January 8, 2014
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Introduction: In today’s episode of the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast: How Root Canals Can Destroy Your Health, Natural Remedies for Stomach Ulcers, The Best Kind Of Garlic To Use, How to Get Rid Of Car Sickness, How Long Should You Rest After Interval Training, What Supplements To Use Before Workouts, and How To Train For An Ultramarathon?
Brock: Some I’m kinda in a bit of a grizzly bear kinda mood today.
Ben: Grizzy bear kinda mood?
Brock: Yeah kinda grumpy.
Ben: Eating berries and hibernating or?
Brock: Yeah I wish I was hibernating. I started the day off. I leapt into work for like 2 hours solid. Got doing amazing work, feeling really good about it and then the computer decided to just delete everything. So I lost my first 2 hours of the day.
Ben: But I least you leapt in work. I like to imagine you up there in Canada kinda jumping out of bed, clicking your heels together…
Brock: Yeah, I do that everyday.
Ben: You sleep in your shiny black boots that you could just leap into the air with and click your heels and off to work.
Brock: Shiny black boots and that’s all.
Ben: Whistling. And you have background noise like to do in that Family Guy episode where it’s kinda like you see, it’s the travel episode in Family Guy wherever he goes he got his travel background.
Brock: Don’t be depressed. Mine is sung by a choir of mountees.
Ben: So this morning just in case people care, I’m actually monitoring my stress during the entire podcast so if you hear me stop and I go into like deep breathing, box breathing stress control mode is because I freaked myself out. I’m using this new…
Brock: That’s it. I’m gonna try and freak you out the entire episode.
Ben: I’m actually interested to see how I respond. I’ve been tracking everything this morning from my cup of coffee to my cold shower to hanging out with my kids using this Vital Connect patch that you wear all day long and it feeds data from your heart into your iPhone and it tracks your heart rate variability during the day so it’s like waterproof, it’s exercise proof so right now…
Brock: Are you, are we allowed to talk about that? I thought it was a secret?
Ben: I have no clue. But I just got one in the mail in the morning…
Brock: Yeah, I tried it out a few weeks ago. It was really fun but since it’s in beta. That’s all we’ll say about it.
Ben: Well I can tell you right now, my heart rate is at 58 and my heart rate variability is on 83 right now so I’m mildly stressed out just talking to you. We should probably stop.
Brock: Alright. Talk to you later.
News Flashes:
Brock: bengreenfieldfitness.com/267 has all this stuff that we talk about as usual. The show notes are very detailed and especially the news flashes section.
Ben: The news flashes. And I’m always…
Brock: Ripe with links.
Ben: On twitter.com/bengreenfield. I’m telling you the latest and the greatest and here are a few things that came out this week. The first is for those of you out there doing these fasted exercise sessions.
Brock: I did one this morning.
Ben: Did you?
Brock: Yeah.
Ben: Was it the jumping out of bed and leaping?
Brock: And with the mountees chasing me?
Ben: And the computer? Holding your computer overhead and smashing it to the ground for people…
Brock: That’s… I will, once this podcast is done.
Ben: So in this study they gave folks an amino acid of carbohydrate mix while they were exercising specifically weight training and found that it did not alter fat utilization and it actually increased the energy expenditure or the metabolism after the workout. And that make it…
Brock: So it did not alter the fat utilization in that it didn’t enhance or decrease?
Ben: It didn’t make you burn any less fat when you did something like the old school body builder approach of walking around the gym with the milk pitcher full of energy drink and amino acids. But it actually increased metabolism. It kinda keeps the body in its anabolic state. The reason I mentioned this study which just came out is that it’s good information for people going out there and beating up their bodies with these long fasted workouts thinking it’s gonna put your body into fat burning mode the rest of the day. And the fact is, if you’re gonna go out and do something hard like a resistance training session, or a hard interval session, a lot of times it’s better to send your message, a message to your body that energy is available for that type of workout.
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And it’s why in most routines that I prescribe, any hard workouts are done in a fed or a snacked state and most then of like the easy, kinda hunter gatherer, trekking, easy cardio, aerobic, yoga, that type or workouts are okay in a fasted state but this research kinda backs up the fact that it is indeed not gonna really be bad for fat loss or for fat oxidation or for metabolism if you’re eating while you’re working out. In this case they were taking in about 5-10 grams or so of amino acids and I believe they were getting in close to about 200-250 calories or so of carbohydrates as well.
Brock: Holy smokes.
Ben: So I think you can…
Brock: That’s some serious carb.
Ben: I would have loved to have seen them done this, do this study and also include an amino acid group without the carbohydrates because that I think can allow you to keep your metabolism elevated, go really hard but experience less of a surge in blood glucose so you know, doing something like a 5-10 grams of an amino acid powder or capsule kinda mixed into your drink that you have at the gym or doing the hard interval session. I suspect that the need for carbohydrates especially like in a fat-adapted athlete is probably not quite as necessary but regardless, interesting study.
Brock: Yeah, very cool.
Ben: Another one, and this was something I tweeted out. I believe it was yesterday but it was another sleep hack stack. I think it was last week we talked about lucid dreaming and how you could initiate lucid dreaming by taking high dose melatonin like 15-20 milligrams of melatonin and mixing that with some neurotransmitter precursors specifically the recommendation last week was 300 milligrams of 5 HTP and 3,000 of tyrosine. So here’s one that’s not going to put you into that lucid dreaming state or even leave you that groggy in the morning but that really relaxes you for a nap or for kinda going to bed at night. If you happen to be the kind of person whose mind races to deal with like anxiety, thinking about the day and things like that before you go to bed, here’s 3 things you can mix together. You can just out this in a little glass of ice water or whatever. You can mix it up with some magnesium if you’re a pretty bad magnesium drinker. It is passion flower which we’ve talked about before and these are all just give them a little dropper extracts off Amazon or whatever and we’ll put links in the show notes.
Brock: Passion flower is the stuff that you were suggesting at one point to take if you wake up in the middle of the night, having trouble getting back to sleep.
Ben: Yeah exactly so it causes your brain to release gamma aminobutyric acid whereas if you just take a gamma amino aminobutyric acid supplement that’s actually not all that efficacious or if it is efficacious, that means it’s crossing the blood-brain barrier and you have a leaky blood-brain barrier. So GABA, I’m not a huge fan of, is pretty bad but passion flower I am. I mixed this with a natural relaxant of valerian root which will also get in extract form so you get a dropper full of passion flower, you get a dropper full of valerian root and then finally, you put in the Hawaiian’s version of marijuana, that’s that natural muscle relaxant, mood stabilizer kava kava which you can actually get. A lot of people don’t realize this, just like off of Amazon in this little dropper bottles and you mix kava kava, valerian root, passion flower, you do that about 15 minutes before you go to bed and you can put them straight into your mouth or you can just put them in a little bit of water and then you’ll be sleeping like a baby in sawing logs, forgetting all your worries.
Brock: Now this doesn’t have anything because this doesn’t have melatonin or any serotonin blockers or anything you know. This wouldn’t shut down anything like this would be safe to use for longer periods?
Ben: Yeah. These are all natural herbal relaxants so there’s no playing around with neurotransmitters, with hormones, anything like that. It’s just kinda really supernatural so kava kava, valerian root, passion flower. I’ll link to some of my favourite kinda 2 ounce portions off at Amazon which is enough to last you about 30-60 days depending on how often you are inducing that deep sleep so and then the final thing that I wanted to mention was a really cool video that I think folks will get a kick out of. The study itself was a little dumb so Brock have you seen the lizard that can run on water?
Brock: Yeah, I love that little guy.
Ben: Yeah, so on planet earth there are a few actual species that have legs that can also run on water like water strider insects, there’s some aquatic birds, and there’s some lizards, and they just came out with this study where they put these specially made fins on humans and had them run in like really on water.
