Ben Greenfield podcast 222

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Podcast # 222 from http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2012/12/episode-222-what-is-the-best- way-to-track-your-heart-rate-variability/ [o:oo:00.0] Introduction: In today’s episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast, what is the best way to track your heart rate variability? Also, what is glutathione, the least amount of exercise necessary for good health, how to minimize stress from travel, how and when to swim with a snorkel, how to deal with the foot neuroma, and how antacids and ADHD medication affect athletes. Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon and wellness advice from the top fitness experts in the nation. So whether you’re an Ironman triathlete or you’re just trying to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from bengreenfieldfitness.com . Brock: Okay. I just polished off a box of wine and I spent some time getting in touch with my feminine side so hopefully, I’ll be able to measure up to the last couple episodes with Jessa. Ben: Dude, it’s kinda weird actually to be a recording this once again at the ungodly hour that we usually record rather than in evenings with my wife who’s been sitting in for you the past 2 episodes, Brock. Brock: And doing a fantastic job. Thank you, Jessa in covering for me. Ben: We having to have this glass of plain water rather than the usual box of wine I was able to get used to past couple of weeks so thanks for that, Brock. Brock: You know what I’m most disappointed in is that you did an episode that involved chocolate, coffee, garlic and talking about boners without me. Ben: But at least my wife thinks you’re Australian, apparently. Brock: That’s right, mate. Ben: That’s right. That wonderful down under Canadian accent.

description

Listen to this podcast at http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2012/12/episode-222-what-is-the-best-way-to-track-your-heart-rate-variability/

Transcript of Ben Greenfield podcast 222

Page 1: Ben Greenfield podcast 222

Podcast # 222 from

http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2012/12/episode-222-what-is-the-best-

way-to-track-your-heart-rate-variability/

[o:oo:00.0]

Introduction: In today’s episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast, what is

the best way to track your heart rate variability? Also, what is

glutathione, the least amount of exercise necessary for good

health, how to minimize stress from travel, how and when to swim

with a snorkel, how to deal with the foot neuroma, and how

antacids and ADHD medication affect athletes.

Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. We provide

you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon and

wellness advice from the top fitness experts in the nation. So

whether you’re an Ironman triathlete or you’re just trying to shed

a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge

content from bengreenfieldfitness.com.

Brock: Okay. I just polished off a box of wine and I spent some time

getting in touch with my feminine side so hopefully, I’ll be able to

measure up to the last couple episodes with Jessa.

Ben: Dude, it’s kinda weird actually to be a recording this once again at

the ungodly hour that we usually record rather than in evenings

with my wife who’s been sitting in for you the past 2 episodes,

Brock.

Brock: And doing a fantastic job. Thank you, Jessa in covering for me.

Ben: We having to have this glass of plain water rather than the usual

box of wine I was able to get used to past couple of weeks so

thanks for that, Brock.

Brock: You know what I’m most disappointed in is that you did an

episode that involved chocolate, coffee, garlic and talking about

boners without me.

Ben: But at least my wife thinks you’re Australian, apparently.

Brock: That’s right, mate.

Ben: That’s right. That wonderful down under Canadian accent.

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Brock: They’re quite similar, yes.

Ben: Welcome back from Thailand, Brock. I’m glad you survived.

Brock: Yeah. My more than survive goes a fantastic time. The races were

a little more challenging than I had anticipated but it was pretty

awesome and I mean, the food, the people, the country, it’s all just

magical.

Ben: Awesome! Now that all the listeners out there are aware that

Brock was not skilled at any type of military cue, that he is not laid

up with any type of strange parasitic infections that we know

about yet…

Brock: Not yet.

Ben: And he is back up in Canada. Let’s do this podcast thing.

Brock: All right.

News Flashes:

Brock: Okay. As always, to get these news flashes hot off the proverbial

presses, make sure to follow Ben on twitter.com/bengreenfield

and also go to Google+ ‘cause there’s all kinds of cool stuff going

on there and you can find all that, all those links all the ways to

find them if you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com.

Ben: That’s right. This is what episode number is this that we’re

recording, Brock?

Brock: 222.

Ben: Nice. Easy to remember. So I’ll put a link to everything we talk

about in Episode #222. One tweet I put out was yummy

brominated vegetable oil in sports drinks and this was based off in

New York Times article that came out this week that talked about

this lady over in Missouri who is a dedicated vegetarian and she

grabbed the bottle of Gatorade to drink and checked the label to

make sure that there are no animal products in the drink and she

noticed that there were something called brominated vegetable oil

as an ingredient in Gatorade.

Brock: Well, that’s made from vegetables.

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Ben: Yes. It is made from vegetables. So the issue is not that it’s an

animal-based product but rather she was a little bit curious what

that actually was. And so when she started looking into it, she

found out some of the nasty things that actually happen when you

consume high amounts of brominated vegetable oil like

neurological disorders and altered levels of thyroid hormone. Use

of brominated oil in the US has actually been something that’s

kinda going back and forth in terms of its safety for the past 30

years. European Union has banned it from foods for a long time.

Japan recently moved to ban it as well. But about 10% of the

drinks sold in the US have brominated vegetable oil – Mountain

Dew is one, Powerade is one, the Dr. Pepper’s another and

Gatorade is one. And basically, what brominated vegetable oil is

is it has bromine which is the same thing that they put into like

flame retardants and they also put it into these drinks.

Brock: Of course, they don’t burst into flames.

Ben: Exactly. You would never want your Gatorade to burst into flame

after you left it in a hot car or something like that.

[0:05:05.2]

Obviously, it’s a very logical thing to put into a sports drink but

something to certainly take into consideration before you start

giving your kids or yourself a bunch of Gatorade. And there was

basically a panel called to action back in the 70’s to look into this

stuff because it was generally recognized as safe back in 1970. The

FDA took it off the list of substances generally recognized as safe

after what’s called the flavor and extract manufacturers’

association revoked the approval of brominated vegetable oil but

it’s kinda just falling off the face of the map since then and it was

never added back to that list. It was kind of ignored. No long term

studies have been done on it. However, there was an article about

it by Environmental Health News that ran in Scientific American

last year that did find that people who binge on sodas and other

drinks that specifically have this brominated vegetable oil and

then experienced nerve disorders, memory loss and a lot of the

things that brominated vegetable oil has been shown to cause in

studies in animals. I probably don’t tell a lot of our generally

healthy listeners not to drink soda but I do know that a lot of folks

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are still them or their children getting indecent share of sports

drinks and this is another reason to be kind of careful with that.

Brock: It’s not necessarily in all sports drinks. It’s really just is Gatorade

and I think Powerade as well uses it but I know the sport drink

that I use, Tailwind doesn’t have it and there’s numerous brands

out there so you really just need to check the ingredients list.

Ben: I’m sorry telling this. It’s a horrible name.

Brock: I know, I know. I feel embarrassed every time I pull the package

out. It’s such good stuff but it’s really a terrible name.

Ben: It sounds like some type of a flatulent beverage. So enjoy, drink

out your Tailwind or my favorite sports drink is just basically

coconut water. Another thing that I tweeted was how to use whole

body vibration. And whole body vibration was something that

Jessa and I discussed briefly about how all vibration plates are not

created equal in one of the episodes we recorded. I think it was

Episode 220.

Brock: Is that the marathon 2 ½ - hour long one?

