Why A Vegan Diet Helped Bill Clinton, Best Fitness Phone Apps, Standing Lawn Mowers & More!

Episode number 288 of Ben Greenfield Fitness 5 Ways to get fit on itunes, how to work out if your hands are broken, why a vegan diet helped Bill Clinton, natural remedies for hair loss, standing lawnmower fitness, and much more.

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You'Re just trying to time to shed.

A few pounds, get ready for non.

Run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com. So I got a funny story for you, Brock.

All right, bring it on.

Last week we talked about water fountains and germs on water fountains. Oh, yeah, episode 287. And so that afternoon I went to the gym and I got a drink from the water fountain. And when I walked up to the water fountains, kind of like I was talking about in that episode, there's like the tall water fountain.

Yeah.

And the short one. Yeah. And so. And I don't know why they have the short one because kids aren't allowed in that area of the gym anyways. But I bend down and I start drinking from the tall water fountain because nobody's at it. And I start drinking and this guy walks up behind me and, and starts waiting behind me. And mind you, the short water fountain is there and available beside me. You wouldn't want to get down in like a half deadlift or anything like that and actually bend over at the gym. Not at the gym. And then another guy lines up behind him and then a chick lines up behind the next guy. So there's three people in line behind me. And to make matters worse, I noticed the chick is actually my wife once I recognize her. So there's three people in line behind me, one being my wife. And I know that she's gonna think I'm a total asshole for doing, but I just keep drinking and I'm like, I'm gonna do a stare down, total face off. Like, I'll just go, we'll see who breaks first. So we're there playing like water fountain chicken, right? I'm just drinking and drinking and I'm looking at the guy behind me right straight in the eye as I'm drinking, just waiting to see what he's gonna do. And finally the guy behind him walks away and I stop drinking and I say to my wife and the other guy, I'm like, you know this other water fountain works. And then I turn around and keep drinking. And I just stared at the wall. And by this time, like, my stomach's getting full and like I'm actually starting to wonder if I'm going to break, if I'm going to swerve first and finally stand up and turn around. And my wife's the only person left there and she stood around and waited for me and she was giving me a pretty dirty look after waiting about two minutes to get a drink. But freaking A. That's exactly what I was talking about on last week's podcast about how funny it is that people will not use the short water fountain at the gym.

You know, I gotta, I'm. I'm wondering if maybe there's something you don't know about that little water fountain. Maybe they're actually pumping cyanide through it or something and you're the only one.

That doesn't know or that's the one that's for spitting gum spitting in general. Well, either way, what do you think? Shall we jump into today's news flashes?

Yeah. Cause we gotta keep moving. I'm freezing to death. Newsflashing.

Brock, before I jump into this week's news flashes, you mentioned you're freezing to death. What's going on?

Dude? I'm actually shivering. I. I decided that my ice baths weren't cold enough, so I actually took the tap off my, off my tub and adjusted it and I managed to make it colder than I've ever made it before and I had a nice 20 minute ice bath and that was about 15 minutes ago and I'm still shivering now.

Back, back it up. Did you put ice in the ice bath or you just like running as cold of a water temperature as possible into your bath?

Dude, I live in Canada. You don't need to put. Well, especially if you, if you hack your, your tap, you don't need to put ice in the bathwater.

You know what you need, dude? And you got to be careful what regions of your body that you get this on. But there's. They make this stuff called sweet sweat and it's like a cayenne pepper and essential oils. And essentially it's like, it's what cyclists use as what's called an embrocation cream in hot weather. And you put it on your body and it attracts blood flow to whatever area of the body that it's put on. And again, guys, do not use this in the wrong way. It does not produce a pleasant tingling experience like you might expect. And I have accidentally slathered some in my nether regions before and paid for it. So that's. That stuff actually works though. If you Google embrocation cream, I think it's embr o c a t I o n embrocation. I watched the movie Bad Words the other night, by the way. It's a spelling bee movie with Jason Bateman. It's actually really.

Oh, is that what that's about? I saw the title of that movie somewhere. I had no idea what it was about.

It's about this adult who tries to crash kids spelling bees to win the checks and trophies. It's actually pretty funny anyways though. Yeah. Embrace and cream, dude.

So, yeah, no, I think I'm. I'm letting my body heat up the natural way because I'm burning all kinds of stuff doing that. Right?

And speaking of burning all kinds of stuff, I've got a pretty crazy Kickstarter I want to talk about that I found on Kickstarter that I think would be interesting to folks. But before I jump into that, I should mention that not only have I been doing a ton of online workshops for all these like free conferences and videos and podcasts and stuff, and I know it can be sometimes hard for folks to keep up with where I'm at. And I try to talk about things that are different than what I talk about on this podcast when I get on other podcasts and conferences and videos. So the best place to kind of track that stuff because I always tweet it out. If you go to twitter.com BenGreenfield I will tweet out not only the latest and greatest research studies, three of which I'm about to talk about, but also where I'm at if you kind of feel like it's the Where's Waldo thing. So check that out.

And have you started wearing crazy striped duke?

I've always done that. So this, this Kickstarter is called Can Women's Sweat Treat Low Testosterone in Men and Ladies? By the way, if you're a first time listener to this show, this is not a show that's just for dudes. But this particular study is probably pretty, pretty skewed towards the dude population. So what they did or what they're doing in this Kickstarter is they're going to give a group of young women scrunchies, which up there in Canada, you probably call them hair ties, they call them squunchies. So they're going to wear their scrunchies for a week and then what the researchers are going to do is Send these scrunchies to low testosterone men. And this is kind of like a clean version of those websites where you can, like, order women's panties, basically, except they're sending you scrunchies. And what they're going to do is investigate the effects in testosterone levels of low testosterone men when they're exposed to female sweat via salivary testosterone measurements after exposure to these scrunchies, particularly by rubbing the scrunchies against their upper lips. Totally not kidding here. And they say if they run out of scrunchies and need more, they're going to use gauze pads instead of scrunchies. And this is actually a study that's done by a researcher, and I believe he's in grad school. I'm not for sure on this one. You can go read the Kickstarter. I'll link to it in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 287 or 288 for anybody who wants to take part in this research study. Ladies who want to wear the scrunchies or guys who want to smell scrutiny. Smell. Taste the scrunchies. He went from testosterone in the three hundreds to a testosterone that was in the upper eight hundreds by taking a summer dance class at his university three times a week for eight weeks with a dozen sweaty young women.

