February 26, 2014
Podcast #273 from https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2014/02/273-how-to-make-bread-healthy-which-chocolate-is-good-for-you-how-to-increase-fertility-more/
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Introduction: In today’s episode of the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast: Do-It-Yourself Fix for Leg Length Discrepancies, Which Chocolate Is Good For You, The Best Ways To Learn More About Health, Exercise, And Nutrition, How To Increase Balance, How To Naturally Increase Fertility, And The Best Supplements For Inflammation.
Welcome to the bengreenfieldfitness.com podcast. We provide you with premier exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon, and wellness advice from the top fitness experts in the nation. So whether you’re an Ironman tri athlete, or you’re just trying to shed a few pounds, get ready for non-run-off-the-mill, cutting edge content from bengreenfieldfitness.com.
Brock: I woke up at five this morning and I kicked some severe butts and then went to work and I had some breakfast with my workout and then I had a nap. Now I feel like crap.
Ben: You’ve accomplished a lot today. You feel like a crap after taking a nap?
Brock: I feel like a crap, yes. No, I feel like crap after taking a nap, not a crap. That’ll be easy to take care of, actually.
Ben: Did you nap for too long? Because that’s one of the things that can make you feel a bit fatigued after you take a nap.
Brock: I think so, yeah. I didn’t set an alarm. I didn’t actually plan to nap, I just went and laid down and start reading and the next thing I knew I was whacking myself in the face with my ipad so I closed my eyes for a bit.
Ben: Well it’s kinda funny we didn’t even plan this but I actually wanted to talk about a new napping bio hack that I just discovered and have underneath my sheet in my room. It’s a 17-layer mat called the BioMat and it…
Brock: Seventeen layer.
Ben: And it emits not infrared light but infrared waves while you’re asleep. And it also has – and this is gonna sound a little bit airy-fairy and woo-woo for some folks. So put on your aluminum foil hats and get ready! It’s got amethyst and tourmaline crystals in it that release negative ions that basically mitigate a lot of the effects of EMF radiation from computers and wifi signals and stuff like that while you’re sleeping. And I took a nap on it yesterday and woke up feeling freaking amazing. Sorry, Brock. And then slept on it last night and it has this heating sensation. It kinda like warms your body from the inside out and it’s really, really cool! It’s not necessarily an inexpensive mat. But I got on a payment plan with the company. They shipped one to my house. So it costs like, I think I’m paying like a 150 bucks a month for it and the total cost is $1700 all in. But it’s called a BioMat and it’s pretty amazing. I’ve never actually slept on something like this before where you just feel your body soaking up these negative ions and the infrared. It’s not magnet, it’s way different than grounding or earthing or anything like that but really, really interesting. And my…
Brock:
Seventeen layers.
Ben: Yeah! And my dog likes it. My dog’s in there basically on the bed right now just laid out sleeping on the BioMat.
Brock: He knows. He knows.
Ben: I’ll put a link in the show notes for all the people who have $1700 burning a hole in their pockets but it’s over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/biomat. I made a special link for it. So check it out and well Brock’s up there getting crappy sleep out in Canada.
Brock: Well, you know what I did? I slept on some seven-layer dip. That’s where the problem was.
Ben: It works pretty well, too. So, yeah, seven-layer dip or seventeen layers of amethyst crystals. Your pick.
News Flashes:
Brock: Alright, we’ve reached that part of the show where Ben goes through some of the greatest and the latest links and studies and cool stuff that he came across on the inter webs.
Ben: That’s right! I know some people have mentioned on their iTunes reviews that this podcast makes their head hurt. You may actually want to reconsider even listening to this podcast at all while you’re exercising. I may have just shot ourselves in the foot there, Brock. But the reason I say that is because a study came out recently and I tweeted about it over at twitter.com/bengreenfield. What I said was this is another very good reason not to check your email right before that big workout or race. And the reason for that is that this study looked at the effects of mental exertion prior to a workout, in this case a 5K running time trial on whether or not the actual performance or the feelings of fatigue during that time trial were influenced.
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And it turns out that what happened was when they had these folks do what’s called a stroop task. That…
Brock: Stroop task.
Ben: It affected their ability to – it actually didn’t affect their performance during the time trial. It didn’t affect heart rate. It didn’t affect blood lactic acid and these other stuff that they’re measuring. But what happened was when they gave these people this stroop task which is a cognitive performance test, they rated their perceived exertion higher during the 5K. So they felt that they’re working a lot higher and significantly was a full point higher which is actually pretty significant. That’s like on the scale, it’s technically a six to twenty scale that they’ll show you in like an exercise performance lab and they’ll say how hard you’re working. I have no clue why they use six to twenty. Don’t know why they wouldn’t just use one to ten. But, whatever! Six to twenty and these folks, the people who did the performance test were averaging twelve and a half and the people who didn’t do the performance test, the cognitive performance test were rating thirteen and a half.
Brock: So no actual physiological response, just psychological response.
Ben: Yeah! And there’s been some other studies that have looked into the effects of mental tasks on physical performance and found that across the board, it either increases your rating of fatigue or decreases your performance or increases your – I’m sorry- decreases your time to exhaustion. So everybody may want to just flip off the podcast right now if you’re exercising and turn on Jillian Michaels or something. Just sayin’.
Brock: Just sayin’. Turn on some fluff.
Ben: By the way, I’m working on a blog post about this but I actually ran 3 hours on the treadmill on Saturday for that.
Brock: Oh, yeah, the University of Connecticut.
Ben: Yeah! For the study I was doing over there. And I had my MP3 player kinda loaded up with podcasts ‘cause I was basically assigned to stare at a blank white wall and run on a treadmill in a fasted state for 3 hours after eating a high fat diet to see what would happen to fat versus carbohydrate oxidation.
Brock: That sounds like a delightful Tuesday you’ve been.
Ben: Well they pay me 750 bucks to do it.
Brock: Wow, that makes sense. That’s a lot better.
Ben: I got 250 an hour for running. So I paid for half of my Bio Mat. But basically, I put on the podcast and I got about an hour in. I couldn’t listen to the podcast anymore and I switched to driving techno beats to get me through the rest of the run just because it was almost like listening to the podcast by itself was increasing my rating of perceived exertion.
Brock: I washed out during a marathon. I decided I had the last few marathons leading up to that, I’ve gone up too fast. Because I was just too excited I was like, okay, I’m gonna keep myself really under control and I’ll listen to podcasts for the while race. It’s gonna keep me nice and calm. Maybe I’ll turn them off at the end of the race. An hour into the race, I was ready to throw my ipod into the ditch. It wasn’t a good idea.
Ben: I do know one thing that will come to potentially good use if you are going to engage in cognitive tasks and that is wine. And what I tweeted out about this was that that second glass of wine that I know some of our podcast listeners, just a few of you are maybe drinking in the evening, could actually come to good use. So this was a study that appeared in the Journal Consciousness and Cognition. And what they did was they recruited a bunch of folks via Craigslist to come into a lab and get drunk. Some people got to get drunk and some people didn’t. So I don’t know how they chose that. They gave them a vodka cranberry drink until their blood alcohol level was about 0.075 and they kept another group sober and then they had all of the subjects do a creative problem-solving task in which they were given a series of words and they were tasked with finding a final word that would form a phrase with some of those target words. Like for example, they‘d give them three words like peach, arm and tar. And the fourth word that someone could find on their own to fill in and work with those words would be for example peach, or pit, like peach pit, armpit, tar pit, like that. So the people that were intoxicated solved more creative word problems in less time than the sober folks. And what they found was that the more working memory you have at your disposal, the better you’re able to work on those analytical tasks and it turns out that somehow alcohol works to improve your working memory. So they actually titled the article Uncorking the Muse –Alcohol Intoxication Facilitates Creative Problem-Solving.
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Brock: Or they get to lay out the other way, and if you’re the only sober person at the party, you’re gonna be too grumpy to play any games properly.
Ben: Yes, especially games that involve word puzzles which we all play at our parties. And then the last thing I wanted to mention was a news flash that I put out about a really interesting article that was published on Bread. And this was called Could This Baker Solve the Gluten Mystery? And like I usually do, I’ll link to all of this in the show notes over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/273. But in this article, what it starts off by getting into is the fact that in this era of the gluten-free craze, that a lot of people may not really have gluten sensitivities or celiac disease so much as pretty much most of the gluten that we’re exposed to these days has not been exposed to yeast and bacteria long enough for the gluten in the flour to get digested. And that can result in all kinds of problems in our gut when the gluten hasn’t been pre-digested. So what this article…
Brock: So, bread’s getting made too quickly?
Ben: Exactly!
Brock: Like they just turn it up, the dough.
Ben: Bread’s getting made so quickly. About 90 minutes from my house over at Washington State University, there’s this guy that does grain breeding which would be a fantastic job getting grain to have sex, and creating new seeds, new recipes, new ways to make grains healthy and this article was one of the better articles that I’ve actually read on how to make your own sour dough using a very simple grain starter and a very simple sour dough starter. And I think I’ve mentioned before in the podcast, I actually do eat bread. I delve into it about once or twice a week because my wife makes a fantastic sour dough bread every week. And that’s one of the few forms of just straight up whole wheat that I’ll eat. Now I’ve got two surprises that for the listeners today, for those out in Ben Greenfield podcast land. The first is I found the exact hard red spring wheat berries that Jessa uses on Amazon. They’re non–GMO, they’re grown in the US, they’re right there on the Palouse literally 90 minutes from my house. They grow it, they harvest it, they process it, they bag it, and you can get it off Amazon via prime shipping. So I am gonna link to that in the show notes over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/273. Another thing they don’t do is they don’t irradiate these seeds which most seeds actually do get. But these are just basic hard red wheat berries. I’ll link to the article so you see what to do with them. And I’ll even link to the sour dough starter that you can get for six bucks off of Amazon that you can pretty much use forever. Like once you get a starter, you can just use it for the rest of all time, basically.
