Recovery For Aging Athletes, Cross-Patterning, A New Kind Of High Intensity Interval Training, An Oxygen Boosting Supplement Called "Oxcia" & More!

Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And on today's show, we're going to talk about nutrients, we're going to talk about superfoods, we're going to talk about some hidden benefits of some different types of things that you can consume that you may not have heard of before. And of course, anytime I talk about stuff like this, I get some blowback from people who say, oh, why can't we just stick to simplicity? Why can't I just have my kale and my hamburger and a multivitamin? And frankly, I derive a great deal of joy and adventure and pleasure from seeking out some of the coolest superfoods on the face of the planet and telling you guys about them and different ways that you can deliver them into your body. And I just think that's one of the coolest things about living on the planet. Earth is just like folks who are into Hollywood will watch a whole bunch of different kinds of movies and not just one. And just like people who love extreme sports might delve into everything from spearfishing to surfing to cliff diving, I'm a fan of trying everything from grass fed liver anhydrate to cordycepsynesis to beetroots to algae and beyond. So I figure there's gotta be a few other people out there who like to do this stuff like I do. In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.

Getting back to the quality work. This is a day where you're doing pure, super high intensity, high quality work. And the only way to get that high quality work is to get the high rest that goes with it. When you have vasodilation going on at this level and you're getting more blood to hard working muscles, you're getting more blood volume, in my case, more blood volume and oxygen to hard working muscles, you're absolutely going to be performing better because you're going to be having more of that octane going to your muscles that need it when you're working out. The primary thing it does for me, and I think that most people use it for, is to take advantage of the oxygen delivery capabilities of it.

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 physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

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Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And in the podcast episode entitled brace yourself, shattering world swim records on 25 piece fried chicken buckets, climbing mountains while eating defatted vegan grass fed Argentinean liver anhydrate, and much more, I interviewed this guy who's not only an athlete, but he's a mountain climber. He's a former collegiate and Olympic trials qualifying competitive swimmer. He's a supplement designer and he knows a lot about everything from conditioning to anti aging to keeping your blood oxygenated, which is what we talked about a lot during that podcast. His name is Craig Dinkle and during that episode we talked about this stuff called biotropic, which is a special tablet Craig developed that has grass fed liver anhydrate, cordycepsynesis, beetroots, chlorella from Lake Klamath in Oregon, and a whole bunch of different things that basically allow you to get all the benefits of blood doping without actually blood doping. I got a bunch of questions from that episode. And so Craig actually came back in the episode called how to legally dope your blood without actually taking illegal drugs. And in that podcast we took a deeper dive into some of the unique blood building formulations that Craig has designed. And Craig is now back today. He has some things that he's been working on, a few different things. He's got a new form of high intensity interval training that he's been telling me about that I thought it would be cool to have him on the show to talk about. He's been getting into this form of conditioning called cross body patterning, which is really interesting. And then he's also got another, another kind of product that he's been working on specifically for produce, for producing more power and for buffering lactic acid and for allowing for enhanced recovery. And because this cat has such unique formulations that he creates and his stuff, in my opinion, flies under the radar as far as not being the type of thing you'd read about in like, you know, Men's Health magazine or Women's Fitness or whatever. I love to interview him about some of the stuff he finds and to pick his brain about some of his biohacks, some of his protocols. And he's always got some interesting things that I don't hear from anybody else. So, Craig, welcome back for the third time to the Ben Crystal Fitness Show.

It's just always great to talk to you. It's always a joy. You inspire me and I love chatting with You. It's great to be here. Thank you.

Yeah, man, for sure. And you know what? I just want to jump right in. One of the first things that you told me was that you're getting into this form of training called cross body patterning. And I'm curious about this because I want to know if it's kind of like this form of training I've been doing for. For my shoulders. Every week. I use these things called the crossover symmetry, and it's like these elastic bands. And I had a bunch of shoulder issues over the summer. I started using these crossover symmetry, and I shot a video for them. I'll put them in the show notes and I'll give you guys listening in the link to the show notes here in a little bit. But I keep these elastic bands in my office, and I fixed my shoulders with this crossover symmetry training, which are like these elastic bands that you. You do external rotation, internal rotation, but the bands are kind of like in an X pattern as you work them. So you feel as though they're pulling on your serratus, on your rhomboids, on some of your inspiratory and expiratory muscles, and then on your obliques as you train with them. Is that a form of cross body patterning or what are you talking about when you talk about cross body patterning?