Oh, I thought it was from the scrunchies.

And in the actual Kickstarter, there's a lot of really good research that shows that sweat can actually have an effect on men's testosterone, particularly the smell as well as the taste of women's sweat. And the interesting thing is when I go to Bikram yoga, which I've actually heard described as a bunch of people having sex with their clothes on, I've noticed that I'm definitely. And I'm hoping my wife doesn't listen into this particular episode, but I'm.

Because that's not yoga that you're going to.

Yeah, I'm mildly horny when I get out of Bikram yoga. And I think it's because usually I'm the only dude in there. And I'm pretty much immersed in women's sweat molecules for about 90 minutes, so. And I also hope that none of the women who are in that Bikram yoga class listen to this either, because I'm a total creeper. Now, that's not why I go to Bikram, by the way. But I suppose it would probably be like a beneficial side effect if you had low testosterone or you wanted to increase testosterone. Right.

You wouldn't be the first guy to go to a yoga class for that reason, I'm quite sure.

Interesting. So my apologies to the ladies listening in for that extremely male skewed first news flash. But you know what, you can't argue with science. And it might work in, in reverse too. Although I've never actually had a lady compliment me on the smell of my sweat. So I think my, I think my wife last described it when I walked in from the gym and forgot to shower as meaty. So there you go. It's not horrible meaty.

Yeah, that's not an insult.

I don't personally want to smell meaty. I'd rather smell like musky or something like that. So anyways, another interesting new thing that's out there is coffee flour and.

Yeah, I saw that. Yeah, okay. Yeah.

It's a new transformative process to bring a new food source to life, particularly.

Flour that can and that's F L.

O U r not coffee flowers. Although that's a great holiday gift idea. These are gluten free, high fiber, protein rich, antioxidant and vitamin rich flour products made from coffee. And the way that they're described on this website are a unique flavor with floral aromas, citrus roselike. And by the way, I would be fine with my sweat smelling floral. Anything citrus like, anything but meaty that you can use for breads, pasta, meat rubs, desserts, chocolate, et cetera. And the idea here is that when coffee beans are traditionally processed, they're separated from what are called the coffee cherries. And then you get this fruit pulp and usually billions of pounds of this unused fruit pulp gets left to decompose. It's just discarded. And that can actually cause harm to local ecosystems where they're growing coffee. So they've now developed this process that would convert the coffee cherry pulp into an all new natural food ingredient known as coffee flour. It's a very interesting story and I think it's cool. I love stuff like this. Kind of like the cricket protein bars where you can help out the planet a little bit and provide people with food and find a use for something that you normally discard like your leftover crickets. So I will link to that article over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 288 as well. And then finally we've got a very interesting article that appeared on Team Beachbody, which I read every day. No, I'm just someone teenage body. No, don't go to Teen Beachbody. I have no clue what you'd get there. Team Beachbody, which I assume is just a group of bloggers that work for. For Beachbody Fitness. But this is an interesting article. It's about 18 ingredients that sound dangerous but aren't actually dangerous. And it's kind of interesting because these particular, particular ingredients get thrown around in, you know, health and nutrition circles as though they're like, you know, the worst alien foods on the face of the planet. But in fact, they're not all that bad, a lot of them. So some of the ones talked about in the article are like, propylene glycol alginate. Propylene glycol alginate. And you'll find that sometimes in salad dressings. You find it in beer for foaminess. Some ice creams have it. And a lot of times that particular ingredient scares people away because it looks like one of those things where you hear health enthusiasts say, if you can't pronounce it, don't eat it. Right? Yeah, but it's just a powder made from kelp and as the name would imply, algae. Propylene glycol alginate. So that's one that's not that dangerous. There's another one, Carboxymethyl cellulose, which thickens and prevents crystallization in foods.

Oh, I've seen that in, like, coconut ice cream and stuff.

Yeah, exactly. Jellies icing. Some wines have it and all it is, it's a cellulose derivative derived from cell walls of plants. The same thing you'd be eating if you, say, made a smoothie out of kale. So carboxymethylcellulose. Another one that's not that bad. There's obviously a whole list on here, and I won't go over all of them, but let's go with another here, castoreum. And this is one that I've seen catch a lot of flack on the Internet. So it's used to produce berry flavorings or vanilla flavorings. And it is a secretion that's extracted from what are called castor sacs, which you find. Oh, from the beaver on the butt of a beaver.

Yeah, Beaver anal gland.

Exactly. It's beaver anal gland extract. And it's kind of interesting. What the article says is if that freaks you out, wait until we tell you where chicken eggs come from, which is kind of true. So it's actually generally recognized as safe. And you're going to find it in some baked goods and some frozen dairy products and even, yes, chewing gum. So ultimately, it's an interesting article. And you should go check it out. It's called 18 ingredients that sound dangerous but that aren't.

Listener Q and A.

Hey, Ben. Hey, Barack. This is Tim from Massachusetts and I was calling in with a different question. I got a very Generous gift of $1,000 in iTunes gift cards from one of my customers. And I guess my question to you guys is if you were to be given a blank checkbook per se to spend on only itunes, health or well being apps, what would they be? Is there any expensive or upper end or even, like I said, even if it's not directly health related, just some sort of life well being app, where would you invest your money? And any answer would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

A thousand bucks.

That's a lot of money for itunes. Honestly, like, it's almost annoying. I got a $1,000 gift card once and I really, really wish that I had just gotten $1,000 because I think I still have like 500 bucks left on the gift card. And like half the vendors that I try and go use the gift card for don't accept it. And it's annoying to me kind of knowing that I have 500 but I don't know how to spend it. It's unlike this American Express gift card. So that's what they call a first.

World problem, isn't it?

