The Problem With Multivitamins, Can Wheat Weaken Your Bones, How Vegans Can Get More Omega 3's & Mu

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness Podcast, when these drugs are taken, they have been given such short periods of time that you're allowed to take them because of the long term health implications.

So what about the actual bones themselves? Are they making the bones stronger?

There has never been one published research paper to show that you can, through food alone, get your minimum amounts of required essential micronutrients through diet. Anybody who wants to have the strong bones moving forward and prevent this deadly.

Disease, health performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show.

Yo yo. Got a good show for you today. My friends Mira and Jason Kelton. You get a two for one. You're welcome. And today's show is brought to you by the brand new, brand new Kion Flex, which is the latest clinically proven supplement designed by me and my crack team at Kion. Totally natural High quality joint formula. We designed this to reduce joint discomfort, soreness, swelling from exercise. We packed some really cool things in there like for example, Turmero saccharides. You may not have heard of these before, you probably have any used them before. But they're the water soluble polysaccharides and turmeric that have incredible health benefits, especially when it comes to joint health and recovery. We also have some other plant extracts in there, including proteolytic enzymes that are amazing. Whether you're a runner or a triathlete or a fighter or a crossfitter or a yogi, whatever. We all get sore, we all get injured, we all have creaks and pains from living our active life. I like to do my stuff and every single day when it comes to getting down in the gym or wherever else, and this allows me to do it. So the brand new Kionflex is here. You get it and you get a 10% discount code. You just go to getkion.com flex that's getkion.com flex and you can use 10% discount code BGF10 at checkout. This podcast is also brought to you by something that if you follow me on Instagram, you saw me using all the way over on my recent plane trip to Dubai to actually work out my legs on the plane. It's wonderful for recovery, for soreness, for massages, would pair quite well with Keyon Flex. Actually it's called the power.it's called the power. So you've probably heard of electrical muscle stimulation, but this thing is cool, it's sexy, it's tiny, it can fit in your pocket it syncs to your phone so you can run the entire program from your phone. It is TSA approved, by the way, which means it's great for flights. One of my buddies was at my house yesterday. We were working out on my Spartan course. He sprained his ankle within 10 minutes. I had them on the power dot and it was doing like an EMS for blood flow and for reducing inflammation. So if you haven't used electrical muscle stimulation before, you might not know. Most of the EMS devices out there are big. They're clunky, they're hard to carry around. This thing, again, is tiny. They call it the power dot. Maybe they call it the DOT because of how tiny it is. Fits in your pocket. Comes with a perfect little manual that shows you exactly where to connect things for an ab workout, for ankle soreness, to work your quads on a plane. You name it, and you get a 20% discount on it, which is awesome. And they're also doing a Black Friday sale soon, which will allow you to get additional savings. So you go to power.com power.com say that 10 times fast. Power.com and that's sl. Ben. Power.com Ben. Use the code Ben at checkout to save 20%. Power.com Ben. Use the Code Ben.

All right.

It's been a long time since I have had today's podcast guests on my show. I was just recently at a conference with them down in San Diego, and as usual, they were looking as. As fit and as beautiful as they always do. This couple really practices what they preach, and they are a wealth, a freaking wealth of information, especially about nutrients and food. They wrote what is still one of my favorite grocery shopping guides, Rich food, poor food, which is actually what I interviewed them about several years ago. But they just came out with a brand new book about osteoporosis and building your bones. And I have to admit, when they offered to send it up to me.

To take a read, I was like, here we go again.

Lift weights, have your calcium, avoid too many acidic foods, blah, blah, blah. But this book actually turned out to be really, really good. A ton of stuff in here that I was unfamiliar regarding. Bone density, building bone cells a lot in here on micronutrients as well. Really, really good information on micronutrients, and we're gonna dive into a lot today. So the book, like I mentioned, is called Rebuild you'd Bones. And my guests are Mira and Jason Kalten, and they have a very, very long history in the realm of nutrition supplementation and beyond. So we're Very lucky to be able.

To have them on the show today and talk about this stuff.

So Mira, Jason, welcome to the Call.

Thank you so much, Ben.

We're so happy to be back.

Yeah, it has been a little while. And by the way, I didn't, I didn't say your, your qualifications but Jason, I know you're a PhD and is, is your PhD specifically in nutrition science.

Yeah, Biomedical sciences and human nutrition.

Yup, gotcha.

And then Mira, you are, you're a certified nutritionist, correct?

That's correct, Yeah. I went back to school after when I thought I needed to before we went into all this research. So I went back and became a nutritionist.

Cool. And, and speaking of you, I know at some point in the past and I, from what I understand this kind of sparked your guys interest in this whole topic. Mira, you actually had either osteoporosis or osteopenia or something like that going on, right?

Yeah. So this is actually way before I met you. And actually it was before I met Jason when I turned 30 and I'm almost 50 now, so that puts things in perspective. When I turned 30, I was diagnosed with advanced osteoporosis. I was living in New York and I thought I was completely healthy. You know, I had my own company and I was like, you know, living the life. And I just started to feel pretty bad. My bones started aching, I felt exhausted, I had a lot of pain and I just couldn't keep up with the pace I had been keeping before. And I went to see the doctor and I was pretty much bedridden by the time I decided to face the facts that something was wrong in my body. And by the time I went, they diagnosed me with advanced osteoporosis and said I had the bone density of an 80 year old.

At 30.

At 30? Yeah. I mean literally, I mean I, I remember I was doing, and there's probably people listening right now who are in this state. I mean that's, I think that the type A personality, the stronger we think we are, the harder it is for us to believe that something is wrong with us. And I just started to feel so bad. I was running my company from my couch. I was lying on the couch with my computer on my chest, not able to literally go up to see a client or to go to any of the events that I was doing the public relations for. And I was running my business for my couch, making all these excuses and just sending my staff to do things for me. And by the time I went, I was, I was in so much pain. I was in so many painkillers, just trying to get through a day, and they said, you're not gonna get any better. There's nothing we can do for you. You have to sell your company. Face the facts, young lady. You're gonna be in a wheelchair.

But you're. You're not in a wheelchair, at least.

Last time I checked.

No, no, that was a long time ago. Luckily, I met Dr. Carlton here, who was at this time, we were not married. And he decided that he would help me look into what was causing my osteoporosis. And we did. And two years later, we went back to see the doctor and to get another DEXA scan, which is how you test your blood, you know, your bone density. And I had reversed my osteoporosis, which they had said was impossible. So now we're on a mission to help other people do the very same thing.

And a lot of what you have in the book that we're going to.

Get into the weeds on, a lot.

Of this stuff, these are the type of things that you did to not only reverse the osteoporosis, but I assume you've actually built your bone mineral density since then.

Absolutely. So in the book, we go over 40 healing habits in rebuild you'd bones. 40 clinically proven healing habits that when combined, kind of act like chain link armor to help you build your bone. But they're all scientifically proven individually to help build bone. They're the things that Jason and I did in diet, lifestyle, and supplementation, all those areas at the same time. And over two years, yeah, I rebuilt my bones back to healthy, and now I'm probably beyond healthy and super strong.

