The Menstrual Cycle And Athletic Performance, How To Get Kids To Grow Taller, Fueling For Soccer Matches & More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, the Menstrual cycle and athletic performance, how to get your kids to grow as tall as possible, how to handle houseguests who don't eat healthy, can ketosis cause dental plaque? 5 Ways to Naturally fuel for a soccer match, and much more. Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. We provide you with everything you need to know for total performance, fat loss, recovery, digestion, sleep, brain and hormone optimization. So whether you're an Iron man triathlete or you just want to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Is that blood dripping down your arm?

I am bleeding, indeed. We were talking about this earlier. I actually took a. I had my wife take a photo, like a. Like a photo with my smartphone, which is.

Should we put that in the show notes?

No, I'm uploading it over to Instagram so people can see. But both my shoulders are bleeding right now because I am using this new backpack that I bought. It's made by this company called Kifaru. And you send them, like, your specs, like your height and the curvature of your back. And like, you get this custom pack designed. And I'm messing around with the fit on the pack. And I think I mentioned this on another podcast somewhere. It may have been this one last week.

They're going on the big archery adventure thing.

Yeah, now I remember what it was. It was the Obstacle Dominator podcast. We were talking about our top workouts of the week, and I mentioned how one of my workouts now is I'm putting an ungodly amount of weight in a backpack and. And then hiking up hills. And so I did this workout this morning and had a bunch of weight in there and just didn't really have. I don't quite have the pack dialed in right now. They say you're supposed to have about 30% of the weight on your shoulders and 70% on your hips. And apparently I have too much on my shoulders.

Apparently.

Or maybe just too much weight in the pack because.

Or just too much jiggle. Maybe it should be held really tight against you.

My problem has always been too much jiggle.

Too much jiggle.

Yes.

So Ben's jiggle calls the boys to the yard.

If you want to see my jiggle and my bleeding shoulders, go to instagram.com our Instagram channel, in my opinion, is actually pretty dang cool. Like my. My post before this one was a bacon Bloody Mary.

Oh, I saw that. Oh, man, I'm not drinking right now because I'm getting ready for the D.C. marathon, but that made me want to have a Bloody Mary so badly.

You don't even have to drink. You can just eat the bacon right out of it. So check out instagram.com BenGreenfield Fitness and you can see all of the photo goodness of bleeding shoulders and bacon bloody Marys over there. Brock, are you ready for the news flashes this week?

News flash. News flash.

News flash.

I'm always ready for news flashes.

I love this part. If you're a regular listener and you feel like we're always reminding you about these things, just know that we always have new listeners added who might need it. Know this. So just so you know, these news flashes are usually found over@twitter.com BenGreenfeld and just a little inside baseball for you if you're listening. What I do every week, every day is I go through about 30 to 40 different articles. I use this program called Feedly. It allows me to get through articles really, really fast. I read the ones that are interesting, I garner as much information as possible from them. And then I have a virtual assistant and I send all of my notes and the things that I'd like to tweet about over to her and then she schedules them to appear over the course of the next week or so. And then on this show, what we do is we pick the most interesting ones and we tell you about them. Usually by interesting I mean gross and. Or controversial. Yeah, so that's.

Or the ones that everybody have asked like a ridiculous amount of questions on Facebook and Twitter when you posted it.

Exactly. So if you're not following twitter.com BenGreenfeld and you don't get get enough of your news flash fiction, this podcast, go over there. Anyways though, the first thing that I tweeted was about catch up sleep. And by catch up sleep I do not mean the condiment catsup, mayonnaise and mustard sleep. What I tweeted was not that I endorse sleep deprivation, but it turns out that catch up sleep can actually help tremendously. This was based on a study done this month in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and what the title of the study was called was Metabolic and Hormonal effects of Catch up Sleep in Men with Chronic Repetitive Lifestyle Driven Sleep Restriction, which I think describes just about everybody.

So is that just working too much? Not sleeping enough?

Uh huh. So they took all these guys who had six months history of lifestyle driven restricted sleep, meaning basically burning the candle on both ends and so what they did was they measured these guys insulin sensitivity, their blood sugar, their leptin and ghrelin, which are hormones that are indicative of appetite regulation or dysregulation, their testosterone levels, their luteinizing hormone levels, which is actually one of the things, one of the hormones that's a precursor, it's like a signal to your testes to make testosterone. So they measured all this stuff from daily fasting blood samples. Now what they did was they studied these guys in their sleep restricted state. But then what they did was they gave them 10 hours of catch up sleep on the weekend. So they gave them, you know, the Saturday and the Sunday sleep in that frankly a lot of people do.

And they found actually that's a really nice gift. I wish somebody would give me 10 hours of sleep.

It's a wonderful study. Yeah, here sleep 10 hours. And this was actually, it wasn't two nights, it was three nights. So I suppose it would have been Friday, Saturday, maybe Sunday as well. But anyways, three nights of catch up sleep improved these blood markers in men who had these six months of chronic repetitive sleep restriction. And so plausibly, you know what they say in the study is that if you are in a situation from a lifestyle standpoint where you're not getting as much sleep as you actually want to, you can fight off some of the metabolic health effects of say like weekday sleep restriction by just planning some catch up sleep on the weekend. So, you know, it's not ideal, but it can kind of mitigate some of the damage. I thought that was interesting.

That is interesting. And a little, gives me a little glimmer of hope. It's not completely destroying myself.

That's right. Okay, so here's another interesting one. And this was looking into soreness and specifically what this study, which was in the European Journal of Applied Physiology this month looked into, was the idea that if you're going to do something like run a marathon or do an ironman triathlon or do some other feat of physical performance, that the idea in most cases is that you must, if you want to mitigate a lot of the soreness that you're gonna wind up getting after an event like that, you know, the walking downstairs like you got a stick stuck up your butt phase of the post mar days, then you need to simulate to some extent the amount of volume that you're going to experience during that event itself. And so the idea here is that if you don't want to be sore after a big event like that, you need to include some high volume Training because the theory is that high volume muscle damaging exercise protects against the potential detrimental effect of soreness from your actual event. So what they looked at in this study was whether or not you would get the same protective effect against soreness when you did lower volume exercise instead of higher volume exercise. The way they set up this study was kind of interesting. They took a bunch of guys and they randomly assigned a bunch of them to a lower volume set of squats, five sets of 10 squats. And then they took a group and they assigned them to a higher volume set of squats, 10 sets of 10 squats. And for anybody who's done squats before, there's a pretty big difference in the weight you feel with five sets versus say 10 sets. And then what they had them do was complete baseline measurements for muscle soreness and also creatine kinase, which is a measurement of muscle breakdown. And then they had them do a running time trial. And then two weeks later both groups repeated the baseline measurements and did the, did the follow up testing. So what they found was that in terms of protection against soreness and production of injury inflammation after that hard running time trial, the five sets of squats gave just as much protection against soreness as the ten sets of squats. And what they concluded in this study, and this is just a quote from the, from the final sayings in the abstract, is that this study demonstrates the protective effect of lower volume exercise induced muscle damage on subsequent high volume exercise induced muscle damage being transferable to endurance running. So basically the short story is that you can get away with protecting yourself from the effects of the soreness that a marathon or an ironman might induce by doing some weight training and not necessarily by doing the high volume running that some people use. The long story, however, if you want to read up on this, was written about in a really comprehensive article on the Sweat Science blog at Runner's World. Because I know some of what I just said may have been a little bit difficult to grasp. Anyways though the idea here is that you don't need to do high volume exercise to keep yourself from getting sore from big events. Does that make sense?

