Episode #271 – Full Transcript

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Podcast #271 from https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2014/02/271-are-vitamin-c-vitamin-e-bad-for-you-exercise-when-you're-sick-why-your-stomach-sticks-out-alcohol-cravings-and-more/

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Introduction:   In today’s episode of the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast: When Is It Safe To Exercise After Being Sick, Vinegar For Fat Loss, Mucus In Your Stool, How To Fix Your Colon, Why Your Stomach Sticks Out, Can A Yeast Infection Cause Alcohol Cravings, and Building Swim Endurance.

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.

Ben:  So Brock, I’m surprised  you  actually  showed  up  for  today’s podcast

I would have expected you to be off watching curling at the Winter Olympics.

Brock:  ‘Cause curling is so thrilling, it is hard to tear myself away from the feed I have to admit.

Ben:  From the feed in Sochi, you know, curling…. have you seen the curling calendars that came out on the internet?

Brock:  No

Ben:  The sexy curling calendars. They actually have ….

Brock:  Really?

Ben:  They have the women of curling and the men of curling and they’ve come out with these calendars to raise money, you know what, I don’t know what they’re raising money for…. curlers, curlers’ anonymous?

Brock:  Probably beer knowing curlers.

Ben:  Raising money for beer. So anyways, after seeing those calendars I’m personally a little bit courteous in curling.

Brock:  Oh, you are!

Ben:  Yeah! I’m surprised apparently curling can keep you relatively fit and so …..

Brock:  You know, I hate to say anything derogatory about my countrymen but not in Canada. (laughs) I think it leads to beer consumption and copious donuts.

Ben:  Well just be glad you’re not in Sochi. I don’t know if you’ve seen some of the feed that has come back from the Winter Olympics but apparently it’s not all that great of a place like there’s like completely unfinished hotel rooms and like beds like they have a pillow shortage like they’ve ran out of pillows.

Brock:  You know, I was in, I spent a lot of time in Russia in the early 90s in Minsk and that does not surprise me. I can’t imagine things change a whole heck of a lot since then and none of the stuff that I’m seeing coming out of that, out of the reports right now surprises me much. I mean it’s not the Russian way, they’re not hung up on things like pillows and having extra blankets and actually even like doors on toilets….

Ben:  Like clean drinking water. Yeah like toilet, toilet bowl lids installed upside down. It’s ….

Brock:  They’ve probably just put those on for the Olympics so they should count themselves like it is a seated all ‘cause it’s just not something that Russians really worry about and in some ways I kinda hand it to them to not be so hung up on all this like feature comfort kinda stuff that we play so much so much importance on.

Ben:  Yes, it’s very pretty nasty ‘cause I’m thinking about that like they’re taking all the other countries way outside their comfort zone which is kinda cool in a way. So if any of our listeners….

Brock:  They’re showing what bad asses they are really.

Ben:  That’s right, very pretty nasty. If any of our listeners are over at the Sochi Olympics, write us in or call the show and ….

Brock:  Yeah, send some photos.

Ben:  ….let us know how it is and for those who don’t know how to ask questions for the show, just go to bengreenfieldfitness.com and there’s like a little right side bar thingy-majig and you click on that and the magic of the internet opens up its arms to you and allows you to actually record using your own voice and the built in microphone on your computer so….

Brock:  I don’t think it’s called a thingy-majig, I think it might be a thinga madooddle technically speaking.

News Flashes:

Brock:  And this is the part of the show where Ben goes through all the latest, coolest and most in depth thinga madooddles that he’s come across on the internet.

Ben:  That’s right and speaking of the Olympics why don’t we jump right in and talk about cheating, doping and steroid use.

Brock:  I’d love it.

Ben:  This was a very interesting study that was published, it was actually published in October but kinda hit the presses earlier this week and the title of the study was A Cellular Memory Mechanism Aids Overload Hypertrophy in Muscle Long After Episodic Exposure to Anabolic Steroids.

Brock:  So basically showing the longevity of using steroids. It doesn’t just end when you stop using it.

Ben:  Yeah basically in a nutshell, in plain speak – non–geek speak what that study showed was that when you get exposed to performance enhancing drugs, your muscles actually remember it and remember it for like years.

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So what this means is for example somebody who uses steroids or hormones or illegal performance enhancing drugs like say Juan Pelota also known as Lance Armstrong, by the way, do you that he has twitter handle called Juan Pelota?

Brock:  I didn’t ….

Ben:  You know what that means in Spanish?

Brock:  Sounds kinda cool. No.

Ben:  One ball.

Brock:  Yeah!

Ben:  Yeah, you could find it, it’s like twitter.com/juanpelota. Anyways though, the idea is that you actually remember it. I’ve suspected this for a long time like you kinda like reset your body’s expectation of what it can do if you use illegal drugs and so let’s say you get banned or you stop using those drugs and then come back to the sport. Technically you’re still able to compete at a higher level than you may have been able to had you not taken the drug. So it’s really interesting, I’ll put a link to the study for people who wanna delve in to a little bit more but to me it kinda brings up the question whether or not we should ever allow people back in sport after they’ve been banned.

Brock:  Yeah, yeah it’s interesting actually with all the new talk about the body having like a set point for your weight even and the central governor theory that Tim Noakes talks about, it does make sense that your body does have these memories that it falls back on and goes to. That’s very cool!

Ben:  Once the incredible hulk always the incredible hulk.

Brock:  You can never get unmad.

Ben:  And of course the other thing that really hit the news this week that I’ve got a lot of tweets and questions about is it’s called vitamin C….

Brock:  Oh man, in twitter, everywhere people are crazy for this one.

Ben:  Vitamin C, vitamin E, antioxidants study and this was in The Journal of Physiology, the title of the study was Vitamin C and vitamin E Supplementation Hamper Cellular Adaptation to Endurance Training in Humans and so we’ve got a bunch of people writing in, asking should I avoid vitamin C, should I avoid vitamin E, are antioxidants bad because the media took this and a lot of the headlines said antioxidants ruin your endurance….

Brock:  What? The media made a blanket statement that wasn’t correct? Crazy!

Ben:  Endurance athlete shouldn’t take vitamin C or endurance athlete shouldn’t use antioxidants. So here’s the deal with this study and I tweeted out a little bit about this over at twitter.com/bengreenfield as well. If you dig in to this study, first of all let’s not even look at what they’re feeding the participants as far as the actual antioxidants that they’re using. First of all let’s look at their definition of endurance. So if you dig in to the results of the study and I’ll link to it in the show notes. What episode is this 271?

Brock:  271.

Ben:  So if you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/271 I’ll put a full download to the study pdf over there but first of all they looked at folks who were running and doing high interval training sessions running for about 4 sets of 4-6 minutes 3-4 times a week. They’re also look to people who are running 30-60 mins sub-maximally at aerobic phase and then they look at folks who were riding a bicycle for an hour or so. So when we’re talking endurance, we’re talking what frankly a lot of people at my health club who are recreational athletes and weekend warriors are doing. We’re talking about like 1/5 of the volume that a lot of like endurance athletes like marathoners and ironman triathletes are actually doing. So first of all, the level of actual endurance is all relative when we’re talking about endurance exercise and so that’s one thing is that the amount of free radicals and the need for antioxidants is not as high when you’re not doing as much ultra endurance or very high volume type of endurance that I know a lot of folks out there doing and I mean even myself. I’m a low volume guy but I’m doing more than 30-60 minutes a day on many days and a lot of times I have weekend workouts where I’m doing something that I did last weekend where I’m literally you know, hoist in sandbag and doing hill sprints and ride my bike and by the end of the day I’ve accumulated a good 2 hrs of exercise. So those are that. If you wanna delve in and look what they fed this folks, so first of all let’s talk vitamin C. So vitamin C what they gave them was  a vitamin pill of synthetic ascorbic acid and they used about 250 milligrams of ascorbic acid per pill and they gave them a total about a 1,000 mg of vitamin C per day. So when you look at ascorbic acid…. you know how they make that stuff? Like synthetic ascorbic acid?

Brock:  No, I don’t.

Ben:  So it starts off with cornstarch which is basically refined pure corn sugar or corn syrup and then they put it through about 7 different laboratory steps.

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They start off with what’s called starch hydrolysis where they breakdown the cornstarch and the simple sugar and then they hydrogenate it, they ferment it, they use what’s called acetonation process where they use a sorbose acid and then they oxidize it they hydrolyze it again with hydrochloric acid and then they re-crystallize it meaning that they purify it and mill it into a crystalline powder and finish product they can technically “legally” call vitamin C but if you compare it to what you actually get from a food, you know, what you’re gonna find ….

Brock:  from the natural source….

Ben:  …. Growing in a tree or on a plant, ascorbic acid is nothing like it and ascorbic acid and vitamin C….

Brock:  It’s nothing like anything at that point after all that.

