Radical Metabolism: How To Cleanse Your Gallbladder, Increase Your Metabolism, Burn More Fat Without Exercise & Much More!

Hey, what's up? It's Ben Greenfield. A couple of nights ago, I had this lady over to my house. She is incredibly. She's like the Yoda. She probably doesn't want me to call her the Yoda of nutrition. What am I thinking? That's horrible. She's like the first lady of nutrition with the knowledge of Yoda. Like, she knows all these people from decades ago and has learned all these amazing nutritional practices. Gallbladder cleanses, liver cleanses. We talk about coffee enemas, we talk about chevon blackstrap molasses up your booty. But more specifically, we talk about metabolism and how to elevate your metabolism using some pretty little known tactics. She is a wealth of knowledge. Her name is Ann Louise Gittleman. Your mind is going to be blown by today's episode.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize, optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

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Foreign.

Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And I have sitting with me here in my home in Spokane, one of the, really one of the very first guests that ever appeared on this show. You know, we've been going for 11 years, twice a week, thousands of episodes now. But episode number 29, my number it was number 29 was with Ann Louise Gittleman. And Ann not only is a next door neighbor of mine over in Post Falls, Idaho, but she wrote a book a long time ago that I read and it was called the Gut flush Plan, A breakthrough cleansing program. And in that original episode that I'll link to for you in the show notes, which you can grab@BenGreenfieldFitness.com radical. Ann and I talked about critters living in your gut and the biome and how to cleanse your gastrointestinal tract. Later, several years down the road, I read a fascinating book by Anne that was really one of my first exposures to the concept of building biology and EMF and cell phones. And it was called why your cell phone shouldn't be your alarm clock and 1,268 other ways to outsmart the hazards of electrical pollution. She's got Plenty of other books. And if you haven't heard of Ann and you're in the wellness sector, interested in health, then maybe you've been living under a rock. Because she is often called the first lady of nutrition. She's a nutritionist. She's internationally recognized as a pioneer in environmental and dietary and health issues. She is a New York Times best selling author. She's got over 30 books on everything from menopause to beauty to diet to detox. She is considered to be one of the world's foremost experts in functional medicine. She holds an Ms. In Nutrition Education from Columbia. She's a certified nutrition specialist, and she has a PhD in holistic nutrition. She, among other things, has served as the chief nutritionist of the Pediatric clinic at Bellevue Hospital. She's the former director of nutrition at the Pritikin Longevity Center. And a couple of years ago she was actually presented with a humanitarian award from the Cancer Control Society. And her list of accolades go on and on, but she is at the forefront of health and wellness, particularly with regards to nutrition. And that's something that we're going to focus on today because she just wrote a book. I'm holding it now. I forget who sent me this book, Ann, but I looked at it and I saw the pink cover and the big bold words, radical metabolism. A powerful new plan to blast fat and reignite your energy in just 21 days. And I thought, here we go again. This is gonna be some new fad diet that's chock full of information everybody knows like don't snack all day long and control your blood sugar. Then I saw who the author was and I thought, w I've actually read a couple of books by her. I own a couple of books by her and I do like what she has to say. So I took a dive. I remember I was reading this actually over in Bellevue, of all places, at one of my friend's houses. I started to read it and you can see here all the pages that are folded over. I do my homework and you blew my mind with this book. I mean, you really did. And you've got great feedback from Mark Hyman and Isabella Wentz and Kellyanne Petrucci and other mutual acquaintances. And so I figured, especially because you talk about things like gallbladder and things people don't know about omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids. I had to get you on the show and talk about this book. So thanks for, thanks for coming on over all the way from Post Falls.

It's my pleasure to be with you.

Hopefully it Wasn't too long of a plane flight.

Not too long at all.

Okay. All right. So the very first thing that struck me as profound in this book, and that I would imagine we're going to be spending a little bit of time on, is the gallbladder. You begin very early in the book talking about the gallbladder. And not a lot of people address the gallbladder when they talk about metabolism. So why did you start with the gallbladder in this book, Radical metabolism, and include it so heavily?

Because there's so many women in this country, Ben, that are fat, 40 and fatigued. And one of the common denominators of all those women is that many of them have their gallbladders out. It's a very, very common surgery in this country. As a matter of fact, it's probably the most common abdominal surger that we currently have.

My sister has had it. She's. And she's, I think now she's 31.

So we're getting younger and younger and that doesn't surprise me. And so the whole idea is that the gallbladder is not a throwaway organ. It's like the appendix, which is not a throwaway organ. And we've got to do as much as we can to keep this very vital organ because it's so important in digesting fats, because it secretes bile in a timed release fashion, it flushes toxins, and it also revs up the thyroid. The cool thing that I found, which I stumbled upon completely by accident, was there was a connection, an unholy alliance between the gallbladder and the thyroid. And when I start seeing all the thyroid dysfunction in this country and figuring out why there's so much Hashimoto's, why there's so many problems with people losing weight, I had to look into the gallbladder and found out that there's great deal of research from Harvard as well as from Finland that suggests that if you don't have free flowing bile, which people do not have, if they do not have a gallbladder, then you cannot convert T4 successfully into T3. And it was an aha moment. And when I spoke to all my functional medicine practitioner friends and all these big names in the field, Rafael Kelman, Mark Hyman, you know the drill. Many of them suggested to me that people started having hypothyroidism problems and a problem with metabolism and losing weight, sometimes weeks, but many times months and even years after having their gallbladder removed. So there's a gallbladder connection to Metabolism that I had to review, I had to take a deeper dive into. And that was the reason that I really wrote Radical Metabolism.

