The Ben Greenfield Fitness Uplugged Show: Special Travel Health Episode From Hawaii

In today's episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, special episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, straight from Kona, we answer all your questions about travel and how to stay healthy while doing it.

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

So what's happening, Ben? Well, Brock, why are you breathing so funny?

I'm wearing an altitude training mask.

An altitude training mask. Nice.

Just a minute. Let me. Let me move this off of my face.

It's not conducive to good podcasting.

I'm gonna turn blue in the face here in a second. Take that off.

That's better.

I do have to admit, though, that looking and feeling like Bane from the movie Batman is just this feeling of intense superiority combined with hypoxia and mild lightheadedness.

You actually look quite terrifying with it on, I have to admit.

That's right.

You got a very sinister look in your eyes.

By the way, speaking of looking terrifying, we should mention the fact that in this special episode of the podcast, we are recording this entire episode via video sitting on the back porch of our condo here in Hawaii at Ironman Hawaii. So for those of you who happen to be premium subscribers of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, you'll be able to.

See that we've both been freshly laid.

You can see that both Brock and I have been freshly laid, meaning that we are wearing fresh lays around our neck, not what were you thinking, sickos. And we're also wearing the brand new Ben Greenfield fitness T shirts, which we are gonna. Oh, nice. Brock just turned around to show off the back, but we're gonna be sending out these T shirts from now on, along with hats and water bottles, to people who leave itunes reviews. So this is the new swag source of jazz going on. But we're down here because I am gonna go do a little workout.

A little eight, nine hour workout. Yeah, hopefully less than 10 hour workout.

Called Ironman Hawaii on Saturday. And so in this special episode, we. We actually put out a Facebook post early this morning and we got a bunch of questions from you guys about travel. We want to focus on. On healthy travel tips, whether whether you're into triathlon or fat loss or you're just somebody who wants to maximize Your, your mental and your physical capabilities while you're on the road, in the air, on your moped, riding, a motorcycle trip across the Himalayas, whatever it is that you do.

That sounds like fun.

That does sound like fun. We should do that. We're gonna answer all your questions.

And again, there's a crapload of them.

Is there a lot of them?

I didn't realize that this many people were interested in how not to get sick.

We can skip the ones about how not to contract herpes while you're gallivanting about Asia. Anyways, though, we're gonna answer all those questions. And first, what is first.

Special announcements.

Why don't we talk about Audible, our sponsor for today? Let's talk about travel because, you know, here's something interesting. Travel is really, for me personally. I don't know about you, Brock, but for me travel is a way to satisfy my need to constantly be like, making life more fulfilling, making life more interesting. And this is about as cheesy woo woo and airy fairy as I promise I'll get during the whole episode. But I read a book, or started to read a book on the way down on the plane called Die Empty and what Die Empty is about. And you can find this over on our over. I have to give you the correct URL so that all the good folks at Audible can track the podcast. Go to audiblepodcast.com Ben that's audiblepodcast.com Ben. But it's about this idea that we think that we're always gonna have tomorrow to do our most important work or our most valuable work. But the fact is that tomorrow's gonna run out a lot faster than we think. And so it's all about like living life not selfishly in the present, but kind of like embracing this concept of like mini retirements and, you know, going out and enjoying life and not like waiting till you're 70. Yeah, in a diaper. My apologies to all our 70 year old listening. Just offended.

It's a little early to be in a diaper. I get to 90 before the diaper. I mean, it could happen.

It could happen.

It could happen.

Anyways though, Die Empty. Check it out@AudiblePodcast.com Ben if you need a little inspiration to inject some excitement and some fulfillment into your life.

So I love that idea of the mini retirements. I like to live that way too. And that's right. I don't own a lot of stuff. I don't even own a car. But I do travel a lot because that's a it's a great way to expand your horizons, learn more about this world and feel, feel good about your existence. I think that's right. And eat some delicious, delicious food.

So speaking of expanding your horizons, what say you? Shall we, shall we jump into today's episode on travel?

Yeah.

And by the way, while Brock's pulling up the questions on Facebook, if you're a brand new listener, usually this show rocks with special music and transitions and a ton of audio editing. And today you're just getting kind of the, kind of the crappy version of the Ben Greenfield Fitness. It's not crappy. Podcast. Just sitting. Yeah, the stripped down version.

Remember in the 90s, unplugged version. Exactly. Back in the 90s when everybody put out cheap albums and they called them unplugged.

That's. This is, this is Ben Greenfield Fitness. That's. Let's call this episode the Ben Greenfield Fitness Unplugged Travel episode. Okay, There we go. All right, so let's, let's jump into your guys's questions. Oh, by the way, by the way, something we totally forgot to mention. What? The book launched this week. The book.

That's right. What else is going on?

