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Real Talk with Real Moms // Traveling with Kids
Welcome back to the Real Talk with Real Moms series! I’m honestly humbled to be a part of this crew of incredible mothers, each different and amazing in her own way. Be sure to check out all of the other posts on today’s topic!
I could talk about traveling with kids allllll day long. Ryan and I met traveling. The first two years of our relationship we saw about 35 U.S. States. Now we’ve seen almost all of them, along with 7 countries and countless road trips. And as we speak, we’re traveling through Italy with our 4 year old and 2 year old.
Suffice it to say, we decided a long time ago that having kids wouldn’t derail our love of travel. More accurately, we decided that we would teach our kids to be good travelers, and good ambassadors wherever they went.
This is not to say that traveling with kids is always easy. It’s decidedly��� not. But! It IS incredibly fun and amazingly rewarding. And once we cracked the code during each stage of our kids’ lives, we were able to enjoy traveling ourselves, and not just feel like we were sherpas for a couple of tiny jet setters. 😉
Traveling with Kids Age 0-1
I think the key to traveling with infants is to try to keep their basic needs (food, sleep, etc.) consistent. We always tried to stay as close as we could to their schedules as far as naps and sleeping; I always think that a well-rested and fed kiddo is leaps and bounds ahead of a kid who is cranky from lack of sleep, or hangry, or missing his routine. If you can stick to that routine as much as possible, it’ll make it so much easier on mom and dad.
Sometimes that will mean giving up a few precious travel hours to nap in a hotel room, or to find somewhere quiet to feed the baby. But the peace of mind that you’re giving the kiddo the best opportunity at staying healthy and rested while you travel is so worth it. Then for the rest of his waking hours, you can adventure! Here are some other tips for traveling with kids age 0-1.
If you’re flying, try to feed or nurse on takeoff and landing to smooth over that tough transition.
Use those naps! Get comfortable with baby napping in a stroller or in a carrier so that you don’t always have to be grounded while he sleeps.
Once baby is a little older and more alert, it helps to have a couple of small toys that he’s never seen before, especially on a long car ride or flight. Try to spread these out if you have a long haul and not give them all to the kiddo right away.
Snacks, snacks, snacks! As soon as they’re able, bring along some baby crackers or puffs for baby to munch on.
Traveling with Kids Age 1-2
To me, this is the trickiest age to travel with kids. When they’re infants, they’re totally pliable and just go with the flow. Around the 2-year mark, they’re much more clear on what’s going on and can manage themselves a bit more. But from age one to two, it’s a toddler crapshoot. So I recommend being ready with lots of tricks up your sleeve.
Again, we try to stick to a nap and meal schedule as much as we can, to head off any meltdowns before they even happen. But the truth is that they will probably happen regardless, so just keep your expectations realistic. This is a tough age because little ones just want to run, explore, and exert a little authority. If you try to incorporate some free time for them in your schedule, they’ll get what they want and you can have a more relaxed time as a parent.
Bring a bag of tricks. Make sure you have their favorite (small) toy or stuffed animal, and a few familiar things from home. At this age, I still bring one or two small new toys or goodies for them to get interested in. You can also start incorporating things like stickers, coloring pages, sticky notes, calculators, and more. Anything that will keep them busy on a plane, in a car, or at a restaurant. (We love the Imagine Ink coloring books for mess-free coloring on the road.)
Temper your expectations as far as what you can accomplish in a day. With kids this age in tow, everything is probably going to be on their schedule. And that’s okay! Get into the idea of “slower and happier.” Maybe you can’t see three museums in a day, but you CAN see your kids explore somewhere new at their own tempo.
Try to schedule at least one thing every day that’s for them AND you. Think cool children’s museums, beautiful parks, beaches, fun new toy shops, and more. Try to find a place that will interest them and will let them run a little wild to blow off some steam, but that you would find fun too.
Don’t be afraid to schedule something for the grownups too! One small thing every day that challenges them to be a little patient or learn something new is a good guide. And it will start making great little travelers. Find a way to get them interested and invested.
At this age, we start introducing a little bit of screen time on trips. At age one, we couldn’t expect Maggie to sit down and watch a whole movie, but we did start teaching her how to wear and use kid-friendly headphones, and how to sit still through a short episode of television. We don’t do a ton of screen time at home, but our rules are different on the road. A kids’ tablet is a great tool if you use it right.
Again, pack the snacks! Allllll the snacks.
Traveling with Kids Age 2-4
I love this age! They’re adventurous, they’re curious, and they’re game for most things. At this point, some kids start dropping naps, but still might need them while traveling because it’s just plain exhausting. If your kiddo still naps at home, try to get them to nap on the road, too. Rested kids = happy family.
My number one travel trick at this age range is mental preparation. They’re old enough and smart enough to start retaining concepts, so before we head out on a trip we talk a lot about what to expect. The things we’ll see, what we’ll do, what we’ll learn, and more. That way, when they get there and see these things in real life, they’re more invested and more likely to enjoy and absorb them. It’s really amazing seeing them make those connections.
At this age, we have a travel rule that before we pull out any screens on a car or plane ride, we visit/chat/sit patiently for about an hour. I don’t love the habit of getting in a car and immediately starting a movie, so we try to teach them a little patience. We’ll up this time as they get older.
That being said, screens! For long hauls, we always let the kids watch moves or tv shows after that hour is up. Not the whole time, but we do rely on them much more than when we’re home. We also make sure to have a few kid-friendly apps loaded that the kids like. On travel days, screen rules are out the window.
Bring a busy bag! Ours has a set of colored pens, small coloring books stickers, sticky notes, stencils, and more. I also have a few small toys that I keep in my bag for when we’re waiting around at a restaurant, in lines, etc. The kids are also starting to want to bring their own backpacks with a few of their favorite things, which we do for longer trips.
Let them take the lead every so often, especially for the kids on the older end of the 2-4 age range. We find that when Henry and Maggie feel like they’re making some decisions about the things we’re going to see or do as a family, they are so much more invested, joyful, and open to what we’re doing.
Traveling with Kids Age 4 and Older
I’ll have to keep you posted on this one! Henry is four and a half, and right now our biggest transition is the stroller situation. We did bring a stroller to Italy with us, because we knew we would be doing a LOT of walking and he’s still not quite able to keep up. But on the flip side, we recently took him on a 3 mile hike and he did almost all of it himself. So I’m curious to know if you’ve hit that stroller threshold and how you’re handling it!
Honestly, this is a huge post and it just barely scratches the surface of all my thoughts on traveling with kids! But I think if you could take away one thing from this, it would be: DO IT. Don’t be scared or turned off by it. Adjust your expectations and take those babies with you. Traveling creates compassionate, aware people. And exposing our kiddos to new and different places is such an honor.
And now a couple of questions for you! Do you have any tried and true tricks for traveling with kids that we missed? Or do you have any specific travel topics you’d like to see us expand on? Leave a comment and let me know. And be sure to read what the rest of the moms in the series have to say about traveling with their kids! xoxo
See the rest of the Real Talk with Real Moms posts below!
The Proper Blog | Studio DIY | The Effortless Chic
Source: https://lovelyindeed.com/real-talk-with-real-moms-traveling-with-kids/

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Restfett in Kühlschrank gekotzt: Hipster braut versehentlich sein eigenes Craftbeer
Immer mehr Menschen brauen ihr eigenes Craftbeer. Mit einer innovativen Methode sorgt jetzt der Germanistik-Bachelorstudent Elvis Spahic (41) in der Craftbeer-Szene für Aufsehen. Er kotzte restfett in seinen Kühlschrank und ließ die Flüssigkeit einige Wochen lang reifen. Das Ergebnis kann sich durchaus schmecken lassen.
WIEN-MARGARETEN – Stolz verkostet Elvis seine Kreation. „Unser WG-Kühlschrank bietet optimale Bedingungen“, erklärt er im Wohnzimmer seiner 140-qm-Dachgeschoss-WG.
„Die Säure meines Magensafts wird balanciert durch die feine Note von Kräuter-Philadelphia Jahrgang 2014. Abgerundet vom fülligen Aroma der zwei Monate alten Quattro-Formaggi vom Kebabstand, muss ich echt sagen: Strickmütze ab!“
Geschäftsidee
Aufgrund seines Brau-Erfolges schmiedet Elvis nun große Pläne. Unter der Marke Olde Vienna Puke Ale verhandelt er derzeit mit einigen Underground-Technoclubs in Georgien. Empfohlener Preis für 0,33 Liter seines exklusiven Biers: bodenständige 14,90 Euro.
Die Entdeckung hat seinen Unternehmerinstinkt geweckt. Als nächstes plant Elvis, aus dem Schimmelpilz ein seinem Brotkorb flauschige Bio-Wolljacken zu stricken.
Auch die Silberfische aus dem WG-Badezimmer sammelt er in alten Gurkengläsern, um sie dann milchsauer vergoren als Austrian Surströmming an selbsternannte Foodies am Grätzlmarkt zu verkaufen.
Auf der Tür des Kühlschranks klebt eingetrocknetes Erbrochenes. Die nächste Business Opportunity. Elvis schabt die gelbgrüne Masse behutsam ab, füllt sie in seinen Vaporizer und nimmt einen Lungenzug. „Ich bin ja schon lange Dampfer, aber das Zeug disrupted meine Schleimhäute wie nix zuvor.“ Lächelnd macht er sich eine Flasche Olde Vienna Puke Ale auf.
Source: https://dietagespresse.com/restfett-in-kuehlschrank-gekotzt-hipster-braut-versehentlich-sein-eigenes-craftbeer/
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[Transcript] – The Ultimate Guide To Freediving, Legal Blood Doping, Wim Hof Breathing, Increasing Your Breathhold Time, Underwater Ear Equalizing, Spearfishing & Much More!
Podcast from: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/biohacking-podcasts/hold-breath-longer/
[0:00:00] Introduction
[0:01:18] Podcast Sponsors
[0:03:52] Meeting Ted Harty
[0:08:37] What happens to the body during free diving?
[0:12:04] Mammalian Dive Reflex
[0:18:54] The Connection Between the Spleen and Breath Holding/Free Diving
Get The Low Carb Athlete - 100% Free!Eliminate fatigue and unlock the secrets of low-carb success. 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[0:24:22] The Benefits of Free Diving
[0:29:58] Tips for Increasing Breath Hold Time
[0:33:39] Podcast Sponsors
[0:36:36] What an apnea table is and the difference between CO2 and O2 apnea?
[0:38:33] The Wonka Table
[0:44:32] Would you do a table while exercising?
[0:48:39] Breath Work In Between Dives
[0:53:08] Valsalva and Frenzel Breathing Technique
[0:58:19] Demonstration of The Frenzel Breathing Technique
[1:02:31] Ted’s and Wim Hof Breathwork
[1:06:47] The Bohr Effect
[1:12:42] Exercise and Regimen for Freedivers
[1:26:21] Courses Offered by Ted Harty
[1:29:13] Closing the Podcast
[1:30:23] End of Podcast
Ted: And you talk to people that freedive and they get all starry-eyed and they’re just like, “Oh, it’s just amazing. You’d be down there.” When you’re not a freediver, you’re like, “How can being underwater and drowning and suffocating be relaxing?” Well, when you do it right, you don’t feel like you’re drowning. You’re completely relaxed. You’re weightless. It’s not like anything else I’ve certainly ever done, and you talk to people that do it and they all swear by it.
Ben: I have a master’s degree in physiology, biomechanics, and human nutrition. I’ve spent the past two decades competing in some of the most masochistic events on the planet from SEALFit Kokoro, Spartan Agoge, and the world’s toughest mudder, the 13 Ironman triathlons, brutal bow hunts, adventure races, spearfishing, plant foraging, free diving, bodybuilding and beyond. I combine this intense time in the trenches with a blend of ancestral wisdom and modern science, search the globe for the world’s top experts in performance, fat loss, recovery, gut hormones, brain, beauty, and brawn to deliver you this podcast. Everything you need to know to live an adventurous, joyful, and fulfilling life. My name is Ben Greenfield. Enjoy the ride.
Well, hello. I had a blast on today’s episode with my buddy, Ted Harty, where we talk about freediving and breath-holding and spearfishing and a whole lot more. Even if you absolutely detest water, there are some very interesting takeaways in this particular show.
Now, a couple of quick things. This podcast is brought to you by Kion, which is my playground for all things health and wellness. What I’ve done is created this company to scratch my own itch whenever I find a cool new ingredient or some brand new molecule that can make your life better, whether it’s recovery or performance or digestion or fat loss or muscle gain or blood sugar control, you name it. I actually create these formulations. They’re the shotgun formulations of supplements, functional foods, bars, coffees. Everything is over there. It’s all research backed. It’s all real-world tested and designed to empower you to live a very fulfilling life, pain-free, operating with a brain and body that works the way it’s supposed to. So, you get 10% off of anything at Kion. Very simple. You go to getkion.com. That’s getK-I-O-N.com and the discount code that you can use over at Kion is BGF10. So, you go to getkion.com. BGF10 saves you 10% site-wide. How do you like that?
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Hey, folks. About two years ago, I wrote an article called, “How Breath-Holding, Blood-Doping, Shark-Chasing, Free-Diving & Ketosis Can Activate Your Body’s Most Primal Reflex.” I wrote that after I began to get involved with freediving and spearfishing, which I did when I discovered this book, this again was a couple of years ago, by an author named James Nestor. The name of the book was “Deep: Freediving, Renegade, Science, and What The Oceans Tell Us about Ourselves.” It was a great book and it got me so interested in this concept of freediving and spearfishing that I decided to hunt down one of the best people in the U.S. to actually teach me how to do this. So, I hired this guy named Ted Harty from Immersion Freediving in Fort Lauderdale, Florida to certify me in freediving so that I could then learn how to spearfish and also how to increase my breath-hold, get better at equalizing underwater, be able to dive more than 15 feet, which I could never do in my life without getting ear pain and I couldn’t figure out how to equalize the depth.
So, I hooked up with this guy named Ted Harty. He’s 6 feet tall. He’s 230 pounds. He’s like a big guy. He looks like a boxer not like a guy you’d expect to be diving an incredibly efficient oxygen capacity to depths deeper than most of us have ever gone. But he has cracked the code on this stuff. He opened up my eyes to a whole new world of freediving. I spent 96 hours of my life down in Florida getting trained by him in the classroom, in the pool, and eventually, in the ocean. Ted, what’s most interesting about him is, A, he holds the record for hypoxic underwater swimming in the pool. He can do seven full-lengths in the pool without a single breath, and he has anemia, which means his blood can’t deliver oxygen as efficiently to his muscles and brain as most of the world’s population. This means he has a relatively low blood hematocrit level, yet he still figured out how to crack the code on freediving with a condition that would leave most folks huffing and puffing for air after they climb a flight of stairs.
He was selected as the team captain for the U.S. freediving team at the Freediving World Championships. He’s also a scuba instructor. His wealth of knowledge is absolutely staggering when it comes to everything to do with breath-holding and freediving. Now, I interviewed him on the podcast a couple of years ago and we delved into everything from using static apnea tables to how cold and cold water could actually inhibit your ability to be able to hold your breath. We talked about his whole back story.
And today, we’re going to be diving into a lot more in terms of like the biology and the physiology of freediving, how to take bigger breaths, how to equalize properly. But if you want to hear Ted’s whole back story, because we’re going to spend more time on the freediving component than the back story component, then just go listen to my first podcast with Ted. What I’m going to do is I’m going to link to that first podcast with Ted and I’m also going to link to everything that we talk about on today’s show if you just go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/freedivingpodcast. That’s benreenfieldfitness.com/freedivingpodcast.
Ted, welcome to the show, man.
Ted: I’m excited to be on the show and excited to chat with you, guys.
Ben: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I feel like I talked to you on a frequent basis because it seems like every time I’ve got the tiniest question about spearfishing gear or freediving or anything else, you’re just an email away. So, we tend to chat back and forth quite a bit, but I figured it was high time I actually got you back on the show because I’m going to be spearfishing next month down in Kona. And I know a lot of people are interested in this emerging knowledge of how good some of this stuff is for you. By the way, if you’re listening in and you just have no clue why the hell you’d want to get in the water and dive more than 15 feet and maybe grab a speargun and go hunt after tasty fish, we’re going to fill you in on the show.
Actually, Ted, I think that’d be a perfect jumping off point here or a perfect topic to dive into, pun intended, as we get going. What is it that happens to the body during freediving? Why is it that this is something that Olympic athletes are doing and people are now using to enhance their vagus nerve function? What’s the deal with the biological benefits of this?
Ted: Well, freediving is–I don’t need to tell you. It’s exploding right now. It’s getting super, super popular, so more and more people are getting into freediving. We see almost all of the scuba agencies now are jumping on the freediving bandwagon because–I mean, freediving is awesome. So, it does a lot of interesting things, like yoga is super popular. And if you go to almost any yoga class, one of the first things they’re going to do is they’re going to alter how you breathe. And guess what, we as freedivers do. We alter how we breathe. In fact, very similar to the breathing that we might do as a freediver is what you might do in yoga. So, one of the first things my students notice is when I start teaching them the breathing we use for free diving, they go to the breathing pattern for three minutes and everyone’s like, “Wow, I feel great. I feel totally relaxed,” because it works.
So, freediving is a way to access all of that stuff in the water, in the ocean, you get a chance to see the marine life, and unlike scuba, you get to be actually a part of it because you’re not this loud, mechanical thing that’s swimming through the water. You’re actually freediving, holding your breath, and it’s a lot of fun. It is something you’ve never tried. Now, it’s easier than never to get involved in the sport.
