Podcast Episode #61: Are 14 Foot Tall Tomato Plants Actually Healthy?

In this podcast episode, Organic Farming Methods how to eat and drink before a long Run if Nutella is good for you, Running on a treadmill versus running outside Recovery from overtraining, Oral magnesium supplementation, the latest news from the Journal of Strength Conditioning Research and tons of information on preparing for an Ironman Triathlon.

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So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you're just trying to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield and man, we have a lot to cover in today's show. We're actually going to start today with the special announcements and in the special announcements because it did arrive on my doorstep this week. I'll be talking to you about some of the latest research from the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. I will be talking to you a little bit about some information on a special promotion during the Ironman World Championship down in Hawaii for you triathletes out there and a couple other brief announcements, today's interview is really interesting. It's with a gentleman named Winston Gao down in Florida and the guy has literally grown 14 foot tall tomato plants. He'll talk about how he does that during the interview. We also have a jam packed listener Q and A. Probably could have made this show one of those listener Q and A only type of shows, but we're just gonna do it all in one show. Might be a little long today, but hey, if you're out on a run or a bike ride or maybe you're at the gym, this is a perfect way to get smarter while you're getting fitter. So let's go ahead and start off with this Week's announcements from BenGreenfieldFitness.com. Special announcements. So as many of you know, I am a personal trainer and a certified nutritionist and I have to be certified by a recognition an accredited agency and the agency that I'm certified by is called the nsca, the National Strength Conditioning association. And they come out with a peer reviewed journal each month. And when I receive that journal, I pore through it looking for information that's relevant to you. And this particular issue didn't deal quite as much with some of the metabolic fat burning type of topics as we've discussed in the past, but it did have quite a bit of information in there. Specifically on endurance, on cycling, and on swimming. And so I thought I'd go through some of the research out there so that you can stay on top of what's actually going on and what the practical applications are to make you or help you achieve your goals. Anyways, the first study that I thought was interesting is called the Effects of Low versus High Cadence Interval Training on Cycling Performance. And in this study, they actually split a bunch of road cyclists into two different groups and they had them trained for eight weeks. And one group did a bunch of high intensity sprints at a low cadence at about 60-70rpm for how quickly they were pedaling. The other group did the same type of efforts, but they did it on a high cadence at about 110-120rpm. And that's a pretty high cadence for those of you who have tried to maintain that. They measured their testosterone concentration after each of the sprint sessions that they did. And then they also measured how big the increase was in the power of these cyclists after going through the low cadence versus the high cadence training. So what they found was that the low cadence training, pedaling at that 60-70rpm not only elicited a larger increase in testosterone after the session, but it also resulted in increased power output during the test that they put each cyclist through both before and after those four weeks of training. So what this means for you is that you don't completely negate the advice that's out there about spinning at around 90-100rpm if you're going out for a long bike ride or if you're in a triathlon. But what it does mean is that some of your interval training sessions should be done at a slightly lower cadence to idealize the hormonal response and the training effect of that training session. And so it is okay to mash the gears every now and again if you want to become a stronger cyclist. You don't have to spin at that high cadence all the time. As a matter of fact, you should make it a point to not spin at a high cadence all the time. So that was an interesting study. Then the next study, and I've literally got the journal just sitting here, and I'm going through these Training with independent cranks alters muscle coordination patterns in cyclists. Some of you may have heard of something called power cranks before, and this study actually looked at an independent crank system, meaning that your right leg is pedaling on that crank separately than your left leg, so that when you turn your right leg, your left leg doesn't turn, your left leg has got to do its own thing. And that's very abnormal for most bicycles to actually have a crank system like that. But you can get something called a power crank system and put it on your bike. This study was looking at it, and basically what the study found when they looked at the actual muscle activation patterns, was there was scientific support for an alteration in the muscle coordination pattern. And specifically, training with the independent crank system resulted in more quadriceps exertion. I'm sorry, in less quadriceps exertion. So what this meant is that you could use your quadriceps for something later in the exercise. Now, what I thought was interesting about this is that technically, a cyclist who's going to run when they get off the bike, like in a triathlon, would actually want to. To increase quadriceps utilization and decrease the utilization of their hamstrings and their glutes. But this study found just the opposite, that it increased the activation of the hamstrings and the glutes, and it decreased the activation of the quadriceps. Now, your main running muscles are your hamstrings and your glutes. So technically, you wouldn't want to fatigue those. So whereas if you wanted to train your hamstrings and your glutes to become stronger on the bike, if you had, like, a quad hamstring strength ratio problem, or if you felt like you needed to increase the actual muscle recruitment overall on the bike, then these would help you. But you wouldn't want to use these in an actual race. Okay. This is something that you would use in training to alter the muscle recruitment patterns. But technically, you actually wouldn't be able to run quite as well after using them. So, again, I would use them sparingly, just like the low cadence effort should be used, but used in moderation. And then the next study looked at the effect of compression garments on recovery. And I know I'm talking a lot to you triathletes out there, and I know that triathletes aren't the only people in the audience, but it just so happens that a lot of these studies did look at people who need to recover from endurance exercise. And what this study did was it measured something called creatine kinase, which is a marker for blood inflammation, and lactate dehydrogenase, which measures. Measures the actual amount of lactic acid that is building up in the bloodstream. And they looked at whether or not wearing compression tights after training would actually reduce either of these markers. And what they found was that although there really weren't any changes in the creatine kinase or the lactate dehydrogenase, the the athletes did report 48 hours later that they were less sore compared to the athletes who didn't wear the compression garments. So it's like there weren't any scientific blood markers to show that they were any less sore. But the people themselves said that they were less sore, which I think goes a long way. And then the other thing that they did was they actually had these people do a training session after wearing the tights for 48 hours and they did not notice that there was any increase in their performance or that the compression tights had a benefit on their. And they also had some of the athletes who were wearing the compression tights report that they had a little bit of trouble sleeping. So you may remember that close to a year ago on this podcast, we did report the results of a study that did find that runners who wore these while running, I believe it was a 5k, actually did show an improvement in their performance. No scientific evidence to show that it's actually reducing inflammation at the muscular level. But hey, if it helps you mentally to feel like you're less sore and you are okay to sleep in the compression garments, I would go with it. And this study was done using the full on compression tights. Now, the next study was interesting because it looks at the effects of recovery interventions on consecutive days of sprint exercise. They took a bunch of athletes and they had them perform vertical jumps, 20 meter sprints and 10 meter sprints in kind of a circuit, and then they had them