What Is The Best Biohacking Device, Is Alkaline Water A Scam, & How To Train For Speed and Endurance At The Same Time

In today's episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast is Alkaline Water a scam ADHD diet for kids losing weight after adrenal fatigue. What is the best biohacking device, how to test your electrolytes and how to train for speed and endurance at the same time. Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast.

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

So off to the cardiologist tomorrow, bright and early, eh?

Hmm. Bright and early. I, you know, I actually for our listeners who are wondering, always, Ben did.

Not have a myocardial infarction or anything like that. He's fine.

It's 3:15 in the afternoon right now while we're recording on a Thursday afternoon. Usually we do this on a Wednesday morning, but not today. Today is full of surprises. And yeah, I'm headed off to the. I think the last time we recorded a podcast I was on my way off to see the doctor to schedule my official heart heart scan. And now I'm going in for a nuclear stress test and a heart EKG on the treadmill where I run to complete and total exhaustion on a treadmill, which should be lovely at 7am wow, really?

They're making you go to exhaustion.

Yeah, while we're doing a maximum exercise stress test on a treadmill. And then yeah, we're gonna see what 10 years of endurance training has done to my heart. So that should be interesting. Well, we should be able to. I literally am meeting with the cardiologist directly the test. So in the next podcast we'll be able to record on the results of what things like Ironman triathlon, water polo, bodybuilding, tennis and eating 10 years of peanut butter Captain Crunch does to your heart.

I should dig around. I'm sure I've got the results somewhere of my. I had the same test, but it was after I had myocarditis. It was about a year after I'd recovered from the myocarditis and they wanted to see if it had actually done any damage to the muscle, to the heart muscle. So I should dig that out and see how myocarditis compares to all your body building and stuff.

We could compare results. I bet I'll see who's got a worse beat. You.

Yeah, you'll have A more beat up heart because you, you did it for years and years. I only had an infection in my pericardium.

Yeah, that's all. Just, just the, just an infection in your pericardium.

Not so bad.

Not so bad. News flashes.

BenGreenfieldFitness.com 256 is the place to go to find the links. The links and the more links to all these. Cool. I hope they're cool. Actually, I haven't looked at them yet.

For this week, the news flashes. Our first news flash is hot, actually. Hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot. It's about cooking food in your dishwasher. You ever heard of this? I have. Yeah.

That's.

I'll put a link in the show notes. But you can make your dinner while you, your plates.

And this actually appeared not only for people, for college students. Right. That don't have.

That's right. It was on, it was on Oprah. So of course it's got to be.

Good and healthy, especially healthy.

The, the video I'll link to is a video on how to poach salmon in your dishwasher. But there's a bunch of other interesting videos on there, like, you know, a recipe for noodles and asparagus and a video from Dan Pashman who runs the it's like a How to Cook Everything podcast or the, the, the Sporkful podcast. He talks about kind of different methods to cook everything from shrimp to beef to spinach to pears in your dishwasher. But basically the idea is the hot water and the, the steam when you're washing your dishes can actually also be used to cook food. So technically it's environmentally friendly if you're going to run your dishwasher anyways.

Yes, it's kind of a poor man's sous vide if you're into the French culinary experience.

Well, actually there is an entire book on it written, I believe in France it's called Cucinare in Lavastovigli, which literally translates into cooking with the dishwasher. So there you go. We'll link to that in the show notes. If any of our listeners happen to actually cook something remotely healthy in your dishwasher and you send us the video, I will lavish you with cool prizes from BenGreenfieldFitness.com so send those into. Actually just upload them to your YouTube page and send us the link over on our facebook page@facebook.com bgfitness of you preparing whatever healthy dish you can think of in your dishwasher. Even a smoothie would count for A smoothie would be easy. You just throw everything in there and shut the door, turn it off before.

It drains and then scoop it out.

Or put a cup underneath the drain. So there you go. We'll link to that in the show. Note Another thing I tweeted out this week was a study on Tabata sets and chalking another one up to the effectiveness of Tabata sets. Now, I'm not going to kick this horse to death because I think just about everybody who ever listens to anything about fitness or reads up on fitness knows about high intensity interval training and the fact that these short 4 minute tabata sets can get you a lot of bang for your buck when it comes to improving your post exercise metabolic rate and your fitness. What was interesting about this study that just came out was they did blood lactates during the Tabata test, meaning that they were taking the exercising individual's blood lactate measurements. And while they of course course found out, no surprise here, that Tabata sets were far superior to moderate intensity continuous training, what I thought was really interesting when I read the study was the actual blood lactate levels for the people who were doing the Tabata sets. So the blood lactate levels averaged 12 millimolar. Now let me put that into context for you. If you are wanting to get the most bang for your buck out of a Tabata set or you think you're doing a tabata that correctly, 12 millimolar. So if you were to go in and do a test where you find out what your threshold heart rate is for, let's say you're going to run a half marathon or a 10k or you're going to do like an Olympic distance triathlon or a fairly hard effort, and you want to find out what your threshold is. Typically your lactic acid threshold is the hardest effort that you can sustain for about 40 to 60 minutes. And some elite athletes can hold lactate threshold for close to two hours if they they've got a few kind of short recovery bouts thrown in there. Now your lactic acid threshold occurs at 4.0 millimolar blood lactate levels.

So this is three times that we're.

Talking about, three times that I have done VO2 max tests in an exercise physiology lab where I've pushed myself like I will tomorrow morning to the brink of complete exhaustion. And I've tested blood lactate levels after those particular protocols. The highest I've ever seen was 10. So what we're talking about here, when we're talking about you getting the efficacy of a high Intensity interval training session is you really, truly pushing yourself. So when you hear people talk about, hey, get fit in 12 minutes a week, or hey, get fit with these four minute exercise sessions, you need to understand that this is like serious, serious burn. So, you know, and I think a lot of people like will do a Tabata set and kind of half ass it and just, you know, give themselves a pat on the back. But understand the intention intensity with which you need to do these things to actually get the type of results they get in these studies.

And not only the intensity, but not taking an extra long break or giving yourself that extra couple of seconds to recover between them, but being strict with the time and going hard.

Yeah. So lactic acid coming out your eyeballs, your ears, and every other orifice that lactic acid could potentially emanate from. There was one other study that I tweeted last week about this new study they did, or this doing analysis really, of Tour de France cyclists, where they looked into whether or not Tour de France cyclists were actually at a higher risk of dying or a higher risk of inflammation compared to the general population. And this one kind of hit the news, it was last week.

And they weren't taking into account any testicular cancer or anything like that. Right.

