Vegan Bulletproof Coffee & Vegan Bone Broth, Can HRV Be Too High, Are Tesla Cars Healthy & Much More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, Vegan bone broth and vegan bulletproof coffee. Can your heart rate variability be too high? Natural remedies for menstrual cramps, Do Tesla cars have high emf? How to choose the sex of your baby, and much more.

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So you made it back from Team Timex Camp alive and well, I take it.

Barely alive and kicking. You know, I actually have to admit that I was using my trip down to Tucson, Arizona for the annual pilgrimage to my Team Timex camp to reinvigorate my passion for triathlon and multi sports.

Yeah, I was really surprised to see that you were doing something triathlon related. I just had kind of forgotten you ever did triathlon.

Yeah, well, for our listeners who may know that I did Ironman Hawaii in October and just kind of quit triathlon for a little while after that and have been doing things like stuff leading.

Up to that, it was sort of pretty sparse as well. Like that entire season last year, what did you do, like three triathlons maybe?

Yeah, I did a handful. But you know, so, so that people know, you know, I'm not out of that sport. And as a matter of fact, I'm going to be traveling around the world doing a few in human interest pieces, shall we say, for, for Lava magazine and possibly a couple of other magazines in the triathlon industry. So you may see me at races like Norseman, which is a crazy triathlon where you jump off a fjord or off a boat into a fjord at like 4:30am and do this ungodly cold swim and a long bike and a run up some craggy mountain and possibly, possibly the Alpe d'. Huez. There are a few other races, one in Spain. I may pop up in Thailand again this year. We'll see. So yeah, I survived Team Timex Camp and did have a few rough sessions. In particular about a 5 1/2 k swim after. I really haven't been swimming too much. So that was interesting. But actually the most interesting part of that camp and something that I'm going to be recording a podcast on soon was a meeting with Alan Lim.

Oh, cool.

The physiologist and nutritionist who works with teams like the professional cycling team, Team Radio Shack. And who is involved with this Scratch Labs electrolyte drink company.

That's how I think he's best known.

Yeah. Very smart guy. And we actually did an interesting test down there in which and I actually podcasted this so I won't get into too much detail because we're going to really geek out on it in a future podcast. But a specific patch that was able to induce a hyp sweating, I guess you would say hyperhidrosis in a specific area of the arm, and then from that sweat measure sweat sodium. It was a very elegant and simple way to measure the amount of sodium.

Loss so you didn't have to jump on a treadmill, like weigh yourself with your clothes on and stuff, then jump on the treadmill, run for a whole bunch of time and weigh yourself, then wring the clothes out into a vat and all that kind of stuff. It was just a patch.

Sounds to me like you have some experience with this.

Well, back in the old days, that's how we used to do it.

The way that I used to do sweat sodium analysis, actually, when I had an exercise phys lab was we would cut about eight different maxi pads into specific standardized sizes, and you'd ride on a bike for an hour in a hot room, collect the sweat into those maxi pads. We'd centrifuge each pad, collect the sodium, and then using an equation that approximated sodium loss based off of the loss on those specific body parts going into the maxi pad, we'd be able to get a rough approximation, rough being the key word there of sodium loss. And this seemed to be a much more simple way to do things, what we did down there.

And there you go, folks. You just got the history of sodium analysis in sport physiology.

Yeah. So stay tuned for a really interesting podcast on that. And that being said, I suppose we should jump into this week's nerdiness.

Sally, for while you were taping things to various parts of your body and inducing sweat, you are also tweeting little snippets of brilliance all over the Internet@twitter.com.

BenGreenfield yes, the Twitter bird was flying heavily. And of course, everything we talk about here we we link to over in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 313 where you can follow some of the articles we're about to talk about as well as everything else we discuss in the show. And there was an interesting article I guess I'd like to start off with that I tweeted about over@the dietdoctor.com website in which they analyzed the food that is served at various obesity conferences.

Oh, I saw this article. It was shocking.

And it started off actually the stupidity is shocking. Pretty promising. The low carb high fat conference in South Africa, which I suppose might qualify as an obesity conference, was serving things like wild caught salmon and red onion and red pepper salsa with an organic cottage cheese. And it appears to be some type of a squash dish or a pumpkin roast with pumpkin seeds and you know, a pretty healthy variety of food. And then it all kind of went downhill from there. For example, at the world's biggest obesity conference, the International Conference on Obesity in Stockholm, the lunch appeared to be sugar filled, Dannon style mini yogurts and chocolate bar.

Chocolate bar?

Yeah, chocolate bar. And then lunch was a, was a sandwich with an apple and another chocolate bar.

A nice white bread sandwich by the looks of things too.

Yeah, the world's biggest diabetes conference. Brown bag served with a banana, a bag of potato chips, a Twix and a sandwich.

It's like a 10 year old's birthday party. It's ridiculous.

Yeah, you can go to the website. We'll link to it in the show notes for you to see more of the apparent hypocritey. Hypocritey, Hypocrisy, Hypocrisy that appears at these obesity and diabetes.

I'd call that idiocracy, maybe.

Idiocracy. It's relatively shocking, so check that out.

I don't know if you notice. I was really happy to see that our buddies Jimmy Moore and Tim Noakes were both at the conference in South Africa where they served the salmon and the delightful cottage cheese and salsa and stuff.

So stuffing their, their gaping maws with pumpkin seeds I suppose, which is better than potato chips and Twix. Quite ironic. Anyways though, another interesting article that I tweeted was over at a website that I follow. There's a few different blogs that I follow just for kind of cool articles and following eartheasy.com, which is kind of a good website to check out interesting articles on farming, emergency preparedness, healthy holistic living, etc. And this article was about five science based reasons to plan for a natural childbirth. And natural childbirth can be everything from having like doulas and midwives in your home to doing the whole water birth thing and basically avoiding the needles and tubes and the beeping machines that go into much of the modern birthing process. Not that I think that those are completely needless all the time. And my Children were born in a hospital. But this was interesting, this article and a few of the reasons that they gave in the article to perhaps consider natural childbirth. One was to avoid what they call the cascade of interventions. Such as the cascade of interventions.

That sounds dangerous.

For example, some of the things they talked about was that an epidural increases the length of labor. It makes fetal distress more likely. And none of us want fetal distress.

I've had that.

It's not good, especially a baby, and can lead to the use of other drugs like Pitocin, which decreases the ability to push effectively and then leads to the need for getting more help in getting the baby out, such as forceps or episiotomy. Episiotomy. I'm not even sure if that's how that's pronounced. Or surgery. And kind of like that classic slippery slope where a woman winds up feeling really not in control at all. The labor and the delivery, it turns out to basically create, like I said, a slippery slope. So that was interesting. And also of interest was the fact that when you go into a hospital, you have, of course, a much, much higher propensity to get a C section. We've talked about before on the show how even though a C section is definitely necessary, in many cases there is a higher risk for infection, for bowel obstruction, for organ damage, for blood clots. And then of course, the fact that your child doesn't get pre populated with all the healthy bacteria they would normally get when they pass down the birth canal and go through.

It's a very gentle way of saying it. The pre populated rather than jammed full of as it squeezes through a tiny little opening.

Yes. Rather than swallowing mom's poo and bacteria. So another thing that they talked about was the freedom and awareness during labor and that babies can experience drug hangovers or loss of coordination after medicated birth.

That makes sense.

