The Dark Side Of Travel, How To Rebuild Fitness Fast, How To Stop Receding Hairline & More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness show, the Dark side of Travel. How to rebuild fitness fast. Is underwater breath holding dangerous? And how to avoid shallow water blackouts, how to stop a receding hairline, 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 need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

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Well, Rachel, I gotta admit to you, I am a bit sore this morning.

You're so. Why is that?

I'm sore. NBC, the. The great, wonderful TV network NBC. I don't even know what NBC stands for, do you?

I don't know either, actually. I'm not American, so.

National Broadcasting Corp. They, they showed up in a. In a giant van at my house yesterday to shoot video. And I'm under confidentiality, so I can't say a lot about why. I can tell you it had to do with that, that TV show. I was on that reality TV show, but they had me doing things that, that, let's just say I would not normally do. For example, I spent a good deal of time after lunch carrying a keg through the forest. A keg? A keg, yes. And a keg would be normally something you'd use for like keg throws and keg deadlifts and short keg carries. But they literally had me hiking through the forest holding a keg. So for any of you who want a workout challenge this week, you get a keg. So I got a keg from a brewery. My mom actually owns a brewery. Brewery in or not a brewery, it's a pub really. But it's down in Moscow, Idaho. So I got an old keg from her. And you rip the top off the keg, you fill it with water, right? Like about a half to three quarter full of water. So it sloshes around, it's really hard to carry. And then you put the lid back on it. And it's a great weight training device. But carrying it through the forest, I can guarantee will throw a curveball at your body.

Yeah, it sounds intense. And I've noticed then there seems to have been a lot of camera crews in your house recently. Has that been fun?

It has been. We'll talk about the other reason the camera crew is at my house here in a little bit, perhaps on the special announcements. However, speaking of throwing a curveball at your body, I know you are across the world from me right now, Rachel. And you just traveled to Australia. Oz, how'd that go?

Yeah, it was actually not so bad this time around because I flew via Hawaii and sort of stayed overnight there. So it was a little bit luxurious, pampered. Yeah. And actually I know I didn't experience any jet lag, which was nice, so fell straight back into my normal patterns.

Nice. And what time is it for you there in Australia?

It's six, six in the morning, but it's bright outside. It's actually really not a big deal.

Congratulations.

Life is happening at 6am in this country.

You're remarkably, remarkably cognizant and upbeat considering it's 6am So I actually wanted to talk a little bit about travel and jet lag and completely random thought. By the way, as we are podcasting, five giant wild turkeys are standing about five feet away from me. They are literally outside the window of my office. They just walked up as we started. So if you hear turkey gobbling.

Do you hunt turkeys, Ben?

I actually, I, I don't hunt turkeys. Believe it or not, wild turkeys don't taste that great and I, I would never find it in my heart to just kill turkeys for the, for the heck of it. They're, they're, they're actually quite beautiful if you've never seen a wild turkey up close. They're, they're very beautiful birds. So I, I will be on in a couple of weeks. I'll be heading down to San Diego to compete in Battle Frog San Diego. And then I'll spend the next day spearfishing down in San Diego. So I will get some fish down there and then I'm heading over to Texas to do some, some hog hunting and white tailed deer hunting.

Wow. A lot of hunting on the horizon.

So I will, will be doing whitetail, hog and fish this month, but no wild turkey.

News flashes.

So as I promised Rachel, I did want to bring up the dark side of travel.

I'm interested to hear it. I'm glad you're doing it.

Yes. As this article notes, the dark side of hypermobility. Hypermobility. There was actually this new study, and I mentioned it a few podcast episodes ago, about how researchers at the University of Surrey in Britain and Linnaeus University in Sweden, they published a new study. It's called A Darker side of Hypermobility and it goes into how we tend to glamorize the ability to rack up frequent flyer miles and jet set around the globe. But that there are a variety of physiological and psychological and emotional and even social deleterious things that happen. I just said deleterious just because it made me sound smart. I have no clue if that grammatically fit into that sentence. But anyways, speeding up aging, increasing the risk of heart attack, increasing the risk of stroke, increased risk of deep vein thrombosis, exposure to germs and radiation at a much higher level than what would be considered like a hormetic effect, right? Like not just getting exposed to bacteria here and there, not just getting exposed to sunlight here and there, but significant amounts that create a significant amount of inflammation. I think that this is an article that anybody who travels much should read and I'll link to it over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 342 which is where you can get the show notes. But what the article gets into is that not only are people found to be more isolated and lonely when they travel more often, and I know that's not the case with you because you were traveling with your husband to go see family, but that this new type of issue called travel disorientation from changing places and time zones quite often is creating almost like this new form of metabolic syndrome. It's really interesting. And they found that specifically. So if you want to sit down, if you're listening in and you want to sit down and see if you fall into the category of people at high risk, it's people who fly more than 85,000 miles a year. And that's a pretty decent amount. But I do know we have a lot of frequent travelers that listen in. And so I would recommend you go read this article. It's a very long article. It's probably going to take you, I would say an hour or so to get through, but it goes into not only some of the darker sides of hypermobility, but also what you can do about it. So I'd recommend that you read that. But speaking of what you can do about it, I did want to bring up one very cool thing and that is a brand new Airbus carbon fiber plane that has been designed to beat jet lag. Have you heard about this?

I haven't, no. But it sounds very fancy and very practical.

Okay, so this isn't available on all airlines right now. Right now it is Qatar Airways. Qatar Airways. And what they've done is, first of all, they have a system of LED lights inside the cabin that are designed to change color to mimic the sun's natural glow. So they're programmed to fit in with your body's natural circadian rhythm, no matter what the actual time is. So basically what happens is you don't arrive at your final destination feeling as though your circadian rhythm is just thrown way out of whack.

Yeah, this is a good question for you. I never know when I'm on. I've flown a ton of international long haul flights and I never know when I'm on the plane whether I should be getting myself into the time zone of the country that I'm going to or just going with my normal circadian rhythm. Prior.

Yeah, there are two schools of thought. So one school of thought is the whole biohacking school of thought, which, if all the stars are aligned, works quite well. So this means that you use like any of the methods that I've written about over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com, like you use a human charger for in ear phototherapy, or you even use one of these intranasal LED devices, or there's another device like these glasses called the retimers that you put on that expose you to enormous amounts of blue light. And essentially you expose yourself to these intense sources of light in the ears or in the eyes whenever it is morning in the place that you're going to, when it is morning in the place that you're going to. And you do that for two or three days prior to flying. And at the same time when it is evening in the place that you're going to, you try and limit your exposure to this blue light and even increase your exposure to, for example, red light or infrared light. And by doing that, you're using light to mildly adjust or gently adjust your circadian rhythm to be more used to the time zone that you are going to. Now that is the big biohacker propeller hat version. And then you get into real life and real life kind of goes like this. I'm going to fly to Thailand or Australia or whatever. I've got a layover in Seoul and I've got a layover in Bangkok and I'm exhausted. And frankly, I really don't give a crap whether it's morning or evening where I'm going. My single sole purpose is to sleep as much as humanly possible on that plane because otherwise I'm just going to feel like crap anyways. And I often resort to that. Some people will say I'm going to stay awake on the plane as long as I can, because it's daytime where I'm going. I tend to be that person who not only just tries to get as much good quality sleep as possible going into travel, but then I just sleep as much as I can on the plane itself. And I've found that to work quite well. So if this new Airbus actually does indeed mimic, mimic the sun's natural glow when I freaking want to sleep, and I don't care what time it is where I'm going, I will still continue to travel with my sleep mask and my earplugs. But there are other things on this plane. They've got a filtering system. It refreshes the air inside the cabin every two or three minutes and it keeps it pressurized at an altitude of about 6,000ft. That's far different than what most other planes will do. But that not only improves comfort, but it also minimizes the effects of jet lag. So basically less pressure and more refreshing air. Now, over 50% of the frame of this plane is made from carbon fiber reinforced plastic, which reduces the weight of the plane and reduces the amount of fuel required for long haul flights. So not only do you feel better when you get to where you're going, but you can rub yourself on the back for saving the planet. Just a little bit of planes and accelerated aging and all that fun stuff that happens to you when you're flying. There is a really interesting article that appeared on the website longevity. Longevityletter.com longevityletter.com and this article was about which part of the human body wears out first. And it's a very, very fascinating article about how our bodies fall apart as we age. And I don't think that this is necessarily something to go read to make you depressed. I think it's rather something that could quite realistically about things that you could do to keep your body from falling apart. So here's a little bit about what this article gets into. It, it literally goes into the bas in which organs fail based off of clinical experience. So the first organ to typically fail is the joint. And this usually happens around the 50 to 60 year old age range. And the reason for that is that cartilage has no blood vessels. And so because cartilage gets more dehydrated as you age, joints are the first to fail. And so joint pain is one of the first things that you feel as you get into your 50s and 60s, or if you're like me and you did 10 years of Ironman triathlon and travel around the Globe doing masochistic feats of endurance. I would say it's about 34 anyways though. And carrying kegs through the forest doesn't help, by the way.

