Podcast Episode #88: Are You Eating Dead Food?

In this podcast episode. What is living Fuel? What to do if you're a female with too much muscle mass? Body bugs versus Heart rate monitors where to ride your bike when you don't have room to train? Is too much exercise a bad thing? How to use electrolytes Compression socks versus Compression tights the egoscue method of pain management do smoothies destroy your food? The best protein for women do expand a lungs work and a good substitute for for hamburger patties.

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

Foreign. Hey podcast listeners. It's Ben Greenfield on a beautiful Wednesday afternoon. Just got back from Miami, Florida yesterday doing a few things for the Rockstar Triathlete Academy, the online triathlon school I run over at rockstartriathlete.com check that out if you haven't been over there yet, but we have, if you hadn't guessed from the announcements, quite a bit of activity in today's podcast. We're not going to waste a lot of time jumping right into it. In addition to some really unique questions that might have been influenced by my threat to give anybody who asked the best question a free month of membership to my Body Transformation Club, we have an interview with Casey Kreischy from Living Fuel. And if you don't know about Living Fuel, you'll know all about it after you listen to the interview with Casey. It's pretty interesting stuff and something I've been starting to implement. So sit back and enjoy another issue of the Ben greenfieldfitness.com podcast.

Special Announcements.

I noticed that a bunch of you are already members of the VIP Text Club. And remember, if you have a phone and you want to get on board now, remember, phones are kind of the wave of the future. A lot of young people don't really even use email that much. They use phone, they use text. And so it's going to be taking over the world. And one of the things that you need to realize is that in the very near future you could be consuming most of your information via your phone. And that includes your health, your fitness, your diet, your nutrition information. Imagine if sometime in the near future you're at the grocery store and you were able to get text messages telling you which foods would be most healthy to buy. Those are the type of things, the type of technology that I'm going to try and stay on the cutting edge of@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and if you want to be a part of that, then you got to get your cell phone and your text messaging on board. Pretty easy to do if you already have a phone. Just text the word Fitness to 411247 as is as in information 24 7. So text the word Fitness to 411247 to get onto my VIP text club. Or if you don't have a phone set up for text messaging, but you do have a cell phone and you think you might be interested in doing something like this in the future, go to the Show Notes for this podcast, podcast number 88. Put your information right there in the cool little form I have in the Show Notes of this podcast will be ahead of the game for when we start using technology to enhance your fitness. So again, you can text Fitness to 411247 or you can go to the Show Notes for podcast number 88. Check that out. The triathlon camp that I'm teaching to beginner, intermediate and advanced half ironman and Ironman triathletes in May. It's filling up May 16th through May 19th. Definitely get on board if that's something that you want to do. All the information is right there on the show notes for Podcast 88 and REM Local in the Spokane or Coeur d' Alene area. There's also a free Coeur d' alene clinic on April 8, and that's going to be at 6pm over at a place called Pilgrim's Market in Coeur d', Alene, Idaho. Lastly, like I said, if you want to get a free month from the Body Transformation Club, be sure that you ask a question. And what I'm going to do is actually be mailing you for an entire month. Nutrition tips, fitness tricks, access to a secret video page, Having a lot of fun in the Body Transformation Club. I am a member of my own Transformation Club. I'm getting my own mailings that I send out and basically putting them all into a big folder and keeping them and kind of making myself my own fitness and nutrition folder with my own mailings. And I show everybody in the club how to do that over at the Body Transformation Club. And you can check that out in the Show Notes as well. Now, the last thing is, I found a really interesting announcement today that I wanted to let you know about. You may have heard me Talk about miracle noodles before on this show. And those are those carb free, fat free, gluten free, essentially everything, free fiber based noodles. And you get them from miraclenoodles.com or you go do a search for miracle noodles@bengreenfieldfitness.com But I got an email from Organization, a global TV organization in Toronto and they want to know if anybody in the Greater Toronto area eats Miracle noodles, uses Miracle noodles. So if you're a listener and you live in the Greater Toronto area and you like or you use miracle noodles and you want to get on TV and be famous, get your 15 minutes of fame talking about miracle noodles, then let global TV know. How do you let them know? Shoot me an email and I'll forward it on for you. So my email address is ben greenfieldfitness.com so if you're a Miracle noodle fan, let me know if you live in the Toronto area. And if you don't know what miracle noodles are, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and when you're there do a search for miracle noodles. So let's go ahead and move on to this week's jam packed as usual, listener Q and A.

Listener q and a.

