April 30, 2013
[0:00:00.0]
Introduction: In today’s episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast: Is Too Much Nut Butter Bad For You, Why You Wake Up During The Night, How To Get Rid Of Food Cravings, Do Collagen Supplements Work, Natural Remedies For Seasonal Allergies, and Are There Exercise Benefits To Alcohol?
Brock: So you’re feeling a little wheezy and light headed? More so than usual.
Ben: I lost a lot of blood this morning.
Brock: Actually, you lost it or somebody knows where it is.
Ben: I purposely lost it. Hopefully someone… I gave about 8 vials worth of blood which actually looks like a lot of blood. According to my 5 year old son who is sitting there as I gave it. “Daddy, that’s a lot and lots of blood” A lot and a lot of blood but it was only 40 ml.
Brock: That’s a lot!
Ben: That’s about 1 tenth of what you’d give if you’re gonna go donate blood for the good of people in general or to lower your levels or ferritin or iron or whatever the case maybe. So, considering (here are my thoughts on that) that I did this right before I’m on my way to a race and I’ll explain why in a second, is supposed to take 3-4 weeks to bounce back from a typical blood donation of 400-500 ml. So, my approximation is if you take about 10% or so of that because I gave about 10% that much blood, that’s probably can take me about 3-4 days to like bounce back from something like that. Like four way physiologically in terms of rebuilding plasma.
Brock: So, it’s Tues, so Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday. You should be back on track Saturday morning.
Ben: Which is race day. Yeah.
Brock: Seems like good timing.
Ben: Yeah. So the whole reason I’m doing this for folks who didn’t know I’m doing back to back triathlons on one of the hardest triathlon courses on the face of the planet, the Wildflower Triathlon down in California. Half Ironman Saturday morning, Olympic Distance Sunday morning, full on performance testing of the WellnessFX performance panel today, and then as soon as I get back from the race. So, we’re gonna see what kinda shiznat happens to the human body when you do stupid stuff to it.
Brock: What you’re gonna do, your absolute best to mitigate the stupid stuff in between right, like you’re allowed all the stuff in terms of recovery and just prevention of any of the real deleterious effects of beating your body to a pulp.
Ben: Exactly. And we’ll publish all this crazy signs over at bengreenfieldfitness.com. So, it should be fun.
Brock: And of course you end up a great big steak tonight, right?
Ben: Tonight? Yeah! Great rib steak. I was thinking maybe just a can of coconut water. Maybe a carrot (multiple carrots).
Brock: Soybeans.
Ben: I’m really feeling like pardine, so yeah, I am drinking a cup of pu’er tea right now though. You had pu’er tea?
Brock: No, and it doesn’t sound like something I wanna have.
Ben: It’s really really good. It’s like the super strong kinda nutty green tea but it’s specifically considered one of the honorable ancient Chinese teas and I’d picked up a nice fresh batch. I shouldn’t say fresh ‘cause it’s like aged, but it’s pu’er tea and it’s got this really nice kinda stabilizing effect, I like it and it’s fun, it’s nice to branch out from basically like lipton’s brew or coffee or whatever, so it’s interesting stuff, pu’er.
News Flashes:
Brock: To get this and other illuminating news flashes make sure you follow Ben at twitter.com/bengreenfield and also go to facebook.com/bgfitness and you can also go to google+ if you’re an ultra nerd embrace that technology which not very many people have but Ben has.
Ben: Google+ is cool! We post stuff on google+ all the time like I post stuff on facebook (you don’t get other places) google+ so, yeah, it’s fun. I like all these social media. Anyways though, we should have mentioned that in case nobody noticed, we do have kinda some new rollicking tunes.
[0:05:04.9]
Brock: Rollicking, yes.
Ben: So, if you can name the movie that the brand new Ben Greenfield fitness podcast tunes came from then kudos – more power to you.
Brock: I guess the Prince of Tides and apparently, I was wrong…
Ben: We are gonna give something away at the end of this episode so, if you have happen to be someone who has left a review on iTunes then stay tuned because we’ve got a cool, stay ahhaha…
Brock: Stay iTunes, ahhaha.
Ben: Alright, let see what came across the radar this week. Interesting study called the Association of GI Distress in Ultra Marathoners with Race Diet. I guess they could have called it, Diarrhea in Crazy Runners. I’m probably getting the same effect but what they did was they took a bunch of ultra runners running the Javelina Jundred which is a 161 kilometer ultra marathon, 6.5 loops on a desert trail which just sounds fantastically exciting and like someone and masochistic as our ultra runs do. They measured the folks’ body mass pre-race and then after each loop and then they did surveys after each loop on the amount of nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, diarrhea all that stuff. So, really fun study. One of those ones that I’m sure research can turn just like “Excuse me sir, how noxious are you feeling right now?”
Anyways, takeaway was that a race diet with a higher percentage of fat and a higher intake rate of fat actually resulted in protection from GI stress and the runners who are eating a higher percentage of fat based fuels like seed and nut and chia seed and medium chain triglyceride type of fuels, had less GI distress than the racers doing the traditional high carb intake during the event. Isn’t that interesting?
Brock: It is and always at because they were running at a lower effort, because they didn’t have that rocket fuel in their system?
Ben: They corrected for the fact that basically runners… no, there wasn’t a performance difference in a fat fueled vs. the carbohydrate fueled runners.
Brock: I was kinda being devil’s advocate there by asking that because traditionally speaking people have always believed that if you’re fuelled by fat or if you’re using fat as really as you can go as harder as fast and when you go, everybody knows, harder and faster you have a little more GI distress.
Ben: Now amazingly the guy who ate the big Mac and took the week to do it showed the lowest rate of GI distress so… No, I’m just kidding. So yeah, high fat intake (seeds, not stuff like that) during ultra runs turns out to be protective from GI distress which flies in the phase of what we sometimes think. Another interesting study was on the fact that your body can actually make storage glycogen out of fatty acids. Now this is super interesting because last week we touched on how easy it is in someone who’s eating like a low carb diet for your body to make a storage carbohydrate (you know storage liver and muscle glycogen) out of those proteins, specifically glutamine but also some other protein, you get like a protein powder or you know steak or whatever else. Well it turns out…
Brock: I’m not going to attempt to say the process that a…
Ben: Yes, the word you made up last week.
Brock: Yeah, I’m not gonna say that again.
Ben: It sounded really smart though but a… anyways here’s another one, this is called “Evidence for Gluconeogenesis from Fatty Acids and Humans.” It’s a comprehensive study that looked at all of the different pathways via which fat and fatty acids can indeed be used to form storage in glycogen in humans. This is really interesting and this kinda again shatters the paradox that you have to eat carbs to store carbs or even that you have to eat proteins to store carbs. It turns out that there are multiple pathways via which your body can take fatty acids and convert them into carbohydrates and to storage fuel that can be used during exercise and that could feed into this whole krebs cycle the same way that carbohydrates can that can result in significant access to fast ATP stores during fast exercise. Super interesting stuff! So your body can make glucose and can make glycogen out of fatty acids. So that was another one that I think is super interesting and again flies in the phase of what we’ve been led to believe from that exercise standpoint.
[0:10:00.7]
Brock: Now was this the first study of its kind? Finding that?
Ben: There are couple other kind of pathways or roots that have been proposed via ways which this mechanism might take place and other studies and I will link to these studies in the show notes by the way, like whether acetone can get converted from fat into carbohydrate and the different metabolic pathways that might exist but this was the first study that really looked into things hardcore.
