Because
most people think of hydration is simply plain water or at most matching the saltiness of your sweat. And I don't even see a whole lot of people even recommending that, but it's actually matching the saltiness of your blood, which is going to improve its absorption and be able to expand your own blood volume, which is the boosting cardiac output. Number one. So that's decreasing basically oxygen demand that part number two. It's giving you a larger volume to dissipate
Pate heat because we need to understand we lose volume from our blood to cool off. Like the SWAT has to come from
somewhere different. Welcome back to Today's Show is about to buy my science Nutrition tools, help you support your athletic performance, healthy, hydration, and recover from things, like going in the sauna, all topics that we are going to drill down today, further with dr. James Daniel, Antonio, the best-selling author of multiple books that I will link below. So if you're interested in going in the sauna recovering from exercise, getting a little bit more mileage out of your workout, you should
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From dr. James did Nicole, Antonio, he's a good friend of mine. I really enjoy his company. His information normally would do in-person video-based podcast, but this is just a zoom conversation and we're talking about hydration, we're talking about athletic performance. We're talking about thermal stress going in, the sauna recovery. Period is a Shinto increase fat loss and all that and mostly drawing off new information from his book win which is an amazing detailed expose about all things that you can do to optimize your physical performance and Recovery.
So I'll put links below to that another past conversations, that we've had definitely check out his book, the salt fix best best seller, for sure an amazing book. You'll definitely enjoy it. And last but not least my video for some reason. When I hit to stop the record, the file got corrupted and because, you know, the we did this virtual and you see me all the time. Anyway, you're not going to see me henceforth, which is totally fine. You're going to get all the links to the, the timestamps, in the show notes below. So, it's all good. But I hope you enjoyed this conversation. Without your James didn't Lynch O'Neil.
Great to have you back on the show, we have done to in-person conversations about your various books, to the best-selling author of five more than five books and you've authored or co-authored more than 300 academic articles. So it's an honor to be with you and I've been diving into your work about salt over the past several years but especially in your new book, when it, maybe we can just start off. I want to get into all the details of hydration of heat, stress and cold stress, and Recovery, strategies and creatine and all that. But
You know, I'm sure you've seen the reports from Jama and various other articles that have found that a lot of people have gained weight due to the stress and reduced mobility of the last couple years. So, if we're just talking simple ideas and exercise modalities for people, because you highlight, in the first chapter of your book, all about the different ways that we can exercise their Zone to training. There's hypertrophy, there's hit training from all the research that you've done for the average person who's not an elite athlete when it comes to sustainability.
Ways to support longevity and prevent age-related fat gain and all of that. What some big picture advice you would give for some of those
folks.
That's a great question. I mean, I'm doubtedly doing resistance training of some sort 30 to 60 Minutes, three to four times a week is going to, obviously reduce the risk of certain pinilla or basically the loss of muscle mass and strength as we age, which can lead to Frailty and fractures even death. So, I think, you know, keeping your muscle is super important. In the easiest way to do that is just resistance training, of course, then you know, there's your standard cardio Zone to training which is
Actually, you know, running at 60, to 70 percent of your max heart rate and doing that boosts your endurance and then high intensity interval training or what's called super a maximal interval training which is basically sprinting as fast as you can, like, for 30 seconds, and then resting for 30 seconds and doing that multiple times, doing that lie to three times a week is going to help with your cardiovascular, basically event. That's what are
you personally doing now? I know you've changed your routine a little bit. You're doing more. Is it Ma?
Now tie or Jiu-Jitsu you're doing some more sort of martial arts so to speak and in conjunction with your resistance training.
Yeah, exactly. So I think I'm more focusing on functional movements at this point. And so basically moving my body in a way that I would move it but with added resistance, whether that's with resistance bands or using things like electromagnetic assistance from tonal machines. But basically for my cardio I do a lot of Shadow Boxing and kicking because it's you know,
I don't know. It's quick. It's a super very intense way to get cardio. So it's like, hit and cement all at once. And I just find that. That is something because I work with a lot of them, they athletes to that sort of drove that interest in kind of utilizing something that's fun to build your cardio answering the same
time. That's awesome. It seems like that's becoming more and more popular. I know there's a lot more like boxing Studios coming on and and people.
Are
transitioning. True. That sort of way to incorporate, you know, a movement that you might do not that you're going to box every day in life, right? But you're moving your muscles in a way that is more natural for the human body. And I think that's one of the benefits if you can look at it that way, with the pandemic, as we were forced to do more body weight type movements and you know, whether it's bear. Crawls or air squats or lunges or things like that because we didn't have access to a gym and I've seen a Resurgence in this.
Sort of activity, which I think is unique because it lowers the barrier to entry. And a lot of people kind of say, well I don't have time to go to gym or I don't know. I don't belong to a gym. I can't afford it, but you can do these different exercises which is pretty cool. So you start, you do work with a lot of MMA athletes and things like that.
Yeah, exactly. I mean, mostly on hydrations primarily what they suffer on because they use on at a colloquy and they don't realize that they are losing a lot of salt and fluids when they do that.
And other minerals. So I primarily work with their on their nutrition and supplementation but also their hydration.
Hmm, which is key. And so let's maybe transition to more hydration as an ergogenic aid. If you were to survey, maybe 100 people on the street and that, that lift weights or that exercise and you say, hey, what are your top performance supplements? I'm sure you'd hear creatine. Hm, be touring, you'd hear about carnosine beta-alanine. I bet like maybe 5% would say like oh yeah I use salt and now use you know hydration.
Strategies to improve Sports Performance. So you've really don't get into this, and I think it's phenomenal to talk about sort of salt pre-loading warming up to the exercise and all that. So if you were to just give us a big overview of how salt can be utilized as an ergogenic aid enhanced performance. What does that sort of look like?
Yeah, that's a great question. I think that sort of level set. Some of your top ergogenic, aids would be things like beetroot juice or like, you had mentioned beta-alanine now.
That's only going to allow you to vigorously exercise, maybe one to two minutes longer. Whereas, if you do salt correctly, you can actually exercise over 20 minutes longer. So it's essentially 20 times, the good is any type of ergogenic supplement that you would take. So that's the difference. And like you said, not people actually realize how much more beneficial pre-loading assault and fluids would be compared to your top supplements. It's 10 to 20 times about so I think that helps level set it for people now.