So it's because the thyroid is so intimately connected to metabolism and the gallbladder is such an influencer of. You said T4 to T3 conversion.

Yes, but who knew?

Yeah.

And people that get their. That have sluggish bile are seven times more likely to suffer from hypothyroidism. And it can go either way. When you start having thyroid problems, you then have problems with your gallbladder. So those two organs are definitively connected.

Do you want to know an interesting story on why this is near and dear to my heart?

Yes.

Over 10 years of competing in triathlon and Spartan eating 5,000 calories a day in many cases, often in stressed out or exercising scenarios, shoving lots of food down the hatch, including things like alcohol at night, caffeine in the morning. All of these things that you talk about in your book can definitely affect the liver. I found myself struggling with decreased thyroid activity. I worked on carbohydrate intake, on controlling cortisol. Two things that can affect thyroid.

You bet.

But I began to test my liver enzymes. I also began to do palpation of liver and gallbladder kind of right upper quadrant areas. And I found that there were some issues. High liver enzymes, liver tenderness, fatty stool, things that indicated that I myself was having thyroid issues that weren't necessarily related to a lot of the things that people commonly talk about with thyroid, but could instead be liver and gallbladder. And I think a lot of people don't realize the importance of this.

No, it's an aha moment. And the other concern that I would have as well are all the people that are doing paleo style diets or keto style diets where there's such heavy intake of fat and you've got to be able to digest that fat. And there's a real problem with people not digesting what they should or not even be able to digest essential fatty acids, people upchucking on their fish oil and so forth. So I think there's a bile deficiency. And if you still have your gallbladder, you could have sluggish bile and that would still go hand in hand with a suboptimal thyroid.

Before we talk about the elephant in the room, you know, what we can do about bile, the first thing I want to ask you is why do you think this happens to so many people, the gallbladder and bile issues? And why does it even say, you know, we look at Fatty liver disease. And that's a growing epidemic as well.

I know.

Do you have a reason that you think that is?

Yeah. Lack of choline.

Lack of choline.

Lack of choline. You know, I find when I do nutrient testing, and I've always done nutrient testing with all my clients over the past 60 years, it feels like it's only been about 30, 35 years. I find that one of the most efficient nutrients is choline. And if you check with the Spectra Cell people out of Houston, one of their most efficient micronutrients is choline. And choline has been found in studies I think was out of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, if I recall, that 500 milligrams of choline three times a day for at least six decongest a fatty liver. And choline is a lipotropic nutrient, so it will thin the bile and help to overturn a fatty liver. So that's one of the reasons we're not taking enough foods with natural lecithin anymore, because soy has gotten such a dirty word. So the soy, the lack of lecithin, the lack of non GMO soy lecithin, people are not having sunflower lecithin, which can thin the bile, the lack of bitters in the diet. And that's another issue that, well, yeah, nobody's eating bitters because it's not part of the American diet. All these things, I think, contribute to the problem that we're having with fatty liver and congested, sluggish bile.

Where do you get things like choline from natural food sources?

Believe it or not, you can get the choline from lecithin, number one, acetylcholine from lecithin. And you can also get it from eggs if you don't have an allergy to eggs. But consequently, when I did my research, one of the most allergic producing foods that can create inflammatory responses in the bile ducts in the liver happens to be eggs, which is one of the primary sources of choline.

They're forbidden on a lot of liver cleanse programs for that reason, eg.

And the research that was done, it was way back in the 1960s, found that individuals that had severe gallbladder pain, if they eliminated three particular foods from their diet, the pain almost was reduced by 99%. The first was eggs, the second was pork. The third was onions, believe it or not.

No kidding.

Really interesting stuff.

Wow. Okay, so what about walnuts? Do you like those as a source of choline?

I like walnuts, but I like the eggs better. If you can Tolerate them. And even more so, sunflower lecithin.

Okay, now, sunflower lecithin, that's something that you would buy in supplement form. That or soy lecithin.

Right? Yes, you would. Non gmo, of course, soy lecithin. And years ago, when I was coming up, probably before you were born, it was in the 70s, Ben. I used to work in health food stores. The one nutrient that everybody came in for, for their gallbladder issues, for their gallstones, for their heart, was lecithin. And it's become very much out of favor. And perhaps that's because so much soy is GMO these days.

Yeah, soy's gotten a bad rap. I actually just got back from Tokyo last week, had a lot of soybeans, a lot of non GM soybeans made miso, had tons of miso, the best healthy fermented tofu. A lot of it was really good. But is that a significant source of soy lecithin, just eating soy soybeans or natto or something like that?

Well, it's certainly a source, but I don't think you can get enough as you could with a little bit of lecithin thrown into your morning smoothie, which is what I suggest for some of my people.

Gotcha. That's a simple fix. Now, you talked about bitters as well. Are there particular bitters that you like for really enhancing gallbladder and bile production?

One of the most. They're bitters in every different form. I like the bitters that you get in your fruits and vegetables. I like grapefruit if there's no contraindication. And one of the reasons that the grapefruit diet actually works, according to Scripps, is because there's a bitter component of phytonutrient that is very helpful for weight loss.

What's the grapefruit diet?

Oh, you never heard of the grapefruit diet? Years ago. Oh, my God. Years ago. This was such a biggie. I'm almost. I say this because I remember it like it was yesterday. The grapefruit diet was very popular. I think it was. Was in. I think it was in the 70s. So it was a little before.

