ben greenfield podcast 255
DESCRIPTION
Listen to this podcast at http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2013/09/255-how-to-get- strong-as-a-bull-and-then-get-ripped-cold-thermogenesis-quick-tips-how-often- should-you-poop/TRANSCRIPT
Podcast #255 from http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2013/09/255-how-to-get-
strong-as-a-bull-and-then-get-ripped-cold-thermogenesis-quick-tips-how-often-
should-you-poop/
[0:00:00]
Introduction: In today’s episode of the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast: How
to get strong as a bull and then get ripped, how to get better
results from cold thermogenesis, what to do about excessive
sweating, how often should you poop, the best natural skin
care strategies, and how to get rid of a bone spur without
surgery.
Welcome to the bengreenfieldfitness.com podcast. We provide
you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon, and
wellness advice from the top fitness experts in the nation. So
whether you’re an ironman triathlete, or you’re just trying to
shed a few pounds, get ready for non-run-off-the-mill, cutting
edge content from bengreenfieldfitness.com.
Ben: I’m gonna interrupt Brock before he even has a chance to say
anything at all because he usually is the first person to talk in
these episodes.
Brock: I do, I usually blurt something out.
Ben: But I gotta tell you, just to give you a little insider sneak peek
of what goes on before we record. I so far have been filled in
that Brock took a giant dump this morning as he has almond
skin in his teeth and he’s drinking decaf coffee right now.
Brock: Yeah.
Ben: So, just to paint a picture for you guys.
Brock: That was nice of you, aired my shame for me.
Ben: Yes, no problem. Anytime my friend, anytime. Hmm, awkward
silence in the podcast.
Brock: Is that the ....
Ben: I guess that was our awkward silence moment. Speaking of
awkward silence, I’m about .....
Brock: There’s gonna be a serious awkward silence when Ben goes up
into the wilderness to practice his zombie apocalypse skills.
Ben: That’s right.
Brock: You’ll leave tomorrow, right?
Ben: I’m going total AWOL, so for all of you podcast listeners and
folks who ask me questions online and stuff, you may notice
some amount of absence on my part especially from
responding to personal emails because I’m going to a 5 day
wilderness survival camp in the back woods of Colorado
somewhere with no phone and no internet and I’ll come back
out with squirrels growing out of my beard. I guess squirrels
would be more appropriately living in my beard not growing
out of my beard.
Brock: I’d like the image of them growing out of your beard. It just
seems more like just sort of .... I can see their little arms
pushing their faces out of your beard.
Ben: Giving my face over just squirrels. So, there’s another intense
visuals for our listeners and we have a jampacked podcast this
week because we’re gonna just be doing a special episode next
week considering the fact that I can’t record too well and I’m
living at bear cave or wherever I’ll be. So .....
Brock: The squirrels will bat at your microphone too much.
Ben: We’ll be sure to give you a special report though if I’d be sad I
wanna return to post industrial America after I spend a few
days in the trees.
Brock: Yeah, what if you never come back?
Ben: It could happen, it could happen.
Brock: Yeah, it could, I guess I’ll take over.
Ben: Yup, you can, you can .....
Brock: Look out everybody. Bad if I scamming every out everywhere.
Ben: You can have my kids, you can have my wife, you can have my
dog and I will .... I’ll be out in the cabin in the woods
somewhere so there you go.
News Flashes:
Brock: Alright, go over to audiblepodcast.com/ben and you can sign
up for your free audible membership and get yourself a free
book and I know Ben, you talked about this book over at daily
apple.
Ben: Yeah, I did, I did. I recently wrote a blog post over at Mark’s
dailyapple.com.
Brock: dot com.
Ben: Which is marksdailyapple.com. A really good website, Mark’s
cool.
Brock: Half and bending.
Ben: It’s called Top Ten Rules For Becoming an Ancestral Athlete
and in that article I talked about this book called Antifragile by
Nassim Taleb who actually have the .....
Brock: Antifragile, so that’s strong – not fragile. It’s an interesting way
to phrase it.
Ben: It’s the ..... subtitle is Things That Gain from Disorder and it’s
pretty cool. It just teaches you about how things like air
conditioning and heat and modern living and health and
biology and medicine and all of these stuff is basically making
us weak and how you make yourself strong.
Audiblepodcast.com/ben describes it as erudite and witty and
.... what is erudite mean again?
Brock: I think that word basically sums up making us weak.
Ben: Ah wait, erudite does that really?
Brock: Well, not really. Erudite is somebody who’s well read, well
learned, very clever and .....
[0:05:02.6]
Ben: Yes, well erudite and witty. I’m not going even to pretend that I
came out with that phrase. Taleb’s message is revolutionary,
that’s what audible says about it.
Brock: Cool.
Ben: So, either way good listen for you check it out it will be a good
book that will just blow your mind and speaking of blowing
your mind, an article came out, I think it was on the New York
Times websites although I also saw it on a ......
Brock: Hey, wait a second. Are we doing this on the wrong order, do I
jump in to special announcements and then on to news
flashes?
Ben: You did but ....
Brock: Oh man.
Ben: You make mistakes, we all make mistakes.
Brock: You know, I’m glad now that you told everybody that I was
drinking decaf coffee ‘cause that explains what’s going on in
my brain .... which is very ....
Ben: and I love how to make .... on to this podcast. I love on today’s
podcast we’re doing zero editing we’re just kinda like talking
over all our mistakes so. We will just do that the whole time.
Brock: Sometimes we realized we’re doing something wrong and we’ll
actually go back but ah, yeah, I don’t think this week.
Ben: Nah, not ...
Brock: This isn’t one of those weeks.
Ben: Not gonna happen. I actually have to go to the doctor right
after this podcast for a special heart scan to see .....
Brock: Oh yeah, your stress test.
Ben: Yeah, I’m gonna go see what 10 years of extreme endurance
exercise has done to my heart. So, stay tuned for some
feedback on that but anyways that means that we have to
churn out this podcast in time for me to hop in my truck and
drive to the doctor’s office.
Brock: Okay, so let’s go back to news flashes and then continue on as
if I didn’t put us on to special announcements.
Ben: Meanwhile, chopping wood boosts your testosterone more
than playing sports and this was pretty cool study. A guy
named Dr. Ben Trumble studied a bunch of forgers/farmers in
the Bolivian Amazon. I’m not really sure exactly what a
forger/farmer is but I can only imagine and they tested....
Brock: I’m sure he has squirrels growing out of his beard.
Ben: He must. They tested these guys saliva after they played soccer
and then after they had chopped down trees where clearing the
jungle to grow crops and at that point I’ve kinda realized while
reading why they chose this group because how many people
on the face of the planet both know how to play soccer....
Brock: Do both of those things....
Ben: And chop down trees to clear jungle to grow crops. Hence,
Bolivia. So, what they found was that there was a significant
higher released of concentration of salivary testosterone after
chopping the wood specifically doing something that would
kinda be considered providing for the family or something
engaged in food or economic productivity vs. simply playing
sports. Both result in a spike in performance but the spike
from chopping wood is higher. So ....
Brock: What it didn’t mention was that they were playing soccer
against ten year old girls.
Ben: That’s right, that’s right. This actually inspired my workout last
night though that’s why I’m sore right now. I have one of those
battle mazes from Onnit which is designed to really give you a
really good workout that’s similar to what you get from like a
kettlebell workout but one of the exercises you can do with the
giant battle maze is wood chopping against a giant rubber tire.
And so, I swing the battle maze up over my head while my 5
year old boy stand there watching me and cheering me on and
I hit the big rubber tires many times as I can and that is a
really really good workout I gotta tell you. If you just gonna go
and do one thing and ..... it’s a little bit cathargic too. So ....
Brock: Uhm, I bet. Do you switch sides, like one side one chop on the
left, one chop on the right? Just back and forth?