Ben: Yeah. So if anybody got past the hour mark of that, my deepest

apologies. But anyways, there was a study that appeared in the

National Journal Strength Conditioning Research this month and

it looked into the improvements in running economy after 8

weeks of whole body vibration training. Not only improvement in

the rate of force development in the muscles that were involved

with running but also an increase in what’s called the maximal

isometric force or the force production capabilities of those

muscles. And what they were actually doing in terms of how you

use these things because I know a lot of people will see these

studies on whole body vibration platforms but maybe scratch their

heads about how you actually use the things if your gym has one,

your health club has one, or you listened to that podcast with

Jessa and I where we talked about which vibration plates are good

and which aren’t that good. But the protocol they used in the

study was 10 efforts of 30-60 seconds on that vibration platform

with the knees bent at about 120 degrees so you’re kinda like in

quarter squat standing on the thing for 30-60 seconds so it’s

basically semi-squat vibration training. And that protocol 10 by

30-60 seconds was done 3 times a week over a period of 8 weeks.

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So I wanted to tweet that just for people who I know may have

access to a whole body vibration platform, that’s the way you

would use it if you wanted to use something like that to improve

your running economy.

Brock: So you’re just standing on it in a 3 or one quarter squat. That’s all

you’re doing for 30-60 seconds?

Ben: Which is actually on a good vibration platform that has a high

velocity of acceleration in terms of its vibration.

Brock: Amplitude?

Ben: Yeah. Exactly. Like a strong vibration platform - a high quality

one. And that’s actually pretty hard to do. It’s a pretty tough

workout. That will drain you 10 by 60 seconds on a semi-squat

position on whole body vibration. So, not to be confused with

basically slouching with your arms on the pads of the vibration

training while you sip a soda. The last thing that I wanted to

mention was another study that looked in to the risks of ibuprofen

use when combined with exercise. And as we mentioned last year,

when a study published last year came out – that cyclist who rode

hard for an hour on ibuprofen developed elevated blood levels of a

marker that indicates basically gastrointestinal leakage.

[0:10:12.4]

And that marker, by the way, is called the fatty acid binding

protein. It’s something that you can measure to see how much

leakage in GI tract is occurring. Well, there’s another study that

just came out that was just published this month and what they did

was they had a group of healthy active men swallowed about 400

mg of ibuprofen the night before and also the morning of their trip

to this lab for exercise. They were at bikes for an hour and what

they did was they drew blood to check whether these guys’ small

intestines were leaking and they found that blood levels of that

same protein - that fatty acid-binding protein that indicates

intestinal leakage was way higher when these men combined the

bike riding with ibuprofen than when they just rode or they took

ibuprofen alone. Once again, for anybody out there who is popping

this stuff to try and reduce inflammation or reduce soreness during

a marathon or during a triathlon, it’s a really quick way to generate

some stomach damage and GI distress.

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Brock: And poop your pants.

Ben: And possibly, do that. That’s right. Natural alternative to

ibuprofen, my recommendation (this is something that was

introduced to me by Dr. Roby Mitchell, he’s been on the show a

few times and we did a whole episode on ibuprofen alternatives), I

recommend phenocane. I keep some of that at home. It’s basically

curcumin extract combined with phenoalanine and nedokinase

and those are 2 things that can inhibit cytokine production and

help to shut down inflammation without putting the same number

on your gut as ibuprofen does.

Brock: How would that stuff work for say like a headache?

Ben: Very well. You pop 4-8 of them and they can have a pretty

profound effect. Again, it’s just a band aid. I mean, it’s the one

that word issue whether to food sensitivity or blood flow issue or

magnesium deficiency or an acidic diet or something like that

that’s causing the headache but this stuff can at least mediate

some of the pain.

Special Announcements:

Brock: They say, it’s Ben’s birthday. Actually, it’s tomorrow, yeah.

Tomorrow’s Ben’s birthday. Make sure to join the VIP Text Club.

He usually gives some stuff away. Tomorrow’s Ben’s birthday…

Ben: I don’t know if I should scold you or if I should thank you for not

taking out the accordion.

Brock: It was a toss-up. It really was.

Ben: Is that a guitar or a banjo?

Brock: It was a banjo.

Ben: That’s what I thought. All right. Well, as Brock mentioned,

tomorrow is my birthday and I always do cool things for people on

my list for my birthday. And for this year, I’ve decided to do

something special for my VIP Text Club.

Brock: Which I gotta say, kinda sucks for us international folks.

Ben: Well, don’t worry. I will take care of people who are international

but the big birthday prizes are gonna go to people who are on my

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VIP Text Club. Here’s how you get in: Text the word “fitness” to

411247. You’ll automatically get a free book from me. But then, on

my birthday, which is tomorrow, Thursday, December 2oth. So

for anybody who listens to this podcast as soon as it comes out, I’ll

be sending out a text right around 6:00-7:00 PM Pacific time on

Thursday. So stay tuned to your phones. Keep those bad boys in

your back pocket and look for a special text from me on my

birthday. The other thing that we should mention is that this

podcast is brought to you by audiblepodcast.com/ben.

Brock: Sure is.

Ben: You had a book that you recommended, Brock?

Brock: I do. I actually was very happy to see a book by Daniel J. Levitin.

A book I read actually a couple of years ago. It’s called This is

Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. It’s

very cool. He’s actually a guy who was a record producer and a

recording engineer who then went on to go back to school and

become a neuroscientist. And he really gets into the nitty gritty of

how our brains respond to music and why we create music, why

we listen to music, why we remember music the way that we do,

all that really cool stuff. I recommend you demo that one from

audiblepodcast.com/ben.

[0:15:06.4]

Ben: Yeah. And you can get your first book for free over there when you

join audiblepodcast.co/ben. I love the idea of how music and how

sound whether it be like special binaural beats that you can play in

headphones to enhance your alpha brainwaves or whether it be

like just using the hardcore techno beat to push you through a

hard workout. I love to see how that stuff can actually affect

neurotransmitters and intelligence and all these other parameters

that we kinda take for granted when it comes to the power of what

we hear being able to affect our physiology. Dr. Phil Maffetone,

who we are all familiar with, he’s the guy who invented the math

method that a lot of athletes use to train with. That is probably

what he’s gonna be speaking on at my upcoming live conference

this March in Spokane. It’s how to use music and how to use

sound to enhance performance and enhance intelligence. It

should be pretty cool stuff and between _____[0:16:07.6] you

can grab that book from audiblepodcast.com/ben. I wasn’t aware

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of it until Brock brought it to my attention. Now, I’m gonna check

out.

Brock: I think you’ll love it.

Ben: And then the last thing is that over Christmas, we’ll be choosing

our first person that we’re gonna actually bring into the podcast to

talk about the MyList that they created. And for those of you who

are not familiar with MyList, it’s kinda like Pinterest for Facebook.

Brock: Pinterest for people who don’t craft book.

Ben: Yes. Exactly. You can check it out over at facebook.com/bgfitness.

We do a MyList for every single podcast episode because we talk

about a lot of stuff and we wanna create basically lists that allow

you guys to go in after you listen to a podcast episode and rather

than trying to remember what we talk about being able to just go

and have a list right there in front of you. We also would love to

see your list and we’ve had a few people create some really cool

MyList and shared them over at the facebook.com/bgfitness page.

So if you create a MyList and you share it, we’ll be choosing some

of them next 10 days that we’re gonna bring on the podcast to talk

about your MyList and why you created what you did. So check

that out and here’s one more special announcement for you.

Wanna get personal access to all of Ben Greenfield’s secrets life?

This March in Spokane, Washington. Ben is bringing the world’s

best speakers straight to you. You’re gonna get step by step

blueprints for performance, fat loss, recovery, digestion, brain,

sleep, and hormone optimization and get inside or access to

private parties special sessions for podcast listeners only. And of

course, delicious locally grown organic meals. The conference is

called Become Super Human and it’s already filling up fast. But

you can get in now at bengreenfieldfitness.com/superhuman.

You’ll come away from this live 2 day event completely set for life

to achieve everything you want for your body, mind and

performance. Whether you want to maximize fat loss, achieve an

ironman triathlon, or push your body and mind to the absolutely

limits of human performance. So visit

bengreenfieldfitness.com/superhuman and we’ll see you live and

in person March 8th and 9th, 2013.

