Episode 383: Brady Holmer - Endurance, Nutrition & Supplementation

Brady is a MSc in Human Performance, endurance athlete, and science writer. He publishes Physiologically Speaking on substack, and works with Examine on reviewing research in effort to help users better understand supplement and intervention evidence. 

Topics covered: keto/low carb endurance, periodized carbohydrate training, supplement efficacy and his work at Examine, recent half marathon personal best, exogenous ketones, strength training for endurance athletes. 

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Episode Transcript:

Brady, welcome to the show. Thanks, Zach. Glad to be on. Yeah, it's so much fun to do these in person now. For sure. I think this is actually one of the first in-person podcasts I've done. Um, when I started doing my podcasts, I did like a couple in-person interviews, and then it was Covid. Boom, two years of zoom, right? Everybody's used to that. But, um, it's cool to be doing it in person. Yeah, yeah. It's fun, it's fun. We got some cool topics to talk about, too. I did actually have, um, a guest present for you because I noticed on Twitter X you were getting, uh, getting some heat from the hardcore keto folks about your granola. So I went ahead and saved you, uh, something that can give you a little camouflage from those guys when they come after you. There you go. Some keto granola for granola. Awesome. Can't wait to try. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, it's, uh, kind of a topic. We're probably gonna talk about some low carb stuff. I think, um, we were actually talking about this probably almost a year ago when it first came out. Um, and here we are on the podcast now. But there was that study. Maybe it was spring last year. I think so, yeah. It was, uh, no, no. Nick Palouse and some other authors that looked at, um, low. It was actually strictly ketogenic. I think there were like 50g of carbohydrates, 50 a day. Uh, and they had what I thought was an interesting kind of look into just performance with that, as well as some other things. And I wanted to just jump in with that and see what you think about that, because for one of my, my assumption or my, my, my prediction is that like. Ketogenic endurance is like a step too far. In most cases. You can always have, like the individual scenario where like you have someone who has some sort of other thing clear up because for whatever reason, they went on a ketogenic diet, maybe lost weight. Now they're running faster because whatever benefit they got from that outweighed whatever potential performance they were going to lose, kind of on the top end. Whereas when this study came out, I felt like at least the kind of the the conversation around it was kind of like trying to maybe poke that a little bit to where it was like, okay, these guys are on essentially 50g of carbohydrate per day, and noticing no loss in performance with what would be probably a reasonably well structured VO2 max workout, which would be the ones where I would start to think you're going to run to some trouble with that. Um, my, uh, curiosity with this stuff is always I want to see it in an actual training program. So, like, and they're working with what they can as the researchers because there's only so much you can do. But like, I always wonder when you have, like, these single workout sessions that are spread out by like a week. Plus the way I look at it is if you put me on a strict ketogenic diet, I can go and just crush a 400 meter repeat workout. But if I had to reproduce that workout 2 or 3 times in like a 5 to 7 day period, I'm going to start noticing it. In subsequent workouts in terms of kind of how my performance goes. So I'm always when I see studies that have like no performance dip and it's a single session or multiple sessions, but spread out with a lot of time in between, I'm just like, I need to see those on like hard, easy, hard structure or like really close proximity before I'm really looking to kind of go or consider going down to 50g for sure. But I'm curious what your thoughts are with some of that. Yeah, that was a very interesting study. I think it was a good maybe like a proof of concept in like, like you said, I think I had the same not necessarily like the criticisms, but the same. Um, you know, I want to see something maybe longer in duration. That's kind of always like the initial nitpick about everybody. Well, no longer than a week longer, you know, they would have, uh, seen the decrements in performance or whatever. But yeah, I mean, I think it was cool to see at least the preserved performance they did that, like you said, they I think it was the six times 800 meter repeated sprints. And then they did the mile time trial. So like you said, I think that and you also brought up something on maybe a couple other podcasts where you were talking about the study. And I think it's important to look at like Cato, how would it fit into a training regimen where you're like extending this out over, you know, months to even like years where training quality might actually be compromised because I don't think there were a ton of details maybe on, like, the training regimen that they were doing during the study. But it's like, you know, these guys were training pretty, pretty hard. I think 50km a week is like what they were running. So let's, you know, a decent amount of volume and stuff. But, um, I think it's important to, you know, try to think about things like, you know, if this was another month longer, are they able to maintain their training quality? And then how is that going to affect the sprint ability or whatever? Um, I also feel like, like you said, six by 800 in a mile, you can kind of gut that out, you know, with just the ketogenic approach. And, you know, could you do that tomorrow? Could you do that if you had to do the same thing, you know, even in like U1 an hour or so, like what's your recovery capacity like? So I had, you know, some of the similar, um, similar criticisms of that study and thinking about it. But what stuck out, I think to me, and maybe we can talk about this aside from the performance, but it almost was like a study that looked at two things. They wanted to look at the performance, I guess, but I think some of the interesting things with that study were the health parameters that stuck out with some of those athletes. So I think it's important to note that it was only ten. I think they had ten participants in that study. So it wasn't it wasn't a ton of, um, you know, participants in the study, but. I think it was a third of them. So 30%, three participants or whatever had pre-diabetic blood glucose readings, which was kind of surprising. You know, they were very fit. I think they have a view to Max of 60. They were 40 years old. So not like super, you know, super old or anything like that. Um, but they were so pretty young, healthy but prediabetic blood glucose levels, which were essentially reversed by the ketogenic diet, which I thought was, you know, kind of interesting. So I think it goes to show, it was kind of a wake up call that like, oh, just because you're fit, just because you're an athlete doesn't mean you're necessarily incredibly healthy. Um, that you're like in superior metabolic health while you might be in like, superior, uh, physical health for kind of like your age. So that was one of the things that stuck out to me. And if you're able, at that age, to maintain kind of your performance on the ketogenic diet, perhaps then the health, the metabolic benefits are kind of the not the sacrifice that, you know, it's like willing to make, but like something that people should consider doing because, um, if you're training and eating, you know, what was it on the high carb diet they were eating? I think 380g of carbohydrates per day. So if you're on, you know, a high carb diet for performance, but it's not really boosting your performance that much at that age and at that kind of level of, um, at that level of competition, if it's not boosting it that much over ketogenic diet, then maybe it's not like a sacrifice worth making if you're quote unquote pre-diabetic. Um, but the glycemic control improvements during that were, I think, one of the interesting things, um, that were. An important part of the discussion along with the training variables. Yeah. And I think another topic we'll get into a bit here is like if that would pan out to extrapolate to the wider population of essentially 30% endurance athletes on a high carbohydrate diet are going to be in a prediabetic range nutritionally. Uh, well, and I should also like the participants to maintain or even lose a little weight too. So it was like that was in the presence. It wasn't like they were overeating and driving that from just excessive consumption. So it was actually pretty compelling in my mind in terms of like, I would have never guessed 30% were going to test at an energy stable or energy reduced, um, uh, scenario like that. So, but yeah, if that would extrapolate out, then essentially we'd be looking at like 30% of the population. Who's going to put in what I would consider like for, for the average person, a pretty solid training structure, 40 miles, I think somewhere in that neighborhood, uh, would want to consider their dietary input of what they want to do if they want to follow the more standard kind of moderate to high carbohydrate approach, or if that's going to actually be something that they should be concerned with. Um, and what's actually driving it to like, are those people pre-diabetic without running? I wonder if they are not if there's something that there's like a, some sort of like a interplay between the running and the carbohydrates or if they're, if that's just if they'd be pre-diabetic anyway, with a moderate carbohydrate diet, energy controlled at like less activity or different sport altogether, maybe if they did strength work they would have had no issues and it was just a running. Wasn't their like best health or health marker for what they should be doing with their active hours. Yeah for sure. We didn't, you know, have a lot of uh, information about them like what their athletic history was like because they were like 40. So were they, were they lifetime athletes? Did they pick up running like later on in age? So, um, I would assume, given that they were pretty talented and they had like a pretty high VO2 max that they probably were like lifelong endurance athletes. But, um, you know, maybe that's somewhere like in the supplementary materials that I missed. But yeah. Um, it's also interesting though. That study, I think, was almost like the two extremes. You know, like you said, I think there's a difference between low carb for endurance performance, like, which I think is like something you practice versus strict keto. I mean, less than 50g of carbohydrates a day is like, you know, that's the classic definition of like keto. So it's like, why do we have to. And then the high carb arm in that study was 380, which, yeah, you know, I most days I don't consider myself low carb, but most days I don't probably eat 400g of carbohydrates in a day. So like what the middle looks like, can we, can we have good blood glucose control while also maximizing performance on 150g of carbs per day? Like, I think that could probably be the case. Like, you don't need to be eating 400, 500, 600g of carbs a day. Especially, I think, given what they were doing for training. I mean 400 carbs a day for, you know what, 50km a week? That's like 30 ish miles of running. It's not it's not a ton of running that they're doing, but it's a decent amount. So it's like questioning whether you need that much, whether the high carb arm was I think I'm sure they designed it to be like, you know, on both different sides of the spectrum, opposite ends of the spectrum. It would have been cool, like in a perfect world, if they had all the resources to study, like the whole spectrum from high carb to strict keto and see, like, is there like a breaking point where you get below a certain amount? Or maybe it would be a percentage or gram total based on lifestyle factors that okay, now you're no longer or where's the spot you where you break free from pre-diabetic. And now if you just maintain here, you're fine. But yeah, unfortunately we kind of have to, like you said, two polar ends. But yeah, my guess is somewhere between strict keto and high carb is a safe spot. And it wouldn't probably have to be strict. Um, but yeah, it's interesting. So I guess, uh, I think it was, um. Guy. When I had him on the podcast, you said that there was maybe some follow up studies to that one that they have in the works, so it'll be interesting to see what they do with the results from this and kind of build from it. Yeah, hopefully they do something everybody always wants to see like studies in females because it's always typically, you know, initially they just get like males who are easier to recruit apparently. But um, doing the study in males. But I think something else interesting about that study was just like, what's like the fat oxidation measures that they, that they had. I mean, Nick was posting and, you know, we don't know what other labs like around the world and stuff. I measured. But he was posting a couple tweets about how some of the highest fat oxidation, um, rates that were ever measured, uh, in that study. So like 1.86g or something per, per minute, I think was what some of the guys hit during the repeated sprints. Um, and I know, I know, you were part of, like, the faster study and, you know, I haven't. I haven't read that study in a while, but I'm not sure what the fat ox rates during that