Ben: I’d go 5 and 5 just to kinda spread the workout through my
body evenly and this is also why, I’m actually in the process of
building a home right now that’s kinda out in the middle of
nowhere, on 10 acres in Washington. More hippie action from
Ben and I’m putting a wood stove into that home and when I
was at the Paleo FX Conference last year I listened into a really
interesting discussion by a biohacker named Josh Whiton who
actually lives as ancestrally as possible I think in the ....
somewhere in like Brooklyn, somewhere in New York City -ish.
He is a huge fan of these modern wood stoves where air enters
the burning chamber from multiple conduits that are kinda
build through and throughout the stove and they have these
panels that reflect heat back at the wood and into the room.
They’ve got this tight fitting doors that keep particulates out of
the air and you can put this intake into them that uses air
that’s piped in from the outdoors into a combustion chamber.
[0:10:09.4]
So, I at first didn’t want to put a wood stove in my home ‘cause
their really inefficient and then once I listen to him talk and
started to research this a little bit more, and I’m going to put a
link in the show notes for anybody listening in who’s interested
in this stuff. It turns out that wood burning stove like modern
wood burning stove can actually be really green and really
efficient plus you’ll get higher testosterone. So, what’s not to
love.
Brock: Yeah, my guess if they can keep the soot out of the room that’s
awesome ‘cause like my biggest problem with burning stuff
was the smell and the dirt.
Ben: I actually want, I want soot and dirt all over my living room so
that after I’ve chopped wood I can go in with my jack-upped
testosterone levels and just like roll around on the bare skins in
my living room making love to my wife with my huge
testosterone levels and then stroking my beard and sitting in
front of the fire as it crackles away.
Brock: You’re totally not coming back in this building to search your
heat. I ‘m just ..... I’m gonna be stuck with everything. Ah, jeez.
Ben: Let’s move along.
Brock: Alright.
Ben: So, let’s move on and talk about high heels. I’ll put a link to this
in the show notes. What is this? Episode 255?
Brock: 255.
Ben: So, in the show notes, the episode number 255. I’m gonna put
a link to this really disturbing 3D scan of a female foot in high
heels and they have this new way to use a $340,000 scanner at
an orthopedic hospital to do a 360 degrees scan of somebody’s
foot in about 60 seconds. And so they’re studying high heels
now and when you do the full scan with the high heels, it’s
really nasty what goes on with the foot so that the toes get
squashed inside the shoe and the more stiletto shapes that the
high heel is the worst that is. The toes gets squashed and then
they become clawed and the base of the big toe kinda becomes
deviated outwards with forms this bunion and then the bones
actually become rotated and dropped out of position and so
you’re not only looking at creating some serious foot problems
when you wear high heels especially if you wear them you
know, for like 8 hours a day but it’s also, it creates a lot of
upstream issues in your low back that kinda turns off your
ability to use your glutes just, it’s bad news all around and for
any of you women who need more convincing that you should
save high heels for situations in which you preferably not
putting much weight on your feet at all and you’re only get a
half month for a short period of time. Go check out the scan,
It’s pretty not so. So, we’ll put a link to that in the show notes
and I’m sure Brock at this point has taken off his high heels.
Brock: I did. I threw them out the window when we first start talking
about this.
Ben: Moved on to skates or something?
Brock: Yeah, but I’m always in hockey skates really. It was just my
high heel skates I was just wearing before.
Ben: Gotcha! Well, one more, one more article. I’ll link to that, I’ll
put out on Twitter that I wanted to explain a little bit more and
this was a study that they did in mice. Well, they have this mice
exercise for 90 minutes in a fasted state and I’ve written
articles before about how cellular death can be initiated when
you exercise in a fasted state. I think a lot of people get a
sharpen and take their breath and take that as a bad thing. It’s
actually a good thing, it’s called a autophagy or cellular
turnover or .....
Brock: Autophagy.
Ben: Autophagy as they say in Canada or as they say anywhere other
than Ben Greenfield’s head.
Brock: I believed you pronounced it autophagey once. That was
uncomfortable.
Ben: Slightly, In PC or cellular apoptosis. Anyways, we’re talking
about cell death and when you actually allow your cells to
turnover a little bit more quickly, you clean up the trash in
your body so to speak, you remove a lot of cellular garbage and
so that’s one of the benefits, it’s why exercise in a fasted state
can be potentially longevity enhancing or increases longevity
and also improves the actual muscular response to the
workout. You also get what’s called increased mitochondrial
fission which means that you can improve your mitochondrial
density or your ability to potentially use things like fatty acids
to make ATP base energy more quickly when you are actually
exercising in that fasted state. A lot of people hear about this
though and then they go out and they’re idiots and I’m sorry
but when you look at the study, the mice were doing the
equivalent of what basically comes out to a brisk walk in
humans for 90 minutes....
[0:15:09.2]
and people see this research and then they go out and they
head out to their cross-fit box or they grab their hardcore
master swim workout for that morning or whatever and .....
Brock: They just go to this stuff.
Ben: Yeah, and then you do that day after day and it sends a
message to your body that you’re asking it to dig deep into it’s
energy stores and basically a catabolic state and you get muscle
wasting and you get huge amount of cortisol formed and you
get a drop in your testosterone, you get a lot of nasty
downstream metabolic issues so when we’re talking about
exercising in a fasted state like when I’m sitting down or
writing down a fat loss workout for somebody for example, I
actually do in both males and females, kinda use that fasted
workout approach but it’s always easy stuff like it’s 20-30
minutes of easy aerobics, and I don’t even flirt with that with
that 90 minute range more often than about once a week as far
as like a long fasted workout and it’s always aerobic and
always easy so that there’s not too much muscle that
deconstruction that’s going on.
Brock: And we’re talking about a real fasted state too not just like not
just havin’ eaten for a couple of hours but actually eat dinner
rather early didn’t eat anything again until well after the
workout the next morning kinda thing, right?
Ben: In my case, it’s 8 hours so, yeah ....
Brock: But I guess, mice has a tiny stomachs .....
Ben: That’s why I was thinking, perhaps that’s the equivalent of 16
hours in humans who knows but either ways some cool stuff
about fasted workouts, about chopping wood to boost your
testosterone levels and
Brock: Mice on treadmills?
Ben: And high heels. So there you go. Go chop wood and don’t do it
in high heels and be careful doing it fasted and you will have
benefits from every news flash in today’s episode.
Special Announcements:
Brock: I’m not gonna say anything about audible because I already
did. So I’ll remind you to do is go to audiblepodcast.com/ben
and that is all I’m going to say about it.
Ben: Yeah, the freakin’ time to shine. So, I’m headed to London
after the wilderness trip. I’ll turn around and fly to London to
speak at The Global Triathlon Conference and .....
Brock: That’s jolly old! Isn’t it jolly old. Not London, Ontario.
Ben: Jolly or Arkansas as we mentioned earlier. There’s a facebook
page though because I’m gonna do a meet up in London while
I’m in there for all the Ben Greenfield fitness listeners and we’ll
put a link in the show notes at bengreenfieldfitness.com/255.
We’re gonna do a day of playing in the park followed by nice
healthy primal paleo whatever you wanna call it style dinner
that is put on by a guy named Darryl Edwards who runs this
fantastic primal workshops around the world and he is the guy
who also creates workouts at thefitnessexplorer.com which is a
fantastic website. It’s a ton of fun. He’s offering this special
early bird discount, the time of this podcast recording that
early bird discount is good for another about 48 hrs or so for
you to squeeze into that primal workshop where basically it’s
fun, we climb trees, we crawl around like animals, we do it like
some park or move nuts style, you know, play basically.
Brock: And you bathe bunch of bobbies that are chasing you through
high park.
Ben: Invade those bobbies, that’s right, so if you want .....
Brock: Actually they only have like night sticks so you don’t worry
about a new shot.
