Supplementation for different people and goals

This is session number 80 of the Performance Place Sports Care Podcast. What's your favorite Costco product? Welcome to the Performance Place Sports Care Podcast, where you can learn about sports injury theory, rehab, diagnosis, and how to understand the doctor lingo you didn't understand at your appointment. And now, your host, Dr. Sebastian Gonzales. Hey everybody, it's Sebastian. Thanks for joining me back on the podcast here today. Today, we are going to learn about supplementation for different types of populations and their specific goals with a great guest that I'm going to have on. There is a video version of this, by the way, because he was nice enough to actually have me on his podcast.

And he has so much more technologically, technological savvy than I do. So, he sent me a video of our whole interaction as well as the audio. It's so nice. It was the easiest podcast I ever did. So, his name is Ben Brown. He has a company called BLS Nutrition. His website is in the links on the show notes. And we're going to go over some cases today. So, he is going to be speaking about, actually, we're going to a couple different topics here. But for the most part, the three cases that I propose to him, if this resonates with any of the listeners out there, is number one, if you're a working mom, 40 years old, likes to do yoga and run weekly, distances under 10 miles, and your goal is to stay healthy and flexible, what are some nutritional supplementation or what are some nutritional advice for you?

Case two is a 35-year-old male with moderate weekly lifting sessions. They're trying to be more anaerobic and less aerobic, and their goal is to stay strong as they age, not really to get big. So, that is case two. Case three is a 50-year-old male looking to get the body of a 25-year-old again. Experiences some lack of energy and overall good health, but has some lofty goals. So, those are things we're going to be covering. But first, we're going to be covering what's your favorite Costco product. I have an affinity to love their churros. Holy crap. If you have not had a Costco churro for a dollar, you are missing something in life.

I love a lot of things Costco. I mean, Kirkland products have never steered me wrong, except for there was one time I got their Kirkland beer of the old variety. I saw they had a new variety recently, actually. But their Kirkland light was not really a big hit in any of the parties I brought. And I brought it to, and actually, I've been sent home with that beer before. So, actually, I believe I still have one can for that lucky person who wants to try that Kirkland light. It's been sitting on the shelf in my garage for a long time. But the Costco churros, oh, my God. Oh, my God. And even their pumpkin pies.

I swear, if their pumpkin pies are sold in a single slice at the food court, I might be probably 20 pounds bigger. So, what's your favorite Costco product? Probably a food, I bet. So, let's get into the interview right now with Benjamin Brown or Ben Brown. All right, everyone. Welcome on. Benjamin Brown has promised. Say, hey. What's up, buddy? How you doing? Good. Nothing. Good to see your face. I feel like it's been forever now. Yeah. It has been quite a while. Good to see you. So, tell me your morning ritual because I want everyone to know exactly what you do nutritionally to be so pepped up in the morning.

Is this, now, let me ask. So, is this like a morning where my son wakes up at 5 a.m. pounding on his door? You know, waking us out of a deep sleep? Or is this a morning where I'm meeting with clients at 6 a.m.? So, pounding on his door so he can't reach the doorknob. No, we locked him in from the outside in because he's two and a half and he'll come out in the middle of the night, like he'll open the door, come out and kind of, you know, be crying or hungry or, you know, he wet his diaper or something like that. And it's not just trying to get him to stay in his bed, but he'll wake up at 5 a.m.

and, you know, come out of his room and wake everyone in the house up. My two older girls, they're 8 and 6. And so, we're just trying to get him to stay in his room, to stay in his bed. But back to, you know, back to the original question. We're not bad parents just because we lock our child in his room. No, I would do the same. My parents just locked me inside the camper, they said. I would pound the shit out of that door. Yeah, well, we did it with our daughter and she would basically just, you know, especially trying to put them to bed at night and stuff. And then eventually she'll just curl up on the floor and go to sleep.

So, I don't know. You got to train these little suckers, man. No one's figured it out. There's no right or wrong way. I would do the exact same thing as you probably. So, I'm not judging. But with regard to the morning ritual, the ritual is hit or miss. It's because there's so many moving pieces. But with the morning ritual, it's usually wake up. I usually get up actually pretty early. So, 5 a.m. I'm usually up at like sometimes 4 or 4.30, depending on kind of the time of year and how kind of motivated I am, what I'm working on in my business, like what specifically I'm trying to focus on. And again, because the kids get up early, trying to knock out some kind of quiet time work, focus work before they get up.

Because then it's breakfast, get them ready for school, all the chaos that ensues, which takes a couple hours. And so, usually it's wake up, drink a big glass of water. Usually, I'll have kind of like some squeeze like a lime or a lemon in the water, put some sea salt or some electrolyte powder in the water. Sometimes some apple cider vinegar or some like chlorophyll, which is chlorophyll is like a green plant pigment that is good for cellular health. So, I'll kind of experiment with a bunch of different things, take some supplements, and then usually that's it, maybe some black coffee and kind of get to work.

Or if I'm, like I was telling you that we work, we run a corporate wellness program here in Chandler, Arizona. And so, sometimes I'm teaching a class that's at like 6 a.m., in which case I'll do all of the aforementioned stuff, but then I'll be out the door on the road and then run a class at 6 a.m., but in a perfect world, it's wake up kind of without an alarm clock. I might do 10 minutes of meditation, like mindfulness app, if you're familiar with that. I heard you talk about it when I was listening to your podcast this morning, actually. Yeah, so that helps me kind of get into a focused state, helps me reduce stress, helps me clear my mind, and also helps me oxygenate the body because oftentimes we're very wound up from the time we wake up with the loud alarm clock to whether the kids are banging on the door to we're scrambling, you know, to get ready for the work day.

And we're just kind of in the sympathetic nervous state all day long from, you know, we're sitting in the traffic, then we're at the office, and then we've got meetings and, you know, maybe running out to lunch and not eating the best foods. And we're kind of in this hyper-sympathetic state where we have short breathing patterns. And so starting the day with dealing some deep guided breathing can go a long way towards oxygenating the body, which every one of our cellular processes runs from oxygen. So that is obviously pretty beneficial. Well, so it sounds like then, since you're going to be one of the nutritional experts on the show, that you have a busy life just like everybody else, but you're making it happen.

Yeah, that's it. I have a very busy life. Like I said, we have three kids, and I have two businesses, and I'm all over the place. And fortunately, I have a very supportive wife, but she's also quite busy with numerous work and volunteer activities. And so we just, we don't make excuses. We have our priorities, and our priorities are family and community and nutrition. And, you know, I make it a point to always, as often as possible, I make it a point to cook breakfast for my kids when I can, when I'm around, cook dinner, have family dinners, eat healthy foods, go out of my way to pick healthier food options.

Is it always amazing? No. Do we eat pizza and burgers? And do I drink beer? Absolutely. And, you know, so we're just, we're kind of real world people, but we have prioritized eating healthy and exercising. Absolutely. Oh, good. Well, I guess we kind of jumped into your daily rituals without actually knowing who you are yet. So tell everybody about yourself, how you came to be such a diligent guy within nutrition and how you got into this field. Sure, sure. So, yeah, again, I'm Ben Brown and I have a company called BSL Nutrition. BSL stands for Body Systems Labs. And I've kind of always been fascinated with health and nutrition and fitness from the time of, you know, I was in high school.

