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McKale is a dietician and runner and has a big passion for iron. Today, McKale answers the remaining patron questions including: How can I lose weight without putting myself in a calorie deficit that heightens my risk of injury? How should my diet change if I move from a maintenance phase to training for a race? How soon after running should I eat? What is the optimal electrolyte drink to consume before, during and after running? Can iron play a role in IBS and distance running? Check out McKale on Twitter @McKaleDavis Or ask her a question at mckale.montgomery@okstate.edu Run Smarter YOUTUBE Channel Become a patron! Receive Run Smarter Emails Book a FREE Injury chat with Brodie Run Smarter App IOS or Android Podcast Facebook group Run Smarter Course with code 'PODCAST' for 3-day free trial.
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On today's episode, Nutrition Q&A Part 2 with Mikhail Montgomery. Welcome to the Run Smarter Podcast, the podcast helping you overcome your current and future running injuries by educating and transforming you into a healthier, stronger, smarter runner. If you're like me, running is life, but more often than not, injuries disrupt this lifestyle. And once you are injured, you're looking for answers. and met with bad advice and conflicting messages circulating the running community. The world shouldn't be like this. You deserve to run injury free and have access to the right information. That's why I've made it my mission, to bring clarity and control to every runner. My name is Brodie Sharp, I am a physiotherapist, a former chronic injury sufferer and your podcast host. I am excited that you have found this podcast and by default, become the Run Smarter Scholar. So let's work together to overcome your injury, restore your confidence, and start spreading the right information back into your running community. So let's begin today's lesson. Welcome back Run Smarter Scholars. Today we have part two of my conversation with Mikael. Before we get started, oh, let me just see if there's much of an update. I was keeping a track of the copies of the book and it is now Friday as I'm recording this and we have had, let me see, reports on Kindle. This is just on Amazon, but we have 91 orders coming in with the book. So 91 purchases and 69 print, 22 Kindle. On Amazon, I am launching the book also on IngramSpark, which will just make the book available across more or just the distribution across more platforms when it comes to where and how you can purchase it, I guess. So it's not just on Amazon anymore. You'll find it on other websites, but this is 91 copies just on Amazon. So thank you for purchasing the books. Thank you for sending me photos of the book and letting me know that you've received it. It's, it's awesome. It's It's one thing to have the book in my hand as like a physical copy of all the hard work, the last like, you know, 12 plus months of just grinding away and then to have it like, you know, manifested into a book, but to see it arrive at your doorstep and taking a photo and sending it to me is just awesome. Heading across over to YouTube and having a quickly approaching 500 people that have subscribed and love the feedback. People are enjoying it. I was just thinking it's, I've got so many ways of delivering, I guess. the run smarter principles and ways for you to train smarter, to reduce your risk of injury. And if it's like the podcast stuff, you know, the formats 40 minutes long, you know, sort of long detailed conversations with people or like a deep dive, but you know, just explaining things through an audio format. Uh, the YouTube stuff is just like quick punchy visual sort of stuff. Six to 10 minutes, maybe for most videos and just covering one topic and just smashing out like research and graphs and. displaying things. It's, um, it's such a cool, different way of teaching and for you learning, I guess. Um, so I'm glad that I've got like this book blogs, podcast, YouTube videos in my, in my way to try and change how I'm communicating, getting like a certain message or a certain lesson across in a different format. I'm just really enjoying it. So thanks for subscribing. Thanks for jumping on and commenting on the videos and liking the videos. Those sorts of things. I'm really. getting a passion for it seeing your reaction. So thank you very much. Like I said, we have part two with Mikhail. We have the remaining patron questions to ask. And I did title this one sort of nutrition q&a rather than iron stuff, because a lot of the questions that we have remaining are very like nutrition focus, not just iron. So we have stuff about weight loss, about how to, if you should be changing your diet with changes in your training. talking about electrolytes, talking about IBS. Um, so those sorts of ones coming in from the patrons. Um, if you do want to become a patron and receive these benefits, like patrons jump into a private Facebook group where I let them know how this upcoming interview with Mikael, this is the topic. If you have any questions, submit them. And we also have like exclusive. Patron podcast episodes get released once a month last. month's topic was how to balance