June 15, 2016

Podcast #353 from https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2016/06/353-5-best-ways-accelerate-fat-loss-can-testosterone-high-get-running-shape-fast/

[0:00] Introduction

[1:55] FDA’s new nutritional book guidelines

[7:25] A study on HRV

[10:52] An article about Yoga and Meditation that may reduce dementia risk

[14:30] What is Hunza Water?

[19:32] An article about Gladiator Gatorade

[25:48] MarcPro

[29:22] Harry’s Razors

[30:38] Organifi Green Juice

[34:48] What to do with so much testosterone

[48:55] Coffee Enemas 101

[1:04:20] How to get in running shape fast

[1:07:24] Runervals by Troy Jacobson

[1:11:29] ElliptiGo Bicycle

[1:13:31] Incline Treadmill

[1:14:43] Weighted Vest

[1:17:08] The concept of isometric loading

[1:21:32] Five best ways to accelerate fat loss

[1:38:25] End of Podcast

Introduction:   In this episode of the Ben Greenfield fitness show:  The Five Best Ways To Accelerate Fat Loss, Can Testosterone Be Too High, How To Get In Running Shape Fast, Coffee Enemas 101, 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’s the 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:  Rachel, today is an epic day.

Rachel:  Every day is an epic day that we have a podcast, Ben. (laughs)

Ben:  I know.  It kinda is.  It kinda is.

Rachel:  But why in particular today’s an epic day?

Ben:  Well, I’ll tell you in a moment, but first I want to know what did you have for breakfast this morning?

Rachel:  I am just dosing on Kimera Koffee.

Ben:  Kimera Koffee?  Okay.

Rachel:  Uhmm.

Ben:  Got you.  The reason I asked is because I was just curious if you ate anything that has a nutrition label on it.

Rachel:  Well, Kimera does right?

Ben:  I believe that it does.  And anyways though, the reason that I ask is literally today. The big epic day after years of committees and debates, and panels and retreats, and literature reviews, the FDA actually finalized their new nutritional book guidelines.

Rachel:  Wow, that’s huge!

Ben:  Insert trumpets here.  (sound of trumpet)  I know.  Actually, you know what?  They’re pretty good and I don’t know if…

Rachel:  You’re impressed by the FDA?  (laughs)

Ben:  I’m impressed by the FDA.

Rachel:  Oh wow! 

Ben:  The powers that be, the white colors of the FDA has finally done us right.  So, here’s what they did.  First of all, when you look at the nutrition label, no that I endorse necessarily eating packaged all the time, but let’s just say that you’re branching out beyond simply eating romaine lettuce and turkeys that you shot in your backyard or something like that, maybe you’re not 100% ancestral.  What they have now is, first of all they have added sugars.  So, rather than simply showing carbohydrates, now they’ll show added sugars which is really great because natural sugars are a lot different than added sugars.  So, if you get like a packaged of blueberries, those blueberries are going to have sugars, right?

Rachel:  Right.

Ben:  ‘Cause blueberries are fruit.  They have glucose, and they have fructose, but they also have all sorts of other good things in ‘em like fiber and micronutrients, and anthocyanins and all sorts of antioxidants, but if you look at the nutrition label now at the grocery store, on say, let’s say like dried blueberries, right, those are the sugar from the blueberries but then they’ll show any added sugars that they’ve added in.

Rachel:  Uhm, that’s awesome.

Ben:  Very useful.

Rachel:  Very useful…

Ben:  They’ve got uhm… Okay, here’s a good one.  They’ve got revised serving sizes.  So you know when you buy like, let’s say, you’re being really healthy, alright.  We know if you’re listening to the Ben Greenfield fitness show, you’re not drinking Coke, right?  But let say you’re drinking kombucha, right, and you look at the label on and say kombucha, and it says 40 calories.  And then you take a closer look and in it, that’s 40 calories and…

Rachel:  Per serving…

Ben:  Per serving, and there’s 2 servings in the box.

Rachel:  Right!

Ben:  Who the hell!  Opens up a bottle of kombucha and just drinks half of it and then just…

Rachel:  I know!  (laughs)

Ben:  Stack the other half in the refrigerator for the next day or you know, or Coke or whatever.  So, now they actually have realistic serving sizes.  What someone actually typically consume in a setting, so.

Rachel:  Uhmmm.

Ben:  So, they’ve got that.  That’s good.  They added micronutrients, so they added vitamin D, and they added potassium, which is really good.  They added updated micronutrients as well.  So they’ve added things like the vitamin and the mineral content in milligrams or micrograms.  So now you know a little bit more about the actual micronutrients in the food that you eat.

What else have they… oh! They added calories and also servings per containers.  What we just talked about how sometimes it can be deceptive when you buy it knowing exactly how many servings are in the entire container.  Well now, if you buy let’s say, a bag of chips, it will tell, you know, this bag of chips has, can serve to be 8 servings, so this bag of chips has can serve 4 servings which I think is helpful for people who may be you know, are at the airport and buy a bag of chips.

Rachel:  Right.

Ben:  And get on to the airplane and maybe glance and see that – oh, hey this is actually 8 servings of chips and maybe I shouldn’t eat all of these right before the plane takes off.

Rachel:  (chuckles) Yes!  True!  Just tell me where you put it.

Ben:  And here’s a big one.  They removed calories from fat which sounds kinda bad but the same time, that was a big one that a lot of people look at.  They looked at how many calories from fat that a food contain and avoid that food, if the calories from fat seemed high when you know, as we discussed on the podcast before, really it’s in many cases sugars that are bigger issue when it comes to metabolic disease and all sorts of other nasties in food compared to fats.  So they’ve actually removed the amount of calories derive from fat which I think is important because it’s kind of cause more people to consume hopefully more healthy fats.

Rachel:  Right, definitely.  What about anything around the ‘whole natural flavorings’ thing?

Ben:  Natural flavorings, I do not believe that they have adjusted that at all.  You can still have a food that says that it contains natural flavors, and those natural flavors can as we have mentioned on previous podcast be derived from a beaver’s anus.  So, there you have it.

Rachel:  (laughs) Oh gosh!  Well, that’s good news anyway.

Ben:  Yeah! Good news for the beavers, good news for the FDA.

News Flashes:

Ben:  Rachel, do you ever measure your heart rate variability?

Rachel:  I have before but I don’t routinely do it.  No.

Ben:  Why?

Rachel:  Well, I don’t know.  It’s a good question.

Ben:  You should.

Rachel:  I should.  I know.

Ben:  It’s the one thing that I measure everyday.

Rachel:  I know.  I know.

Ben: HRV…

Rachel:  Yup.

Ben:  So, uhm… in case you didn’t know, this is the part of the Ben Greenfield fitness show where we talk about news flashes.  The latest research, and every single day, if you follow twitter.com/BenGreenfield, and what’s the Facebook URL?

Rachel:  Facebook.com/BGFitness.

Ben:  Yeah.  We post plenty of research on there.  I actually spends typically about an hour every morning pouring through about 30-40 different research publications and articles tryin’ to dig in to what might be interesting for you.

And here’s one on HRV.  They’ve actually done a study in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, and in this study what they did was they took a 150 people from, your neck of the woods, Rachel.  University of Western Sidney, in Australia.

Rachel:  Oh wow!  The Aussies.

Ben:  Yeah! And they measured their heart rate variability and then they ask about their opinions on social issues from a third person perspective which apparently I did not know this, but in research science that particular method of questioning is supposed to be correlated with the ability to engage in what they call wise reasoning.

Rachel:  I did not know that either.

Ben:  And we also might call Solomon like wisdom.  And what they found actually when they measured their heart rate variability or the time interval between heartbeats, right? Which is the measurement of the strength of your nervous system.  They found that a high heart rate variability cause those people to be able to, from a third person perspective make wiser judgments, and quote from the study it says, “Some people may use their cognitive skills to make unwise decisions, to challenge their cognitive abilities for wider judgments, people with greater heart rate variability firstly to overcome their egocentric viewpoint.

Rachel:  (chuckles)

Ben:   I know that’s a mouthful, but basically what it means is that people who have high heart rate variability may have wiser judgment, may make better calls in face of stress, and may actually may able to do things like make political decisions or judgments a little bit more reasonably.

Rachel:  Yeah.  I’m imagining it’s got a lot to do with feeling triggered and having strong biases around social issues like if there’s conversation, if you can kind of remove you know, the social issue of self from like your association, to what with your identity, then it makes a little bit easier.

Ben:  Yeah, or more specifically basically just not having an active sympathetic nervous system or unbalanced sympathetic nervous system that allows you to have like [9:34] ______ reaction to something that comes your way.

Rachel:  Yeah, interesting.

Ben:   So it turns out that focusing on a lot of the stuff that we talked about the previous episodes like the health of your vagus nerve, sleep, de-stressing, like I am right now, diffusing pine essential oil, you know, things that all allow your heart variability to stay really stable throughout the day, that may actually affect your ability to engage in wise judgment.  That’s why I just sound like so chockfull of wisdom right now, Rachel.

Rachel:  Right.  You’ve got a really strong parasympathetic nervous system.

Ben:  It all comes down to heart rate variability.  It’s also I’m sure although perfectly you’re in a few months when voting comes along, voting season comes along, which by the way we completely avoid talking about in the podcast.

Rachel:  That’s probably smart in America.  (chuckles)

Ben:  I never talk politicians…  although I am ehem,  Libertarian, ehem. Okay.

Rachel:  (laughs) I guessed that a long time ago, Ben.

Ben:  Yes, yes.  (chuckles) I own guns, I hunt gold, silver, all about freedom.  Alright so, moving on to the non-Democratic and non-Republican listeners still around.  

Speaking of heart rate variability, there are certain ways that you can increase wisdom and assist with cognitive impairment, and as we mentioned heart rate variability is one, but there was another study that was done at University at California, Los Angeles in which they did a 3 month yoga and meditation course.  And in this case, what they did was 12 weeks of doing just one time a week, a Kundalini Yoga class, and then 20 minutes everyday of meditation, and the specific type of meditation that they did involve chanting and hand movements.  Two things that by the way increase your vagal nerve tone, increase the strength of your parasympathetic nervous system.  Chanting, gurgling, humming, singing, any of these things as well as hand movements.

And they also did light visualization, and that’s basically where you close your eyes and you imagine like your third eye chakra and you see colors, and you’re seeing colors even though your eyes are close so, kinda woo woo, but still two things that I do, like my kids and I were literally in the living room yesterday sitting cross-legged, holding hands, blasting ourselves with 444 Hertz tones from this wholetones CDs that we listen to, and I’m getting the guy who produces these CDs in the podcast.  They’re design to basically like enhance cognitive function, and decrease stress, and their specific, they’re very similar like binaural beats.

Rachel:  Yup.