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And the only caveat to this study was they actually put them in like a lower gravity state meaning they were slightly suspended from a harness and they’re trying to see like how heavy they could get humans before they started to sink while running with this especially made fins. The reason I tweeted it is the video itself is pretty amazing ‘cause this dude is just like running on water barely suspended, wearing these fins that look just like the feet of this ballast lizard that runs on water. For any of you runners out there, this is kind of a cool one to go check out so it’s got a bunch of geeky physics information during most of the study but if you scroll down to the bottom of the study that I’ll link to at bengreenfieldfitness.com/267, turns out you can actually run on water wearing these specially made fins.
Brock: That is super cool. I’ve always wanted to do that.
Ben: Yes. Yes.
Brock: Oddly enough.
Ben: That Jesus complex.
Brock: Why was Jesus running?
Ben: Walking.
Brock: What’s he so scared of?
Ben: I don’t think he wore fins though. So anyways though, before we lose all of our Biblical listeners, we have to move on.
Special Announcements:
Brock: I went to Tulum a few years ago and it’s a gorgeous gorgeous location, beautiful place and I hear you’re gonna be heading down there in March.
Ben: Tulum, Mexico and the reason I’m mentioning this is I would like to get as many Ben Greenfield Fitness folks down there as possible so it’s a quick trip down to Tulum, Mexico and this is gonna be me and Jessa, Mark Sisson, Robb Wolf, Cate Shanahan who’s the nutritionist for the LA Lakers who’s got the entire LA Lakers team on kinda like a paleo primal low carb high fat diet, Darryl Edwards the fitness explorer guy who has been on this podcast before, a bunch of kinda big wigs on like the whole paleo/primal/ancestral health community. We’re gonna be spending 6 days down there in Tulum, Mexico teaching fitness classes, doing lectures, exploring the Mayan ruins, doing like beach time, hanging out in the sun, having awesome luxurious healthy meals, healthy approved meals, and it’s just gonna be a chance for folks to come and hang out with a lot of us you probably listen to in podcast or you read in books you know like Mark Sisson and Robb Wolf and you know myself and just a chance to come kick it with us in Mexico so that’s coming up pretty soon. It’s March 1st through the 6th but if you want a quick getaway and you want really to be inspired for the rest of the year and to really ensure that your getaway is super healthy, we’ll put a link in the show notes to go over to PrimalCon Vacation Mexico 2014 and if you tell them that Ben Greenfield sends you or that you heard it on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, you’ll get all star treatment. I have spoken with the folks over at PrimalCon and they are very much looking forward to getting as many Ben Greenfield folks there as possible so if that describes you, head over to the show notes and check it out.
Brock: Sounds pretty cool. But you know what I really need? I need something that will undo all the badness I did to myself over the holidays.
Ben: You’re doing such a good job giving me like these segues to just launch straight into the next special announcement. You’d think we planned this out almost? January 12.
Brock: People know better than that.
Ben: Have I got something for you or what Brock? How to Detox your Body for the New Year. Jessa and I are gonna teach an hour long seminar this weekend. The weekend this podcast comes out. January 12th which is this Sunday night, you can grab a little glass of wine, some dark chocolate, your toxic beverage or snack of choice and head in to learn how to detox your body for the New Year. We’re gonna do that at 6:30 Pacific, 9:30 Eastern. It’s recorded for all of our Inner Circle members and it’s part of the Inner Circle but you can check it out now over in the show notes or at bengreenfieldfitness.com/innercircle so check that one out of you wanna detox your body for the new year and if you don’t wanna detox your body for the new year, you should come anyways because we might talk about entertaining things like colonics and enemas and way over right now, all of that fun stuff.
Ben: I just wanna ask, is it like one of these things like you have to go and spend 3 days like only drinking I don’t know, grape, fruit juice with chi and pepper in it?
Ben: No actually…
Brock: That kinda thing.
Ben: You don’t have to drink anything at all, it’s just basically coffee enemas. that’s, I just gave away the entire workshop. Everybody gets a tube shipped to them and we do week long coffee enemas.
[0:15:00.4]
Speaking of coffee enemas, my brand new book is shipping here in the next month and there is…
Brock: Leave the segues up to me man.
Ben: Nothing about the coffee enemas in the entire book but we are giving away over 5000 dollars in swag for pre orders on the book and you can order 1, you can order 5, you can order 10 and you just get a bunch of swag from a variety of different folks like sensorium is sending out some tikis and we’ve got a bunch of stuff from Mount Capra nutrition and we’ve got some exercise gear. I’m looking behind me in my office ‘cause it’s like all here just like piled in my office, ready to be shipped out. So you can visit beyondtrainingbook.com if you wanna get in on that. The official book is gonna arrive at your doorstep the first week of March a long with all of your swag if you are one of our lucky raffle winners so check that out and I think that about wraps up oh, stay tuned for the iTunes review at the end of this podcast because somebody’s getting one of the lucky, the brand new, well the packets aren’t lucky but the one who gets it is. Tech shirt, a beanie, and a super clean, toxin free Ben Greenfield Fitness water bottle to our top iTunes review for the week so stay tuned towards the end if you left a review and we’ll ship you out some gear. And if you wanna get gear for yourself, head over to bengreenfieldfitness.com/gear and see what surprises await you.
Listener Q&A:
Brock: Well it’s been a while since we answered any written questions at all.
Ben: Should we explain why we actually not playing listener questions?
Brock: Sure. We may as well. I own up to the fact that this was not a planned thing. This is just what happens when my life changes.
Ben: I’m supposed to be in New York right now and my flight was cancelled due to poor weather so we originally planned on me doing this podcast solo and just reading listener questions because I’m an idiot and I can’t figure out how to do all the special audio stuff that Brock does. Instead though, I’m at home in Spokane and snowed in so Brock would be reading this week’s listener questions rather than our usual practice of playing the listener audios so Brock will of course I’m sure put his own spin on each person’s accent and voice so that you can picture in your head. I guess out first question is from Steve so Brock can simulate Steve’s voice or he could just read in his usual sing-songy Brocky voice, I guess.
Brock: Is that… Am I really sing-songy?
Ben: Pretty sing-songy dude.
Brock: I had no idea.
Ben: You think the sing-songy Canadian?
Brock: Alright. Well okay, here we go Steve. Steve says what’s your take on root canals? I have seen and read a lot of info by Dr. Mercola saying how bad they are.
Ben: It was a really bad idea.
Brock: Yeah. You started it. Okay. What’s your take on root canals? I’ve seen a lot of info by Dr. Mercola saying how bad they are. What are my options? Zirconia implant? Not cubic zarconia that they make?
Ben: Not cubic zarconia.
Brock: Extraction, partial, like this. I really don’t wanna be toothless but I do wanna be healthy. Please help.
