On today’s podcast Dr. Jimenez DC, health coaches Adriana Caceres and Faith Arciniaga, and nutritionist Ana Paola Rodríguez Arciniega will discuss how intracellular body water affects our fitness health.

Dr. Alex Jimenez: OK, so it appears that time. OK, so today we’re going to be discussing we’re going to get your swole on. We need to understand what intracellular and extracellular fluid does. As you guys know, we’ve been focusing on body composition over the last couple of years. Now we’ve uncovered some real deep science level in body composition and the awareness of inner cell and out-of-cell environments. We have some basic knowledge, and the knowledge is that the more swole the inner cell is, the better it’s going to be. In terms of what we’re looking at, when we look at our body composition assessments, we’re going to use me as an example today in terms of our body assessment and composition studies. We assess our patients by evaluating their body composition and determining how much muscle, water, and intracellular, extracellular fluids they have. So we’ve been able to uncover certain pieces of data when we compile our patients. Now we do know that phase angle is a critical component of health. Now, the phase angle is a determinant that we actually send electrical currents throughout the body and determine the health of the true cell wall. So today, we’re going to have a little discussion specifically of how to get your swole on because we can measure the intracellular versus extracellular water inside the cell and determine if someone’s healthy or not or healthier than the different variable. Now, when we look at these kinds of studies, we have been able to evaluate this. So Ana, let me ask you first when you look at intracellular water, what is it you’re looking for versus extracellular water, meaning water that is outside of a cell?

 

Ana Paola: Well, we’re talking about intracellular water. We’re talking about cellular integrity. We need water to communicate through cells. We need water to communicate or propagate information and nutrients across the cell membrane or make it function. But if we’re talking about intracellular water, we’re talking about integrity inside of the cell. If we’re talking about extracellular water, we’re talking about communication. However, we need to have a constant ratio, or we need to have a constant distribution of this water. And for this to happen, there needs to be a balance between those specific nutrients outside and inside the cell. And it also has to take into account the fact that we have a phospholipid membrane that takes care of that balance. So it has a lot to do with proteins. It has a lot to do with nutrients; it has a lot to do with protons, sodium, and potassium. So we look for this specific marker to determine if our patient is swollen and has a little bit of inflammation in that specific part of their body because that is the kind of information that we can get from the body results. And we used said moles; well, we are currently using it to determine if we can find an association between the IGNACE score and what they can do to improve their endurance while they are exercising.

 

