Podcast #210 from http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2012/09/episode-210-

what-is-detoxification-and-how-can-you-detox-your-body/

[0:00:00]

Introduction: In today’s podcast, what is detoxification and how can you detox

your body? Also, how to get rid of a keloid, muscle twitches and

cramps? Should children do endurance sports? Multivitamins for

kids versus adults, how to increase reps quickly and is cold

exposure before a workout beneficial?

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 triathlete or you’re just trying to shed

a few pounds, get ready or non run-of-the-mill cutting edge

content from bengreenfieldfitness.com.

Brock: Good day and welcome to another episode of the

bengreenfieldfitness.com podcast. I’m your host plus sidekick,

Brock and of course, Ben is here too. Ben, what’s happening’?

Ben: Not much. Just got done and make a little love to my foam roller.

So, yeah the teeth-gritting love-hate relationship with the Rumble

Roller took place this morning.

Brock: Yeah, it’s like if it hurts so good.

Ben: Stuff happens in the living room 4. Let’s put it that way.

Brock: Oh dear.

Ben: Yeah. No, I’ve lifted weights the past couple of days coz I’ve kind

of been neglecting the weight training routine thing with my

triathlon last week and that’s one thing I always got to do after I

go through a bunch of endurance geekiness. It hit the gym so lots

of squats, lots of dead lifts, lots of power lifts and I’m pretty raxed

today. So, I’ll get the foam roller I’ll be jumping in the river later

on and should be right as rain by tomorrow, I hope.

Brock: Yeah, so you’ve like just using the river solely now or are you still

doing ice pads and using the vest and the compression gear and

stuff?

Ben: I still use compression gear for recovery and especially that 110%

stuff that you can put the ice loose in. I don’t take ice pads

anymore. The river by my house is so cold that all I gotta do is

just, you know, bounce in there for, you know, five to fifteen

minutes and good to go. I’ll be at the shrinkage aside from that

it’s so good.

Brock: I don’t mean to turn this into a big conversation about this but

I’ve heard that 110% compression gear with the ice sleeves it

doesn’t actually get that cold. Is that do you find that?

Ben: I’ve found that it depends on the direction that you put the little

ice packets in that come with the gear. If you put it black side

facing in it tends to be colder. When I first got it I intuitively put

the white side which is the side of the ice packs facing in.

Brock: Yeah.

Ben: But yeah for people out there who have that gear, it’s the black

side facing in seem to be colder so there you go.

Brock: There you go.

News Flashes:

Brock: Okay. To get all of these interesting little tidbits every week hot

off the press, just make sure you follow Ben on twitter at

twitter.com/bengreenfield and there’s also some pretty good

stories that you put out on google+ as well and you can find those

links at the website bengreenfieldfitness.com

Ben: Cool! and the first thing that I noted was actually I think a study

that you sent me or not a study that you sent me, Brock but an

article ….

Brock: Oh the article about sleep.

Ben: ….on sleep in the New York Times. And I thought it was pretty

interesting because we’re always talking about the importance of

sleep on this show and this particular article was entitled Re-

Thinking Sleep and it came out a couple of days ago in the New

York Times. And what it talked about was how this infatuation

with getting the straight seven to nine hours of sleep in our

culture is actually relatively new phenomenon. And particularly,

you know much of it arose in the early 90’s from study done over

at the Virginia Tech in which they looked at basically the amount

of time that folks were sleeping and you know reported that eight

hours seem to be something that was somewhat useful. But the

fact is that in you know, traditional sleep habits of various

cultures, we don’t actually find that a full night rest is quite as

important when it comes to you know, mental and physical

alertness compared to just like total cumulative sleep that you’ve

gotten over an entire day. So this kinda returns to something we

talked about on the show before which is kinda like that. I believe

it’s called like the Ubermann sleep method or the sleep cycling

method or polyphasic sleep where, you know, if you only get six

hours of sleep during the night or five hours or whatever, you

know, you’re on and off with the baby crying or you know,

something waking you up or something like that. Ultimately, you

know, if you can squeeze in a nap here and there and try and get

your cumulative sleep over a 24-hour cycle to be closer to you

know, seven to nine hours even if it’s not cumulative sleep or I’m

sorry, sleep that’s unbroken.

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Brock: Consecutive sleep.

Ben: Yeah yeah, consecutive. That was the other C word I was….It’s not

consecutive sleep but cumulative sleep over a 24-hour cycle you’ll

probably be okay. Although I gotta throw in there that I

personally still find that my very very best days in terms of

physical and mental performance occur when the sleep is

cumulative and not racked up with say like a you know, a 6-hour

sleep cycle in a one-hour nap. But it’s an interesting article and

we’ll link to it in the show you know, there’s people who wanna

geek out on that a little more.

Brock: I like how they pointed out that in some like medieval literature

and stuff they actually refer to first sleep when they woke up from

first sleep or I’m off from my second sleep. I like the idea of

having a second sleep because that means a second breakfast.

Ben: haha…You would think that way, Brock.

Brock: ‘Because I am a hobbit after all.

Ben: Another interesting study looked at the effects of uphill versus

level grade high intensity interval training. This is one that

Graham Turner sent over and Graham’s been on this podcast

before the talk about running drills and the interesting thing

about this study which appeared in the National Journal Strength

Conditioning Research was that when you’re doing hard efforts on

a treadmill, particularly efforts that you’re doing to increase your

maximum oxygen capacity. It appears that when you compare

running uphill on a treadmill versus running on a level grade, that

level grade training actually produces greater gains in your VO2

max which to me seemed counter intuitive because it always

seems like when you’re running uphill on a treadmill that it’s

much more difficult but when you match intensity, you know, let’s

say we compare running on a treadmill at a 7.0 speed and a 5.0

grade versus running at a 9.5 speed and a 1.0 grade. The lower

grade I’ll be, you know, higher speed is going to be a better

stimulus for improving particularly your maximum oxygen

consumption. So, I thought that was interesting and a bit counter

intuitive but that’s the way that the die seem to be rolled on that

particular study. So…

Brock: Yeah. The only thing that that study didn’t seem to indicate was

whether or not it was if they were watching your heart rate like if

you’re actually exercising at the same heart on an incline versus

the same heart rate on a flat surface. They would do you think

that would have an effect on things that you are actually taxing

your body to the same amount of its heart rate was?

Ben: Well, heart rate is just one component of your maximum oxygen

capacity. Your VO2 max or your maximum oxygen capacity is

influenced by the amount of blood that your heart beats with each

pump but also by the amount of oxygen that you actually consume

as well as the ability of the muscles to grab oxygen from the blood

stream as the blood rushes past. So, controlling for heart rate

would be important but it wouldn’t necessarily take into account

all the variables involved such as muscle contraction or perhaps

changes in inspiratory or expiratory function as you are on a grade

but ultimately the take away for me was that it’s, you know, uphill

treadmill running is definitely not the “cuts me out” when it

comes to getting good bang for your buck at an intensity.

Brock: Gotcha.

Ben: And then the last thing I wanted to note was a case study that

looked at nutrition and training in elite marathon runners. And

what the study did was simply follow these three elite

marathoners and look at what they ate, what their training

volume was, what pace they ran at, there were several interesting

take aways from the study which I linked to. One interesting

thing was that they tended to do a high high percentage of their

training. Almost 75% of their training are basically a fairly low

intensity and I know that a lot of folks might run with that

unintended and say “wow, look at these elite marathoners, they

don’t do a lot of high intensity interval training or a lot of the

things that we’ve talked about on this show before when it comes

to endurance sports”. One thing to remember is that these folks

are training for long periods of time, not something that I’ve

mentioned before. If you’re gonna do like a traditional aerobic

training protocol and not do a lot of high intensity intervals, you

need to have a lot of time on your hands. And that’s where, you

know, like a Maffetone type of training method or primarily

aerobic type of training method can actually work if you’ve got,

you know, several hours per day to train like an elite marathoner

would. The other thing that was interesting in the study was that

these folks were implementing a low carbohydrate protocols or

low carbohydrate strategies. Specifically, they noted that there

was anywhere from about 2-4 low carbohydrate training bouts

taking place each week. Meaning that these athletes are getting

up in the morning and doing their runs in kind of a fasted state or

doing some periodic low carbohydrate availability training to

basically get their bodies to burn fatty acids more efficiently as a

fuel and possibly do a little bit of a body weight control as well.