study look like during the exercise. But I mean, the fact that some of those dudes, even the guys who were pre-diabetic, um, they responded actually most to like the low carb diet. So he even said or in the study, they said, you know, the guys who had the highest blood glucose levels responded best to that low carbohydrate diet, and they had some of the highest fat oxidation rate. So it seemed that like we always talk about reversing diabetes or reversing prediabetes, it's like they were heavily responsive to that low carb diet. And then the fat ox rates during exercise exceed even 85% of VO2 max, which kind of goes against something like the classic exercise metabolism stuff, even they're like above 85%, uh, VO2 max fat oxidation is supposed to just shut off. Yeah, yeah. Um, and these guys were maximizing their fat oxidation at like over 85% VO2 max. So kind of shifts the way I think we think about. Low carb performance. So even independent of what you and I were talking about at the onset of this study, talking about the study where we were talking about the performance during the mile or during the repeated sprints, those are important. But, you know, showing that we can keep oxidizing fat at like over 85% of you to max is kind of important because I think it at least lends a theory to the fact that, oh, maybe ketogenic diets or even low carb diets can support kind of this higher at least intensity like exercise. I think that's kind of cool and reassuring for people like yourself or anybody who's trying to like, do low carb and or even experiment with low carb for performance. Yeah, we're not totally shooting ourselves in the foot. Exactly. Exactly. So with the faster study, I think the peak fat ox for those the average was 1.53g per minute. I just remember that because mine was 1.56, and I remember I was like just a hair above the average. And that was ten low low carbs and ten high carbs. The parameters there were 10% carbohydrate intake. So in theory you're working with ultramarathon runners. So 10% could exceed 50g. So maybe that would be why those guys were driving higher because they were strictly sticking to 50g. But um, but yeah, I mean it's like it's another part to where on the other side of that is just like, how high do you really need your fat oxidation rates to be? And like from a I mean, you can look at this through a few different lenses, but from for me from a performance standpoint, like I'm interested in that because like if I know the intensity I'm going to race at and I know where my fat oxidation rates are along that spectrum, I can kind of basically predict what I'm going to need from a fueling standpoint. So like when I run my fastest 100 miler, I actually used that data and I was like, okay, at. At my 100 mile intensity. Based on this fat ox test, I'm going to be burning like 80 to 90% fat, 10 to 20% carbohydrate. So then at that point, I'm looking at it. Nine miles per hour by 801,000 calories per hour is going to be the workout. But then it's like, okay, you can run the numbers on that. You can actually get within range of, you know, at least, like where there is a spot where I can safely assume there's not going to be a glycogen issue going on here. And I pinned that to like 40g is like, if I get 40g per hour in at those fat ox rates, there's just no way I'm going to be dipping far enough in. Uh, so like, I find that stuff interesting because we also have on the other side of the spectrum right now, a lot of gut training, research and information where I, I actually can't help but laugh because it's kind of like this scenario where, like the last decade or so, you had kind of the low carb ketogenic movement and they're saying like, you know, leaning on a lot of anecdotes, some research, and just trying to kind of like flip this, this, the script to some narrative. And, you know, you get the people who are like gung ho about it, obviously, like they see one study and they're gonna look at everything that's good about it. And then you get the people who are critics, they're gonna look at everything that's bad about it or what did they miss? And now you have like the gut training, which is the total opposite end of the spectrum. So you get the same exact thing. It's like this isn't really proven yet either. But now we have a group of people who are like, let's get 120 plus grams per hour in, and then another group that's just getting as skeptical as possible about the health ramifications. And just like, do you actually need that much? What value does that actually provide? And we kind of have that side of the spectrum kind of flaring up now too. So it's kind of an interesting time for endurance sports and fueling. Yeah, it really is. I know I was reading um, a couple of the studies. There is not a lot like you said regarding the gut training, but I was reading some of the studies and then I know Alex Hutchinson had posted a few blog posts I was reading outside online about just the gut training and stuff, and the popularity of like 100, 120 is like what athletes are trying. He's like, they're trying to eat as many carbs as possible now, basically, like during the race and shove as many as you can in. So it's interesting. And I mean, gut training does seem to work. Um, I personally haven't done a lot of it because at this stage of my running career, I haven't done anything exceeding even a marathon. So it's like, you know, something to experiment with, like longer distances. But yeah, I mean, there's definitely good evidence that I don't think that you can completely diminish. It almost seems like you're just tolerating a bit more GI like, less GI distress versus like you're going to eliminate GI distress with gut training. I mean, if you're trying to eat 100, 120g of carbs per hour, you're going to have some, like gastrointestinal distress, I think, um, there was, I think a study where they did, um, it was like an hour long run, and they did 90. It was just 90 per hour, which is still a pretty decent amount, um, 90 per hour. And then they trained them for a month. And so they were still experiencing GI symptoms, but they weren't as severe. So I think, you know, perhaps longer training, gut, uh, gut training study might have produced less GI symptoms. But, I mean, at some point I read somewhere they were like an ultramarathon. At some point it just turns into, like, an eating competition. Like who can just, like, stomach the most and, like, fuel their bodies to do that. So, um, but it's interesting and I think that there are I think eventually we'll begin to start seeing these formulations where they're going to mix carbohydrates for certain things to try to like, either enhance their absorption or enhance their ability to, you know, maybe the body's ability to utilize carbohydrates to try to, like, fit them in, I guess. I mean, there definitely has to be some sort of limit to that. But, um, it'll be interesting to see what kind of performance response to it, because I think that there's an assumption that, like, more carbs is going to make you run faster or be able to go longer. But I definitely think there's a point where it's like either diminishing returns, you're eating too many carbohydrates, and it's just going to lead to more GI distress or like. It's just, you know, what's the difference between 100 to 120? Can your body even absorb that many carbohydrates and use that many carbohydrates? Um, and like you said, depending on the exercise intensity, I mean, unless you're maxing out redlining, you know, you're not going to be using 100% carbohydrates. So if I'm eating 90g of carbs per hour, but I'm at 85%, but I'm still oxidizing a lot of fat, like, well, what's the point of shoving all these carbs in there? Do you even, like, need that? So, um, and you mentioned something a while ago that I've had this thought about or I've been thinking about this concept a lot. Like, everybody always talks about the wall and like the marathon, you hit the wall because like, oh, our body has about, you know, 22,200, 2400 stored kcal worth of, of glycogen. So marathons, 26 miles, you run 20 miles, you burn 100 K cals, then you bonk because you run out of glycogen. But it's like that concept always seemed flawed to me. And based on what we know now, like it is flawed because you and I have talked about this a lot, where you're never you're never glycogen depleted. That's dead. You never run out of all. You would be dead if you ran out of all your glycogen. So I think it's like 62% once you get down to about like 62% of your glycogen is kind of where your body's going to start to bonk because it's like a preservation it's a preservation mechanism at that point, like your brain, your brain needs, you know, the blood glucose. So your body's not going to let you dip, dip below that. Um, but even then, there's just the idea of hitting the wall. Never made sense. Because even if you were using I mean, you're not using 100% glycogen for that entire 20 miles, you're going to be using some fat depending on your level of fat oxidation or fat adaptation. Mhm. So it just kind of never made sense. And I think um, just going back to like the gut training thing and how much, how many carbs can you eat. It's a balance. And like doing equations, you know you don't have to go as extreme as you might in calculating this many grams per hour based on my fat ox rate. You know that data. So it's pretty cool. But, um, you know, I mean, it'd be easy for people to see, like, at what intensity? What's the ratio that you're burning and, like, you can do these calculations. Um, but it's an interesting kind of movement, as you mentioned. Uh, maybe towards. Carbohydrate pro carbohydrate approach now. Yeah. And where I think it gets really interesting is when you look at the different populations. So if you take or where I think people kind of get confused as like if you take someone who's just a, like a world class endurance athlete, their work output at like their aerobic threshold is insane. Like if you look at if you just look at, I think Lance Armstrong was just on Peter Taylor's podcast. I don't know if you listened to that or not, but he was talking about how much Watts he was producing at his peak. And it's just an insane amount. Yeah. So like when you think about it, when you get to that degree where you got these athletes that are able to, at a sustainable intensity, produce outputs of like north of a thousand calories an hour and you know, they're up to and beyond their aerobic threshold. And if we take a moderate high carb athlete, we're probably a 5050 split around aerobic threshold. So you can get scenarios where you might need 5 or 600 calories with carbohydrates to sustain that activity for a significant amount of time. Once you start getting to that 62% muscle glycogen point. So. To some degree it is a math equation, but in order to run it properly, you kind of know your fat oxidation rates. So I always think that's like the next interesting piece of the puzzle is like, um, you know, maybe the value add for an endurance athlete, just go and get a metabolic heart test done and find out where that is. And if you don't change anything drastically with your diet, then you can probably safely assume what you're going to need. And if you extrapolate it out far enough, you can you can know like, well, if it's a short race, I don't really have to worry about glycogen depletion to a large degree if it is, you know, an ultramarathon or something like that, maybe you do. Um, and then it's just to what degree are you someone like myself who can get by on like 40g because of the high fat ox rates, or are you, like, some of these guys I'm actually having? Um, Hayden Hawkes just won the Black Hand and Hunter K, which is one of the most competitive Hunter K's in the world right now. And, uh, he released his, uh, inner race fueling and hydration. There's some really interesting stuff in there. I think he was 109g of carbohydrate per hour. Uh, but the thing that actually really surprised me was he only drank less than 500ml of fluid per hour for 7.5 hours, so. He was on the low end. It wasn't super hot. It was pretty nice temperatures I think, for running, but I thought that was pretty low, especially when you consider how much carbohydrate was taken in because like my understanding is, the more carbs you take in, the more fluid you probably need to go along with it. So I'm going to ask him about that. If there was something that I missed in that data spreadsheet. But anyway, it was like, you know, at the intensity he was running with, uh, I assume he's on a high carbohydrate diet. I know he's been into, like the gut training stuff. So I want to talk to him about that in terms of just like how he came up with that number, if that was just what I ended up playing out on the day, or if he was specifically targeting that just north of 100g, uh, and dig in because, um, we have, uh, other ultra runners who are doing that now too. The most interesting one is maybe Kilian Jornet, who the reason he's more interesting to me is because he doesn't do gut training. He just goes with 100g though on race day, for he there was a breakdown of his fueling for um, uh, what was it, Utmb Ultra Trail, Mont Blanc. And he was like 100g per hour for around 19 hours. So it's like that's where I start to get curious because I, I mean, I could do no gut training and it could get away with 100g for an hour or for two hours without having any noticeable issues. But if I had to do that for 19 hours in a row, I'm not. I'm gonna have to do some gut training if I want to do that. Sure. But he doesn't, I guess. I guess he actually kind of almost intentionally fuels very minimally in training