Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 591 - Andrew Huberman, More Test More Sex? Let's Talk Hormones!

Episode Date: September 14, 2021

Dr. Andrew Huberman is an award-winning professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford University, as well as the founder of the Huberman Lab. His lab focuses on researching brain function and brain regeneration. The lab’s goals are to discover strategies for halting and reversing vision loss in blinding diseases, and understand how visual perceptions and autonomic arousal states are integrated to impact behavioral responses. Recommended Supplements: Fadogia Agrestis: https://amzn.to/3A933fj ongkat Ali Root: https://amzn.to/3lkyrB5 Grab the new Power Project "think LESS" shirt, supplies are limited: https://markbellslingshot.com/products/think-less-tee?variant=39468915261534 Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Magic Spoon Cereal: https://www.magicspoon.com/powerproject to automatically save $5 off a variety pack! ➢8 Sleep: Visit https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT15 for 15% off ALL LABS! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Subscribe to the Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ 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 ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ 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 #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Power Project Familia, how's it going? This episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Merrick Health. Now, Merrick Health is owned by somebody you know, Derek, from More Plates, More Dates. But Merrick Health is the premium telehealth TRT and HRT clinic, where we have something called the Power Project Panel that has 26 different labs that give you all the things you need for men and women. But also, if you guys are interested in TRT or HRT, you can actually work with a doctor from Merrick Health, and they'll go ahead and they'll tell you which tests you need to get along with giving you the treatment that you need.

You need to check them out. Andrew, can you tell the people how to get? Yeah, absolutely. So we have links down in the YouTube description as well as the podcast show notes, but you need to head over to MerrickHealth.com. That's M-A-R-R-E-K-Health.com. And yeah, if you are interested in TRT, you can actually contact them. You'll hop on the phone with them. And when it comes time to actually start paying for some of these panels, just let them know that you've heard it through us and you

want to use promo code PowerProject15, and that's going to save you 15% off all the recommended labs that they give you. Again, links to them down in the description, as well as the podcast show notes. Highly recommend it. They are the premium telehealth HRT clinic, TRT clinic. They're really, they're second to none. So head over there right now. My sister loves that story. She's actually pre-athletic, but she just wasn't into it.

Oh, sometimes, you know, actually sometimes the jumping jack's a little weird. Like sometimes you get going the wrong way and then your arms and legs are not in concert with each other. Exactly. And you've got to stop, and then you've got to rethink it again. You're like, what happened to me? I actually got credit in high school for skateboarding because I was so active.

They let me not do PE. But then during PE, all I wanted to do was run the track and do pull-ups anyway, so I opted in. But I heard nowadays they don't have pe nope in some places that is a shock to me that's a shock to me that's amazing i mean i i don't know how you get through high school without pe i feel like he is where you your sanity check comes in but maybe i'm a mutant we're good we're going yeah we're live oh my god yep we're totally not ready uh so we start over uh we don't even have the script. I don't know what's happening.

We emailed it to Stanford, I think. And then they – They should have sent it to you. Yeah. Yeah. They – I don't know. They got a printer over there. They got a printer, but no ink.

You're joking, right? We faxed it, actually. My lab is paperless. Ah. But – You faxed it to me. You know, there's been a lot of hazing today. We like to mess.

I know. We like to mess around a lot. It's okay. Anyway, fired up for today with Andrew Huberman here. And we're going to get to the bottom of lots of stuff. But I think in this particular show, we're going to focus in a little bit more on hormones. And we got to talking about some of these things, you know,

as it, as it pertains to the workout that we got to today, we just kind of like ended up going all over the place, but we're live, I think on YouTube, right? We're live on TikTok as well. So people,

if you got some questions, maybe hold them till we're about a half an hour in. Maybe start asking some questions. We'll prompt you to do so a little bit more later on. But first things first, what does – I got some weird voice popping in. I don't know what that was. Someone's phone. First things first is like I've heard you talk about what testosterone does for

us. And, uh, um, it's, it definitely has been a big, uh, thing of motivation for me. I've been on testosterone. I'm going to be celebrating this year, 20 years, and I got to have a little birthday with, uh, you know, little, uh, syringes as the candles. It's going to be fantastic. Probably not the best way to start off a podcast with someone in academics. But anyway, what does testosterone do for us and why do you think it's so important? Okay.

Two quick disclaimers, not just to protect me but to protect your audience because that's actually what I care about. just to protect me, but to protect your audience. Cause I, that's actually what I care about. First of all, um, you've actually been on testosterone your whole life, even when you were a fetus, right? So it was, uh, being injected into you by your organs when you were young and being made by, um, other tissues. So I just want to be clear. There's endogenous made by our own body and exogenous. Um, when you, in your case, injected or took in pill form, or we could talk about the various forms. First disclaimer is simple. I'm not a medical doctor, meaning I don't prescribe anything.

I'm a professor, so I profess things. And I'm happy to talk about this topic. I do want to make sure that at some point we have the important conversation, which is, I do think that many people start too young. And I even think there's some people who are older, meaning in their thirties and forties and fifties and sixties who don't need testosterone augmentation. They don't, there's evidence that people well into their eighties and nineties can maintain high testosterone output. There are a lot of factors. Okay. So I just want to frame it up that way also, so that as we wade into this topic,

I'm clear on my stance, which is I think these are powerful hormones that can do good, and done wrong, they can do harm. There's no question about that. And I'm not saying this to be super diplomatic. I'm saying this because for the 15-year-old or 17- 17 year old out there, they might look at the SEMA and think, Oh, you know, I bet you, you know, he's augmented or, but, or if it's all genetic and endogenous, then it's in

the extreme. And I think the key thing to remember as we walk into this is that it's not just about testosterone levels. It's about the balance between testosterone and the other hormones. But with that said, okay, all the caveats aside, with that said, testosterone has many effects throughout the body. The definition of a hormone is a substance that's released at one location in the body has locations in multiple places. It has slow and fast effects. It can actually even change gene expression because of the structure of the testosterone molecule or other steroid hormones like estrogen. It can pass through cell membranes

and you've got an outside of the cell membrane it can go through and then it can actually access the nuclear envelope, meaning it can go into the part of the cell that makes DNA and change which genes are expressed. This is often not discussed. We normally just think about receptors and binding to receptors, also gene expression.

However, at a psychological level, the predominant effect of testosterone is to make effort feel good. It's to make the organism, let's just stick with humans for now, more willing to lean into challenges of any kinds. Those challenges can be physical, like weight training, can be running, like running long distances, could be sprinting, could be school, could be a challenging relationship.

It could be even being the kindest person in the room if that takes effort, all right? So from a kind of a 10,000 mile up view, at any point, regardless of what's driving it, our mind, our psychology, can we can either be back on our heels, so to speak, feeling unmotivated or like life is bearing down in a place where we're okay. Or we can be center of mass forward, like you want to get after it, right? You really want to put in effort. You want to study for the exam, or you're willing to get back into an arena where you got an F or you failed, you came in last or third, if that's, you know, devastating for you. So testosterone is this universal currency of effort. And the way that it does that is by suppressing circuits in the brain that trigger anxiety and fear. And by activating circuits in the brain that trigger effort and goal seeking.

So it's two things. It's, you know, driving fast in a car isn't just about hitting the accelerator. It's also about not having your foot on the brake. In this case, the fear would be the brake, right? So everything in the brain and nervous system is a push and a pull and testosterone has this amazing effect of quieting the circuits in the brain that are responsible for fear and timidity and amplifying the circuits that are there for leaning in and being kind of center mass forward so let me ask you this because i think this is going to be a good place for us to start everyone's like i want more. I want to take stuff for more

testosterone. What are habits that people have these days that are super common that are that probably lower your testosterone? I mean, things like maybe not getting outside, et cetera. Just what are some simple things that people are probably doing a lot that aren't good for testosterone and activity? Yeah, I'm really glad that you asked that question first because I can attest from my own experience, but also from working with a number of friends and other individuals and consulting that you can achieve a really decent

to high testosterone level for you, an efficient one, one that serves you well, doing a lot of the right things correctly. And then, and only then, if there's a clinical need or there's a particular lifestyle or performance need, then it doesn't make sense to go down the route of prescription sources. So first things first, one bad night's sleep, no big deal. Two bad nights sleep, sleep, not so great. But when you are chronically sleep

deprived, meaning not enough quality or duration of sleep on a regular basis, or if your sleep patterns are irregular, your testosterone will suffer mostly because the molecule testosterone, excuse me, the molecule cortisol is synthesized from cholesterol and testosterone is also synthesized from cholesterol and they compete. So if your cortisol is going up, your testosterone is generally going down, more or less. So if you're sleep deprived, cortisol is up and testosterone starts going down.

