What's A Genotype?, Substitutes For Foam Rolling, Are Multivitamins A Waste of Money? And Much More!

In today's episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, how to understand your genotype Are multivitamins a waste of money? Should you use orthotics? How to rebuild nerves? How to use fermented foods and substitutes for foam rolling?

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.

Well, Shalom Ben.

Shalom Brock.

And that is the end of my Israeli.

I just rolled in from Israel like.

How many hours ago?

Late last night, I think it was like seven hours ago and pretty much woke up out of bed and sat up and walked over to this microphone stuck in front of my face. So this should be interesting. But I do know I've picked up in the past week that I've been in Israel for the Israman Triathlon Shalom and also some other very important Israel words like falafel and hummus and some more of yogurt. What's it called? The yogurt stuff? Tzatziki Tahini. Yeah, it's like being in a giant Mediterranean restaurant over there. It's fantastic.

It's a delicious country.

Folks who want to know what I was doing over there go over to everymantry.com I went and did one of the hardest half ironman triathlons in the world and took part in a pretty cool cultural experience over there. They brought a bunch of us fitness and health and nutrition triathlon bloggers over to kind of experience Israel all the goodness it has to offer. So that was pretty fun.

That's very cool. So was it actually that hard of a race? Does it live up to its its reputation?

I am still sore. Like I like I am hobbling and I'm supposed to go down to California and race the super Spartan on Saturday in the Spartan Sprint on Sunday.

So you've got three days already.

I've got some foam rolling to do today.

So what makes it so hard? Just quickly not to drag this out too much.

You bike straight uphi and there's this net elevation gain because when you transition into running, the T2 is up in the mountains. So you pretty much ride up, up, up, up, up into the mountains. You never get a chance to descend. So it's not kind of one of those what goes up must Come down things. Oh no. And then you run straight downhill, which just trashes. So you trash your quads, feet, your legs, everything. I wrote a pretty gnarly race report over at Everyman Tri so folks can go check that out. And yeah, this should be an interesting podcast. I, I'm jet lagged, but let's do it.

News flashes.

News flashes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 268 is where you'll find these news flashes.

That's right. This is the segment where we dig into all the stuff that raised my eyebrows this week or that I at least found.

Is that when you raised your eyebrow.

Did you go, huh? Actually, I don't even need to say that. When my eyebrows go up, they automatically make a. It's interesting. It's a sound effect I was born with. So there was an article that someone pointed me out to over@forbes.com and the name of the article, the original article was the top five vitamins you shouldn't take. And it was published last year and just updated to be the top six vitamins you shouldn't take this week. And it was written by a guy whose name is Steven Salzberg. He covers what he says, pseudoscience and bad medicine. And I thought this was an interesting, interesting article because someone sent me a tweet over to it and I went and checked it out and there's a lot of bowl in this article and that's what I tweeted and I said I'd mentioned in the podcast. So here I am mentioning it in the podcast. So he lists six vitamins that you shouldn't take. Are you ready for this, Brock?

Six very specific vitamins that you should not be taking.

Vitamin C, vitamin A, vitamin E, vitamin B, six multivitamins and vitamin D, which I think covers most vitamins.

Yeah, multivitamin. That's kind of all of them. And the ones he already mentioned.

Yeah, I'll link to this article in the show notes, but I have a big issue with it. So first of all, he gets into vitamin C and he says that vitamin C does not prevent or cure colds, that megadoses of vitamin C simply do not work, and that vitamin C can increase the risk of kidney stones. So when.

Well, we have talked about that in the past. The high dosage of vitamin C not being the best idea. Well, you've agreed with that in the past.

I have agreed with that, but there's a caveat to that. What I've agreed with is that the widely reported study that came out of UCLA on vitamin C was basically that men who take 800 milligrams a day of vitamin C live six years longer than men who take the recommended daily allowance of 60 milligrams of vitamin C. And this study looked at over 11,000 people over a 10 year period of time and showed that higher vitamin C reduced cardiovascular risk mortality by over 42%. Now, what you need to contrast that great news about vitamin C with are two kind of issues with vitamin C. These high high doses of synthetic sources of ascorbic acid that people are taking meaning like airborne and these effervescent electrolyte tablets and megadoses of synthetic vitamin C, which I certainly do agree are not necessarily efficacious with like a whole foods vitamin C source. So, for example, I actually took vitamin C this morning because it's something that I use to kind of help my immune system bounce back from the rigors of airline travel and lack of sleep and things of that nature. And it's got some fantastic antioxidant properties. It's something that's used by natural physicians around the world and has been used for thousands of years. And I understand that that can be a logical fallacy saying that other people use it or that it's been around for a long time. But the fact is, natural sources of vitamin C from fruits, from vegetables and from powdered plant extracts is actually quite efficacious. And any of these studies that have shown vitamin C cause kidney stones or to, for example, not be effective, either used very small doses of vitamin C or megadoses of synthetic vitamin C. So.

What'S the stuff that you took? Where are you getting this whole food brand?

There's a few different ways you could get it. The stuff that I have is called natural vitality. I believe that's the name. It's up in my cupboard. It was what was recommended to me by Dr. Minkoff, who's been on this show before. And it's what he gives his patients. So that's the deal with vitamin C. Get a natural source. Don't overdose with synthetic megadoses. And also understand that in most cases, 800 milligrams plus per day is what's been shown to be effective. So then he talks about vitamin A and beta carotene and he says that too much vitamin A can be toxic and cause multiple serious side effects. And this is actually true. Now what you need to understand, though, when it comes to vitamin A is that vitamin A and vitamin D need to be balanced. So if you're taking high dose vitamin A or you're taking a beta carotene supplement, vitamin A, vitamin D and actually vitamin K2 as well, all need to be taken in good ratio. So for example, most studies suggest that an optimal vitamin A to vitamin D ratio is between 4 and 8 and most people aren't getting anywhere near that, meaning that they are vitamin D deficient and that increases risk for beta carotene or vitamin A toxicity if you're taking a multivitamin that has a lot of vitamin A in it but not a lot of vitamin D, or if you're just taking a bunch of vitamin A. So one of the things that you need to realize is if you're going to take a vitamin A or beta carotene supplement, you need to also make sure that you're getting adequate sources of vitamin K. So I like 100 to 150 micrograms of that per day along with adequate sources of vitamin D, and that's usually up around 2,000 international units a day. So I agree with this guy that vitamin vitamin A can be toxic, but in most cases that's because people aren't getting it from a whole food source like say cod liver oil or liver or some kind of natural fat source like that, where you're getting some vitamin D and some vitamin K and other fat soluble vitamins along with it, or you're vitamin D deficient. So that's the skinny on that one, Vitamin E. He also gets into vitamin E and says that evidence suggests that regular use of high dose vitamin E can increase the risk of death by all causes. And vitamin E is similar to vitamin C in that respect. A lot of the vitamin E that you get is in its synthetic form. So here's how you can know if you're taking natural or synthetic vitamin E. Turn over the label of your multivitamin or whatever source of vitamin E you're using. And a natural vitamin E is usually stated as what's called the D form, vitamin E. So like D alpha tocopherol or D, sometimes it's something different like D alpha tocopherol, succinate, things of that nature. But DL indicates a synthetic form. So like DL alpha tosopherol. So look for the natural form. The D form, natural vitamin E gets distributed through your body a lot better than the synthetic form because there's these specific carrier proteins in your liver that bind to natural vitamin E and transport it through the blood to the cells throughout your body. And those carrier proteins only recognize just a small portion, synthetic vitamin E. And so Synthetic vitamin E can not only result in some toxicity issues, but I suspect that unmetabolized synthetic vitamin E is what increases the risk of mortality, not the natural form of vitamin E. In terms of vitamin E dosage, usually you're looking at anywhere from 100 up to anywhere as high as 400 international units per day. So it's not as high as, say, vitamin D, but understand that vitamin E. Yes, once again, the article is correct if we're talking about synthetic doses of vitamin E. So what I'm hearing so.