Brock: Cool! I’ll look forward to more studies coming out showing similar stuff.
Ben: Yeah! Screw on your propeller app, baby! Go out for a ride. The last thing that I wanted to mention was a study that came out that looked at the use of probiotics and fermented derivatives and the effect of fat loss and this study which I’ll also link to in the show notes which was actually done by the Milk Science Research Institute in Japan. Sounds like a fascinating research institute.
Brock: The Milk Science Research Institute!
Ben: Yeah. Basically what they did was they gave obese individuals fermented milk beverage kinda like a kefir everyday. And what they found was a significant reduction in this role fat mass which is the bad fat mass, the belly fat kinda fat mass that tends to be a real cardiovascular risk factor and a real issue in obese individuals. The stuff that produces inflammation, high insulin, high H1Ca levels, all of these decrease in the people who are getting probiotics. And so here’s evidence that eating fermented food, or taking probiotics not only has that immune system enhancing and gut stabilizing effect that most folks know that it does but it also has a pretty potent fat burning effect especially in overweight or obese people.
Brock: Did they talk about the strain and probiotic that was being used?
Ben: Lactobacillus, something something something. There’s so many out there but I don’t remember which colony or whatever it was but it was one of the more common ones you’re gonna find in fermented beverages.
Brock: Okay, yeah that was I was wondering if it was one that we’d actually be able to find in common here or if it was in really specific strain only for Japan.
Ben: Only available to the Milk Research Institute in Japan.
Brock: Exactly.
Ben: And there was like ten billion a day of this probiotic and that’s a reasonable amount. That’s like what you can find in a supplement or by eating some kimchi and some kefir and some fermented foods everyday. So those are the news flashes.
Brock: They were delicious.
Special Announcements:
Brock: So, people are apparently very interested in not losing their hair. Who knew?
Ben: Who knew. No, that was the most downloaded track on the new Ben Greenfield Fitness Top Hits Album.
Brock: It was “The Best Ways to Stop Hairloss” is the track and it’s been downloaded by far than I was… over all the other tracks. Not to say that there’s been a whole lot of activity but it hasn’t been around for long. And extra excitement here if I had a drum I would do a drum roll. The version that was released today, today being April 30th, actually has all the tracks available for download as a single. The previous version, if you’ve gone there before, if you’ve went there before today you probably saw the album only labelled next to 6 of the 10 tracks, well we’ve corrected that now all of the albums or all of the tracks are downloadable at 99 cents.
Ben: There you go. So rather than melting your brain with Ke$ha… What are some of the episodes, Brock?
Brock: We’ve got the benefits of fish vs. fish oil, we’ve got the increaser hematocrit and oxygen levels that strengthen your immune system and shorten a duration of a cold, and of course my favorite, Top 10 ways to boost your drive.
Ben: And there’s a bunch more but apparently we got a lot of hippie and/or bald listeners. I didn’t realize hair loss was such a… growing your hair longer perhaps weigh a valuable and endearing topic to our listeners. So check that out.
Brock: The link is in the show notes if you go to episode 239 and it’s the very first thing, there’s an awesome picture of Ben doing a goblet squat.
[0:15:03.4]
Ben: Goblet squat. No, but I mean it’s a cool idea. Picture this, you’ve got your best buddy and he’s growing bald, he’s losing his hair, he feels like crap and you guys go out and he has no feeling of self-worth, he is very self-conscious…
Brock: He’s a terrible wingman.
Ben: Won’t talk to the opposite sex and you say “hey, listen. 99 cents you could go to iTunes and you could grab this track and it’s ten minutes long and within ten minutes, for 99 cents, and you could go out on the parking lot, bro, and listen to this, and its gonna tell you everything you wanna know about how to re-grow your hair, regain vitality, get your drive back, talk to girls again, everything! It can change lives for 99 cents. So along the same lines, cool news. I can’t say too much about this but what I can say is if you have a smartphone, you’re gonna wanna jump through that smartphone and give us a big hug because the brand new Ben Greenfield fitness app is coming out. I haven’t even told Brock about this too much.
Brock: I know. I got a weird chain of e-mails one day and was like “what, what is this?”
Ben: Yeah, so brand new app. What we’re doing are a bunch of insider episodes every month. We’re doing a bunch of premium content. I’m shooting videos every week now and we’re doing like special podcasts. I recorded an hour last night with Jessa called “The Naked Truth”, dirty little secrets with Jessa Greenfield where we revealed our sorts of embarrassing information about me and we’re putting all of that on the app. I can’t tell you for sure the exact date the app will come out. It’s coming soon, stay tuned because if you’re one of the people to grab it you get access to all that bonus content so it’s gonna be sick, or cool if you wanna use it. 80’s word… So yeah, there’s that.
Brock: Don’t be square and pick it up.
Ben: It’s gonna be keen. Slick.
Brock: Nifty. You know what else is nifty… Is going to Thailand.
Ben: Going to Thailand will be nifty. The Thailand trip, the official 2013 Thailand freakin’ adventure of your life is like November 24th through December 4th something like that.
Brock: Something like that.
Ben: If you wanna get in on that, you got to register for the races, if they’re full don’t worry email me. I can get anyone who’s going with my group in like flint. So, you can basically get all the details on the 2013 Thailand Triathlon Adventure, the opportunity of a lifetime over on the show notes for this episode and where are the show notes now, Brock?
Brock: It’s there at bengreenfieldfitness.com/239. That’s it.
Ben: Easy to remember. We’re making the show notes super easy to remember. So like, when we get to 240 it will be bengreenfieldfitness.com/240 and then the next one will be 241. It blew some people’s mind with that progression to happen, you get the idea. So anyways, bengreenfieldfitness.com/239, you can get the show notes for this episode, you can get the handy dandy MyList for this episode, we’ll remake a handy dandy of everything that we talked about and last thing Stamford, Connecticut.
Brock: On May 18th.
Ben: May 18th. I’ll be there during the triathlon clinic, Essentials of Triathlon Training Clinic. So, if you’re around Stamford on May 18th 1-4 o’clock in the afternoon and you have nothing better to do then go geek out on triathlon, swinging on by! We’ll put links to that in the show notes. It’s 50 bucks to get into that clinic and it will be well worth it, we’re gonna totally feed you the fire hose for 3 hours so to speak, so there you go.
Listener Q & A:
Nutbutter: Hi Ben, I’m a 20-something year old vegan distance runner training for a marathon. I was curious as to what you think about the whole of nut butters in a vegan athlete’s diet. In the past month I found myself over-eating the Whole Foods brand cashew butter that contains safflower oil. Do you think nut butters are necessary for vegan athlete’s nutrition? And how healthy do you consider them to be? Thank you so much for your information packed podcast. Your hard work and extensive knowledge are truly inspiring.
[0:20:00.9]
Ben: Hmm, I love me isn’t nut butter!
Brock: Me too! I eat spoonfuls of almond butter just like in front of the TV.
Ben: I see spoonfuls of jiffy.
Brock: Oh dude!
Ben: Like during college I’ll get the huge things of jiffy and that was like my go-to. I eat the jiffy with a banana, sometimes I eat it with a dark chocolate bar, sometimes with a tablespoon but jiffy.
Brock: Oh, that stuff is filled with sugar… and vegetable oil.
Ben: I did not know that at the time all I know was…
Brock: You probably didn’t even care at that time.
