Train Your Body To Burn More Fat, Is Bulletproof Coffee A Scam, The Best Anti-Aging Exercises & More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness show, can you train your body to burn more fat? Is bulletproof coffee a scam? The best anti aging exercises. Can you use dried herbs in a smoothie? Should you use nasal breathing when you're exercising hard? 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.

Dude, you're back. Yeah. I've got good news and I've got bad news. Brock. Uh.

Oh, it what? I hope the bad news doesn't have anything to do with a hunting accident of any sort.

I was thinking that we'd want the bad news not to involve the. The colonoscopy that I had done.

Oh, there's that too. I forgot about that.

Yeah. So two weeks. We didn't, we didn't actually record the podcast two weeks ago because I was getting a colonoscopy, and then last week I was off in the mountains of Colorado, hunting. So here's the good news and the bad news. Good news is that my. My colon is as clean and shiny as a baby's butt, which is probably.

The way it's supposed to be.

Probably a weird analogy to use.

That is a weird analogy.

In this case.

I. I understand what you're saying. Everything is good down there. Up your old wazoo, as they say.

I'm clean as a whistle. So I can now rest in peace for the next 20 years knowing that I, unlike the members of my family who inspired me to go get a colonoscopy in the first place, do not have strange growths or warts or polyps or whatever you call them growing on the inside of that tube.

And nothing weird caught in the folds.

And no, nothing. No gerbils, no strange insects, nothing. So not even. Not even a kernel of corn. The other thing, the bad news is that I did spend a week, and a lot of people have been asking me about this on Twitter and Facebook. I spent a week way high up in the mountains of Colorado hunting elk. And I came back. Wah, wah, wah, wah.

Not empty handed.

Empty handed. Yeah, empty handed, dude. Had a great time doing some hardcore acclimation training, but really we saw early season hunting. The elk weren't calling, so we had a hard time hunting them down. My guide was a fat little roly poly red faced dude who didn't really feel like chasing elk into the trees. So we spent a lot of time sitting on hilltops looking through binoculars at elk that taunted us from about a thousand yards away, unable to actually hunt them down with our bows.

So when you see them that far away, it's not possible to just sort of sneak slowly towards them or is that.

That's theoretically possible. But everything from the winds to the COVID to the fact that these were smart old big bowls was not in our favor. So that means that, that this year I'll be vegan, I guess. I guess. Get out the cucumbers.

Back to vegan.

News flash.

I'm guessing you must have had some sort of Internet connection on the mountaintop while you're chasing those, those wily deer, because you were still, you were still active on twitter.com BenGreenfield the whole time you were gone.

You'd be surprised at what kind of bar reception you can get from ATT at 12,900ft. It's pretty crazy, really. Yeah, actually I have one of those solar panels that attaches to your backpack and I could literally like work while I was up there looking through binoculars and stuff. Kind of cool. I guess that's good.

Although, who wants to do that? Part of the escape is escaping.

Yes, that's right. And not burning your eyeballs out with a phone while engaged in solar radiation on a mountaintop.

Yeah.

Well, I did have a few things I want to talk about that caught my attention this week. The first was a really interesting study in the. The British Medical Journal of Exercise and Medicine, I believe is what that one is called. And what they looked at was fat oxidation, whether you could train your body to burn more fat. Now, the reason that I thought this study was interesting was because up until this point in the annals of time, in the annals of exercise science, and people in white lab coats studying rats running on tiny wheels inside cages, we've all thought that you basically burn more carbs as you exercise at a more intense pace and you get to a certain point where fat burning almost shuts off completely. And what they wanted to look at in this study was, well, hey, what if you are a well trained athlete, in this case a well trained runner, what if you have built up the capacity to be able to oxidize fat at very high intensities? Is that even possible? And so what they did was they took a group of well trained runners and then they took a group of really crappy recreational trained runners. Nobody wants to be a recreational runner. Bunch of jerks. Yeah, a bunch of jerks. And they compared them. They had them both perform a very high intensity interval training session on the treadmill, getting them up to a really, really hard intensity, right? Like more than 85% of maximum heart rate up close to VO2 max. And what they found was that both groups experienced similar rises in like blood lactic acid, similar rises in like how hard they were working, even though of course, the well trained runners were working or moving a lot faster. And they all had similar carbohydrate oxidation rates also, right? So they were all burning once they got up to that really high level of intensity, similar amounts of carbohydrate. But what they found was that in the well trained athletes, they actually, even at high, high intensities, were experiencing as much as a threefold higher rate of fat oxidation. So not only were they burning more calories overall, but they were burning a much larger percentage of that from fat than we've been previously led to believe in studies that have primarily been done on less well trained athletes. And so believe it or not, some people may think this is kind of like slap yourself in the head obvious, but this is the first time that a study has shown that you can train yourself to burn huge amounts of fat even at high intensities. And this actually has implications for all the people who ask about, well, can I do high intensity exercise if I'm in ketosis or if I'm restricting carbs? And it turns out that you can train your body to oxidize a crapola of fat at high intensities.

So, but, so these, these, like that study that you did at the University of Connecticut, whenever that was, like two years ago or whatever, they actually took people who had specifically been on a low carb, high fat diet and ran them through so the training was actually happening specifically to, to use more fat.

Well, the difference, the difference is that that entire study was done at aerobic heart rates. And we, we, we already know the difference in like fat oxidation versus carboxidation based on, like, if you eat a high fat diet and you go out and do aerobic exercise, you burn more fat. We've known that for a while. But what this study now shows is that, hey, it happens at really high intensities, right? Like what we would call like glycolytic or phosphogenic type intensities you can actually train your body to burn a lot of fat in those scenarios too. So practical implications, if you're listening in now, we cut to the chase. You may want to experiment with perhaps not eating as many carbohydrates prior to a hard workout and just see how that works out for you, especially if you're well trained. Can probably get away with it more than what you think.

So I guess what I was asking was do you necessarily have to change your diet or is it just being well trained as an athlete in general that helps?

Yeah, this, this study didn't look at diet at all. These guys were, you know, well trained runners who were most likely eating a typical western diet. So it'd be interesting to see what happened if you actually, if they, you know, they switch to like a ketogenic diet, you know, maybe.

Or even just a, just a low or, yeah, low carb, high fat diet.

Who knows? Fivefold, sevenfold, phenomenal cosmic increases in fat.

I knew you were gonna go to the cosmic thing. Ultimate fat burning power.

Speaking of ultimate fat burning power, I came across an interesting article on Soul Spot. The title of this article is quite sexy. It says it's. It's called the man who Can Cure All Diseases Reveals His Secret Healing Diet.

Wait, did you say it was on Soul Patch?

Soul spot, which is soulspotttv.com. it's called the man who Can Cure All Diseases Reveals His Secret Healing Diet.

Let me guess, he has something to sell you.

The man who Can Cure diabetes, cancer, STDs, HIV and much more. Reveals Disease Curing diet. Well, usually I completely ignore articles like this because yes, you are correct. Usually you go to the site and they're trying to sell you some cure all supplement book, whatever, and make crazy claims. And in fact they do that at the end of the article. But what I thought was interesting was the beginning of it where he talks about avoiding hybrid foods. And that's like the core part of the diet is avoiding hybrid foods. Now what is a hybrid food? Yeah, you ask.