But it was interesting that, you know, despite the popular belief

that most elite endurance athletes or elite marathoners are still

kinda steeped in like a traditional higher carbohydrate intake type

of protocol, that these particular marathoners and usually,

Canadian marathoners, Brock, really were implementing lower

carbohydrate protocols during their trainings. So, I thought it was

a cool case study and I’ll link to that as well from the show notes

for this episode which is Episode #210.

[0:11:47.5]

Special Announcements:

Brock: Okay. So, I’ve been using this My List thing now for a few

different things and I have to ….they probably don’t like to be

compared to Pinterest but it’s sort of an inevitable comparison to

make. But my list seems to be, this is my assessment of it. It is

for people who don’t craft. The non-craft book people.

Ben: I’m definitely a non-craft book person myself but I have been

making these lists and for folks who don’t know what this is, we

mentioned it last week. But what we’re doing for all the podcast

episodes now, because we inevitably talk about a ton of different

kind of items and tools and things that you can use as a resource

to answer a question in a podcast, we’re putting together lists for

each podcast. So, if you go to facebook.com/bgfitness or just

follow links in the show notes that we’ll put over to the facebook

page, you’ll find the list for last week’s episode – Episode #209.

And in that list is basically kind of a picture and a link to all the

different things that we talked about. And I’ve also got a bunch of

other lists over there, you know, like lists on everything from

weight loss to hormonal stabilization to sexual performance to

basically just kind a little collections of things that you can find

around the web to help you a little bit, you know, the

supplements, tools, gear, things of that nature. So, yeah, that’s

definitely something to check out and as Brock noted, you don’t

have to be a crafthead. The other thing we should mention is that

for those of you who follow the posts over at

bengreenfieldfitness.com, I did a triathlon over the weekend

called the Leadman.

Brock: You did a triathlon, you kicked ass in a triathlon.

Ben: Well, I won it and one of the new nutritional strategies that I’ve

spoken about a little bit before in the show, I used in that race and

it was particularly The Use of a High Molecular Weight

Carbohydrate called UCan. And I did that for a variety of reasons

that I kinda geek out on in the podcast or in a recent post over at

bengreenfieldfitness.com. I think it’d be a very interesting post

for any of you who are out there, either wanting to avoid use of

traditional gels and sports drinks are maybe dealing with bloating

or constipation or diarrhea or anything of that nature while you’re

out there competing or racing or working out. So, I highly

recommend that you check that post and as a related anecdote

this weekend, I’ll be interviewing the guy behind this specific

carbohydrate diet website and we’ll be talking a little bit more

about how the types of carbohydrates that you consume can affect

your gut. So, check that out. It’s over at

bengreenfieldfitness.com. It’s one of the more recent posts over

there.

Brock: Yeah and I guess while you’re over there, check out the podcast

that came out over the weekend with the fitness for geeks fellow.

You guys had a interesting and fun conversation about all the neat

apps you can have on your phone or on your watch or on your

computer or all three places to keep track or I don’t know, give

you some ideas how to work out and track it, all that kind of good

stuff.

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Ben: Yeah and I’ll throw one more phone app, cool phone app out there

for you folks. There’s a new app called Lift. If you want to create

a habit, lift is a free app that you can put on your phone that

basically uses kind of a power of social accountability to allow you

to create a habit. So, I downloaded lift to my I-phone and I’ve got

a few different habits on there so along with a collection of other

people around the globe I would be able to stop biting my

fingernails and picking my nose.

Brock: Yeah. In the comments section for that post, we had the..There’s

a little bit of chat about different kinds of apps and I noticed a few

people are using a website and apps that I’m using as well called

Strava. And I found that’s pretty cool ‘cause I actually spend most

of my time training alone so this actually allows me to compete

against other people here in Toronto or wherever I have to be

training at the moment and it’s sort 0f an interesting little twist on

training alone but still competing against maybe people you know

but people you don’t know. So, maybe I’ll put my Strava name in

our username in there so and if anybody’s interested in competing

against me, let’s go do it.

Ben: Yeah. What I like to do with Strava because it allows you to go out

and compare the times that you took to run a particular course or

bike a particular course and then compare it with other folks and

see who wins as I just try around with my GPS watch and in my

car and all the different courses. So, I look like a freaking rock

star.

Brock: You’re going 35 miles an hour!

[0:17:08.8]

Listener Q and A:

Becky Hi Ben! This is Becky Beltre in Iowa. And my husband and I just

want to say thank you. We achieved our run with constant dream

and your quality over quantity approach made it possible for both

of us to train together around 3 busy kids and our work schedules.

Without your guidance we would still be sitting on the couch, Ben,

we could never find time to do that. I’ll finish it in 1411 and I

made it in 1606. Despite some bike issues, TI issues and nerves

that had us over tired on race day, we were so happy to do it. We’ll

be back next year to try to improve it on time, hopefully, with you

guiding us day by day and week by week, we tell anyone now that

with the right guidance and a determined mind, you can finish

Ironman. We didn’t set new record but our kids saw us to come

Ironman. And that’s worth a whole long year. Thank you again.

Brock: Okay. So, for those of you who don’t know that Ben actually does

custom training plans for anybody. You don’t have to be special

or even be a member of any of the Pacifica Lead or a Rockstar

Triathlete Academy or any of those. I’ll put a link in the show

notes so you can go and get your own custom training plan just

like Becky did.

Ben: There we go.

Brock: And that brings us to our first audio question. It comes from AJ.

AJ: Hey Ben! AJ Chirac here. About a year and a half ago, I was

playing indoor soccer and my legs got supped out from

underneath me and I ended up with a fairly large bruise on the

side on my hip. It was sticking, I don’t know, it’s probably swelled

up to at least half an inch, maybe three quarters of an inch

sticking out. And after it healed, it left behind like a, I’ll take the

size of a quarter, a bump in diameter, in the area of my hip. I can

move it from side to side and up and down but it always stays

within about an inch of that same area. So, I did some research

and it kinda what I determined was a probably was a keloid. I

have had it x-rayed, it turned out negative as far as bone

fragments go. I haven’t had an MRI. So, I guess my question to

you is what can I do to minimize the pain? Because when I do that

with x-ray a little over a year ago, it was my first 40-mile ultra

marathon. And it didn’t bother me there in the race but after the

race it was pretty sore. But then, this year, on the same 40-mile

ultra marathon, in about mile 24, it locked up and was, I mean, I

could barely run at that point in time. So, I guess what kind of

strength exercises or what would you recommend for this type of

an injury and fixing it for next season? All right, thanks for this

show. Hope you can help me out.

Brock: So, a keloid is what? It’s like a hematoma? I’m too

______[19:46.6] use all the medical terms here. Gotta clarify it

for everyone. Keloid is a hematoma, everyone.

Ben: Something that sounds like it that’s making AJ very sad. He’s a

little depressed.

Brock: He does.

[0:20:00]

Ben: Yes and you know, a keloid is a it’s kind of a scar and basically, it’s

an overgrowth of the granulation tissue that can occur as an injury

heals like a bruise or a skin injury. And what happens is that the

tissue basically gets slowly replaced by collagen and it’s very firm

and kind of rubbery and you can even get these nodules and

differentiation in color and sometimes it can produce a pretty

narrowly scar when you have ketosis you know. If you are to go

and do like a google image search for ketosis, you’re gonna see

some or keloid, sorry, you’re gonna on the word ketosis.

Brock: We talk about ketosis so often.

