Mark Bell's Power Project - Dan Garner Pt2- How Much Testosterone You REALLY Need to Get JACKED & Mark's Bloodwork | MBPP Ep 802

Episode Date: September 15, 2022

In this second Podcast Episode, Dan Garner, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about how much testosterone we really need to build muscle, other supplements that really work, and a live reading of Mark's bloodwork.  First episode can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feelugvgqOo Follow Dan on IG: https://www.instagram.com/dangarnernutrition/ Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!! ➢Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject Code POWERPROJECT20 for 20% off Vivo Barefoot shoes! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://eatlegendary.com Use Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori! ➢https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep! ➢https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject  ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok  FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en  Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #testosterone  #PowerProject #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast

Obviously, like it pretends it would pertain to like what somebody was doing or their goal. But what supplements do you feel are pretty effective? Getting gained, getting jacked, getting strong. As much as we love those things, our body is going to use, say, magnesium for very important health purposes before it's going to drive anaerobic energy production and do the cool stuff that we want. Have you found much success with like nootropics and things of that nature? Yeah, yeah, for sure. And nootropics, that's something that I've toyed with quite a bit. Oral BPC-157.

I've heard that that's really helpful on the gut. And I'm sure dietary habits and all that good stuff is going to be probably better. Yeah. But is that as effective as we think? I want people that are listening right now to grab a pen. Most people that are taking HRT or doing TRT, they want to get jacked. And we need more shit.

These people need to prescribe more. So what amount, you know, when we talk about, you had like a kilogram conversion going on. What amount? We need to get these people more aggressive. Merrick Health, help us out, man. Get us some more shit. We need a program, right?

We need like the brass tacks numbers. Yeah. All right. I want to look like Nsema. He's big, right? So before I answer, before I answer, Mark asked me about testosterone and I answered and it was the first exclamation mark I've ever got from him. He said to me, yes! It was the first exclamation mark ever.

I was like, I knew it. Testosterone's the key to his heart. Somebody could make these spectacular gains and they could prepare for a movie and have these awesome results in 12 weeks. Nowadays, because there's so much TRT and HRT and things like that out there and people talk so much about steroids, they're always going to just assume automatically that the person did that. Like if the person didn't have abs and then they have abs, everyone's just like, oh, that's, that's, you know, that guy's on shit. Yeah. Yeah. What are some other things outside of testosterone that can make big impacts like growth hormone and things of that nature? We were talking about modafinil a little bit yesterday. And modafinil is one of those supplements that I've heard. We've heard multiple podcasts talk about. Mark knows quite a bit about it too, but you were mentioning how relatively safe it is and how effective it is.

TSH and T4 are both looking solid. That's very efficient. There's no issue there. He'll have to go over your guys' stuff. Yeah. Right now. I get it. Starting from the top.

I suck. By the way. No, that was great. Well, I condensed it. I know. I know. I was trying. No, that was great. Well, I condensed it. I know. I know. I was trying to speed shit up. Yeah.

And that's still what we had to talk about. That's going to make 795 reels for us. Power Project family, I hope you guys are doing well today. I want to give you guys a quick piece of fitness equipment lifting history. The hip circle that you see before you is actually the first hip circle ever. All right. There were no booty bands before the hip circle, which is pretty interesting. That's why you see it in gyms like The Rock. We've seen Kim K using on Instagram. It is the OG, but that's also why we have the slingshots, gangster wraps, knee sleeves, elbow sleeves, everything that you're going to need in the gym so that you can

protect yourself before you wreck yourself. So Andrew, you tell the people how to get it. Yes, that's over at markbellslingshot.com. And at checkout, enter promo code POWERPROJECT10 to save 10% off your entire order. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Let's kick this bitch off by talking about some supplements for a moment. Because I know when we talk about blood work that we might get into supplements anyway but yeah i don't know like what uh obviously like it pretends it uh would pertain to like what somebody was doing or or their goal but uh what supplements do you feel are pretty effective um i mean there's a lot of supplements that are very effective but like just

like we were talking about yesterday a tool is only ever as good as it is applied. So in the physiological context of that person and what their body is currently, where their levels are at in terms of inflammation, hormones, micronutrient status, all of that, that's going to determine a lot of context. And then, of course, their goals are going to determine a lot of context. And then of course their goals are going to determine context. But as far as like a foundation goes, I am a big fan of multivitamins. I'm a fan of utilizing magnesium. I'm a fan of utilizing fish oil. I think between those three, that's a very agreeable recommendation for a large audience. But then after that, like with the amount of labs I do. Real quick question. Yeah. Before you go on to the labs you do, multivitamins, some people believe like, oh, you take multivitamins, you're not even going to absorb most of it. Is there legitimacy behind that belief? Because you'll see that every time someone starts talking

about multivitamins, most people think it's useless. Oh, it's absolutely not. Yeah. In no way, shape or form is it useless. It's an excellent way in which you can fill up a lot of the micronutrient gaps that exist. And when you start doing labs, you realize how many micronutrient gaps people really have. And multivitamin, multiminerals, these things are very absorbable. And it's key to make sure you get an adequate amount of each and every vitamin and mineral per day because there's basically a hierarchy of importance when it comes to any micronutrient. So let's just use vitamin K as an example. Vitamin K, it has two primary big roles in physiology. One of them is to coagulate and thicken up the blood.

And the second role vitamin K has is to remove calcification from your arteries. So two very important things, right? But what happens in low vitamin K availability, your body will preferentially only coagulate and thicken up the blood and allow your arteries to begin to calcify. And the reason why it does this is one is for acute survival. The other is for long-term health support. Your body will always prefer acute survival 10 times out of 10 before it supports long-lasting health effects. So this has already been demonstrated in humans. If you have only a set amount or a very small amount of vitamin K coming in, that vitamin

K will all be preferentially used to thicken up the blood because when your blood gets too thin, you can die of internal bleeding. So your body's like, hey, we have to do this now to make sure that we survive. That's how we're wired. And then if we have some left over, we can clean up the arteries because although that is also a problem, it's not a problem today. If we have thin blood today, we'll die. But if we have some calcification of the arteries, these things start to build up, then that's something that still can take many, many years before it becomes a life or death

situation. So there's actually a great paper. It's called Triage Theory from Bruce Ames, and it was in 2006. And he's basically outlying, outlaying rather the theory that your body based on acute survival will always utilize things in a form of hierarchy. And I think that's so key for the listeners of this podcast and us here because acute survival is obviously really important. But we're doing a lot of this stuff to gain the benefits of not necessarily acute survival but optimal performance, getting gains, getting jacked, getting strong. As much as we love those things, our body is going to use, say, magnesium for very important health purposes before it's going to drive anaerobic energy production and do the cool stuff that we want. So those micronutrients fill in those gaps. And I may also be perhaps biased because of the population that

I work with utilizes a ton of micronutrients every single day because they're training hard a lot. So I'm a big fan of Maltese and magnesium and fish oil. And then after that, it's kind of like what your goals are and what your labs look like. What do you think the fish oil can do for some people? Fish oil is fantastic. I mean, fish oil, you look at the research on fish oil and then also the research on just generalized omega-3 to omega-6 ratios in diets. It's basically one and the same for me. Fish oil has got a lot of benefits. But then when you look at the diet as a whole, just improving omega-3 to omega-6 ratio is a big component as well.

But they're basically the same conversation. Fish oils have a major impact on mental health. Like you can actually Google omega-3 depression, omega-3 anxiety, omega-3 feelings of loneliness. Like these are all very, very established in the world of mental health, which is fantastic. Omega-3s are also anti-inflammatory. One of the ways in which they are anti-inflammatory is they reduce something known as lipopolysaccharides or LPS. You'll see it sometimes in the literature. That's a bacteria within the gut. And in the presence of intestinal permeability or what some people refer to as leaky gut, that can get into circulation and create a

lot of inflammation. And LPS has been already demonstrated to lower serum testosterone. So in someone who has intestinal permeability, and by the way, only three shots of vodka have been demonstrated to create states of intestinal permeability that day. And then LPS can get into circulation and lower serum testosterone among many other inflammatory issues. So omega-3 being able to lower lipopolysaccharides, improvements in mental health, the body composition benefits that come from improving your omega-3 to 6 ratio with respect to things such as insulin sensitivity plays a big role. But I also like omega-3 too for the people that I work with because when you are involved in grappling, for example, basically you really want to support your connective tissue through three main lanes.

You want to support connective tissue synthesis directly. Then you also want to lubricate the joint, and then you also want to reduce pain. So if my athletes are in a fight camp and they're 90-minute hard grappling sessions with a bunch of killers there, and they got to do that for eight weeks, you're going to get banged up, especially when you combine strength and conditioning, striking and sparring on top of that. So when I'm looking at

connective tissue synthesis, it's like, okay, well, let's get some collagen and let's get some vitamin C in there. And then in terms of joint lubrication, omega-3 is a great option for that. And then finally, if pain management's needed, something like curcumin is actually advisable in that situation. So now we have less pain in our joints, the joints are more lubricated, and the connective tissue is being supported as well. And that's not just going to help people help the camp go along a lot smoother, but it can really help reduce injury risk because I don't know about you guys,

but like if my knee is hurt, I'm not going to squat correctly. Your technique is going to be off and now you're loading a poor technique and then that's a great way to get injured. And it's like, it's not, it was never say the quad, the glute or the hamstrings fall.

It was the fact that you had inflammation in your joint, which altered the technique, which altered the leverages injured and it's like it's not it was never say the quad the glute or the hamstrings fall it was the fact that you had inflammation in your joint which altered the technique which altered the leverages on a weight you were normally comfortable with but now your angles are different and you can fuck yourself up so using nutrition to improve mobility can actually allow you to sustain a greater technique um in your grappling or in your strength and conditioning. So omega-3s, very, very widespread. It sounds like I sell omega-3s, but I don't. They just have a lot of benefits behind them. With supplement or the whole supplement industry, we hear like, oh, it's not monitored by anyone. They can kind of put almost whatever they want into it. So what's a sign of a legit omega supplement?

The sign of a legit omega supplement is the sign of a legit company. You really want third-party testing. Third-party testing is key. I've done a post just recently on melatonin products containing things that they shouldn't, and the percentages are staggering. The difference, even within the same product. So the same company with the same melatonin, the same product had a 465% variation.

The same. So you could be taking three milligrams of melatonin or 15 and you've got absolutely no idea. It's crazy. And then a huge percentage, I believe it was up to a third, contained pharmaceutical serotonin. So you actually had no idea. You were unknowingly consuming a pharmaceutical product in addition to your melatonin that had a variance of 465%.

It was crazy. It's a great study. They basically tested 31 different companies melatonin products and the percentages are wild and you guys i've seen uh vitamin d supplements as well and vitamin d supplements dude there's some vitamin d supplements that had a million iu of vitamin d in them a million is unbelievably terribly regulated. And what I posted that one too, and I was actually mad because a lot of the failed label claims were in children's vitamin D. And I was like, for fuck sakes, you guys, that's insane. Like that has made me wonder

though, because there are certain companies that I've wondered, how are they able to give people just a year's supplement of vitamin D? Is it that cheap? Because a lot of companies, they have that additive, like, oh, yeah, get a year's vitamin supplement or year's supply of vitamin D if you get this package. I'm just like, damn, that's bad. Oh, man. Yeah. So in terms of omega-3, one thing to look for is third-party testing to make sure that you're meeting label claims. A second thing is that it's not necessarily the fish oil itself that drives the benefits, but rather the EPA and DHA concentration in that fish oil.

And in terms of getting the benefits, like all the stuff that I'm talking about from the literature, you want a combined combination of EPA and DHA to reach at least 3 grams. So it could be a 5-gram fish oil, but only 1 grams of EPA, DHA. But then in that case, you would actually want to have 15 grams of the fish oil because its concentration is low, so that you can get that 3 grams of combined EPA and DHA. And depending on what benefit you're after, if you're after more of an anti-inflammatory benefit, then EPA concentration is kind of the route you would want to take. But if you're after more brain benefits, that's when you would go with DHA. I've heard that's not maybe a great idea to

order stuff off Amazon. Have you heard heard the same have you experienced anything similar i mean i've experienced ordering any supplements from anywhere being kind of bad it's sketch yeah it's just the it's the company like um i've heard that like some uh some companies or some people on amazon will like mirror a company oh yeah oh wow and i've never heard that similar and it's not the same product it's not even from the particular company. I believe that, though. Yeah, I don't know what to believe. So I was asking you.

Yeah, I totally believe that because you could absolutely make some sort of a knockoff. I mean, it's a low barrier to entry industry to get in. I mean, we saw Bohr on the documentary of Bigger, Stronger, Faster just make stuff. Yeah. And then it's out there, right? So it's not necessarily the ingredient, but the people behind the ingredient that you want to do your research on. And even the research itself, like this is kind of like a totally different point, but I was looking at hormone testing for urine recently and really really looking in and kind of breaking that all down and seeing which ones are comparable or as accurate or reliable to blood and then there's

some papers on excellent dried urine testing and you're like wow these are really well done and then you look at it's like wait i've seen the same author a few times here and let me google that guy oh he sells dried urine testing and then you're like okay so this is just like you would want to know the people behind the supplement and you gotta it's very important to know the people behind the research as well because it's very self-serving to create research on your own product of course that's going to get published in a positive light we found much success with uh like nootropics and things of that nature. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And nootropics, that's something that I've toyed with quite a bit because I don't know, I'm a guy who's liked uppers. I like feeling dialed in. I like knocking back my kratom with my caffeine and then getting on the mic. That's what I do.