Listener Q & A:

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Annie: Have you heard about getting an IV of glutathione before and

after surgery to help protect your brain? I was hoping to learn

more about it. Thank you.

Brock: So, glutathione. That’s something that’s actually manufactured in

your cells, right?

Ben: Yeah. Glutathione is certainly something that you can take orally.

It’s basically a pretty simple molecule. It’s a combination of 3

different building blocks of protein. It’s a combination of what’s

called cysteine, glycine and glutamine. And the other part of

glutathione that’s really, really important is it’s got this sulfur

chemical group on it. And sulfur, we’re all familiar with, is

something that’s kinda smelly that you smell when maybe eggs

are cooking or somebody toots or Brock drinks Tailwind but it

essentially, you can of that as acting almost like fly paper in your

body and a lot of free radicals and toxins, including things like

mercury and other heavy metals can actually get chelated or get

removed by this particular antioxidant, you basically call it.

Brock: So it’s like the super antioxidant, the smart antioxidant.

[0:20:05.7]

Ben: Yeah. Glutathione is a very potent antioxidant. It’s also used in

phase one and phase two of liver detox which is something that

we’ve talked about on the show before. We got into that in detail

about detoxification a few episodes ago. Now, the thing with

glutathione is a lot of people can be deficient in it. Especially

people who tend to get exposed to lots of oxidative stress or too

many toxins whether that be from pollution, from excessive

exercise, from heavy metal exposure in the work place, etc. And

you can deplete your glutathione levels by basically causing your

natural glutathione levels to work overtime, essentially. And there

have been studies that have looked into folks and found that the

highest glutathione levels tend to exist in healthy young people

and there are lower levels in healthy elderly people and even lower

levels in sick elderly people and lowest levels of all in hospitalized

elderly people. And there are some other good studies out there

that show low glutathione levels to be associated with increased

risk of heart disease, risk of cancer, etc. It is something that’s

important. There’s a few problems though with just seeing that

it’s good and then going out and spending a bunch of money on

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glutathione or even (I’ll address this in a second) going out and

getting a glutathione IV. The problem is that glutathione tends to

get broken down pretty easily in your digestive tract because, as I

mentioned it is just made up of these amino acids and these

proteins and so it’ll tend to be used when you consume it for

things like skeletal muscle regeneration or basic metabolism

which your body tends to use amino acids for rather than actually

staying its whole glutathione form after you’ve ingested it.

Brock: So the body sort of uses the pieces of it that it seems to need right

at that moment.

Ben: Yeah. So you don’t get very good absorption from the stuff and

there’s not very, very good correlation between your glutathione

consumption of a normal typical oral glutathione supplement and

an increase in your levels of glutathione. So you can’t just go out

and use glutathione. The most important thing to do if you wanna

boost your glutathione levels is to consume foods or supplements

or engage in activities that are going to help your body to form its

own glutathione. So one thing that you can do is you can make

sure that you include sulfur-rich foods in your diet because as you

just learned, sulfur is kind of active component of glutathione. So

the main sulfur-rich foods are things that are kinda smelly like

garlic, like onions and specifically, all the cruciferous vegetables –

broccoli, kale, collards, cauliflower, that kind of stuff. That’s just

another one. The stuff that makes you toot, basically. But sulfur-

rich foods would be one really important thing to make sure that

you include in your diet if you’re concerned about glutathione and

you wanna make sure that you’ve got enough of that particular

antioxidant. Some whey proteins can be really good source of

glutathione but you wanna get what’s called the non-denatured

proteins. And a lot of proteins get heated. They’re not formed

through what’s called cold processing. They tend to be pasteurized

or produced from pasteurized and industrial-produced milk that

contains pesticides and hormones and antibiotics. So you wanna

be careful with the whey protein that you choose. That’s one of the

reasons that I recommend like Mt. Capra as a really, really good

cold processed, non-denatured protein with actually bioactive

glutathione or the ability to give your body what it needs for

glutathione synthesis. The main thing that you’re getting from a

good bioactive whey protein, by the way, is cysteine. And that’s

another component as you learned of a glutathione formation.

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Exercise really boosts glutathione and so that’s something that

you wanna take into consideration. Of course, there is that law of

diminishing returns. Over exercise produces a lot of free radicals

and can potentially exhaust your glutathione levels but exercise to

a limited extent is definitely gonna help you out in doing strength

training a little bit of cardio a few times a week. As far as

supplements go, supplements that give you a lot of the precursors

for glutathione production, one would be alpha lipoic acid and

that’s an antioxidant. It’s not going to be used to form anything

that helps you to make glutathione as much as it does take some

stress off of the requirements of glutathione to act as an

antioxidant because alpha lipoic acid is also a potent antioxidant.

That’s something that you can supplement with as alpha lipoic

acid.

[0:25:00.7]

And most whole food antioxidants that we’ve talked about in the

show before like Lifeshotz and Solar Synergy or the living fuel

Super Berry stuff, all of that is gonna be decent sources of alpha

lipoic acid. Another thing that you’d wanna look into is milk

thistle extract which is also known as silymarin. It’s something

that I talked about in the hangover post that I published last week

as something that can help with hangovers and liver detox. It also

can really help to boost your glutathione levels. That’s another

thing to look into. For example, you could do something like use

Lifeshotz everyday and then supplement with this Capra Cleanse

and that would be an example of how to keep your glutathione

level high if you combine that with exercise. And then one other

thing that I thought was really interesting is whole body cold

exposure. There was a study that was done where they took a

bunch of people who swam regularly in ice cold water during the

winter like these polar swimmers and what they found was that

these folks had much much higher glutathione levels compared to

non-winter, non-cold water swimmers. So using some cold

thermogenesis to increase glutathione levels may also be

something that you could look into if you’re wanting to really

improve your antioxidant status going into something like a

surgery.

Brock: Would there be any advantage like really pursuing the glutathione

over just getting a really good dose of full spectrum antioxidants?

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Ben: No. With a couple exceptions and one is that you could technically

bypass oral processing of glutathione through an IV. The problem

with doing something like that is that IV glutathione injection can

be dangerous. There are some surgeons that do recommend

glutathione IV injection, literally introducing glutathione into the

bloodstream via a needle to enhance the body’s ability to bounce

back after a surgery and you actually see this stuff recommending

quite a bit in the dermatology community for some type of skin

treatments. And the issue with IV glutathione is it can be pretty

dangerous because you can risk glutathione overdose really easily

if the stuff isn’t monitored quite carefully. It can cause a lot of side

effects: stomachaches, diarrhea, even kidney failure and blood

poisoning as well as what’s called toxic epidermal necrolysis

which is basically skin cell death from too much glutathione. So

you gotta be really careful with this stuff if you’re getting IV

injections. I would be super careful with it even though it is a

pretty potent antioxidant and it could technically help you bounce

back from surgery, I would be going after doing something like

exercise, cold exposure and then using some of the other stuff I

recommended like a good milk thistle extract along with whey

protein, sulfur-rich foods and any full spectrum antioxidant. And

maybe a little bit of alpha lipoic acid. There is one form and I’ll

link to it in the show notes for you, there’s one form of glutathione

that a couple of studies have found to increase glutathione levels

to the same extent as IV glutathione. And it’s a form of

glutathione called acetyl-glutathione. And essentially, what it is is

it’s a fat-soluble form of glutathione that allows it to be absorbed

without it being broken down on a stomach level. The stuff is

expensive. It looks like a good active form of acetyl-glutathione is

gonna cost you anywhere from about 60-100 bucks for a bottle of

it. I’m not sure if that’s worth it vs. using just some of the natural

methods that you can use to increase your glutathione levels but

I’ll link to it in the show notes if you wanted to use something like

that and you are concerned about spending the money on it. It’s

called acetyl-glutathione.