Ben: …heavenly goodness. Yeah! Some nut butters in general, yeah, I mean, first of all, yes nut butters can be a source of protein especially if you are a vegan or a vegetarian (not athlete, just person in general) so, you can absolutely get proteins from them. The issue as most people I think are aware of is that nuts and seeds in general have a pretty high omega 6 to omega 3 fatty acid ratio and when you look at anthropological research on our ancestors, it suggest that they consumed omega 6 and omega 3 fatty acids in a ratio of about 1:1. And that ratio in our modern industrialized area as there has been a shift in the availability of omega 6 fatty acids has changed a lot. Like it depends but it can be as high as like 20:1 sometimes 25:1 in some folks in terms of the amount of omega 6 fatty acids that they’re getting. And except it’s high in omega 6 fatty acids would be like seeds and nuts but also canola oil, and soybean oil, and sesame oil, corn oil, safflower and sunflower oil are huge. So, a lot of the oils that you’re gonna find in restaurants that they’re using and the type of oils you’ll gonna find in processed foods.
So, the issue here is that omega 6’s are responsible for the inflammatory cascade in your body which is important to have to certain extent like you want your body to be able to when… whatever, scrape your knee to have what it needs to produce the eicosanoids and send your pro-inflammatory pain molecules to that area, but the problem is that too much omega 6 competes with the anti-inflammatory (heart healthy, brain healthy, nerve healthy omega 3 fatty acids) and specifically where the competition occurs is that omega 6 and omega 3 acids compete for the same conversion enzymes so, when you are eating foods that need to get converted to EPA and DHA in your body. So, you’re eating fish and you’re doing a really good job taking fish oil and stuff like that but you’re at the same time eating a bunch of omega 6 fatty acids, there’s gonna less conversion of those omega 3 fatty acids in what are supposed to be in your body. The trick is kind of this delicate balance between making sure that you don’t eat a ton of omega 6 fatty acids and also that you try and you know, fight fire with fire and kinda overload your body with omega 3’s so that the competition is skewed in favor of the enzymes responsible for converting those fatty acids. So, it’s like the more omega 3 have been floating around the more conversion of like ALA and the EPA and DHA you’re gonna get, the more anti-inflammatory potential you’ll gonna have. That’s the idea behind the omega 6 omega 3 fatty acid balance, it’s kinda make sense.
Brock: Yeah, the idea isn’t the entirely inflammatory or anti-inflammatory diet, you don’t wanna go one way or the other, you wanna keep it in balance just like everything else in nature.
Ben: Exactly. And when we go above and beyond the omega 6 fatty acids, grains and legumes in general are very very high in anti-nutrients in what are called lectins and phytic acids as well as a lot of enzyme inhibitors and even in many cases molds especially if you’re getting like the peanuts and brazil nuts for example, are two big culprits when it comes to mold. And so you need to be careful, the source of the seeds and nuts and the nut butters that you used and the best way to get rid of a lot of these digestive inhibitors and what are called anti-nutrients is to just take your seeds and nuts and soak them overnight and after they’ve soaked overnight you can rinsed them, you can dry them in a dehydrator or in an oven, set at the absolute lowest temperature you can put your oven at or you can dry them even like under the sun, on your kitchen counter or anything like that. That can make them a lot more digestive and there are companies that actually do this. There are companies that would take a nut butter and they’ll make a nut butter differently. Meaning that they’re ground at temperatures that are low, they are processed at very low temperatures and the result is nut that has a lot less damage into it, a lot less free radicals, a lot lower oxidation in most cases the type of companies that are doing this are also soaking and sprouting these nuts beforehand.
[0:25:21.5]
I will put a link in the show notes, there’s one company called Rejuvenative Foods and they do stuff like probiotic catsup and probiotic salsa and all sorts of kinda cool like cultured condiments basically but they also do raw nut and seed butters and there are other companies out there that do this too like Brasilla is a company, Raw Organic is another one, you can get the rejuvenative stuff off at Amazon. And I’ll put a link in the show notes for that as well. But you can get the stuff (the nut butters) that are gonna be the least damaging from like a nutrient and digestive inhibitor standpoint, they’re still gonna be high in omega 6 fatty acids but ultimately that would be the healthiest way to go if that’s gonna be the way that you get your protein vs. grabbing whatever nut butter off the shelf in your grocery store.
Brock: Now, do you store, without sounding too perverse, do you store your nuts in the freezer?
Ben: I store Brazil nuts in the freezer, I get them raw from the health food store and store them in the freezer ‘cause those are great for your testosterone and your zinc and your selenium but they tend to be moldy just about anywhere that you get them unless you them raw, fresh from a local health food store. Unfortunately, most people think Brazil nuts smell a little rancid or moldy and that’s because they are rancid or moldy. So, those are what we keep in the freezer. We go through our almonds and our walnuts pretty quickly, we get them, we soak them, some of them we sprout, we rinse and they stay in a jar and we don’t buy them in such a huge quantity that they’re gonna rancid so most of those are stay at room temp in mason jars in the pantry.
Brock: Yeah, I think the only other ones that we keep in the freezer around here are pine nuts only because we don’t go through them that quickly.
Ben: Yeah. So, there you go nut butter that’s what I have to say, go nuts on the nut butter in moderation and use like the raw organic stuff. Spend the extra money and that also will keep you from eating too much of it.
Overactive Bladder: Hey Ben and Brock! I have a question about an overactive bladder especially at night right before going to bed. So, pretty much every night I do everything, go to the bathroom and then I lay down and within about 15 minutes I have the urge to get up and go pee again so you know, I do that and then unusually woken up out 3 or 4 hours after that and have to get up and go to the bathroom again. I remember back in college when I was racing cross-country one of our coaches also told us “if you’re not waking up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, you’re not hydrated enough”, I don’t know maybe that’s just something that stuck with me. I do drink a lot of water definitely spaced throughout the day and not just at night time and I certainly don’t get like this urge to have to get up and leave everything and go to the bathroom like I do right before bed. I’m kinda just wondering what this might be about and if anybody else has had any similar situation like this. Thanks for all of your help, we love listening to the podcast. Thanks.
Brock: So, she doesn’t sound like a 70 year old man.
Ben: No, and I’m guessing her prostate probably checks out okay.
Brock: That’s what I’m thinking too.
Ben: Probably, probably. She may wanna ask her cross-country running coach about that too. So, honestly you always gotta give the stupid response which is “well, make sure you don’t drink too much water before you go to bed at night” but this is probably not that type of issue especially if somebody who’s like an endurance athlete, any kind of a stereo typical endurance athlete who’s churning out a lot of cortisol with training because one of your adrenal hormones specifically your adrenal glands is sit up on top of your kidneys, they churn up these hormones and one of them is called aldosterone and that’s responsible for your mineral balance in your body – your sodium and your potassium balance and in a normal body (not that you’re like abnormal or freak of nature but…) in a normal scenario, well, let’s just say that you don’t have a lot of cortisol that you’re churning out from runs or whatever during the day, aldosterone is relatively high at night. It naturally goes up before you go to bed at night and high aldosterone means that you’re gonna retain a little bit more sodium which also means that you retain a little bit more fluid, and that means that you sleep better at night because you don’t need to take that dreaded walk into the bathroom or wake up at night to pee.
