Podcast Episode #53: Six Key Performance Factors Every Athlete Needs to Know About

In this podcast episode 6 key performance factors every athlete needs to know Stomach bloating while swimming, carbohydrate loading, running intervals, fat loss for breastfeeding mothers, whether mineral water actually works, more on the HCG diet for fat loss and what to do to make raw almonds taste better 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. 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.

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Podcast listeners, I am a little bit upset with you because there have not been many comments over on the blog@BenGreenfieldFitness.com what I would like for you guys to start doing is as much as possible, rather than emailing me your questions, leave them in the comment box or on the website underneath the podcast episode that you listened to that made you think of the question or in really any of the posts over there because it's really fun to get conversations going and actually have more comments appearing over there. So I am going to be much more likely to pick your question to answer if it appears as a comment over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com rather than as a question emailed to me. The other thing that you can do if you have questions and you want them answered on on this show is you can call our toll free number that actually has a dedicated line that's set up for questions and it is in the show notes to this podcast. It is 877-20-99439. I need to check that out. Either way, I've got tons of questions this week and I'm not really mad at you. I'm not upset. I just want to see more comments over on the blog less floating into my email inbox. Special Announcements A couple of quick announcements before we get into the featured topic for this week and it is a pretty cool feature topic. The first is that I have a new podcast player up on the website where if you click on that you can actually listen to the podcast while you're surfing the Internet. If you want to open in a separate pop up window. I also have a survey over there, very quick five minute survey that lets us improve the quality of the actual podcast audio itself and if you want to complete that quick survey it will really help me make it that much better. I also have a link over there where you can go to itunes, you can subscribe to this podcast for free in itunes and you can leave us feedback. And this is probably really selfish of me, but when you leave us feedback, it can actually make us a more popular show on itunes. And I personally, for my own selfish reasons, think that that is really just fantastic when we're more popular on itunes. So before we get on to feature topic, a few quick announcements. And the first is that as many of you may know, the Shape 21 Lean Body Challenge, which was a 63 day fat loss challenge using a copy of a book and DVD fat loss program that I've created. That challenge ended and all of the before and after photos for the final four contestants are over on the shape21.com website. You can actually click on those photos and go vote for who you think is most worthy to win the $400 worth of prizes that we have in that competition. It's three girls and one guy that qualified. A couple videos are up there, some photos. You get to choose who you think had the best results. So go check that out. I'm going to put a link to it in the show. Notes to this podcast. That book, I believe, still has just a few of the bonuses that are actually going out along with it. Meaning that if you are one of the first 100 people to order the book, then you actually get unlimited 30 day access to our Shape 21 Lean Body forum. You get entered into a drawing for a year of personal training and nutrition coaching online with me. You get free access to the Fat Loss Secrets video seminar that I taught. And then finally you get the free Shape 21 support audio program that comes along with it. And that is not an ebook by the way. That is a physical book and DVD that gets mailed out to your house. So make sure you get your hands on that and go vote for the people who worked really hard the past 63 days and just look awesome in my opinion. And we also have an update on the girl who was doing Remember I described to you that HCG fat loss program that I've been using very sparingly. I've got a few clients who I'm coaching online who have tried everything for fat loss and simply cannot lose weight. And I've literally tried a lot. I mean I've put them on the perfect nutrition program, the perfect fat loss program. Anyway, anyways, I have four people right now on what's called an HCG Fat loss diet and it's nasal inhalation or an injection of a compound that actually causes your body to tap into its fat reserves. I have one girl who lost eight pounds in the past week after not losing anything for two years. Another one whose video I just put up, she has broken the 200 pound mark for the first time since she actually became overweight. And she is very excited about it. You can watch that video. Another girl who is down 13 pounds in the past three weeks. This program only goes for 40 days. It's the longest that I put people on it. But I do kind of hold your hand and walk you through the process. If it's one of those things where you're just desperate, I do kind of screen you. You can only do it if you really, truly have tried everything. And just to give you an idea of what hcg, what the cost of that is financial. Usually you're looking at for a 40 day dose of HCG, about $150. And then you're looking at just like a minimal consulting fee for me to actually tell you what to do and design a program to actually allow you to walk through that. So I've been getting a lot of inquiries about it. So I thought that I should mention it on the podcast. And then finally the last special announcement today or the last two special announcements. The first is that the mindset triathlon.com Twitter contest is still going on for the best bicycling tips. I wrote my best bicycling tip and I put it up on the show. Notes to this podcast. If you click on it, you can go vote for me. And Mindset Triathlon is a fantastic website. Anyways. It would be a great website for you to click over to check out all sorts of really cool books and resources, even some free stuff, some free books for triathletes over there that you can download right to your computer. Last announcement is for those of you in the Coeur d' Alene area. I am teaching for young adults, for young athletes, a back to school sports performance clinic. It's on Thursday, August 13th. That's in a couple of weeks. And essentially I'm going to be teaching functional workouts to get your body ready for human performance during sports season. How to ensure that your mind muscle connections are going to operate with 100% efficiency. So I'm going to teach some neuromuscular tips and tricks, some injury preventions, basically build your body up and put down some natural body armor prior to starting into your athletic routine for fall sports. And then finally nutrition guidance, what to eat to make your body perform like a champion and that is going to be taught over at my brand new facility over in Coeur d'. Alene. So for those of you in the Spokane Coeur d' Alene area, that's for you. So we are going to move on to to this week's featured topic. And it's a little bit of a change up because I'm actually going to play the featured topic first and then I'm going to do the listener Q and A after. And what I want to know from you guys is how you like that, if you like that switch up or if you like the Listener Q&As first. So let's go ahead and move on to this week's feature topic. And one of the things that I should warn you about is that the audio fades like maybe three times while Dr. Cohen is talking in this interview. But don't worry, it comes back. We dial him back in pretty quickly.

Featured Topic cast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield coming to you once again from BenGreenfieldFitness.com and today I want to talk about a very interesting paper that I came across in the past couple of weeks. And this paper identifies several key factors that I think every single athlete on the planet should actually know about. And it was written by a physician and a gentleman who's actually an avid athlete himself. He's got about two decades of experience in preventive medicine and sports performance medicine and has been training and counseling members of the American medical community on nutritional issues for the past 15 years. And he really is recognized as one of the leading authorities in the biological analysis of athletic performance factors. This Gentleman's name is Dr. Richard Cohen, and I have Dr. Cohen on the other line. Dr. Cohen, thanks for joining us today.

Appreciate it. I'm glad to be here and hope we can give your listeners some new and exciting information.

I'm positive that we can. I've read this paper and some of the things in here are just going to be so valuable for people. They were incredibly valuable for me. But before I start to ask you about these key performance factors, specifically these six key performance factors that you have listed in this paper, can you explain how you actually came to identify these factors that you write about as the key factors? I mean, where did you actually come up with these factors as being the ones that are unique or the thing that every athlete should be looking at? In other words, what sets these factors apart?

I think they're two components to them. One is there are some very specific factors that individually for athletes, when deficient or not at optimal levels have dramatic effects on your well being. So those factors, these two specific ones just can't be overlooked. And if you're running low and not paying attention to these, they make such a dramatic difference in how you perform and how you feel. So they're, those are very low hanging fruit in my book no Brainers. The other four have sort of a dual benefit. One is, yes, individually they are very important, but also they are interrelated. And what's interesting about these four I found neat about them, when you put them together, they give you a very nice picture of a general state of sort of performance health or performance well being, which is sort of how I like to look at it. So you have a couple individual factors and four factors that work together and will globally give you a feedback of how you're doing. And they sort of derive From, I was 10 years in private practice, very sort of progressively nutritionally oriented practice back east in New England. And the more I got involved in testing people and trying to understand how people perform at their best, there are certain things that just kept repeating themselves. So these sort of, as I say, six factors sort of gave you this nice picture of where people are. I could go on, but I think that answers your question.

Okay, so this is a way for an athlete to basically have a snapshot of where their body stands from a health perspective or from a performance perspective.

Exactly. Does it tell us every particular feature? No, but two ways to look at it. If these six factors are right on, I would say you're in real good shape. If a couple of these factors are not correct, you can fix them. And it does open up your, your thought processes to what else is going on. And the other nice thing about these six factors are they're factors that you can sort of assess for yourselves. So what I try to do is not only say, okay, which are important, but which are going to be reasonably inexpensive to assess as well as there are laboratory processes that allow you to collect your sample at home. So you don't have to go to a lab, you don't have to go to a physician. These are things you can take control of yourself. So it's sort of a blending of all these different components to come up with these six.

Right, right. Well, let's touch on how people can actually test for these when we finish introducing them. But let's just jump right into it here. You've got six factors and I'd like to start with with just the very first one that you think is important in terms of being one of the Six key performance factors that every athlete needs to know. Metabolically appropriate fuel.