I do.

What's a food that is half machine and half man? No, it's actually cybernetic food. It's the offspring of two plants or animals of different breeds, varieties or species that you produce through human manipulation for specific genetic characteristics. In other words, like genetically modified hybridized plants. Marijuana is a perfect example, right? You've got like indica strains, you've got sativa strains, and then you have like hybrid indica sativa strains. I love to use pothead analogies.

How barren. Anyways, I don't know what you're talking about, Ben Greenfield.

Anyways, what they bring attention to in the article is that many of these foods have been bred to be very palatable, high in starch, high in, high in sugar. And many of them have been studied and found to contain interestingly lower levels of minerals than like, wild, non hybrid foods. So when you eat a bunch of, say, like hybrid fruits, you're getting a very large, sweet fruit, low in minerals, or a hybrid genetically modified vegetable, a very starchy vegetable that's been bred for calories, not necessarily for nutrient density. And then the article goes on to to show how many hybrid foods there are hanging around in the grocery stores these days. Like, the most common ones are seedless apples, kiwis, seedless pineapples, seedless citrus fruits, which I always thought were very convenient. Right. Seedless grapes because you can chew them and not have to spit the seeds out. Seedless watermelons. I can't believe they're taking away my seedless watermelons because that's like the next best thing since sliced bread. Because you don't have to spit out the watermelon seeds better than sliced bread.

Sliced bread sucks.

White potatoes, cauliflower, cashew. Oh, it's like if you're and there's a big list, I'll link to it in the show notes for this episode, which you can find at where are the shownotes?

Brock bengreenfieldfitness.com 330330 There you go.

BenGreenfieldFitness.com 330 and then what they list is a list of foods. Now I do disagree with the way that they say their list of foods. They say here's a list of foods you need to eat in order to reverse cancer, reverse aids, reverse sickle cell, lupus, blindness apparently cures blindness, mesothelioma, herpes, depression, just to maintain overall optimal health. I may agree with that last claim.

Yeah, the last one seems plausible.

Yeah. And I do like their list of foods because it's kind of handy. It's like, okay, well, we know that most things that have been bred to be seedless may be also higher in starch, lower in minerals. So it has a list of the fruits that are not canned or seedless or hybridized that you can find in the grocery store. It has a list of grains that are typically not hybridized, like amaranth, kamut, quinoa, rye, spelt, teff and wild rice. It has a list of the nuts and seeds that are better, that are less Likely to be hybridized like Brazil nuts, hemp seeds, sesame seeds, walnuts. Anyways, it's interesting, it's thought provoking. And then at the end of course they move into all of his magical biomineral therapy supplements that you need to buy as well. Which I'm not necessarily convinced are going to reverse blindness or get rid of that strange growth down there. But ultimately I think it is interesting to think about not eating foods that have been hybridized to be big, starchy, sugary. Because of the potential health effects of that. So you know, it's interesting, it's thought provoking.

Yeah, yeah. I guess when a food has been specifically bred only for pleasure.

Yeah, yeah.

That's where the problem comes in.

Yeah. Be careful with the weird seedless watermelons the kids are making these days.

Although isn't watermelon it was hybridized to begin with. Like the original watermelon was much more like a gourd. Like sort of thick and yucky.

Be careful with that path of thinking, Brock. You will go blind again. So finally, since we've already talked about Cullens once, why don't we talk about them again?

Oh, I'm sure we'll do it again.

So Jeff Leach, I met him in Vermont a couple of years ago. We've spoken at some conferences together. He's the guy who went and visited the Hasda tribe in Africa and had the poop from a Hasda warrior shoved up his backside. He did. Like a Hadza. Hadza. What did I say? Hasda.

Hasda.

I don't even know what a Hasda.

I think one's a Toyota.

Oh yeah, yeah, I think you're thinking of a Mazda. Oh, maybe he had the poop from a Mazda shoved up his butt. No, it was actually a Hadza warrior and he did a fecal transplant to see what would happen if you implanted into a typical western gut, you know, like an ancient hunter gatherer microbiome. And he's working on the results of that study, et cetera. But he has a really interesting website that I like. It's called the Human Food project over@humanfoodproject.com and he has an interesting cannibal website. It does a little bit. Yeah. Anyway, sorry, do you visit a lot of cannibal websites? Apparently so anyways, he actually accompanied a couple of Hadza hunters to some hunting blinds where they had a bunch of tall grass to ambush animals and they killed a zebra with a poison tipped arrow. And the interesting part about the article, which is actually quite long and goes into, you know, what goes into a hunt. And what they do after the kill is that when they had removed the poo pellets from the colon, they tossed the colon onto a fire, and they let it sit on the fire for about a minute, but not long enough to actually get rid of all the little microbes and bacteria that cling to the inside wall of the col. And then they cut the colon into chunks and ate it more or less raw to get all of the good bacteria and the probiotics and all these things out of the colon. So we've talked before about, like, eating bone broth and marrow and the joints of animals and all these things that we tend to neglect in western culture. But I had never, up until this point, thought about actually throwing a colon on the fire and eating a colonial. And I'm very. I'm very glad that I didn't read this prior to my elk hunt and have a successful hunt, because I probably would be still picking elk colon out of my teeth if I had.

So wait, so they depupified the colon.

First, they took the poo out, and then they actually eat the colon. Now, now we know that, like, babies who are born vaginally, they actually. It's gross to think about. I know, but they pass factor is.

Is really high here. Yeah, just hang on, folks.

Yeah, just use your gag reflexes. That's why you gross. Hey, don't. Do not make noises like that on my podcast.

Okay? Sorry.

That is. That's disturbing.

Are you one of those people that reacts badly to that? Like, if somebody throws up near you, do you throw up?

I just don't like the sound of grown men gagging. Okay, yeah, fair enough. Grosses me out. So anyways, though, we know that when a baby passes through mom's birth canal, they pick up little fecal, like, pieces. Like little. Little pieces of fecal matter, and that's what populates the good bacteria inside their gut. And we also know from a ton of research that's been done over the past five years that this concept of poop pills or fecal transplantations makes sense if you have, like, dysbiosis, gas bloating, basically colorectal issues, or irritable bowel syndrome or things of that along those lines. But eating colon is a new one that I actually hadn't read before. And the story of the entire hunt is quite fascinating. I'm not just bringing this up because of the colon. I just thought that that leapt out as something quite interesting, that these hunters, these ancient hunter warrior people actually eat that part of the animal. So if you're interested in reading this, you can definitely go and check out and see what else they do when they're hunting. And if you are a hunter, then there you go. There's one little trick to add to your field dressing protocol.

Just take your toothbrush and if you're.

A cannibal, go to humanfoodproject.com listener Q&A.

Hey Ben, I would love to get your thoughts about an article online that I recently came across. It was titled Butter in youn Coffee and Other Stories from a Friend Fitness Insider. It talks about several folks that you've discussed in your show before, such as the Food Babe, Dave Asprey and John Keefer, and suggested things like bulletproof coffee and carb backloading as being scams. What do you think? Any recommendations for us common folk on how to dig through some of this confusion?