Now what's interesting is the main benefit is from the Boost in blood volume prior to vigorous exercise. And the reason why you want to boost blood volume prior to vigorous exercise because when you start exercising vigorously you have a competition of blood flowing from the heart. But now it's has to blow to working skeletal muscle and then it also has to flow to the skin to dissipate heat. So you have competition now for blood and you have about an eight to ten percent drop in blood volume within five minutes.
It's a bigger ass exercise, so you can get ahead of that problem, you're going to dramatically improve your performance and one of the, there's, there's two really key things. I think that a lot of people should understand, is the biggest adaptation that the body goes through during vigorous endurance exercise. Is, it will try to increase its Baseline blood volume. That's one number two. If you give people IV saline and you prevent the drop in blood volume, that happens with vigorous exercise and don't see a drop
Performance. So we know the linchpin on improving performance is maintaining blood volume from those two aspects. And so when you think about it, a typical male adult has five liters of blood a woman has four Elite athletes will have a 40% increase in blood volume. They said male Elite athletes at about seven litres in really Elite rowers, can actually have nine to ten liters of blood bone. So there's a tremendous Spectrum in a tremendous basically Gap.
You can improve on, in a quick way to sort of reach that Gap is to preload the Salton
Foods. Hmm, this is really interesting. I think a lot of people that have studied exercise when I think of these sort of adaptations that occur when you habitually exercise over time we think of sort of the neuro muscular contraction and increased mitochondrial density and all these different factors that relate to the muscle. The last thing that I would ever like if I were to do a multiple-choice test
Test on exercise, physiology blood volume would be sort of the last adaptations that I would consider to be very favorable to improve performance. But it seems that this is a major aspect to adaptation so training in and of itself, habitually leads to the body, be more efficient, independent of salt and food intake and so forth. This is one of these adaptations that is really sort of malleable with training,
correct? Yes.
And the thing is, is, you don't necessarily always want to preload with very high doses of salt in fluid, that is specifically for prior to an events prior to competition. We absolutely always want to do that. However, it seems that dehydration acclamation, where you induce mild amounts of dehydration, multiple times will help build your blood volume. And then, prior to competition, you can do the very, very high salt loaded.
So how I utilized alt loading is if I have really lack of energy, I don't feel like working out, then I'll pre Louis all fluids because you're going to have energy after you do that. Or if before hard training session, even if even if I feel pretty good and I know I'm going to go really hard, I'll probably be loaded with some salt and fluid but just not as much as I would prior to. Let's see Constitution and we can talk about, you know what, the optimal concentration should be and how you should be consuming. This thing,
interesting, that was give me my next question is if we always preload salt for extra,
Sighs. Do we sort of circumvent that adaptation? So what I heard you say right there, just sort of paraphrases you don't use this every single time. It's more of and I always think of swimmers when I think of like the psychology of this. You know, they train with hairy legs and arms and all that. And then before training day, they shave down and just the feeling in the water, you're sort of Glide anymore. And it may enhance, you know, sort of that mental aspect and increase, you know, sort of output on that particular competition day. So that's sort of the way that you
to do this in a sense, you know, feeling. Lethargic, you're jet-lagged whatever you watch Netflix with your daughter or something like that. So, you're up late. You might want to use salt, but on, but on every sink, before every single workout, you may not want to do sit at least as high as perhaps, you would during a competition or a a day. We really want to optimally perform.
Exactly. So centrally before like a typical workout. I think it's pretty smart to have maybe a thousand milligrams of sodium and Tents.
Announces fluid. But if you're talking about the doses that really have the evidence for improving performance dramatically because they're gonna boost blood volume by about 8 to 10 percent, you really have to have anywhere from about three thousand to forty. Three hundred milligrams sodium in about, 26 ounces to 33.8 ounces of fluid, which the 33.8 ounces of fluid is a full liter of fluid and so and really actually that pipe which is light, slightly hypertonic or slightly more salty than the blood actually even better than matching.
You're the concentration exactly as your blood, which is interesting because most people think of hydration as simply plain water or at most matching the saltiness of your sweat. And I don't even see a whole lot of people even recommending that, but it's actually matching the saltiness of your blood, which is going to improve its absorption and be able to expand your own blood volume, which is the key but even slightly hypertonic. Even want a little bit higher. Actually something even more beneficial.
Things that I want to dive deep into if you're okay this what does the increased blood volume do? Is it increase nutrient delivery to the muscles? Is it? Increase removal of waste products like what? How how specifically I mean without getting into the Super nuances of maybe intracellular pH or calcium about whatever but a big picture, what is the blood volume specifically? Doing
big picture? It's boosting cardiac output. Number one, so that's decreasing basically oxygen demand.
I'm heart number two, it's giving you a larger volume to dissipate heat because we need to understand we lose volume from our blood to cool off like the SWAT has to come from somewhere, it's being drawn part of it from your blood volume. So if you boost your fuel use that Ting, you literally have more fluid to now who you off quicker. So that's another, that's one of the other benefits but it is true to when you have a larger blood volume, you can actually pull out metabolic
East. In other words, the hydrogen ions and just the acid. You can pull that out of the cell better to and you can deliver nutrients better as well, but I think the primary benefit is the increasing cardiac output and the decrease in oxygen demand of the heart.
That's super fasting. I mean, if you were to think of, you know, in PE class like going back to high school or junior high school kids that weren't very fit, for example, running a mile. We used to do the mile time test or some pull-ups, whatever they would look really exhausted and be very hot.
Red in the face, sweating, everywhere, whereas the athletes could, you know, it's like you didn't even know if they really did the same work. So that ability to dissipate heat. I think, obviously, we've all sort of experience that and I don't want to deviate too much from this conversation. But since we're here and I want to go back to Salt, let's talk a little bit. If we could weave in the sauna just thought and you have this. I think chapter 3, you talk a lot about cold stress and heat stress in the book. When so sauna bathing is this another modality that can have sort of
Trans over translation or carry over to sports performance because you helped with that ability to sort of it causes the adaptation to increase the ability of the body to cool
itself. Exactly. So, basically going into the sauna, every single day, for two weeks allows metabolic adaptations to occur very similar to dehydration at the nation's, you becoming heat applicator. One of the there's many adaptations that occur when you become heat activated, number one, your Baseline.