One, again, one great night out, no big deal. So get good at sleeping. What does that mean? Everyone has different sleep needs. Some people are night owls. Some people are morning people. Some people need six hours of sleep to feel great. Some people need nine.

It varies by age. It varies by circumstance. Just really quick. This podcast isn't about sleep. I've talked a lot about this on my podcast and elsewhere, but there are two or three things that you can do daily to make sure that you're pushing yourself toward the right patterns of sleep. First of all, get some sunlight in your eyes first thing in the morning.

I cannot emphasize this enough. Ideally do that while walking or being in motion. You want to run, run, but sunglasses off, corrective lenses like eyeglasses or contacts are fine. How much light, et cetera, well, it depends on where you live, time of year, a lot of factors, but 10 to 30 minutes. get outside. Even if you're checking your phone, get outside, get sunlight in your eyes. It's going to set you up to fall asleep about 16 hours later. It's going to cause the cortisol

release, which happens every 24 hours and is non-negotiable to come early in the day, which is going to prime you for energy and output. It's really, really good to do. Don't do it through a window. Don't do it through a car windshield. That's the number one thing. That far and away is the number one thing. Also, sunlight exposure to the eyes and to the face and to the body, the upper part of the body. People are always discouraged that it's not the entire body,

but has been shown in a recent study that was just published in Cell Reports. There's a really nice study in humans that it increases testosterone in men and in women to get that couple hours of sunlight a day. Now, a couple hours is a lot. And during the year, you often don't have the opportunity, but get as much sun as you can in the morning and throughout the day. The other one is avoid bright lights in your eyes between 10 PM and 4 AM. A little bit of light, fine.

You wear blue blockers, fine, but it suppresses dopamine. And as we'll talk about later, dopamine and testosterone are close cousins. They hang out a lot, right? They're like Nesima and Mark. They're hanging out a lot. I don't know who's testosterone and who's dopamine, but I think you're both high testosterone, high dopamine. But we'll talk about that relationship, not your relationship, but we'll talk about, maybe we will, we'll talk about that relationship, not your relationship. We'll talk about, maybe we will. We'll talk about that relationship between dopamine and testosterone, but try and avoid being on the phone in the middle of the night. I have trouble with this, just in full disclosure, I'll wake up at three in the morning. And sometimes the best way for

me to fall back asleep is to do something kind of mindless on the phone, but try and really dim the lights on, dim the screen. That's a big one because it suppresses dopamine through this pathway from the eye to a structure called the habenula. This leads to learning issues. It doesn't necessarily hit the next day, but it causes problems. And then there is the training factor, right?

So regular training of, we can talk about the different kinds that will stimulate testosterone, but Duncan French, director of the UFC Performance Center, he's actually going to be coming on my podcast. We've already recorded and he's amazing. Duncan, when he was a PhD student at University of Connecticut Storrs,

did the science on this, actually measured serum testosterone from different types of training. And these 10 sets of 10 protocols or six sets of 10 with two minutes rest in between and adjusting the weight so that you always hit that 10 reps uh for these for the full six sets or 10 sets so that's a powerful protocol has to be big whole body movements like squats and deadlifts and bench presses and this kind of thing you see a rise in testosterone from a program like that?

Oh yeah. And it's significant. German volume. The Germans knew. Well, and the reason is interesting. So as a neuroscientist, I heard that and I pushed Duncan a little bit harder and I said, great, that's a really interesting result. But why, why is it that doing that raises testosterone?

Like what's the signal to the pituitary or the testes? What is happening to do that? Turns out that anytime that you engage the motor neurons along this chain of neurons in the middle of your spine that and you subject them to heavy loads there's a signal that's sent from the brain to the testes to trigger the release of testosterone right we don't often ask the mechanistic thing because people like i don't care don't just tell me how to do it but then when you start thinking about how it's actually accomplished in the body, you know, the brain

and body need to coordinate effort and hormone. In this case, the hormone testosterone being the hormone that lends itself to doing more effort makes effort feel good. It needs to know when to be secreted, right? It doesn't just happen. And so this is a stimulus where when you put yourself under heavy work, the body responds by saying, okay, I'm going to activate the systems of the body to do more work in the future. Now, it was really key that these workouts be done about two or three times a week, but not more often. And Duncan tells me you can do other workouts separate from those workouts. But these workouts were just the six sets of 10 with two minutes rest in between after a warmup, of course. What was the exercise?

In this case, it was squats. And they were working in the, starting off at about the 85% of one rep maximum range. There's some information that they think squats in particular might, but is that true? Yes. Squats can raise testosterone? Squats and deadlifts.

Any, because what you need is the signal to the brain to then signal to the testes have to do with thrusting the hips uh it probably has to do with hip hinging and using the entire upper torso this entire podcast by the way i'm gonna say i'm gonna talk i'm gonna mention these scientific um facts i was kidding and mark is gonna and mark is gonna make these uh comments and my and my job is to is And my job is to double down on the scientific component of it. But you're absolutely right. And so I think getting good sleep, and we talked about a couple ways to do that. Also, I understand people are really into low-carbohydrate diets.

But if you can't sleep well on a low-carbohydrate diet, you might consider eating some carbohydrates in the evening, which is what I do to get really great sleep. Even if, you know, it means that you have to depart from a certain diet protocol, getting great sleep is terrific. Now, some people sleep really well on a low carb diet. Some people don't. And then there's the supplementation game around um around sleep and and the three things that work really well that i feel have the biggest margins for safety again check with your doctor but uh and that work better than most other things are magnesium threonate with a t it's really easy to find or bisglycinate would be the alternative to that one those cross the blood-brain barrier apigenin a-p-i-g-e-n-i-n i can list these out for you guys uh 50 milligrams of apigenin, A-P-I-G-E-N-I-N. I can list these out for you guys.

50 milligrams of apigenin, 145 milligrams of magnesium and theanine in combination, not for everybody, but for about 85% of people, really helps them get much better sleep. Has transformed the sleep of now thousands of people who've taken that combination. If you have sleepwalking issues or you have night terrors, drop the theanine. And this would be taken 30 to 60 minutes before sleep. And I'm not mentioning particular brands,

just shop for price. I also say that so that it doesn't seem like I'm hawking any particular supplement brand. It's really- Is there research to back this up that this works well for sleep? And if so, what does it do? Yeah. So there's good research on each of those compounds separately magnesium 3 and 8 increases gaba transmission in the brain gaba is an inhibitory neurotransmitter it tends to turn off thinking more or less you know in kind of loose terms apigenin works through a slightly different mechanism it's more along the lines of a chloride channel which shuts down your forebrain again a lot of falling asleep is not making plans, not thinking about what's happening next. It's letting time and space just get kind of drifty. Mark standing by too. I really, it's, it's that bad. I trained this morning. I, I, I,

we got them deodorized. We can talk about pheromones and hormones related to olfactory scents later. I do want to talk about that. because I hate those fucking things. My wife has them all over the house. These smelly things all over the house. And I took, we had like 14 of them. I took all of them one day and I put them on the counter. I'm normally pretty calm. I said, I'm going to smash all of these. Can you like condense this

down to have like two or three in an area where I am not walking or something. They drive me crazy. And then people walk into our house and they're like, it smells so nice. And I or something, they drive me crazy. And then people walk into our house and they're like, it smells so nice. And I'm like, you motherfuckers. Those things.

I hate all of them. I think I'm pretty sensitive to smell. So you and Kelly Starrett, the first time I ever went to Kelly's house, met him, we trained. I was with Brian McKenzie, who I'm sure you guys know.

Went there and I, I was really we trained hard and i i smelled terrible i smelled terrible afterwards and kelly kept backing up and i said at one point because we went into and at one point i said listen i'm really sorry i always need a shower after i train because i do tend to have a pretty strong odor and he said you know i i honestly think i'm gonna puke oh and it turns out that kelly has a really strong um puke reflex and uh so kelly and we became friends so kelly yeah i'm really sorry so we communicate by text mostly kelly and i um i'm working on this um hey but i'm the guy with

the nickname smelly yeah oh that's true yeah um you're gonna see us fidgeting a lot though we move a lot during the podcast great great just but do interrupt me because i i have a kind of scientific Tourette's i'll just start blurting out scientific facts but along the lines of smell and odors that um this is not what i would consider a testosterone augmentation thing um but it turns out that the smell of this was this study was done using the smell of women's tears and their partners would smell their tears. Okay. They can't consciously register anything.

I love where this is going, by the way. And the smell of women's tears lowers testosterone in men. Oh yes. And this is, and so, and if anyone wants to look this up, cause I don't want to throw anything out there onto the internet like this

without backing up. There's a study done by Noam Sobel's group at the Weizmann Institute in Israel. It's kind of like the Harvard of, of Israel. It's an amazing, he's a terrific scientist. He used to be at UC Berkeley and then he moved to Israel. I hate to be so childish, but what about the smell of your own balls? They researched that or sweat? Like I'm being, I'm being kind of honest, like just a exertion.