Yeah, absolutely. I think it all starts with what we put in our body. Absolutely.

Okay, so does this go deeper than just eating healthy?

Absolutely. If your listeners can understand this one point, then I think we've done our job. You need to look at food in a new way. You need to look at food. 1. Food provides nutrients for short term and for long term health. But even more importantly for an athlete, food is your fuel. Most people that I know go through the day and picking foods that are either they like or foods that they've heard are nutritious or what maybe the latest research said was good for you. Eggs are good. No, no. Now eggs are bad. No. Weights are good. Again, Lean meat is good. No weight. No, it's not. You just get on this roller coaster ride. But when you begin to understand that you can eat very specifically to fuel your body, and every person actually has a unique need for a different type of fuel. The same way you wouldn't take a diesel Volkswagen and put regular gasoline, nor would you take a propane car and put diesel fuel in. So everyone's particular needs for fuel are going to be different. And that a lot of times will override, at least on a short term for a performance or a race or for heavier training or for just, well, being the nutritious part of it. Now you want to shoot for both. But you know what? If you have a choice, a lot of time it's the fuel which is going to leave you feeling better.

Okay, I want to get even more specific about this because you actually have differentiated between the metabolic types for people that need certain types of diets. Can you explain, can you explain that?

Sure. Metabolic typing or just sort of the general.

In your paper you talk about fast oxidizers, slow oxidizers, and mixed oxidizers and each of those different types of athletes needing different types of fuels.

Got it. Okay. So let's just give you sort of the paradigm. Carry on a little bit further from what we just talked about, and I think it will make it very clear. Oriental or Asian people culturally and geographically have survived very well for hundreds and thousands of years on vegetables and rice and a little bit of fish and not too much fat. They do very well. Now let's go the opposite way. You have Eskimos or Inuits. And what do they eat? They do not eat these. They survive on fat and meat and rare amounts of vegetables. They found a way to get their nutrients. If you switched each of these diets for Each of these population bases, they would each not perform well and they would certainly become ill in time. Their own metabolic needs, based on their geography, based on their ancestry, their genetics are different. Now. We live in a world which the geographic lines have blurred or our cultural lines have blurred. Even up to 100 years ago, you knew where you're from, you knew the foods that you ate. In fact, the foods that you ate were locally or seasonal. You could trace your family line back to one particular area. Well, that doesn't exist anymore. So where people used to eat, where they lived, not only do we have to deal with foods from different parts of the world and foods that are marketed to us and processed food, we really don't have a grasp anymore what foods are best for us. Now there is a way to do that. And getting back to this, fast, slow and mixed oxidizers. There are people who perform well or feel better, such as the Asians, and they would be more of a slow oxidizer. They feel better on lighter foods. You can even start asking yourself, how do I feel better? Do I like, can I eat? Gosh, just have some fruit in the morning, maybe a bagel, and I feel great. I have good energy, I don't bonk. I'm not hungry. Or are you someone who would be a faster oxidizer, such as an Inuit, who would feel much better on some eggs, maybe some potatoes and some sausage? That's not healthy, right? Well, not necessarily. One we're looking at is fuel. How are your fuel needs? A fast oxidizer typically is going to need a richer. We can get more complicated, but very simply, they need richer, heavier diet. The body burns fuel at a faster rate. In fact, they thrive on fuel that is richer. We'll call it for simplicity, where a slow oxidizer is going to feel on that same type of food, sluggish, heavy, tired, they're not going to perform well. And they can do well on even a vegetarian or a quasi vegetarian diet. It's just what their makeup is that's very simplistic and there's variations in there. And then you have your mix oxidizer, who needs a little bit of both. They can't go real heavy, but you know what? They need a little more protein. They don't do as well on grains. They can have some fats, but maybe instead of heavier animal fat, they do better on nut butters and they do better with olive oils and such.

Go ahead. I was going to say, it just seems like in a nutshell, what we're saying is that for, let's say the Ironman triathlete who's got a five hour bike ride on a Saturday afternoon, one might have the performance of their lives because they had an omelet that morning for breakfast and another might have had an omelette, but just completely, completely hit a wall when what they really should have had was oatmeal.

Exactly. I mean there's a balance. Exactly. And that balance and you know, I'll say right off, the majority of people do better with richer fuel. You know, our industry for the most part, you know, getting into there is more of that sort of paleo type diet, which is proteins and vegetables, less grains. But absolutely the key is making people aware and giving them the knowledge of it's not one size for all. It's sort of interesting if you go back to the 20s when, if you look at medicine, everything was germ theory and bacteria. We had no clue even 80 years ago that to the late, actually 120 years ago, Louis Pasteur, that's really when we even understood bacteria cause disease. And it wasn't really until 1930 or so Francis Pottinger and Royal Lee, they actually started to pay attention to any nutritional deficiencies. And as you go through the, through the years, well then we started to Even in the 60s and 70s, well, diet and fat may play a role, but we're not for the most part, especially on the medical profession. And it's coming there really understanding that each person is uniquely different. Just if you get into the research and the news headlines and one thing's good, and they do these mass studies on particular diets and nutrients and they're misleading because they're studying groups of people all with different needs. The cruise is to find out what your individual need is, especially from a fuel perspective. And then if you intuitively follow things such that you talk about all the time, if you stick with things that haven't been modified, haven't been processed and existed in nature, you're so far ahead of the game you can shut it off your brain to most of the popular research because you know you're doing what's best for you. And then you modify it as new information comes out, but it becomes very intuitive and you go, gee, if I'm feeling good, if my energy is good and I'm not hungry and I'm performing well, well guess what, something's right and that's what you need to do. And then you can begin to say, all right, well how do I fine tune this? How do I begin to Assess some key factors. So absolutely, the metabolic. Understanding how to fuel yourself is crucial.

When we finish talking about these six factors today, I'll mention about some of the ways that you talk about how to actually figure out whether you're a slow oxidizer or a fast oxidizer or a mixed oxidizer. But I want to go on to factor two, because in addition to these metabolically appropriate fuels, you Talk about Factor 2 being proper pH balance, which I really know not a lot of people think about, but what does that mean, proper PH balance? What does that mean for the athlete?

Okay, so I guess ph just for people. We've heard that term. You can go back to chemistry and so forth. Ph is a measure of the hydrogen concentration. Basically it's the. The power of hydrogen actually is what ph means. Ph is a measure of acid alkaline, where if PH is less than 7.0, it's considered acid and there's more hydrogen. If the PH is greater than seven, you're more alkaline. Everything on earth has a balance that is crucial between acuin and alkaline. The body requires a very tight control of ph to be mildly alkaline. And if you measure blood ph, it'll be 7.2 to 7.374, not much greater than that. Now, the body will do everything it can to maintain that, that PH level, because we could go on for a long time discussing this, but let it be the cells require this balance to function properly. There are chemical reactions, and if the ph is not appropriate, things are just not going to work well. In fact, signs of illness or severe illness occur when the PH in the blood becomes acidic. In fact, death is defined by a very low ph. Acidity is disease. Alkalinity up to a point is health. There are a number of things that we do to our body that create a greater acid load, and that's a problem because as we said, when the body has an acid load, it needs to takes some of its resources to try and create that alkalin and alkaline balance.

Doctor Cohen, your voice just faded a little bit. I don't know if your mouthpiece may have gone a little far. Go ahead and say something.

The body needs homeostasis in acid alkalinity. So when it becomes acid, it reaches into its stores and primarily its stores, minerals, calcium, magnesium, so forth, to try and create this balance. And sometimes you can't do it sufficiently and we wind up maintaining a very acid state. The problem is there's not an ideal way to measure this. You can measure Serum ph as we talked about. But that doesn't change very much. And it's really not practical to periodically, three times a day, check your serum ph and getting your blood drawn. The body, like we said, will do everything it can to modify that serum ph. There are ways to look at ph and one of the factors that we will, that are important to monitor with our athletes is urine ph. It gives us a sense of a trend of what the body's acid load is. You just collect a urine sample and there are dipsticks that have ph color readouts and it will tell you what your status is.

So primarily you would be looking at actually changing the food ratio in your diet based off of whether you were acidic or alkaline.

