What's The Healthiest Way To Tan, Biohacking Tricks For Getting Ripped, The Best Exercise To Get Fat Adapted And Much More!

In this episode, what's the healthiest way to tan? How to biohack? Getting ripped? The best exercise to get fat adapted. Can you get fitter without exercising? Does zone one training affect recovery? Can electrical stimulation help bones heal faster? And Brock's finally back. 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 BenGreenfield Fitness dot com. So I looked at my calendar just now, and it said to call Brock, but I don't really remember who Brock is or why we're talking.

I was hoping you'd remember.

How was Europe?

Dude, it was amazing. And I. Well, the only problem with Europe is, and here's my biggest complaint, there's no history.

That is true.

Like, totally boring. Nothing old.

Yeah.

Everything new happened there. Yeah, it's like, it's so boring.

Yeah. There's a lot of places in the world like that, like Kyoto, Japan, and Stonehenge. And, you know, it's like, I spent.

A few days in Berlin and nothing has ever happened in Berlin. Nothing.

Oh, that's hilarious. Well, it's good to have you back. I have to admit that we had some pretty cool podcast episodes with Rhonda, Patrick, and. Gosh, I don't remember. There were a couple other interesting people.

Yeah, I got to catch up and listen to all those things.

Yeah, they're pretty good. Obviously not so good because I can't even remember their names before we head on.

I'm sure we won't tell them. Nope, they're not listening.

They're back there on itunes somewhere. So, anyway.

So what have you been up to? Well, other than forgetting people's names, I've.

I've had an interesting week. I was over in Quebec City.

I was up in the label Bravance.

Yeah. Where everybody spoke French. And I was. I was pretty surprised because I pretty much all I know is mercy and Bonjour. So I raced a couple of spartan races up there. It was an incredibly steep ski resort, just up and down and up and down. So I raced what's called a super Spartan, which is about nine miles of obstacle racing on Saturday, and then visited the spa at my hotel and did as much hot cold therapy as I.

Could, maximize the recovery time.

Yeah. Thought about getting a massage, but didn't feel like paying 200 bucks. So basically that was 200 bucks Canadian though.

That's like 50 bucks American.

Yeah, something like that. Or do they call them loonies up there or is it just.

Yeah, loonies. And then we have also have toonies.

Yeah, loonies and tunis. Anyways, I didn't, I didn't want to pay loonies and toonies for a rub down. So I basically gave myself a little, little self massage in my hotel room and then woke up the next day, did a spartan sprint the next day in the same territory. And that hurt quite a bit. I took took about 10 minutes for the legs to finally open up and remember how to run again after the previous day's activities. And then I'm actually trying to do what's called a trifecta in a week. So I'm going to go down to Salt Lake City and race a spartan beast here on Saturday. And so within seven days I'll have done all three distances of spartan racing. And actually for any listeners who are out there trying to do like back to back hard workouts or like back to back races, I know we've got some listeners who will crazy enough to do something like an Ironman over a couple weekends or marathon. Just a few notes and I'm expounding on this in my next inner circle workshop. But when I'm going from two races on one weekend to a big race the next weekend, rather than actually doing workouts on each of the days this week, instead I do a lot of the things that naturally increase production of growth hormone and decrease of inflammation, but that don't involve much physical activity. So I do what's called, I think we're going to talk about this later on in the episode Zone one. Very, very easy spinning on my bike over to the gym and basically I sit in the sauna for about 20 to 30 minutes and get some of the training benefits that a sauna gives you, the cardiovascular benefits that a sauna gives you without actually training. And then I go and do cold. And for me the river here is cold enough to where I can just sit in the river, but you could also do a cold shower. So I do some hot therapy, some cold therapy, very easy aerobic training, I do some foam rolling. And then because I drive around in my car more than I do ride my bicycle around during a recovery week, I keep a power lung in my car and do a lot of breath training. So inspiratory and expiratory muscle breath training and then foam rolling every day. So basically every single day this week, I am making my body better and helping it to recover faster, but I'm not actually exercising. And so for me, that accomplishes two objectives. Number one, I get very jittery and a little bit grumpy when I'm not able to actually feel like I'm moving around and kind of helping. Helping my body to get better. And then the other thing that it helps with, of course, is, is I bounce back a lot faster, because I got to tell you, I was pretty sore on. On Monday when I rolled back into the airport here in Spokane.

So. Yeah, I don't even know. How long do those types of races take you?

You know, it was about an hour and a half on Saturday and about. I take that back. It was about an hour and 45 minutes on Saturday and about 50 minutes on Sunday. And that doesn't sound that long, but you are in battle the whole time, because I try and hang in the front of the pack, and I came in top 10 in both races out of. You know, I think There were about 3,000 people the first day and about 7,000 the next day. And I, you know, to. To kind of race towards the pointing end of the pack like that. You're suffering the whole time. So I would say it is harder than triathlon in that respect, in that, you know, if I were to compare, like, a Spartan sprint to a sprint triathlon, the. The Spartan definitely takes the cake.

Interesting, because I actually. The reason I ask and the reason I'm really interested in this is I just signed up for a Tough mudder. Oh. I got all excited because you've been doing all these races, and I was like, fine, okay, there's one in Toronto, so what the heck? I signed up yesterday night.

Well, those.

Now I'm like, okay, now what do I do?

Those are. Those are easy to get ready for. You just basically find some kind of an apartment or a house that has poor wiring, and you subject yourself to certain random episodes of shock therapy and then run around the room in between, and you'll be good to go. Nice. News flashes.

We must have a huge pile of news flashes after all these weeks of not doing a podcast.

Yeah, you know, I've been tweeting out quite a bit over@twitter.com BenGreenfield and, you know, every single day, like, my rule is every day, I have to at least say one interesting study that I've found, and I picked out a few that I thought were kind of interesting for today's podcast. Speaking of shocking yourself to death to get Ready for your tough mudder? You know our friend Alex Hutchinson? Actually, I shouldn't say he's our friend because he's not our friend.

Well, I met him once. Yeah, that's not quite friend acquaintance.

He doesn't really, like, come to our birthday parties or anything. But we both read his blog over at Sweat Science, and he wrote a really interesting article about whether or not it's safe for people who are over the age of 40 to exercise hard. Because there's like this unwritten rule, especially among cardiologists, that the risks of interval training when you're over 40 outweigh the benefits. And that somehow once you push yourself to the point where you're exercising at a high intensity, that the risks outweigh the benefits compared to lower intensity exercise, and that your risk of having a heart attack is gonna go up the older that you get.

Please tell me that's a lie. Please tell me that's a lie. Cause I'm almost 43 and I've been doing intervals like crazy.

Yeah. And Alex, actually, he pointed out that really there's only ever been one study that was in the journal Circulation that really, truly looked into this in like a pretty large population, a pretty large n. And that was about 4800, 4900 cardiac patients. And they had an average age of 57.8, not just 50. The 0.8 is pretty important.

That's an important point.

