Episode 460: Optimizing Energy and Micronutrition | Dr. Marc Bubbs
In this episode of the Human Performance Outliers Podcast, Zach Bitter is joined by performance nutritionist Dr. Marc Bubbs to discuss the intricacies of optimizing energy through nutrition. Dr. Marc Bubbs is a Performance Nutritionist, author, speaker and consultant for a portfolio of professional and Olympic athletes and Fortune 100 companies. He is also the co-founder of ProBio Nutrition. They cover various key topics including the importance of magnesium, its intake, absorption, and how lifestyle factors like stress and diet affect it. They also delve into other essential micronutrients like B12, folate, and CoQ10, discussing their roles in energy production, recovery, and athletic performance. The conversation offers practical insights into how diet and selective supplementation can enhance overall health and performance.
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Timestamps/Topics: :
00:00 Introduction and Podcast Overview
01:03 Sponsors and Promotions
01:56 Guest Introduction and Episode Outline
02:34 Energy Management for Athletes
03:43 Importance of Micronutrients
05:27 Magnesium's Role in Performance
09:50 Dietary Sources of Magnesium
13:47 Testing and Supplementation
16:30 B12 and Folate for Athletes
22:42 Personalized Magnesium Intake
23:46 Iron Deficiency in Athletes
24:51 Micronutrient Support for Athletes
29:19 Blood Panels and Key Markers
34:59 The Role of CoQ10 in Recovery
38:49 Zach's Nutritional Journey
43:19 Diversifying Seafood Choices
44:30 Final Thoughts and Recommendations
Episode Transcript:
I'm joined once again by a performance nutritionist, consultant to pro and Olympic athletes, and co-founder of Pro Bio, Dr. Marc Bubbs. Welcome back for a third round, Zach. Appreciate the time.
Looking forward to round three here. I'm really looking forward to it for our three part series. We covered gut health in that first episode. Then we dove into recovery after that and now we are gonna look at energy as the third piece to the puzzle here, and it'll be fun to help share with the listeners everything that goes into optimizing these things.
We all need more energy.
It's funny, isn't it, whether you're a pro athlete, whether you're, kids at home, whether you're just trying to crush it at work and your activities, your hobbies. It's like that's gotta be the one of the number one things that you hear from clients. Right. How about when you're working with folks?
Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of it's just managing their schedule in a way that makes sense. I know it when I look at a coaching client. Usually the first thing I'm interested in is like what their, what the rest of their life is outside of training. So we try to hammer down well, what's the reasonable amount of time per week that you can dedicate to training so that we can build a consistency within that framework.
And then from there it's moving the pieces around where I'm programming the right workouts on the right day, so I don't end up adding the most stressful workout of the week on top of their most stressful work day or family day and things like that. That's always an interesting topic and a fun one to explore too.
It creates a little bit of a uniqueness from one person to the next. You don't feel like it's quite as cookie cutter.
Yeah. Most people don't appreciate that they're, it's harder to program for people who are working real jobs, right? Their life load is so much more than even a professional athlete.
So it's certainly true. Super important to be able to program those on the right days and obviously fuel up to be able
To perform 'em. Yeah, no doubt. I know like when it comes to energy, my mind oftentimes goes to just like food and kind of the fueling side of things. And part of that's probably the endurance athlete mindset or the ultra marathon endurance mindset too, where we get this vision of running.
Not just for a little bit, but for a very long period of time. And sometimes days if you get into the multi-day stuff. But the other thing I always find interesting about it too is when you just look at a typical week, if you zoom out a little bit, like a week or a month or something like that. You can see quite a bit of polarization from an energy output standpoint relative to what a typical person might have, where they maybe have a little more consistency on that side of things from one day to the next.
So for me, it's always like, how do I manage energy intake like a big training day versus a rest day and everything in between, because it becomes very wide ranging. Kinda input. And then on, on the other side of it too, it's not just about calorie intake too. You also wanna make sure you're getting the right micronutrients and stuff like that.
So sometimes I find it maybe easier to do that when it's higher training volume, because I just tend to be eating more and I'm gonna more likely accidentally stumble upon, yeah. RVAs and things like that versus a rest day or an off season when the calorie count comes down a little bit and now all of a sudden I'm kinda the back of my mind thinking, okay, am I missing other things other than just the energy intake.
It's easily one of the most overlooked things, which is if you increase your meal frequency, you just have more room for air to actually hit some of those targets. And of course, getting your macros and your total energy right, is certainly the first port call when we talk energy, but. Once you've got a pretty good handle on that, then the Micronutrition piece does become more important because, or increasingly more important because you're just doing more, right?