Ben: Yeah, so no permanent risk of death or anything like that. Not
if there’s any temporary form of death. Anyways, bobbie
evading, so if you want to enhance your bobbie evading skills,
check out the link in the show notes and come out to that and
then just a couple other things. Everybody’s asking about
Ironman Canada and what went on with ketosis and my race
report and everything. Published that on Monday, a couple of
days ago. Anyone who is part of our 10 dollar a year premium
podcast at bengreenfieldfitness.com/premium can grab that
and run away with all the blood lab results, the nitty gritty’s of
what happened with the nutrition and everything that shook
up as far as whether or not ketosis actually worked, whether I
plan on continuing that scenario for Ironman Hawaii, pretty
much everything you’d ever wanna know I geeked out for
about an hour and before Ironman Hawaii, for any of you who
are part of the premium podcast, I’ll be doing it again
essentially kinda feeling in on all the little things that are
getting added into the protocol and just some of the big take-
aways for you whether you’re an ironman triathlete or you’re
wanting to experiment with, you know, ketogenesis or blood
work or biohacking or minimalist training protocols or any of
that jazz.
[0:20:18.3]
All of that is worth the premium.
Brock: And head over to Youtube and do a search for Ben Greenfield
fitness and you’ll see there’s a couple of videos that make great
compendiums to that podcast episode that Ben did to.
Ben: That’s right. Brock and I went nuts with the video camera
because he was up there as well and .....
Brock: And I have nothing else to do but chase him around at the
video camera which is actually really fun.
Ben: We did shoot, the next time that you listen to the podcast stay
tuned for a special url that we’re gonna give you because we
did actually shoot a cool little 5 minute video for you where
Brock and I are messing around so stay tuned for that and last
thing I want to throw into the special announcements here just
real quick was that, we did have a one slot open up for
Thailand for the Thailand Triathlon Adventure that I’m taking
everybody on from November 15th to December 4th or
November 21st through December 4th depending on when you
decide to jump in to the adventure. But we’ll put a link in the
show notes to that, it’s gonna be a ton of fun and if you wanna
escape to Asia this winter and go and race and train and do
some clinics and stuff like that, definitely get in on that we
have one slot open up so there you go.
Listener Q & A:
555: Hi Ben, I was wondering if you are familiar with the strong lift
555 program. I know the 555 has been around for a long time,
but just for somebody who’s wanting to strengthen up the
workout a little bit, is it a good program and is it effective? I
appreciate the work you do and look forward to hear from you.
Thank you.
Brock: Now I’ve never heard of strong lift 555 I’m hoping that you
have Ben.
Ben: 555 is actually something that’s been around since the 70’s to
tell you the truth.
Brock: Uhm, maybe that’s why I don’t know about it.
Ben: So, quick overview here for people who are wondering about 5
by 5. So, if you wanna get strong and you wanna get mass and
you just want to make yourself strong like bull, 5 by 5 is a good
way to go.
Brock: Or was it 5 by 5 not 555?
Ben: Well, this 555 workout is based on the original 5 by 5 training
system and that was designed by football strength coach back
in the 70’s, this guy name’s Bill Starr and 5 by 5 is just 5 sets of
5 repetitions of specific exercises. So the original 5 by 5
program was published in this book called The Strongest Shall
Survive and it was designed simply to bulk up football players
to add mass and some amount of strength to football players.
So the way to the 5 X 5 workout goes and this something that
men or women can do who wanna get strong fast and I’ll
explain in a minute how this is actually very similar to
something I am personally gonna be doing in the off season for
my training this year. But each workout in the original 5 X 5
workout has 3 primary exercises that you do and the 3 primary
exercises are squats: so a basic barbell squat with a bar in your
back, power clings which is kinda more of an Olympic weight
exercise and then the bench press which is actually an exercise
that I hate and I think it’s a silly exercise. Anyways though,
unless you wanna add a bunch of mass, mass to your chest and
it’s not that bad silly bench press. So, these 3 exercises
basically work every major muscle in your body once you
actually put all three together. So when you do the 5 X 5
workout the original 5 X 5 workout, what you do is each
exercises rotated so that 1 of the 3 exercises is performed with
a maximum load each week or the other exercises are
performed with a sub-maximum load.
[0:25:15.7]
So let’s say you’re gonna do your 5 X 5 on Monday,
Wednesday, and Friday and that’s pretty typical you’re usually
doing something like this 3 days a week and following it for
around 6 weeks or so. So, Monday you’ll be doing really heavy
squats, 5 sets of 5 squats and then medium intensity power
clings and bench presses but you’d also been doing 5 sets of 5
reps of those. And then like Wednesday, squats you’d use a
medium weight power clings would be as heavy as you could
go 5 by 5 and then bench press you do 5 by 5 but it would be a
little less intensity. And then on the last day like a Friday, the
bench press would be the heavy exercise that you do. Now, it
works really well for mass there, a bunch of really cool
variations of the 5 by 5 workout too and one of the best books
that I would point you towards if you wanna see some really
cool variations of the 5X5 workout including a variation of the
5X5 workout called simple strength which is a variation that
I’m actually gonna be doing in the triathlon off season this year
to make myself strong and build mass and kinda get my body
to the point where it’s ready to start getting my goals to put on
a lot of muscle and I need to get strong first. So I’m gonna use
this book ....
Brock: I believe the number 30 lbs. has been thrown around.
Ben: My plan is to put on 30 lbs. of muscle during the first few
months of 2014. Yeah, anyways though, the book
“Interventions” by Dan John there are some really good
variations of the 5 by 5 protocol in that book and another very
very good book if you’re not accustomed to throwing around a
barbell or you don’t really know how to move a barbell right,
and you don’t necessary have access to like a weight lifting
coach to work with is the book “Starting Strength” by Mark
Rippetoe. If you were to read Starting Strength by Mark
Rippetoe and the book Interventions by Dan John, you would
have access to all the information up inside your head that you
need to get mass and get really strong, really fast, I still think
that a lot of folks need to get in touch with a personal trainer or
certified weight lifting coach and actually learn how to do
specific moves properly if they’re really gonna seriously make
some inroads in the strength like the power cling for example
in the original 5X5 workout, if you don’t know how to do a
power cling and you’re trying to do 5 max weighted reps of
power cling, you’re gonna screw yourself up fast. So, that’s why
you need to be careful with this stuff. Now .....
Brock: Books aren’t very good at correcting your form.
Ben: Yeah, I mean I kinda got my chops doing this 12 month
internship with the University of Idaho football team where we
have 2 certified weight lifting coaches and I was in the weight
room 3-4 hours a day watching them teach and then assisting
with the actual instruction for the football team. And then also
doing all of that myself, so, I spent a year in the trenches
learning the stuff and that helps a lot to hook up with an expert
who knows how to move and to not just have your head in a
book but as far as some of the variations, some of the
workouts, some of the programming, these books are really
good Intervention by Dan John and Starting Strength by Mark
Rippetoe. So this 555 program that ....555 ask about, they’ve
left themselves anonymous didn’t they?
Brock: Yes, yeah, I don’t think it was on purpose it was just so excited
to ask a quick question and he forgot to say his name.
Ben: 555 is a variation of 5 by 5 program. It uses the lift squats,
bench press and barbell rose on one day of the week and then
it uses the exercises squat over head press and deadlift on the
other day of the week. So it does eliminate the power cling
which can be one of the more kinda injury creating exercise in
a traditional 5X5 protocol but it’s pretty much 5X5 just a
variation of it. So, my issue with this 555 program and they’ve
got a website for a kinda typical internet sales website is it
promises to get you ripped and burn up body fat and that’s
bull. 5X5 programs don’t do that. All they do is give you mass
and make you strong and if you’ve ever seen a football line
back there with their shirt off most of them aren’t ripped, they
are just kinda fat with a lot of more muscle and they’re kinda
puffy.
