Podcast Episode #82: Is Modern Medicine Killing You or Your Loved Ones?

In this podcast episode, the latest research on strength and conditioning, timing your supplements before exercise, alkaline water, the lemonade diet, women's hip issues, more on wheat germ, sitting on exercise balls, which low fiber foods to eat before an event, and death by modern medicine.

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 we have a full podcast episode today, that's for sure. This is podcast number 82 and I would encourage you to visit the website and check out the show notes to follow along if you hear stuff that you're interested in as you listen. We have some of the latest research from the Journal of Strength Conditioning that we're going to start off with, along with some special announcements. We're going to move on to an interview with Dr. Carolyn Dean about her new pretty controversial book, Death by Modern Medicine, as well as another new book that she has, how to Change youe Life With Magnesium. And then we're gonna move on to a really great listener. Q and A so quite a bit to cover today. And real quick, before we jump into it, I do know that there has been some issues with the audio especially people have noted that the audio kind of appears to be a little bit different between myself and the person that I'm interview. I've tried to fix that in the interview with Carolyn Dean. Please stay on top of me with the audio. I want to make sure that this is just perfect for you listening, especially if you're swimming or biking or running or doing something while you're listening. I want to make sure it's the right volume for you so that you can hear everything. So just shoot me a quick Note. Ben Greenfield, Fitness.com or leave a comment if you feel the audio needs any work. And other than that, let's get started.

Special Announcements.

The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. It's put out by the National Strength and Conditioning Association. It's a peer reviewed journal. I subscribe to it and I actually have two issues. I've got the January 2010 and the February 2010 issue. I'm not going to cover any of the research from the February issue, but I am going to go over some of the relevant stuff for you that I think would really help you out from the January issue. And what I do is I go through it, I find the stuff that we could practically apply to our lives in terms of performance, nutrition, fat loss, etc. And then attempt to give you the best interpretation of that data. The first study I want to look at is one about triathlons. It's called triathlon Event Distance Specialization, Training and injury effects. And what this study looked at was the type of injuries and the frequency of injuries experienced by short distance triathletes such as Olympic distance triathletes and endurance triathletes like ironman triathletes. And as you probably wouldn't be surprised by ironman athletes did have a higher incidence of injury, but also experienced injuries in different anatomical sites than the Olympic distance triathletes. Now the interesting thing was that even though the Olympic distance triathletes became injured less frequently, the severity of their injuries were typically greater and they were forced to take a longer time off from exercise when they were injured compared to the ironman athletes. And that kind of makes sense because Olympic athletes train at a higher intensity. And so when they do get injured, it's more likely to be an injury that occurs while the muscle is under a greater force or a greater load versus the chronic repetitive motion injuries you might see in an ironman athlete. Now what they found with Olympic distance athletes was they tended to get more injured in the Achilles tendon and the ankle area. And the hypothesis was that, I'm sorry, also the lower back area, Achilles tendon, ankle and lower back. The hypothesis was that this is because they do a lot of hill training and also they tend to be in a little bit more aggressive position when they're riding their bike and they're doing so under greater amounts of force. Now the ironman distance triathletes experienced more neck injury injuries, mid back injuries, and a little bit fewer injuries in kind of the lower leg, calf area. Again, the idea being that the ironman athlete spent a longer time either hunched over their bike, looking forward, putting a strain on their neck, and also with the upper back issue, just did more swimming overall, which contributed to kind of shoulder, scapular type of injuries. So it was interesting to see that there was actually a study done that looked at the different types of injury areas and frequencies among triathletes. Take away message for you is that if you're a short distance athlete doing a lot of high intensity training, especially doing a lot of hill repeats, make sure that you stay on top of your lower leg, your Calves your Achilles. Treat those well, stretch them, ice them, use a topical magnesium, do whatever you can to reduce inflammation in those areas. And if you are an iron distance triathlete, I recommend that you work on your flexibility, especially in your shoulder region and your neck region. And I would highly recommend it also, if you're an ironman triathlete, that you get regular massage in that upper back and neck region, especially some detail work done up in there. So the next study, and I'm literally just holding the journal kind of going through these, was looking at what happened when you add protein to a low carbohydrate sport drink. And specifically what this study was looking at was if you add protein to a sports drink, does it inhibit the ability of the sport drink to get absorbed and assimilated as blood glucose in your bloodstream? And also does it affect your perceived exertion levels or your ability to actually exercise for a long period of time? Now, what they found in this study was that the protein that was added into the carbohydrate sport drink, in this case, it was added in the same way that you're going to find it in a lot of protein drinks on the market. Just as essential amino acids that protein added didn't enhance someone's ability to exercise for a long period of time without experiencing fatigue. And it didn't enhance a lot of the blood parameters that showed the glucose uptake into the bloodstream, but it did not significantly decrease any of those parameters either, meaning that the participants were able to safely add protein into their carbohydrate drink and not experience a problem with their performance. Now, this has implications because if you've got protein coming on board along with the carbohydrate, you're sparing the breakdown of a lot of your skeletal muscle. You're also kind of lowering the glycemic index of a carbohydrate. So that means that something like Gatorade, if you had protein added to it, wouldn't spike your blood sugar quite as much. So that also has health implications for people who are worried about throwing their blood sugar levels off. So the protein added to the carbohydrate looks like a good idea. Now, the next study I want to look at inspected something called glycerol hyperhydration. And glycerol is something that athletes have been using for a long time to allow the body to take on and store more water than it normally would. And it's actually a decent strategy to experiment with if you're planning on doing any type of training or racing in very hot weather, and you're concerned about dehydration. Now, in this study, they actually wanted to find an equation that allowed an individual to determine exactly how much glycerol they should be consuming based on their body weight and the type of event in terms of the exercise time that they wanted to do. And so, rather than read you this entire equation, which was found to be effective, what I'd like to do is give you the name of the study so that if you're somebody who wants to use glycerol, you can go basically find that equation and dump your data into it and then know exactly how much glycerol you're supposed to use. So the name of the study is this Glycerol induced hyperhydration. Glycerol induced hyperhydration. And the author was someone by the last name of Goulette. That's G O U L E T. So if you go Google that study, glycerol induced hyperhydration, you'll be able to find that equation. The glycerol supplement that I'm familiar with is one called Liquid Endurance by Hammer Nutrition. There are others out there, but that's the one that I'm familiar with and one that I've experimented with a little bit. Okay, so the next study is for those of you who want to know whether getting an IV after a race or after a hard training session to hydrate yourself is going to be as effective as taking those fluids orally. Now, in this study, which looked at the effect of an IV versus oral hydration on circulating factors associated with inflammation and damage from exercise, it found that there were actually no significant differences between oral hydration and IV hydration when it comes to something called creatine kinase and something called myoglobin, which are two of the things that appear in your bloodstream after you've done a hard exercise session. So what it didn't look at was the actual rate of hydration or the level of hydration. So remember, these aren't all the factors that are being taken into consideration when it comes to IV versus oral hydration. Just a couple of them. But the interesting thing is that there's really no difference in the amount of recovery from muscle damage when you hydrate with an IV versus when you hydrate orally. Now, I personally do like to get an IV after I've done a triathlon or something like that in hot weather. I do really feel a lot better later on the day when I get an IV versus when I hydrate orally. The next study looked at sodium bicarbonate ingestion and boxing performance. And sodium bicarbonate is something that athletes have used for a long time with the idea that it's buffers lactic acid that builds up in your muscles as you exercise. So it lets you kind of delay that burn a little bit longer and put up with more lactic acid. This study looked at boxing performance, which essentially does lead to a high level of lactic acid formation. And what this study found was that a standard loading dose of sodium bicarbonate, which is about 0.3 grams per kilogram of body weight, actually improve the performance during four rounds of boxing. Now, for a higher intensity event like let's say a sprint triathlon, sodium bicarbonate could definitely help. And you can just get generic sodium bicarbonate capsules anywhere. I mean, you could google it and it's just sodium bicarbonate. NAHCO3 you can get it just about anywhere. But the only issue is that a lot of people have stomach issues when they take this stuff. I'm one of them. My stomach just feels like it's flips a little bit. So it'd be something that you want to experiment with for sure prior to actually using it. But if you have a real kind of short, intense event like a 5k or a sprint triathlon, it could be something that you want to consider. Okay. And then the last study was called effect of an acute bout of whole Body Vibration Exercise on muscle force output and motor Neuron excitability. This study looked at those vibration platforms. See them in gyms a lot nowadays. You also see them in a lot of, you know, you know, like physiology or biomechanics laboratories. They are purported to actually improve the amount of muscle utilization that you can rely on while doing an exercise after you have been standing on one of those vibration platforms. This study looked at a fairly small group. It was 19 recreationally trained college age males. And, and it did find that up to eight minutes after someone had been standing on the vibration platform, they were able to produce a greater force with their muscles. They didn't find that the vibration platform actually increased something called motor neuron excitability or muscle activation. So they weren't really sure why the person was able to produce a greater force, but it did show that they were able to produce greater force. So if you're somebody who wants to, to go out and try and squat more, if you stand on one of those vibration platforms before you squat, it could help you out a Little bit. So those are this month's notes from the National Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. Now, as far as other special announcements are concerned, a couple of things I told you in the last podcast, podcast number 81, about the brand new body Transformation Club that I'm forming beginning in March. And what this is is you get a weekly mail out from me delivered to your mailbox, and it is a recipe as well as a workout. And then you get access to some special videos that I put in a secret place online that only the people who get those postcards can access. So essentially something that you can put on your refrigerator, you can take to the gym with you. A little bit different than getting an email or reading a blog post. I know that a lot of you out there do like to get that physical piece of mail that shows you what to do, and you can collect these, put them in a folder, and essentially kind of create a recipe and workout book based on what I send you. So it's called Ben's Body Transformation Club and you can join. It's just seven bucks a month and you get these mail outs from me. Basically the $7 a month covers my costs of mailing this stuff out to you. And I really want to see people getting some awesome results. I'm looking forward to starting this in March. You have to click on the link that I put in the show notes to this podcast episode number 82, or look at podcast episode number 81.