Yeah. Yeah, I love it. Okay, cool. Well, we're gonna delve into some of those strategies. But before we do, it really shocked me when I. When I went through the section of your book on modern osteoporotic treatments or osteoporosis treatments, and specifically how some of these bisphosphonate drugs and some of the other, I think they're called rank ligand inhibitors, actually work when it comes to. To the way that we're treating osteoporosis in current modern medicine. So, Jason, can you delve into basically the mechanism of action behind some of these and why it's such a crappy approach?

Yeah, well, you know, again, when it comes to taking drugs, that's a big question that we get a lot from people who have osteopenia or osteoporosis or just low bone density in General, you know, should I take the path that my doctor is prescribing or recommending for me? Because almost all people who are prescribed with low bone density are recommended by their doctor to get on one of these medications. And that's because for so long osteoporosis and osteopenia have been looked at, as Mira said, as kind of an irreversible disease. And we know now that it's not. We know now that it's a lifestyle disease. But yeah, so when they, when they're prescribed these things, there's a few different choices that they have. The bisphosphonates are kind of the most common one. And the problem with bisphosphonates, and we've outlined it pretty, pretty in depth in the book, there's several different reasons why you wouldn't necessarily want to take a bisphosphonate. I think let's start at the beginning.

And by the way, we're talking about things like Fosamax and I think Fosamax is the most popular one.

Right.

Actonel is actually really popular in Boniva. Those are probably the ones that we see the most reclassed.

Okay, Those are all, those are all bisphosphonates.

Bisphosphonates, correct. And the problem with all osteoporosis drugs, including bisphosphonates, is really there's a 10 year window at maximum. And really most medical professionals would suggest two to three, maybe five years that you can be on these drugs. So here's the idea. If I'm a 30 year old woman like Mira with advanced osteoporosis and I'm going to learn all the negative side effects, we're going to talk about, about these osteoporitic drugs. Then why would I want to get on them? Right. Okay, so you've got a 10 year window max and then you got to get off or you've got to switch.

Wait, wait, I want to stop there. When you say 10, 10 year window max, what do you mean?

Mean you can only be on the drug for a maximum of 10 years. Means you can't just get on the drug.

Some are only 18 months.

Yeah. Some are only 20. Yeah, 18, 24 months. Some have black box restrictions mandating that the maximum amount of time you can be on the drug is 24 months.

Meaning when they tested them on animals, should they have tested them on animals or. Some of them do not even have long term testing on anim animals and yet they're still given to humans. And most of these drugs have been Actually failed to pass in the European Union. When these drugs are taken, they have never. They have been given such short periods of time that you're allowed to take them because of the long term health implications.

Okay, like what?

Oh, like cancer.

Like, for example, bisphosphonates. Most people know when they take a bisphosphonate drug, you have to, like, stand up for a while afterwards because it is so harsh on your esophagus, which you might not think is so bad. Okay, so I have to stand up for two hours because I have. My esophagus is gonna get burnt when I'm taking this thing. But at the same time, you don't think that's gonna cause esophageal cancer when that happens. That has. That's like one of the deadliest types of cancer you can get. I think it's a 50% increased rate after someone's been on it for five years.

Holy cow.

Okay, so. So what about the actual bones themselves? Are they making the bones stronger?

No, that's the crazy thing.

That's the crazy thing. I mean, according to the British Medical Journal, they found that bisphosphonates are totally ineffective at preventing fractures. Bisphosphonates do produce visually denser, stronger bones. Okay, so that's not fake. You go to your DEXA scan, you're taking your medication, you're coming back with denser bone, but they are of less quality, they are more prone to fracture, and fracture is really the dangerous thing when it comes to osteoporosis. Remember that about 50%, 50% of people who. 50% of. I'm sorry, 25, 24% of all people who fracture bones in general fracture a hip. And the problem with that is that 24%. About 24% of the people who fracture a hip die within the first 12 months, that is, of the fracture. So fracturing is really the main concern of osteoporosis. And bisphosphonates make your bones more prone to fracture.

So bisphosphonates is kind of like a really strict. A really hard, thin piece of like a ruler, say a plastic ruler. You know, how would you snap a ruler? It snaps really, really fast, Right? That's what bisphosphonates does because it creates these microscopic cracks where there's. With these crystals that start forming in these cracks in your bone. And when it. When those crystals get in there, it appears that the DEXA scan is getting better. You appear to get stronger bones, but those cracks make it. So you snap like that ruler. So they're really, really dangerous.

Now, you talk a lot in the book about micronutrients, and of course, one that comes up a lot in the realm of bone density discussions is calcium. What would be the effect of a bisphosphonate on calcium?

Okay, unfortunately, it depletes your calcium levels. So that's the crazy thing. They give these drugs, okay? So people on average, especially people who have osteoporosis, are usually calcium deficient. And then they give you this drug that's supposed to tell you to increase your bone density, which on their own label, they're not supposed to give to anyone who's calcium deficient in the first place, but it actually depletes you further of calcium. And it's not just calcium. It's also your CoQ2 levels and your vitamin C levels and your vitamin E levels. And both your C and E also play a role in bone density building. People think that, like, it's only calcium, Magnesium, D, maybe K2 if they're lucky, they've heard of that. But all of these nutrients, every single one from A to Z, and we outline it really clearly in the book, every single nutrient plays a role. And in fact, there's certain forms of vitamin E that some of the tacatrienols that have actually been shown to be more effective than bisphosphonates at actually creating both.

It's really interesting thing that osteoporosis is this disease that we all know stems from, like Mira said, a deficiency in many different essential micronutrients. But calcium being kind of that pillar micronutrient that we all know that the body, the. The body is leaching the calcium from the bones. And yet everybody who's looked at this said that taking a bisphosphonate when you're deficient in calcium is so dangerous that you shouldn't even take the drug that it will make your condition worse. And that's. Again, we're going to talk about this later on. But bisphosphonates works by binding to calcium and magnesium and iron and copper and zinc and several minerals and making them an insoluble salt. That's how it works. And so you must take this drug at least, and we want you to take it hours away from any of these first food or any time when your body is going to be getting these essential micronutrients into it or supplements so that it won't have this effect otherwise. All these supplements that you're taking in to try to reverse your osteoporosis, you know, that is these Important minerals are just being inactivated by the very drug that you're taking to reverse this condition in the first place. So bisphosphonates are a tangled web of all kinds of problems, and that's actually.

Probably one of the better drugs. I mean, to be honest, that's probably one of the safer ones. Whereas that does the. Decreases your calcium levels. You have things like teriparatide with, like forteo, which is the name of the actual. What people probably have heard of as forteo. It's actually a teriparatide. As a type of drug. It is. But that one actually. Whereas the other one decreases your calcium. This makes you mega calcium overload. And magnesium depletes.

Hmm. Now, that teratiparatide isn't a bisphosphonate. Right. That's one of those ligand inhibitors you talk about.

Exactly. So that's another class of drugs. So there's a bunch of different classes of drugs, and they each play with your micronutrient levels in a different way, but they all come. There's not a good one out there. And that's the bad part about it is right now, there is not a decent drug out there for osteoporosis. And most of them are just trying to duplicate what you can do with your micronutrients that are cheap and free and effective and safe, where these are dangerous. And I mean, so much so they come with black box warnings.

