Episode #345 – Full Transcript

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Podcast #345 from https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2016/02/345/

[0:00:00]  

Introduction: In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness show: Brand New Research On Chocolate, Whether Supplements Really Do Kill People, How To Burn More Calories Without Exercising, How To Get Ready For A Hot Race, How To Fix Muscle Imbalances, and much more!

He’s an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America’s top personal trainer and one of the globe’s most influential people in health and fitness.  His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance.  He is Ben Greenfield.  “Power, speed, mobility, balance – whatever it is for you that for natural movement, get out there! When you’re working all the studies done… studies that have shown the greatest efficacy…”  All the information you need in one place right here, right now, on the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast.

Ben:   Well Rachel, today is a sad day.

Rachel:   Oh, it is? Why?

Ben:   It’s a sad, sad day on the Ben Greenfield farm.

Rachel:   Why? What’s going on?

Ben:   I have to kill a chicken.

Rachel:   Ohhh, that is sad.

Ben:   More specifically, a rooster.  I have too many roosters and so apparently, according to the chicken textbooks, you can’t have too many male chickens roaming around.  Apparently, it’s a …

Rachel:   Why is that?

Ben:   It’s something to do with like over fertilization of the chickens and too many roosters fighting with each other…

Rachel:   Mm m-hmm.

Ben:   And it’s just, it’s a too many chicken peepees hanging around the property.

Rachel:   (chuckles) You know, I feel a little bit less about, feeling a little bit less about killing a rooster which is you know, terrible.  But they’re actually aren’t very nice to chickens.

Ben:   Roosters aren’t – yeah, they’re a little bit disruptive but…

Rachel:  They are.

Ben:   What do you know about this?

Rachel:   Well, actually, I don’t know if this is like a legitimate theory or not, but if you observed chickens and roosters together, there is what could be considered some chicken rape going on.

Ben:   Chicken rape?

Rachel:   And it sounds terrible.  Yes.  Have you noticed that with your chickens and roosters?

Ben:   Sounds horrible.  You know what? I haven’t actually sat there to do a rape analysis….

Rachel:   (chuckles)

Ben:   …on the chickens, but I could see something like that happen,  and roosters are not very nice.

Rachel:   Yeah.

Ben:   And really, the conundrum that I have aside from the fact that now I need to worry about chicken rape, I need to go out there and check that out.

Rachel:   Mmm-hmm.

Ben:   The best is you put up a trail cam or something like that.

Rachel:   You should.  Yeah.

Ben:   It’s to create little chicken.

Rachel:   Yeah.  I can’t not intervene when I see it – it’s like, it’s intense.  It’s really intense.

Ben:   Wait, you intervene? You actually go in and you separate them?

Rachel:   I do.  I know I’m one of those terrible people, I like chase those chickens, those roosters away.  I’m like, “get off her!” – it’s terrible.  (laughs)

Ben:   Oh my goodness.

Rachel:   Anyway, question: how are your boys gonna handle the killing? They’re alright with that? They don’t have like any attachments to the rooster?

Ben:   Well, I’m deliberating and by the way, for those of you who are listening in, I know that… you know, Rachel is vegetarian and I know we have vegan and vegetarian listeners, my apologies for this entire discussion but its just life.  Well, decapitation is obviously one option where you pick up the bird, and you put its head kinda between the couple of nails in a log and you decapitate it.  And then you can also do like a cervical dislocation which would be a little less messy.  It’s like a neck snapping type of thing, I would prefer to go that method right, rather than have like blood spraying about.  I suppose another option would be, I could use my 22 or even like a – I don’t have a pellet gun but I have a 22.

Rachel:   Do you think what would be less suffering is that like for a such and what is less suffering for the animal?

Ben:   Mmm…

Rachel:   Or you don’t wanna fuss with that?

Ben:   I don’t know.  You know what? I would like to reduce suffering, I’m a little but woo-woo in that sense.  I believe that chickens don’t indeed have a soul, even if they are…

Rachel:   I feel that’s not super woo-woo even if they don’t have a soul.

Ben:   Even if they’re raping chickens.

Rachel:   Right!

Ben:  I would like to ensure.  And there’s also one called CO2, it’s like a CO2 chamber that your CO2 canister that you somehow kill a chicken with by placing it in a bag or a box and killing it with a CO2 or car exhaust, and apparently it just naturally falls asleep.  I’m not sure if this is true but that might be a less…

Rachel:   Yeah.

Ben:   …less inhumane method, so.  Ultimately though, for those of you tuning into the Ben Greenfield Fitness show for the first time, we do indeed talk more or about more on the show than chicken rape and…

Rachel:   We do. (chuckles)

Ben:   …decapitating chicken and so we should probably…

Rachel:   Probably get on with it.

Ben:   probably move on…

Rachel:   Okay.

Ben:   …because it’s a little bit of a disturbing topic.

[0:05:01.1]

But by the way, if you’re listening in and you’d like to pipe in on the comment section about chicken rape or the most humane way of killing a chicken, just do it.  You can access the show notes…

Rachel:   Would love to hear.

Ben:   …at… where can they access the show notes, Rachel?

Rachel:   bengreenfieldfitness.com/345

News Flashes:

Rachel:   Time for news flashes.  Ben, what have you got for us this week?

Ben:   Well, I think we should probably move from chickens into chocolate, a much more pleasant topic.

Rachel:   A nice segue way? Yup.

Ben:   There’s a new chocolate research, my antenna go up whenever I see research on chocolate, ‘cause frankly even though I don’t have a sweet tooth, one of the things that I love, probably I think there’s something wrong with anybody that doesn’t love this stuff.  One of the things I love are the Cocoa Flavanols that one get through dark chocolate.  I’ll admit, I really mostly don’t give a crap about the flavanols as much as I do about the fact that chocolates just makes me happy.

Rachel:   Mmm-hmm.  And so is dark chocolate?

Ben:   Oh, dark, like 90% plus dark chocolate?

Rachel:   I’ve met people like you; I’ve met people like you.  You’re an interesting bunch.

Ben:   Yeah.  Like I’ll go into like the airport stores you know, when I’m going through airport, I’ll ask them, “do you have any dark chocolate?”  And they’ll say, “oh we have the Dove and Hershey’s dark chocolate”, I’m like, “are you kidding me?”

Rachel:   It’s not dark chocolate.

Ben:   That’s not dark.  “That’s…

Rachel:   You don’t know what you’re talking about.

Ben:   That’s 55%, you blasphemous fool.”

Rachel:   (laughs)

Ben:   “I need dark, dark chocolate.”  We’ve actually done a podcast on the healthiest chocolate choices.  There are companies such as Eating Evolved and Bulletproof Executive then, and they do things like these chocolates that are no dairy, no soy, no gluten.  I think the Bulletproof one is flavoured with a stevia, you know and they’ll go 80% and 90% plus, etc.  So there are healthy chocolates out there even for those of you who assue dairy and soy, and stuff like that.

Rachel:   Yup.

Ben:   But I digress.  This latest research was actually research into what chocolate can do for your skin.  And so, this was a 24 week study that they published in the journal of nutrition.  What they did in this study was they took a bunch of women – now granted in this particular study, there were Korean women.  It’s possible that Korean women have a different response to chocolate than…regular women – Korean women are regular (chuckles),  than Caucasian women, was the word I was looking for.  Anyways though, these Korean women had visible facial wrinkles, they actually chose women who had wrinkles which I suppose this could be kinda of an insult to a woman if she knew that she was chosen for a study just based off of the crappiness of her face, potentially.

Rachel:   (chuckles)

Ben:   But they were 43 to 86 years old, and one group got a placebo beverage, those poor Korean women, those poor wrinkled Korean women, because the other group got a cocoa beverage that contained 320 mg. of what are called Cocoa Flavanols.  So this would be the equivalent for those of you wondering, scratching your heads, it’s about a 100 calories worth of dark chocolate a day.

Rachel:   Mmm-hmm.

Ben:   Okay? So you take like the average dark chocolate bar, about a quarter of the average dark chocolate bar, really.  And they measured wrinkles, they measured skin elasticity, they measured hydration and what they found – drum roll, please – was that regular Cocoa Flavanol consumption had extremely positive effects on facial wrinkles and also a skin elasticity.

Rachel:   Hmmm.

Ben:   One interesting thing about this study was that the results didn’t seem to kick in until nearly the 12 week mark.  So, if you as a wrinkled woman are out there consuming chocolate and you’re ripping your hair out because you just don’t know why it’s not having an effect on your skin, just hold on tight.  I know this is gonna be hard for you, but you may need to actually continue to consume that chocolate for at least 24 weeks…

Rachel:   Ohhh.

Ben:   …to see the effects on your skin.

Rachel:   Woe is me.

Ben:   Yeah.

Rachel:   That sounds terrible.

Ben:   Yeah.  So there you go, an excuse to eat chocolate when all your friends ask you why you’re eating chocolate everyday, so.

Rachel:   It’s good for the skin!

Ben:   There’s that, and I’ll link to also if you wanna go to the show notes and listen to the podcast that we did awhile ago on the healthiest chocolate choices, go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/345.  I’ll link to it but Cocoa Flavanols, eat your freakin’ heart out.  There was another, we’re gonna go back into talk about death and rape now.

Rachel:   (chuckles)

Ben:   Because actually I shouldn’t – I gotta be careful using word like that, like ‘rape’ – it actually, I think you were the person that said it, Rachel.

Rachel:   I said it with every heaviness that that word should come in…

Ben:   Yeah.  And…

Rachel:   … for the chickens.

Ben:   Clearly we’re talking about chickens…

Rachel:   It was terrible.  I wasn’t joking about it, alright? I just want to make that clear.

Ben:   Yeah, we’re talking about chickens, not humans but I have gotten feedback before when we’ve brought up sensitive topics like that because let’s face it, you know, people get rapes, too.

[0:10:08.4]

Rachel:   Yeah.

Ben:   And sometimes it could be…

Rachel:   And it’s terrible.

Ben:   …a disturbing topic to talk about.

Rachel:   It’s definitely not something we go joking about.

Ben:   We do not endorse rape.

Rachel:   No.

Ben:   Okay.  Anyways, that being said, there was a brand new study or a brand new show, rather on PBS that went into how supplements are killing people.  In the New York Times also in conjunction with this PBS documentary, release their own article about all of the issues with supplements and how they kill people.  An hour long frontline show which was part of the PBS investigative series, focused on the quality of the supplements and in particular they focused on omega 3s, they looked at fatty acids and fish oil.  And what they reported on with fish oil was everything from potential for cardiac death to oxidation, to the fish oil I’m not having in it what it says it has in it, to hospitalization.  They basically shelved fish oil under the bus, and the fact is that it was an extremely one-sided article because they got so many one-sided documentary.  I got so many questions about it from people on Twitter and on Facebook that I wanted to point something out, and I will link to an article as well if you wanna read the real truth behind this article or behind this documentary.  But the idea here is that while the PBS documentary came to the conclusion that you should only use prescription omega 3s, meaning you should only use like fish oil that you can actually get prescribed to you by a doctor.  The fact is, the show made absolutely no distinction between a crappy oxidized fish oil versus the fish oil that has like anti-oxidants in it or that is called ‘processed’…

Rachel:   Mmm-hmm.