training and recovery. The patrons voted on that and that became the most popular, I guess, topics. So I created an episode on it that interests you. Like I say, there's always a link into the show notes about how to become a patron. It's just $5 Australian dollars. I think it's like two or three euros, two or three U S dollars per month. Not really a lot, but we have 109 patrons so far that have signed up and yeah, it's great to see. People are so passionate and care so much about the podcast, the work that I do, and also valuing knowledge and wisdom when it comes to training smart and running smart and getting to that next goal in your running journey. So it's excellent to see. Um, like I said today, we're covering off the remainder of the Patreon questions and let's dive back in with Mikhail. Joshua had a question that, um, I'm curious to hear your answer. He says he's five foot 11, 180 pounds. He runs. five times per week and does strength training twice per week. He said he's trying to slim down, but doesn't want to be in a calorie deficit to increase his risk of injury and ask us if you have any general guidelines to help his particular situation. Yeah, I mean, it is, I'm sympathetic, especially as I'm older, it's hard to maintain race weight, and you know, that those race condition weight all the time, especially when you're just in, you know, just a maintenance phase. And so the biggest guideline I can tell you is, is make those calorie deficits, those energy deficits, it's small. Typically, so for weight loss, so somebody was coming to me as a dietician, needing to lose weight and they're not a runner, we might suggest a 500 calorie per day weight loss because that would lead to what is considered a fairly healthy about one pound, one to two pounds per week of weight loss. But that's probably a bit high, 500 calories a day, for someone who's running five days a week and also lifting. And so, you might make a small cut, maybe 200 calories a day. Again, just something small, a little about, one thing that I'll say is just make sure, And this is, I don't know you Joshua, but you know, making smart cuts, right? So as someone who's lifting, as someone who's working out, you still need good amounts of protein, you still need lots of fiber, and so you know, you still need fruits and vegetables, so don't cut 200 calories a day by... not eating your banana for breakfast and not having your yogurt for a snack. Don't let those be the cuts. Maybe you switch from having steak to chicken and switch from regular fat yogurt to low fat yogurt. But make those small things where you're not sacrificing things like protein and fiber, just losing your calories. Those are just standard. It's hard. Um, whenever I, um, go to the, so the other thing I'll say, depending on your goals, you're right there. Jim Joshua on that over weight BMI category. Um, I don't stay at race weight year round. It's too stressful. It's a lot of work, but I still make sure, um, I shoot for about a hundred grams of protein, which is still a ton. Um, so. It's, it's very small changes. I stopped putting granola on my yogurt, but this, like those little things, and they add up over time. And I would say it sounds like you're at a place where these small changes will add up over time and you'll probably be all right. Hmm. It sounds like if someone were to try and lose weight, hypothetically, if they aim to lose weight and they got themselves into a situation where they're so calorie deficit, that it might increase their risk of injury. Seems like that scenario might just be way too much of an abrupt change. Um, and it seems like what you're saying, the original, the goal should be small changes, small weight loss over a longer period of time. Would that be fair to say? Yeah. And I feel like, and I didn't get not knowing them as a person, but runners in a general, or me as a general runner, if you'll get impatient, like, okay, I can't, I could. cut 200 calories a day and I could also increase two miles a day, you know? And so then you're just, I think we tend to want to do it quickly and exacerbate. Yeah, and you'll know, I think he was a little bit worried about, you know, not going overboard leading to injury and that's important. Generally the first indicator that people don't think about is sleep though. One of the first indicators the energy balance is off, probably before you start noticing it in your workouts is you're going to start noticing it in your sleep. You're not going to sleep as well. You're not going to feel as rested. The same amount of sleep isn't going to get you to that level. That's usually where those first energy deficits come in. So if you start noticing that you might be overdoing it. That's going to show up before your workout. Great tip. Great tip. Yeah. And we know that reduced sleep does increase your risk of injury as well, because we know it has such a higher recovery sort of component to it. So, um, Absolutely. tracking sleep or monitoring sleep monitoring, like how fresh you feel in the mornings, measuring like, you know, your perceived energy levels, that sort of stuff, sounds to be really important. So yeah, great thing if you're overdoing it, sometimes your heart rate. Resting heart