I was an athlete, but I had a couple injuries and maladies that I had to deal with. I tore my ACL, the first scrimmage of junior year football season, which was a huge disappointment. And then similarly is I had suffered quite extensively with some stomach issues throughout high school and college in the beginning parts of grad school that took me a really long time to kind of figure out what the issue was. And so between the process of kind of the physical therapy, like I'd been interested in fitness and strength training. And so going down the physical therapy process with my ACL injury was very enlightening for me and really made me think that kind of I wanted to go and be a physical therapist.

When I grew up and then coupled with, I still haven't grown up, so I still haven't really figured that out. And that coupled with really just kind of digging in and having to figure out my own gut issues because conventional medicine wasn't doing it for me. They were just prescribing numerous different medications and antacids and things that were really were not helping or make the situation worse. Kind of was the stimulus for me to continue on with my education first was in strength and conditioning. I started a personal training business while I went to grad school and specialized in strength and conditioning and got a master's degree in exercise and wellness and then started a personal training business really because it just was kind of yeah, I was interested in it.

I was good at it and kind of came naturally to me, my desire to help people with that aspect of their their life. But then within that is the more I practiced as the years went by, I started to realize more and more the importance of nutrition as I dug in to start to heal my own gut issues. And so that involved going back to school for a second master's degree, this one in clinical nutrition, starting to study some functional medicine and starting to experiment and do my own diagnostic testing, which is when I realized that I was suffering from like a pretty, pretty bad case of what they call H.

H. Pylori, which is a bacterial infection in the stomach, which is a bacterial infection in the stomach, and that was coupled with some pretty significant food sensitivities, particularly to gluten. And so the combination of healing H. Pylori with herbal based protocols and supplementation and lifestyle managing my stress, and then also nutritional interventions in terms of avoiding the inflammatory foods, really trying to eat as healthy as I could, kind of paved the way for me progressing into more nutrition coaching in my business, which led into learning more and more about supplementations, particularly through my education.

In clinical nutrition, the importance of supplementation, the importance of supplementation for certain conditions and certain people at certain times, and that led me into starting my own supplement and nutrition coaching business, which is now BSL Nutrition. And our mission is really to help people, you know, help people, you know, help people make smart nutrition simple. There's just such an influx of information out there with, you know, with media and social media and news and articles, and there's no lack of information about what works and what we should be doing, but there's so much confusion because of the expansiveness of the topics.

And, and it's, it's, it's our, it's our, it's our opinion that it just doesn't really need to be so difficult. Yeah, I feel like there's a lot of, there's a ton of information out there and it's really confusing. Um, do, do, do most people who, who you speak with have a really good knowledge base or have you found anyone who, who really, really understands the, the small parts of supplementation in order to kind of buy the right stuff or use the right things? Or is there always a little bit of confusion? Generally speaking, no, there's a lot of confusion and they're justifiably so like people are, deserve to be confused because of the things that we hear on the news and Dr. Oz and these quick fix, like, look, you know, nutrition and supplementation is a multi-billion dollar industry and it's only growing.

And so it only makes sense that more companies are trying to get a piece of the pie, um, with putting their products out there with marketing tactics, um, with, uh, you know, everything that's online. And, and, and so again is, you know, the very nature of, of humans is we want something to be easy. We want something to be a quick fix. We want that magic bullet. And it's only, it only makes sense that we're going to be intrigued by things that say, you know, six pack abs in six weeks or four weeks to, you know, how long did it take you to, how long did it take you to actually solve your gut thing?

Just, just kind of creating a timeline for everybody. It took me, uh, well, I mean, it's something I suffered with for over 10 years and, uh, and then it took me a couple of years to remedy and, and that's, that's the crazy part about nutrition and about human physiology is where it's sort of these ever changing organisms that need different things at different times. And so nutrition for people is always evolving. There's never going to be a, a one size fits all for sure. And we, we know that we know there's hundreds of diets on the market and each of them works to their own degree, but they all work because they create a caloric deficit.

Now, do they work for a long period of time? No, absolutely not. Because they're not realistic for people to stick with. Um, but the nature of diets is that they're creating a lower, a level of caloric restriction. So I don't care if you're doing the banana diet or you're doing keto or you're doing paleo or you're doing, um, Atkins or whatever, it, it doesn't really matter that much in the short term. Um, what matters is, are you learning nutritional habits for the longterm? And, and so, you know, with, we're just, like I said, we're sort of these ever changing organisms that need different nutrients at different times, given the situations and levels of stress and, and things that we're dealing with.

And so it's important for people to start to understand what specifically they need that fits in with their life, um, and their limitations. That's kind of the most important thing. So how does someone then find, um, how does someone know what, what they actually need? And actually a second question was the, I know we're talking about, we're going to talk about supplementation. You mentioned a lot of diets there. How does someone know if they need a diet or if they need to supplement? Well, people should always, I think nutrition is always the most important thing. I mean, we have, you know, we have food for a reason and, uh, supplements don't grow on trees, but fruit and vegetables do.

And so I think it's always makes sense to, to start with real food first. Um, and so do people need a diet? I, I think that there's obviously a negative connotation to the word diet. Um, what most people need to do is start to become more aware of what they're eating. So that they can start to control their caloric intake more effectively so that they can then, whether the, you know, whatever their goals are. I mean, for, I would say, generally speaking, most people want to lose weight because 65, 70% of the American population is overweight. How do we do that? Well, you become more aware of what you're eating.

I mean, there's numerous ways to do that. By doing that, then you're likely going to start to reduce your caloric intake, which is kind of the guiding principle of how to lose weight. So you just have to expend more calories than you're consuming. Yeah. The calorie in calorie out thing, the calorie in calorie out thing. And, and it's not, it's not, um, you know, uh, uh, it makes the most sense. Like it's, it's the most important principle of weight loss. It's not the end all be all because there's other factors at play. But, but for most people, yeah, it's like eating, just eat, just eating less food before you worry about eating organic and paleo and gluten free.

It's like, you know what, why don't you just start eating less? Let's start there. I heard you say, I don't know if it was you or if it was your, uh, person you were interviewing, uh, about eating, about having people wait until they like, don't feel full yet. Just wait and let your body adjust. Speak on that a little bit. One of the, one of the habits that we implement with our clients from a nutrition coaching standpoint is getting them to actually experience what hunger feels like. Because we have this sort of the conventional wisdom is that people need to be eating multiple times, like five, six, seven times throughout the day, eating every couple hours in order to, you know, quote unquote, stoke the metabolism.

And from the research standpoint, that's simply not true. What we know that actually does is causes people to gain weight because they end up consuming too much throughout the day because they're eating too frequently. So what we suggest is people stick to three solid meals per day, maybe four, depending on the person allowing four to five hours in between meals. And this, these, these habits aren't things that I came up with. I mean, intuitively the things that we know successful eaters practice, but, um, there's a company, um, called one by one nutrition. And I've interviewed a couple of their people, Georgie Fear and Josh Hillis on it, um, and their whole, they've created certain habits that six, all successful eaters practice.

And one of those really important habits is eating three to four meals per day without snacking in between, but also within that is allowing four to five hours, um, without eating and actually starting to experience hunger in between meals. Because one is we start to freak out, um, intuitively, like we start to freak out when we start to get hungry because we constantly have food all around us. So we think if we're getting hungry, it means maybe our blood sugars dropping, maybe if we're like, um, a gym enthusiast, maybe we're losing muscle mass and really it's nothing to fear. Rather, it's something that should be embraced because if our goal is weight loss, then typically when we're starting to experience hunger, the hormones that affect our, our weight loss are starting to get ramped up.