My, my brand new book just launched this week. Go to Beyond TrainingBook.com it's the number one book in Amazon right now in Fitness three days. The number one book in Health. The number one book in in triathlon that my publisher tells me that as a golf cart drive the garbage truck. My publisher tells me this book is selling 150 copies an hour right now. So if you're not in on that party, you can get in on it and get over $5,000 in swag.

But you have to do that.

Raffles, giveaways, pre order with the, with the Swag ends in three days. So if you're listening this on Wednesday, October 9, which is when we're releasing this podcast, once I cross the finish line of Ironman Hawaii, you've got about 12 hours left to pre order your copy. Everything that you need to do it. Barnes and Noble, Amazon, wherever good tasty books are sold, you can get it@beyondtradingbook.com Kindle electronic version is not out yet, but if you want to get in the know, once that's out, fill out the tiny little email address form right there@BeyondTrainingBook.com youm'll not only get a hidden chapter that delves into all of the, all the special medical testing I did on my heart to see what 10 years of extreme endurance will do to your cardiovascular system and the morphology of your heart. But you'll also get an instant email from us as soon as Kindle version goes live. So check it out beyondtrainingbook.com this is pretty much the last book you will ever need to guide you through training, nutrition, life, biohacking, everything. It's all in there. Along with tons of goodies, hidden chapters, bonuses, and swag. Like squatty potties and stuff like that.

There's a lot of squatty potties.

A lot of squatty potty going on.

First prize winner gets two of them. So just in case you need to poop in more than one bathroom, there you go.

Listener Q and A.

So after having bored you guys for like eight minutes, let's. Let's jump into our Q and A.

Anybody who's watching the video will see that I have to hold the computer very close to my face.

Yeah. Oh, and if you need to watch the video, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com premium check out the video. Yeah. All right.

Okay. Steve says I travel a lot for the past year and have had trouble sleeping in hotel beds. My fiance thinks it's because I am now old. He's 46. But do you think this is more of a nutritional thing? My eating habits change or get worse when I'm traveling. Or is it a mental thing? Do you have any recommendations?

Well, everybody has trouble sleeping as they get older. You actually. Yes, you do. You get less sensitive to a substance called gaba, gamma aminobutyric acid as you get older. Now, GABA is something you'll find in a lot of sleep supplements, sleep capsules. You'll find GABA in something I recommended in the past couple of podcasts as a really good muscle relaxant and a really good sleep aid, passion flower extract. You'll find GABA in the stuff that I saw Brock slam last night, Somnidren, which throws you into what one of the athletes I coach describes as a somnidren induced coma. But you actually, as you age, in the same way that as you age, you become, say, less able to digest proteins, you simply produce less hydrochloric acid. You get less protein digesting enzyme released into your. Into your bloodstream or into your. Into your gut, rather, your stomach. The same thing happens with gaba. So gamma aminobutyric acid, you lose sensitivity to that. What that means is that you also get a little bit less efficacy from melatonin. Now, the kind of potent 1, 2 combo here is that as you get older, you also produce less melatonin naturally. So your pineal gland in your brain up inside your head is actually releasing less of the specific compound that helps you to sleep and also helps your neurons to repair as you sleep. So not only do you sleep less soundly, but you wake up more groggy and you have a little bit more. Brock's screensaver just came on telling us it's 1.59pm it's very nice of it.

To tell us that.

Yeah, so basically you kind of have that 12 combo, less GABA. So less deep sleep, less neuronal repair while you are sleeping and less melatonin release. And it doesn't just have to do with the hotel beds.

So his girlfriend's right.

So your girlfriend's right. It could be because you're getting old. I've even found that. Just, I mean, I'm not old. I just turned the clock past 30. I'm 31 now. I even noticed, you know, I have a little bit more difficulty sleeping now than I did when I was, you know, a 20 some year old college student and could pretty much crash just about anywhere I went. And you know, I could sleep on.

The floor of a passing out floor.

Of a hotel room after a few beers and I was good to go.

Yeah, that's unconsciousness.

Yes, there are shreds of truth to Brock's observation. So anyways, what this comes down to is that first of all, you can totally hack this. How could you hack it? You could use something like a passion flower extract, get it off Amazon or wherever. You can get it mixed in ethanol, you can get it mixed in a non alcohol solution. Both work equally well in my opinion. I've experimented with both. You could get this Somnidren GH stuff. It's made by a company called Millennium Sports. That's another good option for the gaba. And you could, you could take that at the same time as the passion flower. And then a third thing that you can add into that and all of these will play nicely with one another would be melatonin. And I do not recommend a melatonin taken orally. I recommend now these slow release patches and again you can find them on Amazon wherever. A lot of times they release other natural accents like St. John's wort into your bloodstream while you're sleeping. You put them on. If you take melatonin too close before you go to bed, you actually wake up when it hits your bloodstream. So take it about 30 to 60 minutes before you go to bed and that will really help you out Especially if you're struggling with sleep more as you get older. And those would be the primary things that I would do to kind of overcome the issue with age, sleep, and travel and then just boatloads of Valium. Of course.