This article has been circulating like wildfire if you follow the people that I follow on Facebook and Twitter for the last few weeks.

Butter in your Coffee and other Cons Story from A Fitness Insider so this article is about fitness marketing. It's about fitness marketing. It's about everything from like these articles about the Food Babe blogger being full of to Dave Asprey's bulletproof coffee to John Keefer's carb backloading protocol. And basically what the article goes into, and we'll link to it in the show notes if you want to go read it, is that you can't trust people in the fitness industry who sell stuff because it's all marketing hype. And actually the article itself makes some really, really good points in my opinion, that a lot of people maybe aren't aware of when it comes to the fitness industry. Like for example, what most people don't know is that the physiques who grace the front of a fitness magazine actually don't look that way and they especially don't remain that way year round. They go through all these special water manipulation techniques. A lot times they're like photoshopped. They get this peak short lived physique for the photo shoot to sell you the supplement or to be on the COVID of the magazine and then they basically go back to having a normal body that's called a cutting and bulking cycle. And then he goes into how some folks just skip that altogether and they'll even post before after photos on a website trying to sell you a supplement or trying to sell you a book. And these photos are literally taken like minutes apart and all they do is change the lighting and the kind of shorts they wear and that type of thing. And these fake transformations. I think just about any website that shows a transformation that's been doctored is something to avoid, period. But it's interesting how he goes into that. But then he starts to delve into talking about some folks who we've had on this podcast and some folks who I've hung out with in the fitness and nutrition industry. Like take John Kiefer, for example, who I actually just mentioned, right? Like I interviewed him on, on carb backloading or carb refeeding or carb night or whatever you want to call it as part of that rev conference I was talking about. And this guy who wrote this article throwing kefir under the bus says carb backloading has a compelling premise. By following a simple set of rules, you can lose weight by starving your fat cells and enjoying your favorite foods. Cherry turnovers, ice cream, fries. F yeah, you'd be an idiot not to want that. And then he goes on about how Kiefer cites a bunch of scientific references to back up his claims that this car backloading protocol actually works. You can just eat junk food all night. This is a case where the person who wrote the article probably doesn't really know Kiefer and hasn't hung out with him. At least it doesn't look like it. And maybe hasn't talked with him about his true feelings about that protocol. Like Kiefer's take. And Kieffer and I talk about this on the interview that I did with him is yeah, you can, in a post workout state in the evening, when your muscles are more likely to take up carbohydrates and store them away as glycogen the next day. You can get away with eating more carbohydrates when you're in that scenario. And there's even some research that, based on circadian rhythms, that your insulin sensitivity may peak a little bit in the evening after that initial morning peak. And that also may allow you to, even if you haven't worked out, right? Like if you've worked out in the morning that you could still take some of those carbohydrates from an evening meal and sock them away as storage glycogen for the next day's workout, rather than them being shuttled to the liver to be converted into triglycerides or stored away in adipose tissue. And he's not a gluten free guy. He actually makes the argument that we live in a society where if you go Completely gluten free. You don't get this hormetic effect that gluten can give you that mild stress that allows you to potentially be able to handle gluten when you do get it. When you're out, let's say you go do seal fit kokoro and you got to eat MREs or you're like me and you were up in the mountains hunting elk for a week and you have access to hamburger buns and some meat from Safeway. So his argument is that not only can you eat carbohydrates at night, but that they don't need to be completely gluten free. However, he has said before he's like, you know, that he's had like a cherry turnover after a workout, and this guy takes that and runs with it. I don't think that that's necessarily the case. I don't think it fairly paints the picture. And then he goes into Dave Asprey. He says that, you know, Dave Asprey had this assistant who worked for him who reported that Dave Asprey was willing to have his assistants just go on PubMed and find anything that remotely resembled claims that Dave was making about his supplements and just use those as research so that it looks like there's science to back up the claims. And then this guy goes on to say that you just have to eat more butter to lose weight. And that if you haven't figured out by now, the whole butter for weight loss recommendation is about as real as Santa Claus or the tooth fairy. And frankly, once again, you gotta educate yourself and step back. Sure, I've looked at the blood and biomarkers of a lot of people who have consumed bulletproof coffee, and a lot of them eat way too much butter. They'll have bulletproof coffee, then they'll go off and have like, eggs and bacon too, so that the body is not burning the triglycerides from the butter and the bulletproof coffee, but instead jacking up blood triglycerides, increasing the triglyceride to HDL ratio, increasing risk factors for coronary heart disease. Abso freaking lutely. You can destroy yourself if you use something like bulletproof coffee and you don't do it the right way, but done in moderation. Meaning drinking bulletproof coffee in the absence of other calories, or even blending any form of coffee with fats so that the fats are able to carry terpenes in the coffee that would not normally cross the blood brain barrier and instead allow those terpenes to cross the blood Brain barrier to enhance the wakefulness effects of coffee. That's science, kids. That's proven stuff. So regardless of, let's just say worst case scenario, like Dave Asprey, and I've noticed that this is on their pqq, their unfair advantage mitochondrial support compound PA that says it's going to allow Olympic athletes to break new records, et cetera. And if you go look at all the research, it's a bunch of research done on mitigation of free radicals in mice, not any improvements in performance in Olympic athletes. And so, yeah, if you go look at the research, there's definitely not as much research as you would think that there should be to back up the claims. Right. Just like that blindness, curing blindness, hybrid diet that we just talked about. Right. A lot of good advice, but also some marketing claims. Now, I'll step right out there and tell you, like, I'm a capitalist. I'm okay with somebody having a good idea and profiting from it. I do agree that in some cases, you know, for, like John Keefer to say, eat cherry turnovers all night long and lose weight, if he said that, I don't know if he did, then, yeah, I think that that's a little bit misleading. Or if Dave Asprey says, well, an Olympic athlete is going to break records and this is going to change the way that the world's athletes perform. Well, if he's saying that research says that that's true, then, yeah, I would take issue with that. But if he's saying that's what he thinks is going to happen, I mean, it's one of those things where buyer beware, right? Go educate yourself. Go look at the research yourself. Don't be an idiot. And if you see claims, go research them. I could probably go to pubmed right now and find out if hybridized GMO foods have any association whatsoever with like, cataract defects, blindness, glaucoma, et cetera. Right. And I, and I could go research that for myself. So, you know, I would say that rather than having some blanket rule that you're gonna follow that says that you're not gonna buy anything from any fitness person who markets stuff, I don't think that's. That's such a good idea. Now, I do have some sources that I personally use to get good, unbiased advice or at least to keep me abreast of the latest research so that I can make educated decisions when I see a new supplement come out or I see some new fitness technique come out. And I think that's important that if you are going to buy something, you don't just buy it based on the claim or what someone tells you, but you go out and you do your own research. So I want to give you a list of some of the research sources that I use. Is that cool with you, Brock? Is that okay?

Fantastic. Because that's exactly what I do. And I think also when I do buy stuff and it doesn't work out for me, I don't get mad at the people who sold it to me. Like that's the other thing I don't understand is like if you do go ahead and buy the stuff then like give it a try. If it doesn't work. Yeah, well, if it does work, fantastic.

