May 29, 2013
Podcast #242 from https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2013/05/242-how-to-switch-off-pain-exercise-during-cold-thermogenesis-how-to-use-d-ribose/
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Introduction: In today’s episode of the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast: Should you exercise during cold thermogenesis, how to use D-Ribose, What is a withings scale, how to turn off pain, should you run if you have epilepsy, and what is a bad heart rate variability score?
Brock: I can’t believe it’s coming out on Tuesday.
Ben: It’s coming on Tuesday.
Brock: I’m so excited.
Ben: That’s right. And it’s not just the new movies that get released on a redbox on Tuesday which is also another good reason to look forward to Tuesdays.
Brock: That’s an exciting day but not as exciting as next Tuesday will be.
Ben: That’s right. It’s actually been a long time since I watched it. An actual, like real movie. I just watch stuff on hulu nowadays. Master Chef and now The Office is over, I’m not really watching that anymore. Modern Family, that’s another one.
Brock: Yeah. We don’t, we can’t get hulu in Canada.
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: It’s geo-blocked.
Ben: Well what happens to us is like it about 9:30 PM when our kids finally like get shut into their bedroom and we lock the door with chain and padlock, my wife and I collapse on the couch and just like fall down in heap of exhaustion and put on whatever happens to be on but yeah, next Tuesday the app….
Brock: That has nothing to do with hulu, it’s got nothing to do with redbox. It has everything to do with a new smart phone app.
Ben: Yeah, the Ben Greenfield Fitness app we’ve been developing it with our crack team of awesome developers for the past month.
Brock: Wizards.
Ben: Wizards. And it’s pretty sick as I like to say. It’s got a ton of extra insider exclusive audios in it. I’m putting interviews in there that you don’t get access to on the regular podcast. Yeah, it’s free, by the way. Totally free.
Brock: Now, I still don’t know how we’re gonna get rich when you keep making things free? You really don’t get it….
Ben: No, I’ll tell you why and I’ll share this with the listeners too. Here’s my plan to take over the world.
Brock: Okay.
Ben: So the app is free, right, and it’s got like a bunch of videos with Brock. Brock, what are the product reviews you’re doing?
Brock: So far, in there, if you were to get it on launch day, I’ve reviewed Tailwind Nutrition and also….
Ben: It’s just a horrible name for….
Brock: It is. It’s a good product but a terrible name.
Ben: I don’t think I’d eat anything that said tailwind but I’m curious to see. I haven’t actually watched your video yet. But so what else?
Brock: Yeah of course you’d have to wait ‘til the app comes out on Tuesday.
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: I also did IntelliSkin shirts and with any luck before the launch I’ll also do a review on Skora shoes ‘cause I love those things.
Ben: There you go. There you go, you can do all three at the same time – IntelliSkin with Tailwind while wearing the Skoras. You might need some IntelliSkin underwear pura if you’re drinking Tailwind fuel.
Brock: Yeah. We’ll fit it all in there.
Ben: Got a how to use an inversion table video, half-ironman triathlon fueling set up, Olympic distance fueling set up, specials with Monica Reinagel, Dave Asprey, Ray Cronise, bunch of stuff in there, Insider, Naked Truth episodes with Jessa and myself along with video. We’ll play a little preview of that for you.
Brock: Yeah, we’ve got a little teaser coming up.
Ben: In between the special announcements and the Q&A, listen in 'cause we have a little teaser there for you and yeah as far as why and the ultimate evil plan on how to actually make money of something… cause we’re not actually selling advertisement on it. You can, if you get the phone app and you decide that you want access to even more, like a bunch of inside videos and the stuff that I’m doing, there’s actually an option on the app to upgrade to premium. And it’s super expensive, it’s $9.99 a year. And anyways so that’s our plan to take over the world.
Brock: Again, how are we going to get rich like this?
Ben: I’ve already bought my Mercedes so people better, people better buy that 9.99 a year. I’m telling you what. And then I’m also, I’m on top of the world right now cause I just sucked down my ketogenic kale shake.
Brock: Hmm, delicious.
Ben: I know folks who are at bengreenfieldfitness.com recently but I wrote a mondo article about how I’m spending the next 12 weeks in a full state of ketogenesis – full-on low-carb high blood ketone bodies measuring it with breath ketone monitors, measuring my blood every week and staying in full ketogenesis for all 12 weeks leading up to Ironman Canada.
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And I’m gonna see what happens to your body when you do that and the whole thing is sponsored by Talking20 who’s doing the blood measurements by Metron whose doing the breath ketone measurements, by Dave Asprey and the Bulletproof Coffee so I’m doing either Bulletproof Coffee every morning with tons of MCT Oil or else I’m doing this ketogenic kale shake. And the ketogenic kale shake is essentially, there’s a few extra ingredients in it and you can watch the video I just put up on youtube if you want the full ingredient label or ingredient list but it’s basically kale and the kale is washed and mixed with like calcium to rinse all the oxalic acid off it and you just do that in the blender and then it’s got protein, like grass fed protein. It’s got collagen, it’s got a little apple cider vinegar, some sea salt, some Brazil nuts, some coconut milk, and some cinnamon, and I think that’s close to about it. I literally just like put the last spoonful of it into my gaping mouth right before we started podcasting and I’m a happy, full man right now.
Brock: That sounds very similar to your sexy time shake.
Brock: It is but I left out anything remotely resembling carbohydrates at all and also left out the avocado because frankly when you add all that MCT oil and you put in avocado into, we’re talking north of like 1500 calories in the shakes so it starts to get lower redonculous so there you go. Try out the ketogenic kale shake videos on youtube.com/bengreenfieldfitness.
News Flashes:
Brock: Go over to bengreenfieldfitness.com/242 to find the links to all of these news flashes right here, taking you away to all the beautiful new discoveries that the scientists are….
Ben: Crazy scientists…..
Brock: But they’re just doing crazy weird stuff all the time.
Ben: Those bastards. They’re constantly throwing stuff at as that we have to tell you about. So we just got in talking about ketogenesis. Here’s the cool thing that came across my radar. They did a study on ketogenic diets and thermal pain in rats. And….
Brock: Thermal pain. So like setting them on fire?
Ben: Something like, I’m guessing more like a cattle prod hypothermal pain regardless. The type of study you can’t do on humans but you can do in rats. And what they found was that rats that were fed a high-fat, low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet developed reduction to pain specifically reduction to heat-based pain and thermo-pains, sensitivity to thermo-pain. And this reduces pain tended to develop about 10 days into the ketogenic diet and I have no clue who thought of this study about feeding rats a high-fat, low-carb diet and hitting with the cattle prod until you know, seeing which day they actually started to not respond.
Brock: That’s just sadistic.
Ben: Yeah, it’s a little sadistic but regardless, I think it’s interesting in a couple of levels. First of all, it’s interesting that when you switch to a high-fat diet it usually takes about 10 up to 14 days for you to really make that metabolic switch for you to feel like, you’re not, you don’t have this feeling of blah, you know, I just wanna pass out all the time and it’s interesting that it was about day 10 where the rats started to experience these interesting adaptations to ketogenesis. The other thing that I thought was interesting for me is that since I started doing the kinda more low carb ketogenic approach, when I’m doing triathlons and races in hot weather, I actually feel better and I haven’t had due as much heat acclamation and I’ve no clue if you know, a cattle prod has much carry over to you know, exercising to the heat of Hawaii. You know, doing an Ironman triathlon in lava field. But I suspected ketogenic diet and low-carb diet maybe one of the reasons that I actually performed better in the heat the past couple of years. So….
Brock: Interesting.
Ben: Yeah. I thought that was an interesting study and….
Brock: I think you should sneak one of your kids a cattle prod. Just get them to like surprise you at some point and see how it feels.
Ben: That would get out of hand. That would be like the electro-shock therapy in the South Park cartoon where….
Brock: Oh with the v-trip…
Ben: Where Cartman is out and singing “O Holy Night” and get shocked everytime he sings it. So, moving on.
[0:10:11.8]
Brock: That’s pretty good.
Ben: By the way, I do have a special song I’m gonna play for folks at the very, very end of this episode. And I’ll fill you in towards the end but we do have a special song, not sung by me but sung by someone close to me at the end of this episode. So you always gotta stay tune for the end of this episode folks ‘cause we put in some cool stuff. So anyways, pain management and ketogenesis may go hand in hand.