Now, you may recall that I said.

I was going to limit it to 50 people. I think I made a mistake by saying that because it filled up right after I put out that podcast. So I decided that I can probably handle doing a few more postcards than 50. I'm going to actually double that. I will between now and March, up that to 100. Okay, so 100 people between now and March will get to be in the Body Transformation Club. You need to go to the link in the show notes and click on it to actually be able to go sign up. So visit the show notes for this podcast episode over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and you can sign up for the Body Transformation Club. You need to do that before March of 2016. Now, the last thing is that the Rockstar Triathlete Academy, which is the online triathlon school that I run over@rockstartriathlete.com we've added a new kind of like a membership upgrade for triathlon coaches. Okay. Basically, it's a business of coaching session or section where you get access to a private triathlon coaches forum where you learn business techniques for triathlon coaches, athlete management techniques, and then you also get a monthly call for about two hours with me to talk about your triathlon coaching business. So for you triathlon coaches out there, people who want to be triathlon coaches definitely go over to rockstartriathlete.com and check that out. Okay, we're going to move on to this week's Listener Q and A.

Listener.

Q and A alright, one last thing before we get on to this week's Listener Q and A and those are a couple of special announcements that I forgot to tell you about. For those of you triathletes who may be out there in the Northwest, I've created a triathlon training plan for you that gets you ready for just about any event that's kind of in the Northwest region through Race Center Northwest. Those are all over@pacificfit.net and while you're over there, be sure to click on the calendar of events because in May I will be teaching a camp for Ironman Coeur d' Alene right out on the Ironman Coeur d' Alene course. All the details about that as well as the training plans are over@pacificfit.net alright, so if you have a question, email Ben greenfieldfitness.com or call 877-209-9439. Now our first question is from listener Judy who asks, I have taken your Excuse me, I have taken your advice on the supplements and ordered quite a few which I like. I however, I'm hoping you can clarify how and when to take performance supplements.

You suggest.

Specifically, I have race caps, Supreme, Cortagen, VO2 and creatine. They all say best used 45 to 60 minutes before exercise and better on an empty stomach. How long do I wait to eat? Assuming some nutrition is required before an extended period of exercise. Also, if I do two a days, should they be repeated in the afternoon prior to the next event lasting approximately an hour or longer? Finally, I have recoveries and should that be taken twice as well if there are two exercise periods in a day and should it be taken if you do a recovery drink? All great questions and it looks like what Judy has done is kind of put into practice some of the performance supplements that I've recommended in the past on this show. And first of all, let's tackle that first part about timing your supplements prior to exercise. That's the issue is a lot of supplement manufacturers don't take into account the actual carbohydrate supplementation that you got to take in before you go and do an exercise session so that you have adequate energy levels. And so when it tells you to take a performance supplement 45 to 60 minutes before exercise and to do it on an empty stomach, that's kind of hard to do and still be able to get your pre workout meal in or your pre workout snack in. So the best case scenario, if you want to get the best of both worlds, is you make sure that you time your exercise session about two to three hours after you've had your meal, like a main meal, and then you take those performance based supplements about 45 minutes before you exercise. So your food has had a little bit over an hour to digest and some of the acidic environment of the stomach has cleared up just a little bit. Okay. And then if you're hungry right before you exercise, have a little bite of sugar, like half a piece of fruit or sports gel or something of that nature. Now, if you're exercising in the morning on an empty stomach, just take your supplements and then go work out and you'll be fine. Now, as far as taking the supplements twice, definitely no. If you're doing it two a day, I don't recommend you take the supplements twice. That can get expensive and it can also kind of overload you with too much. I recommend that you take your hardest workout session, take your supplements before that session, and then your question about the recoveries, which is the recovery supplement that I recommend, it's basically a pill or a capsule. Those are something called proteolytic enzymes and branch chain amino acids. And both of those type of supplements, they aren't calories, but they're good to give your muscle some of the building blocks that they need for recovery. Again, I wouldn't take them twice in a day. What I do is I choose my hardest workout that I have in a day, and I take about 4 to 6 of those recovery capsules right after that workout. Now, if I'm drinking a recovery drink, which I don't do too often, but if I'm drinking like a smoothie or something like that that has a protein powder mixed with a carbohydrate, like recover right or in Durox or something of that nature, I actually won't take those capsules along with that because a lot of times those compounds already have glutamine and amino acids and a bunch of other stuff in them. But if I'm doing what I usually do and eating some real food after I exercise, having a piece of fruit with some nuts or Something like that. I definitely do their recoveries. So it depends whether you're taking what I would consider to be like a fake food powder after exercise, it's already formed, formulated for recovery, or if you're eating real food that you might want to add a little bit of amino acids and building blocks to using something like those recoveries capsules. So listener Judy also has a follow up question. She says, what are your thoughts about alkaline water specifically, will it lessen the effectiveness of any supplements? That's a great question, Judy. And the idea behind alkaline water is that the body functions best in a certain state of a certain ph state. So it can't be too acidic and it can't be too alkalinic. Now, in most cases, for those of us eating a typical western diet, exercising, getting exposed to pollutants in the environment and essentially just living, our bodies tend to migrate towards what would be considered a net acidic state. And the idea behind alkaline water is that the filter, the filtration process and the minerals that they add into that type of water makes the water a little bit less acidic. The problem that I have with alkaline water is that a lot of it also tends to be very expensive. I happen to have a filter that I put on my kitchen counter and that's what I use to filter my water. Where did I get the filter? I actually got it from Greenfield Naturals. Isn't that cool? A website with the same last name as me. Greenfieldnaturals.com is where I got the water filter, sits on my kitchen counter and that's kind of the economical way that I found to get alkaline water. Any relationship to me? Yes. In full disclosure, Greenfield Naturals is actually owned by my father.

So there you go.