You're demanding more of the body. So it's definitely an interesting moment when we get into the micronutrition side and things like, magnesium for me is a great place to start.
Yeah, magnesium is an interesting one for me because that is one where when I've gotten blood panels done in the past, it has been out of range from time to time.
It's always been one where I've looked at that as, okay, well maybe my diet is lacking in magnesium to some degree, or maybe it's just having a harder time absorbing it because of other things I'm eating for one reason or the other. And so then I, I always look at it through two lenses as well, how do I.
Maybe optimize my diet to close that gap to some degree or supplement with it so that I'm covering my bases with that side of things too. And it's an interesting topic. I also think that it's not. Too unique to me. I remember when I spoke with a podcast guest who had some access to data on endurance athletes and just where their kind of blood panels were laying, and magnesium was one of the three he mentioned that are, they're typically showing up in the out of range category.
So it's a fun one to dive into.
You need magnesium to make a TP and there's no energy without a TP, right? So whether you're explosive movement and the A TP breaks down, you break off that high energy phosphate and you gotta recycle that with the phospho, creatine, that requires magnesium.
Whether you're pushing into that 20 to 60 seconds, building up the burn, that requires magnesium. And then if you get into aerobic, and obviously marathon, ultra marathon, all the energy systems. Require magnesium. So it does become increasingly important and then often overlooked for athletes, especially as you increase your protein intake, you're gonna be increasing your magnesium requirements.
And then things like obviously muscle and nervous system relaxation. So I think it's not surprising that when we look at some of the research with athletes, the requirements are about at least 10 or 20% higher than the general population. And we know that the general population, I mean it's about two thirds that don't meet their needs.
It's an important one and it does get a little tricky when we talk about how magnesium is metabolized in the body. But yeah, certainly very important.
Yeah. And one thing I thought was really interesting was when it, when, and this is probably true for micronutrients in general, but it's not always about getting it in.
It's also about like, when you're having it in relation to other things too. So take me for example. I usually start the day with a cup of coffee or tea or some caffeine source. And my understanding is like. That may be like a positive in the moment, but it also maybe creates a little bit of an uphill battle when it comes to things like magnesium, because when you start introducing things like caffeine, you're going to give yourself a little bit more of a need for things that are gonna get leached out with that, if I am making the, or if I'm understanding it all correctly.
Yeah, I mean there's some common causes of lower magnesium status. If we even just start with stress. And that can be physical stress. So in terms of training, we're obviously gonna have a higher need for magnesium. Magnesium makes adrenaline as well. You are required to make adrenaline, so that's obviously key.
Psychological stress. So mental, emotional, you're gonna increase your magnesium needs. If we think about the environment for the professional athletes or for anybody who's on business and traveling a lot, plane travel is a stressor. And then even things like injury. So trauma is a stressor. So whether you're injured or post-pregnancy for women. These are all situations where magnesium requirements go up. What you're talking about is also the vice definitely impacts magnesium. And so whether it's coffee, alcohol, and the one that probably doesn't get enough attention is smoking weed, right? Marijuana has an impact. All those things are gonna increase the requirements for magnesium.
And then of course we get into things like. On the food side, like processed food intake. If we overcook foods, we're gonna not have significant magnesium that we're taking in. And then if you look at the general population, the most common ones in medications become things like proton pump inhibitors.
So if you have a heartburn, you're taking medication for that, or people with high blood pressure, diuretics tend to have an impact. So there's quite a few different things in this picture that are impacting, magnesium and then it, supplementation's certainly beneficial for busy people and high performers just because of those increased needs.
But diet as well, right? Like how can we get more food in? Into the system.
When you're working with athletes, are there groups of foods that you're usually suggesting if they. Present low magnesium or you suspect they're low in magnesium? Yeah, we'll always do
a combination of supplementation and foods for foods.
I love things like edamame beans, which are fantastic, right? Like you keep 'em in the freezer, pop 'em out, boil some water three minutes later, you got a great treat. You're getting nice. Protein source. Some great carbohydrates and a great source of magnesium, black beans. Another good one. Try to include that with kinda rice and beans type dishes.
Fish is always good. Good source of magnesium for athletes. Gets tricky with some younger athletes that don't like fish, but that's always a nice one for people who do. Leafy greens. Get your spinach in. And that can be in smoothies as well, right? Just get that handful of baby spinach and pop it in your, pop it in your protein shake or your smoothie and it tends to go unnoticed, if you've got enough fruit or other things in there.
And then a lot of nuts and seeds, so your pumpkin seeds or your almonds. So it's really when you go through an athlete's diet and sometimes it's not just the young athletes. And when it's on the endurance side, we get sometimes too fixated on it. The total carbs and total calories, and all of a sudden it's bread for breakfast in a granola bar, and then pasta for lunch, and then more bread in the afternoon.
