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Supplement Stacks

well let's go ahead and move into some specific needs. And um I just want to kind of go over essentially what I call stacks um supplement stacks or combinations of supplements that I 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 very for mental carbohydrate sources like malted extra and fructose 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. Um And then 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 now For muscle burn and for cramping if you're gonna do like let's say you're running like an 800 m event ...

or you're doing something like a crossfit workout 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 and sea salt that I get. It's made by a company called real good salt. I've talked about it before at 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, as most people 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 is 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 you'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 acetate. What ox alot acetate 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. Um 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 20 to 25 grand portions of protein at about 0.7 to 0.8 g per pound of body weight in order to actually build muscle mass. But this is a stack that I really like to give to 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 gonna give me the best bang for my buck. I recommend creating creating incidentally is a very good brain enhancing neurotrophic type of type of supplement to help with brain performance about five g 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, sertraline and beta alunan or to other supplements that have been proven by research to really help with strength and power and muscle formation during like a strength building workout amino acids. I mentioned that you want to maintain high blood levels of amino acids during exercise. So that's another really good one for strength or muscle and then colostomy colostomy. 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 in coll Ostrum a lot of times that baby ends up being an adult with a leaky gut. Now, if someone's really hitting it hard in the weight room, I'll not only tell them to be doing like that kale shake thing with the proteins, et cetera, but we'll also throw in greens. Like I love enter prime as a source of greens. This is like a capsule and you take like to 12 on a daily basis. They also make powders like the one that I used in the smoothie earlier today, like the super greens. This would be another way to balance ph with really alkaline rich foods. Those spiral enoch Lorella bits that I dropped from energy bits into the end of the smoothie. That's another good way to balance ph But I really, really focus on greens, especially in people who are tearing down muscle fibers, which could create a really acidic environment in like a strength or muscle performer for vegan or vegetarian. These are some of the things that tend to be notoriously deficient. We already touched on vitamin B 12 and how I like a vitamin B 12 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, mitochondrial support type of supplement. That tends to be deficient in a vegan or vegetarian population. I like spirulina again is a really potent source not only of vitamin B, but also some of your amino acids and your fatty acids and this is a really nice stack for like a vegan or vegetarian to use. So recovery from workouts. Um I mentioned yesterday how there are something called chinese adapted genic herbs that help to increase your cortisol when your cortisol is too low and to decrease it when it's too high. The one that I use is called TNG 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 helps 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 G. And I definitely recommend it as far as part of your workout recovery protocol. Um I like, like I mentioned earlier to Jeff 2025 g of protein portions of protein. Post workout protein politic enzymes. We talked about breaking down fibrinogen yesterday. The interesting thing is if you use a digestive enzyme just great to eat before you eat a big hunk of steak or a big meal, I always pop a couple of digestive enzymes if I know I'm gonna eat something that my body needs a little bit of help digesting. These can also help to break down fibrous region that you build up during a workout and help to decrease soreness. You can just take the same digestive enzyme that you use to help you with digesting food. You can take it on an empty stomach and it can actually help out with vibrant region as well. So 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 ferret in pira phosphate. Really, really good for people who tend to be iron deficient or ferreting deficient is something to help you recover better from your workouts. So recovery from injuries. I showed you that magnesium not only does it work really well before you do a workout that's going to cause a lot of muscle burn. But if you've injured an 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 Finucane I mentioned that I take every morning anyways. I'll double this up if I've injured a body part 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 physician down in florida. But I'm a big big fan of that, forgetting amino acids in um for bone density lac to Farron, it's actually in that cap reflects stuff that I talked about. But lactose Sharon 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 lac different supplementation as well as including minerals which are an important component of bone per day. If you didn't want to do liquid trace minerals you could do bone broth Which we talked about in the other session 1-2 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 uh magnesium as well um 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 gonna touch on fat loss as well. I mentioned coconut oil and M. C. T oil a couple of times. I'm really a big fan of those for mitigating appetite cravings coconut manna. This stuff is really super good. I get it from a company called not Eva it's a mix of coconut butter and coconut oil. Super rich really calorie dense but it keeps you full for a really long period of time. So if you crave stuff during the day adding a little bit of coconut manna to 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 got to have your pasta I like it as like a zero calories, zero carb kind of higher fiber type of alternative to pastas. Um 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 fat loss. Chloral a can help with cravings. Chlor L. A. Is again uh in like those energy bits that I held up. That's one if I can go to a desert island, have one thing with me, I 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 corella it can really help the shutdown appetite cravings. So that's another one that I'm big on is corella and then amino acids also helped tremendously with shutting down appetite cravings because they bring this surge of proteins into 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 I'll pop about 2-3 capsules of this, about 30 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 as far as speeding up the metabolism without doing a lot of damage to the adrenals, bitter orange extract and green tea extract worked well for this. This is a really good stack for if you have issues with metabolism, Magnesium, it's responsible for over 300 different enzymatic reactions to assist with metabolism. So that was really good. We've touched on carnitine and linoleic acid. Those also really help 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 gut health. We've pretty much touched on all of these probiotics, colosseum and digestive enzymes. 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 the more 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 5 to 10 drops in the morning, 5 to 10 drops in the evening to actually help to naturally act as an antibacterial antiviral and 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 cleanse that I mentioned earlier. So that works really well as far as that's concerned. Um And those are some of the things that they should 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 hangover again, high dose curcumin. Like that final 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 Glutathione. I don't have it here. Similar at B- 12. You spray it 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 to a glass of water and have one for each alcoholic drink that I take in brain stack some of the things that I'm big on as far as brain in addition to these chinese adapted genic herbs um I like uh generous autumn. 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 phosphate title Colin. 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 choline, both acetyl, l carnitine and alpha slowpoke acid, which I mentioned earlier, not only help with mitochondrial support, they can also really, really help as neurotrophic 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, a neuronal formation and also brain health sleep supplements to help you to sleep. I do have certain stacks that we'll use for this as well. Um 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 is magnesium that we already talked about. But if you combine magnesium with equal parts potassium citrate and magnesium citrate. Fantastic for help you to fall asleep at night. Um Gamma amino butyric 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 Jabba actually helps you get to sleep, then there's probably some other issues going on. Valerian root is a natural relaxant. 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. Um as far as the testosterone stack 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 uh 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 I recommended. Guys who struggle with libido issues combination is 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 as far as testosterone is concerned. 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 and certainly is a really good source, but you can also take an l arginine supplement. You can get an L. Arginine supplements off amazon or GNC or wherever else. It's a natural vaso dilator. You take it about 60 to 90 minutes. Pre sects works really well for both males and females to enhance pleasure um orgasm everything. Horny goat weed works better in guys but that's another supplement that's been proven to work really well. Um About 300 to 500 mg of that on a daily basis. Really really good for libido. This chinese adapter 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 12 hours prior for both males and females, this one can have a really nice effect as well. Yo 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 300 to 500 mg of johann B 1 to 2 hours prior to sex. And then pine pollen powder. This one works better for guys to get a natural rise in testosterone and pine pollen is just chock full of natural testosterone And you take that about 1-2 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 800 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.