Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 259 - Q and A: cannabis, EAA’s, protein intake when fasting, tips for great digestion + more!

Episode Date: January 27, 2023

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This episode is brought to you in part thanks to some of our amazing partners like LMNT. LMNT makes the best electrolyte product on the market. In fact, I've actually started drinking my LMNT each and every morning before I have coffee so as to optimize my circadian biology, make sure that I'm hydrated, and make sure that I'm getting ahead on my water intake throughout the day and not reliant on stimulants, but instead being somebody who's reliant on stimulants, but instead being somebody who's reliant on hydration and the proper balance of minerals and electrolytes. If you want to feel your best all day, mentally and physically, it's imperative that you stay

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you back to a place of alertness in a really chaotic world. It's also great for just cultivating resilience. I find I'm much tougher. Again, this is a more anecdotal thing, but I find that I am much tougher, ready to face the day's tasks when I am consistently exposing myself to the elements. Call it bromeopathy, call it anecdote, but I will tell you one thing is for sure, cold water immersion has made a huge difference for my health and well-being in just a few short sessions a week, and Ice Barrel is the sleekest, best-looking, cleanest, and most affordable way to do it reliably. You can head over to icebarrel.com slash Danny to take advantage of their 100% satisfaction guaranteed with again, a 30 day money back guarantee and

save 125 bucks on your ice barrel using the promo code Danny. So again, icebarrel.com slash Danny and check out using the promo code Danny to save 125 bucks. This podcast has some awesome partners. And one of my favorite, of course, is Legion Athletics. Legion is my go-to supplement manufacturer for what I like to call my big rock supplements. This would be my protein powder, my pre-training formula, my post-training formula, and creatine, and my kind of ancillary vitamins and micronutrient protection. and my kind of ancillary vitamins and micronutrient protection. So why do I like Legion so much? What sets them apart? It's quite simple. Legion uses all natural ingredients. All the formulas include natural coloring and natural sweeteners, no artificial sweeteners, just stevia. And every single formulation, be it a pre-workout or a vitamin contains clinically effective dosages

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contain caffeine. That would be their Stem Free Pulse. I'm a huge, huge fan of beta alanine and L-citrulline, but I don't like taking in wildly high amounts of caffeine. So if you are somebody who likes pre-workout with caffeine, you can try Pulse. Or if you like it without caffeine, because you maybe want to enjoy your morning coffee or monitor your caffeine consumption, try the Pulse Stim Free. My favorite flavors there for sure are the new grape and the amazing, amazing tropical punch. As for my creatine, I get that from Legion's Recharge. Five grams each and every day.

I take it on the days I train as well as the days I do not because Recharge also contains L-carnitine, which can help with promoting muscle recovery and decreasing soreness, as well as some ingredients to help with creatine utilization. And of course, my favorite supplements for my ancillary micronutrient health are Legion's Multivitamin and Legion's Greens Powder. Not only do these two products contain a ton of high quality vitamins and minerals. They also contain unique adaptogens like KSM 66 ashwagandha and reishi mushroom, which I like to take each and every day to promote my health. If you want to cover all your bases with a high quality protein, creatine post-workout or the ancillary micronutrient health stuff like greens,

powders, and multivitamin, I encourage you to go over to legionathletics.com and check out using the promo code Danny. That'll save you 20% on your first order and you'll rack up points that you can use the same way as cash every time you use the code and you'll also be supporting the show. Welcome in everybody to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Matranga. And in this episode, I will be answering some of your questions, questions that I have fielded from my Instagram. We have questions today about a variety of different fitness, nutrition, and health topics, things like intermittent fasting, probiotic supplementation, constipation and digestive health, marijuana and cannabis,

marijuana or cannabis, as it pertains to performance specifically, essential amino acids, how and when to use them if you should use them, as well as alternatives, whether that be protein or various amino acids, and memorization tips when it comes down to granular subjects like anatomy, biology, physiology, and whether or not I have recommendations for nootropics or smart drugs, as they are often called. So getting into the first question, again, these are all fielded from my Instagram. So if you want to have your question featured on the podcast and you're not following me on Instagram, I would recommend doing that. About once a week, I throw a question box up where I field questions directly from you guys, specifically on the topic of health, fitness, behavior, performance enhancement,