In core body, temperature becomes lower. So now you actually have a larger pool to soak up heat and it takes longer for you to hit a critical core temperature, which means you can train. And you can perform longer before basically enzymes, that produce ATP starts shutting down because certain enzymes are heat sensitive. So you have a lower Baseline core body temperature. The other adaptation that occurs is your sweat becomes more. Dilute you stop losing as much electrolytes in the benefit for that is when you have a more
That's what it actually evaporates faster when it's more dilute. So you cool, your body self off better and faster. And the threshold for sweating goes down. In other words, you actually start to sweat faster when you are, he acclimated so, you are literally a better cooling off machine when you go into the sauna every single day. Let's say for two weeks now, how long you have to go and what temperature you have to hit, you need to basically hit it, core body, temperature 101.3, you want to try to maintain.
18 that for 20 to 30 minutes and you want to do that for about two weeks consecutively. Once you have done that, you are now key that lamented. And those, most of those benefits will actually last out two weeks, as long as you maintain a good exercise
program so much to take away from that. I think a lot of people are looking for the granularity when it comes to sauna duration, Saint a time and I haven't heard anyone articulate that and put language to it. Like you just did it of you need to do this consecutively. Just like you would
If you want to increase your bench press or your squad or your Springtime, you really need to be vigilant about this for a consecutive period of time. So that's, that's a wonderful tip and just this is a super small anecdotal story. I just want to share this. So my daughter and I have been going in the sauna together quite a bit and I noticed you didn't sweat. It was weird. It was that she's nine years old and it would be hot as heck, and she's not, she wasn't sweating. And this was like, I build this on and all this over covid. And so, it's been about a year this week that we've been doing.
That's pretty regularly, not every single day. But maybe four to five days a week and just on Sunday night, I've noticed she is finally starting to sweat and it was like, wow, it took that long to train her body and all this. So you can see like the Beale it's coming on her forehead and her arms. And so it was interesting how, you know, this ability to thermoregulate and all this is inducible. And I just thought that was quite interesting, because people will say, why don't sweat so he doesn't do anything for me. It's like, well, yeah, maybe you haven't trained yourself to learn how to do.
Do this with exercise or heat? Stress or anything? Like that. Fascinating stuff there. I just we can continue on with heat therapy but I want to go back to blood volume because I can I can send some people might be resistant to look. I have hypertension. Doc said I should exercise and now you're telling me to increase my blood volume and presumably that goes along with increases in blood pressure. I already have high blood pressure. Should I be concerned with this way of improving my ex,
Sighs performance by salt pre-loading, and things like that. What would you say to that
person? Yeah. So I would, I would say is that athletic. Vigorous endurance, exercisers, who have large blood values typically have very good blood pressure. So as long as your arteries are able to beso dilate well and you don't have an increase in basically basil constriction with an elevation in blood volume. You're not going to see increases in blood pressure per se chronically, but going just a quick note.
What about the sauna you don't have to go every single day. It just will take you a little bit longer to become seat at the made it. So, if you're someone that typically just goes, four times a week, that is okay, that will actually work. You just have to be, simply go for three weeks. You basically need about thirteen sections, you need to hit about about for sauna sessions per week, for three weeks. And that will that will basically allow you to become. He tapped
right tip. Yeah, a lot of people had found just reading the comments any time I do
Video related to sauna or sauna bathing. A lot of people will go after they exercise because it's at the gym. You know, they work out that you resistance training or cardio, whatever and then they'll go into the sauna after the gym. We're kind of jumping ahead. I want to talk to you about circadian rhythm of sports performance. But since we're here, we know that body temperature is highly influenced by circadian biology. And all this wind. If you're going to split hairs, right? I suggest go in the sauna when you can but if you're going to split hairs
Ears and choose to go in the sauna for exercise after exercise in the morning versus evening. What would be considered sort of optimal if you're trying to maximize
benefits? Well, to be fair, I don't think they've ever actually, tested, let's say Sona prior to exercise versus after. So, I want to kind of preface it with that. However, the the data does set with doing sauna post exercise in regards to increasing performance later on. So,
There was a one clinical study was a three-week study that was sauna sessions of 30 minutes after host exercise. It was a traditional song, I'd but 190 Fahrenheit and it was doin basically 13 sessions in total. And after those individuals did sauna sessions post-exercise. It basically, you know, improved their performance by about 10%, which
That's actually a large increase from a performance standpoint. Usually you're talking maybe one or two percent being clinically significant. So there's about a 10% increase in their performance after they had done that. And so I like post exercise because it's a little bit more of a hormetic effect. You're basically inducing dehydration on top of mild dehydration, so you're going to get even more adaptations.
And then typically you want to wait a little bit before. Let's say you cold plunge because you still want to get all those
adaptations. That's a really good point. I think I've seen a lot of people go right to the cold shower or the ice bath. I mean this is just again looking at this through Instagram videos and you see people talking about how to biohack and stuff like that but if you were to think about barbecuing a piece of meat or whatever you know the cooking still happens after you pull it off the barbecue with a grill.
You let it cool. And I've noticed with my own body. So what I'll do is I'll go and walk around, or do some breath work or something like that. Let myself get to the point where I'm starting on the decline of cool, then do a contrast and then wait and then, go back in. But that do you see people sort of, you know, maybe not getting the maximum benefits of letting their body? Continue to heat up before they start the
contrast? Yeah, I do. I think it's pretty common that people after exercising their already high.
Not just jump into a cold bath. Now, I guess it depends on what your your goals are. If you are in an intense training camp and you're an MMA athlete, there are some benefits to doing an ice bath, fairly quickly to shut down the information so you can train hard again, taxed at. So, you know, ice baths which is a temperature of essentially 59 Fahrenheit or less have been about. If you do that about 43 minutes after exercise that dramatically improves,
Output out to 96 hours. So you recover much faster and your recovery compared to not doing that is better out to 96 hours. So if you're someone in an intense training camp, start cold plunging, you know, that's fine. But if your goal is hypertrophy like muscle, increasing the size of the muscle. Increasing muscle strength, you don't want to cold plunge, probably within 24 hours after exercises that will inhibit some of the the gains that you would have got not
is that sort of like taking antioxidants after exercise you?