Like does that, the smell of your own exertion. I wonder if that – So I'm going to answer that question. I've got my notebook here. I can't believe I'm going to write this down. Smell of your own nuts. I'm just going to draw them. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Hey, at least they're shaved. Left and right. So the – so Gnam's group showed this. This was published in Science Magazine. You can look it up. Sobel, if you Google Sobel, tears, testosterone. Very interesting. So there's some social signaling going on through smells all the time.

And actually when two people meet, this is amazing. Noam Sobel's group has also done this experiment. When two people meet. So they meet, they shake hands, man or woman doesn't matter. Shake hands. Guess what happens within the first 30 seconds? We wipe it on our face. Now it's a little bit different because of everything going on in the world and people avoiding each other and doing the germ free handshake, knuckle bump and all that. But we all do that. So all animals are sharing chemical signals and humans do it too. And it's a fascinating aspect of our biology

that is overlooked and it makes people a little uncomfortable to think that we could be signaling to each other by smell, but we can detect stress, we can detect hormone levels. Now, here's an interesting one. We're going down this rabbit hole for just a second because if it's okay. Men rate women as more attractive both by face and their smell as more attractive when women are in the pre-ovulatory phase of their menstrual cycle. So if you give the smell of women's sweat or skin from a time when they're pre-ovulatory, men rate them as more attractive and their faces is more attractive.

That effect is eliminated if women are on oral contraception. Why? Because oral contraception in women is estrogen, which blunts the testosterone bump in women that triggers, it's estrogen and testosterone that primes libido and ovulation.

I mean, there's a cascade of things. Okay, You can look at all that perfume is covering up natural scent. Yes. And so the perfume companies are, have, you know, fallen over themselves to try and create these delicious scents, but you know, all this was worked out, um, through hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. Now this turns out to be really interesting because what it means is that, that somebody smell is actually a trigger for our own hormone response. And the last study, and then we'll get back to more on testosterone, is that there's actually classical conditioning of your own testosterone response. And this is to answer your question about the smell of your own sweat, regardless of what part of your body it comes from. So the experiment has been done.

It's pure Pavlovian conditioning. of what part of your body it comes from. So the experiment has been done. It's pure Pavlovian conditioning. You take an animal or a human and you measure their baseline testosterone. Then you expose them to some odor. It could be peppermint or it could be whatever, smell of the athletic greens I'm drinking, doesn't matter.

That does not change testosterone levels, okay? Then you have them mate or be in the presence of their mate and you bring the scent along. So you're pairing the scent with an experience that's known to be associated with elevated testosterone. Okay. It's just like Pavlov's dogs, right? Give the food, ring the bell. Okay.

This kind of thing. Then you take away the mating and you just smell the substance and testosterone goes up almost as much as mating itself. What does this mean? This means that if you associate a particular smell and does have to be a smell with a particular testosterone elevating event, could be training, could be the smell of the gym, could be smell of your own sweat. If you're in a romantic relationship, it could be smell of your partner or their shirt or some other article of their clothing that will increase your testosterone. This is the way that the, the, the nervous system has been wired up is to anticipate things. Now there is a well-known

habit of people leaving clothing at each other's houses, right? This is a well-known thing. I don't think this is new information, but you will discover if you are, when you're young and single, regardless how long, that somehow articles of clothing just start getting left behind. And that behavior may not be conscious. That behavior may actually be a subconscious behavior

of marking territory. That is not necessarily that different than other animals marking territory and so marking of territory through articles of clothing isn't just about making sure that someone else sees it or you know whose toothbrush is that um you know people's undergarments and things like that it's what couples who spend a lot of time apart you know people who travel overseas for military. Oftentimes the spouse will say, will you leave me a shirt or something and just their smell. So this is real stuff. It goes deep into the, into our biology.

Anyway, I hope I answered your question, Mark, without having to answer it directly. People can read between the lines. You know, I, we're going to get back to what you mentioned about what we were talking about, about habits that help increase testosterone. And this actually, I've always wondered why do people go on the Internet to purchase women's underwear? Like, you know, because women, they sell that online. And now that kind of makes a little bit of sense. I didn't know this. You didn't know this?

No. Women sell their underwear online. They're worn underwear. And people purchase it. Oh, I get it from a vending machine, depending on what country. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, smells are very powerful cues. You know, our original senses were chemical senses. So we go into any environment. Imagine if you had no vision and no hearing, right? Unfortunately, some people suffer from that, but you have no vision and no hearing and you enter a room and

you have to decide who's a friend, who's going to try and fight me, who should I mate with, what's food, what's poisonous. That was all chemical. And so we normally think about chemical like odors, but also taste and smell are very closely related. And then there's chemical sensing on the skin. So those signals converge to create an internal representation of how safe, how friendly, how desirable a given environment is. And we are very visually driven animals now.

Of course, I mean most of the human brain is – 40 percent of it is dedicated to vision in some way or another, even if it's vision and movement. But chemical signaling is a very real thing. But chemical signaling is a very real thing. And one of the ways that we remember and the ways that we forget is we remember by associating smells with particular people and environments. And we forget often by over time losing that sense. A lot of people can remember the smell of their, it sounds weird, but their grandmother's hands or their grandmother's kitchen, or when somebody passes away, we can, we can yearn for their smell. Actually, I had a bulldog for 11 years. It was time for him to go. So it was appropriate timing, but yeah, he smelled like a bulldog. Two days after I put him down, I missed his smell so much, you know, cause I think

that was, I mean, I lived with the guy, you know, and he smelled like a bulldog. And so there's this deep wiring of, of smell and the smell system and the hormone system are tightly, tightly wound so much. So, and these results are a little controversial, but I think it's been, um, borne out now over time that like the synchronization of women's menstrual cycles can be shifted by smell of other women, you know, for, for women. Um, there are a number of these effects that exist out there, whether or not they're true pheromones or not as controversial, but yeah. Um, olfactory stuff is powerful. So if there's somebody or something that really gets you amped up, you know, uh, you know, you could use that as testosterone augmentation,

but probably with all the testosterone that you've secreted in your gym, just walking in there subconsciously is triggering your system for work. It's not just about what you're seeing. Yeah. Right. I mean, that's your, that's your, that's your, that's your place to use effort to reshape your mind and body. So testosterone helps make effort feel good. Yes. Movement and or other things like maybe smell can maybe trigger dopamine. If like something was being cooked that you like the smell of can food, the smell of food, can that encourage dopamine and therefore maybe encourage testosterone?

And like there to me, there's feels to be something primal about like eating meat. But I don't know if there's any research or information on this, but even something like a tomahawk steak, like if anyone's ever tried this before, you take a tomahawk steak and you grab the bone and you actually bite it, or you do this with like buffalo wings or something like that, and you tear it away. But to me, there's something like that feels maybe like innate in that. That feels way different than biting into like a Subway sandwich. Is there any correlation, like when you choose something hard like that, and when you're eating certain things, does it maybe potentially testosterone or dopamine or what's going on in our bodies?

Yeah. Very interesting question. So first of all, along the lines of chewing and that, you know, we've evolved now all these foods, baby foods and soft foods and sandwiches. And I will be happy to go on record saying it's terrible. It's really harming us as a species. There's a great book about this called Jaws, a hidden epidemic. It's by two people from Stanford, Paul Ehrlich and Sandra Kahn. She's in the orthodontia side of things. He's a biologist with a foreword by Robert Sapolsky and a introduction by Jared Diamond.

So these are heavy hitters, serious academics and scientists. And it looks at how soft foods change the shape of the palate and the airways. This has been discussed a little bit by James Nestor's book. But so nasal breathing,, mouth breathing bad, unless you're talking or eating. Also chewing hard foods has been shown to be very important for the shaping of the sinuses and the facial structure and jaw structure.

Okay, so they've done twin studies. There's some amazing pictures in that book of identical twins raised apart where one had access to soft foods. The other had to do a lot of chewing. People who do a lot of chewing have beautiful tooth structure. Animals in the animal kingdom have beautiful tooth structure. They don't go to the dentist.

Okay. Just amazing. And when you start thinking about soft foods and you get this elongation of the face, the sinuses drop, you get allergies, these kinds of things. That book is incredible and will convince you that doing a lot of chewing, which is mostly done on meats and pulling things off of bone and really chewing a lot is excellent for your mouth health, your airway health, your nasal passages, your immune system. And I'm not just listing these things off. You know, I'm very careful about not just, you know, throwing out little factoids. It's my understanding that like stem cells released or something too.