Ben:   or that is sourced from like a good, wild caught fish source.  And the issue that the documentary brings up is it says that basically, supplements are unregulated.  They say it’s a completely unregulated wild, wild west industry – that’s not true.  Dietary supplements are regulated but they’re regulated like food, not like drugs.

Rachel:   Right.

Ben:   So, what that means is that even though for supplements, there’s not a drug-like, pre-approval required by in the case of the Unites States, the FDA, there’s no drug like pre-approval for any foods at all.

Rachel:   Right.

Ben:   Supplements are just basically considered foods in America by the FDA and yeah, some people when you look at food, they die of E.coli in their spinaches or in their hamburgers; or they get poisoned by aflatoxins in peanuts.  And that doesn’t necessarily mean we have this huge problem with food safety, it just means that sometimes in a society where people are eating things, some manufacturers are making things that are not so good, and some manufacturers are making things that are good.  And as you know, I’m personally a little bit more of like a libertarian, I’d say that you know, if a company produces a poor product, they’re eventually gonna put themselves out of business anyway.  I don’t necessarily think that the government used to shut them down, I think that the free market will basically eventually you know, pick and choose whose making good stuff and whose not.  But ultimately, when it comes to fish oil, there have been so many studies showing the cardiovascular beneficial effects of omega 3 fatty acids on everything from reducing triglyceride levels to reducing  blood pressure, to getting depending on the study that you look everything from a 9 to a 30% reduction in cardiac death that I don’t think you should throw out your fish oil.

Rachel:   Right.

Ben:   Or your sardines or your fish, they’re all something I could consider to be food, but really, I mean – drugs, pharmaceuticals.  Just pharmaceuticals that spends in hospitals for example, they’ve been shown the Journal of American Medical Association has shown they kill a 106,000 Americans a year, and so I think we should be worrying far more about pharmaceutical drugs than we should about supplements.  And one thing I would say to folks who watches documentaries, don’t necessarily put everything into the same category basically, just choose your supplements wisely if you’re gonna use them.

Rachel:   Right.  Yup.

Ben:   So, yeah.  But anyways, speaking of supplements, there was actually another quite interesting article that I will – I’ll link to in the show notes and I don’t know if you saw this, Rachel.  But it’s basically about how folks are now using – all the kids these days…

Rachel:   Yeah, in Silicon Valley.

Ben  …are now micro dosing, yeah, in Silicon Valley to get what they call “superhuman” creativity.  People are now micro dosing with small amounts of LSD to enhance creativity.  So the idea here – oh, go ahead.

[0:15:09.9]

Rachel:   No, you go.  You go first.

Ben:   Okay.  Alright, so boosting creativity, enhancing performance and climbing the ladder of success is now something that people are using LSD for, and it’s LSD micro dosing.  So we’re talking about like a dose of 10 micrograms of LSD which would be like 1/10th of what you take to say like have a trippy camping weekend with your friends.

Rachel:   (chuckles)

Ben  But basically, the idea is that LSD can actually cause similar effects to something like – you’ve heard like Modafinil or Adderall or some of these drugs that folks will take that are considered to be smart drugs.

Rachel:   Mmm-hmm.

Ben:   Yeah, micro dosing with LSD supposedly does something very similar to that with the distinction that is significantly enhances creativity at the same time, so people are now using LSD.  Now…

Rachel:   And so…

Ben:   Oh, go ahead.

Rachel:   What do you… yeah, what do you think about that in terms of like the impact that it has on how versus something like a Nature’s CBD?

Ben:   So I have – well, yeah, Nature CBD is… you know, that is where gonna entirely different system that’s like an endocannabinoid system or cannabidiol.  But with LSD, LSD is in higher amounts, one of the most potent psychoactive compounds that we know of, you know, you look at like Mescaline which is another component that people will use now like before they go into a float tank…

Rachel:   Mmm-hmm.

Ben:   … a lot of people use Mescaline to enhance their creativity and their thought patterns before they go into like isolation and something like a float tank.  LSD is about 3,000 times more potent than that.

Rachel:   Wow.

Ben:   And even the doses, little as 10 micrograms is capable of producing you know, psychedelic effects, lucid dreaming, etc.  And the issue with LSD, very similar to like Modafinil or Adderall is a) it’s metabolized by the liver, so there’s probably a biological trade off in terms of an elevation in your liver enzymes and you know, beatin’ up your liver a little bit, basically.

Rachel:   Yeah.

Ben:   The other issue is that there are a lot of side effects.  Everything from respiratory distress to hyperthermia, activation of the sympathetic nervous system, and a lot of effects that for me as an athlete and someone who exercises frequently, I would be very concern about like a cardiac arrhythmia or cardiac event during exercise if I had LSD in my system.

Rachel:   Mmm-hmm.

Ben:   And so the combination of the liver and the cardiovascular effects mean that this is probably something I personally won’t be experimenting with.

Rachel:   So I didn’t read the article…but… did it talked about in terms of like athletic performance? Or is it, ‘cause I assumed that it’s just Silicon Valley entrepreneurs just doing it to be super creative.

Ben:   Just Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.  Now when you look at athletic performance probably the two drugs that actually could help you out quite a bit, both of which I believe are banned by the World Anti-doping Association, f.y.i.

Rachel:   Just f.y.i.

Ben:  But that Modafinil or Adderall could help you during a very, very long event, right? Like an Ironman triathlon, or something like that to have extreme focus during the event.  You know, that stuff can cause you to stay awake and be hyper productive for like 24 hours.  And then also, interestingly, and I talked about this when I spoke at the online Sexual Satisfaction Summit.  Viagra actually has some pretty potent cardiovascular boosting effects and that’s because it causes this big increase in nitric oxide, so if you really wanted to just you know, stuff a bunch of candy in your face before you go out and compete in an athletic event, I wouldn’t do LSD.  You can always try Modafinil or Viagra.  However, I personally, I’m not a huge fan of anything like that – that is heavily processed by the liver, that has potential for side effects, and so I personally do not use any of those compounds.  And I’m a big fan of just going the natural route you know, using things like Lion's Mane mushroom for cognitive enhancement or using like a – like arugula and dark chocolate and red wine.  And even things like citrulline and arginine to enhance nitric oxide production, so.

Rachel:   It’s very fascinating ‘cause it seems like a bit of slippery slope in a way because I mean, you’re trying to achieve “superhuman” characteristics but like you’re taking something but it’s still you.  But the difference between Lion’s Mane and Modafinils is still that you just don’t like how it’s metabolized by the liver.

Ben:   Well you got the…

Rachel:   It’s interesting like…

Ben:   … liver and also the side effects.  The biological side effects when it comes to, you know, everything from hyperthermia, to cardiovascular arrhythmias, to real significant activation of the sympathetic fight and flight cortisol based nervous system.  It’s just, it’s a short term trade off, so.

[0:20:14.3]

Rachel:  Yeah.  It’s fascinating.  I think I just… what does it actually mean to be “superhuman”? Like can you call yourself “superhuman” and take drugs? I don’t know, I’m not saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’, I just find that interesting kind of tension.

Ben:   Mmm.  Yes.

Rachel:   Philosophical.

Ben:   The great thought experiment for the week. Type in on comment section over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/345 if you: a) have an opinion on this, or b) if you’ve taken a crap load of LSD and found it to be beneficial likely fun but beneficial.  Let us know.

Special Announcements:

Ben:   Speaking of dumping a bunch of drugs into your system, Rachel, this podcast…

Rachel:   Yes.

Ben:   … is actually brought to you by one of my favorite drugs on the face of the planet – coffee, Kimera Koffee.  Kimera Koffee is coffee that has nootropics added to it.  Things like theanine and acetylcholine, and all these derivatives that make caffeine go way above and beyond just being caffeine – really good stuff.  And anyways, I have a new recipe for you, for your coffee.

Rachel:   You do?

Ben:  I hope you enjoyed the recipes I shared with you in the last couple of episodes.  This one is called Gorilla Coffee.  Gorilla Coffee.

Rachel:   Oooh.

Ben:   Here is how it goes, and we will put this recipe in the show notes as well, for those of you who wanna tap into it.  But you start off with your brewed coffee, so whatever how much brewed coffee you want, you know – 12, 15, 20 oz.; whatever it is that you like to drink.  Mucho grande coffee! Hot, hot coffee in this case.  And then you take a few tablespoons of organic coconut oil and you take a few tablespoons of raw almond butter.  Gotta go with the healthy stuff, right? So organic coconut oil and raw almond butter.  You don’t use organic, and you don’t use raw, you’ll get cancer…

Rachel:   Doesn’t count.

Ben:   … and your chickens will die.

Rachel:   (chuckles)

Ben:   And then here’s the cool part: you want a tablespoon of maca root.  Maca root is this really cool adaptogen that has like a nutty flavor, you can get it in like a powder form on Amazon and it has a really, really cool effect in your hormones – for guys it actually increases drive and testosterone as well.  And then you put a little bit of stevia in there for some flavor, and then you just blend that in the blender, right? So we got coffee, coconut oil, almond butter, maca root and stevia and then you just blend that and get ready for a complete brain trip powers.

Rachel:   A super powered, super charged, dominated gorilla day.

Ben:   Boom!  Gorilla coffee.

Rachel:   (chuckles)

Ben:   So try that out, and if you wanna get 10% off of Kimera Koffee, you can go to k-i-m-e-r-a-k-o-f-f-e-e – kimerakoffee.com, use 10% discount code ‘BEN’ and you will save.  This podcast is also brought to you by nuts.com, I spent about 50 bucks personally on nuts.com yesterday because, I don’t know if you heard the news on the streets, Rachel, but in 6 days I am shoving off to the cold, wintery, frozen tundra/forest of Vermont.  I’m headed out to Spartan founder Joe De Sena’s farm for a 60-hour Sufferfest…

Rachel:   Wow.

Ben:   … called the Spartan Agoge.  By the way, I think people can still get answer, if you’re a listener, and you wanna come join me on that Sufferfest, go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/agoge.  Now, here’s the deal: it’s gonna be 60-hours of just basically getting my (censored word) kicked and I have no clue because there’s – this is the first ever one that they’ve done.

Rachel:   Mmm-hmm.

