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Supplement Stacks

Well let's go ahead and move into some specific needs and I just want to kind of go over essentially what I call stacks supplement stacks or combinations of supplements that I've found to work really really well for folks who are pursuing specific needs so for example, for endurance performance I'm a big fan of not frequently spiking your blood sugar levels and not relying upon vory for mental carbohydrate sources like multiplex train and fruit toasts and things like that if you're running marathoning cycling doing things of that nature I'm a fan of easily digestible fats like m c t oil easily digested proteins like an essential amino acids or a branch chain amino acid andi also some kind of a slow release fuel there is one out there called super starch made by a company called you can but I like to combine those three things together to enhance endurance performance on dso for like a long workout I will combine that with a little bit of sodium to raise blood pressure because what happ...

ens is when you strip your body of carbohydrates or you eat a little bit lower carbohydrate your blood pressure tends to drop is your body sheds carbohydrate and water weight but you take some sodium you mix it with amino acids you mix it with m c t oil you mix that with the slow release starch and then during the actual event you continue to take in the starch the amino acids and about one to two tablespoons oven easily digested fat like that m c t oil that we talked about earlier and that is my go to recipe for endurance athletes who want to go all day long works much, much better than gels, powerbars, goose sports drinks things of that nature now there are some other things that all throw into the mix to reduce the burn, so to speak and I'll get into those in a second but that's a great mix for endurance per performance now for muscle burn and for cramping if you're going to do like let's say you're running like an eight hundred meter event or you doing something like a cross fit workout that that involves a lot more lactic acid production. I'm a fan of using trace liquid minerals on a daily basis or using like a sea salt that's really rich in minerals like this is an aztec in sea salt that I get it's made by a company called riel good salt I talked about it before it ben greenfield fitness dot com but I will use a lot of salt and a lot of minerals, especially in the week leading up to a hot event if you struggle with cramping, sometimes it is electrolyte or mineral related and usually it's not related to you not taking in enough sodium during that actual workout or during that actual event it's related to you having a chronic mineral deficiency or chronic electrolyte deficiency and consuming trace liquid minerals or consuming like a really nice sea salt on a daily basis can really help with that and it actually helps to stabilize blood pressure not necessarily to increase blood pressure is most people would would believe I'm a big fan of topical magnesium I use a lot of this stuff either before or after a workout to restore magnesium to a very targeted location like I'll smear this stuff on the back of my calves after a run or I'll smear it on my chest after like a bench pressing type of workout and it's just a topical magnesium that's very, very easily absorbed this one's made by a company called ancient minerals, by the way, just about everything I talk about is at ben greenfield fitness dot com slash creative live but topical magnesium if you're going into an event for which they're worried about cramping or where you're going to be engaging in some really powerful muscle contractions that can really really help I'm also a fan of ox alot acid tate what aqsa low acid tate does is it allows your body to take all that lactic acid that you make during exercise and convert it back into sugar more quickly so what happens is your body can take lactic acid out of muscle shuttle it up to the liver and then converted into sugar that you can use during that workout so lacked the gas it is actually a good thing ox alot asset a this is the stuff that I use same place I get my empty toilets from ah day vasteras website it's marketed as an anti aging supplement but it's also an ox low acid tate salt so I will use this to help reduce the burn during exercise on the other thing that I'll use is something called x to performance to help restore a teepee levels more quickly and this is a really, really good one two combo for prior to like hard sprint style workouts crossfit workouts that type of thing ox low acid tate plus some form of a teepee so you're about your body is basically allowing itself to more readily make energy when you need it super duper quickly there are some supplements out there that are advertisers like buffers like extreme endurance is one example sport legs is another usually for any of these type of buffers to work you need toe load with them similar to needing to load with minerals prior to a high priority event like a marathon or a triathlon that you're going into you can't just buy something like that and take it in the morning before the race and expected to work well so baking soda can work in a situation like that but it causes stomach upset so for strength and muscle mass which we talked about quite a bit yesterday we talked about foods for that and of course we already touched on protein and taking twenty to twenty five grand portions of protein at about zero point seven two zero point eight grams per pound of body weight in order to actually build muscle mass but this is a stack that I really like to give toe athletes who want to build muscle quickly and again this is not like stuff that I would take every day. This is if somebody came to me and