And that's a very good thing that we want to experience. Now, we don't want to get to the point where we're ravenous and we'll eat anything in front of us, but just getting comfortable with experiencing a little bit of hunger for 30 to 60 minutes before our next meal is a very positive state to be in for people to help acknowledge that, Hey, you know, I'm a little bit hungry. It's not a big deal, but it also means I'm burning more body fat and, um, nothing to freak out about, but also is a good sign that, okay, I'm actually ready for my next meal as opposed to maybe we eat something in the morning.

You're not hungry again for, you know, five, six hours. Well, that's totally fine. Just acknowledge it. And this is one of the ways that people can start to create more awareness around what it is that they need. What ratios of foods, protein, carbs, and fats should they be utilizing to build out their meals by acknowledging what, how, what am I experiencing? You know, did I eat a meal and it's two hours later and I can't think straight. I feel like I'm having blood sugar issues. Um, I'm starving again. I have low energy. Well, that's likely a situation where, okay, what you had at that last meal, isn't the appropriate ratio for what your body's needs are at this given point in time.

Do you, to build awareness? Is there any tools that you use? You have them write like notebooks or anything? So, yeah. So we kind of plug in these habits one step at a time. And then we have some accountability tools that they utilize journaling being one of them. And it's just kind of writing down what you're eating and then writing down how you're feeling in between those meals. How's your hunger? How's your energy? How's your cravings? Um, how's your sleep? Uh, what, how, you know, how did your workout go? Uh, if that's something that they're implementing in and around that feeding window, those types of things, because then they can reflect back on it like the night of, or the next day and say, okay, here's what I ate.

I realized very quickly that I didn't get enough protein at that meal, or I didn't get enough fat because I was hungry again right away. So next time I come back to that situation, here's how I'm going to change it up. And by writing those things down and journaling it, we can kind of create this, um, just sort of ongoing awareness tool. Yeah. That almost reminds me of like, you know, when you go visit someone in a hospital and you see up on the chart, it says, how are you feeling today? And it's just a bunch of emojis slowly getting sad. Yeah. That's a, that would be a good one though, you know, to be utilizing, like, how are you feeling after this meal?

And it's like happy face or just like, you know, death face. Yeah. I don't think going with like devil emojis or like peaches would probably work. So you got to stick with the faces. That'd be good. So as we jump into nutritional, sorry, uh, supplemental stuff, uh, I was going to go over, I wrote down three cases here just so it would kind of cover a broad basis of people listening. Um, so I guess then as we go through the cases, just give me an idea of like, just your thought process on like what you would first maybe test on this person to know what they would need or what they typically need or blah, blah, blah.

Right. Yep. Okay. So case one. So there's a working mom who's 40 years old who likes to do yoga and run frequently, but she only runs under about 10 miles at a time. So her goal is to stay healthy and flexible. What do you think? Well, I think that, um, we need more information. So I think that, uh, I can role play on this one. I'm really good at playing for you. So how are her energy levels throughout the day? Uh, you know, uh, it feels like she really needs some coffee in the morning, but, uh, after that coffee, she feels good. She crashes around three needs a payday. Okay. Payday candy bar.

She wants a payday candy bar. Okay. So, so low morning and low afternoon energy, but good in kind of in the middle of the day. And how's her sleep? Uh, she tosses and turns a little bit. She's really stressed out by her young son is pounding at the door in the morning around five o'clock. Yeah. That sounds familiar. Yeah. And, uh, what's her nutrition look like? Uh, she believes it's healthy. However, she does slip up, um, an example of a good meal would be, uh, cantaloupe, honeydew, uh, bacon, eggs and coffee with cream. That's her breakfast. And, and how does she, um, where is her problem areas on her body?

Where does she tend to store the most body fat? Body fat? I'd say around the hips. Just can't get them off those hips. Kind of hips and thighs area. Yep. So she started running a little bit thinking that that would cut that weight off there. Has it? Uh, she's having, she's having ups and downs. Um, she feels like she's having good, uh, fat and skinny mornings. She's trying to, she's testing genes on them. They feel a little better some days, not others. Sure. Okay, cool. Um, and is she still menstruating? Uh, yes. Yes. She's very, she's very thankful for that. Yeah. Okay, great. Um, yeah. So, you know, we can kind of go down the rabbit hole of finding more information, but, but typically you kind of want to get, well, typically what we'll do is we'll, we'll find out as much information as we can in terms of energy levels, hunger levels throughout the day, house or sleep, because, well, what's, what did you say her main goals are?

Uh, just to, just overall be quote unquote healthy and flexible. She really wants flexibility for some reason. Okay. But she's practicing yoga. She's, she's in yoga. Okay, cool. So, I mean, just to kind of a general protocol that would probably be beneficial for a woman like this would be, um, you know, one of the things that we'd look at before really getting too deep into supplementation would be lifestyle habits is what's, you know, how good is her sleep? We want to make sure we're optimizing sleep with everyone. It doesn't matter what the case is, but that's obviously a big one to the degree that she should be waking up in the morning with the best energy possible as opposed to dragging her butt out of bed and needing coffee as kind of a way to mask that low energy.

Um, and then maybe needing more sugar or coffee later on in the afternoon is a pretty good sign that something's going on with hormones. Maybe something's going on with adrenals, um, to the degree that if she continues down that road, it might be a situation where gender energy keeps getting lower and lower and her inability to burn body fat, um, continues to be exacerbated. Um, but, but just, um, so we would work through nutritional protocols, making sure she's getting the right amount of calories, right amount of protein, carbs, and fats, um, in her, in her diet. Um, and then from a, uh, supplemental standpoint, a few of the basic things that we would focus on would be like a multivitamin with iron, assuming she's menstruating, um, consistently then, uh, you know, and, and of course she needs to check with her doctorate.

She actually needs iron, but, um, but we'd go multivitamin with iron, you know, something that may help with managing her, helping manage her stress and possibly improving her sleep would be magnesium, um, and increasing her magnesium intake. Magnesium is one of the minerals, uh, electrolytes, if you will, but it's one of the most abundant minerals in the human body. And it's one of the minerals that we use in hundreds of different biochemical reactions in the body. So we use it for blood sugar regulation. We use it for energy production and nervous system function. And, um, when I say nervous system function, what I specifically mean is helping activate the parasympathetic nervous system or a rest and digest system, as opposed to what I talked about earlier is waking up in the morning in the sympathetic state, this fight or flight mode, like go, go, go, go, go, which we're all in all the time.

We really need ways to, um, activate the parasympathetic nervous system to be able to chill out. A woman like this, uh, young kids, she's been on the go. Usually it's a situation where like she gets the kids to bed. Then maybe she has a chance to eat her dinner or catch up on some TV shows and, and likely she needs some tools to start to chill out, which would mean maybe keeping the TV off, maybe increasing magnesium. And there's a couple of ways that she could do that. But one would be, um, like an Epsom salt bath. And so doing a, uh, and this would probably be great for your type of clientele as well.