Ben: Yeah, that’s actually one of the things I like the most is I’ll fish from a boat or I’ll fish from the shore with a fly-fishing rod or a reel and you’re kind of blind fishing. You’re throwing your hook in there. You may or may not get a legal fish or a non-catch and release fish that you could actually go home and cook up. And then you put on your wet suit and you put on your mask and you dive into the water with an actual speargun, and all of a sudden, you’re down there in the coral, you have this amazing feeling of relaxation, all the worries of the world just slip away and you’re exercising, you’re cold, you’re holding your breath.
So, you’re tapping into all the benefits that we’re going to talk about when it comes to the mammalian dive reflex, which I’m going to ask you about and the spleen compression that happens when you dive deep. But even if you don’t get a fish, you feel amazing at the end of a couple of hours of spearfishing just because you’re looking at beautiful coral and seeing amazing nature and scenery and swimming with the fish that swim up to you because you’re not in your foreign-looking scuba diving gear.
And then when you do see a fish, let’s say you see a big group or that you want to go after, it’s not like you’re on the edge of the shore like blindly throwing the hook in hoping that that fish is the one that bites. You just go and hunt that fish, which is amazing. You hunt it, you get it, you bring it to the surface or you put it on your stringer and then go home and have a fish cooked.
Yeah. For me, it’s just way, way better than regular fishing. But let’s get into the physiology here. Can you talk to me specifically–let’s start off with the mammalian dive reflex? What is that and why would we want to activate that?
Ted: The mammalian dive reflex is it’s genetically coded in every human being on the planet. Dolphins, seals and whales are mammals. We, as human beings, are mammals. So, dolphins, seals and whales are full-time residents of the water. We are part-time residents of the water. So, dolphins, seals and whales, one of the reasons they can dive so incredibly deep and do all these things that they can do is because they have something called the mammalian dive reflex, and it’s absolutely something that we have, too. One of the things that I or other instructors will do in a freediving class is the reason that we can get anyone to hold their breath for two to three minutes is I know how to reach into the body, press the button, turn the knobs, adjust the dials to your actual freediving physiology and make that dive reflex come out.
Now, everyone has the dive reflex but it’s considered like–it’s graded, right? My dive reflex is much stronger than yours because I dive all the time, yet you compare me to a world record freediver, their dive reflex is going to be much stronger than mine. Now, the reflex itself is composed of several components. And so, I’ll go through those. One of them is bradycardia, which is just a fancy name for rapid onset of the lowering of the heart rate. You’ll see the heart rate drop upwards of 50% as soon as the body has a contraction. The contraction is happening. You’re holding your breath for a certain amount of time, your body is going to say, “Hey, maybe you should take a breath,” and it’s going to trigger contractions.
Contractions feel like, if you’ve never had one, it’s like a hiccup. If you hold your breath long enough, you’ll have one. It’s actually the body trying to draw that–make you take a breath, but we as freedivers are going to say, “No, not quite yet.” Now, that contraction is going to be obviously trying to make you take a breath. So, one of the things that the body does is now that it realizes that you’re not going to breathe, it’s going to say, “Hey, let’s lower the demand of oxygen.” So, it actually drops that heart rate up to 50 beats to try to beat more oxygen, conserve the oxygen. That’s a very helpful part of the dive reflex.
There are several other components. One of the things that happen is the blood vessels in the fingers and the toes will constrict, and the idea is this trying to push all the blood to our core where we need it; heart, lung and brains. That’s also why we get the pee reflex. Freedivers and scuba divers are probably familiar with the fact that as soon as they get in the water, they feel like they have to pee. Now, it’s even stronger among freedivers.
Ben: So, that’s what’s going on.
Ted: Yeah.
Ben: Yeah. I mean, it happens even when you’re just cold in general. What’s happening is your peripheral organs or your peripheral extremities are constricting, and when that happens, it actually–does it cause like a vasodilation of the vessels leading into the areas responsible for urination or how exactly is that working?
Ted: Well, it’s pushing all of the fluid from the blood vessels that are shrinking are coming into the core. And then at that point, they’re going, “Hey, there’s too much fluid in here. We got to get rid of that.” And that’s going to trigger that urge to pee.
Ben: Okay.
Ted: And it’s definitely stronger with freedivers than the scuba divers. You still get it both ways but the breath-holding has access–does it as well. So, for me, if I do a deep dive, like let’s say I’m teaching a class and I’m doing 100 plus foot dive, almost every time I come up, I’ll have urge to go to the bathroom. It was just tiny but it’s like almost every time.
Ben: Yeah.
Ted: That depth exacerbates it more.
Ben: Me too. Me too. Now, I’ve talked a lot in the show before about the vagus nerve and the importance of vagal nerve tone to have a healthy nervous system response, healthy feedback to the heart, healthy balance of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. A lot of people track heart rate variability. Now, high heart rate variability is a good sign you’re recovered, that your nervous system is ready to train or ready for stress. And in many people who have poor vagal nerve function, one of the main reasons their HRV is low is because of that poor vagal nerve function.
Now, from what I understand, when we activate them a million-dive reflex, we somehow trigger that vagus nerve to become more tone because that’s what’s produced now bradycardia, that lowering of the heart rate that you talked about. Now, when it comes to things like heart rate variability or the vagus nerve, have you looked into that or tracked that at all yourself?
Ted: That’s really something that I don’t–I mean, I know all that you’re saying is true but it’s not something that I have a lot of area of expertise on. Certainly, freedivers, we talk about that. I know those things happen when we’re holding our breath, but it’s not something I’ve done a lot of research into.
Ben: Yeah. It’d be fascinating to see a study of freedivers and heart rate variability because I’d guess theirs is profoundly higher than the general population. I mean, people who do like Wim Hof breathing, which I want to ask you about here in a bit.
Ted: Yeah.
Ben: Breath-holding get that, but I think once you add in that cold-water exposure, getting the face under which you don’t get in like a cryotherapy chamber, you’ve got to get into the water, you see that improvement in vagal nerve tone that I think is very impressive.
Ted: It would be interesting to see if I could get some of my competitor freediver friends during our competition where they’re going to be going through this a lot, as more and more of them have the ability to track–it’s a lot easier to track that now than it used to be.
Ben: Yeah.
Ted: That would be something interesting. I would reach out to those guys and see what happens.
Ben: Yeah.
Ted: So, if I can do that, I will let you interpret the results [00:18:24] ______.
Ben: Yeah, it would be very interesting. We just get them an Oura Ring, which is the ring that will–well, you know what? The Oura Ring tracks it during sleep. It wouldn’t track it during the actual dive. We could see what’s happening during a night of sleep afterwards. The other way to do it would be the WHOOP wristband would do it. That’s one that could track it in real time. They could put on this wristband during their dives and I’m pretty sure that’s water resistant to 100 meters or so. So, that’s about as deep as most of the folks are going to be.
Now, what about the spleen? There was a research study, it’s a relatively new research study but it looked at what happens when just dry land, not even in the water, you hold your breath. In this study, they did five maximal apneas, like five maximal breath-holds without being in the water. And what they noted in these folks was an improvement in terms of red blood cell production and blood flow in and out of the spleen. So, what’s the connection between the spleen and breath-holding and the spleen and diving?
Ted: Yes. That is another part of that mammalian dive reflex. So, you’ve got bradycardia, you’ve got the blood shunting, and then the spleen contraction. I had first heard of that probably maybe 15 years ago. They had done some–they had a performance freediving, had done some studies and saw that. The first thing they did was they put Tanya Streeter in a hyperbaric chamber which simulates going to depth. They measured, I believe it was a 20% decrease in volume of the spleen, and they also measured increase in other hematocrit. So, the spleen is a reservoir for red blood cells, it’s like the hospital so when that thing compresses, it’s shooting more red blood cells in the system, increasing your oxygen carrying capacity.
So, then the researcher said, “Oh, it’s not because of breath-holding. It was just because of the pressure of being in the hyperbaric chamber that did it.” Then later, they did an experiment with Mandy Cruickshank where she literally just laid down on the table and held her breath. And just holding her breath on dry land compresses the spleen. So, the idea is this is another reflex that’s designed to increase our ability to hold our breath because, in essence, this is legal blood doping, is what it is. This is increasing that hematocrit levels so that now the body can be better, can transport and store more oxygen.
One of the things I’ve always laughed about is when I talk about this in the program, in the intermediate course, I get into the spleen and the contractions and all this sort of stuff, is I always envisioned, “One of these days, you’re going to turn on the Olympics and you’re going to see this sprinter and he’s going to have a little Immersion logo on his uniform and he’s going to be doing his warm-up just like everyone else except he’s going to be holding his breath.” Why? Because he’s trying to trigger that splenic contraction. He’s then going to win the gold medal. And then when they drug test him, they’re going to be, “Yeah, your hematocrit level is way too high,” and they’re going to test all his blood and there’s going to be nothing in it and then they’re going to be like, “We don’t know what happened.” Because it’s legal blood doping.
Ben: Yeah.
Ted: Now, what we don’t know, and I would be interested to find out maybe listeners or you or whatever, is we know that in elite athletes, just the aspect of holding your breath is going to induce a splenic contraction. I can guarantee you if one of your listeners holds your breath; their spleen isn’t going to contract because the body is going to be going, “What in the heck are you doing? You need to breathe.” Whereas in an elite athlete, they’re doing this all the time, so one of the things that happen is the more that you freedive, your body starts to work for you. It starts to do all these things to help you do better.
One of the reasons I can do what I do is because my dive reflex is strong, whereas if I’ve got a brand-new student, their body is going, “Why aren’t you breathing anymore?” That’s what I mean by it’s a [00:22:31] ______. The more that you do it, the stronger that dive reflex becomes and it allows you to perform better as a freediver.
Ben: Yeah, but before I bought that book by James Nestor called “Deep” that I was talking about earlier, what it got me interested in the first place was, I believe it was an article James wrote. It was like New York Times or Wall Street Journal or one of these accessible websites that you can read news articles on. He wrote about how Olympic athletes were actually getting into freediving as a way to enhance performance, particularly, because of the red blood cell production or the “blood doping” or the “legal blood doping” that you were just alluding to. And just so you, the listener, understand what’s going on here–there’s a long time. My background is in exercise physiology, and physiologists long believe that the spleen was like this redundant organ that shared the liver’s function of destroying old red blood cells in the liver, and it actually has this secondary function because huge volumes of blood circulate through it so it acts as like this reservoir of blood. And when you compress it, you get this big release of red blood cells.
I mean, there are other things that they could do that, like we know that getting into the sauna after a workout when you’re already hot, that doesn’t compress the spleen but it does increase your red blood cell production and your erythropoietin production. You could, and I do this sometimes, I’ll do breathe holds in the sauna to double up on that effect and get my spleen to jump into the game, too. But it still doesn’t really match what you get once you introduce the compression that occurs when you’re actually in the water and diving the depth.
Would you say there are any other benefits besides the spleen, the mammalian dive reflex, the vagus nerve, and just the freaking enjoyment that comes out of being in the water?
Ted: I mean, it’s just overall wellbeing. You talk to people that freedive and they get all starry-eyed and they’re just like, “Oh, it’s just amazing. You’d be down there.” It’s just completely–when you’re not a freediver, you’re like, “How can being underwater and drowning and suffocating be relaxing?” Well, when you do it right, you don’t feel like you’re drowning. You’re completely relaxed, you’re weightless. It’s not like anything else I’ve certainly ever done and you talk to people that do it and they all swear by it.
Ben: Yeah. I guess the only other thing to consider here would be for people who like to exercise to lose weight or to burn calories, when you combine the cold with the rigors of diving down and coming back up and diving down and coming back up, and then if you’re spearfishing, you combine that with the resistance training aspect of having to pull the big elastic band on that roller. Basically, what you’re doing is exercise in a giant liquid cryotherapy chamber. Have you ever seen any studies or anything looks like how many calories you would burn per hour doing something like freediving?
Ted: I heard or saw some study but that was like seven, eight years ago and it seemed very anecdotal, but I think it was categorized in spearfishing but it was in this report that I saw, it was one of the highest ones. But I will tell you, it is exhausting. Of all the workouts that I do when I teach a class, I come home and I’m exhausted.
Ben: Oh, man.
Ted: Three hours diving up and down that line exactly because you not only have the work, I’m doing all the dives, your body is trying to generate your body heat to keep that up.
Ben: Okay.
Ted: It’s very challenging.
Ben: Dude, I just found the study. It is 11–I’m sorry, 1,120 calories per hour that you burn freediving. I mean, to put that into context, playing basketball is 400 calories an hour, dancing is 200 calories an hour, the steeplechase is 700 calories, hunting which I love to do like bowhunting, that’s 175 calories per hour. Even boxing in the ring during a boxing match is 840 calories per hour. So, freediving is like basically–I’m looking at this list, the only thing close to it is people who are racing like running races and are doing their 5Ks and somewhere in the range 14 to 16 minutes like that matches freediving. That’s nuts.
Ted: Yeah, freediving.
Ben: That’s crazy.
Ted: Yeah. I wonder if you know. So, I understand that, 1, being in the water, your body generates a lot of energy to try to keep the temperature normal. That does a lot of work. But I guess what I don’t understand, if you have any insight on, is how does the breath-holding part of it–I mean, it certainly seemed reasonable but it makes it more difficult, but I’m not sure how that translates into a calorie burn.
Ben: I don’t think the breath-hold would translate into a calorie burn aside from a shift in metabolic efficiency like when oxygen is not present–and this is actually in relation to the ketogenic diet component of this which is very interesting. When oxygen is not present, you can tend to shift towards a little bit more glycolysis while you’re in the water. And when you do that, you can increase what’s called the glycogen sparing effect, meaning that once you’re done with the dive, your body actually becomes very efficient at sparing carbohydrates, particularly via what’s called beta-oxidation or burning of fats, and also the production of ketones to allow you–ketones are the primary source of fuel for the diaphragm, for the liver, for the heart, and for the brain.
One could argue that those are used just as much as the muscles during freediving. And so not only would you increase your fat burning capacity once you’re done with the diving, but also this would go to say–and there’s anecdotal evidence from guys like Dominic D’agostino who is able to double his breath-hold time from–he did it from two to four minutes. He didn’t do any training. All he did was shift himself into ketosis.
I don’t know if you remember, but when I went down to Immersion Freediving and took your course, I took those ketone supplements. I experiment for my breath-hold with and without ketone supplements, and I had like a 40 to 50 seconds increase in breath-hold time, not even like shifting to a high-fat diet or changing my diet dramatically but just by using ketones. And so not only are you enhancing your body’s own ability to use ketones but one could argue, and again I’ve seen long-term studies on this, that if you were to supplement with ketones or be on a ketogenic diet, you could actually increase your breath-hold via that method as well.
Ted: Yeah. That’s interesting. I’m curious if any other elite divers are playing around with that.
Ben: I’m sure we’ll get some divers listening in. So, if you do diving and listening and you’ve experimented with ketosis, leave a comment over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/freedivingpodcast.
In the absence of ketones though, what are some other ways that we can take bigger breaths or hold our breaths for a longer period of time? What are your ninja secrets for getting a longer breath hold time?
Ted: It is a couple of things. First off, one way is just take down–if you want to increase your breath-hold, whether you’re a freediver, spearfisherman, and [00:30:23] ______ or whatever you do underwater, you take down more fuel. So, simply taking a bigger breath. Now the average person, if they take a breath, it’s all from the chest. You probably remember from the class, we’re doing this thing where you do diaphragm, then chest, then shoulders, then neck, right? Your lungs are basically trapped inside of a cage, the rib cage. And everyone says, “Oh, my lungs aren’t that big.” Well, it’s not really your lungs that determine how big a breath you take; it’s the flexibility of that rib cage. So, when I teach my students to take a breath, I teach in a very specific manner and it’s designed to increase the size of that cage. So, if I could somehow mechanically grab your rib cage and pull it apart so it was doubled in size, your lungs could fill that up. It’s not the lungs that are limiting you, it’s the cage.
One, learning to take a bigger breath just by using the diaphragm, chest, shoulders will make a huge difference. Typically, about 20% to 30% is what my students will do. It’s hard to demonstrate that over the podcast but I do have a free course specifically on how to take 20% to 30% bigger breath. So, absolutely on that. One thing is, you want to hold your breath longer? Take a bigger breath.
Ben: By the way, for taking a bigger breath, is that that strategy that you talk about where–and I know you have a whole course on this that I’ll link to on the podcast show notes but in a nutshell, the quick 20-second overview, you’re basically starting by breathing in from your diaphragm and then you continue that breath going up to your chest, and then you continue that breath up into the shoulders, and then you look up towards the sky, and just like you’re sipping through a straw to suck the rest of the breath in. Is that the technique you’re referring to?
Ted: Yeah, yeah. Diaphragm, chest, shoulders. Doing that just big, big, big breath. That definitely makes a huge difference. I have students who have been freediving, who’s been spearfishing for 20, 30 years and they always look bug-eyed afterwards, “That’s the biggest breath I’ve ever taken.” Like, yeah.
Ben: Yeah. And you can do it while you’re–I mean, you taught me how to do this while you’re essentially prone in the water, looking down, floating in your wetsuit, all you do is you–and you have a snorkel in. By the way, for those of you who don’t know, you do wear a snorkel when you freedive so you’re able to breathe as you’re looking down into the water at the fish or the line you’re going to travel down if you’re freediving. You can actually do that whole scenario if you think about it while you’re prone in the water and at the very end of the breath, you’re on your stomach but you just shove your head forward and suck, suck, suck some more, right?
