Episode #212 – Full Transcript

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Podcast #212 from https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2012/10/episode-212-what-kind-of-yogurt-is-best/

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Introduction:   In today’s podcast, what kind of yogurt is best? Also, choosing a bed mattress and treating Dowager’s hump. Who should use a breath training device, cold feet while cycling with Raynaud’s syndrome, how and when to use amino acids, can olive oil be bad for you, and how to deal with bicycle saddle sores.

Brock:  Good day everybody! Welcome to another episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. This is Brock, coming to you live from Toronto and Ben is coming to you live from Kona. Is that right?

Ben:  That’s right!

Brock:  Aloha!

Ben:  Aloha! I’m sitting on the veranda in the condo where I’m crashing on…one of the athletes that I coach,  I’m crashing on his couch and I’m here to watch Ironman Hawaii and spend some time down here in Kona, talking to triathletes and attending the superbowl of triathlon.

Brock:  It’s been a pretty exciting week.  I suppose everybody’s got to be there by now.

Ben:  I just rolled in last night.  I’ve no clue. I had to dig me beach this morning, went for a swim and yeah.  I’ve been really done too much or gotten about too much but yeah and that’s also why the audio might sound a little funky today is I’ve got no microphone or anything. I’m literally talking into a computer.

Brock:  That is how committed Ben is to this podcast.

Ben:  If I sound like I’m in a tin can, that’s the level of commitment, right there.

News Flashes:

Brock:  All right, to get these news flashes and a whole bunch of others, make sure you follow Ben on twitter  and google+ and you will find the links for both of those at bengreenfieldfitness.com, of course, but let’s highlight a few from this week.  What do you wanna highlight?

Ben:  Well, the fact that no surprise here, another reason to eat more fat.  There is a study that was done and the title of it was called Higher Regular Fat from Dairy Consumption is associated with lower incidence of metabolic syndrome and this was basically a study that assessed food and nutrient intake of a fairly large group of individuals and what they noticed after they corrected for smoking status, physical activity, glycemic low, sugar load of food the people were eating, amount of fiber they were eating, total amount of calories eaten and then a family history of diabetes as well as calcium intake.  What they found was that the people who ate full fat dairy were falling into the lowest quartile in terms of their risk for metabolic syndrome which would basically be like risk of diabetes, risk of heart disease and obesity, etc. and all these different metabolic chronic disease issues.  And so, eating full fat milk or a full fat milk product vs. a low fat or a non-fat milk product did these folks a pretty decent favor.  It’s one of those issue where I’m not totally sure why because you do get the people out there say that when you homogenize milk, and when you separate the fat from the milk that you change the size of the fat globules and that might rearrange the fat and the protein molecules which might alter how they act in the human body.  And back in the 70s, there was this guy named Kirk Oster and he proposed this hypothesis that homogenized milk could increase risk of heart disease. The problem is that there is not a lot of research that actually validates that theory.  However, this is kinda like a smoking gun type of study that suggests that perhaps it’s possible that somehow the process of removing the fat from the milk or the fat from the dairy product is causing issues with the proteins of the fats in the actual end product that is increasing risk for heart disease.  But it was an interesting study and yet another reason to avoid things like skim milk, fat-free yogurts, stuff like that.

Brock:  So, this isn’t necessarily a rally call to tell everybody to go out and start drinking milk if they don’t already.  It’s just more if you’re drinking milk anyway, maybe you should switch to like a 2% instead of a skim?

[0:05:08.4]

Ben:  Well, yeah.  We drink milk at our house and we just get full fat milk from a local raw dairy farm. When we get yogurt, we get full fat yogurt and we’ll talk a little bit more about yogurt and health later on on this podcast.  But yeah, when you’re choosing a dairy product and really, most animal products, try to get it in its whole form – the fat, the protein, and all that in its whole natural form and homogenization in it’s pretty likely is not doing you much of a favor when it comes to that milk that you’re drinking or that yogurt you’re consuming.

Brock:  Gotcha.

Ben:  All right. So, there was another study at the US Publishing Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise.  It was funded by the Gatorade Sports Science Institute. No surprise,   with the stuff that they eat, what they found in the results but they took folks and they have them do a 2-hour cycling trial at a fairly high intensity at 95% of what’s called lactate threshold.  So, they’re going pretty hard and they vary in the amount of carbohydrate that they fed this group.  They went with 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, 110, or 120 grams of carbohydrate per hour that they were given.  And the best performance was observed at 78 grams per hour or if you round that up to 80 grams per hour, that comes up to about 320 calories per hour of carbohydrate if you are wanting to ride a bike hard for a couple of hours.  There were definitely a lot  about _____[0:06:54.1] in that study.  There were some people who did really really good on 110 grams per hour and actually, that in some cases, produce some of the best results.  And then, there were some people who did decently as low as 50 grams per hour and anything lower that 50 grams per hour, anything lower than 200 calories per hour of carbohydrate you started to see some real performance deficits.  So, it’s almost like it’s upside down parabolic curve where we gotta get at least about 50 grams per hour and then once you start to get an excess of right around 100 or so grams per hour, the result start to diminish.  The caveat to this, and this is something that I tweeted when I let people know about this post, was that, of course, like most studies like this, we’re talking about people that are not fat-adapted, that reading standard American diet, that are not necessarily using fatty acids that efficiently.  And when you get into a situation where someone perhaps is doing like I did a few weeks ago in my triathlon eating a high fat diet, not doing a bunch of carbohydrate loading before the race and then using a really really slow raise carb.  It’s pretty likely that you can do very well, not pretty likely but for sure.  That you can do just fine at a lot less than 80 grams of carbohydrate per hour if you’re especially just going out for training session. The numbers in this study actually are something that can give you a little bit of a guideline if you are trying to, for example, red line it during a race and figure out how much carbohydrates you’re suppose to eat during an event.

Brock:  Cool! That sounds like that would be a vote like four, like gu gels or any sort of power bar gels would be vote to the right amount of carbohydrate to be inside of that ball park area.

Ben:  Yeah.  Something like 4 gels an hour or 320 calories of like a sports drink per hour and again, I’m not necessarily endorsing that stuff if you are going for like a low carb fat-adapted approach but there are a lot of people that are just not a fan of eating that much fat.  I realize that there are people who are on the show who wanted to eat carbohydrate during something like a race and know how much they’re suppose to eat so there you go.

Brock:  Yeah.  There’s even a few of us who sort of flip flop between the two like doing a race situation that go whole hog on the carbohydrates but they do keep us to lower carbohydrate or fat on a day to day basis.