Ben: It’s another “ke” word. In keloids, you’re gonna see some pretty

interesting and early photos. I’m not necessarily completely sure

that that is what AJ has but let’s just say that that’s the case – that

this is a keloid and it is an overgrowth of tissue underneath the

area where that hematoma or where that bruising and initial

trauma occurred. In many many cases, you’re going to find that

kinda not going after the alternative medicine route is gonna give

you some pretty quick results when it comes to something like

this. And you can get everything from like a laser treatment to a

cortical steroid injection. There’s kind of a variety of different

ways to treat these things. And this would be something that for

example a dermatologist would be best qualified to treat. But

laser treatment, specifically, is one that I’ve heard has been fairly

efficacious against these keloids. Now, there are if you didn’t

want to go after that type of modern medical routes, some

alternative treatments for something like a keloid and one that

tends to be quite popular is the use of apple cider vinegar. Apple

cider vinegar is actually a cool thing. It’s useful for a lot of

different remedies, you know, for example, I’ll just gargle with it if

I’m congested or I feel like I’ve got a little bit of scratchy throat

coming on and it can be quite useful in a situation like that. I just

keep some Braggs apple cider vinegar around. But what you do

with apple cider vinegar is you can literally just like wet a cotton

ball or wet like a wrap and you can keep that thing basically

treated with apple cider vinegar a few times throughout the day

and you can even apply a wrap with it as you sleep during the

night. And what the apple cider vinegar does is it kinda denature

some of the epithelial tissue or the top skin layer and essentially

kinda peel away some of that keloid. And that’s something that

may help. Anyhow, I don’t want you to misconstrue this Ben’s

medical advice. It can definitely irritate your skin when you apply

apple cider vinegar to your skin. And the other thing that can

happen and this is something that I personally experienced with

the MRSA or with this staph infection that I had. If you can get

kind of this dark discoloration of the skin that tends to stay for a

long period of time after this keloid goes away or in my case, after

my staph infection had cleared up. And you can get some decent

sized scars with this type of stuff. I ended up needing to do some

research on how to get rid of some of these skin scars just because

I didn’t wanna be stuck with these dark spots at the back of my leg

for life and something that I’m using that seems to be really

clearing up the scar, you know, whether AJ decides to go with the

laser or you know, using something like apple cider vinegar or

whatever he may also end up with scars I’ve been using this type

of essential oil called the helichrysum oil. And I’ll link to in the

show notes I just it form Mountain Rose herbs which is where I

get most of my essential oils but for skin scars, this stuff can work

really well and I’m already noticing after just a couple of weeks

that some of the scars at the back of my leg are beginning to really

clear up nicely. And I just diluted it with some flax seed oil and

applied on daily basis to that area. So, that’s something else to

consider is it’s kind of post treatment scar formation.

Brock: I’ve heard of some people using that for tattoo removal. I mean

actually, not for tattoo removal but for after the tattoo is removed

because it often leaves scars.

Ben: Okay, that would keep away from my tattoos. Fortunately, the

backs of my legs are not tattooed yet. So, I don’t have to worry

about that but yeah, the helichrysum oil work pretty well, too. So,

these are some of the things I would look into. But you know, if

this is for me, I would go after more of like a modern medical

routine and go check in to get into the thing you know, like

lasered and then just get some of that like helichrysum oil on

there to treat the scar and get on with life, so…

[0:25:13.6]

Brock: Yeah. But I agree with you that it’s I’m not entirely convinced that

that’s where the problem is like even that he actually said that he

was barely able to run after a race. It doesn’t seem like something

as topical as a keloid would be that would cause that much

problems.

Ben: Well, those things I mean when you’re looking at that type of

granulated tissue, it can be very very immobile and you know, it’s

like when you’re running post serious ankle strain and you got a

lot of scar tissue in the ankle, there can be some serious

immobilization that goes on there. So you know, I don’t want this

podcast to necessarily turn into like a medical management

podcast. So, I do recommend that AJ go and visit a dermatologist

for sure that make sure he gets the same sort. It sounds like he’s

going after some modern medical imaging just to check and see

what this really is. But it’s certainly possible and probable that it

could be this keloid.

Brock: All right, let’s leave it at that and move on to the next question

from Cathy.

Cathy: Hi Ben and Brock! My name is Cathy and I have a question today

about cold therapy and or versus sweating. I’m really interested

in the cold therapy that you’ve been talking about a lot and I’ve

seen the benefits of bathing in cold rivers and swimming in cold

oceans and it does make me feel great. However, in my situation,

I have a condition of being kind of I have a toxic overload and I’ve

recently found this out through years of trying to figure out what

was my problem and my doctor, my naturopathic doctor has

recently really kind of hit the nail in the head and that I have a

very toxic overload because my detoxification pathways are not

open. And so, I cannot really shed off the toxins out of my system.

Amongst various therapies including acupuncture, some herbs,

he’s recommended that I do saunas to increase my sweating.

Now, the problem is it’s very difficult for me to sweat. It’s got to

be over 100 degrees for me to actually start sweating so he has

encouraged me to do saunas. I still don’t sweat in the sauna

unless I’m jumping rope or something. But my question is, how

does this work with cold therapy? I love the idea but I’m

wondering, is cold therapy for everyone? Should I maybe not use

it in my condition since I’m supposed to kind be doing the

opposite and I also have Raynaud’s syndrome and poor

circulation. So, would cold therapy be beneficial for me or do you

have any ideas about how I can increase my sweating since it’s so

difficult for me to sweat? Thanks a lot. Loving the podcast.

Brock: Okay. It seems to me that if you had Raynaud’s syndrome and

you went in a cold bath, you’d probably freak out, wouldn’t you?

Ben: Well, yeah. You know, Raynaud’s syndrome is basically kind of a

circulation issue with specifically of the extremities like the hands

and the feet and yeah it can be uncomfortable when you’re

exposed to cold. I mean, you know, in this race and I talk about

this a little bit in my race report. That race I did over the weekend

was extremely cold starting off the race and I didn’t wear gloves. I

kinda went rushing out of the swim-to-bike transition and I was

really watching my hands kinda turning blue as the bike portion

progress and I couldn’t eat and I couldn’t drink ‘cause I couldn’t

get my water bottle out. And it was really uncomfortable and I

would imagine my wife also has very poor circulation in her hands

and her feet and it’s not a full-blown Raynaud’s but yeah, it can

make cold exposure quite a bit less comfortable. But it sounds

like in Cathy’s case that there’s multiple issues going here and I

wanted to just mention a few things that are gonna be important

for folks to realize. And the first is this concept of detoxification

pathways and how some people can actually have some

limitations in terms of the detox pathways. So detoxification,

which by the way, I think it’s an overused term but it’s certainly

something that’s relevant. It’s just a process via which your body

eliminates or neutralizes toxic substances. So, as you know, we

can get toxics from the air, from our diet, from pharmaceutical

drugs or even supplements in some cases from alcohol, from

smoking, and just from the by-products of normal everyday

metabolism. Even more so if you’re very physically active person

who exercises a lot. And eventually, if you do get a build-up of

toxins, there can be some cellular damage that occurs and there

can be even higher risk of chronic disease, you know, like diabetes

and arthritis and things of that nature. You know, some of that

does have to do with some kinds of toxin build-up. And the body

has several routes of detoxification. One route is the skin.

Another route is respiration via the lungs. Another route,

especially for like protein by-product breakdown would be the

kidney and the urine pathway. The liver is the major

detoxification pathway and the gut is another one. And when it

comes to harmful substances, there are kinda two major detox

pathways and they’re called phase one and phase two pathways.

So, when we look at the liver and we look at chemicals, whether

chemicals that are made through our internal metabolism or

chemicals that we encounter in our environment, the liver is one

of the primary areas where these detoxification pathways take

place. So, every single minute, every 60 seconds, about a third of

your body’s total blood flow gets pumped through your liver. And

the liver filters the blood and it removes harmful substances like

drugs and bacteria and toxins and form proteins and things of

that nature. Which is one of the reasons that I think if you’re

gonna include like animal liver as a part of your daily diet, you

wanna make sure that you’re consuming a liver of an animal that

has been raised quite naturally. You know, like pasture raised

cattle, for example, because the liver is a detox organ. So, you’ve

got two primary detoxification pathways in the liver via which

these chemicals get eliminated or get neutralized and these are

known as phase one reactions and phase two reactions. So, a

phase one reaction primarily processes chemicals or converts

toxins via several different chemical, you know basic chemical

reactions. Back to Chemistry 101, for those of you who took it,

there is this kind of three different types of reactions that take

place in a phase one detoxification - oxidation, hydrolysis or

reduction. So, we’re either adding an electron to something,

taking an electron away from something, or using H2O to

essentially like hydrolyze a toxin or chemical. Most common is

oxidation, of those three different pathways and there’s a specific

class of enzymes in your body called the cytochrome mono

oxygenates or cytochrome P450. And that’s what you use as the

actual oxidant enzyme in the liver. And it’s very very important.

There are some things that can alter the metabolism of drugs or

other chemicals through almost like a down regulation of that

particular enzyme. Interestingly, grape fruit juices is one of those,

you know, drinking a ton of grape fruit juice can actually kinda

shut down some of the detox pathways. It’s pretty interesting.

But we’ve got those phase one reactions – oxidation, reduction

and hydrolysis that take place in the liver to process chemicals.