They weren't counting the one ballers. No, the Juan Palotas. What they looked at was Tour de France cyclists, and they found that they lived six extra years compared with the general population, meaning that Tour cyclists had a 41% lower death rate and lower mortality rates were caused by, among other things, lower risk of cardiovascular disease. So, you know, we started off this podcast talking about endurance exercise and how it potentially could be bad for your heart. Well, this study seems at first glance to point to the possibility that complete opposite extreme levels of endurance exercise might actually help you live longer. I've got a couple of issues with this, this whole thing, though. The first thing is that in order for you to be a Tour de France cyclist, period, you are genetically superior. I'm sorry, you just are like you. You are wired differently. Like Lance Armstrong, sure, he used, you know, he used drugs and everything, but he was still just wired differently. Bigger heart, bigger lungs, bigger vessels. Prob. Ancient times would have been, you know, like a warrior or a really good persistence hunter or somebody who potentially was kind of genetically favored to live longer. Anyways, so there's that. The next thing that you need to realize about a lot of these elite athletes is they're not chronically beating themselves up until they're 50, 60, 70 years old. You Know, a lot of these elites, you know, Tour de France cyclists, Kenyan marathoners, whatever they are, you know, they've got a 10 to 20 year timeline, right? And then they retire and they're kind of. They're kind of done. And they're not necessarily doing 10 triathlons a year and two marathons a year and continuing to kind of cause inflammation later on into life. And so that's another thing that I think we need to realize is that these folks are living kind of a different type of endurance lifestyle. So the other thing, when we're talking about living a different type of endurance lifestyle is a pro triathlete, really, or pro athlete endurance general, especially a Tour de France cyclist, is prioritizing recovery. They're eating better, they're recovering better, they're taking better care of their body. They're not exposing themselves to as much lifestyle and work stress on the same days that they're exercising. So there's that that you need to take into account as well. So this, this study tells us just a little bit about kind of like the upper limit of exercise dosage in elite athletes. But I don't think that we can say that extreme levels of endurance exercise are necessarily healthy based off of this Tour de France cycling study.

You know, I'd throw another thing on that list, which is they come from a much higher socioeconomic situation than most regular people as well. You don't become a Tour de France cyclist if you were from, I don't know, South Central or.

Yeah, yeah, that's probably a good point too.

Like better access to clean food, better healthcare, clean water, like, while you're growing up and all through the entire. Well, the entirety of your career as well.

Yeah, yeah, that's true. Socioeconomic is probably one of the bigger words we'll throw around on the show today, by the way.

Oh, I've got a few more. Obfuscate is about to come out any minute now.

How about tachybradicardia syndrome? That's a good one.

That's when your heart speeds up and slows down at the same time.

That's right. That's another issue you sometimes see. Anyways, though, I don't want to give people the impression that I think endurance sports are of the devil or anything like that, but because I literally have turned in my manuscripts to the publisher for this entire book that I've written on the subject, it's fresh on my mind. I thought this was interesting. I'll link to it in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 256 and of course, if you want more studies every single day that I'm looking at just like this, head over to twitter.com BenGreenfield and knock yourself out.

Special announcements. So remind me, how much is it again to get into the inner circle, the inner Circle, the BenGreenfield.com inner circle.

The inner circle is $10 a month to be a member of our coveted Inner Circle.

Cheap, cheap, cheap.

It is. Are you bringing this up because we've got a webinar coming up?

I am.

October 4th, 6:30pm Sedgway Master. That's right. October 4th is our next inner circle webinar. And this one is called get your ideal winter physique. So we're going to be talking all about how to pile on fat for the winter.

Get pile on fat and fur. Gonna make everybody look like a, like a. What are those called? The. Oh, the yeti. Yeti.

That's a yeti. We're gonna teach you how to use Rogaine and eat lots of food. We're actually going to teach people how to come out the other side, oh, the holidays looking the way that you want to look. And I've got some tricks up my sleeve for being able to eat your way through Thanksgiving and Christmas and whatnot and still come out the other end with a set of six pack abs and a nice tight tush. So we're going to be teaching all of that in the next inner circle WEBINAR that's on October 4th. So we'll link to that in the show notes and you can tune in.

On October 5th when I do the webinar about how to become a yeti.

That's right. For any of you personal trainers or Chewbacca.

Or Chewbacca.

For any of you personal trainers or chiropractic physicians or anyone who works in the fitness and the health sector. Who's listening in for my mentorship program, the Superhuman coach program. I'm also teaching a webinar actually a couple of nights from now if you happen to tune into this podcast when it first comes out and we'll be talking about how to make special population superhuman. Specifically, we'll be going over how to work with older individuals, people who are eating plant based diets, kids, just about any population who kind of needs tweaks to their protocol. And we're going to talk about the things that you need to take into account for people who may not fall into the average boat when it comes to achieving their physical goals and becoming what we like to call superhuman. So that's over@superhumancoach.com where you can become a coach and part of the Mastermind program over there. So what else? For special announcements. I was just in London.

Yeah. How was it?

Was it in London where everyone is from.

Lancaster Shire.

Yes, Lancaster Shire, Berkshire Wood.

I'm amazed anybody from the UK listens to the show anymore.

We make fun of people in London so much, don't we?

We really do.

I hated a Brazilian.

It's only because we're jealous.

I ate at a Brazilian steakhouse in London. It was awesome. It was one of those steakhouses where you have a card that is green and you leave it up when you want people to keep on bringing meat to your table and then you turn it over red when you're done eating meat. And I never actually turned my card over. They just kind of quit bringing meat to the table. It was.

See, I'd be screwed because I'm colorblind. I would have. I'd be like, where's my meat? Why aren't they bringing me any meat?

Oh, because. Yeah, well, I think it does. It did say something like the Brazilian word for stop on one side and go on the other, but still screws. Then again, you're mildly dyslexic. So, yeah, London was good. So big shout out to all the people who joined us in London and did the primal workshop and everything else over there. We had a ton of fun. A lot of meetups for people who feel like they may have missed out. If you're going to be in Kona, we'll be down there. Brock and I will be in Kona. Tawny from Endurance Planet will be down there. We will be. Well, I'll be racing, so I'll be doing slightly less partying than Brock and Tawny probably will. But either way, look for the whole Ben Greenfield Fitness Endurance Planet crew down there and come say hi. We'll be tweeting the heck out of the Twitter sphere, letting folks know where we're at. And so if you. If you happen to be in Kona for Ironman Hawaii, that's the next big chance to get in on some fun meetups and stuff like that.

So we need to get some Speedos, like matching Speedos or something for. For all three of us so people can recognize us.

Yeah, some Speedos, coconut bras, a cowboy hat, and maybe some flip flops or thongs. That would kill two birds with one stone and we wouldn't have to get a speedo.

Then I'll have to Take my skates off.

Yeah, there we go.

Listener Q and A.