Yeah, I think so. So if I had a thousand dollars for itunes, I'm. I am gonna open up my phone here paid. I'm not into paid phone apps, but I do have a few. I'll tell you my paid phone apps, you can use up like 1% of your $1,000 on the $1.99 phone apps that I use. I'll give you, I'll give you four of them that I really like that I use pretty regularly. And then also I'll give you access to a whole cornucopia of goodness that you could easily blow your thousand dollars on and get really fit in the process. So first of all, you've got the Sweet Beat HRV Sweet Beat life phone app. This is the one that I start every day with. So I roll out of bed. I don't roll out of bed. I roll over. While I'm still in bed, I put on a Bluetooth heart rate monitor that will transmit a signal over to the phone app and I turn on the phone app. And I'm not a huge fan of wearing Bluetooth all day long or like having self quant devices on your body all day long, but I just do it for five minutes in the morning. And, and it sends this phone app feedback from my sympathetic and my parasympathetic nervous system that allows me to make educated decisions about the way that I'm going to exercise and the amount of relaxation that I need to take part in that day. And this morning is a perfect example. I did about 20 minutes of yoga and deep breathing this morning because I had a really, really high, what's called a high frequency or I'm sorry, a low frequency output into my Sweet Beat app. And low frequency is basically elevated activation of your sympathetic fight or flight nervous system. So I knew that I needed to kind of relax myself in the morning. So you, you also get just like a morning number for your heart rate variability, like whether it's high or low. So you can decide if you're going to take an easy day, for example, if it's low or you know that maybe whatever you did for nutrition and fitness the day before was spot on because you wake up the next day and heart rate variability is high. So I really like that one, the Sweetbeat HRV monitor. And that's probably the most expensive app I have on my phone. I think it's $9.99. There is another one that I use when I'm asleep at night because we have trains that go by our house. And I'll also use this when I'm on an airplane and when I'm at a hotel. And it's a white noise app. Now I learned recently on the I did a parenting course for ari Mizel from lessdoing.com who's been on this podcast. He's a productivity expert and he has twins. And so he and I actually kind of matched heads and put together about 10 different mini courses on parenting. It's over@udemy.com DoubleDads really, really cool course, like videos, audios, transcripts, stuff like that for parenting. But one thing that he talked about was his white noise app and how you shouldn't play white noise for your kids because it disrupts their sleep cycles. But it doesn't do the same thing in adults. So I use that to cover up noise and to sleep better. And I think that's $1.99.

Is that what is actually called white. White noise app or is that.

Yeah, I'll. I'll link to each of these in the show notes for anybody who wants to just click and grab them.

I use one called Sleep Pillow.

Yeah, that's a much sexier name. I like it.

Sleep Pillow. When you and I are rooming together in Kona we'll have the battle of the. The white noise apps.

That's right. If we should mention, this would be.

The noisiest room in the whole place.

Yeah, Brock's going to be covering the the race Ironman World Championships in Kona for Endur. So should, should if you're going to be in Ironman Hawaii. Brock and I will both be there. The next thing is the Safari Fit phone app. I love this one for when I'm just like traveling and I want to do a quick workout in my hotel room or in a park or anywhere.

You want to pretend you're some type of animal.

And I get my, my giant gun and my Teddy Roosevelt glasses, my khaki shorts and my little tie thing that goes around my neck to dab away sweat off my cheeks and I head out and hunt for lions. It's called the Safari Fit phone app. Check it out. Safari Fit. No, it's a, it's like a bunch of like animal esque movements like the flamingo and the lemur and the parakeet and all these weird moves that you can do with just like picnic benches and tables or like the end of your hotel bed and you know, the floor. Really cool app though. It's just like kind of outsourcing the whole body weight workout thing. And it's on your phone, which I like. It's pretty cool. It's got like four different fitness levels on it. I don't know how much it is. I think it's maybe like 4.99 or something like that. But that one's called the Safari Fit phone app. That one's pretty cool. And then a couple others. And I used this the other day to send a message to you, Brock, but I'll use this when I don't have time to type an email, but I want to respond to someone and I don't want to like do the thumb typing on my phone. It's called the say it Mail it Recorder. So all I do is I open up my phone, I say it and then I click mail it and it just mails whatever I said as a voice memo to whoever, whether myself, as a reminder to me or to anybody else. So it's called the say it Mail it Recorder.

It's kind of fun actually getting those. Although I'm always inclined to try to talk back.

Yeah, if you talk back, if you don't listen, nothing happens.

Yeah, you're very unresponsive.

Yeah, technology doesn't work that way. So the other thing is the Ben Greenfield Fitness Page on itunes. I don't know if people are aware of this, but pretty much every book I've ever written is available on itunes as a downloadable book that you can read. And in what? Like, I have a Kindle, so I honestly buy most of my books on Kindle. But apparently you can buy books on itunes and read them from your. From your app, as kids say, these days. So anyways, I'll put a link in the show notes and if you click on that link, like, everything from like my book beyond training is $9.99. Looks like run with no pain rev. Like, all of my books are on here. Rev Diet 100 Ways to Boost your metabolism. So they're all in the itunes store and they're all. It looks like one of my books is like 99 cents. So yeah, you can get all that. I actually didn't know this until I was trying to figure out what I would use a gift card for and I'm like, hey, I'm actually on itunes. So I'll put a link to all those books. And then finally, here's the other thing you can do in app purchases with gift cards. So if you're using something like. And here's something I haven't tried out yet, but like that sweet beat phone app that I talked about, for example, it has the option to do an in app purchase of like their little sticky things that you can put on your body to health match. Yeah. To like measure your heart rate variability during the day or maybe during a workout. You can buy those in the app. You know, it's like, it's like a. I want to say it's like 200 bucks or something like that.

Yeah.

I don't know if you could use your gift card for that, but pretty much almost any in app birthday purchase you can use a gift card for. So you just want to make sure that you load up your gift card to itunes and any purchase that you make can be processed by itunes that come off the gift card balance. So there's another idea.

I like it.

Did I miss anything, dude?

Well, I was going to throw in a couple of things. Just. I know I don't know about you, but I have trouble doing yoga sessions at home all by myself. So getting some yoga videos I found really helpful. Downloaded a couple of Rodney.

Yeez, that's not going to get your testosterone up.

No, no, it's.

It's definitely. Rodney's a great guy.

But yeah, unless you get some of those scrunchies.