recover for 24 hours. And one group did just passive recovery, just not doing much at all for the recovery, just sitting around. The other group did active recovery along with a cold water immersion and a hot cold water treatment. And what they found was that similar to the compression garment study, the athletes who did the active recovery methods, they actually didn't show an improvement in the following day's repeat of sprint activity. But again, the athletes that did the active recovery reported that they felt better, recovered, reported less soreness, and even though it didn't appear to improve their performance, to me, just the mental feeling of not having the soreness and not being as fatigued goes a long ways. So how you perform and what your blood is saying isn't the only thing. I think that the psychological and mental component of whether or not you feel sore is important as well. And then the final study looked at the effects of apnea on swimming coordination and what apnea means is that you're doing hypoxic training holding your breath. And in this case in the study, they actually had people do a three month breath hold training program where they would actually have swimmers swim while holding their breath for as long as possible. And what they tested was how quickly they were swimming, the stroke rate and their stroke length. And what they found was that the three months of including sessions that actually had a breath holding component, the stroke rate was decreased, which in swimming is good, and the stroke length was increased and the arm coordination, meaning the recovery time between each arm following through, was actually decreased a little bit, meaning that the swimmers became more coordinated swimmers. And the rationale behind this was that when you can't breathe, your body does funny things to try and become more efficient. And in this case, these swimmers just gradually adapted greater efficiency by swimming while holding their breath. That's actually something that I do in my training and do a lot with the athletes that I work with is we'll include some hypoxic sets where we'll just do 10x25 with a no breather, or with the advanced athletes, we'll do something like a 5x50 with a no breather. And we'll always throw in just a few sets after that that allow them to breathe liberally. But you'll notice some crossover effect in terms of the efficiency and the economy that they get while doing the hypoxic training. So that was interesting. And that is this month's Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research News. Now, just a couple of little announcements before I get to the big announcement. The first one is that I did create, as you may remember last week, a BenGreenfieldFitness.com hat, a hoodie and a singlet for males and a singlet for females. Or not a singlet, but kind of like a quick, dry type of exercise shirt. I put a link in the show notes to this podcast. If you surf over to Ben Greenfield Fitness and look at the show notes for episode 61, there's a little store where you can go and get these and they're incredibly affordable. I actually just ordered myself a hat today and it says BenGreenfieldFitness.com Fat loss, nutrition and performance. You can just go to the show notes to see pictures of those, but those are available now. Then the other thing I wanted to mention is that I am developing the list right now for the people who are wanting to go to the official triathlon training camp that I'm putting together and coaching at down in Austin, Texas in January, if that's something that you're interested in. I'm not requiring you to pay right now. But you do need to email me and let me know your interest so that I know exactly how many people to anticipate. I'll need to know if I should take on any assistant coaches and it just helps me a little bit in terms of preparation. If you email me and let me know if you're planning on going to that training camp and if you need to know the dates, the itinerary, everything is right there if you click on the link in the show notes to this podcast. Now, the final thing that I want to mention is a little bit bigger announcement. So here's the deal. If you're not into triathlons, if they don't interest you, fast forward about two minutes and go on to this week's listener Q and A, which is jam packed with a bunch of other information. But if you are a triathlete, just listen in for just a second. Perhaps you've heard that the average age group or the amateur Ironman triathlete, they cycle about 300 miles a week, run about 30 miles a week, and they swim about 10,000 meters a week. Most of the time you'll find out that they're training anywhere from 15 up to around 25, in some cases 30 hours per week. So we've all heard stories of the year long sabbaticals from work, the neglected families, the ruined marriages and families, the obsessive lifestyle that results from these crazy attempts to maintain a normal lifestyle while you're trying to train for Ironman. And perhaps you've also noticed that some of these people will report back after the race and it'll be like, I had a horrible day, I had to walk the marathon, I had stomach upset issues. It took me 16 hours to complete the race. And you're thinking, gosh, you just poured your life into this for 12 months or 15 months or two years and that's your report that it was just kind of the day from hell. Well, the truth is that you actually don't have to train that much for Ironman. It's kind of a myth. It's basically a myth that's been passed down from the ranks of the pro triathletes or the people who are able to just kind of get out of bed in the morning and train. And there is actually tons of evidence out there that you can get away with training for Ironman and closer to about 8 to 12 hours a week. But you have to have certain Key principles in place in order to do this, things like high intensity training, periodization, strategic resting and retesting, strategic racing, having a plan for every workout, doing a lot of holistic fueling and supplementation, utilizing a lot of time flexibility concepts. Well, what I've done is completely taken the guesswork out of how to actually train for, and not just train for, but do Ironman Triathlon very, very successfully. With about 50% of the average training time that people spend getting ready for Ironman, this will free up a ton of your valuable time. For work, for play, for family, for fun. If you're a busy person, an important person who has a lot of obligations, family obligations, work obligations, you don't want to give up your social network life, you don't want to neglect your family, then you are going to want to check out this package that I've put together. It's four different books on fueling on training. It's an actual nine month training plan for Ironman. It's a bunch of CDs that walk you through, step by step, exactly what you're supposed to do during Ironman race week and on Ironman Race day. Ton of information in there on how to choose supplements and what actually works and what's a waste of your money. Pretty much everything that you need to be ready for Ironman in nine months and to not have to give up your life in order to do it. So here's the deal. It's not completely ready. The Ironman it's called the Triathlon Dominator package. It goes live as a celebration of the Ironman World Championships on October 10th. If you're listening to this podcast on the day it was released, that's 16 days away. You can go to the website right now and I'll put a link to it in the show notes. You can read about everything that's available. You can even sign up for a little newsletter that lets you know when it does come out. But on October 10, from the time that the Ironman World Championship starting canon goes off all the way until the last participant crosses the finish line, I'm going to make this thing available online for a special one day promotion web only price. And it's going to completely blow your mind when you see the price that this thing is being sold for and how affordable it actually is. This isn't one of those hire a coach for $250 a month type of things. This is a huge package. It's going to give you a clue here. It's under $100, so you can go check that out. It's at the triathlon, I'm sorry, not the triathlon, but just triathlon. Dominator.com youm can click on the link in the show notes October 10th during Ironman World Championships. From the time the starting gun goes off. If you're online, if you're tracking athletes, whatever you're going to want to surf over there, check it out, it will be ready. And in the meantime if you want to just get added to a list and receive an email when it is ready, a reminder, then you can also go over to triathlondominator.com and do that. So this is the most comprehensive package that I have ever put together for triathletes and it's based off of years of research, of testing, of coaching. It is the full meal deal. So with that being said, we are going to go ahead and move on to this week's Listener Q and A.