and does these really long sessions with very little fuel and then on race day goes hyper high on that. So yeah, some I mean we obviously know he's like a freak of nature, but like some people I think that just I think that all goes in just like points out the importance of doing like experiments yourself and like individual individual individual variability and like your physiology, I mean, somebody you might be a higher fat burner than another ultra guy who's going to just be like smashing the carbs during an ultra, you know, marathon. And so like. Like you said, people can go and if they're interested, you can go and see what you're like. Fat oxidation and carbohydrate oxidation rates are during a test. And like to use that to inform your training. But it's like yeah, there are hydration guidelines. There are carbohydrate guidelines for athletes. But like so that's you know for on average that's going to work for like most athletes it might not work for you. It might not work for everybody. Um, some people don't like to eat anything, you know, during or before a race. And it's like you're gonna have to figure out a way to, to kind of bypass that. But, um, yeah, I mean, it's interesting that everybody can respond differently. And doing no gut training and being able to tolerate that. I mean, it's just, you know, maybe you just got he just got lucky with that. Uh, yeah. Being able to do that I mean, I'm, I say lucky, but he obviously is like doing incredible, like, training runs. And I'm sure there's something to what he's doing that allows him to not have to gut train. But you know, who knows what that might be. Yeah, yeah. You want to be careful with the outliers in terms of how you structure your stuff, which is also interesting because when you look at just I mean, the most basic data that has kind of gotten pushed around in the endurance world for a while is like 90g per hour, where you have like, and this is, I guess been altered to some degree, but originally it was like 60g, 30g from a, um, like a maltodextrin to a, uh, fructose spread. So you can kind of have the pathways allow you to get 90, whereas by themselves you'd only be able to do you'd have to do less than that. Whereas now I think you can technically do more fructose without having to worry about it. But anyway, it was like. You know, 90g is an average. So are there people that can do 120 and absorb it? Probably other people can only do 60. Yeah, that's probably also true. So at a certain point when you get like Tour de France athletes, it's probably going to start selecting for that to some degree, where everything lines up. By the time you find yourself winning the tour de France or competing at the tour de France. So maybe the majority of those guys are just able to absorb a higher amount of carbohydrate than what we would expect, and therefore, getting up to those 120 plus grams is going to be beneficial. Uh who knows? Yeah. That's interesting. Like eventually, are we going to get to a point where, like the ability to win a race is just going to come down to like, who can, who can fuel the most and who can tolerate the most? I mean, you think that it would eventually maybe like, get to that point where, you know, everybody's lining up at the line, everybody's got a freaking super high VO2 max. Everybody has the latest technology in the super shoes. Everybody has, you know, the optimal, like wind resistance or, you know, the aerodynamic clothing and stuff. It's like we're all on a level playing field. Everybody has the latest in nutrition. Everybody has the latest in training. It's like when it comes to race day, like is it just going to be like, who can absorb and who can like fuel the best during the race? Like, is it just going to become like an F1 race where the pit stops are just like the most important aspect where you just got to fuel yourself and get to the line. I mean, it's kind of interesting and like, are the best athletes, guys like Kipchoge, I mean, is he able? He's obviously a incredibly talented runner, but like something about him makes him special to like break that two hour marathon barrier. Is it because he's able to, you know, take in 120g per minute because like that might be required to break the two hour marathon barrier? Um, I think there was there was a recent study and I didn't read it, but I was reading a synopsis of it where they, they ran models basically about like what elite athletes would have to eat to break the two hour marathon barrier. And it was something in the range of like 100, 120. So that's basically saying like. If you can't, if you can't take that in during your marathon, then you have no shot at breaking the two hour marathon barrier because that's just like the fuel required. You're required to do it. Yeah, yeah. So the listeners can just probably assume they're not breaking a two hour marathon. Yeah, I guess so. Man two bad. Yeah. Broken dreams for me, I guess. And everyone else is listening. Yeah. The other interesting side of just kind of like running those numbers too, is when you step away from the elite athletes and you think of like, what is the output that the a normal average person training for a marathon is going to produce, where I think is where you we're going to see the backlash of the gut training stuff and the high fueling strategies because it's like, yeah, you get someone like Kipchoge and some of these guys who are well north of a thousand calories per hours of work and maybe need that when they're following a moderate, high carbohydrate diet. But then you take the average person who they might be getting, they might be much closer to say like six 700 calories per hour. So for them, it's like the amount of energy output they're doing per hour may only be the carbohydrate side of the elite athlete from a total energy. So for them, it's like they don't need to be going anywhere near that in order to meet the demands of the job. So like. How much more digestive issues are we going to get with that population versus the highly tuned? Like stress tested over and over again in training elite athletes where they know what their body is probably going to do with the inputs they're giving it. Yeah. The pipeline from like the elite athletes down to just your, you know, weekend warriors or whatever is always interesting. And that's where the criticism, you know, everybody loves to criticize Gatorade. It's like, oh, you know, you need Gatorade to fuel. You're like five K and stuff like that. Well it's like it wasn't created for that. I mean, I know they're marketing for anybody who does like sports, but yeah, it is interesting. I'm sure there will be backlash because you're going to get the average person thinking they need to, you know, take in 100, 120g per hour when they don't. So I think that's where the importance of like, I don't know, just the communication and things, science communication and and things like that come into play. Yeah. And throw in 30% pre-diabetic and we got a health emergency on our hands. Yeah I know we gotta find a balance somewhere. We're like swinging to the extremes, you know? Yeah. It is interesting, I wonder how much improvements and wearables and stuff is going to help, like push this stuff too. So like, I mean continuous glucose monitors have been on the market for a while. I think they still need work in terms of how well they predict what you would want to do during an endurance race, but we're going to see continuous ketone monitors. I think those already exist. They just haven't hit the, the, the mainstream or the public market yet. But I mean, I can see a scenario where like, you have that data and it's accurate enough in a quick enough amount of time where, you know, like your lactate, you know, your blood glucose, you know, your, your ketones and your fueling based on the numbers that are showing up on that, or you're stressing it in training with those numbers, and then you're putting together your plan for race day that you do maybe a little less, um, by the watch or by the wearable, but you just know from all the data you've collected in training what your needs are going to be, at what frequency and stuff. Uh, I think that's going to be really interesting, too. Yeah. I mean, and all that. I mean, a lot of that stuff is available, like for people to do, which is the coolest thing now because it's like, you don't, you don't, like, really have to guess anymore. I mean, even regarding like you said, there's, you know, continuous ketone, continuous lactate monitors, eventually those are obviously going to become a thing. Just kind of like you can get a CGM commercially pretty much available now. Um, and then, you know, going to something like sweat, you can go get a sweat test to determine your sodium and potassium excretion. So there you can then figure out how much electrolytes you need, how much you know, water intake you need. Obviously that will change. You know, if you do a sweat test in a humid environment, it's going to be different. But nonetheless, you can determine what your hydration needs are. I mean, you can really quantify even if you're not like a professional athlete, if you're just doing like road races on the weekend, like you can quantify what you need, you can quantify how it's impacting your body. So I think we're in a super cool way. A time period to be like an athlete or just to be like a, to be a metabolic athlete, or like a regular athlete, or just somebody concerned with their health because the wearables are allowing you to do that. But yeah, I mean, just how cool would it be to, you know, you have your iPhone in front of you or something like that, or, um, some sort of thing on your watch, obviously would be easier if you were running and it just tells you levels of everything, like what's going on during the run. I mean, you literally don't have to guess about anything. It'll tell you when to fuel, you know, how many carbs you need at this time. It'll be a projection screen in front of you. Yeah, because you'll be wearing your Apple Vision Pro, so you'll be able to see, like all your health metrics in front of you. Blood glucose is going down from taking 12 g of carbohydrate now. No. Yeah. Take ten grams of ketones. Now we joke but man it's I mean it's coming eventually. Yeah. Huh. Yeah. It's taken a lot of the guesswork out, which I mean, I've been running long enough where sometimes I wonder, like, maybe it would be better without that, but then it's also like, what are you going to do about it? Yeah. And yeah, in a way it's like the over over optimization in paralysis by analysis type of thing where like, yeah, when, when I was, you know, coming up and just starting running and I just probably even barely had a GPS watch, just like a time watch. I mean, running was certainly more fun. I mean, it's fun now because I have all the data, my, you know, cadence rate, my stride rate. It's like stride length, all that kind of stuff. But. So it's fun to see, but you can definitely get kind of worn down in it. And for something like a race, I can imagine. I mean, you know, when I do a race, I wear my watch. I rarely ever look at it. If, you know, if I'm doing. Um, and I don't put my heart rate monitor on, I'm not looking at my heart rate during the race. But I imagine that there are people out there who certainly do that. They're like looking at their heart rate during the race, trying to, you know, determine what the intensity they're at. I think all of that contributes to cognitive load during a race and adding more variables like glucose or ketones or lactate or whatever would only just contribute more to that. So it could be a good thing. But you want your coach who is on the sidelines to be, you know, have a little wire in your ear or something telling you about that versus you thinking about that during the race. Because I think that more data isn't isn't always better. And sometimes you just need to like, disconnect and just go out there and run or just go out there and race. Yeah, I think that's certainly important. It's a great point. I had a coaching client who was targeting the 24 hour, and she had done a few of them, so was looking to kind of take another step forward and just got really dialed with her crew where she had like a spreadsheet and all the data put in there. And we had a conversation kind of before her race. And, you know, she's getting nervous like everyone does before a race. And I was like, you know what? You you really need to do is you need to stop worrying about the spreadsheet and what's on it and just commit to one thing, and that's do what your crew tells you to do. Don't worry about whether you've done 17oz of this or one packet of that. Just don't ignore your crew and make sure the crew has a set of non-negotiables where they're like, this is what you need to have. You can't say no to this. These are options. So if you say yes, we'll give it to you. If you say no, we're not going to push it on you or anything like that. So then she goes into that event, all she has to do is run and do what she's told. So those are the two things she needs to do is run the right pace. So don't go too fast. Right? It's 24 hours, so don't go too fast, too early. And then take what your crew gives you and just know that that's the plan that you drew out and that we know is going to work. So she ended up going way further than she had prior. And it was I think a lot of it had to do with that. She, like you said, you removed a huge, cognitively like detailed thing and removed that from her mental energy so she could just kind of focus. Yeah. You don't want to be thinking about anything other than just like putting one foot in front of the