Brock: Yeah, but you need to take care of it.
Ben: You have to care for it. You have to let it sleep on your $1700 crystal Bio Mat. But the other thing I’ll do if folks are interested, I’ll let you weigh in on this, Brock, is – I can hear Jessa tooling around in the kitchen right now. So we could call her in and give her a very – or have her give us a quick 60-second overview on how to make your own sour dough. What do you think?
Brock: Yeah, I’d love that! I’m totally down to that.
Ben: Cool! Cool! I’ll call her in. Just a second. Hit pause. Okay.
Jessa: Okay.
Ben: Okay, Brock. I have right here the world-famous Jessa Greenfield who…
Brock: Hey, Jessa!
Ben: …was just in the kitchen making -you were making something with chocolate, I can tell.
Jessa: I was, yes.
Ben: Some little –some little snack for the boys and hopefully for me.
Jessa: Some treat for the kids. Only if you’re good.
Ben: What were you making?
Jessa: I was making this like coconut chocolate bars.
Ben: Coconut chocolate bars.
Jessa: They’re delicious!
Ben: Awesome! Maybe we can bring some to Mexico for Brock.
Brock: That sounds fantastic.
Jessa: You’re coming, Brock?
Ben: Saturday. You didn’t know Brock was coming to Mexico?
Jessa: No! Right on, okay!
Brock: Yeah!
Ben: Brock’s gonna be down there, too.
Jessa: Cool!
Ben: Yeah! Jessa…
Jessa: And his phantom girlfriend?
Ben: Jessa, the listeners are curious how – can you give us a 60-second overview on how you make your world-famous Jessa Greenfield sour dough bread?
Jessa: I can tell you that it is one cup of sour dough starts.
Ben: Sour dough starter?
Jessa: Yes. So you have to have that made already and going well, thriving.
Ben: I’m putting a link on the Amazon for people could – to get their starters.
Jessa: Yeah, like a volcano kind of action.
Ben: And then what do they do? We’re gonna save all you paleo listeners out there, we’re gonna save you from paleo and teach you how you can have your bread and eat it, too.
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Jessa: Okay, so, one cup of starter and then you wanna have a little bit left over so you can replenish your starter ‘cause the idea…
Ben: So don’t use all your starter.
Jessa: Yeah, the idea is to keep it growing in its sours more and more the more you use it. Okay, so use that then you do two cups of lukewarm water, that’s not hot water ‘cause you’ll kill your starter with hot water ‘cause it is alive. It’s like a little pet. Actually, I’m feeding ours before we go to Mexico.
Ben: Nice! Leave a little cup of water out in the kitchen floor for it.
Jessa: Yes, exactly.
Brock: I have a friend in high school named Lukewarm Water.
Jessa: So two cups of water and then you wanna put in two to three cups, actually I do three cups, three cups of flour and I use a red cracked wheat flour, hard wheat sorry, hard wheat.
Ben: Yes, we found it on Amazon, actually. You can get it on Amazon prime.
Jessa: Okay. Well, the stuff I get is milled like every 40 days. So it’s not milled 2-3 years out in advance and stuff like that.
Ben: Okay, cool. So don’t get a 3-year supply?
Jessa: Yeah, you want it milled recently. And then –so 3 cups of that and then you wanna put in 2 teaspoons of salt and it sounds like a lot of salt but that’s actually- it slows down the fermentation process which allows your bread to sour more and soak longer so that’s – and you want that.
Ben: Hmm, we want our bread sour sour like pickles.
Jessa: Yeah! So two teaspoons of salt and then you’re gonna stir that in and then you’re gonna add one more cup of water and then you’re gonna add- if you’re using whole, whole wheat I would say 2-3 cups of water. Wheat has a tendency to slowly soak up the water so it may seem really, really doughy at first but if you let it sit for 20 minutes, it will firm up considerably. So I would do anywhere from 2-3 cups more of flour. And just kinda watch it for 20 minutes and make sure it doesn’t get too firm because it’s gonna look a lot like pancake batter, a little firmer than pancake batter because sour dough does a lot better in moisture conditions. And it’s not like your regular bread dough, that you’re probably- that people are traditionally used to seeing. So it’s not gonna be –you’re gonna be able to handle it very well. And then you let that sit on your counter overnight covered and in the morning you’ll come in there and it won’t look puffy like regular bread it have like these little bubbles on the top and that’s the gases.
Ben: Gross!
Jessa: Yeah, gross! It does go up higher but it doesn’t stay in a nice lump or a nice ball. It will get these gas bubbles that come to the top. And then once that happens, you’re gonna scoop it out with your hands, kinda pop it down and then you’re gonna put it – I like to grease just a regular small mixing bowl and let it do a second rise for another 5 hours, so it just sits on my counter for most of the day. And in the evening you wanna crank up your oven to its hottest temperature possible. And I like to use my cast iron soup bowl…
Ben: Is that like a Dutch oven?
Jessa: If you have a cast iron Dutch oven, that’s like the best ideal thing. What I –but I don’t have one so I just use my cast iron soup bowl and or soup crock and then I put my cast iron frying pan on top of it so that I create my own little Dutch oven. And so you put that in there while the oven’s heating up ‘cause you want that fiery hot, too. And then you’re gonna pull it out and be really careful because the whole thing is gonna be super hot, handles, everything because it’s been in about 500 degrees for about probably 20 minutes.
Ben: It’s a giant flaming bomb of sour dough.
Jessa: It’s gonna be hot. So be really careful when you do this. And you’re gonna pull it out and then you’re gonna sprinkle a little bit corn meal on the bottom of it, it keeps it from sticking to the base of the pan. And then you basically just pour your dough in, you don’t shape it or anything. And then you get it in the oven as fast as you can. Put the lid on it, shove it in the oven as fast as you can. Turn the heat down to 450, let it cook for half an hour and then take the lid off of your pan or your pan off the top of your bowl if that’s what you have, and let it cook at 350 for 10-15 minutes just so it gets nice and crunchy on the top.
Ben: Hmm, crunchy on the top! Love it!
Jessa: And then it’s done. But I just want everyone to know that sour dough bread making is an art and it is -takes time to perfect so do not be sad if it’s not perfect.
Ben: It’s not like microwaving a hot pocket.
Jessa: It’s pretty challenging actually. So I‘ve been doing it for 2 years now and I’m still not totally 100% happy with what I come out with. I’ve had a couple though that I’m like-okay that’s good, I did really good on that one. It’s definitely an art.
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Ben: The article that we’re talking about, we’ll put a link to that ‘cause that has a nice little sour recipe on it too for those who don’t have…
Brock: Photographic memory?
Ben: Yeah, photographic memory for everything that Jessa just said. But…
Jessa: I can send Ben a link you can put in.
Ben: And maybe Jessa can send one lucky listener a loaf of sour – maybe we should send this weeks’ top iTunes review a loaf of sour dough.
Jessa: Sour dough ages pretty quickly. You gotta eat it within a week.
Ben: Well, thank you, babe, go back to making me my chocolate coconut bars.
Jessa: Okay, I will.
Ben: Yeah, thank you so much!
Brock: See you soon, Jessa!
Ben: And, butter! Must have butter! Lots and lots of butter!
Brock: Yeah, I can’t help but giggle every time somebody says Dutch oven.
Special Announcements:
Brock: So you have figured out a way to use torrents for the power of good.
Ben: That’s right! Bit torrents…
Brock: Not just copyright infringement.
Ben: You don’t just have to download free movies off of torrents now. I just put out the official bit torrents download for the Beyond Training book and what that means is that you can go download a bunch of free crap that goes along with my book. I’ve got…
Brock: Free crap.
Ben: Five human performance hacks that you must do every morning which is a special hidden chapter. And one of them is not going to the bathroom, by the way. Although that is a hack that I recommend you do every morning. That is kind of a hack. You can actually train your body when to go to the bathroom. And when you train it to go like when you get up, it makes the rest of your day so much better ‘cause you just don’t have to worry about going again for the rest of the day.
Brock: I just have to ring a bell and that makes me go to the bathroom.
Ben: Yeah! That or a catheter would also work well.
Brock: Pavlov’s power.
Ben: A poop bag. I’ve got a hidden killer gut resources and the hidden killer in your gut video in which I go on to how to identify and hunt down and destroy hidden killer in your gut. I’ve got a sample chapter, free full chapter, about 30-minute audio book chapter. I’ve got another chapter in there about recovery. We’ve got the official audio download where I walk you through making the ultimate human performance smoothie. We’ve got a 12-week over training recovery plan in there. So that’s all over on the bit torrent. You can get it at bengreenfieldfitness.com/torrent and that will hopefully help those of you who may have received the word from Amazon if you already pre-ordered the book that they’ve delayed it by like 20 days. So, yeah, so you can still pre-order the book now at beyondtrainingbook.com and get your 400 plus pages of hard-covered goodness but the actual ship date got moved forward. Don’t get mad, totally out of my hands. Complain to the publisher because it’s their little thing they have, I don’t even know, they’ve got these hoops they have to jump through. So there’s that beyondtrainingbook.com and then also bengreenfieldfitness.com/torrent and if you don’t know how to spell torrent then just google however you think it’s spelled. I bet you can figure it out pretty quickly.
Brock: Yeah! You’ll figure it out.
Ben: And then also for you podcast junkies, we just released a new premium podcast episode over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/premium and if you don’t know what premium is, it‘s $9.99 a year and we got like over 300 audios, videos, pdf downloads, tons of bonuses in there for those of you who want access to the premium content. What we just released in there was an actual one-on-one consultation that I did with a dude named Nate who did by the way give me permission to record it. Just…
Brock: That’s good!
Ben: …record one of my private consults and put it out there in the internet. But we talked about….
Brock: How do you get rid of this rash?
