April 2, 2015
Podcast #314 from https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2015/04/314-is-eating-insects-healthy-should-kids-run-long-distances-how-to-get-fit-with-a-sauna/
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Introduction: In this episode of the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast: Is Eating Insects Healthy, What Does It Mean When Joints Pop, Why You Get Cold Hands And Feet, Should Kids Run long Distances, Natural Remedies for Osgood Schlatters, How To Get Fit With A Sauna and much more!
Welcome to the bengreenfieldfitness podcast. We provide you with everything you need to know for total performance, fat loss, recovery, digestion, sleep, brain, and hormone optimization. So whether you’re an Ironman tri athlete, or you’re just wanna shed a few pounds, get ready for non-run-of-the-mill, cutting edge content from bengreenfieldfitness.com.
Brock: Mmm, you smell beautiful!
Ben: Mmm-hmm.
Brock: You smell very outdoorsy.
Ben: Piney. Woodsy.
Brock: I am piney.
Ben: Then not to be confused with gamy.
Brock: Yes. The opposite.
Ben: I actually do – not only do I smell like a pine tree, but my entire office smells like a pine tree because I am cold-aired defusing evergreen essential oil into my office. I understand that evergreen essential oil can actually decrease your cortisol probably in the same way – remember when I interviewed Evan Brand?
Brock: Uhmm.
Ben: A few weeks ago we talked about forest bathing?
Brock: Yeah.
Ben: And how this concept of forest bathing, there’s even a fancy Japanese named for the…called – I believe it is Shinrin-yoku.
Brock: Uh-hmm.
Ben: Do – was my accent good?
Brock: I think so. I’m very heavily immersed in the Japanese culture…
Ben: Yes.
Brock: I believe you pronounced that perfectly.
Ben: Well, it’s possible that perhaps some of the same compounds that you’re exposed to when forest bathing to decrease cortisol, may also be getting defused into the air when you are defusing essential oils like evergreens. So those are two new things I’ve been trying out for stress: defusing evergreen essential oil and then also rubbing another type of wood oil called syprus oil into the bottom of my feet. So I’m just going…
Brock: Syprus or cyprus?
Ben: …wild with my essential oils over here. I don’t know if it’s syprus or cyprus, actually.
Brock: But the Cyprus, is a type of tree. Syrpus is – I don’t know.
Ben: A name. A Persian name.
Brock: Oh, probably. Perhaps. Well I – I find it odd, like I live in downtown. I’m surrounded by tall buildings and I’m surrounded by people and surrounded by everything, so I can’t get to the forest very easily but isn’t the forest like right outside your door? Can’t you just go in forest field for free?
Ben: Yes, I probably could just go rub my nose up and down the trees ten feet outside my door and I’d be good, but I think it’s much more biohacky to colder defuse evergreen essential oils into my office.
Brock: Fair enough.
Ben: Yes.
Brock: I did go out on balcony this morning even though I’m surrounded by tall buildings and with only my sweat pants on and did some cold yoga. It’s finally warming up here in Toronto that I was able to go outside without my parka, without my winter boots, without mitts and stuff and actually enjoy being outside.
Ben: Were you wearing…
Brock: So it’s cool!
Ben: anything?
Brock: I was wearing sweat pants. That’s all.
Ben: Okay, got it. Because I did actually tweet earlier this week about how one of my key workouts was I did some – some cold thermogenesis called ‘soaking’ in the nude in my little cold pool out in the forest and then I wandered through the forest air-drying myself so that I would maintain a little bit of coldness so…
Brock: And the squirrels were all interested in you, ensuring their nuts.
Ben: I’m wandering nude about the forest, yes. Let’s go ahead and get into today’s podcast before this thing…
Brock: No more.
Ben: …just really takes downslide.
News Flashes:
Brock: While you’re protecting you’re nuts from the forest creatures, you were also busy on twitter.com/bengreenfield. Putting out some pretty – pretty interesting news flashes this week and nothing…
Ben: That’s right.
Brock: …nothing really stirred up the aire of too many of our followers.
Ben: No, and of course I can always tweet even when wandering nude through the forest.
Brock: Uhmm-hmm.
Ben: So I did find some interesting things this week. For example, I don’t know if you heard about this, Brock. But there was a new study on saunas and what they reported in the news was that saunas could have the same effect as EPO also known as blood doping which is, the last time I checked, more illegal in most sports than sitting in a sauna is.
Brock: Yes.
Ben: So what the study showed was that, by visiting a sauna after a workout,
[0:05:03.9]
by actually sitting in a dry sauna for about 30 minutes after the main workout of the day, these endurance athletes were able to build a higher number of red blood cells and had an increase in their plasma that was very similar to what they would get if they were blood doping. And the really interesting thing about this one is that they – they did things like they tested their 5k times and found they were actually faster – and it was quite interesting. So of course the trick here is that they were sitting in a sauna after their workout.
Brock: Hmm, okay.
Ben: Which is…
Brock: So you workout really hard, go sit in a sauna for what was it? Thirty minutes, I think?
Ben: Yeah and if – if anyone has ever tried going into a sauna for 30 minutes like a really good, dry sauna after your workout – you’re way, way hotter than you would normally be.
Brock: Yeah. We have another chance to actually bring your core temperature back down so you’re just compounding your core temperature being raised with – what is this, I think it was like 9 degrees Celsius was the core temperature that was resulted?
Ben: Yeah, and so it’s basically like subjecting yourself to like a native American sweat lodge right after your workout.
Brock: So you start seeing your vision animal, your courage animal.
Ben: A squirrel.
Brock: Does Johnny Cash has a fox?
Ben: And actually, Mark’s Daily Apple this week had a really good article about a lot of the – the benefits of sauna and what actually happens in terms of oxidative stress and increased anti-oxidant capacity, improved insulin sensitivity, increased growth hormone, increased protein synthesis which helps with muscle growth and a lot of really cool things so, we’ll link to that article as well. But of course, the other interesting part of that is the detox effect through the sweat or the potential detox effect. So two interesting articles on saunas this week.
Brock: I thought it was interesting that Mark Sisson pointed out that if you can actually get some toxins out through your tears…
Ben: Mmm-hmm.
Brock: I think I’m gonna start just like, instead of going saunas and just gonna make myself cry for like a half hour every day to get my – get my toxins out of my body.
Ben: Yeah, exactly.
Brock: Sound like fun?
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: Doesn’t sound like fun? Screw you, Greenfield! It sounds like fun!
Ben: So, those of you listening carefully may have noticed that my sanity seem to be dropping just little bit there of what to you, the listener, might seem like just a minute ago. But was in fact, one day ago.
Brock: And in 27 hours ago.
Ben: You may also noticed that this podcast number, what is this? 314?
Brock: 314.