Yeah, I'm sure.

So since we know that one of the primary reasons that joints tend to fail is dehydration, one of the things that you can look into is of course not only really focusing on good quality water and hydration, duh. As you age, but there are also, there are different types of injections and capsules that use things like MSM and hyaluronic acid and glucosamine chondroitin and some of these things that can really help you as you age in terms of your joints. Access to synovial fluid and water and a lot of these cartilaginous precursors that help you to maintain the integrity of your cartilage. So that's one way that you can, can come at going after the joint issue. And the other thing is, as dumb as this may sound, and as irrelevant as it may be for people who perhaps are eating a plant based diet, eating joints can help with your joints. Because when you eat joints, you're getting a lot of this hyaluronic acid and synovial fluid and cartilage. This is a reason when my wife makes chicken bone broth, she knows I love to eat the bones, so she leaves all the bones out for me because they're soft. And I literally saute them in olive oil and sea salt and pepper and I put a bunch of anti inflammatories in there like curry and turmeric and that's what I'll have.

And you actually eat bone every week?

I kid you not. I eat a pile of bones. They're soft, they melt in your mouth, they're tasty. You suck the marrow out of your bones.

Is it just chicken bone?

It's just chicken bone, yeah.

They're the only ones that get soft.

Well, you can have bone marrow, right? You can get like a bigger bone, like a cattle bone or something and have the bone marrow. But as far as a lot of the other components aside from marrow, yeah, it works fantastically. So that's my little anti aging tip. That's fascinating. So the second organ to fail is one that you'll tend to see via abdominal ultrasound exams, according to this article, as being something that fails, and that's the liver. The liver becomes fatty. It's called liver steatosis. And that's a common medical diagnosis that sets in just after the joints begin to age. And so the liver is the next thing. And of course, there are ways that you can take care of your liver as well. A few very simple examples that I could give you would be things that support, like, phase one and phase two detox pathways. Antioxidants are huge for that. Like your daily, you know, cup of coffee or tea and a daily glass of, like, a good tannic red wine, you know, or if you're not a wine drinker, you could do tart cherry juice, you could do cranberry juice, you know, something like that. But then also, you know, there are supplements as well. You could quote, unquote, biohack this, Right. There's like glutathione and N acetylcysteine, two very, very good components for phase one liver detox. Phase two liver detox would be things that will bind and remove toxins from the liver. So this would mean including things like chlorella in your diet. Chlorella is one thing that can help out quite a bit if you do have times of your life when you have to take pharmaceuticals or drink a lot of alcohol. Charcoal is another one that can help out with that. Phase two liver detox, that binding and removing of toxicants. So antioxidants, along with binders, two very, very good ways to ensure your liver stays healthy. And then, of course, don't have too many benders. That would probably help as well.

What's next?

Then we move into the 60s and the 70s. So this is when the lens gets clouded and the hearing declines. I actually have an article@BenGreenfieldFitness.com about how to take care of what's called your vestibular and your visual systems. And the vestibular system would just be your ears. And of course, the visual would be your eyes. And a couple of things that I get into, one for the eyes would be zeaxanthin and lutein are two very important components for the eyes. You would find, for example, high levels of those in kale and dark leafy greens as well as eggs in the same way that we have, like I mentioned, like, joints are good for your joints, eggs. And don't laugh because it's actually true. You know, like walnuts look like little brains and they're good for your brain. And avocados, believe it or not, are good for the ovaries and the testicles because they actually do look like a pair of gonads.

Yeah.

One of the things that is good for your eyes is eggs. And if you think about it, an egg, when you crack it Open looks a little bit like an eye.

Like an eye. It does, yeah.

It's very interesting how nature gives us clues. Celery, by the way, is pretty decent for erections.

Oh, they true facts. There you go. My mom actually has macular degeneration and I only just learned about this. And so tell me some things that would be good for that.

Exactly what I just said. Like kale and lutein and then also omega 3 fatty acids from fish. Excellent for the eyes as well. And there are actually a lot of cultures have myths and legends about how fish or like rubbing fish scales against the eyes can help with blindness and cataract degeneration, all these type of things. It's really more likely the omega 3 fatty acids from fish consumption or from using like a fish oil capsule. But that can help out quite a bit with the visual system. And then as far as the ears are concerned, people think a lot about taking care of the ears, you know, not going to loud concerts or listening loud music and stuff like that. But you can also train these little semicircular canals in your ears that are full of fluid that respond to how your head moves in space by doing simple balance exercises, you know, using like balance discs, balance pillows, standing on like balance boards, just basically ensuring that you force the balance section of your ear staff to work. And that can help quite a bit with your vestibular health as you age. So interesting. There's that now we've got two more things that tend to fail as we get up into our 70s. Atherosclerosis is one of the primary things that tends to set in now. Your heart gets bigger, especially your left ventricle as you age. And as that happens, the valves become calcified and the collagen within that left ventricle gets cross linked. You would think that exercise would keep this from happening, but in fact, athletes are at a higher risk of this because they have what's called athlete's heart. That's like a bigger left ventricle or a bigger wall of tissue next to that left ventricle. I have this, I've gone in for, for what's called an ultrasound echocardiogram. You could waltz into just about any heart clinic and either pay them or if you happen to have really good insurance, you could get this covered by insurance. But you can find out if you have this mild amount of scarring in the heart tissue and what's called left ventricular hypertrophy. If you're an athlete, especially an endurance athlete, and it's not Necessarily a bad thing. It's kind of like muscle, right? Like anybody who uses their muscle, a bodybuilder or a weightlifter or an athlete, they're gonna have more muscle damage and a little bit more scar tissue than the average person. It's just a sign of use. And I personally think the pros outweigh the cons when it comes to using your muscles, as long as you're not abusing your muscles. But atherosclerosis is something that is going to increase. Very, very simple tests that you can get a blood test. And although there are a variety of tests for atherosclerosis, one is just a rise in the levels of blood creatinine. Creatinine can show that atherosclerosis is an issue. There's also a calcium score. You can check out the website trackyourplaque.com trackyourplaque.com is a great website to go to to get a test that will look for the potential onset of atherosclerosis. But one of the main things that you can do about this is to limit the amount of oxidation that occurs to compounds in your bloodstream. And one of the best ways to do that that is to keep your blood sugar low. So if you're tracking your blood sugar, you want to keep your fasted blood sugar below 90, you want to keep what's called your hemoglobin A1C, which is a three month snapshot of your blood sugar levels. You want to keep that below about 5.5. And if you can really control blood sugar fluctuations. And again, I'm not necessarily saying, oh, you know, go into ketosis or eat a high fat diet, that's not necessarily the answer for everyone. And probably in next week's show, I'm going to talk quite a bit about how your genes and things like salivary amylase and methylation status and all these nerdy things can actually affect your blood sugar status based on whether you eat a high carb or a high fat diet. Ultimately what it comes down to is no matter what diet you eat, you need to be careful with how frequently that diet spikes your blood sugar. And you can use yourself as an n equals 1, go get a little $20 blood glucose monitor from Walgreens or CVS or whatever freaking pharmacy they have down there in Australia and test your blood glucose. So, yeah, atherosclerosis, and then the final thing that tends to fail is the brain. And degenerative brain diseases typically will set in like late 70s, early 80s. I probably don't need to kick that horse any more than I did, if you want to know. Pretty much. I would say that was probably the most comprehensive episode we've ever done on improving cognitive performance and decreasing the rate at which the brain degrades was podcast episode 340. So if you go back and listen. So go check it out. Yeah. Then greenfieldfitness.com 340 because we really delved into the brain there. But yeah, that's how the human body wears down, starting from the joints to the liver to the eyes and the ears and then the heart and then finally the brain. So now that you know that, you can kind of pull out the stops and preferably do it before those things set in.