But nootropics, that's a fun world to play with. I'm personally a big fan of AlphaGPC. I think that it has an excellent safety profile and people's tolerance can vary. I'll typically use a minimum of 600 milligrams and I'll have my fighters actually do that before sparring as well. Because when you are looking into the world of psychology, there's something known as a state of flow. And it's basically based on arousal. So you don't want to be under aroused because then you're kind of apathetic and you're a little too relaxed before you compete. But then you also don't want to be over aroused because then you're erratic, you're not patient, you're not your best version of yourself because you have too much energy and

it's it's sporadic but there's that state of flow right in the middle where you're at the right amount of arousal but also the right amount of patience and calmness and sometimes caffeine and a lot of my fighters well i can kind of put them a little bit over, but a more direct neural stimulant, such as alpha GPC really helps put them in that state of flow. So I like using it for that purpose. I'm curious too, because I don't know what your thoughts are like with Kratom. I've, when it comes to that mind bullet or Kratom, I sometimes use it before doing jujitsu because I can, it, it makes me feel good. Like the, the, the feeling of that supplement specifically is like, I feel very empathetic, but good conversational. But then when I do jujitsu or anything like that, I feel very calm. So is it,

is it partially because of that aspect that I feel like it's, it helps me get into that flow state a little bit easier. I'm just wondering, like, when it comes to athletes getting into flow, alpha GPC, but what other aspects can they control or try to use to get into that state a little bit easier? Man, I think the number one thing you can use is a routine, like your warm-up routine. Like, that's such a huge kind of under-talked- about thing because life can be stressful, dude. If it's a breakup or if you've got a lot of taxes you weren't expecting, you know, whatever it's going to be. When it's time to compete, you need to have a bridge that separates your everyday self from your competition self. And that bridge, there's no better bridge than the warm up. And you need to have a

certain cue you know like uh anderson silva he would always lean back bounce off the cage and then he's the george saint pierre sprints to one end of the audience sprints back and starts jumping uh john jones he crawls in on all fours like these things aren't by mistake it's like you're it's a cue the body it's like oh you're doing this okay we know what's like it's the cue, the body. It's like, oh, you're doing this? Okay, we know what to do. It's time to rock. And then those life problems, that's a different guy.

That's Dan out there. Right now I've got to be a different monster. We've got to do something else. So, yes, you know, caffeine and nootropics, they can help support that mentality. But you need to enter it first. And I think the best way to enter it is by creating a warm-up and a routine, A, that's only reliant upon your body so that you don't need to be somewhere, right? If you have like those examples of the fighters, they could be fighting in France or Australia or in Vegas. But because they're warm up and those cues are just body only, they're able to execute them anywhere and achieve that same state. But if you're dependent upon certain tools or certain environments, then I think it's a reason why a lot of teams lose away games way more often lose home. games way more often lose home it's not just you know those factors of traveling but it's the factors of them being out of their routine and or perhaps creating a routine rather than becoming resilient like there's a whole that's a whole conversation by itself like if you have it's

very dependent too dependent on a routine yeah you didn't have your i don't know your favorite thing with you. Your special bar. Yeah. So you couldn't lift a particular weight or whatever, right? Yeah. Or even in the entrepreneur world, like I'm going to wake up and I'm going to do my gratitude and then I'm going to do my meditation and then I do my journaling. And then I'm going to do my cold plunge and then I'm going to have this amount and then this and then there's like a hundred things there.

And you actually put a label on yourself. You're like, if I don't do this, I'm not as productive. Well, dude, you just actually, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. So now in any environment where you can't do all that shit, you've already told yourself you're not going to be as productive. Same thing goes with sleep. If I don't do all these things, I just don't sleep as well. It's like you're actually giving yourself a label now that that is a self-fulfilling

prophecy. I like to think that I could be anywhere and I'm going to get a good sleep. I can be anywhere. I'm going to be productive. I can be anywhere and I'm going to be good on a podcast. It doesn't fucking matter because I'm not dependent upon those things. So that flexibility with your routine in that context of being able to enter your competitive self, that's really key. You don't want to depend on anything. There's been some more people recently talking about taking large amounts of melatonin. Have you heard about any of this or what are some of your thoughts on melatonin?

Oh, man. So melatonin, the thing with melatonin is it has a half-life just like anything else. So caffeine's half-life is five hours. So if you take 200 milligrams of caffeine at noon, at 5 p.m., you're still going to have 100 milligrams in your system. Then at 10 p.m., you're going to have 50 milligrams in your system. 3 a.m., you're going to have 25. So that's the half-life. It's variable depending on someone's metabolic rate. But on average, it's five hours and it breaks down. Melatonin also has a half-life.

And through doing labs, I have seen so many people with sky-high melatonins, and it's upon waking. And what happens is they think they need melatonin to go to bed. So then they take a bunch of melatonin prior to bed. And then because they think that they're fatigued and they need a better sleep. But what happens is then the melatonin is still in their system upon waking. And the only way to get out of that sedation is to take a bunch of stimulants. And when you take a bunch of stimulants, now you're not prepared for bed and you need a bunch of melatonin again. You take a bunch of stimulants.

Now you're not prepared for bed and you need a bunch of melatonin again. And then you end up in that sedation, excitatory, stimulant relationship that just kind of never ends. So I like melatonin in the context where you need it. Melatonin should ideally be reserved only for jet lag situations or for shift workers. If you need melatonin on a regular basis, then you have another issue that needs to be addressed as to why it's low to begin with. We kind of forgot sleep is supposed to be natural. Yeah. You're supposed to be able to fall asleep.

Believe it or not, we actually went to sleep 100 years ago without edibles. We went to sleep 100 years ago without melatonin. We went to sleep 100 years ago without edibles. We went to sleep 100 years ago without melatonin. We went to sleep 100 years ago without all of this shit. We did it for a million years. It's supposed to be natural. So when you need something to do something that should be natural, then you are doing nothing more than managing a symptom. So jet lag and shift work, for sure. Love it. But using it on a regular basis, or even using it for things like antioxidant benefits or anti-aging or stuff like that,

I just don't think the research is there on any of that yet. And especially if you're using it to overcome sleep, which I think would have a better antioxidative effect and a better anti-aging effect if you actually figured out the reason why that was messed up. What are some other good practices surrounding sleep? We talked on episode one of your podcast about a little bit about mouth tape. What are some other good practices that people should maybe try to, you know, link up with? Sure. So sleep, I mean, it's so important. This is like, you know, I could challenge anybody, find an ailment, and then try not to connect it to sleep. Sleep is so involved in even the cosmetic stuff, like trying to look jacked and tan, like sleep,

sleep is everywhere, man. And as a memory tool for people, serotonin puts you down, melatonin keeps you down. So serotonin is what's going to decrease that latency. It's what's going to allow you to fall asleep faster. Melatonin is what's going to keep you asleep. So if you have a real problem falling asleep, I'd be more looking towards things like serotonin and perhaps GABA if there's anxiety. But if you're someone who's getting up constantly throughout the night and it's not just for urination, which is another problem, then melatonin is likely your issue. So not being on your phone before bed because that does suppress melatonin,

not being exposed to light prior to bed because we actually have photoreceptors in our skin that will reduce melatonin secretion, even if it's just on your skin, not even in your eyes, that will suppress melatonin. Wow. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Being overly excited, like, you know, going to even like watching UFC right before bed. It's like, well, you can't really expect to have a cozy night's sleep if you just watch a bunch of KOs, even if it's something that you're super, you know, you're regulated to. So I really like getting off the phone, making sure that you're reading a book or something before bed. A pre-bed breathing routine, I never think is a bad idea either to enter that parasympathetic state. You know, we talked about some nasal

breathing last time. Yeah, some box breathing is really beneficial to me. I'm going to try four rounds of four seconds in, four seconds out, a little bit of breath holding, and I don't know. I don't make it very far. I make it like two or three, and I'm like, boom, I'm out. Yeah. It works well. I do that when I wake up in the night too.

So if I wake up and, yeah, then I'll do like a four, four, four, four, four, four, four. And then you're kind of gone. Yeah. So that, uh, yeah, that's a, that's a big one too. Um, and you know, and I actually do connect gut health in, in this conversation because we do make 95% of our serotonin in the gut, and there's 400 times more melatonin in the gut than there is in the brain. So in so many cases, I'm thinking through this, and I'm like, okay, serotonin puts us down, melatonin keeps us down, and nearly all of our reserve is within the gut. So, hey, client, do you have bloating?

Do you have distention? Do you have constipation? Do you have loose stools? Do you have any of these things? Because you can't tell me an organ under stress responsible for creating these chemicals isn't playing a role in your sleep. Like, yeah, that's where I begin almost all of my sleep diagnostics. It's not diagnostics. It's not what sedative can I give you before bed? It's why aren't you naturally sedated to begin with? And what's going on with the gut.

It's an excellent place to start for a lot of people. Since we were talking about supplements and stuff, I'm not really asking about the shortcut of it, but oral BPC-157, I heard that that's really helpful on the gut. And I'm sure dietary habits and all that good stuff is going to be probably better. Yeah. But is that as effective as we think? So in the right context, sure. So this is difficult to answer, and I'll tell you why. I don't even like saying the gut.

I've said it already on this podcast for ease of communication. Yes. But the problem is with the gut. If we do a gut protocol, hey, is that good for the gut? It's like, well, okay. Well, we have to chew our food properly, and the saliva actually contains enzymes to break that food down. And then it goes down into the stomach where it has to deal with hydrochloric acid, pepsin, pepsinogen, the chief cells, intrinsic factor. And then we're going into the duodenum, the jejunum, the ileum,

three different sections of the small intestine that have completely different roles. We have the pancreas. We have the liver. We have the gallbladder. And then you're going to enter the colon, the ascending colon, the transverse colon, the descending colon, the microbiome, the fungal factors, the parasitic factors. Let's see. I'm going to go ahead and repeat what he just said.

But it's like when someone says someone says hey do a gut protocol i'm like dude are we talking about 10 organs and and multiple different systems all happening at once the gut mucosa as well playing a huge role even your mindset during food impacts digestion and assimilation so like when someone says take this for gut health, I'm always like, why? How in any world are you confident that that was the root cause of your issue? Gut health might be don't eat in front of a screen. Yes. You know, sit down, chew your food. Yeah. Don't eat in the car. Yeah. Try to be calm. Like those things, you can build a scenario in your head where it's like, I think that'll be helpful for anybody.

Yes. Right? Yeah, on my meal plans, actually. On every single meal plan I make, there's a notes section, and it says spend at least 20 minutes per meal. So I just try to slow people down because people can just annihilate food. Yeah, I've seen them. Annihilates, what was it, like greasy fish?

No, it was a raw fish that was in his trunk. Trunk? Okay, so warm trunk fish. Trunk sushi fish, yeah. This sounds like a business, I think. What? He can sell it out of the back of his car. Amazing.

Look how jacked he is. If it works for him, for him i mean fuck it just makes me throw up everything i'll be your first my caloric deficit i'll be your first client just say it i'll give a shot it uh strengthens your gut health i am so curious about my gut though at this point especially after talking to you because like you got a couple gremlins in there yo i could have a parasite who knows you do for sure we've known yeah i'm sure you're running i'm sure you run into that a lot it's way more common than people think yeah way more common like uh if if i do 100 stool analyses 15 to 20 of them will have some type of parasitic so not just uh bacterial or fungal like like, I mean, just uniquely parasitic. It's way more common than people think.

But then you start to think your way through that. And you're like, well, that kind of makes sense. Because if you ask 100 people how many of them have bloating, distension, discomfort, intermittent loose stools, a huge amount of them, at least 15 to 20. That's for sure. Probably a lot more. Yeah. Yeah. them at least 15 to 20 that's for sure probably a lot more yeah yeah so that that uh you know you think it sounds like a big number but then it kind of doesn't when you consider what everybody

talks about all the time and even the smell of people's farts like just it's the it can be my own by the way that's a that's a side story coming to what a segue coming to an event like this or an event coming to a event like this, or an event, coming to a podcast like this, I'm really excited to meet you guys. I'm like, yeah, let's do it. But then coming from Canada, you spend so much time in airports, and then you eat airport food. You're so excited to meet these new people,

but the airport food just fucked your gut up before you got there, and then you're holding in farts for five hours because it's gonna melt the room that's rough yeah it's okay in this room if you gotta let it out let it out like i have no shame no because andrew put a microphone right in my crotch here i'm gonna get caught that's recording yeah pick up the sounds don't just blame me i mean 99 of time it's me anyway so if it happens blame me i'm okay taking the blame so you don't have to deal with it and based off of the last time you and i were stuck in the same office you definitely have some parasites in there that was bad hey dude i walked right into it too or yeah but was it his fart

that stunk or did he bring in warm fish and just let it stay out? I think the fart stank because he ate the warm fish. Oh, God. Digested warm fish. He apologized, though. I want people that are listening right now to grab a pen because I'd like for you to describe where some of these testosterone levels should be. You and I were texting a little bit last night and I was just kind of, I just conjured up like a hypothetical of somebody just taking like 100, 120 milligrams, which I hear oftentimes prescribed for HRT, which sounds great. Replace the testosterone if you

weren't, if you're no longer producing as much of it. And maybe whatever symptoms you had, maybe they'll subside. But most people that are taking HRT or doing TRT, they want to get jacked. And we need more shit. These people need to prescribe more. So what amount, you know, when we talk about you had like a kilogram conversion going on. What amount? We need to get these people more aggressive. Merrick Health, help us out, man.

Get us some more shit. We need a program, right? We need like the brass tacks numbers. Yeah. All right. I want to look like Nsema. He's fucking big, right? So before I answer,

before I answer, Mark asked me about testosterone and I answered and it was the first exclamation mark I've ever got from him. He said to me, yes! It was the first exclamation mark ever. Let's go. I was like, I knew it. Testosterone's the key to his heart. Oh, my God. Just opened up some doors in there. So testosterone is typically prescribed on a milligram per kilogram basis. So one kilogram is 2.2 pounds. So if you have a 100-kilo guy, he's 220 pounds. So you would actually begin around one milligram per kilo, which would be 100 milligrams.

So a 220-pound guy would take 100 milligrams of testosterone per week. If his symptoms don't really improve, his brain, you know, his mood's not really improving, his boners aren't improving, his body's not getting better, then they'll work their way up to 2 milligrams per kilogram. So then now that 220 pound guy is on 200 milligrams of tests per week. So that's like pretty common, 100 to 200 milligrams, depending on what doctor you're talking to, the severity of your symptoms, and if you came back to him asking for more. However, at three milligrams per kilogram, that is more of like the alpha TRT. That is much more of the situation where you are maximizing that

type of alpha male testosterone for muscle mass, testosterone for libido, testosterone for fat loss, testosterone for mental health without going so high as to begin to running into the health risks. So that three milligram per kilo is where a real sweet spot exists in managing that checks and balance situation to where that 100 kilo or 220 pound person would now be on 300 milligrams per week and likely feel way fucking better because of it. And is there long term studies done on testosterone? Like, what do we know about it? Like somebody taking 300 milligrams or 400 milligrams a week, is there information? Yeah. About people doing that for several years or decades even?