All right, so remember, if you have a question, you can call 877-209-9439. You can Skype. If you're international, you can Skype at Pacific Fit. That's the username that you want to Skype to. Or you can email ben greenfieldfitness.com and the first question is from listener Julia. And Julia says, I have a question you've probably not been asked before. I am a top age group female triathlete, age 56, who's been competing for 21 years. I've done 11 Ironmans, including four Hawaii Ironmans. Dang, girl. I'm very strong on the swim and the bike, but my running is slow due to what I think is excessive muscle mass and a knee issue. My body fat varies between 18 and 19%. How can I lose muscle mass? They say it around 35 years of age you start losing muscle mass while I'm still waiting. How can I lose muscle mass besides starving? Because then I would not be able to train for the eight to 10 triathlons I do a season. I do not eat excessive protein or take anything that would beef me up. People constantly comment on my muscles and I do not lift weights. Great question, Julia. It is very possible for both males and females to have what's called mesomorphic bodies. You tend to Be very athletic, you put on muscle mass. You just tend to have genetically that body type. Okay, first of all, let me say that it doesn't sound like you're suffering from an athletic standpoint with the body that, that you've been blessed with. So the first thing that I would not be doing is comparing yourself to skinny, lean females who are that way genetically. They can't help it. You can't help it either to a certain extent, in terms of the density of your muscle fibers and the amount of muscle that you have. However, it is possible to cannibalize your own lean muscle mass. And I want to make that evident to you because that is what you're going to be doing. If you use some of the recommendations I'm about to give you, you will be cannibalizing lean to muscle mass. Well, you guys know that one of my recommendations for leaning up, for losing fat is to wake up in a fasted state and do some light exercise. Nothing too catabolic, nothing that's going to break down the muscle too much. Nothing like a two hour workout or a hard and heavy workout with intervals, but just kind of a long or even a short, slow, easy, fat burning session. That's the time that, that fits in for you. Julia, I'm going to actually recommend that you take that to another level. You get up in the morning, fasted and you do intervals. Okay? You don't have to do weightlifting, but you do cardiovascular intervals. You do hard, intense work. You do some of your long workouts minimally fueled, you know, 100 calories an hour. Waking up in the morning on an empty stomach for a three hour bike ride. Okay? The type of things where you're still working on fitness, but you're also slowly starting to eat up your own muscle mass. Okay. I do not condone this. You're asking me? It's not something that I would do if I were you. Because you will lose muscle as you age, as you mentioned. And I think that it could come back to hurt you when you're 65, 70 years old and you're starting to really lose a lot of strength and a lot of muscular endurance. That's because you cannibalize your lean muscle mass between the ages of 55 and 60. But that's one of the things that you'd want to do. The next thing that you'd want to do is kind of lower the protein intake a little bit and up the carb intake, up the glycogen intake. So what we're talking about is Eating closer to a 60 to 70% healthy carbohydrate diet from whole grains like quinoa and amaranth and millet fruits, melons, vegetables, things of that nature, and actually bringing down the protein intake a little bit. Again to starve your muscle to wear away some of your muscle mass. The other thing that I would do and again kind of flies in the face of what I typically recommend. But I do lots of long, slow, easy cardio and not very many intervals that you don't get. The hormonal release that occurs, the testosterone release that occurs when you do harder intervals, when you do more of the intense versus the aerobic fat burning. So you kind of got to redesign your whole program. If you are going to do a lot of those intervals, do them starved so you're not able to go very hard and so you're wearing away your lean muscle and then do lots of long, slow fat burning efforts. You're right. Not a question that I typically get, but that's the way that you would want to go about doing it. And again, I'm going to emphasize this point. I don't recommend that. But hey, it's your body you ask. So. Question from listener Patricia. She says, I need your help. I am so confused. I'm a female, 5 foot 7, 160 pounds. I'm trying hard to lose weight, but I'm really struggling in this department. I've been focused since November and even though I've run three marathons in three months, bike long rides every weekend, run, swim and weight train during the week and eat moderately well, I have not lost a single pound. I've gotten a local personal trainer to help me with muscle gain to aid towards this goal. And recently she lent me a bodybug device. My polar heart rate monitor has been indicating I burn approximately 10 calories per minute during moderate to intense exercise. Well, I wore the body bug for a 70 mile bike ride, windy and hilly, and while I didn't hammer it, I was working pretty hard. That took about four hours. And the body bug says I only burned 1200 calories, but. But according to my heart rate monitor, I burned 2,400 calories. That's a big difference. No wonder I can't accomplish any progress. My trainer says welcome to the reality of calorie burn and that body bugs are much more accurate because they use body heat. My question is, what is your input on the difference between the two and what should I trust? And then she also follows up and says that when she runs, the body bug is A lot closer to the heart rate monitor in terms of what it's telling her she's burning versus when she bicycles and then finishes up, hopefully confused and quite frustrated. Okay, so there is kind of a debate between the heart rate monitors and the body bug heart rate monitor. What happens is it counts the number of beats and the amount of time between beats. And there is an equation that the heart rate monitor uses to approximate the number of calories that you've burnt. And they can typically be accurate. And some are accurate. They can vary by up to about 16% in terms of their accuracy. Okay, the body bug doesn't measure your heart rate. The body bug measures a few different things. It measures, measures motion. So it's got what's called an accelerometer in there and measures changes in direction, changes in speed, measures the heat flux in terms of the amount of heat that your body's giving off. And the body bug is basically just a device that you wear on your body. It can measure your skin response and more specifically, something called your galvanic skin response, your skin conductivity. So it can basically measure the amount of stimuli to exercise, stress, the amount of sweat due to physical exertion, those type of things. And then finally, it'll measure your skin temperature. And the body bugs are fairly accurate too. There's a lot of people that have success with a body bug. I believe that is the preferred measurement tool that they use on the Biggest Loser as well. And as far as accuracy, there's a lot of variations in what you'll find out there in research in terms of whether the heart rate monitors or the body bugs are more accurate. A couple of things that I would wonder is, is your heart rate monitor actually measuring your heart rate beats accurately, or if it is over exaggerating the number of calories that you burnt, is it actually counting too many beats? Some heart rate monitors will go nutty every once in a while until, you know, if you happen to look down, you might notice that they're saying you're doing 220 beats per minute, which is unlikely. So I would question the accuracy of the actual heart rate monitor. Now, at the same time, some of the numbers that you're throwing out there for a 70 mile bike ride, 2,400 calories is probably closer to the number of calories you burnt versus the 1200 calories that the body bug is telling you that you burnt. So it's really a little bit foggy. Here is what you can do. You need to get what's called indirect calorimetry okay? You need to go to an exercise physiology lab at your local university or a metabolic laboratory, and you need to actually have them hook up a gas mask to you and measure the amount of oxygen you consume, the amount of carbon dioxide you produce. And that gives you a laboratory accurate measurement of the number of calories that you're burning at every different heart rate, okay? And every different speed and every different intensity. And then you go out and you measure those numbers up to what your body bug's giving you and what your heart rate monitor is giving you. And then you choose the one that's most accurate. But I'm not going to finish there because when you write me and I can tell this a lot of time, and I've been doing this for a decade, helping people lose weight, and you're telling me about all these things that you're doing and the way that you're writing, you're frustrated, you're confused, you sound stressed. Be careful. You're probably a very kind of cortisol personality. You tend to be stressed. You, you tend to get a net acidic load due to that cortisol and stress. You tend to retain water, you tend to retain fat when your body is in a non alkalinic state. And you tend to be very resistant to weight loss when you are not relaxed, when you are not in control of your emotions, when you are letting something like a weight loss plateau stress you out. One of the most important things that you can do if you are at a weight loss plateau is not to freak out, to take a deep breath, to analyze your life, Take control of what you can take control of and basically make some changes, but don't let anything stress you out. Okay? If you're going this way and going that way and exercising and exercising and exercising and starving and stressing your body out, getting net acid load, fat gain, water, weight retention, returning to that cycle over and over again the next day. A lot of times you are overdoing it more than underdoing it. Okay? Overdoing the calorie burn more than under doing the calorie burn. When your body is doing this, I see it happen all the time. It's a big problem, especially in triathletes, endurance athletes, who are working out all the time. And then you say you eat moderately well. I would recommend that you look into a highly alkalinic diet. Cut any acidity from stress, cut any acidity from sugar consumption and grain consumption. Let go. Read some books that will really help you, help you relax and have a little Bit more stress free personality. You know, I'm just gonna say this one not because I think is the best book on the planet, but because I just finished it. The Magic of Thinking Big. Great book to help out your personality and help out your life. So that's what I would recommend. Patricia the other thing that can really help is relaxation tapes, CDs. There's one CD called the I Am Seminar. It's very good. Google it. The I Am Seminar. And that's again something that can really help you get a little bit more relaxed when stuff like this is stressing you out. So great question. And the next question is from listener John. Oh, and by the way you guys, just so you know, I will be announcing which one of these questions won't the entry to the Body Transformation Club at the end of the Q and A. So listen in. John says, while it is fresh in my mind, I was wondering if at some point you could give us an idea on training in a city that is not friendly to bikes. This weekend we had a car hit someone riding in a large group of cyclists while obeying traffic laws. In Tennessee. We've passed cycling laws, but they don't seem to be getting through to motorists. What are your ideas on how to train when it's not safe to ride all over town? Some of my thoughts much more training on a trainer or roller finding a short loop in a park. I want to improve my skills on a bike, but I want to be safe also. Great question, John. I'll tell you exactly what I do, exactly what I do when I have this issue, okay? Realize that you need the equivalent of about a mile, a mile long stretch of road to get a good bike workout. That's all you need. I have one workout that I do on a quarter mile stretch of road by my house. Okay? What I do is a five minute warm up, riding some loops back and forth and then I go out and I do 20 standing sprints, each one separated by a seated spin back down that quarter mile to my starting location. I have a very similar workout that I do on a hill near my house where it's just up and down the hill. Hill repeats, okay, so you don't have to do a full on ride. The indoor trainer works very well. I use one called a Kirk Kinetic Road Trainer. A computrainer, if you can afford one, is really great because then you can get videos that are actually real videos and the resistance on the computrainer changes as you watch that video and so it's really one of the closest things you can get to riding outdoors, doing a loop in a park, you can do that too. But if you do that, I'd recommend to, if you want to spice it up a little bit, if you can splurge and get like a 500 to $700 cyclocross bike or even a mountain bike, then you'll be able to do some off road, have some fun and kind of get off the road. I have a cyclocross bike that I kept down at my office for a while and now I keep it at my house. And it's what I use when I want to ride short because that allows me to go off road to kind of switch it up a little bit, a little bit more rolling resistance so you get a better workout in a shorter period of time. So those are my recommendations. It is very hard to ride in a city that's not friendly to bikes. I agree with. I've been there before and I've used some of the strategies that I just laid out. The next question is from listener Mandy. And Mandy says, my husband is reluctant to get into endurance sports because he read an interview with Dr. Ken Cooper that said that the free radicals produced by heavy endurance training cause all sorts of diseases from heart disease to cancer to virtually everything else. What is your take that. Okay, this is a great question because the idea is that when you exercise it produces something called oxidative stress. Alright. Skeletal muscle when it's contracting increases the rate of oxygen that you use during that contraction. Anytime you're using more oxygen, there's a lot of little biochemical changes that occur at that muscular level. Specifically an increase in, in the activity of the antioxidant enzymes because of the free radicals, little free electrons that are being circulated as you use that oxygen to produce energy. Okay. There is a significant increase in free radical production that occurs when you exercise. In addition, there have been studies that have looked at ultra endurance athletes and when they look at ultra endurance exercise training, one study foundation found that the increase in oxidative stress, all those free radicals that were being produced, could actually contribute to the development of atherosclerosis. Because what happens is when you've got enough of that oxidation going on, enough of that production of free radicals, it can actually oxidize some of your cholesterol. And anybody that knows much about heart disease has heard that term oxidized cholesterol thrown around because that's the worst thing you can do for your heart is have oxidized cholesterol. Sugar can cause you to oxidize cholesterol. So can heavy, heavy amounts of exercise. Now, I remember when Mandy first asked me this question, I wrote back to her and I said, well, you know, technically your husband is right, because really, ideal exercise scenario, we're kind of staying active during the day. We're farming, we're walking, we're moving, and then maybe every now and again, we're running really fast from a lion. And that would actually be kind of the ideal scenario because you don't produce a lot of free radicals, but you're still moving, circulating blood, circulating lymph fluid, and basically doing what the body was designed to do. But now when we sit around all day and we're at our computers or whatever and we get up, we want to exercise hard. And exercising hard like that does produce a lot of free radicals. You know, I do know people that are farmers, that are ranchers, and they look great and feel great, and they don't have to exercise at all just because they are kind of getting the same amount of physical activity that people who exercise do, but they're not doing it in such a high intensity state. Now, that being said, some amount of free radical production is okay. And this returns to something I talked about a couple weeks ago, the idea that you don't want to always be taking high, high levels of antioxidants, because when your body produces free radicals like it does when you're exercising, or like it does when you're mildly stressed, then your body responds by increasing in its ability to handle stress. In other words, you grow a harder shell, so to speak. Your body ends up being able to recover faster. You end up being able to produce your inflammatory response just a little bit quicker. You end up being able to repair and recover muscle tissue just a little bit faster. And there's all sorts of cool things that happen when you exercise. And that's kind of one of the ways that exercise makes you fit and can also help you to live longer is because you actually get this stress response, bounce back, get stronger effect. And as long as you allow the bouncing back and the getting stronger to occur, that exercise is actually pretty good for you. You just have to find that fine line. Too much exercise, as the study showed, with the oxidation of the cholesterol, can be a bad thing. I do think people overdo it. You do see people, they look like they're prematurely aging, wrinkled skin. You do see people, you know, even athletes sometimes dropping dead of heart attacks. You see people look like they're constantly run down. Okay, that's not all that great. That's one of the reasons that I'm kind of into the whole, you know, low volume, high intensity training scenario where you're staying pretty active during the day, you're feeding yourself well, and then every once in a while you're going out and doing a real, real hard workout that invigorates the body and then allowing yourself to relax and recover. So, Amanda, your husband is right to kind of wrap this up to a certain extent, and he's wrong to a certain extent because it just depends on how you define heavy endurance training. If you're listening to this and you're like, I'm not going to exercise an hour a day because Ben said it can cause atherosclerosis. No, no, no. I'm talking about people who are going out there, you know, two, three, four hours a day, ultra endurance athletes. I mean, these are people running, you know, multiple dozens of miles per week. Those are the type of things that can be a little bit damaging that I would recommend that you be real careful with.