8. And what they found was that during 129,000 hours of moderate intensity exercise that these people had one, there was one fatal cardiac arrest among the entire population. And during and after 4,46,000 hours of high intensity interval exercise, there was two non fatal cardiac arrests. And what Alex points out is that, first of all, those numbers are so small that you really can't make any comparison or come out and say that traditional moderate exercise versus high intensity interval training is safer. And the other thing that has been found, and it was cited in this paper, was a whole pile of research on the cardiovascular benefits of high intensity, the exercise, and the fact that there's a lot of epidemiological studies that have consistently found a greater reduction in the risk of cardiovascular disease with high intensity exercise in comparison with moderate physical activity. So basically, if you're over 40, first of all, don't be scared about exercising at an intense rate as long as you're not doing, like, I don't know, whatever, like a CrossFit wad every day or three Spartan races in a week. And by the way, I don't Necessarily feel that what I'm in the middle of doing is healthy. I'm just trying to put a notch in my belt, basically. I should come right out and say that. But the other thing is that probably the fact is that Even if you're 70 years old and you're healthy and you're not stressed out, you don't have high blood pressure, history of heart disease, that high intensity interval training is still going to be fine for you. I think that the reason that people, let's say, you know, we see for example, older men dying during triathlons. I think the reason that we see that is a cluster of events. We got these type A personalities with high cortisol levels, typically a relatively poor diet, or at least a mineral depleted diet, particularly respect with respect to magnesium. Putting themselves into stressful situations in water where if you do pass out your, you're gonna die. And I think when you put that entire cluster of events together, that's where you see things like say, deaths in something like triathlon in older males particularly. But I think that there are a lot of factors there that could be mitigated. So ultimately, guys who are over 40, ladies who are over 40, the benefits of interval training outweigh the risks.

I don't remember if Olga did interval. Well, she must have because she ran short distances.

Yeah. And that was a fantastic interview that we did with the author of the book why does Olga Run? If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and look for that one, it's on exercise, anti aging, longevity. She did a lot of interval training.

And you guys got into comparing her to somebody like Ed Whitlock.

Yeah.

Who's like a 80 some year old marathon runner who does nothing but zone two.

Exactly.

As well. And how she, she actually looked younger than him. Even though she was older, she looked fantastic.

Her mental faculties were better. But unfortunately. It's interesting that you bring that up. I don't know if you know this, but. But she just passed away yesterday, I believe.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean I, I'm sad about that, but you can't really mourn somebody who had such an amazing life.

That's amazing story. Yeah. And if people haven't read that yet, I keep a, I keep a list of some of my favorite books over on my Ben Recommends page. If you go to BenGreenful Fitness, you click on the Ben Recommends section. That's on my list of books that I Recommend among about 20 others that are kind of like my required reading for people who want to optimize their health.

Rest in peace, Olga.

Yeah, yeah, Very impressive lady. So, also, barefoot running, really interesting review that was in the Journal of Sport and Health Science. It was Barefoot running Survey Evidence from the Field was the name of this paper. I'll link to it in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 285. But what this study looked into was a survey of a few hundred runners. And they surveyed them on their, their habits with respect to barefoot running. And when I say barefoot running, minimalist running is included in that. You know, literally barefoot.

Well, not without shoes and socks.

Yeah, that too. Barefoot running, Vibram running, minimalist shoe running, just basically all of the above. What they found was that a big portion of the runners, about 60% of them, tried barefoot running due to the promise of improved efficiency, about 53% to get rid of a past injury, and about 52% just because of the recent media hype around barefoot running. And amazingly, almost 70% of the runners participating in the study experienced no new injuries after barefoot running. And again, almost 70% actually had their injuries go away after they started barefoot running, with the greatest percentage of injuries that declined being injuries to the knee and knee pain in almost 50% of the runners decreased after they shifted to barefoot running. And, and I think that there were two very interesting takeaways from this paper. And again, I'll link to the full paper, but in one section of the paper, this is what the research says or the researchers say there's little evidence to support the current practice of prescribing elevated running shoes with cushioned heels and pronation control systems to prevent injuries. The long industry standard of prescribing running shoes based on arch type may be incorrect. In fact, minimal unsupportive shoes might actually improve rehabilitation outcomes as compared to conventional running shoes. And they go on and make a lot of other interesting observations. But in the very, very end, they say that the majority of respondents in this survey indicated they developed no new injuries after starting a barefoot running regimen. Second, those that did primarily experience foot and ankle injuries, indicating the need to progress slowly, AKA not to go out and get Vibrams and run a marathon and then sue Vibram so that new areas of loading can adapt. And then finally, the survey results indicate that the majority of barefoot runners had previous running injuries that resolved after starting barefoot running programs.

That's awesome.

So, yeah, really interesting. And I've been, you know, I do, you know, like when I was doing Ironman last year, both my Ironman races I ran in scoras which are a minimalist, pretty much like a zero drop running shoe. And now for my obstacle races and my Spartans I'm running and we actually I believe you called in a question Brock to the obstacle. I don't know if our listeners know. I have a new podcast that I'm doing with the top ranked Spartan athlete Hunter McIntyre. It's called Obstacle Dominator podcast over@ obstacledominator.com real short half hour podcast just devoted to obstacle racing. And we talked about shoes and I mentioned that I'm racing in these vivo barefoot. It's called a breatho. It's very similar to their trail Freak shoe. Extremely large lugs on the bottom, zero drop in a puncture resistant sole. And those are working very well for me for Spartan racing. And so I switched those after losing my shoe while racing in Montana because it got sucked off. These fit a little bit better and wrap around my foot quite nicely. So anyways, we'll link to that article in the show notes again@BenGreenfulFitness.com 285 and then finally, there was a study that came out in the Journal of Nutrition about what kind of things that you should drink if you want to rehydrate after exercise. Now, parts of this paper are flawed. For example, in the abstract, they say, for example, in cases of dehydration exceeding a 2% loss of body weight, athletic performance can be significantly compromised. That's actually not true. Dr. Timothy Noakes has shown that first of all, the winners of most races are anywhere from 6 to 10% dehydrated and they win. And that the ultimate measurement of whether or not your performance is going to decline during an event is your core temperature, not dehydration. And so even though that's a flawed statement, the outcome of the study was really interesting. They compared how quickly you could rehydrate and what they compared was an electrolyte beverage with carbohydrates mixed into it. A plain water.

Carbohydrates mixed in.

Yeah, electrolyte carbohydrate mix and then a plain water control and then an electrolyte amino acid. So an electrolyte carbohydrate mix would be like Gatorade. Basically, an electrolyte amino acid mix would be like taking electrolytes, like a scoop of electrolytes and a scoop of amino acid powders and putting them into a bottle and drinking that and then drinking plain water. And what they found was that compared to the electrolyte and carbohydrate Mix and compared to the water, mix that within four hours, the amount of hydration, specifically cellular hydration, and the what's called urinary specific gravity, which is a measure of the concentration of solutes in the urine. The rehydration capabilities of mixing electrolytes with amino acids were significantly higher than any of those other beverages. So ultimately, if you want to rehydrate as quickly as possible after you finished a very tough workout in the heat or a big race or anything else like that, get amino acid acids in your system along with electrolytes in one beverage. And that's going to be the best way for you to rehydrate. Unless you want to use my method, which is basically you act like you're as sick as possible near death's door, you stumble to the iv, you stumble into the nearest ambulance or medical tent, and you flop in there and basically ask for an iv. And that's a really good way to rehydrate. But if you don't happen to have an IV in the comfort of your own home, mix amino acids and electrolytes and you can, you can hack rehydration as quickly as possible. So there you go. Listener Q and A.