Yes, of course. Yeah. Actually, I was gonna say red wine. Yeah, actually, Valium and red wine.

Diazepam and booze.

There's something I learned from David Bowie. Valium and red wine, potent combo. Actually, here's a question for you. We should have discussed this before the show started. Are we gonna put together show notes, or do people have to read?

Yeah, why don't you. Why don't you pull up a little text doc? And we'll remember to throw in some show notes there. So, so far, the things I've mentioned have been the passion flower extract, the somnidrin gh, and the melatonin sleep patches. So in the show notes@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 259, we'll make sure. We'll put links in there to the stuff that I personally use, just in case you want to not have to navigate the wide world of confusing options out there. And of course, we'll link to the altitude training mask. Why not?

Of course. Because they were nice enough to send us sick.

Yeah. Yeah. Full disclosure, they sent us this for free. They sent us, like, five of these.

We did ask for it, though.

Yes. All right, cool.

You ready for the next one?

Let's do it.

Alex wants to know, do you have a good blending solution while you're traveling? It is monumentally harder to intake my normal nutrients without my blender. Exclamation point. Thanks. Exclamation point. I'm definitely looking forward to the shows. Oh, and good luck.

Well, thanks. Thanks. So we. We actually ground our coffee in the blender last night. We were lucky enough to arrive at our condo and find a blender sitting on the counter. They actually had one right here waiting for us.

I thought that was yours, too, because when we were in Whistler, you did bring yours.

I drove to Whistler, and so I was able to toss my Vitamix or my Omni blender, rather, omniblender, into the trunk of the car. Now, an Omni blender, by the way, is really good. They have a huge engine, and they fly under the radar. But they're about half the cost of a Vitamix. They don't sponsor the show. I don't really make any money off recommending them, but it's Omni blender is what I use. That's Omni blender. And it's just less bendy than a Vitamix, honestly. And it's an identical engine. I don't know why they sell it or how they sell it for half the price. But anyways, it's big, it's bulky, it's one of those big blenders you can't really travel with. So if, if you're flying.

Yeah.

So option one would be a Magic Bullet. I'm a big fan of the Magic Bullet. Those are like, you can't make like a football, you can't make my, my quintessential quote unquote big ass morning smoothie in a Magic Bullet because they're pretty small.

Like you might get, you wouldn't get the big ass portion of it.

12 ounces, maybe you could make a small butt. You could, you could make a, a few Magic Bullet smoothies in a row I guess and dump them all into a cup. That's one option. Another option, I will confess to having done this and I do not endorse this. I really hope that no one from any major department store or local business is listening in. I know, but you can actually go to any store that has a fantastic return policy, specifically Walmart, Target or Costco, purchase a blender and bring it back for a full refund before you the.

16 year old that's working at the counter.

So that's ask you why that is. Number two, just take it to the man, take it to big commercial stores and there you go. That's another option. You didn't hear that from me. The final option is simply chew your food better. And really what happens is when you chew your food, the digestive enzymes in your mouth work to break up that food. And it actually does a really good job for people who struggle with leaky gut syndrome, nutrient malabsorption, things of that nature. 20 to 30 times is the number of times you're supposed to chew your food. Most of us chew our food anywhere from like three to five times and then we swallow. So make your mouth your blender. And I know that sounds like a simple and stupid solution, but just take the stuff you normally blend and eat it, but chew it really, really well. And you know, if you're used to blending like I guess, I don't know, like apples with almonds with coconut milk with whatever. I mean you really can't just dump all that in your mouth and chew and replicate the feeling of a blender. But yeah, I mean, Magic Bullet, good return policy or chew your food intensely. Those would Be my top three.

Or just bring less shoes and pack your omni blender.

Or pack your omni blender. There you go.

Or stay in a condo like this. Yeah.

Or, or just stay in a condo or a suite rather than a hotel.

All right. This one's not necessarily a, a health related one, but it's. The question is simple. Ship my bike or rent one locally.

Assuming that you are, you are a bike rider.

I'm assuming this is a triathlon.

We're trying not to keep this podcast too, too triathlon specific. But you can get these fold up bikes, but they're spendy. I mean, it's like over $3,000 to get a nice good travel fold up bike. So it's on my, my bucket list for sure. Because I'd love to be able to just have one of those bikes that you can, you can carry in a suitcase.

Come with their own suitcase. Those are kind of cool, almost like a briefcase size.

