July 16, 2014

Podcast #288 from https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2014/07/288-why-a-vegan-diet-helped-bill-clinton-best-fitness-phone-apps-standing-lawn-mowers/

[0:00:00]  

Introduction:   Episode #288 of the Ben Greenfield fitness:  5 Ways To Get Fit With an iTunes Gift Card, How To Workout If Your Hands Are Broken, Why A Vegan Diet Helped Bill Clinton, Natural Remedies for Hair Loss, and Standing Lawn Mower Fitness and much more.

Welcome to the bengreenfieldfitness.com podcast.  We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon, and wellness advice from the top fitness experts in the nation.  So whether you’re an Ironman tri-athlete, or you’re just trying to shed a few pounds, get ready for non-run-of-the-mill, cutting edge content from bengreenfieldfitness.com.

Ben:  So I got a funny story for you Brock.

Brock:  Alright, bring it on.

Ben:  Last week we talked about water fountains and germs on water fountains…

Brock:  Oh yeah, yeah.

Ben:  Episode 287 and so that afternoon I went to the gym and I got a drink from the water fountain and when I walk up to the water fountain, kinda like I was talking about in that episode. There’s like the tall water fountain and the short one and so – and I don’t know why they have the short one ‘cause kids aren’t allowed in that area of the gym anyways but I bend down and start drinking from the tall water fountain ‘cause nobody’s at it and I start drinking and this guy walks up behind me and starts waiting behind me and mind you the short water fountain is there and available beside me. You wouldn’t wanna get down like I have to lift anything like that and actually bend over at the gym.

Brock:  Not at the gym.

Ben:  So, – and then another guy lines up behind him and then a chick lines up behind the next guy. So there’s 3 people in line behind me and to make matters worse, I notice the chick ‘cause she’s actually my wife, once I recognize her. So there’s 2 people in line behind me, one being my wife and I know that she’s gonna take that I’m a total asshole for doing this but I just keep drinking and I’m like I’m gonna do a stare down. Total faceoff like – I’ll just go. We’ll see who breaks first. So they’re playing like water fountain chicken right? I’m just drinking and drinking and I’m looking at the guy behind me right straight in the eye as I’m drinking. Just waiting to see what he’s gonna do and finally the guy behind him walks away and I stop drinking and I say to my wife and to the other guy, I’m like, “you know, there’s other fountain that works”, and then I turn around and keep drinking and I just stared at the wall and by this time my stomach getting full and I’m actually starting to (laughs) wonder if I get a break from – if I’m gonna swear first and finally, stand-up and turn around and my wife is the only person left there and she stood around and waited for me and she was given me a pretty dirty look after waiting about 2 minutes to get a drink but freaking A, that’s exactly what I was talking about on last week podcast about how funny it is that people will not use the short fountain at the gym.

Brock:  You know, I got – I’m wondering if maybe there’s something you don’t know about that little water fountain.

Ben:  Hmm, yeah.

Brock:  Like maybe they’re actually pumping cyanide through there or something and you’re the only one who doesn’t know.

Ben:  Or that’s the one that’s where spitting gum, spitting in general. Well, either way – what do you think? Shall we jump in today’s news flashes?

Brock:  Yeah, ‘cause we got to keep moving. I’m freezing to death.

News Flashes:

Ben:  Brock, before I jump in to this week’s news flashes, you mentioned you’re freezing to death. What’s going on dude?

Brock:  I’m actually shivering. I decided that my ice pads weren’t cold enough so I actually took the tap off my tub and adjusted it and I manage to make it colder than I’ve ever made it before and I had a nice 20 minute ice bath and that was about 15 minutes ago and I’m still shivering.

Ben:  Back it out. Did you put ice in the ice bath or you just like ran as cold of a water temperature as possible in to your bath.

Brock:  Dude, I live in Canada. You don’t need to put – well, especially if you hack your tap, you don’t need to put ice in the water.

Ben:  No, you need dude and you’re gonna be careful what regions of your body you get this on but they make this stuff called Sweet Sweat and it’s like cayenne pepper and essential oils and essentially it’s what cyclist use as what’s called an embrocation cream in hot weather and you put it on your body and it attracts blood flow to whatever the body that it’s put on and again, guys do not use this in the wrong way. It does not produce a pleasant tingling experience like you might expect and I have accidentally slathered some in my nether regions before and paid for it. So, that’s actually worse if you google embrocation cream – e-m-b-r-o-c-a-t-i-o-n.

[0:05:04.7] 

I watched a movie “Bad Words” the other night by the way. It’s a spelling bee movie with Jason Bateman.

Brock:  Oh! It’s that what’s about? I saw the title of that movie somewhere. I’ve no idea what’s all about.

Ben:  It’s about this adult who tries to crush kid’s spelling bees to win checks and trophies. It’s actually pretty funny. Anyways though, yeah embrocation cream dude.

Brock:  Yeah, I think I’m letting my body heat up the natural way ‘cause I’m burning all kinds of stuff doing that, right?

Ben:  Uhmm and speaking of burning all kinds of stuff, I’ve got a – a pretty crazy kick start I wanna talk about that I found on kickstarter that I think would be interesting to folks but before I jump in to that I should mention that not only have I been doing a ton of online workshops for all these like free conferences and videos and podcast and stuff, I know it can be sometimes hard for folks to keep up with where I’m at and I try to talk about things that are different on what I talk about this podcast. When I get on another podcast and conferences and videos, the best place to kinda track that study ‘cause I always tweeted out. If you go to twitter.com/bengreenfield, I will tweet out not only the latest and greatest research studies, three of which I’m about to talk about but also where I’m at if you kinda feel like it’s the Where’s Waldo thing. So, check that out.

Brock:  Have you start wearing crazy stripe dude?

Ben:  I’ve always done that. So this kickstarter is called “Can Women’s Sweat Treat Low Testosterone in Men?”. And ladies by the way if you’re first time listener of the show, this is not a show that’s just for dudes but this particular study is probably pretty skewed towards the dude population. So what they’re doing in this kickstarter is they’re gonna give a group of young women scrunchies which up there in Canada you probably call them hair ties. We call them squanchies. So they’re gonna wear their squanchies for a week and then what the researchers are going to do is send these scrunchies to low testosterone men and this is kinda like a clean version of those websites where you can like order women’s panties basically except they’re sending you scrunchies and what they’re going to do is investigate the effects in testosterone levels of low testosterone men when they’re exposed to female sweat via salivary testosterone measurements after exposure to these scrunchies particularly by rubbing the scrunchies against their upper lips. (laughs) Totally not kidding here and they say if they run out of scrunchies, they’re gonna use gauze pads instead of scrunchies. This is actually a study that’s done by a researcher and I believe he’s in grad school (I’m not for sure on this) well, you can read the kickstart, I’ll link to it in the show notes. It’s over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/288 for anybody who wants to take part in this research study. Ladies, who wanna wear the scrunchies or guys who wants smell/taste these scrunchies but he went from testosterone in the 300 to a testosterone that was in the upper 800 by taking a summer dance class at his university 3 times a week for 8 weeks with a dozen sweaty young women.

Brock:  Oh, I thought it was from the scrunchies.