Oh, interesting. Well, you know, the cues for that, the body and brain are healthy come from what you're ingesting and how you're ingesting it. And also the state of your gastric juices. Actually later, maybe we'll get into a little discussion about peptides, right? GPC one five seven gastric peptric peptide, that people take for healing and healing tissues. It's part of a gastric peptide cocktail that signals to the rest of the body that the immune system is strong. So gastric peptides as a way to induce healing

is actually, it makes a lot of rational sense. So chewing your food, being a nasal breather, even while you run, Brian McKenzie's talked a lot about this and others So chewing your food, being a nasal breather, even while you run, Brian McKenzie's talked a lot about this and others, you know, adapting so that you can nasal breathe during most exercise, unless you're talking or eating. Um, at first you'll feel like it's hard to put out that really strong effort. And pretty soon you'll start to realize you have much better aerobic capacity when you're nasal breathing. Um, what I can never pronounce his name correctly. Elliot Koskojiji the guy who ran the marathon in

record time okay yeah kip koji sorry uh kip chogey thank you um nasal breathe most all of it really oh yeah yeah most all of it now he's at the elite level so he's got a he's got to shift gears and do what he needs to do um very powerful tool so you you asked about dopamine. So what is dopamine? Dopamine is a neuromodulator. It works a little bit faster than a hormone like testosterone. It encourages certain neural circuits in the brain and body to be active and others to be quiet. And it tends to activate the circuits that are involved in shifting our perception toward outside goals, things beyond the confines of our skin. There are other neuromodulators like serotonin, oxytocin. They're more about what you have in your immediate possession.

I don't need anymore. It's the gratitude, love, holding a child. It's all the good stuff of what you already have. Dopamine is about desire and effort. stuff of what you already have. Dopamine is about desire and effort. And just by saying that and knowing what you know, know about testosterone, it should be obvious why dopamine and testosterone are close cousins, right? They kind of run a shuttle race on effort where dopamine gets things going and there's a kind of quick out the gates. It's the sprinter and testosterone is that low gear engine that can keep things going over long periods of time.

And so I think that most people don't realize that, but the sites in the brain where dopamine are released are very similar to the sites in the brain that trigger the release of hormones that activate testosterone. So luteinizing hormone, gonadotropin releasing hormone, this is, you know, sort of a pathway.

It's not sort of, it's a pathway from hypothalamus brain to pituitary. Pituitary releases, luteinizing hormone goes down to the testes or the ovaries and stimulates testosterone. There's also follicle-stimulating hormone and all that. So it's always brain, pituitary, pituitary, gonads. And the brain part of it is mediated largely by dopamine. So when you desire something and it's outside the confines of your skin, it's going to take effort to get there, whether or not it's a lift, whether it's a financial goal, whether or not it's somebody you want to date, whether or not it's a degree you want to get or any goal, right? So how do you take that desire and shift it into action?

Well, there has to be a hormone signal and a neural signal, excuse me, and those two things work together. There has to be a hormone signal and a neural signal, excuse me, and those two things work together. Now, a lot of people don't realize this, but dopamine is actually the precursor to adrenaline, right? So now you're starting to get the logic. There's a precursor. So this molecule actually can be converted into epinephrine or adrenaline. Same thing. Those two, epinephrine and adrenaline, are the same thing. And so now you've got adrenaline is like the gas it's like the fuel and so now it's effort it's desire it's pursuing things outside

the confines of your skin and so then you sit back you say what is testosterone doing well testosterone is involved in this intricate dance of taking any organism but in this case let's just think about humans and that organism says you know i need things i want things i desire things more than what i have right now it's the anti-complacency pathway if you will and it pushes all your systems toward that pursuit and there's the extreme of this is useful as an example it's's not something I recommend, but drugs that increase dopamine massively like cocaine and amphetamine put people in a state of constant pursuit. It's a very disorganized pursuit,

right? But it puts them in this constant pursuit of things beyond the confines of their skin. Contrast that to drugs of abuse that like the opioids, those tend to make people not pursue anything except more opioids. It makes them very complacent and stationary. There's nothing about pursuit related to that pathway. So the nervous system has a currency and that of effort and that's testosterone.

It has a currency of reward and drive and motivation and that's dopamine. And so we talk, we normally hear about currencies like, you know, Bitcoin or Ethereum or the dollar or the Euro, but in the brain there's only one currency of motivation, and that's dopamine. Now, real quick, I wanted to make sure that there was nothing else that was skipped over because you mentioned as far as habits, like bad habits that aren't doing well for your testosterone. You mentioned exercise, lack of sleep. Yeah, so get the morning light, avoid bright light in the evening, late at night and throughout the night. So that's a, so there's a do and a don't there. Train hard for, you know, 45 minutes to 60 minutes, two to four times a week. Right. I think that's reasonable. So warm up and then go hard for 45 to 60 minutes. You could do the Duncan French protocol or you could do something similar.

But past 60 minutes, unless you have superb recovery capacity, if you try and push for two hours at max capacity, you will have an increase in cortisol and a decrease in testosterone. If you rest three days, you'll be fine. If you're one of those genetic freaks that can do that repeatedly, fine.

But for most people, really intense effort for 45 to 60 minutes, maybe 75, maybe 90. Again, it's not like a gate shuts, right? A few, you know, some ab work at the end of your workout or a little neck work or something isn't going to send cortisol into the roof. But if you finish your squats and then you deadlift and then you leg press and then you're up into the two hour range, you're your squats and then you, then you deadlift and then you leg press and then you, and you're up into the two hour range, you,

you're going to drop your testosterone. No question. Yeah. Okay. So do that two to four times a week. Then also it is important. And this is often overlooked to get some level two zone, two cardio, two to four times a week. This is the reason it's overlooked is that people forget how testosterone

is actually liberated into the body to do what it does, both for the brain and for the muscles. And that's all mediated by vasculature. And so you need your cardiovascular system working well. Well, people say, well, no, I know guys who are just blasting tea and they don't do any cardio. Okay, but that's different

because they're overriding the system. Right. But for most people, they shy away from doing cardio. Now, I do think that the evidence that sprinting that hit type workouts can increase testosterone is quite good. And those sort of serve as a more like a weight training workout though. I'm talking about zone two cardio. So it's a little bit uncomfortable to have a conversation.

Watch one of Mark's posts where he's out there. I am pushing it, walking and he's talking and you can tell he can get the sentences out, but he's right on that edge where if he went any faster or harder, you know, he might have to catch his breath. Keel over. Right. So that's twice a week. Jiu Jitsu.

Okay. And that brings up another thing. If you really want to get into the behavioral tools, competition induces the release of testosterone, even if you lose. So there was stuff written in the early nineties about, Oh, you know, day traders who, if they lose money, their testosterone drops, the evidence is okay. It's not great. Winds definitely increased testosterone. Sure. But competition is great. So it could be competition with yourself, but inter species competition, um, intra and inter species competition.

So the hunters understand what I'm talking about. I'm not a hunter, but Andy Galpin, you know, he's really into hunting. And, uh, I remember Joe Rogan was telling me on the podcast I did with him last was when I went on his podcast, he was talking about hunting in this. This is a primal relationship to to the world. Now, most of us, including me, aren't aren't hunters. So what what does this look like? It's jujitsu. It's soccer.

It's even playing pool. You know, competition is good and be willing to lose. I mean, one of the one of the things that we have to get comfortable with is losing and still feeling the lift that we got from competing. What about something along the lines of like competing against yourself, like maybe putting together like a puzzle or something,

something a little bit more like, I guess, relaxing. Yeah. Anytime that you have to push against some resistance, external or internal, you are in a great place to increase dopamine and testosterone

this i deal with this challenge on a regular basis so i wake up in the morning there's so many things that are easy and distracting or just boring and fill the time but i've learned that if i can struggle with something get a paragraph out on a book or get through a hard analysis for a paper or something like that, really struggling with it. When you finish it, you feel great. And my colleague at Stanford, Anna Lemke, um, has a great book. I'll plug it since it is so great. It's called dopamine nation. And she talks about, it's a lot of, it's about addiction, but she has a chapter in there about pain and how ice baths and workouts and things like that when you engage in pain and i

don't mean physically damaging pain but pain like training and those kinds of things that afterwards there's a long release of dopamine much longer than you would get from any drug leg extension came to mind right away the amount of pain what is it about the leg i don't know it feels horrible i feel like never have i felt so miserable looking at my own toes. You're just like, and if you're lucky, you see your own toes, right?

Yeah. What is the burn is unbelievable. Yeah. Burning maybe some dopamine up there. I don't know what, right. So the pain that you experienced then, or from an ice bath or something,

yeah, it's going to carry over into a long release of dopamine. And there's a, actually I plotted it out. Um, cause I'm a nerd. Um, there it is. I was, um, going to do a into a long release of dopamine. And there's a, actually I plotted it out because I'm a nerd. There it is. I was going to do a post about this later, that the dopamine starts about 30 minutes after you cease this painful experience. Again, non-tissue damaging pain.