I will admit there are too many people in the fitness industry taking like 20 research studies. Toss them at the bottom of an article to make the article look like it's legit. And if you go and you look at the research studies, you see that they actually don't match up to the claims being made in the article.

Right?

So like you know, hybridized foods cause blindness. And then you scroll down and you might see that whatever the consumption of ungodly amounts of GMO based soy in rats caused some, you know, cataract issues. Right. You can't extrapolate that to say this, you know, eating a seedless watermelon is going to make a human blind.

Right.

So you need, you know, you, the listener. Yeah, you, you have to go. You can extrapolate sometimes, but a lot of times you can't. So I mean go look, go look at the actual research studies and see what they actually say. And yes, that takes work. It takes work, takes you now a lot of work though, not being lazy and just clicking by on Amazon. So what are some of the, what are some of the sources I use? I like the website Examine. The Examine Research Digest is really good unbiased research. Yes, they do have affiliate links to Amazon based supplements on that website. But what they don't do is tell you that those supplements are going to make you a sex God and you must go buy them right away and you must only buy the examine branded ones. So I like Examine's Research Digest. I'll put a link to all these in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 330 for those of you who want to subscribe to some of the same research that I do, Alan Argon's Research Review, just unbiased research released once a month. They take 10 to 20 of the top studies in fitness, nutrition, health for that month. They break them down. They talk a lot about statistics. It's a good education as well, a good way to see how a smart person breaks down the science and even shows that a lot of these research studies are flawed. But it teaches you methods, analytics, statistics. You got to put on your propeller hat to read this stuff. But that's another good one. Alan Argon's research review. That one's like 10 bucks a month. I think the Examine Research Digest is, I want to say somewhere around 20amonth. I don't remember. I pay for both of them.

I want to know what the atomic weight of Alan Argon is.

You made a joke. You made a chemistry periodic table joke. That's funny. Stone Hearth Newsletters. This is a free one. Health, Medical and Science updates. Okay, they just send you the latest health, medical and science updates. Good way to keep abreast of the literature. Good way to know what's going on and to, you know, keep your finger on the tab of whether eggs are going to kill you on Monday or, you know, save you on Friday, depending on the time of year that we decide to vilify eggs. Supiversity is a good one. Subversity.com website they actually break down a lot of good research studies in fitness, nutrition supplementation, and they don't really sell you. I don't think anything. I don't remember if there's ads on that website, but it's good writing, it's good material. I need to get that guy in the podcast sometime actually, because I like his stuff. Another one I like, even though he does have a book to sell, is the Perfect Health Diet website. Just because Paul Geminet, the proprietor of said website, is a former astrophysicist and software programmer and he's just really smart. He breaks down studies in a really, really good way. We've talked about many of those studies before on the podcast, but that's another one that I personally follow. So a few more. I like Mark's Daily Apple the link. Love that he releases every weekend that's just chock full of the latest fitness nutrition research. Chris Kresser does a similar thing with his Roundup releases. Just a bunch of kind of like the latest. It's kind of like we do in our News Flashes section of this show. But a lot of those sources the Perfect Health Diet Blog Subversity, Stoneheart Newsletters the Examine Research Digest, Alan Argonne's Research Review Chris Kresser's Roundup Mark Stealy Apple Link love. Now you're starting to build. If you're kind of like, you know, and I spend a good hour each morning reading 40 to 60 different articles and a lot of them are articles that I find through some of the sources I've just listed. But if you start to educate yourself, then you don't need to worry. You don't need to worry if someone's pulling a fast one over on you because you know how to go out and research that stuff for yourself. And again, like I mentioned, you know, I'm fully aware I own a supplements website, right? Like greenfieldfitnesssystems.com sells fitness gear. It sells supplements, a lot of supplements that I've personally created the actual formulations for or that I have formed relationships with the people of different supplement companies. I've gone and toured their facilities, I've vetted their stuff. I will, I will speak to their, their ethics and their quality and the fact that their stuff isn't laced with unhealthy ingredients. There's, there's coaches on that website. There's gear, right? There's, there's stuff like I make money in the fitness industry. It's what I do. It's what I've done since I was 15 years old teaching tennis lessons in my backyard. But what I won't do is make a claim that is unfounded or that is not based on research. And if I do make that claim, I will say right away that it's woo woo, right? Like I wrote a whole article on chromotherapy two weeks ago on BenGreenfieldFitness.com about red light and blue light and yellow light and green light and the effects that ayurvedic medicine has proposed that those have on the human body. And I've said right away, hey folks, there's zero research to back this up. This is total woo woo. This is blue sky stuff. But I can tell you that when I go in my sauna and I use the blue light in the morning and I use the red light at night, I feel better and I sleep better. And I'm fine telling you that. And if you want to go get a sauna, here's my link. And I make a few bucks off of that. I'm fine with that. But I mean, the deal is be straightforward, right? Tell people what's up, tell them if there is research, tell them if there isn't research, don't blow the research out of frickin proportion. And this guy makes some good points in this article, but I think he Also shoved some people under the bus without actually knowing their full story. And I think you do have to be careful with that because these people are out there supporting their families. And I think that there are some folks who. Let me put it this way, I never like it when just one side of the story is being told. I like to see both sides of the story. I'd love to see Dave Asprey, right, like come on and talk about, you know, like his assistant army who's quoted in that article. Like his former assistant who says that he like flaked on, on research and stuff like that. I'd love to see Dave's response in the comments. Right? Like that's the cool thing about the Internet too, is we can have conversations just like we're having right now. People can come out and defend other people. People can defend themselves. And so I would say at this point, you know, any fair journalism at least will give a crack to the other guy to tell their side of the story.

Yeah, I'd love to live in a world where altruism was where you were able to make a living off of just being good, just being a good person. But you can't. You can't just live off of the well being of others. You have to make some money and that's okay.

I'd love to live in a world where to be a badass hunter gatherer, you don't have to eat colonial. It's just not the reality.

You don't know that maybe it's delicious.

Hi, Ben and Brock, this is Bill Montgomery. Thanks for answering my Stairmaster question. I have two more questions for you. Every weekend I climb a mountain. Typically elevation gains between 3,500 and 5,000ft.

Really?

Only one time, 5,000ft one time a year. But I carry the 2025 pound pack. And do you think that's a good type of exercise? And I'm 70 years old, by the way. I've got a few knee problems. Also tore my quad tendons last year. But they're healed up quite a bit. So want to see what you thought about that. Appreciate it. Thanks. Great. Great job, guys.

Bye.

I like the cut of Bill's jib.

I like the cut of Bill's jib. I don't know what jib means. I don't know what cut means. I don't know if I just offended Bill.

I don't know if that's a good thing.

Strange, brackish Canadian phrase, but no, that's a sailor phrase.

It's like if you've cut your jib properly, then it's. Then you're smooth sailing.

Nice. Okay, well, cool. I. I'm. I'm both circumcised and I have a cut jib then.

So there you go.

