The Potato Diet, How To Biohack Your Office, How Much Liver Is Too Much & More!

In this episode, is the potato diet healthy? How to biohack your office, how much liver is too much? Natural remedies for receding gums, itchy skin after hard workouts, and much more.

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

So it's really early. We're getting rolling here, and I gotta say, I'm still a little bit hungover because yesterday was Canada Day.

Oh, Canada Day.

Did you sort of like Independence Day like you guys have? But it's much more polite.

Ah, you mean you don't have a bunch of drunk rednecks out lighting off fireworks and.

Oh, no, no, we've got that.

Small animals on fire.

Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of burnt beavers.

Yesterday I will be burnt beavers. I think that's, that's not a euphemism. I'll be driving my kids over, over the border, the Washington, Idaho border today to get fireworks. The, the Idahoans come over here to buy marijuana. We go over there to buy fireworks.

News flashes.

I've been keeping a close eye on twitter.com BenGreenfield over the last few days because there's been some, some interesting stuff you've been posting, some cool stuff.

There has been, and I like this one. This is a tweet that I sent out a couple of days ago. That exercise can make you smart, but exercising too long can make you stupid. And this was a study that was done in Taiwan. I don't know if that changes any perceptions of the study because they're all kind of smart cookies over there. I don't know, is that racist? For me to say that's racist in.

The good way, yeah.

Well, there is that whole just like, you know, smart Asian stereotype that's out there, right? So apparently when, when the Taiwanese exercise for too long, they get stupid and that may affect the rest of us as well. This was a test of cognitive abilities using something called the Stroop test, where you identify the color of color words flashing on the screen. I don't know if you've done this test before, Brock, but what they do is they'll like flash the word green across the screen in green letters, but sometimes they'll flash the word green across the screen in different colors.

And that's a. Lumosity has that same test.

Yeah, the Lumosity phone app. Yeah. Lumosity tests like six different elements of your cognitive performance. And this particular one is a measurement of executive control.

So I suppose also a measurement of whether you're colorblind or not. I suck at that one because I'm totally colorblind.

As anyone who has hung out with you and seen the shirts that you wear knows.

Anyway, so they did this Stroop test.

They did this droop test and what they found out was that the sweet spot was about 30 minutes. And then once you exceed 30 minutes and you get closer to 60 minutes of exercise, your cognitive performance, especially on this Stroop test, decreases. So it turns out that exercising for too long could potentially be cognitively fatiguing. And we all know that exercise can increase levels of brain activity, this brain derived neurotrophic factor. So it can cause growth of brain neurons and help with learning, help with cognitive performance during the day. But the takeaway lesson here is don't go out and do a brutal workout when you need your mental faculties around, but keep things kind of short and sweet.

Nice.

Yeah.

I did a 30 minute run before we started recording this, so I should be at my peak of smartness.

There we go. I strained in the bathroom for five minutes and then wandered in. So I'm right there with you. My isometric contractions. Here's another one for you. Can eating a big.

What are you doing in there, baby? Just doing some isometric contractions. No problem.

So here's another one. Eating a big steak before bed. Can it help you to sleep? Because there's a lot of talk out there about whether or not like high protein intake before bed can, can help you to sleep. And this was a really interesting study that was over@BioHacksBlog.com and what they reported on was a study in which they gave people glycine proteins. And here's the really interesting thing. We don't eat many glycine rich proteins anymore in a typical westernized diet or a typical meat rich diet. So this actually came up when we were talking about the whole red meat cancer study that popped up a few weeks ago. The deal with animal meat, especially like a traditional steak or burger or something like that, is it's very high in a couple of amino acids, one called methionine and one called tryptophan, but it's really low in something called glycine. And organ meats are the complete opposite Organ meats like liver and heart and kidney and stuff like that, they're high in glycine but low in methionine. And what happens is when you eat foods like steak that are high in methionine or high in tryptophan but low in glycine, you're actually getting a little bit of an amino acid imbalance, meaning that from an ancestral standpoint, our hunter gatherer ancestors would have incorporated what are called the gelatinous regions of the body, like the bone broth and the skin and tendons and ligaments and discs and bone marrow and organ meats, rather than just eating the lean muscle, which, frankly, often got fed to the dogs. So the idea here is that in this study, they gave the isolated amino acid glycine, which you'd find in more of these ancestral meats, to people prior to bed, and noticed a significant improvement in sleep quality. They gave them about 3 grams of glycine versus a placebo before bed at night. And so it turns out that having protein before bed could theoretically improve sleep quality. But if you're going to use that type of strategy and you're gonna not go out and buy, like a glycine supplement, I'm all about using whole foods versus supplements. When you can, it would be a good idea to make sure that you eat more of an ancestral food. So literally, like a cup of bone broth before you go to bed at night. If you have difficulty sleeping, maybe just the thing for you.

How about some liver pate?