It does, it does. And in my experience I've felt that you do the longer volume kind of stuff and you get sore, you end up just getting sore more often. It's not like you actually feel better, you just end up damaging yourself several times.

Yeah, the theory here is called the repeated bout effect. It's the idea that if you do a demanding workout that makes you sore, then you'll be less likely to get sore the next time you do the same workout. And what this study is showing is that that repeated bout effect is not necessarily necessary to do in high volume. You can do it in low volume. So anyways, we'll put a link to the more comprehensive treatise of that study over in the show notes. And the show notes for today, by the way are at BenGreenfieldFitness.com 310Brock and I slave over these show notes, so make sure you check them out if you want helpful links.

I broke a sweat over these ones.

That's right. Speaking of breaking a sweat, let's talk about the menstrual cycle, which was the last thing I wanted to mention that I tweeted about. And we also have a goodie for you in the end of this podcast. We'll tell you about in a second related to this. Anyways, though, really good article about how the menstrual cycle affects athletic performance. And what this article goes into is that there are two key hormones, estrogen and progesterone. And after the onset of menstruation, both of those hormones stay pretty low for most of the first part of the menstrual phase, what's called the follicular phase, and then you get this big spike in estrogen before ovulation. And during the second phase of the menstrual cycle called the luteal phase, both estrogen and progesterone rise. And based off of these fluctuations in hormones, there are differences in terms of the amount of, say, carbohydrate that you're able to use and access, or the amount of flexibility or laxity that you have in certain ligaments, or even your ability to exercise at higher intensity and be able to recover adequately. For example, for endurance performance, like if you're going to go out and do a half marathon or you're going to go out and do a triathlon. What they found was that one to two days before ovulation, when estrogen is highest and progesterone is lowest, that is when endurance performance is going to be the highest, about one to two days before ovulation. If you want to say, like, I don't know, time and Ironman Triathlon, or perhaps call up the race director, call up the race director and explain to them when you're having your period.

So my cycle is about to kick off.

If you could just move this race back about one to two days, that'd be great. Actually, one of the things I go into in the article as well is how for some of the Olympic athletes, they actually have birth control pills that they'll give them to synchronize their cycle with major championships to allow them to kind of like time things so that during the major championships they're not, for example, right in the middle of menstruation or for even better, for endurance performance, they're about one to two days before ovulation. Anyways, it's a really interesting article and there are two things related to this. First of all. Well, first we'll link to the article in the Show Notes, but then at the end of this podcast, we're going to play you the raw and uncut version of an excerpt from my book Beyond Training in which I go into how female athletes should customize their diet. Now, every week I've been sitting down and recording about an hour or so of my book and we publish this to the Ben Greenfield Fitness App. Now, the Ben Greenfield Fitness app is totally free. It gives you access to all the podcasts. But then we also have things like the audiobook chapters of Beyond Training and what we call premium content, which is like extra interviews, PDFs, videos, stuff like that. So anyways, listen in to the end of this podcast. If you like what you hear, you can go to BenGreenfulFitness.com premium and download more. So that's one thing related to the menstrual cycle and female athletic performance. So go read that article. The other thing is that this Monday I'm releasing about, well, a really, really good treatise of this as well. Like a thorough article that goes into each phase of the menstrual cycle and what kind of exercise you should be doing in each phase. But cool. The main thing is because I know we have a lot of endurance female athletes who listen in, it's about one to two days before ovulation, when your estrogen is highest, that you're going to have your best performance. So there you go, Listener Q and.

A. Hi Ben, Tony out in Redondo Beach, California. My question is related to my 14 year old son.

He's become quite the athlete, wants to play football when he gets to high school. And so I was looking for nutritional.

Advice and biohacks to help a child reach their maximum height potential.

Any thoughts on this? Thank you. Love the podcast.

Tony wants to have himself a basketball player. He wants an NBA star taking care of him as he ages.

You know what I do with Mike kids is I've got that inversion table and I hang them from the inversion table, but then I have them hold dumbbells in their hands while they're hanging.

I thought you were gonna say you attach the dog to their wrists and get him to run the other direction.

All right, so I know since we got a bunch of smart cookies listening in, we can jump into, like, how a kid would get tall in the first place so that you can kind of understand the way that this works. But it mostly starts. You know, there are some hormonal considerations here as well, but it mostly starts with. And kids and people in general have these things called growth plates. They're epiphyseal growth plates, and they include, like, cartilage and bony and fibrous components. And all of those act together to help with bone growth. And there are different things that can affect the development of those growth plates in children or hamper the development of those growth plates in children.

Like smoking?

Like smoking.

Like smoking and drinking coffee?

Yes. If your child smokes and drinks coffee. And that actually is. When my kids ask for coffee, I explain to them. I say, hey, you know what? I'm fine with you having coffee. This is the way I present everything to my kids. I educate them, and then I give them the choice, and I explain to them. But the problem is that caffeine, if you have growing bones, can affect the growth of those bones. It can decrease some of the things that your body needs to grow those bones. So if you start drinking coffee, like dad does in the morning, before your bones have grown all the way, then you're going to be shorter when you grow up. And they don't touch coffee. They run very fast away from coffee because they want to be as tall as. What kid doesn't want to be tall?

Yeah, exactly.

It's the same reason that I tell them about alcohol. When mom and I are drinking wine and they want to have wine. I explain to them, well, you have this thing called a liver, and it's growing inside of you. It's a really important organ. It's extremely important for detoxification and for helping your body get rid of anything that you might be taking in that. That you got to get rid of. And it's really, really important for helping you to be healthy. But if your liver is still growing and you drink a big glass of wine, like mommy and daddy do at night, then you might have a liver that doesn't work very well. So it's a better idea to wait until your liver is all done growing, which is 18 to 21 years old, depending on which state that you live in, and then you'll be able to drink alcohol. So, you know, your kids actually told.

Me we were having breakfast in Kona and they saw me eating pancakes and they told me that I shouldn't eat those because I was going to be stupid when I grew up.

Well, no, I do explain the concept of brain fog and brain inflammation and gluten to them. And it's funny because. And again, I tell them, hey, you know, you can, when we go to a restaurant, that's fine, you can eat the bread. But here's what gluten does and here's how it might affect your performance at school the next day, et cetera. And nine times out of 10, they just, I give them the choice, but I educate them. I think that's a good way to go with kids rather than just saying, don't eat this and don't eat that and whatever. I was explaining this on a podcast the other day, too. I know this is a complete segue, but, like cursing, right? I have explained to my kids what every single curse word on the face of the planet means. And I've explained to them what intelligent vocabulary is and when words like that would be appropriate and when words like that wouldn't be appropriate. And then I give them the choice. Like, they know, for example, that, you know, they know what the F word means and they understand that that is an offensive word in many situations. And that's also a word that can, it can be a bad way to describe love, right? And so they understand that there are better words to choose than that word. But they also, you know, it's not like I just say, oh, never say that word. It's dirty and it's bad. That's not the way I explain things to kids.

So, anyways, let's get the out of this rat hole.

