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Listen to this podcast http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2010/07/episode-103-how-to-manage-a-low-thyroid-ketogenic-diets-and-more/
Citation preview
Podcast #103 from http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2010/07/episode-
103-how-to-manage-a-low-thyroid-ketogenic-diets-
and-more/
Introduction: In this episode from Ben Greenfield Fitness: how to manage
a low thyroid, are ketogenic diets helpful for fat loss? The
link between magnesium and testosterone, budgeting your
supplement intake, how to improve circulation, knee
strengthening exercises and how to eat during an Ironman
triathlon.
Ben: Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield. The day before
I’m about to head out for a 10-day flurry of trips across
Oregon and California for various business meetings and
family reunions. So, over the next couple of weeks, am I still
going to be bringing you the podcast? You bet. I have some
great interviews lined up. Last week, I asked you to tell me
who you wanted to see on the show. You gave me great
feedback and I’m lining up a fantastic series of podcasts for
the next couple of months so look forward to still getting the
podcast even though I’ll be rushing around, and the audio
might change a little bit as I use portable microphones and
iPhones to record the podcast, but either way we’ll make it
work. So, in today’s podcast, I’ll be interviewing Dr. Roby
Mitchell who is an expert on many forms of natural medicine,
but is going to share some insightful tips on managing a low
thyroid and low metabolism today. And why you should even
care about your thyroid, even if you don’t have
hypothyroidism. I’m also going to be answering listener
questions – both call in questions and write-in questions that
cover a variety of topics. Before we get into that, we’ll have a
special announcement feature, a special message and then
the Listener Q and A. Enjoy.
So here’s what we’ve got going for today’s special
announcements. First of all, you may remember that last
week I mentioned that I’ll be teaching a triathlon camp in
Texas. The 2011 Austin Triathlon Camp. You’re not going to
want to miss that if you’re a half Ironman or Ironman
triathlete who’s preparing for a 2011 event. It’s a blast. It’s all
inclusive. That means your lodging, your meals, your nights
out on the town, your training, your segue in. Everything is
paid for so be sure to check that out. In addition, I’ve been
getting fantastic donations from listeners. I’ve been sending
out lots of free T-shirts and lots of goodies along with those
T-shirts. And you can donate to the show by going to the
Shownote episodes where I always put lots of goodies and
links and resources that have to do with whatever
information we covered during the podcast. You can go to
the episode Shownotes for episode 103. Scroll down to the
bottom and that’s where you can donate to the show. In
other news, I am still accepting just a couple more people for
the trip to Thailand that I’m organizing. A two-week trip to
Thailand for anybody who’s interested in doing an Olympic
distance or a half Ironman triathlon over there. I’ll be
helping you organize your trip and putting together some
social events as well as organizing some of the logistical
difficulties of racing in Thailand for you. So for any of that,
email me [email protected]. Whether you are a
triathlete, or you just want to shed a few tones, you’re not
going to want to miss the Q and A and featured topic coming
right up.
So folks, if you have a question, you can email
[email protected]. If you’re in the US, you can
call toll free to 8772099439 or if you are international and
you want to use the fantastic free conferencing software
called Skype that you can download from skype.com, my
user name is Pacific Fit. That’s Pacific like the ocean, Fit like
fitness. So Pacific Fit. The first question is from listener Sean,
and listener Sean actually had a very long question about
some struggles he’s been having with low testosterone. But
he finishes by saying…
Sean asks: My question is do you have any literature or information
about athletes with low testosterone and how it affects their
training? I’ve listened to your podcast about your own bottle
with low T. Besides any supplements or medication, do you
think it takes a guy like me more time to reach the desired
results due to my low testosterone?
Ben answers: Well Sean, it’s a great question and just to clarify, you say
I’ve been battling with low T – I personally had testosterone
levels that weren’t ideal for the level of competition for
triathlon that I wanted to into. But from the letter that you
wrote me, you’ve got far more clinical issues when it comes
to your testosterone levels. I see that you’re trying a lot of
different things like the testosterone patch and different
types of supplements. But what I would recommend is that
instead of coming to me for advice on hormone therapy or
medical testosterone management, which I’m really not an
expert in, you go to two different people. One, the guy that is
going to be on the show today, Dr. Roby Mitchell. And you
can find information on him and information on hormones
that he provides at www.drfitt.com. You can also go look at
the company Bioletics, which is where I get the OptiMale
testosterone supplement that I take on a daily basis. I
actually cycle on it. Five days on, two days off. It did double
my testosterone levels. I’m not saying that it’s going to do
that for you, but it’s worth looking into that and also maybe
trying to arrange a consultation with Dr. Cohen over there,
who’s also an expert on testosterone management and
bringing testosterone up. I can tell you that with the athletes
I’ve consulted and the individuals I’ve consulted with who
are attempting to battle low T, especially males who have
testosterone levels that are in the tank – it does take several
months and sometimes more than a year to really get things
optimized in terms of all the different things that have to
take place within your body to get your testosterone levels
back up to where they should be. But because your question
does have to do with testosterone, I wanted to talk to you
about an interesting study that I just came across in Alan
Aragon’s research review. And Alan Aragon is actually going
to be coming on the show to talk about the top ten myths in
nutrition and training here in a couple of weeks. But he talks
about a study that was published in Biology of Trace
Elements Research in March of 2010. The title of the study
was The Effects of Magnesium Supplementation on
Testosterone Levels of Athletes and Sedentary Subjects at
Rest and After Exhaustion. The results of that study showed
that the free testosterone levels increased at exhaustion,
that’s after a hard workout, before and after magnesium
supplementation compared to resting levels. The conclusions
were that supplementation with magnesium increased both
free and total testosterone in sedentary individuals and in
athletes. And those of you who have been listening to the
show know for a while that I have recommended magnesium
on the show. Dr. Cohen has, Dr. Caroline Dean has, Dr.