Listener Q and A.

As you listen to the questions this week, remember you can ask me a question by emailing Ben greenfield fitness.com and you can also call to the toll free number 877209 and there's an option on that call in number to leave a message for the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. I'll put that number in the show notes but you can also just email your question. I like the call in questions because I like to hear your voice. Makes it that much more personal. So we're going to start off with a question from listener Scott. Scott says you provide some great responses in last week's podcast regarding pre and post workout nutrition for fat loss and sprint triathlons. I'm wondering what recommendations you have for fueling and hydration prior to runs. I've been working on increasing my run distance and am up to eight miles with a nine minute mile pace. I've been following your Shape 21 meal plan, so what I eat prior to running varies based upon what the plan recommends. For breakfast. I usually wake up, eat breakfast, drink 16 to 24 ounces of water, then let my stomach rest at least an hour. I'll then go on a run and typically have a berry shake or cinnamon banana shake from the Shape 21 recipe plan after my run followed by more water. You mentioned avoiding fats and proteins for breakfast prior to a race or endurance form of exercise. What suggestions do you have? Thanks Ben. It's really interesting you should ask this question Scott. I was actually talking to one of my clients last night on the phone and she was saying I feel so horrible. When I go out on my morning long run, I'm not sure what to do. I said, what are you having for dinner the night before? And she's like a salad and a salmon. And I said, well, what are you having for breakfast in the morning? She said, well, have a little rice cake before I go out. I said, what else? And silence. There really wasn't much else other than a small cup of coffee. The truth is, you shouldn't be using your long runs for fat loss just because it's very hard to train for performance when you're running and to train to basically eat away at your body storage energy at the same time. So here is how you actually eat and drink for your long run the night before. There's no rule that says that you got a pasta load, you gotta eat a bunch of carbs. I actually don't recommend it. You don't need those insulin levels going into your night's sleep because you are gonna be more likely to create some adipose tissue. You can get away with doing the whole vegetables and meat thing in the evening. And I know that's one of the things in the Shape 21 plan, Scott, is that a lot of those evening meals, because it's meant to enhance fat loss, are more vegetable and lean protein based. However, in the morning, you need to eat about two hours before that long run. That's about how long gastric emptying takes. And if there's food in your stomach during that run, it's going to divert blood from your working muscles and you'll have that much less oomph to put into your run. So I would recommend two hours before you do a primarily complex carbohydrate based kind of blah meal. We're talking about steel cut oats with maybe just a little bit of honey. We're talking about a couple of pieces of whole grain toast. We're talking about something like quinoa or amaranth or millet or any of those hot cereal alternatives that you can cook up, that you can batch cook and have ready about two hours before. Sweet potato works, yam works, even a baked potato works. But that's where that's what you're looking at doing if you are going to avoid carbs for your evening meal. Now, with that being said, right before you go out on the run, you can bump up the blood sugar levels just a little bit with a gel. I'm partial to the goo brand of gels, but what you want to do during your long run is take in a gel about every half hour. That's for kind of an average sized person. You may think that that's a lot of sugar to be consuming during exercise, but if you really want to feel great, you want to feel fantastic, you want to run some great mild splits during your run, you actually have to keep the sugar levels elevated just a little bit so you can't have your cake and eat it too. You can't lose fat and run fast at the same time. Now if you were going to have carbs with dinner instead, for instance, have a side of whole grain gluten free pasta or you were going to have a baked potato on the side with a steak, which is actually one of my favorite pre race meals. You can do that and then you can get up in the morning and just have that gel right before you head out. So if you don't feel like getting up two hours before you run, that's option number two is just have carbs with dinner and have a little bit of sugar right before you head out on the run. So great question Scott. I hope that helps. Oh, I almost forgot hydration. As far as hydration goes, if you really want to feel good during that run, you're either going to have to pick a loop that goes by your house that allows you to sip water about every 20 to 30 minutes, or take in the equivalent of about 10 to 15 ounces of water an hour. You're going to have to carry a little water bottle with you as another option, or you plan your route as a route that goes by water fountains or gas stations or places where you can get a little bit of water. So a few different options there. I really wouldn't recommend running for more than 90 minutes without having access to some form of hydration though in the morning when you get up, if you just drink about 10 to 15 ounces as well, that should be fine for helping you along. Now the next question is from an anonymous listener and this listener says, I have a question in regards to my training and energy levels. Lately I've been feeling incredibly tired and really have no motivation to go to the gym, to lift or to do my triathlon training. I will finish work and have to force myself to go to a workout instead of just going home and going to sleep. I know I'm not getting enough sleep, but are there other factors that could be adding to this? I'm falling asleep at work too. I can prevent this by getting some caffeine in my system, but try to limit this if I can. I've read that over training can lead to loss of motivation, but I don't know if that's a reason. In the second half to this question. I have a few more races before my last race. I'm assuming you mean triathlons on October 17th. Would it be a good idea to take some time off after that race? I've heard that after long training cycles, athletes should take some time off or light training to recover, but I've never done this. What are your thoughts? Thanks a lot and I appreciate all your advice and help. And I'm sorry to the anonymous listener, I really truly did lose your name. I know you gave it, but I lost it. I'm sorry from the bottom of my heart. Now, the first part of your question about over training or other factors that could be leading to you feeling incredibly tired and having no motivation? Yes, both of those. Those are symptoms of overtraining, as is insomnia, as is or as are stomach issues or diarrhea. You put all that stuff together and you probably are training too much. Now I have seen some cases where athletes aren't overtrained. They've just been doing the same routine over and over again. They're tired of it and they're not motivated to do it. They've just gotten done with a race or some hard training. They kind of had that big up, that big high in adrenaline right afterwards and now they're on their low. So that can happen. And that doesn't necessarily have to be over training. But if you are over trained, then these signs and symptoms are pretty severe, pretty big load of cortisol and really a true, true complete lack of energy. Now, it's likely that you're not over trained and let's hope that you're not, because when you're over trained, that can take up to six months of very, very light activity to come off of of. Let's assume that you're overreached. And by the way that you describe it, I would guess that you probably are overreached more than over trained. And overreached means that you're right at the edge of being overtrained. But if you back off a little bit, you take a few light days, you do some recovery, you actually bounce back stronger than you were before. And it's a strategy that I'll use when I'm putting together people's programs sometimes is I'll get them close to the edge, I'll overreach them and then pull them back and let them absorb all that fitness. So some of the things that you can do to recover from overreaching. You can get a couple of nights of sleep where you're trying to sleep about 8 to 10 hours now during those nights of sleep to enhance your deep rapid eye movement sleep, you can employ something like melatonin. Three to six milligrams of melatonin helps quite a bit. Don't operate heavy machinery, but do hit the sack afterwards and it'll help you sleep. Gaba. I take something called Somnidrin GH when I need a really good night of sleep. And it's a GABA, kind of a growth hormone precursor and it really helps your body doze quite soundly and wake up feeling very refreshed. I've even combined that with melatonin before. This isn't something that you do all the time, but if you really need to recover well and you know you've got a couple nights, or even just one night where you can get some serious sleep, just do it. It will help you out quite a bit. As far as your training. Taking some days off or some very light days where you're doing non muscle tearing type of activity, non weight bearing type of activity like cycling or the elliptical trainer or swimming would also be beneficial to you to reduce the amount of inflammation that's occurring in your body. Magnesium can help quite a bit to reduce some of the calcium leakage that's occurring at the muscular level. And what I'll do on a recovery day is I'll try and get a massage if I can and I'll actually bring the massage therapist like a magnesium oil that they can use on me if I'm not getting a massage, then I'll just spray some on my legs and my arms and rub that in myself. Okay. Or you can have your wife or your spouse or a friend rub it in. So a little bit of TLC is a lot of times all it takes to bounce back. But yes, know that you are experiencing some of the signs and symptoms of being overreached. Let's hope you're not over trained. And if you are over trained, then you would be looking at the same type of protocol I just described. But literally for months and months and months. And most people think they're overtrained, but they're really just overreached. Now as far as taking some time off after your race? Yeah, absolutely. I'm actually on my third day right now after my, well, almost my last triathlon of the season. I'll go down and do the Clearwater World Championship, but I just finished doing a race called the Grand Columbian Triathlon, a half ironman on Saturday. And I've just kind of been sitting around since then, stuff in my face, going on a walk, hopped in the water once and went for a very light swim. But just a little tlc, it helps you physically, and even if you don't need it physically, man, it helps you mentally. I can tell you right now, just sitting here recording this podcast, I really, really feel like exercising. And sometimes that isn't the case. But today I'm ready to rumble just because my body's had some time off. So let's go ahead and move on to a question from listener Chuck. Listener Chuck says, hey, Mr. Greenfield. That's right. This is the guy that calls me Mr. Greenfield. I remembered another question I have, but it is completely related to the other. Is Nutella alright to eat? Occasionally? I know it's not the same as peanut or almond butter, but by any means it is made from hazelnuts, so I assume it is not horrible for you. What are your thoughts, Chuck? I actually did have a handful of hazelnuts with my lunch today and they are a great source of your omega 3 fatty acids and fiber and a good source of the monounsaturated fats as well. Now, if we look at the Nutella, about 2 tablespoons of that is going to give you 200 calories. So it's actually kind of along the caloric equivalent of peanut butter. And the primary ingredients are roasted hazelnuts, skim milk and cocoa. There are also some soybean products in there and they put a partially hydrogenated peanut oil in as well as a regular peanut oil and an artificial flavoring called Vanillin. I do