Ben:  In the actual kickstarter, there’s a lot of really good research that shows that sweat can actually have an effect on men’s testosterone particularly the smell as well as the taste of women’s sweat and the interesting thing is when I go to Bikram Yoga which I’ve actually heard described as a bunch of people having sex with their clothes on, I’ve noticed that I’m definitely – I’m hoping my wife doesn’t listen in this particular episode but I’m…

Brock:  Yeah, ‘cause that’s not yoga that you’re going to.

Ben:  Yeah, I’m mildly horny when I get out of Bikram Yoga and I think it’s because usually I’m the only dude in there and I’m pretty much immersed in women’s sweat molecules for about 90 minutes. So, and I also hope that none of the women who are in that Bikram Yoga class listen to this either ‘cause all, I’m a total creeper now. That’s not why I go to Bikram by the way but I supposed it probably be like a beneficial side effect if you have low testosterone or you want to increase testosterone, right?

Brock:  You wouldn’t be the first guy to go to a yoga class for that reason. I’m quite sure.

Ben:  Yeah, interesting. So, my apologies to the ladies listening in for that extremely male skewed first news flash but you can’t argue in science and it might work in reverse too although I’ve never actually had a lady compliment me on the smell of my sweat. I think my wife last described it when I walked in from the gym, I forgot to shower is meaty. So, there you go.

[o:10:07.0] 

Brock:  That’s not horrible.

Ben:  Meaty?

Brock:  Yeah, that’s not an insult.

Ben:  I don’t want to personally smell meaty. I’d rather smell like musky or something like that. Anyways, another interesting new thing that’s out there is coffee flour.

Brock:  Yeah, I saw that.

Ben:  It’s a new transformative process to bring in a new food source to life particularly flour that…

Brock:  That’s  -f-l-o-u-r  not -w-e-r.

Ben:  Yes, not coffee flowers although that’s a great holiday gift idea. These are gluten-free, high fiber, protein-rich antioxidant and vitamin-rich flour products made from coffee. The way that they’re described on this website are a unique flavor with floral aromas, citrus/rose-like – and by the way, I would be fine with sweat smelling floral, anything but meaty – that you can use for bread, pasta, meat rubs, desserts, chocolates, etc. and the idea here is that when coffee beans are traditionally processed, they’re separated from what are called the coffee cherries and then you get this fruit pulp and usually billions of pounds of this unused fruit pulp gets left to decompose or just discarded and that can actually cause harm to local eco-system where they’re growing coffee. So they’ve now developed this process that would convert the coffee cherry pulp into an all new natural food ingredient known as coffee flour. It’s a very interesting story and I think it’s cool. I lost stuff like this you know, kinda like the cricket protein bars where you can help up the planet a little bit and provide people with food and find the use for something that you normally discard like your left-over crickets. I will link to that article over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/288 as well. And then finally, we’ve got a very interesting article that appeared on team beach body which I read everyday. No, I was just… some…some

Brock:  You say, teen? Teen beach body?

Ben:  Ah, no. Don’t go to teen beach body. I’ve no clue you’d get there. Team beach body which I assume it’s just a group of bloggers that work for beach body fitness but this is an interesting article about 18 Ingredients That Sound Dangerous But Aren’tactually dangerous and it’s kinda interesting because these particularly ingredients gets thrown around and health and nutrition circles as though they’re like the worst alien foods on the face of the planet but in fact they’re not all that bad, a lot of them. So, some of the ones talked about in the article are like propylene glycol alginate. You’ll find that sometimes in salad dressings, you’ll find it in beer for foaminess, some ice creams have it and a lot of times that particular ingredient scares people away ‘cause it looks like one of those things where you hear health enthusiast say, “If you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it.” Right?

Brock:  Yeah, yeah!

Ben:  But it’s just a powder made from kelp and as the name would imply, algae, PGA – propylene glycol alginate. So, that’s one that’s not dangerous. There’s another one, carboxymethyl cellulose which thickens and prevents crystallization in foods. And…

Brock:  Ah, I’ve seen it in like coconut ice cream and stuff.

Ben:  Yeah exactly. Jellies, icing, some wines have it and all it is it’s cellulose derivative derived like cell walls of plants. The same thing you’d be eating if you say, “I made a smoothie out of Kale.” So carboxymethyl cellulose, another one that’s not that bad. There’s obviously the whole list on here and I won’t look over all of them but let’s go with another here. Ah, castoreum (laughs) – this is one that I’ve seen catch a lot of plaque on the internet. So it’s used to produced berry flavoring or vanilla flavorings and it is a secretion that’s extracted from what are called castor sacs which you…

Brock:  Oh! From the beaver!

Ben:  … find on the butt of a beaver.

Brock:  Yeah, beaver anal gland.

Ben:  Exactly, it’s beaver anal gland extract and it’s kinda interesting, what the article says, if that freaks you out wait until we tell you where chicken eggs come from. It’s kinda true so it’s actually generally recognized as safe and you’re gonna find it in some baked goods and some frozen dairy products and even yes, chilling gums. Ultimately, it’s an interesting article and you should go check it out. It’s called 18 Ingredients That Sound Dangerous But Aren’t.

Special Announcements:

Brock:  So, do you have any big plans for August?

Ben:  Hmm, I just signed up to be a Gladiator.

[0:15:02.9]

I signed up for the stadium race in San Francisco – the stadium Spartan race in San Francisco.

Brock:  Oh cool! That’s one of the races that actually all happens indoors?

Ben:  Yeah, it’s inside the stadium so you like do rowing and you carry heavy stuff up the stadium stairs and I honestly don’t know what all else is involved but I guess I’ll find out on race day. We actually talked about in recent podcast episode at obstacledominator.com if you wanna listen in into what stadium Spartan races are all about. But the reason I’m doing it is because, for any of you listening, we’re gonna be at Ancestral Health Symposium. I will at the Ancestral Health Symposium presenting a poster on the benefits of standing vs. sitting and some of the recent research to come out on that and that’s gonna be at Berkley.

Brock:  A poster. Like the thing you hang on the wall?

Ben:  Yeah, it’s a poster. I just stand there holding the poster and talking.

Brock:  That’s good work!

Ben:  Three days straight and I just leave my poster on the ground when I go and race my Spartan. So, that will be August – I believe it’s like the 7^th through the 10^th. I’ll be down at the University of California, Berkley for any of you who will still wanna sign up for the Ancestral Health Symposium or the AT & T Stadium Spartan Race. There’s probably still time for that. I will also with my wife and kids be over in Washougal, Washington for another Spartan race over there. For anybody who happens to be over there, say “Hi,” we’ll be the family walking around with the twin boys and I don’t know if there’ll be other families walking around with twin boys. But we’ll be there. And then also I will be down in August at SealFit in Kokoru Camp – Mark Divine SealFit Camp and I’ll be there during the third week of August basically like August 18^th through 24^th, something like that. So anyways, be down in California a lot of these months and yeah, so the other thing that I wanted to mention for folks is that sometimes hard to keep track of everything that I recommend as well as what I have to offer like my books and that kind of stuff. So, we just launch a brand new website called greenfieldfitnesssystems at greenfieldfitnesssystems.com. Super friendly to use and easy to find what you’re looking for from blood and lab and saliva testing to supplements to books to coaching. Pretty much anything that you’d need is over there. So for those of you who have sometimes felt lost in the four corners of the internet trying to hunt stuff down, it’s a good place to go – greenfieldfitnesssystems.com.

Brock:  And it looks good on your mobile device as well.