Debbie: Hi Ben and Brock! This is Debbie. I have a question that I think

is gonna shock you and all of your superfit triathlete listeners. I

wanna know the least amount of time I can workout to maintain

my current level of cardiovascular fitness, muscular strength and

body composition. I’m just completing Shape 21 with excellent

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results. I’m in my early 40’s, I’m a working mother and a wife. I

exercise only to be fit, look good and stay healthy. I do not

compete in any events and I don’t have tons of extra time. I am

currently getting up at 5:00 AM to do the Shape 21 workout

before my family wakes up for the day. It seems that going

forward interval training offers the biggest benefit for the least

amount of time. How often will I need to do strength training and

how frequently will I need to change the workout to maintain

muscle confusion? Your podcast is so helpful and chocful of

fabulous and helpful information. Keep it coming.

[0:30:23.1]

Ben: So it sounds like Debbie is using my Shape 21 Lean Body Manual.

And that the very first book that I ever wrote and my goal was to

have a 21-day exercise plus diet program that someone can go

through with zero gas work. Since original publishing the book,

I’ve gone and kinda re-invented the diet once but it has options

for kind of a beginner, circuits – an intermediate circuit or an

advanced circuit and bounces back and forth between doing

cardio intervals one day, doing weight training circuits one day,

doing a little bit heavier training on another day and trying to hit

as many different energy systems as possible over a 21-day time

spin. So, it’s over at shape21.com. And first of all, let me say,

Debbie, that we aren’t all superfit triathlete listeners. There are

many many folks who are just looking for general health that

listen to the show and certainly not geared for geeky triathletes

alone.

Brock: I was a little bit shocked though.

Ben: That’s right. We’re a little bit shocked, Deb. Anyone would ever

wanna limit their exercise. Crazy.

Brock: What do you do with your free time if you’re nor constantly

working out?

Ben: First of all, Debbie, you don’t have to go through Shape 21 for just

21 days. The way that I wrote the book is you could go to the

entire beginner series for 21 days and then go back and do the

intermediate until the intermediate starts to feel easy and it’s no

longer pushing you, you no longer sore after the workouts, you’re

no longer sucking wind from the cardio intervals. And then you

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could move on to the advance level. And literally, the advance

level is tough. It’s up there with beach body insanity and P90X.

These are the workout programs and you could go to the advance

section a couple of times too. So technically, you could use this

book for almost a year before your body starts to become adapted

to it. But as far as these actual adaptations go, what’s important

to understand is that different sections of your physiology are

going to adapt at different rates. I mentally like to just put things

into the cardiovascular system, the musculo-skeletal system and

neuro-muscular system. And it should be pretty apparent what

each of those are but of course, the cardiovascular system is your

heart and your lungs and your vascular system and all the

enzymes and cellular structures that your body uses to deliver

oxygen and blood to working tissue. So when you’re exercising

and you’re doing cardiovascular exercise specifically or your

weight training to a certain extent can be cardiovascular

depending on how you do it. You get 2 different types of

adaptations. You get what are called central adaptations which are

typically short-term adaptations and what are peripheral

adaptations which are long-term adaptations. An example of

short-term adaptations that occur pretty quickly in response to

cardiovascular exercise are increased stroke volumes - the amount

of blood that your heart can pump; increased ventilation – the

amount of oxygen that your lungs can breathe in; increased

recruitment of muscle fibers which should be how many fibers

you can grab each time your foot strikes the ground when you’re

running. And then long-term adaptations or what are called

peripheral adaptations would be, for example, an increase in

number of your mitochondria or what’s called your mitochondrial

density which are needed for you to produce ATP from energy and

basically become a better aerobic athlete. Another example of

peripheral adaptation would be your ability to clear lactic acid

which is a kind of metabolic by-product that can contribute to

muscle burn during exercise. Generally, central adaptations to

cardiovascular exercise is immediate improvements in stroke

volume and blood shunting and recruitment of muscle fibers that

can take place literally after about 2-4 cardiovascular workouts.

But usually, you see the biggest improvements in short-term

cardiovascular adaptations occur between 2-6 weeks. About the 2-

week to the 6-week mark is where you’ll start to notice that your

ability to respond to specific cardiovascular, say, an interval

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training routine or specific cardiovascular swim or bike or run or

something like that, it’s gonna start to peak after a maximum of

about 6 weeks and a minimum of 2 weeks. Now, peripheral

adaptation is like your mitochondrial density and some of these

longer term results, that can literally take 6-12 months.

[0:35:07.7]

So you can be doing the same program for literally almost a year

and still be getting decent results from your cardio workouts. But

as far as getting the most results, getting the best adaptations,

you’re looking at 6 weeks being the longest you’d wanna go

without changing up the type of cardio workouts that you do. And

the way that I generally lay out most of the programs when I’m

working with athletes or designing a triathlon program or cardio

training program is about every 4 weeks, we change things up

when it comes cardio. So that’s my recommendation as far as

cardio goes and all that means is for example, you might do the

same swim or the same bike workout or the same run workout

every single week for 4 weeks in a row. And then you’d maybe

take an off week and then switch to something new. that’s an

example of a cardiovascular side of things. Does that make sense,

Brock?

Brock: Yeah. Totally. And I actually see that in the programs that you

give me too.

Ben: Yeah. You’ll notice that you might repeat the same swim workout

for 3 or 4 weeks in a row and then it changes.

Brock: And actually, that works really well for any sort of techniques

that’s involved as well. After 4 weeks, you get the hang of doing

something technically as well as aerobically.

Ben: Exactly. So the other part of your adaptations would be your

musculo-skeletal and your neuromuscular. And again, there are

central or short-term adaptations and there are peripheral or

long-term adaptations. So an example of a short-term adaptation

to weight training or to any training that’s considered resistance

training would be a synthesis of hormones whether they’re like

your anabolic hormones like testosterone or increase recruitment

of muscle fibers similar to that cardiovascular central adaptation.

Examples of peripheral adaptation would be for example,

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increased muscle size, meaning, it can take a while. It can be

kinda long-term before you start to notice that your muscles get

bigger or increased strength of connective tissue, meaning, your

ligaments and your tendons start to become better able to handle

strain. Now, short-term adaptations to weight training, to this

type of musculo-skeletal training, you’re looking at very, very

similar cardiovascular training every about 2-6 weeks. But the

caveat to that is that 2-6 weeks is generally more of your nervous

system response than more of your neuro-muscular response and

generally to actually see changes in muscle size or changes in the

way that your body looks, it’s usually 6 plus weeks before you start

to see significant changes in that. And so when it comes to weight

training, if you want to improve sports performance, you need to

be similar to cardiovascular changing stuff up about every 4 weeks

or so, minimum of every 2 weeks, maximum of every 6 weeks. But

if your goal is just improving muscle size, getting bigger, putting

on muscle, changing the way your body looks, it can actually help

out to go 6 plus weeks doing the same workouts over and over

again before you switch to a new workout profile. And so that’s

why a lot of times, you’ll see in like really good body building

programs, someone will be doing the same workout sometimes for

6 weeks, 8 weeks, 12 weeks to really build as many different

muscle fibers as possible before switching things up. Whereas if

you’re looking for more of a neuro-muscular adaptation, more of

kinda sports-specific sports performance enhancing type of

weight training routine, you’re switching things up every 2-6

weeks. That is kinda what it comes down to and the most

important thing here to bear in mind is you gotta test and you

only really know if you test and testing if your only goals are

aesthetic, testing could just be taking a photo of yourself or taking

your body fat percentage. If your goals are performance-related,

it could be a specific section of road that you run once every 4

weeks to see how fast you’re able to travel it on bike or on foot or

it might be 10 by 100 meters in a pool that you swim to see how

fast you’re able to swim each 100 meter repeat if you’re giving

yourself 20 seconds of rest between each one. So testing is super

important in terms of seeing whether or not you’ve stopped

adapting to the workout that you’re doing.