occasionally have Nutella in my house. It'll get spread on toast every once in a while, occasionally a little spoonful into some oatmeal. It does have a nice flavor. You do have to be careful with it. For example, when I utilize peanut butter, I just get peanut butter that you turn around the back of it and all it says is peanuts. Now more frequently I'll use almond butter and you turn around the back of that and usually it's just almond butter, sometimes some added salt. Primary ingredient in Nutella. And actually, I don't think I even just said this when I was listing off the ingredients is sugar. It's the number one ingredient in nutrition there. So it is going to be a little bit more inflammatory, a little bit sweeter, a little bit higher glycemic index than peanut butter or almond butter. If you were to use Nutella, I would want you to treat that the same way as you would any cheat food. Try to consume it before, during or after exercise only, or on one of your cheat days or your refeeding days and not as a staple in your diet. Okay, so Nutella is not the worst thing you could put into your body, but it does have a lot of stuff in it in addition to just hazelnut milk and cocoa. So be forewarned that you can't put it on the same pedestal as like a peanut butter or almond butter because it is a higher sugar and it would have what's considered to be a higher net acidic load. So the next question comes from listener Tanzi. And Tanzi is the guy who had asked me about exercising and pollution a few weeks ago. He says, thanks for asking my question, Ben. I run in a 400 meter track. Now that's away from everything. It's in the middle of a horse track that I sometimes run on, but that also passes under the most congestion bridge in all of Egypt. So I'm kind of iffy about that. As for running on a treadmill, I always notice that my heart rate rises much easier on a treadmill than anywhere else. And hitting higher speeds makes my heart rate go through the roof. Is this something that needs adaptation or what? After training on a treadmill for a while, would I find that the speeds I can actually hit outdoors are higher than those that I run at on the treadmill? Well, what a treadmill can do is it increases typically the cadence of your run. And if you're not used to running at a high cadence, typically of about 90 or higher, and you're used to kind of plodding along outdoors and not getting that mind muscle reaction to fire more quickly when you're running a treadmill will tax your cardiovascular system just a little bit more. Typically, your body does get used to that and an adaptation does occur. But when you're training your neuromuscular system and your cardiovascular system simultaneously, you can feel, you can perceive that you actually have a higher level of exertion. And sometimes you actually do. Now, I don't know if you're actually running faster on the treadmill than you are outdoors, since you didn't shoot any speeds over to me, but your feet are probably moving faster. And usually after about four to six weeks, enough neuromuscular adaptation has occurred for you to feel like you're running at about the same exertion level on the treadmill indoors as running running outdoors. Now what I do like to use the treadmill for is to actually help people out who do tend to over stride when they're running outside, who do tend to heel strike when they're running outside because it helps them move their feet faster, it helps give them a higher cadence, which is good for running. Now the problem with the treadmill is that if you take somebody and you train them on a treadmill for say a marathon and they go out and they actually run the marathon, they're really going to start to break down after about an hour and a half or two because there's very low ground reaction forces that occur on the treadmill compared to running outside. And so your muscles tend to get a little bit more torn up, so to speak, when you're running outdoors. That's why you shouldn't train solely on a treadmill if you're actually training for an event. If you're just training to burn calories, you'll be fine. No difference between that and say, the elliptical or the bicycle in terms of actually being something that would burn calories. But as far as placing a little bit bigger joint load, there is going to be a difference between the treadmill and running outdoors. So good question. Next question is from listener Lou. And Lou says, thanks Ben, for posting the video of Carolyn Dean. And Lou is referring to a YouTube video that I put on the website about a week ago with a doctor who's a fairly well known natural doctor, about an hour long interview where she talked about a lot of important, important things. But Lou continues, she talked about the importance of magnesium. You also talked about it in some of your shows. I would like to know what is a good oral supplement type to take. Thanks, Lou. When Carolyn Dean was interviewed on this show and you can do a search on the BenGreenfieldFitness.com website for Carolyn Dean if you want to actually find that interview. She talked about something called an Angstrom mineral source because she felt that it was better absorbed as a magnesium source. And some of the other magnesium sources out there, there are all sorts of different types of Angstrom based magnesium if you were to search for them in Google. Now the reason that I don't have any experience with the Angstrom based magnesium is because I personally and with most of my clients use a protocol of transdermal magnesium. And I'll put a link to the transdermal magnesium that we actually use in the show notes notes to this podcast. But what we'll do is spray a few sprays of that onto the arms and legs before and after a workout that typically gets you up to about 100 to 200 milligrams a day. And then also in addition to supplementing with fruits, with vegetables, with seeds and with nuts, I recommend a product called Mount Capra Mineral Way and I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. But what Mount Capra Mineral Whey is is it's mineral extracted from a whey protein product from actually organic goats. And it's got like a magnesium profile, calcium, all your basic minerals. That's something that I'll just stir into a glass of water or into just a little bit of juice or occasionally into my oatmeal. And that adds just a little bit more of the oral base minerals as well. So what I use with my clients is a transdermal magnesium combined with magnesium from natural sources like food or from that mineral way. So. So good question. And then if you want to listen to more of Carolyn Dean's personal recommendations, listen to the podcast with her that we did a few weeks ago. Just search for that on the show notes. Now the next couple of questions are very triathlon specific and so if again, you're not into triathlons, you may want to skip over these and go straight onto the interview with Mr. Winston Gao. But the first question comes from listener Andrew and listener Andrew says just purchased your 36 week Ironman training plan. Looks great and I'm assuming Andrew got that over at over at Trainingpeak. Well, I'll just put a link to it in the show notes where he got it. I just have a few questions I was hoping you could answer. On the first day of the plan, you mentioned strength training sessions in the gym, but in looking over the plan I don't see any scheduled. How would you recommend I integrate strength training into the plan? Do you have general guidelines in terms of how many days per week and duration? On days when I strength train, do you recommend doing so directly before or after a run, bike or swim workout? Also, our strength training session is something I should plan on phasing out after week 10. And finally, on days where multiple workouts are on Tap in your 36 week plan, is the intention that one should be completed in the morning and one later in the day? Ironman Coeur d' Alene 2010 will be my first Ironman, so any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for the help, Ben. Well Andrew, in that particular plan there are not specifically written out strength training sessions but those general strength training guidelines that I give in that first week. You'll notice if you scroll through the plan are actually repeated in a few different places through the plan where I tell you, well, switch to this for your strength training, switch to this for your strength training, etc. But let me lay it out a little bit more specifically for you for that particular plan. Now what you want to do is right now, at this point, kind of in the off season or the preparatory season, you want to actually do strength training sessions that are focused on something called hypertrophy. And hypertrophy is an increase in the number or the size of your lean muscle fibers. It's what you would consider to be lean muscle mass building. A little bit of tearing down, a little bit of post workout soreness, a little bit more stimulation of the muscle fibers. Not something you want to do during race season, but something that comes in quite handy when you don't have the hard swimming, biking and running sessions going on. What you want to choose are basic squat, bench press, deadlift, the type of moves that are multi joint. And you want to choose a weight that's about 75 to 80% of your max and generally anywhere from three up to five sets of 12 repetitions in the weight room. And this would be all the way through the first 10 to 12 weeks of your training program. You can vary those up. One day you could do regular deadlifts, the second day of the week you could do single arm deadlifts. And the third day of the week you could do dumbbell instead of barbell deadlifts. And one week you could do your bench press with a stability ball. And one week you could do it on incline bench. And one week week you could do it on a decline bench. And one week you could do single leg squats. One week you could do barbell squats, one week you could do goblet squats. There's a lot of different ways that you can do it. And actually if you go to pacificfit.net my triathlon coaching website and you click on triathlon, there is a link there on the left side that takes you to an exercise photo and video page with literally just hundreds of different exercises and me performing examples of those exercises. Now, moving on from that base training or that off season phase when you're getting to be a little bit closer to your in season conditioning, you would want to reduce both the number of sets that you do and the number of reps that you do. So you're not tearing up the muscles quite as much, but you would want to kind of maintain the amount of weight that you're using or Even increase the weight slightly so you can still do the same type of exercises. But now you would want to do, for example, two to three sets of eight to ten repetitions, rather than three to five sets of twelve repetitions or higher. And then when you're moving even farther forward in the actual race season, and especially in the taper before the race, everything is very quick, very explosive, very powerful. You use about 40% of what you would actually be able to lift as a maximum, but you lift it very quickly. So very, very fast type of jumping, explosive plyometric type of moves in the weight room. And then during the race season, what helps is to actually go back to that hypertrophy phase, but just do it once per week so that you maintain some of your muscle mass. And that would be an example of how to what's called periodize your strength training. So as far as your other question, you said is it on days where multiple workouts are on tap, is the intention that one should be complete in the morning, one later in the day? Not necessarily. It depends on your lifestyle. You definitely get a little bit more benefit out of splitting multiple day workouts up or multiple times per day workouts up, because you're able to focus a little bit more during a workout knowing that you haven't just finished one 45 minute workout and you're moving on to another. But if you just have the time to get up at 6am and do a couple of workouts, then that is actually just fine. There's no rule that you have to split them up up. Metabolically it's a little better. Sometimes mentally it can be a little bit better, but no rules. Oh, you had one other question. On days when you strength train, do you recommend doing so directly before or after a run, bike or swim workout?