Hi, Ben and Brock. It's almost summer and I'm going to be pasty and pale again. I stopped lying in the sun to Tan about 10 years ago because of all the sunspots I was getting on my chest, arms, and legs. I use sunscreen on my runs or when I'm out gardening, but I really want to be tan again. Have you ever researched the safest way to chemically tan? Either spray on at a tan shot, which I've never done over the counter products. You might have used them being a bodybuilder in the past, so I thought you might know. Thanks for answering my past questions. I got your book and I love it and I really enjoy the show.

Thanks.

What are you chewing?

Sorry. I walked out of the room to get some chocolate. I was hungry, actually, while Celia was.

Asking her very important question, Ben was chocolate.

Well, here's the deal. I literally was. Before we got on the podcast, I was doing that, that cold soak in the river. So all of a sudden, like a half hour in, this happens to me. After I do that cold stuff. I got hungry, so I grabbed chocolate and a glass of wine because as we all know, cold thermogenesis increases glucose clearance, so your body sucks up carbohydrates in the muscle like they're going out of style. So the, the one Time of day, I can have my chocolate and my wine, which is. Oh, that's a good mix. Is when I'm podcasting at 5:30pm After a soak in the river. So there you go. But this was a good question, and I did listen to it, so I. Yeah. Yes. So I'm. We don't have to repeat it.

Focus, focus. Okay.

So, first of all, as far as tanning in the sun is concerned and sunspots are concerned, I don't really have a big issue with tanning in the sun because you get your mix of UVA and UVB radiation. And we're meant to get a balance of UVA and UVB together. And we've talked about this on the podcast before. But basically, UVA radiation is the stuff that penetrates your skin pretty deeply, and it passes through things like clouds and window panes and water and ozone. And it's the thing when in isolation that has been implicated in, for example, melanoma and DNA damage. And it also doesn't create any vitamin D. So it's, you know, when you aren't getting that in conjunction with uvb, it's pretty useless. And UVA doesn't just provide no vitamin D, but it actually breaks down vitamin D. It binds to the vitamin D receptor. So if. If you're just getting uva, which. Which you can get from some of these. These tanning beds, for example, or from, say, like, here's an interesting way that it can happen. Just like sitting next to a window and getting a ton of sun exposure, a lot of times, window panes will allow UVA to come through without uvb. And when you're flying on an airplane. I learned this because I was talking to Jack Cruz yesterday. There's a few things you don't want to do when you're flying on an airplane. One is sit next to a window with the. With the little window curtain open because you're getting massive doses of uva. He actually told me a bunch. We were doing a podcast for something I'm releasing later on and learned a bunch of interesting things. Like you don't want to sit in the emergency exit row because that's where the fuselage goes through, and that's where you get exposed to the highest amount of free radicals if you're sitting in the emergency exit row.

Bummer.

I love that stuff. Yeah, exactly. So he had a lot of interesting observations. And also another observation he had was that the X ray machines that you pass through at the airport, basically the. The dose that you get of X Ray is next to nothing compared to what you're getting from just like EMF and WI fi routers and stuff like that. So really we, yeah, we learn a lot of, I mean total sedgeway. But anyways we, we are meant to get a mix of UVA and uvb. So uvb, the problem with that is it can burn. It doesn't penetrate deep enough into your epidermis to trigger melanoma, but it can cause some of these sunspots. And the thing is u counteracts UVA damage and UVA keeps vitamin D synthesis from getting out of hand. So essentially UVA and UVB work together. So the best thing that you can do if you wanted to tan was get out into the sun at some time around the time when the midday sun is directly overhead, like close to noon where you get a good mix of UVA and uvb. Later on in the afternoon there's going to be more UVA production. You're more likely to burn earlier in the day, get a little bit more UVB exposure, but you know, you're not getting some of that balance of the vitamin D synthesis. So basically if you're going to get out in the sun, getting out around noon is a good time to do it. Now as far as healthy ways to tan, if we were going to just not have a chance to get outside, period, or we didn't want to go outside because we were concerned about sunspots, things along those lines. The first thing is that there are, there's some talk that goes around about these tanning beds that produce a wavelength of light that's around 633 nanometers. And there's a guy named Dr. Mercola that actually sells these tanning beds that he claims, even though the research may exist, but I haven't seen any, but he claims that they are these systems that they produce only UVB rays and the rays are mixed with red light in this 633 nanometer range. And the idea here is that when you put both of those together that you're not getting a deep enough exposure to UVA light to where you're getting a production of melanoma, but you're getting enough UVB light to get a little bit of a tan. Now I haven't seen any long term research on whether or not there's any risks of skin cancer or anything like that that would ex with a normal tanning bed from these type of tanning beds. But I think the only place to get them is on Dr. Mercola's website and there's one called a Sun Splash. There's another one called. They've got dumb names. Sunsplash and all. All tanning units have dumb names. The other one's called the, the D light, as in the vitamin D light.

That's a great name.

So yeah, you know there is something though to that whole 633 nanometer range because that's very close to what you're going to get from red light exposure and red light exposure. Red light like the light that you would get from just like. And I'll put a link in the show notes because I actually have a ten dollar light bulb that I shine on my body for about 20 to 30 minutes before bed. And that's because it's been shown to improve growth hormone. It's been shown to improve sleep quality by about 15 to 20 minutes. Meaning you sleep longer in the morning when you get exposed to that red light at night. But also when your skin gets exposed to light in that particular light range, it stimulates skin cells and that leads to production of collagen and the elastin. So basically as you age, collagen and elastin breaks down and that's when you start to see wrinkles and folds in the skin. But you can reverse some of that process as well as improve oxygenation and the formation of a lot of these small blood vessels towards the surface of the skin when you get exposed to red light. But you don't have to go out and buy like a multi thousand dollar 633 nanometer tanning bed to get that particular benefit for your skin. Red light is not going to tan you, but it can really give you like this skin firming kind of anti aging type of appearance on the outside of your skin. And it's literally as simple as there's a few different ways that you could rig up a red light bulb next to your bed stand like I have. But what I do is I just have this little tripod that you'd normally put like a camera on and I just have my red light plugged into that and just flip it on in the bedroom and shine it. And it also actually helps you wake up in the morning as well. So now when I wake up in the morning and I'm like writing in my journal and kind of, you know, doing my morning habits, I write my journal, I meditate, I do a little deep breathing, you know, track my, my heart rate and all that jazz, I have that red light turned on. So very, very simple. Just I flip it on before I go to bed. It's got like 5,000 hours worth of red light. So the one that I use is. It's called a triangle bulb and it's a 250 watt red heat lamp and it's literally $9 off of Amazon.