Okay, so from what I understand, the bisphosphonates are actually attaching themselves to the bone matrix.

And basically affecting the replacement of old bone with new bone. So they're kind of reducing bone loss, but they're also inhibiting new bone formation. And that's the mechanism of action via which they work, and also via which they produce a lot of these side effects and. And even increase the risk of fracture, as you noted. But these ligand inhibitors, what's the mechanism of action via which they're working?

Okay, so these are the ones that are. So these work totally different than bisphosphonates. So these rank ligand inhibitors, they actually work very similarly to how Omega 3 works naturally in the body. So they couldn't. Obviously, you can't patent Omega 3, but what they did is they looked at the actions of Omega 3, and then they tried to kind of mimic it.

Reverse engineer.

Right. So denosumab, which is kind of like the main rank ligand inhibitor, it binds to the RANK ligand, the RANK L, and it prevents the rank L from doing its job, which is binding to the cell receptor of rank and activating It. That's basically what it does. So it is an inhibitor of the.

RANK L. Okay, so if you inhibit RANK L, you would basically be inhibiting osteoclasts.

Right.

Which would technically break down bone.

Right. You cannot create the osteoclast. So that makes sense. Right? If I stop that RANK L from being able to bind a rank, which then activates the production of osteoclasts, which break down bone, I should be able to stop the person from losing bone. Right. All we have is osteoblasts working and blasts build bone. But the problem is that RANK L does other things in the body, too. They also bind to receptor sites on your immune system. So while you're taking out the ability to activate these osteoclasts. Yes. You're also stopping your body's ability of creating immune cells in the long term, because those same rank Ls are supposed to stimulate that action. So they didn't think it through. And really, when you look at how Omega 3 works in the body, we start to see, oh, that's what they were trying to go for. We can achieve this in a natural way.

And as you alluded to, even though the bisphosphonate would actually affect something like your calcium bioavailability, these RANK ligand inhibitors, in addition to suppressing the immune system or altering immune system modulation, actually strip a different mineral. Magnesium.

That's correct. They cause low blood levels of magnesium, and that can be actually very dangerous, especially in a population who's already known to have low levels of magnesium, thus causing their osteoporosis in the first place. Wow.

Okay. So you get into a lot in the book about even more of the nitty gritties of these osteoporosis drugs. But then you also talk about some other things that you feel are culprits when it comes to bone density that I think people also may not be thinking quite as in depth about as you present in the book. For example, one is wheat. You know, I know that gluten goes back and forth, and some of these wheat gliadin proteins go back and forth in terms of whether or not they're harmful or not. But get into the interplay between wheat and bone density and why you guys have this entire section devoted to wheat specifically.

Right. So, you know, when we're talking about things in this book, we want to talk about exactly what they do to Bones, because, you know, there's a lot of ways if someone's trying to. I don't know. You know, not everything that is Bad for one person is bad for everybody. So whereas wheat, there's generally not a lot of real great positives about it. We really want to focus on what it does to your bones. So first it has oxalic acid, Oxalic acid leaches calcium, magnesium and iron. Then it has fittic acid, phytic acid leaches calcium, magnesium, manganese, copper, chromium, iron, zinc, niacin, and it also makes you utilize your vitamin D faster. So as you can see, just with those two antinutrients alone, we're leaching a lot of bone builders that we could otherwise be using. In fact, there are certain groups who eat a lot of different types of bread, like Chabadi, that have been found to have different bone related diseases simply due to their diet containing a lot of the sweet.

Right.

But then it goes further because wheat also contains lectins and trypsin inhibitors. And both of those antinutrients are sticky things that bind to your intestinal tract. And that puts all of your vitamins and your amino acids at risk. And remember, amino acids found in proteins, those are really important for bone building as well. So we don't want to be doing that to ourselves. And then you add in the gluten. And regardless of whether or not you're gluten sensitive, it's going to help. It's going to create that leaky gut situation when combined with the lectins and triptans in hers. And when you get leaky gut, you can't produce your vitamin K2 because that's where it's produced. And you want K2 because we'll go into later how necessary it is for bone health. And then you get to what the real problem is with specifically that people don't necessarily talk about. And that's how amylopectin A causes us to over secrete leptin. And what happens when you over secrete leptin for bones?

Yeah, I thought that was interesting because amylopectin A isn't something I've talked a lot before on the show. Can you discuss exactly what that is and its interplay between leptin and how that would specifically affect bone density?

Well, amylopectin A is that what causes the body to over secrete leptin. And that's that part of wheat that's not really talked about very much. And a lot of times people do like to use like a sourdough bread or fermentation or other waste that they can get rid of some of these other antinutrients, not just in wheat, but in all foods that would contain these nuts, seeds, weeds, everything, all those things. But when it comes to amylopectin A and the over secretion of leptin, that hormone that tells us when we're full, then that's the real problem when it comes to bones. Now granted everything else that Mira just stated, remember that when we're talking about osteoporosis or any disease that stems from a micronutrient deficiency. Our whole goal is to try to get your body to be as receptive as possible to absorb, absorbing them. So everything we do at cult nutrition kind of goes through that lens of how do we get the micronutrients into the body in the best way possible. And when we're talking about the wheat, then when we're talking about amylopectin A, then you, then that over secretion of leptin and what that leptin does to the body, specifically what it does to you not being able to build bone, is the problem with wheat, the problem with the amylopectin in wheat.

Okay, so I know a lot of people, especially the folks who for example use my, use my, my, my wife's slow fermented sourdough bread recipe which has gotten kind of popular of late, or folks who do things, you know, such as treat their, their legumes for example, which are also notorious anti nutrient containing type of compounds. They'll soak, they'll sprout, they'll ferment, they'll pre digest, they'll kind of try to deactivate.

A lot of these phytates and lectins and tannins and even the calcium oxalates, et cetera. What do you guys think about that type of approach, like that ancestral slow food approach of deactivating a lot of these compounds.

Bravo. When we traveled around the world and lived with tribes, they all did this naturally. I mean literally nobody had any dry place to put the crops. They leave them outside after they cut them down and then the next day when they wanted to use them, they were already sprouted. So that was just a natural thing that all of these ancestral communities we lived in just did naturally. Lectins are really durable though. So while it does help a lot to break down some of the other anti nutrients, that's probably going to be your hardest one to get rid of. So it's really good. You know, you can do high temperature food processing, digestive juices, enzymes, none of those things will degrade your lectins. It is best to sprout and soak and ferment, but you're just not going to get rid of all of them.

It sounds like it would be safe to say that if osteopenia or osteoporosis is an issue for you. Yeah, those type of ancestral food preparation methods are smart, but if you fall into that category, you should probably play it safe and even be careful with those.

Absolutely. And that's what it's all about, finding a little bit of balance and how at risk you are. For me, I steer very clear of certain things, even though I don't have it anymore. I just know that my body obviously reacted to a great extent to some of the things I was giving it.

Okay.