There you go. Anyways, you know what's scary about mountain climbing? And this is actually at 6,000 plus feet. And by the way, whenever you hear about altitude, it's. It's almost always 6,000ft at which effects kick in, whether it be the positive effects of training at altitude or, like, altitude sickness. And the deleterious effects of altitude and.

Altitude in quotation marks is 6,000ft, right?

And I was sleeping, you know, everywhere. I basically range from 11 to 13 through Colorado last week. And I was thinking about this a little bit because when I worked here in the exercise physiology lab in Spokane, one of my colleagues there studied mountaineers, and he actually studied this older guy that climbed Mount Everest. And they did like, a brain scan of this guy after he had climbed. And what they found was that when he returned from altitude, the spaces that surround the blood vessels actually drain brain fluid when you are climbing at altitude. And what that can cause is brain cell death and what are called subcortical lesions in the frontal lobes, meaning if you spend too much time with lack of oxygen at very high elevation, your brain actually shrinks. So the walls of blood capillaries start to leak. That leaked fluid can cause swelling. It can press the brain outward against the skull. It can cause the optic nerve to swell, like, against the back of the eye. It can affect vision just like seedless watermelons. And basically high amounts of time spent above 6,000ft, and even more so above 8ft. Thousand feet can actually start to be bad for you if it's combined with, like, hard physical exertion. Okay, and the guy who we studied was an old guy, or not the guy who we studied, the guy who my colleague there in the lab studied was an old guy, and he actually had irreversible brain damage from climbing. And this guy was on Everest. So you do have to be careful if you are basically an old mountaineer, right? Like, be careful and know that there's a law of diminishing returns with time spent at altitude, performing hard when the air is thin. But climbing a mountain, 3,500 to 5,000ft, like Bill says, carrying a pack, I'm a huge fan of that. I'm a huge fan of that because it's ancestral, right? Like, you're out moving, carrying, combination of lifting, heavy stuff, cardiovascular fitness. I like it. And you don't. Even if you're listening in, there are ways that you can do this, right? Like, I've been doing a ton of incline treadmill work. I have this thing called a Nordic. What's it called? A Nordic track, Nordic trainer. It's an incline treadmill. The Nordic NordicTrack.com, something like that. Anyways, though, it goes up to 40% incline. And the cool thing about that is I can stare at the white wall of my garage. That's not the cool part. That's the boring shoot yourself in the head part. But you can climb and climb and climb and not descend, because that's the tricky part about mountaineering, and especially mountaineering with a pack on. And I screwed my knees up a couple times this year competing in those train to hunt competitions because you're running down steep hills with a really heavy pack on. You know, in this case, 100 pounds. But basically the idea is that if you are hiking weighted, remember, what goes up must come down. And so if you're old and concerned about like, joint pain, knee pain, hip pain, et cetera, but you want to get the benefits of climbing, you may have to figure out a way to kind of hack things. Like you can hike on an inclined treadmill, you can hike on stairs. There's this one workout that my coach gave me a few times when I was traveling. And you would climb the hotel stairwell, right? And then you take the elevator down, and then you climb the hotel stairwell and take the elevator down. So that's another kind of cool way to mitigate the effects. You can even do.

Bill could get a helicopter to meet him at the top of the mountain.

You could do push ups in the elevator. Yes, you could get your helicopter. Or you could. I mean, you know, that's. That's what a lot of skiing is like, backcountry skiing. Right. And I like that too. Like, you hike up and you ski down, you know, so. And that takes some stress off the knees as well. So anyways, though, I like it. But I would. I would caution Bill, that you're still missing out on some of the things that have been shown to cause like testosterone to stay elevated, or growth hormone to stay elevated, or even to decrease the rate at which telomeres shorten as you age. So specifically, that is the stimulus of type 2 muscle fibers. So what this means is that when you look at. For example, they did a study at Boston University and they found that when you replace type 1 muscle fibers with type 2 muscle fibers, which is primarily what you do not with endurance training, not with long periods of time spent climbing, but rather with strength training, right? Like 4, 6, 8, 10 reps with heavy weight lifted either slow and controlled or even in some cases like powerfully in a gym. You can actually turn on and off genes by activating type 2 muscle fibers and the specific type of genes, they're called the AKT1 gene. That gene decreases the rate at which telomeres shortening. It has this anti aging effect and there are some other studies that have shown that there is a growth hormone effect as well as a testosterone increasing effect that occurs in response to lifting heavy stuff that you don't get with endurance based exercise. I will personally like two things I guarantee that I will do going into old age and while in old age is a I will take creatine because creatine has been shown to have cognitive performance benefits in elderly in multiple studies to stave off like symptoms of Alzheimer's and stuff like that. And I will also lift heavy weights not only to stave off muscle loss, but also to maintain growth hormone, to maintain testosterone and to decrease the rate at which these telomeres shorten. So yeah, I'd say like if hiking weighted works for you, that's fine. But understand that that's still not resistance training, right? For me to hike up a mountain, that's still hundreds or thousands of reps versus whatever eight squats under a barbell. So I say do both. Don't rely. Don't put all your eggs in the mountain climbing with a 20.5 pound pack bucket. So that's my advice. By the way, I just got done writing a really what in my opinion is a good article? Pat myself on the back there or praise my own lips as my mom used to say. No, not praise my own lips. Don't let your own lips praise you. Also don't praise your own lips.

Don't praise your own lips even if.

They are supple and red and beautiful. It's called how to look good Naked and live a Long Time. And in it I go into something you and I talked about on the podcast a few weeks ago, Brock. We talked about what would the perfect exercise routine look like if you wanted to A look good naked plus B live a long time. That article's coming out on Monday, so I'm not gonna belabor the point right now on this show, but if you're subscribed to my newsletter or if you just go to BenGreenvilleFitness.com this Monday, you'll get to Read the entire exercise program that I recommend for the combination of looking good naked, living a long time, and being like those people in the back of airline magazines with their shirts ripped off, which also involves injecting ungodly amounts of horse steroids into your left butt cheek.

But we won't touch that without having read that article. I have a feeling you've had me doing that workout program for the last couple months.

I've started to do a lot of research and I'm implementing these type of strategies with my clients. Now these. These things that are a little bit more proven. One of the reasons for that too is more and more now I'm not coaching triathletes and marathoners. I'm finding myself more coaching like CEOs and people who want to live a long time and people who want to look good naked.

Right.

Like I've been coaching a lot of prostitutes actually. Yeah. Yeah. Fun. So, yeah, it's fun stuff. Prostitute CEOs. Hi, Ben, this is Brad in Pennsylvania. My wife uses the Method All Purpose Natural Surface Cleaner to clean our countertops. Is this a safe way to clean our countertops or are there better options out there?

I've seen that method stuff all over the place these days.

It's popping up all over Method All Purpose Natural Surface Cleaner. They actually have the limited edition Beach Sage version on Amazon. Did you know that?

Is. Is that the scent?