No.

When you can try and separate the strength training, if you have to do them together, then do your swimming, biking or running first and do your strength training next. Because swimming, biking, running is going to be important in terms of not doing those in a tired state where you're more likely to get injured during that chronic repetitive motion pattern. And then the final question, and I wasn't positive that I wanted to answer this in the podcast, but after thinking about it, because I get so many questions like this, I'm just going to answer it in the podcast so that so that you guys can get the answer. He says. Hi there Ben. I wanted to get back to you to thank you for answering my question in podcast number 58. The advice has been very helpful. I got vitamin D, digestive enzymes, probiotics, liquid magnesium and have been using them since the podcast. It has helped a tremendous amount. I just finished the Grand Colombian Triathlon. Hey Christian, me too. And my recovery is so much better than the Coeur d' Alene Triathlon was. I actually placed second in my age division. So my next event is Wildflower Half Ironman next year then Ford Ironman Coeur d'. Alene. It will be my first half iron and first Ironman. I'm very interested in meeting with you to find a program that would best work for me. I've noticed you have a 36 week training program and a 25 week training program for Ironman. I'm unsure of what I need to do through the winter to set me up for next year. I have been strength training three times a week and I swim twice a week, bike three times a week and run once a week. I haven't run much due to the IT band problem I was having. It has gotten much better with regular massage and chiropractic appointments. I plan to increase my reindeer three times a week if I can. I know there is a build and taper to doing Half iron and Ironman events. I would like to improve in all areas of the triathlon and be faster. I've been told I really don't need to train till March for Ironman due to my current ability. However, I don't feel that is correct. I need to find out where my weak points are and how to strengthen them in time for next year's events. I tend to overtrain a lot. I have a hard time taking days off. I am hoping with a structured program I will have better training sessions and recover better. I'm not sure where to start though. Please get back to me on what the first step is to getting started. Thanks again for everything. Okay, the reason I'm responding to this on the air is because I get about 10 emails like this every week. You've got two options, Christian. If you want a coach, I can coach you. And if you go to PacificFit.net and you click on Triathlon Training and you follow the link there to my personal coaching page and click on the map of Washington State, click on the link that goes to Ben Greenfield. I can coach you. I don't know if you're local, but I coach people from all over the world online and I also coach people face to face here. Locally I do have a physiology lab, biomechanics laboratory. I do bike fitting, I do swim lessons, I do run gate Analysis. I do all that. And that would be kind of the gold standard coaching package for getting a customized training program to get you ready for Ironman. Here locally there are about 12 to 13 people that are doing a program like that, just getting ready for Ironman Coeur d'. Alene. You know, I also train the sprint triathletes. I also train, you know, I train Everybody. I train 50 year old women who come to me and they just want to lose the 20 pounds that they've gained in the past five years. So it kind of spans the gamut. But Christian, you do have the option of doing just personalized coaching with me and right there on the website you can see what it is. I can tell you right now on the air, it's 250amonth to do that type of personalized face to face coaching that has that online program involved with it as well. So your other option is probably going to be up until today, I would say get the 36 week training program or the 25 week training program. The new triathlon Dominator package that just came out that I just talked about in the introduction of this package. Man, that would. I mean the whole reason I created that was because I'm sick and tired of seeing people try to do Ironman give up on their families. I'm sick and tired of the annoyed letters that I get from wives, even from kids who want to see their daddies. And these aren't the athletes that I'm coaching. These are people who write in comment on the podcast. There's been some I've deleted. Just people who almost like hate triathlon because people spend so much time giving up their lives and their careers and their families to train for it. I wanted to be able to help some of the people that I can't coach. I do get a lot of inquiries and a lot of people do sometimes end up on a wait list. And I wanted to put all this information out there in just one big package to help people who have questions like you. So if you don't want an actual personal coach and if you don't want to talk about something like that, just email me. If that is what you want, then go to the triathlon webpage or go to triathlon dominator.com the new webpage that was just created. It comes out in 16 days. I mean it's everything. It's literally the full meal deal. And I know that I'm also going to get some angry letters from people who have gotten triathlon training programs from me in the past for the same price as this one is with literally like 18 of what's included in it. But I've been working on it for a while and I wanted to make it available and just know that the pricing that's on there, that's special pricing, that's for October 10th, that that's going to be available at that price. Click in there anytime between the starting cannon and the last finisher crossing the finish line at the Ironman World Championships, and it's going to be available to you. So there you have it. I guess I got a little marketing on you in that last question. Sorry about that. So we're going to go ahead and move on to this week's featured topic.

Featured topic.

Hello podcast listeners. This is Ben Greenfield and I am here with Mr. Winston Gao. And Winston, and you don't mind if I call you Winston, do you?

No, please do.

Could be easier than Mr. Gow. He's a biologist. He's an agro researcher, a consultant, and the inventor of the Go beyond organic Farming technology which he'll tell us about. And with over 23 years of research, he's pioneered advanced soil based microorganism technology, watering restructuring technology, and he's developed a method to even neutralize seawater so that seawater could be used in agriculture to enhance health and nutrition of crops without actually burning the crops due to the high salt content. He's developed a method to break down rock dust dust rapidly for the purpose of soil remineralization, which I understand has caused tomato plants to grow over 12 to 14ft tall and caused broccoli to be harvested over 11 times from the same plant, caused experimental orange trees to produce 1200-1400 oranges for three years consecutively. He's done work in organic methods of hydroponics and just a really real pioneer when it comes to organic growing. And Dr. Gao, Mr. Gao. Not a Dr. Winston Gao, thank you for coming on the show today.

You're very welcome.

I'd like to hear about this. Go beyond organic farming technology and what you've actually developed.

Okay, so let's get down with some basics. And that is is the soil depletion. Most people know that soil has depleted, but most people don't realize that soil depletion pretty much came to its pinnacle of truly non returnable point by 1920. So soil depletion really means the minerals in the soil has gotten so low that they now influence the soil based microorganisms and cell based microorganisms has starved to death. So this is where the point of fertility or the soil fertility has been lost. So this is the point where I start picking up.

Are you saying that it was lost in the 1920s or that it began in the 1920s?

No, it was ended. It was totally lost by the 1920s. And tail end of 30s.

Wow.

Yes. And then of course, after that we got the Second World War, then we start pouring in petrochemicals as fertilizers. And so that brought another 50 years, which actually took what little was left and further locked up into the soil. So it was further unavailable. So this is why back in the 1920s, big chemical packages were £200 that people would heave and roll around all day long. Today you go to Home Depot and Lowe's, they're doing 90 pound cement sacks, they're doing 50 pounds, 45 pounds, 25 pounds. I mean, people are getting weaker and weaker and thicker and thicker because soil depletion had occurred totally by 1920.

And what the soil was depleted in were the things that are necessary for our growth, our development, development and our health.