Right.

But it's your body, it's your life. I mean, if you know that's dangerous, but you enjoy it, you get a rush out of it, that's fine. That's your call. I'm not, I'm not saying that that's morally wrong. I'm just saying that that, that free radical production could hurt you a little bit. So. Great question. Listener Chad asks, I was wondering what your recommendations are for taking salt tablets while racing. I've read where you can just take them orally and your body will know when to spit them out. How does this affect your overall health long term? I fall flat after about three to three and a half hours of training or racing, no matter what or how much I ingest for fuel. All of the symptoms that are said to come from low sodium, I feel at that point. So I know I need it, but would really like to know the healthiest way to get it. Great question, Chad. Basically, the idea when you say that your body knows when to spit salts out if you take in too much, it's true to. It's not really necessarily true to a certain extent. What you're talking about is what's called the aldosterone mechanism. And that's a hormone that your body produces and essentially it's a blood pressure regulating hormone. And there's two things that happen when you begin to lose too much salt, to sweat too much salt out. And the first thing that happens is your body produces something called adh, which is an antidiuretic hormone. And whereas a diuretic is going to make you lose water, the antidiuretic hormone, which is also known as vasopressin, that's going to make you retain water. And the reason for that is when you're losing a lot of salt, when you're sweating a lot, what else are you losing? You're losing water, okay? And so your body has to actually retain more water. So you produce that vasopressin, that adh, and that's what that helps you to do. Then you produce something else called aldosterone. And what aldosterone does is it actually helps your kidneys to lose less sodium, okay? So not only are you starting to lose less fluids, but you're also starting to lose less sodium. And this delicate balance between the aldosterone and the vasopressin or the antidiuretic, the ADH hormone, that's how your body responds sensitively to salt and water loss. And that's the reason that when you're sweating a lot, you don't actually have to replace all of the salt that you're losing. And in fact, most of the research, and specifically the research done by a fellow named Tim Noakes down in South Africa, suggests that it's right around 30, 30 or 40% in terms of what the human body actually loses in terms of electrolytes compared to what it actually needs to replace. Now, really fit people, if we're just talking about, like, sodium, really fit people tend to lose about 1 1/2 to 2 grams of sodium an hour. People who aren't fit, who really, their bodies aren't acclimatized to sweat loss, they tend to lose a lot more, okay? They'll tend to lose closer to 3 to 4 grams of sodium per hour, and they'll lose a higher amount of all the other electrolytes per hour, too. So either way you're looking at it, you got to put those back in or else your body loses the ability to produce a muscular contraction. And when you're looking at the type of salts that you want to put in, a couple of things you want to. You want to think about is, first, it's not just sodium that you want, okay? Because there are a host of electrolytes that are responsible for. For keeping your muscles at their optimum amount of contractility. So in addition to sodium, you're looking at wanting to get calcium. Magnesium, as you've heard, if you've listened to this podcast at all, is very important. Chloride is another important one. And the other thing Potassium would be the last one. Potassium you'd also want to look at. But basically a chelated electrolyte is a lot better too, because they tend to provide for greater absorption. What that means is they're actually tied typically to an amino acid to make them a little bit more bioavailable. Now I use something called Athletes from a company called millennium sports, and two of those athletes are going to give me about 350 milligrams of sodium an hour, which for me is about 15 to 20% of what I'm losing. So I'll take about four of those athletes every hour and I'll typically do two every 30 minutes. So I get those from a company called Millennium Sports. If you're an athlete that I coach and you're listening in, you know, you get 45% discount on those. So you essentially get them at cost. But either way, they're relatively inexpensive anyways, they're@millionsport.net and the athletes would be the way to go if you took four, four of those an hour. That's why I tell most of the guys that I work with to take most of the females I tell to take about two to three per hour. That'll help you out quite a bit in terms of keeping your sodium levels topped off. Now, the last thing I want to leave you with is that in most cases when people tell me what you've just told me that you start to crash at three to three and a half hours no matter what or how much you ingest for fuel. Typically, yeah. I look at salt and hydration, it's off a little bit, but then I look at fuel and it's also way lower than what somebody thinks they should be getting. All right. I mean, heck, during Ironman, I'm up around 350 to 400 calories an hour, and a lot of times that's what you need to keep you rocking and rolling. So really experiment with that fuel, even if you think you're getting enough. Chad. So great question. The next question is from listener Chuck, and Chuck says you've talked about the benefits and science of wearing compression socks. Would wearing compression tights have a similar effect or are the socks designed differently? I have Under Armour tights and I'm curious if I would get benefit out of wearing these or not. All right, great question, Chuck. And the idea behind the compression socks is there's been a ton of different research studies that have found them to probably be helpful for muscle recovery. Okay. And a lot of the initial use of these socks was in people with poor blood circulation in their legs, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, those type of things. And then athletes started using them for recovery, and then athletes started using them for performance. And the manufacturers claim that the compression socks can help to optimize the blood flow, reduce fatigue, prevent injury, help remove lactic acid, help decrease some of the muscle vibration that happens during exercise. And there's been some studies that have gone back and forth, but specifically in runners. There were some studies that showed that runners who were wearing the compression socks tended to move a little bit faster. But most of these studies were done on the socks, not on the tights. However, the tights are made out of the same material, Chuck. The only difference is they cover more of your body. Lots of athletes use the tights. The only issue is you're probably not going to wear the tights. And in a triathlon, I mean, I've worn them in one triathlon before, but it's because it was cold. But you're not going to want to swim in them because none of them have like a drawstring that's going to stay around your waist while you're swimming. And they tend to retain a little bit of water and make your legs feel kind of heavy. And you're not going to try to pull on a full on pair of compression tights after you get out of the water before you get on the bike. However, if you sleep in the compression tights, which I do during a hard training week or during a kitchen camp, things of that nature after a race, definitely there is a lot of evidence to suggest that those could help you with recovery. So, yeah, you're going to get similar benefit from the compression tights as you are to the compression socks. It's just that the compression tights are not going to be as conducive to using for performance. So the next question is from listener John. And John says in an interview on goat versus cow's milk, I believe he's referring to an interview on my podcast. There's three of them that I did, actually. If you go do a search for milk on BenGreenfulFitness.com, you'll find a couple interviews with a guy named Joe Stout. And then you'll find one interview with a guy named Paul. I'm blanking on Paul's last name, but really great interviews on milk. And he says that the guest speaker mentioned that homogenization of milk destroys the fat globules and releases free radicals. So we have reduced our dairy consumption, but still consume low fat plain yogurt, some cheese, whey protein, and occasionally raw farm fresh milk. I like to make fruit smoothies that include yogurt, whey protein, and sometimes milk. Is the blending of these ingredients homogenizing the globules and releasing free radicals? Well, the homogenization process, John, is typically high, high pressures pushing the milk through very, very fast, fine filters. And unless you have some blender from space that I don't really know about right now, it's unlikely that you're doing anything that stressful to the actual fat globules in the milk that you're consuming. And the whole idea is you don't really want the proteins in the milk to pass undigested into your gut. And the way that that would happen is if they're bound up in the fat globules. And the idea is that homogenation, basically, homogenization, basically blends all the proteins and the fats together. And you get the fat globules surrounding the proteins, you get poor digestion of the proteins, you get the protein circulating in the bloodstream, and then your body mounts an inflammatory or an allergenic reaction against those proteins, and voila, you get a dairy reaction. You gain weight when you drink milk, or you get a, like a lact, not a lactate intolerance. That's something different. That's just lack of an enzyme. But you