The Post-Workout Nutrition Myth, Your Personal Circadian Rhythm, Hot Vs. Cold For Recovery & More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness show, the post workout nutrition myth and why you don't need to eat right after a workout. Maybe your personal circadian rhythm. Hot versus cold for recovery, how to absorb iron better healthy breakfast travel ideas 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.

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

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

Hey, Brock, do you hear that sound? That sounds like bumblebees. Like warm bumblebees buzzing around my. My head.

Okay, let me. Let me listen for a sec. Oh, yeah, a little bit, a little bit.

Let me, Let me. Wait, wait. I'm gonna bring the microphone down by my belly button. Hold on.

This is good podcasting here, folks.

Good. This is good podcasting. Hold on. Hear that?

Yes. It kind of sounds like a didgeridoo. A tiny didgeridoo.

Not bumblebees. I am not actually raising bees yet, even though that's on my bucket list. I'm. I'm wearing a belt, and my wife was laughing at me last night because I wore it for like an hour last night while I was reading in bed. It's. You know how they make vibrating foam rollers and vibrating like, rolly balls to dig into your hip?

Love those things.

So, uh, they're not a sponsor, by the way. They should be. They're getting a big shout out right now. But it's. So this company, Viper, they make this belt that does infrared and vibration at the same time. So the whole time that we're talking, not only am I, am I juven, not only do I have near and far infrared light bathing my body, but I've got this thing wrapped around my waist and it's like a warm teddy bear is giving me a hug. A vibrating hug, humping me with rapid succession. No, that's a horrible visual.

Yeah, no, it's.

It's. It's as though I've got a tiny little leprechaun sized massage therapist blasting me with a blowtorch and simultaneously massaging me with all 10 of his little leprechaun like fingers.

Not better, not better. But I do, I do like it.

That sound.

Not the, not the metaphor, but I like the sound of what's going on.

Well, what I'll do, I haven't talked to them about this yet, but I'll. I'll tell them I mentioned it in this show. We'll see if we can get snag a discount code from the good folks at. I mean I gotta look down. It's called a Viper vip. No. Yeah, Venom. It's called a Venom. It's a great name for a personal care device. Venom just like the stuff that kills you that comes out of snake's mouth.

Totally, why not?

News flash issues.

So speaking of infrared heat on. On one's midsection. Did you see this new study? Brand new study. We always sound so sophisticated when we talk about new studies. Just imagine if we brought up studies from like 2012 be so outdated because we all know that's not science. Unless it's approximately one to two years old, it's not actual science.

Yeah, nobody knew what they were doing in 2017.

Yeah, no, this just came out. Basically what they looked at was hot versus cold for recovery. How intramuscular temperature affects recovery following the fatigue induced by endurance exercise. And granted they used little mouse models for this, but it's still relevant. You know, mice have muscle fibers.

They were hard charging mice.

Those mice have muscle fibers just like regular people.

They do.

And leprechauns.

And leprechauns.

And so they, they also, it turns out they did some testing in humans as well. So they tested muscle fibers and they also tested humans who were cycling. I don't know why they split up the mice muscle fibers and the human cycling. But either way cover their bases. They looked at the mechanisms underlying the temperature dependence effect on recovery. Now here's what they found. They did cooling and they did heating for post exercise recovery. So the equivalent of an ice bath, cryotherapy, that type of thing afterwards. And then they also did heating, the equivalent of a hot bath, a hot tub, a sauna, that type of thing. What they showed was that after exhausting cost of endurance exercise, recovery was enhanced by raising the muscle temperature and it was slowed by lowering the muscle temperature. And specifically what they were looking at was the ability of those muscle fibers to be resistant to fatigue following that endurance exercise, after which the muscles were subjected to other heat or cold. So what's the takeaway?

What is the takeaway?

Well, it turns out that if you really want to enhance recovery, I'd say you may want to avoid like the extensive ice bath or cryotherapy. Even though I'M still a fan of it. For a quick decrease in core temperature. So that you say sleep better afterwards if it's like an evening workout or something like that. But ultimately doing, like, the long ice bath post endurance exercise, we already knew it blunts the hormetic response to exercise. It turns out it also blunts the ability of the muscles to be able to likely restore glycogen and bounce back quite as quickly. Bounce back being the highly scientific term. And the only thing they didn't do in this study that I wish they had, because I suspect they would have found out that it beat out heat is hot, cold. Mmm.

The contrast.

Right. Like going back and forth from hot to cold. Like, hot, cold contrast that we know is pretty effective. So I would have liked for them to have done that in the study. They didn't. But regardless, now they know. So they'll have to do another study on this with heat versus cold.

But give them a call.

Turns out, heat a muscle. So hence I actually, I had a. I had a. An endurance workout this morning. I worked out with my. My hyperoxic hypoxic training unit, and then I did the sauna and then jumped in the cold pool. Then I had a smoothie. Then I came in here with you, and now I'm heating myself.

So you're just doing it all. Just cover all the.

Doing it all.

Just throw everything at it.

I do like that. Yeah. And then after we. After we record, I'm gonna go upstairs and give myself an iv. That's just my life.

I'm having a cup of coffee, and I did a bike ride this morning. That's.

Yeah, that's. Well, if you put that coffee in an IV bag and mainline into the cubicle vein. Cubicle, cubicle, cubicle. The cubicle vein. Okay, let's keep going. All right. This is taking a downhill slide quickly.

Silliness.

So, ketogenic diet. Two new studies on the ketogenic diet. The first was they looked at it as a regulator of obesity and metabolic syndrome. Right. Does eating fat actually cure obesity? So what they looked at was restored insulin sensitivity, regulation of blood glucose, metabolic rate, triglycerides, body fat, mass, a whole host of parameters that would normally be associated with things like, say, type 2 diabetes. And what they did was. This is very interesting. This is the twist that I thought was quite interesting. They had an exercise group, they had a group that didn't exercise, and then they had a ketogenic group that didn't exercise. And on a ketogenic diet. For folks who are On a ketogenic diet. If I can spit it out.

I'm on the edge of my seat, man. Come on.

