Welcome to The Podium, the podcast about optimal health and high-performance. I'm Dr. Kevin Sprouse. This discussion was created as a resource for the patients in my practice, where I have the pleasure of working with a very small group of professional athletes and high performing individuals from around the world. So why podium? Well, it represents the pinnacle.
The winner of any race takes their place atop of the podium, much as any expert in their field is often asked to share their wisdom and present from the podium. For me, it represents the intersection of athletic and cognitive performance. Our podcast dissects the principles of performance for my patients, and then disseminates, pertinent, actionable information with them in mind. If you happen to have found us and are not a patient, that's great. I hope you enjoy.
Please understand if you're not a current patient, any information contained herein is not meant for you to take as medical advice. You need to speak with your doctor before implementing any change in your health and fitness regimen. There is no doctor patient relationship established via this podcast. For my patients, of course, that relationship already exists. Welcome to this episode of The Podium.
Recently, I had the great pleasure of interviewing one of my very favorite people in the world of sports science, Dr. Allen Lim. Allen is a sports
physiologist who has worked as a coach at the highest level of endurance sports. He's also the founder of the sports nutrition company called Scratch Labs. In this episode, we delve into numerous topics around fueling and hydration with a special focus on a new high carb low-glycemic liquid fuel that I've been using with my patients during his prototype testing phase. I always love getting to chat with Allen and I hope you enjoy listening in on our conversation.
Hey, this is Kevin Sprouse, and I'm here with Dr. Allen Lim . Hey Allen,
How are you doing doctor ?
I'm good. How are you? Dr. Lim is a PhD and brilliant scientist. PhD is a philosophical doctor, which means that you have much more wide ranging and applicable knowledge, I think, than I do. Um, and the philosophical component is perfect for you, I think.
Yeah. I mean, I can wax philosophic that's for sure. When I worked in pro cycling, I think that you have far more questions than you have answers for especially as scientists or as an athlete or anyone. It's always good to have the ability to compensate
For sure. And , Alan's background is definitely scientific. He is quite the philosopher, but strongly scientific. Alan, tell us a little bit about your academic background and how you got into pro sports.
I got into the world of pro sports because of a childhood love for cycling that was initially sparked by watching the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic cycling team - this was a golden age in American cycling like Greg Lamond, Davis Phinney , Connie Carson Turner, Lamond, who would go on win the 86 Tour. Events like the Coors International Bicycle Classic.
And , I began bike racing, realized that I was as interested in what was happening intellectually with the sport, such a great foundation for understanding the human body, understanding performance, understanding science as a whole. And I really didn't like waking up early or , racing my bike in the rain and so I took the academic route, got my exercise science degree from the University of California Davis, and then went on to graduate school at University of Colorado Boulder.
And it was at this time that, you know , people were just beginning to think about losing pollinators to quantify , um, the training intensity and training load in professional cycling. Um, there was a new app called the resistance meter that was , uh, made out of drug me by a guy who really show bar , you know, probably to were super, super expensive.
And so I started working with , uh , uh , based out of Massachusetts on something called the power cap, which was our rear hub power meter , uh , made that , uh , was a lot , uh, less expensive and , uh , gave me a great platform for our understandings of the performance.
Um, and so much the human performance, you know, just like in medicine, dose response relationship, you have some amount of stress or dose or training load , um , adaptation to that, some sort of response , um, having these portable power meters really close the gap and actually quantify what that training was.
It took off a lot of the guesswork out of it, and a lot of Suffolk to begin to make a lot of good core relationships that not only influenced for the cycling, but , um , other realms , which in the performance
yeah. And power in cycling is really interesting because it's so objective where you many sports still train with a heart rate meter is one of the primary objective metrics, but it's, it's still something that kind of, it's not as hard and fast as power. Um, so for those folks who may be listening, who aren't into cycling a power meter basically takes a look at the wattage that you're putting out, which wattage day to day is water .
Like if you put out 500 Watts at this moment on the bike today and 500 tomorrow, then that's pretty much the same effort. You may have a different heart rate and a different response physiologically to that effort, but the effort is the effort. Um, and more and more sports are now starting to bring those types of , of measurements into their training.
Um, but cycling was really on the forefront, which is also why still in the, in the performance literature, you see a lot of the studies look at the effect on cyclists because they can measure how power so being at the forefront of that , um, gave you, I imagine , uh , an incredible education into general , uh, human performance.
Yeah, it was, it was a very, very simple model . You know , like you can think of the human body, like a stick, right? Um , let's say you put a certain amount of load on that, stick in it, Ben .
Well, if you put too much force on that stick, not only does it bend, but it might crack , but what's really cool about human physiology is that we have the ability to adapt to new respond and over time, that same amount of pressure or stress on that creates less strain or less bent and effectively what the power meter allows us to do is look at how much force you're putting on that stick or it's variables like hardware response , or perceived exertion.
They allow us to see how much this fits best. So as you were saying on day one might be able to do 500 Watts at one heart rate. The next day they'll do maybe 500 Watts, but let's say that your heart rate is now elevated on that second day. We know that for the same amount of loader effort, there is more strain. And that, that might be an invitation that, Hey, we need to shut this thing down before we break the stick.
Yeah. So, so both metrics are useful and having, I think having the combined view of the two helps give a very well rounded picture. Um,
that's right. That's right. You always don't want to know how much, how much stress you're putting on the system. And you always want to know how much that system is strained. And if you understand the relationship between those two things, then you really understand training and adaptation because you can decide when to apply force and when to back it off, because ultimately you don't get strong when you train, you get strong when you recover from training.