Hi Ben and Brock, My name is Chris. I want to start off by thanking you guys for this podcast for all the content you guys give away for free. I'm a relatively recent follower. The last 60 days or so I recently bumped up and paid the 10 bucks for the premium and that content is unbelievable. So anyone thinking about it should definitely do it. That's about what two Starbucks for the year's worth of content. I am a 31 year old male. I'm an ex athlete. I was an offensive lineman and so I have a propensity to put on weight, especially in times of bad diet and stress. About 90 days ago I sort of hit a personal low mentally and physically and was in a bad place. My older brother pulled me out of it by challenging me to a half ironman in 90 days. Just completed the Cedar Point half ironman in a time of 5:32, which blew away my goal of six hours and my stretch goal of 5:45. A lot of that has to do with, I believe, my nutrition and my diet and the training plan. The nutrition and diet is largely paleo and I folded in some ketogenic recommendations from you guys with the bulletproof coffee and the kale shakes. Amazing results as far as my body, lost close to 40 pounds, doubled my good cholesterol, cut down my bad cholesterol, cut my triglyceride levels by 75%, lost almost 12 inches in my body. My doctor barely recognized me when I went in for my checkup and I used the protocol that you use for the Ironman Canada race. We made a big blender of the superstars, the MAP amino acids, MCT oil, D ribose and electrolytes emitting only the wasp amino acids acids and then used water to fill it up to 64 ounces. Both my brother and I took 32 ounces into the race. I was able to choke it down and nurse it during the bike and run as he recommended. The taste of it, however, tasted like rancid and looked like and tasted like rancid skim milk. My brother was unable to choke it down during the race, discarded it pretty early and switched over to gels. The interesting part is I felt great during the whole race, mentally aware the whole time, did not bonk, did not walk during the run and again beat all of my goals as far as my time for my first 70.3 distance race. My brother, however, who has never lost to me in a race, bonked during the run, had to walk And I ended up beating him by over 20 minutes. And I think a lot of that has to do with the choice to switch over to sugars and nutrition. Thank you guys and look forward to hearing from you and the great content in the future.

Wow. Chris kind of rocked it.

He did. That's awesome.

Chris actually sent in a bunch of photos, too. So I think we are going to turn Chris's story into a blog post for anybody who wants to see Chris getting his flex on. If you're listening in and you have a special story that you want to share and it's relevant, I mean, if your special story involves, I don't know.

Rescuing puppies from burning. Actually, that would be.

Yeah, rescuing puppies from burning buildings, your kid's soccer game, you helping an old person cross the street then. And that's all really great, but we don't need necessarily photo stories. We probably, probably won't publish you. But if you have a story of success like changing your body, achieving some really cool physical goal, or doing something completely selfish.

Not becoming Yeti over the months.

That's right. We'll publish you@BenGreenfieldFitness.com we're going to start trying to do weekly stories of success. So I was trying to think about week could actually even do something like that. We could work it up into a. Into like Brock's voice as the voiceover. Do you do that again, Brock?

Stories of success.

We better.

We've got the intro right there.

There we go. So email supportengreenfieldfitness.com with your story of success and we'll publish it. So we better get started into our Q and A. This is going downhill fast.

Hey, Ben and Brock, I got a question about body chemistry. You've talked about having an alkaline system in our metabolism and encouraging that in what we eat and stuff like that. But recently I've been reading the advertisements and supposedly scientific articles regarding Kangen water, which is spelled K A N G E N, I think. And that is a means of delivering alkaline water to your body. And what they want me to do is drink it all the time. So I'm wondering if drinking alkaline water all the time as my sole source of hydration is a good thing or if this might just be a good thing now and then. Thanks. And I love the podcast. It's driving me forward. Thank you.

I've never heard of trying to find like, does anybody actually walk around going, I need a means of delivering alkaline water to my body?

They do actually do they? They do. And this is kind of interesting because these machines that you put on your kitchen counter that make alkaline water are becoming pretty popular. And I personally have some issues with them. And I know I might get some angry letters from folks who are involved with Kangen and Nikken and all these other multi level marketing companies that, yeah, bring it. So alkalinized water, what you do, the way that you make alkalinized water is usually it takes normal tap water and it passes it through some kind of an electrical machine and it runs the water over some kind of a plate. Usually it's a metal plate, like a platinum plate or a titanium plate. And that causes the actual ions on that metal plate to get exchanged with the water and to make the water more alkaline in its physical. And then typically most of the machines have a filter installed in them as well, like a carbon filter. And that removes impurities from the water. And then a lot of times they'll even add in some kind of an alkaline mineral to make the water even more alkaline. Which sounds really, really cool because if you look at spring water, for example, pouring down off of a mountain, you know, out in a pastoral setting with maybe a moose off to the side grazing in the field and I don't know, and a beaver slapping its tail, unicorn skipping by. What happens with spring water is it passes over rocks in the earth and it picks up all these various minerals and that affects its ph. And so if you get like a good spring water coming off a mountain, it usually is a little less acidic. Like it's usually got a slightly alkaline ph. We're talking about an alkaline ph of like eight, eight and a half, something like that. And the body actually does.

Is that what they call soft water?

Yeah, it is kind of soft. And it. And generally the body takes forever to.

Get the soap off your body.

Yeah, yeah, the body does pretty well with a PH of water, you know, kind of in that 7 to 9 ish range. So the problems with alkaline water are, are multi fold and that's a word I just made up.

So the multiple twofold problem, better than.

Threefold, is that first of all, when we're looking at drinking alkaline water, a lot of people say that you're supposed to drink alkaline water because your body is too acidic on a cellular level. There is no evidence that drinking alkaline water is going to reverse acidity at the cellular level. And in many cases, the reason that you would Be acidic at a cellular level is because your body is under a great deal of stress that is causing a deficiency of your reserve alkaline minerals, things like and magnesium and zinc and selenium. And drinking artificially alkalinized water doesn't really replace these minerals. So that's the first issue. The second issue is that when we are looking at the plates that this alkaline water is passing over, the platinum and the titanium, those are both toxic metals. And you could potentially be causing a little bit of metal overload in your body by using machines that use these metal plates to alkalinize water or to cause that ion exchange in the water. So that's another issue now, potentially very large issue. Yep. Carbon filtration, if you're relying upon that as the only filtration method for the water that you're drinking, does not filter out much chlorine, fluoride, aluminum, copper, pharmaceutical drugs, pesticides, stuff like that. And so you might be under the impression, if this is the only type of water filter that you're using, like one of these countertop alkaline water filters, that you're getting super duper clean water, when in fact the filtration method isn't removing a lot of what might be found in your normal municipal water supply. So that's another issue. Now, the biggest issue, the biggest issue with alkaline water, in my opinion, is that if you actually test the alkalinity on these machines, and a lot of times this is the selling point via which someone will sell you on one of these machines, the alkalinity ends up being 12, 13, really high, like way higher than like a natural alkaline spring water. And that can be really unhealthy for your body to be dumping something of that alkalinity into your system. And that that's my concern, is that just like very, very acidic compounds might not be all that great for you, you extremely alkaline compounds can also cause some pretty serious imbalances in your body. And from personal experience, I don't want to mention any names or point your fingers at specific water machines, but I actually had someone approach me who was very, very concerned about this new alkaline water system that they'd been using because their child had begun having seizures within three days after they'd started using this alkalinizing water machine. And my advice to them was to cut out the water right away to ensure that that was not causing the issue, because water of that alkalinity can certainly cause some imbalances. There's some scientific literature that indicates that PH is or extremely alkaline PH could have detrimental effects on living organisms. And they have found that plants grown in water or exposed to water that is of too high a PH tend to have micronutrient deficiencies or an inability to obtain nutrients from the soil. They found that influxes of alkaline water into some plant water supplies can actually cause death of those plants. And fish in alkaline water can show some signs of heart stroke stress that tend to be fatal. So there's some interesting studies. The website Mercola over@mercola.com published some of the findings of some of these studies on alkaline water and some of the issues with water that is too alkaline. So to wrap all this up and put it into perspective, I've talked about structured water before on the podcast and about how I have a filter in my house via which water is passed through a series of vortex glass beads and then put through reverse osmosis filter. And that's like what my central system home water filter is. So it structures the water, meaning it adds like a crystalline structure to the water and then filters it. That's not an alkalinizing system. Okay. I don't use an alkaline water filter and it's for the reasons that I just kind of went into. I think that artificially kind of ionizing or removing a bunch of ions from water at a very, very high level kind of gives you a lot of diminishing returns once you reach a certain point. And it's playing with fire. So I'd be careful.