So I've got one by my bed, but it's actually one of the ones that you put on like the back of a goalie's net in hockey.

Huh.

And then when like somebody scores in the bedroom, it just like flashes like.

Yeah, when somebody. And does it make the noise like that? Nice. I like it. It's a great idea.

Then everybody knows when I score a.

Shot, countdown clock or anything like that on it too. So anyways, like, I would be a little bit more prone to do something like that than I would be to buy one of these tanning beds from, like, the Dr. Mercola website, just because I always hesitate when I don't see much research behind something, you know, and there are some things out there that, that, you know, people have raised eyebrows on, on me about. Like, for example, I've talked about structured water before. Well, there is a ton of research at University of Washington by Dr. Gerald Pollack, who I've had on the podcast on, for example, structured water. So I'm okay with recommending that in certain situations. I haven't seen the same kind of research on these, on these specific tanning beds that Dr. Mercola recommends. So I'm kind of. I mean, you could try it, but I can't guarantee that that amount of UVB exposure that those tanning beds give you without it being balanced by uva, as we would experience in nature, is necessarily beneficial. So I'm a little bit hesitant on that one. But the other cool thing is that there was this really interesting study that they did on the ability to tan the skin with supplemental tanning formula. And this was a study that they did in a laboratory in Paris. And they found significant tanning effects without exposure to any type of UV radiation from the intake of specific nutrients. And in this case, they used a mix of beta carotene lycopene, like you would find in a tomato, vitamin E and vitamin C, and you can actually get the exact supplement. I found exactly what they used in that study in Paris. You can get it off Amazon. And it's like this totally natural mix of nutrients that you ingest, and it's designed to naturally darken your skin without you even being exposed to light at all. It's kind of. I don't even know how to pronounce it, it's like enobiol, It's O, E, N, O, B, I, O, L. Yeah, it's called a tan enhancer lotion. And it doesn't have, and I'll talk in a second about some of the issues with the spray on tans, but it doesn't have any of the issues of those. And it's just a lotion that you put on your body. And they actually did some pretty interesting research studies on it. And it turns out that that works pretty well. You could try if you didn't want to use a supplement, you could achieve some of that same type of thing from food. So for example, omega 3 fatty acid intake, and this was actually in mice, was shown to increase resistance to sunburns and melanoma formation. So you could just basically include a lot of fish oil and then these things that can help to tan the skin if you wanted to get them naturally from food. For example, vitamin E, you can get that from egg yolks, olive oil, avocado, sunflower seeds, raw nuts. You can find vitamin C pretty readily available in like, you know, lemons, lemon juice, vegetables, fruits. You can find vitamin B in many cases in, you know, meat, dairy, eggs, that type of thing. You can get a lot of the, the skin protecting carotenoids that are in these lotions with astaxanthin, which you'll find in like marine algae. So you could also just eat a diet pretty high in wild caught fish and get it that way. And then a lot of the flavonoids and the polyphenols you're gonna find in like grape seeds and red wine and herbs and spices and coffee and cacao and you know, the wine that I'm drinking right now, so I'm, I'm actually tanning as we speak by drinking wine. And then, you know, a few of the other things that you want to avoid when it comes to skin and tanning would just be alcohol consumption and high amount of omega 6 fatty acid from vegetable oils. Those are two of the fastest ways to age your skin very quickly. And I say alcohol consumption, I mean to the extent where you're producing inflammation. So basically like getting drunk and then the other thing that kind of flies under the radar is gelatin. Gelatin is super duper helpful for preventing sun induced damage. And that's just as simple as working in some bone broth or getting like, you know, organic gelatin or collagen off of Amazon like the Great Lakes or the Bernard Jensen gelatin. So and you know I used to, to fake, whatever you call it, not fake bait, because fake bake is tanning. But I used to, to use that, that rub on bronzer, the sunless tanner. I was actually, I, I modeled for a spray on tan business when I was in college because I was a bodybuilder. So I do the spray on tan and then they actually would have me walk around the gym and show people my tan. And I realized because I was a spin instructor too that when you do a spin class, the tan actually sweats off so you get like these tiger stripes. So anyways, though, spray on tans are not a good idea. One of the main ingredients in them is something called dihydroxyacetone and that's this color additive that darkens your skin by reacting with amino acids on your skin surface layer. And it's abbreviated dha. And you don't want to confuse that with the docosahexaenoic acid, which is that the healthy DHA that you find in omega 3 fats. Yeah, this, this, this DHA is not good because it actually has a lot of contaminants in it, specifically lead, arsenic and mercury. So when, when you have these DHA containing products that are sprayed on you in a booth, even if a lot of that isn't getting absorbed through your skin particles, you're getting it through your eyes and your nose and your mouth. So you want to be super careful with the spray on or the rub on tans. Especially if you look at the label and it has this dihydroxyacetone, stay far away from that form of sunless tanning. So I would be pretty careful with that. I don't know of any bronzers that are natural that don't contain dha. But if I wanted to get my skin as good as possible, I would keep eating the type of diet that I eat. I would, if I were really serious about making my skin a little bit darker, I would consider you know, using like this, this onabiol rub on like tanning solution that naturally darkens the skin without actually using a bronzer. And then I would just get sun exposure sometime between 11am and 2pm so you get that mix of UVA and UVB and those would be your, your biggest wins. And then the, the infrared light before bed at night. If you just get like a light for 10 bucks off Amazon.

Hey Ben, if you were preparing for a one to two day photo shoot where you wanted to look as lean and as best as possible, how would you go about preparing for that? Would you do kind of a carb depletion and then repletion in the week leading up to it, or would you take a different manner and what would the training look like along with that? And also on the days after the shooting, what would you do to make sure that your body stays looking as good as possible for as long as possible? If you have any insight on that, I'd really appreciate hearing it. Thanks a lot. And I love the show that you and Brock do together.

So is it just me or do we have a lot of vain listeners?

Everybody just wants to look good. That's okay.