I don't know. Yeah, testosterone has been around a long time. I mean this is something that was discovered many decades ago and has been implemented legally and illegally by people for just as long of a time. by people for just as long of a time. But typically long-term use, you are going to run into, you know, you should be doing blood work each year because primarily it can impact red blood cells. You know, that's kind of the silent killer is if that blood thickens up over time. And you have high blood pressure on top of it, you could be gone like that. Yeah.

And the problem is a lot of the demographics wanting testosterone are not us. They're guys who want testosterone because they're out of shape because of their current habits and they don't have a, you know, a libido because of their current habits. They don't have energy because of their current habits. So then you're now just adding a drug and a lot more red blood cells, probably some water retention to that situation that's already metabolically a bit chaos. Yeah. So that's, you know, I think in terms of long-term studies, it depends upon, like you could say this about anything, but it depends so much on lifestyle and habits too. Because testosterone in one guy could be completely life-changing for him.

And for another guy, it can be life-changing until he runs into some side effects and some things that are more undesirable. And if this is the first time you're listening to Dan, if this is the first podcast you've heard with him on us, on the last podcast we did, he went into a lot of lifestyle stuff that you should probably pay attention to if you want higher tests. So just a quick asterisk. Yeah. Yeah. Just go back one episode. Yeah, went over a bunch of stuff because there's a lot of things that you can check off before you start sending me exclamation marks. Yeah.

When it comes to blood work, what are some of the things that people should be looking at? What are some of the things that concern you when you start to kind of look at people's blood? Oh, man. I mean, that's, there's so many things. I mean, just staying in that world of testosterone, like even just taking testosterone doesn't mean it's going to be unbound, like that maybe we could start there. There's something known as sex hormone binding globulin, that can, that is what it basically is, is it's a protein that acts as a vehicle for sex hormones in the body. Sex hormones, say testosterone, estrogen, binding globulin, binds to it and globulins the protein. Imagine that your testes made testosterone and it needs a vehicle to your biceps in order to exert an anabolic action.

That vehicle is going to be sex hormone binding globulin. That's how it's going to get there. The problem is testosterone, when bound up, cannot bind to receptors. So although sex hormone binding globulin is healthy and you want it, and it's a very important part in physiology, but if you have testosterone bound up by sex hormone binding globulin, then it can't bind to testosterone receptors and give you the benefit that testosterone is supposed to provide you. Now, what drives up sex hormone binding globulin? DHT is actually the largest contributor towards elevating sex hormone binding globulin. And then testosterone, and then the estrogens.

So I actually, when I get a full profile, like when I do hormones, I don't just look at say estradiol or just look at testosterone. I look at the full hormone combination because that's really what you want to see. Like how hormones basically work is you've got some circulating fats and cholesterol, and then you've got your vitamin B5. You're going to do some cool gymnastics with some more micronutrients in the mitochondria, and then you've got your vitamin b5 you're going to do some cool gymnastics with some more uh with some more micronutrients in the mitochondria and then you're going to create this thing called pregnenolone now pregnenolone is um is basically the mother of all sex hormones because you need it in order to make any of the sex hormones um pregnenolone it can go basically

down to make dhea and then from dhea is the precursor to make the estrogens testosterone and androstenedione. Or pregnenolone can kind of go left and then make progesterone as well as cortisol and aldosterone. So that whole kind of— I love these minority report, like, graphs that you build with your hands. It's fucking crazy. I can see them. I know that you can. That's why it's fucking crazy. I can see them. I know that you can. That's why it's nuts.

Yeah, it's amazing. It's a side effect of Kratom. I'm drawing. Well, it's just because we're on the other side. You can see the side where you can actually view it. If we walk over, we can see it too, but we're on this side. Yeah, I look at all that because when you take a hormone, let's stay in the pocket of testosterone. When you take a hormone, if you take a lot of it and more than your body wants, it's kind of like if you've got an empty pond, okay?

You've got an empty pond and then you're filling that pond up with testosterone. And when that pond gets too full, then rivers start to create. Rivers and streams start happening. So we've got two, your body's like, there's a little bit too much testosterone here. We're going to start making some more DHT. We're going to start making some more estrogen. We're going to start, and it actually starts, and that is your environment and your diet and your genetics will determine where a lot of that stuff goes and what concentrations that balance system your body's trying to create happens in.

But I like to look at all of that because if you have really high sex hormone binding globulin, which is binding up the testosterone, which is what you really want the freaking benefit from, you want free testosterone, we want to find out where that's coming from. So a good example would be DHT, actually. So DHT is the number one driver of sex hormone binding globulin. And you create DHT through something known as the 5-alpha reductase pathway. However, this pathway is overactivated in the absence of adequate zinc status. So if somebody has a lot of DHT, you would actually be able to see that with their sex hormone binding globulin.

That is what's messing up your free testosterone marker, and it had to do with inadequate zinc status. So identifying that, getting some, you know, take ZMA. Actually, that would be a one-two punch because magnesium also plays a role in the actual biochemical pathway of unbinding testosterone from sex hormone binding globulin. So zinc helps regulate that 5-alpha reductase pathway, but then magnesium helps unbind sex hormone binding globulin from testosterone. You kind of get that one-two punch there. So that's a big thing I'd be looking for in that context of blood work. Are the, at least in the States, like the upper range is 1,100 nanograms per deciliter.

Is that an accurate number for high? Yeah, to now. Yeah, the current society, man, it's a lot of low testosterone males. Yeah. There's actually, there's a little article cut out from Time magazine. And they had access to testosterone data from the 1920s.

And their ranges were between 1,000 and 2,000 nanograms per deciliter. When? They started at our top. You'd be accused of steroid use. And that was what those ranges were at in the 20s. That 2,000 nanograms, okay? So, like, when I say, like, things like 3 milligrams per kilogram, and it's like, wait, hold on, like, what's this alpha male thing you're talking about?

Is it that crazy? Or are we just very far removed from what man used to be? Because I think that in a lot of cases, we are far removed. And you can draw correlations. Exposure to environmental pollutants can suppress endocrine function. But I think, honestly, a lot of it is just a sociological situation that we're in.

You know, you're kind of not, you're told not to be assertive. You're told not to be confrontational. You're told not to have opinions or a lot of confidence in situation. You're told to, you know, be docile in a lot of ways. And I think psychologically, I do think that the human is the ultimate adaptation machine. So if that's the person you want to be, that is a lower testosterone person.

That's an adaptation due to current sociological norms. Because now, you know, like back in the day, in early, early days, you are basically fighting or hunting or mating. Like these were just, you know, very testosterone-driven things. And I think that those roles and responsibilities of like

people go through their whole life they've never been in a fight. People go through their whole life they've never hunted. People go through their whole life they've've never been in a fight. People go through their whole life, they've never hunted. People go through their whole life, they've never been hungry enough to get angry enough to go hunt. Like these are very testosterone things, and we don't have any of that anymore. And then on top of that, you add in the lack of physical activity. You add in the introduction of processed foods.

You add in body fat percentage. You add in all of it. It's like, yeah, I can see how the reference range is well by the way the reference range is stupid it's 300 to 900 enormous like i don't know i i always narrow things whenever something's giant i'm like that okay so you you have two people i'm starting to get mad about this let's go but it is frustrating though it is it's frustrating dude because it's like i don't want to increase the reference range to to to uh give you basically a justification that you don't need to change your current

lifestyle and habits it's just not me it's not i don't and it's because i care about you i care i want your testosterone to be 900 i want it to be 900. I want it to be 1000. I want it to be better. And so if you come and you're at 301, well, you're good. Nothing to do here. But you can have low libido and all kinds of stuff that I'm just not in alignment with because I care about my people more than that. But yeah, in the world of testosterone, it works on the natural level too. So like if you had two people and they're biological twins and they're on the exact same training program and diet same stressors same sleep everything right same genetics and all factors but this guy had a testosterone say in between 200 300 and this guy had a natural testosterone talking natural in between 900 and a thousand who's going

to get the better results the dude with the testosterone of 900 and 1,000, 10 times out of 10 because it's not just the training volume you're performing or the calories and macros that you're taking in. It's the physiology that that training volume – it's the physiology that those calories and macros are going into and the physiology that is creating the stimulus from that training. That's a physiological process. Even if someone's on the same diet and training program, if you've got more testosterone in your body, you're going to get better results from it.

That works on the natural level as much as it works on the natural versus enhanced level. So when someone has a range that has a 3x difference of 300 to 900, I'm like, come on. When we know the benefits of testosterone, why on earth would we let somebody get that low? Mark, did you – were you going to have us go over your labs? Yeah, we can do that. Because I – I actually found mine too. Yeah.

I sent Andrew mine, but it might be a good idea. Yeah, yeah. I'd have to shoot him over. Let me, while we're doing that, you ended up training, you know, some really, you ended up training some unique individuals. And we've had on the show before, we've talked about, you know, our perception and ideas of, you know, what the male body should look like. You know, there's a lot of stuff on Instagram of, yeah, these super jacked superheroes. I think you've had an opportunity to train some superheroes. So I don't know, just what are some of your thoughts on that? You know, where, you know, you got these young kids nowadays kind of growing up with these guys that are in really good shape. I don't see it as like a problem.

I actually think it's kind of cool. But there might be more to the story of maybe what some of those people are doing to get to some of those levels than what is maybe portrayed. But for me personally, I always looked up to like the WWE wrestlers and, uh, you know, Hulk Hogan and like all that stuff when I was a kid. And, you know, here I am many years later, uh, people saw bigger, stronger, faster, and they, they know my story and they know my position and stance on performance enhancing drugs and stuff like that. But I don't really think it's a huge negative in, in any particular way. Do you think some of the images portrayed by Hollywood are, you know, in some way negative?

Or what's some of your stance on that? Yeah, I don't think they're negative at all. Like, I think that that's inspiring. Like, we kind of talked about it last time. Winners are inspired by winners. Like, I just, I like seeing people who look fantastic and who look like superheroes like that and that kind of route. I don't know how you would ever be able to judge someone on that. But like I'm kind of like a totally different, you know, side note here.

What we perceive is there's like a whole community of like aesthetic is the is the natural look. If you think in terms of actual function, like, function, it's not, like, it's not very natural to have this, like, big chest, rounded out shoulders, big arms. Like, in terms of actual function, you would have, like, big strong hands, a big-ass forearm, traps, a big back, big glutes. Like, the actual functional muscles

aren't beautifully aesthetic. Yeah, a guy from a thousand years ago or something? Sure, he's not fat or anything like that, but he probably doesn't look jacked and tan necessarily. No, he's just not aesthetic. He's very functionally. That guy from a thousand years ago isn't walking around with this beautiful V-taper

and keeping his waist in and turning in this way, doing all that. That was actually pretty good. That true function is not very pretty. But back to the world of superheroes, yeah, I've coached a number of superheroes in terms of in the movies, but also just in real life. I've got athletes in 14 different professional sports. So, yeah, it's very, very widespread.

And I just don't have any judgment towards it. And the people who do, I don't really think they've ever thought it through. I just don't. I'm sure you've collected a lot of negativity that way. What are your thoughts on that? negativity that way what are your thoughts on that um in terms of like you know what i see from like instagram and just social media in general and people you know posting you know these that these uh i don't know particular celebrities and stuff did these things in these short amount of times i don't have any issue with it i think i think that sometimes people have a hard time hearing the truth anyway.

So somebody could make these spectacular gains and they could prepare for a movie and have these awesome results in 12 weeks. Nowadays, because there's so much TRT and HRT and things like that out there and people talk so much about steroids they're always going to just assume automatically that the person did that like if the person didn't have abs and then they have abs everyone's just like oh that's that's you know that guy's on shit yeah yeah and people that train really hard they know that that's not necessarily the case it might be the case um but fuck man 12, 12 weeks can change. Anyone listening to this show right now, their life can be changed forever in fucking 12 weeks. You can lose so much weight. You can make so much progress or you can make strength gains that are fucking crazy. I mean, even like with me and Seema and Andrew, like we, none of us have been really working on like our actual like strength

more recently, like where we have a clear measurable but if we wanted to measure and then 12 weeks from now all three of us would get way stronger yeah so 12 weeks makes a big difference no matter how advanced you are or no matter where you're at in your journey it makes a huge difference yeah like when people like are like oh that guy's on steroids like i kind of think two things. A, who gives a shit? As simple as that. And then B, if you took steroids, my friend, I can see your Instagram avatar.

If you took steroids, you would still not look like him. Okay? It's like, it doesn't, I could take all the anadrol and tren in the world. I'm not going to be as strong as Mark Henry. I'm not going to look like Brock Lesnar. Like, there is an enormous genetic factor to all of this shit. world i'm not gonna be as strong as mark henry i'm not gonna look like brock lesnar like there is an enormous genetic factor to all of this shit um in addition to the enormous factor of discipline and consistency and execution too so i've never been in alignment with that and and i like a lot

of times i don't even think about it because i just think who cares can you imagine caring about that enough to comment what the wild thing is like people think steroids are the answer all their problems as far as size is concerned like what you the statement you just said there like even if you took steroids you would not look like this individual like i know guys like jeff alberts or sam okunola or even alberto nunez people think these natural bodybuilders are on steroids but it's like if a majority of guys just started using some shit they still wouldn't look as good as jeff who's 50 years old and an amazing looking natural bodybuilder or sam who's won his the world championship like i think wmbf world

no not wmbf but imbf worlds or whatever it's a natural uh bodybuilding competition they wouldn't look anything close to him because of the decades of training and habits that he has under his belt. And if he did choose to get on steroids, Jesus Christ. But that's, that's the thing. I think people can't wrap their minds around like how a steroid user or someone who doesn't use steroids can look better than someone who they assume does use steroids. Yeah. And, and the, the and there's people who are natural out there that you would swear are on, and they're not. Like, I work with some, NFL's a pretty good example. I work with several NFL guys.