Yeah , absolutely. And I imagine correct me if I'm wrong, but I imagine as you, as you got into that role within cycling and we're training athletes , um, some pretty notable athletes , uh, that nutrition is somewhat inextricably linked to performance. And as athletes, we're talking to you about their performance and their wattage day to day and what this workout was trying to do and how to recover that there were a lot of questions around nutrition that just kind of find their way in there.
Yeah, it was interesting for me because when I was in academia, I really had what I would call a reductionist view on nutrition. Renae . I looked at it through the lens about chemistry, carbohydrate, protein, fat, different pathways, and you know, what might be the right substrate for a particular biochemical reaction. But as I got into pro cycling, I remember one of my first experiences showing up at one of the homes of an athlete that I was was, was hired to coach.
Um , I was, had been a really long day of travel and he had asked me, you know, kind of my state of the state by, by arrived . If I was hungry, I want something to eat. And I was like telling , yeah , I am so excited to have a great meal here in Spain. And , uh , he walked to the kitchen, cupboard, opens it up, pulls out a box, like pouring a bowl of cereal.
And at that point I realized that if this guy was going to, you know , beat me eating cereal to try to win the tour well, yes, it does have all the vitamins and minerals you might do that might have the right ratio of carbohydrates and protein and fat. But there is this, I think we all kind of social component and , um , you know , kind of emergent aspect of food where the hole is not necessarily made up of the sum of its parts, right?
Yeah. For me, that I've definitely learned from you that, I mean, cereal is a lonely meal, right? Like it's not, cereal is not a myriad of shared and enjoyed with people. Um, that move from a , from a very reductive view of the biochemical components into how is this meal truly nourishing you? Um, that's something in my eyes too .
Well , you know , it was something that post cycling opened my eyes to because we also worked in a sport with many, many different cultures. And , uh , one of the things that I learned, especially because I came to it initially with this very techno centric mindset, is that it's probably easier to change a person's religion than it is to change the way that they do that. There is such a massive cultural component.
And if we can get certain way when their mob is telling them that this is the way they need for their entire life can be very, very difficult. And so rather than trying to fight that , that culture, I tried to embrace the best of so many cultures and try to, you know , um , use those more ethnocentric models for , for nourishing the athletes we worked with without disregarding the science. Right.
And I think that what I learned was that you could do, you could do both, you could have a fantastic chef to make a really beautiful, delicious meal and half sitting on the table, but you could create that going away that optimize the performance in the middle of a race bike , the quarter fonts .
Yeah. Entirely. And when you do have all those cultures, you can't, it's hard to take an Italian, you know , who's grown up in, in Tuscany and say, okay, we're not going to have, you know, we're not going to have pasta. We're not going to have , uh , some of those instead, we're going to go, you know, we're going to have, I dunno , all Asian food, right? Like it's, there's got to be some comfort there.
Um, and that's one of the things that I've seen with our chefs that , uh, on, on, you know, on the world tour is the ability to kind of jump around within multiple cultures and create dishes that are , uh, reminiscent for the different writers from different cultures, like there's aspects of this and that. Um, but there really do stick to the, the scientific principle of providing what they need.
That's right. That's right. It's super fascinating to me. And I think there was a big, big learning experience. Try to combine the two because as Americans, I think that we do have a much more technical culture around food than we do. Um , you know, a cultural basis of eating just because, you know, we are a melting pot, right. We love to innovate, we love trying new things. And I think that there is kind of a balance. There's a, there's a time for innovation.
And I've certainly seen, you know , uh , a number of things that , that make fueling athletes in the field better that are purely scientific. And I've seen other techniques that, you know , um , are much more cultural fella . Good example of that would be making, you know, she baked rice cakes and she's a very ancient way of fueling versus, you know, a lot of the different types of sports drink ended up concocting.
Yeah. Yeah. And the rice cakes , um, for those of you who aren't aware, one of the things Alan brought to pro cycling was this idea of rather than having highly engineered unwrapped food, that's, you know, shelf stable for God knows how long , um, instead moving toward real food during your workout and using sushi, rice and flavoring that my , my favorite is the eggs, soy sauce, a little bit of bacon mixed into the rice wrapped up.
It's such an amazing treat, you know, an hour, two hours, three hours into a ride , um, who am I kidding on a ride three hours, but you know, if , if, if I get stuck out for three hours, it's, it's such a good way to fuel and you don't have that , um, that flavor fatigue of, you know, something just overly sweet. Uh , I think , I think old school power bars , like the really old chewy kind of like an eraser, you know, like a pencil eraser trying to chop down.
Um, so those rice cakes were a , uh , uh, a novel thing cycling and now they're, they're ubiquitous. I mean, every team carries a , a rice cooker and is making these things. Um, but you brought that to the sport. And I know you had some stories of , uh, the hazing that came with that or the,
yeah, there was definitely a lot of hazing that came with it.
You know, I was, I think for a long time, and I don't know how things are now, but , uh , the only , um , the only real Asian staffer working in pro cycling , um, there , there , there , there aren't many, if any, at all, and, you know, I was kind of reinforcing a stereotype as me being Chinese, showing up to a vibration up with the rice cooker, making, you know, a life space, energy bar, or part of me was very loud and proud about it.
Another part of me, you know, they kind of have to fight a lot of ignorance and prejudice to make that happen.
Yeah. And they say, you know, nutrition is it kind of falls along the same lines as religion and politics. Like, you know, if you're talking scientific religion, you just kind of want to tread lightly. And I think you might've brought the perfect storm of like changing the religion, religious paradigm or religious, the nutritionist paradigm, maybe religious too . Um , and doing it from a perceived , uh , difference in terms of ethnos intricity. Um,
yeah, I think we ultimately, yeah, I think it wasn't just about weathering through it, but it was , uh , it was that we actually had data. We had, you know, we had the ability to monitor these athletes very, very well, and we had their daily feedback and while many of them might have been initially hesitant or resistant, I think that I was able to convince enough of them to try that, you know , over time . And as you see now, it's so ubiquitous because it actually does work.