Right? Yep. Try not to get depressed by this whole thing.

No, don't get depressed. Get inspired. Get inspired to go eat your kale and eggs and your chew on your chicken bones. The last thing. And this is something. I won't dwell on this one too long, but somebody had sent me over a link to a brand new study and the headlines go like this. Carbs fuel long runs. Researchers show fat isn't necessary for marathons. Now, this was actually a really interesting study that just got published in the Journal of Applied Physiology. I thought it was pretty interesting. What they did was they took a bunch of folks. This was actually research from Australia. Rachel, you're welcome. You're welcome. They took competitive half marathoners and they ran these competitive half marathoners at a pretty decent pace, doing their best half marathon time on the treadmill. And what they did, though, was they gave them a compound called nicotinic acid. Nicotinic acid, before they ran. Now, what the researchers proposed nicotinic acid would do was that it would block the body's ability to be able to access fat, to be able to oxidize fat during exercise. Apparently, nicotinic acid can to a certain extent, shut down fat production or fat utilization. Right. Fat oxidation. And what they found was that in these runners, even when they weren't able to access their fat, it didn't affect their body's use of carbohydrates. Carbohydrates contributed over 90% of the total energy used by these runners, whether they blocked access to fat or whether they didn't block access to fat. And so interesting the proposal was that. And the final statement by the researchers was basically this. Blunting the exercise induced increase in free fatty acids via nicotinic acid ingestion did not impair intense running capacity lasting approximately 85 minutes, nor alter patterns of Substrate oxidation in competitive athletes. While there was a small use of fat, the oxidation of carbohydrate based fuels predominates during half marathon running.

Tell me what you think about that.

Okay, I have two quick thoughts on this. The first is, as we spoke about a few weeks ago, they recently did another study in which they took a group of athletes who ate a high carbohydrate diet for 12 months and compared them with a group of athletes who ate a high fat diet for 12 months. And what they found was that the substrate oxidation, your choice of what kind of fuel you are going to use during exercise is highly determined by what kind of diet you've been following. And in this study, these runners were just eating a traditional diet. They were not what we would call fat adapted or metabolically efficient. I've never argued that being fat adapted or metabolically efficient is going to make you perform better. But I have said that it can help you to perform just as well with better health. And so that's one thing to bear in mind is that these folks had not been trained to utilize fat as a fuel. I would suspect that if you took a fat adapted athlete and you gave them something like nicotinic acid to shut down fat utilization, that they actually would see a slight decrement in their performance because they weren't able to access their fat stores. So that's one thing is you always have to look at, look at the subjects used in the studies and what kind of diet they were eating. And then the other thing that we should note is that the American Journal of Endocrinology did a study on nicotinic acid a few years ago. And what they found was that while it does indeed shut down the ability to be able to access fat, there's what's called a rebound overshoot. After that happens, what happens is whole body fat oxidation falls initially when you take in nicotinic acid, but then it goes right back up and often goes farther back up than it would normally. So it turns out that their choice in this study to use nicotinic acid to shut down fat oxidation was probably slightly flawed in the first place. I think that the body is a little bit too smart to be able to simply completely shut off fat burning pathways using something like nicotinic acid. And my eyebrow is highly raised. It's about the level of my hairline right now when it comes to this particular research article. But if you are listening in and you want to go check it out, I'll link to it in the shownotes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 342 if you want to leave your own comments about that article or any of these other research articles, you can. And Rachel, where can people get even more goodies every single day or, or twice a day from, from the latest research I've been delving into.

You can get all of that good, fascinating stuff@twitter.com BenGreenfield or if you want to follow Ben and see more of a behind the scenes, go to instagram.com BenGreenfieldFitness and then if you want all of that and more crazy giveaways, lots of fun stuff, go to facebook.com BG Fitness and follow Ben there.

Listener q a.

Hey Ben, Big fan. Sean Gallagher here. Listen to all your podcasts, read all your stuff. Got your book, buy your products. Recently run into some some health issues came down with Lyme disease. And my question is for anybody out there who's coming back from a significant injury, whether that be sports related or a health issue like Lyme, what's the best way to rebuild your fitness and strength and how to go about tracking that? Like, should I be using a heart rate meter? Should I be you tracking my heart rate variability? Should I be jogging? Should I be, I'm not really sure what, how I should approach starting to build up that stamina again and how to track my progress to see if I'm improving. Thank you very much, Ben. Talk soon.

All right, well, Sean's one of my buddies, so Sean, if you're listening, what's up, man?

All right, how can we help him out?

Okay, so first of all, Lyme disease, I am not going to focus on that too much. I have a pretty comprehensive podcast that I did on that actually with. Are you familiar with Dr. Mercola, Rachel?

Yes.

Okay. Dr. Mercola's girlfriend came on the show, Aaron Elizabeth, and we had a pretty comprehensive interview on Lyme testing Lyme protocols, and a lot of really good information on Lyme. So I will put a link to that in the show notes because if you really want to learn about what I would consider to be a global epidemic of Lyme disease that kind of flies under the radar, you can go check that out. So I'll link to that. But we're really not going to focus on Lyme as much as when you've had a debilitating chronic disease like this, chronic fatigue, Lyme things along those lines, what do you do? How do you rebuild your fitness without overstressing your adrenal system, without creating some of the autonomic nervous system imbalances that we talked about, for example, in last week's podcast. What are some of the things that you can do? So what I'm going to go over are some of what I would consider to be the biggest wins when it comes to increasing your fitness significantly without actually putting your body under inordinate amounts of stress or inflammation. Okay, sound like I am. All right. It involves hopping on an airbus and flying for thousands of miles while exposed to the natural circadian rhythms and gently filtered air coming from the airbus. But there's more. But wait, there's more. So, first of all, let's start with, with strength training. So in folks who have had adrenal fatigue or who are perhaps on an off season, bouncing back from, like, a tough season of, say, like marathoning or, you know, triathlons or obstacle racing, or people who are coming back from something like a chronic disease, the best form of strength training that will both build cardio and strength at the same time is super slow strength training. There is a book that I would recommend that you purchase or you can kind of sort of do the done for you approach if you just Google this guy or listen to my podcast with him, which I'll link to in the show notes. But it's called Super Slow Training, and the book is called Body by Science. The Author is Doug McGuff and the training protocol outlined in that book, and Doug is a physician who actually works with quite a few people using this protocol is a lot of very slow time under tension for the muscles hitting a few different muscle groups. So an example of this would be you're going to do four to six repetitions of one exercise. Let's say the chest press. You're gonna go about 30 seconds up and 30 seconds down.

Wow, that is super slow.