Ben: Steve. Toothless but healthy. Root canals are bad news. There is a really good book that you can read called Root Canal Cover-Up. I’ll link to it in the show notes but the idea behind root canals is that there is this guy that we’ve talked about before in the podcast that is named Dr. Weston A. Price and he did a lot of very interesting epidemiological research and travelling around the world, looking into the effects of root canals on things like neurological disease and auto-immune condition and found that root canals and specifically the tiny little canals that remain even after the root of the tooth has been filled, they end up being havens for some really nasty bacteria. So what happens is you get this necrotic dead tissue left in the tooth, no matter how thorough the actual root canal itself is, and that harves or harbors anaerobic bacteria and these multiply and they produce what are called endotoxins and endotoxins can reap some pretty nasty havoc. They actually produce this type of thing called a Hampton…
[0:20:01.3]
… and a hampton is this tiny little molecule that illicit an immune response meaning your body recognizes it as non-self and this happens when protein or a metal like mercury for example which you’re gonna find in a lot of these older fillings, what happens is the actual bacteria adheres to this large molecule and the body initiates this enormous immune response against that hampton and that can create some serious neurological issues so multiple sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s disease, a lot of other autoimmune diseases and neurological conditions have been linked to root canals and to mercury fillings because of that. And this book goes into it in pretty good detail but the main idea here is that there are so many of these tiny canals that are called dentin tubules that are left over after that tooth has been filled that harvest or harbor all these bacteria. They, bacteria basically get trapped inside the structure of your teeth, they wind up migrating for your body, they can infect organs, they can infect your glands, they can infect the issues, damage the heart, the kidneys, the joint, the eyes, the brain, and it’s pretty bad news bears. And this book Root Canal Cover-Up goes into it in pretty good detail. Now Steve mentioned zirconium and there’s certainly are metal implants that are less reactive than mercury, less likely to react with this bacteria that are certainly an option if you’re seeking out a root canal. There are also some other kind of options as far as like alternatives to root canals. One would be this new filler that they’re using for root canal procedures that tends to be more able to kinda get its way into a lot of these tiny tunnels where the bacteria tend to live so traditional root canals usually use a rubber sealer and that sealer is toxic, it can react with moisture from the canal, it can cause the seal to break at the bottom of the canal and that allows a lot of these bacterial infections to develop. Now some of the newer materials, that like a bio-compatible dentist, is gonna use, or what’s called a holistic dentist is a calcium hydroxide sealer and a calcium hydroxide sealer actually stimulates the formation of new bone and it does a little bit better job sealing off some of these accessory canals, some of these smaller tubules, where the bacteria tend to fill during a root canal. There’s a specific brand called Bee Sealer that you could talk to your dentist about and your dentist is likely not gonna have any clue about this unless they are holistic dentists or somebody who has accepted the fact that root canals could be dangerous and they did an interesting study recently in the American Society of Microbiology that found that this particular material does a really good job of destroying pathogenic bacteria so you could get a root canal and just use like an alternative filler, what’s called a bio-compatible filler. The other option is to remove the tooth and if you remove the tooth you can get what’s called a fixed bridge which combines the crown on the teeth to each side of the missing tooth with this false tooth that basically bridges the gap and even though it’s not your tooth in your mouth, this can get rid of some of the you know, aesthetic downsides of being toothless so that’s one alternative is to do a bridge and you can get a lot of holistic dentists doing a bridge. It’s the least expensive option if you do like a removable bridge. You can also get a fixed bridge. And then you can also do an implant. These zirconia implants they actually contain no metal but they do require a lot of bone removal and they require sometimes other surgeries if the actual root canal is close to the sinus cavity. It’s probably got the highest risk compared to a fixed bridge, a removable bridge, or a biocompatible root canal. So what I’m gonna do for Steve is I’m gonna put a link in the show notes to where you can go to find a biological dentist like I go to a guy here in Spokane, took me 5 minutes to find him, to research him. You know took a little bit longer than that. I believe I used Angie’s list when I first visited him and he ended up being a good guy. He’s where I go to for my teeth cleaning especially like filters in the office to get rid of toxins, uses like biocompatible materials and it’s called a biological dentist or holistic dentist. Now if you had mercury at any point in your mouth, I would highly recommend that you do a metal detox and the problem with metal detoxes, I talked about this before in the show is that if you’ve got a buildup of metals in your body, lead, arsenic, mercury, etc. And this can be from vaccinations, it can be from root canals, from dental work, etcetera, if you use the average kinda metal detox type of compound, they’re all made of what are called chelators and these chelators, they include things like EDETA and DMPS.
[0:25:15.6]
They bind to heavy metals but they bind to it via a relatively weak bond and so what happens is that they’ll bind to one area of your body and then they’ll drop it off to another area of your body and that can be again, bad news, if that other area of your body is an area where the metal is simply being passed via usually your stool, the removal of your bowel. Sometimes…
Brock: Yeah, it’s like through chelation takes like a complete bond to it and then eventually goes both things are released from your body.
Ben: Exactly.
Brock: You pee it out.
Ben: That’s true chelation but most metal chelators do not do that and the big issue here is if metals get deposited in your brain, or cross that blood-brain barrier, that’s a big issue and it can cause some serious neuronal damage. So the type of chelator you wanna look for is what’s called a peptide chelator and what these do is that the peptide surround the metal so it won’t get dropped off and cause trouble elsewhere in your body. The bond is really tight and allows the metal to be removed via your body via hair or stool and probably the best one I can recommend for you, I’ll put it in the show notes. There’s one called Metal-Free. It’s a spray. I do it once a year. I do 15-30 days of metal free metal chelation just because you know, you get exposed to metal I mean freakin like cars driving on roads breaking release a bunch of tiny little metals particles into the air and I mean just living by the side of a road or if you’re a runner who runs beside like a highway or a busy road…
Brock: I’m a bicycle commuter.
Ben: Yup. That automatically puts you into the category of somebody who needs to do chelation therapy so you don’t have to have a mercury filling in your mouth to kinda qualify for this type of thing. So that’s another thing to look into and then finally, you know I talked about Weston A. Price but one of the things that you need to realize is that Weston A. Price when he was figuring out kinda how to overcome a lot of these issues with root canals and not only the cavitations or the areas of unhealed bone left over but also the anaerobic bacteria formation and the toxins and the endotoxins produced by dying bacteria, a big part of what he did was nutritional therapy. In really making through the diet of the person who have had the root canal or have the dying tooth was changed up and by that I mean that a big part of Weston A. Price’s diet was of course eliminating processed sugars like especially foods that have white sugars, drinking lots of raw milk from pasteurized animals because of the natural anti-bacterial effect of that as well as raw butter, doing lots of high quality proteins like you know, sashimi and wild fish and beef and things of that nature and then avoiding flower products and grains temporarily as the tooth infection heals up. You could go google Weston A. Price diet and kinda get a pretty good look. There’s also a really good book out there called “Nourishing Traditions” by Sally Fallon and that entire cookbook is based off the Weston A. Price diet but ultimately, you know, those are some of the alternatives I guess one of their alternative I didn’t talk about as far as root canals go is they’ll use in some cases like a low electric voltage basically zapping and killing the bacteria in the toothache and then also some dentist will use a laser again to penetrate and kill the bacteria, that’s a little bit less common than doing like an alternative filler or doing a bridge so hopefully that gives you some option Steve and I would steer clear of root canals and if you need any convincing than that read the Root Canal Cover-up Book because it’s pretty shocking.
Brock: Shocking. I think it’s been awhile since we mentioned the word laser.
Ben: Lasers, we have to squeeze that in although I didn’t use my doctor evil voice unfortunately, I’ll save that for later.
Brock: Okay, alright I’m gonna channel Ana, what does Ana sound like?
Ben: Dude, just read the freaking question.
Brock: I have a question regarding stomach ulcer, I’ve got one and I was wondering if you could tell me what I should do to fix the problem?
Ben: That’s a pretty direct question.
Brock: Nice and straight forward. So much Ana.
Ben: Stomach ulcers are interesting, There’s a really… I don’t know if you’ve heard about this story Brock but there was a really interesting story behind stomach ulcers and also treatment. There was this guy named Dr. Barry Marshall back in the day and he had this theory that there’s actually a bacteria responsible for stomach ulcers and all of his medical colleagues branded him as crazy and so what he ended up eventually doing was just like swallowing a bunch of helicobacter pylori or H-pylori bacteria to prove his hypothesis that H-pylori was a major cause of ulcers.
[0:30:07.4]
And of course he immediately got ulcers and was in great deal of discomfort and the reason for that is that H-pylori, this bacteria produces chemicals that damage your stomach’s mucosal lining and allow these breaks and allowing to form and then these breaks become vulnerable to erosion by your stomach’s own acid and by your gastric juices and it is really is one of the leading causes of ulcers. A lot of people think that ulcers are from too much stomach acid. It’s not from too much stomach acid it’s from the mucosal lining of the stomach wearing away usually from something like H-pylori and then the stomach acid is able to eat it’s way in the places where it’s not supposed to be. Now you can get tested for H-pylori, there are breath test for H-pylori for example H-pylori has this enzyme called urease and that breaks down urea in the stomach to ammonia and carbon dioxide and so you can do a breath test and what it does is they actually give you a special urea solution that’s chemically labelled so it can be traced and so if the H-pylori in your stomach breaks down the labelled urea into ammonia and carbon dioxide, the carbon dioxide is also labelled so that you can detect that in your breath. So that’s one easy way to test for H-pylori. You can do a blood test as well, a lot of times your body will recognize H-pylori bacteria and produce anti-bodies against it and those anti-bodies are detectible in the blood. And probably for a little bit more invasive procedure, you can actually get a biopsy for h-pylori and that’s literally where they put a tube down into your mouth and into your stomach and remove a little piece of your stomach lining and then test that for h-pylori so….