So some of the things that can affect the growth of epiphyseal growth plates 1 is that calcium and what's called 125 hydroxy vitamin D act together in close coordination to increase the growth of the epiphyseal growth plate. So anytime that you're looking at a 1, 2 combo of calcium and vitamin D deficiencies in kids or growing adolescents, that's one really, really big whammy against growth. Vitamin D is of course, achieved through sunshine, but the fact is that it's not very well absorbed unless you have this triad of vitamin D, vitamin K2 and magnesium. So you want to be sure that you give your kid really, really mineral, rich sources of magnesium. And if you can't do that, then you need to include like for example, a multivitamin that has magnesium in it. My kids kind of bounce back and forth between two different multivitamins. They have this, it's called a kid's calm liquid multivitamin. That's one that they take and that actually has a, a specific compound in it that can help tremendously with brain development as well. Along with a bunch of different omega 3 fatty acids, there's another one that they use that's called a smarty Pants. And this is more like a gummy vitamin. It's better for travel. Yeah, because it's harder to travel withwith liquid multivitamins versus like solids. And the smarty pants one has fish oil, it's got EPA and DHA in it. It has choline in it, which is really important for brain development. And then it's got, got a lot of these other kind of like mineral precursors in it that help.

Isn't choline what they put in?

Red Bull Taurine is what they put in.

Oh, taurine, yeah. That would not be a good thing to give your kids.

Vitamin K2, grass fed butter. A lot of fermented foods will support bacterial formation in the gut, which can help with K2 and then egg yolks, organ meats, things along those lines. Kate Shanahan talks about this a little bit in her book Deep Nutrit about how a child's facial symmetry and beauty are distinctly correlated to their intake of fat soluble vitamins. And so any child who has a deficiency in specifically vitamin A, vitamin D and vitamin K is not only set up for a suppression of the proper growth of the growth plates, but also asymmetry in facial characteristics. Very interesting. And that's a great book to own. Anyways, if you have a kid to make sure that you give them every advantage in life. Because as you know, whether or not it's fair, beauty and height have a very significant impact on success. Right. On income, on raises, on promotions, on the way that people perceive you, on popularity. It's just the way that based off of evolutionary and survival mechanisms that we are hardwired. Right. We want the bigger, stronger, more beautiful people to survive. That's just, I mean, I know that sounds like totally Nazi Nazi esque and unfair, but it is the way to a certain extent that, that humans are hardwired.

Well, that's exactly why this is the Ben Greenfield Fitness show, not the Brock Armstrong Fitness show, because Ben is three inches taller than me. So that's it.

But we don't know who's more symmetrical because Brock always Has facial hair.

Yeah, I hide my asymmetry.

So anyways, the fat soluble vitamins, vitamin D, vitamin A, vitamin K are very important. Magnesium is very important. Calcium is important. But that does not mean that a child necessarily needs to drink milk because they can get lots of calcium from things like sesame seeds and dark leafy greens and even like a lot of the properly prepared grains, you know, quinoa, amaranth, millet, you know, like a good fermented, like sourdough, like you can get calcium from sources other than dairy. It's not that I'm against dairy for kids. Dairy is a great way to help a small mammal grow into a large mammal. It's just that if your only option is a commercial dairy or dairy that's been pasteurized and homogenized, which separates the protein from the fat globules and allows a lot of those proteins to pass undigested into the bloodstream and cause things like acne and autoimmune issues in kids. So unless you have access to a really good organic raw dairy that hasn't been subjected to heat pasteurization and homogenization, then it's better to look at other calcium sources for kids. And again understand, as long as magnesium and the fat soluble vitamins are all there in decent amounts, your child doesn't need a ton of calcium from dairy based sources. So those are some of the things as far as the fat soluble vitamins, as far as the minerals like magnesium are concerned. Now you also want to look at, of course, on activity now, you know, and I work out with my kids quite a bit. And one of the things that's important is vascularity. So blood supply to epiphyseal plates can really assist with the activity of the osteophytes and what's called osteogenesis or bone formation. And so any child that is moving more, that is allowing for that increased vascularity is going to give themselves a hand up as far as that osteogenesis is concerned in terms of the influence of inactivity on the epiphyseal growth plates. There is some hypothesis out there that physical activity can have a protective effect on the epiphyseal growth plate. But very little research has actually been conducted on the role of inactivity. Like whether or not being sedentary would directly cause a child to have like a stunted growth. What's more likely, and this is what research is a little bit more conclusive about, is that you do see a lower bone density in the children who have that Lack of load bearing. And considering that you go into your later years of life with the bone density that you have in your early years of life, it's pretty dang important that a child be given situations in which their bones are loaded. So somehow it's really weird. Legend of Zelda and what are the other games that kids are playing these days? Candy Crush.

I played Legends of Zelda. That's not these days. I think they're playing Minecraft.

Yeah, exactly. Anyways though, so those don't build bone density. And then of course with activity you get an increase in growth hormone and insulin like growth factor, two other hormones that are very important for normal growth. So when we look at activity and lifestyle factors that go above and beyond the nutritional factors that I just mentioned, what you would be looking at is preferably load bearing that is not excessive in children. So most of the research points to somewhere in the range of 10 to 20 reps. As far as a good rep for resistance training in kids who still have growing growth plates, like kids who are kind of under that 13 to 15 year old age range, you know, who are least like prepubescent so not like load their bones and joints, but heavy, heavy loading, like 2 failure, 5 reps, 8 reps, 10 reps, that can actually inhibit the growth plate formation. It compresses the growth plates in the same way that excessive endurance training can inhibit the growth hormone and insulin like growth factor. Well, so you don't want excessive endurance training because of the hormonal effect on growth hormone and insulin like growth factor. You also don't want excessive loading due to the inhibition of the growth of the growth plates, the compression of the growth plates. So in an ideal scenario, you want a kid to be able to get movement without complete exhaustion, right? So they're not getting into a catabolic state and then loading without failure. So, and returning back to like my, my Instagram page, I've been posting the workouts that I do with my kids to Instagram. So we do, we do some box breathing and then we do some warm ups and some dynamic movement. And then I actually do a lot of five by five type of workouts with my kids, but I don't use a load with them that takes them to failure. We focus on really good form. And I stopped them at 5 reps because I find that once we get up to like 10, 15, 20, they just focus more on the number and on like hammering out reps. But when I keep the reps low, they really focus on form. I don't keep the reps low though because they're getting to failure by 5. I don't use really heavy weights with them. So like if my kids are doing deadlifts, we're doing like 40 to 50 pound deadlifts, right? Which is not really, really heavy for a kid but allows them to maintain really good form for five reps. And then we'll go do some mobility, we'll do like some, some opposite arm, opposite leg extensions, we'll do some lateral shuffles, we'll go like climb the rope and then come back and do another set of deadlifts, for example. So anyways, though excessive loading and excessive endurance would also inhibit the growth plates. And then finally, of course, growth hormone is the big, big one here. You know, as the name implies. And if you. I was looking through like Muscle and fitness magazine yesterday when I was at the, at the gym and it's a, it's crazy how many supplement advertisements there are for growth hormone enhancers. Especially when you look at the research and see that very few of these, in the absence of like high amounts of like heavy weightlifting and exposure to anabolic stimulus, how many of these are completely ineffective. And it's crazy how much people spend on these growth hormone derivatives when the two things that increase growth hormone to the greatest extent are a lifting. So yes, lifting is going to help your child. It's just you want to make sure you don't do the excessive lifting, right? Like keep things in a weight range that would allow them to do 10, 15, 20 reps, even if you're just having them do five reps. And then the other thing is that sleep is the other huge increase of her growth hormone. So giving your child enough sleep is incredibly important. We're a huge fan of really not using alarm clocks in our house. We try and get our kids to bed early enough to where we don't need alarm clock to blast them out of bed in the morning. Right now we don't have blackout curtains like in the kids bedroom. So they kind of get a little bit of like natural exposure to light to wake them up. Up. I'm actually in the process of adding blackout curtains to their bedroom however. And then I'm putting one of the sunrise alarm clocks in their room because in the summer, you know, it can get light around, you know, 5:30am so I'd rather my kids not be waking up that early. But what I'm doing is putting blackout curtains in their bedroom so it stays really dark. But then I'm setting the sunrise alarm clock so it gradually introduces natural light into their room over the course of about 10 to 15 minutes, starting a little while before they need to be getting up and kind of getting ready for school and all that jazz. So we're really big proponents of sleep. And yes, my kids have the blue light blocking glasses that they wear at night. I bought them those off of Amazon. And they don't mind that because dad's got his dorky glasses and we all look like complete nerds walking around the house. Mom laughs at us. We have yet to get her on board with the glasses. But she also. She's one of those people that just sleeps like a log. Anyways, so. So I don't. Yeah, anyways, she's one of those people, but those are some of the biggies. I know this was kind of a long answer, but hopefully that points you in the right direction as far as enhancing growth. So minerals like calcium and magnesium, fat soluble vitamins, resistance training without going too heavy, endurance training without going too long, sleep and yeah, I think those are some of the biggies. Oh, and then dairy in moderation, if you can find the good stuff. Stuff.

