Muscle Talk - By International Protein

Gut Health & Bodybuilding

December 09, 2020 International Protein Season 2 Episode 14
Muscle Talk - By International Protein
Gut Health & Bodybuilding
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode we talk about gut health and bodybuilding. Bloating  and how uncomfortable it can be. International Protein has an answer!

  • The struggle with food, eating too much and too fast
  • Which  ingredients help
  • Gut Shot, an effervescent herbal gut health drink


Muscle Talk - Bodybuilding podcast by International Protein

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Ash Horton:
Welcome to Muscle Talk where you'll get world-champion advice about nutrition and stacking on muscle. Our host, Christina Envall, she's a three-time world champion bodybuilder and IFBB Professional, a food scientist, and a founding co-owner of our podcast sponsor, International Protein. In this episode, we talk about gut health and bodybuilding. We talk about bloat and how uncomfortable it can be, and a new gut relief powder called Gut Shot, which seems to be the answer. So, Christine, gut health is a popular topic in the bodybuilding scene. Especially with all the supplements that people take, they get a lot of bloat, those sorts of things. International Protein's just brought out a gut health powder drink. Correct?

Christine Envall:
Yes.

Ash Horton:
So, talk to me about that.

Christine Envall:
Okay. So, Gut Shot actually came about because our sponsored athlete, Branden Ray, suffered really, really badly from this particular issue of upper stomach bloat, indigestion, and it's something that kind of came about over, obviously, a number of years from eating very large portions to try to gain all that size. So, I think a lot of bodybuilders can relate because they are literally finishing one meal and then because of the amount of meals that they need to fit in, it feels like that last meal still hasn't really digested and they're ready to start the next round. And that can create a lot of problem because you have to fit it in, feels like it still wants to come back up, and then you got to try to train, and you go to train, and then the food's kind of still sitting high. So, we-

Ash Horton:
So, less to do with the supplements, more to do with the food.

Christine Envall:
Well, it's definitely more to do with the food, but I do believe that a lot of the pre-workouts can also have an impact, mainly because the composition of those products. They are quite concentrated even though you're drinking them with fluid, I think the impact on the digestive tract is... There's no firm research. I just know that this issue wasn't an issue say 20 years ago before all the pre-workouts came about. And then as more and more people are taking these products and they have some quite interesting ingredients, we don't know the impact on the stomach because as I said, they're not food ingredients as much as they are amino acids and herbal type things which are taken at quite high levels and potentially interfere with how the digestive process works, interacts with the food.

Christine Envall:
It can also just be a simple kind of interaction where you're creating say gas from how an acid and a base are reacting and that's creating gas. I guess there's not enough firm research because nobody's kind of looking into that type of thing, but anecdotally, a lot of people do suffer. And even if it's just basic indigestion because of the high acid levels that are in some of these products, and then also the timing that you take them. So, you go take it and then you go start putting your body into kind of weird positions with training. Leg pressing, you're squishing your legs up against your stomach or squatting so it can be that physical plus the extra food plus the supplement. So, it can be the whole lot together. So, there's a lot of different things going on here, and obviously, that's... Might as well talk about it now. Just some of the key reasons for digestive discomfort are large portions, like classic simple, whether you're a bodybuilder or not a bodybuilder, everyone experiences it, particularly, I guess, at Christmas and stuff like that, where we all eat a whole pile and it's like, "Ah, man." You get that little bit of indigestion.

Ash Horton:
Is it speed of eating as well? I grew up with four boys and you'd eat to survive, so you'd eat as fast as you could as well. And I feel like doing that you take in far too much air.

Christine Envall:
Well, funny that you say that because actually, that was next on my list, eating too fast because essentially you do. You don't realize it, but as you eat, you are swallowing air so you're kind of gulping in air. And when you're going fast, a lot more air is going in with that food. So, yeah, eating too fast is definitely another issue. Now, again, because you're trying to get to your training session or because of you only have a certain amount of time for your lunch break and you're trying to fit that food in then that certainly does become an issue. Certain types of food do cause trouble. So, this is where I would say mixing your meal, plus then you have your pre-workout out on top of that, and it just all combines together.