get basically almost like an allergic reaction to the milk and you get fatigued and you have poor performance after you consume it. Those are the reasons that we want to be careful with consuming a lot of homogenized dairy products. Don't worry at all about the blending, man. I mean, I use a Vitamix, and that thing's powerful enough to actually heat up some of the foods that you put in it. You know, if you left your yogurt and your whey protein in a Vitamix for 10 minutes and came back and it was smoking and warm and you'd really churned it up. It's possible that you'd get some mixing of the fat globules and protein globules, but a little blending, light blending, mixing of yogurt and whey protein and milk, not an issue. I really wouldn't worry about that. So, great question. And again, as far as the whole raw milk thing goes, I tell people, just be careful, be careful with the raw milk, because you never know about the cleanliness of the farm that you got it out of. Well, I shouldn't say that it's not that you never know, but you need to make sure that you do know. I've gotten raw milk from a farm before, but I've gone and visited the farm to make sure that it's actually clean milk, clean farm. So next question is from listener Grace and Grace says, what's your take on Peter Gosku's pain management methods? I've just started reading this as a way to relieve SI pain and IT band pain and she has a follow up question. But let's address the first part of this question first. You know Peter's pain management methods, those are, they're spot on. And what he does is he doesn't say, okay, have this syndrome, you have this pain. Let's go straight to the pain and eliminate it. He looks at the underlying structural issues that have caused the problem. So we've talked about it before on this podcast. Like the SI joint, the joint in your pelvis, a lot of times that precedes knee pain. If you fix the SI joint mobility in the SI joint and then you rehabilitate the knee pain, rebuild the body and return to activity, then you actually achieve results that are lasting, permanent. Well, it's the same with those pain management methods. Typically what this method does is it identifies the injury, identifies the biomechanical abnormalities that could be producing that injuries, fixes the underlying abnormalities while working on the pain, and voila. That's the way it works. I mean, it's the same way that I designed my IT band friction syndrome@Bulletproofnee.com when you go into that, that's 13 different modules from nutrition modules all the way through to, to adjustment modules, physical therapy modules. And if you follow point A to point B step by step, it eliminates IT band Friction syndrome and eliminates pain in the outside of your knee. And I designed that over the course of an entire year of rehabbing my IT band and figuring everybody didn't want to go through all the same guessing games I had to play to fix my IT band. So it sounds like what the Egoscue method does is it's kind of designed some similar protocols, calls for, you know, as many different injuries as possible. And so there's just different moves that you do, whether with the foam roller or with your own body to relieve the pain. So it'd be a great method. I'm totally not getting on my, on my soapbox here, Grace, but you say a way to relieve SI pain, the same thing I did with the bulletproofnee.com that's the same thing I did with runwithnopain.com It's a step by step module for identifying and fixing pain related to your low back joint. You know, and that's, that's $17. I don't know how much the other pain management methods are that you're talking about, but it's kind of a do it yourself method. So I definitely, definitely check those out. As a matter of fact, I'll write a note to myself to put links to those in the podcast for you. Okay, next question is also from Grace. And Grace says, what protein supplements should women take? I've heard so much about whey protein. That is taking not positive. Now I'm stuck. Whey protein. The only issue with that is if you have a casein or a whey or a dairy or an animal intolerance. Yeah, it might not be the best thing for you. That's why I actually do the goat whey protein. The proteins in that are a little bit smaller, a little bit more conducive to human digestion. But you know, if you're looking at a different protein source, listen to the interview today for sure with Casey Kreischy because he talks about that living fuel protein. He's spot on. You gotta go with the vegetable based proteins and especially if you're a female, not so much the soy protein because the phytoestrogens in that, but I'm talking more along like the hemp protein, pea protein, rice protein route, all of those. Even though they're not as well absorbed as some of the animal based proteins, you're still going to get a great protein source out of them. So that's what I look at if you're really worried about the whey protein. So specifically, I mean, to give you brands, I would recommend if you want to do whey protein, but you want to go with a healthy whey protein, use the organic goat whey protein that I use. It's called Mount Capra double bonded protein. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. And then also the living fuel living protein that Casey talks about in the interview today, I'll put a link to that as well in the show notes. So check both those out. And then I have a question from listener Jim. And Jim says, do expand lungs work? And just so those of you who are listening in know, the expand lung is a device that you, that you breathe into and then you breathe through it as well. And it's called a resistance exercise for your lungs. And basically it, it increases the resistance to both exhalation and Inspiration. And the idea is that it increases the strength of your inspiratory and expiratory muscles. And, you know, the studies that specifically expand a lung has on their website is that they looked at some cyclists who trained with this and they found that the cyclist did nothing to their training programs except started using one of these and found that after about eight weeks of using one, that they improved their time to fatigue while riding at a high intensity from 22 minutes up to 31 minutes. So, you know, I'm not quite sure if there were any other training effects in that study. It was also a very small study. It only had eight people in it. The other studies that they looked at were primarily done with like scuba swimmers. They did some with people who were breathing into snorkels, see how long they could swim, swim while using a snorkel. Cited a few studies of people with the pulmonary disease and the lung disorders that helped with them a little bit. This would not be like the magic key in your program to help to make you the ultimate athlete. It would be kind of like my recommendation for some supplements or foam roller, things like that is kind of the extra 5% here here, the extra 2 1/2% there. The reason that this would be different than something like breathing through a straw, you know, while you're driving down the road, which technically could make your lungs stronger, is that this has something that will increase or decrease the resistance of the actual, the difficulty of the breathing exercises that you do. A lot of triathletes do use these. They do sell them in a lot of triathlon export, they expand a lung. Another one they do is the power lung, but basically same concept all around. You know, again, it's not going to be your saving grace. Training hard is what's going to make you work better. But it just makes sense intuitively that if you're working hard to breathe, that it's going to increase the strength of your body. This is one of those things that I would suggest that you do, not as a replacement for an exercise session, but for example, when you're driving your car or when you're watching a movie or when you're reading a book or at a time when you're able to double up in terms of your productivity. So that's when I'd throw something like this in. So great question. Then I've got a comment from listener Lorenzo, and this is actually one of the guys that I, that I coach and he wrote into me, says, dude, my wife stumbled on a new recipe. Our dog is four years old today. So we had a party and my wife made him a cake. She took one half cup of cooked quinoa and 1/2 cup of cooked kidney beans that were smashed and enough almond butter to keep everything together. She made a cake out of it. Well, I watched my dog eating his cake and wondered, can I have that cake and eat it too? So I tried it. I hope you tried something other than what your dog was eating, Lorenzo. And he says it's very good and stayed together extremely well. Probably would be suited best as a meat style substitute in hamburger patty applications. Use as you will, but if you get rich off of my wife's invention, I need some kickback. Well, you know, I'm not a food manufacturer, so I'm not really driven to get rich off inventing a quinoa cake. But hey, listeners, if you're listening in, okay, we got a half cup of cooked quinoa, half cup of cooked smashed kidney beans, and putting it all together in almond butter. Okay, if you try this, if you try this out and it works and you're able to literally like grill it and make a burger out of it, write in and leave a comment on this podcast because I would, I would love to see that Heck video. Record it and show it to me and we'll make you famous and put you up on the website. 15,000 people a week will see your hamburger patty invention. So check that out, try it out. And remember, if you like that type of stuff, definitely go back and watch Chef Todd's videos from last week. You've seen those cooking videos. They're hilarious. We're going to finish it up with a call in comment from listener Chuck before we move on to this week's interview with Casey Kreischy.