Just what the sleep doctor ordered. Yeah, liver pate, bone broth, fish that. That still has, like, the spine and organs inside, which sounds kind of gross, but you could do, like, whole sardines in the can where you get little sardine brains and eyes and all that good stuff. So eat some sardine brains and hit the sack.

Nice.

And then finally, here's one that I tweeted about something not to eat. This study came out just this month in the European Journal of Sports Science, and it looked at carbohydrate availability during exercise. And what they did was they specifically looked at key cell signaling, what are called kinases and transcription factors, things that can help muscles to repair and recover and help to enhance the fitness response to a workout. And what they noted in this study was that when you train in a condition of reduced carbohydrate availability, not only do you improve fat oxidation, but you up regulate the activity of these enzymes that are responsible for improving fitness. So it's kind of like this whole train low. Well, there's some people that say train low, race high when it comes to carbohydrates. Then you get like the people who arewho use ketosis, you know, like I've experimented with in the past, which is kinda like a train low, race low type of approach. But ultimately what it looks like is whether or not you plan on eating carbohydrates during say like a long event or a race, you know, triathlon, marathon, etc. You're still gonna benefit from doing a few workouts in a state of reduced carbohydrate availability just so you upregulate some of these enzymes responsible for improving fitness. So the study goes into way more than that, or the paper goes into way more than that. But it's really interesting. I'll link to it in the show notes for this episode over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 286 but it's worth checking out. It's really interesting.

Listener Q and A.

Hi Ben and Brock. My name's Becky. Last year I had my wisdom teeth out and I ended up eating mainly mashed potatoes for about a week while my mouth healed. And surprisingly I felt very healthy and satisfied and ended up losing a bit of weight during that week. I've come across some forums where people do potato fasts as a way to lose weight while still providing their bodies with necessary micronutrients. There seems to be quite a bit of research on the subject as well, most of which has been positive. I'm wondering what your thoughts are on consuming a diet with majority of calories coming from potatoes. It seems like a frugal and overall healthy way of eating and certainly worked to keep my Irish ancestors alive. Thank you.

I've heard of the potato famine before.

Yeah, this is basically like a self inflicted potato famine. Sounds horrible. It does sound horrible. I told my wife that somebody called in a question to the podcast about the potato diet and she said it just sounded like the worst thing on the face of the planet when I described it to her. So here's how the potato diet goes. You eat mostly potatoes and the original potato diet was called the Potato Reset and I think that's great. The potato Reboot or Reset. Basically you eat potatoes for a week. 90% of your calories come from just potatoes.

These are like fully dressed potatoes, regular roll, sour cream, bacon bits, chives.

No, you are allowed. You are allowed. Spices, salt, pepper and vinegar. Okay, so that's it. That's like the traditional potato. So you can put that stuff on the potato. You eat between 2 and 4 pounds of potato daily. And those are cooked and they're cooled so that the potato's level of resistant starch, which is the type of starch, is a little bit more resistant to digestion, but that's still kind of ferments in your gut that's enhanced when you cook the potato and then you cool it. You get unlimited amounts of coffee, tea, and water. And you can continue to take any normal supplements you would usually take. Intermittent fasting, especially by skipping breakfast, is encouraged on the potato diet. And then the other thing, I have.

A feeling that would be just the natural reaction the fourth time that you look at a potato that day, be like, oh, I'm just gonna fast, whatever.

Skipping breakfast would not be hard for me if I was limited to potatoes only. And then lifting heavy things is discouraged. So that kind of.

Well, I guess that makes sense.

Yeah. I personally don't get that motivated to go lift heavy things if I've been forced to eat potatoes for a week.

Just eating cold starch.

Yeah. So basically the idea behind this is that it is supposed to cause you to kind of eat less of the foods that might be unhealthy for you because you get a lot less food reward, obviously, from potatoes. So you're less likely to overeat those as well. Two to four pounds of potatoes is actually not that many calories. You do tend to be in a calorie restricted state on this diet. You get the resistant starch from the potatoes, which is supposed to be good for your gut flora, and it causes the formation of what's called butyrate, which helps fatty acids to get formed as you get the fermentation of these resistant starches, and that produces a bunch of fatty acids. So technically, you can go into ketosis on this. On this potato diet as well.

Crazy.

