Mike says he exercises and eats clean but feels constantly sluggish. Ben Greenfield points to mineral deficiencies, heavy metal exposure from farming chemicals, or air pollution as likely culprits. He recommends testing for toxins or trying supplements like magnesium, vitamin D, and CoQ10 while checking your environment.
Welcome to the top 10 questions on diet, fitness, and nutrition. This is question number two. And question number two.
Is from listener Mike. And he says, I feel like my body is a complete mystery. I exercise consistently with a combination of cardiovascular intervals, resistance training, and aerobic exercise. I, I eat primarily vegetables, fruits, lean meats, seeds, and nuts. Despite these healthy changes, I feel sluggish and fatigued. I'm constantly sick, I have no mental focus, and I'm losing productivity in my busy job. Is there something I am missing? Great question, Mike. A lot of people deal with these type of issues where they're living what they think is a healthy lifestyle, but they're still struggling with their body feeling it's operating at 100%. So you need to think a little bit more about perhaps going beyond some of the foods that you're eating. The reason for that is a lot of the foods that we eat nowadays have been exposed to modern industrial agricultural practices. And what that means is that the soil might be leached of minerals. It might have more toxins present. Your vegetables, your fruits might have more herbicides, more pesticides, more of an ability to generate what's called free radical formation within your body, and that can actually be damaging to your metabolism, and it can make you feel sluggish and fatigued and give you some of the feelings that you describe in this question. And what I would recommend that you do is there are tests that you can get to look at the presence of heavy metals in your bodies. There are tests that you can get to look at the presence of toxins. And usually what these tests do is they give or they have you give a blood sample or hair, hair sample or some sort of tissue sample. Hair is usually the easiest way to go, and you'll actually be able to look and see if there are some deficiencies going on or the presence of some toxins in your diet. The other thing that you could do if you don't want to get tested is you could just look into supplementing with some of the common things that people tend to be deficient in. Some of the top ones you want to think about, for example, would be vitamin D. That's a big one, especially if you live in northern climates. Magnesium is another big one. And you can fix that with something as simple as a topical magnesium oil. Iodine or iodide is another thing that you can look into supplementing with. Coenzyme Q10 is a big one. And then finally some sort of omega 3 fatty acid. Those are kind of some of the things that I work into the diet. People come to me asking about problems similar to yours. So look into supplementing some of the real foods that you're eating with some things that you may not be getting from those real foods. And then you can also just look into your environment. Are you running next to busy highways where you're getting lots of industrial pollutants sucked into your lungs, into your bloodstream? Are you living close to a high power source, like a big power line that's putting a lot of electromagnetic radiation out? Are you pressing your nose up against the microwave when you're cooking your oatmeal? Just think about some of the things that you might be exposing your body to from an environmental toxins standpoint, a pollution standpoint or radiation standpoint. Keep plugging away. You're doing a lot of the right things, but yeah, there are a few extra things that you could be doing. So that was our response to question number two in this top ten video series on exercise, diet, nutrition, lifestyle, and a host of other questions that I get over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com thanks, Mike.
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