increasing productivity, all things kind of physical and mental personal development. increasing productivity, all things kind of physical and mental personal development. And I answer a few on there, but I actually bring most of the best questions over here to answer in a more long form format. So you guys can actually have your question answered in more than a one minute snippet because that's all you get on an Instagram story. It used to only be 15 seconds. Now it's a little longer, but a minute still isn't enough. Not the way I see it anyway. So first question comes from petty underscore Donald. And the question is, I practice intermittent fasting 16 to eight. Any tips on still meeting protein intake at 208 pounds? And my goal is 195 pounds. So this is somebody who's fasting for 16 hours and has an eating window of eight hours. So to put this in perspective, this might mean

not eating from, let's say eight o'clock in the evening until maybe two in the afternoon. And then you can eat from like, no, to 12, and then you could eat from 12 to 8. So there's eight hours in which you're eating, and there's 12 hours in which you're fasting or not eating, mostly just relying on water, hopefully. Otherwise, you could get into the nitty gritty about whether or not that would even qualify as fasting. So why is this important? Well, to know, you know, you need to know kind of the guardrails of the fast. You need to know how much time you have to eat. Now, if you're only going to give yourself eight hours and you want to have protein intake, the level of protein intake that I think would be reasonable for a 208 pound person looking to lose body fat, you're going to have

to eat quite a bit of protein in that eight hour time window. And the problem with that is protein so filling that it can be very hard to do without relying on things like shakes, which I'm more than fine with. I think shakes are fantastic, but even then, let's say we're going to shoot for 0.6 to one grams per protein per pound of body weight. That seems to be the most reasonable place to start if we want to preserve muscle while dieting, which is really, really important. So knowing that, that means for a 208 pound person to get 6 or 0.6 grams of protein per pound of body weight, they would need to have 124 grams of protein. So somewhere between 124 to 208 grams with only eight hours to get it. And let's see,

say you eat every four hours or two meals in that frame timeframe, that's going to be 60 to 100 grams of protein per meal, which is going to fill the average person up quite a bit. So what I would do here is I would pick a protein goal that is on the lower end. I would probably recommend the 124, 125 gram target of 0.6, go up a little higher, maybe 140, 150, put it at 0.7. And then I would recommend eating two traditional meals and having one shake because it is going to be very hard to hit that target without a supplemental form of protein. And while intermittent fasting can be good for increasing mental clarity and increasing cognitive efficiency in some people because they don't feel the fog that's oftentimes associated with eating and the insulin

spike that comes with a large meal where you need a substantial amount of substrate, carbs, fats to be shuttled throughout the body. And there's a lot of digestive energy that's used to do that. Assimilating those nutrients takes energy. So some people really like the clarity that comes with fasting. They also have a fat loss goal, but then they get into a situation like this where they have too much of a macro to fit into too small of a window. So what I might ask is if you're willing to make that a 14-10 fast to give yourself an extra two hours, if you're doing fasting for the purpose of mental clarity, you can probably get everything you need to get done inside that 14 hours. Now, if you're just fasting to fast and to lose body fat, I think it's worth noting that you're not guaranteed a better outcome here just

because you're fasting. In fact, in my experience, I find fasting protocols oftentimes to be worse for fat loss, and there's really no evidence to support them being any better. So just want you to think about that. If you're using fat loss to enhance your clarity and cognitive capabilities in the earlier part of the day, maybe start eating a little bit earlier so you can more easily get the right amount of protein because as you lose body fat, if you are in fact in a deficit, you'll really, really want to hold on to as much muscle as possible. Okay, This question comes from Smallin and the question is, I struggle with constipation and digestive issues. Do you recommend a probiotic? Question mark, seed? Question mark. So for those of you who aren't new to the show, you'll know that seed

is our resident probiotic sponsor. They make the best probiotic supplement on the market. It is a dual capsule delivery system with a prebiotic capsule that contains the husk of watermelon, which is pretty dope, a very, very potent prebiotic fiber, all of which can actually nurture and nourish the bacterial colonies and bacterial organisms that are alive inside the capsule. Unlike most capsuled prebiotics and probiotics, seed is delivered monthly. So it comes in fresh, happy, and ready to go. And you know, with the AFUs or active fluorescent units, you're getting living bacteria that actually has a chance to colonize the gut.