You don't want to take vitamin E vitamin C because there is favorable signaling from these so-called inflammatory cytokines that help with the adaptation. So there is context here. If you're talking about performance versus hypertrophy, there's different protocols for post-exercise cooling, huh?
Exactly right? So if you're more into endurance or you're more into recovery quickly because you're in a training camp then you know cold plunge all day so to speak. But if you're someone who's looking to gain muscle and strength, then
Lots of weight to 24 hours after your training session. So you don't lose the some of the increases in muscle strength and size that you would have gained
gosh. These conversations are so helpful for people because, you know you see a snapshot of a football player that everyone thinks. Oh yeah, well, he goes in the eye or she goes in the ice bath after a competition, the Olympics football, whatever. So therefore when I go to the gym, I should do the ice bath after. But there are subtleties here that are not really
Conveyed, that I think is important. So, you know, if you were to do two a days, you know, I remember when CrossFit was really big back into, I'm sure it's still big in certain circles, but 2014, 2015, there was always his posts of these people going, a nice bass afterwards, and, and some of those competitions, especially the games. There was multiple workouts throughout a day. It was like two a day for football in them in there, you know, summer. So that would be a situation where if you're training multiple times a day, it makes a lot of sense to cool down the muscles and and accelerate, the
Every process so that you can have a consecutive work out later that would be optimal.
Exactly. So like you said, it just totally depends on what your goals are and like, what exact sport you're performing in, will depend on, when you should do an ice bath, how cold it should actually be in. There are pre-cooling methods to that can dramatically improve performance. You don't have to doing pre-exercise, but even during exercise in short amounts of time, if you cool.
All certain areas of the body. You can pull down core body temperature pretty quickly
passing stuff. Definitely want to get into more orogenic. AIDS and creatine and all that. But but since we're sort of here talking about temperature in chronobiology, one of the things that I've really found to be helpful in forming my routine with regards to exercise, especially during covid-19
Point but also I found that my body started started to sort of anticipate that I am going to exercise and it just made things a lot easier to stick to with regards. And I know you have a full chapter all about Chrome biology and circadian rhythms and sleep and all that. But with regards to timing of exercise for hypertrophy power recovery, making it a habit can we sort of unpack a little bit of what you found in the literature there especially for people who?
You know, are trying to figure out because I get I'm sure you get these questions. Should I do fasted cardio in the morning on an empty stomach or should I lift later in the day? How important is chronobiology? As it? Relates to sports performance?
Yeah, this is another question. That is highly individualized and will depend on if you're a morning person or a night owl, but essentially around about eight hours after you wake up is typically, when you're going to perform the best. So for, you know, a typical person who wants a wakes up at 7:00 in the morning somewhere between
2:00 and 5:00 p.m. this typically is when you'll get your best workout. And actually that's typically when I like to work out as well because I like to have a lot of my cognitive Powers early on in the day. Now, if you do a vigorous, exercise, your cognition is shop for a couple hours after that because your body just put a ton of effort into, you know, breaking down proteins and muscle and now is trying to rebuild. And so me personally, I like to work out a little bit later in the day, but you never want to work out too.
Close to when you go to bed because it activates the sympathetic nervous system and you're never going to be able to fall asleep. So it's that tight balance that you need to figure out for yourself.
That's a really good point. Yeah, a lot of people don't realize that they you are kind of mentally shot after you exercise especially if your exercise intensely. So on the one hand it does wake you up. It's nice to have some caffeine and then go exercise. But I always found myself and I thought maybe it was something wrong with me. Maybe I'm sort of broken or messed up or something cuz I'm like, dude.
I cannot write and read and and I'm way less productive if I train beforehand. Now, if I go for a walk with the dogs at five in the morning or whatever, let that's a totally different story. But if I go crush a workout, I am no good for a few hours. So I found that my work is generally, not that good between 2:00 and 5:00. Anyway, like you said, so that's when I generally work out and then I'll do busy work or things that I need to do. So I think that's a great tip but again, just because that works for dr. James or myself.
Doesn't mean that you have to do that. And I think, unfortunately, as great as the internet is, for disseminating information, context is often lost. And we always encourage people to try different things to see what works for them because everyone is so unique and things. Now that being said, if you train it to a clock, when are you having caffeine or do you have caffeine? Because I know you talked a lot about this in the book, caffeine can help I found with exercise, but if you have it too late in the day can augment sleep, so,
What do you do with regards to caffeine
the golden rules to really not have any caffeine at least six hours before bedtime, I believe like to not have it afternoon so I try to keep it in my last cup at around 11:00 and of course, it depends on how much you're consuming to. Like if you're consuming three cups of coffee at noon, that's different than just one cup of coffee and everyone is different and how the metabolize coffee. Some people are fast metabolizers, which probably would, I end this hobby, doesn't really affect me that much. And then some people they have a half a cup of
Coffee. And they're off the walls and they have anxiety panic attacks and all this other stuff. So it's like coffee and caffeine intake is super individualized just like everything we've been talking
about. Hmm. Do you recommend any DNA testing for people?
Um, you know, it's like certainly what do you do? Once you know what right versus in almost every single case, if you just optimize all your nutrients, it's going to fix your DNA issues, anyway, right? Like a lot of DNA
Issues can simply be like MTHFR you get riboflavin up to a certain amount and you fix most of em, thr issues. So I think more focusing on what I'm really interested in is how to test for subclinical malnutrition or nutrient deficiencies, basically in vitamins and minerals. I think that's really the future that I see because if you can optimize that and figure out
You know, who's Division and who's not and then you fix that, you're going to have, you're in a fix the jeans because the genes are turned on and off, but a lot by our nutrient status. Really is what drives a lot of them?