Dr. Alex Jimenez: I guess what we’re talking about today is as we start evaluating, we start evaluating cells. And so if we look at cells, we can show my little two cells here, and let’s assume this is a surface area. We talk about this intracellular water versus extracellular water. So what we were trying to do is see that a person who has a more swole cell, OK, is basically in this comparison between this one and this one is a healthier individual with a less amount of, let’s say, fluid outside. This is, let’s say, a fluid level here and here that there’s a lot of, let’s say, a lot of fluid collection here. OK. So when we look at this kind of dynamics, and I apologize for my drawing. What we’re trying to do is figure out and measure these variables. So what we’re able to do now is we’re able to see true health dynamics occurring in an individual now. When we look at that, what we’re looking for is we’re looking at the true numbers that we see here. So here we have a typical assessment. This is happens to be mine that we look at intracellular water versus extracellular water. We look at dry, lean mass. We also look at body fat mass content. So you know, you hear bodybuilders say, “Let’s get my swole on.” So which is the title on this? Because when you get your swole on, you feel better, right, so you feel like you feel fitter. We’re also noticing that when athletes are training for, let’s say, competitions, there’s a balance of level of intracellular and extracellular fluids. So what we need to do is we need to look at what our studies are reflecting now. These are a short series of studies where we can see a certain amount of patients, right? And what we look at as we’ve talked about phase angle and the higher the phase angle, the healthier the individual. So we also notice that the lower the phase angle, the two-point two would be relatively low, OK. Therefore, we have an unhealthy dynamics, OK, versus a higher phase angle individual, which would be high in the upper close to a ten, let’s say, eight-point one. And if we’re looking at this new factor here called the swole factor or the swole hedge factor that we’ve been able to kind of identify. We see that the numbers rise between forty-five and thirty. OK. So when we start noticing a forty-five being able to retain. In other words, the cell can retain forty-five percent more water than the outside environment of the cell. OK? So when we were going back to that example, a cell’s ability to hold on to water determines its health. All are controlled by these cellular membranes. When we study the whole cell, the membrane dynamics, we measure the phase angle, which tells us the electrical current that we’re seeing. So when we do these studies, we look at a couple of other variables. And as we look at these dynamics, we start looking at things such as the impedance of a cell wall. When we talk about phase angle in this particular situation, I have a phase angle of 6.3. How do we figure this out? We figure this out by sending low frequencies to a higher frequency hertz through the body through the whole body dynamics. Once we figure it out, we give an average number. This tells me the overall health of my body, right? So what we need to know is that the higher the phase angle, the higher the electrical current dynamics inside the cell outside than the cell membrane, which allows us to have a better phase angle. That means you’re healthier. A low phase angle would be an unhealthy dynamic. So we’re able to identify to find it. Today, we see studies that use phase angle to determine and screen out pre-cancerous pre-disease states such as diabetes, cardiovascular issues, and even mitochondrial deficiencies like neuropathies. This determination is all being assessed at the cell membrane. So when we’re doing these kinds of dynamics, we’re looking for these variables. So as you can see here, we can see an individual with a phase angle of 8.1, which has a fitness score of 100. In reverse, we can see from this small study that we did with about 500 patients. From this, we can see that the phase angle for certain individuals is a two-point two, and their fitness scores of 41. But if we take a look at that dynamics, we also look at the intracellular extracellular fluids. And we do believe we lost the phase angle. So that’s going to refresh the page, and let’s see how we got here. OK, so when we start looking at that, and let’s go to 50. What is it? 50 all records? No, no, it’s the HIPA. So when we look at these particular records, we see the overall health, and you can see the intracellular fitness score and the phase angle. So it appears we lost one of our components there. So when we look at the dynamics of that, we see that overall fitness level and intracellular fluids, we can see the ratios develop. Now, as we look at these dynamics, we’re going to be able to assess and determine the overall health of an individual. So when we see a low phase angle, we have a low fitness score when we have a high fitness phase angle. We’re looking at an individual that’s got a high beam score. OK, so we’re basing this off of intracellular and extracellular fluids. OK, so we notice that intracellular fluids if it’s higher, the ratio becomes an important component. So as we measure these dynamics, we can see in terms of athletes; certain athletes have tight systems with very little fluid, maintaining interests, extracellularly OK. And a lot is maintained intracellularly. You can see the difference between an individual who is off-season and on season in this situation. You can assume that this person has a much more level of extracellular fluid if that makes sense. So as we look at exercise their body fluid versus intracellular fluid, you can transition as you do these dynamics. So our goal here is to create awareness about what’s going on and in terms of the fitness dynamics occurring in the patient. So when we look at these kinds of dynamics, what are the things that we can do to increase, let’s say, intracellular fluid and decrease extracellular fluid retention? Adriana, you particularly work with patients. And what we want to do is we want to increase our phase angle. So when we have an individual with a high phase angle or that is a healthier individual or a person has a low phase angle, and they have a lot of extracellular fluid retention, what is one of the things that we do to establish normalcy or create an at least homeostasis between that?

 

Adriana Caceres: The exercise is essential in this water balance because, of course, you want to retain the water inside the cells and imagine cells being like grapes. And then if the water’s outside the how the extracellular water, you’re going to have little raisins, they’re going to dry out, and the muscle is not going to be able to grow, and you’re not going to be able to prevent inflammation. So you want to have the water in the cell, the intracellular water. So the grape is healthy, and round two, it’s a very juicy, healthy grape. And that would be better with exercising and good nutrition where you have the balance you need in your body to prevent any inflammation.

 

Dr. Alex Jimenez: We have been able to see the changes within two weeks in terms of the activity level if someone starts with the cardiovascular work. It seems obvious, but you can actually pump the fluids out of the system and make the cells healthier by increasing the intracellular water, which indicates what are we doing? We’re actually improving the health of the cell membrane. So as we do that, I guess the impedance and the capacitance between the cells become much more logical. For those who don’t know, the cell wall is a bi-lipid layer, which acts as a capacitor to many extents. So it holds a charge. So a lot of our systems are controlled. That cell membrane controls many or most of our systems. What is allowed in and out of the cell determines its health. So the ability for the cell to maintain its water, so to speak, or its volume of fluid, determines its health by default, a cell that doesn’t indicate that the cell is losing its ability and strength. So we look at those things in terms of nutritional aspects Ana, what kind of things do you do that help people, let’s say, return to normal dynamics inside the cell?

 

Ana Paola: Well, if we’re talking about it. Intracellular water and extracellular body water need to figure out what is the thing that is causing that leakage. We kick off things that tell the body water to the extracellular side, so it’s very important to know if the patient is drinking the right amount of water and eating the right amount of protein. So that is crucial in the nutritional aspect of determining if the intracellular ratio is doing all right. So that is the first thing. But of course, exercise has to do a lot with that because it is our mechanism of maintaining that balance, so it’s crucial for it. Nutrition should always be followed with exercise.