Yeah, that sounds great, what you're doing there. But just first, real quick, just a minor correction on the intro there. The product that comes out of Klamath Lake is the AFA product, not the Chlorella. The Chlorel, as you know, is a great detox tool, but it's the AFA that comes out of Klamath, the cross body pattern. I have a friend, a colleague in this business who introduced me to this. We've been doing it, you and I, and lots of people have been doing it. I didn't really think of it as cross body patterning, but the idea behind it is the way it's explained to me, and to the extent that I use it, it's a really great technique for, first of all, switching it up and changing up your routine. It's a nice way to get around doing what you normally do. And it's important to have diversity in training to shake up your muscles and shake you up a bit. So what you described is an example of that. Another example of that would be skaters. So you know what those are where you're standing on one side and you jump, let's say, with your right leg over to the right side, and you Bring your left leg in back of you. That'd be sort of a, you might call that an inverse cross body pattern. You're still throwing that left leg across the center line of your body. And that's basically what defines it is when you, when you're breaking the midline of your body, the center line of your body, and exercising cross body in that manner. So skaters would be a really, really good example of that. And another one that would be a great example is something I've been doing for a long time. Probably you as well, A lot of people listening is a particular type of serratus and ab work where you're standing parallel to the cable machine. You lower the cable handle down to the floor level. Not all the way down, but as low as you need to lower it for your height. Get the weight where it needs to be, and you grab it low, Grab a single handle with two hands and you move across your body. Well, you step out a bit from it to get some resistance on the cable. And then you move it from a low to high position so you're moving from the lower right of your body to the upper left of your body. And phenomenal movement for both serratus. It's also good for your arms and shoulders, but it's a great core workout as well. So that would be an example too.

Yeah, it would be like a wood chopping exercise, for example, in reverse. And you can also go high to low with the cables across the body, right?

Yes, yes, absolutely. Great. You know, simple. I hadn't thought of that. That's a really good idea. Yes. I'm gonna start doing that.

Anything where you are unilaterally loaded actually has that cross body patterning effect. Now that I understand what it is that you're talking about. Sometimes I. I don't quite know the, the catchphrase for the type of motion that I'm doing, but one of my favorite exercises. Do you do much with kettlebells, Craig?

Yeah, I, you know, I have my signature. I hate kettlebells because they're so good. They, they destroy me. And I do like them because I like things that are. That. That make me hurt. That's just how I see this stuff. You know, you've got to. If you're smiling when you're working out, you're really probably not working out hard enough. So kettlebells put me into that. I hate this mode. And when I hate something, I'm really getting. You know what I mean?

Kind of. But I completely disagree with you. I actually, my belief now is I don't really like to do any type of workouts that I don't actually enjoy or feel good doing. And so I'm actually. I have the complete opposite thought. I think life's too short to be suffering while you're working out. I used to have that thought when I was an ironman triathlete and used to pound the pavement all day long. But now I want my workouts to be running around in my forest like an obstacle course training session or swimming in the open water, but with my mask on while I'm looking at fish or spearfishing or bow hunting or doing obstacle course races. Like. And I always have a big smile on my face or at least feel inside like I have a big smile on my face when I'm doing that stuff. So, no, I disagree. I don't like to suffer. But at the same time, I ask you about the kettlebells because one of my favorite exercises of late is you hold a kettlebell in what's called a bottoms up position, which is actually really hard. You feel just about every muscle in your body working as you try to maintain the kettlebell with the handle held and the actual main mass of the bell up above the handle as you hold it overhead. And I'll do walking lunges or overhead squats with the kettlebell in just one hand. So you're loading the body unilaterally in kind of like an asymmetrical pattern. And that is, you know, in a way, it's a form of this cross body patterning that you're talking about. But I'm a big fan of that. The other thing that I have are these. Have you seen these battle bags before?

Yes, in fact. Yes, I have. In fact, that's. That's the primary tool that my colleague who introduced me to this stuff uses.

Yeah. So you can, like take a battle bag and you know, folks like, you know, our good friends at on it, they have these battle bags. For example, that's where I got mine. And you swing it from, like, your right hip up above your left shoulder, or from your left hip up above your right shoulder. Or, for example, this is something I'll have my kids do. They'll grab a little sandbag and I'll grab the battle bag and you put it on just one shoulder. And we'll run down the driveway and then come back up the driveway doing either lunges or walking or trudging or jogging with the battle bag on just one shoulder. But I think what you're getting at with crossbody Patterning basically is you're loading the body diagonally or loading it unilaterally to create more complex spiral or diagonal patterns. And when you do that, you actually get a great deal higher amount. That was an interesting phrase. Great deal higher amount. I know what you're saying, you know what I'm saying? Of nervous system stimulation and coordinated motion through timing. Plus it's a little bit more complex, kind of spins the dials in your brain a little bit more. But for anybody who's not familiar with crossbody patterning, I'll put a link in the show notes to this crossover symmetry video that I shot, which shows you exactly how I use these really simple elastic bands in my office to do crossbody patterning, primarily for the core and for the shoulders. And for me it works. It works really well. The other thing that you told me about Craig was this stuff called. It's a different form of high intensity interval training. I believe you called it. It's hard to, hard to pronounce. Hikti. High intensity, High intensity interval quality training.