So we tell people as they're going through the rebuild your bones protocol to steer clear of these things or to have them as treats or occasion, not to something to include in their diet while they're going through the program, while they're really trying to achieve that bone growth, but later on adding a few of these things back in. Definitely do it. But definitely do it the way your wife is doing it, by making sure that you're sprouting and doing the proper method.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And you guys actually do discuss the Weston A. Price foundation in the book. And I think you get into sprouting and fermentation of things like chia and flaxseeds and nuts, et cetera. So you do give that a shout out in the book, particularly regarding your treatment of phytic acid and these phytates. But another one that comes up often. It actually surprised me in the book how you address this was so many people are kind of championing this idea that coffee causes bone demineralization or contributes to net full body acidity that might decrease bone mineral density. And I'm curious if you guys can kind of expound upon what your thoughts are on coffee and what the research is on coffee and bone mineral density.

Sure. So coffee, the real problem we're thinking about, let's look at one first, which is caffeine. And yes, caffeine has been shown to deplete slightly some micronutrients, specifically calcium and iron. But you can offset that amount of calcium that you're losing, literally by just putting in two tablespoons of dairy into your glass so that, you know that's a wash. You can definitely counteract that if you want to have your coffee. And then we started to look at it, we're like, okay, well, we know that it's super high in antioxidants. We know it's super healthy. Let's try to find some proof about what anyone really says about what happened. Well, how coffee affects bones, specifically. So we found a review of 32 observational studies that indicated that no overall negative effect of caffeine on bone health existed at all. Potentially negative effects on bone mineral density were only found in populations that already had low calcium or insufficient calcium intake or that drank over nine cups a day.

That's a lot of coffee.

Yes, it's probably too much coffee. And not only that. I mean, it's only if you're at risk of calcium deficiency. So if you don't have a calcium deficiency and you're drinking coffee, I mean, why not? There's so many amazing benefits to coffee.

So why not enjoy it?

Yeah, I mean, amazing benefits that have a direct effect on bone. It can reduce levels of C reactive protein, which is inflammation in the body. And anytime inflammation is that kind of root cause of so many issues, including. We will also want to reduce inflammation when it comes to bone health. It also helps to reduce leptin, again, back to leptin. And leptin is going to be that hormone that actually turns off your body's ability to produce osteoblasts and that which are the bone building cells. And it's the osteoblast that creates something called osteocalcin, which is going to be that transporter for calcium out of the arteries where it can be dangerous and into the bone. So, again, we want to do anything we can to drive those leptin levels down. And coffee helps to reduce that. So that first cup of coffee in the morning's really good for you.

Yeah, I drink coffee. I highly recommend our people drink coffee.

But organic.

Organic coffee, yeah.

I wasn't aware of the interplay between caffeine and leptin until you pointed it out in the book. You know, there is one person, Dr. Jack Cruz, who's somewhat controversial, but has made, amongst other things, quite popular his kind of leptin control diet, which involves quite a bit of cold thermogenesis. And I have actually found cold therapy, morning cold workouts. You know, I was just outside before this, doing my aerosol bike workout in about 38 degrees here at 7 o' clock in the morning in my driveway. And I've worn my Dexcom continuous blood glucose monitor and found that that type of cold exposure for a good 20 to 30 minutes in the morning keeps my blood glucose actually below 60 until the late afternoon. So it's incredibly effective for blood glucose. But Also is effective at stabilizing appetite and lowering these levels of leptin. I usually combine it with caffeine or with a cup of coffee, but I was unaware up to this point that coffee also has that effect on lept. So it's. It's very good to know. And I think you'll probably make a lot of people happy knowing that their daily cup or cups of coffee aren't really causing any significant amounts of bone mineral or bone demineralization. So that's. That's good to know. But I think the. The acidity thing is something we need to unpack even more because the other thing you'll hear a lot about is this idea of not just coffee, but a general overall net metabolically acidotic diet. You know, like red meat, dairy, coffee, alcohol, etc. Being a pretty big issue when it comes to bone minerals. So can you guys kind of unpack this whole acid versus alkaline diet thing and how that could or could not affect bone density?

Yeah, so it's a myth. We. I can't. Okay. So getting ready to launch this book, we spent a lot of time in the osteoporosis room and on Facebook and other forums. And one of the things that I heard over and over and over again was I can't do all these because I'm on a alkaline diet. So the alkaline diet, obviously, is one that is trying to remove those acid foods that you just mentioned and try and eat things that are more like peas and.

Fruits and stuff like that. Vegetables, fruits, nuts, spices, seeds, all those types of foods. And they tell you it's because if you have foods that have acid in it, you're going to leach the calcium out of your bones and it's going to cause osteoporosis, and it just isn't true. So there's a lot of reasons why your body likes acid. For example, you need an acidic environment in order to absorb many of your micronutrients.

When someone says they're going to take an antacid, again, I cringe because all they're doing is causing more stomach upset and more GERD to occur. The problem is actually one of too little acid for most people and not too much.

Yeah, this was one of the big. I think this is one of the big things that kind of surprised us when we saw. Because if you have osteoporosis or low bone density, it isn't long if you're on the Internet until somebody comes up and, you know, somebody emails you and says, hey, you should get on this alkaline diet. Because as, as you know, the alkaline diet is going to help to preserve your calcium levels. You need that for your osteoporosis. And it all sounds real good until you really start to look into the science of it.

I don't think the people out there who are trying to promote this type of a diet are trying to do anything bad. They're trying to look at it and say, hey, these foods that are acid causing. There has been some research that acid causing foods do increase calcium loss in the urine. What they didn't know look at and that soundand they look at that and then they say, oh, okay, so this gotta be good for me. If I want to try to retain my calcium and build my bone, then the foods that are more alkaline have to be good for me. And of course, these foods are also fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, foods that have always that people are told are good for them. So it all kind of makes sense. The problem is the research doesn't hold up. The research shows that acid based foods, again because they help with the absorption of calcium and magnesium and the B vitamins and other minerals we absorb, absorb more calcium when we have an acidic environment in our gut. So it kind of counterbalances any loss that we may see in the urine. The other big glaring issue here is that bonus 50% protein by volume. A lot of times people think that, you know, when our bodies are stealing calcium from our bones, it's somehow kind of sneaking up there and strategically pulling little pieces of calcium out of the bone. That's not how it's working. It's literally tearing down the structure in order to get at that calcium. And that part of that structure is that protein matrix. And when we have bone loss like this and we want to rebuild our bones, we need a certain amount of protein in order to do that. And we know that now. In fact, some of the greatest scientists in the field of bone in general have done pretty amazing experimentation looking at people who are sufficient in their calcium and vitamin D, which everybody agrees upon, must be in place in order for anything to happen. And then looking at what would happen if we followed a more alkaline based diet where it had lower protein intakes or a higher protein or more acid forming diet. And the results are clear. We see bone mineral density loss when we don't have enough protein, even though calcium and magnesium and vitamin D was sufficient. And we see huge increases in bone mineral density when that protein meets what is called the ideal protein intake ratio.

It's really hard to get that message across to this community. And we are trying our best, but it's really, you know, you think in all the. All this time, like, someone else would be screaming this from the chandeliers, like, we are, because we are. But it really is that important. It's the exact opposite of what these people are trying to do by limiting their protein. And so it's so key. We actually go through the book about how to find it for your weight because it's different for every person.