Far is basically it's kind of like food. Like, if you're eating the real food, if you're eating like whole food that's grown in the ground and picked and not processed too much, then you're good. But as soon as you move into the processed or the fake stuff, then it's not so good. Basically, the same sort of rule goes for vitamins, by the sounds of things.

And a lot of people are going to wonder, if you're listening right now, you might wonder, why not just take. Why not just eat real food? We'll get into that a little bit later in this podcast because I think we have a question about multivitamins in general, and we'll kind of dig into that topic. It's a little bit controversial right now, so we'll get into it because we love controversy here on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.

Well, you love controversy.

It makes me laugh. That's right. We love politics and controversy. So vitamin B6. This guy also talks about vitamin B6 and says that vitamin B6 in high levels can cause severe nerve damage. Now, the issue with this is that vitamin B6, which is also known as high pyridoxine, is this really good vitamin. It helps support your adrenal function and maintain a healthy nervous system. The fact is that it can be toxic, but you're looking at levels that are far in excess of the current recommended maximum daily intake. For toxicity, the current recommended maximum daily intake is about 100 milligrams, and the NIH here in America recommends that folks get somewhere in the range of about 1 to 2 milligrams per day. So you'd have to be taking a ton of vitamin B6 in order for it to be toxic. So anything in high, high amounts is toxic for him to pull this one out. I don't really understand it because, like, water is toxic if you take enough of it. So vitamin B6, water is toxic if.

You take enough of it.

If you're concerned about vitamin B6, just don't exceed 100 milligrams per day. And if you're an athlete or a hard charging person, a lot of times your metabolism is high enough and you're burning through your vitamins and your nutrients, nutrients and your minerals at a high enough rate to where even that can be okay in some cases. So yeah, taking high levels of vitamin B6 from supplements can cause some issues, but it's gotta be like 100 milligrams plus. And in most cases you're not even touching that. All right, now then he says number five is multivitamins. Now, I'm not even gonna really comment on this because I've got more to say about multivitamins later on in this podcast. But what he says is that multivitamins don't boost your immune system, they don't promote joint health, they don't reduce stress, and they don't help prevent colds or any other common ail. Well, we'll get into that a little bit later about why that's an issue. Why studies in sedentary hospitalized folks or the average people really don't apply to everyone across the board or specifically the 30,000 women that were studied over 25 years with the major multivitamin study. Yeah, the one that most people quote. There were some pretty serious issues with that study.

Put that on the back shelf.

Finally, he says vitamin D, and he says that vitamin D is a waste of time because there is no evidence that vitamin D can actually increase bone density or reduce risk of osteoporosis. Now there are some pretty big issues with this. The number one thing being that vitamin D has been shown to in studies in just the past three years to increase everything from testosterone, growth hormone to improve muscle recovery when taken directly after a workout. That study just came out to a whole range of benefits, especially when balanced again with vitamin A and vitamin K. Now the other thing is that these studies that looked at bone density were not looking at vitamin D levels that I'll look at in, for example, folks I do consults with when I'm looking at their blood values, I typically like vitamin D to be between 40 and 70. And these studies weren't looking at vitamin D levels anywhere near that range to see if it gave benefits. They were down around 20 to 30 nanograms per milliliter of vitamin D. Now.

That'S, that's free floating vitamin D in the blood, right?

Exactly. Now, I would agree that vitamin D levels that are that low if you're taking a vitamin D supplement may not result in much benefit. Shown for anything from bone density to any of the other benefits of vitamin D. But if you actually get vitamin D up into that 40 to 70 nanograms per milliliter range, then you're going to begin to see a lot of these optimal benefits that have been shown for vitamin D in studies. But the issue is, in the study, especially the one on bone density, they weren't giving people enough vitamin D to even get them close to what would be considered adequate levels anyway. So I'm not surprised that they didn't see any benefits when it comes to osteoporosis. And again, let's just say that, sure, vitamin D doesn't prevent osteoporosis. Well, there are a lot of other benefits from vitamin D that go way above and beyond kind of non skeletal disorders or skeletal disorders. So yeah, that's my take on this study. And remember folks, whenever you see a headline like that, like the top six vitamins you shouldn't take, take that with a grain of salt. Sometimes Forbes runs an article like that to stir up controversy and to get ads. And again, nothing wrong with stirring up controversy. But I just wanted to make sure that I get a chance to say my 2 cents on that particular article.

And your 2 cents equals. Equals mole.

There you go. All right, what else did I tweet out? Oh, a really good up to date sleep article. I'll link to that for folks who want to read it. But some really interesting things in this sleep article that appeared over at Supversity because we're obsessed with sleep here at the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. True.

It really is true.

I certainly didn't get enough of it last night. But what they found was a few things. First of all, they found that when you restrict sleep, there are some pretty interesting biochemical issues that go on. They found that there were elevations in fatty acids and in the circulating levels of glucose in folks who were sleep restricted in one study. And that means that you're increasing risk for diabetes and obesity. They found that low levels of sleep can actually cause a bunch of different side effects. But specifically, what this particular article goes into is that you snack more, you have increased psychological distress that you attempt to alleviate with food because you have increased sensitivity to food reward, meaning that any food tastes better when you're low on sleep and you just get this dopamine release that you use to shut down this psychological distress from lack of sleep. You get lower dietary restraints, you need more calories necessary necessary to sustain extended wakefulness. And of course, you have an increase in Your natural production of hunger hormones, or what's called your homeostatic drive to eat. So this is why, from a variety of standpoints, folks who don't sleep enough tend to overeat and also gain weight. So you're not only naturally having increased levels of glucose and circulating fatty acids, but you're piling more food on top of the that. So that was interesting. They also found double whammy. So exercise attenuates the metabolic effects of light exposure at night. Meaning we've talked before on this show about how lights and stuff in your house can shut down melatonin production or decrease melatonin production at night, especially the blue light spectrum. But exercise can mitigate some of those effects. So that was an interesting study that was done just last year specifically on.

So you can read books on your iPad as long as you're jogging on the spot.

When you're doing it. Exactly, exactly. You can shine a bright light in your face before you go to bed as long as you've done some bench pressing beforehand. No, what it actually gets into is how if you've done a short, high intensity interval session, like in the afternoon or the early evening, that can help attenuate a lot of the decrease in melatonin that occurs from light exposure. And that's because exercise regulates your circadian rhythm. It's like one of the first things I'll do when we finish this podcast is I'll do a short exercise session, probably some yoga, to get my circadian rhythm back in line. And if I was really on top of things, I'd be doing some burpees and stuff right now while we're podcasting. Go for it. Yeah, that'll be fun. The next one is the next thing that they go over is melatonin supplements. Not only did they find that melatonin supplements reduced sleep latency or how long it takes for you to get to sleep once you get into bed at night, but they increase total sleep time. They increased overall sleep quality or your ability to get into kind of your deep, rapid eye movement sleep by over 20%. And there were no issues in the studies that they were citing on melatonin with you actually losing the efficacy of the melatonin over time. So basically, you can take melatonin and it can increase sleep levels and you don't become sensitive to it over time. Now, what I found is that. That I feel that I personally tend to do best with melatonin when I'm in a situation like I'm in right now, where I'VE traveled multiple time zones. And I take it before I go to bed at night, I took it last night before I went to bed and use it for a short period of time when you're traveling or when you need increased sleep and then you don't use it. And I personally feel that it's kind of like that, no biological free pass type of thing where I suspect that they may find at some point that a lot of melatonin supplementation may decrease a little bit. Your pineal glands own production of melatonin. But as far as this study goes or as far as the multiple studies they go over in this article, that doesn't appear to be an issue. That's actually been proven by science. So that's just something that I suspect. But either way, you should have some melatonin around if you travel a lot or if you have some sleep issues. If you're one of those people that relies on Ambien, Valium, any of these other sleep compounds, try experimenting with melatonin a little bit. You don't need much. One to three milligrams is efficacious if you really want to get. We talked about this a few weeks ago and like lucid dreaming, ultra deep sleep, you can take 10, 15, 20 milligrams. But ultimately melatonin is a pretty efficacious supplement for sleep. And we'll link to that article in the show notes for those of you listening in.