Ben: Yeah, was getting released a day late and there’s actually a very good reason for that. You may want even hit rewind and go back and listen after you hear me tell you about what actually happened. So, this Monday, if you’re listening to this podcast at the time that it comes out – this Monday, we are releasing on bengreenfieldfitness.com a really well researched article that I co-penned with a PhD on the effects of marijuana on exercise performance. And as a part of that article, we delved into the type of edible recipes that a lot of like MMA fighters and Ironman triathletes and folks are using these days to actually enhance performance. And you know, the article goes into a lot of the science and really delves more deeply into the dosage and things like that, but the ultimate take away is it – it comes out to somewhere between about depending on your size, five to fifteen, maximum of twenty milligrams of what’s called THC of the more slightly psychoactive component of marijuana to actually induce a potential performance enhancing effect even though you need to read the article coming this Monday to learn about some of the pros and some of the cons; some of the sporting situations in it which would be appropriate and some of which it wouldn’t be appropriate. But ultimately…
Brock: Yeah and of course it’s only appropriate in the States and in the countries that this is legal, we’re not…
Ben: Of course.
Brock: …by any means saying that you should go out and break the law to try this.
Ben: Yeah and there’s you know – there’s water and you saw the restrictions, in NCAA restrictions on using all sorts of considerations, but anyways, as part of immersive journalism, I did indeed make one of the exact recipes that you’ll find in that article. But as I am prone to do as a human being, I messed up a little bit on the actual dosage concentration of…
Brock: This is the same guy who put 2 tablespoons of bicarbonate soda into his water when it’s supposed to be a teaspoon.
[0:10:01.2]
Ben: Yes. So basically about an hour prior to what you were listening to about five minutes ago, I took what was equal to 250 milligrams of THC.
Brock: So more than ten times what you were supposed to take?
Ben: Yes, the upper legal limit in any edible solvent for example, the state of Colorado is 100 milligrams, the approximate level needed for any type of performance enhancing effect is 10 to 15 milligrams like I mentioned. So basically you know, again about 5 minutes ago at the time you the listener will listening in and I was beginning to sway and to get pretty close to losing consciousness and I transported myself into the bedroom where I remain until about midnight last night, mostly just working and getting things done and trying to be productive while I was knocked extremely hard on my ass. And interestingly, I was telling Brock about this. I’ll put a report on this soon as well. I was at least conscious enough to strap a heart rate monitor on myself and to start up my heart rate variability app. So I’ve got full sympathetic and parasympathetic and heart rate variability and heart rate and respiration data…
Brock: That’s awesome.
Ben: …from about a – you know, a multi-hour very bad THC induced trip. So…
Brock: I’m super curious to see that because you had that conversation with Evan on the podcast a few weeks ago where you guys actually dove into the idea that THC – even though it relaxes you, it actually raises cortisol.
Ben: Mmm-hmm. Yeah.
Brock: So I’d be really curious to see what it’s doing to your parasympathetic nervous system as well.
Ben: Yeah, in a nutshell I can tell you it destroy – I’ll already gave you the file, destroyed my heart rate variability. I had almost had no – no nervous system feedback to the pacemakers cells of my heart which is why a lot of times people who do what I did, if they are prone to heart attacks, will have a heart attack during that time because you lose a lot of you, even your subconscious electrical control of the heart so.
Brock: So not only was it not fun and not productive, it was very dangerous.
Ben: Yeah, but it was interesting and again like you know, with this show, with all of my endeavors to find out what works and what doesn’t for people, you know I’m totally transparent and yeah. I mean, I’ll admit that I messed up and interestingly you actually got to hear the beginnings of that mess up you know, as they materialize live on the show. So there you go, you can press the rewind button and realized that for about the first 10 minutes or whatever of the show, I was high as a freaking kite and…
Brock: Slow-ly sliding down then…
Ben: Yeah, and sliding into dangerous territory, really. Okay. So ultimately, let’s go ahead and climb out of that “red a hole” and jump into the second news flash of the day. And this one is about…
Brock: All right. Back on track.
Ben: – is about sleep. That’s right, back on track. How people sleep when they’re not surrounded by electronics? This was an article on Medium that I thought was very interesting because they go into a sleepy village over Brazil where they actually aren’t surrounded by electronics. And what they found was that residence tend to naturally sleep and rise with the setting of the sun. They tend to fall asleep around 9:20 or so and wake up around 6:30 compared with say like the average in the hyper-connected city of London, where they go to bed close to midnight and then wake up around 8:30am – that’s on average. So what they found was that there was a very strong link with what the researchers in the study called the ‘solar rhythm’ when you don’t have access to a multitude of electronic devices at night. And anyone who’s been camping kinda knows this intuitively, right? Any anyone who’s worn blue light blocking sunglasses at night or installed flux on their computer or their smart phone to decrease blue light exposure, also notices that you fall asleep more easily and you know, my case may wife gets mad at me sometimes ‘cause I’ll put on my glasses before watch a movie at night and I fall asleep halfway through the movie. You know, ultimately I think that this is interesting, but my conundrum here is that it’s very difficult to step away from a world that kind of continuous to roll along on after the hours of sunset and you know, our social lives, our electronic lives, our work lives, in many cases now, they simply don’t shut down as they would if we were like living in a middle of sleepy village in rural Brazil. So even though I think the study is interesting, I think the practical aspects of this would not necessarily be to you know, move to a place where you can live with ideal circadian rhythms set by the star and the sun and the moon, but to instead at least hack your environment as much as possible you know. Install the flux in a smartphone and buy the blue light blocking glasses, and do some of these things that can mitigate some of these effects.
Brock: That’s why the hacks are cool and important.
Ben: That’s right. That’s a great summary, Brock.
[0:15:03.0]
Brock: Thanks, yeah. I worked on that the whole time you were talking.
Ben: Something a little bit more light-hearted. You thought carefully about that one, huh?
Brock: Mmm-hmm.
Ben: Something a little bit more light-hearted for all of you low-carbers out there who have maybe been avoiding the chocolate. They actually did a study that found that chocolate with high cocoa content, in this case 81% plus acted as a weight loss accelerator. And get this, they actually took a group of people eating a low carb diet and they had one group eat chocolate as part of their low carb diet – specifically 42 grams a day which is not a small amount of chocolate. And, then they has another group eat no chocolate but also continue on a low carb diet. What they found was that the chocolate intervention group and you would of course…
Brock: The chocolate intervention…
Ben: …be tapping your heel together if you happen to be the first person in the study who got to be part of the chocolate intervention group. They had the easiest and the most successful weight-loss and even though the researchers noted that there was a slight delay in how long it took them to start losing weight, they appeared to have longer term weight-loss that based off of their surveys of these folks was easier and more successful when chocolate was added to the low-carb diet versus the non-chocolate low-carb dieters. And when we look at at low-carb right, like in 42 grams of chocolate, not all of the 42 gram portion chocolate is carbohydrates, right?
Brock: Yeah.
Ben: So typically you’re looking anywhere from 30 to 50% of that being comprised of carbohydrates or sugars and so, when you consider the fact that most low-carb diets, you get the benefits of low-carb by kinda being in that anywhere depending on your physical activity levels 50 to a 150 grams of carbohydrates per day. You know that bar of chocolate is kind of a drop-in-a-bucket you know, especially if you time it in like a post-workout scenario when you’re really going to be insulin sensitive anyways. And it turns out based on the study, which we’ll link to a show notes ‘cause that’s actually pretty interesting, a chocolate can be your weight-loss friend.