Hi, Ben, this is Kerry from Tampa, Florida. And I love the podcast, so keep.

Up the good work.

But my question is, how do you handle house guests that don't share your dietary habits? I'm finding it harder and harder to.

Cook for other people.

Having to tell house guests, be sure.

To stop at the store and get.

Whatever you're gonna want. Then I have to tell them, I don't have a toaster, I don't have orange juice, I don't have bread. I don't have a wife to cook sourdough bread for me. So anyway, it's starting to be a real problem. I just kind of avoid having any kind of company. So tell me, how do you handle it?

Thanks.

You know, first of all, I gotta say, good questions, everybody. Seriously, like, we're getting some good stuff lately.

Yeah. So this is, this is interesting. So first of all, I am a fan of having people over, having things like dinner parties, bringing people into your home. The home that I grew up in. My parents had people over literally almost every night. We'd have college people over, we'd have homeless people over. We'd have these huge, like, not lavish dinner parties, but like, you know, the big pot of spaghetti or chili or soup type of dinner parties. At our, at our house, we had.

On weekends and stuff, come and stay for like months on end too. Like, they just come and like, move in for a few weeks.

Yeah, we had. We had like foreign exchange shootings from Spain and Japan. Like, our home was just constantly full. And it really is interesting. You know, for me, I grew up a little bit of like a social outcast in that respect, in that when people would come over, I would literally get annoyed. I would go to my room and read. Like, that was just the type of kid I was. I would just like go through, like, I would stay up till like 4am in the morning reading fantasy novels. And like, you know, my parents would have to coax me to drop World of Warcraft and come out of my room to interact with our guests. And eventually I got out of that phase. But, you know, I still, even when I got older, had to kind of coax myself into understanding how important it is to, as the name of the book I'm about to recommend says, never Eat Alone. Right? Like, go out of your way to develop relationships. Because frankly, I'm completely happy staring at a Kindle and having a salad. And when I'm at a conference, right, and not even like talking to anybody. It's just. It's kind of the way that I am. I'm a hardwired introvert. But there's two books that are really good that are out there right now, relatively new books. This one is Never Eat Alone. It's by Keith Farrar. It's called Never Eat Alone and Other Secrets to Success. One Relationship at a Time. And what he goes into is how there's something that distinguishes highly successful people from everyone else in the way that they use the power of relationships. And he explains how he has connected with like thousands of colleagues and friends and associates on his contact list and done much of the this through like, you know, just like dinner and eating and lunches and, you know, the social power of food. And then there's another really good book out. And I'll link to both of these in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 310 it's a new one. It's written by my friend Jason Gaynord, and it's called Mastermind. Building lifelong Relationships by Connecting experts, influencers and linchpins. And Jason has this really interesting. It's kind of a business. He puts on these dinners called Mastermind Dinners, where he'll just bring together a bunch of key influencers, like five to 10 key influencers, and they all sit around a dinner table and have dinner together and produce these meaningful relationships that last a really long time. And it's all done around food. So it is really Cool. How food can Bring us together. And I think that both of those books are really good. If you're one of those people who needs to be convinced to have more house guests or to have more dinners. But like Carrie says, many times you will have people over who don't share the same dietary concerns and habits as you do. My take on this is pretty simple. It's the same way that I raise my kids and that is that you eat what is in the house. We do not have any of the junk foods or the, you know, like Kerry says, you know, the juice, the breads, etc. At our house. And since we live out in the frickin middle of the forest, there aren't a lot of options. You can't walk down to the grocery store and get yourself a bag of.

Potato chips, pop over to the sev.

That's right. So the thing is that I am. This may not sound very nice, Carrie, but what I would say is that if you're eating healthy ancestral food, food that is not steeped in the commercial fast food, macaroni and cheese esque pizza type of lifestyle that a lot of people are eating and your house guests are not appreciating or eating or enjoying that food, then there's something wrong with the way that you're preparing it. And the reason that I say that is we have house guests over quite a bit. And most of the time the meals that we are serving are extremely ancestral from books like Nourishing Traditions or any of these. Like there's a publisher called Victory Belt. They're the same publisher that published my book Beyond Training and they put out a ton of cookbooks like Gather and Paleo cookbooks and we're not Paleo. Right. But a lot of those meals are really, really good. Like Mark Sisson's company, the Primal Publishing Company. They've got a lot of really good books on fueling and eating and making these really nice tasty dinners. If your dinner is freaking like salad with sardines on it with maybe some nori wraps or something like that, that's not, you know, that may be something that some of us listeners dig for lunch, but it's not going to be a good way to introduce your houseguests to healthy ancestral food. So I would say you need to learn how to prepare food in a more tasty and well presented way so that your houseguests actually appreciate it. Because there is no reason that people cannot eat and enjoy this stuff. And we have house guests, they eat what we eat for breakfast. They'll have eggs and bacon with us for breakfast. Who doesn't like eggs and bacon for breakfast?

Crazy people.

Crazy people. And vegans.

And vegans. Yeah.

In which case we have, like, these awesome kale smoothies with dark cacao nibs and chocolate powder and almond butter for breakfast. And for lunch we'll have. Well, a lot of times, frankly, lunch is leftovers. But then we'll also have. My wife will make these awesome coconut crepes and we'll wrap lunch meats and salamis and cheeses and homemade mayonnaise and things like that, and have the crepes with some fresh vegetables and some sprouts that are grown out on the kitchen counter in the sunshine. And then, you know, for dinner we'll have, like, wild caught salmon and roasted vegetables and some kind of, like a nice, you know, homemade sourdough bread with some. Some butter slathered on it. And I mean, in my opinion, if you're cooking that way and your house guests are still wanting to bring over to your house juice, bread and a toaster, then there's something wrong with. You need to go get their brains checked out.

You need new friends.

Yeah. So ultimately, I would say if your house guests don't like the healthy food that's in your house, then you better get to work educating yourself and becoming better at making food that people just love to eat. Because it is an awesome art, right? It is an art and it's something that you have to learn. You have to go out of your way to learn, and it is a labor of love. But once you learn how to prepare healthy foods in a really good, tasty, ancestral way, man, people are going to want to. They're going to want to come to your house. They're going to love to come to your house. You're not going to have to convince your house guests to eat healthy. They're going to want to eat healthy and they're going to leave inspired. So that's what we focus on, you know, when people come over, is we give them real healthy food and, you know, just like the way that we raise our kids, there is no other option. Right. Like, you eat that food or, you know, that's fine, you can have some water and go to bed hungry if you. If you don't like it. So.