rate will go up. Like if you're wearing a smartwatch, Josh, you like keep an eye on that. Usually that's, those are my first indicators. I do, I don't like religiously write them down, but I ballpark no, and I will flag myself when something's off and then look back at this week. How was I eating? How was I sleeping? Am I meeting needs? Yeah, great. We have a question from Sam, just a generic sort of eating diet question. How soon after running should I eat? And Amy sort of went on top of that and said, I say some, some people say that 30 minutes after is when you should be eating, but others say it doesn't matter. So any advice for, I guess, general dietary guidelines during and after exercise. Um, so as with a lot of these guidelines and talking with people, the masses that I don't know, this answer is going to depend on a lot of things like duration of the run, intensity of the run, and turnaround before you plan on running again. Okay, so those things are all going to have a little bit of a factor into that. However, textbook... definition, right, if you're talking about maximizing, replenishing your stored carbohydrates, maximizing, repairing those damaged proteins, because we all damage proteins in our muscle when we exercise, it's a natural thing, when we rebuild them, textbook is within at least 30 to 60 minutes after finishing your workout. So 30, half an hour to an hour, yes. So they say that. And some say, others say it doesn't matter as long as you're getting your daily calories again. I would again say that depends on the two biggies, duration and intensity. Something, so say I'm doing a double run that day, like an easy half an hour run. I'm not as crazy about, and then I need to eat in 30 minutes. But I will say, and this is just a personal anecdote, so I teach this to my students. It's known if you're going to maximally replenish your store those glycogen stores those stores carbohydrates and Repair muscle proteins getting that in within a first within an hour is that critical window for? maximizing that Personally, I'm religious about it. I am religious about Making sure I refuel within 30 to 60 minutes after training because I run 10 to 15 miles every single day. And I can't be tired because I didn't eat breakfast right afterwards the day before. So it has to do it. And I credit a lot of my ability to continue to turn around and do it again day after day after day through the timing of my meals, which is eating within 30 minutes after I work out. I did see, and what's the best option in there. So just to say, what you choose to eat is important as well. and I'll preface it with this, anything is better than nothing though. So anything better than nothing, but you really wanna have something that's a little bit of carbohydrates and protein and more carbohydrates than protein. A little pet peeve and I'm not anti-muscle milk, like that brand Muscle Milk, people love that stuff. I don't know why it's like they've never tasted real milk that tastes better, but. Muscle milk has way too high of a protein to carb ratio to maximize recovery. The perfect carb to protein ratio is actually just regular chocolate milk or peanut butter crackers or actually putting some banana on a cereal milk. You're right there ballpark to a little bit carbs with a little bit of protein. That's what you want within 30 minutes to an hour after you finish. And that's textbook and I'll preach to it that I think it works too. Okay. Great. Um, is it, is it the same as protein as well? Like if someone says they do a gym workout and they need to have protein within 30 minutes after that workout to, I guess, you know, that's, that's a, the ideal window. It does the same thing apply. Oh, so like you're talking about like, so strength training and then yeah, a lot of people say in the gym. So something misunderstood in that is yes, protein, but you cannot re-synthesize proteins without energy. And so calories, right? So you'd rather get that energy, use the protein to synthesize your muscle, right? So that's what we take it in. We take, okay, I might be going off the deep end, but this is my, something passion that I want the population to understand, but I don't get enough time to tell it. We consume protein, protein is necessary in our diet, to rebuild protein. That's why we need it. We do not need, nor does our body want to use, protein for energy. Our body wants to use carbohydrates and fats for energy, and it wants to use proteins to rebuild proteins. And so, if you're trying to even maximize muscle, you're trying to get big bulk up. and you're gonna consume your protein drink within 30 minutes after your meal, consume some carbohydrates with it so that you use the energy from the carbohydrates to build those proteins. Otherwise you're not doing yourself a disservice in doing just protein alone. All right, great. Next we have- Soapbox. Sorry for that, soapbox. That's good. Um, we have Melinda asking, um, is there a distance time where you have to take nutrition into account? And I asked for clarification. She said, essentially, do you need to change your diet if you are running quite high amounts, but not just like sort of maintaining your distance compared to if you switch to sort of training