Now, potatoes themselves some people get concerned about because of some of the potential digestive inhibitors and phytates that are in potatoes. But the basic idea is that potatoes are the reproductive organ of the potato plant. And anytime we look at, like a seed or reproductive organ, they have defenses against predators, including humans, from eating them, so that they could potentially get pooped out basically and grow somewhere else. So basically, a potato does have natural toxic chemical defenders on the outside of it, specifically on the skin. And it has a high amount of what are called glycoalkaloids on the skin. And these help the potato plant to repel pests, and they help it to be a little bit resistant to digestion over and above the actual resistant starch that you might get. So when you consume these glycolids, they could potentially cause a little bit of inflammation, they could cause some bowel upset, Especially in someone who has leaky gut, like someone who maybe has, has been under a lot of stress or has been eating a poor diet. Those glycoalkaloids might actually be pretty aggravating to the gut. That's the main issue with potatoes. If we're not talking about potatoes that are like fried in vegetable oil or have a bunch of sour cream added to them or something like that. Now, the potato form that's the lowest in glycolids is the russet potato. And then of course, you could, in addition to just using like a russet potato, peel the potatoes to get the skin and the glycoids off of them. And I actually make that recommendation to folks who have like, immune issues, leaky gut, stuff like that. Anyways, if you're gonna eat potatoes, it's a good idea to peel the potatoes, whether it's a sweet potato or a yam or regular potato or whatever. Potato head. So the idea here though is that, you know, potatoes are a pretty basic form of food food. They're not incredibly full of nutrients, They've got a really low calorie density, and they actually fill you up pretty, pretty well. But I mean, when you look at the nutrient profile of these, you're going to be missing out on a lot of micronutrients, on some of your minerals. And I personally am not a fan at all of any type of diet that is incredibly restrictive, like the cabbage soup diet or the potato diet or the lemon juice cayenne cleanse. You know, if somebody comes out with like the steak diet, I could probably handle that, the T bone steak diet. But ultimately, like, even though you could do it, it's probably not going to hurt you short term to do a potato diet for a week. Honestly, you know, it takes a good 30 days before excessive calorie restriction begins to affect your metabolism in a negative way. You could try this out. It's not going to hurt you, especially if you peel the potatoes or you use like a low glycoalkaloid, like a russet potat. But man, it just sounds boring as hell. And I'm just not a huge fan of overly restricted diets. I don't know. What do you think, Brock?

Well, I just, I can't help but think of the early explorers, like when they'd be out on their ships when they're like discovering the new worlds they ended up running out of food a lot and would eat potatoes, like, for weeks and weeks on end, and they all ended up with scurvy. Yeah. And that's the first thing that pops into my head is like, well, you could do a potato fast, but you might lose your teeth due to scurvy.

Yeah, that. And they had to, like, you know, bury grandpa halfway across the country as they traveled in their covered wagon, you know, getting chased by, you know, Buffalo. Yeah, by. Yeah. Huge buffalo. And I don't know, just like. Yeah. I think emulating the diets of our ancestors in some cases may not be a possibility.

The greatest idea in this case.

So there you go.

Hello. So I just got an office job for the first time in many years, and it's a great place, but it's a very corporate. Lots of cubes, lots of people, lots of dirty electricity, EMF signals, WiFi, you know, the works. So my question is, Ben, if you were to work in an office, if it just was completely unavoidable for you, what would your days look like? What things would you bring into the office to help mitigate some of those toxins?

Yeah.

Just walk through a whole day. I want to know, what would Ben do?

Thanks.

So I think we need to make the T shirt now. What would Ben do?

What would Ben do? The wbwd in an office job. Okay, so here's the deal. The very, very first thing that you got to realize is that. And I think I might be preaching to the choir to our podcast listeners here, but basically, it doesn't matter how much exercise you do at the end of the day, if you have your butt planted in a chair for eight hours a day or for two hours at any given time. So before you start to delve into all the little biohacks that I'll tell you about here, the most important thing is that you freaking just get off your butt and go back and listen.

To the Katie Bowman episode. What was it called? I can't remember what you guys talked.

About, where we talked about different positions, standing positions that you can be in.

Yeah, yeah, just do a search for Katie Bowman.

Yeah, Like, I have a poster that. That's hanging on my wall that shows about 50 different positions that you could be in during the workday. And, you know, it's every. So I'll alternate from standing to standing with a leg up on a stool, to lying on the floor with my laptop, to lounging on the couch, to going into a seated position, to wandering outside, to going back into a standing position. You may not Be able to do all of that at your office job, especially if you're in a cubicle. But you can at least kneel, you can get into a lunging position, you can get into like a cross legged position on your chair and you can kind of shift throughout the day. But even more importantly than that, if you can, if you can slip away, you know, whether it's, it's at multiple intervals throughout the day. I'm a huge fan of these shorts workout intervals like the 7 minute workout that appeared in the New York Times, the 20 squats every time you go to the bathroom. I've got five different ten minute exercise routines. I wrote an entire article that was just full of 10 minute exercise routines. I'll put a link to that article in the show notes for you, Heather. But it's just, you know, a mix up of push ups and mountain climbers and squats and lunges and things that you can do real quickly without working up a big sweat that are pretty much body weight only. So that's, that's kind of the biggest, most important thing. Because what annoys me is you. Once people start talking about some of the stuff I'm going to talk about, like negative ions of structured water and all this jazz you can use to detox your body in the office, but they're still just sitting around all day. I mean, in a way, exercise is kind of the great cure to help your body to fight off a lot of the environmental assailants that you might see in a typical office.

