Q&A 433: Secrets Of The Centenarians, A New Anti-Aging Molecule, When Exercise Is Bad For You, Does Your Metabolism Slow Down & Much More.

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast, Secrets of the Centenarians, a new anti aging molecule. When exercise is bad for you, does your metabolism slow down? And much, much more. Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the Foreign. As we were briefly bantering about before this episode began, I do think I have the black lung.

Oh man. So the smoke is hovering over the Ben Greenfield compound.

There's a lot of smoke outside. Like the air quality index is remarkably low and I'm, I'm a huge outdoor enthusiast and for me to not go outside during the day, you know, looking outside at the sun shining through the gray blackness, apocalyptic like settings up here in Spokane, Washington, means that the air quality index must be pretty dang low. I actually shot a video, like, yeah, I shot a video yesterday where I was showing. Well, first of all, I've been using my biocharger, which is this crazy machine that goes and makes pulsed electromagnetic fields and infrared and lights and all sorts of cool alien like things that even if there's zero science behind it at all, must have some kind of a placebo, placebo effect. Although I just, it does have some science, some science behind it. I interviewed them on, on my podcast a while back. But anyways, they have like an oxygenation and like a breathe free and a hypoxia recipe. And since that thing's right next to my office, I've just been slipping in there during the day. You know, I have a little catch up work to do. Been running that thing a few times a day. I don't know if you're familiar with Mullen. Mullen is, is great as a lung support type of plant and it grows like weeds on my property. So I can dehyd that Mullen and then just make a tea out of it like in a French press. So that's another little hack I've been pulling out. And then just based on this whole concept of like supports, like, you know, the doctrine of signatures in nature and actually some amino acid tracing studies they've done showing that the glandular of certain organs when consumed, help to support said organ. So in this case I've been taking some of the ancestral supplements, desiccated lung extract. I just sprinkle a little bit of that in a, in bone broth. In the, you know, during my lunchtime I bought a little pair of scissors on Amazon that lets you cut open capsules. Yeah, so I was like, cut open the capsules and sprinkle them into my bone broth. So, so that, that's my, my big old biohacks lung support protocol for the smoke.

And I might need to start doing something like that, like, I don't know, almost like as a preventative measure. Because the way we got on this discussion is I was telling you that I'm headed to Montana. When. And the part of Montana that's much more of like the, the western part of Montana. So not super, super far from where you are. So I can. That there's plenty of smoke there as well. And here on the east coast, obviously I don't deal with that. I think there's a little bit that's come our way but obviously not as concentrated as you guys. So I'm wondering if I should get some lung capsules or do some other things. My wife as well, because man, we wanna have a good 10 year anniversary out there in Montana.

Dr. Yeah, I would get the ancestral supplements, lung capsules I would get. Well, you aren't gonna get a biochar and travel with that, but I would consider getting a travel nebulizer like you would get just off of Amazon. And then I would nebulize. There's a pretty good lung support formula that Dr. John Laurence makes. It's called Glutastat. I use their nasal spray a lot when I travel. But you can also nebulize with it. It's like glutathione, a bunch of different essential oils. But it's got some really great lung support in there too. And that could be useful as well for when you're coughing up all the black flakes, the black romantic flakes that you want to share with your wife during your guys. Anne. Which part of western Montana by the way?

Missoula. So we'll be at a 16,000 acre ranch in Missoula, Montana.

All right, well we won't bore people with the details, but email me separately, dude, because you literally are like pedal to the metal. Almost like two hours or less from my house.

Yeah, we got to meet up.

Yeah, we may have to have a little steak feed over the smoke. Well, this is our live clubhouse Q and A for those of you who aren't familiar with this. We record this Q and A live on Clubhouse and we always via my newsletter and my social media, send out a link to join in on the clubhouse live chat. And typically we dive into some cool news flashes and articles for a little while and then we, we open things up to Q and A. So I guess that means that we should follow our own rules and jump in Today's news flashes. What do you think, Jay?

Yeah, man, let's rock and roll.

I came across a really cool article. It's basically, well, it's initially about this gal, Jean Calment, John Calment, being one of the longest livid humans on record. Although she recently passed. She was 115 years old, I believe when she passed. And this article is about the longest livid humans. It's like an observational article about the the habits and routines and life story and history of basically a whole host of people who pretty much across the board lives to about the age of 115, which I think I've established in other podcast interviews that I've done. Seems to be right now still the approximate ceiling on human lifespan, about 115 years old or so. And what they got into was a lot of the practices of some of these people and how they ate, how, how many kids they had, what kind of little routines that they had. I thought there were some notable takeaways. And just to preview and we always link to these kind of articles that we talk about in the show notes. So for today's shownotes go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com433 and I'll link to this article. But for example, and These are all 115ish year old centenarians. There was Charlotte Hughes who every day had a stiff brandy, bacon and eggs.

That's a good way to do it right there.