Right. So now let's get back what plays a role in, in creating a greater acid state? Certainly foods. Traditionally, if you start looking up heavier meats, sugars, grains, citric acid, sodas, energy drinks, I think you just sent a little blurb out about that. Are one of the major concerns we see. Most of these endurance energy drinks are extremely acidic. Stress over training, these all create acidic states in the body. And when the body has enough of its nourishment, when it has proper balance, when it has recovery status, as we're talking to some of the integrated factors, your body can handle that load up to a point. With regard to diet or foods, like I said, traditional foods, it'll vary a little bit depending on each person's metabolic. So a, a fast oxidizer can tolerate more animal proteins than a slow oxidizer. There's been a recent book that was published and some more literature that has come out again in the press, which will be confusing. Protein is very harmful to you. Well, you have to know excessive amount of proteins when someone is consuming lots of sugars and not many vegetables, which tend to be alkaline, when they're drinking sodas, when they're eating grains. And top it off, if they were a slow oxidizer, that' syou know they're a big okay. But you take a fast oxidizer who is eating proteins, and typically their proteins are with vegetables or they're not drinking energy drinks, they're on clean water, their mineral balance is good, not a problem at all. Here you can see how you become misled and someone says, God, I'm eating too much protein. Well, not really following this acid alkaline balance will give you a nice overall clue of how things are going for you. It's one of these markers that ties in really directly to mineral Status, which is sort of, we'll call it marker 2A per se.

Right. And the mineral balance, that's basically the third key factor that you talk about in addition to this, the metabolic typing essentially, and then also the acid alkaline balance. Talk to me about the mineral balance. I mean, I should let you know. We've talked about magnesium a lot on this show before. I know a lot of people who have listened in or are fans of the podcast have heard a lot about the importance of magnesium. But when we talk about mineral balance, is it more than just the magnesium? And where does calcium come into play?

Right. Minerals obviously are key. And I had the opportunity to listen to the magnesium and it's one of the key factors that when I was in full time practice, majority of people were outright magnesium deficiency. This is one of these factors that you can do some overviews now. Calcium, there are minerals, there's macrominerals and microminerals. Calcium, magnesium, zinc, chromium, are some of the macros. And then selenium. Actually, I put chromium in a Microsoft. There are a number of them. Then you have trace minerals which we don't really want to address at this point because those are extremely difficult to monitor. The two crucial minerals that we want to pay attention to are calcium and magnesium.

Interesting.

Most people, right, calcium is sort of a shock for most people. We all think we all don't get enough calcium. The fact is we actually get too much calcium. The problem, we've been sort of provided information for years to show that calcium is important for bones. Well, it's interesting if you look at literature, the countries that eat or have consumed the most amount of calcium actually have the most amount of disease, specifically bone loss and other illnesses. The countries that have the least amount of magnesium actually go right along with that. There is a direct correlation between too much calcium and not enough magnesium. Both of those minerals are essential for the cellular membrane function. The problem is not enough calcium. So you look at some of these again, we'll just pick Asian countries where they consume lots of vegetables. In fact, their body tends to be much more alkaline. Their calcium need is not high because their calcium, which is primarily stored in the bone, is not being resourced by the body to balance out that alkaline acid state. So it's this catch 22 feed more calcium into the system. But the body is really losing it because it's requiring it to balance out the acidity, which is created by stress, by energy drinks, by sodas, by too much protein, by sugars etc. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it makes perfect sense. It's so funny because so many people, athletes and just the general population, I know, they come into my office for nutrition consulting or performance consulting, and they've got these huge bottles full of their calcium supplements they're taking out. Yeah. Yeah. Now, in contrast, you describe magnesium as the king of minerals. And it's kind of funny because any of the top respected physicians we have had on this show in the past six months, every single one has listed magnesium as one of the top supplements that their patients and the athletes that they work with should be taking. All of them have reasons that kind of coincide. But when you describe magnesium as the king of minerals, that makes you like the fourth or fifth renowned physician that's come on this show who has said that. Why do you describe magnesium as the king of minerals?

From an athlete perspective, magnesium. Magnesium is involved with more enzymatics. Minerals for the most part in the body are coenzyme. They promote or involve with energy processes or other biochemical processes. Magnesium is involved in more biochemical processes than any other mineral in the body. Without sufficient amount of magnesium, these chemical processes just don't work well. Magnesium specifically is involved with energy formation or energy transfer. Take it that much further. Magnesium is involved with muscular function, cardiac function, rhythm, relaxation. It's the tone of the body, the ability of the muscles to perform, ability of the muscle to relax, and it's that magnesium calcium balance, which is crucial for cellular function. So if that balance is not there, if there's too much calcium or the body losing calcium and it's deficient in magnesium, things are not going to work. The body is not going to process properly. We'll take it one step further. Magnesium in a traditional diet, which we've gone away from in modern civilization, was abundant. Magnesium is in vegetables. It's in anything that's dark and green and leafy. It's in some grains. Abundance, not a problem whatsoever. If you look at primitive, you look at the diets that existed before modern civilization, the body really doesn't have a wonderful way of holding on and replenishing magnesium, because it always was there. When we're magnesium deficient from our diet, we also, on the flip side, have a hard time restoring magnesium. And it's funny that magnesium is actually almost as much prevalent in the bone as calcium. You don't hear much about the importance of magnesium. There is no magnesium council, such as. There's no, you know, with calcium. We have a dairy council. There's no one pushing Magnesium. There's no one marketing a particular product or food that can be sold. Unfortunately that's the main crux of the lack of magnesium pr. But if you look straight up, magnesium more important for well being. The challenge with magnesium is double one. I said it's a hard mineral. Once you're deficient to restore at least some of the. I'm real interested in the topical. We've been working with that recently and it's hard to test for. There is a particular intracellular assay that's done by a lab out of California. But to specifically look at that's 3, $400. If you go to your doctor and you want to test serum magnesium, it's like waiting for the yellow light on your gas tank to come up to tell you that you're low. The only way your magnesium is going to show low is if you're severely low. So that, that's not really efficient. Some people look at red blood cell magnesium, that's a little better. Some people look at hair and a 24 hour urine. That was one that when I was in practice, you can actually load someone up with intravenous magnesium and take a urine before and a urine after and see how much they hold onto. Again, not a very practical way of, of assessing it for the general population base. When we look at mineral acids as a key factor, I can talk a little bit about this. There is a particular marker and it's called urinary NTX or it's a telomere. It's a collagen breakdown product of bone. I chose this marker. It gives a global overview of these two key minerals, calcium and magnesium. The status of the body when your body is acidic, when your body is, we'll call it minerally imbalance. If you're losing calcium, if you're pulling it out, if you're magnesium deficient, begin to break down bone, other things will happen in the system. There'll be lack of energy, you might have muscle spasms and a variety of things relate to magnesium deficiency. But one of the things that are easily measured through a urine sample is this increased amount of this NTX molecule. So when NTX is elevated in the urine one, you know you're breaking down bone at that point, which certainly is not a comforting fact to know and you know how that's going to affect you, that'll be years down the road. But cherries, you know, at that one point when you're collecting that urine, you're minerally imbalanced and you're acidic and you're going to assume one, that's not a health state to be, and two, your performance is not going to be optimal. It's a real interesting factor and it's one of these interrelated factors as we talk about because as we'll learn, it relates to vitamin D, it relates to amino acid status, it relates to your ph and acid alkaline balance, and also it relates to are you following the proper diet.

So you mentioned the amino acids and I noticed that you have that also listed as a factor in addition to the mineral balance. Now, most people are familiar with amino acids as being the things that we need to get into our bodies after a workout to make sure that we rebuild muscle or recover properly. When you say that that's a picture key performance factor for athletes. What exactly are you referring to when you say the essential amino acids?

Okay, so amino acids are protein building blocks and basically from a very simplistic form, we eat protein. Your body digests the protein to these particular nitrogen based little subunits called amino acids and then it absorbs them. The body's job is then to take these amino acids and recreate like a puzzle takes this puzzle, takes them apart, shifts them and puts them back together, create enzymes and proteins and neurotransmitters and hormones, etc. It's a structure. So think of protein and think of amino acids as the framework of your body. It's how you're building your house. And you have to start with the foundation and the structure of the amino acids, which there are 22, eight of them are considered essential, meaning that your body requires all eight of these pieces to build everything else. So while there's 22 pieces in, all the other 14 can be made from those eight essential amino acids. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

The problem that we see is we don't tend to think of amino acids per se. What's my amino acid intake? We're lucky if people are aware of what my protein or even are really aware of the difference between protein, carbohydrates and fat. As a nutritional consultant, how do I get enough protein? Our concern is step one is to just make people aware of you need protein. For amino acids, Especially for athletes.

The.