[0:30:00.7]
So this would be something that you would be prior to
launching into like a more traditional body building style
program or launching into a more kinda met con style program
like a beach body insanity or crossfit or P90X or something
along those lines or you know, another really good one would
be like an MMA style training routine like Martin Rooney has a
good book called The Warrior Workouts something like that,
you know, Cardio for Warriors I think but anyways, you have
to follow up a mass program like this, let’s say you’re gonna do
a 5X5 for six weeks or eight weeks, perhaps 12 weeks would be
about as long as you go through something like this. You’d
want to follow it up with another 6 months or 9 months or
even a year of just a specific met con or body building style
workouts to get you ripped after you put on the mass so I’ll put
a link to the book Interventions by Dan John, the book
Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe. I’ll link to the Strong lift
5X5 program in the show notes but then I’m also gonna put a
link to a 9 Month Men’s Muscle Building Program. It’s one that
women could use too. I designed it, I named it Men’s Muscle
Building Program just because I wanted to appeal to the dudes
out there but if you’re a lady and you wanted to kinda get toned
or ripped or whatever, you could use a program like this. It
would be something that you follow up, the starting strength or
the any 5X5 variation with and if you we’re to follow that
program, it’s all programed into training peaks which is the
online software that I use to deliver workouts to the phone to
the email whatever, it’s all really specific. I spell out the exact
exercises, workouts to do, so really cool scenario would be, you
pick your 5X5 variation, what you’d gonna do the stronger 555
or simple strength or one of the variations in the book
Interventions by Dan John and then you’ll followed up with
something like this 9 month men’s muscle building program
and that would be like if you’re gonna target 2014 to just turn
yourself into a freak of nature during that year, that would be
how to do it, that would be what I would do.
Jenna: Hello Ben and Brock, I have a question regarding cold
thermogenesis. I was hoping you could discuss or contrast the
effects and benefits of pure cold exposure, all cold water for
example vs. a hot and cold alternate contrast. I’m inquiring
specifically as it pretends to a shower protocol. Is one better off
to use only cold water or to cycle between hot and cold water or
is this dependent on one’s goals for example for a recovery type
goal is it advisable to use the cycling up hot and cold water as
opposed to a metabolic goal in which you would be advisable to
use a purely cold shower? Thank you very much for your time,
I appreciate you answer my question. Bye.
Brock: There are a lot of different reasons to use cold therapy for very
different things and especially the difference between a
contrast therapy than not necessarily not just a shower and
just straight up chilling the bones, so yeah, what’s for what?
Ben: Or if you just want to make some good jokes on a Seinfeld
episode cold thermogenesis comes in handy for that too.
Brock: I guess so.
Ben: I forget what the exact line is. Something like I was cold, I
don’t remember. You know the episode I’m talking about
though.
Brock: No. You know, I never watched Seinfeld. I’m one of those
people but I don’t know what you’re referring to like with some
sort of shrinkage ....
Ben: Yes, one of those called shrinkage jokes so this is something
that at the Become Superhuman Live Event, the world’s expert
on using cold thermogenesis to lose fat as quickly as possible
talked about and that guy’s name is Ray Cronise. I have
interviewed him and also that entire talk that he gave at
Become Superhuman is available inside the Ben Greenfield
fitness phone app. So if you go to
bengreenfieldfitness.com/app you can actually watch the
whole thing and grab the, actually I think the way that we have
it set up is the, you can listen to the whole thing. If you wanna
watch the video and grab the pdf and the slides, you would
need to be on the premium version of the app but either way
like you can get access like this first hour of his talk just blew
my mind because he’s talking about rates of weight loss in
terms of like 15-25 lbs in a month using contrast methods of
cold thermogenesis. So, specifically what Ray Cronise uses to
get the body to burn fat as fast as possible is he drinks about a
gallon of cold water in the morning, sleeps without covers,
does hot/cold contrast showers that are not done with super
duper cold water but fairly cold water and then he takes mile
long walks in the cold (in a cold enough environment where
he’s shivering).
[0:35:14.3]
So I believe that he has a kind of a biohack lab or he’s doing
those on a treadmill on a cold room but you could also do them
outdoors on a cold if that were something you had access to.
Now, the hot cold contrast showers are 5 minute long showers
that are 20 seconds of cold water followed by 10 seconds of hot
water or warm water basically ten times through. Okay, so you
go cold water to warm water ten times through 20 seconds of
cold to 10 seconds of warm. That is the actual protocol that is
most effective for metabolic goals when you looking at fat lose.
There’s some amount of blood circulation right like
vasodilation followed by vasoconstriction in your blood vessels
when you’re doing a hot cold contrast shower like that which is
why you could also use it for recovery. So it’s the reason that
they’re have like hot tubs and cold tubs in athletic training
rooms of professional training facilities and athletes who go
from the hot to the cold to the hot to the cold. You get better
recovery, you actually can really help with like hangovers and
detox and stuff like that to you can actually feel like a million
bucks after you do hot cold contrast. I remember my wife and I
did it for about 45 minutes when we were at this special sauna
in Jamaica and this was after a night where we’ve been out on
the town kinda doing the margarita ville thing and you know,
we did a hot cold contrast like 45 minutes and walked out of
the sauna just feeling like a million bucks like we had touched
a drop of alcohol so there are benefits that go above and
beyond simply fat loss and muscle recovery. Anyways though,
there are also other things that you can do. I’ll put a link to a
big article that I wrote about cold thermogenesis, it’s called
The Cold Thermogenesis How-To and it talks about how you
can do something like when you’re sitting at your desk, use one
of this vests that you can get from coolfatburner.com and this
vest from coolfatburner.com wrap around your collar bone and
your back and the areas where you tend to have a lot of brown
adipose tissue and they cause that brown adipose tissue to
burn calories, to create heat to keep your body warm. You can
also get compression tights like the 110% compression tights
and put ice sleeves into those if you wanna do a similar thing
for your lower body with the added advantage that when you
combine compression with ice, you actually enhance recovery
and you stop a lot of potential what’s called a back flow of some
of your lymph fluid when you’re icing and you’re not
compressing at the same time. So a lot of kinda ways that you
can use cool temperature but to answer Jenna’s question about
like which one is better for recovery and which one is better for
fat loss, the contrast showers are better for fat loss and they’re
more comfortable and they’re more doable too like one in the
morning and one in the evening. The cold water immersion,
I’ve personally found to work better for recovery in terms of
lowering inflammation and lowering post workouts soreness
and also something that I’ll use a lot of times during or before
workout to pre-cool the body especially before a hot workout.
So the issue is that, that is a total and equals one statement
because the evidence goes back and forth about whether or not
cold water immersion really truly does work to reduce soreness
or enhance recovery or if’s kinda all up in your head. So, you
kinda have to go out and try it and I know it’s kind of a cup out
answer but I’ve personally found that cold thermogenesis in
terms of cold water immersion for me, when you compare to a
hot cold contrast showers or like putting ice on area or even
using compression tights with ice in them nothing for me beats
going out and going out shoulder deep down into the cold
Spokane river behind my house and just like standing there for
15 or 20 minutes or treading some water, nothing I have found
beats that when it comes to my muscles feeling or recovered
so, there’s that.
Mike: Hi Ben, a big fan of your shows, 44 years old worked out my
whole life, the last ten years seems like I react differently to
humidity when it’s really hot and humid I sweat, I sweat a lot
whether I’m working out or not it’s obviously just very
embarrassing in social situations, I just feel like it looks like
I’ve come out of the pool and wonder if you can kinda help me
out give me ideas on other way to tolerate the heat better other
than shutting down the air conditioner off when I’m inside it’s
just embarrassing, it’s inconvenient and you know, I’ll have tell
my people I just finished the workout like 15, 20 minutes
before so if they’ll ask or I’ll go out and say it’s really hot out,
you know, so anyway I can do about better let me know, there
you take out sweat glands, help.
[0:40:37.5]
Brock: This is again every time somebody brings out the excessive
sweating, I’m always all ears because I’m a very heavy sweater
and I like the way Mike is thinking here someway to shut it
down by always being hot which is completely against what
Jenna has to it and Mike said that he, should he shut off his air
conditioning, so I’m thinking yeah, maybe just get being more
conditioned to the heat.
