Podcast Episode #63: What You Don’t Know About Bone Density

In this podcast episode, what you don't know about bone density, recommendations on food combining healthy saturated fats, whether you burn more calories in hot weather, off season training tips, and how to become a better cyclist. Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Fitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon and wellness advice from the top fitness experts in the nation. So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you're just trying to shed a few.

Pounds, get ready for non run of.

The mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com. Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield and if the audio sounds a little funky today, I'm actually recording this podcast on a tiny little handheld digital recorder from a small bedroom in my condo in Kona, Hawaii where I am staying for the week to watch the 2009 Ironman World Championships. I know that some of you have been staying updated on my video coverage. I'm actually doing media coverage for a website called everymantry.com so if you surf over to everymantry.com you'll be able to see some of what's going on down here in Kona and we're trying to keep the videos as entertaining as possible. Anyways, today's podcast, we've got a lot of good listener questions. We've got a fantastic interview with Dr. Carolyn DiMarco who has some outside the box concepts to talk about when it comes to bone density in females. We've got a few special topics to go over and it's going to be a good podcast. Hopefully you can bear with me on the audio here and let's go ahead and just dive right in.

Special Announcements.

Pretty quick on the special announcements today for you triathletes out there, I have two things to tell you. The first is that that triathlon camp that I'm going to be coaching down in Austin, Texas in January is coming up quickly and if that's something that you want to be a part of, whether you are an Olympic distance athlete up to an Ironman athlete, we're going to have stuff for you to do. Primarily, I'd like the majority of people going to this camp to be focused on doing either half iron or an ironman. Just because the amount of training that's going to be available to you will be enough volume for you to really have a good time and put in a big week. And it's all inclusive, food, lodging, everything. I'll put a link to that in the show notes and then also like I mentioned, I'm down here at the 2009 Ironman Triathlon World Championships. And it just so happens that coming up here in three days is the release of the Triathlon Dominator package and this is the complete book DVD CD package that I put together to allow the average everyday person to be able to successfully train for Ironman without neglecting your family or your career or your hobbies or your social life. Essentially, it's a lot of tips and tricks that I've learned over the years, put into a plan, packaged with a nutrition plan and a bunch of bonuses thrown in to help you get to the Ironman finish line and be 100% confident that not only are you going to finish, but you're going to finish with a lot less time put in than some of your friends who are training with 15, 20 or 25 hour training weeks. So the link is in the show notes and remember, it's only going to be available on October 10, 2009. In three days for that special pricing, it's going to open up exactly at 7am which is going to be Hawaii time, 7am I'll let you figure that out all the way till about midnight when the last participant crosses the finish line. So make sure that you go to the link in the show notes or go to triathlondominator.com to get your Triathlon Dominator package on that day. And we're going to go ahead and move into this week's Listener Q and.

A.

Listener Q and A.