[0:30:07.3]
That’s one reason that you would be waking up at night to pee is simply beating up your body, increasing cortisol levels. The other thing that happens when you increase your cortisol levels is high cortisol, just going to cause your body to rely upon blood sugar a little bit more as a fuel and when you rely upon blood sugar a little bit more as fuel you gonna tend to go hypogylcemic more quickly. You know, you eat a dinner with high cortisol circulating your bloodstream, you’re gonna notice kind of a big spike in blood sugar and then drop in blood sugar. That occurs a little bit more readily compared if you’re kind of a rested lower cortisol state. So, that’s the main idea and a lot of people kinda know this. It’s like you’ve trained too hard and you’re over-trained, you tend to get up at night to pee a lot but that’s the mechanism, that’s responsible for something like that occurring. That doesn’t mean that that’s the only thing that this would be though. There is also this idea behind meridians and this is kind of a Chinese medicine thing but there are certain meridians that are associated with certain times during the day and when you wake up specifically at certain times during the night, that refers to that specific meridian and to give you some examples, about 11 pm to 1 am is when your gallbladder is at its highest point of energy, its highest amount of metabolism that can occur during your 24 hr. circadian rhythm.
So, if you find yourself waking up between 11 pm to 1 am, it certainly could be the issue that I just talked about with cortisol. But let’s say that your cortisol levels are fine, you’ve tested your cortisol, you know that you’re not over-trained, you’re recovering well, it could mean that you have a problem with your gallbladder, it could mean you’re drinking too much caffeine, that can put a hit on your gallbladder or could mean that you’ve got too many trans-fats or kinda man-made fats like margarine and spreadable cream cheese and the lovely lovely spreadable peanut butter in your diet and that also can put a load on your gallbladder. So, that’s one thing.
Between 1 am and 3 am is your liver meridian and so let’s say you have a history of pharmaceutical use or you’ve been drinking a lot of alcohol lately or you’ve got any type of situation where you’re gonna expose to a lot of toxins, a lot of pollutants whether at work or in your city or whatever. Your liver is your detoxification organ and if it’s having to work overtime then that can be one of the issues that you’d be waking up between 1 and 3 am with. In a situation like that you would want to look maybe doing a liver cleanse. There are variety of different ways out to cleanse your liver. I use sublingual glutathione which is just like the spray underneath your tongue. You can use acetylcysteine which is what they use in hospital setting a lot, you can use milk thistle extract. There are a lot of different liver cleanses out there and frankly most of them are pretty decent. So, that’s another way that you can do it if you wanted to take up more the natural root to juicing with like cilantro and parsley and some of these common liver cleansing supplements can help with that if the wake cycle tends to be around 1-3 am.
Five-seven am is the large intestine and this is something that I had to deal with when I had not to gross anybody out but parasites. A couple of times in my life I had parasites and you generally about every couple of weeks you start waking up like clockwork between about 5-7 am and 5-7 am is a large intestine meridian. A lot of times if you’re waking up at those times, you don’t normally wake up at those times then that can indicate that you may have some kind of a colonic issue and that can be a gut bacteria issue, it can be yeast, it can be fungus or it could be like a parasite type of issue and that’s where you would do like a gut cleanse rather than a liver cleanse. So, you use any number of these gut cleansing compounds out there like a Capra Cleanse, is the one that I keep on hand but those are some of the times. You remember a few weeks ago, Brock when we’re talking about the whole idea that this 8 hours cycle might be a myth?
Brock: Yeah, they actually historically woke up in the middle of the night and actually got things done every couple of hours.
Ben: Yeah, yeah exactly and if you wake, if you’re fine, if your body’s healthy and you just wake up at midnight or whatever, and 1 or 2 am is a lot more common, after you have been sleeping for about 4 hours, there’s some evidence to show that that was a pretty common practice up until about a hundred years ago and this 8 hr. sleep cycle is more like a 4 hr. on 2 hr. off 4 hr. on type of sleep cycle, and if you’re clean and you don’t have high cortisol and you flush your body and you cleanse, you don’t have parasites, and you’re a healthy person and you’re waking up at night, don’t fight it, I mean, get up, get some stuff done, try to stay away from computers and kindles and stuff like that. Read a book, hang out with your spouse or your significant other, go for a walk and basically just live for a couple of hours and then go back to sleep, I mean, that’s another option.
[0:35:10.4]
Obviously it kind of a few different issues, this is good as kinda a multi-factorial but hopefully that at least gives you a blueprint and a little bit of direction when it comes to why wake up at certain times during the night and what to do about it if you need to do anything at all.
Brock: And I would suggest that you go find your cross-country running coach and tell him to download from the iTunes album hot tips the episode about how much water do you really need to drink each day because you know, there’s only so hydrated you can get and I think your running coach was trying to over-hydrate you.
Jeremy: Whenever I eat my meal I always make sure to take in a good amount of fats, protein and carbs and make sure to get all the good nutrients in for proper nutrition but after I’m done eating from the point I finish my meal until the point of my next meal, I’m always craving all types of food, it doesn’t matter if it’s sugary food or salty food, I just hunt food basically and I normally always give in to the temptation. I do take chromium supplements but that only really takes away the sugar cravings for me. So, I’m just wondering if you have any tips on that, thanks.
Brock: You know Jeremy I used to have the same problem. I had food emergencies between pretty much every meal and actually in the last couple of years, and I will give Ben a lot of thanks for this, I’ve got it very under control.
Ben: Why am I to thank for that?
Brock: ‘Cause you changed my diet around
Ben: You’re eating like higher fat, higher fat….
Brock: Much lower carbohydrate.
Ben: Also, he pee posted a picture of me on his refrigerator and kinda really scary.
Brock: And he gave me the finger.
Ben: Pretty really scary face. Like the scary monkey from Family Guy just like….Grrr right there on the refrigerator. Yeah, cravings can mean a lot of different things and there are a number of different kinda strong cravings that usually indicate your body can be low in a specific nutrient or vitamin or mineral and I’ll get in to that in a second, but know firsthand that there can be some psychological reasons for this as well. I’ve covered food cravings a lot before on bengreenfieldfitness.com and what I’m gonna do on the show notes over at bengreenfield.com/239 is I’ll link to a bunch of previous episodes I’ve done on these powerful craving control tricks that you can use to eat less food like you know keeping things in opaque vs. transparent containers and using pickles and fermented foods or salty foods to control your appetite. And…. that’s right, or swizzles or licorice or anything like that but basically little steps for eliminating food cravings. You know, chewing a lot before you eat or while you’re eating preferably chewing with food in your mouth.
I’ll put a link to all the stuff in the show notes. In terms of a lot of psychological ways that you can control unhealthy eating habits or cravings but like I mentioned a lot of times what you’re craving can be a decent indicator what’s going on from physiological standpoint just because low serotonin, dopamine, blood sugar, a lot of these can be related to what you’re craving. So, for example as we all know craving chocolates is what, magnesium, right? Yeah magnesium, as Brock takes a break from eating his dark chocolate bar.
Brock: How did you know?
Ben: So chocolate is really high in magnesium and a lot of times chocolate also gets metabolized to serotonin especially if you’re eating like the really good dark chocolate and that’s a mood boosting hormone and sometimes we tend to rely on chocolate for our serotonin levels as well. Now, chocolate and a craving for chocolate can also indicate a chromium deficiency. It can indicate a B vitamin deficiency and it could indicate an essential fatty acid deficiency. So, there are a few different things to think about if you’re constantly find yourself craving chocolate and it’s very very interesting you should just try this if you’re listening and you tend to be a chocolate craver, try adding some minerals into your diet like use a trace liquid minerals in the morning or start taking some magnesium before you get to bed at night and you may find that your chocolate cravings subside. So, that’s one thing to think about.