DiMarco has. Lots of different physicians are really
recommending magnesium and more magnesium than what
you’re going to see in most dietary guidelines. We’re talking
about magnesium levels… as a matter of fact, in this study,
the actual dosage was 10 milligrams per kilogram of body
weight. So for example, for a guy like me that’s between 700
and 800 milligrams of magnesium. Now between the food
and the supplements that I take, that’s about what I get on a
daily basis. But a lot of people aren’t even taking 100
milligrams of magnesium. The way that I do it is I use a
combination of topical and oral magnesium. I’ll put a link to
the topical magnesium that I use in the episode Shownotes,
and the oral magnesium that I use – I’ll put a link to that as
well. I’m not saying that the increased levels of testosterone
are necessarily going to enhance performance. As a matter of
fact, this study shows and Alan Aragon on his notes on the
study mentioned that it didn’t exactly mean that you were
going to be a better athlete or perform better, but there was
an increase in testosterone. And I have yet to see that be a
bad thing. So, I’ll put a link to a couple forms of magnesium
in the Shownotes for you and also check out Dr. Cohen and
Dr. Fitt. So we’re going to move on to the next question. This
question is from listener Patrick.
Patrick asks: How much fitness is really gained in the last big month for a
long distance training plan? I’m on your Triathlon
Dominator plan and I’m three weeks into the last five week
kick of volume. I’d be interested to know how much all this
volume really amounts to on race day. I get the feeling that it
might not make much of a difference from a fitness
perspective, but perhaps help a lot from a mental perspective.
Ben answers: Well Patrick, you’re on the right track in that if you’re going
to do something like an Ironman triathlon, whether or not
it’s going to help you to sit in a bike saddle for five hours
before a race from a physical perspective – you definitely
have to have some amount of mental fortuitiveness to
actually make it through that event. Just by training and
doing a few long sessions. However, you need to take into
consideration a few things. For example, during the
marathon, you are going to be on your feet for at least three
hours. For most people, closer to four hours and sometimes
more than four hours. If you’ve never spent that much time
on your feet, moving on your feet and you’ve never spent
even close to that time moving on your feet, then you may
not have the actual strength in your ligaments, in your bones,
in your soft tissue to actually support you during that event.
Especially after you’ve been on your bike for five to six hours.
The same goes for the swim. If you’ve never been horizontal
in a pool or in the open water for an hour or an hour and a
half or however long it’s going to take you to swim 2.4 miles,
you may find some hip flexor and some core fatigue that you
didn’t experience from shorter swim sessions. That’s why
including some volume is important. But it goes even farther
than that. Understand that there are lots of adaptations to
endurance training. You gain in your oxygen capacity and
your ability to use oxygen. You gain in your ability to be able
to buffer lactic acid and also shuttle that lactic acid up to the
liver to be reconverted and reused as fuel. You improve in
your exercise economy, meaning that if you’re training to
swim, cycle and run you’re going to become more efficient
neuromuscularly at swimming, cycling or running. Whether
it be your stride length or your push off when you’re running,
your swimming technique, your body position on the bicycle,
your ability to push and pull the pedals. You also develop a
greater ability to use fat as a fuel during a higher intensity
exercise, meaning that you get a carbohydrate sparing effect.
You’re able to go longer on less fuel. You get a conversion of
your fast explosive – what are called type two muscle fibers
into type one muscle fibers, which are slow twitch muscle
fibers that take a much longer time to fatigue. So I could go
on. You get increased capillarization which means your blood
vessels that feed into the muscles become more dense and
larger. You get an increased size and density of the
mitochondria in your cells which are the part of your cells
that are able to take oxygen and convert it into energy. You
get increased stroke volume in your heart meaning that your
heart can pump more blood per beat, delivering more oxygen
to your tissues and your tissues can become enhanced in
their ability to extract that oxygen from the blood as it rushes
past. All sorts of things happen in your body that if you did
not engage in heavy training up to the race, you would not
gain all of those results. Now, there’s also the use it or lose it
philosophy in exercise. What that means is all those aerobic
capacity benefits that I talked about tend to disappear after a
certain amount of time spent in de-training. There has been
a study that looked at well-conditioned athletes who trained
regularly for a year and in that study, they stopped those
athletes from exercising and after three months they lost half
of their aerobic conditioning, which means if you really
neglect your fitness in the 12 weeks leading up to the race,
you’re going to lose a lot. And your muscles can tend to
atrophy after they haven’t been stimulated for 72 hours.
