Podcast Episode #62: Is Ben Greenfield Actually Healthy? The Blood, Urine and Saliva Results Are In!

In this podcast episode, the results are in and you get to find out the hidden health risks inside the body of yours truly.

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

Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield and today we have quite the episode. You may have noticed that it's a little bit longer than usual, so consider that just your special opportunity to learn a lot more. We're going to be very brief today with the special announcements and only answer a couple of the crucial questions in the listener Q and A because the featured topic for this week is out of this World, incredibly interesting, and in my opinion, one of the most important podcasts that we've ever done. Now, as you may have already read in the show notes, it'd be very useful for you during this podcast to understand it. Even better if you went back and listened Also to podcast number 53 where I speak with Dr. Richard Cohen about the six key internal performance factors that everybody needs to worry about, from the elite athlete all the way down to just the recreational sport enthusiast or the person who's trying to shed a few pounds. So we're going to move right on, not waste any time in getting the special announcements done. Listener Q and A and then we'll go straight into the featured topic.

Special Announcements.

First, and probably the most important special announcement for those of you out there who are listening in and who are triathletes, I have received a ton of questions and I will be answering some of them in today's podcast about the new Triathlon Dominator package that just was released last week and actually isn't even available for sale until October 10th during the Ironman World Championships. But essentially this is the gold standard program that I've spent several years now designing to allow anybody to train for Ironman Triathlon. That's pretty much the program in a nutshell, and everything's there. It's not just a training plan, it's a nutrition plan, dietary supplements, lifestyle, everything that you need to know. It is the same program that I personally use to compete in Ironman Triathlon and qualify for Ironman World Championships several years running. And it's at Triathlon Dominator. I'm putting a link in the show notes, but the the main idea is that that is released on October 10th. And yes, I am serious about the price that I put on that. I've had some people write me in and ask me if it really was everything that's included in that package that you really do get for, for what's listed there is the price. And yeah, it is true that you get everything there for 97 bucks. So if you want the complete program for Ironman Triathlon, go check that out. And remember, October 10th, that's next Saturday during the Ironman World Championships. From the time the starting gun goes off until the last participant crosses the finish line, that's when it's available for that price. So you got to get on board on that day. Between now and then, we're just getting all the technical details worked out, putting a few finishing touches on the program. We'll have it ready for you. Then a couple of other things, really. One other thing in particular. January is quickly approaching and if you recall, January 18th through 25th, I'm given the opportunity for anybody that wants to come to an all inclusive training camp down in Austin, Texas to join me. I'm going to be the head coach at a camp where we'll be working out, we'll be doing lots of swimming, cycling, running. It's designed for anybody from the Olympic distance kind of beginner, not beginner, but.

Shorter distance triathlete, all the way up.

To the serious Ironman triathlete. And this is a full on all inclusive training camp and it is January 18th through 25th. So I put a link in the show notes to this podcast, episode number 62, where you can go read about the registration details, the itinerary, the food, the training, the activities, everything that's going on there. It's beginning to fill up. So I need you to just shoot me an email to ben greenfieldfitness.com if that is something that you are interested in attending so that I can get your name on the list and keep you posted as that date approaches. Because January is going to be here quicker than you know it. And then you will realize that two weeks before the camp, you are asking your spouse for permission to disappear for a week to train or your boss. So make sure to check that out in the show notes to this podcast. Okay, Like I promised, that was brief.

That was it.

Triathlondominator.com and the triathlon training camp down in Austin, Texas. And in case you're a new listener to this podcast, no, the podcast is not just for triathletes. This show is designed for anybody who wants to lead a healthy and active lifestyle and make sure that their nutrition, their fitness and their lifestyle is perfectly aligned for optimum health.

Listener Q and A.

I'm going to be answering three questions in today's Listener Q and these are time sensitive questions and I want to make sure to address your concerns before the crucial time rolls around for you. And the first question is from listener Adrian and Adrian says, I'm running in my marathon this coming Sunday in Portland. I'm not sure if I have a strong stomach or what, but I haven't paid much attention to what I eat before long runs. The morning of I usually eat half of a whole wheat English muffin with peanut butter and maybe half of a banana and a little coffee or tea. Lately I've been eating half of a Larabar and sometimes I fix myself a Chia Fresca. I'm sorry Adrian, I might be ignorant, but I actually don't know what a Chia Fresca is. I seem to have a great run, especially after the Lara bar and wanted to hear your thoughts on those bars. Also, I usually eat just an hour before running. As far as the night before goes, I've eaten everything from Indian food to Szechuan food to hamburgers and gin and tonics. We have reservations at an Italian place the night before my marathon and I'm just looking for some insight on foods I should stay away from. Thanks so much for your thoughts. Maybe if I qualify for Boston I will feel more like a real athlete and I can come see you for nutritional guidance. Thank you very much. Okay, first of all, before I address the meat of your question, let me say for those of you out there who heard the last part of that question about feeling like a real athlete. I train everybody from the complete non athlete who has no interest in sports whatsoever and just wants to lose a little bit of weight or tone a little bit of lean muscle all the way up to the pro level athlete. So don't feel like you have to be some special person to come to me for nutrition consulting or for fitness consulting or running coaching, cycling coaching, triathlon coaching. You don't have to be at a certain level. So to answer the first part of your question, you want some insight on what foods to eat and what foods to stay away from before a marathon. We have talked on this show before about fueling before your long run and just a couple of those key points is that two hours is about the minimum time that your body's going to need for gastric emptying, meaning that your meal, your final pre race or pre big run meal should occur two hours prior. Now you can, if you're getting hungry right before the race, top that off with a quick hit of blood sugar like a half a banana or a sports gel, literally about five minutes before you toe the starting line. But for the most part, you should be getting the majority of your food in two hours prior. Now, in my opinion, for, for marathon, you're not eating that much. A Larabar I believe is about 200 calories and you know, half of a whole wheat English muffin with peanut butter. Again, not that many calories. Most of the females that I work with I'm having eat 400-500 calories two hours prior to the event. And guys, some of the bigger guys, up to 700 calories two hours prior to the event. So that will help your energy levels and it will help decrease your need to eat during the event, which can slow you down and be a little bit logistically challenging. Now as far as the content of that meal, we primarily go for kind of a blah, complex carbohydrate, not a lot of fats, not a lot of proteins, not a lot of fiber. And that will digest most easily and lead to stabilized energy levels and also keep a lot of blood from being shuttled from your exercising muscles down into your gut. Because proteins and fats take a lot of water, they take a lot more blood to digest. And so those aren't ideal, ideal pre race or pre long workout type of meals when you're looking at speed and performance being a goal. Now Larabars I have no problem with. That's a great bar. It uses a fruit sweetener. It doesn't have a lot of high fructose corn syrup in it. They use primarily organic, holistic ingredients. But the number of Larabars you would have to eat for 400 calories might be a little bit too much fiber for you. So you could for example, have a Larabar but make a little bit of oatmeal or make a little bit of quinoa on the side, break up that Larabar and put it in there or have your Larabar with a little bit of fat free yogurt. So a few different options for Italian and for any restaurant really, I recommend a serving of preferably red meat. If you're not a vegetarian or a vegan with a side of carbohydrate and pretty limited fiber, don't do the unlimited salad and breadsticks type option. A sample meal at an Italian restaurant might be A small steak, like a six or an eight ounce piece of meat, preferably rather lean or fat trimmed, and you have that with a little bit of pasta on the side, like a whole grain pasta with a marinara sauce. You don't necessarily want to go with a pure serving of carbohydrate because that's not going to provide you with all of the metabolites that your body is going to be trying to draw on during that long effort the next day. I like the meat because you get some of the protein, you get some of the mitochondria, you get some of the amino acids, and that's what I've been using lately before my bigger performances. And it actually helps out quite a bit. So go for red meat with a little bit of complex carbohydrate and not like a huge salad. I know some people will say, well, I had a giant salad with the salmon on top and that's fine. But you're going to be in the porta Potty line the next morning trying to purge all that fiber from your system and all that water from your large intestine before you take off. So those are my recommendations, Adrian, and great question. And the next question. Next couple of questions were quick questions related to the triathlon dominator question or triathlon dominator package. Christy asks Ben, if you would release a version of this plan for athletes who favor the Olympic distance, I would buy it. Would you consider it? Christy, this plan, the triathlon dominator plan that you're referring to, could pretty easily be modified for Olympic distance because it's made up of high intensity intervals, because it actually uses pretty minimal amounts of training time. What you would need to do is take all the weekend workouts that are a little bit longer than the weekday workouts and reduce their volume by about 50 to 60%.

Okay?