Ben: Heat acclamation actually causes you to sweat more. It makes
you more efficient at sweating unfortunately.
Brock: That’s right, it increases the blood volume and stuff doesn’t it
so you can sweat more efficiently.
Ben: It’s actually a biohack that I used before like the, for example
for the next month before Ironman Hawaii I’ll be using this
product called Sweet Sweat that I can put on my skin and it
increases the temperature of your skin. It’s got cayenne pepper
and a bunch of essential oils in it and then you go sit in a sauna
after you put this .....
Brock: So it’s a marinade.
Ben: It’s a marinade, a juicy juicy marinade. You put it on your skin
you go sit in a sauna and it jacks up your body temperature or
your skin temperature specifically even higher than you get if
you weren’t wearing it and so you just, you pour buckets of
sweat and it really amps up your body temp but what you find
is that you start to pit out and sweat more ‘cause your body just
gets so efficient at cooling itself that the sweat flows even more
so in Mike’s case, if he’s a heavy sweater already, heat
acclamation protocols would probably not be such a hot idea or
intended for him. Hyperhidrosis is something we’ve talked
about on the podcast before though and hyperhidrosis is a
condition characterized by abnormally increased sweating or
perspiration if you’re a lady since ladies don’t sweat as we all
know, they simply perspire, they glow.
Brock: Of course, they glow.
Ben: So, hyperhidrosis - it could be something that’s caused by
genetics so it could be congenital, it could be acquired and I’ll
explain in a second what I mean by acquired but either way
you sweat more and there is, part of it is increased nervous
system activity like sympathetic fight or flight nervous system
activity, part of it is greater density of sweat glands some of it
can be exacerbated by nervousness or excitement and I really
try not butcher saying the word exacerbate right there because
I almost turned it into a different word. And foods and drinks
and caffeine and smoking and even different kinds of smells
can trigger this hyperhidrotic response of excessive sweating.
In many many many people what I have found to be the issue
when it something that kinda pop up at some point in your life
and you really weren’t a heavy sweater before typically it’s
because you have gone through a period of stress in your life
that has created a little bit of an autoimmune situation
meaning that for example, someone who I know very closely
went through a personal relationship issue, kind of a divorce
type of scenario and within several weeks they were allergic or
intolerant to a variety of foods that they would normally have
been able to consumed just fine in the past and for this person
it manifested in hives, rashes, sweating, some gut issues –
bloating, constipation things of that nature. But this is a
situation that can be brought about by stress increased
sympathetic nervous system or fight or flight activity from that
stress and then increase gut permeability and kind of an
imbalance in the neurotransmitters produced by the gut and
some of the issues we’ve talked all about an episode 154 when
we talked about just like how gut issues can be the precursor to
a lot of other issues. So, autoimmune protocol and I’ll put a
link to the autoimmune protocol, the autoimmune ebook that
I’m a fan of, it’s a 4-8 week autoimmune protocol that you
could use to see if your high amount of sweating is indeed due
to an autoimmune reaction and it just cuts out common
autoimmune triggers like soy and wheat and dairy but actually
provides you with some meals that allow you to do something
other than just like, I don’t know, sip, yeah, chew on cardboard
or just eat icy’s from 711 or whatever.
[0:45:13.7]
So you’ve got that, the autoimmune protocol something that
you can definitely try but there are some other natural kinda
home remedies for excessive sweating that you can also try. So,
some of the things that are effective natural remedies for
hyperhidrosis include number 1- using apple cider vinegar and
actually consuming it about 3 times a day on an empty
stomach, you can also soak some cotton balls in apple cider
vinegar and you can rub it into your underarms to get rid of
some of the odor that’s produced from excessive sweat,
coconut oil instantly also works very well for that but as far as
actually .....
Brock: That doesn’t sound that it would smell better though putting
apple cider vinegar in your armpits like that, that’s not gonna
smell good.
Ben: Well, it has an anti-bacterial action remember that sweat
doesn’t stink it’s the bacteria that are in your armpits
metabolizing sweat.
Brock: Yeah, I’m just saying that the vinegar itself smells and even
when you’re in your kitchen with vinegar, it’s smells like
vinegar for a few hours so you wiped it on your armpits and
sure you’re not getting b.o. but you’ve got v. o.
Ben: Similar to cleaning a house though, you could wipe it on your
armpits and then you just do like a soap and water cleanse
afterwards if you wanted to get rid of the vinegar smell. So, you
could do that.
Brock: Uhm, good point. Next.
Ben: Coconut oil would also work. Another thing that may help in a
similar manner and this would just be basically away to kinda
shutdown a little bit of sympathetic nervous system activity in
a similar way that eating vinegar on an empty stomach would
be to have a glass of tomato juice and you can do just a fresh
glass of tomato juice preferably not the v8 stuff but just like
regular old tomato juice several times a day and that’s another
thing that has traditionally been used as home remedy for
excessive sweating. So, that’s another thing. There are a couple
of herbs, one is witch hazel, the other is sage and both witch
hazel and sage tea can help to get rid of excessive sweating.
They help to reduce the sweat gland activity though activate
the para sympathetic nervous system a little bit to reduce
underarm sweating so that’s something else that you could try.
It’s an herbal tea made out of like sage or witch hazel those are
two of kinda traditional herbs. As far as some other things that
you could try, that go above and beyond just like an
autoimmune protocol, sometimes iodine-rich foods can
aggravate sweating and that would be specifically some of your
cruciferous kinda stingy foods like broccoli or asparagus or
onions those would be some things that you could be careful
with and some of those can kinda cause sweating and also
cause sweat to stink a little bit more. The other things that can
cause that would be foods that are rich in nitrate or foods that
are also rich in purine based proteins. So having a lot of like
beef and liver and dark poultry meat and stuff like that can
also aggravate the issue and I know that these stuff is just kind
of like you know, it might be tricky for some people to
eliminate but if you’re trying to get rid of sweating and you just
wanted to try out a few things, these are the things that are
traditionally used as like natural remedies if you didn’t wanna
go in for surgery to have your sweat glands cut out. So, last
thing is wheatgrass and wheatgrass juice can actually be an
effective home remedy for excessive sweating. We actually
grow wheatgrass on our counter and .....
Brock: I thought that was something new and fancy I haven’t heard it
before.
Ben: Wheat jazz. Wheat jazz juice. Anyways, wheatgrass juice, we
grow wheatgrass and just drop it into smoothies you can just
cut it with scissors after it grown in your counter and toss it
into a smoothie or just you know, I guess you could eat it if you
wanted to you can blend it to make wheatgrass but having a
glass of wheatgrass a day similar to like having a glass of
tomato juice a day or drinking some of these herbal tea or
using the apple cider vinegar, all of those are things that you
can definitely try for excessive sweating if you don’t just wanna
go and get the sweat glands snipped so to speak.
Brock: Is that really a thing?
Ben: That really is a thing sweat gland removal or destruction is a
surgical option or .....
Brock: I’ve heard of giving the botox injection....
Ben: Botox is another one but it’s very similar to like a liposuction
with lasers, it’s called lasers sweat ablation and you can also
use a similar technique that you’d use for liposuction or
sucking fat out and it’s called sweat glands suction. So, ....
Brock: I just worry that keeping all that sweat inside you just explode
at some point.
Ben: At some point your head is just gonna like swell up and you’ll
explode in one nasty stinky pile of sweat.
[0:50:06.9]
Brock: Exactly.
Ben: I’m sure that they have looked into that and .... they did a little
bit of research before the surgical procedure which approved
by the FDA or not, so there you go.
Brock: I’d be the first.
JustWondering: How many times do you poop in a day?
Ben: Well, that was short and to the point.
Brock: It’s right to the point and I like it.