That is correct. The pH balance. Everything. Minerals is the key to everything. This is where I pick up my research, is that I took one look at the agricultural practices and I go, oh my goodness, the petrochemical is completely unacceptable. Everybody knows that. But people going back to this organic farming, and I'd like to point out that the original organic farming and the old American farming practices are really unsustainable farming practices. The American Indians had to move every seven years and the white men had to move every five years. This is how they crossed the east coast to the west coast. Farmers in America used to be proud to say, I destroyed how many plots of land as I moved towards the west? They used up, they depleted the soil. So basically the five year or the seven year, as far as I am concerned, that's not sustainable. Now let's take a look at the opposite side of the globe. The Chinese and the Japanese, their old organic farming practices, where they work with Mother Nature, they hardly ever do any crop rotation, yet they manage to plant the same plants on the same piece of soil for a minimum of 10,000 years. That's sustainable. So that's where I start, right? And so I take a look at what does Mother Nature do to prepare her soil so that it is full of minerals and life is wonderful. Well, she uses the technology called the Ice age. And for 100,000 years, she builds the glaciers over the land, grinds up rock and stones and ice over the surface and deposits at the end of the hundred thousand years, ten to twelve feet worth of finely ground rock powder. This rock powder then can provide the planet with another 10,000 years of, of interglacial period. And now we're at end of the 10,000 years of the intergracial period. So of course, adding more petrochemicals, dumping our toxic waste, mixing toxic waste and fertilizer and all the other crazy practices that humans do, we sped up what was little left for us anyway at this time. So the whole thing here that I'm talking about is we need to start going back, looking at nature, does the ecological things and mimicking and copying it. And so one of the things that I take a look at, as far as what do I have to address one, I have to address minerals. The second thing I have to address is water structure. Now man also destroy the water structure by cutting rivers up, making them straight, putting dams in them. So this cuts the structure of the water. So now water, when it is used, tends to fungus. Like people don't want to water their plants in the nighttime. Certainly they don't want to water it on the leaves during the nighttime because fungus will grow on the leaves. And you have have this kind of a problem more and more, especially in California and the desert, the climate places. This is a very big problem and actually it's a big problem throughout the whole world at this particular structure. So water structure is a very important thing. And of course these things both relate to each other as far as minerals, water structure and microbes, they are all interrelated to each other and you must control all three factors or you don't have fertility.

Interesting.

Let's start out with something very simple so that people can understand when I talk about water structure and the proper time to water plants. Now, most farmers water plants nowadays in the daytime. Well, the first thing you do when you water plants in the daytime is you're going to lose 85% of the water through evaporation. That's a very wrong thing to do. And especially when water is tight and scarce, throwing away 85% of the water into the atmosphere is singularly unintelligent. So the correct time to wash your plants is in the time when the sun sets and before the sun rises. The vectors, which is direction of where the flows go during the nighttime you have dew, so the vector comes downwards towards the ground. So if you water at this time of the day, the water doesn't evaporate, it actually penetrates deep into the soil. It'll the mineral, when it turns around in the morning and starts to rise up, it will pick up up sugars and starches and other enzymes that the plant has secreted deep into the soil. They'll pick all that up, rise it up to the surface. Now the plants get the minerals and the enzymes and sugars that are brought up with the water. In addition to water, it has nutrition and then the sun rises and you have evaporation and life goes on.

So when people are watering their backyard gardens and more and more people have those, those these days, or farmers are watering their crops in relation to where the sun is, at about what point, you know, about what time during the day would someone actually want to water?

As soon as the sun sets.

Pretty much as soon as it sets, yeah.

As it's starting to set, probably one hour before actual sunset moment. Right. From that point where you still can see from that point all the way until basically 5, 6 o' clock in the morning before the sun rises again. And you probably water into maybe an hour into the sunrise that's pushing it basically hour before and hour after the sunrise and sunset is your correct time to water. Or it's the most efficient times to water.

Okay, interesting. As we're going through these and people are listening, is there a website or place that they could go to be learning more about this?

Yes, certainly. You can go to my gobeyondorganic.com gobeyondorganic.com and you have my phone number so you can make contact with me and get more data.

Gotcha.

Right. Which was basically I talked about where water can be made to be pro life. Water can be made to be anti life. Now just to explain a little bit clearly, let's take distilled water from the rain. The rain has a frequency when it hits the ground. You see, in 30 minutes of a good decent rain, everything turns beautifully luscious green. It has very high levels of pro life frequencies within rainwater. No matter how much well water we throw up, it's just never quite as good as a good decent rain. That's because the well water is missing the frequency that the rainwater has. Now let's take anti life water, reverse osmosis water. This is 90% of the water that Americans drink. It is 90% of all the water filtration systems that Americans use. And this is the biggest anti life water that you can possibly drink. It's highly acidic to start out with and it loves to grow black fungus.

See, I was under the impression that reverse osmosis was a good form of filtration Was it what I thought, that reverse osmosis was actually a healthy form of water filtration?

Oh, I believe that once upon a time too. But no, that is not true. And anybody can prove this to themselves. It's an eight week experiment. You just pour a distilled glass of water, a city water, and a reverse osmosis water and just set the three glasses with a little cellophane cover and set it next to a windowsill and watch what grows. You will see the still will turn green, the city water will turn green, but not the reverse osmosis. It will stay clear. It'll stay clear. One, two, three weeks, four weeks. But around the third to the fourth week, pick up reverse osmosis water and look from the bottom of the glass upwards and you will see that there's a black layer starts to grow there. And eventually, some six to eight weeks down the road, eventually that black layer will start to break up and the green water will start turning green like the other two waters. But that's just a point to prove that you don't have to be a rocket scientist to find out that there's something very wrong with reverse osmosis water. But the point here is that it's a anti life water. And those of you who are drinking reverse osmosis water better start looking for much better quality water than reverse water. Carbon filtered water, UV or ozone added to the filtration system is the good way to go. But that's another subject, another day.

Okay, yeah. I mean, I personally have a carbon filter in my home, but I wouldn't have known that a reverse osmosis osmosis would have been that subpar. So sorry to interrupt you though. You were talking about the health of the water.

Health of the water. Easily handled. You get an electromechanical water conditioner, you run the water through it. When it hits the tree leaves, it will no longer allow the water to grow black fungus on the trees. It will hit the water. I mean, it hits the ground and it helps the organisms to grow better, healthier. So now you're making better compost, better soil, the microbes come back. And I have a rule of thumb when I do consulting to farmers, I don't allow them to buy any earthworms. The reason for that is when you spray the right microbes, you use the right water and you do it correct, the earthworms will show up on their own. Roughly speaking, an earthworm has like 300 egg potential or 300 worms per one great big egg sac. And so 300 times. 300 times 300 is already off your calculator. So. Right. Condition will bring in horrific volumes of earthworms without paying a penny for them. So that's a good indicator. Don't buy earthworms. Just if you do your job right, they'll show up. And so you have water change the structure. Soil based microorganisms is the next thing that is very, very important to get. And there are many kinds of soil based microorganisms. I sell one that's called live earth or inner garden. There's many different. You'll see on the website that for human consumption will be called inner garden. So agriculture has different names. Septic tanks have different names for different applications, but nonetheless, they're basically the same thing. I also have projects to clean up oceans, rivers and lakes. Same thing, roughly speaking, same types of microbes. These probiotics are broad spectrum, multi family, multispecies probiotics, which we feed to chickens, we feed to humans, we feed to rivers, lakes, soils, compost piles, and even septic tanks. You know, they're the guys, the digestion for everybody.

Gotcha, gotcha. And so with these organic farming technology methods, you talked about the water and about the probiotics that you have. Are there other problems with commercial farming technologies that you in particular wanted to talk about today?

