Struggling with post-workout soreness? This episode breaks down the science behind muscle soreness and how to prevent it. From reducing lactic acid buildup with a keto diet to optimizing testosterone levels, hydration, and oxygen intake, key strategies are shared to speed up recovery. The discussion also covers the impact of sleep apnea, electrolytes, and anti-inflammatory supplements like turmeric and B vitamins in reducing soreness and improving overall muscle function.

The episode also dives into the dangers of seed oils, the benefits of foam rolling, Theragun therapy, and deep breathing exercises, and how CBD and low-grade cannabis can help with pain relief. Plus, it explains why improving liver function and making small lifestyle changes can significantly enhance workout recovery. Tune in to learn how to keep soreness at bay and stay on track with your fitness goals!

Highlights of the Podcast

00:04 – Understanding Soreness & Lactic Acid

02:07 – The Role of Testosterone in Recovery

03:09 – Oxygen & Sleep Apnea Impact

03:40 – Hydration & Electrolytes

04:47 – Supplements & Anti-Inflammatory Support

04:47 – The Problem with Seed Oils & Omega-6

06:04 – Recovery Techniques: Stretching & Foam Rolling

06:50 – Liver Function & Detox Methods

07:31 – Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) & Breathing Exercises

08:34 – Light Workouts Aid Recovery

09:23 – CBD & Cannabis for Pain Relief

09:50 – The Benefits of a Soreness-Free Workout Routine

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:04] So we’re talking about fixing soreness. I was going to save the die of heart to last for me to do that first, because that’s the most fun for me. The easiest way to knock out soreness is listen. If you’re working out, you’re always sore is to switch to a keto diet. So let’s talk about first the chemistry of this and how this is kind of simple. But again this goes back to the calories are trash and they’re not real. So you actually learn your chemistry you know figure out how the body works. So the first thing we gotta look at is how are we. Why do we get sore. That’s the lactic acid, right? You know, people always say, yeah, I’ve got lactic acid. More lactic acid, the more sore. Got it. Where does lactic acid come from? It comes from metabolic processes where you take glucose. You break it into lactate. As you break break glucose and lactate. You have all this lactate sitting around and it that lactic acid is where the soreness comes from. So if you moved to a keto diet where your body is burning fat to produce ATP, instead of using sugar to produce ATP, you’ll have a lot less lactate.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:03] The other fun thing is that when your body will then has the lactate and has a smaller amount so that your body can go back through, and it’s not. Using sugar for its primary fuel sources. Keeps. What ends up happening is your body actually uses the lactate to make ATP. It goes through I told the Cori cycle to make ATP. So when you’re really stuck on this whole calorie thing and you’re eating all your calories and you’re taking in too many carbohydrates for your functional system, you’re gonna end up with more lactate, more lactic acid than you want. And so you’re going to be sore more often. So that is a primary piece. So if you move to a lower glycemic or a keto diet, you’re going to greatly reduce the amount of lactate your body holds and that lactate uses. And so it’s going to make it easier for your body to not be sore. So that’s the first piece. The other ones are where where’s your testosterone levels at men and women. If your body can’t heal, it can’t regenerate. And you’re not gonna get back where you want to be. There’s been a lot of people who come in, you know, it used to be the 50s and 60 year old guys who come in and be like, man, I’ll mow the lawn. I’ll be sore for three days, like. All right.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:02:07] We test our testosterone. They’re like 150 or 250 somewhere in there. So we’ve gone back up to that 800 to 1200 range. And all of a sudden, within like six weeks, I’m like, man, I can go work out as hard as I want to, and I’m totally fine the next day. Yeah, the variety can heal, regenerate. That’s a big piece. So obviously getting that stuff into me, a big, big benefit. As long as your hormone levels tested that whole thing. Oxygen giant giant way we are body denature and destroys lactic acid and a whole bunch of other reactive oxygen stress molecules and all sorts of stuff. If you have sleep apnea and we talk about it happening a lot, if you’ve got sleep apnea and you’re not breathing properly at night, you’re going your body can produce more waste, more lactic acid, not less. So getting your sleep apnea issues corrected is a giant part of this. You know, are you drinking enough water? That’s a big, big part of this. You know, your body uses water like a dump truck. And so it takes all the waste, puts the waste into the water, then excretes the water. And that’s how we get kind of back to where we’re supposed to be.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:03:09] So if you’re drinking plenty of water, you’re going to be good electrolytes on that same the same topic. Electrolytes, your your minerals and things like that are going to help your body detoxify and clean that stuff out as well. So make sure you’re getting all your minerals. And the Baja Gold stuff is actually pretty decent. I’ll, I will go through, make sure that I have plenty of I take magnesium separately. I take I take a mineral supplement separately. So I get all my boron in. That helps the free test. All those come up I work on, you know, take selenium like all the things. So potassium that’s your stuff. So that’s going to be a big one. I also take a bunch of tomorrow effects every day. And it’s funny because like, you know I designed tomorrow effects for liver function for fibromyalgia. You just so happens that since it blocks hangovers completely, we more people buy it for hangovers than they do for anything else. But I still take it for anti-inflammatory and stuff like that. So yeah, and that has, you know, this amount of turmeric and it’s got, you know, a variety of other things in it, you know, that help, you know, clean up and purge the liver. So those things are big piece of it. How healthy your gut is. So basically the overall inflammatory process of your entire body. So if you’re taking it a bunch of omega six is the seed oils, which is kind of funny because now there’s a big there’s groups of people out. Apparently the seed oils have been paying people, and the vegans are been all upset because, you know, seed oils are you know, we tell people, see, those are bad. And they’re like, no, they’re of plants and everything of plant is good. And so there’s a big, big counter pushback that seed oils are not only not harmful, they’re very, very good for you. They’re better for you than meat even.