And it's not necessarily exercise either. It's just movement.

Yeah, just movement.

The biggest problem is that we're not moving at all.

Yep, exactly.

Even with the standing workstation, like I find myself in my standing workstation, I'm standing on two feet. Like you said, like you need to be shifting your body around. Needs to be a dynamic workstation.

Yeah, exactly. A trampoline workstation.

Yes.

Okay, so let's, let's delve into a few of the things that I would recommend that you do. The first thing is when you look at the human cell itself, it's based on electrochemical gradients. So it works best at basically an electrochemical gradient of about 70 millivolts. And so when you step into a room that's full of WI fi routers and computers and electromagnetic fields and cell phone signals, there is a huge amount of positive ion generation. And when you get a big amount of positive ion generation, what that does is it drops that electrochemical gradient closer to about 30 to 40. And so inside your cell, Inside your cell, it literally affects the cell membrane, cellular metabolism, and the activity of the cells themselves, as well as the enzymes. So what, what you have to ideally do is somehow expose yourself to negative ions to restore that electrochemical gradient. This is why, you know, when you're traveling on an airplane, it's so important to get outside, get in the fresh air, get by an ocean or a body of water, stand barefoot on the ground. Because all of those type of things are sources of negative ions. Huge amount of negative ions are generated by moving water, like rivers and waterfalls and crashing waves and showers and fountains. So that's a really good way to get exposure to negative ions. Plants produce negative ions, especially when they're photosynthesizing. So natural plants in an outdoor environment exposed to sunlight, those are sources of negative ions as well. Unfortunately, sometimes you may not have access to plants exposed to sunlight in your office. You may not have access to giant naked cubicles, fountains, and waterfalls in your office. So you have to find other sources to have to get exposed to negative ions. And that's where, like, if you go to Amazon, for example, and I've got one plugged into the wall here beside me, you can get what are called negative ion Gener. And these are literally generators that you plug into the wall and they produce negative ions. You can also, if you wanted to go kind of a step above and get more bang for your buck, you could get a HEPA air filter, like a portable HEPA air filter, which is really good for kind of filtering toxins, endocrine disruptors from cologne and perfume of other people around you in your office. You can put one of those under your desk to filter the air. But you can get HEPA air filters that also have negative ion generators. And so you can kind of kill two birds with one stone. I'll put a link to both, you know, negative ion generators, like 25 bucks. I'll put a link to that in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 286 but I'll also put a link in there. And this is all stuff you could get off Amazon to a HEPA air filter. And again, the only difference between you going to the show notes and grabbing this stuff off Amazon is it helps support the show. Of course, when you shop on Amazon.

Throw some shekels in our hats.

Shekels. So the other things that I would focus on in addition to filtering the air and a negative ion generator, one would be the type of water that you drink. Obviously, you may not get the best water in your office setting. Some offices will have the water cooler that's honestly a lot of times filtered, clean, you know, mineral enhanced spring water. I mean like there's, there are outfits here in Spokane, I know that, that deliver that type of water to offices and that's something that you could speak to your co workers or your boss about and look for in your area would just be like a good mineral spring water that gets delivered in, in one of these coolers.

Now a lot of times the Culligan kind of thing.

Yeah, exactly. A lot of times the cooler is still plastic. You know, it's sitting there, it's not, it's not getting swished around or swirled. So sometimes the water isn't quite as live structured as you could get yourself. And that's where you could do something like get one of these little glass structured water bottles. And there was actually I already mentioned biohacks blog, but I'll mention again, they had another article over@BioHacksBlog.com about structured water and about how they specifically did a study on it and showed that it did help to lower inflammation compared to regular water. Structured water is, is it's water that has been passed through like a series of glass beads and kind of moved around and shaken up a little bit in the same way that you would get if you were to drink out of like a fresh mountain spring, like high up in the mountains. And the idea here, delicious. So anyways, you can get like a glass bottle which is much better to drink out compared to plastic. It helps to keep the water structured. And they sell these glass structured water bottles on Amazon that would be way better than like a Nalgene or like a regular plastic water bottle. And you can just take that to work. And the cool thing is that it structures any water that you add to it. So assuming that you've got like good filtered water, then you can basically just add regular filtered water from your office into the structured water bottle to structure it. If you tend to have things like fluoride and chlorine and stuff like that, it would be beneficial for you to maybe add a little bit of iodine. You can add a few drops of iodine to the water to help mitigate some of the effects that things like chlorine and fluoride would have on your, on your thyroid gland, for example. But at least get a glass structured water bottle and then you could potentially add iodine to it as well if you wanted to add that in. So you can, you can literally get a form of iodine called nascent iodine. It comes in this little dropper and that's one that I travel with. So there's a few little droppers that I travel with. Like I travel with a melatonin dropper and I travel with a little bit of iodine, usually a little bit of marine phytoplankton, but basically iodine is a good one to add to a glass structured water bottle. A few other things that I would do for a healthy home office, or not a healthy home office, a healthy work, working environment. The first is for cleaning. If you need to clean, just basically use like a spray bottle with water and a few drops of oil of oregano in it. Okay, so if it's a diluted oil of oregano, then you can put about 10 to 20 drops of oil of oregano in a spray bottle. You can use that to clean rather than using a disinfectant or a typical like antibacterial hand soap or something like that. So that's something easy you can keep around for cleaning. You can also clean your hands with that. And that's what I would use instead of the typical cleaning products that you'd find to clean your desk or to clean your office area.