Brock: What do they say? It’s that which can be measured can be

improved? I think that’s the saying that goes along with that.

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Ben: And again, go back and listen to it was either Episode 220 or 221

where Jessa and I really got into all the different ways that you

can test your improvement. Hopefully, that gives you an idea of

what you’re looking at in terms of time frames as far as how often

to switch things up. And as far as per week, how much you should

actually exercise, what they found as far as the positive

adaptations to exercise whether it be strength training or whether

it be cardiovascular exercise, it’s 2-3 hours per week.

[0:40:12.8]

You get good results. And after that, your results start to plateau.

When it comes to just general health and fitness, it’s 2-3 hours per

week. And obviously, if you’re looking to go out and run a

marathon or do a triathlon or get a really, really low body fat

percentage or put on a bunch of muscles or something like that,

you may need to exercise more than that. But 2-3 hours a week

would be the minimum.

Brock: That’s the old doctor recommends 30 minutes per day kind of

thing.

Ben: That’s exactly it. Yup.

Brock: Okay. Let’s move on to the next question. It comes from Craig

and Craig says, “I have both an EmWave2 and an iThlete. How do

you use your EmWave to help you determine whether or not

you’re overtraining? I use the iThlete for this purpose but it

sounds like you prefer the EmWave2. Also, I travel nearly every

week and I find it stressful. A friend of mine asked me why it’s

stressful. I wasn’t sure how to respond. In your opinion, why is

travel stressful and what can you do to mitigate this?

Ben: Two interesting questions and we just to run some phrases that

probably could’ve confused some folks – the EmWave2 and the

iThlete. The Illudium Q-46 Explosive Space Modulator. We just

like to say technical things in the show to make us sound smart.

All of those things that Craig mentioned – the EmWave2 and the

iThlete, these are ways that you measure your heart rate

variability. And we’ve talked about heart rate variability a little bit

on the show before. But all that is, is it’s the variation between

each of your heart beats. It’s how much time that is spent between

each of your heart beats and you can measure that that heart rate

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variability and ideally, you want your heart rate variability to be

somewhat high, meaning that there is a lot of con jumping around

in the variation between each of those beats because what that

indicates is that your nervous system is talking to your heart very

efficiently. You got this nerve called the vagus nerve. It’s one of

your cranial nerves and it controls your heart and it basically

innervate your heart and it’s the mediator of your heart rate

variability. And the higher your heart rate variability the more

quickly you’re able to make micro adjustments in how quickly or

how slowly your heart is beating. That indicates how strong

what’s called your vagal tone is or the strength of your vagus nerve

is. And that’s a direct indicator of the health of your sympathetic

nervous system, the health of your parasysmpathetic nervous

system and your propensity to be either overtrained or

overstressed. So it’s a very, very good way to track your

overtraining. It’s one of my top recommendations in terms of a

very good way to kinda see where you’re at when it comes to being

stressed or when it comes to being overtrained. And there are a

variety of ways that you can measure your heart rate variability.

The traditional method and probably the most popular tool out

there is called the EmWave2. And it’s just this little black kind of

box about the size of a phone like an iPhone. And it has this cable

that comes out of it and you attach the cable to your earlobe and

it’s measuring your heart rate in your earlobe and then you can

use little lights on the unit itself to track your heart rate

variability. If I remember properly, the more it’s towards green,

the higher your heart rate variability. The more it’s towards blue,

the lower your heart rate variability. But the reason that the

EmWave2 is so popular is it’s produced by this company called

Heart Math and Heart Math also produces what are called

biofeedback tools for the consumer market, meaning that if you

have an EmWave, you can plug it into your computer. You can

purchase software from this Heart Math Institute and you can

literally have the software bring you through special training

exercises, special breathing exercises, and essentially, tools that

can help you to consciously control your heart rate variability. It’s

called biofeedback. So it teaches you how to think thoughts, how

to produce feelings that actually cause you to become de-stressed.

It’s more expensive using this software plus the EmWave2 but if

you want to do really, really costumized biofeedback, it’s a good

way to go.

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Brock: That’s sort of interesting ‘cause like just knowing that you’ve got a

really high heart rate variability or I guess low would be even

worse. That’s great to know that but what do you do about it?

Ben: Yeah. Exactly. And you have to of course, be able to not just

create this vicious cycle of stress by seeing your heart rate

variability as low and then getting more stressed out.

[0:45:05.5]

By the way, just as an interesting anecdote, I should note that if

you’re overtrained with too much intensity, like too many crossfit

workouts or running hard too much doing too many intervals,

that type of thing, you tend to see that heart rate variability might

actually remain somewhat high but it bounces around a lot from

day to day. I mean you may be at 90 one day, 80 one day, 100 one

day, and by the way, the higher the score, the better. Whereas if

you’re parasympathetically overtrained, too much aerobic

exercise, you’re overtraining your parasympathetic nervous

system, you tend to see just consistently low heart rate variability

values. As an aside, I also test my heart rate variability every

single morning for 5 minutes. The EmWave2 is expensive. And if

you’re buying that software, if you’re buying EmWave2, you’re

looking at $200-300 investment. You’ve also got options that are

more portable and typically consisted with heart rate monitor

strap, and then some kind of a docket that plugs into the bottom

of a phone like an android or an iPhone. And these don’t come

with quite as powerful a biofeedback software as the EmWave but

they can be more portable and they can offer you a way to test

your heart rate variability for example, when you’re out exercising

or say if you’re lying in bed, you don’t wanna get up and plug into

the computer when you’re lying in bed in the morning. There’s a

couple of different types of apps like that. One is the iThlete that

Craig mentions and another one is called the SweetBeat, which is

the one that I use. I’ll put a link to both of these in the show notes

but all you need is an app that you download to your phone: some

kind of a chest strap and some kind of adapter that plugs in to

your phone and lets the app in your phone get the information

from that chest strap that’s measuring your heart rate. And from

what I understand, the difference between iThlete and this sweet

beat thing that I use is that iThlete requires you to have a paid

subscription after you buy the app and the chest strap and the doc

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you’re paying to have access to be able to upload your data to

iClick and keep track of your data.

Brock: Those way for you to keep a history.

Ben: Yeah. Exactly. And it’s used a little bit more in kind of the sports

and athletic environment. It’s also a UK-based company. The

Sweet Beat, the one that I use, it was created a little bit more for

kinda like the medical and nutrition environment. It’s got like a

food allergy track around there that will track your food

sensitivity, your nervous system response to food intake. It’s free

and it doesn’t require any type of subscription and you basically

also have an online platform that you upload your data to. And

I’ve actually got a few clients that track their heart rate variability

using Sweet Beat, upload the data to their platform and then share

with me so I can look at their heart rate variability as a marker of

their training status. Either one will work. They’re all based off of

specific algorithms. So I’m not sure if iThlete uses the same

algorithm as the Sweet Beat does but for example, the Sweet Beat

measures what’s called your RMSSD and RMSSD stands for root

mean square of successive differences which doesn’t really mean

anything to most people. But basically…

Brock: I’m furrowing my brow.

Ben: Yeah. It’s a heart rate variability algorithm that they got from

Harvard and MIT. And it basically measures frequencies. It’s

measuring what’s called very low frequency, low frequency and

high frequency data that it’s getting fm the heart rate chest strap

and then producing a score, 0-100 score based off of that. So,

essentially, what you’re looking at is perhaps the iThlete is using a

different algorithm than Sweet Beat. But they’re both giving out

similar data – sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic

nervous system data. It’s just differences in the some of the

features of the app and some of the package subscription prices.

Brock: How the heck does Sweet Beat do anything with your allergies or

food sensitivities?