Ben:  Yeah. And then the other interesting thing was a study on the International Journal of Sports and Nutrition and it looked at omega 3 fatty acids in optimizing physical performance.  What it did was it basically looked into a lot of studies that have been done on ingection of fish oil basically.  And what they found was that when it comes to exercise-induced inflammation and the overall health of an athlete, when you’re looking at everything from what’s called red blood cell deformability or the damage that can be done to red blood cells during exercise, to muscle damage to markers of inflammation like creatine thiaminase, taking about 1-2 grams of EPINDHA, that’s basically what you’re gonna find in fish oil, a ratio of about 2:1 of EPA to DHA was observed to be really beneficial in counteracting exercise-induced inflammation.  So, as far as fish oil goes, 1-2 grams a day has some benefits when it comes to optimizing physical performance.

[0:10:55.7]

Brock:  That’s awesome!  So, all you people out there who would be normally reaching for like an ibuprofen or something if you haven’t been swayed already off of that by all the negative talk about it, go for the fish oil instead.

Ben:  Yeah.  Absolutely! And then just remember there’s always a caveat that fish oil can be bad for you if it’s oxidized, if it’s rancid, if it’s been heated, kept in the shelf for a long period of time, perhaps not packaged up with antioxidants like vitamin E and astaxanthin and that type of stuff.  So, you know not all fish oil is created equal and you need to be careful with what you take.  Aside from that, it’s looking like a little bit of the fish burke post workout is a good thing.

Brock:  Delicious!

Special Announcements:

Brock:  Okay. So, you put up a really very helpful video up on bengreenfieldfitness.com the other day.  That sort of walks everybody through pretty much everything that you do and offer the people out there. If anybody hasn’t checked it out, go to bengreenfieldfitness.com and take a peek at that.

Ben:  Yeah. Ten cool ways to enhance your life with bengreenfieldfitness.com where I get into a bunch of stuff that you may not know about the website and also show you how to get a free book from me.  So, you gotta check that out at bengreenfieldfitness.com.

Brock:  And speaking of books, this podcast is sponsored by  audible which is a fine purveyor of audio books and has been for quite a long time, they got an enormous backlog in the catalog of books and to take advantage of the fact that they are sponsoring this podcast, make sure to go to audiblepodcast.com/ben and you can sign up and claim your own free audio book by doing that.

Ben:  Have you been reading anything interesting in there lately, Brock?

Brock:  I noticed that IQ 84 by Haruki Murakami is available on Audible and he’s actually the guy who wrote the book that’s called What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, which is a very cool running book but this book is completely different from that.  It’s more along the lines of a musta science fiction fantasy kind of thing.  That’s very cool and it’s very long so if you’re doing some long slow distance stuff getting ready for fall races, that’d be a good one to choose.

Ben:  During this week, cling on or anything to be able to geek out on  that.

Brock:  It’ll probably help but it’s not necessary.

Ben:  Okay. Gotcha. Cling on or like some elven language.  All right so, there’s science fiction tip from audiblepodcast.com/ben and get your free book.  What’s the name of that book again, Brock?

Brock:  IQ 84, 1Q 84, not sure which it is actually.

Ben:  Sounds freaking weird. The other thing that I wanted to mention was that the pair sports I-phone app is out and that’s pretty cool.  I’ve got a bunch of pre-recorded workouts where I’ll literally walk you through treadmill workouts, bicycle workouts, gym workouts, and it’s all on this pair device.  So, you sync it up, you put on the headphones, and you go and you’d literally just have my voice walking you through workout.  So, I’ll put a link in the show notes for you to be able to check out the pair workout device. It’s super cool and have you used that before, Brock?

Brock:  No, I’ve seen it yeah. I was actually just wanted to ask if the I-phone version come with the foot pod and the heart rate monitor as well?

Ben:  I think I’m pretty sure it does. I don’t see why it wouldn’t. But yeah, I’ll put a link in the show notes for this episode, Episode#212. And like anything we talked about in this episode, it will also be up on in  mylist up in the facebook.com/BGFitness  MyList page. And the other thing that I wanted to mention was, speaking of MyList, actually the sponsor of Ironman Hawaii this year, so, they’re all over the place down here.  I’m down here in Hawaii and one of the podcasts that I kinda oversee is  enduranceplanet.com which is a podcast where we interview triathletes, multi-marathoners, and cyclists and swimmers and stuff like that.  We’re gonna do a live sports nutrition episode with me – a live video sports nutrition episode with me.  So, the host of Endurance Planet, Tawnee Prazak and myself are literally just gonna be sitting in front of a computer this Friday on video answering anybody who pops on to the facebook.com/EndurancePlanet page and asks questions.  So, we cooperatively to interact live and that’s at 6 Pacific 9 Eastern and it literally just hop onto facebook.com/EndurancePlanet you could put a little live video button and we’ll just  pitch on   there answering your questions and if nobody’s actually asking questions, we’ll be sitting in awkward silence sipping a coffee.

Brock:  I’ll just tune in to that.

[0:15:57.2]

Brock:  Okay. As usual, awesome questions everybody.  Thank you for keeping them coming and also for not completely overloading us with audio questions so, I actually feel like I have a purpose this week.

Ben:  Do you have to read?

Brock:  I get to read, just looking at it.  And I’m gonna start reading with Dave’s question here.

Dave says:     I’m curious why your concerns about dairy do not include yogurt.  I’m not suggesting that they should, I’m just curious why yogurt is not a concern? And these are the follow-up questions or second question, he said, a fellow triathlete podcaster that I listen to is a big fan of yours but very anti-olive oil. I’ve not heard on his reasons so I’m curious what they could be.

Ben:  Cool!  Those are both good questions. Let’s start with yogurt. There are some important points to consider when you’re looking at which yogurt is best. You can be pretty shocked when you look at like a high dollar “organic yogurt” and you find that it’s what’s ultra pasteurized which means that pretty much most of the beneficial bacteria in that yogurt are completely killed off.  So, regular pasteurization which is at a little bit lower temperature than what’s called this ultra heat pasteurization is typically gonna involve heating that milk to a little lower 200 degrees.  And that does kill off the living organisms in milk.  If you took raw milk and you heat it like that, you’re gonna kill off a lot of these beneficial bacteria but what happens is that you can use that same milk that’s been pasteurized to culture more organisms-yogurt cultures, for example, which returns the beneficial organisms back into the milk.  So, pasteurization is not necessarily an issue per se because you add your cultures back in so you take a pasteurized milk and take a yogurt out of it and you still get some of the good bacteria.  But when yogurt has been treated with ultra high temperature pasteurization, it not only kills off the bacteria but what it does is that’s  a high enough temp to literally alter the biochemistry of the milk and it burst cell walls that can create a lot of essentially toxins in the milk.  And the milk doesn’t support microbial growth any longer.  So, when the yogurt has been ultra heat pasteurized, it literally can’t have active life cultures in it.  And many times, it has texture that’s different in yogurt.  It’s a little bit thinner, a little bit less film in it than like a regular yogurt.

Brock:  Like Jell0-ee.