That's right there. That's gonna help you live a long time with the smile on your face versus being cold and hungry and libido less strapped inside a cryotherapy chamber and eating nad capsules. This gal, Jean Calment, who I already mentioned, the French lady, she had a glass of port and she also had a cigarette every day. One cigarette every day. She was also really into her cakes and her chocolates. And of course there' there's no doubt we've shown in many studies that smoking will shorten your life. And indeed it appears to be tobacco packaged up with all these other carcinogens that seem to have a pretty powerful known factor in reducing human lifespan. Yet we do see amongst several of these people, Jeanne Calment would smoke one, actually in some cases two cigarettes per day, but claimed that she rarely inhaled. Another guy, Chris Mortensen, who is the world's oldest man, he actually smoked quite a bit on pipes and cigars, but claimed also to not inhale. These people are reminding me a bit of President Obama, former President Obama. They did not inhale. Yeah, and so, you know, there is this idea of the hormetic effect of certain plant defense compounds that may actually induce like an endogenous antioxidant response that helps you to grow stronger. I personally think that, like exercise, sunshine, cold water, heat, you know, plant defense molecules from herbs and spices, et cetera, are probably a better way to get that hormetic effect versus smoking cigarettes. Yet it is kind of interesting that these people did smoke several of them. So, yeah, sure, I've talked about the longevity effects of probably for similar reasons, microdoses, so to speak, of alcohol. Like a lot of these people had alcohol nearly every day. For example, common theme. Marie Esther is another one. She had a small cup of wine every day with lunch. Jean, like I mentioned, had a glass of port every day. That Charlotte Hughes lady I talked about, she had a stiff brandy every day. And so once again, we see that not large intake of alcohol or not frequent episodes of alcohol that are more of like a binge episode, but small amounts of alcohol every day seem also to be a characteristic of many of these folks. Only very few of them said that they. You know, there's one that said they never damaged their body by liquor. Emiliano Mercado del Toro. He attributed his longevity to a healthy diet. Daily he would have boiled cornmeal, cod and coconut milk. And his favorite drink, instead of alcohol, he actually drank a lot of coffee. And kind of along the same lines of vices. I noticed how often chocolate would pop up on many of these people's list of go to's as well, which I don't know if that has something to do with increasing human lifespan as much as there's not a lot of human beings walking the face of this planet that don't have some certain fondness in their heart for chocolate. So, you know, I would imagine if you were to do a survey of any random, you know, handful of people, you'd probably see chocolate popping up over and over again. Although I'm lucky because barely anybody in my family actually likes chocolate, especially dark chocolate. So I get weirdos. Most of that's myself. So a few other things. It seems that most of these people, especially the men in particular, this is interesting, didn't have that many kids. Like, like about half of the folks on this list had no children or only one child. Yet amongst the women, the longest, livid women. And maybe this has something to do with the whole, like, matriarchal philosophy where women who feel as though even when they're past childbearing years are given some type of matriarchal role where they pass wisdom along, tell stories, care for other people in the village or the community, etc, that induces kind of like meaning and purpose in their life. Thus they live a longer time. Even if they're a woman who you'd think from an evolutionary standpoint, sorry ladies, about saying this, but, but you know, just, just put your, put your ancestral hat on here momentarily. If a woman can't have kids anymore, nature wouldn't necessarily see a lot of value in her being alive. Yet in humans we see that that doesn't happen in women who are given more matriarchal roles in society, thus dictating that, you know, even when you're past childbearing age, if you have life sacrifice purpose based on caring for perhaps a lot of the children and grandchildren and great great grandchildren, you may have produced that, that there's actually a longevity inducing effect. And sure enough, many of the women in this paper, they had, I mean, 8, 10, 15 children, whereas a lot of the men, you don't, you don't see that effect quite as much. And interesting, many of them outlived their children. A few of the things I noticed because I like to take notes as I read an article like this, not because I'm a transhumanist who wants to live forever. I just equip myself to, you know, be able to throw a football around with my grandkids and not be relegated to a wheelchair in my later years. You found that many of them were super self reliant. Like they insisted on driving themselves to the grocery store. They love to walk into old age, they love to go out to restaurants. They just seem super tough and self reliant. Like they, you know, they built a lot of their own homes, they took care of themselves, they insisted on not being placed in the hospice, you know, not giving up on caring for themselves. Like very self sufficient and to a certain extent self actual. That was an interesting anecdote. And then one last thing that I noted was that most of them, when they did die, they died from frailty, right? Their physical function declined markedly, typically after about 105 or so. That was when they began to just have difficulty or would slip and break a hip or have a broken bone. It wasn't really cancer or heart disease, et cetera, that seemed to take a lot of these people out. It was just frailty, which kind of advises us in the area of fitness. We know that the amount of muscle and the amount of bone density and the amount of mobility that you possess going into Your later years is kind of what you're stuck with. And so focusing at an early age on functional strength training, on mobility, on being able to do exercises that go beyond, like the Nautilus at the gym, but like carrying weights and walking them around, being able to balance on one foot or one leg, being able to walk for longer periods of time at a decent pace. These all seem to be skills that would serve you in fighting the battle against frailty as you age. So just a fascinating article.

Yeah, for sure. There are a couple of things that also stood out for me. I love that they said that one of the things that they also shared was their will to live and their sense of humor. And I really kind of resonated with that one because I just feel like it's such an important yet overlooked thing. Think about kind of how can we enhance ourselves from, you know, a physiological fitness perspective? And that's great. There's importance to it. But also too, just enjoying life, like, being passionate about our pursuits, experiencing meaning in our lives, and then also too, just like, having fun and just enjoying laughter and making other people laugh. It's one of those things that I really resonated with that one. And the other thing, too, I like that you talked about the whole idea of self reliance. So I actually had my great. One of my great grandmothers lived until she was in her mid-90s. So not sincere, but pretty damn close. And one of the things about her is, like, she was such a firecracker. Like, she was like, I'm gonna do everything, like, until I die, Like, I will be the one to drive myself to church, to drive myself down to, you know, to the local grocery store to, like, go do my own thing. And anytime anybody tried to give any bit of help to her, like, she would just kind of like, bite at him and be like, what? Like, what are you trying to do here? Like, I want to live my life like the way I want to live it. And so I'm like, yeah, that's. And that. And that's actually how my grandparents are too. They're close to their 90s. And so hopefully that gene pool is being passed down directly to me. And that's where I'm headed as well. But it's, it's a. It's an interesting observation, for sure.

Every old person needs to know a few. Few good jokes. A few good. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Dirty old man jokes.

Oh, yeah. Like my favorite of late. What do you call a pig that does karate?

Pork chop.

Pork chop. You got it. I got it. Yeah, good one. All right, so we, we won't give up our day jobs, folks. Don't worry. We, we are not in the comedy category on any of your fine, fine podcast players. And we promise that we probably won't be anytime soon. So anyways, that article is called Biographical Notes on the Longest Living Humans and we'll link to that@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 433 now, speaking of anti aging and living long time, this was kind of a controversial paper in the Journal of Applied Physiology that hit the news outlets a few weeks ago. It was new research that found that elite athletes, meaning people who kind of exercise, the, the pointy end of exercising, have temporary mitochondrial impairment after their intense workouts. So this was a study where they looked at mitochondrial capacity, right? The body's ability to be able to generate exercise and the health of the mitochondria itself. And they took a bunch of athletes, they used, in this case male elite athletes, like people who had won national titles or even internationally recognized for their performance, in this case cycling and triathlon. And they had them trained for four weeks really hard. Like they basically did a four week training program where they did two to four days of low to moderate intensity endurance exercises or workouts. And then they had three days of intense training with some pretty intense high intensity interval training, like 2 a days. And they were training for like 12 to 20 hours per week, which is pretty decent if you add it up. Like that's, that's pushing, you know, two plus hours a day on most days with pretty heavy training. Although most of the folks in the study obviously were used to heavy training, this was kind of a new workout protocol for them for the four weeks. So it was throwing kind of a curve ball at their bodies. And to the research team's surprise, actually, because they didn't expect this, the trained participants, mitochondrial capacity was impaired after the month long training period. And the researchers had hypothesized that the elite athletes would actually be more resistant to those kind of alterations. But it turns out that wasn't the case, that they saw essentially reduction in mitochondrial capacity, right? The ability to produce ATP, probably some of the effects of excessive inflammation over training, perhaps some of the impact that that had on things like sleep and heart rate variability, et cetera, also affect mitochondrial function. But what I think a lot of people don't realize when they see the results of this study, because a lot of people responded to this by saying, well, no more high intensity interval training for me. I'm done. I'm not Going to push my body to the extent where I'm reducing my mitochondrial capacity. Well, the study also found that the reduced mitochondrial capacity didn't affect these folks exercise performance at all because they still had oxygen delivery going from their heart to their muscles. And the researchers hypothesized that oxygen delivery and oxygen uptake actually played a more important role than mitochondrial function and performance. So it's not as though they showed that doing a month of hard training like this actually affected your ability to be able to perform and that oxygen delivery from the heart kind of balanced out the reduction in mitochondrial capacity. They also found that there was an upregulation of three different proteins, proteins with pretty strong antioxidant properties that increased after the period of intense training, thus showing that kind of similar to what I was talking about, like cigarettes and alcohol when we were talking about the old people, the body is mounting up a pretty robust production of its own endogenous antioxidants and its own cellular resilience in response to this period of stressful training. So what this means is that essentially everything that you would want to happen for a bounce back in mitochondrial density and function, for an increase in fitness and for an increase in oxygen delivery and oxygen output was actually occurring. But the trick is that you need to work in periods of time for the body to actually absorb that training and for the body to recover from that training. So all this study shows me is that, yeah, four weeks of hard exercise, especially in elite athletes, does exactly what we want it to do. And the only thing you want to make sure that you provide in that scenario is some kind of deload week or detraining period of time. That's a whole definition or partially the definition of periodization and exercise, right? You train, you have certain periods of time where you train hard and certain periods of time where you train easy. And really, my main takeaway from this exercise, just don't beat yourself up for much longer than four weeks without a de load week or without a detraining week for you to be able to soak up the effects of all that exercise that you did. So this doesn't cause me to want to swear off high intensity interval training. All this tells me is that recovery is important and that high intensity interval training actually works for stressing out the mitochondria the way that we want. Want to.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, wouldn't another way to look at this too, basically using, you know, kind of what you're saying, just kind of in maybe more technical language, is to avoid over training in an anaerobic state and focus more on kind of recovery in an aerobic state.