People that are experiencing joint aches and pains and, and issues like that, but doing a really concentrated Epsom salt bath, um, to the tune of like two to four pounds of Epsom salt in a really hot bath and soaking in that for 20 or 30 minutes right before bed. And, and Epsom salt is really rich in magnesium chloride. And, uh, and so because our skin is an organ, it can really soak in that magnesium and, and that can just put people out cold, um, as well as really contribute to improving those magnesium deficiencies that all of us have, which we all have because our food quality is so poor, our soil quality is so poor so that the plants, um, that we're eating and the whole grains that we're eating, um, just simply don't have the minerals in them that they had 50 or a hundred years ago.

So it becomes important. This is where supplementation really can make a difference is for things like magnesium, um, minimizing any of those deficiencies by doing both topical and oral magnesium intake. So do, when you, so you mentioned about like crop soil and stuff like that, is there, I mean, do people that grow their own foods, they typically have as many issues with magnesium if they're treating the soil and everything, or is that just like, even if we're buying organic stuff or, um, say, you know, the farmer and things like that is, are most people still pretty deficient in that? I don't have an answer for that.

Um, I, I just don't know. I imagine people that are eating and it's not even organic, Sebastian. It's organic is, is one of those marketing things. It's not that I don't believe in organic and reducing our exposure to pesticides and herbicides and fungicides and all that stuff. But when we're eating an organic apple in the middle of winter, that's from Chile, it's like, how long has that apple been sitting on a ship or in a cargo plane and on the shelves at the store to the degree that every day that passes that, that apples on the shelf, it's reducing in nutritional value such that we could have an organic apple that's been on the shelves or sort of in a container for six weeks versus a local apple that may not technically be organic, but it's from a local farmer that was just picked yesterday.

And we could be getting considerably higher amount of nutritional value from the locally grown apple. Does that make sense? Yeah. Actually, interesting. The, uh, I, I didn't tell you I had a, we just, we just recently closed, but we, I had a coffee roasting business so we had people that were asking about like, are your beans organic and blah, blah, blah. And they, and they were grown organic, obviously they'd grown in a different country. So they shipped over and every person that touches them, every business that had to touch them until it got to the end consumer needed to be organic certified to, for that being, be considered organic.

So it was kind of funny. I just told people like, I mean, yeah, it was your own organic, but technically we weren't organic. So it wasn't organic. I'm like, well, it seems kind of like a crock. So it's really, uh, it's, you know, it's, it's all marketing thing and it's expensive industry and there's a lot of money to be made and there's a lot of demand for it because of the perception that it's that much better. And to be fair, it's hard to say that it really is like I, anytime we can reduce our exposure to these chemicals, um, that's a good thing, but is organic the end all be all definitely not.

And, and, and, you know, um, back to the question of is, is it, are we less nutritionally deficient if people are growing it themselves than probably, but still because of modern day environmental toxicity and stress levels, um, and gut health and all of these things that we're dealing with, I would venture to say that most people have some degree of, of deficiency, particularly in these really big, um, abundant minerals that we find in the body. Okay. So I'm going to ask you a random question here because sometimes I'll throw these in to make sure everyone has a little bit of a brain break. So it's a, what did you rather question straight for you?

Cool. So would you rather be a clown who distracts the bull or the cowboy who rides the bull and why? That's a good question, right? Ooh, you know, I live in Arizona, so we go to like, um, rodeo events. Like there's a lot out there. No. Well, there's not a lot, but there's this one, there's this one restaurant in town that has a whole bowl ring. It's called the Buffalo chip. So we take the kids over and these guys are nuts, but to answer your question, um, I think I would rather be the, this is all ego talking, but I think I would rather be the bull rider. Is it because you want to have like, they win like a big buckle, right?

Yeah. I just want to be the dude on, you know, like the clowns don't get as much credit as those are the bad-ass guys, but they don't get as much credit as they deserve. Nonetheless, the, the bull riders, the one that gets the notoriety, I'd take that. Okay. I could see. Just pump my ego up for one second that I'd be able to stay on the bull. That's a, that's a good answer. I, I, I feel like my answer would be a depends one and it depends how many clowns are with me. Cause if there's, I'm the only clown, I don't want to be that clown. So I don't want to divert too much from the topic at hand, but, um, we got married in Arizona here, uh, going on at well over 10 years ago.

And after this, the reception, we went to this bar actually across the street from this Buffalo ring that I was just talking about, uh, called Harold's and they have a mechanical bull and both my wife and I on our wedding night, we're like riding the mechanical bull. And of course she gets on and the guy, the guy, um, operating the bulls like super nice. She's going slow. Everyone's cheering. I get on there and like, he just crushed me. Like flying 10 feet off the bull into the side paneling. It's brutal. Have you ever, have you ever seen anyone actually hit their head on a mechanical bull? Like I bet that could happen.

I'm sure it could happen. And fortunately, no, but to be fair, I haven't really experienced too much mechanical bull action. Okay. Well, that was a good, it's still a good answer. I like it. The, the, the, the ego fireworks, um, let's go into case number two then. Cool. All right. 35 year old male with weekly moderate lifting sessions, uh, more anaerobic than aerobic, uh, in, in regards to the goals, you're not really concerned much about hypertrophy or muscle growth. And the goal is just to stay strong as they get older. He has energy in the morning when he wakes up and going to sleep 90% of the time, it feels pretty good.

So he's just feeling pretty, pretty good. Has a pretty well-rounded diet. Uh, he's, he's eating keto. Okay. And, uh, I guess let's, let's just say this person is like, I keep thinking about like the paleo people. It's like, what paleo are you? Oh, I'm an 80, 20. Let's say, let's say an 80, 20, 80, 20 keto. That's cool. Okay. So it feels good. He's training. He's training for strength. Uh, 35 years old. Cool. There's a couple of things that we could do to support him with his ketogenic diet. Um, one would be, and this is kind of in general is, is a really beneficial supplement in multiple capacities.

Creatine can be really beneficial for short power, you know, short burst power output, um, that we're seeing not only is really beneficial. It's kind of one of the most researched supplements out there that has gotten a bad rap, but I think we're coming around in terms of really the benefit of utilizing creatine for all levels of, you know, all levels of athletes. So anyone really can benefit from it specifically, you know, even elderly in terms of, uh, heart function, um, for people that have a traumatic brain injuries, the benefit of, of creatine and mitochondrial function, especially in the brain and stuff like that.

So creatine would be a good one. Um, I would say for someone who's keto and or hardcore paleo would be definitely the magnesium, but going out of their way to make sure they're getting all of those big electrolytes. So some sort of electrolyte powder that has magnesium and potassium and sodium. Um, one of the things that people don't realize when they go low carb, uh, or paleo or keto, specifically if they haven't eaten very well in the past is that they lose a lot of water. And that's one of the things that people experience. So, you know, we, we switch to a, a clean eating diet. We go paleo, we go keto, we lose a lot of weight right off the bat, but people don't realize that's a lot of water weight and with that water is it's pulling out a lot of these minerals from ourselves.

And so one of the best things we can do is making sure we're actually getting in enough of these electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, potassium, bicarbonate, phosphorus, all of these things. So using a, um, a complex electrolyte powder, or just making sure you're actually going out of your way to salt your foods enough, there's, there's a bit of a, a fear of, of excessive sodium intake in our society. And if you're the type of person that's eating junk food, then yeah, stay away from extra salting of your food because you're likely taking in enough as it is. But for people that are eating well, eating clean, whole foods, so to speak, well, then you really probably, and it's very individualized in terms of our sodium needs, but you probably need to be going out of your way to salt your food a little bit more, um, to make sure you're getting these, these minerals in that are going to help drive energy production and recovery, um, and brain function, all of those things.