Okay, yeah.

Before you were talking about.

I was born in 81.

I know, I know, but it was. And then it had a resurgence, I think, in the 90s. But it was a diet whereby you had to have half a. I think it was half a pink grapefruit three or four times a day. And it was magnificently helpful for weight loss. And when my people can't lose weight and they're doing radical metabolism and taking their allotted fruit. And of course, we reduce that particular amount of fruit. I always switch them to half a pink grapefruit.

That's interesting because grapefruit, actually, grapefruit extract, I know, influences the mitochondria. I believe it. It speeds up activity in the electron transport chain. Which is why people tell you be cautious with grapefruit. Because of the medication, Pharmaceutical medications. Because it speeds up their metabolism.

Exactly. But it does have that beneficial aspect in terms of weight loss as well. But if you can't tolerate grapefruit, there's always lemon. The lemons thin the bile. Dandelion root is a wonderful bile thinning agent. And even coffee, the right kind of unmoldy, high antioxidant, high polyphenol, organic coffee, which I talk about in the book. Lots of ways to get bitters, Angostura bitters. I mean, if you're going to go out and drink alcohol, put some Angostura bitters in your vodka, for God's sake.

Angostura bitters. So it was actually. This may have been influenced by your book. I don't recall, but it was close to the time your book was published. I went to the bar and I usually have a Moscow Mule, which I actually have because it's a bitter and a digestif. You have lime, ginger.

Yum.

What else is in there? Usually I haven't put a splash of bitters. You have. Typically I have a gin which burns super clean. But the thing that the bartender asked me was they said, have you ever had. They called it a Ben Jitters and I switched to this drink. Now people go out to me with a bar, it was rare. Now that I order a Moscow Milli or a Ben and Jitters, what you do is you ask for their Angostura bitters and any kind of like good fresh house made bitters they have or anything that's more of like a healthy bitter. And you simply do bitters on the rocks with a splash of gin.

Oh, that's so healthy. I mean, I'm all for that. And I like the hard liquors.

Plus it's named after me.

Totally cool. Totally cool. But yes, I mean, bitters are all over the place. So you can drink on radical metabolism. You can eat on radical metabolism. You've got your bitter greens, you got the bitter fruits, you got the bitter drinks, you got the bitter herbs and spices and ginger certainly would qualify in that regard.

What about the one they do in Okinawa, the bitter melon extract.

It's so very High in antioxidants. It's very good to use topically. I mean, they take extracts. We use topically for the skin. Oh, it's magnificent for the skin. And it's very high in polyphenols. Absolutely. Bitter melon.

Now, some people sell supplements. There's one that I like, I wanted to get your opinion on because I travel with it sometimes. Because sometimes it's hard when you travel. Check it in your hotel room.

There's not like bitters in the refrigerator.

Grapefruit in the refrigerator.

No, I get it.

The Chris shade stuff. My friend Chris Straight, he does the quicksilver bitters.

And then I mentioned, I mentioned him in the book.

Okay.

It's one of my very favorites. You like that one very much.

Yeah. You just squirt it in your mouth and you hold it for, you know, 30, 60 seconds, a little bit before a meal.

Absolutely. And we have do it yourself bitters. We call them Metab elixirs as well.

Metabolic. What's a, what's a do it yourself bit?

It has a little bit of vinegar, a little bit of maybe some angostura bitters added to it, maybe some lemon, some lime. So we've got all kinds of little drinks in the book. So you can get it with the Chris Shade product, the bitters number nine. There's other brands that are, I think, that are out there or you do it yourself.

Okay, gotcha. And by the way, for those of you listening in the recipe and the book, I'll put over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com radical. So we talked a little bit just now about how we can support the gallbladder. And that's a question I was going to ask you and wound up being answered when you were talking about why people have messed up gallbladders in the first place because they're not including choline and lecithin sources and some of these bitters and digestifs. But I also wanted to ask you, is there a way, aside from looking for fat in your stool and paying attention to the way that you feel as you're digesting food, is there an actual test for gallbladder function?

Ggt. Ggt, which most people don't test for. So you look at your liver enzymes and I get ggt. And that as well as high liver enzymes can usually be the clue that could be the tip off there.

So like ast, ALT and now ggt.

Alphabet soup.

Ggt. Okay.

Right. And if you have light colored stools, if the stools are very light, not the Normal color. If you've got pain in the upper quadrants, if you've got pain on your right side, if you have dizziness, if you get up in the middle of the night, if you have problems with your hearing, all of that is part of the gallbladder meridian, and that could spell problems with the gallbladder itself.

What about glutathione? That's talked a lot about. You know, that and N acetylcysteine are probably two of the darlings of, like, the liver supplement industry. Do those have an effect on the gallbladder?

Not that I know of.

Okay. But a lot of times liver issues go hand in hand with gallbladder issues.

You bet. Hand in hand and there. And, you know, if you're an embittered person and if you're very resentful, you could have gallbladder problems. There is an emotional contact if you're embittered.

Your gallbladder short work pretty well.

If you're. If you got the right kind of bitters. Yes.

Okay. Actually, I don't want to neglect the importance of what you just said. So if you're embittered or what?

Resentful, really, it's the emotion that's tied, according to traditional Chinese medicine, with the gallbladder. Anger traditionally is the liver, but resentment is the gallbladder. And I'm just wondering in this day and age, if we have more gallbladder problems because of the upsurge of resentment for many different reasons.

Interesting.