Ben: What it does is it’s got this food logging part of the app, you log

your food and then you wear the chest strap while you’re eating

and for a little while after you eat, it tracks your nervous system

response to what you eat and identifies if anything is actually

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causing like decrease to vagal tone or essentially causing your

sympathetic nervous system to have and over response to the food

that you’re eating.

Brock: Interesting.

Ben: Going to fight or flight mode from what you’re eating. So it’s

kinda cool. The other thing that you can do if you just want to

kind of experiment with this stuff with a low entry level cost,

there’s an app made by a company called Azumio, called the

Stress Check app and it just uses you putting your finger over the

camera lens of your phone to check your heart rate variability.

[0:50:07.1]

It’s probably not quite as accurate as a chest strap method but it is

kinda cool it lets you play around with this stuff before you spend

much money on a better tracking unit or a tracking unit that

comes with logging capabilities and stuff like that. And it also

comes with some simple biofeedback tools. You can put your

finger over the camera lens of the phone, it’ll walk you through a

simple breathing exercise that will de-stress you based off of you

breathing in conjunction with the rise and fall of your heart rate. I

personally own an EmWave2 but I don’t use it very much now

that I use this Sweet Beat heart rate variability monitoring.

There’s more than one way to skin a cat when it comes to this

stuff. There’s also one I know out there called the Bio Force and

there’s a few others too. But those are my thoughts on the heart

rate variability component and some of the ways that you can use

it, some of the differences between the methods of tracking it.

Brock: And we’ll put all the links to all those different apps and stuff into

the show notes so you don’t have to remember everything that

Ben just said.

Ben: Yeah. And as far as travel being stressful, I mean not to gloss over

this question too much but it totally depends. Airplane travel can

be stressful due to negative ion build-up from not being I contact

with the surface of the earth and due to increased levels of solar

radiation and some of the free radicals that can be produced from

that. Whereas, travel by car can be stressful because perhaps

you’re not moving as much as you’re used to or you’re putting

your body into situations that are new – new hotel rooms, taking

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out of situations in which you’re mentally comfortable and

increasing stress or increasing your sympathetic nervous system

kind of fight or flight type of response that way. So in my opinion,

travel is stressful due to multiple reasons, whether it be

physiological variables or mental variables. But I think ultimately,

rather than talking about why travel is stressful, I think it’s more

important to focus on some of the ways that you can mitigate

some of that stress. I certainly like using heart rate variability and

then using any number of the stress relieving tools that come with

pretty much anything that I just mentioned – the iThlete, the

Sweet Beat, the EmWave2 or the Azumio app, they all have little

biofeedback tools that teach you how to control stress and mend

stress. I think that anybody who travels a lot or stressed out a lot

or is working out a lot would benefit from having any of them.

Brock: Awesome! Okay. Let’s move to the next question from Kathy.

Kathy says, “Ben, I heard you mention that you’ve been swimming

with a snorkel. After a podcast, guest said he uses one for training.

I was in a bike accident not too long ago and fractured a couple of

vertebrae. I get a little achy from the twisting motion of breathing

while I swim so lately I’ve been doing most of my swimming with

a snorkel. I’ve noticed I have more feel for body position but I’ve

also found that I’m slower by about 5 seconds per hundred meter

which I find surprising. Perhaps I’m not rotating enough since

I’m not breathing to the side. Any thoughts on that or additional

advice on training with a snorkel?

Ben: Yeah. I have been training with a snorkel. I use the finis

swimmer’s snorkel.

Brock: Is that the one that goes like sort of up between your eyes rather

than off to the side?

Ben: Exactly. It allows you to swim freestyle while you’re breathing

through a snorkel. And as Kathy kind of alluded to, it lets you

focus more on your stroke technique, more on what your hands

are doing underneath the water without having to think about

turning your head to breathe. And it still lets you move to full

range of motion because of the way that the snorkel kinda just

attaches to your head and sticks up straight out in front of you. So

you can work on your body alignment, you can work on your

stroke efficiency. For example, one of the ways I’ll use a swimmer

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snorkel is I’ll use it in my warm up like I’ll get in and my warm up

will be 10 by 50 meters with my snorkel on. There are a few things

to consider when it comes to finding that you’re slower with a

snorkel. One would be that food dynamics are kind of effective

when you got this big thing sticking up in front of your head. And

that’s enough ride there to slow you down a little bit. So I

wouldn’t let that bother you too much. The other thing to think

about is that when you’re using a snorkel, you do have a little bit

lower oxygen availability. It’s not quite as bad as breathing

through a straw but I have noticed that my inspiratory and

expiratory muscles feel like they have to work a little bit harder

when I’m using that snorkel which to me is great because like

Jessa and I in one of these episodes that we did when you’re gone,

we talked about this altitude training mask and how breathing

through a smaller surface or even breathing through pursed lips

kind of forces your lungs to expand a little bit more and increases

the surface area of your alveoli which essentially can improve the

strength of your inspiratory and expiratory muscles and your

ability to extract oxygen from your lungs and into your

bloodstream.

[0:55:19.0]

And so I almost consider using my snorkel as not just a way to

work on my form but also way to work on my oxygen availability.

The other thing is that when you get this thing attached to your

head and you’re swimming in a front position without breathing,

I’ve noticed that you also tend to thrash in the water a little bit

less. You tend to have a little bit less acceleration. It’s almost like

you swim a little bit more safely and as counter to the best of my

team, the messier you swim, sometimes, the faster you go. The

more your hand accelerates in the water, the more you thrust your

hips forward and sometimes it’s not quite as easy to do when

you’re swimming with a snorkel. So that might be another reason

that you find that you swim slower when you swim with a snorkel.

However, I think that the benefits outweigh any risks of you

swimming a slower one hundred. If you’re gonna try to swim a

fast one hundred, take off the snorkel and do speed work without

the snorkel on. But do form work and do some long training with

the snorkel on. I’m a fan of it. I’ll link to the Finis Snorkel that

I’ve been using in the show notes. I’ve currently been using thing

for about 8 weeks now and just tossing on about once a week. I

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got to admit I haven’t touched the pool or touched any water since

we got back from Thailand.

Brock: Me neither.

Ben: I just completely quit swimming for at least a month every year. I

just stay away from the pool, stay away from that black like at the

bottom of the pool. But up until I put on work with swimming,

going to Thailand, I was using a snorkel about once a week just

kinda experimenting with it. Really, the best way that I found to

use it was just as a real focused way to warm up the lungs and

warm up the stroke mechanics with like a 10 by 50 wearing a

snorkel before the swim.

Brock: It sounds like Kathy is into the same boat as you or I. She doesn’t

sound like she’s necessarily training for any races or anything like

that and so the achiness she’s getting in her neck from doing the

twisting motion when she tries to breathe and it would be

advantageous to everyone ______[0:57:18.1] do some speed

work until your neck starts to get sore and then just put the

snorkel back on.

Ben: Yeah. Hopefully that helps you out, Kathy.

Brock: All right. Now Tricia asks, “I have neuromas in both of my feet

that only bother me when I run. I’ve been seeing a podiatrist for

about 4 months and I have been getting a series of alcohol-based

shots. I also have custom orthotics for my running shoes. I’ve had

some improvement from the shots but still have some discomfort.

Surgery is my next option and I wanted to know your thoughts on

neuroma surgery and recovery and if I could do both feet at once.

Ben: It probably wouldn’t surprise you that I’m not a huge fan of going

after surgery in this case until you’ve tried something rather than

just alcohol shots/alcohol injections. Alcohol injections are just a

form of prolotherapy. So you can inject like sugar water, you can

inject specific amino acids, you can inject alcohol into an area but

these are all kind of alternative medical forms of prolotherapy

where you’re trying to increase inflammation in an area to

enhance the healing response. So essentially, you’re stepping up

inflammation short term so that you can, basically remove

metabolic by-products that might be contributing to inflammation

or irritation in and area.

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Brock: So by injecting that, you’re sort of angering the cells in that area

so that they sort of fight back.