I think the big issue right now, the only thing that stops me from taking melatonin on a really regular basis is that fear that my endogenous building of it myself will, will die out. So if somebody can just finally figure that out once and for all, then we'll know.

Well, what we do know is that you decrease melatonin production as you age. So it may be something that as you get older, increasing melatonin just slightly, you know, same same as like digestive enzyme production, you know, decreases and hydrochloric acid production decreases and some of these other things decrease as you age. It could just be better living through science to get a little bit of it into your system before you go to bed at night as you get older. My mom, for example, I have her taken about one to three milligrams in.

The evening every night.

The last thing that I thought was interesting was an article that came out that showed that Tylenol can kill the pain during exercise and help you to achieve a higher rating of perceived exertion or allows you to go harder. And this the title of this study was the influence of acetaminophen on repeated sprint cycling performance. And they showed that it improved performance by reducing pain, allowing participants to exercise closer to their true physiological limits. And the issue with this is an issue that I've written about before. And I'll link to a pretty comprehensive article that I wrote about the issues with taking ibuprofen, nonsteroidal anti inflammatory drugs, and other sources of acetaminophen or painkillers on the body during exercise. The problem is that especially during exercise, these compounds increase what's called your gastrointestinal permeability, which is a sign that your gut is becoming leaky. So you get a much increased risk of gut distress as well as intestinal injury. But you also do a huge number on your liver and your kidneys. And what they showed was a lot of the metabolic markers of kidney damage and liver damage, like increased creatine kinase, things of that nature are vastly increased when you take painkiller, especially during exercise and especially during exercise in the heat. So the fact is that even though it may actually shut down a little bit of pain and allow you to go harder, the question is, is handing over your liver or one of your kidneys worth that? That, or is destroying your gut worth that? So I would say when you see a study like this, you gotta realize it's not just about performance.

Yeah, but I recall you saying in the past that acetaminophen wasn't as bad as the NSAIDs. We were definitely supposed to stay away from ibuprofen, but I thought the acetaminophen was relatively safe to pop before an.

Event you get a similar effect, especially on the liver and the kidney. Ibuprofen is the one that's a big deal when it comes to your gut, just due to the issue with ibuprofen. Essentially is decreasing the levels of an enzyme that helps to protect your gut barrier along with decreasing pain. Acetaminophen doesn't have as much of that effect, but it certainly is just as bad, if not worse for your liver and your kidneys. So just something to bear in mind, if you need to shut down pain, I recommend high dose curcumin. Curcumin that works really well. There's this one supplement called phenocaine that's got curcumin, it's got some other natural painkillers in it, nattokinase, phenylalanine, Some of these things that more naturally decrease pain without doing the same type of damage to your gut. So Check that out. We'll link to those articles in the show notes along with all the other handy dandy news flashes that we talked about about.

I recommend a hot bath and a shot of vodka for everything.

Special announcements.

So we've got a Paleo Con and we've got a Primal Con.

Got cons all over, cons everywhere. So primal con. I hope folks are brushing up on their Mexican because myself, Jessa, Mark Sisson, Rob Wolfe, Kate Shanahan, a bunch of real leaders in the Paleo and the prime only ancestral health community, along with Brock, one of the more famous folks in this whole community. Brock, Jason Skywalker Armstrong is going to be there as well. And that's for those of you who don't know Brock's full name.

That's me.

Yeah, that's Brock. So that is going to take place March 1st through the 6th. It's down to Tulum, Mexico. Awesome getaway if you want to just get steeped in luxurious health, health food and outdoor fitness workouts and beach time and fun in the sun. And of course, things like exploring Mayan ruins and potentially even getting a chance to brush up on your Mexican. And who doesn't want to order a shot of tequila with Mark Sisson and Rob Wolf?

I'm a little worried that I'm going to be the only one ordering shots of tequila. Everybody else will be sipping out of coconuts.

We'll put a link in the show notes for those of you who want to get into that and go drink tequila with brock in Mexico March 1st through the 6th. So check that out. That's Primal Con. And then there's this other thing going on called Paleo Con. And Paleo Con is not in Mexico. That's an online event. And it's folks like Dr. Loren Cordain and Dave Asprey and Chris Kresser and Paul Jaminet, some, some real brilliant minds in kind of like the, again, like the ancestral living kind of, kind of circle. You don't have to be Paleo to go to this Paleo Con event, but if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com you'll get a chance to check it out. Like Mark Sisson is talking about low carb training in endurance. Dave Asprey is talking about Paleo problems for high performers. Chris Kresser's talk is called the top three mainstream and Paleo nutrition myths debunked. Abel James is talking about intermittent fasting and feasting for enhancing fat loss. Denise Minger, who recently wrote a really, really good article over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com is doing one called the Truth about the China Study. So lots of really good presentations, 25 plus free cookbooks, bunch of cool stuff over there. Check that out@BenGreenfieldFitness.com PaleoCon and I think it's going to be pretty cool. These online events, usually you pick up a bunch of stuff that you don't get in. Kind of like the free podcast.

Yeah, it's pretty neat too because you can tune in live and hear all the stuff or you can, I think for an extra, extra few bucks because it's free otherwise. But you pay a few bucks and you can watch it basically forever.

Yeah, that's the way most of these, these online events go is it's, it's free to tune in live and then you can also watch afterwards. I don't know what it costs. Usually it's like 47 or 37 or 57 or something seven. Something seven.

Yeah.

So anyways, yeah, those are, those are a couple of things to check out. Paleocon and Primalcon. And then finally, if you haven't yet been to Beyond TrainingBook.com just a few more weeks until my 540 plus page hard copy manual of Human Performance and Nutrition ships and you can still get in on the pre orders, the raffles, the Swag that's at Beyond TrainingBook.com so check that out if you want a really, really heavy paperweight.

And for those of you who've been hanging on waiting for the raffle to be drawn so you can see if you've won any of the awesome stuff, that's when it will happen. When the book comes out the first.

Week of March, get the inside edge from Ben Greenfield Fitness delivered straight to your phone.

Just text the word Fitness to 411247.

And you'll instantly get exclusive VIP discounts and insider tips that no one else will ever see except you. Do it now. Text the word Fitness to 411247 and you'll be in Ben's VIP Text Club.

Listener Q and A. Hi Ben, I was wondering if you could give me some guidance about the APOE genotype 3.4which my brother has. And he also has high cholesterol. And I guess that genome type, which is more rare means he's more likely to respond to dietary changes in fat. And what I've read is to lowers cholesterol. It says he should be eating a low fat diet, but it doesn't really discuss what low fat means or it doesn't really discuss the quality of the fats. And I was wondering if you could weigh in on if you think a low fat diet is good for that genotype or if it's more important to eat good quality fats like you've been doing. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed what you did on the blood work that you had. That was a really helpful video. Thanks.

This is kind of a timely question. You actually addressed this APOE3.4 genotype in the blog that came out earlier this week.