Ben:  Yeah.  They have add a bunch of additives back into that ultra high temperature yogurt to make it kinda _____[o:19:59.5] and appear _____[0:20:00.9] So,  if you want to avoid yogurt that is ultra heat pasteurized, you wanna look for some of the brands that use regular heat pasteurization.  I know Dannon doesn’t use ultra heat pasteurization, Stony Field Farms doesn’t, there’s another one called Brown Cow, doesn’t and Yo Plate might.  So, Yo Plate, I couldn’t find it listed anywhere whether or not they do so, if they don’t list it, it’s likely that they may.  So, I’m not sure about Yo Plate but those other 3 that I mentioned Brown Cow, Stony Field and Dannon would be okay when it comes to that pasteurization process.  As far as homogenization goes, we already talked about that, how it might destroy that molecule’s natural structure and that’s why any of these brands you’re always wanna go full fat.  As far as organic vs. non-organic, what that mean is that for a milk that’s used to make yogurt, to be labeled organic, farmers have to use organic feed and not use antibiotics and not use growth hormones and typically that means that the animals have to be pastured for at least 4 months.  They don’t usually have to spend their whole life in pasture but at least 4 months for a yogurt to be labeled organic.  Probably, the best commercial yogurt that’s out there that does a pretty decent job with having like small family-owned dairy operations that are decent in terms of their organic standards would be Stony Field.  So, Stony Field is not a commercial brand that you should be able to find at most grocery stores out there.  Most of these yogurts are still gonna have some additives like milk solids and then they add some pectin to typically as a thickener, gelatin as a thickener, some cornstarch as thickener, and that’s just all stuff that you really can’t get around when you’re buying something off the shelf vs. making it yourself at home.  If I just wanna go to the grocery store and have to pick something off the shelf, I’d typically go for Stony Field Farms.  The only thing that they don’t do is they don’t alter their casing post production which can also affect the texture of the actual yogurt but also damage the protein structures in the yogurt,  so, Stony Field doesn’t do that.  They also don’t homogenize the yogurt and the additives to it are fairly minimal.  I know that’s a little bit different though than Greek yogurt so, one thing I wanna mention though is Brock, do you guys actually have a Stony Field yogurt up there?

[0:22:35.4]

Brock:  Yeah, I think we can purchase Stony Field in Canada.  We’ve got a whole bunch of other different brands as well that are really good.

Ben:  Gotcha.  Well, Greek yogurt, I know is a whole different issue especially here in the states and I think out there in Canada too from what I could tell when I was out there for Ironman Canada.  It’s getting popular there and it’s very expensive to make Greek yogurt.  It takes more milk to make Greek yogurt and the end product though is like it’s really creamy high protein product and you get it by straining out the way from regular yogurt.  You typically get just the concentrated casein that’s left in the Greek yogurt so it’s really thick, it’s really creamy. It’s kinda really nice amino acid profile too for people who aren’t dairy sensitive or sensitive to casein but the problem is that the way that a lot of companies make Greek yogurt is not all that hot.  Like Yo Plate, for example adds a thickener to the Greek yogurt rather than doing a really good job like removing the whey in using a high quality starter.  So, they had what’s called milk protein concentrate which is this cheap powdered form of dairy protein that’s really processed. And what that means is it’s been heated to really hot temperatures. The milk is very oxidized, it’s like eating powdered eggs, one of the worse things on the planet you can eat because the cholesterol particles in the eggs are so oxidized and the thing with the dairy powder that they add to a lot of these Greek yogurts.  A lot of them also add cornstarch they’ll add like a tapioca filler and you get a really really nice melt feel of the Greek yogurt but it’s not healthy for you at all.  You wanna look for a lot of that stuff.  The other things you wanna look for in this the modified cornstarch and the added milk protein concentrate. It’s a lot the amount of  label.  You just have to kinda buy the right brand would be sugar and sucralose which  add to a lot of them, and then fructose as well.  So, the couple of brand that I know of that are good for Greek yogurt would be Chobani _______[0:24:55.1]that’s decent. It’s also made from milk that’s free of  growth hormones which is nice.  Stony Field, they do a great Greek yogurt. Again, they don’t add that stuff from Stony Field, it’s non-fat. I’m not a big fan of the non-fat dairy product for the reasons we talked about.  And then, Olympus does a great yogurt as well like a full fat Greek yogurt and those would be a few of the brands that’d be okay for Greek.  For regular yogurt, I’d go Stony Field, Greek yogurt, I’d go Chobani or Olympus.

[0:25:25.1]

Brock:  I’d love the Olympus stuff.  That’s delicious.

Ben:  Yeah.  So,  of course, if you really wanted to make your own yogurt, my wife and I’ve got some stuff in the inner circle for inner circle members on how to go to your local dairy farm, if you’re gonna buy from a local organic dairy farm and just bring home and make your own yogurt.  It’s really easy to do and it’s worth learning if you eat a lot of yogurt.  So, there you go.  There’s  yogurt.

Brock:  Okay.  So I guess…back to the question then. As far as your concerns that revolve around dairy, why don’t they apply to yogurt?

Ben:  Well, my main concerns with dairy are, if we’re talking about the good organic dairy, that’s free of growth hormones, it’s pretty much all that you left that’s a concern is the lactose issue.  And for people who are lactose intolerant, or who genetically don’t have enough lactose on board to be able to digest lactose sugar and milk, anything with a live bacteria culture and it’s not an issue because those bacteria produce lactase and they digest the lactose for you.  There is, for example, this company down here, I noticed that there are men Hawaii expo called core power.  And they make this milk that’s kinda like muscle milk ‘cause in terms of recovery beverage but it’s lactose free and if you look at the label, they’ve added lactase enzyme to it but they’ve also treated it bacterially to kinda like predigest a bunch of the lactose sugars are already in there.  So, yogurt is similar any dairy product that’s been fermented is kinda be similar in terms of being lower in lactose content.  That’s really the only, for example, I can’t drink the raw milk that Jessa  gets from the local dairy farm but once it’s made into yogurt and it’s been fermented, I’m just fine with it.  That’s kind of the issue with yogurt vs. regular unfermented dairy.

Brock:  That makes complete sense. Okay, so why don’t we…let’s just quickly talk about the olive oil.  Why might this fellow podcaster and triathlete be not a fan of olive oil?

