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Transcript of 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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
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:
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
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.
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?
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
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
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
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,
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.
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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.
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
until next time, this is Ben and Brock, signing out from
bengreenfieldfitness.com.
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