Yeah, yeah, basically, I mean, just, just smart recovery. Yeah, yeah. And, and you know, I, I thought that this might really have, have some relevance and crossover to another study that I found that actually showed a pretty powerful way to protect the mitochondria. And this study was done in, it was done in, I think it was mice. It was an article in Nature magazine or I'm sorry, it wasn't mice, it was worms. I get worms and mice mixed up. They look really the same if you scroll down. So similar, really poor eyesight. Anyways, this study was in worms, but they do a lot of anti aging studies in worms and yeast, fruit flies and rodents and find that there is some crossover to humans. And in this case they found that with age. You see this protein, It's a protein that's kind of a mouthful, but I'll just give you the abbreviation. It's called NFYB1. NFYB1. So this protein called NFYB1 switches on and off genes that affect your mitochondrial activity. And the activity of that NFYB1 protein goes down during age aging, meaning that the mitochondria aren't going to work as well. And as a result of that, the worms weren't living as long as they aged due to the activity of this NFYB1. Now what NFYB1 does is it can allow molecules to be broken down and recycled as nutrients. So almost like the cellular autophagy that we hear about, the natural cellular cleanup, and it especially does that, that in mitochondria. Now they found that there's a certain crucial protein in the mitochondria that's responsible for the activity of something called cytochrome C oxidase. Cytochrome C oxidase is one of the parts of the mitochondria that can do things like accept biophotons of light from sunlight and infrared light and produce ATP, which is one reason why red light and sunlight exposure are so good for the mitochondria. And this crucial mitochondrial protein is called cardiolycomplus. We've mentioned a couple times before on the podcast, but it looks like cardiolipin content seems to decline remarkably with aging. In addition, the cardiolipin tends to be damaged by polyunsaturated fatty acids, by vegetable oils. And they've actually found that fully saturated fats or a diet that includes some amount of saturated fats and DHA to a certain extent as well, such as you would get from, you know, like sardines, mackerel, anchovies, you know, herring, grass fed beef, et cetera. Well, it turns out that DHA and saturated fats help your body to produce this protective cardiolipin. What they found though was that when they directly fed the worms cardiolipin, there was a restoration of mitochondrial function and worm health and an anti aging effect because these cardiolipins are so essential for the human mitochondria. So A, we now see that cardiolipin is like this protective molecule for the mitochondria that has now been shown to have a life extending mechanism. And B, it kind of makes you think about whether or not some of these folks producing, you know, anti aging formulas, which a lot of companies are right now, you know, all these different mitochondrial protection or mitochondrial regeneration formulas, whether or not we're just going to see like cardiolipin as one of the next, you know, kind of like nad, like one of the next anti aging molecules that might be available for sale probably at a disproportionately high price at really high margins and without any information from people to maybe first think about avoiding vegetable oils and getting enough saturated fat and DHA in their diet. But that aside, it'd be interesting to see if we're going to see more cardiolipin kind of like supplementation protocols that appear on the market market. Although I should note that a lot of the mitochondrial support formulas, for example, Thorne has one called Neurochondria and it's really good. It's like acetyl L, carnitine and coenzyme Q10 and glutathione and phosphatidylserine which may actually help as one of the building blocks to support cardiolipin activity in the mitochondria. You'll see a lot of these type of compounds in some of these mitochondrial support compounds that may support cardiolipin to the extent to where we don't have to actually, actually supplement with cardiolipin. But I'd be curious to see like some type of cardiolipin study take place in humans now as well.

Yeah, I'm surprised they aren't already actually making that.

Yeah, as a supplement I couldn't find much cardiolipin for sale. I don't know, maybe if people pop in in the comments section of this particular podcast@bengreenfieldfitness.com 433 you could let me know if you know of a company that's currently producing cardiolipin approved for human consumption, that type of thing. It'd be interesting to check out. I think probably one of the closest things and this kind of flies under the radar is there's a doctor named Dr. Dayan Goodenow and he actually wrote, I might be butchering his name, but I've had some email communication with him. He just wrote a book called Breaking Alzheimer's. I recently finished that book and it's about these things called plasmalogens and how a decline in plasmalogens is directly correlated to increased risk of dementia and Alzheimer's. And these tiny molecules, these plasmalogens that tend to decline with age, have a real protective effect on the mitochondrial membrane. So he actually has a scan, I've done a couple of his scans called a prodrome scan where he looks at your plasmalogen levels and then his company, Prodrome Sciences, actually makes these things called plasmalogens that you can actually supplement with. And I mean if I had like the APOE 4 gene variant, for example, with the increased risk for Alzheimer's and dementia, after reading his book and going through his test and seeing some of the stuff, stuff that he produces, I think that I would probably work some type of plasmalogen supplementation or at least a prodrome scan in to see where I was at because I think that this is probably one of the closest things out there right now to probably having some of the effects of supplementation with cardiolipin. So I actually had a before and after video of my own protome scan and some more information on him and what he does does and I'll link to that in the show notes. I had like a couple of weekly roundups where I showed my pre results and my post results three months later. I didn't keep supplementing with plasmalogens afterwards because I was kind of comfortable with where my levels were at and feel like I'm getting enough mitochondrial membrane support with my fatty acid intake and my DHA intake. But again, if I had like the, particularly the APOE4 gene variant responsible for increased risk of dementia and Alzheimer's, I'd certainly look into this or cardiolipin and other mitochondrial support as well. Well, so cardiolipin, you should get that.

Guy on the podcast.