Brock: Ouch!
Ben: Yeah! And you can also with some test like the GI effects panel, the stool test, that will sometimes detect h-pylori but it’s not quite as effective as doing like a breath test…..
Brock: And where is that one from?
Ben: You can just get that from like Direct Labs. Most of the meda metrics panels are the genova panels, they call now for testing your gastro- intestinal system. It’s basically the poop test they run on all my clients. That will sometimes detect h-pylori but it just kinda depends. Anyways though, as far as what to do if you have h-pylori, there are few different fixes for it so one is apple cider vinegar. Actually works pretty well with h-pylori so that would be doing just like 1-2 shots of apple cider vinegar in the morning, another couple of shots in the afternoon, another couple of shots before you go to bed at night. Another thing that you can do shots of to fight and prevent h-pylori is actually….
Brock: I love doing shots right before bed.
Ben: ….extra virgin olive oil and extra virgin olive oil has some really good anti-bacterial effects specifically against h-pylori. Now, I actually I’m part of this club called the Fresh Pressed Olive Oil Club. They send 3 bottles of olive oil to my house every quarter from like a different area in the world like Australia or Chile or this last one is from Italy.
Brock: You really know how to party, don’t you?
Ben: Well, that’s what I’m getting at. You can do olive oil tasting, it’s actually kinda interesting. It’s somewhere a wine and that you start to recognize the flavors and the aromas and whether an olive oil is herbaceous or sweet or smoky, etc. but you can also make drinks out of olive oil and what I’ll do is take a shot of olive oil and put that like in a martini shaker and then I’ll take a really nice vodka like a gregus and put 1-2 shots of that in there, squeeze a lemon, do a little bit of olive juice, so it’s kind of like a dirty martini with a splash of olive oil and then I’ll just strain that into a martini glass, sprinkle a little bit of sea salt on there, garnish with an olive and it’s olive oil vodka martini and it taste fantastic like the olive oil adds this splash of flavor that you don’t get in a regular martini and the mouth feel, like you’d think it be like oily but it’s actually got this really cool kinda mouth feel, it’s a very enjoyable drink. Anyone who hasn’t tried an olive oil martini before should try one.
Brock: That’s really, that sounds really weird but I’m intrigued.
Ben: It’s good but I digress. H-pylori, so olive oil and apple cider vinegar can work pretty well. Another thing that works well is a high dose vitamin C like you could go, there’s really good form of vitamin C. Vitamin C is fantastic for adrenal fatigue, it’s fantastic for immune function but it can also have some pretty good effects on this h-pylori and there’s a brand called Natural Vitality, it comes with a little scooper, 1 little scooper of that stuff is 4,000 mg of vitamin C but it’s this whole foods highly absorbable form of vitamin C unlike what you get in like an airborne you know, or one of these common drug store vitamin C like effervescent powder type of supplement and this stuff just pure really absorbable vitamin C.
[0:35:23.2]
It was recommended to me by Dr. David Minkoff, he’s the same guy who makes that metal free formula I was talking about earlier. So high dose vitamin C like around 5,000 mg or so on a day can also work for h-pylori. And then the other thing, and I had h-pylori once and this is what I used and it worked really well because I tested and then I re-tested at the end of 30 days it was gone and I used something called Mastic Gum. There’s a variety of studies you can find on PubMed about the anti-bacterial effect of mastic gum on h-pylori. You can get mastic gum off of like Amazon, it’s just a supplement. What you do is, you take it a couple of times a day it’s 1-2 capsules a couple of times once a day and that can knock h-pylori out of the park so that’s another solution that I’d recommend is to look into mastic gum that’s what I used. And then the other thing and we’ll talk about this later on I think in the podcast is garlic. We’ll geek out in garlic later on so that’s another suggestion that I would make if this is h-pylori related. The other thing that ulcers can be caused by stress in addition to h-pylori and sometimes it can be a 1-2 combo of both because in many cases stress makes us more susceptible to bacterial infection, parasite infection, things of that nature. I have a really good article on my top seven ways to reduce stress in a nutshell they’re journaling, breathing, meditation, yoga, what’s called coherence or heart rate variability training which is what I’m doing right now as we speak and then sleep. So you can go and read an article where I’m going to each of those really potent stress control strategies but reducing stress and getting adequate sleep that’s sounds kinda dumb but that can actually have a really good effect against kinda protecting you from ulcer formation the first place. So I would do that and speaking of stress, I’m gonna grab my little phone here and suit my stresses like Brock.
Brock: Alright. Okay. I’ll try….
Ben: Okay, I’ll see the breath pacers starting going off as I was pointing that question which means that question somehow stressed me out. Interesting. So my heart rate variability though is actually at 96 right now.
Brock: Wow!
Ben: It’s good.
Brock: I never hit, I rarely hit 90 even when I’m like completely relaxed, lying in bed, thinking glorious thoughts.
Ben: My heart rate is at 50, interesting. Cool! Alright, well let’s keep churning through these things.
Brock: Okay, Brian is next. Oh yeah, this is the girly question that you’re alluding to. Brian says, “My name is Brian”. Awesome. “I’m a firm believer in garlic raw and supplemental form. I’m wondering what is the best brand of garlic and what should I look for in the supplement?”
Ben: The best brand of garlic, before….
Brock: I think breathe would be a better….
Ben: That’s breathe, before I give you some garlic recommendations, the idea behind garlic is it’s got some really cool anti-bacterial activity and fresh naturally grown raw garlic is best honestly like if you’re gonna use anything it’s best to just keep fresh cloves on your counter to break them open, to use them in your cooking, to allow them to get heated up and exposed to air a little bit before some of the other things that you’re cooking with like onions or meat or other vegetables because the active component of garlic specifically what’s called allicin needs a little bit of time and a little bit of exposure to oxygen to become basically activated. Using fresh naturally grown raw garlic on your kitchen counter is good but let’s face it, a lot of times we can’t travel with that sometimes there are some breath issues or some social issues with constantly having a raw garlic seeping out of your pores. So the idea behind garlic supplement as an alternative to this is that even though supplements can have this same active anti-bacterial component, allicin in them it really depends on the growing conditions of the garlic, the type of fertilizer they used on the garlic, the processing method they use, the quality control during manufacturing. Garlic supplements, they’re usually made by slicing garlic and then drying it at a low temperature and the reason they dry it at a low temperature is so that the alynase in the garlic doesn’t get destroyed because alynase is the enzyme that causes garlic to be able to form Allicin, which is again that active component of garlic that we want in high amounts.
[0:40:03.7]
So once the garlic has been sliced and dried it’s then pulverized essentially into a powder and they form it into tablets and in order to meet the standards that are set by US Pharmacopeia which is the group that develops the quality standards for prescription, over the counter drugs, dietary supplements pretty much anything sold in the United States for this example. The powder has to contain at least 0.3% allium and allium is the precursor to allicin. Now manufacturers process their supplements differently, they label their supplements differently and so some tablets don’t contain any allicin but they just contain the allium which theoretically gets converted to allicin but if the supplement actually doesn’t have an allicin potential statement on it then you have no actual confirmation that it’s gonna get converted that the allium is gonna get converted to active allicin in the supplement. Now the other thing that happens is that that enzyme that’s responsible for converting allium into allicin, that’s get destroyed by stomach acid in many cases so what a good garlic supplement would do is they coat the supplement they do what’s called enteric coating to keep it from dissolving until it reaches your small intestine and some supplement will use a good enteric coating and some will not but they actually report on the bottle is the allicin release which is a measurement that shows how much the supplement actually produces once it gets into the digestive tract and very few manufacturers are actually list that measurements on their labels so what you have to look for when you’re shopping for garlic supplement if you’re gonna use garlic and again it has really good anti-bacterial effect, it’s great for blood pressure as well. You wanna look for what’s called a standardization statement, and when a product supplement in any category standardized that means is has a certain amount of specific ingredients so for example oil of oregano, is one of my favourite kind of natural immune boosters, anti-bacterial, anti-viral, if you order oil of oregano from pacificfit.net, you get emailed to you the laboratory certificate of analysis which is essentially the standardization statement for the oil of oregano stating that it has 72% plus of carvacrol content which is the active content that actually allows the oil of oregano to be efficacious. So when you’re looking at garlic usually you wanna look for something that contains at least 1.3% allium which is the precursor to allicin so that’s what you’re looking for the standardization statement in the garlic supplement. So now that you know that you’re looking for 1.3% allicin, you’re looking for stardardized garlic and preferably some kind of a tablet that allows it to kind of avoid the acidic environment of your stomach and windup in your digestive system. There are few brands specifically on Amazon that fall into this category. One would be called omami garlic, o-m-a-m-i that’s a standardized and deodorized garlic tablet that’s enteric coated, that would be one.
