Podcast Episode #84: Chinese Medicine & Why Sugars Don’t Add Up Right on Food Labels

In this podcast episode, an interview with a Chinese herbologist, food labels, how much fat should you be eating, exercise, induced nausea, and more on glycerol.

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, it's Ben Greenfield here in sunny Washington State where it's a glorious, beautiful sun, sunny Tuesday afternoon and all I can do is snub my nose at those of you back east waiting for your snowstorm to arrive. The only consolation being that tomorrow morning I actually have to fly over to New York, so I'll be joining you in your wet and snowy misery. Anyways, though, speaking of snow and misery, I am wearing a band aid on my fingers because I just redid my testing for vitamin D and also at the same time tested for my essential fatty acids, a test that I haven't done yet, but based off of the recommendations from Dr. Cohen, who's been on this show before I got done. So I'm interested to see if I was able to bring my vitamin D levels up using that sublingual spray that I've been implementing, but also interested to see how the essential fatty acid levels measure up on that home test. So what we're going to be doing today is a really interesting interview with a fellow named Roger Drummer, who wrote an article called Are youe Feeding Yourself or your Kids Pink Slime? That was actually on the BenGreenfieldFitness.com website earlier this week. Going to respond to some listener Q and A and go over a few special announcements that you aren't going to want to miss. And one thing I want to warn you about in today's podcast is that during the interview with Roger Drummer, we had a little bit of technical difficulties in a couple of spots. However, the interview still has a ton of good information in it and in the show notes to this podcast podcast episode number 84. I've actually put a link to Roger's radio show because he does a radio show. It's an online radio show. You can download it for free at the website link that I gave you and it takes everything that he talked about today and if you find a shred of interest in any of it, he expounds on all that over on his radio show and has a great title to each show so that you know what you're going to be listening to, whether it be some of the things he talks about, from cholesterol to stress to Chinese herbs, etc. So that being said, let's go ahead and jump right into this week's special announcement.

Special announcements.

Well, for those of you listening in who are part of Ben's Body Transformation Club, you should have received your first mailing of workouts and recipes to your doorstep yesterday, Monday, or possibly today, depending on where you live. And that's going to be a weekly mailing that you'll receive. There's a link to your secret video page on there where I'm demonstrating some of the exercises and also giving you some clarification on the recipes that you'll be receiving. If you're listening in and you're not a part of that Body Transformation Club, it's kind of the way that I, that I've designed a method for me to stay in touch with you, provide you a lot of value, but also not break the bank, so to speak. So for $7 a month, I'm sending out workouts, recipes, and basically giving you kind of that accountability factor, knowing that I'm going to be giving you a new assignment every week, a new recipe to implement into your lifestyle every week. So I'll put a link to that in the show notes to this podcast episode, and I still have room for a few more people. Obviously the sending out postcards to everybody is a little bit of a chore, but I'm still taking on a few more people in that if you want to come and be a part of the Body Transformation Club. In addition to that, if you have ever wondered about how your swim technique looks, if your bike fits properly, if you're running the right way, especially for you triathletes out there, I've got a really cool piece of software that I'm using now that allows anybody anywhere to upload a video to me and then I'm able to look at it, mark it up, draw in angles, put my notes on there, and even do voice annotations or voiceovers on top of your video, talking about my techniques with arrows and pointers, etc. It's a really, really cool new thing that I'm doing and I'm going to put a link to that in the show Notes to this episode. I'm doing it for anybody anywhere. Now in terms of a biomechanical analysis, at this point, I'm only limiting it to swim bike and run. Don't send me your golf swing because I'm probably not the best guy to analyze that for you. But if you send me any of those other variables, as well as any type of weightlifting activities, I am now doing video analysis for all that. And then the final special announcement is that the 2010 Ironman Coeur d' Alene camp that the triathlon camp that I'm teaching from May 16 to May 19 is already starting to fill up. I'm going to put a link to that on the page, but it includes customized race day pacing and nutrition tactics. Every day we're going to be out there in the Ironman Coeur d' Alene course, breaking it down, learning about it, learning how to properly do an ironman. Whether you're doing that race or you have your goal set on something in the future, that will be a fantastic camp. Just about the time leading up to the race that you want to be out there on the course checking it out. That would be for anybody anywhere in the world can come to that camp. And it does include some some special events, including a post ride pizza party at my house on one of those days. So that about wraps it up for this week's special announcements. And one last thing, if you haven't listened to the Fat Loss interview, the special midweek update fat Loss interview from last week, you're missing out. Excuse me? You're missing out. Go read that if you haven't yet. And I'm going to take a sip of coffee here. And we're going to move on to this week's Listener Q and A.

Listener q and a.

