Secrets Of The Fittest Old People, Ben's Top Healthy Baby Tips, How To Get Rid Of Injuries Fast & More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show, Secrets of the fittest Old people. How to stay fit when you're sitting. My top healthy baby tips, how to get rid of injuries fast, what to eat before, during and after workouts, and much more.

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 you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

Power, speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's a natural movement, get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy.

All the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Rachel. Today is a very, very special day in the Greenfield household.

It is. Why is that?

Because today is the first day in a very long time that I have not been eating waffles. Waffles. I've been so American inundated with waffles. My children. Well, let me put this into context. My wife left for LA for about four days to go visit family. And so I was left with my two boys who are relatively obsessed and seemingly becoming more obsessed with the process of making various flavors and kinds of waffles. Like our waffle iron is, is getting.

Getting really good use. I saw, I saw some of the videos on social media. They are epic. I can't believe they can make those waffles themselves.

Yeah, I woke up one morning and they had gotten out of bed before me. I mean, they must have been up at about 5:45. And I woke up to a giant stack of waffles next to my computer.

And, and the video that they made completely without your help was incredible.

They did the waffle show and then the night before mom got home, they wanted to have a waffle making contest. And this is where if you're listening in, things get interesting because I actually came up with what I would consider to be a pretty good waffle. You want to hear what it is?

I would love to.

So here we go. This is a protein packed chocolate, orange gluten free waffle. And it was very simple to make. What I did was, and this was enough to make two waffles. So scale accordingly. You take a couple of scoops of protein powder. Okay. I like to use chocolate because that gives, gives the chocolate flavor. If you don't use chocolate, you could always just use like a little bit of dark chocolate stevia to make whatever protein powder that you choose. More chocolatey. So I used a couple scoops of chocolate protein powder. In this case, I used the hemp protein powder from Onnit and then I used one egg beaten. I used a couple of tablespoon of coconut flour as the flour of choice. A little bit of olive oil added in so that the waffle didn't actually stick to the pan. One drop, just one drop of orange essential oil. That's where you get the orange flavor. And then just a little bit of salt and of course a little bit of baking powder. And that's it. You stir it all up and you dump that into the waffle iron and it makes this fantastic chocolate orange protein gluten free waffle.

That sounds delicious.

Which we'll post this by the way to Instagram. You can go to instagram.com BenGreenfieldFitness and I'll put a little photo up there. But there you have it.

Who won? Who won the contest?

We decided that it was a tie.

Between river and Terran.

Yes. One of them made gingerbread lemon and one of them, it was so many ingredients that that I believe we lost track of what exactly the title of the waffle was. But regardless, they are little chefs. They will be. By the way, for those of you who are going to be at Paleo fx, my kids are going to be doing a cooking demo there. They've been working up a fantastic Japanese Thai fusion recipe that I think is going to blow people's minds. And so we'll talk about that perhaps a little bit later in this podcast. But for now, let's get onto the good stuff, shall we?

News flashes.

So, as is customary on the show, let's start off with some of the latest science, the latest cutting edge science. Here's an interesting new study that found that for those of you out there who might happen to want to get some of the benefits of altitude training, right, like the increase in red blood cell production and hematocrit, the increase in blood volume, or perhaps you're training for like a race or competition at altitude. They've recently published a new paper in the journal Frontiers in Physiology. And I'll link to the full free text in the show notes if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 351 but what they found is that when you train in the heat, when you train in a sauna or you do just training in hot weather, what happens is there is what's called a cross acclimation effect. So what this means is that by training in hot conditions, you actually improve your performance at altitude. And in this particular study, what they did was they took a bunch of folks and they had them do a series of cycling sessions and exercise sessions in the heat for 10 days. And what they found was that the group who exercised in the heat compared to a group that did traditional, what would be called hypoxic training, right. Where you hook yourself up to an air generator that removes the oxygen from the air to simulate altitude. They found that the group that trained in the heat actually got results that were pretty similar to the group that did this hypoxic training. And they were able to have a good amount of performance at over 10,000ft of elevation, which is, which is pretty significant. And the proposed mechanism of action here was the production of these things called heat shock proteins. So this is one of the reasons that I spend quite a bit of time in the sauna myself. You know, I try and get into the sauna about four to five times a week for around 30 minutes or so. And these heat shock proteins, they, they defend your cells from stress induced damage. And, and so if you repeatedly trigger this heat shock response, your body increases its level of heat shock proteins. And it appears that these heat shock proteins can somehow help you to perform better in conditions of hypoxia, you know, such as altitude. Yeah, so it's, it's a really, really cool adaptation or mechanism. And you know, if, for example, you live in, you know, a low elevation area, but maybe you have a race at a high elevation, or maybe you want to increase your red blood cell production, you know, maybe you live in Florida or something like that. This research shows that you could just go out and train in the heat for a little while and be ready for the altitude. So I thought that was kind of cool.

Does, does cross acclimation mean that it works in reverse as well if you train in altitude, that you'll be more heat adapted?

I like the way you're thinking. You know, I don't know, but I would imagine because altitude training can increase blood volume and it may also increase the production of heat shock proteins, that could be true. It'd be interesting to see the study in reverse that, wouldn't it? To see if folks who trained at altitude could do better training or competing in the heat. Yeah, so I thought that was cool. We'll link to that study in the show notes. Another really cool article that recently came out was an article in Esquire magazine. Or I'm sorry, it actually wasn't a square magazine, it was a Vice. Yeah, Vice they talked about this, this guy who they describe as the healthiest old person on the planet. This guy's name is Charles Eugster and he's a British sprinter. So he's got world records in the 200 meter and the 400 meter sprints as well as the British records in the 60 meter, the 100 meter and the 200 meter. And the dude is 96 years old and he does a bunch of stuff, right? He's a bodybuilder, he's a rower, he's a wakeboarder, he's got like a bunch of businesses. He's even got his own like clothing line that he's designed. And the interview with him, which, which I'll link to in the show notes, it was really interesting. I thought that there were a lot of cool takeaways from it. But one of the things that, that I thought was, was most interesting was when they asked him about his diet, what he eats to stay in shape. So here's what he says. I'll read this to you, Rachel. He says, variety is key. I start every day with a protein shake because as you get older, your protein synthesis no longer functions as well, which by the way, is true. This is something I recommend to a lot of seniors is that they take things like hydrochloric acid and digestive enzymes to allow them to get more amino acid absorption from their protein. And he goes on, he says, I avoid sugar and eat lots of meat, especially fat. Fat. Piles of fat, yes. I was in the supermarket the other day and was perplexed to find yogurt with zero fat. What on earth is that? The idea of the nutrition pyramid, where at the top is a little fat and meat and at the bottom is a lot of carbohydrates, is, excuse me, bs. Humans are so unbelievably stupid that we have begun to tinker with food. He says our theories of nutrition have resulted in a pandemic of obesity. Can you imagine a hunter gatherer enjoying a low fat diet? Let me tell you this too. I read a report recently which says that a fatty diet increases your libido. So really interesting and I love to study how, how old people who are fit and who have just like, you know, amazing bodies and are doing epic feats of endurance or, you know, even cognitive performance, how they do what they do. And you know, I'm, I'm actually working on an article about this and, and for those of you listening in, you may or may not know this, but every single week I publish an article over on the website quickanddirtytips.com and one of the articles that I'm working on right now is an article about some of these other folks who are fit old people. So there's this guy. There's this Charles Ugster. You know, we could say that perhaps one of his tips is to, like, you know, eat a lot of fatty foods. But you look at, like, Laird Hamilton, right? In my podcast interview with him, one of the big takeaways from him was constantly learn new stuff. Yeah, the dude's garage is just full of, you know, like, skis and snowboards and jet skis and balance devices and all these different tools to challenge his body and his brain and develop new neuronal firing patterns because he's constantly learning new stuff. And I think that. And we have a short interview that we did with him on Facebook where that's what he talks about is he said that's how he stays young, is he's just always experimenting and learning new stuff.