Brock: It’s deodorized.
Ben: Deodorized, which is a big plus. There’s another one….
Brock: It is! It sounds that it involved a lot of processing.
Ben: It may, I don’t know how much processing goes into the deodorization process for garlic but it’s gonna pay dividends if you windup going on a date or say you need to kiss up to somebody. Nature’s Way Garlicin is another good one and there’s one made by a company called Vita Logic. So omami, nature’s way or vita logic but ultimately your best bet is gonna be to just natural raw garlic on your kitchen counter and to use that frequently.
Brock: Very cool! And delicious food doesn’t love garlic. Ah okay, so Jacob is, no sorry Betsy is next and Betsy says, “Last two times we’ve attempted mountain trips our almost 3 year old gets really car sick. The drives only about an hour and 3 minutes and she’s puked both times, the route isn’t too swirly and we’ve tried the regular advice like roll down the window even though it’s really cold out and have a light snack before we go, and told her to look out the window and no dice. Still….
Ben: I think it’s the first time that I’ve heard a mountain road described as swirly.
Brock: Swirly.
Ben: Swirly, maybe use up the next time we’re driving in the car and tell my wife that it’s a very swirly road.
Brock: Sound dangerous.
Ben: It does sound dangerous, so car sickness or motion sickness. A lot of people don’t realize this but most common hypothesis for the cause of motion sickness is that your body has mounted this defense mechanism against neuro-toxins.
[0:45:08.2]
And so what I mean by that, is you’ve got this area in your brain that’s responsible for inducing vomiting when poisons are detected in your body and when you’re feeling motion but if you’re not seeing motion like if you’re, you know, worst case scenario like a boat that doesn’t have windows on it. Your inner ear transmits to your brain that it senses motion because you’ve got this little semi-circular canals in your inner ear that are full of fluid that detect motion but your eyes are telling your brain that everything is still and nothing is moving so you kinda create this discordant scenario where the brain comes to the conclusion that either the ears or the eyes are really messed up and that there’s possible poison ingestion or neuro toxicity at play and so the brain responds by inducing vomiting. So that’s the hypothesis for why motion sickness…
Brock: I guess that’s kinda smart.
Ben: Yeah, I guess it seems like a weird explanation you’d think that there’s a better explanation than that for motion sickness but that’s kinda prevailing hypothesis. Regardless with cars, there are some definite things that you can do in addition to simply trying to look out the window and allow your eyes to tell your brain that you’re actually moving. One thing that really worked well is ginger and I’m not sure if they’ve experimented with ginger before sometimes with the kid you gotta do like some kind of like a soft ginger candy. Kids may turn down actual boil ginger root even though you can make a nice ginger tea you can take ginger root and you can boil ginger root and you just boil it in water that makes ginger tea then you can put that like in a pitcher in the refrigerator and just have a nice iced ginger tea and if you wanted to sweeten that you can put like a little lemon or honey or stevia or something like that in there and it’s something that you can use kind of a go to beverage in the car. The reason ginger works is it’s what called antiemetic and so what that means is that it actually shuts down that nauseous response so they’ve done studies everything from sucking on crystallize ginger which are those little dried ginger pieces that you can get at the grocery store or sipping ginger tea and all of that can help to relieve nausea. There’s also been a myth busters actually we did an episode on this, looking into ginger as an effective treatment for motion sickness and it does indeed turn out to actually work. It calms what’s called the pyloric valve at the base of your stomach and when that valve relaxes you get a little of that urge to vomit. So, ginger is really good. Another thing you can do with ginger because I actually likes to mix ginger with dark chocolate as an anti-inflammatory snack because ginger is very anti-inflammatory and I’ll do that sometimes while travelling when I duck into the grocery store, what I’ll do is find a really nice dark chocolate bar like I look for 80% plus dark chocolate and then I’ll go to the bulk section of the grocery and find those dried like crystallized ginger pieces. Now they tend to be covered in sugar but you can buy the ginger, you know, take into the bathroom or out to a water bowl in a car or whatever and you wash the sugar off the outside so you get rid of all that nasty sweet sugar that’s gonna spike your blood glucose and you basically just windup with dried ginger pieces and you break up the dark chocolate and you mix it with the dried ginger and it’s really nice little snack. So anyways though, I’m not sure what the chocolate would do, 2,3 year old I’m not sure I would do that but the ginger would definitely something to look into. Peppermint gum for an adult would also work but obviously peppermint gum is not an option for a kid. If you do something with the kid you may want to consider peppermint oil, you can get peppermint essential oil if you shop in a place like Mountain Rose Herbs. That’s one of our favourite places for like organic essential oils, you can get peppermint oil and you just put a few of drops of that into a little glass of water to make a little peppermint water and again you can put stevia and a little bit of honey in that and make like a peppermint water and peppermint similar to ginger can also be a little bit like an antiemetic. So that’s something to look into. There are also a couple of other things that you may wanna consider one are these acupressure wrist bands. Now the idea behind acupressures, is can relieve stress, it can relieve nausea if you find that little, if you are listening, now Brock you can try this, if you hold out your index finger and your thumb and there’s like that middy portion of flesh between your index finger and your thumb, you can pinch that flesh with your other hand. It’s a little bit uncomfortable, that can actually a great way to settle the body down and to relieve stress is just pinching that area and that can also help out with nausea a little bit. There are also some acupressure places on your wrist and that’s where these bracelets come in handy, they’ve actually got these acupressure wrist bands.
[0:50:07.0]
I’m not sure that they would fit a 3 year old or not, but you can find them at your local pharmacy, I’ll put a link to acupressure wrist bands form Amazon in the show notes for this podcast and that’s another thing that you could look into is acupressure wrist bands.
And then finally there’s this device called the View Limiting device. It’s made by a company called Viban, this is again something that you can get off of Amazon but what is does is it’s an eyewear device and it’s designed to block motion outside the moving vehicle so if you’re trying to read in the car or looking at a computer, watch something, what it does is remove all that outside visual stimuli and sometimes it can work with something like motion sickness or car sickness especially if inner ear conflict is not a play and it’s just like the movement outside that’s stopping you. It almost looks like a horse blinder a little bit but it’s called a Viban View Limiting Device so you can check that out. I’ll put a link to it in the show notes for this podcast over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/267 but those are some of the things that I would look in to try on.
Brock: Very cool. I wanna try one of those view limiting devices just for the heck of it. I don’t get car sick but it might be kinda fun.
Ben: I would imagine that it would be highly illegal for the actual driver of the car to wear. So I’d be careful for that. Maybe you could tell the cop that pulls you over, I guess it’s a little mounty up there in Canada and he pulls you over, you can tell him that maybe tell him you’re a horse. It’s just your blinder. You wanna carrot?
Brock: Okay. Next question is from Jacob. He’s a triathlete and he says, “Should I do hard intervals in both bike and run workouts in the same day and then make the next day a recovery day? Or besides swimming, keep the intervals to either the bike or the run for that day and then do the intervals in another discipline the next day?” So just basically he just wants to know does he need to rest after interval training?
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: Whether he needs to go straight into the next one.