And so all of a sudden, phytate levels go up pretty high. And we know that in a dose dependent way, as Phytates go up, then magnesium is gonna be going down in terms of absorption. That's not to say you can't have any bread, but it's more when you find those individuals or athletes that all of a sudden it's five or six servings in a day at every meal, that's when it becomes a problem.
So I think going back through the diets to be able to get more of those things consistently is a great place for the foundation. 'Cause when we do bloods, and we could talk about testing here in a minute, you tend to see, now there's certain exceptions with endurance 'cause the outputs are so high. But in team sport you tend to see your best eaters will have.
The better magnesium status as a simple rule, right? It's a stick here, but it does change a little bit with endurance. 'cause like someone, in your case the outputs are just so high.
Yeah. Yeah. It gets interesting 'cause you have that yeah, you have these days where from a size standpoint, I might be doubling, or in some case tripling my typical resting metabolic rate and I need to fuel to support that.
The other thing I always think about when it comes to things like magnesium is time of year, because. You do lose more if I understand correctly from sweat and just like working out. So if I'm training like in the heat of the summer, my thought is, okay, well maybe I am needing even more magnesium during that timeframe versus maybe in the winter when I'm sweating a little bit less or in an off season when I'm not not losing as much fluid and things like that.
But I know it's small. Piece to the electrolyte puzzle, but it is a piece there. So I'm just curious if you see anything like that too where you have warmer climates with more sweating and things like that, producing any meaningful changes in someone's magnesium profile? Yeah, that's certainly
an area to consider.
I think even before that, if you go back to just magnesium homeostasis, magne, magnesium metabolism, if we think of someone taking a 400 milligram supplement, let's say. Right. When they take that and it goes into the gut, absorption can be anywhere from 80%, which is great, all the way down to 30%, right?
So there's a lot of noise in terms of how much you're actually gonna take in. And that can be active transport. So through the cell, which there's a capacity there, a limit that you can take in. Or it can be between the cells, right? Where it slides in between. Now magnesium has a couple extra shells of water on it, and so that's where you've probably seen if you've taken a big dose of magnesium citrate, right?
It goes through those cells, the watersheds, and what happens, you get the looser stools, and so that's where they say, mitigate how much you're putting in. It gets taken up. But here's the big, the other big X factor is that on the output side, your kidneys will filter anywhere from 30% to 90%.
So just as you alluded to starting this, there's a lot of unknowns. And so for an individual in terms of the amount they need to supplement or the foods they need to take in, it's gonna be pretty different from one person to the next. And that's why when we look at even testing, serum levels, by the time that's outta whack, you're probably pretty, pretty low, right?
When we look at tests, like even a urine test, we used to do 24 hour urine tests. The trouble with that one is that if you do it just for a day, magnesium output varies so much day to day that it's tricky to get a real good sense, and it's tough to get an athlete to do that for a week. So it just becomes really cumbersome.
And so that's where, and you probably get this measured. And then I think especially for the endurance athlete or the ultra endurance athlete where you are sweating a lot, I think that's where there's an opportunity. Even though the magnesium and sweat is a very small amount, the sweat loss of magnesium as well as iron, starts to become more and more significant.
And so if you start to notice, the twitchy eyes if you start to notice. Feeling more inability to relax, more tension. Some of these general symptoms that I are obviously quite tricky because they're, there could be other things as well, but struggling with recovery, these are good times to double down and rethink what you're doing on the magnesium front, which is why it was so important for us to include magnesium three and eight in the pro blend, right?
We wanted the most bioavailable form, we wanted the form that crosses the blood-brain barrier. And it's not easy. It's an expensive supplement on its own right? It's a bottle of mag, a bottle of Magine. Magnesium three and eight is $50, $60 for three capsules. And so to be able to include that as part of the package so that athletes can feel really confident that they're getting covered is a really big priority for us.
This is maybe a little bit of a tangent, but still fits along with this is like when you go and get a blood panel. I've heard sometimes where they'll say okay, yeah, you're in range. But in range it is just okay you're existing. All right. But then when it comes to range for someone who's trying to perform high physically, or cognitively.
Is there a lot of shifts in that from, because I know with some of these like services now, when you look at kind of their ranges, you'll see a difference there between what they're suggesting you get versus what you'd standard you'd find on kinda a standard blood panel that you maybe get from work or something like that.
Yeah it's nice in one sense. We're using different ranges to be able to support performance and athletics versus just overall health. Sometimes those ranges can be up to the labs or the clinics, and so it can get a little bit misleading. When we talk about frank deficiency, then you're not getting enough to be able to support overall health.