Remember, if you have a question, you can send it in to ben@BenGreenfieldFitness.com you can call toll free to 877-209-9439 and record your question and leave it in a voicemail. Or you can Skype using the online voiceover Internet protocol, Skype to username Pacific Fit. So those are all the methods that you could use to ask questions. And the first question this week comes from listener Chris and he says, hi Ben. When I look at nutrition labels, I often notice a big disparity between the sugar content and total carbohydrate. Doesn't the liver basically convert carbs to sugar for the muscles? I guess what I'm ultimately asking is while I'm looking out for the low sugar content in food, should I also be concerned about the total carbohydrate content? If it is significantly higher than just the grams of sugar? This is a great question. This is something that I get a lot, because when you read the label of any nutrition product, if you already know, like Chris does, that sugar is kind of synonymous with carbohydrates, sometimes you may notice that the sugar and the carbohydrates don't quite add up. So, for example, if you look at, say, a diet box of cereal and you see that it's got 42 grams of carbohydrates in it, which would be pretty typical for a box of cereal, and that would be in one serving. We'll talk about servings here in a second. But you see that in addition to that carbohydrate, it has 6 grams of sugar and then maybe 13 grams of dietary fiber. So the dietary fiber and the sugar, which are both carbohydrate sources, add up to 23 grams. But the label says that it's got 42 grams. Well, basically the idea is that if you look at just the sugar, at just the 6 gram part, that includes essentially all of the sugars that they added in to that food. So that could be added sweeteners, from sugar to corn syrup to honey to brown sugar, so on and so forth. Other carbohydrates that they're not listing can include anything from non digestible additives, stabilizers, thickening agents, to any other form of starch, in addition to those added sugars and sweeteners that are present in the product. And so that's where that disparity is between the total carbohydrate listed and the actual sugar content that's listed. Now, you asked about, you know, doesn't it all end up as sugar anyways within the body? Well, it kind of depends. I mean, if you actually are in need of filling up your body's glycogen or storage carbohydrate levels, which most people, especially sedentary population, they're really not in need of that. But if you are in need of that, then, yeah, your liver will help you to take the sugars that you take in and basically package them into long chain sugar molecules called glycogen. And both your muscles and your liver will be able to store storage carbohydrate as glycogen. Otherwise it would end up getting converted in your liver into free fatty acids and essentially fat. And that's why even if you're eating carbs, you can still gain weight, as any of us know. But while we're on the topic of food labels, I do want to kind of have a little bit of A rant here about food labels in general just because there's so many things that you could be misled on when it comes to food labels. And I want to go over a few of them here just so these are fresh on my mind, because these are things I like to bring up to my clients. And I want to bring up because Chris's question reminded me of some of this stuff. So when something says that it's made with whole grains, basically what that means is that whole grains make up some portion of that food. So, like, you can take like a. Like a Keebler cracker. And they say that they use whole grains, but basically they. They're not using very many whole grains at all. They're actually using a caramel color to mimic that brown color so that you really think that it looks healthy. But a lot of times there's not that many whole grains in these foods that are listed as having whole grain content. And the effect on your blood sugar levels a lot of times is very similar to the same as you would get from a white bread source. The other thing is that when you turn around the ingredient label, you look at the ingredient label and it says something like enriched wheat flour, which sounds just great. The problem with that is that we've all been taught that the first ingredient that's listed is the ingredient that a product has the most of. But if you look at, say, like, chocolate cake, an ingredient box for chocolate cake lists enriched wheat flour as its first ingredient. But if you go on down the list, there's a whole bunch of other ingredients that go by other names, like sugar, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, even, like, grape juice concentrate or juice concentrate. And when you add all those up, there's actually more of the sugar in that product than there is of, say, like, the healthy, nutritious wheat flour. So don't think that the first thing or the first ingredient that's labeled on a nutrition label, if it's healthy, means that the product actually contains primarily carbohydrates from that ingredient. Because a lot of times that's not the case. And then the other thing is serving size. I don't know if anybody's been watching the serving size, especially of drinks lately, but a lot of the energy drinks that are out there especially. And even the sodas and, you know, the sobe, the healthy water, quote, unquote, healthy water, all of that stuff now is saying anywhere from two to three servings, sometimes two and a half servings, which is even more confusing. But when you're reading over the label and it says something like, you know, 70 calories. Well, you got to multiply that by 2.5, because really, how often do you buy like a Sobey beverage or a Coke or something of that nature and drink a third of it, set it down and walk away and come back, you know, three hours later for your next meal and drink another third? The majority of people that I know and that I see generally tend to punish most of that in just one serving. So eat cookies, crackers, candies, chips, any of these carbohydrates, because I'm really harping on those. That's what the question was mostly geared towards. They're all going to be something that you want to check out the serving size on. Even if it's a package that looks like it can only feed you in one serving, a lot of time, they're still going to split that into two or three servings. Now, another thing is the real fruit. You take, like, especially snacks for kids like the Gerber Fruit Juice treats. And you look on the front of that and it's just got pictures of oranges and raspberries and cherries and pears and all sorts of fruits just bursting out of the packaging. But then you look at the actual label and it's basically fruit juice concentrate. That's all that's in it, which is just sugar. And Roger Drummer will talk about the problem with sugar later on in his interview on Chinese Herbal Medicine. You can go back and listen to my interview with Nancy Appleton, who wrote the book Suicide by Sugar. But you're not feeding your kids fruit, even if the package has pictures of fruit on it. A lot of these products will even be colored to look like fruit.

Fruit.