I believe that Beach Sage is probably the scent. I would. I would guess that that's what that's referring to. Although perhaps it has little chunks of beach sage floating in it. There's that too. Seems like that would gum up the works of the spray bottle. I'll tell you what. Here is the simple and easy step for any of this stuff. So rather. Let. Allow me to teach you how to fish rather than giving you a fish. So there's a website called the. Don't get Distracted Brock. There's a website called the Environmental Working Group. EWG.org I'll put a link to this in the show notes and on the Environmental Working Group website. They have guides. They have guides that rank from. From a score of A, all the way down to a score of F. Cleaners, personal care products, you name it. Right? Like including some of these method products as well as. I mean literally like 20,000 different products they have on this website. Or maybe it's 2000. I don't know. I'm not good at math. But they've got thousands and thousands. At least. At least 2000. Anyways though, whenever I am analyzing A cleaner or something that I want to use that I've decided is just going to be a pain in the ass to make myself. I'll go to this website. So let's go there right now, shall we?

Yes, let's.

Ewg.org, okay, I'm there. I'm gonna search for method all purpose surface cleaner.

Okay.

EWG.org it turns out they don't have beach sage on here. They've got ginger yuzu though. So let's click on. Let's click on Ginger Ginger yuzu. So ginger yuzu. Ginger yuzu. It looks like it has a B. They give it a B.

That's not bad.

What they say is that the ingredients disclosed on the label are purified water glucoside, ethyl levulinate, glycerol, sodium citrate, ethanol fragrance, oil blend, coconut oil, annatto extract. Here's the one that concerns me because a lot of these benzos have potential for carcinogenicity. I spit that one out. This one's called benzosothiazolinone. I don't know what that is, so I don't know if I would spray it on the same countertop that I'm using chopping kale on. They say that the reason it gets a B plus this particular one is that it has looks like it's got mild concerns for cancer, respiratory effects and nervous system effects. So that brought it down a little bit of a notch. And the reason that there are some of those concerns were some of those things that I just listed and I could go back to general purpose cleaners and I could see what products scored an A. So I'm going to click A. So like, okay, here we go. Number two on a is Dr. Bronner's Sal Suds Liquid Cleaner. And when I click on that one, it's got an A. Doesn't have any of the cancer risks in it. It's still got something in it that it says may cause asthma or respiratory issues for some people, specifically sodium lauryl sulfate and cocoa betaine. But it's a cool website because I can go in there and just search for anything I use. And again, like, it's in my opinion almost always best to just make it yourself. But I know a lot of people don't have the time to do that. So use the Environmental Working Group's website. I mean, that's what it's there for. That's what all those friendly Environmental Working Group people in white lab coats are there typing away in the room full of servers. Somewhere that's what they're doing is making this easy for you. What do I do for cleaning my own surfaces? Well, first of all, put a link in the show notes to an entire article I've written on how to detox your home. There are literally dozens and dozens of recipes from me and my wife in that article. But my go to is I take a few drops of oil of oregano, right? It's an antiviral, it's an antibacterial. It's not going to make you blind. You can eat as many cherry tarts as you want when you take it. And I mix that with water and a little bit of lemon and spray that on the countertop. And that has some very, very good deep cleansing effects. And it works, right? Like, I always have a bottle of oil of oregano in the fridge too, just for using, you know, if there's a sickness going around the house or if I have to knock out, you know, some kind of infection, toenail fungus, you name it. But you know, I use oil of oregano with some lemon juice. My wife's got all these different blends that she uses that I go into in that Detox youx Home article. But ultimately, like, that's, that's my method is you go to the Environmental Working Group's website. You use their handy dandy search function. If you don't have the Internet or your workplace has blocked the Environmental Working Group's website, then just have a friend do this for you. Go to the library. Go to the library. Many ways you could skin that can't. So there you go.

Hello, Ben and Brok, this is Alexey from Finland. Yeah, that crazy sauna country. I really love the show and it has been the highlight of my morning to listen for learning new and awesome things about health and fitness overall. So thanks. But anyways, here's my question. Can I use dry herbs to make my own greens drink? Thanks.

Alexi is from Finland, which is why Alexei's name sounds like Helsinki. As a matter of fact, I think everybody in Finland has a name that ends in I. I think I need to change my name to Binky to go over there and speak at the conference. It'd probably be a good idea. Benki. Benki Greenfieldski. Greenfieldski. There we go. Benki Greenfieldski.

That's almost Polish.

Brush up on my finish. What's the Nozdravia? Yes. Binky Greenfield. Zinky Nozdravia. And we drink, okay, dried herbs to make a greens drink. So, yes, you could absolutely, you could absolutely Use dried herbs to make a greens drink. Here's the deal. I don't do a lot of greens drinks. I don't do a lot of juices. And frankly, it's because I like to get the fiber and I like to get the satiety and the prebiotics that is like the fiber compounds that probiotics in your gut will feed on. And so I tend to do smoothies and, like, shakes and stuff like that more than I tend to do juices. But I will often go out and I've talked about this on a recent podcast, you know, where we interviewed like, like, wild crafted herb botanists, people like that. And I'll go out on my property and I'll find nettles, and I'll find mint, and I'll find wild dandelion, and I'll find, like, plantain. I'll bring those back and gather them together. And some are herbs and some are plants and some are grasses. And I will put those into my smoothie. Right, like, along with my coconut milk and my chocolate and all that jazz. And I'm a huge fan of adding in these type of herbs and plants to smoothies. As far as which ones I'm a fan of. First of all, fresh is going to be better than dried. Not only are you going to get better texture, more water content, more fiber, but the fresher versions of herbs tend to simply have more antioxidant activity versus the dried versions. So that's something to think about. The fresher the better. You also get more. We talked about this on a recent podcast about chlorophyll, how when you eat fresh plants, you get high amounts of chlorophyll in your bloodstream. And there's new evidence showing that the UVA and UVB radiation from sunlight may help you to convert that into ATP. Really kind of cool stuff.

Yeah.

Showing that humans are indeed plants.

We're just like trees.

We are no different than plants. That's right. Let's be quiet and grow for a little while. That doesn't sound like growing. Sounds like something else.

I have a new leaf.

I do not have a leaf. Okay. Anyway, the herbs that I like, so some of the ones that I use, basil, also known as basil, depending on where you're from. Basil is good for your kidneys. It actually helps to remove waste products and toxins from your bloodstream. So it specifically targets the kidneys. Good for the kidneys. I'm a fan of adding that one in. Cilantro has the ability to bind heavy metals, and that One I've talked about before on the show before is good for, like, liver detoxification. I'm a huge fan of adding that to smoothies as well. Mint as a digestive. Mint is a really, really good herb. And then another one that I like is parsley, because parsley, similar to cilantro and also basil, has a little bit of a detoxification effect in terms of helping your kidney or your kidneys in most people's cases, and your liver, but it also helps your bladder. Parsley is something that's known as a natural remedy for UTIs, and it also helps to filter fluids and flush them out of the body. So parsley is another one. Those are four that I typically will have around in the refrigerator. Basil, cilantro, mint and parsley.

They also cure blindness.