So automatically take a bike ride. And if it recommends that you're going on a two hour bike ride, shave that down to 45 minutes. You're going to maintain all the weekday workouts pretty much as they are, okay? Keep those exactly as they are. And then to remove a little bit of the calorie intake from the meal plan because you're actually working out less on the weekends. Take two of the four snacks out of the meal plan on the weekends and completely remove the snack that you're supposed to take in during the workout or the fuel that you're supposed to take in during the workout. And that will ensure that you're not taking in too many calories in the plan. And Then Ryan had a question. He says, my first question regarding your triathlon dominator program is can I tailor it to half ironman training in racing? My second question is how is speed work incorporated when most of the training appears to be high intensity interval training? Is one able to trigger the physiological adaptations of both aerobic and anaerobic endurance with high intensity interval training? My third question is how is pacing worked into the training? Are heart rate zones incorporated into the training? Ryan, you can modify this program for half ironman training pretty similar to my recommendations about the Olympic distance, except now you only reduce the volume of those weekend workouts by closer to 40%. So that two hour bike ride is going to be closer to about an hour and 20 minutes. To use the same example, with this reduction in volume, you would again reduce the meal plan slightly. You'd retain the meal that you're taking during the workout. Okay, retain the fueling during the workout, but take out two of the weekend snacks. And then finally, as far as the pacing and the intensity, I give instructions in the program on how to use power on the bicycle or how to use heart rate. It's kind of an option that I leave to the person who's doing the program, depending on what they have available to them. And then we use testing on the swim that is based off your hundred meter time. So it's called the T pace. And there's instructions on how to actually keep track of your T pace as well as long logs and everything that you need to keep track throughout the entire program. So as far as the high intensity interval training, I want to make sure there's not a misunderstanding here. But that actually is speed work. Those are anywhere from one up to as long as five minute efforts that really actually do make you faster. Those do increase your muscular endurance. And actually we'll talk about that pretty comprehensively in the interview that you're about to hear. So remember, if you have a question, you can email me. Ben greenfieldfitness.com I do have a few questions that I didn't answer this week just because our interview is so long, but I will be answering those next week. And remember that I will be down in Kona at the Ironman World Championships from October 4th through October 11th. I will be bringing you a podcast next week from Hawaii. If you're down there, whether you're participating or you're watching or you're part of the event in some way, make sure you come and say hello. And let's go ahead and move on to this week's epic interview with Dr. Richard Cohen and Tim Monaco, who are from a company called Bioletics. And what Bio Letics does is they allow you to test all the variables that we'll be discussing via a kit that they send to your home. And I will put a link to Bioletics and the kit and everything else in the show notes as well. So if you listen and you're interested in finding out some of the stuff about your own body, you can just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and click on the link in the show notes and you will be ready to rumble.

Featured Topic.

Hey podcast listeners. This is Ben Greenfield from BenGreenfieldFitness.com and today is a pretty important episode. You may remember back to podcast episode number 53 where we talked about six key performance factors that every athlete on the face of the planet who is truly serious about their performance needed to know about. And on that Show I interviewed Dr. Richard Cohen, who is himself an avid athlete, but also a physician who has about two decades of experience in preventive medicine and human performance. He was training and counseling members of the American medical community on nutritional issues for over 15 years and right now he is recognized as one of the leading authorities in the biological analysis of athletic performance factors. And after speaking with Dr. Cohen about some of the factors that athletes really need to take into consideration, factors that athletes need to get tested on and find out about, I went through a process guided by Dr. Cohen of testing my body for the six key performance factors that he recommended and that he talked about in that podcast, namely vitamin D, ferritin, my mineral levels, my hormone system, my amino acid status, and then also the specificity to which the foods that I was taking in metabolically actually matched up to my unique metabolism. And so after going through all that testing, the results have come in. We now know where I stand with all of my internal performance factors. And today I have on the other line not only Dr. Cohen, but also Tim Monaco. And Tim Monaco works with Dr. Cohen. He is a metabolic typing advisor. In addition, those of you who are exercise professionals out there will recognize when I say he's a check practitioner. That's a high level practitioner in fitness, wellness and nutrition. He's a certified personal trainer. He's a licensed massage therapist. He is himself an ex professional triathlete. He was a pro triathlete for five years. He won numerous national and pro titles in triathlon and duathlon, even in ultra distance running. Now he's a competitive masters level triathlete. But both Dr. Cohen and Tim are going to sit me down here on this call, so to speak, and talk to me about my results. And you're going to get to listen in and to find out how this system of testing yourself actually works and what you actually get out of it. So, Dr. Cohen and Tim, thanks for coming on the show today.

Thanks very much. It's good to be here, Ben.

Hey, appreciate, Ben. Looking forward to giving you the good and not so good news.

All right. The good and not so good news. And just so the listener knows, I actually. I know very little about my results. I've heard shreds here and there this week leading up to the call, but this is really something you guys are going to hear live in terms of me finding out what actually is going on inside my body related to performance factors.

Let me preface one other thing. I mean, it's all good news because now we have some info, we can tweak some things, and they can understand the importance of what we're trying to help them with.

Right. Okay. Well, I've never done this before, so I'm gonna hand the reins over to you guys and let you start talking to me about what's going on with me.

Sure. Sounds good. Well, Tim. Tim won the hand wrestling contest. He's gonna go first, and he'll start with the metabolic typing.

Okay. And I guess one thing we should make sure to talk about as we go through this is what I did with each factor so that the audience knows how you guys got the results.

Right, right, right. Maybe I'll just do a quick overview of what we did test and we can sort of proceed from there.

I think that would be perfect because, I mean, on my end, and I did mention this to the audience in a podcast a few weeks ago, I got a big box in the mail and it was full of all the papers, all the forms that I needed, all the things that I could get tested with at home. There was one test, the Ferritin test, that I needed to go down the street to my local lab to draw. Everything else was literally just pricking the end of my finger and putting a drop of blood onto one pad and dripping a little bit of saliva into another. Peeing in a cup a couple times. But Dr. Cohen could probably give a much more comprehensive overview than that.

Right. Maybe we could do before each test, we can just give a brief overview what it was. And if you want to comment on that, that's great.

I think that's perfect.

Okay, so just the general. So, you know, what's coming up is the six factors. One was the metabolic typing, which was a computer survey based on particular like dislikes of food, how you feel after eating certain types of food, what foods, how you react to foods, how do you feel after caffeine. And it also included other physical traits as well. So it's a combination of some ancestral needs as well as your own individual biochemical need. Tim will explain a little bit more.

And when I was going through that questionnaire, the questionnaire was pretty straightforward but I was kind of going with what my gut instinct was. When I filled that out I was kind of go with the first response that came to my mind, I guess.

Yeah. And that's ideally what you want to go with because being kind of a general screening tool, the questionnaire can have some questions that in some cases people don't identify with or they think there might be one or more answers that might apply to them. So that's exactly how I advise people is just gut feeling. And we'll get a really good idea of what is going on with you and what kind of specific needs your body has.

I also like that they have some redundancy. There's some questions that are repeated to ensure that the responses are more as explained. It's a starting point and it's a guide for you to sort of fine tune how to fuel your body, which is key. So then the other factors that we looked at were your hormone recovery status which was testosterone and cortisol amino acid status. Looking at amino acids which are critical for all the fundamental functions in the body. We looked at at ph and mineral status which we sort of link together and that looks at bone health and then also your utilization of magnesium and calcium, the balance there. And lastly we looked at vitamin D status which is another critical, critical component to health and well being. And we'll discuss each one of those and, and I guess no further ado, I'll hand you over to Tim. And you can start with the metabolic typing because in essence how you fuel your body defines all these other components and that's the fundamental block on the pyramid.

So the whole idea of metabolic typing is looking at the really individual biochemical and genetic needs for any given person. There's six different metabolic types that you can fall into. The really interesting thing that I think is revolutionary about this whole system is that I would say every diet that's ever been thrown out there on the market has a certain element of this to it. And what I think the reason why some people have success on one diet or someone else might have Success on another diet is that they just happen to fall into that particular slot that like one diet might one of those six metabolic types, and if you happen to be in that group, then it's great, then you're right on the money. But for the other people, it's not going to work so well. So I think just understanding and acknowledging that we're all individual, our biochemical needs are different, our genetics different, you know, literally we've all come from different bloodlines and gene pools that have come from all over the world. So there's, you know, certain, I would.

Say.