Well, Denise Minger talked about the APOE gene specifically when she was talking about how to figure out what kind of diet is going to work well for you. So, yeah, this is a nice, timely question. We didn't plan that, but there you go. So the APOE test, this is a genetic test and you could get something like this through like 23andMe.com genetic testing. That'd be one way to do it. And the test for APOE is usually ordered to help physicians or help healthcare practitioners to guide their treatment of cholesterol issues. Because what happens, and the reason that APOE testing kind of became popular in the first place is that when you treat people with statins, some people are sensitive to lipid lowering drugs like statins and some art, and that's in part influenced by a specific genotype called the APOE genotype. So some people who have say, like what's called an APOE4 genotype are less likely to respond to statins than people who have what's called an APOE2 genotype. So of course I'm not a fan of statins in the first place, but that's kind of how genotyping got popular. Now it's also used in Alzheimer's disease. So there are also certain people who tend to have increased likelihood of Alzheimer's disease. And technically those are people who have this APOE 4 genotype. And you can go and get your 23andMe.com genetic testing and go see what your genotype is or what's called your allele is, which is basically an allele, is any of the possible kind of forms of which a specific gene can occur. So you have like the APOE E4, E4 allele and the APOE E2 E2 or in this case the APOE, she has the 3, 4. So the thing with APOE is in addition to kind of dictating how sensitive you might be to a statin or what your risk of something like Alzheimer's disease might be is APOE is technically this lipoprotein and it carries cholesterol through the blood. So the type of APOE genotype that you have can influence how you actually metabolize cholesterol. So when we look at some folks, they do have what's called this 3,4APOE3.4 gene. It's anywhere from about 20 to 30% of people have this APOE3.4 gene. And what we tend to see is that some of those folks tend to have higher levels of circulating cholesterol and specifically higher levels of some of this certain small, dense cholesterol. And those could be people who might have an issue with a high level of fat intake. Because a lot of this cholesterol is spending a longer period of time in the bloodstream. And that's kind of an issue with cholesterol is when it spends a long period of time in the bloodstream, it's more likely to become oxidized and more likely to cause some issues in terms of cardiovascular vascular risk, disease. So that's why I think that genetic typing can really come in handy when it comes to figuring out what kind of diet is right for you, because your APOE genotype is going to be largely dependent on your ancestors and what they were exposed to as far as what was available to them as a diet for thousands of years. So there's a really interesting book about this, by the way. It's called the ApoE gene diet. I'll link to it in the show notes. It was written by this lady named Pamela McDonald, but what she does is she helps you match your genetic type with the correct nutrition. Now, I'm not necessarily a fan of everything that's in the book, but if you really want to wrap your head around how your body responds to certain foods based on your APOE gene type, it'd be an interesting one for you to go check out. So that's called the APOE gene diet. I'll link to it in the show notes. But if you do Indeed have this APOE3.4 genotype and you've decided that you want to actually start into a lower fat type of diet, I would recommend that you be really careful. I would say if I was personally going to go out and eat a low fat diet, I would do kind of something relatively close to almost like a raw vegan type of diet, but I would supplement with a lot of fat soluble vitamins. So I would do like a traditional kind of raw vegan diet diet. And I would go after a diet that's kind of modeled along the lines of Brendan Brazier's Thrive diet, for example, is a really good one. The reason I say that is because it's got a lot of sprouts, it's got a lot of raw seeds and nuts, a lot of kind of coconut oils and some of these healthy fats that a lot of times you tend to miss out on when you switch to a raw plant food based diet. But these kind of fats are to going, going to be less likely to spend longer periods of time in your bloodstream compared to animal based saturated fats or some animal based fats that people with the APOE3.4 gene specifically may not do well with. So you would do like a raw vegan diet higher in a lot of your dark leafy greens and things of that nature. I would supplement with a vitamin K2, a vitamin D3 and a vitamin A, or else use a fermented cod liver liver oil. I would make sure that you're doing a lot of sprouting and soaking and fermenting so you're getting a lot of those fatty acids, but you're also decreasing a lot of the enzyme inhibitors or a lot of the gut damaging compounds that you can get when you're increasing your intake of plants and grasses and things that are going to naturally cause some issues in the digestive tract just because plants want to get pooped out. And so when you're hitting a lot of of plants, they tend to do a number unless you've properly prepared them through soaking and sprouting and fermentation and things of that nature. I would also make sure that you use a couple of things that tend to be deficient in folks who eat a plant based diet. Like iodine for example, is one biggie. Vitamin B12 is another big one. And then taurine is specifically an amino acid that you only find in animal foods. It's really important for brain development and blood glucose stability and fighting free radicals and protecting your eyes. So taurine is another one that I'd throw in there. And then if you're an athlete, I would also include creatine, I'd include a component called L carnitine and then also beta alanine, creatine, L carnitine and beta alanine. If you're eating like a low fat kind of vegan plant based diet diet because of an APOE3.4 genotype. Now I don't recommend that type of diet for everyone, but this might be an issue where genes actually make it so that a high fat diet might not be right for you. Now there's not a lot of Evidence that shows that ApoE3.4 genotypes who are eating a high fat diet necessarily get heart disease. But if you're wanting to be super careful until the research on genotypes and heart disease and, and diets comes out, that's the way that I would do it.

Interesting. So all those supplements you were talking about were really things that would just be filling in for the lack of meat?

Yeah, exactly. Like if you're going to eat a low fat diet because you're trying to control the levels of specifically like saturated fats and some of the things that are going to naturally increase the levels of cholesterol circulating in the bloodstream, you would still want to get a lot of the vitamins you're going to miss out on, some of the nutrients that you're going to miss out on by not getting those in the diet. Now of course there's a lot of other benefits of saturated fats when it comes to cholesterol, membrane stability and things of that nature that you're still going to miss out on. But this is one of those areas where I'm not a genotyping expert and I'm sure there's a little bit, I'm sure there's a lot of research that's left to be done on genotyping and diets, but that's at least where I'd start if you decide that you want to look at this. And then I'd also test like, you know, do like wellness FX testing or do some kind of testing where you're, where you're able to look at the levels of very low density lipoproteins, low density lipoproteins, inflammation and basically check and see if you're even responding to changes in diet because again, genotype expression is really important. And if you're eating like, let's say you're eating a high fat animal based diet, you're eating lots of coconut oil and steak and fatty fish and things of that nature and your nice large fluffy LDL particles are high, your small, dense LDL particles, your VLDL is low, then that genotype isn't causing any issues for you. So that's another thing is that you can test your cholesterol particle size and check and see if it's even really creating issues for you or not.

Cool. The last thing I wanted to bring up was the 23andMe. I think last time we checked in on that during the show anyway, there were some problems with the FDA was stopping them from being able to deliver the results from your tests. And I assume that's been taken care of since you're recommending it again.

Well, 23andMe is actually not really giving you a lot of data right now in terms of the. The health data or health recommendations based on your data. But you can, for example, you can go to 23andMe.com, you can do the test, it's like a $99 saliva test. And you'll get your raw genetic data and you can download that raw data and then there are websites that will actually take that raw data and give you some really good health information based on it. So one is called the Sterling's app. So if you go to this website, it's kind of a mouthful. It's called mth. That's mthfr support.com you can upload your raw data from 23andme.com and that will give you really good health interpretation. Another good one is called the kind of a funny name but the Genetic Genie's methylation analysis and detox profile. You can, you can also upload your raw data to that and that will kind of spit out all of the unique. Specifically what are called SMPs or basically what it tells you is where some of your health issues might lie if you do tend to have some what are called methylation issues in your genetics. And we don't have time to get into that too thoroughly. But Sterling's app@mthfr support.com or the genetic Genies methylation analysis and detox profile, just Google that or I'll put a link the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 268 if you want to kind of dig into those a little bit more. But you can take your 23me.me.com data whether you have it, whether you're going to get it, and you can download the raw data and look into it that way.

I saw this article on CNN.com and it was talking about how multivitamins are a waste of money. It was about an article in the annals of internal medicine and I was just, just wondering what your take was on it.