Basically versus folks who are on a standard American diet. The ketogenic diet beat out everything. Not exercising on a standard American diet. Exercising on a standard American diet. Ketogenic diet without exercising gave these people better weight, better body fat percentage, better BMI, better hemoglobin A1C, which is like the three month snapshot of their blood glucose levels. Better triglycerides, pretty much across the board, even without exercise. So they have no grand. There are of course people who have whatever like familial hypercholesterolemia or don't respond well to a ketogenic diet, blah, blah, blah. But ultimately you can still do a ketogenic diet.

You just have to be more selective with the types of fats that you're eating. It doesn't completely negate the keto.

Right. The ketogenic diet for people who have familial hypercholesteremia is basically just don't eat till you die. Pretty much, yeah. That's the approach. It's wonderful. No, seriously, it would be caloric restriction, high intake of plants and care with the amount of saturated fat intake.

It's the saturatedness problem.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Good observation, Brock. You should be a scientist.

I have that gene, that's why I'm so familiar with it.

Yes, you study it up all the time.

Yeah, I want to make sure I'm ruining myself because I did put my cholesterol through the frickin roof when I tried to follow the bulletproof diet, like verbatim.

Yeah, well, the bulletproof diet is a, it's a. I mean that's a good diet. Honestly, it's just like if you can adjust it if you need to based on your genes and I think. I don't know if Dave has a section in his book about that, but I know Dave's aware of that. I'm sure he has. Yeah. Kind of.

All I had to do is drop the butter. That's not so much butter in my coffee. More MCT oil.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's an adjustment in the types of fats that you. That you take in. Dave being. Being our friend Dave Asprey, the bulletproof executive. Also another one. They looked at the, the ketogenic diet, three months of it. And they looked at this in CrossFit trainees. So you could only get into this study if you were wearing annoyingly high neon knee socks and you call everybody bro or bra and you Call everybody bro or bra. Yep. And what they looked at was the effect on exercise. Right. Cause you do hard exercise, you're supposed to eat more carbohydrates so that you don't have reduced skeletal muscle glycogen levels. And you know, they say that, you know, low carbohydrate diets might stifle muscle anabolism or the ability to be able to recover properly. And so they looked into this and they looked at fasting glucose and cholesterol and triglycerides. And they also looked at, of course, course I was happy about this. 1 rep max back squat, 400 meter runtime, VO2 max. What they found out, very similar to that faster endurance study that I took part in was that there wasn't necessarily a performance advantage of the ketogenic diet, but there was zero decrement in performance in crossfitters. Who followed a ketogenic diet for, and I think this is important, 12 weeks, meaning that they followed it for enough time to be kind of like keto adapted as we say, to become the so called fat burning machines.

Yeah, it wasn't 12 days, it was 12 weeks.

And that's, that's significant and that's key for these type of studies is you want to follow it for an extended period of time. So ultimately if you're a crossfitter, it turns out that you, you can get away. And remember, similar to what I was just saying earlier, ketogenic diet, that's not synonymous with calorie deprivation. Right. I'm not saying like go, go on a, on a five day bone broth fast and you're gonna bust through your next wad, whatever your wad.

That was a very upsetting sentence.

Jackie, Cindy, Laura, Lauren, Tracy. Tracy Lynn. There's a lot of CrossFit workouts. I know ones that nobody even knows. Oh yeah, Jessica, Jessica has a great CrossFit workout. Anyways, the idea here is, and I'll link to this study in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 381 Sticking to a ketogenic diet and of course introducing the type of variables that might be missing on that diet, like say potassium, magnesium. I would even consider, you know, if you're reducing your meat intake a little bit and increasing your fat intake, you know, creatine, filling in some of those missing variables turns out pretty decent strategy because there was a market reduction in body fat percentage along with that increase in performance. So potential, you know, kind of washout as far as performance, but a definite increase in metabolic Parameters.

Yeah. One interesting thing about this one though was that there was a significant increase in LDL. Like a 35% increase in LDL.

No, of course there was. Yeah, yeah, you're gonna, you're gonna produce more LDL in response to the need to shuttle more cholesterol around the body.

So. Yeah, shuttle in the cholesterol. Yeah.

And then one last one because I know a lot of people, a surprising amount of people want to wander off for 10 days not talk to anybody. This, this whole. Have you done a Vipassana meditation retreat?

I have not. I don't. I, I'm with this guy that I'm not a fan of the idea. I'm glad that other people do it, but I'm not doing it.

Yeah. I mean, 10 days without my kids not talking to many folks. I just, it's not a hell yes for me at this point in my life. I know that some people have found a great deal of benefit out of it, but the, the guy who, who wrote this particular article, he actually is not a fan of these Vipassana retreats at all. And you know what he says, and I'll link to the article, which is pretty comprehensive, but he has some reasons for that. He says that a. The meditation sessions are too long and so the retreat goers, the retreat goers, they spend most of the allotted time for meditation thinking about things other than meditation. He says throwing someone into 10 hours of meditation a day who hasn't been meditating much recently is much like taking somebody who's out of shape and throwing them into the start line of a marathon.

Totally, so, totally agree.

So. And even gets into how meditation strengthens a region of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex. And so if you go into a Vipassana retreat and your anterior cingular cortex just like wears out after the first hour of meditation, you're going to be kind of like irritated both physically and mentally. So the takeaway there is, I mean, if you're a more advanced meditator, it might be for you, but if you're beginning that all or nothing approach to meditation might not be a good idea. He also talks about how much of the Vipassana course instruction. I wasn't aware of this. It's done by recorded video. And a lot of times the in person teachers, he, he says are often this, this dude Max Marmor, who wrote this story could be biased, but he says they're reportedly not very advanced practitioners and many of them are burnt out, which I probably would be if I Had to hang out with a bunch of people or trying to be quiet for 10 days.

I'd assume that has a lot to do with where you go. Like it's not going to be across.

The board, but yeah. He says it's also conducted in silence. Says you can't ask your teacher questions or get feedback on whether you're doing the meditation correctly or not. And he's not a fan of that.