You can get an alkaline water filter@greenfieldnaturals.com I don't get paid for saying that, but it is all in the family. So when you did ask about the supplements, for those of you listening in all those supplements, if you want to read more about them or check them out, the place to go is the same place you go for training plans and things of that nature. And that's pacificfit.net Pacific like the ocean. Fitlikefitness.net now listener Katie asks my question for you. Is this what has been your experience or thought thoughts with the Master Cleanse Lemonade Diet? I did it once a couple of years ago and I remember feeling good when I did it. But I wanted to see what more what those more informed thought about it. Let me know if you can. I'd like to start it soon if it really is something as beneficial as it says. Now, the Master Cleanse Diet is a diet that incorporates a cocktail of lemon juice, maple syrup, cayenne pepper, and water, and you basically drink six to 12 glasses of that through the day. Now, of course, like any diet, there's all sorts of little details about when you drink water and what times that you actually eat, but essentially the basic idea is you are living for a certain period of time off of lemon juice, maple syrup, cayenne pepper, and pure water. I have a couple of thoughts for you, and the first is that when you're on this diet, your primary source of calories is rich maple syrup. About two tablespoons of that into each of those glasses of water, the six to 12 of them that you drink during the day. So you're getting 600, 1200 calories, basically of pure sugar in your system and no protein, cayenne pepper and lemon juice, and you're basically flushing out your system while giving it just enough sugar that it needs to survive. I'm really not a big fan of doing something like this for a couple of reasons. First, is that all that sugar we just talked about, a net acidic state. It's going to do that to your body. If you want to listen to more about what that sugar can do to your body, listen to the podcast, episode number 80, Suicide by Sugar, where we talked about a lot of the damaging effects of having that much sugar in your diet. And rich maple syrup is a source of sugar, and it's a very concentrated source of sugar that you're eating all day long when you're on that lemonade diet. Now, the other thing is that I'm also not a huge fan of going on a diet like this that is this drastic, unless you've tried other more sustainable lifestyle type of measures, like switching up to eating more vegetables, some of the healthier grains, lean proteins, healthy fats, and just changing your diet to a healthy diet that you can sustain for life, rather than going on one of these type of cleanse diets that could lead to a little bit more of a yo yo effect, meaning that you strip your body of a bunch of nutrients and completely deprive yourself of calories for a few weeks, and then you start eating again, and you tend to gain back a lot of that weight, and it tends to just lead to that yo yo effect throughout the year. I'd be real, real careful with the Master Cleanse diet. If you've tried everything and you're at a weight plateau, you could try a more extreme diet. We'll actually talk about one that I would recommend if you've literally, if you have tried everything and been unable to lose weight. We'll talk about that later on in this podcast. But I'm really not a big fan of the Master Cleanse diet, primarily because of the high amounts of sugar that you're dumping into your body day after day. And it's not something that I put any of my clients on. So. Great question, Kate. The next question is from listener Brett. And so here we are right at the. Right at the next diet that I was talking about on your podcast, number 51, you mentioned a client you put on HCG diet. Last summer, I went on a 45 day cycle of HCG and dropped about 40 pounds. As you know, I am 11 weeks out from my Ironman triathlon and I'm maintaining weight, but I want to drop another 20 to 30 pounds. Would you suggest HCG again? I know that another 20 pounds would really help with my speed and get better results from all the work that I'm doing. Okay. So the idea behind the HCG diet is that's a hormone that you either inject or inhale via a nasal spray. It's called human chorionic gonadotropin. And it actually does enhance the body's ability to tap into storage fat and use that for energy, something that's produced by pregnant females in high amounts so that they're able to mobilize adipose tissue to grow a healthy baby. And both males and females traditionally found a great deal of success with something like the HCG diet because it also suppresses your hunger. So the whole idea is you go on about a 500 to 800 calorie a day diet for right around 45 days with a daily dose of HCG. Now, like I said, I'm not a huge fan of drastic measures like this unless you've tried everything and found little to no success. But I have overseen several of my clients going through the HCG diet, which actually does involve getting a prescription for HCG from a physician as well, versus ordering HCG from like an international overseas laboratory, which is. Which I do not recommend. Now, the idea is that if you are taking the very, very few calories that you're allowed to take in on the HCG diet and trying to train for an ironman at the same time, you can't do it. You literally can't do it. I mean, when I oversee this Diet for my clients. By day 20, they're literally banging their head against the wall, just completely tired. Yeah, they lose a lot of weight, but, I mean, it's not a good experience. They can barely even exercise, let alone do any type of job that involves standing and walking and lifting, etc. So it is kind of a tough diet to be on, and I would not recommend it while you're preparing for Ironman. What I would recommend is that you adapt some of the other protocols that I've talked about on this show before, Specifically getting up every single morning and on an empty stomach, doing anywhere from 20 up to a maximum of 60 minutes of aerobic exercise, preferably taking in a little bit of caffeine before you do that, but not any food at all. Okay. That can help mobilize the fat tissue a little bit. I recommend you take something like the thermo factor or the lean factor that I've talked about before on this show to help you mobilize a little bit more adipose tissue and bump up the metabolic rate just a little bit more. And then, of course, it should go without saying caloric control, not eating for two hours before bed, really tapering your carbohydrate level so that most of your carbohydrates are coming in the morning, not in the afternoon or the evening, and focusing more on the healthy proteins and the healthy fats. So if you've tried all that and you're training for Ironman, I guarantee if you're doing all that, you're going to drop weight. And you can easily drop a couple of pounds of weight doing something like that. So it would really come down to dialing in your nutrition before you do something as drastic as the HCG diet. And if you do the HCG diet, you'd probably have to quit Ironman training. Listener Anya asks, I have a running question for you. I do some running. Nothing crazy, but I can easily run five miles and up to eight miles off the couch without any training. I have been noticing that my knees are bothering me. I have new shoes fitted at a running store, so it's not that. The owner said, being a female who has had children, that knee pain is to be expected and he said to do dynamic stretching. Do you agree with this? I really don't want to stop running. I love races and half marathons, etc. What do you think? It's a great question, Anya. Postpartum, there can definitely be a change in the structure of your hips, especially if you've given birth vaginally Women who've had a C section tend to have a little bit less of an issue with this. But what happens is that the amount of stretching that occurs when you give birth can actually change anatomically the angle of your hips. And it can increase something that's called the Q angle, which is the angle from your hips down to your knees. And when that Q angle increases, every step that you take just puts a little bit of extra torque or extra pressure on your knees and on your ankles. Now, what that means for a woman as a runner is that if that extra pressure and extra torque is being put on those joints, you have to be able to do something to either make yourself stronger to be able to withstand those extra pressures, or essentially do something that will allow you to be able to move a little bit freer with that wider hip angle. The dynamic stretching that your running store recommends would be okay, but it's not going to do a lot for you. I would recommend that you really focus on core strengthening protocol, that you really focus on strengthening your hips, specifically your butt muscles, by doing kick outs and side kickouts. Squats and lunges can help out quite a bit, as can any type of core exercise done in the standing position, like cable torso twists. Plank position exercises will also help, like front planks or side planks. Moving in the front plank and side plank position, like getting into a front plank position and doing toe taps, or getting into a side plank position and reaching for the sky over and over again. Those exercises can help your body to be able to be stronger, to withstand some of those extra pressures. And then also in your shoes themselves, making sure that you add some overpronation orthotics or get a higher stability running shoe. But ultimately you are going to be at higher risk for knee pain postpartum and it's just one of the joys of having children. So hopefully that helps do the core strengthening, the butt strengthening, get some overpronation orthotics and it should help out quite a bit. Next up, listener Eric has a follow up question from the interview with Nancy Appleton about suicide by sugar, where I said that sugary drinks and diet drinks weren't a good choice. He says, what are some drinks that you use? I've been using stevia and lemon in water and it is really good. But want some additional ideas for a low calorie, somewhat sweet drink. Great question, Eric. Now, I drink my calories very, very seldomly. Basically, you've got no fiber and a lot of calories in most drinks and they tend not to satiate your appetite very well. So most people who drink their calories tend to consume too many calories and also tend to consume a lot of calories from sugar. And that includes sport drinks, smoothies, anything like that. So I don't recommend that those form the crux of your diet. Now, in terms of low calorie drinks, a couple of things that I'll use. There's a product called EU Hydration, which are basically flavored electrolytes that you can get from a company called Noon. And you drop one capsule into some water. And my only caution I would give you with those is they are about 7% of your daily sodium needs. So if you're not exercising or sweating, limit yourself to just one to two of those a day. If you're in a hot environment, moving around a lot, perspiring a lot, you can get away with a little bit more than that. But it's called Noon EU Hydration. Now, Noon does make another capsule just called a Noon capsule. They flavor that with sucralose, whereas the EU hydration is flavored with stevia. So I'm a bigger fan of the EU Hydration. Another thing that I'll use is something called Delta E. It's more of a low calorie energy drink flavored with a pomegranate extract. It's about 20 calories. You can find that@pacificfit.net now, that one does have a little bit of caffeine in it. It's a great alternative to like a, like an energy drink if you're hooked on energy drinks or hooked on, you know, something that has a lot of caffeine in it but also has artificial sweets.