And you see this a placebo effect . We tried a lot of different things. And I think that with almost everything that we tried that was novel with respect to nutrition or performance, if it didn't work, but it was new, it was novel. It was maybe even expensive. It did something in the first, maybe few weeks then overtime . And it would kind of fade away from the practice, but the things that did work ended up holding on for years, right .
That's always been really neat to see, and they always going to see a lot of different trends come and go, and that's okay, that's fine. We got it . You got to try because, you know , athletes ended up being their own experiments, scientific literature, at least in forced performance has never as robust as the kind of data that you get in , you know , medical science or the clinical trials. You need to say prove the efficacy of a vaccine . Right.
I'm so happy to do their own own little experiments
for sure. I mean, most, most sports performance sport science literature , um , is a doctoral student or master's student who gathers a bunch of maybe moderately trained , uh, fellow college students. And does it experiment? It's great. And we start to see where things might go, but it's really hard to convince, say a country's Olympic program to put all their athletes into a trial because there's a risk of detriment and there's no time for detriment in pro sports or lead sports.
And so the studies kind of show us what might be possible and then implement it , um, with, you know, some, some idea of mechanistic , mechanistic, rationale, follow closely with the athletes. And then we see may work for some, and not others. It may work for all of them, but like you said, the stuff that is kind of universally beneficial, it sticks and it hangs around. Yeah . That's fun.
I think another factor there is , is execution, as you mentioned, implementation, and, you know, for the proteins that we've worked for, we were fortunate enough that there was budget to hire a great chef, to build a great food truck, right. To do things, to be able to execute. But Holy cow, a lot of this stuff to be a real hassle , if you're on your own. Right.
And that's , that's a big kind of dividing line between performance at times , which is kind of unfortunate is that none of this stuff is easy. Right.
It's resource, expensive time demanding. Yeah. Well, so one of the things that you came up with , um, in the early years of our cycling team was this secret drink mix , um, speaking of things that have , have stuck around and hung on and, and actually blown up. Right. Um , so it didn't mention it earlier, but Alan is the founder of scratch labs, which , um , has numerous products , uh, in the nutrition space. But , um, is it, is it fair to say that hydration is kind of a Keystone for you guys?
Yeah. It's our bread and butter. It's our flagship product. That's why most people get interested in us that we make a, you know, kind of a natural sports drink. Um, that is a lot simpler than a typical, you know, commercially available sports drink that is on the pro tour. And there's a lot of science in with shrink . It's just that we took a much simpler approach in putting it together.
Yeah. I mean, nature does a lot of engineering in, you know , what's produced in lemons and limes and salts and things that are readily available. Um, and so I w I would say your drink is fairly engineered was just pre engineered before you got to it, as opposed to driving in the lab. Um , you're taking advantage of what's already been, been out there.
That's right. When you do look at nature and you do look at culture, you learn a lot about what does work. So for example, in almost every culture where there's a very, very hot and humid environment and where intestinal viruses like cholera might be very prevalent.
We also see these homemade remedies that tend to have a lot of thoughts that tend to have, you know , some amount of carbohydrate in them, whether it's a faulty porridge or whether it's a very salting shower, you know, lemon, hydration, drinks , et cetera.
Um, and you know , that form is the basis of what we know is hydration solutions similar to like Pedialyte, which, you know , take advantage of the fact that when both sodium and glucose are cotransporters together, that also opens up water channels that help to move a lot more water across the small intestine, our gut than water alone.
So it's funny that there are both kind of cultural recipes out there, but also, you know , a great body of science describes why some things have lasted a long time cultural work.
Yeah. Yeah. And how we can draw from the science that looks at those cultural remedies and at medical remedies for like you mentioned, cholera and other things, and bring that into sports and know , you know, we know what rehydrates and supports hydration and people who are at , at a rough end of the medical spectrum. Um, a lot of that applies in sports too, and can help us make sure that we're giving the athletes what they need, whether that's a hot iron man or a hot day in the tour de France.
Um,
that's right. That's right. I always refer to elite athletes as canaries in a coal mine, because as much as we admire them for how strong they are and for their, their, their kneecaps and abilities, they push themselves so hard that they're always on the Razor's edge between peak, performance and illness. Right. And so, you know, they consume products at such a high level. They're so sensitive to their own body, but they're the first ones to know when something is off.
Yeah. And that's in medicine, we kind of joke , um, lots of patients, if not all patients will say, Nope , doc, I know my body. I know my body. Yeah . Athletes do. Um, I think there's a large population, a large part of the population that, that say that, and really have no connection with their body.
And I don't want to go down that path right now, but , um, but athletes, to your point, they really know when something small is off, it's kind of the way the other , uh , thing that we always pay attention to medicine is if a mother says there's just something not right with my kid like that, you know, there's something there. I don't know what it is, but okay. I'm going to , we've got to dig in and figure out what this is.
Um, athletes, I think to the same, to the same degree they know what's going on. So you developed a , uh , a drink mix has become Skratch labs , uh, hydration mix. And it's got kind of a storied past in that. Um, I mean, it was, it was definitely a backlot kind of thing where you were, you were making this for that few athletes that, that , uh, initially had access to it and it grew and grew and grew and eventually grew it into this company.