Ben: Yeah! We talked about inflammation, power, shoulder injuries, anti-aging, his STDs, no I’m just kidding. We even talked about fashion. He asked me some interesting questions about fashion and how I plan fashion and what websites I use to buy clothes. And we…
Brock: He obviously have never met you.
Ben: Yeah, obviously! So we get into all of that. So if you’re curious what a consult sounds like, if you want to pick up a little bit of extra audio tips and kinda delve into what a one-on-one is like, then go grab that. It’s at bengreenfieldfitness.com/premium or if you’re already a premium member, just grab that, it’s on your computer, it’s on your phone already. You should have instant access to it. What else? I think those are some of the main things we want to mention today. Brock, am I forgetting anything?
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Brock: No, no, I think that’s it! Other than just if any body’s coming to PrimalCon in Mexico in Tulum, we’ll see you in a few days!
Ben: That’s right! Both Brock and I are gonna be heading down to Tulum, Mexico along with Jessa, Mark Sisson, bunch of other folks in kinda like the ancestral health community to do a health retreat right down there amongst the Mayan ruins and tequila. So I’ll see you there!
Finally, a solution for healthy living that actually makes sense. Ben Greenfield and his wife Jessa have cracked the code on healthy living and reveal their entire system inside the Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle where you get instant access to 24/7 forum interaction with Ben and Jessa, a live monthly webinar, meal plans, videos, Ben’s Body Transformation Club archives and much, much more. If you or your family want to learn how to achieve the ultimate healthy lifestyle on a budget, then the Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle is for you. Get four free videos to get started and full access to the Inner Circle at bengreenfieldfitness.com/innercircle. That’s bengreenfieldfitness.com/inner circle. We’ll see you inside!
Listener Q & A:
Ben: Hey, Ben! Short leg syndrome- what are the treatments you can do for it and who should I talk to about it? Chiropractors seem to just want to put lifts in my shoes. Thanks a lot! Appreciate it.
Ben: Short leg syndrome. Do you have short leg syndrome, Brock?
Brock: Do I have it?
Ben: Have you ever had it?
Brock: No! No, I have…
Ben: Do you have a peg leg?
Brock: Yes! I have three of those, actually.
Ben: Argh! Haha! I’ve got short leg syndrome and a hook. No, sorry.
Brock: I bet that’s known as pirate syndrome.
Ben: My apologies to Ben for our complete lack of respect for his delicate situation.
Brock: Yes, we’re making it up. We’re just being asses, not true.
Ben: Leg-length discrepancies, honestly I did the – worked out of a sports medicine clinic for 4 years. So it was me, we had 2 chiropractic docs in there, group of physical therapists, 2 sports medicine docs, and we pretty much catered to the local athletes/triathletes/marathoners/cyclist community. So we had a bike fit studio, exercise phys lab, gym. That’s where I saw my personal training clients. And one big thing that we saw on there over and over again was this leg-length discrepancy issue.
Brock: Yeah, it’s incredibly normal. I think most people have one leg longer.
Ben: Yep. And we saw it a lot with folks who did chronic repetitive motion because they were the people for whom this leg-length discrepancy would really creep up and manifest itself because they’re out there running and cycling and feeling some of the back pain, some of the knee pain, some of the foot pain and some of the things that resulted even in terms of –for the folks who are really geeking out on it, they’d see uneven power distribution on the bike, that type of thing. So it was certainly an issue but we found that in 99% of the cases, it could be fixed and was not a true anatomical leg-length discrepancy.
Brock: Okay, so what was it then that you found was really causing the problem?
Ben: Okay, that’s a great question! I’m glad you asked.
Brock: Yeah!
Ben: Sacroiliac joint misalignment or locking basically chronic sacroiliac dysfunction and we don’t have to get into the entire anatomy of the SI joints and bore folks with that because as we know when you think too much it decreases your physical performance. We know people are out there biking, and running and lifting while they’re listening to this. And I think Jessa’s sour dough explanation was probably enough cranial smoking for them. So, anyways….
Brock: There is tons of information in all the other podcasts about SI joint problems. If you want, you can search for it.
Ben: That’s right. The thing is though, is that you can self-correct your sacroiliac joint pretty easily and it doesn’t necessarily require you to go visit a chiropractic doc. My apologies to all the chiropractic docs who are listening in, but you can self-adjust and in the show notes at bengreenfieldfitness.com/273, I’m gonna give you a link to a more thorough explanation and a video of what I’m about to explain to you but there are three different exercises that you can pretty easily do to reset your sacroiliac joint.
[0:30:21.7]
That’s not all that you need to do. I’ll tell you what you need to do after you reset it. But the first exercise, what you do is you just bring your leg up to your chest while you’re lying on your back on the ground. You grasp that leg with both your arms then you push outward against that resistance that you’re providing with your arms against your legs. So you push outward for about 5-10 seconds then you go the other leg, you push outward for 5-10 seconds. So you go back and forth from leg to leg while lying on your back just pressing out and then what you do is you put one leg out stretched on the ground, one bent on the ground and you just repeat that same scenario of 5-10 second presses but this time you use the ground for resistance. And you’re kinda pushing out, you’re distracting your femur towards your knee joint, and you do that for each leg. And then the third thing that you do is, still lying on your back, you take your hip and almost the happy baby yoga exercise where you’re pulling your hips up towards your – the outside of your armpits, you do that but you just do it for one side. So you pull one side up and then you pull the other side up. And what you can finish this entire scenario with, if you have a hard pillow or your foam roller, is you take it and you squeeze it between your legs as hard as you can. And if you’ve done these exercises properly, you hear this nice satisfactory clunck. Almost as good as sex but not quite, but cleaner. And that is how to adjust your side joint. I’ll put a link to an article. I’ll also put a link to a video that shows you how to self-adjust your side joint. But you could do it in about 6 minutes. Here’s the problem, This is just a band-aid because there’s a reason why your side joint is getting out of place in the first place. And it is, and again this is what we found in 99% of folks once we throw them on the treadmill and do a slow video analysis of their core and their glute and their hips, once we do some glute functional testing, weak glutes, weak butt, basically a locked SI joint and a weak butt is a really good way to dig yourself in this leg-length discrepancy hole that creates a bunch a of downstream injuries. So the weak butt, I mean this is the entire reason that I wrote the book Run With No Pain, and that one’s at runwithnopain.com is – I show you how you can get your SI joint adjusted although I wrote that book before I figured out how to self-adjust the joint. So I tell you to go to, in the book I tell you to go to chiropractic to get it adjusted, but you could adjust it yourself. I actually need to go back and edit the book to add this self-adjustment information. But once you get it adjusted, what you want to do is, not only make sure that you stretch the hip flexor on the side of the leg that is longer but you strengthen the hip extensor on the side of the leg that is shorter. And that may sound confusing but the book lays it out. There’s basically 5 different stations that you go through where you’re essentially rotating your pelvis back into place. And you do that in conjunction with the butt strenghtening program So, kick-outs, squats, reverse lunges, high knee steps ups, that type of stuff and you could pretty much get rid of the problem with the SI joint locking in the first place. So it’s a combination of correcting your sacroiliac joint or adjusting it, keeping that cemented in place and then making sure that you strengthen the correct muscles and stretch the correct muscles to address any muscle imbalances. And that’s the number one thing I would do. I guess the only other thing I would do is traction. So traction is when you’re distracting two joints apart. Really the best way I found to do that is in an inversion table. Go to Craigslist or I’ll put a link on Amazon to some of the better inversion tables out there over in the show notes. But you grab an inversion table and the way that you distract that particular hip joint when you’re on an inversion table is you hang from the table but then you gently sway from side to side and you’re gonna feel this nice satisfactory pull in each hip. So just don’t, as you heard on the podcast a few weeks ago do this in the cold temperature because all the blood drains from your feet, wind up with foot burns. But those can be corrected by simply jumping into your bed and placing your feet against your brand new infrared mattress that you have in your bed. So that thing’s a fix for everything.
[0:35:07.9]
Brock: Where do you get your $1700 you get that up and kills you or not?
Ben: That’s right! bengreenfieldfitness.com/biomat
Bill: Hey, Ben and Brock! It’s Bill from Tennessee. Hey, love the show! Got a quick question for you about dark chocolate. Ben, I know you’re a fan. But there’s a newer product out in our market, it’s called the Zen Evo Dark Chocolate. There’s three different options. One with some caffeine, one with some vitamin D, and one I think just plain. Anyways, just want to get your thoughts on that product and just on dark chocolate in general. Thanks a lot!
Ben: Hmm. I think I’m still picking the dark cacao nibs out of my teeth from my smoothie for breakfast this morning.
Brock: Hmm. Delicious! Oh, you have cacao for breakfast. How decadent!
Ben: Well, I put, I get the organic dark cacao nibs and I put them for crunch in my smoothie. So those are really good ‘cause those are just the cacao, those don’t have the sugar or anything added to them. Some people think they’re kinda bitter but I actually like them, .And they’re the really, really dense source to get all the naturally occurring antioxidants in chocolate like the flavonoids and the epicatechin, two types of flavonoids that really help to do things like increase blood flow, vasodilate arteries, just one reason why dark chocolate is good before sex. It’s been shown to decrease the risk of heart attack, strokes. I mean like, chocolate’s good stuff but the problem is that most of us hear this and we stand at the aisle at Whole Foods or the grocery store and we see all the dark chocolate and we think, ok 70%, 80% whatever I’m gonna grab this thing, gonna eat it. And you turn it around and look in the back, it’s got a ton of dairy in it. It’s got a lot of sugar in it. It’s just basically processed, a cone of white sugar and dairy and a lot of times even the chocolate itself is not from all that great of a source, meaning that you can get chocolate from like organic fair trade sources, you can get like fine French or Belgian sources of chocolate and it’s way healthier, it’s way richer in these flavonoids and antioxidants and much, much better for you. But unfortunately, not all of the dark chocolate bars in the bargain bin at the grocery stores you’re checking out or lined up against the wall of Whole Foods or whatever other grocery store you’re getting your dark chocolate from are created equal. Can you tell I associate dark chocolate with Whole Foods?