Nurse.

The other thing that I'll use is something that I wrote a blog post about@BenGreenfieldFitness.com called Solar Energy. And it's basically a blend of juice powders and antioxidants. But it's not that many calories. It's about 50 calories or so for a couple of scoops of that put into water. It's really great for recovery if you're exercising a lot. You can read the article that I wrote about that, but it's called Solar Energy. That's another one that I'll use. And then finally from a company called Bioletics, they put out like this amino acid powder that's also flavored with stevia. That's good as well. But if you use that, you want to make sure that you drink it with warm water because the amino acids don't dissolve very well. In water at room temp. So that's what I use. New, new hydration, Delta E, the amino acids from bioletics, and then the solar energy, and that's put up by Mount Capra. So those are some things you could have in your pantry, in your cupboard if you're craving a drink, especially at night, but you want to go the low calorie route. And then listener Chuck says, I thought that the information about octacosinol was very interesting, and he gave a really good answer to that question. But how much wheat germ would I have to eat daily to obtain the suggested benefits? I've seen it available in oil extract extract as well, but would rather just be able to eat it. Well, in those studies that were done on octocosanol, Chuck, they used about 20 milligrams of that as an extract from wheat germ. And the recommendations are that you not actually take in more than 20 milligrams of the octocosanol per day. Now, in about 1 tablespoon of wheat germ, which is right around 14 grams, you would have about a milligram of octacosanol. So you would have to take 20 tablespoons of wheat germ to get the ergogenic dosage of octacosanol versus just taking octacosanol in, like a capsule or tablet form. That's the thing with a lot of these. A lot of these supplements is that you have to take them in their isolated form versus their whole food form to really get the ergogenic effect. Because if you actually ate that much wheat germ, you would have some other issues. But it's a good question. Okay, our next question comes from listener Jen. And listener Jen says, I spend most of my workday sitting at my desk. But as I have learned from you, I know the benefits of standing as much as possible versus sitting. I can't stand at my desk, but I've seen people in the past sit on inflatable exercise balls. Does that actually provide any benefit? My back often hurts, and I'm hoping it may help as well. What do you think? I think it's a great idea, Jen. You tend to incorporate a lot more, your butt muscles, your core muscles, your stability muscles. When you're seated on an exercise ball, you can bounce around a little bit, burn a few extra calories. You can improve your balance. It helps out with your spinal alignment. You're forced to change position a lot. The only issue is, I have also seen people have some really, really bad posture on stability balls before. So if you're going to sit on that ball. Make sure that you sit upright, that you keep your core tucked, and if you find yourself slouching, you correct that. But ultimately, as long as you have good posture, it can help. It could also be a huge crutch though. And if you tend to have bad posture naturally, you may want to try like an ergogenic chair if all you're going to be doing is aggravating your poor posture if you sit on a stability ball. But if you're able to keep your core aligned, I'd definitely do it. So, final question from listener Chris. And he says switching to low fiber foods a few days before an event is advisable.

Right.

I was just doing a Google search on low fiber foods and found a lot of lists that contradict each other. Could you make a short list of foods that actually have low fiber content that are reasonable for an athlete to eat? It's a good question, Chris. And the whole idea is that this is something that I preach to my athletes is that a couple of days before a race, you really taper off the fiber consumption so that you're not standing in a long line of the porta potty or having lots of butterflies all over in your stomach right before an event like a triathlon. So what I recommend that people do is that if they tend to eat a big salad with lunch or big salad with dinner, that they eliminate that in favor of something like a brown rice or a potato or sweet potato, yam, even things like carrots and parsnips and beets tend to be good carbohydrate sources that are lower in fiber than some of the things like fruit and oatmeal. So you can use, use a lot of those type of root or tuber based carbohydrates and you can even remove the skin from a potato or sweet potato or yam if you want to get even lower fiber from those. Now the nice part about doing that is it kind of at the same time causes you to naturally increase your carbohydrate intake so you almost carbohydrate load as you decrease the fiber consumption. But I would recommend some of those starches that I just mentioned as well as some of the grains that tend to be just a little bit lower in fiber. Like brown rice is a perfect example, quinoa, amaranth, millet a little bit higher in fiber, and oats even higher in fiber. So you just need to make sure that you choose them correctly. So great question, Chris. And finally, remember, if you have a question, just email ben greenfieldfitness.com I also love those audio questions. So you can call toll free, 877-209-9439. You can Skype me at Pacific Fit. And yeah, those are the ways you can get a hold of me. So let's go ahead and move on to this week's interview. You're not going to want to miss this. I know this is a long podcast, but hey, split it up if you need to. We're going to move on to our interview with Dr. Carolyn Dean.

Featured topic.

Hey, podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield. And if you visited BenGreenfieldFitness.com anytime in the past couple of months, you may have come across a few articles by an author and physician, Dr. Carolyn Dean. And Dr. Dean is one of the top natural physicians in the nation, if not the world. And she really is just a wealth of knowledge on taking charge of your health in a natural manner that actually gives you health for life. And that's why I'm such a big fan of what she does and the articles that she writes.

And, you know, I own and I've.

Read all of her books, from the Magnesium Miracle to some of the books that you'll hear about today. And she's just a wealth of knowledge. And it's going to be a real treat for you to listen in to what we're going to talk about today. And it's going to be all about medicine and physicians and modern medicine specifically. And some good news for you on that, but also some kind of shocking and surprising things that you definitely are going to want to know about and listen into. So, Dr. Dean, thank you for coming on the call today.

Thank you, Ben. Great to be here. I just love what you're doing and I'm really excited about this interview.

Fantastic. Well, if people go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and do a search there for magnesium and specifically the Magnesium Miracle, that was the book that, that I read of Dr. Dean's that really turned me onto her and inspired me to hunt her down and see if she would be willing to come on the show to talk about that book. And I would recommend that you go back and listen to that interview if you haven't. But Dr. Dean has a few other books and one specifically that I recently read that simply rocked my world when it comes to the modern medical environment is called Death by Modern Medicine. Dr. Dean, I guess we'll just start right here. Why did you write a book called Death by Modern Medicine?

I know I tell people Ben that I wrote that on a bad day. Usually I focus on Solutions. I've 19, 20 books and only one of them is the bad stuff. But you have to know what you're up against and what, what was happening with me at that time is I was traveling to codex meetings about the regulation on food and, and food and dietary supplements. I was in Bonn, Germany when I was sitting at these meetings with my computer there and I just started writing. And it, it started with the article that I, I researched and wrote for Gary Null called Death by Medicine. He kind of challenged me to find out, well, how many people are really dying due to medical interventions and medicine. And actually when you pull all the stats together and all I did was comb the medical journals and scientific literature and I put together the people who are dying from drug interactions, surgical intervention, bedsores in nursing homes. People don't realize how many people are dying from bed sores, preventable bed sores. And I came up with three quarters of a million people are dying too early by medical intervention. And that kind of shook things up, that paper, which people can find on the Internet. And from there I decided, well, let's go into all the various aspects of why this is happening. So that's how it came about. And actually when I was working on the paper, my mother was dying of acute leukemia. Now 80 year old women don't die of acute leukemia, it's chronic leukemia. So it seemed to me like her cholesterol medication and high blood pressure medication were doing it. So I was very much immersed in drug side effects when I wrote the paper and then expanded to the book.

Interesting. And just for the listeners, this book isn't just about, you know, medical errors in hospitals. You've got, well, you got 13 different chapters in the book and each one goes over kind of a different issue when it comes to some of the problems in modern medicine. Can you talk about, you know, I'm not asking you to read your entire book on the air, but can you talk about some of those issues that you bring up that go beyond just the idea of hospital errors and some of the issues that could be leading to death by modern medicine?