That’s how short a time period you have to really be able to
stimulate your muscles and to do exercises that use the
muscles that you’re planning on using during the race. So
there are a lot of physical benefits that maintain a sharpness
for triathlon in your body that you’re going to lose if you
don’t engage in the workouts. Now as far as the mad volume
goes, like on the Triathlon Dominator plan, there is an 18-
mile in there. There’s a 100 mile bike in there. Could you go
out and do an Ironman triathlon without doing those? Yeah
probably. But you wouldn’t do as if you had because you’re
not going to have the mental wherewithal, and you’re not
going to have that neuromuscular training and it’s likely that
something called the central governor in your brain – which
is the part of your brain that says “Okay, I’m tired now, this
is all I can do” – it’s likely that that’s going to kick in a little
bit earlier if you haven’t gotten yourself close to that marker
of long-distance fatigue. So there’s a lot of reasons to be sure
you include the volume. Any single training plan that you
look at – whether it be a volume or intensity training plan
definitely has some workout that stimulates something close
to race distance in those final eight weeks leading up to
something like an Ironman triathlon. So great question.
A question from listener Gabe.
Gabe asks: I’m on a budget but committed to improving my health. If
you had to choose, would you take the EnerPrime
supplement as a first priority or the Living Fuel Super
Greens supplement? Also, which supplements would you say
are the most valuable to you in order of priority?
Ben answers: Well, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the two
supplements that Gabe just mentioned, I will put a link to
those in the Shownotes. But to answer the first question, you
have to understand the difference between those green
supplements. They both contain super foods, greens, things
like chorela and spirolina, blue-green algae, all sorts of
basically alkalinic super foods that help the body fight off
inflammation, have a less acidic state, give you a little bit
more energy and they’re very, very nutrient dense forms of
nutrition meaning that there are not a lot of calories but a
high amount of nutrients and minerals and vitamins. Now
the difference between the two is that the Living Fuel Super
Greens is formulated to be a meal replacement, meaning that
it’s got carbohydrates. It’s got proteins, it’s got a couple
hundred calories per serving. The EnerPrime supplement is
designed to be just a green supplement meaning it doesn’t
have the carbohydrates, the proteins and the calories. Now
my entire philosophy of life and nutrition is to try and get my
meals from real foods as much as possible and then
supplement that real food with the things I need to fill in the
holes. Now although I think that both of those supplements
that were mentioned, the EnerPrime and the Living Fuel
Super Greens are both excellent supplements I would tend to
have to go with the EnerPrime just because I like to have
salad, fresh fruit, things of that nature. Post-workout I try
and have a real meal like chicken and quinoa or brown rice
with a little bit of nuts, almonds, things of that nature. So for
me to have a post-workout drink is pretty uncommon. That’s
why if I had to choose from a budget perspective between the
EnerPrime and the Living Fuels Super Greens, I would go for
the EnerPrime. That being said, I do use both. I use a serving
of that Living Fuel Super Greens typically about once every
couple of days, I’ll have that as a meal. Usually when I’m on
the go and I’m real busy. And I do the EnerPrime powder
every single day. I stir that powder into a glass of water every
morning.
So the second part of your question.
Gabe asks: What would I do if I had to budget my supplements?
Ben answers: It’s a pretty simple answer. In this order, I would take my
greens supplement, I would take a vitamin D supplement
and I take the NanoSpray from Bioletics. I would take a
magnesium supplement and I’d take a fish oil supplement.
All four of those are supplements that are very effective, that
are not super expensive. If we took them all together, you’d
easily be under $100 a month and all of them are well proven
to really help out with your overall health and your
performance. So that’s what I would do if I were you. Take a
green supplement, take a vitamin D, take magnesium, take a
fish oil and then eat lots of fruits and vegetables. Lots of real
food, real nutrient dense food.
Laurel asks: I just pulled something in my back doing squats, putting the
weights down when I was done. I am trying to get my left
quad back from an ACL energy and I think squats are some
of the better exercises, but are there safer ones to do at home?
Ben answers: Well Laurel, the interesting thing about strengthening your
legs is that any body builder will tell you that they do a lot of
reps when they want to build up leg muscles. They’ll do 12, 15,
20 reps and that results in hypertrophy in development of
the leg musculature and you actually don’t need a squat rack
or a barbell to do those amounts of reps. You can use things
like kettle bells, dumbbells. I have something called a gym
stick that I use. You can check that out at
www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/gymstick. However, if you’re
rehabbing your quad from an ACL injury, I don’t think that
heavy squats are necessarily going to get you the most bang
for your buck compared to single-leg exercises, which are
going to actually train your knee to move properly so you
don’t risk tearing your ACL again or doing damage to your
ACL again, whatever it is that you did to it. So, you would
want to do what are called propeoceptive exercises, which
means you’re doing things where you’re standing on one foot.