Yeah, I may now that I finish his book and have some pages folded over and I might have him on and interview him. But super interesting that the new anti aging darling, cardiolipin tm. So a couple other things that I think were interesting. There was a study that came out that looked at basically what happens when you have what's called relative energy deficiency. So this paper was looking at what are called non non pharmacological strategies to treat energy deficiency. So what energy deficiency means is basically what you're probably seeing amongst a lot of Olympic gymnasts now, or what you see in a cross country runner or many triathletes and chronic repetitive motion athletes who are also trying to keep their body weight low. You'll tend to see this a lot. So essentially it is high energy expenditure, low fat mass, mass, you know, low energy intake, resulting in this cluster of issues that result in kind of like metabolic downregulation. So what I mean by that is when you decrease energy intake, like you're not eating a ton of calories and you're working out a lot, which I would suspect a small number of the listeners to this podcast might fall into that category because it's very easy to do. You see a drop in what's called uncoupling protein activity in the mitochondria. The body kind of stops burning calories as much to generate heat as kind of like an energy conservation mechanism. You also see a drop in the hormones that would result in energy being elevated or metabolism being elevated. Like you see a drop in leptin, you see a drop in thyroid hormone. You see a drop in sex hormones like LH and FSH, which are responsible for enhancing fertility just as an ancestral mechanism because the human body doesn't want to bring new human bodies or babies into the. During a time of stress or during a time of starvation. Right. You actually see a drop in just overall low level physical activity during the day. You see a drop in the thermic effect of food. You see a drop in sympathetic nervous system tone, you see a drop in the activation of brown adipose tissue, which is like the metabolically active form of fat. All this stuff happens when you have long term energy restriction paired with high amounts of exercise. You know, kind of like that study we were talking about earlier in the athletes dictating that the body just kind of goes into shutdown mode to begin to hold on to fat, to begin to hold on to calories and the appetite dysregulation. And also things like the drop in bone density, the drop in stored minerals, the, the breakdown of the body's own amino acids and the degradation in muscle and the muscle loss that occurs as a response to that can be problematic and can stick with an athlete for, for months and, and months on end if they're not careful. And that's what this latest study was trying to tackle is how do we actually present some solutions to this type of metabolic adaptation that occurs with longer periods of time in an energy deficit while exercising. And so they did come up with some of the things that kind of work. If you're somebody who likes to exercise, who's also cognizant of the amount of food that you take in, as far as what you can do, do to actually protect yourself from the alteration in hormone levels and the drop in muscle mass, the drop in energy expenditure, and all the things that happen when the body basically just kind of goes into hibernation mode, if that makes sense. So some of the things that seem to mitigate the effects of metabolic adaptation is first, a higher protein intake during the drop in calorie intake. Meaning if you're going to lower calories, try and at least make sure that the drop in calories that when you're lowering calories, try and have more of it come from carbohydrates and fat than from protein. Like, try to maintain at least 0.55 grams of protein per pound of body weight, up to about 0.8 grams of protein per pound of body weight. I mean, you can use, you know, amino acids, you can use whey proteins, you can use collagen, you know, lower calorie sources than like, you know, fatty ribeye steaks, if you're, if you're on a calorie cut to do that. But basically, if you're gonna cut calories, try to keep your protein intake from dropping. Okay, so that's one of the recommendations that seems to help. The next is refeeds, you know, and it appears that doing a refeed about twice a week helps to stave off a lot of the effects of metabolic adaptation. Meaning have a couple of times during the week, a couple of meals during the week, to which you're just basically eating as much food as you feel like shoving into your, your face, right? And that just sends this body a message that, you know, and this would be something, you know, like five days of low calorie intake or intermittent fasting, etc. But with two days where you're not fasting a lot or where you're eating to calorie excess or to calorie maintenance, or even a meal a couple of times during a week where you're just going out in the town and having a meal at your favorite restaurant, not worrying about, you know, pushing yourself away from the table when you're eating, just getting to that point where you're sending Your body a message a couple of times a week that that food is not something that is scarce or calories or not something that is scarce. Another one is that if you are doing this as well, what's called a diet break seems to help also. So after about four weeks of dieting, even if you're doing refeeds during those four weeks of dieting, throwing in one week for every four weeks that you're dieting is really, really helpful at avoiding a lot of those metabolic adaptations. Meaning diet, eat calorie deficient. Try and get a couple refeeds during those four weeks during which you're calorie deficient and exercising a lot. But then have one week where it's like really good, nutrient dense meals, maybe more sauna, walking in the sunshine, maybe some cold soaks, some yoga, some less calorie burning, intensive type of activities. And if you were going to go the whole year like that compared to your neighbor who might see more weight loss early on in that phase by just like straight up living a completely stoic lifestyle and not like a monk for weeks and weeks on end, they might lose more weight than you, or get better body composition than you, or see a greater drop in adipose tissue than you over the first several months, months. But what happened is if you look at it over the course of a year, long term you're going to be more successful at not only losing weight, but keeping the weight off. Because when you do these refeeds and when you go like, you know, four weeks of dieting one week off, what you see is you don't see quite as much of what is called fat cell hyperplasia, where fat cells tend to grow in size, right? And basically they're there waiting to munch up calories once you finish your diet. And that's why people see this like yo yo dieting type of effect or a real gain in fat after a long period of time spent losing weight. Well, if you do these refeeds, that type of fat cell hyperplasia doesn't seem to occur to as great an extent. So essentially you're creating a scenario for long term successful healthy weight loss without that starvation mode happening, without that drop in leptin and thyroid hormones and fertility hormones and a lot of things that would happen to somebody who may get better short term results, but more deleterious, serious long term results and possibly permanent adaptations to their hormones and their endocrine system that would dictate that long term they're going to have more problems than the person who Goes a little bit more slowly with weight loss, keeps their protein high, does refeeds, and follows a lot of the, kind of, a lot of the recommendations in this latest article. The other thing that the article touched on is that in many cases we see bone density being an issue here, here. So making sure that you induce bone stress and also intake of bone building nutrients. So you'd basically want to keep your intake of vitamin D, A, E, K and your minerals high while also doing some amount of weight training that loads the bone along its long axis, you know, like squats and overhead presses and things like that. If you are engaged in a sport or engaged in activity that has some type of relative energy deficiency because you have, you want to keep weight off or you want to lose weight or your sport dictates that you stay light. So basically paying attention to bone also appears to be a really, really important part of this as well.

Yeah, it sounds like in the end it's like play, play the long game, not, not the short one.

Yeah, yep. So, and, and, and I'll, I'll link to that paper as well in the show notes. Um, a couple of other things. Uh, first of all, this is pretty interesting. The Journal of Strength Conditioning Research looked at, at what people would look at if they're going to hire a personal trainer. And this probably comes as no surprise. So if you were to take into account like, you know, experience of the personal trainer, like how many years they've worked with clients and what kind of success those clients have seen during the time that trainer worked with them. If we were to look at that trainer's like certification, education classes taken, you know, what kind of university degrees they might have attained or, or the robustness of the personal training certification that they do have, like is it a weekend certification, open book test, or has this person studied for years to understand, understand human anatomy and physiology, what kind of continuing education credits has that person taken and what do they look like? What's their body type? Like, are they a ruler shape, are they athletic? V shape, Are they more of like an apple shape? And how do they look aesthetically? What do you think would be the number one reason that someone would hire a personal trainer, take out their wallet and hire a personal trainer to create their exercise program and be in charge of the, their bodies?

Well, considering my education is in behavioral science, I hope I get this one right. But I would, I would bet money that most individuals are going to base it off of the individual's aesthetics. They're gonna look and say, does that person either practice what they preach or if there are doing kind of what they're preaching, is it working for them? I would say aesthetics or the physique of the individual would be the primary thing they look for.