Brock: Nice! I calculated that roughly in my head that’ll be a six – a sixth of my carbs for the day.
Ben: Yes, 1/6th of your carbs for the day can be chocolate, the rest can be a wine and marijuana-infused smoothies.
Special Announcements:
Ben: Brock, can you hear me stroking my chin right now?
Brock: I can’t.
Ben: That’s right.
Brock: It sounds smooth… as a baby’s butt.
Ben: It’s smooth as a baby’s butt and the reason for that is because, I have been shaving with our sponsor for today’s show a shaving equipment – Harrys.
Brock: Harrys.
Ben: And you wanna know something interesting before I let you know about Harrys, I actually – when I quit, I think I mentioned this a couple weeks ago, maybe on this podcast or another podcast – but once I quit, hard and heavy Ironman training and I started: A. eating more carbohydrates meaning not doing so much of like the strict ketosis thing, and then, B. doing essentially more lifting, more high intensity intervals, and less chronic cardio, I found I had to start shaving more.
Brock: Hmm!
Ben: And I believe that’s also because and I have the blood results from this. My testosterone went up by about 300 points…
Brock: Nice.
Ben: …once I stopped hard and heavy training for Ironman. And then I went to my Teen Timex Camp, I guess it was almost three weeks ago now, and did quite a bit of endurance training there and almost kinda got like thrust back on the endurance training bandwagon like I’ve been running, like I actually ran a lot last week. I did almost a 50 mile week last week which for me is a decent amount of running, and have just been doing more cardio. It’s just – it’s just something I’ve been doing. I have been doing as much of the weights and I’ve noticed suddenly and I haven’t got a blood testosterone measurement this time around, but I’ve had the shave a lot less and I think that there is definitely some kind of a link between the rate at which facial hair grows and your testosterone levels or the rate that which facial hair grows and how much of a potentially over-trained or over-reached state of training that you’re in. Just a personal hypothesis.
Brock: Hmm, that explains why I can actually braid my beard at this point.
Ben: Yes, exactly. It’s got testosterone coming out of your eyeballs. There are birds growing in your beard – bird nests in your beard.
Brock: In search, I thought I got another.
Ben: Yeah. Anyways though, Harrys – Harrys is this company that bought a blade factory in Germany and they’ve been crafting some of the world’s highest quality blades in that factory for nearly a century and now Harrys took it over…
[0:20:03.3]
…and they cut out the middleman, they gave you this amazing shave in a fraction price of what drugstore brands give you and so you can either: A. get the cheapo, blue, plastic, disposable shaving blade from Walgreens or CVS or wherever else you shop for blades or you can go to harrys.com and get something that looks like a freaking conversation piece that you’d put on your coffee table, but the same price. If you use code BEN, you save even more, you save 5 bucks. So…
Brock: I’d say if you keep razor on the coffee table, I’m not coming over for coffee, ever. That’s kinda gross.
Ben: It’s just hair, it’s just hair – facial hair that. So harrys.com and use five dollar code BEN. What else do we have for you in these special announcements? Well here is something cool, that I haven’t mentioned before on the show, this is Memorial Day weekend and this is really cool. It’s a custom father-son wilderness survival program. So this is a chance for you, if you’re listening in with your son or supposed with your father, depending on your age to come out to the mountains near my home. But now I’m away from my home. We’re gonna do with myself and my two sons and there’s also open to five other father-son pairs – this is one of the first place I’ve actually announced this for a total wilderness survival camp in which we’re gonna learn everything from like making natural fire, to building bows and arrows, to sleeping in a natural shelters, to traditional hunting and gathering techniques; we’re gonna track wild animals, we’re gonna learn about how to use the sun and the moon and the stars to navigate, we’re gonna be playing like full on like day-long games of capture the flag where we’ll learn how to track and scout and stock and sprint and it’s gonna be really cool. So it’s May 26th thru May – no, May 22nd thru May 26th and I know it can be hard to get away for that period of time, but when you consider the intense bonding experience that this is gonna be, I think that this is gonna be really cool camp. I’m signed up for with my two kids and I just think it’s gonna be really cool so.
Brock: I was gonna come with my dad but I think his rascal would scare all the wilderness away.
Ben: (chuckles) His rascal?
Brock: Yeah. You know those little motorized scooter things?
Ben: Oh, does he? Oh, he…
Brock: Yeah.
Ben: Right.
Brock: My dad’s a big guy.
Ben: Yeah, okay. And well there are certainly a few other special announcements, if you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/314: one that I wanted to point out to you listening in because it’s relatively timely, is that this is probably about the last week that you’ll be able to get into the New Media Expo in Vegas – that’s where they’re doing the Podcast Awards Shows. It culminates, I actually don’t even know if anyone involved with the New Media Expo knows this or is talking about it – except me of course, it culminates with the Vegas Race down there in Spartan. So you can go and come to this expo design for you to learn how to become a better blogger, podcaster, video content creator like if you do anything content based online, this is like the place to be. But then also you get to race a Spartan too. So you can go to this bengreenfieldfitness.com/nmx as in New Media Expo, go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/nmx and you can use the code: bgreenfield20 to get 20% off that expo. Come see me, come hang-out in Vegas, everybody knows that not only do I love the forest and the trees, but I also love walking around the strip watching everyone drinking giant alcoholic drinks out of their 24-ounce super colorful glasses with the curly straws, so you had another reason to come to Vegas.
Brock: Do people really do that?
Ben: Mmm-hmm.
Brock: Oh man.
Ben: Dressed up like storm troopers.
Listener Q & A:
Lizzie: Hi Ben and Brock! My name is Lizzie, I’m from North Carolina and a huge fan of the podcast. I have a question about popping your back and knees, I guess. I was wondering I guess, first off, what causes the popping sound? Sometimes it’s more of a crunching kinda grinding sound then other times it’s like just a release, I guess. And is it normal that my knees and hips pop a lot after a long run and especially a long bike ride? I feel like I’m very easily able to pop my back and I was wondering if that was normal. Would love to know your thoughts on popping knees and backs, thanks!
Brock: As I get older, more and more things pop and click and grind and crack and pop.
Ben: Mmm-hmm, yeah. You like the cereal. What’s the cereal?
Brock & Ben: ‘Snap, Crackle and Pop’.
[0:25:02]
Ben: With the little rice things. Yeah. I just don’t remember when I was a kid. I used to pour that and I would always put my ear down to it and see if it snapped, crackled and popped. And I found that the generic store bought brand that my parents would get sometimes just to save money versus buying like the Rice Krispies brand, it always gave a less than satisfactory snap, crackle and pop. I just remembered that being pissed that we could not get the real stuff and we had the “Greenfields had to eat the generic stuff that didn’t quite snap, crackle and pop like the other”.
Brock: This is what Ben talks to his therapist about every Wednesday.