They also cure blindness. That's right. But there are a ton of others that you could use, right? Like cayenne, cinnamon, clove, cacao, ginger, nutmeg, pepper and turmeric are really good combinations because pepper helps. What are called the bioperines in pepper help to activate the curcuminoids and turmeric. So that's always, like a good blend to add in if you want yourself. A little black pepper turmeric smoothie, which just to me sounds like a hideous way to start your day, but, yeah, it doesn't sound appeals to you. Do it anyways, though. Bigger fan of doing the smoothie route, though, and I kind of got sidetracked. But the reason is because not only do you get more of the fiber and more of the prebiotics, but you are less likely to be just mainstreaming starches, sugars, or fructose into your bloodstream, which is a lot of times what juicing can do. And sure, there are juicing recipes that I like, right? Like, I like to blend up, for example, ginger, turmeric and carrot juice. And then once I make it, I add some olive oil and I add some sea salt, and that's actually a nice kind of tangy, like, juice. I like that one. So I call it my anti inflammatory blend, Ben Greenfield's famous anti inflammatory blend. Anyways, though, the other thing I should mention, there are a bunch of paper bags hanging all over from the ceiling of our kitchen right now because my wife is drying herbs in the kitchen, and that's actually kind of a cool way to do it as well. She's written the title of each herb on the paper bag and she has them hanging from the top of the kitchen. And then we'll grind those right you could use a pepper grinder, you could use a mortar and pestle, whatever you like. And you can grind the herbs. You can even put them in. This is kind of cool. She talked about this in the recent Inner Circle magazine that she puts out every month. You can fill an ice cube tray half full of water and then you put the herbs in the ice cube tray and this actually freezes them in the water. And then you can thaw them or pop them out whenever you want to use them in sauces and soups and stuff like that. So what I would say is, if anybody wants to get started on the herbs in a smoothie bandwagon like I mentioned, I like parsley, mint, cilantro, and basil as like the my four go to's, but there's a lot of other, a lot of other good ones as well. But I always try to pick just like, like 2 to 4, throw them in a smoothie. Yeah, they're fantastic. And I'm a big fan of herbs. Herbs of all variety, dried herbs, fresh herbs. My friend herb who picks up the garbage on Tuesday, you name it.

Hi, Ben. Hi, Brock. This is Teresa calling from Minnesota. I have a question regarding nasal breathing and breathing ladders. Specifically nasal breathing. I have been training for the Chicago Marathon and after listening to some of your recent podcasts about this, decided to start breathing nasally rather than through my mouth as I run. Now, the first week I did this, it was very difficult. However, within the last three weeks, it has become increasingly easier and I have noticed a significant amount of energy that I have gained specifically on my long runs. Now, my question is, when I go to run my event, do I do it with nasal breathing or do I incorporate mouth breathing to get even better results for the Chicago Marathon? Or do I just use mouth breathing alone? I'm not really sure how to proceed when it comes to running events while training with nasal breathing, my next concern is I've developed an awful lot of sore on my lower lip. I assume this is from keeping my lips closed and having my lower teeth rub in that area. It is almost like a cold sore on the inside of my mouth. Eventually it goes away, but I'm just wondering if there is a way to prevent that or to keep it from happening, especially during my long runs. Thank you so much for answering my questions. I appreciate your podcast so much. They have certainly become part of my running. Not to mention they have made me a more efficient runner and a faster runner at that. Keep them coming.

That's what my nasal breathing sounds like right now, very clear, that's the problem with nasal breathing, is that right there, nasal breathing in the morning, we call them snot rockets. I'm pretty clear right now.

It's pretty good.

So the fact is, and I talk about this quite a bit in my book, and I've talked about this before in podcast interviews with, like, Bud Coates, who wrote the book Running on Air, or Jean Douar Douillard.

Jean Duyard, the.

Guy who wrote the book. I think it's called, like, Mind, Body Life or something cheesy like that. Anyways, though, both these guys talked about breathwork and the fact that there's like this. This ayurvedic approach to breathwork, nasal breathing, that's been shown in literature to have a variety of effects. And it's why I'm a fan of nasal breathing, not only when you're just like, you know, typing at your office or whatever, but also during exercise. So some of the benefits that nasal breathing has, first of all, you've got these upper lobes in your chest. They're called baroreceptors, and they're activated when you do. No baroreceptors, no boobs are different. Yes, but baroreceptors are fun, too. Baroreceptors, if stimulated by shallow chest breathing, can cause a cortisol release. And when you do nose breathing, you avoid that and you activate more of your parasympathetic than your sympathetic nervous system. Which is why, if you're doing something like tracking heart rate variability and you begin to breathe through your nose rather than through your mouth, you'll notice almost immediately your heart rate variability score or the strength of your nervous system interplay begins to increase. So what else? The lower lobes of your lungs tend to be activated a little bit more when you're doing nasal breathing. And these lower lobes perfuse more CO2 out of the body. And there is another study that shows that when you do nasal breathing, you tend to remove more CO2, and you remove CO2 more efficiently, which is a good thing. It results in kind of a more like, alkaline effect, because one of the ways that the body monitors and adjusts your ph in addition to the kidneys, is via your breath. So some other things, when you breathe into the lower lobes of your lungs, which is what happens when you do nasal breathing, that massages and exercises your diaphragm. And so you get a lot more diaphragmatic action when you do that. And when the diaphragm is allowed to contract and relax, that massages the stomach. And so there can actually be some assistance with, with digestion as well, which is really interesting. So you may find that by avoiding shallow chest breathing, your constipation goes away. So there's that too. So deep nasal breathing is good for your digestion. It engages more of the ribs. There's an interesting study that looks at rib activation and nasal breathing. And they found that the ribs act as like these levers that help to massage the heart and the lungs and almost act like this cage that squeeze the heart and the lungs during the day. And you enhance that effect when you are doing nasal breathing versus shallow chest breathing. Nasal breathing has been shown to pull lymph fluid from the lower part of the body up into the chest cavity into the heart. And healthy and active lymphatic flow is, of course, how our body supports healthy immune system activity. Another study looked at nasal breathing and alignment of the spine, the head and the neck. And when you breathe through your nose, you automatically pull yourself into better postural alignment. So. But wait, there's more. Nose breathing has been shown to increase the production of nitric oxide. So nitric oxide is a vasodilator, Expands blood vessels, increases blood flow, protects organs from damage. And it's been shown to be produced in higher quantities during nasal breathing compared to mouth breathing. Which is probably why nasal breathing also lowers your heart rate. Right? Because your vessels are bigger, there's less resistance to your heart rate pumping, and it also lowers your breath rate. Nasal breathing has been shown to increase alpha brainwave activity as well. So beta brainwaves are more associated with the stress response. Alpha brainwaves are more of like that deep relaxation or meditative state. Brainwave and nasal breathing increases the alpha brainwave activity. It's been shown that nose breathing exercises used during recovery from exercise results in shorter recovery times, you pay back your oxygen debt more quickly, and better endurance during exercise. The last thing that I noted in terms of research is that compared to mouth breathing, nasal breathing results in 50% more parasympathetic nervous system activation, meaning way less of a fight or flight response. So all of that being said, if I haven't yet convinced you that you need to train yourself to be comfortable breathing through your nose both at rest and during exercise. If I haven't yet convinced you of that, then you're probably one of those people who tries to breathe through their nose and this happens, right? You just like, you can't get a breath. Well, there is good news. There are two products that athletes. Well, one has been used For a long time. One is new, and both of these are recommended by those two guys I mentioned, Bud Coates and John Douillard, who wrote these books on nasal breathing. And a lot of athletes, including, like, Chris Froome, the guy who. I think. Chris. Did he win the Tour de France last year?