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Yeah, I talked about this on the show a couple of years ago that, you know, not only are some of the things you guys just highlighted true, but also, I mean, a big part of this is just basic respiration. Right? Right. The blood passes through the lungs. That regulates the blood ph. When you exhale carbon dioxide, that's producing your kidneys. And when you exhale, you're removing a lot of excess acidity. And then the carbon dioxide is also used to make the bicarbonate that buffers the blood. So, I mean, the body has some pretty, pretty good homeostatic mechanisms built in to be able to handle an alkaline or an acidic state. And as you noted, I think this is something just for, from a pure, pure semantic standpoint, people should remember, what are proteins? Well, they're amino.

Acids.

Right. And that's an acid. An amino acid, and then another.

One.

DNA. Yeah, yeah, DNA. What is a deoxyribonucleic acid and then fatty acids. You talk about fatty acids in the book, and that's a huge part of the book. I did not expect to see so much about omega, omega 3 and omega 6 ratios in here in the detail to which you dive into them. Soso, can you get into the omega 6, omega 3 ratio issue and what that has to do with bone density and some of the important considerations for omega fatty.

Acids. There are several things that I think have been really downplayed when it comes to what makes a diet healthy in general. Just across the the board, protein increase, or having enough protein, specifically having enough of our essential amino acids, certainly is one of those. And the other kind of giant out there is Omega 6 to Omega 3. When it comes to not only inflammation, let's start with that. So Omega 6 is the essential fat that has a tendency to cause inflammation in the body. Now, please don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that inflammation is bad. We need inflammation. It's kind of like yin and yang. Bang. It's a push and a Pull. There's a certain amount of inflammation that is absolutely essential for the body. That's why Omega 6 is an essential fatty acid. Omega 3 has an opposite effect, an anti inflammatory response. Most individuals, most people who have studied nutrition and medicine will agree that a ratio of, somewhere between a one to one ratio of omega six to Omega three and a four to one ratio of omega six to Omega three is, is the optimal ratio that we should have in our bodies for health. That's going to allow us to have enough of the inflammation and enough of the anti inflammation to reduce overall body inflammation and.

Disease. It's what our ancestors would have eaten in their diet.

Right? However, our omega 6 to omega 3 ratio out there, even in a quote unquote healthy diet, might fall anywhere between maybe a 15 to 1 to 24 to 1 ratio. So we have a huge problem with inflammation. Now inflammation is a bad enough problem, but most people say, well, if you have high omega 6 levels, it's simple, just take an omega 3 or eat foods with higher omega 3. The first problem with that scenario is omega 6 competes with omega 3 for absorption. They battle each other. So think of it. If you've got 24 players on one team on a field and you've got two over on the other side, just statistically, which side's going to win no matter what the battle is, right? The 24 over the 2. The same thing happens when you've got it or a 1. We got a 24 to 1 ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 and they're competing for absorption. That omega 3 is going to have very little chance of getting in. Doesn't matter how much fish oil you take. You know, it's, you have to, you have to take an entire bottle.

Of fish oil over those 24 other.

Guys on the other side just to get it. So, so, so understanding that the first step to reducing inflammation levels in the body and allowing some of that Omega 3 to get in is to drive down your Omega 6 level to that at least 4 to 1 ratio. That's the first step. And that's easy to do because you can take a blood work and you can find out what your ratio is and you can work towards reducing foods that contain high amounts of Omega 6 and at the same time building up your Omega 3.

Levels. Unfortunately, a lot of the foods that people think are healthy and a lot of paleo foods, a lot of primal foods, a lot of natural foods are really high in Omega 6. Things that we might think are.

Good for us, I thought that was Interesting about how you say, like the Paleo diet, for example, which a lot of people are on, including a lot of people listening, is skewed heavily towards omega 6 fatty acids or an improper omega 6 omega 3.

Ratio. It's crazy. I mean, the reason that we first started realizing this is because. Because we used to take an Omega 3 off the counter. You know, it wasn't our product. We used to take it. And you know, we eat pre Paleo and we were eating, you know, making almond bread every now and again, but only as a snack. We're not even heavily into nuts or seeds or anything like that. We started to decide to test ourselves our omega 3 ratios and we were like, wow, we stink. Like, how is this even possible? So we started examining the different foods and we were shocked to find out, like, for example, you know, if you have one tablespoon or what is it like, you know, one tablespoon of olive oil, you'd need two fish oil capsules even to counteract, to get to a one to one balance just for that one tablespoon you ate. Well, most people don't have one tablespoon. First of all, even in a salad dressing, sunflower seeds, you want to have three and a half ounces of sunflower seeds. It's a 473 to 1.

Ratio. Yeah. You have a very compelling example in the book. You use.

An avatar named Wilma, a typical Paleo dieter, and you go through her diet of Cobb salad and bacon and avocado and chicken thigh and avocado oil and olive oil. And then you highlight how once you do all the math, which is very simple to do using any nutrition calculator, you rush at a 15 to 1 ratio of that typical Paleo diet. Right? 15 to 1, omega 6 to omega 3. And what was really shocking to me was that in order to counteract that, you've got to take over 34,000 milligrams of an omega 3 fatty acid supplement to bring you back into.

Ratio. Isn't that nuts? And when you read hers, honestly, Ben, it sounded healthy.

Right? Oh, yeah, at first. I mean, avocados and olive oil and seeds and nuts. Yeah, it sounds amazingly healthy. But yeah, it was very interesting. Now, I know you guys, you guys have a supplements company, you sell a fish oil, you have a really good fish oil. But I mean, if you were to kind of describe how Wilma could, from a food based standpoint, make adjustments, would it just be adding in things like sardines and mackerel and herring instead of say like beef or having more salmon or what would things look like.

Exactly? Well, it's always twofold. So step one is reducing the foods that have high omega 3 omega 6 levels. So take out the nuts, take out the seeds, those things you don't need at all. Find an oil that is not an avocado or not an olive oil. Find things that are lower in that Omega 6. And the second is to drive up your Omega 3 by any means you can, which is choosing proteins like a salmon, like the.

Sardines. Mackerel's very.

High. Yeah. So it's really twofold. And this is where it becomes so important is because for bone building, your omega 3 to omega 6 to omega 3 ratio is key. It's literally going to do exactly what those other drugs we talked about earlier do. And it's going to tell your cells whether or not they should become fat cells or bone building osteoblast. So it's just basically it's up to you. You can. It's the coolest thing because I actually want to do a blog on this. We haven't had time to do it. I want to call it like how to train your fat cells to build bone. Because it's literally, it's you telling your body, you know what, I want more bone building, I want less bone breaking and I don't want as much fat on my tush. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna make sure my omega 3 ratios are in the right ratio, I'm gonna merely up them and I'm gonna watch my omega 6 to omega 3.

Ratio. Now what are your thoughts on some of these omega 3 rich plant based oils like flaxseed oil or chia seeds or something like that? Would that be good to include or are you concerned about the inefficiency of the conversion of the Omega 3 Ala into bioavailable EPA and.