H I I Q T. Yeah, yeah, that's. Look at. I come from the world of sprinting and one of the reasons the formulations that I've used and had success with are all around blood oxygen and things like that was because I was a sprinter and I was always looking to, you know, to get, to get more air, better oxygen, better blood flow, more oxygen anyway, to improve that performance. And you know, along those lines there's high intensity interval training, which we're all familiar with. To talk about that in a second. But the quality training is something that, as, as a swimmer on a high level, it's a particular type of training that we do to increase speed. It's a very, very serious and difficult kind of training. Speaking of pain, this is probably why I relate to hard workouts because when I go back to the years that I was competing, everything had to be that way. And even though I'm an older guy now, I still sort of measure how I get around in everyday life by how hard I train. And so that's why my training has to be generally harder than hell for me to feel like I'm getting something out of it. But high quality training would look something like this. I'll give you a couple of examp. First, swimming, which I'm most familiar with, it'd be part of a mid season routine because it's very hard. So an average sprinter might go somewhere between 5 and 7,000 yards or meters per workout, depending on the time of season. And where they're at. So that's a lot of yardage, it's a lot of work and it's going to have a combination.

It's a lot of freaking sensory deprivation too.

Yeah, it really is. Very well said. It is exactly that. Swimmers play in their heads all the time because of the lack of, because of the sensory deprivation. So they, they spend a lot of times working in their minds when they're in the water because it's a very lonely sport. And as you said. But the upside to high quality training or quality training is that that yardage drops to again, depending on the coach, depending on the time of season, depending on who you are, maybe 3,000 yards, which for a sprinter is nothing. That's nothing because a thousand of those yards are going to be taken up by warm up. So all that's left is about two grand. 2000 is not a workout in most people's mind. But now let's take those 2,000 yards and let's do it like this. Let's say that we're going to go a slow set or low set, low number of 10, 100 sprints. And you're going to do those all out. 10 of these all out. And perhaps you'll do 75 yards with everything you have all out. You'll hit the wall at the 75 point. You'll take five seconds rest just to catch some air and then go back all out to the other end there. That's one version of it. Another version of it is simply 100 yards all out and you get five minutes of rest. So that's where the quality idea comes in. It's a little different than traditional high intensity interval training where, for example, on a treadmill, the way I do it on a treadmill is I spend about three or four or five minutes, maybe six minutes warming up, just walking, just getting my body ready for it. And then I amp up to a particular level and I run at a low level for, for one minute and then I rest for 20 seconds and I go up a full point and do it for a minute and then rest for 20 seconds. And I do this all the way up to the highest level that I can take, which is usually around 12 or 13. On a treadmill I'm running pretty hard and I'm dying. And it's a pyramid routine. And so that's a real, that's a high intensity training routine. It's just another way to shake up your training.

So the difference is you're going extremely short and focusing very, very much on form. So you're going like 10 to 30 seconds of length for the interval length.

On this high intensity interval training comparison. But getting back to the quality work, what you're doing here is you're trying to take advantage of everything that your body has to give and you're slowly taking all the life and energy out of you by going all out. And you take maybe five minutes, for example, I used to do these on a five minute rest period. Now typically, just to give you a comparison, when you do a sprint workout with, let's say again, 10, 1/ hundreds, you might do those on one minute and you come in at maybe 55 seconds depending again on the athlete, but you might come in on 55 seconds, get five seconds rest, which isn't that bad when you're a very highly tuned athlete and then continue that routine. And even though there's very little rest on that, a really well tuned athlete can manage those five seconds very well through. It's high intensity, it's tough and you got to make the send off, which is only one minute. But you know, five seconds isn't all that bad over a series of ten. But getting back to the quality work, this is a day where you're doing pure, super high intensity, high quality work. And the only way to get that high quality work is to get the high rest that goes with it. Not the 30 seconds on the HIIT example I gave a second ago. A minute off, 30 seconds rest or 20 seconds rest, or rather a minute on 30 seconds rest or 20 rest minute on 20 minute on 20. So on here you're taking five full minutes to get as close to full recovery as you can, but not total recovery. So that when you do that second sprint, you've got your rest back, you're feeling better, and then you do that again and by the third hundred, you know by only 300 yards. Remember, we've only warmed up a thousand at this point. It's only a 3000 yard workout, but at this point, maybe 1300 yards into the workout and you're shaking, you're vibrating at the end of that third 100 and you've got to get these seven more of those and hold. Purpose of that particular type of training is to really press your body into discomfort. Some of that mimics what it's like at the end of a race. So you're always putting yourself into some kind of oxygen debt or heavy lactic acid buildup from probably number four of these on because you're just tired at this point, no matter what kind of condition you're in. They're all out, but they also really, really do a hell of a job at, at massively increasing your speed for sprinters. So that's what that looks like.