Remember, if you have a question, just email Ben greenfieldfitness.com or you can call toll free to 877-209-9439 or Skype me. Pacific Fit and listener Christine wrote in and she says, hi Ben, I just tried a hot yoga class and a friend of mine mentioned that you can burn up to a thousand kilocalories per 90 minute session. This seemed to be on the high side and I got real curious about it. A quick Google gave me an estimate of 300 to 1,000 calories per hour. I understand that my heart rate goes up and my heart works harder to keep cool, but does my system really work that much harder to burn so many calories? I did an experiment after my workout at the gym and got into the Sauna. After about 5 minutes my heart rate was 85 beats per minute and after about 10 minutes it was close to 100 beats per minute. I plugged in two numbers into a calculator I found online at triathlontrainingblog.com the first was my resting heart rate in A hot environment of 100 beats per minute. And the second was an estimate of my max heart rate doing hot yoga, which was about 160 beats per minute. The calculator told me that I was burning 361 calories at 100 beats per minute and 942 calories at 160 beats per minute. I don't know my VO2 max that the calculator asked for, so it just used a Suggested number of 35. I don't know the math behind the calculator, but was wondering if this is an accurate way of estimating calories burnt in warm or hot environments or if you know of a better way. I often see weight trainers at the gym all bundled up in sweats and wonder if this is really a good way of burning more energy and if I too should bundle up and hit the hot yoga class or sauna more often. Wow, that's a really good question. And the short answer is that you do burn fewer calories when you exercise in cold weather versus exercising in hot weather. And the reason for that is that the hotter it is, the more work your heart has to do to keep you from overheating. You've got all this blood in your body and blood is how your body, how your body can keep itself cool by putting more blood out to the extremities. And the harder you exercise, the hotter your muscles get. So your heart has to pump extra blood to get oxygen to the muscles, but it also has to pump all the hot blood from those heated muscles to your skin, where the heat gets dissipated, where your body can actually cool. So it doesn't have to do that quite so much when the temperatures drop a little bit. So yeah, your heart rate is going to go up in cold weather. And kind of on top of that, as you lose fluid volume and you sweat fluid volume, your blood becomes thicker and your heart has to beat even faster then as well. Now, is it healthy to get your heart rate up with simply making things hotter rather than say, exercising more, moving the muscles more, exercising at a more intense level? It's probably not. You're going to not get the same type of what's called like a protein fiber activation. You're not going to get the same bump up in your post exercise metabolic rate. You're not going to get all the advantages that you would get if you were to get your heart rate high through exercise rather than through heat. But assuming that you are exercising, exercising in a hot environment does burn more calories than exercising in a cool environment. And Even though there are more risks when you exercise in a hot environment. Yeah, hot yoga is going to burn more calories than room temp yoga. Hot spinning class is going to burn more calories than hot yoga, and so on and so forth. Now, as far as the best way to measure the calories. Yeah. Unless you have access to be able to wear a mask the whole time you're working out to measure your oxygen. Inspired. And your carbon dioxide produced heart rate is going to be pretty much the closest estimation that you're going to get, whether by using a heart rate monitor or by using, for example, this calculator that you mentioned. And I'll put a link to that calculator in the show notes is essentially the same type of equation that's going to be built into your heart rate monitor. So the heart rate monitor just saves you the step of having to go onto your computer after your workout. But that's a really great question and I hope that answers it. So thank you, Christine. And the next question comes from listener Chuck. Listener Chuck says, I had a question on choosing real butter versus trans fat free margarine products. So I went back and listened to podcast number 12 where you talked about butter and saturated fats. As you discussed, I've read a lot lately about the moderate amount of saturated fats from butter and other products being healthy for the body. With regards to this, are all saturated fats equal? Would the saturated fat in butter be the same as that in bacon and the same as that in, say, a 96% lean ground beef? Obviously, the overall consideration here is the amount of total fat in each product when it comes to making decisions about which to eat. But in terms of the saturated fats in these various foods, are they all equally healthy? So before we talk about the actual healthiness of the fats themselves, what Chuck is referring to when he's talking about saturated fats not necessarily being as dangerous as we all used to think that they were. The basic idea is that even though the consumption of animal fats and cholesterol in the American diet has decreased significantly, there really hasn't been a decrease in heart disease in America. At the same time, we have been increasing, increasing the consumption of things like vegetable oils, processed fats, shortening in baked goods, refined oils, and all sorts of things that cause that free radical formation in the body that really causes a lot more cardiovascular damage than just saturated fat consumption or cholesterol. Now, the problem with saturated fats is they're really calorically dense. You got to be careful with them. But they do contain a lot of things that are good for your body. They can help out with building your cell walls, your bones, your skeletal structure, they can help with your immune system, your fatty acid utilization. So the cholesterol that you take in with those saturated fatty acids, again, it contributes to your cell membranes, your hormone production. So for hormones like testosterone or estrogen, your body's vitamin D production, which you know, if you've been listening to this podcast, is really important. Proper digestive function, proper antioxidant formation, cholesterol even has an anti inflammatory effect when it comes from a healthy natural fat source versus the type of cholesterol you would get from a baked good. So yeah, saturated fat in moderation is fine for you, is good for you, and you have to have a little bit in your diet. As a matter of fact, one of the T shirts that we had made for the BenGreenfieldFitness.com show, you get a T shirt when you donate to the show. There's a little button there on the right hand side. The back of that T shirt says my personal trainer told me to eat more fat. And it's all based off of that information that I gave you in podcast number 12. So saturated fat sources from say like bacon. Yeah, that's going to be different than some other saturated fat sources because you are probably going to get some added preservatives, some added sodium to something like bacon, and a lot of meats as well. I try to choose the vegetable based fats as much as possible with the meats you try and choose as organic and unadulterated as possible. So these are going to be the best type of fats for you to start off with. The best sources of saturated fat or cholesterol, Extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil, which you can get. It's kind of solid at room temperature, but you can use it for cooking. It's very heat stable for cooking. You can also put it by the spoonful into like a smoothie. Flaxseed oil, butter is good in small amounts especially for cooking versus like a heat unstable oil. Grass fed beef, organic beef, bison, also very lean, good source of saturated fat. Buffalo, walnuts and almonds as well are going to have some in there. So those would be your top picks for saturated fats. Chuck and I hope that helps. So the next question is from listener Todd. Listener Todd says Ben, I listened to podcast number 53 and number 62 and I have to say I was blown away. I had no idea that the typical non pro athlete had access to this level of nutritional analysis. Thanks for being the guinea pig and sharing your results. My question is that if you had to choose between performance testing like a VO2 Max test, or the type of testing that you got from Bioletics, which one would provide more or better insight to your optimum performance? I think I already know the answer, but was curious to hear your take on this. Great question, Todd. Here's the deal. The performance testing, like the VO2 Max testing or the blood lactate testing, it's going to give you numbers that you can generate heart rate training zones from. And those numbers can be very good to guide your training. However, you can approximate the results of those tests by doing what are called field tests. So for example, rather than going to a lab, exercising for a half hour on a treadmill and getting very precise blood measurements from your fingertips that tell you exactly when your blood lactate levels peak, you could go run 30 minutes, breathing hard, legs burning, sustainable pace, not all out, but pretty close to it. Observe your heart rate, your average heart rate during that time, and it's a decent approximation of your lactate threshold. So you can ballpark it and you can get pretty close. You can't ballpark your vitamin D levels or your testosterone levels, or your essential amino acids or your magnesium or your metabolic type or any of those type of things that we found out through bioetics. So if I had to choose, I would actually choose the internal performance factor testing that I got of Bioletics rather than the performance testing, which I could simulate in the field if I absolutely had to. Obviously, best of both worlds would be to do both. But sometimes what's ideal is not necessarily practical.