Ted: Yeah. That’s how it works. I always tell people, competitive freediving is–spearfishing and recreational freediving are not the same as competitive freediving. People tend to want to blow off competitive freedivers as this weird little subset and my point is like, “Look, competitive freedivers, we know how to dive really deep, we know how to stay down a really long time.” You should be very interested in how we do that. And competitive freedivers, they have very specific training methodologies they go through that allow them to do that. So, it definitely makes sense. It doesn’t mean you want to be a better freediver but if you want to improve your performance as a freediver, you should do all the things competitive freedivers do because it works.
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What about the use of apnea, like static apnea tables? I’m going to link to some CO2 and O2 apnea tables in the show notes, but a lot of people don’t know what those are. Can you explain what an apnea table is and what the difference would be between CO2 and O2 apnea?
Ted: Yeah. I’ll explain what the tables are and I’m going to explain what, in my opinion, is the most time effective and efficient way to do this. Now, so a table is–you hang out with freedivers, they talk about doing tables. Table simply means you’re doing a series of breath-holds. Oftentimes, it’s eight breath-holds in a row. A table basically has two variables. It tells you how long you get to breathe up for, and then it tells you how long you breathe for.
Let’s look at a CO2 table. Well, the reason we do tables as freediving, we have to basically deal with two issues. We have to learn to tolerate low levels of oxygen because as we hold our breath, our oxygen level drops. When we consume that oxygen, CO2 is one of the waste products that’s created. When we exhale, we’re exhaling out that carbon dioxide. So, as our oxygen level drops, CO2 level is rising. We have to tolerate high levels of CO2 and low levels of oxygen.
So, a carbon dioxide table might say something like this. You breathe up for two minutes and then you hold your breath for two minutes. And then the next one, you breathe up for a minute and 45 and you hold your breath for two minutes, then you breathe up for a minute and 30, hold for two. A minute and 15, hold for two. A minute, hold for two. You’re getting less and less time and at the end, you could only breathe up for 15 seconds, hold your breath for two minutes, repeat it again. Fifteen seconds, breath up, hold for two. What’s happening is you’re only holding your breath for two minutes every time, but because you’re getting less and less time to breathe up, your carbon dioxide level is getting–your breath-hold starts with more CO2. So, therefore, at the end of the breath-hold, you’re going to have even more CO2.
That is your typical CO2 table. That was the way I was taught to do it, that’s the way I did it, but I have definitely found I think a much better way. I certainly didn’t create this. I first heard about it. It’s called the Wonka table. I believe it was from Freedive Paradise but that might not be exactly correct.
Ben: Why’d you call it Wonka table?
Ted: Well, Richard Wonka is the guy that invented it.
Ben: Not Willy?
Ted: Correct.
Ben: Okay.
Ted: It’s what I do and it’s what I teach all my students to do. There’s an inherent problem with the traditional CO2 table, and it’s as follows. If you remember I said the very last two, I said you breathe up for 15 seconds and then you hold your breath for two minutes, and then you breathe up for 15 seconds again and you hold your breath for two minutes. Now, if you have 15 seconds to breathe between two 2-minute breath-holds, there is only one possible way you can do that and you’re going to be breathing like this–
Ben: Yeah.
Ted: As fast as you can. You are going to be hyperventilating your head off. The table is designed so there’s no other way for you to pass it than to hyperventilate. Now, hyperventilation dumps your CO2, drops your CO2 level more than any possible way of breathing out there. And let’s think back. What is the point of a CO2 table? It is supposed to teach you to tolerate high levels of CO2. Well, if that’s what it’s trying to do, why would it force you to breathe in such a way that dumps as much CO2 as humanly possible in that amount of time? In my opinion, those two things are counterintuitive. They don’t go together.
Ben: Right.
Ted: Right? Because you’re lowering your CO2 as much as possible right before you hold your breath and you’re trying to get high CO2. So, here’s the better way. Let’s walk through this. Imagine I was going to do two–let’s call it two minutes is what we’re doing, two-minute breath-hold. Beforehand, I’m going to take five breaths; one, two, three, four, five. And then I’m going to hold my breath for two minutes. But you know what? I’d like a little bit more CO2. I want to start with more CO2. So, instead of five breaths, do you understand if I took four breaths instead of five, I would start with a little bit more carbon dioxide because I had less time to get rid of it?
Ben: Right.
Ted: Well, if I wanted more than four, I could do three. And if I want more than that, I could do two. You want to get the most amount of CO2 possible? You’re only allowed one breath between the two breath-holds. There’s no way possible that you’re going to have more CO2 stored in your system than if you only take one breath in between the breaths. Okay? Here’s how this works. Now, this sounds crazy, but I can–me and entry-level students can do this because here’s all I’m asking, and this is the way that I teach them to do it. All you need is a stopwatch. You don’t need an app. You don’t need to log on anywhere. It’s very simple.
Ben: Okay.
Ted: You’re going to sit on a couch.
Ben: And what you’re about to teach us is basically this Wonka table?
Ted: Yeah, yeah.
Ben: Okay.
Ted: CO2 table, Wonka table. You’re going to sit on a couch. Do this on dry land and not on the water and no risk of–so you may do this on dry land. You’re going to hold your breath. At some point, it’s going to be uncomfortable and you’re going to feel a contraction. I don’t care if that takes you 20 seconds. I don’t care if maybe you already got some freediving experience that might go for two minutes. It doesn’t matter what is. I don’t care. But as soon as you feel that contraction, that first hiccup, that first contraction, it’s now becoming difficult. And so, you’re going to start your stopwatch, and you’re going to only deal with that uncomfortableness for 15 seconds.
Ben: Fifteen seconds?
Ted: Anyone can do that.
Ben: Yeah.
Ted: At the end of the 15 seconds, you’re going to take one breath and you’re going to do it very specifically like this. You’re going to do a slow inhale using your teeth and tongue to make that sound as you exhale. So, you’re going to go–
Ben: That’s the exhale.
Ted: And then big breath, and hold again. At some point, I don’t care if it’s 15 seconds or 2 minutes, it’s going to become difficult. What are you going to feel? Contraction. You feel that contraction, start your stopwatch and you do 15 seconds. By the way, this is going to trigger–when you do that exhalation, you are going to get a massive urge to go to the bathroom. So, if you have not gone to the bathroom before you start this, you will not be able to finish this. So, do yourself a favor, go to the bathroom before you start, then you’re good to go unless you’re going to quit. Now, the goal is when I do these–let’s say I do six. And if I’m feeling saucy, feeling good, maybe I’ll do eight. But if I can do six, I’ll still pat myself in the shoulder and say, it was a good job.
Now, what’s great about this is it’s only 15 seconds. When you took your class with me, I assure you, when you were doing statics in the pool, you went through way more than 15 seconds of uncomfortableness, right?
Ben: Right.
Ted: You’ll do probably minutes, minutes with an S on it when you’re like, “Good Lord, I want to breathe.” So, anyone can accomplish what I just laid out. And the idea is if it’s super easy for you, awesome. Do 20 seconds, do 30. You’re just moving that number and just making it bigger based on your ability level.
Now, the other thing I like about the CO2 table is when I used to do your traditional training, some of those tables would take me an hour and 15 minutes.
Ben: Yeah.
Ted: You can do this in 10 minutes. Basically, you’re skipping all the point where it’s easy and you’re just getting right at the point of where it sucks.
Ben: Yeah. No. The last time I talked to you, you said that you’re doing some of this stuff while you were exercising, like walking or light jogging. Is this something you can do, say if you’re out on a walk or is there too much risk of hypoxia and passing out?
Ted: No, you’re doing this right on the couch.
Ben: Okay.
Ted: You’re not doing anything else. Now, you can incorporate breath-holding into, in essence, any exercise. For instance, when I was really into competitive freediving and trying to train, one of the things that I noticed is I was stuck at about 200 feet for maybe a year and a half because I couldn’t equalize any deeper because that kind of depth equalizing is very complicated. And eventually, I worked through that and then I started doing 65, 70 meters, and then my limit became my legs. The lactic acid because I’m doing dives for let’s say the last two–that’s two and a half minutes that I have no access to–no other options than what I took down and that you’re generating a lot of lactic acid.
One of the things that was my weakness was my legs couldn’t do it anymore. They were done. So, I would do lactic tolerance training or I’m doing almost any typical breath exercise you would do at the gym except I do super lightweight and I’ll hold my breath for 30 seconds, and that’s as many as I can, as fast as I can for 30 seconds trying to get that extreme lactic build up. So, I would do a lot of stuff with my quads and it’s brutal because you’re not breathing. You get a lot of funny looks at the gym. I would definitely–anytime you breath-hold and stop, there is a risk of blacking out. So, I would always try to do these on seated equipment. Right?
Ben: Okay. Yeah.
Ted: So, I’m sitting down in some way because in most of the gyms, they’re going to have places where you can do that, right?
Ben: Right.
Ted: I’ve heard some nice stories from people on treadmills doing this. You can imagine that can go really bad. If you [00:46:39] ______ and do it, recumbent bike is the better option.
Ben: Yeah, exactly.
Ted: I would do things that the–I’d do apnea walks and jog. I incorporate a lot of that stuff but basically, my world is–I don’t have access to oxygen so if I want to train as–why am I breathing while I’m training?
Ben: Yeah.
Ted: Trying to get it as close to the world I operate in as possible.
Ben: Yeah. I’m a big fan of books like Patrick McKeown’s “Oxygen Advantage,” or there’s another one by Anders Olsson. I forget the name of his book. It’s “The Power of Your Breath,” I think is the name of it. And these guys go into the value of training yourself how to engage primarily in nasal breathing even up to relatively intense periods of exercise because that enhances oxygenation, humidifies the air, warms the air that you’re breathing in and keeps you from activating those baroreceptors in your chest that can tend to cause like a sympathetic nervous system cortisol response.
And so, a lot of times, what all do is I’ll go on a walk and I’ll have certain periods where I hold my breath for as long as possible, but the entire walk is breathing through my nose. And even the recoveries after my breath-hold are through my nose. I find that that alone, just going on those long walks seems to do a really good job with my breath-hold time, even the absence of regular apnea breath-hold practice. But I need to try these Wonka tables that you’re talking about now. Maybe I’ll make that part of a sauna session or something like, but that’s very interesting. I hadn’t heard of these tables before.
Ted: Yeah. It’s effective. It’s time efficient. I always tell people in the class, is whenever you see me clap my hands, I get really excited about something and say, “This is going to be awesome.” Eventually, you learn that when I do that, I’m about to do something–you’re about to do something awful. These Wonka tables, they’re awesome. They are awesome.
Ben: Yeah. Now, what about when you’re actually in the water? Let’s say somebody is out there in the water. They either want to dive deep or they’re spearfishing and they want to go down after a fish, maybe it’s–let’s say someone is used to being able to go 12 to 15 feet deep and they want to now go like, let’s just say 15 to 30 feet deep. Now, when they’re there on the surface of the water looking down on their stomach, in addition to that breath that we’re talking about where you start from your diaphragm and move your way up all the way up to your shoulders and suck in every last bit of oxygen, is there any type of breathwork that you can do in between dives or in between going down to fish that allows you to prepare for that dive in a manner that would allow you to hold your breath for a longer period of time, like is there a frequency? Like how many seconds in, how many seconds out or anything like that?
Ted: Yes. I would say the most important thing is when you–every freediving instructor is going to teach you a different way. Some instructors, they’ll teach you–argue that, “Oh, it should be this way and this way is better than that way.” And I’ll be honest, I don’t think there really any way is that much different than any other way as long as you’re doing one thing, any freediving instructor is going to teach you diaphragmatic breathing. So, that’s absolutely what we want to be doing. And the other way to put it is you want to be conscious on how you breathe. The average person hasn’t taken any training, freediver, spearfisherman, they’re just breathing, however, they think they need to breathe. And I’m going to tell you that diaphragmatic breathing is going to be a huge improvement over that.
So, the idea is when I say diaphragmatic breathing, you want to–when you’re breathing in and out, if you’re going to put your hand on your chest and your hand on your stomach, the only thing you should feel moving is your stomach goes out and your stomach goes in. Your chest should be absolutely motionless. When I have students try this in class, no one can do this at first because we all are chest breathers. I mean, every infant is–you will look at an infant on their back and watch how they breathe, their belly goes up and down. They didn’t have to take a yoga class or a freediving class to learn diaphragmatic breathing. That’s just the way we are. As we get older for societal pressures, we are taught to never stick your stomach out. In fact, you’re supposed to walk around your stomach sucked in all the time so we lose that natural ability of diaphragmatic breathing.
But if you can teach yourself to do diaphragmatic breathing, the way you test is hand on your chest and hand on your stomach. You want to do a slow inhalation a couple of seconds, take a good breath and then just exhale. I like teeth and tongue to make this sound–so that I’m regulating how much air comes out.
Ben: And you can still do that with a snorkel in your mouth.
Ted: Snorkel. Yeah, absolutely.
Ben: Okay.
Ted: Snorkels in the mouth, teeth and tongue. I make that exact same sound and you just exhale to what’s comfortable, if it’s 5 seconds, 10 seconds, whatever. The main thing is to do where it’s comfortable. But what we’re doing is we are on purpose slowing our breathing down that’s going to slow our heart rate down. I can, when I’m out freediving, whatever I’m doing, I can 99% of the time breath like that. Now, can I sprint around like that? No, but if you’re doing things right, you shouldn’t be doing that because the more you raise your heart rate, the more you lower your bottom time. I’m breathing like that the entire time. I’m out there on the surface the whole time, slow, relaxed, diaphragmatic breathing just like what you would do at a yoga class. You walk out of a yoga class and you’re like, “Oh, my God, I feel so relaxed.” Why? Because you did diaphragmatic breathing for 15 minutes. That’s why you feel good.
Ben: Do you have a certain period of time where you’re doing the inhale and the exhale? Is it 5 seconds in, 10 seconds out or have rules like that?
Ted: It doesn’t matter. I mean, I typically do 2 seconds in, 10 seconds out, but what’s more–
Ben: Two in, 10 out.
Ted: Yeah. But what’s more important than the numbers is that it’s whatever is comfortable for you and that you are controlling your breathing instead of not thinking about it. Because if you’re not thinking about it, you’re going to be–having the tendency to breath more like that, which is going to increase the heart rate and just not be relaxing.
Ben: Yeah, yeah. Okay. Now, what about when it comes to the idea of getting down to that depth that you want to get to? A lot of people do, and this is what many of us are taught when we’re in the pool when we’re kids or whatever and we figure this out on our own, this whole Valsalva maneuver where you just plug your nose and go–trying to equalize that way. Why doesn’t that work when you get–I mean, for me once I get to about 15 feet or so, that doesn’t work. So, why doesn’t that work and what should we be doing instead?
Ted: Yeah. Valsalva is the way most people are taught to equalize. I, as a scuba instructor, that’s the way I teach people to equalize and it’s very simple. The reason scuba instructors do it is, one, they don’t really understand the difference between Valsalva and Frenzel and it’s very simple to teach. I’ve got a 12-year-old kid in a scuba class and I’m like, “Hey, little Johnny. Can you equalize your ears?” “Uh-huh.” “Okay. Can you pinch your nose, Johnny?” “Uh-huh.” “Now, blow your nose real hard.” He’s like, “Oh, my ears.” Exactly, right?
Ben: Yeah.
Ted: It’s called the pinch and blow method. You pinch your nose and you blow your nose, that equalizes your ears. Now, here’s where things get confusing, especially because we get a lot of scuba divers take the class. If you use Valsalva as a scuba diver, you can scuba dive to 200 feet using that. It’ll work fine. We run into issues–I’ve had scuba instructors take my class and get stuck at 15 feet. I’m trying to explain to them, “Look, man, you need to be doing Frenzel.” And they’re like, “Yeah, Ted. I’m a scuba instructor. I can breathe through my ears just fine,” and then they get stuck at 15 feet and they’re like, “Alright, what is this whole Frenzel thing?”
There’s another method of equalization called Frenzel that as freedivers, we have to be doing. Valsalva will typically stop working for a freediver around 50 or 30 feet–I mean, 15 to 30 feet.
Ben: Okay.
Ted: Now, you’ll see people go, “I can do Valsalva down to 50 feet.” Yeah, but they don’t dive down straight like a laser. They dive at a 45-degree angle and then every time they equalize, they have to turn their head up until their head’s at the surface then they can equalize and they turn back down. What a terribly inefficient way to get down to depth. If you want to go down straight like a laser just boom, boom, boom, pinch your nose and equalize every time, you have to be doing Frenzel.
Now, I’ll answer your question. Why doesn’t Valsalva work? Here’s why. When you’re doing a Valsalva–like imagine a scuba diver. So, scuba diver, when they go down to depths, typically they’re head up feet down. That’s the way that they go down. So, their head’s facing the surface. Every time you take a breath off your regulator as a scuba diver, your lungs are fully inflated. When your head is facing the surface, the air naturally wants to go to your ears because air rises. So, when you’re scuba diving, you’re in this position where your head up, the air naturally wants to go that way and so it’s very simple to equalize your ears. Now, as a freediver, we turn around. Now, our feet are facing the surface and our head is towards the bottom. So, when we started diving down, the air wants to go to our fins but we want it down here by our head. And what’s happening to the supply of air as we go down? It’s shrinking, shrinking, shrinking, shrinking.
That’s why Valsalva doesn’t work. It’s squeezing the air. It’s squeezing and ever and ever-shrinking supply of air and trying to push it the way it doesn’t want to go. And that’s why it typically doesn’t work ’til around 15, 30 feet. If I remember in your class, in the beginning, you were doing Valsalva and you were stuck right at that depth. It didn’t matter how hard you pushed, didn’t matter what you did, you’re just stuck, right?
Ben: Right.