Whether it means starting off with walking lunges,
supporting yourself in the middle of the walking lunge by
standing on one leg and then dropping into that lunge
pattern, doing single-leg squats starting by supporting
yourself using a wall or a stability ball and then gradually
getting to the level where you can do so without holding on
to something. And then using things like pillows and bosu
balls and elements that you stand on that make you balance
and not even worrying too much about doing leg exercises
per se but just standing and balancing. I have some people
who have weak knees and I have them stand on one foot
while they’re brushing their teeth just to improve the
propeoception in that leg and the ability of the elements
around the knee to develop the awareness that’s necessary to
support the body. Dropping off of low level surfaces like the
bottom of your stairs and practicing landing in a controlled
pattern can also help out your knees quite a bit. You can do
that double leg and then progress to doing it single leg. When
I was in college, I did an internship down at the Nike Sports
Performance Center in Duke University, and there were a
couple athletes that I worked with… NFL football players,
both rehabbing from ACL injuries and half the work that we
did was things that if you looked at, you would have thought
they were pansies because all we were doing was doing real
light weights on one leg, doing balancing on balance pillows.
We were even doing some water running and some aqua
jogging, some light plyometrics meaning those jumping and
landing type of activities and some light change of direction
type of activities out in the field. But not a lot of squatting
600, 700 pounds or anything like that. So sometimes brute
strength is not what you need to protect a weak link in your
body as much as the awareness that’s necessary to keep that
injury from occurring again and help your body to protect
itself.
Now you had a second part of your question.
Laurel asks: There are so many slang terms for exercises. Is there a place
to look them up?
Ben answers: There are tons of different exercise resources that are out
there, Laurel. YouTube of course is the most popular one
that comes to mind. You always want to be careful because
obviously anybody and their dog can throw exercises out on
YouTube. I have a full exercise database – exercise photo and
video database at my Web site www.pacificfit.net. I’ll put a
link to that in the episode Shownotes for you. I also have
several workouts, recipes, videos, tons of different things at
my YouTube channel. That’s at
www.youtube.com/bengreenfieldfitness. I’ll put a link to that
in the Shownotes as well.
So we have a question from listener Patrick.
Patrick asks: What is your opinion on very low carbohydrate ketogenic
diets? In studying for my CISSN test (and that’s a Certified
International Society of Sports Nutritionist test) and reading
a chapter on very low carbohydrate ketogenic diets – they
basically praise it to the skies as a new cutting edge way to
increase your metabolism and lose weight, saying that it’s
safe and effective in terms of promoting weight or fat loss,
improving metabolic and cardiovascular risk factors and
compatible with a physically active lifestyle.
Ben answers: Okay, I guess the best place to start here is to explain
listeners what a very low carbohydrate ketogenic diet
actually is. What ketosis actually is. Basically when the
amount of carbohydrate that your body burns drops below a
critical level – so the fuel that your body needs drops below a
critical level, your body turns to protein and fat reserves for
energy. So if you’re on a low carbohydrate diet, that’s
basically what’s going to happen. Your body will take protein
into a process called gluconeogenesis – convert it into
carbohydrate energy and fat through a process called beta
oxidation, also convert that into energy. So when you convert
protein into energy, you do get some nitrogen released into
your bloodstream and your kidneys do have to excrete some
excess urine due to sodium loss from that nitrogen. When
you break out fat, you also produce something called ketones,
which also puts a little bit of a burden on the kidneys. So the
idea behind people who slam the low carbohydrate ketogenic
diet is that if ketosis continues for a long time with this very
low carbohydrate diet, there can be some damage to the liver
and the kidneys. Now there has been some research done
that shows that ketones in the bloodstream actually can
inhibit the release of insulin and the release of cortisol. So
you can get some blood sugar stabilization, you can get some
calming of your hunger. They’ve shown that it can help
prevent epileptic seizures because keytones actually can help
calm down your brain cells and at the same time, it’s kind of
interesting because there are also some problems with
ketogenic diets such as increasing your risk of kidney stones.
Definitely not recommended for kids. There’s been some
research that shows that it can retard growth. It can lower
bone density. For some people, they get a little bit of what’s
called acidosis, hypoglycemia and low blood sugar especially
in diabetic or pre-diabetic people – this is not really such a
good idea. And interestingly, it can also be associated with
kidney stones because of the excess calcium that occurs in
the urine which happens when you get increased bone
demineralization that occurs with that’s called acidosis or an
acid state from the breakdown of all the fats and the proteins.
Now the interesting thing about the ketogenic diet is that the
question is, is it the low, low carbohydrate intake that is
helping you to lose weight on a diet like that and to stabilize
your insulin levels? Or is it the higher levels of protein intake?