Yeah, well, the answer is if you're wondering if you're doing it right, you're probably not doing it right.

Yeah. And then finally he says that it focuses not enough on awakening, it focuses on concentration. But the way he describes it is that when you experience a taste of awakening, it's like tasting the nectar of the gods or the velvety chocolate of reality. And that's how we kind of. He lost me in the article right there because he says, you know, what you really need is a near death experience, not a 10 day retreat. So basically what he's saying is getting a plane accident instead of going to a Vipassana retreat, I think is what he's getting out there. I think so anyways, though. Well, if you're. A lot of people are considering this, you know, this whole Vipassana retreat, it's the same thing as like, you know, my take on ayahuasca, for example. I don't think people should go out and do a bunch of plant medicine to discover themselves until they've used a more stoic approach to discover themselves. Like go fast for three days in the wilderness. Right. Go do the Jesus thing before you dump a bunch of drugs down your throat and find yourself that way. That's just my take, right. It's the same as my take with exercise. I was just talking about IVs and weird belts and massage devices and hyperoxic biohacks and all that jazz. But please remember that for the past two decades I have been out crushing it in just about every exercise environment possible, pushing my body to the limits. I'm not the guy that just like, you know, was born with wires coming out of my head, quote, cheating, unquote, on workouts by biohacking everything, right? So in my opinion, that's where I approach every. It's like do the hard thing first, right?

Yeah, so. Or the easy thing. Like really what it comes down to is you've spent a lot of time getting the big picture dialed in. You've got the stress under control, you've got your diet figured out, you've got your exercise in place and you have for a really long time. If you didn't have that stuff in place. Like having an IV isn't going to move the needle on its own.

Yes, preach it. Move the needle. I see what you did there. Yeah.

Listener Q and A.

Hi Ben, I'm currently training for a Spartan super and I have a question about nutrition. So I was at a talk by an exercise physiologist and he kept on stressing the importance of post workout carbs. He was saying 1 gram per kg of weight per hour of training immediately after. So in the two hours following your workout, he said this is the best time, showed some graphs and how it was the most important time, blah, blah, blah. I've heard you talk often about not not eating immediately after something to do with either growth hormone or testosterone. So I'm wondering if you could go into a little bit more detail on if carbs are actually needed after the workout. Keep up the great work. I follow and listen to your podcast religiously. Thanks for everything.

Oh, this belt feels so good. I'm still wearing it. Brock, this belt is still going. I think it has a safety timer on it that you're supposed to turn off so you don't burn yourself. But I just keep pushing right through it so my back is going to be scalded by the time this podcast is over. Third degree burns on nutrient timing the post exercise magical window. What do you think?

Oh man, we've been through this a bunch of times and we've never taken.

A deep dive though.

We've never done a deep dive. You did write about this. Oh man, this is back in probably 2012.

Yep, yep. Well, let's.

I think it was time to revisit it. So that's why I put this in here.

Right. So basically the strategy of post workout nutrition in a nutshell is that you want to maximize your exercise induced muscular adaptations and facilitate repair of damaged tissue and get those muscles chock full of glycogen during that quote, anabolic window of opportunity where you've got like this limited time that exists after you've trained because you have a huge amount of insulin sensitivity and blood flow and post workout protein synthesis capability after you've trained to optimize your training related adaptations. And so you can look at the different parameters that you're trying to achieve with post workout carbohydrates and evaluate based on actual true science whether or not it's actually worth it to go face stuff with carbohydrates after a workout so that you hit that magical Anabolic window. So glycogen repletion, right. Your storage carbohydrate, which is pretty essential for ATP production. Even in people who are following a high fat, low carb diet. You run out of glycogen. Yeah, you need some there and or creatine. And you're going to have a severely limited ability to engage in rapid ATP production because ATP production via beta oxidation of fats generates ATP but relatively slowly. And so there's also some evidence that glycogen mediates what's called intracellular signaling because it lowers something called amp K, Amp K And when you lower amp K it, that's basically it blunts a lot of energy consuming processes like the activation of MTOR and you know, catabolic processes like glycolysis and beta oxidation and protein degradation. Basically glycogen has been shown and restoration of glycogen levels has been shown to significantly lower catabolism. It's also probably why lowering your glycogen stores, training in a fasted state, training in a low carbohydrate state is somewhat catabolic. That actually activates this mtor and it enhances longevity in many cases by decreasing or I'm sorry, by increasing this level of amp K. But at the same time it kind of flies in the face of ultimate human performance. Right. So it's like that trade off between longevity and performance. There's a few other things like phosphorylation of protein kinase, which is extremely important for muscle protein synthesis that also is dependent on muscle glycogen content and restoration of glycogen levels. They've shown that delaying consumption of a meal post workout and delaying consumption by as little as two hours actually attenuates the rate of glycogen resynthesis by as much as 50%. Meaning you're missing out on like half of what you could be putting back into your body from a glycogen restoration and from an anabolic and from a protein synthesis standpoint. And if you are skipping post workout carbohydrates. However, the study and that type of research is done in people who exercise in a fasted state to complete exhaustion. Right. So our first takeaway is if you wake up fasted and trained to complete glycogen exhaustion, which is a pretty tough 60 to 90 minute training session in a fasted state, you are going to see a significant reduction in glycogen replenishment unless you actually eat within two hours of that workout. Now, at the same time, they've Also shown in that same scenario, right, in a fasted state where you work out to complete glycogen exhaustion, that if you just eat ad libitum according to appetite, you actually resynthesize all of your glycogen within approximately eight hours. And so what that means is that unless you're going to work out again within eight hours, even an exhaustive exercise session in the morning, it's not necessarily something that you need to eat right after as long as again you're not going to be working out again within the next eight hours. Now for me personally, I don't fast a lot in the morning because I do a little bit of morning activity. Typically I've got about a half hour to 45 minute long morning workout that I do. I do kind of an easy morning workout around sometime between 8 and 10am and then I also do a harder afternoon workout sometime between 4 and 6pm and and it's like on that eight hour cusp. And so I do actually have a meal in the morning, I have a breakfast at about 10am or so. And I feel a lot better in my afternoon workout when I do that because it's pushing pretty close to that eight hour mark. But if I weren't working out in the afternoon, I would be just dandy, you know, finishing up my morning workout and waiting until lunchtime to eat right, Because I'm gonna replenish all my glycogen levels for the next morning's workout easily, you know, within eight hours. So that's basically the idea with glycogen repletion, but it doesn't necessarily address this other idea of muscle protein synthesis. Meaning that the other reason that folks will argue for that anabolic window is because you have enhanced muscle protein synthesis and in many cases that's due to enhanced insulin sensitivity in that post workout state. Well, similarly, they've found that if you are completely fasted and you're coming out of a workout in a fasted state, that a workout that's been pretty exhausting and your blood levels of amino acids are low, it does actually downregulate muscle protein synthesis. However, if you've eaten anywhere in between about one to two hours prior to that workout session, your blood levels of amino acids stay high even after the workout, your body can rely upon those as a signal and as a source for muscle protein synthesis. And so what this means is that it if you're still burping up your pre workout meal, there's no need to rush off to get the post workout meal because your body still has high blood levels of amino acids from whatever you had before your workout. That's also why I'm a huge fan of if you are going to work out in a fasted state, you know, you're not going to get like a workout shake or, you know, some other form of protein afterwards. You take, you, you, you hack it, right? You use essential amino acids. You know, some people use branched chain amino acids. I'm a bigger fan of essential amino acids. You use essential amino acids. And this is, you know, this is like one of my best strategies for maintaining muscle with as much like fasting and calorie restriction as I personally do to, like, stay lean for races. I eat essential amino acids. I take the equivalent of up to 20 grams of those bad boys per day. That's like one of our flagship supplements over at Kion are the kion aminos. And I mean, I go through a copious number. Like, I literally have bottles of that in my pantry. And I will do a couple times a day, I'll drop in there and, like, chew 10 to 20 tablets of those and just munch them down, you know, getting the equivalent of a steak with almost no calories. And if I do that before a workout, there's no need for me to rush out andand eat right after the workout. And I can even do it after a workout, right, toto enhance muscle protein synthesis until I get my hands on actual calories. Right. So the idea is it's more important to look at what your blood levels of amino acids are than to necessarily look at a huge bolus of protein post workout. Uh, it's also important to look at what you ate prior to the workout. And if you did have, you know, adequate amount of protein prior to the workout, let's say you're doing a lunchtime workout and you had eggs for breakfast, you're probably gonna have decent amounts of blood amino acids and you don't have to again, drop everything to go eat. Unless your goal is to put on a lot of weight. And in bodybuilders or high school football players, you need to put on £20 or whatever. In many cases, you will find that just the amount of damn calories you need to eat necessitates multiple feeding windows. And one of the prime feeding windows in that case would be post workout. But unless you're really trying to get swole, you know, to get, as we say, 70s big, again, no need to drop the bar and go, you know, shovel the amino acids and the carbohydrates or the fructose and the maltodextrin down the hatch.