And then typically, you get a phase two reaction and that kinda

follows the phase one reaction and that’s the pathway via which

these molecules undergo a process of something called

conjugation in the liver. And so that’s where actual metabolism

occurs and these molecules that are formed via oxidation or

reduction or hydrolysis, they get converted or they get bound to

different components in your liver like sulfates or glycine or

acetate. And this basically makes them water soluble. So, this

water soluble metabolized can then get excreted from the body via

your urine, or for example, in the bile, in the digestive tracks, and

kinda move on. So, we get this phase one to phase two

detoxification that takes place. Now, there’s also, in addition to

the liver, a fairly important role of your GI tract - your

gastrointestinal tract and your gut when it comes to

detoxification. And the reason that I say that is anytime you have

increased permeability in your gut due to a poor diet, maybe high

intake of gliadin protein from wheat or a low intake of amino

acids or simply a poor diet high in processed foods, in time you

get increased gut permeability. You get increase absorption of

toxins or also kind of another environmental component called

the xenobiotic. And when you do that, all of these toxins that are

coming in due to the increased gut permeability must be

processed and removed by the liver. So, you really increase

demands on your liver’s detoxification system. If your

gastrointestinal health is poor and you can certainly do some

things in terms of addressing your gut to make sure that your liver

doesn’t have to work quite so hard. So, when it comes to

detoxification, I think that a very very important and often

neglected component is addressing kind of the food. We’re gonna

talk about this a lot in the upcoming podcast this Saturday that I

do with the guy from the specific carbohydrate diet. But, you

know, there’s a few things that you can take and that can help, like

for example, while I don’t think that fiber is necessarily great for

you in high amounts, dietary fibers do bind things like

carcinogens and bile acids and other potential intoxications. So,

making sure that you have adequate dietary fiber can be

something that can help and that can be done just through a

moderate amount of vegetable and fruit intake. Balancing your

intestinal micro flora through proper prebiotic and prebiotic

would be basically fiber and also probiotic like fermented food

intake can also be incredibly helpful. There are basically these

acids called short thing short chain fatty acids and those are what

result when dietary fiber ferments in your gut. And these short

chain fatty acids can also help with detoxification and in kinda

activating a lot of these enzymes that are part of the detoxification

pathways. That’s another reason why completely fiber-void diet

wouldn’t necessarily be something that would help with

detoxification and it’s one of the reasons that a lot of like detox

diets include like juicing in high amounts of vegetables and things

of that nature would be to help with the formation of the short

chain fatty acids and also the ______ [0:36:57.8] to help the

fiber to bind to toxic agents or carcinogens or things of that

nature. So, ultimately when we step back and look at this big

picture, what we wanna do is support the gut and heal the gut but

then also make sure the liver is equipped for this phase one and

phase two detoxification. And there are certain detoxification

processes in the liver that are gonna require certain nutrients.

And this is why like if you go, you know, we mentioned like the

My List page on the facebook.com/bgfitness. And if you just go to

the Bengreenfield recommends page, what you’ll find is that there

are certain supplements that I recommend in terms of like

clearing the liver or helping out the liver with detoxification. One

particular reaction that your liver uses is part of its detoxification

process is called glucuronidation and that uses a particular acid

called glucuronic acid. And glucuronic acid is coupled or what’s

called conjugated with different drugs and hormones and

pollutants and bile acids. And you do actually need to have

adequate levels of calcium D-glucarate and glucuric acid in order

for this to actually take place. One of the things that I

recommended before for liver support is milk thistle extracts

which inhibits the enzyme that breaks down calcium D-glucarate.

So, that’s one of the things that can help out quite a bit. You’re

also going to find calcium D-glucarate and glucuric acid in a lot of

different fruits and vegetables. So, making sure that you’re

actually eating real raw foods can be quite helpful as well in terms

of activating that particular component of the detoxification

pathway. Another thing is glutathione. And glutathione is an

antioxidant that’s also involved in detoxification in the liver

particularly of what are called xenobiotics or foreign chemicals

and also carcinogens as well as heavy metals. So, getting adequate

glutathione in your diet is also important. Some of the things that

are gonna be used to make glutathione are amino acids. So,

making sure that you got enough protein in your diet is really

important and vitamin C. And obviously, if you got adequate fruit

and vegetable intake and maybe you’re taking some type of an

antioxidant supplement, you’re gonna get some adequate vitamin

C. So, that’s another kind of component – glutathione antioxidant

compound that you wanna make sure is present to really support

the detoxification pathway. Acidulation is another process and

that’s basically the process in which the toxins are conjugated to

another type of component particularly one called acido

coenzyme. That particular process can really be enhanced again

by adequate vitamin C as well as adequate vitamin B. So, these

are another couple of vitamins that you wanna make sure are

present in your diet and you can easily get screenings to find out if

you don’t have enough of a vitamin like this by doing something

like a spectra cell analysis. That’s probably one of the better ones

out there. You could just go google “spectra cell” or talk to your

doctor about getting a spectra cell analysis and you can find out

whether you’ve got enough vitamins on board to support that

particular component of the detoxification pathway. Amino acids

are used in many many cases to conjugate toxins or to bind the

toxins for neutralization. Glycine is one example of a very very

important amino acid for particularly this phase two of

detoxification in the liver. So, again, making sure that you have

adequate amino acids and that you’re not unlike a super low

protein diet typically vegetarians and vegans need to be a little bit

more careful about their amino acid levels. And again, you could

get a blood amino acid levels test to see what your amino acid

levels are like. If you’re deficient in the amino acids, you know, I

take that Master Amino Acid capsule as a supplement particularly

to support my workout. But it’s also really really good in terms of

ensuring that I’ve got decent levels of amino acids. Another

component of the detoxification pathway is methylation and

methylation is the addition of a methyl group to pretty much

anything and many of these toxins are gonna require some type of

a methyl donor in order to be neutralized. Anytime we’re talking

about methylation you usually are going to need adequate levels of

vitamin B in order for that to occur. So that’s another situation

where having adequate vitamin B levels, in particular, vitamin B12

is very very important when it comes to methylation. And that’s a

red flag especially for like again, vegans and vegetarians or people

who are getting adequate vitamin B in their diet. Another

detoxification pathway and the last one will be sulfation or

sulfoxidation and that’s the addition of sulfur-containing

compound to any of these toxins to eliminate, in many cases,

hormones. This would be an issue or something like estrogen

dominance or getting exposed to a lot of hormones and what

happens is that allows the hormones to be carried away in the bile

acid. So, getting adequate levels of sulfite in your diet can also be

something that can help out a little bit with this as well. And

sulfur-containing compounds a lot of time you’re gonna find in

like meat and proteins and eggs, fish to certain extent, things of

that nature. Those can all help to support.

[0:42:52.2]

Brock: A sulfite or a sulfate?

Ben: Any sulfur-containing compound, really.

Brock: Oh yeah?

Ben: So, and a little range between sulfates and sulfites. You know,

even a little bit of red wine here and there is gonna get you some

sulfates. So basically, you’ve got these nutrients that are required

for phase one and that’s in particular like your vitamin B complex

having adequate levels of vitamin C and then something like a

milk thistle extract along with really good fruit and vegetable

intake can all help with that phase one detoxification pathway.

For the phase two detoxification pathway, you’re usually looking

at wanting to have adequate levels of amino acids and then

adequate levels of, for example, sulfur. Another thing I didn’t

mention as far as sulfur goes is cruciferous vegetables. Those are

really really good for that too, like onions and broccoli and

cauliflower and stuff like that. And you combine that with taking

care of your gut and that’s how you really set up your body to be

able to detox more efficiently. That’s kinda, you know, when we

look at detoxification pathways and trying to support them, what

we’re looking at. But some people just don’t really secrete quite as

well and there’s actually a test. I mentioned this a few weeks ago

in the podcast. So, there’s this test by Peter D’Adamo called the

secretor type test and my naturopathic physician had me actually

do this test to see what kind of secretor type I was. And this was

after I got the MRSA or that staph infection because we were

looking into some just basically various parameters in my body

that might make me predisposed to infection. And he wanted to

see what my secretor status was. And one thing he wanted to look

at was whether I was what’s called the non-secretor. And a non-

secretor is basically someone who has a little bit more trouble

excreting toxins and a lot of times they need a little bit more

adequate detoxification support. Sometimes, they need to be on

higher dose antioxidant and taking, you know, eat milk thistle

extract on a regular basis but also doing some of the things that it

sounds like Cathy’s physician’s recommended to her, particularly

like sweating and opening up the pores and trying to detox

through the skin and other methods over and above using the

liver and the urine pathways. As far as finding out your secretor

status, there’s this very simple test that you can do. It’s a salivary

test you can order online. I can link to it in the show notes for

people who wanna find out if they are non-secretor or secretor.