Yes, the other things we just touched upon, which was the glaciers that Mother Earth runs across the planet and depositing rock dust. Now, since we don't have the time to wait for another 100,000 years to go by, we as the individuals need to put rock dust down on our soil. Now, rock dust is like a great big mixture of river rocks. River rocks are particularly better because they have a mixture of all kinds of rocks within river rocks. And you can buy rocks sometimes from expensive slate cutters or tombstone cutters. They'll cut and leave these really, really fine, what they call pons, the leftover of the fine dredges. And you can get it for free to 10 $12 for a ton, or you can buy for 40, 50 bucks for 50 pound bags, you can buy a raptor. But it's very, very important to understand the size of the rock dust that you buy. If you measured in 30 mesh, you're going to need at least 10 to 20 tons of rock dust to be placed per acre on your land, which is a lot of rock dust.

Even if you've got a small backyard garden.

That sounds like a lot of rock dust.

That's a lot of rock dust. Right. So what you need is what you can usually get 20 to 40, sorry, 200 to 400 mesh rock dust. Now, at least that's immediately available. And the remaining will basically break down in the next five to 10 years. And if you really want to do it big style, get that rock dust ground down to 800-1200. Now that's virtually immediately usable. And you don't have to talk about 5 or 10 or 20 tons per acre, maybe half a ton per acre, and voila, you are in business. I mean, it's incredible stuff. This is the other reason why I also use seawater. And you will see people selling sea salts or using seawater. And you can use a maximum up to maybe 3 or 4,000 parts per million of seawater on your irrigation soil. Especially if you use my water conditioner, you can use 3 to 4000 frequently and safely because the water conditioner will change the corrosiveness of the salt to be non corrosive. So the salt is still there, the minerals are there, we use everything. The plants love it. They stay green, they don't burn, they don't do a leaf curl, which salt, basically, once you have more than 900 parts per million, it starts to curl your leaves and dry up the tips of the leaves. If you have a water conditioner, you can get up to 2, 3, 4,000, and sometimes I push it up to 8,000 to 10,000 parts per million. But I usually spray that just before rain and stuff like that. But nonetheless, you can get away with a lot. And that's what I usually do. And this is how I get tomato plants. And nowadays I've gotten tomato plants for 20ft. You know, one plant will produce about 2,000 tomato plants, tomatoes per plant. I mean, this, I have achieved so many other people. This is not real rocket science for.

Myself as a nutrition consultant and just watching a lot of the debate that goes on about the fact that healthy food is something that a lot of people avoid because of its expense. It seems like these type of methods would potentially bring the expense down. You know, if a tomato plant could produce that many thousands of tomatoes. And you know, I talked about some of the other things I was reading about in your, in your bio about the broccoli that you harvest 11 times from the same plant and the orange tree that was producing 1400 oranges for three years. Are these type of things just from a political perspective able to be implemented on a national basis to bring down the cost of people obtaining healthy food? Or would you recommend that we implement these in the local communities?

They will Obviously have to be implemented in local communities, in backyards first, because let's face it, we're going to be stepping on the big farmer, big fertilizer companies, right? And they got all the political clout. So this will always be politically incorrect for sure.

Now for people who may be concerned about this or someone who doesn't really understand, this is different than genetically modifying a food. The practices that you're talking about are different than that, right?

That's right. I'm talking about standard heirloom seeds, non hybrid seeds, or if they're hybrid, if the hybridation is specific, referring to as flower pollen cross breeding. That's the definition of hybridization. There are other hybridization where they do it in test tubes, where they use the tips of the cells in order to hybrid plants. That's borderline genetic engineering, although technically speaking it's not genetic engineering. When you step into genetic engineering, that's when you start cross breeding fungus and fish and pig genes and human genes into the plant. Now you're crossed into genetic engineering. Genetic engineering meaning multi species crossed into the same one thing. And most Americans unfortunately don't recognize that they're eating a minimum of 70% genetically modified organism. 70%, that's a low conservative number. It's probably more like 80, 90%. So if you're not eating certified organic food, you're eating genetically engineered food by that high percentage. And just to give our listeners some reality, why exactly is a genetically modified organism? Well, for starters, corn, soy, wheat, squash, papayas, those strange looking broccoli, doesn't look like broccoli, but doesn't look like cauliflower either. Those are your genetically engineered food. They got multiple species. So let me give you an example of wheat. Just for example, wheat would have, of course the wheat plant itself, it would have flounder, which is a fish in the North Pole to get its cold gene. It would have ergot. Now Ergot is a fungus also known as wheat rust. It's the same stuff that we used to make LSD out of back in the 60s with. It would have that fungus gene inside of your wheat. And then let's say you got Monsanto is a person that's making this particular genetically engineered organism. So they will put their herbicide Roundup, so they have Roundup ready things. So the Roundup will be actually grown and created within the plant itself. And in order to make sure that if you bought your seed from Monsanto that you don't run over to 3M and buy 3M's product they will put other things into it to assure that in order for the plant to flower or do the next phase, you got to use their pesticides or their other programs, otherwise the plant won't work.

Yeah, that's what I've heard at the.

End of the whole.

We, we had a, we had a GMO talk here on the show a few weeks ago from that book, the Seeds of Deception. I believe it was called the title.

That's right.

You're eating what? Yeah, it was all about these GMO foods and the degree to which Monsanto actually manipulates and has control over the food supply.

And you can't even save your seeds. It's actually illegal. And even you are an organic farmer and your next door neighbor plants see and the pollen blows over to you and they come over and check your seeds and they find in your seeds, now your organic seeds got genetically engineered contamination. They're now going to sue you for royalties for not paying them who contaminate your organic food royalties because now you're stealing from them according to the Monsanto. And of course they got, you know, a legion of lawyers to come after you and also indefinite debt pockets to send the lawyers after you to collect their money. And you can go into the Internet and find out many farmers are being sued by Monsanto and various different genetic engineering companies for stealing their products, when in fact their pollen had contaminated their fields and they're accusing them for stealing their jeans and not paying royalties.

Now listen, a lot of people that listen into the show, they may not be a farmer per se, but people want to take charge of their health. And people are interested in maybe making their existing backyard garden more healthy, remineralizing the soil using some of these organic farming methods that you've invented, or even starting their own garden. So if you were going to just walk into someone's backyard garden and give them the list of things that they would need to do to produce vegetables and fruits that are not only healthy, but that are producing the increased number of or the increased amount of produce that you're talking about. What would be the steps that people would take, the practical things that they could do?

Well, the very practical thing is, call me, I have all of this that you said written out point by point. And it'll also suit various different people's wallets, you know, because water conditions are a little bit costly. So some people may skip that temporarily. And there's substitute ways to make things go better, even though it's not the real thing. There are many other methods of Doing it.

So.

So I have. Fortunately, there are other people who are on the same page who are making fertilizers that are truly healthy. And this is another show talking about certified organic foods. There are, believe it or not, extremely high quality petrochemicals, when properly blended with humus and humics and all the compost materials produce extremely high quality fertilizer. But they're not legal for the certified organic industry. Another sabotage. Oh, it is. I didn't lay the laws down. Some fool thought that all petrochemicals are bad. But that's not a true statement. We use pharmaceutical grade petrochemicals, but we blend it with the humics and the carbons and other sugars and suddenly these become highly nutritious stuff. You feed it to the microbes. They don't roll over and die. They do very well. They make beautiful soil and these incredible growth rates with incredible high levels of nutrition. Not all petrochemical fertilizer is actually bad, but it's a typical generality. Generalities are always going to get you into trouble. That's one the of. I'll give you another example. In certified organic farming, it's mandatory that you use soft rock phosphate. As for your source of phosphate, well, I don't like to use naturally occurring soft rock phosphate. Why? Because it naturally has too much strontium 90 radioactive material. It has too much chromium. They use various different industries waste acid. So you got all the heavy metal plating from the plating industry all mixed inside of the soft rock phosphate. But that's required in order to get this wonderful phosphate which is the primary carrier of nutrition to all plants and animals and humans alike. You've got to use this toxic stuff and I won't use yet. But it's required. It's the law. So our certified organic has problems. So this is why really your own backyard is where you have to start. And so what I have done is I've made very simple programs, slightly more comp. And then of course the real professional programs for professional organic farmers. So I've made it simple enough so that you can just pick a phone call, buy some basic ingredients and you can immediately start growing this year and have good crops this year. You don't have to wait four or five years for your soil to be built up to get good. None of that has to occur.