Ding, ding. Winner, winner, chicken dinner. It's the physique of the personal trainer which to me is super scary because we live in an era of like Instagram and social media and also drugs where a trainer can cheat their way, take steroids, you know, use performance enhancing drugs, often things that are inaccessible or unaffordable to the general population. Put photos of them, you know, ripped or toned or you know, do showing their booty next to their cat on Instagram and approach person is far more likely to hire that personal trainer versus let's say a trainer with a realistic body who has a really great education, who's going to actually get them good results. So it shocked me how high on the scale simply looking at what a trainer looks like. And in this study they're actually using pictures, right? Exactly the type of thing you'd see on Instagram. And I just want to warn people that yeah, you'd love to work with someone who appears to practice what they preach, but if that's your only metric or you're putting that pretty high up on the totem pole, then that can be dangerous because that does not mean that trainer has competence. That does not mean they have had, they have knowledge. That does not mean any of those things are increased relative to that person's physique. They might be right. That person might have a really good physique and a good body of knowledge, but don't assume so. And this was just a real eye opening study for me. I didn't realize like how many people just almost ignore a trainer's education or knowledge or results and instead just hire them based on what they look like. So I would caution our listeners, like be careful, make sure you look into like, you know, does that person have a really good training certification from like the NSCA or the ACSM or the nasm, you know, is it a weekend trainer certification? Do they have a certification at all? They gone to college at all, you know, for four to six years, years studying exercise science, anatomy, physiology, biochemistry or are they just a pretty face on Instagram? And if they're pretty face on Instagram, I'm not saying they wouldn't be able to get your results. Like there's a lot to be said for practical experience and anecdotal hands on experience, but there's even people on Instagram who literally have never stepped foot in a gym and worked with real people and seen how real people move in real life situations handling real weights. And instead they just post a photo and say, you, yo, here's what I look like. Hire me. And usually when you hire them, they're having you do pretty much what they do for their program, which isn't necessarily customized to you, comma, you're not on all the drugs that that trainer is on. Which is another thing a lot of people don't realize, like how many peptides and sarms and hormones and just, you know, steroids and drugs in general these people are on that dictate that they're getting those results with far less work than you might put in.

Yeah, this is an interesting one, Ben, because I, like, I get it. Like I get it because the natural inclination of the human brain is to respond to things that they see. And so with our eyes and go with the easiest heuristic. So our heuristic is typically, oh, this person obviously kind of like is doing everything they say they're doing and therefore I must go with them without taking into account all of the other variables that you mentioned. And the other one goes, and I've seen this with other health influencers as well. It's like some people will look at certain health influencers and be like, eh, I'm not sure that you're practicing what you preach or if you are, like, it's obviously not working for you. Is things that I've heard from, from plenty of individuals about health influencers. And like there's a part of it that may be true. Right? Like it may be that that's the case, but it's not always the case. And so this means that we need to avoid just kind of these easy heurist that we've developed and really do due diligence in studying up on these individuals and their background, their education. And then again, what kind of success have they had in their professional career? Like, are these people who have trained like world class Ironman or like, or whatever maybe that you're training for? Or like, yeah, they don't really have much education, they look awesome and they don't really have any much success to write home about, so we just have to do due diligence.

Yeah, yep, exactly. So one, one last thing. I guess perhaps this is somewhat relevant to what we were just talking about that is not necessarily fitness related, but it really spoke to me. And it was an article written by a former podcast guest of mine, Vanessa Van Edwards. I interviewed her about her book Captivate, which is kind of like a human behavior hacking type of book just to show how to read people and how to captivate a conversation and body language tips and stuff like that. But she wrote a really good article about people pleasers. I'm a people pleaser. I don't know about you, Jay, but I have a hard time saying no. I love to make other people happy. Sometimes I'll go out of my way to please someone, even if it means taking my own valuable time or resources away from me or sometimes my family in order to do so. And she just had a great article that would. That. That. That was essentially 11 ways to stop being a people Pleaser. If you are one of those people who constantly like, you know, feels responsible for other people's emotions or you find yourself always apologizing, you know, I'm sorry for being just a few minutes late. Or, you know, you say yes to parties that you don't really want to go to, or you feign interest even when you're bored. Bored. Or you laugh when other people laugh, even if it's not funny. Or you offer to help someone all the time even if you're busy. There's something to sacrificing yourself for other people, but sometimes it can get a little bit ridiculous. And so she had some really great tips and just a quick preview of her tips and then I'll let people delve into the nitty gritty in the article, which I'll link to if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com433 she has all these anti people pleasing phrases. Instead of saying yes, say let me get back to you. It's okay with my playing the waiting game. She says, whenever you don't know it's not Hell yes, let me get back to you is a very good response. Next is to delay. Anytime somebody asks you to do anything, just stop, take a deep breath. She shows that human brains need about 50 to 100 milliseconds to block out all distractions and focus on relevant information. And that takes just stopping and taking a breath when people ask you something. Like if somebody on the phone says, yo, yo, you want to come out to the party tonight? Don't be like, yeah, yeah, I think I can make it. Let me check my skill. Just stop and take a breath and analyze it logically. She recommends just starting to say no to little things, right? Like when a waitress asks you if you want to order a drink with your meal. It's a perfect example. Like how Many of us, the waitress comes out, you don't really want a cocktail. You finish that first cocktail and they come out and they like, say, oh, would you like it? Another one? Like, sometimes you feel like saying yes, and you are literally, like, subconsciously just trying to please the waitress or the waiter. Like, you really don't want another cocktail. You're just like, oh, I got to be nice, got to order. Because they, you know, they've asked me, so. So just saying no in those little situations, or just being like, well, I'd like a glass of water or refill on my soda water instead. That's perfectly fine to do, especially if you're like me and you travel to restaurants with. With hydrogen tablets and electrolytes and, you know, for. For me, any glass of water is easily turned into a cocktail or at least something more fun than just a regular glass of water. I've always got stuff in my fanny pack that I'm putting into my water, and that actually keeps me from spending money on, slash, drinking cocktails.

Always prepared.

Yep, exactly. So a few others, I'm not. I'm not going to tell you all of them because the article is a little bit long in the two, but a few others that really stood out to me are to basically not necessarily apologize all the time for feeling as though you aren't on the same page as another person, knowing that's okay to have your opinion. Just basically stop saying sorry too much. It's okay to just say, no, I don't want to do that. And just because, not, no, I can't do that, but no, I don't want to do that. That's just not me. I'm not interested in it. That's not who I am. And what I'll do a lot of times is I'll meet somebody in the middle. Like, somebody recently asked me, and this is relevant to the podcast, just opening the kimono. They asked me if they'd come, like, shadow me for the whole day and walk around with me and follow everything I do and just basically be a fly on the wall and just watch me and get to my house, you know, like 5am Just following me around the whole day and, you know, the inside of me, as a people pleaser, wanted to say, well, yeah, it's a great idea. I'd love to bless you and for you to learn all these things from me as you follow me around during the day. But I really knew deep down inside all that was going to do was distract me from my job, result in me feeling like an asshole, because I'd be so busy, I wouldn't actually be able to stop and explain to this person everything I was doing the whole time. And that ultimately it might be kind of a disappointment for them. They would just be following this guy around with his head down, not explaining anything he's doing, and they're just scratching their head the whole time. And so I said, well, listen, I'm sure you have lots of questions about my daily routine and how I organize my day and how I work with my team and how I prioritize family time and me time and how I structure things and when I write and when I read, etc. So why don't you just come up with a list of all your questions, the things that you really would be looking for if you shouted me during the day. And at some point, we'll just have a phone call, you ask me all those questions, and I'll record it and we'll make a podcast about it, you know, on it with all my daily routines. And they're like, oh, yeah, okay, I could do that. And so we're just gonna have a call, and I'm gonna take care of them, you know, help them out, but I'm gonna help them out and also turn it into a podcast and meet him in the middle. And so sometimes you don't necessarily have to say, well, you can say no, but when you say no, just offer something that meets them in the middle that you know is sustainable for you. Right. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, for sure. You know, it's such an interesting thing because being, like here in Southern culture, like, people pleasing is such a immensely big problem here, like in the south.