 

Dr. Alex Jimenez: You know, there are extremes, and sometimes we can learn from extremes like the CDs, which is a disorder that there is a low level of albumin or actually poor nutrition to that extent. The level of albumin is minimized, and the orthostatic and the hydrostatic pressures in the body change as a result of its inability to hold water while the water ends up leaking outside the cells and end up going not only to the extracellular tissues but into cavities inside the body in the peritoneum. And patients have large bellies of water that are at extreme poor nutrition. But it gets the point on the other side, a bodybuilder who works out and they workout or an athlete that works out a lot. You can see that if they overload their body, they become almost ashy and depleted and lose their ability to hold water. And a lot of the glucose is, and at least the normal products of cellular metabolisms, such as glycogen, are diminished in the body. And once the person loses their glycogen, they feel weak, and they don’t retain water inside their cells. Once that, the body retains and restores back the glycogen. So you have certain drinks that bring in the glycogen or increase the sugar levels. That increases the hydrostatic pressure within the cells and brings normalcy, and the color of the human actually start changing right in front of you. So it’s in its amazing dynamics when you can actually measure the amount of changes. Now, when we would also evaluate this when athletes are trying to determine and are trying to compete; we want to push the body. You can actually measure the amount of intracellular water, and the higher the intracellular water is, it tells you that your body is moving in the right direction of athleticism. So, on the contrary, if you’re becoming depleted and you’re losing your ability to become fit, then you are going to know that extracellular fluid is now diminished in that region. What are the things that we notice in terms of? Faith, the wellness dynamics, what has been your experience in terms of intracellular and extracellular fluid within the cells?

 

Faith Arciniaga: So intracellular water, you want it to obviously be higher than the extracellular water, meaning that the cells absorb water as they should. If we see that a patient isn’t absorbing water as they should and that value is slightly low, we can start to say, Oh, you need to exercise more. Or maybe you’re deficient in certain minerals because minerals allow us to absorb water as we should. So those are the values that we want to pay attention to ensure that the ratio is correct and you got it.

 

Dr. Alex Jimenez: So as we’re looking at these dynamics, we actually see the results. So going back to our studies, as we evaluate these individuals and we start seeing these particular results in our in-body assessments, we not only look at the water but also at the body capacitance, which also lets us see exactly what’s actually happening inside the cell. So when we pull this over here, we’re also going to be able to see their muscle mass index and what goes on. So not only are we looking at the physiological component, but we’re looking at the physical components because many times, patients come in here with just pain and joint problem. But we’re able to see that their overall healthy state of the musculoskeletal level and physiology are altered. So we need to be able to restore through nutrition, exercise, and lifestyle changes. So one of the things we do is we use these tools to assess. Adriana, in terms of your results and what you’ve seen in patients in the past. Have you noticed any changes in active or athletic patients and change their phase angle through a series of exercises?

 

Adriana Caceres: Yes, definitely. The phase angle is related to the exercise and the fitness level, so you will see a change with two or three weeks of exercising a month of exercise. You can already see a change in the body index in the body fat mass and, of course, in the phase angle.

 

Dr. Alex Jimenez: Excellent. So Ana, tell me a little bit about your experiences with the phase angle dynamics over time.

 

Ana Paola: Well, I have noticed that the phase angle is very important in critically ill patients. So the phase angle can also help us to know what is going on with the cell. So something that happens is that whenever we have a critically ill patient,

 

Ana Paola: the…

 

Dr. Alex Jimenez: That was America. I’m sorry about that, guys.

 

Ana Paola: The intracellular waters start to come out to the extracellular compartment, which happens just for the body to have enough resources to move. And also, it bypasses a lot of the protein bombs. And with this, it makes like a like a saving mode of energy-saving mode. So they do not use as much ATP because the cell can no longer produce that amount of energy to pump out all the different electrolytes you need. So that is very important for the patient or personally. I like that about the face time off because it allows me to know that that is happening in the patient’s body if it’s critically ill. But if we have outpatient and we see that they’re at the phase angle is improving, we have to take into account that the phase angle also measures the amount of cell mass that we have in our body. So we need to take into account the fact that if we’re losing weight, then the face angle will be lower. But we need to go back and see what is going on with that body fat mass and with the percentage of muscle mass. So we have to take all of the information and gather all our theoretical information and see what is going on with the patients. So it all depends on the patients that we see currently.