If you're using olive oil to keep your skin nice and supple, you'll smell like a salad.

Olive oil and oregano. Yeah, yeah, smell like. You'll be very attractive to all of your Italian co workers. A few other things. Speaking of attractiveness, this is going to sound silly, but this is actually, mark my words, going to be something that more and more people begin to use, and that is fabric or clothing that helps to shield yourself from electromagnetic radiation. And believe it or not, they're actually getting more fashionable. You can get some pretty good looking, especially for guys, less, I would say so for women at this point. But you can get EMF blocking underwear, meaning that you can at least protect your gonads in some of the more important areas of your body with things that are going to block high amounts of electromagnetic field exposure. Especially if you've got like WI fi routers and things like that underneath your desk. EMF blocking underwear, you can literally get it off Amazon. Now there's more and more companies popping up that are selling EMF blocking clothing that basically blocks some of the radiation that you get exposed to when you're surrounded by computers and routers and things of that nature. So you can use EMF blocking underwear as well.

And then stop putting all that tin foil in my shorts.

Now that's right.

Awesome.

You know you like the tinfoil in your shorts anyways.

Yeah, yeah.

It's just the texture is, is, it's, it's, it stays warm too. It's a nice thing about the tin foil on the shorts. Um, another couple of things you can do. I'll throw two more things at you here. One would be to if you're exposed to like nasty food or cafeteria based food, or food that might have toxins in it, subpar proteins like, you know, non organic eggs, you know, fish, stuff like that, I would have chlorella or activated charcoal. Both of those are really good binders that can help to bind to toxins that you might get from foods that you're forced to eat or, you know, when you have limited food choices and there's something.

Where are you working? They're forcing you to eat this.

Eat this boiled egg. Now eat this bologna. Anyways though, chlorella or activated charcoal. I'm a fan of that as well. And then finally, I have a book that has a bonus video that comes with the book. It's an hour long interview that I did with a guy about how to reduce EMF in your home office. And it's why right now my computer is grounded. I'm hardwired into the wireless router. I've got one of these negative ion generators. My entire office right now is rigged up to have as little EMF as possible floating around. But I've got a video in the book and I've got, it's a bunch of transcripts and podcasts. It's called Biohacking a Healthy Home. I'll put a link to that. It's seven bucks, but it kind of goes into all this stuff in detail. And a lot of the things I talk about when it comes to biohacking a healthy home, in terms of just detoxing your home, decreasing emf, decreasing exposure to mold, stuff like that, it all applies to your home office as well. So that'd be another good resource would be that Biohacking a Healthy Home book. I know, I just went over a ton of stuff for that. What would been do in an office job? I don't think I'd survive in an office job, by the way. But basically I'll put a link to all that stuff in the show notes.

Hello, Ben and Brock, this is Kathy from Portland and I had a question today about liver powder. I've heard you mention several times on the podcast recently about supplementing with liver powder. If you don't or aren't able to get in organ meats regularly. And I've actually been doing that and found it to be quite helpful. My question is, is this safe to take every day? I know that supplementing with organ meats, especially liver, with its high concentrations of certain minerals and vitamins, that you should potentially have it once or twice a week. And so I'm wondering if supplementing with a liver powder is something that we should be careful with and only supplement seemingly the same once or twice a week or if we could take it every day.

So that's it.

Thanks a lot.

You know, Brock, liver can kill ya. What did you hear about this? There was this, this deal with these arctic explode explorers and they were dying from a retinoid overdose, basically vitamin A overdose. You know why?

Oh, because they were eating polar bear liver.

Polar bear liver, yeah, I've heard about that. And they'll tell like a lot of, for example, pregnant women will be told by their doctors to avoid liver because all the excessive vitamin A in liver could increase the risk of severe birth defects. And it's actually true. Polar bear liver, just like 1 gram of polar bear liver has like 30,000 international units of vitamin A in it. And if you compare that to the same amount of like beef liver, you've got like 150 international units.

Much more reasonable.