That was something that I wasn't aware of, but certainly something to consider and that mothers saying yes to an epidural may not actually anticipate the discomfort of urinary catheter insertion or the constant tether of the spinal tube, or the reduced mobility at a time when walking and freedom of movement can be a tremendous relief.

So wait, so if you get an epidural, you're actually tethered to something?

Yes.

The entire time?

I don't think you're tethered the entire time, but apparently a spinal tube is tethered for a significant period of time.

I had no idea.

Yeah, Breastfeeding. A strong start with breastfeeding. Is of course something that a lot of people are aware of, is something that helps with a baby getting exposed to things like colostrum to help seal up the lining of their gut and to help with bacteria and a really good protein, fat, carbohydrate macronutrient ratio in breastfeeding. But often you don't get quite as much of a breastfeeding relationship initiated when you're in the hospital. And as a matter of fact, when my children were in the hospital, even though we insisted upon breastfeeding, the babies were often taken away from us. River and Taren would just disappear and I'd find them in the nurse's station being fed soy formula, even though I distinctly said that I did not want that to happen, it just happened. So that's another kind of issue. And I know that many people who are working in perhaps neonatal units or people who work in hospitals and nurses who perhaps work in very responsible good hospitals are cringing, right? And perhaps I'm painting with a broad brush, but these are things to consider. And then they get into the fact that a lot of the immune boosting microbes and the good bacteria that a baby is exposed to in the vagina and when the baby is snuggling with mom as its firstborn, they lose a little bit of that with some of the modern hospital burrs and especially with like I mentioned the C section and the list goes on in the article. But I actually do think it's interesting and in full. The, you know, when we had our twins, we started off with a home birth and a water birth and after 10 hours of labor and the eventual realization that my wife's hips are so small that back in the wild wild west days she probably would have been the woman who died during childbirth. We did wind up going to the hospital and having a hospital birth and it was not that much fun and I much would have rather done it at home. But this article is certainly something to read if you are expecting or if you know someone who's expecting. It's good. It presents a pretty fair view of things, in my opinion, and it doesn't completely shove hospitals under the bus. But it does make some good points. So read that one. We'll link to it in the show notes.

Well, I think this is another one of those issues that it doesn't have to be one way or the other. It's not black or white. It's not one is evil and one is one is better or perfect or anything. It's just a matter of they both.

Have their place and being educated on your options and speaking about childbirth. One other thing I wanted to get the sensor beep ready was a study on swearing. And this study was brought to my attention even though it is a little bit old. I became aware of it just this week and it is entitled Swearing as a response to Pain and was published in the Journal of Neuro report.

Actually, I think it was in response to mother pain. That was the name of the study really. Well, it was done by Dr. Samuel L. Jackson.

Well, what this study investigated was whether swearing affects pain tolerance and in this case the ability to withstand immersion of a hand in icy water along with pain perception and heart rate. And what they found was that swearing did in fact increase pain tolerance, increase heart rate and decrease perceived pain compared with not swearing. So it turns out that if you want to shut down the pain response, it may be good to let out a little motherf cker here or a get there or a. I don't know what are, what are other swear words. I don't even wear that much. So I'm not even too familiar with the patois that you tend to see so often among the kids these days.

Yeah, the kids really know how to go to town these days. But yeah, I think we can let the audience use their imaginations.

Yes. And one interesting thing about this study, one interesting takeaway was that swearing did actually not increase pain tolerance in folks who had a tendency to catastrophize.

Yes, I like that word.

So I suppose that if you are the type of person who thinks that the world is ending every time cold water touches your body, that even if you swear it's not going to help you out, you may have bigger problems that you need to address.

I. I'm glad I had the, the sensor beep handy for this section.

Listener Q and A.

So Brock, before we jump into this week's Q and A, can I say something about last week's Q and A?

Uh oh, am I in trouble?

I think at one point, I believe it was either during the Q and A or during the special announcements. We were talking about what exactly this whole Certified Paleo thing is. We were talking about a supplement. Actually it was the Natural Force Supplements. We were talking about Certified Paleo. And I received an email after that show from Karen Pendergrass. And Karen Pendergrass is the mastermind behind the Paleo foundation. And apparently the Paleo foundation actually helps to certify things like farms and ranches. And a lot of these people kind of running around the the paleo community hawking their wares and ensures that some of the ingredients that are actually going into these compounds are indeed paleo. Ish. So it actually is a legit certification. And I happen to know Karen and she's a very intelligent and smart person who is committed to, I know, a high amount of quality and making sure that paleo doesn't turn into a total show. So anyways, Karen Pendergrass wrote to me and informed me that it actually is legit. So there you go. If something says certified Paleo on it, they're not just making stuff up.

Hey, Ben and Brock, this is Michael. I have a question. Is it possible for someone to have too much heart rate variability? I measure my HRV almost every morning with the Sweet Beat app and I tend to score above the maximum value of 100. I even scored 107 ones. I am nowhere near a professional athlete, but I do train a lot. I sprint, run, do obstacle racing and heavy lifting. And I'm wondering if I have some weird, unknown medical condition or I am just really good at doing the test. I sent you some of my scores to take a look at. I hope to hear from you.

Thanks.

I am lucky if I make it into the 80s these days. It baffles my mind that people can get into the 90s and the hundreds.

Come on. I'm actually reading. Someone just Facebooked me. Because what I do on my Facebook and often on Twitter as well is I will publish my morning heart rate variability readings because, yeah, and I always go, come on. My heart rate variability is good. I won't lie. I have very high, what are called, frequency scores, meaning that the feedback of my sympathetic and my parasympathetic nervous system is quite robust. My vagus nerve is sending feedback from my nervous system to my heart's pacemaker cells. And I measure that every morning and it's very high and I get high scores. And someone actually just emailed me and they said, extremely high HRV with a very low heart rate. Ben, this could indicate severe adrenal fatigue. Have you checked your cortisol and your dhea? Well, I should note, and I haven't written back to this person, that an extremely high heart rate variability with a very low heart rate can also indicate that you're just a freaking beast. And so the very low heart rate is of course indicative of a high stroke volume and being fit the high heart rate variability. As long as your frequency numbers are high, like your high frequency and your low frequency numbers, that's a good sign of A robust nervous system. So whoever wrote me, and I'll write you back at some point. Sometimes high HRV is in fact good. I know it sounds like I'm bragging, but I'm honestly just trying to use myself as an example of what a high heart rate variability can indicate. But a high heart rate variability can actually be bad as well. So I'll go into why that is in a second. But let me explain something about heart rate variability to you. And by the way, if you're listening in and you completely don't understand heart rate variability, this may go slightly over your head. I would recommend that you go back and listen to any of the previous podcast episodes that we've done on heart rate variability, because we've really spent probably, I would say, a good four hours interviewing folks about it and going into it. But the idea between heart rate variability is it's an analysis of what's called the RR interval, which is just basically one point in the wave. When you're watching, say, a medical show on television and seeing the little beep, beep, beep of the heart rate and seeing that wave, there are certain points in that wave that are identified as the R part of the interval. And what is happening when you're measuring heart rate variability is you're measuring the time spent from one point in the R interval to the next occurrence of that R interval. And when you're analyzing those intervals, they have to be analyzed using a statistical analysis, actually a statistical and a geometrical analysis. And there are a few different ways that these are analyzed, but one of the more popular ways is what's called the square root of the mean squared difference between those intervals. Now, stick with me here, that's abbreviated RM rmssd. And that RMSSD is basically used as an index of the vagus nerve mediated cardiac control of what's called sinus arrhythmia, or the actual electrical innervation of the heart by the nervous system. And so, for example, when you inhale, your heart rate slightly speeds up, and when you exhale, your heart rate slightly slows down. And RMSSD is basically smoothing out these slight variabilities and allowing them to be given a numerical value. And that numerical value can indeed actually go above 100. And there are some heart rate variability analysis tools out there that actually rely upon that RMSSD value. And in something that does that, you can often get values like 110 and 120. And those values would, in a normal heart rate variability, App Express as like 80 or 90. And the reason for that is that most of the apps out there, like the Nature Beat app, the Greenfield Nature Beat app, that is actually my app for measuring heart rate variability, or the Bioforce app, or the Athlete app, or the Sweet Beat app, or many of these, they're modified RMSSD values. They've actually transformed the RMSSD value to allow it to figure on a 100 point scale. So scores above 100 are possible, but pretty uncommon. You usually see them in highly fit individuals. But for the most part, unless a heart rate app, and here's what I'm getting at, unless a heart rate app is measuring using an RMSSD interval without that interval being modified to allow it to be on a 0 to 100 scale, there's usually something else going on. If your heart rate variability is consistently measuring above 100, and here's what it could be, that is going on, and this is what has actually been looked at in research. When you have what are called paraventricular contractions or heart rhythm abnormalities, or what are called ectopic beats, any type of basically a hiccup in the pacemaker cells of your heart, it can cause that abnormal heart rate variability pattern and often a heart rate variability that is above 100. And this, in this case, is not a sign of superior fitness, but rather a sign that you have an electrical abnormality in your heart that needs to be checked out.