And as far as probiotics go and using them for constipation and digestive issues, seed would be my top recommendation. But I wouldn't be doing you guys any favors if I didn't give you some stuff you could work on right now, because the truth is you can't just go buy seed at the store today and try to fix all your problems with a supplement. You'd have to wait for it to get there. And there's always lifestyle things one should consider when looking to optimize digestive health and what it is that you're trying to accomplish with your nutrition in general, because a lot of digestive issues are, in essence, lifestyle slash nutrition issues that have kind of gotten a little bit out of alignment. So one of the first things you need to do when you're experiencing constipation and digestive distress is consider the mastication or chewing process. Be sure that you're chewing

your food thoroughly so that large chunks of undigestive food that don't contain the enzymatic equipment required for optimal digestion aren't hitting your stomach. Like if many of you know this, but salivary amylase, the enzyme, amylase means essentially it breaks down carbohydrate. Lipase means it breaks down fat. Protease means it breaks down protein. The lipases and proteases that break down fats and protein are added into the digestive process later. But salivary amylase or amylase, the enzyme responsible for the breakdown of carbohydrates, actually starts the digestive process of carbohydrate in the mouth. And a lot of you probably know this,

but it's a little bit important to know this when it comes to understanding how it is we actually break down and digest the food we eat. So think about carbohydrates, like sugary candy carbohydrates, like Jolly Rancher and Werther's, they actually digest in your mouth because of amylase. So for carbohydrate rich foods, it's very, very important that you actually go about chewing them. You need to chew the carbohydrates that you eat. And I think that's true of all foods, especially those where the enzymes responsible for digestion aren't added in until later. But when you eat carbohydrate, you should chew it thoroughly, especially if it is fibrous

carbohydrate. But in general, carbohydrate could be anything starchy. So think breads, grains, rices, cereals. Chew it so that the amylase, the enzyme that is partially responsible for helping that digest, gets pulverized, mixed in with the food as it heads towards the stomach. If you are just inhaling your food, not chewing it, not doing what you need to do to help the enzymes responsible for digestion actually get into the bolus or the lump of food you're swallowing, you can expect some digestive distress, some gas, some constipation, some bloating.

A lot of people want to sell you really expensive gut health fixes, but the best gut health fix you're ever going to find is actually chewing your damn food. So keep that in mind whenever you're considering a supplement. You need to do the big rock lifestyle, behavioral, even ingestion habits first because a seed, as good of a product as it is, has no chance of helping if you're not chewing your food properly. Another thing to consider, and I think a lot of people do this when they eat, is they're not particularly mindful. They're on social media. They're watching TV, so they're really swallowing a lot of food. Constipation can almost always be driven by fiber. Having too little or too much can make it hard to get adequate stool formation. So you can have normal bowel movements. If you have too little fiber, it takes a while for things to

work through the stomach and you don't have the fuel that will feed those good bacteria. So a lot of problems there. If you have too much fiber, which is much more rare, much less common, you can see too much stool stiffening, and that can lead to constipation. So do check your fiber intake and make sure that you're falling kind of in the RDI. For men, you could be 30 to 40 grams. For women, it can be like 25 to 35 grams on average, being a decent starting point for fiber intake. Now, could it be something a little bit more advanced? Could it be spices? Could it be oils? Could it be allergens? Sure. It could be a lot of these things. And there's a lot of people who want to demonize foods and say, don't eat this. If you have constipation, don't eat this. If you have gas, but I do have a checklist here.