Hello. Ben and Brock, love the podcast.

It's Will here from Vancouver.

I just have a quick question about.

Ketosis and dental plaque. I'm fat adapted and like to keep myself in a mild ketosis as it helps with my ADHD and a few other things, but I have noticed that I seem to be producing more dental plaque, and I just was wondering if there's any relationship.

Thanks for everything. Bye. That's cool that he's managing his own ADHD with. With some mild ketosis.

That's.

Congratulations, Will. It's good work.

Yeah. And there are some good studies out there in terms of, like, enhancing focus and cognitive performance when you don't have rapidly fluctuating blood sugar levels and even when you have ketones available as a fuel for neuronal activity. You know, the interesting thing here is that you would think that when you cut out carbohydrates that you're going to have less issues with your teeth simply because there is less sugar.

Less sugar caking up your teeth all the time.

Yeah, exactly. Just because, you know, sugar is relatively acidic. And when you expose the tooth surface to acid, that can cause demineralization, which is the initiation of what's called the caries, the dental caries process. And so you get, like, progressive demineralization of the tooth structure. And that can eventually result in destruction of dental tissues and the development of abscesses and all the other things that happen when we constantly subject teeth to. To acidic substances. Sucrose is the real culprit, by the way, with this. You know, the main thing you'd find in table sugar, fermentable carbohydrates in general can also be an issue. You know, a lot of that stuff gets absorbed by the biofilm in your teeth, and that can cause your bacterial plaque to produce a lot of acidic compounds. And so when you look at fermentable carbohydrates, typically they are the. The sweeter, more starchy carbohydrates. And so once you drop off that amount of acidity, as you would by nature, if you're taking in fewer carbohydrates, then you get better mineralization and even remineralization and more support for the teeth and less issues with that, especially when the sucrose intake is low. Usually what you find people complaining about when they restrict carbohydrate intake is that ketosis causes three different molecules, three different types of ketone molecules to get produced. Acetoacetate and beta hydroxybutyrate. And those two can be used for energy by most body tissues. But then there's this third ketone called acetone, that can't be used by the body. And it's typically excreted in the lungs or excreted in the urine. And then exhaled by the lungs. And that can cause halo. That can cause this, this kind of like keto breath. And usually isn't that the same thing.

That happens when you drink alcohol?

It's. It's somewhat similar, but. But typically you'd have to have a lot of acetaldehyde produced from alcohol consumption. So you'd either have to be, for example, like, you know, Asian, so you've got lower levels of alcohol dehydrogenase, or you'd have to just be drinking so much alcohol that you've got a lot of acetaldehyde produced in most cases, for many people, that's three plus drinks before you start to get to the point where you can get some acetone smell on the breath. Jimmy Moore talked about this a little bit when I interviewed him. And you can go to BenGreenvilleFitness.com and do a search for ketosis to listen to literally tons of interviews I've done on ketosis with folks. But in active people who have been in ketosis for a while, who are efficiently burning fatty acids and then utilizing those ketones by the diaphragm and by the kidneys and by the heart as a fuel, typically that acetone breath is a little less of an issue. And in many cases, people will start onto a ketosis based diet, they'll get a little bit of that acetone breath, and then the more active they are and the more they're adhering to that fat burning. Well, how should I put this? Well, basically, the people who are more active and in ketosis tend to have less of the acetone breath than the people who are inactive and in ketosis. Does that make sense?

Yep.

Just because they're utilizing those ketones more effectively. Yeah.

They're not just floating around, they're getting used for stuff.

Exactly. So when we look at this plaque issue or he's. He says it's kind of like a. Well, it's dental plaque. Sometimes it can be a little bit more of like a slime in the teeth. It kind of depends. This is something that I've seen come up before. And one of the proposed mechanisms for this, and this would be on a more of like a high protein diet than a high fat diet, which is why it's something that. It's a little bit puzzling to me. But some people who are doing like the very, very low carb thing, like they're doing more protein than they are fat to replace those carbohydrates. Now, when you look at plaque that's formed on the teeth of people who are on like a low carb, high protein diet, the ph gradient is different. The overall ph of the plaque is influenced by the ammonia that's produced as a byproduct of amino acid breakdown. Okay. So higher protein causes more amino acid breakdown, and that can cause the plaque to have a higher ph. Now, a higher ph of the plaque can favor what are called gram negative organisms, and those can actually produce a little bit of an offensive odor, and they can also change the way that the plaque feels. The thing is, this is something you would normally experience on more of a, like an Atkins based diet than a ketosis based diet. So that's one thing that kind of puzzles me about this plaque thing is this is something that I would more expect with like the high protein diet. But the other hypothesis here that I have is that many times when you're on a ketosis based diet and you're eating fewer carbs, you get less salivary production and you get less. Less mucus production. And so you can get dry mouth. And dry mouth can actually cause tartar and plaque buildup if you don't figure out a way to keep your mouth hydrated or to consistently introduce water into the mouth. And so for this reason, I would recommend that one of the things that you may want to try is one of these water picks. You seen a water pick before, Brock?

Yeah, I used to have one when I was a kid.

Yeah. So once a week, both my wife and I do a water pick. We put a few drops of oil of oregano in our water pick. And this was recommended to me. I don't visit a regular dentist. I visit one of these fancy, schmancy, biological, like, holistic dentists. They don't use, like, heavy metal and they use compounds that are more compatible with the human body. They don't use a lot of chemicals. When I went in for a teeth cleaning, though, a couple of years ago, they said, hey, you need to start using a water pick if you use a water pick. And I don't know why they told me this, because this is a good way to put themselves out of business. They're like, you don't need to come in to have your teeth cleaned as much. So I got a water pick like that weekend, and I haven't been to the dentist since. Anyways, though, I use this water pick once a week. I put the oregano in it and just basically go through each of the teeth. The water pick takes like five minutes. And then the other thing that I do once a week is I Swish with coconut oil. So I put like a teaspoon of coconut oil in my mouth. I do a called oil pulling where you just like swish for 15, 20 minutes and then through your mouth. Those are a couple things I do for oral care. But if this is an issue related to dry mouth, you could get a water pick and just use that every night instead of brushing your teeth. Or as the water pick actually comes with one of the attachments that goes on the end of it, because it's like this basin of water that basically is directed via a tube at a high pressure in, into your teeth. But one of the handles that comes with it is a brush. And inside that brush is a little hole where the water comes out. So you can brush and do water picking at the same time. So you could just do that as an alternative to brushing your teeth every night and try that out and see if that helps to keep your mouth hydrated and results in a little bit less of this plaque issue. So worse comes to worse, you could always get, get your teeth removed and get the dental implants and have that cool little glass of water that you keep next to your bed at night that you put your teeth in just like grandma and grandpa. I remember the first time I walked into my grandma's bathroom and saw her teeth floating in a cup. I was just like, I was mortified because there was like, you know, body parts floating in water in my grandma's bathroom. And I had plenty of questions for my parents after the that. But will, hopefully you don't need to get to that, that point.

Hopefully not. Dentures just get veneers. Go Hollywood.

Hi Ben, I have a question about.

Fueling field sports, specifically soccer.

I was wondering how you would fuel.

It with nutrition or any supplements. I know you talk a lot about that.

You can stuff and any gel. So for soccer, assume two 45 minute halves with the 20 minute halftime in between. So I guess, yeah, Nutrition leading up.

To it during, at the halftime and afterwards. This could also apply to other sports.

Basketball, football. I know you talk a lot about triathlons and endurance efforts, but I was.