I don't know.

He either. He either won it or he came darn close. Chris Froome. Anyways, a lot of, like, endurance athletes, marathon or cyclists are using these now. And we all know if they use it, you should, too.

Yes, that's.

That's the logic.

Everything they use on the Tour should be used in everyday life.

We all know that. Assuming that you aren't going to. Through P tests, breath right strips are number one. So breath right strips, if you have difficulty with nasal breathing, they can open up your nasal cavities and help you to move more air in and out. I will warn you, if you have seasonal allergies, like hay fever, and you go out on a run using a breath right strip, you're going to take your hay fever and, like, push the maximize volume button on it. Like it. You've got to be careful. So if you have allergies, fix the allergies before you go out on a run with breath right nasal strips, breathing through your nose. And we've had other podcasts about how to fix seasonal allergies, but there's another one that's even sexier. It's called the rhinomed Turbine nasal dilator. Holy crap. The Rhinomed Turbine nasal Dilator. And it is exactly what it sounds like. It's this. I have not used it before. I will admit. I'm still old school. I still use the breath right strips when I want to go out for a run and use the deep nasal breathing. And I'm a little bit congested. But the turbine, which you can actually get off of Amazon, it's basically like a nostril stent, for lack of a better word. Right like it. Rather than going on top of your nose, like a breath right strip, it goes inside your nose. It comes in three different sizes. So whether you have a small and dainty nose or whether you have a biohacked nose that you've had implanted at the Biohacker Summit in Finland, you. You can basically get these turbine strips and you insert them gently. Insert them gently into the. Into the nasal cavity. And they apparently picture on Amazon how.

You put that in your nose.

They do. Oh, they do.

There we go.

Yeah.

Oh, that makes more sense. I couldn't figure out where the little archway went.

Yeah, they kick the butt of these breath right strips, apparently. Full disclosure, I have yet to try the Rhino medium. It's on my wish list on Amazon. It is $16, so I gotta save up for it.

$16 for three?

Really? Yeah. I didn't know that they were three pack assorted 16 disposable. I guess it makes sense that they would be disposable. Otherwise you'd have a green crusty rhinomed turbine nasal dilator sitting on your bed stand after each workout, which would be gross.

Or you could wash them.

You could wash it. That's right. Washable would be more environmentally friendly. So anyways, as far as nasal breathing, I would say that, yeah, as far as using it during your race, I would totally nasal breathe during a marathon when I did. I don't remember if it was Ironman Canada or Ironman Hawaii a couple years ago. I wore the breath right strip all during the bike and did the deep nasal breathing just to keep myself not only in a lower heart rate zone, but also to get all the benefits that I just got done talking about. So, yeah, I'm a fan. Just as with anything, practicing your training before you practice in your racing, probably not gonna work for you if you struggle with seasonal allergies, I can tell you right now, but otherwise definitely worth doing. And yes, you can use nasal breathing not just during, like, longer endurance efforts, but also during more intense efforts. You just have to train yourself to move that amount of. Of oxygen in and out. And it takes going out and doing workouts while forcing yourself to breathe easily.

So I think I just wanted. I know Teresa, like, the way she was asking the question. It seems like she wanted to know more about, like, if she was to now switch now that she's trained herself to sort of work on the nasal breathing. If she switched to mouth breathing, could she actually get more benefit from that at this point in her training? Because she's sucking, you're able to get more air through the bigger hole.

Yeah, I see what she's saying. So theoretically, if you've done a bunch of nasal breathing, you may have a stronger diaphragm, you may have stronger inspiratory and expiratory muscles, and you may somehow move more oxygen in and out, like increase what's called tidal volume when you switch from nasal to mouth breathing. But at the same time, you lose a lot of the benefits that I just got done talking about. Right. Like alpha brainwave production, activation of the lower lobs of the lung, lower lobes of the lungs, you know, activation of that cage that surrounds the lungs and the heart. So I would say that, you know, going back to what I was talking about as far as, like, research and stuff goes, I've seen no research. It's all theoretical blue sky. But theoretically, yeah, like, if you're used to nasal breathing and you start doing mouth breathing instead, when the going gets tough, you may feel like you've got access to a whole new world of oxygen.

So, yeah, it's possible in. Especially in the Chicago Marathon, it starts off pretty flat and it gets a little wonkier near the end. So maybe three quarters of the way through the race is when she should maybe switch to mouth breathing to get that final kick.

So if there's anything you learned from today's episode, when things get wonky, breathe through your nose, baby.

If you've learned one thing.

So speaking of wonky, we do have a review for this week. But before we actually get to a review, don't turn off the podcast because we do have something we want to tell you about here towards the end. But first, itunes review. So since it's been a little while since I've reminded you of this, if you haven't yet left a review in itunes, please do so. It helps us. It helps us get ranked really, really high in itunes. It helps us beat out podcasts like this American Life or cereal. Not really, but it does help us to get ranked higher in the health and fitness podcast section since nobody can really beat out any podcast that comes from npr. That being said, go leave us an itunes review. And if you hear your review read on the show and you email us or email specifically geergreenfieldfitnesssystems.com that's geergreenfieldfitnesssystemS.com we'll send you a surprise gift pack with things like a tech T shirt, bpa, free water bottle that does check out just fine on the environmental working group's website. And also a beanie cap. Or as Brock would call it, a toque.

A toque.

A toque. So that being said, Andy left us a review this week. 5 star review that says, changed my period. Life, period. Wanna take this one away, Brock?

To use punctuation a little less liberally, yes, I will take this way. When I first started listening, I thought the show was kind of boring, a little monotone. But after one week and about four episodes, I was hooked. Like that.

I like that I listened to y'.

All when on my walks.

That's.

That's hard for me to say. That's such an American thing to to say. Yeah, that was difficult. I found myself devouring the shows. I've learned so much and have made many professional improvements to my health and body comp. I highly recommend the podcast to my friends and fellow gym mates. Thanks for all y' all do and spreading y' all word, y'.

All. I feel like you should have read that in a deep southern accent with all the yellow.

Thanks all y'.

All.

Well, y', all, y'. All. That's right. Y' all want some sweet potato pie? How about some cherry tarts with your butter Sweet potato pie? Eat that butter, baby. You gonna melt that fat right off your waistline, y'.

All.

Y' all hear me now? Anyways, yeah, speaking of boring and monotone, here's the deal. Because I did say we'd announce something special, we have a very, very special guest who is joining us for next week's Ben Greenfield Fitness Q and A show. Stay tuned because it is a voice that you may become very, very familiar with in weeks to come. I'm gonna leave it at that. No, I won't leave it at that. I will tell you and I'll give you two clues. Sexy Australian. So there you go. Stay tuned. More to come. But in the meantime, check out the shownotes@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Y' all. Get out there. Have some calling with your butter. Have a great 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.