It starts with chewing the shit out of your food. It starts with making sure that you're getting adequate fiber. If I could make the recommendation to eat one to two servings a day of fermented foods, particularly fermented vegetables like kimchi, sauerkraut, even things like kefir. I like goat kefir. I have found that those things can be wonderful for helping your gut. And then of course, supplementing with things like this, all of this can help with digestive issues, constipation. And if you do these things for a long enough time and you don't get any results or help, you should definitely consult with a physician, medical practitioner specialist, because having a long-term digestive distress and having a long-term constipation issues can actually be a lot more debilitating than I think people give it credit

for. I know a lot of people who really suffer and struggle with their gut health and the way that their digestive system works writ large, and it's debilitating. So do try everything, but definitely sit down with a physician if you're not getting a lot of traction. Okay, this question comes from Kelly Sutton Fitness. And the question is, how do I think moderate cannabis consumption affects performance? What's going on, guys? Coach Danny here. Taking a break from the episode to tell you about my coaching company, Core Coaching Method, and more specifically, our one-on-one fully tailored online coaching program. My online coaching program has kind of

been the flagship for Core Coaching Method for a while. Of course, we do have PDF programming and we have app-based programming. But if you want a truly tailored one-on-one experience with a coach like myself or a member of my coaching team, someone who is certified, somebody who has multiple years of experience working with clients in person, online, somebody who is licensed to provide a macro nutrition plan, somebody who is actually good at communicating with clients because they've done it for years, whether that be via phone call, email, text, right? This one-on-one coaching program is really designed to give you all the support you need with custom training designed

for you, whether you're training from home, the gym, around your limitations and your goals, nothing cookie cutter here, as well as easy to follow macronutrition programs that are non-restrictive, you'll get customized support directly from your coach's email, or they'll text you, or they'll WhatsApp you. We'll find the communication medium that best supports your goals as well as provides you with accountability in the expertise you need to succeed as well as biofeedback monitoring, baked in accountability support, and all of the stuff that you need from your coach when you check in. We keep our rosters relatively small so that we can make sure you get the best support possible. But you can apply today by going over to corecoachingmethod.com, selecting the online coaching option. And if we

have spots available, we'll definitely reach out to you to see if you're a good candidate. And if we don't put you on a waiting list, but we'll be sure to give you the best shot at the best coaching in the industry. So head over to corecoachingmethod.com and apply for one-on-one coaching with me and my team today. Hey, everybody, I have a favor to ask you. If you're a regular listener or somebody who gets value out of this podcast, somebody who's learning from me on your health and fitness journey, whether you're a trainer, a high-level athlete, or you're just getting started, other people need this kind of advice. And the best way for you to help me grow the podcast is to take a little bit of time, literally one to two minutes max, to leave a

rating and review on the app that you listen to your podcasts on. The majority of you probably listen on an iPhone and you probably listen on Apple Podcasts, but many of you listen on Spotify. Both platforms allow you to leave a quick, easy review. And if you could leave me a five-star review plus a short one to two sentence blurb about what you like, not only will it help more people reach the podcast, it will help me to continue to refine what it is I bring you each and every week. Thanks so much for doing this. It means the world to me. It helps me achieve my dream of helping more people live a healthier life. Enjoy the episode. Hey guys, taking a break from the action to tell you about one of

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enter the promo code Danny, and they will match your first deposit up to a hundred dollars. You'll have a blast playing underdog all season long. Back to the action. In full transparency, I should let you guys know in advance, I'm probably a little biased because I don't indulge or consume alcohol at all, but I do enjoy occasional cannabis consumption. And as a relatively active adult, I can tell you it does not affect my performance in any way, shape, or form when consumed far enough removed from my workout window. Now, if you consume too much cannabis, it could impact the quality of your sleep, which could affect early morning training the following day. But in general,