And mom, if you're some more fried chicken, honey.

Yeah, exactly. Mom, if you're listening, pay attention. You know, the one thing that I've kind of really noticed is that, and I think that most people would probably agree with. With this, is that in general, most people want to be liked. They don't want to be disliked. And so us saying no to something or us not pleasing someone. So a lot of times we kind of turn that back and we reflect that on who our character is or who we kind of perceive our character is. Oh, well, I'm someone who, you know, can't follow through, or I'm someone who isn't nice to people, or I'm someone who isn't liked. And these are these cognitive kind of constraints that we have that aren't really real, but we like to tell ourselves that about our character when we say no or don't please people. And it's just a matter of kind of shaking that. It's easier said than done, but it's a matter of kind of really standing firm on things that we don't want to do. Engage in the things that we do. Help people when we can. But also remember too, that our time is valuable, just as their time is valuable. There's no difference there. So, yeah, it's good. Good lessons to keep in mind, for sure.

Like she says in the article, you can't please everyone. You're Not Pizza. That's true. That should be the name of this podcast. You're Not Pizza.

Hello guys. First of all, Ben, I'm such a big fan of yours. I have Boundless and the Cookbook, but when you're talking about refeeds, I usually follow a pretty low calorie diet, mostly keto. Keto. What are some of your favorite things to do a refeed with? And if it's in your cookbook, that's great too.

Well, during a refeed, I mean, I, I don't cheat on deep fried Twinkies and, you know, and Domino's Pizza. I simply eat more of the good stuff. Like, for example, you know, I love to go out to my favorite restaurant for refeed. Like, lately I've been going to this Mediterranean restaurant called Baba's here in Spokane. I'll get like a lamb shank and hummus and pita and tahini and, and tzatziki and some eggplant fries and their wonderful cauliflower dish and just invite a bunch of friends out and eat a bunch of shared plates and not worry at all about how many calories I'm consuming. When at home I like to get a big old cut of meat out of the freezer and do a rib eye steak with instead of something I might have on a normal day like roasted vegetables or carrot fries instead. Something a little bit more dense like sweet potato fries fries or sourdough bread with butter and honey. I would instead of not having dessert, because a lot of times I don't have dessert and I do the kion amino acids instead, I'll take like 20 grams of that because it just crushes my appetite. And when I'm dieting down or being cognizant of calories, you know, a lot of times I'll just do something like amino acids for dessert. But instead, you know, during a refeed week, I'll do like a really good brand of ice cream. Like, I've been geeking out on this stuff called good kind ice cream cream, which is this really good banana based ice cream. And I'll sprinkle like a little energy bar on top of that and maybe some coconut flakes and some bee pollen, a little chocolate sauce, and you'll have something like that for dessert. It appears that based on a lot of the studies on refeeding, that keeping the amino acid pulsing high during the day is actually a good idea. Meaning that not only will I say take those amino acids I'd normally have for dessert and do little bits of amino acids throughout the day day, but I also on my refeed weeks or the weeks where I'm trying to take better care of my body and keep my metabolism elevated, I will be sure not to skip meals. Right? It's meal frequency that, especially from a protein and an amino acid level standpoint, seem to be the most important when it comes to the distribution of meals across the day. So not, you know, if you normally skip breakfast, don't skip breakfast like have your eggs, bacon, avocado or a nice superfood smoothie or something during that week that you're refilling, eating rather than breakfast skipping and doing longer periods of time, intermittent fasting in many cases. For example, for my lunchtime salad, which is normally a low calorie lunchtime salad with greens and some type of low calorie filler like sea moss gel or pumpkin mash or like the Japanese yam miracle noodles. Instead, during a refeed week, again with my lunchtime salad, I'll just do like, you know, sourdough bread with, with honey and butter or, you know, or, or like a higher calorie dressing on top of my greens, you know, like one of the primal kitchen Caesar ranch dressings instead of just like, you know, balsamic vinaigrette and salt and pepper, I a lot of times, like I mentioned with dinner, will eat more of the good stuff, but especially like the bigger, fattier cuts like the pork chops and the ribeye steaks versus say like doing a lot more of the fish and the chicken and the leaner cuts or the lower calories cuts during a week like that when paired with lower exercise, calorie burning overall, like doing a lot less high intensity interval training on those refeed weeks and instead doing a lot more sauna, a lot more walking, a lot more cold pool, a lot more yoga. That typically tends to make you feel like a million bucks by the end of the week. And I have some clients who I coach who are afraid it'll make them fat, but it doesn't happen. What we see is just long term gradual decreases in body fat without a drop in muscle mass and without a drop in a lot of the hormones responsible for appetite and responsible for fat burning and responsible for thyroid upregulation occurring. So basically for me, it's just like more of the good stuff, less meal skipping, less of the lower calorie fillers like sea moss gel and pumpkin mash and miracle noodles, and instead simply more of the the good stuff from a real nutrient density standpoint. The last tip I would give you would be, if you go to the website for the Wesson A Price foundation, that diet is very rich in fermented foods and ghee and butter and lard and coconut oil and big fatty cuts of meat and broths. And that's a really good example of A, the type of diet that's super nutritionally dense and nourishing for a refeed period and B, that's also the type of diet that if I'm working with like a pregnant woman or a breastfeeding woman or, or somebody who's showing low levels of hormones but still exercising a lot and leads a lot more hormonal support, particularly from nutrient density and fats, like that's the type of diet that I would have somebody like that follow. So you could look up the Wesson A Price foundation to better wrap your head around that particular eating protocol. But yeah, those are a few of the tips that I've got for you for the refeed week. Great question.

Hi guys. I just wanna say love the podcast. So thanks so much for doing this. I've been tracking my HRV for quite some time now and I'm consistently around the low 30s. The only thing that I've noticed that's really worked for me in a big way is a five day fasting mimicking protocol. I guess my question is what do you make of this? Do you think that there might be an underlying underlying food allergy that's stressing my body? And also is there a way to, to keep these numbers higher without consistently being in a caloric deficit? Thanks.

And Stephanie, again, explain to me one more time, why are you doing the five day like the alternate fasting type of diet? Like what is it that you're noticing when you're eating a lot of food?

So I'm noticing that my HRV is quite low when I am eating just regularly. And then when I'm doing the five day fasting mimicking protocol, my HRV like skyrockets and it Gets to like, you know, the 50s, 60s, and it lasts there for like a couple of weeks after, but then it drops back down again once I incorporate my regular diet. Just wondering, like, is there, do you think that this might be like an allergy stressing the body or if there's any way to keep those high HRV numbers without being in a caloric deficit?

Okay, so we happen to have probably one of the nation's leading experts on hrv, as my trusty sidekick Jay knows a ton about hrv. So I'm gonna let him take this one away with the comment that, yeah, if you are calorie deprived and that's having the impact that we've already discussed that it can have, then that can be an issue. But at the same time, if you're consuming calories from food, if your body has an autoimmune reaction to those foods, or even a psychosomatic reaction to that food, such as it's associated with the stressful event in life, or a blood sugar response to that food, or something else, even an inflammatory gut response to that food dictating. You want to do some gut testing like a Genova Diagnostics three day gut panel, for example, that could all impact HRV in response to food intake. But I'm curious to hear what you have to say about this one, Jay.