Hey, Ben, this is Chuck Furyk. I just wanted to give you an update on how I'm going with the triathlon dominator plan. My half Ironman is about a month and a half out now. I did a half marathon two weeks ago and beat my previous best time by about a minute and a half. Also did the longest bike ride I've ever done today at about 65 miles and was able to complete that no problem and do a six mile run afterwards, which felt great. And also during that ride, beat my 50 mile time by about 6 minutes from previously 2 weeks ago. So it's going great. Just wanted to say thanks again and I'm going to be keeping it up. Thanks for the podcast.

Well, Chuck, congratulations on your success and if you're listening in, you Want to check out the Triathlon dominator? Go to triathlon dominator.com okay, I bet you guys want to know who won the Body Transformation Club, and it's going to go to Patricia, the confused and frustrated person who wrote in about trying to lose weight, trying everything, not being able to do it, being confused about the number of calories. I'm going to give you a free month to the club. So write me in if you're listening to this, Patricia, I'll hook you up and hopefully what you learn there, the accountability you have to me, the weekly mailings you get from me, the videos that I show to you will give you that edge that you need to to get you started with effective weight loss. So let's move on to this week's interview on Living Fuel with Casey Kreischy. And remember that if as you're listening, you hear I'm talking about some of this stuff, you can go over to the show notes for Podcast 88 and click on the links and check it out.

Featured topic.

Hey, podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield. And on the other call, or on the other end of this call, I've got Casey Kreiche. And Casey is an expert in something called super foods, which you're going to learn all about today. And this guy is a big time health advocate. He's done a lot of collaborative work with a lot of medical and nutritional practitioners, researchers. He's had health problems in his own family, which he'll tell us about a little bit that kind of led him down the road of superfoods. And he actually now sits on the Clinical Nutrition Review Board, which is the certifying body of the International and American association of Clinical Nutrition. He also has a little bit of a background in sports performance nutrition. So he's going to be able to share some of that with us today. And just a wealth of knowledge on the topic that you're going to learn all about superfoods. So, Casey Kreiche, thanks for coming on the show.