they were like ben I want to put on muscle as quickly as possible which supplements are going to give me the best bang for my buck I recommend creatinine. Creating, incidentally, is a very good brain enhancing neuro chopper type of type of supplement to help with with brain performing it's about five grams a day there's another supplement called carnitine that acts in your mitochondria to help you produce energy that one really helps to produce fatigue during strength training workouts sitra lean and beta allen in our two other supplements that have been proven by research to really help with strength and power and muscle formacion during like a strength building work out amino acids, I mentioned that you want to maintain high blood levels of amino acids during exercise that's another really good one for strength or muscle and then kill ostrom kill ostrom kind of flies under the radar, but not only is this stuff fantastic for healing the lining of the stomach. If, for example, a baby is born and was raised on formula rather than a mother's breast milk, which is very rich and kill ostrom aa lot of times that baby ends up being an adult with a leaky gut. And so sometimes when people come to me and they have digestive issues by asking if they're raised on formula and they say yes, one of the best things we can do is get him started into something like colostomy right away. But colostomy can actually also help you exercise better in the heat. It decreases your gut permeability. When you're exercising and hot environments, it helps to increase. Testosterone helps to increase growth hormone and that insulin like growth factor that I talked about yesterday. So I included as part of a strength stack, and then we talked about balancing ph. I like a daily serving of some form of a concentrated green source. So if someone's really hitting it hard in the weight room? I'll not only tell them to be doing like that cale shake thing with the proteins, et cetera, but we'll also throwing greens like I love enter prima's, a source of greens. This is like a capsule and you take like six to twelve on a daily basis. They also make powders like the one that I used in the smoothie earlier today. Like the super grains, this would be another way to balance ph with really alkaline rich foods, those spiraling acc lorella bits that I dropped from energy bits into the end of this movie that's, another good way to balance ph. But I really, really focus on greens, especially people who are tearing down muscle fibers, which could create a really acidic environment, like a strength or muscle performer for a vegan or vegetarian. These air some of things that tend to be notoriously deficient. We already touched on vitamin b twelve and how I like a vitamin b twelve spray for someone who's, a plant based athlete also creating is really good because you get a lot of that from meat and vegetarians tend to be deficient in that, especially if they're going after strength or power. I like l carnitine, another mitochondrial type of supplement, might a contra support type of supplement that tends to be deficient in a vegan or vegetarian population. I like spiraling again is a really potent source, not only a vitamin b, but also some of your amino acids and your fatty acids. And this is a really nice stack for, like, a like a vegan or vegetarian to use and remember, I know there's a lot of numbers listed in terms of like grams per day, milligrams per day, etcetera. As part of this course, you you do get the slides as well, she'll be able to go back through and kind of look up. Hey, I want the strength, power, stack that's, the one that I want to use before my workout. What should my dozing b and you'll be able to go back and look at that so recovery from workouts I mentioned yesterday how there are something called chinese adapted jenna curbs that helped to increase your court assault when your cortisol is too low and to decrease it when it's too high, the one that I use is called t and she this is something I take every day on an empty stomach as not only a way to improve my mental performance, because it's got a bunch of different brain enhancing what are called neuro tropics in it. That help you to think better and help to enhance mental clarity but it's also a fantastic adrenal tonic so this one's called t and she and I definitely recommend it as far as part of your workout recovery protocol I like like I mentioned earlier to jeff twenty twenty five grams of protein portions of protein post workout prodi olynyk enzymes we talked about breaking down five brimage in yesterday. The interesting thing is if you use a digestive enzyme just great tea before you eat a big hunk a steak or a big meal I always pop a couple of digestive enzymes if I know I'm going to eat something that my body needs a little bit of help digesting these can also help to break down vibrant engine that you build up during a workout and help to decrease soreness you could just take the same digestive enzyme that used to help you with digesting food you could take it on an empty stomach and it could actually help out with vibrant engine as well that's another really good one I like a daily full spectrum antioxidant like this life shots that I mentioned earlier daily serving of concentrated greens like I mentioned earlier and then I also mentioned earlier the sheraton pyro phosphate really, really good for people who tend to be iron deficient or ferric and efficient is something to help you recover better from your workouts so recovering from injuries I showed you that magnesium not only does it worked really well before you do a workout that's going to cause a lot of muscle burn, but if you've injured in area rubbing that topical magnesium into the injured area is one thing that will get people