Ben: Speaking of stuff building up inside of you and exploding. So,
how many times do you poop in a day? Well, I can go right out
there and tell you how many times I poop in a day and it’s
once. So, I have one big bowel movement in the morning
where I’m typically, I’ll sit on my squatty potty and I sip my
cup of coffee and usually I read my kindle for a few minutes
and do my big bowel movement for the day and that’s it and I
really don’t go back to the toilet other than to pee after that so
I’m a one a day-er and I used to be more of like a 2 or 3 day-er
until I decided that I wanted to be 1 a day-er and so I just kinda
stay in there in the bathroom until I kinda eliminate everything
in the morning and then I just don’t go back in the rest of the
day, I’ve kinda trained my body to just go once in the morning
and that works out pretty well for me. How about you Brock?
Brock: I’m extremely similar, I did the same thing a few years ago.
Actually when I started racing it’s when I started start doing
marathons that I just decided, okay well this is, I’ve got my
protocol down, I have my big glass of water, I get my cup of
coffee (have a couple sips of that) and badabing badabang, it’s
all done!
Ben: Your para-sympathetic nervous system is pretty active in the
morning and it’s really conducive time to just get everything
out if you’re able to, if you have the luxury of not waking up
and being in a stress hectic rush to get to work and you know,
skip a morning trip to the bathroom and that kinda thing. If
you can make some time in the morning, you can actually train
your body to get in to this kinda one a day scenario and if you
need some help getting that along, you should listen to my
podcast episode I did with the guy named Troy Casey.
Brock: With the poop expert.
Ben: The poop expert, who’s also a male model. He’s a male model
and a poop expert. So, there are 2 unique populations that
we’ve discussed, the soccer playing wood choppers and the
male model poop experts in today’s episode. I will link to that
one in the show notes but he’s got a, Troy has a what’s called
his better pooping regimen which is a combination of
something called Dr. Schultz’s Intestinal Formula, clay literally
the edible earth clay and then a high fiber herbal colon cleanse
and I think Troy and I talked about this in the episode but I
talked to Troy a little bit about how I feel like the high fiber
cleanses cause more potential damage to the small intestine
and long term build up in the gut rather than really helping
you to poop long term and actually there was an article that
came up today Brock and I were talking about it before the
show about how too much fiber may also be bad for your
sexual performance. So, I’m not a huge fan of high fiber
supplements, I personally recommend if you want to kind of
get your body into a state where it initiates that bowel
movement a little bit easily in the morning. Two things that I
like: one is called mag07 and that is like an oxygenated
magnesium and compared to all of the other forms of
magnesium out there this is the stuff that I think has the most
potent stool softening effect. So, that would be one and then
the other one is called the Colorectal Recovery Program and if
you have a lot of issues with your colon and your pooping
mechanics and all that jazz it maybe due to some kind of a
bacterial imbalance in your large intestine or something that
needs to be addressed from like a fatty acid or a mineral
standpoint in your colon and the colorectal recovery program
is something that I successfully used when I got pretty severely
constipated after a bout of antibiotics and this kinda rescued
me. So I talked about all of those and linked to all of those both
choice better pooping regimen and also Ben’s better pooping
regimen in the How to Poop Episode so I will link to the How
to Poop episode in my response to her, but yeah, I’m a one day-
er and it’s just a combination of the Squatty Potty and just
kinda wakin’ up in the morning and I don’t even use anymore,
I don’t use a stool as often or anything like that in the evening,
I just kinda get up and go but initially when I was poop
training myself, so to speak, I started off by using some of
those evening stool softeners and occasionally if I’ve had
something that I know constipates me such as too much
alcohol, I’ll still do that.
[0:55:12.7]
Brock: I remember the guys who invented the specific carbohydrate
diet, the SCD when they were on the show they were talking
about how especially the one fellow, I can’t remember his
name, he was having like what basically what we were refer to
as poo emergencies quite often during the day and he cured
basically while he was inventing this specific carbohydrate diet
so isn’t it often like people who do have to go more than once a
day, it’s likely because there’s something going on that isn’t
quite right that they need to sort to figure that out a little bit.
Ben: Yeah, it can be infections, irritable bowel syndrome, it can be
like an allergic reaction, like an autoimmune issue. Anytime
you’re going more than 3 times a day, that would be a case
where you should be definitely look into using something like
the specific carbohydrate diet, eliminating what are called
fodmaps which you could go do a search for at
bengreenfieldfitness.com ‘cause I’ve talked about them before
there just fermentable foods that can cause issues with going to
the bathroom too much or becoming constipated. And yes,
going less than once a day or going like 3 plus times a day are
both issues that you may need to address some kind of a
bacterial imbalance or kinda dig a little deeper when it comes
to figuring out what’s going on, Interestingly the other thing
that you need to pay attention to is color and there’s something
called the Bristol Stool Scale which shows you the proper
texture that poop is supposed to be but there are also charts
out there that show you different colors of what an ideal stool
should be and you’ll notice a lot of times in athletes that the
color of poo is more brown sometimes a little bit even
borderline black and that’s because of bilirubin which is this
pigment that’s generated when you breakdown red blood cells.
A lot of times once you start exercising or during a period of
time when you’re exercising heavily, your poop gets darker and
that’s something I’ve noticed because my kids forget to flush a
lot, it’s that their poop is like really light colored compared to
mine which is very dark and it’s because of my levels of
exercise and that bilirubin formed by the breakdown of red
blood cells. So, all sorts of interesting things that you can delve
into and we could probably talk about poop for really a long
time but ultimately one a day is in my opinion a really
convenient way to train your body to go and then if you’re not
even going once a day, or you’re going more than 3 times a day,
something is probably up and I’d get that checked out.
Brock: And as Dr. Kellogg used to say “Never resist the urge to
defecate”.
Ben: Never resist the urge ..... that’s actually really good advice, you
should, if you need to poo, go poo because when you resist the
urge it actually can damage the nerves that are up inside of you
and it can also cause an impact and some issues with
restraining hemorrhoids stuff like that so when the urge to poo
happens, go poo. So, that’s being said, I’ll be right back. No I’m
just kidding.
Kelcey: Hi Ben, hi Brock. This is Kelcey calling. Since I have been
listening to your podcast and reading some of the great articles
that you’ve written and doing the superhuman coaching thing
and I’ve gotten kind of into checking the ingredients on
everything especially like cosmetics and skin care products. So
anyways, there’s a company that I’ve been buying skin care
products from for years it’s called Hydron and so I was reading
the ingredients list and they were using BHA as a preservative
in one of their products that I really like. So, I sent them an
email, you know, with my concerns, they sent me an email
back saying well you know, we really need our products to be
shelf stable and vit E and rosemary oil would probably cut
down the ton that these products would stay fresh. So, I sent
her another email with a link to a couple of articles. One was
about a new preservative called Rosamox made from rosemary
that is good for skin care products and.... anyways, to make the
long story short, she sent me an email back and she said,
“thank you for the great articles, I’m forwarding these articles
to our chemist and she said because of your email we are going
to start testing this Rosamox in our products, you know,
maybe we’ll see if we can switch over and get rid of the BHA in
our products”. So that was just really cool to get that email to
actually make a difference to a company and that company
would actually listen to me, that’s pretty cool, anyways, thanks
for everything you do.
[1:00:05.8]
Brock: So that was a really great story and you know, there isn’t really
a question in what Kelcey said but I decided that we should put
it in the show anyway because I sort of have the question now
after hearing her story of successfully getting this company
that actually looking to switching to something else. Is that
actually better, as Rosamox going to be better than the BHA?