What happens from there? That dopamine continues to rise for until two and a half hours later, and then it starts to taper off, but it doesn't go below baseline for almost 24 hours. When it's, when it starts to come back down, what else comes back up? Maybe there's something else, you know,

cause there's like a lot of yin and yang with all these things, right? Yeah. So as you start to lose that dopamine increase, there isn't necessarily a compensation unless it's something that has a huge release. So a good example would be the push, the yin and yang. Is it yin and yang?

Yang. Sounds good enough. Yang. Okay. Sorry. Yin and yang. Of dopamine is a hormone called prolactin. Now, prolactin is a really interesting hormone.

Okay. It is associated with milk letdown in females. It's part of the lactation pathway, oxytocin. And men, right? And men. And expecting fathers, their prolactin goes up and it helps them put on body fat, retain body fat from the same caloric load, right? Same caloric load in the presence of prolactin, more body fat.

I want to name a few names, but there are a few people out there in the fitness industry that are like, no way. It's always calories in, calories out. Mostly true. But if you read PubMed past 2005, then what you find is that there are hormone effects that can override or at least adjust that equation. Okay. So this is to prepare parents of all species for care of the young. Now,

prolactin and dopamine have a very magical relationship during mating and reproduction. So desire to mate high test, it increases dopamine and testosterone. Okay. Mating itself. And let's just be, you know,

we're always saying, I always do the disclaimer. It's always, anytime I talk about mating, you know, we're always saying, I always do the disclaimer. It's always, anytime I talk about mating behavior in humans, I'm always saying age appropriate, consensual, context appropriate, species appropriate. Okay. So under those circumstances, dopamine is released. So during sex, dopamine is released. But after orgasm and ejaculation,

this is key because there's a lot of questions about this on the internet. Prolactin levels go up and dopamine levels drop. Why? Well, pair bonding in our species is very important. And if we were the type of species where immediately after mating, we were going off seeking another mate, a lot of our social structures wouldn't look the way that they do.

Okay. There are species of animals that just mate, mate, mate, mate, mate, mate, mate with as many as they can. But even there, the capacity to mate is set by how much prolactin is around. It inhibits further sexual behavior. How do we know this? Well, things that blunt prolactin allow for a shorter refractory period in males. Hey, now.

Yeah. So we could talk about what some of those are, actually. So you can – That's the whole reason why I'm right here. Right. So there are things that inhibit prolactin, and actually in the bodybuilding community, one reason I'm always curious about the bodybuilding community is that they go to the extreme and give you examples of – they illustrate basic biology by showing you the extremes.

Okay? And there are a lot of lessons that we can learn from the extremes in human behavior. Right? Alex Honnold, free climbing, El Cap. I don't think anyone should go do that besides him. And I don't even know that he should do it again. He's from up here actually, near here. But that illustrates something about fear. And it illustrates something about the human mind.

Right. So it's an extreme example. It can inform us. Well, there are anti there are pro dopaminergic drugs that a lot of bodybuilders take to suppress prolactin. And those tend to make people somewhat hypersexual and able to to, you know, basically to have sex over and over again in the short term. However, it can damage those neurons in those pathways. And then those people end up with trouble down the line. There are ways to blunt prolactin that are safer and more straightforward. There are two ways. One is behavioral. One is pharmacologic. Vitamin B6, 200 to 400 milligrams will reduce prolactin.

So taken after sex, it will, in animals and in humans, will reduce the refractory period for males. Now, with females, the whole sex and reproductive axis is completely different, right? Because there's a whole different set of pathways. So it's not quite the same way. Now, because right now we're focused mainly on testosterone in males, but we'll circle back to what this means in females as well. So prolactin is responsible for the refractory period, right? But it's also responsible for the crash that people feel after achieving a big goal. So when you achieve a big goal and you think, oh, I just want more of that, more of that, more of that.

Well, okay. that's common, but also common is somebody getting a gold medal or hitting a thousand pound squat or getting a degree or some big milestone. And then the next day feeling kind of low. Well, that low is because that your dopamine depleted and your prolactin levels are up. But it's important to recognize what that low is

and that it's transient. And the thing to do is basically to say, you know, it's actually good sometimes in life to come off the gas pedal. The dopamine will come back as long as I don't keep pursuing it right now. Anna talks about this in her book, Dopamine Nation. And people who take a drug or engage in an activity

that releases a ton of dopamine. So think pre-workout, best workout of your life, best night of your life. Think about everything that could happen that night. And then the next day, you're going to feel great, but that glow will dissipate. And then you start wanting to seek that peak again. And what you don't realize and what Anna's work is so beautifully illustrated is that the next time you have that same set of behaviors, same experience, dopamine's a little less and a little less and a little less. But the pain side pushes back a little bit more, a little bit more, and a little bit more.

This is what triggers addiction in drugs like cocaine that trigger massive increases in dopamine. People are always trying to get back to that point. So the key is after you achieve a big win, soak up the big win, expect there to be a dip, learn how to be comfortable with that dip, let the adaptation occur, and then get after it again, set your new goal, et cetera. A lot of people get on this treadmill and it's, and when we look at people like it's never enough money, it's never enough relationships, it's never enough clothing, it's never enough whatever, it's never enough weight on the bar. They're actually limiting their long-term progress and, and probably their short-term

progress too. So that's important. So you asked about behavior. So we talked about the ones for sleep. We talked about training a certain way. If you're going to chase dopamine and testosterone releasing activities you have to know when to come off the gas pedal if you want to continue to be able to trigger the release of dopamine and

testosterone what about chasing it in a different Avenue yes so sounds like it probably be pretty healthy because you might start something kind of new that you're not as good at or something like like like, I don't know, let's say you, you're, you're lifting for years and then you switch over and you're like, ah, I want to work more on my cardiovascular. You want to run more. Right. Like that. Well, I'm so glad you asked that because the beauty of that is the chances are after, after

how much have you, what was your maximum squat? Thousand 80 squat. Thousand 80 pounds. Goodness gracious. Yeah. So after that you started some running and I'm guessing that you weren't running as well as you're running now. Right?

Yeah. It took a long time to even took a long time to even transition into walking. It took me like five years to, to be able to even like run the way that I'm running now. Right. So, so what you can then see from that example is that you are, you were and anyone is able to get dopamine and testosterone release from shifting your goal to something where a smaller increment actually leads to an equivalent amount of dopamine and testosterone. people get into is they mess this up. The brain is powerful in the, in both ways. It's a double edged sword and they start messing up this whole powerful system. And they start saying, oh, well,

I'm not Elliot because go G or, uh, I can't pronounce his name. I'm not Elliot Kachogi. And therefore why walk? Why run? Right. Why do the sprints? Cause I'm, you know, I'm not, uh, I was going to say Ben Johnson, but I don't know if he's the best example. You know that Michael Johnson. So why Sprint? Well, do it because it's good for you, but also because it gives you an opportunity, as you said, to diversify your dopamine testosterone portfolio. It's really cool to be up here and to see your incredible gym. I've seen you guys a lot.

I watch your podcast, but also to see the incredible business and the facility you've built and the people, what's really cool is the people are all happy and working and getting along and it's a beautiful thing. And so you've, you've won in multiple domains, right? So that's actually a great way to continue to be able to produce these hormones at good levels. Yeah. Excuse me at high levels. The beauty of being a human being is that you can diversify your portfolio right if you're an elk or a lion there are only a few behaviors that are going to trigger these pathways five or six and life for animals in the wild is very stressful where am i going to eat tonight where what will i eat tonight will i get to mate this season do i have to fight to mate i haven't eaten in three days do i and i'm going to fight to mate? I haven't eaten in three days. Do I, and I'm going to fight to mate, you know, these kinds of things, being a human being, we often forget is, is pretty cush

in comparison. And so we can select you. It could be poetry. You know, it could be a business. It could be a thousand 80 pound lift. Um, you, we have the opportunity to select and you don't want to select an infinite number of them, but you also don't want to get to the point where you're chasing a goal so much that your testosterone and your dopamine are so latched onto that goal that if you fail by 5%, you're miserable. I mean, we know high performing people that kill themselves because of falling short on a, on something. And that just tells you that this portfolio is referring to, it was not diversified enough. They had all their eggs in one basket, which especially in the United States, we love to encourage that because we love to see

the Alex Honnold's and the Tiger Woods and the, you know, but you know, for the most people, that's dangerous. And anytime I see a super high performer, when I see something about their life crashing, I get no pleasure out of seeing that. I just think, wow, you know, they funneled all of this into one thing. And that's when it's pretty cool when you see an athlete who also has a business or has a great family or multiple things, all of the above. Then you're like, okay, they get it. They understand these mechanisms without really understanding the underlying mechanisms. You know, from what you were talking about as far as dopamine and testosterone, this made me really curious, and you're the guy who would really know about this.