Speaking of micronutrients, let's talk about some of the things that are found in meat that happened to be, you know, ergogenic Gates of think, taurine carnitine, creatine carnosine, all these things generally found in animal products and a lot of people that gravitate towards Health and Fitness,
There's a lot of conversations about going plant-based and all this, so the nutrients that are found in meat and although they may be deemed as controversial because they come from animal products happened, you talked a lot about these in the book. Let's talk about what some of these nutrients do in the big ones. Maybe creatine, carnosine beta alanine something. And then, if you are a vegan vegetarian, different considerations, particularly when it comes to
sport. Yeah. So you're a vegetarian then
All right, you're not eating. Let's say, red me, for example, so you're not getting many nutrients like you, like, you had mentioned carnitine, which is important for fat oxidation. Or you also carnitine helps bring in fatty acids, there's certain Transporters carnitine palmitoyl. Transferases one of them, were it brings fatty acids into the inner mitochondrial membrane space to burn via beta oxidation and deliver burning fat for fuel. So you're going to burn fat better if you
Have a better carnitine status, which obviously people that eat red meat are going to have more carnitine much there. You don't get carnitine. If you're a vegetarian carnosine, also is super important. It's basically an advanced glycation end-products inhibitor and essentially a buffer of acid and beta alanine is sort of the best way to boost carnosine levels in the body. It's a precursor for carnosine and so that helps buffer the acid that's produced during vigorous.
Your thighs, taurine is another amino acid that you'll get an animal Foods as well, and touring definitely helps with blood pressure. Blood flow in a oxidants that is particularly in the central nervous
system and creatine and all these things are found in Whole Foods, right? Assuming that if you eat red meat and I maybe we just go a little sidestep here. I'm much more inclined. To encourage my clients and myself to eat red meat compared to chicken. I know a lot of people eat
An important things at them and having backyard. Chickens has made me even more of a fan of like, red meat. But these, these nutrients that were speaking to that had that are healthy. Just generally have health benefits that are linked with living a healthy life in general. But apply to sports performance. Do you eat much chicken in your household and if so, how often or do you gravitate more towards red
meat? I definitely gravity more towards red meat, chicken like you once a week in the household.
It's typically almost always pastured chicken. So, chicken, that's, you know, beating on the grubs and worms and all that stuff versus, you know, chicken that's being fed, corn, and soy, and you're 100% correct. That read me is just simply more nutrient dense than chicken. The only thing is that will integrate pork because pork typically tends to be 10 times higher in thiamine or vitamin B1 and there's so many things that can delete that b-vitamin quickly. So I'd like to try to integrate pork at least once a week. Yeah, there's a couple other nutrients.
Actually import that are fairly High than bernheim, red meat. But overall, I think consuming liver and heart on a fairly consistent basis. It's super important for the heart for the co Q 10 liver for the vitamin A and copper, which so many people are deficient. And and a lot of this iron deficiency, anemia is probably actually driven a lot by vitamin A and copper deficiency which are both needed to allow iron to work. And so I think integrating maybe half an ounce of liver every single day or
It's three times a week is going to go a long way to providing you. A lot of nutrients that you can't get even, you consuming muscle me and like, you said, creatine super important, not just for athletic performance, which is probably one of the best evidence based supplements for increasing strength and muscle hypertrophy anywhere from three to five grams per day. But cognitively tours, there's now systematic reviews and meta-analyses that taking creatine 325 grams per day, improves cognition, particularly in vegetarians in,
Two percent of our methylation is actually specifically to create creatine in the body. So, if you, if you take creatine, you're going to now, basically dramatically reduce the methylation needs, and now you can basically put that energy towards other things.
Creatine is so fasting because there's this perception that creatine causes kidney damage. Creatine is anabolic agent, that causes you to turn into the Incredible Hulk, and if you really look at the physiology of community and it
It really do any of that, but I think there's this a lot of people who stand to benefit from taking creatine, have this perception that it's dangerous. It's bad like women. For example, have heard that creatine is almost like an anabolic steroid, but there's all these, of course, that's not true. But there's a lot of papers coming out showing that creatine can actually really help particularly hairy and postmenopausal women. It's up regulated. It changes that coincide with menstruation and there's all these benefits. So
I guess sort of the question is, if you're eating red meat, do you still from the research that you've done stand to benefit from taking creatine around exercise?
So, the most of the evidence shows that around the 3 to 5 grams of creatine per day is going to give you most of the benefits. Even if you're eating red meat, it's going to be typical to hit that. Mark, you might get one or two grams. So I still think adding a couple grams of creatine on top of even consuming a pound and a half of red, meat is still going to bring you
You
benefits. Yeah, me too. I found just even having like a g before exercise. And after I have noticed and I don't think this is just Placebo, I have noticed more Vigor during my workout and, and I think part of that too, could be the changes in intracellular water. I mean we're talking a lot about blood volume but but changes within the muscle. What do you think about that?
Yeah. 100%. Your muscle is about 75% water and the
Hydrated. It is the better. It's going to move waste. The better pump, you get the better blood flow, oxygen delivery, etc, etc, and it's mostly water as it is. So if you can enhance that, then you're going to get better benefits. Indefinitely creatine is one of the reasons why you can cause a little bit of weight gain is because it does improve intracellular hydration, which is a good thing.
Where do you think the perception that creatine is problematic or bad for the
The kidneys came from, is it? Because back, like, in the, I remember, and when I played football in high school, we are crushing creating, but it also came with one part or two parts of dextro. So if you're due to do 5 grams of creatine per day, you're getting 20 grams of dextrose. And sometimes we were doing five grams multiple times a day. So we're getting like, 60, 80 grams of dextrose or maltodextrine, is that we're sort of the complications with creatine and how this stigma became attributed to this organic
Aid.
I think a lot of it has to do with some misconceptions around, creatine potentially, increasing Bratton, and then not being translated into worsening kidney function. And I think that's where a lot of it stems from. And we now know that supplementing with creatine is completely safe doses of 5 grams per day. Yeah,
you know, people split hairs on the forms. There's creatine, magnesium chelate, from Albion. There's creatine monohydrate. There's a buffered. Creole: from a company in Montana.