Greatest source of amino acid need is for an anabolic nature. Anabolic would be repair and restoration for muscle recovery. Every time you're working out hard, that's soreness or your muscles basically are breaking down and the body needs to be able to repair them and to recover and rebuild, to restore hormones, etc. This was my paradigm Shift. Not too long ago, I was like, okay, get enough protein. This sort of came out of working with a few endurance athletes here in the end. And they were getting enough protein, but yet they were experiencing. And this is one particular one sort of changed my paradigm. She was on protein powders and was eating red meat and she just was not feeling well. She had been losing weight, her muscles weren't recovering well, and we did a serum chemistry on her and lo and behold, her actually, her plasma albumin, which is a protein in the blood, was deficient. That's again, it's sort of like she was extremely low. We didn't even look at amino acid status, her protein status, and her blood was low, her hormone status was low, which again was a protein component. And then lastly, when we did, she was having some stool problems. We looked at a stool analysis and she had protein fibers in her stool. So it was like put two and two together. There's. There was this woman who was eating enough protein, but she wasn't absorbing it, or what she was getting wasn't doing the trick. As I started to look further into this, you have to understand there's two limitations. Well, let's go three. One, you need to be eating protein to meet your metabolic needs and to meet your physical needs. So if you're sedentary, you're not under stress, you're not ill, you're not injured, you're going to have a lower protein or amino acid requirement. If the proteins you are eating are not of high quality. There's a term called biological value. And biological value means the ability of the protein source to be used in an anabolic way for restoration. If protein isn't used, or the amino acids from the protein are used for an anabolic repair and restoration, they're basically just burned for energy. They're used to store. They're actually turned into energy storage. You can actually use for fat storage. Here is someone that was getting enough protein, but either the protein quality and she was consuming a lot of protein powders. Well, lo and behold, we think protein powders are a great source. They can be useful. But the biological value of a whey or an egg whey protein is about half of what you get of a red meat or some chicken. Or the best would be a whole egg. Then take it one step further with this. What's your ability to digest protein? It's Hetch 22. If you're under stress andor you're amino acid deficient, or you're getting older or you're over training, Your digestive enzymes decrease. So then you don't break down even if you're eating healthy, clean grass fed bison or fresh wild caught salmon, et cetera. It's a three fold. And we subsequently went ahead and did a plasma amino acid and she was dramatically deficient in these branched chains amino acid. So we needed to restore her amino acid status. So even though she was eating metabolically correct for herself, she was deficient. And by restoring her amino acid status, everything began to recover. Hormonal recovery, muscle base recovered, digestion actually improved. She noticed within a few weeks of restoring amino acids she could begin to break down foods more effectively. And one of the but more interesting things, there are a couple wonderful age related researchers on sarcopenia. And sarcopenia is the age related lobe and muscle. What they found, which blew me away was when they restored amino acid status, they used IVs for some of these studies. But hormonal levels improved. And you take people in their 60s and 70s and their muscle mass improved. The realization is that we used to think it was the hormones declining, affecting perhaps our ability to use proteins and amino acids for muscle recovery. People use testosterone and such to try and bulk up. Not all those studies show super benefits because if you don't have the amino acids or you're not able to absorb them, or you're not utilizing them properly, then it's not going to work. You can actually create a strong anti aging benefit by restoring your amino acids. It's a whole new exciting and I'm really looking forward to following up on people and looking at the sort of the other benefits we see with amino acid restoration.

And you said you did a plasma test on that girl and that's something as simple as just like a blood test.

Right?

Right, that's one. And it actually is one of the key factors is a way to assess, you can assess that by a finger stick, believe it or not, so we can talk more about that. So amino acid recovery is truly our understanding where your amino acid status is essential. Subsequently I had another athlete, she's actually a nationally renowned ultra endurance runner and she's doing pretty well. We checked her amino acids and her branched chain amino acids are all low. She's getting by but at some point she's going to crash because you just can't continue eating up your muscles to fuel your body proteins and to fuel our anodes. That's your store of amino acids are your muscles. The paradigm shift is protein needs really are amino acid needs. And you need to understand that eight essential amino acids are crucial. And if you're deficient in one of those pieces, you can't put the puzzle together in an appropriate way. A lot of foods, vegetarians and people are eating mixed amino acids, especially if their body may be requiring more protein based on the metabolic type, are going to be in trouble. There is no, there's no way they're going to perform anywhere near their optimal status. Vegetarians do well. Not if their amino acid status is not balanced, not if they're not eating according to their metabolic type. Can they get by? Yes. Is it a good thing for the earth? Yes. But not for performance and ultimate long term health, for sure. Just related to the amino acids though.

Yeah. And I think that will come as a shocker to a lot of people who just eat their protein and their recovery drink and think they're doing just fine. So. Well, it really, you know, I want to move on to the next performance factor. But what this really comes down to is if somebody's doing everything right and they're still feeling crappy, or they're not racing like they want to race, or they're not training like they want to train, then they may need to get a little deeper than just making sure that they're eating enough protein and consuming their vegetables is right.

Absolutely. And there's some guys here and Ben that do everything wrong nutritionally. We have people who have greater genetics.

You're fading a little bit.

Yeah. I'm saying there are certain people who can do everything wrong nutritionally.

Did your headset just turn down?

No.

Oh.

Huh.

Interesting. So they're doing everything wrong, but they're still doing okay now.

So the question is they have done better and, you know, what's going to happen to them in five years, you know, once they stop, you know, so there are people who have genetic resiliency and they do have youth on their side. Right, right. You know, but, but then for every one of those, you know, it's sort of like, well, you know, my grandfather smoked and what about the other 90 people who smoked and died at 50?

Exactly. They're an anomaly.

There's always the anomalies that people have the ability to last and then you can check into them down the road. And what happened to you? You pay for it.

Now we had Dr. Minkoff on the show from LifeWorks Wellness center down in Florida, triathlete down there, one of Dave Scott's friends, and, and we also talked about the recent vitamin D meta analysis that basically compared vitamin D to almost like a, like a steroid hormone in terms of its ergogenic benefit for athletes. You list vitamin D as your fourth key performance factor. Why?

Oh, gosh, sometimes I think it should be number one, vitamin D. And the research on vitamin D over the past 10 years is just exploding. And you go, well, how did we miss this? The fact is, we really didn't have a way to easily assess it. We didn't truly become aware of, one, that vitamin D was such a critically deficient nutrient for many people because we couldn't test it. Two, even when I was in medical school 20 years ago, it wasn't understood that receptors for vitamin D, or the ability to convert vitamin D into its active form, was present in every cell. Let's back up here. Vitamin D is not a vitamin. That's one of the misnomers. While it's called a vitamin, the only reason it's interesting if you go back to the history, but vitamin D was thought to be a vitamin because they found dogs who would, well, there's a disease called rickets. Basically, they were trying to figure this out with animals and they found that when they found dogs who had rickets or weakening of the bone, basically breaking their bones, and they gave them fish oil, which had some vitamin D in it, they got better break their bones. So they figured, oh, okay, here was an essential nutrient that's present in food, and that's the definition of a vitamin. Something your body can't make. Well, it turns out your body does make vitamin D and it makes it from exposure to the ultraviolet B rays of the sun, There is a cholesterol, basically a steroid cholesterol component found in your skin that gets activated by UVB of sun. So it is not a vitamin. In fact, the same way that the body creates testosterone, a hormone out of cholesterol, in a different process, but it uses a cholesterol product to make vitamin D. So within every cell, every muscle, there are vitamin D receptors. So vitamin D, Vitamin D, yes, Has strong effects, strong steroid like. Because it is a steroid like hormone in the body, it is really more hormone. Like, the other thing that's really incredible about vitamin D is it controls the genetic process. Every cell has the ability to modulate how it sort of uses its genetic machinery. And vitamin D manipulates that in our case, in a very positive, beneficial way. When vitamin D isn't present in adequate amounts, that machinery doesn't activate in an appropriate manner. That's a general vitamin D scoop. And the other really important factor was with our ability to now test vitamin D relatively easily, finding that deficiencies are rampant. Vitamin D is linked to these deficiencies for autoimmune disease, cancer, depression, autism, the list goes on. And while it's not our direct topic, it is a globally efficient nutrient. People don't get the sun that they used to when they worked outside and lived outside. Generally, if you look at levels of vitamin D for people who spend sufficient amount of time outside.

You're starting to fade a little bit there.

Fading again.

There we go.

Okay. Yeah. So generally it's 50 to 60 nanograms per milliliter. If you look at indigenous populations that work outside, that's what their blood levels are and that's what our studies show are optimal amounts. Well, majority of people, if they're living inside, even if they're in warm climate that you don't get outside sufficiently, their levels can be anywhere from 20 to 30 and that is deficient. And with that deficiency causes risk of illness but decrease in performance. What's amazing is mankind's been around enough. And before we were information loaded, there was intuitive. People had time to study the stars. And even going back to the Romans and Greeks, they knew that when people had sunshine, just became aware. When people had adequate sunshine, they felt better, their mood was improved, they worked longer, they performed better. So they would be more resistant to certain illnesses. Going back to the original Olympics, they used to have sun, send their athletes away for sun. And this sort of continued and I was forgotten until the Germans and the Russians did this through the 30s and 50s and that's where a lot of the research came from. And they would show endurance increasing. They'd show power, strength, muscular vertical jump speed in the 100 meter decreased over a second. They showed changes in performance over the years. Well, it makes sense if you're coming out into spring and you're living in a dark climate and you haven't either been traveling and getting sun or taking vitamin D. Your performance, if your levels are down, are not going to be the same and you're going to improve throughout the summer. People notice that. Or if you go on a sunny location, you're trying to compete mid winter. Even if you've been doing your indoor workouts as a cyclist, you're just not going to be able to compete with someone from a different from the southern hemisphere who it's their summertime, so that's pretty clear. There's rises and falls. And we see that with fall cross country teams. They do great coming out of the summer, but a lot of them begin to overtrain. Not because they're training too much Their D levels are slipping. And some of the research we did here in Bend with the local high school cross country and track team and D levels were significantly deficient.