Ben: Okay. So as far as the Snap, Crackle and Pop, it’s pretty straightforward, really. So first we’ve got the snap and you’ll generally hear about this with something like the snapping hips syndrome or the hip joint. And typically, what you’re hearing is your tendon snapping across your hipbones. And sometimes it can hurt and sometimes not, right? Sometimes that can actually create friction and irritation and a lot of times that can be accompanied by pain. The number one reason that I found that hips tend to snap is because of a lack of joint mobility in the hip, particularly two issues: tight hip flexors and a locked sacroiliac joint. So the tight hip flexors, that’s an easy move, you can go use doctor Google and look up ‘hip openers’ you know, and start to work in like yoga-based hip openers so that your hip flexors are not immobile to the point where those tendons are – are snapping across those big hip bones. And then as far as the sacroiliac joint goes, it’s something that’s kinda hard to self-adjust. There are some YouTube videos – you go YouTube and you type in ‘self adjust SI joint’, there are some folks doing it – I’ve tried it myself in occasion will get a pop and sometimes not. But a chiropractic doc who knows what they’re doing cannot only analyze your SI joints and look at things like leg-length discrepancies and lack of mobility that that could be causing but can also adjust that pretty easily. And then the trick for you, once you’ve adjusted your SI joint, is to make sure that it doesn’t slip back into a maladjusted state and the number one reason I’ve had some pretty big conversations about this with one of the better local chiropractic sports physicians here: one of the number one reasons for that is that you’re gluts get turned off. Once your gluts get turned off it’s very easy for your SI joint to come to slip back into that locked state and so not only do you wanna get the SI joint adjusted but you wanna make sure that you’re doing things like not keeping your butt turned off by sitting for long periods of time, doing exercises like deadlifts and single leg deadlifts and kick outs, some things that – that stimulate the butt. Or I suppose even, you could try this for keeping your butt turned on, I wonder if anyone’s tried this: electrodes – you can use like an electro steam machine and test your butt cheeks to keep your butt turned on even if you had to be sitting during the day. You could still…
Brock: So when I ripped my hamstring, they put electrodes on my butt.
Ben: Uhm, yeah, yeah, yeah! And people wouldn’t even need to know, you could be sitting in that meeting, sitting in a traditional chair or just like everyone else with their butts turned off but your butt would be…
Brock: Turned on!
Ben: That’s right. So we got the snap, we also got the crackle – the crackling like sensation, that one’s never fun, you get that a lot of times like in a back of the knee, you get it in a shoulder blades sometimes.
Brock: Yeah, I’ve seen my shoulders do that.
Ben: Yeah and it’s when – in the shoulders it’s when you get this fibers muscle tissue between your chest bone or your shoulder blade and it turns the smooth glide that should normally be there into a little bit more of a bumpy sensation and that’s often just simply because of one cartilage that’s no longer smooth and the medical term for that is Crepitus. Crepitus.
Brock: Crepitus.
Ben: Yes. Great name for an old man and in a horror flick. Crepitus.
Brock: I was saying as good heavy metal band.
Ben: Possibly a sexually transmitted disease – Crepitus. But anyways, if you get Crepitus, sometimes that can mean you’ve actually worn down the joint, but sometimes it can mean that immobility is for example in the case of the knee, right? Pulling the knee cap back into some are those articular surfaces on the femur and the tibia in causing a Crepitus-like sensation when in fact it’s not because you’ve completely worn out the life of your knee joints, it’s because in that case really, really tight hamstrings accompanied by really, really weak quads can cause that issue. And so in many cases, Crepitus is simply muscular imbalances it’s not a sign that you gonna get something replaced you know, especially once the case of one bone getting pulled into one articulating surface because of immobile or excessively tight, or excessively weak muscle areas. And so, I know that’s painting with the really broad brush I mean we could delve into any number of different joints and talk about the specific imbalances in those joints. But ultimately what you should know is that the first thing you should look at if you’re getting the crackle or the crackling-like sensation is your actual mobility in that specific area.
[0:30:07.9]
And that’s where you get at a book like you know, “Becoming a Supple Leopard” by Kelly Starett is a really good one. You take that area that’s crackling, you flip to the section of that book which is like a cook book for mobility, and you do the exercise in that section of that book and if you’re Crepitus begins to go away, then there’s your answer.
Brock: Nice.
Ben: And if not, you can call the surgeon. So the final noise that you’ll hear is the pop and the pop is something that you know, that’s of course the stereotypical knuckled-joint popping but you’ll also get like the spine joints which are also known as your facet joints – those will pop sometimes as the bones along your spine slightly adjust their positions. And of course your chiropractic doc will do that a lot of the times but, you can do it yourself you know, with inversion tables or with this neck traction devices like I’ve got a neck traction device hanging up in my dining room that you can just basically hang from it, elongates the neck and you get all these popping along the neck and the cervical spine. So the popping is apparently created from within the joint capsule which is this little balloon-like area of space that surrounds your joint and you get pressure changes in the joint fluid. And what specifically happens is that these fluid pressure changes cause gases to release from the joint capsule and that creates a pop. So you could simulate the same thing for example, balloon right? You could fill up a balloon with water, you could shake it around you know, bunch of sounds as the fluid inside the balloon sloshes around and if you release air from the balloon, you’ll hear a pop, and that pop is the fluid pressure change and it’s exactly what’s happening in your joints. And so that’s completely natural for fluid pressure changes to occur and you don’t have to worry necessarily if you – you know, consistently get like a pop in your back that’s something’s wrong with you and you have to go you know, see a chiropractor 14 to 16 times. It simply can mean that there are just normal fluid pressure changes when you wake up at the bed in the morning and things are popping, great; once these fluid pressure changes are normalized, you’re good to go. So those are some of the reasons for the snapping, the crackling and the popping that might be present in your life even if you only have the generic brand of the Rice Krispies.
Daniel: Ben, recently our family has become interested in beginning to farm insects especially crickets. Can you tell me what your experience is with eating bugs, the psychological barriers and how they will apply as a protein and nutrition source especially as an addition to our western diet?
Brock: So when I think about farming insects, the first that comes to mind is keeping a whole bunch of piles of dang around.
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: It’s just me?
Ben: Yeah, you mean to actually grow the insects in.
Brock: Yeah, well to attract them, I suppose.
Ben: Yeah. The first thing that comes to mind for me are some of those old men in black films you know, where…
Brock: Oh, yeah.
Ben: Not only were people insects but they were also eating insects. Ah, so don’t watch that one before you head out to, you know, make something out of a tub of cricket protein powder. But yeah, I mean this is been around for a while and of course a big part that got popularized when the dude who’s selling that cricket protein powder, I believe he was on shark tank and I think…
Brock: Aaah.
Ben: He actually got an investment and I’ve run into these things you know, for example at Paleo FX now they have the EXO Cricket Bars which are actually pretty tasty, I would have to say that I actually recommend the peanut butter and jelly flavor and have yet to find the legs or antenna in there and it doesn’t taste that bad. But this whole idea behind insects there’s this really good book out, it’s called “Edible: An Adventure into the World of Easting Insects and the Last Great Hope to Save the Planet”. Really interesting book about the sustainability of eating insects, I’ll link to that book over in the show notes at bengreenfieldfitness.com/314. But it’s actually got a name, it’s called entomophagy and that’s the idea behind eating the eggs, the larvae, the pupae and the adults of specific insect species. And when you look at the actual protein density of a lot of these species, it turns out that there’s a huge energy input to protein output ratio. So what that means, if you look at livestock, like normal-raised livestock, the ratio of energy input to protein output is about 54:1. When you look at insects, it’s about 4:1, so in other words, a hugely sustainable source of protein energy, calories in general and you know, people are out there doing things like eating crickets, eating grasshoppers, eating June bugs. We actually when I was growing up, we used to have these giant grasshopper almost like you know, from the Old Testament of the scriptures right?