So.

Good question. Next up, listener. Rob says, have you ever come up with what type of foods to eat with each other? We usually only eat beef once a week, and when we do eat it, it's with vegetables. But I wanted to know if you've ever put a nutrition plan like that together. Two different directions I could take this question, Rob. The first would be taking it in the direction of food combining. And a food combining diet means that essentially it's built upon the fact that carbohydrates take carbohydrate enzymes to digest, proteins take protein enzymes to digest. And so if you consume the two at the same time, you might get incomplete digestion as the enzyme enzymes fight for space. Basically not a ton of evidence that a food combining diet is highly effective, but there's all sorts of rules like don't combine proteins with starchy carbohydrates. Only drink milk by itself. Don't drink water during the time that you're eating. Don't add fats to proteins, like a fatty sauce to a fish or chicken or creamy sauce. Don't consume starch foods and sugar foods together like a jam on toast or honey on oatmeal. And then make sure that your foods are protein only or carbohydrate only in terms of the actual meal. So your meal would only be like fish with asparagus or a sweet potato with asparagus. I'm not huge on the food combining diet. I wrote an article on it once a while back, and I know a lot of people think that I'm a proponent of it based on the article. I'm not a proponent of it necessarily. I have found that with some people who have stomach upset or gastrointestinal problems, it can help a little bit to make the meal more simple, so to speak, less complex. But more importantly than that is the other way that you could combine foods, and that would be combining foods that aren't necessarily a complete protein to form a complete protein. Because if you're not going to eat meat, and I don't necessarily encourage you to eat meat for every meal, it's good to learn how to survive off vegetable proteins if you have to. You can combine foods to form a whole protein. Some examples of that you could take in a whole grain cereal. You could consume it with a dairy source like milk, and that would give you a complete protein. You could take a whole grain pasta, you could consume it with cheese, and that would give you a complete protein. Rice again, you can combine rice with milk and that will give you a complete protein. Wheat and peanuts would give you a complete protein. So like a whole grain peanut butter sandwich. Even though I'm a bigger fan of like the almonds than I am of the peanuts. Beans and wheat, or rice and beans, either of those would give you a complete protein. Peas and rye, interestingly, are a complete protein. Beans and corn, pretty popular Mexican type of diet that also is a complete protein. And then soybeans combined with nuts, kind of a less popular combination. But you can do like a soybean, like edamame, and combine that with almonds, and that also give you a complete protein. So that is really the only type of food combining, I would say, that I really think makes a lot of sense. And it can ensure that you don't have to eat meat all the time, but that you can combine vegetable and wheat and nut sources and still get a pretty decent complete amino Acid. So, great question. The next question comes from listener Jason.

Ben, this is Jason here from Dallas, Texas.

Again.

I was just wondering if you maybe.

Had some advice for me. Looking towards the end of the triathlon.

Season now and going into my first.

Winter, basically what sort of training am I going to be looking for? And you know, just basically, should I do more, Should I work out more.

In the gym, Should I get off.