Um, and the, the mix that you all make, the hydration product , uh, the exercise hydration product is one that I think any of my patients have heard me recommend that they've , you know, it should be in their armamentarium when it comes to , to training and competing. Um , but you've got a few other products. You've got a , uh , uh, a wellness. I almost said hyperhydration, which I think is what it used to be called.
Yeah. We both have a wellness product, which is our version of an oil rehydration solution, similar to P like that's a higher sodium and higher potassium level with a little bit of strength to help quell any kind of intestinal virus as well as to help improve the rate of water absorption for pupil athletes.
Yeah. Great. Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, it's great. So she brought days , uh , then we have hyperhydration, which is also intended for the heat, which is a sports strength with a Shaline level of Sonia minute . And the idea there is that you can drink it before an event say the night before the morning of , or right at the start line.
And that extra sodium allows you to potentially max out the amount of total water that you can hold, because if you drank plain water, we would, you know, you'd be more likely to filter out a lot of that water. Um, the sodium helps to keep the concentration of sodium in the blood, you know, consistent. Um, and as long as your blood pressure is skyrocketing, you won't be able to retain that fluid.
And while we don't think of food retention as being a good thing in normal life , uh, for an athlete about exercise, that can actually be really performance enhancing .
Oh, absolutely. And we say water follows salt in the body. And that's part of that, that whole idea is if you you're always going to be eliminating salt too. So if you add a little extra, you'll be able to keep some of that water around while your body kind of churns through and metabolizes, or kind of balances out that salt load , uh , through the kidneys , the things
that's right. That's ultimately the basis of the IVR duration , right. Uh , you know, sailing bag is about pretty followed two milligrams of sodium per year. Uh , same with our hyperhydration. Uh , and that's, if you just want to expand that, but with a normal sports drinks , concentration is only about say 800 milligrams to a thousand because that replicates with loss of sweat, there's a pretty complex physiology around the triggers for first, one of those triggers is sodium concentration.
And so we think that we help the process by replacing what's lost. We, by not being there, there may be some evidence that , that you can actually enhance the system by , by replacing sodium.
Yeah. And that , that's an important point. The whole idea of the thirst trigger, if you can, one of the things any athlete is familiar with is you go out you're, you're exercising, training, competing , um, and you're solely focused on whatever it is you're doing the idea of, you know, drink when it occurs to you to drink when you're thirsty is great, except that if you're solely focused on other things, it only occurs to you later.
And so you guys have designed a product that helps kind of augment that trigger, so to speak.
Yeah, exactly. I think that there are two points of augmentation. One point is having something that tastes good and having something that is cold, for sure, drinking a cold drink on a hot day, feels a lot better and , uh , actually can help to cool the body down. And so that's one mechanism.
Another mechanism is having that sodium because, you know , if we are losing water for what is effectively happening is the concentration of sodium in our blood goes up, but that is one of the triggers for thirst. Another trigger for first is losing a lot of blood volume shows , for example, or sweat that year . Um , you know, your , your shrink , your blood going and shrinks . That's another trigger, but you know , blood pressure tends to be so hydrated exercise. That's a trigger.
Does it have to be as strong , um, that high sodium concentration trigger, which can take some time feedback on that is a trigger. If you're drinking plain water and you're also losing salt, well, then there's not , um, there's not as much set in the body. And so you don't need to drink as much water as you've lost , uh, uh, you know, puncher first .
So one of the problems with playing water during exercise is that if you're not drinking , uh , the sodium with that, then it doesn't trigger you to drink the same amount of fluid that you've actually lost. And so adding that sodium at a higher concentration that replicates the sweat , um , creates a better matching. There's still some wag , but, you know, once you catch up with that lag, you end up being a little more challenging or you don't go, you don't go backwards beyond that lag .
So let's say the lag takes you like a 2% loss. Well , at that point, we're first we'll tend to trigger new , to stay at a two or 3% loss, as opposed to Ave continue to go backwards over time.
Right? If it's just water, it's kind of a losing game. You're, you're always going to be just a little bit under replacing that
adds up over time. And what's important to realize is that your body is doing that for a reason. Your body is doing that to maintain a electrolyte balance. And the first mechanism will preferentially , uh , protect electrolyte balance over total fluid balance, right?
Yeah. Electrolyte imbalance will potentially kill you quickly if it gets, I mean, not, not in sports that often, but as a , as an evolutionary , uh , premise, if it gets way out of whack, that's a short game, whereas a dehydration, you can last a little longer.
That's right. And that's the thing about sports is that we know that the hydration does hurt performance, but we also know that electrolyte balance can be harmful as well. And your body is effectively prioritizing the electrolyte balance. Silvers , you know , the body's smart. If they can't cope, it will tell you to slow down. Right. But the problem with being an athlete is that you always find yourself, drop it off .
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along with this problem of hydration. Um, one of the issues that comes up is refueling. And by the same token, like if, when it gets really difficult and the it's hot, the pace is fast. Uh , the concentration levels are high. There's the simple act of refueling can become pretty difficult, even though it's a limiting factor in your performance.
It's one that can either , uh, not, I don't want to say ignored , um, but it, but it gets a little bit neglected , uh, out of a preference for just pushing on and trying to go harder and faster than the task at hand. So we will have come up with an interesting way at scratch to address this as well. And it's something we've been playing with, not playing with. We've had the pleasure of , of using it as a tool on the world tour and is about to be available more widely.
Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Yeah, certainly. You know, here's the issue, the issue is, is that you do need to feel when you're exercising, especially for prolonged periods of time. We're lucky enough that we store both fat and carbohydrate. Um, you know, our bodies tend to be extraordinarily ample and they're very incredibly rare . We ever run out of fat as a fuel source . So we literally can walk across the country on our fat stores, right?
The leanest habits .