Thanks.

All right, so this is what you were alluding to in the news flashes that you're going to get into sort of the whole multivitamins being a waste of money articles that have been circulating over the last few weeks.

Yeah. And a couple podcasts ago, I think it was number 266, I believe. And maybe you could look that up while I'm talking Barack, but we spent a little bit of time on multivitamins. In this recent paper that came out in the Annals of Internal Medicine, which reported basically that you should stop wasting your money on vitamin and mineral supplementation. I think that the title of the article was actually relatively provocative. It was enough is enough. Stop wasting money on vitamin and mineral supplements. Now, we already talked about some of the issues with the studies that were cherry picked in that article. The fact that some of the studies were just done on physicians, which are relatively unique portion of the population, and the fact that in many cases they were using very, very low levels of the specific vitamins that you'd actually need, which we kind of touched on earlier. But there's a few other things that you got to consider. First of all, they ignore specific diets in this body of data that's used to look at multivitamins. And when you look at specific diets, a lot of times you find that most are not providing even close to the recommended daily intake of your nutrients or your micronutrients or your vitamins, or they're very deficient. So, for example, if you look at some popular diets like the Dash diet, the Dash diet is only 51% sufficient in terms of providing your 27 essential micronutrients and micronutrients. If you read the book, what's the book by the Caltons, Mira and Jason Calton wrote a book called Rich Food, Poor Food. They get into what all these 27 essential micronutrients are. But the DASH diet, which is a popular low fat DIET that's only 51% sufficient in your micronutrients. A Mediterranean type diet called the Best Life diet, is only 55% sufficient in micronutrients. The Atkins diet, the high fat, low carb diet, that's only 40, 30% sufficient in your micronutrients. The south beach Diet, shockingly, is only 22% sufficient in your micronutrients. Now, all of these popular diet plans, they don't get close to providing 100% sufficiency for all these micronutrients. But this article on whether or not multivitamins were efficacious didn't look into any of these micronutrients. And when I say micronutrients, that includes stuff like vitamins, vitamin D, vitamin E, but it also includes things like iodine, chromium, vitamin B7, or what's called biotin, which flies under the radar, but which is very important for your eyes, for your hormones. So that's one thing to consider, is that micronutrients are not taken into consideration and specific diets, which a lot of people are on, are not taken into consideration. The other thing that they don't look at is athletes and athletic populations tend to create kind of their own unique set of problems. Like bodybuilders. When you look at bodybuilders. There have been studies that have examined the dietary habits of both male and female bodybuilders and found, for example, that female bodybuilders are extremely deficient in calcium and magnesium. And it's probably because of the amount of muscle cell damage and muscle cell turnover that's occurring, occurring in that population. Male bodybuilders tend to consume only 46% on their bodybuilding diet of the recommended daily allowance for vitamin D. And women are even lower than that. And those are just studies that are done specifically in figure competitors and bodybuilders, other athletes are flying through magnesium like it's going out of style. And whereas the general population may not have a deficiency in magnesium, many, many athletes actually do. And again, this multivitamin study didn't look at that as well. And the high, high turnover in athletes. So we've got dieters, we've got athletes. And then the other thing is that there is some bias here too. So a common thread along a lot of these vitamin and mineral supplementation analysis show show that we've got a little bit of potential for political foul play going on. So there was this recent study that found that when you ingest a multivitamin and an omega 3 supplement together, like an omega 3 fish oil type of supplement together, that it can lower levels of inflammation like C reactive protein and homocysteine and triglycerides levels. But a lot of times these non pharmaceutical therapies like fish oil supplementation, these are usually either ignored or not reported by a lot of journals. And I think that there may be some political foul play going on there as far as like the drug industry and the fact that it generates way more revenue than something like fish oil. But I think that some of the results and like the synergistic effect of for example, combining a fish oil with a multi, multivitamin, we just don't get to see a lot of that stuff reported unless we're really paying attention to the alternative health industry and a lot of the research that's coming out there. So if I could end here with kind of an idea of people who could benefit from a multivitamin, think about some of these things, like women of childbearing age, they tend to be deficient in folate and vitamin D and and an iron. That's a population that would potentially benefit from those type of compounds. Pregnant women or lactating women, they tend to be deficient in vitamin B6, in folate, in vitamin D and in iron. If you read this article over at Forbes that we talked about earlier, vitamin B6, it tells you you shouldn't go near it and that it's toxic. But pregnant and lactating women tend to be deficient in vitamin B6, so they, along with folate and vitamin D and iron, they could benefit from those. You tend to see infants and children and adolescents benefit quite a bit from vitamin D supplementation. So do people with dark colored skin, people who spend a lot of time indoors. A lot of these folks are not specifically studied, but that's where vitamin D would come in. You tend to see a lot of older adults being deficient in vitamin B12 and in zinc. So aging population populations. We talked about digestive enzymes and melatonin as two other things that those type of people can benefit from. Some people have fat malabsorption syndromes or have had their gallbladder removed. And for those people, fat soluble vitamins like vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E and vitamin K may come in even more handy than for the general population. People who smoke, they tend to be deficient in vitamin C and vitamin E because of the high level of turnover of vitamin C and vitamin E to fight a lot of the oxidative damage from smoking. So if you want to kind of have your cake and eat it too, if you're going to light up, you'd want to take vitamin C and vitamin E and go out of your way to do so. There are certain medications that a lot of people are on that can interfere with the absorption or the metabolism of micronutrients like proton pump inhibitors that you find to a lot of people are on for treating heart heartburn. Those impair vitamin B12 absorption. And so people who have been on a protein pump inhibitor maybe tend to be pretty deficient in vitamin B12. And while I don't recommend a proton pump inhibitor to treat heartburn, even if you've been on one, you decide you're going to get off one, you're probably vitamin B12 deficient. Frequent aspirin use can lower your vitamin C levels. So that's another population who would benefit from vitamin C supplementation. So I hope you're getting the idea idea here that you are a unique snowflake. So you know, depending on what category that you fall into, there are specific targeted supplements that are going to specifically help you and your needs. And while a cheap, you know, filler multivitamin from Costco might not be the best pick for you, depending on what category, what population, you know, athletic, pregnant, young, old, it's et cetera, that chain smoker that you fall into. It's really going to affect what you take. So I personally don't take a multivitamin. I just take targeted supplements like vitamin D. I use some, like I mentioned, melatonin every now and again. I'll sometimes use some digestive enzymes depending on the meal I'm eating. I'll just pick and choose as I go. But that's my take on the whole multivitamins waste of money article in addition to what I said. And was it 266 Brock?

You know what, I wasn't able to find it. I cruised around him. I came up with nothing.

Well, if you go to BenGreenful Fitness.com and actually just go to BenGreenfulFitness.com 268 and we'll put a link to that one in the show notes as well. So we'll put all sorts of goodness in the show notes for you.

Hi Ben, my name's Amy. I'm calling because I am just coming back from a foot injury. I'm a half marathon runner generally and I'm quite hooked on my, you know, 30 miles a week or whatever I normally do. It's been three and a half months off the road for me. Finally I had been able to go back out on the road for a couple of weeks and now I've got a new issue with my foot in spite of starting up slowly the way that was recommended. And I just wonder if you have a tip for what kind of health professional I would be best off consulting. I went to a podiatrist. I felt like that particular podiatrist was a glorified orthotics salesman. I have orthotics. I think they may be part of the problem and I would like to get my feet strong again. I'd like to get diagnosed quickly and I'd like to not spend a fortune. So where do you start when you're trying to be holistic and efficient with mechanical musculoskeletal issue. Thanks for your time.

I'm glad that Amy mentioned that she also thinks that the orthotics she has are maybe causing the problem because I know I spend a lot of time trying to get my runners to not necessarily throw out their orthotics but to just get to being comfortable without them.