Ben:  Hmm, is that what you’re doin’ in the bathtub? Surfing on the mobile device, looking at websites?

Brock:  Maybe?

Voiceover: Finally, a solution for healthy living that actually makes sense. Ben Greenfield and his wife Jessa had cracked the code on healthy living and revealed their entire system inside the Ben Greenfield fitness inner circle where you get instant access to 24/7 forum interaction with Ben and Jessa. A live monthly webinar, meal plans, videos, Ben’s body transformation club archives, and much, much more. If you or your family wanna learn how to achieve the ultimate healthy lifestyle on a budget, then the Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle is for you. Get four free videos to get you started and full access to the inner circle at bengreenfieldfitness.com/innercircle. That’s bengreenfieldfitness.com/innercircle, we’ll see you inside.

Listener Q & A:

Tim:  Hey Ben, hey Brock! This is Tim from Massachusetts and I was calling in with a – different question. I had a very generous gift of a $1,000 in iTunes gift card from one of my customers and I guess my question to you guys is, if you were be given a blank check for (inaudible), do you just spend on only iTunes help or well being apps? What would it be? Is there any expensive or upper-end or even like I said even that’s not directly help your way or some sort of nice well being app? Where would you invest your money and any answer will be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Brock:  A thousand bucks!

Ben:  It’s a lot of money for iTunes. Honestly like it’s almost annoying. I got a $1,000 gift card once and I really, really wish that I just got a $1,000 because I think I still have like $500 left on the gift card and half the vendors that I try and use the gift card for don’t accept it and it’s annoying to me, kind of annoying that I have $500 but I don’t know how to spend it unlike this American Express gift card, so.

[0:20:11.9]

Brock:  That’s what they call first world problem, isn’t it?

Ben:  Yeah, I think so. So, if I had a thousand dollars for iTunes, uhmm uhmm!

Brock:  If I had a thousand dollars…

Ben:  Well, I am gonna open up my phone here. I’m not in the paid phone apps but I do have a few. I’ll tell you my paid phone apps you can use up like 1% of your $1,000 on the $1.99 phone apps that I use. I’ll give you 4 of them that I really like that I use pretty regularly and then also I’ll give you access to a whole cornucopia of goodness that you could easily blow your thousand dollars on and get really fit in the process. So first of all, you’ve got the SweetBeat HRV sweet beat life phone app. This is the one that I start everyday with. So, I roll over still in bed, I put on a bluetooth heart rate monitor that will transmit a signal over to the phone app and I turn on the phone app and I’m not a hitch fan of wearing bluetooth all day long or like having self-quant devices on your body all day long but I just do it for 5 minutes in the morning and it sends this phone app feedback from my sympathetic and my parasympathetic nervous system that allows me to make educated decisions about the way that I’m going to exercise and the amount of relaxation that I need to take part in that day. This morning is a perfect example. I did about 20 minutes of yoga and deep breathing this morning because I had a really, really a low frequency output into my sweet beat app and low frequency is basically elevated activation of your sympathetic fight or flight nervous system. So I knew that I needed to kinda relax myself in the morning. So, you also get just like a morning number for your heart rate variability like whether it’s high or low so you can decide if you’re gonna take an easy day for example if it’s low or you know that maybe whatever you did for nutrition and fitness the day before were spot on ‘cause you wake up the next day and heart rate variability is high. So, I really like that one – the SweetBeat HRV monitor and that’s probably the most expensive app that I have in my phone, I think it’s $9.99. There is another one that I used when I’m sleep at night because we have trains that go by our house and I use this one on an airplane and when I’m at a hotel and it’s a White Noise app. Now I learned recently on the – I did a parenting course, Ari and myself from getleverage.com, who’s been on this podcast – he’s a productivity expert and he has twins and so he and I actually kinda match heads and put together about 10 different mini-courses on parenting. It’s over at udemy.com/doubledads. Really cool course like videos, audios, transcripts, stuff like that for parenting but one thing that he talked about was his white noise app and how you shouldn’t play white noise for your kids because it disrupt their sleep cycles but it doesn’t do the same thing in adults. I use that to cover up noise and sleep better and I think that’s a dollar and .99 cents.

Brock:  It’s that what it’s actually called – white noise app?

Ben:  Uhmm, yeah. I’ll link to each of these in the show notes for anybody who wants to click and grab them.

Brock:  I use one called sleep pillow.

Ben:  Yeah, that is just much sexier name. I like it! Sleep pillow.

Brock:  I think when you and I are rooming together in Kona, we’ll have the battle of the white noise apps.

Ben:  That’s right.

Brock:  It’s kinda been the noisiest room in all the places.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. Brock’s gonna be covering the race Ironman World Championships in Kona for Endurance Planet. So should if you’re gonna be in Ironman, Hawaii, Brock and I will both be there. The next thing is the SafariFit phone app. I love this one for when I’m just like travelling and I wanna do a quick workout in my hotel room or in a park or anywhere…

Brock:  And you’re wanna pretend you’re some type of animal?

Ben:  And I get my giant gun and my Teddy Roosevelt glasses, my khaki shorts and my little tie thing that goes around my neck to dab away sweat off my cheeks and I head out and hunt for lions. It’s called the SafariFit phone app. Check it out! SafariFit. No, it’s like a bunch of animal-esque movements like the flamingo and the lemur and the parakeet and all these word moves that you can deal with just like picnic benches and tables or like the end of your hotel bed or the floor. Really cool app though, it just like kinda outsourcing the whole body weight workout thing and it’s on your phone which I like. It’s pretty cool, it’s got like 4 different fitness levels on it. I don’t know how much it is, I think it’s maybe like $4.99 or something like that but that one’s called the SafariFit phone app, that one is pretty cool and then a couple of others. I use this the other day to send a message to you Brock but I’ll use this when I don’t have time to type an email but I want to respond to someone and I don’t want to do the thumb typing on my phone.

[0:25:11.0]

It’s called the Say It, Mail It Recorder. So all I do is I open up my phone I say it and then I click mail it and just mails whatever I said as a voice memo to whoever. Whether myself as a reminder to me or to anybody else so, it’s called the say it, mail it recorder.

Brock:  It’s kinda fun actually getting those although I’m always incline to try to talk back and you don’t listen.

Ben:  Uhmm, yeah. You talk back. Nothing happens.

Brock:  Yeah, you’re very unresponsive.

Ben:  Yeah, technology doesn’t work that way. So the other thing is the Ben Greenfield fitness page on iTunes. I don’t know if people are aware of this but pretty much every book I’ve ever written is available on iTunes as a downloadable book that you can read and what – like I have a kindle so I save most of my books on kindle but apparently you can buy books on iTunes and read them from your app. These kids say these days, so. (laughs) Anyways, I’ll put a link in the show notes and if you click on that link like everything from like my book, Beyond Training is $9.99. Looks like you know, Run with No Pain, Red, like all of my books are around here, Red Diet, A Hundred Ways To Boost Your Metabolism, so they’re all in the iTunes store and they’re all – it looks like one of my books is like .99 cents. So, you can get all – I actually didn’t notice until I was trying to figure out what I would use a gift card for and I’m like, “Hey, I’m actually on iTunes,” so, I’ll put a link to all those books and then finally here’s the other thing. You can do in app purchases with gift cards. So, if you’re using something like and here’s something I haven’t tried out yet but like that SweetBeat phone app that I talked about for example, it has the option to do an in app purchase of like they’re little sticky things that you can put on your body to…

Brock:  Yeah, health patch.