other. So like having a team for sure is like definitely a benefit, especially over something like 24 hours. You know, if it's like a half marathon or something, you know, you can be thinking about stuff and it might not contribute that much to it. But over 24 hours where you're, I'm assuming, like not sleeping or anything like that, it's just like you're, you know, you have to preserve literally every last calorie. And so you don't want your brain doing it. Yeah, doing any more than it has to. Yeah. Speaking of half marathons, you're coming off of a half marathon PB not too long ago at Houston. Yeah Houston ran 109 34. So that was almost like a minute PR super happy about it. Um, I had to take some time off after dealing with injury. But we'll be running up like in the next week or so. But yeah, I was stoked about that. Um. It had been, you know, I think my, the PR that I had set before then was it wasn't 110 and that was from like seven or so years ago. So I was obviously, you know, much younger. I was like 23, I'm 30 now, so I'm not, you know, old or anything like that, but, you know, seven years ago and it's funny because I was when I was preparing like for this half marathon and even others that I've run, you kind of like look back in your training logs in, I went to Strava and just typed in the name of the marathon where the half marathon where I ran that PR and I'm like, man, 522 pays for like 13 miles. I'm like, am I ever going to run that again? It's like, it's just crazy how you know, you can look back on past performances and they seem like very daunting. But I mean, the training up until then had been really good. And I just think that with age and kind of I wasn't as smart of a runner then. I mean, at 23, it was kind of just like running as much as I could. Yeah. And see how fast I can run. And now I'm like, you know, I think that I can run faster than I did, you know, whether it was in college or like those few years post collegiately just because I'm like, you're much smarter about training, smarter about nutrition, smarter about racing, like. You know. Yes, a little bit older, but like, I don't know, I think that being being more knowledgeable about training has like led to a lot of improvements and not only about how to train harder, but like sometimes about how to train less hard, doing the right stuff at the right to the right stuff at the right time, allowing yourself to recover. Um, but I think one of the things, honestly, that has contributed a lot to fitness and, you know, that's not running related has just been like learning to embrace the bike. Yeah, yeah, I follow a lot of guys on Twitter too who will or ex I guess we're calling it now, um, who just talk a lot about, you know, cross training and the importance of cycling for runners. And even so, in the past, like five or so years, man, I've been just doing probably more volume on the bike than I have running. Sometimes it's like a half and half split. So say like a total training week might be 14-15 hours. It's typically evenly split like seven and a half on the bike, seven and a half running or something like that. But that's allowed, I think, major improvements in fitness, because, you know, what's different from the bike running is the impact. And impact is actually something that I've had to learn to kind of moderate over the years because I've dealt with some, some bone stress injuries. Um, and so, you know, I'm not, you know, for the time being, not able to run necessarily like, you know, 70, 80, 90 mile weeks. So just replace that with non impact bike workouts. But one of the neat things about it and that I've kind of integrated in is a little bit higher intensity on the bike. You know you can't go out and run your quote unquote threshold pace every day or you're going to get injured. But when you're on the bike, you can do something a little closer to that threshold. You obviously don't want to do it every day, but you can kind of go much harder on the bike. I don't necessarily have to stay in zone two on the bike every day. I can do 1 or 2 interval threshold sessions on the bike, like a week. So keep that kind of aerobic fitness up and use the running to kind of build, you know, obviously that running specific strength and do running specific intervals. But um, I think that's definitely contributed a bit to at least that half marathon PR um, a lot of other things. Obviously the running training was good, but embracing cross training, um, I know like Parker Vallabh cross training has become like the popular thing. Everybody's everybody's saying, oh you don't you only have to run three days a week and the NCAA champ. But I'm like, one of the things that I don't think people realize is how much cross training that she's like, actually doing. I'm like a couple hours a day, a couple hours a day, probably on whatever modality that she's using for it. But it's like it's not just a cross train, like, oh, let's, let's hop on the bike and ride around campus. It's like you're, you know, 3 or 4 hours a day, right? Cross training, probably four times as much as you would if you were running. So like, if you're gonna cross during. Yeah, it can help improve your running fitness. Um, but, uh, yeah, you got to kind of do a lot of it. Um, yeah. Yeah, it is interesting. She's definitely an extreme on the cross training side of things, but clearly there's a path forward for it. Um, or she's just. Way better than she actually is. And it's like she's going to blow us all out of the water. With what? She could be the best runner ever at some point in her life. But it is fun too. I never got around to looking to see what the reasoning for that was. Did she have an injury that caused, I think it was just kind of a and I and it, I don't know, this is kind of just like through the pipeline type of stuff, but I think it was like injury related stuff. Like, you know, if she ran more than like what she was doing, maybe that was like making her more prone to injury. So I think the cross training, well, I guess what I'm trying to say is like, I don't think the cross training and what people made it seem like was the cross training was like a, a deliberate scheme. Like we were like, oh, we're only going to run three days a week and we're going to cross train for I think the cross training was kind of born out of necessity. In a way it became. And so she's good. Maybe not because, well, she's good because of the cross training, but sort of like in spite of the fact that she cross trains a lot. Like it's just she would prefer to run probably seven days a week like all runners would. Yeah, but she's cross training a lot and she's incredibly talented. So, you know, she ends up being fast like she is. Yeah. I remember the first time I had heard about that particular scenario was at the NCAA championships, because I was here in Austin, and obviously she won the ten K at that. And it was that's when I first heard like, oh, she only runs like 15, 20 miles a week. And they said that. They said she had only been training 15 to 20 miles per week going in. So I'm like I hadn't been following that closely through the season. So I'm like, oh, well, she's definitely not at peak form. And then she goes and blows everyone away and it's like, okay, apparently that worked. 1s Yeah. And it's funny because like, it can almost be or at least with uh, going back to like the, the race in Houston or whatever the week before that. So I was injured like during the race at Houston, but I had decided to do it anyway because I'm like, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna make it worse. And I'm like, kick ass shape. So I'm just gonna go in and run this race. But. The week beforehand, I was like, really trying not to injure myself even more. So I was doing a little bit less on the bike, but still biking and like very little running. But it was almost like a forced taper in a way. So it was like I went into that race like super fresh, I think. So it was kind of, you know, the injury made, uh, forced the taper a little bit. But so I wonder, like with, you know, whether it's Parker or other runners who are doing a lot of cross training, it's like you might save your legs a little bit, like when you're doing the running, get quality work in, like do some quality sessions and, you know, then save your legs. Don't do your slower zone two. Or just like your base aerobic sessions running like switching it to cross training and like to see how it works. I mean it's kind of interesting. Yeah, yeah. See more. I don't know if we'll see more athletes kind of embracing that. Or again, most runners just want to run, myself included. Like I don't want to spend two hours on the bike a day. I've learned to kind of enjoy it, but I would rather be outside running, obviously. Yeah. When I was injured this summer I could do a lot but not run. Um, like this sacral stress fracture. So it was like four weeks of like no impact based stuff. But I could push and pull a sled, I could bike, I could even do some resistance training if I wanted to. After like the second week and in the thick of it, I was like, I'm going to keep a lot of this stuff around. But then once I got healthy it's like I started phasing that stuff out and slowly moved to next to nothing. I kept a lot of the strength work around that's I've probably been more consistent and deliberate with strength work the last almost year now than I ever have. And I think that's just the reality of maybe being 38. It's like it's no, it's no longer something where it's like it's kind of fun to go to the strength, do strength work every once in a while. But now it's like, yeah, you better do it every day. Not optional. Yeah, for sure. For sure. When you do your strength training. So are you doing it every day or are you doing like a couple a couple more like heavier sessions per week. So I'm curious how you do it because, you know, I'm sure you're a bit like me. Um, and maybe most runners who, like, I don't necessarily like to strength train. I don't necessarily like to lift weights. If you catch me on the right day, in the right mood, right, I might be, uh, I might be, like, pumped to go to the gym, but generally I'm just like, ah, this is kind of. It's kind of boring. I mean, it's not it's not as like, uh, mentally like stimulating as, like, running is. So I just don't like to do it. It's almost kind of like the, uh, just like a chore to do. Um, so I've, I've tried to find ways recently to like to integrate strength training, but doing it more frequently seems to be better for me. So, like what I've been doing lately is three days a week, I'll do like a probably 20 ish, maybe 30 maybe minute max circuit of I'll just pick like 3 to 4 exercises, do them at the house. I have some kettlebells. I have some general stuff and I'll kind of do that. That to me seems to be a better way to do it. I could do some more, like heavy stuff and actually go to the gym and do some like heavy lifts. I think that would be beneficial. But, um. In terms of just integrating it, frequency for me has been better versus just saying, oh, I'm going to go to the gym now for an hour and an hour and a half and like, do these long drawn out sessions. So I'm curious how you like strength. Uh, yeah. Yeah, I should clarify on that because it's not. It's every day, but it's not like what you would imagine when you think about strength training every day. So the way I look at it is I've got like daily drills or daily exercise and those are things I'm going to aim for every day. I'll miss a day every once in a while, but I'm usually pretty consistent. And that's going to be just a series of, uh, kind of just like kind of mechanical motions, more or less where I'm kind of just, I'm not really doing any weight bearing for the most part with it. But I'm going to go through what I'm doing like leg swings, forward squats, um, Bulgarian split squats, unweighted some box steps and maybe just like a set and I'm just going to run through like that circuit. It's probably like maybe ten, 15 minutes tops. Uh, and then I'm going to that's, that's going to be like baseline, like just drills essentially. And then from there I'll do like one lower body session that is like muscular endurance based. So like I'll do uh, like alternate leg jump squats, jump squats. Um, forward lunges. Um, what's the other one that I have in there? Uh. 2s And you might have my program in front of me. I'll do it. Uh, did I say box steps, I think. Yeah, box steps is the other one. So that's like the four. Like a four piece muscular endurance routine. That'll do. So it'll be like one more specific lower body day. That'll do. And then I'll do a more weighted one for the second lower body session for the week. And that'll be like hex bar deadlifts. I'll do weighted Bulgarian split squats. Um, some heavier kettlebell swing type stuff. Um, depending on the kind of how I'm, where I am in the training cycle. Like I might do some more weighted versions of those muscular endurance stuff where I'm trying to do more like one leg at a time. Since running's a single leg at a time. I try to transition to that for the most part versus doing the dual leg stuff. So like if I get on like a leg press or something like that, I'll do single leg leg press versus dual leg like press. Um, and then I'll like any other strength work I do is like non-law body specific. So I'll do a day where I'm doing core first kind of a focus, and then I'll usually like I'm the least consistent with this, but it's like upper body stuff maybe once per week. Yeah. So like when I and that would be like those two lower body drills and like 1 or 2 core upper body sessions per week. That would be like