Yeah, exactly. Well, yeah, that's true. You could get the scrunchies and then do Rodney yoga at home with, like, somehow. Somehow, like glue the scrunchie to your upper lip. Yeah, there you go. Kind of get that scrunchie Hitler look.

Good old scrunchy Hitler.

And was there another one?

Well, I was just going to suggest. Also, there's all kinds of, like, learn new language, learn how to play an instrument, apps and books. And we always talk about, like, keeping your brain sharp and keeping that neuroplasticity is. It's all about making yourself learn something that you kind of suck at to begin with. Like, not. Not doing something you're already kind of good at and just getting better at it, but actually starting from scratch. So I'd recommend, like, choosing a new language or choosing a musical instrument or something like that. Download a book, download an app, download a video, Something like that.

Oh, and by the way, that Udemy course I talked about, the parenting course, you can get that via an in app. She could download the Udemy app for free to your phone. And then you could get my entire new parenting course as an in app purchase.

Nice.

So there's that, too.

Beautiful. And I wouldn't be a patriotic Canadian if I didn't also say, download the greatest hits of Rush. Closer to the heart.

Closer to the heart. Closer to the heart.

Beautiful.

Hey, Ben. This is Lee from Florida. About two weeks ago, I broke both of my hands going over my handlebars on my bicycle. Now I'm looking for alternative methods of exercise. Before, I was doing triathlon, swim, bike, run with some weight training, rock climbing, and racquetball. Seems that most of those things require grip strength, which I don't have anymore. Any suggestions on what I should do, Lee? Dude, sounds painful.

Bummer.

I actually had a snowboard accident. So I've been where Lee has been before, but with one hand, not with both hands. So if it's. If it's just one hand, you can get this whole contralateral training effect. Basically, I tore my mcl. You have an MCL not just in your knee, but also in your elbow. And I landed with an outstretched arm coming off a jump on my snowboard.

And that's called a Voosh.

Yeah, I don't know what it's called in Canada.

Stretched hand.

Down here, we call it a fail. But I just would walk around the gym doing, like, my curls and my extensions and just, like, literally doing a farmer's walk with a heavy weight for the opposite hand. And there is what's called a contralateral effect. Like I mentioned, where by training one side of your body, the other side gets stronger. And the same thing can happen from legs up to upper body. So if you're doing leg press and leg curl as two extremely simple examples, you can get a little bit of a crossover training effect to your upper body. But in addition to training your legs, a couple of the other things that that I would do is use your arms without using your hands. So can do a lot of gyms for example will have pullover machines and seated fly machines. And even on some of the cables you've got very, very similar to like the, the elbow handles that you would hang from from a pull up bar to do hanging leg raises rather than gripping you're hanging from your elbows though you can attach those to cables and you can do like standing cable flies, standing cable poles, things like that using the section of your arm from your elbow up to your shoulder rather than gripping them. And it's just a matter of fixing those straps to the end of a cable apparatus at the gym. And that's a really, really good way to train without using your hands. It's also a good way to train if you've just bombed your biceps or you've been working your grip a lot and your grip's dead, or you have tennis elbow or something like that, you can still get a really good upper body workout by pushing with that sense. The other thing that you can do is standing core exercises. You've got like those straps placed over your shoulders and you're standing and doing like standing resisted crunches. The low back extension machine or the, or the glute ham extension at the gym is also a really good one and you can even do what are called zercher squats where the bar, the barbell is placed in the crook of your elbow and you do your squats. It's a little bit uncomfortable at first and sometimes you can put a little bit of padding or wrap an ace bandage around your elbow if it's a little bit uncomfortable for you. But you can do full on squats holding the barbell in the crook of your elbow and that's a great exercise period. Really good strength building exercise. But it's also good if you're unable to grip stuff with your hands. The other thing that I would totally use would be electrical muscle stimulation. I'd be all over that. So you can get like a Compex EMS device and you hook that up pretty much anywhere from the wrist on up. You can do a full on bicep session Tricep session, shoulders, quads, hamstrings, you name it. And what it does if you put it in strength mode or power mode is it will recruit as many fast twitch and slow twitch muscle fibers as possible, hold them in a contraction. And it's a pretty significant contraction. It can almost be a little bit uncomfortable, but that's what you need to get a good hypertrophic or good training response. And it will go like 5 seconds on, 5 seconds off, or 10 seconds on 5 seconds off. And the, the more you go into like the power slash strength phase of it, the more it's going to grab fast twitch muscle fibers based off of the signal that it sends to muscle, the shorter a period of time it's going to hold them, but the higher the contraction. That's elicited. So much different than like I've talked about the Mark Pro electrical muscle stimulation device before. That's a whole different waveform. It recruits muscles much more slowly and gently. And it's great for rehab, it's great for massage. You know, if you're unable to make it to a massage therapist, it kind of has a similar effect. But if you want a strength or power training or actual muscle hypertrophy effect. And there was a recent study, I tweeted it out, I think it came out. Let me check here. It was about a 23% strength increase from using electrical muscle stimulation. Really interesting study. It appeared on clinbiomec.com, clinical Journal of Biomechanics or Clinical Biomechanics or something like that. But the title of the study was Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation on the Enhancement of muscle Strength. And there was a huge increase in muscle thickness and muscle strength. And in this they trained the biceps and the triceps, so super applicable in the case of Lee. So check out EMS too. I'd pick up a Compex device and yeah, those would be the biggies, of course. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and do a search there for broken bones because we've done podcasts in the past about minerals and topicals and all sorts of things that can speed up recovery for broken bones. Even like pulsed electromagnetic field therapy. We've covered it all when it comes to speeding up broken bones because we've got a bunch of exercise addicts that.

Listen to the show.

We've got, yeah, we've got a lot of spazzes and people who won't stop exercising ever. So. So yeah, that's a, that's a good one. Check that out. The compex EMS and the, the flies and the pullovers, the cables, the zerter squats and then everything we've talked about as far as broken bones on the podcast. Hi Ben, I just had a question for you. I've recently gone from a more of a vegan style diet to more of a paleo type diet. And I always get an argue with a friend of mine. He was claiming that both George W. Bush and Bill Clinton were on a meat based diet for many years and then had heart problems and switched over to a more vegetarian type diet and apparently their health improved. So my question for you is why do you think that happened? And. Okay, thanks a lot, Talk to you later. Bye.