I do labs constantly. They're legitimately natural. 250 with abs. And it's like, you would also think, too, like, man, with the amount of cardio they're doing and, like, the amount of travel and stuff, like, you would think that they wouldn't be able to sustain that mass and leanness. They do.

They do. There's genetic anomalies out there. Yeah, like someone like Shannon Sharpie is just a freak, man. He's an anomaly. Obviously, he's been working hard his whole life, but he's a fucking mutant. The guy's a specimen. Francis Ngannou. Yeah, he looks unbelievable.

And the dude cuts to 265. He has to make heavyweight. Like he has to cut to make heavyweight. Yeah. That is an absolute animal. I remember Brock Lesnar was complaining about that. He's like, I don't think I can weigh 265. I was like, that's Brock Lesnar? Yeah. Doesn't think he

Well, no, he obviously does. But like when he was coming in from WWE, I think he was like 305 pounds or something. Yeah. I read that he started fight camp at 302. Oh, my God. And I was just like, you are a behemoth. Yeah. His arms are all long and shit and his lats are all crazy and traps are all jacked up.

And he's still fast. Yeah. He still has a quick double leg. Like, he's just crazy. Scary person. Yeah. Still has a quick double leg. Like, he's just crazy. Scary person. Yeah. One of my favorite comments is, like, because we had a long galani. See, I mess up the L in the middle of it.

My dyslexia takes over. But we had him on the podcast, amazing natural athlete. And everyone's like, oh, you're natural, and you're as jacked as Arnold in his prime. So if you just take a little bit of steroids, you're natural and you're as jacked as arnold in his prime so if you just take a little bit of steroids you're gonna look like i know but because he's you know i guess that's where the bar is but it's funny because they're just like as soon as you take steroids like you're gonna be the greatest bodybuilder of all time and i had this perception that yeah once you just take steroids like you're gonna be jacked as fuck but then as i dabbled a little bit i was like oh they

don't do what i thought they would do so did you have that perception switch at all or did you already know that like just because you were so knowledgeable that i don't know like it wasn't actually the steroids it's so many other factors yeah i've always thought there were so many other yeah okay that's good yeah a lot of people don't. Yeah, well, it's just like you can start tests, and you can actually add anything else to it. And if you wake up in the morning and go, I'm not Arnold yet. This is bullshit.

My friend, you didn't have a testosterone deficiency. You had an IQ deficiency. Oh, man, every morning is like that. What are some other things outside of testosterone that can make big impacts like growth hormone and things of that nature? Are those things that you've seen over the years be super valuable for people to figure out ways to elevate whether they're doing it through supplements or whether they're doing it through growth hormone itself? Sure. So yeah, yeah. I mean, there's a lot of things.

A well-functioning thyroid is actually up there. That's one of the first things I think about. But to stay in the context of growth hormone, growth hormone, despite its name, it doesn't directly cause growth. What it does is it prepares the body for growth. So you basically get this growth hormone signal that goes down to the liver,

and then the liver, and then the liver makes a bunch of growth factors. And the liver does this amazing job at assessing the checks and balances in the system. So what it's doing is basically like, okay, if there's needed for injury repair here, tendon repair there, if there's skeletal muscle repair that's needed there, what growth hormone will do is it signals the liver to secrete the growth factors based on the current physiologic context of the body on who needs what right now in order to recover faster than ever. And then growth hormone also breaks glycogen down into glucose and fatty acids down, fat cells rather rather down into fatty acids because growth and repair is energy expensive so it's not only providing the growth factors for anabolisms in the target tissue

that your body's deemed as the most important right now but it's providing the energy and resources in order to do so so you're getting the calories to get the job done you're getting the growth factors to get the job done and it happens getting the growth factors to get the job done. And it happens very fast. Growth hormone is kind of a cool one, too, because it's it's active life is so quick that when you take it, you can kind of self-select what you want out of it. Like, for example, growth hormone prior to fasted cardio in the morning will provide you more fatty acid availability for fat loss specific events to take place. But prior to bed, it's going to be more beneficial towards things such as injury repair or protein synthesis and muscle mass. Because prior to bed, one thing that offsets growth hormone

is insulin secretion. So basically, when you're taking it throughout the day, you don't always let your whole growth hormone life take place, because you're cutting it off, say halfway on the path. But it's still fantastic for fat loss in that purpose. But if you want to allow growth hormone to do all of the beautiful things it does, then it gets its full active life in your system. And that's when you take it before bed. So basically, you know, kind of rule of thumb, if you're more after repair and hypertrophy before bed's advisable, if you're more after leanness and anti-catabolism during training, then your pre-workout growth hormone makes more sense. Wow. Okay. Before we continue, we were talking

about modafinil a little bit yesterday. And modafinil is one of those supplements that I've heard. We've heard multiple podcasts talk about. Mark knows quite a bit about it too. But you were mentioning how relatively safe it is and how effective it is. So let us know about that a bit. Yes. This podcast. Hey guys, three milligrams per kilogram of testosterone, modafinil, growth hormone. I'm not the drug guy. All I heard was multivitamin and fish oil. Yeah.

That's home base. That's what's doing it. Take your vitamins and say your prayers. That's right. You know what that's about, right? So modafinil. Okay. Modafinil is a central nervous stimulant.

It helps increase dopamine and norepinephrine concentrations in the body, and it helps inhibit the enzymes that break those down. So, we're getting more of this excitatory stuff to improve memory recall, attention span, focus, drive. We're getting those things, and then we're also inhibiting the enzymes that break them down so it stays around a longer period of time turns out does it really effectively modafinil's half-life is about 15 hours so you get a very very long period of stimulation from it and its safety profile is surprisingly fantastic for a central nervous stimulant that lasts 15 hours. Yeah, the United States Air Force has done a ton of research on modafinil in that world. And you basically can learn as much as you want to know about modafinil through the U.S. Air Force.

It's typically prescribed for narcolepsy to help keep them awake because it's a wakefulness stimulant. It's also prescribed for sleep apnea, Andrew. So if you've still got sleep apnea, go pick up some modafinil. Yeah, I definitely need it for that. How does it help with that? Yeah, for reals, that's crazy. Basically, so sleep apnea, it doesn't help sleep apnea. Sleep apnea gives you terrible sleep.

It makes you feel exhausted. So then modafinil can be taken upon waking to offset exhaustion. Yeah, so that's basically how that works out. On a side note, though, a lot of people don't know how beneficial NAC is for sleep apnea. There's research on NAC for sleep apnea, and every research metric measured improved with NAC supplementation. So a lot of people have sleep apnea. A lot of people don't know that NAC can help in that department. A lot of people need more glutathione anyways.

So that's kind of just advisable. NAC over-the-counter? Yeah, yeah, N-acetylcysteine. There's talks about it not being over-the-counter anymore, though. That's how you know it's good. Yeah, when it starts getting protected. Yeah. So what does it do in the context of sleep apnea?

That is like, is it, again, something while you're awake or does it actually affect your sleep apnea? No, it improves sleep apnea. Yeah. Like, yeah, everything measured. So like the wakeful bouts, the oxygen, the feelings of sleep quality, all of those things were all. So it's a sleep apnea. It's not just a wakefulness thing. Wow.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. How much approximately do you think of NAC we're talking about, right? Yeah, NAC. So typically what I have people at is typically 300 milligrams twice per day. So I think 600 milligrams is kind of like your starting area. But research goes all the way up to 2 grams per day. So I think 600 milligrams is kind of like your starting area, but research goes all the way up to two grams per day. But based on labs, I just haven't seen need for that. So I'm always, I'm a huge fan of starting low with basically everything and then only going up when you need to. The minimum effective dose thing is I'm always a huge fan of.

But to roll this back to modafinil, it's basically a rule of thumb. For every two hours of missed sleep, 100 milligrams of modafinil would be advised. So if you're used to sleeping eight hours per night, and then last night you got six hours, then you would have 100 milligrams of modafinil. If you're used to sleeping eight hours, and then you only got four hours, then 200 milligrams of modafinil. So that's basically a very agreeable approach with modafinil. But research has – the United States Air Force actually had people taking – so by the way, just as a – I don't even know what the word is. Pre-something.

Precursor? No. Disclaimer? Kind of. Well, what did you say? But that's totally not important. But it's a pre-something. You want to say it before you make a point.

Preemptive. It's driving me absolutely mental. Me too. Let's figure it out. Premature? It's not prerequisite. That's what I was going to get to. Yeah. It's not pre-requisite. That's what I was going to get to. Yeah, it's a preface.

Sorry, preface. Oh, okay. Preface. Nice. We got it. And let me preface this next statement with the fact that I am a definite user. I've used it to offset wakefulness. I mean, to offset drowsiness due to poor sleep.

And I've basically been taking stimulants for 15 plus years. Like, when did the first NO Explode come out? Oh, yeah. That's about 15 years, probably. Yeah, dude. That shit was powerful. Oh, my goodness.

And then we went through the wave of the Jack 3D and the 1MRs. I always love, like, people talk about all these different things. And then when someone brings up Redline, people are like, oh, no, I didn't fuck with that. Don't fuck with that. It's like DNP. You're just like, that shit kills people. Yeah, Redline was like, holy.

And the fact they called it Redline, you're like, that's a horrible name. How much caffeine was in Redline? It didn't matter. Don't look at the label. I used matter. Don't look at the label. I used to. Don't look at the label. It tells you to only drink half. And you really do have to.

Like, it's not one of those where you're like, I'll just take it. Did you ever, did you have the Redline syrup? No, I don't think so. Oh, dude, that'll fuck you up. That's some serious shit. In the best way. Yeah. So you actually couldn't even get Redline in Canada.

So I got Redline when I was in Florida with my parents. I'd come down, and then I would just, and they don't know what it is. So I would just go to GNC and get Redline, and then you would put this syrup in the spoon that it came with, and you would have this syrup, and it was like your chest was as warm as after a tequila shot. Oh, my God. Your chest heats up and then you're ready to train in five to ten minutes.

Like it lit your ass up. That's crazy. Yeah. What was I talking about? It doesn't matter. You were prefacing something. Vodafone. Oh, yeah.

That was actually a good actually preface then. I've been taking crazy stimulants for 15 years. So the U.S. Air Force had test subjects take 600 milligrams of modafinil for 18 months. I have this much stimulant experience. I've never in my whole life gone over 200 milligrams. And I cannot even imagine anybody doing more than that. Even 200, it's like you're lit up for the day. You're flying those planes around like...

Getting road rage at 30,000. Oh my God. Jesus. But yeah, so I have never gone over 200 milligrams. I have no intention of ever doing that. I never would. I'd feel like shit. Even 200 milligrams can be way too much.

But the U.S. Air Force had guys take 600 milligrams for 18 months. And even at the end of 18 months, it was really only a bit of mild liver and kidney stress that was reversible. Do you build up a tolerance to it? Yeah. Do you build up a tolerance to it? Yeah, you do build up a tolerance to it. But the thing is, the thing with building up the tolerance to modafinil is it actually makes it work better, believe it or not. I know that sounds weird, but when you take modafinil for like the first time, you can actually almost be overly stimulated and a bit jittery with it.

So when you find that sweet spot, like after two weeks or so, you're actually getting the benefits of it while being way more functional on it. Can you take L-theanine to help try to ease that jittery feeling? I think that would probably, I've never tried that. I haven't looked into the biochemistry of it. I know L-theanine and caffeine have a great relationship that way. But modafinil operates in different mechanism pathways. Yeah. Caffeine's affecting adenosine and cortisol, whereas, uh, modafinil is really after dopamine and noradrenaline. So, um, I don't know how much it would work. Right. And then, so how is it compared to like

Adderall? Um, I think it's a safer alternative to Adderall. Yeah, Adderall has a lot of, and I've never used Adderall or even advised it before because there's a lot of euphoric effects that can happen. Modafinil has no addictive properties, whereas Adderall does. I just think if you're after a smart drug, for lack of a better word, modafinil is just the better option because you don't get the type of euphoria or the addictive-like properties. You just get dialed in. You're dialed in, and it lasts 15 hours, so you're dialed in for the day. You mentioned yesterday to me, I was telling you that sometimes I get leg cramps,

and you were mentioning an amino acid to me. What is that amino acid, and how does it help? Yeah, so taurine. Taurine is really underrated for helping regulate cramps and because taurine plays a big role in electrolyte homeostasis. So if you're somebody who's like, man, I keep getting cramps and I don't know why, and your sodium intake is solid, your potassium intake is solid, your magnesium intake is solid, and you're still getting these mystery cramps.

Taurine is like a miracle in that situation. And you don't need a lot of it, like even one to three grams. And it's actually also been demonstrated to reduce DOMS, delayed onset muscle soreness. So in double-blind placebo control. So in double-blind placebo control, so like taurine for muscle soreness as well as for the regulation of cramps through improving electrolyte homeostasis is advisable. Taurine is also something that the heart eats up. Your heart absolutely loves working with taurine. It's very cardiovascularly protective, and that's one of the reasons why it's advisable when someone takes, what's that bodybuilding stimulant to lose body fat and starts to see? Clenbuterol.

Clen is actually depletes taurine at quite high rates. And that's taurine. One of the reasons why taurine is advisable on clenbuterol is not just because clenbuterol depletes taurine, but because clenbuterol is also pretty hard on the heart. And then adding taurine in there just helps add that extra layer of protection during, you know, those times where you want to minimize what you're doing, the damage of what you're doing. What do you think might be some supplements and or offshoot things that might be like peptides or they might be in this modafinil category. What are some things that like are from what you've seen, they seem to be really safe and people just don't know much about them.

Well, they could be really beneficial for, you know, performance. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if anything's safe because there's always outliers, right?

Even, you know, there's some people who can eat a peanut and then they'll die. Like there's outliers everywhere. And you guys have so many listeners. So I can't say that everything is safe. Because then someone's going to say, Garner told me to do this. So, yeah.