Yes, the chapter titles, they all start with Death by and beyond the death by the medical doctors. And they don't set out to kill you. I mean, they really don't. I think doctors aren't there trying to hurt people they want to help, but they really have been systematically brainwashed. And I can personally say that because I went to medical school in the mid-70s, we were told that everything that we needed to know to be a doctor we would learn in medical school. And if we didn't know about a treatment or something that came our way, then it was quackery. That's it. If you go to your doctor and say, well, what about this vitamin treatment? Or what about magnesium? Not they'll, you know, check their brain and say, well, I didn't learn that in medical school, so it must be cooperate. And they'll just say, well, it's probably bullshit. And that's, that's what, that's the answer you'll get. And then you'll feel kind of, well, what? Where do I go? We were told that chiropractic, herbalism, nutrition, all that was bullshit. We were told that breastfeeding was bullshit. So all those things are in the minds of doctors. And so they will be. They're culpably responsible, I think, because they're not looking beyond what they learned in medical school. So they have, you know, there is this death by modern medical doctors. Then I go on to death by drug companies. And we all can see on the Internet now that the research, the scientific research is all being bought up by drug companies. They'll do a study, and if it doesn't show that their drug is good, they'll pull the study and it won't be published. Death by healthcare bureaucracy. The HMOs have been killing people since they began because they'll put a limit on what can be covered by insurance and death by media. This is a whole world that your listeners might be interested in. Because, you see, we don't just have physical bodies anymore, Ben. We have a chip body because we're hooked into the Internet. We have a TV body. We're sitting in front of the TV and our whole being is being molded by this TV to the point, you know, TV dinners, we're eating snacks. I mean, we've gone to drinking everything because we don't want to spill stuff on our computer. I mean, how much are we changing change by our media in very simple and subtle ways. And so we have these other bodies. So when someone comes to me and they say, well, they're drinking, you know, I do telephone consultation. So on the phone they'll tell me, well, I'm drinking 10 cups of coffee a day, and I'm doing this. And I'm saying, well, you know, you're, you're just. Your chip body has, has decided that your physical body doesn't need to have good nutrition. And that's, that's just not the case. We're not all robots and synthetic body parts yet. So we have to take care of our physical body. And that's what you and I do. But I remind people that you're also a chip body and a TV body. And you, you have to balance, balance the three. The death by propaganda in chapter five. Man, we've been propagandized since, well, since day one. But we take the, well, it's Madison Avenue, it's the TV ads, radio ads, newspaper ads that are our education for how we live our lives and how we grab for things and we want all the material goods. And how many stories have we heard about people who just drive themselves through their work ethic, etc. To the point where they die? I mean, this is where, when we talk about magnesium, athletes die when they push themselves because they get into heart arrhythmias because they don't have enough magnesium. That's why I'm so excited to be talking to you and your group of athletes because there are things that their body needs. The overwork and stress of someone in business, men and women, puts them to the point where they get into deficiency diseases, nutrition. So the propaganda leads us to these physical body problems.

Now, what type of propaganda? Like, can you give me an example of propaganda that you talk about in the book?

Well, that would be as simple as the drug ads on television. Now, they only came in, they were legislated in about 20 years ago now, and everybody just takes it for granted. You're sitting in front of a television program and you'll be faced with about five or six ads throughout the one hour program telling you how sick you are, are how depressed you are, how your legs won't stop moving, how you're sad, and how your cholesterol is up. But, oh, wait a minute, we have the drug for you. And then they'll tell you, but you know, they'll show someone running through a field, you know, someone who's crippled with arthritis. Suddenly they're floating through a beautiful, beautiful scene and there's the drug for you. And I know one of my sisters is a doctor. And she said when those drug ads started, she started having to beat people away who came in and said, I want to try this drug. And even though the disclaimer at the end, which legally they have to say, they'll speedcock it and it'll say you're going to have headaches, vision problems, gas bloating, diarrhea, constipation and sudden death, if you take this, I mean, they'll even have the death word in the disclaimer. But people just, they're hypnotized by the image that they want to be, and they want it to be a drug. And I know one of our mutual friends, Dr. Roby Mitchell, he states very uncategorically that you can't medicate yourself out of symptoms you behave yourself into. And that's what they have, a lifestyle which they know. I mean, when, when people talk to me on the phone, it's like, well, you know, I know all this coffee isn't good for me and, and just eating donuts in the morning and all the sugars. They know. But it's, it's almost like some sort of human nature that we wait until we have real symptoms and we steer ourselves enough before we'll do something to change our behavior.

And even when you're talking about those symptoms, you know, in your chapter in the book on death by drug companies, I noticed towards the end of that chapter, you even talk about how those symptoms are described, sometimes using euphemisms to describe some of the drug side effects. Like a couple of the examples you use is that suicidal tendencies can be labeled as nausea and aggression verging on homicidal behavior in children can be described as hostile behavior. And you know, just the list of side effects you list in that chapter alone, just, they're, they're mind blowing. But yeah, then you go on in the propaganda chapter, and it's interesting to see just, just like you say, the person skipping through the, the field of flowers while at the same time the voice in the background is talking about the multitude of side effects that that drug has. But all we see is the person skipping happily through the flowers, right?

And about the side effects. It's interesting that they don't even have drug side effects listed as a cause of death when they're developing statistics for people's reason for dying. So if someone's on a dozen medications and they have a heart problem and finally the medications do them in, well, you'll never hear that. It'll just be, well, they died of heart disease, or it'll be buried within the known category. So if you don't have a category for drug side effects, then no one's going to list them. So it's very deceptive, the whole business, because, you know, people say to me, well, how can there be this many deaths? And we don't hear about it and it's been written about. There's the doctor that started talking about its equivalent to a jumbo jet falling every Day, the number of people that are dying. And, you know, we go crazy if one plane falls out of the sky. So there's the propaganda, goes to the point of just of covering up this, this incredible surge of this incredible epidemic of people who are being affected negatively by, by medicine, by, by the drugs and by the procedures too. I mean, you, you look at the body scanners that they're trying to put into the airports and someone finally starts saying, well, you know, that's. We're radiating ourselves. And then, oh, no, it's only a little amount. You go to your dentist and they say, well, before you see the dentist, you have to have your X rays done. No, I do not have to have my X rays done before I even get looked at by the dentist. Oh, well, it's digital, you know, there's no radiation. Yes, there is radiation in digital photography of your. It may be less, but it's still radiation. Or the total body CAT scans that they're trying to do now. Oh, well, we can find anything in the body now. Well, that's equivalent to about 100 chest x rays. So the procedures that doctors are relying on, instead of their own common sense, their own fingers, their own intellect, their saying, well, go get all these tests and then come to see me and I won't even bother looking at you or looking in your eyes. I'll look down at the desk and look at the results of all these tests and say, well, everything's normal, you're fine.

Yeah. And that's something that I noticed in that sixth chapter that comes after the death by propaganda. In the death by modern drugs and procedures, you give a pretty comprehensive list of both the costs and the deaths associated with, you know, most of the procedures that are being done. And it's, it's simply amazing not only how many procedures people are actually undergoing.

But the cost and the deaths associated with them.

Mm, yes. And even in the news, we'll hear about people going in for a routine recent polyp, had a routine laparoscopy for gallbladder. You know, they just put a little incision an inch or two, they go in, they scoop out the gallbladder, pull it out, they tie it off. But oops, you know, while they were there, they nicked the intestines and you can't see that through, you know, a one or two inch incision. So it's become so routinized, you know, such a routine procedures that people just, you know, maybe they're just not paying attention anymore. And then the death by Modern Science Chapter 7, I mentioned at the outset, where you've got drug companies that are controlling science, you can't get money anymore from the government or from universities. The money dried up about 15 years ago, so that most research now is conducted by drug companies and it's on their drugs, and it is that their drugs are good for you, are beneficial. And what also happened in amongst that is, as we noticed, that the placebo effect was actually had higher ratings than drug effects. Let me explain. Placebo is supposedly something that they laughed at when I was in medical school. Oh, and you know, a placebo, that's where someone takes a sugar pill and they get better. Isn't that stupid? Isn't that crazy? Well, actually, it's not. It shows you your healing potential. If you think positively about a drug or a treatment, then you are going to have a much better outcome than someone who is motivated by the nocebo effect, which is feeling you are going to have a negative outcome. So what happened? Because the placebo was looking better in clinical trials than drugs, especially antidepressants, they couldn't show that a drug was better than a sugar pill. Then they started just matching drug to drug. They do a clinical trial where they'd say, well, we're going to use this antidepressant and that antidepressant and show which is better. And so when you're, you know, studying two negative things, then you're just saying, which is less negative than the other. So the science, they've manipulated so much that people haven't got a clue what's going on until five or six, even 10 years after a drug is out on the market, then they start looking at it like they did Vioxx and they say, oh, my gosh, this arthritis drug that was such a miracle and could have you dancing across the fields, all of a sudden it's causing heart problems. And, you know, that's part of the suppression of the inflammation and normal inflammation in the body, the normal immune system in the body. It's partly associated with the way it affects magnesium and the requirement for more magnesium. And then the upshot is it was causing heart attacks and heart disease.