My bike and take a break for a couple months? Or what is your best suggestion? Basically. So, Jason, it's a pretty loaded question, but I want to mention that I did receive a related question about the triathlon dominator package. I had listener Cindy ask if I plan to use the triathlon dominator package to do an ironman In November 2010, what should I be doing during the months of November 2009, December 2009 and January 2010? I'm also interested in post Ironman. So Cindy, Jason, I know Cindy, you asked that question because the triathlon dominator package is a nine month training plan. And so yeah, you do have an extra three months during the year. The question is what do you do? And the answer is one option is nothing. Which if you're incredibly fit, when you finish. Triathlon season in October could be an option, but I don't recommend it. I sat in on a lecture by Paula Newby Frazier down at the Ironman medical conference last year and she said they'd finish the Ironman world championships and go surf and lift weights for three months. What do my athletes do? Here's what most of them do. We have a foundation phase of weight training where you actually build strength and you add a few pounds of lean muscle by doing full, full body exercises, three to four sets of 10 to 12 reps, trying to hit every single body part in the gym three times a week. So you're building that injury free foundation on the bike. What we work on are high cadence. So lots of super fast spins of 30 to 60 seconds in duration that take the cyclist to 100 or 110 beats per minute. We do a lot of drills with cycling, single leg drills and spins like around town where you have to change direction quickly, accelerate, decelerate at a high cadence. That's for the summer type of athletes or athletes who are in hot climates. For the winter athletes, we're doing a lot of those high cadence efforts on an indoor trainer. Cycling, we also do force workouts where we're doing very slow kind of grinding hill climbs at a low cadence, about 50-60 rpm. So we'll combine the slow cadence force building efforts with the high cadence neuromuscular type efforts and those form the foundation of the off season. In cycling. For swimming, what we focus on again is force. So a lot of work with the paddles, with the pole buoys, with kick boards, sometimes with resistance bands, again building strength in the water and then tons of drills. So it's the skills drills and force similar to what we work on on the bike, on the run, again, lots of drills. I also encourage athletes who have other hobbies like tennis or basketball or soccer to take those up in the off season as an alternative to running. Most of the athletes that I work with only have one structured run in the offseason. And by structured run, I mean a run where it's like, okay, you're going to go out and you're going to do a 90 minute trail run. The other runs I give them the option, they can go play pick up basketball at noon, they can go join an ultimate frisbee league. But one of the things that I do include in the running program, especially for the people who are weaker runners, are running drills, heel to butt kick drills, track drills. There's some great track drills that are called A's, B's and C's. I have my athletes do those. We'll do high knee kicks, some aqua jogging, some work on keeping the center of gravity forward, some treadmill work to work on keeping the cadence up, up. So again, most of the running is slightly non structured, but still focus on again the skills, the drills and the force and then just kind of escaping some of the mental repetitiveness of going out and doing a structured run per se, three times a week. So that's the basics of the off season. Now as far as post Ironman.

Typically.

It'S very light movement, maintaining blood flow and using lots of recovery methods. When I say recovery methods, I'm talking about lots of cold baths, lots of magnesium baths, lots of yoga, lots of massage, lots of light walks, usually some light swims. And that's typically for about a week. And for my athletes who really push hard and are really going very, very hard in Ironman, usually about two weeks of that type of treatment. And of course, total mental break from training. No requirements for structured swim, bike and run workouts whatsoever. Because the mental component is very important. The mental break is very important to avoid burning out the next season. So great questions you guys on Ironman training. And then our final question is another call in question from listener Chuck.

Hey Ben, this is Chuck Feerick, one of your blog listeners and triathletes. I just wanted to first off say thanks for answering all my questions. I really appreciate it and I've got a lot out of the answers in the blog podcast. I have a question this week. I was riding with a guy yesterday and we did about 30 miles at about 21 miles an hour pace and he told me that this was a recovery day for him and when he goes hard, he'll go at about 25, 26, 27 miles an hour for 21. I was pushing pretty hard and I was wondering what can I do to become a biker at that level? I mean, I guess just a better biker overall. Is it more miles or is it the type of workouts I'm doing? I didn't really feel like it was a cardiovascular issue as much as my legs were pushing hard and that's going as hard as I could go. So any advice you have, I would really appreciate it. And thanks again for answering all my questions. Take care.

