Podcast #46 from http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.

com/2009/06/podcast-
episode-46-a-green-triathlon-vitamin-d-and-how-to-convert-fast-twitch-
muscle-to-slow-twitch-muscle/

Introduction: In this podcast episode: A green triathlon, vitamin D and

sports performance and how to convert fast twitch muscle to
slow twitch muscle.

Ben: Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield. Welcome back

to the www.bengreenfieldfitness.com podcast. I have an
interesting interview to bring to you today with the founder
of a particular triathlon event that actually is doing more for
the planet than just sending Styrofoam cups and plastic
water bottles and litter all over the highways. It’s actually
really interesting how this particular individual is actually
putting together a triathlon event that saves the planet. I
know there are a lot of triathletes that listen to this show. So
this might be interesting for you and if you’re into
marathoning, cycling – anything of that nature that requires
an event that happens on the planet Earth, you may be
interested in listening in. Before we move on to this week’s
special announcements let me just say that after the
conversation with Dr. Cirkis on transdermal magnesium
therapy last week I have actually started using that in my
own protocol for soreness and for sports performance. I am
mixing about ½ to 1 cup of 100% pure magnesium flakes
with an aluminum free baking soda that I got at the grocery
store just in a 1:1 ratio so about ½ to 1 cup of baking soda
with ½ to 1 cup of magnesium flakes, putting that in a bath
that’s not super hot. If it’s too hot it will interfere with
absorption, about 103 degrees, 106 degrees max. So abou t
the level it would be in a hot tub and soaking in that for
about 15 minutes. Let me tell you right now that my body
feels simply amazing. Those of you who work out, you
probably know this feeling of maybe going out, maybe having
a run, having stale legs or sore legs or maybe having a little
bit of sore joints when you first get out of bed in the morning.
I feel like I’m about 2 years old in terms of my joints and my
muscles. It’s pretty amazing so I was very surprised at the
inexpensiveness and the effectiveness of this type of therapy
that we talked about. I’ve been doing quite a bit more
research on the magnesium therapy. I’ve also started
 spraying a little bit of this 100% absorbable magnesium oil
on my forearms prior to a workout and it’s probably the
closest thing you can get to steroids. Although it can assist
with testosterone activation and strength, it’s not a steroid
hormone. It’s completely legal. It’s just a mineral and
literally you spray it on your forearms or rub it in before your
workout. You can combine that with taking these baths. Just
a couple of times a week, whatever, when you’re talking on
your phone. I don’t recommend you do it while you’re
curling your hair or using a hair dryer but if you are simply
sore and you’re competing in sports or you’re exercising on a
frequent basis, I really recommend that you work this in. I’m
going to put a link in the Shownotes exactly where I got my
magnesium flakes, exactly where I got my magnesium oil
and I would recommend that you get it. I think the flakes
cost me something like – it was somewhere around 45 or 50
bucks for about enough to last me a mon th. That’s less than a
massage and I feel awesome. So check those out and let’s go
ahead and move into this week’s special announcements.

Nick asks: Hi Ben, this is Nick in San Francisco. My question has to do

with endurance training and racing for individuals with large
amounts of muscle mass and a high metabolism of blood
sugars. I recently had my metabolism tested and learned that
I burn through stored blood sugar much faster than the
normal endurance athlete. I also tend to race at a relatively
high weight even though my body fat percentage is low and I
do very little in the way of strength training. Are there any
special training principles or nutritional protocols that will
allow an individual such as myself to delay fatigue in an
attempt to race better at longer distances such as Ironman?