Carbohydrate cravings especially for really really sweet starchy carbohydrates, that can indicate also a mineral deficiency specifically a chromium deficiency but it can also indicate that you’ve got some insulin resistance or some hypoglycemia issues going on and your cell surface receptors may not actually be sensitive to insulin, and we went over this in the last week podcast episode about restoring insulin sensitivity and stabilizing specifically the beta cells and the pancreas and one of my big big recommendation in that case was to not only include more minerals and include things like chromium and magnesium but also to use something like a bitter melon extract and bitter melon extract is a pretty potent insulin stabilizer.
[0:40:41.2]
So, that works pretty well for carbohydrate based food cravings like white flour based food cravings, noodles, white bread, chips, biscuits, crackers, whatever weird foods they have up in Canada that guys like Brock eat. And then, that’s the deal with carbohydrates and sugar in general is a kinda mineral issue. Now, salt. Salt as we kinda touch on with this whole cortisol issue in sleep. Salt can be a kinda be an issue with stress hormone fluctuations and also low levels of electrolytes. One of the things that can really really help you just to test this out is to get your hands on like some Himalayan sea salt and if you’re in a pinch on how many Himalayan sea salt use, one try this out grab like, if you’re an endurance athlete and you happen to have like some electrolyte capsules around, you can just break open like 4 of them and put them in a glass of water and drink that. But if you tend to have cravings for a lot of salty foods and a lot of times it can just be low electrolyte status and it can also be an issue with stress hormone fluctuations like cortisol, it could be an indication that you need to….kinda take a few days easy and repair and recover a little bit.
The other thing that can happen when you’re over-stressed and you’re craving salt is it can be an indication that you’ve got a B vitamin deficiency and you’ll find a lot of vegans and vegetarians that crave salty foods and one big reason for that is their vitamin B12 deficient. So adding those into the diet can be helpful as well like a vitamin B complex. That’s to deal with salt usually it’s electrolytes, vitamin B and it’s kinda fluctuations in stress hormones. Craving fats, like fried foods, oily foods, poutine, that can be essential fatty acids deficiency. So we talked about omega 3 fatty acids: fish, fish oil and somebody’s healthier seeds and nuts, things of that nature, simple essential fatty acids deficiencies can easily cause you to crave fried foods and oily foods. So, you’d want to include more foods that are high in healthier fats, raw yogurts and dairy and milk derivatives preferably organic sources and eggs and healthy seeds and nuts, fish and fish oil and grass-feed beef and yatayatayaya you know, all these healthy fats.
Same kinda goes for cheese, it falls into that essential fatty acid deficiency category and then if you’re craving dirt, you’re probably pregnant (that’s the big one) that whole pike issue, clay, dirt, chalk. Actually, interestingly ice kinda falls in that category too. It’s 2 things, it’s usually either pregnancy or low iron when you’re craving stuff like ice, clay and dirt and chalk. So, that’s something to think about as well. The question is, it’s like do you just start to eat clay and dirt and chalk and ice and see if your deficiency goes away, you know, test it. There is a test that you can do and it’s spendy, we’ll link to it in the show notes even though I do realized that it’s expensive it’s like a $900 test but it’s from Metametrix and it’s called the Metametrix Ion Profile. It’s the same profile that I like to recommend to folks who want to test truly with their antioxidant levels are at vs. this cheesy useless beta carotene skin measurement that they do at health expo sometimes. It’s an ion profile and it test your amino acid, your fatty acid, your organic acids, everything, your vitamins A E B, co-enzyme Q10, folic acid, pretty much anything that you need to look at to see whether you’re deficient in something. And it’s a really comprehensive test, again it’s expensive but doing one off might be worth it especially if you’re somebody, if you’re happen to do like a flexible savings account or health savings account you can kinda use that to pay for something like this. I’ll put a link to Directlabs which will…. normally this test to go to your physician can be close to a 2000, you can at least closer to a 900 going this way but those are some of the things to think about when it comes to food cravings, what your food cravings really mean and then I’m gonna link to a bunch of other stuff ‘cause we’ve got videos and other podcasts we’ve done with folks like Nora Gedgaudas about food cravings. We can put it all out in the show notes.
[0:45:00.2]
Brock: I wonder, are you actually having cravings or you just plain hungry? Like maybe you’re just not eating enough.
Ben: Yeah. I would have post about this at bengreenfieldfitness called “Is it Bad to be Hungry?” and on that post I talked about when hunger is good and when hunger is bad. You should go read it, I’ll pull it up and link to it in the show notes so you can go read that and find out when hunger is good and when hunger is bad.
Steven: Hello Ben and Brock, my name is Steven. I love the show. I’ve got a question about collagen supplement for joints and ligaments and I’m just wondering if type 2 collagen is any good, what the studies are, if it can be absorbed, if it’s helpful how regularly you need to take it. I’m 49 and I like working out and I’m hoping that this will help with overall tendon and ligament strength and that it’s a good thing to do. Interested in your response, thanks.
Brock: I had no idea there was more than one type of collagen.
Ben: This is a timely question ‘cause I actually had chicken bones for lunch.
Brock: Just had chicken bone?
Ben: Just mix bone broth and it makes like the chicken bones all soft and you have all this cartilage and stuff, you can literally just eat it. It’s like eating gelatin powder that you can get. We’ve talked about like the Organic Great Lakes gelatin collagen that you can buy, it’s like that, you just chew enough cartilage and I like it like I put olive oil and salt and stuff in there and you eat it up with a little bit of regular chicken meat and some carrots and celery. It’s good!
Brock: Do you actually just break the bones open and suck the marrow out?
Ben: Yeah, most of the marrow has already leached into the bone broth that you strained the stuff out off but you’re still getting a lot of the collagen, a lot of the minerals out of the bone. I enjoy it.
Brock: What type is that? Is that type 2?
Ben: Some of it is type 2 collagen because that’s the basis for your hyaline cartilage which is the cartilage that gets really soft and edible when you’re chewing on chicken bone. So, type 2 collagen is basically a little bit of articular cartilage, it’s a little bit of hyaline cartilage and it makes up the proteins that are in that cartilage and also forms what are called fibroids which are these fibrolary fiber based network of collagen that allows your tissue to have these ten style strength including your skin for example, someone who’s got a collagen deficiency a lot of times have wrinkles and just bad looking skin as well.
Brock: And dry patches…
Ben: Dry patches, that’s right. There have been studies that have looked at the effects of oral administration of type 2 collagen derivatives on stuff like arthritis and they’ve found that it does have efficacy in terms of helping rebuild some cartilage, helping with pain relief and helping with bone density in those cases. Now, there not been to my knowledge any studies directly done on folks like athletes who are rehabbing from an injury or even just athletes in general who are trying to keep their joints from breaking down but I know from personal n equals 1 experiments that the more I use stuff like bone broth, like the Mount Capra Capraflex which is the supplement that I used that’s ground up type 2 chicken collagen like that Great Lakes Gelatin, we keep a couple of canisters of that in the pantry and I dumped that in the smoothies. The more I do that stuff the better my joints feel, the more chicken bones for lunch. It really does like from my perspective just as an exercising athlete who beats up my body, I feel much much better from a joint standpoint when I use this collagen.