And if you turn over the label, a lot of times you'll find especially in the strawberry and the cherry flavored type of things. Red number 40 Artificial coloring Chemical that they put into this stuff to really make it appear to be more like fruit. So a couple other things that you want to look out for when it comes to fats, you'll see that a lot of companies now are writing omega 3 fat switch sources on there. Make sure that even if the label actually says that it's a rich source of omega 3 fatty acids, that you look out for some other risk factors such as trans fats or saturated fats, because just the fact that it has Omega 3 on there doesn't really say anything about the heart health of the product. So make sure that you inspect the nutrition label. Same goes for the trans fats that's another thing that a lot of companies are just slapping on labels to try and tell you that is good for your heart when it can still be bad for your heart. If they've essentially just replaced a lot of those trans fats with other forms of fat, either a bunch of the chemical replacements that are now acceptable substitutes for trans fats, or in some cases, even just high amounts of saturated fats, which, you know, if you've listened to the show in the past, aren't completely bad for you, but are still fats and still need to be consumed in moderation. So be careful with the whole trans fat omega 3 fat kick that a lot of people who package products are getting onto. Just because that doesn't mean that they haven't put a bunch of other potentially harmful compounds into the packaging. Fiber is another one that you want to look for. A lot of times what they're doing to make foods high fiber is they're putting just purified powders into the food. Some of those would include inulin, polydextrose, and maltodextrin. Okay. A lot of those fibers don't have the same effect on lowering blood cholesterol or lowering your blood sugar as the type of fiber that you would get by eating a whole piece of fruit or a whole vegetable. Maltodextrin is typically made from corn or wheat or rice. Polydextrose is made from a mix of glucose and something called sorbitol. Inulin is essentially like a root derivative. But these are all basically just filling agents. They're not the type of fiber that's actually going to help you with the cholesterol issues or with the blood sugar control issues. And just be warned that because it says high fiber doesn't necessarily mean that it is high fiber. So that is my rant. I hope I answered your question. Chris taught you a little bit about carbohydrates, taught you a little bit about food labels. And we're going to move on to the next question, which is from Sophie. And Sophie says, I've been wondering recently if I'm getting too much fat in my diet. Don't get me wrong, I'm primarily eating good fats like nuts, avocados, flax, and whatnot. But if my total calorie intake is kept where it should be, is it possible that getting two many of those calories from good fat is having a negative effect? I am way beyond believing it's as easy as calories in, calories out, because all calories are not created equal. But I Have this funny feeling I may be going into good fat overdose. So would you be able to shed some light on how this could be affecting me? If I'm eating 1200-1700 calories, how much of that should really come from fat? And that's a great question. As we all know, fat's really calorically dense and it's got almost twice as many calories or more than twice as many calories per gram than carbohydrates or protein. So even if you're eating the healthy fats. Yeah, you want to taper intake. You know, the USDA recommendations are 20 to 35% in most of the meal plans that I write and most of the recommendations that I make to my clients, we're generally hitting it a little bit closer to 30 to 35%. Using a lot of the recommendations in terms of the vegetable fats that you already mentioned, and a little bit of the butters and the meats, but primarily avocados, olives, seeds, nuts, things of that nature. So right around in that 30 to 35% range in terms of your total caloric intake is generally about as high as you need to go. And that's the amount of fat that people, like the Mediterranean diet folks, are taking in when they're consuming those high amounts of healthy fats. There's been lots of studies done on athletes to see if a higher fat diet, especially in ultra endurance and endurance athletes, actually helps them perform better. The idea being that because your intensity is taking you up to a stage where you primarily burn fat as a fuel by consuming a high fat diet, you might actually be able to have a performance breakthrough. None of those studies have actually found a benefit for an athlete to switch to like a high fat diet leading up to a race or an event or a competition. So wouldn't worry about going above that 30 to 35%, even if you're getting ready for, you know, something like an Ironman or a marathon. So, great question. The next question is from listener Elsa and she says, why do I want to have a throw up feeling after my weight training session? Well, basically, when you are exercising, what happens is blood gets shunted out of your stomach and more to your muscles and your exercising extremities. So you get a lot of what's called dilation of the vessels that bring blood for everything from cooling to respiration to elimination of byproducts that are building up while you're exercising. But your body can only dilate or open up so many blood vessels before your blood pressure Drops pretty low. If you open up all the fire hoses in your body at once, there's not enough water to go around, there's not enough blood to go around. And so your blood pressure can drop. And that's one thing that can make you feel nauseous is that drop in blood pressure as you're moving all this blood all over your body. It's generally a lot more exaggerated if you've eaten something especially like a protein or a fat based food before you've gone to exercise. So I would make sure that you're not eating too close to your exercise session. You're especially not eating a lot of proteins and fats even for that meal. That's about two hours prior to your exercise session. Primarily carbohydrates. And you know when you, when you're exercising, a lot of that food is just sitting in your stomach anyways. And sometimes your body just kind of has this mechanism where it wants to get rid of it. The other issue would be your vagus nerve. When you feel nauseous, when you want to faint, when to you want, when sometimes you feel like throwing up or you get that cold clammy skin, that's stimulation of your vagus nerve. And when you exercise and you become very acidic, produce a lot of lactic acid. Again, the drop in blood pressure, the reduced blood flow, a lot of that can stimulate the vagus nerve. And that's another thing that can make you want to want to throw up during exercise. So what I would do is if you're really concerned about this and you're monitoring your food intake and you're not going excessively hard during exercise, I would figure out a way to monitor your blood pressure while you're exercising. And there are blood pressure measurement cuffs that you can wear that will actually monitor your blood pressure while you're moving. I would look into doing something like that just to make sure that your blood pressure isn't falling extreme, excessively low. But in most cases for most people, it's just one of those deals where when you're first starting to get fit, it's pretty normal to feel that way. The final thing that I didn't bring up was that if you've been eating a very bad diet and you're just kind of turning that around and making yourself healthy, and you've been consuming a lot of fats, you're overweight and so you're accessing all that adipose tissue. What happens is your body can start store toxins when you've been eating an unclean diet or when you become very heavy and have a lot of adipose tissue and you start to mobilize that while you're exercising, the body stores some of these toxins and fat cells, they get released into the bloodstream. And so not only do you have that lower blood pressure and your body trying to move all this blood around, but you got these toxins that you're attempting to eliminate at the same time. And that can also be an issue when it comes to nausea and a feeling of wanting to vomit during exercise. So great question. And then the final part of our Q and a is not really a question as much as a comment that I wanted to give to you athletes out there because listener Joan said in a podcast you aired a couple weeks ago, you mentioned that you use Hammer Nutrition's Liquid Endurance for hot weather competitions. That of course is a glycerol based product. In Hammer's latest endurance news issue, they note that glycerol has now been prohibited by the World Anti Doping association, so Hamer no longer has liquid endurance available. Okay, so for those of you out there who have heard me recommend glycerol and glycerol equations for hyper hydrating during exposure to hot weather, bear in mind that because those are prohibited by the wada, that's something that you would want to use caution with. And I would definitely contact a race director prior to going to a race to make sure that you wouldn't be DQ'd for using that in a triathlon or running or cycling event. So may have to find other creative ways to stay cool. Alright, we're gonna move on to this week's interview with Roger Drummer. And by the way, Roger talks about this herbal formulation and these adaptogens and how he's figured out basically how to squeeze about 48 pounds of Chinese herbs into some energy compounds. He actually sent me some of the stuff that he makes and I took it on an empty stomach in the morning. It actually really, really works. You know, some energy compounds don't, some do. You know, I'm a big fan of Delta E by Impacts. I'm a big fan of Solar Synergy by Mount Capra. This stuff was a little bit different that Roger sent me. It's a little bit more herbal based. But I would highly recommend if you're looking for kind of that afternoon kick and you haven't found anything that works for you yet, or you're looking for that motivation in the morning and you haven't found something that works for you yet, check out the website Check out the link that I put in the show notes to this podcast, podcast number 84. Order yourself just a couple packets of this stuff that Roger talks about because it works really well. I'd recommend it. I'm blanking on the name. It's called Tanchi Tianchi, something like that. Roger will talk about it towards the end of our interview. So enjoy this talk with Roger Drummer, and forgive me for a couple of the audio hiccups that happened during it.