Yeah, but the thing is that when we look at something like say birth defects from eating liver, that's pretty overblown because the studies that have been done on the spike in the things that could cause malformations to a fetus, what's called trans retinoic acid, those spikes in the studies that they've done on retinol consumption were only shown when someone supplemented orally with high doses of vitamin A, like vitamin A extract or intramuscular vitamin A injections. And they actually didn't have a spike in those same levels of retinoic acid when these women who were in the study just had basic calf liver. So the idea here is that there's a big, big difference between what you get from whole food versus what you get from like an oral liver supplement or even like a liver capsule or a liver powder. And, and I suspect that's because when you consume something like a whole food source, you're getting copper, you're getting iron, you're getting some of the other fat soluble vitamins that help to balance out high amounts of isolated vitamin A or even some of the isolated fat soluble vitamins that you're just going to get from like a liver powder or liver extract. So ultimately you have to be less careful if you're eating regular liver than if you're taking, like, a liver capsule or a liver powder. Now, at the same time, if you look at things from, like, an ancestral standpoint, like animals, to my knowledge, only have one liver. Right. And so if you're eating liver every single day, then you might be eating more liver than what our ancestors would have traditionally been exposed to. You're going through the whole herd? Yeah, yeah. Like, I personally eat liver about once every two weeks, and what I do is I take about 6 ounces or so of liver, I dredge it in some eggs, I put it in a little bit of coconut flour, and then I basically fry it in some butter. And before I do all of that, I soak it in lemon juice for about four hours beforehand. That just kind of breaks it down. It removes a lot of, like, the livery kind of gamy flavor that you get from the liver. I like that flavor. I don't eat that much. And I'll have that with some onions and some roasted vegetables, and it's pretty good. And my kids like it, too. It kind of covers up the taste. And we get our liver from a few different sources. US Wellness meats, they have organic liver that's really good. And then I also hunt, so I usually have some deer liver in the. In the freezer, and then we get a little bit of cow liver from the local butcher. But I'm a huge fan of doing that instead of the powder or the extract, just because of the potential for really, really highly constant, concentrated doses of vitamin A and these powders or these extracts, if you're going to use the powder or you're going to use the extract, the doses vary pretty highly. So what they reported on there was a really interesting article that appeared in the Guardian, and what they reported on in that article was that when you're consuming these liver doses, these liver powders, or these liver capsules, that the recommendation is to limit your intake to no more than about 50 grams of the equivalent of liver consumption per week. And in most cases, that would be not using much more than about one of these capsules each day. If you're going to use, like, a liver powder extract or a liver capsule. Ultimately, though, I'm a bigger fan of getting it for the reasons that I just mentioned. From just like a whole food source. Source. So. And definitely not from a polar bear. Also, like, organic is really, really good when it comes to any of these organ meats because, you know, the liver is a filter, and you want to theoretically consume liver that comes from an animal that is reported to have not been exposed to pesticides and herbicides and hormones and stuff like that. So Now Foods has, I would say if I was going to use a liver powder, probably the Now Foods one, just because it's like an organic Argentinian beef source. So I would do that. But ultimately, like if you had to choose between that and ordering liver from a company like US Wellness Meats, I just order liver from a place like that.

Hey, Ben and Barack, this is Matt calling from Kaiser Slauder, Germany. I'm hoping Ben can help me with a little oral problem I have. My wife just underwent a fresh free soft tissue graft with our dentist due to our gum recession and I'm trying to avoid the same fate myself. So I have some significant recession already going on and I've been hunting the interwebs for a solution, but I can't seem to find anything out there. I did see a recommendation to take Gyro's CoQ10, which is, I believe, a liposomal CoQ10 supplement. I've been taking that for about a month with my eggs at breakfast, because you're supposed to take it with a fatty meal. So is there anything else you think I can do? Are there any supplements or any techniques out there that you're aware of?

Tell me.

Regrow my gums. Or am I just out of luck? Thanks as always for the podcast and good luck.

I have nightmares about oral surgeries like this one. I'm okay with needles, I'm okay with blood, I'm okay with guts, but just stuff in the mouth.

Yeah, I tend to stay away from the dentist. I've been to the dentist, I think once in the past 10 years. I just don't go. I use, I use one of those water picks. I put a little bit of oregano in that I brush my teeth with. I use like a fluoride free toothpaste. It's the, the Dental Herb company, something like that for a while. I use like a, like a charcoal tooth powder, but I literally don't go.

Oh, that charcoal toothpowder. I used to use that too. And then that company just stopped making it.

Yeah, yeah, but, but you can still find charcoal tooth powders. There's another company out there. I saw it at a Paleo FX conference. It was called Dirt and it's like a. Again, it's just like a tooth powder, but I use that. I use a water pick and I actually chew xylitol gum a lot. It's I use a brand called Be Fresh, which is like vitamin B12, xylitol based gum. So, you know, and knock on wood, I haven't really needed to go to the dentist. And I just went once just to see what my teeth were like, and they told me my teeth were fine, like they didn't even need to clean them. So you go, we're gonna get all the dentists writing into the show now. Very angry that I'm trying to put them out of business, but I'm not, I'm just saying. And my wife has been to the dentist a few times more than I have because she ate a bunch of candy when she was a kid and she's got like fillings all over the place.