Now, the Internet started getting all wild. I think, Mark, you know I'm going to be going with this. The Internet started going wild around like 2005, 2006 or whatever. But I think millennials are the first generation that we could really test what would happen when young kids got their hands on internet porn. Right. And it makes me curious because like it's dopamine, like these young,

young individuals are chasing dopamine to be perfectly blunt. I was addicted to porn from the age of 11 to 24. That was the first time I got on it. And I was like trying for a long time to get off of that because I noticed how it was affecting me. And then I was also reading some stuff on how porn affects the male brain and all this. And I was like, Oh God,

this is bad. But it took me a long time to get off of that because it was quite literally, I was addicted to that and I could see how it was negatively affecting me. Now I'm curious, do you know if there's any like how that affects individuals, men, as far as testosterone, if there's a negative thing, a positive thing. Cause I think I heard you talk about like, like first for people that were viewing, I think the act of sex, there's like a 10% increase, but I think there's like long-term disadvantages to that. Correct? Absolutely. And I think there's like long-term disadvantages to that, correct?

And I think this conversation is now finally starting to emerge in the scientific and academic literature. I mean with no judgment whatsoever, right? Again, I'm not here to – it's not a moral thing. I'm just talking about what I do is I look at things through the lens of biology and in particular through neuroscience, but some other fields as well. We have to take a step back and now knowing what we know about testosterone and dopamine and all these things and ask, you know, what is pornography doing to the brain? Well, first of all, it's triggering the release of dopamine and in the short term testosterone by the observation of sex, not actually engaging in human contact. So think about the young brain being significantly more plastic and willing to rewire than the

adult brain. Absolutely. There's no question about it. It's hyperplastic. Yeah. And of course it can wire rewire again, but you think about somebody who engages in a lot of porn watching right watching porn and that person is getting dopamine and

testosterone increases by observing sex and not actually by engaging in human contact okay so that's concerning right and they're and obviously that people vary but that should come as no surprise that a lot of these people have trouble with romantic interactions when they do happen, right? Because their brain isn't conditioned to respond to those, right? And there's variation there I'm sure and these are private matters. So there aren't good data because there aren't laboratory experiments that you could do on this sort of thing that someone will probably do those experiments eventually. But also dopamine seeking is what triggers the increase in testosterone. But as we just talked about it with repeated dopamine seeking or triggering of dopamine release, it starts getting diminished,

diminished, diminished. So pretty soon that behavior is not causing the release of testosterone. Now people are just doing it compulsively to try and get some little droplet of dopamine out of their brain. I personally think that porn and the availability of porn is a real detriment to the developing brain, especially to the developing brain. Yeah. Now, it sounds like you rescued the behavior. Yeah. And it takes some discipline, right, I imagine. And it's one of those things that it's also anxiety-less compared to dating and relationships

where people are vulnerable on both sides and have to negotiate things like, you know, consent and timing and, you know, and communication and all the things that are really hard to do but are essential to do. That's key. So I think, uh, pornography is a serious issue. And because of the way that taps into these very primitive systems, it's as serious in my mind as some of the other drugs of abuse, like the, the opioid crisis and talked about cell phones. You ever noticed that when you get on a phone and you're scrolling Instagram, it's like a lot of fun. Like this stuff is cool. You're seeing people. And then sometimes you're on there and like, this doesn't feel good, but I'm doing it anyway. I'm just doing

it. That's exactly how people talk about their drug use. That's exactly how people talk about alcohol use. That's exactly how people talk about gambling. You imagine this high, but the high doesn't show up and that's your dopamine depleted. You need to take some time away from it and then come back and then you can enjoy it again. Now with pornography, it's a slippery slope, right? There's also a whole aspect of pornography, which is that if people are pursuing pornography and they're not pursuing relationships, there is the potential that they reach their twenties and thirties and they are truly dysfunctional in terms of it. Look,

every species has two major goals, protect the young and make more of itself. You know, whether or not you decide to have children or not is a, is a personal issue. I personally don't have children. I may someday, but every species protects its young.

The, the maternal aggression is amazing, right? A mother protecting its young there's nothing like it in the animal kingdom actually that's not triggered by testosterone that's triggered by estrogen which is interesting but the parents of every species try and protect the young and they try and make more young this is every species is driven to do that and you think about what porn and masturbation, these things really are.

I'm not calling them sinful. What I'm saying is they are potentially addictive, especially with the availability of pornography. So, you know, beware, you know, just everyone's different and people have to be careful about these circuitries. You really need to protect them. They are super valuable.

And so I would say in keeping with our theme of, you know, what are the other things to do to support testosterone would be, uh, don't engage. I would avoid pornography, frankly. I really would. I would, you know, maybe everyone's got their threshold for what's too much for some people that might be, the number might be zero versus other people. It might be something different. Then it's going to vary. It would be different maybe using your imagination versus seeing images or like, you know, is there a difference if you know any of this? Is there a difference between video versus, you know, old school way of like having magazines and things like that? Well, it's because it's like more fantasy and maybe I don't know, maybe you thinking it through about this thing is different than you just watch or even remembering past experiences.

Yeah. So we can speculate there a bit. You know, a picture is worth a thousand words and a movie is worth a billion pictures when it comes to the impact that it has on your nervous system. That's a bar. You know, exactly. And so, um, you know, I'm, I think it's fair to say that whatever problems exist in society today, almost certainly existed a hundred years ago, but in a different form. Okay. We always think, Oh, you know,

stress was only there for the saber tooth tiger and now there are no tigers. And we got this thing that's really unfortunate called stress. Look, let's imagine this was 100 years ago. Spouses still cheated. People still died. You had, you know, physical challenges. There was a question of, you know, all that stuff is baked into us at a deep level, right? None of those circuits have changed.

It's just the circumstances that trigger them change. So I think that 100 years ago, it wasn't cell phones. It might, but you can bet that there was, there were forms of pornography. They were probably more cloistered away. They weren't, you know, as out there in certain parts of the world, it's still very been defined. This is one of the challenges. We know what an eating disorder is, but what's healthy eating? Where do you draw the line? I think given this general theme that relationships are healthy, friendships are healthy, romantic relationships are healthy, and anything that inhibits the pursuit and functioning of healthy relationships is where you have to start saying, wait a second, is this behavior getting in the way? So look, it's, it's unlikely to be an all or none.

I think, and I don't know what the line is, but we just have to be careful. Anytime we are overwhelmed with powerful images of increasing intensity, that's where you start getting into the dopamine depletion. That's where you start getting into the hormone depletion. That's where you start getting into the hormone depletion that we're talking about here. So this is also true of violence.

A lot of people, they're like excited about watching zombie apocalypse violence, plus all of that violent sex and everything getting poured into the same film. Well, they made horror movies, you know, 50 years ago, they were a little bit different. The question is how strong were we driving the system? And if anyone out there is feeling underwhelmed and kind of like life is no good, et cetera, chances are your dopamine system has been pushed too hard. I'll give one quick

anecdote. I have a friend, he's got a kid, he's 21. He graduated high school. He went to community college for a little bit, decide not to do that anymore. Then he stopped working. He stopped exercising. He's really fit. He's got like, his genetics are like the SEMA's. He's kind of like, he's just got this incredible physique and all this doesn't do anything. It doesn't work. Doesn't do anything. He's a failure to launch as we call it. And they were analyzing, does he have ADHD? Does he this? And he heard Anna talk about dopamine depletion and he called me and he said, and he said, I'm going to do one month,

no video games, no phone, no nothing. He's 25 days in and he's running again. He's lifting again. He's heading back to work again. And this was somebody who thought he had ADHD. Now there are people with ADHD out there,

but what happened was he was dopamine depleted. So he couldn't concentrate. He didn't care about anything. with ADHD out there, but what happened was he was dopamine depleted, so he couldn't concentrate. He didn't care about anything. And so the phone and just living in this constant stream of movies that are really stimulating on YouTube and everything else, I mean, you have to be, I mean, we're on YouTube right now,

and I use YouTube for my podcast and everything, but you have to know when to shut that valve. And here's what I tell myself. Shut that valve so that I can continue to enjoy it. Right, it's like gorging yourself with Tomahawk steaks. They're delicious, but unless you've been fasting all day, you're not going to eat nine of them.

Right. What's your record, Mark? I think I've done two, two, but yeah, nine would be, that would be a feat.

Yeah. Two, but they were the size of, you know, the table, but no. So you have, if you want to continue to enjoy things and pursue things,

you have to know when to slam the gate shut. And I think that no one told us that we needed to do that. That's the challenge. And so just like with training, you get out past 75 minutes, 90 minutes. If you're natural, you're going to start seeing a depletion in testosterone. Get out of the gym, go eat, go recover, go relax.