Ted: Freedivers need to be doing what’s called the Frenzel method of equalization. Valsalva takes the air that’s in your lungs, your throat is open, you’re compressing your chest and lung and stomach and you’re pushing that air into your ears. You can tell if you’re doing Valsalva very simply. Put your hand on your stomach, pinch your nose, equalize five times in a row. Boom, boom, boom. If you feel your chest compressing every time you’re doing that, you’re doing Valsalva. Frenzel, completely different animal. Frenzel takes the air that’s in your mouth and shoves it directly into your ears, and your throat is shut so your lungs are not involved or whatsoever and you’re doing this whole thing. They always say use your tongue as a piston and push the air into the Eustachian tubes. So, Frenzel doesn’t have that depth limitation.
Ben: By the way, that’s F-R-E-N-Z-E-L, right?
Ted: Correct.
Ben: Yup.
Ted: Yeah. And so that’s the method that freedivers have to do. It’s tricky to teach.
Ben: When I interrupted you, you were beginning to say how Frenzel would differ from Valsalva.
Ted: Well, yes. I mean, Frenzel, it takes the air that’s in your mouth as opposed to the air that’s in your lungs and you’re using your tongue to push that air into the Eustachian tube instead of compressing your chest and stomach and shoving that air into the ears.
Ben: Okay. Alright. So, the way that you would actually learn the Frenzel technique, and I know that you have courses on this online, you do one-on-one Skype sessions with people like you did it with me leading up to that freediving course that I did with you, but what’s the basic overview of what the Frenzel would sound like or look like or be accomplished?
Ted: It’s very, very, very tricky to teach. That’s why you should spend an hour with every student on Skype. Now, as you know, I don’t do that anymore. They get the online program and I love it. They just walk in the door and they can do Frenzel. It makes my life so much easier. I don’t have to do another 500 hours of Skype sessions. But the simple explanation–and sometimes it works, sometimes literally, they take it up instantaneously. So, if you want to try that, put your tongue in the position like you would make the T sound–if you think about that, the tip of your tongue is on the back of your teeth. The sides of your tongue are down the molars.
Frenzel is you put your tongue in that position, and if you can imagine what that does, is that creates like a sandwich. The tongue is the bottom part of the sandwich, the bottom loaf of bread, and the middle is the air that’s trapped in between your tongue, and then the top slice of bread is the roof of your mouth. What you’re trying to do is you put your tongue in that position, you shut your throat, you pinch your nose, and you try to push your tongue up to the roof of the mouth. So, what that’s going to do is it’s going to compress that air that’s stuck in there and it’s going to try to make it come out your nose, but your nose is pinched so it can’t go out that way. That’s why you’ll see the nostrils flare and then it will go into the ears.
So, you can try it with what I call the T Block, doing it like that. Another way you can do it is what’s called the K Block, when you make the K sound. The middle of your tongue is on the roof of the mouth. So, again, the same thing. You can start to make the K sound where the middle of your tongue is on the roof of your mouth, but instead of making the K sound, you don’t let that air go forward. Right when the middle of your tongue hits the top of the roof your mouth, the back of your tongue pushes up while you pinch the nose. And you can do it that way. So, those are two ways that people do that is the T Block or the K Block. And some people who can just–I tell them that and they’re like, “What’s the big fuss?” Some people pick it up quite easily but what’s difficult is if you’re a life-long Valsalver, then that explanation probably isn’t going to cut it. It’s the people that have been doing it one way for a long time. It’s difficult to transition them over.
Ben: Yeah, especially when you’re stressed out and maybe have a speargun in your hand, you’re going after a fish, you have to make it almost like second nature. That’s what I’d found. Like I thought I had it nailed when I did dry land training and then once I got in the water and have all these other things going through my head, I just lost it. So, it takes a lot of practice to learn, but man, now that I know Frenzel, it’s easy, like you go down and you just do it.
Ted: You’ll never think about it. Once the light bulb goes off–like beforehand, it seems like, “Good Lord, there’s like 13 steps I have to do with my tongue. I’m not going to ever freedive. I can’t even do it sitting on the couch.” Then once the light bulb goes off, you’re never going to think about again.
Ben: Yeah. The best tip I can give to people is go do it in a pool first. Even if it’s just like your local YMCA pool or whatever, which might go down to 15 feet, you can at least play around with it without having to worry about the ocean and distractions and the cold. You just go down and practice it in the pool. And especially people who might be at the gym anyways, doing a lap swim session or lifting weights or whatever, that’s simple enough to just hop in the pool and do it. I find that that works far better than practicing on dry land because once you’re in the water, it’s a little bit different. It feels different and it works differently.
Now, I also want to ask you because this is obviously extremely popular, this whole idea of Wim Hof and Wim Hof breathwork where you do like a whole bunch of power breaths. Then after you’ve done like 30 power breaths, you breathe off as much oxygen as possible and you just hold your breath for as long as you can. I mean, it’s essentially almost like hyperventilating followed by a breath hold. What is your take on that for increasing breath hold time or doing like Wim Hof does, which is where you’ll do that and then you’ll get in cold water and sometimes go underwater and cold water?
Ted: Okay. I’ve heard about Wim Hof breathing. I’ve had other freediving instructors talk to me about it, and in essence, what it seemed like to me was you just hyperventilate your head off. And I did some Google and I saw I am teaching people to do it, and in essence, it’s a lot of hyperventilation before breath-hold. So, I don’t know anything about cold. I’m assuming it’s really good for that.
Ben: Yeah. Well, I mean the cold component, I think, is just that you’re inducing vasodilation through that power breathing. So, essentially, you’re actually shoving blood to your extremities that could allow you to withstand the stressors of cold a little bit more. But I’m interested in comparing and contrasting that breath-hold technique to your breath-hold technique.
Ted: Yeah, for sure. What I was getting at is as a cold person, maybe that’s great for cold. As a breath-holding tool, there’s any freediving instructor from any agency on any continent would tell you, you don’t want do that because hyperventilating before a breath-hold increases the risk for blackout. Now, most of his stuff he’s doing in dry land, as I understand it, but this is extremely dangerous.
Ben: Well, I think Wim himself–and he’s been a podcast guest a couple of times. I think he’s almost passed out like underwater, like under the ice doing this.
Ted: Yeah. So, I mean, as a freediving instructor, and this is not me, you ask any freediving instructor, they will tell you absolutely under no circumstance–I mean even freediving instructors that hate each other will say, “Don’t hyperventilate before breath-hold because it absolutely increases the risk of blackout.” That’s why every freediving agency teaches that. So, let me explain why that’s happening.
Now, hyperventilation, as I mentioned earlier on top of the CO2 tables, it drastically lowers your CO2. It makes it so that when you start that breath-hold, your CO2 is as low as possible. One of the biggest triggers for your urge to breathe is your carbon dioxide levels, right? Your physiologist will say 80% of your urge to breathe comes from rising carbon dioxide and 20% of it comes from low oxygen. So, hyperventilation has a pretty obvious advantage.
Since you start with lower carbon dioxide, it’s going to take longer for that CO2 level to get to where you have an urge to breathe or a contraction. So, if you have a breath-hold where you just hold your breath normally and you wait ’til you have a contraction, let’s call it two minutes, and then you go backwards in time and you hyperventilate a bunch, then you hold your breath again, now you might not get that contraction until 230 because you started with less carbon dioxide. So, hyperventilating absolutely delays your urge to breathe. I will not deny that it does that because it certainly does. This why so many beginners like me when I started, I remember freediving down to 20 foot of water and I’d stay there for like 20, 25 seconds and I felt like I was going to die and then my captain told me to hyperventilate. Then I went to that same spot, I could stay down there for like 45, 50 seconds because it’s delaying the onset of the urge to breath.
Now, here’s the other thing that it does that people don’t understand, and this is why every freediving instructor says don’t hyperventilate. Not only does it delay the urge to breathe, but it also physically reduces the amount of oxygen available to your body. This is a bad combination.
Ben: The Bohr. Can you get into the Bohr effect?
Ted: When we hold our breath, our blood is becoming more acidic. As our blood is becoming more acidic, that’s changing the pH levels of our blood. So, when we hyperventilate, what that does is it’s increasing the strength of the bond between hemoglobin and oxygen. So, if I’m holding my breath, I’ve got all these hemoglobin molecules running around through my bloodstream, the hemoglobin molecule has little oxygen molecules attached to it. That’s how it transports the oxygen, and then it pops off the oxygen and gives it to the muscle tissue so I can use it. If the strength of the bond between hemoglobin and oxygen is too high, that oxygen molecule can’t pop off and be used as fuel. So, it’s stuck to the hemoglobin. So, when we hyperventilate, it’s altering the pH levels of our blood and it doesn’t allow that oxygen to be used because it’s dropping the pH level before the breath-hold.
As the blood becomes more acidic, the strength between the hemoglobin and oxygen gets less and then we can actually use that oxygen because it’s shifting it so much the wrong way in the beginning, now at the end of the breath-hold, there’s still oxygen stuck on the hemoglobin that we can’t access. That’s why it’s limiting the amount of oxygen available to your body, but it’s confusing especially for beginners because they hyperventilate and they can instantly hold their breath longer. And then you get people saying, “Oh, yeah. Well, you just got to hyperventilate and it lets you access all the oxygen.” They say that because they’re holding their breath longer so it seems logical, but the facts are it’s not.
Ben: Yeah. Essentially, you have less oxygen available to the tissue but also a lowered urge to breathe, and that’s why when you’re doing the Wim Hof breathing, you can hold your breath for a longer period of time, but it’s also why you get the lightheadedness and the tingling and the potential for passing out. And I personally have found that when I jump into a cold pool–all right, I have cold bath protocols I do and I have some of my clients do this. Like one of our workouts we do is you get three minutes in the ice or a very cold bath but you precede that with Wim Hof breathing. You slip into that bath while you’re on your breath-hold. You’re not in deep water. You’re in a tub. You’re typically with someone. And in that tub full of water then you get out and you do another round of breathing to warm yourself back up, and sometimes a lot of people hit the bike for a few minutes then get back in the water. But I’ll never combine that with actually going underwater or deep water. I’m pretty remiss to even do the Wim Hof breathing with the breath-holds and be near water unless somebody else is there, even if it’s shallow water.
Ted: Yeah, it is. It absolutely increases the risk for blackout. Take a look at competitive freedivers. They do the exact opposite. So, basically, if you understand what I was getting at is the more acidic your blood gets, the lower the strength of bond between hemoglobin and oxygen, meaning oxygen is more accessible. Well, this seems like a good thing, right? If you look at like a competitive freediver world record holder, they’re saying, “Carbon dioxide is my friend. I want as much carbon dioxide in my blood as possible so that I can more quickly make that shift to where the oxygen becomes more readily accessible.” So, if you watch a competitive freediver breathing up, they might be doing what I would call minimal breathing where they’re breathing out–just like they’re sitting on the couch doing nothing. That’s the way they’re breathing because they want to keep every amount of carbon dioxide in their blood as possible so they can shift that way.
Now, thanks to the wonderful world of the internet. People will be like, “Oh, Ted. Well, why don’t you teach the way these top freediving world records do it? Why are you teaching different clearing methods that don’t work?” I said, “Are you a world record freediver?” “Well, no.” “Well, then you shouldn’t breath like one because what they do, they understand, they’re trying to get that extra little bit of advantage. They certainly get an advantage of doing that, but what happens? Because they start with more carbon dioxide, the contractions come way earlier. The dive becomes way more terrible, way more difficult of all these other things. Yeah, if you’re a world record freediver, your goal is to dive deep as humanly possible. You don’t care how terrible you feel because you’re going to train that out of it. But the average Joe–I mean, Ben, do you want your 80-foot dives to feel harder than they were?
Ben: No.
Ted: Than what you did? Probably not.
Ben: It’s already hard as it was.
Ted: Exactly. People have access to information on the internet, and sometimes, they don’t understand how it’s most applicable.
Ben: Yeah, yeah.
Ted: So, you want it middle ground, which is what I teach.
Ben: That was a gnarly adventure. When we’d got in the ocean, remember, like a tornado but we had sharks circling around us that you showed us how to point our–I think you were–we weren’t spearfishing. So, you have a gun but you had like some kind of a long pole or object in your hand and you showed us how you could point it out and the shark would go away. So, I burst one of my eardrums, still trying to learn Frenzel. So, I’m bleeding. I didn’t burst the eardrum but I was bleeding out my nose and I thought I’d killed off half my brain. And then we finally get in the boat to go back. We’re all shivering. We’re starved. We’ve gone through that rite of passage in the water and then this tornado blows in off the Fort Lauderdale Coast and we’re like racing in a boat to get back.
Ted: That was an unusual trip.
Ben: Yeah, but it was fun. I don’t want to scare people away but it was actually pretty cool. It made my other dives feel easy.
Ted: Well, I was just so ecstatic when you finally got Frenzel because the first two days, you’re stuck at 15 feet and I’m like–but I could tell you were that close to being like, “No, I’m not coming out the third day and I’m not coming.” And then the light bulb went off and boom, you got it.
Ben: Yeah. No. To nail 80 feet, it felt good. I can’t fish at 80 feet but it felt good to just be that deep in the water and know I’d been that deep. How about how freedivers exercise? I remember you showed us, and I’d love for you to get into this, like how you exercise the diaphragm. You have like the number one stretch that you recommend for freedivers, but are there any other things that–like in the freediving community that people have–because you’re very connected to that community, ways that people exercise or ways that people stretch any typical like gym routines. What’s the training protocol look like when you’re out of the water?
Ted: Well, you look at most competitive freedivers, they’re all going to be extremely fit. They’re athletes, so that’s not their–they do whatever they do to get fit. But competitive freedivers has this very weird thing. Certainly, because we’re athletes, you want to have a high VO2 max. It’s like almost any athlete would. Now, high VO2 max comes with hard training, which does watch our metabolism, raises it. As a freediver, do we want a high metabolism?
Ben: No.
Ted: No. We want the lowest.
Ben: That was why you wouldn’t even let us drink a damn cup of coffee before we got up.
Ted: So, there’s that weird thing, and I’ll be honest, we don’t–I don’t know the perfect answer but the idea is so they might have–if you look at training progression leading up to a competition, there’s going to be some point where they’re going to be doing all your typical cardio, however they want to do it. And then as they’re getting closer and closer to the event, they’re going to be doing more apnea, more breath-holding work. And then towards the end, maybe the last two weeks, they turn into a sloth. All they’re going to do is hold their breath on the couch, or maybe do some workouts in the pool where they’re trying to lower that metabolism.
It is a very tricky thing to train at at a high level because I don’t know of any sport where that’s important where you have those two competing issues. The other thing that’s tricky about it is we don’t know the answer. Now, if you want to become the–if you’re a U.S. speed skater and you’re like top speed skater in high school, they just put you on some campus and there’s a whole program and there are doctors and there are researchers and they just–they know how to make the best speed skater. They just put you through the program. We as freedivers, there’s no money in the sport, so we don’t have all of that. Not only we don’t have that and what we’re trying to solve is incredibly complicated.
Ben: Yeah.
Ted: So, it’s tricky.
Ben: Is there any type of gym routine or any type of stretching routine or anything like that? Because you showed me that one stretch and I’m curious when people go to the gym, are they doing like high rep/low weight, low rep/high weight or any insight into that?
Ted: In most circumstances, you’re not going to see big, bulky freedivers, in most circumstances. There are some that are actually pretty built that do very well. [01:16:00] ______, he’s a big guy, right?
Ben: Right.
Ted: But most, kind of you jokingly talked about, the then mild-mannered freediver. You’re going to see a lot in that way. If you’re looking at the world record static guys that they’re doing the maximum breath-holds, they’re very extremely skinny. They’re going to be not eating. They’re going to be fasting to do everything they can to put their self in starvation mode. But as far as typical gym training, I don’t think there’s anything super special in particular to what they’re doing. Most of them are just–they want their good cardio and they’re not trying to bulk up on muscles.
Ben: So, it’s almost like cycling where a cyclist is going for a very good power to weight ratio and a lot of cyclists don’t do a lot of strength training for that reason, at least traditional hypertrophic strength training. But you could make an argument that you want low amounts of muscle mass but the muscle that you want would be like lean, wiry muscle that doesn’t take up a lot of space, but that’s very efficient metabolically.
Ted: And in the areas that you need it. Like if you’re doing constant weight of the ocean, you’re going to need some power in the quads to get yourself back up from 200, 300, 400 feet or whatever you’re coming from. I would say the biggest thing, the thing that they will all do is that idea of diaphragmatic stretching which is really, really critical. So, I can do a very quick exercise all your listeners can do to prove the power of that diaphragm.
Ben: Okay.
Ted: Okay. So, all I’m going to ask them to do is just follow my instructions for just a bit. You only have to hold your breath for 15, 20 seconds maximum. I alluded to this earlier. Your physiologist will tell you that 80% of the urge to breath comes from high carbon dioxide levels and 20% comes from low oxygen levels. I always start with that story in the class and we’re going to pretend that physiologist is sitting in the back and he’s going to be doing the same exercise with us.
Here’s the exercise. We’re all going to do it together. You want to be sitting down. You want to make sure there’s space in front of you so if you bend down and put your head between your legs, you’re not going to bunk onto anything. Here’s the deal. You’re going to take a big breath.
Ben: Pull over the car.
Ted: Alright. So, biggest breath you can. Now, we’re going to exhale the air out. All of it. You’re going to bend over and push out every bit. Push, push, push, push. Now, you’re going to hold your breath, sit up, and we’re going to hold our breath for 10, maybe 15 seconds. Keep holding your breath if you can. If you’ve already breathed, that’s fine. Alright. Five, four, three, two, one, take a breath.
Ben: Oh, I got to pee. There comes the pee.