Ben: So with interval training, the important thing you need to realize is it’s very stressful to your nervous system and a lot of people don’t realize this but your nervous system can take anywhere from 4-6 times longer to recover than your muscles so even if you’re not sore, and say your calves aren’t sore anymore from hard intervals base running the day before, a couple of days before, your nervous system might still be recovering and the problem is that most overtraining or adrenal fatigue does not actually result from overtraining of the muscles or excessive breakdown of the muscles that results from over stimulation specifically, typically of the sympathetic nervous system. Kinda like your fight and flight base nervous system. That’s why you can become overtrain so easily…
Brock: That makes sense.
Ben: …. with interval training and with weight training so it’s really important that you figure out a way to be able to track the recovery of your central nervous system and when it’s recovered, whether it’s a swim interval, a bike interval, a run interval, your nervous system is your nervous system is your nervous system and your body doesn’t know if you’re running from a lion versus sprinting down a pool so it’s any interval training not necessarily you don't differentiate from sport to sport. But the idea is that you gotta figure out to test your central nervous system. So the best 2 ways to test your central nervous system, one would be a hand grip test and they’ve done some really good studies on this in sports, in professional sports and they found what’s called a dynamo meter or a hand grip test is a really great predictor of central nervous system recovery. You can get these easily off at Amazon or you know, a lot of other places are gonna have like hand grip dynanometers and what they do is they’ll give you like, they’ll tell you can produce whatever, 50 pounds of pressure, 43 pounds of pressure and if you’re seeing a fluctuation or a loss of about 5 pounds of pressure on a daily basis, that’s a pretty good sign that your central nervous system can still use some recovery. The only exception to that would be, if your muscles haven’t recovered yet and it was a really hard grip type of workout like dead lifts or pull ups or something along those lines, that’s a case where grip strength measurement might not be quite as accurate as doing my other favourite way of tracking your nervous system recovery and that is a heart rate variability which I am doing myself right now as we talk and for that you just use the SweetBeat heart rate variability monitor. This is one of the reasons I measure heart rate variability every single morning before I get out of bed for about 5 minutes to see where my nervous system is at, to see how recovered it is, how ready to train it is and yeah, just a simple 5 minute measurement and it will tell you whether or not your HRV is high and I consider an HRV score that’s ready for interval training or heavy weight training to be anything above 80.
[0:55:10.3]
That’s what you want to wanna look for to really show that your body is truly recovered and ready to do something hard and if you.. .
Brock: Isn’t that… That’s really dependent on your age.
Ben: A little bit dependent on your age and there’s no reason.. I’ve worked with people who are not hard charging athletes, triathletes, so just like business people who are working out 20, 30 minutes a day who are not beating themselves up, you know, excessively you know, kinda like the CEO type so that’s what we look for the type, regardless of age, just going above 80 and a lot of times in like a lot of charging athletes you know, it’s gonna consistently be lower and that’s a problem ‘cause you’re always fighting this uphill battle trying to avoid overtraining but in most people, if you can get 80 or above, that’s a really good score to shoot for in terms of your heart rate variability and the recovery of your central nervous system so ultimately you got a test and the speed of recovery of the nervous system is going to vary greatly from person to person and you know, that’s really making a good point Brock, your nervous system is gonna recover more slowly with age, it’s gonna recover more slowly depending on the diet that you’re eating, it’s gonna recover more slowly if you have omega-3 fatty acid deficiencies which are really important for milanation, it’s gonna recover more slowly if you tend to have high HSCRP or high levels of inflammation so there’s a lot of things that can affect it that you can take into consideration but I would start by measuring your central nervous system, that’s gonna tell you how recovered and ready you are to take on the next interval.
Brock: So I guess he should just in the meantime, he gets sort of the testing regime down, would you ever do intervals on the same day? Would you ever suggest doing bike and run intervals?
Ben: Yeah, you can definitely pile a bunch onto a day and then take a couple of rest days. And that’s a common strategy among some athletes who would do some really hard workout you know, there’s some people who would do you know, like 1 a day lifting program and just have that one day be the extremely hard day and be that all the other days be like recovery, repair, movement, mobility, things of that nature and then you get back in, you do a hard workout but you can only throw like a true hard day like that in just 1 or 2 days a week.
Brock: There you go. Okay. Alright then, let’s move on to Peggah’s question and Peggah says, “I don’t take any pre-workout supplements now and I was wondering if you had any recommendations. I workout usually after sitting at a desk for close to 10 hours and I feel like I would definitely benefit from having additional energy and would love to take something that would help me burn more fat and build more muscle. The caveat of being that I’m not training for a triathlon or doing crazy hard workouts.”
Ben: She kinda answered her won question. Sitting at a desk for close to 10 hours. The number 1 thing you could do for your energy levels would be not to sit so I mean, you can get a standing work station, you can get one of these like, the upright focal furniture that they make this kinda like mogo device that kinda puts you into this half-seated, half-standing position but sitting is a really good way to put your body into this crouch defensive turtle like hunched over positional all day long and it’s just a huge energy suck so first of all, you know, whether you install one of these reminder apps on your computer you know, like the stretch reminder app or you know, you use the technique of walking around for 20 minutes, standing around for 5. Whatever it takes to get out of that desk is gonna help tremendously and if your job keeps you chained to a desk for 10 hours in a row and you’re not allowed to stand, talk to your boss or switch jobs if this is something that’s really important to you. I think that the number of studies done on long periods of time sitting and increased risk of dying are valuminous enough to wear you know, you could easily bring that research to a boss and say hey look, you’re killing me here literally. You’re killing me. So as far as supplements go, you know, I’ll put a link in the show notes to a recent article that I wrote about timing your vitamins and timing your supplements and one of the things I went into in that article was what supplements I personally take like what I’ll do before a very hard workout and I talked about you know, things like X2 Performance and like this oxilo acetate from buffering lactic acid and some kinda more you know, athlete-y kind of supplements but for the average person who just want to kinda hit the gym after work and needs a little bit of extra energy, I do have a few things I would specifically recommend. Number 1 would be Chinese adaptogenic herbs which are gonna increase cortisol when cortisol is low, decrease it when it’s high, allow your body to have really stabilize energy levels but not put the same hit on your nervous system as like caffeine or a big cup of coffee in the afternoon or an energy drink in the afternoon would.
[1:00:11.0]
So doing like a packet of TianChi like 2 or 3 in the afternoon can really help with sagging energy levels and TianChi is the one that’s kinda handmade and harvested and grown in Portland, Oregon. It’s super duper high quality, dense supplements about 40 pounds worth of Chinese adaptogenic herbs in one tiny packet of this stuff so that’s one that…
Brock: It’s impossible to pick up and pour into your glass. It’s so heavy.
Ben: Phenomenal cosmic power. So TianChi would be one. Amino acids, which we talked about earlier in this podcast, those can be a really kick in the pants to get you jumpstarted in the workout especially if you’re doing weight training or interval training so there’s these capsules called Master Amino pattern capsules, you can pop like 5 maximum 10 of those you know, if you’re really a big person of you’re doing tough workout or something like that and those you can even combine with like Chinese adaptogeneic herbs like that’s a stack that you can use as a pre-workout stack that just gives you a lot of energy again without creating a lot of the health issues in something like a Red Bull or Monster Energy Drink or a big cup of coffee. And then the last thing that you may want to consider and this is again something that when you’re sitting, perspiring, maybe it’s a warm office and you’re sweating a little bit, that type of thing for long periods of time, I like trace liquid minerals. Your adrenal glands, some workout, you run out of vitamin c can also run out of minerals pretty easily especially when you’re stressed out or you’re exercising and so kind of a 1-2-3 combo of adaptogenic herbs, amino acids, and then minerals is something that can work really well. I have over at Pacific Elite Fitness, there’s something called a hormone pack, that’s really similar what’s the ingredients of the hormone pack are and that’s something that’s designed to stabilize hormonal imbalances via use of the herbs, the minerals, and it’s like 72 plus different kinds of minerals, not just like you know, sodium and magnesium and the amino acids for restoration of neurotransmitter production, it’s a really nice 1-2-3 combo so good for hormones and also good for kinda like the person who wants a middle of the day pick me up without a lot of the deleterious effects of an energy drink or you know, some of these fedora type supplements, that type of thing. So those are some of the things I would try out. Adaptogens, amino acids, and minerals would probably be my top 3.