Ben:  Probably because of what can happen with olive oil if you don’t take good stuff.  If you don’t get extra virgin olive oil and it’s not cold pressed and it’s also not what’s called first pressed, there’s some issues.  So, to label an oil extra virgin olive oil like over in Europe, it has to have less than 0.8% acidity.  And when you press the olive oil out of the olive, that can be all the oil that has higher acidity and then you have to refine the oil to reduce the acidity.  And when you refine the oil, that can reduce a lot of the beneficial polyphenols that are in that oil. The other thing that can happen is when you make olive oil industrially, you can use this hot water process to separate the actual oil from the pulp and whereas a nice clear olive oil looks nice when you’re pouring it or when it’s sitting in a dish or when it’s in a bottle, you want your olive oil to be cloudy because if that oil is separated from the pulp, what happens is any contact with that hot water not only removes a lot of the poyphenols which are the beneficial antioxidants in olive oil but it also can oxidize the actual fats in the olive oil themselves which makes some damage once it gets into your body.  The other issues of oxidation is if the olive oil has been exposed to light because it’s in a see-thru bottle or it’s been exposed to heat in the industrialization process or in the shelving process, that also makes it very very prone to oxidation and rancidity and that can cause some cardiovascular issues if you consume it. And then, depending on how it’s been treated or stored in your home, whether, for example, you got an extra virgin olive oil but then you’ve heated it and used it for sautéing, it’s got a pretty low smoke point.  Extra virgin olive oil in particular and that’s another reason that olive oil…you could take olive oil and actually make it unhealthy.  However, olive oil in general, good olive oil, it’s got a lot of monounsaturated fats in it which are great for your heart and also have been shown to have some pretty cool action against cancer tumors in terms of shedding down some of the expression of cancer tumor genes.  They also contain an active ingredient called oleocanthal   which is an anti inflammatory that’s similar like ibuprofen except it’s completely natural.  So, the issue is that if you want olive oil to be good, you need to make sure that you get extra virgin olive oil that hasn’t been exposed to a lot of processing.  It’s one of the things, it’s like fish oil or any fat really.  If only it’s been treated properly, and you’re taking really really good fragile care of the fat, it’s not gonna be that bad for you.  But if it’s been heated and exposed to lots of pressures and allowed to become rancid then it can become unhealthy.  So, that’s kind of the issue.  It just depends on the way that the olive oil has been treated.

[0:30:28.4]

Brock:  So, should people be looking to buy extra virgin oil in an opaque bottle, then?

Ben:  Yeah. Preferably like a bottle that’s not like the typical plastic see-thru bottle. You want a dark tinted bottle to reduce a lot of light damage.  You want a little bit of cloudiness in the oil since if it’s super clear, that suggests that it’s been filtered and that some of the pulp have been removed.  And you wanna look on the label.  Look for words like cold pressed.  Look for words like first pressed.  Those are really good things to look at. And then, I mean just intuitively buy your olive oil on a fairly small bottle just because quality producers are trying to sell oil although it’s young are gonna tend to sell it in small amounts.  And you also tend to leave it sitting in your house or tend to get hot or staying in a shelf for long period of time ‘cause you’re just going through it a little faster.

Drew:  Hello Ben and Brock! My name is Drew.  My first question is can you recommend from personal experience or close acquaintanceship, i.e., not a commercial source of bed mattress superior for chronic back pain? Heavy lifting I tore multiple micro tears in my trapezius muscle.  Also in a motorcycle spell, I sustained a fractured tailbone, bulged disc, I forget which 2 or 3 up from the tail dented and skewered a kneecap and blew a hip bursar.  These injuries are not fresh.  I trained with _______[0:31:51.1] and then my racing trekker hill biker scuba diver and avid nature hiker but lack of sleep flapping in pain every night is taking its toll.  I’m not a sissy girl, pardon the expression, I have a very high tolerance to pain but lately it’s getting to me.  Is there a specific mattress type or brand or options for athletes with these types of injury hauntings?  My second question is my job using a computer station has created a Dowager’s hump.  Is there a way to reduce this? The company I work for does not invest in ergonomic set up  for its employees.  Also, we’re not committed to stray off the chair.  I tried a conventional method to hold chin to chest but that hurts my neck.  In general, my posture is deteriorating.  Can you advice on how to correct and strengthen posture?  Thanks guys!

Ben:  Well, Drew is lucky because I happen to be staying down here with a chiropractor, a guy who I coach.  I talked to him a little bit about mattresses last night and asked him for some of his recommendations. I personally been eyeing one of the Sleep Number mattresses which are the mattresses that allow you to adjust the stiffness of the mattress and it’s literally just like it sounds go dial where you actually adjust the sleep number.  That mattress has had clinical studies on that had been shown to reduce back pain and to improve your sleep quality.  The other thing that they do with the sleep number mattresses is they’ve got this what’s called the dual air technology on it and that distributes your weight a little bit more evenly across the mattress.  You combine that with being able to dial and making extra firm down to soft depending on what feels better on your back.  And you can really get some pretty cool benefits from spending the extra money on a mattress like this considering you spend whatever comes out to a little less than half your life like 40% of your life in bed.  In many cases, depending on how active the lifestyle you live, investing in a good mattress like this is a cool idea.  The chiropractor that I was talking to, he also mentioned this company called Icely which I think is out in Nebraska which is similarly a mattress where you can adjust the firmness but they’ve also got temperature control built in to that mattress as well.  You can literally dial in an adjustable temperature and a lot of times, temperature can be therapeutic like if you have back pain, your turning on a little therapeutic warmth can be nice.  And you can even do something like to make it cold down by your head so that you get that cold pillow effect and then you can make a little bit warmer down by your back or down by your feet and it’s similar to the Sleep Number mattress they’ve got the pressure living foam kinda like the memory foam and the ability to adjust firmness. I was originally thinking pretty soon ______[0:34:59.7] Sleep Number mattress after looking at this Icely, I kinda like the idea of being able to dial on the temperature as well.  But when it comes to an issue like kyphosis which is basically around the back issue, sleeping on a proper mattress can help out quite a bit but taking care of muscular imbalances is also something that you really wanna focus on when your upper back has a fairly distinct curvature so that would mean really working on your scapular alignment during a lot of like seated rows, seated cable rows, elastic band rows, pretty much any rowing type of movement. And then plank exercises doing pushups in which you’re really trying to keep your shoulder blades aligned can also help out.  There are people with really really bad hunch back, really really bad kyphosis and a lot of times, that requires some medical intervention and some bracing and things of that nature but in many cases, if it’s just a slight round back, you can overcome something like that with some strength training for muscular imbalances combined with doing something like this, like sleeping on a good mattress to reduce some of the back pains, so you get some rest.

[0:36:09.1]

Brock:  Yeah, I know you’ve been playing around the  Intelliskin shirts as well.  I’ve got one that I’ve been trying out a little bit and I don’t know if they’re actually clinically proven to work for a Dowager’s back or a hyperkyphosis but I’d suggest trying something like that as well.

Ben:  Yeah. Absolutely!

Brock:  I know Ben actually sleeps on a bed of nails so I don’t think you’d recommend that, would you?

Ben:  Actually, I do like really really hot activated charcoal.