I'm not a fan of orthotics. I think they weaken your feet, they dampen your foot senses. You've got a huge number of proprioceptors on the bottom of your feet. And when you look at custom orthotics, heel lifts, arch supports, and you're talking to a guy who's literally had $400 to $600 custom orthotics comped for me just so I would write reviews, and I've never had success with that type of stuff. They negatively affect your proprioception, your feel for the ground. They support muscles and tendons and ligaments in such a way that those muscles and tendons and ligaments don't have the need to function as they normally would. So your foot gets weaker and that spreads to other areas of your body, like, again, your nervous system and your feel for the ground. And that can put you into a situation where you not only get foot pain, but you have decreased balance, you have decreased performance. And so I'm not a huge fan. Even if you have something something like a leg length discrepancy, a lot of times the muscle imbalances that create a leg length discrepancy, those can be fixed with things like trigger point therapy and reflexive therapy, and even in some cases, eliminating certain foods that can cause issues with your digestive tract, especially on your right side, where your liver's at an autoimmune type of diet. So when you're looking at using orthotics as a band aid and that nature. Not a huge fan. There are some other issues, though, with orthotics as well. So when you're altering your feel for the ground, that's altering what's called your somatosensory system. And your somatosensory system is how your joints actually send a message to your brain about where your body's at in space. So when you're messing with your somatosensory system by doing dampening the amount of nervous system stimulation to your feet, that's also going to affect things higher up the kinetic chain, like your knees and your hips. So that's another thing to bear in mind is we're not just talking about the feet, but we're talking about knees, hip back, everything of that nature. Now, Dr. Phil Maffetone, who is a frequent podcast guest over at Endurance Planet, he is on the board of of our Superhuman Coach Network, and he's the author of the Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing. He's also the author of a book called Complementary Sports Medicine. And in that particular book, he gets into something called muscle testing. And when you look at muscle testing, essentially it's a form of testing a muscle to see whether it is inhibited by certain things or strengthened by certain, certain things. And a lot of chiropractics who do muscle testing find that folks who are wearing orthotics a lot of times tend to have inhibited muscles because of those orthotics. So when you look at, for example, like your tibialis posterior muscle, that muscle supports the main arch of your foot and it's responsible for proper pronation and for the overall foot stability in your foot. Now, in some people, that tibialis posterior muscle might be inhibited because of, say, like an injury to the muscle, but it can also be inhibited when you are wearing orthotics. And so, you know, that's another issue is that you can get this muscle inhibition or turning off of certain muscles when you're changing the way that the foot is in contact with, with the ground. And that's something that can be looked at via muscle testing by Dr. Maffetone or someone who's been through his program. But it's also something that you can just a lot of times get a feel for when you're wearing your orthotic versus when you have it out. So there's some gait disturbances that go on. There's some also issues with arch support. So a lot of people wear arch supports because they have flat feet or they get some kind of a pain in their arch. Now, flat feature, soft feet are pretty normal in little kids. And as kids get older, the tendons in their feet strengthen and they tighten to form what's called your medial longitudinal arch. And that usually happens by the time a kid is around 3 years old. Now some kids, because they're put in footwear from an early age, and I just wrote about this in a Paleo magazine, they don't actually develop that arch in their foot. And so you get adults with flat feet or with muscle or tendon or ligament weakness in their foot. Now you can actually redevelop that arch by getting rid of orthotics and getting rid of big built up shoes or by doing like barefoot and minimalist shoe running or walking or just standing around in bare feet. But it's something that takes time to rebuild and simply putting in an orthotic which supports that dysfunction. It's a band aid. But eventually, eventually you're gonna have to fix the actual foot. So you know, there is this one device called correct toes that can help to fix a lot of structural misalignments that are due to years of, you know, poor foot health or improper footwear or overuse of orthotics. And I'll put a link to that in the show notes, but it's basically these little spreaders that you put between your toes. I think that when I had Katie Myers on, she talked about the happy feet socks that you can sleep with. This is similar to that. But if you just wanted to put these on with a normal pair of socks or with your shoes, you didn't want to get funny looks by wearing your funky looking happy socks, you could put these correct toes on. So we'll put a link to those in the show notes, the correct toes. But the idea is that, you know, you, you really do need to let your feet just be feet. And, you know, no matter how fancy your orthotics are, they're not properly supporting the, the tendons and the ligaments in your feet. Or. Well, they, they are supporting them, but, but you don't necessarily want those supported in the same way that you don't want to go lift weights at the gym every time with like a, like a big low back, back brace because all you're doing is not allowing your back to become stronger. So ultimately, Amy, as far as your feet go, what I would suggest that you do is a lot of soft tissue work on the bottom of your feet, like rolling a golf ball, doing a lot of stretching of your toes, training your feet by doing something like putting a cup on the ground and spreading some marbles around that cup and using your toes to pick up the marbles and put them in the cup. You need to treat this injury like you'd treat any type of condition or injury. You need to fix the underlying issue, retrain those muscles, and eventually get yourself to the point where you can function without orthotics. But it takes patience, it takes time. And a lot of times people will try to use an orthotics as a quick fix when in fact you need more than that. And it's just annoying, this whole quick fix thing, like all the people rushing out to get back surgery and, you know, everything else. It's like a lot of times all this stuff can be fixed just by going after the underlying issue and getting rid of, you know, everything from built up shoes to orthotics to chairs to everything else that are causing these issues.

So it's more than just letting her foot heal. It's letting it heal and then addressing the problem.

Yep, exactly. Hi, Ben. My dad was just released after 42 days in the hospital and rehab center due to Guillain Barre syndrome as a result of a flu shot. He currently is in a wheelchair and can't walk. And I'm wondering if you know of any supplements or homeopathic methods for nerve regeneration that I can pass along to him to help speed his healing. Thank you.

So Katie's dad was incredibly unlucky. That's like 1 in 100,000, I think is what the Mayo Clinic says. And the odds of getting that.

Yeah, Guillain Barre, it's a nerve based issue and it's this disorder where your immune system damages your own nerve cells and that causes muscle weakness. It can cause paralysis and some people fully recover from it, but some people get permanent nerve damage. It's kind of stuck similar to like, you know, like, like polio in that respect where, you know, there, it can cause some, some, you know, almost like multiple sclerosis style, you know, like scarring in the nerves. But, you know, it is kind of blown out of proportion. It's like there, there are some issues that I have with flu shots, but it's not like everybody who gets a flu shot is going to get Guillain Barre. And you know, the reports are flu.

Shot every year of my life and I haven't had it.

Yeah, the reports are pretty few and far between. Now my issue with the flu shot is more due to like the heavy metal issues and a lot of the other kind of things you're going to find in a lot of these influenza vaccines and flu shots. I personally have never gotten one in my life and don't ever plan on it. And you know, my kids and my wife don't don't get it either, but.

I have a feeling I get a lot worse things in my body from, from other places.