You gotta be in frigging Zen mode. The problem with most people is they don't fail physically, they fail mentally on this one. Right? They just like. Like they want to. They want to go fast and get it done. Just listen to an audiobook or a podcast or focus on deep nasal breathing and turn it into meditation. Whatever works for you. There are even these binaural beat apps, like Sleep Stream is one that I use that doesn't just play Apps for Sleep or Beats for Sleep, but it'll play Beats for motivation and focus. Another one would be the website Brain fm, which I've been using quite a bit for writing. But the idea is there are specific sounds that you can listen to to improve your focus and your alpha brainwave. Production. If you have difficulty staying focused during a run or during a workout like this, I personally, when I'm doing a super slow strength training routine, I just put on, like a good podcast or a good audiobook that makes me not mind that long, long amount of time spent doing one single frigging rep. But anyways, you'll choose one exercise. You do four to six reps of that exercise. So a lot of time under tension, and then that's it. You're done with that exercise. You're just doing one set, and then you move on to another exercise, like, let's say the seated row, and you repeat with that, and then you'll do two or three more exercises. Let's say the squat, let's say the overhead press, and let's say some sort of very slow core movement, Right? Like a V, up again, moving extremely slow and controlled. A lot of tension, a lot of fascial tension, muscle tension. You don't hold your breath. You breathe through the movement, preferably with something like deep nasal breathing. And that's the workout. It takes 12 to 20 minutes. And it's incredibly effective, but it's also, it's low intensity. Doug McGuff himself, the doctor, has been doing this for many years, and he stays fit without getting injured at all. If you're gonna do it like a triathlon or a marathon or something like that, but this is not going to do it all for you, right?

Yeah.

You're still gonna have to get out and do some powerlifting and throw some sandbags around, pound the pavement, but for just basic strength. And the thing that also happens is you get an increase in what is called your peripheral blood pressure, which is actually the type of blood pressure that you want to increase during a workout without a simultaneous increase in what's called your central blood pressure, which would be the blood pressure during a workout that you wouldn't want to rise. So there are some very cool cardiovascular training effects, as with this form of training. But you would do that two to three times per week. Two to three times per week. Super slow strength.

Yeah, Nothing crazy. So four to six different exercises. Four to six reps, two to three times a week?

Yep, exactly. Just one set per exercise. But the. But the actual reps for that set are very slow and controlled. The next thing would be increasing your nitric oxide production, your inspiratory and expiratory muscle strength, and your oxygen capacity by using hypoxic methods, which you could do at the same time as some of these other things that I'M talking about. This would be, yes, the use of something that many people consider to be a scam, but that I think works quite well. And that's one of these, like, elevation training masks.

Yeah.

And it just makes it harder to breathe. And in addition, the carbon dioxide that you exhale, muscle builds up in the space around that mask. And so you're actually breathing in slightly more carbon dioxide than you would normally, which allows your body to have better cardiovascular adaptations during the workout. It makes your body have to buffer acids a little bit more during the workout. And so something, let's say you're doing a super slow strength training routine. Or in my case, for example, yesterday I did a workout that was comprised of primarily kettlebell swings. I did kettlebell swings. It also had kettlebell deadlifts. It was exactly like the YouTube video I just posted to YouTube. If folks want to go check it out, you can go to YouTube.com BenGreenfieldFitness I'm not wearing the mask in that video because you wouldn't be able to freaking hear me if I was. My voice would be all muffled and bane like. But it's basically kettlebell swings, kettlebell deadlifts, kettlebell squats and kettlebell clean and press half naked.

Can you train without the mask and achieve hypoxic breathing in a different way?

Yeah, you could do nasal breathing. That'll do it a little bit. But the mask is what really. And by the way, this Saturday's podcast, for those of you listening in, I have a very good discussion with Brian McKenzie about this whole idea and how the training mask actually works. It's not a complete scam. Some people do blow it out of proportion. It's not going to simulate altitude. It's not going to get you ready for something. Some, you know, climb up Mount Everest. But it is good at making you work a little bit harder without creating a huge amount of additional stress on the body. Right. So if I can do a series of kettlebell swings and get my heart rate just as high as, say, if I were to just sprint up a hill, it's going to be a little less impact than sprinting up that hill. And you could use a training mask while you are doing, and I do recommend this, something like the super slow strength protocol that I just talked about. In addition, a couple other ways that you can train with hypoxia or hyp hyperoxia, which is increased amounts of oxygen. One would be keep a power lung in your car. I've talked about this before recently on a podcast and this is just a little device that restricts oxygen or doesn't restrict oxygen. It makes it harder to breathe out and harder to breathe in. And it's basically a resisted form of breath work. You could keep this in your car whenever you're driving around or if you're sitting around watching a movie or whatever. You can train your muscles using that. And then the other. And by the way, the way you do that is, for example, 10 breaths of three seconds in, three seconds out, and then you pause for a little while, you take a one minute breather and then you do it again. And you would treat that just like a strength training workout for your lungs. The final thing that I would mention to you is recently a physician published an article at Ben Greenfield Fitness about how to biohack with hyperoxy, how to use what's called exercise with oxygen therapy. This involves spending a little bit more money. You'd need a device that'll cost anywhere from about $1,000 to $1,500. And it's literally a machine that concentrates the amount of oxygen that you breathe. So you get hyperoxia. And there's some very interesting studies that show when you do bouts of hyperoxia followed by hypoxia, breathing low amounts of oxygen, you can actually get a significant improvement in cardiovascular fitness very quickly while working under a lower workload. I realized that's a little bit more of an extreme biohack. This would be perhaps like the professional athlete who has a competition coming up who has been injured, who needs to bounce back as quickly as possible. But not only is that a very good method of training, it's called ewot. If you want to look into it or if you want to go read the article that the physician wrote, I'll link to it in the show notes. But I also have a follow up article being published on Ben Greenfield Fitness by him in a couple of weeks which goes into how to make your own hyperoxia device that you can, for example, put next to your desk while you're working. And you can just while you're working, do five minutes of concentrated oxygen, take the mask off, breathe normally for five minutes, put it back on, do five minutes of concentrated oxygen. Or you could do this while riding a bike. So very interesting stuff.

Wow, that sounds fascinating. DIY masks.

It's a little more techy, but I know some of our listeners like to kind of take the deep dive. So a few other things I would recommend. One would be hyperthermia. Hyperthermia. Just this Monday, I Published a post that I'd recommend anyone who's into hyperthermia, which would be sauna exercise and heat exercise. Go read. And it goes into the exact sauna workout that I sweat through every single morning. Did you see this one, Rachel?

I did, yeah, it's juicy.

Yeah, it's juicy. I'm not gonna give it all away. You gotta go read it. But when you look at sauna, there are a lot of interesting things that it can do. So not only does it increase the growth of new brain cells, but it also causes your body to release erythropoietin, which vastly improves your ability to create new red blood cells. It causes the induction of heat shock proteins, which not only improves longevity, but also increases your stress resilience. You get a significant increase in growth hormone along with a small increase in testosterone. You get a maintenance of lean muscle mass, not necessarily a growth in lean muscle mass, but a maintenance of lean muscle mass. Due to the production of these heat shock proteins. You get a release of prolactin hormone, which makes your brain function faster by enhancing myelination and repairing damaged neurons, which is important because a lot of neural tissue can becomes damaged during something like Lyme disease, for example. You get an improvement in fat oxidation. You, of course, get a little bit of detoxification of heavy metals and environmental chemicals through the skin. There's a lot of really cool things that happen. But what I like most about it is it's very passive exercise, right? You don't. Don't finish up a sauna session feeling as though your muscles are all inflamed and swollen and beat up and torn. And so I would recommend. And you could do this. I do sauna now almost seven days a week. Unless I'm traveling. I'm in my sauna every day, every morning. So you can get in there along with these other protocols I've recommended as much as every day. And if you finish up with a cold shower to improve the production of nitric oxide, all the better.

So you can't really OD on heat, Is that what you're saying?

You can, but if you're doing a sauna session every day for 20 to 30 minutes, you're not standing there for 60 minutes. You're not like, wheeling your stationary bike in there to exercise while you're in there. You can actually get quite a good improvement in fitness again without stressing out your body or your nervous system. So I'm a big fan of sauna. And again, each of these things by themselves, it's not incredibly significant, but once we string all this stuff together, and I'll talk about a way that you can do that in a second, once you string all this stuff together, it becomes pretty significant. Cold, which I just hinted at, is another way to increase nitric oxide, increase production of adiponectin, which helps your body tap into fat stores in adipose tissue, increase the production once again of brain derived neurotrophic factor, increase the production of proteins very much like these heat shock proteins that increase stress resilience. So we're talking about, for example, cold shower in the morning, cold shower in the evening, and a couple of times a week, some kind of a cold soak where you're getting into like a cold bath or a cool river for 15 to 30 minutes and basically breathing through that kind of like the guy interviewed Wim Hof and learning how to improve your fitness and your cardiovascular efficiency via the use of cold. And the benefit is a lot of people, when they're trying to become fit again, are also trying to lose a little bit of fat, fat that they may have gotten while sitting around. And so this will help with the mobilization of fats out of adipose tissue and also the conversion of adipose tissue into more metabolically active brown fat.