Featured topic.

Anytime this week, you may have seen an article on there about whether or not you might be feeding your children pink slime. And the author of that article was a fellow named Roger Drummer. And Roger is a diplomat of Chinese herbology. He's a Chinese herbologist. He travels all over the place lecturing on the benefits of Chinese herbs. He's a U.S. patent holder of several different Chinese herbal formulations. And he's got close to 30 years of experience basically formulating personalized herb and nutritional remedies for thousands and thousands of people. I have had the pleasure of hearing Roger speak before and hearing some of his ideas. And what he has to say goes way beyond just telling you what Chinese herbs are all about. And he's going to have some fantastic information for us today about how to enhance our health and how to enhance our performance. So, Roger, thanks for coming on the call today.

Oh, it's great. I'm excited to be here.

Well, we're excited to have you. And I guess the perfect place to start for people who aren't really familiar with Chinese herbology. What exactly is Chinese herbology, or what is a Chinese herbologist, and what's your background? How did you get into this?

Well, I have a certification as a Chinese in Chinese herbology, but basically I'm an herbalist. An herbogist is more someone of a scientist who studies plants. An herbalist who actually takes that is someone who takes that information and applies it to real people. So I'm more the real people guy. Although I do a lot of research on herbs and my background is pretty unique, I'm one of the few probably practicing Chinese herbalists who studied as an apprentice to another herbalist. Most people go to acupuncture school and spend at least five years and then apply to the National Committee that certifies acupuncture and Oriental Medicine.

Gotcha. Gotcha. So, as a Chinese herbologist, what exactly do you do? I mean, what's your day job look like? Or are you primarily just speaking now?

Well, at present time, I'm doing mostly speaking and formulating things for other companies and doing consultations on the phone or doing research work for different companies. I have my own website where I put out health information and I make a few products that I sell. So basically I'm involved with that.

Gotcha. So that's over@askrogerdrummer.com for those of you listening in. So as far as the Chinese herbs go, what exactly are the. Are the classifications of different Chinese herbs, and how would they be used?

Well, it's interesting because Chinese herbal biology only has. Has the only system, really, that's broken up into different classes of herbs. The one mistake that most people make is that they think that all herbs are good for them and they can take them at any time. The reality is that most herbs, in fact, most herbs you find here in the United States and in Europe are medicine. You take them for specific conditions. And inferior was the normal class of herbs that we know about, which is medicine, things you would take to kill something off immediately. In fact, they call them poisons in China because they're meant to kill something that's invaded your body. The next in the history of use of herbs in China, that was meant to just build you up to a state of radiant health. And in fact, the Taoists who came up with this whole system of herbology basically used them as part of their spiritual practice because they lessened their stress, they helped them recover from illnesses, also made them stronger. A lot of them were used just to help with their meditation. So there's a wide range of uses for those types of herbs.

Gotcha. So in addition to the classifications of the different Chinese herbs and how they actually work, on the website you talk about, on your website, askrogerdrummer.com, you talk about three treasures of Chinese herbology. And what exactly are those? How do those kind of form the platform, what you do?

Well, the whole healing art system in China started with the theory of the three treasures. It's about 5,000 years old. And when you look at that, what they're called is jing, or translates as vitality. You have chi, which is energy, shen, which roughly translates to spirit. It's a way of looking at how energy manifests in your body. And if you could bring them into balance, then you have the greatest chance of not only feeling really good, but tapping into your inner self. That was the whole idea in Taoism. And when you translate that over to modern times, what they call jing has to do with your reproductive system, the hormones of your glandular system, and the energy of your mind. And so when you think about that, you know, the whole idea that you conserve, that you live a lifestyle that doesn't wear that out. In Western terms, we'd say try to avoid getting burned out. Make sure that you're actually eating well and sleeping well and not partying so much, because that puts a strain on your adrenals, which are part of that whole Jing system. In fact, it's the most important part, because that's the way you lose most of your energy is adrenal being constantly turned on through stress. In their idea, Jing rules your longevity. The length and quality of your life has to do with the strength of your glandular system. Pretty much the way you look at it here in the west, too, when your glands are functioning really well and they're balanced and they're signaling properly, then you're in your greatest state of health. Your whole system works well because it's almost like the chips in your computer, it's what runs and relays messages. And the whole system works better. Now with Qi, everybody's heard that term, they know that it's energy. But when you look at it physically has to do with how much energy you make on a daily basis, and that's influenced by how well you eat and different exercises you do that involve breathing. One of their big things was light exercises like qigong and tai chi that had more to do with subtle movements. And even though they were pretty hard, a lot of them in qigong, it was more about subtle energy and getting to the point where you could feel you're actually your own energy. So you knew that it exists, and it gave you this almost inspiration to learn more about it and pay attention to it. But the way you should look at it in its simplest form is that you make energy out of the food you eat in the air that you breathe. If you do some breathing exercises, it'll enhance it. If you pay really good attention to the food you eat and eating more nutrient dense food, that it makes it easier for your body to make Qi out of it. And then you have a ready source of energy every single day. But the most important part of that is that when you do it, you don't tap into your adrenals as an energy source. This is one of the big problems in America, is that people are constantly tapping in their adrenals by either skipping meals and drinking too much coffee, or being constantly stressed and using too many things to push themselves through barriers at work. And all these things just continuously tap into your adrenals and you're not using your food as a constant source of energy.

So when you're talking about energy, just to interrupt you real quick, you're talking about more than just calories giving youryour cells the ability toto make your muscles move.