Ben: Nick, great question. Ok, first of all this test that you did that
showed how quickly you were actually using blood sugars –
I’m guessing that was probably a substrate utilization test.
it’s also known as a metabolic rate test. It’s basically just a
way to see how much fat, how much carbohydrate you’re
using at rest. Based on your description you probably had a
high what’s called RQ or respiratory quotient which means
that you’re burning more carbohydrate at rest than the
average individual. Theoretically because it does burn a lot of
carbohydrate somebody with a high amount of fast twitch
muscle may actually as you have indicated be burning a little
bit more carbohydrate. Essentially what your question boils
down to is how can you convert fast twitch muscle to slow
twitch muscle because slow twitch muscle is your endurance
muscle and fast twitch muscle is your heavier and denser,
more powerful strength based muscle. So, let’s talk a little bit
about slow twitch muscle and fast twitch muscle and what
each one contributes. So first of all, you can actually test the
exact ratio of slow twitch muscle and fast twitch muscle in
your body by getting what’s called a muscle biopsy. It’s not a
real pleasant test. They basically push a needle down into
your muscle and the muscle has kind of almost like a
guillotine mechanism in it and it slices off about a rice size –
about a grain of rice size piece of tissue and then that’s taken
out and that’s chemically analyzed. They do a PH stain on it.
And even though there’s a lot of different variations of the
type of muscle fibers in your body, they’re basically slow
twitch or also known as type 1 muscle fibers or fast twitch
type 2 muscle fibers. Another term for the slow twitch is red
fibers and the fast twitch are known as white fibers. The
reason the slow twitch are known as red fibers is because
they have a lot of mi tochondria in them and we talked a
whole bunch about mitochondria last week. If you want the
lowdown on mitochondria, listen to podcast episode number
45. But basically slow twitch muscle twitches at about 10 to
30 twitches per second and fast twitch muscle, you get about
30 to 70 twitches per second. So fast twitch muscle creates a
lot more wo rk in a lot shorter period of time. Now there has
been one study done that looked at the long term effects of
endurance training on muscle fiber adaptation. What the
study found was that when they took skeletal muscle from
the front of the thigh in people who had about 10 years of
endurance training under their belts and compared it with
people who were basically untrained – control group – they
found that the training group had about 70% slow twitch
muscle fiber. And the group that wasn’t doing the aerobic
training over those 10 years had about 37% of slow twitch
muscle fibers. And then of course conversely the training
group had a very low amount of fast twitch muscle fiber –
about 25, 30% and the other group had about 50to 60% of
fast twitch muscle fiber. So the researchers in this study
concluded that the endurance training promotes that
transition from fast twitch to slow twitch muscle fibers and
you actually lose that fast twitch muscle fiber as you do so.
This is the same reason that for example when you go out
and you train for a marathon or a 10K or a triathlon, you may
lose your vertical jumping ability. You may lose your bench
pressing ability. You may lose a little bit of that power and
that strength and that’s why we always want to include just a
little bit of fast twitch muscle type of work when we are
training for an endurance sport so we retain some of ou r
strength. But when we talk about somebody like Nick who
has this high amount of fast twitch muscle, very dense kind
of strong muscle tissue, he would be type of athlete that if I
were writing out a coaching program for him, we wouldn’t do
as many intervals, as much weight lifting, as much power, as
much strength as somebody who tends to have a lot less fast
twitch muscle. I don’t send everybody out to get a mu scle
biopsy. You just look at body type. You can usually tell.
People typically fall into one of three different body types.
The real skinny, high amount of slow twitch muscle. They’re
kind of thick, muscular, athletic type, high amount of fast
twitch muscle or else they’re fat and that also most of the
time is a little bit higher in the fast twitch muscle. So one of
the ways that you can actually train your fast twitch muscle
to convert to slow twitch muscle is by actually performing
aerobic exercise at your long slow distance pace meaning
that you’re really trying not to tap into to much carbohydrate
utilization. How do you know when you’re using
carbohydrate? Because when you break down carbohydrate,