Robert:   Hi Ben and Brock! This is Robert from Portalane, Idaho. I have a question about a breath training device such as the Powerlung and whether this would be beneficial, especially for us older age grouper late to the game with regard to enhancing our lung capacity and I wanted your feedback.  Thanks.

Ben:  I think we mentioned of PowerLung before in the show on the MyList and also on the show notes.  We’ll link to the PowerLung for those of you who wanna actually check it out.  But this is a device that provides resistance to your inspiratory and expiratory muscles as you breathe in and out.  It looks like _____[0:37:21.6] like a snorkel kind of mouth piece at the end that you breathe into and it’s got this adjustable knob on vary amount of resistance that you receive when you exhale into it and also the resistance when you inhale.  And by using it, the idea is you’re supposed to build strength in your inspiratory and expiratory muscles no matter what your age is.  There have been some good studies on it.  They’ve got a lot of independent clinical studies listed on their website that show that this thing can actually help with respiratory muscle training with lowering the amount of respiratory muscle fatigue that occurs during exercise and increasing ventilatory capacity particularly in the elderly.  I think it’s pretty cool but kind of caveat for me is I know a lot of triathletes listening to the show, you got a ton of inspiratory and expiratory muscle training when you’re swimming.  If you’re swimming properly and you’re kinda breathing out slowly as you swim and taking a breath as you rotate and getting that breath in quickly, you do the swim and you can really work your inspiratory and expiratory muscles pretty significantly.  And then, if you’re throwing some other techniques, like doing some hypoxic swimming where you’re doing like 25-yard repeats, like all in workouts with 10 x 25 yards without breathing at all in between each repeats, that can really really help with inspiratory muscle strength that’s like an isometric contraction for your inspiratory muscles.  I’ve started swimming with one of those Finis Snorkels since I talked to Sammy ______[0:39:02.2] about that a few weeks ago in a podcast where we’re talking about how to get the most bang out of your swimming workouts and I tell you what, that feels like it really makes your inspiratory and expiratory muscles work a little bit harder when you’re swimming with one of these swimming snorkels.  If you’re like a triathlete or somebody who swims, I’m not convinced that one of these PowerLungs is really necessary but if you’re like a cyclist or runner or somebody who wants to improve your oxygen capacity and just want something to do or you’re whatever like sitting in your car, sitting in traffic, I think this is a pretty cool device.

Brock:  And it’s also, if you’ve got any sort of an asthma-related problems like even this exercise-induced asthma, I’ve seen that work really well.  I know a couple of people who have…one adult and a child who have seen significant benefits from working with one of those.

Ben:  Yeah. Definitely, you put that hand in hand, for example, with taking care of some of the asthma issues that we talked about in the podcast that we do with Dr. Mankoff about eliminating inflammatory compounds from your diet and from your home.  You can go back and just go to bengreenfieldfitness.com  and do a search for “asthma”.  There could be some pretty cool effects in terms of your breathing happiness.

[0:40:15.4]

Elisabeth:    Hi Ben! My name is Elisabeth Robson and I just wanna say thank so much you for your podcast.  I really enjoy it. My question is about raynaud’s syndrome and how to deal with that when I’m on the bike and if you have any tips on how to deal with raynaud’s in general.  My problem is that my raynaud’s acts up when my feet get very cold and when I’m on the bike, I can’t seem to warm up my feet no matter how hard I’m exercising.  If I go for a long period of time and do enough hills, they’ll eventually get warm but the cold air seems to keep them cold for a good long time on my ride and sometimes my feet gets so cold that I have to stop riding.  Obviously, I do use neoprene foot warmer to try to keep my feet warm.  But it doesn’t always do the trick.  So, if you have any tips on how to deal with raynaud’s and any supplements I could take, anything I could do that would help my feet to stay warm, that would be much appreciated.  Thanks very much.

Brock:  Yeah.  I get very very cold feet sometimes on the bicycle.  I know where you’re coming from, Elisabeth.

Ben:  Yeah.  Raynaud’s is literally like this little arterial spasms that can cause really really cold temperatures.  When we’ve talked about them before in the show in terms of the physiology behind why your fingers and your hands get cold, you could again, go to bengreenfieldfitness.com and do a search for “raynaud’s”.  But when it comes to some of the therapies and some of the stuff that you can do about it, the fact that it, a lot of times, is sympathetic nervous system driven and stress driven, when you get this type of stress response to cold exposure, you may wanna look into something like biofeedback and I’ll talk about a couple of supplements that may also help with something like this but in particular, biofeedback training is a type of training where you learn how to consciously control your body’s vital functions like breathing or heart rate or blood pressure with the combination of relaxation techniques and then some type of information that’s delivered by an electronic device whether you’re going and meeting with a qualified biofeedback practitioner and they’re hooking you up to electrodes and monitoring your breathing and your heart rate and your blood pressure and then you’re looking at a computer screen, that is giving you information about breathing, heart rate and blood pressure as you’re engaging in this relaxation technique that a practitioner would teach you.  Now, in this age of cool and enhanced technology, there are biofeedback devices like home biofeedback devices that you can get.  Like for example, there’s one on amazon , I’ll link to it in the show notes for you, but this is literally a skin response monitoring device.  And the reason that I mention this one in particular is just because raynaud’s a lot of times, you’re getting cold hands, cold feet, this is literally a biofeedback device that you place your hand on to.  And what it does is it teaches you how to change a certain behavior or pattern or nervous system response by learning how to focus in particular on your breathing patterns in response to stress.  So in this case, stress from a cold environment, cold water, cold air, that type of thing, and it essentially trains your sympathetic nervous system how to not have as pronounced a response in heart, pulse rate and also in skin temperature when you’re exposed to these particular situations.  Literally, this thing that you put your hand on top of, and these things are not expensive.  You’re looking at anywhere from a 100 up to 500 bucks for like a home biofeedback device compared to the multi thousand dollar units that you’re gonna use at a like a biofeedback practitioner’s office.  They can be  pre-efficacious.  I talked about the heart rate variability biofeedback tool that I use, the Heart Math Institute, the one that they make the sitting like 10 feet away from me and my bag.  But yeah, basically, it’s like the heart rate variability device that you can plug in your computer that teaches you how to control your heart rate in response to specific variables.  The EMWave, that’s right, that’s called the EMWave, that’s another example of something that you can use for biofeedback but something you wouldn’t think a lot about when you’re talking about cold hands and cold feet but something to look at.  As far as supplements go, a big big thing when it comes to inability to control body temperature is your omega 3 to omega 6 fatty acid ratio.  That’s something that you could get tested.  You could use a company like WellnessFX or Direct Labs to test your omega 3 to omega 6 fatty acid ratio but you’d like that to be low.  And in many cases, you’re seeing people who are reading a standard westernized diet.  That’s got lots of omega 6 fatty acids in it particularly from things like vegetable oils, cookies, crackers, stuff like that, even healthy whole grains.  We look into amounts of omega 6 fatty acids that are coming in.  There can be some real temperature regulation issues. So, I will recommend that you limit those type of fats in your diet and include omega 3 fatty acids instead from fish or from fish oil.  I talked about fish oil a little bit earlier.  I’ll certainly include a link to the show notes to the fish oil that I use – the SuperEssential stuff.  That’s one supplement that can help out quite a bit when it comes to raynaud’s.  And on and off, you’ll see that some people have found some success with another thing called Gingko Biloba as an herb that might be useful in preventing raynaud attacks.  It’s been shown to pump up your circulation in some studies but I’ve never come across a study that has looked specifically at raynaud’s and the use of Gingko Biloba.  There has been some research though on the use of essential fatty acids and omega 3 fatty acids in mitigating some of the effects of raynaud’s.