When it comes to the forum's, do you do worry about splitting hairs on
that? No, I think monohydrate is completely fine and optimal. I don't I haven't seen any good research that those other types of forms are going to have that much, or if any type of benefit over
monohydrate, I have some other notes Here With regards to inhibiting myostatin because myostatin can augment muscle growth and so forth when it comes to maybe if you're a hardgainer or your elderly and prone to sarcopenia or something like
Like that natural ways to interfere with myostatin preventing muscle growth. What are some things that come to mind?
I think so, in order to induce hypertrophy, the key is to go near failure or go to failure. That's the key. So you don't even have to use heavy weight per se as long as you get close to failure or to failure, you are actually going to grow muscle and strength. Now, that's not to say that obviously, if you're lifting
8% of your maths and going to failure that you're not going to have obviously larger increases in a muscle hypertrophy and strength versus going to failure at 30% of your max, but that's the key. The key is to getting close to failure or to failure and you will see improvements muscle gain. Now, that's, that's also not to say that certain supplements won't help with muscle gain. A lot of it has to do with improving insulin sensitivity, which a lot of you'll just get that through increasing resistance.
This training exercise but certain supplements, like the no suit, all help to improve insulin sensitivity and basically, you get better improvements on muscle growth strength, glycogen recovery. When you actually after a workout, add some carbohydrates, add some inositol to give you the insulin stimulus to kind of bring in the creatine, you know, improve the protein in the car but working better.
That's a great point that I think is under recognized the importance of
Insulin sensitivity to preserve muscle mass. If you look at diabetics, generally, there's a situation where they're gaining fat and then also losing muscle at the same time and bone as well. This osteosarcoma pinochle, obesity, sort of vicious cycle. A lot of people don't think about that. So, great, great point there. One of the things that's controversial on the Internet is carbohydrates, right? You've written the book super fuel all about, helping people choose the right fats especially if they're on a keto diet.
Carb carbohydrate manipulation around exercise is controversial in some people say it doesn't matter. I found generally on days where I'm less active, I have less carbs on days in a more active. I can afford more carbs and I try to strategically time those carbs around exercise. What do you think about carbohydrate manipulation as it relates to exercise specifically?
Yeah. So the data is very clear that if you are doing vigorous explosive activity, that's fairly prolonged.
So let's say, you know, a minute or longer, then pre-loading, with complex carbs, is going to improve performance, because it's going to help tap your muscle glycogen reserves, which will dramatically go down use about 33% of your muscle glycogen, which is just a few minutes of explosive activity. So, but you don't always have to train pre loaded with carbs. I think there's benefits to training fasted and then also training preloaded with carbohydrates because you're going to sort of tap into both.
Metabolic fuels and that, that that's what makes you metabolically, flexible is to be able to work out fasted. But then also be able to work out with, you know, carbs in the system and I do, I hundred percent agree with you that my carbohydrate intake fluctuates based on my activity level. If I'm more active, my body will crave more carbohydrates and it's simply it's not. I think part of the debate is a lot of low carb, or say, I don't need exogenous glucose, my body can make it. Yes, that's true but it's more taxing.
To force your body to make glucose rather than just consume some exogenous lie, just, like taking exogenous creatine. But yeah, the body can make creatine, but when you take it, you know, exogenously right? You're going to, you know, reduce methylation needs, all these other things, so it's about decreasing, the burden on the body to do it. And so, I think that exogenous carbohydrates and athletic person who can tolerate them, you know, 150-200 grams of carbs on an exercise day, I think is, is a good
amount.
Yeah, and if you're not up, insulin-dependent diabetic, you're probably okay. Especially, you know, having that the context. It's we keep having to harp on this. But I think it really needs to be said because there's a lot of purest out there who say, wow, yeah, I can do it on fats alone, we like well, yeah you can we've all done this and we've learned the hard way but having a little bit of organic white rice or some fruit or a little honey. Like there's you don't get extra credit Health points, you know for being the hero
Right? So anyway, I found that having a better workout leads to more favorable adaptations. And is better for longevity and hormones and insulin sensitivity as well. So we don't, we don't get extra credit points for being the hero. The other sort of controversial aspect of exercise and sports performance is as it relates to longevity. There's a lot of people who perceive mtor and igf-1, you know, they sort of
Of anabolic signaling molecules to always be bad in every context, but we know the context applies to these animal like signaling molecules. So, there's this perception that if you take creatine, you might stimulate mtor, igf-1 or if you exercise, you will stimulate these anabolic signaling molecules that are linked with cancer heart disease and neuro degenerative issues. But context matters, what do you say in that
situation?
So I think if you look at a lot of these longevity populations, they typically are much smaller than your typical American particularly someone who lifts weights. So that's why they can get away with such low protein intake, and still live, fairly long lives because they typically are ten to twenty percent less in weight than a typical American. Now, their muscle mass is also probably much less than yours or mine. So our protein needs are dramatically going to be
Higher than your typical elderly Okinawan who typically just walks or does mild forms of exercise versus someone like yourself who's watching, you know, like you know, 185 pounds of almost pure muscle. So the Nuance there is that's typically lost in the discussions that these longevity populations are typically super skinny have a low muscle mass and don't really lift heavy weights and so their protein needs are much
less the difference between chronic overexpression of these
Moloch whether it's enter igf-1 versus acute. Transient increases around exercise. Where after a meal, that context really gets lost? I think it's helpful for people to understand is you don't want to drop em tour to the ground or igf-1 to the floor. You also don't want it to be over, expressed constitutive lie all day long and night long and snacking all the time and this. So there are some benefits to having, you know, this ebb and flow around exercise and so forth. So I guess to summarize when it
To longevity. James, are you worried about exercising, while you're fasting for fear? That the mtor expression or igf-1 changes might negate some of the health benefits linked with fasting?
No. Because I think ultimately exercising is going to dramatically improve insulin, sensitivity, and its really insulin resistance. It's going to chronically elevated. Mtor everyone sort of focuses on protein being, this mtor stimulator but really having chronic
Insulin resistance, which is a lot of it is contributed to a lack of exercise and not building muscle. And so, I think like you said, a little bit of Emptor stimulation on a workout day, is a good thing. This is going to help recover and build what you just broke down.