Ted: Right. So, if you guys did that, you’d probably say that was one of the worst feelings that you’ve ever felt, especially if you actually exhaled all the air out. If you didn’t exhale all the air out, do it again. I promise you, it’ll be terrible.
Now, let’s look at what just happened there. The physiologist will tell you 80% of the urge to breath comes from CO2 and 20% comes from low oxygen. Alright. And I’ve done this. I wrote an article in Spearing Magazine just recently, and it’s going to be coming out in a month, actually, in a couple of weeks, about this exact same thing. I used a pulse oximeter in the middle of that exercise. So, pulse oximeter measures my oxygen level in my blood. And when I did that exercise, it started at 98%, and when I was done, it was 98%. So, the oxygen level of my blood didn’t alter at all, which means that the urge to breathe didn’t come from oxygen, but we expected that because 20% comes from oxygen, 80% comes from carbon dioxide. So, it must be the carbon dioxide.
Let’s look at that. How is carbon dioxide created? It’s created by consuming oxygen. How long do we hold our breath for? Fifteen, 20 seconds. So, that means we created 15- or 20-seconds worth of carbon dioxide. The exact same amount of carbon dioxide was created in that exercise than if you just held your breath for 15 seconds normally where you would get no urge to breathe. So, this means the low oxygen level didn’t trigger the urge to breathe, and the high carbon dioxide didn’t trigger the urge to breathe because both of those are absolutely normal. So, now the physiologist in the back of the room is scratching his head like, “Well, why did I feel like I wanted to die?” It’s because I would say 80% urge to breathe comes from carbon dioxide, 20% comes from low oxygen, plus there are other factors. As a freediving instructor, I’ll put in that there are other factors, and that’s the diaphragm.
Your diaphragm, now unless you’re a freediver who trains or a competitive freediver, you have never exhaled all the air out and then sat there. Your diaphragm got stretched in the way that it has never been stretched before. So, in essence, as you exhale all that air out, your diaphragm–as your lungs shrink, your diaphragm gets sucked in to fill the void. So, your diaphragm is getting sucked in up, up, up and it’s a muscle just like your hamstring and it got stretched in a way that it has never been stretched before. So, what it did–if you stretch your hamstring too far, you’re going to get a signal that says back off. Quit bending forward, bend backwards to loosen that because the hamstring can’t take it.
When your diaphragm gets stretched too far, guess what it does? It says, “That’s too far.” So, how would that diaphragm go back to normal? If you took a breath. So, it’s triggering an urge to breathe to reset your diaphragm. So, that urge to breathe in this particular example had nothing to do with your oxygen levels, had nothing to do with your CO2 levels, was completely triggered by the inflexibility of your diaphragm. It’s the inflexibility of the diaphragm that’s causing that. That’s also why as a freediver if you have somebody who maybe have freediving experience, like my students, they’re freedivers already and I say, “Look, every student in my class has some depth where they go to and they feel fine. Maybe it’s 15 feet, maybe it’s 30, 40 feet. They get to the bottom, they feel no urge to breathe, they feel totally calm and relaxed. Every one of those students has a depth where you put 15 foot under that, 15 foot deeper, they get down there, they feel antsy, they feel uncomfortable. “I got to get out here. I can’t handle this. I don’t feel good.” But why is that happening?
It’s because when they went down deeper, their lungs got compressed more, their diaphragm got sucked into the point where “That’s too much. I’m not comfortable with that level of stretch.” and that why it triggers that urge to breathe. That’s why every competitive freediver on the planet stretches their diaphragm because it makes you more comfortable at depth. It helps [01:23:01] ______ and does a lot of stuff. That’s something that most people don’t understand. And I’m always talking to my typical student who’s a spearfisherman and they tend to want to poo poo on all this. They’re like, “Competitive freediving has nothing to do with spearfishing.” I’m like, “Look, we dive really deep. We stay down a really long time. You should learn exactly how we do that and then do it for what you’re doing.”
Ben: Yeah. Interesting. By the way, returning back to the piece about stretching the diaphragm. I think that one other thing people should consider would be in many cases, there are like fascial adhesions, there’s immobility in a lot of the muscles around of the diaphragm. Paul Chek talks about this in some of his videos about foam rolling the diaphragm. I have my massage therapist actually do massage therapy especially on either side of my rib cage. And you can do some of this yourself like digging your fingers up underneath the rib cage while you’re taking your breath. But it’s shocking to me how many people will get their IT bands massaged or their calves or their traps but not do any work on the fascia that surrounds the abdomen and the diaphragm.
So, I think that that’s a very important component. And the other thing that I wanted to bring up, returning back to the training was, you know what I think is probably the best form of training that someone interested in freediving could do? I’ll assume by your silence that you’re just waiting with bated breath, pun intended, pun intended. Would be what Laird Hamilton does at his training pool where he’ll have a bunch of people over and they do this Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday in Malibu from like 8:00 to 11:00 a.m. They’ve got a whole bunch of people over. Everybody’s got a buddy. There’re people monitoring the whole program but you’re in the water with dumbbells, carrying the dumbbells back and forth under the water. You’re swimming with the dumbbell-like treading water with a dumbbell between your legs. You’re doing jumps from the bottom of the pool while hoisting the dumbbell upwards. And you’re basically doing an entire workout in the water.
And what I like about that is Laird developed it for being able to survive the mental and physical rigors of being under the water for long periods of time when the surf tows you under or you’re thrown off your board and in the waves. Also, what I like about it is you get this amazing cardiovascular and breath flow workout but you’re not sore the next day, meaning that you’re not inducing muscle mass or hypertrophy. It’s exhausting. You’re cold. You’re tired. You’re hungry afterwards just like a freediving session. I actually interviewed him, and in that interview with him–I’ll link to some articles with like samples of their workouts and stuff like that, but I was thinking as you’re talking about the diaphragm stretching, I’m like, “Gosh, I think more freedivers should know about the kind of stuff Laird is doing in his pool because man, not only is it a blast but you’re not sore, you’re not building a bunch of muscle mass but you’re training blood and lungs tremendously.” I’ll link to that in the show notes as well, my podcast with him, but I think that could be a good way to go for some people.
Ted: Yeah. I’m pretty sure he went through the big wave surf program that PFI does.
Ben: Yeah.
Ted: Where we go through all that sort of stuff. So, it’s pretty cool.
Ben: Very cool. Very cool. Well, I know we’re getting towards the end of the show but I wanted you to really just walk us through quickly here the different courses that you teach. I mentioned that you have one on breath-holding and these are just courses people can take online. You’ve got one on the Frenzel technique. What else do you have?
Ted: The one I’m honestly the most excited about is, I launched it from the [1:26:47] ______ Recording four or five days ago. It’s freedivingsafety.com. Alright. So, the idea of this course is it’s an online resource that teaches people safe freediving practices from a trusted and reliable source, and it’s free. My whole taking is this. For the past 10 years, I’ve been teaching these classes and you sat through my class. You know I’m passionate about freediving safety. And the reason is there are 50 to 75 fatalities per year in this sport of freediving, mostly incurs in spearfishing, but we’re getting growing, growing number of people doing stuff in the pool because they saw some YouTube video, some guy telling them to do something in a pool but they don’t have safety. They don’t understand.
For 10 years, I’ve been dealing with the spearfishing community and what I always hear is, “Ted, I love taking those courses, but my boss, man, he’s such a pain in the–I can never get the time off,” or, “I can’t afford the course.” So, the way I look at it is you want to get better at freediving? Yeah, you’re going to pay and take a course just like anything. But if you want to learn how to be safe, if you want to learn to not kill yourself, there’s no barrier to that.
So, the idea is it’s an online course. It’s got basically an hour worth of videos. You’re going to learn the rules, safe freediving practices. You’re going to learn the myth of, “I don’t push myself. I know my limits. I would know before I blackout.” Because the reality is most circumstances you wouldn’t. I have a video footage of a spearfisherman with 30 years of experience. He’s spearfishing at 50 feet, which is a total number of depths for him. He did seven dives at that exact same depth and you see him coming up from a dive and 10 feet in the surface, he has no idea what’s wrong. He blacks out. He exhaled all his air out and you see him start to sink down.
Now, the video recorder was a friend of mine and an instructor, [01:28:28] ______ Chapman took care of him. He is fine. But I always have been trying to get across this point that when you’re diving in the ocean, people say, “I’ve never had a problem. I don’t push myself. I’m not that worried about it.” The physics of it is that on most dives in the ocean if you were to have a blackout, you’d feel 100% fine the whole time. So, saying that you don’t push yourself, it’s going to explain that. And then it also has video. I hired two camera guys at multiple camera angles on what to do if you have a [01:28:54] _______, what to do if you have a blackout at the surface. I’ve launched the course just four or five days ago. I’ve already had 150 people on it and people are–the response has been very good and I’m very excited about it.
Ben: And that one’s freedrivingsafety.com?
Ted: Safety.com. Yeah.
Ben: Okay. I’ll link to that in the show notes and then you’ve got all these other courses like how to make the mammalian dive reflex work for you and the spearfishing checklist, the guide on how to mitigate the risks of freediving, the guide on equalizing, the guide on taking a 30% bigger breath. I’ll link to all of those so that you guys can just delve into all of Ted’s knowledge, and that is all going to be over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/freedivingpodcast. That’s BenGreenfieldFitness.com/freedivingpodcast.
You got me excited, Ted, because I’m headed down to Kona to do some bow hunting next month. I’m going to throw in a couple of days of going after a tasty fish. So, thank you for opening me up to this whole world of freediving and spearfishing, man. You’re my guru in this department.
Ted: I enjoyed working with you and I’m excited to hear how the trip to Hawaii goes. And if you want any suggestions for who to hook up with there, definitely let me know.
Ben: Sweet. Alright, folks. Well, I’m Ben Greenfield along with Ted Harty signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com. Have an amazing week.
Well, thanks for listening to today’s show. You can grab all the shownotes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com, along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful “Ben Recommends” page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I’ve ever recommended for hormone, sleep, digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please, also, know that all the links, all the promo codes, that I mentioned during this and every episode, helped to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. When you listen in, be sure to use the links in the shownotes, use the promo codes that I generate, because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.
In my article entitled “How Breath-Holding, Blood-Doping, Shark-Chasing, Free-Diving & Ketosis Can Activate Your Body’s Most Primal Reflex,” I mentioned the fascinating book by James Nestor, entitled “Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us About Ourselves.”
After reading it two years ago, I hired Ted Harty, from Immersion Freediving in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, to certify me in freediving so that I could learn how to spearfish.
At over six feet tall and 230 solid pounds, Ted is a big, bold, loud, extroverted character. He looks like a boxer and not like a guy who you’d expect to be diving at incredibly efficient oxygen capacity to depths deeper than most human beings have ever ventured.
But it was Ted who was about to open my eyes to a whole new world of freediving and who I spent nearly every waking moment of ninety-six hours of my life with learning every possible closely-guarded breath-holding and deep-diving tactic.
Ted began his underwater career in 2005 as a scuba instructor in the Florida Keys. Over the years, Ted became a Scuba Schools International Instructor and a Professional Association of Diving Instructors Staff Instructor.
But whenever Ted was on the boat and did not have students to take care of, he’d jump in with mask, fins, and snorkel and play around on the reef, sans scuba equipment. As Ted highlights in this fascinating, quick video about his life:
“Sometimes I’d have just five minutes to swim around without all of my scuba gear. I loved it. I could swim down to the sand at Sombrero Reef and hang out for a bit at 20 feet. I wanted more. I wanted to learn how to stay down longer and how to dive deeper.”
So, in January of 2008, Ted took his first Performance Freediving International (PFI) course.
“I couldn’t believe how little I knew about freediving at the time. As a scuba instructor I knew more about diving physiology than the average Joe, but quickly realized I knew nothing about freediving. At the start of the course I had a 2:15 breath-hold, but after just four days of training, I did a five-minute hold! I couldn’t believe it was possible.”
Next, Ted signed up for instructor-level courses at Performance Freediving. He was soon offered a job teaching with Performance Freediving when he moved to Fort Lauderdale.
Then, in 2009 Ted went to PFI’s annual competition. At the time, he was about an 80- to 90-foot freediver and weighed 230 pounds. He wasn’t in good shape at all, but after three weeks of training under the tutelage of world-renowned freedivers Kirk Krack and Mandy-Rae Cruickshank, he did a 54 meter (177 -feet) freedive.
“I was blown away by what I was capable of.”
Ted spent a year working with Kirk and Mandy while traveling around the country teaching the Intermediate Freediver program. Then, in 2010, a much more fit Ted went back to PFI’s annual competition. That year his new personal best was 213 feet, and currently, he’s managed to up that to an impressive 279 feet.
In June 2012, Ted was selected as the Team Captain for the US Freediving Team at the Freediving World Championships, and in 2013 he attained PFI Advanced Instructor and PFI Instructor Trainer, becoming the first and only PFI independent instructor to receive this rating.
Oh yeah, and Ted also holds the record for hypoxic underwater swimming in the pool, having done 7 full lengths (175 meters) without a single breath.
But most impressive?
Ted has anemia.
This means his blood can’t deliver oxygen as efficiently to his muscles and brain as most of the world’s population. This means he has a blood hematocrit level of 34, easily 1/3 less than most athletes. This is a condition that would leave most folks huffing and puffing for air after climbing a flight of stairs.
Obviously, anemia hasn’t stopped Ted. In our last podcast, which you can listen to here, Ted and I covered:
-Why being cold and cold water can actually inhibit your ability to hold your breath…
-How to use static apnea tables to enhance your ability to tolerate high levels of CO2 and low levels of O2…
-Why training your mammalian dive reflex is so useful, even if you have zero desire to do long breath-holds or freediving competition…
-Why you should avoid hyperventilation and “blowing off CO2” prior to a breath hold…
-The difference between Ted’s breathing techniques and Wim Hof’s breathing techniques…
-And much more…
Today Ted is back, and we take a deep dive (pun intended) into:
-What happens to the body during free diving…9:30
Similar effects as yoga
Alter how you breathe
Interact with marine life
Stress release
-What the “mammalian dive reflex” is and why we would want to activate it…12:25
Genetically coded in every human on the planet
Dolphins, seals, whales possess the mammalian dive reflex
We all have it, but at different levels depending on experience
Several components:
Bradycardia; Body lowers demand for oxygen
Fingers, toes constrict
Pee reflex – peripheral extremities constrict
We don’t have conclusive data on how free diving affects HRV and the vagus nerve
The connection between the spleen and breath holding/free diving
Another component of the mammalian dive reflex
Simply holding one’s breath on dry land compresses the spleen
Legal blood doping
In elite athletes, holding breath compresses spleen; an ordinary person, not so much
In free diving, your body becomes more accustomed to these changes
Large amounts of blood circulate through the spleen; compressing it leads to a large release of red blood cells
Breath holds in the sauna activate the spleen; not the same effects as diving
-The benefits of free diving…24:37
Overall well-being
Q: How can drowning and suffocating be relaxing? A: You don’t feel that way
People swear by its efficacy
Comparable to training to lose weight
How many calories are lost during free diving:
It’s absolutely exhausting
Generate tremendous amount of body heat
Study: 1,100 calories burned per hour
Breathwork wouldn’t translate to burning calories
Glycogen sparing effect
Ketones increase the ability to hold breath
-Tips for increasing breath hold time…30:10
Take a bigger breath
Diaphragm, chest, shoulders, neck
Flexibility of rib cage determines the size of your breath
“Sipping”
-What an apnea table is and the difference between CO2 and O2 apnea…37:30
Table: series of breath holds
How you can breathe up for
How long you can breathe for
Learn to tolerate low levels of oxygen; CO2 levels rising
Carbon dioxide table: breath up for 2 minutes; hold breath for 2 minutes…
Wonka table
You want higher CO2 levels
Hyperventilating discards CO2 faster than anything
Sit on couch, hold breath
You’ll feel a contraction, start stopwatch; deal with discomfort for 15 seconds
Take one breath
Go to the bathroom before doing this!
Would you do a table while exercising?
No, but you can incorporate breath exercises into your training
Risk of blacking out; do on seated equipment
Book: The Oxygen Advantageby Patrick McKeown
Book: The Power of Your Breathby Anders Olsson
-What kind of breath work one would do in between dives to maintain maximum breath hold time…49:30
Remember diaphragmatic breathing
Only thing you should feel moving is your stomach moving out and in
We’re all chest breathers
Control, be conscious of your breathing vs. not thinking about it
-Why the Valsalva breathing technique is not optimal for free diving…53:22
Pinch and blow: equalize your ears
Can use Valsalva scuba diving
Frenzel technique
Pinch your nose.
Fill your mouth up with a little bit of air.
Close the epiglottis.
Move the soft palate to the neutral position.
Use the tongue like a piston and push air towards the back of your throat.
Valsalva is optimal for scuba diving as you dive head first; air rises
Frenzel is optimal for free diving because you dive head first; opposite of scuba diving
-A demonstration of the Frenzel breathing technique…58:30
-Similarities and differences between Ted’s breathing technique and Wim Hof’s…1:02:45
Hof’s methods are good for cold therapy, not necessarily breath holding
Hyperventilation increases risk for blackout
Drastically lowers CO2 levels
Carbon dioxide levels trigger urge to breathe
Physically reduces amount of oxygen available to your body
Bohr effect:
When we hold our breath, our blood becomes more acidic; changes ph levels
Hyperventilating increases strength of the bond between hemoglobin and oxygen
If strength of bond too high, oxygen molecule can’t be used as fuel
Hyperventilating initially increases ability to hold breath, but there’s the risk of blackout
-Exercise and stretching regimens specific to free divers…1:13:30
Paradox: Free divers train a lot, which leads to high metabolism, which you don’t want as a free diver
There is no set regimen on how to craft the “perfect free diver”
Problem seeking to solve is very complicated
Similar to training cyclists would undergo
Diaphragmatic stretching is critical –
-Some of the courses Ted teaches online…1:26:30
-And Much More…
Resources from this episode:
–Click here to see all of Ted’s courses, including how to equalize, how to take a 20-30% bigger breath, how to freedive safely, and much more!
-Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us about Ourselves
–The OURA ring – Save $50 with code: GREENFIELDOURA
–The WHOOP wristband
–Spleen volume and blood flow response to repeated breath-hold apneas.
–CO2 and O2 apnea tables
–The Wonka table
-The Oxygen Advantage book by Patrick McKeown
–The Power Of Breath
–My podcast with Laird Hamilton about underwater workouts
–FreeDivingSafety.com
Episode Sponsors:
–Kion: My personal playground for all things having to do with health and wellness. You can get 10% off your entire order when you use discount code: BGF10 at checkout.
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This might be why your hands are always cold
© Provided by TIME Inc. To say my body doesn't do well in the cold is an understatement. When the temperature drops, my fingers freeze, and often turn deep red, followed by white. On especially exciting days, they'll look a little blue. "Cold hands, warm heart," my mom used to tell me.
Growing up in sunny Southern California, this rarely happened—mostly just on ski trips or when I’d spend too long in the ocean. (Yes, I realize how obnoxious that sentence is.) But when I moved to New York for college five years ago, my blue hands became a winter mainstay. I’d never lived in a cold climate, so I assumed this happened to everyone in frigid weather.
Turns out I assumed wrong. On a trip to Chicago to visit extended family this past Thanksgiving, I went for a walk and returned to my aunt's house with my signature blue fingers. “Oh, you must have Raynaud’s," my aunt said. I must have what?
Naturally, I headed back to New York with a lot of questions, so I called up Melisa Lai Becker, MD, site chief of emergency medicine at Cambridge Health Alliance in Everett, Massachusetts. Dr. Lai Becker described my experience as "the classic vignette that would open a textbook chapter on Raynaud's disease." (By the way, it's pronounced ray-NOHZ.) So if you're concerned you might also have Raynaud's, here's some info and advice from Dr. Lai Becker to help you (and me) out.
RELATED: Why Your Hands and Feet Are Always Cold and What to Do About It
Raynaud's symptoms
“The average person can go into chilly weather and get by without gloves, their fingers would just get a bit cold,” says Dr. Lai Becker. But someone who has Raynaud’s has a much more extreme reaction. “If you touch their hands, you can tell the difference," she explains. "Even in a moderately cold environment, they have white, ice-cold hands.” In addition to getting cold, if you have Raynaud’s, your hands might turn white, then blue, and red when you start warming up again. But not everyone with Raynaud’s exhibits all three colors, or in that exact order. You might also experience these symptoms in other extremities including your ears, nose, lips, and even nipples (cringe!).
If you notice any of these symptoms, even simply getting cold and painful fingers, Dr. Lai-Becker recommends you see your doctor and possibly get a referral to a rheumatologist. A doctor will help you determine whether you have primary Raynaud's (the most common type), or secondary, meaning it's brought on by another condition.
RELATED: 10 Things Your Hands Can Reveal About Your Health
Raynaud's disease causes
For primary Raynaud's, genetics likely play a role. According to the Mayo Clinic, about one-third of people with primary Raynaud’s (the most common type) have an immediate relative with the disorder. Although anyone can develop the disease, Raynaud’s is “overwhelmingly more common with women and generally first discovered in adolescence,” explains Dr. Lai Becker.
But for cases of secondary Raynaud’s (also called Raynaud’s phenomenon), the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute says there’s usually an underlying cause such as nerve damage, injuries to hands and feet, exposure to certain chemicals, repetitive stress (like typing or playing the piano), medicines that affect blood pressure, or nicotine. Secondary Raynaud’s is less common, and doesn’t usually appear in adults until after age 40. However, since it tends to be a more serious condition, it’s important to see your doctor if you notice symptoms of the disease later in life.
RELATED: 11 Products You Need to Stay Warm in Your Ridiculously Cold Office
Why does Raynaud's make my hands turn blue?
Why the heck do you turn into a blueberry when it’s cold? “No one’s been able to say for sure what causes it,” says Dr. Lai Becker. “But we know one thing: Cold can trigger the closing up of blood vessels.” If you have Raynaud’s, the arteries to your fingers and toes go into vasospasm—which means your blood vessels narrow and limit blood supply to affected areas, explains Dr. Lai Becker. Chilly temperatures generally trigger this phenomenon, whether that’s in the form of cold air or icy water. However, according to Dr. Lai Becker, doctors have also found an attack can be caused by emotional stress or hormonal changes.
RELATED: 9 Gifts for Your Friend Who’s Always Cold
Is Raynaud's dangerous?
For the most part, Raynaud’s isn’t a huge concern, says Dr. Lai Becker, but it does increase your risk for frostbite. “Another thing that could happen is spasms,” she explains. “You have these tiny little blood vessels in your fingertips, and if they start to spasm, that makes it difficult for blood to get to your extremities.” This could result in sores or dead tissue. It’s also possible that blood circulation to your fingers and toes could stop entirely, leaving deformities. But don't freak out—these conditions are extremely rare. But if for some reason they do occur, it’s important to seek treatment from your doctor immediately.
RELATED: 10 Winter Health Myths, Busted
Raynaud's disease treatment
There are plenty of treatment options available, depending on the cause and severity of your Raynaud’s. “If it happens to be the primary problem, it’s not that big of a deal,” says Dr. Lai Becker. “It’s very manageable and there’s certainly medications you can take.” You can try anything from medications that widen blood vessels to nerve surgery to Botox injections. But for the most part, Raynaud’s is manageable without extreme treatment. “The best way to cope with it is to avoid a trigger, which is generally a change to cold weather,” says Dr. Lai Becker. “Plus, getting yourself a really good pair of gloves is essential!”
Since I don’t have plans to move back to sunny California in the near future, here are the next two things on my to-do list: schedule an appointment with my doctor and invest in a hefty pair of mittens. Who’s with me?
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Source: http://www.msn.com/en-us/health/healthyliving/this-might-be-why-your-hands-are-always-cold/ar-BBPsmDF?srcref=rss
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Exposure to sugary breakfast cereal advertising directly influences children's diets
High-sugar cereals are heavily promoted to children on TV. The adoption of poor eating habits including excess consumption of sugar can lead to obesity, a known risk factor for 13 cancers. Children's eating habits develop during the preschool years, and children who are overweight by the age of five are likely to remain overweight into adolescence and adulthood. Unfortunately, many young children have diets of low quality and consume too few fruits and vegetables and too much sugar, salt and fat. A new study led by Jennifer Emond, PhD, member of the Cancer Control research program at Dartmouth's Norris Cotton Cancer Center and Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Data Science Geisel School of Medicine hits a notable target in the many diet influences that lead to obesity.
"One factor believed to contribute to children's poor quality diets is the marketing of nutritionally-poor foods directly to children," says Emond. "Brands specifically target children in their advertising knowing that children will ask their parents for those products." Laboratory studies have shown that kids will request and prefer brands they have seen recently advertised on TV, but no study has examined the effectiveness of TV food ad exposure on kids' diets in a real world setting. Emond's study addresses that gap. "We conducted the first longitudinal study among preschool-age children to see how exposure to TV ads for high-sugar cereals influences kids' subsequent intake of those advertised cereals. An important and novel aspect of our study is that we were able to look at brand-specific effects. In other words, does advertising for 'Brand X' cereal relate to an increased intake of 'Brand X' cereal?"
Emond's study, "Exposure to Child-Directed TV Advertising and Preschoolers' Intake of Advertised Cereals" recently published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine. The novel study computed kids' TV ad exposure based on the TV shows they watched on children's network TV. Emond's team purchased an advertising database and actually counted, by brand, the cereal ads that aired on the children's TV network programs each child watched. Parents were asked about the shows their kids watched and what cereals their kids ate in the past week, every eight weeks, for one year. "We found that kids who were exposed to TV ads for high-sugar cereals aired in the programs they watched were more likely to subsequently eat the cereals they had seen advertised," says Emond. "Our models accounted for several child, parent and household characteristics, and whether the child ate each cereal before the study started. We were able to isolate the effect of cereal advertisement exposure on kids' intake of cereals, independent of all of those other factors." Emond's study is the first naturalistic study to show a direct and concerning link between kids' exposure to TV ads for high-sugar cereal and their subsequent intake of that cereal.
"Efforts to promote and support quality diets at a young age are important to foster the lifestyle behaviors needed to maintain a healthy weight and reduce the risk of chronic disease including many cancers," notes Emond. "Child-targeted marketing of foods high in sugar makes it hard for parents to shape healthy eating habits in our kids. It's hard to even notice sometimes. But, it is modifiable. There are policy-level actions that could be implemented to reduce children's exposure to food marketing and to improve the quality of the foods marketed to kids. And we as parents have the choice to switch to ad-free TV for our children and for ourselves."
Reducing the marketing of high-sugar foods to children may ultimately improve diet quality and reduce the risk of obesity and related chronic diseases among children at the population level.
Story Source:
Materials provided by Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190107153410.htm
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Resume Genius Review
You’re on the job hunt once again. This time, it’s serious: whether you’re going for a promising side hustle or your first professional job, you want to land this more than anything else. The problem is that you’re only great at the job, not at resume writing. Resume Genius supposedly takes the guesswork out of resume-building, but does it live up to the hype? We delved deep into the Resume Genius business model to find out. Read on for an honest Resume Genius review.
What’s Resume Genius?
Resume engines are pieces of software that automatically add your information to a resume. This isn’t a hard task for a computer because all resumes contain a few basic elements:
Your name
Your contact information
Work experience
Good skills that you can bring to an employer
Information about your previous jobs
Educational experiences you’ve had
As long as a resume engine has this data, it can arrange it on the page any way you’d like.
Image from Pixabay
Of course, you could accomplish this too as long as you had the tech skills; resume building from scratch is partially a matter of how well you can use the ruler function in your word processor. The reason that resume engines like Resume Genius exist is that many people don’t feel comfortable formatting a document by themselves. Formatting is the process of making computerized text look a certain way. It can involve bullets, tabs, indents, and tables in Microsoft Word, LibreOffice, or another word processing program. Resume Genius and other tools of its type do all of that for you.
Resume Genius isn’t a writing service. That is, it doesn’t create the content of your resume, generate a persuasive essay, or adapt your cover letter, resume, and CV based on the business profiles of the places that you want to work for.
Resume Genius Services
The basic purpose of Resume Genius is to format a clean, modern resume based on your information. The site’s advertising also suggests that Resume Genius generates an unusually professional resume. While this is debatable, Resume Genius accomplishes what it sets out to do.
Making resumes
Resume Genius gives you a wide variety of templates to choose from. They’re generally quite plain, featuring the standard array of your name, contact info, and points, but you can sometimes change font colors or page structures. The Taj Mahal template, for example, shows your contact information on the side of the page rather than at the top. To help you decide on a template, Resume Genius shows you samples, resume examples that stand as typical specimens of what you’ll customize with your info.
You’ll start making your resume before Resume Genius asks you to make a free account with Facebook or Google. The default format that this service uses is the reverse chronological resume – that is, your most recent job and education information will appear first on the page. (A chronological resume would begin with your oldest work and proceed to your most recent.) If you’re not a user of either of these services, you’ll need to slog through an email signup process. This part is free, but don’t be fooled. Resume Genius will want money from you immediately after you write a resume.
Image from Pixabay
Once you’ve made an account, ResumeGenius asks you a series of questions about your education and experience. When you give it information about a job you have or had, it will give you the chance to add bullet points or use premade ones that are relevant to the job. For example, if you indicate that you want to create a sales associate resume, the service would offer you a list of stock objectives and accomplishments relevant to that career. The material for a housekeeper resume would look different. The process of creating a resume can take as little as ten minutes if you already know what you want on your resume. After that, the billing begins.
The subscription plan
This is where using Resume Genius gets significantly dicier than we like. This service is a subscription. Even if you go for the 14-day $1.95 trial, it won’t give you your resume unless you give it your credit card number first. Furthermore, there’s a huge “gotcha” built into the low-cost trial. After those first two weeks are up, your Resume Genius subscription will start renewing itself automatically for the low, low price of $39.95 per month.
Screenshot from Resume Genius
After you pick your jaw up off the floor, consider the people who might fall for this business model:
People without strong computer skills, like older people and people with limited educational experience.
Rattled job seekers who are nervous about being on the market again.
Young people who have never made a resume and are desperate to do it “right.”
We assume that job seekers who find work quickly using Resume Genius’s services would cancel their subscription tout suite, ideally before the trial period ran out. But what if a job seeker’s search drags on for longer than two weeks? There’s a significant danger of forgetting the subscription. Even if you watch your expenditures like a hawk, it’s easy for a Resume Genius subscription to slip through the cracks.
But at least on the 14-day trial plan, you can cancel any time. The $7.95 monthly plan comes out to $95.40 per year, and according to Ripoff Report, they may refuse to refund you the advance payment if you decide you don’t like the service.
To a stressed-out job seeker or someone who’s not too computer-literate, that two-week trial period looks like a good deal. Some people might even mistake the $1.95 “most popular” trial price for a one-time resume download fee.
What you get for all of this rigamarole is just a functional resume. In the screenshot above, you can see a sample that the writer of this piece cooked up in five minutes. Employers won’t complain, but it also won’t blow your hiring manager’s mind. If you feel you can’t write a resume by yourself, that might look impressive, but the most advanced thing that Resume Genius did for this example was to add a line below the address. The rest of the formatting was accomplished with bold, capitalized, and centered font.
Image from Pixabay
What else do you get for the price?
If Resume Genius only offered resumes, then it would be difficult to recommend it for the price. However, while resumes are what made this service famous, resumes aren’t all that it provides; it also claims to offer resume reviews and personalized job searches. The fact that Resume Genius offers reviews might be the more valuable service. Job searching is an anxious time, and if you don’t have many friends or family members willing (or able) to give you good advice about your career, then you may wonder if you’re doing everything right. Resume Genius apparently provides this service through one-on-one career counselors available online.
That said, many schools provide this service, too. Career centers at colleges and universities often welcome alumni, and even high school career counselors will sometimes make time for alumni. If you’ve never had higher education, you could even try reaching out to a community college. As public institutions, they may be either willing to help or to point you toward someone who can.
Although Resume Genius addresses curriculum vitae in a blog post, it doesn’t appear that it helps you create your own. If you’re applying for work in Europe, this might not be the tool that you want to choose. If you need to use a CV template, there are free, Word-compatible ones available for download on CV Template Master. (Just watch out for the banner ads!)
Letters, cover and otherwise
Resume Genius also provides some free information covering letter writing. You don’t need a subscription to see their thoughts on how to write a cover letter. Templates and sample letters are available for free download, and surprisingly, there are no apparent gotchas attached. The free templates are particularly useful. If you’re not comfortable using a template, you can also base your cover letter on the sample they provide in the post. There are no full application examples available on the site, but even a complete newbie to the world of job searching can usually cook up a cover letter for resume based applications after reading through a few posts.
The only caveat to this otherwise valuable gift is that using the provided samples without changing them is likely to damage your reputation with a hiring manager. Even if you’re not a confident writer, it’s always better to submit a thank-you in your voice. Anyway, you can’t risk running into someone else who is aware of Resume Genius and has seen their sample business letters! For the surest route to success, download the templates, which you can edit in either Microsoft Word or its free clone, LibreOffice, and follow the instructions.
Image from Pixabay
Resume Genius doesn’t necessarily help with more specific requirements of your job search. For example, if you needed to write an essay to secure a job at a particularly desirable position, Resume Genius probably couldn’t help you. In that case, writing ability may be one of the job skills that your employer wants to test you on anyway.
Look for links to Resume Genius’s letter-writing posts at the bottom of their main page.
Terms and Services
If you’re going ahead with a Resume Genius subscription, you’d better know what you’re signing up for. Here are the key points.
Copyright
Resume Genius considers its site’s content its intellectual property. This is reasonable and normal, but it does include the resume designs and the canned text that you can use to populate your resume points. As long as you’re not using Resume Genius to sell resumes to other people, this shouldn’t be a problem.
Your resume is their resume
According to section 6 of Resume Genius’s terms, any resume that you upload or make using this site is actually the property of Resume Genius.
Screenshot from Resume Genius terms of service
That means that Resume Genius could theoretically use your resume for their marketing purposes. They could even sell it to someone else if they wanted. Technically, according to these terms, it’s not your resume; it’s theirs. Later in the same section, Resume Genius confirms its right to sell, copy, reproduce, retitle, and archive anything you put on the site, including forum posts, at its discretion. That includes your name and your company’s name, cover letter samples, resume points, and anything else you write on Resume Genius. Yikes. The reasons for this probably have to do with Resume Genius’s ability to sell you your own resume at a tremendous markup, but it’s still a bit creepy.
Resume Genius roundup
Strengths
Resume Genius seems to do an adequate job of formatting a standard resume. Its templates are bland but produce perfectly acceptable outcomes. The service itself presents testimonials, glowing reviews, and boasts about client placements in Fortune 500 companies. That, combined with their glossy and attractive website, might woo customers who would otherwise balk at the expensive, spring-it-on-you subscription model.
Resume Genius is easy to use. That may be its most attractive quality. If you want a resume made fast, then this offer might look tempting. However, we can’t recommend it.