 

Dr. Alex Jimenez: Let me ask you something that we’ve learned about betaine. We’ve learned about things like creatine. What are the things we’re noticing, and people have known for years that creatine is used for, from anti-cancer to fitness to increase strength? Actually, not only just increased strength, but increased power, primarily power over the strength components. So what does that mean when someone increases power versus strength? Because we’re seeing that when you take certain supplements, such as creatine or betaine, we’re noticing changes in the strength curves. Tell me a bit about the differences between the power that we notice when cells are fully hydrated versus less hydrated.

 

Ana Paola: Well, something about power is that it has to do with the fact that we can prolong or exercise for a little bit longer, so for example, if I’m lifting a hundred pounds, I can do it for a lot of repetitions. However, if I’m focusing on strength, I’m upgrading from a hundred pounds to 120 or 130, but I’m only keeping small repetitions. So that is where you have to infer from the strength and power. So by power, you almost want to make it equal to endurance. So that is something very important to note. So specifically, talking about betaine, I’ll say that it’s very important for them methyl donors. So, of course, as part of a very important methyl donor pathway, you have to learn that it has to do with lowering the amounts of homocysteine in our body, which will lower the oxidative stress and will promote health ultimately. Ultimately, it will lead to all of the production of acid tryptophan and sustain Sammy specifically and will lead to serotonin, which leads to many good things. Something that has been brought up in different research papers is that betaine can also prove the amount of muscle mass in people exercising. So that has been compared to people who are or most animals, and this is very sensitive. So when kids were supplemented with betaine and not exercising, they gained no muscle mass. However, when they were supplemented with betaine and had more range to run around and exercise, they increased their muscle mass. So it is crucial to mix something that has to do with nutrition, exercise, and talking about creatine; we have to know that creatine, well, we needed to promote endurance. That is very important, but also it creates like the swollen factory nerve cells. So if we have, like Adriana said before, like a grape instead of a raisin of her cell, we can promote more work, more endurance, more power so that it’s something that we need, and it has to do a lot with extremes. We have extreme, an extreme athlete. Then you will have some specific measures or some specific factors that we want to observe. If we have an extremely ill patient, then it will be different. However, we can use the same measurements for the same factors to measure how they are doing.

 

Dr. Alex Jimenez: Excellent. Excellent good points. And you know, we do that for our athletes. Our extreme athletes such as wrestlers such as our CrossFitters. We want to reassess their factors, from the phase angle to the intra extracellular body fluid waters, which tells us the overall health of the individual, which they’re now, as Ana indicated. You know, a lot happens, but you have got to do a lot to say, for example, that you can’t see the effects unless you exercise, right? So that’s what’s critically important. So as your body throttles up, as the indicators do, now we have the ability to see how healthy the cells are. We don’t have to use that like, you know, I feel better. I feel tight or whatever. No, we can actually measure the entire extracellular body fluids and actually see what is actually happening. This is great for the season, so you start the season by assessing your body composition, and you know, a quarter of the way through, your body starts changing quite a bit. For wrestlers, they start at one hundred and, let’s say, 80 pounds. And their goal is they’ve got to be at the 155 weight class. So as that happens, there’s a flux of water issues and intra and extracellular fluids that alter not only the ability for them to battle, but if you take out the extracellular fluid or an imbalance of intracellular fluid in the wrong direction, you may actually make yourself weaker. That’s why there is a period of time that you want to attain your body weight to allow your body to restore its normal orthostatic pressures. Makes sense. So we don’t want to drive into the 155 weight class the day before. OK, we want to allow the body to establish its normal balances and see what’s actually going on. So there’s a lot of science in this. We can also take this with individuals with cardiovascular issues and joint problems and diabetes, obesity, and density issues on muscles. So sarcopenia, we can evaluate the changes as we’re showing the improvements. Little by little. So I just wanted to give you insights as to what we’re learning here. So we’re with our patients as the data starts rolling in. So as we do this, one of the things is people ask me, “Can I do this? How often?” Well, it depends on what you’re doing. If you’re not doing much well, once a month, every couple of months is fine. But if you’re an extreme athlete, we want to monitor you regularly, maybe every two weeks, to see what the changes are. So we can see then our tools will give you insights as to what’s going on. So I appreciate you guys. Little by little, we were talking about intercellular exercise, other to get your swole on because we want to get those cells really healthy, and the bottom line is the more powerful the cell is, and the cell membrane is, the healthier the individual. Whether we measure it to phase angle or measure the amount of bottle volume in the water, enter an extracellular. We can actually determine different components. So thank you guys very much, and we look forward to next time we chat about the new topic and depending on what it is. So thank you. Ms. Faith. Thank you, Adriana. Thank you, Ana, and we look forward to hearing you next time. Guys, you have a good one.