So perhaps an arrhythmia.

An arrhythmia, exactly. So this would be a case in which it would be prudent to actually pay a visit to a cardiac physician and do an EKG stress test in which you have electrodes attached to your heart. You exercise at an easy pace, all the way up to a hard pace, and you check to see if you're displaying PVCs, and in particular displaying those PVCs or paraventricular contractions, electrical rhythm abnormalities of the heart at lower intensities. Because frankly, and this is something I actually talk about in my book Beyond Training, I published some secret hidden chapters that come along with that book. And if you're reading the book, as you get towards the end of the book, you get access to this website where I've published about 10 hidden chapters. And one of those chapters goes into my journey of finding out whether extreme endurance had hurt my heart. And I detailed my process of going and visiting a cardiac physician and getting all these measurements done. And what I discovered during that process was that most athletes in general actually do display electrical abnormalities of the heart once they're approaching their VO2 max and their maximum pace. And that's not necessarily a sign that something is wrong with your heart. It's just a sign that you're working the hell out of your body.

Your heart's just sort of freaking out.

Yeah, but if it's happening when you're walking or when you're jogging, that's another matter altogether. And so that's what I would do if I were you is I would actually consider getting a cardiac analysis. You know, a cardiac stress test, an EKG based stress test of the heart. That would be prudent. At least if you're consistently testing and your heart rate variability is way above 100 and you're not using. Well, let me put this. Most apps out there, they're not using this RMSSD scale. They're using a log based version of that scale that allows HRV to typically be between 0 and 100. So if you're typically way above 100, that's a sign that something else could be going on. And so I'd recommend getting checked out.

Hey, Ben, this is Ellie here. I was just wondering if there's a vegan equivalent to bone broth. I don't mean like vegetable stock or anything. I kind of mean the nutritional benefits that bone broth brings. Another. I guess a second question would be, is there a bulletproof coffee for vegans? If I added some Earth Balance to my coffee, would that be kind of like the fatty coffee that you guys drink? I'm guessing not, but I figured I would throw it out there. Have a good day.

Bye.

Love the podcast.

Vegan bulletproof coffee.

And vegan bone broth. That's interesting. Which should we tackle first?

I don't know. I looked at that Earth Balance fake butter stuff and it scared me.

You know what, that's perfect. Let's start with that. First of all, whether it's bone broth or whether it's bulletproof coffee, don't add Earth Balance. So Earth Balance is kind of like the hippie version of I Can't Believe It's Not Coffee.

Exactly. Yeah.

So if you look at the ingredients, you know, the first ingredients in it are canola oil, soybean oil, and sure, there's some flax and olive oil in there as well, but ultimately these are oxidized vegetable oils that can, down the road, create some cardiovascular issues. A high intake of omega 6 fatty acids, which are not bad in small amounts, but can create inflammation when they're imbalanced relative to omega 3 fatty acids. And ultimately, even though Earth Balance probably isn't as bad as Deep fried Twinkies. It's definitely not high up there.

Twix bar and a bag of cheese.

List of things you should prioritize if you care about your heart, health in particular.

Ellie's a smart girl, we know her and I'm sure she's not pounding that stuff. Don't want to imply that she's doing that.

But let me tell you this, Ellie, the reason I know what your thought pattern is here, you're thinking, well, maybe use this earth balance as a substitute for the dairy based butter if you are vegan. The reason that butter is added to something like say bulletproof coffee would be for the butyric acid, because butyric acid has a lot of cool effects. It can suppress inflammation in the gut and in other tissues. And as a matter of fact, butyrate and a lot of other short chain fatty acids that are produced by your gut bacteria. If you've got a lot of good healthy gut bacteria, that has a really remarkable effect on your intestinal permeability. And in both tissue cultures and in rats, a high intake of butyric acid can show a really big decrease in intestinal permeability. So essentially what that means is that it can cause a decrease in leaky gut and it can heal the lining of the gut and it can also get absorbed into the circulation and in human blood immune cells. Butyrate is very anti inflammatory. Butyric acid has been shown to increase resistance to metabolic and physical stress. It can reduce the harmful effects of type 1 diabetes in mice. It's been shown to increase the function and the survival of mice who have neurodegenerative diseases. So it can help out the brain and with neuronal health as well. And there's some other interesting things too. For example, the body's immune system becomes altered when you've got a high amount of butyrate in the digestive tract. And there's a hypothesis out there that butyrate is used as a signaling mechanism between bacteria in the gut, allowing them to operate much better when it comes to immunity. So basically, if you're not getting some form of butyrate, butyrate or butyric acid in your diet, you are really shorting yourself in terms of your gut health and your immunity and your anti inflammatory potential in particular. However, there are ways to get butyric acid that go above and beyond just butter. Just basically walking around with, you know, whatever the stereotypical Kerrygold unsalted butter in your backpack at all times, just in case you should walk into a Starbucks and need to shocker, get a cup of black coffee. So, for example, if you have a high amount of fiber in your diet, clinical trials have shown that increasing dietary fiber significantly increases butyrate production. And when you consider that a lot of vegan and plant based dieters are getting, in most cases, more fiber than the general population, they're also by nature you're probably getting more butyrate as well. So sweet potatoes and beans and vegetables and fruits and nuts, all of those can get you butyrate and other short chain fatty acids too, in addition to, of course, butter. Now, cod liver oil and butter would be the main non vegan ways to get your butyric acid. But if you're getting fiber from other sources, eating lots of salad and sweet potatoes and all that good stuff, you've got other sources of butyrate in your diet that would make it so you don't necessarily need to be dumping butter into your cup of vegan bulletproof coffee. Now this leaves some of the other things that would normally get added to bulletproof coffee. And normally for bulletproof coffee, you'd blend up butter and you'd add some MCT oil. And typically you could add some other things like cinnamon or stevia or some organic cacao or vanilla powder, vanilla extract or something like that. And last time I checked, everything that I just mentioned was vegan. So you can pretty much make bulletproof coffee without the butter. And it is vegan. And as a matter of fact, if you were to search for bulletproof coffee vegan recipes on the Internet, you're pretty much going to find that what is recommended is to take coffee and to blend it with some extra virgin coconut oil or MCT oil and add some vanilla, some stevia, and potentially some raw cacao. So it's pretty much bulletproof coffee without the butter. And you do get some recommendations by the way out there to add things like almond milk or rice milk or soy milk or coconut milk, for example, to that bulletproof coffee. And one thing you should be aware of is that once you begin to add any type of milks that have milk sugars in them, if you are consuming bulletproof coffee for the fat burning effect or you're consuming it, well, let's put it this way, if you're consuming it in general, you're going to be increasing cholesterol and you don't necessarily want to be spiking blood sugars at the same time that you're doing that. You also don't want to be spiking blood sugars if you're trying to engage in all the benefits of increasing your fat oxidation or kind of keeping yourself in a fat burning state. So I'd actually leave the milk out.