Hey Ben Block, I love the show. Listen. I've been listening for a few months now and I have a question about breakfast and my son, my 10 year old son sometimes will not eats breakfast and it's important that I get some food in him or protein in him in the mornings because he is on an ADHD medication. So I've been reading up on smoothies and thinking about making him a smoothie in the morning when he doesn't want anything and was wondering about protein powder. Is it okay to give him any protein powder in the in the smoothie? If so, what kind of a brand would you recommend or how much could I put in there? One of the recipes I looked at called for Carnation Instant Breakfast and did some research on that and decided that that is not anything I want to put in him. The reasoning for it on the blog post was due to the vitamins and minerals that it has, but I'm thinking it's kind of like a breakfast cereal. It has all kinds of added vitamins and minerals because the base is crap. So anyway, I don't want to do that but was wondering about a protein powder if I could put that in there or maybe yogurt be enough to get protein in him. Anyway, thanks a lot for the podcast. I enjoy listening and I will keep listening. Thanks Ben. Bye.

I've never had Coronation instant breakfast, but I'm guessing it's one of those powdered things that you mix into water or something.

Sounds wonderful. I actually am not quite sure what the ingredients of Coronation instant breakfast are, but I pretty much look it up while you're talking. Why don't you look it up while I'm talking? And I pretty much avoid anything that says instant. Just add water anyways. Unless it's that living fuel super green stuff which is not bad. But I I really really definitely out that this coronation falls into that category. The idea behind increasing protein intake in children or adults with ADD is that protein rich foods are used as neurotransmitter precursors, meaning the amino acids and protein rich foods are used to make neurotransmitters. Those are the chemicals that your brain cells use to communicate with each other. So when you're getting adequate amino acids acids at the start of your day, you're kind of helping to balance the body's neurotransmitter levels. Typically in a situation with something like ADD or adhd, neurotransmitter repletion a lot of times has to go above and beyond protein rich foods. Sometimes you have to use essential amino acids. Sometimes you even have to use neurotransmitter repletion therapy, which would be like I've talked about these on the show before, but like neurotransmitters like 5 HTP and tyrosine and some of these type of precursors or neurotransmitter precursors. Ultimately though, starting off the day with a good, you know, for a kid, about 10 to 20 grams of protein, for an adult 20 to 40 grams of protein. Decent idea if you struggle with hyperactivity or ADD or lack of focus during the day. So starting off breakfast with some extra protein, that's a good idea. There are some other things that I'd recommend that you do as well though when it comes to adhd. Before I mentioned some of them. Did you happen to find the label for the coronation?

I did. It's first ingredient, non fat milk, then sugar, maltodextrin, cocoa, lactose and 2% or less. Dicalcium phosphate, soy lecithin, caramel color, natural and artificial flavors, Magnesium hydrochloride, sodium asorbate, cornstarch, starch. A whole bunch of stuff that I cannot pronounce for the next like 17.

Sugar, sugar, dairy, sugar, sugar, sugar, soy sugar, chemicals, sugar, sugar, sugar, preservatives.

And then at the very bottom I've got some B6, some vitamin K, vitamin D, of course, vitamins of course.

Gotta add in the vitamins. I'd give this stuff to somebody you don't like.

So I mean give it to your children.

Like yeah, I mean get like a good, like a nice like rice protein or pea protein or hemp protein or like a good organic whey protein and mix that up in like a smoothie or do like a quinoa which has some decent levels of amino acids in it with like some coconut milk. And that's one of my kids favorite breakfast is cinnamon, quinoa, coconut milk, a little bit of raw honey and usually they'll toss some coconut flakes or some raisins in there and they go back and forth between doing something like that and then doing like eggs and bacon and you know, they thrive pretty well on those type of meals. So you don't have to necessarily do like a protein powder. You canyou can get it from real food as well. So that's one thing. As far as protein goes for ADHD in children and adults, there's a few other things that I look into though as well. She mentioned vitamins and minerals, and minerals are certainly important. Zinc, iron and magnesium would be kind of the same. Top three. Zinc regulates the neurotransmitter dopamine, and improving the brain's response to dopamine is extremely important for adhd. Essentially when you're making dopamine you're more pleased by activities and you tend to be able to maintain your attention to activities a little bit better. Iron is also necessary for making dopamine. And so that's iron makes us play.

Or helps us play.

Is this where we all start talking with high voices? The rest of the podcast.

Yay.

High iron and low iron levels are definitely associated with cognitive deficits and adhd. So the other one is magnesium. Magnesium is used to make neurotransmitters that are involved in attention and concentration. So you kind of get that holy triad, grail, whatever of zinc, iron and magnesium, the holy trinity of zinc, iron and magnesium. And this is where the angels start to sing and that gives you what you need.

I mean the angel, right?

So that's really good vitamin B supplement. Like I'd use like a full spectrum vitamin B. What I give my kids is they get this kid's liquid multivitamin, which is a mix of fatty acids from omega 3 and fish oil sources. Sources, along with vitamin B, magnesium. They get that before they go to bed at night. Helps them to sleep like babies, literally. And that's a good way to go in my opinion. There are some other things that are important for brain function in kids and adults with ADHD as well. One would be any of these type of herbs that are traditionally used as neurotropics like ginkgo, ginseng. There's another one called pycnogenol, there's cytokoline, rhodiola. All of these help to improve blood flow to the brain. They're safe. They're not the type of things that would cause like liver or kidney issues. They aren't overstimulants to the central nervous system. They can increase alertness. You know, if you're looking at like a junior high or a high school or a college student who has ADD or an adult who's studying a lot, these are the type of things that I would consider giving them. I wouldn't necessarily give like a 5 year old like a, an adaptogenic herb or a brain stimulating herb, but there is certainly a time and a place for these type of things. I'm a huge fan of something I've talked about on the show before called TN Chi. That's probably my favorite safe natural neurotropic Chinese herb that can increase alertness, focus.

Tastes like Kool Aid.