the most diligent I get. They'll be phases of the year where I'll maybe scale back to a single lower body session per week, um, when I'm kind of in the thick of things and it's like eventually you got to get around to like, positioning in a way that they don't interfere with your running workouts. And I always find, like when I'm really consistent with it, I'm usually a little more safe because you normalize the routine to a degree, whereas if you like, take an off season and you come back, it's all a sudden like one set or a third of the workout essentially is enough to make you saw the next day. Yeah, for sure. But no, I like the kind of small, everyday approach because it's like you're getting you feel good about it, like because you're getting like a stimulus every single day versus just like, oh, I do. I did, you know, two days per week this week for like an hour. But then on the other days I did nothing versus like, oh, today. You know, I did a lower body set and yesterday I did an upper body set. And you only have to spend ten, 15, 20 minutes on it. I think that's like an interesting approach that I think a lot of runners, um, could probably kind of take up. I certainly like that approach better too. And I like doing things. I'll typically try to do something every day, even if it's literally just doing some pull ups and push ups and whatnot. Like with stuff I have around the house, just to just because you're like, you're technically, you know, getting stronger. You're improving on something every day. Um, somebody I don't know who likes where the phrase originated, but like, they'll call it like greasing the grooves, like you said, doing just motions. Yeah. Even if it's not, even if it's not super heavy weights, you know, I'll have like a £25 kettlebell and maybe do just a couple sets of DLS throughout the day, or it's just like you move around the house. So one of the perks of working from home, you know, I just have kettlebells next to my desk, so. Oh, it's been 30 minutes. I'm gonna get up and do a set of kettlebell swings or something so that I can keep you, keep you active and, like, keep you, uh, doing some strength training. And it's also a little bit, like, mentally stimulating too. So it's all just been like a it's kind of been like a game because like you said, you unless you were you know, you are a full time professional athlete, but unless you are that or, you know, unless you are one like you only have a limited amount of time, it's like, yeah, training and running is going to come first kind of your main thing, but then it's like you try to fit the strength training in and you know, if you don't have time to go to the gym, then how can you how can you integrate strength training? Because it certainly is important and I can't neglect it as I have, I have neglected it in the past and like you said, once you get hit a certain age, you no longer can start to neglect it. It becomes a need to do versus an optional thing. When you first moved to Austin, you had a hamstring issue that you finally resolved, right? Yeah. The hamstring issue was so interesting. So I tore my hamstring probably three or so years ago and it wasn't even running. It wasn't even run. I mean, I heard it running, but it wasn't even like running where I tore it, I tweaked it, and then I was just like being an idiot in the gym one day and like, stretching really bad. And I just heard, like, a snap. And I just knew, like, oh, something's wrong. So that is a huge hamstring injury. Like kind of right, like proximal hamstring. I had that and I went to rehab for that and stuff like that. And it did get better. And obviously they want me to run again. But for probably two years I had just experienced something not like a debilitating pain, but going on runs, you'd feel it sitting down is when I would feel it the most, almost like what people will describe as proximal hamstring tendinopathy. So like you have an injury and it never goes away. Like, if I were sitting like this for an hour or so, you're just like, you feel this pain, like almost like your butt. Yeah, just a pain in your butt. So it had just been dealing with that for a long time. The pain didn't. Didn't really go away. I was doing like a ton of hamstring rehab, hamstring strengthening type of stuff and it just didn't go away. So we moved to Austin. I went to a place here called Run Lab. They have several different locations here because I wanted to see PT and just like to see what was up. Um, they did, you know, obviously something very comprehensive like running assessment, gait analysis, which I would recommend, like whether it's running a lab or not, everybody should do just to see where your inconsistencies are, where your imbalances are, like things to work on. But I went there, um, got a gait analysis, and they identified some things. Nothing necessarily, though, that would have been like contributing to the hamstring injury. So, you know, I went there for a couple months, did some peachy drills, but it was less about PT and they really reworked like my form kind of from the ground up. I mean, focusing on knee drive, focusing on kind of leaning forward a little bit more, focusing on increasing my cadence. And after working with them for probably 1 or 2 months or so, the hamstring pain just went away. And so I wasn't doing any hamstring rehab. So like my mindset had shifted towards, you know, for two years I have been just targeting this hamstring, like get stronger, get stronger, like to try to reduce this like the hamstring pain I've been having, but literally reworking my running form, it pretty much eliminated all of that pain. And so I was just like, damn. Like I was doing the wrong things. Like this whole time where I could have just focused on my running form. So, you know, shout out to the lab to help me. I know a lot of other people, um, I know a few other people who have actually gone there with some with some positive results. But yeah, and I think in general, not only has the hamstring thing kind of improved, but just like I credit that just reworking my running form to just getting better at running overall, I think in terms of like my efficiency and whatnot, like running is just easier. Um, so that was just a totally interesting experiment. And, you know, I know I don't know about you, but like, I had never really worked on my running form as a runner. I mean, even, like in high school, in college, like we would have drills and we would, we would do certain things. But I never really did a comprehensive thing like, let's fix or let's change your running form because it's kind of one of those if it's not broken, don't fix the thing. I mean, you don't you don't want to change anybody's running form too much unless they're like a really, really bad runner. They're really inefficient. Or you identify something that's like, oh, you keep getting injured because you, like, run like this. We need to change that. I mean, I had a pretty decent running form. Um. As or so I thought. But like, just like these small tweaks and just practicing these different cues every week, eventually the patterns just kind of get ingrained in your mind and like, oh, like I'm a totally different runner in the way I run now. And I think it's, you know, all for the better. So that was a totally interesting experience to kind of cure an injury, not through strengthening, but just through changing the way, the way that I run. Yeah. You change your form to the degree where now whatever load was getting placed on that hamstring gets reduced. Exactly. Yeah. It progresses by elimination more than it does by adding. So that's interesting. Yeah, yeah. Running's a goofy sport because it's like one of those things where we just assume we all know how to do it. And I think that's kind of the understanding a lot of times. And if you're doing other sports too, like non running, if it's not like cross-country or track, you're going to still do a lot of running. Like if you're soccer, if you're football or any of these basketball, any of these other sports, but they're not going to teach you running form for that. They're going to teach you the drills for the sport. They're going to teach you technique for the sport. But like if you just go for a run after that, you might just have a really, really wild form. Yeah. And never know it. Yeah. And a lot of people start running as probably one of the most participated in sports worldwide. Just because it's like people play sports, you know, up until their 20s and then you graduate college and it's like, well, unless you're doing rec sports, like a lot of people just run. But nobody's ever been taught to run. You just you just run. You start running, you walk faster, and then you start moving your arms like you run. But nobody, like, learns how to run. So it's like we need a maybe, I don't know, we need, like, a nationwide like program. Right. Let's do a running form technique. Yeah, 1s yeah. You know, I wanted to talk to you about, um, supplements too, in general, because I know you go deep into the supplements, both, like, where their value or lack of value is. And I'm sure, like, you get marketing with anything and it's always going to be. I would say like an overshoot in the value for the most part. So, um, yeah. Like so you're with, I guess, the let's start here. You moved to Austin because you started working for examine 2.0, right. Yeah. And we actually didn't move there because examine those. So examine is actually a remote based company. So, um, we moved to Austin actually for my wife's job. So we're here and I'm able to work just to examine. They coincide that we moved to Austin around the same time I started working for the examination. Oh, okay. Gotcha, gotcha. And the interesting thing about examine is, uh, it's essentially like in feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. It's like a subscription service where you sign up and then you have access to this database, and you and other researchers are essentially going through all of the evidence that talks about different supplements. And then I've got the the lifetime membership. So like I go on there from time to time when it's like when I see something like, you know, it's like anything you see, like this is the next great thing. You go there and you type it in. Let's find out exactly what the research says, because oftentimes the marketing is going to highlight the positive research, maybe not so much the negative research, and get an idea of like, what am I looking at from a value add with this versus not having it at all, or, or even just like the dosage too, because it's like I could go and say like, okay, caffeine is probably one of the most proven performance enhancing substances you can get probably scores about as high as anything. But like if I go and buy a product and they say, like, you're going to get this much improvement from the caffeine. And I look on the back of it, it's like, oh, there's ten grams of caffeine or milligrams of caffeine in here. And then you look at the research and it's like 3 to 6 mg/kg of body weights, the kind of the performance loading zone you get a lot of like I think, um, just a lot, a lot of gray area in the, in the marketing and in the kind of the public conversation around some of this stuff. So like having a tool where you can essentially plug it in and figure out, like. Have I done the things to make this applicable at all? Or maybe I don't even need to bother with that at any point. Is kind of an interesting concept. So obviously you don't take any funding because your subscription is based and that's how you get by without having any sort of um, industry funding, which would obviously make it a little more hard to trust you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of one of, one of the main things that we pride ourselves on at examining is like having no, no industry ties or anything like that. And, and that's not to say that we're, you know, against anybody who does, but as a company who's trying to provide the most unbiased evidence for like, what works and what doesn't, it's just kind of our duty, I guess it would say, to like to not have any ties or whatever. And if you went on site two, you would notice, like we don't talk about specific brands of supplements. So, you know, we're not going on there. You're not going to find anything on, say like athletic greens or I know you're a fan of, um, a certain brand of magnesium supplements, but we're not going to talk about those supplements specifically, but just magnesium in general. Right. So. What is kind of unique about our site? And I would mention that like we focus on supplements and examine came out of kind of examining supplements and saying which ones work. But with the 2.0 launch of exam and 2.0 and kind of update on the site, like we now cover different diets. So you can go on there, we'll have pages for intermittent fasting. We'll have pages for, um, the Mediterranean diet, the ketogenic diet, any diet you can kind of think of, the Dash diet, things like that. Um, certain, you know, exercise interventions. We have like a whole page on saunas. So kind of like if you're interested in more than supplements, like, we kind of take the same approach to interventions as we do supplements with things like with what works. But um, yeah, with the supplements, what's been cool kind of as a researcher, but also just as a user of the site as well as not only can you go to say, like you mentioned, caffeine, go to the caffeine page and say, oh, does caffeine work? It's kind of sorted by outcome. So if you're interested, you know, we can't. It's interesting to say, oh, does caffeine work? Well, what does