Can I tell you my favorite secret from this article?

Yeah. He says, you mean the article on Vice?

Yeah, the article on Vice. This is the part that really stood out to me because it's, like, so counterintuitive to me. But he said that the reason why he started working out and getting healthy when he was 87 years old was because he was so vain to myself. Is vanity really the secret to a long life?

Yeah. I don't know. It is interesting, though, that he didn't even start until he was 87, which is why I just started playing the ukulele. And, like, I would love to be just, like, awesome at the ukulele by the time I'm 40. And, you know, things like this, when I read about people who are 87 who just get started, give me quite a bit of motivation to know that it's never too late to start something.

Definitely.

Yeah. But there are other old guys. Like, you look at Mark Sisson, right? And Mark Sisson's philosophy is you lift, move, and sprint, right? His whole thing is, you know, every seven to 10 days, he does something that shoves his body into anaerobic mode, right? For him, it's ultimate Frisbee. But it could be, you know, a hard bike ride, uphill or treadmill, high intensity, but it's not that often. It's once every seven to 10 days. And then he does heavy weightlifting one to three times a week for just seven to 30 minutes. And then his. His last thing is he moves frequently at a slow pace, so he does like treadmill workstations and low level physical activity all day long. So his whole deal is lift, move, sprint, you know, Laird Hamilton's is to learn new stuff. There's another guy named Don Wildman. I don't know if you've heard of this guy, but Esquire magazine did an article on him called the Hardest Workout in the World where he talks about this grueling, intense, multi stage weight training routine that he does each week. And this guy also does like mountain biking on these really hard trails in Hawaii. He does stand up paddleboarding, he does big wave surfing, he does helicopter snowboarding. And now he's about 80 years old. But you know, one of my takeaways from this guy, Don Wildman is to pick something that kind of scares you, right? Pick something kind of epic. And this is something I live my life by, right? Like at least once every quarter, right? Like at least four times a year I try and pick something and put it on my calendar. Something that scares me, that's ultimately outside my comfort zone. You know, like case in point, this weekend I'll be in Seattle and I'll be doing this 12 hour hurricane heat where I show up at 10pm and it's basically a Spartan race that goes until 10am, right? And I don't really, let's put it this way, I would rather be at Pike's Market, like eating sushi and then staying in a nice hotel. But I know that when I go out of my comfort zone and I choose to do that epic, scary thing, it builds this resilience that almost kind of keeps you young.

And you must also get a lot of enjoyment out of it.

You know what? It's hard when you're doing it. It really is. It's hard when you're doing it, but when you finish and you feel like a God among men or a goddess among women, it's a cool feeling. It's a cool, cool feeling and it's well worth the pain and the suffering that you go through. So we'll link to this article in Vice, check it out and stay tuned for another article that I'm working on where I kind of put together a lot of advice from a lot of these old fit people.

I can't wait for that one. Sounds awesome.

And then finally, there was another really interesting study that looked into gluten and in particular the effect of gluten on fat levels. So obviously gluten free diets have been pretty well researched for the removal of them, being helpful for people who have autoimmune disease or gluten intolerances or food allergies. But this particular study just wanted to look into whether, even if you don't have a food allergy or a food intolerance, if gluten could cause weight gain. And so what they took was four groups of mice, and they put one mice on just a standard diet, one group of mice on a diet with about four and a half percent gluten intake, one group of mice on a high fat diet, and then one group of mice on a high fat diet, also with 4.5% gluten intake. And what they found was that gluten consumption caused increased weight and fat gain and decreased metabolism, regardless of the diet, although the effects were more pronounced in the mice that were on a combination of a high fat diet that also included gluten. And they also found that gluten consumption was associated with some changes in gene expression and inflammatory and metabolic markers in fat tissue.

So gluten doesn't sound fun then?

Well, interestingly, and we have to take into account how much that they gave the mice, but interestingly, the biggest thing that gluten seemed to do was it shut down the activity of some of the lipases and some of the enzymes responsible for mobilizing and burning fatty acids, even when a gluten intolerance or gluten allergy was not present. Now, here's one thing that we always have to look at when there is a study like this. A, it's done in rodents, and mice aren't necessarily little people, but it can give us clues. But B, a DIET that is 4.5% gluten, that doesn't sound like much, but that means that these mice were consuming the equivalent of 20 slices of whole wheat bread per day during this study. Okay. So, you know, you always have to step back and look at the amount that is being included in the diet. But this does, you know, the takeaway for me is it does continue to motivate me to avoid some of these modern cultivated forms of wheat. Because the idea is that when you systematically cross breed wheat for higher yields, you concentrate the the wheat germa glutenin or the gluten content. And so this simply means that if you're going to say, you know, eat bread or eat pasta, you would ideally choose what would be called ancient wheats. And you can find this kind of stuff online. Like two. Two examples would be Einkorn wheat and Emmer wheat. Einkorn is spelled E, I, N K O R N Emmer is e m m e R But these wheats have, because they haven't been bred for high yield crop, they have fewer chromosomes and they have a lower gluten content compared to basically modern wheat, bread wheat, commercial wheat, which has more chromosomes and a higher concentration of gluten. Because it turns out that especially if you're trying to, you know, whatever, keep some six pack abs or keep a muffin top at bay that you know, this study gives you a clue that gluten may not be your friend in that context even if you don't have a food allergy or food intolerance to gluten. So really interesting study. I'll link to it in the shownotes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 351 but for those of you who are still doing Wonder Bread and Subway sandwiches, you may want to reconsider.

Listener q and a.

G' day Ben. Dougie Boxall here from Yarra Junction, Australia. I've got a question pertaining to sentencery behaviour this time. Now I've heard you talk and write lot about how sitting, and not only sitting but also staying in the same position for an extended period of time can have deleterious effects on the human body. Now unfortunately, due to where I live, I'm forced to dive at a bare minimum of 60 minutes a day for just about every day of the week. Usually five to six days a week, but sometimes the whole week, every day. So that means I'm sitting and, and more importantly, I'm staying in the same position for at least 60 minutes a day, just about every day. Now I've really thought hard about this, but I can't seem to decrease my ascendancy behavior or sitting time. And I'd really like to ask you if you have any ideas on how to combat this. Thanks for listening and keep up the great work.