So you have to really chew on that.

Why would somebody get resentful?

Resentful because of their job. Maybe the politics of what's going on, the state of nutrition, the state of the world.

It's easy to be more resentful when we're living in an information age where you just are more aware of all the things you can be resentful about.

Well, that's a resentful fact in and of itself. Yes, indeed.

Interesting. Okay, a couple other questions about bile. In addition to beginning to include a lot of the nutrients that we just talked about. Are you a fan of any type of protocol? There's a lot of different liver cleanses out there. Gallbladder cleanses.

I know, I know. I did them.

Talk to me about what you like in terms of, like, a more intensive program. If someone were to have a week free or 10 days free in their life or something like that to be able to.

I'm not in favor of those cleanses, and I know all about them from way back when. And I'll tell You why? Because oftentimes, if there are hidden bile stones or hidden gallbladder stones, I should say because of congestion, congested bile, they can get stuck in the gallbladder duct and can create real problems, and that's a real issue. But instead, if, in fact you have gallbladder issues, if we have gallbladder stones or dust, what do they call them? Gallbladder residues that you can see when they come out, particularly if you're a fan of colonics or coffee enemas and you see a lot of residues that, you know has to do with the gallbladder, then I believe you should take some orthophosphoric acid. And there are wonderful protocols that have been out for many years with the orthophosphoric acid, which is an element that will also help to digest kidney stones. And I would much prefer people do that. It's a high phosphorous element, Ben. Phosphoric acid, of course, because we know with the name and we've got a lot of supplements out there from phos food that you can get from standard process to a phosphozyme from biotics. A lot of these are available online, and that's what I would suggest.

And you look at the ingredient label specifically for orthophosphoric acid.

It's orthophosphoric acid to digest some of these or break up and decongest the gallbladder stones.

So what you're suggesting is the use of things like choline soy lecithin or sunflower lecithin bitters, supplementation with this orthophosphoric acid and then following some kind of.

A diet, following radical metabolism. You got it.

All right. We're going to delve into radical metabolism a little bit later on. So hold on, folks. We'll get to what that program actually looks like because there's.

And it's not really radical at all, if you think about it.

It's not that crazy. It's pretty common sense.

You bet.

Yeah. Okay. But before we leave gallbladder, because I have another kind of elephant in the room I want to open up. You mentioned it first, so I'm going to mention it now. Coffee and an enemas is there. Because there's a lot of chatter out there on the Internet and in health circles about coffee enemas. Is there a single correct way to do a coffee enema?

I don't know. I think it really depends upon your individual system. I mean, I know from my experience with my clients that have had any Type of cancer situation that doing coffee enemas twice a week is very sufficient. Some people can do it once a week, but whatever coffee you use, let's make sure it's organic.

Organic coffee. And when, when you do the coffee enema, do you. Do you keep it inside of you for 10 minutes? 20 minutes?

20 minutes? 20 minutes. It's about 20 minutes.

Do you lie on your right side or your left side?

Left side.

Okay. Because that's the other thing that you.

See go that they. I know and I learned from one of the best. So I can tell you that it's the left side.

You learn from a coffee enemy ninja.

You bet. Who was that from way back when? Dr. Hazel Parcel.

Hazel Parcell.

She was the grand dom of nutrition. She lived to the age of 106, was my original teacher.

Has she written a book?

She has not. There've been books that have written and I take that back as I'm thinking in my mind's eye. She has not written a book. There's been books written about her, but not at all the type of book.

That I've never heard of her.

Now you know the rest.

Hazel Parcells.

Yes. She was the woman that changed my life again before you were born in 1974.

Okay, so you use organic coffee.

You use organic coffee.

Keep it in there for 20 minutes.

20 minutes.

Left side.

She also taught me to use blackstrap molasses. She was a big believer in enemas with blackstrap molasses mixed in with the coffee? No, alone.

Why would you do that?

Because you can alternate. Because one of them can get to the colon wall. So the liver is not necessarily dumping but you get all the gunk that's on the colon walls.

Have you done that before?

I've done it all. I've got all kinds of things up there. Sticky. No, it's very, very detoxifying.

Interesting.

There's a certain recipe and I'm happy to give it to your people, but.

Yeah, well, I'll hun put it in the show notes or grab it from you afterwards because that's something that hasn't come up before. Blackstrap. We've talked about probiotic enemas and we talked about coffee enemas but we haven't talked about blackstrap.

This is all time good sense. This is from the masters.

Yeah, I like it. Okay, cool. All right. So now that we've. We've kicked our gallbladders to death and explored that. And by the way, if you guys really want that Deep, deep dive. Get the book. Because there's even more recipes, recipes and digestifs and bitters in all manner of. More of the science of the gallbladder in the book. But the other thing that blew my mind when I was reading your book was I got to a section where you talked about how we can take too much fish oil and you talked about the danger of people vilifying omega 6 fatty acids excessively.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. And you know, Omega 6 has always been a theme of mine, since my first book, which came out in the late 80s, beyond Pritikin, because I was the director of nutrition at the no to low fat diet model of the country for many years. And what I learned after testing people who came out of a no to low fat diet model was they were very deficient in essential fatty acids. But there are two essential fatty acids, omega 3s and omega 6s. And the omega 6s were the one that they were most deficient in, particularly the linoleic based Omega 6, Omega 6s. So what I'm finding when I did the research here was that when people need to feed their mitochondria to get actual energy in their systems, because energy is so important these days and fat is a perfect fuel for the mitochondria, we need more omega 6s in a ratio of 4 to 1 to omega 3s.