That's why I stopped putting almond butter in my bulletproof coffee, too.

Yeah, exactly. So if you want to do the vegan, bulletproof coffee thing, just have bulletproof coffee and do the coffee, the coconut oil, maybe some vanilla, some stevia, some cinnamon or some cacao. If you want to add some party to your coffee, leave out the milk, leave out the butter, and have a sweet potato on a salad later on in the day. And I don't think you're going to be experiencing any butyric acid deficiencies.

You don't put stevia in your coffee, do you?

I will occasionally. I've got a little bottle of liquid chocolate stevia. And even though I'm usually a one cup of coffee a day person, on some days where I need a little bit of energy, in the afternoon, I'll make a cup of iced coffee. And in that iced coffee, I'll put a few drops of this chocolate stevia. And it's a nice little beverage. So. And I will do that sometimes, as a matter of fact.

You know the old. The old blues song by Howlin Wolf, Sugar in my coffee makes me mean. That's how I feel. Don't.

Must have been before my time.

It was before my time, too. Let me just put that there.

Okay, so let's move on to bone broth.

Bone broth without the bone.

Yeah. And you know, one of the primary benefits of bone broth, which we've talked about before on the show quite a bit, and we've done stories on it and everything, so we don't need to get deep, deep into bone broth on this. But gelatin is one of the things that you're gonna find in bone broth, especially if you're not skimming all the fat off the bone broth, which you shouldn't do. And gelatin has a few benefits. First of all, it helps to balance out meat intake. We mentioned this in the news flashes a few months ago on the show how muscle meat and eggs, they're high in methionine. And methionine is an amino acid that raises homocysteine levels in the blood. And this is one of the reasons that people will say, like red meat causes heart disease is because it can elevate those homocysteine levels if that red meat is not balanced out with glycine. If you have basically more methionine then you do glycine or methionine amino acid, then you do glycine amino acid. You can have excess inflammation and high homocysteine. And the way that you can get the added glycine is from a source of gelatin. And so this is why gelatinous rich foods and bone broths and things like that should ideally be included if you are a meat eater. And of course, if you're trying to make vegan bone broth, you should ideally have some source of gelatin in there, even though you're not getting methionine in your diet from red meat. Obviously, if you're vegan or vegetarian, the reason for that is that there are some other benefits to gelatin as well. For example, it helps improve your gut integrity and your digestive strength. It helps out with gastric acid secretion. It helps to restore a healthy mucosal lining in the stomach. It has some of those same benefits as the butyric acid does, so it can help out with that. It's a well known promoter of skin health. So it helps to make your skin healthy and beautiful because gelatin gives you glycine and also gives you proline. And those are two amino acids that are used in the production of collagen. And so a diet rich in gelatin can help you kind of have a little bit of an anti aging effect and help you be protected against like sunlight and wrinkles and all sorts of things. Gelatin is good for protecting the joints, obviously, because like I mentioned, it helps with the production of collagen. And they've even had done research studies who show that athletes who take hydrolyzed collagen, which is very similar to, similar to gelatin, they experience less pain in their joints. And so, you know, if you exercise, you would definitely want to include gelatin. And then finally, gelatin has been shown about 3 grams of glycine, as a matter of fact, before bedtime, was shown to help with sleep quality. And so having enough glycine in your diet can help with sleep as well. And it has a little bit of a calming effect. So as far as how you can get, get gelatin and do like a vegan bone broth, well, one of the first things you gotta have on hand is gelatin. And this kind of depends on how vegan you are, how plant based you are. If you don't want to use any animal sources at all, period in your diet, it's going to be tough because most gelatin comes from, for example, the one that I like is Great Lakes gelatin that comes from grass fed animals. You can get it in its hydrolyzed collagen form, you can get it in its whole form and that's a great thing to have around. But again, it starts with an animal, but so does most vitamin D. So that's one thing to know is that if you get a gelatin powder or a collagen powder, most of the time it's still going to start from an animal source. However, one of the ways that you can get around that is like I mentioned, for example, glycine, glycine, proline, glutamine, a lot of these compounds are the bioactive compounds of gelatin. And you can actually purchase amino acids in their isolated form or you can even get like a whole amino acid supplement, like an amino powder or an amino capsule. And those don't start with animals as their initial source. Those are just basically, you know, they're laboratory produced amino acids and no they're not, they're not Frankenfoods, they're not chemical cocktails, but they're amino acids. That didn't necessarily start with, I don't know, I think possibly a lot of vegans, just imagine cows getting shoved into a blender when they think about eating certain foods.

I love picturing that.

Will it blend anyways though, you can just get amino acids and you can include those in some of these recipes. Even in a vegan bone broth recipe if you didn't want to use gelatin. And you can get some of those effects of gelatin that you're not going to get from just like making a vegan bone broth. If you wanted to make something like bone broth that is going to help out with collagen production, there are some things that you can do. So for example boil rocks. There are foods out there that can help you with promoting collagen. Like seaweed is one, celery is another. Kale, kale, beets, spinach, olive oil, all of these are not only very alkaline substances that can help keep minerals from leaching from your bones, but they can also assist with collagen production with healthy hair, skin, nails and joints in a similar way that bone broth, that animal based gelatin bone broth can. So for example, there's one recipe for vegan bone broth where you can take, take olive oil, take about 4 tablespoons of olive oil and then you just mix a bunch of chopped vegetables, right, like chopped celery and chopped beets and some chopped spinach and kale and Then you would technically want to put some seaweed in there. Wakame w a k a m e is really nice in soups. As a source of seaweed for soups, it's much better than like nori or kelp or dulce. It's called wakame w a k a m e. You put some of that in there. You can put a soy sauce or if you didn't want to use a soy sauce, you could use coconut aminos which are very similar in terms of taste to soy sauce, but don't have the actual soy in them. You could add some miso paste and then any herbs that you want, like parsley or cilantro, and then you add your water and you can just basically in a large stock pot, simmer all of that over a medium to low heat. And that's kind of like a vegan base bowl bone broth. So you're just wanting to make sure that you add seaweed, you add some of these collagen supporting foods, you add a little bit of miso, some herbs, and so you can still get a lot of the benefits of bone broth. And then technically, if you're to suck that down and maybe use an amino acid later on in the day or in the morning, you'd be getting some of that, you know, some of the same glycine and proline and glutamine that you'd be getting from the gelatin. So, you know, you can, you can kind of skirt your way around full on bone broth.