Dougie is an Aussie. Dougie like tweets. You Aussie, 10 tweets at once. He's that guy.

Do they name people? Is that his handle on Twitter?

Dougie.

Dougie.

Um, it's Dougie Boxall. I think Doggy, his name would be Douglas.

I like Dougie. Yeah, that's pretty cool. If I had like, like a, a pet or something. Like a next dog. Dougie. Yeah, Dougie's a cool name. That's badass. Okay, so here's the deal, Doug. You can't necessarily, you know, stand up, you gotta sit down. What do you do? I've got some suggestions for you. So first of all, different positions when you're sitting or different contractions when you are sitting. So for example, some of the things that I will do whether I'm sitting on an airplane or I'm sitting in a car, is I will keep my hip flexors from being shortened. And the way that you do that is you place some kind of lumbar support behind your back, whether it's a pillow or a rolled up blanket or rolled up coat or whatever you can use to keep your hips or your hip flexors from shortening. You can also kind of arch your low back, squeeze your glutes and push your hips forward and up. And you can do repeats of that, right? Like almost like thrusting, like air thrusting. Right. Air humping in your car. Do the vehicle based air humping, whether you're at your desk or in your car. And that will keep those hip flexors that tend to get short from shortening and being in that state that can cause low back pain and a lot of other biomechanical issues when you're driving. So that's one that I'll do on an airplane.

Yeah, you do air thrust on an airplane car.

Air humping. That's one good one to do. Along with the lumbar support. The next thing that I'll do is I'll work on shoulder alignment and shoulder posture by doing steering wheel rows. What this means is you'll hold onto the steering wheel at 10 and 2, as you learned in driving instruction class. You pull yourself in towards the steering wheel nice and slow as you breathe in and then you breathe out and you push yourself away from the steering wheel. It's not dangerous. It really isn't. It's not that hard to do. But you can go through repeats of this, right? It's almost like a very slow, super slow contraction where you pull yourself into the steering wheel and push yourself out, focusing on using your shoulder blades more than your biceps to pull and push on the steering wheel. So that's another one that works quite well for the upper body postural alignment. The next thing would be your diaphragm and your inspiratory and expiratory muscles. Now for this, I like this thing called a powerlung. I keep one in the glove box of my car. And this is a resisted breathing device that resists both your expiration and your inspiration. And so what I'll do for this, and this is actually the programmed and recommended training session from the Power Lungs website, is you do 10 repetitions of 3 seconds out and 3 seconds in, and then you'll take A breather for a little while, and then do another 10 repetitions of three seconds out, three seconds in. The power lung has the ability to increase the inspiratory resistance and also the expiratory resistance. So depending on how hard you feel it is, you don't want to turn blue in the face and pass out when you're driving, unless you want to wind up on the front page, the newspaper, whatever town you happen to be driving through. But the power lung works, works quite well, and will get you fewer funny looks than wearing a training mask when you drive. So that's another one that I like to use. So we've got the hip flexors that we're working, We've got the shoulder muscles that we're working. We've got the diaphragm, like the inspiratory and expiratory muscles that we're working. Another one that I'll use when I'm driving is I have two different devices. I have what's called a Captains of Crush hand grip strengthener, along with what's called a hand expander. And on Amazon, they have a package where you can order a Captains of. They're both made by the same company, but the hand expander are little bands that you attach to your fingers and you expand your hands against those bands. And then the grip strengthening device, the Captains of Crush, is just what it sounds like, like a device that you squeeze. And when you do this, when you do the expand your hand bands along with the Captains of Crush, what you'll find is that it's not just your grip that you're working. You'll find that your entire body tends to tense a little bit. And one of the things that I'll do is I'll squeeze the Captains of Crush, or I'll open my hands against these hand expander bands. And at the same time, I will do a Kegel contraction. So I'll squeeze my sex organs, right? Like you're stopping the flow of urine. And do that at the same time that you're squeezing the hand grip strengthener device or expanding the hands, and you get like this full body contraction. And again, a lot of this stuff sounds humorous, but there are people, you know, there are truckers, there are. There are frequent travelers. There are people like Dougie. You have to sit for a long period of time. You would be surprised at how fit you can get your body even when you are relegated, having to be in a seated position when you start to use some of these little tips. And I'll go On a road trip right where or maybe I will, I will land when I'm traveling somewhere and I'll have a two hour drive right where I'll land in San Francisco and I got to drive up the coast to whatever, a triathlon or Spartan race or something like that. And I'll just sit in the car and for five minutes, I'll do the power lung. For the next five minutes, I'll do the Captains of Crush with the hand expander band. For the next five minutes, I'll pull myself into the steering wheel and push myself away from the steering wheel. I'll do 10 air thrusters with my hips and just do it like a circuit as you drive. So all of these things can really add up when it comes to combating the effects of sedentary time. Now, a couple of other things. You can always use something like a electrostimulation device. And these are devices that have been proven not just to increase blood flow to an injured area, but also to maintain muscular fitness. When you attach these electrodes to a specific body part and you work that body part. And so I've even done this before when driving, for example, to a race where you want to arrive at the race and have lots of blood flow in your muscles. So you'll attach these electrodes to your, your quads and run a set on your quads, then your hamstrings and run a set on your hamstrings. And they actually do work, obviously a little bit more of an expense compared to like a hand grip strengthening device or an elastic band. But two examples would be the Compex or the Mark Pro device. And I know we get a discount on the Mark Pro device and I'll put that in the show notes for you. But electrostimulation, if you spend a lot of time driving, they're very, very simple to use. And you can attach them to like low back, to quads, to shoulders, to biceps, and they can maintain fitness in those areas even when you are driving. And I'll take them on airplanes, especially for like international flights. I'll nap with, for example, electrodes attached to my right and my left calf while I'm on an airplane. And it keeps blood flowing up and down your calves. And sure, you could wear compression socks too. And you can like, you can pull the socks up and over these electrodes, but it's kind of cool.

That's a brilliant idea.

Yeah. How, how much different you feel when you use something like this after you've been sedentary. It's Just, you know, my opinion, better living through science. You take it out of your bag before it goes through the security scanner, you know, through, through TSA or whatever. And usually nobody, nobody gives a fit about it as long as you take it out of your bag before you, you bring it through the scanner.

Right. So you're not trying to hide anything.