They want to get ripped. You know, we actually sip of wine here. We talked about this a few weeks ago. I think it was maybe podcast. It was like 282, 283 where I talked about how back in the day when I was a bodybuilder, I used to do these complex like sodium loading, sodium depleting, diuretic protocols to hack the process of getting ripped. And it worked. But it's pretty tough on the kidneys, pretty tough on the body. That's why I don't consider bodybuilding to necessarily be a healthy sport. But that's, that's the same protocol that a lot of models and fitness enthusiasts will use to do everything from looking good for a photo shoot to looking good for a day at the beach, to any time that you know that you're going to have to be naked or be in a swimsuit or something like that, trying to basically get your skin to tighten and eliminate bloating. Now, first of all, I should say that I think a lot of people look softer than they should because they're stressed. And cortisol causes a shift in aldosterone and antidiuretic hormone that causes you to retain water and to have that bloated, soft look. And I think that I will give my biohack here for getting ripped at the risk of your kidneys taking a hit. But before I do that, let me mention that getting cortisol down makes a huge difference in most people. And it sounds dumb, but just like de stressing and getting rid of bloating that way is a huge, huge win for getting rid of that kind of skinny, fat look. But let's say you want to do the whole carb depletion, carb repletion, sodium loading protocol to get ready to be in a swimsuit at the beach or look as cut and as ripped as possible. Because I got this down to a science when I was a bodybuilder. And there's a way that you can do it. And I'll make this pretty easy to understand. I'm not gonna get super duper deep into the hormones. I'm just gonna tell you exactly how to do it. And it's a little bit of a science. If you miss the window, you end up looking bloated when you don't want to look bloated. So you want to make sure that you maybe try this at least once, apart from a photo shoot or very important day at the beach, before you pull it out for real on a pro level. So the first thing is two weeks out. You want to count back about two weeks from the day that you want to look ripped, okay. From your photo shoot, you know, stepping out on stage for fitness competition, whatever. You want to count back two weeks from that. And you want to start loading up on sodium. Now, I'm not a big fan of doing this via the way that a lot of bodybuilders do it, which is just a lot of table salt and a lot of sodium rich foods, because I don't like a lot of the health implications of unopposed sodium. I'm a bigger fan of using sea salt and minerals, basically increasing sea salt and trace mineral intake. So you're getting sodium along with a lot of your other trace minerals, but essentially you start loading up on sodium. So we're talking about anywhere in the range of about 2 to 6 teaspoons of sodium on a daily basis or salt on a daily basis. And the higher levels would be if you're doing a lot of, say, like, you know, sauna sweating, still working out pretty hard, that type of thing. But you're going to want to increase your sodium intake about three to five times higher than it would normally be. When you first do this, your body is going to hold more water, but after you've maintained those high sodium levels for a few days, your body will eventually adapt. Okay? So you're going to. You're going to basically be holding the same amount of water as you did when your sodium intake was normal or when it was slightly low. So you start off by loading up on sodium, and you want to do that about two weeks out from the time that you want to look good. At the same time that you do that, you want to gradually drop the carbs. Okay? So the reason that you would want to drop the carbs is so you upregulate levels of glycogen synthase, which is the enzyme responsible for causing storage of glycogen. And so when you load on carbs later on, you're theoretically going to be able to load on a higher number of carbs. Okay, so you increase your sodium two weeks out and then you gradually begin to drop your carbs so that by the time you're one week out from when you want to look really, really good, you're eating a pretty low carb diet. Okay, so like 10 to 20% carbohydrate. So pretty low. You've got depleted muscle glycogen levels and you're at the same time eating a lot of sodium. Now the next thing that you want to do is, especially if you're still working out, but also to help increase water levels that are basically what's called your intramuscular water levels, you can add creatine into the mix. And I'm a big fan of creatine loading during this, during this last week. And so what you do is you've been on a high sodium diet and a low carb diet. Now you're one week out, you start loading up on creatine. I would not recommend a creatine monohydrate powder just because that can increase water levels outside the muscle, directly under the skin and cause a soft look. You want creatine that doesn't cause that bloating look. There's a, there's a company called Millennium Sport, they make what's called an enteric coated creatine that doesn't cause, it's the same one that I take just for racing and for very hard workouts. That one doesn't cause that type of bloated look. But stacking with creatine while you're doing this sodium loading carbohydrate depletion protocol can be really effective, especially if you're having difficulty with, with dropping carbs super duper low and still being able to maintain energy levels. So I like about 10 grams of creatine on a daily basis for this one. Millennium Sport is over@milliumsport.net and any of our listeners get a 50% discount on that stuff. The code@millengesport.net and I'll put it in the show notes, it's MST as in Millennium Sports Technologies, MSTBG09. So that'll get you 50% off their creatine. You could also find it like on Amazon, bodybuilding.com, places like that. So anyways, that's step three. The next thing that you do is a week before you actually drop the sodium. So you've been at a high sodium intake, now you drop the sodium. Okay, back to a low sodium intake or back to under 2000 milligrams, under about a teaspoon of sodium per day. So as you drop that sodium down, you're going to start to lose water. Okay, so you go from high sodium intake to low sodium intake. Two weeks out, you're at high sodium intake. One week out, you're at low sodium intake, and you keep the sodium low. At the same time that you drop the sodium intake, you start drinking a bunch of water. So one week out, you're drinking anything from about one and a half to two gallons of water a day. And you're gonna do that all the way out to two days before the day that you wanna peak.

Okay, so you're gonna be peeing like crazy that week.

Yep, exactly. So basically you're up regulating the hormones that are responsible for dumping water, like your diuretic hormones, so that when you cut water, the activity of those diuretic hormones stays up and you basically pee out a bunch of water. You lose a bunch of water. And the fact that you've cut sodium also means that you're not going to retain much water. Okay? So we're basically trying to trick the body into losing as much water as possible while retaining as many carbohydrates as possible. So that's what this all comes down to. Okay, so again, just to review, just so listeners don't get lost here, two weeks out, you are going to load up on sodium all the way up to one week out, at which point you're going to start to cut sodium all the way from two weeks out out to one week out, you're going to be dropping your carbs that you're at a very low carbohydrate intake. And about one week out, you're going to start to load up on creatine. Okay? So now you're two days away from the day that you want to look really, really good. And then there's two things that you do. Two days out. Two days out, you cut water, and you cut it a lot. And when I was doing bodybuilding, I would do this in conjunction with taking a diuretic. And I was actually those last couple of days, like, peeing like dark yellow. Like, that's, that's how, how. And this, this is why I'm saying I don't necessarily, you know, total caveat. I'm not saying this is healthy, but if you want to hack the process of getting ripped, this is how you do it. And I use dandelion root extract as a diuretic to just basically shed as much water as possible. And you're only doing it for two days. Okay, so it's still unhealthy if you're doing a lot, but I mean, it's just two days. So two days you, you're dumping water, taking diuretics, and you are also carb loading. So you shift from that low carb diet into a high carb diet, eating a lot. Sweet potatoes, yams, chocolate and wine bring vascularity to the surface. So those are really good. But basically for two days, you're cutting water and you're carb loading. And when you get to the end of that second day, so two days out, you've been cutting water, you've been carb loading. You wake up on the morning of the, of that last day and you're thirsty, but you're pretty shredded, pretty ripped. And you know what, if, if you're getting paid a lot of money to be on a magazine cover or it's kind of like your big chance to look as good as possible, this will do it. It's not healthy, but that's basically, that's the protocol. That's, that's what I did when I was a bodybuilder. And it works. You know, it gives you that, that camera ready body, but it's, it's a chore. But, but you know, if you kind of enjoy that, that type of thing kind of tricking your body, you know, it can, it can work again. I think a bigger win is just decreasing cortisol so you don't retain water. But yeah, again, creatine or loading on sodium, dropping carbohydrates and then dropping sodium, loading carbohydrates and then kind of doing, doing that water load followed by a water cut, throwing creatine into the mix. That's kind of, kind of everything. So there you go.

Is that what your buddy Hunter McIntyre did when he was on the COVID of Was it Men's Health?

He's been on a bunch of covers, but no, we actually talked about that in today's Obstacle Dominator episode. So to give away listen in his secret was basically just getting covered in a bunch of mud.