Ben:  Uhmm, yeah like measure your heart rate variability during the day or maybe during a workout. You can buy those in the app, it’s like – it’s like 200 bucks or something like that. I don’t know if you could use your gift card for that but pretty much almost any in app purchase, you can use a gift card for. So you just wanna make sure you load up your gift card to iTunes and any purchase that you make can be processed by iTunes that come off the gift card balance, so that’s another idea.

Brock:  I like it!

Ben:  Did I miss anything dude?

Brock:  Ah, I was gonna throw a couple of things just, I don’t know about you but I have trouble doing yoga sessions at home all by myself so getting some yoga videos, I found really helpful. I downloaded a couple of Rodney Yee’s yoga videos…

Ben:  Uhm, that’s not gonna get your testosterone up.

Brock:  No, not.

Ben:  Rodney’s a great guy but…

Brock:  Yeah, unless you get some of those scrunchies.

Ben:  Yeah, except – yeah that’s true. You can get these scrunchies and then do Rodney Yee yoga at home with like somehow like glue this scrunchie to your upper lip.

Brock:  Uhmm, uhmm. I like it.

Ben:  There you go. Kinda get that scrunchie Hitler look . (laughs)

Brock:  Good old scrunchie Hitler. Bad guy.

Ben:  And was there another one?

Brock:  I was gonna suggest also there’s all kinds of like learn new language, learn how to play an instrument, apps and books and we always talk about like keeping your brain sharp and keeping that neuro plasticity is all about making yourself learn something that you kinda suck at to begin with like not doing something you’re already kinda good at just getting better at it but actually starting from scratch so I’d recommend like choosing a new language or choosing a musical instrument or something like that. Download a book, download an app, download a video, something like that.

Ben:  Oh and by the way, the Udemy courses I talked about, the parenting course. You can get that via in app purchase, you can download the udemy app for free to your phone and then you could get my entire new parenting course as an in app purchase. So, there’s that too.

Brock:  Nice! Beautiful! And I wouldn’t be a patriotic Canadian if I didn’t also say, download the greatest hits of Rush.

Ben:  (singing) Closer to the heart. Closer to the heart. Closer to the heart.

Brock:  Beautiful!

Lee:  Hey Ben, this is Lee from Florida. About two weeks ago I broke both of my hands going over my handle bars on my bicycle. Now I’m looking for alternative methods of exercise. Before I was doing triathlon, swim, bike, run, with some weight training, rock climbing, and racquetball. Seems that most of those things require grip strength which I don’t have anymore. Any suggestions on what I should do?

Brock:  Lee! Dude! Bummer!

Ben:  Sounds painful. I actually had a snowboard accident so I’ve been where Lee has been before but with one hand not with both hands. So…

[0:30:00.4] 

Ben:  If it’s just one hand you can get this whole contra lateral training effect. Basically, I torn my MCL; you have an MCL not just near your knee but also in your elbow and I landed with an outstretched arm coming off a jump on my snowboard and…

Brock:  That’s called a fush.

Ben:  Yeah, I don’t know…

Brock:  Falls on outstretched hands.

Ben:  Down here, we call it a fail. But I just would walk around the gym doing like my curls and my extensions and just like literally doing a farmer’s walk with a heavy weight for the opposite hand. And there is what’s called the contra lateral effect like I mentioned where by training one side of your body, the other side gets stronger. And the same thing can happen from legs up to upper body, so if you’re doing a leg press and leg curls to extremely simple examples; you can get a little bit of a cross-over training effect to your upper body. But in addition to training your legs, couple of other things that I would do is use your arms without using your hands so you can do… a lot of gyms for example, will have pull-over machines and sitted-fly machines and even on some of the cables, you’ve got very, very similar tool like the… the elbow handles that you’d hang from a pull-up bar to do hanging leg-raises rather than gripping, your hanging from your elbows though. You can attach those to cables and you can do like standing-cable-fly, standing-cable-pulls, things like that using the section of your arm from your elbow up to your shoulder rather than gripping them. And it’s just a matter of fixing those straps to the end of the cable apparatus at the gym and that’s a really, really good way to train without using your hands. Also a good way to train if you just balm your biceps or if you’ve been working your grip a lot and your grip’s dead or you have tennis elbow or something like that, you can still get a really good upper body workout by pushing in that sense. The other thing that you can do is standing core exercises where you’ve got like those straps placed over your shoulders and you’re standing and doing like standing-resisted crunches. The low back extension machine or the glute ham extension at the gym is also a really good one and you can even do what are called the Zercher squats – where the bar – the barbell is placed in the crook of your elbow and you do your squats. It’s a little bit uncomfortable at first and sometimes you can put a little bit of padding wrapped in ace bandage around your elbow if it’s a little bit uncomfortable for you. But you can do full-on squats holding the barbell in the crook of your elbow, that’s a great exercise period. Really good strength-building exercise but it’s also good if you’re unable to grip stuff with your hands. The other thing that I would totally use would be electrical muscle stimulation; I’d be all over that. So you can get like a Compex EMS device and you hook that up pretty much anywhere from the wrist-on up. You can do a form bicep session, triceps session, shoulders, quads, hamstrings – you name it and what it does, if you put it in strength mode or power mode is it will recruit as many fast-switching, slow-twitch muscle fibers as possible. Hold them in a contraction and it’s a pretty significant contraction. It can almost be a little bit uncomfortable but that’s what you need to get a good hypertrophic or good training response and it will go like five-seconds on, five-seconds off; or ten-seconds on, or ten-seconds off. And the more you go into like the power/strength phase of it, the more it’s going to grab fast-twitch muscle fibers based off of the signal that it sends to muscle. The shorter period of time it’s gonna hold them that the higher the contraction that’s solicited so much different than… like I’ve talked about the Mark Pro electrical muscle stimulation devise before, that’s a whole different way form – you recruit muscles much more slowly and gently and it’s great for rehab; it’s great for massage you know if you’re able to make it to massage therapist it kinda has a similar effect. But if you want a strength or power training, or actual muscle hypertrophy effect and there was a recent study I tweeted it out I think it came out… let me check here. It was about a 23% strength increase from using electrical muscle stimulation, really interesting study. It appeared on clinbiomech.com clinical journal biomechanics or clinical biomechanics or something like that but, the title of the study was “Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation on the Enhancement of Muscle Strength” and there was a huge increase in muscle thickness and muscle strength and in this they train the biceps and the triceps – so super applicable in case of Lee. So check out EMS to pick-up a Compex device and yeah, those would be the biggies, of course go to bengreenfieldfitness.com and do research there for broken bones because we’ve done podcast in the past about minerals and topical and all sorts of things that can speed up recovery for broken bones even like pulse electro magnetic field therapy…

[0:35:4.8]

…like, we’ve covered it all when it comes to speeding up broken bones ‘cause we’ve got a bunch of exercise addicts that was…

Brock:  Plus spazzes.

Ben:  We’ve got a lot of spazzes in people who won’t stop exercising ever so it’s a good one; check that out the Compex EMS and the flies, the pullovers, the cables, the Zercher squats and then everything we’ve talked about as far as broken bones on the podcast.