Thinking maybe you could talk about field sports. Thanks. Yeah, I've never really thought about it. I always, I go play hockey quite often and it's three periods of 20 minutes with a like five minute break usually between it. And I just eat a lot of food before and then tons of wings and beer after.

Done, done, done. Yes.

So there you go, Julian.

You know, it kind of depends, right. So if I know a lot of people are listening in probably at this point, you know, who may have kids, because we talked about kids earlier and we talked about, you know, increasing growth in kids and what we do with our kids with food and stuff like. Like that. So we might as well kind of stay on, on that vein. And I should mention that if you have kids and you're listening to this and they're playing soccer, There is no research that shows that children benefit from exogenous sources of fuel for any event that lasts less than 75 minutes. And the reason for that is that kids have higher fat oxidation capabilities compared to adults. Kids actually have enzymes that are more active in their bodies that can inhibit their ability to tap into storage muscle glycogen and liver glycogen as a fuel. And the hypothesis here is that by having these carbohydrate conservation mechanisms during exercise, kids are able to tap into that carbohydrate more efficiently for growth at other points during the day. So kids have this inherent ability to be able to tap into their own fatty acids. Acids as a fuel. And for anything that lasts less than 75 minutes, they actually don't really need fuel. They just need like some water. You can give them some electrolytes to help drive that water into the, you know, from, from the gut into the bloodstream a little bit faster. But ultimately, if you're looking at kids, you know all this, like, Oreo and the little, what's, what's the name of the little juices that you poke the straw into?

I don't know. Juice box things.

Yeah, little juice box things. Yeah, like. Like that. That stuff is actually not really necessary for a kid during summer.

All they need is love and encouragement.

And a little bit of water. So anyways, though, a little bit of whoop ass, dude. A little bit of whoop ass. So as far as adults, you know, I don't know if it's because adults at some point from childhood up to adulthood get ripped out of the ability to tap into fatty acids as a fuel because of Cheerios and Froot Loops and frequent trips to the pancake, you know, feed or whatever, but like, you know, the ihop. The ihop, that's the word I was looking for. I was close with the pancake feed. It's really close.

Yeah.

Anyways, though, so adults technically tend to have more of a propensity during exercise to become hypoglycemic compared to kids. And so, you know, for Julian, like fueling for a size soccer match or if you're fueling for football or Basketball or whatever, you may be able to benefit from exogenous sources of fuel and they may provide you with a little bit of a performance enhancing aid. The problem is that the stereotypical way to do this is via Gatorade, like a 6 to 8% carbohydrate based solution or power bars that are made with GMO wheat and GMO corn and a lot of preservatives or very sugary based compounds that are acidic, not just for the teeth, which we just got done talking about, but also the body as a whole or can cause like for example, fermentation in the gut. So there are ancestral, you know, quote unquote, ancestral, at least more ancestral ways to fuel these type of things. Because, you know, during a soccer match or football or basketball, you do have frequent, what are called glycolytic surges where you're tapping into storage, carbohydrate and done over and over again during a very long match. We talk about football games, we're talking three hours, right where you're going to reach glycogen depletion unless you do something about that. And I personally play tennis. I have a tennis match this weekend. I'm playing number one singles right now for my local men's team. And my tennis match this weekend is probably going to be a doozy. Like that'll be two to two and a half hours this Sunday afternoon of some, some hardcore sprinting. And I won't go out there in a ketotic state because there's just so much more surging and sprinting than what I experience, for example, in like an Ironman that I just feel better if I've got some exogenous source of fuel. And there's a few different ways to, to achieve this. I'm going to throw some ideas at you because like there's more than one way to skin a cat. And some of this stuff is like six of one, half a dozen of the other. But here are some ideas for you. The first is that you can make your own sports drink and bring it with you. And it's got far less preservatives, colors, artificial compounds in it, et cetera, compared to a commercially available sports drink. One of my favorite ways to do this is you can get chia seeds, got about 60 calories or so, and a tablespoon of chia seeds. Seeds. And so you'd use about 2 to 3 tablespoons of that for each hour of fueling that you desire. And then you add in about a tablespoon or so of raw Honey, which is chock full of amino acids, immune boosting compounds. I'm a big fan of finding yourself like a really nice, good raw local honey. And then you put some sea salt in there for minerals and electrolytes, typically a couple of pinches of sea salt and then you can mix all that together in a water bottle. Chia seeds, honey and sea salt. I like two to three parts chia seeds to one part honey, couple pinches of sea salt. And then I actually in a mix like that, I prefer coconut water compared to regular water just because coconut water can hydrate you so much better during hardcore activities. And you got to shake it a few times before you drink that as you go to fuel. Shake it up, drink it down and keep it in a water bottle. Mixes pretty well. But that's one thing that I really, really like is the chia seed raw honey sea salt mix. Another way that you can go is I have an article about fat based energy gels. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. But I researched 12 different gel companies that are relying more upon fats like coconut oil and medium chain triglyceride oil and things that spike the blood sugar a little less, result in fewer of the issues with carbohydrates and acidity compared to standard carbohydrate based gels. And there are a bunch of them like Windforce and Justin's Nut Butter and Pocket Fuel and many of these companies that are doing more fat based energy gels. And you would do about one to two of those each hour. And each time you take one of those gels, you wash it down with a little bit of water. So that's another really, really good, good way to go as far as a more natural way to keep energy levels elevated. Another one that I really like, if you want to go more of the solid route, is you just get one of these energy bars that's more based on fat or that is less based on like wheat, corn, oats and soy. So some of the good brands out there that I like is, is Onnit makes one called the Hemp Force bar. You know, if you like solids. I'm personally a fan of solids. That's, that's just, it's just the way I'm wired. Like I like to chew on something, you know, as I'm switching over sides like during a tennis match. So for example, this weekend I'll have the hammer bars just because that's what happens to be in my pantry at the time Hammer makes this bar. It's like I use the one called the Hammer Vegan bar. It's made by Hammer Nutrition. We'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. But it's like it's got a little bit of a chocolate coating on it and it doesn't have like soy and wheat and corn and things along those lines in it. So that's another good bar. Bonk breaker. You'll find these on a lot of Ironman courses these days. It's a gluten free, lactose free bar, dairy free as well. Burns really clean, decent source of energy, tastes good. That would be more acceptable than like a power bar or clif bar, for example. And then if you want to go with more of like the meat root, Epic Bar is a really good company. They even have one that's, that's made out of organ meats like Liverpool. You know, when we talk about like getting kids, they're fat soluble vitamins. I mean like, and it's, they're, they're actually really tasty. I ate some at the Ancestral Health Symposium this year. And so Epic Bar has some really good solid sources of bars. And then there's this company called US Wellness Meats that makes a pemmican. And pemmican is like rendered fat. And that also, you know, if you want to do more of, you know, if you want to feel more like a Native American playing old school lacrosse during your soccer match, you can do pemmican. So let your hair out and get that meaty smell on your breath and run around chewing on a stick of pemmican during your soccer match or at least on the sidelines. So pemmican is another choice. So we've got energy bars, got fat based energy gels. We have chia seeds, honey and sea salt. And then you could also go with premixed fuels. I have a whole post I'm not even going to get into detail because we're kind of droning on on this one, but I have a whole post@bengreenfieldfitness.com called how many carbohydrates, protein and fat should you eat before, during and after a workout? And in that post I go into how to take things like a superstarch. Like UCAN is a company that makes this superstarch that gives you a really slow release of carbohydrates. And you mix that with some MCT oil, which is a form of fat that bypasses digestion and goes straight into your cell cells to burn fats and generate ATP and you mix that with some amino acids, like an amino acid powder or an amino acid capsule, and some electrolytes. Brock and I actually shot a video when I did Ironman Canada a couple years ago where he just shot a video of me dumping all this stuff into a blender. You can MCT oil, amino acids and electrolytes. And that's what I used to fuel myself for that race. You just blend it all together and dump it into water bottles. So that's another way to go if you want to kind of of like mix your own fuel together and you know, just kind of. Again, another like little inside baseball thing for you. I'm working with a company right now where we're trying to figure out how to get all that stuff, like a really good high molecular weight starch, some coconut or MCT oil, some amino acids and some electrolytes, and figure out how to get all of that into almost like kind of like a little gel pack that you could mix in a water bottle or that you could. The formulation is pretty complex, so it's. It's taking a while to figure out how to get all those ingredients to play nice. But hopefully at some point in the next year we'll have some, you know, something like that available for folks to use, you know, to kind of, kind of get all that stuff without having to go to the four corners of the earth to buy it and then put it all in a blender and then the last thing. And I've been using a lot of this lately. This is what I use when I did like Kokoro, the seal fit training. I use this stuff made by a company called Natural Force the Escape. Yeah, they've got this. Yeah, it's. They call it the natural stack. So it's kind of like how Gatorade has like, it's pre, during and post workout fuel. This is like the, the paleo slash ancestral version of that. So pre workout is this stuff called raw tea. And it's, you know, it's basically like beet juice and there's like some green tea extract in there. I'm trying to remember all the ingredients. It's got maca, cranberry, cinnamon, grapeseed, yohimbi bark. It's sweetened with stevia. So it just gives you this big boost in natural vascularity. It's kind of like Viagra for your workout. So you do that first. You do that like 20, 30 minutes before. And they've got this thing called a natural stack where you can order it and you just get all three of these. And then they've got the ischiate endurance which is for during. And that is basically chia seeds, bee pollen and coconut palm sugar. And then that's sweetened with stevia as well. And it has also what's called royal jelly in it, which is just what it sounds like. It's royal and it's jelly. It's actually, I believe that's bee pollen. Yeah, it's basically a bee pollen related extract. And then for after you finish, they have what's called recovery nectar. And by the way, I first discovered these guys at their booth down at Paleofx and it was just. It's amazing. It's good stuff. And their recovery nectar is coconut water with hemp protein and then there's spirulina, chia seeds, maca and goji berry added to that. And they've even got some natural immune system support in there like devil's claw and maitake mushroom. It's really good stuff. I'll be totally straightforward with you. It's not cheap, this stuff. As far as sports nutrition goes, it's. It's some of the spend your stuff you can buy but if you just want. This is kind of a done for you approach. I do like the natural force stuff and I've been using that quite a bit lately too. There.