DHA? Yeah, that's really the big problem for vegan vegetarians. Anybody doesn't want to use a fish oil. But in the book we do go over kind of what we feel would be the best way for them to get their EPA and dha. So you know, first of all, a plant based like a flax seed or chia seed oil is going to be your best bet because the body will be able to convert a certain amount of that to the epa, that first elongation. And women actually can do it, but at a much higher rate than men can. But either way you'll be able to get some EPA in that way in order for the dha in order for you to get the DHA that we want you to get, I wouldn't necessarily wait for that conversion of the EPA to the DHA because that conversion is very low and very inefficient in most people. In that way, I would just go for like a dha, an algae product. They have those out there now. So I would take two separate ones like a flax seed or chia seed in the morning and then a DHA at night. Again, remember, EPA and DHA compete for absorption the same way Omega 6 and Omega 3 do. So you don't want to take. This is why when people are talking about fish oil or krill oils or other kinds of oils out there, they typically recommend taking one that has higher EPA than DHA because there's a direct competition between the two. So research has shown, obviously as the gap gets bigger and bigger between EPA and dha, you get more EPA getting in when you have less dha. Right. That's just common sense. Obviously, if you can separate the EPA and the DHA completely, which is kind of what a lot of the research is showing for all kinds of issues. Some issues do better with just epa, some with just dha. But for absorption in general, the more we can separate them, the better we can be and we can get rid of that competition.

Altogether. Yeah, our vegans take a. For their dha, they take an algin for the epa, they can take the.

Flax. Okay, so you've got flax. So flaxseed oil would be your separate source of EPA if you're vegan. And then you could take a separate DHA supplement like LG and that would be a good 1:2.

Combo. Yes, exactly. We always say to take your DHA at night. We do that for the vegans and non vegans.

Alike.

Why? For timing. It's just been shown to be better absorbent and better have sleep. Some. There's some sort of sleep benefits. So we put the DHA at.

Night. How about, by the way, just, just kind of a random thought because you guys talk about calcium a lot in the book. What about calcium? Is there an ideal time of day that one would want to take?

Calcium? Yeah, I think calcium, the best thing that we found is right before exercise, if you want to stop your body from kind of leaching calcium or looking for calcium, drawing that calcium into the blood to kind of keep that tight calcium ratio in the blood that the body wants to keep, you can take it right before your exercise. That's. That's the best time.

Okay. And that's specifically to offset some of the bone leaching that would be caused by exercise.

Right? Absolutely. And so if you exercise in the afternoon, that's when it has to go. So, you know, put it there. Now, most, a lot of people don't realize that you can't absorb calcium in any quantity, so you can only absorb up to 500 at a time. A lot of people with osteoporosis will be taking it twice a day trying to get the extra in it. They're not going to do it through food. So we always say take one calcium in the morning and then take the other one before your exercise if you're gonna exercise in the.

Afternoon. Okay, got it. Now, another huge, huge part of your book is of course about micronutrient deficiencies. And you actually say in the book it's one of the most widespread and dangerous health conditions that we currently face. Now, obviously, many multivitamins are something that someone would take to replace a lot of these micronutrients nutrients. Is that something that you guys recommend, just basically kind of like a shotgun approach to replace a lot of these? And if so, what would some of the considerations be? If someone is gonna take a multi. And I realize you've got a lot of research on this, and I'm fine if you take a deep dive, but if someone were gonna use a multi to replace micronutrients, what kind of things are they gonna want to be thinking.

About? Oh, my goodness. That's a, that's a big.

One. That's fine. We got.

Time. Okay. Why? We think it's the most widespread and dangerous health condition of the 21st century. We say that because, based on published research, it shows that more than 93% of Americans are deficient in at least one essential micronutrient. And there isn't anything else in the world where 93% of Americans are affected by anything. Now, that's widespread. But the dangerous part is because almost every single health condition or disease out there has at its roots somewhere a deficiency in micronutrients as a causative effect of that health condition. In fact, most of our modern day health conditions are what we call long latency deficiency diseases, micronutrient deficiency diseases. So, you know, if we have a chromium deficiency and that's affecting our blood sugar regulation because of that chromium deficiency, we have a danger. Or if we have a deficiency in calcium D and magnesium and we get osteoporosis, that's the danger. So because it's kind of at the base of all these health conditions. That's why we want you to become what we call micronutrient sufficient. And of course, yes, we do have a supplement company. Yes, we do believe in supplementation. But in our books, I think we are very clear that first we want you to get your micronutrients through your food. We also want you to look at your lifestyle habits and change any of those things that you can or improve them so that you don't lose the micronutrients that, that you put into it. But we are also very clear that all research, there has never been one published research paper ever in the history of published research papers to show that you can, through food alone, get your minimum amounts of required essential micronutrients through diet. And that's just the truth. And so since because of that, we do believe in supplementation now you mentioned kind of a shotgun approach and that's what the multivitamin really is. Since its inception and since its invention back 80 years ago, it has been that kind of thing where they threw kind of all the essential vitamins and minerals into one formulation, so to speak, the one a day type things out there. And they just tell you all these are important. They've all been shown by research to be good for you. So just take it in the morning and your body will absorb what it can. And most medical professionals say it's mostly a waste. And Forbes magazine and Time magazine came out with with front cover page, front cover reports the death of the multivitamin. They don't work. And the reason why they don't work is because they don't work. Nutritional science knows that minerals and vitamins compete in the gastrointestinal tract for receptor sites. This is why there are such things as time release mechanisms and chelated minerals. Right. So we know that. What are you going to.

Say? I don't know. I was going to say that, you know, when we first started, the reason we got so in love with micronutrients and we totally geek out on these is because the fact that when we were trying to cure my osteoporosis, this was all we had. All we knew at the time was that I was supposed to take extra calcium. So we started looking at calcium. We were like, oh wow, calcium. Then you need magnesium, and then you need this one, you need that one. We end up realizing that every single nutrient was needed. So yes, a multivitamin is a great place to start if you're trying to do it simply to get them all in. But like Jason was saying we realized very quickly that multivitamins don't work. And what we did is we created a system called the ABCs of optimal supplementation. So it's A for absorption, B for beneficial quantities and forms, C is for that micronutrient competitions, and S is for micronutrient synergies. And those were the four flaws that we identified in multivitamins. And in the book and in all of our research we keep outlining and we get a little bit more specific every single time about how you shop for products based on the abc. So we've got complete checklists on them because every single. Those are the four things that you really have to consider from absorption, beneficial quantities and forms, competitions and.

Synergies. Okay, got it. Now they actually tested, I think you went into some of the testing done on a lot of popular multivitamins, you know, like Kirkland and gnc, et cetera, and specifically found some issues, I believe, with either the absorption or the disintegration time or something going on with a lot of these commercially available multivitamins. What exactly was going on with.

Those? Yeah, so that was a really good research study that they did. And they took 51 just over the counter supplements. And as you mentioned, they were things like gnc. Mega man was one of them, also Swiss one. And there was, I think there was even Kirkland, Costco's formula was among them. And they just wanted to see, hey, let's just see if these vitamins will disintegrate within the allotted time window, which was a 20 minute time window. So that when you take a supplement and it goes into your stomach and of course your acidic environment in the stomach is supposed to help to break down these tablets and capsules. And they just wanted to see if they would even break down in that 20 minute time window at all. And it turned out that 51% of them, or more than half, didn't disintegrate within the timeframe and some didn't disintegrate at all. Literally none. And we know this is true because, you know, oftentimes these one a day pills are called bedpan pills. We see them in septic tanks backing the septic tanks up.