Yep. Here's the deal. You cannot replicate the efficiency and the economy that you build in the muscles and the joints that you get when you're, when you're riding your bike at home. Say you're a racer and you race bikes or you race triathlons, you simply can't arrive at your race, Get a different bike, have it fit with the seat height approximately where you had it, or the seat fore, aft approximately where you had it, and expect for your body to simply wrap around that bike and act just as well on that bike as it does on your, on your quote unquote, you know, home bike. So if you're serious about racing, you don't rent, you, you learn how to pack your own bike. You learn how to take the rear derailleur off and learn how to take the handlebars off and the fork off. And you, you travel with your bike. It's, it's a little bit of a learning curve. I have 20 minute long videos inside the Rockstar Triathlete Academy at rockstartriathlete.com we'll link to that in the show notes. But basically, learning how to take your bike apart is a pretty good skill to have anyway. So what I do is I have a hard case. It's made by a company called Trico and it travels well, it keeps the bike protected. It is not a huge case. It fits in the trunk of a car. I take my bike apart, take the fork off, the wheels off the, the rear derailleur off, the seat off, wrap it in foam and travel that way. And if you're serious. And you don't want to, say, get a chronic repetitive overuse injury from using muscles you're not used to by riding a bike you're not used to. That's an option. You also take risks. Like, Brock had an interesting experience in Thailand when he joined us last year.

Yeah. I was going to say, the only thing I have to offer is my only DNF was when I rented a bike.

Yes. Because, what, like, the brakes failed or something? Didn't they fell off.

The back brakes actually came.

Those are golf carts.

Going by, sipping by. It's okay. They'll be gone. Yeah. The back brake actually came off. The one time I really needed to hammer on the brakes near the beginning of the race, the back brake kind of went. Yeah.

So that being said, though, if it's just for fitness, I mean, rent a bike. For sure. Like, you know, Brock's tooling around town all week on a beach cruiser from our condo. And it's awesome. And single speed.

If I pedal backwards, I stop.

He's gonna have buns of steel by the end of the trip.

Are you saying I don't already?

I was not implying that. No, I'm just saying get steelier.

I'll show you. Never mind. Okay, let's see. Oh, yeah.

Okay.

I always get sick. Oh, sorry. This is Keerthi. Says I always get sick for the first week when I visit India. So I'm trying to find ways to avoid it this time.

Okay, cool.

So he travels India, gets sick the first week he's there. I. Yep. That's really just an India thing.

Ways to keep your immune system elevated while you are traveling. I'm gonna tell you exactly what I do. You see this little pillbox right here, Brock? This for our. For our premium subscribers. This is what I travel with. This pillbox. I just can take my pills, put them into. In the little box for those of.

You who aren't watching the video. But it's one of those things that, like, your grandmother has on her counter.

That has the days of the week on it. Doesn't have the days of the week on it. Ask me my heart meds. So. See these little white pills? This is a colostrum. It's a very, very good immune system support. And I take four of those in the morning and four of those in the evening when I'm traveling. So colostrum works really, really well. A few other things found in.

In mother's milk. Right? Like, that's actually derived.

I actually do not get colostrum from my mother. Per se. I get it from an organic goat farm and it doesn't hook you up. I use this stuff called Capra colostrum. Capra colostrum. And we'll probably want to, want to, want to put a link to that for folks. Yeah. When I go like this, for those of you watching the video, that means. So capriclossum, what I don't have out here, that's in my bathroom right now. I use an echinacea goldenseal tincture. Echinacea is really good for your white blood cell supports. Goldenseal is a really good natural antibacterial. And I get that echinacea goldenseal mixed together in a tincture. You can find that on like Amazon or wherever. So that's another really good immune system support for when you're traveling. I use an oil of oregano with a very high, what's called, called carvacrol content because that's able to break down bacterial cell walls. Very good anti parasitic antifungal. You can put a few drops in your mouth before you get into crowded areas like airports, buses, football games, prisons, whatever. And oil of oregano is another thing that I'll use. So I use colostrum.

Don't let it leak all over your luggage though. That happened to me on the last big trip.

That actually happened to me on this trip. Yeah. Make sure the lid is screwed on tightly.

It does make a mess.