Yeah, so I actually think this is a great question and one that I have fielded on numerous occasions because people have made this connection between either fasting or if they're doing elimination type diet, they see fluctuations or modulations in hrv. Here's the one thing that I really try to drive home to people when it comes to utilizing HRV as a biometric is a lot of people say, how can I raise my hrv? Well, let's ask the question of what we're actually raising. So when we're raising a number, what we're raising is that time in between heartbeats and which is indicative of adaptations and resiliency of the autonomic nervous system. Now, there are many different contributors to the autonomic nervous system fluctuations or HRV modulation that we have to consider. One would be kind of the rate that you're breathing. One would be stress load, the other would be. And that when I say stress load, I mean physiological and psychological or psychosomatic stress. And then also too blood pressure regulation. So all of these things are factoring in to what is then contributing to this one number or many numbers, depending on what device you're using. Using that we call HRV or heart rate Variability. One of the things that I tell people from the very get go is that we get so wrapped up in this objective measure that we forget the subjective measure. We forget to actually check in with how we're feeling. Because a lot of times people are so considerate or they are they, or I would say better, better word for that is concerned of how can I raise my hrv? Because I see that, you know, Ben Greenfield has, you know, know a 120 HRV, or J. Wiles has a, you know, a 130 HRV. I had to one up you there Ben. But the thing is, is that we're not actually one upping one another. There are different genetic contributions that can take somebody from that's, that's basically sedentary, not very active and can actually have them up in the 120s and 130s. I've seen it plenty of times and I've seen very fit individuals who are very keyed into nutrition, keyed into their nervous system modulations from a stress load standpoint who are in the 20s and the 30s. So I never get overly concerned with where that number is as a baseline. What I do is I take that baseline and say, okay, how can we make kind of considerations from what we're doing based on that baseline? Now for you, Stephanie, one of the interesting things that you did indicate is that when you make some pretty significant shifts or changes, you'll see this modulation of nervous system flow functioning. Could it have something to do with, you know, HPA axis dysregulation due to foods or an allergen potentially? That's why when Ben was mentioning earlier that you should get tested for it, I certainly agree with that. But also too, one of the things that we see kind of happening for almost everybody is that when people fast, especially when the first, within the first 24 to 38 hours, is we'll see kind of this transient raise in orthostatic HRV. But then after about that 42 hour, three to four days fast, we typically will see people's HRV go down because the body is basically saying, okay, are you starving? Like, do I need to conserve energy and resources here? What is like going on? And so we'll see HRV go down and then when they refeed, we'll actually see it go back up. Now again, that's not every case and it may not be for you, Stephanie, but obviously something is happening and there's a shift. So if I were you, it would be worthwhile checking in to see if there is A potential food allergen by getting one of these, you know, genoba testing, diagnostics test, seeing a functional medicine practitioner or a health coach who can do that for you. I think that there is, that there is support for that. However, what I would say is don't get so wrapped up in what that baseline number is because your 20s of an HRV doesn't mean that you are more stressed or physically worse than me at a 140. The baseline number is not nearly as important as kind of fluctuations from that baseline number number and then also too your ability to modulate stress in the moment or take better control of your stress. So for instance, if we were to put like a chest strap on you and we were to look at an EKG or even, you know, you could use some different wearable technology and we look to see, okay, when we manipulate your breathing, can you take your 20 HRV and bring it up to a 50, 60, 70? Maybe you can. And if you can, then that means you have extremely strong control and resiliency of your nervous system, especially your parasympathetic sympathetic vagal break. But if you can't do that, if you can only get it up to 21, 22 and you start at 20, then we have a vagal break problem which could be contributed by food, it could be contributed by stress, by overactivity, whatever it may be. So I'm sorry, I don't want to get too long in the tooth here, but I mean there's, there's different things that you have to look at. But always make sure that you are taking equally as much of a consideration into your subjective experience of how you feel feel. And not just base it on objective data, just use that as kind of like a backup. So tell people, don't be, I'm, I'm an HRV expert, but I tell people, don't overly rely on hrv. Rely on HRV plus your level of subjectivity. Hope that made sense.

Yeah, that's great feedback, J. I guess. You know, I run into this a lot with people like food affects me deleteriously, right? In some way. Gas bloating, hrv, you know, sleepiness, brain fog, whatever. However, the long term solution is not don't eat because that's not very sustainable. Last time I checked for living a long time, you actually do need, unless you're a real true ninja of a breatharian, some amount of calorie intake at some point in your life. So yeah, while fasting can be a short term solution for helping to heal the Gut and turn over some of the cells and the lining of the gut, et cetera. Especially for people with SIBO or some type of underlying, underlying yeast or fungus or, you know, gut inflammatory type of problem. You can't just fast your way out of that, go back to the way that you were eating and expect for everything to be fixed. In most cases, there are some underlying issues with your psychosomatic approach to food or the actual composition of your diet that needs to be adjusted.

Well, I can, I can raise people. It's just like this. Would this be sustainable? I could raise your HRV right now, Ben, by engaging your mammalian dive reflex. By putting your face into cold water, I could get your HRV up with within 30 seconds, anywhere from 20 to 30 points. I guarantee. I can do it. You can do it, I should say. But is that sustainable? Are you going to go around with your face in water all day, every day? No, no. Just like you're not going to fast all the time. It's just obviously you cannot live life that way. So you have to take the metric for what it is. Not something that says. Well, I should say you should take the metric for what it is in the sense that it is something that provides you with data that allows you to check in with yourself. Subjective experience.

Yep, yep, you got it. All right, well that's a great question. Let's do, let's do one more question here.

Question regarding H1C and insulin. I've had work done with functional medicine doctor for a few years. So I have a couple years of blood work to repair, but my most recent was done during intermittent fasting. My H1C was 5.9 and my insulin was 2.8. Historically I've had 5.3 and 5.2. I follow a really, really clean diet, plant based, as well as just introducing really healthy grass fed beef lately. At the time I was doing intermittent fasting, so curious. Any feedback on that? I'm planning on doing a retest because these numbers just don't make sense. This is Angie and I'm done speaking.