We actually had one of our book editors one year, one of our books talk to us and say, hey, I just read the story that you, I think we call it the scoop on the poop or something. And one the of of our earlier books, anyway, she was like, my parents actually had a person out to the house because their septic tank was so Backed up. And it turned out that it had been almost like 10 years of both of her parents taking their one a day vitamins literally down there. And even RIDX did not disintegrate it. So that's pretty crazy. But yeah, so that's what the, that's what the. And that's what this research showed as well. If you can't, if you're disif, your multivitamin doesn't disintegrate. It doesn't really matter what is in it, how much of it or what forms. If you can't, if it doesn't disintegrate at all, you can't absorb it. And so absorption is our first step to getting the micronutrients that you need. And that's why Nutrients at its inception was a powder formulation. We just wanted to bypass that ability to or its inability to disintegrate and make sure that the micronutrients we were trying to provide for people were able to get into the receptor.

Site. So you guys use a powder versus a capsule to avoid like a lot of the disodium hydrogen, hydrogen phosphate and calcium stearate and you know, sodium starch and, and all the type of things that would normally interfere with proper disintegration. And, and based on that, can you just like take a multivitamin powder like you're. What you say your guys is called.

Nutrients? Ours is called nutrients.

Yes. Okay, so can you just take that and dump the powder straight into your mouth or do you need to mix it with.

Water? We do not recommend that people dump it straightly in their mouth. Although we do have a bunch of guys in the military who, who seem to think that that's the way to take. Doesn't work for me. Some of them come flavored natural flavors and stevia and xylitol to sweeten. Some of them are unflavored, unflavored at all. And it comes both those. We did now this year come out with a capsule as well. It took us that long to find a capsule that we liked for its disintegration. So we tested, we wanted to make sure it would disintegrate in water. And unless because not everyone has enough stomach acid. So that was really important to us. But we did finally make it in a capsule this year for people on the go and stuff like.

That. Okay. And one thing I wanted to ask you guys about was obviously a lot of vitamins are water soluble and get excreted pretty quickly. Would that make a case for needing to. If you're Gonna take a multivitamin, like doing it multiple times during the day. Or can you just do something like this once in the morning or once in the evening, for.

Example? Well, you know, I think it does make a case for it. I mean, because certain vitamins are excreted within, let's say a 12 hour period and it really depends on your metabolism, what you're doing and what have you. But let's say they are discreted within a 12 hour period. Then you're kind of without that micronutrient for the other 12 hours. Now again, you're eating right, so you've got food going in and hopefully you're eating maybe three or four times during the day. So you are getting your nutrients through food. But yeah, that's one of the reasons why we want to have an AM and PM formula so that you could put certain water soluble vitamins in both. So you could theoretically have.

That. That falls under the beneficial quantities category. Yeah, we always look at it and I always tell the story. It is kind of, I would say it's kind of like wearing a condom half the time. Like, do you really, do you want to take the risk? I mean, I prefer to make sure I have what I need all the time, that I need.

It. I just wear, I just wear half a condom all the time. That's my.

Approach. That's different also. I haven't seen that done. But yeah, I just, you know, it's, it's beneficial quantities. It's making sure that what you need is there for your body when you need.

It. Okay, what about form forms? Because you know, there's all the different forms of vitamin A. You know, I had researcher Barry Tan on the show several months ago and he was talking about how so many vitamin E supplements are flawed because they're just basically the tocopherol and not the tocotrienol form when it comes to a lot of the forms. Because you guys have pages upon pages in the book of the flawed forms of things like vitamin K or you know, or copper or iron, etc. That you find in a multi. In your opinion, even though there's a ton in the book, if you could name just like two or three biggies when it comes to the lion's share of the multivitamins out there having the wrong form of a specific vitamin or mineral, what would be some of the biggest things for people to look out.

For? Well, I think for everybody and especially for bone health, but for everyone, because remember when calcium, calcium must be carboxylated by vitamin K2 in order to take it out of the arteries where it can cause arteriosclerosis and damage and into the bone where it can keep strong bone. So because that's a concern for everyone, I would say first of all, most Maltese or most supplements don't contain K2 in general, even if they do contain K1. But what new research is showing is that vitamin K2, when in formulation with an alkaline mineral like calcium or magnesium, like it is in a multivitamin or a bone supplement, degrades extremely quickly. That alkaline mineral degrades it to the point where it literally has lost almost all of its potency within a few months of production. And remember, a lot of these multivitamins or supplements have two or three year shelf lives. So by the time you get has degraded to the point where your body, there isn't any more potency to it. I think that was one of the, the big ones that we even fell prey to when we first started to create a multivitamin. Because this, it's called K2 Vital Delta. It's a relatively new patented product. But what they do is they microencapsulize that K2 in such a way that it protects it from that alkaline environment and it doesn't disintegrate. And you can put it into formulations where they put K2 like with calcium and magnesium and you don't have that problem. I think that's one of the big ones. And we of course changed our formulation immediately to include that.

Form. And I love the fact that you brought the vitamin E because that's one of the things we do. We have all eight forms in our product because we totally agree there is, it's, it's a wasted product when you only have one form of.

Eight. It's the DL tocopherol. That's a synthetic form a lot of manufacturers use.

Now. Absolutely. And that's. First of all, it's been shown to have negative health effects, including cancer. Yeah. And it's the only. I mean, basically there's eight family members and they're all equal. They are all now being studied individually for all their amazing benefits. So yeah, making sure that you have something that has all eight forms in there is.

Key. Also, what would be the best form of calcium specifically to look.

For? You know. Okay, so calcium is one of those, we mentioned earlier that you need an acidic environment if you're going to absorb calcium specifically without food. And of course we don't want you to ever take our multivitamin or any multivitamin really with food because of what we call the micronutrient competitions, the competitions between other micronutrients. So if you took your food and then you take your micronutrient or vitamin.

You'Re going to fall prey to some of these competitions. So because of that, because we want you to take it on an empty stomach, we like an acidic form like calcium citrate or calcium malate, you could do that. But what we've now included in our powder forms is the type that's closest to bone and that's the calcium potassium phosphate citrate form, which includes the phosphate and potassium. With the citrate form it's easy to absorb and it has that phosphate that you find in bone as well. That's a relatively unknown form of calcium. But. Butbut a good calcium citrate is good as.

Well. Now to my understanding, calcium will degrade that vitamin K2 you just talked about. So you can't take calcium and vitamin K2 at the same time.

Right? Well, you can if your product contains that K2 vital delta form. So if you have K2 vital delta, it can be in the same formula with calcium and magnesium. But if you have any other form of K2 in with calcium magnesium, they've tested product after product after product after product and none of the K2 is actually there anymore. It degrades that.

Rapidly. Yeah. We should be clear though, you can take K2, any form of K2, not the K2 vital delta with calcium. It's not going to have. There won't be a competition for the receptor site in the gut. We just don't want it to sit in formulation with.