Brock: Yes.
Ben: Oh the next thing is there was a study that was done by a bunch of Danish students and this was a biology project that a bunch of 9th grade Danish girls did and what they did was they got a crest which is you know, kinda like a water crest, essentially. And they grew crests and they observe, measured, and weighted and took pictures of crest for 12 days ‘cause the stuff actually grows pretty rapidly. So they had 6 trays of crest seeds and 6 trays of crest seeds were out into a room without a wifi router and then another 6 trays of crest were put into a room next to 2 wifi routers. And these routers broadcast the same kind of radiation as an ordinary mobile phone would or as an ordinary wifi router in your home might.
Brock: So 2.4 Ghz signal.
Ben: That just went way over my head dude. I do not know gigahertz.
Brock: Just nod and smile.
Ben: Below hertz. Anyways though, the effects were shocking. I’m gonna link to this in the show notes because pictures tell a thousand words on this but the crest and the non-wifi room grew and was this rich green color and was like growing off the plate and flourishing. The crest in the wifi room was literally like dead brown, and shriveled, and shrunken.
Brock: I was hoping that you were gonna say the opposite and it was gonna be sort of like the Hulk sort of thing where exposure to radiation made it stronger and bigger and greener.
Ben: Well you know, Jack Cruz, I’ve got a podcast coming out with Jack Cruz here.
Brock: Oh cool.
Ben: This Saturday. He and I talked a little bit about EMF and what it does to you cells and also we delved into a bunch of stuff. We delved into what he calls the pentose phosphate pathway and enhancing performance and what makes your cells leaky and it’s gonna be a cool podcast but regardless, this is one of the reasons that I don’t even have the wifi router on in my home anymore. I hard wire into the cable modem whenever I wanna access the internet. And my phone, for the most part, stays in airplane mode unless I have time to the day I wanna turn it on to communicate with folks so the less you can expose yourself to these wifi signals, the better. I know it sounds kinda tinfoil at it but you gotta check out these water crest photos. We’ll link to them in the show notes.
Brock: So what you’re saying is Marvel comics got it completely wrong.
Ben: What did Marvel comics do?
Brock: Just everybody who’s exposed to radiation in comic books, is like superhuman.
Ben: Yes, exactly the opposite. You will shrink and shrivel. There is also a study that was released in the Medicine and Science and Sports and Exercise Journal. And this was really interesting and what it did was it purposefully over trained people or actually got them close to overtraining. So they had 2 groups of well-trained triathletes and one group spent a week doing regular training and then for the next 3 weeks continued regular training. Well the other group did a week of regular training but then for the next 3 weeks they ramped up their training by 40%. And then for the very last week, both of the groups tapered before they did this final performance test. So the goal was to push the group that increased their training by 40% up into what’s called functional overreaching. And they took heart rate data, they took heart rate variability data, which is that amount of time between you know, your heart beats and it’s the measure of your nervous system health. And what they found was that sure enough, as you might expect, heart rate variability tended to drop more in the group that was chronically overreached or what was close to overtrained. Morning resting heart rate tended to fluctuate and actually got higher in the group that was reaching the overreached state. And although things tended to fluctuate quite a bit from day to day when you actually look at the 7-day average of both heart rate variability and heart rate, you tended to see some really telling patterns. Now here’s the interesting thing. The overtraining group got steadily worse and worse and worse as that 3-week overtraining period went on compared to the control group. But remember, they put in a 1 week taper between the 3 weeks of training and the actual performance test. Well the group that was overreached or close to being over-trained – I have to be careful saying over trained because technically, over training is like really, really serious where as overreaching is pushing yourself close to the edge.
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But this overreached group, during the taper period, they began to see massive improvements in performance and by the time the performance test rolled around, they kicked the ass of the people in the control group. So what this goes to show you is that if you’re tracking things like heart rate, like heart rate variability, etcetera, expect it to get a little worse as you’re getting close to your vantage, you’re getting close to the end whatever you call it your build phase or you know, your big ramp-up to the race. Allow enough time for a taper and I like around, you know, it depends. I like it 2-4 week taper for an Ironman and 1-2 week taper for half an Ironman and most age group or triathletes for example and trust your body. Know that it’s gonna kinda suck towards the end of that build period but man, if you taper, that’s when you get the gains over and above the folks who maybe just trained the same thing day-in day-out all the way up to the race.
Brock: So I assume the taper period was the same sorta protocol for both of the groups.
Ben: Yeah, the taper period was the same but one group was really really beat up going into the taper period, one group wasn’t. And the group that was more beat up did better so it’s kinda this whole overreaching stair step effect. It’s the whole basis, you know what, in sports science we call it functional overreaching where you put yourself in this slightly high risk state and you risk those extreme benefits that you’re gonna get if you push yourself to that point. So….
Brock: And it’s all about timing at that point, just making sure that you push just hard enough at the right time and then cut it off otherwise it could all go to hell.
Ben: I’ve had races where I started my taper too late. I got to the race, had a crappy race and then like 3 days later, I was superman and you know, it was because I didn’t time that taper right. So it’s really important you know. That’s one of the reasons to work with a coach or use a training program if you’re getting ready for a big race. The last thing that I wanted to mention, and usually I only talk about 3 studies, but I wanted to throw in 1 more here because fish oil has come under attack recently. There’s been lots and lots of talk about how fish oil does not indeed reduce your risk of cardio-vascular disease based on these big studies starting with one that was published in the journal of the American Medical Association a few months ago and this big study that was published in the Journal of American Medical Association basically showed that a modest daily intake of fish oil did not actually result in any statistically significant association with a reduction in cardio-vascular risk disease which is why a lot of people take fish oil to just make their heart stronger, and their vessels better. That’s my highly scientific term – make your vessels better. But anyways, the Journal of the American Medical Association study had some serious flaws. First of all, here’s something that they don’t tell you. That the entire study and all studies that they looked at were done on people with cardiac disease, people who would already become victims of accelerated atherosclerotic plaque formation and people who they were feeding generally about half as much fish oil as is necessary to be an efficacious dose too. So these people were not getting enough fish oil and furthermore, they were already experienced significant cardiac damage. So, you know, it’s kinda like saying that you know, you use fish oil as a preventive measure not to reverse heart disease so if you’re….
Brock: Yeah it’s not a cure, it’s prevention.
Ben: Exactly. And Life Extension Magazine did a great article on this, I’ll link to it in the show notes but you know, the analogy that they used was let’s say you’re barbecuing outdoors and you accidentally light a bush on fire that’s next to your house and you turn your garden hose on full blast and you put out the fire. And so based on that experience, you can say that garden hoses are effective in preventing houses from burning down. And then, you know, in a different scenario, let’s say you come home and your entire house is engulfed in flames and you take your garden hose and you turn it on and you turn it halfway on (since they only gave people half dose of fish oil).
Brock: Yeah.
Ben: And your house burns to the ground anyways. And so at that point you say that garden hoses are completely useless in preventing houses from being destroyed by fire so you know, the fish oil is analogous to that garden hose and that yeah, fish oil is gonna work if you’re in a healthy state and if you’re taking enough of it. But if you’ve already messed up your body, you know the only thing this Journal of American Medical Association study or meta-analysis shows is that fish oil isn’t gonna reverse cardio-vascular disease. That’s about it.
Brock: Which is a valuable thing to know.
Ben: Oh sure, it’s a valuable thing to know that you can’t just pop a pill to reverse a hole that you dug yourself into but I think that for those of us taking fish oil you know, for prehab, for prevention, I personally plan on continuing to take fish oil. I was talking to Kc Craichy, the guy who develops the Super Essentials Fish Oil that I take that you get over at Pacifically Fitness and I talk to him sometimes and he gives me some advice in terms of like supplementation and proper use of products and stuff like that, he does like the super grains and the living fuel and stuff like that.
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And he said he takes 14 of this fish oil capsules per day. The Super Essential Fish Oil capsules. I only do about 4-6 but that’s, it’s definitely something you notice a difference in. From a cognitive performance standpoint to a joint standpoint, you know, and you kinda get to keep your fingers crossed from the cardi0-vascular standpoint unless you’re literally going in, doing like a calcium score analysis on yourself or something. But yeah, there you go. Fish oil. Good stuff not bad stuff.
Special Announcements:
Brock: If you wanna get yourself a free audiobook, go to audiblepodcast.com/ben and sign up right then and there and you will become a gold standard, gold premium member, I can’t remember what it’s called. Some kinda awesome member and you get yourself a free book.
Ben: Titanium Warrior Member.
Brock: Sure.
Ben: I don’t know what it is. I’m looking at the top book in parenting right now which is a topic close to my heart. The top book in parenting, actually I can’t tell if it, yeah it is a book but it’s got whisper sync for voice on it that means they read it to you and then you can pick up right where you left off.
Brock: Does it whisper to you?
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: They read it to you really quietly.
Ben: I’m trying to suppress a sneeze here. Hold on.
Brock: Go. Do it.
Ben: I’m good. I went running just as it was about to rain yesterday and I was wearing one of these Breathe Right strips and practicing like my deep nasal breathing and I think I might have sucked some pollen up into my nose cause I never ever get sniffles and I’ve got sniffles this morning. Anyways though, yeah, this book is called “Dad is Fat” by Jim Gaffigan. He’s a stand-up comedian and he talks about his 5 kids and everything from cousins who he calls celebrities for little kids to toddlers’ communication skills. He describes toddlers as they always sound like they have traveled by horseback for hours to deliver important news.
Brock: It’s true. “Daddy… you’re never gonna believe… what I saw…”
Ben: To the eating habits of 4-year olds. There’s no difference between a 4-year old eating a taco and throwing a taco on the floor. So anyways though, he’s a funny guy. I kinda like comedians talking about kids and you know, it’s real, clean stuff, so check out “Dad is Fat” by Jim Gaffigan and you can get that at audiblepodcast.com/ben.
Brock: Beautiful.
Ben: Beautiful.
Brock: And what else is going on? Hey you’re doing a USAT webinar tomorrow if you’re tuning in right away. It is May 29th and the webinar is tomorrow, May 30th.
Ben: Yeah, it’s, speaking of kids, about balancing work and family and life while you are training for a triathlon and yeah, it is a USAT webinar so if you’re coach, you get CEUs and all that good stuff. And we’ll put a link in the show notes. And that one, that one actually does cost money to attend.
Brock: Not much.
Ben: But check it out. Scrapes and point together, if you wanna learn how to get your life together and train for Ironman or something like that. It’ll be a good webinar. I’ll knock your pants off with my powerpoint so there you go. Check that out.
Brock: That is if you’re wearing pants.
Ben: That’s right. Speaking of not….
Brock: And I’m watching webinars, why wear pants?
Ben: Speaking of not wearing pants, the Thailand Triathlon Adventure is coming up in this winter. We’ve got, I think we have 11 people signed up for it right now.
Brock: Wow.
Ben: We’ll put a link in the show notes over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/242 but here’s the way I look at opportunities like this. Like 20 years from now, 20 years from now you’re gonna regret the things you didn’t do more than the things you did do and this is one of those bucket list trips. It’s the complete adventure of a lifetime. If you’re a triathlete or you’re married to a triathlete, this is one of those things you just should totally step up and just go. Like I’m literally, like I talked to Jessa we’re just, we’re literally moving to Thailand for 3 weeks, we’re taking our family there, we’re doing the races. We’re hanging out in the, you know, we’ve got hotels and you know, you do have to be somebody who’s able to get that time off or be like me. Change your laptop or working from your computer but if you’re one of those people who has a flexibility to take off this November and December and come over to Thailand, we’ve got some options. You can go for 2 weeks, 3 weeks, or even 1 week. But blink is in the show notes. It is gonna be a complete blast and the adventure of a lifetime. Trips to Raleigh Bay and rock climbing and sea kayaking and triathlons and elephant rides, it’ll be pretty fun so check it out.
[0:25:17.8]
Brock: Just a word to the wise, if Ben starts running off down the beach and says I’ll see you back at the hotel, don’t let him get out of your sight or you may get lost in the jungle for a good couple of hours like I did.
Ben: Yeah that was my bad. Sorry about that, Brock.
Brock: That’s right. I survived and I saw some awesome monkeys but I did have those moments of, this is how people never get seen again.
Ben: Horrible suppressed memories of….
Brock: Canadian men lost in Raleigh Bay.
Ben: Monkeys chasing you through Thailand. And I think that’s about… Oh, one last thing. This Saturday, for anybody who lives down near Sacramento, California, I’m hopping on a plane on Friday and I’m coming down to speak at an event. It’s actually in Folsom which is right by Sacramento but it’s called the Health and Wellness Celebration. So check that out.
Brock: You’re speaking to the prisoners.
Ben: Folsom prison, yeah. We’re gonna go celebrate health and wellness in Folsom prison.
Brock: Why not?
Ben: No but it’s like all afternoon. It’s like a bunch of food and partying and talks by health and wellness experts and they invited me to come down and kinda head, coming down that way anyways, so there I am in Sacramento at the Health and Wellness Celebration. Check it out and are we gonna play that little app….
Brock: Oh yeah.
Ben: Preview for folks?
Brock: Yes, if you have delicate ears, you may want to turn away.
Ben: The preview of the app.
Jessa: For me, cheating is probably… In mind which I partook of both times and to me though, that’s not really cheating…
Ben: And the other boys will have 1 or 2 servings or whatever and I’ll just have a couple of huge-ass *beep* and Jessa see me jack before in like big and…
Jessa: I know for myself I’m tempted by stuff like that. I love *beep* I grew up on….
Ben: So I usually bring a steak in my pocket to and chew on that. Okay.
Jessa: I’ve done it several times or I have….
Listener Q & A:
Casey: Hey Ben this is Casey from Oregon, California. I had an idea to incorporate cold thermogenesis with the Litvinov Training Protocol by substituting the run with a 400 meter swim in an icy cold river that I live nearby. I’m just wondering your take on combining these 2 things and if there’s any health issues involved I mainly wanna make sure my heart doesn’t explode while on the middle of the 400 meter swim.
Brock: Yes Casey, nobody wants your heart to explode. Not even us.
Ben: Do you know what Litvinov Training is?
Brock: I have looked over your training protocol and I think you incorporate some of those crazy combinations of blasting anaerobic exercises and then pumping iron and then….
Ben: Yeah, it’s like you do 8 reps or so, you could do up to 30 reps if you’re doing like burpees or something but you do some good solid reps of a full body move like a dumbbell swing or a kettlebell swing or burpee or front squat or whatever and then as soon as you finish that lift, whatever numbers you do for that lift you take-off and then all-out, you know, full-on sprint for about anywhere from 30-60 seconds. And then you recover, back to the bar or the kettlebell or whatever it was you were lifting and you do it again. So should you combine something like this with cold thermogenesis? Or, was he gonna swim or he’s gonna soak in water?
Brock: No, he was gonna swim. He was gonna do a 400-meter swim in the icy water.
Ben: So he’s not just like dipping in the water between sets.
Brock: That was sort of confusing ‘cause can you actually do cold thermogenesis if you’re working that hard?
Ben: Well let me tell you.
Brock: Do it.
Ben: So pre-cooling before workout. This is something that we saw like way back as early as the Olympic games, like back in the 90’s. I remember they had photos on TV, videos on TV of athletes wearing ice vests.
Brock: Oh the 1900 and 90’s.
Ben: Oh the 1900 and 90’s ice vests. Retro ice vests. Neon pink and neon green with the mohawks. Maybe that was the 80’s. I don’t remember. Leather pants. Anyways though, multiple studies have shown that a cold shower or a bath or even an ice pack before work out helps to cool your skin and reduce your core body temperature. And you know, there was one study that was in the European Journal of Physiology that showed that in the instance after you’re submerged in cold water, not super cold but about 50, 55 degrees water, groups who were in this experiment had a lower heart rate while they were exercising after that cold exposure compared to those whose muscles hadn’t been treated to the cold water bath.
[0:30:15.4]
And, you know, there was a good article about this I think it was in Outside Magazine about all these professional cyclists and also professional triathletes like Craig Alexander’s a perfect example, who were using pre-cooling. Literally pre-soaking in cold baths or even using like a cooling vest to actually lower the heart rate before going out and exercising in hot conditions. Now I personally found from my own n=1 experimentations that if I do get a chance to a nice long cold shower or a little bit of a cold soak down the river by my house earlier in the day before I go for a run or a hard bike ride or something like that, I do actually have a better workout and I also, when I raced in Las Vegas a couple of years ago, wrote an article for Lava Magazine where I, during the race, was wearing an ice vest and had one of these palm-cooling devices and even one of those zylatron-infused hats that when you put water on it, it cools. And then the zylatron-fused arm sleeves and you know, it felt good, I kept cool but ultimately I just felt like a total nerd and inspector gadget running down the highways so I just didn’t enjoy it so for me it’s all about being happy to and I just wasn’t happy with this vest on, hat, and all this jazz so anyways though, returning to the topic at hand here and doing cold thermogenesis by swimming through a cold environment and then moving on and doing a weight training protocol, a few things that you need to know. First of all, they have studied the effective exercise training in the cold on thermogenesis and what they found is that, and this was in mice and we can’t necessarily say that mice are little men but we can make some proximation. The regular mice had a much much higher calorie burn from non-shivering base thermogenesis meaning that their brown adipose tissue actually burned a lot more calories when they exercised in a cold environment versus exercising in, you know, not in a cold environment so when you’re exercising in the cold or you’re jumping in a cold river, cold water, swimming, you’re gonna burn a lot more calories. And this is something that Ray Cronise actually talked about in the Become Superhuman event like one of the best fat-burning exercises you can do is swimming in a cold pool or swimming in a cold river. Assuming you’re about to control this huge appetite increases you get after you finish something like that. Interestingly, in the older mice, older mice seemed to have reduced ability to actually produce a lot of heat through the activation of that brown adipose tissue and in those mice, it was actually shivering that caused them to burn more calories regardless, both groups were burning extra calories, the older group through shivering and the younger group through brown adipose tissue heat generation. So exercising in cold, doing a cold thermogenesis type of swim is actually gonna give you bigger calorie bang for the buck compared to just sitting in the water. Now here’s the kicker. For anybody whose done cold thermogenesis, who’s swam in sufficiently cold water to actually get your brown adipose tissue activated, what you get is a little bit of a kind of a neural down regulation when you’re in the cold meaning that movement patterns become a little bit more difficult to sustain and proper biomechanics becomes hard. Anybody who’s done a cold soak and then gotten out and tried to run, for example, and you feel like Bambi on ice when you’re running. You know, when I’m riding my bike and I stop and I do a cold soak in the river, cold swim, and then keep riding, I just, my pedaling mechanics are off and I don’t feel quite as fluid on the bike. I mean there are some definite physiological benefits but there are some biomechanical drawbacks. Now, those biomechanical drawbacks are not a big issue if you’re running or cycling. ‘Cause you tend to warm-up after a little while and you know, those first 5-10 minutes are a little funky and then you’re good to go. But if you’re lifting heavy weights and you’re cold and your biomechanics are crappy, then you could really hurt.
Brock: Danger.
Ben: Yeah. You could hurt yourself. So me personally, because I know my own body and I know I move like a freaking plastic after I get out of cold water, I wouldn’t be hoisting a dumbbell over my head or doing any of these like Litvinov type of Protocols. You know, I suppose like a body weight exercise, that’s a little less risky. You know, like a burpee or some push-ups or some body weight squats or something like that and you could probably get away with something like that but I’d leave weights and extreme joint work out of the equation on this one.
[0:35:10.4]
Brock: Yeah I’d be worried about like snapping an Achilles tendon or something too. And you get your muscles all good and taught and throw them into a burpee and that’s just, that’s asking for a rift muscle or torn tendon or something as well.
Ben: Yeah. So the correct way to use pre-cooling would be like before you go on a bike ride, you sit in a you know, cold bath or take a nice long cold shower and accept the fact that it’s gonna take you a little while to warm-up into your bike ride. So I, ultimately I wouldn’t be doing this especially if you’re using weights.
Ribose: Hi Ben and Brock. I’m taking D-Ribose from Now Products and the website says I should take one and a half level teaspoons daily prior to exercise but it also says serious athletes may want to double the dosage during training. I don’t know if I’m a serious athlete and I also don’t know if I’m taking too much. Is it gonna cause problems? Thanks.
Brock: Yeah, how do you define whether you’re a serious athlete or not? That’s a weird way to term it.
Ben: You know I think a lot of people get the impression that only serious athletes listen to show. Like, I’ve seen demographics from Alexa and these websites that give you demographics of what your visitors look like and the people who listen to bengreenfieldfitness and visit the website generally, not all of them, but generally fall into the 40-60 year old demographic of slightly more males than females, like 60% males, 40% females. And serious, like elite athletes, pro athletes are listening but they’re not the majority so. Anyways though, as far as dosage of D-Ribose, I’d tell you what I’d recommend as far as dosage but let’s dig into what D-Ribose is.
Brock: Yeah.
Ben: It’s cool stuff. I literally just started using D-Ribose this year and it’s pretty cool specially if you’re a low-carbohydrate or like doing ketogenesis. The reason for this is D-Ribose is this special sugar and unlike a lot of other sugars it actually has a negative value in the glycemic index so it doesn’t spike your blood glucose, your blood sugar at all, and you can’t even find it in food. Your body actually makes it itself. So D-Ribose either has to be formulated like in a lab, or else made by your own body. It has a negative value on the glycemic index. Now, you know what ATP is. ATP is the energy storage in it for everything and what your body uses D-Ribose specifically for is to rapidly generate ATP. Rapidly generate ATP. So normally you’d use like carbs or proteins and fats and stuff like this to go through all their energy-creating scenarios and finally downstream create ATP. D-Ribose bypasses all of that and its used by what’s called your total adenine nucleotide pool which is basically like your precursor for building cells and everything like that. The total adenine nucleotide pool eats up D-Ribose and uses it to produce ATP extremely rapidly. So usually after you’ve done exhaustive exercise it can take a good 3 days for you to replenish your ATP stores so a lot of athletes who are exercising on a consistent basis or everyone who is exercising everyday consistently is walking around with consistent depleted ATP stores. But if you saturate your body with d-ribose and you basically load d-ribose prior to like a hard event or even use it on a daily basis at about the same time everyday, it has a really, really cool effect. So I’m a fan of d-ribose. It’s kinda like my new darling supplement. Most studies show loading phase of about 3-4 grams of it is sufficient and then once your muscles get saturated with d-ribose you can maintain that with about 6-9 grams a day. And actually there’s 3-4 grams you take in multiple times a day so you’re actually close to 13-15 grams a day for your initial loading period and then 6-9 grams a day after that.
Brock: How long was loading period? A week?
Ben: About a week. Yup, yup, exactly. So I started loading with, prior to races, now it’s something amusing. Everyday, I use the X2 Performance stuff and that’s actually the new kind of surprisingly one of the official drinks of Ironman triathlon now and that’s something I was quite happy to see is the first time I ever seen a product that’s sponsored Ironman that I actually agree with the formulation. You know, it’s not just like complete sugar-filled, chemical filled crap. This stuff’s pretty impressive, it’s got a bunch of other stuff in it like disodium ATP and panetol and trace doses of caffeine and basically a bunch of stuff and I don’t know if they did this on purpose but it’s everything that a low-carb or ketogenic athlete would need to actually massively improve ATP regeneration in the absence of carbs without spiking blood sugar.
[0:40:18.9]
So it’s pretty cool stuff. And this X2 performance stuff comes in like a shot. You drink it down and yeah, you do it like a half hour before you work out or you race or whatever and it’s literally like drinking ATP so that’s d-ribose. The only side-effects I’ve seen with it, and I’ve looked all over the place for side-effects was that if you overdose on it, we’re talking about like 60 gram doses, you can get a little bit of diarrhea and also because it’s negative on the glycemic index, you can also get hypoglycemia if you overdose with it. But ultimately, the benefits of this stuff far outweigh the risks in my opinion and…
Brock: You’d have to get really carried away to get the negative effects.
Ben: You would have to have like a crack cocaine booze-induced d-ribose party and just do like a bender of d-ribose for a week to overdose. But yeah. Check out the stuff. If you get the chance, try out the extra performance. I think, I’m checking the sea because I know we have a discount code for it where you get like 10 bucks off or something like that. Yeah, it’s Greenfield. Use code Greenfield, you get 10 bucks off x2performance.com. Check it out. Best way to get d-ribose in my opinion.
Eric: Ben, I’m enjoying your Superhuman DVD seminar I bought on DVDs. They’re pretty excellent but I was listening to Ray Cronise and he mentioned a scale. He mentioned it twice but I couldn’t find it, I couldn’t find it in any of the show notes. Do you know what kind of scale he was talking about? I think he said it measures the resting metabolic rate possibly. It seem like he said like it was a Y-Rain something scale and I try to google and I couldn’t find it so I was wondering if you knew what kind of scale it was and two if you have a website where I could visit it. So like, get more information on it. Thanks.
Brock: You know I actually have a memory of people asking the same question during the conference. I was manning the livefeed that was going out to all the people who were watching at home and I remember the question coming up.
Ben: Yeah, it’s, it’s….
Brock: What was Ray talking about?
Ben: It’s the sexiest scale in the planet and I’m not a fan of scales by the way. I do not use a scale. I haven’t stepped on a scale in a really long time. I did a promo video a couple of years ago for a scale that I was sent to analyze and it was cool and everything. It was one of those body fat tracking scales that hooks up to your computer and stuff but I just I think I got burnt out on scales when I was like body building and I was having to like make weigh and stuff and now I just go by the way I feel and occasionally I pinch a little bit of fat that’s right above your hip bone and that’s usually how I can tell if I’m eating too much is if I can get a big old pinch of fat I usually dial back on how much I’m eating and that’s like..
Brock: Right above your hip bone?
Ben: It’s my super…
Brock: In the front? Or right on the sides?
Ben: In the front. In the front.
Brock: So not back fat?
Ben: No, not back fat. Like right in front of your hip kinda so that’s where I pinch and if I get a big old pinch, them you know, and that’s, that’s just my qualitative way to measure my body fat.
Brock: I like it.
Ben: Super scientific.
Brock: Totally.
Ben: And then anyways though, it’s a withings scale. W-i-t-h-i-n-g-s withings scale and I believe the one that Ray is called the Smart Body Analyzer. So you step on the scale, it gives you your heart rate and it gives you your body fat. I believe it gives you your water saturation values. It actually checks the indoor air quality through temperature and carbon dioxide measurements and builds a CO2 level graph that shows you the air quality of where you’re at or the air quality of your home which I’m not really sure how practical that is ‘cause you can’t like move your home.
Brock: No.
Ben: But anyways, it shows you the….
Brock: If it’s really, really bad you might want to consider it I guess.
Ben: You might want to, yeah. Put a plant in your bedroom. It hooks up to a bunch of different apps like runkeeper app, then you know, all these apps that you can use to pair it with so you could keep track of your body fat and your weight and everything in that way. You know, if you’re data nerd, I think it’s kinda cool. For me, I’m kinda a data nerd but because I travel so much, I have to use data that I can take with me and I can’t really, I guess I can put a scale on my carry on but you know, I don’t. But anyways, it’s a withings scale. We’ll put our handy-dandy amazon link to it in the show notes so you can put a few dollars in our hat if you buy a withings scale following the link in the show notes but that’s what it is. Withings scale.
Brock: I hate to ask how much one of those things would cost.
Ben: I think it’s like 200 bucks no, it’s 149.
Brock: Awesome.
Ben: The one stop health tracking scale. The Smart Body Analyzer Ws50. My illudium q-46 explosive space modulator. So you can grab the withings scale and I’ll also put a link to those DVDs cause I think we’ve got like, I wanna say right around 30 DVD sets left from the Superhuman Conference. Those get shipped to your house, they’re like 27 bucks, I think. So we’ll put a link in the show notes if you wanna snake some DVDs for whatever, you know, watch them during the summer.
Michael: Hey Ben, my name is Michael. I am a combat rescue pilot flying the hh 60. It’s a pave hawk helicopter and during this previous deployment, just about 2 weeks ago, I got a herniated disc between the L4 L5 series. So I had to come home ‘cause there’s nothing they could do for me there. I’m starting physical therapy next week with a guy who’s part of the Ironman network. He does ART, dry needling, decompression, manipulation, stuff like that, so he’s gonna be a good guy. I have a 100 miler in September I’m doing followed by Ironman Florida in November and a few other races after that. Just curious what your suggestions are that I can do on my own such as exercise, supplements that might be of help to get through it. The pains are not too severe. I’m still out running 8-10 miles every morning and still run and bike. I lift weights and what not just while sitting down for long periods of time, just wanna get the most amount of pain so any of your thoughts would be currently appreciated. Thanks.
Brock: Okay, herniated disc. Doesn’t sound like fun.
Ben: Yeah and Michael is the combat rescue pilot who actually sent me a flag from one of his missions. I’ve got a big flag actually in my living room and it’s one that Michael sent so what’s up Michael?
Brock: Very cool.
Ben: Thanks again for sending that over. We’re recording this after Memorial Day but again, huge, huge thanks, huge amount of gratitude for all the service men and women who are out there protecting us and securing our freedom so.
Brock: We throw you a salute.
Ben: A salute. What do you do in Canada, salute? Do you guys do like a….
Brock: We moon each other.
Ben: A drop kick. You just moon each other. Okay, so you’re doing a lot of the right stuff Michael I mean active release therapy and dry needling, and you know decompression. We actually talked about decompression in Dr. Ho’s Decompression Belt in podcast episode 224 and we’ll link to that in the show notes because decompression belts along with inversion tables can actually help out quite a bit in a situation like this. But what we’re talking about is kinda like temporary alleviation of pain right? And, you know, taking the pressure off of a herniated disc vs. healing the actual area. So I’ve got a few other band-aid ideas for you. One would be to go and listen also to podcast episode number 235 where Brock and I talked quite a bit about getting rid of nerve pain and we specifically talked about the type of compounds that you could include in your diet that are going to help either with nerve pain or help to heal nerves. One was a high omega-3 fatty acid and gamma linoleic acid intake and making sure to include what’s called borage oil with that. So you could use a really good, high quality fish oil so there’s fish oil’s cameo. Once again, in this podcast, but that good high quality fish oil also natural pain killers. I’m a big big fan of phenocane for this. That’s kinda my natural recommendation as an alternative to ibuprofen. And phenocane is basically a mix of curcumin which is the active ingredient in turmeric. It’s got boswellia in it which is a COX-2 inhibitor meaning it down regulates the amount of pain producing prostaglandins that you make. It’s got some dlpa in it. D,L-Phenylalanine that has the ability to help your body maintain higher levels of seratonin so it turns out more of the brains feel good hormone. And it’s also got nattokinase in it which has some blood clot dissolving abilities. Again that’s a band-aid but it’s something that have had people pop you know, right around 4-8 every couple of hours during like a hard event and it can at least control pain without literally, you know, kicking your liver and your kidneys and causing endotoxemia and all this stuff that ibuprofen and advil can create when you’re out exercising and trying to control pain. So that’s another thing that I’d consider would be using phenocane whereas veratril has some good efficacy as well in controlling nerve pain in a situation like this like a high-dose resveratrol and glutathione would be the last one that you may find in handy.