Kind of tastes like Kool Aid.

Like it?

You can tell your kid it's Kool Aid actually. Bitter Kool Aid. Yeah, just tell them it's Kool Aid's Chinese friend and they'll be happy.

Kool Aid.

And then those would be the biggies. Of course you want to avoid artificial preservatives, dyes, high sugar and anything that would be a potential allergy causing food because that's huge for kids with adhd. So gluten, wheat, corn, soy, essentially everything that's on the coronation instant breakfast label you'd actually want to avoid in a case of adhd. So for both kids and adults though, I mean, good neurotransmitter precursors from proteins and amino acids, getting zinc, iron and magnesium, getting a good vitamin B complex, good with good levels of fatty acids like from a fish oil or this liquid multivitamin I mentioned, and then doing like an Adaptogenic herb complex. All of that is going to help help quite a bit. A situation like this. Not to be misconstrued as medical advice or giving out information meant to manage a medical condition, but I'm just saying that's what I would do if I had ADHD and difficulty focusing and, oh, hey, there's a bird.

Now. Do you think the tnt, like, would that be something that they should go to the. Go to the doctor and just make sure there isn't any sort of interaction with the medication. Is it powerful enough that that should be a concern?

Depends on the medication. I have actually had clients who use Ritalin who have started to use tnt, who quit using Ritalin almost as soon as they started using TNT because they didn't need the Ritalin anymore.

So obviously it didn't cause any problems. Interaction problems for them.

There were no deleterious interactions. But I of course have to say, to cover my ass from a legal standpoint, run anything by your doc first. If you're already on a pharmaceutical medication and before you stop using a pharmaceutical medication, talk to your doc.

But yeah, that's where I was kind of hitting with that. Just. Yeah, don't. Sometimes those kinds of things, like, I know certain SSRIs don't mix well with like, say, St. John's Wort or something like that. You don't want to take them both at the same time.

Exactly.

They. They do work well in exchange.

Yep. Yep.

Nice.

There you go.

Hey, guys. Not a competitive athlete, but I am recovering from adrenal fatigue. Finally ready to move beyond the walking and light yoga phase of activity level and get rid of the ten pounds I gained in the three weeks leading up to the fatigue. So, wondering which of your fat loss protocols, exercise or not exercise, getting back into shape, would you say are the safest in terms of stress in the adrenals? And what would be the signs that I should back off before I start to backslide? Thanks a lot.

Why isn't anybody giving us their. Their names? This is like the third question in a row they don't want us to know.

People are embarrassed. Probably because we've been making fun of people a lot of names. Yeah, because we really are jerks. We're the bullies of the podcast playground.

Giving away free advice in jerkish fashion.

That's right. So here's the deal. If you're recovering from adrenal fatigue and you want to lose weight at the same time, you have to be careful because caloric restriction and exercise can both stress the adrenals so you may need to find like some underground methods to lose weight that allow you to lose weight without stressing your body. Yeah, get yourself one of these fancy liposuction machines that plugs into the cigarette burner on your car. And when you're sitting in traffic, do a little self liposuction and jam it in there. Jam it in there.

That's right. That's what the belly button's for.

That's right.

To squeeze the fat out.

That's right. That's why we all have a belly button. No kidding. So some of the things that you can do, I'll just give you kind of like some unconventional techniques you could use for fat loss that aren't going to be as stressful to your body as like hitting the gym every day and engaging in severe levels of caloric restriction. Neither of which I would recommend in a state of adrenal fatigue because you're just going to stress your body out more in that situation. One would be greasing the groove. This means that you're just basically staying active throughout the day. You're doing when you're watching TV, you're doing 10 push ups during every commercial break, you're doing 25 jumping jacks for every hour that you're sitting at your desk or every time you go to the bathroom, you're doing 20 body weight square squats. Or you've got a pull up bar installed in the door of your office and you're doing five pull ups every time you go underneath the door. You're never actually telling your body, hey, I'm going to go beat you up and run from a lion for an hour at the gym. But you're figuring out ways to inject low level physical activity into your daily routine. And you could even do something as drastic as hitting up Craigslist, finding a barbell, putting a barbell out in your garage, loading up a few plates on it and heading out there and doing a few deadlifts here and there throughout the the day or a few squats. But basically you're just kind of emulating physical activity throughout the day. And that would be all the more important if you have kind of like a sedentary job or you're not getting much movement into your routine. So that would be one thing. Hand in hand with that would be to either turn your workstation into a standing desk or a treadmill workstation. Fantastic way to lose weight. It's not stressful to the body. You can walk at a super slow pace two to three miles an hour or you can just stand. Either one is going to upregulate the activity of your lipase fat burning enzymes. And that's another way that you can kind of get free fat loss.

I saw the coolest standing desk at the Philadelphia Marathon last weekend and I can't remember the name of it. I'm going to try and Google it. It was like the coolest looking and ergonomically fashioned standing desk I've ever seen in my life.

Was somebody actually.

I'm excited about anything.

Was somebody actually running the marathon in their. In their standing destination?

They were getting work done while they were running the marathon. It was amazing and they still beat me.

There are some very cool standing workstations out there. I am getting one installed in my office because we're moving to a new house next year. And I've even gone so far as to ensure that the windows in the office are put into the office two feet higher than they normally would be to take into account the fact that I'll be standing during the day. Yeah, there are some very cool, you know, like updesk.com they make a cool one. There's a website, it's like human. I want to say it's humansolutions. I think it's humansolutions.org try humansolutions.org I believe that's the site that has standing treadmill workstations. Let me grab my computer here and see if I can pull, pull up something. Human solutions. Maybe it's not humansolutions.org just give me a second here. This is going to be really, really good podcasting as we stand up.

Yeah, we're both Googling like crazy.

Okay, here you go.

The human solution.

Thehumansolution.com They've got one called an uplift treadmill desk and it's pretty cool. They've got a few different variations of treadmill desks on here, but some of those are really cool. The uplift. I know up desk makes one. Mark Sisson over@marksdailyapple.com recently had a pretty good article on standing workstations as well. And the one that he uses is really kind of cool because it's totally portable. And the one that he uses is like a mobile standing workstation. Let me see which one it is, because I think I bookmarked that article when I saw it because I thought it looked really, it was expensive. It's like a, like a $1,000 desk or something like that. But it's a lot of People pay more than that. Okay, here we go. It's called a Locus Workstation. A Locus Workstation made by a company called Focal Upright Furniture. A Locus Workstation, and it's a really cool looking one, so a few different options there. The Locus workstation, though, is pretty dang cool. It's not a trick.

Oh, that's it.

That's it.

That's the one from Philadelphia.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. We'll put a link to the Locus Workstation in the show notes if you guys want to take a look at that one. That's probably the sexiest of the workstations that we've come across.

Well, ditch the whole little stool thing that they sell with it, because what do you need that for? You're just going to put you in a weird position.