Christine Envall:
But I used to find myself, as soon as I started to diet, I would start to suffer from indigestion because there's a fact where your high-fat foods will cause a problem with digestion, but then too low-fat foods will cause the same thing because they're very dry. So, your body's kind of trying to deal with these foods which don't have a lot of lubrication, and for some reason that always would spark a certain amount of digestive discomfort and a feeling of acidity when I was eating those kinds of foods. So, again, people who might eat Italian food might find that a certain combination of herbs plus the tomato just absolutely sets it off for them. So, different foods for different people. Some people believe coffee can do it, but then research shows that there's no significant difference. But I guess if you're suffering from indigestion from coffee, it doesn't matter what the research says. You know what you're feeling.

Christine Envall:
Stress, believe it or not, can also impact it. So, whilst there's all these food factors, there's also the stress factor. So, again, if you've got a lot of pressure on you or maybe you don't feel it necessarily, but that anxiety and that, which is actually becoming more common these days will again have an impact on how you're digesting your food and leave you with that feeling of discomfort. Overweight or high body mass so I guess, again, bodybuilders fall into this category. They're not overweight, but they have a high body mass so they're carrying more weight and there's obviously more weight pressing on their stomach. So, that is another impact that can lead to these kinds of issues. Other things are smoking and being pregnant and eating too close to bedtime. So, again, a lot of people suffer this right before they either train or right before they sleep, and it's because if you eat and then you go and lay down and then it kind of allows the food to rise back up again. So, that's another thing.

Christine Envall:
And then other things like medication, like anti-inflammatories which again, training, potentially have injury and those types of things are things which can cause a problem with digestion. So, that's just, I guess, summing up where all that kind of stems from.

Christine Envall:
So, obviously, just coming back to how the product came about, ticking off a few of those things, large portions, the speed of eating, and all that kind of stuff, obviously, you look to all the normal kind of digestive products like QUICK-EZE and things which give that instant relief, but it's so temporary, and it's also something that you don't want to have to be relying on forever because it's like a still, I guess, a kind of a chemical-based product. So, we were looking at what can relieve this, looking at can we increase the good bacteria in the gut like digestive enzymes work, looking at a whole bunch of different things. And we started to create this little concoction.

Christine Envall:
So, we looked at apple cider vinegar. So, whilst talking about the pre-workouts being very acidic, you do need, obviously, when you're digesting food, a rebalancing of the acidity. So, if there's not enough acidity, then you don't digest properly. So, that ingredient itself has got a lot of history in aiding digestion and being used as a tonic and also actually regulating blood sugar and just being overall a good thing to have to kind of prime the digestive system. So, looking at something like that to have, we obviously included lemon juice for the same reason. It kind of has a good acidity, but it also has soluble fiber, which is, again, very important to feed the right bacteria.

Christine Envall:
Ginger because ginger is a classic calmative. So, if you ever have travel sickness or anything like that, ginger's a really good ingredient to calm the stomach, stop that spasming because a lot of the time hiccups are involved and just that sort of general tightening of the digestive tract. So, we're putting some of that in. Mint because mint's also, it's a great post-meal type of thing. Some cultures, they eat it after they've actually eaten to kind of freshen the digestive tract and just help with overall digestion.

Christine Envall:
Playing around with these different ingredients, and obviously, the carbonated effect, we were putting it into soda water and finding that what we were trying to do was get that air out because... And again, I'm sure a lot of bodybuilders relate to this, it's that feeling of... It's like the air's just kind of trapped up high, and until you get rid of that, the burn doesn't go away. So, we're trying to get something that basically attacked that or eliminated that. And we kind of consistently came up with this little formulation that Branden would use and it would instantly just get rid of all of the problem. So, I said-

Ash Horton:
And you managed to make it taste really good too.