doing right away after they've been injured I also like high dose curcumin this is the fina okay? And I mentioned that I take every morning anyways all double this up if I've injured a body part so it's got natto kaine ace final valentin curcumin a bunch of natural painkillers and natural anti inflammatories in it that don't destroy your stomach like ibuprofen or like advil would so all you something like this and then I also use ah blend of herbs like feverfew garlic tem erik white willow bark uh cherry extract mixed with chicken like ground up chicken college in glucosamine con droid in all this stuff, I'll take all of that if I'm injured for bone healing bones, support in muscle support and that's all kind of bound up in this capsule called cap reflects, so those are all important nutrients to get into your body if you've been injured and that's kind of my stack for helping people bounce back from injuries as quickly as possible, amino acids can really really help with this as well I already mentioned vitamin c and antioxidants but amino acids there's a specific form of essential amino acids that I really like that's extremely digestible it's called master amino pattern or m a p and that's made by a by a physician down in florida but I'm a big big fan of that forgetting amino acids in um for bone density lacto faron it's actually in that cap reflects stuff that I talked about the lacto farren is really, really good for bone density and for helping to recover when you've had like a stress fracture, you've broken a bone big big fan of lacto faron supplementation as well as including minerals, which are an important component of bone per day if he didn't want to do liquid trace minerals, you could do bone broth, which we talked about in the other session one to two cups of bone broth per day vitamin d again balanced out with their I actually have a written down vitamin k two so now vitamin k three and then magnesium as well again, preferably before bed that's a really, really good stack for bone density, especially if you're eating calcium rich foods anyways like the kale, the yogurt and stuff like that. All right, so we're going to touch on fat loss as well I mentioned coconut oil and m c t oil a couple of times on I'm really a big fan of those for mitigating appetite cravings because those fats form readily available energy sources that kind of shut down you wanting teat that snickers bar I'm a big fan of those coconut mana this stuffs really super good I get it from a company called the tva it's a mix of coconut butter and coconut oil super rich really calorie dense but it keeps you full for really long period of time so if you crave stuff during the day adding a little bit of coconut mana toe like a smoothie or even just eating a little chunk of it can work really well there's a company out there called miracle noodles if you really gotta have your pasta I like it is like a zero calories zero carb kind of higher fiber type of alternative to pastas it takes a little bit of getting used to but it's it's a really really good way if you like to eat pasta based meals to get like a pasta that's going to help you out a little bit with that loss clore ella can help with cravings claire l a is again in like those energy bits that I held up that's one of my go to a desert island have one thing with me I'd take lorella because it's one of the most complete foods on the face of the planet and when you eat just a little bit of clear l a it can really help to shut down appetite cravings so that's another one that I'm big on is clear ella and then amino acids also helped tremendously with shutting down appetite cravings because they bring this surge of proteins in your bloodstream that tell your brain that it actually doesn't need to eat these big meals. You can also increase metabolism a lot of different ways to increase metabolism I want to touch on a few of my favorites one is bitter melon extract and all pop about two to three capsules of this about thirty minutes prior to a carbohydrate rich meal to improve the blood sugar response to that meal and to keep myself from getting too sluggish from that roller coaster blood sugar ride another one that I really like a ce farrah speeding up the metabolism without doing a lot of damage to the adrenals bitter orange extract and green tea extract worked well for this is a really good stack for if you have issues with metabolism magnesium it's responsible for over three hundred different enzymatic reactions to assist with metabolisms of that one's really good we've touched on carnitine and little a gas and those also really helped with metabolism and then during our cooking session we talked about cinnamon and apple cider vinegar as natural ways to stabilize blood sugar, so those also are really good got health we've pretty much touched on all of these probiotics kill ostrom and digestive enzymes and we're going to dig into those a lot more during the gut health section of today but all three of those that's a really good stack if you want to improve your got health if you want to actually fix a gut that has issues we're going to jump into this in great detail later on but what all usually get people on if they have a lot of heart burn a lot of indigestion is you can take hydrochloric acid along with something called pepsi in for example there's a company called now foods that makes eight shell with peps and that's really good that's one that you can use prior to a meal if you have issues with heartburn rather than taking like a proton pump inhibitor which will actually decrease your ability to be able to digest a meal bitters really help you can actually purchase bitters and use those prior to a meal ah gut cleansing mix I use one called capper cleanse and I'll take that one to two times