Interesting.

One other thing would be electrostim. Electrostim would be the use of, for example, there's one unit called a Compex C O M P E X. And that is a form of electrostimulation that unlike there's another popular device called the Mark Pro. The Mark Pro is very good for recovery, but this one called the Compex is very good for causing your muscles to contract in a much more difficult manner, like it'll simulate a several hundred pound squat. If you were to attach the electrode to your quads and your hamstrings, for example, without actually creating the same amount of potential joint wear and tear or strain that your body might not be prepared for if you were to actually hop under a barbell. If you're just starting to rebuild your fitness and they come pre programmed right, they've got like a strength session, a power session, an endurance session, and you simply attach the electrodes to the muscles for which you want to do that session. And so for example, you could do once a week an electrostim session on the quads and the hamstrings. And these sessions last 20 to 30 minutes. And then once per week you could do a session on say another lagging body part, like let's say the biceps and the triceps. And again, you don't finish a session, kind of like the sauna, you don't finish the session feeling as though you've lifted weights or done like a bodybuilding type of routine. But you still do get those musculoskeletal adaptations.

So very cool.

That is another option. Now, as far as putting this all together, you know, if we step back and look at it, you know, your cold shower morning and evening, along with a cold soak, let's say once a week, sauna session, four to five days a week, super slow strength training session twice a week, along with, you know, the use of like a training mask during that session and then the use of a power lung if you're driving around in your car and stuff like that. And then the only thing that's missing would be you're eventually going to want to start to include some of the things that might be a little bit more stressful to your nervous system initially, but that you're eventually going to want to include. And that would be higher intensity interval training like bicycle intervals or elliptical intervals or know, kettlebell swing intervals. And I have a lot of instructions for that and exactly how to do it in an article that I wrote over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com called How to Look Good Naked and Live a Long Time. And in that article, which I'm actually quite proud of, it's a little bit of a long article, but it delves into all of the research that's out there that tells you exactly how you can maintain the density of your mitochondria, your muscular endurance, your VO2 max, and then also your metabolic efficiency and your blood control. And it's just a simple series of cardiovascular workouts that you do each week, some long, some short. If you were to.

Oh, go ahead, I actually do this one. And one thing I noticed that's in the plan, that's not something that we've covered is is fasted exercise in zones one and two. Is that something that you would.

Yeah, it is. And I don't consider fasted morning exercise, which I'm a big fan of, to necessarily be a good way to improve fitness as much as to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, like in the morning in a way that I talk about. I get into all the science of that in that recent article that I wrote about saunas. So go read that. We'll put a link to that and this Look Good Naked Live a Long Time article if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 342. I'll link to all this in the show notes. But one thing, Rachel, is that if you were to do like a morning sauna session, it would count for that morning fat burning session.

I see.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I would, after about four weeks or so, begin to implement some of the intervals that I have in that particular program and article, the Look Good Naked Longevity Program. I love that title, by the way, myself. Anyways, though, the last thing I would mention is how to track recovery. Best way to track, probably you'd expect me to say this would be what I talked about when we talked about the nervous system last week. And that would be a very simple morning measurement for about five minutes of your heart rate variability. And that will show you how well your nervous system is coming along because, frankly, yes, you can take front and side photos and you can do body fat measurements and you can even, for example, do a weekly test where you're gonna ride a bicycle for 20 minutes and see if your power is going up or see if your heart rate is lower for the same RPM and the same power for that bike ride. But most of that stuff is pretty intuitive. Most of us know or can find out pretty easily if we're losing body fat or if we're getting more fit. That's not rocket science. The hard part that a lot of people don't pay attention to is if their nervous system is becoming more robust. And I would say that that's more relevant to bouncing back from something like Lyme disease than how hard you can ride a bike. And so I would say that the main thing you're going to want to look at specifically is when you do a morning heart rate variability test, look at the numbers that are used, your power numbers, your power numbers. So there'll be a power for your low frequency, which is your sympathetic nervous system, and a power for your high frequency, which is your parasympathetic nervous system. And ideally, both of those power Frequencies are above 1,000 and steadily climbing. Like, I know I'm very fit, very recovered and in a really good place both mentally and physically if my numbers are 8, 8,000 or higher. And I know for me personally, I'm pretty beat up. If they fall below 2000, that's a sign for me to look into taking a rest day or to go back and see what I did the day before that might have stressed me out so much. So that's my recommendation for tracking. The app that I use for that is called Nature Beat. We'll put a link to that in the show notes along with all this other stuff. But those would be some of my, my, my primary recommendations. Does that make sense?

Yes. So we've got cold thermogenesis, electrostimulation, all brought together in the look good naked and live a long time blog post. Correct.

More than that, hypoxia, hypoxia, hyperthermia. Right. Like sauna stuff. And, and then the, the heart rate variability tracking. But yeah, there's one other thing that I would mention, one other podcast that might be worth looking into and it's called why Strong People are Harder to Kill. It is a podcast episode that I did with Keith Norris in which we talk about these machines called the ARX Fit Machines. If you do a search for the name of your town and the word ARX Fit, that's ARX Fit. Or if you just go listen to that podcast. These machines are expensive to purchase for home use. They're a few thousand dollars. But a lot of times some cities will have these machines available for use. And it's highly efficient exercise. It's a simple like 10 minute protocol that you go through with these ARX Fit machines. And again, for those of you who really want to get into the techie side of things and hack as much efficiency into your workouts as possible, that's worth looking into and listening to as well is that podcast that I did with Keith Norris on getting strong, why strong people are harder to kill and these ARX Fit machines.

Hi Ben, huge fan of the podcast. Been a fan for years. I'm a member of the inner circle. Great information. Keep doing the great job that you guys doing. I'm calling from Trinidad and Tobago, the twin island republic in the Caribbean. And recently I've been seeing a lot of articles, the last of which was an article on Slow Twitch that is condemning the problem practice of, you know, doing laps in the swimming pool while holding your breath. I mean, this is something I've heard you mention on numerous occasions and something that I know you practice usually at the end of your swim sets and it's something that I've recently introduced. So I'm a bit concerned by all of this bad press, I would say, about that particular practice and these articles that highlight the dangers of, of shallow water blackouts. So really appreciate if you could shed some light on this. And thanks again. Keep doing the fantastic job that you're doing.

So just so you, the listener know, we're going to open the kimono here. Since that last question, Rachel went and poured herself what sounded like a copious amount of coffee. Are you doing okay over there, Rachel?

It's slight Struggle street in the southern hemisphere, but I'm doing all right.

You know, one of my favorite Christmas gifts that I got was. Was a mug, and it says, coffee makes me poop. The giant brown mug.

Oh, my God. Coffee makes me poop, too.

Yeah, that's one of the best ways, really. Any hot beverage in the morning will help out a little bit. Or if you're not a fan of coffee, not a fan of hot beverages, or not a fan of tea. The other little thing that'll make you poo in the morning is you just drink a glass of water with a little bit of lemon juice and about a teaspoon of baking soda and holy cow, wait about a half hour. And if you have trouble pooing in the morning, that will get things going big time. Sometimes too much. Yeah, you may. You may want to go in the bathroom with some baby wipes if you try that technique. Just saying.

We are just getting grosser by the seconds.