But depending on what you find out, you may want to engage in

some of the practices that Cathy’s doctor has recommended to

her, particularly, the sweating or you know, doing like a sauna or

spa type of treatment. Of course, the issue with Cathy is it sounds

like she’s having trouble sweating.

Brock: Yeah, make me envious because I’m the opposite.

Ben: Yeah, yeah.

Brock: I just think about doing something and I’m sweaty.

Ben: Hyperhydrosis and hypohydrosis. And if you’re like Brock and

you got hyperhydrosis, you’re gonna be pitting out quite a bit.

Brock: I sweat drinking coffee.

Ben: Yeah and hypohydrosis is basically the absence of sweating. And

hypohydrosis can be caused by a bunch of different stuff. It’s also

known as anhydrosis and sometimes it can occur after the skin

has been injured. It can be genetic. It can be the side effect of a

medication. I think one thing that should be paid attention to in

Cathy’s case is that it can also be due to some autonomic nervous

system dysfunction. And in many many cases, autonomic nervous

system dysfunction can be because you’re over-trained or you’re

stressed out or you’re not getting enough sleep and that’s often

the case. I don’t wanna paint with too broad of a brush here but I

tend to see situations like that. A lot of times in like females who

worry about their health and it sounds like Cathy could certainly

fall into that category. No offense, Cathy. I mean, it’s not bad to

worry about your health necessarily but sometimes, you know,

people can stress themselves out just almost becoming

hypochondriac like in worrying too much and a lot of times that

can really throw your nervous system into a tissy. So, as far as

alternative medical routes go to take care of your autonomic

nervous system, acupuncture is one thing that can come in handy

and it’s also something that alternative medicine has used in

situations such as anhydrosis. And then biofeedback or

neurofeedback, you know, working with a biofeedback

practitioner is something else that may help a little bit with

something like autonomic nervous system dysfunction. Now, in

terms of some other things that you can do to get yourself to sweat

more if that’s not the case, there is this product that I use and I

think I’ve mentioned that on the show before, when I am in a spa

or in a sauna setting and I’m really wanting to sweat a ton, and

really increase my skin temperature. This stuff will increase the

skin temperature by about 10-15 degrees and it’s called sweet

sweat. It’s a mix of coconut oil and some capsaicin compounds

and some other things that really draw a lot of blood flow to the

surface of the skin and I’ll link to it in the show notes and also in

the My List for this episode but it’s called Sweet Sweat. So that’d

be one thing that you could check out and you could try. So, you

basically just like put it on your body before you put it on your

skin before you get in and step in to something like a sauna or a

spa.

[0:49:00.0]

Brock: It’s also handy for when you’re racing in cold conditions, you can

put that on right before the race starts and feel a little bit warmer

for a while anyway.

Ben: Yeah. That’s something that I know is too fun so I got some of

that on my skin when I go and do something like jumping to the

river. I’m definitely… I stay much much warmer when I’m out

there swimming. So, that’d be one thing that I’d look into is using

something like that, that sweet sweat stuff that you can put on

your skin. And the other thing that you can do and this is

something that I know really ump my sweating when I step into a

sauna is just making sure that I go in there cold, you know, I’ll

even go just like run on a treadmill for 10 minutes before I hop in

just something that gets the circulation going before you get into

like a spa or sauna or something like that. So, and I just wanna

work ton of information but I would certainly make sure that you

take care of your detoxification pathways by supporting the liver

and the gut using some of the methods that I just mentioned and

then certainly, if you’re non-secretor type, using the skin

detoxification pathway can also be useful if you have anhydrosis

and you’re not sweating, you may want to consider that. You’ll

wanna look into some stress control methods, some acupuncture

and you can even, you know, that stuff is really not relevant to you

, just make sure that you go into the sauna with your temperature

already elevated and try some of that sweet sweat stuff on your

skin. So…

Brock: And have a big ball of curry before you go in as well.

Ben: That’s right. That’s right and make sure that nobody else is in

there with you.

Brock: Okay. I think everybody should take a moment, take a deep

breath, shake your head around a little bit and we’ll jump into the

next question from Charlie.

Charlie: Hey Ben! This is Charlie from Georgia Vermont and I have a quick

question for you. I appreciate your guys’ podcast. My question is

I’ve been training for a couple of marathons over the past 68

months. I noticed recently that after every run, my muscles begin

to twitch involuntarily on their own. It’s not just after the run but

even sometimes days later and my quads and down in my calves,

my muscles just again, twitch and I don’t know if this is

something that’s normal or if I’m like in some sort of nutrition

that‘s causing this to happen. I really appreciate the insight and

wisdom on this and I look forward to hearing from you guys soon.

Thanks again for all you do.

Brock: Okay. So, we actually have a question from Chrissy that is very

very similar, wasn’t an audio question but she’s asking pretty

much the same thing. She says, do you know anything about a

popcorn sensation in the calf muscle after running followed by

severe muscle cramps? She said, this started happening to me

about 2 years ago after running a half marathon and it occurs

after running even short distances, a couple of miles, and

sometimes, after a bike ride. And the cramping gets so severe that

I did an intense calf workout.

Ben: Yeah. I used to get this during water polo practices and sometimes

during games from all the egg beat taking you do combined with

kind of a cold in the water, my calves would cramp and sometimes

they just stay that way and that’ll be like super super hard for days

and it’s pretty annoying and it can be painful and debilitating too.

Brock: I like the way Chrissy actually explains this being a popcorn

sensation or at the end of the question, she says that it feels like I

have aliens living in my calves.

Ben: Yeah. Hopefully, that would actually pop out. Hire a couple of

guys and machine guns to follow you around just in case.

Basically, you know that the popcorn-like sensation, that’s just an

elongated spasm like a Charlie horse but that is an involuntary

contraction. The cramp is an involuntary contraction but what

can tend to happen is that if that cramp occurs and it’s very very

strong, you can get an inflammation or you can get an area of

inflammation and blood swelling. And I’ll address the cramping

issue here in a second but if you get that post cramp knot, a lot of

times, just a combination of deep tissue massage or even light

massage and ice can help out a ton. If you have access to one of

those type of machines or like a game ready that can combine like

compression and relaxation like a pumping action along with ice

like a game ready circulates like ice cold water through a pumping

and relaxing sleeve that you can put over a leg or something like

that, that can get rid of that stuff super quick. And you can

simulate something similar to that. For example, if you have one

of these like electro stimulation units and you can get those for

like 75 bucks on Amazon, you know, they’re up to a thousand

dollars too. You can put on electro steam unit on your muscle and

then cover that up with cold like a cold pack or an ice pack and do

electro steam plus ice and that can get rid of those really really

quickly too, that combination of a blood flow from the electro

steam along with icing. So…

Brock: And that’s to get rid of the twitching?

Ben: No. That would be to get rid of this like the knot…

Brock: Okay. The balled up muscle, yeah.

Ben: Yeah. It’s actually interesting because I had a knot this morning

in my back that just kinda creeped up on me. I’m not really sure

why it occurred. Probably from all these weight training I was

doing in the past couple of days and I used another method that’s

slightly less comfortable but also works and that is I had my wife

just basically get on top of me with her knee and her full body,

this is on my back. She spurs full knees body weight into my back

and then I follow that up with a little bit of topical magnesium to

relax the area. But that’s another thing. It’s just like deep tissue

pressure like point massage can help out with these things as well.

Brock: You should probably mention that your wife is not 300 pounds.

Ben: No. She’s not but she’s got some danged bony knees. So, yeah. I

just basically walked in and interrupt her and told her to kneel on

my back. So….

Brock: Nice.