Yeah. So it doesn't look like this bag of, of tangled wires inside your carry on, which tends to raise some eyebrows. The final tip I would give you is there was a brand new book that I just finished reading. It's called Desk Bound. It's written by Kelly Starrett, who also wrote the book Becoming a Supple Leopard. And there are a variety of different tips in there for a sitting position, like bracing yourself correctly as you're in a sitting position. Tips for standing workstations, tips for mobilizing with like golf balls and lacrosse balls. Specific areas that tend to get tight when you're sitting. It's just chock full of like every tip that you'd ever need to have. Proper ergonomics and biomechanics, whether you're sitting in a car or whether you're standing at a standing workstation. And it's just chock full of photographs. Right. It's like a Kama sutra for people who, who have to sit or stand for long periods of time and like different positions that you can be in. Really, really great book. You know, Kelly's a brilliant guy and I would highly recommend anybody who, who uses a desk or who sits in a car like Dougie does or sits in an airplane. You should own this book. Very, very simple to read. You know, I got through it in a couple of days. It's called Desk Bound by Kelly Starrett. And just like his other books, it's kind of like a cookbook where you're like, okay, well I've been sitting for a while and my calves bug me. And he'll show you what might be causing that calf pain, how to get rid of it, how to adapt your workplace. Really good book. So that one's called Desk Bound. I'll put a link to this along with the other things that I just Talked about@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 351But doggy, I hope that helps. Hi Ben, my name is James. My wife and I just had our first child and we'd like to know what are some of the things you did with your boys to make sure they're flourishing and healthy. Thanks very much. Well, I'll admit I was Actually a little bit scared about how my boys were gonna look when they came out.

You were? Because they look like aliens.

So I did like my first Ironman triathlon. Right. And after I did my first Ironman triathlon, my wife and I thought, well, okay, you know, I got that under my belt. You know, something epic. Maybe we should have babies now. Or a baby rather. And so the very first time that we tried, we conceived. And my concern was that maybe an Iron man really messes up your sperm and your DNA and I'm gonna have little freaks when they actually do come out.

Maybe something and then that you probably would.

Anyway, they turned out to be beautiful baby boys. Yeah, no, I'm not. They're little Adonis'. But yeah, we certainly did quite a few things to really give them a step up in life. And I can tell you some of the things that we did. I wrote this little book called 10 Ways to Grow tiny superhumans. And I talk about some of this stuff in the book. And then there's some other things that I want to tell you about as well. Probably the number one tip I can give anyone out there, whether you just had a baby or whether you have a child who's just a few years old, is you really need to understand this concept of germ theory. Germ theory, meaning that we live in an era where there is an infatuation with healthy hygiene and in many cases that can ruin or delay the strengthening of a child's immune system, which is incredibly important because a healthy intestinal environment means that your kid is going to have a healthier brain, healthier neurotransmitter production, get sick less often, have better bacterial profile in terms of their skin and their gut microbiome. So I would say if I could pick one thing to throw a dart at as the most important thing to do for a child, it would be that now some of the things that you can do, first of all to take care of that prenatally is they've done a little bit of research. So one of the things speaking of gluten is that they've done studies in rodents showing that a gluten free diet actually increases the gut barrier function of the offspring. And so that would be one thing, if you're prenatal would be, you know, we talked about gluten. And again, like, I'm not a gluten freak. I'm not one of those guys who just like, you know, freaks out if my kids have a cupcake or whatever. But if you're prenatal avoiding gluten could be a good idea. Along with taking probiotics and eating fermented foods. They found bacteria in things like amniotic fluids and umbilical cord blood and the placenta. And they do know that colonization of a fetus's gut begins in the womb and maternal probiotic usage directly affects the gut microbe of the fetus. So if you are a mom, you should be going out of your way to do things like sauerkraut and kimchi and yogurts and like a good therapeutic grade probiotic and those type of things. So consider that during birth, you know, my kids were born via C section. What they've shown is that when a child is born via C section, it takes seven years for their gut to develop as healthy a microbiome as a child who is born vaginally and is able to, as gross as this may seem, swallow a little bit of mom's feces as they're, as they're coming through and going out. Like, that's how, how a child's microbial colonization begins is they basically, you know, having a little bit of a. A little bit of a fecal feeding.

I just learned something that I can never take back. Thanks.

Well, I mean, well, there's there. I've got a gal coming on the podcast pretty soon, and we're going to talk all about all the most recent research on fecal transplants and poop pills, reversing irritable bowel syndrome and colitis, and how, how therapeutic it can be. But it turns out that, that if you were born vaginally, you probably don't have much of a need for something like that. So avoid unnecessary C sections. Right. If you don't need a C section, don't get one, ideally. And in the event that you do have a C section, give your child probiotics. So we did this with our children. You can actually use infant probiotics, and you can also use smaller doses of just regular adult probiotics to colonize a child's gut. And of course, you don't have to go out and buy pills and capsules. One of the other things that we did quite a bit of with our children was we had access to raw cow's milk and raw goat's milk, two things that are very accessible in terms of probiotics. And in this case, my wife was a member of what's called a CSA where she took turns with six other women who would drive out to a local farm every week and bring back a raw goat's milk and raw cow's milk from a good, clean farm.

Awesome.

And we would give that to our children. And of course, breast milk contains probiotics as well. But once the breastfeeding is done with, you can use goat's milk and cow's milk as great sources of probiotics along with fermented foods. There's no reason that you can't include things like chopped up and blended sauerkrauts and kimchees and things like that in a child's baby food. And so what my wife would do was she'd take fermented foods and she'd blend them with things like fresh organic fruits and fresh vegetables, and she'd flash freeze these and let's little trays and keep them in the freezer and just pull them out when she wanted to thaw them and give the kids a little meal.

Brilliant.

Yeah. So probiotics are really important. A few other things from a postnatal standpoint is, you know, when we look at this germ theory, a lot of this stuff is, you know, kind of like, keep it simple, stupid. Right? Like, let them play outdoors. You know, I've talked about this before, but dirt, dirt is full of microbes. And it's really important to let your kids, you know, make mud pies and play in the garden soil and get out in the dirt and get out in sandboxes and play in the playground. And they found that kids who do that actually have lower amounts of intestinal permeability, meaning that they have a healthier gut lining when they. When they get out. And of course, they're gonna get plenty of vitamin D as well, which is super important. They've shown that kids who play with other kids who get exposed to farm animals, who, like, eat their own boogers and who don't get exposed to a lot of antibiotics and antibacterial hand soaps. These kids that get exposed to dirt, they're healthier. So let your kid get dirty.

Let your kid eat their boogers.