Oh, yeah, we're talking more. Yeah. The energy is involved in every process in Chinese medicine. When you look at it, their whole idea of health is how energy moves around your body. Every organ in your body is involved in it, in the processing of it, how it flows around system. And in their idea of energy, it's all about flow and how it moves around. And that's where the whole acupuncture system came from, was how they can enhance the flow of energy around the bottom. Acupuncture is simply set up to put a needle in a place where it's blocked and another needle in a place where there's not enough energy and running the energy in between. Kind of like having an electrician come over your house to fix a wire that got chewed through in your wall. You're just hooking up electrical energy. So it all goes around the entire bonnet. Now, in that concept, the thing that most disrupts your energy is stress, because that impacts the main organ system around your entire body when you become stressed.

You broke up for just a second there. You said that stress impacts the. What.

Impacts your liver more than anything else.

Okay, gotcha.

When you first experience stress and you tense up, that's a liver issue. Your liver organ and the system that it's part of, which is in Chinese medicine, is connected to your nervous system. When you get stressed and you tense up a bit, your whole body inside tenses and your energy stops flowing. Then when you hold on to attention, then your energy gets stuck, and not as much of it is moving around and nourishing all parts of your body. Again, herbs are used to move that around and to enhance the flow and to wreck energy around the body, but also to make sure that you're not just running out of energy. Now, Shannon, the one we haven't talked about yet, the Shen treasure, had to do with their idea that your heart had more to do with your mind and the way you viewed life than did with your. Than what we think of mind being involved with the brain activity, well, it had more to do with Shen. You're in a radiance that you were born with and how you viewed life and how you move through life and handle stress, determine how much energy you actually had. And so they KNEW, you know, 5,000 years ago, that if you could develop a clear Mind and heart and knew really see into what was really going on in life. You were less stressed, you had less tension and death, and thus you didn't use up so much energy inappropriately. Dealing with stress, and it is the best way to conserve your energy and to have more energy is just to avoid stress because you're not turning your adrenals on continuously and having all these things happen to your digestive system because you're producing too much stress hormone.

So basically, the whole idea behind what you do as a Chinese herbologist is you try to give people energy so that they don't have to stress themselves out. Is that kind of the basic idea?

Right.

It's about giving them. Sure. It's about giving them certain types of herbs which I. Well, they're called adaptogens, which are superior herbs that regulate the stress response. When you use those, people have energy at the same time that they're less stressed. Because an adaptogen will actually regulate how long you stay in a stress response and not get locked into it. And at the same time, it nourishes the glands involved in it. So they just actually work better and it calms your nervous system. When you do that for someone, they have a greater ability to be less tense and stressed when they encounter a stressful situation. And so they don't overreact and lose as much energy. And then when it's over, they have.

A. Oh, go ahead.

When the stressful situation is over because their glandular system resets properly, they don't stay locked into it and lose so much energy inappropriately.

So how would something based on an adaptogen or a Chinese herb work differently in the body to give it energy than like an energy drink, like a Red Bull or a monster or rock star or something like that?

Well, all of those drinks are based on one formula, which was the original Red Bull formula. Almost all of them are the same. They have a little bit of some aminos in it, different things like that, which are basically their aminos they use to calm your nervous system a little bit so you can get more caffeine in your system and not have it over amputee. There's not really much in it that actually provides real energy. It's more of a stimulant. But with Chinese herbs, you get natural energy from your organs and glands and how they affect your body's ability to process energy out of food and out of the air you breathe. How all that feeds into the health of your hormones and your entire nervous system different in that it strengthens Your internal organs. That was how I got into Chinese herbs. I had chronic fatigue. And in their view, chronic fatigue is just your organs and glands have lost their ability to make energy. They're too worn out. So you have to bring the quality of those up before you can experience energy.

So as far as this management of stress thing goes, I've seen that you've said in some of your articles and online that you think that 90% of all diseases that people get are related to stress. Why would you say something like that?

Well, something that's been written about in all kinds of literature and books on herbs and adaptogens and, you know, it's a science based number they come with, but when you look at it and how they come across that, just think about the fact that it plays a huge role in your hormone balance. It affects your memory, your emotional stability. It's a huge cause of depression, it lowers your immune system. It plays a huge role in cardiovascular disease, premature aging, and even substance abuse. The World Health Organization says that mood disorder is a part of stress is right now the fourth major cause of illness and disease in the entire world. And they think it's going to be number two by the year 2020, which is only 10 years off. Now. It plays a role in everything. Just think about the fact that anybody who's stressed, which basically means just about everyone, has impaired digestive function every single time they eat. Their level of stress is affecting how much nutrients they actually extract from their food, how much energy they make out of it, and how well their body utilizes it because of their stress response.

So in addition to the stress response, you say that another issue with people is chronic inflammation. How is chronic inflammation an issue and how is that related to people's health conditions?

Well, because anytime you have chronic inflammation, which means it's just long term, and the source is not exactly identified and it just goes on for a long period of time. Well, chronic inflammation is all about tissue damage and damaged DNA and basically that can break down and lead to any chronic illness. It's now been linked to diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, Alzheimer's, cancer, you name it, it's linked to chronic inflammation. That's why another reason why stress is so such a part of almost every chronic disease, because the main thing that happens in your body physically from chronic stress is inflammation. Excessive stress hormone causes inflammation and it sets up different areas of your body to just be more susceptible to being damaged long term because of the constant inflammation.

Gotcha. Okay, so based off of this concept of stress, being able to manage stress through giving your body the right type of energy and avoiding chronic inflammation. Would you mind if I just kinda ask you about a few different problems that a lot of Americans, lot of people are facing? And I'm curious how a Chinese, her biologist, or how you yourself would respond to some of these issues or health conditions. So one that comes to mind is the blood sugar problem or the diabetes issue. How would you actually go about finding a solution to something like that?