So, I used the Capraflex (that’s glucose, amino choidroitin from type 2 chicken collagen) it also got like cherry juice and ginger, turmeric, and pyrolytic enzymes just all sorts of magical stuff in it. I am a fan of type 2 collagen, I personally use it, you gotta be careful with some of the powders and the blends out there because they do add artificial sweeteners and not all type 2 collagens are created equal. If you get like a good organic base healthy type 2 collagen sources like basically our sources are, we make the bone broth out of organic pasteurize chickens, we get the organic Great Lakes gelatin off Amazon and then we get the Capraflex from Pacific Elite Fitness and those are the main sources of collagen in our diet. My wife takes Capraflex too, we swear by that stuff (we’re joint).
Tom: Hi Ben and Brock, my name is Tom! Every Memorial Day weekend I do a camping trip with neighbors, we camp right by a river and there’s a lot of pollen and mold out where we camp and it just kills my allergies. My nose gets all congested and my eyes swell out and it’s just a terrible situation. I tried over the counter allergy products but combined with a few beverages of different variety that really puts me down for the count. So I’m wondering if there’s anything I can do that you would recommend that would allow me to address my allergies without actually being affected so I can actually appreciate it. Thanks so much.
[0:50:25.0]
Ben: Poor Tom. Poor, poor Tom.
Brock: Yeah, poor guy gets to go camping on Memorial Day weekend.
Ben: Just quit camping, just quit celebrating Memorial Day. I mean, seriously stay home.
Brock: Yeah, I don’t know if he’s complaining about, he’s mixing beer with some good anti-histamine. That’s a party right there. And once I lost like 4 hours of my life, had tattoo and was married to a monkey. That’s awesome!
Ben: And you lost all your hair. Diphenhydramine and Benadryl and all these popular anti-histamine over the counters, they do a number on you from a fatigue standpoint and you get pretty drowsy and they also tend to inhibit what’s called GI motility so they constipate you a little bit as well. They’re gonna make you drowsy and some people use them for sleep supplements and they also work for antihistamine effect, but I think there’s better natural ways to go.
The first thing I should mention is that we did a podcast with Dr. David Minkoff, one of my favorite wellness docs on kids and exercise, induced asthma, and allergies, and one of the main things we really geeked out on that podcast was how most of these stuff is related to an over-active autoimmune system and your basis is getting tested for food allergies, getting tested for food intolerances or just working common autoimmune triggers that include gluten and dairy and soy out of your diet. So, that would be the number one thing and you can go back and listen to that podcast and I’ll link to it in the show notes. But there are other things that you can do from kind of an antihistamine perspective to make breathing easier. One thing that can work really well interestingly is just adding some vitamin C into your diet. And about 1-2 grams or so or just a basic vitamin C and that access a natural antihistamine. That’s one really good way that you can get that in your diet or that you can fight off the antihistamines. I mean you know, what I’m saying, it isn’t the antihistamines, you know what I’m saying.
Brock: Yeah, he just dose with that leading up to the camping trip and while you’re on the camping trip, like for all time.
Ben: Yup, exactly. Magnesium, magnesium helps with nasal allergies, help with breathing problems. It’s got a little bit of a dilatory effect on your bronchial tubes on your soft tissue and in addition to making sure you’ll include magnesium rich foods like green leafy vegetables and to limited extent soak and sprouted seeds and nuts and stuff like that. Just using like a natural calm magnesium on a daily basis and you don’t have to take it at night. It’s like can make you fall asleep and go head down on the breakfast table if you take it in the morning but doing a little bit of magnesium can help with allergies and breathing problems as well. So, you’re looking about 1-2 grams of vitamin C about 400-600 ml of magnesium just stop when you get diarrhea, basically because that’s not the fun way to celebrate Memorial Day. Few other things would be to have a cold pack around. In many cases if stuff just gets out of control, putting a cold pack over your eyes or on your face helps to reduce a lot of inflammation that increase bloodflow to your nasal passages and your face especially if you’re just like somewhere where you have no choice but to be there, it’s a social obligation or something like that. If you’re able to have a cold pack around like you can up a little bit too and you can always just put some ice into a napkin if you have to and dubbing that in and around your face can help out a little bit.
The other thing on a similar level is photo sensitivity. Sensitivity to light is gonna go up when you’ve got a lot of rhinitis and inflammation on your nasal passages or hay fever going on, wearing sunglasses can help to reduce your sensitivity to light and help your eyes from getting that excessive watering and tear formation, that’s another thing that you can do in addition to putting a cold pack on your face is wearing sunglasses. As you’re walking around with your sunglasses on and your cold pack, you know, ace bandage around your face, a few other things that you may wanna consider, one is neti pot use. Have you use one of these neti pots, Brock?
Brock: I sure have.
Ben: A little Aladdin’s lamp and it’s an Indian remedy which has been used for thousands of years in India, and to flush the sinuses and kinda keep them clear and they’re inexpensive and they’re easy to use, and you just mix some electrolytes like a non-iodized table salt in this water, like lukewarm water and you pour into the pot and you flush out your nasal passages by leaning over a sink with your head kinda turn to one side and it feels fine the first couple of times you do it. Pour into the nostril and kinda rinse in your nasal passages out and during allergy season that can really help using a neti pot. That’s another thing to look in to.
[0:55:17.7]
Brock: Okay, so this next question is actually a written in question. So I’m going to have to use my voice.
Ben: It’s been awhile, we should put you through some vocal exercises ‘cause you don’t get to read that many questions on the show. And fire away…
Brock: I recently started brewing beer at home and wanted to know if there any health benefits to non-pasteurized brew. On the same note I lift weights regularly and have heard alcohol is detrimental to muscle hypertrophy. I don’t drink everyday and when I do it’s usually only one or two beers.
Ben: Well, first of, all the whole unpasteurized organic beer thing, it does have a little bit of truth to it because when you filter the yeast out from beer and that’s something that happens when beer is pasteurized, you’re getting rid of brewer’s yeast and a lot of nutrients and minerals like chromium and a lot of the B vitamins and some of the healthy things you’re gonna find in yeast. There are some people like Dave Asprey (the bulletproof exec guy) and he talked about this at the superhuman event how a lot of these foods like brewer’s yeast and yeast based compounds have a lot of mold in them. Anyways, and so by avoiding those you’re actually getting more benefit than harm from what you’re missing.
But you know, I haven’t seen a ton of evidence that necessary says that you completely eliminate yeasty foods or fermented foods and when you’re looking at a beer that is unpasteurized you kinda look at something like unpasteurized cow’s milk, and the reason it’s pasteurized ‘cause the FDA regulates cow’s milk and it says that animals that are producing the milk are pump with chemicals and growth hormones which they are and that makes the milk that they produced unsafe to drink and unsafe to consume. So they boil the milk and they pasteurize it and they also kill all the vitamins and minerals that are in milk. That’s one of the reasons that’s pasteurize milk is just not great for you from a nutrient standpoint regardless of the taste perspective. And when you look at pasteurized beer it in a similar way loses a lot of those health benefits because a lot of these studies that have been done on beer that have found that beer reduces your chance of blood clot or increases your HGL cholesterol or provide you with some of these B vitamins and some of these minerals. Most of those were done with unpasteurized real beer and not with the pasteurized crap that you buy at the grocery store.