for a goal towards a marathon and you're increasing your distance. Do you need to change your diet? when it comes to, I guess, those two different cycles, the two different training cycles. Okay. I sounds like, so I got to read the question, right? I have that look. Sounds like you and I maybe interpreted it a little bit differently. So I'll sort of answer it both ways. Go for it. Yeah. The way I was thinking, the way you were thinking. Um, and that first part, is there a distance time where you have to take your nutrition needs into account? Um, and so I was thinking nutrition, like. for that effort. Mm-hmm. So like, you know, nutrition needs for a marathon. Yes, you absolutely should consume calories during, say something as long as a marathon. So in that regard, there actually is a defined time of when you should consume nutrition. And that time is 90 minutes. Actually, anything that takes less than 90 minutes. There is zero scientific evidence that any sort of calories taken is going to be beneficial. Anything, it's just going to slow you down. Interesting. So if it's less than 90 minutes, and there are some exceptions, somebody's going to throw me out there with an outlier, but by the book, if the activity to take in calories to complete that workout. And no study has shown that it's beneficial. You don't see an improvement in performance. So there's my time break on that one. Now then she kind of goes into, right, you clarified with your day to day in your runs lasting. She's over an hour, but no intention to build. And here's kind of my response to that. You don't have to do anything. Absolutely not. The body, I love it and hate it for what an incredibly efficient adapter it is. I generally run at least 90 minutes every morning and I consume nothing beforehand. Just go run, right? Don't have to. Doesn't bother me. Doesn't affect me. Body's used to it. I'm an efficient person. Being efficient is helpful in a marathon. It means that I can go further with less energy. So you don't have to. Especially if you're just maintaining distance and fitness, making sure you get in that good recovery food in the 30 to 60 minutes afterward would be what I say focus on. If you're gonna try to focus on something. And then again, as opposed towards building towards a goal. And so what I'd say is, so as opposed to, so if you aren't any goal and you're happy and you're fine, you're probably fine doing what you're doing. If you start to see though, a drift in the effort required to do those regular runs, that's when I would say, yeah, maybe you need something before to modify during. Maybe do a social long run. I was in a group where most of the people probably ran for an hour every day with him Socially, I guess just peer pressure would do like 15 or 20 miles on a Saturday. So even if it's just a social fun Run if it's going 90 minutes to two hours, you're gonna consider Nutrition to be more important during that I have seen people I Guess run the usual recreational run Not need to build up and their diets fine, but then when they switched to like a marathon and their distance increases and their mileage increases, they sort of justify. Eating more, but usually eating more comes with like they just eat more junk food. Like they, they start eating sugary foods. They started like their diet actually suffers. They're eating more because they can justify eating more because they're exercising more. Um, have you seen that similar pattern? Oh, I've lived it. I think I think I lived it about the first five or six marathons that I ran. Um, you're hungry when you start training more and the intensity goes up. You're hungrier than if you were just going for your regular routes. And so, and I think the thing that finally got me settled in was planning for that. And this is what I've said before, that a good marathon training plan absolutely involves planning to be hungry. So what you bought at the grocery store when you were in maintenance phase versus what you buy at the grocery store needs to look different because you're gonna make, potentially make some bad decisions, you know. you need to account for your hunger. So if you have a bowl of oatmeal and a banana every morning during your regular training and now you've bumped it up to a marathon phase, you should probably bump that to a bowl of oatmeal, banana and some toast with some butter and have that plan that you're going to get hungry. Otherwise you're going to have your usual breakfast you're going to get to work and you're going to hit the vending machine because you're still hungry. So you just need to plan that out. Right. Okay. I'm going to be hungrier. I want to make good choices. Maybe more of the good stuff. Yep. Still finding that balance, still finding a nice healthy balance in your diet, but just, just a little bit more in terms of volume. Yeah, it's, uh, it is a challenge because you get, I mean, yeah, yeah. I mean, hanging people like to use the hangry, but I think you just, it's just those bad decisions. It's kind of like, I've been, I feel almost like a post 20 mile workout for me. Hitting the kitchen can almost feel like. hung over me hitting the drive through. It's like, I'll take one of everything. You know, I'm not making