Yeah, I'm still not a fan. You're gonna have to stop. Well, Brock and I are gonna have to have a conversation off air about heavy metal toxicity, fisticuffs. But let's address Katie's question now. Katie, first of all, you should go listen to podcast number 235 where we talk about healing nerves and rebuilding nerves. Because I get into that in detail, we geek out for like 20 minutes. I'll put a link to podcast number number 235 in the show notes. But ultimately what comes out of that is that some of the things that are going to be necessary for your nerves to heal properly, number One would be a really good intake of omega 3 fatty acids and specifically what's called a gamma linoleic acid, which you're going to get from. One thing that's really high in that for example, is borage oil. So you're going to find borage oil in like the. There's one type of type of fish oil. The one that I use is called super essentials. Omega 3 fatty acids. That one has fish oil, astaxanthin, but it's also got a source of borage oil in it. So gamma linoleic acid intake is really important. So you can, you can be on if you're trying to fix a nerve issue up around like 8 to 10 milligrams per day of a good high quality fish oil that not only has the omega 3 fatty acids but also has something like borage oil in it. Natural painkillers. I talked about phenocaine and how it's high in that anti inflammatory curcumin. Getting about 1 gram or so of curcumin on a daily basis as a natural painkiller and natural anti inflammatory. Really important as well. A few other things that really help support nerve healing. One would be a really good level of magnesium intake. So I'd be looking at around 400 to 600 milligrams of magnesium per day. Zinc can be really helpful as well. So I would consider using a zinc type of supplement or kind of upping the amount of shellfish in the diet. And then glutathione. Glutathione, you can get that in like I like the spray that Dave Asprey sells on his upgraded self website. But you would take glutathione and you do about four to six sprays of this sublingual glutathione for a really good absorption. That's another one that I recommend. And then finally the last thing I talk about, and I give a little bit more of kind of like a scientific explanation of all this in that podcast. But one other thing is a whole food antioxidant. I'm a fan of this packet that you can take on a daily basis that has. It's got vitamin B, vitamin D, vitamin E, a bunch of really good wild plant based antioxidants in it. That one's called Life Shots. That's another one that I recommend for this now because Guillain Barre is an autoimmune issue. I also recommend that you really get rid of things that are going to contribute to the immune system being hypersensitive in the first place. So I would consider doing something like an autoimmune diet in which you eliminate specifically, not for life, but for a good four to eight weeks initially, wheat, dairy, eggs, and soy. Now, my favorite kind of done for you, autoimmune diet like that is called the Paleo autoimmune diet. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. That'd be a really good one to check out. But the autoimmune Paleo diet, going back and listening to podcast number 235 and including, like the fish oil, the curcumin, many magnesium, zinc, glutathione and antioxidants would be what I'd go after when it comes to kind of like a natural approach to helping to heal from this. Now, I always have to put in my medical disclaimer that I'm not a doctor. I don't want this to be misconstrued as medical advice. We're not trying to manage diseases or medical conditions on this show. But that's what I would do if I were in your shoes. And for those of you listening in who are thinking about flu vaccines or flu shots, Brock, I would avoid those. And we don't have time to get into the nitty gritty on that. But I would start by going and reading the book called or it's not a book, it's a dvd. It's called Flu and Flu what's Coming through that Needle. So flu and flu Vaccines. What's Coming Coming through that Needle. You know what? I'll just put a link to that one in the show notes if you want to go check it out. But it's a little bit disturbing when it comes to the problematic ingredients like animal cells and detergents and formaldehyde and gelatin and mercury and all the other stuff that is in a flu vaccine. Hi, Ben Kelly here. I'm listening to your podcast about the top five reasons athletes get fat. And I noticed that you wanted to encourage people to have more fermented foods in a variety of formations. I make my own kombucha, so it's essentially the same brew every day. Is that a problem? Should I add different fermented foods to my diet? Thanks, Ben.

Yeah, this is a really interesting question because I know, like, personally I tend to eat the same yogurt constantly, and we make the yogurt from the previous batch of yogurt. So in essence, I'm doing exactly the same thing as Kelly.

Yeah. And I mean, you can go and look at the range of bacteria in your gut. I mean, you can go and get like a comprehensive gastrointestinal profile from a company like Direct Labs, and it'll show you all of the different bacteria in your colon and your small intestine, what kind of range of flora that you have, what you might be deficient in, what you might not have enough of, what you might have excess of. Really interesting test. I'm going to be doing a blog post here pretty soon because I do that test once a year, and I just got my results back. Literally the this morning, I noticed that there was a PDF in my email with my results, and there was some really interesting stuff in there. I haven't had a chance to dig into it too thoroughly. But, for example, I'm deficient in a couple forms of flora that I can actually repopulate with. For example, Saccharomyces boulardii is one form of probiotic that it looks like I need to do a little bit more of. And that's just something that I know just based on a year test. But you can also kind of wrap your head around it this way. You've got three different kinds of bacteria that play different roles in your body. You've got your beneficial flora or your essential flora, and those are the good guys. We always hear about the friendly bacteria that you get from probiotics and fermented foods like bifidobacteria and lactobacteria and even some strands of egg. E. Coli can be friendly and healthy in your digestive tract. You've also got the bad guys, what are called the opportunistic flora. And there's about 500 different species of microbes in your gut that fall into that category. But these opportunistic flora, they're controlled by the beneficial flora. So they can overgrow. They can basically cause bacterial overgrowth issues, small intestine bacterial overgrowth, yeast and fungus infections, things of that nature, if you don't have them controlled properly by a wide variety of beneficial flora, because some opportunistic flora are controlled by some beneficial flora and some aren't, then you also have your third type of flora. And these are kind of like the drifters. They're microbes from the outside environment, some stuff you take in through food or drink, and some of them can take hold and damage your gut and cause disease. And again, it's the beneficial bacteria, the good guys in your gut, that keep a lot of those transitional flora from creating issues. And technically, it's just a checks and balances game and all. Of these different forms of bacteria are working together. So you've got your beneficial bacteria that's controlling the opportunistic bacteria from getting out of control and protecting you. So that like the opportunistic bacteria, the transitional bacteria, they can't take hold inside your gut. But at the same time, a little bit of this opportunistic bacteria and transitional bacteria exposure here and there helps to strengthen your immune system and has kind of like this hormetic response. Just like parasite exposure in some cases can actually be a good thing. So, you know, it's one of those things where, where as long as you're getting enough good bacteria from a wide variety of sources, you're going to be able to control a lot of these other bacterial issues. So the thing with probiotics and kind of how to use them the right way is that you need to introduce a wide variety. And Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride has a really good book called Gut and Psychology Syndrome, more widely known as the GAPS Diet. And what she says in that book is that a good probiotic should have as many different species of beneficial bacteria as possible because the human gut contains hundreds of different species of bacteria. So you want to try and get as close to that as you can in your diet. And she recommends you make sure that there are strains from different groups of probiotic bacteria rather than just one group. So for example, with just yogurt, you're getting a lot of times a few billion units of Lactobacillus acidophilus. And if that's all you're doing, you may not only benefit from doing a multi strain probiotic like the one that I take when I'm traveling and I'm not eating a wide variety of fermented foods is caprobiotics and that's got 10 billion plus strains of a bunch of different type of probiotics. But I also eat yogurt and yogurt cheese when I I'm at home and I eat sauerkraut and kombucha and kimchi and kefir and a lot of these different types of foods that help to introduce a wide variety of probiotics into your immune system. Even cheese and wine and chocolate, those are all byproducts of fermentation and you're getting a lot of different strains of probiotics when you're using those. Now I'm going to give you access to a few different websites here that are going to give you kind of done for you probiotics. If you don't want to make your own at home. Or if you're having trouble finding the natural stuff at the grocery store, there's one called immunutrition.com and@imunutrition.com they'll actually send you these mason jars full of fermented vegetables and you can order those without necessarily having to make them yourself. There's an another company called Rejuvenative Foods and they not only have vegetables that are raw and cultured, but they also have laconiments. They've got like probiotic ketchups and salsas and dressings and all sorts of stuff that again, kind of gives you a good selection of a wide variety of fermented products. There's another website if you wanted to kind of make your own homemade fermented products, but get really detailed instructions on like how to make your own kefir and how, how to make your own kombucha. That's@culturesforhealth.com and again, I'll put a link to all this stuff over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com268 but those are a few of the sources that you could use. Culturesforhealth.com, nutrition.com and rejuvenative.com that kind of will give you some good starting points to introduce a wide variety of probiotics into your body. And then just at the grocery store you can get kefir, which is a yogurt type drink. Get the sugar free stuff if you can. You can find a ton of different brands and types of kombucha and it can be helpful if you swim in the grocery store to just play around with different brands and try different ones. Kavita, that's like, it's kind of a newer drink. I'm a big fan of Kavita and that's like a bottled fermented drink and it's like this 16 ounce glass bottle and that one's really good. Sometimes you might find you can get a little bit of stomach upset if you launch into all this stuff at once. So you can just do, get the kombucha tea or the kavita drink and just drink a little bit of it and kind of spread it out over the day and don't go ape nuts filling your face with sauerkraut and kimchi and kefir and kavita and yogurt all in one day. But begin to introduce just a little bit of this stuff throughout the week. And it's really, really important for your immune system and the control of some of this opportunistic bacteria to do that and to not just say use yogurt. And you can even, you know, if you're using yogurt, switch brands every couple of months. So you're always introducing these new compounds into your diet. But yeah, it really is super important. So in addition to getting Brock off his flu vaccine, we need to have him switch yogurt brands. Right? Right. Brock. It's homemade at least I hope you're taking notes.