Brock: Not Bud…
Ben: Exactly. There are a lot of decent brands out there that you can buy at the grocery store without making your own beer that actually do unpasteurized beer or beer that hasn’t been filtered in a way that removes that yeast. I know Sierra Nevada around here is one of the more popular ones, it’s not an organic beer but it is unpasteurized and unfiltered. There are some others: Dog Fish Head which I think might be at Portland (I don’t remember) they do one… if you’re to go and use Dr. Google and look for unpasteurized and unfiltered beers, you’ll gonna find a bunch of brands and a lot of companies, like grocery stores, like Whole Foods and stuff will carry this unpasteurized and unfiltered beers. It’s not like cow’s milk to where it’s this black market that you got and get up at midnight and sneak in your Batman gear to local farm to find. You can find this stuff at the grocery store and the unpasteurized is healthier.
As far as the exercise effects, first of all this reminds me of a study that we talked about on the podcast way back in the day. The one they did on marathon runners, remember this one? They gave the marathon runners beer but it was non-alcoholic beer and they found that they were three times less susceptible to infection and inflammation after the marathon and the risk of developing a cold, was cut by one third because of the high concentration of polyphenols and vitamins and minerals and that non-alcoholic beer. So as one study that they did and that there was another study where they actually looked at the hydration effect of regular beer and they found that beer actually hydrated better than Gatorade and one of the reasons was because the carbonation in the beer helps to quench the thirst and the carbohydrate content of the beers are now getting better absorbed than what was in the Gatorade, but ultimately while they were testing the subjects in this post-exercise beverage where half the people got beer and the other people got some kind of a sports drink, they found that the people who got the beer tended to recover a little better.
[1:00:16.5]
And I’m trying to remember, trying to remember if I used this portion, if they used water. It may have been water that they used. Either way though, they found that beer could rehydrate you. Well, that was the take-away. So it’s interesting that beer has this hydrating effect. Now, of course, there is, first of all, the gluten and celiac issue with beer that is derived from wheat and most of the beer that is not derived from wheat like, you know, omission beer or any of these gluten-free beers have the celiac formulant, they taste like crap. But for anyone who’s gluten sensitive or who’s trying to live a gluten-free diet, you know, beer would not be a good choice, better something like wine or something in that nature. Now as far as alcohol in general, there are a few things that I wanna make people aware of. First of all, alcohol a lot of times is blamed for making people fat. But I found that in most cases it’s what you eat along with the alcohol that tends to be more of the issue. You know, those salty chips at the Mexican restaurant versus the tequila and that’s ‘cause alcohol has a really high thermic effect and about 20% of what you drink from alcohol is actually burnt in the processing of the alcohol. So that’s one thing that’s interesting is even though alcohol is labelled as seven calories a gram, it’s really closer to about five and a half calories a gram because it does have a high, high net effect of metabolizing it. So that’s one thing to think about when it comes to alcohol is if you’re gonna have a glass of wine at dinner, it’s not gonna make you fat, you just need to make sure that you adjust for your food intake with dinner, in both that the alcohol has calories but it’s not as big of a villain in fat gain as is I think it’s made out to be. Moderate alcohol consumption has been shown to improve your insulin sensitivity, to lower your triglyceride, to improve your blood sugar control, and that is with things like wine, red wine specifically, where most of these types have been done in terms of insulin sensitizing effects. But that’s one of the things I’ve been thinking about.
Brock: The keyword being moderate in that case though.
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: And moderate being one glass of alcoholic beverage for a woman and two for a man, right?
Ben: Exactly. Exactly. And you’ve probably heard that…
Brock: And you can’t stock file though.
Ben: Yeah. Stocks – as fun as stock filing is, you’d probably get alcohol…
Brock: Drinking five days, I get 10 drinks!
Ben: Lowers testosterone. Right, that’s not the thing. I’ve mentioned that. But you’ve had to consume a lot of alcohol to get that lowering of testosterone. So in the studies that have shown testosterone to be lowered, they’re looking at about 30-40 grams of alcohol per day for a three week period of time. So that’s the equivalent of three drinks a day for three weeks to lower testosterone significantly. And that’s some serious drinking.
Brock: That’s some college drinking.
Ben: Exactly. And some serious bingeing similarly that it takes to do it in a 24-hour time span. So again, if you’re drinking heavily you don’t have to, or if you’re not drinking heavily, you don’t have to worry (I choose my words carefully) what you’re gonna drink. You’ve got to be, you got to not be quite as worried about this hormone testosterone type of effect. So that’s another thing that I think kind of alcohol gets vilified for that’s not as big of an issue. So ultimately that kind of a take-away here is that you can get a long-term effect on insulin sensitivity when you’re doing something like having a glass of wine with dinner. Alcohol does not have as many calories in it as we’ve been led to believe and if you’re careful to adjust for the amount of calories in the actual food that you eat, that you eat along with the alcohol, you should be just fine. Unless you’re bingeing or drinking a lot of alcohol, it’s not gonna be that bad for your testosterone and your hormone levels.
And then finally, as far as it comes to his question about hypertrophy, and what we refer to in exercise science as muscle protein synthesis. There’s actually no research that shows that exercise, you know, accelerates or alcohol accelerates exercise-induced muscle damage or affects muscle strength. And they’ve tried to do a couple of studies on it and have found nothing except that exhaustive endurance training like running for hours followed by post-workout alcohol intake in about a hundred and twenty gram range, which is a lot of alcohol, significantly suppresses some of the hormones responsible for repair and recovery. So all the people hanging out in the bar after an Ironman triathlon probably have a little bit to worry about but they also probably don’t care at that point so…
Brock: Yeah, at that point.
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: It’s the ones who finish the extra-long runs on the weekend then they go straight to the bar are probably undoing a little bit of the work that they did for themselves…
[1:05:10.3]
Ben: Exactly.
Brock: But it doesn’t sound as that awful.
Ben: Exactly. So that’s the skinny with alcohol. I wouldn’t worry about it, in moderation. You know, I personally have a glass of wine with dinner just about every night now and I, you know, occasionally get out and party but I realized that no, it doesn’t do the greatest things for the next day’s workout so there you go.
Brock: I wanna clarify just or get you to clarify one thing and what you mentioned with the beer, the gluten, that it contains gluten. Most beers, that there are wheat beers of course that are made from wheat but the majority of beers and ales and lagers and stuff are made from barley and hops which don’t contain gluten. So where’s the gluten coming from?
Ben: Actually that’s a myth. Barley and Hops do contain proteins that are of a very very similar structure to gluten. The protein in barley, it’s called hordein (h-o-r-d-e-i-n) and the gluten is called gliadin and in rye there’s called a gluten that’s called secalin (s-e-c-a-l-i-n). And both of these proteins, and people who are gluten-sensitive who have issues with gluten, who have issues with celiac, for those folks, these beers that are made of barley and that type of thing, there’s still an issue. So if you’re going gluten free, you basically just can’t drink beer unless it literally is labelled like a full-on gluten-free beer. But…
Brock: You’re right about those, those are awful. They’re not beer, that is some sort of weird beverage.
Ben: So that’s the deal with beer and like for me, personally, beer messes me up. It flips my stomach, I feel horrible after I drink a beer. And I do fine with alcohol, like wine and vodka and stuff like that but beer is a big no-no for me personally, it just messes me up.
Brock: I think we had a conversation at a party in Thailand where I was standing outside the tents and you were asking why, and I said that because I was farting my way into the moon and you looked at the beer I was holding and held up the vodka that you were holding and said, “that’s why I drink vodka.”