So a good electrolyte powder, um, would be beneficial, uh, doing something I would say, is he, is he using, utilizing supplementation around his workouts? Uh, zero supplementation. Okay. Well, you know, definitely supporting his hashtag gains with, uh, you know, we think some, some kind of research proven, um, workout supplements would be essential amino acids. So he could get this in making sure he's hitting a protein goal. So making sure he's getting enough animal protein in throughout the day to support his lean muscle tissue, support his caloric needs. First and foremost, second to that would be utilizing protein in and around his workouts.

I am biased because I have my own, um, supplement, uh, kind of all in one workout powder, but utilizing the essential amino acids, um, can be very beneficial in and around workouts. And these essential amino acids are really what we would get. These are, um, the essential amino acids are nine of kind of 20 something amino acids that we get from animal proteins, right? We get from, from the foods that we eat. The essential ones are the ones that the body can't manufacture on its own that we need to get from our diet. But what we know from research is utilizing these essential amino acids kind of around your workout can lead to more workout energy, faster workout recovery.

Um, but to be fair, if, if someone's getting enough protein throughout the day, then it's not that important, especially if he doesn't have the, the goals of increasing, um, uh, lean muscle mass. But for someone like the female that we were talking about, oftentimes we'd seen that type of demographic 40 year old busy mom runner, usually they're not getting enough protein in their diet to support their body composition goals and energy demands. Um, in which case, again, an essential amino acid powder or protein powder would be beneficial. So I guess for everyone listening to just to clarify is that, um, so they probably are probably like everyone's familiar with like pre-workouts and things like that.

Is that like a pre-workout? Is it an energy thing? Is it a, just a supplementation thing or does it matter when it's taken? So specific to the essential amino acids? Yeah. Well, yeah. The one that you're speaking about, cause, um, I feel like a lot of people that I encounter that take some type of things surrounding their, um, their workout. It's, I feel like they do it because they want energy in the workout. It's, I don't hear them talk about, well, here's my, my BCAAs and you know, my creatine in here and so on. Yep. So the popular ones that, so most, so we're kind of have this terminology of pre-workout.

Most people are familiar with a pre-workout in that it's some sort of supplement that we take in the pre-workout window, usually, you know, 30 to 60 minutes before our training session. And that's the purpose, what most people are looking for is a boost in energy. Um, and what they're finding in these products is usually an excessive amount of caffeine. Um, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. And we do know there's, or good, you know, caffeine is a good ergogenic aid, meaning it can actually help support sport performance. It's the amount that people are getting that can actually be problematic, especially when we're using it to kind of mask these low energy type symptoms.

A lot of times we see this in people that train first thing in the morning. Um, or later at night, it's been a long day and they need a boost or it's first thing in the morning, they drag their butt out of bed and then they need sort of some excessive amount of caffeine to get their butt going in the gym. That's not necessarily a good thing. But typically what we're seeing in these pre-workouts is caffeine, BCAAs, BCAAs are the branched chain amino acids. So it's just three of the nine essential amino acids. And, and what we're starting to see with the BCAAs is they're really just not as beneficial as they have been made out to be, as the marketing would suggest, especially in the workout industry.

Um, we're much more beneficial getting all of the essential amino acids, particularly from our food. But, but next to getting our food, if we're still trying to contribute to our net protein intake or a total daily protein intake, then getting those from the essential amino acids, um, before and during the workout or before and after it doesn't matter that much beneficial. Now the product that we created is called complete essentials. And what we suggest is people take it before and during their workouts. Um, that way they're kind of getting these essential amino acids into their bloodstream. And the beauty of the essential amino acids is that unlike a whey protein or a plant-based protein, which does contain the essential amino acids, but in varying degrees, there's, there's a difference between the plant protein and a whey protein, which is animal based.

Um, the, the animal based, the whey protein has a better amino acid profile, um, than the plant-based proteins. That's why it can be more beneficial depending, but the beauty of the free form amino acids, the essential amino acids is that they don't require any digestion. So it's easy to take them before and during your workouts. They're immediately kind of shuttled through the gut lining into the bloodstream. They bypass the liver, um, and, and kind of are utilizing. Right away for fuel, um, and kind of are supporting that muscle protein, uh, synthesis and muscle protein breakdown processes that we're very familiar with as it relates to, um, exercise.

If that makes sense. Do you, um, I'm writing a list a little bit as, as, as we go, can I send you that list and you send me some links and I'll put them on the show notes. Yeah, that'd be great. Okay. Perfect. Yeah, please. You, you mentioned creatine as well. And I know that, um, I've had a lot of people ask me what type of creatine, because I know there's a couple of blends. There's the monohydrate. Is there a certain one that you tend to use more? Uh, just get the creatine monohydrate. I mean, other, and, and most people around five grams a day, it's all you need. You don't need to load it.

Just take it consistently and everyone can benefit from it. Like you might experience a little bit of water, like weight gain through water retention. At first people might, um, notice it's not a bad thing. Um, but it's kind of keeping more water in the cells. Um, but five grams a day of a creatine monohydrate, you'd be just fine. There's, there's really not big difference. Would that, would that theoretically offset the water loss with a keto or a, or, or, or a paleo diet. And then you don't lose that. You don't lose all the magnesium and the, uh, sodium. Yes. Uh, I don't know if you would retain those minerals, but, uh, you could play around with it for sure.

Okay. I'm going to measure my, my urine for sure. Um, okay. Case three. So we have a 50 year old male looking to get the body of a 25 year old again, experiences lack of energy, energy and overall good health, but has, I think I, I guess I wrote my opinion there. It's pretty lofty goals. Yeah. So trains like a maniac to do it. So 50 year old, he's training hard. He wants to pack on some lean muscle tissue, get, get pretty ripped. Right. Um, and so, yeah, I mean, you know, okay. So few things first is making sure he's hitting his protein goals, like making sure he's getting enough protein throughout the day.

And when I say protein goals for someone like this, at least a gram per pound of body weight, that's kind of an easy, easy way to, to think about it. Or we could even say, what does he weigh? Uh, let's go with one 85. Okay. Maybe he wants to pack on 10 or 15 pounds of lean tissue. So maybe he should be closer to 200 grams of protein per day. And I would make sure he's just kind of splitting that up throughout the day through his given meals. So he, this is a situation where it's like, yeah, we would normally say eat three to four meals per day. But for a guy like this, or someone that's really maybe a hard gainer, or maybe to try to put on some weight, then they may have to eat five or six or seven times a day.

Um, just depending on their appetite, their digestion, all that kind of stuff. So, you know, we take that 200 grams and split it up. Let's say he has five meals of 40 grams of protein, which, um, you know, would be like for ease, six to eight ounces of protein at each of his meals. Okay. Um, so making sure he's getting that first and foremost, making sure he's sleeping, uh, seven to eight to nine hours a night, especially for a guy like this. This is someone where if we're talking about blood work, I'd make sure, you know, we check his testosterone levels, um, and just make sure he's in the normal range and high normal range.