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:04:47] So that’s going to be a fun one that we can kind of walk through. Because omega sixes are not fantastic. Your body requires a little bit of omega six, but not the giant loads that these seed oil is actually giving us. So that’s a big piece of it. And then if you will, if afterwards will actually stretch and kind of work this stuff out. Theragun XR fantastic. Foam rolling will work. I’m a bigger fan of Theragun myself, but you know, foam roll works too. Depends on what kind of level of torture you want to put yourself into, because they’re both not comparable. So those are gonna be some of them. And then warming up beforehand and cooling down afterwards helps you get things moving. So the reason that you’re actually sore. Isn’t because your body necessarily produces all these things. It’s because they stay there. And so if you can, you know, foam roll them out. We can Theragun them out. We can, you know, cool down and we can stretch afterwards and kind of move these things out, help our lymphatics pull this stuff out. You’re not going to be nearly as sore if you’re if you do castor packs and coffee enemas. And, you know, tud can feed your liver and keep your liver clean. You know, with high methylated B6, your liver can then process all the lymph and all the all the trash that’s in your blood and move it out much, much quicker.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:06:04] Reduction in alcohol consumption will also help allow the liver to do other things, which is, you know, pull this waste out. So if you’re sore from doing normal things, we’ve got major issues. If you go to the gym and you bust out a really great workout in your soul for 2 or 3 days. If it’s when you first started working out, that’s going to be kind of normal. You know you’re going to be somewhat sore the next day, and then two days later you’re gonna be really sore. That’s the delayed onset muscle soreness or the Doms. But still, if you’re in the right metabolic state. So if you’re in that low glycemic Akito state, your body is not going to be using glucose as a fuel source. And so you’re not going to have the lactate that produces lactic acid nearly as much. So it’ll still be easier to get through that. And then, you know, again, if you’re breathing breathing exercises, deep breathing exercises are really great for this too. Again, it’s the getting the oxygen in getting the carbon dioxide out. Like getting that cycle moving is really beneficial. So if you’ll just sit and do deep breathing exercises, go do those a couple times a day, that’ll help get all the stuff out. And so that’s a really, really great way to kind of move through stuff. Start your day with them. If you’ll start your day with them. It kind of helps reset everything and kind of get your diaphragm moving, get everything kind of going, you know, getting rid of the stuff, you know, from from night if you’re not breathing, great night if you have any apnea there. So I kind of helps get that stuff moving.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:07:31] But if you’ll do it throughout the day, the thing I love about doing it throughout the day is that it’s really easy when you’re doing deep breathing exercises to shift yourself back into that parasympathetic space, that space where you’re more relaxed, more calm and this type of thing. And so we have this giant reduction of stress. We have this giant shift neurologically from fight, flight, freeze back to resting and digesting. And if you get back to resting and digesting your body can, you know, move things around the liver. Is your body cleaned out a little bit easier? So that’s a fantastic way of doing it. The other way is just go back and do a lighter workout, you know? But again, the reason that it helps is because as you’re going back through this lighter workout, you’re moving those same muscles and you’re getting the blood flow in them. You’re getting the lymph flow in and out of them. And so we’re actually picking up and carrying out that waste. So if you’re worried about getting sore, those are the things I would do. I would you know, primarily I would change to lower glycemic or keto diet, get your testosterone levels checked, your sleep apnea levels checked, then start taking all your anti-inflammatories.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:08:34] This is gonna be your mega threes. This is going to be your methylated B vitamins. It’s going to be your tumor X. It’s going to be things like that that’ll help kind of move all that stuff out. And that works really, really well. The other thing is low grade cannabis will help tremendously with any pain or soreness. We’ve used this a lot with our strips, so you can do some. So you cut a small piece off and then you get the relaxation. You get the the pain blocking. But you don’t get any of the psychedelic, the psychological changes or the, the high so that you know CBD isn’t a good option for that as well. But at the end of the day, you’re going to want your body to clear this stuff out, process it and move it out. So if you do the diet, we’re going to reduce the amount your body has to deal with. If we’re taking the nutrients for the liver is going to greatly increase the body’s ability to process and move these things out.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:09:23] And so that’s going to help tremendously. And then if you’re breathing at night getting depressed or asleep or moving those things out again. It works really, really well. So those are kind of some of the things I would recommend as far as keeping yourself from being sore. When you’re working out, if you guys will move more heavily into those things, not only will you be less sore when you work out. And here’s the cool thing about that if you’re not sore because you worked out the chances you’re going to work out tomorrow, or the chance you’re going to work out a little bit harder than you would normally tomorrow go up. And so as we start increasing everybody’s ability to move and exercise and things like that, we get healthier as the blood starts flowing more. Guess what? We start moving waste out of our systems a lot faster. And so we’re sore less for the future. So those are kind of some of the quick ways to start really kind of making significant changes and being sore after you work out. Okay. So any questions drop in the comments or hit us up. Questions at Chalmers wellness.com. Thanks for your time.

As always if you have any questions, please send them to [email protected]

Check out Chalmers Pillarsofwellness.com for Wellness updates! And ask me any questions you have at [email protected]. I answer all of them and look forward to hearing from you.

The Chalmers Wellness Stubstack just launched. Comment, Like, and Interact with other people on their wellness journey. Communities can make a difference.     DrChalmers.substack.com

Dr. Matt Chalmers

Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only. Before taking any action based on this information you should first consult with your physician or health care provider. This information is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health providers with any questions regarding a medical condition, your health, or wellness