It sounds very similar. I have this article and I'll link to it in the show. Notes about mitochondria and activating mitochondrial biogenesis and skeletal muscle. And in one particular study, what they did was something very much like this. They did 4, just 4 32nd all out cycling sprints, but each one was separated by four, four minutes of rest and all they were doing that was three times a week, so four. And they went up to six over the course of the study. 30 second bouts with four minutes of rest, which sounds easy, but you were going at 120% of VO2 max. So as hard as possible on each of those 30 second sets. And they found a significant increase in mitochondrial biogenesis from that. They did another study that was very similar and for that one they did three sets of five four second treadmill sprints, just four seconds and they had 20 seconds of rest between those. But we're talking about, you know, like a, like a 1 to 5 up to a 1 to 10 work to rest ratio. And it sounds to me like that that's how you're defining this HII qt, your high intensity interval quality training is you're going very, very, very hard on the efforts, but they're short. They're like using your creatine phosphogenic system, so extremely short, but then long recovery periods in between each. So you're devoting a ton of quality to each interval.

Yeah, yeah. Look at the most fun I ever had with this routine was training for a Ragnar relay. We've talked a little bit about that. I do those once in a while. And I took my brothers, I've got a family like yours, and I took my brothers out to a track and I said, look, this is how we're going to do. Sorry, I'm laughing. It's still a funny story to me. But I took them out onto a track and said, look boys, this is how we're going to do this. And we're only going to do six of these. Just like you described the bicyclists doing four, four to six. I said, we're only going to do six of these. We're going to run 100 yards, we're going to do a little different. We'll start at 80%, but we'll get up to 90 and 100. So by the third one, we'll be at 100. We'll have maybe three more of these to go at 100%. And we're going to. And this was a big track. This was a quarter mile track. This is not a small track. So we did that. We did that. And by the time we got through and the rest was walk the track, we're just gonna. As slow as you possibly can walk that quarter mile. We're talking a lot of rest, you know, A lot of rest.

Yeah.

And so I said, listen, that's what I'm gonna do it. My oldest brother looked at me with a smirk and he said, this is way too much rest, Craig. You know, this is. This is. We need to be working harder. And I looked at him and said, listen, just trust me, you don't know what you're talking about. Just follow my lead here, and if it doesn't work, you can do your own thing, but give it a shot. I think it was the second, literally the next one, the next hundred yards we did at 90%. It just so happened to be a restroom at the end of the sprint that we were doing. And he did this sprint and he ran into the rest of them and we didn't see him for two more sprints while he emptied his guts and gained significant respect for this particular type of training.

Yeah, the other thing that I've been doing that actually is kind of a form of interval training. And I think this will be right up your alley, Craig, because you and I have talked a lot about oxygenation and improving erythropoietin production. On the podcast in our previous episodes, I've been using this hypoxia, hyperoxia training device in my office. And what it is, it's a giant bag. And it's kind of annoying because you gotta flip it on like an hour before your workout. Kind of like a sauna. Right. Once you get used to it and you just plan your workout ahead of time, you can flip it on, but it collects all the air from my office or from my home, and then super concentrates the oxygen inside this giant bag. That's why you gotta turn it on for like an hour. And then I've got my exercise bike set up next to this thing and there's a mask attached to the bag. And what I do is when I flip the plus, it's got a little handheld device that brings air in and out of the bag. And when I put this handheld device on, plus, it gives me 100% pure oxygen to breathe. And then when I put it on minus. It sucks just about all the oxygen out of the air. So It'll simulate like 16 to 18,000ft. And the idea behind it is that you go back and forth between extreme amounts of low oxygen and extreme amounts of high oxygen. It's called an exercise with oxygen therapy. And what that does is it vasoconstricts and then vasodilates youryour capillaries and your blood vessels as you train. So you get this massive surge of nitric oxide, you get all the benefits of hypoxia training, and then you get these huge doses of oxygen to the brain. So a typical protocol would be like you'd do 15 seconds of hypoxia while sprinting and then 15 seconds of hyperoxia while sprinting, and then you go back to 30 seconds and you recover while you're in this hypoxic state. It's like a 15 minute workout, right. But the effects stick with you for like two or three days in terms of feeling this huge amount of oxygenation to tissue. It's called a live O2 and it's not cheap. This is like a 5, $6,000, you know, like standalone unit that you would place next to an exercise device. But dude, this thing like flips interval training on its head in terms of the value that you get out of it. You would dig this thing.

Oh, yeah, I'm familiar with it. It's terrific. And I related to it immediately when it was described to me because again, I'm very familiar with hypoxic training. Did more of it than I like to remember. On top of the water and under the water is a big part of swimming. And it's great training. It's one of the other things you can do to increase red blood cell production in the body. Is going hypoxic, either getting up to altitude, which is effectively doing when you do that, or going to altitude, or swimming and doing hypoxic work in the water. So, yeah, I think that's great stuff.

Yeah, a lot of different ways you can induce hypoxia or hyperoxia from restricted breathing in the water. For example, I'll go for open water swim sometimes where I'll just swim steady, but I'll breathe every two strokes, then every four strokes, then every six strokes.

Exactly.