And that was recently in the news, the placebo effect of antidepressants. I was reading that recently that most antidepressant medications really aren't even that effective.

Yes, yes, I did notice that. And it's interesting. A lot of things that I wrote about back in this book I did in 2005, a lot of things I'm noticing coming to the fore where when people took the first drug side effect study where they showed that 106,000 people die annually directly from drug side effects and 2.5 million are adversely affected. They may die later, but they're not even counted. Well, when that first study came out of, I think it was University of Toronto in Canada, they set about trying to disprove it and all they came up with was more and more incidents of side effects and death. They really couldn't disprove it. It was a very real research finding. And I don't know if anything has changed. The drug companies keep making drugs. Although in the book I talk about report from a journalist in Canada who went to a pharmaceutical marketing meeting. She somehow got her way in there and they said, well, you know, we're having so many problems with drugs and people don't like our drugs anymore, we'll have to start pushing vaccines. And this was back in 2004, I believe. And what have we got? Just, you know, wall to wall vaccines now.

Yeah, now you have in the next chapter, death by cancer. You start off by saying, why fix a system that's earning billions? What do you mean by that?

Well, cancer is an industry and it's another form actually of propaganda because every time you do a report on television or talk about a new treatment for cancer, you're actually advertising cancer. Because now we're at the stage where people are being told, well, you know, everybody is susceptible and everything is a possible reason for cancer. Instead of, I guess, you know what, at the bottom where I talk about death by lifestyle, the bottom chapter 13. I mean the culmination of all the information, all the negative information, information, all the worries that people have is that you're getting sick by this worry factor. But just taking yourself in hand could start to undo this. It's lifestyle, nutrition and attitude. So the attitude that we're developing when we see all this information on our TV body box, all this information about the cancer is that, oh, I wonder when I'm going to get it. It's no longer, oh, that's just not in my universe. You, you know, you, you instill this little nodule of fear in the minds of everybody when you keep on talking about cancer. That the, the race for breast cancer, the run for this, the, the marathon for that, you know, we're just, we keep propagandizing cancer and it is a huge industry where you have the companies that are creating obviously carcinogenic chemicals and drugs. You have those same companies that are making anti cancer drugs and sponsoring the marathons for the only cancer establishments that I support are ones that try to undo the chemical industry. The way chemicals are thrown into the rivers or the way they're not regulated. You have to stop the source of some of these problems rather than wait till everybody develops cancer. Give them all kinds of drugs, keep them alive for longer on their drugs so you can make more money off them.

That's something that you talk about in the chapter right after the death by cancer, the death by modern chemicals, primarily. I noticed that you talk about herbicides and pesticides and taking into account the environment. But in terms of that chapter, are there other things that people need to be aware of when it comes to the presence of chemicals in our life?

Well, I've been around this world for. I'm just turning 61, so I've been around studying nutrition since my late teens. And I'm getting to the point where I'm developing the attitude of look at the anomalies in health. Look at the people who, they're in the midst of horror and chemicals and eating badly and they still thrive. And I'd like to look at those situations. And it is a matter of attitude. It's like, not in my universe. And if something is going wrong in the world, it doesn't have to happen to me. We look at the people during the whole swine flu fiasco where people were absolutely going crazy, oh, you know, I'm going to die of the swine flu or I'm going to the vaccination that's going to be forced on me. And for some people, they did badly with those. But so many people, they just, they weren't even affected by it. So it does begin with attitude. And then when you have your attitude in line, you either know you're going to be healthy and take care of yourself, or you're no, well, I'm doomed and I'm going to die. So you just develop your attitude and then you go from there. People with a good attitude, then they will start exercising more. They will start looking at their nutrition and find simple things to help them, but they won't do it so much out of fear. See, what's happening is we've got this. We have medicalized natural medicine to the point where we're just trying to scare people into taking care of their health. And that's, you know, that's as false a premise as it is in medicine. When I mentioned Robi's statement about you can't behave your. You can't medicate yourself out of symptoms. You behave yourself Into. Well, it's the same with supplements. You can't take supplements and expect them to undo your behavior. And that's what I saw happening in integrative medical practices where people would go to integrative medical doctors, take huge sums of money, take. I've had clients come to me on 80 supplement pills a day from natural medicine doctors and say, well, you know, the doctor said, I needed this, this and this and this. You know, it just completely undoes natural medicine.

And there's a reason they're called supplements. Right. They're supposed to supplement a healthy lifestyle and healthy diet. They're not supposed to be your lifestyle in your diet.

Right. So we get into this, the propaganda aspect in the whole natural medicine world as well, with the. Yeah. So with modern chemicals, I just tell people, well, you know, use your common sense and, you know, work on ways where you can be away from the chemicals. Don't buy the chemicals. The power of the purse is huge. That's why now is being so commercial. It's making billions. So I wrote the book so people could understand the problem, not to put the fear into them, so that then they were immobilized from. From doing anything. Because a lot of people have reached that stage. There's just too much negative information. I can't take it all in and I give up. Well, you can't, you know, and that's.

One of the reasons that I. That I like that you've got some other books as well, because. Yeah, when I read this book, there obviously are a lot of things that concern me. You know, everything from. From the Future Health now program that you have to. That the, you know, you have an entire encyclopedia. I don't think a lot of people know this, but you have an encyclopedia that's got, you know, a natural cure, not a natural cure, but, you know, kind of a. Kind of a natural type of home remedy kind of treatment for tons of different conditions and issues that, you know, it works well with this book. I know that you're not just scaring people, you're providing some solutions as well. Now, we had just had recently, recently on the show, Dr. Nancy Appleton, who wrote the book Suicide by Sugar and who you talk about actually in your book is Death by.

Absolutely.

But you also talk about, in that chapter, chapter 10, about artificial sweeteners and, you know, things like aspartame. Do you consider those to be as big a problem as sugar?

Absolutely. It's a chemical combination of. To amino acids, which are neurotransmitters. And within a food Those amino acids are all balanced out and everything, but when they're taken individually like that in aspartame, they can just go straight to the brain and affect it. And beyond the two amino acids, there's methanol, which is wood alcohol, which again, if it's within a food, methanol is neutralized and the body takes care of it. But as straight wood alcohol, then that can go straight to your brain and your eyes. The blindness from drinking alcohol from a still is well known. And often they get a methyl alcohol problem when they're making. Making alcohol. I don't know what exactly happens, but it's something that goes very wrong when you're trying to make alcohol with the aspartame. I think it's like one of these additive situations where, oh, we've discovered something sweet by accident in the lab and, oh, maybe we can make a sweetener out of this. Well, people, they'll drink a Coke or a soda or something once or twice a week and it should be fine. There shouldn't be any side effects with that. What's happened is now soda is cheaper than water. You've got people drinking liters of this stuff and really getting toxic levels of methanol in their body from drinking these sodas and being propagandized to think that they're doing a diet product because that's how they're labeled and it's good for their health. So it's false advertising. And it's being shown in studies that aren't done by the manufacturers. The independent studies are all showing great side effects with aspartame. The FDA had on its substance reports for side effects, 92 different side effects for aspartame. And then apparently they closed the docket and stopped taking reports. So we've got a real problem there where. And I've done this. I've spoken at schools with the kids telling them about the dangers of sugar. And then they said, well, we'll just drink diet. And then I have to go into the whole aspartame situation and you talk.

About some of the other artificial sweeteners in there too. I don't want people to just think that aspartame is the problem. But pretty comprehensive chapter on the artificial sweeteners and the sugars, and then you go on to kind of a related topic, death by addiction. Now, what do you mean when you're talking about that in that chapter 11.