Well, they won't say it because they'll be dead. Oh, God. Okay. So dark. Keeping it positive. So, yeah. So there's outliers to everything. So lab work's always important. Listening to your body is always hyper important. As far as things that people don't know about, I would actually, oddly enough, say rhodiola. Rhodiola is an adaptogenic herb.

It's a supplement that I've used for a long time. and it has a lot of – it increases mental alertness. But it does this really great thing with stress management. So if cortisol is a little bit too low, rhodiola helps bring it up. If cortisol is too high, rhodiola helps bring it down. And I'm always a huge fan of that management rather than suppression or stimulation, like that management, allowing your body to kind of find that sweet spot. I've used rhodiola extensively in the past. And the reason why is because I saw it's an initial research on it

towards improving stress tolerance, regulating cortisol, and improving mental alertness. And I was like, stress tolerance, mental alertness, and cortisol management all sound quite great, but this is kind of scarce research. And the supplement world kind of likes to fund its own research

to look pretty good so that you buy their products. I don't know too much. Let me start incorporating this, and since I already run labs on all my guys, we'll see what happens. It works. Rhodiola, it's fantastic. And it has a half-life of six hours. So I'll typically have my guys have 100 milligrams three times a day, spaced about six hours or so apart. So when you do that, you get 18 hours of that stress tolerance

and cortisol regulation, and you don't need it for the final six hours of the day because you're asleep anyways. So it's basically that 24-hour protection and improvement in stress tolerance. That's something that very few people talk about but is very beneficial because almost everybody you talk to has stress issues. It's very, very advisable and safe. I was just looking up, like, like trying to find it like on Amazon. I just found a whatever brand, but it's like this, the serving size is a 500 milligrams per capsule. Is it probably bullshit or is it? It's either a bullshit or a terrible extract. Like you would want 3%

Rosa beans. So you would be able, you would want to look at the label and have a 3% Rosa beans. Um, cause that's the actual type of rhodiola. That's another thing to look out for when, cause sometimes labels can say things, but it's not the actual extract that you want. Uh, so they throw a lot more of it in there. It says extract. Yeah. Okay. So the, well, it's just too much in my opinion. I would way rather space that out based on the, based on the literature that I've seen. Uh, but I'm a minimum effective dose kind of guy and, and slowly bringing that up over time. What was the thing you mentioned to us yesterday about there was some drug that can help ingrain stuff into your brain

and you've got to be careful that you don't like... I don't know. Maybe you know what I'm talking about. Cellank. Yeah, yeah. Cellank is something that a lot of people don't know about. And it's basically a compound that helps improve neurological density in motor units. So it's something that's used in order to ingrain a skill or habit. Now, here's the thing. It's so effective at what it does that you can learn a bad habit

and have a huge problem unlearning that bad habit. That's how effective it is. It will wire in these pathways so that you're going to move in that direction. So if you were to take it prior to jujitsu and then you're old like shit, then you can actually keep ingrained these bad habits. If you were squatting, we were were just talking about, if your knee hurt and you're a little offset, you're taking cell link in this process. You can ingrain bad habits because you're increasing the neurological density of the motor units responsible for that pattern. And unlearning that takes a lot of effort.

But when you do use it and you do lock in a good pattern that is an accelerated rate of skill acquisition have there do you know any horror stories of selling like anybody who's like ingrained some pretty bad you know habits from no no i don't no yeah yeah i got no no stories on that typically the only people that even know about it are the people that know how to use it. Yeah. Okay. That just seems like, you know, like the movie Limitless, right? Like as soon as you take it, you can learn like crazy.

But, man, that's, I don't know, to me that just seems like there'd be a crazy amazing movie that could be written on this supplement. Yeah. To like a fucking crazy horror story or, yeah. I don't know. That sounds incredible though. Yeah. I don't know. That sounds incredible, though. Yeah. It's definitely its own kind of dangerous thing all by itself. Yeah. Because you really have to know exactly what's up or else, just like any other drug, it can be a detriment to you rather than a positive to you if you don't have access to all of the information. Gotcha.

all of the information. Gotcha. You know, when it comes to when you're working with athletes, we touched upon all the different tests you do, but can you kind of walk us through, say a pro athlete comes in like, okay, I want to work with you on to improve my performance. What do I need to do before you work on my nutrition, all these other things? How do you work with them? So if an athlete comes my way, what'll happen is they'll sign up, So if an athlete comes my way, what will happen is they'll sign up. We'll do their onboarding call. And basically the onboarding call is more for me to hear them out. So I'm not just going to talk at them like a lot of coaches do.

What I want to do is meet you, learn who you are. The labs will tell me what you are. You will tell me who you are. And I want to match that objectivity and subjectivity because objectivity is the science of coaching. Subjectivity is the art of coaching. When you combine those properly and you treat both with equal amount of respect, that's when you can truly get world-class results. So somebody says, Coach Garner, yeah, I'm ready to rock. Let's go. We'll do that onboarding call. They tell me. And they'll tell you, yeah, I'm ready to rock. Let's go. We'll do that onboarding call.

They tell me, and they'll tell you, like, I want to hear your story. And then they'll give you their pain points. They'll give you their goals. They'll give you what they've tried up until this point. You get to really good sense on the road this person's been on leading up to you and the road that you want to keep them on moving forward, but then with better direction from the labs. So we'll do that onboarding call. After that call, all of the labs get sent to their

house. So your blood, urine, saliva, stool actually runs seven different labs on my people. All of that shows up at your doorstep. And then I actually have a mobile phlebotomist. So a mobile phlebotomist will just go to your doorstep. So you don't have to do any. My people are busy people. It's usually athletes, actors, CEOs. So I'm just like, don't worry about it. You're working with me. So it's concierge and as convenient as possible for you. So I already got your mobile phlebotomist booked, going to be at your door 7 a.m. Wednesday. Does that work? Cool. Then at that time, we get the blood and we get the urine drawn. And then they're going to do the your door 7 a.m wednesday does that work cool then at that time we get the blood and we get the urine drawn and then they're going to do the saliva kits throughout the day because it's actually you want to when you're measuring stress i want to know what your stress was like

at work i want to know what it was like after work i want to know what it was like at the gym like all of that stuff so they're going to do those those saliva kits throughout the day and then a stool kit um whenever is most convenient for them. Once all of that data is in, then all of the results get sent to me. And then myself and Dr. Andy Galpin combine forces to create the perfect program for this person. And it's at that point where it's an organizational structure. So much like you would periodize your training, like hypertrophy, strength, power, whatever it's going to be, right?

That periodization. So we'll do physiological periodization. So if your number one issue right now is sleep, that's month one. And then your number two issue was inflammation, that's month two. Number three issue was whatever it's going to be. So we're not just periodizing your training,

we're periodizing your training. We're periodizing your physiology based on the things that are holding you back. I like to think about it, my whole philosophy with coaching is operating upon the theory of constraint. So an athlete will only ever perform to the degree that they are constrained. And what's the problem is nobody does enough labs to identify their constraint. So they will perform to the degree that they are constrained, and then they'll read a book or hear a podcast, and then do a breathing routine and a meditation routine and a new sleep ritual. And although these things are very beneficial on paper for the body, if they aren't the

constraint that's currently holding you back, then you will still only perform to the degree that you are constrained. Now, that is exactly how I'm viewing physiology, much like a CEO would look down at a business because the theory of constraint is system wide. A business will only scale to the degree that it is constrained. So a good CEO would look down and see where the bottlenecks are. Is there a bottleneck in sales? Is there a bottleneck in marketing? Is there a bottleneck in culture environment in the company? We need to identify the bottleneck, remove the bottleneck so that the business can scale to the next level. I look down at your physiology and I look at it as this full molecular portrait and I'm identifying every single constraint in your life through all of your

subjective markers from the interviews and the tracking and the questionnaires, but then your objective markers from all of the labs. And then those constraints are periodized through and removed so that you become and keep getting closer and closer and closer to a better version of yourself. And there's this real beautiful thing that takes place because when someone's at this constraint, sometimes they're like, man, I just have bad genetics or man, I just I just can't get results. And when you identify that constraint and you remove that constraint and they start getting results again, it's the ultimate plateau buster. And this thing happens where their body starts to change. I'm like, wait wait it wasn't my

genetics like if their belief in themselves gets better they get happier and because of the happiness and belief they start setting bigger goals for themselves and i'm also removing the physiological constraints as we go and then that person just dominates so it's a that's how the whole process is laid out and you know from start to finish, the way I like to operate, it's eight months. You sign up with me, it's not just me. You get a full team of directors behind you with the sole purpose of understanding your exact physiology and taking you to the next level. Giving you supplement recommendations, probably diet, training protocols, and the training protocol is going to be something that is going to

have an intensity to it, but it's going to keep in mind whatever the major things are. Like if your sleep is wrecked, then maybe during that month time you're not power lifting because you can kind of overstimulate the nervous system and you could end up with issues sleeping, things like that. It's a one stop shop. So like it's amazing. It's built to be your one stop shop so that you have one place to go to rather than eight places to go to. to go to because you'll notice this actually in combat sports with fight camps and when you go to that wrestling coach and then this striking coach and then this strength and conditioning coach and then this mma coach and then those coaches aren't communicating so then you you are the athlete in

the middle and you're kind of on like four disjointed programs rather than one beautiful synchronous like synchronized system truly made for your physiology. So when someone comes to me, that is not a problem. Every single angle is covered and incorporated into one system rather than five. So a question because there's probably people who are interested in doing this or working with you, but you guys work with like a select group of people correct like you have a lot of applications that come in and you pick which people you're going to be working with right yeah yeah like i'll be the first to say that what i do is not for everybody

it's very intensive like uh it's for the people who do care about that last one percent it's for the people or the people who have had so many issues in the past, and no one's figured them out. It's for those people too. So like, it's definitely not for everybody. If you're just like an average person who has average goals, and you've got an average amount of discipline and an average amount of consistency, I'm not your guy. You'll actually like you won't have to pay my premiums in order to get what you need, because right now you just need to be more consistent and, you know, do some basic stuff. But if you're somebody who wants to understand your own physiology inside and out. So basically when those labs come in, I put on like a seminar.

So like let's say I got your labs. Yeah. about a two-hour video from me and I break down every single marker, what it means in simple terms and why it's relevant to you and your goals and how it's incorporated into your program. So it's a, you're watching like this video of me that's as long as the Lord of the Rings. But it's a, I'm putting on a seminar on Nsema and then you get to understand, because I'm not a coach who's like, here's your program. Now go do it. I want you to know the why, not just the how. Because when you have the why, your belief and buy-in into the system is on the next level.

And when you – your belief and buy-in is like, wow, this is really made for me. It's customized head to toe. This wasn't a template that someone just put my name on the top. This is something that's legit customized um and it's my exact physiology that's uh that i'll do that whole process and go that extra mile for everybody who comes my way yeah that sounds amazing it's not for everybody it's it's it's a lot like you you're like hold on this bald guy from canada wants me to poop in a box and put it in the mail? It's a lot.

But when you get that done, especially, dude, especially if you've never done it before. Yeah. The amount of constraints that you have no idea that you currently have. And a lot of people don't understand how good their body is actually designed to feel. You're supposed to feel amazing. Like to go back to episode one in the saga, you're supposed to be at real health. Yeah. If you did not say, oh, that's me when I discussed real health, then you have constraints and you need to get them resolved if you are interested in real health. Yeah.

Wow. Okay. Do we have the labs i think so pat brodsky family hope you guys are doing well now we love meat we love to eat meat on this podcast we've talked about it yeah we talked about a lot that's why i partnered with piedmontese because they have amazing cuts of steak some that have a lot of fat some that are a bit lower fat but no matter what diet you're on, you can fit Piedmontese steak into your diet. It's fucking good. Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, you guys got to head over to piedmontese.com. If you guys know how to spell it, say it with me.

That's P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E.com. And at checkout, enter promo code POWER for 25% off your entire order. And if your order is $150 or more, you get free two-day shipping. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Let's get back to the podcast.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, send some over to them, yeah. So these are marks. It's going to be kind of hard to see, but I don't know. Where do you want to start? Oh, we can start anywhere. Let's just zoom in there. We can scroll down.

Right there. That's probably good. I mean, TSH and T4 are both looking solid. That's very efficient. There's no issue there. White blood cells. So here's the thing with white blood cells. You see that reference

range? It's going 3.4 to 10.8. When you start looking into the literature extensively, you start to recognize that after 6.1, something's irritating the immune system. Things such as cardiovascular disease risk, all-cause mortality, basically you name it. When white blood cells start getting after 6.1, I don't go, oh, something's irritating the immune system.

What I do is I put that in my back pocket and I go oh that's curious that's curious and that's kind of like a that's what I'll do with all labs by the way is um I never so I view labs the way I view the scientific literature because you can find one study to prove anything that you want um But the true scientific mindset would look at the entire body of evidence and see where the consensus is. Where is that body of evidence leaning as opposed to me just using one study and then posting that online as if it's a representation of the full body of evidence? I do that with labs. So I don't treat any one marker as God. what I'll do is slowly develop a consensus. Mark, these are your labs?

Yeah, I think so. Yeah, so I'll slowly develop this consensus over time. And so that right there with that white blood cell, I kind of just put that in my back pocket and be like, huh, we go on down here. No, you can just stay there. I'm going down with my eyes rather. MCV, MCV. MCV over 90.

It's not – that's no like real thing. You guys got to understand too. I'm so nitpicky. All little things are big things for me. But when you start getting over 90, especially in the higher 90s with MCV. What's MCV? Yeah, that's why I was going to back up and preface this statement. That is mean capuscular volume. So mean, average, capuscular red blood cell volume size. So if we took all of

your red blood cells, and then the one in the middle, if we organize them from smallest to largest, the one in the middle would be your MCV. So that's your average red blood cell size. The one in the middle would be your MCV. So that's your average red blood cell size. When you undergo erythropoiesis, which is the synthesis of red blood cells in the body, what happens? There's a stage about—I won't start drawing things again. But about halfway through, there's something called nuclear maturation.