Yeah. You may even be able to find it on Amazon. I don't know. Either way, though, we'll find a link, we'll put it in there, and if we can find an affiliate link, all the better, because then we could make like 10 bucks. Every time a listener buys a Locust workstation. We can support the podcast. So we'll figure something out. So there you go. If you buy a standing workstation, buy it from our show notes. Okay, so a few other things totally went down a rat hole there. We did. Rabbit hole. Not a rat hole, just a harmless rabbit hole. Cool fat burner vest, cold thermogenesis, that kind of stuff. Grab yourself a vest from coolfatburner.com I think they're starting to make like, almost like corsets or like waist pieces now. But, but you can, you can wear this. It causes your body to have to generate a little bit of extra heat to burn calories. It's not super stressful. Way less stressful than even like jumping into a cold shower or cold bath. When it comes to adrenal fatigue, even that can be a little stressful for you. So yeah, this is just a vest that you wear. So that's another way that you can burn free calories, lose weight without stressing your body. Here's another good one for you. Go get yourself a weight vest or some ankle weights or wrist weights and just wear them around during the day. Day. Use some kind of a deodorant or a powder or something that's going to keep you from getting too gamey and stinky and sweaty.

And wear some long sleeves so nobody can see that you're wearing weights on your wrists.

Exactly. Or just tell people that you're trying to burn a few extra calories or like when you're at home, whatever, working in the yard, on a walk, doing the laundry, you can use this stuff and you'll burn a few extra calories when you weigh 5, 10, 20 extra pounds, you know, just makes sense.

So just make sure you keep gesticulating. You don't just sort of dangle your arms.

Terms. Did you say gesticulating?

I did.

Okay. Is that legal in Canada? I don't know if it's legal only.

In a couple of the provinces.

Okay, yeah. Make sure gesticulating is legal wherever you live. But if it is, then, yeah, just. Just gesticulate freely and liberally. The last thing that I would recommend that you learn is proper posture and breathing. You would be surprised at how many extra calories you can burn during the day by doing things like, like keeping your hamstrings activated, by learning how to stand and kind of keep your butt just slightly contracted, almost like you're doing just a little bit of like a Kegel exercise, like the whole time that you're standing. Right now, Brock's taking a bathroom break and then deep breathing. So shallow breathing reduces the amount of oxygen in your bloodstream, and that can reduce the amount of oxygen that's available to the cells in your body and reduce your metabolism. Metabolism. So deep breathing from your diaphragm, learning how to do that, like deep nasal breathing. I definitely recommend that as another method to kind of burn free calories throughout the day. So that's another thing that I'd look into would be deep breathing. And, yeah, those are. Those are some of the places I'd start if you want to lose weight after adrenal fatigue without stressing out your body too much. So, yeah, a little cold thermogenesis, some extra weights, do a lot of standing, grease the groove, and then, yeah, solo gesticulation and gesticulate.

Hi, Beth. My name is Jen and I have a birthday coming up next month, and I was hoping to ask for my friends and my family for some kind of biohacking tool or electronic. So I'm wondering what your advice is on the best one for the money that's going to tell me the most information. I'm not an Ironman triathlete. I do some endurance training, half marathons, full marathons. But most of the time I just like to participate in group exercise classes and attend the gym. So I'm just looking for something that's going to tell me a little bit more about myself, and then I'm going to try to figure out ways to improve it. I already have a good Garmin and a heart rate monitor. But after that, what would be my next investment? Thanks for all you do. I love the show. Bye.

Gosh, there are so many different biohacking tools out there. Biohacking tools. So let's just talk about, like, let's. Let's categorize this into, like, the actual, like, things you can buy category that you could buy and wear, that type of thing. I would say the lifetrack device that Brock recently did a review on in the iPhone app or our Android app that was kind of cool. So there's this company called Azumio, and they make this app called an Argus. And the Argus can be used to track, like, your heart rate, the steps taken, distance, calories, burned, food, sleep, everything like that.

You can cough.

It has a special place to track your coffee. Track yo coffee. And you can actually get this wearable wristband called a lifetrack that syncs with the Argus app on your phone. And that's a pretty cool little one two combo. I don't know how. I think the lifetrack's like maybe 60 bucks.

Yeah, it's like 59 bucks on Amazon, I think.

And the Argus app is free. So that'd be one thing that you could look into would be to use, like, the Argus app plus the LifeTrack wristwatch. That'd be one little biohacking toy that you could use that would be pretty cool. Another one I'd look into would be the Tinky, which is made by a company called Zensorium. And we'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. But the Tinky is this little attachment that you plug into your iPhone and it tests your heart rate, your respiratory rate, your blood oxygen level, and your heart rate variability. And then it spits out a score. It spits out what's called a Vita score, which is almost like a Life Force score, and then a Zen score, which is kind of like a relaxation score. Brock and I have both used this one. So the Vita score is Vita. The Vita.

Don't you think it's Vita, like. Like the Latin word for life?

But don't you pronounce that Vita? I'm pretty sure you do. I had. I had two years of Latin in high school. Yeah. If you're American or if you're Latin or if you're Latin or if you.

If you actually speak Latin, Vita.

So Vita, your Vita index is comprised of your heart rate, your blood oxygen level, and your respiratory rate. So let's say you Wake up in the morning and you've got a kind of low heart rate, you've got a high blood oxygen level and you've got a low respiratory rate. Your Vita index score would be really good in a case like that. The Zen index simply relies on breathing and heart rate variability to calculate your level of relaxation. So you've got high heart rate variability and controlled breathing. Then your Zen index is going to score really high, high. So ideally you wake up in the morning, you use the Tinky to test. If you get a high Zen and a high Vita, then that's a good thing. And it's got some community aspects in there where you can compare your score with the rest of the world, with your friends, stuff like that. So there's some community gamification type of stuff built in. That's a pretty cool one too.

And I also did a review of that product on the Ben Greenfield fitness phone app as well.

There you go.

If you want to see more about.

That, Brock is all over that.

And then the everything we mentioned, the.

Last one I think is kind of cool is although it's not incredibly accurate, I still think it's kind of cool. And that's the Fitbit one. So the Fitbit one will, similar to the Argus, plus the Life track. It'll calculate steps taken, calories burned, distance traveled, quality of sleep, hours slept, stairs climbed, stuff like that. It's kind of like a pedometer on steroids, is a wearable device that you just clip to your jeans or to your shirt or whatever. It has some pretty cool syncing capabilities in terms of being able to sync with online health tracking systems like DansPlan.com and Endomondo and RunKeeper and Map My Fitness and SparkPeople and a lot of these apps and websites that kind of allow you to track your diet or your fitness fitness. Anyways, I think the Fitbit one's pretty cool. The Jawbone is similar to that. You know, either one is kind of, kind of, you know, six of one, half dozen of the other. But the Fitbit one or the Jawbone are both kind of cool. I think that there still remains to be like one device that does it all. And I would hope that at some point in the future something like that is developed, but at this point it doesn't exist. However, those are three things that I think are kind of cool. Ultimately, it just comes down to finding something that works well for you. What do you use personally, Brock? Like when you wake up in the morning, do you have something that you're Actually using as your biohacking or your self quantification device.