I think that everybody needs to be aware that cannabis can, and this is as someone who would describe themselves as a cannabis advocate, I think cannabis should be legalized nationwide. And I think that any government who regulated it properly and taxed it accordingly could stand to benefit tremendously from increased revenue driven from consumption of a product that will always be consumed. And decriminalization could get a lot of people out of prison that are, in my opinion, incarcerated for possession of something substantially more innocuous than alcohol. But I digress. You obviously can tell I have an axe to grind here, but I'm going to tell you all of the reasons,

essentially, that you should be aware of as to why cannabis might not be ideal if you want to optimize performance. I'm not going to sell you on some CBD product that I'm going to bullshit my way through why it would help you perform well. I've turned down more CBD sponsors than I can possibly handle because, quite frankly, I think marijuana and cannabis make for a decent substitution to alcohol when it comes to quote unquote, cutting loose or quote unquote, winding down at the end of the day. But I don't think you should be using this to enhance performance. I think a lot of that hogwash is just pure nonsense. And as far as CBD goes, I think that CBD has substantially shown, you know, it has shown substantial rationale for

the utilization in seizures and even with the treatment of anxiety. But I've seen too many influencers hype it as a performance supplement. And I just don't see that. And when you talk about cannabis consumption, you're talking about more than just one cannabinoid. So THC is almost always going to be in the equation here, which is the psychoactive compound responsible for quote unquote, getting you high. And cannabis that contains THC can reduce muscle strength and coordination. It can increase your heart rate if you are predisposed to anxiety that is enhanced by the use of psychedelics, which might not be optimal for recovery. It can reduce your lung function if you chronically smoke cannabis, particularly without the utilization of

filtration. So think about smoking from joints and think about smoking from what many people will refer to as blunts, which are cannabis, ground cannabis flour rolled in tobacco paper. You know, you have bongs, you have vapes, you have so many ways in which people go about ingesting cannabis that do have a pretty consistent interplay with the surface of your lungs. And that's just something that you should be aware of. As for appetite, obviously, the thing that everybody knows about cannabis when it comes to cannabis and food is the munchies, which I do believe to be person-specific and strain-specific. Some strains definitely have the capability to elicit the munchies. So if you are looking to gain weight, that could actually be something that could help performance because many people who struggle with weight gain or the people that we often refer to as hard gainers

struggle because they have a hard time getting their appetite to a place that they're comfortable eating enough food required to gain weight. So that could be a way that it works to your benefit. But for those of you who are looking to lose body fat, you can expect it to work to your detriment in essentially the opposite way. And then again, this is strain specific. You'll probably find this to be more common with indica strains of cannabis. So cannabis has multiple different phenotypes. It has multiple different families. And there's cannabis indica, sativa, and ruderalis. And indica strains are oftentimes more likely to induce feelings of fatigue and drowsiness. Sativa strains are more psychoactive and oftentimes elicit a little more energy and creativity. Hybrid strains are the most popular. Those are strains that are mixed or bred down from both types of cannabis, sativa and indica. And if you

go out of your way to consume cannabis indica varietals prior to exercise, I would imagine that you'd have a very lethargic and poor workout. Now, speaking anecdotally, I have trained a number of people who like to use cannabis before they train. I know a number of people who like to use cannabis before they train, and these are people for whom cannabis subjectively increases their performance capacity. I think if you were to get a study funded where you had a thousand people consume a vaporized cartridge for a standard dose from a cannabis THC rich cannabis strain and then a placebo group that consumed a CBD only, meaning it didn't have that THC psychoactive component, my guess is that you would have better workout quality in the non-THC group, just because I don't think most people can handle psychoactive substances prior to exercise. I think writ large, it's a better option for winding down than alcohol, but I would not be

consuming cannabis pre-workout. This question is from Billy underscore mamas underscore fitness. And the question is, what are my thoughts on EAAs? See so many people using them, but I'm unsure if they are necessary. So EAAs contain, EAA products usually contain all of the essential amino acids. They are a more refined, let's call it more cerebral iteration of the BCAA product, branched chained amino acid product, which only contain the branched chained amino acids, leucine, isoleucine, and valine. Leucine, isoleucine, and valine are beneficial for muscle growth. Essential amino acid supplement will contain those three plus more. The problem is both of them I don't think can help with muscle growth and anabolism as much as people would like if you're eating enough protein. So a hierarchy I often work from is in terms of amino acid supplements in general.