We digress, because what we're actually talking about here, of course, is Dundee's question on underwater breath holding. And this. This actually was pretty sad. It was something that happened this past week to a Dartmouth College swimmer. And this guy had been trying to complete four laps underwater without surfacing debris. So that would be. I'm assuming he was swimming at 25 pool. So 100. 100 meters underwater, 100 yards underwater. And apparently in this particular case, he actually was somewhat fatigued. He'd swam about 4,000 yards, which is not an ungodly amount for a collegiate swimmer, but it's enough to fatigue you a little bit. And then he tried to complete his hundred. His four laps across the pool without surfacing for air. And he had what is called shallow water blackout. He died from this. And there's been a lot of kind of controversy around the Internet because this reflects quite a bit on a lot of these techniques that folks are using these days. There's everyone from Wim Hof, who has his book Becoming the Iceman, in which he describes, you know, turning yourself into a beast by going underneath the ice and swimming back and forth underneath the ice. I personally have done the whole free diving thing and experimented with breath holding and apnea quite a bit. And so this is certainly relevant. And like I just mentioned, I am a proponent of some of the benefits of hypoxia, the big dump in nitric oxide, the. The activation of your mammalian dive reflex when you hold your breath underwater. The improvement in focus and the activation of your parasympathetic nervous system when you do this stuff. Right. But there are some definite issues with it.

That sounds very high risk.

It is. And there are a few ways that this actually happens. So I want to tell you how you can avoid this if you happen to be one of those people who wants to tap into hypoxia, underwater breath holding, Wim Hof style training, without necessarily risking this type of issue. So first of all, the way that this happens, there's actually four different ways that you can get blackout from oxygen deprivation even if you're swimming in shallow water, right? Like, even if you're not going deep, deep down and spearfishing or something like that. So one would be low CO2 before you begin your breath hold. So this happens with hyperventilation. You know, just basically what you see a lot of people doing before they hold their breath, they. So when they do that, they're blowing off a bunch of CO2. Anytime you're exhaling more than you inhale. Because when you exhale, you breathe off carbon dioxide. Anytime you're exhaling more than you inhale, you're breathing off CO2. Now, CO2 is the gas that if in your blood, triggers your desire to breathe, breathe. So as would make logical sense, if you blow off a whole bunch of CO2 before you go under, yes, you may increase the amount of oxygen, but you also decrease the one gas that's going to tell you to breathe when you're supposed to breathe the gas. That's like your warning sign. It's like your canary in the mind. You get rid of all that. And that can become dangerous because all of a sudden you may black out before you realize that you should have taken a breath. So that's, that's one thing that can cause us hyperventilation.

So do you think that that's what happened to the swimmer in this instance is that he was low on CO2?

No, I think he was probably low on O2 because you can actually lower your oxygen levels as well. And this happens more with repetitive breath holding or by doing breath holding after exertion and exhaustion. So you'll see swimmers do this sometimes, like hypoxic sets where you'll hold your breath, you'll swim, say like a 25 underwater, and then turn around and sprint to 25 back. And when you're doing repetitive efforts like that, your oxygen levels tend to drop lower and lower. You're not necessarily blowing off a lot of CO2, but you simply are experiencing low levels of CO2 and you can eventually get to the point where you black out because you're combining hypoxia with intense exercise. So the combination of hypoxia with exercise is another way that shallow water blackout can occur. So the third thing that can cause this is maybe you're not hyperventilating and maybe you're not exhausted. And this is something I even had when I took the freediving course down in Florida. Some of it can be simply competition and peer pressure and having a certain number or a certain goal that you're going for for your breath hold. And you get blackout that occurs when that critical level of hypoxia is reached Simply because you are ignoring the urge to breathe, not because you necessarily have low levels of CO2, but because you are competing with someone else or competing with the clock for a certain breath hold time. Yeah, so that's another thing that can happen. And then the last thing is simply a combination of many of the elements above, which often happens. Someone will be doing repetitive breath holds while tired, hyperventilating, and then also competing with someone else or competing with the clock. And so what happens is you eventually get to the point where you run out of oxygen, and you get what's called shallow water blackout, which is the result of a severe lack of oxygen to the brain. Because when oxygen falls to critical levels, blackout happens instantaneously, frequently, without warning. And the issue is not necessarily that it's the lack of oxygen that kills you. It's that you have this brief blackout, and what happens is you black out. And for a little bit, your larynx kind of goes into a spasm and keeps you from taking in water into your lungs. And then that spasm goes away While your head is still submerged in water, you breathe in a bunch of water, and then you have that. That fatality occur. Knowing how it happens is really basically advising you on how you can avoid it. So one thing is that you'd never want to practice prolonged breath holding Unless you were in an extremely controlled environment. For example, when I took the freediving course a few weeks ago, most of the static apnea training that we did, and again, it was static. We weren't swimming in back and forth. We were just holding our breath statically. Each of us had a partner. Each of us were giving a signal every 15 seconds to show that we were still cognizant. We had an instructor right there with us, and we were right on the pool edge. Even if someone had blacked out, it would have been known easily within 15 seconds. So that's One thing. Another thing, in addition to being supervised in that type of environment, is if you're going into a switch, a swimming pool and you're doing breath holds in a swimming pool, I have two recommendations for that. Because I do breath holds in a swimming pool. I'm not going to say that I never go alone by myself and do breath holds, but a, I always stop when I'm at about 80% of what I think is my longest breath hold time. So I never push myself to the point where I'm sucking oxygen. Because believe it or not, just by swimming at 25 hypoxic, which is simple for a lot of people, you get a lot of the benefits of hypoxia without actually subjecting yourself to the risks of shallow water blackout. So for example, I'll go out and I'll do 10 repeats where I'm swimming 25 meters hypoxic. But I'm always in control. I'm never going anywhere close to. So we're talking. That's like 30 seconds of holding your breath, right?

Yeah.

But you're still getting a lot of those benefits. And interestingly, here's something funny. One of the ways that you know that you're getting some of the benefits from hypoxia and that nitric oxide release is if as you're doing those repeats, you have to pee. That's a good sign. If you feel that urge to pee. That's actually a dump of nitric oxide, FYI.

Good to know.

And I also assume that there is no lifeguard. Even when there is a lifeguard, I go into the pool assuming that that lifeguard is completely incompetent and is not going to notice it. If I have some kind of a block blackout or if I do something stupid in the pool, I just don't trust the lifeguard ever. As dumb as that sounds, I assume that, okay, let's pretend I'm completely by myself and no one is here to save me. I need to swim like that. So that's another thing that I'll do. Another one that you want to be careful with is repetitive breath holding. Repetitive breath holding, where you're doing like long underwater repeats over and over and over again to exhaustion again. If they're short breath holds, it's probably not as big of an issue. But long breath holds to exhaustion is a big issue. So one breath hold, one time, one lap, and then you recover. And you never want to combine your heart racing with this hypoxia. And then the other thing is, whenever possible, and if you are going to do any type of hypoxic training, you do it with a buddy. Now, you should also know that I have the next two podcasts. So the next podcast you're going to hear is with Brian McKenzie that's coming out this Saturday, in which we talk about performance, breathwork, and all his little breathing hacks to improve oxygen capacity and activate your nervous system with breathwork. And then the podcast the following week is with Ted Hardy, who taught the freediving course that I took. And we take a deep, deep dive into, pun intended, into this whole shallow water blackout and what causes it and how to prevent it. But the very last thing that I wanted to mention was I know that in my response to Sean, I talked about the training mask and the power lung and all these things that can build up your inspiratory and expiratory muscles. Well, if you are one of those people who's focusing on breath hold time, please know that it is a little bit of a catch 22, because as you increase the muscle around your ribcage, you can actually inhibit the ability of. You can inhibit your ability to be able to hold your breath for a long period of time because you can build up too much muscle around your lungs and your diaphragm. So you should know that you can't have your cake and eat it too. And that's why a lot of free divers that you see are kind of skinny, thin people. They're not doing a ton of core muscle training because they don't want to build up those muscles, muscles too big. I'm a fan of. I'm happy to be like, for me, I'm almost up to a 5 minute breath hold.

I'm totally happy with a 5 solid effort.