good choices right now. Yeah. I think we've all been there. I think we all kind of share that sort of sensation. All right. Um, Karen asks, what's the optimal electrolyte drinks to consume before, during, after a race? And I guess, you know, it's, it's quite a vague question. I'd know where you want to take it. What do you have for Karen? Yeah, so it's a great it's a great question. I think it's something that's sort of on everybody's mind but here's thing Karen and I hate being that person that can't give a good ant Just give you probably what you want to hear which is like 120 milligrams of sodium per hour or whatever It is too individualized to make a blanket recommendation people sweat at different rates they sweat with different electrolyte levels. And so, I think she said, can you take in too much of a good thing? And so I'll talk about this as just the most blanket recommendations I can make. Acutely speaking, so like in an acute severe scenario, you're actually going to can overdo it on just water alone way before you can overdo it on electrolytes. So something called hyponatremia which is low sodium in the blood is a very serious medical condition that can lead to hospitalization and worse and that happens oftentimes for people who are doing long endurance events and only drinking water with no electrolytes. And so that is much more serious. So can you take too much of a good thing? Actually, yeah, you can actually take in too much, just water and not everything else. Not super common, but it happens. Can too much of a good thing, too much of a good, or can you take in too much of a good thing? So electrolytes, can you overdose it on electrolytes? Yeah, certainly in individuals who have high blood pressure. they might need to watch their sodium intake and that. And I don't want somebody with high blood pressure to be like, oh, this running dietician told me I can eat as much salt as I want because I'm not gonna say that. So there are those individuals. But if you don't have high blood pressure and you are an endurance athlete, by and large, you're not gonna take in too much electrolytes. Virtually every commercially available formula is Optimized to not cause any problems. You're just not going to be able to physiologically Drink too much Gatorade. Yeah You could I suppose take way too many salt pills This the pills but that's gonna cause more GI Discomfort than anything probably end up actually just having diarrhea the body will try to maintain osmotic pressure and to do so it'll just flush the water from your body into your gut and you'll be in the bathroom. So that's undesirable. So the best thing you can do again, this has to be individual, so the best thing you can do is know your sweat rate, yours, not somebody else's, and pay attention to whether or not you are a salty sweater. So does your watch have a white ring around it? Do your eyebrows get crusty after you run? you're a salty sweater. I am a salty sweater so to counter that I salt everything, I have normal blood pressure, I don't worry about it. Sweat rate is very individual. Some people sweat a lot, some people don't, so you should know yours and the best way to do that is get on the scale before you go for a run in the morning. Weigh yourself before a run. Come back home, take off your clothes, get on the scale. How much weight did you lose? Divide that per mile or minute or hour, and that's your sweat rate. And then do that in the spring, and do that in the summer, and do that in the fall, and do that in the winter. Because your sweat rate will change. So if you're living in the mountains and you're going to run a race in the desert, or you're training in the desert and you're going to run a race on the mountains, you should probably kind of have some idea. But that's individual. You can't make those. More sodium if you're a salty sweater, less if you're not. more volume if you're a heavy sweater less if you're not um Just yeah, that's great. The easy check is right. The even before you get on the scale, pee, look in the toilet. If it's pale, looks like lemonade or lighter, you're probably fine. If it's darker, darker yellow to orange to apple juice, drink some water for crying out loud. 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So sign up and say hi to your new patron family and we'll see you there. I was actually surprised when I did a sweat test cause I interviewed Andy Blow on the podcast and he had a, like he did an entire episode on exactly what you just explained. You know, the individualized sweat rates and sweat sodium concentrations. And we organized after that interview, a sweat test for me to do. And we did like a questionnaire beforehand and it was like, um, Do you, do you ever have cramping? Does it affect your performance? Do you get like the crusty sort of white marks? And I'm like, no, no. And I thought I would be really, um, low in terms of concentration of sodium in sweat and turns out I'm actually quite high on the spectrum of I'm actually a salty sweater, but looking at my sweat rate, my sweat rate is actually really low. And so I don't really, I don't think I can't remember a time when I've done a really long endurance event under like. hot and humid conditions. Um, I