Brock: Apparently! Yeah!
Ben: Yeah! I don’t know. I guess it’s just because it seems there’s always a giant oversized wall the size of a large Hummer of dark chocolate at Whole Foods.
Brock: It’s true, though. It’s actually really hard to find dark chocolate especially in the regular stores in America. I tried to buy you some after Ironman Kona. You were like, “I want some dark chocolate”. So I ran over to the nearest grocery store and I was just surrounded with M & Ms and Hershey’s and all kinds of stuff that really isn’t chocolate at all.
Ben: That’s okay. I drowned my sorrows in the margarita. So, this Zen Evo stuff, I took a look at the ingredients of Zen Evo and what they’re using. So first of all, they are indeed using a French source of chocolate. They’ve got basically fair trade non-GMO ingredients and it’s really interesting because for example in their vitamin D chocolate, they put 1,000 international units of vitamin D3 and as you may know if you’re a frequent podcast listener I’m a fan of vitamin D for boosting immunity and helping regulate blood pressure and even as you’ll find out later in this podcast for even increasing fertility. But 1,000 international units of vitamin D, that’s kinda nice. That’s actually in the chocolate especially if you consider the vitamin D plays a role in blood sugar regulation as well. So it’s kinda mitigating some of the potential sugar boosting effects of chocolate. Now it is dairy-free so this would be something that would be paleo friendly although I know we’ve already converted every single paleo listener we’ve converted to non-paleo anyways with Jessa’s delicious sour dough explanation.
Brock: Or they _____ [0:39:28.1] from there.
Ben: Or were just gone or banned. And then so they’ve got that and this Zen Evo Company also has this energy chocolate and that one has ginseng in it which I’m a fan of – eleuthero which is a natural adaptogen. In it’s that TianChi adaptogenic herb complex that I take, it’s got ashwagandha in it. It’s got maca root in it which incidentally is another way that you can not only increase your virility so another good reason to eat this one 30-60 minutes prior to a romp in the old bedroom.
[0:40:02.8]
Brock: A romp.
Ben: And it’s got some caffeine, about 75mg of caffeine so equivalent of about a half to a three quarter cup of coffee. So, not a huge amount of caffeine but enough to give you a little bit of a boost on top of what you’re naturally getting in the chocolate. And then they also have this Fit stuff which they put all those similar ingredients in but they’ve also got a green coffee bean extract and raspberry ketones in their Fit brand. And as I think I’ve said before – nothing beats exercise, movement, and healthy eating when it comes to fat loss but these little things can give you a little bit of a 5% boost here and there when it comes to bumping up the metabolism. So maybe work a little bit against some of the calories in the chocolate because chocolate is still very calorically dense. It’s kind of a super food in that way. It’s nutrient dense but it’s also kinda calorie dense, too. They use a high quality chocolate. The ingredients, they don’t have a lot of artificial sweeteners, not a lot of tummy-upsetting sugar alcohols. This one I’m- actually I was impressed enough with to where before we got on the podcast today, I called them up. I actually called Zen Evo and I told them – Hey, I actually took a look at your stuff, I like the looks of it. I wanna get some for myself and I also wanna get our listeners a discount.
Brock: Thanks!
Ben: So get your pens out, folks, so they’re giving us a 20% discount on Zen Evo dark chocolate at zenevochocolate.com
Brock: Wow! Thank you, Zen Evo!
Ben: So, the code is “Ben”, works with pretty much anything on their website. So use code “Ben”, you get past the issue with dairy, and you get past the issue with crappy sources of chocolate from other chocolates that you might find elsewhere, and yeah, 20% discount at zenevochocolate.com. So, you’re got that but wait, there’s more! Because I wanna tell you about another source of chocolate that again is kinda like a primal paleo-friendly, non-GMO source of chocolate, gluten-free, dairy-free, and this one’s even soy-free for those of you who want to avoid soy. That’s probably the one thing with the Zen Evo that I noticed they do have is they use a little bit of soya lecithin. It’s not a lot but it is in there. There’s another place and I’ll link to this one in the show notes as well. I don’t have a discount code for it but it’s called the Primal Dark Chocolate Company. It’s called Eating Evolved. Eating Evolved. And I’ll put a link over at bengreenfieldfitnes.com/273. But they have- all those chocolates with organic maple sugar so that form of sugar is much, much higher and more nutrient–dense, higher in antioxidants and more nutrient-dense than regular sugar. Again, like I mentioned, it’s gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free, and get this, Brock, this is the company that makes bacon truffles. Bacon – they’ve got coconut buttercups and they’ve got hot chocolate powder and baking products but that’s how I actually first discovered this company was at a health expo and I grabbed one of their bacon truffles and had a little bit and it was just fantastic! I wound up going home with a whole suitcase full of bacon truffles for everyone who I love or wanted to bribe. And…
Brock: Wow!
Ben: Yeah! So that’s good stuff, too. They’ve got other stuff but their bacon, sea salt, dark chocolate truffles definitely go try some of this stuff from the Zen Evo website. Use that fat discount code that they gave us. But, holy cow, also check out this Eating Evolved if you’re a chocolate junkie. Get the bacon truffles and I would vouch for this stuff, too because again, soy-free, dairy-free, gluten-free, different than a lot of the major chocolate bar brands you’re gonna find in a lot of grocery stores. So I’m gonna vouch for this stuff, too. So two different things and I guess the last thing- I’ll even give folks a third little perk here- I’ll give you a link to the organic cacao nibs that I actually –I’m on the subscribe and save for organic cacao nibs on Amazon and I’ll give you a link to the exact cacao nibs that I use on Amazon.
Brock: Does that mean you go through two kilograms a month?
Ben: I don’t know what a kilogram is ‘cause I’m from a regular country. I guess…
Brock: From the only country that doesn’t use metric.
Ben: I’m from the only country that doesn’t use metric. But I get through about a decent size bag a month. I use the Navita’s Natural organic raw cacao nibs. And they’re really, really good to drop in a kale smoothie. So that’s what exactly what I do is I put them in a kale smoothie. So there you go!
[0:45:02.2]
Ben: Hopefully all you chocolate junkies out there are happy ‘cause now you can have chocolate, you can have bread, you can drink a bunch of wine before you go and do cognitive tasks. This is just a very, very decadent podcast today.
Erin: Hi, Ben! This Erin from Maryland. I just have a really simple question. Ben, how did you get to be so smart? I’ve been listening to your podcast now for the past two years. And I’m just completely blown away every time I listen on how much knowledge you have on the most random of topics. You have very specific recommendations. You always have the latest and greatest research to support these recommendations. And I just really would love to know. What do you do on a daily basis to keep up with all of the knowledge that you carry? And how do you specifically prepare for podcasts? Do you get the questions ahead of time and do the research or do you just have things on hand that you read from? Any information you could offer would be great. I’m always looking to learn new things. Thanks!
Brock: Yeah, Ben! How are you so awesome?
Ben: My head exploded just now.
Brock: What makes you so great?
Ben: Yeah…You know…
Brock: Actually what listeners don’t really know is that neither Ben nor I are actually real people.
Ben: Brock, you just opened a kimono. Those are…
Brock: We’re computer-generated personalities.
Ben: A lot of questions there. How do we prepare the podcasts? I mean, let’s start here- I’ll tell you some of the things that I use to educate myself, some of the resources, some of the magazines, the subscriptions, maybe a couple of podcasts I listen to, that type of thing. But first of all, speaking of opening the kimono, as far as how Brock and I prepare for the podcasts, Brock’s kinda the mastermind behind that. So Brock will –when you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com and you leave your question on the little recorder button there or you write in to your support at bengreenfieldfitness.com with your question, Brock kinda aggregates those and he picks the ones that are relevant to stuff we haven’t talked about before, that kinda like delve into new material. He typically sends them over to me the night before we record the podcast. So we usually record on Wednesday mornings and he sends over the questions on Tuesday night. I give them a look over and make sure that there’s nothing that needs to be eliminated. For example in this podcast that we’re recording today, we were, there was one question on there that Brock had included about heart issues, and heart rate issues and it was just like a really long convoluted question and I was like – Oh, I don’t think we’re gonna have time to answer that question.
Brock: that alone deserves a show on its own.
Ben: Yes! So I take a look at ‘em. Usually it’s stuff that I’m pretty familiar with. If there’s something in there that I don’t know about like the Zen Evo chocolate company we just talked about, I’ll do a research and check them out, see if that’s something we want to talk about. And then I’ll go through, take a few notes and then we hop on and record the show. And really for me the most time-consuming part of the show is creating the show notes. Everybody here’s been talking about the show notes like the show notes for this one at bengreenfieldfitness.com/273. Any podcast episode, you just go to the number of that podcast episode. And because we put so many resources in the show notes, and I personally write the- well Brock writes the show notes and I put all the resources and the links in- that’s the most time-consuming part is putting the show notes together.
Brock: For me, it’s editing out all our swearing.
Ben: Yes! Yes, all our swearing and…
Brock: And you have no idea how many times we drop the f-bomb every show.
Ben: Fainting, swooning and me beating my kids and yes, so…
Brock: And breaking wind. Yes, so…
Ben: All of that.
Brock: Takes forever.
Ben: And that actually has happened before. I’ve actually during interviews that I’ve done. I’ve full on just farted. I’ve written at Brock something like “So at time stamp 21 minutes and 32 seconds I farted. Brock, can you edit that out?”
Brock: So of course I just make it louder. Put lots of reverb on it.
Ben: So Brock’s the audio engineer. He gets the questions. I put together the show note references and that’s how we do it. So as far as how I have knowledge on hand and how I build my body of knowledge is first of all, I studied quite a bit at the undergraduate and the graduate level in college. So I’ve taken 400 level classes in organic chemistry, biochemistry, biology. I taught the anatomy and physiology labs. I was a nerd in college. I was the guy who didn’t get laid because I was in the lab dissecting cadavers and then often I do the – I intern in the microbiology lab, I intern in the physiology department. So I was all over the place on the science label all through college.