Weaknesses
It’s easy to imagine a situation where a desperate, anxious job searcher, newly laid off, logs onto the Internet to get a quickie resume and ends up accidentally hooking themselves on a monthly payment that they can’t afford. Resume Genius takes this imaginary scenario and brings it to life. The fact that Resume Genius charges almost $40 per month (!) to people who may well be out of work (!!) and does so in such a sneaky way (!!!) suggests that they’re more interested in parting you from your money than they are in helping you out. If you’ve ever been sucked into a subscription you don’t want, then you know that disentangling yourself can mean calls to customer service and several repeated attempts.
Image from Pixabay
Why do people use this service?
There are a few ways that people might find themselves with a Resume Genius subscription.
The Resume Genius “free” account trick initially makes them think they’re going to get something for nothing.
They don’t know of any other services that offer resume help.
The job search process feels intimidating to them.
They don’t realize that they’re signing up for the subscription instead of just buying a copy of their resume.
They assume that they’ll remember to cancel before they have to pay the monthly fee.
Granted, the Resume Genius cover letter help is a great resource. It’s a little surprising that this company, which otherwise seems intent on parting you with as much of your money as possible as quickly as it can, gives away cover letter samples for free. That said, it is a great draw and maybe a way that Resume Genius tries to entice people to sign up for its service.
College students who have never had a “real job” before may be at risk of falling for Resume Genius and services like it. If you’re a student or a recent grad, be aware that you may not be as experience-less as you might think! We’ve written before about how simultaneous work and study can boost your resume. Click over to find out how entry-level jobs can make you shine for future employers.
Should You Subscribe to Resume Genius?
Image from Pixabay
Even though it offers one-on-one resume consultations, Resume Genius probably isn’t worth the cost for most people. This honeypot of an online service only looks good until the first monthly payment disappears from your account, and as we all know, it’s too easy to forget about subscriptions during stressful life changes. Even if you don’t forget, do you need one more thing to do on top of your job search? You have better things to worry about than a resume service sucking your bank account dry. Plus, there are some cheaper alternatives out there that you should look into first.
Resume Genius Alternatives
Resume Genius has some competitors that offer similar services for a vastly smaller amount of money. Many operate on a similar gotcha subscription model – that is, they let you make a resume, then charge you a monthly fee for the privilege of downloading it. You don’t need that headache. We found some better resume builders that are free and make better, more interesting resumes.
Cypress Resume
Image from Cypress Resume
This resume builder is one of the best-kept secrets in career counseling. It’s 100% free to use if you access it through a public library, provides users with two clean, generic resume formats, and lets you customize a wide range of prewritten resume points for a broad selection of careers. You can also buy a $10.99/month individual subscription. (This is the cheapest rate we’ve found so far for resume subscription services on the Internet.) While it’s not the flashiest-looking tool out there, it gets the job done. Like Resume Genius, Cypress won’t let you make a CV.
Canva
Image from Tech Crunch
You might know Canva as the freemium web-based graphic design service, but it also makes some very stylish, out-of-the-box resumes. These range in style from minimalist to ornate. To use the templates, you’ll need a Canva account and a good artistic eye. Remember, a retailer or standard BBB business won’t necessarily be interested in a flashy resume, just like a web designer might look for one with extra pizzazz.
Canva downloads are free, giving it an edge over Resume Genius from a dollars and cents perspective, but it does require more tech skills to use. If you’re artistically inclined and computer-savvy, you can even create a resume from scratch using the many graphic design tools available on this site. Try Canva if you want to approach your resume creatively.
Microsoft Word and LibreOffice Templates
If you have Microsoft Word already, then you’re in luck: there are free resume templates available online for you. Just follow this link and download the one you like. The tricky formatting is all done for you, and your only job is to fill in the information. There are free LibreOffice resume templates available too. Just download them, open them, and fill in the necessary data.
Like using Canva, this strategy is probably best for people who feel OK about their ability with technology. You don’t need to be a hacker to use a template, though. If you want some free tech help, consider calling your local library and seeing if they have an expert available to guide you.
Schools, Libraries, and Community Centers
We’ve mentioned a few times that schools will often help alumni with their resumes. If you don’t have that option or don’t like it, consider hiring a graduate student to assist you. Even if you pay them $20, that’s less than Resume Genius would charge you for the same service. You’ll get a deal, the student will get a meal, and everybody will come away happy.
Image from Pixabay
While you’re calling libraries about Cypress Resume, ask if you can get a person on staff to help you with your resume. Librarians are often computer-literate and often happy to help with resume formatting for free. Make sure to call and tell them what you need. Be prepared to save your resume electronically to a cloud drive or a USB. It’s fine to have one printout of your resume, but you should be updating it with every job, so having a digital copy is important too.
If you live in an area with a community center, reach out to them and see if they have a career or resume day. (We’ve written about resume writing as one of many ways to give back to your community!) If they don’t, they may know of organizations that do.
Look for YouTube tutorials
There is a lot of good help on YouTube. If you’re completely lost and have no idea how even to start your resume, look for tutorials on this subject. Here’s a good one to get you started.
The Final Word
Don’t waste your time with Resume Genius. Even among other resume engines that charge a monthly subscription fee using a similar model, Resume Genius is one of the most expensive services that you can choose. Even if you don’t care about the money, consider that what Resume Genius offers is fairly straightforward. You can get it less expensively from one of its competitors, from Canva or a free Microsoft Word template.
If you’re out of work now or otherwise not in a position to afford a subscription whose annual cost would be more than $400, then please avoid this product. There are better ways to get a resume that don’t involve sapping your finite funds. You don’t know how long you’ll be out of work, but you can probably think of something better to do with $40 every month rather than spend it on an unnecessary resume service.
Don’t subscribe to Resume Genius. Instead, check out Cypress, Canva, your local public library, or the free templates we linked above.
Source: http://www.thebudgetdiet.com/resume-genius-review
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Ladies Composition Question (booby-lats battle!)
Hi All,
Question for people in here familiar with ladies body competition tweaks and tips. I am currently 125 lbs, 5'4", I'm not competing but I lift -a lot- and do many other activities. I started keto in January 2019 hoping it would reduce some inflammation and autoimmune struggles I have (it hasn't) but I did drop 4% body fat while gaining a crap ton of muscle and strength (increased deadlifts by 100 pounds in two months), especially when I combined intermittent fasting. My body fat is currently at 16%. My weight pre-keto was 132, but it now goes up down week to week from 126 to 120.
Just a general question on the off chance anyone has any insight :) I'm trying to tweak my body composition a bit if it's even possible. When I first started dropping tons of water weight, I lost weight from everywhere, particularly in my waist. Then, as I started putting on a lot of upper body muscle (Switched out all of my liss for upper body days), my arms and lats got pretty big pretttty quickly, but it's if the fat tissue from my breasts became less and less. Now, even though my weight is staying the same, I've started to regain some fat in my waist, boobies staying flat as ever. I lost my period, as well, even though I've increased my macros and am doing less cardio and more rest.
All that to say - I'd like to keep my body fat low for aesthetic reasons, but I'd like to get my period and boobs back (as much as possible) and have a more feminine look. But considering I'm already gaining some fat in my midsection, I'm uncertain if simply increasing macros, laying off intermittent fasting, or adding cardio or whatever should be the way to go and if I'll just continue bulking and getting a belly hahaha. This is the most I've ever trained my upper body so this is a new conundrum for me, but I'm sure it's an old one for many others.
I am shamelessly vain and like having the muscle so if I just have to live with it, so be it, but maybe people have some know-how tips on hitting the sweet spot between maintaining a low body fat and not losing the lady bits :)
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ketogains/comments/cfkqek/ladies_composition_question_boobylats_battle/

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Episode 405 - Robb and Nicki Q&A #9
We're back with Q&A #9 with Robb and Nicki.
Remember to submit your own questions for Robb and Nicki to answer on a future show here: https://robbwolf.com/contact/submit-a-question-for-the-podcast/
Show Notes:
1. [2:06] Kidney Stones
Krisztian says: I've been mostly Paleo for about 5 years now based on one of your piror books. Overall, it has worked well for me, with one exception. I started to develop kidney stones on a regular basis. I finally had them analyzed and they turned out to be calcium oxalate stones. Upon reading up on this condition, it stems from a high amount of oxalate in the diet. Unfortunatley, most of the foods I liked on Paleo happen to be super high in oxalate... spinach, nuts, seeds, dark chocolate, sweet potatoes. The other wammy here is that I was initially avoiding dairy on Paleo which turns out to be worse for stones because one way to counteract high oxalate intake is to match it with high calcium to avoid stone formation. I've since gone back to eating plenty of cheese and high fat dairy in my diet.
I'm curious if this is a common issue that you've seen and I'm wondering if this is something that might be helped by going to a keto diet.
2. [5:33] Sugar addiction Kathryn says: Hey Robb, I am really hoping you can give me some insight into why I can't seem to fully recover from sugar addiction. I have had a sweet tooth my whole life, but in recent years I have learned that I have a true addiction to sugar. In the last four years or so, I have studied a lot of nutrition, functional medicine and ancestral health perspectives and gone on a strict paleo diet for months at a time. In almost every way, a clean diet of whole foods makes me feel amazing (better sleep, clearer skin, joints and movement feels better, etc.), except, I become very depressed. It's not a mopey, weepy kind of depressed, it's literally a depression of all feeling, like I feel very little at all. But I do sometimes feel really, really irritable, or sometimes bouts of rage that don’t match the situations they arise in. But most of the time, I just feel blah. I thought this would go away after a couple of weeks or even a month or two of eating clean, but it didn't. In happy or exciting moments, it was like I just couldn't feel those emotions fully. I also noticed that I didn't crack jokes like I usually do or feel like being social. All my feelings were dulled. Even sad ones. And when I did fall off the diet, and eat sugar, I immediately felt cheerful again. To me, it seems that the years of sugar abuse have altered my brain enough that without sugar, I can't feel normal emotions anymore. So my question is concerning healing my brain. Is it possible to reverse these effects? The longest I have gone on a strict paleo diet is three months. I admit it was hard to keep going when I just didn't see myself ever feeling happy again. If it's possible to heal my brain and increase its capacity for proper dopamine signaling again, are there certain therapies or supplements that can precipitate and accelerate that healing? Perhaps I am ignorant of some other factor or mechanism at work here. I would be grateful for any insight or help you can give. Thanks for the incredible work you do to bring to light the truth about human health and nutrition.
Notes:
Carb 22: https://carbsyndrome.com/nutraceuticals-new/
STEM Talk Episode 69 (David LeMay): https://www.ihmc.us/stemtalk/episode-69/
3. [11:32] Metabolic Flexibility and Weight Loss/Maintenance Julia says: Robb and Nicki, I am very interested in the concept of metabolic flexibility and eagerly waiting to hear your upcoming lecture on this topic. Intuitively it makes sense that given variation in season and climate that humans would have relied on a menu of macronutrient combinations. My question is: how can developing metabolic flexibility be used as tool for weight loss/maintenance? I have been about 90% ketogenic for the past 28 months; the other 10% would be high carb meals which I have allowed as a metabolically flexible person. I can swing in and out of ketosis with ease; however, I have noticed that if I go through periods of higher carb, it does result in weight gain which is tough to lose even when reentering ketosis. I do crossfit almost daily and practice the 18:6 IF schedule, and I don't notice either of those things affecting my performance. Thanks!
4. [16:31] Low afternoon energy
Laura says: Hi Robb and Nicki, Thank you both for all you do! I've been a huge fan since 2010 and admire your relentless pursuit of the truth when it comes to health and nutrition.
My question is about my extremely low energy in the early afternoons. I know it is a common complaint, but I feel like I've done everything I can to fix the common mistakes that lead to the afternoon slump, and I also feel like my exhaustion is too extreme to be normal for my age and health status.
I'm 32 years old, I eat low carbish (75-100g most days), have toyed with keto, eat mostly paleo with the addition of some dairy and occasional non gluten grains. I do crossfit 3x/week and spend most of my time chasing my 2 year old around. My sleep is good most of the time, and I do not have any major life stressors that effect me currently. No diagnosed health conditions, no rx meds.
I had bloodwork done recently, and my doctor was very impressed with the results, especially my blood lipids. A1c was 4.8, C-reactive protein 0.8, no thyroid antibodies present. Fasting blood sugar 78. The only things that were slightly out of range were homocysteine (slightly low at 4.6), Uric acid low at 2.4, serum iron slightly high at 148, and my free T3 was a little low at 2.5. Another Doctor years ago prescribed me naturethroid but I never took it.
Ive tried changing my diet in every way imaginable to try to combat a possible hypoglycemic or food sensitivity related slump after lunch. I've eliminated various foods that people can be sensitive to,and ive even tried more carbs in the morning, but that leads to blood sugar imbalance and cravings all day. As a result, my breakfasts and lunches would fall under the keto umbrella, as I feel better when I eat carbs later in the day.
The only thing that seems to slightly help is not eating at all, but I just get so hungry! My activity level is fairly high and I don't feel like I'm a great candidate for intermittent fasting at this point.
My mom, who has had MS for about 30 years, does not eat all day and only eats dinner because she's says eating makes her tired. I just can't handle not eating at all, and I do feel fatigued and hypoglycemic if I try to skip meals.
Thanks for reading and for all you do!!
5. [23:08] Carb test and ketosis
Carl says: Hey Robb,
I read Wired to Eat while I was pretty deep into a ketotic cycle, so I didn't immediately get to the 7-day carb test. Years of self-experimentation have led me to a relatively low carb (<50g/day) Paleo diet with an occasional 48 hour fast, an occasional ketotic cycle, and a very occasional carb re-feed. Genetic testing revealed some SNPs that predispose me to insulin resistance, and others that positively affect my fat metabolism, reinforcing the fact that I look, feel, and perform better eating in this fashion. I do enjoy my occasional carb binges, so I'd like to perform the carb test in order to whittle my food selections down to those least damaging to my metabolism; but I'm concerned that my postprandial blood glucose readings will be skewed upward because I don't regularly eat more than ten or fifteen grams of effective carbs at a time. Should I bring my daily and per-meal carb intake up for a certain period of time before starting the carb test, or is a 50 gram bolus of carbs small enough to give me a true measure of glucose tolerance for the purpose of food selection? Thanks in advance.
6. [27:30] Creativity and Writing Process
Peter says: Robb,
I hope all is well. I'm a big fan of the Podcast and excited about the Q & A return. I have a two-parter both within the same general idea.
FIRSTLY: I'm a writer and I am alway curious about how others approach the creative process. I was curious if you could elaborate on how you approach writing and creativity in regards to balancing an active lifestyle? And how a typical day when writing might look.
For example -- Do you do things like meditate? What time of the day do you write? Where do you write? If you write in the morning how do you reconcile with hanging outside first thing in the morning to get some sun? If you do Jujutsu around noon and roll for 2 hours how do you write around it? You've mentioned eating big meals in the morning, if you're in a heavy writing period, is this a habit you stick with? Oh by the way, you have a wife and kids... how do you balance it all?
Do you still do caffeine? Do you force yourself to take breaks during writing? How do you avoid sitting for 5/6 hours straight?
Sorry for all the questions, I've just been thinking about this a lot lately as I enter into a career pursuing my passion as a writer while trying to balance and prioritize my health. As I am sure you can attest, writing can be all consuming if you let it and setting boundaries is vital -- though difficult, especially if you're in "the zone." So I'd love to hear your thoughts.
[33:18] SECONDLY: I'd love to get your thoughts on the mechanisms at play when writing or doing anything else that requires intense mental focus in regards to willpower. Correct me if I am wrong, but it feels like for me, many aspects of writing and maintaining a healthy lifestyle (choosing healthy food over shitty stuff, hitting the gym, walking, etc.) can drain from the same willpower tank (if not just psychologically, and physically -- physiologically as well). This isn't to say that both can't exist -- rather does one need to be given priority based on ordering of events throughout the day?
For example, I feel my creativity comes to me first thing in the morning. If I were to wake up and hit a Metcon first thing, I feel my creativity gets depleted from the shared willpower tank. I feel this to be true with little things that chip away at my early morning start time as well. For example, taking the time to make a big healthy breakfast, sitting in the sun, even a short walk, all delay me tapping into when I feel I am creatively primed -- but is it worth the sacrifice of my health?
I was curious if you have any thoughts on when or how you prioritize creativity. Or maybe this is all just a bunch of bullshit like Robert Rodriguez says -- and our creativity is totally out of our control.
Anyways, love the show and everything you do. If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.
Regards, Peter
Source: http://robbwolf.libsyn.com/episode-405-robb-and-nicki-qa-9
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Is the Gym the Place for Psychotherapy?
I was on the treadmill when the battery for my noise-canceling headphones died. As I took them off and hung them on the railing of the machine, I heard a personal trainer talking with some urgency to the woman walking on the machine next to me. She was in her late forties, more or less, and about 40 pounds overweight. He questioned whether she had planned to cancel the training session because she had not lost any weight, and when she nodded in the affirmative, he went on for some minutes, describing her emotional problems and what she should do about them. The noise of the treadmills was not loud enough to block his voice. The trainee, a woman, was a little out of breath, which may be why she did not respond to his lecture.
What to do? “I really should not be hearing this,” I told myself. As someone who has done weight counseling and clinical research, I know how important it is to protect the privacy of everyone with whom I have contact. Having a therapeutic conversation with a client would be done in an office, and the information in my notes was protected against an invasion of privacy. And yet, this trainer was conversing in a sufficiently loud voice so that I, and perhaps someone on a nearby machine, could hear what he was saying. Should I have been hearing about her problems with her mother? Did I want to know what she eats when she is upset? I suppose we all would benefit from his advice to take better care of ourselves, but it was not necessary for me to hear that as a bystander.