Right? And so that's obviously a big problem. When you get into nutrient micronutrient insufficiency, you're not getting enough to meet your needs, so you're able to keep everything running, so to speak, but you're gonna get more and more benefit as you go up the ladder, and that becomes specific to each micronutrient.
For example, B12, if you're less than 200 picograms per mil, then that's considered deficient. 1 5200, typically 200 to 400, right? We would call that insufficient. And then for athletes, we'd say, well, let's get you above 400. Right? The tricky part though is if you look at the research, you get benefits for hemoglobin synthesis all the way up to 700, right?
And so there's, this is where there's no definitive clear cut answer. But if you're a coach. You are working with an athlete, especially an endurance athlete, we're saying, okay, well let's, let's try to get ourselves up towards that 700. And when we look at dietary intake, obviously protein's important for a great source of B12.
So if you have vegetarian or vegan endurance athletes, particularly if they're female as well, then we wanna be supporting and b twelves, it's important for nerve function, right? Nerve transmission. It's important for DNA and RNA synthesis. So all the little Lego blocks that are building up the proteins in the body and then red blood cells, right?
So if you're a, if you're an endurance athlete that's what you want, right? Wanna carry more oxygen and deliver that oxygen to the tissue so that you can keep going. So things like B12 become key, things like folate and to your point, there's. It's almost like a stepwise system where you wanna make sure an athlete is obviously not deficient and you wanna make sure that they're through insufficiency.
And then we push our way towards being optimum. But there is a, it does get a little crazy 'cause sometimes within even supplements you'll have these mega doses where it just becomes more and better. Or having 1500 picograms per mill is great for B12. You're like, okay, hold on. This is.
You can get too much, right?
Yeah. Yeah. That's always an interesting one. 'cause there's a lot of just, weird kind of talking points around some of the supplementation and like the B twelves. One that I think people maybe assume alright, I can't really get too much of it 'cause you're just going to, you're just gonna ex excrete whatever you don't need.
But I always wonder about that from a, from the context of, well what's that? How is that competing in your body with other things? And what kind of problems are we maybe not thinking of when we look at it through that lens? Yeah. Especially when it comes
to, B12, folate, iron, like these are all playing key roles in red blood cell production.
We know from, we know from research in elite endurance athletes, so studies in Ethiopian professional runners, they break it down. 20 men, 20 women. We could see roughly what the averages are on the median intakes of things like B12 and folate. And we see, for example, folate. I think about 20% of those runners had insufficient folate levels.
Now none of them were deficient. But 20% of them are insufficient. So there's some room there to be able to support optimizing folate status to be able to improve red blood cell production. And that was within that study. They'd broken it down between separating high performers and low performers.
And the main thing that was the difference between them was that the high performers had a greater. Red blood cell levels than the lower performers. And that was a function of, better, B12 status, better folate status. It's certainly one that when we start with a food first approach, we're in the best position to set ourselves up for success so that there's not much to be able to adjust or tweak.
And so then the supplementation comes on board to be able to enhance that or provide that extra insurance, if you will. But then you get into certain athletes again, like if you are. I think it's something like 17% of teenage females are gonna be deficient in folate. When we get into women who are between the ages of 20 and 30, you're looking at about 20% of women that are gonna be deficient.
So not just insufficient. And for those, who have labs at home, now we're talking about, less than three. Right. And so insufficient for folate would be between three and six. And we're always trying to be above six. And so this research, when we talk about these professional runners, you're looking at nine, nine and a half, right?
And so for things like folate, it's nice 'cause it is found in a lot of foods. Even if you're vegetarian, it's leafy greens. You're finding, folate again, fish your nuts and seeds, like there's a lot a lot of great sources that you can include in your diet to be able to get that. But it's one that, and I'm sure you've seen this over the years, like getting some testing really helps to have a look under the hood to see.
Where you need to support. I think the challenge for folks is working out the noise of like, how much do I have to do in terms of supplementation? Because the doses, even when you look at some supplements, like it'll be 10,000 times the RDA for B12, which is like even once you get above 500 micrograms, you're only absorbing 1% of that.
Whereas at a dose that's around a physiological dose, so three to five micrograms, you're absorbing 50% of that, right? So you just start to increasingly waste what's in the supplement. So you want to be efficient, but you can appreciate that supplement companies wanna just have the highest number to be able to sell, more of them being complex compared to the competition.
Get that, that wow factor, we've got 10% more B12 than you do.
Yeah. That's such an interesting thing too with just how the body behaves around some of these things. These things too. Are there any inputs that are similar to magnesium that if you're having it, it's gonna make it harder for your body to absorb?