Now, Chuck, if you listen to the answer to the last question on what to do in the off season of an ironman, skills, meaning high cadence repeats on the bicycle and overspeed repeats, high RPM effort efforts, drills, single leg efforts, you have access to what's called a spinscan, which is a computer that you can hook up to your bike that shows how much wattage you're putting into your right and your left pedal strokes, how much efficiency there is in those pedal strokes. Again, very effective, as well as some of those slow, cadence, grinding type of hill repeats. Even though I don't know your personal limitations, those are two of the best ways that I know and that I know a lot of cycling coaches use to get an athlete to become stronger on the bike. Now, as far as the intensity goes, yeah. Anybody I'm assuming, knows that if you go out and you lay it on the line and you do intervals that you're going to get fitter. But there are finer points than just going out and smashing it to get fitter. So work some of the drills, work some of the skills, work some of the force repeats into your program. Great questions this week. And remember, if you have a question, just email me Ben greenfieldfitness.com call toll free to 877-209-9439 Skype me at Pacific Fit and I'll put a link to all those ways to contact me right in the show notes. Make sure you access the show notes. There's a lot of cool stuff and links that I put in there so that you don't have to Be running along while you're listening to this podcast and stop to write it down. So waved down a car passing by to borrow a pen. Anyways, great questions. We're going to move on to this week's featured topic.

Featured topic. Okay, great.

Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield and, and I am back with Dr. Carolyn DiMarco. And Carolyn is the author of a few different books really. She's written a book called the Bone Building Solution. She's also written a best selling book on women's health, fantastic book called Take Charge of youf Body. And this book is considered one of the gold standards for women's health information. And she actually also has what's kind of a mini encyclopedia on natural remedies. It's called Dr. DeMarco Answers yous Questions. And she has quite a background in both Western medicine and natural medicine, a forerunner in natural childbirth actually, and one of the first people to really promote the proactive approach to healthcare that we're all becoming a little bit more aware of here in America. So Dr. DeMarco and Canada, I guess as well, you're up there in Canada, right?

That's right, yes. I actually live in the west, but in this interview I happen to be in Toronto, which is in the other side of the country right now.

Tell me a little bit more about your background, where you came to be, where you are right now and what your practice is currently like.

Yes, actually right now I'm not practicing. I'm more doing lecturing and writing. But I, I also just want to mention I'm the co author of the book the Bone Building Solution published by Wiley and the other two books. The content is available on the web@doctor demarco.com both books in full are available on the web.

And who did you co author the Bone Building Solution with?

The main author was Sam Gracie, who's a famous nutritional researcher and he did a lot of work for Extension Foundation. But I originally, when I went into, I'm a general practitioner, when I went into general practice, I just found that people had a lot of complaints and we'd go through the standard procedures and refer them to a specialist and they would, and they would be told that it was functional or all in their head. So I started looking at alternatives. Plus I saw that especially for women's health, there was a lot of over prescription of drugs, even birth control pills, things like Depo Provera, which by the way causes a lot of bone loss. That's the new birth control that's being used for young women. A lot of people may not be aware of that, but we can get into that. So I just became aware that there was a lot of abuse in the medical system. And at first I was just recommending that people become educated. And then I started to realize they needed alternatives of recommendations also.

Okay, when you're talking about things like birth control pills and some of the effects that modern medicine has on bone density, in your opinion as a general practitioner, how widespread was the use of the type of medication that would cause low bone density?

Very widespread right now. Actually, osteoporosis begins in childhood when the bone masses, most bone masses form before age 21. And now we have a whole group of very sedentary children with inadequate nutrition. And then you have young women who are being exposed to the birth control pill, which in itself causes almost up to 4% bone loss over time. And that's the mainstream journals and Deprevera injections, which is a new form of birth control really being promoted. It causes is 6% bone loss over two years. It's very substantial. So you're having people who are not going into adulthood with peak bone loss. So it's quite a serious problem. The birth control link. A lot of people don't realize that. We started doing research and we were kind of appalled.

I actually didn't know that. And when you're talking about going forward into the rest of your life with low bone density, what I understand is that the amount of bone density that you enter into a certain part of the years of your life with is.

What you're stuck with.

Is that correct?

Absolutely. That's why we call osteoporosis now. We call it a pediatric disease with geriatric consequences. Yeah, you're stuck with that. There's widespread inadequate nutrition in the children. With the increase of diabetes, many children don't have any vegetables. They eat soda pop, they're drinking soda pop every day and they have little or no exercise. Actually, we recommend that people start taking a bone building supplement at age 6.

Interesting. Now, when people are going forward in the rest of their lives with X amount of bone density, is there a cutoff where you quit building bone density a certain age?

I believe it's 35, but 80% of the bone density is formed by 21. I'll just check that. But it's a phenomenal fact. I had no idea. First of all, I didn't realize the birth control length of so many people. Yes, here it is. Actually, according to our stats here, it's 24 is when the bone starts growing. So 40% age 1 to 10, 40% age 10 to 20, 20% between ages 20 and 24. So by age 20, you have the majority, 80% of your bone mass form. So they are critical years. And I think maybe anybody who is training and persons running on a regular basis is bound to have an adequate bone density from the exercise. The stress on the bones.