I guess that works.

This is Patrick, you mentioned in a podcast that it takes six months to become fat adapted for exercise. Now my question is how is this only affected by diet and how much training, a specific type of training actually plays a role in this? My background is more strength and power, being a college offensive lineman. But I'm starting fit training, which you're familiar with since you mentioned it in a podcast. Love the show. Thank you.

Well, the answer to Patrick's question is pretty interesting because when I ran an exercise physiology lab and I did this for three years, I had a lot of athletes come up and I would hook them up to an indirect calorimeter, which measures the amount of carbohydrates and fat that you're utilizing as a fuel. And I would always.

Looks like a scuba diving masky stuck in your mouth, right?

Yep, exactly. The athletes, like the soccer players, basketball players, football players, people who were used to on and off type of training. It's very, very interesting. When you looked at their carbohydrate and fat utilization while, say, running on a treadmill, they would have these large shifts, they'd go from carb utilization to fat utilization and it was almost as though their body had been trained to cycle between those energy substrate pathways. And then when you take the people who are doing more steady state exercise, the triathletes, the marathoners, etc. They would generally be at a little bit higher state of fat utilization and at a steady state of fat utilization during the entire treadmill protocol or bicycle protocol, whichever one that we were doing on them. Interestingly, you saw similar patterns at rest as well. More fluctuations and almost like a wave curve of carbohydrate and fat utilization shifting between carb and fat utilization at rest in the folks who were doing a lot of interval training and more of a steady state energy utilization in the folks who were doing more steady state training. So what this means is that even though interval training is going to get you fitter faster, you're going to have a higher post exercise metabolic rate, you're going to have an increased production of fat burning hormones, etc. If you work in some kind of steady state exercise into your protocol, it's going to accelerate the rate at which you become fat adapted. Or in other words, it's going to train your body to burn fat as a fuel source a little bit more efficiently. And this is why I like to get the best of both worlds and the folks who I'm training for fat loss. What I mean by that is you do your fasted fat burning in the morning at a very aerobic level in basically what would be considered your fat burning zone, you know, approximately your, what's called your anaerobic threshold heart rate or the heart rate at which your muscles start to burn. Generally you subtract about 20 beats from that and that's your approximate fat burning zone. So for Me, like my muscles really start to burn and I start to breathe really hard at a heart rate of about 170. And so I can approximate my fat burning zone at being pretty close to 150. And it's generally like an aerobic conversational pace. You train your body how to do brief bouts. A lot of people overdo this. They go out for like two hours, three hours, whatever. But brief bouts on a daily basis of about 20 minutes or so, generally in the morning in a fasted stay, a little bit of caffeine can help you tap into that fatty acid. And you do that as many days as you can each week. And again, all you need is about 15 to 20 minutes. And I like to also, when possible, add in one session each week that's a little bit longer, like a hike or a bike ride or a swim or a walk where you're going out for anything from one to two hours in that fat burning zone. You don't overdo that workout. That's only about once a week. A lot of people overdo that and they try that. You know, I found a lot of women will like do this every morning. Like they'll, they'll take that fat burning easy exercise that I talked about and they'll do it for like two hours every morning or one hour every morning. Don't do that. About once a week is all that's required for that kind of fat adapted fat burning zone type of exercise, preferably in a fasted state, like on a weekend. And then in the morning every morning, that's when you do your aerobic fat burning. So that way you're getting that steady state fat adaptation. And then the later afternoon or the early evening when your body temperature peaks and your protein synthesis peaks and your reaction time peaks, that's when you do the hard stuff. So that way you get the best of both worlds and you can accelerate your ability to become fat adapted. When you work in that type of training. Rather than just doing the high intensity stuff or just doing say like the seal fit training. And if you look at something like seal fit, what you'll find is that in a typical Seal Fit protocol, because I'm doing seal fit right now, that's my training is I'm using Mark Devine's eight weeks to seal fit and just kind of throwing in, you know, like I substitute a few of the workouts for like skill based obstacle training workouts and swims and stuff like that. But for the most part I'm using his seal fit training. He has durability worked in, like, aerobic durability training. And you can split that up. And rather than doing the durability training at the end of the workout, like he has it written in, you could take that durability training and shift that to be like your morning aerobic workout and then save every other aspect of seal fit training for later on in the day. So you could just kind of like, tweak the workouts around to kind of kind of do the steady state stuff earlier in the day and the harder stuff later in the day and do the steady state stuff in your fat burning zone in a fasted state. So that's the way that I would do it. Cool. Hey there, Ben. I have a question. Can cold thermogenesis and the ketogenic diet alone improve one's stroke volume and resting heart rate, or does it have to be combined with some form of exercise in order to reap the benefits?

It's a good question. We've got some good questions today.

We got a lot of smart cookies listening in.

Smart people asking smart questions.

Geeks. Yeah, I feel guilty that I'm drinking wine and eating dark chocolate while I'm answering questions.

Okay, the next two questions, we'll make sure really easy.

Okay? So I've seen zero evidence that a ketogenic diet is gonna improve your stroke volume or your heart rate directly. Now, the fact is, when you're producing ketones, when you're burning fatty acids and you're producing ketones, or you're, say, using one of these fancy new supplements that that's literally drinking ketone bodies like beta hydroxybutyrate salts, for example, you are providing a fuel that's a preferential fuel for diaphragm and heart tissue. So theoretically, you might be allowing your heart muscle to tap into a fuel that it can burn a little bit more readily or more efficiently. But I've seen zero studies that show a direct improvement in stroke volume or drop in heart rate from that occurring. Okay, so, you know, there's a little bit of a disconnect there. So I can't say that a ketogenic diet is going to improve your stroke volume or your heart rate. And when you look at cold thermogenesis, there's some very interesting things that happen during cold thermogenesis. Like you get an increase in the production of adiponectin, which is a hormone that breaks down fat and shuttles glucose into muscles and increases the density of your mitochondria. You get an improvement in immune system because you get an Upregulation of glutathione production, which is an extremely powerful antioxidant. You get an increase in the number of immune system cells, you get a decrease in the rate at which telomeres shorten. So you get the same cellular longevity effect that you might get from calorie restriction or from intermittent fasting or from exercise. You get reduction of inflammatory cytokines. You get faster glucose clearing, meaning that that blood glucose gets burnt off as fuel to heat the body, so that that you can essentially produce ATP from heat rather than. Or you can produce heat from calories rather than producing ATP from calories. You get what's called skeletal muscle uncoupling, which basically means that you burn calories and generate heat through like this shivering process as a result of what's called thermal loading. And Dr. Rhonda Patrick and I talked about this a little bit in our podcast that we did on heat. But skeletal muscle uncoupling and activation of heat shock protein and clearance of a lot of basically what are called junk cells or an upregulation of what's called apoptosis, all of that occurs in response to cold. But again, I don't necessarily think that you're going to see a direct improvement in stroke volume and heart rate, aside from the fact that your muscles might become a little bit more efficient at utilizing glucose and nutrients, so you might have more oxygen and more blood to go around. In general, the fact is that if you really want to truly improve your cardiovascular efficiency, improve your stroke volume, improve your heart rate, you need to combine interval training, which is going to take care of the heart rate side of things, meaning that you're going to become more efficient at delivering oxygen to muscle tissue and you're going to improve capitalization of muscle tissue when you do interval training and also heavy weightlifting or anything that subject your muscles to a pretty intense load. If you combine that with aerobic training, which is going to increase your stroke volume. Then again, kind of similar to my response to the last question, you get the best of both worlds and you get an increase in stroke volume and an increase in heart rate. That's why, for example, like crossfitters who don't do any endurance or volume whatsoever, and I think we talked about this a little bit a couple episodes ago, you actually don't get much of an increase in stroke volume with something that only has high intensity interval training and weight training. You actually have to do aerobic training to get that increase in stroke volume or a significant increase in stroke volume. Although your heart rate does you know, your resting heart rate will drop and your delivery of blood to working muscles will improve. You don't get a significant improvement in the actual ventricle voltage volume or the filling of the ventricle before it pumps the blood out into the rest of the body.