Christine Envall:
Well, that was kind of the step that came afterwards because we were making this thing with liquid apple cider vinegar and liquid lemon juice and soda water. He would get to the gym, he'd like, "Oh man, I've got indigestion. What do we do?" And I said, "Well, how about we look at something we can create from a powder form where people can basically have it in their gym bag and be at the gym, have the problem, and take it, and get rid of it, and then got to get on with their workout?" So, I said, "Look, obviously, we do powder blending. Let's look at what we can do."

Christine Envall:
So, obviously, we got the powder version of apple cider vinegar, of lemon, the ginger, the mint. Obviously, I didn't mention the turmeric, but turmeric obviously being such a great anti-inflammatory, part of the reaction that's happening here is obviously, the esophagus was inflamed, stomach spasming, so you need something that's going to help to relieve that, and that's really where the long-term effect of the product comes in. So, it has that immediate term, release the air, get the problem fixed, but long-term we're looking at something which also is helping to soothe and calm that area. So, yeah, so we basically looked at all the natural herbal powders that are around and put it into a format where it was transportable and someone can use it wherever they are, and that's basically what we come up with.

Christine Envall:
And then, obviously, in that raw form, it was kind of very, very unpalatable. So, we looked for a nice natural berry flavor and some natural kind of just, yeah, really natural flavors so that it complimented it, basically. And, yeah, it's a great tasting drink just if you want something quite refreshing, but just the feedback that we're getting is that it does give that instant relief, allows someone to have that meal, feel like it's digested, and then be ready to eat their next meal. So, I think for bodybuilders, absolutely, who are struggling to get the food in, to get the calories in, then this is a great, great product.

Ash Horton:
And there really is high demand for it too. Obviously, me being in the marketing scene, I've done a little bit of research and you can see so many people are searching for something and there's no really good answer out there.

Christine Envall:
Well, that was the crazy thing is obviously, Branden thought he kind of suffered alone because no one really had talked about it. And then when we started talking about what we were doing and that, then everyone's like, "Oh my god, I need that. I suffer from that." And I was surprised really at, yeah, exactly how many people are suffering silently, I guess, because-

Ash Horton:
Well, I don't suffer from it and I still drink it because it tastes good. But, I mean, it's so good as well, so many good ingredients in it.

Christine Envall:
Well, I mean, it's all natural. I mean, it's natural turmeric powder, natural mint powder, natural ginger powder. So, it's things which are going to help with other things as well. Like ginger, can't get enough of that just from an immune-boosting perspective and an overall health perspective. The mint, it's kind of like a really good cleansing type of ingredient, and turmeric, of course, it's going to help also with joint inflammation, so many different things. And as I said, the apple cider vinegar, very cool thing about that is that say you had this before a meal, it actually, as I said, it does actually help regulate the blood sugar levels and has been associated with weight loss. If people take apple cider vinegar in water about half an hour before a meal, there is an improvement in, I guess, making you less hungry for people who are trying to lose some weight. So, it has a multi-functional thing, and as I said, the long-term benefit that we're looking at is it actually does improve that situation, rather than being like an antacid that kind of just basically shoves all the acid back down into your stomach and keeps it there and stops you from feeling that burn, but it's not really doing anything to actually help the problem, which is what we were trying to do there.

Ash Horton:
So, with Branden, did it actually stop him in his tracks from training?

Christine Envall:
Yes. Oh god, yeah.

Ash Horton:
Yeah, so he'd get there, it would be a problem, and he'd go, "Nah, I can't train today."

Christine Envall:
Yeah.

Ash Horton:
So, that would have been huge for him, looking at his size and how he trains and his routines and everything like that. He'd be pretty upset by that.