4 to 1.

4 to 1. That's the ratio. And there's such a thing as Too many bad Omega 6s that are altered and that are, are full of hexane and that are exposed to heat, air.

And light, just like rancid processed heated vegetable oils, that type of thing.

Yeah, that's not what. We're not talking about that. We're talking about the parent oils from hemp oil, which is why I'm such a believer in hemp. Hemp. Hemp. Hooray. And it's also very protective against radiation because we're loaded with radiation.

Does it need to be the oil or can you sprinkle the seeds on a salad?

I love the hemp seeds.

Or drink hemp milk.

You could do either or. But you're going to get more of the good Omega 6s, more of the linoleic acids. Acid. If you have the oil drizzled on your salads.

What are some other examples of some of these parent essential oils that people are missing out on because they're focusing too much on the fish oil, sesame oil, trying to avoid seeds and nuts.

Sesame oil. So what's the toasted sesame oil, which Is totally delicious.

Toasted sesame oil. Oh, somebody told me you reminded me. Now somebody told me I have to get toasted sesame oil.

We cook with it all the time and it can take the heat.

It's not rancid, it's heat stable.

No, there's something about the sesame that makes it very heat stable and very helpful in augmenting your platelets. It's got a lot of vitamin T. Nobody's heard of vitamin T, but it's got a lot of vitamin T. God only knows. I don't know. But that's another thing that my original thing. Yeah. My original teacher who used to work with Royal Lee, who is the founder of Standard Process. That's what I learned many years ago. I mean, I was at the foot of a master for several years. So everything I'm telling you has been tried and true and it's kind of timeless, ageless wisdom.

Yeah. Have you talked about vitamin T in any of your books before?

No, but I, but I will in the next book. Okay, so we've got the sesame oil and then the one that I'm craziest about and I didn't know whether I should include in the book was pine nut oil because there's an enormous amount of research to suggest that the pin oleic acid in pine nut oil is very similar to the gamma linoleic acid that you get in evening primrose oil and you get it in borage and you get it in black currant seed oil. And it's very healing for the mucosal membranes. So one teaspoon three times a day for the first three weeks of the month will actually clear up esophageal irritation corrosion in the large intestine, the small intestine and help to heal H. Pylori. It is an absolutely unsung hero.

I don't know if you notice when we walk through the kitchen just now that we're going to be having some toasted pine nuts on our salad with dinner tonight.

Well, my God, then your wife must have read the book or read the script.

She's listens to me talk about the book. She. It's. It's kind of funny. My wife reads about one book probably a year. I read a book a day and I just fill the family in on what I read. So I'm.

Well, that works.

Yeah. My kids are starting to catch up to me. My kids are almost at a book a day now, but they're reading like, you know, Captain Underpants and would be.

Cute little 10 year old.

We'll have dinner with them later. We'll get to meet them. And then borage oil and also evening primrose oil. I actually take those along with astaxanthin, but they're all in the same capsule. They're packaged with the fish oil that I take.

See, that's a good combination. So you're getting at least more Omega 6s. So my mantra here is that sixes are sexy. And if you've got issues with your skin, you want to look at the Omega 6s. Very helpful for eczema, psoriasis, important for the mitochondria, and they do so support the structural aspect of the cell membrane.

Now, would those also be the type of things? You know, this is one that's very popular. It's the. The gentleman in Canada who makes all the oils. Do you know who I'm talking about? I'm blanking on his name now.

Are you talking about the Omega guy?

Yeah, well, he does omegas.

You're talking about Udo.

Udo, yes, my old friend. What do you think of Udo's?

I think it's probably a very good blend of oils because he's got the unrefined, raw, unheated sunflower oil, which is a source, if it's unheated and raw, of good Omega 6s.

Okay, good to know. So a lot of these oils with.

The proper antioxidants, of course, because they can go rancid. So that's where the vitamin E and.

The rosemary with the antioxidants.

Yeah, and he does a very good job of doing that.

Okay, so you could eat like a whole foods, plant rich diet diet that's going to give you a lot of the antioxidants and supplement that with pine nuts and hemp seeds and flax powder. But you could also, if you want to kind of take an even deeper dive, use supplements that. That are some of these parent essential oils packaged with antioxidants.

Absolutely. So you. So you've got a wide, wide variety of things that you can do. And don't forget that pine nut oil. Yeah, that's a biggie.

It's funny because, I mean, there's people in the industry and I. This is going to be controversial for me to say, but one of the pioneers of the industry who endorsed 30, 40 grams of fish oil a day, Charles Poliquin, he actually just passed.

I know.

Heart attack.

May he rest in peace.

Yeah. A huge wealth of knowledge. The strength sensei. And I always wondered whether that amount of fish oil was natural or Good for the human body. But, you know, this idea of balancing it out with seeds and nuts and some of these.

These staples just makes good dietary sense.

It does. It does. A lot of what you're saying is the way that we would experience life in nature.

Yes.

Rather than having unopposed amounts of these things, rather than like, sitting down to a meal without eating bitters or digestifs, for example.

Agreed.

Yeah. Okay. So another thing about parent essential oils, I thought it was really interesting and I wanted to ask you this. I don't know if you know anything about it, but you mentioned how gamma linoleic acid actually promotes the formation of brown fat tissue, which I wasn't aware of.

It activates.

I've been taking cold showers and cold baths for years and everybody forgets. Where were you? Why can't you tell me? Just take gla.