I'll take a 5 minute breath hold and then I also want to have those inspiratory and expiratory muscles to help me with things like my obstacle course racing and stuff like that. So anyways, we have a lot more podcasts coming up on this stuff and it's relevant even if you're not into diving and spearfishing and holding your breath. For those of you listening in, Benchmark. So go ahead.

So what is the upside to actually doing these breath holds underwater? And is that more important? Does that kind of make up for.

The risk when you do hypoxia? There's a few things that happen. For example, one study that I've talked about on the podcast before was the use of restricted breathing in swimmers and the significant 8% improvement in running Efficiency and economy from hypoxic work in the pool. So if you are a runner or a cyclist, it can help out with that. Activation of the mammalian dive reflex, more efficient use of oxygen and an increase in capillary density. Delivery of oxygen via the formation of new blood vessels to all these different regions. I like the fact that it helps me quite a bit with relaxation and with focus. There's nothing to make you focus like just kind of of swimming by yourself underwater, back and forth on one breath. Yeah. But again, I don't do it to the point where I'm gasping for breath. When I come up, everything I do, I'm easily, I would say Nowhere near the 80% of the breath hold mark. And again, like, I can hold my breath just sitting there for almost five minutes. Any of these, like, static breath hold or not static moving breath holds that I do underwater, we're talking like 30 seconds. Right? Like, it's not long periods of time.

Okay, so you think it is worth the risk if you're doing it in a controlled environment and you're doing it smart?

I think smart hypoxic training is a cool little skill to throw into your fitness protocol. Yeah. I just think you need to take into account everything that I just said, and if you're serious about it, you need to listen into the next two podcasts that we have.

Hey, Ben. Hey, Rachel. It's Daryl here from Melbourne, Australia. I've got a pretty entertaining question for you today. First of all, I'd like to give you some feedback on the show. I absolutely love it. Me and my best mate listen to you all the time. When I'm driving in the car or whether driving to work, to training, sitting in traffic, I think it's fantastic. And the information you share is very, very beneficial for both my training and nutrition and overall health. Which brings me to my question, Ben. I've been training myself for a long time, talking 10 years plus at a very, very high intensity, playing sports such as swimming, soccer, cross country, running, and even bodybuilding to some extent as well, for the past three years. I have noticed in the past three years that growing up, I have. I grew up with a massive, massive Afro. Like, I had huge amount of hair on my head. And the past three years, I have found that as my training intensity and load has increased, my hair has slowly diminished and I'm finding myself with a bit of a receding hairline. I have my personal thoughts on it from a health perspective and maybe perhaps it's got to do with the amount of Stress that I'm putting my body under and maybe the lack of recovery maybe due to some sort of nutrient deficiency. And therefore the areas of my body that are copying it are structural areas such as skin, fingernails, or even hair. Yeah, I wanted to see what your thoughts were on this matter and I think it's quite an entertaining question. So love to hear what you have to share. Really love the show. Keep doing what you're doing and I'll keep an ear out for your response.

Rachel. You guys struggle with hair loss a lot down there in Australia.

It must be something to do with being in the southern hemisphere.

Yeah. This is quite an Australian podcast, by the way. Our last caller was named Dundee and then we have Darryl from Australia. Isn't dundee an Australian term? No.

Well, you're thinking about Crocodile Dundee, but no, Dundee was definitely not Australian.

Yeah, Crocodile Dundee. Yeah. Okay. He was Australian, wasn't he?

Crocodile Dundee was definitely Australian, but Dundee was not Australian.

Okay.

As in our caller Dundee.

Gotcha. Okay, well, let's start here. We have a very comprehensive episode on hair loss. If you go back and you listen to episode number 249, we did quite a bit on hair loss in that episode. I'm going to link to that episode because it basically covers a few things. There have been some new developments since then which I'm going to get into here in just a moment. But just to briefly go over some of the recommendations from that episode to give you the cliffness. One of the first things that is associated with hair loss is a loss of fat soluble vitamins. So I'm a big fan of vitamin D supplementation to help out when you have something like a receding hairline. Now, the latest research on vitamin D that came out this month shows that it's not going to be the same for everyone. What specifically they found was that for people who are of a normal weight, what you typically need is right around 3,000 international units of vitamin D per day. That's 3,000. However, if you are overweight, vitamin D needs go up to about 4,500 international units per day. Some of the inflammation and some of the increased metabolic requirements of being overweight increases your need for vitamin D. And then finally, if you are obese, and this is very interesting, your needs go up to about 7,000 international units of vitamin D. Vitamin D deficiency deficiencies are quite common in the case of obesity. And so there's kind of a sliding scale for vitamin D intake. And I will link to this research in the show notes. But basically it's going to change, especially based on your body weight. So 3,000 if you're at normal weight, 4,500 if you're overweight, and then 7,000 plus if you are obese. So very interesting in terms of vitamin D intake. And then the other thing that's very important is I never recommend using vitamin D in the afternoon, absence of vitamin K, so that you avoid some of the potential risk for calcification if you take too much vitamin D. So vitamin D would be one. The other things that we went over in that podcast were fish oil. About 2 to 5 grams of fish oil per day. That's Another one. An omega 3 fatty acid deficiency can also contribute to hair loss. And don't worry, this isn't going to be all about supplements, but I'm just going to name off a few of the supplements that we went over in that particular episode. Magnesium is another one. Deficiency of magnesium has been associated with hair loss and about 500 up to basically however much would give you loose stool. Usually it's going to top out around 1,000 milligrams of magnesium per day before you start to get a diaper moment. But magnesium is another one. Brazil nuts. Hoorayfornuts.com Brazil nuts, excellent. Because selenium deficiencies can also be associated with hair loss, you can go to nuts.com using your discount code and I've already forgotten. I believe it was fitness. Am I correct?

It was fitness.

Yes, fitness. You go to nuts.com and use code fitness. Get yourself some Brazil nuts. Another one would be zinc. And when you take zinc, a lot of times it's best combined with something that will reduce the formation of what's called dht. Testosterone can get converted into a very, very active form of testosterone called. I believe DHT is dihydroxy testosterone. Don't quote me on that because I'm having a total brain fart right now. But I believe it's dihydroxytestosterone. Anyways, DHT is the abbreviation, but what is called an alpha reductase inhibitor. An alpha reductase inhibitor can inhibit some of the conversion of testosterone into that form of dht. Because high levels of dht. DHT can cause hair loss. That is the reason that we have thatthat cultural icon of someone who is like bald and full of like, libido and is a complete badass because of their huge amounts of dht. A guy like the rock, right? So there's certainly something to be said for baldness and high levels of testosterone because a lot of that testosterone can get converted into dht. Now, in some cases, it can be things other than testosterone, unhealthy lifestyle, toxic, and too much stress, which we'll talk about in a second. There's a few different reasons that you can have a receding hairline, but ultimately, if you tend to be like a big mesomorphic guy who produces a lot of testosterone, you're losing your hair. In many cases, that just goes with the territory. And I would, you know, if I had that issue, I'd be more than happy to just be bald and have good looks.

Banging a lot, so.