Ben: Sure. They’re just both anti-oxidants. So BHA is something
that gets added to a lot of foods and supplements and skin care
products because it’s a fat preservative. So we all know that
like fish oil if we get fish oil and it’s not packaged with an
antioxidant and it’s not cold processed and it’s not in its
triglyceride base form it’s doing more harm to your body than
good to consume that fish oil but if the antioxidant that they
add to that fish oil is say a BHA derivative antioxidant then
that also turns that fish oil into something that is potentially
carcinogenic and something that has more oxidative stress
producing properties potentially because that is a synthetic
chemical that BHA so what you’re seeing the better companies
doing now are choosing natural antioxidants that preserve fats
in both supplements and nutraceuticals and skin products
using natural antioxidants that are extracted using a different
form of chemistry specifically in the case of this Rosamox stuff
it’s extracted using super critical carbon dioxide and that’s
totally solvent free, it’s green, it’s sustainable and it results in
an end product and an antioxidant that actually doesn’t have
those same type of carcinogenic properties and chemical
properties as traditional BHA. So, that’s fantastic that a
company which used to use something like Rosemox instead of
BHA and this is something that I’ve kinda have my head into
recently anyways because as I think as I’ve mentioned on the
show before, I am in the process of developing a supplement
line that specifically designed for kinda like hard charging
people who wanna get the most out of their bodies and out of
their minds and I’ve had to look at ton into the actual
ingredients that are used and you know, how we can generate a
formulation that allows you to have just 1 pill bottle in your
fridge and kinda get everything done in 1 fell swoop and yes
I’m subscribing right now to all these natural supplement
insider magazines and it’s mind blowing and mind boggling
how many different labs and ingredients source materials are
out there that you could use and I’m sure that there are many
many companies out there making these decisions based solely
on price and not on long term effects so you certainly got to be
careful. My wife actually has done some webinars inside the
Ben Greenfield fitness Inner Circle where she not only talks
about how to make your own sunscreen and your own natural
skin protectants but she talks about how to protect your skin
by avoiding chemicals, how to choose the right products, she’s
got a bunch of videos in there like the lotions that she uses and
everything. I talked to her last night though and I actually
asked her, you know, if I wanted to tell the listeners to the
podcast tomorrow some of the little things that you do, can you
tell me and so some of the things that she does is she dry
brushes her whole body everyday. And we don’t have lot of
time today to get into what dry brushing is but essentially it’s
kind of a removal of a lot of dead skin cells and you could go
google dry brushing and you’d find a lot about it.
Brock: I found it’s exactly what it sounds like.
Ben: Yeah, it is.
Brock: So it’s kinda a lot of mystery there.
Ben: Yeah, so she dry brushes everyday, she uses a mineral based
make up made by a company called Ferro that’s F-E-R-R-O.
She washes her face with a very hypo-allergenic soap and it’s a
goat milk soap and I believe she gets that goat milk soap from
the local health food store and then she also uses coconut oil a
coconut oil rinse as an oil cleansing method to cleanse like
bacteria and stuff off of her skin. Once a week she scrubs her
skin with baking soda for about 5-10 minutes and she doesn’t
do that anymore often than once a week because it can really
be very drying to the skin to use baking soda too often and she
used to really have to deal quite significantly with acne and
actually that’s one of the things that initially kinda tuned us
into some of this.
[1:05:05.0]
you know, kinda westerner price ancestral paleo primal eating
was kind figure out how to get rid of some of her acne about 6
or 7 years ago or so and we bought one of Loren Cordain’s
books called something like The Dietary Cure for Acne and she
picked up a lot of kinda natural dietary tips from that but she
has great skin now, if she does get a breakout, she does a honey
mask, she makes a honey mask that’s another thing that you
could look into using against ....we won’t get into on the show,
she does talk about her recipes though inside the Ben
Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle and when she gets kinda like a
freak pimple, she dubs just like a baking soda based toothpaste
on it overnight to draw the infection and then she makes most
of her own stuff aside from the mineral based make up and
puts all those recipes into the inner circle. So we’ve got a lot of
listeners I know, I think we have about 800 listeners who were
inner circle members so for those of you who are inner circle
members, I’ll just kinda put the link to the 2 webinars if you
don’t wanna go search for them in the Inner Circle, I’ll link to
them straight from the show notes for this episode, episode
number 255. And if you’re not an Inner Circle member it’s 10
bucks a month so it’s pretty cool. We actually just did a
webinar 2 nights ago called Dieting Sucks where we talk about
why dieting sucks, why we don’t diet and how you too can not
diet. So, there’s that shameless commercial for the Inner Circle
and yeah, that’s what I’ve got for you.
Brock: That’s interesting though that just I had skin problems before
‘cause having just spent 4 days straight with you guys, she has
really great skin now. I saw her first thing in the morning and
she looks great.
Ben: Yeah, and let me say this too. I don’t want to take my own horn
too much but I personally get a lot of complements about my
skin, about the color of my skin, the texture of my skin, and
when I don’t have my squirrel flowing beard essentially the
youthfulness of my skin and what I use on a daily basis is I use
olive oil as my moisturizer, just a regular extra virgin olive oil
which is chockfull of healthful skin protectants and
polyphenols. I take about 6 mgs of astaxanthin per day and
that’s a natural skin protector. I don’t even use sunscreen, I
didn’t put a single drop of sunscreen under like something
Ironman Canada and I used to use super essential fish oil
which has astaxanthin packaged along with it. Another really
good source of astaxanthin is from the big island down in
Kona, I forget the brand but it’s called like Kona or big island
astaxanthin or Hawaii astaxanthin or something like that. And
then the only other things I do is I use all natural personal care
products. So I use hair pomade that’s made of coconut oil and
hemp oil, I only use Dr. Bronner’s liquid soap which is again
hemp oil and I think olive oil and a few other natural
antibacterials, I used Br. Bronner’s shaving cream for my
shaving cream and that’s again just made from natural oils you
could literally eat the stuff and you’d be just fine, doesn’t hurt
you and then I use a little bit of coconut oil occasionally in my
armpits as a deodorant and that is about the extent of my own
personal care product line and so essentially my rule for what I
used on my face is if I could eat it without dying or if I could
eat it without getting sick or getting a tummy ache then it’s
probably okay to put on my face or on my skin so that’s the
rule that I follow. Just recently we put out a video over at
youtube.com/bengreenfieldfitness about that too. So that’s
how Jessa and I go about our own care for our skin and
hopefully that gives you listeners some ideas as well.
Brock: Pretty much the first thing that people ask me when they found
out that I work with you is, first they ask, how old is Ben? And
then the second thing they ask is, how much money does he
make? So of course, I answer, well he’s 67 years old and I think
he makes about a 100 bucks.
Bob: Hey guys, I’m Bob from Wildwood, New Jersey. I’m a long
time listener and show supporter. My question today regards
bone spurs. I have a serious bone spur near my big toe and it
just keeps getting worst with every run, I’m hoping to learn of
some magic pain treatment or recommendation to fix it. I wish
I know surgery is inevitable but I had to reach. I’m curious at
all what causes bone spurs and is there any non-surgical fixes
that you can recommend. Alright thanks and keep up the great
work, I look forward to hearing from you.
Brock: You know, Bob needs to just go over to the website and do a
search for bone healing or (what else could he look for) we’ve
talked a lot about how to heal broken bones or fractures and
stuff like that, I’m assuming it’s a similar type of answer here.
[1:10:16.8]
Ben: Well, specifically with bone spurs though. The problem with
bone spurs is you know, that’s an actual physical spur, I mean
a lot of times you talked about stress fractures and how you
can use like lactoferrin and electro magnetic stimulation and
you know, glucosamine chondroitin from something like
Capraflex and like ways you could heal stress fractures or even
broken bones more quickly but a spur is actually a literal
growth mean it’s an ______ [1:10:44.1] it’s a boney growth
that typically forms on the back of your heel or on the front of
your toes in response to stress in that area and it’s kind of a
different situation right ‘cause it’s not something that needs to
be melded or welded or fixed, it’s something that almost needs
to be kind of like broken down or removed. So .....
Brock: Ah interesting, I was thought that bone spur was actually part
of the bone head sort of broken, not completely off but it’s just
separated and was sort of sticking out like a spur but it’s
actually growth eh.