Yeah.

Really promotes increased bone density.

Did you say it promotes increased bone density?

Yes, yes.

So the runners are in a.

Runners are very protected, I would say.

Now, what about the actual breakdown of bone from the stress of running, the loss of minerals, things of that nature, especially for the long distance runners who are burning through both a lot of calories and a lot of salts. Do you think that there's a law of diminishing returns at some point there?

You know, I'm not aware of any research in that regard. But the one thing with the bones is you also require antioxidant protection and essential fatty acids. Many of the things that probably most runners are doing to protect themselves will probably protect their bones.

Now, what about their upper bodies? Because the lower bodies are primarily what's striking the ground during the running gait.

There's a real problem if you haven't addressed the upper body strength. Your bone density then will be weak in that area wherever you exercise more. For instance, if you only exercise one arm, that would have the greatest bone density. So the bone density varies throughout the body. And when you go get bone density testing, it only tests two areas, the spine and the hip. So for instance, if you had your leg in a cast for three months, then the bone density on that side would be diminished and you'd have to work on it.

Now, that's something that I talk to a lot of my athletes about. Not just my female athletes, but the male marathoners and female marathoners that I coach are doing a lot of running. Thing is, they tend to dislike the strength training, especially the upper body strength training. And that's one of the ways that I explain it to them when I have them doing four sets of overhead presses with dumbbells is they're not really doing a whole lot for their upper spine, for their arms, for their neck bone density when they're out pounding the pavement during the run. So the trick is not to put on muscle mass. The whole reason behind doing that is to load the bones in a way they're not being. Being loaded. And you would agree with that?

Absolutely. And I talked to a fitness instructor, I think his name was Dragon, and he emphasizes the upper body, because he says that most people have much more developed strength in the lower body because of walking, because of weight bearing alone, and that it's complete, that if you don't address the upper body, you're never going to be truly fit, in his opinion. And so I remember that he emphasized that beyond anything is the upper body training and of course, the balance training. We also emphasize core abdominal strengthening, core muscle strengthening, balance exercises, as well as aerobic and weight bearing exercises.

And so guys do need to worry about bone density. It's not just.

Absolutely, absolutely. In fact, I recently had a case of a man in his 40s, early 40s, who developed bone density and bone density lowering and actual osteoporosis. And I'm seeing that more and more. And it is partially related to low testosterone. There's no doubt that lowering of testosterone and now prematurely in men is associated with it. It can also be related to toxins or other exposures, you know, unusual exposures. In his case, he had a heavy iron load. So osteoporosis in men is quite neglected. And the research has all been done in women.

So he had a heavy iron load and low testosterone. Is there a proposed mechanism of action as to why those factors would lower?

Well, it's well known that hormonal factors. The hormonal factors are. Well, research the iron. I did research it. For some reason, excess iron inhibits the absorption of calcium, I imagine. I don't remember. But the interesting thing is that hormonal, whether it's lack of estrogen in women, lack of estrogen and progesterone and testosterone, and even in women, testosterone is a major bone building hormone, as is dhea. So in both men and women, testosterone is a major component of building strong bones. In fact, if a woman is not responding to progesterone, we will definitely check and see if her testosterone level is low, which often happens around the perimenopause in the late 40s, early 50s.

Yeah. And I've actually been recommending to most of my triathlete clients, especially even the females, that they have their testosterone and DHEA levels tested. And I'm getting a lot of their results. You know, they'll get their results and then send them over to me. And it's across the board. Well, not across the board, but very frequently, very frequently. Very low in both DHEA and testosterone.

Well, you just reminded me of a study that a very good endocrinologist up in western Canada did, and she studied female runners and they were having micro fractures of their feet because they were deficient in progesterone. He proved as soon as she gave the progesterone that problem was ended. But progesterone is also the other very key component to bone building. And I just remember that I do quote that study in my PowerPoint. My whole PowerPoint presentation on bone building is available on my website.

Also, I do have another question for you about calcium, but real quick, Is that the drdemarco.com website?

Yes. Click on it right at the beginning. You'll see the bone building presentation. I talk also there about another critical mineral that I use, which is strontium. Strontium is a natural mineral. It is a very good at both inhibiting bone breakdown and promoting bone buildup. And it has almost no side effects. In fact, it's patented as strontium ranelate in 21 European countries and also Australia where all the research has been done. But ranelate is an inert molecule. So in the house food store now we can get strontium citrate and we can use it as an alternative to the toxic drugs that are available. And of course I do want to emphasize vitamin K and vitamin D. I want to come back to those two nutrients which are critical for bone. Bonus.