Bob:  Hi Ben! I just have a question for yah. I recently gone from a more of a vegan style diet to more of a paleo type diet and I always get into an argue with a friend of mine he was claiming that both George W. Bush and Bill Clinton were on a meat-based diet for many years and then had heart problems and switched over to a more vegetarian type diet and apparently, their health improved. So my question for you is why do you think that happened and okay, thanks a lot! Talk to you later, bye!

Brock:  What’s with all the vegetarian vegan presidents say?

Ben:  Yeah, over here in the U.S. our presidents get tired of the beef and chicken apparently.

Brock:  At first I am really excited ‘cause I thought he was talking about George Clinton?

Ben:  Yeah. No, Bill Clinton, the former U.S. president and George Bush – yeah it’s really interesting because there was like all this “Ra-ra Go Bill Clinton” vegan stuff that appeared because what happened was Bill Clinton ended up going the New York Presbyterian Hospital and underwent emergency surgery there to insert a pair of stance because one of his veins gave out. And he had undergone a quadruple bypass surgery in 2004 prior to that and at that point, not after the quadruple bypass but after revisiting the hospital in 2010, he jumped into kinda like the Dean Ornish program for reversing heart disease – this whole like low-fat, plant-based diet type of thing. And the way that Bill Clinton describes his diet is that, he eats primarily plant-based foods; he does things like substitutes – cauliflower for potatoes as well; so he’s being really careful with starches and sugars. And once a week or so, I’m not exactly sure how this is a vegan diet, but he has a big help in organic salmon or omelet made in omega 3 fortified eggs so he’s getting enough iron and zinc; and so he doesn’t, as he says, lose muscle. So kinda interesting that he’s not actually on a vegan diet leading salmon and eggs to preserve his muscle mass not that you can’t preserve muscle mass on a good vegan diet but I just thought you ought to know that Bill Clinton is not exactly a vegan. So when you see people switch to vegan diet which I have nothing against, I see some very healthy vegan blood labs from the people who are doing it very much right and also including many other things they need to include to optimize a vegan diet which I’ll talk about in a second. But the thing is that vegan diet is often work in a short term because people don’t just avoid animal foods, you know whether they’re Seventh-Day Adventist or they’re following after Dean Ornish’s Healthy life program, they’re also avoiding added sugars like Bill Clinton substituting cauliflower for like the starchy potatoes, they’re avoiding refined carbohydrates. Typically like an Ornish’s program – you would cut out processed vegetable oils which are huge for inflammation; inhibition of fat cell death; build-up of oxidized cholesterol – you generally cut trans fats and processed fats. All of these vegan diet programs highly recommend people to stop smoking and they all include an exercise component. There are a ton of co-founders here that could easily explain all the beneficial effects of the vegan diet in the absence of the cutting out meat part of a vegan diet. And that kinda leads me to my next point is that it is true that processed meat causes harm to the body, it causes inflammation especially processed meat that’s been fed high amounts of omega 6 fatty acids or even like had a bunch of cortisol in it when it was disgustingly killed the way that a lot of commercial food manufacturers are killing their animals these days you know, giant herds mashed up. I don’t know if you watched like Food Inc. that they get like electrocuted and it’s just nasty, it’s horrible and it’s disturbing and it’s disgusting the way that conventionally-raised animals are treated but animals that are fed natural diets like grass-fed cows and pastured chickens, that type of natural unprocessed meat does not really cause an issue at all. And there have actually been studies that have shown that unprocessed red meat doesn’t have any association with things like cardiovascular disease or diabetes or the risk of death.

[0:40:03.5]

And there was one case – there’s actually multiple causes where no matter the type of meat, there was a link with an increase risk of cancer and that was the meat that have been excessively cooked as in your backyard barbecue where dad walks away with his beer and forgets to come back soon enough. But in other cases, no issues at all with unprocessed meat and then of course, you know we’ve seen research come out recently and there’s even a New York Times best-selling book that went over this… I forget the name of it… but it was about saturated fat and how saturated fat has never been proven to lead the heart disease. It has been proven in increase cholesterol but there again there’s no association between an increase level of LDL cholesterol and heart disease. And they did a study of almost 350,000 people that found no association between saturated fat consumption and cardiovascular disease and same goes with eggs as far as meat goes; no negative effects of regular or organic omega 3-enriched eggs as well. So, ultimately when we look at vegan diets, the short term health effects of vegan diets are likely due to the elimination of lifestyle parameters that go way above and beyond meat unless, and this is of course the case in many people’s switch to being on  diet, that person was eating like commercially-raised, nasty meat. So, the issue with the vegan diet long-term is that while many people feel good for two years or five years or ten years, the problem is not just the difficulty in getting amino acids in unless you’re really willing to do a lot of soaking; a lot of sprouting; a lot of food combining; a lot of use of proteins that people sometimes find expensive like hemp-protein and rice-protein and P-protein and these type of foods. It’s difficult to get a lot of those amino acids in so it can be difficult to maintain muscle mass but it’s also difficult to get a lot of the other nutrients in like vitamin B12. Extremely column vegans and there’s over 90% of vegans that are deficient in vitamin B12 from studies that they’ve done. And another one is creatine. That’s another one that is very helpful and necessary for muscle function and brain function that vegans are deficient in. Carnosine would be another one, it’s only found in animal foods, very powerful anti-inflammatory – you need a supplement with that one too if you’re a vegan. I go over like twenty different things that vegans need to go out of their way to include in their diet if they’re gonna eat just plants in a modern-living environment. You know with modern fruits and modern vegetables and basically not the same food that we might have eaten like thousands of years ago on a pristine planet. DHA is another one, so you gonna get DHA from like LG and spirulina and chlorella and frankly again, a lot of vegans will complain about the expense associated with that and hemp-protein and P-protein and rice protein. You see, doing vegan is alright – you just gotta, you gotta do food preps the right way and you gotta supplement the right way and if you don’t, you get that muscle mass and you also get degradation of your ______ [0:43:08.9] and neuro degradation which means that you’ll wind up eventually down the road getting things like brain frog and poor joints because of the lack of essential fatty acids and the lack of the necessary anti-inflammatory components of the diet. You can see a drop in I.Q., Nora Gedgaudas talks about this in her book “Primal Body, Primal Mind” how an I.Q. drop chemical in your cholesterol it is lower than 200 like your total cholesterol which is very frequent. I’ve seen vegans with cholesterol values well below 100 and that’s not healthy unless there’s some Asian populations that naturally have low cholesterol like that but in most cases it’s not healthy. So ultimately, first of all, Bill Clinton is not vegan. I kinda doubt based-off of like the whole beef industry thing and the fact that he’s like a Texas rancher – I kinda doubt that George Bush is vegan either. I’m just saying, but ultimately yeah, you’re gonna see some health improvements but I’d rather see people just switch to a whole foods diet with healthy non-commercial meat I’m good on that well instead. And in the show notes for those of you who are vegan or vegetarian or considering it, listening in and wanted to do it right, I will link to my Beyond Training book’s chapter on how to customize your diet if you’re vegan or vegetarian – and I’ll put that link over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/288.

Brock:  And does that include avoiding the tofurky?

Ben:  It does include avoiding the tofurky or frying it in peanut oil.