Groups that are more prevalent in North America. Most of us are European descent and we have a couple of different bloodlines in our family. But I would say in most cases, when I do testing, the large majority of people fall into what I would call a fast oxidizer or a protein type, which leaves us, the athlete, needing more protein and fat to really optimize their health, which goes against most conventional, especially sports nutrition advice, where generally it's like 60 to 70% carbohydrates, maybe 20% protein, 10% fat. And the usual dogma out there about limiting saturated fats and limiting animal proteins, it really can be a problem if you happen to be a protein type. So, Ben, you are on that side of the equation. You are what's called a fast oxidizer is which. Which I think the easiest way to explain that is that we all have what you would call a metabolic fire. And if you metabolize and burn really hot. So if you kind of take that fire analogy, you need a big log on your fire in order to keep that fire burning strong. So if you happen to be on the other side of the spectrum, a slow oxidizer, which you aren't, if you put a big log on a small fire, it's going to the fire. So you need kindling. The analogy is the carbohydrates like kindling. Fat and protein is more like a big log. So for the person who is more of a slow oxidizer or a carbohydrate type, those people need more carbohydrates and less heavy fat and protein, and they do really well on that. The fast oxidizer or the protein type on our side of the spectrum, I also happen to be a fast oxidizer. If you eat too many carbohydrates, you end up just burning through them really quickly. It's just like throwing a candle on the fire and it just keeps burning out really fast and you don't have any Long burning fuel. So the effect of that as you go through your day is that how you feel really connecting what you're eating to how you feel. It's, you know, what your energy levels are, what your focus is, how you can concentrate, you know, training wise, what your endurance is like overall, how your body is maintaining muscle mass and even body composition, like how much fat and lean muscle mass you're going to have. The usual thing that I see is that people who are fast oxidizers, who are eating too many carbohydrates, they generally don't have good body composition, they usually are carrying a little extra weight, a little extra body fat, and once they make the right adjustments, which kind of is counterintuitive for most people to be eating more fat and protein, their body starts to shift and their metabolism starts to get in better working order. And all of a sudden you start losing fat and you start getting leaner. And I think depending on what sport you're doing as an endurance athlete, you're not looking to necessarily build muscle mass, but you do want to maintain muscle mass.

And.

Being an ultra distance athlete, that's a big issue because if you're not enough fat and protein and your metabolism is not working right, then you're going to start breaking down a lot of your lean muscle mass and getting in a catabolic state.

So you always want to be in.

A more anabolic state.

Yeah, it's interesting because I have this metabolic laboratory here in Spokane. I've tested my metabolism and I have a very high metabolism. And when I first had that tested, I just kind of assumed that because I had a high metabolism that I should be eating a lot of carbohydrates to fuel that metabolism. And so, you know, I wouldn't say that I am on a traditional high carbohydrate diet, but I do, or at least I did up until I heard rumor that I was a fast oxidizer. About two weeks ago, I ate a little bit higher carbohydrate diet to fuel that metabolism. And so being a fast oxidizer, as you describe it, or having more of that protein type doesn't necessarily mean that you don't have a high metabolism. It just means that if you do have a high metabolism, you shouldn't necessarily be fueling it with a high carbohydrate blend. Am I on the right track here?

Yeah, I think that's a good point that we should clarify is that I think your metabolic tendencies are different from your actual like metabolism in the sense of how many calories you're burning a day. So just your base metabolic rate and then all the extra calories you're burning through all the exercise you're doing.

It'S.

Going to be giving you X amount of calories a day that you need just to maintain health and your body weight. And most ironman athletes who are, you could be burning 5,6000 calories a day, probably between 2 and 3000. Just base metabolic rate, which is what you're burning just walking around breathing. But the thing with metabolic typing is definitely that the mix, a calorie mix and what's called a macronutrient ratio. So macronutrients being fat, your carbohydrates and your protein. So dialing in that ratio is really the key that's going to distinguish which type you are and getting on the money with that.

Well, I have to tell you that this was one of the results that I did actually hear about a couple of weeks ago, even though I hadn't heard officially from you yet. I think Richard mentioned it to me in an email because the questionnaire was one of the first things that I filled out and I just made some small changes, some very small changes. For example, I usually have a bowl of oatmeal or a bowl of quinoa in the morning and I substituted about half of that bowl with that goat whey protein that I've been using from Mount Capra. I usually will work at a coffee shop in the afternoon kind of after a workout and I'll typically have a brand muffin out there. Started substituting just like almonds or walnuts that I actually brought. And then probably one of the more significant changes was a lot of times pre race, like the night before, I'll have a couple of sweet potatoes or a couple of yams. And I actually did have a race a couple of weeks ago or last week actually and I had a prime rib with a baked potato instead of that slightly higher carbohydrate pre race dinner and felt really good. I actually had a great race and came in second place and barely lost to a fairly top level pro. And it actually felt pretty good. So I can see where you're coming from with some of these changes. And the questionnaire that I was answering to come up with this metabolic type seemed pretty straightforward. It was like, what are your energy levels like after this meal, this meal and this meal? And, and it included questions in there on emotions as well, I think. And I took it about four weeks ago. So I'm forgetting some of the Questions. But it was pretty comprehensive from both an emotional and kind of a logistical fueling perspective. So those were kind of my thoughts on some of the stuff that I felt after I made those adjustments in the protein.

Yeah, I think that's a really important, important part of the process, really, that doing the survey, finding out what the information is. We send you out an actual food list, which you have.

Dr. Yeah, I got that. And it was incredibly comprehensive. I actually printed it out and put it on my refrigerator. And I'm starting to make some tweaks in my diet based off of the list of foods that you guys sent me. But, yeah, I mean, I pretty much got everything that I would ever need to make the adjustments in my diet. It's not like I didn't eat healthy already. It's just that I'm just shifting the scale, so to speak, more towards protein.

Yeah, I think most athletes are pretty knowledgeable. They do the work, they do the reading. They're on the Internet. They read about stuff that they want to know, they want to learn. And this is truly just a matter of making a better choice for your particular needs. So when we send out this packet of results, it has the food list, it has your macronutrient ratio, it has some sample diets. There's a little bit more information about how this works if you're interested in reading through it. And then there's what's called a diet check record, which is your tool to find the dieting as you go forward. Because the way I look at it is when you do the test, it brings you basically from having no clue and you're eating just anything and everything that comes your way to probably 90% of where you should be. And then the diet check record is a sheet that you can write in your meals. You can make note of how much you're eating when you're eating it. So when you're using the diet check record, you after your meal, you one to two hours after, there's questions about if you feel fat, if you feel full or you're, you're hungry or if you have cravings or if you don't have cravings, if you, your energy feels good or you don't feel so good, if you have, you know, feeling uplifted, feeling mental clarity. So it's basically giving you a tool to really identify how that food is affecting you. And I think it's a huge.

Kind.

Of up in consciousness when you can actually link what you're eating and how it's affecting your body. Right unfortunately, that's one of those things that in our day and age, most people have been born and raised in a society where food is plentiful and it's more about entertainment, you know, flavor, energy, and sustenance. So most people, I think they. They don't put two and two together when it comes to what I'm eating becomes how I'm feeling an hour later.

Right? Well, yeah. And, you know, I. When I send out food logs to the athletes that I coach or when I use training peaks to prescribe them their recommended meal plans and things of that nature, I do have a place there where they can tell me their comments about how they felt, how their energy levels were, et cetera. But I think kind of the missing piece for me as a coach is to have that comprehensive metabolic questionnaire that I went through that will let me tweak an athlete's diet even more, using some of the tools that you guys provide. Just because rather than saying, well, this is healthy, so you should eat it instead, you know, I'd be able to say, well, this is not just healthy, but it's you. I mean, it' sit's the way that your body is going to respond most optimally. And I thought that that's what was really cool. And I'm pretty excited, frankly, to see. You know, I know that takes several weeks of changing your diet to really feel the full effects, but I'm pretty excited to see how my body responds. And, I mean, I'mI'm happy, especially with mywith my race that occurred just a week and a half after I started changing up my diet.

Yeah, it's good to get some positive feedback happening real fast for you.

Yeah. And also, you know, probably so that our podcast doesn't last hours and hours, one of the things that we should do is really encourage people to go listen to episode 53 that goes into great detail about why you would want to get each of these tests done. Also, if you subscribe to Triathlete Magazine, there's an article coming out in there where I talked a little bit about some of the importance of these factors. And I don't think that's coming out until December of this year. But what we'll do, I think, going forward into some of these other components that I got tested on is we'll kind of give you the overview, but not to go into tons of detail on each one. So you can kind of put podcast episode number 53 and then this episode together, if you as the listener really want just the full meal, deal to get all the details on why you would want to be doing everything. But yeah, starting things off with the metabolic questionnaire, I think was incredibly important for me to just find out the overview in terms of the macronutrients of what I should be putting into my body and then the, you know, the stuff that you guys provided to me afterwards is going to be enormously helpful rather than me having to play the guessing game, so to speak.

Absolutely. I could chime in here with just a couple other points if you guys are. It's a starting point, so the more you can listen to your body. And I think when we nutrition at all points is we tend to get away from the realization of how critical what we put in our mouth affect how we feel. We can get lost, especially from a media research representation of what food is healthy. And we talked a lot about this before, but what food is healthy and has nourishment. But we're taking it to a much deeper level to how to combine foods as fuel and then what specific foods are actually, even though one food may be nutritionally packed, may not be good for you to eat, that's critical. And the more you can. I love that you started taking small steps and you're in a good, healthy place to start. Sometimes we're working with people who are really having more serious problems. It's sometimes a little easier almost to more dramatic shift. But that might in your case be a little more challenging. But start making these shifts, start paying attention, start paying attention how you feel. And it's just, hey, how did I feel after that? Well, you know, I felt good. Okay. And then, then you continue down that path and you may find in three, four months, you're, you're almost an 80 from where you were.