There has been a study that looked at low carbohydrate diets
that included a high amount of protein intake and regular
carbohydrate diets that contained a high amount of protein
intake and the regular carbohydrate with the higher protein
intake actually improved the body composition more than
the low carbohydrate diet – the ketogenic diet with the high
protein intake. So, the idea in ketogenesis for me when it
comes down to the nutrition plans that I write and the help
that I give to people is I always look at it from an energetic
standpoint. If you have a hard exercise session – if you’re
lifting weights, if you’re engaging in a high amount of
endurance activity, this diet is not for you. There’s way too
much use of carbohydrate that’s going on. There’s way too
much reliance on glucose and glycogen that’s going on. For
you to be able to justify either tearing through your muscle
tissue or lowering your body fat or just burning too much fat
in general, which will form all those excess ketones – for you
to justify doing it. It’s simply not healthy. A low, low
carbohydrate diet for an active population, it doesn’t even
make sense. It’s not the way that the Earth is built. There’s
fruit and starchy vegetables all over the place. There’s
potatoes and yams and peanuts and all sorts of things for you
to eat that can contain carbohydrates. Why the heck would
you fight against nature and not consume carbohydrate
energy that’s plentiful around you? As long as you’re doing it
in moderation. Now if somebody really needs to lose a lot of
weight quickly, I don’t have a problem with going high
protein. I did it when I was body building. I went very low
carbohydrate. I probably got to the point of ketogenesis. A lot
of times your breath starts to smell a little bit when you get
to that point. Almost like nail polish due to the state of
acidosis and the ketones in your bloodstream. I didn’t feel all
that hot. I felt horrible actually for the last few weeks leading
up to my bodybuilding show. And I had very low energy, very
low sex drive, did not feel healthy. So, what I would say from
my perspective is that although I haven’t pored through over
all the research significantly to compare the ketogenic diets
with a regular carbohydrate diet with high protein, I would
tend to lean toward the direction of consuming as I’ve
recommended in the past somewhere in the range of 40 to
50% carbohydrate if you’re going to consume a controlled
carbohydrate diet and then make sure you get lots of high
quality proteins in and continue to consume anywhere in the
range of 20 to 30% fat primarily from healthy fat sources. So,
it all comes down to really depending on who you are but if
you’re an active individual and I know that most of the
people who listen to the show are active individuals, you’d be
better off going medium carbohydrate, high protein rather
than low, low carbohydrate; high, high protein.
Jennifer Roe asks: Hi Ben, my name is Jennifer Roe and I have a question about
circulation. I like to do a lot of hiking, skiing in high
elevation peaks in Colorado. And I have always had this
problem with – as soon as I finish exercising, my body cools
down really fast and basically the blood leaves my fingers.
My fingers turn white. They are kind of swollen and they
become very, very painful with cold. So, I was wondering if
there’s any supplements out there or nutrition or tips that I
could do to improve my circulation so I don’t have this
problem. I’ve tried using different pairs of gloves and mittens
to try and keep the problem from happening and I have it all
the time, even in the summertime during my exercise. So if
you can let me know of anything I could do, that would be
great. Thanks a lot, love your podcast. Bye.
Ben answers: Jennifer, there’s absolutely some supplements that can help
with circulation but I wouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket
and just rely on nutrition supplements to help with
circulation. That being said a fish oil and Omega 3 fatty acids
would definitely be something that you could take. Bioletics
puts out a great fish oil. There’s another one called Ener-EFA,
that’s a flax oil. You can find both of those – I’ll put a link to
them in the Shownotes for you. Ginko biloba can help with
circulation. That’s basically a herb that you can find at most
health food stores. Topical magnesium which I already
mentioned earlier in this episode can help. But I would also
look into something like a muscle warming lotion. There’s
one that I use in cold weather triathlons made by a company
called Greyhound at www.greyhoundjuice.com. I’ll put a link
to that in the Shownotes. But that’s actually got cayenne
pepper and other essential oils in it that help draw blood to
the extremities and improve circulation. So I would
definitely look into that. I would also look into my favorite
type of glove that I wear when I’m doing cold weather cycling
or skate skiing or anything where I’ve got to have my hands
out there in the elements. That’s Lobster Gloves. A little bit
different than mittens, a little bit different than regular
gloves. You’ve basically got two fingers on one side and two
fingers on the other side and then your thumb in its own
compartment. Those tend to work really well. Google those.
“Lobster Gloves.” They work really well. So I’ll put a link to
those other things in the Shownotes and that’s a great
question and I hope you do well with that. But Greyhound is
something that definitely I would try.
Jason asks: Ben, hey my name is Jason and I just want to say that I’m a
huge fan of your podcast. My question is about Ironman
nutrition. I’m planning on doing Ironman (inaudible) at the
end of August. I just wondered if you could possibly divulge
some of your insight into fueling pre-race, during the race
and maybe recovery from the race all the way from the
nutritional way down to (inaudible). Hey, I appreciate it. My
name is Jason.
Ben asks: So, Jason. That is a very, very loaded question. You may
suspect that that’s a very, very loaded question. I could fill
probably several hours worth of audio answering that
question. And I hate to do this, but I need to tell you that I
have answered your question. I have several CDs out there
and audio products that go into great detail – every tiny,
little element that you need to consider for the last eight
weeks leading up to Ironman all the way up to race day, race
morning, what to eat, what to drink, what to take in during
the race, what to put in your swim to bike bag, bike to run
bag, bike special needs bag, run special needs bag, morning
swim bag. Everything. Every pill, every capsule, everything.