You can use those training masks which don't simulate elevation, but at least restrictions some oxygen that you're breathing in. You can use like a power lung, right. Whichwhich provides resistance to your inspiratory and expiratory muscles. So a lot of ways you can play with oxygen, but one of the things that you've got, Craig, is this thing I wanna talk to you about that. You know, I know you're a mad scientist and you're always looking into these different formulas that one can use to build blood or deliver high volume blood oxygenation or even, you know, like, I was just talking about vasodilation. One of the things that you were talking to me about was this new formulation that you're working on, and it actually has one of the things in it. I don't know if I told you this, but when I was bodybuilding, one of the things that we knew would give us an enormous pump and I would eat a half of a whole one of these before I'd head into the gym was watermelon. Just a great big old watermelon. And it was because of a component in the watermelon called L citrulline. L citrulline. Tell me a little bit about L citrulline and what you found in terms of what it can do either for athletes or people who want that, you know, kind of like that Viagra for the whole body effect.

Yeah, that's another. You know, I, I wasn't gonna necessarily go there. But you did. You did. And it does have that, you could even say primary effect. I, I don't, I don't have it in my, in my product here for that reason, but again, and not so secondarily, it does have that Viagra effect. And the other thing is, as far as getting L citrulline goes, you pick the right fruit of all the fruits. Watermelon has the highest amount of any of it out there that I know of, and I've done a lot of research on it and is the best source that you can possibly get for L citrulline. And L citrulline is the cleanest material you can get in terms of building out the nitric oxide production in your body. Arginine used to be the, the material of choice, but it goes through a harder road of digestion than citrulline.

Arginine would normally be. That'd be like the supplement that people would buy to get the pump. Right. Usually you'd buy L arginine or another one would be llornithine, right?

Yes, that's correct. But the catch with that is that, believe it or not, even though citrulline is converted to arginine in the body, it's done quicker and more cleanly. Than the body does by itself, naturally. So arginine is not the way to go anymore. Citrulline is the way to go. And it sounds like you knew that anecdotally. And that's, by the way, why I listened to athletes tell me, hey, you know, Ben, what should I use? What are you using? That's working. We talked about this in our earlier podcast, because athletes always know. They always know what's working for them and they know what to pass on. And it's important to do the research and know what's out there that is scientifically backed or clinically backed. And a lot of stuff that has great research, which akin to that is just what you just said, your own personal experience. And that's why athletes listen to athletes. But L citrulline is a much cleaner material that goes through the body differently than arginine does. It bypasses the liver altogether and converts much more. One study I found showed that citrulline actually uptakes at a much higher rate, like 80% of it, relative to arginine, which is a much, much lower rate. So again, you pick the right fruit to get the right product to go more cleanly and more quickly and convert more quickly into nitric oxide in your body than anything else that I know of that's available.

So it's obviously a crap ton of sugar and fructose to eat an entire watermelon or even half of a watermelon, along with, of course, the bloating and the water retention that you can get from that, you know, and that's why I eventually, when I was bodybuilding, I converted into. Into just like L citrulline supplementation. And of course, as we alluded to it, it's actually used as a pro erectile agent used for men with erectile dysfunction too. But when it comes toto citrulline and how you would actually get it if you weren't gonna do something like melon. Tell me about dosage. And also I'm curious if it's important to choose like an L citrulline source versus just regular citrulline.

Yeah, L citrulline is the way to go. That's a naturally occurring form of it. So you want the L citrulline. And you've asked another thing that's really important to know too, that it also has properties that improve or remove the ammonia in your blood. So you can get the ammonia out of your bloodstream. You're going to recover better too. So it's very well documented. To do that as well. It also has a, well, you've really covered it. A very good and healthy effect on high blood pressure as well. You've asked a really, really good question that's been close to my heart for a long, long time. This goes back to the very, very beginning of supplementation for me dosage. And I've done so much research on proper dosage and I see what people say out there. But again, this comes back to the athlete side of things. You're talking to a guy who is a mega dosing guy. In my day, I don't mega dose anymore. I do what I call smart dosing. I try to find the lowest possible dose that will give me the maximal effect. And that takes some personal testing to do. And I build all of my stuff on the clinical trial for my materials. And when I put them out there, they've worked on me to the point the ratios are in there are such that they have the effect that people are looking for. And so that's how I build this stuff. I do take into account some of what, some of the information out there about dosing and it's anywhere from one to. Again, this is all open to debate. And that's why I say it's highly personal. And I really think that you should get, get to the point where you're finding out for yourself what works for you. But one to five milligrams a day of this stuff is what they say. So that's a pretty widespread. And so I say ignore it. That's just what I did. And everyone's got to figure it out for themselves. But just getting back to my point here, I was megadosing like crazy and I never got a good effect on megadosing.

Citrulline, you mean?