Ben:  So we play them really loud in the living room when we sit in front of the speakers so the tones just like blast our entire bodies.  And so, what this study looked at was this idea of like meditation along with Kundalini Yoga.  And what they found was a big increase in specifically cognitive performance and blood flow to the brain, and visual spatial memory increases in people who did this 20 minutes of meditation along with this specific forms: yoga, Co-Kundalini Yoga, and it turns out that even compared to like crossword puzzles and computer games, and other forms of memory enhancement training, that 1-2 combo of meditation and yoga vastly improved cognitive function.

Rachel:  And I guess now it’s technically not woo woo because it’s the scientific study.

Ben:  Scientific fact.  Anyways though, so Kundalini now, that’s something that I personally do multiple times a week.  I had a custom Kundalini yoga routine designed for me.  I don’t know, did you listen to the podcast I did with Somer?  

Rachel:  With Somer?  Yes, she’s brilliant, brilliant.

Ben:  Somer Nicole.  She’s very cool.  So, if you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/customyoga, you can have, Somer actually designed a custom Kundalini yoga routine for you, and then also if you wanna know more about like the chanting and like the music that my kids and I are listening to now, just stay tuned.  Pun intended.  Because I’m getting Michael Tyrrell who wrote the entire book about a wholetones and [13:50] ______ CDs, I’m getting him on the show very soon.  So…

Rachel:  Hmm, very exciting.

Ben:  There, fun news flash.  So, kinda taking a completely different direction.  I want to talk a little bit about water.  So, do you use a water filter by the way or do you drink special water, Rachel?

Rachel:  I don’t know, the only filter we use is one of those jug, filters.  What are they called?

Ben:  Uhmmm.

Rachel:  Brita.  Brita Water Filter.

Ben:  Oh, Brita water filter.  

Rachel:  Yeah.

Ben:  Yeah. Yeah.

Rachel:  You’re like, those are terrible, right? What are you doing?

Ben:  No, Brita water filters are okay.  There’s more that you can do when it comes to water though.  There’s surely more that you can do.  For example, there was a really interesting article recently that I read about, Hunza Water.

So, Hunza Water is based on studies that have been done on isolated societies such as the Hunza warrior tribe population.  And the type of water that they drink, and in many cases they found that these folks are drinking water that a) has a lot of live minerals in it, and b) gets exposed to a lot of sunlight.  And so, this particular article which I link to in the show notes talks about how to make your own Hunza Water.  And it’s kind of a cool little recipe.  So, what they use is a Himalayan pink rock salt in this Hunza water recipe, and then they take that rock salt and expose it to sunlight to activate the, all the minerals that are in Himalayan rock salt ‘cause the idea is you want water that has high amount of vibration in it, that you know, that such as water that would be when it travels down glaciers or mountain sides in the sunlight, and stuff like that.

So, the way that this works is you take water and you fill a sterilized, clear glass container with the highest quality drinking water you can find.  You put that glass container in a sunny window for a full day.  So it’s getting exposed to a bunch of sunlight, and while it’s in there, you also take a bunch of Himalayan pink crystals, and you can buy this on Amazon, and you take this Himalayan pink crystals and you put them in another glass jar, and you take this jar, and you take the sun water that you’ve had basically exposed to the sun for a full day, and you pour it over this Himalayan salt, this Himalayan salt crystals, and then you basically drink that.  And they call it Hunza Water.

Rachel:  Very cool.  I…

Ben:  This is basically water with a really, really high vibrational charge.

Rachel:  Hmm, have you tried it before?

Ben:  I haven’t.  It’s on my list to try, and I’m putting it on the show notes for people who wanna try this recipe, but this is actually not woo woo.  You know, the bodies are battery and the idea is that this research at the University of Washington, I’ve had them on the podcast, his name is Dr. Gerald Pollack, and he goes into how water can vibrate at specific frequencies and when it’s vibrating at specific frequencies, it creates what’s called an exclusion zone which allows for bonding between water molecules that is based off of electrical charge that is not just hydrogen bonding, but causes it a serious of this crystalline-like [17:11] ______ structures in the water, and when that happens, more water is able to move into cells.

And so, when you exposed the water to sunlight, and then you pour the water over minerals after it’s been exposed to sunlight, you get water that has very similar vibrational qualities as the type of water you’d get say if you’re on a Himalayan mountain top, like getting it from a spring as it tumbled over the rocks.  So…

Rachel:  Two questions…

Ben:  So, it’s a way to hydrate yourself much more completely.

Rachel:  Is rainwater supposed to be like the beyond and all of water?  Is it particularly good for you?

Ben:  Rainwater?

Rachel:  Yeah, like if you would just like to harvest rain water directly and drink that.

Ben:  Uhm, it depends.  If I was in LA, I wouldn’t go near rainwater.

Rachel:  Really?

Ben:  Well no, ‘cause it’s, it goes through the smog.  It’s full of a bunch of pollutions.  So, not rainwater but spring water.  And they’re actually, you can go to like findaspring.com, and there are other companies, and my friend Daniel Vitalis has a podcast called The Rewilding Podcast, and he recently interviewed someone who is now setting up shop in different big cities, LA being one of the most notable by the way, and delivering spring water to your home.  And spring water is one really, really good way to get exposed to water that has this really good vibrational qualities.  In other ways, you can biohack this right like I get my water from a well outside my house, but then after the water goes into my house, it passes through a filter that’s basically like a series of glass beads.  It’s a structured water filter.  It’s called structured water, and when it does that, it gets a lot of these vibration.  But what I’m not doing is pouring it over these Himalayan rock salts or letting it sit out in the sunshine, so.

Rachel:  Wow!  Next level.

Ben:  Yeah, so you need to two glass jars, you need some of these chunks of Himalayan pink salt which you can find in grocery stores like $3 each.  And then, just some high quality drinking water, and you let the one water sit in the sun, once it set in the sun for a day, you dump it over the Himalayan rock chunks and you have yourself Hunza water.  So check it out.

Rachel:  Sounds delicious!

Ben:  And then one other note about water.  There’s a really interesting article on npr.org, and by the way, I’ll link to all of these articles and research over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/353, and this article is about Gladiator Gatorade.  And they go into what Gladiators, the sport stars of the Roman empire may have had for their post workout recovery drinks, and what they may have guzzled is what they found is that they had this drink made from the ashes of charred plants.  The ashes of charred plants.

What they found was that when they burnt plants, they use the ashes of charred plants in water, there’s a bunch of minerals and high amount of alkalinity in that particular water, and a ton of calcium in particular, in addition to manganese, and copper and iron, and many other trace minerals that we can get when we say re-mineralized water or take traced liquid minerals or whatever, but they were actually burning up plants and using the ash from those plants, then adding them to water for their post-workout recovery drinks, these Gladiators and this was considered to be like their power juice.

Rachel:  That’s so fascinating to me ‘cause I wouldn’t have imagined that ash would have nothing left if it was burn to crisp like that.

Ben:  Yeah, they called that a plant ash beverage.  And I haven’t been able to hunt down an actual recipe for how to make your own plant-ash beverage, but I don’t know, maybe Gatorade has suppress all the recipes out there so they don’t go out of business.  But if you’re listening in, and you know how to make this Gladiator Gatorade with plant-ash, please do let us know the recipe ‘cause this is something I would actually try.  I could see myself going out finding some plants, burning them and figuring out how to drink like or water made from plant ashes because I’m all about turning myself into a Gladiator, so.

Oh and by the way, the Hopi Indian tribe by the way, they found that they use burned plant leaves and burned peapods to prepare things like bread and dumplings, and also to add to their water, again for the calcium and manganese, and copper and iron, all that kind of stuff, so.

Rachel:  So it’s the new superfood?

Ben:  It could be a new superfood, could be a way to die from copper and iron overdose, not quite sure but either way, I thought it was notable and I’ll put the link in the show notes over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/353, for those of you who want to dig in to the goodness that is plant ash.          

Special Announcements:

Ben:  Rachel, do you where I’m headed this weekend?

Rachel:  Ahhh, I don’t.

Ben:  You would if you went to bengreenfieldfitness.com/calendar.

Rachel:  Oh wow!

Ben:  The brand new calendar.

Rachel:  All your public information now live!

Ben:  Yeah, so for those of you listening in, I will be down at the Dallas Spartan race.  Be racing at the Dallas Spartan race on Saturday, and taking the Spartan SGX coaching course down there which is basically allows you to become a certified Spartan coach, and I’ll be testing out the special course that Spartan is planning on proposing to the Olympic committee to make Spartan like an official Olympic committee sport, and I’m one of 10 athletes who are going to test out the Olympics course that they want to make as part of the Olympics…

Rachel:  How exciting!

Ben:  Yeah!  So, oh! And by the way, speaking of Spartan, the TV show went live.

Rachel:  Yes!  Yey!  And you and Jessa are featured on the 20^th. 

Ben:  Yes, so the reality TV show Spartan, which is actually I watched it yesterday, I’m in bed at 10pm and the show aired at 10pm, so I watched it at Hulu the next day.  It’s actually a pretty dang entertaining show, and it’s really weird to watch a TV knowing all the behind the scene stuff and you know, I know who won and everything like that, but it’s actually for, if you’re listening in, go to Hulu or go to NBC and check out The Spartan Team Challenge.  It’s actually made the same people who did American Ninja Warrior, I’m on it, my wife is on it, we’ve got a whole team, we’re called Team Sashquats, and so, what do you say Rachel?  It’s the 20^th that are team…

Rachel:  The 20^th, yup.  That’s when you guys are featured.

Ben:  Okay.  So, check it out.  They came out to my house and shot a bunch of footage.  They had me carrying a big heavy cag through the snow ‘cause everybody knows that’s how I train, carrying cags  through the snow.

Rachel:  And they got shots of Jessa’s incredible abs.

Ben:  Uhm, that’s right.  So, check that out, and then from Dallas I would be headed to LA.  I’m going to be recording a podcast with Tai Lopez, with Dr. Drew, Josh Wolf the comedian, I’ll be going and filming a video workout with Laird Hamilton and Gabby, we’re gonna do one of those underwater crazy underwater training workouts, and then I’ll be recording a podcast with Rick Rubin, and Neil Strauss, and then also… 

Rachel:  Wow!

Ben:  Vinnie Tortorich, and then finally Andrew Hill, we’re gonna do a live video podcast of an acute EEG brain analysis of yours truly, and then I’ll be flying back to Spokane after that.  So if you’re on the Dallas area or the LA area, you’ll definitely want to stay tuned.  So we’ve got plenty of goodies comin’ up there, so, and a busy travel time for me.

Rachel:  Yes.

Ben:  But I also wanted to let you know about a few other things.  So first of all, this podcast is brought to you by one of the things that I use to suck inflammation on my body.  So, I have this 1-2-3 combo if I have an injured area like a knee injury or a foot injury or anything like that.  What you’ll do and this will be quite useful knowledge for you, Rachel should you ever injure anything.  Step 1, is you take some kind of oil like magnesium oil or arnica oil or icy hot or anything that would be considered like one of these oil that helped muscle to fight inflammation or help to calm down inflammation on muscle.

Rachel:  Got it.  Oil.

Ben:  The next thing that you do is you take electrodes, and I use electrodes from MarcPro, so MarcPro makes this electrostimulation devices, and while you can get EMS or electrostimulation devices just about anywhere including Amazon, MarcPro has patented what’s called a square way form.  What that means is that when you attached the electrodes to your muscles, it gradually recruits the muscles from slow twitched muscle fibers going all the way up to the fast twitched muscle fibers in a manner that does not cause muscle fiber damage.

So, it’s specifically designed to be electrical muscle stimulation for recovery, okay?  So, what do is I surround the area that hurts with the MarcPro electrodes, so there’s 4 electrodes who basically create an X pattern around the area that hurts.  So, you’ve got the oil, you’ve got the electrodes, and I actually take duck tape or electrical tape or  some other form of tape because electrodes don’t stick to your body very well, and you got the oil on the skin, and I’ll tape the electrodes over the oil.  I learned this by the way from Jeff Spencer who use to get Tour De France cyclists to bounce back as quickly as possible without illegal performance enhancing drugs.  And then what you do is over the electrodes you wrap ice so you can really jack up the electricity as high as possible.  So you’ll take like frozen peas or frozen corn or something that you can really mold around the muscle and you ace bandage that over the electrodes, and that’s it.  That’s the 1-2-3 combo.

Rachel:  Wow!

Ben:  So you’ve got oil, plus electrodes plus ice.

Rachel:  And then how long will the recovery be?

Ben:  If you do this for 15 to 20 minutes, 1 or 2 times a day, you can literally, I mean, I don’t have the data, there’s no research data on this.  It’s one of my underground recovery techniques, but you can get rid of extreme soreness or an injury within literally like 3 to 7 days.  Something I’d normally take a month to recover.

Rachel:  Wow!

Ben:  So it vastly speeds recovery.  Anyways, MarcPro is giving all of our listeners a discount code.  So you go to marcpro.com, that’s m-a-r-c pro dot com, and you use promo code ‘Ben’ and that gets you 5% off of the MarcPro electrical stimulation device, so.

Rachel:  Cool!

Ben:  Highly recommend you have one hanging around even if you don’t get injured, it’s fun for parties.  So, marcpro.com promo code ‘Ben’.

Also, I’ve got a special Father’s Day announcement for you Father’s out there, and there’s a saying that goes like this: “Being a great Father is like shaving.  No matter how good you shave today, you have to do it again tomorrow.”  Unless you’re a Ben Greenfield in which case you still have the face of a 7-year old boy and you only need to shave once per month.

Rachel:  Once per month.  Wow!

Ben:  You know what, my hair does not grow fast.  I was on that Grand Canyon rafting trip that your husband Jacob was also on, by the way, and I don’t think it was Jacob, that was somebody, the 5 days into the trip they commented about how nice my face looked and how I was shaving on the trip.  And I hadn’t shaved in 5 days.

Rachel:  Did everybody else looked like Jesus?

Ben:  Yeah, everybody looks like Jesus except me.

Rachel: (laughs)

Ben: And I, you know, I’m one of those guys who you know, everyone’s know have to pluck a chest hair.  I don’t know how that works, but I also have the gene for making me never go bald.  I’ve done genetic testing and I’m not gonna go bald.  So I have…

Rachel:  It’s like the perfect mix for men right there.

Ben:  All my hair is on my head and my crotch basically.  Not on my face, not on my chest, just 2 places.  Anyways though, so we digress.  This podcast is brought to you by Harry’s, and Harry’s actually has the perfect Father’s Day gift.  They have this starter set called The Truman, and the Truman gives you the Harry’s moisturizing shave cream which is really good.  It’s uh, no animals were killed making it, it doesn’t have parabens or phthalates or anything in it that’s gonna give man-boobs and it’s got aloe vera in it, so it’s very, very moisturizing and nourishing to the face.

And then you get 3 of the 5 blade German-engineered razors from Harry’s, and then you get the razor handle.  So you’ll get all of that for 15 bucks but, you get $5 off that if you use promo code ‘Ben’.  So go to harrys.com, h-a-r-r-y-s dot com, and you use promo code ‘Ben’ that gives you $5 off and if you’re listening in and you have a father or you have a husband… 

Rachel:  Or you have a wife… 

Ben:  Or you have a wife, or you have hair, then you should order one.  So, these blades are pretty much the only blade that I use.  Super sharp, super close, comfortable shave, the more striking shave cream smells, amaze bombs, and you can go to harrys.com.  So harrys.com, use discount code ‘Ben’.

And then finally I’ve got this green juice.  I’m actually holding the jar in my hands.  I don’t know if you’ve ever read the label of the Organifi Green Juice but they’re sponsor of the show.  Before I read this label, you can go to Organifi.com, and use discount code ‘Ben’ to get 20% off this stuff.  But, are you ready (drumroll please) for the fullness of ingredients from the organifi green juice. 

Rachel:  Darararararara! 

Ben:  Okay, here we go, so it has wheatgrass, organic wheatgrass powder, organic horseradish tree leaf, organic spirulina, organic chlorella, organic match green tea, organic coconut water powder, organic ashwagandha, organic red beet, and organic turmeric.  And then when you look at listed other flavors, it’s just basically a little bit of organic rice brand, natural lemon flavor, natural orange flavor, natural mint flavor, and then they use a little bit of luo han guo which is also known as monk fruit which is a very, very like low or it’s actually a negative glycemic index sweetener. 

Rachel:  Wooow, that is huge!  Basically everything you need.

Ben:  It’s everything you need.  As a matter of fact, what I did this morning ‘cause I had smoothie this morning, all we had in the refrigerator for greens this morning was lettuce, and lettuce is not necessarily the most nutrient-dense of plants.  As a matter of fact, even though we got our lettuce from the garden, if you get your lettuce from the grocery store, they’re pretty much bread, much of the nutrition out of lettuce.  Meaning that lettuce is basically extremely low in phytonutrients, it’s extremely low in minerals, it’s almost like a dead vegetable.  It does have fiber though, it does have some water content there.

There are some little things that it has them, but what I do is when I make a smoothie like that that has a vegetable that’s not very nutrient-dense in it is, I add a couple of scoops of this greens powder, so I took all the lettuce ‘cause I want to do something.  I didn’t want to throw out the lettuce, but I made it super nutrient-dense by adding a bunch of greens to it.  So this is a good way to turn lettuce into kale basically.

You take your lettuce, you make your smoothie, but then you add these green powders to it.  So it’s called Organifi.

Rachel:  Yeah, I love this stuff.  It’s the only greens powder that I use.

Ben:  The only!  So you can get it at Organifi.com, and use discount code there to save 20%, and there are plenty of other things going on from the Seal Fit Obstacle Training Course at my house, The Ancestral Health Symposium in Boulder, Colorado, the upcoming Biohacker’s Summit in Helsinki, Finland, the upcoming Digital Detox Runga in Costa Rica that we just talked about with Joe DiStefano on Saturday’s podcast, you can find all of that and oh so much more, if you go to the show notes.  Go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/353, I’ll put a link in the shows notes to all of that, and again if you’re near Dallas or LA, stay tuned to twitter.com/BenGreenfield, and our Facebook page and we’ll post updates as I globetrotter round California.

Listener Q & A:

Joshua:  Hi Ben, this is Joshua.  Love your podcast, love your website.  My question is, I just got my blood work back, everything looks really good except for my testosterone was at 1100 (chuckles) which I know is ridiculously high.  So it scares me, any thoughts I don’t know I’m gonna go to see my doctor here in about a week but I just don’t trust them the, have a real answer to what is going on.  So, I know it’s good to a high testosterone. But 1100 I know is a little bit over the top.  So, love your feedback. Thanks a lot! 

Ben:  Poor, poor, Joshua.  All the guys are singing right now absolutely hate Joshua. 

Rachel:  Right, so much testosterone, what are you gonna do? 

Ben:  So much testosterone.  What do I do with all these testosterone? 

Rachel:  (laughs) 

Ben:  Now, seriously though, there are some definite considerations here.  If your testosterone is redonkulously high as Joshua says, and 1100 is pretty high.  Like to put this in context, mine floats between about 500 and 700, depending on when I test. 

Rachel:  Wow. 

Ben:  When I used to race Ironman triathlons, it was between about 300 and 400.  Most guys are generally like high is considered to be like 800 plus, 1100 plus is typically what you’d see if somebody was taking testosterone, like a testosterone patch or a cream or something like that. 

Rachel:  Okay. 

Ben:  Which it doesn’t sound like Joshua is doing.  So, can you have too much testosterone?  Is too much testosterone a big deal?  Well, first of all, yes.  High total testosterone which is what we’re talking about with Josh, that can be an issue.  So, one of the things that you’ll tend to see with high total testosterone is aromatization of that testosterone.  Meaning that, much of the over abundant hormone can get converted into estrogens which can cause things like man-boobs, getting weepy during chickflix, increase risk of cancer, the latter being probably being the most serious.

And you can certainly get on what is called an aromatase inhibitor.  So there are compounds like chrysin, c-h-r-y-s-i-n or myomin, m-y-o-m-i-n.  These are potent aromatase inhibitors that can keep that total testosterone from getting aromatize into estrogens, but ultimately this is an uphill battle that a lot of people who are in a patch or cream, or lotion or testosterone injection have to face is this over aromatization in the issue with testosterone getting converted into estrogens.  

Rachel:  Right. 

Ben:  Now, there is a way that you can test and you can see whether or not your total testosterone is getting converted into estrogens.  It would be a very, very simple panel would be like an estrodial evaluation.  There is a sex hormone balance test, I actually have this test as one of the available lab test over at greenfieldfitnesssystems.com, ‘cause I just basically list a lot of the test that I tend to frequently recommend over there.  And this test is called a sex hormone balance test.  And what it looks at is not just what your total testosterone looks like but where that total testosterone is going.  So, looks at total testosterone, free-testosterone, estrogens like estrodial, DHEA, cortisol, and something called sex hormone binding globulin or SHBG.

So, I would recommend number 1) if your testosterone is really high, you test and see if much of it is getting converted into estrogens, and if so, you may want to consider using one of these aromatase inhibitors.  So you don’t turn into a woman.  So that’s one.  Number 2) would that very, very high amounts of total testosterone can also cause oily skin and acne, and these can be brought on if a lot of that testosterone is getting converted into DHT or dihydrotestosterone.  Now, in terms of oily skin and acne, what I found is that people who have high total testosterone, or who are doing a lot of like testosterone creams or patches or ejections or lotions, if they have to deal with oily akin and acne, one of the tricks to keep oily skin and acne at bay is to keep levels of what is called insulin and insulin-like growth factor low.  And the best way to do that is to be very careful with wheat and dairy.  Those are two of the most insulinegenic foods that you could be eating.  Whey peotein isolate is pretty high up there as well.

So, you clean up your diet when it comes to wheat, dairy, whey protein isolate, and this can really assist with like the oily skin and the acne, that high levels of testosterone can create, so you kinda clean up the diet a little bit but you should note also that this DHT, this dihydrotestosterone, it’s something that a lot of guys who begin to get bald, this high levels of DHT is what can cause you to begin to get bald like I freak out when that happens, but if you try to simply lower DHT like by taking say like propecia or something design to cause you to increase hair growth, propecia for example decreases DHT, and DHT is an extremely anabolic and drive enhancing form of testosterone.

So when guys begin to be bald if they’ve got lifestyle in order and stress and sleep is good, and their nutrient density is good, and the baldness just appears to be from high levels of DHT, I tell ‘em – hey you know what? Embrace the baldness ‘cause it means that you’ve got really high drive and really high levels of DHT, and the only thing you wanna bear in mind is that you wanna control insulin and insulin-like growth factor by doing things like controlling wheat and dairy intake, whey protein isolate, intermittent fasting can help as well like going a longer periods of time between meals to improve insulin sensitivity, but that’s another issue with very, very, very high testosterone can be this oily skin and acne, but come at that from a standpoint of not decreasing testosterone but rather by going after insulin and insulin like growth factor.

Rachel:  So why would one not come at this in terms of decreasing testosterone, if testosterone is so high?

Ben:  Well, the thing is high testosterone is not necessarily an issue.  It would be making sure that we control some of the downstream byproducts that that high testosterone can create.  Like the estrogen that I talked about, like the DHT that I just talked about, or specifically like the insulin and the insulin growth factor.  Another issue is prostate cancer and prostate cancer or PSA can tend to increase this prostate specific antigen which is a risk factor for prostate cancer.  It tends to sometimes correlate with very, very high levels of testosterone.  And so, one of the things that can control this prostate specific antigen is lycopene.

And you know, I’ve personally done genetic testing, I personally have higher than normal levels of risk factors for prostate cancer, so I go out of my way every day to eat fresh cherry tomatoes or grape tomatoes, or like this nice ripe on the vine tomatoes.  Tomatoes you always wanna go organic, any vegetable or fruit of which you’d eat the skin, you always wanna go organic.  So I don’t necessarily go out of my way to buy organic bananas, or avocados ‘cause they have a nice thick skin on them.  But for tomatoes, or cucumbers or peaches or anything that you’d eat the skin of, I go organic and when it comes to prostate cancer, trying to get a good serving of organic tomatoes each day.  That’s another one that can help out of your very, very high total testosterone.  So, the testosterone tomatoes link…

Another one would be when you have a high amount of total testosterone, it can also cause an increase in red blood cell mass, and hemoglobin levels.  And high, high amounts of red blood cell counts can increase your chance of heart attacks or strokes or clotting.  And one of the best things that you can do to make sure that you decrease blood thickness is a) fish oil, so I’ll be taking about 4-6 grams of a good fish oil each day to make sure that your blood is staying thin.  That’s assuming you’re not on some kind of a blood clotting medication like Warfarin, right? You should or you need to be careful with fish oil if you’re on a blood clotting medication.  But the other thing I do is test your iron levels.  And if you have very, very high levels of iron which again can sometimes go hand in hand with high levels of testosterone, consider giving blood or blood donating or at least not taking iron supplements.  So just bear in mind that those two things can go hand in hand: thick blood, high levels of iron, and high total testosterone.

Rachel:  You know, resting…

Ben:  So that’s another.  And then finally, I’ve got one more for you, and that would be that in many cases you’ll find that guys have really high total testosterone, but they’ve got low drive and they have low motivation of workout, and low aggressiveness, and low amounts of a lot of the things that you would expect guys with high total testosterone to have high amounts of, and that is because the total testosterone is not actually getting converted into free testosterone.

Now, free testosterone is the bioactive form of testosterone.  So, your brain can make a bunch of luteinizing hormone which is called LH, and that’s the signal for your testes to dump out a bunch of total testosterone, but in many cases that total testosterone doesn’t converted into free-T and that is because you have high levels of something called sex hormone binding globulin.  That’s another thing that sex hormone balance test that I mentioned will test for.  High levels of sex from a binding globulin tend to be cause by hypercortisolism – high levels of cortisol.  The other thing that can cause high levels of HSPG is calorie depletion, just a consistent low level of calories because for some reason nature doesn’t want us to make babies when we’re stressed out and we don’t have much food around.

Rachel:  Food… right, oh!

Ben:  Go figure.  So, the idea here is that you should test your free testosterone.  You should see if that total T is making us getting converted into free testosterone, if it’s not, well, you typically notice is that HSPG will be high, and then you wanna look at things like stress, sleep, too much chronic cardio, too much calorie depletion, and what I found is that in guys who have good amounts of total testosterone, but low amounts of free testosterone, that can be fix by doing things like calorie refeeds one or two times a week where you have that day where you just eating as many calories as your body needs to sustain a nice, normal, healthy metabolism.  Limiting the amount of like chronic long term cardio that you do.  Making sure that you limit stress, you know, decrease salivary cortisol using things like the meditation and the yoga that we talked about using their specific herbs that have clinically been shown to lower salivary cortisol and lower plasma cortisol.  Probably the three of the top ones are phosphatidylserine, supplementation, the use of lavender oil, like diffusing lavender oil or putting lavender oil on your upper lips you know, before you go to sleep at night.  And then holy basil which is like an herb, it’s like, that you can get in capsule form or in tea form, all three of those have been shown to decrease cortisol, when you decrease cortisol, in many cases you also decrease this sex hormone binding globulin.

So, lots of little things to look into if your total testosterone is high but ultimately this would be a consideration for a) Joshua or b) guys who are doing like testosterone creams or patches or lotions or injections which frankly a shockingly high number of guys actually do, and it seems these days.

Rachel:  Why do they do that?  Why do they get testosterone injection?

Ben:  Uh, in most cases, it’s an easy way out.  In my opinion, you should be able to maintain good normal levels of high testosterone with adequate sleep, frequent sex, good high amounts of fat soluble vitamins, good amounts of magnesium and zinc, lower in cortisol, lower in sex hormone binding globulin, but frankly you know, a lot of guys wanna live a stressed out hard charging lifestyle, eat crappy foods and then just cover that up with testosterone injections and creams and lotions, and frankly I’ve worked with a lot of guys who’ve been on those that we’ve gradually got an off of them, and on to just natural amounts of normal testosterone productions.  So I’m just, I’m not a fan of testosterone therapy also because it put you on a state of constant anabolic growth.  It puts you on a state of constant cellular growth and that can be synonymous with cancer, and so anytime you have a high amount of undifferentiated cell growth, you’re looking at the potential for cancer.  And so I think that is almost like in a way pushing the fast forward button on life if you’re not be careful, so.  Anyways, go on natural dudes.

Rachel:  So sex hormone balance test is best place for Joshua to start.

Ben:  Yeah, I’ll put a link to that in the show notes at bengreenfieldfitness.com/353, we have a sex hormone balance test, and then if you’re listening in, you have more questions about this stuff, of course, leave them in the comments over in the podcast show notes and we’ll be happy to help such as straight and ensure that you don’t get man-boobs, go bald, acne, anything else that we just talked about.  So, there you go.

Yvonne:  Hello!  I have a friend who does regular coffee enemas.  He cannot sleep at night.  Is there a relationship between the coffee enemas and his inability to sleep?  Should he change the frequency of his enemas as he enjoys them so much, as they give him energy?  However, the last couple times he claims that he didn’t get that energy boost.  Please give me your advice.

Ben:  Rachel, I’m gonna put you on the spot.

Rachel:  Go Ben, do it.  You know I love it.

Ben:  Have you ever done an enema?

Rachel:  I haven’t.  No, we didn’t talk about this a little bit last week.

Ben:  You’re missing on life.

Rachel:  Yeah.

Ben:  Well, here’s the deal.  A lot of people cringe when it comes to enemas.  I know a lot of people’s colons are just quivering with curiosity right now.

Rachel:  (laughs)

Ben:  Maybe you have not done an enema but coffee enemas aren’t like this new underground biohacking method, and they’ve actually been using an herbal medicine and folk medicine, and shamanic healing for literally thousands of years.  So, there’s for example in the Dead Sea Scrolls, they talked about the use of enemas as way to clean up the unclean and evil smelling things of Satan as they described in the Dead Sea Scrolls.  And evil smelling things of Satan does indeed actually described by no many peoples’ bathroom episodes, but there’s more to coffee enemas than just getting rid of bad smells, and they were actually until the 80s, coffee enemas were in the Mirk Manual which was the handbook that was used by physicians all over the world, and they just gradually fell out of favor, and for some reason became some of people’s scoff at as woo woo medicine but there is in fact a lot of cool things that happened when you do a coffee enema.

 Rachel:  I would love to hear them!

Ben:  Now, before I jump in I can tell you that I personally do a coffee enema twice a month.  And I feel amazing afterwards.  I mean, it’s something I’ve been doing for a year and a half, it completely cleans you out, and it causes a lot of kinda cool things happen.

Now, the reason that I started doing this in the first place was I did a metal detox episode with Dr. David Minkoff, and we talked about how we’re surrounded by environmental levels of toxic compounds like lead, and mercury and cadmium and arcenic, and nickel and uranium and radiation, and all of these different chemicals that are allowed in foods and are found in fruits and vegetables, and other things as pesticides, and herbicides get sprayed on, and are found in prescription and over the counter drugs that you may not take but that still wind up in the water that you’re drinking if you’re not filtering your water really, really well, and these drug residues can just hang around in the body for decade.  These metals can hang around in the body for decades.  So, one of the things that a coffee enema can do is it can help to clean out some of these metals.  Very similar to like heavy amounts of sweating in infrared sauna for example.  That’ll be another way that you can do this type of thing.

Rachel:  So they live in the colon when they stay in the body.  Is that right?

Ben:  Among other places, toxins and pollutants tend to hang around in the large intestine.  So, stringency is one thing that a coffee enema can do, and all stringency refers to that peeling of the top layer of skin or the mucous membrane.  And I know this is making a lot of people probably sick to their stomach to think about, but an enema basically cleans the surface layer of the mucous membrane of the colon.  So…

Rachel:  Does that hurt?  That sounds painful.

Ben:  No, it doesn’t hurt at all unless you were to say put for chacha hot sauce in your coffee enema, or something else like that.  But no, it doesn’t hurt at all.  You don’t want to put, no just go with straight up coffee.  There are other forms of enemas that people do like milk for probiotics, like raw milk and stuff like that, but there’s a few other reasons that you would want to use coffee and I’ll get to that in a second.

But an enema will also kinda mechanically wash out the colon.  So if you struggle with constipation, if you got like pocket or diverticula in your colon which are a little expansions or dilations in a wall of the colon, it can clean out things like food particles and bacteria, and even parasitic organisms like worms, and yeast, and things that tend to live in the colon.  They’re antioxidant effects, so coffee has a lot of antioxidant chemicals that prevent oxidation, and you can basically in the same way that people would use ozonated water is another thing that a lot of people would use for an enema.  And this type of oxidation or cleansing effect can also be a sheave in something that’s high in antioxidants like coffee for example.  It can help with digestion and this is because coffee specifically when put up the butt causes an increase in bioflow, causes an increase in bowel production by the gallbladder.  There is an improvement in fat digestion when you’re eating later on in a day, and it helps also in what’s called peristalsis, so movement of food stuff through the digestive tract.  So if you struggle with sluggish digestion or you struggle with constipation, doing a coffee enema a couple of times a month can help tremendously with just keeping things flowing.

So, it helps to clean you out if you’re one of those people who tends to struggle with like sluggish digestion.  Glutathione, so glutathione is a major detoxification system that catalizes the binding of toxins from the bloodstream, and what glutathione does is it binds these toxins to what’s called the sulfhydryl group of the antioxidant glutathione, and coffee enema has been shown to significantly enhance the amount of endogenous glutathione that you produced which helps to remove many toxins from the blood and from the liver.  So that’s another cool thing about it.

Rachel:  And that’s coffee specifically not enemas in general.

Ben:  That is coffee specifically.  Then there’s caffeine.  So, caffeine as we know is, it’s a little bit of essential nervous system stimulant but it’s also a vasodilator, and it causes dilation of what are called bile ducts, and when you dilate the bile ducts, this again can improve digestion during the day, and it can also cause fickle matter to move much more quickly through the digestion tract and again speed up digestion.  So you get that 1-2 combo of dilation of bile ducts and stimulation of the central nervous system.

Coffee has selenium and zinc and other minerals in it and those can actually get absorbed through the rectum. You know, as we know with like suppository medications, many things can be delivered pretty significantly through the rectum in terms of drug delivery.  There are even, this is gonna be a complete rabbit hole, but I don’t know if you’re familiar with like THC or CBD capsules, Rachel, or if you’ve or…

Rachel:  Yes I am.

Ben:  So you can actually enhance the delivery of those to the endocannabinoid system  thru by doing a rectal administration of a THC or a CBD capsule.  And, earmuffs on the kids please, I will pause for a moment so that the parents can put the earmuffs on the children.  Pre-sex a THC capsule that you would normally swallow, if you put it up your butt instead, it basically is like a high for your crotch and makes sex absolutely amazing.  It’s just a little tip there.

Rachel:  Wow!  Now that is a super biohack.

Ben:  Get your hands on a THC capsule if it’s legal or where you live and try that as a bit of a suppository.  Anyways, so earmuffs back off kids, back to coffee enemas.  A few other things that they can do is they can assist the lymphatic system.  There’s something called the lymphatic drainage that occurs in Peyer's patches which are certain areas in the small intestine that are lymph glands, and a coffee enema improves the lymphatic drainage.  So it assist with your immune system health.  It can also help quite a bit with hydration and one of the reasons for that is that many people are dehydrated, and in many cases that’s due to not drinking enough water or drinking incorrect types of water or ingesting things that can tend to dehydrate you.  You know, like alcohol and sodium-rich packaged foods and stuff like that.  And when you do a coffee, you’re actually putting about anywhere from 1 to 2 liters of fluid up your butt.  Much of that is getting absorbed and actually causing you to become more hydrated ironically, you think that coffee would dehydrate you but this can actually hydrate you.

The list of benefits go on and on with it comes to coffee.  And I’ve written actually an entire article on how to do a coffee enema, what type of coffee to use, and by the way, a medium or a dark roasted is best because it’s gonna be higher in vitamin E, and in glutathione, and in a lot of the antioxidants, organically grown coffee is best ‘cause you don’t want pesticides up your butt, coffee grown in high climate would be best, and by the way, I’ve never done an enema with Kimera Koffee which you mentioned, Rachel, which has like the nootropics infused to it, in it like DMEA and theanine, and stuff like that, but…

Rachel:  What do you think would happen?

Ben:  I would imagine you would probably spend a few dials in your brain by doing something like that.

Rachel:  Uhmmm, I need to try it.

Ben:  To try it out and reports…  If the folks at Kimera Koffee are listening in, (chuckles) prepare for…

Rachel:  (chuckles) I wanna try your coffee in my bum.

Ben:  … that to wind up on Instagram somewhere.  Anyways though, so I have the full instructions you want like a stainless steel enema bucket, and it’s very simple.  You lay on your left side, you put the coffee in, you let it sit for about 20 minutes, and then…

Rachel:  Why on my left side?

Ben:  That’s just basically allows the coffee the way that your large intestine travels to your body to make its way into the upper portion of the large intestine a little bit better.

Rachel:  See, I see.

Ben:  So you put all in there, probably after a bowel movement, you hold it all in for about 20 minutes and then you just basically go to the bathroom, and get the improvement in digestion, you get improve circulation, you get the reduction in high blood pressure, improved liver and gallbladder function, the anti-inflammatory properties, the anti-viral properties, cleaning out yeast and fungus and bacteria, so huge fan.

And again, I will put a link in the show notes to my complete comprehensive instructions for how to do a coffee enema, but to answer Yvonne’s question, you do absorbed lots of caffeine when you do a coffee enema.  You will feel as though you have had a cup of coffee and if you’re doing regular coffee enemas, and you can’t sleep at night, you are probably a) a… if these coffee enemas that you’re doing in the morning, you’re probably a slow caffeine metabolizer.  Meaning that coffee can stick around in your bloodstream for a really long period of time or caffeine specifically.  So, I would consider doing something like a coffee enema early in the morning as early as possible like right when you get up.  Don’t wait until the afternoon or the evening, b) you could also look into using something like a Swish water processed decaf coffee, and Swish water process just means that chemicals aren’t use for the decaffeination of the bean.  The only issue with that is you won’t get a lot of the, the liver and gallbladder stimulating effects, a lot of the dilation etcetera that occurs when you use caffeinated coffee for something like an enema.

So, I would recommend just moving it to early in the morning and if it’s still keeping you awake at night, etcetera, you could also consider just doing an enema with something.  There’s a lot of different things that you can use for enemas, you know, things like ozonated water, things like probiotic-infused coconut water which is another way that you can really help out with the flora balance in the large intestine.  That would involve like breaking open probiotic capsules, fermenting them in coconut water on your counter top overnight, and then using that as an enema.  That’s another common one that people will do though, they like breakup a probiotic capsules and shoot those up the butt.  So, a lot of ways you could do.

Rachel:  Can you do too many coffee enemas? Is there a sort of certain frequency that’s best?

Ben:   Uhmm, depends on how much of a social life you want and how much time you wanna spend on the bathroom laying on your left side with the bucket of coffee draining into your anus.

Rachel:  So daily would be a bad thing.

Ben:  You could probably do it daily, I mean, some of the stuff kinda unresearched, you know, N=1, guinea pig type of science.  I personally, have found that this sweet spot is about twice a month.  Like it’s not overbearing, I can mentally handle crawling on the bathroom floor twice a month then doing the coffee thing and making the big, I do the cowboy right, like the way the way to do it and I talk about this in the article as you boil the coffee even for about 13 minutes in a cast-iron skillet and then you decant it in the stainless bucket, you add a bunch of water to bring it to room temperature, and get you to about that 1-2 liter mark and then you just shoot it up there.

So anyways though, yeah, as far as frequency goes I mean, I guess if you’re bored you could just do it everyday, or if you are very toxic or you just want, you know, if you have really poor digestion and you just wanna clean things out, but I would say a more reasonable approach would be 1 to 2 times a month, I wouldn’t go ape nuts.  And then also try that THC I mentioned if you’re listening in and let me know how that goes for yah.

Joshua:  Hey Ben and Rachel, I’ve decided that I want to start running.  I’ve never really been a runner before.  I never really run for any greater distance than 3-5 miles with a buddy, he was trying to lose weight.  Also, I just want to know if you guys have any suggestions on how to improve the stamina and maybe ways to motivate yourself to actually get up and go run, every best times a day to go running?  I’m not sure folks how to get to full marathon distance or anything like that, but I really like to get to you know, where I can run for say, an hour without getting tired.  I love the podcast guys, I listened to all of ‘em.  Thanks for all the great information, Ben, and have a great day!

Ben:  Before we reply to Joshua’s question, Rachel, I think we should probably open the Kimono for the podcast listeners.  We just both press pause and went to pee.

Rachel:  (laughs)

Ben:  There’s something about chatting about coffee enemas that for some reason…

Rachel:  All those liters of water.  All of that expression of things out of the body. 

Ben:  You know, I’ve been staying incredibly hydrated.  We talked about water earlier in the news flashes, and I have been ordering Pellegrino by the case.  And I’m a big fan like when I travel, I do glass bottled sparkling water.  I’ll get Pellegrino, Pierre, Gerald Steiner, that’s what the first things that I do when I get into a city and I’m driving my rental car towards my hotel is I’ll stop at Whole Foods or wherever else, and just load up on a ton of glass bottled water.  And I’ve gotten so addicted to it over my travels that I now order Pellegrino like by the case for from Amazon, and using the subscribed and saved on Amazon to my house.  So I do my well water but then I also do Pellegrino, and I’ve actually you know, this morning it’s whatever 10 something AM, I’ve already had 2 giant bottles of Pellegrino.

Rachel:  How much do you think you’re drinking a day?

Ben:  I go through almost 3 glass bottles of Pellegrino every day, that’s it. 

 Rachel:  And that’s liter, 1 liter bottles? 

Ben:  It’s becoming a spendy habit.  Yeah! 

Rachel:  Wow! 

Ben:  They’re big bottle, so, yeah.  But, you know what? I can think of worst things just on my own.  Yeah. 

Rachel:  Totally.  Alright Joshua!

Ben:  Anyways okay, so Joshua you decided to start running. 

Rachel:  Good for you.

Ben:  And frankly, I think that the human body gets pretty beat up by running.  It’s not necessarily the most enjoyable activity on the face of the planet.  In many cases, a lot of people undunk it very motivated to run, and it can cause knee pain and ankle pain, and hip pain.  I’m a fan of running but unless you’re training professionally for marathoning, doing the least amount of running that you can, the minimum effective dose to make the maximum benefit out of running, that is just me, and I know that there are people that have other podcasts like The Marathon Academy Podcast, and you know, the Running Podcast, and they’re people who are just obsessed with running but I personally, even though I do marathons and Ironman triathlons, and 26 miles Spartan races, and just a ton of competitions that involves running, I don’t run that much in between the competition.  I run maybe a maximum of about 8-10 miles a week.

Rachel:  Wow!  That’s…

Ben:  But I have special ways that’s just precious.

Rachel:  Yeah!  Tell us! Tell us your special ways!

Ben:  Special secrets, okay.  So, first of all, nearly everyday I am at my treadmill work station for a good 2-3 hours.  So any time I have a phone conversation, I have consult sometimes during podcast, I will be on my manual treadmill at my desk walking.  And I have one of these special treadmills that’s like an ergonomic treadmill, I’ll link to it in the show notes.  It’s called uh, I don’t know, what is my treadmill called?  I don’t even know.  It’s called uh, I remember, a Trueform Runner, that’s right, a Trueform Runner.  So I had to go look at the label on my treadmill.  It’s a manual treadmill, so it doesn’t have the motor that produces a lot of electrical pollution.  It puts you on a proper biomechanical position for walking or running ‘cause it’s impossible to make the belt move unless you lean just slightly forward.  I have a whole podcast about it that I’ll link to in the show notes, but I spent a lot of time at very, very low levels of physical activity on that treadmill, and that causes the mitochondrial density that I’d normally need to build by doing long runs each day or long runs a few time a week.  So that’s one thing that I do, is  I spend  a lot of time with just easy slow walking on the treadmill during the day, and that helps with the stamina, the endurance component when you’re on your feet all day.  So, that’s number one.

Rachel:  Right.

Ben:  So, number 2, would be also related to the treadmill.  I am a huge fan of the treadmill because it forces to have really fast turnover and cadence, and it allows you to get a lot than a short period of time with running.  There are, and I don’t know why this allow me to get motivated to run fast or to push myself harder than I normally push myself when I’m running, but they just do.

There are these run workouts called “Runervals” by this guy named Troy Jacobson, and it’s basically just this dude walking around a room full of people on treadmills barking out orders, and it’ll be like 2 minutes as hard as you can go, and then 30 seconds off, and then 2 minutes as hard as you can go and 20 seconds off, and 2 minutes as hard as you can go, and 10 seconds off, and you’ll repeat that like 3 times through, Boom! Done! They’re like all like 20-30 minute workouts.  So they’re called Runervals and you could easily get a few of these Runervals DVDs and just do you know, 2-3 of those a week for your high intensity interval training until like a Monday, Wednesday, and a Friday.  They’re called Runervals.  I’m a big fan, and I don’t know why they just get me excited about running.  So…

Rachel:  ‘Cause you love having people yelling at you?

Ben:  I love Troy Jacobson yelling at me, yup!  Total cheesy, you know like 80s type of music like (Ben sounding off music) but I like it!  It works, so there you go.

The next one is 30 second treadmill burst.  So this is a workout that I’ll do about once a week, I include in a lot of my clients programs, so if you’re listening in and I coach you then you are probably sick of this one.  But what it involves, it’s very, very simple, you put the treadmill on a maximum incline and maximum speed that you can do for 30 seconds.  So let’s say that’s 10 miles an hour at a 10% incline, and you’ll do 30 seconds of that, and then you just hop off the treadmill, and you walk it off.  So if you’re at the gym, you’re just like walk around the gym until you’re finally ready to get back on the treadmill, then you do another set.  And you do 10 sets of 30 seconds, and that’s it.  I call this the hurricane workout ‘cause it’s just like this hurricane blowing through the gym, or blowin’ through every running on your treadmill.  Again, I’m a big fan of the treadmill for making you a better runner and this is 10 by 30 seconds.  So it’s just 30 seconds as hard as you can go maximum incline, maximum sprint then you’re off.  You can do this just like once a week.

Rachel:  And you can take as long as you want in between?  Or is there like a max time before you go back on?

Ben:  The ideal ratio is a 1:4 work to rest ratio for stuff that’s not hard.  So technically, you walk around the gym for about 2 minutes.  Now, in folks who are training for something like obstacle course racing, or MMA or something like that, I will actually have them do body weight workouts as they’re recovering.  So you do 30 seconds as hard as you can on the treadmill, and then you’ll do a back to back set of say, pushups and bicycling crunches.  And then you get back on the treadmill, and then you get off the treadmill and you do a set of body weight squats and a plank hold, and then you get back on the treadmill.  So, in each of those 2 minute recovery periods, you’re putting work into your body.  And that comes a very difficult workout.

But you know, on the flipside it’s overly fast, right? That’s 20 minutes if you’re looking at 30 second per and 2 minutes total, if you include the recovery time.

Rachel:  And you don’t need the 3 times a week?

Ben:  Three times a week or even once a week, you know, it depends on the program that you’re following.  If you’re also doing this Runervals right, and you’re also walking on a treadmill desk, and you’re also doing some of the other things that we’re about to talk about, you could do something like that just once a week.  So, you know, and I have programs like my look good, naked, longevity program in which you’re doing something like that once every two weeks ‘cause there’s so many other little interval training methods that I have sprinkled into that program.

Next is, and this is something that I do about once a week just for running errands, going to the grocery store, you know, from gonna like say, ride over to the park, or I’m going to ride to say like I’ll do later on today to go get a haircut, I use the elliptical trainer and there is a lot of really good research on the crossover between elliptical training and running.  And the most recent one was actually, it just came out, it was performed at the University in Ohio, at Ohio University and what they did was they used the – you know that outdoor standup elliptical trainer? The ElliptiGo bicycle?

Rachel:  Yeah.  It looks like a bike.  Yup.

Ben:  Yeah, that’s what I own.  That’s what I use for my elliptical training, and they did a test and trained fit runners to see if they’re able to maintain the performance.  The physiological fitness necessary for running at a very high performance level using an elliptical trainer as a cross training method.  And what I mean by that is if you’re running 5 days a week, you would instead run 3 days a week and then substitute 2 of those sessions with the elliptical trainer, and it turns out that the elliptical trainer can actually maintain or build running fitness without running, with lower joint stress compared to running with targeting of many of the muscles that tend to be notoriously weak in runners like the hip extensors, the hip external rotators, and with more calories  burnt because you’re using more of your upper body and more core muscles.  So, I’m a big fan of working in elliptical training as well and if you’re going to commute or something like, you could use an elliptical trainer.

They range, there’s a few different models. Like I think the one that I have, I mean, it’s like a decent bicycle, it’s about 1200 bucks…

Rachel:  Yeah, okay.

Ben:  So you know, it’s about what you’d spend with a road bike except there’s way more crossover between elliptical training and running vs. cycling and running.

Rachel:  And you have a lot of hills in your area, how do they go on hills?

Ben:  Fine!  They’re fine.

Rachel:  It is super hard?

Ben:  It’s tough but it also has 8 gears.  So you can, you’re not just stuck with 1 gear that you have to mash up a hill on.  So I mean, I if can ride on this thing, out on the back woods of Spokane, Washington up these really steep hills, I’m just about anybody.  I should be able to use one of these things.  So I’m a huge fan of this elliptiGo, elliptical trainers or even just using elliptical trainer at the gym.

There’s two other things that I use in addition to treadmill desk, the Runervals by Troy Jacobson, this 30 –second treadmill hurricane style workout and the elliptical trainer.  One would be an inclined treadmill.  So yes, I have a manual treadmill in my office, and then out in my garage I have one of these inclined treadmills that would go to 40%, and I was explaining this to someone at the, so I did Train to Hunt Utah last weekend.

Rachel:  And you won!

Ben:  I won!  I actually, I won Train Hunt Utah which qualified me for nationals.  And for those of you not familiar with Train to Hunt, it involves obstacle course racing, combined with shooting your bow, combined with 100 pound meat packs straight uphills, and downhills.  And one of my secret underground training methods for that is that I have an inclined treadmill because with an inclined treadmill as you do, is hill training.  To get all the benefits of going uphill without ever happen to get all the knee pounding and hip pounding of going downhill, and so you know, for a typical workout, for example, I will just walk as far as I can at a 40% incline and 1.7 to 2 miles an hour, holding a 50 pound sandbag, or with 50 pounds in my backpack, and I’ll just walk straight uphill.

The other thing that I’ll use is a weighted vest.  So I wear 40 to a 50 pound weighted vest and just walk straight uphill on this treadmill.  You do not even need to run to vastly increase fitness if you’re going up a treadmill.  I’ve got a friend who is one of the top master’s Spartan athletes.  His actually one of the top Spartan athletes period, but he rarely if ever runs.  He does almost all his training walking at a 20 to 40% incline.  His name is Matt Novakovich, he’s also known as ‘The Bear’ in Spartan racing.  And the majority of his training, is just walking uphill ‘cause his knees and his hips can’t take the pounding of running but he is still super fast.  He’s churning out incredibly fast 5Ks and 10Ks in Spartan races but he was just walking uphill for the majority of his training typically holding a sandbag or holding a bucket or with a weighted vest but at 20 to 40% incline.

So, Nordic Track is the company that makes these treadmills.  I got mine from Nordic Track, I actually got at eBay.  Got a really good deal.  I think I got mine for like probably the same price as the elliptical trainer, like 1100, 1200 bucks something like that.  So they’re not super cheap, and in terms of treadmills, check Craigslists, check Amazon, Amazon has Nordic tracts, the Nordic Tract website, they let you get on a payment plan but inclined treadmills as a way to get a lot of bang for your buck at a run training especially when combined with something like a weighted vest, huge, huge way you know, good way to increase running fitness fast.

And then finally, there’s this guy that I interviewed and his name is Jay Schroeder.  I met him at one of Dave Asprey’s biohacking conferences, and this guy uses like high, high intensity electrical stimulation on the NFL athletes that he works with, and he’ll use like super-duper fast intervals on like a fixed speed bicycle trainer, and he has all sorts of these weird ways that he’ll train people.  He’ll train Olympic swimmers with like these tubes that pull them to the water like 4 times faster than they normally swim just to train the neuromuscular cadence necessarily for turning something in an extremely fast swimmer.  I’ll link to the podcast I did with them ‘cause it’s fascinating.

So, go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/353, and listen to that podcast but one of the easy simple to implement tips that I learn from him is this concept of isometric loading.  Now, what that means is you’ll do a very long, long isometric hold right. Like a 3 minutes isometric lunge for the right leg, and a 3 minute isometric lunge for the left leg, or a 5 minute isometric squat.  And what that means is you’re dropping into that position and you’re holding it for a very long period of time and a long a bunch of lactic acid to build up in a muscle tissue, but you’re not contracting right, that you’re not moving the joint up and down, all that lactic acid sticks around in the muscle tissue.

So you build up this enormous tolerance to lactic acid and what you do is you combine that with movement.  So, a typical workout would be for example, you will hold an isometric squat for as long as you can, and when you finally, when everything burning and quaking, and shaking and trembling and you’re just about to fall over, you stand up out of that squat and then you run a hundred yards.

Rachel:  (laughs) Oh, wow!

Ben:  so you’re running with your legs that’s chockfull of lactic acid.

Rachel:  Jelly.

Ben:   And you’ll do like 10 repeats of that, you know, you drop, you squat again, hold it, and then run back for a hundred yards.  Super difficult way to train but this is one of the advanced endurance training techniques that we talked about in the podcast with him.

When you put all the stuff together, it’s amazing.  Like you don’t have to go on a lot of like one and a half or two hour run, you don’t have to pound the pavement everyday.  You can do like the short four race into intensity or you can use this little techniques like isometric training or the inclined trainer or you know, do all your commuting on like a standup elliptical trainer, and all of a sudden you can stay in really good running shape year round, and again, I personally run maybe 8 to 10 miles a week but I can go out and, you know, I’m not the fastest marathon runner on the face of the planet, I’m not necessarily like winning every Spartan race but I’m pretty competitive, and I don’t waste a lot of my time running and probably more importantly, I’m not beatin’ up my knees and my hips right?  Like I’m not gonna need a knee or hip replacement (knock on wood) when I’m 50 years old ‘cause frankly I just don’t run that much.

Rachel:  Right.  When you do going your 8 to 10 mile runs, what do you looking for like why do you even run at all?

Ben:  No, I mean, I don’t run 8 to 10 miles unless I’m in a competition like I run 8-10 miles a week, total, like all my running ever put together for the whole week.

Rachel:  Wow!

Ben:  That’s what I mean when I say it’s 10 miles.  So, yeah, you can get away with not running very much and get to be a better runner.  You would be surprised at what a lot of these little biohacks can do for you.  So, I’ll put a link to all these stuff.  If you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/353, all these little tips like the Runervals, and stuff like that.  So, there you go Joshua.  Enjoy not running.

Craig:  Rachel and Ben!  Hi!  My name is Craig.  I listened to you guys for a couple of years.  All the winter time, I hurt my arm and fell out of taking care of myself and eating good foods and so on, and so now, here I am 20 pounds over the weight I like to be at, and just trying to get back on my horse as should be.  And what’s the, curious enough if there’s a, if you were in that position Ben, how would you uh, I guess maybe from a food perspective, detox perspective, trying to lose fat perspective, just curious to see what you’ll do besides the obvious of eat better foods and exercise.  Just to know if there’s something more you’d recommend in that case.  Thanks a lot, love the show.  Take care!

Ben:  This is good question.

Rachel:  This is a brilliant question!

Ben:  There’s a lot of stuff you could do.

Rachel:  I love it.

Ben:  I could talk a long time.

Rachel:  Oh, so you just got to use your 5 favorite ways.

Ben:  Uhm, okay.  I’ll give you my 5 favorite ways to jump start fell outs or to accelerate fat loss or to get back on the fitness bandwagon very, very quickly.  This kind of segues are nicely from the tips on running ‘cause this is all about efficiency, right? Like getting the maximum amount of efficiency with the minimum effect of dose.  So, Craig and everyone, five best ways to accelerate fat loss.  Get out your notepads, put on your thinking caps, I’m gonna fly through this stuff, I’m gonna feed through the fire hose, okay.  Number 1, when you combine niacin, high dose niacin with infrared sauna, you can lies fat cells, meaning that the frequency, the vibration of the infrared wave when you have niacin in your body, high dose niacin, it cause this flushing reaction that causes fat cell to lies and disappear very quickly.  A lot of people when they use this strategy, they’ll break out and rashes and stuff because of the rate at which fat cells are dying in the body.  So…

Rachel:  Is there anything that’s… bad about that?

Ben:  Yeah, it’s uncomfortable, and you get like welts and it’s in rashes and I mean, you detox quickly but yeah, I mean, you wanna drink a lot of water and clean out the body and you could combine something like this  with like enema approach that I talked about earlier, but basically the way you do it, I’ve got an article about this, I’ll to in the show notes but it’s about 500 to 1000 mgs of niacin using a liver friendly form of niacin called Niasafe.  It’s made by a company called Thorne.

And what you do is you take that and then you go into a sauna, preferably an infrared sauna, and you stay in there for about 30 minutes.  You can do yoga, you can do Kundalini, you can do whatever you want in there, read a magazine, listen to an audio book, whatever, but it’s high dose niacin plus infrared sauna.  And ideally you finished that up with another very, very good way to accelerate fat loss and that would be cold thermogenesis.  So you finish that whole thing up with 5-10 minutes of a cold soak, or a cold shower or cold bath or any type of cold exposure.  Snow angels, whatever.  You name them.

Rachel:  Sound intense.  Love it.

Ben:  Okay?  So that is number 1.  You can do that, I personally still do that to myself to stay lean and to keep my body detox 3-5 days a week.  I’m doin’ infrared sauna with cold thermogenesis and high dose niacin.  That’s number 1.  Number 2, every single day do a fasted session.  Meaning, you haven’t eaten for 12 to 16 hours, so you stop eating at 8pm at night and at 8am you do a fasted exercise session in your fat burning zone, okay?  You preferably do this with caffeine in your system because caffeine can increase mobilization of free-fatty acids and cause you to burn through more adipose tissue.  So technically, the infrared sauna is one thing that could count as a fasted fat loss session because your heart rate will rise during that session.  Easy cold water swimming is another really, really good one ‘cause you get in the cold combined with the movement.  Walks in the sunshine.  That’s another good one ‘cause you gain the vitamin D and the sunlight exposure combined with easy movement.  Anything except for extremely hard efforts which will increase cortisol and can actually fly in the face of fat loss.  We’re talking about easy, aerobic fasted morning fat sessions.

How do you find your personal fat burning zone?  There’s a few different ways to do it.  One would be, you take the heart rate at which your muscles really burn during exercise and you subtract 20 beats, okay? That’s one way to do it.  That’s just a simple calculations, it’s gonna give you a ballpark, right, if you’re muscles really start to burn during exercise at 170 beats/minute, then your fat burning zone is gonna be close to 150 beats per minute.

Another way that you can do it is you can Google search for the name of your city plus the words metabolic testing.  And what a metabolic test is it’s called indirect calorimetry.  You get on a treadmill, and you exercise at varying intensities and they measure fat oxidation and carbohydrate oxidation, and there will be a certain zone at which you burn a high, high amount of fat.  That’ll be your maximum fat burning zone.  And while that zone is that the best zone for getting fit necessarily unless we’re just talking pure aerobic fitness, and while you don’t wanna do all your exercise in that zone doing fasted morning 20-30 minutes session in that fat burning zone with caffeine in your system is another way that you can get fat off the body very quickly.  That’s number 2.

Number 3, number 3 would be to keep yourself extremely insulin sensitive and keep your blood sugar levels extremely low.  There are 4 ways that I do that.  Number 1: the equivalent of 2 tsps. Of organic Ceylon cinnamon each day.  Ceylon is the type of cinnamon that’s been shown to decrease blood sugar and to increase insulin sensitivity quite efficiently.

Rachel:  And you just eat it?

Ben:  Yup.  I just have it in the morning in my smoothie.  Number 2 would be apple cider vinegar.  The equivalent of about a shot of apple cider vinegar each day.  Just get like organic, whatever, Bragg’s apple cider vinegar off at Amazon but a shot of that each day preferably your timing this type of things is prior to a meal, so you’re decreasing your post perineal blood glucose.

Number 3 would be bitter melon extract.  I take 2 capsules of this prior to my largest carbohydrate containing meal of the day which is typically dinner because you know, I typically have a glass of wine before dinner, I take the MPX100 which is the form of bitter melon extract that I take to get the blood glucose low, and since I’m having carbohydrates typically at night with dinner, this allows me to get back into what’s called ketosis.  Extremely, quickly when I take this prior to a carbohydrate containing meal.

So those 3 things: bitter melon extract, cinnamon and apple cider vinegar, and then the final thing that you wanna do is upregulate the sugar transporters that are necessary for getting sugar out of the bloodstream quickly, right, so sugar doesn’t get converted into fat and the liver, so you don’t get a lot of the metabolic by-products of high amounts of blood sugar.  You wanna upregulate sugar transporters so that sugar gets to driven in the muscle tissue and liver tissue.  And the best way to do that…

Rachel:  How do you do that?

Ben:  … is prior to your biggest meal of the day which in an ideal scenario based on circadian rhythm is going to be dinner, you want to do either high intensity interval training or strength training or both.  So for example, 5 sets of 5 deadlifts, 5 sets of 5 squats, 500 yard sprints and that would be an example of an evening or later afternoon workout that will upregulate sugar transporters, much higher than say like easy fasted aerobic sessions like I talked about earlier.  Those you do in the morning and then you do the high intensity interval training and/or the heavier strength training in the evening prior to your biggest meal of the day.

Rachel:  Wow, this is huge!  Yes!

Ben:  So that’s number 3.  And I guarantee, if you’ll listening in and you incorporate all these, you’re going to melt fat off your body.  If you ever let me be one of the personal trainers on the biggest loser, I’d be using these strategies.  I’d be kicking the other trainer’s butts.  I guarantee, and I didn’t get into the coffee enemas.

Okay, so couple other things, one of the times that people said a ton, especially people who live in municipal areas, big cities, is they drive, and you can use the car not only as a university like I’m always playing podcast and audio books in my car, but you can also use it as a gym.

Rachel:  Oh, very good.

Ben:  How do you do it?  Three things: Number 1, I’ve a PowerLung in the glove box of my car.  A powerLung is a resisted breath training device that allows you while you’re driving despite the funny looks that you might get at the stop light when you’re doing this, it allows you to train your inspiratory and expiratory muscles and diaphragm and maintain your metabolism when you’re driving.  So you can do 3 seconds out, 3 seconds in, and you would be surprise at how much of a workout you can get for your lungs and your core by using this powerLung while you’re driving.

Number 2 would be hand grippers.  I keep Captain of Crush and grippers in my car along with these hand expander bands that are also made by Captains of Crush.  So I can do grip training, as well as training for the opposite motion that you get when you’re doing the Captains of Crush grip training.  And when you’re training your hands and your grip, you get a growth hormone release, you get a testosterone release, you get a slight spike in your heart rate and that’s another thing that you can combine with powerLung sets to basically be working out while you’re sitting down, while you’re driving.

And then finally, I talked about that MarcPro earlier that electrical stimulation device, you can use that or any other form of electrical muscle stimulation attached to your quads or your hamstrings or your calves or anything else like that while you are driving.  So, you can also do e-stim and this would be a special like if you have a long commute, let’s say you have an hour or 45 minutes commute to work and back during the day, you can get nearly 2 hours worth of making your body and your brain better with a commute like that.  There’s no excuse to just be sitting there slumped over listening to the top 40 radio.

Rachel:  Yup.

Ben:  So make your body and your brain better when you’re driving and when it comes to fat loss, get a hand gripper, get a powerLung, and if you can afford it, get an electrical muscle stimulation unit as well.  And keep all 3 in your car.

Rachel:  So that’s 4, what’s number 5?

Ben:  That’s 4.  Number 5 is, and this is huge.  It takes a little bit of self control but it’s not that hard once you wrap your head around it.  One, 24 hour water fast each week.  There’s a huge longevity effect, there’s a huge cellular clean up effect, but there’s also really, really good fat loss licing effect or fat cell licing effect when you do this.  Very, very simple.  This would mean like Saturday at lunch time you quit eating, and you skip Saturday’s dinner, and you skip Sunday’s breakfast, and then Sunday at lunch you break your fast.

Rachel:  Yup.

Ben:  Very, very simple way to do a 24 hour fast ‘cause half of the time you’re just sleeping through the fast.  Amino acids if you get really hungry, can help to curb the appetite.  Just taking like essential amino acids and those are not going to count as calories.  Another thing you can take to really, really help and this also helps people who are doing ketosis would be minerals.  High amounts of something like trace liquid minerals, one to two shots a day of minerals can help to combat a lot of the blood pressure lowering that can occur when you’re doing a water fast.  And finally multivitamin.  We talked about this on a podcast a couple of months ago but there is that guy who get like 350 plus of fasting and when from 460 pounds down to 1oo something pounds, and all he was doing was minerals and a multivitamin and a water fast.

Rachel:  Wow!

Ben:  And I don’t necessarily recommend going for a full year fasting.

Rachel:  Not eating.

Ben:  Doing it once a week can massively exhilarate fat loss along with giving you a host of other longevity promoting effects.  That’s one 24 hour water fast per week combine with amino acids, minerals, and a multivitamin.  And if you do this 5 things, I guarantee you will strip off your body fast without necessarily having to go on some crazy diet and without having to spend hours and hours and hours per day exercising.

Rachel:  And what I love about this is it doesn’t require thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars either.  It’s all really cheap.

Ben:  No, I mean the most expensive things I just talked about was an electrical muscle stimulation unit for your car, so.

Rachel:   Yup.  And a lot of stuff you already have at home.

Ben:  Yeah.  So there you have it.

Rachel:  Really Ben, brilliant.

Ben:  We link to that stuff in the show notes at bengreenfieldfitness.com/353, where you can also leave your comments and speaking of leaving comments, we also have a review.

Rachel:  Yey!

Ben:  So, we love iTunes reviews.

Rachel:  We do.

Ben:  And we spend a lot of time on this podcast from the weekend guest episodes that we have to the podcst that you’re listening to right now with Rachel and I, and one of the best ways that you can give back and you can introduce some good karma in your life is by leaving us a review in iTunes.  And every week, we pick the best review of the best 5-star review and we read it on the show, and if you hear your review read on the show, and you just email gear as in  g-e-a-r  at  greenfieldfitnesssystems.com, let us know your t-shirt size.  We’ll send you a gift pack and that’s gonna be a bpa-free water bottle, a cool tech t-shirt you can workout in, and a Ben Greenfield fitness beanie.  So this week, we have a review from Buymlo who says: “Searching for truth in fitness and nutrition”, at just 5-stars we’re gonna send you a sweet gift pack, Rachel, what do you think?  Do you want to take this one away?

Rachel:  Yeah.  Let’s do it.

Ben:  Here we go.

Rachel:  So he says, “I’ve been listening to the Ben Greenfield podcast for about 9 months now.  It is my number 1 podcast to go to for tips, fitness, and nutrition.  Whereas some fitness nutritional podcast contain only here say and little fact, it is helpful for me to get researched based advice from experts around the globe who, Ben brings to his show.  I was overweight and unfit a year ago.  Now at 59 years old, I ran my first 10k ever over Thanksgiving, and just last week I ran a sub-8 minute mile.”  Nice, right?  “The expert guidance and levity of Ben and Rachel has lead to my fitness and nutritional reclamation of my body.”

Ben:  I don’t know what levity or reclamation mean, but sounds cool.

Rachel:  He reclaimed his body.  “I highly recommend them and their podcast.  I am one who appreciates that Ben will use himself as a human Guinea Pig for fitness and nutritional tips before recommending that his listeners consider them.”

Ben:  That’s right.  I will stick THC and coffee at my butt before you need to.

Rachel:  We’re so grateful for that Ben seriously.  “As for some doubters, I never took an intentional cold show in my life until April 1^st which was the first day of the 21-day cold shower challenge.”

Ben:  That’s right!

Rachel:  “Since then, 70 of my 75 showers have been cold.”  Wow!

Ben:  he’s a good counter.

Rachel:  Yes.  “This is just one of a couple of dozen changes to my life that have come as a result of my listening to their podcast.  Keep up the great work guys.  You’re really making a difference.  Tom C. from Dallas.

Ben:  And Tom, you now have a bunch of other things to add into your protocol like cinnamon and infrared sauna, and coffee enemas.  So, you’re welcome.  But also, thank you for the awesome review, and that’s the kind of stuff that warms the cockles of my heart to hear that people are actually getting success by using some of these stuff that we talked about that goes above and beyond drinking Gatorade and spending copious amounts of time exercising.

Rachel:  Which makes me wanna say, Craig, who was our last question, take a before and after photo after you’ve implemented what Ben said and send it to us ‘cause we love to have a testimonial for Facebook.

Ben:  Preferably in a Speedo.

Rachel:  Yes!

Ben:  Yes!  That being said, we should wrap this thing up ‘cause it’s get a little long in the tooth, but again bengreenfieldfitness.com/353.  I’ll look for you in Dallas and LA this week if you happen to be in those areas.  Stay tuned to twitter.com/bengreenfield ‘cause I typically tweet out when I’m headed out to a restaurant or a coffee shop where I’m gonna go do something cool.  That’s the way to get the insider scoops and then check out bengreenfieldfitness.com/calendar, for all of the other cool events that are coming up.  And Rachel

Rachel:  Ben!

Ben:  Top of the morning!

Rachel:  Top of the morning to you.

Ben:  Later.

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

 

 

June 15, 2016 Podcast: 353: The 5 Best Ways To Accelerate Fat Loss, Can Testosterone Be Too High, How To Get In Running Shape Fast & 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/BenGreenfield, Instagram.com/BenGreenfieldFitness, Facebook.com/BGFitness and Google+.

• Want epic, Solomon-like wisdom? Work on that HRV. 
• Kundalini yoga makes you smarter! 
• Add minerals to your water. Here’s why…fascinating
• Gladiator Gatorade? Ancient Athletes Had A Recovery Drink, Too : The Salt : NPR

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This podcast is brought to you by:

–MarcPro – use PROMO CODE BEN for 5% off your Marc Pro or Marc Pro Plus.

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–Click here to follow Ben on Snapchat, and get ready for some epic stories on his morning, daily and evening routine!

NEW! Click here for the official BenGreenfieldFitness calendar.

July 8-10, 2016: Join SEALFit and Ben Greenfield for a SEALFit 20X event at Ben Greenfield’s home in Spokane, WA – combined with Obstacle Course training with Ben Greenfield and Hunter McIntyre. Get all details here and get in soon because this one will fill up fast!

August 11-13, 2016: Ben is speaking at the Ancestral Health Symposium (AHS) in Boulder, Colorado. AHS is a historic three-day event created to unite the ancestral health movement and to foster collaboration among scientists, health professionals, and laypersons who study and communicate about health from an evolutionary perspective to develop solutions to our health challenges. Click here to learn more or to register now.

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.

–Dec 3-10, 2016: Runga in Costa Rica: 8 days, epic food, twice daily yoga, salt water pool and manual therapy and spa services galore, experts from around the world teaching running clinics, kettlebell seminars, lecturing on nutrition, etc. Also daily adventures ranging from zip lining to white water, along with a full digital detox. Code “BEN” gets you a free gift with your RUNGA registration valued at $75! Click here to get in now.

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.

Can Testosterone Be Too High?

Joshua says: He loves the podcast and website. His question is, he just got his blood work back and everything looks good, except his testosterone. It was 1100, which he knows is ridiculously high so it scares him. Do you have any thoughts? He’s going to his doctor in a week but doesn’t trust them to have a real answer to whats going on. He knows its good to have high testosterone but 1100 is over the top.

In my response, I recommend:
–Sex Hormone Balance Test

Coffee Enemas 101

Yvonne says: She has a friend who does regular coffee enemas who also can’t sleep at night. Is there a relationship between the enemas and the fact he can’t sleep? Should he change the frequency of the enemas? He enjoys them so much because of the energy they give him. Please give us your advice.

In my response, I recommend:
–My article on Bulletproof Coffee Enemas

How To Get In Running Shape Fast

Joshua says: He’s decided to start running, but he’s never ran further than 3 miles. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve stamina, or ways to motivate yourself to go for a run? He’s not sure if he’ll try to get to full marathon distance, but he’d like to get to the point where he can run for an hour without getting tired, what are your thoughts?

In my response, I recommend:
–Treadmill desk article
–Troy Jacobson’s Runervals 
-30 second treadmill bursts
–Elliptical trainer high-intensity intervals (including this recent study on the Elliptigo)
–Incline treadmill with weighted vest
-Isometric squats or isometric lunges into sprints. Very much like the Russian underground techniques here.

The 5 Best Ways To Accelerate Fat Loss

Craig says: Over the winter time he hurt his arm and fell out of taking care of himself with eating good foods and so on. Now he’s 20lbs over the weight he likes to be at and hes trying to get aback on the horse. He’s curious to know if you were in that position Ben, from a food, detox, fat loss perspective, what would you do, besides the obvious of eat better foods and exercise?

In my response, I recommend:

–Infrared sauna plus niacin, followed by cold thermogenesis

–Fasted fat loss with caffeine, including this fat burning zone calculation

–MPX100, Organic Ceylon Cinnamon, Apple Cider Vinegar + regulation of sugar transporters the high intensity interval training or strength training pre-largest meal.

–Compex or MarcPro ($32 discount at http://www.MarcPro.com with discount code “Ben”)
–PowerLung
– Captain of Crush/Hand Expander Band

-One 24 hour water fast per week combined with amino acids, minerals and multivitamin.

Read more https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2016/06/353-5-best-ways-accelerate-fat-loss-can-testosterone-high-get-running-shape-fast/