Thanks for having me, Ben. It's a pleasure to be here.

And I guess the best place to start would be for you to tell me just a little bit and tell the audience just a little bit about superfoods and how you came to discover the whole concept of what a superfood is.

Well, allow me to back up a little bit to give you some background. So we'll go there. Okay. Several years ago, my wife, who three, let's see, four years prior to this incident, was Miss Florida. She was Miss Florida. And then Miss Florida USA competed in both Miss America and Miss USA and won swimsuit at Miss usa, first in swimsuit. So on the outside she was the absolute picture of health. And within just a short time after we were married, she came down with clinical depression and panic attacks and suicidal thoughts. The doctors said she had anxiety disorder and they gave her Xanax and Zoloft and psychotherapy. And at the time I was running a medical device, pacemaker company and I just decided at the time that they were messing my wife up and I wasn't. We decided together this was not the answer. So we decided that I was going to dive in the literature and I wasn't coming out without an answer. And so over a 10 year period of research and trial and error, we discovered the seven areas to manage. That became the foundation of my best selling book, Super Health and also discovered the foundational principles of our company Living Fuel and the superfoods and so on. And I'll say initially I thought I could get there all the way with clinical nutrition, that that was going to be the magic bullet, the answer, that if we solved all these nutritional components that she would be perfect and we would move on. But as I did the research, I discovered that several other things kept popping up that were really important in the literature. Things like hydration and exercise and stress, managing stress and sleep, environmental hazards, meditation and prayer and so on. And that each of these things has such a profound effect on the body and on the performance of the body and on the hormonal flows and so on, that if you were deficient in any one of them that you got physiologic consequences coming. And if you, most people listening today would have probably deficiency in probably four of those areas. And in retrospect, my wife was rock bottom on all seven. So that was the foundation of what got me into this. And so I worked to develop the perfect food. And in the literature I really had in the past had a weight problem from my youth that it was a struggle. It wasn't really a problem, it was a struggle that last 10 pounds and such. And so I had tried basically every diet system out there. So I had some background in the diets and the performance, nutrition and those sort of things. So I wanted to get in the literature and see what did the research say, not what did this author say and that author say and so on. So the thing that become profoundly important in the literature was that if you would cut the calories and increase the nutrient density that you could extend life, delay disease, enhance performance, optimize weight. I mean, essentially the fountain of youth, essentially is what the research was saying. And There were about 2,000 studies and everything from a single cell organism up to now, human primates and humans that would show all the same thing. It was really profound. So I got such an interest in that area. Now you've seen the calorie restriction with optimal nutrition work out there, right, Ben?

Right, right.

Well, it seemed to me that that wasn't quite enough because this was so profound that scientists really don't even argue anymore of whether or not that cutting calories works and increasing the nutrient density does that work. They now argue why it works. So you got a group on one side that says, well, the reason the low calorie works is if you cut the calories, you automatically cut the glycemic or the oxidation going on in the body, because less food equals less combustion equals less oxidation. So the theory on that side was that if you would have less oxidation, you could get similar response to cutting the calories and increase the nutrient density. So that side said less food and more broad spectrum antioxidants is the reason that low calorie works. And the other side is this group says that you cut the sugar and the glycemic response and you get the same result as cutting the calories and increasing the nutrient density. And they did studies to show that that would also give a similar response 150% of the calories of greens of a low calorie, Low calorie diet. And they were able to get similar responses. So then there's the group with the healthy fats that, you know, the things like the fuel fats like coconut and the essential fats like fish oil, epa, DHA and so on. Well, those studies essentially were saying that you could take fish oil and extend life, delay disease, enhance performance and all the things that you want without making a single other change in your diet. It was that profound.

Yeah.

So on the way to superfood nutrition, which is what we call this is, I discovered that you could actually put all four of those concepts together in the same nutrition program. We call it the four corners of optimal nutrition, or the four corners of superfood nutrition.

So essentially the idea is you're taking the four most successful, I don't like to use the word diets, but the four most successful eating habits on the planet when it comes to fat loss and performance. And you're trying to interlock all four of those together into one basic eating plan.

Precisely. And now I have found some literature that would Back this up. Also, Journal Nutrition 2002 does a study, and one of my favorite little studies that really says the story. They had four groups of mice. One group was the all you could eat group. You're familiar with how people eat out there. A polyunsaturated diet, no omega 3s, and they eat all they want. Right? Well, this group was able to eat anything they wanted, all they wanted. And they lived an average of 232 days. Okay. The second group was the fish oil group. They had the same amount of food, same kind of food, but they added fish oil to the equation, and they lived 100 days longer with absolutely no change in the diet except for the fish oil. The third group was the calorie restriction group. They took the same food, the same food the other two groups ate, and they cut the calories by 40%. This group lived an average of 200 days longer than the first group. Now, the fourth group was the same food as the third group, 40% less calories, but then they added fish oil. They live 400 days longer than the first group, which is 300% longer by adding those two concepts.

Wow, that's amazing.

So we're not just talking about fat loss here, we're talking about anti aging.

Is what it sounds like, essentially, because, interestingly, that the pace of cell division, cellular apoptosis, cells divide and die over a life.

Correct.

And they only do it a certain amount of times. And there are things you can do in your diet to either speed the pace of cell division or to maintain the pace of cell division. One thing we know about that speeds the pace of cell division is the increase of sugar. We take a micronutrient sugar and have made it a macronutrient in the diet of Americans today. So 100 years ago, the average intake of sugar is thought to be about £5 a year. You know, mom would make an apple pie, sometimes you go to the store and get a treat, that sort of thing. It was a luxury. Well, now it's become a staple in the American diet. And do you know how many pounds per year now people eat in sugar?

Oh, I don't know, but I've heard multiple pounds per Week.

It's 150 plus pounds a year in sugar. Okay. And what this sugar does, it speeds the pace of cell division and death and it collapses the term of lifetime. So, yes, I'm not saying that everybody needs to live up to be 120. What I'm saying it's not about being older longer, it's about Being younger, longer, and that means a lot in the terms of an athletic career. As, you know, an extra few years in an athletic career is huge as far as money and so on. And so it's about being younger, longer. So now, from all the way back around to the concept backing the superfood concept, how do you get nutrient, low calorie, nutrient density? How do you get there? Well, there are foods out there in nature that are, you know, the broccoli, spinach, kale, spirulina, chlorella, blueberry, strawberry, raspberry, cranberry that have extremely high nutrition but not a high amount of calories.

Those are the type of things that you see a lot in. Like greens powders.

Exactly, greens powders. Barley grass, wheat grass and so on. This is kind of the craze. But, you know, greens powders can't get you all the way there. So we have to combine the concept of the four corners of superfood nutrition that we talked about with how much protein does the human body need and how much essential nutrients does the human body need? Because, you know, the superfood nutrition piece that is really important is that we know about in medicine, we know that there are 50, 52, 53, depending on how you slice them, essential nutrients. And that just means that you have to get them from outside, from your diet. And in the case of vitamin D, you can get some from the sunshine, but people are not getting all of their essential vitamins. So it's not like getting a pill, because that doesn't quite do it. You got to combine what we know about in terms of the number of nutrients that are essential with the highest quality, most bioavailable forms, and then combine that with the highest nutrient density, superfoods, because they contain so many things that we have yet to name, as you know, we in medicine find the doctors and researchers, they find nutrients that they now call essential that weren't called essential a little time back, as you know. Right, right. So they have. So once you combine all of these yet to be named phytonutrients with the ones that we know about, that now covers the basis that every person needs and that if anybody is deficient or insufficient in any of those essential nutrients and known and unknown CO factors, there is a physiologic consequence associated with that that you may not even have any clue is associated with a nutrient deficit.