Banging a lot. So, yeah, there's that. And then finally in that episode, we went into some herbal compounds that may help. And I have a whole list in the shownotes. But it's like tribulus and maca and nettle and fenugreek. For those of you who just want to, like, you know, swallow the 10 pills every morning to stop the hair loss, we've got it all there for you. I know it's a lot of stuff, but I'll put that in the show notes along with the link to episode 249, where I go into more of the logic behind each of those. But today I want to just cover a little bit of extra research that I didn't talk about in that particular podcast episode. So, for example, when we look at the pattern of hair loss, the pattern of hair loss can give us clues. So when they've looked at hair loss, what they found is, for example, if your hair loss is patchy, right, you're losing hair in patches in different sections. Typically, that is because of the A cortisol imbalance, a deficiency in B vitamins or a deficiency in zinc, or finally, a buildup of heavy metals. So if you look at your hair and it's patchy, the hair loss is patchy. It can be a cortisol imbalance, a deficiency in B vitamins, or a deficiency in zinc or heavy metal exposure. So that's one issue if your hair is simply thinning, right? Very thin hair. And a lot of times it's a little bit dry as well. In most cases, that comes down to thyroid. And so you can get a thyroid panel and you can look into whether you've got enough thyroid precursors like selenium and iodine, whether you're eating things that might cause damage to the thyroid, like gluten. Stress can aggravate the thyroid. Inadequate intake of carbohydrates can aggravate the thyroid. But thinning hair and dry Hair would be thyroid. Now, if it's just the top of your head, head, that's just the top of your head only. And a lot of times that's what you'll see with receding hairline. Typically it's a hormonal imbalance. It's testosterone or cortisol in men, typically progesterone or estrogen in women. And I'll talk to you in a little bit about how we can test for these. But top of the head only is typically a hormonal issue. And if it's total body hair loss, right, like you're finding that you have hair, like falling off your arms and your legs and also your head, that's typically related to two things, either DHEA deficiencies, DHEA deficiencies, which is another kind of hormonehormonal precursor, and then blood sugar dysregulation, like rapidly fluctuating blood sugar levels. So that's what you would get if you had total body hair loss and then finally just balding all over the place, like full head balding. In many cases, that can actually be either poor circulation to the head or it can be a deficiency in some of these things that are associated with connective tissue. Things like silicone and essential fatty acids. And zinc is actually up there too. So obviously you may want to actually test for some of this stuff and find out. But basically there are labs that can test for this stuff. So for example, when we talk about iron deficiency, when iron dips, hair loss can occur. And so you can get an iron test and a ferritin test. And that would be one test to look at. There's a thyroid test that I talked about. And if you were to test your thyroid, you don't just want to test tsh, which is what most docs will test for, but you also want to look into free T3, free T4, what's called antithyroglobulin and reverse T3. I will put a link to all these different tests in the show notes because you can run any of these by themselves or as a full panel. Another one that you can look at would be just a basic hormonal panel to look at, like testosterone, free testosterone. That other one I talked about, dihydrotestosterone. Remember the name of it? It's not dihydroxy, it's dihydrotestosterone. And that's most associated with male pattern baldness. Like I mentioned, it can also be associated with women's hair loss. But like a hormonal panel in which you're looking at those specific hormones. Another one would be a cortisol panel. You can get what's called an adrenal stress index to see if your hair loss is related to stress. And then one other that I mentioned would be heavy metals and you can get heavy metal testing, and that would just be like a hair heavy metal test. I've got a podcast that I've done on that and I'll link to that in the show notes as well. So the solution, of course, would be to figure out what your pattern is, figure out which lab you want to get to double check and see if that is indeed the issue. And I realize this is kind of a process, but it's better than just throwing random things at your body and wasting your money and then you supplement and you change your lifestyle accordingly. Now there are a huge variety of things that we can get into and again, I've got a full list in the show notes of all the solutions. But again, again, I would always test before, just like wasting your money on a bunch of supplements. But some things that you can eat do cover a lot of the bases all at once. If you just don't have the money to be able to test or you just want to start to try things right away. For example, if we look at pumpkin seeds, pumpkin seeds not only give you zinc, but they also prevent testosterone from getting converted into dht. And so you could use pumpkin seeds. Another one would be, for example, example, essential fatty acids like salmon or sardines or cold water fish or fish oil. That will help a lot of times with the inflammation with the cortisol and with some of the nutrient deficiencies associated with hair loss. It's why a lot of times, like if you start giving your dog fish and fish skins and stuff, their hair becomes shiny and healthy and new. And that's because a lot of dog food, traditional dry dog food, doesn't have a lot of that stuff in it. Another one would be Chinese adaptogenic herbs, which help again to balance hormones, to regulate cortisol, to regulate stress. That would be another example of something that's kind of like a shotgun approach to hair loss. So have some pumpkin seeds, have some fish oil, have some adaptogens. And obviously it goes way beyond that. But then the other thing that I mentioned was the fact that in some cases this can be related to just basic blood flow to the scalp. I mean, just like the rest of your body, when you exercise, when you get massages, when you foam roll, like it improves health in the specific body parts that you've worked. And the same can be said for head, and specifically head massage. Have you ever gotten like a scalp massage or a hair massage, Rachel?

Yes, it's delicious.

Yeah, it is. Well, I wasn't going to use the word delicious. Relaxing slish, increased blood flow that stimulates follicles and helps hair to grow. And you can not only get a massage or you can use one of these, like, hair brushes, they're like, they're like these thick rubber brushes that you can use. It's not even a brush. It's more like a hair massage tool. But you can combine that with specific oils that can help with hair growth. So, for example, if you look at peppermint oil. Peppermint oil as a natural way to improve circulation. And you can get a hair massage, but you can use peppermint. Yes, you'll smell like a giant mint until you shower afterwards, but peppermint helps to improve circulation. Another one is almond oil and castor oil. Both almond oil and castor oil have been shown to help promote hair growth. So you could get a scalp massage and use almond oil or castor oil or even almond oil, castor oil. And peppermint oil.

And peppermint oil.

Yep.

Three beds of one star. So, Ben, is. Are receding hairlines ever genetic?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. You actually inherit your mom's hairline. You inherit your hair from your mom, just so you know. So if you look at your mom's side of the family, you know, the uncles and the grandfathers and the cousins on your mom's side of the family, you can pretty much expect hair growth similar to what they have. Fortunately, in my case, most of the people on my mom's side of the family have nice big old full heads of hair, just like me.

So you got great hair.

There you go. On the other hand, on my dad's side, not the, not so much. He's got hair on his face, not so much on the top of his head. But ultimately, those are some of the things I'd look into, honestly. I have a huge list in the show notes for you at BenGreenfieldFitness.com 242342 linking to some of these lab tests. So you can go check them out. And basically my recommendation is you test, you look at patterns like the patterns I just described, hit rewind and listen to them again if you want to to, and then you treat accordingly rather than just throwing a boatload of random things you found on some website under your hair and wasting your money on supplements that may not address Your need. Right. Like, if you're not zinc deficient, why take zinc? If you're not iron deficient, why take iron? If your hormones are balanced, maybe you don't need adaptogenic herbs. You know, maybe for you, you just need some whatever, some magnesium and some selenium. So I'm a big fan of coming at this a little bit more precisely than just like, you know, throwing everything in the kitchen sink of your hair.

Yeah. And saves you a lot of money as well.

Saves you some money. We're all about saving you some money. Oh, and by the way, I have sad news. Sad news is that when we went in to get the way that we wrap up every show, the reviews, I wanted to get the reviews. There were no new itunes reviews this week. What? There was no love, no good karma. So I'm just saying. I'm just saying that we aren't giving away any swag this week. We're holding back.

You guys are missing out.

You guys are missing out. So spread the love, spread the good karma. You'll not only feel good about yourself, but you may even grow some hair on your head and be able to hold your breath for a longer period of time. If you go spread this good karma, go to itunes. Just go to itunes. Do a search for the Ben Greenfield fitness show or Ben Greenfield or whatev. And when you go there, leave five stars, Leave a review. It helps the show, it helps us spread the word. And you'll win cool stuff. You'll win cool swag from us. But in the meantime, Rachel, you don't get to read a review this week.

That makes me feel sad.

Yeah, that's all right. You're in Australia at 6am in the morning. You're allowed to feel sad.

Thank you.

Keep sucking down that coffee, though. And in the meantime, we'll link to everything that we talked about over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 342. The article that I'd recommend you read if you travel a lot, about the dark side of hypermobility, those cool gift boxes that we've got for 50% off, all the resources on how to rebuild your fitness fast. My full list of things that you can put into your body to help with your hair, and, oh, so much more. So check it out. And also stay tuned this Saturday for a really cool podcast on Breathwork and next Saturday for a very cool podcast again on hypoxia breath work. You guys are going to be Breathwork ninjas if you keep listening in the next couple of weeks and in the meantime, Rachel Benjamin, hope you enjoy the rest of your day.

Thank you. You too.

And get enough coffee into your system to survive your bright and early morning with the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show. And for you all listening in, have a healthy week and we'll catch up with you this weekend.

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

Sam.