Yeah. Even the leanness of us. Uh , unfortunately those doors open , we get news that lower exercise intensity. Anytime we start to work , um, you know, at, or above a hard exercise intensity, the preferential fuel is the glycogen or the storage form of carbohydrate inside of our muscle. We can't go hard without it. And I think what ends up happening is athletes because they have this storage form of carbohydrate or glycogen to go really, really hard, forget about fueling.
And then when they run out, it's like they fall off a cliff, right? So the only way to be able to maintain higher intensity exercise for a really long time is to have an dodginess or external source of carbohydrate muscle glycogen stores. You know , you know, even body language in stores and take working muscles may only be around 2000 to 2,500 calories.
So if your event is going to be shorter than that, there's probably no reason to worry about doing, but with a lot of the athletes you work with on the pro tour, those days could be 5,000 calories a day , uh , pretty easily. Right. And so they've got to still consume about half the fuel that they burn , uh , externally. Right.
For sure. And that goes into 2,500 calories that presumption upfront that you're going into an event with that many stored really presumes that you've totally filled the tank, which on a day after day , uh, effort can oftentimes isn't the case.
Yeah, that's right. Unless you're having a high amount of carbohydrate. When I say high, we're talking about 10 grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight per day. Right? So from an absolute standpoint, that's , you know , 700 grams of carbohydrate for 154 pound person, which is a lot of carbohydrates . The other thing is that you also have to have , um , muscle that is , uh , well recovered.
So we know that damaged muscle tissue, for example, from a very hard workout, I may not store it by the gym as well as a fresh or healthy tissue.
Yeah, for sure. So these are all reasons why having a source, a steady source of carbohydrate for workouts is really to performance. And there's a lot of people have talked about, you know , you hear a lot about Quito and doing , uh , you know , fasted workouts and fat fuel and stuff, but that's there , you could debatably get into that for certain health reasons and things other than performance, but we're talking about performing well,
yeah, we're talking about , uh , uh, you know, a stage four , the final client is a massive thousand liter client , right. And you're going to be go on call out, you know, five hours into an event we're talking about, you know, having the finishing sprint at the end of the Olympic marathon. Um, we're talking about periods of time where you have to go really, really hard. Um, and we're also talking about neurological function, right?
Because our brain and our nervous system rely solely on glucose for carbohydrate as a school. So even having that mental acuity is going to be dependent upon, you know, having a normal blood sugar level. So, you know, hypoglycemia , uh, even if you have, you know, even if you're not going hard, can be detrimental to cognitive performance. Right.
Absolutely. And that's something that I think is interesting across sports that we may not consider as collected independent , um, sports that are, you know , like , like baseball or golf where it's a long day. Um, and just by virtue of the time out there, not necessarily the intensity of the effort at times intense, but just the duration of the event, you can have waxing and waning glucose levels independent of whether you're truly glycogen depleted.
Um, but then that impacts mental acuity, which is vital , seems like that
that's right. That's right. Obviously fuel is important, obviously carbohydrate as being a rate, limiting fuel is really important. Um, you know, the issue with fueling though, is that in liquid form , um , most carbohydrates that you can drink can also cause an appreciable amount of GI distress, especially if you drink those solutions too fast. Right.
Um, what ends up happening is is that these solutions , um, you know , let's say we wanted to get 400 calories and half a liter, well, that's a hundred grams of carbohydrate. And , um , the first question is , is whether or not the small intestine can absorb at that rate. And let's say that it , that it can over an hour towards that much carbohydrate.
Well, if you're drinking all of that carbohydrates and, you know , uh , 10 minutes swig, right , because you're in the middle of competition and you have a limited amount of time where you can actually replenish that if you will , we're not fuel enters the gut and digest a bunch of these small little glucose molecules. The molecular pressure inside of the gut can be so high. That all of a sudden you create a situation where you have a massive traffic jam inside of the gut.
And now your , your small adjustment can absorb that carbohydrate at a fast enough rate. That what ends up happening is because that concentration is much higher in of your gut than it is in your blood water tends to like to move from an area of low concentration to high concentration.
And as you start to get some water moving into the small intestine, you can get bloating, discomfort, significant amount of GI distress, and , you know, worst case scenario, you got an exercise associated diarrhea, right?
Yeah. It's the corollary to what we were just talking about with hydration, where if you can get some more salt crossing into the bloodstream , it pulls the water along with it. Well, if you have salt Butte , which in this case will be carbohydrate stuck, you know , not being able to cross quickly enough from the gut then rather than the water going from the gut into the bloodstream, going to go the other way, which is uncomfortable and possibly embarrassing.
That's right . That's right. You know, the reality is, is that for these endurance athletes who were exercising really, really hard blood flow to the small intestine is ready to limit limited . So their absorptive capacity ends up being very different when they're exercising than when they're sitting down at a dinner table. Right? And so you need a carbohydrate source that can be a chore very, very fast.
Initially, this is why we've stuck with very low concentration carbohydrate drinks for sports drink with an Apple amount of sodium, that little bit of carbohydrate with that good amount of sodium could help move water in. And if you drank enough of it, because it was a hot day, trickle handles carbohydrates all the time was a way that you could actually present an appreciable amount of energy.
And then we would tell people, Hey, look, we want to , you know , for the rest of your food to stay steady, these rice cakes or these solid forms of food that athletes would have to chew, I would hold up in the stomach or preferred because the stomach ended up acting like a big reservoir for food, almost like a stoplight at the beginning of a highway, which would then allow foodstuffs to trickle into the smaller Justin, a more appropriate rates .