Ben: That’s probably a good one to end the podcast on.
Brock: I think so.
Ben: There we go.
Brock: So if you wanna hear more about me farting my way to the moon, go do benfieldfitness.com/239 and you can get a link to everything.
Ben: Although the free box of Lifeshotz, we’ve got a…
Brock: Oh yeah, we’ve got a very important thing to cover.
Ben: Okay, so. We’re going to start giving stuff away if you leave a review on iTunes and this box of Lifeshotz value at 35 bucks. This is the potent antioxidant packet that I take every single day to mitigate the effects of swimming in chlorine and living in a polluted city and stuff like that. Lifeshotz, and I’m gonna give a box of it. Let’s take in the mail. To Amy E. Nauss. And Amy says this, “love at first listen,” and she gives us five stars and she says, this is so heart-warming, “I listen to Ben and Brock on my way to work and it feels like Christmas morning every time I find out a new episode is posted. Ben reveals most interesting useful information you would have believe existed. Thank you for getting me excited about my otherwise ho-hum commute.”
Brock: Aww.
Ben: Ah, yeah.
Brock: Bummer.
Ben: I like to think that…
Brock: Glad that we could help.
Ben: Amy would probably be depressed and living in a dumpster if it weren’t for this podcast.
Brock: Yeah.
Ben: Alright. So Amy if you heard us read your review, then let us know. Write in to [email protected] and we are gonna get your free box of Lifeshotz, up to you. And finally we have a… speaking of spreading the love, we have a new URL that people can go to and this is a huge way to help the show out. Go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/love and when you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/love, what happens is there’s a handy-dandy little pre-written tweet there, or Facebook post or Google plus post where you can go share your love. So there you go.
Brock: That’d be awesome. Please do that. It will be fun.
Apr 30, 2013 Podcast: Is too much nut butter bad for you, why you wake up during the night, how to get rid of food cravings, do collagen supplements work, natural remedies for seasonal allergies, and are there exercise benefits to alcohol?
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News Flashes:
To get these and a few other illuminating news flashes each and every week, follow Ben on Twitter.com/BenGreenfield, Facebook.com/BGFitness and Google+.
- *PARADIGM BUSTER*: Less GI distress in ultra runners with higher fat intake during race.
- Yes, your body can make storage glycogen out of fatty acids.
- Yet another reason to eat fermented foods – their potent fat burning effect.
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Special Announcements:
If you’re looking for a topic we covered in the past – we have released the Ben Greenfield Fitness Top Hits, Vol. 1.
Including:
1. The Benefits of Fish vs. Fish Oil
2. The Best Ways to Stop Hair Loss
3. Increase Your Hematocrit & Oxygen Levels
4. Strengthen Your Immune System & Shorten the Duration of a Cold
5. Top 10 Ways to Boost Drive
6. Get Rid of Migraines Naturally
7. Become a Curvaceous, Lean, Ripped Female Athlete Without Destroying Your Health
8. Stop Side Stitches as Fast as Possible
9. Is It Possible for a Vegan to Be a Healthy Endurance Athlete
10. How Much Water Do You Really Need to Drink Each Day
2013 Thailand Triathlon Adventure with Ben Greenfield – details at pacificfit.net.
Essentials of Triathlon Workshop with Ben Greenfield – Saturday, May 18, 2013 in Fairfield, Connecticut. In this private clinic you’ll discover everything you need to know about how to maximize your triathlon success, including Ben’s top secrets, tips and tricks to save time, get the most bang-for-your-training buck, and ensure your body, health and hormones are optimized for endurance. Location: Fairfield, Connecticut.
– Hour 1: Essentials of Triathlon Fueling + Nutrition Q&A
– Hour 2: Essentials of Triathlon Training + Workout Q&A
Registration: May 1-17: $50, At-Door Registration: $60. Reserve your spot now. Space is limited!
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Listener Q&A:
As compiled, edited and sometimes read by Brock, the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast “sidekick”.
Nutbutter says @ 00:19:28
She is a 20-something year old vegan distance runner who is wondering what role you think nut butters play in the diet of a vegan athlete. Lately she has been over-eating the Whole Foods brand cashew butter (that contains safflower oil). Do you think nut butter is necessary for a vegan athlete’s nutrition? How healthy do you consider them to be?
~ In my response I mention raw, organic nut butter.
Overactive Bladder says @ 00:27:31
She will brush her teeth, go pee and head to bed but after about 15 minutes she has to get up and pee again. Then she will wake up again in 3-4 hours and have to pee again. She had a cross-country running coach that told her “if you’re not waking up in the night needing to go to the bathroom, you’re not hydrated enough” and she things maybe that stuck with her. She drinks a lot of water, spaced out during the day, not specifically before bed and never has this type of urgency during the day.
~ In my response I mention these sleep resources: Sleep Pack, Sleep Add-Ons, Sleep Gear.
Jeremy says @ 00:35:52
When he eats, he tries to get in a good amount of fats, protein and carbs – for good nutrition – but as soon as he finishes eating, and onward between meals, he is always craving all types of food. Sugary or salty. And he usually gives in to the cravings. He takes Chromium but that only helps with the sugar cravings.
~ In my response I mention Metametrix ION profile for micronutrient testing, Is being hungry bad, and also the follow helpful carb craving resources:
-VIDEO: 5 Powerful Calorie Control Tricks To Help You Eat Less Food.
-VIDEO: 5 Ways To Suppress Your Appetite Without Taking Any Special Pills or Capsules.
-PODCAST: How To Stop Carbohydrate Cravings In Their Tracks.
-PODCAST: Inner Circle Free Episode: How To Stop Sugar & Carbohydrate Cravings In Their Tracks.
-ARTICLE: A Simple Six-Step System for Eliminating Food Cravings.
-ARTICLE: How To Fight Candy Cravings.
Steven asks @ 00:45:28
He would like to know more about collagen supplements for joints and ligaments – specifically Type 2 Collagen. What do the studies say about it being absorbed? Is it helpful? How regularly do you need to take it? He is 49 and he likes working out. He is hoping this will help with overall tendon and ligament strength.
~ In my response I mention Capraflex, also bioactive collagen peptides, and great lakes gelatin.
Tom says @ 00:49:33
Every memorial day weekend he does a camping trip near a river and the pollen and mold kills his allergies. His nose gets congested and his eyes water. He has tried over the counter remedies but those don’t mix well with adult beverages (put him down for the count). What would you recommend he do.
~ I recommend magnesium, vitamin C, and this podcast with Dr. David Minkoff on kids, asthma and allergies.
Brandon asks @ 00:55:18
I recently started brewing beer at home, and wanted to know if there are any health benefits to non pasteurized brew. On the same note, I lift weights regularly and have heard alcohol is detrimental to muscle hypertrophy. I don’t drink every day and when I do it’s usually only one or two beers.
~ In my response I mention the study Nonalcoholic Beer Aids Marathon Recovery
And don’t forget to go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/love !
”
Brock: Not bud…”
I disagree. Read http://drhyman.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/EFGT-Manual-PDF.pdf
Sincerely, Lucie
nice conversation
Hi Ben,
Have been looking for recommended dosage of chromium for blood sugar stability. Have been recently put on 250mcg per day to help control blood sugar while we sort out some gut/malabsorption issues. Just wondering if you have an idea of a safe dosage of chromium and if long term use is recommended? Or if there is a more effective supplement?