Now, how can somebody actually take all these different compounds that you're talking about? Excuse me, because the average person doesn't go to the grocery store and Pick up a bag of spirulina or a bunch of powdered kale and eat that for dinner. How do you actually take these concepts and put them all together?

That's a very good question. When my wife was going through this situation years ago, I'd be in the kitchen, I was mixing in the blender, my wife's and my breakfast and our children, and it was a myriad of things. It took quite a long time just with the blender to put all these things together in the right ratios to make the, the fuel for our family, so to speak. So I really wonder if it is even possible to do without the help of some powdered, freeze dried superfoods these days. Because the vegetables that you get in the store, even the organic ones, often, most often have been picked 14 days prior at a minimum to you getting them, and they've been put on a truck and shipped to somewhere. And so the nutrient density or the nutrient availability is not what it was. And the fact that they picked it before it was mature. So you got to eat a lot of the things like the greens and the bright colored vegetables and those sort of things that needs to be a staple in your diet. So that's why I designed Living Fuel, because it is. What differentiates Living Fuel from anything that we know of is that it's designed to sustain life indefinitely. More calcium than vitamin D than milk, more potassium than bananas, more resveratrol than wine, more protein than a half a dozen egg whites, more phytonutrients than 20 servings of fruits and vegetables, and more friendly bacteria than 10 cups of yogurt in a single meal, combined with all the known and unknown essential nutrients and CO factors and superfoods and so on.

So you basically took all these things that are the components of the four successful diets that you just talked about, and you essentially blended them all up and put them in a container. And people just use that as, as a meal or as a supplement?

Well, you can use it as a meal as a supplement or a supplement. But see, yes, it is the most nutrient dense, low calorie, broadest spectrum antioxidant with healthy fats known to man.

So that really what I'm used to is exactly what you're saying. But typically, like I talked about, these green supplements, no calories. So you would take something like this, whatever with a meal, have some potato and chicken in a greens smoothie or something on the side. What you're saying is that all of this actually has the calories in it as well?

Yes, Exactly. See, the thing is that, you know, it's kind of a funny story. When I first built living fuel, I was building it from the ground up. How much protein does the human body need? What is the amino acid profile? What is the antioxidant? Brought the spectrum of antioxidants to get all five radical groups. What is the, you know, what is the probiotic combination? How do you encapsulate them, so on and so forth. So once I put all the fiber and the protein and the carbs and everything in here, I was really shocked to find it at around 300 calories. And I was really kind of bummed about it. I said, what am I going to do to get the calorie levels up? Because basal metabolic rate theory says that 1600 calories for men and 1200 calories for women are required to maintain metabolic balance. You see. So this was a real troublesome thing for me to start with. But as I got farther into the research, I realized that once you lower the calories and you max out the nutrient density, because the nutrient density of this thing is so far beyond a meal of five times the calories. Because you couldn't have a team of organic chefs put together a meal as balanced as this is for the human body, you're feeding the body at the cellular level. And that as long as you can maintain energy levels and not be hungry for a four to six hour period of time, the calorie is really not what you're looking for.

Gotcha. So this is kind of cool because I could imagine that for especially the people who I'm trying to help lose weight, who just need almost that simplicity, not only when they're first starting off, but when they need to round out their diets. This would be kind of a perfect way for somebody to just grab something and have a meal and know that it's complete and know how many calories are in it. But in addition to something like fat loss, you know, I coach a lot of athletes. I personally go for a lot of sports performance benefits in my diet. Is this something that you could take after a workout, before workout? I mean, does it jive with sports performance diets as well?

Very interesting. You know, nutrition performance is an area of specialty of mine. I just love it because people always think that, you know, because we're dealing with world class athletes, it doesn't apply to them. But the truth is that maximizing performance is important at every level. Every person that's listening here today, you know, from the world class athlete, and we do have many world class athletes, including, you know, Dara Torres. I mean, are you familiar with Dara Torres, a swimmer?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. Dara is a, you know, a tremendous athlete at 41 years old and she is at the peak of her career. She uses Living fuel on a daily basis. And to answer to your question, how do you incorporate it into a sports performance kind of diet? Well, it's really interesting that people that are trying to optimize their weight or they're trying to enhance their performance both require the elements of the nutrition that we just described. Now, an athlete is going to require more protein than someone that's a couch potato, okay? Which is why we develop living protein. Because we had our athletes coming to us saying, hey, we really love this living fuel stuff, but, you know, 26 grams of protein is not enough for our meal. We really like to kick that up by 10 or 20. Is there any way we can get some more of this, you know, high quality, complete plant protein that you guys have developed so that we can add it to the, to the shakes? And so that's how we came up with our super antioxidant living protein fiber probiotic blend. It's designed for the active people who want to kick up the protein levels in the fiber.

Okay, so sports performance, ideally you'd want to add a little bit of protein to something like this.

Super protein. Yes, because there's so, I mean, there's so much literature around, you know, up to one and a half grams of protein per pound of lean body mass. You know, some people will say, you know, one pound of protein per pound of lean body mass, but still you're talking 100 plus grams of protein on a daily basis. You know, for someone who's an athlete or, you know, someone who's trying to lose weight. Also it's important to get high levels of protein. So yes, the living fuel you can survive. Most people can survive easily on either living fuel superberry or living fuel super greens. But adding in the living protein is something I do every day, something Dara Torres does every day. You know, J.D. drew with the Boston Red Sox does that as well. And many other athletes that use living fuel always incorporated either one or two scoops of living protein and on top of their, say, breakfast meal. Now, how does an athlete use it beyond that? Well, you know, the prevailing theory of fueling an athlete is 20W15. If you're familiar with the concept. 20W15 is 20 minutes prior you have, say, a scoop of super berry. During the workout, you can have more super Berry, if your workout is an extended, very difficult workout because you want to maintain, what you're trying to do is to block the rise of cortisol. Okay? So during the workout, so post workout, within 15 minutes, you want to have a recovery fuel, which would be one scoop, say, of living fuel, of superberry or a half a scoop of super berry with a sugar kind of source, so that you would say, put it in some lemonade or something like that.

And you.

What did you call that again? The 20. What? 15.

20 W. 15. It's 20 minutes. 4 W means while or during the workout, and 15 means post workout. So I say 15. You know, a lot of people tell you anytime you do your post workout fuel within 90 minutes of your workout, you're fine. I'm sure you've heard that a lot because that's a prevailing theory. But the truth is that the research is more refined than that now. And it really is showing that 45 minutes really is the optimal window for protein synthesis. And synthesis just means building proteins from amino acids in your body. Right?

Perfect.