Eyebrows:   Hey Ben and Brock. I recently run my first marathon. While I was training I started losing my eyebrows and then diagnosed with alopecia. The doctor told me it was probably from the stress caused by the training. I only topped out at 35 miles a week though and I know ______ [0:44:54.8] it will do twice when I train for marathon. Therefore, I’m really not sure if the training caused it. Either way, I eat a mostly paleo diet but I still eat some carbs and just a tiny bit on dairy. Any idea of what to do with this autoimmune problem?

[0:45:07.8]

Right now I’m getting shots every month to stimulate hair growth. That sounds like a band aid I’m not really getting to the root of the problem. Thanks.

Brock:  He didn’t say his name so we call him “Eyebrows”. That is crazy I have never heard of people losing their hair from working out too much.

Ben:  It’s possible that he just had some bad sunglasses and a bad helmet and his eyebrows are just getting ripped off from his hell of fast speed sessions…

Brock:  Oh yeah! Maybe he’s just that fast!

Ben:  Of course he’s running though, he’s not cycling huh?

Brock:  He might be wearing helmet, just in case.

Ben:  Yeah, I did that sometimes. I’ve actually seen people at triathlons wearing out the transition with their helmets on…

Brock:  Still on?

Ben:  Like from the bike to the run transition. I’ve also seen people running from the swim to the bike transition with their, like their pointing arrow helmets on backwards. That’s another classic. Just in case, it looks like a rhino – charging rhino.

Brock:  Awesome!

Ben:  So, alopecia can definitely, or in any type of hair loss, can definitely be aggravated by a variety of conditions including stress. So there’s kind of two different forms of alopecia: one is called androgenetic alopecia and that occurs in both sexes – males and females; whether or not the females are wearing scrunchies. And what happens with that is typically like even in your teens or early twenties you’ll notice a little bit of hair loss more often than not it develops about after the age of fifty. You’ll get a little bit of balding, a little bit of receding hairline; some females will get female pattern baldness which is like progressive thinning hair at the front or the sides or the top of the head – and that’s just genetic. And some people will try to stop something like guys especially will try to stop something like that with a hair-loss injection or treatment like a Propecia is one. That is, that you’ll take the… that inhibits the conversion of testosterone to dihydrotestosterone. And dihydrotestosterone or DHT has an incredibly potent form of testosterone that enhances drive, motivation, sex drive, things of that nature and when you inhibit the conversion testosterone to DHT, you can stop some hair loss but you’ll also lose drive. So you kinda have to decide whether if you’re using something like that for a genetic-based alopecia, if you’re going to be the drive-less hairy guy or the bald horny dude. So…

Brock:  It’s one or the other, folks!

Ben:  One or the other. I know if I ever start to lose my hair, I’ll just let it go unless it is something related to stress and autoimmunity in which case there are other reasons beyond like geneticism and conversion of over-conversion of testosterone to DHT that can be an issue. Now with the other form of alopecia’s, it’s called alopecia areata and that’s an autoimmune condition that attacks your hair follicles and causes the hair in your head to fall-out a lot of times in patches. It can cause baldness anywhere that hair grows unlike the genetic form of alopecia so we’re talking about like eyebrows, eyelashes, your extremities, pretty much everywhere where you tend to be hairy. You can lose hair and sometimes the hair will come out and then when it’s triggered again, it can fall-out again and people can continue to lose and re-grow their hair for a long time. So when we’re looking at something like this typically it is nutritionally-related or it’s hormonally-related. So sometimes you’ll see the alopecia autoimmune issue get triggered by low levels of thyroid hormone and interestingly a couple other things that can inhibit conversion of the less active thyroid hormone (inaudible)______ [0:48:43.8] is hyper-cortisolism. Excessive training or excessive lifestyle stress and so you get that drop in thyroid hormone or mild hyperthyroidism that occurs from excessive exercise and that can cause hair loss. You know the trick there would be either continue exercising at the rate that you’re exercising and consider using like a thyroid glandular extracts, sticky pro-thyroid up or just back things off. And you know, add in more rest or amp up exercise a little bit more slowly. The other thing that can affect your thyroid is your gut and your liver both of which also can kinda take a hit with all the excess calories, sugar, starches, the fact that you develop a little bit more leaky gut anyways when you’re exercising; and you have elevated activity of the liver enzymes and so all of that can also affect your ability to adequately utilize thyroid hormone. Then the other thing that you take care your gut, you know consider if you’re gonna exercise a lot, consider using things like bone broth and marshmallow extract for your guts you know; glycine supplements, adequate amino acid other things that are going to help out your gut and even some antioxidants to help your liver. Like you know N-acetyl cysteine, glutathione, some of those more advanced liver support if you’re doing a lot of training so…

[0:50:01.8]

Brock:  Can you just use those mini-marshmallows that you put in your cocoa?

Ben:  Yeah, those were just like marshmallow extract. Just chillin’ those bad boys. The other thing is of course, you could just rule out the thyroid by getting thyroid tested. Like if you go, like I mentioned Greenfield Fitness Systems, one of the lab tests that I’ve got listed over there is just a thyroid panel and it’s a full thyroid panel like it test for all of your autoimmune reactivity to proteins that you might be eating that could aggravate the thyroid, it test for T3, T4, TSH, everything. So rather than get on with a full blood panel, you could just get that. Now the other thing and this is something that I browse, alluded to is it might be an autoimmune issue. Now if it’s an autoimmune issue then I would just like, I’ve talked about this on the show before, but like my standard recommendation for the autoimmune is the Paleo Autoimmune diet. It’s just an e-book, you can download it straight to your computer and just jump into it literally and like… tomorrow.

Brock:  You can download it from iTunes.

Ben:  You could probably download it from iTunes with your $1,000 worth of gift cards. It’s a really simple diet to follow, it allows you to get adequate calories while eliminating soy, wheats, dairy, gluten – a lot of this common autoimmune triggers that can cause hair loss. So that’s another thing that you may wanna look into. And then few other things that can prevent hair loss, one would be adequate intake of omega 3 fatty acids, so this is the case where you can eat that wild fish a couple of times a week. Do as I do and have sardines literally I have sardines like five days a week with a  big-ass salads for lunch, you know, use walnuts, use ground flaxseeds, use chlorella spirulina. Get lots of omega 3 fatty acids in your diet. The other thing from the supplementation standpoint that can help out quite a bit, if this is DHT-related is one essential fatty acid called gamma linolenic acid which you’ll find in like black current oil or evening primrose oil. There’s another one that can inhibit the conversion of testosterone to DHT that acts very similarly to Propecia but in a much more natural way and that’s like a saw palmetto extract. There’s a pretty good mix of like a flower pollen extract as well as some of those plant-fighto sterols similar to what you get from like this plant essential oils along with lycopene, zinc and copper. And this is one that I recommend to all of my cyclists who have a lot of times prostate inflammation or issues with testosterone to DHT conversion or clearing from the DHT from the body. That one’s called ProstÉlanand I’m not a doctor that’s not to be construed as a medical advice for prostate issues or anything like that but it’s something that I’ve recommended in the past to folks who like have urinary tract infection or prostate issues or inflammation in the crotchial regions. So, I’ll link to that one in the show notes it’s called ProstÉlan, that stuff works pretty well in that type of situation. So ultimately I think the biggest change that Eyebrows could make could be just shifting like an autoimmune-based diet and try to get off some of this shots that is on to stimulate hair-growth just because a lot of those are not that natural; most of these shots are like cortisone injections or topical inflammatory or something else that’s basically like causing inflammation to cause hair-growth to occur. So be careful with some of that stuff.