So in addition to these things that people can go to go beyond organic and read more about, find out about order and just have accessible to add to their own backyard gardens. You also have done some Work in the field of, of hydroponics and more specifically organic methods of hydroponics. Can you explain what hydroponics are and the work that you've done in that field?

Definitely. Hydroponics. The word hydroponics, hydro is water. Ponics means work, water work. And traditionally hydroponics has been soil less gardening. So they had no soil in it and they just shoot nutrients, usually petrochemical nutrients, onto the hydroponics. And so most of your fruits and vegetables that you see in a supermarket are commercialized hydroponics. Very, very, very toxic industry. I mean, so toxic that the farmers have to go into space suits and self rebreathers to walk in. Their security is unbelievably high. And that's how your hydroponic tomatoes are. So we're definitely not talking about that type of hydroponics. Extreme opposite side. My hydroponics actually does in fact use soil. Still water works. But hydroponics has the potential to grow between 9 and 25 times more food for the same time period than on regular soil. And the only reason they're there is that feeding your plants at least once a day, or in the commercial people, they feed it three times a day. But in my system, because we're using some form of soil, the water retention is much better than soil less hydroponics, the water just goes right through it and the plants get to catch it. And soon as the water turns off, that's it. Mine will hold the water. So we only need the water once a day and it's a couple, three, four minutes. And it's all automated. So we make special media, which I will teach people how to make. And we still use similar things. Of the soilless people, we use peat, light and vermiculite and some coconut shells. But we'll add rock powders and other things to the media so it resembles more soil than not. And then, as I was mentioning just before we got cut off, we use heavy amounts of foliar feeding. You see, we're taught that plants mostly absorbs their food through their root system. This is singularly an untrue statement. Plants primarily absorb through their leaves. As a matter of fact, 80% of the nutrients of a plant goes through the leaves and only 20% of the nutrients goes via the root system. Another thing I wanted to cover so people really understand is it's not from the top side of the leaf leaves, it's from the bottom side of the leaves going to cross into a field where university professors are going to scream bloody murder because they Totally don't believe in this. And that is calcium, magnesium. And all these minerals actually do break down into gaseous forms. And under every single leaf on the planet, the stomas or the mouth where the plant actually be fade downwards. There's virtually no stomas on the top side of the leaves except for cactuses. Aside from those plants in the middle of the desert, everybody else has stomas on the bottom side of the leaves, so they're catching gaseous vapors that's coming up from the compost, from the soil rising up, and that's what they're catching to feed the plants. So knowing this, agricultural industries nowadays are doing tremendous amount of foliar feeding. And that's what people need to focus because that's 80% part of the equation. And eventually this will be coming down into the schools maybe 100 years down the road, but you can do do it today.

Is that really the problem? Is the problem with, with our current farming methods what's being taught at the university level in agriculture departments? Or is it what's being taught from farmers to their sons to their sons and just being brought down through the generations based off of this, this idea that the initial farming methods were more of a nomadic farming method?

No, it's actually the university people who are funded by the petrochemical people. And if you check into the university funding, you will find that most of the funding are funded by the pharmacy industry and industry who funds the university, who then controls the colloquium of what goes and what is taught. And this is why we have doctors who are not permitted to cure, but only permitted to treat. And farmers will only use toxic pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers to grow. And you can talk to plenty of professors and they'll flat out tell you it's impossible to grow without pesticides and petrochemical fertilizers. I like to point out that hasn't always been true for human history. But they will say that with a straight face and totally believe it it wholeheartedly that you can't grow anything without pesticides. That's not possible in their viewpoint. I don't use even soap, water, cayenne pepper or garlic juice. I don't even need to use that. Why? Because I got the minerals there. And when you have high enough minerals, you have high enough sugar content in your plants, therefore you have high enough nutrition and high enough immune system. The plants can defend themselves and they simply don't get sick.

How do you implement change? What's it going to Take to actually turn America into a country that can produce healthy vegetables, healthy fruits in a quantity that makes them affordable for the general population.

Well, the change is occurring. I think we are a crossover between the old civilization and a new civilization. I think speaking politically there is more chaos in America, politically speaking, than we have seen in 200 years. The last time we had 200 years it was pretty bloody and hopefully we don't get into the bloody end of it. But we're definitely going to have a changeover. I believe as the changeover goes into what I call the dawn of the new millennium, these technologies will be wholeheartedly embraced by everybody. And it's already, the trends already can be seen. You see many of the supermarkets, people are starting to stock up with organic food. Yeah, they may be a little bit more expensive, but at least starting, I mean 10, 15 years ago you couldn't go to Safe Publix and buy anything organic. They would just laugh at you.

That's true, that's true. I guess, I guess I kind of changes that we are seeing. Yeah, it's just, it's slow, isn't it?

Yes, it's slow, but it's definitely happening. And you know the crazy things we see politically that will like anything else, like a bad nightmare, it will eventually blow over and go away. And so, you know, look at the positive side. As individuals you can grow food and let me tell you, a little 4ft by 4ft little garden can produce a tremendous amount of food. When you start applying hydroponics, I have a little 280 plants in a 10 foot by 10 foot area. 280 plants. This is hydroponics. So per every square foot in the 10 by 10, there's like 20, there's four plants per stacker and it stacks all the way up. So on one square foot you can have 20 some plants there. And so this is hydroponics. And even if you just take a look at just for what equipment you can use, there's hundreds of designs of hydroponic equipment that you can use. And you can get even just if you're bro, get empty gallon buckets and cut them and turn them into hydroponic pockets. Bottom part becomes the reservoir, top part is soil and you just pour the solutions down the pipe and go to the bottom of the five gallon bucket and you only need to water your plants once a week and you'll have incredible bumper crop growth on a balcony in an apartment. So everybody can do this. Look at my website, call me. And there's plenty of data out there. Go hunting on the Internet and you'll find lots of people out there teaching people how to do, you know, soilless garden, patio gardens. The tech is out there.

People just have to make the change. You know, that's what it takes, is for people to really reinvent the way that they think about food and the way that they get food and the way that they grow food. And I think it's a great service that you're doing with your website. And, and I'm going to put a link to that in the show notes. And of course, once they go to that website, you were talking about people calling you, but your number will be in there on your website as well, correct?

That's right. If they're listening to us now, you can give them the number.

Go ahead.

727-447-2344. That's 727-44723. Or just go to my website or email me at info infobeyondorganic.com Fantastic.

Fantastic. Well, Mr. Gao, I'd like to thank you for coming on the show today and talking about this, helping to open people's eyes. And I look forward to actually going to your website and starting to implement some of your advice in my own garden here in here in my backyard. So thank you for coming on the show.

You're very welcome, Ben. It was my pleasure.

All right, well, have a wonderful week. And this is Ben Greenfield and Winston Gough signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Folks, that is today's podcast. So just remember, go to the Show Notes, check out some of the stuff that I talked about. Show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com probably the biggest thing is that triathlon Dominator package that's coming out. You can also check out the triathlon training camp in January. Remember to shoot me an email if you're interested in attending that. And then finally, go to our itunes page, leave us some feedback, give us a star ranking. It really helps get the word out about the podcast. A lot of fantastic interviews coming up on Bone Health on women's hormone issues, on the blood, saliva, and urine testing that I did quite a bit. So until next time, this is Ben Greenfield signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a wonderful, healthy week.