[0:46:26.6]

The two  biggest things I’d look at would be a biofeedback and then the omega 3 to omega 6 fatty acids ratio.

Brock:  I’m gonna suggest something just totally old school. There’s this thing  called Heat Factory Hand Warmers and they are just these little packets like little satchels of who knows what magical stuff that warms up and if you slide that into under your shoe it can really help just sort of from…it actually produces heat.  But the one thing, make sure you don’t use it in conjunction with your neoprene booties ‘cause it will ______[0:46:55.3] on having some oxygen flow in order to create a chemical reaction to make that makes it warm so you don’t wanna cut that off.  That’s true when you have it red against your skin but that’s what I’d suggest being from the great white north.

Ben:  There you go.

Ty:   Hi Ben and Brock!  This is Ty. I had a question about supplementation with branch chain amino acids as it relates to muscle catabolism and workout intensity.  Specifically, at what point does it benefit to supplement with branch chain amino acids?  For example, if I were to be going out and doing a 45-minute moderate pace run workout, I’m assuming I wouldn’t benefit as much if I were doing a 45-minute intense workout.  So, my question is what threshold should I set for saying this is a workout in particular that I should supplement with a branch chain amino acids? Thank you.

Ben:  Branch chain amino acids are something, those also like essential amino acids or something that I’ve written a couple of articles before on the website but the branch chain amino acids in particular are leucine, isoleucine and valine. And when you look at branch chain amino acids, what most studies have shown is that if you consume those, anywhere from 5 up to as many as 20 grams an hour during a long period of an intense training like when you’re going out and you’re going typically like 1+ hour really for training session, you can see some really good effects in terms of elongating the time that it takes you to get into fatigue.  And then also mitigating a lot of your post workout soreness because what you’re doing is stating off the extension which your body is going to start to cannibalize its own organs and lean muscle mass for energy you’re sending a message to your brain that amino acid levels are high and that allows you to push a little bit harder when it comes to tricking your brain and pushing past that point where your central governor might shut down your exercise capacity.  Branch chain amino acids are easy to get your hands on if you wanna look for the right ratio.  What I mean by that is studies have shown that 2:1:1 ratio has been shown to be most effective such 2 parts leucine to 1 part isoleucine to 1 part valine.  And when you’re using branch chain amino acids for anything that would be considered difficult then typically, that’s anything like at your lactate threshold or at your end of a threshold that you start to breathe hard and you’re like start to burn, that would be the point at which these things come in pretty handy in terms of increasing your threshold and intensity and your threshold and duration.  You’ll need to go out and use some…I wouldn’t be taking 10 g of branch chain amino acids to walk your dog around the block but for a tough session, they can certainly help.  I’ve experimented with the Recoverease, that’s one brand and I really like those because they combine branch chain amino acids with what are called proteolytic enzymes and proteolytic enzymes are specific type of enzyme that help to decrease post workout soreness.  You take them on an empty stomach so that they don’t work on food ‘because if you consume them with food, they end up working on the food instead of working on the muscles but they decrease level of fibrinogen which can cause a lot of soreness.  There’s something that can be used for anything from like post surgery recovery to like chronic inflammation to acute inflammation to workout recovery.  So, there’s a brand called Recoverease that I recommend as a combination of branch chain amino acids and these proteolytic enzymes.  And that’s something that you could take during exercise.  I tend to take them after exercise on an empty stomach but that’s one thing that you could do.

[0:50:52.9]

The other thing is the Master Amino Pattern.  Those are a lot more expensive ‘because those are 9 different amino acids rather than just 3.  I found that those kicked the butt of any branch chain amino acids supplement just because you’re getting a lot higher levels of amino acids.  Again, they’re more expensive but when you’re talking about bio viability of blood amino acids, and then also decreasing of the post workout soreness, I don’t think branch chain amino acids hold the candle to a whole amino acid supplement in terms of what I found with my own self-experimentation and also with some of the athletes I’ve coached who have used either that Master Amino Pattern and that stuff or the Recoverease and found that the NatureAminos stuff works way way better especially during the workout or during a race.

Brock:  Cool!  But that actually leads really really well into a question that we got from Lance.  And Lance actually addresses, he asks about the Master Amino Pattern and also some Wobenzyme Proteolytic Enzymes that he’s been using to help recover between consecutive weekends of long racing and he said I understand to NatureAminos before and after but the timing confuses me since the enzymes need to be on an empty stomach and post race calories are important too.  What is the best way to combine everything? And then also, should I continue for a few days?

Ben:  Yeah.  Basically, when you’re looking at post workout and taking a supplement that’s suppose to be taken on an empty stomach but you kinda have to balance that out with actually eating something post workout, especially if you’ve done a long workout or a really hard workout.  The fact is that you can eat your post workout meal like right after workout when you’re in that really insulin-sensitive state, when it can help to get a post workout meal in, in many cases, and then just later on in the day when you’ve got an empty stomach, you can take the Proteolytic Enzymes like 2 or 3 hours after you’ve had that meal.  The other thing like I alluded to earlier, is you can take them during actual workout itself and that’s another way to do it.  I mean, you could technically involve with the pre workout so you’ve got higher blood levels of proteolytic enzymes in your system pre workout.  But what I tend to do when I use them is I will do something like I’ll take the amino acids during the workout and then there’s just like have my meal and everything and then later on in the day, take the proteolytic enzymes to mitigate some of the post workout soreness, if you’re doing something like the Recoverease.

Brock:  So an empty stomach is really it’s not a matter of feeling super hungry and waiting until you’ve got every ounce of everything flashed to your system.  It’s just a matter of like 2 or 3 hours just a trance of time?

Ben:  Yeah.  You just don’t want the bolus of food, the food that you’re chewing be mixing up with the enzymes at the same time.  It’s kinda like digestive enzymes.  You’re suppose to take digestive enzymes right when you eat and they’re less efficacious if you take them half hour before or even a half hour after you eat.  Some more idea with the enzymes with enzymes that you don’t want to digest food but they would rather have working on the fibrinogen, with those for decreasing post workout soreness, you take them a few hours after the workout.  You know, a few hours after the workout or a few hours after your post workout meal or alternatively take them before the workout.