it produces hydrogen ions and those hydrogen ions have to
get breathed – they don’t get breathed out of the body – but
basically they get converted into a form of CO 2 and so when
you start to breathe hard, when you start to breathe off CO2,
that’s an indication – that type of ventilation is an indication
that you’re actually using your carbohydrates, that you’re
starting to use more fast twitch muscle. So if you’re trying to
convert fast twitch muscle to slow twitch muscle, you would
actually want to stay away from that range where you are
breathing hard and I’m not saying this is the way I believe
you should train for maximum fitness, but if you’re just
training for maximizing that slow twitch muscle fiber
capacity, that’s the way that you could do it. There’s also a
theory called the central governor theory, which basically
argues that you can alter your brain’s ability to persevere
when it comes to endurance sports. In other words you can
make those slow twitch muscles get accessed for even longer
periods of time if you are able to reset your brain’s ability to
withstand long amounts of endurance activity. And the
reason for that is that a lot of times, even when somebody
thinks that they’ve exercised for as long as they’re physically
able to exercise, what they found is that the body can still
hold on to about 80 to 90% of its ATP or its energy levels and
also hold on to quite a bit of its carbohydrate or its storage
glycogen levels after an intense endurance effort and so what
researchers who are looking at this central governor theory
have been doing is one way to actually get the body to last
longer – to not fatigue quite as quickly from a mental
standpoint – is to actually precool the body with ice baths,
ice vests or ice helmets. This is kind of new research but the
whole idea is that you essentially reset your body’s ability to
withstand endurance by precooling it. It’s a little more
science than we’re going to get into right now but the idea is
for example that earlier in the day you would take an ice bath
or go swim in a cold river or lake and then go do your longest
endurance activity of the week at some point after that
precooling has occurred. The interesting thing is that I
personally have had some of my best long runs on the same
day that I went for a nice cold icy swim in a river or a lake on
that same morning. So it is interesting. It may hold some
credence that you can actually get your slow twitch muscle to
last for a longer period of time, stimulate more of it, get more
fast twitch to slow twitch muscle fiber conversion by not only
doing long slow endurance sports but also precooling the
muscle prior to engaging in those sports. So all we’re trying
to do is enhance the slow twitch muscle fiber that’s already
there, convert more of it into fast twitch muscle fiber with
long distance cooling and then work on that precooling
technique. Now understand that fiber reversion occurs after
inactivity. Meaning that if I go sit on the couch after I do an
Ironman triathlon – I stay on that couch for four weeks, I’m
going to have a bunch of fast twitch muscle fiber and I’m
probably going to be able to jump higher than I would than if
 I hadn’t sat on that couch for four weeks. I’m going to be able
to run faster because what happens is I get all that slow
twitch muscle fiber reverting back into my powerful strong
fast twitch type muscle. Obviously that’s not saying that
couch potatoes are fitter than people who run 10ks but what
it does say is they do have more fast twitch muscle fiber and
they would have a little bit more power and strength but
unfortunately it would also fatigue very quickly. So let’s wrap
this up. In a nutshell, my recommendation to Nick would be
to do lots of long slow endurance training several times per
week, to not do a lot of wei ght lifting, not do a lot of power,
not do a lot of fast twitch muscle fiber stimulation and from a
nutritional standpoint, you know you could try to limit the
amount of carbohydrate that you’re consuming just so you
don’t have as much capacity to use fast twitch muscle fiber
because carbohydrate is its main fuel source. Of course the
problem with that is I never like to recommend that people
go on a super low carb diet just because they’re a lot of times
replacing those slow carbs with proteins that can get hard in
the liver, hard in the kidney. So you want to be a little bit
careful. But I definitely wouldn’t be taking in a high
carbohydrate intake with the type of training that I just
recommended for fast twitch to slow twitch muscle fiber
conversion. So you could combine some of th at endurance
training, some of those precooling techniques with a slightly
lower carbohydrate intake. So, try some of that out and good
luck. Great question.