Gosh.

Metabolic fuel certainly is something you can do for yourself. I'd say number one if the number one thing I would have people look out for is vitamin D. And again.

It'S something that you can test for and this is something people can find out and well, again, I'll save that until we're done talking about these last two factors. But stress and recovery hormones is what you list as Factor 5. And you talk about testosterone and cortisol as your two key stress and recovery hormones. Why is that ratio so important?

Okay, so you know, as we talked about, this is one of these interrelated factors and, and also I used to look at testosterone and cortisol maybe as a primary factor, but we live and we experience and we learn and it's sort of the fun thing about health and performance and feedback and the ability in anything to stay open minded and to put things in perspective that we understand. We'll sure we'll understand even more than we do now. But testosterone. Testosterone is an anabolic hormone, meaning its primary function, as we talked about with amino acids, is recovery and repair. Obviously it has some other benefits, the sexually oriented benefits. But from an athletic perspective, you need testosterone for recovery and repair. Cortisol is your stress hormone. Cortisol wall in short amounts or small amounts for quick, how should we say it? For quick recovery is important, but cortisol in higher levels is a breakdown. It's a catabolic hormone cortisol level which occur with aging. In essence, let's give people a visual perspective. Take a 17 year old boy who can pretty much do anything, run into walls, fall down, eat anything he wants. And they're lean for the most part, muscular, and they recover really well. Take someone as you get older, about 60, you're working hard, your muscles just don't recover, you're sore, you got a little fat around your belly and you just don't handle stress. And it takes about nine months to recover from something that didn't even bother you when you were 20. Guess what? It's a testosterone cortisol ratio imbalance. Obviously amino acids and vitamin D all play a role, but those two key hormones are crucial. Cortisol is key for acute stress responses. It saves your life. It was the fight or flight hormone when we're in death. It's responsible with other stress hormones for causing our blood to clot, for knocking pain Thresholds for or changing our mental acuity and can see better. Right. So cortisol is very helpful in acute stressful situations. It helps your body recover, it helps your body prepare and handle injuries and life threatening or body threatening type responses. But over, as we age and that testosterone cortisol ratio becomes imbalanced or when we're chronically under stress and we either deplete cortisol or we cause cortisol levels to rise, that blunts immunity, blunts Recovery, Blunts Energy, etc. Looking at a testosterone cortisol ratio gives you a sense again, it's a global marker of your recovery status, your ability to that anabolic catabolic balance. Anabolic being youth. There's a way to think about it. Anabolic is youth, catabolic is you're getting old, your body's breaking down. The more that testosterone cortisol ratio is elevated, the more youthful your body is, the quicker it's able to recover. It's a marker of strength and well being. In a very simplistic way, it makes sense.

Now, what's the last factor? I know we've gone over quite a bit here, but you do have one final factor that people need to be concerned about in terms of it being a key performance factor for athletes.

And what is that?

Iron. Iron level. Yeah, this is partly interrelated because your iron levels are confounded, more compounded or, or related to protein intake, dietary intake and so forth. Iron levels. And actually this is the one that sort of started this whole paradigm of assessing athletes and these key factors.

Is.

I was asked by local high school coach who had two state, we're in Bend, Oregon, so it's endurance. Everyone's doing something endurance related here. He had two state champion runners who both had iron deficiencies last year. And he got to the point where he felt he could take a look at people, at these girls primarily and sort of say if they were low in iron, he could sort of judge how they were training, what the recovery status, almost a glint in their eye. So he asked me to help him out. We went ahead. We tested 20 girls and 17 of them had low iron levels. Now why is that important? Well, iron is the critical component of heme. And heme being what binds onto oxygen in hemoglobin in your red cells. If you don't have enough iron, you're not going to deliver oxygen to your muscles. Muscles also if you don't have enough iron, iron is one of those coenzymes that's involved just like magnesium in energy processes. There Is risk with regard to being an endurance athlete, especially one if you're doing a lot of pounding, you can lose iron through foot stretch. It's actually the pressure. You can break down your red cells, you can lose iron through your GI tract, small amount of bleeds, microbleeds, you can lose iron. Gosh. Especially young athletes, women, you lose iron through menstruation. So iron loss, and actually one other component is iron levels will be depleted because endurance athletes raise their blood volume. So iron is a crucial mineral that is frequently low, especially in women, that will affect your performance. The important thing to understand is that you can have low iron and not be anemic. Again, just anemia would be sort of extreme iron deficiency to the fact that your red blood cells are now deficient in number. So you have a significant disability in providing oxygen and muscle fatigue and other complications associated with that. But what we're finding, and not just us, but it's just been known for years, is if athletes iron, which is measured by something called ferritin, Ferritin is just a protein which binds iron. When that ferritin marker begins to become low, even before. Before someone is anemic, many runners or athletes will begin to experience decreased performance. Not all. And that's sort of a little bit up for debate. But we will see. When ferritin levels start to dip below 30, your risk of performance deficiency increases dramatically. And it is an early sign of anemia. And endurance athletes specifically, again, premenopausal women who are bleeding have a much greater risk of low iron. And that's just something you just shouldn't miss. It's a problem and it's a simple test to do. And if you're susceptible to it, then other factors can be adjusted. You can change your diet, you can add a little iron to it. Now, the flip side is, why don't I just take iron and I'll prevent it? Well, the problem is iron. What happens to metal when it gets wet or exposed? It rusts. Well, iron is a. We'll call this a free radical promoter. So when there's. That tends to be a problem more in men since they're not regularly bleeding. So you really don't want to randomly take iron without having some sense of what your levels are. And then once you know you're at risk, then you can take enough to recover and then use preventively. But too much iron is not good either. So it's something that really does require some assessment to see what your status is. Yeah, so it was amazing. 85% 17 of the 20, and I think two of the ones were actually. Were iron deficient as well. They both come off of viruses. And this ferritin marker actually elevates. It's called acute phase reaction, meaning that the protein artificially increases after a virus. So I expect all of them except one in these young teen girls were deficient in iron, which was incredible. So that's what got us looking into these other factors. About 65% were vitamin D deficient as well.

I see from your paper that of everything we talked about today, it looks like iron. This iron is really the only thing that you technically have to go to your doctor to get tested. And you can test almost any of this stuff on your own at home, correct?

Yeah, actually working whenever we get to. Or maybe we're at that point, but working with the lab, the ability and the technology is out there to measure and important ferritin, which is your best single screening marker, to do that by finger stick. And they've done that since iron deficiency. Globally, worldwide, is putting the greatest deficiency out there.

In.

Underdeveloped countries, researchers have used finger sticks to actually collect blood to measure iron. And the technology's out there. It's just getting a lab to go ahead and do it. I'm working with one lab, actually, in the Portland area that hopefully will have that in the next three to four months for us. But, yes, you don't need to go to a doctor, but you need to have a blood draw at this point, at least. You need to have a venipuncture.

I see. Hey, you're starting to fade a little bit there. And every time you fade, you're doing something that brings you back in. I'm not sure what.

I'm still in the same place.

Interesting. I thought maybe you were just, like, sitting on the volume control to your microphone. I'll wait for your voice to come back in. For some reason, it still faded.

Still faded.

Let's see. Okay, I think you're coming back in now. Go ahead and say something.

Okay.

Okay, Now I can hear you. Okay. All right. So, you know, I had spoken with you a little bit before this interview, and just so people in the audience know, I am actually personally in the process of getting every single one of these factors tested for myself. Now. I'm not going out into my local medical community and visiting eight different doctors and getting all these different salivary and urinary and blood analysis. All of this is done via kits that are literally sent to my house so I can take the collections myself. Send them back out. In terms of the price comparison, Dr. Cohen, what would this be? Not to mention the time factor for me to go out and get all these tests done in my local medical community.

If you were to do them hit versus what's out? Well, it depends. Gosh, testosterone cortisol could cost, depending on who you're going, what hospital, how they bill it. Just that could cost $200. The vitamin D could cost $85. Urinary NTX, the 85 to $90, plasma, amino acids $150. You're over $500, which is plus driving.

All over the place trying to get.