Ben: Yeah. It’s mild amount of irritation. Where a surgical treatment

might involve actually excising the neuroma and perhaps

transferring some nerve tissue without cutting the nerve and it

could be a little bit risky and surgical complications can include

not only some scars on your feet and some scar tissue formation

but also worsening of nerve symptoms. And sometimes a

numbness or always kinda having this weird feeling in your foot

like you almost like you’re walking around constantly with like a

lump in your sock.

Brock: We should probably talk about what a neuroma is. We started to

just gloss over that.

Ben: Yeah. That’s true. It’s just sensory nerve irritation in the bottom

of your foot. It’s typically caused by nerve compression due to

arch tightness. It can be from a collapse of the long arch on your

foot, putting a lot of pressure on the involved nerves. It can be die

to poorly fitted shoes, too much time on your feet, weighing too

much, wearing high heels or not very supportive shoes, using

insoles that are too soft or too hard.

[1:00:02.2]

But basically, the nerves in your feet get irritated, they get

swollen, they get inflamed and…

Brock: Sometimes can grow like a bit of a tumor or growth.

Ben: Yeah. And a lot of times, you can lose sensation between your

toes, usually between your second and your third or your third

and your fourth toes. And a lot of times you get like this constant

burning sensation in the bottom of your foot. Pretty annoying

thing! The first thing that I would consider even before you go

into like prolotherapy and especially before you consider

something like surgery would just be looking into like a metatarsal

button or an orthotic that has a metatarsal relief pad or a

metatarsal button built into it and this essentially spreads the

head of your metatarsal bones and allows for relief of that nerve

pressure. Even if you got custom orthotic that a podiatrist made

for you, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they built in a metatarsal

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button into the orthotic. There’s a cycling orthotic made by

specialized, it’s called the specialized body geometry orthotic.

And I had some issues of numbness in the bottom of my foot a

couple of years ago and I switched to that orthotic and it relieved

the issues and I now use another…it’s a Louis Garneau custom-

molded cycling shoe and same thing, it’s got a metatarsal pad

built into it that keeps the heads of my metatarsal spread out and

keeps me from getting that burning foot sensation after I’ve

ridden my bike for a few dozen miles. I’ll link to it to a page on

Amazon for you that shows you at any number of different

metatarsal pads, metatarsal gel cushions, metatarsal sleeves, and

metatarsal orthotics that can relieve pressure on these nerves on

your foot. But that’s one thing that I would look into before I look

into like a prolotherapy or especially before you look into surgery.

That’s where I would start and then I would also definitely make

sure that you’re wearing properly fitted shoes and staying away

from high heels and just being careful with the type of pressure

that you put on your feet from that standpoint.

Brock: Okay. That brings us to our final question from Jim and Jim says,

“Hey, could you talk about in an upcoming podcast about what

the prescriptions Prilosec for acid reflux and Vyvanse for ADHD

do to athletes. I mainly a road bicycle racer but I do duathlon and

triathlon every so often as well”.

Ben: Yeah. The Prilosec, the acid reflux drug and the Vyvanse for

ADHD are two completely different things. We should probably

address them separately. Acid-stopping drugs are not that hot for

you. Probably, this will surprise you to hear me say that. But

there’s 4 things that Prilosec or any acid inhibitor can do when

you take it. The first thing that you need to consider is that you

can get a lot of bacterial overgrowth in your stomach anytime that

you decrease stomach acid which is what an anti acid is essentially

doing. And when you get bacterial overgrowth due to low stomach

acid conditions that makes it so that you’re not able to digest

carbohydrates properly. And when you’re not able to digest

carbohydrates properly, they ferment in your digestive tract and

that produces gas. That gas causes pressure in your stomach

which essentially puts pressure up against your lower esophageal

sphincter and allows acid from your stomach to enter your

esophagus and produces this vicious cycle of more heartburn

when you’re using ironically, an acid inhibitor.

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Brock: Yeah. It sounds like it’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to not be

doing.

Ben: Exactly. So it creates this vicious cycle and bacterial overgrowth

has a lot of other kinda nasty effects to in terms of creating a lot of

the symptoms of GI distress and irritable bowel syndrome and

things of that nature. The other issue with shutting down stomach

acid is you get impaired nutrient absorption. A lot of the

breakdown in absorption of nutrients is reliant upon a certain

range of ph in your stomach. And so if there isn’t enough acid in

your stomach then normal reactions that are required to absorb

nutrients become impaired. So for example, when you eat food,

your stomach is supposed to secrete hydrochloric acid and that

triggers the production of something called pepsin and that’s one

of the enzymes that requires for you to digest protein. So if you

suppress your HCL levels through an anti acid, you suppress your

pepsin levels so proteins don’t get broken down into amino acids.

And so that can lead to things like amino acid deficiencies and

interestingly, I’m guessing that the listener asked this question

about both ADHD and an acid inhibitor because perhaps they’re

using both of these things.

[1:05:22.2]

But amino acids are used for neurotransmitter production and if

you got impaired amino acid absorption and impaired

neurotransmitter production, that can be linked to depression and

anxiety and insomnia and a lot of neural disorders, including

ADHD. That’s something to think about, the fact that you’re on

both of these things maybe related. Once these proteins that

escaped digestion actually enter your digestive tract, actually, they

can end up in your bloodstream too so your body can mount an

allergic or auto immune reaction against the undigested protein

particles in your bloodstream because you didn’t digest them in

your stomach. There are a lot of other nutrients whose absorption

become impaired when you’re on an anti acid. Some of the main

ones are iron which obviously is very important for people who

are exercising; B12 which is very important for your brain

function and also your normal neuro-muscular activities that also

can affect your exercise capabilities; folate which is important for

keeping your cardiovascular system healthy, so that’s another one

that can affect your exercise capacity if it’s not getting absorbed

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properly because of anti acid intake; calcium is another one that

can get impaired when you’re given an HCL supplement for

example, that brings your stomach acid back up. It can go hand in

hand with improved calcium absorption. And then finally, zinc

which is very important for hormone formation. It’s a good

testosterone precursor and it’s been shown that most anti acids

significantly reduce your absorption of zinc, so that’s another.

That’s kind of a second thing to consider is not only bacterial

overgrowth but also impaired nutrient absorption when it comes

to being on an anti acid. Then other important thing to consider is

you might get sick more if you’re on an anti acid because the high

acid environment of your stomach is one of the main defense

mechanisms in your body. When the ph of your stomach is low,

bacteria don’t last very long thus the ph gets higher and higher

and as acid starts to disappear from your stomach, bacterial

species, many of them including harmful ones can avoid acid in

your stomach and start to thrive and basically, a stomach that

doesn’t have enough acid is creating this environment that

harbors potentially pathogenic bacteria because you’ve got this

dark warm stomach that doesn’t have necessary acid in it. And a

lot of times you get what’s called bacterial overgrowth and so you

may find that you have risk of like giardia, salmonella, cholera.

H.pylori is another one that tends to be kinda common and this

stuff can not only result in GI distress and poor bowel function

but can also affect your mood. Again, another reason that I

suspect that if you’re on a heartburn medication may be one of the

reasons that you’re also having to be on an ADHD medication.

Brock: Yeah. Be interesting to know which one came first.

Ben: Exactly. And then the final thing to think about is that one of the

leading causes of what’s called the atrophic gastritis which is a

major risk factor for stomach cancer is h.pylori and acid-

suppressing drugs can really worsen h.pylori bacterial infection

and increase risk of stomach cancer. And so that’s something else

that you really wanna be careful with. The other thing that you

should consider here when it comes to exercise is that if you’re

getting acid into your esophagus, there is a significant drop in the

ability of your lungs to take in and breathe out air and that’s the

reason that a lot of doctors wouldn’t want to put asthma patients

on anti acids, it’s because it can significantly impair your lung

function and so that’s something else to consider when it comes to

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exercise. So obviously, a lot of issues here when it comes to being

on an anti acid and I think we’ve discussed on the show before

some of the ways that you can get rid of heart burn without

actually going on an anti acid but it’s kinda sort of simple. What

you wanna do is reduce anything that could be potentially

promoting bacterial overgrowth which remember produces this

gas and this pressure up against your esophageal sphincter and

also reduce anything that can be contributing to low stomach acid.