So you had an awesome conversation sort of along these same lines with a guy named Tyler LeBaron. Just recently, if anybody wants to go back and check out that podcast, you guys dove into the sort of staying fast, staying lean, but getting strong, and using the, the amino acids for those purposes as well. It's really interesting stuff.

Yep, exactly. So I'm a huge fan of amino acids for that. And ultimately what this comes down to is as follows. If you wake up and you're working out in a fasted state, and it's a significant workout that's taking you to glycogen depletion, then you should consume carbohydrates after that workout. If you plan on working out again within the next eight hours. If you don't plan on working out again within the next eight hours, the only reason to consume a post workout protein and carbohydrate rich meal would be because you're trying to put on size. In addition, when it comes to protein, if your blood levels of amino acids are high because of a meal you've eaten before the workout, or because of some kind of supplement that you've taken, such as amino acids, that would increase your blood levels of amino acids, there's no need to take advantage of that anabolic window by getting more protein into your system after the workout. Your blood levels of amino acids don't have to be that high, and frankly, your insulin sensitivity can stay high, especially after a difficult workout, for up to 24 hours. So this whole idea of that, that magical window is not as important as we've been led to believe that it is. But go ahead.

Can I ask you one, one thing to sort of round off this whole topic, which is, is there anything wrong with doing that, taking that one gram per kilogram of weight two hours after the workout? Is there anything bad that will happen?

Yes, you can blunt a growth hormone response and you can blunt a testosterone response. Right. You can blunt some of that hormonal response to exercise. You can also blunt some of the cellular autophagy and cellular cleanup that can occur. And I'm actually getting somebody on the podcast soon to really take a deep dive into cellular autophagy and the cool things that that signals and how you can tap into that in ways other than just say, fasting. But ultimately, yeah, you do miss out on some of the benefits that would be similar to what you would experience if you were, say, like intermittent fasting. So it's a fine line Right. I don't want all those, you know, females with 12% body fat who have missed their period six times in the past year to go out and skip their post workout meal because they heard Ben Greenfield say it would increase their growth hormone. Right. That's not the person who needs to be fasting post workout. They would probably benefit quite a bit from one of my big ass smoothies after workout. But if there are people who need to enhance their metabolic health who want to perhaps increase growth hormone and testosterone a little bit, and they have ample body fat percentages and, you know, they're not in like an overtrained, constantly catabolic state, those people may actually benefit from experimenting on how the body feels and what happens to their testosterone levels and what happens with their sleep, you know, due to the growth hormone release, all those other things, by not necessarily rushing out to prioritize their post workout cookie. So there you have it. Circadian rhythm seems to be a theme and most popular health podcast these days. So what do you suggest is the most efficient way in finding your personal circadian rhythm? Is it the oura ring or is there more than that or something else that gives you the best personalized circadian rhythm?

This is a topic that I'm completely fascinated with right now. Just because, well, the Nobel Prize in science or biology went to the people who really discovered, like, really dove into the whole circadian clock thing. Really, I just, I love this stuff.

I did not know that.

Yeah.

So you're saying I got, I got, I got to get into sleep if I want to win that Nobel.