Yeah. This whole concept of germ theory, that is the most important thing that I'd recommend. So that's the number one thing. There were a few other things that we did. First of all, they've shown that the loading patterns of a child's foot early in life actually affects the shape of, for example, their. The cavity that their lungs are in, along with their hip biomechanics and their knee biomechanics later in life. And so minimalist shoes, or letting your kids be barefoot as much as possible is actually Something that's very important. And so our kids were barefoot a lot and we used a lot of kids, kids based minimalist shoes, like companies like Vibram and Merrell and Nike Free. Like they all do these thin soled shoes. And I would highly encourage you to have your child barefoot as much as possible. And once they do start wearing shoes, have them go. Have them go with minimalist. What else did we do? We were very careful with, with electrical pollution. So when my kids were born, I started using an electrical timer on the WI fi, meaning you can get these little digital wall timers off Amazon that you can program and it'll automatically turn off whatever is plugged into that outlet at the time that you've chosen and then turn it back on at the time that you've chosen. Now in my current house, I don't have WI fi at all, right? Like I just have ethernet cable. That's it. And because I have the privilege of having built this house, I just hardwired all the rooms with ethernet so there is no WI fi. But when my kids were born, we lived in this little home where I had a WI fi router. And so I had it automatically turn off at 10pm and turn on again at 6am so that my kids, while they were sleeping, weren't getting exposed to these WI fi signals. And in addition, if I ever give them my phone to play with, whether they want to mess around with Snapchat, because you can do funny things with Snapchat, or they want to play a little game, always in airplane mode, right? And they still do that. I explained to them, you know what, you know, a child's thinner skull rapidly dividing neurons, rapidly dividing cells, they're going to be more susceptible to some of the damage that WI fi and Bluetooth and constant electrical radiation and pollution can cause. And so my kids know, you know, from any, from the time they were young, you know, I'd put the phone in airplane mode. And now when they're using the phone or playing around with the phone and they don't need a connection for what they're doing, the phone's always in airplane mode. So phone, WI fi, be careful with that stuff. A few of the things that we did, there's a company called Lighting Science that makes special bulbs that don't produce a lot of blue light wave spectrum. And they're healthy baby bulbs. And you can put them, I think they call them sleepy time bulbs. You can put them in your child's bedroom as the main source of light in the child's bedroom. So that's lighting science that makes those. What that does is just it's easier on a child's melatonin production. It enhances their sleep cycles. And so we use those in the kid's bedroom rather than opting for regular light bulbs. So we used a specific type of light bulb. And I'll link to the one that we use in the show notes. I have to remember the name of it.

I think it is lighting science. You can get it on Amazon, right?

Yeah, yeah. Sleepy baby. A sleepy baby bulb is what it's called, a sleepy baby bulb. It's called a biological LED lamp. And so rather than using regular lights in the kid's bedroom, you use these lighting science sleepy baby bulbs. So I'm writing a note to myself to make sure that I leave link to the correct one in the show notes for you.

And if I want to be a sleepy baby, I can just use that in my room.

You can use them in adult bedrooms too. Actually. That's what my wife and I have. We have the little lights next to our bed stand and that's what we use is those sleepy baby bulbs. A few other things that we do with our kids, a ton of roughhousing, a lot of fighting, a lot of roughhousing. They've shown that kids who roughhouse a lot when they're young tend to be less violent and more socially adapted, you know, as ironic as that may seem as they age. And so, you know, I went out of my way from the time my children were young. You know, boys and girls both benefit from this, you know, fighting, roughhousing, wrestling. Now my kids are in jiu jitsu, but basically giving children a chance to tussle and to wrestle. And not only do you get the ability for a child to be a little bit more over open to physical touch and a little bit better able to respond to whatever, bullying, violence, et cetera. But you also get a big dump of oxytocin, this feel good hormone when you're touching your children. And even when my children were in diapers, touching their skin, wrestling, rolling around, just lots of movement. And they've got. If you're not into jiu jitsu and fighting and stuff like that, they've got classes like, like baby yoga. You can work out like you can. We used to swim. My wife and I would go to the pool and we'd swim. We put our kids in our back when we swam, right? We'd swim laps back and forth and our kids would just be along for the ride. That's awesome. When we were traveling, my wife and I would always use our kids as weights. So we would do walking lunges and then we do push ups and then we do body weight squats and then we do V ups on the floor. But all these different moves with the kids. So it's like that the child is having a great time, right? Because they're almost getting like massage and they're getting a touch to the parent and you're working out at the same time. Plus, they've shown that a child who sees their their parents working out tends to perceive themselves to be a fitter child. They've done some really interesting studies on this that have shown that the more fit and physically active that the child sees the parent being, the more fit and physically active the child will be.

Makes sense.

Those are a few of the things that we did that I think were big wins. And I will link to my little book, super fast book it took you 45 minutes to read called 10 Ways to Grow Tiny Superhumans. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. There's two other resources that I want to give to you that I would recommend you read. Dave Asprey wrote a book called the Better Baby Book. Really good book when it comes to almost like, you know, biohacking your baby's diet and their bedroom and, you know, a lot of little things that I haven't even had a chance to go into in my response to James. So I'd recommend that James, you check out that book. And then another really good, smart physician named Chris Kresser. Chris Kresser has this program, it's like an online program. It's called the Healthy Baby Code, where he goes over the best micronutrients to make sure that you get your kids some superfoods that help to boost fertility and encourage a safe delivery for a baby. The different types of solid foods to introduce and in which order, how to manage some of the stress and some of the potential health issues that could occur in the mom during pregnancy. A bunch of breastfeeding tips in there. Just a really, really cool just. It's called the Healthy Baby Code because that's exactly what it is. So he's a super duper smart dude. I like that program. And if I were gonna push the rewind button and have a baby, those two resources didn't exist when we had our children, but I certainly wish they had. So that's Chris Kresser's Healthy Baby Code. And then Dave Asprey's Better Baby book my book, 10 Ways to Grow Tiny Superhumans. I'll link to all of this stuff in the show notes for you, but hopefully that helps. And when your child grows up to be President of the United States of America, you can send me a check or give me a fat tax refund.

Hi Ben, it's Neil from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. I've been having issues with one repetitive.

Strain.

Pain in my shoulder and also pain in my hip. I had it scanned and it looks like I have a spur started in my hip region. Just wondering if you can give me any suggestions to get these two things sorted out, either using supplementation or any. Anything food related. I'm currently doing a low carb, high fat diet. I swapped over about a year year, just over a year ago. Seems to be going well. But I just want to get running again consistently and wondering if you can give me some suggestions to fix my issue. Thanks, Ben. You're doing a great job. Love your show, love your podcast. Got your book, awesome stuff. Keep it up. Thanks, man.

So you know what RSI is, Rachel?

Repetitive strain injury.