Brock: Did you wear a shirt back in those days?
[0:50:04.3]
Ben: I definitely wore a shirt with the pen protector. So I have a good baseline. I’m totally not wanting to break you here, I’m just laying it out for you exactly kinda how I got to where I am. And then I do a huge amount of continuing education every single day so I subscribe to over 50 blogs and I digest those blogs using feed.ly on my browser so that’s f-e-e-d-dot-l-y and that’s also synced with my phone and my Kindle. So pretty much anywhere I’m at, I’m reading the latest and greatest and it’s a ton of different blogs from a lot of different sources and they’re just basically feeds. So for example, I’ve talked about the Examine website for learning about supplements which I know I talk about a lot on the podcast, like supplement herbs, what’s good, what’s not, what’s proven, what’s not. I’ll link to the Examine website for you in the show notes as well as their 800 plus page compendium on supplements and supplement research that I keep on my computer. But that’s an example of the type of blog that I subscribe to. I also subscribe for strength conditioning information to the National Journal of Strength Conditioning Research as well as the Journal of Strength Conditioning, two different publications put out by the National Strength Conditioning Association. For nutrition and health, another thing that I subscribe to are the Stone Hearth Newsletters, a free digest of the latest and greatest research in science, in medicine, in health, totally free, gets delivered to your inbox each day. That’s another really good resource for staying on the cutting-edge. I subscribe to Life Extension Magazine and I’ll link to all these references for you over in the show notes. That’s another really good- that magazine does a lot of up-selling of supplements and stuff like that but if you can get past all the ads, chock-full of really good research-based articles on health and nutrition. So Life Extension Magazine is really good. My fellow quick and dirty tips podcaster, the nutrition diva, does excellent nutrition podcast every week. And I listen to all her episodes every week because I like her unbiased approach to nutrition and to food. And so she’s got some really good stuff and has contributed to some of the information in our Superhuman Coach Network at superhumancoach.com, spoke at our event and she’s got some really good stuff, too. And speaking of which, the superhuman Coach Network is what I designed to teach people all of the stuff that I know and then certify people and we do CEUs there. We have ACUs and NSACUs and NASMCUs and that’s open to any nutritionist or coach or chiropractic doc or personal trainer or someone who really wants to go in and go through 12-month curriculum in which you get certified to basically learn a lot of the knowledge that’s up inside my head that I constantly learn and that’s on this podcast. And so we do webinars each month, we’ve got a 24/7 Q and A forum with me and that’s a really good resource as well. If you already have a university degree in nutrition or in physical education or in exercise science or something like that, I actually would say that two of the better certifications that you could get to tack on to that type of certification – number one would be the Z-Health certification. And Z-Health is a training system that teaches you how to use modern neuroscience to get better physical and health results. So you learn how to integrate your major senses specifically your visual system, your vestibular which is your balance, your spatial orientation system, and your proprioceptive system which is kinda like your brain’s 3D map of your body in space. And it teaches you how to integrate all three of those together to help your joints and your muscles and your tissues to be able to move through their full range of motion while also optimizing performance. Like in my opinion, that is one of the better certifications out there to put on top as the icing on the cake or really a lot more than that, really to turn yourself in from an average trainer into the top 1% percent of the field globally. So Z-Health is really good as a certification. I’ll put a link to that for you in the show notes. And then the other one I’d look into would be a functional medicine certification. So you can go to functionalmedicine.org to look into that. For that you have to actually hold a healthcare degree from a medical or a chiropractic or nutrition or dietetics type of program but functional medicine is really, really good because it teaches you how to have a more holistic view of the body and integrate a more systems-oriented approach to the way that you approach everything from disease to nutrition to supplements to pharmaceuticals, everything of that nature.
[0:55:26.8]
So if you really want to turn yourself into a superstar, the type of person that I personally would visit if I had something messed up with my body, I would do Z-Health and functional medicine. Those are two crucial ones in my opinion. Yeah, those are some of the resources that I would definitely launch into if you really truly did want to kinda do some of the stuff that I do and apply some of these stuff in your own life. I don’t know, did I miss anything, Brock?
Brock: I think the only thing that I would add on there is I really like to sit down with the guy that’s begging for change outside the liquor store. He’s got some really good ideas about everything.
Ben: Just life in general. In terms of getting wisdom that’s top-notch, cutting-edge, very almost sicratic, in terms of its wisdom and its ability to really help you peer deep into your soul, the guy sitting outside the liquor store, absolutely!
Michelle: Hi, Ben! It’s Michelle. Love the podcasts, been listening since 2010. You helped me change the way I think about food and what it does for me. Thank you so much! I hope you can help me with this. I have an acoustic neuroma tumor in the brain. I had surgery in 2001 to de-bulk the tumor at age 29. I lost all hearing in my right ear and it destroyed my vestibular nerve as well on the right side. No issues of side effect since the surgery minus the hearing loss and imbalances. For my imbalances, I know that my left side has been compensating for the right but I wanted to know if my imbalances that I have today are truly from the tumor or just regular muscle imbalances that I can improve with one-leg exercises. My imbalances are not horrible. I have to really concentrate when doing one-leg exercises on my right leg and often have to grab on to something or focus more. Thanks for taking my question and keep on podcasting!
Ben: Yeah, I mean the vestibular nerve which I think I just mentioned when I was talking about Z-Health, that’s – it’s pretty darn important. It’s one of two branches of what’s called your vestibulocochlear nerve. So the vestibular nerve is the part of that nerve that transmits the sensory information that all those little hair cells inside your ear get and transmits that information to your brain. So basically your ears are one of the primary regions –those little semicircular canals in your ear, one of the primary regions via which your body collects information about where your head’s at in space and if your body doesn’t know where your head is at in space, you tend to lose balance really quickly. So you could absolutely have damaged or even a loss of the ability to properly be tuned in to your vestibular nerve but be able to improve that. So for example, I have an entire article on how to increase balance in which I talk about optimizing your vestibular, your somatosensory and your proprioceptive sensing systems and one of the things that I get into when it comes to improving vestibular balance in particular is taking care of your ears while also engaging in activities that help you to or help your head and those little semicircular canals in your ears in particular to better be trained to recognize where you’re at in space. So some of the recommendations that I give in that particular article are number one- to avoid loud music, loud sounds and this one kinda tends to fly under the radar, pun intended, but cell phone radiation like holding your cell phone up to your ear. And we have a rule in the Greenfield house that your phone is never by your ear, period. You’re either using the headset and it’s preferably an air tube headset so there’s a company called Envi Airtubes. That’s e-n-v-i- air tubes that makes really good air tubes that transmit sounds to your ears in a different manner than the typical wire headset that you might get with the white ear buds that you might get with an Apple phone, for example. So that would be number one would be really careful holding your cell phone up to your ear because that can actually do some damage when it comes to that vestibular nerve. So another thing that you wanna be careful with in addition to loud sounds, loud music, just not playing sound too loudly in your ears is you can -basically go unshod as much as possible.
[1:00:14.3]
And when I say unshod, that’s my fancy scientific way of saying not to wear big supported built up shoes. Unshod is barefoot. So what that does is…
Brock: That’s the biblical way of saying it.
Ben: Yes, go unshod.
Brock: And you must unshod.
Ben: Go unshod as Jesus.
Brock: And he lay prostrate and unshod in altar.
Ben: Yeah! That’s right! Not to be confused with prostate…
Brock: Yes!
Ben: …which I actually used to do all the time when I was singing those songs at church. I would say prostate. My mother would elbow me and tell me it was actually prostrate. Anyways…
Brock: Embarrassing!
Ben: So when you go barefoot, it forces your vestibular system to micro adjust to a little linear in your rotational movements. So, go on minimalist and preferably even taking your feet off so the little proprioceptors on the bottom of your feet which is one of the areas in your body that’s richest in proprioceptors that can help a lot with your vestibular system as well. Doing a lot of single leg stuff, a lot of single leg balancing, getting one of these half foam rollers, keeping that in the house, standing on that with one leg while you’re working on your computer or brushing your teeth or doing things of that nature, that can really help. In the initial stages, you probably don’t need one of those. You probably can just stand with one leg or with one foot just on the ground and practice doing that. You’d be surprised that- how much you actually stand on both feet rather than one foot. And by just going throughout the day trying to stand on one foot, I’ll even do it sometimes during this podcast, I’m actually standing on my left leg right now.
Brock: I’m standing on my right. That’s my workout.
Ben: Look at me go. So, doing a lot of single stand stuff and then also look at the world around you. Use it as your freaking playground like sidewalk posts, rails on fences, the curb, just get used to balancing and challenging your body everywhere you go so that you keep that vestibular nerve really tuned in and constantly challenged. So these are ways that you can specifically help to train the –your ability to detect gravity, detect front-to-back, side-to-side movements, allow these little semicircular canals and the fluid that fills that semicircular canal to be able to detect movement. That’s the way that you can train a lot of these stuff. We didn’t really dig in to training your visual balance, training your proprioceptors, that type of thing, but that’s certainly important. So I would go read that article. The other thing that I would definitely do.- I mentioned Z-health, they don’t just certify trainers but they also have some really good products in there for the general population, some books, some resources stuff like that. So again I’ll put the link in the show notes to some of the Z-Health stuff but I would definitely visit that and grab one of their training programs or use their search engine to find one of their practitioners to go work with because that again is an excellent system especially for your nervous system and I’ve- if you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com and you do a search for Z-Health, I’ve also interviewed their lead trainer Eric Cobb on exactly what Z-Health is and how it works. So if you just want 45 minutes of immersion into Z-Health and what it is, check that out, too.
Brock: If you Canadians out there are confused, it’s called Zed Health here.