That is basically what Triathlon Dominator is. So rather than
go into great detail on Ironman fueling in this podcast, you
need to go check out Triathlon Dominator because that’s
information that I’ve put so much work into that I have a
hard time going on with an hour long response on the
podcast when I’ve really already given that response on a
program that I’ve designed to be comprehensive for Ironman.
So I’ll put a link to that. www.triathlondominator.com. Sorry
to not answer your question in detail. It’s just too big man. I
can’t answer that question on this podcast. So, that being
said we’re going to go on. I actually didn’t receive any
questions – really any questions that were that good or that
weren’t repeat questions from Twitter this week. But again, if
you ask me a question on Twitter, then I will send you a free
T-shirt if I answer your question on the podcast and choose
it as the best question. How can you do that? Go to
www.twitter.com/bengreenfield, hit the “follow” button, then
write a message and ask me a question. So we’re going to
move on to this week’s interview with Dr. Roby Mitchell, and
remember to leave a comment on the episode Shownotes if
you have feedback on this interview.
Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield and I am here
once again with Dr. Roby Mitchell, aka Dr. Fitt. Straight
from Texas, this natural healing physician has a ton of
experience working with both athletes and the general
population. He’s a triathlete himself. He also happens to be
an expert on thyroid activity and hypothyroidism and the
effect that that can have on your metabolism and on your
health and some of the solutions that are out there and
alternatives that are out there for treating your thyroid. So,
Dr. Mitchell, thank you for coming on the call.
Dr. Roby Mitchell: Oh, it’s great to be on, Ben.
Ben: So, the most important thing to start off with – just as a
refresher for people is the thyroid itself and why proper
thyroid activity is actually important. So can you give your
overview of how you in your words would say people should
think about their thyroids and the importance of the thyroid?
Dr. Roby Mitchell: So, the thyroid gland is a gland that’s located right there at
the bottom of your neck. It’s right over your trachea and that
gland produces a hormone called thyroid hormone. The
reason thyroid hormone is so important is because that is the
– you think of it as the sparkplug in an engine or the
electricity in your home. That is your energy source. So that
is the hormone that goes into your cell and asks as a
sparkplug for these organelles that are inside each cell. These
little power plants that are called mitochondria. Now the
mitochondria are the actual energy makers, so think of the
mitochondria as the engine, but you have to have that
sparkplug in there in order to kick off the energy producing
process. So, as thyroid levels go down, then energy goes
down and we see stuff start to build up in the system and the
motor doesn’t run well.
Ben: Interesting. So, for the same reason that someone would say
exercise to keep the mitochondria dense and keep a high
level of cellular activity, that’s the same reason why someone
would want to make sure their thyroid activity is optimized.
Dr. Roby Mitchell: No question, and actually there’s a dovetail in there in that
exercise improves the conversion of T4 to T3, and we’ll talk
about why that’s important here in just a minute.
Ben: Gotcha. So, in a previous podcast episode when you were on
the show and I’ll make sure I link to that in the Shownotes
for people, you talked about when somebody walks into your
office how you look for a range of symptoms. Things that you
can see just by looking at them without doing a lot of blood
testing to identify that they may have low thyroid activity.
Can you briefly review some of the things, some of the most
important parameters that you look at?
Dr. Roby Mitchell: Again, thyroid – one of the major things that it does is it
creates cellular energy. So one of the primary complaints
that people with hypothyroidism come in with is low energy,
no energy. I’m tired all the time. For athletes, this will
manifest in an inability to recover. Your recovery time will
start to slow down and we see this as people get older. I
started to notice it in my 30s. It started taking me a little
longer to recover from a triathlon event. Another thing that
people will notice is hair loss, constipation is a very common
symptom. Again, and actually one of the very common thing
is muscle cramps. If you start having muscle cramps on a
regular basis, charley horses, that’s an indication of either
low magnesium or low thyroid. Cold hands and feet, again
the thyroid is very important for peripheral circulation so
when you start getting cold hands and feet that’s an
indication also. Some of these clinical features like high
blood pressure and high cholesterol and so forth – when I
see a person, I look at their – I automatically scan people for
these physical symptoms. So one is the ridging on the nails.
If people have these longitudinal ridging in their nails, that’s
a clue for me. If they’re losing their eyebrows on the
periphery, that’s a clue for me. Just a pot belly is an
indication of low thyroid. Swelling in the hands or legs. If
their rings are getting tight or when you take off your socks,
there’s an indentation from your socks or pantyhose for
women. You take off your sandals or shoes, if there’s
indentation there that means that you’re holding on to excess
fluid. Skin manifestations – so things like eczema and hives
and psoriasis. Even athlete’s feet. People think that’s
something you catch. It’s not something really that you catch,
it’s something that you are prone to. So those fungi that
cause that particular problem – what we call dermatophytes,
they are opportunistic organisms. So if they see an opening,
they’ll jump in. Everybody that’s using that same shower
doesn’t get the athlete’s feet, right? It’ll just be the person
that has again kind of a crack in the armor. A lowness in
their ability for the immune system to keep them healthy
because of low thyroid.