So. Colostrum echinacea, goldenseal, oil of oregano. There's pretty good evidence that probiotics can help. I'm kind of careful traveling with probiotics because they're not very heat stable. So it'll depend where I'm going. Like I didn't take probiotics on this trip because sometimes you take the risk that your luggage is sitting in the belly of an airliner kind of getting extremely hot. And so I'm pretty careful with the probiotics. I have a big bottle of them that I keep at home. I loaded with probiotics before I left, but I don't have any of those with me. But probiotics can also help out quite a bit. And then just the basics, you know, making sure that you're, you're sleeping as much as possible, you're on the plane, drinking lots of water, avoiding lots of alcohol and caffeine. You're kind of taking those basic measures. You know, there's a little bit of evidence out there that high dose vitamin C can help. The issue is whether or not oral absorption is Adequate. There are some people that will literally go as far as to do vitamin C intravenous injections, like what's called a Myers cocktail, prior to periods of time during which their immune system activity is really important. A lot of times super bowl teams will do this. They'll give the folks on the team Meyer's cocktails so that their immune system just gets chalked full of antioxidants and vitamin C. And if you really want to step up your immune defenses, I mean, that's like the gold standard. But you gotta go, you know, find somebody who lives in your neighborhood who's a registered nurse and get your IV or go to a local, like naturopathic medical facility or natural medicine facility. A lot of times they'll be able to do like, high dose vitamin C injections, high dose antioxidant injections, and those can really give your immune system huge boost. You feel completely Superhuman for like three or four days. You're going to pay anywhere from like 50 to $150, depending on how much you want in there. There are some docs that will literally test you. They'll do what's called a spectra cell analysis. They'll test you for certain levels of these vitamins and minerals and antioxidants. Customize an IV formulation and let's use that. So I actually did that once and I ended up ordering it from a. From a physician who sent it to me overnight on ice. Had a registered nurse who lived a couple miles from my house give me the injection. Totally legal. It's not like banned by the World Anti Doping association or anything like that. It's just kind of a lot of hoops to jump through to get the iv. But, man, if you haven't ever tried that and you're listening in, it's kind of a cool experience to feel that power surging through your veins.

Oh, so you really did feel it?

Like, it really, you feel it. Plus, the IV is a little bit cold, so you're blood gets a little cold and you feel that too. So should we answer one more? Well, let's keep going. Yeah, let's do a few more.

All right. Okay. Okay. So we've got a question from Trevor. Wants to know, should I worry about bedbugs or other gross and creepy possibilities from my hotel room?

Bedbugs.

Where are you staying, Trevor?

You know, so. So there's lots of essential oils out there that are marketed as bed bug repellents or things that are supposed to kill bed bugs. I have never seen any studies to back Any of these up. Lavender oil is a popular one. Oil of oregano sometimes gets toted as that. I like olive oregano for some stuff like antibacterial. Never heard of it. Being able to kill bed bugs. Lavender, great for kind of sleep and relaxation. Might be another one to add into your relaxation protocol, incidentally. But again, no evidence that that stuff can take out bed bugs. So ultimately, if they were in your home, I'd say, you know, heat is the best thing. You know, go, go run your sheets, your. Your bed linens, everything through a really hot cycle through your dryer. And yeah, cold can kill bed bugs as well.

Cold or heat in Canada, you put it outside in the. In the middle of winter, and that just takes care of them right away.

So this is going to be kind of fringe. It might be kind of hard for you to travel with enough for you to be able to sprinkle over your. Sprinkle all over your bed linens. And this is not something that I've personally done, but there is something that can break down the exoskeleton of bugs, crickets, bed bugs, whatever. Literally is. It breaks down the specific cellular collagen, like makeup of the exoskeleton of a bug. It's called diatomaceous earth. Diatomaceous earth. You'll find it at, like, natural health food stores. You can find it online if you were to Google it. It's like D I, diatomaceous. Like D I, A, T, E, M A C I O, U, S, something like that. Diatomaceous. It's like a form of clay almost. And if you're really serious, you check into your hotel room, sprinkle that stuff all over the actual mattress, pull the sheet up over the mattress, put another sheet on top of that, and you could potentially kill off some bed bugs. I'm a big, big fan of using the Dr. Bronner's soap when I travel. Like in the bathroom at our condo right Now I've got Dr. Bronner's Natural Herbal soap mixed with oil of oregano. And that's what I shower with. And it does a pretty good job at killing infections, fungus, bacteria, and stuff from the skin. I don't know if that does anything against bed bugs. Knock on wood, though. Like, I travel a lot and I.

Haven'T gotten bed bugs in my bathroom. There's just a big gallon thing of kerosene. That's what I've been showering with.

Yeah. So Brock lights himself on fire, runs out in the living room screaming. Does this stop, drop and Roll. And that's his bedbug sequence.

That's why my hair is like this too, Dude.