What's with all the vegetarian vegan presidents?

Yeah, over here in the US Our presidents get tired of their beef and chicken apparently.

At first I got really excited because I thought he was talking about George Clinton.

Yeah, no, Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton, the former US President and George Bush.

Not from P. Funko.

Yeah, it's really interesting because there was like all of this rah, rah, go Bill Clinton vegan stuff that appeared because what happened was Bill Clinton ended up going to the New York Presbyterian Hospital and underwent emergency surgery there to insert a pair of stents because one of his veins gave out. And he had undergone a quadruple bypass surgery in 2004 prior to that. And at that point, not after the quadruple bypass, but after revisiting the hospital in 2010, he jumped into kind of like the Dean Ornish program for Reversing Heart Disease, this whole low fat plant based diet type of thing. And the way that Bill Clinton describes his diet is that he eats primarily plant based foods. He does things like substitutes cauliflower for potatoes as well. So he's being really careful with starches and sugars. And once a week or so, I'm not exactly sure how this is a vegan diet, but he has a big helping of organic salmon or an omelet made with Omega 3 fortified eggs so that he's getting enough iron and zinc and so he doesn't, as he says, lose muscle. So kind of interesting that he's not actually on a vegan diet. He's still eating salmon and eggs to preserve his muscle mass. Not that you can't preserve muscle mass on a good vegan diet, but I just thought I'd throw in there that Bill Clinton is not exactly vegan. The thing is though, so when we see people switch to a vegan diet, which I have nothing against, I see some very healthy Vegan blood labs from the people who are doing it very much right. And also including many of the things that they need to include to optimize a vegan diet, which I'll talk about in a second. But the thing is that vegan diets often work in the short term because people don't just avoid animal foods. You know, whether they're Seventh Day Adventists or they're following Dr. Dean Ornish's healthy Life program. They're also avoiding added sugars like Bill Clinton substituting cauliflower for like the starchy potatoes. They're avoiding refined carbohydrates. Typically, like in an Ornish esque program, you would cut out processed vegetable oils, which are huge for inflammation, inhibition of fat cell death, buildup of oxidized cholesterol. You generally cut trans fats and processed fats. All of these vegan diet programs highly recommend people to stop smoking. They all include an exercise component. There are a ton of co founders here that could easily explain all the beneficial effects of a vegan diet in the absence of the cutting out meat part of a vegan diet. And that kind of leads me to my next point is that it is true that processed meat causes harm to the body. It causes inflammation. Especially processed meat that's been fed high amounts of omega 6 fatty acids or even like had a bunch of cortisol in it when it was disgustingly killed. The way that a lot of commercial food manufacturers are killing their animals these days, you know, in giant herds, mashed up. And I don't know if you watch like Food Inc. But they get like electrocuted. And it's just nasty. And it's horrible and it's disturbing. It's disgusting the way that conventionally raised animals are treated. But animals that are fed natural diets like grass fed cows and pastured chickens, that type of natural unprocessed meat does not really cause an issue at all. And there have actually been studies that have shown that unprocessed red meat doesn't have any association with things like cardiovascular disease or diabetes or the risk of death. And there was one case, there are actually multiple cases where no matter the type of meat, there was a link with an increased risk of cancer. And that was in meat that had been excessively cooked, as in your backyard barbecue where dad walks away with his beer and forgets to come back soon enough. But in other cases, no issues at all with unprocessed meat. And then of course we've seen this research come out really recently and there was even a New York Times bestselling book that went over this. I forget the name of it, but it was about saturated fat and how saturated fat has never been proven to lead to heart disease. It has been proven to increase cholesterol, but again, there's no association between an increased level of LDL cholesterol and heart disease. And they did a study of almost 350,000 people that found no association between saturated fat consumption and cardiovascular disease. And the same goes with eggs. As far as meat goes, no negative effects of regular organic, omega 3 enriched eggs as well. So ultimately, when we look at vegan diets, the short term health effects of vegan diets are likely due to the elimination of lifestyle parameters that go way above and beyond meat. Unless, and this is of course the case in many people who switch to a vegan diet, that person was eating like commercially raised nasty meat. So the issue with a vegan diet long term is that while many people feel good for two years or five years or 10 years, the problem is not just the difficulty in getting amino acids in. Unless you're really willing to do a lot of soaking a lot of sprouting a lot of food, combining a lot of use of proteins that people sometimes find expensive like hemp protein and rice protein and pea protein and these type of foods, it's difficult to get a lot of those amino acids in. So it can be difficult to maintain muscle mass. But it's also difficult to get a lot of your other nutrients in, like vitamin B12, extremely common among vegans. And there's over 90% of vegans that are deficient in vitamin B12 from studies that they've done done. And another one is creatine, that's another one that is very helpful and necessary for muscle function and brain function that vegans are deficient in. Carnosine would be another one that's only found in animal foods. Very powerful anti inflammatory. You would need to supplement with that one too if you were vegan. I go over like 20 different things that vegans need to go out of their way to include in their diet if they're going to eat just plants in a modern living environment with modern fruits and modern vegetables and basically not the same food that we might have eaten thousands of years ago on a pristine planet. DHA is another one. So you got to get DHA from algae and spirulina and chlorella and frankly, again, a lot of vegans will complain about the expense associated with that. And hemp protein and pea protein and rice protein so you can do veganism right, you just gotta. You got to do food prep the right way and you got to supplement the right way. And if you don't, you get that muscle mass and you also get degradation of your myelin sheaths and neural degradation, which means that you wind up eventually down the road getting things like brain fog and poor joints. Because of a lack of essential fatty acids and a lack of the necessary anti inflammatory components of the diet, you can see a drop in iq. Nora Good Goudis talks about this in her book Primal Body Primal how an IQ drop can occur when your cholesterol is lower than 200, like your total cholesterol, which is very frequent. I've seen vegans with cholesterol values well below 100 and that's not healthy unless you're. There are some Asian populations that naturally have low cholesterol like that, but in most cases not healthy. So ultimately, first of all, Bill Clinton is not vegan. I kind of doubt based off of like the whole beef industry thing and the fact that he's like a Texas rancher, I kind of doubt that George Bush is vegan either. I'm just saying. But ultimately, yeah, you're going to see some health improvements. But I'd rather see people just switch to a whole foods diet with healthy non commercial meat and go down that road instead. And in the show notes, for those of you who are vegan or vegetarian or considering it listening in and want to do it right, I will link to my Beyond Training book chapter on how to customize your diet if you're vegan or vegetarian and I'll put that link over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com 288 and does.