Ben: It’s an actual growth so if you look out like everybody’s got the
little bump on the front of their knees and I thought this was
really interesting in Anatomy back in the university when we
look at the bones. In specific places where tendons that you use
a lot attached to bones or where ligaments attached to bones
and pull on those bones, you have bumps that’s why you have
that bump on the front of your knee it’s because of the weda
patella tendon attaches and in areas where bone is stressed its
response by growing and in some places where there is
repetitive injury or repetitive stress such as you know, in
runners we’re putting repetitive stress on our heel or repetitive
stress on their toes, you actually..... you can observed this
osteophytes forming and pain develops eventually from this
spur. So if you just wanted to control the pain, you just use a
natural pain killing anti-inflammatory and a lot of people
that’s enough. Like you can use something like a high dose
curcumin extract like I use phenocane. So phenocane, it’s a
turmeric, it’s nato kinase, it’s pheno alanine, it’s a bunch of
stuff that works in my opinion just as well as ibuprofen or advil
with zero side effects. Now phenocane is something I’ll use for
hang-overs, it’s something I’ll use for muscle pain and I use
about 8 a day for a week after Ironman to reduce my risk of
blood clotting......
Brock: I took a bunch of them before I went to the dentist once
because I knew it was going to be a painful procedure.
Ben: Yeah, so curcumin is a pretty potent brain anti-inflammatory
as well so anytime who have brain fog interestingly can kinda
help to clear that up too. But that’s what I would use for the
pain killing part of this. If I personally ever gotta bone spur
though I can tell you the very first thing that I would
personally do before I even consider going in for surgery which
is an option (survival option) you can have it removed and
that’s not dangerous surgery. I would consider using pulse
electromagnetic therapy. So, you’ve perhaps heard me talked
about that earth pulse device that I placed underneath my
mattress, it’s like grounding or like earthing on steroids
meaning that it amplifies the natural frequency emitted by the
planet earth while you’re sleeping and you basically soak up all
those beneficial frequencies into your body. Very very low
frequency is very different from like a cell phone or microwave
or something like that as you’re sleeping.
Brock: And you shrink your testicles down to the size of .....
Ben: No, okay. And if it does you can just go and chop some wood.
Anyways though, you can also take....it’s a magnetic, you can
take the north end pole of a pulse electromagnetic frequency
device like the earth pulse and you can place it against an
injured area and it can enhance blood flow to that area. Now in
the case of a bone spur there is actually..... there’s really
interesting study online that shows some of the PDM after
results on breaking down areas of excessive osteophyte
formation but there’s a really interesting x-ray where within 6
months of this PEMF treatment there’s new elimination of a
bone spur that’s almost penetrating the spinal cord in
somebody’s back so it’s essentially a frequency that kinda
breaks down a little bit of that bone. So what you do is you’d
hold it against the area where the spur is for about 15-20
minutes a day, north end pole would go up against the bone.
Don’t worry it doesn’t like break down bone in that when you
hold a hinge of bone you gonna like make a bunch of weak
bones in your foot. It doesn’t work that way.
[1:15:07.8]
It’s just essentially working on that area, the excessive
osteophyte formation it’s a frequency that’s emitted by the
PEMF device fortunately also has a little bit of a pain killing
effect. So that’s what I would use at least for a little while I
would use it for a good couple of months and then if nothing’s
happening, then go in and schedule your surgery, and get the
bone spur removed and go do a search on
bengreenfieldfitness.com for surgery so you know about all
ways to bounce back faster like using proteolytic enzymes and
all that jazz. That’s what I would do, I would use phenocane, I
would use pulse electromagnetic field therapy and if you are a
runner or a jumper or somebody who’s concerned about
potential for a heal spur or a toast for reformation, the best
recommendation I could give to you would be to a) strength
train so that you are training your body to not have to put
excessive stress on a joint but instead training your body how
to weight bear a little bit more evenly and then be make sure
that you are using footwear that’s really design very very
properly for your specific foot and this is actually a blog post
that I’m working on because I just personally had some
customed fitted cycling shoes designed and they’re really cool
and I’m working on a blog post about the kind of the closest
thing that you can get to barefoot running for cyclist. They’re
made by a company called Rocket 7 so I’m gonna be writing an
article where .....
Brock: It doesn’t sound like a good idea.
Ben: What’s that?
Brock: That they just seems kinda sort of counter intuitive to wanna
be, why would you be wanna be barefoot on .....
Ben: Oh no, they’ve got like a carbon foot plate and everything like
the power transfer ______ [1:16:55.2] and they’re developed
by professional cyclists but they’re literally molded to your
foot. Like you do a casting of your foot, you send into this
company, you put on the shoe and you can’t tell you’re wearing
a shoe when you’re riding your bike but you still have the
power transfer and everything. So it’s not like using those
cheesy barefoot plates, I actually raise the Wildflower
Triathlon in those once the..... I forget what they call but
they’re not cycling pedals they’re actual platforms like I think
they’re called pyro platforms and you.....
Brock: Oh that’s snap into your where your clips would go?
Ben: Not a good idea. They’re my transition during the triathlons
like 5 minutes long and my feet were killing me for like weeks
so yeah, true traditional barefoot cycling I don’t recommend
but using customed fitted cycling shoes, holy cow, if you’re
planning to be a cyclist long term, ah awesome, awesome stuff.
Those are made by Rocket 7.
Brock: Well, maybe you can get some branded with the BG Fitness
logo.
Ben: That’s right. I’ve got my name on mine. They’d say, “Be Green
Field” ‘cause I don’t think Ben Greenfield would fit along the
entire..... or just probably didn’t like Ben Green.
Brock: so I was just actually joking about that ‘cause I wanted to find a
way to segue to asking you if you have your Ben Greenfield
fitness swag on all lined up to give away to our awesome
ITunes reviews.
Ben: Yes, you and your tricky segues. No, no, I don’t but I’m still
sending out cool care packages for reviews. I should have that
swag on by about mid-September so all of hats and I’ll have
water bottles and I’ll have shirts like not croppy cotton shirts
that look like tens but actually like nice fitting tech t-shirts for
all of our muscly ripped listeners.
Brock: All the people who do silly bench press.
Ben: That’s right, all you silly silly bench pressers. So, if you want to
leave your review on ITunes, what we do is if we read your
review on the show then you can let us know that you heard
your review being read and you give us your address and we
send you a care package. So, it might be a canned of Campbell
soup or maybe some crackers, some .....
Brock: Some of those Oreo cookies with the double stuffing,
everybody goes upset about it lately.
Ben: That’s right, that’s right, that’s right or perhaps if you give me
this week a survival kit maybe I’ll send you some beef jerky and
some .....
Brock: Oh, maybe one of your home grown girls.
Ben: astronaut capsules that need to add water to get a turkey
dinner. Anyways though, today’s review is left on ITunes by
Try Buddha who only gave our podcast 4 stars not 5 stars. I
have no clue why but anyways (I’m gonna read it anyways).
Brock: Try Buddha, not cool Try Buddha not cool.
Ben: But he says, “A great kick in the pants” so Try Buddha says.....
Brock: I’ll give him a kick in the pants 4 stars worth.
Ben: “Ben and Brock do a fantastic job each week bringing you
everything you need to know about health, fitness, nutrition
and holistic living. His tips and tricks on how to hack healthy
living motivate and inform me on how to live a better life. It is
one of the few podcast that actually bases all the
recommendations on actual science and not tin hat conspiracy
theories. Even the poop discussions have a (ready for this)
nugget of truth in them”. Try Buddha you are such a kick in the
pants and because you only left 4 stars, I think I may actually
just send you a nugget if you catch my meaning. Anyways, a
dark bilirubin colored nugget. So, there you have it.
Brock: Nice.
Ben: So anyways, yes, if you wanna leave your review go over to
ITunes and of course if you want a special website that allows
you to give the gift of Ben Greenfield fitness to your friends,
your family, your loved ones or your extremely annoyed co-
workers, go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/love and at
bengreenfieldfitness.com/love you can share the wealth and at
bengreenfieldfitness.com/255 you can get the show notes for
this episode and if you’re lucky, I might actually show up next
week or a couple of weeks and a, if not, goodbye everyone it
was nice knowing you.