The other things that you can do is replace stomach acid, you can

replace digestive enzymes, you can replace a lot of nutrients that

help out with digestion and it kinda restore your levels of

beneficial bacteria in your gut.

[1:10:13.9]

So essentially we’re talking about kinda like a gut healing

protocol. I’ll link to a lot of the stuff that I recommend to kinda

heal your gut in the show notes. And I know that the podcast is

starting to get a little bit long so in the interest of time, I’m just

gonna kinda gloss over a few of these things. But some of the stuff

I would recommend would be controlling the amount of

carbohydrates and the type of carbohydrates that you take in. I

would recommend that you try out something like a specific

carbohydrate diet which limits the type of carbohydrates that tend

to cause fermentation and heartburn. And I’ll link to a free book

in the show notes that kinda goes over what the Specific

Carbohydrate Diet is and shows you how to start that. A few of

the other things that I would recommend would be that you look

into getting on like an actual (as ironic as it may seem) acid like

HCL. I like HCL with pepsin supplement that you can literally

take in the early part of each meal and that’s just a capsule that

you swallow that has both pepsin and HCL in it and will start to

rebuild the healthy levels of stomach acid and the healthy levels of

pepsin in your stomach.

Brock: HCL is hydrochloric acid, right?

Ben: Exactly.

Brock: That’s really powerful stuff.

Ben: Yeah. You don’t need much of it. And another way that you can

stimulate acid production in your stomach is by taking herbs that

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are called bitters. And you can literally get like bitters tonics that

are like this liquid shots that you can use prior to consuming your

meal and that can help out as well.

Brock: They also go really well in cocktails.

Ben: That’s great in a cocktail. Yup. A little bit of bitters added to some

beefy _____[1:11:53.8] and an olive, preferably a blue cheese

stuffed olive, yum. But stay away from it until you get rid of your

heartburn ‘cause alcohol can contribute to that. So bad advice,

Brock. Down, Brock.

Brock: Sorry.

Ben: And then also, probiotics can really help with restoring proper

balance of the stomach flora. The other thing that you may wanna

consider that your gut lining maybe damaged and that can

contribute to heartburn is getting on like bone broth or if that’s

too time-consuming for you to make, just buying like a gelatin

supplement which you can mix up in water, that can have a

similar effect in helping restore the mucosal lining in your

stomach. So those are some of the (you know, I just want for that

stuff really fast) but I’ll put a link to all these in the show notes as

well as on the MyList for this episode over at

facebook.com/bgfitness. Those are some of the gut healing

protocols that I would look into.

Brock: And actually, if you go to Endurance Planet, I know Dr. Minkoff

went really in depth one time about exactly this stuff. So if you

did a search for “acid reflux”, probably on Endurance Planet,

you’ll find that as well and he’s quite a genius.

Ben: Yeah. Over at enduranceplanet.com, for sure. And then the other

thing when it comes to the ADHD medication, is that Vyvanse is

basically a psycho stimulant. It falls into the class of

amphetamines and it certainly an approved treatment for ADHD

similar to an anti acid, there a lot of side effects from dizziness to

nausea to anxiety and diarrhea to headache, insomnia and there’s

also a very, very kind of addictive potential of the stuff. In terms

of the potential effect on exercise, the main thing that I would be

concerned about is cardiac dysrhythmia which is abnormal

electrical activity in your heart which can cause sudden cardiac

death if you’re not careful. And that’s one of the main issues with

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amphetamine that I would want you to be really careful about.

There was a really interesting study that came out early last year

on treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder with

basically amino acid precursors. And this is something I just

hinted that that amino acid deficiencies can be associated with

neural issues. And in this particular study, they were able to

mitigate a lot of the effects of ADHD by using amino acid

precursors specifically precursors with dopamine and precursors

for serotonin. And there are specific natural amino acid

derivatives out there that can be synthesized in the serotonin and

dopamine. 5-HTP, L-Dopa, L-tryptophan, and L-Tyrosine are the

main neurotransmitters that are used in natural neurotransmitter

treatment for ADHD. And there are certain supplements that

have these particular components in them. I’ll put a link in the

show notes but basically, there’s one called NeuroReplete that’s

used to increase serotonin levels. There’s one called CysReplete

that’s used to increase what’s called catecholamine synthesis and

there is one called L-Dopa that you can use to improve your

dopamine levels. And then you can also just take straight

Tyrosine and 5-HTP. The problem is that when you’re

experimenting with neurotransmitter therapy for ADHD, it’s very

easy to create imbalances if you’re not careful with this stuff and

so you could get for example, too much serotonin or too much

dopamine and that can kinda create issues. So I would

recommend that you work with someone who is licensed in this

type of stuff when it comes to using natural neurotransmitter

treatments for fixing this type of issue. Anybody who has been to

what’s called the Kalish Method and you can check that out over

at kalishresearch.com but this is a guy who has a really, really

good natural treatment for ADHD. He has a practitioner program

that physicians are able to go through. I will be looking into a

physician who is certified in the Kalish Method to replenish

neurotransmitter levels rather that playing around with this stuff

yourself. If you just have a little bit of trouble with mild

depression and stuff like that, a lot of times, you can fix it just by

using for example, like some 5-HTP and some Tyrosine and all in

the show notes. I’ll put some ratios and some links and stuff for

you. But if you’re going after fall-on clinical condition, you may

wanna consider working with a certified practitioner to address

these type of things.

Page 32: Ben Greenfield podcast 222

Brock: You should probably drop in a little audio clip about Ben not

being a doctor here.

Ben: Boom! Put it.

Brock: Ben is not a doctor and the content provided on this podcast is for

informational purposes only and should not be construed as

medical or health care advice. Okay. Back to it.

Ben: That’s probably a perfect place to kinda end the discussion but

what I’ll do is I’ll put a link in the show notes to this study on

treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder with amino

acid precursors. If you wanna check out exactly what they went

into in that study but it really kind of, in my opinion, beats the

risk of drug dependence and some of the other risks of using an

amphetamine to treat ADHD. Anyways, speaking of neural issues,

this weekend, I’m going to be releasing a pretty interesting

podcast I did with a hypnotherapist. He’s a hypnotherapist and a

personal trainer specializes in hypnotherapy for sports

performance.

Brock: Did he make you act like a chicken?

Ben: He’s gonna hypnotize me next month and we’re gonna record it

and release it on the podcast. But for this first episode, we’re just

gonna talk about hypnotherapy and what it is. It’s pretty cool. So

stay tuned. That’s gonna come out this Saturday. Make sure that

if you get this in time, that you get into the VIP Text Club by

texting the word “fitness” to 411247. Check out we talked about a

lot of stuff in this episode so be sure to check out the show notes

at bengreenfieldfitness.com, Episode #222 and also the MyList for

this episode over at facebook.com/bgfitness. And if you realize

that Brock completely sucks compared to my wife and you want

my wife back, ‘cause you don’t like Australian.

Brock: Canadian, damn it! Canadian.

Ben: That’s too bad ‘cause Jessa’s not coming back. No seriously, I’m

talking dude, about maybe doing an episode every now and again,

in the new year and kinda have a little bonus episode for folks

with Jessa but we’ll see if that happens. For now though, Brock

and his banjo are with us to stay. Thanks for listening, folks and

Page 33: Ben Greenfield podcast 222

until next time, this is Ben and Brock, signing out from

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