Brock: Very cool. Sounds delicious and fun and helpful.
Ben: Great adjectives.
Brock: Okay, let’s move on to our last question from James and James says, “I’ve been doing triathlons for about 4 years now. I love the endurance side of things but in 2014 I’m planning on tackling a different beast. An Ironman in January and a 75k ultramarathon and then a 100k North Face ultramarathon in the mountains. I was wondering if you have any recommendations, yeah, yikes, any recommendations or suggestions for a training regime that would take him from Ironman to ultramarathonman.”
Ben: That’s a lot of stuff. That’s a lot of moving James.
Brock: It makes me think of Dr. Phil Mafetone once said that this kind of race season should be made illegal.
Ben: Yeah. You know I’m actually, I’m in the process of turning Dr. Mafetone’s entire big book of training and endurance into 3 different workshops that he’s gonna be teaching for our SuperHuman Coach Network during 2014 and that is one freakin’ big book and actually, that’s gonna be a good one for you to read would be his big book of endurance training. So he’s got some good tips in there. The reason that like Mafetone is actually good resource, I’m glad you brought this up Brock is that pace for an ultra like it’s not about speed at all when you compare even like a marathon to an ultra-marathon or like a multi-day stage event it’s just about brute endurance and it’s not about speed or temple work or lactic acid threshold work or sprints I mean when you’re covering distances of 30, 40, 50, a hundred miles, the most efficient way for your body to make it through is to slow down and so you actually have to kinda take your training from a different standpoint. You know, I have course in this big intensity over volume kind of guy but there’s definitely less of a need for short and fast track workouts and more of a need for just like heading out into the trails to accustom your mind and your body to that repetitive pounding that’s gonna occur for hour, after hour, after hour.
[1:05:00.7]
So going out like every couple of weeks or so and literally just like you know whether it’s a 7 hr hike with some short jogs and stuff thrown in or whether it’s a like kind of a long trail run I mean you need to train your body to slow down, to run aerobically, to run efficiently and you can use like your math pace for this which is it’s basically 180 minus your age so if you’re 40 years old you know you’re doing most of this long sessions at a 140 beats per minute for heart rate but that’s a big big difference between marathoning which you can actually get pretty successful with doing 400s, 800s and repeats in the occasional kinda like longer run vs. ultra-marathoning where you’re just gonna be spending more time period. So that’s one thing to consider. Another thing to consider is your pack weight, so for a marathon you know, average marathon if you’re using like a fewer belt or something like that you might have 1-2 pounds of extra weight. For an ultra-marathon, a lot of ultra marathons they’ve got no aids stations or they have very few aids stations or aids stops so you have to pack a lot more of your own fuel whether pb camel packs, like hydration packs you know, they have packets and webbing for things like extra food and socks and gloves and Vaseline and bandaids and head lamps and all these other stuff you’re gonna need but you know, you may also windup using like a multi-bottle fuel belt that goes around your belt, you might use a light backpack, you might be carrying things in your hand and you need to get used to hacking around an extra anywhere from 4-7 pounds while you’re out on your runs so when I’m talking about heading back into the hills doing like this pace around you have to get use to the biomechanical changes and also the metabolic demands of carrying a little bit of extra weight on you while you’re out there with the understanding that you might have access to fewer aids stations during an ultra. A couple other things I would bear in mind is like the distance so marathon typically can get away with about anywhere from 17-20 miles for your long run as far as kinda preparing you for the endurance that you need for marathon, for ultras they are pushing 40+ miles or once you get up to like a 100k ish distance your training run is gonna be closer like your long training run is gonna be closer to like a marathon distance run so you can actually like you know go register for a marathon or jump into a marathon and use that as like your long training run that you do a few times leading up to the race or few weeks out from the race and generally you’ll find a lot of more successful 50k, a 100k athletes have 30-40 mile runs as like their one long run that they do per week you know, the better people who are really devoting a lot of time to this, I’m not saying that’s healthy I’m not saying it’s something I encourage for your hormones or for your body but I mean if this on your bucket list and you wanna do it, that’s what you’re looking at as far as some of your distances go and then nutrition also you know, again marathon you can get by doing you know, I had some people doing marathon they could have around a 100 calories an hour and been able to just like squeeze themselves through with little hits of glucose here and there. With an ultramarathon you just have to get used to eating more and the stomach aches, the barfing, the diarrhea, all these stuff can occur once you’re trying to shove in some cases 200, 400 calories down the hatch while you’re running and a lot of times this is from real foods. A lot of ultra marathoners they get taste fatigue pretty quickly and so you’re using a mix of trail mixes, raw seeds, raw nuts, chia seeds, slurries which is like chia seed mix with water to form like a little gel solution. Sometimes folks will run a little candy bars that have fatten them you know like snickers and stuff like that. Sharp intake gasp breath to the podcast audience has been recommend snickers. You know, using like the UCan superstarch, I’ve had some people experiment with doing kinda like id for Ironman like mixing the superstarch with some mct oil and some amino acids but ultimately it’s a long run and you gotta eat and so you even get some these ultra marathoners like Dean Karnazes you know, he’s running with like a half a tuck up pizza you know, tucked in one arm and it’s one of those deals where you do need to get used to eating while you’re training and we’ve talked plenty on this podcast about what kind of things will be healthy and what kind of things wouldn’t. I’m a bigger fan of real food or fat-based foods or some proteins rather than sweet carbohydrates the whole time just for an over-all health standpoint but regardless you’re gonna have to eat more calories per hour to be listing yourself to a 100k that’s another consideration.
[1:10:00.2]
Really good resource is the Ask the Ultra Runner Podcast at enduranceplanet.com like a, why am I blanking on his name?
Brock: Lucho.
Ben: Yeah, Lucho who’s the kind of the expert on that podcast, he’s one lead man which is an ultra running trail ring series, he has really good history with trail running, he was up in the mountains near boulder Colorado and he is really a good resource and there’s hours and hours worth of ultra running tips and tricks and you know, pacing, rules and training recommendations and everything on the back log of that podcast when you’re going on your long runs that’ll be a good one in addition of course to the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast.
Brock: Of course!
Ben: Yeah and load up to your mp3 player and ask the ultra runner podcast at endurance planet. So that’s another good resource for you and you know, Brock’s a running coach. Brock, anything else you would throw in there.
Brock: Yeah, I’ve coached a couple of ultramarathoners and I don’t know if this actually applies to James in particular ‘cause he’s doing Ironman so he’s definitely done some heavier volume stuff but when you’re moving from marathon to ultramarathon generally you have to be careful with adding in too much volume too quickly like it’s the same as when you start out running at all, your body response to the stress you put on it, it doesn’t respond to a number. So, you look at some of these programs and like Ben was saying, like you want your long runs to be more like a marathon distance but if your body can’t handle it don’t try and hit those numbers ‘cause it’s your body is going to respond to the stress you put on it and well if that stress is a little bit less, if it’s only 30k or 35k then that’s okay that’s your maximum and don’t try to push past otherwise you’re gonna get yourself in trouble even though you’re doing this like 100k races you can’t. You can’t just sort to hit those numbers and think you have to do that, your body will respond poorly and then you’ll be out.
Ben: Yeah I can tell you, building endurance and kind of going into this new mode of training is tough like I’m getting ready for the zeal fit camp right now in August and you know, I’ve already got my 40 pound weight vest and I’m going out and doing rocks with back in the hills behind my house and my body is just not use to hauling you know basically walking around with 40 lbs for a couple of hours up and down trails, it’s just brand new muscles and I’ve certainly experienced even though I’m strong, I’m fit and I’ve done Ironman. It’s new muscles, new territory and we’ve talked about tracking recovery and central nervous system and that’s also important when it comes to this stuff.
Brock: Yes, I guess all I’d say is be careful downloading an ultramarathon program off the inter webs and just following it blindly pay attention to your fatigue levels like Ben said using heart rate variability and stuff is great too.
Ben: There we go and if you do want to train blindly get one of those view limiting devices that we talked about.
Brock: Yes. Quite literally joining blindly.