That's our friend Tamsin Lewis used that when she won Ironman uk.

No, I think she used Windforce.

I thought she was using the Escape.

She may, you know, she may have been. I don't know, I'll have to ask her. Anyways, that's my natural force. We'll put a link in the show notes because we get a 10% discount so it knocks a little bit off of. Off of the price. So anyways though I'll put kind of a synopsis of all those. So I'm not saying any one way is best, but those are some of your options as far as really natural ways to fuel activity.

So yeah, I stand by my wings and post hockey game tradition. No worries. No stomach upset. Well, actually quite a bit of a stomach upset, so.

But a big smile on your face. A big greasy smile on your face. Big greasy smile and chicken skin in your teeth.

Speaking of big greasy smiles, let's put a big greasy smile on somebody's face. That left us a nice itunes review.

That's right. If you go to itunes and you leave us a review, we will put a handy dandy Ben Greenfield fitness gear pack in the mail to you. If we read your review on the show so if you hear your review read, just email bench@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Let us know your address and your T shirt size. We'll get all that out to you. And of course if you just want to buy that stuff yourself, the texture, the beanie, the water bottle and support the show. It's a cool way to support the show and get a bunch of cool stuff sent to you. It's BenGreenfieldFitness.com gear. Most of it is used. It comes from my garage, it has cat hair on it. But hey, you know, hey, you don't have a cat and cigarette smoke. But anyways though, so we've, we've got a review here that we're gonna read for you.

It's called not afraid of controversy or Controversy by Klein BC As I love that Ben is willing to take on controversial subjects like vaccination without people questioning the recommendations. And propaganda. Yes, it's propaganda. Have you seen the ad ads of our government? Are we really better off? Just look at the food pyramid. There was supposed that was supposedly backed up by solid science but all it did was make make people sicker. Should we all be willing to completely trust our government and pharma or should we question it even if it looks like the evidence is solid? Because of a recent podcast, everyone suddenly thinks Ben is anti vaccination. But if I remember correctly, he chose to least partially vaccinate his children.

True fact.

So he's not anti vaccination but rather pro choice and pro make an educated decision. If you aren't willing to hear the other side then you are doing yourself a disservice. There is likely some truth in what his guest had to say. Some truth. But there is some benefit to vaccinating. The truth is we don't really know if we are better off vaccinating because there is no long term double blind studies looking at the total effects of vaccines.

Preach it bro. That was less of a review than it was a commentary on vaccines.

That was totally just that. We just like Klein BC get up on a soapbox in my voice there for a second.

But I mean let me just say.

Those were not my words. That was Klein bc. Not that I disagree.

Ultimately though, let me, let me say this. We're willing to think outside the box on this show. And I mean, you know, here's the deal. I don't think a lot of people are going to write in angry that I gave you some choices to go with other than Gatorade. Some people will write in angry that I gave you some other choices to go with other than vaccinations a couple of weeks ago because frankly, I will admit that is a little bit more serious issue than Gatorade potentially. But ultimately, please know that I will continue to put out advice or information that may go against, against the grain on this podcast because progressive forward thinking is how we make ourselves better, how we discover new ideas, how we get outside the box, how we discover new technologies, et cetera. So I have no issue bringing up that stuff. And I do appreciate the review that mentions that. Hey, you know, it's not that I'm, you know, all of a sudden like anti vaccination. I just want to make sure that people have all the information that they need to make an education decision.

So, man, personally, I did not agree with very much of what she had to say, but I'm happy that she and other people like her out there putting some pressure on the government and the, and the pharmaceutical companies to do a better job. Just make it better. That's. We can't argue with that.

That's right.

So there's a, there's got to be a better way to do it and they're not going to do it unless we put some pressure on.