Well, I know, and this has been known for ages. I mean, it was taught to me by my friend David Horabin, that was the scientist, he was out of Montreal, that wrote about evening primrose oil back in the day, this would be the 70s and 80s. And we all knew when they talked about brown fat, you know, being the new obesity cure, for heaven's sakes, that the what? The one thing that triggered that, you know, was not just cold, but was also was a supplement like evening primrose oil. So GLA is a real promoter and activator of brown fat, which, as you know, is very dormant in overweight individuals.

Yeah.

So bring on the gla. And it's the reason why people lose weight without changing their calories or even lifting a finger to exercise.

That's interesting. You know, I had studied up and heard the same thing. I actually take this sometimes before, like a cold water immersion or going out to the cold bath is bitter melon extract. But I hadn't heard of GLA as a way to do that, too.

It's huge.

So you get the ability to convert adipose tissue into metabolically active brown fat.

Which is what we want. Which is loaded with the mitochondria.

Yeah. And you have people who lose weight without a robust exercise or diet program just by supplementing.

I don't like to say that, but yes, it's true, because we all need to exercise for other reasons. But they do lose weight.

I'm telling guys to shoot testosterone into their butt cheek. There are better ways, but it's at least interesting to know. That's very interesting.

Oh, it's huge and very forgotten. And it concerns me because so many of my cohorts so many of my friends out there are still writing about how bad Omega 6.

Oh, you see it everywhere.

Yeah, I know because everybody's rehashing the same nonsense.

Yeah, exactly. No, I really appreciate that section of the book and I learned a lot. You also talked about protein intake and specifically omega or not omegas, but essential fatty acids. You refer to protein in a pill and you talk about EAAs and BCAAs. Can you delve into that a little bit?

You know, I'll tell you something. I wrote the book, but now believe, number one, that most of us need more protein, not less. I think we need about 100 grams a day. And if you're an athlete, you probably need a little more. You probably can speak to that. And I know that you have a protein. Is it a protein supplement that you've come out with?

I use a protein supplement. I use amino acids and then I use typically like a. Well, the protein powder I use is from Thorn. I use like a Thorn vegan based protein powder that I mix digestive enzymes into.

Well, that's probably a very good idea. And I know that you're involved with a. The protein company that you have is.

Kion is my company. That's where I develop supplements.

Yeah, well, I think that, that, well, if you have a supplement, I can always. And for the next chapter of the book or the next edition of the book, it became a national bestseller, by the way.

The first book, Radical Metabolism, it did.

It became a national bestseller. And I'm very happy to use your brand. I don't know if it's very different than what we have in the book that has, I think nine or ten of the most essential amino acids. I think you need.

Just about every one I use has. Has nine.

Well, that's about right.

Now, does that have to do with the gallbladder or is that part of metabolic rate?

Metabolic rate.

Talk about it.

It's really metabolic rate because we're trying, we're, we're trying to enhance your ability to grow stronger muscles, more lean muscle mass as we get older because we know we lose it. And one thing I discovered here when I did the chapter is that coffee, the right kind of coffee, can actually prevent lean muscle, can actually prevent you from losing lean muscle mass as you get older.

No kidding. Well, I got some great coffee upstairs I'll give to you.

It's the chlorogenic. And I'm not even a coffee drinker. It's the purity coffee brand.

Well, you can, you can, you can use it for your enemas.

That's where it'll go in the right place. Yeah.

You drink it. It's not like normal people drink it. That's so. So with, with protein, the idea with the amino acids is you would use those as a way to get more concentrated forms of protein without all the calories.

You. You would? Quite honestly, yes. And. And I have a lot of vegan people that follow my programs and they can't assimilate the carbohydrates in beans.

Yeah.

So I need more raw amino acids, so to speak. I need those building blocks.

And you get less of the accelerated aging effect in the MTOR activation that like a BCAA alone would provide.

I believe so.

Yeah. I don't feel good on BCAAs.

No. No. So I'm so. I'm really getting away from.

I've worn a continuous blood glucose monitor before and they, they push my blood glucose through the roof. I think it's all the, the, the loose seen in them.

I would agree.

Okay. Another thing that you talk about is toxicity. You talk a lot about toxicity and its effect on metabolism. And a lot of people are aware of heavy metals and toxins and plastics and whatnot, but you have specific ways that you encourage people to test for toxicities because there's a variety of different ways to actually test whether you're toxic. Can you go into the test that you actually like for something like that?

Well, I like something that's kind of not non invasive. I like a tissue mineral analysis. I like a hair test because not only can we figure out what the body is excreting or isn't excreting, but we take a look at the mineral ratio in a typical hair test to see how your glands are functioning, whether there's a blood sugar problem, a thyroid problem, or an adrenal problem.

Are all hair tests the same?

They should be. The lab that we use, I know, was the lab that my master teacher worked with in his later years. So I would say so at least he was the partner, the fellow that's now involved with this. It's the lab down in College Station, Texas. The name writer. Not now.

I can look up. It's probably in your book, I think.

Trace elements.

Trace elements. Your husband piping in from the back.

Thank you. Trace elements.

Okay. I've heard of that one before. So that would be a good way to actually test for toxins versus like, you know, a lot of people will talk about doing like a urine provocation test where you drink a substance.