Ben:  Yeah, they’re not even structurally identical, the two. I brought this up on the show before about the difference between like synthetic vitamin C and what you actually find in nature when it comes to vitamin C. So like when you look at the complete complex of vitamin C that you’re gonna find in a fruit or in a whole foods vitamin  C source you’ve got what are called bioflavonoids and there’s actually kinda this underground name for those bioflavonoids called vitamin P or also known as factor K. You’ve got another thing called factor J or tyrosinase which are gonna find in the full vitamin C complex that you get from say like a whole fruit or even like a ground up whole fruit or vegetable powder that would be called like a whole food vitamin C source. And then you’ve also got a different form of ascorbic acid many times ascorbic acid is bound to minerals which actually allows it to be absorbed by your body and not cause a lot of kinda like the stomach issues and some of the downstream issues that a synthetic vitamin C source can actually cause. So what I’m getting at here obviously is there’s a big difference between what they’re were shoving down these folks as gullets in the study vs. what you actually get when you use vitamin C. I would say from one of two different sources. If you’re gonna use vitamin C because it is good for you and you know, I’ll even go hunt down a natural doctor who does high dose vitamin C injections when I need my immune system to bounce back fast like if I’m coming down to a race or big travel session and I know or feel that my immune system is beat up I will go in and do a high dose vitamin C injection and there are naturopathic physicians that can do that, I mean you can do a search in your area using like a Primal Docs, you can use the functional medicine websites but you can find the person who would give you like a high dose vitamin C injection. That’s one way that you can do it.

Brock:  Where did they do those injections? Is that an inter-muscular thing?

Ben:  It’s actually an intravenous injection, an IV I think I said …..

Brock:  All right, it’s right into the vein….

Ben:  I mean IV, it’s a drip, yeah, it’s a drip into your vein. And a lot of times it’s combined with other vitamins like vitamin B12 and stuff like that. So that’s one way you can get vitamin C but let’s talk about easier ways that getting hook up to a needle. You can use a bound source of vitamin C so I actually have a brand and I’ll link to this in the show notes it’s called Vitality C and the way that Vitality C works is the common pathway for vitamin C uptake is via both a glucose pathway as well as a sodium pathway so what they do is they bind this natural form of vitamin E (it’s a whole foods, vitamin C rather, whole foods vitamin C powder) and it’s bound to ribose which I’ve talked about before, I think we’ve talked about it last week and it’s also bound to sodium and so it doesn’t breakdown in the gut and it actually uses what’s the pentose phosphate pathway or the ppp to allow to vitamin C to get absorbed into the cell. So totally different absorption pathway than synthetic ascorbic acid and they also use sulfur in that particular supplement which allows the cell to become a little bit more permeable to the intake of the vitamin C. So that’s about the best vitamin C source I found it’s the one that Dr. David Minkoff who runs the Lifeworks Wellness and Anti-aging Center down in Florida, that’s one he recommends if you don’t access to like vitamin C IV so that’s really good. The other way that you can go is like with the whole foods powder source that’s typically like blended up fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts. There’s one called Super Berry that I like that’s really good but either Super Berry or this Vitality C stuff way way better than like a synthetic ascorbic acid, so that’s number 1, that’s my first kinda beef with this study is they’re using totally synthetic corn syrup derived ascorbic acid.

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And then number 2 is they’re also using and I’ll give you the exact title from the study here because they all in the methods. They’re using 58.5 mg dl alpha tocopheryl acetate tablets for their vitamin E and I think I mentioned this on the show a few weeks ago how when you’re looking at vitamin E and if you’re gonna take like a vitamin E supplement if you look on the label and the vitamin E typical list this like alpha tocopheryl acetate  or alpha tocopheryl succinate, what they’re gonna put on there or what’s gonna be listed on there if it’s a natural form of vitamin E is the prefix is gonna a D and if it’s a synthetic form of vitamin E it’s gonna be labeled with a DL and there’s a big difference in terms of the chemical structure between D and DL as far as the actual absorption of the vitamin E vs. it just basically stick around your tissues or your digestive tract or not getting absorbed potentially causing some of the effects that cause these endurance athletes to actually have a lower fitness response or these semi-endurance athletes to have a lower fitness response compared to what they will get without the vitamin E. So they use the completely synthetic form of vitamin E as well so there’s that issue pretty simple to look for vitamin E that’s natural when it comes to that type of thing. What this comes down to is you gotta go and read the study, get to the method section and see what they were using and anytime you’re looking at a vitamin or supplement study see what’s going on. The human body is gonna excrete synthetic vitamin E about 3-4 times faster than the natural form of vitamin E so the folks probably won’t even responding to that particular antioxidant and you know, there’s definitely a difference in the liver too so basically you’re binding and transport proteins in your liver, select the natural D form of vitamin E and pretty much ignore that DL form. So there’s your chemistry lesson for the day.

Brock:  I like it! I like it a lot!

Special Announcements:

Brock:  So we’ve been adding a lot of stuff to the BG fitness phone app lately and we’ve got another premium exclusive interview, this releasing on Monday.

Ben:  That’s right! How to lose 75 lbs eating plants is coming out on the premium podcast on Monday. You actually don’t have to get the app, you can access the premium episode and there’s like over 300 extra video and audio and pdf episodes of the Ben Greenfield podcast on the premium. You should go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/premium, it’s $9.99 a year and what’s coming out on….

Brock:  What a bargain!

Ben:  ….. Monday is how to lose 75 lbs eating plants and..

Brock:  I’m intrigued.

Ben:  It comes down to a lot more than just diarrhea from a study diet of bananas and kale.

Brock:  That’s was I was afraid of. It’s just the eating, are we going back to 30 bananas a day?

Ben”     It’s an interview with an ultra runner who eats a plant-based diet so should be interesting stuff and then speaking of diarrhea, we’re gonna go to Mexico.

Brock:  Yes!

Ben:  So you can join Brock and myself and Mark Sisson, Jessa’s gonna be there, Mark Sisson’s wife will be there who I know is doing a lot of writing now for the Mark’s Daily Apple website or for their newsletter, Darryl Edwards, the fitness explorer guy is gonna be there. We’re gonna do workouts on the beach, we’re gonna to eat luxurious health foods, we’re gonna explore the Mayan ruins and you could still get in, you could still sign up even though it’s coming up literally in like 2 weeks. If you’re one of those last minute people who makes decisions like going to Mexico with a drop of a hat then head over to bengreenfieldfitness.com and check out our link to PrimalCon Vacation Tulum, Mexico 2014.

Brock:  It’s gonna be fun.

Ben:  That’s right.

Brock:  You can sit around the pool with me while everybody else does cool stuff. Drink some tequila!

Ben:  and curl.

Brock:  Soak up some sun and then do some sand curling.

Ben:  That’s right and then one other thing, my book is coming out literally they’ll ship the 540+ page hard cover manual is gonna ship in 2 weeks and we’re actually got a rally page going for the Beyond Training Book and what that means….

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Brock:  What is that? Yeah, tell us about this rally.org. I haven’t heard of it before.

Ben:  So if you’re listening in and you wanna help support what I’m trying to do which is to change the way that folks kinda view performance and exercise and to start to look at things from more of like a health and an anti-aging and longevity and standpoint that brings in everything from family, and your relationships to your time management to just like looking at exercise way and above and beyond exercise. You can help contribute to the cause and join what we’re going after which is 5,000 donors over at rally.org/beyondtraining. In a couple of weeks I’m gonna announce the charity that we will be giving the donations to. It’s likely gonna be through donorschoose.org which means that you’re gonna be able to choose which charity your funds to go to if you go over there and donate anything from $1 up to 50 bucks really whatever you want to donate. But it’s at rally.org/beyondtraining, you don’t even have to donate you just go over there and share with your friends, spread the news like have that be your donation and use social currency and tell other people about but….

Brock:  After you’ve got a lot of friends with big pockets, then awesome.

Ben:  Yeah, or friends of $1. So you can head over rally.org/beyondtraining to check that out and I’m personally kinda respond in all the comments over there and a big thanks everyone who has donated or share the love over there so far and we’re gonna, will keep that rolling for another 2 weeks if you’re listening in right now, mental note yourself rally.org/beyondtraining. Check it out and I think that’s it.

Brock:  Check it out!

Listener Q & A:

Daniel:   Hi Ben, Daniel is here. I must have found what you’re doing into that on twitter and often that you do for everyone. So this is a follow up with the tweet that I sent you. I was diagnosed with pneumonia 2 days ago, now this could be cause for food or the cold or even with training maybe. But I was really suffering and what I want to know really is what I can do to speed remarkably. I’ve got some big races, world championship qualifying in March and I just want to know what sort of nutrition I can use to have my body not lose anything. I’m trying for 3 days now, I’m on antibiotics, should I say probiotics, what supplements can I use in a diet to help my body, how long should I leave it before I race again or train again really. Be absolutely brilliant if you share the advice on this. Thank you very much.