Ben: Anyways though, as far as this like twitching and cramping goes,

let’s talk a little bit about like a post marathon, post race, post

hard workout type of twitching that Charlie says that he’s getting

because I get the same thing too and it’s super annoying. So, the

medical term for it is fasciculation. But it’s basically this tiny little

involuntary muscle contraction and relaxation and you can sit

there after a race or something and just watch your muscles

contract just like they have a life of their own and they’re

twitching and moving around and I’ve certainly seen that

especially in my quadriceps. And the way that an actual twitch

occurs is you’ve got these motor neurons that connect your spinal

cord to your muscle fiber and they bring the nerve impulse from

your spinal cord and to your muscle fiber. And what happens

with these motor neurons is they depolarize and they cause what’s

called an action potential to propagate along the length of the

neuron or the axon to the neuromuscular junction where a bunch

of acetylcholine gets released that causes the muscle to get

signaled to contract. And that’s the way that a lot of like

neuromuscular blocking drugs actually work is they either

increase the level of what’s called the acetylcholinesterase which is

the enzyme that can break down acetylcholine inside the synapse

so it basically keeps that message from propagating into the

muscle and they’re basically like depolarization blockers. Because

when your muscle gets triggered to contract like that, it’s called

the depolarization. And so if you could somehow block that

neuron transition or transmission, the muscle can’t really

contract. When you finish up like a hard triathlon or a hard

marathon or something like that, you still got basically a bunch of

this acetylcholine still getting released by this nerve ending. You

still got your brain telling your spinal cord which is transmitting

this message with this motor neuron into your muscle that it’s still

working, that it still needs to be activated and you continue to get

this acetylcholine kinda like pump and surge into these motor

neurons and it crosses the synapse and causes these muscle

contractions whether or not you’re telling your muscles to

contract or not. And so eventually, it goes away and it’s not a big

deal. It’s not harmful. It’s totally normal. But the issue is that it

can lead to cramping especially if you’ve done something really

really hard because the other component of this, the other

component of this contraction is that when that action potential

from the nerve arrives at the muscle, what you get is a calcium

influx through these calcium channels into the muscle. And when

you get that calcium influx occurring, that’s what causes your

muscle fibers to basically contract. But if the calcium is sting

bound to the area inside the muscle that calcium basically binds to

its called troponin, on the acting part of these little filaments

inside your muscle, you can get basically like a cramp, like the

calcium isn’t getting released. So, that can also occur when you’ve

done something really really hard because you got a big big

calcium build up and that’s one of the things that can lead to post

workout swellness as well as calcium build up. So, one of the

things that I recommend that you try, something that can offset

the calcium and basically kind like restore that electrical gradient

in the muscle and that’s magnesium. You can use like a topical

magnesium oil and I’ve found that to be really really helpful with

like post hard hard effort like twitching and cramping like when I

got to a triathlon or some kind of an event like that, I’ll make sure

I’ve got some topical magnesium in my finish line bag or like the

post race baby you can get in the finish line just like in smear

thump on my legs and my calves and stuff so I get rid of a lot of

that twitching and potential for cramping and getting hubbled up

cause I’ve been walking around after a race before and had one of

those cramps that literally did leave me with a big long knot like

Chrissy was saying that she’s getting. So, that’s what I

recommend and I’ll link to the magnesium oil that I use in the

show notes but that can help out quite a bit is the magnesium oil

and if you do get a cramp that results in this knot like Chrissy got,

try the ice and if you got electro simulation, try to combine the

electro sim along with the ice.

Brock: Awesome! Let’s move on to our next question from Jeff.

Jeff: Hey Ben! Hey Brock! This is Jeff down here in Texas. I’m a 38-

year-old A3 triathlete that lives a lifestyle and everything

triathlon. This is a follow up to a few shows back that you talked

about a young girl that was doing half marathons at a very high

level and the concern that Ben had about that. I have a 10-year-

old son that is training for his first triathlon in a few weeks. He’s

really short with a 50-meter swim, 2 ½ mile bike and a half-mile

run. I’ve been keeping his training short and fun with mixes of

intensities. He came home from school the other day and told me

he ran 3 miles during PE and was really excited to tell his mother

and I all about it. He chose to run along with 3 other boys. He

sees me train a bunch and says he wants to be like dad. It makes

me feel great to his getting into endurance for he wants to share

the same interest as his old man. I was really happy that he’s so

excited and told about your podcast and the young girl. He’s now

training 3 plus miles in a regular basis but if he continues, is this

something that I need to reign him in on? I don’t want to

discourage him but is there anything from a developmental

standpoint that I should be concerned with letting him go longer

distances in a time where great kids more interest in TV and

video games than sport. I feel like I should keep encouraging him

but don’t want to hurt himself or get burned out. What are your

thoughts on youngsters and endurance sports? Also, anything

from a nutritional standpoint that we need to concentrate on? I

look forward to hearing back from you guys. Keep up the great

work.

[1:01:52.1]

Brock: You know I got to say, Jeff sounds like an awesome dad. I love his

approach to his respecting his son in that he doesn’t want to hold

him back but he also doesn’t wanna push him into something that

might hurt him. Good work, Jeff!

Ben: You know I wish I could’ve dug it up for Jeff but I wrote a big

article on this at Lava magazine. You might be able to find in

their archives at lavamagazine.com but it was about kids doing

triathlon and some of the important considerations that needed to

be thought about when you have someone who is young, say like

pre-puberty are basically out there doing endurance sports cause

there surely are some considerations. I wanna trotted that my

kids have done a couple of kids triathlons and they love them and

I love watching them and I think it’s fantastic to have this type of

competitive opportunities available for kids. But then, there’s

certainly that catch 22 that a kid that crosses the finish line of a

tiny little kid sprint triathlon where they’re out there for 10 or 15

minutes running around might start eyeing some of the things

that their parents are doing. You know, like 2-hour long races up

to 10-hour Ironman events and possibly begin wanting to compete

in those longer distances. And some of the issue and these are

issues which I spoke about in the article that you have to consider

when it comes to kids doing long distances like that is one. The

bone density and growth plate issue in the same way that you

wouldn’t want a kid lifting heavy weights because it can stunt

growth if the growth plates aren’t fully formed. You can have also

a similar growth-stunting effect with impact-based exercise,

specifically, long periods of time spent running. You can also,

because kids do tend to have a little bit lower density, tend to see

much much increase risk for stress fracture and that’s one of the

more common injuries that you see among youth who are doing

endurance sports is stress fractures because that bone issue. The

hormonal factor’s another issue and in most cases with sports you

see a surge in testosterone in kids. But of course, with endurance

sports, you do risk that law of diminishing returns where you

eventually get that pregnenolone steal where a lot of hormonal

precursors that would normally be used to form things like

testosterone or estrogen instead gets shuttled to form cortisol.

And because there’s so much cortisol being produced from the

body being in this catabolic state of being broken down from

chronic repetitive motion from chronic endurance sports

participation, you tend to see that more often in a situation where

it’s just a poor training program and there is inadequate recovery

being provided. But that’s certainly another issue especially in a

kid for whom hormones are so very important to growth and very

crucial to proper development.

Another issue would be that of ventricular hypertrophy which

would be the growth of that left ventricle in the heart. And you

tend to see this in all athletes and exercising individuals but it

certainly can put a little bit of added stress in the heart and I’ve

not seen ever any long-term studies that have looked into whether

or not there’s a greater degree of ventricular hypertrophy in

individuals who started off doing endurance sports at a younger

age. But there maybe a little bit of a cardiovascular risk factor

there as well in terms of kinda prematurely asking the heart to

work much harder than it may be adapted to from like an

evolutionary or an ancestral health standpoint because I certainly

don’t think that we can find many examples in our ancestral roots

of kids going out and doing long long hard efforts. Traditionally,

you’d want to probably protect the child from doing something

like that if you’re wanting to propagate your seed or basically,

grow your family. You wouldn’t want to be subjecting your

children to hard labor per se.

And then, there are some other issues that I talked about in that

Lava article that I can remember. One was the social

implications. You look at something like a…I read Andrei Agassi’s

biography last year. And one of the big big issues of Andrei Agassi

and his rebellion and all the trouble that he got into was that he

was a little bit bitter about having never been able to experience

many of the things that his peers were able to experience that

went above and beyond tennis, things as simple as going to the

prom or playing baseball or doing some of the things that he

wished that he would have been able to do. And so, there was like

this bitterness or resentment present because there was so much

time spent in this one single sport. And of course, there are the

other social implications of the fact that endurance sport tends to

be more introverted individualized sport that may take a child

away from learning how to cooperate in a team environment or

play well with others, so to speak. And so, there’s also that

thought about how much teamwork and cooperation is being

learned by a child if they are engaging in very individual isolated

form of endurance training like going out for long runs by

themselves.

And, you know, the final component here would be kind of a

psychological component. The fact that in many cases, endurance

sport has a big focus on weight loss, weight control, on body

image and on a lot of issues that if a child is not developed to

think about properly or handle properly can cause things like

eating disorders especially in female athlete. You can get that

female athletic triad which is the combination of loss of the

menstrual period or menorrhea along with osteoporosis or

osteopenia or low bone density and any eating disorder like

anorexia or severe caloric restriction which of course, leads to a

lot of nutrient, mineral and vitamin deficiencies down the road.