Um, and because if he's not, he's going to have a hard time laying down new muscle tissue. Yeah. Is, uh, I know there's probably, there's probably a lot of people. People who have, uh, what they would consider a low testosterone is there, or the other than a hormonal replacement, or is there other things they could do to improve that or their natural ways sleep. Okay. And it's sleep, man, stress, improve gut health. So those are things that I'm going to talk about, um, here because. I heard you say parasympathetic, sympathetic a couple of times. So, yeah. And, and it's always going to come back to that as again is, you know, we want these, supplementation, sort of the sexy industry where it's, it is, I mean, it's like you were taking these magic pills that are, have all these touted benefits, but really if you're not doing the foundational things, right.

If you're not eating right, if you're not sleeping right, if you're not allowing yourself to recover in between workouts, right. We're only as effective as a recovery. And so this, for a guy like this, making sure he's not overdoing it in the office, in the gym, making sure he's sleeping enough, um, and making sure his digestion's really good so that all of this protein that he's trying to take in, if he's not digesting it, uh, appropriately, then we're, we're spinning our wheels. Even if he's taking all these powders and stuff like that, if his digestion sucks, then what a waste of time. Um, I'll give you an example is I actually had a client, I have a client just like this.

He's actually 70. He just turned 70. He's a big time lawyer in Phoenix here. Um, and he's extremely stressed out. I hate avid exercise or exercises every day, tons of joint issues. He's one of those sort of, uh, ex college athletes, super type a personality. He played football and water polo and just kind of one of those hardcore dudes has had like 15 different surgeries and different joints and, you know, um, and he's kind of progressively been experiencing weight loss over the last few years. He had his, uh, gallbladder removed recently and now has found that his digestion is impaired. He keeps losing weight and he just wants to pack on some muscle tissue.

And so for a guy like this, you know, we kind of took a step back and said, okay, well, how are you managing your stressors? Again, he's in this sort of sympathetic nervous system response. He's on all day, every day phone, you know, he's always, um, on, doesn't take any time off. Um, he gets decent sleep, eats really clean, but wasn't eating enough calories. And so we had to increase his caloric intake and figure out how to start to improve his digestion so that the calories he was taking in, he was better able to digest, absorb, and assimilate so that we were working on building up lean muscle tissue.

So for a guy like this, we really worked on his digestion. Um, he was having trouble breaking down fats, but the beauty of fats is they're so calorically dense. So for a person that's trying to gain weight, we just need to get more calories into them. Once they're hitting their protein goals, get more calories, um, which we can do through consuming more fats, but he wasn't digesting them appropriately. So we kind of had to work with some digestive enzymes, which can be really beneficial for people. So most people, as they age, our digestion starts to suffer because we stopped producing, um, some of the, uh, HCL and pancreatic enzymes that the body produces.

HCL stands for hydrochloric acid. And that's something we would naturally produce in the stomach to help break down proteins. And then other enzymes down the road that help break down the protein carbs and fats and sort of neutralize the stomach acid as it drops down into the intestines, um, so that we can absorb those, those nutrients. So supporting people with digestive enzymes usually is one of the first steps that we take in terms of supplementation. Like why worry about any of these fancy things if, if the quality food that they're eating isn't, uh, being absorbed. And then, um, let's see next to that for a guy like this.

So let's assume that his T levels are pretty good. He's sleeping enough. Um, then we could look at, you know, I mean, we could, we could look at a couple of different things. Um, the, the, certainly the creatine, certainly the pre-workout post-workout supplements. We would want to take advantage of some nutrient timing and make sure he's getting enough protein and carbs in and around his workouts. And that's the situation where we could really go a lot higher in his carbohydrate intake, be it during and or after his workouts from fast digesting carbs. Um, and I don't know if you want to consider this a supplement or not, but there's some carbohydrate powders that could go a long way for a guy like this to really help boost calories and pack on some lean muscle tissue and help promote fast recovery.

Um, because we're so insulin sensitive in that post-workout window that, um, when we load up a bunch of carbohydrate, the body doesn't really a much better job, uh, assuming he's already pretty lean, a much better job of shuttling those sugars into the muscles, into the liver to kind of replenish the glycogen that we, um, spent during our exercise. Okay. Yeah. There's a lot that you can do. I'm going to tell them. Yeah, tell them. Yeah, for sure. But like, again, is, you know, we're not getting too flashy, but we could use some fish oil to kind of support joint health and inflammation. We could use curcumin based supplements and bromelain for, again, for inflammation and joint health, um, because we know that inflammation can inhibit so many different biological processes from energy production to mitochondrial function, to brain health, to sleep, um, all of that to, to muscle recovery, all that stuff.

Well, you mentioned something with digestion that, um, it just triggered a thought in my mind that with, you've heard the term sarcopenia, right? Of course. Okay. So for everyone out there who hasn't heard before, sarcopenia, I actually had a patient approached me one time. He's like, Hey, I heard about this thing. It's sarcopenia. And, uh, it was like a light bulb went off that, and cause he's, I want to say he's about 65 or so. And he's like, you think that's happening to me? And, uh, I thought, well, your, your weight training, that'll probably offset some of it. But, um, sarcopenia is, is a loss of, uh, muscle size, I believe not necessarily.

I don't think it says actually strength, but with age. So you said people lose their ability to digest when they get older. So is there a correlation to that? Or is that just a observation? No, I, I, I can't say, I'm, I'm, I mean, I'm sure there is, but back up a sec. Sarcopenia is what we, you, what we say to each other when we want to like each other a hard time. I'm like, Hey buddy, what's up? I see the sarcopenia is, uh, suffering from the sarcopenia again, one year older sarcopenic. Yeah. So, but, but yeah, so we, we do tend to the, the average American, um, tends to lose, uh, like one pound of muscle mass for every year after the age, I think of 35 or 50.

I'm not exactly sure, but I want to say 35 and that's a problem obviously because most people's weight stays the same, if not increases as they age, right? To some degree. So that means we're losing muscle mass and we're increasing body fat now. Um, yeah, with, with, and, and I think it, a lot of it's correlated to digestion in terms of as our, as our digestion becomes increasingly impaired, we lose the taste and ability to appropriately digest these animal proteins, which kind of offsets our preference for them. So a lot of people, as they get older, especially elderly people tend to not eat a lot of protein.

They don't really have the taste and or digestion for protein, which is a major issue because they need extensive, uh, they need significantly more protein than you or I being, you know, 30 something individuals that strength train consistently. Um, and so finding better ways for them to actually be able to digest these proteins is incredibly important. Absolutely. Was there a trick to like, I almost feel like the, in my experience, my grandpa and, uh, and, uh, I've noticed other, uh, geriatric populations. It's, it's like they start to wither and it's almost like you start a weeded. It's like whatever he wants, just give it to him.

He wants cookies, let him eat it, you know, cause he wanted the calories on, but if they need the protein then, so how do you trick them into actually eating that stuff? Well, you, you, you get them to do it the right way from the beginning, um, and make sure we're optimizing digestion. And if they're starting to produce those digestive juices, you know, one of the things we, we don't talk about is hydration and especially an elderly population is like, you know, our pancreas dumps out something like seven or eight cups of pancreatic enzymes into the, the gastric system in order to break down all the food that we're consuming at any given meal.

And if you're dehydrated, then obviously your body's ability to produce these gastric juices is going to be impaired to the degree that obviously we're not producing the gastric juices. We're not digesting, assimilating and absorbing our foods. And so making sure people are hydrated, hydrated for one, and that's always why I start my day with a huge glass of water and why most people should, um, and certainly be drinking enough water throughout the day. And then, you know, the next step is, okay, let's improve the digestion. If we need to support with supplements, HCL, digestive enzymes, and then it could be as easy as cooking the foods in a way that makes it more palatable or easy for them to digest.