Right.

It's possible they find just the subtle, subtle additions or you know, for me, I find and carbohydrates. I'm a fat oxidator as well. Don't work well in the morning, but I can get away with a little bit more later in the day, more in the evening. I'm fine. But if I just ate a bowl of oatmeal in the morning, I would be starving two hours later and not be feeling well.

Oh yeah.

It'S that plan. And with the understanding of how do I feel and why am I feeling this way and what my energy and that's, you know, to everyone out there, whatever they're eating, it's pay attention to your body. And I think that would be my final point. Right.

And I think before we Go forward into the. Some of the. Some of the blood tests and salivary and urine tests that I did. One thing I should mention is that for me, you know, it's not like I wasn't healthy already and didn't already have really good energy levels. For me, one of the things that's big on my goal list for next year is I would like to go race and in kona in the 2010 Ironman World Championships. And even though I've made it there, every time I've tried, I know that it's getting more competitive, and I know that I'm not getting any younger, and it gets tougher the older that you get. This was one of my big motivations as well, was I want to pull out all the stops, and this was a big one for me. And I know that you, as a listener, maybe you're not an elite athlete or maybe world championships are on your list of goals, but if you do have a big goal or if you just want to make sure that you're not wasting your time, I mean, that's kind of a motivation as well. But I didn't really talk to you guys too much about that on my questionnaire that I included along with the test I did. But for me, Kona is a big motivator here to really make sure I've got everything dialed in, so to speak. Using the highly scientific term dialed in.

Well, I think that that's really a very important point, you know, is that, I mean, obviously everybody's got kind of their own. They're on their specific place in the journey, whether they're a beginner, you know, someone who's really looking to qualify, someone who. A professional trying to win a race or just getting off the couch the first time. What is considered normal for any individual is a very relative term, a relative state. So I think in a lot of cases, people get used to feeling bad and. And negative types of progress just kind of happen slowly in most cases, and you don't really realize that you may be kind of slipping down a little bit. Maybe you're not recovering from your workouts quite so well. So there's, like, really subtle things, subtle changes that happen, and you just don't really identify what's going on. So going through this process is huge because it's really going to give you that information and enable you to dial it in, as you said. And it could be one little thing, one little change that you make, and it could bring you back to life. My story, it was crazy. I consider myself A pretty high level athlete and I train as much as I can given my schedule with my family and my job. But I still probably get in, you know, eight to ten hours a week of training and, you know, focus on the quality. And I've been working my way back at doing triathlons the last few years and making progress, but, you know, always feeling a little bit like I didn't quite recover the way I felt like I should. So over the winter, I tested, I went through, I did all the tests and my vitamin D came back absolutely dismal. I think it was nine and it should be 50 to 80. So that was actually the lowest test of anyone we've tested so far. I have the championship cup on my desk for worst vitamin D. So I start supplementing. In a couple of months, things started to shift and I've been absolutely astounded by how well I. How good I feel and how well I'm recovering. And this year has just been a benchmark year for me because I've gone from like, just what I would call, you know, banging my head against the wall, like a hard workout, taking a week to recover and feeling like I should be moving along but not really doing it. And now I feel like I can, I can do a couple of hard workouts in a row. I can really push hard. And I wake up the next day and I don't feel like I've been hit by a truck. So I'm a believer, as they say in the process, and it just kind of makes it more real for me. I mean, obviously I'm on this side of the desk, but when I'm dealing with people and I'm consulting with people, but. But I'm a player too. I'm an athlete and I'm very much in game, so I can appreciate it.

All right, well, should we move on to the next test?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I think we can, as you said, if any listener, go back to the previous podcast and we discussed each other of these factors, more depth. So what I can try and do is, you know, just give a brief prelude, absolutely brief prelude to each one, and then we can move forward. So, you know, let's go. In my mind, what the most critical, the most critical marker that anyone can measure at this point, in my viewpoint, is your vitamin D level. There's so much information out there now and you can read about it, but the 32nd blitz is Vitamin D is not essentially a vitamin. It's an essential hormone like substance in our body that's activated by the sun and basically has genetic expression control of multiple cellular functions. Basically it affects anything. It's a simple term. When your vitamin D is low, it can cause a multitude of problems. And with regard to athletes, since it's a hormone lack substance that affects muscle tissues, when vitamin D is low, endurance power performance can suffer significantly. And as Tim said, he was even living in Bend, Oregon, sunny, sunny Bend.

And training outdoors, the Palm Springs of the Pacific Northwest.

Right. He was seriously low in vitamin D. So we like to shoot for in talking to the latest researchers and what we've seen. An ideal performance level of vitamin D, if you have that assessed is between 50 and 65, it doesn't necessarily pay to go up much higher than that. And how do you know? You really have to test that. So your level then came back at 45, which actually in the spectrum of people that we assessed is not that bad. It's mildly, very mildly less than optimal. So whatever you've been doing, I don't know if you'd been. You didn't put it on the survey. If you take any vitamin D or. I didn't.

I actually, I don't take vitamin D. There's very, very kind of trace levels in a few of the supplements that I have, but I don't take vitamin D or vitamin D3 specifically per se. I mean, I.

The question is, is there anything that you can think of if you're not taking D and other supplements? I'm thinking a mineral whey that really shouldn't have as protein other than, you know, maybe run and ride without a shirt.

Yeah, I do the majority of my training shirtless and I, whenever I do go outside because I do spend a lot of time from my computer. I do a lot as an, as an author and writing and on the Internet. Whenever I am outside, I make it a point to be as naked as possible to expose as much skin as I can. So, you know, maybe that's, maybe that's how I'm keeping. And I think when I sent it into you guys though, for me to be at 45, I think I sent that in in mid to late August in the throes of training for Half Ironman and spending several hours outside, especially on the weekends. And so I would imagine that going forward here living in Washington in this climate, that If I'm at 45 now and the ideal dose for me for athletic performance, like you say, is 55 to 65, I shouldn't be seriously considering bumping up my vitamin D levels or actively taking a vitamin D3. Supplement.

Dr. Exactly, exactly. What you showed is you could pretty much almost get it done with the sun exposure even being outside a couple hours. Not quite. So during summer when you do that, maybe add 1000 1500,000 to 2000 to what you're doing. But, but during the winter I would go up to anywhere between four and six and then it's something you can recheck again probably before you start heading out in the spring. So recheck again in January and February. Is this.

Oh, sorry, I was going to say one of my offices is located inside kind of a dispensary in a natural health food store. And a lot of people there tend to really like the Carlson's vitamin D. And I know, I don't know if we want to like push specific brands and stuff, but when you're talking about 4,000, 6,000 IU, do you guys prefer like a cod liver oil source or do you go with like you know, a fish oil vitamin D capsule source or what are your recommendations on something like that?

You know, I use a couple different brands. I haven't paid attention necessarily to how that's affecting. As we start adding more athletes, we can do that. The one thing I do know and I have seen and I haven't broken it down, like I said specifically, there are people who do not absorb even on gel apps efficiently because they're fat based and people may have individual absorption issues and you're requiring it to get into the system. I've seen people go up to 10,000 and they think, wow, I'm doing great. Their vitamin D levels haven't budged. They'll go up from 20 to 30. So there's two components. One is always assess because you think you might be doing the job and you may not. Two is you can't beat the sun. Whenever you have the opportunity to get the D from the sun, do it. And there's some neat devices actually we're working on that will actually be able to assess how much D you've received from the sun. So I can share with that in the coming future. It sort of converts some factors and assesses so you can get a sense of, okay, this is enough uvb, but now I'm sort of reaching a point where I need to be concerned about it. But really the third thing is I had some experience using a vitamin D spray a little bit more expensive, not too much more consistently reliable. They break the D down to these very small particles that can bypass the gastrointestinal system so you get a more effective Absorption and it's a more reliable spot response. When I tell people, okay, what you need, we're pulling out that whole absorption factor.

So where do you get that?

That's actually something. I don't want to harp ourself, but it's something a bioethics will be carrying. It's a vitamin D.

I don't care if you harp yourselves. I want to find out the best place to get this stuff.

Yeah. So that's something that I'm excited about as well. But to back off. If you can get sun when the sun's available, who knows what else? But let's say off the point. Instinctively, we didn't get D from foods or supplements. We got it from the sun. What other benefits the sun may provide that we're not aware of? I'm sure there's something that eventually we'll find out. I think you're pretty good, Ben. You got it with the shirtless riding. And hey, pull your shirts off when you're out there riding. So that would be my.

I'll switch to the padded Speedo.