All right, cool. So hemoglobin A1C, that's simply kind of like a three month running snapshot of what your blood glucose is, or at least an approximation of it. It refers to glycated hemoglobin. So glycated hemoglobin, so HbA1c is something that is going to develop or basically have a certain amount of percentage in your bloodstream. And HbA1c itself develops from hemoglobin, which is a protein in your red blood cells that carries oxygen through your body, binds with glucose in the blood, and that causes that protein to become glycated, hence the, the name glycated hemoglobin. So when your body processes sugar, of course, as you would imagine, glucose in the bloodstream is going to attach to hemoglobin. And the amount of glucose that combines with that hemoglobin is proportional to the total amount of sugar that's going to be in your system. And what they recommend, for the most part, is that you keep your hemoglobin A1C below about 6% or so now due to increased turnover of particularly red blood cells cells in people who exercise a lot. You know, athletes, exercising individuals, exercise enthusiasts, et cetera. It's not that great of a value just because you can see artificially elevated hemoglobin A1C levels in that population dictating that. If I see someone with high HbA1c and they're an athlete and exercising person who you would expect to have pretty good metabolism, and they're eating a diet that's not really high in sugars and vegetable oils and other things that would contribute to that glycation, I like to look at some other parameters, like what's the fasting glucose look like, what's the insulin look like, what's the insulin like growth factor look like? And for me, personally, well, to put this in perspective for you, I recently did an HbA1C test and at the same time had been wearing a continuous blood glucose monitor. My continuous blood glucose monitor was giving me values on a typical day of like 80 to 90. You know, not a lot of variability, pretty well under control, looked great. My hemoglobin A1C came back at 6.8, which for me is really high. Yet I'm not that concerned about that because I'm looking at my blood glucose all the time. It's super stabilized. And I'm sure that a big part of that elevation, hemoglobin A1c, is due to the fact that I'm exercising right, and I've just got a higher red blood cell turnover. And a lot of my exercise includes, includes some amount of endurance training. So if you fall into that category, I don't even know how, how much, you know, how much faith you would want to put in that, in that HbA1c data, if that makes sense. So that's one thing to think about, you know, and, and so, I mean, really, I would get a continuous blood glucose monitor. Insurance might not cover it for you, but Anybody can get one, anybody can go to levels and talk to them about getting one. Or you can look into the Freestyle Libre or the Dexcom G4 as a couple of ways that you can track your blood glucose continually. But there are a few random things that can increase hemoglobin A1C. Smoking increases it. I'm assuming you're not smoking. A lot of times you have a deficiency in iron or a deficiency in vitamin B12 or a deficiency in folklore folate. Those can all raise hemoglobin A1C because they almost cause anemia like symptoms. And so that would also be something to look into is what's your iron at, what's your vitamin B12 at and what's your folic acid at? H. Pylori infection, which a lot of people have in the gut. I would get your gut tested because a lot of times that is correlated with high levels of hemoglobin A1C. You also see high levels of hemoglobin A1C when urea is, is high, like a diet that's really high in uric acid or even poor kidney function. So if you get your labs and you look at your estimated glomerular filtration rate, your EGFR and your creatinine levels and other markers of kidney function, you'd want to make sure that you just double check the kidneys and make sure those are working well. We know that poor sleep is definitely associated with higher levels of hemoglobin A1C. So usually you see that with sleep apnea. People sleep apnea tend to have high hemoglobin A1C lower levels. So you may want to consider like a sleep study test too. People who use a lot of opiates have high hemoglobin A1C. So I would think about that. People who drink a lot of alcohol also have high levels of hemoglobin A1C. I doubt based on what you've just described about yourself, Angelique, that you're like ayou're like a booze chugging cigarette smoker unless you want to live to 115 plus years old like Jean Calmac. So I'd look at gut folks function, I'd look at sleep, I would look at iron B12 and folate deficiencies. And then I would also consider using a continuous blood glucose monitor so you can see if this is just a relic that you don't actually have to pay that much attention to. And that's, that's where I'd start. Anything you want to throw in there, Jay.

Yeah, man. So I, I would also, I would agree with all of those. I'm gonna speak to CGM second. But first, I'll also say that overall stress load, um, so if you're having high cortisol spikes, high adrenaline spikes, dysregulation of the HPA axis, that can also influence blood glucose fairly heavily if that's something that's sustained. The thing is that I tell people like I. And I don't know if you think this is the same thing for you, Ben, but for me, I think out of all of the wearables or said wearables that I've ever tried that the most informative one that I've ever had has been a cgm. I just think it is an incredible amount of very useful, useful and practical information that can just show you what is this doing throughout my kind of daily routine. And so I know, like, you've. You've had this happen too, Ben, because I think I remember you saying it. But for me, like, obviously I know certain foods are going to have higher variability from a glycemic index for me than others. But the big one too is like if you're doing a daily sauna routine like that for me, like, blast my. Blast my GI load way up. So I mean, I see super high spikes after a sauna session.

Me too.

And so, yeah, so if you're seeing that day in and day out again, those are going to cause your mean to skew over to the right side more than kind of what would be expected from somebody who's not doing that. So again, yeah, these are things that are kinda like artificially, I would say inflating, you know, your, your blood sugar and blood glucose. I mean, I hate to use the word artificially, but it' sit's just doing it in an entirely different mechanism than let's say let's us just. Just shoving Sour Patch Kids and Twinkies down our throats. So, yeah, CGM for the win. Definitely get one if you haven't had one.

That's actually a really good point because I have been doing. You'd think I wouldn't do this in the summer, but I actually have really liked my sauna this summer because it almost gets more warm and I really get a good deep sweat and I actually enjoy it quite a bit. I was doing a ton of sauna almost every day, six or seven days a week leading into my last blood test in which the hemoglobin A1C levels were elevated. Yeah. And I see the same Thing as you like. My blood glucose goes up to. And this is like, I've talked about this on podcasts before. You see a short term rise in blood glucose when you're in the sauna, but long term that results in better glucose management and better insulin sensitization the rest of the day. So it's not a big issue. Just like a cup of coffee will temporarily raise blood glucose, but actually appears to be pretty good for Things like type 2 diabetes and blood glucose management, management, etc, you know, same same as exercise, for example.

Right.

So basically I, I would, I would pay attention to looking into some of the stuff that Jay and I shared with you and yeah, maybe also look into whether or not you're doing a lot of. A lot of sauna. Well, I think we're out of time because I have a. I've got a client I gotta run off and call here in a few minutes. You know that that's my real job. Podcasting is my favorite job. I gotta actually talk to people. So anyways though, before we go, let's give away a goodie bag because we love to give out cool gifts to people who go to any platform that they listen to this podcast on. Leave a review. So if you leave us a review and then you hear your review read on the show, all you got to do is email gearngreenfieldfitness.com and if you email gearngreenfieldfitness dot com what will happen is we will send you. If you include your T shirt size when you email us your T shirt size and your address, we'll send you a handy dandy gear pack with a BPA free water bottle, a cool beanie tech T shirt, and possibly another cool thing that we throw into the mix these days. So that being said, Jay, you want to choose our big review of the day?

I will, I will. So this is entitled My Health and well being. Thanks you. And even though I. I think that this is kind of contrary to what this person's about to say, this is from Evil. Jpr. That's evil.

Maybe Ivil.

It's E V I, L J P R Evil. So evil. JPR says from the podcast to the books to the products you recommend, Ben, your podcasts have been a game changer for my health and wellbeing as well as my marriage. Big one. I have an entire notebook filled with things I have learned and I get so excited to share them with all of those around me. Keep doing what you do and changing lives one by one.

We change lives, we change marriages. I think it was podcast 431 where you gave you. We gave you tips for having more sex in your marriage, which basically comes.

Down to referring to.

Yeah, that one. That was a tip for guys. Guys, be more vulnerable and you'll. You'll get more. I need to be reading. I need to be reading the Urban dictionary more. You'll get more booty. Geez, I'm showing my age, trying to keep it clean for the kids in the minivans. All right, well, that's a great review. Email gearngreenfieldfitness.com and we'll hook you up with some cool swag. In the meantime, I'd like to thank all of our wonderful and intelligent and highly driven and curious clubhouse listeners for listening live. All the rest of you for listening when this podcast comes out. All the show notes which we work so hard on, the links to everything we talk about, all the news flashes, all the tips, all the products, all the insiders, the calendar we're linked to, all that if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com433 well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income. That nature enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes, use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.