I've been using Sweet Beat, the heart rate variability app for the iPhone and a Bluetooth heart switch rate strap. That's what I do. Actually. I've been doing it in the evening just before I go to bed because I found that first thing in the morning I was just sort of all over the map. But in the evening it was much easier to just get a real nice reading.

You should do it. Same thing. You should do it in the morning. I actually talked with Sweet Beat about this and it's better to do it. All the studies that have been done on heart rate variability have primarily been relying on resting morning scores. So if you're really wanting to correlate with with studies or compare yourself to the general population, you may want to consider that.

That's funny. Actually, I started doing it in the evening because I heard Rhonda on the Fit Fat Fast podcast and she was talking about doing it in the evening.

And I was like, no, seriously, I'm going to have to listen to that because I wrote her and all the journal studies she sent me were morning.

Interesting.

That's interesting.

Okay.

What a fricking hypocrite. Gee, no, just kidding.

Or maybe I wasn't paying really close attention because I was doing yoga while I was listening. But you know what the problem is with that whole list of things that you, you just gave Jen? They're all like things that you could just kind of go out and buy yourself if you're a reasonably gainfully employed adult. I was thinking like, if you're gonna ask for something for your birthday, you gotta go go crazy and get like a whole body vibration plate. Like something that costs like four grand.

Yeah, that would be pretty cool. Get a whole body vibration. What else could you get that would be like a serious expensive biohacking?

What's that thing that Dave Asper uses to pass the electron?

Here's a cool one for you. The Sound Light David Mind Alive therapy device. It's a combination of sound therapy and binaural beats light therapy and then electrostimulation, cranial electrical stimulation. It's made by a company called Mind Alive and it's called the. It's called the David, I think is what it's called. Let me get the exact name for you. But if you wanted to, this would be like getting the 30 years of Zen meditation kind of like compressed into using this one device throughout the day. It's called Audio Visual Entrainment. It's called The David Delight Pro. And it's like glasses, cranial electrical stimulation and then sound. And it's designed to boost your mood, help with sleep, sharpen your mind, increase your level of relaxation, guide you into brainwave patterns, help you to do self neurofeedback, like everything all at once. And it's actually like a Class 1 medical device, but you can buy it. So we'll put a link to that in the show notes. If you want to really go crazy and just go nuts on your brain.

And just go ahead and buy a.

Laser, go mad scientist and then buy a laser with a shark attached to it, preferably.

Hey, Ben, this is Jeremy Hardy from Louisville, Kentucky. Man, you got an awesome podcast. Just kind of new to it, but it's phenomenal. Had a quick question for you. Do you have any good way of tracking electrolytes? You know, I use enduro lights. I've done an ironman 2011, but my biggest struggle was trying to know exactly how much salt. So I didn't know if there was a ratio. You know, I take about 20 ounces of water an hour and I took about four endurolite pills an hour. I didn't know if there was an appropriate ratio number one and then two, if there was any way to track your electrolytes of actually kind of what you needed, what you were specifically low on and things like that. So anyway, thank you so much, man. If you can answer that, that would be phenomenal. Talk to you soon. Thanks.

So I'm assuming this is going to involve some sort of peeing or bleeding into a test tube?

No, just licking. What you do is you lick your arm and you gauge the level of saltiness based on a salt scale. Really good way to track your. It's highly scientific too.

My tastes delicious.

That's right. The armpits are a good. Probably the best spot would be the armpits if you can get your tongue in there anyways. No, you are correct, Brock. You would need to do an electrolyte panel. The best way if you really wanted to check for electrolyte deficiency. So first of all, if you were to just do like a normal wellness FX baseline panel, which is going to test your thyroid, your lipids, your red blood cells, your white blood cells, your kidney, your liver. It'll also include electrolytes. So it'll test sodium, potassium, chromium chloride, common electrolytes that are a pretty good picture of how you're doing from a mineral standpoint. Point really related to some of the stuff that we started talking about. Earlier in this podcast related to alkalinity and acidity. Meaning, like, if you have a super duper acidic diet, you could potentially, you know, leach minerals and you would have, in that case, like, low levels of bicarbonate, you might have really, really high levels of sodium, low levels of chloride. In a state of adrenal fatigue. A lot of times you have abnormally high potassium levels. So you can kind of, when you, when you're looking at the levels of some of these minerals, have a decent idea of some things that might be going on in your body. A lot of times you get a lot of athletes who are just walking around with low electrolyte levels across the board and easily, easily fixed by just adding in a few grams daily of like a Himalayan sea salt or a trace liquid minerals blend. But ultimately, to test this, yeah, just like a basic Wellness FX baseline panel is good, there's another one called a minerals panel that you could get from direct labs. It's about 150bu. And that's going to test your magnesium, it's going to test your iron. It's going to test what's called your total iron binding capacity, which is a blood test that tells you if there's too much or too little iron in your blood, because iron is carried in your blood attached to this protein called transferrin. So it measures the ability of this protein called transferrin to carry iron in your blood. It'll measure zinc, it'll measure potassium, it'll measure calcium, and it'll measure phosphorus. Technically, that minerals panel is a little bit more comprehensive than the minerals that you would get looked at if you were to do something like a Wellness FX baseline panel. But ultimately, like that Wellness FX baseline panel that gives you something like sodium, potassium, chloride and your bicarbonate or your CO2. That's generally going to tell you most of what you need to know. So unless you have some serious electrolyte imbalance or deficiency that you're concerned about, that's really all you need to do. If you really wanted to just, like, get the full meal deal, you could do a mineral panel through direct labs. We'll link to both of those in the show. Notes. But that would ultimately be the way to go if you wanted to know about electrolytes. I've found that most people feel pretty good by just adding in, again, a couple shots of trace liquid minerals in the morning and, or, you know, a bunch of pinches of Himalayan sea salt or like Aztec. And sea salt is another really, really good form of sea salt. When you're looking at mineral profile 70 plus different minerals and a Himalayan or an Aztec and sea salt and that'd be another good way to go. The Himalayan sea salt that we use is made by Onnit and that's a really, really good brand. So we just get a big bag of Onnit Himalayan sea salt about once a month and we go through the stuff like it's going out of style. I even travel with it because it actually helps stabilize your adrenals and stuff when you're stressed out. So that's another good one. Would be like an on it Himalayan sea salt or a trace liquid minerals. The trace liquid minerals that we use is made by Natural Calm, the same company that makes the Natural Calm magnesium.

Natural Calm Magnesium.

Yeah. Yeah.

So that makes me sleepy just saying it.

If you live in a super hot area, you're whatever. Maybe you're training for an ironman triathlon or something like that. You could do both. You could do literally like a mineral supplement in the morning and then just like liberal use of a Himalayan sea salt during the day. You could use one or the other. If you're not into really salty food, then you probably just want to go with the minerals and like a morning glass of water. But more than one way to skin a cat. Ultimately though, that's how you test and that's how you would replenish.