Ben: Yes! Zed Health. Which I always was confused by it for the longest period of time when I heard people from New Zealand and Australia and Canada using the word Zed ‘cause I just thought of it like the name of a hick and then I realized they were actually using that to say the letter Z. So, and not my cousin Zed who plays the banjo on his porch down in the back woods of….
Brock: I think your cousin Zed might be in my favorite band called Zed Zed Talk.
Ben: That, too!
Mike & Laura: Hi, guys! This is Mike and Laura from Dallas. And we’ve decided we want to try and have a baby. But he’s already training for races and we want to know if some training techniques specifically long rides on the bike and ice packs will hurt his “swimmers”. And I also like to know what kind of foods or supplements guys can eat to increase fertility. Or any other advice and tips you have for people who want to conceive while still training. Thanks for the podcast! We love it!
Brock: Do we need to point out how cute that was or do you think that people know?
Ben: That was very – they’re not gonna have any trouble conceiving, I can tell. They’re just fine.
Brock: They work together as a unit. Nice work, Mike and Laura!
Ben: Nice work, Mike and Laura! So you wanna conceive. First of all, let me tell you about the best two resources that you could ever get if you’re trying to conceive or if you wanna have a baby that’s not messed up for life.
[1:05:09.1]
Not that that would ever happen to Mike and Laura ‘cause they sound like perfect people. But I would definitely get the two resources I’m gonna put in the show notes for you- Dave Asprey’s Better Baby Book and Chris Kresser’s Healthy Baby Code. I’ve gone through both those programs. I’ve looked at them, they’re definitely good. So that would be number one would be to grab those. Those are gonna help you a lot. So as far as the actual fertility part of this goes, I’ll delve into some stuff that both guys and girls can do because there’s a lot of little things that you can do that go way above and beyond fertility drugs and artificial hormones…
Brock: And lube?
Ben: And lube.
Brock: And sex dolls.
Ben: Yes! (laughs)
Brock: Only we know that wouldn’t help at all.
Ben: Now we know the way they do it in Canada. Yeah, I don’t think sex dolls are gonna help out fertility.
Brock: Yes, that’s the offset. Never mind, don’t listen to me.
Ben: Poor nutrition usually plays a huge role here so does exposure to toxins. So if your diet, do some of your supplement nutrient intake protocols. So let’s just tackle each of those one by one. So first of all as far as nutrition goes, one of the best things that you can do is to optimize your fertility through nutrition. Before you even look into herbs, supplements, anything like that, some of the biggest things you can do come from a fertility standpoint. So for both men and women one of the biggest thing that’s gonna contribute to infertility is lack of essential fats and kinda secondary to that, low intake of whole amino acids in the diet. So to optimize fertility, I would increase healthy fat intake. I’m probably preaching to the choir a little bit here because I know a lot of our listeners are aware of this but coconuts, coconut oil, olives, olive oil, grass-fed butter, grass-fed meat, wild-caught fish, pasteur-raised eggs, avocado, raw seeds, raw nuts, that should be the crux of your diet. I would also be really, really careful with processed dairy so if you eat dairy get raw organic dairy and that would include even the sources of your butter, the sources of your cream, things along those lines and the fats are a big thing and then as far as protein goes, you wanna shoot for just go hop on a scale, find out what you weigh, you wanna get about 0.7-0.8 grams of protein per pound of body weight if you’re really active person. If you’re not that active, you can get away with as little as 0.5 grams of protein per pound of body weight but those are two things that I would do. Now you don’t want to overdo the protein. The reason for that is because just as with sugars and starches and processed foods and grains, insulin levels can get out of control or can be pretty significantly elevated even with consumption of protein. So it’s just not carbohydrates but it’s also proteins. And when you jack up insulin levels that especially in women can really do a number on your potential for fertility. It’s one of the contributing factors for polycystic ovarian syndrome or PCOS, it’s also a contributing factor to infertility. So I’d be careful with spiking your insulin levels and base most of your diet around like a 50-60% healthy fat, moderate amounts of protein and just you know enough carbs anywhere from 10% carbs on the average day to 30% carbs on an active day but being really careful with insulin especially. So that’s what I’ll do from a nutrition standpoint. From a lifestyle standpoint, sleep is gonna be pretty critical. What studies have shown is that in women when you have low melatonin levels and low serotonin levels you have a shorter luteal phase and your luteal phase is your time between ovulation and menstruation. So when you have a shorter luteal phase you’ve got a lower chance of conceiving. So lack of sleep is going to really do a number on fertility, I would make sure that you optimize sleep, get a $1700 amethyst and tourmaline crystal and choose Biomat and sleep on infrared. And you know, I’m kinda saying this tongue-in-cheek but I really am serious. The thing helps you sleep. So bengreenfieldfitness.com/biomat, grab one of those. Be really careful too when you’re looking at things from a lifestyle standpoint. For men, you want to limit your exposure to any hormone mimickers, any phytoestrogens, any of the type of chemicals that you’re gonna get in personal care products and household cleaning chemicals. So they found that men who take a shower with the average bottle of shampoo and conditioner 3 hrs later, they’ve already got a lot of those parabens and chemicals circulating in their urine and that can really inhibit fertility.
[1:10:15.2]
So I would use only natural household cleaning chemicals and natural personal care products. I have seen….
Brock: No Axe body spray?
Ben: Well, Axe body spray is great for getting laid as we all know by multiple cheerleaders or women at the beach but it may not be a lot hot for fertility. So yeah, Axe body spray use it sparingly or in strategic situations such as when you’re out at a club and you wanna get laid by 8-12 women. Aside from that though, I would be really careful with most of the personal care products that are out there so just go all natural. So like I use olive oil, I use Dr. Bronner's soap, I use some coconut oil on my face or olive oil on my face sometimes a little bit of emu oil, I use an essential oil base fragrance, I’m totally blanking on the name of it but I have it listed over on the Ben Recommends page at bengreenfieldfitness.com/ben-recommends. I list all my personal care products that I use over there and I pretty much don’t put chemicals on my body period. That’s really important for fertility too. And then the last thing is just limit the amount of stress in your life. So stress is gonna basically send a message to your body anytime your hypercortisolic that is really not in a situation where it should be producing offspring because we’re not evolutionarily wired to bring offspring into a world that is extremely difficult and harsh so when you have amped up levels of stress that’s really good way to send that message to your body. So I’d be careful with that as well and really really lower the amount of stress in your life and you know that’s something I’ve written a lot of articles on over at Ben Greenfield Fitness as well. So control stress and that’s another biggie. Now we’re gonna jump into…. I don’t know why but this is, seems to be the most popular thing for people, what supplements do I take to improve fertility? So I have definitely got a fertility stack for you that will help you out quite a bit. Number 1 thing you could be doing would be high high amounts of a good triglycerides base fish oil or a cod liver oil. I’m talking 6-8 grams per day for both men and women to increase fertility. The high omega 3 fatty acid content is gonna help produce inflammation, help to boost proper hormone production, it’s also going to give you a lot of those essential fatty acids that you need. So I recommend getting your hands on something like super essentials fish oil, that’s what I take. One capsule of that is 1 gram and I’d be going 6-8 grams of that per day. It’s got fish liver oil in it, it’s got vitamin E in it, it’s even got some natural skin protectant astaxanthin in it so it’s got a little bit of anti-aging effect so you don’t look like you’re 80 years old when you actually do have your baby. So you don’t think you’re grandparent so there you go, super essentials. Vitamin D, I mentioned that for fertility and it definitely it’s an important one, recent studies have linked inadequate vitamin D blood levels with infertility and with miscarriage. So I recommend about 2000 IU of vitamin D a day. You can get that from just like an under the tongue spray or a liquid.
Brock: or ZenEvo chocolate…
Ben: Or ZenEvo chocolate, that’s right. Another thing would be vitamin C which is also really good for fertility. You wanna go with about 2000 ml a day but you don’t wanna use the crappy synthetic stuff they’ve been using in this studies that show that vitamin C is bad for you or whatever. You wanna use the whole foods vitamin C. Number 1 recommendation I can give you is the stuff made by American Nutriceuticals that’s a fantastic really good absorbable form of vitamin C. So I would be on that as well as the vitamin D and a good fish oil. Another nutrient that you wanna get in to your body is folate. Not folic acid but folate. Big difference between the two and for folate you wanna shoot for somewhere in the range of 2000 up to 5000 micrograms per day. So folate helps with cell division, it helps promote ovulation in women, it can help with sperm formation in men. So that’s another big one that I would definitely include would be a folate. Now, then we get to some herbs, there are variety of herbs that can be really really effective for improving fertility. Most of them act by either introducing hormone balancing properties or introducing fertility supporting nutrients into your body.
[1:15:04.8]
Like if you look at like chaste tree berry which is also known as vitex. You find that in a lot of testosterone boosting supplements for men but that helps with your pituitary gland. In women it helps to lengthen that luteal phase, it helps to lower prolactin and increase progesterone and that can increase fertility in itself and it can have some fertility enhancing properties in men as well. There’s another herb called red clover that balances hormones and can help to restore fertility. Another one is nettle leaf, that’s another one you’ll find a lot of times in testosterone enhancing supplement for men as well. Red raspberry leaf is also well known fertility herb and that one also good for, when you are pregnant. It’s got a lot of really good tonics in it particularly for fertility and for pregnancy. Dandelion is another good one, it’s also great for cleansing your body and for detoxing your liver.
Brock: It’s good in a salad too.