So that's me. I've got a bunch of fillings that need to be. Well, they need to keep an eye on them. Yeah, kind of a bummer. But so anyway, so free soft tissue grab. That's when they grab some tissue from somewhere else in your mouth and then graft it onto where your gum ought to be.

Yeah. And I mean, gum is just connective tissue, right? It's the interface between your teeth and your jawbones. And when we look at any type of connective tissue, what you need to support connective tissue is collagen, because collagen is a major component of connective tissue. And when you look at the type of compounds that are best at building collagen, we see these group of nutrients called glycoaminoglycans or gags. And some of the more popular gags that you may be familiar with are things like glucosamine, chondroitin and hyaluronic acid. And these are all things that a lot of times will be sold as like supplements or injectables for joint pain. But gags help to support connective tissue health and all connective tissue, including the gums. Now, the very, very best source of gags is something that I brought up earlier, and that is bone broths. And when you slow cook bones, particularly joint bones, over the course of anything from one to three days, that gives the bone and the connective tissues that are in a slow cooker or in a pot, the time to break down in the stock water that they're in. And what the result is is this perfect balance of minerals that are really easily absorbed by the body, super healthy and healing to the gut lining, but also chock full of collagen for connective tissue health, for joint health, for gum health, for teeth health. And so I Would say if, if anything, if I were gonna choose one thing for gum recession or for enhancing connective tissue as well as enhancing, you know, because of the minerals, the health of the teeth as well, it would be bone broth. If you don't wanna learn how to make bone broth, it's really easy to make. We make it every week with a whole chicken. You can buy bone broth. There's. There's companies like TheBrothery.com for example, that sells bone broth. But basically bone broth would be the number one thing that I'd recommend. There are some other things though, that you could do as well. And I didn't mention that I do this, but sometimes I'll take that MCT oil. Just like I have the bulletproof MCT oil, but I swish it around in my mouth. So there's this concept of using oil pulling as a mouthwash. But when you oil pull with specific forms of oil, it can also help with gum recession. I haven't seen any evidence for MCT oil for this, but the type of oil that's used for oil pulling in like ayurvedic medicine is usually sesame oil or coconut oil. And all that means is that you put it in your mouth and you swish it around. And obviously the coconut oil has to be at room temp or a little bit higher because otherwise it's not gonna be. Yeah. Or mouth temperature. But basically you swish and swish and swish and you pull it through your teeth and in and out of your teeth for like two to five minutes and you just swish this oil around in your mouth. And sesame oil would be a really good one. Coconut oil would be another one. Aloe vera is also a natural remedy for healing damaged gums. And you can get fresh aloe vera gel. Don't get the stuff that's full of like the artificial colors and the additives and stuff that you would find at like, you know, Walgreens or cvs. But like, get a good natural fresh aloe vera gel and you can use that in the same way that you can use mouthwash to prevent gum decay. So that would be another really, really good one to use. There are some essential oils that are really, really good for mouth health as well. We purchase essential oils. There's this website called Mountain Rose Herbs. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. But they basically have certified organic essential oils. And when added to water or even swished around in your mouth, like diluted in water and swished around in your mouth in the morning, for example. Any of these are really good antifungal agents and also good at helping with receding gums or helping with connective tissue strength in the mouth. One would be lemon oil. Another really good one is eucalyptus oil, and you could mix all these together if you wanted to. Another good one is clove oil. I like clove because it's a natural antiseptic and antimicrobial and antifungal agent, too. So clove is really good for that as well. Tea tree oil, by the way, is also a pretty good one. So I would say the top ones would be tea tree oil, clove, lemon, and eucalyptus. If you wanted to have more of, like, an antifungal effect, Antiviral, antibacterial effect. Sesame and coconut are really good just for general mouth health. And then if you do have some pretty serious receding gums, you can use aloe vera as well as something to put in your mouth. And then, of course, bone broth would be the number one thing that I'd go after.

Hi, Ben. I have a question. Every time I do any remotely intense exercise, 20 minutes of kettlebells, a little bit of speed work, running, I cannot sleep at night. My body just gets wired. I'm itching my skin. What's happening to my nervous system? Why does this happen? If you have any thoughts, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.

This is a problem I've never heard of before.

Yeah, not sleeping.

I've heard of it.