All these tests, plus driving, plus seeing a doctor who may. And I guess the point is doctors who are looking for disease, this assessment is really, we're looking at optimizing performance. It's not a medical type assessment, but be following up with the doctor, seeing them twice, getting them to help you. Maybe they don't even understand its relationship to performance because they're more focused on illness. Right.

And I've tried to get some of this stuff tested in my athletes, you know, in the past. Sounds like their doctor just kind of check to make sure they're within range and then call them if they're not. And that's it.

Right, Exactly.

And within range, like you say, that's okay, you don't have a disease. Good. But yeah, for ideal performance, Whole different planet. So it was about 50% of that or less than half of that for this kit, for everything.

Correct. It's significantly less. Significantly less. That's correct.

So I'm looking forward to actually getting my results and finishing all my testing. But I know that there's people out there in the audience who are interested in just going through, what is my oxidizing rate, Am I slow? Am I fast, am I mixed? Should I be on an acid diet or an alkaline diet? What are my essential amino acid levels and am I utilizing them properly? What's my vitamin D status? What's my testosterone cortisol ratio? What's my iron level? You can literally get the answers to all these questions fairly quickly. You could be standing there within what, what do you think about six weeks, 10 days?

10 days? 10 days to two weeks, you get the results back. The beauty about what I love is you start, start adjusting one or two factors and a lot of the other ones get better because they are interrelated. You fix your vitamin D, all of a sudden, your mineral balance can improve. You increase your amino acid hormone recovery status, your bone NTX improves They're all directly connected with one another. There are a couple other factors that in a perfect world I would also add in, but those improve as well. And a lot of those are just intuitive. The neat thing is it gives you control. Why not take control back for your health? Stop guessing what's correct for you.

Exactly. With dozens of hours training, hundreds if not thousands of dollars spent on equipment, why go out and train on an $8,000 bike when you're not performing to 70% of your physical capacity? That's right, doing it.

Exactly. The simple thing we know, which we didn't talk about is obviously hydration is one of those no brainer biological factors that you want to address. Most people will realize you're dehydrated. And the research show if you're dehydrated before a raise 1%, which could be a pound and a half, your performance could be 3 to 6% decrease. A two hour race, what is that? Four to gosh, eight minutes, that's significant. But how many people check their hydration status? I don't know. Is that something you do, Ben?

Not on a daily basis.

Well before race. Right. It's. And it's a simple thing to get a dipstick and you can check specific ratio or check the color of your urine. It's almost what I'm hoping is to create an awareness and that's a simple thing to do. Costs virtually nothing. Awareness of. We take care of our body, it's going to be our greatest performance enhancer, our greatest.

Support.

We can't go anywhere without our body so we need to pay a little bit of attention to it. And now there's some tools that make it a lot more practical to be able to do that. And that's cool and that's exciting.

Yeah. And these tests, I mean this home testing, this method of home testing for this stuff is pretty proprietary, kind of new in terms of its availability to people in their homes. I guess if people in the audience listening in are interested, you have my email the ben greenfieldfitness.com you know how to get ahold of me. We have our toll free number set up. 877-209-9439. I'd be happy to tell you exactly how I'm going about arranging getting all of this tested out of the comfort of my own home and kind of walking you through the process because this information that Dr. Cohen shared with us today, if you really are serious about feeling good about actually ensuring that all this work that you're putting into your training is actually Paying off. These are some pretty important factors to pay attention to. So I know we've been going for a little while, Dr. Cohen, we're probably going to have, have to start to start to end our conversation here, but did you have any final, any final words that you wanted to give to the audience? You're pretty comprehensive.

Yeah, I guess it's just hopefully there are a few key points with regard to food as fuel, with regard to understanding that there's some key factors that you just don't want to overlook, such as that don't require, I guess that don't require a lot of effort other than a little bit of cost and some sample collections. For example, vitamin D. What could be easier to restoring vitamin D than I'm going to go out in the sun 15 minutes, three, four times a week and in winter I'll pop a capsule. Pretty simple for the recovery ability. Working with a local former professional triathlete, one Vineman, 10 years ago is coming back. Two cool things. He told me the other day he's been taking vitamin D and amino acids. He's in his early 40s now. He's hitting heart rates he hasn't hit in 15 years. His heart rate, which had been maxing out around 160. He said he's been hitting 172.

Wow.

At a full. And that's like. Wow.

Yeah. And this is, this is basically, I mean, once you kind of add everything up, all the testing everything, you're looking at less, significantly less than the cost of a wetsuit. I mean, right. That's stuff. It's not, not, it's not marked up or overpriced. I mean, this is, this is literally cutting edge medical tests that you can get done on yourself out of your own home to figure out exactly what your body is doing, to look inside your body and suddenly have zero guesswork about where you stand.

Right. And the other key thing is you control it yourself and you can change as much as you need to change. Obviously the only major change for people would be, would be some of the food choices. But the neat thing about once you change your food as fuel and as long as you're open to it and some people just aren't, but if you're open to adjusting things, you start to feel good. When I was in practice, the greatest thing I could do is put someone on a cleanse or, and I say, okay, you follow this and they go, wow, I feel really, really good. And then I hope that they would fall off the wagon really quickly because I know they're feeling great. The majority of their problems have improved. Then they go back to it. Go back? Well, yeah, I didn't follow it, but I feel horrible again. Then I know I had them. So then the choice was theirs. Do I want to feel, do I want to perform poorly? Do I want to feel good? Do I want to not have headaches? Then it's a choice. The choice is yours. But it's a lot easier to make that choice once you have the feedback, the meta about fuel. Once you're fueling your body correctly, it's not this, well, I'll take vitamin E and maybe I won't get heart disease in 50 years. That's a leap of faith. This is, gosh, I ate. It's something simple people can do. Go ahead and eat two different breakfasts. Have some cereal, have some oatmeal and some fruit with low fat without much protein. I think we already know. Versus have some eggs and some lean sausage and a piece of toast or maybe not toast, some vegetable with it. See how you feel. Which one? Where are you three hours later? Is your energy good? Are you hungry? Are you light headed? Are you spacey? So that feedback will go okay. It will give you a sense of which way you need to go.

Yeah, and I like to think that I have my nutrition pretty well dialed in. But I'm interested to see how my questionnaire and my test results kind of correlate to what I've established as what seems to work best for me. Well, you know what, we're going to have to wrap it up. I wanted to thank you for your time and all the insight in the knowledge that you've given us today. And again, folks, just email me ben greenfieldfitness.com or give me a call at 877-209-9439 and I'll fill you in on.

How you can do this and help.

You take the guesswork out of your performance. So thank you, Dr. Cohen.

Hey, appreciate Ben. I'm glad to share the info. Hope hopefully it was helpful.