really don't push myself. So that's probably why, but, um, I guess not seeing any saltiness, any salt marks and those like, say during a triathlon or during, you know, trail race and that sort of stuff, it's probably just cause I don't sweat a lot. And so it was interesting to find my results cause I was expecting one thing. I got the total opposite thing. So yeah, an individualized test and then sort of adopting what, what you find in those individual tests can be really helpful. Yeah, it really is. I agree. If you have the option to do the actual sweat, the concentration test, you know, no, if you're a salty sweater for sure, I'd say do it, but because yeah, certainly we can miss things. Salt on the eyebrows isn't the end all be all for what they're not. Yes. Yeah. I have a question from Laura about IBS. She says, can I in play a role in IBS and distance running? She says, um, Are there any new info guidelines about IBS and running? Um, I find it hard to completely do a, a FODMAP, um, diet a hundred percent and I'm struggling with pain. So what advice do you have for Laura? Um, so Laura IBS is, is challenging. I'm sure she knows anything that ends in syndrome is challenging because there's such a, you know, a wide array of symptoms that individuals can have. So, bummer, not a lot of new info. One of the more recent studies that I found, so keep doing what you're doing as much as you can, is that there's some pretty promising work saying that exercise, and particularly endurance exercise, may actually help people with IBS. So they took people with IBS who weren't classically exercised and kind of put them on a training regimen. And for most of them, the symptoms improved. So I think keep training when you can, is what I would say. So no, and then no on iron causing IBS, but because of that inflammation in the gut, the whole irritable bowel syndrome, it can actually interfere with your iron absorption. And so you might be at risk for deficiency, so it might be important to get those tested. And the hard thing is those supplements, those iron supplements can also cause some GI distress. So, you know, you might be one of those people where an infusion might be more warranted to just not make your, you know, gut feel any worse. The one thing that I kind of think of it from a runner's point of view as an injury, you know, if you say you got a stress fracture and the doctor said, you know, you got to stay off of it for four to six weeks or so, you probably would because ultimately you want to get back to running and getting to improve. You know, the FODMAP while challenging, I personally wouldn't want to have to do the FODMAP diet. For those people who don't know, FODMAP is fermentable, oligosaccharides, disaccharides. monosaccharides and polyols. Basically, those are all the sugars. All sorts of things that taste good. Even helpful sugars like stuff in fruits that are known to cause gastrointestinal distress. But if you can find a dietitian to work with, really, and it's not no FODMAP, so it's not like you can't eat any sugars, fruits, vegetables or anything. It's low. And it's six weeks. It's six weeks and they and it's shown improvement 70% of patients see noticeable improvement in that six weeks and then you get to start reintroducing stuff and Get your diet as close to normal as you can So let's say you know in the grand scheme of things a couple of months of yes Challenging dietary restrictions that have manageable pain so that you can run You know, might be worth it. Treat it like that. Treat it about as an eight week commitment to your long-term fitness goals. I say all that because I don't have to do it. It would be hard, but I'm going through an injury right now and going for a swim today and a sec instead of a second run, look all the willpower I had, but ultimately I want to get better. It's a short-term thing. It's a commitment to my overall health. Yeah. I actually tried if you can. Yup. I don't think patience is a very common attribute in runners. I just don't see it that often, but yes, it does pay off in the long run. We have all the questions answered. Uh, that's, I think you've knocked all of these out of the park, all these like different types of questions being thrown at you and, um, like the amount of information, I'm actually glad that some of these questions you, we interpret differently because it just, you just answered two different questions and all of it was just very valuable. Are there any final takeaways, maybe some tips that you might have to run as about iron or something maybe that we haven't discussed yet that you think might be helpful? I would say my recommendation always is try to meet your needs through diet. Really try, you know, don't use a supplement as a blanket whenever, you know, just because you don't want to buy the higher iron grain or, you know, pay attention to your diet. Try to get it through diet. That's the more efficiently absorbed way to guarantee to be absolutely safe. If you're concerned at all in thinking about it, go to the doctor for a quick iron check. For the most part, those serum iron tests, it's going to be a $15 copay. I'm talking my US counterparts. I don't know what your healthcare is like there, but $15 