Exactly. Well, although they already won it, so now you got to find something else.

Okay, well, maybe mine will be, maybe mine will be smoothies or. Sure, I'll get the Nobel Prize in biohacking. One drink, infrared and vibration. So chronotype, that's just your, you know, essentially it's the. It's defined as the behavioral manifestation of circadian rhythms on a myriad of different physical processes. So it would be, you know, what time you feel like falling asleep at any particular time during a 24 hour period. Right. How much eveningness you have versus how much morningness you have and how your, what they call clock genes actually work. Your body has clock genes, your brain has clock genes, and these regulate your hormone levels and your metabolic function and your body temperature and your cognition and your sleep habits. And they're influenced by what are called zeitge. I love to use that word when I want to sound like a smart German. Zeitgebers. Zeitge. That Would be like light, light feeding and feeding times, social behavior. And when you're engaging in social behavior and sex, work schedules, school schedules, movement, all of these feed into your, your chronotype and your chrono biological regulation. Did you. I was gonna say your, your biological regulation, but I threw chronobiological regulation in there, so I sound even smarter.

You made it even fancier.

Yeah. And humans are controlled by, by their biological clocks. We're. We're diurnal creatures. That means we're active at daytime. And we are, we are pretty significantly controlled by these clocks. So we are.

We should be, anyway.

Yeah. And, and so there's different ways to determine what your particular chrono type is. You know, when you're going to release more melatonin, what kind of genetic variants you have that would cause you to be a morning versus an evening person. What time is going to be best for you to sleep during the nights? You know, 10 to 6am like I am, or a midnight to 8am or 3am to 11am Brock, what are you, by the way?

I'm like you. I'm ten to six.

Yeah, ten to ten to sixer. Ten to sixer, baby. Anyways, though, and it can change. You can adjust that slightly. One of the ways that I, for example, work my chronobiology is I have a very set morning routine. I expose myself to copious amounts of natural light at a specific time, I move at a specific time, I eat at a specific time. And regularity and habit is actually pretty important for circadian rhythm. It's why after a long period of time traveling, or one of the reasons why, I'll have trouble falling asleep for a good three to five days before I get back into my chronobiology routine. So, you know, and so it's pretty important for hormone balance and appetite regulation and recovery and a whole host of factors. And probably the world's leading expert on this has been on my podcast, Dr. Michael Bruce. He wrote a book called the Power of Win. And in the Power of when he defines four different chronotypes that I at first thought were cheesy.

They're a little bit cheesy, but they're fun.

The dolphin, the lion, the bear, and the wolf. And then I realized these things are actually steeped in science in this behavioral manifestation of the biological clock. And so like the bear, that's about half the population, right. Middle of the spectrum. The 10 to sixers, you know, rise and sleep with the sun, kind of match the solar schedule and do pretty good with normal like 9 to 5 type of work hours. And there's the lion. And this would be like the Navy seal, the CEO, the manager, the drill sergeant. These are the people who wake up at like 4am Right, and go to bed frankly in most cases pretty early. There's the dolphin. And the dolphin would be the people who basically can do well in just about any chronotype. They can sleep in abnormal situations. They also tend to struggle quite a bit with insomnia and other sleep disorders. Interestingly enough, they, they sleep. And in his book he gets into the science of this, but he delves into how they sleep what's called uni hemispherically. Basically they how dolphins sleep unihemispherically and that leaves part of their brain functioning at all times, keeping them alert for other predators. And some humans are kind of like hardwired to be extreme worriers. Probably has also to do with the COMT gene, which I talked with Dr. Ben lynch about when I had him on the show. But some people sleep as dolphins, you know, just kind of all over the map. Then there's the wolves, right? Those are the tend to be the creative types, the bartenders, the security guards, the musicians, you know, the night owls who kind of like would stand guard while everybody else sleeps. You know the. So Dr. Bruce gets into this in his book, you know how the best time to eat breakfast and the best time for like a bear to have coffee would be at 10am because we get a natural surge in cortisol anyways around like 6 or 7am and how like for a wolf, late dinner, like 9pm ish dinner would be better than like an early dinner, et cetera. He gets into the whole chronobiology and I'll link to the podcast that I did with him. But there are ways that you can actually determine your own personal chronobiology. For example, Sheridan asks about the OURA ring. The OURA ring, I wear it. And this brand new version that they've come out with. It actually allows you to study or to measure the variations in everything from your body temperature to your heart rate variability to your heart rate to your activities based on the actual time of day. And based on that, it gives you circadian alignment guidance by tracking your long term data based on your sleep and your recovery levels, your hrv, your activity, your body temperature. It then gives you your personal circadian rhythm and helps you to align your lifestyle to it. That just sounded like a giant commercial, didn't it?

No.

A little bit, yeah, a little. But it's actually, it's kind of important like soso. Yeah you can use thesethese new wearables to actually figure out what your unique chronotype is. There are also websites you were telling me about one website brock mycircadianclock.org and it's kind of similar and I'll link to this and I'll also link to Dr. Michael Bruce's chronotype quiz that he has online. But this my circadian clock. It's an app and what they do is you ask certain, you answer certain questions like when you're eating, when you're sleeping. Kind of similar to like what the ring is doing on an automated basis. But after 10 days of collecting data, this MyCircadianClock app, which again we'll link to this over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com 381 it begins to tell you like when would be the best time for you to have breakfast? When would be the best time for you to have dinner? When would be the best time for you to sleep. It's like your mommy telling you when to nap and when to eat.

Little mother in your phone, a little.

Radiation inducing mother in your pocket.

Totally. The thing I thought was really cool about this one is actually by downloading the app you become part of a research study that's happening at the Salk Institute. So you're actually feeding. Like not only is it benefiting you, but you're also benefiting the, the scientists who are looking into this.