it work for? I mean that's it's hard to say. Like, well yes, caffeine works, but does it work for, you know, uh, increasing VO2 max or are you interested in sleep? Well, obviously it doesn't work for sleep, but it might work for improving VO2 max or maximal strength or power output or something like that. So you can kind of go through the site and click on, you know, what outcome you're interested in. If you're interested in a specific condition like hypertension, we kind of have all these interactions like on the site. So it's kind of like this web of um, sorted by conditions, different diseases, different health goals, supplements and then the different outcomes. Um, so that's kind of just a, you know, a comprehensive database where you can kind of go and find information on any of those. But, um, it's been interesting as a researcher, you know, when I started working there, um, to. One of my main roles there is to update certain pages about supplements. So I'm basically just assigned like a supplement. So for instance, I might recently be working on a page for resveratrol, which is, you know, that molecule found in red wine that David Sinclair and everyone else has claimed, which promotes longevity in reverse aging and things like that. So I'm doing this whole update on like there was a virtual page and like what we do is focus on meta analyses, which are studies where you quote unquote a study of studies. So you'll read a paper and they'll compile evidence from any randomized controlled trial on resveratrol. They'll lump together all the results and basically give an outcome saying, does say resveratrol work for high blood pressure. So that might be evidence from, say, 20 to 25, 30 studies or something like that. So when we're updating our database and when I'm doing that, I'm only using meta analyses, which we consider to be kind of the gold standard for evidence if you're evaluating not just supplements but anything. So a meta analysis, um, it's kind of like the gold standard when you think of it as if you're looking at something, whether something works or it doesn't. Um, but maybe in a bit, though, I'll talk about why maybe just like a single study might be more important than a meta analysis, but doing research on that, you know, you hear about resveratrol, you hear it promoted in the media. You hear that it has all these amazing effects. And then I do a literature search and I start updating the page and I'm like, well, it's kind of underwhelming. Like there's not really a lot of studies. Exactly. A lot of studies in mice, a lot of studies in kind of like animal models, which aren't useless. You know, I think that we sometimes discredit it's like, oh, well, that study was in mice. Well, most studies at least began in an animal model. You know, you have a preclinical model. Does it work? Okay. Well, now we translate that to a clinical trial in humans. But even then, I mean, resveratrol is a pretty old molecule in terms of like it's been studied for a long time. And there are human studies and it's just like it's kind of underwhelming in terms of the effects. And that's been one of my takeaways from supplements just in general when reading like research. And since working at examine and just like reading studies on my own to write about, it's like there's. There's not a lot to support most of the stuff that's out there, but there are a lot of just like keys, kind of like Keystone supplements that like work. And then everything else is kind of coming from these fringe real small like trials that somebody saw. And then they hype up a supplement to be huge. So another example would be, um, Tonka Ali was popular. Everybody was talking about it like this testosterone booster. And, I did an entire page update on Tonka Ali. And I mean, there are, you know, very comprehensive and there's like there's a total of seven studies ever published on this supplement, and it's somewhat effective at increasing testosterone. There are a few, yes, rat studies, but there are some human studies that yeah, they show that it can increase testosterone. But like seven studies is really not a lot, you know, in total in the total grand scheme of things. So just doing that has kind of opened my eyes up to like to be a bit more skeptical. Like you said, when you see claims about something, what it works. Um, and then the other thing I think would be that like you said. Most people don't just take, say like straight up magnesium or like they don't just take one, one ingredient or whatever. It's usually like a supplement that contains some type of herbal blend with like a bunch of these different ingredients. And so, yeah, something you might have this herbal blend that contains ashwagandha and like ginseng and, and caffeine or something like that. Well, independently, those ingredients or those herbs or whatever have probably shown benefits in some studies. So maybe ashwagandha boosts cognitive performance or ginseng, you know, boosted and I don't know, sexual fertility or something like that. But when you know what happens when you combine them, like you said, what was the dose that was used and was it in mice? And does that scale up to humans? And so just because a supplement contains something, you know doesn't mean that that's actually going to have that effect, because it could be a very, very trace amount. You know, you kind of see that with energy drinks where they'll have a proprietary blend of something. But it's like that there might be just like a minuscule amount. There might be a drop of, you know, something in that energy drink. So, um, and unfortunately, the supplement industry is very, very unregulated. And so you can kind of say whatever you want. It doesn't really even need to be backed up by a clinical trial on your supplement. You can make a claim, say studies have shown that this supplement can boost this because it contains this ingredient. So you basically extrapolate the study was done in this ingredient. It showed this benefit and therefore our supplement should benefit that. But in reality that's not how it works. But reading all the research has opened my eyes to well, that's how most of the kinds of supplements operate. So unless you're just taking like a single thing like you are just using, say, magnesium or just vitamin D, you might be taking something that has kind of a little evidence, like to support it. And most of those supplements that you like to see on the shelf, um, or see marketed on like a podcast or something aren't probably haven't necessarily been like actually tested right. Of course some have but. Mhm. Well you get one like an athletic greens where it's like a list of like 70 plus stuff. So how do you even begin to know what each individual thing is doing? It seems to me that like with some of the stuff like athletic greens, it's almost like there's so much information out there about like supplements and optimization where people just say, screw it, give me the one with everything, and I'm just gonna try to like, throw a blanket over it and hope that that catches any deficiency, which is actually an interesting topic, is there? But my thought is like, step one is like, construct a diet that is going to have the RDA or somewhere near the RDA of the things you're and do your best there. And if you have a situation where like whatever is kind of a good diet for you, where like I can repeat this day in and day out and be happy with it. If there's gaps in that and you can't find replacements that are going to keep that diet to be successful, then maybe look at a supplement to try to fortify that. Is that like good practice or should people just. Is there a value of just throwing a multivitamin ad and just saying, like, here we go, I'm going to be safe now? Yeah, I think for something like a multivitamin, I mean, I think for most people, the reason why you probably don't supplement with more things is just because you don't want to, like, spend a ton of money on it. I mean, if I had $1,000 a month to spend on supplements, I would buy as many as I could with that amount. Sure. But like, you know, we have it's discretionary income for most people. I mean, for some supplements are, you know, essential and like people will almost see that as part of their income that they have to spend. It's like you're buying groceries while I have to buy my supplements. But I think that for something like a multivitamin, it's pretty cheap. And at the least, you know, if you're getting more than the recommended amount of something, you're just going to, like, pee it out. So that's okay. But yeah, the problem is, and, you know, I, I hate to drop a name and like, talk about something like with athletic greens, but it's a, it's a perfect example where the whole kind of marketing thing is nutritional insurance. So that's fine. But like do you want to take something that's insurance if you know you're not like, you know, necessarily deficient in it. So I mean, I think it can be good. And it's not necessarily that I don't think there's harm in doing that. Um, but like you said, I think doing a well balanced diet, for one, they're called supplements for a reason. They're meant to supplement. It's in the diet. They're not meant to. You know, I don't have to eat veggies now that I'm having my, you know, greens shake every day, you should probably still eat vegetables for the fiber and things like that. But I think identifying, like you said, gaps in your diet or, or areas where you think you might want more of something. So like creatine, I think it is a good example where we get creatine from the diet. So probably. 2 to 3g per day. Maybe if you're eating, you know, some meat and like, fish like every day, but not in, like, huge quantities. If you're eating, like a carnivore diet or something, I mean, you're probably getting like 5 to 10g of protein per day. You probably don't need to supplement. But like, it's one of those things where I think providing a little bit more can probably have a benefit. Um, it's not like a minimal essential, like a nutrient. So I think something like that. Um, but I think creatine kind of falls in line with a performance enhancing supplement versus like a daily, um, you know, like a multivitamin or something like that. But so I think in general, I mean, 1s aside from like a daily multivitamin, I think with most other things people should think about whether they need it or not and whether it can you could put something in your diet to replace that versus buying a supplement, because it's probably going to be a bit more bioavailable, it's going to be a bit more cheaper, and most people would probably rather eat food than like take a supplement. Um, so I think just yeah, identifying, you know, can I get this from food? If I can't, maybe I should consider supplementing it. But then also think about whether you're deficient in it and if increasing your intake of something is actually going to provide a benefit or does a deficiency in that nutrient provide kind of like a detriment? So I think it's important to think about versus just, um, I think people have like this, uh, this almost like fear of missing out kind of around supplements, I mean, myself included. I mean, you know, you see all these, like, supplements going around and, like, all these podcasts talking about, oh, this new supplement does this. And I'm like, oh, I want to try all these to see if you know, it benefits my health and benefits my performance. But I think that that can lead to some urgency to like, go out and do it without kind of making an analysis of how this fits into, you know, my life and do I actually even need this. Mhm. Yeah. Do you think it's fair to say like if someone is looking to potentially, let's say someone has the discretionary income to spend on some, some supplements and they're like, well I want to be smart about it though. I'm not just going to go and buy every supplement that pops up. Is it fair to say if you get a pretty comprehensive blood test, that that's going to highlight maybe the spots you'd want to focus on more, or I would think so. But I mean, with, you know, with blood tests, it's like it's interesting because you're you're getting a snapshot of just like one time during the day and like, was it after you exercised or, you know, what did you do the day before? So I think that they can definitely be informative, and I think that most people should probably get regular blood tests, um, to identify like a deficiency. But, I mean, I think that's probably the best way for somebody to do it based just off of feeling or somebody saying that most people are vitamin D deficient. So you probably are to like go get a test to, to see if that's actually true, you know. Yeah, yeah. There's probably some things like just by the averages, you're more likely to or higher risk of being deficient at. And then if the blood test confirms that then you can maybe trust it a little more. Yeah. So like vitamin D might be one of them. Yeah. And I think too, you know, most people will say regarding supplements that like, well you don't need this because you can get it. In plenty amounts in the diet. I think there's some, you know, some indication that, like, people will talk about like soils or depleted in nutrients and things like that. So I definitely don't think that our food contains maybe as many nutrients or the types of nutrients that we, you know, presume it to contain. So I think for that reason, maybe it could be good to like safeguard yourself again. So I don't want to say that like a diet can contain everything you need because you know it. It might not, you know, there might be less magnesium in like the spinach you're eating or