Christine Envall:
Yeah, because imagine you're all ready for your training session and you literally can't perform it, and yeah. So, that's a major, major deal breaker in... Or trying to work through and just being in so much pain, again, depending on the body part, on certain body parts. Yeah, that would be the end of the workout. But just so many situations to where sleep would be affected because you'd eat a meal, and again, when you're trying to fit so many meals in, often you're eating right up until bedtime. It's not like you've got a big three-hour gap between eating and then going to sleep. So, then you can go to sleep. So, he'd have to eat and then sleep, and the minute that he'd lay down, it'd be like, "Oh, it's sore." He'd start experiencing all kinds of discomfort, and then you're not able to sleep, and then that causes anxiety and stress. So, it kind of becomes this whole compounding problem.

Christine Envall:
And as I said, the more people that we talked to, we realized that this isn't a one-off thing. This is so many people who are fit and healthy but just suffering this problem because of the nature of bodybuilding, and you are trying to potentially eat more than what a person who's just trying to be on an average diet. But then we started talking to people who weren't bodybuilders and it's the same thing. It's just fast-paced lifestyle, trying to prevent-

Ash Horton:
Too much coffee.

Christine Envall:
Yeah, too much coffee. But you're trying to rush. A lot of the time, it is rushing between meetings or rushing and not-

Ash Horton:
Been there.

Christine Envall:
Yeah. Yeah. So, that's the thing. I think a lot of people can relate. But the thing with the gut health is that as I said, the gut, it just impacts so many things, not just in life like that, but your whole immune system is driven by the gut and having a healthy gut. This is solving an immediate problem which is that bloating, but it's that long-term effect where we've also have the inulin, which is a prebiotic, and having that so that it's kind of supporting the gut flora and helping that environment be a lot better because so many of the auto-immune problems, and as I said, your immune system problems are related back to the gut. People having issues with metabolic disorder, again, it's all coming back to the gut. So, we didn't used to realize 20, 30, 50 years ago how important the gut actually was. And that's why it is becoming such a hot topic because when they say that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, it's actually the way to a man's health or a person's health is through their stomach.

Ash Horton:
Do you know how often I pitched that line to females?

Christine Envall:
And they're still not buying you any food, are they?

Ash Horton:
Oh, no, no, no, I did pretty well. Especially in high school, all the mums would invite me around and I'd clean up so I did well.

Christine Envall:
So, yeah. But it's so true. I guess your stomach's the center of your body. The digestive tract obviously runs from one end to the other, but it literally, it can cripple you, essentially, if that's not all working right. So, really, really important now. The big question though, and I know that people are probably going to say this, why didn't I put glutamine into the product? Because it's, obviously, glutamine and gut health is really, really important, keeping in mind that we work under the Australian food regulations, and we are limited in how much glutamine we could put into the product. So, I wanted to create a product that was really effective, and I would say recommend for glutamine having about five grams, but we're only allowed to put 1.9 into a serving.

Christine Envall:
So, rather than put, I guess, a sub-maximal dosage into the product, people absolutely can add their glutamine into the Gut Shot and have it together, or still take their glutamine because, obviously, the glutamine helps with protecting the lining of the stomach so it's again improving how the stomach's working or the gut's working, but it's literally the food for the cells of the stomach lining. So, don't not take your glutamine, but the reason I didn't put it in was because I didn't believe that I could put enough in to make it really effective.

Christine Envall:
So, I'd rather say, "Okay, whilst it may be kind of a little bit annoying to have to buy the two different products, you're probably using glutamine anyway because I've recommended it obviously so many times. It is such a great product." That's why I kept the two separate to allow you to dose the amount that I believe that you should be using rather than kind of putting a little bit in because the regulations say that 1.9 grams is all that you're allowed to have, which is a little bit behind when it comes to that.

Ash Horton:
That makes sense. Now, tell me, it's quite a cheap supplement as well. Each time you have it, it's only a couple Australian dollars.

Christine Envall:
Yeah.