B12 and folate. I think as a simple rule, it's
just good not to push to super physiological levels unless you've got a good reason. So even within dosing magnesium as a supplement, circling back to our previous point, I think having it more frequently. Is obviously helpful rather than having big boluses.
Now, evening time is the one time that you tend to have more, but again, it's very individual. 'cause if absorption is 30 to 80% difference between one person and the next, then the dose and the bottle, we've gotta adjust that to how the client's actually, or athletes responding, right? So the art of the practice becomes more increasingly important when we look at, okay, this person took 300 milligrams in bed.
Person Y took the same dose but felt X amount better. You need to toggle that a little bit. And so that's where you're, as a coach, just the conversation with the client, seeing how they're doing, getting regular blood work done, and putting their diet through a program to be able to see what their magnesium intake is.
Because if you're looking at men, the RDA is 420 women. It's about 300 or so. And we know athletes need about 20% more. So are they getting that in their diet? And if the diet looks pretty brown, so again, younger athletes or maybe busy people that are on the run eating more processed food, then that's gonna add an extra layer.
We talked about the coffee and the alcohol, smoking marijuana, like all these things start to add on. As a practitioner I would always start with your diet first, but then having that next layer above of what supplement can I take that's gonna be able to cover my bases for me so that I can just be more confident that I'm gonna be achieving that rather than having to spend too much time kind of chasing all these biomarkers?
'cause they give you an indication, but it's not always foolproof.
Yeah. Yeah. The one, another one that always kinda comes to mind to me too, and this fits itself into the endurance world nicely, is iron and like that side of things where iron deficiency. An interesting thing about that one to me is you can.
My understanding is you can get the same symptoms by having too much iron and it may just be that some people are just like really hyper-absorbers to that sort of a nutrient and then they have to be a little more mindful of how much iron they're getting in. I was curious if you knew anything about that in terms of just like frequency, is that pretty rare and it's not something most people are probably needing to be concerned with?
Most people
know, but there are people that genetically will retain more. And so those people actually go and are advised to do blood donations, right? To be able to pull their levels down. Obviously typically that's obviously in men women with menses every month they're having to rebuild blood, rebuild red blood cell production.
So this is where. Again, the B12, the folate. We tend to see these insufficiencies more in female athletes than male athletes. We tend to see them more in black female athletes than Caucasian female athletes. That constellation becomes really key. And this is, it goes back to even some of our first, maybe it was our first podcast, we talk protein.
As you increase protein intake, you're increasing your micronutrition, right? So you're gonna be getting the B12, you're gonna be getting the iron, depending on the type, you're getting some magnesium as well, depending on the type, like fish. Again, you might be getting some folate in there. So when we see an athlete that's not consuming enough protein, right, we can start to assume that the micronutrition is gonna struggle to be on point as well.
So that's the first port call. Then we get the total energy up to make sure we're covering all our bases and alongside doing that, this is where, yeah, having some extra micronutrition support. The more you're at the. Either the tip of the spear or in your own life, the tip of the spear in the sense that you're a busy person and you're really trying to perform, you're training for an ultra marathon type of clients that you work for, that are pushing themselves hard.
This is where you want to have confidence that your bases are covered, and so you don't have to do loads of testing, but a little bit of testing helps, and then just being able to have, a. Being able to have foundational support so that you've got the best in class if you're adding a supplement, the best in class type of ingredients, you're consistent with taking it in.
And you're able to do that over the course of your training block is just such a huge advantage for our discussion today with this energy. But also, previous talks on immunity recovery. It's definitely the next area that we're gonna see more and more coming out.
Because technology's getting better with assessing all these things and providing a bit more clarity in that noisy world of biomarkers.
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Is there a Ty of, 'cause I know when people are thinking like, okay, I should test, maybe not just guess at these things. Is there like a specific type of blood panel that you're typically looking for people to get or is it a little bit of mix and matching in terms of kind of diving in? 'cause I know sometimes some of these services are almost overwhelming in the sense that you go on, you're like, okay, they have this offer that offers these testing services and that testing services.
Is there stuff that you're more in, more or less interested in when it comes to that?
Yeah, I think this is where. There is some benefit when we do these more expansive tests, but like everything, it just creates more variables and more noise and we start kinda looking for problems where there aren't any in the sense of if we start with a basic tests and when basic, foundational, but things like B12 folate and that can be serum or red blood cell iron, right?
An iron panel if you're a female athlete for sure. Red blood cell magnesium. Getting your blood sugars lipid panel, CRP, for some inflammation like this is a really good place to start. You'd probably throw a, TSHT three thyroid in there just to be able to see if you're really pushing yourself to, to see how the nervous system's doing.