So, Doctor, that's funny. I was just gonna say maybe we should explain what a stroke volume is.

Yeah, it's basically just how much, how much blood volume your heart is gonna pump out per stroke. So ultimately though, cold thermogenesis and a ketogenic diet, those work pretty well together, or at least cold thermogenesis and even just like a high fat diet work pretty well together, but they're not necessarily going to produce a huge amount of cardiovascular benefit. In the absence of exercise, the human body really was meant to move and to, you know, as Mark Sisson says, you know, lift, move, sprint, or Art Devaney or whoever first said that, you know, you combine that with things like temperature fluctuations and restriction of high amounts of, of like modern carbohydrates and, you know, that's, that's kind of the best case scenario. Hi, Ben. For starters, absolutely love the book, but I do have a question in regards to the minimal ancestral ironman training plan you have included in your book. How does the, how does riding bike every day, pulling children, preferably zone one, probably at 8 to 10 miles an hour, how does that affect the minimal training plan? Yeah, let me know.

Thanks.

Love the podcast.

Blake actually asked more questions, but I, I figured this was the most interesting of all of them. He went on a little too long, so. Sorry, Blake.

Zone one training, and I mentioned this earlier, that's where you're going so easy that it's like boring yawn training. And that has a really good effect at improving blood delivery to working muscles without stressing those muscles or causing a huge decrease in muscle glycogen or tearing of muscle fibers. And I actually really like that as a form of recovery and as a way to actually enhance your ability to bounce back from workouts. The only caveat is that most people think they're doing zone one training and they're really doing like zone two or zone three training.

Zone three? Yeah. That's what I've seen.

Yeah. So like, zone one training would be like, maybe you're like, you know, treading water easily in the pool, like not even swimming laps, but just like treading water, or you're walking around at a very leisurely pace that isn't causing you to breathe hard or, you know, you Aren't feeling that impact in your legs much at all.

I'd call it saunter.

Yeah, exactly. So zone one training is pretty hard to do. Pulling a bike trailer. I've pulled a lot of bike trailers in my day, and I don't think I've ever been in zone one pulling a bike trailer because you're pulling a bike trailer. So I would just say the short answer is yes. The long answer is, are you really, truly in zone one? Because zone one, I mean, that's a heart rate for most people. That's a heart rate of like 80 to a max of about 100. And that's, you know, that's not very high above resting heart rate. So make sure that you're truly in zone one. I like. And I'm going to be doing a giveaway of one of these, hopefully next week on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Facebook page over@facebook.com bgfitness I like these wihoo bike trailers, and these are the ones where your kid sits in it, but your kid has to pedal. So the bike trailer attaches to your seat post and extends up. Yeah, exactly. And they actually make them for twins. So they've got. They've got a double or twins or just two kids. So they've got a double option and a single option and the kid pedals. And I could see how you could stay in zone one pulling a wihoo bike trailer because your kid is doing some of the work and they're not as heavy as some of the other bike trailers as well. So that would probably be a pretty good way to go. I'm not financially affiliated with we who or anything like that. They did send me a trailer that I could give away on Facebook, but that would be a pretty good way to go. I would say, if you were really wanting to use it for recovery, would be make your kid do the work.

Hey there, Ben and Brock. This is Davey Navy. I was out playing some soccer, working my way up for this World cup excitement, and somebody came in and decided to break my fibula bone and my ankle. So I'm well into the healing and recovery process, eating lots of good food, and I was curious about home estim and particularly I was looking at this relatively affordable system by Omron, which is available at the local drugstore. Could you guys do a review or summary of what are the better home estim products? Because I'm at the point in my recovery now where I'm going to be doing some estim to help the muscles all come back in Addition to obvious flexibility, I'm doing have a great World cup, guys. I'm watching.

Bummer, Davey.

Yeah, bummer.

Although I do want to say one thing.

Yeah, go. Have you watched any of the World cup matches?

I actually, yeah, I watched in Croatia. The first night of the World cup happened while we were in Croatia, and man, those people are crazy for soccer or football.

Oh, yeah, I think the US Plays tomorrow. Germany, I believe so.

The US Tomorrow, you mean?

Yeah. That's going to be ugly. Yeah. Anyways, first of all, Davey, I'm sorry to hear about your fibula. This Omron that you ask about, like the cheaper ones at the drugstore, I've talked about this before in a podcast. As far as the difference between electrical muscle stimulation and transcutaneous electronics. Electrical nerve stimulation, or what's called tens. But most of what you see at the drugstore, including something like the Omron, those are tens units. So they're good for, like, back pain, they're good for stimulating, like subcutaneous nerve receptors, but they don't actually stimulate muscle or stimulate blood flow and recovery to an extent. So like a band aid, they mask pain. So they're useful if you need to cover up low back pain or you need to just like, take care of. Yeah, pain. But they're not really gonna hold a candle to say like, electrical muscle stimulation or pulsed electrical magnetic field therapy. So that first thing that I just mentioned, pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, that is a form of. It's what's called pemf, and that's actually FDA approved to fuse bones. And a lot of docs will use it to reduce swelling, to reduce joint pain, and to speed up healing of bone. So that's something that I recommend. There's one called the Earth Pulse, and it's like this little donate shaped PEMF device that releases a magnetic frequency that's much, much different than what you get from, like a magnet. So putting a magnet around an area that needs healing, there's a little bit of evidence that you might get a mild heating effect and maybe a little bit of an increase in blood flow. But when you expose bone to pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, you actually get a stimulation of osteoblastic activity and a true increase in bone healing. And that's why it is, you know, that's why PEMF is FDA approved specifically for bone healing. So if I ever broke a bone, knock on wood, because it's been a long time since I've broken any bones, the very first thing that I would do is get pemf on it, actually, I'd probably find a good friend who had, like, oxycodone, and I'd have that and a glass of wine, and then I'd get out the pemf, because breaking bones hurts. So PEMF would definitely be one therapeutic model I would look into. And by the way, it's way different than electromagnetic or EMFs. Electromagnetic fields. PEMF. EMF is a much lower frequency. It's pretty close to what's called the Schumann frequency, which is the basic, like, 7.38 Hz frequency that the planet Earth naturally emits. It's way different than the magnetic field you might get exposed to from, say, a WI FI router. So you don't need to be concerned about emf. And it can accelerate repair of bone, it can accelerate repair of soft tissue. And there are many good studies on it that, I mean, you could go over to PubMed and look into it. It's definitely not even close to woo woo or anything like that. So pemf, definitely. And then the other thing that I would consider for accelerating healing or at least decreasing inflammation would just be electrical muscle stimulation, which is different than PEMF in that it is causing a contraction of the muscle. So PEMF is kind of like ultrasound. Like it passes through tissue deep into tissue, causes an increase in blood flow and an increase in growth factors, increase in osteoblastic activity. EMS actually causes a muscle contraction. So this is where you put, like, the electrodes. Like, you stick the electrodes around the area that's injured and you turn it on and your muscles are literally contracting. And they come with, like, a handheld unit, and that unit is replacing your brain. So rather than your brain sending a message through your spinal cord to the muscle, you're using a handheld unit to deliver an electrical stimulation to the muscle directly via the electrodes. So that would be like a. Like a compact. What's that?