And then supplementing with protein powders, the essential amino acids. Like I talked about in the free form are a great way for people to get these, um, important proteins in, um, in a way that's easily digestible and, or just using protein powders or meal replacement shakes or stuff like that. But yeah, sometimes it's just tricking them like here, drink this lemonade and we put essential amino acids in it, at least until, you know, we can get them in a, to a position where they're willing and cognizant enough of what they need to be doing on their own. Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. That's interesting.

And we, we really came a long ways from that, uh, 40 year old mom who liked to do yoga and now we're in geriatrics. Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Um, I, I don't think it'd be a complete nutritional, uh, or supplementation conversation without talking about vegans or vegetarians really. Um, I know I didn't put a case down with this, but, um, regards to like essential amino acids or things that, um, actually while this spring up a story, so I have a couple of friends right now that they, they, they watched that Netflix, um, movie and it scared them out of eating meat. Dr. Justin Marchegiani: What the health?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I think it was that. Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So they told me, they're like, we're going, we're going vegan or I don't remember if it's vegan or vegetarian, but they're like, we're going to go this. Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And I said, well, do you know what that entails? Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And they said, well, we just don't want to eat meat. Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And I'm like, I'm, I'm pretty sure being not a non meat eater, it takes a lot more thought. Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so do you have any thoughts on all this? Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You know, I think that in order to be a good vegetarian or vegan, you have to be very diligent about your nutrition.

So if it's something you want to do, then I fully support it. Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But again, you have to be really good about your nutrition, um, in terms of prepping and planning and making sure you're getting a wide variety of foods with most people just don't do. Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Um, but also you need to supplementation on top of it, because there's certain things you're just not getting in your diet, like B, like B12, um, like carnitine, like all of the essential amino acids. Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And, and so while it, it can be more challenging, it can be done well to a degree, but it's very rare to find someone that's doing it correctly to the degree that they're not, um, reinforcing any nutrient deficiencies.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so a lot of times what we see is, yeah, okay, people decide to go vegan, which means they avoid animal protein, but they just start eating more junk food, right? Dr. Justin Marchegiani: They start eating more dairy, excuse me, not dairy. Dr. Justin Marchegiani: They start eating more refined and processed carbohydrates, um, to support their caloric needs without focusing on improving the quality of their foods, increasing the fruit and vegetable intake, going out of their way to eat both raw and cooked foods, and again, getting it from a wide variety of foods, making sure they're combining foods like beans and, and rice and things so that they can support the essential amino acid profile that they need.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then again, it's supplementing with things like carnitine and like, um, Dr. Justin Marchegiani: vitamin B12 and zinc and the, uh, the essential amino acids. Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, um, if you, if it's something you want to do, then go for it. Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But don't, don't, it's not something to be done on a whim. Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It's gonna be very well researched and, um, kind of, just like anything, it's, it's gonna take practice, um, as it's really a skill to be able to eat that way. Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Just like it, it just, it's hard enough to eat healthy in general to say nothing of how hard it is to eat well as a vegan or vegetarian.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, yeah, if it's something, you know, it's rare, I'll be, I'll be honest, it's rare for me to see, um, a vegan that's actually healthy. Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, yeah, I, I don't, like I said in the beginning, I don't have a lot of experience with nutrition, but just knowing that, like you said, it's really hard for most people to eat well with having the availability of animal proteins. Dr. Justin Marchegiani: To take that away, all of a sudden this becomes a lot harder job. Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Um, and I don't know if a lot of people can manage it, but I think it's, I think it's great in theory and I'm more power to them, but I don't want that work.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think, I think, first of all, nutrition is too dogmatic. Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Again, there's no one size fits all. I think it's, it's asinine to suggest that all meat is bad. Um, I know people have various reasons for, for doing, you know, for, for going vegetarian or vegan and that's all good and well, but, um, I think people need to, you know, listen to their body and, um, kind of make it an educational process and like take a smaller step is like, Hey, would it be a bad idea for all of us to eat more fruits and vegetables, vegetables specifically to say nothing of eliminating animal proteins, eliminating dairy, eliminating gluten, blah, blah, blah. All these foods are bad. What if we just started eating more vegetables? Like could, would everyone benefit from that? Yeah. Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: A hundred percent. And that in and of itself would take care of so many different things. I think we're, we're also obviously biochemically individual. We have different, obviously, as I'm talking about digestion needs, um, at different times, like, especially for a guy like you for, if we're, if we're nurturing an acute phase injury, we have much higher up to 50% higher protein demands so that we can support the inflammatory process, lay down scar tissue, um, and support the, the increase in, in, in metabolic output that happens in the body. If we're under a tremendous amount of stress, we need to have higher protein needs. And so people aren't understanding the, uh, diverse nature of, um, of how the human body works. And, and first and foremost, like I said at the beginning, it's just, you have to start to practice and get in tune with what it is that you need. What makes you feel good? Just cause coworker Janet is practicing keto and has lost, you know, 20 pounds and feels amazing.

Doesn't mean it's the right diet for you. One is she's 20 something and has no kids and you're 40 something, have three kids and an extremely busy lifestyle. And you don't have the first clue about healthy eating. And she's been, you know, whatever she has a dietetics degree. Like, you know, it's just, everyone's so individualized. Yeah. This would be a little bit tangent conversation, but you, but you brought up, uh, keto again. I, I, one day I researched and look about, uh, just to see, uh, keto options. If you're eating out and McDonald's Wendy's, like, I can't, I can't tell you how much fast food I actually saw as that. And I started looking on Instagram just to see what are, what are keto recipes? I can't tell you how much dairy and meats. And I'm just surprised. Like it's, it wasn't, it was kind of like a reckless way of eating fat. Although the processing part of the food wasn't really even addressed. Um, and now dairy probably presents a whole nother issue for people, but I'm sure you have some thoughts on that, but I was just surprised. It's the same deal.

It's the same deal as it's when we get polarizing with the type of nutrition is like, we have macronutrients, we have protein and carbs and fats, and we have all three of those in the body has needs for all of those to some degree. But when we start to isolate and say, you know, okay, we're just going to do predominantly fat. Well, it becomes much more challenging to do it the right way, the healthy way, if you will, from what we know about nutrition. And of course it's this ever evolving industry. Like we don't know that much in the scope of the nutritional realm, but as it pertains to keto and something that I've certainly experienced, um, or, or practice to some degree, and have had a lot of clients utilize it, uh, it's hard, just like vegan, it's hard to do it right.

And we can easily fall in the trap of using more oils and junk foods and fat and dairy sources to create that, uh, caloric load that we need to make it into the keto diet at the expense of our health. Um, just, you know, because of this notion that this one diet plan is so much more beneficial. Yeah. It has, you know, it has medical benefits. Um, it has weight loss benefits. It has cognitive benefits. That's all good and well, but for most people, honestly, most people that we're dealing with, most people that are listening to this, it's like, we don't have to get that far, that far out. Yeah. Vegetables, water, magnesium, right. And, and the, uh, the, the, the, the compound, uh, powder. Yeah. The complete essentials, the complete essentials. Um, so, so on a personal level, then is there anything that you're actually really excited about with nutrition or healthcare in general right now? Like, is there anything you've seen? You're like, Holy shit, this thing is, this is going to be great. And you want to learn more about it.