[0:35:08.0]
Like these plagues that came down upon our house you know, like locust – full on locust that would cover the entire house and that would like eat the wooden siding on our home and they eat up our whole garden, and us boys would go outside and we actually figured out that you could fry these things, you could take off their legs, you could pop them in your mouth and they actually didn’t taste half bad. Now, if I had to go back and you know, eat insects again I was really be paying quite a bit of attention to things like you know, herbicides and pesticides in local environment and all those types of things that insects actually get exposed to but…
Brock: And whether or not they were the army of Yahweh.
Ben: Yeah, exactly. Whether or not the actual army of Yahweh attacking the house.
Brock: You may not want to eat those.
Ben: Maybe eating your way out of that situation when have been quite as good as like fleeing for the hills with our shotguns. Anyways though, there are quite a few non-profits out there kinda researching the – the use of insect foods just like therapeutic foods for folks who can’t get their hands on more expensive cuts of beef for example. And there are a lot of environmental benefits as well, potentially to relying upon insects for fuel, like if you look at the production of grasshopper meat, that requires very little water you know, cattle requires thousands and thousands of liters of water to produce the same amount of protein that you can get out of grasshoppers without almost no water at all. And when you look at the actual biomass of insects, you need about ten times more plant nutrients to produce a kilogram of meat compared to what you need to produce just one kilogram of edible insect biomass. So there’s environmental friendliness component as well. And of course, I don’t know how much this stuff costs over once we start to look into the cost of rocket fuel and packaging materials and mark up and all that – that you would need for something like one of this sexy new, you know, cricket protein bars or some other you know, food stuff, popular food stuff like cricket protein powder. But ultimately, just when you look at the raw insects themselves, they’re quite sustainable in terms of a source of food and a lot of people do things like eat you know, June bugs, crickets, grasshoppers, etc. So ultimately, that book is really interesting and I know that you know, in some cultures, insects can be taboo and I guess what I would say to folks in the U.S. who have this taboo gig like reflex to the thought of eating insects, please understand that most of the smoothies that you’re getting from places like Wendy’s and McDonalds actually contain food dyes and fibers made from ground up insects, beetles, etc., so you are already eating them anyways. The other interesting thing is that if you look at the maximum permissible level of insect contamination in food products for humans, it’s pretty shocking like wheat flour, for example, in wheat flour they allow an average of about a 150 or more insect fragments per 100 grams of wheat flour. Or in chocolate, which we were just talking about, you get an average of about 60 or more insect fragments per 100 grams. So I think we’re all eating a lot more insects than we’re aware of anyways and probably canned sweet corn is the most disgusting. In canned sweet corn, you are allowed to have in there as long as you don’t exceed about 12 millimeters and 24 pounds, you can have 2 or 3 millimeter or longer larvae cast skin, larval or cast skin fragments, insects, or insects parts in canned sweet corn. So…
Brock: There you go.
Ben: Just think about that the next time you’re at the barbecue shelving that stuff down into gaping molar.
Brock: I actually found a ladybug in my spinach yesterday.
Ben: Hmm.
Brock: It was delicious.
Sam: Hi Ben, my name is Sam and I’m listening to your Get Fit Guy podcast. Really awesome podcast. Thanks for all of the great tips you’ve been dishing out for the last couple years and I have to phone in question. I am starting where I have the problem of losing my temperatures, body temperature –my hand and my feet and it never used to be a problem back in the days when I was still playing hockey. Now that I stopped, a couple years back I think, I’m starting to get cold hand and cold feet and I was wondering if there’s anything I can do. So, if I walked around barefoot or woof socks that I don’t start getting cold feet right away and is also the same for my hand if I’m outside in the spring and the fall. I don’t really get fast cold hands so I’m looking forward for any answers or any help you can give us or me. Thanks a lot. Bye.
Brock: Sounds like Raynaud’s.
[0:40:01.4]
Ben: Uhmm, could be Raynaud’s. We’ve talked about Raynaud’s on the podcast before, that’s when you’ve got this disorder in which the blood vessels in your hands or your feet overact the cold temperature or stressful situations. My wife gets a little bit of this, she’ll come back from a run and literally have like blue/pale ghostly white hands and feet, even though it can often not even be that cold out. What happens with Raynaud’s is you get this arteries in your fingers or toes that vasospasm or get extreme blood vessel narrowing and constriction that limits the blood supply to those extremities and overtime, like over a lifetime, those arteries thicken and thicken more and that further limits blood flow and so we can get worse as you age. So if you didn’t notice that much when you were younger, you can start to have even more cold exposure sensitivity as you get older.
Brock: And peripheral neuropathy?