This is dependent upon B12 and folate. If we do not have adequate B12 and folate the red blood cell is actually bigger than it should be because nuclear maturation did not undergo proper synthesis and it's a little bit bigger than it otherwise would have been so when we start getting into the 90s but especially the higher 90s i'm like yeah you know i'll put that in my back pocket i wonder if i'll see any other things going on here for B12 and folate. His previous hematocrit was at a 52.6. That is quite elevated, even on the normal reference range. So that means like in terms of when I'm working with athletes, and that's quite elevated. Now, hematocrit can simply represent a state of dehydration. That is a very sensitive dehydration marker. But it can also represent hematocrit will absolutely go up in the presence of testosterone supplementation.

So that could be, you know, Mark could have been dehydrated going into this, or he could have been on three milligrams per kilogram of his testosterone and hematocrit is going up um and we'll see see rdw is another beautiful one so rdw rdw is red blood cell distribution width so again we got all of mark's red blood cells and then we're gonna look we're gonna put the smallest one on this side and the largest one on this side the red blood cell distribution width is the size difference between your smallest and largest. You actually want that below 13%. You do not want a large variance in red blood cell size. And that's actually a window towards micronutrient status in the body.

So you make new red blood cells every 120 days. And that's dependent upon many micronutrients. So when that is actually, when you have a large difference, it's actually a representation of micronutrient availability over the course of the last 120 days. Because if you had all of the micronutrients there ready to rock and roll, there'd be very minimum difference. But when you start to see that difference, you kind of start thinking about the things like I talked about with MCV. We got some big guys over here, but then we don't have the bigger guys over here. Why does that difference take place?

Almost always it's due to micronutrient status. And then RDW, unsurprisingly, is also correlated to C-reactive protein and ESR. So there's something known as erythrocyte sedimentation rate. C-reactive protein is acute inflammation. Erythrocyte sedimentation rate. C-reactive protein is acute inflammation. Erythrocyte sedimentation rate is chronic inflammation. RDW is connected to both. And then when you think that through, it's like, well, I mean, if RDW goes up, there's probably low micronutrient availability. If there's low micronutrient availability, it's likely that this person was inflamed over the course of the past four months before they saw me.

So that's a really, really good marker that I'll use quite a bit and another kind of argument as to why I use multivitamins very frequently. Scroll down just a touch. I want to talk about there. That's perfect. Okay, so at the top of that page there, you see total white blood cells. However, about two-thirds of the way down, you see neutrophils, lymphocytes, monocytes, eosinophils, and basophils. If you added all five of those numbers up, it would equal 100. Why? Because that's a percentage of distribution.

So white blood cells are at the top. That's the total amount. However, neutrophils, lymphocytes, monocytes, eosinophils, and basophils, they're all white blood cells. And what this is telling you is what we talked about yesterday. Remember I talked about hematopoiesis that begins with a hematopoietic stem cell and then existing cytokine status determined where that blood is going to be created. So this distribution tells you what the body thinks is currently important. And as a memory tool for you guys, that distribution in like true homeostasis would look like 60-30-7-3-0 in that exact order. 60-30-7-3-0. You see marks at a 66 to 20.

So that's a greater than three to one ratio. Neutrophils are elevated in the presence of a bacterial infection. So when someone is preferentially creating more neutrophils, that actually leads me into the direction. It's like, huh, you know, maybe there's something with bacteria going on. Maybe lipopolysaccharides. Maybe there's a bacterial infection in the gut. And then maybe start asking him questions about the gut or look at his questionnaire.

Or based on this, you know, I might order a stool analysis, see what's going on in there because that would be advisable in that situation. Lymphocytes typically elevated in response to viral load. I think we talked about that yesterday. Eosinophils elevated in response to parasites. Mark being that low, we know he doesn't have any parasites in there. Not 100%, but very high likelihood. And then basophils are typically elevated in response to allergies. So if memory recall is really on point, I said 60, 30, 7, 3, 0. Because basophils can be 0 because you cannot have exposure to something that you're allergic to. But he's got a little 1% there.

That's not a big deal. That's very common, but it's there. So we'll keep scrolling down here. Oh, see, his ratio. So I did come back. So that's a 3.4. This lab does it for you. That's very cool. Love it. So you're at a 3.4. So that's just the marker of what I just talked about with respect to neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio. And when that gets down to like one to one or even when lymphocytes start dominating, that's really when you start thinking about viral status of the body and the cortisol manipulations that I talked about in the previous episode too. But let's keep rolling down. That right there, so those immature, yeah, so immature granulocytes, if those start leaking

out into the system, it's actually a bone marrow issue. Your bone marrow is where we begin to create all of that blood. That's where hematopoiesis begins. If you see these immature things in circulation, then they're actually getting out into circulation before they're done construction. So you get these very, very small things, and it's associated with genetic defects and can be a blood disease. So he's got zeros there, so that's no problem. Let's stay there, actually, and talk about that glucose a little bit. So glucose at 94, this is a big one, okay?

So you see that reference range is 65 to 99. There's great research out at the University of Kaiser Northwest that demonstrated for every one point above 85, you are at a 6% increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes over the next decade. Okay. Okay. So him. Yep. Oh, sorry.

I thought you said something. No, I just said shit back here. Oh, that was you. Yeah. Oh, God. I'm all over the place. So you're at a, for every one point above 85, you are at a 6% increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes over the next decade.

So him being at 94, that is 9 times 6, which is 54. So that would, you know, on paper, be at a 54% increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes over the course of the next decade. Do I think he's going to develop type 2 diabetes? No. But in my world, I don't even want you in a risk category because that means not optimal. Okay? He's lean.

He's healthy. He's active. There's no way he's going to get type 2 diabetes over the next decade. But that doesn't mean I can't improve his blood sugar, right? And it's a real good point as well as, you know, that reference range will go up to 99 until you're at 100 and you're pre-diabetic. It's like, wait, why didn't somebody tell me that? There is known risk factors after 85 and no one told me that? Like that's a huge problem for me.

and no one told me that, like that's a huge problem for me. And glucose actually in between 91 and 99 is an independent marker for type 2 diabetes. So an independent marker for type 2 diabetes, meaning not considering your BMI, your C-peptide, your insulin, your HbA1c, nothing. By itself, it's powerful enough to be a predictor for type 2 diabetes. So he falls into both of those categories so then that's a situation where i would uh look at that and i'm like okay fasting glucose that's his acute glucose today but it doesn't represent his chronic glucose so that would be uh hba1c hba1c is a marker of glucose over the past several months. So why don't we scroll down and we'll see if it's on this page. Can you scroll down a little bit more? It's got to be somewhere.

And then we'll go back up. There it is. HbA1c. So he's at 5.4.4 yeah so that's a little high for me i want my guys more like around 5.1 so that means i look at his fasting glucose it's acute um so i'm like okay you know maybe mark just had a lot of pasta before bed last night and then he didn't fast too long before this and now is it's elevated but he's actually fine. But HbA1c is a marker of chronic glucose control. So what happens, HbA1c is glycated hemoglobin. So put simply, just imagine your red blood cells are always in the bloodstream, but in chronically elevated glucose, kind of damages and annoys the red blood cells.

And then it creates something called glycated hemoglobin, and then that's what that is. cells and then it creates something called glycated hemoglobin and then that's what that is so that only ever exists in the presence of uh glucose and red blood cells being the bloodstream at the same time the higher it is the more glycation and damage took place so it represents more chronically elevated glucose so now with the acute and the chronic i'd be like okay um if he's already on low carb probably right right low carb or Low-carb or even no-carb. But so then glucose is still elevated in this sense. So then you have to start thinking about the things that elevate glucose like cortisol. You start running down the pathway of what you could correct.

But then at the same time, I want to improve his glucose disposal. So I'd be working on at the cellular level in that. But let's go back up. So that's already something we want to work on. I don't remember where we were. Here we go. Yeah. There we go. All right. All right. So we got our CMP. That's right. One of the recommendations from yesterday. We got blood debris and nitrogen. So that came back at a 30. That can just be high in the presence of a high-protein diet, though.

And based on the breakfast that Mark cooked me yesterday, I think that there's probably a lot of protein in the diet. We just, you know, get some eggs, get some filet. Let's rock and roll. So that can purely be elevated in the presence of a high-protein diet and can be elevated in the presence of a lot of muscle mass. But that will actually also be elevated in the presence of catabolism.

So basically it is a marker of metabolism of protein. So that will actually – this is kind of an interesting one because, yes, it's protein metabolism. So a high-protein diet can elevate blood urea nitrogen but what can happen too is um if you're in a severe catabolic state then that will go up not and that's a kidney marker by the way so that can go up not necessarily because your kidneys are in very poor health but because you're simply metabolizing a lot of protein right now yeah so that could be due to an extreme hypocaloric state, or maybe you're on your PCT.

It is not uncommon at all for some of these kidney markers to go up during a PCT, because you're losing muscle mass at an accelerated rate. So you're metabolizing your protein from the diet, but you're also metabolizing your own skeletal muscle tissue. And it's like, holy crap, Mikey, you have kidney markers that scare the

hell out of you. But it's like, holy crap, Mikey, you have kidney markers that scare the hell out of you. But it's actually just a representation of protein metabolism. You're just not taking into consideration the whole context of the situation. So that's something, again, that's in our back pocket. But creatinine wasn't elevated. So that's another kidney marker. But admittedly, it's a pretty poor kidney marker for a variety of reasons. Because creatinineine it'll go up in the presence of unhealthy kidneys but it will go down if you're on a low protein diet or if you

have a low amount of muscle mass so let's take into the context the uh say a vegan who's elderly they're going to have a lower protein diet and since they're elderly they have lower muscle mass so that'll actually bring down creatinine but let's say they had unhealthy kidneys well that'll bring it up but into the normal reference range so it makes it a not very good kidney marker which is why i said yesterday get cystatin c that's a lot better of a kidney marker because it's not susceptible to variation egfr is glomerular filtration rate. So this is basically how well or how not well the body is filtering, the kidneys rather, are filtering blood in the body. And that's one where you want it higher. Like you want, 80s is just fine for Mark, but like 80s, 90s, 100s, 120,

whatever, that, and good filtration rate is something that you want your kidneys doing. When that starts getting low, you could see on the far right there, you've got greater than 59 is ideal. When it starts getting low into that and you start running into CKD risk, which is chronic kidney disease, the kidneys start taking damage over time. And the kidneys are scary. You don't want to mess with them. I like to use an example of a hard boiled egg with kidneys. don't want to mess with them. I like to use an example of a hard-boiled egg with kidneys. So your liver, it's very resilient and repairable, for lack of a better phrase. And it's like water. So when you freeze water, it turns to ice. But if you let it thaw, it goes back to water.

The kidneys are more like an egg. If you hard-boil that egg, it ain't going back to a raw egg. The kidneys, their regenerative capacity is extremely poor. So in terms of like your susceptibility or your choices in life, your liver can actually take a beating and do a good job at it surprisingly, but the kidneys cannot. EGFR is a tricky one though too because that's an algorithm. That's not a marker. So it's taking into several things into consideration, one of which being your body weight. So a problem here is a body builder might have a really bad filtration rate because he's got very unhealthy kidneys. So he's like, okay, I'm going to retire. This is too

much. And then he lowers his body weight because he retired. And then he's like, okay, I'm going to retire. This is too much. And then he lowers his body weight because he retired. And then he's like, oh, wow, my kidneys have regenerated. They're good. It included your body weight, my man. So your kidneys aren't necessarily healthier. You're just a lighter person at this point in time. So that's just a, it's an algorithm susceptible to some poor interpretation if you don't know how to interpret it. Continuing on here, we've got

sodium, potassium, chloride looking good. Carbon dioxide is an interesting one. Mark is good in that respect. A lot of people talk about pH balance. And it's one of the things that's plagued with like some of the most hippy dippy kind of crap. Yeah, the alkaline diet and stuff like that. But carbon dioxide is actually one of the best ways to view pH status in an evidence-based way. Everywhere else in the world, if you're listening internationally, the U.S. calls it carbon dioxide.

Everyone else calls it bicarbonate. But that's the same marker that you're looking at. When you get below 23, so Mark's kind of right on the edge here, when you get below 23, you actually want to add some more base nutrients into the body. So things such as calcium, magnesium, and potassium can provide more base and bring that up. And that has already been connected to skeletal muscle proteolysis. So like muscle tissue breakdown, when carbon dioxide starts getting too low it's been connected

to speed it's been connected to strength it's been connected to inflammation when combined with something called anion gap which is another ph thing it's also been connected to i said speed strength inflammation it's been connected to cardiovascular conditioning as well so it's enormously important and uh and i typically like like my guys around or close to 25. 23 is the absolute cap off because that's where speed and strength. When you get below 23 compared to greater than 23, speed and strength can suffer. So he's still fine there. But I would probably be like, yeah, let's have a look at your total dietary intake and see where your calcium, magnesium, potassium's at. Um, an easy way to do that is to get an app

called a chronometer or chronometer. I don't know how to pronounce it. Um, but, uh, you can upload your diet to it. Um, and I get no money for saying this. You can upload your diet to it and, uh, it will calculate your macros for your micros for you so it's not just calories and macros it's also micros so you can look at it and then and then it's lots of times it's kind of easy it's like hey you see here where you were having celery uh you cool with replacing that with spinach yeah i'm fine okay cool and then that's going to bring potassium status back up and then we can offset something like this so it's not always the knowledge behind this stuff can get really deep but the application of it it's like always the knowledge behind this stuff can get really deep

but the application of it's like hey can you have spinach instead yeah yeah we're good it's like yeah it can it can be it can be pretty simple that way um up next here we've got uh albumin and globulin so albumin and globulin you can see they did the ratio for him there um so that's a little bit off right now um But it's not bad. Both of them came back within the reference range. And blood urea, nitrogen, as well as hematocrit, were both kind of off for hydration. And that we talked about yesterday, albumin is actually pulled up by dehydration. So that might just be a little bit artificially elevated. But globulin, so you see beside it says globulin total. Globulin is a protein. Total means all of the globulin, so you see beside it says globulin total.