Now my second question this week was from Listener Chris.

Chris asks: With as much as Dr. Cirkis talked about magnesium and
magnesium deficiencies, I was surprised he didn’t mention
vitamin D. Are you familiar with any of the recent research
on vitamin D and sports performance?

Ben answers: And in Chris’s question, he is referencing the interview with

Dr. Cirkis from podcast interview number 45 wh ich was just
last week and that is a fantastic question about vitamin D
because it has been mentioned on this show before, we did
an interview with Dr. Minkoff down in Florida several
episodes ago and you can just do a search for Dr. Minkoff
over on the website and he talked quite a bit about vitamin D,
vitamin D deficiencies and the fact that a high amount of the
population is actually deficient in vitamin D. Now the study
that Chris is probably referring to is the brand new study
that came out in Medicine and Science and Sports and
Exercise in their May 2009 issue. And what this study did
was they had researchers review all the world’s literature
since the 1950s for any evidence that shows that vitamin D
could affect physical or athletic performance. And what they
found was that there was a consistent trend in exercise and
science research that showed that physical and athletic
performance is seasonal – that it peaks when vitamin D
levels peak, it declines as vitamin D levels decline and it
reaches its lower point when vitamin D levels are at their
lowest points. They also found quite a bit of research that
showed that vitamin producing ultra violet light could
improve athletic performance. Now befo re we talk a little bit
about these findings, let’s just review real quick what vitamin
D is. It’s basically a steroid hormone. When vitamin D is
activated in your body, it’s a steroid hormone. It regulates
over 1000 different genes within your body. Unfortunately a
lot of research indicate that a lot of people can be deficient in
vitamin D, even people in sunny climates like Arizona or
California or Florida. People who have darker skin, whose
skin produces less vitamin D in response to sunlight, they
tend to have higher amounts of deficiencies and the problem
is that because vitamin D is a steroid precursor – if you have
a vitamin D deficiency, you’re not going to have the proper
amount of hormones on board for many of your body’s
functions and especially because vitamin D is found in its
highest concentrations in the nerve tissue and muscle tissue
– especially for athletes, that can be a pretty big problem.
Now vitamin D deficiencies have been associated with quite a
few chronic diseases like cancer, hypertension, heart disease,
even obesity. So if you’re vitamin D deficient, there could be
quite a few considerations for you from a health or
performance standpoint. Now the research study in
Medicine and Science and Sports and Exercise came to the
final conclusion that vitamin D could improve athletic
performance in vitamin D deficient athletes. Because of the
high number of people that are vitamin D deficient and
because athletes tend to use more hormones and more
vitamins than the average person anyways, it is fair analysis
to say that vitamin D should be something an athlete is
considering as part of their sports performance protocol. You
can go get your vitamin D levels actually tested if you want to.
There’s a simple blood test you can do. You can just call your
physician, tell him hey I want to go get my vitamin D tested.
They can get it done for you. But what I would recommend
as an athlete is that you make sure that you’re spending
enough time in the sun and while I do recommend that you
never let yourself get burned in the sun, I would recommend
that you do allow your body fair exposure to sunlight, as
much as you can get without burning and then the other
thing you can do and it’ll only cost you probably about five or
ten bucks for a month’s supply – I’ve seen it as low as $4 – is
supplement with a vitamin D supplement. Vitamin D3 is
going to be your best bet. It’s also known as cola calciferol
but you can supplement with vitamin D. I would recommend
that you keep track of how much you’re taking using
something called an international unit. How much vitamin D
that you actually take is going to depend on your age, your
body weight, how much body fat you actually have because
vitamin D can be stored in body fat, the latitude of where
you’re located in terms of sun exposure, how much skin
coloration you have, what season it is, what sun tanning
lotion you use. Old people usually need more than young
people. Big people need more than little people. Heavier
people need more than skinnier people. People in northern
climates need more than people in southern climates. Dark
people need more than fair skinned people and so there’s
quite a few different individual considerations for vitamin D.
So, the maximum that the actual FDA says that you should
take is about 2000 IU and I would recommend that you
actually start at only about 400 units because you can get
vitamin D in some other supplements you’re taking like say a
fish oil supplement has a vitamin D. So you’re getting it from
other sources and then you automatically start taking 2000,
you might be reaching toxic levels. You’ll know, you’ll get
nauseous, you’ll get diarrhea. A lot of times your body just
doesn’t feel quite right when you’re overloading with a fat
soluble vitamin because unlike vitamin B, you aren’t going to
pee it out. It’s actually going to get stored in your body. So
 pay attention to the way that your body feels, you shouldn’t
feel nauseous or light headed or dizzy or have bowel
difficulties. But I would recommend that you start adding in
vitamin D at about 400 IU per day. You could gradually
bring that up to 2000 but research shows that it can improve
sports performance. Spend a little bit of time in the sun, add
some vitamin D3 into your protocol and make sure you listen
in to the very end of this podcast today because I’m going to
share with you about 18 other ways that you can get your
body to heal like Wolverine from Xmen. So listen to that. I’ll
put it at the end of this post right after our interview with
Jeff Henderson, the interview of the Portland Triathlon.