All right, so like you heard during that interview, if you're an athlete sitting there thinking, wow, you know, I wonder, are my vitamin D levels optimal? Are my iron stores adequate? Are my mineral levels balanced? Is my hormonal recovery system strong? Do I know my essential amino acid? Does the food that I eat provide my body with the fuel that it really needs? Am I fast oxidizer? Am I slow oxidation oxidizer? I'm currently in the process of discovering all that about my own body. It's very cool and it's way easier than I thought it would be. So email me if you want me to help you walk you through that process. You spend I don't know how many hours training hundreds if not thousands of dollars on gear. And this tiny investment in your body to know exactly what's going on in the clockwork inside your body is not only very cool, but well worth it. Okay, let's go ahead and move on to this week's jam packed Listener Q and A. Listener Q and A My first question today comes from listener David, who says, ben, I appreciate your training and health insights. I followed your comments online and on the Everyman Triangle Newsletter and I've just subscribed to your podcast. I have a question about trouble I experience with my swim workouts. Virtually every workout is interrupted or shortened by the need for a bowel movement. I swim first thing in the morning before breakfast, yet always aches at the pool feeling bloated. What can I do? I suspect this is a result of gulping too much air, but you recently referenced adjusting your diet. I've got a race in six weeks. How can I eliminate this discomfort interruption? I did mention last week that a lot of times bloating and stomach discomfort, especially prior to athletic events, can be the result of too much fiber intake leading up to the event. And so that's one of the first things that I would inspect in your diet. Are you on a new multivitamin that has a high amount of like a vegetable starch type of fiber in it? Are you eating multiple salads during the day? Are you eating more than two pieces of fresh raw fruit during the day? Do you have a high intake of things like legumes, black beans, garbanzo beans, kidney beans? And if you do have a high intake of those, are you soaking them? Are you doing anything to soften them? Are you mixing a little bit of vinegar with them to help break them down prior to consuming them to allow your body to actually digest them a little bit better so they don't sit and ferment in your stomach? And then also you didn't mention mention what you were eating prior to your swim. But if you are eating a food that would tend to ferment a bit in your stomach or metabolize and create gas formation and typically a starchy carbohydrate is the biggest culprit, then I would eliminate that. Now that's not to say that these are the issues if you have a food allergy, if you're intolerant to something like soy, gluten or wheat, caffeine, alcohol, dairy, any number of different things that people tend to be unable to tolerate. You can actually get inadequate digestion of those type of substances. And again, they can sit in your stomach, they can ferment, they can cause bloating, they can cause heartburn. So you may want to look into a blood test or a saliva test or a stool test to actually see if you have any food allergies. And that's something if you, if you email me privately, I can help walk you through that process. But that's another thing that you would look into eating too close to your swim workout. It takes a minimum of two hours for gastric emptying to occur. And so if you are eating say a bowl of cereal, strawberry, banana, chocolate, pop tart before you head over to swim, these type of things can actually cause that bloating and stomach discomfort as well over hydration. Believe you're not drinking too much prior to the workout can cause a lot of sloshing in the stomach. Again, a lot of bloating. And your breathing pattern while you're swimming could also be an issue. Some people focus too hard on exhaling the entire time that their head is underneath the water and then coming up for one big breath. And the amount of activity that takes from the inspiratory and expiratory muscles can cause a little bit of stomach discomfort. And it would be better to let the air naturally escape. That's going to escape anyways. When your head goes into the water after you've taken your breath and then exhale anything that's left with one big final exhalation before you come up for oxygen. The other thing you can do to make sure that you're not breathing in water when you are taking a breath is make sure that you're practicing really using the arm that's extended out in front of you while you're swimming as a buoy. Make sure that you got. The best way I like to describe it is pretend you have a hundred dollar bill and you're trying to trap it between your head and your shoulder. If that arm that's out in front of you is really truly extended, it's going to create almost like this little trough of a non water area for you to breathe when you take your breath. So focus on that. Do some side swimming drills. Those are the best ways to actually learn how to maintain that type of buoy in the water. And then the last thing, and this is a tip that a lot of Ironman athletes will use. You can drink a carbonated beverage prior to swimming and that will help you displace any air that's in your stomach before you get into the water. The next best thing if you don't have access to a carbonated water would be an effervescent tablet like a noon tablet, Alka Seltzer tablet, something that's gonna make you burp up a little bit before you get into the water. So hopefully that helps.

David okay.

Listener Chuck asks kind of a long question. Hey Ben, hope everything is going well. Just had a quick question that I thought about today. I have a race this Saturday. It's a run, swim, run. In the sense of preparing for the race. I was going to do, as I usually do, focus my higher carbohydrate meals to be Thursday dinner and Friday lunch for the Saturday race. But the race hopefully won't take me more than around an hour and five minutes, which is just as long as most of my workouts. The difference obviously is that I won't be holding anything back during the race. This being said, why does it or does it at all matter if I eat an increased healthy carbohydrate diet before the race as opposed to eating like that before every day that I train? If I plan on going hard, I hope that makes sense. I appreciate any insight you can offer. He's kind of got a two part question because he says again, the shirt is awesome. I think this was a guy that won one of the Ben Greenfield fitness T shirts. I plan to wear it pre and post race this weekend. Speaking of gear, I currently don't have any tri jersey or sponsor for that matter. Does your training and coaching company have a team in jerseys for your racers? It would be cool if I could represent it on the east coast. Thanks again Ben. I look forward to hearing from you. Let's address the first part of your question first, Chuck. When you are doing a sprint triathlon or if you're doing any athletic event that you plan on using anything less than two hours to complete, carbohydrate loading is not really going to give you that much benefit because your body's natural carbohydrate stores. For most males you're looking at 1800 to 2000 calories. Females around that 1400 to 1500 range. That's enough to get you through a couple hours of intense exercise. So the reason that you would eat during a race like that is to maintain high blood sugar levels, which have been associated with a decreased rating of perceived exertion, meaning that when your blood sugar levels are high, you actually feel like you're not working quite as hard. And we can even take that another step. There's been studies that are done in cyclists that show that even when they do something as simple as sloshing a sugar solution in their mouth and tasting sugar, it actually decreases their rating of perceived exertion. So you don't eat during those races to keep your carbohydrate levels up, and you don't carbohydrate levels load before those races to make sure that your carbohydrate levels are all loaded up. It's not that necessary. Now, there were a couple studies I remember back in exercise physiology during my graduate studies, we did come across one study that showed that to a minimal level, creatine is one of the first things that your body uses for a quick, explosive contraction for anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds, and then it switches over to carbohydrate. But there was a study that saw that the body was actually using a little bit of carbohydrate during the time that it was accessing the creatine. And so it was depleting the carbohydrate stores even during quick, explosive type of activities. So theoretically, carbohydrate loading might help you a little bit during those short races, but for a lot of triathletes, if you're doing a few short races, a few mid distance races, a few long distance races over the course of the summer, you're looking at carbohydrate loading, you know, one out of every three weeks. And then you want to consider the long term effects of that on your body. Because carbohydrate loading, if you're doing it correctly, means that you're literally shoving carbohydrate down the hatch on a daily basis. 80, 85, 90% carbohydrate intake for four to five days leading up to that race. After a carbohydrate depleting protocol where you're on a high protein diet and you're exercising and you're not putting that many carbohydrates in, you do that to your body over and over again leading up to the race, multiple races, it might not be that healthy. So I wouldn't worry about carbohydrate loading before the short races. And all you want to do is make sure that during that week, for all of your pre race workouts, you fuel with a carbohydrate protein blend within about 20 minutes after that workout. And that will help you maintain adequate Carbohydrate stores on board and then just a little bit to keep your blood sugar levels up during the race, like a sports gel. The second part of your question, you know, I have considered for, you know, I coach a lot of triathletes through a company called Pacific Elite Fitness, which I own and we coach athletes primarily online across the country. I have looked into getting cycling jerseys, tri tops, triathlon.

It fits.

I would have to get a minimum of 10 if I were going to do it. And you know, right Now I have 23 athletes that I coach and I've only got about four or five that are really, really interested in the tri top or the cycling jersey. I haven't really pushed it that much. I can get 10 sets of triathlon suit tops and bottoms for about $1200. So you be looking at, you know, if this were something you wanted to do, it cost right around 120 bucks. A cycling jersey with this, with the cycling bib would be closer to about 130 bucks. If you're a listener listening to the show and you think it'd be cool to have like a Ben Greenfield fitness cycling jersey, I can get a cycling jersey for 60. And so I imagine that once we factor in shipping and everything, it, it come out to about $70 for a Ben Griffel fitness cycling jersey. Triathlon outfit would be closer to $120. Tell you what, if you're listening to the show and you want me to actually do this, email me, tell me if you would like a cycling jersey or if you're a little bit more serious and you want a triathlon kit like a triathlon top and a triathlon bottom. If I can get at least 10 people that are interested, I'll pull the trigger in order. That's a no brainer. I'll definitely do it. But just, just let me know and I can make sure that the design is really cool. So just email me ben greenfieldfitness.com and I'll do it if there's enough interest. So we'll get some jerseys out there and I could probably have them sent out within about four weeks or so. Listener Scott asks Ben, I'd like your opinion on how to incorporate intervals into my run. I'm not much for sprinting, but I've read enough articles and research to know how effective intervals are for fat loss. I'm sure that altering my pace would be a systematic way to decrease my mile times, which is my goal. I average two to three runs per week. I like to go for 40 to 50 minutes. I have access to a high school track so I can accurately measure my laps. What suggestions do you have? Well, Scott, I gotta tell you, I hate tracks with a passion. Never have liked them, didn't like them in high school, didn't like them in college, never enjoyed tracks, get bored to death on them. And I have started incorporating kind of a double whammy type of interval training session that gives me two different advantages. The first is I will go to a park just as part of a 10, 15 minute warm up jog. And when I get to that park, I will do anywhere from 10 to 20 sprint intervals where I'm just walking in between each one. Yeah, you can still listen to your MP3 player when you're sprinting and you can still hang out, have fun, bring a buddy along, race him, whatever. But usually I'll do 10 sprint repeats that are around 100 yards in length, all the way up to 20 sprint repeats that are around 50 yards in length. So we're only talking about 10 to 15 minutes total in terms of amount of work.

But it's hard.

That's allowing me to get my fast twitch muscle activation in to get some of that hormonal activation in. That doesn't come from a nice easy jog. But what I also do is I do it on grass and I do it barefoot. And the economy and the efficiency that you will feel when you put your shoes back on and head back home after you've done 10 to 20 barefoot repeat sprints is going to blow your mind. There is a lot of research out there that shows that barefoot running really is biomechanically favorable for the human body. It keeps us more in that forward center of gravity pose. And it actually makes us use muscles that shoes don't allow us to use muscles that are a little bit more springy in terms of the way that we bound off of the ground. So that is my suggestion. That is what I do. I have a blast with it. It's fun just running around your bare feet in a park. What can be better than that? I don't know. I'm sure some of you are gonna say something like ice cream, but yeah, that's what I would recommend in terms of your sprint intervals. I'll do 10 of 100 meters, all the way up to 20 of 50 meters, and just basically take about 10 to 15 minutes. So it ends up being about a 45 minute workout by the time you count, you know, 15 minute jog and then 10 to 15 minutes of sprints and then 15 minute jog home. So hope that helps.