On every product I ever used to get the biggest hit, whatever it was I was using. The point I'm making, the point I'm making about megadosing is that personally and speaking for myself and a lot of the athletes that I've worked with, we just find that megadosing just gets excreted from the body and you're blowing a lot of money. And you really got to find you've got to do the opposite. You can't start at mega dosing. You've got to start at the lowest possible dose that you think will have an effect on you and build up from there until you know it works. So as far as dosing goes, you know, I built mine around a 1mg tablet that has appropriate ratios in there. For citrulline. L citrulline tamalic acid, which we're gonna get to in a second, and cordyceps, which is in there also.

Okay, so L citrulline, basically the main thing that it does is it's a vasodilator, very similar to like if you were eating watermelon without the actual calories because it's a precursor for arginine, which is involved in thein the vasodilation of blood vessels. But what you said is it helps you to remove waste products like lactic acid and ammonia. What about trials in terms of like bodies in the streets? Right, like that's great that it, that it might vasodilate. But have they actually investigated athletes to look into improved performance or improved power output or improved endurance or. You know that that's always my question with supplements, right? Like, yeah, they might increase blood vessel vasodilation, but do they actually cause or are there studies that show an increase in actual performance?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. L citrulline has very strong, very, very strong documentation in academic study that absolutely show its help in athletic performance, aside from being something you could take for blood pressure or as you mentioned earlier, the vasodilation for ed. But yes, absolutely, very strong evidence out there that it works that way. You were taking it. So there's great anecdotal evidence. I think you were saying it worked for you. So we know both anecdotally and based on research that it does have a very strong effect that can be researched yourself. Just check it out yourself and figure that out. But you can also click on my studies page because every time I create a formula, I take the time to have the appropriate scientist, quote, unquote scientist on my team do the academic research to make sure it's all good and above board. And I put it out there so people can read it there on the page and link out to those, not only what they say about improving athletic performance, but the mechanisms, also the actual mechanism behind what makes it work.

All right, so fill me in. What are the studies?

I know what these things do. I generally never remember the details of the studies other than at a high level, which very clearly states that when you have vasodilation going on at this level and you're getting more blood to hard working muscles, you're getting more blood volume and in my case, more blood volume and oxygen to hardworking muscles, you're absolutely going to be performing better because you're going to be having more of that octane going to your Muscles that need it when you're working out.

Yeah, I mean, well, what I've seen is you get about a 20 to 25% force output. Increase in force output. And in that study, they were dosing at about 3 grams per kilogram of citrulline, which is a lot of citrulline when we're talking about mega dosing. But I saw a pretty significant increase in force and power output in one study. There was another study that they did with treadmill subjects, and in that there was an extremely significant reduction in time to exhaustion. So again, that was, I think, close to about 3 grams of citrulline. If you guys listen in for dosage, 3 grams of L citrulline, which is a lot more, I believe, than you get from eating like a half or a whole watermelon. But that one was, that one was pretty interesting. And then at lower dosages, I think like one to one and a half milligrams, that's where you. You see the decrease in blood pressure and some of the increase in vasodilation. One of the other things, incidentally, that this can be used for, that I didn't tell you about, Craig, that I'm familiar with, with L citrulline and also with any of these other, like nitrate precursors that open up the blood vessels. Is anybody who does like, sauna protocols, Right. For detoxification or for increasing cardiovascular blood flow or increasing the production of heat shock proteins. Anything you take that vasodilates prior to that can increase the efficacy of something like a sauna session. So if you wake up in the morning and you have some caffeine with some supplement that has citrulline in it, and you hit the sauna, you can actually see a really significant increase in detoxification, fat cell lysing from the use of any of these vasodilators. Anything interesting in terms of the formula as far as where you get the L citrulline? I mean, are you getting it literally from watermelon?

Yeah, I'll go this far. I did mention this to you offline that I'm concerned that my competitors figure it out. But I'll say this. Yes, it comes from the actual source. I want to explain to the audience why this particular product is above and beyond what's available in the market. But if I do that, then my competitors are going to figure out what I'm doing right away and probably simply copy it. So, yes, though I'll go that far to say, yeah, it is from watermelon. And we'll get in here to the malic or malate in a second here. And it is from apples, which is the highest form.

So you literally get L citrulline that's been harvested from watermelon, and then you combine that and I want to ask you about malic acid. In a second. But you combine that with malic acid, which you're harvesting from apples.

Yes.

That's really interesting.

Yeah, that's the only way to do it. That's the only way to do it. But there's one more step in the process that makes it very special, which I sort of jokingly called a trade secret. It's really not. Anyone can figure it out if they're willing to do the hard research and dig in real deep and find out. But for now, let's just say that it is a special formula. People should try it and. Okay, give it a run.

Tell me about why there's malic acid in it. What's malic acid do?

Well, the reason I have malic acid in there also is because it's pretty well known to give a really good one, two punch when used with L citrulline. And malic acid, as I know you know, is something that helps the body produce more energy in the form of ATP. So it's part of. It's a significant part of the Krebs cycle. So the reaction of the vasodilation along with the production of ATP is what I call a one, two punch. I mean, I think of it as a trident, actually, because we'll get to the final ingredient and why I'm using that in a second here. But that's why malic acid is in there. So I can have not only the vasodilation going on, so more of that good stuff going to your muscles, but take advantage of the ATP production of malic acid.