Globulin is a protein. Total means all of the globulins. So sex hormone-binding globulin, vitamin D-binding globulin, thyroid-binding globulin, all of the immunoglobulins. So it's an enormous category. Yeah. So if that's looking really weird, you can order something called an electroprotein phoresis that'll actually break down all of the different globulins. So you can see, again, what the body thinks is important right now, because globulin status is huge towards that. But testosterone lowers sex hormone binding globulin. So that albumin might be slightly pulled up from just dehydration, but his globulin might be slightly pulled down, not necessarily because anything is really wrong,

but the fact that he was on testosterone and that drove down sex hormone binding globulin. So those numbers are going to be lower anyway. Yeah. Okay. So that's a, you know, kind of just the quick story on that. Billy Rubin's one we talked about yesterday, but his markers are just fine. Um, I like Billy Rubin between 0.5 and 0.8. Um, he's at 0.6. So we're on the money there. I see AST and ALT are both elevated. Man, if you're training hard and using any form of performance enhancing drugs, AST and ALT up to 100 is kind of just the cost of doing business. It's kind of the cost of that lifestyle. I've seen some insane, I've seen ALT at 700. Jesus. Yeah. Yeah. So, but that's obviously extremely inadvisable. When, when AST and ALT at 100, it's high for sure,

but just in that lifestyle, I'm assuming you've already made the decision that you're, you're doing that cost benefit analysis and it's the cost of doing business but once you start getting over 100 and and at 200 you're like um you better start seeing the finish line and then when you're over 300 it's like stop yeah this is it stop that um yeah i i was uh working with a guy who was at 700 once and apparently you have to come off and it wrong huh you know once in a while maybe yeah you should have a small handful of breakfast and then get on with your day. Oh, Jesus. Yeah.

So 700 was, and I was like, yeah, this is why you feel bad. You don't really need me to coach you. Let's just stop doing that. Just for time purposes, because I was looking at my labs and my Billy Rubin was at a 1.7. Yeah. So that's hemolysis. So that's a, that's a lot of, um, uh, red blood cell breakdown taking place. Um, some of your other markers could likely tell us why, but one good lesson on here that kind of connects to Mark's labs is, so remember

I said, hemoglobin A1C is a marker of chronic glucose because it's measuring damaged red blood cells and red blood cells have a four-month lifespan. In the case of someone who has got elevated bilirubin, then they're breaking down a lot of their red blood cells. So that actually artificially lowers hemoglobin A1C because you're not getting that chronic reading anymore because they're dying before you can read them. Because you're not getting that chronic reading anymore because they're dying before you can read them. So Billy Rubin and HbA1c have an antagonistic relationship because they die before the proper measurement. So if he had a 1.7 Billy Rubin, which is twice what I wanted, but if it was at 1.7, his HbA1c probably looks good even though it might not be. Okay. Yeah. looks good even though it might not be okay yeah um but bilirubin the the thing with bilirubin

though is um hemolysis like can take place for a lot of reasons um you know bacterial infections and you actually talked about a gut issue didn't you uh yeah i mean i've had weird stomach stuff going on for a long time so yeah yeah there's something known as hemolytic anemia um and and that can take place in in response to a wide variety of bacterial infections. So that would be an interesting point of action for us. Just go get a stool analysis and we'll see what's under the hood. We'll see what's going on. But the thing with bilirubin, though, is red blood cell destruction doesn't always have to be something so scary.

You'll see red blood cell bilirubin elevated in endurance athletes because when you're running, you're actually, you're heel striking blood and killing red blood cells. And that is red blood cell destruction. And Billy Rubin will be elevated because of physicality. You can see that in combat sports as well. If you're getting beat up, if you're involved in anything high impact, you can actually damage red blood cells through that way. So sometimes you're looking at a marker and you're like, wait, what the hell is that?

And it could be just because you're jogging every day. It's like, well, okay, it's not as scary as I thought. We'll keep rolling here. We'll see what we find. So see that thing that says specific gravity? That's measuring density of urine. So this whole page, we're now looking at urine stuff. That specific gravity

at a 1.022 that's a little concentrated but not too much i mean i i now don't think he was dehydrated going into this lab um if that was more like you know uh 28 29 30 it'd be very concentrated or if it was very low like a 1.0 uh you know 1.0 we'd be looking at a urine that's very dilute so that's when you can there's some people who are just like i have a gallon water today and it's like kind of for no reason at all yeah there's such a thing as over hydration so you can have very dilute urine that actually dehydrates you over time because you're diluting electrolyte status so when someone has very dilute urine because they just have a non-specific approach to hydration, you'll see that in the urine and then I'll change their hydration.

And can you guys probably guess how many markers improve when someone's optimally hydrated? A lot. We're 70% water for a reason. Yeah. It's involved in everything. Yeah. Quick question. Both you, Mark, Andrew, did you guys both get like the same labs done?

Cause this shit, this is very extensive. Did you get the same type of labs done too? Um, I'm not 100% sure, but I mean most, the only one that I didn't get was the hemoglobin A1C. Yeah.

That's the only one that I'm missing right now. Okay. Yeah. Cool. It would have been a false finding anyways. Cause if you're Billy Rubin, yeah, I wouldn't have even really looked at it. Interesting. Okay. Cool. It would have been a false finding anyways. Because of your bilirubin. Yeah. I wouldn't have even really looked at it.

Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. pH of the urine is coming back just fine. Urinary pH is very susceptible, though. If someone's supplementing with sodium bicarbonate or if they're on like green strings and stuff, it can look real crazy. So it's not that valid of a marker.

You see like white blood cell esterase. That'll be there if you've got a kidney infection or something like that. If he's got proteins, there's no protein in his urine. So that's really good. A guy who's done a bodybuilding show has been 330 pounds. You expect some kidney problems over the course of time. And you would actually see protein in the urine. And the reason why is there's a... Drink that shit. It's like a... No.

There's no way. There's something known as glomerular filters. Glomerular filters, they're like um they're like a net like a real tight film and they're only supposed to allow like amino acids or glucose through small molecules but when you see a full protein go through there it means that that filter has been damaged and kidney damage is taking place so in i've worked with a lot of uh you know heavyweight bodybuilders and they're peeing protein wow yeah so that's a huge marker for kidney damage. And it would have been an awkward one to do live, right?

Especially after the hard-boiled egg thing. So I'm glad that one came back good. Let's keep rolling here. There's other urine stuff. You can see if people have kidney stones and shit or fungal problems, but none of that was there. By the way, go back up. Yeah, we'll stay there.

If you guys haven't noticed, I can talk for hours about every single mark. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, every single mark. I'm very confident I could do a Monday to Friday seminar, nine to five, on just this. Oh, my God. I'm not surprised. I'm 100% confident.

What's that, lipid profile we're talking about, right? Yeah, yeah. I'm not surprised. I'm 100% sure. What's that lipid profile we're talking about, right? Yeah, yeah. We're looking at lipids here. Coming back, you know, quite good. The cholesterol, that's very agreeable.

Triglycerides, you know, that's actually decently low. Like, you start to see, so the triglycerides reference range, that goes up to 149, which is too high for me. You start seeing issues with longevity after 90. So the fact that that goes up to 149, I'm just not really in agreement with that.

49 is, it's not low, but it's starting to get low. So Mark, nothing else here has represented any form of autoimmunity, but low triglycerides are associated with autoimmunity. So if he told me that he was getting like weird skin rashes or if his thyroid markers were really off or if he had Crohn's or a lot of gastrointestinal problems, then you'd start thinking autoimmunity if it started to get really low, but he's not in that ballpark. Your total cholesterol to triglyceride ratio is on point. Your HDL to LDL, your, where is

the LDL by itself? Oh, there it is. What am I talking about? It's high. so it came back at a 127 um you know believe it or not it's actually not that high um is when you when you start to research lipids and cholesterol and stuff you see a ton of variability um and even in hdl hdl is your good cholesterol so i'll kind of back up um ldl is uh you can imagine ldl like um that old fairy tale where the kids leave breadcrumbs everywhere they go to remember where they came from. LDL is kind of like that, but it'll leave little droplets of plaque everywhere it goes. HDL is the janitor. So HDL comes and cleans up that mess and brings it to the liver to be metabolized.

So it's actually okay to have enough kids leaving breadcrumbs around so long as you have enough janitors to clean up the job. Okay? So that's why you want to see HDL. They've got there greater than 39. He's at a 47 right now. I'd like to see it a little higher, and I think we'll actually improve that,

not by targeting that, but by improving his blood sugar. That's probably going to be the number one thing that's going to get that up um anti-estrogens will bring that down too so i'd be asking hey are we doing any nova or an astrozole right now or arimidex um what's going on in that department because that'll really tank your hdl um it's something like omega 3 can help bring it up as well. The thing with HDL, though, like what I'm in total disagreement with, is see how it just says greater than 39? There's research out there that elevated HDL above 80

is connected to cancer. So like, it's just like when I see anything, things like that just kind of drive me nuts just because I know from pattern recognition and being obsessed with this stuff that there's a bell curve to everything. And it's just natural to think, yeah, of course there's a bell curve to everything. Just like triglycerides, 0 to 149. You're telling me I can have zero fats in my bloodstream?

Like even from a common sense level, does that sound ideal? Hell no. So like the bell curve exists everywhere. The truth is almost always found in the middle. But overall, I mean, decent lipid profile and a point of action for us to take as well with the blood sugar to help improve it. So we can keep rocking and rolling here. Just an interesting point is that I don't – this blood work stuff is like, it's just like such a moving target, you know. I believe at the time of this, I think I was eating less carbohydrate.

Now I probably eat a little bit more. Interestingly enough, my blood sugar would most likely be a little lower is what I would think it would be, even though I'm eating more carbs. little lower is what I would think it would be even though I'm eating more carbs. And also, interestingly enough, you would think the triglycerides would be nuts and you would think the cholesterol would be crazy because it's not uncommon for me to eat like 300 grams of fat in a day. Yeah. You know, so. Yeah. Well, I mean, your genetics play a huge role in that, but also body composition. Somebody can be on a lot of fat per day and it won't pop up here because your body composition is on point yeah it's just interesting i think you know sometimes we just think that

you know somebody eats a lot of eggs or something like that which i eat a lot of eggs and saturated fat you would think the cholesterol would be crazy right and you think the triglycerides would be crazy but yeah it's not always the case and in case, probably because of the way I eat, maybe it's different than someone might think. Yeah, and I mean, your liver does a good job at regulating. So your liver is responsible for cholesterol synthesis, so it'll actually create cholesterol. And your liver does a great job of managing that with dietary cholesterol. So it'll actually not produce any or produce some more

based on dietary availability. Your liver does a great job at regulating that and metabolizing it in a healthy state, of course. So yeah, that's something where body composition and genetics are huge and liver health is huge. Like gallbladder, for example. I don't really like people going too low in fat because we actually, so bile is secreted from the gallbladder to break down fat into fatty acids so that we can take them up into circulation. We use bile to break down fats for digestion and assimilation. However, bile is made from cholesterol. Cholesterol, taurine, and glycine play huge roles in the creation of bile. That's, you know, and one reason why I like, I don't like rather, when people go super low fat is when you consume fat,

you secrete a hormone called cholecystokinin or CCK. CCK stimulates the gallbladder to release bile into the small intestine so that we can break down and absorb that fat. But when we lose that bile, that also ends up in your toilet. So we're going to need to use more cholesterol to make more bile for the next meal. So that actually helps lower cholesterol when we have bile flow taking place. Fiber does this as well. Fiber actually binds on to bile

and brings it all the way to the toilet. And that's why you see things like psyllium husk improve cholesterol values. But even fat, like when someone's taking in fat, you're getting cholecystokinin release that is stimulating the gallbladder to secrete even more bile because you're eating even more fat, which means you're going to need even more cholesterol in order to make more bile.

So your body has an amazing check and balance system, really, kind of no matter what you throw at it. And it's kind of just understanding that process in the context of the client to see if you need to even do anything or not. You see here iron saturations at a 39. That's basically if you viewed your red blood cell like a pie chart, that's how much of that pie chart is taking place. MCHC was at the top as well.

It's mean capuscular hemoglobin concentration. That's a good marker for this type of thing as well. But iron saturation, when you look at longevity research, typically 25 to 35 is a zone you want to be in. But it's pretty common for iron to be elevated in people who take testosterone because testosterone increases red blood cells. Red blood cells have hemoglobin. Hemoglobin contains iron. So actually just testosterone by itself brings up iron status. So this is a pretty common thing to see. He's not out of the reference range, but again, I'm picky as fuck when it comes to all of this stuff, just because I want the best for

anybody who comes my way. But his other, I mean, his iron markers are looking just fine. So we'll keep on rolling. We've got DHT. So we already talked quite a bit about DHT there. DHT. So it used to be high. So that would have pulled up. Sex hormone and body globulin, that's also associated with hair loss. That's never fun. You would end up looking like me.

And that's also that 5-alpha reductase pathway. So we'd be looking at things um in that category but that was you know previously 12 and now it's only at 7 there's a huge improvement there could be for a variety of reasons but in present day that's only at 7 we're ready to rock testosterone was at 1355 yeah so like seeing dht previously elevated and testosterone now at 1355. Yeah. So like you're seeing DHT previously elevated and testosterone now at 1355. If you don't mind me asking, were you on during that time and then taking less at this second draw? I don't, I have no idea. I know that like my levels have been all over the place because I've gotten a lot of blood work done over a pretty long period of time. So I remember seeing DHT

be like through the roof and i remember seeing the testosterone levels being really high and yeah things like that yeah yeah okay cool so like maybe maybe not kind of looks like it because it what happens like remember i talked previously so that testosterone that pond filled up and then streams started taking place to try and lower that testosterone right so it kind of just looks like there was an overabundance of testosterone, which then resulted in more DHT because your body just didn't, what happens is your body just doesn't have enough receptors for that much testosterone. So it starts creating DHT, starts creating estrogens, and it'll actually create more androgen receptors. Your body will do that. DECA also increases androgen receptors as well. And it's just another way when your body's like, hey, I don't want to make any more estrogen. I

don't want to make any more DHT, but we got to put this testosterone somewhere. So let's actually create some more receptors for it. So yeah, it'll increase androgen receptor content as well. So that's something a lot of people don't know they think that uh you actually reduce receptors or and that type of thing but that you actually make more with some compounds and not others how long does that take like can you work out your receptors to work out your receptors so that way you can start you know putting testosterone to more places ah i think that would need to i don't have an answer for that yeah i think it would need to – I don't have an answer for that. Yeah. I think it would have to be chronic use though because your body has a lot of avenues to put that before it would structurally alter the muscle mass. Got it. Yeah.