And you could basically shovel hole by staking your mouth, but it didn't mean that it was going to cause a traffic jam in your gut. The stomach would hold it up, digest it, and then slowly introduce carbohydrates over a longer period of time. But all of it is , is that as we all know, and in any sport or event , it can be really, really hard in the middle of an activity to try to chew a piece of food, right?
So the question became, how do we allow someone to drink a high amount of carbohydrates source, right? That , that , that won't necessarily flood their , their small intestine,
which has been the way to be done for awhile . I mean , it's kind of
right . It's been limited. And I'll tell you why it's because in order to get carbohydrates, to dissolve into water new, for the most part, simpler carbohydrates , something without a big structure, which, you know, for background, let's talk a little about , about carbohydrates as a whole. Um, carbohydrates are basically, you know , carbon water, carbon being the backbone, the water, having the hydrogen and oxygen. And these are these kind of carbon six structures at it's simplest form.
Their simplest sugars are glucose they're fruit toast, which is fruit, sugar, and galactose, which is drive from milk. And those three sugars are the only three sugars with that can get across the small intestine. So anything, whether it be rice or pasta or keto , eventually we'll digest to one of those three sugars and then cross the small intestine.
If you take one step up from these simple sugars, which are called monosaccharides , the disaccharides, so glucose , glucose, glucose, fructose sucrose, or cane sugar , um , a glucose and galactose molecule, lactose molecule. And for example, if you don't have black case , we'd never be able to break apart that black toast , it would sit in your gut, eventually build up, create a lot of pressure because it's not being transported across the intestine.
And that's where people end up getting bloated. And that GI discomfort when they're lactose intolerant , um , you know, further up from the diet are sugar molecules greater than, and at this point we're only talking about using glucose as a building block.
If you have a volatile know what's called a maltodextrin molecule , and those are still pretty soluble, but if you compare that to say a potato carbohydrate molecule may actually be made up of several hundred glucose molecules combined together. And what's really interesting about real food. Is that real food, not all only has significantly more glucose units. They're big molecules, right? With a lot of energy density, they also have different types of structures.
You can either link glucose units like the train , uh, the carbon wander the carpet floor . Those are called out the one for leakages . Those linkages are typically how simpler sugars like maltodextrin are linked together. And they can break apart.
We really, really fast through and dine with the mouth, primarily an enzyme called amylase, which is in the mouth and in the gut, but it reals food, a potato or pasta, not only do you see these kind of straight chain links, alpha one forming, but you see big complex branches coming off of those long chain . And this is where the six attaches these alpha one six linkages , uh , or these branch linkages. Uh, they are harder to break apart.
Uh , their breakups they're broken apart by different kinds of inbound calls , which is only found in the small intestine . And so we ended up finding, being able to source that carbohydrate, that bad , a lot of branches that there's about 64 glucose. Um , it's a lot closer to what real food looks like.
Uh, yet it's still small enough that it dissolved in liquid form until we get , uh, get something that is very drinkable that is more similar to water yet when it gets in your gut, it ends up breaking apart and how they what's called the lower glycemic index, meaning that the rate of glucose, small chills being presented with a gut ended up being a lot more steady.
And so you can get a lot of carbohydrates into your gut at one time, but the absorption ends up becoming a little steadier over a longer period of time.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's one of the things that has been interesting with the , uh, so , so the packages that we've had of , um, what is going to be called a super fuel, is that right? Um , the , the protocol or prototype packages of said high carb mix on them. And I had to continuously have the conversations. Understandably. So with athletes that, yes, it's high carb , but it's not necessarily high glycemic index. And it's not just because you're taking in a big load of carbohydrate.
You're not spiking your sugar. It's kind of the best of both worlds. You get, you get all these calories in a slow, slow release where drinking is usually boluses it's, you know, big input time away from it big , but it almost acts as if it , you just had kind of a steady drip.
Yeah, exactly. So , so there's something in nutrition called the dextrose equivalent and the dextrose equivalent is how quickly something can raise your blood sugar as compared to something that is pure glucose or extra. Right. And, you know , it's very interesting about these charts is that the equations that predict the dextrous equivalent are all dependent upon the number of glucose units.
So if you have something that is three glucose units, as it gets in the gut, those three, or those two bonds break apart very, very quickly, but you increase the number of glucose that you add to a given carbohydrate structure and get kind of a logarithmic or exponential kind of slow down. And that slowed down as you've been greater, it's a highly branched carbohydrate .
That's ultimately what, when you were going to do with the super field product, which is called highly branch cyclo dextrin, you know, in terms of , uh , mimicking nature where you find highly breadstick , what sections are muscle glycogen or as glycogen glycogen is the reason why glycogen has such a great carbohydrate fuel source is because it is very, very complex food packed , cyclical carbohydrate inside of a muscle cell.
And the way that muscle glycogen is made is through an enzyme called branching and , and you increase blood sugar to a muscle. And that muscle absorbs it branching enzyme that their access to calories will link those glucose units into this very complex glycogen structure, which is this highly cyclics extra and structure . The differences is that a glycogen molecule could be up of a thousand glucose units.
Whereas even though , uh, are highly branch stick with Dexter and carbohydrate is of the same structure where we've cut it down to about 16 to 70 glucose unit , um, what , what is really cool is that the way you make of this carbohydrate is you actually take the same enzyme in the body that makes lots of clients, and you put it in a waxy corn starch, which is very complex, but not very soluble. And it creates this really cool structure.
Um , so it's a natural enzymatic process that happens inside the human body that , uh, is used to make this couple hydrant .
That's, that's really cool. I didn't know that it so closely mimicked glycogen, but that makes a lot of sense. Um, yeah,
it basically chops up.