They do amazing research. That's, that's Sachin Pandas Institute. He's pretty cool. We, we were both speaking over in Iceland. He's a cool cat. But the one thing I don't like about him is he feels that any coffee, any supplements, anything interferes with the livers. Like the liver is a pretty important organ when it comes to your body's clock. And he says like if you want your especially the chrono biological rhythm of your liver to be exactly how it's supposed to operate, then it doesn't count anything that goes into your mouth if you're fasting. So like bone broth, fast having coffee, if you're fasting, like doing intermittent fasting but still waking up in the morning and having some supplements. He says all of that breaks the fast. Damn you Sachin Panda. Damn you. And making me guilty about my morning coffee because I'm trying to live a long time through intermittent fasting. Other than that, he's cool.

But don't hate the man, just hate the Message.

Yeah, screw him. All right, so check out those resources. We'll put those in the show notes. Read the book. The power of when you could use the ring. Take that. MyCircadianClock.org, but that's how you would find your own personal circadian rhythm. Unless you. You just kind of know that you're a night owl, in which case, flip on some family guy, stay up late, sleep in, enjoy life, because you're a wolf, baby. You're a wolf.

You can do that was the worst nice one foul I've ever done.

I heard from Dr. Mercola that turmeric blocks the iron absorption, and my iron and ferritin is low, and I take a fair amount of turmeric. I'm wondering if I take them at very different times, like take the turmeric before bed, if that will allow me to absorb the iron from the food I eat and the liver pills I take. Thank you.

Hey, Ben, how do you say turmeric? Do you say turmeric?

Well, I usually say it tumeric. My wife says it like this. Ben, our comforter has yellow stains on it again. Were you eating turmeric in bed? Which I actually, you know, I put turmeric on stuff, and I was mentioning that organifi. Golden milk juice. Like, I. I have stained our bed multiple times with turmeric. I will admit I've been that person. I don't. I don't have psoriasis and inflammation of the liver. That's not why my skin is yellow. It's yellow because I'm usually eating something with turmeric in it, and I've spilled it on myself, smeared it on my face.

Kind of like the. The Cheeto fingers.

Just like the Cheeto fingers, but for healthy people. Darn. Dr. Mercola, he says that turmeric blocks the absorption of iron. And Mia has low iron and low ferritin, and she takes a fair amount of turmeric.

Turmeric.

So she's asking if she takes her liver pills at a different time than her turmeric. Well, that allow the iron turmeric. Well, I looked into this, and so here's. Here's the deal with turmeric. Turmeric, turmeric and iron. They did one study in which they found that curcumin may impair iron status when fed to mice for six months in extremely high doses. They were feeding them 0.2% of their total dietary intake. That's a lot. I mean, this would be multiple tablespoons of. Not turmeric, but Curcumin, the isolated extract, concentrated extract of curcumin. And they did indeed find that what they call liver hepcidin and ferritin expression was strongly suppressed in these curcumin fed mice. It did what's called a chelation of the actual iron, a significant reduction in iron from a huge amount of curcumin. So there's that it has like this anticoagulant activity and it can contribute to iron deficiency and potentially ferritin deficiency as well, in this case, in very, very high doses, a potentially adverse biological effect on iron. Considering that there are some new supplements out there that put curcumin in, like a micelle or a liposome to enhance absorption, you could argue that even less than what they were giving to these mice with these modern supplements could cause the same effect. But then I looked at another study in which they used actual turmeric, right? Not the high dose curcumin, but just actual turmeric. And they also looked at chili, both of which are rich in what are called phenolic compounds. And so theoretically, those would be expected to bind iron in the intestine and inhibit iron absorption. The chili, it turns out, did indeed do this. So I would say chili might be a bigger fish to fry, like doing a lot of chilies and chili peppers versus turmeric, which did not do this. Turmeric did not affect iron absorption. So when we look at curcumin, high dose, yes. When we look at turmeric, no. When we look at chilies, just a, you know, a decent intake of a lot of chili vegetables, no. So that's something to potentially worry about. Now, turmeric actually, ironically enough, has iron in it, but it also has a lot of flavonoids in it and it has a lot of tannins in it. And those could bind to iron molecules and they could block absorption. So I see where, you know, where a guy like Dr. Mercola is coming from. And we have seen that high levels of flavonoid compounds in vegetables and fruits and tannin rich beverages like teas and coffees may actually inhibit iron absorption. But again, when they've actually studied this with turmeric, they have not found it to cause a decrease in iron absorption. Now, there are certain things that can decrease iron absorption. So just to clarify here, you've got two forms of iron, your heme iron, and that's your readily absorbed form of iron you're going to find in shellfish and red meat and poultry and fish. And then non heme iron, which you'll find in mostly in plant foods. And so when you look at things that would enhance the ability to absorb iron, first of all, a lot of vegans and vegetarians have lower iron period because the non heme iron is harder to absorb. But certain things can enhance absorption. Vitamin C can, citric acid similarly can do that. So if you're vegan or vegetarian, that would help out. Anytime you consume plants with meat, beef, poultry, salmon, pork, it enhances the absorption of not just the heme iron from the meat, but the non heme iron from the plants. So being omnivorous is obviously the best bet when it comes to your iron levels. And the flip side of the coin is the things that can inhibit iron absorption. High intake of grains and legumes which have high amounts of phytic acid, excuse me, phytic acid in them, which can inhibit absorption. High, high amounts of egg protein. Right. Like doing like the 12 egg omelet, that could interfere with iron absorption. So me is, if me is doing the rocky raw eggs in the smoothie, that might not be the best thing. Like I mentioned, tannic acid from teas, coffee, cacao. High, high intake of fiber could potentially do it. And you could get a lot of that back in obviously by eating meat. Cooking with iron cookware, that's a really, really good one. Like cast iron cookware. I love egg yolks. Whereas egg protein can inhibit the absorption of iron. What they found is that when you add a whole bunch of egg yolks in, that doesn't happen. Right. So egg yolks would be a good strategy or just eating the whole egg rather than just egg whites. Iron fortified cereals have been shown to help, but I'm not a big fan of that just because of all the other crap. You know, a lot of times they'll add like folic acid into those, which is horrible for people who have methylation issues who might develop really high levels of homocysteine from, you know, a fortified processed packaged food. So I wouldn't go with iron fortified, fortified foods as much as I would be careful not to consume tannin rich foods and phytate rich goods, grains at the same time as your iron. I wouldn't do high, high dose curcumin, especially at the same time as your iron. I wouldn't do a lot of coffees and teas at the same time as your iron. But I'd say you could still include a lot of turmeric in your diet because of the host of benefits of turmeric and you would probably not experience a big decrease in your in your iron stores. Hey Ben, big fan of all your work. I personally consume your signature smoothie every morning and I was wondering what you take in the mornings when making the smoothie is just not an option due to traveling and whatnot. Thank you.