I'm, I'm pretty excited about genetic testing. Yeah. I don't have much experience with it, but I'm, I'm very excited because we know this, there's this field of epigenetics and the fact that we all have all of these genes that kind of determine our disease state and, uh, and our body function and our ability to lay down new muscle tissue and our, our sort of, um, genetic predisposition to certain things. But we also know that our environment acts as a trigger in order to turn these things on and off. And so by identifying some of these genetic factors earlier on in our life, we can then determine, okay, well, is it actually, do I need a ketogenic diet? Because I have this APOE4 gene that leaves me significantly more susceptible to dementia as I age, wherein if I'm eating more of a Mediterranean style diet, the likelihood of this gene being switched on is going to be much more, um, reduced. Does that make sense? Um, genes that determine our caffeine sensitivity genes that determine the type of training that we are most likely to benefit from.

Are we going to be more likely to, uh, do better with strength training? Are we going to be much more suited to be a, you know, cardiovascular training athlete, um, things like that. So I think that that's really an emerging field that we're going to be able to use a lot of this testing to start to make some more strategic recommendations with our nutrition and supplementation as we move forward. Do you happen to have, uh, you didn't write any posts or have a video on that in case people want to learn more about that. Do you? I don't. Um, if I was to, Hmm, I don't, I don't have anything. Um, and I will give, I'll send you a link to though, that, um, would be a resource for that. Okay. Um, how can everyone reach you?

Uh, our website is BSL for body systems labs, BSL nutrition.com. And we write all kinds of articles on nutrition, fitness, supplementation. Um, we have our podcast, the smart nutrition made simple show that is on iTunes. And you can also have a link in our blog on BSL nutrition.com. Um, and then we are on social media at BSL nutrition. We've got, um, uh, somewhat active kind of social media platform, although I'm not super into spending a ton of time posting, but, uh, we, we do post content on those sites and have, uh, a community page, um, that is BSL nutrition community that, uh, everyone's welcome to come on by and check out. I post, uh, Facebook live videos to that. And, uh, and then I think, um, and then we've also got a shop on our BSL nutrition.com page, uh, for a product called the complete essentials, which again is kind of an all-in-one workout product. It includes not only the essential amino acids that I talked about, but also includes the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, potassium in really high quantities. Um, so it's kind of like a Gatorade without all the junk. Plus you're getting easily digestible proteins. Plus you're getting L-carnitine. So we talked about that for, for vegans. Uh, but L-carnitine is something that helps us utilize fat as fuel more effectively. Um, it also has citrulline. Citrulline is, um, a nutrient that helps us kind of buffer lactic acid. So when we're exercising, we build up lactate and it helps our body clear that lactate and ammonia so that we can do more work in a shorter amount of time, but also we can recover a lot faster so that we're not a sore in between workouts.

Um, and then, uh, we don't use any caffeine or artificial sweeteners. So we just use stevia and some, some natural flavoring and we've got a grape and a lemon lime. And, uh, I'll tell you what, for all of your followers, I'll give you guys 15% off your first order. Um, and so why don't we do, what's the name of your P2 sports care? Is that, yeah. So we'll use the code, say again, all right, go ahead. Go ahead. So we'll use the code P2 sports care at checkout for 15% off your first order for all of your listeners. Let's do that. And, and, uh, for everyone listening, I'll, uh, again, I'll, I'll post all of it. It was a lot of information went through. So for the cases, uh, I'll post some links on some of the things we spoke about and some, and, um, I am one of the things that I appreciate most is interacting with people that have questions about these types of topics. So my suggestion would be to come on over to our Facebook page. Um, and, uh, again, BSL, uh, nutrition community, uh, or BS at BSL nutrition and just post some questions if you have any related to this or anything else. And I'd be happy to either answer it on the page and, or film a video for you. Okay. I bet the first question is going to be, so how many seconds were you on that bowl?

Not very many considering the number of beers that I had had. Yeah. Well, time, time gets distorted when beers are consumed as well. And it does. All right. Well, yeah. Thanks so much for calling on. This was fun. Sebastian. It's been an absolute pleasure. I appreciate the, uh, the types of questions and, uh, it's been fun. We'll have to do it again. Yeah, for sure. I'll, I'll come up with, uh, I don't know how many role, how many times I can role play and act different. So maybe we'll just get the actual client on next time. Okay. Well, I thought I did an okay job speaking for them. I think you did well. I think it was good. I think, but I think people get the idea that we really try and get things individualized. And there's so many underlying factors that we want to look at before just saying, should I be taking a probiotic? Should I be taking fish oil? Like maybe, but what else is going on that we could probably address before supplementation?

Yeah. I'm surprised you don't have, or I haven't seen it yet on your podcast. Do you have any where you actually do a Q and a kind of like a consult with somebody? Not yet, but I'm just starting to roll those out. Okay. Um, I'll link to one when you get that one live. I'll put it in this note too. Cool. Sounds great. All right, man. I'll talk to you later. All right, brother. Take care. Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate you. Yeah, man. Thanks. Okay, everyone. That was Ben Brown. Uh, you can find the show notes for this episode at ptsportscare.com/80. Uh, we've gone a little bit away from the, uh, slash podcast pound, uh, session number, so on. We're redesigning the site a little bit and making it easier for you guys to navigate. So we will be redirecting, redirecting and updating some of these links on the show or on the, uh, uh, clickable part of iTunes and Google play over time. But, uh, as of now, I believe, uh, ptsportscare.com/ the session number will get you to the, uh, correct show notes.

You can find Ben's contact there as well. And he did provide a, uh, special coupon code for you guys that want to get it there. So, um, let me find his website. What the heck? I had it right in front of me here. So his website is body systems lab.com. So definitely reach out to him. He's a good dude. He's a fun guy. Um, he understands what you've been going through. If you read some of his bio on the page as well. So if you guys have more, uh, stuff that you want me to speak to people about, please, uh, pipe in. I do listen to people's emails. I already read people's emails that send me [email protected]. Um, I'm starting to realize that more and more students and young docs are listening to this. Um, I want you to use it as a tool for sharing with your, with your new clients, by the way, if you feel like they resonated with some of those case studies, that 35 year old male, the 50 year old male, the 40 year old mom, these are, these are talks and conversations that you could easily have with them, but it's, it's sometimes they get a little bit more from hearing it from another source. I personally had, there was a patient that came in that we talked about. I forget what it was. Um, she had a hip condition and I sent her a hip podcast that I was speaking to another person with on it. She came back the next day and she's like, Hey, I really liked the way they said this, this, and this. And I was thinking we already talked about this, but I'm glad she heard it. I'm glad she understood it from another source, which is what we really need. We need patients and clients to understand, uh, what we're attempting to do so we can, make the changes we need to, to improve their case. So, uh, if you have not gone to review already, please do, uh, iTunes, or I think Google play has reviews, but please do. We have a lot of listeners so far and I think there's roughly about six to seven to 800 listeners. It's a little bit hard to get analytics on this thing. Um, at least as of now of publishing this one, I want to have all of you just give me some feedback. There should be 600, 700 views on there. Please do. Um, lastly, leave each other how you, uh, better than how you found them. Golden rule always stands. Uh, respect your fellow Eagle Scout. Talk to you guys next week.