Brock:  Okay.  Lance also threw in a little question right at the end here that it also likes to ask about tart cherry juice. Is there something special about tart cherries or is it the same effect as other juices like pomegranate since it looks like it has the same active ingredient?

Ben:  You know, I don’t know about the comparison of tart cherries vs. pomegranates.  In tart cherries, it’s the antioxidants in them what are called the anthocyanins that have been specifically links to be able to reduce  information. If we actually look at the studies, it’s the anthocyanins which, they’re basically called the glycoside, and you find them in cherries and you find them in berries.  I know that you also find kind of a similar type of anti-inflammatory in pomegranate but I wouldn’t be surprised if tart cherries just based off of the taste and the color were even denser in terms of the amounts of these anthocyanins.  The studies that have been done on them, they looked at the racers in the quinte cost which is a 196-mile relay race out here, relatively close to me, actually.  And they found that folks were in significantly less pain after the race if they drink tart cherry juice on the week before the race.  It’s almost like pre-loading on the anthocyanins in the cherry juice.  There’s been a few other little studies that have shown that cherry juices kinda help with decreasing soreness and with reducing muscle pain during workout.  I’ll put a link in the show notes and on the MyList for this episode but you can grab a bottle of dense 100% tart cherry juice of Amazon for 15-20 bucks. And the dosage on it would be anywhere from I think it’s around 8-16 ounces a day if you’re gonna load on it.  So, it’s just something you’d load on for a like a week or for something really really hard.  I personally a bigger fan of just kinda eating lot of fruits and vegetables on your diet including antioxidants here and there.  And then I use the caproflex which is basically a cherry extract like a really really dense cherry extract with the advantage of that being all  the sugars that you get in the tart cherry juice but that stuff works.  There’s been studies that show that works and honestly, I don’t know how much different it is than a pomegranate in terms of the amount of anthocyanins but yeah, it’s something that is efficacious.

Brock:  You know what?  I just realized that we read Lance’s question and he had a little piece in there that we kinda missed out on where he asked about should he continue taking the Master Amino or the amino acids for  a few days afterwards and if so, how much and when?

Ben:  You mean proteolytic enzymes?

Brock:  Yeah.  he was talking about the Master Amino Pattern and the Proteolytic.

Ben:  Well, proteolytic enzymes are going to work on you for as long as inflammation is present.  And for something like an Ironman triathlon, that can be for 2-3 weeks.  So you can continue taking something like that on empty stomach until soreness has subsided or until the inflammation has subsided.  As far as amino acids, since those are something that you’re kinda supposed to take during the actual exercise session, you don’t need to continue to take them after the exercise is done.  You could technically but I’m a bigger fan of just like having some chicken or fish or steak or real meal than continue to eat capsules post workout.  But for proteolytic enzymes, yeah, you could continue to take them as long as you’ve got inflammation.

Brock:  Okay.  Sorry about mixing all the plans, hope you got all the answers you’re looking for.  And let’s jump in to our final question here. It comes from Josh.

Josh:   In your blog post “The Hawaii Comedy of Errors” you mentioned that you had a bout with saddle sores.  I too have had an ongoing battle with them ever since I started cycling. I’ve tried many different saddles and nothing has been especially wonderful. My saddle I slightly pivoted downward and I have been properly fitted.  Tri-shorts make it worse than cycling bibs and early in the season, they were so bad that I nearly had a full-blown infection.  I’ve tried every cream/natural remedy with no relief.  I was thinking of getting an Adamo Road Saddle but wanted to get your opinion on what to do first.

Ben:  Yeah.  Like you alluded to Brock, my saddle sores ended up getting infected like I wanna put with full-blown MRSA and honestly, I’m not sure if it was a saddle sore issue or if it was an issue that I had some cuts and scrapes on my legs and those got infected with staph which led to a saddle-sore-like infection or regardless, it left me with permanent scarring and long bout of antibiotic therapy.  Yeah, if a staph gets infected it can be a pretty serious issue.  One of the problems is that a lot of their remedies for saddle sores that are out there that you’re gonna find recommended on a lot of cycling websites and stuff. There’s a lot of added ingredients, petroleum-like ingredients and something that can get absorbed through your skin that’s not all that hot for you.  So, some of the more common non-natural treatment for this that would be efficacious but not completely natural would be….there’s a skin cream that was developed for sunburn called Maxima and it’s basically a combination of camphor oil and then some menthol for an anesthetic and then eucalyptus and liniment and some other analgesics that they throw in there for pain relief.  So, Maxima is one that can help.  It’s not extremely natural but it’s something you could use.

[1:00:12.8]

Vagicil, I’ve seen some people talk about as well. Even though, of course, you’ll typically think of that as a feminine care product if you are female and if you are like Brock and I, you’ll probably don’t think about Vagicil at all.  That can be used as well on saddle sores. That’s basically benzocaine which is a local anesthetic and a topical pain reliever and then resorcinol which is like a topical antibiotic or antiseptic and again, that’s not something I make use but it is something that some folks use for saddle sores.  Preparation H would be another thing you can use, usually used to shrink hemorrhoidal tissue swelling but some cyclists feel that it helps them shrink saddle sores so that’s the other one you could look into.  It’s just a mix of a bunch of stuff that kinda decreases blood flow to the area.  As far as a few other non-natural ingredients, one would be Monkey Butt or what’s called Anti Monkey Butt and that’s actually sold at cycling stores and stuff like that.  And that’s a combination of zinc oxide and iron oxide mixed with some of these other anti itching and antiseptic agents.  Again, I’m not a huge fan of spreading a bunch of metals down around my crotch just because that’s an area of high blood flow but it is something that you should try.  And then, of course, there’s this  like baby powder and talcum powder and stuff like that.  If the saddle sores are actually like (this is gonna sound really nasty) but if they’re actually pimpling and coming to a head and really forming some nasty wounds down there, I would recommend that you use a combination of like a hot compress or an epson salt salt soak or like a bath to draw some of the stuff out of there and then follow that up with Manuka honey literally just like smear some honey up your crotch and that stuff can help heal that a little bit.  Manuka honeys have some really cool healing benefits and I use that to heal up some of my MRSA wounds as well.  As far as the stuff that I personally use, I use 2 different brands for  shammy cream.  One that I use is from Hammer Nutrition and I think it works really really well and I swear by it and wasn’t using it when I actually get in that with that saddle sore issue last year.  But it’s basically olive oil (I don’t know if it’s extra virgin olive oil but I’m not drinking it) shea butter and then it’s got some chamomile, it’s got some beeswax, it’s got peppermint oil, tea tree oil, vitamin E oil.  While you can get just stand alone tea tree oil, and use that on saddle sore this staph in terms of its blend of essential oils as well as like beeswax and stuff like that, it’s smells really really good and it also helps the saddle sores.  So, not only you’re not gonna smell too growy or gammy but it also helps out.