Ash Horton:
How often should someone use it? And I know it's for instant relief, but is it actually good to have before bedtime?

Christine Envall:
Yeah.

Ash Horton:
Is there a method?

Christine Envall:
If you don't suffer, like someone like myself who I don't tend to have too much trouble now that I'm not dieting, believe it or not, so once a day, just as a, I guess, as a tonic. As I said, it has the really great ingredients which are just going to help with the overall benefit of health. So, have a serving once a day, even a half serving would be fine if you really don't have a huge problem. The idea of it is that it is for that immediate relief. So, we have to put a limit on it and say maybe don't have it more than about three times a day because hopefully, if you're having that much distress, you maybe need to look at if you don't have other issues that require actual medical intervention or something.

Ash Horton:
Let's take Branden, for example. Do you know what his habits are around using it?

Christine Envall:
Yeah. He normally has it a couple of times.

Ash Horton:
Okay.

Christine Envall:
Yeah.

Ash Horton:
But just when he experiences the discomfort, as opposed to he drinks it first thing in the morning, and then-

Christine Envall:
Yeah, he normally saves it for the discomfort because yeah, he'll go along and then if he gets it, he just, yeah, pretty much has it because he knows either as soon as he starts to work out or normally that kind of before bed because that's where he has a major problem where he's had a meal, wants to be able to get to sleep, and then can't because of that kind of build-up of gas. So, he knows he's probably going to be having it every day.

Ash Horton:
Yeah.

Christine Envall:
Yeah, just from speaking to him, on average, a couple of times a day he'll experience that problem. But I guess, long-term, we are finding that it's less frequent, which is obviously the goal as well, that we get to a point where it does become a maintenance thing where you would just drop back to having it last thing before you go to sleep or first thing in the morning because you're just not experiencing that same kind of issue.

Christine Envall:
But as long as people are having to eat big meals and put on their size and that kind of stuff, then they are probably going to find that it's not going to get away from that problem because the volume of food's the volume of food, and if it's that that's causing the problem, even with all of the active ingredients, it's still going to come back to having to give you that space to fit the next meal in.

Christine Envall:
Just on a note on that, cardio is the option. I know a lot of big guys don't like to hear that, but cardio keeps the food moving. Believe it or not, you will do the workout, and then because you have to replenish the glycogen, it does actually help to keep that metabolism going. So, just a little bit of light cardio will help to kind of pull the food through. Just a little tip there for anyone who is trying to gain size, cardio doesn't burn off the muscle if done in a nice, gentle fashion. It'll just help to pull that through. But to get away from that gassy, airy, burny kind of a feeling then Gut Shot's the best place to look.

Ash Horton:
Brilliant. Thank you very much, Christine.

Christine Envall:
No worries, Ash. I hope everyone enjoys that. Warning, it does fizz up a lot.

Ash Horton:
Yeah, it should come with a safety label or a warning sign because the first time I used it, I think I only half-filled the glass full of water and it-

Christine Envall:
It fizzed.

Ash Horton:
... fizzed. I was going to say jizzed, but it's probably the wrong word.

Christine Envall:
Yes.

Ash Horton:
Fizzed over the top of the cup and into...

Christine Envall:
Into everything. Or you put it in a shaker and then just when you lift the lid, it goes pop.

Ash Horton:
Yeah.

Christine Envall:
But that kind of just adds to the novelty. But that's the thing. That's what is actually being part of the activity of expelling that air. So, people take it and you will start burping because that's that air, that's the trapped air that's getting out, but that's what's meant to happen.

Ash Horton:
Perfect. Thank you.

Christine Envall:
Cool.

Ash Horton:
Words of wisdom. If you like what you've heard, recognize that these tips are free so show your support by becoming a loyal International Protein customer by jumping online, hunt our product down, and hit that buy now button. So, once again, like, share, and subscribe to our podcast so we can continue to bring you these episodes from our one and only Aussie muscle guru, three times world champion, Christine Envall.