The best amino acid supplement is a protein powder of high quality that yields all of the amino acids, but specifically a good heavy dosage of the branched-chain amino acids. So the tier one of protein powders is going to be a whey protein isolate because it is so rich in leucine. The next tier would be quality whey protein concentrates and isolates that are maybe not as high quality as some of the top-tier isolates, but maybe they're a concentrate-isolate blend, or they're a high-quality concentrate and plant-based protein powders. These all contain a substantial number of the branched chain amino acids as well as the rest. Down a tier, I would go into that third tier to get to EAAs, which represent just the essential

amino acids. They don't contain the non-essentials. But for plant-based trainees, dieters, and anybody who wants a consistent circulating pool of amino acids available, this could be perhaps somebody who is doing an endurance event and concerned about excessive muscle protein breakdown. Those would be a decent option. Now, the lowest tier, the last tier, would be the BCAAs, which only contain leucine, isoleucine, and valine. Again, decent in the context of somebody who is eating mostly plant-based proteins, which can be low in leucine, isoleucine, and valine, not all. And adding something like branched-chain amino acids could help specifically with the goal of muscle gain. And it could be, again, utilized in an endurance athlete who is quite concerned about tissue loss. But that's the hierarchy there. And

while you do see them used a lot, I tend to find they're quite expensive to supplement with. So if it's possible for you to just use a high quality protein powder, I would do that. That would be the most expensive, but certainly the best option. And it would eliminate for most people the need for BCAAs and EAAs. And when you do look at the literature, what you find is those things, BCAAs and EAAs work great for populations that don't get enough protein, but they don't work well for people that do get enough protein. And getting enough protein is just the meta kind of goal here, not getting in supplements more generally. Okay. Last question comes from setfreesoldier underscore. And the question is,

more generally. Okay. Last question comes from set free soldier underscore. And the question is, I'm a student having trouble memorizing anatomy and biology, any nootropic or tips. So I am not a fan of nootropics. My favorite nootropic smart drug, so to speak, is sleep and caffeine. Um, but I'm not a huge fan of nootropics or nootropic supplements. I have a limited experience with them. Uh, none of the experience that I have had with them were particularly effective. Now, I do use AlphaGPC in my stimulant-free pre-workout from Legion, which is considered to be a nootropic. I regularly consume lion's mane mushrooms, which are often considered to be a nootropic. But more generally, I don't get a ton out of nootropic supplementation. And I haven't when I played with it and I played with things like AlphaBrain or Legion's Ascend. Not to say these

products won't work for you. I'm just going to be transparent with you and tell you I haven't had great experience with nootropics myself. But what I did to pass my college anatomy classes, biology, physiology, chemistry that worked tremendously well was the Pomodoro method or daily note reading. So I would just take meticulous notes in all of those classes, specifically anatomy and physiology. And I would read my notes three to five times a day from everything that I knew would be on that midterm. So for example, when we were studying bones and we would have a final exam on bones, at the beginning of the bone unit, I would take meticulous notes on the first day. Let's say I

have three pages to five pages of notes. I'd read those three to five pages two to three times a day until the second lecture, in which point I would accumulate three to five more pages. And so then in between those sessions, I'd read six to 10 pages, two to three times a day until at the end of the block, I could essentially read through eight to 10 lectures worth of notes for anywhere between eight to 10 minutes, two to three times a day. So about 20 minutes a day. And I could tell you literally everything about the block. And by the time you got to the test, you have smashed out that kind of introductory one or two lectures multiple times to the point where you don't even need to go back and read them.

You literally have them memorized. And for these classes, specifically biology, physiology, anatomy, and chemistry, memorization is extremely important. And that is the tip and the technique that worked tremendously well for me. You can also do the Pomodoro method, which is like a 20 minute study bout followed by a break to allow your brain the opportunity to kind of always enter in with a high amount of focus. But, uh, micro dosing my notes and taking good notes was huge for me. And then with anatomy, flashcards can also be really valuable. All right, guys, that does it for this episode of the podcast. I want to thank you so much for tuning in and remind you, please leave

a written review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps more people find the show. And one of my biggest missions this year is to grow this podcast and help more people live healthier, happier, and more productive lives. So thanks so much for tuning in and I will catch you on the next one.