Ben: Well Raynaud’s can be caused by things too, like Raynaud’s can be cause by autoimmune diseases like lupus for example, that can cause shrinking blood vessels in the hands and the feet, and basically ‘cause Raynaud’s you know, secondary Raynaud’s rheumatoid arthritis can also cause it. So there are certain things that will aggravate it, there are certain things that can cause very similar effects like smoking for example. Smoking causes blood vessels to constrict so if you’re a chronic smoker, you can find that your hands and your feet are constantly cold or Raynaud’s that you never had to deal with, all of a sudden you have to start dealing with. If you got something like a beta-blocker or some other blood pressure medication that you’ve been on that can also contribute to cold hands and feet. And like I mentioned with autoimmunity, you know a lot of this autoimmune disorders like the eventual distraction of the intestinal villi from too much stress like work stress, emotional stress, relationship stress. Eventually, once you’re unable to digest foods properly and you’ve got undigested protein fragments, crossing into the blood stream that can cause a variety of issues that you never had to deal with before. It’s like, “Oh I was never allergic to say like, Edamame and all of a sudden I can’t eat soy without just feeling like crap and getting eczema on my skin”. Well, you also get a vasospasm of the arteries. I mean, these autoimmune conditions and so sometimes there can be a direct link between the whole stress in the gut-brain connection and getting cold hands and feet. So if you’ve been through a period of intense stress, that also can potentially cause these issues, but there are other things, too. You know, for example of course diabetes you know, we all know that the diabetes can cause both nerve, inflammation as well as blood vessel inflammation and that can cause cold hands and feet. So and again, Type 2 diabetes is something that can happen later on in life you know, when you’ve never had to do with cold hands and feet before all of a sudden you wanna go in for like a post-prandial glucose test – an insulin test and you know, you look at your pancreatic enzyme production and delve into whether or not diabetes might be an issue for you. Anemia, iron-deficiencies specifically is something else that can cause that and so you know, for looking at testing and measuring that be certainly something else to look for. Usually if it’s anemia, it’s accompanied by things like really pale skin and weakness and inability to really throw down hard and especially cardio-vascular workouts, but iron-deficiencies can cause this too so if you test iron and it’s slow that’s another thing to look at. And then of course, the one that you’ll see a lot of people talking about is of course the thyroid and this kind of like autoimmune issues you know, hypothyroidism is something that can set on later on in life, depending on you know, like consistent exposure to high amounts of concentrated wheat germ gluten. Such as you might find in like commercial wheat sources that can eventually do a number on your thyroid even though you live for a very long time and your thyroid is just fine and you gradually get a lot of destruction of thyroid tissue that can eventually start to manifest itself in like you know, sub-clinical hypothyroidism or consistently cold hands and feet and a lot of times, that’s the case. It’s not just your hands and feet like you just kinds get cold right? Like your core is kinda cold and then you start to shiver in situations that you normally wouldn’t shiver in. And of course, hypothyroidism can also be caused by inadequate intake of carbohydrate right? Like the inability of having enough glucose to convert inactive to active thyroid hormone. It can be caused by hyper-cortisolism which can basically keep thyroid hormone from attaching properly to its receptor for it to be actually active. And there’s some other things than can cause hypothyroidism above and beyond just like food allergies, but that’s another thing to look into. And then the last thing would be any be type of peripheral neuropathy or nerve damage – and nerve damage can be a vitamin deficiency or like vitamin B12 would be a biggie, magnesium would be another; nerve damage can also be brought on by diseases like you know,
[0:45:02.9]
MS for example you know, and a lot of times if you’re getting numbness or tingling and burning sensation in your extremities along with this cold you know, you would wanna kinda dive down this peripheral neuropathy route and look in the nerve damage and things of that nature. So you know, like you’re probably realizing this whole cold hands and cold feet issue can be multi-factorial. And then of course there’s just the phrase itself ‘getting cold feet’, right? That’s what you usually say when the bride gets cold feet before her wedding day.
Brock: Isn’t it the groom, I think.
Ben: Is it the groom? I don’t know but either way, I have always wondered where that came. Like, where the whole analogy of getting cold feet actually comes from.
Brock: I think it’s the anxiety reaction you often get kinda clammy and sweaty and then chilly in your extremities.
Ben: Hmm, there you go. I thought maybe it was – it had some interesting story and there were some fascinating playwright lore behind it, but you’re…
Brock: I thought there might be.
Ben: …extremely stripped down psychological explanation is not quite as fun but make sense.
Brock: Sorry.
Sarah: Hey Ben, this is Sarah Hamilton from Houston, Texas. And I recently came across an article in Trail Running magazine about Kids and Ultra Running. And as mom, my kids haven’t been running Ultras, but we have been hiking and running 5 and 10k distances and more just trying to get away from all of the electronics and all of the other things that are frankly, in my opinion, making kids fat and unhealthy. What do you think about this article? Do you really think that getting our kids away from being plugged in is going to make a huge difference? And do you really think that getting kids out in to nature affects their over-all well being? Have a great day, thanks!
Brock: I wish we had some sort of pedometer or something on us and your kids, ‘cause I’d love to see how far I actually went on like our regular Saturday in the summer.
Ben: From the remote control to the Warner Bros. old school cartoon.
Brock: No man, I grew up in the 70’s. My mom actually yelled at me if we came home…
Ben: To the kitchen for cereal? Yeah, I heard…
Brock: It was like, first thing in the morning, get out of the house, if you came back before lunch, you’re yelled at. You basically like ate your food and got back outside, it was – I’m sure I ran an Ultra Marathon at least once a week.
Ben: I grew up on six acres but the entire landscape around me was almost void of any residentially zoned areas anyway, so we just climbed on the barbed wire fence and hike on cattle land for the day. But there is a difference between hiking, stopping, bending on in a creek, chasing a snake…
Brock: Oh yeah.
Ben: …climbing up a boulder or stopping, sitting, eating your little sandwich that you packed in your backpack, walking some more, playing game of chase…
Brock: Getting on the bike.
Ben: …versus counting the pavement for hours on, and or running on a trail for hours on and in the same chronic repetitive motion activity, with the accompanying stress of knowing that you’re actually racing you know, /running from a lion whichever way that you’d want to phrase it. I think that there is a distinct difference between that mileage that is discussed in this article versus the mileage that you get just playing. And so, I don’t really agree with this article, we’ll link to it in the show notes but it’s called “Ultra Running Kids are greater than Ultra Sedentary Kids – Dispelling myths on why kids shouldn’t run ultra-marathons.” So for example, one of the things that the author says is “the most common reason I hear for excluding kids from Ultras is that it is not good for them.” And what he says, and then he says a few things about how this is propagated by medical professionals, blah, blah, blah. But then he says “as a general rule, running is generally better than not running. And running more through a gradual build up, is generally better than running last or running at all. The risk of muscular skeletal cardiac or pulmonary stress are no worse for those running ultra-distances at young ages than the far more common practice of ultra-sedentary lives of ultra-gaming.” I completely disagree with that. The research that is out there on children and endurance sports has come to pretty conclusive findings. For example, when you look at children’s bones and the areas of children’s bones that are vulnerable to injury in their formed of years, their prepubescent years, they do not have the same susceptibility to be able to withstand their repetitive stress of marathon running or marathon training or long chronic repetitive motion training.
[0:50:01.1]
And generally what you’ll find is once you get passed – and this makes sense once you start to think about it, once you get passed a running length in which a child’s glycogen stores would naturally be depleted, okay? So if a kid can store say like, a thousand calories of glycogen on their whole bodies and their burning 500 calories now or running, after about two hours, they’re going to begin to experience some of those deleterious minerals stripping, bone degrading, catabolic type of activities that leave a child’s young body potentially as susceptible to hormonal deficits and through growth plate compression which would mean a retardation of growth and also stress fractures. And then you know, you can look at the other things, for example: kids run with different mechanics, they’ve got shorter legs in relation to their body size and that means they’ve got a diminished ability to be able to absorb impact. And so, that is probably one reason that when you look at young gymnast, right? And I know that’s totally different than trail running but these are still kids who are getting thrown around a lot when they’re kids. Like a lot of other like chronic repetitive impact, they found a lot of growth plate separation in response to that repeated impact and trauma that young gymnast go through. So, you know it’s – and I’ve talked about this in detail before, in talks that I’ve given, etc. Not only do the review articles that out there look at kids running in sports find that training to run a marathon is an inappropriate activity for children when it comes to putting them at increase risk for repetitive stress injuries, but you can say some more things for weight training. Once you draw below right around the weight that you would be able to comfortably lift for about ten repetitions, the amount of compression placed on the growth plate of a child is potentially leaving them prone to growth retardation and compression of the growth plates that’s going to cause a – you know – down the road, some pretty serious biochemical issues. So, I really would have to say that I disagree with this author when it comes to any risks of kids running ultra-distances at young ages being less than say like, having an ultra-sedentary life, so I think neither is good, right? Like I think both are on both ends of the unhealthy spectrum and I’d rather have a kid who gets home from school you know, maybe over the course of playing tag and exploring the forest and running around covers a good 2 to 3 miles and yeah, maybe later on the day, there are inside – whatever playing Angry Birds or StarCraft or whatever stuff kids are playing these days.