So, there are certainly some potential dangers if you don’t go

about this carefully. In my case, the way that I’ve gone about

things is I simply exposed my children to as many different sports

as possible. And granted they do probably, they’re skewed

towards playing tennis. You know, we play tennis 3 times a week

and just cause I play so much and I think it’s a great sport for my

kids plus they’re left-handed and right-handed twins and so I

wanna have the doubles world championship team in a decade.

But basically, getting kids exposed to as many different activities

as possible both in the arts as well as in the sports I think is super

important in terms of making sure that they don’t become

obsessed with one single activity that may end up harming them

long-term especially something like endurance sports because of

some of those physical and anatomical issues I just got talking

about. So, I would not necessarily focus as much on reigning your

son in as much as I would exposing him and encouraging him to

participate in as many other sports or activities as possible. And

then, as far as nutrition goes, I believe we have a question in this

podcast about vitamins and nutrients for children. But I would

certainly make sure that you’re giving that kid a lot of food and

definitely not,we’re on the side of overfeeding a kid rather than

underfeeding a kid when it comes to someone who’s got as much

interest in endurance sports as your kid seems to have just

because you wanna make sure that you don’t set up any type of

like eating-disorder type of psychology or weight-control type of

psychology because when combined with endurance sports and

the young person, that can be kind of a recipe for like overtraining

hormonal depleted disaster. So be careful with that too and feed

them well.

Brock: That sounds good and that actually, like you said, it brings us

really well into our next question from Keith.

Keith: Hi Ben! I’m in the market to buy some liquid multivitamins that

you recommended on you podcast but I noticed some of them are

marketed as liquid multivitamins for children and liquid

multivitamins. Now, are there any differences other than

flavorings to make them more palatable for children? I wonder if

there’s any extra supplements that you would recommend

specifically for children to take beyond what you’d find in adult

product or if there’s any danger in giving an adult product to a

young child?

Brock: Okay. So, the difference between adult multivitamins and kid’s

multivitamins.

Ben: Yeah. First of all, my kids do take the kids liquid calm

multivitamin and we’ll link to that in the show notes. But the

reason that I chose that multivitamin in particular is because the

DHA and EPA levels in which are those biologically active omega

3 fatty acids that especially when you’re growing are really really

crucial for brain and vision and nervous system development. It’s

also why my kids get a lot of fat in their diet and eat lots of things

like avocados and sardines and all of these and things of that

nature. That particular multivitamin also has decent levels of

magnesium and calcium which are also important for…the

magnesium in particular is important for a lot of enzymatic

reactions that are used as a kid is growing. And then, aside from

that, it’s just a basic nutrient and multivitamin profile but of

course, it’s less than what you would get in adult multivitamin.

Basically, the general rule is that kids should get no more than

about 50% of the adult RDA of the major vitamins and the major

minerals especially the fat-soluble ones because those can tend to

be toxic because they are fat-soluble and that body can store

them.

Brock: Okay. What’s RDA?

[1:12:23.7]

Ben: Recommended daily allowance. So vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin

E, vitamin K, those fat-soluble vitamins, those are the ones you

wanna be careful especially no overdosing to your child. You

wouldn’t wanna give your kid like 4 tablespoons of cod liver oil a

day. You’ve known in many cases from adult you know, that’s not

too much of the fat-soluble vitamin. Typically, you’re looking at in

most cases, right around 12 years old that kinda being that

approximate cut-off to where a kid could start to use something

closer to an adult dose of vitamin supplements. But my hope had

with this issue is that vitamin supplements should not be regarded

as a substitute for whole foods and for healthy eating. And I think

that a lot of times, parents will use a fallback of like a Flintstones

multivitamin to justify ice cream and pizza and candy bars as

being the basic diet of a kid. So, I would definitely make sure that

the formation of your child’s diet is comprised with real whole

food. And then, just supplement with some type of a multivitamin

has been designed with the kids’ needs in mind which is why I use

that kids calm multivitamin. If we’re giving an adult product to a

child, basically, you’d wanna cut it in half. And when our kids

started taking that kids calm when they were one. And in that

case, we simply give them a half dose of the kid’s dose. And now,

they’re on a full dose of the kid’s dose but you could use an adult

dose and like cut it down but you generally….the general rule,

you’d want them to begin in no more than 50% of an adult dose so

you’d wanna cut it in half. If you were, for example, getting like a

liquid multivitamin and not wanting to buy both the adult and the

kids, you could like use half a dose of that – that adult multi, for

example. But it does have a little bit lower levels of the EPA and

the DHA in it relative to the other components just because you’re

generally gonna need more of that during something like a child’s

neural development.

Brock: I’ve read a study not that long ago like just do go back to a point

you are making about making sure the diet is there as well that

they actually found a people who took a multivitamin whether it

was like one over-the-counter special or anything like that. They

actually took more risks like they didn’t eat as well, they exposed

themselves to colds more regularly or readily and all of that kind

of stuff because they felt that they were protected by these

vitamins that they were taking.

Ben: Yeah. And that’s a good point too is that you won’t necessarily

wanna give your kids a multivitamin if they’re more likely to run

around the neighborhood with a stick of dynamite and chasing

after the neighborhood cats.

Brock: I’m going to go to the doctor and get every vaccination I can

possibly get so I can be god-like.

Ben: I heard that you had that plan for Thailand so hope to keep you on

the list down there.

Brock: Okay. So, that brings us to our next question from McKade.

McKade: Hey Ben! This is McKade. Currently I’m in the military and right

now, I’m trying to increase my body weight exercises primarily my

push-ups, pull-ups, chin-ups and sit-ups. I was wondering if you

have recommendations on how I can increase those numbers at a

faster pace. I heard you mentioned greasing the groove a few

podcasts ago so, if you recommend that or maybe the traditional

military view where you do a few hundred of these exercises per

day or maybe I should skip days and give myself time to heal up.

Anyways, I’m interested in what you have to say and I appreciate

any help you can give me and I love the podcast. Thank you.

Brock: Okay. You wanna know my advice is to McKade?

Ben: What’s your advice?

Brock: Talk and give me 20 Make it!

Ben: Was that an actual megaphone?

Brock: You know, I’ve had it sitting on my desk actually all week waiting

for this question.

Ben: There’s a really cool book out there for McKade and here’s the

book that I read a long time ago and I got a whole “greasing the

groove” idea from it’s called the Naked Warrior by Pavel

Tsatsouline. He’s kind of a pretty well known like a MMA type of

coach or strength conditioning adviser and the whole idea behind

greasing the groove actually Pavel was a Soviet Specialist Forces

guy. It’s that you combine specificity meaning doing the exact

motion that you’re going to be expected to do for example, in the

______[1:17:04.6] that you’re doing with frequent practice. And

so you’re not necessarily training to failure but you’re instead,

doing for example, like what I do, keeping a pull-up bar in my

office and everytime I walk underneath that pull-up bar, I gotta do

about 5 pull-ups. Well, I can easily if I’m not ill, it’s so tough but I

can go to the gym and I can bang out 25 body weight pull-ups. I

never do 25 body weight pull-ups like on a daily basis as part of

my training routine or whatever but I’ll easily do anywhere

between like 30 and 40 pull-ups, sometimes 50 in a day just by

doing 5 pull-ups everytime I walk under my pull-up bar and that’s

the concept of greasing the groove. You can do the same thing.

You can do everytime you take a pee, you can do 20 perfect body

weight squats. Everytime you eat something, you can drop and do

20 push-ups. I mean, there are, that’s really the best way to use

the greasing-the-groove philosophy is you just set yourself up

these triggers throughout the day that you’re gonna use as triggers

and don’t make them in frequent triggers. Don’t say, okay I’m

gonna do 20 sit-ups everytime I eat lunch cause I got to be doing

20 sit-ups a day in those cases. I’m sure like Brock and you eat 2

lunches.

Brock: Sometimes 3.