Yeah, repetitive strain injury. Some people call it repetitive stress injury injury. But yeah, it's doing the same thing over and over again. Right. Like, for example, case in point for me, I just started kneeling more at my, at my workstation rather than standing. I just wanted to switch things up. Yeah. And all of a sudden, after a week of kneeling, guess what? I started to get like chronic butt pain in my right butt cheek. And I realized that I just like slightly rotate my right pelvis back when I'm kneeling and it puts a little bit of strain on that right butt cheek. And I've developed like a little bit of almost like tendonitis in my right butt cheek. And that's technically, you know, just from kneeling for a week, a repetitive stress injury. And you know, we see this especially in like chronic repetitive motion athletes. Right. Like cyclists develop piriformis syndrome, where the front of their hip flexors tighten up or runners get, you know, plantar fasciitis or Achilles tendinitis, or, you know, swimmers get shoulder pain. The list goes on and on. As far as my suggestions for how to get things sorted out, how to, how to get rid of injuries fast, I've got a few techniques that I personally use. I'll give you some of them from a, from a nutrition standpoint and also from a movement standpoint. So the first thing that I'd recommend that you do, you know, step number one is deep tissue work. So there is this idea of the Cumulative injury cycle. What that means is when you have friction and pressure and tension that arises primarily from cross adhesions, from cross linking in your fascia, the sheath that surrounds all the muscle fiber in your body, what happens is you get decreased circulation, right? Like hypoxia and decreased blood flow to an area which actually tends to create even more pressure or tension. And eventually what happens is that muscle becomes weak or tight from that lack of circulation and from that constant pressure or tension, and you get to a certain point where it becomes so weak or tight that it develops little micro tears, okay? These micro tears result in chronic inflammation. So now you've got a combination of inflammation and decreased circulation and constant pressure and tension. And eventually your body begins to lay down scar tissue in that area. And scar tissue is very immobile. And so you develop the scar tissue, and that leads to even more tension because scar tissue isn't as mobile. And you get this vicious cycle that gets worse and worse and worse as it goes. So the trick is, logically, you want to decrease pressure and tension, you want to decrease inflammation, and you want to increase circulation to an area so that you get rid of that cumulative injury cycle. Now, one of the things that I personally do to avoid repetitive strain injuries is every morning when I get up, I do about 10 to 15 minutes of deep tissue work. Now, I recently posted to YouTube. If you go to YouTube.com bear Ben Greenfield Fitness what I call my metabolic mobility routine, it's me and my underwear doing a bunch of jumping jacks and burpees and stuff like that. In between hitting up the foam roller, like with the ridges sticking out of it. Massage ball. I've got this little vibrating massage ball, what's called a battle star, which is like a rolling, polyurethane, super duper hard type of roller that really digs into muscle tissue. And then an arm aid, which is this thing that you can use on your triceps and your biceps and your wrists. And I'll do that once a week, and that takes about 30 to 60 minutes, depending on how long I go. I do about 10 to 15 minutes every morning. And then once a week I get a massage. Okay? So I'm getting deep tissue work for a good probably two to three hours every single week. I knew some people, there are some really good crossfitters. I know some of the people who are some of the top ranked guys and gals in the CrossFit Games. They will do multiple times a week, up to two hours of massages and soft tissue work. And sometimes when you're really beating up your body. That's what it takes. But soft tissue work is incredibly important and typically should precede any type of stretching, any type of traction. And I'll explain what I mean by that in a second that you do. So everything starts, number one with the soft tissue work. Because if you pull on a rope and that rope has a knot in it, what happens? It tightens, right? Knot tightens, right? So what you want to do is you want to get rid of the knots, get rid of the adhesions, and then you work on the flexibility and the mobility. So really train yourself in how to do your own deep tissue work and preferably work with a massage therapist as well as probably one of the best resources for this would be another book by Kelly Starrett called Becoming a Supple Leopard. But just so you know, I mean, like, I am literally doing deep tissue work every single day. Okay? The next thing would be mobility, and two of my favorite or the next thing would be stretching, and two of my favorite methods of stretching would be a this thing called voodoo flossing. So voodoo flossing is a way that you milk fluid, like synovial fluid, in and out of joints. The way that you do this is you take an old bicycle tube, and what I do is I tie two bicycle tubes together, and you wrap the bicycle tube above the joint really tight, and then below the joint really tight, and then you extend and flex the joints. You can do this with your knees, you can do this with your elbows. And what it does is it just causes a bunch of milking of fluid in and out of the joint. So anywhere where you tend to have chronic pain, voodoo flossing can work incredibly well. You don't have any expensive equipment, just bicycle tubes, right? You tie the joint above, you tie the joint below, and that's it. The cool thing is that if you have this bicycle tubing, you can also do what's called Katsu training. It's blood flow restricted training, where, for example, you want to do a set of squats and you want to increase the amount of lactic acid that builds up in your muscle during the squat. You can literally use that bicycle tube like a tourniquet, and you'll tie it on, you know, tie one bicycle tube on one leg, one on the other leg, do your set of squats, right? And then you rest for 30 to 60 seconds, then you do another set, then you do another set. It's called Katsu training. K A A T S U training. A bunch of new research behind it. It's also called blood flow restricted training. And what it does is it. It vastly improves the hormonal response to a set and also your ability to be able to buffer lactic acid. So if you get your hands on the bicycle tubes, you got two uses for them, right? You can do the voodoo flossing, but then you can also use it as like a tourniquet to restrict blood flow when you work certain areas. The other thing that I really like for stretching in an area is traction. Traction. So this would mean you're gonna take a specific area and you're going to pull on that joint. So a really simple example of traction would be like an inversion table, right, where you're hanging upside down from an inversion table, which, which, believe it or not, you can get pretty cheap on, like Craigslist, for example. There's a lot of. A lot of rich people that buy inversion tables use them. But you can hang upside down and it stretches and gives traction right to your vertebrae, Pulls the vertebrae apart, pulls the hip flexors apart, pulls the knees apart. I like the inversion table because you hit a lot of things all at once, and you'll just hang from that for five to 15 minutes a couple of times a week, again, preferably after you've done the soft tissue work. So you're not stretching a rope that has knots in it. The other thing that I have is I have these bands. They're just really thick elastic bands. You can find them at sporting goods store, you can find them online. But you can attach these bands to your ankles or to your wrists or to your elbows or to your knees or even to your hips. And then you just back away as far as you can after you've attached that. That band to an immobile object like a bed stand or a pole or something like that. And you. And you literally stretch almost like, you know, in the. In the old medieval days where they used to quarter and torture people and kill them by, you know, attaching a horse to each limb and oh, my goodness. So don't use a horse. Use it using a mobile object, preferably. But the idea is very similar. Like this voodoo flossing concept. You're pulling apart that joint capsule muscle and allowing for a bunch of blood flow and lubrication to get restored to the area. So that's called traction. Traction. So we've got deep tissue work, we've got voodoo flossing, we've got traction. And then one other tip that I'll give to you. Even though there are a lot of Other ways to kind of get rid of injuries pretty quickly. And, and I will do everything that I just described. Let's say I hurt my, my elbow, right? I will voodoo floss the elbow. I'll do deep tissue work on the elbow and then I'll do traction on the elbow. The other thing would be, you know, like, like Neil asked about, you know, food supplement related. Some of the top things I'd recommend, number one would be bone broth. Bone broth has a lot of really good joint healing compounds in it because you are, you're sucking in all that marrow that's coming straight out of a bone. When you take a bunch of bones and you just put them in a Crock pot for 24, 48 hours, throw in some black pepper, some salt, some thyme or oregano, whatever you want for spices, you know, maybe some carrots or onions, and make yourself some bone broth. You know, I always have a pot in the fridge, super duper, easy to make. I'll drink a cup here and there throughout the day and, and really, really just chalk full of joint healing compounds. That's one. Ginger would be another one. I always have a root of ginger in the kitchen. And if I'm ever injured, I'm having ginger tea every single day, multiple times a day. I'm grating ginger on salad. Ginger is a very potent anti inflammatory fish or fish oil. Again, a lot of research behind that and decreased osteoarthritis, decreased joint pain, decreased inflammation. And you can do everything from like a can of, of sardines on a salad to, you know, four to six capsules of a good fish oil. And sometimes I'll double up on fish oil if I'm injured. But that's another really, really good one. Would be omega 3 fatty acids. From a food standpoint, that would probably be my top three would be bone broth, ginger, and either fish or fish oil. From a supplement standpoint, there are a lot of different things out there, but two that I really like would be number one, proteolytic enzymes. So you'll see supplements that have things like trypsin and chymotrypsin and papain and bromelain. And if you were to eat those with a meal, they're gonna work on the meal. If you're gonna eat them with a steak, they're gonna digest all the proteins in the steak. But if you take them on an empty stomach, they break down what is called fibrinogen along with scar tissue and what are called granulomas and tough cell Coatings and a lot of the things that cause joint pain and lack of mobility. And as a matter of fact, for example, like in Europe and Japan, proteolytic enzymes are used pretty extensively to speed up healing from surgery. Very easy to get your hands on at, like, a local health food store. There is a supplement called Nature Flex that I designed that you can get at Greenfield Fitness Systems. That's just. It's ginger, it's proteolytic enzymes, it's tart cherry, it's turmeric. It's like this cocktail of stuff that rapidly heals the body. And along with doubling up on fish oil, I'll just overdose on that stuff if I'm injured. And it speeds up healing dramatically. I mean, you can't just pop pills. You gotta do this other stuff, like the deep tissue work and stuff. But the other thing, in addition to proteolytic enzymes, I would say if I could choose one other supplement, it would be glucosamine chondroitin. So glucosamine is a sugar that they get from the exoskeleton of shellfish, and it stimulates cartilage production in the joints. And then the chondroitin, that's something that they get from cartilage, typically like chicken cartilage, for example, and that attracts water to tissue, which helps the cartilage to stay elastic. So you can use that to keep injuries at bay. You can also double up on it if you are injured. And that's another thing that I found to be quite effective. The final tip that I'll give you is something that flies under the radar but is relatively kind of new in the healing world. Proceed at your own risk on this one. But there are these things called peptides that you can inject into a joint. So, for example, One is called BPC157. BPC157. And you can find it on, like, peptide websites. And you can literally use an insulin syringe, and you can reconstitute these peptides with what's called bacteriostatic water. And then you use the insulin syringe and you can eject a joint subcutaneously. And this produces a healing effect very similar to what people are spending, like, tens of thousands of dollars on to go to Europe and do stem cell inj. You can inject peptides into your body in the comfort of your own home pretty safely and extremely effectively for, like, pennies on the dollar. Really amazing. They're legal. They're not technically sold for human consumption or human use, but you can get them from chemical websites. And one of the most researched is called BPC157.