I've experienced this myself, and I've had some of my clients have this as well. And the culprit is heat. It's body temperature. So what happens is, when you physically exert yourself, especially at a really high intensity, it creates heat in the muscles, and that heat spreads and it raises your internal temp. And, you know, usually what you would want is, you know, you have a temperature of 98.6. And when you get very, very hot during a workout, one of the ways that your body gets rid of the extra core heat is it sends blood to the skin surface. And the skin surface is normally like 80 to 90 degrees. But that excess heat can aggravate the skin in many situations and cause a release of histamine. And histamine triggers that itching sensation. And a lot of times you'll feel it more often in areas of very high blood flow, like your face and your scalp and your neck, which is where, you know, you can get heat kind of kind of trapped, especially up towards the hair. And so you might find you sweat or itch in your scalp area. And obviously the way that you would address this is by addressing formation of heat and also addressing histamine. My number one tip is to get cool as quickly as possible after your workout, especially if it is an afternoon or an evening based workout. Now, one of the best ways that you can enhance sleep post workout is by getting your body wet. Because as soon as you get out of like a cold shower or a bath prior to bed, whether or not you've worked out what happens is the air cools your skin and it can really help you to sleep. That's a huge kind of hidden cause of people not sleeping properly is it's just that their temperature is too high. And sleeping in a cool environment can help people out quite a bit. If you've been working out, this is all the more important. Get into the habit of like a lukewarm shower or a cold shower to cool the body down. Lower your room temperature. Turn on a fan if you have a fan, because that moving air will help to kind of cool and dry your skin. You can even use a humidifier to moisten the air a little bit and to cause it to become a little bit more cool. So that would help out quite a bit. In addition to just making sure that you're not exercising in an excessively hot environment for your afternoon or evening based workout, the other thing that I'd recommend would be kind of the number one way that I've found to help with everything from allergies to reducing histamines to helping with allergic reactions. That would just be to step up your intake of fish oil. I'm a big, big fan of fish oil as a natural antihistamine. So you can take about 4 to 6 grams of fish oil. Just look for something that has a really good, like a one to one EPA to DHA ratio. Get something that's in its natural triglyceride form versus ethyl ester form. There's a lot of good brands out there. Barleens Pharmax is a good one. Super Essentials is a good one. Green Pastures makes like a fermented cod liver oil. It's a good one. The Thorn FX1 is a good one. But just like get a good fish oil and use about 4 to 6 grams of that a day in addition to keeping your body as cool as possible, especially in the evening. And that can help with the nervous system. It can help with the heat formation. And that's, that's the first thing that I'd try if I Were in. In Skyler's shoes.

I like it. And you know what else I like free stuff.

Swag.

I like free stuff.

Boom. Actually, you know what? We got a big box just arrived yesterday of the Ben Greenfield fitness beanies, which are pretty tight. I put a picture of myself wearing one up on the Facebook page the other day and a bunch of people want to know where they can get them. And you can get them@BenGreenfieldFitness.com gear. We've got this gear package that comes with this cool tech T shirt. It's got the beanie and then a BPA free water bottle that's perfect for bringing to work with your negative ion generator and your HEPA filter. So we are going to give away one of these gear packs. You can support the show by going to BenGreenfieldFitness gear and buying one. It's 47 bucks to get the beanie shirt and water bottle altogether. But you could also win one by leaving a positive review in itunes. And by the way, Brock, before we go into this positive review, can we play sad trombone music? Sad trombone music because we've gotten a few 1 star reviews in itunes lately. Yes, I just noticed. I went in to look at the reviews. I noticed that we've got some one star reviews.

What are we doing wrong?

I don't know. I know that it's Brock's fault. It must be Brock's fault. We have a lot of Canada haters. I don't know. But anyways, if you're listening in, then help us fight those negative reviews by going to itunes. We'll put a link in the show notes, go to itunes and leave us a positive review. Be happy. A nice review. I hope those haters so give us a five star and we'll love you forever. And we might send you some free stuff. So this review looks like. Who'd it come from?

C, Brian H. C. Brian H. I don't think. Cabrian, perhaps. All right, the title of this is this podcast has made me weirdly amazing. I like it. All right. He says the word. The words of my wife. You sure do talk about this podcast a lot. I like it. Ben and Rock.

That was a pretty good wife impression.

Yeah, that was my. I was trying not to be. Trying not to be offensive. Ben and Rock have become a daily part of my morning commute. Not only have they opened my mind to new ways to achieve superhuman power, read in a reverb enhanced man voice.

Reverb enhanced human power. Oh, that's what reverb is. Doesn't reverb have to echo? It does Superhuman power.

That's yeah, I like it anyway, but they've inspired me to think more about my daily choices I make. Do yourself and your family a favor and subscribe to Ben Greenfield Fitness. I can guarantee you will become a.

Better person for it or at least achieve superhuman power. Yeah, so check it out if you want to achieve superhuman power power power. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 286 I'll put a link to all of my helpful notes about how to biohack your office as well as our US Wellness Meat source for liver, Mountain rose, herbs for essential oil and everything else that we talked about. Remember to check out the new obstacledominator.com podcast as well as get in on that we who bike Trailer Facebook giveaway, so check all that out. It's@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 286 Leave us a cool review in itunes and we'll catch you later.

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