Ben: Sometimes, 3. That’s right. But basically, that’s what the whole

greasing the groove philosophy is. And he gets into a hard core in

his book The Naked Warrior. But you can easily grease the groove

by not working to failure and I think it’s less stressful and you get

better results with less risk for injury when you go about things

that way. And so that’s what I would do is I would just set up

triggers throughout the day. I would, the actual exercises that

you’re doing are the push-ups, the pull-ups, the sit-ups and the

chin-ups. Obviously, pull-ups and chin-ups are gonna be a lower

frequency. I would have a pull-up bar in your house or outside,

somewhere nearby. You gotta have something accessible when

you’re using this greasing the groove philosophy. But you know,

anywhere between like 5 and 10 pull-ups or chin-ups at a time and

then for your push-ups and your sit-ups typically, you’re gonna be

closer to like 15-25 at a time – a little bit higher frequency. But I

would literally, every single day, be greasing the groove with all 4

of those activities and to grease the groove generally, you’re gonna

hit each of those exercises about 5 times during the day. When I

will be shooting for close to like 5 to a maximum of 10 range in

terms of just like dropping and doing those and having certain

triggers throughout the day.

Another really good book that I recommend that I own and a lot

of times like I’ll break this out during the triathlonal season. The

past 2 years I’ve actually used it over the holidays like kinda from

the early Christmas season onwards to a little bit after the New

Year just because I’m always traveling and I’m in places where

sometimes I don’t have access to gyms and life is hectic and I just

need to get in quick workouts during there. It’s called the

Ultimate Warrior Workouts. It’s by Martin Rooney and I’ll link to

it in the show notes for you. But it’s basically like workouts

derived from all the different mixed martial arts and martial arts

practices from around the globe like Judo and Karate and things

like that, rich with fantastic photos and this really really good

workout program that’s just all body weight stuff like this but it’s

just super hard. It increases mobility. A ton of these like push-

ups and sit-up and pull-up variations and that whole book is

basically just like a bunch of crazy variations of those exercises.

But that’s a really good one too and one that I had a little bit of fun

with in terms of pulling some workouts out of that. So that one’s

called the Ultimate Warrior Workout and then the other one is

called The Naked Warrior. I think “warrior” seems like it’s a

pretty popular.

Brock: It does. I was kinda wondering about that. Why is everybody so

angry?

[1:21:12.3]

Ben: We should write a book about warriors. We could do the podcast

warrior workout, the travel warrior, that’d be a good one. I’ll buy

a book called The Travel Warrior. I’ll write that down – write a

book called The Travel Warrior. Somebody’s gotta buy a

travelwarrior.com now.

Brock: Now, I’m doing it right now.

Ben: You’re gonna sell it to me. Yeah, even lunchtime warrior.

Brock: I’m actually, I’m gonna be in Boston early next week. If anybody’s

listening to this podcast when it first comes out from October 1-3,

I’m gonna be in Boston. I’m actually doing a talk at a software

conference there just giving hints and ways for people to get little

more fit and not have to give up their entire lives of sitting at a

desk all day long and it’s very similar to the greasing the groove

idea, just getting up once an hour and doing some squats, doing

some sit-ups doing some push-ups, anything like that and then

getting back to your chair and getting back to work. So, if

anybody’s interested, come down to the Business and Software

Conference in Boston.

Ben: The software warrior.

Brock: Yes. There you go. Register that.

Ben: There we go.

Brock: All right, let’s move on to our final question from Scott.

Scott: Hey Ben! This is Scott from Columbus, Ohio. I know you

addressed in past podcast the use of cold thermogenesis for both

fat loss and muscle recovery. However, I’m doing some self

experiment and wondering what your thoughts were about using

cold exposure pre-workout. I’ve noticed some anecdotal results of

increase strength output in both number of reps and weight and

I’m very interested in your thoughts on whether there is any

research out there on using cold to actually gain strength.

Something along the lines of delayed or numbing the muscle

fatigue leading to greater work capacity. Thanks again, Ben for a

great show. I really appreciate your input.

[1:23:03.6]

Brock: Well, you’ve been totally geeking out on all these cold exposure

stuff lately. So, you’re the guy to ask for sure.

Ben: Yeah. I mean, the quick answer is, yes, and the basic principle

behind this is pretty simple. When you’re exercising, a lot of your

central organs get hotter, like your liver and your kidneys and

your intestines, all of those tend to rise in terms of their

temperature. And when that happens, you got water and blood

that leaves your muscles and it goes to the skin to try and cool you

down so that these organs don’t fail. So, if you can put yourself

into a situation where you don’t overheat as fast, you can control

body temperature, that can help out quite a bit. And NASA has

been studying this stuff ever since the 80’s in terms of pre-

exercise or pre-exertion cold exposure using everything from like

cold pools to like cold wraps and cold applications. Because one

of the best ways to cool the core from the outside is by cooling

areas that have blood vessels close to the surface of the skin.

Cooling vest is another example of something that could be used

in a situation like this. Cycling teams have used this. I know

garments surveilla was doing some of the like pre-race freezing

their butts off type of stuff including like even the consumption of

ice slushies pre-race or pre-event. I know that Craig Alexander

was doing a little bit of this cause I read about it. It was last year

in triathlete magazine or something like that about some of the

like the drinking cold water or drinking cold slushies, trying to get

as core temp down pre-workout by doing stuff like that. I know

that I personally had fantastic runs like later on in the day if I’ve

done some type of like sitting around in the cold river doing like

some cold showers earlier in the day. So, basically, anything that

you can do like that to basically kinda shut down the core

temperature prior to activity so that your body takes longer and

longer to actually get to the point where it tries to drive blood

away from the muscles to the skin to save your organs can help

out. So, ultimately, the answer is yes, cold exposure before a

workout can definitely help. As far as assisting with strength

output, I have not necessarily seen any studies that have looked at

strength and power output per se. Most of what I’ve seen has

looked at exercises of attrition like running to fatigue or

something of that nature. I guess my only concern would be if

that cold exposure affects the actual pliability of the muscle,

specifically by reducing its elasticity to the extent that it may

increase your risk for injury, you’d wanna be careful in a situation

like that. So, I would make sure that if you do something like a

cold bath prior to a strength training workout that you get in a

really good dynamic stressing routine like some lunges and some

swings and circles and things like that to make sure that you’ve

got good range of motion or enough range of motion to take you

through the activity that you wanna do prior to like going into a

set of power cleans after you’ve frozen your butt off. That seems

like it might be a little bit dangerous as anybody who’s tried to

exercise when they’re really cold might know. You know, there’s a

little bit of loss of flexibility in some situations.

Brock: I love the story of Simon Whitfield the year that he won the

triathlon at the Olympics 2004, 2008. Before the race started he

was just sitting there with ice vest on while everybody else was

like moving around and jumping around and getting warmed up,

he was just sitting there like in this little ball with his ice vest on.

And everybody thought that he was playing mind games with

them because he was just sitting so still and like staring at

everybody in there and flipped the vest on and basically just went

to town and won the race. It’s pretty cool but yeah it is, that

makes me worry about being too cold, just going straight into like

he said like trying to lift some weights or something with really

tight cold muscles.

Ben: Yeah. I’d just be careful with that but ultimately, it’s definitely

worth cooling your body prior to exercise if you’re able to do so if

you can also do it without reducing your range of motion. So,

yeah, I think that that about wraps today’s podcast.

Brock: It doesn’t if it was obvious today that majority or all the questions

are audio questions lately because of that new -little feature on the

website, we’re getting a lot of audio questions and don’t fear if you

did send in a question like weeks and weeks ago. We do so have

them in cue, all the text questions and we will get to them when

that happens but if you’ve been waiting for a long time, the best

way to get your question answered these days is to really do the

audio question.

Ben: Or just send a check to me, to my address. No but seriously, it’s a

good point. We’ll definitely prioritize the other questions cause

we’d love to hear people’s personality and voices.

Brock: Do try to keep your questions a little bit short, though. Otherwise,

you fall prey to my scalpel.

Ben: Yes, yes, Brock will cut you.

Brock: I will.

Ben: Not physically but digitally.

Brock: No, I’ll cut you physically too. I’ll cut you, man.

Ben: All right, let’s shop rack down before you train yourself. So,

bengreenfieldfitness.com the show notes for this episode are at

Episode #210. And you also get a list of some of the

recommendations that I made over at facebook.com/bgfitness in

our My List section. Thank you everybody for listening in. For

those who are gonna be in Kona, Hawaii for the Ironman World

Championships, that will be the next place that I’m headed so I

might see some of you down there. Best of luck to those of you

who are listening in and preparing for that event. Make sure that

you’re ready to sweat. And till next time, this is Ben and Brock,

signing out from bengreenfieldfitness.com.

For personal nutrition, fitness or triathlon consulting, supplements, books or DVD’s from Ben Greenfield, please visit Pacific Elite Fitness at

http://www.pacificfit.net