Well, with diabetes in every, you have to have a talk with them about their diet. The main thing you want to emphasize in diabetes is that they go on a low glycemic diet, avoid sugar and different types of fats that cause inflammation, because diabetes is a disease of inflammation. In fact, it's looked at as a disease of rapid aging due to the amount of inflammation that's going on in the body. The first thing you want to do after you talk to them about their diet is get a monster that regulates stress response. Because stress response mimics sitting down, eating a fast food meal with a lot of sugar in it. When you eat a meal like that, your body has an excessive amount of sugar in your system, an excessive amount of toxic fatty acids. More than likely, the food has beneficial fats in it. Mostly rancid oils have been overcooked or rancid animal fats. All these things cause inflammation. Your body is flooded with that. When you have a stress response, it's the exact same thing. Your body releases fatty acids and sugar to prime your muscles up for fight or flight. At the same time, you're already stressed and you're sitting down and you've got an excessive amount that your body's having trouble clearing anyway. Now you sit down and you eat more of them. You have this double whammy of all these things floating through your bloodstream that causes excessive inflammation. Your body is working overtime secreting insulin to try and pack it in your cells, but it can't really do it. Now you start to pack on weight and you have these things floating around your system continuously causing more inflammation. Basically that's one of the reasons why people age so rapidly with diabetes. All neuropathy issues are basically excessive inflammation in your system that's not being controlled properly by nutrition or the antioxidant you have in your cysts.

Interesting. Now you said something kind of interesting as you were talking about that, that you want to avoid the type of fats that could cause inflammation. What type of fats can cause inflammation?

Well, almost all the fats and people Rarely eat complement omega 6 oils. It's not that omega 6 oils are so bad for you if you were eating them in the food that they came from. But most omega 6 oils, things like corn oil and sunflower oil and different things that are normally used in products like the baking of chips, and they're in breads and they're in pastry, and all these different things are hydrogenated. So they've actually been changed to a type of fat that won't go bad right away, but it makes it almost like plastic, and your body can't utilize it. You get that in your system. It causes inflammation right away. But the worst thing it does is it starts to affect your cellular membranes, because your cellular membranes are made from fatty acids and cholesterol, different fats. And if you're always giving your system a bad source of that, then it affects the actual membrane and how they move nutrients in and out of the cell. When you combine that with the inflammation, you're actually choking off all your cells. But that's the predominant type of fat that most people eat. We have this idea that we have to avoid most animal products because they have fat. We have to avoid all fat. It's not actually true. Fat is one of the greatest foods you could ever put in your system if you actually ate good fat. And good fats cut down on inflammation.

Now, what about cholesterol? Wouldn't cholesterol be an issue if you were eating these types of fats?

No, it's not really. The whole cholesterol issue is one of the biggest mistakes, I would have to say, in modern medicine. In fact, that because cholesterol shows up when you have heart disease or you have some sort of damage in your artery, it's considered to be bad for you. They make all these drugs deliver your cholesterol, but that just leads to a whole host of problems. If you actually looked at why you had cholesterol there in the first leg, then you realize cholesterol is not the problem. It's the fact that you're not healthy. So your body is taking too much cholesterol to repair cellular damage, because that's the main function of cholesterol. One of them, cholesterol, is used to make your hormones and to repair cellular membranes and to be able for your body to process vitamin D, your arteries become damaged. And the only way your body can now fix that, it's a secondary measure. It sends out more cholesterol. Cholesterol goes out and kind of glues the back shut and heals the damaged part of your arteries. And. And then things start to stick to it. It wouldn't be there. If you actually ate well enough and had enough nutrients, there wouldn't be anything. Inflammation going on.

Interesting. So when somebody is having heart issues, the cholesterol is there because it's being produced to assist with repair.

Yeah, it's there to repair something as a secondary measure because you didn't have enough nutrients in your system to repair it the right way. It's all about homeostasis. Homeostasis takes vitamins, minerals and all these antioxidants and it repairs your arteries because your arteries are a type of connective tissue. So it needs vitamin C to repair itself. If you don't have it, then it sends more cholesterol out to do the job. The main way to get out of your arteries is to do the same thing. Take more vitamin C and antioxidants and herbs that have flavonoids in it. That type of antioxidant is really good at getting rid of inflammation in your arteries. And then you don't have as much need for cholesterol. When you see your cholesterol go up and you see your ldl, which everybody calls bad, there's nothing wrong with LDL cholesterol. The only reason you have really high levels of it is because you're experiencing cellular damage. So your body makes it to go out to fix it. And then there's another process when it goes back to your liver. If your liver's not working properly because you've been eating too much sugar or drinking too many sugary drinks and too many quick carbos out of, like, flour, white flour, pastas, those types of things, then your liver starts to become fatty and it can't process the cholesterol that's coming. And that is only bad because, again, you don't have enough antioxidants in your system to keep it from going rancid. Because just like any other fat, it doesn't matter if it's sitting on your kitchen counter or it's in your bloodstream. It needs certain preservatives in the form of a fat to keep from going bad.

Interesting. So you've got the diabetes and the high cholesterol issues being linked, you know, from. Sounds like, from what you're saying to a lot different things than, I think, what people would naturally think of. Now, how about some of the things that are going on, you know, inside people's heads, like Alzheimer's and depression and dementia and all these issues. Does Chinese herbology have a. Have a unique approach to Those type of issues.

Well, it does. In the same way they approach everything. They see where your weaknesses are. You try to build it up. The whole link between depression, Alzheimer's and dementia is excessive. Turn into almost like a sponge in your head to where it's just so much more susceptible to damage from all the toxins in your system. Then when you combine that with the fact that people are usually eating some sort of diet that doesn't really, really supply their body with proper nutrients for brain function. Because a lot of Americans start their day out with coffee and a donut or coffee and a bagel and some quick carbo and it's really not what your brain wants in the morning. Your brain needs certain things. Proteins that will give it dopamine and different aminos that will help it make serotonin and all these different things to keep it in balance. And you're not getting it out of your food. So now your brain is deficient. That deficiency slows down neurotransmitter function. It stops with the proper development of your brain. Remember that hippocampus that becomes inflamed is just about the only part of your brain that generates new neurons. You're really playing havoc with your brain when you combine stress and a lack of nutrition. Chiars when they look at any of these conditions, it's all about regulating stress response. Intentions to the because tension is basically just another. Is a different way of saying stress. Too much stress. In fact, if you reach up and grab your shoulders and neck and it's really knotted up, you're guaranteed you have excessive stress hormone. Because that's just the way your physical body is reacting to that lack of energy flow around your system. So it's all interrelated depression is. Has a huge link to excessive stress hormone.