You had talked about the fact that having too much iron can inhibit calcium absorption and be a possible factor in low bone density. Are you of the opinion that some of the other people have on this show or some of the other physicians that come on this show have that calcium is overrated and magnesium is underrated when it to comes comes to mineral importance?

Absolutely. Magnesium is a critical mineral and it has to, you know, there's recommendations. For instance, on TV sometimes you see a recommendation for a supplement that only has calcium. And magnesium is equally important. Perhaps more important, there's at least 60% of adults have magnesium deficiency. And it's absolutely essential for bone billing.

For people who are already getting into their later years of life and beginning to struggle. And we're just going to say who are past the age of that kind of 30 to 35 range and maybe starting to worry about osteoporosis or lack of bone density. Is there a certain dosage recommendation in terms of their daily magnesium intake that they should be focusing on?

Yes, I usually recommend about 300 and about 300 milligrams of magnesium a day with the calcium. By the way, there's a whole team of bone building nutrients. So I recommend which includes things like zinc, magnesium and silica boron and also antioxidant vitamins, the b Vitamins which reduce homocysteine and high homocysteine is actually a risk factor for bone loss. And no calcium. 50% of osteoporosis patients are deficient in vitamin D3. Absolutely critical. So everybody at every age should be taking between 1,000 and 2,000 IUs of vitamin D3?

Yeah, absolutely. The interesting thing is that a lot of the women who come in to me for exercise training, I do have them bring me a, a big plastic.

Bag of all the supplements that they're.

Taking when they come in. And almost always there's two or three different calcium supplements in there. Like, you know, calcium is just incredibly overrated. And people are popping calcium like it's going out of style, but there's no other minerals going into the body.

It' sit's amazing because calcium, you try and add them all up and then they're in different forms. Calcium carbonate, very hard to digest unless you take it with a meal. Virtually indigestible, especially without adequate vitamin D3, and that you need a calculator to add up all this calcium. And then one of the things we found in our research is only about 500 milligrams of calcium can be absorbed at one time. So we recommend that people try and get 500 through their diet. And the other 500 they take at bedtime, if they can. Sorry, at meal, at supper. Meal they usually end up taking at bedtime. But it would be better if they took it at supper because the peak bone building period is between 10pm and 4am so therefore, if you take it at supper, by the time it absorbs calcium, is slow to absorb into the system even with a meal by the time it absorbs. And you want the whole bone building team. So I do recommend, in Canada, I recommend genuine health bone building supplement because it's been researched in the U.S. i like the natural vitality products like osteocalm. They're very good products too. Those are the two that I'm most familiar with. And I'm sure there's many other good products as well.

The osteo made me think of another supplement that someone had recommended a little while back that had something called lactoferrin in it. And did you have any opinion on lactoferrin or have you ever seen any results or studies from that?

I'm not aware of the studies with respect to osteoporosis. I understand that it is a positive supplement, but I don't have any research on it, so I'm not too helpful in that regard.

Now, perhaps a Little bit of a change of subject here, but your book, Take charge of your Body, the Women's Health Advisor. What exactly is in that book and what sets it apart?

I wrote it many years ago, before there was much on the take charge approach to women's health, because I saw that women were being over prescribed drugs and surgery and I wanted to provide information on the normal milestones of women's life like pregnancy, childbirth, menstruation, perimenopause, menopause and all the issues around that. And so I just started writing articles actually first in my office for a little magazine and then I started compiling them because there just wasn't enough information even on the basic facts. So that women were being, you know, normal events in women's lives were being medicalized. And then I got interested in alternative medicine, first in childbirth and then throughout the whole spectrum of women's lives. And I had been promoting natural hormones and natural solutions. And then I got involved in natural medicine, including herbs and especially nutrition and natural hormones. And so this book has just loaded with information. A lot of people keep it by their bedside. It's still very pertinent. That was published several years ago. I had written some things ahead of their time, so it's still quite pertinent. People are still using it.

Interesting. I'm going to put a link to that book in the show notes to this podcast. But I also have another couple of questions for you. The first is, let's say just as a recap here, that I am a male or a female. Say I'm an athlete. I do a lot of running or I do a lot of exercising. I'm concerned about making sure that when I'm 50, when I'm 60, I have nice strong solid bones. I'm eating a healthy diet.

An alkaline diet. Of course, an alkaline diet is what we prefer and that's essential.

Can you briefly explain what you mean when you say alkaline diet?