Well, it does flow from the sugar chapter. The late Abram Hoffer, who actually forwarded the book, one of the Forwards was by this incredible orthomolecular physician, Dr. Abram Hoffer. He said that sugar is as addictive as cocaine. And that's kind of how it begins in our lives, that we're given treats as our reward, family occasions, and you know, you always have a cake, you have ice cream. It goes to the point where you become addicted to sugar. People can have all the symptoms of hypoglycemia or you know what the relationship of taking in something that has 10 teaspoons of sugar into a body that at any one time, and I heard you on a podcast say this, and I'd worked out the numbers too, Ben, that at any one time you only have one or two teaspoons of sugar in your whole bloodstream. And then you take a soda or a milkshake, has about 22 teaspoons of sugar. So you take something like that in and your body's just going to go crazy. All the alarms go off. Insulin is flooding your system to try to drive this down. And usually it's so much insulin that the sugar dissipates so quickly that your blood sugar then drops and your adrenal glands don't want you to fall over and faint. So they'll put out some adrenaline, number one, to get your glycogen liver stores of glucose, get them into the bloodstream quick so you don't faint. Number two, that adrenaline also pumps your heart because the message is that you're in an emergency situation. So the pumping of your heart and sweaty palms makes you think you have a panic attack. Hypoglycemic episodes like this are the prime reason why people get diagnosed with panic attacks and put on the tranquilizers, the Xanax and whatever. And I can tell you it's just close to hell for people trying to wean off and withdraw from these Xanax and the anti anxiety drugs. And if you look at the drug labeling, it says it's for short term use only. When they first came out, it was for a period of two weeks. I've been trying to find, looking at the labeling and all that, now it just says for short term use, people are using these things for years. Panic attacks and not being told that, well, it could be your blood sugar, but that in the magnesium miracle book, how people get into this low blood sugar. And also if they have a magnesium deficiency on top of that, they've got kind of trigger happy adrenal glands, they've got muscle twitches, they've got cramping, they've got Insomnia, headaches, all kinds of symptoms. So you go to your doctor and you say, I think I had a panic attack and yes, I have all these other symptoms and they're going to put you on an anti anxiety drug and an antidepressant.

Now in your final two chapters, you talk about denial and you talk about lifestyle. What are some of the considerations that people need to have as they come to realization of some of the things that you talk about earlier in the book?

I guess it's, yeah, there's a lot to be said for denial. I go back and forth on denial. It's like, how much do we deny about our own symptoms so that we don't get caught into them? Because as soon as you start saying, oh, you know, my heart just skipped a beat, oh, maybe I have a heart problem because you've just seen a drug ad for, for heart disease or you've read an article about heart disease. So you run to your doctor and the doctor is not there to give you hope or to tell you about nutrition or lifestyle. The doctor's job is to diagnose and treat disease symptoms. Diagnose your symptoms into a disease and treat them with a drug. That's the focus. And you'll know that because the doctor will either do a bunch of tests and say, oh, you're perfectly fine, go home and not give you any other advice, not tell you to take magnesium for your heart or join a fitness club or enter a lifestyle program, their job is done. And then you're still left with your concerns and your worries or the doctor. If you keep complaining, the doctor will search and search and search until they find something. I mean, I get people who tell me, well, I had this back pain, so I had a bone density test and they told me that my discs were desiccating. Now that's a term that's used after the age of 40, you start losing a little moisture from your discs. That's. Or you can, I mean, if you're the average person, someone who's well hydrated and exercising and stretching and everything, that doesn't have to happen to them. But it's kind of an average thing that happens. So in order to give someone kind of a reason for why they've had all these tests and to tell them they found something, they'll say, oh, you have some mild desiccation. Now sometimes that'll over a cliff, oh my gosh, you know, my discs are drying out, you know, and their back pain will get worse because they think they have a physical problem. So you see what I'm saying? All this testing, you have to have some reason for the testing. So the doctors are going to give you information that makes you think, oh, you know, I've got my money's worth because I find something out. But then you're left with, well, what do I do with it? About that doctor? Oh, it's okay. You know, a lot of people have it. So you've got this incredible situation where doctors are in the position where with the technology, they can find out all kinds of information and have nothing to offer you to do about it, because they will wait until you're really sick to give you a whole bunch of drugs. Actually, that's not true. That's a statement I used to make about 10 years ago. Because now you have doctors who actually think that they should give you statin drugs for cholesterol to prevent you getting cholesterol, or if your blood pressure is just a tiny bit off, they'll start giving you blood pressure medications because they believe the studies that have been manipulated to make you think that people who are on cholesterol drugs and blood pressure drugs live longer. And when you delve into those studies deeply, you find all kinds of anomalies in their reasoning. And we've got a situation now where people are put on medications. You'll be under stress, someone's died in the family, and your blood pressure goes up with the stress. When you're under stress, you lose more magnesium, your blood vessels and your muscles get tight, so you develop higher blood pressure and you're put on blood pressure medication. And it's like the end for a lot of people. Oh, I have high blood pressure. It's only going to get worse now. It will get worse because as you take a. Usually the first line is a diuretic. As you take a diuretic for your blood pressure, then what happens is you drain out your magnesium. You actually worsen your problem of muscle tension and blood vessels being tighter. You come back a month later to renew your prescription. Your blood pressure is worse. Oh, my goodness, I knew this was going to happen. So you're put on another blood pressure medication. That usually happens three times. You end up on three different medications. And then at the three month mark, they redo your blood test. All of a sudden your cholesterol is up. That's because you're losing more and more magnesium. It's a direct consequence that your cholesterol will go up. Then maybe at that visit or the next, they'll also do your blood glucose invariably when you're magnesium becomes more and more deficient with all the blood pressure drugs, your blood sugar starts going up and then you're put on an antidiabetic medication. So that's the scenario I see over and over and over.

Wow. Now in Death by Lifestyle, your final chapter in this book, you write it as an edit from a paper that you wrote for, for the Nutrition Institute of America titled Modern Medicine Gets a Failing Grade Birth of the lifestyle Approach. What is the lifestyle approach?

It's basically eating well. I was going to say properly or. Well, nobody knows what that means anymore. But eating well, exercising and having a good attitude that you develop by either your exercise and eating program starts taking the worry out of your mind. Because when you start feeling better, then it just perpetuates your ability to improve your lifestyle. It's why I give most of my clients, I begin them with magnesium in some form. Because as soon as you start relaxing your muscles with magnesium and sleeping better during the night and having more energy during the day, then you can start tackling things. Your reserves start improving, your adrenal glands settle down, your brain neurotransmitters work better. So when people start improving their lifestyle, how they feel, take a few natural and I recommend food based vitamins and angstrom sized minerals. We can't really metabolize synthetic vitamins. I don't know why we thought we could, but I saw the whole progression because I've been in this natural medicine field since the 70s. I saw doctors in natural medicine. If 10 milligram B complex didn't work, then it would be up to 50 and then 50 twice a day. If that didn't work, they started doing IV vitamins all the time, kind of pushing and pushing and pushing, all synthetic. Because what happened is when they did research, it was epidermy.

Epidemiology.

Yeah, that word. Need a drink of water. When they started doing studies on geographic locations where people were getting more of this food or less of that. When they looked at areas where people weren't having any synthetic products, any synthetic foods, they found health improvements and they isolated. Well, what food would that be? So they look at brown rice and oh, people who eat a lot of brown rice, they're healthier. So then they'd isolate well what's in the brown bites. So maybe it's the, you know, the thiamin, this certain B vitamin. And then it got narrowed down to where. Well, if it's a thiamine, well we'll just make it synthetically and give it to people and they'll benefit. So chemistry took over and became, for no good reason, became the sine qua non of supplementation. And that's been going on for 40 years.

And so you don't recommend synthetic vitamins at all. Like that would include say whatever, like a Kirkland brand multivitamin or something of that nature.