That include avoiding the tofurky?

It does include avoiding the Tofurky or frying it in peanut oil.

Damn.

Hey Ben and Brock. I recently ran my first marathon while I was training. I started losing my eyebrows and got diagnosed with alopecia. My doctor told me it was probably from the stress caused by the training. I only topped out at 35 miles a week though, and I know plenty of people who do twice that when they train for a marathon. Therefore, I'm really not sure that the training caused it. Either way, I eat a mostly paleo diet, but I still eat some carbs and just a tiny bit of dairy. Any idea of what to do with this autoimmune problem? Right now they're giving me shots every month to simulate hair growth. That sounds like a band aid and not really getting to the root of the problem.

Thanks he didn't say his name, so call him Eyebrows. That is crazy. I've never heard of people losing their hair from working out too much.

It's possible that he just had some bad sunglasses and a bad helmet and his eyebrows are just getting ripped off from his hella fast speed sessions on the on.

Oh yeah, Maybe he's just that fast.

Of course he's running though. He's not cycling. Huh.

I might be wearing a helmet just in case.

Yeah, just. I do that sometimes. Just I've actually seen people at triathlons running out of transition with their helmets still on. Like from the bike to the run transition. I've also seen people running from the swim to the bike transition with their like their pointy arrow helmets on backwards. That's another classic. Just in case it like a rhino charging rhino.

Awesome.

So alopecia can definitely or any type of hair loss can definitely be aggravated by a variety of conditions, including stress. So there's kind of two different forms of alopecia. One is called androgenetic alopecia and that occurs in both sexes, in males and females, whether or not the females are wearing scrunchies. And what happens with that is typically like even in your teens and early twenties, you'll notice a little bit of hair loss. More often than not. It develops about after the age of 50. You get a little bit of balding, a little bit of a receding hairline. Some females will get female pattern baldness, which is like progressive thinning hair at the front or the sides or the top of the head. And that's just genetic. And some people will try to stop something. Like guys especially will try to stop something like that with a hair loss injection or treatment. Like I think propecia is one that is that you'll take, but that inhibits the conversion of testosterone to dihydrotestosterone. And dihydrotestosterone or Dharma dht, that's an incredibly potent form of testosterone that enhances libido, motivation, sex drive, things of that nature. And when you inhibit the conversion of testosterone to dht, you can stop some hair loss, but you also lose libido. So you kind of have to decide whether if you're using something like that for a genetic based alopecia, if you're willing to be the libido less hairy guy or the bald horny dude. So it's one or the other folks, one or the other. I know if I ever start to lose my hair, I'll just let it go. Unless it is something related to stress and autoimmunity, in which case there are, there are other reasons beyond like geneticism and conversion or over conversion of testosterone to DHT that can be an issue. Now, with the other form of alopecia, it's called alopecia areata. And that's an autoimmune condition that attacks your hair follicles and causes the hair on your head to fall out. A lot of times it and patches, it can cause baldness anywhere that hair grows, Unlike the genetic form of alopecia. So we're talking about like eyebrows, eyelashes, your extremities, pretty much everywhere where you tend to be hairy, you can lose hair and sometimes the hair will come out and then when it's triggered again, it can fall out again and people can continue to lose and regrow their hair for a long time. So when we're looking at something like this, typically it is nutritionally related or it's hormonally related. So sometimes you'll see the alopecia autoimmune issue get triggered by low levels of thyroid hormone. And interestingly, a couple of the things that can inhibit conversion of the less active thyroid Hormone, active or T3, is hypercortisolism, excessive training or excessive lifestyle stress. And so you get that drop in thyroid hormone or mild hypothyroidism that occurs from excessive exercise and that can cause hair loss. And the trick there would be either continue exercising at the rate that you're exercising and consider using like a thyroid glandular extract to keep your thyroid up, or just back things off and, you know, add in more rest or amp up, exercise a little bit more slowly. The other thing that can affect your thyroid is your gut and your liver, both of which also can kind of take a hit with all the excess calories, calories, sugar, starches, the fact that you develop a little bit more leaky gut anyways when you're exercising and you have elevated activity of the liver enzymes. And so all of that can also affect your ability to adequately utilize thyroid hormone. So that'll be another thing would be take care of your gut. You know, consider if you're going to exercise a lot, consider using things like bone broth and marshmallow extract for your gut. You know, glycine supplements, adequate amino acids, all the things that are going to help out your gut and even some antioxidants to help your liver, like, you know, n acetylcysteine, glutathione, some of those more advanced liver supports. If you're doing a lot of training.

So can you just use those mini marshmallows that you put in in cocoa?

Yeah, that's just like marshmallow extract. Let's chew on those bad boys. The other thing is, of course, you could just rule out the thyroid by getting thyroid tested. Like, if you go, like I mentioned, Greenfield Fitness System, one of the lab tests that I've got listed over there is just a thyroid panel. And it's a full thyroid panel. Like, it tests for all of your autoimmune reactivity to proteins that you might be eating that could aggravate the thyroid. It tests for T3, T4, TSH, everything. So rather than getting like a full blood panel, you could just get that. Now, the other thing, and this is something that Eyebrows alluded to, is it might be an autoimmune issue. Now, if it's an autoimmune issue, then I would just like, I've talked about this on the show before, but like, my standard recommendation for autoimmune is the Paleo autoimmune diet. It's just an ebook. You can download it straight to your computer and just jump into it, literally.

Like tomorrow you can download it from itunes.