Scott.

Now listener Mindy asks, I have a friend who wants to start shape 21. However, she is nursing a five month old baby. What to recommend for her as far as calories needed and supplements taken. So just just to clarify, the shape 21 that's the book DVD that I mentioned earlier. It was not necessarily specifically written for breastfeeding women. However, most of the nutrients in it are going to support any human body in just about any state. But there are some things that you need to realize if you are pregnant. The first is that you're going to have increased calcium needs when pregnant or breastfeeding. And there are lots of sources of calcium that aren't dairy sources. But realize that the entire idea behind Shape 21 is that it's designed to remove food allergies from your diet and actually put your cells in their optimum fat burning state by making sure that they're not being exposed to anything that they don't like. So cow's milk and dairy products are worked out of that plan in favor of things like rice milk, almonds milk and goat's milk. Some of the other ways that you can get calcium in is you can take for example any of the hummus recipes or for example the guacamole recipes in that book and you can include a little bit of goat's cheese with them to increase calcium intake. A canned fish like a salmon or a mackerel, those actually contain bones that become soft during their processing. Excellent sources of calcium. And whereas in shape 21 in some of the recipes, it calls for one of the the more hypoallergenic meats, lamb, to be consumed with some of the salads and some of the dishes. You could instead substitute a canned fish for that lamb. Now whole grains and whole grain flours, those are high in calcium. Shape 21 has a high amount of quinoa in it, which is a great whole grain. Pretty easy to find these days. You can get it at Costco and a lot of commercial grocery stores. And that's going to be something that's already giving you calcium that's in that plant. Green leafy vegetables, spinach, bok choy, kale, broccoli, all those are present in shape 21 as well. And those would be something that you'd want to include in the diet. Almonds and walnuts are very high in calcium. Those also are already included in the diet. So I would say that in terms of increasing calcium intake in shape 21 that the only things that I would add is maybe a little bit of extra like goat's milk or goat's cheese and then some canned fish substitutes you could add to any of the places in the manual where I'm having you make yourself a trail mix or eat seeds to actually add sesame seeds, which are also high in calcium. You know, tofu and soy cheese are pretty high in calcium, but you got to be careful with the, with the phytoestrogens in those and the phytic acid. A lot of like lime, processed corn, Mexican tortillas, those are also also pretty high in calcium. But again, the whole idea behind Shape 21 is that we're trying to control the glycemic index of it just a little bit. Now the other thing interestingly that can give you a good amount of soy can be or a good amount of calcium can be algae like sea vegetables, fermented foods like miso, and a lot of seasoning. And there is one of the supplements that I include in shape 20 that you actually are given kind of this special discount code for in shape 21. It's got a high amount of sea vegetable extract in it. It's that enterprime multivitamin and that's in shape 21. So that one that's in there you would be fine to take. Now there are a couple of other supplements that you get a discount on in that book that I would actually not take if you're breastfeeding. Specifically the thermo factor that contains something called advantage resistance, which is basically a bitter orange extract and it steps up your body's fat burning process. But because it is an herb that has an effect on the central nervous system in a similar way that caffeine does, I would not take it in the same way that you shouldn't be drinking coffee when you're breastfeeding. And then the other one that's in there that I wouldn't take while you're breastfeeding is the lean factor. It contains something called Google steroids in it. And those support healthy cholesterol levels, cardiovascular help, they help to step up the productivity of your thyroid gland and so they can assist with increasing metabolism. But again, I haven't seen any safety or long term studies in breastfeeding mothers with those. And so that's another one that I would avoid in the Shape 21 book. And the other supplements that are in there are fine. The other thing to focus on is making sure that you're getting adequate vitamin D supplementation, especially if you're breastfeeding. Because it's can really help with absorbing calcium into your bones. So making sure that you're spending enough time out in the sun or that you are consuming, for example, vitamin D supplement or prenatal that contains a vitamin D supplement. And then the final thing is realize that your caloric needs when you're breastfeeding are going to go up by about 300 to 500 calories a day. Now, shape 21 gives you caloric ranges that you can use as you go through the program. Choose the higher caloric ranges if you're breastfeeding for sure. So good question, Mindy. Now, listener Scott, another Scott asks, hey Ben, I don't know how new it is, but at this weekend's race they were handing out Aquagenous water. What's on your what what are your thoughts on it? Scott Aquagenous water is basically water that has minerals in it. So like in the special topic today, Dr. Cohen was talking about magnesium intake, calcium intake, even mineral intake. He briefly talked about some of the smaller minerals. And these would be the tiny little minerals. You know, I had an interview on it sometime back with a with a woman named Ambaya A M B A Y A. You can go back and listen to that podcast. But essentially all these teeny, tiny minerals are sometimes things that we're not getting from our soils because of modern agricultural practices. There are supplements out there that contain these these tiny, tiny minerals. And the water, that Aqua Genus water actually contains those. The question is, it's a little bit pricey. Are you going to buy whatever a 20 pack of that water and use it during the week while you're riding your bike or you're out training? And every time you drink in your car, you suck down a bottle of it. It gets a little spendy. What I do is since I talked to that mbio lady during that interview, I actually have is this little dropper bottle that I keep in my fridge and I add it when I get up in the morning. I have a glass of water. I add five drops of that to a glass of water, and that's actually the full mineral profile. I guarantee it's way more financially viable than buying the Aquagena water bottles. But that's what the Aquagena is.

It is minerals.

And yeah, minerals will work for the reasons that you heard today in the special interview in the podcast, go to benton greenfieldfitness.com and Google Ambaya A M B A Y A and you're going to come across that mineral source that I use in my water in the mornings. Last question is from listener Todd and he says, I've been listening to your podcast for a few weeks now. I've been really enjoying them. I heard about you through trainingpeaks.com I heard from one of your podcasts about mixing sea salt and other seasonings to plain almonds, but I'm having trouble finding it. Do you have any ideas on what to mix to flavor plain whole almonds? I've been known to mix sea salt powder, ginger powder, garlic powder, cayenne pepper, turmeric, curry powders with almonds in little Ziploc bags and shake them up. So you have quite a few choices out there. I'm going to give you a recipe, Todd, that actually combines a whole bunch of stuff that you can do to make your almonds taste better. So what you do is you take about two cups of whole almonds or as many as you want, really, and you put those into a pan like a saucepan, and then you put about a quarter cup of soy sauce in there, about a tablespoon of brown sugar. And if you really want to keep it lower in calories, use stevia. Use about a quarter teaspoon of ground ginger or a few shakes of ground ginger, a few shakes of garlic powder, a few shakes of cayenne pepper, and then sprinkle that lightly with a couple of teaspoons of an olive oil. And then what you're going to do is just bring that entire mixture to a kind of a. Kind of a light boil.

Okay.

Was just heated up. It's about five minutes that you heated up. Once you've heated it up, throw them on a cookie sheet and bake for about 8 minutes or so at right around 250, maximum 300 degrees. Stir them around a little bit. About halfway through the cooking time, just put your hand in the oven with a spatula and stir them around a little bit and they'll start to smell really good. Pull them out of there before they start to burn, let them cool. You can even sprinkle, sprinkle them with sesame seeds. Once they're cool, don't throw the sesame seeds into the oven with them or the sesame seeds will burn. But that's, that's really tasty. And all your friends will love you when they come over to watch a movie. And you've got these homemade seasoned almonds sitting on the table. So that is what I would recommend for the almonds. So great recipe and very tasty. Those are all of the Listener Q&As for today. We've already listened to our special topic, so I'm going to go ahead and close out today's podcast by really encouraging you to go check out some of the very cool videos that I've posted on the show notes to this podcast. Scroll down to the special announcements and check those out. A couple of my clients sent in some really great videos that I think were pretty entertaining. And then and remember, if you have a question, leave a comment on the show Notes to this podcast. Episode number 53 make sure that you subscribe to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Newsletter so you can stay up to date on everything that goes on. And if you haven't gotten your hands on a brand new Shape 21 release, Surf over to the website and get it. It is a physical book DVD package that gets mailed to your home. You have the option of of getting an ebook as well if you wanted to get the ebook version. So until next week when we're going to have an interview with Dr. Carolyn Dean, author of Miracle of Magnesium, this is Ben Greenfield. Email me benvenreenfieldfitness.com if you're interested in testing your own body. Wow. A long podcast today. Have a great and healthy week.