Ben: It’s good in a salad. Bad in your backyard, the goodness salad. And then alfalfa is also another one, I know I’m listing off a lot of stuff here but I’ll put links to all the stuff in the show notes. Now most of the stuff, most of the herbs that I just mentioned and a lot of the nutrients that I just mentioned, there’s a company out there that makes what they call fertility blend. They make a fertility blend for men and a fertility blend for women. I like most of the ingredients in this, the only thing I don’t like is the use of an ascorbic acid for the vitamin C rather than a whole food source or more natural form of vitamin C but other than that if you can get pass that they’ve got a pretty good range of ingredients in this stuff so it’s called fertility blend for men and the one for women is called fertility blend for women and I’ll put a link to those in the show notes for you. So those are a good way to kinda get a shock on a lot of the nutrients that I just described. Now for women, sometimes progesterone can be an issue especially if you’re a woman who has a short cycle or a short second phase of your cycle and in that it can help to use a progesterone cream but you wanna be careful because that is hormone replacement. Anytime you’re doing hormone replacement without testing, it can be kinda playing with fire. So I would recommend if you’re gonna do progesterone cream then either do progesterone cream but do it with testing like work with for example a Wiley practitioner. A Wiley practitioner that’s w-i-l-e-y their really good at helping walk you through the process of bio-identical hormone replacement working with a compounding pharmacist or you could use a sublingual progesterone which tends to not create as many of the progesterone imbalances as using like a progesterone cream. So if you’re a guy I don’t necessarily recommend that you do bio-identical hormone replacement with testosterone and the fact if you’re a guy if you just used for example somebody’s herbs that I just talked about along with the vitamin D, the fish oil, the stress control, the sleep, the whole foods vitamin C a lot of times that gets your adrenals to the point where your fertility is just fine. Now if you visit pacificfit.net, pacific elite fitness, over there there’s a hormone pack. It’s adaptogenic herbs, it’s minerals and it’s fish oil. So you just go to pacificfit.net if you go over you click on supplements, there’s a hormone pack over there that would also be another option for you who would be just get that pack in it also most of the stuff that I just talked about in terms of mineral restoration, adaptogenic herbs for your adrenals and your gonads and then also the fish oil. So couple of things I’d recommend would be – if you’re not using a zinc supplement, eat shellfish. It’s not only gonna make you a horny and more likely to conceive but it also will help to improve fertility. So we did just a podcast with Jack Kruse about increasing your shellfish intake, you know, oysters on the half shell baby. So….
Brock: Yeah, you keep some frozen too.
Ben: Yeah exactly, so go to a nice shellfish feed once a week or once every couple of weeks and you can actually increase your zinc absorption when you combine that with a vitamin B complex which means you can either do surf and turf or else use a vitamin B complex like Lifeshotz at the same time or near the time that you’re doing the shellfish feed and that will really help with that as well. And then the last thing that I mentioned is selenium. If you’re a guy trying to increase fertility, that’s really important the way I get it is I buy Brazil nuts in the shell off Amazon, I keep them in the freezer so they don’t get moldy and I do 3 of those a day every single day and just keep a nutcracker on hand and crack those bad boys open and go to town on my huge serving of 3 brazil nuts.
[1:20:03.9]
So that is what I would recommend.
Brock: Speaking of nutcracking…. Laura did ask about the riding of the bike and the taking of the ice pads…
Ben: Uhmm…
Brock: I’d say like the ice pads is probably not a problem it’s more the hot tubs that can be an issue.
Ben: You know there’s…. yeah, ice pads actually is just the opposite. Ice pads there’s some evidence that that might help to increase testosterone and actually be kinda therapeutic if you can stand it. So yeah, it’s saunas like sitting on the hard slats in saunas for long periods of time. Riding a bike definitely if you’re not using one of those noseless saddles like the Adamo ISM saddles. I used to have a hard time getting it up after a day of bike riding and once I switch to the noseless Adamo ISM saddle, wasn’t an issue at all. So these new bike saddles they actually do make a big big difference in the amount of stress that’s in your perennial area and the amount of inflammation that’s produced in your crotchal region. So…
Brock: You’re in the angle of your seat too like I used to have like almost flat and I start slightly pointed it down when it was flat I’d actually lose all feeling in my tereverinial region if I sat for half hour or longer and yes it could.
Ben: Or you could just stand the whole time you’re riding your bike until your body’s you’re trying to make babies so….
Rob: Rob here from South Africa. I’m currently in rehab off the coming of my bike last year and was rehab just going pretty well. I found myself near constant muscular discomfort, I feel I supplement well and include fish oils and magnesium and tissue salts in my diet. Not have the idea of having to swallow the can and reduce it every few hours. I did some research which revealed that CLA had all things, may have some pretty potent anti-inflammatory properties. I just like to know and get your take on this and to know whether or not to switch or some to maintain with extra CLA and if so how much looking forward to your answer. Cha!
Brock: Okay, first thing I have to ask is, what are tissue salts?
Ben: Tissue salts, that’s like a homeopath. So tissue salts are…. you get it from soil and from dirt, they’re inorganic mineral substances. You can also derive them from plants so some people will grow them and harvest them from plants but tissue salt therapy is been around a long time like since the late 1700s and what they do is they take this salts, this inorganic minerals, they make them into pills and so that makes the active ingredient in the tissue salts really really dilute and they give you just tiny tiny amounts of this tissue salts each day and they’re supposedly and I’ve never used them, I’ve never really recommended them before, I don’t, they’re just not my will house but they, you know, it’s like calcium fluoride, calcium phosphate, calcium sulfurous, ferritin phosphate like they have some anti-inflammatory effect, it’s kinda like using like trace liquid minerals or sea salts that type of thing so the idea is that every human cell actually has tissue salts and supposedly if you are deficient in certain salts you might have a net inflammatory condition or some might have a little bit anti-inflammatory effect. You know what I honestly haven’t really used them much myself and haven’t really made many recommendations for folks to use them because I haven’t really seen a lot of evidence that they’re enormously effective against inflammation so you know it’s one of those things where you know, I can’t say necessarily that I would recommend them but that’s what they are. Now, that is good that Rob is avoiding non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and some of the things that can kinda do a number on your liver so as far as what I would recommend though, first of all, as far as conjugated linoleic acid is concerned that’s some pretty cool stuff. So we all hear that you’re supposed to avoid trans-fats and trans-fatty acids, what a lot of people don’t realized is that conjugated linoleic acid or CLA, that is a trans-fat but the trans bond in that fat is aligned a little bit differently than what you’d find in, say like a vegetable oil that’s been transformed to keep it hard at room temperature which is what you use to find ‘til it’s start to getting banned because of their artery clogging risks. But trans-fats and CLA’s don’t really seem to hurt people’s arteries because the trans-fat is actually oriented in terms of where the fat is where that trans…. it’s basically the structural alignment of the fat. It’s located on a different spot on the actual carbon chain of the fat than it would be located on if the fat we’re producing like a factory setting or a kinda produced into a trans-fat in an artificial way.
[1:25:03.1]
And what they’ve found is that these trans-fats actually shows some pretty good anti-inflammatory effects and the way that they work is they modulate the activity of a specific molecule that controls part of your immune response and that molecule is called nf kappa b. So when you’re immune system gets stimulated by something that would normally cause inflammation, nf kappa b goes into your cells nuclei and it activates genes there that turn on inflammatory agents specifically for example like cox-2 which is what something like ibuprofen would inhibit. So when you use something like CLA it actually tampers some of that over stimulation of inflammation or excessive inflammation by working on that nf kappa b molecule. So the interesting thing is that one of the best sources to get some of these inflammatory fighting conjugated linoleic acid derivatives or fatty acids or trans-fats is from dairy products so like cheese, milk, yogurt that type of thing and the interesting thing is that when you look at dairy if you look at a grain-fed vs. a grass-fed cow the grass-fed cow produces more of the type of conjugated linoleic acid, that actually limits inflammation. So if you get dairy from a grass-fed source you can actually get enough CLA in your diet where you don’t have to go out and take a CLA supplement per se to you know, like pop a pill for example. So if you’re including dairy, if you’re eating grass-fed dairy, if we’ve already converted you from the paleo diet to eat bread and eat chocolate, we might as well throw dairy in there too. So probably bad thing that I’m speaking at paleo effects next month ha.
Brock: Yeah and primalcon.
Ben: Yeah, I think the primal diet is technically okay with dairy.
Brock: Oh yeah it’s true, it’s not strict paleo.
Ben: Yeah, they’re… primal diet allows you to drink dairy and horse blood but the paleo diet is a little bit more restricting. And Jessa by the way is doing a cooking class at Paleo Effects.
Brock: Oh cool.
Ben: I’m gonna keep my fingers crossed, she’s not in the bread demo, I don’t think that would go over too well but the, yeah…. Anyways though, so that’s the deal with conjugated linoleic acid for it’s anti-inflammatory effect, I would say yeah use it but best way to do that would be just to get some grass-fed dairy in your diet. Now few of the other things that I would recommend to you, number 1 would be high dose curcumin. I’m a huge fan of that for fighting inflammation. I was actually at a juice bar yesterday and had a turmeric, ginger, lemon, (what else was in there) carrot. Turmeric, ginger, lemon, carrot juice. Turmeric and ginger are two really really good anti-inflammatories, I have heard that ultra runners got Jericho run with like a big chunk of ginger root in his pocket and just pop that if he’s sprain his ankle or whatever in the same way that you might pop advil or ibuprofen because ginger has such good anti-inflammatory effects but I use a supplement called phenocane for an anti-inflammatory and I also will take that when I wake up in the morning if I have not slept at least 8 hrs the night before because it helps to shutdown brain inflammation and mitigate some of the effects of not enough sleep. It also acts very very similarly on an anti-inflammatory level when you’re travelling, when you have jet-lag or you’ve got a lot of inflammation from flying on an airplane. The other thing that I’ll use for injuries and I’ve been popping 12 of these a day since I came back from the University of Connecticut because you know, I have 3 different muscle biopsies where they jab a needle into your muscle and suck out 250 ml….
Brock: They jabbed you in the butt?
Ben: Yup, they sucked a bunch of fat out of your butt with a fat biopsy and I was covered with, I looked like a heroin addict, I’d needles up and….
Brock: You had liposuction, didn’t you? That’s where you were….