That's an interesting question, though, I guess, like, ultimately, maybe you ought to step it up and start getting some awards points or whatever and go check into a Four Seasons rather than a, you know, the Hostel beside the 7 11. By the way, I actually use. This is totally off topic. Well, it's not off topic because it's related to travel. I do a lot of travel hacking, so I rarely buy my own airline miles. I rarely buy my cars, anything like that. What I do is I sign up for credit cards as soon as they become available with like thousands of airline miles associated with them. I buy a bunch of stuff on that credit card, pay it off, set up a reminder on my computer to cancel the credit card within one year so I don't pay the annual fee. And then I use this website called awards wallet.com and awards wallet.com just basically sucks in all your award miles points and your rewards points. We can link to it for folks we want to and. And then shows you how you can use those points. And it also sends you an email when a new credit card comes up that has a bunch of points associated with it. So that's a good feature. It's called travel hacking. There's like a whole, like underground community of travel hackers, a whole movie travelhackers.org and there's. What's the other guy who I follow who does it? Chris. Chris Gillebo, the Art of Nonconformity Blog. And at the Art of Nonconformity Blog, he actually does a bunch of posts about travel hacking and how to basically string together airline awards miles and hotel awards miles so that you get to the point where you don't have to check into a hotel. Trevor that has bedbugs in the beds. So.

All right, there you go. I like it. And that also explains why it took me 18 and a half hours to get to get to Kona from Toronto. Okay, Kev asks a question. He says he's got a 10k cross country race this week and he's had a lower back pain for a few days. Any advice to help it not getting worse? And I'm assuming he means not getting worse while he's traveling or staying in the hotel for the race.

Low back pain. I'm gonna give you two books first of all, and then one exercise. Okay, so book number one, I've already mentioned, I mentioned it on last week's podcast. It's called Foundation. Foundation By. He was typing a different book. You were typing Supple Leopard.

I was.

Which is. Supple Leopard is a good book, but Supple Leopard is a cookbook. Right. It's got a ton of stuff in there. It's big. It helps you with knee pain, hip pain, back pain, toe pain, foot pain. But it can be a little bit intimidating or foreboding or whatever just because there's so many different things in it. So it's, it's good to have around. But I recommend foundation, which is a book that has 10 different exercises in it. I've been doing these exercises once every 48 to 72 hours or so. So once every two to three days, I go out on my porch and I do these 10 exercises. It takes me about 10, 15 minutes. It turns on what's called your posterior chain and turns on your butt, basically. And a turned off butt is one of the primary reasons that you're going to get low back pain in the first place. I'll tell you how you can address the low back pain in a second. But first of all, the book foundation, you need to get that book, learn all 10 exercises, do them at least once a week. Okay. The second book that I'm going to recommend to you is called Alignment Matters by Katie Bowman. Alignment Matters by Katie Bowman. You can find that@katiesays.com Katy says.com I'm going to get Katy on my podcast at some point here in the near future. Excellent knowledgeable biomechanist who goes into shoe choices, postural exercises, diaphragmatic breathing exercises, a bunch of stuff that does what's called stacking your body in the correct position for standing or sitting so that you learn how to have the proper vertebral and hand hip alignment things in there, like purchasing special socks that actually spread your toes while you're asleep to improve flexibility in your toes, which is where posture really begins. Special exercises like deep diaphragmatic exercises that allow you, you like get into a bridging position and you do a diaphragm release. You hold your breath and then you slowly lower that bridge to turn on some of those deep intubator and expiratory muscles that can, that can brace the spine. Anyways, it's called Alignment Matters. So the book foundation and the book Alignment Matters would be two really good books for anybody who wants long term back health to read, even though that other book, Supple Leopard, is not bad either. And then for fixing it, a simple trick that will help to adjust your sacroiliac joint. Brock, I know you've dealt with sacroiliac joint issues in the past. As a runner, I've dealt with them primarily from cycling. What happens is you have a joint in your body called your si joint or your sacroiliac joint. It's got two different, what are called articulating surfaces, kind of a smooth surface and a surface that's a little bit more grizzly. And the two surfaces can basically lock on each other. And once that happens, it limits hip motion, typically on one side or the other. And once you start running or cycling or moving with that limited hip motion, the muscles on the side that's locked, the back muscles on the side that's locked, they spasm, they cramp, they become painful. You can go to a chiropractor who will adjust your sacroiliac joint, but you can also do a self adjustment. And the way that you do it is you lie on your back on the ground and you put one hand on the front of your right leg and one hand on your left leg. And then you simultaneously push your right leg away from you while you're resisting the movement of pushing your right leg away from you and pull your left leg towards you while you're resisting the movement of pulling your left leg towards you. So you're torquing your hips basically, and using your hands to provide that resistance as you push.

I was sort of proc's doing it in the video here. It's hard to do sitting down.