Brock: Minecraft. Crazy kids!
Ben: Anyways, I’m a fan of balance and I think that in many cases, you don’t get a lot of balance in ultra-runners. I mean, and I respect the hard-driven personality, the stick-to-itiveness, the perseverance of many in ultra-runner, but at the same time to expose the body to what ultra-runners do in early age is not necessarily healthy. Like you take Michael, forget his name, he might have been listening to the podcast ‘cause you know he listens to some of them. He was on the Spartan cruise, and he did the Spartan in the morning, he raced the Elite male wave – really fast guy, like really fast ultra-runner. And then we were sitting around, our kids were playing on the beach afterwards and I sort of “What you’re doing this afternoon, he’s like, “Well, I think I’m going to – I wanna get running, so I’m gonna try and break the 50k indoor record on the treadmill on the cruise ship.” I’m like, “Are you kidding me?” So, seven p.m. that night when everybody else is at the awards ceremony, he pounds the treadmill for 3 plus hours and goes for the 50k indoor treadmill record. He misses it by a minute, he wakes up the next morning after having slept like two hours, he misses it for a minute so I’m like, “What are you gonna do still Michael?” and he’s like “I’m gonna try and break it again.” And so he’s like back and this was like 3 a.m. the next morning. And you know, that was in addition to you know, running at three other times during that like 48-hour period again like, huge amount of perseverance, stick-to-itiveness, competitive mentality and grit. But at the same time you know, I think that is dangerous especially if the body is still developing to have that mentality of just like run, run, run almost like rat-on-a-wheel type of running. I just think that for kids, the cons out way the pros.
Paul: Hi Ben. I have a question on Osgood Schlatters disease. I’ve had this since I was a teenager, first started around age 14 and I’m now 47.
[0:55:01.2]
I still have problems with my knees regarding Osgood Shlatters, and I was just wondering if you had any ideas for the pain or prevention of this? Thanks a lot.
Ben: Brock, did you purposefully plant these two questions so close together?
Brock: Ah, yeah…I do. I wish I had.
Ben: Osgood Shlatters? ‘Cause Osgood Schlatters is that – that pain right in front of the knee, that a lot of times kids get in relation to activity. And a lot of like crack athlete kids to the ______ [0:55:36.0] of their parents, they all of a sudden can’t do, they can’t jump and they can’t leap and they can’t run and they can’t perform with the level that they were earlier. Like when they were ten or eleven or twelve and a lot of times, it’ll set in when boys and girls are anywhere from like 10 to 16 years old usually as they’re going through that – that growth spurt early in life. And what happens is they’ll start to get pain in the front lower part of their knee. It’s actually where you’re patella ligament, right? Which kinda passes from your knee cap attaches into your tibia where was called your tibial tuberosity, that’s the area on the front of your leg that’s kinda raised. And it’s really interesting how bone in any area that is stressed, has the ability to lay down new boney tissue and that’s why you have what’s called this tube rosier – this bump if you reached down to the front of your leg where you feel your knee cap, we all have this little bump, alright? Where we have patella ligament kinda pulls on that bone, we got a little bit of extra bone forming. But the problem is that with this Osgood Schlatters, you get inflammation of the patella ligament right where that tibial tuberosity is. A lot of times in kids who are really super-duper active, that tibial tuberosity almost grows at a faster race due to the bone getting laid down and the patella tendons is able to actually deal with and so you get even more inflammation as the patella tendon rubs a little bit on that bone and also, is also subjected to the overuse that a lot of young athletes can experience, right? If they’re playing soccer and volleyball and basketball or maybe doing you know, ultra-running or whatever else. So the problem I think is that a lot of parents and I learn of the parents who do this: they pull their kids out of sports, right? Because their kids have the Osgood Schlatters, and that or worse yet, they go for like the surgery like you can get a surgical excision where you actually – you get rid of lot of are called the ossicles that are produced in the bone that create a lot of that patella tendonitis. And the problem with doing that is, I found that in most cases, these type of issues especially when it comes to patella tendon, are created by a combination of two factors that I actually mentioned earlier: we were talking about the crackling in the knee cap, tight hamstrings and weak quadriceps in kids. The tight hamstrings developed as a kid as just like sitting all day long, the weak quadriceps are compounded by that situation and then also you know, kids who aren’t doing things like mobility exercises for the hamstrings, or aren’t doing things that engage the quadriceps you know. Like for example, you know, a dead lift or squatting with good formers, single leg squatter you know, some other type of strength training that supports the quad musculature and also stretches the hamstring musculature. They dig themselves into this hole and then they just walk away from the sport because the knee pain rather than actually going after the biochemical imbalances that caused it in the first place. So, I like a combination of rest hamstring flexibility mobility work that includes like a foam rollers as well as static and dynamic stretching and then also quadcriceps strength work for this. And then just like you can with tennis elbow, IT band friction syndrome, any of these tendon’s issues, you can use a strap to limit the motion of any of these tendons like a new or thought like what’s called the patellar strap. Even a knee sleeve can help to decrease what’s called the traction that’s placed on the patella and prevent a lot of that painful tibia contact while restricting some unnecessary movement along that patellar tendon. And if you are combining that, with some work for the quadriceps and some mobility work for the hamstrings, a lot of times that’s all it takes to nip this stuff in the bud – if you’re a kid. Now if you’re an adult, and if you’ve had Osgood Schlatters since you’re fourteen and Paul’s says he’s now forty-seven. He may have enough like ossicle like bone formations over that tibial tuberosity that he needs to do something even more proactive than that. But even before I go in for surgery, to do something like get some of those ossicles removed. I tried some the other things that can help out especially with boney issues you know, one the one’s I’ve talked about before and actually talked about recently in the article at bengreenfieldfitness.com is pulsed electromagnetic frequency or PEMF that’s shown some really good activity against things like bone spurs.
[1:00:16.3]
When you use it a few times a day and may help to break down some of these ossicles. You just take like the North Pole magnet and have a PEMF device, and you do a few fifteen to twenty minute treatments throughout the day, I mean, it’s not gonna hurt you and it’s worth trying versus going straight in for surgery you know, of course like I mentioned: it’ll be strengthening the hamstrings or strengthening the quadriceps, stretching the hamstrings using the bracing during that time until you’re pain free but you need to break up the PEMF too. You know most kids, that’s not necessary just compared to the freaking making-sure-you’re-taking-care-of-the-kids total bio-mechanics rather than just you know, running ‘em silly. So, there you go! There you have it!
Brock: There-you-go!
Ben: We managed over the course of the past 30 hours or so to record a podcast.
Brock: I hope so. I hope I can piece this together.
Ben: I’ve been to cannabinoid hell in back and I know we had some recording hiccups along the way, but Brock, you have your work cut out for you on this one.
Brock: Yeah, this may not come out for another week.