That's right. So anyways, though, that was my soapbox there. Love it. So I know this is turning into a monster episode, but yes, we do have more for you if you stay tuned. After the show, we're going to play you the raw, uncut version of how females can change up their diets to make athletic performance better. And of course, you can get all of our premium episodes over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com premium along with my my audiobook version of Beyond Training. You can grab the links for everything that we just got done talking about over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 310 and I believe that wraps things up. I believe. I do believe. Okay, now let's jump into some needs for female athletes and three reasons why exercise can make females fat. In my podcast episode called why Women Gain Weight When Training for Endurance and what yout Can Do About It. About it, I responded to a question from a woman named Lisa who wrote in and said, I have a question about weight gain during marathon training. I'm a 28 year old female training for my fourth marathon. I run anywhere from 50 to 70 miles a week. At the height of my training. I eat very clean. I also lift weights two to three times per week. I'm five foot six and around 130 pounds. Whenever I train more intensely for marathons, I end up gaining about 10 pounds. I don't think this is all muscle and I don't think it's due to overeating since I track my my food quite assiduously and usually end up about 700 calories in the hole every day. I've become concerned about this weight gain. I was tested for hypothyroidism which was negative, and when I mention my weight gain to my physicians they seem dismissive since I'm not overweight. Is there any way to explain this weight gain? Despite steep calorie deficits, I eat a low carb high fat diet and that was for about a month in December when work prevented me from training at all and ended up losing £10 in a month, then regaining it almost immediately once I resumed my training. I've been able to make massive time improvements despite this weight gain, but it leaves me feeling bloated and large in my normal clothes. I've heard of several others, mostly women gaining weight during marathon training, and I'm wondering what the explanation for this could be, especially when the person is OCD about calorie intake as I have been. Well, Lisa is not alone. This is a huge problem among athletic females, especially those engaged in endurance exercise or chronic levels of high training combined with calorie depletion. In my response to Lisa, I explain why many female athletes gain weight or become unhealthy and it's due to a combination of three factors. Number one is excessive cortisol. As the body churns out cortisol in response to repetitive training stress, sodium retention and subsequent fluid retention and bloating can occur occur. Number two is progesterone depletion. With excessive training stress, the body shuttles precious levels of the hormone precursor called pregnenolone into cortisol production instead of progesterone production. That's called a pregnenolone steal. Since progesterone facilitates the utilization of storage fat for energy, this decreases the body's ability to tap into its own fat for fuel. And number three is estrogen. Dilute estrogen is a hormone that promotes cell division, cell growth and in excessive amounts, formation of fat tissue. Estrogen dominance can be created by stress, poor sleep and mineral imbalances in addition to some of the other factors you'll learn about in the lifestyle section coming later in the book. Of course, all three of these issues are magnified with high amounts of training. In addition, since progesterone protects women against the pro growth effect of estrogen, the drop in progesterone and the rise in estrogen creates a weakening weight gain. Double whammy. So if you're a female athlete training long, hard or heavy and you don't want to just stop training, what can you do about this? Well, in addition to implementing every single one of the stress control strategies that you already learned about earlier in this book, as well as eating a higher fat diet to allow for adequate steroid and hormone production, you should include the following nutritional strategies. Number one, Decrease exposure to all estrogen raising factors in your diet, and that includes excessive amounts of coffee. I recommend no more than two cups per day of caffeinated coffee. Also, be careful with unfermented soy sources like tofu and soy milk, non organic meats, commercial dairy sources, sugars and starches. Number two is to help your liver deal with excess estrogen through natural detoxification. This can be accomplished with two to three cups of green tea per day and a high intake of cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage, along with adequate fiber consumption like a daily kale shake. Number three is to use a supplementation protocol that allows your liver to naturally detox high levels of estrogen. Now I'll go over some of those things in the Gut cleanse and detox chapter, but a few of the things to pay attention to. 1. One would be a vitamin B or an antioxidant supplement or multivitamin that has those compounds in it. Next would be some source of hops. For example, Integrative Therapeutics has an AMPM perimenopause formula which Dr. Sarah Gottfried recommended in my podcast episode entitled the Cost of being a How to cure your hormones. Next is to use a natural anti inflammatory high in curcumin. I like about 1 to 2 grams of curcumin on a daily basis and then some type of detoxification compound for the liver. One of the more powerful ones, especially for estrogen dominance, is called diindolmethane or dim, and you take about 200 milligrams of that a day. Now the high amounts of stress to which you're exposing your body are actually training your body to store fat, lower metabolism and retain water. But some of the advice that I just gave includes ways you can mitigate the damage. Now of course, the opposite scenario can ensue as well. In female athletes, a loss in body weight accompanied by a drop in bone density, a loss of your period and severe hormonal depletion. Now this is a scenario I most often See in women who have been living like Lisa for a long period of time and eventually hit the wall with adrenal fatigue and complete energy depletion. The low progesterone continues, but it's health mental matched by an eventual drop in estrogen too, a drop in cortisol and hormone fatigue. In this case, when chronic levels of training are combined with low calorie intake, your liver and your adrenals get tired, you become insensitive to important hormones like leptin and insulin, your sleep suffers, your body weight drops, and you begin experiencing low thyroid symptoms and menstrual dysregulation. In other words, you become skinny fat. Now this may sound sexist or unfair, but compared to men, females are simply less capable of running from a lion every day, day in and day out. So if you're going to fight your biology and try to do it anyways, you better do an excellent job eating adequate calories, detoxing your liver, and getting as much rest, recovery and sleep as you can. By caring for your body with high amounts of nutrient dense foods, getting lots of sleep, and implementing all the important recovery tips that I outlined in chapter eight, you can keep many of these issues from occurring, but you must listen carefully to your body because especially as a female, you are fighting an uphill battle. Now interesting women can use the fact that there are significant gender differences in fuel selection during exercise. For example, one of the most common methods used to determine how much fats and how many carbohydrates you use for energy is a measurement called the respiratory exchange ratio, or rer, and that measures the ratio of carbon dioxide produced to oxygen consumed. A lower RER means a higher fat metabolism and a higher RER means a higher carb metabolism. Now studies have shown that during low to moderate intensity exercise, women have a much lower rer, meaning they burn way more fat compared to men. Now this could be one of the reasons why as the time of exercise becomes longer, female performance tends to become closer and closer to male performance. When corrected for difference. The time gap between, say, a top female and male Ironman triathlon finisher is actually much smaller than that between a top female and male 100 meter sprinter. Apparently, because of your naturally higher capabilities to burn fat as a fuel, you ladies are actually pretty good at going long. So are there any practical fueling or training tips that can be fleshed out from this fuel fact? Well, while there's not a ton of research to back this up, I highly suspect that women will gain a great advantage in maintaining long term training health by a limiting the volume of extremely high intensity carbohydrate utilizing exhausting training sessions like CrossFit Wads, long track sprint intervals or tough workouts like Tabata sets done multiple times a week and limit those to just two to three days per week maximum, especially if engaging in other longer energy depleting, stressful training sessions like triathlon or running or marathon training. Now since women are even better than men at fat oxidation and endurance, their focus should primarily lie in strength, power, speed, mobility and balance, which I went over in chapter five in great detail with limited amounts of high intensity metabolic conditioning and fat fueled long aerobic sessions b Engage in moderate amounts of low volume movements throughout the day, including walking, standing workstations or treadmill workstations, gardening and easy aerobic sessions that are fueled by high amounts of fat intake from coconut or MCT oil, nut butters, et cetera and c eating enough carbohydrates to support normal fertility and health without any excessive emphasis placed on fasting or constant ketogenesis. As I alluded to earlier in this book. You can check out the article Carbohydrates for Fertility and Health Health by Stephanie Ruper if you want more details on that and I'll put a link to that over@BeyondTrainingBook.com Chapter 14 finally, if you want to understand more about how where you're at in your menstrual cycle changes the way that you feel and perform during exercise, I recommend a book called Running for Women by author Jason Karp, who is also interviewed in an Endurance Planet episode on female athlete fueling, and I'll put a link to that over@BeyondTrainingBook.com Chapter 14 as well. Now in that book and in slightly less detail in the Endurance Planet podcast, they tackle many topics that I think you should review if you're a woman, including the impact of the menstrual cycle on hydration, body temp, metabolism and muscle function, how and when to train during your menstrual cycle, pregnancy and menopause, avoiding the risks of the female athlete triad, which is disordered eating, osteoporosis and menstrual irregularity, how to use sex differences to your advantage, and much more. And finally, ladies, be cautious like I mentioned with fasting, and resist the temptation to focus on keeping your body in fat burning mode through long periods of time spent in calorie restriction. We'll talk more about fasting strategies, especially for females, later on in this chapter. Visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice.