August 21, 2013
Podcast #253 from https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2013/08/253-new-ways-to-sleep-better-how-to-track-your-sleep-are-fillers-in-multivitamins-bad/
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Introduction: In today’s episode of the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast: New ways to sleep better, how to track your sleep, should blood sugar go up when you exercise, are fillers in multivitamins bad, should you get your hip injected, and how to eliminate decision fatigue.
Brock: Okay, so the tables are turned. This week if you hear children in the background, it’s not on Ben’s end, it’s on mine. And not because I magically had children…..
Ben: I’m not gonna say did the stork come?
Brock: It sure did in a big way.
Ben: That was quick.
Brock: Yeah, yeah, you put the order in with a stork in there and they’re pretty prompt.
Ben: Why are there children in your presence?
Brock: I’m currently in Edmonton and I’m at my sister’s house and she has a 2 year old and a 4 year old and I think they’re trying to go to bed right now which, I don’t know if you have this problem with your kids or did have, but they don’t wanna go to bed.
Ben: Well, I can tell you one thing. Watch your testosterone levels.
Brock: Oh.
Ben: Expectant fathers have a decrease in testosterone. I learned this at the …..
Brock: Ah, I wish. I was hoping you’d say the other thing. I was gonna like, be right with testosterone for being around children.
Ben: No, unless you like to fight children, probably not. I learned this at the Ancestral Health Symposium.
Brock: Seriously?
Ben: Yeah, this past week and one of the first talks was, it was titled something crazy like Ferraris, hamburgers, and porn. I forget the exact name but it went in to like, the evolutionary psychology of like fertility, and sex, and hormones and among other things, I learned that like 99% of Ferrari owners are male ….
Brock: I’m not surprised.
Ben: And their testosterone rises when they drive sports cars and there is of course a decrease in testosterone when you are in the presence of children because that’s like this ancestral mechanisms that you don’t wander away from, you know, from the family basically. There’s actually some other cool stuff that I have there, I mean, I guess this might be a good chance for me to give listeners a heads up that the ancestral health symposium is this, it’s basically this symposium about the ancestral health and let me think ….. (what are some of the cools things I learned?). Okay, so from that same talk, men statistically when you look out, when you like flash photos in front of them, they prefer women that have basically some meat, some fat on their legs and on their butt and that’s because if women are low on body fat in those specific areas, it results in unintelligent children. So, there’s another interesting take away.
Brock: Uhm, don’t tell Jessa that, ‘cause I’m not gonna tell Eleanor that.
Ben: It would actually be women who have gone below their natural levels of essential body fat stores …….
Brock: Okay.
Ben: By doing way too much exercise and like not eating enough food so …..
Brock: That makes sense.
Ben: Some cushion for the pushion apparently is actually good when it comes to fertility and intelligence and all that jazz.
Brock: It’s good for more than one thing.
Ben: As well as for vitamin D, learned that the number one place you get vitamin D rather than from supplementation is in this basically beats supplementations pants is the combination of high levels of cholesterol like high levels of circulating cholesterol in your blood stream and sunlight exposure so those 2 factors put together are way more important when it comes to vitamin D levels than any supplement you could ever take. Also, I learned, you could dose on your fish oil like in 1 big dose every few days if you want to, if you don’t wanna take fish oil everyday.
Brock: Goes down once a week or twice a week or something.
Ben: I have no clue how that is ancestral. I guess in the fact maybe somebody, caveman Grog caught a bunch of fish and eats it.
Brock: Usually I guess they probably would though, they’d go out on hunch, they’d go out on fish spring it all back and then like they don’t have fridges or freezers to keep it in so they just ….
Ben: So, they just eat it.
Brock: Eat it all up.
Ben: Yeah. What else was interesting? There was a talk about, more about vitamin D, about how crucial vitamin A and vitamin K are to actually utilize vitamin D.
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So, if you’re taking vitamin D supplements you have low dietary intake of vitamin A and vitamin K, you’re kinda screwed in terms of vitamin D. Toxicity, so that’s another thing to kinda kinda bear in mind.
Brock: Yeah.
Ben: Fatty liver disease, there’s interesting talk on fatty liver disease and basically how like almost 40% of the population has fatty liver disease now and like 10% of American children have fatty liver disease.
Brock: Oh man!
Ben: Yeah, it’s crazy and the number one places that you get fatty liver disease kinda aggravated from a dietary standpoint are omega 6 fatty acids, fructose and glucose. So omega 6 fatty acids, of course is the big word for vegetable oil, so, something to be careful out there. What else ….
Brock: Isn’t it usually like what’s in it been sort of historically been from alcohol abuse?
Ben: Well yeah. It can definitely be aggravated much more quickly by high amounts of alcohol and pharmaceuticals and things of that nature but most people don’t realize you can destroy your liver with excess levels of ……
Brock: with vegetable oil….
Ben: Of fructose or vegetable oil. And I’m not talking about like you know, fiber and polyphenol laden fructose from like an apple. I’m talking about like you know soda ….
Brock: Slurpees.
Ben: Yeah. Slurpees. There was an interesting talk on macular degeneration and how high blood glucose and like super high levels of insulin are actually toxic for your eyes and a couple of best things you can do for your vision is to eat eggs like specifically egg yolks and to get out in the sunshine, so, another reason to get out in the sunshine.
Brock: Like get your eyeballs out in sunshine like no sunglasses or with, not that specific just go outside.
Ben: Just get out in the sunshine. I don’t think if it’s sun gaze is necessary.
Brock: Little mirrors and reflect the sun up in your eyeballs.
Ben: Yeah, yeah. So a couple of highlights for me I guess were this Kyle Maynard guy who has no arms and no legs. He actually, he’s amazing, he’s like a wrestler (you may have seen him on Youtube or whatever) he’s a wrestler, he just became the first man that crawled Mt. Kilimanjaro.
Brock: Wow.
Ben: Amazing dude! He taught a combat class …..
Brock: Cool.
Ben: Where he taught us like a bunch of self defense techniques and those kinda cool he has us to a bunch of tabata sets at the end. Did a bunch of primal workshops with Darryl Edwards from thefitnessexplorer.com, awesome, awesome instructor when it comes to kinda having fun and playing when you workout. He is actually, when I go over to London, for any of our listeners who are over at London, the official meet up with me in London, what we’re doing is we’re actually gonna meet on Saturday, Sept. 14th, we’re going to do a like a 6 hr workshop with Darryl in the park, we’re we just like working out in the park and playing and climbing and doing all this stuff and then we’re gonna go out and have dinner after we’ve kinda workout all day.
Brock: Awesome!
Ben: And so, there’s an official facebook page for that so, if you go to the show notes ….. what’s this episode? 250….
Brock: 253.
Ben: So, if you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/253 if you’re in London, Sept. 14th then we’ll have that going on so, did a lot of that with Darryl Edwards, he’s pretty cool and then got to have dinner with Mark Sisson and his wife, Carrie which was a lot of fun.
Brock: Nice.
Ben: So, we got to sit around and have some food and chat about all things health, nerd, ehhh, he’s actually really cool about Markcism is from marksdailyapple.com so shout out to him. And yeah those are .….
Brock: I think I’d be afraid to eat in front of him. I just be like so nervous about everything I’m eating, he’s scrutinizing.
Ben: You know what, it was a set meal and so of course dessert was included and they brought like these chocolate cupcakes and like some kind of a gluten-free custard and like this sorbet and everything and Mark and I actually did the exact same thing like we have 1 spoonful sorbet and called it good so, he practices what he preaches. There you go.
Brock: And tell the waitress to bring you a spike to sit on instead of a chair.
Ben: That’s right. Where are you going with this?
News Flashes:
Brock: bengreenfieldfitness.com/253 as we mentioned. This is episode 253, if you go there and scroll down a little bit you’ll see these links to this news flashes and there’s some really really interesting ones. I’m excited about this, this idea about asking for an IV.
Ben: asking for an IV.
Brock: ….. at the end of the race.
Ben: Well yeah, I guess we can start with that one and yeah, since I’m racing Ironman Canada this weekend, I can tell you right off the bat that I would do a total flop and what that means is I will pretend I am in dire need of an IV when I cross that finish line and stumble drunk like into the medical tent …..
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Brock: It doesn’t take much really just have to look a little like gaze sort of that like 100 yards scare and stagger a little bit and they’ll take you away.
Ben: You have to cross the finish line before a lot of people are actually in the medical tent and then look like you need an IV. And the reason for that, they did a study. I always kinda tried to get an IV after a race if I can but what they did was they studied rehydration mode after exercise dehydration on cardiovascular function and so they had a bunch of people kinda voluntarily dehydrate themselves during exercise and then they tested oral hydration, IV hydration, or oral plus IV hydration. And an oral plus and IV hydration just kinda blew the other 2 methods of hydration out of the water ….
Brock: Which is surprising ….
Ben: When it comes to restoring your cardiovascular function which is really important not only because you know, I wanna recover as fast as possible so I can drink a lot …..
Brock: So you can party.
Ben: No, so my heart doesn’t go bonkers but also like I’m getting a full-on stress test of my heart like about a week and a half after Ironman Canada. I wanna go and see ….
Brock: They’re doing a whole like inject the dye and put you on the treadmill and do the radioactive thing? That’s so cool.
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: I’ve done that a few years ago and it’s really cool.
Ben: So we’re gonna find out if I have holes in my heart or valve issues you know, any of the stuff that you’ve heard maybe through the great find that endurance athletes seem to worry about. I’m just gonna go find out.
Brock: Find out if the walls are thickening the muscle.
Ben: Yeah. I’ve tried to space it a little bit from Ironman because obviously the heart is a little bit messed up for a few days anyways.
Brock: What would it be, inflamed? Yeah.
Ben: I think I’ve got like 10 days out from the race so shouldn’t be too bad so yeah. Get an IV you have the option after you do a race. What else? There was a, or fuse them at home when you happen to have some IV bags I don’t know, in your gym bag. How your brain becomes addicted to caffeine. New York Times had an interesting article this week. Kinda, you know, a lot of people think that caffeine is addictive but the fact is that it’s not really the caffeine that’s the culprit so much as this other molecule that caffeine mimics in your brain called adenosine and what happens is caffeine structurally resembles this adenosine molecule and adenosine is what makes you feel tired right and what makes you wanna go to sleep and be relaxed or whatever. Now since caffeine structurally resembles adenosine it fits into the brain cells receptors for adenosine and kinda blocks them off so adenosine can’t bind to the receptors, so you can’t get tired. So what your brain does when you’re dumping a bunch of caffeine molecules into your precious head, is it generates a bunch more receptors for adenosine because the existing receptors for adenosine are blocked so you build up all these receptors to adenosine and you eventually need more and more adenosine to actually get tired and you need more and more caffeine to block those adenosine receptors so the idea is that what you’re doing is actually making a chemical like a structural change in your brain when you drink high amounts of caffeine over time. Now what I thought was a cool take-away from the article was it takes like 7-12 days to kinda reboot that receptor system so the idea was, yeah, the idea like the way that I roll is I drink a cup of coffee each morning and I do Dave Asprey’s upgraded coffee. I like the way it tastes. I frankly, I rarely do it BulletProof style. I just drink it.
Brock: Just like the fact that it has no fungus.
Ben: Yeah. It has no fungi.
Brock: No fungi. No mold.
Ben: No mold. No microtoxins. So I drink that and then I every month or so, sometimes every 2 months, it kinda depends, I switch to decaf for a week or 2 and reboot those adenosine receptors and keep myself sensitive to caffeine but also allow myself to become tired at night when those adenosine receptors come out. So we’re gonna talk about sleep in today’s podcast but one way that you can really hack your sleep is to make sure that you don’t override these adenosine receptors constantly so it’s a cool article. It goes way, into way more detail. We’ll link to it in the show notes for 252 over at Ben Greenfield Fitness.
Brock: 253.
Ben: 253. So go check that one out and then speaking of coffee, why don’t we just talk about milk, our other favorite beverage.
Brock: Delicious. They go so well together.
Ben: This was another article. It was actually a study in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry and this was a few months ago and what scientists did in the study was they analyzed 20 samples of milk like cow’s milk, goat’s milk, and human milk incidentally which I thought was interesting.
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I don’t know why they chose that but they found that the ingredients that were added to the animal or the person’s diet affected the milk significantly and they found contamination of a ton of different things like triclosan which was an anti-fungal, and beta estradiol which is a sex hormone and florfenicol which is an antibiotic and literally over 20 painkillers, antibiotics, and chemicals in milk.
Brock: And these are none naturally occurring substances I’m guessing.
Ben: These are things that shouldn’t be in the milk. These are things that, basically we’ve talked before, I think on the show, I’m pretty sure we’ve talked before about how you are what you eat, ate. Meaning like if you’re eating meat from a cow that was fed a bunch of antibiotics or omega-6 fatty acids from grain and soy, you wind up with a lot of those fatty acids, those omega-6 fatty acids in your body. Well, it’s the same thing with milk. You are what you drink, ate, I guess, I can say, or was injected with, or whatever. So yeah, sex hormones, antibiotics anti-inflammatory, anti-fungals, painkillers, all that stuff winds up in the milk so it’s just a really good reason to be careful. You don’t have to like, you know, go to your local mom pop farm and like you know, smuggle raw milk out of there but I mean at least look for the organic milk from like grass-fed cows. I mean, at least so just know that. I’ll link to the article if you wanna come check out the study for yourself and see what it says and yeah, just be careful …..
Brock: Cool. Or not cool.
Ben: Yeah, yeah. So and the study was done in Spain and Morocco so I would suspect that we might be even messing our cows even more here in the US but …..
Brock: Yeah that’s …. and anywhere in North America. I’m sure we do the same thing in Canada.
Ben: Yeah. So last thing ….
Brock: You know, I don’t know how you do it with kids in the background. I can’t stay focused. It’s just like running around then suddenly somebody stops and somebody screams. It’s mayhem.
Ben: Are we live? Are we live?
Brock: Yes.
Ben: Okay. I thought you were just throwing up your hands and you’re like screw it, let’s not podcast anymore.
Brock: I’m done. No, I’m giving a high-five to all the parents out there for being able to multi-task. I don’t even have to do anything and I’m losing my mind.
Ben: Yeah, it’s called Valium. Diazepam. So the last thing is that we talked a couple of episodes ago about how we were looking for a really good way for people especially in the UK. We got a lot of UK listeners who wanted like urine analysis, stool analysis, blood testing, but they couldn’t order it from you know like WellnessFX where I get a lot of my bloods done here in the States. Like Direct Labs. Well Tamsyn Lewis who is a listener of the show, who has been a guest on the show, she wrote to me and they’re actually now testing over in the UK and they’ve got a couple of docs and a clinic over there so if you want, if you’re listening in and you’re living in the UK and you’re looking for like a urine or a stool or gut analysis, I’m gonna give you the URL for Tamsyn. It’s sportiedoc.com, that’s sporty spelled with an i-e. sportiedoc.com/consult so if you go to sportiedoc.com/consult, apparently that is the place to get hooked up with a knowledgeable doc and some testing and all that jazz so there you go.
Brock: Get her autograph while you’re there too.
Ben: Yeah. Get her autograph. Doctors love that when you walk into their clinic with a pen and a pad and have her sign your chest or whatever.
Brock: Yeah, she might think that you’re trying to forge her signature on a prescription pad.
Ben: Could you sign this?
Brock: Can you sign this prescription pad so ….
Ben: Brilliant, brilliant. I just need your autograph doc.
Special Announcements:
Brock: You’re leaving for Canada tomorrow, I’m heading to Whistler the day after.
Ben: That’s right.
Brock: And we’re gonna meeting up, actually probably first time I’ll see you there as well as we’ll see everybody else at the meet up at Mogul’s Café on Friday at noon.
Ben: For anybody who’s gonna be at Ironman Canada, I know you got a lot of triathlete listeners on noon, Friday, August 23rd, a couple of days this podcast comes out. Meet up at Mogul’s Coffee House up there on the mountain and we’re going to have a meet-up, whatever the hell a meet-up is.
Brock: I think it just means like sit and chat. Nothing fancy.
Ben: Sit and have forced conversation at noon.
Brock: Yeah.
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Ben: And then also, while Brock and I are up there, good excuse for you to go and grab access to the premium podcast ‘cause Brock and I are gonna be recording a pretty big podcast like ketogenic diets and triathlon performance and kind of all the geeked out stuff that I’m doing in those last few minutes literally leading up to Ironman. To get on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Premium podcast, it gives you access to all of the hundreds of episodes we’ve had in the past because normally you only have access to the last 10. Gives you access to all the premium episodes, all the insider videos, ton of stuff. You don’t even have to have the Ben Greenfield Fitness app to get this stuff but you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/premium. It’s 10 bucks for a freakin’ year for that.
Brock: What?
Ben: So 10 bucks a year, do it. We don’t extra price, you know that.
Brock: Every time you say it though, it’s like a knife in my heart. I thought this is how we’re gonna get rich.
Ben: No. We’re going to get rich by filming a video up at Ironman Canada actually.
Brock: Oh.
Ben: For all the podcast listeners, Brock and I are gonna be filming a video that we’re going to turn into a basically a cool bonus for everybody who subscribed to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Newsletter which is actually free which you can get at bengreenfieldfitness.com so check out the premium, check out the newsletter and then …..
Brock: Check out the hangout if you’re in Whistler.
Ben: Yeah, the hangout in Whistler. We already mentioned the dealio going over in London, the meet-up over there.
Brock: That’s September 10th to 12th.
Ben: And then … Yeah. The last thing I wanna mention here as long as we’re shamelessly promoting things before we jump into this week’s Q&A. Our kinda main sponsor for Ben Greenfield Fitness is of course Pacific Elite Fitness who we sometimes mention on show, sometimes don’t but basically..
Brock: We often have a lot of things to do there anyway.
Ben: It is the finest provider of nutritional supplements and things that I’ve personally researched and handpicked and put into basically like a birch box that gets into your house. Everything from fat loss packs to endurance packs to muscle packs, you name it. It’s all over there at pacificfit.net. If you’ve ordered from that site in the past, I know in a lot of cases there’ve been shipping issues. You’d be pleased to know that all the shipping there is now centralized and shipped from one nice little warehouse, all gets sent in one box, not multiple packages, straight to your house. Everything’s tracked now and you get a nice little tracking code so, so there you go. If you want the convenience of just like getting everything in one package, sent to your house and you want the peace of mind that I’ve gone out and kinda handpicked all these stuff for you, there you go. Pacificfit.net.
Brock: There actually are a few things that are available there that aren’t available anywhere else too so.
Ben: That’s right and I ….
Brock: That’s an added plus.
Ben: If I were really on top of things, I would be able to tell you but I don’t know. What is available there that isn’t available anywhere else? Oregano?
Brock: I think the MPX100.
Ben: Oh yeah. MPX100, Oregano, a lot of the stuff you can’t get internationally like X2 Performance and stuff like that like we ship anywhere in the world. So….
Brock: Oh finally, I can get some X2 Performance. That’s awesome. I forgot about that.
Ben: There you go.
Brock: Sweet.
Ben: So.
Rolynn: Hi Ben. This is Rolynn from Salt Lake City, Utah and I have just read your article a couple of weeks ago about how to fix your gut and how to hit the reboot button and the best way to detox your body. So May of 2013 I did the Ironman St. George 70.3 and that was about the peak of my stomach cramps and my bloating and ever since then my workouts have suffered, my time has decreased, my energy has gone down and so when I read your article, I decided to check to see if perhaps I was gluten-intolerant so I went about 2 and a half weeks gluten-free which seemed to correct a few of the problems and then I decided to hold in the last 4 days to complete your detox and reboot system and after following the advise found in your column which was fantastic, I dropped 3 and a half pounds of body weight, I also felt cleaner. I felt healthier. I felt that the supplements and the things I am eating following the detox, I could feel it benefitting my body and so I posted a run and also a bike ride 2 days following the detox and I posted some PRs and also some 6th place over-all at some segments with Strava and I haven’t had these results since May and I was getting frustrated up until the time I read your article so I just wanted to send a big thanks to you and your wonderful article about eating gluten-free prior to race days and most days and also for your detox system, the 4-day challenge. It was fantastic.
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Listener Q&A:
Heather: Hello. I’m sure you’ve noticed Body Health just put out a new supplement called Healthy Sleep Ultra and Ben, I wanted to know what you thought about it. It’s a little expensive at $60 a bottle but I know that Body Health has really good quality supplements like the Map supplement. So is it worth trying out? What do you think? I have sleep issues. I’ve tried a lot of stuff including a lot of things you’ve suggested on your blog. Even your recent sleep blogs and I just, I still wake up super early and can’t get back to sleep and it’s very frustrating so this is a totally different kind of supplement that might help with that. I’m all about buying it, I just definitely wanted to know your opinion on it first. Thanks. Peace.
Brock: And Body Health is, that’s Dr. Minkoff right?
Ben: You know what, yeah, it is Dr. Minkoff.
Brock: Yeah. Heather, he’s on it in every way. I’m on his newsletter and I see all the Body Health stuff.
Ben: I think he owns that company and that’s the same company that makes the master amino pattern that I take.
Brock: Yeah if anybody doesn’t know who we’re talking about, Dr. David Minkoff was one of the speakers at the Become Superhuman event.
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: Like in March. He just blew my mind if I am…. Not that everybody didn’t blow my mind in that thing but he was, he was really fantastic.
Ben: Yeah. So the ingredients on this stuff. There’s some pretty common ingredients for relaxation specifically 5HTP which kinda helps stabilize your neuro transmitter levels, there’s melatonin there, there’s what’s called pyridoxal 5 phosphate as well as phenol amino butyric acid. Basically a lot of neuro transmitter precursors and natural relaxants. You know, if you read the article that I recently wrote at bengreenfieldfitness.com, I talk about this concept of neuro transmitter repletion and this may not sound like a ties to sleep at all but it really does. Essentially, if you have imbalances of neurotransmitters, that is one of the biggest causes of tossing and turning at night. There are other issues that can cause you to have insomnia such as you know, staring at your kindle for too long before you go to bed, such as not having a dark room and having too much stimuli before you go to bed and caffeine, parasites for crying out loud. But neurotransmitters are a big issue and in that article, what I talked about was how in a lot of times simply eating adequate protein or using essential amino acid supplements for example. 2 really good ways to kinda get amino or neurotransmitter building blocks into your body. For a lot of people who need kinda reboot or a reset, that’s not enough and so you know, if you really have severe sleep and relaxation issues, it could be a pretty good sign that there are neurotransmitter imbalances going on. And one, probably the most popular example of something like neurotransmitter repletion that works really well for like mood disorders, for depression, for sleep and some pretty sever sleep issues like insomnia, it’s taking a blend of tyrosine and 5HTP. And you’re going to find a lot of supplements out there have this blend of tyrosine and 5HTP so you could go to like Now Foods for example on like Amazon or whatever and get tyrosine and 5HTP and the approximate ratio is like a 10 to 1 so 3000 milligrams of tyrosine and 300 milligrams of 5HTP split into 3 daily doses like 1100 In the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening. Now, there are some supplements and they are different in this healthy sleep ultra supplement which I haven’t personally used but there are some supplements that actually have this tyrosine and 5HTP in that exact same ratio. And these are neurosupplements that I haven’t talked about before on the podcast but they include, there’s a few additions which include TravaCor that’s made by a company called Neuro Science. I’ll put a link to these in the show notes. There’s one called Neuro-5-HTP which is made by a company called Biotics and there’s a company called CraveArrest by Designs for Health. The reason it’s called CraveArrest is a lot of times, the same neurotransmitter imbalances that affect your sleep function, so affect your appetite function.
[0:30:08.1]
So all of these are kind of, you know when you’re repleting neurotransmitters you need to be careful ‘cause you can create imbalances like if you take only 5HTP or you take improperly balanced 5HTP it can for example, deplete dopamine or if you are to just take amino acids that weren’t balanced, just like say sulfur based amino acids that would deplete dopamine and also deplete serotonin. So you gotta be careful. Those 3 brands that I just listed off are in the correct ratios, probably the best one, it’s the most expensive, it’s like 60 bucks for a bottle but it’s that TravaCor stuff by Neutro Science. You can get tested though, there is a test that you can get. Like if you’re in the US, there’s a test called the neuroadrenal test and you can get it over at Direct Labs. I’ll put a link to it in the show notes. It’s called the neuroadrenal expanded test and what it screens for is it’s a urinary test and it screens for serotonin, dopamine, a bunch of different neurotransmitters and kind of like amino acid precursors to neurotransmitters so that way you could kinda see what you might be deficient in. You can get that test and see okay, well, you know what my 5HTP levels are fine. I really don’t need to be taking one of these supplements that’s got 5HTP in it ‘cause that’s not the issue for me with sleep. Or maybe you’re going to find out that, you know, you’ve got 5HTP dopamine imbalance so maybe you need to focus more on the dopamine aspect of things in which case you take like you know, L Dopa or Mucuna or something like this and you know, this is one of those things that I work with people a lot with in consults and you know, it’s something that sometimes you need a little of handholding with but it’s certainly is something that flies under the radar when it comes to sleep, right? When we take our magnesium and we wanna sleep in a dark room and all this jazz but we don’t think about the fact that our brains might be chemically imbalanced and a lot of times, it’s due, (I talked about this in the article) it can be due to gut issues, it can be due to amino acid deficiencies, all sorts of things can cause neurotransmitter imbalances I mean, stuff we’ve talked about before like bad coffee you know, sensory overload. I’ll link to the actual article in the show notes, the pretty recent one that I wrote but ultimately, as far as this stuff goes, the Healthy Sleep Ultra ingredients. I haven’t personally tried it. It does have a lot of these amino acid precursors to neurotransmitter or neurotransmitter kinda precursors like 5HTP that make it kinda fall into that category of neurotransmitter repletion but then it’s also got melatonin and stuff in there. Now, I personally don’t like using sleep supplements that have melatonin in them. I kinda side with the idea that you don’t necessarily want to take a bunch of melatonin because you may risk shutting down your body’s own production of melatonin. I only use melatonin when I travel….
Brock: Okay.
Ben: And I use about 3 milligrams not right before I go to bed because it can wake you up when it hits your bloodstream but about 30-60 minutes before bed, I use the melatonin. But I only use it when I travel. I do not like to become dependent on the stuff and I suspect, from some of the things that I’ve seen, that it may shut down some endogenous production of melatonin or make you a little insensitive to melatonin so you know, and Dr. Minkoff by the way is a brilliant doctor. I’m just telling you, you know, the way that I’m seeing things and you know, this is certainly something I’d use without a doubt what if you know, I were travelling but not sure I’d use it as a daily but there you go. That’s what I know about some of these, some of these neurotransmitter repletion sleep type of supplements so.
Michael: My name is Michael and I’m a big fan of your show. I was calling to ask a question about sleep tracking type devices. I know you talk a lot about sleep on the show. I personally use a device called the sleep tracker. It’s made by a company called Innovative Sleep Solutions. I don’t, I was wondering if you’ve heard of that one. You know, the company claims that their devices say 90% accurate compared to like an actual sleep study would be so yeah, I wasn’t sure if you’ve heard of that and maybe what your thoughts on that specific device and also any other you may think are better or just as good that are on the market right now so thanks a lot Ben. I look forward to hearing your response. Take care. Bye.
Brock: I’ve been using an app called Sleep Cycle for the last, actually for like 3 or 4 years now and I just switched over to Sleep Time, the Azumio one.
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: And I only switched up on that one because it syncs up with Argus and I’ve been trying out every freakin’ thing on Argus so it’s nice to have everything just sort of pile into 1 app.
[0:35:04.0]
Ben: Yeah. And for people who don’t know, the Argus app is a free app. It’s an iPhone app made by a company called Azumio which actually puts out some really great apps and it tracks like, as long as you’ve got your phone around in handy, it tracks like sleep and steps taken and you can snapshots of your food and log your food. Some of my higher end clients who are doing what’s called black box coaching where I basically track your entire life for you and they’re using Argus to track and you just share your Argus data with me and I can log in via iPhone and look at it and it shows like deep sleep phases, amount of time spent sleeping and what’s called sleep efficiency, stuff like that. So Argus is a decent app and that’s a good one Brock. I do like that one. I personally don’t track my sleep at all and no, I don’t track my sleep at all. I find that when I fret about sleep and I roll over and I’m looking at my sleep levels and everything, it starts to take a little bit, for me personally, this is just me, it starts to take for me, a little bit of me the enjoyment out of sleep. I just….
Brock: It takes the fun out of it.
Ben: Yeah. I just like to and I’ve used the Jawbone, I’ve used the Argus, I’ve used all these different apps out there. The Sleep Time app which is the other one by Azumio. There’s a good one by MotionX called the Sleep by MotionX app. If you’re an android user, they’ve got the Sleep Bot. If you want one of these wearable sleep tracking devices, you’ve got the fitbit or the Jawbone up or this other one which I’ll talk about in a second that he asked about, the Sleep Tracker but ultimately, I…. This other…. There’s 2 things. Number 1 is I just, I find that when I’m tracking my sleep like that I just kind of obsess a little bit and sometimes it takes me longer to fall asleep or I’m, you know, you know it’s similar to when you are so concerned about insomnia, not falling asleep that it creates a vicious cycles that it keeps you up?
Brock: Yeah, it’s like when you have an early flight to catch and you end up not sleeping….
Ben: I hate that.
Brock: Because you’re so worried you’re gonna sleep over.
Ben: Similar to that, you’re like so worried about what your sleep app’s gonna tell you when you wake up about your deep sleep cycle versus the number of hours that you slept versus your sleep efficiency. It almost keeps you awake at night because you’re trying to like get a good score so you’re like go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep.
Brock: The gamification of your sleep patterns….
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: It’s not a good thing.
Ben: Yeah so I personally am not a fan of it. Now, ironically, I do like some of my, some of my clients to use it so that I can see how their sleep is. But in an ideal world, we get all of that sorted and then they don’t have to use the app anymore once there’s this kinda trust relationship that okay, you’re making all the right choices, I can see your sleep, you know, I emailed one of my clients just this morning and gave her a pat in the back because I was looking over her sleep and she’s been like 90 plus efficiency score for the past week which means she’s falling asleep really fast, she’s gotten 8+ hours of sleep at night, 40-50% of that has been in deep sleep phases and that’s great. It’s wonderful that you can glean that like that from technology but I think that we just need to be careful becoming too dependent on this and that it’s good for looking at every once in a while. Similar to like tracking your calories….
Brock: Yeah.
Ben: You know, I’m not a fan of like tracking your calories everyday but just doing an audit every now and again, that’s cool. So that’s my thoughts on these sleeping apps. Now first of all, as far as the sleeping test goes, obviously they are more convenient than a sleep test. If you wanted to go in for a sleep study, what would happen is you would show up for the sleep study and they do a portable equipment now that you do for home testing if you wanted to do kinda like a home sleep study but what they do is they put surface electrodes on your face, on your scalp, and these send electrical signals to measuring equipment and these signals which are generated by your brain and your muscle activity, they’re recorded digitally and they also put belts around your chest and your abdomen. I don’t know how the hell people even sleep in these sleep tests….
Brock: I’ve done a sleep test before and I did not sleep for very long.
Ben: Yeah. To measure your breathing, they put this oximeter probe on your finger to measure how much oxygen is in your blood. You cannot even come close to that with one of these sleep apps that like measures whether or not you roll over during the night. It’s like….
Brock: Yeah. All it’s picking up is vibration and sound.
Ben: Yeah. A sleep study is gonna destroy any of those apps or wearable devices, let’s face it. I mean, you know, and they’ve got everything from like nasal air flow sensors to record air flow and snore microphones and like electrooculograms to record eye movements and I mean it’s not, electromyagrams to record face twitches and teeth grinding. If you really really want to get a good idea, you go to a sleep lab but even then it’s like is that really gonna reflect the way that you’re sleeping?
[0:40:05.4]
Brock: You’re not at home, you’ve got all these things attached to you….
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: There’s people watching….
Ben: Yeah. Yeah.
Brock: It’s not realistic.
Ben: Exactly. Exactly. So if you were gonna get a test like the gold standard would be the sleep test and the accuracy of any of these things, I question and like this sleep tracker that Michael asks about. They say in their website that it comes within 95% accuracy of the professional sleep monitors used in clinics. I would question that data but anyways, it’s a watch. It’s a watch that you wear. I think that’s cool because it doesn’t necessarily require you to remember to use your phone or whatever. It’s kinda like a jawbone or a fitbit, it’s already around your wrist. It looks like the sleep software that the sleep tracker comes with. It’s a little bit more comprehensive than what you might get from a jawbone or fitbit. It has a waking feature where it will detect when you’re in your phase of sleeping that’s kind of coming out of deep sleep phase and gradually wake you based off of that and it has kind of a little bit of an educational software in there where it helps you understand your sleep patterns and how to improve them so I would say that of all the sleep devices that I’ve seen, this one is probably the most impressive. You know….
Brock: I’d actually have one more thing to that as why it’s impressive is like most of these, well all of these other ones we’ve been talking about, you have to have like your phone, your android or iPhone really really close to your head….
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: All night long. So you’re sitting there with a phone that’s not only close to your head but it’s actually turned on because it needs to be measuring all the sound and the vibrations and stuff so….
Ben: But you can keep it in airplane mode for sure.
Brock: You can. That would mitigate at least the wifi signals and stuff but you’ve still got a cell phone sitting right by your head.
Ben: Yeah. Yeah. I should say that I actually do have my cell phone on my nightstand when I’m sleeping. It’s one of the few things that I have in the room that is actually turned on because I like to listen to white noise when I sleep but it’s in airplane mode and I don’t use the alarm at all because I fell that alarms are a little bit disruptive and I like to kinda train my body to just wake up when it wakes up. But if you wanted to use an alarm and you wanted to wake up at the optimum time, this sleep track would be a cool way to do it. Also, one of the more impressive devices that I’ve seen in terms of the data that it actually spits out of you. It’s 150 bucks which is not too bad….
Brock: It’s not bad.
Ben: And it’ll give you some cool data. If you’re into that and you wanna track your sleep, and I’ll put a link in the show notes to where you could buy it. You could get it off at Amazon if you follow our link in the show notes, we make a few bucks and you support the show.
Brock: Throw a nickel in our hat.
Ben: Other than that, I have no financial ties to this thing but yeah, it’s interesting so you know, that’s kind of the way I feel about sleep tracking though, I’m like you know, these devices are cool but ultimately, I think you just need to kinda unplug and I think there’s a point where the value of data begins to be a little bit, you just tend to kinda geek out on it too much and I think you need to be careful so.
Brock: Amen.
Jason: Hi Ben and Brock, this is Jason from Michigan and I have a question related to gluco immunogenesis. I am a type 1 diabetic for 3 years now. I’m 31 and I’m having a little bit of problems with my glucose readings in the morning. At night it will be at a normal range but when I wake up, it will be like sometimes 120 and within a half hour it immediately jumps up to 150 and when I do an exercise such as kettlebell it can even go up to 170. And so what I do is I take more fast acting insulin in the morning to combat that and I think that’s related to the dome phenomenon where your body needs more energy so your liver produces glucose to kinda keep you going. I was wondering if you had any ideas that could help me with that. I would like to know if there’s some natural remedies, any sort of herbs or special foods I can eat. Now I’m doing intermittent fasting where I stopped eating at 6 or 8 o’clock at night and I don’t eat ‘til noon. I’m pretty much doing a low-carb or ketogenic diet even though I don’t test for it. If there’s anything you guys could suggest that would be really great and thanks again for all your help. Have a good day.
Ben: So we’ve talked about this on the show before.
Brock: Yeah we’ve talked about the reaction of the blood sugar actually going up while you’re exercising.
Ben: Yup. Yeah, totally normal.
Brock: It’s exactly what he said. Jason nailed it. It’s like exactly what’s happening. It’s like you’re breaking down the stuff your body’s kicking some extra sugar into your system so it can…..
[0:45:01.1]
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: Has the ability to give her and it’s totally normal.
Ben: Yeah, you’re running from a lion, you’re running from a bear, running from your mother-in-law, whatever.
Brock: Running from that terrifying woman in the spandex in aerobics class.
Ben: That’s right and your liver whether or not you’ve eaten is gonna churn out some blood glucose. It’s going to cause breakdown of storage glycogen and churn up the blood glucose and it will do so whether or not you’ve eaten or in a fasted state. Fasted.
Brock: Or if you’re in ketosis.
Ben: Yeah, I mean if you’re in ketosis. I’ve had my blood glucose be as high as 90 completely fasted, having not eaten for 16 hours and I’ll wake up, have a cup of coffee which is mildly stressful, exercise a little bit which can even be more stressful and bodaboom-bodabing, you know the blood glucose level shoot up so this is a natural response. I’d be more concerned if the blood glucose levels didn’t shoot up…..
Brock: Yes.
Ben: ‘Cause it would mean you were reaching adrenal fatigue and you know, have really low cortisol levels or something, something like that, you know, low morning cortisol. Now as far as some of the ways to control that, first of all don’t worry too much about controlling it ‘cause it is natural. Next, understand that that jump is going to be slightly less pronounced the more metabolic efficient you are, the better you are at burning fatty acids as a fuel and kinda creating those ketones as a byproduct of burning fatty acids as a fuel but sometimes, it takes a long time to get in to that metabolically efficient state and we talk about this, we talked about this at the Ancestral Health Symposium, on the panel I was on there about how it may take as long as 1-2 years, and you know Jack Kruse talked about this…..
Brock: Yeah.
Ben: On the podcast.
Brock: Jack said 3 or 4.
Ben: And the reason for that is because the mitochondria or what take up fats and turn those fatty acids and turn them into ATP and generate what’s called acetylcholine in the process and the acetylcholine gets converted into ketones so your ketone levels arise and we test your blood ketones, it’s a good sign of how many fatty acids you’re using as a fuel and as you can imagine that more mitochondria that you have the greater the rate that which you can use fatty acids as a fuel. And, you can technically get your mitochondria measured you can like infrared measurement of mitochondria it’s not that hard to measure mitochondria but the fact is that it’s takes, you know, longer than sure, I mean it’s 2 to 3 weeks to get your brain kinda shifted into ketone utilization and really comfortable there as far as not feeling like crap on a low carb or ketotic diet but you know, it takes a significant period of time especially if you’ve been eating a diet of cheerios and bread for several years or for most of your life to get back into that fatty acid utilization. This is something I was talking about on the enduranceplanet.com nutrition episode with Tawnee the other day is like you know babies when they’re drinking their breast milk start off in a ketotic state. Breast milk is a lot of fats and the baby has a ton of ketones circulating in their blood stream and in an ideal world we never take our babies and our children kinda out of that stage like we keep them in a state where they’re not eating lots of soda and cereals and sugar and experiencing these constant spike in blood glucose so you know maybe once we all kinda get nutrition dialed in and start to feed our kids more kinda natural diet, we’ve just got a bunch of people runnin’ around with really good functioning mitochondria, and good fatty acid utilization. But until that point the blood glucose spikes are probably going to be a little bit more pronounced. Now, you do need to be careful trying to shove blood glucose back down to low if you’re diabetic because essentially aren’t producing insulin so when you’re in that type 1 diabetic state your pancreas, the pancreatic what they’re called the islets cells in your pancreas, those are not producing insulin. When you’re unable to produce insulin you’re going to have to be of course on an exogenous sorts of insulin like an injection and if you’re trying to shove your blood glucose levels down using supplements and you happen to be using like an insulin injection on top of that, you really risk hypoglycemia so you need to be really really careful you know like using supplements like I’ve recommended for example like bitter melon extract before and the MPX100 is really good supplement for people who have eatin’ a bunch of carbohydrate when they want their blood glucose levels back down but pairing something like that with insulin, I mean heck even pairing something like that with exercise can cause some pretty serious hypoglycemia so you gotta be careful using supplements. Now what is more exciting to me is the idea that there have been a lot of studies that have literally looked into regeneration of pancreatic cells, regeneration of the ability of the pancreatic islets to produce insulin.
[0:50:11.2]
And I would point Jason towards some of these research because there are natural compounds that you can find that can actually really help with genesis of these beta cells to potentially and I know this is totally going on a limb but potentially reverse some of the symptoms of type 1 diabetes. Some of those compounds, one would include arginine and arginine is an extremely, there are ton of different benefits of arginine, it’s a nitric oxide precursor it’s kind of the active ingredient in a lot of testosterone supporting supplement and also a lot of nitric oxide type of supplements but arginine is capable of stimulating the genesis of beta cells in animals with diabetes so arginine supplementation or the consumption of arginine rich-foods would be one thing to look in to. Avocado seed extract and consumption of avocados has also been shown to be something that may have a protective effect on pancreatic cells. I would look into rock lotus extract that’s another one and that’s actually a component of that bitter melon extract that I talked about, the MPX100 again. Probably not something to combine with insulin injections but certainly something that has shown some promise in terms of its effect on diabetes and in this case, the pancreas. Berberine, which is a plant compound that you find in herbs like goldenseal extract for example which is something I recommended in the past as a natural antibiotic that something that can induce beta cell regeneration in diabetic rats and you know it’s been used literally for thousands of years in Chinese herbal medicine to treat diabetes. That’s another one to look into. Curcumin or turmeric, ton of different anti-inflammatory benefits of that but in type 1 diabetic rats, curcumin has been shown to stimulate beta cell regeneration as well as pancreatic cell survival when pancreas are like transplanted between animals. So that’s another one to look into is curcumin. Few others I wanted to mention, one would be like manuka honey like a good high quality honey and I realize that there are probably any pharmaceutical rep listening into the show is probably snickering because you know honey seems like this totally natural compound and how it could be medicine but it has actually been shown …..
Brock: Also sweetener which is something you don’t usually prescribe to diabetes.
Ben: Alright, but like a good high quality natural honey can have positive effects on type 1 diabetes including beta cell regeneration and it’s something else that has been shown in studies to assist with beta cell regeneration. A couple other things, one would be stevia which is pretty easy to find that has been shown to fix damaged beta cells in studies and then there’s another one called black seed extract which is a, it’s a supplement that you can find like health food stores but they did a study in humans and found that in humans eating 1 gram of black seed extract per day increased beta cell function and insulin production in diabetics. So that’s another one to look into. Ultimately, I think a lot of this stuff flies under the radar ‘cause you can’t make a lot of money of it they aren’t FDA approved drugs, they’re not patented but if you’re type 1 diabetic listening in, these are things that you should look into, I’m not a doctor ….. but I certainly wouldn’t ignore some of the data that’s out there as far as like these natural derivatives we can find in nature that may have an effect on type 1 diabetes so there you go.
Jennifer: Hi Ben, this is Jennifer. So, I take several supplements including L-carnitine liquid form, glucosamine chondroitin, CLA, 5HTP, magnesium with calcium, that’s just cutting down on a few of all of the supplements that I generally take. I’m concerned or at least I questioned the other ingredients that are in each in every supplement. Other ingredients including vegetable cellulose, silica, vegetable magnesium stearate, microcrystalline cellulose, dicalcium phosphate, and vegetable stearic acid to name a few. I have no idea what these components are. My question is, what is their impact on the body, the metabolism and could there be any long term effects or consequences anyways, can you please shed some light on these? Thanks in advance and thank you and thanks to Brock for consistently bringing amazingly, interesting, fascinating, and beneficial information.
[0:55:04.7]
I appreciate each and every podcast and I’m really a devoted listener. Thanks again and keep up the positivity.
Brock: I was excited when I heard this question ‘cause it’s something that crossed my mind, I’m sure it’s crossed a lot of people’s mind and you look at the non-medicinal ingredients in anything and it’s like sometimes list as longer than the stuff that actually in like supposed to be in there.
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: Like what is all these stuff?
Ben: And how much magnesium silicate is winding up in your poo. Yeah, it is an issue you know for example, magnesium stearate is a big one and that’s formed by adding magnesium to stearic acid and it’s a lubricant so you use it to make supplements that helps the machinery that make the supplement to ran faster and smoother and it prevents pills and capsules from sticking to each other but it can also cause some issues with your cell membranes, it could in high amounts suppress your natural T-cell production which are your natural killer cells that are key components of your immune system, and magnesium stearate is usually sourced from hydrogenated oils like cotton seed oil. It’s been shown to potentially be contaminated with calcium hydroxide, with bisphenol A or BPA, with a lot of hazardous chemicals. This is an issue not only with magnesium stearate but also with a lot of the other common things that you’re going to find in multi-vitamins or in supplements. Artificial colors for example in a lot of children’s gummies and supplements that are colored. Most of those are derived from coal tar which is toxic. Magnesium stearate, I already talked about but there’s another one called magnesium silicate which is very very similar. Titanium dioxide which is a naturally occurring oxide in titanium, you’re gonna find a lot of times using vitamins as a pigment but it’s a metal and a lot of times long term exposure to metals can lead to some problems with immune function in your body. The type of multivitamins that don’t have as many issues when it comes to these stuff are what are called whole food vitamin supplements. Typically these are the supplements where you have to take an annoyingly large handful of them because they’ve been combined with whole foods in order to allow them to have better absorbability but they a lot of times have fewer fillers, fewer colorants, fewer coatings. The other thing that you really wanna make sure that you pay attention to if you’re trying to avoid the fact for example that magnesium stearate has a lot of harmful contaminants in it is you wanna look at the actual quality assurance on the supplement that you’re taking in needs to have good manufacturing processes, so it needs to have what’s called a GMP certification, it needs to preferably have used an independent third party lab to check the raw materials for contaminants and for the correct dosage and the gold standard that I would point out for supplement that you’d wanna look for is what’s called an NSF Certification and NSF Certification costs supplement companies a lot of money but it’s a third party verification that goes above and beyond anything else from the face of the planet when it comes to verifying lack of contaminants and toxic compounds but also purity of the supplement itself. It a guarantee that the supplement actually has what it promises to have in it and I agree with completely with Jennifer’s concerns. I’m concerned a lot of times about some of the supplements that are in my covered. It is difficult in many cases to find supplements that are completely free of some of these things that are necessary for them to not stick to each other and for them to not completely degrade in the bottle. I would say that at least make sure that CGMP try and look for something that’s NSF certified and try and get the whole foods version of a multivitamin or other supplement and you’re at least gonna cover a lot of your basis when you do something like that. I am, I think as I’ve talked about before on the show, I am in the process of trying to design and come out with a supplement that covers as many basis as possible but it’s also healthy, safe, is NSF certified, CGMP certified, all these jazz. I’m still honestly a good 20 weeks out or so from actually having a viable product in hand that’s actually able to be used with peace of mind by anyone and is also something that would allow that you use one supplement, open up your refrigerator and have just 1 bottle in your refrigerator. It’s been something I have been working on for the past year and a half and I’ve kinda capture into the radar because I’ve talked about a couple of times on the podcast but I don’t really wanna talk about this too much until it’s really ready for people to use and I’m pretty excited, well hopefully be ready by the end of the year but it is one of those things you can take with complete piece of mind until that point at least look for CGMP, look for NSF, look that it’s mixed in whole foods formap and that at least will help out a little bit so that will keep you from turning green going 8 eyeballs on your forehead.
[1:00:32.1]
The other thing I would mention is that if you wanna get tested for toxins, tested for chemicals, contaminants, PCBs, all of this stuff. You can do testing, I’ll put a link to the test from Directlabs that you can get but they do toxin testing, they do porphyrin testing and you can go and see what kind of stuff is built up in your body and kinda act accordingly. It’s one of the reasons that detoxing every now and again like going supplement free, fasting and juicing, having like maybe you know, a month that of each year that you really detox your body. In this day and age, post industrial era is probably a good idea so, there you go.
Will: Hi Ben, this is Will from Denver, Colorado. I’m just calling for some advice, the reason I’ve got diagnosed with a torn hip labrum, good news is that it can be repaired ______ [1:02:25.1] but my bad news is that my doctor told me that I have very little cartilage left in my hip and he recommended something called Synvisc. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that but I just wondering if you have an opinion on that if it’s worth the money and also if you had $50 to spend on supplements, what would be the best use of that money – $50/month that is. Thanks for the advice and want the show.
Brock: I personally never heard of synvisc, have you heard of that?
Ben: I haven’t heard of synvisc, I’ve heard of what synvisc is made up of which is essentially highly ironic acid which is highly ironic acid injection. Now, the whole idea behind this this synvisc is it’s a field of medicine called viscosupplementation. Anybody who’s ever had joint pain should probably know about this but it’s based off the fact that there’s a decrease in the viscosity or the elasticity of the synovial fluid which is the lubricating fluid in your joints. We have osteoarthritis, what happens is the natural highly ironic acid in your knees or your elbows or wherever, it has a lower molecular weight than what you’d find in a normal healthy knee and so the idea is that if you replenish the highly ironic acid and you’re able to somehow recreate normal synovial fluid you can restore a lot of the normal function to a joint and allow it to move a little bit better. So how ironic acid is a mix of what’s called glucuronic acid and acetylglucosamine similar to using something like a glucosamine chondroitin supplement. So it allows you to restore your natural highly ironic acid, it is kind of a lubricant and a shock absorber in the synovial fluid and it’s you know, just what it sounds like it’s an injection of what you need back into your joint. The issue with viscosupplementation and these injections are not that they don’t work because most of them have been shown to work and this synvisc for example is different than a lot of the others in terms of its actual molecular weight being as close as possible to synovial fluid you can get. It’s got higher elasticity, higher viscosity, it’s got better studies behind it so it’s kinda unique but the idea is that a lot of people have immune based reactions to these proteins that are getting injected into their knee and sometimes end up getting a lot of downstream autoimmune effects that can end up for example making them hyper sensitive to foods, end up making them break out, get sick more easily, kind of a lot of things that might happen if you are to say eat the food that you are allergic to like soy or wheat or dairy or something like that. And of course, the other issues that injections can be expensive so this is one of those things where I would say if you get injected and you notice any issues whatsoever, I wanna be careful with it and you know, it’s one of those trade-offs, do you want your knee to feel better vs. having some autoimmune issues or some potential immune side effects and that’s just kind of a call that you have to make, it comes down to what you find most important to you but certainly these injections worked and there’s enough studies behind them that show that especially for something like osteoarthritis or complete loss of synovial fluid they were, I suspect with my participation in marathons and triathlons and stuff like that.
[1:05:01.2]
I probably have some knee degradation and some joint issues when I’m 56 years old that leave me wanting to do something like this and I would certainly go out and at least try it and if I have side effects potentially think about some other options but it’s one of those things that’s not, it’s not completely unnatural like your body it’s just injecting extra of what your body kinda naturally already has in there so in my opinion it’s better living through science and does have some decent effects on your joints. If you’re gonna take supplements first though I can tell you exactly what I take, I would look into fish oil….
Brock: I wasn’t sure if you’d wanna answer that, yeah, $50 question.
Ben: Two things, super straight forward, they’ve done studies with fish oil and osteoarthritis and found significant improvement in overall pain and reduction and the need to use anti-inflammatories like ibuprofen or advil when fish oil is used. So anywhere from 4 – 10 grams of good high quality triglyceride based fish oil. I would certainly do that, the other one that I would look into that doesn’t have many studies behind it but that I found just from my personal use and the use of athletes that I’ve worked with is Capraflex and Capraflex is this bone and joint formula made by a company called Mt. Capra and it’s a blend of 17 different foods and botanicals and enzymes that are natural anti-inflammatories, that are mineral blends that are compounds such as lactoferrin which help bone to regenerate, glucosamine chondroitin, cherry juice, ginger, turmeric, acerola cherry extract, all of these different proteolytic enzymes. In this last week leading up to Ironman I’ve been poppin’ 12 of those a day just so that ‘cause I know I’m gonna feel a lot better in my 20 of the run with my joints pretty much kinda rebuilt from all these training I’ve been doing the past 20 weeks leading up to this race so I would do fish oil, I would do Capraflex and I would go higher than what I normally do you know, I would go higher than that 2 – 4 grams of fish oil and do closer to 5 – 10 grams. With Capraflex, I wouldn’t just take 4 or 8 which is kinda little lower dose of those but I’ve be pushing 12 a day in terms of supplement like Capraflex. That’s what I would do from a supplementation standpoint and then for the last I would look into, would be like one of this Ironman suits or one of this cool new prosthetics that just turn you into a complete badass like robot, I would say like the, have you seen like lasers on it? That you could …
Brock: Oh of course, yeah, you have to get the lasers.
Ben: Yeah, I would do the lasers for sure for the lower …..
Brock: That’s like getting air conditioner in your car, you gonna put this on your suit.
Ben: If you could do it 2 for 1 I’d also do something like the shield force on the upper body like around the arms and stuff so you could deflect bullets, rockets, hammers thrown by demigods, all that jazz and …..
Brock: Yeah, of course.
Ben: Uhm, yeah so that’s the direction I’d go.
Brock: That’s gonna be more than $50 a month. So, I think we’re trying to stay on a budget.
Ben: Yeah, yeah.
Brock: Silly Will. Oh wait! Hey, I was just gonna let the next question play but it’s not actually an audio question, I have to read it. You know, I’m lazy but I’ll read …..
Ben: Do you remember how to do that?
Brock: Oh, I’ll see. Give it a shot. Brian wrote, “you recently talked about decision fatigue although I believe this is a problem for me on occasion I feel my problem is more decision overload. Too many variables in the grand scheme of is this the right day to do the workout, right time to eat this, right ingredients, right protein/fat/carb make up etc. It seems like there’s always another level of decisions to make, what should I do to simplify this?
Ben: That was an effing train wreck dude.
Brock: That wasn’t my fault there, I read exactly what Brian wrote And Brian …..
Ben: And this is why we have people call. Call their questions in.
Brock: Exactly.
Ben: Okay, so Brian just ….
Brock: I may sound like an idiot.
Ben: Wants to know about decision fatigue. The New York Times had a really interesting article on decision fatigue recently. It’s a long article, I’ll link to it in the show notes but the take away of it is that making decisions about food or exercise or work or life or relationships or whatever and resisting temptations get really hard and they especially get hard towards the end of the day when you’re mentally zapped and this decision fatigue is responsible for gradually poor choices, more and more indecision, more fatigue, more frustration, more stress as the day progresses.
[1:10:09.8]
What experiment show that they report in that New York Times article is that we all have this finite store of mental energy for exerting self control and every little decision that we make and the more choices that we have to make throughout the day the harder it gets for our brain to continue to make decisions. So the result is that by the end of a big day when you’re low on mental energy you’re gonna be more likely to give in to an impulse and whatever, eat the snickers bar that’s in your freezer which is in the great place to keep snickers ….
Brock: It’s really the only way to have a snicker bar.
Ben: Frozen snickers, amazing! Or just like to avoid making decisions all together and just be like, I’m gonna workout or try to workout, I’m just gonna go flop on the couch and turn on the tv, so the worst part is that a lot of times we aren’t aware how mentally tired we are from all those little choices and we just kinda keep on going through life making all these mistakes especially as the day goes on and potentially not making the decisions that we know are right simply because we don’t wanna make decisions at all or we take easiest road out. What compounded is that as we go throughout the day, our blood glucose levels tend to drop speaking of blood glucose and this can be responsible for poor decision making as well if you’re going on this blood glucose roller coaster rides during the day. What the article came out to in terms of what it recommended was if you wanna make the best choices you need to make sure that you eat a good breakfast full of like slow release fuels like proteins, like some healthy fats, some lower gylcemic index carbs, be careful scheduling endless back to back meetings and then reserve your biggest commitments and your biggest decision times before the afternoon or in the morning when your decision fatigue is going to be lowest. I think that’s a really good place to start but I think there are some problems with that. For example, if you’re looking to get the most bang for your buck at of your workout, technically doing a hard workout later on in the day is better than doing it earlier in the day and the issue isn’t necessarily going and doing the workout but knowing what you’re supposed to do. This is why at the beginning of the week, I generally get out my Evernote document for the week and I write out what my workout are gonna be on each day so that by the end of the day when I’m kinda mentally fatigue from writing articles and doing consults and doing all these other stuff, you know, homeschooling my kids just everything I do, I don’t have to sit there and think, okay what do I’m gonna do for a workout now. I just look at my calendar and it says, you know, ride your bike to the gym, do 3 by 5 bench press squat, clean deadlifts, ride home. And so I just go and do it and the decision fatigue is gone that’s why it’s really important to kinda have a set plan for that type of stuff. As far as a few other things that I recommend when it comes to decision making fatigue, I wrote this big article recently about “How to Quit Mowing Your Lawn” and ten other time saving productivity tips, one of the things I talked about is keeping clean mind and what I mean by keeping a clean mind is, or clear mind is, whenever I have a task or a reminder, an article I wanna read whatever, I get it out of my head as quickly as I can so my head is never rattling around with all these thoughts that I think can truly lead to decision fatigue so I mentioned Evernote. So, I’ll use Evernote and whenever I have something come across my radar, I think of something while I’m walking around or standing in line or driving, I basically pull up an evernote doc, write it down, shove it into whichever day I wanna do it ‘cause like I have an evernote doc for Monday, for Tuesday, for Wednesday, for Thursday etc and it’s just out of my mind. Okay, so it’s kind of that, it’s almost like the whole Arthur Conan Doyle where he writes in one of the first Sherlock Holmes episodes where Watson is talking to Sherlock Holmes and shares with him some facts and Sherlock like, “I’m just gonna try and forget that as quickly as possible” and Watson ask why Sherlock says that because all these random things rattling around in your head detract from your ability to solve problems and I probably horribly misquoted that but I believe that’s kinda just the gist of it. The idea though is that ….
Brock: I gonna get the accent right so that’s one thing for sure.
Ben: Yeah, my dear Watson. Anyways though, yeah, so you keep your head clear using stuff like that. Whenever I come across an article I wanna read, I don’t distract myself and get down to read the article, you know, I can talk about this New York Times articles and these different things that I tweet, all I use is a send to reader app on my browser and when I find an article I wanna read, I click the send to reader button and it sends it to my Kindle so that I just have it on my Kindle, I know it’s stack away for reading later and I quit worrying about it and just out of sight, out of mind.
[1:15:02.8]
I use a program called BusyCal on my computer and BusyCal let’s me schedule meetings and events and write them in the BusyCal and then it pops up and it gives me a reminder and I can even use this program called follow up then or everytime I write an email, I can CC like one day at followupthen.com or 2 days at followupthen.com and it reminds me like one day later or 2 days later, it will pop up on busy cow and say, “Hey, follow up on this” if the person never responded to the email so I never also have to have these random thoughts popping into my head like, “Oh, I sent this email to that person, did they respond to me? I don’t remember if they responded to me. I wonder if they even got the email.” So, I used that combination of follow up then and BusyCal to kinda keep a clear hear that way. I also, I read, I keep a pen and a pad next to my bed and write it down if I wake up to get it out of my head so I’ve got access to it the next morning. For me, that’s the best way to beat decision making fatigue is if you’ve got a clear head, you make decisions just like that , you’re just like BOOM! I know what I’m gonna do because I don’t have other thoughts distracting me and that’s probably the biggest tip that I can give to Brian is to keep a clear head. I talked about a ton of other stuff from that article, I’ll link to it, it’s one of the articles that I’m using in my book but I’ll link to it in the show notes over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/253 for Brian to read but keep a clear head and it takes some index to the brain and that’s where it start.
Brock: Nice! So Brian I’d say just go ahead and make your decisions and just don’t worry about them, the chips fall where they may. I think you’re worrying about it too much.
Ben: That’s right and when it comes to right to eat this, right ingredients, right protein/fat/carb make up all that jazz, pretty much don’t do anything except listen to the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast and you can’t go wrong and pretty much ignore everything else. So, there you go.
Brock: The first question that you should ask yourself is, “What would Ben do?” and the second question is “What wouldn’t Brock do?”
Ben: Wwwbd, what wouldn’t Brock do? Wwwbd, that’s also, that doesn’t work, they’re both wwwbd.
Brock: Oh yes, they might forget who are they supposed to be following, who they’re supposed to be ignoring.
Ben: Any who, should we give something cool away? Since we’re ……
Brock: ….. Yeah, it’s to visit ITunes and find an awesome review that somebody has left us and preferably a 5 star review if you don’t mind.
Ben: That’s right. I kinda like your visit ITunes, we should play like a Mr. Rogers type of soundtrack as we read this like ….. and play the tinkles of the dreams going back in time. There you go…. So,
Brock: I don’t have any ……
Ben: Can you actually get some Mr. Rogers music to play as I read this?
Brock: Absolutely!
Ben: Bingo.
Brock: Here it come.
Ben: This review is called superhuman education. Now, if you hear your review read on the show then we will send you a super duper prize pack straight from bengreenfieldfitness.com, all you have to do…..
Brock: Hi, Mr. Greenfield!
Ben: All you have to do is go to bengreenfieldfitness…..
Brock: I missed stupid little cat that looks like a …….
Ben: Or go to ITunes and leave your review. So this review is called superhuman education and it’s by Gary3. Here’s what he says, “although Ben says on too much, these guys know their diet and performance info. Both triathletes, their ability to breakdown performance tweak and supplements efficiency is second to none. Highly entertaining and tongue and cheek, one of my go to podcast to fitness info.”
Brock: Alright, that was a rocky start but …… what’s his name? superhuman education or Gary3. Yeah, folded over the fire.
Ben: Uhm, so I guess …… I’m gonna wrap the podcast. You can go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/love that’s bengreenfieldfitness/love and well, if you go there there’s some cool stuff so check it out. Podcast review, much of cool stuff in the show notes.
Aug 21, 2013 Podcast: New Ways To Sleep Better, How To Track Your Sleep, Should Blood Sugar Go Up When You Exercise, Are Fillers In Multivitamins Bad, Should You Get Your Knee Injected, and How To Eliminate Decision Fatigue.
Have a podcast question for Ben? Click the tab on the right, use the Contact button on the app, click Ask a Podcast Question at the bottom of this page, Skype “pacificfit” or use the “Ask Ben” form… but be prepared to wait – we prioritize audio questions over text questions.
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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+.
- How Your Brain Becomes Addicted To Caffeine.
- What’s in Your Milk? 20+ Painkillers, Antibiotics, and More.
- Ask for an IV if you finish a triathlon or marathon and you can get one!
- Need gut testing in London? Visit www.sportiedoc.com/consult.
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Special Announcements:
ONE slot remaining – November 21 to December 4, 2013 Thailand Triathlon Adventure with Ben Greenfield – details at pacificfit.net/thailand. 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!
August 23, Friday noon Pacific – Ironman Canada at Whistler Meet-up: All BenGreenfieldFitness fans and athletes are invited to hang out for a lunch hour on Friday before the big race! Come ask your last-minute questions, chill, plan post-race parties and meet other athletes who will be racing. This event will be a Mogul’s coffeehouse and you can RSVP on the BenGreenfieldFitness Facebook page.
September 10 to 12, 2013: The Global Business Triathlon Conference is featuring Ben Greenfield as a speaker. Hilton London Metropole, London, UK – Join us for the premier global gathering of leaders of the triathlon business community. Enjoy three days of learning, networking and fun at the newly renovated Hilton London Metropole, conveniently located near the ITU World Championship activities in Hyde Park. Here is a link to the Facebook page for the London meetup with Ben Greenfield.
February 6 to March 6, 2014: Want to get into the Perfect Health Diet retreat in Austin, Texas? Click here for all details. Ben Greenfield will be presenting at the Feb 6-Mar 6 retreat.
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
And of course, this week’s top iTunes review gets a care package straight from Ben – leave your review for a chance to win one:
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Listener Q&A:
As compiled, edited and sometimes read by Brock, the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast “sidekick”.
Testimonial from Rolynn
After reading some of Ben’s articles, he was able to diagnose himself with gluten intolerance, clean up his diet and start setting some PRs in his races again (first ones since May). He also dropped 3lbs and felt much better and lighter. He could also feel his body getting cleaner. He really credits your articles on eating gluten free prior to race days and the 4 day detox challenge.
New Ways To Sleep Better
Heather says @ 00:25:32
Body Health just put out a new supplement called Healthy Sleep Ultra. It is a little expensive but she knows they make good quality supplements. She has sleep issues and has tried many things that you have suggested. If this is something new that might be able to help her, she is willing to spend the money but she wanted your opinion first.
~ In my response to Heather, I mention:
- Travacor by Nutriscience
- Neuro-5 HTP by Biotics
- CraveArrest by Designs For Health
- DirectLabs and the NeuroAdrenal Expanded test.
How To Track Your Sleep
Michael says @ 00:33:59
He uses the Sleep Tracker app by Innovative Sleep Solutions. They say it is 90% accurate as compared to a real sleep test. Do you believe them? Do you know of any sleep tracking apps or devices that might be better?
~ Here’s where you can buy the Sleeptracker from Amazon and support the podcast.
Should Blood Sugar Go Up When You Exercise
Jason asks @ 00:43:21
He is a Type 1 diabetic, 31 years old, and is having trouble with his glucose readings in the morning. They jump very quickly, especially after exercise which he knows is normal. He has been counteracting the effects of exercise raising his blood sugar with some fast acting insulin but is looking for a better, more natural way, to control it. He has been IM from 6pm until noon and he follows a low-carb ketogenic diet.
~ In my response to Jason, I mention MPX100, but be careful if diabetic.
Are Fillers In Multivitamins Bad?
Jennifer says @ 00:54:01
She takes a lot of supplements (and I do mean a lot) and is concerned about the “other” ingredients in her supplements like: Vegetable Cellulose, silica, vegetable magnesium stearate, microcrystalline cellulose, dicalcium phosphate, vegetable stearic acid. She doesn’t know what those are or how they impact the body. Could they be causing issue when taken in aggregate?
~ In my response, I mention porphyrin and toxin testing with Directlabs.
Should You Get Your Hip Injected?
Will says @ 01:01:10
He has been diagnosed with a torn hip labrum. He also has very little cartilage left in his hip. His doctor wants him to try Synvisc. Do you have an opinion on that? Also, if he had $50/month to spend on supplements, what do you think would be the best way to spend that money?
~ In my response, I recommend Capraflex and fish oil.
How To Eliminate Decision Fatigue
Brian wrote @ 01:08:36
You recently talk about decision fatigue. Although I believe this is a problem for me on occasion I feel my problem is more decision overload. Too many variable in the grand scheme of is this the right day to do this work out, right time to eat this, right ingredients, right protein/fat/carb make up etc. It seems like there is always another level of decisions. What should I do to simply this?
~ In my response to Brian, I mention my article on decision fatigue and this NY Times article on decision fatigue. I also mention my “Don’t Mow Your Lawn” article.
Hello my wife’s sister just had a baby and I wanted to pick your brain about 1. Good ways to help produce more breast milk and quality breast milk? And 2. What are do’s and don’ts while breastfeeding?
I recommend heading over to the Wellness Mama blog for that info.