[0:50:15.7]
Glutathione is something that your body can make itself if you’re using like a good, cold processed natural whey protein. You can also get glutathione like the bulletproofexec. They make like a liposomal glutathione you can spray under your tongue. None if these stuff is going to stop the pain thought, right, or heal the issue. It’s all gonna be a band-aid and I’ll certainly put a link to all of these band-aids in the show notes, you know if you’ve got a race coming up and you just need a nip stuff in the bud and minimize pain as quickly as possible for something like back pain or injury, this is all the stuff that can work to stop nerve pain and kinda turn off pain. But there are some other things that I would, that I’d recommend. The first is if you’re trying to heal this thing, you know, David Minkoff, whose been on this podcast multiple times, I’ll put a link to the episode that he did with us on How to Stop Chronic Pain but he runs the Lifeworks Wellness Center down in Florida and he has a lot of different protocols that he does at the wellness center down there but one of them is stem cell therapy and when I say stem cell therapy, I’m not talking about the traditional use of stem cells that involves actual surgery but there are actually, there are oral kinda stem cell precursors that you can use. So stem cell implantations are medical procedures that are administered by doctors and it’s like injections of stem cells and cell precursors to injured areas to massively increase healing in an area but you know, it’s expensive and kinda hard to get access to in some situations so imagine especially if you’re you know, a combat pilot, you’re overseas and something like that. Cell therapy is usually administered via injectibles or incapsulated like in soft gels. And what cell therapy is is basically mixes of stuff that enhances your body’s own ability to heal itself via the same mechanism that stem cells would. The one that Dr. Minkoff recommended, and this was another one at the Superhuman Conference a bunch of people were “what did he say? What did he say?” and I wrote it down, it’s called Celergen, c-e-l-e-r-g-e-n. It’s a cellular marine complex that’s mixed with collagen and what’s called a hydropeptide and marine complexes actually can be extremely protective against cellular oxidative damage but have some pretty potent healing properties too. And when you combine that with collagen, which helps to reinforce connective tissue hydration and elasticity, and peptide which plays a critical role in the regeneration of cartilage, this stuff can be pretty efficacious. I’ve never personally bought it, I don’t know where to get it, I’m just kinda pointing you in the right direction but it’s called celergen. I’ll put a link to Dr. David Minkoff’s Lifeworks Wellness Center in the show notes if you wanna maybe try to hunt him down and see if you can get a link to it or you know, I don’t know if you need a prescription for it or much about it but it’s basically like oral stem cell therapy. So that would be one thing that you could look into as a way of shutting off pain. Now, if you did wanna go, you know, if you get the chance at some point in your life and you just put your foot down and you’re like I wanna get rid of this forever, that when I would start to look into something like a minimal invasive spine surgery technique that uses stem cell therapy. The one that I’m aware of is called regenadisc and that’s r-e-g-e-n-a-disc.com and it’s a combination of low-level laser, spinal decompression of the disc along with regenerative stem cell therapy in a surgical setting. And that’s supposed to be extremely efficacious, much much common in Europe. You can’t get it in the States but it’s something that if you just want kinda more permanent healing, not just a band-aid, I highly recommend that you look into. So that’d be one to check out as well and I’ll put a link to that in the show notes. The last thing that you should consider would be more of a mental approach. And there’s this technique out there that’s really, really cool. It’s called neuro-linguistic programming and you can use it for pain relief. There are pain receptors in your brain and if you can manage your brain, it’s possible for you to reduce and eliminate pain temporarily in certain sections of your body when you need to just shut off pain. So you learn with neuro-linguistic programming with how to communicate with certain body parts so you have the psychological parts of your body that actually form the pain so if your shoulder is experiencing pain then you can learn how to communicate with that pain using the link between your brain and your shoulder and I know this stuff sounds whoo whoo, don’t worry, I’m gonna tell you how you can learn more in a second.
[0:55:11.2]
And you can get extreme stress relief and tension relief and you can actually use this stuff to massively improve sports performance as well. Here’s the deal, here’s what I’m gonna do because I’ve gotten some questions about this from listeners. It seems like we’re always dealing with pain and pain management so I am actually going to personally, this Friday, meet with one of the top neuro-linguistic programmers on the face of the planet. His name is Andy Murphy. He works with high high level athletes, professional athletes, CEOs, you know, multi-millionaire business owners and world champions, MMA stars, and trauma survivors, the royal family. Like this guy, is at the top level for NLP.
Brock: That’s awesome that the royal family is in that list of people.
Ben: Hey, you know what, we… hey the Royal Family likes to throw money at the best, right. So this guy is good. And he…
Brock: I also engage in massive fights occasionally….
Ben: Oh yeah…
Brock: Just beep each other….
Ben: I’m just saying. I’m just saying. So dude, we gotta be careful. We can’t mark this podcast as explicit or we’ll lose all our family listeners.
Brock: I’ll bleep it. Don’t worry. Sorry mom.
Ben: Anyways though, his name is Andy Murphy, andymurphyconsulting.com but I approached him and he agreed to do a video recorded NLP session with me.
Brock: Cool.
Ben: So I’m gonna record the whole thing. It may involves some hypnosis, it will definitely involve some neuro-linguistic programming, it will involve, if anything, a high entertainment level as you laugh at me being neuro-linguistically programmed, and I’m gonna release it because I’m actually gonna be in an airplane to Japan next week. Next week’s special podcast episode is going to be me getting the hell on neuro-linguistic programming out of me so you can get the chance to check that out.
Brock: Cool. So the only thing I worry about, especially for Michael who’s got a herniated disc, if he ignores the pain or masks the pain or makes the pain disappear, is he going to put himself at risk of doing some worst damage?
Ben: He is.
Brock: A straight-up yes.
Ben: Yeah, but I mean, you know, how many of us have been signed up for a marathon or an Ironman or whatever and realized that we’re not gonna be 100% going in? And there does come a time when you just kinda hack the pain, figure out a way to switch it off, for you to mask it a little bit, figure out a way to push through the discomfort and yeah, you wind up sometimes in a worst condition than you were when you started but you know, if that’s part of the….
Brock: If it’s important enough to you….
Ben: If it’s part of the adventure that you call life and you’re willing to you know, take one really, really fun step forward or really, really engaging or challenging a fulfilling step forward and you know it might mean you take 2 steps back, you know, if that’s what makes you happy, you know, I don’t have a problem with it as long as you’re not hurting anybody except for yourself so.
Brock: I guess. I just worry when it’s something like your spine.
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: Like more so than if it’s like your big toe.
Ben: Yeah, I mean it’s not like it’s a fractured vertebra that’s you know, like cut off his spinal cord or make him paralyzed or something like that. If anything, he’s just gonna have a lot more pain and at some point, he’s probably gonna need surgery if he tries to push through a 100 miler with back pains. So yeah, I’m glad you were the person I brought it up and not me Brock but yeah, I mean there always is that option to have just like take the year off and heal your body and then get back into it. So…
Brock: Luckily, the race isn’t until September so you’ve got some time. Kick that thing Michael.
Ben: There you go. Stem cell the heck out of it.
Steph: Hi, I just wanna know if there’s any concern about training for a marathon when you have epilepsy in relation to maybe exertion or nutrition. Any help would be great. Thanks. Bye.
Ben: Well you could, this is an interesting question. Because exercise can certainly help to control epilepsy and aerobic exercise specifically has been shown to clearly benefit people with epilepsy. Just to…. Oh, we’re gonna edit that out.
Brock: Tell me, 20 minutes later, the sneeze came.
Ben: It was a delay. I warned you. It took you by surprise. So epilepsy. Yes, it’s definitely, multiple studies have shown it to not exasperbate…
Brock: Exasperbate.
Ben: Exasperbate. How do you say that? Seizures. But the only issue is that if you did happen to have an epileptic incident while you were running, it becomes an issue with falling in the hard pavement or you know, it’s not the same risk as like sky diving or rock climbing or scuba diving or something like that or even swimming. It’s like you, you know, if you fall and you’re running, you’re probably not gonna die but you could definitely you know, get a head injury or you know, injure a wrist or a knee or something like that so you know, there’s a little bit of risk involved but walking and jogging and running are relatively safe if you have epilepsy. I’d be careful in something like a treadmill just because the motion of the treadmill along with all the bright lights in the gym, TV, and stuff like that can potentially trigger something but you know, ultimately, the benefits outweigh the risks. Now, I couldn’t respond to a question about epilepsy without noting that something we already mentioned in this podcast – the ketogenic diet.
[1:00:34.3]
Brock: Ketogenic diet.
Ben: That’s something that’s shown to control seizures in people with epilepsy. And if I were going to be training for a marathon with epilepsy, I would really be considering, you know, liberal use of like medium change triglyceride oil and coconut oil, limiting carbohydrates, potentially even using you know, a medium change triglyceride oil derivative in your actual you know sport fuel to control epilepsy. Things of that nature. It’s interesting because there are some some underground talk like how Tour de France cyclists right now. A lot of them are experimenting with ketone pills, full-on ketone fuels, and kinda tapping into this enhanced aerobic efficiency that comes with shifting your body into ketogenesis and obviously, you know, when you have a hammer, all the world looks like a nail or whatever that phrase goes. But basically, for me, because I’m very intensively studying ketogenesis and in-ketogenesis right now. I’m seeing a lot of the benefits of it but you know, with epilepsy, it really, really is something that’s been studied quite a bit for epilepsy so. You know, the running is not an issue from a nutrition standpoint. I would really consider ketogenesis. From an excursion standpoint, I would try and recommend that you keep things aerobic, and there’s no reason that you can’t you know, kinda find out what you were threshold heart rate is, do most of your training sessions that threshold heart rate minus 20 beats. You can use a little bit more of like a Maffetone type of training approach.
Brock: That sounds… .Yeah.
Ben: Aerobic training approach. Whereas, I’m not a huge fan of that approach if you’re time crunched or if you wanna get the most bang for your buck from a time standpoint, you know, if you got the time to do it, you can do like a you know, an aerobic test, a maffetone aerobic test every 4 weeks or so to keep your aerobic heart rate identified and continually monitor your improvements in speed at that aerobic heart rate, you know it’s certainly an efficacious way to train. It’s helped a lot of folks in endurance planet over at induranceplanet.com. One of the podcasting networks that I own recently did a 2 and a half hour interview with Phil Maffetone that I listened to over the past couple of days and it was freakin’ fantastic so.
Brock: Yeah, I listened to that too the other day. I didn’t realize it was that long. It was that interesting, didn’t seem like it was 2 and a half hours.
Ben: Yeah. He’s a cool dude. He’s a cool dude. He has a presentation on Superhuman DVDs as well. But yeah, that’s the type of training that I do, if you were gonna do this.
John: Hi Ben, John from Toronto. I just have a quick question on actually 2 questions. One on training effect. I’m not sure I understand it correctly because either that or it’s not working correctly on my Garmin. What happens is I can run in my zone 3 for like an hour and a half and get a, you know, 4.5 training effect and then I could walk when it’s cold outside and get a training effect of 5 which is overreaching so I’m not sure I understand it or if it’s really just bunk. Second thing is, I thought I actually have the Sweet Beats, I do my heart rate variability. I noticed, actually the other day when you said that your heart rate variability was up around 90, you should really be that, that’s something you really want to be working on that’s around 90. Mine is on average 60 and I’m wondering if it’s based on who you are or maybe it’s something I should be really looking into to say you know, that maybe this should be significantly higher. Anyway, just appreciate the show. You and Brock do a great job and thanks a lot.
Brock: Yeah, I’ve noticed the training effect on my Garmin is often questionable.
Ben: As a Team Timex athlete I would get shot if I ever put on a Garmin again so I can’t say that I’ve noticed the training effect on my Garmin. But the training effect is just a, it’s an algorithm that your Garmin uses to measure what’s called your excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. So as you exercise during a workout, you reach a state where you’re using oxygen more quickly than you could actually replace it through ventilation. And there is a correlation between excess post exercise oxygen consumption, or in this case, oxygen consumption during the actual work out, predicting what your post-exercise oxygen that would be, and you can correlate that to heart rate.
[1:05:09.2]
So that’s all the training effect does, is the Garmin keeping track of the heart beat measurements, it’s correlating that to oxygen consumption and then based off of your approximation of oxygen consumption, it’s kicking out a training effect number meaning that the higher the training effect, the higher the likelihood that it’s going to enhance your cardio respiratory fitness. Just because you are going to have to replace all that oxygen after you finished working out, and you’re stressing your ventilatory muscles and your cardio-vascular system more during a training effect. You know, there’s a variety of different ways you could monitor the intensity of a workout. You could use this training effect which is a 1-5 scale. You could use you know, what’s called an intensity factor which is more common in, if you’re using like training peaks. You could use a training stress core which is kind of a combination of your heart rate, your speed, and the time that you spent training. You could use just like your breath scale on your own perceived riding of excursion. I mean, ultimately, like there’s so many different ways that you can track intensity out there and I gotta be honest with you, like lately, and I’ve got access to like every timepiece that Timex has ever made. Like I’ve got everything. I’ve got a run trainer, a cycle trainer, 300 dollar watches and everything, ever since I read that book by Bud Coates the Running on Air, I’ve basically just been doing 2 things when I’m out running. I either use that aerobic 32 breathing pattern meaning 3 breaths in, or I’m sorry. 1 breath in, for 3 counts, oh gosh I’m messing it up.
Brock: What?
Ben: I’m closing my eyes, imagining myself running so I try to remember…
Brock: Yeah.
Ben: How it’s done ‘cause I’m now having a hard time describing it. Okay so you’re trying to breathe out more when your foot hits the ground so you take a breath in, for 3 foot strikes and a breath out for 2 foot strikes. And a breath in for 3 foot strikes, a breath out for 2 foot strikes. It’s really awkward when you start doing it, now I just do it naturally. So that’s your aerobic pace and then if you wanna go a little bit harder, it’s 1 breath in for every 2 foot strikes and 1 breath out for 1 foot strike. O it’s 2 in, 1 out. And if you really really wanna go hard, it’s 2 in, 1 out, 1 in, 1 out. And that’s like, I have not been using my watch, like all I’m doing is work on that breathing and for me it’s just relaxing. Like when I finish a long day of work and I just don’t wanna strap a heart rate monitor, all that jazz on, I just go out and run and listen to my breath and it’s quite relaxing and combining that book, that Running on Air book with the John Douillard’s Body, Mind, and Sport Book has really changed my workouts pretty significantly. I think I mentioned this in the last podcast episode but combining rhythmic breathing with deep nasal breathing, I’m planning on doing that all during Ironman frankly, for Ironman Canada. I’m going to try and keep that nasal breathing protocol all the way up to the final 10k at which I’ll pull the rip cord and go to the pain cave. But yeah, it’s cool stuff so.
Brock: Very cool.
Ben: And then the….
Brock: So then the second half of the question was about the Sweet beat heart rate variability.
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: He said you keep yours around 90 and if it drops too much lower you get kinda concerned about that.
Ben: Well, Sweet Beat, which is the app that I use to measure my heart rate variability every morning, they recently refined their heart rate variability calculation. Because myself and some other athletes were doing it, we were maxing out their heart rate variability reading so it was always at 100 just because the nervous system of an athlete tends to be more tuned than the nervous system of the average population and their algorithm was based on the general population so they redid their algorithm, I actually got emails from a bunch of folks, some of the athletes I was working with who were tracking HRV, some folks who were using the Sweet Beat measurement, they’re all freaking out cause all of a sudden….
Brock: Cause all of a sudden they dropped.
Ben: Their scores all dropped cause they redid the calculation. So what you need to do, if you were using that and you noticed that you need to redo your baseline heart rate variability measurement, and then know that its gonna be a lot harder to reach a hundred. Like since they redid that calculation, I never reached a hundred. What I found in myself as well as watching athletes I’m working with who were doing those daily measurements and sending me their values and then we could track things like injury, illness, how they feel, their perform, how their workout looks that day, their speed, and power, and heart rate, what you’ll find in most cases is once your heart rate variability is dropping consistently below 80, that’s a pretty good sign that you really need to be careful with hard training like anaerobic training, things of that nature. And if I have any days where I go below 80, that’s kinda like my new 90 with the new Sweet Beat measurements, so if I drop below 80 on any day, that is a sign of concern to me and I’m very careful with my training that day, I’ll also do yoga and meditation and kinda see if I can bring that heart rate variability back up and sometimes I can.
[1:10:21.0]
Like this morning, I tested at 73. And so, I felt great but I was kinda wondering why I tested at 73 and I think it was because I was checking my email during the test like I was on, I had it hooked up on my phone but I was going through emails on my phone so I put my phone down and I just closed my eyes and leaned back into the pillow and started doing nasal breathing and did a retest and I was at 84 after 5 minutes. So sometimes, it’s not you being beat up, it’s just in the moment being stressed out so kinda be aware of that. But yeah, 60 is too low. Like, in my opinion you shouldn’t be beating up your body unless you’re 80 or higher and otherwise you need to fix your nervous system, you know, do some relaxation, and then retest. So that’s my recommendation for that.
Brock: That’s a good recommendation.
Ben: We are just a chalk full of recommendations.
Brock: Alright.
Ben: So.
Brock: Okay. So.
Ben: I wanna read a review. We get a review.
Brock: It’s time to read a review from iTunes. If you haven’t left a review or ranking, you don’t even have to write something, just click on the little stars and give us 5.
Ben: No. You gotta write something.
Brock: Okay.
Ben: You gotta write something.
Brock: I’m just trying to be forgiving. But if you do write something and it’s really cool then Ben will read it in a funny voice.
Ben: Yeah. Well fitbritmom wrote to me. She’s the gal whose review we read in the English cockney Australian accent last week. She was super super… I actually sent her, I sent her a book and a bunch of supplements yesterday. So yeah, everybody who leaves a review, we read it on air, I send you a care package. Usually like 40, 50 bucks worth of just free stuff so anyways, so what I picked today was reviewed by James Skilo. I think his name is James Skilo. And James says, “a wealth of knowledge..” star star star star star. 5 stars, boom.
Brock: Yay.
Ben: He says, “there’s no way I could keep up on all the research on fitness and nutrition but Ben does. This is a great way to become educated on fitness science and practical applications.” Here’s what I like. He says, “the podcasts are fairly long so I listen at 1.5 times speed.” So Brock and I have a special request. Can you play with it would sound like for us at 1.5 speed for the listeners just for us talking, right now.
Brock: For the rest of the episode I’ll do it at 1 and a half time?
Ben: Sound like chipmunks or little mice?
Brock: I’ll do it.
Ben: So. Sweet. Alright, that’s getting close to the end. Be sure to go to bengreenfieldfit.. I do have one other thing for you by the way. But first..
Brock: Oh yeah. We got a song.
Ben: That’s right. Go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/love if you wanna spread the love on….
Brock: Spread the love.
Ben: Whatever way you would like. In a safe and clean manner. And you can also go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/242 to check out the show notes for this episode and also the handy-dandy my list that we create for each episode which is just like clickable links, resources, stuff like that.
Brock: For people who don’t like to read and just want to look at pretty pictures.
Ben: Like pictures. And then, yeah. The last thing is that when I was sitting around with my kids at dinner, was it last night? No, it was 2 nights ago, they wanted to go see Ironman 3. And they’re 5 year old twin boys River and Terran and so I told them that they could go if they could basically raise money for their own movie tickets.
Brock: They’re 5.
Ben: And they’re 5. And so they wanted to draw pictures and record songs and sell them.
Brock: Oh okay.
Ben: So right after dinner, they recorded a very short but sweet album called “The Clownies.” They came up with that name. Clownies.
Brock: I like it.
Ben: And it’s $1.99 and it’s 4 different audio tracks you can download but Terran has a song that he sang and we’re gonna play it for you right now and if you like this sample of “The Clownies,” you can get the whole album all, I guess probably about 3 minutes worth of songs for $1.99 then teach my boys a nice lesson about entrepreneurship. So.
Brock: And send them to see Ironman 3.
Ben: There you go. So here’s Terran with “Wishing on a Star.”
[1:16:00.5]
Anonymous: Ben, I completed my first Ironman on Texas a week ago and your book Holistic Fueling for Ironman, your blog and your advice made it a success for me. From fueling with the UCAN, Energy 28, the amino acid supplements, to your advice, on the meeting couple of weeks before the race, in the steam room to the recovery on the ice top were fantastic. I’m thrilled about this I know I couldn’t have done it without your help. Thank you so much.
May 29, 2013 Podcast: Should you exercise during cold thermogenesis, how to use D-Ribose, what is a withings scale, how to turn off pain, should you run if you have epilepsy, what is a bad heart rate variability score, and an absolutely heart-melting finish…
Have a podcast question for Ben? Click the tab on the right side of this page, click Ask a Podcast Question at the bottom of this page, Skype “pacificfit” or (if you hate the sound of your own voice) scroll down to the “Ask Ben” form.
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News Flashes:
You can get these News Flashes hot off the presses if you follow Ben on Twitter.com/BenGreenfield, Facebook.com/BGFitness and Google+.
- I suspect this is WHY I do better performing in heat when I’m following a ketogenic diet.
- Holy cow. Check out what WiFi can do to you. Scary.
- This is interesting: if you push your nervous system just *slighty* too far you can “overcompensate” & bounce back even better.
- Here’s a great rebuttal to the recent media attacks against fish oil.
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Special Announcements:
The brand new Ben Greenfield Fitness app – is your portal to all of Ben’s best fitness shows, special episodes, and videos in one convenient spot – including exclusive bonus content you won’t get anywhere else except inside this app!
May 30 USAT Webinar with Ben Greenfield: Balancing Work, Life & Triathlon – Discover from coach, athlete and family-man Ben Greenfield how to merge your love for the sport of triathlon with family, social obligations, friends, hobbies and other activities – without sacrificing your training or multisport success! You’ll get the proper strategies, tips and tricks to help both you, as well as any athletes or clients you coach, properly balance time and training.
– Entry Fee: $24.99 for USAT Members and Race Directors; $39.99 for Non-Members
– Event Date: May 30, 2013
– Start Time: 2:00 PM Pacific
Ben is speaking in Sacramento on June 1 – at an event called a “Health and Wellness Celebration!“. Come and join in Saturday, June 1, 2013 from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM (PDT). Exact location is in Folsom, CA.
Go to audiblepodcast.com/ben – to get an audiobook of your choice, free, with a 30-day trial.
2013 Thailand Triathlon Adventure with Ben Greenfield – details at pacificfit.net. Now including the pre-camp: It’s a “high end” triathlon training resort. Brand new facilities – check ’em out! We’re going to do coached sessions every day. It won’t be hardcore training as much as a focus on learning about nutrition, training, fitness, and how to “get the edge” in endurance, life and health!
Brand new BenGreenfieldFitness triathlon kits and clothing is available! Need a BenGreenfieldFitness triathlon suit or running/workout shirt? bgpromo13 is good for 20% off of anything.
If you’re looking for a topic we covered in the past – we have released the Ben Greenfield Fitness Top Hits, Vol. 1.
Including:
1. The Benefits of Fish vs. Fish Oil
2. The Best Ways to Stop Hair Loss
3. Increase Your Hematocrit & Oxygen Levels
4. Strengthen Your Immune System & Shorten the Duration of a Cold
5. Top 10 Ways to Boost Drive
6. Get Rid of Migraines Naturally
7. Become a Curvaceous, Lean, Ripped Female Athlete Without Destroying Your Health
8. Stop Side Stitches as Fast as Possible
9. Is It Possible for a Vegan to Be a Healthy Endurance Athlete
10. How Much Water Do You Really Need to Drink Each Day
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Listener Q&A:
As compiled, edited and sometimes read by Brock, the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast “sidekick”.
Casey @ 00:27:35
He had an idea to combine cold thermogenesis with the Litvinov Training Protocol. He wants to substitute a 400m swim in icy water for the run. Are there any health issues involved? Will his heart explode in the middle of the swim?
Ribose @ 00:35:41
He is taking D-Ribose from Now Products and is wondering about dosage (the website says to take 1.5 level teaspoon prior to exercise and more if you are a serious athlete). How does he know how much to take and if he takes too much, what might happen?
~ In my response, I mention www.X2Performance.com and the code GREENFIELD $10 off every case.
Eric @ 00:41:37
Has been watching the Superhuman Conference on DVD and is wondering what the scale is that Ray Cronise mentions during his talk. It measures RMR and might be called the Y-Rain scale? What is it and how does it work?
~ In my response, I mention the Withings scale and the Superhuman DVD’s for $27.
Michael @ 00:45:47
He is a combat rescue helicopter pilot and has a herniated disc. He is being treated with ART, Dry Needling and decompression/manipulation. He is doing a 100miler in September and IM Florida in November and is wondering what he can do on his own to get through it. Pain’s not bad – he is still able to run, bike and lift. It hurts most when he sits for long periods of time.
~ In my response, I recommend Michael listen to episode 224 for compression belt information and also to episode 235 for nerve pain tips where in my recommendation for pain management to JD, I recommend: A whole food antioxidant that includes vitamin B, D, E and wild plant derivatives, such as LifeShotz. High omega 3 fatty acids and GLA intake, including borage oil, Natural painkillers from something like phenocane, High magnesium intake, A zinc supplement, and Glutathione. I also recommend episode 138 on how to stop chronic pain. I mention Lifeworks Wellness Center and also regenadisc and stem cell therapy: www.recytecorp.com and www.swisscelergen.com. And lastly, neurolinguistic programming with Andy Murphy.
Steph @ 00:58:44
She is wondering if there are any concerns around nutrition or exertion while training for a marathon with epilepsy.
John @ 01:03:08
Would like you to explain Garmin’s “Training Effect”, if you can. He gets very strange and confusing readings. Also, he would like to know if a score of 60 is really bad from the SweetBeat HRV app? Does it really depend on the individual or should he be working on getting it higher?
~ In my response, I recommend listening to this heart rate variability interview.
At the end of this podcast, we play 5 year old Terran Greenfield’s song from “The Clownies”, which you can grab here for $1.99.
And don’t forget to go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/love!
hi Ben,
Do you still use Ribose?
It is something that is in several of the supplements I use, yes, such as TianChi: https://greenfieldfitnesssystems.com/product/tian…