Ben:   I don’t know if I’m going to be able to have food or not.

Rachel:   Wow.

Ben:   But I do know have to show up with all my gear on my back and carry my gear for the 60-hours of the entire weekend.  So I made an order from nuts.com to – for my gear.  So what I got was I got a raw granola – raw sprouted granola and the raw, sprouted granola is just basically organic almonds and goji berries, and that’s it.

Rachel:   Ooh.

Ben:   That’s all mixed together.  So and I tried to choose super duper high calorie, high fat compounds that I could go for long periods of time without like blood sugar roller coaster rides, and then I got their raw cacao goji energy squares.  So I’ve got cacao so, should I be at risk for looking like a wrinkled Korean woman?

Rachel:   (laughs) 

[0:25:01.5]

Ben:  I’m mitigating that, so I’ve got a raw cacao energy squares and then I got Macadamia nuts.  Macadamia nuts are huge in terms of their saturated fat levels which can be a really good, slow bleed of energy when you’re exercising for a long time.  And then I got chia seeds which are actually great if they’re thrown to a water bottle, and you just let that water bottle sit for like 20 minutes or an hour and you get like this chia seeds slurry.  The chia seeds slowly release all their fatty acids and so I got all of those from nuts.com.  Raw sprouted granola, raw cacao, goji energy squares, Macadamia nuts and chia seeds in the deal that nuts.com is giving all of our listeners is, you can go to nuts.com, and you click on the mic that you’ll see there – as in like their podcast video and enter the code ‘FITNESS’.  And when you do that, whatever you order from nuts.com, they’ll throw in for free samples at a $15 value.  You get to…

Rachel:   Nice!

Ben:   … choose from over 15 different options of these for a free samples, so it’s a really cool deal.  It’s a really cool website.  It’s fun…

Rachel:   Is that all of the food you’re taking with you?

Ben:   Uhmm, possibly.  I’ll throw in like some of the energy bars from Onnit…

Rachel:   Mmm-hmm.

Ben:   You know, I’ll probably grab a few extra things but yeah, that’ll be the majority of it ‘cause that’s a – that’ll be several thousand calories for me to…

Rachel:   Gosh.

Ben:   … duff in my face.

Rachel:  I can’t wait to hear how this one goes.

Ben:   But again, I may show up and they might just take away all of my foods, so.

Rachel:   They’ll be like, “no mate…

Ben:   That’s possible.

Rachel:   …you are not eating for 60 hours.”

Ben:  Yeah.  Anyways though, nuts.com is simple and convenient way to have nutritious, delicious, healthy nuts, and many other tasty treats from around the world delivered straight to your door.  I didn’t make that up, that was actually what they told me to say.  Okay, the last sponsor for today’s episode is Casper – Casper Mattresses.  And Casper Mattresses are these mattresses that have a ton of cool engineering and they have latex foam, they have memory foam, I have one upstairs, the king size one in the guest room of my house.  All my guests love it, they come, they don’t wanna leave, and the cool thing about Casper is a) you can sleep on this mattress for a 100 days and still return it.  So I mean, you could be a homeless person and sleep under the bridge, you could order a Casper Mattress, lay it out under your bridge, you could sleep on it, and still get to return it.  There you go… for all of you, for all of our homeless listeners.

Rachel:   (chuckles)

Ben:   Free delivery, painless returns, they’re made in America and the cool thing is that they come in this sexy little box – it’s not like this big mattress that you gotta like hold while stepping down your stairs.  There’s little box, they cut out the middle man and they go straight to you so you get a fantastic deal, and you get $50 off your Casper Mattress when you go to casper.com/ben and you use the promo code ‘BEN’.  That’s casper.com/ben with promo code ‘BEN’ and just to give you an idea, king-sized mattress, you can pay up to like 10,000 bucks for a king-sized mattress that doesn’t load a bunch of crap, and that’s made from special foams, etc.  The Casper one is $950 and then you knock another 50 bucks off that with the discount code ‘BEN’, so.

Rachel:   Nice.

Ben:   There you go, check them out.

Rachel:  I might need a new mattress ‘cause we have a memory foam mattress, and I don’t know if this is a testament to good or bad memory foam but my husband is like a dent in the damn thing.

Ben:   He leaves a dent in it?

Rachel:   Yeah, like I – he’s been away the last few days and so I get the whole bed to myself, and I noticed that there’s like a dent in the mattress where he is.  And I thought well, I guess that’s what memory foam does, but I’m not sure.

Ben:   No, good memory foam should compress…

Rachel:   There you go.

Ben:   …when you’re on it but then kinda bounce back.

Rachel:   Mmm-hmm.  I think we should be hitting up some Casper Mattresses.

Ben:   That or your husband needs to lose a crap of a weight, too.

Rachel:   (chuckles) Whatever, he’s perfect.

Ben:   Feeding too much of your Australian Vegemite?

Rachel:   Mmm-hmm.  He loves it.

Ben:  That’s what I thought.  Alright, cool.  So those are our sponsors for today’s show, and then I just wanted to mention, one more thing.  A lot of our listeners do not know that I send out about every week cool techs, chockfull of discount codes to our listeners.  Discount codes, free offers, hidden PDFs, articles, all sorts of cool stuff and if you live in America, sorry to our non-American listeners, text word ‘FITNESS’ to 411247 that’s text – so you just text the word ‘FITNESS’ to 411247, and you get into the VIP text club.  It’s absolutely free, and it’s just you get little texts from me.  Sometimes I might just send you a drunk text when I am at the bar….

Rachel:   (laughs)

Ben:   I don’t know.  You know, like a…

Rachel:   You’ll talk about taking an activated charcoal.

Ben:   Activated charcoal, chickens, etc. but anyways, there you go, so text the word ‘FITNESS’ to 411247 and that’s it.

Rachel:   I just did it.  I did it, Ben.  I just texted ‘FITNESS’ to 411247 and now I’m gonna get your drunk text.

Ben:   Boom.

[0:30:05.3]

Listener Q & A:

Sarah:   Hi Ben, my name is Sarah, I’m from Adelaide, Australia.  I’m a new triathlete looking to finish my first 70.3 Ironman in June this year.  My question is, where I’m from it’s really dry heat and where the race is that I’m planning to do, it’s in Cairns which is known for it’s humidity.  So I guess the real question is how do I prepare myself for a really humid 70.3 Ironman in a place with virtually no humidity? Even more so, as the race starts to near, it would be getting into winter here in Adelaide and it can get quite cold, whereas Cairns remains hot and humid.  So, both the heat and humidity would a great shock when I get there.  I’ve realized that probably hitting up the sauna and steam will might be an option, unfortunately, the gym that I’m a part of doesn’t seem to have either of those.  I’ve also tried to find steam and sauna rooms where you can go to for casual visits in Adelaide and I haven’t been able to find anything.  So any other tips and insights would be a great help.  Thank you for your podcast, both my partner and I really love it.  Thank you.

Ben:   Rachel, you just came back from Cairns, did you not?

Rachel:   I did and I’d loved it.  I love how you say it, Cairns.

Ben:   Cairns.

Rachel:   We’d say, ‘Cans’, like c-a-n-s.

Ben:   ‘Cains’,

Rachel:   Yes.  And Ben, I was actually born in Cairns, that’s where I spent half of my childhood.  So there you go, Sarah, I know exactly about the humidity you’re talking about.  I grew up having cold baths in the middle of the day because it’s so freaking hot outside.

Ben:   Really?

Rachel:   I spent all my time in the shopping center mall or going to the cinemas just because it had air conditioning, ‘cause back in those days that was not a big thing happen at home.

Ben:   So Adelaide is dry?

Rachel:   Mmm-hmm.

Ben:   But Cairns is…

Rachel:   Cairns is super humid.

Ben:   … humid and hot.

Rachel:   Very humid, yes.

Ben:   Yeah.

Rachel:   Super tropical.

Ben:   Which can be an issue because the humidity can tend to make it much, much harder for sweat to kinda like pour off your body so you don’t get as much of the convection based cooling effect…

Rachel:   Mmm-hmm.

Ben:   … when you have – when you have a humid condition.  And if you don’t have access to say like a steam room to train in, which it sounds that Sarah said she doesn’t have access to a sauna so I’m gonna assume she doesn’t have some access to a steam room as well.

Rachel:   Mmm-hmm.

Ben:   Because when you gonna go train in a humid environment, a steam room can help.  The interesting thing, and I talked about this when I did a heat acclamation workshop for USA triathlon – is that a lot of the research that they’ve done on athletes who go, and compete in the Ironman in Hawaii, in Kona, they’ve found that they can get the blood volume increasing effect, and the heat acclamation effect in a lot of the effects that allow them to be able to perform well – even in a relatively humid conditions in a place like Hawaii – by using dry heat.

Rachel:   Ah.

Ben:   So you can actually acclimate quite well to humidity by using dry heat.  Now that being said, one of the things that does build up humidity if you don’t have access to a steam room or sauna, is one of these heat suits.  You’ve seen these heat suits before?

Rachel:   I haven’t, no.

Ben:   Okay.  So heat suits are – they’re very similar to what like a wrestler would wear to lose weight prior to weighing in for competition.  And typically, like a good heat suit, you can buy one in Amazon – I’ll put a link in the show notes for folks.  But what it does is it prevents the body from cooling itself, so of course you can overheat, you can have a heat stroke and proceed at your own risk, I should say.  Insert a medical disclaimer here, but the way that it works is a heat suit typically has two waterproof layers, so a traditional sweat suit has a single waterproof layer.  The way a sweat suit works is it traps your sweat and prevents the sweat from cooling your body, but the problem with having a single waterproof layer, is that the sweat soaks through in a clothing and reduces the insulation.  And so, especially if you live in a cool environment, you tend to get sweat soak clothes that get chilly even when you’re wearing the sweat suit.  So what that means is probably not as much of an issue for Sarah because she is already in a hot place.  But if you live in like Idaho, Washington or Alaska or some other cold place and you’re getting ready for a hot race, you buy a sweat suit that you can go running in – the problem is it gets cold pretty easily.  So a double suit, what’s called a heat suit, the way that that works because it has two layers is it traps the sweat away from the insulation layer so you don’t get cool as you train in it, so it’s two different layers.

[0:35:09.2]

And you could kinda sort a piece together your own heat suit.  You could make your own heat suit – the way that you would do that is you would first get like a thermal layer that you wear around your body like let’s say, like a wool underwear you know, wool underwear top…

Rachel:   Yeah.

Ben:   … wool underwear bottom.  And then on top of that, you’d put a waterproof layer, right? So like what you – like let’s say like a windbreaker and like some pants that would be like waterproof style pants, right? Like the crinklely pants that you could wear, the old school 80s crinklely pants.