So if you can get your insulin, because also your insulin sensitivity is the highest after a hard workout. So if you can get that going 15 minutes after your workout, and you can get it going before your workout, during your workout, and within 15 minutes after, you now have controlled two of the processes which cause significant soreness on subsequent days. Okay, gotcha. There are three at least, processes that cause soreness for an athlete. And the first one is the physical breakdown of the tearing of fibers, which is what you want, right? But that process is exacerbated by the rise of cortisol that happens in most athletes. And then beyond that, the oxidation that is allowed to occur. So it's really, it's not just oxidation, it's inflammation, oxidation, glycation, Those are the big three, I call them. Okay, so beyond the breakdown of the muscle, if you can control inflammation, glycation, oxidation. Now you have given the athlete a chance to recover almost twice as fast as the athlete who didn't pay attention to that. Gotcha. When you're thinking about the post recovery shake, that really is as important to your workout as the workout itself. So post recovery fuel, if you will. Okay, so post recovery fuel that also when you take, you know, I think you take the super essentials, omegas, you know, making sure you have enough fish oil with the right antioxidants to help with the inflammatory processes in the body and the blood flow of the body and so on, those things are really critical for athletes and people who are weekend athletes. I'm talking about world class to any level, really. So an athlete who is just a weekend athlete who doesn't work out that much or that hard is going to really want to minimize or eliminate the sugar part of the post workout fuel.

Gotcha, Gotcha.

Okay, so you have the powder in the canister that people can take, probably adding a little bit of protein if they're doing the sports performance. Now you also have a bar, and that was actually how I first found you, was I tried one of these bars, stumbled across it and really liked it, and then tried some of the other stuff that you guys have. But the bar was initially the thing that I thought was really good because my wife actually does a lot of raw foods and she makes a lot of our own kind of like these raw food energy bars at home. And this tasted just like that, that homemade version that she makes. So what was the idea behind the Coco Chia bar? Is that also the concept of super greens just in bar format or what would somebody use that for?

You know, that's a great question. These are sustained energy bars. And you know, it's funny you say it's like your wife developed in the kitchen. You know, if she's doing really good stuff, I encourage you to take that on and make a bar out of it, because that's exactly how I developed the Coco Chia bars. You know, chia seeds are part of our living fuel shakes. And you know, they are the highest percentage Source of plant Omega 3 of any seed and the most easily digestible without even grinding them. You know, so chia is a really power superfood that was used by the Aztec Indians. They say that two teaspoons of chia seed would be the. Or one tablespoon of chia seed would be the nutrition for an entire day of hunting that and water. So it's a superfood all by itself. The other superfood that I'm very enamored with and have been for many years is coconut. You know, coconut is a high source of medium chain triglycerides. People are scared away from saturated fats. But the truth is, if you really look at the literature, you'd say there's a difference in saturated fats. There's the saturated fats that are the unnatural hydrogenated saturated fats. Those things are horrendous for your health, no question about it. But medium chain triglycerides actually can increase performance, can increase the thyroid performance. They have lauric acid, which is somewhat antimicrobial. And so On. So there's so many benefits to coconut. If you look at the indigenous populations who eat a lot of coconut, there's very little obesity in those cultures and so on. So chia seed coconut and then raw almond. The power of almond. I mean, most people know about the power of almond. So combining those three things together in a bar format was just. We wanted to give people the concept of sustainable energy and not quick sugar fix, crash kind of energy. So it's a true superfood. And fats need to be a part of. From the athlete all the way down to the healthy. Fats are one of the key components to the four corner concept. So the bar is a healthy fats and fiber bar with protein.

Mm.

Okay. So it basically keeps you full for a longer period of time compared to, say, like a power bar.

Yes, exactly.

Gotcha.

So these are all. These are all great for people going after fat loss, sports performance. My next question, because I get a lot of these type of questions from people who listen to some of the nutrition supplements that we talk about on this show, but is it something that you could use with kids?

Oh, in fact, it's terrific for kids. See, every human has the same foundational needs. Now, some people have additional needs that you need to customize on top of that. But, you know, you're still made of the same kinds of proteins, the same kinds of essential nutrients and so on. So for instance, when my babies. I told you about this situation with my wife when she had her panic attacks and depression and that sort of thing, you know, if we hadn't solved that, we would have one kid today, but we now have five children and another one on the way at the moment. And so I really believe that this is hugely important for everybody.

Okay. So kids can tolerate this stuff. Okay.

Well, the first food for my children after breast milk is living fuel. We mix coconut milk with living fuel, and that's their food until they transition to Living Fuel. Shakespeare for breakfast and then the regular food that everyone else eats.

Fantastic.

Okay, cool. Well, go ahead.

I was going to say it's terrific for women who are trying to get pregnant. Women who are pregnant. It's terrific. Instead of the pregnancy multivitamin. It's just a terrific way to go. My wife has done that with all of our children.

Nice, nice.

Well, over@livingfuel.com, because you kind of just scratched the surface of superfoods and you have a lot of great articles over there@living fuel.com and I'll put a link to that in the show notes to this interview. But also those of you listening in should know that I am now including the option for you to be able to get some of the super greens or these Coco Chia bars that we talked about with any of your orders from pacificfit.net and I'll put a link to that in there as well. So if you want me to send you some of these, these with anything that you might currently order from that website, I can definitely hook you up. So, Casey, that was awesome. I have a lot better understanding now. I think a lot of people hear the term superfood and it's just like this concept that's a bunch of mystery foods. But I think you cleared it up pretty well today. I want to thank you.

Well, it's my pleasure. One thing I want to point out that, you know, there's a lot of hype out there in the market and people need to be able to look through it. You know, when you talk about a green drink on the market, you're talking about a nine gram salad that you cannot sustain life on. A nine gram salad. It's very good food, don't get me wrong, a wheat grass shot, barley shot. Those things are terrific, but they're not. You're not going to be able to have it for breakfast, lunch and dinner indefinitely like you can Living Fuel. The other thing is that antioxidants, you'll see Orac. People talk about Orac, how high the Orac is, but Orac simply measures one of the five major radical categories. Living Fuel is tested against all five of the major radical categories that attack the body. So there's nothing else that I know of that's rated that way. So it's really important to really understand what you're getting into and go with it.

Fantastic. All right, well, cool. Thanks for your time. For those of you listening in, I'll put a link to everything in the show notes to this interview with KC Qureshi. And until next time, thanks for coming on the show, man.

It's a pleasure, bro. Look forward to doing it again.

All right, cheers.

God bless. Bye bye.

All right, folks, I'm gonna put a link in the show notes so you can check out all of Casey's stuff, the Living Fuel products. Take a look at those. Also look at all the other links in the show notes to podcast number 88. Check out the special. Now, remember to text the word Fitness to 411247 and also to shoot me an email if you like Miracle Noodles. And you're from the Greater Toronto area. We'll get you famous. We'll also get you famous if you try out that hamburger patty recipe from the listener. Q and A so we have some great interviews lined up. I've been working on some really cool stuff for you guys, so information that is going to blow your mind in terms of ibuprofen, anti inflammatories, some of the things that you can do. Very, very cool stuff. I'm very stoked about. So stay tuned to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for more. Subscribe to the free newsletter if you haven't yet. And until next time, this is Ben Greenfield signing out. Oh wait, one last thing. Ranking in itunes. You know what to do. Click on the link over in the show notes. Leave us a ranking. It's the coolest and best thing you could ever do for me. Have a great week. It.