Ben: Yeah, so but we do nonetheless, have a review and we’ll read a review. And if you’re listening to the show, and you wanna leave your review, it always helps the show out, helps to spread the word, helps to put a few nickels in our hat and you do that over an iTunes. If you hear your review read on the show and you e-mail us, you just e-mail gear@greenfieldfitnesssystems and gear is the name of the thin tiny elf who puts gear into a box and send it to you, after you fill out your review. So e-mail [email protected] and we have a review from – how’s this for a name, Brock? Reptar342432342. Looks like they left to serve you entitled “Entertainment that also makes me feel productive.” Take it away, Brock.
Brock: You think his mom really named him that?
Ben: No, I think that’s his screen name. Actually that’s his, as they would say in Napoleon Dynamite, “it’s my chatroom name, yeah. Peace out.”
Brock: Okay, I’ll read the review now in my best reading voice.
Ben: When you’re studying a chat, are you doin’ it?
Brock: “I’m a college student studying…”
Brock: Okay. “Studying Bio-engineering so I have no time to learn things outside my textbooks. Listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast however, is my one connection to the outside world.”
Ben: Hmm. That’s sad. Yeah.
Brock: It’s terrible.
Ben: I’m checking hot girls.
Brock: “While I’m no marathon runner or triathlete, I don’t have the expendable income to purchase any of the items recommended on this podcast.” Aaaw, nuts. Sad, sad.
Ben: Can I give you a little strap for your knee?
Brock: Not even a part of one. “I still enjoy listening to the informative and silly band featuring these two guys.”
Ben: Some true, sometimes high.
Brock: That’s why it’s so silly. “Unfortunately, fitness and nutrition research are finicky areas and therefore I always take the results of the studies mentioned with many grains of salt.”
Ben: So you can afford salt?
Brock: Yeah, apparently. Probably cheap, crappy salt.
Ben: Yeah, refined salt.
Brock: Yeah. “At the end of the day however, I appreciate learning about these sometimes contradicting articles Ben finds because they teach me to always keep an open mind. Something useful for me as I progress into the research field and honestly useful for everyone.”
Ben: A good lesson for everyone.
Brock: That is. I hope everybody takes that home. “Keep up the good work, guys. You always make me laugh out loud on the treadmill scaring everyone around me at my university gym.”
Ben: Hmmm.
Brock: “Yes, a visit to my university would be amazing!” Exclamation point.
Ben: I’ll bet it would. We could run on the treadmill together, laughing. Laughing wildly. Haha!
Brock: You insulted everybody.
Ben: Reptar342432342 see you in the chatrooms. That’s an awesome review, actually.
Brock: Is that the brother? Is that Napoleon’s brother?
Ben: Ahhh, Kipp is Napoleon – I believe it’s Kipp – is Napoleon Dynamite’s brother. He’s the guy who meets Lafanda in the chatrooms.
Brock: Oh, okay.
Ben: Yes.
Brock: ‘Cause I haven’t seen that movie in too long, I might have to watch that tonight.
Ben: I see. Sleep off unto the bus in a romantic interlude. It’s a funny movie. Okay, anyways though, so all of the resources for what we talked about from the cricket protein bars, to the studies, to everything is at bengreenfieldfitness.com/314. If you are still fascinated with what happened on today’s podcast, with regards to THC, you will not want to miss the upcoming controversial article that we’re releasing on Monday over at bengreenfieldfitness.com. If you’re always nervous about getting those and finding when it will come out just go there and subscribe to the freaking newsletter.
[1:05:03.0]
I will not only spend the hell out of you but I will also send you links to interesting articles and you get to dig through and figure out which you actually want. No, I’m just – I don’t do a lot of spamming. So, I’m gonna chat now and meet me in the chatroom.
Visit bengreenfieldfitness.com, for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition, and performance advice.
[1:06:01.7] END
Apr 2, 2015 Podcast: What Does It Mean When Joints Pop, Is Eating Insects Healthy, Why You Get Cold Hands And Cold Feet, Should Kids Run Long Distances, and Natural Remedies for Osgood Schlatter’s.
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April 24-26th, 2015: Come hear Ben and Jessa speak at PaleoFX 2015. The can’t-miss conference that is the Who’s Who gathering of the Paleo movement, with world-class speakers including best-selling authors, physicians, nutritionists, research scientists, professional athletes, trainers, sustainability and food activists, biohackers, and more (including Jessa’s “Whipped Up Homemade Heavy Body and Face Lotion.” and Ben’s potentially offensive Pecha Kucha presentation).
May 1-3, 2015: Ben is speaking at Ari Meisel’s Less Doing Conference, the year’s top conference for learning about things like how to manage your email inbox, hack productivity, enhance your cognitive performance, learn how to use the latest and greatest phone apps and productivity software, free up as much time as possible, and much more! Click here to get more details and to book a free productivity call with Ari.
May 22-26, 2015: Custom Father-Son Wilderness Program with Ben Greenfield. Imagine taking five days with your son(s), and connecting deeply with nature and your boy(s) through ancestral wilderness survival skills, all within a small “tribe” of other fathers & sons that are like minded with similar values. Since the dawn of time, fathers and sons have bonded deeply in and with the wilderness. Ancestral wilderness skills have an innate ability to deepen the Father-Son connection like nothing else. During this custom Father-Son Wilderness Program, we’ll make fire by friction, build and sleep in natural shelters, learn traditional hunting and gathering techniques, and track wild animals. Primitive wilderness survival isn’t a “Man vs. Wild” scenario, it is an opportunity to build a deep relationship with the Earth. As you and your son do so, you’ll find that your relationship with your son deepens in powerful ways. Click here for all details and to register.
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.
What Does It Mean When Joints Pop?
Lizzie says: She wants to know about popping your back, hips and knees. What causes it? Why is it sometimes a pop and other times a grinding sound? Is it bad that her knees and hips pop after a long run/ride and that it is also very easy to pop her back?
Is Eating Insects Healthy?
Daniel says: He and his family are interested in farming insects/crickets for eating. What is your experience with them? In your opinion what are the psychological barriers to eating them and how would you go about incorporating them into our western diet?
In my response, I recommend:
-Book: Edible: An Adventure into the World of Eating Insects and the Last Great Hope to Save the Planet
–EXO Cricket Bars
Why You Get Cold Hands And Cold Feet
Sam says: As he has grown older he has noticed that his hands and feet get cold very easily. This didn’t used to happen back in the days when he played hockey (couple years ago) but now whenever he goes barefoot or even in socks he gets cold feet right away. Same thing with his hands. Is there anything he can do?
Should Kids Run Long Distances?
Sarah says: She recently read an article in Trail Running magazine about Kids and Ultra Running. She is a mom and her kids run and hike 5 and 10k distances (and more) to get them away from electronics. What do you think about this article? Should kids run long distances? Is there a benefit to it beyond getting them away from being plugged in, off the couch and into nature?
Natural Remedies for Osgood Schlatter’s
Paul says: He has Osgood Schlatter’s disease. He has had this since he was 14 (he is now 47). He still has problems with his knees in relation to the disease. Do you have any ideas around the pain or the prevention of this?