Yes. We just started a new tread. We can put iron on. Riding shirtless to get D. Yeah. Okay. So moving on to my next sort of. That's the most important marker.

Oh, and really quickly, that was. I have to remember back now. That was a blood spot, a little prick on the end of my finger onto a few different. A few different pads that came along with the test. That was literally dry it out, send it in the mail, same day type of thing.

Painless finger stick, two drops of blood.

Yeah. Cool.

Okay, so the next test is for me is aand you've talked a lot about this over the podcast, so your followers would certainly be understanding the magnesium. Unfortunately, if there were inexpensive tests for magnesium, it would be in here because it's truly as important as D is to genetic control. Magnesium, which was found in chlorophyll and photosynthesis, is involved in so many different enzymatic pathways and so many critical functions in the body. The only test right now is that's a scanning electron microscope test that's done in the lab. It's commercially available. It's 350 bucks. The fact is 85 to 90% of people are not getting enough magnesium. This urinary anti X marker, which we talk about is a urine sample. And what we look at is mineral metabolism. It actually looks at if you are turning over more bone than would be ideal. Well, now it's not a specific marker for magnesium. I feel really comfortable if Those levels are slightly elevated. Magnesium is. You just got to make more of an attempt to get it. Your urinary ntax marker was 50.4. We're looking to get a level less than 37. And then we would consider over 67, you know, someone who's, you know, significantly breaking down bones. So you actually kind of broke up.

There for a sec. You said under 37 would be ideal, but over 67 is that what you said would be?

Over 67 is a severe, you know, you're getting into, you know, accelerated breakdown significantly. Now I've seen, I've seen 100, 150. We, you know, mentioned. We did remember the teen cross country girls and they were in the 150. Their diets and so forth weren't anywhere near what you were doing. But having said that, hey, you're turning over some bones as we go on. You'll sort of see there are many factors that could be playing a role. Certainly the vitamin D, possibly. It may be that since D is critical for healthy bone and mineral metabolism, it may be that your D was just starting to rise through the summer. And if we checked you in spring, your levels might have been 30. That's a component generally for the markers. These markers will slowly shift bone dynamics that could be improved with a high level D. But as we go on and look at some other factors here, I throw in magnesium is critical. You're already starting to take some magnesium?

Yeah, I mentioned on my survey I'm taking a transdermal. I have the past few weeks. Well, I've been stepping up my transdermal magnesium to, you know, I was just a few sprays on the arms, you know, before a workout. Now I'm, I'm putting it on kind of the upper head and neck, rubbing it in before bed. 10 to 15 sprays on both the upper body and in the lower body before workout or after workout. And then orally. There's a few different supplements that I take that contain small amounts of magnesium. You know, 25 milligrams here, 10 milligrams there. You know, an example would be Millennium Sports. They have a product called Somnidren, which is kind of a GABA based sleep aid. And I take that a couple of times a week. And I think that has 25 to 50 milligrams in it, but nothing on a regular basis. But I have been, I have really been kind of starting to step up the magnesium.

Got it. Okay. That's probably 30 to 50 sprays. If we start getting to about 50 sprays gives you about 500 milligrams. And that topical. Well, it's unusual to think topical does get in. There are data that has been shown using that scanning electron microscope data that shows it does recover magnesium levels. And it seems to be the best way to do that other than actually intravenous magnesium, which is something I used to do in my practice. Yeah, I would say keep that up.

It's critical, would you say, for somebody like me to be at 50.4, wanting to be around that ideal level of 37 or below in terms of milligrams of magnesium per day? That would safely. Obviously I'd want to back off if I got the loose stool. But you said. Did I hear you say 500mg?

500. The topical should be fine at this point. From what I'm seeing, you don't have a lot of symptoms. You're not going to get the gi Excess magnesium problems that you will with an oral. It's so hard to anything oral other than there are some new novel liquid magnesium that we're looking into and I'm curious to see the responses. Is something I learned from Carolyn Dean. But there's no risk to it. It's relatively inexpensive to use the spray, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. And like you say, you can do it once a day or you can put it under your arm a couple times a day, put it in your legs. Some people like taking a magnesium bath periodically and just let those salts especially after a hard race. So just incorporate that and it's inexpensive and it's another base.

I did forget to mention I do have the magnetic clay magnesium flakes as well. And about on a once a week basis after a tough workout. I've been doing a soak in those. So. Okay.

Yeah, I think that's right. So we'll come back to NTX again here.

And that was a. That was a urination.

That was the urine. That was a urine spot, right?

Yeah.

Okay. So then let's look at another key factor that we looked at each of these sort of interrelating with another was we looked at amino acids. And what amino acid tests again was another finger stick. I think this one involved four blood spots. And just the 10 seconds. Amino acids are critical for enzymes, for neurotransmitters, for protein, for bone, for muscle tissue recovery. In essence, if your body is your house, the amino acids are your foundation and the studs and the walls and everything that builds you. What happens with athletes, specifically especially endurance athletes, is they start if they're not utilizing protein well, if they're not getting enough protein in their diet, which as we learned in the metabolic typing, may be the case for you, or if they're just not digesting well, which also. You have some GI bloating minor. Not too. It may be, like I said, it may be extra calories, it may be that too many carbohydrates. But what we found for a number of people is since amino acids, acids control enzyme production, pancreatic digestive enzymes, if they become deficient, then it's sort of this spiraling situation where you don't get enough enzymes, you don't digest your protein. So when we looked at urine fluorescent pattern, we saw three that were. Well, we actually have five, three that are under the 20 percentile and considered low. Valine, isoleucine. Okay. And then we had. Isoleucine is one of the branched chain amino acids which controls muscle. And then you have. Right below that up to 21st percentile is leucine and lysine. So the three key branch chain amino acids, isoleucine, leucine and lysine, are not where you want them to be. And then we have two other amino acids, valine, which is also controlled with muscle metabolism, that's low. And then the other one is threonine, which is also associated with some catabolic state. So it looks like the five key essential amino acids that are associated with catabolism or the breaking down of tissue are not where they need to be.

Hmm.

Okay.

And this is justjust for me thinking about this, you know, thisthis is prior to me actually launching into a little bit higher protein intake. And, you know, I don't know if I mentioned this on my survey. I take recoveries, which is kind of a glutamine branched chain amino acid blend, but I typically only take four. And dosage requirements on that tell you that, you know, when you're in periods of training, you can take six and up to eight. So. So I don't know if I can bump those up. But what are your recommendations?

Yeah, what we found in the research is that while branched chain amino acids are useful, if you really, truly want to get a recovery, you need to restore all eight essential amino acids, since you're trying to throw pieces to the puzzle, because proteins are digested into amino acids and they almost become these multi. These puzzle pieces for the body that the body can take and break and put together in all these different ways. I was just trying to think of like A little game there must be, you know, where you take the label blocks and you make shapes of all the different pieces. So that's one in essence the body isn't, you know, if you're trying to build a structure and one of those pieces are missing, well guess what? It's not going to, it's not going to function as well. So generally what I recommend especially for a high level endurance athlete and someone wanting to recover is to use an essential amino acid blend. And it's a multi provides all the eight essential amino acids. The neat thing about the essential amino acids are they're highly effective and they almost all go to muscle tissue recovery where if you eat proteins, I'm not saying that we shouldn't eat real protein, but if we cook proteins, you break down the absorbability. If your digestion as you're getting older under stress, you're not digesting those as well. Protein powder here's the paradigm shift that I've had. We think I'm getting my protein, I'm getting my protein powder, I must be fine. Well it's really am I getting my amino acids? Because it's not the protein that we want, it's the amino acids we get. If the protein is not highly useful or highly utilized, you may not be getting what you need in regard to how that's being broken down, even a high quality whey protein and there is a place for that. Absolutely. In our diet has other benefits is only about 20 to 25% utilized for that anabolic tissue recovery where the rest is broken down and you get nitrogen waste and that's just really utilized for calories. So we can be much more efficient. So the paradigm shift is eat whole foods and to be able to adjust them but use essential amino acids blends to support recovery. And actually there may be and it's something we're studying and there's been some good research. If you take someone as they age and you support their amino acids, you see tissue hormone recovery. Actually testosterone levels change, cortisol levels reduce. So it may be actually not inefficient. Amino acid utilization is part of that whole aging process and that's what they're suggesting. So critical essential amino acid blend and you know what's nice is you can take about 20 grams of essential amino acid blend in a powder. It's the easiest way. 10 grams twice a day. You can go up to 30 someone your weight on a real heavy training day. We tend to like people to take it in the morning and then either before or after A ride if it's just a normal ride and then if it's a heavy heavy ride you could do it before some people put it in their drinks. And if it's going to be a three, four hour event they'll sort of continue the fueling process. So that's something that we've tried to put together a nice formula based on some research and it's bioetics as an essential amino acid blend. There are a couple similar ones out there where real pleased with what we've seen with this one. The one other point is what's nice is 20 grams of an essential amino acid blend is equivalent to about 75 grams of whey protein. So it's much a lot of protein.