What are they sold for if they're not sold for human use?

They're. They're sold for human use, but they're not allowed to say that they're sold for human use. Basically. Yeah. So anyways, though, I don't know rodent use. My use anyways, though, you know, I do consults with people privately where I'll walk them through the use of some of these more fringe type of healing methods. So, you know, I'm happy to help via consult as well, but most of this stuff, you can find it at greenfieldfitnesssystems.com or in Kelly Sturerett's book, Becoming a Supple Leopard. And then like some of the more French stuff, you know, that's what I get paid to do, is walk people through the stuff that still flies under the radar. So anyways, those are my recommendations, Neil, and I hope that helps, man. Hi, Ben and Rachel. It's Rachel. My question is what you should be eating pre workout and post workout. I've heard a lot of conflicting information on proteins, fats, and carbs and when you should be eating them. I would love to get your insight on this. Thank you so much for all that you do. Bye. I've got one word for you, Rachel. Gatorade.

Gatorade.

Gatorade. As we all know, Gatorade.

I don't believe you.

Scientifically formulated for every need an athlete might ever, ever need. Gatorade. Purple, blue, green.

Looks like nature. Drink it.

Looks like nature. Drink it. No, actually there are. There are not that many things that would be worse than Gatorade to consume.

Oh, my God.

I've got. I've gotten into this on previous podcasts how the osmolality or the concentration of Gatorade actually creates stomach distress. You know, not to mention all the frankenfuels and colors that are in it. But anyways, I will give you Rachel, Obviously this is a question we could spend hours on. And I've gotten. I mean, if you get my book beyond Training, I've got literally like four chapters in the book on this. But what I will give you here real quick are five things that I would avoid and five things that I would eat before a workout. With the caveat being that I am a huge fan of. As I talked about with Mark Sisson on my recent podcast with him on if you're not trying to gain muscle, really not eating a lot before or after workout because of the decreased rate at which telomeres shorten, the production of ketones, the increased release of growth hormone and testosterone, and all the really interesting things that happen when you're a little bit more spartanesque with your fueling before and after workouts. I'm a big fan of doing things like exercising in intermittently fasted state or waiting for a few hours after you've worked out to actually give yourself a bunch of nutrients and maybe, you know, stringing yourself along with just, you know, some amino acids or something like that. But ultimately, five things that would not go near prior to workout One would be fructose and maltodextrin, two of the things that you will see added to most sports nutrition compounds. I have found that that that combination, especially when taken for hours in a row for things like a triathlon or a marathon, flips your stomach because maltodextrin is basically a complex carbohydrate that can attract a lot of water and blood to the gut and away from the muscles. And then fructose can actually cause because it is a fructan that can ferment, it can create like gas, bloating, gut rot after the workout, a lot of these issues. So look at whatever you're eating, try and avoid the combination of fructose and maltodextrin. Number two. Another thing that you'll see in a lot of pre workout compounds is very high amounts of caffeine. Now there are typically doses that exceed about 100 milligrams of caffeine and many of these gels and sports drinks that are out there. But most of the evidence shows that you can get a benefit, a pre workout boost, an ergogenic boost from as little as 50 to 100 milligrams of caffeine. So I'm a bigger fan of microdosing caffeine rather than using high amounts of caffeine. And by the way, something I'll be talking about in next week's next Wednesday's podcast episode as an alternative to cat caffeine. Believe it or not. And don't rush out to buy this because I'm going to be talking about dosing and sourcing and everything is nicotine, nicotine and you can like chew on nicotine gum during workouts. Get a similar effect of caffeine without as many central nervous system issues as caffeine. But more on that later. But either way, avoid high amounts of caffeine. Number three, you'll find that one common sweetener sweetener found in many sports nutrition Supplements, even healthy, quote unquote, you know, paleo type of supplements these days are sugar alcohols like xylitol and erythritol and stuff like that. Those can actually, similar to fructans, create a lot of fermentation and gut issues during exercise that make an exercise session less than pleasant. So that's another one that I would avoid. In addition to being careful with fructose, maltodextrin and high amount amounts of caffeine would be sugar alcohols. It should go without saying that like sucralose and acesulfamipotassium and a lot of these other potential neurotoxins and gut damaging compounds should be avoided. But a lot of people don't realize that xylitol and erythritol and stuff like that can also cause a lot of stomach issues during exercise. High, high amounts of fiber, that'd be another one to be careful with. You know, 18 pears and nine apples and two bananas and eight bunches of kale, all shoved into one tiny plastic bottle that you purchase from Whole Foods with the picture of the person running on the front of it. That stuff not only ferments, but it can also move through your system relatively quickly, especially when you're doing it before a workout. So I would be extremely careful with high, high amounts of fiber in some of these compounds that are sold as pre workout superfood foods. And then finally, the last thing that I would be careful with are foods that have a lot of water volume to them prior to a workout. I found these to cause stomach distress in people too. So like melons, apples, pears, things along those lines, like really big sweet potatoes. I'd actually be a little bit careful with that stuff. And again, the number one complaint I get with people with their pre workout nutrition is their gut, right? Like my gut just doesn't feel right before workout. I would avoid a lot of the things that I just mentioned. High amounts of fiber, foods that are heavy in water, foods that are heavy in sugar, alcohols, high amounts of caffeine and fructose, maltodextrin. And this is also why I'll typically really not eat much at all for two to three hours prior to a workout. And if I need a quick hit of energy before the workout out, I'll do something like a small cup of coffee and I'll throw in some amino acids, right? Or a packet of adaptogenic herbs like Tian Qi or something like that. So those would be things to avoid, things that I would use. One I Actually am a fan of. If you're going out for a big workout and you do find that you get tired during a workout, you need more nutrients. I like juicing. I have a masticating juicer and I'll juice for example some carrots and some ginger. Throw a little bit of olive oil, a little bit of sea salt in there and these juicing recipes that don't include a lot of fructose, that are more like some superfoods that