Yeah, so what you're saying is like vegan, junk food could increase, mtor right? Cupcakes can increase mtor right at having soda pop. Could increase mtor. So, it's funny how protein has become the the villain re. You know, an egg
The villain but you're like, well, you can have all sorts of plant, derived sugar and corn and all that, that can also stimulate this so-called, you know, nefarious, signaling molecule, of course, I'm being facetious. It's not nefarious, but the context gets lost in the conversation, dr. James we can go on for hours and you have so much detail in the book and I want to encourage people to check it out. Links will be below, but there's two questions that are unanswered.
Related to the book. I know, you know, a lot about that. I just wanted to sort of explore with you and that is the linoleic acid oxidation of LDL and ldo oxidation, you wrote a great piece on this. I believe, was it 2018 or 2019, really important stuff, because I think a lot of people get their LDL levels measured from their doctor and there's really not a lot of conversation about the oxidation of that and the changes in the types of fats, they consume in their diet. I
Length of paper in the show notes. But if you could help us sort of better, understand the big picture here of the oxidation of lipids in our body and why that can increase our risk for all the different diseases that are so, common
nowadays. Yeah, I think you're probably asking this to because you probably get a ton of questions of people who maybe go animal-based and their LDL goes up and they're all they're very worried about this and there's virtually I've haven't seen any literature that in the face of good insulin sensitivity.
Low triglycerides good HDL. That elevations in LDL outside of like homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia is going to be an exhibit of a risk factor, for actually increasing heart disease. And so, we need to look at the whole context of the lipids and the insulin sensitivity and not just myopically focusing on LDL. And that's sort of kind of like the same thing, with salt, everyone focuses on blood pressure and they don't look at the all those, you know, the aldosterone and running. All these stress hormones that increase with salt, how it's done,
Distance goes up with low salt. So we have to look at the whole picture and what's happening. As you said, oxidized LDL is an actual contributor to heart disease, right? Our livers produce LDL naturally. So that's not a natural contributor to heart disease. When it oxidizes, that's absolutely a contributor and one of the main things that basically leads to oxidation or increases, the susceptibility of LDL to oxidation is the
The amount of linoleic acid in LDL, because that's basically the first fat that oxidizes, both arachidonic acid and linoleic acid are the first bats that oxidized and you actually have to deplete basically all the antioxidants in LDL first, in order for those absolute paths to oxidize. So that's why eating hard because of the ubiquinol and getting like really good sources of meat, which are higher in carotenoids will actually help to protect the LDL from oxidized. And so, there's been a lot of
Talk some people like Rob Wilson and their book that that grass-fed meat isn't nutritionally that much different or pasta me to then grain-fed meat but they're not looking at the carotenoid alpha-tocopherol content which is like 10 times higher in the conjugated linoleic acid content, much higher sure. No. Mega threes are a little bit higher but they weren't looking at the right nutrients. So it's very important to also look at the carotenoids, the antioxidants because that will get integrated into all lipoproteins and
Prevent them from oxidizing. There's a tremendous difference in pasture grass fed meat on the carotenoid Spectrum compared to grain-fed meat. So I think that's important. But if you there's been so many experiments where if you lower the linoleic acid intake, it increases the LDL susceptibility to oxidation and if you basically increased, let's say olive oil consumption that will increase the monounsaturated fats and LDL and decrease the susceptibility.
Only about the oxidation. And so we have systematic reviews and meta-analyses to from Chris ramsden and colleagues that. Absolutely, yes. When you replace animal fats with these vegetable oils, there is increases in all cause mortality coronary, heart disease events and things like that. So we can talk about oxidized LDL all we want. But then a lot of the naysayers will say well that's just in a cell or that doesn't translate to clinical events but we do have many clinical studies showing this as well. That that's the bullets are harmful.
And stuff right there. I think people hit the rewind button because that aspect of the sort of phenotypic difference between grain-fed, feedlot meat versus pasture-raised and all that. I think a lot of people do focus in on the omega-3 versus manga. 36 fat composition, but anyone who has decent visual Acuity can tell there is a visual difference here. Just looking at this weather, the composition and I haven't heard anyone articulate, but language to the
Fact that there's a change in the fat soluble antioxidants. There's a quantitative difference in that, is in part, how it's beneficial. So I think that's huge, but going back to the Practical nuts and bolts here. If you haven't, your HDL is normal, triglycerides are normal, but your LDL increases doctors all freaked out, family members are freaked out. Do you recommend taking that next step to look at oxidized LDL assays, or look at lipoprotein, little a, or things like that.
Is there any clinical utility to knowing that
information?
I think there's some decent evidence for out of approaching a, especially certain if you have certain genetic issues to then definitely things like nice and have been shown to help people, with elevated lipoprotein, a things like that. So you can kind of tweak that a little bit. I try to stick with dietary things mostly well yeah, sure. I mean coronary artery calcification carotid ultrasound looking at. If you have plaque in the carotid arteries, right? Those are all great ways to basically visualize,
If you actually have atherosclerosis or plaque in your circulation, which is I think ultimately matters. More than if you have slightly elevated, LDL level
and I mentioned LP little a and I just sort of tassili threw that in there. The Assumption from the research that I've read and correct me if I'm wrong here. That that is sort of a functional marker of LDL oxidation, although not directly. But is that sort of the best working hypothesis because I know it's sort of controversial and there's still a lot that needs to be known about LP.
Little a is that
yeah I think that's fair to say that if you're someone with an elevated LDL plus you have an elevation and LP little a then it's more likely or not that you're at a high risk of heart disease than than if you have good levels of LP little a but elevated LDL
amazing. So I wanted to kind of clear that up. I think again that that paper that you published a link in the show notes, really helpful and I guess to finish off is the mainstream is mainstream medicine and
Providers. We know that the dietary approaches to stop hypertension, the DASH diet has received so much attention but we know that there's all these Trends in medicine and health and nutrition. You know, salt has been the devil for a lot of years and we're told to reduce salt intake. Is there any change in the recommendation or the guidance from cardiovascular Specialties and things like that? With regards to salt intake or qualifying salt intake? Any changes that you're seeing with regard to
To that.