Yeah, very cool. So in using this, you know, we've used it on, on the world tour in the tour de France , um, I can say that we've had great feedback and great objective results from it , uh , and of the things we're being like, like you alluded to earlier, anytime you're trying to take in , uh , large amounts of fuel during exercise GI distress is almost a given as you push the boundaries.
And that's something that, you know, almost uniformly we've been able to avoid with this is, you know, typically we think of maybe trying to get back during an endurance performance, you know, 300, 350 calories in an hour, and we've really been able to push the envelope using this , um, significantly. I know you all have done some studies on it. What, what boundaries do you see in terms of refueling with, with this fuel?
Yeah, I think that , uh, with this particular source and a really fit athlete , um, I've been able, you know, for example, with some of the athletes to get up to 500, 525 calories , but nature of it is so is that you don't need that many calories. And so knowing that 500 or so might be kind of the top limit, it's nice to be able to go back to that 300 or 400, right. Uh , and use a combination of, you know, fall and carbohydrate as well as with the carbohydrates, the athletes.
I think what this ultimately does is it creates , uh , a really, really great and shaped weapon that you have in your arsenal and your feeling arsenal . Right ? And so, for example, at a race like Leadville , uh , 100, which guys participated in last year, this was certainly one event where, because it's so bumping , it's a hundred miles of mountain biking over really hard terrain at very high altitude. There's no way that they could literally, you know, have try and chew food.
And so these athletes were able to use the super fuel the whole entire time and about 400 calories an hour and feel pretty strong towards the end . Right.
Yeah, for sure. I do have to find out though, at the first feed you're asleep in the back of the truck, I had to hand out this Overfield ,
Nina wakes you up. We haven't had any caffeine. We have added a good amount of salt to it. So they make , uh , our sports drinks. So again, like we said, that transport of sodium , the glucose will allow water to get pulled into the gut. And so it does have the advantage of our sports drinks , but we are able now to concentrate it , uh, quite a bit. And I think that, you know, what's cool about this is it just gives you options.
I don't know if , if, if when you feel really comfortable telling people how to use it, what I really enjoy seeing is now that we have followed this issue is to see how people decide to use it themselves. Know what are the opportunities , um, you know, w w when, when would you prefer this versus leftover pizza?
Right . I think that's a great way to think about it. And that's how with, with , uh, the athletes that I work with, I've suggested that they use it almost as like a, as a glycogen safety net. Um , like you've got this right , that you can sip on, or, you know, drink normally throughout the ride workout, whatever it is you're doing.
And then you can add to that, if you feel like you're craving a peanut butter sandwich and you're three hours , three hours into a ride, then eat the peanut butter sandwich. Um ,
yeah, yeah, exactly.
It just gives you this kind of a , a baseline and a steady release. And in thinking through this , um, you know, I work with , uh , uh, a good number of PGA golfers, and it kind of occurred to me probably later than it should have , uh , as we were talking with some of these guys, and we'll, we'll have some of them were glucose monitors , uh , and kind of look at their, their glucose profiles through a training day.
Cause a lot of them are, I mean, they, they train pretty seriously , um, training day, a practice day, and then at the tournament. And we'll see these, especially, you know, as, you know, some people are just prone , uh, to the peaks and valleys in glucose than others. Um, and for them, when they have the valleys, it's, they , they get this cognitive brain fog too , which really impacts their, their play.
And so I've actually thought about using and have some of the guys using this now at a little bit lower concentration, but just to drink a bottle across the first nine a bottle across the second, eat with it water in addition, but kind of use this to keep things steady. Is that a reasonable way to,
I think that's a really reasonable way to approach it because I think that there's a real possibility with this fuel is that you never find yourself having an emergency, right. That , uh, it's my hope that this changes the nature of how athletes do their pooling , because what typically happens for a lot of athletes is they're going, they're going, they're going. And then they hit that wall. They fall off that cliff.
When they fall off that cliff, they start to panic and they start to reach for all of these really high calorie, super sugary gels, and syrups to try to bring them back up as fast as possible. And while that might help initially they end up kind of paying the price maybe an hour later through GI distress.
Yeah. Or , or in another massive drop in their sugar bomb you just took and then five minutes later. Exactly.
Exactly. So my thinking is , is that if you're proactive, if you have something that you can consistently consume without any issues, then you're going to be better off for the long haul and you'll never need or reach that point of emergency. And so, you know, lowering the concentration using it throughout the day. Um, I think that's a great way to go about it. Um, you know, for the guys on the world tour, I would tell some of the athletes think of it like this.
You know, if you know that in an hour, you're going to be approaching the hardest part of the day. Well , in that hour, try to consume as many calories as you can. So that during that hour, you don't actually have to worry about it. You're already skilled up for that effort.
Yeah. Yeah. Because like you said, if , if you get to that emergency point, you know, you're 30 minutes into that next big effort and that's when things start to fall apart, it's too late. If you're an athlete, just trying to finish, like you can kind of pull things back together, but if you want to have your best performance, then it's too late.
Yeah. I mean, speaking of an athlete who just wants to finish, I also think that it could be a really great way to restore glycogen stores. Um, and that last hour of exercise. So if you're doing a cooldown , you know, and you're still exercising, it's the contracting muscle that is most sensitive, both insulin as well as , uh , able to move glucose into the muscle without insulin . Yeah. And then we can actually refill those muscles in real time. Kind of pop them back off.
You're that much further ahead at restoring your glycogen for the next day.
Yeah. And whether that next season competition or just training, you know, day after day training , um, you got to think about, you don't want today's effort to ruin tomorrows unless today's is the only one today's Leadville, then what tomorrow looks like is kind of immaterial. You just gotta get through it .
