Bill W. Brazil Blog: Dear Mark: Following the Money, HIIT Workouts, HIIT and ACL Recovery, Spinach, Collagen Timing

For today’s edition of Dear Mark, I’m answering six questions from readers. First, is funding from a biased source sufficient to negate a study’s results? Second, what are some good high intensity interval training workouts that people might not have considered? Third, what can someone recovering from an ACL tear do for HIIT without triggering knee pain flareups? Fourth, how do I like to eat spinach? And finally, how and when do I like to take collagen?

Let’s go:

On the nuts vs. carbs study, I want to say ‘follow the money’ since it was funded by the International Tree Nut Council Nutrition Research and Education Foundation. Then again, it was also funded by the Peanut Institute, so I don’t know what to think…

“Following the money” isn’t enough to come to any conclusions about the worth of a study. We can’t declare a study tainted based on bias alone, especially because we can’t avoid bias. Every person reading studies and deciding which one to write about is biased. Every organization meting out funding has biases. Every entity in the known universe has an agenda. It’s not “bad” (or good). It simply is.

If the cow consortium funds the “red meat is actually good for you” study, red meat is still good for you. The bias doesn’t negate the facts. Big Soy funds the “don’t worry about the quarter cup of soybean oil in your restaurant food” study, but it’s only a mark against the paper if the science was shoddy and the conflict of interest exerted influence (which it probably was and did).

But I totally understand where you’re coming from. There’s an entrenched bias against most of the health advice we support. The powers that be have spent decades telling us to avoid the sun, restrict meat (especially red meat), go vegetarian, eat low-fat, get “more complex carbohydrates,” use seed oils, do cardio over weights, eat less salt, and blindly drink more water. They’re not just going to go away—and they aren’t.

So whenever I see a study’s been funded by an obviously biased source, I can’t help but wonder and look more deeply at the paper with a skeptical eye. It sounds like you do the same. That’s great. It’s the kind of healthy skepticism we should all have and employ in our search for good information.

We just can’t stop there.

If the results of a study are unfavorable to the funders, it’s a strong indication that the funding didn’t interfere with the science.

If the results are favorable to the funders, our hackles rise. We examine the study methods, design, and results to see if bias affected the results. Many times it doesn’t. Sometimes it does.

Can you point us in the direction of a good HIIT workout and what it should look like?

Here are a couple ideas:

Hill sprints. Find a hill and run up, then walk down. Walking down serves as active recovery. Steeper hills, shorter sprints with more rest. Hills with a gradual incline, longer sprints. All permutations work. Though extremely difficult, hill sprints are good options for many people with lower body injuries that flare up on flat ground sprints; running up a hill is gentler on your joints.

Barbell complexes. Pick 3-4 barbell movements. Clean and press for 5 reps. Romanian deadlift for 5 reps. Clean to shoulders, then front squat for 5 reps. Finish with 5 bent over rows. Do that without stopping or dropping the weight. That’s a complex. Drop the bar and rest a minute or two, then do another complex. Repeat. This works with any barbell movement, and you can even do kettlebell or bodyweight complexes. Adjust weight and reps accordingly. These complexes should be hard (but over quickly).

I tore my ACL 6 months ago. Although I am walking 5-7 miles a day and doing heavy lifting for my upper body. I am only able to do ball squats carefully at this point. Any HIIT ideas for me at this point? The bike causes pain on the front of my knee still.

Check with your doctor, but deadlifts are probably safe during knee rehab. Do them right and there’s very little knee flexion (it sounds like flexion hurts the knee); it’s all hip extension.

Deadlifts can become “cardio” if you drop the weight and increase the reps. Just maintain impeccable form. Don’t sacrifice technique (and back health) for a couple extra reps.

If you can deadlift safely for high reps without pain, the next thing to try is the kettlebell swing. Swinging a kettlebell is very similar to deadlifting a barbell—it’s all hip extension—and lends itself well to high-rep, HIIT-style workouts.

I’m one of few people I know who enjoys eating basically any type of offal (no problems with raw), but can’t handle spinach by itself. Any advice? Also, ever tried meditatin’?

And here’s where I’ll get thrown out of my own movement because of one of the ingredients.

Sauté spinach (frozen or fresh) in butter for a minute, add a handful of corn kernels (fresh or frozen, but organic or at least non-GMO), add salt, pepper, and dried chipotle pepper powder (as much as you can tolerate), cover, and turn heat to low. After about ten minutes, it’s ready. Finish with grated sharp cheddar or pecorino romano.

I don’t eat this often (never while keto), and it’s certainly not the only way I enjoy spinach. A good raw spinach salad is fantastic, as is basic sautéd spinach without the corn. But I’ve never met anyone who didn’t like the spinach-corn-chipotle recipe, even avowed spinach haters like yourself.

I’m curious about when Mark was supplementing heavily with collagen. Did he do that at breakfast as his only food, lunch in lieu of some other protein, a shake between lunch and dinner? What have other folks done?

I’m wary of too much protein in one sitting.

I would have 2-3 tablespoons of collagen with a little vitamin C half an hour before a workout. That’s been shown to increase collagen synthesis, a necessary step for healing tendons and other tissues.

That’s it for today, folks. Thanks for reading and take care!

Be sure to add your own comments, questions, and input down below.