Combining exercise and talk therapy is certainly a good idea, as it may amplify the benefits of both. Presumably both therapist and client are better off engaging in physical activity; we all sit more than we should. And as a friend told me, you, the patient, know that your therapist isn’t sleeping while you are talking if you are walking together. Sometimes simply walking side by side with someone who is an empathetic listener makes it easier to talk about problems than sitting face to face. How many of us have taken a walk with a friend or family member to discuss a problem?
But the personal trainer is neither a friend nor a family member, much less a licensed therapist. Yet because his advice was being given in a professional capacity as a paid trainer, it is reasonable to assume it would be taken more seriously than if the advice came from a friend or another gym member on an adjacent treadmill.
It is very tempting to give advice even when it is outside the area of one’s expertise. I go to the gym; shouldn’t I be able to help a weight loss client plan a program of physical activity? For example, when I see a client for a weight-loss consultation, I ask about the level of physical activity and usually suggest exercise as part of a weight-loss plan. Certainly I should be able to suggest even more, such as how much weight lifting should be done along with cardiovascular activity. But I am not a certified personnel trainer and I would never give advice as to the kind of exercise that should be followed, beyond the obvious recommendation to walk. Instead, I recommend a consultation with a personal trainer or physical therapist to make sure that the physical activity is compatible with the client’s health, stamina and age. Would I take the client to a gym to show her how to use the machines? Of course not. I do spend time with clients helping them figure out when their schedules will permit them to exercise. And once I discussed with a client what she could wear in the gym that would flatter her shape. (It is hard to find workout clothes in large sizes.)
However, I have overheard many trainers who have relatively little nutritional expertise giving advice about diets or nutritional supplements; sometimes their information is erroneous or based on little evidence that a particular supplement is safe and effective. Too many times, I have been told that a friend is following the latest diet fad because his or her trainer recommended it.
Would we be taking financial advice from our trainer or listening to her about how to decorate our living room, buy a car, or deal with a troublesome teenager? Unlikely. Would we take marital advice or suggestions on how to deal with an aging parent from the person who helps prepare our income tax? Probably not. But as I kept glancing at the woman on the treadmill beside me, I wondered why she was allowing her trainer (and not a therapist) tell her how to handle the demands of her mother, or problems with her marriage. (I obviously heard too much.) Was it because she was a captive on the treadmill? Or maybe she believed that someone who is overseeing how your muscles are working is competent to advise her on her emotional state.
The trainer’s advice to exercise faithfully, eat frugally, and give her some time for herself are within the bounds of common sense; they are suggestions that any of us could give and receive. But if he plans on continuing his gym psychotherapy, let him go through professional training and receive the credentials to do so. And then he should he want provide therapeutic consultations in the gym, go to a place where only the client is listening.
Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-antidepressant-diet/201806/is-the-gym-the-place-psychotherapy

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Ask the doctors: Results point to importance of diet in fertility - Bloomington Pantagraph (blog)
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Source: https://www.pantagraph.com/blogs/ask-the-doctors-results-point-to-importance-of-diet-in/article_f5ce4f2b-d8ef-5e5a-bc51-2af44155ffa2.html

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Orange and Beef Stir-Fry
When you buy more oranges than what fits into your morning orange, mango and kiwi smoothie, and your after-dinner Paleo orange carrot cake, you can always eat them fresh as is, though we’ve created an orange and beef stir-fry that is worthy of abundant applause. It serves just 2 and takes half an hour to make. Easy on the budget, uncomplicated to cook and ready in less time than it takes to order out? Count us in!
We hear you questioning – are oranges really Paleo? Luckily, the answer is yes. While we don’t encourage drinking the juice straight, because of its high sugar content, we do recommend eating the whole fruit (fiber, peel and all), so make sure your oranges are of organic origin. This means you can enjoy the zest freely too. If you’ve never tried to eat orange peel before, take a tiny nibble as you remove the orange segments. After you have zested one orange, consider finely chopping up the peel of the other and adding a portion of it to the dish. Keeping in mind that the orange peel may actually be the healthiest part of the fruit, rich in flavonoids (hesperidin and polymethoxyflavones), adding it to your diet is a good thing.
Serve this stir-fry with a handful of fresh greens to make sure your body is getting all the quality nutrients it needs. Eating well is as simple as that.
Serves: 2Prep: 20 minCook: 15 min
Values are per portion. These are for information only & are not meant to be exact calculations.
Add to Meal Plan
Ingredients
1.5 lbs. flank steak, thinly sliced
2 oranges, segmented
1 bell pepper, diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 tbsp. coconut aminos
3 green onions, sliced
Juice of 2 oranges
Zest of 1 orange
1 tbsp. coconut oil
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Preparation
In a small bowl, combine the orange zest, orange juice, garlic, and coconut aminos, then season to taste.
Heat the coconut oil in a skillet over high heat.
Brown the beef on all sides, 3 to 5 minutes; remove and set aside.
In the same skillet, add the bell pepper and cook for 2 to 3 minutes.
Pour the orange juice mixture into the skillet and cook until syrupy, 2 to 3 minutes.
Add the segmented oranges and green onions, then add the beef.
Toss everything gently until well coated, and serve while hot.
P.S. Have a look at Paleo Restart, our 30-day program. It has the tools to let you reset your body, lose weight and start feeling great.
+ The Paleo Leap Meal Planner is now also available. Put your meal planning on autopilot!
Source: https://paleoleap.com/orange-beef-stir-fry/
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Doing refeeds with high fat days?
Hi everyone,
I'm lifting for several years, had a big pause during college (4 years) where I lost all of my gains but I'm training actively for the last 2 years. You can see my progress here.
I had a problem with night eating syndrome over the last 3 year and only recently I found that it was fueled with candida. Now I'm doing IF with keto for about 20 days and all my symptoms are gone (I also included some supplements into diet). Therefore, I'm planning to switch to keto long-term. I also dropped about 3,5kg and that's wonderful as I yo-yoed a few kgs after my summer cut. So keto is definition of mixing pleasure with benefit for me.
As I don't want to do CKD but rather SKD my question is - would it be benefitial to throw in periodic refeed days but fueled with additional fat and not carbs, i.e. increase calories for 500 (as I'm currently in deficit) but primarily by adding more fat to intake? Would it help in breaking plateaus, or eventually reset some metabolic adaptations which will eventually occur? Or it will bring only psychological benefits (by being able to eat more keto fat bombs)?
I simply don't want to do CKD and go over mini adaptations after every refeed with carbs.
Btw. I'm planning a lean bulking in keto from February until May so fingers crossed for debunking the myths.
Thank you in advance fellas.
Peace
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ketogains/comments/a5ivd0/doing_refeeds_with_high_fat_days/

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7 common mistakes you might be making on a high-protein diet - Business Insider
Eliminating carbohydrates is not the best way to succeed on a high-protein diet.
Stay hydrated; it helps keep your digestive system healthy.
Eating protein with too much saturated fat can have consequences.
Bodybuilders and fitness fanatics fill their plates with it. Fans of keto and Atkins swear by the power of it. Dietitians urge people to include lean sources of it throughout their day.
Protein is an essential macronutrient that functions as a building block for your blood, muscles, bones, cartilage, skin, and more. While getting too little protein in your diet can be detrimental to your health, there are also consequences to eating too much of it.
Here are seven mistakes you might make on a high-protein diet, according to experts.
Source: https://www.thisisinsider.com/high-protein-diet-mistakes-2019-2
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Study: Mediterranean diet boosts endurance exercise within days - Medical Xpress
Researchers at Saint Louis University have found that eating a Mediterranean diet can improve athletes' endurance exercise performance after just four days.
In a small study published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition, investigators found that participants ran a 5K six percent faster after eating a Mediterranean diet than after eating a Western diet. Researchers found no difference between the two diets in performance in anaerobic exercise tests.
The Mediterranean diet includes whole fruits and vegetables, nuts, olive oil and whole grains, and avoids red and processed meats, dairy, trans and saturated fats and refined sugars.
By comparison, the Western diet is characterized by low intake of fruit, vegetables and unrefined or minimally processed oils and high intakes of trans and saturated fats, dairy, refined sugars, refined and highly processed vegetable oils, sodium and processed foods.
Senior researcher Edward Weiss, Ph.D., professor of nutrition and dietetics at SLU, says the Mediterranean diet is well-established as having numerous health benefits. He and his team hypothesized that the diet's anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects, more alkaline pH and dietary nitrates might lead to improved exercise performance.
"Many individual nutrients in the Mediterranean diet improve exercise performance immediately or within a few days. Therefore, it makes sense that a whole dietary pattern that includes these nutrients is also quick to improve performance," Weiss said. "However, these benefits were also quickly lost when switching to the Western diet, highlighting the importance of long-term adherence to the Mediterranean diet."
The study enrolled seven women and four men in a randomized-sequence crossover study. The participants ran five kilometers on a treadmill on two occasions—once after four days on a Mediterranean diet and on another occasion after four days on a Western diet, with a period of nine to 16 days separating the two tests.
Weiss says the study found the 5K run time was six percent faster after the Mediterranean diet than the Western diet despite similar heart rates and ratings of perceived exertion.
"This study provides evidence that a diet that is known to be good for health is also good for exercise performance," Weiss said. "Like the general population, athletes and other exercise enthusiasts commonly eat unhealthy diets. Now they have an additional incentive to eat healthy."
More information: Michelle E. Baker et al, Short-Term Mediterranean Diet Improves Endurance Exercise Performance: A Randomized-Sequence Crossover Trial, Journal of the American College of Nutrition (2019). DOI: 10.1080/07315724.2019.1568322
Provided by Saint Louis University
Citation: Study: Mediterranean diet boosts endurance exercise within days (2019, March 6) retrieved 6 March 2019 from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-03-mediterranean-diet-boosts-days.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
Source: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-03-mediterranean-diet-boosts-days.html
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For older adults, does eating enough protein help delay disability?
To live successfully and independently, older adults need to be able to manage two different levels of life skills: basic daily care and basic housekeeping activities.
Basic daily care includes feeding yourself, bathing, dressing, and going to the toilet on your own.
You also need to handle basic housekeeping activities, such as managing your finances and having the mobility to shop and participate in social activities.
If you or someone you care for has trouble performing these two types of life skills, this may bring on problems that can reduce quality of life and independence. People 85-years-old and older form the fastest-growing age group in our society and are at higher risk for becoming less able to perform these life skills. For this reason, researchers are seeking ways to help older adults stay independent for longer. Recently, a research team focused their attention on learning whether eating more protein could contribute to helping people maintain independence. Their study was published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
Protein is known to slow the loss of muscle mass. Having enough muscle mass can help preserve the ability to perform daily activities and prevent disability. Older adults tend to have a lower protein intake than younger adults due to poorer health, reduced physical activity, and changes in the mouth and teeth.
To learn more about protein intake and disability in older adults, the research team used data from the Newcastle 85+ Study conducted in the United Kingdom (UK). This study's researchers approached all people turning 85 in 2006 in two cities in the UK for participation. At the beginning of the study in 2006-2007, there were 722 participants, 60 percent of whom were women. The participants provided researchers with information about what they ate every day, their body weight and height measurements, their overall health assessment (including any level of disability), and their medical records.
The researchers learned that more than one-quarter (28 percent) of very old adults in North-East England had protein intakes below the recommended dietary allowance. The researchers noted that older adults who have more chronic health conditions may also have different protein requirements. To learn more about the health benefits of adequate protein intake in older adults, the researchers examined the impact of protein intake on the increase of disability over five years.
The researchers' theory was that eating more protein would be associated with slower disability development in very old adults, depending on their muscle mass and muscle strength.
As it turned out, they were correct. Participants who ate more protein at the beginning of the study were less likely to become disabled when compared to people who ate less protein.
Dr. Nuno Mendonca, the principal author of the study, said: "Our findings support current thinking about increasing the recommended daily intake of protein to maintain active and healthy aging." Older adults should aim to eat about 1.0 to 1.2 grams of protein for every 2.2 pounds of body weight. For example, for a person who weighs 160 pounds, that would be about 58 grams of protein a day (a 3.5-ounce serving of chicken contains about 31 grams of protein). Find your recommended daily protein intake -- and other important nutritional needs -- by using this calculator.
Story Source:
Materials provided by American Geriatrics Society. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181102105941.htm
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A Diet With No Food Off Limits? Does 'Cruise Control' Work? - Inside Edition
A diet where you can eat whatever you want and lose weight?
"There's no food that's off limits, absolutely none, there's no deprivation," Jorge Cruise, celebrity trainer and author of "The Cruise Control Diet," told Inside Edition.
There is one caveat, however: He sayd you can only eat within an eight-hour window every day. It's called intermittent fasting.
"It's really understanding that you can enjoy fasting without starvation," Jorge said.
He said that as long as you eat or drink healthy fats, you'll feel full those other 16 hours of the day.
"Healthy fats will stop hunger, you won't feel hungry, and it's indulgent and it's delicious," he said.
To break the fast, start with a healthy salad for lunch and try adding avocado, Jorge said. Then, "enjoy a beautiful dinner: pasta, a big salad, pizza, fried rice," he added.
Jorge, who's written over 25 diet books, said that this is his favorite plan yet.
"This gives you the most amount of freedom and confidence. ... People can do this long-term," he said.
Click here to read an excerpt of "The Cruise Control Diet."
RELATED STORIES
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Why Jillian Michaels Thinks She Deserves an Apology From Al Roker
Ivana Trump Supports the 'Italiano Diet,' a Collection of Low-Carb and Low-Calorie Meals

Source: https://www.insideedition.com/diet-no-food-limits-does-cruise-control-work-52170
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Altitude Training, Red Blood Cells & Shellfish: Are Clams The Next Big Performance Enhancing Supplement?
When it comes to nutrition benefits, clams are interesting creatures that pack an impressive nutrient-dense punch.
For example, they are well known as a source of iron.
There are two types of iron – heme and non-heme. Heme-iron is more bioavailable, which means it is better absorbed and can be utilized by the body. Clams have both versions of iron, and a 3-ounce serving of clams can provide up to 24 mg of iron. In addition to Iron, clams are an excellent source of:
The list goes on and on…and my guest on today's show, Craig Dinkel – a supplement formulator, ultra-endurance athlete, altitude specialist and much more – has studied and managed to harness the power these superfood sea creatures. On today's show, we take a deep dive into clams, his new Altifuel supplement, and much, much more.
During our discussion, you'll learn:
-About Craig's adventure on the Hardest Hike in America (which we talked about his last time on the podcast)…4:30
Along the Sierra High route; At altitude (9-12k feet); 33 mountain passes
Takes over 3 weeks to finish
Pack ultra-light everything
Big mistake: Bought ultra-light backpack
Not designed to carry as much weight.
Excess weight caused strain on lower back and glutes
Get the weight higher up (mid-back or higher)
Decided to pull out the 3rd day – potentially dangerous situation
-Why Craig initially sought the health benefits of clams…19:20
Desiccated liver extract powder great for high-altitude events
Clams have the highest amount of iron and vitamin B12 available
Clams are a more potent version of the desiccated liver
-Concerns about the level of contaminants found in clams…23:45
Use wild, farm-raised clams
Small serving (3 oz.) of clams contain 1500% of daily iron intake
Heme vs. non-heme iron
Great source of minerals
High amount of Omega 3 and Vitamin K2
-What Craig combines clams with to get the highest level of efficacy…30:30
Cordyceps, Rhodiola, ginkgo biloba
Rhodiola crenulata vs. Rosea
Maintains sodium pulmonary transport in the body
Helps reverse altitude sickness
AMS – Acute Mountain Sickness
Cordyceps – Oxygen producing capabilities with polysaccharides
Why not add blue-green AFA to his ingredients…
Strong nootropic effect
Helps with muscle recovery
Wanted most powerful source to work with blood development; clams superior.
Have to pick and choose what you think is the best
-Best practices for taking the capsules…43:00
Find the lowest dose for highest impact
-And much more…
Resources from this episode:
–Kifaru backpacks
–Altifuel supplement with clam option and liver option. Use code: BENA for 20% off plus free shipping.
–Biotropic Labs Code: BENA will save you 20% plus get you free shipping.
-My previous episodes with Craig Dinkel:
Shattering World Swim Records On 25-Piece Fried Chicken Buckets, Climbing Mountains While Eating Defatted, Vegan, Grass-Fed, Argentinian Liver Anhydrate & Much More.
Recovery For Aging Athletes, Cross-Patterning, A New Kind Of High Intensity Interval Training, An Oxygen Boosting Supplement Called “Oxcia” & More!
A Potent Pre-Sauna Stack, How To Cleanse Your Blood Before Bed, 700%+ Endurance Increases, The Best Supplements For Altitude Performance & Much More With Craig Dinkel of Biotropic Labs.
The Hardest Hike In America, How To Train & Eat For Altitude, Dangerous Ingredients In Supplements & More With Craig Dinkel of Biotropic Labs.
Episode Sponsors:
–Kion: The Recovery Bundle Contains Kion Flex, Kion Aminos Tablet, LivingFuel SuperEssentials® Omega 3EDA+. Use discount code: BGF10, and receive 10% off your order.
–Organifi Red: A “Tart-Sweet” Custom Brew With The HOTTEST Fat Melting And “Skin-Firming” Superfoods In The World. Use code: GREENFIELD at checkout and receive 20% off your order.
–Purathrive: Stay in ketosis, shred fat off your body, experience sustained energy throughout the day… and… break through plateaus to reach the next level that once felt out of reach.
Do you have questions, thoughts or feedback for Craig or me? Leave your comments below and one of us will reply!
Ask Ben a Podcast Question
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Source: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/supplements-podcasts/clams-health-benefits/

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