Brock:  Yeah, this is a great question. We’ve covered, if you’re sick how to get over it quickly, what can you do to mitigate the possibility of getting sick but, I don’t think were able to talk about how do you know when you can go back to training….

Ben:  That’s right.

Brock:  …. When you’ve gotten over your cold?

Ben:  Yeah! It’s kinda of a paradox because exercise actually makes your immune system stronger so they’ve done studies where they show that exercisers get fewer colds when they run regularly or when they exercise regularly and….

Brock:  I think the key is moderate exercise.

Ben:  Yeah, it’s moderate levels of exercise so we’re talking, getting back to that vitamin C, vitamin E study. Folks who are exercising like 30 and 60 minutes a day, you get strong immune system response, you get an increase production of macrophages which are the cells that attack bacteria, you improve blood flow and the movement of lymphatic fluids, that  means your immune cells can circulate to your body more quickly to kill bacteria, to kill viruses. And the other thing that studies have shown is that consistency is key here. So like the folks who do like whatever, you know, skip working out for 3 or 4 days then workout for 3 days or 2 days or whatever, you know, go like week days on, weekends completely off you actually don’t see as high as an immune system enhancement as doing like short sessions consistently every day so that’s something that’s important as well.

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When you look at whether or not exercise can actually get you sick, there’s definitely a temporary decrease in the proper function of your immune system after a big workout like a hard exercise session like I mentioned like I threw down like a really hard exercise session last Saturday. You actually increase cortisol, you increase adrenaline, your fight and flight hormones and that not only raises your blood pressure levels and your oxidized cholesterol levels but because of a lot of things that happened from that increase, you suppress your immune system. And that’s why people get sick after they run a marathon or after they do an Ironman triathlon or after they do a really hard workout especially if they get exposed to cold germs or things like that….

Brock:  It will kick you in the butt right after it….

Ben:  Yeah, exactly. And then if you exercise while you are sick, there’s some interesting research on this too so they did a study at Ball State University and my apologies to anyone who goes to Ball State, just for the name.

Brock:  I was just gonna say why you were apologizing.

Ben:  They actually, I don’t even know which state Ball State is. Do you know which state Ball State is?

Brock:  I’m gonna guess it’s Baltimore?

Ben:  Who would name their state Ball State? Maybe my mind’s in the gutter and I’m just thinking Ball State. Anyways, they injected students with cold germs and I don’t know why you would want to volunteer to be in that study.

Brock:  Geez.

Ben:  Or where the cold germs came from.

Brock:  Maybe they were paying these people a lot.

Ben:  You sneeze into a syringe and then inject. So they injected them with cold germs and they tracked them for 10 days and each person logged their exercise session and in the group that did light aerobic activity for around 40 minutes each day, they didn’t get any sicker, they saw no significant difference in their cold symptom severity or duration. So the exercising group did not get better any faster but they also didn’t get any worse. So exercise didn’t get them more sick but they were also not doing high intensity exercise. They were doing light aerobic exercise. So what this means is while you are sick, it’s probably okay to go for like an easy bike ride in you know, non-inclement weather, in not super duper cold weather you know, that’s going to be tough on your immune system or you know, stressful. You know, easier sessions, easy swims would be okay, runs. But you also have to be careful, you’re not going out into public places spreading germs all over the place.

Brock:  Don’t go to the public pool with a big runny nose. I’ve seen it. It’s gross. And also, if it’s a flu or it’s a fever, that requires a great deal of healing by your body. One of the reasons your body naturally shuts down when you have the fever, when you have the flu, is because it needs lots of energy in order to recover and repair and so my opinion is don’t exercise at all when you’re in that type of situation just because your body needs every shred of energy that it can get so as far as working yourself back into exercise, not a lot of studies there as far as how quickly you can actually get back into exercise but you know, if you’re looking at a chest illness like a pneumonia or bronchitis, a lot of times that tends to be a little bit more potent than a head cold, takes a little bit longer to bounce back from. I would say that anything that causes you to breathe deeply could aggravate the issue that I found that a lot of times when I have like an upper respiratory tract infection or a cold and I do a high intensity interval training, a lot of times it could spread to your lungs pretty quickly and actually cause some of that deeper you know, respiratory tract or lower respiratory tract infection so I’d be kinda careful there. There’s some evidence that zinc is a pretty good immunomodulator when it comes to increasing the amounts of your natural antimicrobials.

Brock:  Immunomodulator.

Ben:  Cue 36 explosives space modulator. And it also it can upregulate your t-cells which can help you fight infection so getting a decent dose of vitamin d like 2000-4000 international units. I already talked about vitamin c in a whole foods form, that’s gonna be important. There’s some support for zinc supplementation. There’s also, in other studies, they showed that people who supplemented with zinc had higher instances of side effects so you wanna be careful with zinc. Some folks side effects are….

Brock:  Zinc?

Ben:  Deficient in it. Yeah, exactly so you wanna be careful with zinc not to overdo it on that front but vitamin d, vitamin c would be fine as far as that goes.

[0:30:03.6]

So as far as getting back into it, I don’t know, is there anything else that I would recommend. You know probably the one thing here that would be pretty important would be utilizing electrostimulation. If you have access to like a compex electrostimulator because what that allows you to do is keep the muscles activated and even increase strength of the muscle without putting any stress on in particular your cardio respiratory system at all so you’re not having to breathe deep, you don’t have to huff and puff and you literally do electrostimulator while you’re lying on the couch watching you know, replays of mad man and still get some muscle stimulation, you know, this stuff can actually improve blood flow, increase limb flow a little bit so that’s an option if you have access to electrostimulation. Another similar option you know, we’re talking about just biohacks would be the vibration like a vibration platform for example.

Brock:  Shake the mucus out.

Ben:  That also. Yeah, exactly. Shake the mucus, clean up the vibration plate afterwards and then I’ve also got an article called Can You Exercise If You’re Sick and you know, I’ve got literally hundreds and hundreds of articles, newsletters I put out every week over at, a lot of people don’t know this but over at quickanddirtytips.com. You can go over there and I’ve got just everything you’d wanna know about you know, fat loss and muscle gain and you know, men’s health, women’s health, stuff like that so I’ll link to that…

Brock:  Ben is also known as the Get Fit Guy.

Ben:  The Get Fit Guy.

Brock:  You can google that.

Ben:  And if you google image that, you’ll see that I wear red tighty tight pants and a black tank top….

Brock:  I think you have blond hair on that shot too.

Ben:  It’s kinda like red hair and lipstick so if you wanna see my avatar that looks nothing like me…

Brock:  You look fancy.

Ben:  Then check out quickanddirtytips so there you go. I hope that helps Daniel.

Brock:  Yeah, I think the only other thing that I’d throw in there is you’d really just, you’ve gotta pay attention to yourself and just trust your body and test the water if you think you’re feeling well enough then just give it a try but be ready to pull the plug, turn around and go home if it just doesn’t feel right and just test the water over the matter of a few days and eventually you’ll feel like you’re back at it and you can actually finish your workout.

Eric:   Hi Ben, hi Brock. Love the show. I wanted your take on vinegar as a fat loss supplement. Can you give me any insight? Is this myth or something that should be added in a daily dietary consumption? Thanks a lot.

Brock:  Yeah, I really just need dumped like a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar on my salad just sort of crossing my fingers, hoping that it’s helping me just to keep my fat down.

Ben:  Yeah. I’m pretty sure vinegar is a really potent fat loss supplement ‘cause it tastes so nasty, you just don’t wanna eat anything else ever for the rest of the day. No, but seriously, they’ve actually had vinegar around as a weight loss aid for a long time and they did a study relatively recently in Japan where they gave folks a high fat diet that had vinegar in it and then they studied them, I don’t remember the period of time they looked at them for but at the end of that, decrease in their body fat significantly like lowering their body fat by 10% compared to people who ate that same high fat, high calorie intake without any vinegar and the idea behind this is that vinegar has a lot of acetic acid in it and acetic acid can activate lypolysis by upregulating levels of your lipase enzymes that are gonna burn fat. It can activate some of the genes that specifically causes your body to store less fat around your waist and it may also increase metabolism specifically by increasing thermogenesis.

Brock:  Nice.

Ben:  In a similar way that like cold thermogenesis in like activation of like brown adipose tissue for taking a cold shower would increase fat loss. Acetic acid may have kind of like a similar effect and that’s actually a biohack stack that you can use is a shot of apple cider vinegar or if you’re really daring, I guess you can just use like white vinegar. We’ll get into in a second why apple cider vinegar would be a much superior choice. Anyways…

Brock:  Cause it’s tasty?