Ben: Great look. Well, did we get any reviews on iTunes this week?
Brock: We sure did! We sure did, I have 5 star review. Thank you very much Steve.
Ben: I wonder if it’s the same Steve that ask the question about root canals.
Brock: It might be although the wording in this question is quite glorious, I have to say I wanna read it in a Shakespearean voice but I won’t.
Ben: Well, we’re gonna be sending Steve the official Ben Greenfield fitness gear package from bengreenfieldfitness.com/gear so he can get all geared out and geeked out but what he has to say Brock?
Brock: Okay, the title is and don’t let this scare you: This podcast will ruin your life! (exclamation point)
Ben: I like it!
Brock: Alright, so he says “seriously ruin it, it will knock down what you are and trample on the remains of your very being and then like a majestic phoenix you will rise from the ashes more glorious than before. Your impurities melted away by the fiery wisdom bestowed upon you by these two arbiters of fitness and health.”
Ben: Wow! Those….
Brock: Hmm, that’s very nice!
Ben: Arbiters of fitness and health, fiery wisdom. I’ve never thought of myself as having fiery wisdom but I’ll take it.
Brock: It’s, I picture it being fire coming out of your eyes.
Ben: Yeah, after a good little bout at the Thai restaurant or a nice bit of wasabi I do indeed have some fiery wisdom coming out both ends so…
Brock: Yeah, that’s not what I was thinking. Anyways, so make sure you can go over to iTunes leave us a review if you want to perhaps win some gear, you can also go over to bengreenfieldfitness.com/love. Do leave us some love and share the love, pass around the love.
Ben: Check out bengreenfieldfitness.com/267 to get your standardized garlic extract, your acupressure wrist bands,
[1:15:01.3]
… you grip strength tester and everything else we recommended in today’s podcast and join us of course in Mexico as well. Don’t forget about that and we’ll be back next week.
Jan 8, 2014 Podcast: How Root Canals Can Destroy Your Health, Natural Remedies for Stomach Ulcers, The Best Kind Of Garlic To Use, How to Get Rid Of Car Sickness, How Long Should You Rest After Interval Training, What Supplements To Use Before Workouts, and How To Train For An Ultramarathon?
Have a podcast question for Ben? Click the tab on the right, use the Contact button on the app, click Ask a Podcast Question at the bottom of this page, Skype “pacificfit” or use the “Ask Ben” form… but be prepared to wait – we prioritize audio questions over text questions.
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News Flashes:
You can get these News Flashes hot off the presses if you follow Ben on Twitter.com/BenGreenfield, Facebook.com/BGFitness and Google+.
- This may disturb strict fasting+exercise enthusiasts, but turns out that eating during your workout BOOSTS metabolism.
- Here’s another sleep hack stack for you: one dropperful Kava Kava + Valerian Root + Passionflower.
- Holy cow, this is cool. You can run on water.
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Special Announcements:
Jan 12, 6:30pm Pacific/9:30pm Eastern: How To Detox Your Body For The New Year! It’s time to shatter dangerous detox myths, learn how to hit the reboot button on your body, and achieve a safe, nourishing, life-changing cleanse for the New Year. Visit the BenGreenfieldFitness Inner Circle to get in now!
March 1-6, 2014: PrimalCon Vacation Tulum Mexico 2014! Join Ben and Jessa Greenfield, Mark Sisson, Robb Wolf, Cate Shanahan, Darryl Edwards, and other leaders in the Paleo, Primal and Ancestral Health community to celebrate healthy living in style – at the magnificent Dreams Tulum Resort and Spa, an all-inclusive 5-star resort on the Mayan Riviera. You’ll be immersed in outdoor fitness workouts, luxurious health food, exploring Mayan ruins, lots of beach time, fun in the sun – and much more! Click here to get in now, and be sure to tell them Ben Greenfield sent you to get all-star treatment!
Want a done-for-you coaching package with Ben? Check out the new Black Box Coaching Package.
Grab this Official Ben Greenfield Fitness Gear package that comes with a tech shirt, a beanie and a water bottle.
Ben’s new book has been released. Pre-order it now and get entered into a raffle for over $5000 in swag! Just visit BeyondTrainingBook.com.
And of course, this week’s top iTunes review – gets some BG Fitness swag straight from Ben – leave your review for a chance to win some!
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Listener Q&A:
As compiled, edited and sometimes read by Brock, the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast “sidekick”.
How Root Canals Can Destroy Your Health
Steve asks: Whats your take on root canals? I have seen and read alot of info by Dr. Mercola saying how bad they are . What are my options zirconia implant? Extraction partial i really dont wanna be toothless but i do wanna be healthy please help.
In my response I recommend:
–Root Canal Cover Up book
–Metal Free formula
-The following links to help find a biological dentist:
- Dental Amalgam Mercury Solutions
- Consumers for Dental Choice
- International Academy of Biological Dentistry and Medicine
- International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology
- Holistic Dental Association
- International Association of Mercury Safe Dentists
Natural Remedies for Stomach Ulcers
Anna asks: I have a question regarding stomach ulcer. I got one and I was wondering if you could tell me what I should do to fix my problem.
In my response I recommend:
–My top 7 ways to reduce stress
–Mastic gum
-High dose Vitamin C
The Best Kind Of Garlic To Use
Brian asks: My name is Brian and I am a firm believer in garlic raw and supplement form, I am wondering what is the best brand of garlic and what should I look for in the supplement?
In my response I recommend:
–Standardized garlic extract
How to Get Rid Of Car Sickness
Betsy asks: I live in Denver – we have a house in Breckenridge at 11,000 ft (near Mt. Quandary) . Since we have had kids, it’s been difficult to make it up for weekend adventures. The last two times we have attempted mountain trips our almost 3 year old gets really car sick. The drive is about 1 hour 3 min. She has puked both times. The route isn’t too too swirly. We’ve tried the regular advice – roll down the window (even though it’s freakin’ cold), light snack before we go – tell her to look out the window… No dice.
In my response I recommend:
–Acupressure wrist bands
–Viban view limiting device
How Long Should You Rest After Interval Training?
Jacob asks: I do triathlon and had a question about training. I work out two to three times a day and when I swim, I always do intervals. My question is this: Should I do hard intervals in both bike and run workouts in the same day and then make the next day a recovery day? Or, besides swimming, keep the intervals to either the bike or the run for that day and then do the intervals in the other discipline the next day. I have heard of some cyclists smashing themselves with hard intervals twice a day and then going very easy on off days. I am wondering if this or if doing intervals everyday ( except for weekly rest day ) in just bike or the run is the the way to go. I would appreciate your input.
In my response I recommend:
–HRV testing
–Dyanomemeter
What Supplements To Use Before Workouts
Peggah asks: So I read your personal vitamin regimen, and specifically, the supplements you take pre-workout. I don’t take any pre-workout supplements now and was wondering if you had any recommendations. I workout usually after sitting at a desk for close to 10 hours, and feel like I would definitely benefit from having additional energy and would love to take something that would help me burn more fat/build more muscle. But I’m also not training for a triathlon or doing crazy-hard workouts, so I imagine (but am not sure) that something like the X2 Performance would be overkill. I’m 28, 5’4, 130lbs (would like to lose 10 and just get more toned), can run like 4 miles at a 10 min pace, workout 3-4 times a week, and generally do a combination of cardio and weights for 45 minutes at my apartment’s gym. Anyway, if you have any thoughts on pre (or post) workout supplements for a pretty average gym-goer who wants to step it up a little, would love to hear your thoughts!
In my response I recommend:
–TianChi
–Master Amino Pattern
–Trace Liquid Minerals
–Hormone Pack
How To Train For An Ultramarathon
J asks: I am a chiropractor & have been doing triathlons for about 4years now & I love the endurance side of things. In 2014 I plan on tackling a different beast, an Ironman in Jan, a 75k ultramarathon in the Victorian mountain country then a 100k north face ultramarathon in the nsw mountains. I was wondering if you would have any recommendations/suggestions for a training regime that would require me to go from ironman athlete to ultramarathon man?
In my response I recommend:
–Ask The Ultrarunner podcast at EndurancePlanet.com