You could probably download it from itunes with your thousand dollars worth of gift cards. It's a. It's a really simple diet to follow. It allows you to get adequate calories while eliminating soy, wheat, dairy, gluten. A lot of these common autoimmune triggers that can cause hair loss. So that's another thing that you may want to look into. And then a few other things that can prevent hair loss. One would be adequate intake of omega 3 fatty acids. So this is a case where you can eat that wild fish a couple times a week. You know, do as I do and have sardines. Like, literally, I have sardines like five days a week with a big ass salad for lunch. You know, use walnuts, use ground flaxseeds, use chlorella and spirulina. Get lots of omega 3 fatty acids in your diet. The other thing, from a supplementation standpoint, that can help out quite a bit if this is DHT related, is one essential fatty acid called gamma linoleic acid, which you'll find in like black currant oil or evening primrose oil. There's another one that can inhibit the conversion of testosterone to DHT that acts very similarly to propecia, but in a much more natural way. And that's like a saw palmetto extract. There is a pretty good mix of like a flower pollen extract as well as Some of those plant phytosterols similar to what you get from like, like these plant essential oils along with lycopene, zinc and copper. And this is one that I recommend to all of my cyclists who have a lot of times prostate inflammation or issues with testosterone to DHT conversion or clearance of the DHT from the body. That one's called Prostolon. And I'm not a doctor. That's not to be considered as medical advice for prostate issues or anything like that. But it's something that I've recommended in the past to folks who have urinary tract infections or prostate issues or inflammation in the crotchal regions. So I'll link to that one in the show notes. It's called Prostolon, though. That stuff works pretty well in that type of situation. So ultimately, I think the biggest change that Eyebrows could make would be just shifting to like an autoimmune based diet and trying to get off some of these shots that he's on to stimulate hair growth, just because a lot of those are not that natural. Most of these shots are like cortisone injections or topical inflammatories or something else that's basically like causing inflammation to cause hair growth to occur. So I'd be careful with some of that stuff. Hey, Ben, this is Jeff in St. Louis. I had a question for you in regards to the standing workstations. Mine happens to be a unique one that is attached to a big commercial mower. I stand on a sulky for about six to seven hours a day, five days a week, for about, I don't know, nine months out of the year. And basically to describe what that is, it's like lawn surfing. You know, constant movement, hips, feet all shaking and moving. I was just trying to find out the benefits of this type of, I don't want to say exercise, but I do feel fatigued at the end of the day. And for training, for marathons, how do I incorporate what I'm doing? Love the show. Look forward to hearing the answer. Thanks.

Lawn surfing. I like it.

Yeah, we, we used to have one of those, like seated lawnmowers when I was growing up. You seen those? Or like tractor lawnmowers?

Yeah, yeah, we had one of those. Go to the farm. We used to chase each other around on it.

Yeah, my brother, like drove it off a cliff and it, it rolled and rolled and it was kind of just like a smoking pile of metal at the bottom of a ditch. So we didn't. We don't have that. And then we had to start pushing the lawnmower. And then when I, when I first got my lawn in the house that I'm in now, I thought I was going to get super duper fit. And I got one of those lawnmowers that's like powered by humans. You like push it and, and I thought that I was just going to get buff by mowing my lawn using this fancy lawnmower. And it took me like two hours to do my tiny little front lawn. And I realized after that that it's not worth it because it actually didn't look like a mowed. It was, it was just like a really, really bad, bad haircut that when I finished up. So don't you hire a neighbor kid.

Now to mow your lawn?

Yeah, I do. I've got this, this guy who comes in and mows and it works out well. So anyways though, as far as these standing lawnmowers, this reminds me of a vibration platform. So whole body vibration, I mean that's, that was invented by the Russian cosmonauts like back in the 60s to do things like strengthen the immune system and pump the lymph fluid to help to maintain bone density and rebuild bone density in people. After they'd come off of the Cosmo equipment up in the skies, they would get them on these vibration platforms to rebuild bone density much more quickly. It can help you recover faster if you stand on it in between workouts. It can help to enhance brain function. Really interesting study on release of brain derived neurotrophic factors and brain building hormones and the use of whole body vibration therapy. So it's pretty cool. I mean you can use it as almost like a way to preamp the body for things like squats or deadlifts or something like that. Like you'd stand on a vibration platform and get off and do the squats. Same thing for running. They found that when it's used prior to running intervals, that running economy improves as does plantar flexion force and dorsiflexion force, which influences the amount of distance that you're able to travel with other each each step. So it can be used as, as kind of like a pre workout. Amp me up too. Like you could mow your lawn right before you, you go on a run. Honestly though, like this seems like a really functional way to like you could go and buy a vibration platform. Like, you know, Dave Asprey's got like his bulletproof vibe, which is kind of like a plain Jane vibe platform with no bells and whistles. But it just kind of, you know, you stand on it and does the job.

Aren't those like $10,000?

No, it's like a thousand bucks, I think. Yeah. So you could get something like that and you could also just get a standing lawnmower and kill two birds with one stone. I would definitely take fatigue into account though. If you're spending all day on this thing. Like, I would be doing compression and wearing compression tights while you're using it. I would be using inversion, like using either yoga inversion poses or literally like an inversion table. After a day of riding on that lawnmower to help drain blood from the legs, I would consider like hydrostatic pressure combined with cool. So that means like finding a really cool bottle of water. Bottle of water. Body. Body of water. It's going to take you a long time dipping each toe individually into a bottle, but a really cold bottle. Body of water. Jump in the bathtub with Brock and surf the Internet with him, but basically figure out a way to combine water with pressure that will really help to kind of pump your legs out. They also, of course, make these full on like gravity boots and like the, the Normatec boots and these spendy boot systems that will like pump and circulate air in and out of your legs if you really want to recover a lot faster. Which I mean, like I. At PaleoFX there was this ex. Olympic skier, ex, like CrossFit high level masters female competitor named Eva T. And she talked about how what the best ski teams in the world do now is they don't compete for fitness, they compete for recovery. Meaning that the best teams are dumping all their money into how to beat out the other teams when it comes to recovery. I kind of like that idea of when you finish up a workout, like, especially if you're like me, for example, like, like I want to get really good at the sport that I'm doing right now, which is Spartan racing. And I know that. And like, you know, Hunter and I talked about this in the recent Obstacle Dominator podcast. You know, guys are out there, they're doing altitude training, they're doing, you know, multiple CrossFit workouts a week. They're, they're running hard, they're training hard, sleeping in altitude tents, doing all these things that definitely put fitness and definitely break down the body and will make you fitter as long as you allow yourself to recover. And I think one advantage that I have is that I know a lot about recovery and I can out compete a lot of people when it comes to laying on the couch, gravity boots. I'm not. I don't want to sound like that's not all it takes. Like, some people overdo it and some people will be like, you know, they'll like, push their grocery shopping carts through Whole Foods, piling their grocery shopping cart full of detox supplements, and go home and do yoga and maybe dip into the pain cave once a week for their interval workout. And that's like the other side of things that's like expecting food and herbs and supplements to do all the work for you. Like, I'm, I'm not proposing that. What I am saying is that if you're a serious athlete, just like, put yourself in that mindset of not just putting in the hard work, but also seeing if you can out compete your competitors when it comes to outsmarting them from a recovery standpoint. So, you know, whether you're competing for riding lawnmowers and mowing as many lawns as the other neighbor kids or competing for obstacle racing. So I would, I would leave Jeff with that.