Right.

So you can truly flood the tissue levels. And what we've seen and Tim, I don't know if you mentioned his heart rate recovery. No, I don't think he mentioned that. But what he noticed and we've from other people are his max heart rate. How old are you? 39, 40, 43. He looks younger. Tim's 43 and I guess he's as you get older your heart rate that you can max goes down. He's noticed since he started this he's up about 10b when he pushes out his heart rate isn't he can his engine's firing. The muscles of the heart are able to function at a better level.

Wow.

So critical. And amino acids flowing back to the NTX to see how they're all related. Low tissue amino acids can also play a role with bone. They're structural. So that turnover may also be part of of the bone metabolism issue. Okay, let's move on. So we have vitamin D pretty good. You got that one ntx, not bad. Could be related to the D and very likely related to the amino acids. Then the one other thing that we wanted to look at with the minerals NTX which I neglected was your phone. And ph was done by every morning for 10 days. You just took your morning sample and put a little dipstick of ph. And generally what we want to look for is a PH level around 7.2 and your average for those 10 days was 7, which was good. That says to me a lot of what you're doing. You're eating healthfully. You're able to seemingly tolerate the grains from an acid alkaline basis and that may be one reason why you're still feeling reasonably well. We see people who are eating too many carbohydrates a lot of times very acidic and that causes problems in itself and causes bone issues. So from the acid alkaline issue, I'm not seeing that as a significant cause to any bone issues. And it could be the mineral whey that you're using is alkalizing you or any number of things that you're doing. So that's good. I'm happy about that.

I also take one of those greens supplements which I know has a strong alkalizing effect. Take something called anaprime, which is spirulina and blue green algae and all these highly alkaline foods.

That's getting the job done.

Yeah.

So those are the two things that I recommend people. Well, three things is find your metabolic type and adjust for that. And then realistically, in the world, how often do you sit down a huge salad having a mineral whey, which is rich in nutrients and using a greens formula is not only physiologically beneficial, but you feel better when you have it. And I think I psychologically feel better. It's like, okay, I got.

Dr. Exactly. And I mean again, I mean for me it comes down to not the fact that I'm not healthy. I mean I haven't been sick in three and a half years. I mean at all. Since I've really been kind of taking care of myself and my diet. But I'm ready to bring it to the next level. So.

Got it.

Got it. Yeah.

Okay.

So we have two more markers to talk about the next one, which it's funny, I used to be because I do some other. When I sort of started, before we started biolytic, I focused all my energy on these which are hormones of recovery or male hormones regarding to aging and testosterone. Certainly testosterone is what makes a man a man. And testosterone controls tissue and muscle growth and recovery and sexual desires and so forth. And as we age, testosterone levels decline. The use of anabolic steroids to raise testosterone and so forth obviously have particular benefits as well. And that's a whole other topic conversation. This you did in people with saliva sample. And it measures the active biochemical, the bioavailable amount of testosterone and then the stress hormone cortisol.

And I think that's the reason that you mentioned that about bioavailable because I had looked into this before testing and getting a blood version of testosterone is subpar compared to the cell.

It doesn't always right. It gives you a total. Testosterone is a hormone that's predominantly found in a serum bound to protein. It's called serum hormone binding globulin. And it basically carries it around. And the majority of that found in the Blood is inactive. And while having a high testosterone, total testosterone in the blood is certainly a positive result. Very frequently I find men with lower fractions or higher levels of the protein boundaries and therefore the amount that's left over, which is generally 1 to 3% of free, tends to be too low. So unless you test free testosterone, even if your total is high, you still may be deficient or deficient in the active amount. That's doing the job. The nice thing about saliva is it sort of filters out all the proteins. So whatever makes it into the saliva is free and available. So it gives you a much more clinically relevant result. And there's only, unfortunately, there's only even by blood. So if you're going to check testosterone by blood, I'd always request the free testosterone. And most docs don't do that. And then even most labs actually calculate they do a calculated free testosterone, they don't actually measure it. There's only a few labs that actually have the equipment and go to the expense of truly measuring free testosterone by radio immunoassay. So that's an important measure. And one other measure, not directly sport related, but when I look at men and aging, I always look at estradiol as well. We can measure that with you, but with obesity and medications and all the environmental pollutants such as BPA and plastic water bottles and please throw away your plastic water bottle. That would be my. If anyone drinks a plastic water bottle and leaves it in heat, go read. It's one of the craziest things you should do. You're basically flooding yourself with estrogens with the bisphenol. So I'd like to see that being the next move in racing. All the plastic bottles and the heat, it. It's not a good thing at all. You might as well just take birth control pills, basically. Look at the test data. Anyway, your testosterone cortisol, we like to see for your age. 28. I gave it away, Ben. And you want to see testosterone levels around.

I'm actually.

About 100.

I'm actually 27. Does that give me any room?

Yeah, you should be higher. I'll still give you about 100. Right.

Okay, so I should be. I should be at 100 for what?

My goal is the range and the saliva with the lab that we use. Okay. So the ranges are different. So anyone hearing these numbers, just remember we're not talking total testosterone and we're not talking free testosterone that's found in the blood. We're talking about this specific lab range. You know, based on their measurement. So lab set measurements. So even total testosterone, each lab's measurement is a little bit different. You know, they set their particular standards. So the lab that we measure, you know, based on their data and the studies, optimal levels should be anywhere from 90 to 120. Okay. And then you're coming around 46. I do hundreds of these. As I said, we've been doing salivary testosterone and hormone support for men for years. 46 is not where it needs to be. Why is that? And then let me. We also looked at the stress hormone cortisol and excess training and stress and lack of sleep and so forth can sometimes elevate that. And ultimately we want to see a good ratio. High amounts of the anabolic testosterone and normal or optimal ranges of the cortisol. Not too high or not too low. Cortisol 13 in the morning, the screen is not bad. Cortisol is a hormone that cycles through the day. A comprehensive picture of cortisol would be you actually do four samples through the day and we'd see the curve. Or you can do a 24 hour urine. So you know, with a 13 and with signs of stress related issues, it's not something that's necessary. No sleep problems and no major recovery problems. But certainly the testosterone of 46, something's up with that. What is it? You were over treated at the point. It could be like.

I can tell you exactly when that test was given. It was, I took, I believe it was on a Thursday that I took that salivary sample and I had a half iron man on Sunday. So I had been tapering for a good seven days. When I gave that, I wasn't, I wasn't, I mean I'm over training or training excessively by any means at that point. Right.

But you did have a half ironman.

I had one coming. I had one coming up. I was, I was coming up. I was resting and recovering for one.

Got it. Yeah. So that's lower than you would expect to see it. And you know, it's been an over training possibly. You know, would you. And you know, that's a question back to Tim being a fast oxidizer and I don't know Tim, how you've brought this in. You may benefit from more high intensity interval training than longer endurance. That's sort of subtle shift that you may experience that might do you better.

Well, you know I actually the longer.

Slow endurance, it tends to be more draining on our anabolic levels. You know, if you look back to all the paleo types of realizations we Were we did a lot of power. Tim's gonna come back here. That's another thought to consider.

Tim.

Okay, come back and just talk about that. And let me just spin around to some other things that could play a role. The aminos could make a difference. As we talked about earlier, getting those amino levels could be one of the drains. Obviously, having this level over time is not going to be optimal for your health. We don't know what your baseline per se is. Typically I see guys in their 40s coming in or 50s having this level. And then I say, well, I don't know how bad. What's your prime level? What was your peak level when you were 18 or 20? Some guys are tend to be much higher. They may have been 120 normally. And if you were 120 dropping to 46, that would be a significant decline. If you're naturally 85, it's still a decline. And testosterone, it's something today. What type of a guy you tend to see the higher testosterone guys are heavy. It's like football. It's like the orthopedic surgeon. It's, it's that very bravissimo, over the top type guy. So you may be a little lower or not, I don't know. But that's something to consider. We don't have that.

Just to ask you as a physician, I know I'm being recorded on podcast right now and it could be something embarrassing for me to bring up, but when we're talking about performance in the bedroom, when we're talking about male potency and things like that, would it drop in testosterone like this actually cause issues in that department?

Totally.

Okay. Yeah.

If that's not where you want it to be, it could be one of the reasons.

Yeah. And I mean, I don't, I don't really struggle with that per se. However, I know that, you know, my virility now at age 27 is not exactly what it was, you know, when I was 18, not doing triathlon, bodybuilding, single, and had higher levels of hormone levels. I'm sure for sure. I can definitely notice changes in terms of, you know, bedroom performance and things of that nature.

Yeah. And it's funny, you know, I don't know how many, how they tease this out, but definitely marriage. You know, there is a lot, you know, studies that say when men get married, their testosterone levels go down and, you know, that's probably a mating thing. If we kept our testosterone levels higher that was that dry, you know, there wouldn't be many marriages that lasted.

You.

Know, this is true.

It's a way to keep us with.

Our search and conquer. It's like, thank you. Right, yeah. You know, but having said that, you know, not only that type of issue, it's, you know, it does play a role in lots of factors. Now what was alluding to before I got involved in this, it was like, gosh, testosterone was this master key and it is. But what we're starting to find is maximizing d, maximizing amino acids, switching or playing around with hormone, sorry the type of training someone does. Those three seem to play a role when seeing a younger guy with hormones that are not where they need to be. So those are the things I would recommend. Definitely this is something you want to do again and probably throw in an estradiol just to make sure that there's not some spurious exposure to that for whatever reason. I've seen that, you know, you're a thin guy so tends to be higher estrogens than guys who are, who drink more or have a little extra body fat or might be over the counter medications, less active eating, non healthy. But, but I've seen guys, like I said, water bottles and just exposure to who knows something you wouldn't want to miss. It's an easy fix.

Now as far as the fitness after.

That we can see where it is. There are some herbal nutrients that can sort of support.

I was about to ask just because some of the things that I'm familiar with or have heard about just for myself as a sports nutritionist, things I've come across in magazines and literature that I want to ask your opinion on after seeing how low I am. Dhea, is that something you've had experience?

No, I wouldn't do that. It doesn't convert readily to testosterone. It's something we probably worth looking at a follow up because DHEA cortisol is also a stress component and that issue is important. I struggled when putting this together if I should put the DHEA in there. But at the end I, I decided that testosterone cortisol as a screen was probably a more primary marker. DHA has some anabolic but not much.

Now what about boron?

Boron some. But you know, I'd go, I'm tending. The whole idea is to not worry as much about some of the micro minerals and initially I think if you. One thing I like people do is use some of the Himalayan salt, some of the micro multi minerals that has, I think it's 80 to 90 different macro minerals and some of that you can make a salt solution really for.

Actual testosterone increases, just for overall micronutrient.

Recovery, as opposed to start playing guesswork and say, what, do I need boron? Do I need zinc? Do I need. You know, it's like you can start guessing and wind up on mol. And, you know, that's something you can assess. But, you know, generally it's function on the big. Let's fix the big stuff first. You know, get the amino acids, you know, make sure the bone's in a good shape. Your amino acids are recovering.

And then vitamin D is. Vitamin D is.

But, you know, most of the time. And then I think, you know, use it. Use this. Get your metal tapping to where it needs to go. Tweak some of this. See if there's a way to tweak your training a little bit and use some of these essential minerals in this healthy salt, which you can actually take. You mix it up, it's called a soleil, and you just take the crystals and you put it in a jar and add some water to it. And it becomes like salt water. It becomes ocean. You take a teaspoon of ocean in the morning. There's some good research with the effects of that. That's just base healthy eating. And at that point, I'm really, as I've been doing this longer and longer, getting away from so many synthetic nutrient replaced. It has its place, but not as a first step in your case, if you don't notice an improvement and you.

Can use.

Some of the issues you're concerned about. Where I'd rather go with you would be once we had a better sense of where the estrogen is and the DHEA is just go in the herbal support. We can use maca, which is a nourishing food and supports the pituitary gland nettles, which helps detoxify and also frees up testosterone from the protein tribulus. A good form of tribulus also helps nourish the pituitary glands. Those are things magnesium help testicular production along with zinc. So there are ways to support that and nourish that if we feel we need to. But I'd say nine out of 10 times. And the other key I have people do is take enough essential fats. You're just doing flat. You may need more Omega 3 directly. And while we could test that and that's another test, but it's not part of that. I generally say try adding some good omega 3 type oils. Cod liver fish, as opposed to the flax oil might see some benefit there. You can sort of see how they all sort of tie in together.

Oh, absolutely.

The amino acids, the vitamin D, the NTX are sort of markers which have now flowed down into your testosterone and it's not necessarily testosterone first.

Now, quick question for me because it wasn't quite clear and so I know it wouldn't be to listeners. You're talking about the salt, about the micro minerals and that is an actual salt that you can.

Yeah, Himalayan salt. Yeah, there's Himalayan salts. You should be able to search online and I could give you some resources too, Himalayan salt. Also, Chris Lieto has a company, another trial, it's called Base Performance and they have a salt electrolyte and that is basically the Himalayan salt. And that's a nice product. And it's actually, it's an electrolyte you can throw in. It's magnesium, it's potassium and it's these micro minerals as well. So that's. But that's what we need. That's what humans have consumed for hundreds and thousands of years is this base prime salt that used to be minerals in our earth, in the ground, in the soils that got into the foods and our soil is not what it used to be. That's a nice basic helpful thing to add into our. We're not talking salt, Table salt, sodium chloride. I'm not quite sure that ever made it into our particular diet, but that's not a healthful thing to consume. But these whole mineral based salts you can use to flavor foods and you can take directly. And if anything, the salt hypertension is directly related to the, this almost synthetic based salt that we add to foods to preserve it as opposed to nourishing mineral base. So we've seen people actually drop blood pressure by adding these mineral based salts. Tim, did you want to let me have Tim sort of add to the exercise component to this?

Did Tim fall asleep over there?

No, no, I'm just.

Hanging out and observing. So yeah, I think just when you are looking at the, I would say primal effect of different types of training and I think a lot of people that are listening might already have some familiarity with this. But in general doing more like weight bearing exercise, strength training, more interval, short burst exercise is more generally more anabolic. So it's going to break you down. But it has more of a hormonal drive. It's going to be creating a bigger push in hormones, kind of like a surge. So that it actually is going to be creating more, more recovery, more muscle, more muscle rebuilding where endurance exercise tends to be more catabolic in a, you know, an Evolutionary way. So that's why a lot of endurance athletes struggle with their body composition. You know, that's a little counterintuitive because you'd think that people are out there training four, five, six hours, that they'd be skinny as can be and have no body fat. But that's not the case in a lot of people. And what's happening is you're actually breaking down muscle mass and your body is put into more of a stress response so that the cortisol, which is your body's main stress hormone, is elevated. It's kind of like a survival mechanism and that breaks down muscle mass and it also keeps the body to go into a protective mode and store fat more readily. So a lot of times over time, even if you're getting on a scale every day and monitoring your body weight, oftentimes your body composition will change. And especially as you age, you'll lose muscle mass and you'll be slowly gaining fat. And you, you might step on the scale and see the same number year to year, your body composition is actually shifting. I think as far as metabolic typing goes, the people who are more towards the protein and fat type probably need to be a little bit more careful about doing excessive amounts of inderts work. And just like, you know, low, low, slow exercise, you have to be a little bit more discerning because the fact that you are more, higher, higher metabolic drive, you need more protein and fat, you basically are more of a power animal. You know, you're built for speed.

That's interesting, you know, because I come from, from tennis and bodybuilding. Those were, those are my sports before.

Yeah, exactly. And I think that's not uncommon to see, you know, people coming from explosive team sports and stuff like that and then shifting into this kind of training and you know, to say that everybody needs to do distance work in order to gain endurance, but you just have to be a little bit careful about not overdoing it and really just monitoring how the training is affecting you. And obviously, you know, doing the testing is going to give you some real hard information as far as your hormone levels.

Yeah, you know, this is something that obviously people haven't broken down, you know, with regard to, you know, body type. But you know, my sense is you would just from my experience, I don't know how much you've played with it, Tim yourself, other than awareness, you might do better. And there's certainly been research about the high intensity training for endurance athletes. And not that you cut out all long endurance training, but if there are Options. Okay, I'm going to substitute this for 2 minute high powered intervals with rest, 4 to 8 of those and that's going to be equivalent to doing a long two hour ride. You may find only equivalent. It may even be, I would suggest, optimal for you. Research is certainly suggesting as people are aging, forgetting the metabol type, as long as they have some core base that they can get away with that and recover quicker.

Yeah. And you know, I have two, I guess I have two thoughts on that. And then I suppose since this is going to turn into the most epic long podcast we've ever done, we have one more to cover too. Do we still have one more? Okay, okay, well just real quick, you guys are preaching to the choir on this one. Two thoughts. I have experience in the past four years of coaching more of the Ironman triathlete than that, especially my female athletes who I'm working with will come to me and have gained 5, 10, 15, sometimes 20 pounds while training for Ironman triathlon. And what I discovered when we first started into this was that when I started giving them intervals and I started giving them the weightlifting and we switched the routine that they'd done to prep for one Ironman triathlon to this new routine that I designed for them, that they didn't experience that problem with fat gain and weight gain, ironically while training for Ironman. And you know, I, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna call these people out. I know they're probably listening into the show. A few of my clients who in the past couple of months I've talked to female marathoners, same thing, displaying signs of a lot of cortisol load coming to me, having gained weight. And I've switched up their program to start them into weightlifting, but then kind of audited their weightlifting program and they're just weak, lifting five pounds, two and a half pounds, maybe eight pounds and really not getting that hormonal release that's conducive to weight loss that they need. And then my second thought was both the programs, kind of the major program I have out there for triathletes, the top 12 resistance training routines for triathletes, and then my new Ironman triathlon dominator package are both designed around the concept of intervals, Intervals, intervals, high intensity weightlifting, power and not doing a lot of the junk miles, the kind of the long slow endurance training. So I'm on the same page with you guys as far as that's concerned that you know, if you're a pro triathlete and you have tons of time to train. Maybe the Markellan philosophy, you know, pure aerobic training might, might work, but especially for us age groupers, it seems to work better due to the interval and the weightlifting. So. Okay, Ferritin.