That's correct. If the little bracket at the end of the thiamine is a chemical, if the B1 bracket, rice powder or rice polish or rose yeast or something as the source or the ones that I'm looking at now are the food sources grown in Saccharomyces cervazes, it's a yeast. But when you grow these yeast in a nutrient broth of a food that's high in a certain vitamin like you grow in citrus, then the little organisms start attaching the citrus as a complex within them. And then at the end of the process, they take these billion, get rid of their cell walls so there's nothing left that's yeasty. And then you have a vitamin C complex product. Because ascorbic acid is just one of the 12 chemicals in a vitamin C complex. And somehow we've been led to believe that if you take ascorbic acid, you're getting vitamin C. Interesting.

Now I'm sure that you go into all this and more when you talk to people in your consulting. Is all that what your Future Health now program is? Because I've seen that on your website and links to, from your articles. You know, when, you know, if I were to come to you and, and do that program, do you walk me through a lot of these concepts that you're talking about?

Yes, it, it's my way of, after 40 years in, in natural medicine, it's, it's giving you the, the nutrition and the lifestyle parameters so you can take responsibility for your own health. It's not a lot about supplements, although I have the seven pillars of health, which Roby Mitchell calls the seven pillows of health pillows to support you. He's so cute. Vitalizing food. Number one, personal care. That's like hygiene aspects, toothpaste, energizing exercises, super nutrients. Number four, living space. Like the electromagnetic smog in your living space, how to deal with that. Sleep, very important. And mind over matter. So all those aspects I cover, but what it is, it's so people can take responsibility for their health. It's so important to get past the brainwashing by the TV medicine, you know, where everyone thinks everything to do with health is life threatening and it makes people think they have no possibility of knowing how their body works. And at this point, I think there's no physical education in schools and no education on health or nutrition. Actually did a sidebar. They tried to do sex education, but just taught young kids how to have sex. So we have to get people back to taking their power for their own health, Take back their power because. And it's not a matter of me. I don't empower people. I think that's a misnomer. You know, you just give people the tools, people, because it's. It's up to them. You know, you are your own God. You are your own doctor. You are. You are in charge of your own universe. So people take responsibility for their health. It's like, well, what I. Should I be encouraged to drink 12 cups of coffee a day and then go to my doctor and expect my doctor to cure me? So when I started studying nutrition and lifestyle in the late 60s, it was, it was just about what you ate and, and how you exercised and how you lived your life. And the past 30 to 40 years, it's become about what supplements you take. I mean, all those, you know, TV ads for resveratrol. And, and the doctors who get, get involved with. Promotes these supplements. And then I saw a recent resveratrol study and they're saying, well, actually, maybe it doesn't work so well. And what will happen is you'll get a study on maybe a pure form of a substance, and it will look just fantastic. In the mice, you know, they do the animal trials. We don't have clinical trials of resistance veritrol on 5000 people to say what it does for their lifespan. Come on. We just, we're taking, we're extrapolating from studies on small organisms in petri dishes or in lab rats. And this extrapolation then gets caught up in the whole industry of supplements and people think, oh, wow, I can undo 50 years of a horrible lifestyle, horrible diet, no natural supplements, and take resveratrol and I'll be fine. Now the placebo effect may kick in and people will give the most brilliant testimonials about how they were benefited. Well, that's just the placebo effect. In maybe 80% of cases, it's not the resveratrol. So you'll get, you know, you'll get this drive of all the placebo effect for the first few months or a year of a supplement, and then it'll just fall off the. Off the bandwidth.

Yeah. I think that's interesting how you talk about empowering people. That's something that, you know, with me as a triathlon coach and a fitness trainer and nutritionist, that's what I do now primarily is I've progressed from having people rely on me and meet with me three or four or five times a week to, you know, basically I just write out plans for people and they come consult with me, you know, maybe once a month. And people are far more successful because they're actually being empowered with the knowledge and learning to take charge for themselves rather than rely on, on somebody or some supplement. Now, a couple of other things I wanted to ask you about. I mentioned your future health now encyclopedia is something that I would consider as a, as a really good companion, I guess you could say, to something like death by modern medicine in terms of.

Again, empowering people with knowledge.

But you also have another new book called how to change your life with magnesium. Now how is that book different than the Magnesium miracle?

Right? Well, the Magnesium miracle was the second edition of a book that I wrote in about 2000. The second edition I wrote in 2006, published early 2007, so it's already about four years old. And since writing that second edition, I found out about Angstrom minerals. And these are minerals that are 100% absorbed at the cellular level. So I put that in the book because I get countless questions about what forms of magnesium to take. A lot of people who take oral magnesium, they can get the laxative effect from it, and that's not good because if you're having more than three bowel movements a day and they're loose, then they can be pulling out nutrients. I go into all the forms of magnesium, how to take them, when to take them, why to take them. Then I put in dozens of miracle stories and answer dozens of questions about taking magnesium. So it's a very consumer oriented someone who wants to consume magnesium. This is what it's all about. Whereas with the book you can go and find research and references, go into all the conditions that magnesium treats. And it's a great read book as well, but people don't have a lot of time. So this is about a quarter the size of the book. And yet speaking of the miracle stories, I even have your story in there, Ben.

Nice, nice. Yeah, I've had just a little bit of success, you could say, by incorporating.

Magnesium into my sports performance protocol.

And actually a lot of my athletes are pretty crazy about it as well.

I know, it's fantastic. And you know, I'd like to get a hold of Apollo Anton Ono and ask him if he's Taking magnesium because it really does enhance performance. Because if you get a muscle cramp and you're sidelined from your event, then how much worse could that be? Whereas muscle cramping, lactic acid buildup, the fatiguing of your muscles, all that can be undone, can be treated by magnesium and prevented by magnesium.

Yeah. Now, so you have this book Death by Modern Medicine that we just talked quite a bit about, but we kind of didn't even scratch the surface of what's in the book. It's about 250 pages long and it is an excellent read. I own the electronic version of that which I read on my computer actually on the plane. And then I've also got the electronic version of how to change your life with magnesium as well as the Future Health now encyclopedia, which, which I keep on my computer. Now I'm gonna put a link to all those books in the show. Notes to this podcast. This is podcast number 82 for those of you listening in and I would highly recommend that you read those. I mean we're talking about literally just, just a few bucks to get your hands on this wealth of information and knowledge from Dr. Dean. And I would say that these are a must have in terms of an addition to your library when it comes to performance and health. And in addition to that, I'm also going to put a link to Dr. Dean's future health now program that you heard me talking about because I think that's, that's worth it for a lot of you who are wanting to take charge of your health. Again, like Dr. Dr. Dean said, not have her take charge of your health, but have her empower you with everything that you need to know to make these changes for you or for your family. Does that about COVID it, Dr. Dean?

Yes. Yeah. What it is with Future Health now.

Is.

You can search the Internet for the. I think it's about 150 different topics on a weekly basis. You can find a lot of information on the Internet but a lot of it is attached to a product or some or another. I don't have any bottom. I'm not pushing raw or heavy meat or. But I talk and I give people ways of understanding how they can incorporate, know what's good for them, know whether or not yeast is good for you. It's about experimenting with your body and I lay it out step by step so that you can find out what's good for you, not what you know, a certain percentage of the population thinks because you can, you can be propagandized into anything But I'd rather people figure out what's good for them and not what's good for a health guru that's imposing it on the population.

Right. All right. Well, we've gone on for quite some time here. I'm sure this is going to be a long podcast, but to those of you listening in, go to the Show Notes for podcast number 82 to learn more about everything that you just heard and read Death by Modern Medicine. I highly recommend it. Dr. Dean, thank you for coming on the call today.

Oh, thank you very much, Ben. It's a lot of fun and as I said, I think you do helping a lot of people and it's just wonderful. Thank you.

All right. Well, thanks. Have a wonderful week.

Wow, folks, one hour and 40 minutes in. We're finally getting close to the end of this week's podcast.

So just a few quick things.

If you like this type of information and you want to check out Carolyn Dean's books, go to the Show Notes for podcast episode number 82.

And they're right there, along with all.

The other information that I talked about on this podcast, including the training camps and training plans over at pacificfit.net the brand new triathlon coach coach section over at rockstartriathlete.com and the body Transformation Club that is starting in March. Please leave us a ranking in itunes. Just go to itunes, do a search for Ben Greenfield Fitness and then go leave a comment. Be nice, please, but leave us a comment. Leave us a ranking. And it really helps the show out quite a bit. So thanks for listening in. And until next time, this is Ben Greenfield signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Sam.

It.