Ben: Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield and I have a

gentleman who happens to be the race director of a very
unique event. And one of the things that I’m always looking
at when I try and give you cutting edge health or nutrition or
fitness information on this show is, is it healthy for you? But
for those of you who listen in to the episode on (salmon) and
some of the things that are going on in the fish farming
industry, you know it gets a little bit more involved than just
thinking about the effect that something has on your body.
Sometimes you have to think about the effect it may have on
other people, on other life or even on the planet. And that’s
what we’re going to talk about today because I know that
there are a lot of triathletes out there that listen to this show
and I know that a lot of you are even from the Northwest and
the guy I have on the other line is from Portland, Jeff
Henderson. Jeff, thanks for coming on the show.

Jeff Henderson: Thank you Ben, I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you
today.

Ben: Jeff is the race director of the Portland Triathlon. Jeff, why is
the Portland Triathlon unique?

Jeff Henderson: Well, the Portland Triathlon really started three years ago
and in living in Portland and being an athlete myself, you
can’t help but realize the environment around you. You can’t
help but notice the clean lakes and rivers and the air that you
breathe and so starting the triathlon in Portland – it seemed
appropriate to honor the city’s efforts and being an
 environmentally responsible city and trying to (audio cut).
What we tried to do from the very beginning is hold a race
that aligns with people’s views and people would be pleased
to compete at because it held the same values that they do in
their homes. You made an interesting point there, Ben.
People are taking care of their bodies, they’re eating right,
they’re working out and when you go to an event, a race that
you want to participate in, you want that race to do the same
thing in the environment.

Ben: Yeah, and that’s one of my pet peeves – is when I’m rolling
around town the day after I’ve gone and done a triathlon or a
marathon or a 5k or something of that nature and there’s gel
packs lying all over the place, there’s cups here and there,
you see plastic bottles in ditches. You see people walking
around with sometimes five or six different plastic bags.
What have you guys done to try and minimize some of the
effects of that?

Jeff Henderson: Well, it really is embarrassing. You hit the nail on the head.
There’s a lot of waste. There’s a lot of inefficiency. It’s
difficult to go to these events and not see it these days. It
seems to be ubiquitous. So, what we try to do is from the
outset just eliminate all the unnecessary stuff. People want to
go to a race to race, to enjoy the athletic experience and they
don’t need all the other clutter. So things like goodie bags,
things like advertisement and flyers – all of those things, we
tried to rethink and come up with a better way to do it. Is
there a better way to showcase the sponsor without putting a
flyer on every goodie bag and it turns out there is. Is there a
better way to hydrate an athlete without handling a plastic
water bottle to each and every one of them at the finish line?
And it turns out there is. It’s just getting away from common
practices that we tried to do first and foremost and when you
think about 20 years ago, races weren’t doing all these things
but there were still races and people were enjoying them. So
it’s really just a matter of getting back to where we were
without all the additional stuff that people are immersed in
when they go to a race.

Ben: So what do you do? You gave some great exa mples there of
ways that you can eliminate race but in a practical sense,
 how do you give somebody water without using the plastic
bottle or how do you give them goodie bags without actually
cutting down 10 trees for 18 different brochures and so on
and so forth?

Jeff Henderson: Well, it turns out that technology is a big help. You can cut
down on a lot of things right from the get go. With everybody
using the Internet now and computers and hand held cell
phones and things like that, you can do your registration
system entirely online without using a single piece of paper
and a lot of races are starting to do that. So you can
distribute information through email and through your
website, you can spotlight your sponsor with electronic
coupons or electronic flyers. A lot of these things that used to
have to be printed, you can now do electronically. So that’s a
good place to start. As far as the plastic water bottle, if you
just put a cooler at the finish line with some compostable
cups and you seek out a way in your local community to
compost those cups and just let athletes take them if they
need them, that cuts down on a lot of waste from the
beginning. Because not every athlete is going to take one,
first of all, and if they do and if you’ve figured out a way to
dispose of those cups responsibly then you’re cutting down a
lot of waste that doesn’t go into the landfill. So that’s one way
to do it. And there’s other ways too.

Ben: What about the water that’s out there in the course? On the
rest of the course? Because it’s an Olympic distance triathlon,
right?