per day when my gut needs a little bit of extra repair like it does now after my little adventure in thailand and then one to two servings of bone broth or that organic gelatin that we talked about during the cooking section each day if you've got issues if you've been on antibiotics if you've gotten sick recently with a gut issue this really helps the picture got very very quickly so that's a protocol that I'll use for that, and then just a few other stacks here one is a basic detox. I'm really going to get into this in a lot of detail again when I talk about fixing your gut and detoxing your body, but some of them or important detox supplements that I'll use that I didn't talk about yet one is oil of oregano. This is one that I'll use on a daily basis about five to ten drops in the morning, five to ten drops in the evening to actually up to naturally act as an anti bacterial and viral in my digestive tract. So this is a really good one for a cleansing type of supplement, another one that works really well as a cleanses that capper clans that I mentioned earlier, so that works really well as far as that's concerned on dh, those are some of the things that they would focus on as far as the detox goes, the iodine also works really well as a detox. And then finally, the moment everyone's been waiting for, what do you do to detox from alcohol or hang over again? High dose curcumin like that fino kind stuff that I talked about before and after drinking full spectrum antioxidant, I'll usually pop one of these as well, before and after drinking. There's a supplement called beautify own I don't have it here similar b twelve you sprayed underneath the tongue very very good antioxidant for if you've been drinking one electrolyte tablet you can usually get electrolyte tablets in a format like this you can take these and I'll usually add one of these two glass of water and have one for each alcoholic drink that I take in and then a lot of us tend to get constipated when we drink so you take about three to four of that supplement that I mentioned called capper cleanse which is like milk thistle extract and licorice root and a lot of really good gut cleansing type of compounds and that's that's a fantastic stack for detoxing for alcohol for hangovers for stuff like that and then finally, um you know, as far as as far as time goes, I want to make sure that I respect the time here so well I'm just going to keep sailing through a fume or these because I want to talk about brain sleep and hormones really quickly and no that we're going to hit some of these stacks when we talk about brain sleepin hormones in more detail brain stack some of things that I'm big on as faras brain in addition, these chinese adapted genic herbs I like uh anna rasa tam if I'm in a high mental stress type of scenario, it looks like this it can really really help spark neuronal activity in the brain, but it rapidly increases turnover of something called foster title coleene so you'd only want to take something like that if you combined it with something like a fish oil or krill oil or something else that contains cooling both the seattle l carnitine and l philip oak acid, which I mentioned earlier not only help with mitochondrial support, they can also really, really help as nor tropic or his brain enhancers and fish oil like you've learned a few times during this session is really, really good for a nerve transmission on your own information and also brain health. There are also neural transmitter ripley shin type of supplements and we're going to really get into those in detail during the brain section but there's one called traffic or and this is the number one go to supplement that all use if I'm concerned about someone actually having nor a transmitter deficiencies that are causing things like carbohydrate cravings, mood issues, things like that it's got a really, really nice neuro transmitter ripley shin balance in it that works really well sleep supplements to help you to sleep I do have certain stacks that will use for this is, well, some of my favorites are passionflower extract I don't see my passion flower up here but using like a passionflower droplet underneath your tongue before you take a nap or before you go to bed at night that's a really good natural relaxant as his magnesium that we already talked about but if you combine magnesium with equal parts potassium citrate and magnesium citrate fantastic for helping to fall asleep at night gamma amino beauty iroc acid is a very popular supplement that you'll see sold it like walgreens cvs places like that to supposedly help you sleep the only issue is that it's not supposed to cross your blood brain barrier so if g et ba actually helps you get to sleep than there's probably some other issues going on valerian root is a natural lax and and then melatonin and I actually use melatonin like slap on melatonin patches and I'll get into those in more detail during our sleep section to help with sleep and those really help with like a slow bleed release of melatonin before bed and then testosterone a ce faras a testosterone stat goes gosh, we've talked about just about everything that helps to increase testosterone from vitamin d three to fish oil to magnesium I mentioned brazil nuts in the last in the last workshop I mentioned zinc as well and then I'm also a big fan of what's called dia spartak acid so this is a really, really nice stack that it recommended guys who struggle with libido issues combination something called renew male with dea spartak acid it's one of the best stacks that I've found if using natural things like zinc and vitamin d and things of that nature aren't really doing the trick sparse testosterone is concerned so that's a really good testosterone blend adrenal fatigue we touched on adrenal