aren't fermentable, that don't have a lot of sugars in them. One of my favorites, like I mentioned, tumeric carrot. I'll throw a little bit of olive oil and sea salt in there and I'm trying to think if there's anything else sometimes like a scoop of aminos, like amino acids or a scoop of electrolytes. But that can work really well if you have a juicer. My wife actually likes to juice before she'll do like a trail run. Beets are another really good one to juice. So having like a good, what's called a masticating juicer, that can be a really good option. Small amounts of caffeine, like I mentioned 50 to 100 milligrams, what you get out of say a cup of coffee, that would be another thing that I'm a big fan of for pre workout. You know that or like I mentioned, you know, nicotine gum, which I'll talk about later. But I, I like juicing, I like a little bit of caffeine. If you do have a pretty epic workout, something like an easy to digest carb a little while before the workout can work pretty well. When I say an easy to digest carb, what I mean is avoid fructose void maltodextrin. But something like potato based starch would be a perfect example of something that's very easy to digest. There's a company called Exos that makes this stuff called Carb Fuel. Very slow release potato based starch. It doesn't have a lot of water volume in it because it's a powder. It's not like eating a sweet potato or a white potato. Doesn't have of a lot have a lot of the same fibers and skins and stuff like that, but it's just potato based starch. There's another company called Ucan that makes a super starch. It's again very similar like a slow release starch. And this would be for a longer workout right where you, where you actually need the carbohydrate and you know that your body may not be able to rely on its own glycogen stores for long periods of time. So that would be an example. Easy to digest fats. We talked about mcts earlier in the podcast and I am a fan of very easy to digest fats. Two perfect examples of that would be like a very easy to digest MCT oil. And again, if you have stomach distress, use something like the C8 based MCT like brain Octane and then they also sell now these exogenous ketone salts like beta hydroxybutyrate salts. There are companies like keto os, which is also known as. As as Prove it there or what's another one I've got a whole article on on ketone salts that are out there on the market now. There there's a bunch of them. Precision nutrition makes one or not precision nutrition, a prototype nutrition makes a ketone. But basically these are exogenous ketones that allow your body to be able to burn a source of fuel that's really preferentially used by your liver and your diaphragm and your heart and your brain without you actually having to rely on a lot of other sources of fuel. So I'm a fan of that like some form of ketones or MCTs. And then finally easy to digest proteins rather than a steak or eggs or going with a rocky style blender. Natural amino acids like essential amino acids. Huge fan of about 10 grams of essential amino acids prior to a workout for a huge boost. And one of the things that they do in addition to staving off your muscles from catabolizing during a workout is normally your body produces a lot of tryptophan during a big hard, long workout and that crosses the blood brain barrier and it makes you a little bit sleepy while you're working out. But what happens when you take amino acids is that they compete for tryptophan. And so you stave off this central nervous system fatigue because the they bind to a lot of those receptors that tryptophan would normally bind to. Interesting science.

Science, baby.

Magical science. So much more I could talk about. Like I mentioned, read my book beyond training. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and do a search for what to eat before, during and after workouts. Do a search for ketosis. I've got tons of articles on there. The list goes on and on. But anyways, hopefully that helps you, Rachel and everybody else. And I'll put links to most of these things I've talked about. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com351 that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com 351 that being said, what do you think? Should we, should we do a giveaway?

Let's give away some free stuff.

Let's give away some free stuff. Stuff. So here's how this works. If you hear the podcast and you go and leave us a nice tidy 5 star review on itunes and you say something nice, we will send you a gear pack. All you have to do is email geergreenfieldfitnesssystems.com that's geergreenfieldfitnesssystemS.com if you hear your review read on the show, you let us know your T shirt size and we'll throw a cool water bottle, a beanie and a T shirt all in the mail to you and it will arrive magically at your door anywhere in the world where you happen to be. So today we are going to give something away to listener Craterfrog who left a love the name left a five star review on itunes called New Human Superhuman. Rachel, you want to take this one away?

Yes. This podcast has 100% changed my life. Using tips and methods from this show, I've been able to lose 26 pounds in four months while putting on muscle. So who knows how much I lost in fat. My biggest regret is not taking a before pic. Total body rebuild. I love being able to pass on knowledge that I've picked up here and there to my friends. I'm not an ironman, tough mudder, spartan or crazy endurance athlete. Just a civilian who wants to be in the best health possible. And this podcast has played a major role in getting me where I am. Thank you Ben and Rachel.

Kind of a slacker. Not an iron man. Not a tough mudder slasher. Not a Spartan slacker.

I'm a slacker.

Gotta get out there. Crater frog. No. That's awesome. Congratulations. £26 in four months. It's nothing to scoff at. I wonder if they did the cold shower challenge.

I think that might have helped. I wonder if he had cold showers in that.

I love cold showers. I'm tapering right now for this 12 hour super Spartan I'm going to be doing this Friday night, which is just 12 hours of complete suffering. But I do a cold shower, five minute cold shower in the morning and five minute cold shower in the evening and that keeps me from gaining weight. When I'm not exercising as much as I usually do, I like to use cold shower.

Speaking of the cold shower challenge, tomorrow is the final day. 21 days we had 75 people take a 5 minute cold shower every day. And the general feedback has been that it's incredible and they're going to keep going.

All right, I want to leave folks with one last final tip. Do a search like if you use social media like Twitter or Facebook or whatever, do a search for the hashtag cold shower challenge. There are some extremely entertaining photos of half naked people competing in the Ben Greenfield Fitness cold shower challenge. So check that out. Coldshowerchallenge. And that being said, what do you think, Rachel? Shall we call it a podcast?

Podcast is done.

Check out BenGreenfieldFitness.com 351 thanks for listening, everybody. And we'll be back this weekend with a special episode with a very special guest. Stay tuned along with a special episode next Wednesday on Nicotine Gum and oh, so much more. Rachel Benjamin, Talk to you later.

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

Sam.