That can be very hard on the system. And any of the pills that people now take to excrete heavy metals is also very hard on the kidneys. So I've had people over the years that simply can't tolerate such a test. But I think that's important. And I think it's also important to know what you're cooking in that you're getting a lot of toxicity from your pots and pans. And lo and behold, you know, this was like a piece of enlightened self interest. I started reading about cast iron that I had been promoting coating for many, many years until I did the research for the book. And we've been cooking in cast iron. I can't tell you for how long.

Us too.

Well, I tested my ferritin. It's the highest it's ever been. I tested my husband's ferritin, and everybody that eats with us on a regular basis, and we're all stockpiling iron, which is not good if you want to live a very healthy, long life.

It's not. I'm lucky in that I'm an endurance athlete. I burn through a lot of red blood cells. I go through iron like it's going out of style.

Well, you're unusual.

Ferritin and iron, but. Yeah.

What was your. What is your ferritin?

I don't remember the exact number, but it's. It's low. I want to say it's like 60s.

70S, something like as long as it's under 100.

Yeah, yeah. What about sauna? Does sauna have an effect on. On ferritin and iron?

You know, I don't know.

Yeah, I don't either. I mean, I know. I know in certain situations, it's a red blood cell builder. You know, it can cause erythropoietin production. But you hear sauna often championed for heavy metal detoxification.

Well, that's good. It's also good to get rid of virus because it can penetrate so long. But depending upon your ability to detoxify, can be too much for some people. We have a lot of sick people out there, Ben, who can't detoxify. They don't have the ability to make glutathione. Their detox pathways are blocked. I happen to be one of those people. Three detox pathways blocked. So if I can do my program, which I created for people like me as the canary, anybody can do this.

Me too. My sod pathway is. Is. It's the worst gene you can have. Same with my kids. We all take liposomal glutathione every day.

Very interesting. And that's what I do. So what is your mthfr?

I am heterozygous for mthfr.

Which gene? Do you know which gene?

Well, I'm, I take methyltetrahydrofolate and I'm very careful with synthetic sources of folic acid.

You have to be. But I'm homozygous on 1298 and heterozygous on 677. So I've got three, three to the four pathways block which is not an ideal situation.

Your full on mother effed as they say.

Yes, that you got it there. There I am.

Okay, so one other question about metals just while we're on this topic and, and I'll hunt down for those of you listening in that hair test and put a link to it over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com radical because.

Or they can do it through our office. Ben.

Oh they can probably. Okay, well and then, and then we'll give them.

And then they can meet with one of our nutritionists who could actually decipher what's going on.

So you guys have nutritionists at your office?

We got it all.

Supplements, we test your poop, your saliva. Is it all over in Post Falls?

Yeah, well the, the main we have. We're in Texas and we're in Post Falls. Our sales and marketing are in Texas in the Woodlands, Texas. And we're in Post Falls is where the, the, the Hayden Lake actual area.

I gotta ride my bike down Centennial.

Truck sometime and visit say hi.

So I'll put a link to Ann's website as well over in the show notes. But, but one other thing regarding toxicity, aluminum foil. You're also not a fan of that.

Never have been. I'd rather have a poisonous serpent in the, in the kitchen than aluminum foil because it can easily absorb into the foods. Much more so than aluminum pots and pans, particularly if it's acidic based foods.

So if we can't use cast iron or aluminum foil, we'll have more alternatives.

Enamel covered iron. Enamel covered iron ore or a high gauge stainless steel or my very favorite is the Vita Clay where you're cooking in some kind of earthenware that of course is unglazed.

Yeah, I've actually since I got back from Japan I've been doing a lot of cooking in the clay because it.

Is the best and the food tastes the best. Yeah, it's kind of infrared cooking. P.S. and it's very high in biomagnetic energy.

Is there a brand you like for clay?

Vita Clay is the Name of that?

Vita Clay.

It's a slow cook cooker called Vita Clay. See how radical we are?

Money on my kitchen.

Oh God.

My wife will be happy. New pots and pans. So.

Well, it's, it's important nobody pays attention the way they should.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So in the book, obviously the foundation of it, as we've alluded to, is, and correct me if I'm wrong, a four day program.

Four days, an intensive cleanse. 21 day in the 21 day. And of course then there's a week of maintenance which just shows you how to put the program together. So it's a four day intensive cleanse which has soup. It has watercress soup. Because the research was so compelling about how watercress contains 10 of the most cancer fighting phytonutrients on the planet. So I had to make a watercress soup.

Where do you buy watercress?

Trader Joe's.

Just Trader Joe's. I just got watercress packaged, whole foods packaged.

And it can be hydroponically grabbed own as well.

So the four day cure is watercress soups.

Watercress, watercress soup and juices that we make, which of course are low glycemic, low fruit and have a lot of prebiotics in them. Very cleansing and very priming of the pump.

Okay.

And full of polyphenols. So they're juicing. So your juices with. Without any pulp.

Is celery juice included?

A little celery is included.

Okay, you're gonna laugh because I have a big glass of celery juice. Juice before dinner. You'll hear the juicer up there grinding.

Well, it's very good for your digestion.

Yeah, yeah. Interesting. Okay, so the four day cleanse, a little bit more intensive. Basically.

It is very intensive, but people lose weight very quickly. Eight to ten pounds. And quite frankly, for women that are of a certain age and stage of life, as well as men that haven't been able to lose doing anything else, that's a welcome weight loss.

Do they lose weight because they're just like, oh, it could be water weight decommissioning the bathroom?

No, a lot of it is water weight from inflammatory responses from allergic producing foods. But so what? They feel good and it motivates them to continue on a healthy program.

And if someone were to follow that four day, would it also affect the gallbladder?