Ben: Yeah, it was actually liposuction, I mean you know, and I’ve got photos around the Ben Greenfield facebook page over at facebook.com/BGfitness. I’ve put a bunch of photos up of all these biopsies and fat needles and so I was covered with wounds and I was sore from running 3 hrs on a treadmill so for a full week I’m on 6 days out from that but popping on Capraflex everyday, 12 of those and that’s really really good. That’s a mix of ginger and cherry juice extract then glucosamine chondroitin from type 2 chicken or type 2 collagen from chicken so a lot of really good stuff on that and there’s even, I mentioned the hormone pack over at Pacific Elite Fitness which is the fish oil with the minerals and the adaptogenic herbs.
[1:30:05.2]
The other thing over there is the injury pack and that’s basically a bottle of phenocane and a bottle of Capraflex so that’s another thing to look into for fighting inflammation from coming off of a bike crash. So those some of the things that I’d recommend, tissue salts I can’t vouch for but grass-fed dairy and the conjugated linoleic acid you can get from that as well as like a high dose curcumin and something like Capraflex absolutely that’s the way that I’d go so. Best of luck Rob and I hope you’ll get healthy and of course sleeping on a biomat would not be a bad idea and again you know said partially in jest but also there are some really really cool anti-inflammatory effects from the infrared therapy they get off of that like a lot of people nowadays are doing like infrared saunas for reducing inflammation, for improving recovery, for even generating growth hormone and this is kinda like sleeping on an infrared sauna so here we go.
Brock: I think Dr. Kruse has like infrared lights in his bathtub.
Ben: Yeah! That’s what I hear. So haven’t spend much time with Dr. Kruse in his bathtub, that’s what I hear so here you go.
Brock: Okay lets, we gotta wrap this up this is a long one. Holy smokes.
Ben: It’s because of Jessa’s 10 min sour dough explanation.
Brock: Yeah, it’s worth it.
Ben: Let’s blame her. Uhmm, what do you think, yeah, let’s give some swag away and maybe a loaf of sour dough. So, who’s our lucky winner of the Ben Greenfield fitness swag this week Brock?
Brock: Uhm, I don’t think I can pronounce this…. fflugvssg1.
Ben: Yeah, we’ll roll with that.
Brock: Sure. And this is the iTunes review that came in and it’s a five star review for those of you who don’t know what the heck we’re talking about. We grab an iTunes review every week from iTunes and giveaway some stuff to this person and we read their review too which I will attempt to do even though my brain is shutting down. Uhm, title is – Canadian-U.S. Cooperation in Health and Fitness.
Ben: Hmm, sort of patriotic….
Brock: Uhmm, of all the health/fitness podcast collaborations between a U.S. host and a Canadian co-host (and there are several, believe it or not).
Ben: I was gotta say that narrows it down to one.
Brock: Yeah I want to know, I want this list full, this is a good one (he sent it to us). This is my favorite. Sure, Ben’s West Coast accent is tooooatally raad especially when he says “shuhgurrrrr”, and Brock knows what he is talking abooot. Yes, they occasionally mention the French Canadian delicacy called poutine. More than that, they provide top notch information about healthy living, daily exercise, training for an athletic event or sport, what supplements to try and which to avoid and so much more. I’ve learned so much from listening over the past several years. Thanks for giving me another reason to be a proud Canadian-American. I think it was a good one.
Ben: Hmm, so first of all if you heard that review and it was your review, write to [email protected] and we will send you some sweet swag from bengreenfieldfitness.com/gear…
Brock: Send this …..
Ben: And particular… that’s right, maybe I should use my totally red West Coast accent for the rest of this thing. What do you think? So we will send you, I don’t even dude, I don’t, is that a valley girl accent?
Brock: C’mon Ben, what could you do… I can’t do it.
Ben: (laughs) That was like Scottish. Anyways, I’ll just talk like I usually talk or maybe slow it down a little bit. Uhm, bengreenfieldfitness.com/gear sweet tech t-shirt, bpa-free water bottle, a killer tech beanie that I’ve been running around in the winter here in Spokane, awesome stuff, we’ll send that to you if you’re listening and that wasn’t your review then go buy that gear pack anyways because they’re already dying that you spend on that gear pack because to support this podcast. So head over to bengreenfieldfitness.com/gear and you can also head over to iTunes, leave us a review or ranking so that people can better discover this podcast in iTunes. You can change someone’s life, make them more fertile, teach them how to eat bread, show them what chocolate is good for you and help them to avoid “shuhgurrr” Shuhgurr, shuhgurr.
Brock: Shuhgurrr.
Ben: Shuhgurrr, like the man and black guy…. Shuhgurr, shuhgurr. I want shuhgurr. Water and shuhgurrr…. Shuhgurrr.
Feb 26, 2014 Podcast: Do-It-Yourself Fix For Leg Length Discrepancies, Which Chocolate Is Good For You, Best Ways To Learn More About Health Exercise and Nutrition, How To Increase Balance, How To Naturally Increase Fertility, and The Best Supplements for Inflammation.
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+.
- Ben mentions his new Biomat from BenGreenfieldFitness.com/biomat.
- Another VERY good reason NOT to check your email right before that big workout or race.
- I KNEW that second glass of wine in the evening would come to good use…
- How you can your bread & eat it too (my wife does this 1x/week).
- In the bread news flash, Ben mentions “Hard Red Wheat” from the Palouse and this sourdough starter.
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Special Announcements:
We mention a new premium episode – a 1 hour audio recording in which Ben Greenfield helps Nate (who gave permission for Ben to record and release this episode) with inflammation, power, shoulder injuries, anti-aging, fashion and more!
Ben’s new book has been released. Pre-order it now and get entered into a raffle for over $5000 in swag! Just visit BeyondTrainingBook.com – and be sure to spread the word, contribute to the cause and change the way people exercise forever at Rally.org/BeyondTraining.
Want some free hidden chapters, audio clips and videos from Beyond Training? Check out the Beyond Training book torrent at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/torrent!
Grab this Official Ben Greenfield Fitness Gear package that comes with a tech shirt, a beanie and a water bottle.
And of course, this week’s top iTunes review – gets some BG Fitness swag straight from Ben – leave your review for a chance to win some!
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Listener Q&A:
As compiled, deciphered, edited and sometimes read by Brock Skywalker Armstrong, the Podcast “Sidekick”.
Do-It-Yourself Fix For Leg Length Discrepancies
Ben asks: He has Short Leg Syndrome and is wondering who to see and what the treatments are for it. His chiropractor just wants to give him lifts.
In my response I recommend:
–This article on SI joint correction exercises
-This video on how to self adjust your SI joint
–Run With No Pain
–An inversion table
Which Chocolate Is Good For You?
Bill asks: There is a new Dark Chocolate product out called Zen Evo Dark Chocolate. There are some different options: one with caffeine, one with Vitamin D and one plain. What are your thoughts on this product and dark chocolate in general… he knows that you are a fan!
In my response I recommend:
-Use code BEN for 20% discount at Zen Evo Dark Chocolate.
–Evolved Eating chocolates and bacon truffles – Click here to begin shopping for your favorite Eating Evolved chocolate now and use 10% discount code BENGREENFIELD10.
–Organic Cacao Nibs
Best Ways To Learn More About Health, Exercise and Nutrition
Erin asks: She has been listening to the show for 2 years and is always blown away. What do you do on a daily basis to keep up to date with the knowledge to have specific recommendations and the latest studies. How do you prepare for the podcast? Do you get the questions ahead of time and do research or do you just have things on hand to reference? Can you give and specific recommendations for someone who wants to be… more like you?
In my response I recommend:
–Stone Hearth Newsletters
–Life Extension Magazine
-QuickAndDirtyTips.com Nutrition Diva
–NSCA Journals
–Z-Health
–Functional Medicine Certification
–Examine website and book
–Superhuman Coach Network
How To Increase Balance
Michelle asks: She had an acoustic neuroma tumour in her brain. She had surgery in 2001 to debulk the tumour and she lost all hearing and her vestibular nerve on her right side. She knows that her left side compensates for her right side but are the imbalances she has today from the surgery or just regular imbalances? Can she improve them with one legged exercises? She has trouble with one legged balances and has to really focus or grab on to something. Is there anything she can do to improve her balance?
In my response I recommend:
-My article on How To Increase Balance
–Envi airtubes
–Z-Health
How To Naturally Increase Fertility
Mike and Laura asks: They want to have a baby. He is already training for a race and she is wondering if things like riding a bike and taking ice baths will hurt his “swimmers”. He wants to know what kind of food or supplements guys can take to help maintain or enhance his fertility. Any other advice for people trying to conceive?
In my response I reccomend:
-Dave Asprey’s Better Baby Book
-Chris Kresser’s Healthy Baby Code
–Cod Liver Oil (e.g. Superessentials) – 6-8g/day
–Vitamin D – 2000IU/day
–Whole Foods Vitamin C – 2g/day
-Any of the following herbs used regularly:
–Red Raspberry Leaf
–Nettle Leaf
–Dandelion
–Alfalfa
–Red Clover
–Maca
–Vitex/Chaste Tree Berry
–Folate – 2000-5000mcg/day
-Many of the nutrients above are in Fertility Blend for Men and Fertility Blend for Women
-Consider progesterone cream WITH testing or sublingual progesterone
-Shellfish or a good zinc supplement, best when combined with a B-Vitamin complex
–Brazil nuts in the shell
Best Supplements for Inflammation
Rob asks: He is in rehab from coming off his bike last year and it is going well although he is in near constant muscular discomfort. He is avoiding NSAIDS and supplementing with Fish Oil, Magnesium and Tissue Salts. He saw some research that showed CLA had some pretty potent anti inflammatory properties. Have you seen that and do you think it is worth supplementing with?
In my response I recommend:
–Phenocane
–Capraflex
–Injury Pack
The wheatberries you recommend aren’t organic. People seem to overlook pesticides, which our food is heavily contaminated with.