Jeff:  Hey Ben, this is Jeff of St. Louise. I have a question for you in regards to the standing workstations. Mine happens to be a unique one that is attached to a big commercial mower. I stand on a sulky for about six to seven hours a day, five days a week for about, I don’t know, nine months out of the year. And basically to describe what that is, it’s like lawn surfing you know constant movement – hips, feet all shaking and moving. I’m just trying to find out the benefits of this type of… I don’t wanna say exercise, but I do feel fatigue at the end of the day. And for training for marathon, how can I incorporate what I’m doing? Loved the show, look forward to hearing the answer. Thanks!

Brock:  Lawn-surfing, I like it!

Ben:  Hmm, yeah, we used to have one of those like seated lawn mowers when I was growing up. You seen one of those like tractor lawn mowers?

Brock:  Yeah, yeah, we have one of those. In the farm, we used to chase each other around it.

Ben:  Yeah, my brother and I drove it off a cliff and it rolled and rolled and it was like a smoking pile of metal at the bottom of a ditch so, we had to start pushing the lawn mower. Anyway, when I first got my lawn in the house that I’m in now I thought I was gonna get super duper fit and I got one of those lawn mowers, it’s like powered by humans. You like push it and I felt that I was just gonna get buff by mowing my lawn, using this fancy lawn mower and it took me like two hours to do my tiny little front lawn and I realized after that, that’s it’s not worth it.

[0:55:06.4]

Because it actually didn’t work-out mode, it was just like a really, really bad, bad haircut when I finished up so…

Brock:  Didn’t you hire a neighbor kid now to do your lawn?

Ben:  yeah, I do. I’ve got this guy who comes in and mows and it works out well. So anyways though as far as these standing lawn mowers, this reminds me of a vibration platform. So, whole body vibration I mean that was invented by the Russian cosmonauts like back in the 60’s to do things like strength in the immune system and complex lymph fluid to help to maintain bone density and rebuild bone density on people after they come off the cosmo equipment up in the skies. They gave them this vibration platforms to rebuild bone density much more quickly; it can help you recover faster if you stand on it in between workouts; it can help to enhance brain function really interesting study on release of brain drive neurotrophic factor and brain-building hormones in the use of whole body vibration therapy. So it’s pretty cool I mean you can use it as almost like a way to preempt the body for things like squats or deadlifts or something like that; like you’d stand on a vibration platform and get off and do the squats. The same thing for running, they found that when it’s used prior to running intervals that running economy improves as does plantarflexion force and dorsiflexion force which influences like the amount of distance that you’re able to travel with each step. So it can be used as kind of like a pre-workout… you could mow your lawn before you go on a run. Honestly though, this seems like a really functional way to like, you could go and buy a vibration platform like you know, Dave Asprey’s got his bulletproof vibe which is kinda like a plain-jane vibe platform with no bells and whistles but it’s just kinda, you know, you stand on it and it does the job.

Brock:  Aren’t those like $10,000 though?

Ben:  No, it’s like a thousand bucks, I think. So you can get something like that and you could also just get a standing lawn mower and kill two birds at one stone. I would definitely take fatigue into account though for you spending all day on this thing like I would be doing a compression and wear compression tights while you’re using it. I would be using inversion like using other yoga inversion poses or literally like an inversion table after a day of riding on that lawn mower to help drain blood from the legs. I would consider like a hydrostatic pressure combined with cool so that means like finding a really cold bottle of water… body, body of water it’s gonna take you a little long time dipping each toe individually into a bottle. But a really cold body of water, jump in the bath tub with Brock and surf the internet with him. But basically, figure out a way to combine water with pressure that will really help to kinda pump your legs out. They also of course make this form like gravity boots and like the normatec boots, and the spendy boot systems that will like pump and circulate air in and out of your legs as you really wanna recover a lot faster which at Paleo FX there is this ex-Olympic skier, ex-like Cross Fit high level masters female competitor named Eva T. And she talked about how, what the best ski teams in the world do now is they do not compete fitness, they compete for recovery – meaning, that the best teams are dumping all their money into how to beat out the other teams when it comes to recovery. I kinda like that idea of the new finish-up workout like especially if you’re like me, for example: like I wanna get really good at the sport that I’m doing right now, which is partner racing and I know that and like, you know Hunter and I talked about this in the recent Obstacle Dominator podcast, you know guys out there they’re doing altitude training, they’re doing multiple Cross Fits workouts a week, they’re running hard, they’re training hard, sleeping in altitude tents, doing all these things that definitely put fitness and  definitely breakdown the body and will make you fitter as long as you lie yourself to recover. And I think one advantage that I have is that I know a lot about recovery and I can out-compete a lot of people when it comes to lying on the couch… I don’t wanna sound like “that’s what it all takes” it’s like some people overdo it then some people will be like you know, they’ll push their grocery shopping carts through whole foods piling their grocery shopping cart for all detox supplements and go home and do yoga and maybe dip into the pain cave once a week for their interval workout and that’s like the other side of things. That’s like expecting food and herbs and supplements to do all the work for you. Like… I’m not proposing that, what I am saying is that…

[1:00:01.2]

if you’re a serious athlete, just like put yourself in that mindset of not just putting in a hard work but also see if you can out-compete your competitors when it comes to out-smarting them from a recovery standpoint. So, you know whether you’re competing for riding lawn mowers and mowing as many lawns as the other neighbor kids or competing for obstacle racing, so I would leave Jeff with that.

Brock:  I had an interesting conversation with Brad Kearns about exactly that. How’s he’s predicting that he’s a former pro-triathlete and now he’s a high jumper and speed…

Ben:  He works with Mark Sisson, right?

Brock:  Yeah, so he was talking about how he sees in the next like five or ten years, he thinks that like the athletes are gonna train, train, train for like a few days or like ten days in a row and then be in like drug-induced coma for like three days. And then they’ll wake up from that and then train, train, train like really hard.

Ben:  There’s a movie I watched about that one like would just like throw this guy like this clay-like isolation like this clay-bath, Epson salts bath; isolation chamber like helium and then wake up on like this bowl of wounds will be closed and everything. I forget the name of the movie, it was like science fiction oh yeah, kinda the same idea you know, there are people doing that now like serious athletes or they’re like on the recovery day they’ll go like this footation chambers and spend an hour and a half in like sensory depth with magnesium salts you know and it’s crazy. Honestly, like just for you who just listened in I know we’re going on now about this and journeying on, but that’s one of the reasons that I do this podcast and that I like to run my inner circle is because I freaking love studying this stuff and finding out about it; figuring out if it works; testing it out in the trenches and then bringing it to you. And so I promise that if you keep listening I will keep doing that, so there you go.

Brock:  And if you keep listening you could also spread the love by going to bengreenfieldfitness.com/love.

Ben:  That’s right and when you do visit bengreenfieldfitness.com/love that’s where you can spread the word to all of your friends. The other thing that you can do is you can leave us a review on iTunes and if you do that, you not only get the nice, warm-feeling inside of having spread out the news to your friends but you’ll also get some Swag…

Brock:  Swag.

Ben:  Swag BPA-free water bottle, guilt-free that you can sip your favorite beverage from your Ben Greenfield Fitness beanie and also your tech t-shirt that automatically makes you look sexy especially if you wear with your sweat encrusted scrunchie and we will mail all of that.