I had an interesting conversation with Brad Kearns about exactly that. How he's predicting that he's a former pro triathlete and now he's a high jumper and speed works.

He works with, with Mark Sisson, right? Yeah.

Yeah. So he was talking about how he sees, sees in the next, like five or 10 years. He thinks that, like, athletes are gonna train, train, train for like a, a few days or like 10 days in a row and then be in like a, a drug induced coma for like three days.

Yeah.

And then they'll wake up from that and then train, train, train. And again, really hard.

There was a movie that I watched about that where they like, would just like, throw this guy into like this clay, like isolation, like this clay bath, Epsom salts bath, isolation chamber to like, heal him. And they'd wake up and like, his bullet wounds would be closed and everything. I forget the name of the movie, but it was like science fiction. But, yeah, kind of that same idea, you know, and there are people doing that now. Like serious athletes are, you know, they'll like, on their recovery day, go to like, these flotation chambers and spend an hour and a half in like, sensory depth with magnesium salts, you know, and it's. It's crazy. So. And that, honestly, like, just for those of you listening in, I know we're going on now about this and droning on, but that's one of the reasons that I do this podcast and that I like, run the run. My inner circle is because I freaking love studying this stuff and finding out about it, figuring out if it works, testing it out in the trenches, and then bringing it to you. And so I promise that if you keep listening, I will keep doing that. So there you go.

And if you keep listening, you could also spread the love by going to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Love.

That's right. And when you do visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com love, that's where you can spread the word to all your friends. The other thing that you can do is you can leave us a review in itunes. And if you do that, you not only get the nice warm feeling inside of having spreaded the news to your friends, but you also get some swag. So we're sending out Schweg BPA free water bottle guilt free that you can sip your favorite beverage from your Ben Greenfield fitness beanie and also your tech T shirt that automatically makes you look sexy, especially if you wear it with your sweat encrusted scrunchie. And we will mail all of that.

I've got a new idea for another piece of gear.

I do too. I'll just start having Jessa wear Ben Greenfield fitness scrunchies and we'll send them out to beanies. Testosterone deprived listeners. Yeah. So anyways, leave a review in itunes. If we read your review on this show, like we're about to do, we'll send you that. So what do we got, Brock?

It looks like the name of this person is actually some sort of advertisement for. For something. I recommend tap and track.

Tap and track. Yes.

I will have to Google that afterwards.

But I recommend tap and track is a calorie counter.

Yeah.

So he's like advertising while he's leaving his review. Interesting.

That's cool. I like his moxie.

That's cool. Whatever.

Okay, he says or she says. Ben Greenfield is a fairly knowledgeable guy. His topics are interesting, helpful, and useful. I'm so thankful that someone mentioned the pronunciation of segue, not sedgwick. That was starting to really irk me. Other words that need to be pronounced correctly are cytokines, biotin, and butyrate.

Ah.

Now how do you say those? I. I thought you pronounced those correctly.

Pretty much how you just said them is correct. And if it's not, it should be.

Yeah. Okay, so we're on the same page as far as those are pronounced. But it continues. Ben is bright, but sounds less bright when he pronounces words incorrectly. Otherwise, this is a great show. And I get excited when I see that there is a new show. Keep it up.

Yeah, so like I mentioned last week, I do a lot of reading, but I don't do a lot of talking and I don't get out much. So I do things like pronounce mizled or pronounce misled as miseld and I pronounce autophagy as autophagy. And sometimes I'll pronounce.

I've heard very smart people say auto feg as well, which actually kind of makes sense.

Yeah. So anyways, my apologies if I mispronounce stuff. Maybe we should just start calling them tape and trach. Tape and trach. Anyways though, I will try to look up pronunciations. If anybody has like some kind of a pronunciation website or something that could help me out, that would be great. But I make no promises because I literally am a bookworm and end up reading words more than I end up pronouncing words. And that's just the way that I am. And I apologize, but you'll just have to accept me for the way I am.

We do. We love you just the way you are, Ben.

I hope you love me.

You are a smart, handsome, strong young man.

Okay, I'll leave. I'll leave folks with this. Hey, Taryn, people like you. My son just walked in the room. Taryn, come here. We're doing a podcast right now and can you tell people what you did the other day, how you build your endurance? You don't come talking to the microphone. Tell people how you build your endurance. Come on up here. Taren did a 6 mile hike the other day in 100 degrees. Tell them how you did that. Taren, speaking of the microphone. Right here. Go ahead.

You don't really know how you did it.

How'd you do? How do you get stronger? How do you build endurance? How do you get stronger? What do you do? Do hikes. You do hikes? Yeah. Yeah. And what do they do to you?

Get me stronger.

They get you stronger. And what is your favorite part about hiking?

Going down the hills.

Going down the hills. Yeah, me too. All right, thanks for those huge pearls of knowledge, dude.

Thanks, Darren.

Yeah, thanks. Alright, so that was the part of the show where the host has his kid on because he thinks it, it's cute but actually contributes nothing to the conversation.

Half the audience's heart just melted and the other half just turned us off.

All right, well, thanks for listening in. We'll put the shownotes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 288 Check those out and There you can read the studies about everything from scrunchies to the sweet beat, heart rate monitoring, and until next week, have a healthy week. Visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice.