January 10, 2019

Podcast from: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/lifestyle-podcasts/increase-testosterone/

[0:01:10] Introduction

[0:01:10] Start of Podcast; Talking About their Fastingxf

[0:06:51] Newsflashes: CBD, Keto and Romaine Lettuce?

[0:16:40] The Carnivore Diet

[0:24:32] Ketogenic Diet and Athletes

[0:30:43] Older Folks Who Are Performing Really Well

[0:37:35] Special Announcements

[0:46:58] Listener Q&A: How to Increase Testosterone After Exercise

[0:59:53] How to Fix the School Lunch Program

[1:14:04] Giveaways & Goodies

[1:17:08] End of Podcast

Ben:  In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness, CBD, keto, romaine lettuce, how to increase testosterone after exercise, aesthetics versus longevity and much, much more.

I have a master's degree in physiology, biomechanics, and human nutrition. I've spent the past two decades competing in some of the most masochistic events on the planet from SEALFit Kokoro, Spartan Agoge, and the world's toughest mudder, the 13 Ironman triathlons, brutal bow hunts, adventure races, spearfishing, plant foraging, free diving, bodybuilding and beyond. I combine this intense time in the trenches with a blend of ancestral wisdom and modern science, search the globe for the world's top experts in performance, fat loss, recovery, gut hormones, brain, beauty, and brawn to deliver you this podcast. Everything you need to know to live an adventurous, joyful, and fulfilling life. My name is Ben Greenfield. Enjoy the ride.

So, Brock, besides all the other sexy things that we have planned to talk about today like the most–

Brock:  Sexy, sexy things.

Ben: –trendy topics and all of health like CBD and keto. We might as well make a trifecta and talk about fasting.

Brock:  Okay.

Ben:  Are you doing this five-day New Year's fast that I'm on?

Brock:  I am. I'm doing a variation.

Ben:  What's your variation? Pizza?

Brock:  Well, what I'm doing is I'm doing a vegan. I'm doing a Level 4 vegan diet.

Ben:  Level 4?

Brock:  But only between 11:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m.

Ben:  Wait, what makes it a Level 4?

Brock:  Well, you don't eat anything that casts a shadow.

Ben:  Oh, I get it. Okay. I'm nodding my head like I understand but I still don't understand what that has to do with Level 4.

Brock:  It doesn't. Yeah. I think it's from “The Simpsons,” to be honest.

Ben:  Is it really called the–

Brock:  I think they stole that from–

Ben:  Is it really called a Level 4 fast?

Brock:  Well, it is by Lisa Simpson when she's talking to, I think it was Paul McCartney's wife, Linda McCartney, yeah.

Ben:  You, my friend, are dating yourself because I know nothing of this strange mysterious Simpsons you speak of.

Brock:  Oh, it was just the 1990s, come on. Anyway, so yeah. That was my clever way of saying, “Yes, I'm doing the intermittent, like extended intermittent fasting version.”

Ben:  Okay. Well, I am and for those you who have no clue what we're talking about, my company, Kion, we are overseeing a fast for–gosh, there's like over 10,000 people doing this over this week.

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  I've chosen to do kind of a modified fast. It's called an elemental diet and it's a way to heal the gut. So, basically, there's this meal replacement stuff. It's called MediClear. Have you heard of this, Brock?

Brock:  I have not.

Ben:  So, it's got a whole bunch of sulforaphane in it, like sulforaphane glucosinolate. That's from the seeds and sprouts of broccoli. And you hear about sulforaphane–Dr. Rhonda Patrick has talked about that quite a bit as being a really good way to up-regulate particularly what's called Phase 2 detoxification of the liver, and then also to protect the gut from damage and protect the cells overall. But then, what Thorne did is they blended this with a whole host of other nutrients that make it almost like a medical meal replacement blend. Meaning that it has everything from like curcumin, green tea, grape seed extracts, the methyltetrahydrofolate form of folic acid, a bunch of mineral chelates. It's everything that you would expect to put into a giant canister that would taste like ass. But actually, it's like a–

Brock:  I was going to ask that.

Ben:  So, breakfast, lunch and dinner right now, I do two scoops of that which comes out to about 170 calories and then I just–

Brock:  That's pretty puny.

Ben:  Well, yeah. But well, I'm fasting, duh.

Brock:  Duh.

Ben:  Duh. I'm fasting. I'm making shakes over here, bro. So, I blend that with some bone broth and a little bit of salt. And then, the only thing that's missing, for me as a nutritionist, I look at the labels and inspect things and try to figure out if I'm building up any deficits. The only thing I was a little bit concerned about, just because I'm still training and everything, was a little bit of fatty acids and a little bit of extra amino acids. So, pre-workout, I'm doing about 10 grams of what are called essential amino acids to keep myself in a relatively anabolic state for my workouts. And then, the other thing–

Brock:  We've talked about those a couple of times.

Ben:  Yeah. The other thing I'm doing is about a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil that when I blend that Thorne MediClear, I put that in there. For a five-day fast, that's not that necessary. It's not like I'm going to be fat deficient but for a lot of people who do an elemental diet, it's particularly effective for things like small intestine bacterial overgrowth and bloating and gas and leaky gut. They'll follow a protocol like that for a good 30 days.

I have some clients who have had followed something very similar to this for 30 days and that's a scenario where I'm like, “Okay. We need to add just a little bit of extra fat.” So, I'll have them supplement with some fish oil and then put some extra virgin olive oil in with their MediClear. Plus, the MediClear has broccoli in it, and last I checked, olive oil tastes pretty good with broccoli. I think that's like [00:05:46] ______.

Brock:  Mm-hmm. That's delicious.

Ben:  Anyways, now that everybody–

Brock:  You should just do a shot glass. Just pour a shot glass of olive oil. That's delicious.

Ben:  You mean just drink it straight?

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  It actually is. We're part of this thing called the Extrovert–what's it called? No, The Olive Oil Club, The Olive Oil Club. Every quarter, we get three bottles of wonderful olive oil from all over the world into our house from like Australia and Spain and Italy. And my kids and wife and I will have tastings when the olive oil gets there because it comes with all these tasting notes almost like wine. And so, you can taste the herbaceous, spicy, lemony, citrusy. They kind of pull some stuff out of their ass sometimes, as far as the description, like an herbaceous, thyme tree bark infused piney flavor.

Anyways though, yeah. So, we do shot glasses of olive oil. And I suppose now that everyone's salivating, we should go on to talk about keto and romaine lettuce, shall we not?

Brock:  Let's do it.

Male:  New flashes.

Ben:  Alright, so first of all, before we jump in, I should mention that all–I know everybody's chomping at the bits to join The Olive Oil Club and to learn more about this mysterious Thorne MediClear I speak of. So, that along with–as usual, we do really, really comprehensive shownotes for you guys. So, I'll put everything over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/393. And I'll bet now you're very, very much interested in why I mentioned romaine lettuce in the intro.

Brock:  I think I can guess.

Ben:  Yeah. Okay. So, did you see this article about The Five Foods the Internet Was Most Obsessed with In 2018?

Brock:  Only because I saw you put it in there but I saw some similar ones and this one, I have to admit, is much more near and dear to my heart than some of the other lists I saw.

Ben:  Yeah. Alright. Drumroll, please. Here we go.

Brock:  Okay.

Ben:  Number one was keto cheesecake. Keto cheesecake, baby. That was number one and I went and looked at the recipe, it's–some of these keto recipes it's kind of like–what's the diet? That if it fits your macros diet, where it doesn't really matter what's in it so long as it has X percentage of fat and as far as if it's low enough in carbohydrates. This one, it looks pretty tasty. I wouldn't have particularly put this recipe together exactly as they did. The crust is almond flour and butter, which is not bad.

Brock:  That's fine.

Ben:  I choose some grass-fed butter, of course. And then, the cheesecake itself is 16 ounces of cream cheese with no stipulation of the source of the cream cheese.

Brock:  Organic, yeah.

Ben:  Yeah. I would potentially choose something else like a really good organic. You could use a yogurt cheese or even like an almond cheese if you were doing the almond flour, could probably go pretty well with the almond cheese or just like go organic too if you're going with the creamy cheese. What else was in there? Two large eggs, not bad.

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  Vanilla extract or vanilla flavor, which you do need to be careful with. They do get that from beaver anus, believe it or not, if you don't get the real vanilla extract. Then lemon juice, salt and erythritol. You may want to use stevia instead of erythritol if you don't want your cheesecake to be a fart city. But it's not that bad. It's a keto cheesecake. Keto cheesecake was the number five food the internet was most obsessed with based on–I think they're ranking this on Instagram likes or something like that.

Brock:  I think it was Google. It was Google Analytics like Google search terms, yeah.

Ben:  Wow. Yeah. Okay.

Brock:  And that is literally like have your cake and eat it to kind of a deal right there.

Ben:  Yes, yeah. And promise, we won't reverse-engineer every single one of these recipes. Keto pancake was the next one. Those actually look pretty good but the main–it's similar to the keto cheesecake except it's a pancake.

Brock:  Squish it down.

Ben:  That's pretty much it. You could probably skip it. Make the cheesecake, get a griddle and just put the cheesecake on the griddle and you have the pancake recipe.

Brock:  Just flatten that sucker and grill it up.

Ben:  Yeah, it's basically like coconut flour and baking powder and then they'll add cream cheese, speak of the devil, and lots more almond flour and lots more cinnamon. I think most people who make keto recipes, and my wife says this about the keto cookbooks that people inevitably send to our house like every single freaking day, you only really need 10 ingredients in your pantry to follow any of these cookbooks. It's like stevia, cream cheese, eggs, MCT oil, coconut oil and cinnamon, maybe some quinoa.

Brock:  And then, some sort of flour like almond flour or coconut flour.

Ben:  Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Number three was CBD gummies.

Brock:  I had not seen those.

Ben:  No. They're actually pretty good. There's this company called Botanica, Botanica that is out of Seattle and they make these wonderful, wonderful, wonderful edibles and they do different THC, CBD ratios. And I think they're expanding now into California and a few other places where marijuana is legal but of course, most people are aware that CBD from hemp is fully legal now, federally, based on the farm bill in the U.S. And CBD gummies, but these are not homemade. These are not like a recipe like keto cheesecake or keto pancakes. These are just sold. People like to eat these CBD gummies. The ones that are shown here are the brand, Lord Jones. I don't know what those are or where they come from.

Brock:  I like the logo.

Ben:  Yeah. I'm a fan of CBD. The problem with CBD is most people use it but they don't notice anything because they don't use enough because all these products use paltry portions of CBD. When you look at the research like for the anti-anxiety effect, it's like 300 to 900 milligrams. And the serving in most of these CBD products is 5 to 10 milligrams. For sleep, you need 60 to 100 milligrams minimum. Alright, so I actually took CBD last night for sleep.

Brock:  Me too.

Ben:  This probably broke my fast now that I think about it because of the amount of oil I had to consume to deliver said CBD. I was using this CBD that was blended in MCT oil and I had to use like six dropper foals and then you hold it in your mouth like two minutes to actually get–I think I got about 100 milligrams but I had to use like half the bottle to get 100 milligrams of CBD.

So, I think a lot of people aren't aware that CBD works like gangbusters but there are some companies that make really, really dense CBDs. I think Elemental Health CBD is one, and then I use the BioCBD stuff in capsular form, and then Thorne has a CBD that–Thorne doesn't even call it CBD because they're smart because they know the feds will shut them down if they did that. It is just Thorne Hemp. But some of these products, they have slightly higher amounts of CBD or slightly more dense or efficacious but anyways, that's CBD. And then, number two was romaine lettuce. Now, why do you think people would have Googled the hell out of romaine lettuce?

Brock:  Maybe because it was poisoning people.

Ben:  Uh-huh, yeah. It's E. coli.

Brock:  Was it E. coli-ing people?

Ben:  The E. coli outbreak. So, that was pretty much it. That's why romaine lettuce appeared along with CBD and keto pancakes and cheesecake. So, that would–

Brock:  Yeah. I have never wanted a Caesar salad so bad as during that whole outbreak. It was one of those like just because I can't have it, I want it really bad.

Ben:  I knew nothing of the outbreak. I am so tuned out to the news that the entire world supply of chicken, burgers, vegetables could all go completely to hell and be full of E. coli and parasites and pathogens and God knows what else, and I would probably show up at a restaurant and order the romaine lettuce burger with the side of raw beef, tartare and not know any better because I know nothing of the news.

Brock:  Yeah. I knew because I walked into my local grocery store and they actually had a sign that said, “No romaine lettuce until it's proven to be E. coli free, blah, blah, blah.” I was like, “Oh, crap.”

Ben:  Yeah. And number one was this unicorn cake, which I think was a cop-out. I think whoever wrote this article was on deadline and it got to number one, but unicorn cake was number one. I think they were trying to be funny.

Brock:  I think so. Maybe they were alluding or harkening to that Starbucks drink that was out in the spring. Wasn't there a unicorn Frappuccino or something that was redonkulously every kind of sugar, every kind of color all piled on top of each other?

Ben:  Really? That was an–

Brock:  That was a real thing.

Ben:  That was an actual thing?

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  A unicorn Frappuccino. Can we find the recipe for a unicorn Frappuccino? You think you could–

Brock:   I think so.

Ben:  Oh, oh. Hey, I have a recipe. They call it, “The flavor changing, color changing totally not made-up unicorn Frappuccino, magical flavors start off sweet and fruity transforming to pleasantly sour.” Oh, this cannot have any chemicals in it. “Swirl to reveal a color changing spectacle of purple and pink. It's finished with whipped cream, sprinkled pink and blue fairy powders.”

Brock:  Fairy powders?

Ben:  Oh, wow.

Brock:  I love fairy powders.

Ben:  Here are the ingredients and then we'll move on because this is getting along in the tooth. Here are the ingredients. I'll do this like the micro machine guy speaking of dating myself. I smell Creme Frappuccino, syrup, whipped cream, creme mono and diglycerides, carrageenan, vanilla syrup, sugar, water, mango juice concentrate, sugar water, natural flavors, potassium sorbate, sugar, natural and artificial flavor, salt, salt water, xanthan gum, potassium sorbate, citric acid, blue drizzle which is made of white chocolate, mocha sauce, sugar, condensed skim milk, coconut oil, cocoa butter, natural flavor, salt potassium sorbate, monoglycerides, classic syrup, sugar, sugar, water, natural flavors, potassium sorbate, citric acid, sour blue powder with citric acid, color, spirulina–oh, dude. It's got a super [00:16:09] ______?

Brock:  Oh, hey. Well, there you go.

Ben:  I'm in.

Brock:  It's good for you.

Ben:  Water, sugar, maltodextrin, citric acid, pink powder with fruit and vegetable color, apple, cherry, radish, sweet potato? Holy cow.

Brock:  Radish?

Ben:  Oh my gosh, this is ancestral. Sour blue powder, citric acid, color spirulina, more spirulina, water, sugar, sugar, maltodextrin, citric acid. Did I mention sugar? Wow. Not half bad. Alright. Let's move on. Let's move onto something a little bit more scientific.

Brock:  Okay.

Ben:  The carnivore diet, fantastic article. And by the way, during the news flashes, I linked to all these articles in the shownotes and some of these get a little dense and so I do recommend these as good reads. So, the carnivore diet, it's obviously popular. We've talked about it a lot and this particular article on obscurescience.com delves into how the carnivore diet could theoretically reverse the serious health conditions that it's been shown to anecdotally be able to reverse. So, some of the things that this article explores, in summary, is that we know, for example, that intestinal permeability is the common link behind a lot of autoimmune conditions.

This simply means that dysfunctional intestinal permeability can allow these large molecules like foreign proteins to enter the body and that can lead to the development of everything from diabetes to rampant inflammation to mast cell disorders to autoimmune thyroid issues to a host of different problems. And, of course, when you switch to a carnivore diet that is by definition due to the fact that you're eating, although there are variations of the diet, primarily just meat, it is an elimination diet. And it is a pretty significant elimination diet.

In that, you go cold turkey getting rid of gluten, corn, soy, milk, dairy, a lot of the lectins from plants, any of the phytic acid inhibitors. Just about anything that could mount a reaction against the wall of the gut. This is what I've said before and what I always question is I would love to see a comparison of an autoimmune diet with the carnivore diet or an elimination diet with the carnivore diet because I think a lot of the benefits people see in terms specifically a reversal of–there's those Mikhaila Peterson, Jordan Peterson's daughter made famous by this when she was on the Joe Rogan podcast speaking of this, how she got rid of her rheumatoid arthritis or at least controlled the symptoms of it with the carnivore diet. Primarily, I suspect, because it really is an autoimmune diet. It's just a meat-based version of an autoimmune diet.

And so, this article goes into some of the research behind intestinal permeability and also why the carnivore diet is probably having a pretty significant impact on, specifically, intestinal permeability. So, that's one theory.

Another one is that a lot of folks who switch to this diet and feel good may have undiagnosed celiac disease because we know that a gluten-free diet resolves celiac disease and wheat allergies. And last I checked, ribeye steak is not full of gluten unless it's sprinkled with gluten powder, which is a fantastic side to most steakhouse. You can get the mushrooms, you can get the peppercorn, you can get the butter, you could get the pesto or you could get the gluten powder.

But assuming you're passing up the gluten powder, there is a high likelihood because a carnivore diet has a significantly lower risk of accidental gluten exposure or even gluten cross-contamination. That's the thing is a lot of these gluten-free diets people go on still have elements like coffee and corn and maltodextrin and a lot of things you'll find in condiments or in so-called gluten-free foods that really do have detectable sources of gluten in them, whereas that's–

Brock:  Wait, coffee does?

Ben:  Coffee is cross-reactive with gluten, meaning that there are proteins in coffee that can cause elevated reactivity to gluten, like if you were to go to a good food allergy testing company like Cyrex, for example, and you were to do what's called a Gluten-Associated Cross-Reactive Food Screen, they're actually testing for coffee, particularly instant coffee. That's a big culprit with gluten cross-reactivity. And then, they test for rye, barley, spelt, chocolate is another that has a lot of gluten cross–so a lot of people going like a gluten-free diet but continue to drink couple cups of a suspect coffee and have a big bar dark chocolate at night and they still have symptoms and like, “This gluten-free diet is crap. I'm done. I'm going back to my burger buns.”

Brock:  You just described me.

Ben:  Yeah. That's another theory is that it's reversing autoimmune disease because it is something that is completely eliminating gluten, and that's another reason that it potentially works. And so, it's an interesting article. It goes into a lot of the studies behind this but I personally would have no issues–my take on a carnivore diet is I have no issues with it, if you're eating nose to tail. So, you're getting a lot of the glycine and a lot of the marrow and a lot–if you're eating just the muscle fiber, you're getting a lot of the protein methionine. You're getting a lot of some of the sugars in the meat that could potentially cause some gut inflammation issues. You're missing out on a lot of the beneficial amino acids and a lot of the beneficial fatty acids that you can get from eating the marrow, consuming a lot of the awful like the kidney, liver, heart, et cetera.

The other thing is if you are truly eating nose to tail and you're doing as you might see–people talk about like the Inuit. They say, “Well, these people eat only meat or very, very large percentage of meat and they do just fine.” But we see some of these folks, and I don't know if the Inuit, in particular, do this but I was researching, because I'm working pretty hard on my new book right now, which by the way, I have a landing page up for the book now if people want to start to get in line to get their hands on a copy when it's released. The lion's share of the book is actually about longevity and about the natural ancestral approach to living. And there's a lot of spiritual healing, quantum physics, energy medicine in there too. It's a unique approach. People want to jot it down. I'll put this in the shownotes too. Its discoverki.com, discoverK-I.com is the landing page for the book, if you want to get in line to learn more about that when it comes out next year or this year, actually. It's 2019.

But anyways, what I talked about in that book is the habit of a lot of these populations who do eat nose to tail. They will cook the intestines lightly of ruminants like deer and cattle and some of these grazing animals. And so, they're essentially eating like a stomach salad. They're eating a lot of these intestines that have a lot of the fibers and the grass and the produce in them. So, not only does that mean that they're amping up their phytonutrient, flavonol, anthocyanidins, a lot of these nutrients that could potentially be missing from a strict muscle meat diet, but they are also increasing their exposure to beneficial ferments. And so, they're getting a lot of those fermented foods and beneficial bacteria and ensuring that the impact on the microbiome of a strict meat diet that could potentially be deficient in some of the prebiotics that your gut bacteria need, they're kind of controlling that.

So, my take on the carnivore diet is do it but don't do it by buying ribeyes from Costco, which most of my friends who are on the carnivore diet, that's what they do. They're like, “Go to Costco. You get the best meat. You get the best price.” And they're just eating ribeyes breakfast, lunch and dinner. They're not doing liver pate and maybe some nice sliced up kidney or some braunschweiger or some head cheese or any of the more ancestral cuts. Anyways though, that's the deal with a carnivore diet. I think it's a good article and I'll link to it in the shownotes over at a BenGreenfieldFitness.com/393.

Brock:  Awesome.

Ben:  Cool. Actually, the second to last article that I wanted to touch on was this idea of the ketogenic diet and athletes. Now, this article did a very good job. This was on roguehealthandfitness.com. And it did a very good job delving into all of the different studies on ketosis and performance. So, first, it looked at endurance, and particularly, mice and endurance and the ketogenic diet and what they were able to find out with mice. And then, they looked at another study by Jeff Volek, which I was actually a part of, but back at the University of Connecticut where they took a bunch of male endurance freaks who they had followed ketogenic diet for 12 months. And then, they tested their glycogen conservation like how well they were able to kind of conserve and use their glycogen stores more efficiently during exercise, their fat burning capacity, et cetera. And then, they also looked at non-athletes who were exercising on a ketogenic diet.

I'm sorry, that study didn't look at non-athletes but this particular article I'm talking about, it went on to discuss a study that was done in non-athletes exercising on a ketogenic diet. And then, they looked at high-intensity exercise and how that responds to a ketogenic diet. Then they looked at also cyclists in a ketogenic diet. And, I think there were nearly a dozen studies they went into. They looked into body composition and CrossFitters on a ketogenic diet. They looked at higher intensity exercise performance on a ketogenic diet. The list goes on a total of 13 studies that they go into in this article but here's the summary. Here's the summary. This is interesting.

Brock:  Okay.

Ben:  So, A, the longer the studies keto-adaptation phase, meaning the longer that the study participants follow a ketogenic diet, which we would call keto-adaptation or to use the more layman or laywoman's term turning you into a fat-burning machine, the more likely the study is to find favorable performance results. And that's likely due to increases in your ability to be able to use fatty acids as a fuel improvements and your ability to be able to conserve glycogen during exercise, increases in mitochondrial density, potentially even an increase in the ability to be able to digest fats, like increased bioproduction by the liver and released by the gallbladder, potentially an up-regulation of lipase, one of your fat burning enzymes. So, there's probably a cluster of factors that occur with a long-term exposure to that diet that renders it more favorable long term for performance.

I've been following some version of a low carbohydrate or ketogenic diet even though it's not for everybody. I don't possess a lot of the genetic factors that would cause that to become inflammatory for me, like familial hypercholesterolemia or there's a gene called the PPAR gene that can respond unfavorably to a ketogenic diet. There are some digestive issues like gallbladder removal or things like that that can contribute to it. Aside from the fact that I'm APOE 34, and that's a gene that dictates that if I'm going to follow a high-fat diet, it should be more Mediterranean fats than saturated fats. My body responds well to a lower carbohydrate, relatively ketogenic diet. And I've been doing it since 2012.

I've got about seven and a half years under my belt of a ketogenic diet and I feel better than ever from a performance standpoint. So, a big part of this is the keto-adaptation phase. Then also, here are the other things that the study found. It's highly unlikely that keto is good for high intensity or at least better for high intensity. Meaning, it's not going to hurt you, it's not going to help you. It's unlikely that keto is bad for high intensity. It's likely that keto is neutral for high-intensity exercise. It's likely that keto is better for endurance, especially due to that glycogen conservation aspect. It's very likely that keto diets are better for body composition, meaning body fat percentages. And it's very likely that keto diets are generally healthier just from a pure metabolic standpoint, inflammation, blood glucose, insulin sensitivity, et cetera, than standard high carb diets for athletes.

There are some weaknesses to this review. It didn't begin to delve into things like say the microbiome or let's say markers of longevity like telomeres. It didn't really look too much like oxidative stress profiles for panels such as inflammation. But from a general health standpoint, it appears that the low-carb diet was favorable across a wide population. And I am not a keto zealot, I'm not a guy who vilifies carbohydrates at all costs, but I do think that some attention pays to mitigation of what's called glycemic variability or how many times your blood glucose fluctuates during the day is intelligent and wise when it comes to your health and longevity. And I think that a relatively ketogenic diet along with some form of intermittent fasting or caloric restriction is a very good way to do that. So, this is a good article. It's a really good summary of all the studies that exist to date on the ketogenic diet, or the ketogenic diet in performance, whether it works for bodybuilding or athletics.

Brock:  Yeah. Yeah, I liked it, especially that first point because I don't know how many times we've looked at studies in this podcast that are like four weeks of keto or low-carb and then they say, “Oh, it doesn't work.” But they only do it for four weeks. That adaptation phase is so key and they really have missed that in so many studies. So, I think that's one of the most interesting points of this article.

Ben:  Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Okay. And I got one more for you.

Brock:  Okay.

Ben:  So, this next article was in The Wall Street Journal, and my apologies to those of you who do not have an online subscription to The Wall Street Journal. This would have been free to read when it first came out, when I first twitted it, now it's not. So, here is my username and password for The Wall Street Journal. No, I'm just kidding. It's like a dollar a month, I think, for Wall Street Journal access. So, it's worth it if you want to have access to interesting articles every now and again. Speaking, I actually have an interview I think later on today with The Wall Street Journal about cannabis and exercise, yeah. I don't know what they're going to ask me.

Brock:  You don't know anything about that. Why would they talk to you?

Ben:  Well, they want to ask me, but that's on the side. So, this was a great article. The older I get, the more I'm interested in what older folks who are performing really well and crushing it in life are doing particularly from a training and a nutrition standpoint and of course to a lifestyle and spiritual discipline standpoint as well.

And this Wall Street Journal article goes into the story of 71-year-old Grady Cash, Grady Cash. His name is spelled G-R-A-D-Y, like Grady Cash. He is, at 71, still able to throw down a 2-minute 38-second-half mile and continues to set records in the 200, the 400, and the 800-meter distance. He looks fantastic. He's muscle-bound. He has a very unique training protocol, meaning that he does extremely short efforts like he'll alternate 30 seconds of sprinting with 30 seconds of jogging for a two and a half mile workout or do like eight reps of 200 meters that get progressively faster with the last one being an all-out rep. But he's really doing very short intense fast track workouts. And then, he lifts weights a lot more than the other national track and field competitors in his age group who he's competing against.

He pushes a sled a lot. He does a lot of sled pushing. He interestingly avoids deadlifts and I found this to be the case for me too. I'm sure part of it is limb length but I find once I really start to step up the weight on the deadlifts, I inevitably throw my back like over–I have long ass legs so that's probably a part of it, and I can mitigate most of that by doing deadlifts with either sandbags at my side, like what's called a suitcase deadlift or a hex bar, which is a fantastic way to deadlift and protect the back. I think everybody should own a hex bar. There's not a lot of pieces of equipment that I say are just must-haves but a kettlebell, a hex bar and a pull-up bar are definitely three, and I would say if you have room at your house or your backyard or whatever, a sled that you can push would also be a pretty good idea.

He doesn't do a lot of deadlifts, but he does do a lot of sled pushes and he does hit the weights quite a bit with what appears to be kind of like a full body functional type of routine. His diet is very interesting. I thought the diet was great. He fasts for up to 18 hours, five days a week. You don't see a lot of athletes doing that. They get concerned but when he does eat, he looks like he's eating pretty well.

At 6:00 a.m., he has a cup of coffee with a splash of coconut oil, which technically means he's not fasting for 18 hours, five days a week. I just want to name that, but regardless, again, I don't want to judge him. He's doing pretty well. And then, after his workout, he has coffee with cream. So, he's kind of like on a low-carb type of thing. He eats his first meal usually tuna salad with olive oil and avocado between 1:00 and 2:00, even though The Wall Street Journal author here does not realize at that point he's probably already had a good 400 or 500 calories from his coconut oil and his cream, but it's an aside. He's still staying pretty non-insulinogenic, not getting a lot of blood glucose releases up until his first meal of the day. Dinner, it says might be black bean chicken chilli. He always eats evening snacks before 8:00 p.m. and a protein shake or a scoop of peanut butter is in the norm. On occasion, he has a small scoop of ice cream. We don't know if it's keto ice cream made of cream cheese and eggs and stevia.

Brock:  I'm sure it is.

Ben:  On race mornings, he eats low-carb pancakes. Hey, hey, keto pancakes, baby.

Brock:  Hey.

Ben:  Once again, they make an appearance. We should call the keto pancake commission and see if they'll sponsor this episode, with local honey and two or three eggs. So, yeah. It's interesting. So, essentially, he's lifting weights. He's doing high-intensity interval training. He's eating a relatively low-carb diet and it's a good example. Like anything, we could nitpick all day long and be all freaking orthorexic about these types of folks but I think this is another great example of someone who's doing things mostly right when it comes to anti-aging and another person who we can all try to be like.

Although I have to admit, Brock, and then we'll wrap up these news flashes and move on, that I sometimes have a thought experiment about what is better? The hundred-year-old Chinese guy who does Tai Chi and eats a little bit of rice and fish, and sushi, and drinks green tea all day long and walks and is like a Zen master, quiet, unassuming, mild, like a stereotypical Asian guy that meditates maybe one or two hours a day but would probably get his back broken if he ever walked into a CrossFit gym versus the more like modern American anti-aging enthusiast who's lifting weights, eating eggs, drinking coffee, a little bit more Yang than Yin. What I question is which one is better? Which one is superior? Which one makes you happy? Which one allows for just better health and longevity long term or is it both?

That's a part of my book too, this whole ancestor wisdom versus modern science piece. Can you be the fasting, meditating, spiritually disciplined Yogi who could also just crush it under a barbell? I guess maybe Paul Chek could be an example of someone like that. He's very he's very disciplined spiritually but he's also a beast. Just genetically, he's an anomaly, I realize but maybe there are people out there who have a foot in both camps. You know I'm saying?

Brock:  Yeah. Yeah. To quote that little girl from the internet meme, “Why can't we have both?”

Male:  Special announcements.

Ben:  Well, speaking of meat, speaking of meat, we got a meat sponsor today, baby. I hope everybody's ready to get two pounds of free wild-caught Alaskan salmon and–

Brock:  Oh, they switched from the free bacon to salmon.

Ben:  Now, we got two pounds of free wild-caught Alaskan salmon. My mouth is watering already.

Brock:  That's better for me. I like bacon but salmon, mm-hmm.

Ben:  Yeah, it's wild Alaskan sockeye salmon sourced from Bristol Bay, Alaska. It's good. I actually got some of this shipped to my house last month. I forget what we made with that. I think we did cedar plank on the Traeger grill with some olive oil and some lemon, man.

Okay. So, two pounds of free wild-caught Alaskan salmon and then this company, I'm going to let you wait with bated breath, they do 100% grass-fed and grass-finished beef meaning that they don't finish off their cows with corn. They're grass-fed, all the way through. They do free-range organic chicken. They've got heritage breed pork, that's old-world pork before they bred out all a fat and flavor to make it the other white meat and bastardize pork. This is the way that pigs were meant to be and there's an unbelievable taste difference between a harried pork and like this newer pork in concentrated animal feed operations.

Brock:  And the fat is totally different too. It's a different color, it's a different texture, it's–Yeah.

Ben:  So, good. It melts in your freaking mouth.

Brock:  That's really good.

Ben:  Yeah. Anyways, all of this, this company will deliver right to your door on dry ice-free shipping anywhere in the United States. It's like a dream. So, all of our listeners get the two pounds of free wild-caught Alaskan salmon at this company called Butcher Box. Here's how.

You go to butcherbox.com/Ben, butcherbox.com/Ben. You get your first box of meat. It's going to include two pounds of free wild-caught salmon and $20 off. How do you like that?

Brock:  Nice.

Ben:  Yeah.

Brock:  I love it.

Ben:  Alright. Cool. You like coffee with your meat?

Brock:  Sure.

Ben:  Alright.

Brock:  I like coffee with anything.

Ben:  Okay. You already know about Kion and the fact that our coffee tests more pure and richer in antioxidants than any of the other coffees that we tested against. We tested against 48 plus different brands of coffee, Starbucks, McDonald's, Folgers, you name it. Even a lot of the healthy so-called you know organic coffees in the health industry, we tested it against everything. This coffee kicked the pants off of anything. We have no aqua toxins. We're purely organic, but the best thing is the flavors through the roof, the crème on the espresso is amazing. I make a French press of it every morning and it tastes like you are drinking yourself healthier. Plus, it gives you some really good pure clean energy.

We just made these brand new black stainless steel, really sexy food grade coffee tumblers and you get this with the coffee that comes double wall vacuum insulated so it's just got this incredible aroma when you open it up. We're calling this the Kion Coffee Lovers Bundle. It's on sale right now. You get the coffee but you get the tumbler too and the tumblers pretty–For people who don't know what tumblers, not a–

Brock:  I was just going to ask you.

Ben: –not a sweater. It's a cup but it's a really, really good one.

Brock:  I knew it wasn’t–who thinks it's a sweater? That's a–

Ben:  Tumbler? Tumbler?

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  Is a sweater? [00:41:04] ______ the difference? No, I'm thinking of a jumper.

Brock:  Yeah, a jumper is a sweater.

Ben:  Tumbler is a microblogging in social networking website, I do know that.

Brock:  It is, yes.

Ben:  Anyways, it's not that.

Brock:  It's not that, okay. Don't wear it.

Ben:  Yeah, it's good though.

Brock:  Okay.

Ben:  So, GetKion.com, GetK-I-O-N.com, that'll bring you straight to the Kion Coffee Lovers Bundle. It's on the front page right now.

Finally, this podcast is brought to you by Red Juice. This is something that you can put in to, for example, a smoothie or a shake. It can build your blood, it's like Viagra for your whole body, because it has beats, and it has pomegranate, and it has raspberry, and cranberry, and strawberry. You ever heard of this idea that things that you see in nature that are a certain color can be good for a specific part of the body?

Brock:  Yes.

Ben:  Yeah.

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  Like red stuff–

Brock:  That's a very, very old philosophy.

Ben:  Yeah, the doctrine of signatures. It's not really color, its shape, too. It's like avocados for your ovaries and your testicles and sweet potato?

Brock:  Avocado actually means testicle, doesn't it? In some language?

Ben:  I don't think that's true.

Brock:  I think it is.

Ben:  I think it's a myth. I think so. But regardless–

Brock:  Anyways–

Ben: –it is good for your testicles and the ovaries. The sweet potato, shaped like a pancreas. It's actually good for insulin function. The tomato and the pomegranate, you cut them open they look like the chamber of the heart, they're good for heart function. What's another one? Walnut good for the brain. Carrot, you slice it horizontally not vertically, it's good for erections. Probably not true. I don't think it is. But horizontally it's got carotenoids in it, it's good for your eyes. Egg, it looks like an eye. In a pan when you crack it open. It's got, I think, lutein. Possibly zeaxanthin as well in eggs, good for the eyes. You get the idea.

So, this stuff's good for your blood. It's called Red Juice and it's made by Organifi. It's got a bunch of other stuff in it but it's a blood builder especially if you're an athlete. Anytime you want to increase blood flow before the sauna can be nice, anyways it tastes really good. My kids make smoothies out of these. Kids can drink it too. Kids can drink it too. I mean, that's a selling point right there.

Brock:  Yes, it is, if you have kids.

Ben:  So, you go to Organifi with an I. Organifi.com, discount code is here. Get you 20% off that Green Juice, and then a Red Juice and the Green Juice and their Gold–They have every color of the rainbow, at least three of them.

Brock:  Three of them.

Ben:  If gold is in the rainbow.

Brock:  The most important three.

Ben:  Yeah. I am, for the next month, all over the planet. So, for those of you listening in right now, I'll tell you where I'll be in January then we're going to put the full calendar up at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/Calendar because if you want to come see me, I'm speaking at some amazing events that I would highly recommend you come to. So, everything from CalJam in February to the FitCon Summit in April, the Paleo f(x) in April, to European detox retreat I'm leading in June, but ultimately what's coming up right away is for those of you in the Spokane Coeur d'Alene area I'm giving a TEDx talk on January 12th at the Kroc Center over in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. That's literally in three days so I guess I better start practicing my TED talk because you got to memorize those. That's on my list of things to do later today.

Brock:  And you can't ramble either because they'll cut you off.

Ben:  No. It's got to be 15 minutes long so, yeah.

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  Yeah. Admittedly, I'm a little nervous about that one because I usually don't memorize talks. I just get up there and say what I know, yeah. Anyways though, also for those you in the L.A. area, fantastic place called NextHealth, you may have heard my podcast with them last week. It's a complete biohacking facility that's really, really cutting edge for anti-aging, hormones, cryotherapy, infrared light, full body MRI treatments, they've got everything there. It's cool place. I'm speaking there.

And if you heard my podcast with Khalil Revati from Sunlife Organics and you want to try one of those billion-dollar meals we talked about, conveniently in the location the NextHealth is at Sunlife Organics is right across the hallway from them. So, you can get a billion-dollar meal and then come and listen to me speak. I think that's a pretty deal.

Brock:  Perfect.

Ben:  What I should do is I should text Khalil–you want me to do this? I just had an idea for all of our listeners who are in the L.A. I can text Khalil and say, “Hey, can we do like a discount on the billion-dollar bowl for anybody who's coming to my talk at NextHealth?” What do you think?

Brock:  Yeah. Why not?

Ben:  Okay. Alright. Khalil, if you listening I'm going to be texting you, bro. So, come see me talk at NextHealth that's January 30th. January 30th, I forget the time. It's like 7:00 p.m. or something like that.

Brock:  Perfect.

Ben:  Finally, this Serious Business Conference in New Orleans for business leaders, for people who–well technically, even though it's called Serious Business it's like a business education event and they describe it as a way to invoke thought and insight and expose people to new ideas and thinking on self-development and business. They need a better copywriter in my opinion.

Brock:  Yeah. I don't know what that meant.

Ben:  I think they've got Esther Perel, they've got Joey Coleman who's really good at business building and culture. They've got several people who are pretty big in terms of business culture. A lot of leading CEOs and media coming. Esther Perel, she's an amazing author.

Anyways though it's called The Serious Business Conference and it's in New Orleans, of all places.

Brock:  New Orleans.

Ben:  So, you can come to New Orleans have some shellfish with me and learn about business. That's the lineup. There's a ton more. We need to get to the Q&A so I'm not even going to in but a lot more you can access over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/Calendar.

Male:  Listener Q&A.

Jim:  Hi, Ben. This is Jim. Long time listener, love the podcast. I had a question about fasting post-workout. You've talked about how testosterone levels can be prolonged if you simply fast after your workout and that they will dip if you eat post-workout. I'm wondering if eating post-workout just causes a drop in blood testosterone because your insulin takes the testosterone out of your blood and shuttles it to the muscle to begin recovery. I'm wondering if eating post-workout is actually something that we could do to enhance recovery and that blood levels of testosterone isn't necessarily a desired effect. Some clarification would be nice. Thanks.

Ben:  Well, I think some clarifications need to be made here regarding the actual physiology of what's going on.

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  So, first of all, insulin is something that is going to be increased in response to a feeding because the role of insulin as a storage hormone is to ensure that glucose is partitioned into liver and muscle, that fatty acids are partitioned into adipose tissue and it's generally anabolic hormone; thus, elevated insulin levels in a post-workout scenario would be a favorable thing to maintain anabolism. You would think, well, therefore, eating after workout is going to maintain anabolism and potentially that insulin could assist with taking testosterone out of the blood and shoveling it into the muscle even though that's not actually the role of insulin.

Insulin will do that with nutrients like glucose and fatty acids, but insulin is not the main thing responsible for bringing testosterone into muscle tissue. Instead when it comes to testosterone and muscle growth, what you're looking at in a scenario like that would be androgen receptors. Those would be what testosterone is going to interact with and that works basically the way androgen receptors respond to the testosterone release, is that the signal muscle cells to increase the rate at which new muscle protein is laid down.

So, ideally, anything that would up-regulate your androgen receptor density or your androgen receptor count is going to be the best route to ensure testosterone uptake on a muscular level is up-regulated. Going after insulin certainly, if you look at insulin-like growth factor being a precursor for growth hormone would be something that's beneficial but I'll tackle insulin in a moment I just want to name that your goal instead should be to up-regulate androgen receptor density. When it comes to androgen receptor density, really, it's very interesting. I gave a talk on this at a A4M recently, The American Academy of Anti-Aging Physicians and I discussed how androgen receptors are up-regulated more via the exercise approach than via specific nutritional or supplementation strategies. Particularly the lifting heavy complex multi-body lifts, longer rest periods, not meaning you're sitting on your ass playing Candy Crush and watching TV at the gym and flipping through Men's Health but just like doing some foam rolling, doing some mobility exercises and then coming back to the next lift and then finally ensuring that you lift with your legs. Don't be the toothpick-like person, do squats, do deadlifts, et cetera to really amp up androgen receptor density by working with your leg.

So, it's lifting heavy, it's complex multi-body lifts, it's long rest periods, it's including the legs et cetera. That's your strategy for enhancing the ability for your cells to be able to respond to testosterone. But when it comes to the insulin piece, the thing is insulin is capable stimulating testosterone production. That's been shown.

Brock:  Stimulating it.

Ben:  Of stimulating testosterone production and simultaneously it inhibits sex hormone binding globulin. This is why, in many cases, you'll see people who are calorically deprived, overstressed, working too hard, high cortisol which causes high sex hormone-binding globulin. They can sometimes have high total testosterone but low free testosterone and in many cases, if you look at the blood markers in the labs you'll see along with that low insulin and low insulin-like growth factor. In some cases, those people just need to eat some colostrum, eat some dairy, eat more food overall and have a little bit [00:52:00] ______–

Brock:  Chill?

Ben: –anabolic approach. Yeah. Train less, eat more, sleep more, et cetera. That's the way that you can get insulin to be capable of stimulating testosterone production and inhibiting sex hormone binding concentrations.

Then we get to this piece about the exercise, and I think this was probably triggered by the podcast I did with Mark Sisson in–And I'll link to that one in the shownotes. But we discussed the research behind the up-regulation of growth hormone and the up-regulation of testosterone when you fast for about one to two hours after a workout and then eat your post-workout meal.

Now, what Jim is concerned about is the fact that if you do that then, theoretically, you're going to have some of that anabolic hormone insulin not being stimulated and not able to have its favorable impact on anabolism. But the thing is one of the responses, what's called one of the gluco-regulatory responses to exercise particularly intense exercise, is that there is a significant release of insulin. That release of insulin stays elevated for one to two hours following the workout, meaning that you do not need to eat a meal to have your insulin levels elevated in a post-workout scenario. Very similarly to that you actually see during the workout some amount of glycogenolysis by the liver. Some people will work out and their blood glucose will go up and not down and that's because your body is mobilizing and releasing more of your storage glycogen so that you have elevated glucose available for the workout.

So, plasma insulin concentration after intense exercise is what occurs to restore glucose clearance and glycaemia towards normal. So, it's normal response. Your body causes this bump in blood glucose and then it follows that in the post-workout state with a bump in insulin to enable you to not be hyperglycemic after exercise. And that bump in insulin, in most studies, stays relatively elevated, significantly elevated, for one to two hours after the actual workout. Meaning that in that post-workout state, you have enough insulin that's taking that glucose that got released and driving it back into muscle tissue and simultaneously, as I've just alluded to, insulin is capable of stimulating testosterone production and that all occurs without you needing to even eat a meal.

So, it really isn't necessary to drop the bar and go suck down your malted extra fructose creatine shake. It's simply not something that you have to do. As a matter of fact, we know that the effect of this, like I mentioned from that interview that I did with Mark Sisson. When you fast, whether you are just intermittent fasting and especially if you're fasting post-workout you actually see a significant increase in testosterone and growth hormone. Fasting itself with growth hormone, it's crazy. Some studies show up to a 2000% increase in growth hormone in response to intermittent fasting.

I'm talking about short-term fast 12 to 16 hours and very, very similarly these short-term fast there are studies on androgenic hormonal concentrations especially the testosterone response and it ranges between 150% to 200% in response to an intermittent fasting protocol. This is why I feel that–Well my take is this and I'm going to give you one more link in the shownotes if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/393 and that is a podcast or a speech that I gave on fasting and exercise. During that talk I mentioned when it comes to the intermittent fasting protocol that if you're going to do an overnight fast and then you're going to work out, there is some evidence that if you're working out and you're already fasted that eating a post-workout meal is more favorable from an anabolic testosterone and growth hormone standpoint. That is the case. If you fast for 12 hours overnight, get up, you work out, don't fast again. You know I'm saying? Don't skip breakfast.

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  At the same time, if you're an afternoon or an early evening exerciser and you've had maybe breakfast, you've had definitely lunch and then you work out at 4:00 or 5:00 p.m. you can and you will benefit more from this, wait for one to two hours before you have dinner. It's that simple. If you follow that rule, you're going to be able to repeat what you said earlier Brock, “have your cake and eat it too,” when it comes to striking that sweet spot between fasting and exercise insulin testosterone and growth hormone.

The only other thing that I would throw in there, and I'm just going to link to all this in the shownotes if you want to explore any of these resources even more, my podcast with Mark Sisson and my podcasts on the benefits of fasted exercise gym or anybody else listening in, is the idea of basically maintaining muscle protein recovery and decreasing the rate of muscle protein breakdown with a strategy of essential amino acid intake. Because as little as 5 to 6 grams of orally administered essential amino acids has been shown to stimulate net muscle protein balance significantly when consumed in the one to two hours after resistance exercise.

So, this is another way to gain that whole scenario is, and I realized this sounds like the fox guarding the hen house because I own a company that sells essential amino acids. I realized that fact but one of the reasons why–

Brock:  One of the reasons why you make them.

Ben:  One of the reason why, I'd be a fool not to name this, because it's one of the reasons why I actually encourage this practice so much and the reason I do it myself because this research shows that as little as 5 grams, I do 5 to 10 grams of essential amino acids I use Kion Aminos, in that post-workout state and the stimulation muscle protein synthesis and the absence of any other meal of any other calories is as significant as if you'd eaten a post-workout meal. The other thing is it's non-insulinogenic. You don't see a greater spike in insulin so you maintain the insulin you've already released and you get the amino acids that will maintain maximum muscle protein synthesis and so again, this falls into that scenario of being something that you can work into the strategy. So, I'm going to say this one more time and then we'll end this question.

Brock:  Yeah. Okay. Summary.

Ben:  If you are fasting overnight for 12 to 16 hours and you wake up and you do a hard workout, eat a meal in the one to two hours after that workout. If you are eating breakfast and/or lunch and working out in the later afternoon or the early evening, it would behove you to wait one to two hours at least to eat dinner. However, in those one to two hours between your early afternoon and evening workout and dinner, consume 5 to 10 grams of essential amino acids and that would be the best scenario for fasting combined with exercise for growth hormone and testosterone. That's what I would do.

Ben:  Hey, Ben. I was hoping you could talk about the school system nationwide and the–What I feel is an epidemic and a huge issue with the food quality and offerings that are being served at our public schools through vendors like Aramark, as an example. I was at our daughter's kindergarten and her menu for the month was nachos, hot dogs, corn dogs and all kinds of things that are terrible in addition to an ice cream truck that had Hershey's and touted real ingredients. The first thing I pulled out had yellow fat and high fructose corn syrup. So, I'm curious what your thoughts are on combating this epidemic nationwide and getting better food options through our administrators and into our school system and getting these vendors like Aramark out. Thanks. Bye.

Ben:  Man, this is a topic that is fresh on my mind. I just got done reading this book called, “Feeding You Lies” it's written by Vani Hari, the food babe. You heard of her before, Brock?

Brock:  Yes.

Ben:  Yeah.

Brock:  Yes.

Ben:  So, it's a great book and it goes into just basically all the all the chemicals that are in all of the different packaged and processed foods and it may sound like it's just the same old, same old but honestly, she goes in like American versus European foods and the fact that in Europe, they actually–Like the French fries in Europe at McDonald's, it's like potatoes, dextran, sunflower oil and salt and then you look at the ones in the U.S. and there's like 12 other ingredients. It's very interesting. Even in Europe there are fewer processed and packaged ingredients because they're stricter over there when it comes to what is allowed in our actual foods.

What we could do in a food babe-esque exploration of maybe a couple of the popular things that you see in some of these you know lunchtime foods that kids are eating like the Mott's applesauce, Mott's applesauce that's a popular one. Since 1842, Mott's applesauce made from 100% real fruit. These are the ones that parents pick up and put into the kids lunchboxes. The ingredients are apples. Apples. It's great.

Brock:  Okay.

Ben:  High fructose corn syrup, strawberry puree, natural flavors which many cases aren’t natural. We've covered that before. And red number 40 because an apple sauce needs to be red not apple colored.

Brock:  Apparently.

Ben:  Yeah. You look at, for example, the–What's another popular one? The Welch's fruit snacks. It's fruit puree. It's fruit puree. Fruits the first ingredient they brag on the front and then we got corn syrup, sugar, modified corn starch, citric acid, lactic acid, natural and artificial flavors, red number 40, blue number 40. Just a couple examples. I realize I'm preaching to the choir, most people are pretty aware of the issues with school lunch. But it is interesting especially when you look at the U.S. and what kids eat around the world for lunch? I'm going to put a link in the shownotes to “What Kids Eat Around the World for Lunch.” This is a pretty good one. I don't know if you had a chance to look at this one, Brock.

Japan, Japan school lunches, you see some fish, you see some vegetables, a little bit of miso soup, some rice. Not too bad. You go to France. Nice little multi-course meal. They're getting some cabbage and tomato salad, a kiwi, some sliced bread with a little bit of cheese, some roast beef, some potatoes, some tomatoes and fresh herbs. That's their school lunch. Their school lunches. Canada had a vegetable stir-fry; this young man is eating on this slide. There's the U.K. the UK and it's not perfect but a little roast beef with gravy, carrots, potatoes, some peas, very U.K.-esque. In Italy, it's pasta, a little fresh ziti pasta with some nice homemade tomato sauce or cafeteria made tomato sauce. South Korea looks wonderful. It's rice, kimchi, perilla leaves, sautéed duck, a soybean paste soup with greens and tofu. Looks pretty good. Brazil; rice, beans, beef stew and salad. Good blend of nutrients.

Let me get to the U.S.

Brock:  Oh. That's the saddest picture I've ever seen.

Ben:  A hamburger bun with some apple sauce, “#ThanksMichelleObama for banning fat from cafeterias around the U.S.” So, yeah, hamburger bun with some applesauce is what this child is eating.

Brock:  Is there a hamburger in that bun? I don't even see it there.

Ben:  I don't think there's an actual hamburger in the bun. If there is, it's the size of a quarter because you can't see it. Actually, I don't want to throw Michelle Obama under the bus. They actually due to some of the improvement she's made for better school lunches. There are things like salad bars with fresh fruits and vegetables and salad greens and stuff like that but, yeah.

Brock:  I see some canisters of milk behind that sad tray.

Ben:  Mm-hmm, yeah. Okay. Let me get some milk go along there.

Brock:  There's milk in there.

Ben:  So, yeah, it is an issue. It is an issue. And when it comes to changing up and revolutionizing school lunch programs there are some steps that you can take. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine for example, they've launched what's called “The Healthy School Lunch Campaign” which you can find at PCRM.org and I will link to that in the shownotes. What they've what they've done is they report cards to grade school districts on their cafeteria food and health education efforts but they have step-by-step instructions on their website about how a fledgling food warrior could broach the topic with your school principal.

Now, when you go to the website, you'll notice that they're heavily skewed towards plant-based meals and plant-based nutrition for kids, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, low in saturated fat and cholesterol. I realize that all the ketogenic, Ancel Keys was the devil low-carb zealots out there just drew in a sharp breath but really, I'd much rather–Because even at my own children's school here in Spokane, there are a great deal of the students who go to the school cafeteria where they have, I believe it's a Taco Time. They have another fast-food–They have three different fast-food vendors there.

Brock:  Really?

Ben:  Yeah. I would much rather my kids get, if they had the option even though they bring their own meals to school, I would rather them get a kiwi fruit with some kale salad and a slice of whole-grain bread and some lentils low in saturated fat and cholesterol compared to some of those meals. I'm just saying. I can give my kids some bone marrow and liver with dinner. I'm just fine with them having a plant-based meal at lunch if that's what their option is compared to fast-food. This website Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, PCRM.org they've got some good–If you go there and you click the one that says, “Take Action, Take Action,” that would be a good place to start.

Now, in addition to that, there is a farmtoschool.org. Now what farm to school programs do is they connect farms with local schools and there's, at least in the U.S. they exist in all 50 states, and what they do is they have information there that helps you to connect your school with local farms that can get the school specifically locally grown fruits and vegetables onto the school's cafeteria trays. Again, if my kid goes to school, I'd rather they have just three organic apples for lunch, then the fast food and again, even though those farms might not be supplying meat, there's no reason a kid can't eat plants fruits and vegetables that are organic or at least local farm grown for lunch compared to a lot of these fast-food options. So, they're connecting local farmers to schools and I love this farm to school movement idea and their farmtoschool.org website. That's a really good one too.

Then there is The Lunch Box which is a website started by a lady who's known as the Renegade Lunch Lady. They're funded by Whole Foods Market but they have this online toolbox, a resource menu for you for changing school lunches one district at a time. They have healthy recipes, they're scalable, they're priced educational resources and their goal is to enable and equip the parents to help convert and reform school lunches. So, that one is the lunchbox.org.

I'll link to those three in the shownotes because the those are those are three really, really good places to start to be able to take action and I would love if this podcast is able to help parents strike a movement. It actually inspired me, I have it on my to-do list next week because even though my kids get all their own healthy lunches packed, I still feel as though I could do their school a better service by connecting them with some of these resources. So, that's actually on my to-do list for next week to approach the school principal with specifically, I'm going to first introduce the Farm to School idea and see if we can just get some more locally grown fruits and vegetables in there to their school.

So, anyways, thank you for this question because it's inspired me, Ben. Then I get a lot of questions about, “Well, what kind of things do we pack for our kids for their healthy school lunches?” I do have a few little ideas for you because our kids now they're, for the most part, brown bagging their own lunches. But for example, we'll use some olives, some carrot sticks, some cherry tomatoes and then whatever leftover from last night's meat portion and then we'll just use like a homemade mayo or we like–for example, Mark Sisson has his primal kitchen dressings. Our kids love those. They can drench their vegetables in those and they're very healthy.

We do a lot of avocados, we do a lot of beef jerkies from different companies as well as some of our own homemade jerky's. We do a lot of nori seaweed wraps instead of regular sand which wraps, a lot of eggs, hard-boiled eggs because we have chickens and a lot of fresh berries. You can even take things like coconut manna and coconut butter which is not considered to be an allergen in a lot of schools even though you can't do nuts and seeds, coconut tends to be pretty safe and that just makes anything taste amazing as does bacon. So, our kids will do a lot of eggs, bacon, olives, avocados, coconut butter, coconut manna. What are a few the other things? In addition to the sliced carrots, we'll do sliced jicama, we'll do sliced cucumbers. We have certain brands of chips that will get like–Because kids, they're running around all day. Yeah, they're eating more carbohydrates than dad is. The Siete tortillas or the Siete chips, that's also a really good option and, yeah. Mostly, it's a blend of just leftovers and–It's not rocket science, really.

If anything you know follow a Weston A. Price diet. Go to the Weston A. Price website and look at some of the things that they have, some of the resources they have and because they're chock-full of vitamin A, D and K with a lot of the recipes over there. That's exactly what you want your kids to be eating for symmetry and for cognitive health. I don't know if Weston A. Price has like a kids' school lunch resource. I should have looked before the podcast to see if they do. Actually, here we go, “Packing the perfect lunchbox by the Weston A. Price Foundation.” I'm going to link to this in the shownotes for you guys. They've got mashed avocado with a drop of lemon juice in a pita stuffed with spinach, raw cream cheese sprinkled with grated carrots, grated zucchini, grated apple and topped with a lettuce leaf. What else do they have? Cream cheese which is now made its third appearance on today's show with wild salmon–

Brock:  Totally sponsored by cream cheese today.

Ben: –arugula or other lettuce. We're sponsored by cream cheese and what was the other one we're sponsored by?

Brock:  The gummies, the CBD gummies?

Ben:  No, it wasn’t the gummies. We gave something else a pretty big shout out. It was the cream cheese and–I'm forgetting what it was now. Oh, Keto pancakes. Cream cheese–

Brock:  Oh, yeah.

Ben:  This episode was brought to you by cream cheese and Keto pancakes. I might even change the title for this episode. Anyways I'll link to that Weston A. Price resource as well because a lot of the women who I work with who are about to have babies or who are breastfeeding or who are raising young babies, I have almost all of them on something very similar to the to the Weston A. Price type of diet.

So, that's where I would start and I will put that reference for you in the shownotes as well. Now Brock–

Brock:  I mean, I’m going to throw one thing in, have you heard of Big Green, biggreen.org?

Ben:  No.

Brock:  They're doing like planting gardens and things at schools so the kids are able to harvest their own food and they're also learning about take all the food literacy programs that they're doing as well.

Ben:  Let's link to that too. I have been called, I have been known to be called biggreen.org if you know what I'm saying. Yeah. But we digress from kids’ school lunches.

Well, I think that's a good place to wrap things up and talk a little bit about giving some swag away. What do you think, Brock? Shall we give away a goodie bag?

Brock:  Sounds good, Big Green.

Ben:  Alright. I don't know why all of a sudden we started talking like this but this is the part of the show where we give away a handy dandy gift box to somebody who left us a wonderful, kind nice review in iTunes. If you go to iTunes, and this really helps out the show, Apple Podcast I guess is called now.

Brock:  Apple Podcast, yeah.

Ben:  Leave a review, five stars–Leave a review wherever you listen in but particularly if you're on Apple Podcast, leave a review. We will go find one of our favorite reviews, we'll read it right here on the show and then all you need to do is email [email protected]. That's [email protected]. We'll send you out a goodie bag, a cool shirt, a beanie, a whole bunch of swag. So, Brock, you want to take this one away yeah?

Brock:  Yeah. This one's from S_N_Yardley and the title is, “All Time Favorite Podcast,” five stars.

“I never feel let down by Ben's podcast. He always has something new and interesting to talk about and I learn new information every time I listen. I've searched high and low for other podcasters who educate and entertain me like Ben does but I have yet to find his equal. Thank you, Ben, for sharing your knowledge and expertise with all of us. I find it amusing how you always find a way to relate every little topic to your own life experience whether it's flying to Japan to ferment your own soybeans or your–“

Ben:  I did do that.

Brock:  Did you do that?

Ben:  Speak of the devil, my soybeans I've have been fermenting them for three months and made miso in Japan and three months is the minimum time and actually opened it up yesterday and tried it. It's really good there's a little bit of mold on the top which is very normal at soybeans so I got rid of the mold on the top and then took a big spoonful and ate it and probably, I guess, that broke my fast but dude, it actually tasted pretty good. Had my own signature of my biome on it because I made it without gloves on and apparently that's how like miso makers put their own signature on their miso they make is it transfers their skin microbiome into the miso so it tasted like a little piece of fermented soy y Ben.

Brock:  Thanks.

Ben:  We digress.

Brock:  Yeah. Anyway, “–whether it's fine to Japan to ferment your own soybeans or your self -enlightening micro mushroom trips. I often find myself rolling my eyes and shaking my head saying, ‘Of course you did.'”

I find myself saying that. I've been saying that since 2011.

Ben:  Of course, you did, psilocybin soybeans. That's a great name for a song, psilocybin and soybeans.

So, along with Keto pancakes, cream cheese, CBD gummy, psilocybin and soybeans everything for this podcast you can find out BenGreenfieldFitness.com/393. S_N_Yardley, thanks for the review. Email us, remember your T-shirt size, [email protected], we'll hook you up. Everybody else, do us a good one. How do you say it? Do us a solid.

Brock:  Do us a solid.

Ben:  Do us a solid review. This is biggreen.org signing out along with his podcast sidekick, Brock. Thanks for listening folks.

Want more? Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com or you can subscribe to my information-packed and entertaining newsletter and click the link up on the right-hand side of that web page that says, “Ben recommends,” where you'll see a full list of everything I've ever recommended to enhance your body and your brain. Finally, to get your hands on all of the unique supplement formulations that I personally develop, you can visit the website of my company, Kion, at getK-I-O-N.com. That's getK-I-O-N.com.

 

January 10, 2019, Q&A Episode 393: How To Increase Testosterone After Exercise, Keto For Athletes, Keto Pancakes, Cream Cheese, CBD Gummies & More!

During this podcast intro, Ben mentions Thorne Mediclear, The Fresh-Pressed Olive Oil Club, Elemental Health CBD, BioCBD (code: BEN10 will save you 10%), Thorne Hemp and his new book releasing at DiscoverKi.com.

Have a podcast question for Ben? Click the button at the bottom of the page (or go to SpeakPipe), or use the Contact button in the free Ben Greenfield Fitness app.

News Flashes [6:50]

• CBD, Keto and Romaine Lettuce? The 5 foods the internet was most obsessed with in 2018
• Here’s why the carnivore diet probably works well for may folks.
• Is a ketogenic diet good for athletes or bodybuilders? (Long article, but scroll to end for good summary)
• This 70-year-old track star is very inspiring, and an interesting diet too – 18 hour fasts…

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, BenGreenfieldFitness.com/Snapchat, and Google+.

Special Announcements [37:34]

This podcast is brought to you by:

–The Butcher Box Skip the store and spend more time on what's important – family. Get your meat delivered, for free, right to your door. Each box, whether it's chosen by you or curated by us, is perfectly packed and portioned for your needs. Get 2 FREE pounds of wild-caught Alaskan salmon.

–Kion Coffee What's better than Kion Coffee? Keeping it piping hot at home, in the office, or on-the-go in a stylish Kion Tumbler!

–Organifi Red Juice. A “Tart-Sweet” Custom Brew With The HOTTEST Fat Melting And “Skin-Firming” Superfoods In The World. Use discount code: GREENFIELD at checkout and get 20% off your entire order.

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

Ben's Adventures: [43:40]

– January 12, 2019: TEDxCoeurdalene, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. I am thrilled to present topics in longevity and biohacking to in an intimate setting to an inspired audience. Join me!

–January 30, 2019: NextHealth FOREFRONT Talk with Ben Greenfield: NextHealth, Century City, CA Westfield Mall 10250 Santa Monica Blvd LA CA 90067 to RSVP and for more information, send an email to [email protected] (And stop by Sunlife Organics, which is right next to NextHealth before the talk and mention Ben's name for a 10% discount on your Billion Dollar Bowl!)

– Jan 20 – 21, 2019: Serious Business Conference, New Orleans, Louisiana. This conference is going invoke thought and insight and expose you to new ideas and thinking on self-development and business in the beauty industry. Register here.

– February 22- 24, 2019: CalJam: The Rebel Yell Tour. California Jam combines a TED talk format with a rock n’ roll show in-between! The driving objective of the event is to get attendees up to date on chiropractic research, scientific studies, and useful practice management strategy. The hope is that attendees bring all they learn at Cal Jam back to their communities to implement real, rippling change. Get your tickets here before the prices go up!

– April 6 – 7, 2019: FitCon Summit, Salt Lake City, Utah. FitCon® encourages everyone to Find Their Fit. It does not matter whether it is powerlifting, Crossfit, bodybuilding, roller derby, or even axe throwing. Be sure to visit the Kion booth in the expo! Register here and use code BEN50 for $50 off!

– April 26 – 28, 2019: Paleo f(x) Conference, Austin, Texas. Join me, staff from my company, Kion, and the rest of your tribe at Paleo f(x)™ 2019, the largest gathering of Paleo / ancestral health / keto / functional medicine / strength & conditioning experts in the world… see everything you'll get out of this enriching, enlightening event. Besides, April is a wonderful time of year to visit Austin, TX….Get your tickets here.

– June 23 – July 7, 2019: European Detox Retreat, Paracelsus al Ronc, Switzerland. At this 2019 liver detox and R&R at the beautiful Swiss Mountain Clinic (formerly Paracelsus al Ronc) in the Italian quarter of Switzerland, you will stay on-site and receive diagnostics and treatments from the best doctors of biological medicine to detox your liver and your soul. Plus you're going to have a wonderful time hiking, sightseeing and enjoying one of the most beautiful places in the world. Here's the link to more info. *this event is sold out, waitlist is available

-View the Official Ben Greenfield Fitness Calendar Here

Giveaways & Goodies

-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!

 

——————————————

Listener Q&A

As compiled, deciphered, edited and sometimes read by Brock Armstrong, the Podcast Sidekick.

How To Increase Testosterone After Exercise [47:08]

Jim says: You have talked about how testosterone levels can be prolonged if you simply fast after a workout and that they dip if you eat post-workout. I am wondering if eating post-workout just causes a drop in blood testosterone because your insulin takes the testosterone out of the blood and shovels it into the muscle to begin recovery. So I am wondering if eating post workout is actually something we could do to enhance recovery and that blood levels of testosterone are not, in fact, the real desired effect.

In my response, I recommend:
–My podcast on the benefits of fasted exercise
–My podcast with Mark Sisson
–Kion essential amino acids
–Essential amino acids and muscle protein recovery from resistance exercise

How To Fix The School Lunch Program [59:53]

Ben says: I would love to hear your ideas for avoiding the epidemic of poor quality food in our public school system. And also if you have any ideas of how we can affect a change in the system so future children don't have to suffer. My daughter's kindergarten offers hot dogs, nachos, corn dogs and an ice cream truck from Hershey's. I would love you hear your thoughts on combating this issue and getting better vendors into the system.

In my response, I recommend:
–The book “Feeding You Lies”
–What Kids Around The World Eat For School Lunch
–Healthy School Lunch Campaign 
–farmtoschool.org
–TheLunchBox.org
–Packing The Perfect Lunchbox by Weston. A Price
–BigGreen.org