Hi Ben, my name is Matthew. I had a question about how quickly your body can switch different types of training. I'm looking towards next year's races and I want to do a stair rain race in February which will be a less than 5 minutes all out max effort that will be in mid February and then want to do a 50 mile running race in May. I'm a little worried about the two and a half month time period between there being enough time to switch my body to train for those races. I have a pretty good base. I'll be doing my first 50k coming up in October. I got second in the stair running race earlier this year, so I have a pretty solid base going into these. But I'm just not sure how I can successfully train for both those races almost at the same time. So any tips you have would be great, appreciated. Thanks Ben.

A stair race?

Have you ever done a stair race? I did a stair race in Thailand. I did a stair race up to the Tower of Buddha. We were there with about 12 folks and apparently there had been a competition going on for several years to see who could climb. It was like 1400 plus steps going up to the great Buddha statue and I actually set the course record and that was the hardest workout or among the hardest workouts that I've ever done in my life was just climbing stairs for 11 minutes solid at its fast a pace as I could go.

Yeah, that, that sounds really hard.

It was really, really hard. It was really hard. Stair races are difficult so 5 minute all out max effort on stairs that's like again lactic acid coming out your eyeballs. And then the 50 mile running race is a totally different physiological system that you would be tapping into. And we're talking about three months in between both of them them. Now of course the issue is that if you train your body for the ideal amount of fast twitch muscle, lactic acid buffering and speed that you're going to need for that five minute stair race, you are going to have to neglect like a lot of that base training that you'd normally be doing for the 50 mile running race. So if it were me and I were in your shoes, I would be at this point running once a week as like your, your big run of the week where it's like you're heading out into the hills, out into the trails. It's either a hike or a run or a hike run combo. Spending a lot of time on your feet, getting your body prepared for the rigors of a 50 mile run. And just so you know, the rules for running a 50 miler are very, very similar to the rules for running a marathon. Meaning that the longest you'd ever have to run to Prepare for a 50 miler and be able to complete it, it would be running a marathon distance. And once you exceed that, that's where you kind of get to that law of diminishing returns where you're going to start to get injured more. You're going to have higher risk of stress, fracture, adrenal fatigue, biomechanical issues. So understanding.

So you're talking about doing like the full 26 miles.

Yeah.

But not short at like 20 miles.

Well you know, 20, 25 in that range. Just understand though, you don't have to push up to 30, 40, 50 miles miles in your training sessions.

So not in one go?

No, not in one go. And the human body does pretty well with endurance training it just once a week in that fashion. And you can literally have all your other training sessions be short intense runs. It's very, very similar to what I do for Ironman. So I have typically one hard run a week that's 20 to 30 minutes long where it's really, really Hard where I'm on a treadmill doing like a 10 by 30 second second super fast sprint pace or I'm doing like 10 by 100 meter barefoot sprints out in the park by my house. And then I've got one other run I'm doing that's about anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes of kind of like intense aerobic intervals. And those are my two running sessions that I do leading up to Ironman. I haven't found that I get much faster when I run more than twice a week. So I just don't. And that's also because I'm not a huge fan of running any anyways. I think that it's a slightly unnatural to just like run a lot. So that's my personal Ironman training protocol is those two runs a week and then at one time before Ironman, typically at some point in the last four weeks before Ironman I go out and run 20 miles. And for me that's just like my mental checkup, my kind of yeah, I can moment where I tap into that system of spending a lot of time on the feet. But I don't do that 10 times leading into the race. I do it once, once typically sometime in the last four weeks, usually three or four weeks out ideally. So I've got some time to recover because that's actually kind of hard to run 20 miles for me at least. So what I would be doing for this particular combination is doing a lot of power, doing a lot of speed. There's the article that I wrote called over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com called the Five Essential Elements of an endurance training program that most athletes know neglect power and speed. I'll link to that in the show notes. But in it I go into some of the main protocols that you want to do to build power and speed while you are simultaneously training for endurance. One would be plyometrics, meaning you're doing a lot of box jumps, bounds, throws, slams, skips, a lot of things that are going to really, really help you in this stair race as well. Another thing would be speed strength sets where you're doing multi joint moves like squats, cleans, deadlifts, things of that nature, but you're lifting them quickly and explosively, not slowly. So kind of like Olympic style weight training. And then the last thing that really, really helps with developing power and speed is what are called complex sets where you do a strength set like a set of squats followed by an explosive set like a set of squat jumps or lunges followed by Lunge jumps or front squats followed by drop jumps, but basically a traditional strength set followed by a plyometric set. If you're wanting to build power and speed as quickly as possible, that's a really, really good way to do it. A few other things that you may want to think about would be like overspeed running, water running, of course, you know, very, very sport specific. Up and down stair running, any of that stuff is all going to help with kind of like leg turnover and speed. And when you combine it with some of these explosive powerlifting style movements, speed, strength sets, plyometrics, and then you're doing one long run a week and you know, one to two kind of like higher intensity metabolic conditioning run sessions a week, you're going to turn yourself into that, that stair running, 5 minute slash, 50 mile running animal that you want to be monster. So that's, that's what I would do if I were in your shoes. You're never going to be like, you can't have the best of both worlds ultimately with that. But you can get pretty good at both of those if you use that type of protocol. And I mean, you know, I scratch the surface. This is the kind of stuff I do when I, when I do consults with people is we actually lay out a more specific program. But that's where I would start is with that.

I like it. I like it a lot.

I like it a lot. Can you do.

I like it so much. Oh, that was terrible.

Happy Chewbacca. So speaking of Happy Chewbacca, we have a podcast review that we can read right now.

Fantastic.

Because if you go to itunes and you leave this podcast to review, then Brock and I will come to your house and we'll make you breakfast in bed maybe. Or possibly you may just get a special gift box sent to your house from BenGreenfieldFitness.com so if you hear us read your review, if you go to itunes and you leave a review and you hear us read your review and you, you write us and you say, hey, I heard you read my review, here's my address, we'll send you a little something something. So it might even be Brock jumping out of a cupcake, really big cupcake in his yeti in his yeti suit. So here's, here's the review. It's by N9UPU. Yes, he's a robot, I guess. So here's what N9UPU says. Five stars says darn good podcast. I've been listening to the podcast for over a year now. It was a little technical when I first started listening, but I quickly caught on. Ben does a great job explaining fitness and nutrition. My only complaint is that there is not banjo or squeezebox music on every episode. Brock, can we do something about that?

Absolutely.

Boom. Let's squeeze box them out or banjo em out. Either one or both. Is there such a thing as banjo squeeze box music?

Can I do both at the same time? I don't think so.

We'll find out. We'll see what Brock's technical capabilities are. And in the meantime, as our beautiful banjo and squeeze box music plays in the background, head over to Ben greenfieldfitness.com 256 to get access to everything that we talked about in today's show. All of the links, all the notes, all the tweets. It's all there in all of its glory. And we'll be coming to you next week as usual with episode number 257. So have a great week folks. Visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cute, cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice. It.