Jeff Henderson: That’s right. We’ve eliminated the aid station on the bike
course and one of the first things – you’ve heard the saying
reduce, reuse, recycle. And the key part of the whole phrase
is reduce – right on the front end. So if you can eliminate
something that you don’t need, you’ve automatically gotten
yourself steps ahead because you don’t have all that waste to
deal with. The Olympic distance triathlon – we’ve eliminated
the aid station on the bike course. You don’t need one.
Because it’s only 25 miles and if people are told beforehand
that they need to carry two water bottl es with them then they
bring their own, they fill them up with what they need and
 they can use them along the way. So you don’t need to hand
anything to them.

Ben: I see, so the participants come a little bit more prepared.

Jeff Henderson: Yeah, yeah. The key here is getting your participants
involved in this. Telling them what you’re trying to do and
getting their support and an amazing thing happens when
you do that Ben. You end up with participants who are really
invested in the race. People who are not throwing gel
wrappers on the ground. Who are not taking 10 water bottles
at the finish line, because they know that what you’re trying
to do and they’ll support you in that. People want to do the
right thing. You just have to give them the opportunity to do
so.

Ben: Now what about – I noticed another thing that you guys do is
you’ve got bamboo rac e shirts. Tell me about those.

Jeff Henderson: Bamboo race shirts are something that we did for the very
first time, the first year. We were the first triathlon in the
company to have the bamboo rac e shirts. It was an attempt
to get away from cotton. Because cotton is a very water
intensive and pesticide intensive crop that is very damaging
to the environment and so trying to get away from that is a
difficult thing to do because a lot of ath letes expect a race
shirt in their goodie bag when they come to a race. So we
started experimenting with bamboo, wh ich is a little bit more
of a responsible and sustainable fabric. It’s not the best
solution and there are going to be better ways to do it but it is
better than cotton for the sustainability aspect, and people
love them. It’s very soft. It’s silky smooth. And it’s a neat
fabric.

Ben: Is there anything else that you guys do to make the Portland
Triathlon green?

Jeff Henderson: Well, we wan ted to make a statement with the race. We
wanted people to notice what we were doing so they could
take it home with them and try to add some habits into their
own lives so what we did was I commissioned an artist in
Portland – a local artist – to make a finish line arch that was
completely different than any finish line you’ve seen in your
 life. And he came up with this arch that’s made of surplus
steel that was left over at a steel yard and cedar prayer boxes
which he created and we got native local Oregon plants
growing out of the finish line. So it’s a fusion of recycled
materials and actually living things that people are running
through at the end. And we put it up the day before the race
and people walking through the park see it and they notice it
and they ask what’s going on here? And it’s a beautiful piece
of public art that becomes a valuable piece of the triathlon
infrastructure and that’s what we’re trying to promote.

Ben: Wow, I really admire what you’re doing down there. You
know, a lot of th e listeners who are athletes, especially the
listeners who spend a lot of times outdoors swimming,
cycling, running, walking, hiking, whatever the case may be
– you want your children to be able to d o that and enjoy that.
To be able to f eel the wind in their hair and to be able to
breathe fresh air and have trees and flowers and birds
singing. We have to make sure that the sport that we’re
participating in basically isn’t raping the earth and I think
that the Portland Triathlon sounds like it’s a great model for
people to look at when they’re seeing how to do an event and
how to do it properly. So if you’re listening to the show and
you know somebody who’s organizing a triathlon, have him
listen in. have him go to – what’s the name of the website,
Jeff?

Jeff Henderson: It’s www.portlandtri.com.

Ben: What’s the race date?

Jeff Henderson: Race date is August 23rd this summer. And we’ve got a sprint
distance triathlon, an Olympic distance triathlon and this
year we actually added a $25,000 open water swim to the
Saturday before the triathlon. So we’ve got a swim as well in
the middle of Portland.

Ben: Holy cow. Can I bring my family?

Jeff Henderson: You can bring your friends, you can bring whoever you want.
It’s going to be fun.
Ben: For $25,000, I’ll do it. Alright, well Jeff. Thank you for your
time. Thank you for coming on the show and maybe I’ll see
you down there at the Portland Tri.

Jeff Henderson: No problem Ben. Thank you for having me.

Ben: Alright, from www.bengreenfieldfitness.com, this is Ben

Greenfield and Jeff Henderson signing out.

For personal nutrition, fitness or triathlon consulting, supplements, books or DVD’s

from Ben Greenfield, please visit Pacific Elite Fitness at http://www.pacificfit.net