Ben: Interesting. Can the same be said for other fungal thyroid
issues like yeast growth?
Dr. Roby Mitchell: No question. No question. So that is a big under riding factor
for proliferation of candida is the dropping of thyroid levels.
The dropping of the thyroid – that is the first domino. And
then things just spread from there. The yeast starts to grow
and then you get the inflammation and from there, once that
inflammation starts in any particular place – that is the
(unintelligible) for all these diseases that we talk about like
coronary heart disease or Alzheimer’s or gastrointestinal
problems, diabetes, osteoporosis. If you link any of those
terms – if you go up and Google whatever your favorite
disease is and inflammation, you’ll always see inflammation
as the common denominator and that inflammation again is
sparked by that overgrowth of yeast and then your immune
system’s response to that.
Ben: Interesting. I also think that’s interesting what you said
about the cramping issue because there are several athletes
out there who I know have done quite a bit of work on their
electrolytes and their hydration intake who cramp frequently
who may not have looked at their thyroid activity. Now,
when you’re talking about the options for people who have
hypothyroidism, I know that Synthroid for example is one
popular pharmaceutical drug that’s used quite a bit, I’m
curious what types of treatments you incorporate and what
type of alternatives there are out there to prescription drugs
for hypothyroidism?
Dr. Roby Mitchell: So, first let’s distinguish between drugs and hormones. So,
thyroid replacement is a hormone replacement therapy. A
bioidentical hormone therapy. So we have to put back into
the body the exact same molecule that your normal thyroid
would normally produce. Now, a hormone is something that
your body recognizes and it has a biochemical specificity,
just like what your body normally produces and hormones
facilitate normal biochemical reactions whereas drugs are
chemicals that are foreign to human biochemistry and
they’re designed to inhibit normal biochemistry. So when we
do thyroid replacement whether it’s synthetic or the natural
ones that we’re talking about, that is a hormone replacement
therapy rather than a drug therapy. That being said, there
are several different choices out there. So now the actual
thyroid hormone – when we talk about what your
mitochondria wants – the type of sparkplug they want to fuel
the engine, it wants T3 which is this amino acid terasine with
three molecules of iodine on it. That’s T3. That’s the actual
thyroid hormone. Now, your thyroid gland though produces
it in the form of T4 and that T4 has to be directed – it flows
through the blood stream to the cell or to the liver and it’s
converted to T3 and then again that T3, that’s where the
action is. So even though – but a lot of people don’t make
that conversion from the T4 to the T3. So they’ll get put on
T4 Synthroid or one of these other brands of levothyroxine,
it’s the generic name – they’ll be treated but then they’ll go to
my Web site and go through the checklist and they’ll find
they still have lots of symptoms of low thyroid. Their blood
test will be so that they’re balanced and everything and
normal, but they’ll still have all these symptoms of
hypothyroidism.
Ben: Interesting. Why is that?
Dr. Roby Mitchell: Again, because they’re not converting the T4 into T3, right?
So if we just give them the – it’s like you take that oil that’s
spilling there in the gulf, you use gasoline in your car right?
And oil is made from gasoline. Why don’t we just take out
the middleman and put the oil in your gas tank? Well your
gas tank won’t convert oil into gasoline, right? A very similar
thing with the T4. Many people are given T4 but they don’t
convert it into T3.
Ben: So at some point you have to get from the – do you go for the
T4 to the T3 conversion? Do you attack it from that level or
do you try to get T3 into someone or can that only be done in
the body? That conversion?
Dr. Roby Mitchell: So, you can attempt to do both. So one of the things we just
alluded to earlier was that exercise improves that conversion
of T4 to T3. So regular exercise is very important. Not just
for us athletes, but for everybody. Testosterone is a key
element in converting T4 into T3. That’s why in most sports,
we separate men and women. We have a little bit of an
advantage as far as energy and strength output and so forth
because our testosterone being able to make us get a little bit
more bang out of the buck for thyroid. Selenium is very
important. There’s an enzyme that makes that conversion for
T4 to T3. That enzyme is dependent on selenium. So if you’re
low selenium, then you’re not going to have an optimum
conversion of T4 to T3. Now, the next step from that though
is to give a product rather than one that just has T4, has a
combination of T4 and T3 to prime the pump so to speak and
that can get things going. So Armor Thyroid is a prescription
product that fits that combination of T4 plus T3. Armor
Thyroid has been on the market for a long time. Lots and lots
of people take that. It’s an extract from whole porcine
thyroid. Thyrolar is a synthetic form of the same thing. It’s a
T4,T3 product. It’s just a synthetic form and then a
pharmacist – and then the next step – I have patients who
have such an inability to convert T4 to T3, we have to give
them just pure T3. A pharmacist can compound a product to
us that’s just pure T3.
Ben: Do you just go to a compounding pharmacist and they make
pure T3?