Brock:  And then  sore prevention, right?

Ben:  Yup! Exactly.  Skin’s the other one. It’s for prevention, Brock, but it can also be therapeutic when it has olive oil and tea tree oil and stuff on there can help with some of the pain.  And then, skin socky.  That stuff is actually available over at pacificfit.net and it is paraben-free. It does not have a bunch of artificial fragrances and stuff added to it and that’s something that I’ll use sometimes for my wet suit when swimming just like in the back of the neck of the wet suit where it is chaffing and then also on the hands and the feet to help the wet suit slip off faster.  But that also got a bunch of aloe in it and then vitamin A, vitamin D, and vitamin E, so it can have a pretty cool healing effect as well.  Again, I tend to use Cit saver more often as a shammy cream and then the skin socky as more of an anti chaffing ointment for white wet suits but either could work and those are the things that I have around.  And then as far as like an actual biotic saddle goes, absolutely, without a doubt, the ISM Saddles, those have a huge effect in terms of keeping a lot of the pressure off of those areas that tend to be prone to saddle sores so, they were originally designed because when you’re on a typical bicycle seat, you can get numbness, you can get issues with urinary tracts and restricted blood flow to a lot of your vital organs, prostate inflammation, and potential for impotence or erectile dysfunction.  For women, same thing, you get that restricted blood flow and that can lead to some reproductive issues or even just inability to reach an orgasm so, for those who like to come in after a long day of riding and go straight to the bedroom and have sex that could be an issue. But in seriousness, they can a pretty decent effect of mitigating some of the issues of sitting on a bike saddle all day long but they also can keep a lot of the pressure off from the perennial area where you tend to get a lot of those saddle sores. So, we’ll put a link to it in the show notes along with everything we talked about but yeah, the ISM saddles, I’m a big big fan of that one.  My Road bike, one of my triathlon bike and I swear by them.

Brock:  Excellent!  Well, that wraps up all our questions for this week and I think we may have done it again and come in right around an hour, I hope.

Ben:  Nice! And for those who are listening in, who want the behind-the-scenes, Brock and I had audio issues today, we had connection issues and when outside, and there was going and then housekeeping tried to come in about halfway through our podcast, so we somehow managed to scramble together a podcast despite all the technical difficulties. We’ll put this baby up for you guys.  What is this, Brock? Episode 212?

Brock:  Episode 212.  And I hope with Episode 213, you’ll be back at home and we’ll not have these crazy audio stuff going on.

Ben:  I’ll be back in my protective bubble of the home office and of course, check out audiblepodcast.com/ben for a free book.  You don’t have to get a geeky science fiction novel like Brock.

Brock:  But you should.

Ben:  But you should if you wanna be like Brock. And then also, I’ll link to everything that we talked about from ISM saddles to shammy creams that I use, to ______[1:06:51.8] really really good. I’m making a list for you guys and you can grab that on the podcast show notes or at the facebook.com/BGFitness  facebook page and just click on MyList.  So, that’s gonna wrap it up for this week and thanks for listening in.

For personal nutrition, fitness or triathlon consulting, supplements, books or DVD’s from Ben Greenfield,

please visit Pacific Elite Fitness at http://pacificfit.net/

Oct 10, 2012 free podcast: What Kind Of Yogurt Is Best Also: choosing a bed mattress and treating a dowager's hump, who should use a breath training device, cold feet while cycling with raynaud's syndrome, how and when to use branch chain amino acids, can olive oil be bad for you, and how to deal with bicycle saddle sores.

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Listener Q&A:

As compiled and read by Brock, the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast “sidekick”.

Dave asks @ 00:17:20
I am curious why your concerns about dairy do not include yogurt? I am not suggesting that they should, I'm just curious why yogurt is not a concern. Second, a fellow triathlete podcaster that I listen to is a big fan of yours but very anti olive oil. I have not heard his reasons so I am curious what you they could be.

Audio Question from Drew @ 00:31:17
Can you recommend a bed mattress that is good for back pain? She tore her trapezius and fractured her tailbone (among other injuries) quite a while ago. She isn't a “sissy” but she doesn't sleep well and it is really starting to get to her. She also has a dowager's hump (hyperkyphosis) from working at a desk. Do you have any suggestions for treating that and correcting her posture?

~ In my response, I talk about the Sleep Number mattress and Brock mentions Intelliskin.

Audio Question from Robert @ 00:36:40
Do you think a breath training device (like the Powerlung) would be beneficial for an older age grouper late to the game?

~ In my response, I talk about the Powerlung and mentions this podcast episode.

Audio Question from Elisabeth @ 00:40:16
Looking for tips to deal with raynaud's syndrome on the bike (and in general). It acts up when her feet get cold on the bike she and sometimes just can't seem to warm them up. She uses neoprene foot warmers but it doesn't always do the trick.

~ In my response, I talk about the GSR2 Biofeedback Device and the EMWave2. I also talk about SuperEssentials Fish Oil and recommend Omega 3-Omega 6 Fatty Acid ratios, plus testing with a company like WellnessFX. Brock mentions Heat Factory Hand Warmers.

Audio Question from Ty @ 00:47:09
He wants to know at what point there is a benefit in supplementing with branch chain amino acids. What threshold, in intensity and duration, should he set to beginning supplementing.

~ In my response, I talk about Recoverease  and also Master Amino Pattern.

Lance asks @ 00:51:41
I have a question about how best to use Master Amino Pattern and Wobenzyme Proteolytic Enzymes to help me recover between consecutive weekends of long racing. I understand to use Nature Aminos before and after but the timing confuses me. Since the enzymes need to be on an empty stomach, and post race calories are important too, what is the best way to combine everything? Also should I continue in the following days? If so, how much and when? I'd also like to ask about tart cherry juice? Is there something special about tart cherries, or is the same effect in other juices like pomegranate, since it looks like the same active ingredient?

~ In my response, I talk about Tart Cherry Juice.

Josh asks @ 00:57:59
In your blog post “The Hawaii Comedy of Errors” you mentioned that you had a bout with saddle sores. I too have had an ongoing battle with them ever since I started cycling. I've tried many different saddles and nothing has been especially wonderful. My saddle is slightly pivoted downward and I have been properly fitted. Tri-shorts make it worse than cycling bibs and, earlier in the season, they were so bad that I nearly had a full-blown infection. I've tried EVERY cream/natural remedy with no relief. I was thinking of getting an Adamo Road saddle, but wanted to get your opinion on what to do first.

~ In my response, I talk about Adamo ISM saddleHammer Nutrition Seat Saver (use 15% discount code 80244), SkinSake Ointment, and Tea Tree Oil.

 

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