copay, $25 copay to know with a degree of certainty whether taking that supplement is safe or not is a small price to pay. And then retest after you begin supplementing, just to make sure it's worked. Do you need more? Do you need less? That sort of thing. And the other thing that I would say with this is that any sort of major life events can change that. Maybe you never had a problem before, but then you got pregnant and had a baby. Worth getting tested again. Maybe you had a illness. COVID, something like that. Get tested again, maybe you were fine before. Major training changes. You've been a runner for 10 years, but now you've decided to race a marathon. Get tested again. I mean, those major things are enough to throw you off and it's worth knowing and just being sure. Because it's also an easy thing to do, right? If that's what's holding you back. low iron taking a supplement to feel good is totally worth it. Yeah. And like you said, with a lot of answering a lot of these questions, it's, it's tailored to the individual. Like they might need supplements. Like you might need to do these, but you need to be deficient to have that benefit. And it could be of detriment if you don't need it and you're taking it. And I think with such a minimal effort required to get tested, And such a minimal required effort to retest, um, it's automatically just tailoring the guidance, the advice to the individual and you know, you need, if you test something, you need to know if it works or not. Like if you try to change your diet, or if you try to change your, your exercise, if you go from training from a half marathon to a marathon, you need to test and retest to know if something works and. Uh, with something that's not that expensive, not a lot of time out of your day. I think it's, it's pretty crucial. And I'll go back to before I let you go in that hole. It's not a lot of time on your day and it's worth testing and retesting. And we talked about how impatient runners can be. Um, so I know there's a lot of popular, like inside tracker and stuff testing, and they might just be like, okay, now I want to know, give yourself at least 90 days. It takes 90 days. Your blood cell, red blood cells have a half-life of 90 days. It's going to be 90 days before you can really know. So three months, right? So don't start an iron supplement and test next month. Don't go, you know, give yourself three months, um, then retest. So I just want to throw that be patient in that regards. Otherwise you're going to learn exactly what you did before. You're going to be measuring the exact same blood you were before. Yeah. And I think another. key takeaway or just something to remind the listeners, just that serum test would be a lot better than just getting a regular blood test. And, you know, like you say, you might be on the way of becoming deficient, but it does not show up in that particular test of your blood. So if you wait, if you wait until your hemoglobin and hematocrit are low, you are functionally iron deficient and gonna and that's gonna cause some more severe problems. These sort of topics. particularly anything around diet and nutrition is extremely popular when it comes to, uh, the patrons, just my audience in general, just runners in general, we've got a ton of questions flooding in more than I do usually get for just general Q and a sessions. Um, so if anyone wants to follow you or for anyone wants to know more about nutrition and iron, do you have any particular social media or websites or anything that people can go to check out? I do respond to Twitter pretty well. I'm at McKell Davis on Twitter. And then if you look me up, my name is actually McKell Montgomery because I made that Twitter account before I got married. I'm very responsive to email. My website with my university and official stuff is all there. So those are the best ways. I do have a website that I have not. at it rolling. So I don't want to send people to something that's not worth going to. Sounds great. So you're okay if I just leave your email in the show notes for people just to reach out for any questions? Yeah, that's absolutely fine. Excellent. All right. Fantastic. Mikael, thank you very much. Like I said, you knocked all these questions out at the park and it's a lot of I haven't done an episode on iron before and it was a lot of value. So thank you very much for coming on and sharing. Well, sure. Yeah, thanks. I pretty I Thanks for letting me talk about my favorite nutrient. And that concludes another Run Smarter lesson. I hope you walk away from this episode feeling empowered and proud to be a Run Smarter scholar. Because when I think of runners like you who are listening, I think of runners who recognize the power of knowledge, who don't just learn but implement these lessons, who are done with repeating the same injury cycle over and over again, who want to take an educated, active role in their rehab. who are looking for evidence-based long-term solutions and will not accept problematic quick fixes. And last but not least, who serve a cause bigger than themselves and pass on the right information to other runners who need it. I look forward to bringing you another episode and helping you on your Run Smarter path.