Yeah. You know , it's interesting. I think that, you know , even when you think about recovery drinks off of that matter , they're , they're not a replacement for food and this is not a replacement for food that gives you another option when food is as possible. Right. And so I think that it solves the problem of , of athletes coming philosophy saying, Hey, look, what if we're in a situation where we can't get a bar , we can't get that life case .
We can't get, you know, that solid food into our system. Um , and those situations not only happened more than you think they happen , but they also tend to be very critical make or break moment.
Yeah. It's rarely when the, when the is slow and easy or, you know, the , the times when you can reach for something typically not the critical time in the, in the event.
That's right.
And I think that until, until we figured, you know, the best message for this particular carbohydrate structure out, I was really reluctant to tell athletes to jam a bunch of maltodextrin a solution, just because I was always cognizant of the fact that while some athletes could handle it, you know, you've got to kind of take their chip where they ended up experience , you know , whereas the super fuel molecule is, you know , 60 to 70 glucose units, but typical off the shelf Balto is only about
five to 15. And we talk about the dextrose and how fast 15 molecules can break apart versus 70. You're talking about a big, big difference. Right. So I found it kind of boring, but tell people, you know, Hey , um , take it. That's a good goal for dextrin . Um, it's also interesting because I think that with athletes, you also want to provide them with a really clean fuel source that doesn't have a lot of extra ingredients.
And some people fall by items , you know, a lot of fiber affecting the whole things up in the stomach or to protect , um, digestive bond drug , the carbohydrate. And while I think that's a very interesting and elegant solution, it also introduces potential for just more stuff in the gut. And so we tried to come about it and you know , what could we do with just the carbohydrate molecule by itself? It's kind of like when you kind of ask the question, how do we build this spreadsheet? Right.
We do the carbon fiber rather than having to add suspension. Right. We'll deal with those bumps . I think that was a pretty neat way to go about it. Um, yeah. So that's , that's actually a product that's gonna be launching in about a week , um, like the 20th or so of may. So about five days or so seven days from now, we'll be watching that product to public. We've now had about 18 months with you guys , uh, testing and playing with that product.
Originally this product started with , uh , trying to figure out how to tool an athlete named Jordan Sherman . She was preparing for the marathon chocolate, lots of applications .
Well, I'm excited for it. Um, I've enjoyed it myself and have recommended it to a lot of patients. And I think kind of as a pointed out earlier, I think there's going to be a recognition of a lot of, kind of unexpected ways to use a product like this that I think it will answer or be a solution for some problems that plague athletes across numerous sports. And I'm excited to see how that plays out too. Um, what's your favorite flavor? What's your favorite flavor?
Well, we have right now a limited line, which is going to launch next week, and then eventually we're going to probably watch a raspberry flavor. Um, we also have this watermelon flavor, which I know a lot of guys love, but in the middle of a production with the watermelon, we found that the supplier who was giving us the watermelon crystal, that they were doctoring it up a little bit with some natural flavoring agent . And , uh , so we decided to not go the watermelon cloud .
Uh, again, part of our ethos is use , um , really simple ingredients use ingredients that we can identify , um, that we know that we can structurally understand that's coming from the actual food as opposed to , um, you know, being, being adulterated. Anyway , certainly this carbohydrate molecule is on the kind of little, far edge of science.
And so we could certainly argue that , um, you know, not , uh , real, but I do think that this structure brings us closer to what a real complex carbohydrate molecule is supposed to look like that can still dissolve in water than, you know , manufacturers making that we need a glucose unit chain and calling that a complex carbohydrate. Right . Um, what kind of pisses me off about that is that anytime you go beyond three glucose units, we no longer have to call with for sugar.
And yet, while it's still at five to 15 , probably has the highest by civic conducts white bread , uh , the funny situation, right? Food labels and all that,
which is why nutritional science gets so murky.
It is, it is. And I think that, you know, with that in mind, it's really up to the individual, try it out for themselves and my policy with folks, especially because people are so individual is give it a shot. If it doesn't work for you, no harm, no foul. You know, we're trying to solve problems for many people as we can, who are striving individuals . And there are certainly many, many ways to solve the same problem. So this is our kind of patent .
I think that's a noble approach. You hear many companies and many, well, many representatives of companies talk about how their product is the only way to solve a problem. Um, and almost get defensive if you say, Oh , it didn't work for me. Um, and I know from years past that , that you don't address it that way, which is , uh , is something I really appreciate as well.
Yeah. Yeah. Because everyone's different, right? The one solution might work for one person and another solution might actually work better for, for another person. You never know. And this is where I think that both support , as well as working on the performance side, optimizing performance is so fascinating. Right. Because you are kind of a bit of a private investigator a lot of the time.
Yeah, definitely. Alan , thank you very much. I've taken more of your time than I told you I would, but I've, I've loved every bit of it and , and hearing your wisdom on this topic. So thank you. Um, thanks for being here .
Thanks. Thanks for the support. Thanks for being, you know , part of the kind of willing crew to help us solve these problems for others. So that's much appreciated
my pleasure. It's a lot of fun Allen .
She had it and , uh , we'll probably drag you back on here later in the year for , uh , or another topic too good to pass up. Okay . Thanks. The content of this podcast is meant for general informational and educational purposes. Only all listeners should speak with their doctor or a medical practitioner before implementing any change in their healthcare regimen.
If you're currently a patient at podium, then you have an established doctor, patient relationship with me, and I'm happy to discuss this with them . If you're not currently a patient at podium, nothing in this recording establishes a doctor patient relationship between us, nor does it constitute the practice of medicine or the dissemination of medical advice. Should you implement any information contained here in without consulting your own physician? You do so at your own risk.
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