You do that and then you switch sides. So then you push the left leg away from you while resisting your left leg and pull your right leg twice towards you while resisting your right leg. And you do that several times for about three to five second pretty intense holds. And then you finish up by putting a foam roller or a pillow, like a hard pillow or like a medicine ball or anything like that between your knees and squeezing that. So you're contracting your adductors, your inner thigh muscles. You squeeze that ball as hard as possible. And after doing those right leg and left leg exercises and then squeezing, you're gonna heal. You're gonna hear a clunk and feel a clunk as your si joint adjusts. It's kind of cool. This actually works if you're not an audio person and you're a visual learner and none of that made sense to you. Google self adjust SI joint video and there's a couple different videos on YouTube that will show you how to do it. So just Google self adjust YouTube video. Let's let's put a link in the show notes for folks. We'll make it easy for you. BenGreenfieldFitness.com 259 we'll throw in a link there that shows you how to self adjust your. Your sacroiliac joint. So we think. Should we do one more question?

Yeah, I don't think we could do a travel episode without talking about jet lag.

Ah, jet lag.

Ian wants to know.

Brock and I are both mildly. I would say we're mildly jet lagged right now. Brock had an 18 hour travel day.

Yesterday but I'm also living six hours in the future. So it's already 8:30pm my time.

And I traveled with two five year old twin boys who insisted on doing a triathlon as soon as we landed. As soon as the airplane touched down. So we had. We, we've been going non stop since, since yesterday.

Basically. We all went to bed at 8pm.

And we all went to bed at 8pm and woke up at 4.

It's a little weird but.

But yeah. So we still got eight hours of sleep.

That's true. Ian's going to Florida with his family. He lives in the UK and.

Golf cart alert.

Golf cart jet lag is going to be an issue.

Okay, jet lag. I'll give you some of my top tips and they're kind of related to the first tips that I was giving about relaxation. So jet lag. First of all, tip number one is those melatonin patches. Those work really, really well for jet lag. So use those melatonin patches when you land. You can use them for a good two to three days. Put them on. And whether you're young or you're old, melatonin patches will help with jet lag. Number two is grounding for them.

Whether you're young, whether you're old, Melatonin patchins will save your gold.

Gold.

Yeah.

Let's not give up our day jobs.

Sorry everybody.

So the other thing, in addition to melatonin, now that Brock has completely distracted me, I was walking around today. I don't know if you noticed those sandals I was wearing, Brock.

I didn't.

I was wearing Earth Runner sandals. They're made by a company called Earth Runners and we can link to them. There's another company called Plugs. So both the company Plugs as well as Earth Runners. Yeah, you can, you can go and grab them. We'll hold them up on the screen for you guys. So all they're, they're sitting by the front door, dude. So Brock will go in and get them. But plugs and Earth runners, they make these special kind of sandals, and plugs actually makes actual shoes. They have carbon plugs in the bottom of them, and they ground you. So you may have heard of the concept of grounding or earthing, and this allows you to ground or earth without actually, say, going through the inconvenient process. That's actually my son's Converse shoe. Those are not my. No, Those are size 5. That's my size 13 Earth Runner. They look like a Tamamohara Indian running sandal. So they're kind of badass in that respect, too. See these carbon plugs, though, what those do is those actually, they draw negative ions up from the surface of the Earth into your body and offset a lot of the positive ions that build up when you're hurtling through space 40,000ft above the surface of the Earth in a metal tube.

So as far as ions go, negative and positive are reversed from what you'd assume.

Negative ones. Negative, positive ones are bad. Exactly, exactly. So earthing or grounding is something that, like Tour de France cyclists and a lot of European competitive athletes, soccer players, use these a lot, too. European soccer players and Tour de France cyclists always seem to be on the cutting edge when it comes to a lot of this, Right. Recovery jet lag stuff because they travel to compete, and they travel a lot. And Americans just tend to rely on our brute ability to put on helmets, eat lots of hamburgers, and go out and hit each other. So anyways, though, get yourself a good pair of grounding shoes or earthing shoes, especially if you need to be walking around when you get to where you're going, you don't have time to, like, you know, go into your. Your yoga chaturanga pose for two hours on an earthing that outside your front lawn. So I like the Earth Runners again, because I can just, like, be walking around like we were today at the Expo and be earthing at the same time. So that really helps with jet lag.

You were actually riding your bike in those, too?

I was riding my bike in them, which is a. A good trick to pull off. Yeah. So grounding or earthing melatonin. I'm a big fan of avoiding caffeine, of course, while you're traveling, period. So don't drink coffee on the plane, tea, any of that stuff. Just avoid caffeine, period. And drink oodles and oodles of water. That really helps.

Wow, I totally screwed up yesterday. Then I drank oodles and oodles of Both beer and coffee.