something. And so I think you go online and just say like, oh, how much? You know, how much iron is in spinach? Well, that might not actually be the amount of iron and expenditure eating. So you might need some extra. So I think that's something important to consider as well. Yeah. It's you can throw it in chronometer. But at the end of the day it's not accurate. Then you might get a false false hope with that too. It is so interesting there. Um, if we look at just the difference between something being like just art, you need this in order to just function at a normal level versus optimizing. Um, I mean, that's kind of a bad word. I guess. Technically optimizing has kind of like you kind of have to define it like, so let's just say like by taking this, it's by taking this, it's going to move you from, say, just like you're getting your basic needs met to it's going to actually improve. Whatever your focus on, whether you like mental clarity or focus or athletic performance, which you probably have to define to this specific, you know, intensity or skill set as well. Are there things that stand out to you like, oh, this is something that I think probably passes the test better than most does. Yeah, I think that there are probably certain and I think like, you know, I similarly dislike the word optimize, but I use it all the time. I mean, and it's hard not to nowadays. Yeah, it's hard not to because like, what else are you going to use? And I mean, I've been trying to think about a definition of it lately because I use it so much and, and it's like it indicates that like, well, we want to move beyond just general health. We don't just want to be healthy like you want to. I think it just means I want to perform my best in whatever task I'm doing. So you can optimize as an athlete, like train, you know, as hard as you can to reach your peak performance. You can optimize your work output or cognitive performance or whatever. So I don't know, it's, you know, it's a very hazy word to use. But, um, I like to use it all the time and say, I'm trying to optimize. But I think that's kind of where the realm of supplements are moving to. Like, we want to optimize now. We don't just want to correct a deficiency because, you know, we're beyond that. But yeah, regarding certain supplements, I think the big basics, at least for like athletic performance, you have like creatine, you have caffeine, you have sodium bicarbonate, you have beta alanine. And then things like beetroot juice is an interesting one. I mean, there's a lot of evidence to support it. And um, but, you know, some studies show that it. As a benefit if you're like a fit athlete. And there were even some recent studies I've been posting that like, you know, it was only two studies, I think. But like even when women take it, they actually see a performance detriment. I think that will need to be replicated, because there's not really a mechanism for me that, like, stands out as to why they wouldn't benefit or they would perform worse with beetroot juice. But like I think those things are for endurance athletes, but just like strength training in particular, I think those are things where, you know, those aren't necessarily nutrients you need in the diet. Those are the things you take on top of it. Like you don't need to take creatine, you don't need to take caffeine. You don't need to take beetroot juice, sodium bicarb, or beta alanine. Those are things that you can take that can improve your performance above and beyond. You know you can perform well without them, but if you take them, you're probably going to perform better. Um, those have the strongest. All of those things have the strongest evidence to support them. They have pretty extensive research backing them up. Um, so those definitely are. I would always recommend I think like with cognitive supplements, those are kind of interesting. Um, exogenous ketones lately. They're like, I feel like one of the most probably popular supplements. I know you've had, like, several guests talking about exhaustion going deep and yeah, even the ketone research. So I am as well, probably less, maybe even deeper in the research than you. But like initially I was. So I was very bullish on them for exercise performance because I know there were some initial studies by Brianna Stubbs that showed they would enhance performance, like at the end of a very long, um, a very long cycling bout, you know, during a time trial. And so unfortunately, like since then, I feel like most studies that like failed to kind of replicate the performance improvements. But they've been doing a ton of research on ketones. And I know there are kind of two main ketones out there, and they're definitely different in terms of their effects. But like I'm more interested now in, you know, like we're talking about how they could optimize training, but not necessarily in the performance context. So like ketones for recovery from exercise, ketones just like during training as a supplement to maybe augment recovery or prevent overtraining, there's some stuff to support that. Um, for cognitive performance. I mean, I think there's maybe not great evidence. There's more theory than evidence, but I think there are some studies coming out that show that you can improve cognitive performance with ketones. Um, especially maybe in the context of, say, exercise. It's like a fuel-limited scenario. So if you're, you know, under demands and you need carbohydrates or whatever to fuel your exercise, I think the ketones can kind of rescue cognitive performance. There's some studies in ultra runners using them showing that they like to enhance alertness and dopamine during ultrarunning, which is kind of cool. Um, and then just in general, like I know a lot of, you know, the companies will market them as just like cognitive enhancers for, you know, just like working. So if you're writing or if you're doing something, um, I personally have experience like pretty, pretty neat benefits with them, um, just using them for work. But yeah. So those would be one that probably stands out to me that I think needs more research. But I mean, I think like there's a ton. Of research going on right now? I think. So in the next few years, I think we'll see a lot of research being published on ketones. And, you know, I know I don't need to talk about this too much because like, listen to a few of your past episodes, you have extensive discussions about them. So Brendan Egan was fun to talk to because he's kind of in the thick of it. And he's also unaffiliated with any of it. So, um, I mean, he's obviously interested in it, which I guess you could say, like if he's interested and he maybe has a bias, but like, he's not like he's not working for one of the exogenous ketone brands. So I was like, I was interested to hear his kind of breakdown of like where it's at and, and where he thinks it maybe is going to go and stuff like that. But, you know, one of the interesting things that I thought was when you do get into the performance side of stuff, it's sort of this thing where like, if it works, it's a pretty big benefit where like 2 or 3% efficiency, which is like, uh, you know, if you're if you're already got everything else finely tuned to 2 to 3%, we're getting into a territory of like, you know, the super shoes and some of that stuff like where like we see we actually see a performance like show up on the, on the scorecard. But like there's this spot you need to hit in order to actually get that. And the thing I was the most interested in is like because what was that range. So he was telling Brendan was saying like, it's actually 1 to 3 mm of blood. Ketone is kind of like that target range you want to land in. I was surprised that it was that big because like, if I take a ketone ester, uh, and I might not be the best example of this because I'm going to need less, most likely. But if, uh, even if I have a reasonable amount of carbohydrate relative to I normally would if I take a single serving of like 27g, uh, of the ketone ester, like it's going to shoot me well past 1 million mol. So then it's like I'm going to land in that zone. And the only question after that is like, how often do I have to reproduce this to stay in that zone? And that's where obviously a monitor would be helpful, where it's like, oh, I'm down to I'm down 1.0, time to take a little more and then bump you back up into like the twos and then let it drift back down over time and, and kind of like target it like that. But but yeah, I mean it is one of those things where if you don't have that data, you're kind of shooting in the dark a little bit with the performance stuff. Um, yeah. So yeah, I think the recovery stuff is interesting. Um, the cognitive stuff is interesting. And like you said, I think it's all in its infancy, so who knows what'll pan out. It might end up being something completely different than we think. Yeah. I mean, with those, like you mentioned, the context is just so important. And there are unlimited scenarios. And I guess that kind of applies to all supplements. But just like when, you know, we're talking about ketones, but like the context I think is, is so dependent with the ketones more so than other supplements. And like there are unlimited combinations. So like rarely are in like the study design is going to determine your outcome. So like most of the studies you're going to come to the lab fasted after overnight 12 hour fast. You're going to take the ketone. You're going to do the performance. And the other condition you're going to. Fast as you're going to take carbs, they're going to take nothing. Hopefully carbs, not nothing, because obviously ketone would be better. But. And then you're going to do the exercise test. But in reality it's not like an athletic competition is not operating like that. You're going to have breakfast. It's like what's your breakfast combination? Are you taking ketones with carbs? Are you taking it with protein? Are you taking it with fat like so what are you eating it with? How does that impact the ketones? Like what are you having during exercise? You know, the timing before the workout, like so. It's so context dependent because you're going to eat something. They're not just going to take a ketone with it. And I definitely think that what you eat the ketone with will determine some of its effects. So um, very interesting there. Um, in terms of just the design of studies. And that's why it's important to go back to what I mentioned, like the meta analyses. So you could see one that says ketones don't benefit or they do benefit performance. But what might be more interesting to somebody is to take one of these ketone studies, of which there are probably dozens now, and find the one that applies specifically to you. So rather than lump all the studies together. Well, I want to find, oh, I have a three hour bike ride this weekend or I have a three hour race this weekend. So let's find a ketone study where they administered a ketone, maybe before the race. How did that affect that race performance? And like, who was it in? Because in that case you don't really care whether on the whole ketones improve performance. You just want to know if they improve performance in that scenario. So that's kind of where it's interesting to read individual studies about the ketones and like to find the one that applies to your specific scenario. And then it might have some applicability and help you be less confused about whether you should, uh, whether you should like to take them or not. Yeah. Mhm. Yeah. And like you said context specific matters because as of now the research is not supportive of it with a higher intensity endurance event. So it's like you might not want the exogenous ketone before your 10-K, but maybe you want it after from a recovery standpoint. So it's a lot of it is like you know when I take it based on what I'm going to do in terms of if you're going to get anything at all or. Yeah, for sure. And I was thinking about that a while ago because, you know, ketones, ketones in the blood would essentially kind of shut down or shut off like carbohydrate, uh, oxidation or utilization a little bit. So it almost seems counterproductive. If I was going to take this for a 10-K where I want to be maximizing my carbohydrate oxidation and glycolytic. So, you know, taking that and I was like, oh, do I what? I want to do that because it might depress the amount of output that I might be able to do during that race. So it's not that like, oh, ketones suck, but like, well, you don't want to do it before that, but before a 24 hour ultra or even like a marathon. Sure, they could be good in that context. So yeah, it's important to think about for sure. Yeah. When I saw that, I was like, well, this makes sense because when I'm working with my coaching clients, the low carb ones, if they're doing a range of distances, it's like they're doing it all. To run a marathon. You know, they're worried about their fat oxidation rates. And they're like, if I introduce carbohydrates, is that going to be a problem? Is it going to suppress them and stuff like that? I was like, well, before the race, you probably don't want to have a lot of carbohydrate, um, maybe wait until you get into it. But if you're doing A5K, it's like, I'm not really concerned about your fat oxidation rates. I think you might want to like, actually suppress those a little bit and hit the gas for those. So it's like breakfast is going to be different between A5K versus 100 miles. So why wouldn't the exogenous ketone protocol be different? But yeah, but it'll be interesting to see what Brendon and everyone else kind of gets to with it and see where to see where it leads if anywhere. So yeah, I think the two different types though, two are interesting because there's like a like all ketones aren't just ketones. So we have like the two main ones pretty much now are the one that is our like beta hydroxybutyrate. And then there's the butanediol. And so they're definitely different. And I think at least the beta hydroxybutyrate one I would more lean on that towards being kind of a physical performance enhancer. The butanediol one seems to have more of the cognitive maybe or like mental effects because that one's kind of a I mean, it's essentially like an alcohol. So like if you drank enough of it, you'd be like a little, a little bit like tipsy or loopy or whatever. So it's kind of interesting to think about that. Yeah. Well, it's it's funny too, because when you look at the if you actually look at the products that make the difference, the different the esters versus the dials, the dials have less ketones in it for that reason, I would imagine, because you just can't do 30g of, uh, of, uh, of a, of a dial without maybe having. Yeah, the reverse factor. Yeah. It's interesting stuff. Um, I feel like there was another study we were going to talk about that. Oh, the, uh, the period is carbohydrate. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I definitely wanted to touch on that because that one was interesting. And that was kind of a case where, you know, I, I would say that I kind of practiced a bit of periodic carbohydrate intake. So that one was where, like you read a study that goes against some of your previously held beliefs. And obviously one study doesn't negate it kind of like the rest of the research. But yeah. So I have been studying carbohydrates recently. Um, it just recently came out and it was in Elite Cyclist, I think it was like 17 of them and they were younger so like mid 20s or whatever. Um, and what they essentially did was divide them into two groups. Um, it was a five week study. So they did a high carbohydrate group in a periodized carbohydrate group. So essentially with the period as the carbohydrate group was doing, they were doing all their lower. So zone one, zone two intensity sessions. It was like a fuel for the work required approach. So like zone one, zone two sessions, they were fueling with protein and some fat beforehand, no carbohydrates and then no carbohydrates during. So they were essentially doing kind of like a quote unquote fasted exercise type of thing. High carbohydrate group was just like using carbs before, during, after training, like for the entire time. Um, and again, only, you know, five weeks. So it's pretty short. But, um, I thought what was interesting, they all improved, um, in, like, their maximal. Steady state performance. So after the training period, they improved. Um, but I guess one of the main findings was that the, uh, period carbohydrate group didn't increase their fat oxidation more than like the high carbohydrate group, uh, due to training, I guess neither one improved. I think there were like no differences in and improvements in fat oxidation. So, um, and I don't know if you read this study or not, but like, I was interested before I even came here, though, I was reading the table and they did the fat oxidation test during their test to exhaustion. So like a time trial type of thing. And it was really low for one which kind of caught me off guard. I think it was like 0.3g per minute or something during the. But it was time for an exhaustion test. So perhaps they were, you know, pretty high intensity. Yeah. It was double though that of the high carbohydrate group, but it wasn't statistically significant. So one of those other things where you're like, um, sample size and things like that might matter. But overall, basically it was kind of just like they saw they saw no difference, no benefits to the period carbohydrate approach, which one could say, oh, well, period carb is no better. So you can eat high carbs all the time. But it was no worse also. So they maintain a kind of training output. They kind of maintain their performance or even improve their performance similar to the high carb. So, um, it's interesting because one of the benefits and one of the reasons why a lot of people do the period carbohydrate intake is for the benefit of improving their fat oxidation. And so based on the results of that study, and of course it's just one. But like that wouldn't necessarily support that. It's that it's any better. So um, uh, and I think one of the reasons though, might be they were highly trained athletes. They weren't sedentary people or they weren't. You're just like an average quote unquote exerciser. And I think that, like, I mean, elite athletes are like fat burning machines already. So are you going to see a benefit with pure carbohydrate intake? And so that was you know, it kind of just got me thinking one about my, my own training, my own like approaches, most of which is just like fasted training. Um, and you know why I do it? Why do I tell people to do it? It kind of changed how I think about that. But it was kind of cool to see that study. I haven't read a period of eye training study in a while. So this was one of the first. Yeah, published in a while. So. So were they. I haven't looked at it closely, but so were they. Were they eating the same amount of carbohydrate? It was just positioning or was there less carbohydrate. It was. It ended up overall being less. So I think the period carbohydrate group, it was they were eating 5.5g/kg per day. Okay. Um, so they were probably around maybe 300 or 350 a day. And then it wasn't a drastic difference. So like then the high carb group was seven and a half, maybe 8g/kg per day. So they were more in the range of like 5 to 600. Okay. So it wasn't like quite double. You know, they were probably eating 200 ish more grams of carbs per day. So maybe one of the reasons is that like carbs were essentially matched, you know, but um, so yeah, they were eating generally the same, I guess, but a little less. Yeah, I guess it would depend. On the workload of the participants. But yeah, you could have a scenario where enough is enough and then you don't see any difference versus, oh, if you double the workload now all of a sudden you do have a difference. But yeah, the training program was pretty intense. I mean, they were doing what they were doing for two days. Most days. I mean they were probably doing it. I don't know what the hourly kind of work was like or what their workload was. I mean they had like it was pretty extensive, like the tables and stuff. And I didn't get to read all of those, but, I mean, they were doing a pretty intense training approach, like two days. Most days. They also were doing a lot of strength training. They were doing intervals, I think maybe once or twice a week or something like that. So it was a pretty, pretty decent workload. Yeah. For sure. That's interesting. It wasn't just your typical like, uh, 90 minutes a day exercise training study. Yeah, yeah. You would think you would. You'd see a difference then just I mean I would have that's what I would predict if someone said, we got this study, what do you think it's going to say? So I guess you could, I wonder because when I think of improving fat oxidation rates, I think of like there's multiple levers you can pull and one is just reducing your carbohydrate intake, which one makes sense. Right. Like your body needs energy coming from somewhere. So if you don't have enough carbohydrate it's going to get it from fat. Um, but then you can also do it through just training in general. Just go from not running to running. You're to improve your fat oxidation rates. And then um, my prior assumption was that like, yeah, there's like a spectrum where you can you you can or I shouldn't say spectrum. You can just reposition carbohydrate more or less and see some difference where it's like maybe 1 or 2 days out of the week. I go out for a run, fasted with no carbohydrate, and over time maybe that improves my fat oxidation rates. Um, there was a study that looked at carbohydrate types. I think that showed a very small difference, but I don't know if it was really. I think doctor Mike Nelson was telling me about this one like a long time ago, or he had sent me an email. I don't think there was anything conclusive with it, but he was like, this is kind of interesting. They were actually looking at something where it would be basically like straight sugar versus maybe something a little less abrupt, like sweet potato or something. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like you would see a difference. Just were they doing that? Like, was the carbohydrate like positioned around the training session. So it was like what they were fueling. Oh yeah. I don't know about that because that would make a difference to you because like you have that if you have sugar during your session, then it may be much less of an impact than, say, if you had it, like in the afternoon after you were done training for the day. Yeah, yeah. But I think too, with that study, though, you know, I would have loved to also see, like I mentioned, that the fat oxidation was measured during the post-intervention like time to exhaustion test. So like my question would be, well, what if we measured them during this three hour, one of their three hour training rides? Like, I would speculate that they may have improved their fat oxidation during zone one. Zone two like intensity sessions. Maybe not during the high intensity sessions because they weren't they weren't training with low. Low carb availability during the high intensity training sessions. They were training, you know, just with the same amount of carbohydrates as the high carb group. So it's like, what? What is the intensity, you know, at which you're measuring fat oxidation that completely matters. So if you measured it at a different time during a different exercise modality or maybe even at rest, like what would you see? So I don't think the study, you know, it's going to conclusively say that like period Ice training is useless. And like I'm going to continue to do it, as are probably most people, because like, I think you can also lose your ability to oxidize fat if you keep, you know, if you fuel for, for every workout and whatnot. So um, but it was, you know, it was an interesting, interesting one to see, to kind of go against or at least help you think a little bit more critically about, like, not just mindlessly nutrition and just doing it because of this reason. Yeah. Always updating. Yeah. Yeah. That is the reality. So interesting. So you're getting healthy again. You. Well you had an off season probably after the race anyway. So that's probably good timing in terms of letting things settle down anyway. But uh, when you start running it again uh, Monday actually. So. Oh, really? Actually, yeah, it was interesting. I did something for the first time in a while. I like, sat down last week and like, drew myself out like a ten week, just like training plan for now. Um, I'm not necessarily planning on doing a race in ten weeks, but I may try to do something. The goal this year is to have a bunch of friends run in Boston next year, so I have to get a Boston qualifier or something at some point. So, uh, trying to do that. And then, you know, I think for right now, we're just going to focus on things like getting healthy and getting fit again. Although I think I've maintained a lot of fitness. Just like biking or not. But you know, just get healthy and then target and fall races and enjoy the hot summer of training and get through the hot summer. Getting in shape right when the temperatures start to get into the 80s and 90s. So perfect. Perfect timing. I actually tend to enjoy summer training. There's something fun about, like embracing, just like the miserable heat and humidity. Like, yeah, it sucks sometimes, but like, there's, uh, it poses an additional challenge. Well, you were in Florida before this, so you probably had it worse, a huge change. Yeah. Yeah, there is, there is, there is that value add I think when you when the temperatures break in the fall, you're just like, oh, I'm way more fit than I thought I would get that. You get that crazy boost like the first time I remember like last summer, just training all summer for the first time. The temperature when I went out for a run was like 60 degrees. I mean, I was running at a six minute pace and it felt like you're just jogging. Yeah. That fitness, your fitness just spikes up. It's incredible. Yeah. It's pretty cool. Awesome. Well Brady, it's always fun to chat with you. I hope to have you back on more frequently now that we're in the same area and topics will come up, I'm sure we'll want to talk about, but where can listeners find you? I know you're active on Substack, on Twitter, and yeah, mostly, um, mostly on Twitter. So be underscore. Homer. Um, I'm pretty pretty active there. And then Substack, um, it's physiologically speaking, um, I picked like the hardest to spell domain name ever, but that was the name of the blog before I got the domain. So, um, but if you probably search Brady Homer Substack, that would, that would come up. But that's where I'm posting most of my content now. We'll link that stuff to the show notes and the episode landing page too, so listeners can head over and check that out. I always enjoy getting the email notification of a new Substack post, so I'm sure the listeners will enjoy some of it as well. Cool. Thanks, Zach, and thanks for the, uh, fuel. Yeah, yeah, you can get the granola. The granola police won't be on. You know it. Cool. Appreciate it. Awesome. Take care. Thanks. You too. Zach.