Rachel:   (chuckles)

Ben:   The MC Hammer pants.  So you put that on but then over that, so you get that first layer, then you got the second waterproof layer and then over that, you put another insulatory layer like fleece for example, works really well.  So now, you’ve got a waterproof layer trapped between two other layers.  And then on top of that, you put a…

Rachel:   Wow.

Ben:   hand on waterproof layer and that’s like the ultimate DIY heat suit and then if you put them like hat, gloves, neck warmer, face mask and you do a workout like that, it stimulates a humid environment quite, quite well.  You’re gonna get very hot but that’s one way that you can train in the humidity.

Rachel:   Is there like a temperature that you should not wear that suit and train in it over?

Ben:   What I would do personally is I would wear a heart rate monitor, and if your heart rate is getting really close to your max heart rate, you’d wanna be careful.  What you could do is put it on, and  exercise, and try not to exceed about 90% of your maximum heart rate, so you’re not risking the potential cardiac issues that could come.  The heat stroke issues, so yeah, I mean you’re gonna get pretty hot.  The thing is though, when you do that, you know, there’s a lot of cool things that have been shown to occur with heat acclamation.  And so, the main things are: you get an increase in blood flow to the surface of the skin, your body actually gets better at directing blood flow to the surface of the skin to cool you.  Your heart rates or your heart stroke volume increases, so you’re gonna get an increase in blood volume, so your heart is pumping more blood with each beat and it’s very similar.  We’ve talked about this on another podcast before but the studies that they’ve done on sauna being almost as good as the type of blood doping that riders in the Tour De France used to enhance their blood volume, but without causing like the thickness in your blood that’s something like a blood doping would cause.  So, you’ve got that, the other thing that tends to happen is a slight increase in your VO2 max or your oxygen capacity, and then you also get production of these things called heat shock proteins which increase your stress resilience when you’re exercising in the heat, so it’s all sorts of cool things that happen.  The question that I get quite a bit when it comes to using any of these techniques from like a sauna to a heat suit to a sweat suit, you know, hot yoga is another thing that a lot of folks will try.  And that also works you know, doing something like Bikram yoga is how long does it actually take to actually…

Rachel:   Right.

Ben:   You know, how long do you need to do this prior to the event.  So, it’s gonna differ a little bit from athlete to athlete.  The higher the fitness level, the less the acclamation that you need to do, and so typically what you’ll find is any fit individual, they can acclimate for a couple of weeks prior to hot event and be ready for it.

Rachel:   Mmm-hmm.

Ben:  But in most folks, you’re going to find somewhere between about the 4th to 8th week mark as kinda like being the sweet spot for starting to do a lot of hot training prior to doing your hot race.  That’s about how long it takes to get a significant increase in like cardiovascular efficiency and blood flow, and blood volume and all that jazz.  So you wanna give yourself about 48 weeks if you’re super duper fit, you go and you – you need to go off and you race in hot environments a lot, you can get away with as little as two weeks but that’s about the time frame that you’re looking at to incorporate strategies like this.

Rachel:   So, hot yoga also works as well.  That sounds like it could be something that she could use.

Ben:   Mmm-hmm.  Yeah, I mean I personally do hot yoga, I wrote an article about this on bengreenfieldfitness.com recently.  I do hot yoga every morning literally.

Rachel:   Yeah in your sauna.

Ben:   Unless I’m traveling ‘cause I had – and you get the skin detoxification effect, you get the skin beauty effect combined with the cocoa flavanols – extremely potent.  You get the heat shock proteins – you get everything so I do, I heat, I followed up with cold, you get a big bump in nitric oxide, so for me it’s like a daily thing.  So what that means is I’m heat acclimated all year long, so at the you know, at the drop of a hat I can go anywhere in the globe and be able to compete and if it’s hot, it doesn’t get to me so I just kinda maintain it all year long.

[0:40:00.9] 

Rachel:   There you go.

Ben:   Yeah.

Rachel:   Wow!

Ben:   Yeah, I’m a beast!

Rachel:   You are.  Alright, so Sarah, I think that’s your answer.

Kyle:   Hey Ben and super cool sidekick Rachel, who’s doing an awesome job by the way.  I’ve been listening for several years so, thanks Ben for all the great information, and it’s a pretty awesome.  So my question is about muscle and body imbalances.  So I used to a road race motorcycles professionally for several years and have had in the past a dislocated left hip, a left ACL replacement, and I actually used my hamstring and a couple of other injuries.  And at this point I’ve completed up to an Ironman distance triathlon race and I’ve been racing triathlons now for the last several years.  And I wanna keep on doing that but I feel that this imbalances on my left side versus my right side are having an effect on training in my overall efficiency, and I think my right side is overcompensating a little bit.  So, I currently use a globus electro-stim to help on my left side and I generally follow you know, your diet as far as more fat, fewer carbs, not following ketosis or anything like that, and a lot of cold therapy.  And do curcurmin and all the nice good things you’ve recommended over the last several years – colostrum and all the good stuff, so any advice on helping this imbalances would be pretty awesome.  Thank you guys very much, keep on doing the great job.

Ben:  He used to road race motorcycles professionally.  I could imagine that could beat you up.

Rachel:   That makes him a bit of a nutcase in my books ‘cause I recently got taken on my first injury ride with my big brother.

Ben:   Oooh.

Rachel:   Yeah.  And I can tell you that was probably one of the most intense hour-long things I have ever done.

Ben:   Yeah.  This – I have a book about this.  A guy named Dr. Jonathan Edwards who’s actually written some articles for the Ben Greenfield Fitness website.  He used to do a lot of motorcycle racing, now he mostly works with like Tour de France cyclists, but this book is about how he competed in this multi-day motorcycle event racing across the desert.

Rachel:   That’s endurer, yeah.

Ben:   Yeah, your heart rate is through the roof and your body’s getting thwart and thrown around.  I used to ride dirt bikes until I was like 14, and I’ve got scared away from riding because I got one of the worst injuries of my entire life riding the dirt bike.  I got what’s called a testicular contusion.

Rachel:   Oh my gosh.  That sounds horrible.

Ben:   I flew over the handle bars at 40 miles an hour and the only thing that’s slowed me down was my right testicle hitting the handle bar.

Rachel:   Oh god! (laughs)

Ben:   So I had a ball of a size of a grapefruit for a couple of weeks.

Rachel:   Gosh, that’s every man’s worst nightmare.

Ben:  The only thing I was most (curse word) about was I had to miss most of basketball season ‘cause I couldn’t like I had to run like a cowboy you know…

Rachel:   (laughs)

Ben:   I kinda bow legged and I had to wear this giant jackie cup for weeks, and it was horrible, and I had to go to a urologist to like look at my ball sack with a flashlight to see if you know, if veins were damaged – I didn’t know until you know, I had kids if I could have kids and…

Rachel:   Oh gosh.

Ben:   I didn’t ride a dirt bike much after that, so.

Rachel:   Yeah, that’s horrible.  So you know a little bit about feeling imbalanced with one massive ball?

Ben:   Yeah.

Rachel:   And another normal size to add. (laughs)

Ben:   I have ball imbalance but fortunately Kyle just has a muscle imbalance.

Rachel:   (laughs)

Ben:   Now yeah, there’s definitely some things that you can do Kyle, in addition to what you are doing right now.  So let’s start here when it comes to enhancing or getting rid of muscular imbalances.  One of the most important things to focus on is mobility and I’m not talking about yoga and static stretching, that’s really not going to do much when it comes to addressing muscular imbalances.  Primarily when it comes to mobility, some of the things that tend to work really well, first of all there’s a few different forms of deep tissue work that can help a ton with muscle imbalances.  Some of the main ones that you may wanna try and you can often combine many of these: one is rolfing – so rolfing is aptly named after some unlucky dude by the last name of Rolfe.

Rachel:   Greenfielding.

Ben:   Just sounds like puking.  Anyways, it focuses almost exclusively on your fascia, so during a typical rolfing session you would lie down and you would get guided through specific movement, and you roll from manipulates your fascia typically over course of about 10, 60 to 90 minute sessions.

[0:45:01.9] 

Now I suspect part of that might be more of a business model than a therapeutic necessity, meaning like you know, kinda like some chiropractic docs you go to they’re like, “okay, we need to 12 sessions on…” and just like, “maybe we just need to do 1 or 2.”

Rachel:   Mmm-hmm.

Ben:   Or maybe we should not do 10 and we should just figure out when I’m good to go and call it a day.

Rachel:    Right.

Ben:   But either way, if your muscle imbalances are related to fascial adhesions which could be the case especially with the jarring sport like motorcycling, that would be one thing to look into – is rolfing.

Rachel:   Mmm-hmm.

Ben:   Another one is called AMIT. I actually have an interview called “Dr. Two Fingers” Reveals His Teeth-Gritting, Body-Healing Secrets” and this is a podcast I did a while ago, and AMIT stands for Advanced Muscle Integrative Technique.  And it’s based around the fact that every tissue in your body is saturated with what are called proprioceptors and proprioceptors monitor and control pretty much every aspect of joint movement.  They measure tension, pressure, stretch, temperature, compression – everything.  And so, if you have a high amount of inflammation in tissue or if you’ve been injured ever for a certain area of tissue, this proprioceptors become protective – they can shut off function, they can shut off mobility in an area, and that can create a muscle imbalance.  And the way advanced muscle integrative technique works or AMIT works is you apply deep pressure to specific proprioceptive areas of the body and a practitioner who is certified in AMIT.  You could Google for example AMIT and the name of your city, or AMIT method and the name of your city and see if a local doc or therapist is in your area that can do this.  But it can be highly efficacious if your lack of mobility or your muscle imbalance is due to a previous injury or an area of inflammations.   That one’s called AMIT.  Another one that’s very similar to AMIT is called MAT or muscle activation technique – so muscle activation technique typically involves a therapist putting pressure on a certain area of your body that tends to have an imbalance or lack of mobility and then you, doing an isometric contraction.  Meaning, just like contracting that muscle as hard as possible while the therapist is actually placing pressure on that area.  It’s kinda similar to this other form of therapy called active release therapy in which practitioner would pin a tendon or a muscle area and then you move your muscle through a range of motion while the area is being pinned by the therapist.  And the muscle activation technique is similar except you’re not moving your muscle, your just contracting the muscle.  So that’s another technique, and a lot of times you can try different forms of these techniques as well.  There’s another one that can work pretty well called graston – you heard of graston before?

Rachel:   I haven’t, no.

Ben:   It’s really interesting.  So graston – it employs the therapist who does graston, it employ this collection of 6 special shaped stainless steel tools.  They looked like torture devices…

Rachel:   Oh my gosh.

Ben:   … and they’re designed with specific curved edges to mold them to different contours around your body.  So one to might work better on your knee, one in your elbow, one in your calf and what this graston tools do is it is you literally scrape an area…

Rachel:   Oh!

Ben:   … to break down scar tissue and to get rid of knots and some people can get a nearly instant cure from just one graston therapy section or session.  If there are lack of mobility or if there are muscle imbalance is due to scar tissue build up in an area.  So it’s very, very similar like deep tissue work except it’s deep tissue work with like you know, silver ware basically, so.

Rachel:   With like torture devices.

Ben:   Yeah.

Rachel:   These will sound really painful.

Ben:   Most of these are pretty painful, most of them are like deep tissue sports massage.

Rachel:   Mmmm.

Ben:   Trigger point therapy is another one, so you’ll find a lot of folks selling out like this balls that you would like put pressure against and hold for a certain period of time.  And the idea is that when you have a muscle knot also known as a trigger point, it can be a hyper irritable point that can reduce mobility or create imbalances.  So you know, one trigger point that might cause pain in the front of your shoulder would be your rotator calf like underneath your armpit for example – your teres major and your teres minor and your infraspinatus.  And if you put pressure on those like in your armpit and in the back of your arm, it can get rid of the referred pain on the front of your shoulder.  So you apply pressure to these knots and all your doing is your hunting down, finding a knot, putting a ton of pressure on it like a ball – like a yoga ball or special shaped roller.  And you know, you could also have someone do this with their thumbs or their fists or some practitioners usually use their elbows or their knees.

[0:50:07.3]

Basically, a trigger point therapy is another good one, and a lot of times you know, like for example, you might have a massage therapist who use a variety of techniques like graston or you can also do rocks.  Rocks can work similarly to graston techniques like my massage therapist here in Spokane, and her name is Tracy Elise.  And she a lot of times, bring in a rock into my therapy session and just literally scrape an area with the rock, or she’ll use her elbow and  doing something like trigger point therapy with her elbow, or she’ll pin something and do something like after release therapy where she’ll pin an area in my chest and then have me move my shoulder back and forth that she pins that area in the chest, so a lot of times a good practitioner work different – with different techniques during a session that is designed to increase mobility or to decrease imbalances.

Rachel:   So what do you think about the globus electro-stimulation he’s using?

Ben:   Well electrostim can be nice if you’re unable to actually move a joint or you’re unable to train a muscle, but all it’s gonna do is cause a muscle to contract and maintain fitness in an area it won’t necessarily get rid of an imbalance.  Unless you’re really – let’s say that your left biceps is so or your left elbow is so immobile that you can’t train your left bicep, but you can train your right biceps so maybe you continue to train your right bicep while doing  electrostim on your left bicep – that type of thing.  But ultimately, you gotta go after the underlying issue which should be like your left elbow and whatever scar tissue or adhesions or issues and you know, and a lot of times this stuff goes deep right? Like for example, this is something I was researching recently lack of thoracic spine mobility can actually cause elbow issues, right? So a lot of times you have a certain area of your body that you gotta work on and to address another area of the body because fascia covers your entire body.  A really, really good book I would pick up, there’s 2 that come to mind and one is ‘Becoming a Supple Leopard’ by Kelly Starett.  There’s also a book that I’m reading right now, I’m not done with it yet, I’m trying to get it on a podcast though, it’s called ‘The Melt Method’ that’s more focused on self deep tissue work.  But that’s probably the most important thing when it comes to muscle imbalances or some of those issues that I talked about just now as far as like different forms of mobility, there are other things that you can do too, though.  Once you’ve gotten rid of scar tissue, knots, adhesions, etc. or at the same time that you’re getting rid of them, traction can work really, really well, so you’re gonna actually get big, thick, elastic bands.  Another example of traction would be like an inversion table that you hang upside down from and you’re literally applying tension across a joint to allow increases of lubricating fluid into the joint space and help produce like permanent cramps or spasms that can creep into overactive muscles that are – like in that cramped or spasmic state to reduce mobility.  So an example of that, for example, something that I do every morning right now because I’ve been having some shoulder issues related to last year’s obstacle course racing season, is I’ve been doing traction on my shoulders.  So the way that I do is that I’ll have this big, thick elastic band and I grab it and I wrap it around my wrist, and then I back away from the pole that that elastic band is attached to until I get this huge stretch on my shoulder – like it’s pulling my shoulder out of the joint capsule.  And then I’ll just hold that for like two minutes and it’s a little bit uncomfortable, right? ‘Cause it’s almost like you’re – you know you used to like having used to like kill people back in the Medieval days…

Rachel:   Yeah.

Ben:   … or they teach a horse into this like quartering yourself, right?

Rachel:   Mmm-hmm.

Ben:   But don’t use a horse.  You could use a horse.

Rachel:   (chuckles)

Ben:   Use a chicken, might be a smarter choice – less disruptive to your joints.  But basically, yeah, you do traction, inversion tables another example, you can hang from an inversion table like swing back and forth and side to side, and basically that will do traction on your ankles and your knees and your hips and your low back, but I’m a huge fan of combining mobility work with traction work.

Rachel:   Mmm-hmm.

Ben:   And for example, that ‘Becoming a Supple Leopard’ book goes into some traction techniques is not that hard to figure out but that combined with traction, really, really good for like reinventing your body.

Rachel:   Yup.

Ben:   Coming things from a nutritional standpoint, too, probably if I could give you 3 of my top picks for helping out with the integrity of your tissue ‘cause you’re doing sounds like he’s doing like colostrum and your curcumin, and some of these other things.  I’d also throw in fish oil which I already talked about – “not gonna kill ya!” if you get good stuff, but basically EPA and DHA have been shown in studies to decrease the progression of osteoarthritis into significantly reduced joint pain.

[0:55:10.1]

So I’ve personally been doing – each day, I’ve been experimenting with doubling up my fish oils – so I’m doing about 6 g. of fish oil a day right now in the morning. 

Rachel:   Wow!

Ben:   So it’s helping quite a bit with all that you know, it’s snowboard season and so I’m out there with my kids like crashing every weekend, and I’m still training for like this race in Vermont then I’ve got these leftover injuries from last year’s race season and so fish oil has seems to help tremendously with that.  I’m doing about 6g. a day, so I take about 6 of these Super Essentials fish oil capsules each day.  Ginger, ginger has been shown to be just as effective at reducing joint pain as Ibuprofen, and it can help out quite a but if you’re lack of mobility or if muscle imbalances are due to inflammation, and you can just toss a big chunk of boiled or raw ginger to a smoothie.  Or you can grate ginger, you can literally just like heat it up and chew on it, more than one way to skin the ginger cat.

Rachel:   Yup.

Ben:   That’s another one, and then bone brothBone broth, I readily admit, a lot of people will say that it’s just like good for everything.  The problem is there’s not a long term research into bone broth, there’s a lot of research on the individual constituents in bone broth, right? Like the amino acids, with the collagen, etc…

Rachel:  Yup.

Ben:   … but I’m not gonna say here in podcast and say that bone broth has a bunch of research behind it because it doesn’t.  I can tell you from anecdotal experimentation with bone broth especially when you consume it along with the marrow that sips into the broth, that it can work wonders for joint pain and for joint mobility.  Just doing like a cup or two of bone broth each day, you can use beef bones, pork bones, you know, feet chicken bones – whatever, the bone broth be another one.  By the way, that’s one thing that I recently hunted down in Texas – I spot and stopped a huge axis deer – have you ever seen an axis deer?

Rachel:   Well I saw one on your Instagram, so.

Ben:  Okay.  Yeah, go to instagram.com/bengreenfieldfitness if you wanna see this enormous axis dear that I just got down in Texas.  I wasn’t able to bring the bones back but you know, I harvested the liver and the heart and the kidneys and of course all the meat and the back strap and the tenderloin and everything but not only…

Rachel:   You used to put those on the plane back with you? (chuckles)

Ben:  No, no.  I shipped them back in a cooler but basically, it is widely considered among hunters to be the best game meat on the face of the planet.

Rachel:   Mmm.

Ben:   So I will be eating well this winter, and it’s a quite interesting animal to look at, it was introduced into Hawaii in the 1800s from Indian, Pakistan and then introduced to Texas in the 30s.  And so, this things they roam around in Texas and it’s kinda crazy because it looks way different – they’re like a white tailed deer or a you know a mule deer or something like that but they’re this – if you’ve never seen one, go to my Instagram page, you can see me doing the stereotypical trophy post with my deer but it’s quite an interesting animal.  I won’t be making bone broth ‘cause I was never able to bring the bones back but ultimately, bone broth would be another one.

Rachel:   Mmm-hmm.

Ben:   Kinda rabbit hole.

Rachel:   (laughs)

Ben:  But anyways, so that and then finally, the last thing that I would recommend anybody listening in, whether you have a muscle imbalance or not, you know I mentioned how I do like a hot yoga session most mornings.  And there are 4 exercises that I try to throw in just about everyday even if I’m just doing 1 round of these exercises, I call them the “Fabulous 4 for Injury Prevention” because they can help out with muscle imbalances and they address a lot things that tend to notoriously be weak in folks.  And those 4 exercises are the front plank so you can just hold the front plank for 2 or 4 or 5 minutes, a clam shell which is…

Rachel:   What is a clam shell?

Ben:   It’s like a – it’s also called the fire hydro exercise ‘cause it looks like a dog taking a pee on a fire hydrant.

Rachel:   (laughs)

Ben:   You get a crawl position and you just rotate your leg out, right?

Rachel:   Uh-huh.

Ben:   Take a pee and then back.  And then external rotation of the shoulder, so you get elastic band or a dumbbell and you just externally rotate the shoulder.  We tend to have very strong internal rotators or a tight internal rotators or a tight internal rotators would be a hunch over computer or steering wheel and external rotation kinda opens up that cavity.

Rachel:   Mmm-hmm.

Ben:   And then on the last one is just a row, right? Like a city row with a band or a bar or anything that allows you to pull, you can even do a bench row you know, with dumbbells or a sand bag or anything like that.   But in time you’re rowing and pulling your shoulder blades back, I try to include some element of each of those 4 moves every single day, and it really helps hit all those little things that try to get in the ways are plank, a clam shell a.k.a fire hydrant, external rotation of the shoulders, and then a scapular row.

[1:00:16.1]

If you throw in those 4 exercises every day or a few times a week, you can literally be bullet-proof to most injuries and muscle imbalances, so.

Rachel:  Because most people have muscle imbalances whether they’re like acutely aware of it or not, right?

Ben:   Oh yeah. I mean sometimes it’s natural, right? Like my right side is way stronger than my left side because I was a collegiate tennis player.  I played tennis hardcore for like 8 years, and so you know I just naturally tend to have a right shoulder that’s slightly forward and a right elbow that’s slightly more developed and my right foot kinda turns out ‘cause I was so used to having it turned out for the serve.

Rachel:   Serve.  Mmm-hmm.

Ben:  So, yeah.  It sounds like it’s a bad thing but when it gets to the point which producing a pain and you know if you get someone who play this sport you know, I was right side or left side dominant and they shift to a chronic repetitive motion sport like triathlon or running or something like that – that’s where stuff can kinda tend to add up more quickly.

Rachel:   So… this could be good for everyone.

Ben:   Yeah.  This better be good for everyone, I’ll put links to a lot of stuff that I just talked about in the show notes, if you need to check it out.  Oh, one last thing, listen to the podcast that I did on the nervous system which tends to have a huge interplay, and if I touch on that I don’t have time, but listen to the podcast that I did with Eric Cobb at Z-Health.  Z-Health is an organization that teaches you how to train and fix your nervous system, and if you do that in conjunction, with I know that it sounds like a lot but they have like little eBooks that just walk it through everything – Z-Health it’s really, really amazing.  Listen to the podcast that I did with him, it’s one of my favorite podcast that I’ve done before about “how to fix like your ears, and your eyes, and your balance and muscle imbalances, and nervous system and everything.”  So Z-Health, if you’ve never heard of that, Google it, or check out my podcast with him and in the show notes for this over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/345 because that could be right up your alley.

Anna:   Hi Ben! My name is Anna, and I’m a current Human Health and Performance major over in Wisconsin, and I listened to all of your podcast, they’re very wonderful.  But I was wondering being in college and living in the dorms, what might be some biohacks that you would have for a college student who’s sitting quite a lot, has a very schedule, and also tries to work and fit into workout while staying healthy. What are those little biohacks that may be able to help us?  Keep up the good work, I love listening to you.

Ben:   Alright.  What do you think, Rachel?

Ben:   Buy heavier textbooks?

Rachel:   Buy heavier textbooks, drink a little bit less. (laughs)

Ben:  Hmmm.  Yes.

Rachel:  Do you everything that you’re not supposed to do in college?

Ben:  Or drink more! I don’t know, you could do 20 ounce curls instead of 12 ounce curls. I actually, you know what? I travel a lot, not I have a heavy bag and like when I’m walking through an airports, I’ll take my backpack off and I’ll hold my book bag in one hand and my backpack in the other and just do really long farmers walks.  And as you’re walking you can literally do curls in one side and curl – I’m serious.

Rachel:   God, I’d love to see you in an airport (laughs).

Ben:   Full on grips strength training workout, you can do lunges, you can you know, of course take the stairs instead of the escalator.  If you got a bag ‘cause I remember when I went to college, I lived about a mile and a half from most of my classes, I would just low down my bag with books and huff it you know, rock, rock to school.  That has actually has a pretty significant effect, so first of all you know, don’t take the little scooter, or the car or the transport system.

Rachel:   Right.  It’s kinda like wearing the weighted vest, right?

Ben:   Yeah, so do that.  Another thing can work really well, in addition to that is if you get like one these – really thin weighted vest, or ankle weights, or wrist weights depending on where you’re going, it can get less than stellar fashion statement.  But there’s companies like hyper ware for example; their weighted vest is actually really low profile.  If you put it on underneath like a sweatshirt or a hoody or something like that, like people I don’t even know would know that you’re wearing a weighted vest.

Rachel:   Yup.

Ben:   You can get those at, on Onnit website, I think it’s onnit.com/bengreenfield, you can get a like a discount on this hyper weighted vest and of course you just burn more calories when you’re doing that.  And of course you’re on typical college campus walking a lot, that adds up pretty quickly in addition to your backpack.  The other thing that I like to do that isn’t it as much of a calorie burning technique but that can improve your cardiovascular fitness, is I will do box-breathing walks, and breathe-hold walks, when I have to walk, whatever, through an airport, when I’m walking to a city, etc.  So the way works is you’ll say like you say.  “Okay, every telephone call that I get to or every stop sign that I get to, or every time I cross the road, when you take a big breath and I’m just gonna hold my breath for as long as I can.”

[1:05:09.0]

Rachel:   Mmm-hmm.  Awesome!

Ben:   I’d say hold, hold, hold, hold, hold and then your recovery preferably doing like a deep nasal breathing is until you get to the next stop sign or the next telephone pole or the next road, so they’re called breathe-hold walks.

Rachel:   Yup.

Ben:   And similarly, and this can be really good if you’re walking through a stressful area like an airport for example, or you were just like, trying to get your game and there’s people where you can do box-breathing.  And the way that you do that is you take an in-count for four steps; one-two-three-four, and then you hold for four steps; hold-two-three-four; then breathe out for four steps; hold-two-three–four; then hold that for four steps; two-three-four.

Rachel:   You just didn’t know you feel better.

Ben:   Yeah, there you go.  Instantly.  Thank you.

Rachel:   Mmm-hmm.

Ben:   Anyways though, box-breathing, box-breathing walks are really like those – those are gonna burn more calories, that’s more of like a cardiovascular training technique, but that would be another one that you can do.  As far as other ways to burn calories without exercising, just kind of like kicking this breathing thing to death real quickly.  Basically, anytime that you’re engage in shallow chest breathing, you’re gonna burn fewer calories, but when you use your abs and your belly-button to breathe, you get blood vessels that constricts and dilate as you do that, you get increase in oxygen uptake, you get an increase in metabolic rate.  They’ve done studies on deep diaphragmatic breathing versus shallow chest breathing and when you inhale, your diaphragm expands and squeezes blood out of your internal organs and your blood vessels and then as you exhale, the diaphragm relaxes and new blood rushes in.  And this can do a really good job keeping blood flowing and keeping your metabolic rate up, so just deep breathing whenever you can, right, like when you’re sitting for example in a class, that can help out quite a bit.  The other thing that I do when I’m in a class, when I’m at a seminar, or at conference, driving in a car, on an airplane, as I’ve got one of these grip strengthening devices.  It’s all like they make a really – this company called Captains of Crush has a really good one, there’s number one called the Grip Master and you just grip and release and grip and release.  Now switch to the other hand and what I do is, I know you’ll probably gonna laugh at this, Rachel.  I combined kegel exercises with my grip strength exercises.

Rachel:   (laughs)

Ben:   So when I’m like sitting in a car…

Rachel:   Oh, Ben.

Ben:   I will do for example, 10 squeezes with the right hand and every time I squeezes the right hand, I also contract all the muscles in my crotch the same as I would like to stop the flow of the urine.  So I’m training all my little crotch in deep core muscles…

Rachel:   (laughs)

Ben:   … and my hand muscles then switch hands and you’d be surprised I mean, you can train your body.

Rachel:   You do add, you gotta add the breathing in there also. You gotta add some box breathing.  Pretty things at once.

Ben:   Yeah.  You can add the breathing in there and you can literally make your body better in many situations and still be able to focus, right? Like still be able to drive and still be able to listen to professor or lecture.  So that’s another technique as you do like grip strengthening, kegel exercises, do a little bit of breathing and when you throw all that in, it can add up over the course of the day.  And you know I’ve walked out on some seminars and conferences and you know my crotch is tired, my grip is tired, and I can feel my diaphragm activated, and you feel way better than if you just sit there, slumped over you know, texting on your phone.

Rachel:   Yeah.

Ben:  They’ve also done some studies that have found that people who just move constantly burn more calories.  It’s like tapping your feet, drumming your fingers, moving your head…

Rachel:   Really?

Ben:   … shrugging your shoulders, clenching your butt, rolling your eyes – like all these things, even chewing a gum, they’ve found, they’ve done studies on this that this tiny booze from this small muscles fibers firing, that can add up very quickly as well.  So just like, basically being very mindful and aware of whether you’re being completely sedentary or whether you’re engaging this slight, slight movements during the day, that’s stuff can add up really, really quickly.

Rachel:   I feel like, I feel like you know there’s definitely like – this might not be the case for everyone, but there’s something like a cultural college thing around drinking and we haven’t commented anything to do with drinking.

Ben:   Yeah. I mean like, as far as drinking goes, it’s pretty straight forward really, Rachel.  I mean there’s this…

Rachel:   Don’t drink.

Ben:   Well, it’s a cash 22, I mean like, you know, certainly drinking has been shown to lower testosterone, lower growth hormone, cause sleep disruptions, and be chockfull of calories.   At the same time, as many as 5 drinks per day has been shown to enhance longevity and decrease blood pressure and decrease stress.  So for me…

Rachel:   So that’s confusing. (laughs)

Ben:   Well it’s confusing but I mean at the same time, you could be let’s say you weren’t eating too many extra calories, you’re having a couple drinks a night, you could potentially increase your longevity without gaining weight.  The problem is – I’ve been through a lot of partying in my college days, usually you drink and then you hit jack in a box, or KFC or whatever, you know…

Rachel:   I see.

[1:10:04.3]

Ben:   … at 1 or 2am and then you’ve got calories, cause the drinking stimulate the appetite, you throw some recreational drugs in there and you’ve got more munchies, and sometimes you’re doing some panic eating and having like all that stuff adds up quickly, so.

Rachel:   Mmm-hmm.

Ben:   You know, drinking can be an issue, going to a party and being that person whose got like sparkling water and lemon and a touch of pomegranate juice…

Rachel:   (laughs)

Ben:   … so it looks like you’re drinking cocktails so you fit it and it’s not awkward and you’re not making the people around you feel awkward but at the same time you’re not actually drinking that could be a good strategy, honestly.

Rachel:   Yeah.  Even once a month.

Ben:   Mmm-hmm.  Yeah.  And you know what I personally do is I just have a glass of red wine everyday and that keeps me from going on a bender every month because I haven’t drank, so for me…

Rachel:   Right.

Ben:   I honestly… since I started doing a glass of red wine just about every night, aside from that brief, spirited time when I did the 30-day no alcohol experiment.  When I’m at a party, I’m really not tempted to have more than one drink…

Rachel:   Yeah.

Ben:   ‘Cause my body’s just like, “hey, you get to drink every night, big deal.”

Rachel:   Totally.  I feel like that’s a learned behavior for like you kinda go through the crazy drinking phase before you realize, “oh yeah, this is actually isn’t it very good and it doesn’t feel very good anymore.”  But like in that – in term like how can you mitigate all of that badness.

Ben:   Oh yeah, I wish I knew now all the stuff that I knew.  The stuff that I knew back in – I wish I knew back in college all the stuff I knew about using like N-acetylcysteine, glutathione, activated charcoal, electrolytes, bacopa, lion’s mane in the morning after like there’s all – we could do a whole podcast on that, we don’t have time but…

Rachel:   Yeah.

Ben:   Yeah, there’s so many things that you can do to mitigate drinking but yeah, that’s a big one, too.  And then finally as per biohacks, you know, if you want to get into this through biohacking category, two things that come to mind: one would be the use of a lot of this gear that you can wear when you’re sitting like at the library or near your dorm room apartment wherever you’re staying.  Like a Cool Fat Burner vest or a Cool Fat Burner – they make one eruption your gut to that basically just strips fat off as areas of your body while you’re seating there because it makes them cold.  They’re not comfortable ‘cause you’ll shiver a little bit chilly but it works, I mean if you don’t have another option, you don’t want to go way above and beyond just keeping your ambient room temperature a little but cooler.  That can help out quite a bit so the whole like cold thermogenesis, cold shower use of like this cool fat burner, go to coolfatburner.com and they’re super inexpensive, super easy to use and way simpler than dropping ice on your shirt.  The other one would be electro stimulation as mentioned earlier the – I mean, people might scoff you know, that it’s made for TV, it gets 6 pack abs while you read a book or watch a documentary ‘cause you’ve got like electrodes attached to your stomach.  They actually do work, they really do!  You attach them to a muscle to make the muscle contract and you just sit down and do your thing.  There’s one they call the Compex, there’s one they call the MarcPro – I’ll put links to these in the show notes but I mean, if you wanna ask, say, “Mom and Dad, for our next trip $500,000 bucks to but a fancy electrostim unit for you to burn more calories”.  You know, that wouldn’t worked with my parents when I was in college but you’ll never know, maybe you can tell them it’s for a school experiment.

Rachel:   There you go.

Ben:   Kind of it is.  Yeah.

Rachel:   Alright.

Ben:   So there you go.  There’s how to burn more calories without exercising, there’s obviously more weights, if you’re listening in, you wanna pipe in some of your own ideas, go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/345 and help Anna out for your own ideas, but there you go, Anna.  I’d start there.

Randy:   Hey Ben, it’s Randy in L.A.  I got a question for you regarding sperm.  Is there anything out there, any substance that actually has been known to reduce ones sperm count? I know this may seem like an odd question, but I have a son who actually he’s looking to have his sperm count lower, so just wondering if there are supplements or something that he can eat or drink that might actually lower his sperm count and reduce the chances of something life-changing happening.

Ben:   Two words: Mountain Dew.

Rachel:   Mountain Dew?

Ben:   Mountain Dew.

Rachel:   Is that from here?

Ben:   You never heard of that?

Rachel:   No.

Ben:   Like Mountain Dew, yeah, like that was the whole deal back in the day was like you drink Mountain Dew, it reduces your sperm count.  I don’t remember if there is actually any research behind that but like back in speaking of college, that was just like, I remember, sitting around the hot tub with all the guys, you know the house we’re staying at and…

Rachel:   (laughs)

Ben:   … Mountain Dew.  Whenever’s something brought Mountain Dew we’ll be like, “Oh, you know you’re already in the hot tub” which supposedly reduces your sperm count when you’re getting your boys all hot, and then you throw Mountain Dew on top of that, we all you know, we’re all considered for sex and drive – the worst thing to be doing would be the drink Mountain Dew in a hot tub, so.

Rachel:   No way.  Is that your answer to the question?

Ben:   You can do that.  Mountain Dew in kinda.  I mean, that’s one option…

Rachel:   (laughs)

Ben:   … with just bunch of Mountain Dew and…

Rachel:   I’m just really impressed by the scenes like thinking ahead like that.

Ben:   Yeah.

Rachel:   Like he’s trying to reduce the chances of anything life-changing happening, I feel like that’s very thoughtful.  Good job!

Ben:   Yeah.  So as far as unnatural, unhealthy ways to reduce sperm count, I can tell you some stuff other than Mountain Dew in copious amounts of time heating your boys.

Rachel:   (laughs)

Ben:  One way to be this brand new study that they did at the Longitudinal Investigation of Fertility and the Environment, and they found that chemicals commonly found in sunscreen can impair male fertility by 30%. 

Rachel:   Wow. 

Ben:   So like BP2 and 3 hydroxy bp – all these can interfere with hormones that’s why I’m not a huge fan of sunscreen ‘cause it gets absorbed into your skin, but one of the areas that works on most guys is male fertility. 

Rachel:   Wow. 

Ben:   Unfortunately, it also can displace testosterone, ‘cause you to build up estrogens or phytoestrogens, so sunscreen would be one.  Buy yourself as much of sunscreen or don’t, depending on your goals.  Processed meat, so there’s a relatively new study that found that found that processed meat like high amounts of sausage and bacon for example, that can significantly lower sperm quality.  So this was at Harvard University.  Harvard University researchers found that many weight half a portion of processed meat per day had 5.5% normal shaped sperm cells compared to 7.2% normal shaped sperm cells in people who ate less of the bacon… 

Rachel:   Wow.  That’s scary. 

Ben:  Yeah, yeah.  In the same study they found that fish are actually the secret to better sperm… 

Rachel:   Hmmm! 

Ben:  … which I think is very interesting ‘cause like fish are like giants sperm that swim. 

Rachel:   They are! Wow! 

Ben:   They are.  See, nature gives us clues. 

Rachel:   I know. 

Ben:   So anyways, so you could just see a bunch of bacon, that’s an option.  Possibly, an option that might be slightly less damaging for the Mountain Dew, you choose like really good bacon, so that’ll be another option.  Watching TV, a new study from the British Journal Sports Medicine found out that men who watch a lot of TV have fewer sperm than men who exercise moderately or vigorously each week.  That is not a surprise to me and there are so many confounding variables in a study like that… 

Rachel:   Right.  Yeah. 

Ben:   that you know… 

Rachel:   It’s more of being sedentary. 

Ben:   The blood flow in what the peep maybe they’re watching TV and drinking Mountain Dew… 

Rachel:   That’s true. 

Ben:   … with sunscreen on eating bacon, who knows?  Drinking alcohol can lower testosterone levels and decrease sperm quality, so speaking of drinking, yeah.  I mean… 

Rachel:   It’s basically, you can’t do anything fun.  No, I’m just kidding. 

Ben:   Everything disperse your sperm. 

Rachel:   (chuckles) 

Ben:   Well no, actually not having sex – not having sex actually decreases  sperm quality and sperm production. 

Rachel:   Oh! 

Ben:   Abstaining from sex actually causes sperm to change shape, they become less… 

Rachel:   I feel like that’s not super helpful in this case ‘cause I think he’s trying to stop something life-changing happening and I think with a lot of sex, it’s gonna increase. 

Ben:   Yeah, yeah.  Just throwing this out there though, for you guys who want to improve your sperm quality, have sex. 

Rachel:   Bang away. 

Ben:  Bang away.  Stress can actually lower your sperm count, so stress from relationships, stress from over training, stress from work, all that can interfere with testosterone production and sperm count, so that’s another one.  This may be working in reverse if you really wanna have kids… 

Rachel:   Mmm-hmm. 

Ben:  … hopefully you’re getting some clues.  Here’s another one: soy edamame – unfermented forms of soy: soy milk, edamame, tofu, chockfull of isoflavones which mean like estrogen.  And the Harvard School of Public Health has done a study that shows that as little as half a serving of soy a day can harm sperm production and lower the quality of sperm, so depending on your goals, you can either eat soy or not. 

Rachel:   Well edamame is delicious, so. 

Ben:   Edamame is delicious but unfortunately because it’s not fermented, it’s not that great for you especially if you don’t want a man boobs. 

Rachel:  And then fermented soy beans as super – I’m haven’t acquired that fermented soy bean taste yet it’s unique. 

Ben:   You haven’t had a natto? 

Rachel:   I have, and I don’t like it ‘cause I’m not acquired to taste it. 

Ben:   Try it with like rice and mustard wrapped it in some nori, it’s really good… 

Rachel:   Hmm.  That sounds good. 

Ben:   … with some fish, I actually liked that.  It’s really good.  Laptops and cellphones – they’ve shown that laptops increase the temperature in the scrotum and reduce sperm production, they’ve also found that cellphones in your pocket – they did a big study in 2008 showing that cellphones in the pocket significantly reduce sperm count as well.  Assuming that those cellphones were in the pocket on for 4 or more hours each day. 

[1:20:01.8] 

So, if you keep your phone in your pocket or say in like a fanny pack of your crotch, you probably have fewer less active sperm.

Rachel:   Mmm.

Ben:   So there’s that.  You’re not gonna like this next one, Rachel.

Rachel:   Gosh.

Ben:   Being a vegetarian.

Rachel:   Damn it.

Ben:   Yeah.  Researchers at Loma Linda University Medical School found that vegetarians and vegans have significantly lower sperm counts compared to carnivores.  15 million sperm per milliliter were still seems like a hell of a lot compared to 70 million per milliliter…

Rachel:   I could… (chuckles)

Ben:   … who who eat meats with of course the caveat that that meat you probably not be processed meat…

Rachel:   Right.  ‘Cause that’s causing cancer.

Ben:   … like coconut sausage.  Yeah and sperm more less active if vegetarians and vegans to one-third of the sperm more active than the vegetarian/vegan group versus two-thirds of the sperm being active in the meat eater group.  So, and the hypothesis there was that it was micronutrient deficiencies and…

Rachel:   Yeah.  Makes sense.

Ben:   … the overuse of evil soy replacements that we just talked about.

Rachel:   I totally can see that.

Ben:   Yeah.

Rachel:   I’m really excited to hear people’s comments about how veganism and vegetarianism are going to kill out the human race because we can no longer procreate, ‘cause our sperm doesn’t work. (laughs)

Ben:   Yeah.  You just need to be a vegan or vegetarian…

Rachel:   Look what you’re doing into the world with the vegetarians.

Ben:   If you’re gonna do soy, eat fermented soy, have lots of like kemp and pea and rice-based proteins and then freaking use a multi-vitamin.

Rachel:   Yup.

Ben:   The thing though that I would do personally is, and totally not adjusting here, there are actually is a supplement and is called a Vitex, also known as chasteberry.  And just as you would guess by the name, it can actually activate areas in the brain that regulate your pituitary hormones, and it can basically increase secretion of luteinizing hormone which oddly enough causes a little bit an increase in testosterone.  But at the same time it decreases secretion of something called follicle stimulating hormone and that causes a slight decrease in sperm count.

Rachel:   (chuckles)

Ben:   So in this way you would have the best of both worlds because your testosterone goes up, but your sperm kinda goes down.  There are many reports that chasteberry can cause a slight reduction in drive.  I’m not quite sure how that works because it’s increasing testosterone but apparently it’s accompanied by a slight decrease in drive, but at the same time if I were gonna do anything, the one thing that I would choose would be something like chasteberry – chasteberry extract or chasteberry supplement – and you can… I’ll put a link in the show notes putting all the now foods, we’ll have that on Amazon for example, you know, those variety of different sources but chasteberry is like a chastity belt that you swallow in a pill, so.

Rachel:   Oh, Rachel.

Ben:   So there’s that.  We like nature, Science.

Rachel:   True.

Ben:   Because of Science.  So there you go, Randy.

Rachel:   Speaking of Science, Randy, you know I kinda just wanna point out obvious here which is just let your son use a contraception.

Ben:   Mmm.  Yes, there’s that.  Oh and by the way, I did write an article about that recently…

Rachel:   Oooh.

Ben:   … on like how if you haven’t yet use the lamb skin condoms or contraception, you’re missing out in a very nice part of life, so I’m telling you.  So the one caution that I can tell you with the lamb skin condoms which significantly increase your tactile perception is don’t leave them on afterwards guys, because they stick to you if you let them dry.  So do not get all cuddley in bed for anything longer than about 2 minutes without like taking the thing of because as otherwise like ripping duct tape off your skin.

Rachel:   That sounds horrible.

Ben:   Yeah.  Just a word of advice to guys out there.

Rachel:   So is there – are you writing an article on that?

Ben:   I did write an article.

Rachel:   Oh, sorry.

Ben:   It was like – it was an article on like Top Things to Buy With Your Amazon.

Rachel:   Oh, that one! Okay.  Reject.  Yeah, alright.

Ben:   There you go.  By the way, speaking of all this talking about sex and sperm, I wanna give a shout out to a podcast, a podcast that is hosted by the same folks who host the Ben Greenfield Fitness at the Podcast One Network.  And the Podcast One Network is also the folks where you can find the Dr. Drew podcast – they talk a lot about like healthy sex and sperm and testosterone and stuff like that and their last one – you might be interested on this one, Rachel.  It was about women’s pelvic issues and they talk specifically you know, we had that one lady on the podcast a while ago talking about vaginal kung fu.

Rachel:              Mmm-hmm.

Ben:  And this entire episode was about something they call vaginal rejuvenation.  Basically how women can maintain like a younger vagina as they age.

Rachel:   I’d say that’s very similar to vaginal kungfu.

Ben:   Yeah, yeah.  So the Dr. Drew podcast, we’re gonna give a shout out to them, you can find them on podcastone.com, you can find them on iTunes but because they are part of our podcast network, we’re going to – we’re gonna give them a shout out.  So the Dr. Drew podcast – its got philosophy, its got comedy, its got sexual health issues – all sorts of cool stuff.  I haven’t been on it yet.  Hopefully I’ll make it on the L.A. sometime, go out there and get on be on the show but – check it out the Dr. Drew podcast.  So that being said…

Rachel:   (gasps)

Ben:   I believe if I’m not mistaken, now is the time on the show when we get to read a testimonial to you.

Rachel:   Review time.

Ben:   Review time.  If you leave a review over at iTunes, if 5 star review or 4 stars, stay away from the 3 or the 2 or the 1, please?

Rachel:  (laughs) We don’t like them.

Ben:   That hurts my self-esteem.  Of course, my mom would say “my selfish-esteem”.

Rachel:   Aww.

Ben:   Anyways though, if you leave a review and you hear your review  read on the show, all you need to do is email [email protected], and we will send you a special handy dandy gift pack – the beanie, the water bottle and the t-shirt, cool Ben Greenfield Fitness gear straight to your front door. So we have a review this week on iTunes, it’s 5 stars from  ThaddeusMoody and he says, “If you want to get better, you should listen to this podcast.”  Wanna take this one away, Rachel?

Rachel:   Yes. Alright.  “Ben really gets out on the edges of the new Science and how nutrition and fitness.  It is amazing to be able to cheat and let someone else do all this reading and bolting sound to digestible, actionable bites of information.  If you wanna improve your performance, live longer and feel better while you’re doing it, you should listen in.”

Ben:   There you go.  There – I hope people cheat.

Rachel:   (laughs)

Ben:   All boiled down in a one sentence, if you want to cheat, listen in to the show.  If you want to cheat, if you want to lower your sperm count, if you wanna have teeth-grittingly difficult muscle adhesion work than to you, have people scrapping your body with silverware and so many more things, eat chocolate…

Rachel:   And the reason to eat chocolate.

Ben:   … get killed by your fish oil, micro dose with LSD, we’ll put links to everything.  The show notes, we actually spend – we put quite a bit of work into the show notes, so they’re like all of the gold that you get on the podcast that you can go check out, so bengreenfieldfitness.com/345, check it out.  Stay tuned this weekend for an episode with my friend Marc Sisson and we’re gonna chat about all things endurance and ketosis and Marc’s strange daily habits, why he doesn’t eat after workouts and much more.  Stay tuned for that one and until next time.  Rachel, actually we won’t have a podcast next week….

Rachel:   We weren’t.  Sad days.

Ben:   ‘Cause I’ll be off in the hills of Vermont tomorrow, getting destroyed.

Rachel:   Mmm-hmm.  2 weeks.

Ben:   And again, if you want to get on that, go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/agoge – it’s bengreenfieldfitness.com/a-g-o-g-e, they’ve got one in February, one in the summer if you’re glad for punishment and I’ll shut up now…

Rachel:   (chuckles)

Ben:   … and why you all go back to your lives.  So, Rachel…

Rachel:   Ben.

Ben:  … and everybody, have a healthy week.

You’ve been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.  Go to bengreenfieldfitness.com for even more cutting-edge fitness and performance advice.

[1:29:18:7]     END

 

 

February 3, 2016 Podcast: 345: How To Burn Calories Without Exercising, Chocolate’s Effect On Your Skin, Eliminating Muscle Imbalances & More!

Have a podcast question for Ben? Click the tab on the right (or go to SpeakPipe), use the Contact button on the app, click Ask a Podcast Question at the bottom of this page, or use the “Ask Ben” form at the bottom of this page.

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News Flashes:

You can receive these News Flashes (and more) every single day, if you follow Ben on Twitter.com/BenGreenfieldInstagram.com/BenGreenfieldFitnessFacebook.com/BGFitness and Google+.

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Special Announcements:

This podcast is brought to you by:

-Kimera Koffee: here’s today’s recipe (and use code BEN for 10% off at KimeraKoffee.com)

Gorilla Coffee

-20 oz brewed Kimera Koffee (Hot)
-3 tablespoon of organic coconut oil
-2 tablespoon of raw almond butter
-1 tablespoon of maca root
-1 pinch of stevia to taste
-Blend and get ready for a ride.

-Nuts.com – Get 4 FREE samples (choose from over 50 options!), that’s a $15 value, when you go Nuts.com, click on the mic and enter the code “FITNESS”.

-Casper Matresses: Get $50 toward any mattress purchase by visiting Casper.com/BEN and using promo code ‘BEN’

GreenfieldFitnessSystems “surprise gift box” – 50% discount on instant access to a box shipped to your front doorstep and full of the latest cutting-edge biohacking gear, nutrients, smart drugs and more, handpicked and curated by Ben.

-Here’s how to join Ben’s free VIPTextClub: just text the word FITNESS + to 411247!

Did you miss the weekend podcast episode with Joanna Penn? It was a must-listen – titled “How To Banish Forearm and Elbow Pain, Burn Calories, Build Endurance& Maintain Muscle While Writing.” Click here to listen now or download for later!

New course from Ben! The 7 Day Full Body Reboot Program To Get Strong And Fit. Optimal fitness and health are closer than you think. In just one week, you can set yourself up for a strong, long, lean and healthy body.

May 27-29, 2016: Ben is speaking at PaleoFX 2016 in Austin, Texas. This is the The Who’s Who gathering of the Paleo movement, with world-class speakers including New York Times bestselling authors, leading physicians, scientists, health entrepreneurs, professional athletes, fitness professionals, activists, bloggers, biohackers, and more. And you DON’T need to be Paleo to be able to get a ton of benefit and fun out of this one! Also, one day prior, on May 26 is Health Entrepreneurs f(x) – a full day of deep discussion on marketing, business development, and entrepreneurship for health and wellness people, featuring Mark Sisson, Robb Wolf, Melissa Hartwig, Sarah Ballantyne, Mike Bledsoe, Abel James, and a bunch of other speakers in small group coaching sessions.

Nov 17-18, 2016: Ben is speaking at the Biohacker’s Summit in Helsinki, Finland. Discover the latest in wearables, internet of things, digital health, and mobile apps to increase performance, be healthier, stay fit, and get more done. Learn about taking food, preparation, cooking, and eating to the next level with the latest science and kitchen chemistry. Even delve into implanted chips, gene therapy, bionic arms, biometric shirts, robotic assistants, and virtual reality. Two days with an amazing crowd and a closing party with upgraded DJs to talk about. Click here to get in now at a 40% discount.

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 – click here to leave your review for a chance to win some!

 

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Listener Q&A:

As compiled, deciphered, edited and sometimes read by Rachel Browne, the NEW Podcast Sidekick.

How To Get Ready For A Hot Race

Sarah says: She’s a new triathlete looking to complete her first 70.3.  She’s from Adelaide is a really dry heat, but the race is in Cairns, which is known for it’s humidity and wet, tropical heat. How does she prepare herself for a humid 70.3 ironman, in a dry place like Adelaide. She currently doesn’t have access to a sauna – any other ideas?

In my response, I recommend:
A heat suit

How To Fix Muscle Imbalances

Kyle says: His question is a muscle and body imbalances. He used to road race motorcycles professionally and had a dislocated left hip, left ACL replacement and many other injuries on his left side. He’s been racing triathlon’s for the last few years and at this point he’s completed an ironman distance, but feels his imbalances on his left side are having an affect on his training and efficiency. He currently uses globus electro-stimulation, eats more fat and fewer cards, and uses cold therapy and curcumin, colostrum all based on your advice, but he’s wondering if you have any ideas on how to help his imbalance?

In my response, I recommend:
-“Becoming A Supple Leopard
-An inversion table, a giant band, and a decent traction website or book.
NatureFlex
-Ben’s Fabulous Four: plank, clamshell, external rotation, row
Z-Health podcast

How To Burn Calories Without Exercising

Anna says: She’s in college student studying human health and performance. What might be some bio-hacks you would have for a college student, who’s sitting, has limited time for workouts etc.

In my response, I recommend:
Coolfatburner
Compex or MarcPro ($32 discount at http://www.MarcPro.com with discount code “Ben”)
PowerLung

How To Lower Your Sperm Count

Randy says: Is there any substance that’s been actually proven to reduce one’s sperm count. His son is looking to have his sperm count lowered and he’s wondering if there are supplements or anything he could eat or reduce the chances of anything life-changing happening.

In my response, I recommend:
Chasteberry

Read more https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2016/02/345/

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