Now when you say excessive stress hormone, are you talking about a specific hormone?

Well, cortisol is the main one.

Okay, so is cortisol just completely 100% bad in the eyes of Chinese herbology, or does it have a place?

Oh, not at all. No, no, not at all. It's wonderful. It's actually really good for you. It's just that because the stress response has changed much from when we originally developed it millions of years ago. You had stress and it was over with quite quickly. So your whole system was set up to just respond quickly, have the stress be over, and then it goes into a relaxed mode and reset. Right. And so nowadays the problem with it and the reason why we have so much excessive cortisol is that we'll Have a stressor, and then an hour later, another stressor, and an hour later or even 15 minutes later, another stressor. And so our body never gets the downtime to reset and clear out excessive hormone. And so our body's constantly flooded with this, and we don't have any way of calming our nervous system completely and having it go into reset. The fact after you've been locked into stress Mode for about 30 days, you basically just end up being locked into it 24 hours a day.

Interesting. Now, how about. There's one other thing I wanted to ask you about, and that's cancer, obviously. Big issue. Tons of money being poured into it. I'm curious what the Chinese herbal approach would be to something like that.

Well, with cancer, again, you're looking at inflammation. The way they approach it. They have a whole. It just depends on the type of cancer. But there's all kinds of herbal formulas. If you went to someone that specialized in that, they were working specifically on your disease. But they also have another way which is really unique to Chinese herbalists looking at it. It's called Fujian therapy. And fujing therapy is basically how you support somebody's life force while it's undergoing radical treatment for disease. Because in China right now, they use a western approach along with herbs at the same time for treating cancer. So you might get chemo and radiation at the same time. You're getting a large dose of herbs two or three times a day. The idea, and what's so different in that approach from our approach here in America, is that they realize that most people die from the treatments that they get because they're so draining and so damaging to their immune system and their basic life force, which is another way to describe jiang, or vitality, that the person's body has no way of recovering from the treatment, and thus they're more susceptible now to the disease itself, or catching pneumonia or a cold and dying. So their whole idea is fujiang therapy is supporting someone's health. And the herbs that they use are actually superior herbs, the same types of things that the adaptogens, the tonic herbs that build your health and maintain your glandular system.

Gotcha. Okay. So kind of related to these diseases that we just talked about, you actually have something that you call deadly habits, and you talk about some of these deadly habits on your website. But what are the deadly habits that you see in people, and what can we do about them?

Well, probably the number one thing is consuming too much sugar. Every single person does it. And it's rare to run into somebody that doesn't do that. And when you look at all the diseases that are related to that, it's quite staggering. And the amount of inflammation that it causes and how it wears the pancreas out, how it just disrupts everything. It ruins your liver's ability to process cholesterol. It leads to heart issues involved with diabetes. It has a lot to do with high blood pressure because again, you already have inflammation in your arteries and the sugar just adds to the inflammation. When you look at also high fructose corn syrup is probably the worst of it then this is kind of the funniest issue in the health field. Back when I got into it in the early 80s, sugar was looked at as something evil. Now actual disrupting your hormones and all these different issues. It's a highly inflammatory chemical. And you look at high fructose corns, basically your liver cannot process it. And so your liver becomes fatty. That's been listed as one of the next two great health crises in America is something they call non alcoholic fatty liver syndrome. So the liver is actually becoming just like an alcoholic's liver, only they don't drink alcohol. It's mostly overconsumption of high fructose corn syrup. Then the second greatest, the other great crisis is dialysis. Kidney function is going later in life. That's just a biggie. Most people don't realize that one or two cans of soda they drink every day not only leads to because of the way your body has to work overtime to actually deal with that much acid and that much sugar.

So.

And then probably some of the other.

You broke up for just a second there. You said they don't realize that the one or two cans of soda that they drink a day are doing what.

That may be putting them in a position to get all of those diseases we've talked about so far, but also things like osteoporosis related to it. Because of the amount of acid in soda and the sugar response, your body has to have a natural response to that amount of acid in sugar or it will damage your body immediately. To keep that from happening, it has to buffer that. And that buffering solution that the body makes has a lot of the minerals it uses comes from your skeletal system. Every single time you drink one, you're going to weaken your skeletal system somewhat. Unless you're eating an almost perfect diet full of trace minerals and different minerals that you need every day, you're not going to be able to buffer that amount of acid in your system.

Gotcha. Now what about the like a diet soda or an artificially sweetened soda.

I think those are actually worse because now you're taking something in it that's considered to be a neurotoxin, something that excites your neurons to death almost immediately. And you're causing brain damage every single time you drink one. It does suck into your liver, which makes you actually crave sweet foods more. There's all kinds of studies that show that drinking things with aspartame in it doesn't have any effect as far as being part of a diet program. In fact, it's one of the sweet that most doctors recommend for diabetics and it's directly linked to causing diabetic retinopathy. So it damages your eyes immediately. In fact, in most laboratories, when they want to destroy the retina in your eye, they'll just give rats aspartame or Tylenol because both of them work really well doing it.

Dr. Wow. So you've got sugar and you got artificial sweeteners. Are there any other deadly habits that you wanted to talk about?