But that's a quite succinct package that people can get up. Obviously vitamin D we throw in there as well. There can be a few others, but that's a. That's a great place to start. And then I think the knee jerk reaction is, we don't want athletes to over worry about things. Like these are things, they're snapshots in time.
So the context really matters, right? If you're a female athlete, where are you in your cycle? Because we wanna know where that is, especially when it comes to things like iron and where you are in your training block. Are you stressed? Did you go out the night before? So when I suggest people go in for bloods, we always try to get 'em to go first thing in the morning, fasted and try not to be training them the day before.
Any kind of travel or anything that can throw off those metrics. And if you're doing an at home kit, you try to do the same, just keep really consistent in terms of when you do it because there can be daily variations in some of these things. And even if we get into hormones, there can be seasonal variations.
So try to keep it as consistent as we can. Really helps them to again, tease out some of that noise.
Yeah, no, it sounds like what you're saying is like, there's some key markers that are probably first, especially if you're working with somebody who is struggling with something where like you have a, it's not just a routine test that you're just using to keep a data set intact, but you're actually having a, an issue in performance that's not clear from the training input.
And it's like these initial packages that you mentioned are probably gonna be great starting points because it's probably one of those things versus some of these more fringe tests. And then if you figure that out, you can, you got a starting point and then, and if it comes back perfectly clean, then you can always go and kinda do the more comprehensive stuff if you need to.
And that's
where, even just to our discussion, like B12,
if we're looking for 700, picograms per mil, most people aren't there. There's some room to grow there, right? We're gonna get some benefit on the hemoglobin front. Most people aren't gonna be at nine and a half for folate, right? So there's again, some room to maneuver there.
We look at iron, right? Where's that magnesium again? Are we looking for RBC mag around six. Most of us, we're gonna be able to add things in, and so as a practitioner I really like it as a lens to focus on the diet, and then when we come to the supplement side, that's why. We built the pro land, right?
It was like, let's take all the key supplements rather than having 6, 8, 10 pills. Let's put them in one form factor that you can get in and be able to cover all those bases and there's still room to then individualize, right? That was the key when we even built it to say, this covers the foundational pieces like a lot of the stuff we're talking about, but it's something we still wanna test and we still potentially need to individualize on the back end of that.
Yeah. Yeah. Especially when you get into those ranges that you spoke about before where some pets, some people might be absorbing from 30 up to 80%, so that's gonna be different. Yeah. And endurance
athlete blood volume gets affected. So that then impacts how much is in the blood, right? Because the concentration gets impacted.
So there's, again, you need to just always be a bit cautious. You tend to see some practitioners these days. Who are maybe new on the newer side tend to always be very interventionist, right? Let's, oh, the number's here, we gotta do X, Y, Z. And I think that's where, having a bit of a, having a process, having a system, reviewing things is key.
Because even with our recreational athletes, like people who have busy lives, they get lots of stuff to do. For me, my job as a coach is to help simplify things for them. So on the back end it can be complex with assessing and evaluating whether it's the total energy, whether it's the labs, et cetera. But on the front end, in terms of helping them execute, it's here's your one, two, couple of things that we want you to do this week so that they can just then, focus their energy.
If we bring it all the way back to energy here, they could focus their energy on the things that matter versus, especially for those athletes that ruminate. Right. If they start to think about, well, what does this mean? How big a problem is this? I think that's where how we communicate this really becomes important.
Yeah, and part of it is also just like what you mentioned is you're removing some stress and doubt that could be there if they don't have that sort of protocol in place that they trust and they believe in where I know for me personally, it's if I. Am confident in the approach I'm taking, whether that be nutrition or training.
I'm just not stressing out about things because I'm, I've already committed to believing in it. Versus a scenario where I'm like, I'm not sure if this is the right thing to eat, or I'm not sure if this is the right way to train. Then I'm, even if I'm doing the right things, I'm questioning it and then introducing extra stress that wouldn't necessarily need to be there.
The other micronutrient I wanted to talk to you about, which is an interesting one to me because this is one that I think has gained more attention. Over the years. I think the other ones have always, at least in my purview, been there as focus points, but KQ 10 is one that I find getting mentioned a lot more in recent years than maybe it had in the past.
So maybe we start just like what is KQ 10 and then like what the importance is with that particular micronutrient.
It's interesting 'cause it's not a vitamin, but it's like a vitamin. And so it plays a lot of key roles in the body, particularly as an antioxidant and then as a co-factor.
So in terms of energy, so again, when it comes back to B12, when it comes back to folate, when it comes back to, to iron in terms of supporting energy levels, now we're talking, at the cellular level with things like coq 10. And so this is one where, you know, within the general population, we tend to find.