Brock:  I got a new idea for another piece of gear!

Ben:  I do too. I’ll just start having just a word Ben Greenfield Fitness scrunchies and will send them out to our …

Brock:  The beanies!

Ben:  testosterone-deprived listeners.

Brock:  All of the beanies!

Ben:  Yeah! So anyways, leave a review on iTunes, if you read your review on the show like we’re about to do, we’ll send you that. What do you got Brock?

Brock:  It looks like the name of this person is actually some sort of advertisement for something…I recommend Tap and Track…

Ben:  Tap and Track.

Brock:  Yeah. I’m off to Google it afterwards but…

Ben:  Tap and Track is a calorie counter. So it’s like advertising while leaving his review, interesting. That’s cool.

Brock:  Nice. I like his  mocksie.

Ben:  That’s cool.

Brock:  Okay, he says or she: “Ben Greenfield is a fairly knowledgeable guy! His topics are interesting, helpful, and useful. I’m so thankful that someone mentioned the pronunciation of “segue”, not “sedgue”. That was starting to really irk me, other words that need to be pronounced correctly: cytokines, biotin, and butyrate.” Now how do you say those? I thought you pronounce those correctly?

Ben:  Pretty much how you just add them is correct and if it’s not, it should be.

Brock:  Yeah, okay so we’re on the same page as far as those are pronounced. But it continues: “Ben is bright, but sounds less bright when he pronounces words incorrectly. Otherwise, this is a great show and I get excited when I see that there’s a new show. Keep it up!”

Ben:  Hmm, yeah. So like I mentioned last week I do a lot of reading but I don’t do a lot of taking and I don’t get out much. So I do things like pronounce “mise-led” or pronounce pronounce “mis-led” as “mise-led”; then I pronounce “autophagy” as “autophegy”; and sometimes I pronounce…

Brock:  I’ve heard serious smart people say “autophagy” as well, which actually kinda make sense.

Ben:  Yeah. So anyways, my apologies if I mispronounced stuff, maybe we should start calling them Tape and Trake. Tape and Trake?

Brock:  Uhmm.

Ben:  Anyways though, I will try to look-up pronunciations if anybody has some kind of a pronunciation website or something that can help me out, that would be great. But I make no promises because I literally no bookworm and ended up reading words more than I end up pronouncing words and that’s just the way that I am. And I apologize but you just have to accept me for what I am.

[1:05:13.7]

Brock:  They do! We love you just the way you are, Ben. You are a smart, handsome, strong young man.

Ben:  Okay. I leave folks with this. Hey Terran!

Brock:  People like you…

Ben:  My son just walk in, “Terran, come here.” We’re doing a podcast right now and can you tell people what you did the other day? How you build your endurance? You can talk to the microphone and tell people how you build your endurance. Come on up here. Terran do the six-mile hike the other day in a hundred degrees.

Brock:  Woah!

Ben:  Tell them. Tell them how you did that, Terran. Speak into the microphone right here. Go ahead.

Terran:  I don’t really know how I did it.

Ben:  You don’t know how you did it? How do you get stronger? How do you build endurance? How do you get stronger? What do you do?

Terran:  I do hikes.

Ben:  You do hikes?

Terran:  Yeah.

Ben:  Yeah, and what do they do to you?

Terran:  It get me stronger.

Ben:  They get you stronger? And what is your favorite part about hiking?

Terran:  Going down the hills.

Ben:  Going down the hills? Yeah, me too. Alright, thanks for those huge pulse of knowledge, dude!

Brock:  Thanks Terran!

Ben:  Yeah, thanks! Alright, so that was the part of the show where the host has his kid on because he thinks it’s cute but actually contributes nothing to the conversation.

Brock:  Perhaps the audiences’ heart just melted and the other half just turned us off.

Ben: Alright, well thanks for listening in. We’ll put the show notes over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/288. Check those out and there you can read the studies about everything from scrunchies to the sweet beat heart-rate monitoring. And until next week! Have a healthy week!

Visit bengreenfieldfitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition, and performance advice.

[END]

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 July 16, 2014 Podcast: 5 Ways To Get Fit With an iTunes Gift Card, How To Workout If Your Hands Are Broken, Why A Vegan Diet Helped Bill Clinton, Natural Remedies for Alopecia, and Standing Lawn Mower Fitness.

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+.

• I love crazy Kickstarters – can women’s sweat boost dude’s testosterone?
• Yet another use for coffee: flour.
• 18 Ingredients That Sound Dangerous, But Aren’t.

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Special Announcements:

The Rock Star Triathlete Academy has relaunched with a lifestyle membership card! Click here for all details.

Check out the Ironman Sports Medicine conference in October during Ironman Hawaii. Ben will be speaking on nutrition myths and alternative methods of fueling Ironman.

Go ask your burning Obstacle Racing questions at http://www.ObstacleDominator.com for the brand new Obstacle Dominator podcast.

Grab this Official Ben Greenfield Fitness Gear package that comes with a tech shirt, a beanie and a water bottle.

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, deciphered, edited and sometimes read by Brock Skywalker Armstrong, the Podcast Sidekick and Audio Ninja.

5 Ways To Get Fit With an iTunes Gift Card

Tim asks: He was given a VERY generous gift of a $1000 gift card for iTunes from one of his customers. He wants to know what we would spend it on. What health, wellness or fitness apps – high end or low end – would we buy?

In my response I recommend:
–SweetBeat HRV Monitoring
–White Noise App
–Say It, Mail It Recorder
–SafariFit
–All Ben Greenfield books on iTunes

How To Workout If Your Hands Are Broken

Lee asks: Two weeks ago he broke both of his hands in a bicycle accident (went over the handlebars) and is now looking for ways to exercise and stay in shape. He is a triathlete who also lift weights, rock climbs and plays racquetball – all things that involve grip strength which he no longer has.

In my response I recommend:
-Leg exercises and even Zercher squats
-Flies, pullovers, cables
-Contralateral training
–Compex EMS

Why A Vegan Diet Helped Bill Clinton

Bob asks: He wants to know why people like Bill Clinton and George W. Bush seem to have health improvements after they switch from a meat based diet to a vegan or vegetarian diet.  Why do you think that happens?

In my response I recommend:
-My book chapter on How to Customize Your Diet

Natural Remedies for Alopecia

Eyebrows asks: He recently ran his first marathon. While he was training he lost his eyebrows and was diagnosed with alopecia. The doc said it was likely from the stress of training for the race but he topped out at 35 miles per week so he doesn’t think the training caused it. Right now he is getting shots every month to stimulate hair growth (seems like a band aid solution) but is looking for other ways to deal with the autoimmune problem. He eats mostly paleo but with a few carbs and some dairy.

In my response I recommend:
–Paleo Auotimmune diet
–ProstElan

Standing Lawn Mower Fitness

Jeff asks: He has a unique standing workstation which is attached to a large commercial mower. It’s like lawn surfing. He is in constant movement – hips, knees and feet all moving and shaking. How would he take this kind of “exercise” (he does feel fatigued at the end of the day) into account when training for a marathon?

In my response I recommend:
-Compression
-Inversion
-Vibration
–Whole Body Vibration Platform

Read more https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2014/07/288-why-a-vegan-diet-helped-bill-clinton-best-fitness-phone-apps-standing-lawn-mowers/