Right, right. You know, who knows what metabolic type is, you know, Tim?

Well, I, it's kind of ironic, you know, that Mark Allen was one of the first guys to buy into.

The.

Filmafetone program back in the 90s and then that kind of morphed into the 40, 30, 30 zone diet. Very seared. I think actually Dr. Cohen has worked with them and as I started in the beginning, it's like if it works for you, if that happens to be your metabolic type, then you're golden. But, but if you're not, then you're in big trouble. But I think in the case, Mark, it's what you just said about if you're a pro triathlete and you've got nothing to do but train, you're going to get stronger by doing more base work. But for the most part, the run of the mill person who has a job in a family, in a life and can only train a limited number of hours, you're going to get the most bang for your buck by doing more interval work and then cycling through different phases of training.

Right. And knowing I'm going to sound like I'm talking myself up here, just from personal experience, you can do this style of interval training and high intensity training and power and weightlifting and as an age grouper still breathe down the necks of a lot of the pros and even beat many of them. And it's something that works when you have limited training time. Absolutely.

And you know what? And for some types it may be actually the best thing for them.

Yup.

That's again an awareness. Sort of like the diet highlighting. No surprise you came from tennis and some bodybuilding. Not, not that you can't do trough. But keep in mind with who you are, that's the most important point. Lastly is ferritin. Ferritin is an iron storage marker and it's something that could be not a problem. It relates to these other factors because iron stores and bone and, and proteins do play a role in men. It's definitely less of an issue. Men just don't regularly bleed out and they tend to eat a little more, they have more calories so they tend to get enough iron into their system. Also on the flip side is you don't want to miss low iron and that's why we're sort of part of the package Especially for women, if your iron is low, there's just no way you're going to perform. Iron is the key component in hemoglobin, which carries oxygen and obviously not getting oxygen to your tissues effectively, that's a problem. Ferritin levels are low don't necessarily mean anemia, which is a total lack of red cells, when your iron stores are extraordinary low. But we're looking for at least to be in an ideal range, again similar to D range seems to be ideally between 50 and 80. Anytime you start slipping below 40 and into the 30s, it's very possibly and likely affecting your performance and other things that you do.

Now, just a quick question, I don't know what my levels are yet, but quick question. If you're above 80, because I know that iron toxicity can be a problem for some people, is it the same deal with ferritin? Can you get that too high?

Absolutely, yeah. So Your level is 90, which is fine, not too low, not too high. And actually, I'm glad you premised that. And it's one. While it's useful for an endurance athlete, an iron deficiency is the number one worldwide deficiency per se. But in popular world, especially for men, there is conditions where if you start taking iron and you are genetically proposed to absorb iron too rapidly, you can wind up with high levels of iron, which would be seen in these high ferritin levels getting up to 2, 3, 4, 500. And iron is an oxidant. It causes rust on metal, it oxidizes your tissue. It's a potential risk for illness. You don't want to have more iron than you need. Before anyone starts taking iron, even a low dose regularly, especially men, you want to check your level. So we've seen a couple guys in their low 30s that are running 200 plus, and it's like, you definitely don't want to be having iron. And I said to him, you probably want to check this because if you start to run up, you probably want to donate some blood periodically and that would bring it down, reduce any risk. It's a healthy thing to do.

So with the high levels of the ferritin in, and in my case being at 90, I would just want to be careful that I wasn't supplementing with iron and that that would be fine.

Yeah, yeah. You're supposed to be the first thing.

For me to consider if I had low energy levels.

Right. You know, at some point, you probably five years, 10 years down the road checking again at some point. But you know, at this point, 29 at 90, I don't see that you're at any risk for, you know, it's called hemochromatosis or even a mild version of it. Hemochromatosis or ferritin levels are. Go up to 1,000 and it could blow out your liver and cause severe problems. But we're looking at, again, everything. We're focusing. We're not looking at disease. We're looking at functional imbalances for women. We tested the local high school team as we talked about here in Bend, and of the 20 girls we tested, everyone except for two that were just coming off of flus and they're Fervritins, were artificially elevated, had levels under 35. We saw girls 25, 20, none had anemia. But a good percentage of those were not recovering the way they wanted to. And they had heavy legs. It's one of the things you just shouldn't miss. And absolutely any woman endurance athlete should have an idea of where they are as a baseline. And they're tending to run in 30s and 40s. A little bit iron every day would not be a bad thing for them. And they're not going to run into any problem. You were good there and nothing really to be concerned about, so. Wow, you know, you did okay. You did okay, Ben.

Thanks. Thanks, doctor. You did okay.

I mean, we got. We got some meat here. I'm glad for the talk. I was. I wanted, hopefully.

Probably would have been boring if I was perfect, huh?

Right. Well, I was hoping we could find a few things that would, you know, highlight. And honestly, it's the rare person that we don't find imbalances, which is, you know, why this is.

Right.

You know, really fun, fun to work with, you know, you and people who are truly interested about their health because you can, you know, you. We don't need to convince you to do this. You already get it. It's just. Okay, we're going to take this information and say, okay, here's how we fine tune. Here's how you fine tune your protein intake. Change this, add a little amino acids more effective than protein powder. Relying on that as a sole source. Sure. Throw some protein into your. Into some cereal, throw it in a blender. But know that that may not get the job fully done for you.

Yeah.

One of the biggest surprises for me was what you said about, you know, my testosterone levels being almost half of what they should be for the level I really want to be at. And I like that you guys have really highlighted the fact that a lot of this stuff depends on the interconnection between the vitamin D and the essential amino acids and the magnesium and the testosterone drone and that if I were to start to get all the building blocks in place, that it's likely that I'm going to feel pretty profoundly the effects.

Exactly. So that you know you're on the right track. Absolutely. That's the goal of what we're trying to achieve here.

Well, I know that for the, for the listeners this has probably been an epic journey. I know a lot of people listen to this while they're out running or, or cycling or working out. And so we just made your workout that much longer. You can thank us for that. But it's likely, and you'll know this when you listen to this podcast, that I will release this particular interview, probably as a special interview, all on its own, without our special announcements and our listener Q and A just to make this a little bit more palatable for you in terms of length. And the last thing that I want to touch on, even though it's in podcast number 53, is the fact that you can get a hold of Bioletics and they can test you the same way that they did me. And what I'm going to do is put a link in the show notes to this podcast and you can follow that link to actually go find out more about getting tested by Dr. Cohen and going through this process that I went through. And I'll also invite anyone who is interested to email me ben greenfieldfitness.com and I could put you in touch with Richard and put you in touch with Tim. Did you guys have any final thoughts that you wanted to express before we end the show?

Think them out. I think we've done a nice job of covering it all and sort of showing how critical even in someone who's doing things really well. And that was our findings too with some that truly were very consciously part of their life trying to make a difference in their health and certainly doing so, but not dialed in. And that's the key. And when you can dial in, little tweaks here can make a major difference. And that's, that's the fun part of what we're doing here.

Well, Richard, Tim, I want to thank you guys for coming on the show. I know that during the interview today it was a one headset interview on your guys end, which is probably why I know we didn't hear as much from Tim as we probably could have. I know you're a wealth of knowledge, Tim, but you guys were kind of having the headset back and forth. I know when you were talking, but, but to both of you, I want to say thank you for coming on the show.

Well, thanks a lot, Ben. We appreciate it. And I guess that's about it.

All right, this is Ben Greenfield signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a healthy week.

All right, folks, that is our two hour podcast from Ben Green greenfield, fitness.com so remember, if testing by Bioletics is something that you are interested in doing and you want to go through the same process that I went through, then just go to the show notes for this podcast podcast episode number 62 and click on the link that I have there to Bioetics. Or you can email me Ben Bengreenfeld.

For.

Now, remember to check out the Triathlon dominator package@triathlondominator.com and also remember, if you're interested in that January 18th through 25th training camp down in sunny Austin, Texas, drop me an email sooner rather than later. So until next week, where I'll be coming at you from Kona, this is Ben Greenfield signing out. Have a great and healthy weekend.