I was just going to say that would have a double effect of, like, helping heal the bone, but also help not get, like, super out of shape.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say. It's really good if you've broken something for maintaining a muscle's ability to contract and even getting a training effect. It's actually kind of funny. I was just at a conference with Dave Asprey in Toronto, and he had an EMS device. This was on Friday night at the bar at the Shangri La Hotel in Toronto, and he was helping people get their biceps stronger and doing AB training sessions with an EMS device in the Hotel bar. It's pretty funny. Getting some strange looks. But interestingly, there's different wave forms of electrical muscle stimulation device. And so this is where you kind of want to choose whatever is going to be best for you. I'm a nerd, so I own both. I have one called a Compex, and that's best for, like, strength power training, helping a muscle to become more fit with electrical muscle stimulation. And then there's another device that uses a different. What's called a different waveform. It recruits muscles in a little bit more slower and gradual format and also releases them in a more slower and gradual format, and that's better for injured tissue. That one's called a Mark Pro. So we interviewed the folks who do Mark Pro. They have a discount code for. For any of our listeners, it's discount code. Ben knocks like 30 bucks off of it@markpro.com but I've got both. So I'll use the Mark Pro. If I've kind of injured an area or I need a little bit of healing. I've been using it this week to help myself bounce back a little bit more quickly from those Spartans. But you can also use something like a compact for training, let's say your quads and hamstrings to not get unfit while you're rehabilitating from. From an ankle fracture or an ankle break. And then the other thing that. That of course you'd use is, is pemf, or pulsed electromagnetic field therapy. And the device I use for that is called an earth pulse. So that's where I would start. And. Yeah. And then, of course, eat your eggshells. Everybody knows eggshells help pump bone stuff. Just heal faster.

And they're delicious. And don't delicious freaky out at all when they crunch between your teeth.

That's right.

I'd add one.

That's why. That's why God made blenders.

Yes, I'm gonna. I'd add one more thing. You know what really helps with broken bone healing? It's a little thing that you can find over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Love.

Oh, tennis ball.

No, that's a game from Ben.

Oh, what is it?

@Bengreenfieldfitness.Com Love. Yeah, we have to go over there and find out, won't you?

Okay. All right, Go check it out. I forget what's on that URL.

It's just a way to spread the love.

That's right. That. Because we all know that gratitude and spreading love will make your bones heal faster. So, speaking of spreading the love, we do want to do a giveaway to the listener who left us a fabulous review in itunes. But before we read that review, I am going to spread the love to one of my friends. And he wrote me the other day and he told me that. And this is a guy who actually came on my podcast. His name was Jordan Harbinger. And he came on, he talked about how you could kind of go outside your comfort zone and get better at things like friendships and relationships and networking. And he actually.

And how not to be creepy. That's the biggest.

And how not to be creepy doing it. Yeah. And he's got this podcast over at Art of Charm. And, you know, this isn't like a paid advertisement for him or anything, but he wrote me and we were talking about how there's a pretty kind of big crossover between the men and the women who listen to our show who are interested in health and fitness, and the men and the women who listen to his show who want to kind of take that and then extend it to friendships and relationships and networking. So I just want to give him a shout out. That's over@artofcharm.com it's not like a necessarily like a pickup dating, you know, gaming type of podcast. It's a lot more tasteful than that. So.

And he seems to work with a lot of executives and like Secret Service people.

Yeah, I listen to his podcast. I think it's good. So I'll give him a shout out. Artofcharm.com so, that being said, let's. Let's charm people with some. Some disaster pants, shall we?

No, you should not do that.

So this review came in. It's called Health Hacks and Disaster Pants. Oh. It's actually a. It's a five star review. All right. That's what you think you want to.

Yeah, I'll read it. It's from Fez 4819. Fez 481 says this is a great podcast. Ben and his sidekick Brock present a wealth of information on health, fitness, and sometimes life as an obsessive competitive bike racer for 25 years. It's unusual to find information that I don't know or hear about. Ben delivers the goods with study, synopsis, new technologies, and the best methods to get fit. Drop fat, do what you want to do to become faster, fitter, and achieve goals. Pay attention, though. Too much too soon may lead to disaster pants or. Or worse. Geez, what's worse than disaster pants?

I was wondering. So if you can think of Something worse than liquid exploding diarrhea while you are fully clothed, then I guess that would be it. I'm also kind of wondering what he means by too much too soon. Maybe he just means that if you take all the advice that we give you on this podcast, such as like, you know, taking creatine and dumping carbohydrates and hopping on your bike trailer, pulling your kid behind you with the wi hoo while you're wearing an earth pulse that you might experience a disruption in bowel function.

I think that's pretty good.

Yeah. Yeah. So I guess start slow so that that's probably a perfect thing to end on. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 285 where we have of course, all of the helpful show notes. And by the way, I should also end on this. Look for some big changes on the website over the next couple of weeks. We're going to make it way more user friendly. And I'm also doing a lot of new things inside the Ben Greenfield inner circle. We are expanding that out big time, meaning that I incorporate a lot of the things that I talk about into my day to day routine, into my workouts, into my nutrition, into the way that I raise my kids, into the way that myself and my wife eat. And I really want to be able to talk about those on a more interactive and a deeper level with the folks who are members of my inner circle. That's the whole like $10 a month thing@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and my, my goal over the next year is to make that pretty much like the most valuable thing on the face of the planet that people could ever access when it comes to tapping into how to use some of the stuff that we talk about on this podcast on a more practical and deep level. So yeah, so check that out too and you're going to notice that the Entire website of BenGreenTravelFitness.com is going to change to make the inner circle like, like easier for you to access and really kind of like a one stop place to be able to just like get as much help as possible from me. Because that's what I want to do, is help you and your kids and your family and everything make this world a better place. So let's all sing Kumbaya around the campfire.

Now I'm holding my own hands.

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