It. Yeah, okay, that makes sense. I mean you guys have, have like, I think it's two whole chapters that gets into all these different considerations when it comes to absorption and when it comes to competition. So I really would recommend folks pick up the book and familiarize yourself with those. And like I mentioned, the Carltons have, have a supplements company and they formulate. You guys sent it up to me and I'm, I'm going to do a pre and post test. You sent me your omega 3ampm and your multi am pm and I'm gonna, I'm gonna be trying those out and doing some tests just to see if it changes anything for me in terms of micronutrients. And by the way, I should ask you guys this. Do you like that the spectra cell analysis for micronutrients as like a good micronutrient analysis for a lab or do you have another lab that you like if someone were gonna test their.

Micronutrients? No, I think we found that Spectracel is the best because it gives us kind of an across the board of the micronutrients that we're looking at. And it tests micronutrients from a different perspective, too. It doesn't just test what's in the blood. It tests how the body is responding, the white blood cells, and how they're responding based on your micronutrient level. So it looks at it from a slightly different way. I think that the Spectracel is a good test. It's the one that we.

Recommend. Yeah, there's dangers in taking the regular blood test from your doctor's office that we do go over in the book. Certain things can cause them to appear very wacky. I mean, if you have inflammation in your body at that time that you might not even know that you're coming down with something, some of your levels may appear far too low, which may then make you over, you know, take an extra supplement that you might not.

Need. Wait, like. Like what? What would be an example of.

That? B12. B12 is one of the examples of that. So, for example. Yeah, you just, you know, you don't know when you go to take your blood test if there's inflammation in your body that could be affecting the way that the nutrients look. The other one is really very common, is calcium. And nine times out of 10, we start working with somebody and they say, I went to see my doctor and my calcium levels were magnificent, not deficient. And then we say, okay, that's great. Let's go take a Spectracell test. And they come back and they have extremely low calcium. And then they go get a DEXA scan, and they already have osteoporosis that they didn't know they had. The reason being is that everyone's blood, you know, your blood wants to maintain a calcium magnesium balance at all times. And so it's going to do what it has to in order to get that calcium to help you breathe, help you move your muscles for all these different functions. So it keeps pulling it and pulling it and pulling it from your bones. So where you might go to the doctor and you might look like you've got great calcium levels. Yeah, you got great calcium levels, but now you got weak.

Bones. Yeah.

Yeah. It's a lot to think about. And probably one of the more shocking things in the book was the effects of doing something like putting a phone in your pocket on hip bone density. I'd never seen that before. You know, I knew it affected sperm quality, and I knew that the EMFs are potentially problematic for overall cell membrane function, but they're actually having an effect on bone density, it.

Appears. Absolutely. They found out that people who carry it in their hip pocket have reduced bone meal density in that one.

Hip. It was mostly men, and it.

Was mostly, well, men who they were testing. Yeah, because you see all these guys walking around with them on their hips. We tell everyone, please, take it out, put it in a bag, put it in a purse, put it away at night. First of all, yes, it's going to directly affect your bone mineral density that way. It's also going to change the intracellular calcium levels, which affects your free radical levels, which then reduces your antioxidants that you should be using to build bone. And beyond that, it also really affects your sleep pattern. So put it away at night. Because sleep is one of those big indicators of how your bones are doing. If you have poor sleep habits, you likely have reduced bone mineral density as.

Well. Yeah, that's something that's, that's important to note. And just so folks understand, you have these calcium channels that are affected by non native emf, such as a cell phone, and that elevates your intracellular calcium. When you elevate your intracellular calcium, that's the point at which you make yourself more susceptible to free radical damage. So if anything, that again, makes the case for doing things like, like hormetic activities that increase your body's own ability to be able to quench free radicals, like cold and heat exposure and exercise and sunlight, et cetera. But then also, especially when you're exposed to higher levels of WI fi and other forms of emf, the consumption of some form of antioxidants help to quench some of those free.

Radicals. Absolutely. Well said. Bravo. I love all those.

Opportunities.

Well, the book is really, really great. Like I mentioned, I especially like, for those of you listening in, if you get the book, you really should pay attention to these sections. The section on what we just got done talking about mineral and micronutrient competition and how different multivitamins are absorbed and some of the things you really need to look for in a multivitamin. And then the book is just chock full of a bunch of other strategies, like Mira was saying, saying at the beginning of this show, over 40 different strategies for addressing osteoporosis. I should mention that Mira and Jason also wrote an article for BenGreenfieldFitness.com that I'll link to about seven really, really good ways to build bone density. And I'm going to link to my previous podcast with them, their book, rich Food, Poor Food, their new book rebuild you'd Bones. That article, their fish oil supplement, their multivitamin, pretty much everything you need. I'm gonna put all that over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com rebuild your bones. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Rebuild your bones. So that being said, Mira and Jason, anything else you want to throw in there or share with people before I let you.

Go? Well, yeah, I want to say too, I think you'll have a link for a really special quiz that we created and people love. This is called our multivitamin stack up quiz and you'll have a link to it. I think over there in the rebuild you'd bone section you were just talking about. And what they can do is the individual can take their multivitamin or one that they're thinking about taking. We ask them, I think around 30 questions about it. They fill in the information and we give them a huge multi page report about the pros and the cons. We go over everything from the absorption pathways to competitions to forms and quantities. So it gives them really, it's our best way to kind of show you and let them know what's right about their multivitamin they're taking now and what could be wrong with it as.

Well. Okay, and the other thing I just want to bring up is we have a great launch going on with the book and it's going to be for the life of the book. It's a forever gift to you. Anyone who purchases it. If they come over through your links to our Rebuild you'd Bones center, they get over $500 in coupons towards things like water filters and great home cleaning products and skin cleaning products and supplements and other spectracell tests and osteogenic loading places like Osteostrong is giving away two free.

Visits. Oh yeah, John Jacquesha. Okay, so that would be if they, if I put the link in the show notes for them to go buy it from your site versus Amazon, they're going to get all those kind of.

Goodies? Nope, they could buy it from Amazon. They can buy it anywhere. And then they just come to our site and they enter their receipt and they get all the goodies. We're not even selling the.

Book. Okay, cool. I'll put all that in there for you guys@BenGreenfieldFitness.com rebuild your bones. Well, Mira and Jason, thank you so much for coming on the show again. And maybe I'll have you back again in what, like seven years so we can keep our, our, our string going here. And yeah, just thanks so much for coming on, for sharing all this stuff with us and for writing this.

Book. Thank you so much for having us and giving us a platform to be able to talk about this. We're so excited that this information can get out there. You know, it's not just people with osteoporosis. It's anybody who wants to have the strong bones moving forward and prevent this deadly disease. So we want to get this information out there. And like you said, even if you don't, I think you're going to find a lot of great information on supplements and lifestyle things that will help you become healthier, even if you're not interested in bone health right.

Now.

Awesome. Just.

Thanks. Very.

Cool. Really appreciate.

It. All right, folks. Well, I'm Ben Greenfield, along with Mira and Jason Kelton signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com Rebuild your.

Bones. Have a fantastic week.

Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes, use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.