But when you don't need to cook that for like 12 or 24 hours or anything like you do with bone broth either, that's just a soup you could whip up.

Yeah, traditional bone broth, you'd simmer for, you know, around 24 to 48 hours. And with something like this, with vegetables, I mean, 45, 60 minutes and you're good to go. So.

Yeah, that's way better than my. What I was going to suggest, which was to just like throw rocks in a pot of water and cook those for like 48 hours.

Yes. Rocks. Yeah.

Good idea.

Brock, I'm glad we have you on the show to balance things out.

Hi, Ben, My name is Jasmine and I have two questions relating to periods or menstrual cycles. What do you recommend for pain? I get incredible cramps that leave me sometimes just in bed and I seriously can't get up or go throughout my day. And so I have to reach for over the counter pain medication and I really hate doing that. Do you have any suggestions for me? And the second, due to related to menstrual cycle, is that I also get incredibly fatigued sometimes. I'll be at my standing desk, which again, thank you to you for teaching me about standing desks. But I'll be at my standing desk, and all of a sudden I'll literally have to just lay down on the floor where I'm at, because fatigue has hit me and I'll just knock out for like, half an hour in some random area and it becomes incredibly difficult to get up. So do you have any recommendations for fatigue? Fatigue and tiredness due to menstruation. And also, do you think this is kind of normal, or what is your opinion on that? Thanks for the great podcast. Bye.

You know, I've known a lot of women who get the bad cramps, but I. I don't think I've ever heard anybody complain about actually, like, having to lay down on the floor.

I have. I've talked to some women who just, like, get paralyzed by their menstrual cramps.

Sucks.

Yeah, it does. Does. It's so awesome being a different dude.

I'm so happy sometimes.

I'm so happy I'm a guy. Yeah, yeah. The whole just like. Yeah, we've already talked about, like, babies and vaginas and all that jazz. They're just. Being a woman is so freaking complex. Geez. All right, well, Jasmine, first of all, you know, I obviously empathize with you, even though I'm also making fun of women at the same time, I'm not a complete act, because I will give you some recommendations here for menstrual cramps. So just when we dig into this and look at the physiology of what causes PMS and menstrual cramps, it's largely just hormones that we're talking about. And when you have your monthly fluctuation of estrogen and progesterone and what are called fsh, or follicle stimulating hormone and lh, or luteinizing hormone. These hormones can interact with brain chemicals and neurotransmitters and create some pretty significant issues when you're going through your menstrual cycle in particular. And there are some things that you can do to control this. So, for example, one of the things that can happen is when we look at dietary factors and in particular, dietary fats, there are some oils that can get incorporated into cells and your reproductive tissue and can cause problems such as endometriosis and polycystic ovarian syndrome. And also a lot of kind of like Excess bleeding and excess cramping that you might experience during a menstrual cycle. And the type of oils that would cause an issue like this would be oils that are high in omega 6 fatty acids, a lot of your polyunsaturated fats. These would be things that you would want to avoid during that time of the month in particular. Now, I'm a fan of being pretty careful with these in general, but we're talking about Earth balance butter, for example. But vegetable oil, peanut oil, soybean oil, canola oil, margarine, a lot of these snacks that tend to be coated a lot of times, even healthy snacks with canola oil, those bastards, they sneak them into everything. And you just want. It's not like you need to be fat free. You just need to choose fats like coconut oil, extra virgin olive oil. And you can do animals fats, even like ghee and tallow and lard. But you just want to be careful with omega 3 fatty acids. So eat your tub au lard, but avoid any type of oxidized oils or vegetable oils. Another thing that can contribute to this issue and cause an imbalance between estrogen and progesterone would just be phytoestrogens and particularly chemicals that mimic hormones. And one of the things that drives me nuts is when women complain about menstrual cramps and about issues with PMS and their cycle. And then you open up the bathroom cupboard or you look at what's sitting on the shelf in the shower and it's a bunch of parabens and phthalates and hormone disrupting chemicals. Everything from plastic containers that you're storing your food in, to household chemicals, to anything that has pesticides, like using non organic produce. All of that can create some estrogen dominance that can contribute to this issue. Because one of the things that can really affect PMS would be progesterone deficiencies. And by nature, estrogen dominance is going to contribute to a progesterone deficiency. So that's something else to be very careful with. Another thing that can potentially create a lot of inflammation that will exacerbate the symptoms of pm. EMS would be common inflammatory foods. Right. Grains, processed sugar, commercial dairy, vegetable oils. I know that for our listeners, in many cases, I'm preaching to the choir. Yeah.

A lot of people are avoiding those anyway.

Yeah. But I would consider even, especially during that time of the month, just go completely, as hard as it can be, go completely grain free and dairy free. And these are just simple things that you can do that will make a Pretty good change when it comes to abdominal cramping and the heavy bleeding that can occur during menses. These are things that definitely influence that. Now, of course, there's really not any population on the face of the planet that doesn't use things like herbs, oils, plant extracts, medicinal compounds, et cetera, to control certain symptoms. And we certainly have access to all of those too that we can add in. I know a lot of what I just talked about was omission, but you can also also engage in co mission and include some things that will help you out. So I'll put links to some of my favorite versions of some of the things I'm about to talk about in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 313 but one thing would be adaptogenic herbs. Things like maca, ashwagandha, eleuthero. Maca in particular is actually a two tuber. It's in the radish family and you can get it in powdered form and it can boost hormone production and libido. But it can also help control a lot of the symptoms of pms. Many adaptogenic herb compounds can do the same thing. My wife takes something called inner peace. Inner peace when she's experiencing any symptoms of PMS. It's great. I just give her about 10 capsules of inner peace and then I run away fast. And that's my strategy. Run into the forest and let her swallow the capsules. I come back two hours later and all is good with the world. But inner peace or maca, they would be kind of redundant. I wouldn't say take both, but choose one or the other, like a maca powder or these inner peace capsules. That's one thing I would include. Another one would be magnesium. And magnesium can definitely help with hormonal balance. It can also just help to relax you. And it's another thing that traditionally has been shown to you and has helped with digestive tract issues and also PMS symptoms and menstrual cramping. I'm a fan of a transdermal form for this transdermal magnesium lotion. Don't get a spray. I find that a spray leaves a residue on the skin. I'm not a big fan of the magnesium oil sprays, but the lotion, it's very soothing, it's very calming. You can rub it into the back of your neck, you can rub it into your temples, you can rub it into your legs. And transdermal magnesium would certainly be something to include as well. That's something also that my wife uses. She'll use that if she feels like a headache or a migraine coming on, which will happen to her sometimes during that time of the month. And she'll rub it into her neck and her temples and she also will take about two to three capsules of that inner peace. Another thing to consider is any type of fat soluble vitamins that will support hormone function. A lot of people immediately think of vitamin D when they hear about fat soluble vitamins. But remember, remember you don't want to take vitamin D in the absence of vitamin K. I used to make the mistake of recommending these liquid vitamin D supplements. Like what was one that I would recommend? Carlson's, for example, like Carlson's liquid vitamin D. The problem is it's completely absence of vitamin K and you don't want to create a vitamin D, vitamin K imbalance because you're going to get low absorption of vitamin D and potential for vitamin D toxicity. So combine vitamin D with vitamin K. Epsos makes a really good one that's a blend of vitamin D, vitamin K and MCT oil. So that's what I'd go with. That's the one that used to be the Thorn FX vitamin D, but all the Thorn FX stuff is now called Exos E X O S. So that's another one to get. And that's just like a liquid vitamin D. I know this sounds like a lot of stuff, but this is just these aren't things you take every day. These are things that you'll break out at that time of the month when you know that you're going to need some adaptogenic herbs, some magnesium, a little bit extra vitamin D mixed with vitamin K. So that's another thing I'd go with. We already talked about gelatin and how gelatin can support digestive health and help to soothe inflammation, but it can also support hormone production. And as long as you're not vegan, which we already touched on, you can use gelatin. If you are vegan, you could always turn to amino acids. But I'm a bigger fan of using gelatin. And this is something that you can mix into a glass of water and drink. You can also just put it into, for example, I'll put it in smoothies. It's great in smoothies. You just can stir it into a smoothie. You can blend it, but the blending could potentially harm the gelatin. So I'm a bigger fan of just stirring it in. And then one other that I'd recommend, there's this compound I think we've talked about on the show before and warned against men using using this unless they want to lower testosterone. But that's Vitex, also known as Chaste Tree and it can help to lengthen what's called the luteal phase and raise progesterone. And like I mentioned, progesterone deficiencies or estrogen dominance can be an issue when it comes to pms. And Vitex or Chaste Tree Berry can help out with this. So that'd be another one to look into would be this, vice versa latex. So those would be some of the basic recommendations. Of course. Sleep and de stressing and continuing to move as much as you can as far as exercise is concerned and especially relaxing exercises like walking and swimming and not a lot of running and CrossFit and high intensity cardio. But movement is definitely going to help you as well. So those are some of the things that I would do when it comes to natural remedies for peeing. I know those arethose are certainlywell. I can tell you the ones that my wife does. She does vitamin D, she does the magnesium, she does the inner peace. I mentioned the omega 6 fatty acids and how to be careful with those. You could also probably benefit from just balancing things out when it comes to the omega 6 fatty acids by using a fish oil like an omega 3 fatty acid source. That might help you out a little bit as well. And that could be maybe something to include. It typically goes well with something like a vitamin D and a vitamin K as far as taking all at the same time to help out with absorption. And also a fish oil is going to provide some of the same building blocks for hormone production that those fat soluble vitamins like vitamin D and vitamin K are going to provide.

Couldn't you just take what's it called a cod liver oil instead?

Cod liver oil as well? Cod liver oil, because it has the.

D, the K, the fish or the omega 3s.

Cod liver oil has a higher amount of those fat soluble vitamins. Yeah. And cod liver oil has the hesitant A D and K in it. So yeah, you could do that as well. It's freaking expensive stuff but.

And it's kind of gross.

But I think it's actually if you're looking at things from an expense standpoint, it's cheaper to use like a liquid vitamin D, like that vitamin D, vitamin K blend that I talked about and then take a fish oil at the same time. I think you're still going to come out ahead of things from a, from a financial standpoint which is using cod liver oil. But you know, it's kind of, kind of up to you.

I'll have to look at my grocery bills.

All of our listeners are loaded, so they don't care anyways.

You mean they're drunk?

Doesn't loaded mean wealthy? Maybe it means drunk too. Maybe they're drunk and wealthy.

Yeah, that's the best way to be.

Really drunk, wealthy and menstrually cramping. Woo.

Hi, this is Maria from Minnesota. Thanks for the great show. I listen to you guys a lot as I drive for work. I am considering getting a Tesla car and I am concerned about the ems. So just wondering what your thoughts are on this. I do have two young kids that will be sometimes riding with me in the backseat. So I have some concerns if it's worth never paying for gas again in exchange for maybe some exposure to EMFs. Thanks again for the great show and looking forward to hearing your answer.

Man the questions. Our audience is not taking it easy on you you today.

These are tough questions.

Just got left and a right and a knee to the balls.

Well, you know, they, they actually, it was several years ago that Consumer Reports website actually looked at this idea circulating that hybrid vehicles or electrical vehicles are going to produce higher amounts of EMF than just regular old cars that the rest of us non hippies drive. And when they ran a test, what they did was they actually did, they used what's called a three axis magnetic field meter. This is somewhat like a gauss meter which you can purchase on Amazon, but it gives you readings in milligauss units which is the commonly accepted measure for magnetic field and it's also abbreviated MG. And they measured the EMF levels on 13 different vehicles, all under the same condition. So they took measurements of the right foot of the driver, the knee, the waist and the head, both when idling and when driving around a simulated stop and go city driving course and then also accelerating from zero to 60 miles per hour. And they tested everything from the shift Chevy Cobalt, which is a conventional non hybrid, non electric car. It's just a small sedan. And they tested some of these hybrids like the Chevy Tahoe hybrid and Toyota Prius and a couple different models of the Prius. They tested the Nissan Altima hybrid and they also tested of course several non hybrid vehicles. Now they found some interesting things. First of all, they found that for every vehicle vehicle that they tested, the EMF readings were highest in the foot and second highest in the waist and relatively low higher up like near the head and the brain, which is Actually where I personally get most concerned about emf. And so it turns out that the majority of your body exposed to EMF when you're driving around in any car is not that high in the areas that are gonna be potentially more susceptible to the deleterious effects of em. It's kind of like the difference between having a Fitbit on your wrist, you know, and the Bluetooth signal emitted from that Fitbit might not be as deleterious as, like, a Bluetooth headset constantly sitting on your ear next to your brain. Right.

Or even a cell phone pressed up to your temple.

Right, right, exactly. Now, some of the hybrid cars had readings pretty similar to conventional cars. You know, for example, the. The Mini Cooper showed a reading of. Of 2 milligauss. And the Toyota Prius hybrid also had a reading of two milligauss. And the 13 vehicles tested, of those 13 vehicles, as a matter of fact, the hybrids did not have the highest peak readings of EMF. The Chevy Cobalt actually had 30 milligauss at the feet and 16 milligauss at the knee. Whereas when you look at a lot of these hybrids, they were down around, like 2 to 3 milligauss. So that the hybrids actually had a lower amount of EMF in many of these cases. Now, if you want to look at that in context or relative to other things that you're around other than cars, if you're looking at a computer, usually that's going to range from 2 up to about 20 milligauss. So pretty similar to a car and in many cases higher than a car when you're just working on your computer. A hairdryer is like 10 up to 70 milligauss. So a hair dryer, dryer turns out EMF, that's way higher than most cars. Power lines are, like, above 200 milligauss in many cases. So if you're, like, hanging around under a power line, you've got bigger fish to fry than the car that you're driving around in.