Ben:  And combine that with a cold shower. And if you really want a potent 1-2-3 potent combo shot, apple cider vinegar, some bitter melon extract, and a cold shower, and that’s a really potent fat loss stack.

Brock:  When you say  a shot, do you mean like a literal an ounce…

Ben:  Yeah, like a shot glass, yeah, like 1-2 ounces. Exactly. Clean the vodka out of it of course, from the night before.

Brock:  It might help.

Ben:  Yeah. Anyways though, as far as acetic acid goes, the only issue is that in some of the studies that they’ve done that have showed for example in mice that acetic acid has a really good effect, it was a lot of acetic acid that they used….

[0:35:13.7]

like the equivalent of using about 20 ounces of vinegar a day so that’s quite a bit in terms of the thermogenic effect however in terms of the blood sugar regulating effect, you need a lot less like around 1-2 ounces or so. So I think you’d have to do a lot of vinegar to actually increase your metabolism but as far as potentially stabilizing blood sugar, increasing insulin sensitivity, less than that and this would be something that you’d do right before you’d have a meal would be something that would help in a similar way that that bitter melon extract would help.

Brock:  Or cinnamon?

Ben:  Or cinnamon, yeah. Now apple cider vinegar is some pretty cool stuff because apple cider vinegar has some benefits that go way above and beyond regular vinegar and we actually keep a big bottle of Bragg’s apple cider vinegar and the reason we use that particular brand of apple cider vinegar is because it is gluten free, raw, unpasteurized apple cider vinegar and that’s really important. A lot of vinegars have gluten in them, a lot to really support things like yeast and fungus overgrowth but like a good, gluten free raw unpasteurized apple cider vinegar, I’ll put a link in the show notes, you can literally get Bragg’s off at Amazon you know, get a prime subscribe and save straight to your house.

Brock:  Bragg’s mixed mother makes good stuff too, they make that soy sauce version that’s gluten free. Aminos?

Ben:  Bragg’s aminos. Yeah. We don’t use that anymore. I believe we looked into it and we’re not sure it’s a non-GMO source of soy things in that so not quite sure about that one. I don’t remember. My wife and I looked into a while back there, I think it was a soy we found to be an issue with that. But their apple cider vinegar is good stuff. So apples are really high in pectin which is kind of insoluble fiber that helps you to feel full faster and be more satisfied with your meal and apple cider vinegar has pretty high levels of pectin in it so you’ve got that. It’s got amino acids, obviously the building blocks of proteins in it and one of the things that may help with when they take in apple cider vinegar is the availability of amino acids to create more growth hormone or natural growth hormone in the same way that getting enough sleep can increase growth hormone, getting adequate doses of amino acids throughout the day can help with that as well and apple cider vinegar has amino acids in it. Important for athletes or folks who are worried about anemia or who are sucking oxygen when they climb a flight the stairs or kinda getting brain fog or an energy depletion throughout the day, iron, a key component of hemoglobin and myoglobin, that’s something that you’ll gonna find in pretty decent amounts in apple cider vinegar as well specifically because apple cider vinegar actually helps your body release it’s natural iron and so it’ll increase absorption and also upregulate your natural release of iron and then also, it’s got some good digestive enzymes in it that will help break down proteins into amino acids. So some pretty cool things and you’re gonna find also with apple cider vinegar that the amino acids in it are particularly good to make more tryptophan and tryptophan is what plays a critical role in your release of serotonin which is one of your feel good neurotransmitters so that may help you avoid kinda like cravings and eating a lot as well so one of the things that vinegar has a go on for it and I’m gonna give vinegar as a fat loss supplement a thumbs up.

Brock:  Is that 3 stars up or 4?

Ben:  3 stars.

Holly:   Hi Ben and Brock. My name is Holly. I just have a quick question for you. I started a pacific elite fitness gut healing pack 5 days ago and over the past 2 days I’ve noticed mucus or jelly in my bowel motions. This has worried me a bit because my nursing knowledge tells me that this is usually indicative of inflammation and I should stop the treatment or the cleanse but I know that this gut pack is relatively gentle and I’m not sure it would cause enough inflammation about my GI tract would produce mucus if any so I just wanted to know if you guys have heard of anybody else who had experienced the same thing or if you had any ideas or information about what could be causing this. Thanks, you guys are awesome.

Brock:  I like how Holly calls them bowel motions.

Ben:  Bowel motions. That’s such a nice word.

Brock:  It’s so gentle.

Ben:  It’s like when women are glowing, not sweating.

Brock:  Exactly.

Ben:  And it’s like women don’t poop, they have bowel motions. Graceful, smooth bowel motions.

[0:40:01.9]

Brock:  Sounds funny.

Ben:  So when you detox, you get something called the herxheimer reaction and it’s basically die off. So that reaction is thought to happen when toxins from dying pathogens like dying virus, bacteria, parasites, candida, yeast, fungus, that type of thing in your body, kinda overwhelms your body’s ability to clear some of that stuff out. And that can create a situation where you get like muscle aches, sometimes you get headaches, you get skin rashes sometimes, and excess mucus production is another side effect of a die off reaction that’s pretty common especially when you’re doing like a gut detox. And that can increase the amount of mucus in your stools. That’s one thing that you may be seeing – the particular detox gut healing pack that Holly is talking about is one that I personally designed. We’ll link to it in the show notes. But it’s oil of oregano, a really potent antiviral, antibacterial that can kill off fungus and yeast in the digestive tract. It is a therapeutic grade probiotic, called CaprobioticsCapraColostrum to help heal up the lining of the gut and then it’s also got digestive enzymes in there, in particular a digestive enzyme complex that contains slippery elm which helps to coat the lining of your stomach and heal the stomach. And also it’s got CapraCleanse in there which has some natural anti bacterials and cleansing supplements in it. So you put all that stuff together and if you have a yeast or a fungus or bacterial issue in the digestive tract, you are definitely gonna get some die off. So, that’s likely what’s going on here but there are other potentials, too. So for example, you can actually get some of the fillers and some of the coatings of capsules ‘cause some of those supplements aren’t tablets, some of them are capsules. Some of those can just wind up in your poo and look like it’s mucus when in fact it’s just…

Brock:  Like the gelatin capsules.

Ben:  Yeah, it’s just you’re digesting the capsules and that’s one thing that can pretty easily happen. Parasite infections can also cause mucus in the stool. And a lot of times if you have a parasite and I went over this in the gut video that I produced at bengreenfieldfitness.com a couple of weeks ago where I talked about how to test for parasites and how to get rid of them. Sometimes there are specific herbs that are active against certain parasites or certain bacterial infections. If you have H.pylori for example, mastic gum is really good for fighting that. If you have something like Blastocystis, berberine or golden seal is really good for that. So there are sometimes things that you gotta add in if you actually have a parasite issue, that can contribute to mucus in the stool that Holly may wanna consider, kinda throwing into the mix there if it is a parasite issue. Inflammation can definitely cause mucus in the digestive tract as she alluded to, and that’s typically inflammation from all sort of colitis, Crohn’s disease or celiac disease. If you’ve cleaned up your diet, and I would hope that you are if you’re doing a detox and you’re not doing things like consuming gluten, digestive irritants, dairy if that tends to be an issue for you, white sugar can be a big issue, as  can like bread, pasta, stuff like that. If you’re cleaned up your diet from that stuff, it probably would not be contributing to mucus. If you haven’t then that may be an issue as well. And then the last thing is of course, just like switching your diet to a high fat diet and having more oil in your diet can make it look a little bit like you have mucus in your stool, a lot of times it’s just oil and fats that are being digested just because you’ve totally switched your macronutrient profile and you probably aren’t producing enough lipase yet to digest a lot of those fats and that’s where taking a digestive enzyme can certainly help. I suspect that because Holly is doing the detox gut healing pack and because I’ve noticed this in myself and I’ve also had a couple other folks report this when they do detoxes, that it’s a die off reaction and that she’s just basically cleaning out her digestive tract. So, mucus reactions in response to detoxes are pretty common.

Brock:  Okay, so everybody who is slightly grossed up by this whole conversation so far may wanna fast forward for the next little bit but I just wanna know, how would I know this, how would I recognize this in my own bowel motions?

Ben:  So it’s like stringy white mucusy-looking stuff that usually settles on top of your poo and it’s usually pretty obvious if you’re one of those people who look at their poo or if you’re competing at the Russian Olympic games and you don’t even have a hole in your toilet. You’ve  a lid and there’s a hidden camera in the bathroom so somebody else is looking at your poo, too. So, yes.

[0:45:02.7]

Brock:  You can always be like -hey, buddy, I just noticed that you may wanna take a look at this.

Josh:   Hey, Ben and Brock! This is Josh from Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. Love the podcast. I’m writing in to ask a question for somebody else, a family member. He’s 22 years old and was recently diagnosed with colon cancer, stage 3. They’ve had to remove a large majority of his colon. They found the colon cancer when they were in performing a routine appendectomy. Now he has very little of his colon left and has no appendix. And there’s been some months before too when they removed the appendix and been living without a colon. I’m curious what kind of recommendation you have from a dietary standpoint for someone that now has pretty much neither. Thanks again. Keep up the good work. Bye!

Ben:  It was not long ago that we talked about the whole idea that the appendix isn’t as vestigial as we once believed that it actually was a place where we store some good bacteria.

Ben:    Yeah, the appendix is like your memory site for the gut bacteria. So if you had your appendix removed and I’ll put a link to the podcast for you where we went into this in detail but taking probiotics if you’ve had an appendectomy or using a lot of fermented foods is extremely advisable. So we’re kinda treading in the whole medical advice here thing, I should throw in a disclaimer that – “Ben is not a doctor and the content provided on this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as medical or healthcare advise”. And as far as colon cancer goes and the actual removal of the colon, I personally don’t have a lot of experience with a diet in particular for colon removal or for post colon cancer recovery but what I can do is give you some of the advise and give our listeners some advice on how to fix the colon that is broken and how to definitely reduce your risk of colon cancer which is like the 3rd most common cancer that there is. And it’s a pretty big issue that you’d wanna pay attention to. So the reason that you wanna pay attention to this is because your colon is extremely important in doing things like fermenting fiber to turn it into a short chain fatty acids that get reabsorbed and used by your body and by your immune system. You get some vitamin production in your large intestine, too. You get some good bacteria in your large intestine. You get some mineral and water absorption there, I mean it’s not just like this storage site, your colon for poo. I mean there’s a lot of other things that go on that make that a pretty important organ. And so if you’d have to remove similar to your appendix, I definitely do think you may want to consider doing something like using like a full spectrum probiotic like I talked about. You’re probably gonna have to dial back your fiber intake a little bit because you’re not gonna have when your primary mechanism for fermenting and absorbing the byproduct of fermentation anymore. It’s one of the reasons that gorillas have huge guts, it’s because they’ve got huge large intestines and huge colons where they ferment and absorb a lot of the byproducts of fermentation of fiber in their digestive tract and so if you don’t have that going on, you probably have to add some good bacteria into the mix. Your colon helps to remove water and salt and other nutrients from indigestible food matters. So you probably have to add in minerals, you probably have to add in a good strong multivitamin complex. Those are some of the things that you’d wanna consider. When it comes to colons are, though, there’s a few things that you should know. First of all, I’m not a fan of colonoscopies at all. I think that they’re a big issue when I had Konstantin Monastyrsky on the show, the fiber menace guy, he talked about some of the risks of getting a colonoscopy but what it comes down to is that there’s not a lot of strong evidence that colonoscopies actually reduce the –or increase the ability to be able to find colon cancer. And there’s an estimated 70,000 people each year that are killed or injured by colonoscopy-related complications. And that’s higher than the number of annual deaths from colon cancer itself. So there’s not a lot of evidence that it prevents cancer, you get increase cancer risk from radiation. A lot of times you get a pretty dramatic increase in the risk of colon cancer that goes hand in hand with the increase in the number of screening colonoscopies. So it’s not really decreasing much of the cancers, anyways. Like these polyps removals or anything like that.

[0:50:01.6]

What it comes down to is that more of a preventive approach is going to help. Now if you really want to get in to some of the issues as far as like kidney damage and bowel disorders and some of the other issues that can happen from colonoscopies, then you should go and check out the link that I’ll put in the show notes over to Konstantin’s website. I’ll put them over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/271 but it’s some pretty interesting stuff and he’s literally got full on 2-hour interview or 2 hours worth of video that goes into what he calls the deadly deception about colonoscopy and whether or not it’s actually worth the risk and there’s transcripts that you could read over there, too. Now as far as a solution, there are some definite things that you could do to reduce your risk without getting a colonoscopy. So, being careful with not overdoing fiber consumption like Konstantin’s talks about in the interview that I did with him, I don’t go as far as he does, I don’t peel fruits and I don’t peel vegetables and stuff as he does. But I’m really careful with a lot of these cleansers that are really high in like psyllium husk, a lot of like high fiber supplements, that type of stuff can be an issue in terms of being hard on your colon. Restoring your colon’s ecosystem is also something that’s important and there are specific bacteria that can help with a healthy bowel. Certain probiotics and –there’s this supplement called a colorectal recovery program that actually helps to restore your colon’s ecosystem and that’s actually made by that guy Konstantin Monastyrsky and it restores your intestinal flora, it normalizes your stool, it replaces fiber synthetic laxatives, stuff like that. And what that one is it’s a whole foods form of vitamin C like I talked about earlier with a lot of the minerals that you need to kinda clear out your colon. It’s got a really high dose glutamine in it to help to heal the lining of your digestive tract. And then it’s got a really nice probiotic profile that in particular is designed to help with things like post chemo and post radiotherapy and that’s something where recovery from colon cancer just might come in handy It also helps out with stuff like yeast infection, it can help a little bit with preventing the growth of new polyps in the colon, or mitigating the risks of colon cancer and kinda restoring normal colonicology if you’ve had a colonoscopy. So it’s pretty cool stuff. I went through a 30-day protocol of that colorectal recovery program after I was on antibiotics and I completely- not to gross folks out- I pretty much got so constipated. I didn’t go to the bathroom for 5 days after these antibiotics. That’s what kinda pulled me out of the gutter and allowed me to have a very satisfactory dumb and dumber style of bowel movement.

Brock:  That bad, after 5 days, dude!      

Ben:  After 5 days, so yeah! That was after I was on a really strong dose of probiotics for a Staph issue that I got from basically working out in a dirty gym while I had open wounds from doing an off-road triathlon.

Brock:  Wait, you said probiotics. Did you mean antibiotics?

Ben:  Antibiotics. Yeah, exactly. So check out that colorectal recovery program ‘cause that’s got some really good stuff in it as far as restoring your normal colonicology. There’s a lot of common cancer triggers for colon cancer that you also wanna be careful with. You’re looking at everything from clostridium in your digestive tract to yeast and fungus overgrowth which I think we’ll talk about later on. Food additives can be an issue, pesticides, herbicides. So basically cleaning up the diet, being really careful with that. And then there’s also some mechanical triggers as well like EMF radiation from power lines and cell phones and wifi routers, a lot of those increase your risk for cellular mutation, We’ve talked about some of that stuff in podcast episodes with Jack Kruse. And what else? I guess any known environmental carcinogen, personal care products, plastic storage containers, Teflon-coated pans, even crystal glasses which can be a source of lead. You just wanna be careful with a lot of these potential triggers or potential carcinogens in your diet. But biggest recommendation for you would be to go check out that colorectal recovery program, be careful with excessive intake of fiber and then to visit that website for the fiber menace, in particular read the page called Colonoscopy, Is it Worth the Risk? Because it really isn’t known yet whether colonoscopy can actually help reduce the number of deaths from colorectal cancer and there are a lot of potential side effects.

[0:55:02.5]

Michael:   Hi, Ben! My name is Michael and I’m just calling about abdominal distention. I’ve got a fairly low body fat but for some reason my stomach sticks out. You can actually see the muscles on the stomach but it just sticks out so I’m not fat, even though I’m not fat. So, wonder if you have any training ideas or supplements or diet tweaks I can make in order to get rid of this annoying problem. Cheers! I’m enjoying the podcast every week. Cheers!

Brock:  Yeah, you see this a lot in young kids it seems. I don’t know why that is.

Ben:  You mean like the Ethiopian poster child kids?

Brock:  Well that and just like the kids running around the neighborhood like those skin and bones kind of kids have those bellies, too.

Ben:  Yeah! Sometimes those kids it’s just that the size of their organs are that much larger than the size of their developing skeletal musculoskeletal structures.

Brock:  Oh! Interesting! I hadn’t thought of that!

Ben:  Yeah! But in adults and particularly like athletic adults, body builders, you see these cross fitters sometimes who have low body fat, the tendency for the stomach to kinda stick out and typically it’s due to some kind of inflammation or an immune response that is causing gas bloating and excessive fermentation in the digestive tract. So there’s a few things that can cause this. One would be small intestine bacterial overgrowth or SIBO. That’s one big issue with gas and bloating and kinda having a stomach that sticks out too much especially after you eat a higher carbohydrate intake during a meal. SIBO is something you can test. There’s a breath test that you can get over at Direct Labs where you swallow a glucose solution and it measures the amount of gases that you produce in response to that solution. And if there’s a certain number that the rise in those gases reaches, then it’s a pretty good indication that you have bacterial –bacteria in your small intestine are kinda overproducing gas in response to metabolizing that glucose solution or lactose solution that you drink. And that’s one thing that can cause gas and bloating.  But more common than that is simply –one of two things –either an immune reaction to a food that you eat and it’s typically wheat, soy, eggs, and dairy are the biggest triggers. And in a case like that, going on a basic autoimmune-based diet is one of the best things you could do. The Paleo Autoimmune Diet is awesome for this. And I’ll link to that one in the show notes. But that’s’ a 4 to an 8 week diet where you just eliminate all of the common immune triggers. So that would be another thing to look into would be elimination of a lot of these common triggers. Now the other thing that really tends to cause this issue, that I would say is the most common thing I see, is yeast or fungus overgrowth in the digestive tract. So if you look at candida albicans, that’s a yeast that usually lives relatively harmlessly in pretty small numbers in your digestive system. And it’s controlled by good bacteria in your body like probiotics from eating fermented foods or from taking a probiotic and also by your immune system. But if the beneficial bacterial get killed off by antibiotics or if your immune system becomes weak due to illness or stress or excessive intake of some of those immune triggers that I just talked about, or you’ve been on an antibiotic protocol like I mentioned, then it can kill off these good bacteria. And when that happens, candida can overgrow and candida overgrowth in your intestine can penetrate your gut wall. They can cause a lot of yeast and other toxins that result in inflammation. And you get a lot of gas and bloating and it can make your stomach stick out. And so the answer to that in addition to rebuilding the good amounts of bacteria in your digestive tract by using like a fermented food and a good therapeutic grade probiotic would be to remove anything that’s gonna feed yeast and also anything that contains wheat gluten which also causes gas, bloating, yeast issue, And so that includes a lot of stuff. That’ll include balsamic vinaigrette, a lot of salad dressings, any – like I mentioned vinegar, if it’s a vinegar that has gluten in it or vinegar that’s not raw or unpasteurized, that can be an issue. A lot of condiments like catsup, worcestershire sauce, barbecue sauce, soy sauce, mustard, a lot of green olives that you get in the can, beer is a biggie. So a lot of that stuff contains things that would potentially aggravate a yeast issue and then sugar and starch obviously feed yeast and will feed that fungus overgrowth. So that will include stuff like bread, pasta, even like a higher intake if you do have an overgrowth of juices, potatoes, fruits, any of that stuff can really aggravate the issues.

[1:00:15.3]

And so this should be a situation where you could even look into doing something like the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. And that’s something that’s similar to the autoimmune diet, it eliminates a lot of common autoimmune based triggers. But that one in particular actually takes care of a lot of the things that would potentially cause a yeast or fungus overgrowth as well. So I can link to that one in the show notes, too. You could even do a  4-8 week of the autoimmune protocol and then shift into something like this specific carbohydrate diet for you to eliminate a lot of these yeast and fungus issues. Or you can just do one or the other. I mean either one of those is gonna be better than a standard diet to get rid of a lot of these stuff. And then you also wanna knock out the bad bacteria. You could use an oil of oregano that’s’ really good, 15-20 drops 3 times a day, extremely potent with yeast and fungus overgrowth. Another pretty good one that I mentioned earlier that’s not only good for some parasites but also good for yeast and fungus overgrowth is this golden seal or berberine stuff, does a pretty good job as well. Thorne in particular makes a good berberine. We can link to that for you as well. Those are some of the biggies and a lot of times if you look at the classic body builder, weightlifter sucking down whey protein shakes and getting a lot of dairy in particular as an immune system trigger, you tend to see that more in the folks who are being careful with excessive carbohydrate intake but still getting a lot of dairy for its muscle building effect. That’s where you tend to see the stomachs sticking out in really fit folks. And then folks who are maybe even eating a really “healthy” paleo or primal diet or whatever but who simply have a skewed macronutrient profile towards too much sugar or starch intake, that could be a really big source of a yeast overgrowth or candida infection. So those are some of my recommendations for Michael and his stomach sticking out.

Richard:   Hi, Ben! And Hi, Brock! This is Richard from New Zealand. Over the last few years, I’ve noticed I’ve started to drink more and more wine and I need to drink more water to kinda get the same effect. And it’s almost like a craving. Once I’ve opened a bottle, I’m gonna carry on until the job’s done rather than enjoy just sipping a little glass. So I’ve been researching candida as a cause of this sugar craving as I see it and possibly also as a contributing factor to me getting a heart bypass a few years ago. I just wondered if you could share any thoughts you have on candida, why it develops and how to kill the damn stuff. My current plant to kill the candida by drinking 2 bottles of excellent New Zealand pinot noir really doesn’t seem to be working. Thanks, guys! And hopefully we can keep this just between ourselves. I wouldn’t want all your listeners to think that I have some sort of  drinking problem, even if I probably do, that’s why I crave so much wine. Cheers!

Brock:  Now before everybody gets alarmed and think that we’re totally ignoring Richard’s request to keep this private. He did send this in after a couple of emails back and forth about how this would make a good question for the podcasts. So please don’t get angry and think we’re being jerks, he’s just joking.

Ben:  That’s right! If you want to stay anonymous, we’ll keep you anonymous. Although I probably would, I would rather not call in to the show and write in your question, or also wear one of those Darth Vader vain style masks, maybe like an altitude training mask just to mask your voice. This is what they use for kidnapping all the time. These are voice modulators. I’m sure there’s an app for that. So but anyways, the answer is absolutely. The symptoms that you’re getting can definitely be related to alcohol and specifically candida. So, candida and alcohol abuse or alcoholism or alcohol addiction or alcohol cravings very often occur together because drinking alcohol can create an overgrowth of yeast or perpetuate an existing overgrowth of yeast. And a lot of times you tend to get food cravings that go hand in hand with that. Now one of the reasons for that is that alcohol is a sugar and it is actually one of the more refined sugars that you can consume because it doesn’t have to be digested and you absorb it directly through your gastrointestinal wall. Now sugar is like I mentioned, candida or yeast favorite food source and it’s what it allows it to grow. So when you drink alcohol on a regular basis, it encourages that candida overgrowth and the candida ferments sugar to generate energy so it can survive and that fermentation process can actually create a lot of toxins in your body.

[1:05:14.0]

And it can even release in particular toxins that contain alcohol or mimic the effects of alcohol in the body. So you can actually, in response to a high carbohydrate meal, you have a candida issues, you can almost feel in a way drunk even if you haven’t had any alcohol. And in many cases, that can result in you craving that feeling and wanting alcohol even when you’re eating other sources of carbohydrates. Now candida can also play around with your neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin. And that’s because it alters your gut bacteria which are crucial in the formation of neurotransmitters and so that’ll tend to aggravate cravings as well. So one of the things that you can do is listen to everything that I just said about controlling candida, not only getting on like a specific carbohydrate diet but also getting rid of breads, pastas, roll, most condiments like I mentioned catsup, mustard, relishes, salad dressings, most fermented beverages and that would include stuff like kombucha, that would include of course wine, but beer and gin and a lot of those as well. Being really careful with cheeses, with dried fruits and fruits in general, and you even got to be careful sometimes with a lot of lunch meats, corned beef, things of that nature. There are some health food stores that will sell totally yeast-free or mold-free products. And you can actually ask, a lot of times they’ll have yeast-free breads that are made using baking powder or non-enriched forms of flour. They’ll have salad dressings that are yeast-free. A lot of times they sell whole foods or something like that where you can get those type of things. But you wanna clean up all the potential things that would cause candida. You wanna get on all the stuff that I talked about earlier like oil of oregano and a good digestive cleanse to be able to restore the normal gut flora. And if you do that hand in hand with understanding that wine increases vicious cycle if you have a candida infection that just creates a desire for more wine, then that can help out quite a bit. Now few other things that are in particular effective with candida, one would be a form of probiotic that’s called acidophilus DDS1. Now most therapeutic grade probiotics are going to contain that particular strain of acidophilus. It produces hydrogen peroxide and that can have a really good antimicrobial effect in your digestive tract, it can really help control candida. So something like that CapraBiotics stuff would be perfect. Essential oils and some of the better ones in addition to oregano oil would be peppermint oil, is really really good and then either that golden seal extract or golden seal type of oil would also be really good for this. And peppermint oil is literally you can get a cinch of peppermint oil and add it to water, it’s actually kind of refreshing as a drink, to put a few drops into your water.

Brock:  Yeah, didn’t you say last week that you put it in your soda stream?

Ben:  I mix it with chocolate stevia. So I do chocolate peppermint soda water. And it’s really good. I’m kinda addicted to it right now. And I just make that soda stream a few drops of chocolate stevia, a few drops of peppermint oil, it’s actually really good. And almost wakes you up, too. The peppermint has this -peppermint is a very heating essential oil. You feel pretty good. Yeah, invigorating. And extremely kissable which is a great thing to be around Valentine’s Day right now. Valentine’s Day is in 2 days.

Brock:  Oh, geez.

Ben:  And then speaking of being kissable, garlic is another thing and we talked about garlic a few shows ago and how you actually need to take an enteric coated garlic capsule if you use garlic. It actually opens when it reaches your intestines. So it can actually be efficacious in that area. So garlic is really good. And then two other things to look into, coconut oil is really good. And the oleic acid from olive oil can have really good effect on candida. So kinda big picture here would be get on a good therapeutic grade probiotic, you introduce essential oils like oregano oil and peppermint oil. You can use garlic as part of your diet or if you’d like you can take an enteric coated garlic capsule. You use coconut oil and you could even take a tablespoon of that before bed is actually satiating for your appetite because it gives you that slow release of fatty acids while you sleep. You use olive oil in your diet and then eliminate a lot of these common condiments that tend to contain yeast, meats, fruits, starches, things of that nature and all that stuff can help tremendously with the huge desire for alcohol in the evenings.

[1:10:15.0]

The other thing to understand with alcohols, let’s say it has absolutely nothing to do with candida, a lot of times it is related to GABA deficiency, gamma amino butyric acid. You get a lot of wound up people who just need that wine at the end of the day. And if it’s that, if it’s a stress issue. You can replace that if you want to get off wine and not get the calories or the expense or whatever associated with having to go through half a bottle of wine every night. Passion flower extract is really good for that and just getting on a basic passion flower extract. I know that’s a lot of stuff. I will try and link to most of my recommendations in the show notes for controlling candida but those are some of the things that I would highly recommend.

Brock:  I’m gonna throw in a little plug for Richard just ‘cause he’s a nice fellow and I actually worked on his audio book called Life After a Bypass. And it’s -I know it’s up and it’s quite entertaining and quite informative, so you should get that.

Ben:  You’re all over the audio sphere between this and Mark Sisson’s podcast and all these e-books you’re doing. Amazing!

Brock:     Yeah. I got to …

Ben:  You’re doing the audio book for the Beyond Training Book as well. So, there you go, yeah. The audio master.

Brock:  As fast as you can churn out those chapters.

Sebastian:   Hi Ben! It’s Sebastian from Fredericton, New Brunswick. I have a question. I’m pretty new to triathlon. I come from a cycling background where I’m a pretty decent runner, so swimming and stuff are not really my sport. I’m having a hard time building up to endurance swimming because I’m constantly out of breath so I swim like 50 meters and I need to stop to catch my breath. How do I improve my aerobic capacity so that I can swim 750 meters straight? And I’m building up to even more after that. Alright, love your show! Hope to hear from you soon.

Brock:  Sebastian, why so sad?

Ben:  Yeah. Actually Sebastian does sound pretty sad. Yeah, sad. It’s time to be happy.

Brock:  It’s okay. We’ll get you swimming if that’s what you want. It’s okay.

Ben:  We’ll get you swimming, rocking, and rolling.  It’s actually pretty common to have this frustration with being able to build your aerobic capacity or feel as though you’re breathless when you’re swimming. So a few of the things that you can do – first of all, I should mention that I’ve been swimming in my garage lately. And it’s because I have one of these VASA trainers. And that’s pretty cool.

Brock:  You don’t have a Mister Turtle pool that you splash on.

Ben:  I don’t have a little Mister Turtle pool in my garage.

Brock:  That doesn’t count.

Ben:  It’s one of these VASA trainers and they’re pretty sick, actually. I always thought they were a little bit dorky. But I’ve actually been training on it and it’s about the closest thing to swimming I’ve ever experienced. And I can actually practice my breathing. Not only can I wear like an elevation training mask or a breath restricted device when I’m on it to kinda make me feel a little bit more of that breathlessness that I experience in the water. But I can also do one breath in for two strokes, one breath out for two strokes, and practice basically the type of breath training that I’ve talked about before in this podcast that I’ll do when I’m running. Kinda like the 3 breaths or one breath in for 3 foot strikes, one breath out for 2 foot strikes similar to this. You can take 1 breath in for two arm stroked, one breath out for one arm stroke. It’s a really cool way to train. It’s also expensive. You can get them off Amazon and they’re anywhere from a $1,000-1,500.Full disclosure, what I’m using in my garage is a demo unit.  But it’s…

Brock:  Do you have to give it back?

Ben:  I have to give it back at some point after I’m done kicking my butt on it for a few months. But really cool thing to have around especially in the winter. So like my workout yesterday was I’ve got a little cul-de-sac driveway that’s about 400 meters long. So I do a 400 meter sprint. And in my garage, I do about 200 meters on the vasa trainer. And then get off the trainer and head back in the driveway. So it was –I did a 5 by repeat. So 5 by 400 with the 200 on the vasa trainer after each 400. So you can do some kinda cool winter swim run workouts on it. But let’s say you don’t want to get a full on vasa trainer shipped in a giant box to your house, you can also train your lungs and get kind of this hypoxic effect using a Power Lung. So that’s another thing that I used yesterday. I had to drive over to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho last night to give a –this anti aging health lecture to some folks over there and what I used on the way over there was my Power Lung device which allows me to build up my inspiratory and expiratory muscle strength.

[1:15:18.4]

And I do that a lot when I’m driving. So I play a little game. Every time I pass a mile marker, I’ll do three breaths of a 3 count in, 3 count out with my Power Lung. So it’s just like this little sets and reps as I’m driving along on the road and I just keep that next to me. It’s better than digging around in your cell phone. The other thing that you can use to take a little bit of the stress out of breathing and thinking about breathing while you’re swimming as you’re trying to develop your stroke is the swim snorkel. And Finis makes swim snorkels. And it’s a front mounted swim snorkel so it just sticks out in front of you as you’re swimming, And as you get stronger and stronger using a swim snorkel, they make air flow restrictors that go on top of those as well. It’s called the Cardio cap. And you can order both of those from Finis. I’ll put a link in the show notes. But front mounted swim snorkel and then having a cardio cap to go on top of that, that can really help as well. Now as far as swim workouts go, honestly, nothing beats the Swim Smooth Book, and it’s – I forgot the name of it but it’s published by the folks at Swim Smooth. I’ll hunt it down and get a link for you. But the idea behind it is that it teaches you how to start your swim with your warm up so easy swimming and stretching, getting comfortable in the water and then you move into drills where you’re all focusing on technique. And then you move into your main set, and this is just kind of a standard lay out from a swim workout and the main set may be endurance, or power or speed or form, and then you finish with your cool down. And so if you’re trying to build swim endurance what you would do is you always include your warm up, your drills and your cool down. But for your sets, you can just do a simple weekly build where first week is a 10 by 25 with 5 second breathers on the wall. And then the next week is a 6 by 50 with 10 seconds of breathing at the wall. And the next week is a 5 by or a 4 by 100 with 20 seconds of breathing at the wall. So you just gradually increase both your distance as well as the duration of your sets while slightly increasing or keeping your rest periods constant and that’s a really good way to build endurance. Now when I first started swimming, I did it totally the wrong way. So I started swimming in college and I remember I was scared to death about having to swim 500 meters in 10 minutes or less for life guarding class. And I think I had about 2 months to get ready. And what I started to do, I would just get in the water and swim until I would almost be ready to pass out. And usually that took me about 25 meters or so. And then I’d just stop for as long as I need to stop and then just keep swimming until I got to 500 and that was kinda like the end of the workout. If I have known that I was supposed to warm up, do drills then do interval base set that didn’t necessarily mean swimming 500 meters in a row but that I could break the 500 into 25s or 50s or 100s and then finish with a nice relaxing cool down, that would have been so much less stressful. And I would have gotten better, so much faster because swimming is all about efficiency and economy. So best advice I can give to you is to gradually build with intervals like that and to use something like the Swim Smooth book to dictate your workouts ‘cause they got really good progression sets there. And then do some extra training for your lungs. Use a Power Lung while you’re in your car, or you’re sitting around, use a swim snorkel if you can. You can even use one of those vase trainers and add in the elevation training mask for added effect and those are some of the places I’d start

Brock:     You know the thing that I’ve noticed the most when I start working with a new swimmer is that it’s not so much the matter like –I’ll be working with them and they’ll swim across, kaboom, and come back and they’re like “Oh, man, I’m so out of shape!” It’s really like –it’s like Ben said earlier, it’s not a matter of really being in shape or out of shape. It’s building that economy and the – getting your technique down because once your technique is good, you’ll just find that you can swim a lot farther because you’re not using as much energy. So…

Ben:  Yes! Exactly!

Brock:  Making sure to do those drills and getting your technique down will make way bigger difference than worrying about if you’re in shape or out of shape.

Ben:  Yep! Exactly! So, I think that’s great and you can put on your snorkel and maybe even drag your vasa trainer beside the pool and just get all geeked out and get lots of, lots of strange looks with the pool.

Brock:  Awesome! It’s fun times!

Ben:  And speaking of strange looks…

[1:20:01.2]

Ben:  I think we’ve got a review that’s got strange looks in it.

Brock:  Oh, iTunes review time yeah!

Ben:  So this is the time of the show when we give away some Ben Greenfield Fitness swag. Oh, we‘ve got a beanie and we’ve got a BPA-free water bottle and a very cool tech t-shirt that you can wear to the gym or in the pool or wherever else you’d like to wear it. And we’re gonna ship all of that to this week’s iTunes review because it’s such a great review. So if you, if you wanna get in the running for some swag sent to you then leave a review at iTunes. And if you just wanna get the swag and support the show, go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/gear And what do we have today, Brock?

Brock:  We’ve got a review, a five star review. Nice! That’s called “Be Prepared for Strange Looks…” by pedro17.

Ben:  Pedro…

Brock:  I don’t know what Pedro is but anyway…

Ben:  It might be the Pedro from that movie. What’s the movie with Pedro?

Brock:  Aren’t they all Pedro?

Ben and Brock:  Napoleon Dynamite!

Ben:  Yeah! Might be the Napoleon Dynamite guy.

Brock:     That’s not it. I didn’t say Pedro.

Ben:  Shucks! Sweet! I see you’re drinking 1%. Is that enough to keep you?  Strange looks! Gosh! Why don’t you go tell your mom to shut up?

Brock:  Anyway. The review goes like this, it says “I just finished rolling around on the floor of my apartment on my foam roller grunting, groaning and giving my neighbors the wrong idea. What better time is there to finally give Ben and Brock the props they deserve for helping me increase my level of fitness and making me to sound a lot smarter than I am when I’m talking to my friends?”

Ben:  Making me to sound a lot smarter doesn’t sound very smart.

Brock:  That’s’ what it actually says. Haha! Increasing my level of fitness and making me to sound a lot smarter.

Ben:  That’s not good. We forgive you since you gave us that great visual of you grunting, groaning and humping your foam roller while giving your neighbors the wrong idea.

Brock:  Or the right idea.

Ben:    Or the right idea. That’s right!

Brock:  I think you should look at this as half full, not half empty.

Ben:  What better gift for your loved one on Valentine’s Day than a foam roller for them to hump.

Brock:  Uh-hmm?

Ben:  Uh-hmm. So, speaking of humping, head over to bengreenfieldfitness.com/love to see Brock and I showing you all the different ways you can hump a tennis ball to get fitter.

Brock:  Maybe we should change it to bengreenfieldfitnes.com/hump.

Ben:  Slash hump. Yep. There you go.

Brock:    Now don’t go to that url.

Ben:  Be sure to visit bengreenfieldfitness.com/premium to learn this week how to lose 75 pounds by eating plants. Check out bengreenfieldfitness.com/271 for all of the helpful links from today’s show notes and Brock…

Brock:  For all you people who keep writing in and asking where the show notes are, that’s the show notes. Every time we say bengreenfieldfitness.com/ what a number, that’s the show notes.

Ben:  Brock, where are the show notes?

Brock:  I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t think they have this– that’s just something they make up.

Ben:  Sweet!

Visit bengreenfieldfitness.com for even more cutting-edge fitness and  performance advice.

 

 

Read more: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2014/02/270-natural-remedies-for-snoring-weight-training-for-endurance-athletes-how-to-lose-weight-with-a-low-thyroid-and-much-more/#ixzz2wPOmFQGH

Feb 12, 2014 Podcast: When Is It Safe To Exercise After Being Sick, Vinegar For Fat Loss, Mucus In Your Stool, How To Fix Your Colon, Why Your Stomach Sticks Out, Can A Yeast Infection Cause Alcohol Cravings, and Building Swim Endurance.

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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You can get these News Flashes hot off the presses if you follow Ben on Twitter.com/BenGreenfieldFacebook.com/BGFitness and Google+.

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Special Announcements:

March 1-6, 2014: PrimalCon Vacation Tulum Mexico 2014! Join Ben and Jessa Greenfield, Mark Sisson, Cate Shanahan, Darryl Edwards, and other leaders in the Paleo (plus Brock), Primal and Ancestral Health community to celebrate healthy living in style – at the magnificent Dreams Tulum Resort and Spa, an all-inclusive 5-star resort on the Mayan Riviera. You’ll be immersed in outdoor fitness workouts, luxurious health food, exploring Mayan ruins, lots of beach time, fun in the sun – and much more! Click here to get in now, and be sure to tell them Ben Greenfield sent you to get all-star treatment!

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.

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”.

When Is It Safe To Exercise After Being Sick?

Daniel asks: He has been diagnosed with pneumonia and has been off training for 3 days already. Aside from wanting to heal quickly, not get too out of shape, and mitigate the damage from the antibiotics – he also would like to know how quickly he can return to training once he is better.

In my response I recommend:
– My article “Can you Exercise IF You’re Sick”
Electrostimulation
Vibration

Vinegar For Fat Loss

Eric asks: He would like to hear your opinion of vinegar as a fat loss supplement. Is this a myth of should it be a part of your daily dietary consumption?

In my response I recommend:
Raw, unpasteurized, gluten-free apple cider vinegar

Mucus In Your Stool

Holly asks: She has been using your Detox Gut Healing Pack for about 5 days and in the last 2 days she has noticed some mucus or jelly in her bowel motions. This worried her a bit as her nursing background tells her that is indicative of inflammation. She knows the pack is gentle and shouldn’t be causing any inflammation but she would like to know what could be causing this and if you have heard of people having a mucus reaction before.

How To Fix Your Colon

Josh asks: A family member has been diagnosed with colon cancer and had to have a large amount of his colon removed. They found the cancer while they were doing a routine appendectomy so now he has no appendix and very little colon. Is there any supplement or dietary advice you would give him?

In my response I recommend:
-Our previous podcast on the appendix
Probiotics
Vitamin D spray or liquid
Colorectal Recovery Program

Why Your Stomach Sticks Out

Michael asks: He has fairly low body fat but for some reason his stomach sticks out and makes him look fat even though he is not fat. Do you have any suggestions, diet or exercise, that could get rid of this abdominal distention?

In my response I recommend:
Autoimmune Paleo diet
SCD Diet

Can A Yeast Infection Cause Alcohol Cravings?

Richard asks: Over the last few years he has needed to drink more and more wine in order to get the same effect. It’s almost like a craving – he opens a bottle and keeps going until “the job is done” rather than just enjoying a glass. He feels that it is a sugar craving and is wondering if it could be candida (he also wonders if the candida could have contributed to his needing a heart bypass a few years ago). His plan to kill the candida by drinking hefty amounts of New Zealand pinot noir doesn’t seem to be working :) Could you talk about what candida is and how to get rid of it?

In my response I recommend:
Detox Gut Healing Pack
Berberine by Thorne
Passionflower
Oil of oregano
Enteric coated garlic capsules
–Brock also mentions Richard’s Book “Life After a Bypass

Building Swim Endurance

Sebastian asks: He is new to triathlon (he has a strong cycling background and is a decent runner) and is having trouble building his swim endurance. He can only swim 50m at a time before he gets very out of breath and has to stop. How can he build his aerobic capacity for swimming? What is the best way for him to build his swimming distance from 50m to 750m and so on?

In my response I recommend:
Swim Snorkel (add a CardioCap for a hypoxia effect, highly recommended)
PowerLung
VASA Trainer (+ Elevation Training Mask for added effect)
SwimSmooth book

Read more https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2014/02/271-are-vitamin-c-vitamin-e-bad-for-you-exercise-when-you're-sick-why-your-stomach-sticks-out-alcohol-cravings-and-more/

 

Ask Ben a Podcast Question

One thought on “Episode #271 – Full Transcript

  1. lchfmaniac says:

    I think you two miss something. Molecule of vitamic and ascorbic acid is the same C6H8O6. Ascorbic acid is produced from glucose. For our body does not make any sence if the molecule is from vitami c from lemons, or ascorbic acid powder sintetic. You have to think in molecular level. Organic sources of vitamin c have many other vitamins and minerals and that cocktail is different from pure ascorbic acid powder. Also there is a lot of literature about ascorbic acid/vitamin c clinical trials and so on. I read a lot. After start reading since 1,5 years i drink pure ascorbic acid every single day with 3-4 GRAMS per day. And if i feel first symptoms of cold of flu i drink 1-2 grams per hour. I did not get flu or cold since 1,5 years since i am drinking regularly ascorbic acid. I am a fact, also i sell the same powder here localy to friends and all of them do not get cold or flu. One joker for all when you have pain in your neck from inside /i dont know the word/ when is strarting to feel pain the troath, put pure powder of ascorbic acid in the tongue and try to move the powder thru the pharynx /sorry english is not my native language/. I hope you understand. You can do this as many time as you feel pain in the troath. Usually the pain is removed after 2-3 times. This info you will not read it in any clinical trials.

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