fatigue and the issues with adrenal fatigue yesterday but those adapted jin's the chinese adapted genic herbs that I talked about are really, really good for adrenal fatigue restoring your adrenal gland sources of minerals is really, really important because the adrenals tend to get really low on al das trone and in all their trace minerals when you're a dreamily fatigue. So taking a lot of minerals can help out quite a bit big big fan of about thirty five international units per pound of vitamin d three and then taking amino acids on a daily basis and there are some other herbal compounds that can help with adrenal fatigue that I'll hopefully have time to get into when I talked a little bit more about your brain and your gut brain connection and stress tomorrow we're almost to the end. But there's two other things to talk about one is estrogen dominance a big big issue with females who tend to gain weight no matter what and they're still training and they just can't lose weight a lot of times this is due to high estrogen in many cases it's because the liver isn't adequately detoxing estrogen's so you go through a lot of those detox supplements that I talked about earlier like magnesium antioxidants, milk thistle extract things of that nature, but you also want to really, really good vitamin b complex, which is a fantastic way toe help your liver detox and then one thing that happens when you tend to get estrogen dominant it is it's a lot of times accompanied by progesterone depletion, especially in female athletes and hard charging females, so I recommend that you go visit a website called john lee md dot com if you want to learn more about progesterone therapy and progesterone creams it's kind of important to make sure that you test as you use something like progesterone therapy, but progesterone is really good as well a something that you can use to kind of combat estrogen dominance if you're a female and you having trouble losing weight, no matter how much exercise that you do and then of course, the last thing everyone's favorite topic enhancing sexual performance and libido I'm a big fan of any source of l arginine um watermelon instantly is a really good source beacon also taken l arginine supplement you can get now large inning supplement off amazon or gnc or wherever else to natural veysel dilator you'd take it about sixty to ninety minutes pre sex works really well for both males and females to enhance pleasured orgasm everything horny goat weed works better and guys but that's another supplement that's been proven to work really well about three hundred to five hundred milligrams of that on a daily basis really, really good for libido this chinese and after genic herb complex that I talked about it's got a little bit of caffeine in it so no, if you're taking in the evening that it does but about one two hours prior for both males and females this one can have a really nice effect as well you know him be this one would be another one that works for both males and females to enhance blood flow to the to the nether regions about three hundred to five hundred milligrams of yo hemby one to two hours prior to sex and then pine pollen powder. This one works better for guys to get a natural rise and testosterone and pine pollen is just chock full of natural testosterone and you take that about one to two hours prior so that was feeding through the fire hose when it comes to supplementation, I realize but there are some other sources out there there's a grate like literally eight hundred page document at ben greenfield fitness dot com slash examine that goes into just about every supplement known to man all the research behind it. The reasons that I chose some of the stacks that I chose et cetera really good resource for you. I talk about this stuff a lot of my podcast on a weekly basis that ben greenfield finish dot com I've got a free ninety minute video at pacific fit dot net that kind of helps to navigate the wide world of supplements as well, and then two magazines that it really like. One is life extension magazine. Another one is natural products insider if you're a coach or if your trainer you're a nutritionist and you kind of want to look into more of like maybe the business side of things or digging them or the research articles behind some of this stuff goes a really good resource is as well, and my oh my, I know I just talked quite a bit, and I probably didn't leave a lot of time for questions, but that is the overview of the confusing and wide world of supplementation, and I really hope that that gives you guys a jumping off point to kind of kind of know where to start winning when it comes to kind of stacking for your specific needs. This was this was a great jumping off point and that's actually what I was just about to say it's terrific that we have this the starting in vote. For anybody who hasn't jumped into the world of supplements yet, and we also have those resources available. So that's, absolutely terrific. And I know that when we come back, we're gonna be talking about custom eating, customizing your diet, which feeds right into the supplements, because we also want to have that. We're going to retouch on a lot of this stuff over the next few days. So we're going to revisit a lot of the things that I just gave you the bird's eye overview up so great, great well, and we did want to share with you some of the quotes that are coming in from online that are just terrific. Ethan gee said, I could use some tea, auntie right about now ben's dropping some serious knowledge on and then mallory renee said. I can't believe how much they know about food and supplements and jenna fryer said. When anyone asks about ben greenfield, I say, he's, a guy that put science into his body and turned it into amazing.