This is true for ice baths too. In Anna's book, she talks about ice baths too in anna's book she talks about ice baths the data i have to hate this is really weird but of the data this is a study that was done by at the university of prague published in the um universe european journal of applied physiology 250 increase in dopamine and norepinephrine from a three-hour ice bath a three minute ice bath sorry don't Don't do the hours. You'll die. I think the record is like an hour.

Um, sorry, when, uh, 250% increasing dopamine. Okay. But you're not going to stay in there for two days. You're not going to try and best whims record. So, and if you keep doing ice every day, you will get less and less dopamine from it. So understand what you're doing. It's like your pre-workout one scoop at the first time you feel like you can jump over a building two scoops the next time. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty soon you're taking four scoops of that four

espressos and you're kind of sitting in the parking lot, texting on your phone. Well, what's going on? Well, your dopamine depleted. So don't dopamine deplete. And then you won't deplete your ability to go increase testosterone. So competition effort, short, intense workout, short, ish, intense workouts, sleep. And then you do have to nourish. I know people are really into fasting. I was going to say under eating can crush you. Oh, totally. I mean, we've gotten hit hard by doing bodybuilding shows, just crushed everything, just crushed. You don't give a shit about anything. Yeah. Right.

Right. So, you know, the body is informing the mind whether or not there's abundance and the brain and the body like to coordinate all the good stuff that testosterone does, like the desire to mate, the desire to work when there's abundance. When you're depleted, it's like bank account is drained and your body and brain are smart. It's saying you cannot go spend because you don't have any savings. That's really what it is.

The brain and body are very logical in this way. And when I say the brain and body, I just want to make the point that the nervous system isn't just your brain, it's all these connections to the organs of your body. You asked about the steak and I want to mention this. So there's amazing data from a guy at Duke University. He's both a nutritionist and a neuroscientist, Diego Borges. He's Ecuadorian. And he discovered

there are neurons in our gut. We've known that there's a gut brain axis, but he found that there are neurons in the gut that are sensing three things, amino acids, especially rare amino acids essential fatty acids like omega-3s and sugar and these neurons signal to the brain to release dopamine when those substances are in the gut now this is really interesting because what he showed was that the desire to eat more of something and to pursue more of that food actually does not have to do with its taste. They actually numbed the taste, had people ingest one or two or three of those things. And then what they found is that dopamine was released in the brain that would make people go pursue either more sugar or more protein or more fat.

Now, you always thought, oh, I want the taste of a steak. And you do, but your gut is also signaling the brain in parallel to that, making you chase more of that. So what this means is that sugar, I think we can all agree, is bad. I mean, except the occasional thing in the short term, whatever. You have to, you know, every once in a while you indulge. I think you posted a Sunday once. Yeah, yeah, stuff like that.

Yeah, every once in a while you indulge. I think you posted a Sunday once. Yeah, yeah, stuff like that. Yeah, every once in a while. But your gut is foraging. You are subconsciously foraging for amino acids and fatty acids. I think it was the great Charles Polk who said there's no essential carbohydrates. But you need protein and you need fatty acids. So if you're somebody who craves sugar, make sure you're getting enough omega-3s. Make sure you're getting enough amino acids. And meat is the, especially grass-fed meat,

and quality meat, ideally it would be hunted, you know, but for most people grass-fed, grass-finished meat brings you omega-3s, and it brings to you those amino acids. It's the most satisfying thing to this dopamine system. And so when you bite into that steak, absolutely, you're getting dopamine release. And when you have dopamine release, almost often you have testosterone release. Now, how long between those, it varies, but without question.

So there's your answer, your tomahawk steak. What's it look like for people that may be suffering from having some anxiety, depression? What does it look like when someone like that pursues, I guess like trying to figure out how to have their testosterone levels be more optimal? Whether they take it through a shot or whether they do some of the things you're recommending, or even some of the supplements that you recommend, what's the kind of outcome? Do they see like massive improvements? What does it do in the brain? Okay. So great question. So since

cortisol at out competes testosterone to some extent early up in the processing of testosterone and cortisol, you want to limit cortisol. You don't want it. You want it released early in the day, not, not in the afternoon, have a real time stress mitigation tool. The best one that I'm aware of is the two inhales through the nose and a long exhale, the physiological sigh. So not just a big inhale. Don't not just take a deep breath, not just exhale, but it goes like this. It looks kind of ridiculous, but we've known about these since the 30s. My lab has now a manuscript that's in process on this. It's a collaboration with David Spiegel's lab at Stanford.

It even feels good to do that. I've heard you talk about this before, and I've done it. I've been like, oh, my God, that feels great. When you're stressed, whether or not it's mild stress from just talking, training, moving around too much, et cetera, it doesn't matter. The moment you're stressed, the little sacs in your lungs, because your lungs aren't just two big bags of air, they're these little sacs, the alveoli of your lungs, they collapse.

And in order to offload carbon dioxide, which is essential because carbon dioxide is a lot of what makes you feel stressed, and like you're kind of grinding, wired and tired, carbon dioxide buildup in your system. Apnea at night, terrible for testosterone. What you need to do is you need to offload a lot of carbon dioxide buildup in your system. Apnea at night, terrible for testosterone built. What you need to do is you need to offload a lot of carbon dioxide. The best way to do that is the big inhale, then sneak in another quick inhale.

A lot of people think, Oh, it's insignificant. Why not just take a deep breath? Well, that second inhale reinflates the avioli of the lungs and you offload a lot of carbon dioxide. You can do this in real time, anytime, right? If you're public speaking, it gets a little bit weird, but dioxide. You can do this in real time, anytime, right? If you're public speaking, it gets a little bit weird, but chances are you can do this a few times a day. Anytime you're feeling too stressed. If you're at night, you wake up and you're stressed, you're in a panic

or you want to get back to sleep, do a few of these. Is this effective during a training session if you get winded or is that not advised? Very. And so, well, first of all, if you're ever running and you get a side stitch people think that's a cramp that's actually you have a nerve that controls your diaphragm and it's called the phrenic nerve ph phrenic and it has a collateral to your liver and that's actually liver it's referred pain liver pain sometimes you also feel it in your shoulder if you're running they used to say oh put your hands above your head. Do a double inhale, exhale, double inhale, exhale. Fucking winning right now, by the way, this is awesome. And you will, that side cramp will really will resolve itself

almost immediately. That's not a cramp. It's this referred pain. Now having a real time tool is great because if you're uncomfortable public speaking, you can get comfortable. You can sneak these in like, or something before you go up there. You can, you know, there are little things that you can do. Now, apnea in sleep is one of the worst things for your testosterone. So when people go to sleep, typically their breathing slows. But every once in a while, they do physiological sighs. When carbon dioxide builds up too much.

Normal people will do a physiological sign offload that carbon dioxide. We do these spontaneously animals do it right before they go down for sleep. Watch your dog. It will go. They'll do this. Okay. And so we can do it consciously. Apnea and sleep is terrible because the buildup of carbon dioxide in our system actually has input to the hormone pathway and will blunt the release of growth hormone and will blunt the release of testosterone. People who are very obese, one of the reasons they have so many other issues is not just – there are issues directly related to body fat levels, but a lot of it is they're suffocating during sleep. There are issues directly related to body fat levels, but a lot of it is they're suffocating during sleep. And then you get people with the CPAP and some people need that,

but by all means, nasal breathe, physiological size, these things really, really help. And there are other aspects of stress that are important to mitigate. A really great tool that was developed by a colleague of mine, David Spiegel, is our associate chair of psychiatry at Stanford. It's called Reveri, R-E-V-E-R-I.com. Yeah, it's the hypnosis. developed by a colleague of mine, David Spiegel is our associate chair of psychiatry at Stanford is called

reverie. R E V E R I.com. Yeah. It's the hypnosis. It's self hypnosis to get you better at sleeping for stress mitigation, for pain. They're great data related to reverie. It's free.

It's Android and Apple. Just go to reverie.com. It's completely cost free. That's a great one. Some people will take ashwagandha, which will, it blocks cortisol. I don't recommend

taking it for more than two weeks at a time. You don't really want to chronically reduce cortisol or else you start getting little sicknesses and then you can start getting more vulnerable to infection. People don't realize this. We always hear stress depletes your immune system. Nothing could be more wrong. When you're stressed, you're go, go, go, go, go. The probability that you're going to get sick is very low. Then you relax, as I would say, like post-finals or post-competition. Then you get sick. If we would be vulnerable to infection whenever we were stressed, we would not be the species in charge of the planet.