I can see five of them out my office window here.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, you know, ultimately, it's not as big of an issue as we might think when it comes to EMF readings in hybrids. Now, when you look at your car, first of all, I would recommend, if you want to test this yourself and look at Milagauss readings, the generally accepted safe exposure levels for people who just want to avoid EMF in general, you should try and keep most of the things that you're hanging around spending a lot of time in below 1 mile. 1 milligauss is a pretty Good number to shoot for, to kind of avoid, especially up around your head or places where your head and your heart and your brain are going to be by and so you can get a gauss meter and you can walk around or I use one of these devices called the Lapka device that plugs into my cell phone and I actually interviewed them on the podcast. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and do a search for Lapka or just go to the show notes at BenGreenfieldFitness, I'll link to that interview. But there's a variety of ways that you can test this. But you're looking at right around 1.0mg as a relatively safe number when you're around, like electrically operating equipment like a car or a hair dryer. Good luck with the hairdryers. Those things turn out a lot. Tesla is an interesting company because Tesla, if you've got the, the 50 to 100 grand to spend for a good electrical car, Tesla actually purposely shields against magnetic fields. They have equipped their vehicles with special shielding devices inside the vehicles. And most Teslas are going to be at 1 milligauss or less when you're driving around compared to a lot of cars are going to be like 3 to 10. Like I mentioned that cobalt can get at a size 30, but Tesla, of all the hybrids, would be actually the safest to go for. So it's very interesting. They've actually considered that fact at Tesla and they've lowered EMF when it comes to Tesla. So, yeah, ultimately. There are modifications you can make. I know some people who are super duper aware. They'll put in shut off switches in the engine compartments for some of the electrical components that can turn on and, and basically drive a car around with lower amounts of magnetic fields. I have no clue how to do any of that stuff. I mean, that's kind of a pretty significant DIY project and I would think you need to almost be a car mechanic or an electrical engineer to pull that off. But ultimately, if you are going to buy a car and you want the lowest EMF car that you can get, not only should you get a hybrid, but you should get a Tesla. So there you go. Go grab a loan and slap down 50 to 100 grand and get on the wait list for a Tesla.

You know what the coolest thing is about getting one of those gauss meter things?

Being able to look for ghosts.

Exactly. You can track paranormal.

Paranormal. That's right. As soon as I check into a hotel, it's the first thing I do is I analyze the ghost factor.

Hello Ben and Brock. Just to say, I'm Paul Nicholl from the UK and I was just want to say thanks for the, the entertaining help you guys give so often. And we've, me and my wife, we've just had our third baby girl and whilst I love it a bit, she's an absolute angel, there is a tad too much estrogen in my family.

Now.

So I was just wondering that if me and my wife were to. To go down this road again, which, you know, like to do if you've come across anything in your research that might tip the balance to getting a little baby boy this time, as I, as I do fancy, you know, bringing up a son as well and doing all that, those crazy boy things that you can do because playing with dolls just ain't cutting it right at the moment. Again, thanks a lot for any help you can give. It's much appreciated. Take care.

Paul, this is a hard question. They're not taking it easy on you, man.

Where how do we go from Tesla and emfs to how to choose the sex of your baby?

That's the kind of show this is.

Yeah, this is going to be a pretty fun question actually because, yeah, I think it's interesting. I've actually thought about in the past like I've got twin boys, right? And my wife and I have talked before about potentially having a little girl. You know, introducing a little pink dress clad girl into the Greenfield household to make me into a softer man and to kind of round things out with all the sausages that are running around the Greenfield house. And at the same time though, when you've had multiples, your chance of having multiples again goes up by 30%. So we could try for a little girl and we could wind up with what, three more little boys. So this is a topic that's near and dear to my heart. So it's interesting stuff. And I looked into this before just because don't tell my wife, I hope she doesn't listen to this and even know that, that I'm considering it because then. Yeah, well, you know, anyways. Yeah, so anyway, everybody, don't tell Jessa. Don't tell Jessa. So you have about a 50, 50 chance of conceiving a boy or a girl through just like plain old, old fashioned intercourse. And a lot of people have looked into finding a way to stack the odds in their favor. You know, like I mentioned for myself, you know, want like a, whatever a daughter to balance out their family. Families or a son to balance out their families. And so this is certainly something that's been talked about quite a bit. And I would say that the most well known and advertised strategy out there for choosing the sex of your child is the book how to choose the sex of your baby, which was written by this guy named Shettles, and I believe he's a doctor. And so you just googled how do.

You choose the sex of your baby? And that you just took the first hit, right?

No, how to choose the sex for your baby is a book.

Yeah, that's what I mean.

Yeah, that's.

That would be the first Google retreat you do.

It probably would be, yeah. And what Shettles argues, he, he says that the male sperm, the Y sperm, is smaller and it's faster, but it's more short lived than the female sperm or the X sperm. And so if you wanted a boy, for example, you would have some sex closest to the time when the mom's egg is released or closest to ovulation. And so that would mean that the speedy male sperm could get to the egg sooner than the slower but more hardy female sperm. So the other thing that happens is that Y chromosome, that boy chromosome might also get discharged as close as possible to the opening of the cervix. And so, so in order for that Y chromosome to get discharged as close as possible to the opening of the cervix, he argues that rear entry intercourse, what we like to call on the Ben Greenfield fitness show doggy style, would be the best way to go if you were wanting a boy.

I was thinking more like reverse cowgirl.

Myself or reverse cowgirl. There you go. So the other, just keeping it classy.

Keeping it classy.

Classy. The other consideration here would be, of course, the opposite. If you wanted a girl according to the Shettles method, you would be wanting to have sex in the missionary position, much more traditional and conservative position, and snugly. And for those of you who don't know what the missionary position is, that's face to face, man on top. So just thought I'd clear that up. And that would be about two to four days before ovulation, so that by the time the egg comes, you've only got the hardier, the more resilient X sperm, the female sperm, hanging around and waiting in mom's reproductive tract. And the thing is that when you look at the Shettles method, there's no actual evidence and there's no studies that show that it works. And there is actually a pediatrician in Texas named J. Martin Young. Young, who's done a medical literature review on sex determination and found that the Shettles method fared worse than just plain old random sex, with a 39% success rate in choosing the sex of the child, which if you look at 50, 50 chances of just a normal intercourse is 11% lower chance of having the child that you want when you look at just regular old sex compared to the shell Shuttle's method. So it's kind of interesting. And the guy who ran that test has also written a book to just introduce even more bias into this. He wrote a book called how to have a Boy and also a book called how to have a Girl. And in that book he has a strategy that completely opposes Shuttle's strategy. He says if you want to have a female, if you want to have a little girl, you would have any intercourse as close as possible to the time of ovulation. And if you want to have a male, you would have intercourse a number of days before. And he claims that the chances are about 67% of successfully choosing the sex of your child with this particular method. And I believe he's just going on data from the folks who he has helped choose the sex of their children. And there is no third party verification of that claim. So I know that muddies the waters a little bit. And now you're completely scratching your head because there's two different doctors saying two different things. Never heard of that before, huh?

Never.

But then we've got these more advanced things like there's one method or one technology called MicroSort and MicroSOR. MicroSort is an actual laboratory method that separates the male sperm from the female sperm once you. Once you submit your sperm to this microsort place. And that's something to do with Bill Gates. I don't know.

I was kidding. Microsoft.

Oh, Microsoft.

Don't trust Windows to sort your sperm.