The four day would. We don't include bitters per se, but I think there is some grapefruit juice in one or grapefruit in one of the programs.

But you could do that four day and include like the soy lecithin and the choline and things like that.

You could constantly eat. You could put it and sprinkle it in the juice, quite frankly. Or you could put it in the soup.

Fascinating. Okay, so you do the four day and then you go straight into the.

21 day and then you do the 21 day and we give you support. 24, 7. We have unsurpassable support. Because I'm very invested in people doing this. Right. It's a little different, it's a little radical. Although it's very common sense, as you and I have discussed. I want people to really get success.

Okay, so how's the 21 day work?

Well, we start in the morning with what is called the Citrus blaster, which is a coffee based drink because it's so important in terms of burning fat three times more than any other beverage. Coffee is very important in terms of its being a bitter. We have a little whey protein.

Coffee all by itself.

No, it's coffee with whey protein. Our fat flush whey protein. A2 based protein. We were one of the only companies years ago that has A two based protein.

Yeah, there's not a lot of A two protein.

Well, we knew what we were doing so we sourced it correctly. Thanks to to Unikey Health Systems.

Not to delve too deeply down that rabbit hole, but can you give people the 30 second overview of why A2 is important?

Because it's based on the non mutated casein milk that has not been implicated in the diseases the way A1 has, which is connected to heart disease, diabetes and all kinds of cardiovascular implications.

Most of the cow milk in the U.S. even the organic stuff is a.

One, but we have a two fat flush. A two. Yay to unike.

But like goats, Cameron, camels, water buffalo, a lot of these milks that people are drinking as alternatives, those are A1.

Most of them I believe. You know, it's a good question. I believe that they're A1.

I'm pretty sure they're. I think that they're A1 cattle that are bred for the A2.

Yeah. No, I think you're right.

Yeah. Okay, so you do the coffee with the whey protein.

Coffee with the whey protein. And what else do we put in there? We put in a little mct high fat coconut milk. We put in some herbs and spices and then we've got breakfast. Breakfast. Okay, so it's got the protein, it's got the fat. And it'll just trigger and it'll get the body into a fat burning mode.

And you're okay with. Because you talked about the Paleo and the keto and the high fat approach.

I'm okay with all of that as long as you can digest it.

Okay. So you'd want to make sure you do the four day cure beforehand so that you can have good digestion before you start into like 21 days of.

Putting or, or, or if fasting isn't for you or juice cleanses and you'd go, go right into, into the program. People do exceedingly well either way.

Just make sure you get good bile production.

Bile is where it's at. Because bile is beautiful.

Okay, what are a few other examples of meals that someone would eat on this 21 day?

We've got all kinds of meals in the program.

I've got a book right here too, so I can, I can thumb through the book and give you guys kind of an idea, I think.

And the recipes are actually very tasty, by the way. We've got desserts, we've got recipes. You're using the Omega 6s, a little bit more. You're using. We've got some vegan recipes as well.

Lamb burger with fresh mint and dill, arugula, basmati rice, celery sticks, grapefruit sloth. There's the grapefruit.

It's really, it's really very delicious.

Yeah, it's pretty straightforward. Not a lot of crazy expensive ingredients either. You know, the one thing I hadn't discovered too much in your book though, and I didn't know that about the anti carcinogenic potential was watercress. You have a whole section of the book of about the benefits.

And there's such good research about watercress and particularly the watercress soup. It is a wonderful weight loss tool.

Are there other ways to eat watercress aside from soup? I mean, can you just eat it like a salad?

You could. I would put it in a salad. I would use it as a green. So instead of, you know, sauteing your kale that you grow out there, we could start growing watercress.

Amazing.

Yeah, you could do it all.

Yeah, that's interesting. And the other, very cancer fighting.

Very cancer fighting kale.

Lot of these cruciferous, they have a lot of sulforaphane in them, which is fantastic for the gut, for shutting down a lot of inflammatory pathways. You can combine it with mustard and it's even better. I'm curious if watercress has an effect on those pathways, too.

I bet. So.

Yeah. Is it considered a cruciferous, you think.

It'S considered a bitter? I believe it's not totally considered a cruciferous. Or because it's so uncommon in this culture, we probably haven't classified it correctly.

Yeah. But you can buy a package.

We buy it at Trader Joe's, and if you can't get it there, get it at Whole Foods. Or you got it in an Asian market. It can be found.

This podcast brought to you by Watercress.

Thank God for watercress.

Hunt it down, along with a lot of the other things that Ann and I talked about in today's show. She, like I mentioned, what's the name of your actual company? Company. I knew this a long time ago.

Unikey. I'm a spokesperson for Unikey Health Systems. I help develop products for Unikey Health Systems, which is in Hayden, Idaho.

Hayden. Not Post Falls.

I live in Post Falls. It's in Hayden, Idaho.

Okay. Not far. Yeah.

No, it's a stone's throw away.

Interesting. Okay, so the book is Radical metabolism, Powerful new plan to blast fat and reignite your energy in just 21 days. Ann Louise Gittleman is my guest here at my home. We're gonna go have a. Have a fantastic meal. I do not guarantee it will have watercress, but the next time that you come over, it might, because I learned a lot just now. All the show notes, along with a link to Anne's book and the other two books of hers that I've read and own, they're over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com radical. So we're all gonna go stuff our faces now. Take care of our gallbladders. And thanks for coming on the show.

My pleasure. Thanks. Thank you.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfield Fitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

Sam.