Food sources of coq 10 tend to be highest in things like organ meats, which, there's a growing group of folks, whether it's paleo or carnivore that are getting those in. But not always at the top of people's lists. And then from there, it's about double digits, 10, 14 milligrams per serving.
So about a hundred grams. And then it drops pretty quick, right? You get into your. Cuts of meat like beef, you might be three milligrams, and then now you're down to much lower levels with things like nuts and seeds and whatnot. So all, most people, while there's no recommended, there's no RDA for coq 10, but typically we're looking to get folks into that, four to six milligrams per day in terms of total amount.
And if you're an athlete, why do people have low coq 10? Training's a big reason for that. And we used to think that coq 10 was more of a potential for an ergogenic benefit, right. Performance benefit. Just as you alluded to over the last few years, we're seeing more on the recovery side, right?
Like coq ten's benefit might be more what's happening, after exercise to be able to support recovery than it is actually as a neurogenic. But in terms of low status, if you're training hard. As you get older levels tend to go down. And then if you're taking statins, so if you've got any clients in the general population that are struggling with high cholesterol levels and are taking a statin, statins are HMG, COAs reductase inhibitors.
And so this is one where that same enzyme is inhibiting the production of coq 10. Right? And so your levels are gonna be lower. So for those clients as well, this is typically where supplementation becomes, a pretty nice add-on because we know that we're gonna have that drug nutrient interaction.
Yeah. So you're thinking it's more on the recovery side of things with coq 10 now versus like a, an energy producing input?
Yeah. It plays a really interesting synergistic role with other nutrients that we know. Evidence-based nutrients that performance staff and athletes are using like creatine, like omega threes, like curcumin.
So those benefits really look promising. And then, it acts as an antioxidant itself, that soluble antioxidant and it helps to recycle other antioxidants like vitamin C and vitamin E. So it is a recent paper that dove into this, around this potential for coq 10 to be more on the recuperative front.
Whilst it also plays a role in, in, in energy in terms of within the mitochondria, when we talk about setting you up for success, the next day or for the rest of the week, in terms of on the recovery side, there looks like there's some potential benefit there as well.
Awesome. Well, I think we've touched on some really cool points.
Some good food for thought or vitamin for thought maybe is the way to say it. That to help people optimize their energy levels and inevitably, go out there and enjoy the sport they're doing more, or recover from it quicker and be able to do more of it if they want to.
That's always an exciting thing for me to think about.
Yeah, and I was gonna say, throwing it back to you, Zach, like in terms of previously, what would your kitchen counter or tabletop look like when you were going back a few years ago?
Yeah. I've been a little on the lower carb side now for 14 years, so that's like the foundation of what I've had to build stuff on.
But within that structure, I've done quite a bit of variety in there from, mostly plant-based to mostly animal product base and more often than I kinda land somewhere in between there. And I look at it more of a, you wanna, I like to keep things consistent. Predictable, but I also like some change from time to time versus just, for instance, repeating everything for years and years on end.
So a lot of times where I'll make a change is okay, let's focus on a few different inputs. And a lot of times I'll run it through like a chronometer or some of these online apps that kind of show what all is in the foods you're eating and just see if there's any big gaps there and then maybe try to rearrange things to best meet it.
But a lot of times that for me, that's meant like some of the lower starch type of vegetables, so a lot of the dark leafy greens and things like that. From the carbohydrates I do take in, I've usually focused on things like fruits and potatoes for the most part, like berries, melons, even grapes and things like that.
For my higher carb days and stuff like that. The potatoes, like I'm a big potato fan in a sense that I like a lot of the varieties. So I've played, yeah, I played around with all the different versions of it. And even though it's not something I'm eating a tremendous amount of on a regular basis, it does make up a good portion of my carbohydrate intake.
So they're nowhere near void in my diet. The baked potatoes gets a really under
underappreciated it's a good source of magnesium. You're getting, you're getting nutrients. Oh yeah, for sure. But compared to the sweet potato, gets all the limelight, poor old white potatoes, just trying to,
yeah.
Yeah. When you look at the nutrient profile across some of the different potatoes, it is interesting to see where the basic, white potato falls and it's actually pretty well loaded with a bunch of different stuff in there. And it may not have this cool sounding one that stands out, like you might get from certain versions of it.
But yeah. And then, on the animal product side, I've just. On the potato front potato
discussion here. They're quite versatile and cool as well because obviously when you roast them, you're gonna increase the glycemic index so you can start to play around, depending on when you're, if it's post-training and you're trying to get things in quicker, you can have more roast potatoes, roast root, veg, and then, at other times, boil 'em, et cetera.