I thought malic acid was more like an antioxidant.

It is that too. It is as well. But it also produces ATP. Check it out.

Okay, interesting. I'll look into it. Does it act as like a precursor for ATP production? I mean, is it getting broken down into ATP precursors or is it just like increasing activity in the Krebs cycle?

In the Krebs cycle, what I understand it to do is it releases stored energy through oxidation of acetyl CoA. Do you know acetyl CoA?

Yes. You familiar with. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it converts that energy into the form of ATP.

Okay, gotcha. So it would drop ammonia levels and increase ATP simultaneously.

Yep, yep. You know I can. I can always count on you to make it more sense than I can.

Yeah, so. So when you're referring to malic acid, that's the same as. As L. Malate, right? Because a lot of times you'll. You'll see it advertised or in supplements as L. Malate, but. But you're calling it malic acid, correct?

That's right.

Okay, got it. So that's harvested from apples, literally, like from, like the flesh of apples?

Yes. And it, by the way, it also is a ingredient in watermelon. Also.

Really, what studies have been done on malic acid as far as, like, any of the other benefits from it?

I think of malic acid primarily as an ATP producer. So I have no doubt. And maybe I should. Maybe I should do a little more research on it and figure out what. What are some of the other great things that it does for the body. But the primary reason I have it in there is strictly for the ATP production.

Okay, got it. Well, I mean, as an antioxidant, obviously it has some benefits in terms of limiting the production of reactive oxygen species. But I know when you look at most of the studies that have been done on malic acid, what I see primarily is a similar effect as creatine, meaning a higher number of repetitions in exercises like the squat and the bench press. You do see a decrease in muscle soreness in a few different studies, and then a few studies in athletes, like tennis players, where they saw an increase in power and in grip strength, which again, is a lot of the similar things that you see with something like creatine. The difference between malic acid or malate and creatine being that malic acid, as you alluded to, causes a little bit more of a vasodilatory effect, similarly to citrulline. What about when you combine citrulline with malate, like when you combine L citrulline with malate? Have any studies been done that have looked into combining the two or putting the two together like you have?

Yes, absolutely. Pretty well, what you're hearing is what I'm telling you here is that you gain this one, two punch. I do want to add in what you said there. It is true, and I didn't know. I didn't think to add it in there. When you ask me questions about science, I tend to think the science part is out of my realm. But you're absolutely right. It reduces muscle tenderness and it does assist with soft tissue recovery as well. But getting to your question, absolutely, there are a lot of Citrulline malic acid compounds out there for the very reason that we're talking about here, because it does provide that one, two punch and it does help people get a good, a good blood flow lift. And often it's used as a pre workout. As a pre workout supplement.

Yeah, it's good, it's good pre workout, it's good pre sex, it's good pre sauna. Like anything that has like that intense vasodilatory effect like that. So if any of your listening and you haven't tried like, like stacking L citrulline with malate, it's actually a pretty cool stack in terms of blood flow. You talked Craig about something else that you threw in there to, to increase the efficacy of this combination of citrulline and malate. Tell me a little bit about that.

All right. So I love cordyceps senesis because cordyceps does a lot of great things too. But the, the primary thing it does for me, and I think that most people use it for, is to take advantage of the oxygen delivery. Capab. And as we talked about in a previous discussion, there are these polysaccharides and long sugar chains that it has. And when they get into the body, they're released on a cellular level. So it helps the body utilize and create more oxygen. So once again, if you have that working with a vasodilator and the ATP production, then what I'm trying to do is get more power, more oxygen and more blood to muscles when they're working out. So I've added cordyceps to this. Really? Again, for the. Primarily for the oxygen delivery capabilities. It also has an ATP producer in it also. But it's primarily the oxygen delivery capabilities that I like with the cordyceps.

Where are you getting the cordyceps? Like, how is that harvested?

Well, it's Tibetan cordyceps. It's organic cordycepsinesis. It's the real deal.

Tibetan, like from Tibet?

Yeah.

Okay, interesting. So when you're adding the cordyceps, essentially what you're doing is you're enhancing the ability to be able to, able to utilize oxygen. So you're increasing vasodilation and then activating. Well, cordyceps is almost like an adaptogen in a way. I know it activates, yes, not only ATP production, but the adrenal activation of lung tissue. And so you see, that's why I see a lot of Sherpas and folks like that using cordyceps. I know that the Chinese women's track and field team swears by this stuff and a lot of the athletes in China use it and they, they, they seem to do pretty well at the Olympics. But yeah, soso, the increase in ATP though is something a lot of people don't talk about with cordyceps, but you actually do. See, I know there's one study that they did where it went up by almost 30%, the increase in adenosine triphosphate or ATP with the use of cordyceps. So essentially what you're looking at sounds to me like big picture is when you combine these three, increased ATP along with increased vasodilation, increased buffering of lactic acid, increased buffering of ammonia, and this Viagra like effect for the whole body, along with the increase in actual energy production and the production or the availability of Krebs cycle intermediates.