Sure. Like snack food is one of the biggies. This is interesting because of the whole we always hear about the French paradox and heart disease and how to eat all these fatty foods. But what you realize if you've ever been over there, they hardly ever eat snack food. You don't walk around and find people walking around with bags of chips and all these different things that they're always munching on. Basically they're sitting down to most of their meals and having a wide variety of foods. They have a lot of cheeses and all this stuff. But that's historically how people ate was having a larger amount of fat in their diet and not too much sugar. That sugary types of food is something that's only been around for a few hundred years. And the body is meant to processed fat. So it has a whole different effect. Now when you look at modern foods, snack foods like potato chips, hardly anybody realizes that a potato chip, one serving of it has 400 times the legal limit of a carcinogen in it called acrylamide. Every time you eat one serving of it, you're getting that huge dose of cancer causing chemicals. Yet people do that normally at least twice a day. They can't have a sandwich without potato chips or french fries, which have the same exact amount in it. They can't sit down and have any type of meal when they're working without having chips or french fries with it. Every single day they pile in some carcinogens and their whole body has to Work overtime to match that with nutrition, prevent cellular damage. You waste so much of your body's energy just dealing with what you sat down and ate at lunch. That's one of the worst habits. Then combine that with lack of sleep, exercise, people aren't drinking clean water. All those basic things all put your body under stress. When you add that to emotional stress, then your whole system is working overtime to try and balance out these excessive responses.

What do you mean people aren't drinking clean water?

Well, you know, you'd be surprised. I thought this was an eye opener for me. I thought years ago when I was, you know, I've been in the health field for so long, I just assumed most people I knew drank water. You know, they either had filtered water at home or they, you know, they bought filtered water, they had some supply of it. It turns out I just started to pay attention to the fact that most people have not even figured out yet that tap water is so bad for them or that it has a negative impact on their health. And when you look at all the chemicals in it, it's pretty mind blowing that the chemicals they add to water to make it safe to drink. Which by the way, even though I'm going to say the United States does have the best water system in the entire world and they have to put the chemicals in it because that water that you're drinking, over half of it has already been drank by somebody else and it's been through the septic system. So you can't basically put it back in your house without putting chemicals in it. But they add fluoride, aluminum chloride and then you have chloride byproducts. All of them damage your arteries and they've all been linked with brain damage. And so you're causing an excessive amount of inflammation all throughout your vascular system, just every single day that you drink tap water. Yet most people don't realize that and they use it for cooking their food. And we're just going to concentrate the minerals in it and the byproduct. And so it's a huge source for a lot of people of toxic chemicals that again cause inflammation.

Now, have you ever worked with any athletes or done anything in the realm of sports performance and its relationship to Chinese herbology?

I have, it's been a while because I haven't been in private practice so much in the last few years. But the way you look at it is basically just giving them something that strengthens again jing, which is their glandular system, and that has an effect on how they recover from a workout. They recover from a meet or whatever event they're having. A lot of it depends on how your adrenals and your glandular system resets after the event. Again, a heavy physical exertion is another type of stress response, but in a healthy person, it actually resets quite easily. You assist them with different herbs to not only make sure their adrenals go back to reset function right away, but you give them things that increase their depth of breathing. Adaptogenic herbs oxygenate the blood. All these different things have an effect on how much endurance they have and how they recover.

Now when somebody hears this and they want to incorporate, they hear about these diseases that are related to stress and influence inflammation. And then your three energy sources that you talk about, that kind of base, the foundation of Chinese medicine and having those all aligned properly. I mean, is this something where somebody can just go buy a bunch of herbs and mix them in a bowl in their kitchen or. I mean, how does somebody actually go about taking advantage of some of the concepts that we talked about today?

Well, there's a few ways. I have a website where I sell a drink that's based on adaptogenic herbs and shutting off stress hormone and feeding your brain. You could also go see a Chinese herbalist and hope that they actually know about it. A lot of herbalists just practice medicine. You have to be able to find one that is more up to date on how the modern uses of different herbs, specifically adaptogens. Because adaptogens are really, I think, the perfect herbal tonic for what's going on today in the country. Because they have to do with loss of energy, preventing stress, recovery from stress. They're probably the most life giving herbs you could ever take. We look at modern lifestyle.

Now. You said that you have a drink that you formulated. Is that that T and Chi that's on your website?

Yes, it's TNT. In fact, the website that is trytiancnow.com Try TNT Now.

And so that basically incorporates all these adaptogens and things that you talked about today.

It's based on adaptogenic herbs and slowing down the stress response and actually re establishing proper stress response. And then also it has an array of nutrients that directly feed your brain. Because so much of the issues with things like dementia, loss of memory, depression have to do with the fact that you're not eating well, so your brain is not getting nutrients. And then stress is constantly causing damage to your brain. So it has a whole phase of nutrients in it to feed your brain. You alert, you can pay attention, you can focus on things like that.

Gotcha. Okay, I'm going to put a link to that in the show notes to this as well as a link to your askrogerdrummer.com site. We obviously just scratched the surface of some of the advantages of incorporating Chinese herbology and I would love to hear some of the listener responses to this interview and maybe even get you back on the show at a later date to actually talk about any of the comments or questions that listeners might have. But I want to thank you for coming on today, Roger, and filling us in on Chinese herbology and the whole stress inflammation concept.

Well, I was glad to do it. I'd love to come back anytime you want to do it. Doctor.

Alright, well, fantastic. Have a great day. And this is Ben Greenfield and Roger Drummer signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Alright folks, well that about wraps up this week's podcast. Remember, if you're a triathlete and you want to get in on that Ironman Coeur d' Alene camp, check it out. May 16th through 19th, go to the show notes. For this episode, my body Transformation Club. All you have to do is again, go to the show notes. I've got a little place there. You can click Join the body Transformation club and you'll get added right away and you'll be on the next mail out. And then finally check out the fat loss interview that we did last week with Darren Steen. That was still, I think, just a great interview that you should listen into. All right, I think that's it. Let's go ahead and wrap things up. And I want to remind you to please go over to itunes and leave a ranking if you enjoyed this podcast. If you like this type of information, it always helps the podcast out when you leave a ranking when you leave a comment. And I thought it was really cool. The podcast actually was showing up on the front page of itunes the other day. So that was kind of neat to see that when you guys go in and leave rankings, the folks over at itunes, the mysterious folks up in the itunes sky, they actually notice and they help the podcast out. So check that out out. You can link over it to rank us in itunes in the link that I put in the show notes, this podcast podcast number 84. Until next time, over and out. This is Ben Greenfield.

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