An alkaline diet is rich in colorful fruits and vegetables, lean protein and low in acid forming substances like sugar and excess carbohydrates. And I'm sure many of the athletes you deal with have a very excellent diet, low carb diet with low sugar, and as I say, lots of colorful fruits or vegetables or else taking a very high quality greens supplement every day.

Well, that's what we hope at least.

Yes. And we all advocate people testing their PH to make sure that they are in the alkaline range.

The alkaline, that's just a very simple.

Urine pH stick, right?

Yes. Actually, at the University of Western Ontario, they found that there is a ph receptor in the bone cells. When it shows acid in the bone cell, it turns on the bone breakdown cells, the osteoclasts. So it's a very important. We stress diet a lot in our protocol.

And if an athlete were to go out and get a urine stick and test their ph, they're looking to be right around seven.

Is that correct?

That's correct, yes. Yes. And so all the colorful fruits and vegetables and green drinks are very alkalinizing. There was a recent book by Jeanette Graff and she, she found there was only two green products that she liked. One was Greens plus that were palatable. But there's many, many out there. If people don't get those five to.

Seven servings, I take one called Enerprime. And that's what it is. It's an alkalizing green supplement. Just a mix of a bunch of alkalizing foods or alkalizing foods. Now, the other things that an athlete should be doing. You said magnesium supplementation.

Absolutely. A good bone building supplement, including calcium, magnesium and all the bone building minerals and at least 1,000 of vitamin D3 a day. That would be the absolute minimum.

The other question that I had for you was I noticed that you're described as a forerunner in natural childbirth and we actually haven't really ever talked about that on this show, although we have done that in my family. Would you be interested perhaps in a future interview on that topic? Because I know that it doesn't really fall in the lines of sports and fitness and some of the things that we talk about on this show, but it does follow a lot of the concept of taking care of your body and taking charge of your health.

Yes, I'd love to. I think it would be really fun to do that. I was one of the pioneers in the natural childbirth movement. Interesting. I was involved in training midwives and home births and of course, there's a complete resurgence of that. Now.

If you are listening into this show and you're interested in that topic of natural childbirth, just go ahead and leave a comment on the show or email me and let me know. And if that is the case, we'll try and get Dr. DeMarco back on the show to talk about natural childbirth. Dr. DeMarco, I'd like to thank you for coming on today.

Thank you so much. I appreciate it. I didn't mention vitamin K too, which is so important because the latest research shows that vitamin K2 in its various Forms not only is necessary for bone proper bone density and these proteins that actually chaperone calcium into the cell, it also prevents calcium from being deposited into the arteries. So as a preventative vitamin, it's just a fantastic.

Do you have similar recommendations like you did for D3 on the amount of vitamin K that people taking in?

I don't have those offhand, but the vitamin K1 is present in all green leafy vegetables and requires acidophilus or some fermented food to convert to K2. And there's an argument between whether forms of K2 are the best. But it's all worked out in the supplements. The supplements have the exact recommended dose.

Supplements are a nice piece of spinach pie with yogurt on it.

Yeah, I believe all the various K2 supplements have various doses, but some are in milligrams and some are in micrograms. So I'd have to write you about that. I have it right available.

Well, thank you for coming on the show and perhaps we will talk to you again in a future your episode.

I hope so. It was a pleasure talking to you and you obviously have a really educated audience which is always fun to talk to. There's so much to say about bone building that I sometimes get carried away because there's a lot there. There's a lot of interesting things both in the over diagnosis too. We didn't get into that, but that's all right.

All right, well, I'll talk to you later.

Okay. Thank you so much for having me. Have a great day.

Folks. That is all for this week. Now remember, if you get a chance to go to everymantry.com lots of entertaining videos on there of what I'm doing with the footage and the media coverage for Ironman Hawaii down here in Kona and that races on Saturday. And remember that on Saturday is when the Triathlon Dominator plan goes public. Be there because that's pretty limited pricing that you're going to have access to just for those 16 hours on Saturday. Be sure to leave our podcast a rating in itunes. It really helps to spread the word. All you do is log into itunes, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already. It's one 100% free. And then leave us a ranking. You can put some little stars in there, you can say what you think about the show. Please be nice, be honest. And then finally we have some really cool interviews coming up. One that I'm particularly excited about is on a natural hormone replacement therapy and I know that some of you think that that's something for postmenopausal women only. But this was a really interesting interview with a woman named T.S. wiley. Be really, really interesting stuff that I hadn't heard before. So be sure to check in and have a healthy week. This is Ben Greenfield signing out from Kona, Hawaii.