Bill Gates is in the in vitro fertilization biz. Yeah, that was. And you know, it's licensed by the Genetic and the IVF Institute, and it's gone through FDA clinical trials. It involves separating X and Y bearing sperm using laser light and dye and this machine called a flow cytometer. And once they are divided, you just simply insert back in the sex of the sperm that matches what you would want. And it actually has a very high success rate, 91% success rate among couples wanting growing girls and about 75% for those wanting boys. And of course, the only drawback to IVF is that it is exp. Hence, if you know, you're looking at the cost of a vehicle basically, or not as much as a Tesla. Yeah. To choose the sex of your child. So this sperm, well, it does involve leisures. Yeah, yeah, lasers. So I think it's about 15 to 20,000 to do something like that. So that's certainly expensive. And there are some other technologies out there, like for example, pre implantation genetic diagnosis. And that's a process in which they collect eggs from the mom, they fertilize it with sperm from the dad, they incubate the embryos for a few days, they grow a few cells, and then they analyze the cell and they basically choose the embryo that is most like the sex that the parents would want. And that's like about, I think it's right around $3,000 to $5,000. But once you figure out everything as far as the doctor's office visits and everything else, you're probably going to be close to the sperm sorting method. And of course, the difference between the two is that for people who believe that life begins at conception, that could potentially be considered as abortion to do a pre implantation genetic diagnosis, because you're essentially tossing the embryos that you don't want. So there are ethical implications with that particular technique. There's another technique called the Erikson technique, and that's used to separate the Y chromosomes, the faster swimming Y chromosome boy sperm, from the slower moving girl sperm. And in that they separate the sperm by pouring a sperm sample into a test tube that has like this gluey layer of fluid and all the sperm swim down towards the bottom of the test tube. And then of course, the ones that get they're faster are the boys. And they isolate those and then reinsert them using artificial insemination. And that's actually not that expensive. It's almost under $1,000, I believe, at this point to do that particular technique, even though it's apparently not quite as accurate or doesn't give you quite as high as a chance as that micro cert sperm sorting method method. And then finally this Dr. Shettles actually has these sex selection kits and those are like ovulation predictor test sticks and herbal extracts and thermometers that all allow you to track your time of ovulation. And if you agree with his theory that the, since the boys swim faster, you would actually, if you wanted a boy, you would want to have sex as close as possible to the time of ovulation. And if a girl, you know, two to four days prior to ovulation, then you could Use that method. But again, apparently it may have a low rate of success. What I get a kick out of are all the other things that are out there on the Internet when it comes to proposed methods for affecting the sex of your child. So, for example, here we go. You ready for this, Brock?

I've been waiting for this. This is a good time stuff.

If you want to have a girl, make sure you're only eating acidic foods. Because the Y chromosome boy sperm is very delicate and cannot survive in acidic places, namely the vagina where the sperm goes in to meet the eggs. Those delicate little boy sperm, they sure are fast, but they're not very resilient. So if you want to have a boy, you would just eat a super crappy diet full of acidic foods. And if you want to have a girl, you would eat very, very alkaline. You know, you would avoid like your caffeines and your red meats and your dairy. And you would be eating like high amounts of vegetables and fruits and lemons and baking soda and all these alkalinic compounds. And there are, you know, you can get test strips to measure your PH levels. So you want to give a really alkaline environment if you want to give the Y chromosome boy sperm a better chance at living and fertilizing the egg. So that's one method that's out there. Here's some other procedures, opposed methods out there. If you want to conceive a. Well, these are things I already mentioned. Girl would be missionary position. Boy would be rear end position or standing position. And by the way, when I say rear end position, do not take that the wrong way. I do mean that you do need to actually do things the normal way.

Just what could you possibly mean?

Here's another one. If you want to have a baby boy, enjoy sex at night during a quarter moon.

Oh, of course.

But if you want to have a baby girl, enjoy sex in the afternoon during a full moon. My problem is if it's the afternoon and I'm about to have sex, I'm usually not in a state of mind where I remember whether or not there's supposed to be a full moon. Here's a good one. For a baby boy, have sex on odd days and on even days, have sex for a baby girl. So. And then we. It all goes downhill from there. Like for a girl, you should put a pink ribbon under your pillow. And for a boy, a wooden spoon. Under. Under wooden spoon or. No, no, what it is, is for a girl, put a pink ribbon under your pillow and a wooden Spoon under your bed. And for a boy, the man should wear his socks during sex.

That's a given. You don't get cold feet while you're doing it.

So, yeah, I mean, ultimately, the. What would make the most sense to me, I guess, if I were going to do this would be the sperm source method. I mean, if you really wanted to just like, you know, hey, you're going to be growing up with whatever choice you make for the next 18 years or so, so you might as well put aside a little money, skip Starbucks for five years, and go with the sperm sorting method. I'd say that has about the most promise when it comes to doing things the most technologically accurate way. And I think that that's probably what I would go for if I absolutely wanted close to 100% chance of getting the gender that I wanted with the baby.

So I'm going to spend that kind of money at better involved lasers.

Yeah. Yeah. Otherwise you could just, you know, go out, get drunk, have hot, crazy, wild sex and keep your fingers crossed that roll the dice happens. Happens. And if not, hey, quesara sera. So there you go.

All right. Well, speaking of quesara sera, should we. Yeah, that doesn't transition at all. Should we give away some gear?

That was a pretty crappy Segway segue.

It was a terrible segment.

Sorry. All this talk about genders and sex and doggy style has got my tongue tied. Yeah. Let's go ahead and jump into this week's review. And by the way, if you leave a review over on itunes and you give us some good stars and you hear your review read on the show, all you got to do is email gearreenfieldfitness systems.com and when you email gear@greenfieldfitnessystems.com we will mail you a cool beanie, a tech T shirt, and a BPA free water bottle. And if you want to just support the show and you don't give a crap about leaving a review, you can buy that same gear over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com gear. So there's another way to do it.

Actually, there's one more way to do it is to go down by the Kennedy center in Washington, D.C. under the bridge. I threw my beanie off during the marathon last weekend, so. Oh, nice. If you go down there, you could probably find it, wash it, you got.

Yourself a beanie, just a cost. The homeless man who's wearing the Ben.

Greenville fitness beanie, he's probably got it by now.

Yeah, you too could score. So what's this week's review.

All right, this one comes from Jim Newell, 73, and it's called Shower Curtain. It goes like this. So there I was hanging a shower curtain. I felt slightly uncomfortable. What should I do?

What should I do?

I thought without much debate, I switched sides so that I would balance out each side. Don't want to throw off the muscle groups. Gotta keep things in sync. Thanks, Ben and Brock. I don't know if this was good or bad, but I do appreciate the perspective.

Dude, we got some. We got some weird listeners.

I liked how it was very story like and sort of had a sense of urgency. So there I was hanging a shower.

It did. It was a little bit mysterious and then it was suspenseful. And then he had a resolution.

He did.

So he told a good story.

It's a good story.

Tell a good story. Yeah, tell a good story. Even though I'm still trying to wrap my head around this. So he basically wanted to hang his shower curtain using both sides of his muscles so he was able to achieve muscular balance, I guess.

I don't know how long it was taking him to hang his shower curtain. Hurting, though?

Yeah, it's freaking weird. Yeah. I don't know. That's. I have a shower door, so I'm not. I don't even really know. But. But you know what? I do actually have to squeegee the water off of the glass shower door after I take a shower. And I switch hands when I'm squeezing to use balance. So I kind of sort of do that actually. Dude, I'm. I'm turning into one of these people that doesn't.

Jim. So there Ben was squeezing his shower.

Feeling uncomfortable switching hands.

What should he do?

Muscle balance. All right, well, we better end this thing before we go completely off the deep end because we obviously haven't done that yet. Talking about high EMF and Tesla cars and the proper sex position to have the correct gender of your child. And of course, vegan bulletproof coffee, vegan bone broth. We'll put links to everything we talked about, though, in the show notes in case you want to pursue even more. Goodness. And Those are at BenGreenfieldFitness.com 313. Hey, thanks for listening in, folks. And what do we have coming up this weekend if you want to look forward to this weekend? Well, let me tell you, as soon as I get our little editorial calendar pulled up in front of me. And this is going to be a good one. This is called behind the Scenes of How. How a Supplement is Made an insider interview to talk about suspense stacked on top of suspense.

So there I was, touring a supplement making factory. What should I do?

I thought, all right, later folks.

Visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice.

Sam.