Dr. Roby Mitchell: Yes, now your doctor has to prescribe it, right? That’s not the
thing that you jump right to. That’s why you need to go to
someone who has some expertise in using these thyroid
products, but the pure T3 product – many times for some of
my patients, that is just a bit of icing on the cake. So we get
them 95% optimized and they’re not quite there so we
sprinkle in a bit of this pure T3 and we get them hitting on all
cylinders.
Ben: Now what’s the ThyroPak that I saw you email out about a
few weeks ago?
Dr. Roby Mitchell: Now, ThyroPak is very similar to the Armor Thyroid, the
prescription thyroid with two exceptions. One is that it’s
derived from whole beef thyroid glands rather than the
porcine or the pig thyroid. The other is that it’s non-
prescription, but even though it’s over the counter, it’s still a
thyroid product. Again, it’s very similar to the Armor Thyroid,
and it’s able to be purchased over the counter because it’s
kind of a loophole in what we call the DSHEA act that allows
things that are natural in nature to be able to be bought over
the counter. Initially the story I hear is that it was outlawed.
The FDA did. But the guy that was producing it down there
in Mexico had enough money to take them to court and
overcame the injunction. So that product is available over the
counter now.
Ben: Interesting. So in terms of if someone’s unable to find Armor
Thyroid, that might be something that they could look for –
not that we’re prescribing medical advice on the show but
that’d be an alternative to something like Armor Thyroid?
Dr. Roby Mitchell: Yes, it would. I would recommend to anybody that goes to
my Web site and they come out with all these symptoms
checked and it’s an indication that they have low thyroid –
the first thing that I would do is I would get this book called
Type 2 Hypothyroidism by Dr. Mark Starr. Read through
that so you can get educated. Don’t just run off and start
trying to find a thyroid product, or even go to your doctor
without getting educated first. Because most doctors are not
educated on this particular topic well enough to matriculate
patients through successfully. So a patient needs to go in
with a little bit of knowledge about how things should go.
They should know what symptoms are associated with
hypothyroidism. They should know a lot more than just a
doctor doing a blood test and well, this looks normal. That’s
not enough. Once the patient gets that information under
their belt, then the next thing I would do is go to a
practitioner. Try and find a practitioner. It can be your
family doctor, but you just need to find somebody that is
open-minded, that is going to work with you, not be
dismissive of you, not treat you like an idiot or somebody
who has no idea what they’re doing. Find a doctor like that to
work with. It doesn’t have to be a specialist. Again, it can just
be your family practitioner or an internist. And then work
with that person. You two work in conjunction to get it where
you start to bring down the level of many of these symptoms
that you’re having from being low thyroid.
Ben: Interesting. So people can find out more information about
how to access Dr. Fitt’s list of thyroid symptoms, and I’ll also
put a link to some of the other resources that he talked about
in the Shownotes to this episode. Now, is there anything else
that you’d like to share that you feel will be important for
people?
Dr. Roby Mitchell: Again, the ThyroPak is something that is over the counter.
Even so, I wouldn’t recommend that people try to
orchestrate their own thyroid therapy. You need to get with
somebody who knows what they’re doing and will graduate
you along in order to get the proper results because it’s not
just about replacing thyroid. If you’re having low thyroid,
there’s a strong possibility that there are other things that
are out of balance also. Again, I mentioned the selenium.
There can be thyroid imbalances also particularly with
women. The estrogen that women have, that tends to block
thyroid. So if you have an imbalance in your estrogen and
progesterone, you have to get that right. There’s cortisol, also.
Many times there’s a combination of low thyroid and low
cortisol. You won’t optimize thyroid unless you optimize
cortisol. So that has to be looked at also. Even though this
ThyroPak is over the counter, right? It doesn’t give people a
license to go in and try and do their own thyroid replacement
therapy.
Ben: Gotcha. Alright, well folks if you have questions for Dr. Fitt,
then go to the episode Shownotes and leave a comment or
question and let me know what you think and if you have
some things that you’d still like to hear about from Dr. Fitt
about hypothyroidism. So thank you for coming on the call
today Roby.
Dr. Roby Mitchell: Oh, certainly. Again, always a pleasure.
Ben: Alright. Until next time folks, this is Ben Greenfield and
Roby Mitchell signing out.
Alright folks, that is going to wrap up this week’s podcast.
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www.quickanddirtytips.com/getfitguy or just do a search for
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another free podcast. So remember to go to the episode
Shownotes. I make sure I put all the information that you
need in those and you can access them at
www.bengreenfieldfitness.com. For this particular episode,
you go to www.bengreenfieldfitness.com and click on
episode number 103. So, I think that’s about it. Last thing is I
did get an email from a listener this week who wanted to
know if there was a way he could not listen to these episodes
sitting in front of his computer. Absolutely. You can
download any of these by subscribing to iTunes or by looking
at the “how to subscribe” link that’s right there at
www.bengreenfieldfitness.com. And it’s all free, but
absolutely. You can get these on your mp3 player, listen to
them while you bike, run, lift, drive your car, do laundry,
clean your house, whatever. So that being said, until next
time, this is Ben Greenfield signing out.
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