I think it would make – it would just have more endocrine pathways before it would do receptor stuff. Then free testosterone. Yeah, free testosterone. So that went down as well. So, yeah, I think that this is more, there was a greater amount of compounds in the previous test and then came off for a little bit of a break. So that just matches the overall pattern consensus. So we can keep rolling here. Yeah. I want to say for a little while, my testosterone was like,

maybe between like 700 and 1,000, like for it seemed like maybe a couple different blood works that I got done. And then I wanted to bump it back up again or something like that. So I think probably that was probably going on around this time. Yeah, yeah, that sounds about right. That matches the story. So that's, hey, you got Cystatin C. You did get it.

Came back good. Yeah. So like that kind of matches your other kidney values there. Cystatin C, that's a compound created from every single cell that has a nucleus in the body. And the kidneys are supposed to filter and clean that out. So when you see that that starts to get elevated, you know the kidneys aren't doing their job. And Cystatin C, it's kind of like a no-nonsense marker,

whereas like the other things, they can be pulled up or down in response to certain contexts. Cystatin C is like, hey, are your kidneys damaged or not? Is that egg hard-boiled or not? This blood work is the byproduct of getting a lot of other blood work done. So there's been things that have been added over a period of time because it's like I just would forget what they would tell me. So I was like, let's just keep everything in there all the time. I don't care how much blood you've got to take or urine.

Just let's do it. This is a great panel, dude. There's so much actionable items to work with here. Obviously, you're already a super healthy dude, so a lot of these things are just fine. But yeah, dude, whatever panel you're running, keep doing it. There's your pregnenolone. So pregnenolone is part of that one of my crazy things that I've drawn up. And that came back at less than 10. It's kind of common for people to have lower

pregnenolone or DHEA in the presence of exogenous hormones because your body doesn't need to make stuff if it doesn't need to make stuff. It's just going to be lower. Your body is the ultimate efficiency machine, so it doesn't waste energy when it doesn't need to. Let's keep going. Oh, that's A1C, so we can pass that.

DHEA, so it came back. Yeah, so see how things will be trending a little bit lower. He's at 103. That's not low. The scale goes up to about 375. What's your opinion on these pharmaceutical ads that celebrate the lowering of something? You know, like you see so many of them for A1C. You see that all the time. And you're like, this has been proven to lower A1C. And this has been proven to lower cholesterol. But as we talked about, you know, this is a giant, crazy system that we're dealing with. We talk about the human body. And when we hone in and focus on one thing, it might be causing some other issues in other spots, right?

I 100% agree, man. And that's like And that's why I like getting a lot of labs. You could almost see my practice in getting all of these labs as a representation of my lack of confidence. Because I want to see everything before I make a decision because the body is so sophisticated. It's such an intelligently designed system that when I see something off, I don't have the arrogance to say that's that and we need to do –

that's why I even prefaced this whole thing with a consensus conversation because when you have absolutist beliefs regarding everything, the industry will kick your ass real quick because you'll get maybe half your client's results and then you won't get the other half of the client's results. But, yeah, I don't like the celebration of anything unless the context demanded it. And it's very difficult to identify that context unless you get a true comprehensive battery of labs. So that's big, man. But A1C and metformin goes a long way in that department so metformin that's that's a drug that um has been around like as long as drugs have been around so i hear it talked about often yeah seems to be fairly safe i don't know yes yeah yeah yeah that's another one where

metformin's been around it's one of the first like commercial pharmaceutical um agents and uh and when something's been around for freaking 70 years um its safety profile is fantastic it's around uh for that long time for a reason it works um it has an excellent safety profile it helps regulate glucose in three different ways. It decreases the liver's secretion of its own glycogen. So that already is a win to lower blood sugar. Metformin actually decreases absorption of some polysaccharides, so forms of carbs of dietary. It'll reduce absorption of that. So that's why you get some gastrointestinal symptoms with some people who take metformin. So you're reducing blood sugar by lowering glycogen release from the liver. You're reducing blood sugar from lowering dietary uptake due to a reduced absorption. And then on top of that, it increases your insulin sensitivity because the GLUT4 is known as glucose transporter 4. If your cell was like this and it had a doorway

that was closed, glucose transporter 4 migrates to the doorway and opens it up to transport glucose into the cell. So metformin, it activates GLUT4 translocation, reduces carbohydrate absorption from the diet. It reduces liver glycogen. And in doing so, it has benefits on cholesterol, it has benefits on inflammation, and it has benefits on longevity, has benefits on a lot of things, and its safety profile is fantastic. So I love it. Typically, though, usually, when you're trying to learn about something, you have to lean on medical research, which is amazing. But the context at which people like in this room with the listeners taking metformin is a lot different than a 400 pound

type two diabetic taking metformin. So you actually see metformin as high as like 1800 milligrams in the research. But for the purposes of administration, on a more performance basis, typically 100 milligrams per 100 grams of carbs in the diet is the type of taper that you'd want to see. And you could go that up or down if you're even in the context that requires that. All right. Cortisol. Cortisol is okay. LH and FSH being low low lh stimulating natural testosterone fsh stimulating spermatogenesis both of those will be shut down in the presence of exogenous hormones

your body won't your body will never make something that it doesn't need to make should somebody take uh like hcg or something when they're on a cycle or when they're doing when they have hrt do you normally think that that's a good practice? If maintaining fertility is important to you, then it's advisable. But if you're somebody who does come off, I actually think HCG is overhyped. When you start to really learn the biochemistry behind it, people are taking way too much HCG.

And HCG is actually a big reason why it can elevate a lot of estrogen. People get a total estrogen dominance from taking too much HCG because they're horrified that their testes will shut down on cycle. Like if you're that horrified of your testes shutting down, maybe you shouldn't go on cycle. If you're that horrified about fertility, then maybe you shouldn't be going on cycle. Like there's just, people don't like to hear that shit, of course, but it is the reality of the situation. HCG, if you want to preserve fertility, then in that context, it would be advisable. But I do think it's way overused, especially in the past 10 years or so, people just say things online like 500 IU per week. But then they don't get their labs.

People say this shit because they don't get their labs done on cycle. People get their labs done at the worst time. You actually want to get your labs done when you're on the most shit. You want to get your labs done when you're on nothing. And then you also want to get it done when you're on the most shit. So you can actually see, oh, this is what I'm doing to myself. The problem, the body is so regenerative and adaptive that a lot of people will go on a hard cycle

and then they do their blood work after and say, hey, am I healthy? Yep. Well, it's because you didn't do your labs on cycle, my man. And then you actually want to do labs on cycle, not just so you have a greater awareness about the damage that you're possibly doing to yourself, but also so you can see the propensities that your body, the direction it goes into,

so you can actually protect yourself more. Like next time, ah, my prolactin does this, my estrogen does this, my free testosterone did this. Like you're actually able to set up safety guards in place, but you can't do that if you've got no data to apply safety guards to. And then you get people taking way too much arimidex. You get people taking way too much anastrozole. You get people taking HCG, and they're just doing it because they were told to rather than because they know their endocrinology. And I mean their unique endocrinology.

We can keep rolling here. Prolactin is looking just fine. So Mark's not going to be making any milk anytime soon. Damn. Damn. Hey, now. IGF-1 looking just fine. Vitamin D.

Hey, vitamin. Are you on vitamin D? I haven't taken it in a long time. I think maybe about six months ago or so, I just stopped taking it. Yeah. Okay. Cool. You can keep rolling here. Maybe it was a little later than that because I was just like, I'm getting so much sun.

I just don't see the point. Yeah. And all the stuff we talked about yesterday. There's so many habits that you're already doing. Right, right. You notice in my foundation, I said multi-magnesium fish oil. A lot of people's foundation includes vitamin D. I've seen so much research on vitamin D now that it's not a part of my foundation.

Yeah, and actually I'll add another point of value here. I've seen so many people with low B vitamins that it is a part of my foundation in a lot of cases. I think a B complex every day is a great idea for people. I've heard some people say that they don't think that you can take, you know, too much is a weird word, but supplementing vitamin D is a really good idea and fairly safe. Vitamin D? Vitamin B, sorry. B, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because it's water soluble. So that's

why your pee gets, you know, neon Las Vegas. Because what your body doesn't use, it can excrete. It's water soluble. Also, because it's water soluble, you don't really have any storage depots for vitamin B. So that means regular intake is that much more important, especially not just because we have a low storage depot, but because B vitamins are used for all the things that we deem important for the neurotransmitter synthesis, for creating proteins. When your body wants to build a bicep, your nucleus signals to your ribosomes to make muscle protein. And your ribosomes, in order to make muscle protein demand b6 if you don't have enough b6 your anabolism will be limited if you look at uh b bcaa stuff or eaa

stuff that always contains b6 and that's not by mistake that's for protein metabolism um it is required and that's every single protein if you want to make make any kind of protein at all, even if it's a receptor or an enzyme, B6 is required every single time. And I see it's low, very common, and it's safe to take a B complex every day. So I have my people on that very, very often. We can keep going here. C-reactive proteins at 1.3, so those acute inflammation is just fine. We didn't get erythrocyte sedimentation rate on this. So, no marker for real chronic inflammation on this. There's also a lot of other great blood sugar markers that we could have included on here.

This is already a super comprehensive lab. So, I mean, I don't need to pick on it. But there's just too many blood sugar markers that people don't know about. Like glucose is great for fasting blood sugar amounts. know about like uh glucose is great for fasting blood sugar amounts hba1c is great for chronic more like three four months blood sugar control but fructosamine is more like 14 days um fructosamine is uh so uh hba1c is glycated hemoglobin so red blood cells whereas fructosamine is glycated albumin. So an albumin only has a half-life in the body of about 10 to 14 days. So you're getting a more, not acute, but also not super chronic.

You're just getting a more recent exposure of blood sugar. And then glycomark is that variability thing that we talked about. And then we could still look at things like insulin and C-peptide. C-peptide is a better marker for insulin than insulin. So yeah, insulin is a, it has a very, very quick half-life. So insulin goes up in the body and then it's freaking gone. C-peptide is co-secreted with insulin, but it has a longer half-life. So you're basically, you get a window towards insulin

because by the time you're 12 hours fasted and you get your blood drawn, it's very common for insulin just to go way back down, even if your insulin sucks. But your C-peptide wouldn't have gone down at that time. So it lets you know what happened. Keep going here. GGT, that's a good one. If GGT is elevated, that's a representation of exposure to xenobiotics.

So when that starts to get high, that's a marker for environmental pollutants among many, many other things. It's a good marker for glutathione and liver health as well. That will actually be really off in the presence of a non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, which is way more fucking common than people think. Way more common. But as GGT is at 31, I actually like to see it less than 20. I like to see that more in teens. You don't want too much activity. See his previous one was 16.

So that'd be like, Hey, what were you doing then? Let's go back to that. Um, I wasn't doing nothing, man. I swear. That sound convincing or not? I believe you. Oh, good. Thanks, Andrew.

I asked you previously if you were on or not. And you were like, I don't know. Who's asking? Is it the police? Like, what's going on here? Let's keep rolling here. Oh, man. Thyroid is another huge.

It's going to add another three hours to the podcast. So we don't need to keep flipping this over. We don't need to... Just keep flipping this over. We don't need to get into that just now. His thyroid's okay. Yeah, we could actually... We could smoke a whole episode on thyroid. But let's just keep going because I'm too tempted. I'm like a caged dog right now

wanting to talk about thyroid. Oh, my gosh. Sex hormone binding globulin came back just fine. Just keep going. And that's it. Yay. Boom. Might have to blur that last piece out. My bad. He'll have to go

over your guys' stuff. Yeah. Right now. I get it. Starting from the top. I suck. By the way. No, that was great. Well, I condensed it. I know. I know. I was trying to speed shit up, and that's still what we had to talk about.

That's gonna make 795 reels for us. 90 seconds apiece. I did the math just now. So we're just gonna clip them all. It's all gonna go on my Instagram, all linked together. Yeah, fuck yeah, let's do it.

1, 2, 3, 4, all the way. Just keeps going let's do it. One, two, three, four all the way. Just keeps going. Got enough content for two years. And we haven't even talked about sex drive and libido and boners and stuff like that. I mean, what are we... Episode three, he's talking about boners.

There's been product placement behind me this whole time. Yeah. Well, that one guy's trying to bench with a boner and we know that that can be a mistake. His name's Charmander. Who is he? Charmander. You still doing the bench boners with the belt?

Oh, yeah. Hell yeah. Yeah, you got to still do that every once in a while. Yeah, dude. Andrew, why don't you take us on out of here because I got a volleyball game. Okay, volleyball is coming in hot. All right, so thank you everybody for checking out today's episode. Drop a shit ton of questions down below because I know you guys have them.

Go ahead and let us know what you guys think about today's episode uh make sure you guys like today's episode and subscribe if you guys are not subscribed already and uh please follow the podcast at mb power project on instagram tiktok and twitter my instagram tiktok and twitter's at i am andrew z and sema where you at and see me on instagram youtube and see me on tiktok and twitter and yeah go check out the discord discord Discord. Where can people find you? Before I say that, I just want to thank you guys for the opportunity to be here. You guys have an awesome audience, super engaged. For you to allow me to say my message out here and leverage the engagement and people you've already got.

You guys, you're all the fucking man. Thank you very much. Thank you. This is awesome. This is an absolute blast being here. So I can be found at DanGarnerNutrition on Instagram. My courses are at CoachGarner.com. And if you want to work with me, the stuff that we talked about, go to RapidHealthReport.com.

You just can't be average also. No, I'm joking. He's not for the average person. I know. He's not. He said it. Admittedly. That just makes people want to sign up for one. Yeah. It's not for the average person I know he's not he said it admittedly that just makes people

want to sign up for one yeah it's not supposed to you don't know me bro I'm way more than average I'm at Mark Smelly Bell strength is never weakness

weakness is never strength catch you guys later bye