That's correct. No, I mean I couldn't, Ben, I couldn't have said it better.

Okay, so tell me how you combine all these three. Is this like one supplement in like a tablet form that all these come in? Fill me in on how you actually implement all these and take them.

Yeah, I didn't go with a powder form. The powder is typical. And I didn't go with the powder form. I went with the tablet form and experimented with that for a while to try to get something closer to a long release. So instead of taking an hour before workout as a powder form and a drink and getting a big hit and going and getting the pump that a lot of people get, I wanted to try to create a situation where in a tablet form, even if they have to crush it up, it's a little different if they crush it up, but get a sustained release of this stuff. So that's why I chose to put it in the tablet form in the hopes that people would get a better hit over a longer period of training cycle using it. So that's why it's in that form.

And how soon before exercise or before a sauna or before sex would you take something like this?

Well, I'd still stay with the basic protocol for that. I think that you should have it in your body about an hour before you do any of this stuff. Good healthy hour before you, before you get to a workout.

Okay, got it, got it. And you've got all these studies online on your website and I'll link to it. But you call this stuff oxia?

Yeah, I call it Oxia. The reason I use that word is the correct spelling is O xia and oxia is a word that O, X, C I A That's the name of my product, Oxcia. Oxia. But the correct spelling of it is O xia and it's just a word that means oxygen producing. So I just added a C in there.

Okay, got it. Just randomly added the C in.

Yeah.

Okay, got it.

It looked like it read better to me. It looked like it read better.

All right. Oxia tm. Okay, cool. So this OX Sea, it's the combination of L citrulline, L malate and cordyceps sinesis. And I know that you're offering the folks who are listening in, Is it a 20% discount to try out this stuff?

Yeah, 20% and free shipping. Yes.

Okay, so we'll put the code is Ben. We'll put the link in the show notes, but I think you just go to BenGreenfulFitness.com Oxcia Oxcia. I'll put a link to the Oxia formula and the Oxia supplement along with some of the other stuff we talked about, like the crossover symmetry and this hypoxia hyperoxia device that I use and some of the other things that Craig and I touched on. But I, I did have another question for you, Craig. You have like your, you have like your other blood doping, blood building supplement, this biotropic stuff. Was this design, this Oxia to be like stacked with that or is there too much crossover? Because I know the other stuff has like cordyceps in it and some of these other vasodilators compounds. Have you stacked them, have you tried stacking them or should this be taken standalone?

That's a really good question. The reason I developed this is that the other two products do have a blood oxygen theme. They have two different prime movers in it. We've talked about that. AFA versus chlorella and each of those two different things. But those two products are beefed up with a lot of other help. They have immune properties in them. They have the B sweet, the healthy B sweet vitamin going on there, vitamin complex going on. There's a whole lot of other neat things that go on in the other products. I designed this to be a very simple. Initially I called it, I don't know if it's too strong here, but brute force oxygen delivery system and changed it to something more pleasant so it's less scary. Pure force. So this is just a simple clean product that's designed to do really one thing and that's vasodilate and deliver energy and oxygen to your muscles when they're working out. There's none of that other Stuff in there that supports immunity that athletes often need. And as I say, the B suite, which is a really, really great complex. So this is just a brilliantly simple delivery system for just oxygen and vasodilation, nothing else. That's all it's designed to do.

Okay, got it. And one bottle of this will last, like a month. Looks like it's around a little under 50 bucks.

Yes, that's correct.

And then if people use the code, they can save 20% off that. So basically, like 40 bucks. Ish.

Yeah, well, and with the shipping, it's reduced significantly, too. From there. It's like another. An additional five. It's really. With the free shipping, it adds up to something close to 25% off.

Cool. Well, I want to try it, man. I mean, full disclosure, I haven't tried it yet, but I'm very, very interested. I want to throw some down before sauna. I want to throw some down before sex. And we'll throw some down before workout. And I want to get a pump and see what happens. See how it compares to the. All that watermelon I used to eat when I was bodybuilding.

I know you're gonna love it. You're a triathlete. You know your body really well, and I have a feeling it's gonna work as well on you as it does on me. I think you'll like it. I'll get it to you as soon as I can.

All right, man, I'll give it a go. And in the meantime, if you guys are listening in, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Oxcia that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com O X C I A and I'll put a link in the show notes to this new formula along with the discount code, which is simple. It's Ben, along with some of the other things that we talked about, like the LiveO2 system. I have here in my office, my article on high intensity interval training, some of the stuff Craig talked about and I talked about as far as cross body patterning and high intensity interval quality training. Craig, it's always interesting to get you on the show and hear the things you've been up to in your mad scientist lab there.

Well, you're a blast. I always enjoy this. I always look forward to it. And thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it.

It. All right, folks, until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Craig Dinkle signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a healthy week.

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