So it's there, you can get creative in the kitchen with those.
Yeah. Yeah. And this maybe goes back to our gut discussion too. 'cause I know there's always been conversations around like the potato and how it behaves. When you cool it and if you cool the potato, it has a little bit of a different effect from maybe a gut bacteria feeding standpoint or even a glycemic index side of things.
The cooked and cool carbohydrates
like rice or potatoes, oats, you get a nice effect with some of the resistant starches. So it's great. You can eat it while you're there, when you're meal prepping, you get a nice, warm meal, then you can pop it in the fridge and get a different benefit for tomorrow's meal, or the snack later in the day.
So it's a great way for coaching clients, coaching athletes up to how they can. Cook and meal prep at the same time. 'cause I'm sure you see that's always a tricky part of, people tend to at first just cook one meal at a time and then they feel like they need to fire up the kitchen every time they're cooking.
Whereas the more they get used to things that can be cooking one meal whilst putting together a second meal, which has similar ingredients, but it's gonna have a different taste profile just on the back end of what they made.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And then sort rounded out too, with some of the other inputs I've had pretty historically is like on the.
On the fat protein side of things, I'll do a lot of combinations of different meats like fish, beef on the more fat side of things. I'll be doing like olive oil quite a bit and dressings and things. Especially when I'm in kinda the heavier training phase of the year where it's almost like easier just to up the calories through those vehicles.
'cause I can have something similar. Similar dish, just more olive oil or more dressing in order to close the gap a little bit there. Nice. Yeah, a lot of seafood and nuts too. Would you do seafood clams? Absolutely.
Oysters must.
Yeah I'm a fan of all of it. I don't branch out much past like salmon though, to be honest.
Like I'm open to doing it more, more often, but for whatever reason, I just usually, I think it might be my wife Nicole, she's a huge fan of salmon, so we always have it, and then that's the thing that's gonna be in my diet pretty consistently. But yeah, if I go to a restaurant or something like that and they have some variety there on that front, I'll usually check it out.
Two of them that are quite easy to cook at home that just people tend to not dip their toe into the first are mussels, right? They're really quick to cook. You could do lots of different bases, whether it's more of a Mediterranean white wine and tomato, or a Thai type sauce loaded with protein, loaded with omega threes, great source of minerals, as well as glycosaminoglycans gags, which are great for joints.
Then the other one is clams, which are actually a little bit like eating pistachios. Once you get used to them, big in places around the Mediterranean, like Spain and just, you pop 'em open and it's almost again like eating a pistachio. You just knock 'em back and it's a great appetizer.
And we didn't talk calcium today, but fantastic
source of calcium. Yeah. So you're saying I should diversify my seafood portfolio a little bit.
The lambs are great, or the frozen muscles st. Slowly. I'll check it out. Slowly out. I'm taking a mental note rotation.
Yeah I'm taking a mental note for the weekend, grocery list of what to add, which versus what's been there.
Okay. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, Dr. Bobs, it's been awesome to cover some of this stuff on this series. I think we've got a lot of interesting topics and information to share with this one. And, or are we missing anything? Is there anything we should throw into the bunch to make sure that people are aware of?
Yeah, it's been a lot of
fun, Zach. Appreciate you having me on. Certainly the areas I see most with endurance athletes, when we talk about gut function, whether that's in general or race day, when we talk about recovery and immunity. So being able to fight off colds and flus, being able to fight off those symptoms so that you can be available, right?
The best abilities, availability. So we wanna help people be available to train so that they can create those adaptations. And then today's talk on energy, it's. It's tough to do all this stuff, and for those recreational athletes and recreational leads out there, do all this stuff, plus the work and the family and kids at home.
So having enough energy is key, and it does start with the fundamentals, whether it's with your training, obviously with the nutrition in terms of the food. First approach with getting in the protein, getting in the carbohydrates, the total energy, and then making sure you're covering your bases when it comes to micronutrition, right?
It's the next frontier when we see. We look down the line at some of the technologies coming out to have a better gauge on what we need. And so for me, years of taking care of athletes and all those different bottles of pills and the countertops, that's one of the reasons why we put together the ProE blend to be able to get those key fundamentals all in one formula.
Get best in class ingredients for folks and then be able to put it in a way that's easy for them to take so that they can be compliant. So yeah, a lot of fun folks, if they wanna test it out, the pro blend, they can use the code endurance. Save 20% off and just head over to pro bio nutrition.com again, promo code endurance, and then you could save 20% off and test drive that for yourself, get some labs done and see what kind of impact it has on you.
Awesome.
Appreciate it, mark.
Thanks Zach.