Bad move. Bad move. Which is possibly why Brock looks so crappy today, whereas I look shiny and new for our video. What? So the next thing that, that you'll want to think about is this Chinese. It's like a Chinese over the counter herb that you can buy and you can get off to Amazon. You can find a lot of places. Hong Kong Airport is where I first discovered this stuff. It's a mix of homeopathic remedies. You take one when your airplane takes off and then you take one every two to four hours during travel and then you take one when you land. And it's called no Jet Lag. No jet lag. They just cut right to the chase. They just cut right to the chase as the Chinese do. So we've offended the Asians and the old people in today's podcast, but it's called no Jet Lag. That stuff works really well. So that's another thing you can do for the jet lag I'm a big fan of. And the last thing that you can try, and this one is a little bit annoying and complex, but you can actually try a jet lag diet. It's. I'll spell it. You could, you could Google it and get the nitty gritty details. But here's the basics. Go back three days from the day you're going to fly out. So let's say you're going to fly out on a Saturday. So we count back. Friday, Thursday, Wednesday. So Wednesday you eat well, you don't go hungry. You eat three square meals a day. And preferably at some point before you are going to bed. You're not completely avoiding carbohydrates. You're actually getting a little bit of a serotonin release from a carbohydrate rich meal, or at least a meal that includes carbohydrates like white rice or sweet potatoes or yam or whatever before you go to bed. So Wednesday, three days out would be a day on which you don't deplete calories or deny your body of calories, but you also give yourself some carbohydrates, which help to get your circadian rhythms dialed in in the evening. And then the next day is a fasting day where you actually do not eat much food at all. You might have like a light breakfast, some water, some sparkling water, maybe some coconut water during the day, light dinner. That's it. So a lot fewer calories than you would normally consume. The next day is a fast day, same as the day that was two days before it. So you fast, feast fast. Then the final day is your travel day. And on your travel day, it's pretty simple. You wake up, you head to the airport, you get on the plane, you start traveling, and you don't eat any meals until it's time for the main meal at whatever destination that you're going to. So like, so the main meal, so like Paris is what, like six hours ahead of New York? Okay, so let's say Paris is six hours ahead of New York. You hop on the plane to New York at 10am and so that would mean in Paris it is 4pm so what you would do is on the plane to New York, you would simulate your dinner in Paris at around noon, which would be two hours after your flight leaves the ground, which would be 6pm around dinner time in Paris. And that basically helps your body to become used to the eating window in the destination that you're going to, which is highly tied to your circadian rhythms. Now this whole fast feast, fast type of protocol is not something that I personally do because for me, a lot of times I'm stringing together travel. Like I'll go home from Hawaii, a few days later, I'll be headed down to LA and Malibu and then I'll be driving to Santa Barbara, come back, turn around, grab my family, we head over to Thailand. And for me, trying to string together this whole fast feast fast thing doesn't work. But if you just travel every once in a while, it can be a pretty good protocol. And you can just, just if you Google jet lag diet, that's the most popular jet lag diet out there and some people just swear by it.

So is it basically you're just confusing the heck out of your body in order to reset it?

You are essentially think of it as priming your circadian rhythm. So your circadian rhythm is tied to your feeding cycles. And so by fasting you're restoring your circadian rhythm. That feast day, I'm not totally sure of the science behind the feast day. In between the two fast days, you got another fast day. And then obviously the protocol behind feast or feast fasting on the day that you actually travel until the main meal time of the time and the destination that you're going to makes sense because then you're just, you're, you're resetting your body's clock from that perspective. So let me throw one other. There's been a lot of kind of sleep talk here, so let me throw one other resource at you guys before we start to wrap up and we move on to our itunes review so we can give away some swag. Look up supermemo.com we'll put a link to that in the show notes. So go to supermemo.com and@supermemo.com there's a section there on sleep. Super duper long, long article on sleep, but it really is jam packed with a bunch of really helpful stuff, especially when it comes to napping, what's called polyphasic sleeping, what's called free sleeping, circadian rhythms, jet lag. It'll take you a good couple of weeks to read the whole article, honestly, because it's huge. But it's called supermemo.com so that about wraps up the time that we have today because we have lots of important things to go and do on the here on the Big island to get ready for the big race like drink Mai Tai's and I believe there's a.

Slow Twitch party that we're going to go to.

A slow Twitch party. Brock gets to go to the thank God I'm Not Racing party tomorrow. So go to Beyond Training book to get 5,000 plus dollars in swag and pre order my brand new book very soon. Do it within 48 hours. After you hear this podcast, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com259 to get access to any of the helpful links that we gave out in this podcast. Next week we promise we will be back to our less crappy, less unplugged, less unplugged format. And we'll also be telling you in that episode how you can get some of these T shirts for yourself. Some of these shiny new Ben Greenfield fitness T shirts. We'll be back to reading itunes, reviews, giving away swag and all that jazz. So thanks for joining us. If you're watching the video, thank you to all our Premium members from BenGreenfieldFitness.com premium over and out. We kept our clothes on so I'm going to say this was a success. Aloha, Aloha and mahalo.

Visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice.

It.