No, not really. And to be honest, if you actually look at the evidence that those recommendations are based off of, It's Always level evidence, see, which is expert opinion, meaning not based on good clinical evidence, that's not based on, systematic reviews. And meta-analyses, when you actually look at those lowering salt intake, barely lowers blood pressure, especially people who are normal tensive or slightly elevated blood pressure. In fact, about the same amount of people in those categories will a
Have a significant increase in blood pressure rather than a reduction if you decrease their salt intake and the thing is too and again, myopically focusing on blood pressure in salt intake is that is this even a good reduction of blood pressure in many instances? It is not you are simply depleting blood volume in your dehydrating, the person and that's why their blood pressure is lower and we know this because then all the stress hormones increase. So the most of the evidence shows that whenever you go below 3000,
Milligrams of sodium, all the stress hormones, start to increase, and insulin resistance, also dramatically starts to increase. So really most of the data shows that between three and five thousand milligrams of sodium, is associated with the least amount of rising stress hormones. The lowest amount of risk of cardiovascular events,
important point. I think a lot of people are scared too fast or do these things because it increases cortisol and stress hormones. But if you just go on a low salt diet, these counter regulatory
Hormones will try to overcompensate, you know, for the reduction and sodium really important point. I didn't know that level C evidence, you know. So this expert opinion and sort of what I've noticed over the last two years has. Once people start, there's an idea put out with local quality evidence and a lot of people sort of clamber onto this idea and and get excited about it and it becomes sort of common knowledge, right? What even know the evidence sometimes is low quality.
So it's interesting that the perception can change and that can influence the sort of culture within academic funding and literature and if you if you sort of disagree with this common knowledge, then you're not part of the team and that may affect funding. So it's sort of interesting once you have paid attention to different narratives whether it's sugar or fat content in the diet sodium masking, non masking like it's interesting to see how these things can influence.
Cognitive biases and Trends and so we all need to be sort of aware of that the level of evidence when it comes to a certain whatever intervention or or thing that we referring
to. So it's great
to have conversations with people like yourself who are knee-deep in the literature and the research not only just sharing this for for Lay folks. Like folks listening and myself over on Instagram with with great content there but also in peer-reviewed academic circles, you know,
Co-authoring over 300 articles, were authoring in co-authoring multiple articles, which is great. So dr. James really appreciate you. As always for coming on, I will definitely link your Instagram handle below. People should should be following you for practical tips on Instagram. You have so many wonderful books. If someone hasn't yet purchased one of your books right? And they're like I want to dive more into dr. James's work, the phenomenal where should they
start?
I guess it depends on what your interest is. If you're interested in fast, super fuel, you're interested just in is salt actually healthy or not salt fix. If you're interested in getting in shape recipes and meal plans, win when would be my choice.
Yeah, and I guess the final question here. I don't know what another person in the house space. That is as productive as you you crank out. So much content. Yeah, you have children. Yeah. You have a family. You have a business. James, how do you do it? Like, what what's the
Do you have like a spreadsheet of like, hey, this is these are the books of we're going to do, like, because you are so productive. Everyone has a dream of writing a book but they never, they never even write a book and you've written multiple. What's the key to your success?
I would say hyper-focus being able to shut everything out. And if you hyper Focus or a couple hours a day, you can get a lot of work done. And so I think just, you know, that there's been books written about this but essentially if you want to improve
On anything, whether it's writing, whether it's training, whether it's, you know, athletic performance, hyper focusing, very intensely for a set of period of time with small breaks of rust is what really leads to dramatic increases in productivity.
Do you follow Cal Newport? And some of his work
I've heard of him. I haven't of I don't follow him though but yeah, I'm sure it's pretty similar principle, right?
Yeah. So, like your phone's not sitting there with Instagram loaded, right? You're probably too.
That on airplane mode or bring it in another room while you're really in doing deep work.
Exactly. Yeah, it's just all about teamwork and being consistent. That's awesome.
Do your kids have aspirations to be authors and do research, like, how do you educate your kids on trying, to sort of share some of the wisdom that you've gained over the course of your career with them and in terms of writing and reading.
Yeah, well, it's, I mean, it's interesting that your kids still pick up on little things right? Like Mike's,
So he doesn't really care about calories and more. He cares about like is the quality of the food which is kind of cool. I don't think like most like you know, nine year olds would be thinking about like the quality of the food versus like always it just has packaged food, a lot of calories or not. So I mean your kids are always listening so I think that your child's best example lead by example, don't speak to them about it. Be about it and they will follow in your footsteps, more likely, that one that's key.
That's awesome. My daughter's, not as well and she's always reading labels now and like what?
The sugar content and we have conversations, you know, in the grocery store. And it's awesome, you know, because a lot of parents, they don't have these these conversations, but we are molding. These children to be future adults and I know you've worked with people over the years who have autoimmune diseases, depression, heart disease, and all this at an early age. And a lot of them will tell you like this happened because I ate this stuff as a child. And so we this is the first place to start and you know that jam article came out last year.
We're finding that 65 percent of the calories, that kids between the ages of like five and twelve eat, its hyper processed junk food. So it's like, we're not do. We could do way better job and that's awesome. James that you're doing that. So, thanks as always for coming on, thanks for sharing your wisdom with us. I will put the books in the show notes, and some of the articles that we talked about, but definitely go out and check out when everyone, a lot of great science in there referenced and it goes a tizzy about how to the book goes in detail. A to Z how to improve Sports.
And athletic performance and I think it can help a lot of people, so appreciate you coming on.
Thanks Mike. Thanks for having me.
Well, my friend that's it for today. Thanks as always, for tuning in for listening, all the way through. Hopefully, you got some value out of this, in the timestamps. And thanks for sharing this with a friend who you feel might benefit from this information. And please, check out the work that dr. James did Nick puts out, he is very productive, very proactive, when it comes to research and translating that sort of technical jargon into more actionable things that we can.
All do is friends and family with our clients with people. As we see a church in our neighborhood, these are practical things that can help a lot of people, so thank you for sharing his work. He is so productive. I think he outperforms anyone in the sort of Health Nutrition space. So hats off to James and again thanks for tuning in and hopefully you have a great rest of your day and we'll catch you on a future episode Down the Road by now,