And do you actually have a signature smoothie? I feel like you change it up.

So I have a signature ish smoothie. Let me, let me walk you through this. First of all, the time that you blend your ingredients is incredibly important. If you want the, the texture of like a Wendy's Frosty or you want a very thick pudding like texture, you both blend the smoothie for a long period of time. We're talking like 90 seconds up to three minutes in a good blender, you know, Vitamix or a Blendtec or like a good height. Not like one of those dinky little like cheapo kitchenaid. Like a good blender that's gonna really blend it hard. You add some vitamin C to it so you don't oxidize a lot of the contents. Like the squeeze of half of a lemon. You keep it cold so you don't oxalize a lot of the content. So I'll either use a very cold kind of like slushy texture bone broth, like bone broth that I'll take out of the freezer the night before and refrigerate overnight or just lots of ice if I'm not using bone broth as my main mix. So we've got cold, we've got vitamin C, we've got blending for a long time. And then you can add an emulsifying agent. If you want a really thick pudding like texture. This would be like an organic sunflower lecithin, right? That's a thickener, it's an emulsifier. And that would be something you could add in one to two tablespoons of. After that, it's a matter of just choosing your ingredients. So for example, I always put a couple scoops of some kind of like a protein or collagen in there. Whether it's like, you know, a whey protein, hemp protein, rice pea protein, just regular old collagen that I'll add some stevia and cacao to to sweeten up a bit. But, but a few scoops of something that's going to deliver to me around 20 to 30 grams of like a good protein source. And in addition to that, I put some Ceylon cinnamon in it to control blood sugar and my insulin response. I put some like a really good Sea salt in there. And then I blend all of that up. You know, while it's blending, I'm. I'm running around grabbing my other ingredients, my toppings that go in after it's blended, right? So it's all blended. My stevia, my. And by the way, if I'm not doing like that frozen ish bone broth with vitamin C, I instead do like, like a really good superfood tea like pal Diarco bark tea or coconut milk or macadamia nut milk. Or occasionally, you know, if this is later in the day, like coconut water, just. Just some kind of liquid other than water to blend it up in. And so I blend all that, and then to the top, I'll just kind of grab whatever looks good. Sometimes it's coconut flakes, unsweetened coconut flakes, like Bob's Red Mill and sweetened coconut flakes. Sometimes that coconut cereal from Thrive that I talked about. Handful of energy bits like spirulina or chlorella, cacao nibs. You know, sometimes I'll like, break open an energy bar. I have this weird thing where I keep energy, like protein bars in my freezer because I like them like, like super duper crunchy. And I'll break open or cut up a few of those, put those in. You know, it's about 800 calories by the time I put my crunchies on top of my smoothie. Then I. I use a spatula and transfer all that into a bowl or a mug, and I eat it like a. You know, like those acai bowls that you can get at restaurants. Oh, yeah, it's just like. It's like an acai bowl, but it's, you know, it's.

It's all with no acai stuff.

And a lot of times I'll put wild plants in there like cilantro, parsley, thyme, nettle, mint. I used to do a ton of wild plants. Like I mentioned earlier, I've stepped back on that a little bit because I think I was doing too many plants. So not quite as many plants as I used to do, but still, you know, a lot of. A lot of plant matter as well. So when I travel, I don't travel with 18 different superfoods in a blender, however.

What.

Thus, I have these little modifications that I make when I travel. So, for example, in my pantry, I've got a bunch of different meal replacement blends, or I'll take those same protein powders I talked about, put them in Ziploc bags, and I'll go up to Like a Starbucks, right? Tell the person at Starbucks I just want a glass of water and I'll just like dump a little bit of that powder into the water. And then I also have another Ziploc bag that'll have like almonds or dark chocolate or, you know, like those coconut chunks I was talking about or energy bits or whatever. I put those on top. I stir that up with a spoon to like a pudding, like, texture. And that's how I do something like my smoothie on the fly if I were in an airport. I also will do similar thing in my hotel room, right. I'll grab the. The glasses of water that they keep or the glasses that they keep next to the, like the bathroom sink, right. So I go with those. So it seems all sophisticated compared to the little paper cups next to the little coffee maker that's besides the tv. And I'll. I usually have a spoon and I'll just put all my little powders in there and stir it up with some, some water and then put like some. Some chunks of whatever I happen to have like spirulina or dark chocolate or. Or whatever. M M's from the hotel minibar.

M&Ms?

Yeah, usually not the M&M's.

The most expensive M and Ms. In the world.

Shot of vodka. Yeah, yeah, $12 shot of vodka anyways, though, so. So a lot of times I'm just like mixing stuff into a glass and stirring with a spoon rather than a blender. And. And that actually works really well for me. It satiates my appetite, you know. So just let me give you some brand names, for example. So I might have like, Ample, which is a meal replacement blend that's like, pretty ketogenic, friendly with a high amount of resistant starch in it. I've interviewed them on the show. Or Ambronite, which is slightly more carbohydrate rich, but a big superfood blend from Finland. Right. So I'll have a bottle of Ample or a packet of Ambernite in my bag, and I'll dump that into the cup and then I'll add my Crunchies on top, you know, once I've added some water to that to stir it up. Another example might be like a ketogenic meal. I'm actually working right now for Kion on developing, like, a really good ketogenic rich meal replacement blend that's just basically, you know, a host of exogenous ketones with, you know, the. Essentially the composition of human breast milk. But you can, you know, you can consume it without hunting Down a human with a breast. Instead, it just is in a packet shaped like a boob.

Never hunt humans.