I've got some extra, extra bacteria just dropping into it as, as we go.

Hi Ben, this is UWU from Portugal. I have a question regarding foam rollers. I know that you like the rumble roller, but getting here in, in Portugal it's really expensive. So I saw, I saw a few sites saying that using a simple PVC tube could do the same trick. Do you know of any problems in just using that PVC tube instead of the more fancy commercial foam rollers? Lebreche.

Thanks. Now this is a fun question. I have used some crazy things. I've even used a beer bottle as a foam roller. In hotel rooms there are so many.

Things that you can use to get rid of fascial adhesions and muscle tissue issues that no, you don't need a fancy foam roller. Like I'm a fan of the Rumble roller just because it's, it's like a really good kind of done for you hard foam roller with the ridges coming off it. And they make these little balls now called the, the beastie balls which sounds kind of nasty and like something that you might buy at a S M shop, but they're actually for your, for.

Your muscles actually just makes me want to wrap.

That's right. But, but, or, or wrap. Yes, you go there too. But you could make your own stuff for sure. Like I'll put a link to a homemade foam roller recipe in the show notes but all you need is a PVC pipe. Like a big PVC pipe. Like a 4 to 6 inch diameter PVC pipe.

Yeah. Like not a skinny one, but when you use for the main stack in your house.

Exactly. Like a two to foot four long PVC pipe pipe. You need some duct tape. You need what's called pipe insulation foam. A few bucks at your hardware store and that's it. And you're basically, you know, in a nutshell the article that I linked to will dig into this a little bit more. But you're just wrapping the foam around the PVC pipe using duct tape as an adhesive and bam, you're done. So that's one way to do it. It doesn't have little ridges sticking up out of it, but it's super duper hard. Harder than most of those cheapo foam rollers you're going to get from the sporting goods store and really easy to put together. I mean, if you're do that and then just like grab a couple tennis balls or lacrosse balls, duct tape them together and you're good to go. So homemade strength.blogspot.com has a really good article on making your own kind of foam roller, doing your own trigger point therapy balls, that type of thing. So that's one thing that I do. Another thing is that there are all sorts of hard things around your house that you can use. In Kelly Starrett's book, Becoming a Supplement, A leopard is really good for this. But I mean, it shows you how you can use like a stick, like a, you know, a broomstick or, you know, any, like a barbell, anything like that to like mobilize your shoulder. By kind of pinning your shoulder between the broomstick and the wall. You can sit with your butt on, like the handle of a kettlebell or the edge of a dumbbell and kind of do some butt work. That way you can again use lacrosse balls, tennis balls, you can use door frames to mobilize your shoulders. Yeah. Like literally leaning into like the side of a door frame and just using it to dig into your shoulder. By the way, that rumble roller, those beastie balls that they make, they, they have this wall unit and I've got it. You, you can just attach it to the wall and that, and it's got the two little beastie balls on it. And you can literally just roll up and down that thing and find hot spots in your back. But you could do the same thing, I mean, if you wanted to, with like a freaking like tree, you know, or a flagpole, if you really wanted to, you know, be like Blue the bear in Jungle Book where he was rubbing his back against the tree. So I mean, there's, there's his butt. Yeah. So his glutes. But yeah, I mean, there's, there's all sorts of things you can use from kettlebells to dumbbells to barbells to broomsticks to trees. So I mean, like, yeah, what you're going after is actually putting pressure, you know, in really, really tight spots. Anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes of pressure against a real tight spot until you feel that knot release or you're actually working an area of fascia over and over again. You know, 10 to 20 passes is pretty typical as far as, like, how many times you pass the hard object over that joint or over that. Not joint, but over that area of tight fascial tissue. And that's all it takes. So I personally, twice a week, do a full body foam rolling session using the rumble roller. And then I keep the golf ball underneath my desk and I'll roll the golf ball. Usually that's a couple times a week that I'll do all along my foot for about five minutes per foot. I'll do the golf ball. And then I've also got lacrosse, lacrosse ball that I use specifically in my glutes and my hips. Typically on a Saturday or a Sunday, I just do about two minutes per hip. Just grab my lacrosse ball off my desk, and that's about it. So I just kind of have a system where I go out of my way to do the soft tissue work. I used to get a massage once a week. I rarely, if ever, get a massage now because I can skip the drive time to the massage therapist. I can sit there with my MP3 player at home, throw in a podcast, do my foam rolling, and call it good. And my. My injury rate is just as low doing that as it was when I was, you know, paying money and going to a massage therapist. So there you go.

I think it's important to mention, too, that even if you spend like 40 or 60 or 80 bucks on one of these foam rollers, they have a lifespan as well. So not only are you making the initial investment, but, like, if you've had it for two or three years, you'll notice it just doesn't have the rigidity left in it. So you're going to have to go pick up another one anyway. So if you can figure out ways to do it not costing you 40, 60, 80 bucks, then that's even better for all of us. You don't have to live in Brazil.

PVC pipe, baby.

Awesome. Well, let's. Should we jump into reading today's itunes review?

Let's give some gear away. So we've got this, this Ben Greenfield fitness gear package. You could check it out@BenGreenfieldFitness.com gear but you get a sweet tech shirt that's a really cool exercise shirt, not a cheapo cotton tent. You get a Ben Gridgefield fitness beanie, which is just badass. The beanies are really cool and they.

Fit under your bike helmet, too. So this time of year, if you're riding your bike around, it's perfect.

Yep. And then a bpa Free water. Water Bottle. So there you go. And who, who's the winner this week? Brock.

All right, it's a guy. I'm assuming it's a guy named wasper007. I don't know if that's a play on Vesper.

Could be, perhaps.

Anyway, the title is Lack of Talent. Not sure about that. It's five stars though, so that's a good sign. Okay, so wasper007 says. No, I'm not referring to Ben Greenfield. So lack of talent, but that of this generation's music. So I have turned to the podcast entertainment for my car rides. I'm in the middle or I'm a middle school health and physical education teacher as well as a part time personal trainer. And although my clientele is far from triathletes, the information you give is awesome. Keep up the good work.

So he managed to basically diss this generation's music and give us props, all in one. One review.

Nice.

That's fantastic.

Really solidifying yourself as an old guy.

That's right. If he's referring to music these days, it's terrible.

Kids don't know music.

But these podcasts, I love these podcasts.

And guys, it's more my speed. They talk slowly.

All right, Wasper, if you want to get a sweet kit from us, just email ben griefhole fitness.com, let us know your address that we read your podcast review on the show, and we'll send you out a sweet package.

Don't worry, we won't email it to you.

We'll send it via the post office. No fancy dancy email. And you can, if you're listening, and leave a review over on itunes. And I think, that being said, that myself and my geriatric electric sidekick.

Hey, get off my lawn.

We'll sign out until next week.

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

It.