That's not exactly with a nipple on top of it. That's how you. That's how you open it. You squeeze the nipple and twist. It's a titty twister.

Oh, dear.

Yeah. Makes your. Your meal entertaining anyways, though. So those are examples, and I'll put a whole host of other, like, powders that I travel with over in the show notes and also an article on. On, like, exogenous ketones that you could travel with. Now, a lot of times when I am traveling, one of my favorite things to do is I combine my morning movement, because a lot of times I'll fast in the morning with just hunting down a place where I can go and grab, like, like a really low sugar bowl, right? Like, a lot of these places. Like, like, if I'm in ever in la, like, if I'm near Venice beach or. Or near, like, an erwan, like, or if I'm in Malibu and you're like a Sunlife Organics or, you know, if I'm near a Whole Foods. In some cities, they a lot of times have these, like, juice or smoothie bars. You can go get a bowl similar to, like, in a side bowl, and I'll have them do like, my own version of that. Like, I'll have maybe add some, like, you know, some raw organic yogurt and some, you know, macadamia nuts and Brazil nuts and just kind of customize a bowl for myself. And that's, like, my workout where, like, I'll hunt down any Whole Foods. Usually my limit is about three miles. That's about the. The most I'll walk, right? Because, you know, and sometimes I'll walk there and lazy. I'll walk there with my laptop, work for a while, and Uber back if I got to get into a conference or something. But, yeah, a lot of times I'll hunt down a grocery store, walk to the grocery store in the sunshine in the same way that our ancestor would have walked to hunt down a deer, but instead I'm hunting down a. An acai bowl. And, you know, you get your sunshine walk. You hunt down the grocery store. You know, go. Sometimes I'll go to, like, a Trader Joe's, which doesn't have a bar, but it does have, like, I can buy macadamia nuts. I can go down into the frozen food section and grab some of those fantastic little coconut flesh chunks that they have, which is literally just coconut flesh, and make myself like a bowl with that. But usually it's similar to what I do at home without the blender. I mean, that's, that's the best way I can describe it. So. And I'll either make the weird mix at the grocery store, I'll make the weird mix back in my hotel room and eat it with a spoon. And it's, it's entertaining. It's like a party in your mouth. And that's really what I do when I'm traveling. And a lot of times when I'm traveling, I don't have a chance to exercise as much because I am speaking at a conference or because I'm more at the whim of other people's schedules when I'm traveling. And because of that, I often do just not eat any breakfast at all. And I'll travel with some of the, like the four Sigmatic mushroom coffee packets and just make myself like a chaga mushroom coffee and have that. And sometimes I'll, you know, I'll dump a little bit of the like on. It has like an emulsified MCT oil that I can dump into that or stir into that. And I'll just do something like that. Or I'll use like some of the bulletproof, like the, the brain octane or something to, to get like, get a few calories into the cup and I'll just roll with that until lunch. So, you know, I'll. I use a lot of different strategies, but really, you know, I don't, I don't stray too much from just like the, the giant ass cup full of weird things, if that makes sense.

Totally makes sense. I do the same sort of thing. But no, I do a lot of the, the fasting because most of the time you're staying in a hotel and I don't stay in the fanciest hotels in the world. So it's often that little, that little bar, you know, where you can go and make your own pancakes in the basement of the like, Super 8.

And if I am, if I am in like Japan or Europe, I mean, European and Asian hotels have amazing breakfast, I am going to be like stuffing my face with freaking salmon and lox and tomatoes and capers and the miso soup and the, the sausages and the bacon and the eggs, pretty much like every cuisine and every ethnic food known to man, I just put all that onto a plate. I eat it and I have horrible gas and heartburn and just feel like I literally ate a Thanksgiving dinner the rest of the day. But it's, it's so, so Worth it. Worth it. So worth it. Everybody needs a heart attack on a plate for breakfast every once in a while.

Every once in a while is the key.

Yes. All right, so that all being said, let's go ahead and give away something amazing to one of the people who has left us an itunes review. Fitness Ben left us a five star review, says I love it. And if you leave us a review on itunes, just go to itunes, leave a few stars, tell us what you like about the show, and if you hear your review read on the show, we'll send you a handy dandy gear pack, chock full of a beanie. Some other surprises. Bpa, free water bottle, a nice tech T shirt that looks really nice. No matter what kind of body you have, this T shirt transforms you into Iron man, Batman. Who has the best body? Which superhero?

Captain America?

Catwoman. Yeah. All right, well, let's take this one away, Fitness Ben. Here we go. Oh, and by the way, email your T shirt size to gear@greenfield fitness systems.com and we'll hook you up, baby.

Wait, is. Is he Fitness Ben or are you Fitness Ben?

Does he uses. Doesn't Brock read the damn review?

Okay, Fitness Ben, whoever the hell that is, is as legit as it gets. His copious. I love that he like put that in quotation marks too, because I think you said copious at least 15 times in this episode. His copious amount of knowledge is staggering. He's a tad. Oh dear. He's a tad cocky.

Yeah, baby, just.

Just a tad. That's okay though, because he has a good sense of humor. If you listen to his show, you will learn a ton about health and fitness and general well being. As an added bonus, usually every other episode, oh man. He will let you know about his explosive lovemaking session he had with his wife. So there's that.

Is any lovemaking session not explosive? I mean, to some. Well, it really should. Unless you're one of those crazy tantric sex, reverse orgasm, no ejaculation people.

Perhaps, perhaps. But. But seriously, been listening to him for almost a year and have gained a ton of insight and knowledge into things I was unaware about. Unaware of, unaware about.

I'm copious and cocky, baby. I'll take it.

Copious and cocky.

Copy Copious Cocky explosive podcast. All right, well, folks, we're going to put the links to everything from all sorts of healthy breakfast travel ideas to the chronotype quiz, to the amino acids, the research studies we talked about. All that's going to be over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 381 somehow it magically appears after every episode. We magically make it happen for you. So check that out, grab your discount codes, come see me at PaleoFX, check out the show notes to get the rest of the calendar and see where else in the world I will be at. And until next time, Brock Top of the day.

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

Sa.