We got here by being able to lean into effort and activate all resources. But as you're coming off of a hard bout of stress, make sure that you're doing something to increase your immune system. And there, I think something more like Wim Hof breathing, like taking, doing 25 breaths, you will release adrenaline.

And then a long exhale and sitting with lungs empty until you feel the impulse to breathe again. That's been shown in a study published in the proceedings of the national academy of sciences to activate your immune system. So whenever I feel like a little throat tickle or something, or it hasn't happened in a long time, but if that ever happens, rather than just say, oh, I just need to go to sleep, I will hydrate. I'll do the breathing. I just described 25 or 30 breaths with a long exhale, maybe take a cold shower. Then I start mellowing out and going to sleep. What you've done is you've released adrenaline. Adrenaline is the signal to your spleen to release killer

cells into your system. So remember, no organ of your body knows what to do unless your brain tells it to. And the last thing about that is if you want to understand the relationship between breathing and heart rate and stress, it's very simple. This might get a little, there's some information here, but it's a simple takeaway, which is when you, you have this muscle called the diaphragm and it's unlike other internal organs because it's a skeletal muscle, just like skeletal muscle. So you can voluntarily control it. So when you inhale, you fill your lungs, right? Your diaphragm actually moves down, right? To make space for that. As the lungs, as the lungs expand, the heart actually gets, but let's do it the other way. Sorry, I'm going to back off here

because it just, so when you exhale, right, the diaphragm moves up, the heart actually gets a little bit smaller. Blood moves more quickly through that smaller volume. And that information gets sent to the brain through a pathway called the sinoatrial node. And the brain sends a signal to slow the heart down. So when you exhale, you actually slow the heart down. Exhale, slow the heart down through something. There's a name for this. It's respiratory sinus arrhythmia for the geeks out there.

There's nothing in your brain that has anything to do with oxygen. Is that correct? Or there's not like a signaling for oxygen. Is that right? That's right. You, your impulse to breathe is triggered by carbon dioxide levels, which is a really smart system, right? Let the alarm hit just like a thermostat, heat up the room. Cause it got too cold, right? Just trigger that. And then you, or you want to breathe same thing. When you inhale, You just trigger that and then you, or you want to breathe. Same thing when you inhale, the opposite happens. Okay.

Your heart actually gets a little bit bigger as a consequence of the movement of the diaphragm. There's less space. Blood moves a little bit more slowly per unit volume through there. And then a signal goes from the brain to speed the heart up. So before a big lift, would you know you, you're bringing in more, you make your inhales longer or more intense and you get more alert your heart rate starts going up the other way to increase your alertness is simply by inhaling smelling salts yes they work according to you and uh they're uh they signal danger actually to the brain the reason they work is they are ammonias and they signal danger in your system. The amygdala goes, boom, it's an ancient pathway.

It's like, we're going to like wide eyed, no blinks, right? Work. We're just squat rack. That's what that is. But even just the act of inhaling, this is shown by no sobles group, even just inhaling increases alertness. When you're sitting there learning information, they've done this experiment and they looked at when people inhale and when they exhale.

And they looked at how well they remember information later. The information that you access, that you were looking at or listening to while you were inhaling, you have better memory for. Because inhaling is the equivalent of eyes open and exhaling is the equivalent of eyes open. And exhaling is the equivalent of eyes closed. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, forgive me. I'm kind of spiraling off on this stress thing.

But what this means is you can learn to lengthen your exhales, do physiological size. You can learn to calm yourself so that your cortisol isn't chronically elevated. And this is all going to support natural endogenous levels of testosterone. Up until now, that's all we've been talking about. Tools that require no injection, no pill, no nothing. Now, if we talk about supplements, so you need enough food. I guess we should go to food, then supplements. You know, you need enough food.

You do need enough amino acids and essential fatty acids. If you're not getting enough fat, forget having decent testosterone. The mid nineties were a really good example of this, right? If you went on a low fat diet, subcaloric low fat diet is, you know, it's a form of nutritional castration basically. Right. Uh, and some people require more fat than others, but that is absolutely deadly to the reproductive system. And if you increase your fat, in particular saturated fats, the vegan community is pretty angry with me right now because I said, sin of all sins, I said that I eat butter. I like grass-fed butter. I don't eat chunks of it.

I eat a little bit of it. And there's a video on the internet saying, you know, bad advice. My blood lipids are great. Thank you. And sometimes I put video on the Internet saying, you know, he's bad advice. My blood lipids are great. Thank you. And and sometimes I put it on a vegetable. But but, you know, I'd never said to consume butter in large amounts. But if you dietary cholesterol is is vital for hormone production. And for me, butter, red meat from good sources is wonderful. Other people, they don't want to ingest those, and eggs are really good.

People are big on fish and omega-3s, but some amount of saturated fat is good. If you put your saturated fat to zero, your testosterone will drop. There's no question about it. And I'd be happy to share my blood lipid profiles and show I've done the experiment. So you need ample calories. You need ample fats. And you need ample amino acids. And then there's the supplementation realm.

And then it really starts going to, okay, like zinc. Do you need? Yes. Okay, fine. Sufficient zinc. Do you need to supplement zinc? Maybe. Probably not.

Magnesium is important for these pathways. But it's indirect. magnesium is important for these pathways, but it's indirect. The two things that at least in my observation and in my hands and in the helping some people with this over, over the years that have made a big difference. And again, this is different for everybody,

but have been these two compounds Tonga Ali, which is Indonesian ginseng reduces sex hormone binding globulin, sex hormone binding globulin and albumin are what bind the testosterone molecule and deliver it to your different tissues. Now, sex hormone binding globulin has been demonized. People are like, SHBG is bad because free tea is what counts. True, but sex hormone binding globulin is also time release on your testosterone. You don't want a ton of testosterone than it plummeting either.

So having some sex hormone binding globulin around is good. In fact, low SHBG levels are what women see in polycystic ovarian syndrome, PCOS. And that's an issue. So Tonga Ali can lower sex hormone binding globulin and free up some testosterone. And it is true that free testosterone ideally is in the whatever 10 to 15 range or something. Typically, this is going to be nanograms per deciliter just for people out there. But dihydrotestosterone, DHT, is the most dominant androgen in humans. And we'll get back to that. But Tonga Ali, 400 milligrams a day taken in the

morning will increase free testosterone. I know that people, there's some folks out there. Again, you have to check with your doctor if this is right for you, but there's some folks out there that said, I didn't see the full 200 point increase that you referred to. Okay. Well, let's talk about that in a second. I've seen people get 400, 500 nanogram per deciliter increases, but they started off low. Okay. And then Fidogea agrestis, 600 milligrams. I've seen people recommend a lot more.

I don't think that's a good idea. Fidogea tends to increase luteinizing hormone. Luteinizing hormone is the signal for the testes to make more testosterone. It actually, Fidogea in many people will actually increase testes to make more testosterone. It actually, Fidojia in many people will actually increase testes size. It's a tangible increase in testes size. Now, there are some reports out there about toxicity of Fidojia.

Those were rat studies. They may have merits. I do think everyone should get their blood work done and they should before and after trying any of these kinds of things. And I think that people should be careful to get their liver enzymes included in those profiles. Okay. So again, 400 milligrams of Tonga Ali, 600 milligrams of Fidojia will work to increase testosterone by way of luteinizing hormone and freeing up testosterone taken early in the day because they can stimulate energy and so forth why am i mentioning this well first of all i want to be very clear i don't have any financial relationship to any companies that manufacture those things zero zilch but you know and some people ask well how much should i take maybe the answer is zero maybe you shouldn't take

it at all i don't know so if you're going to explore testosterone augmentation i think those those are decent places to start, but you do need to do your blood work. You need to monitor your liver enzymes. You need to think you need to be smart about your health. It's also not most likely not going to make you look like somebody that abuses steroids. That's on Instagram. Right. It absolutely won't. Right. What it will do is, is increase some of the, it will mildly increase some of the parameters that we've talked about related to testosterone, willingness to effort for one. Some people get big libido increases. Some people, they're more subtle. It's a subtle increase of 100 to 200 points, right?

And some – there are the extreme cases of 400 or 500. But I've seen – and someone wrote to me and said, my testosterone went up 50 points or something okay you know first of all the sourcing is going to be key there's a lot of garbage out there there's a big problem with the supplement industry and we could this is also relevant to our where we're probably going which is things like trt the quality control provided from a doctor in a clinic is quite hot, quite high compared to the supplement industry. I can mention names of for Tonga Ali and Fidojia. The only ones that I'm aware of that are what they say they are. Well,

there may be other companies too, is Solarae makes the Tonga Ali and Barlow's herbal elixirs makes the Fidojia. I put links to those in the show notes for the Tim Ferriss podcast. Yeah. So these folks, and they've, I, again, I have no financial relationship to them. Now on the bottle, I think they recommend three per day, up to three per day. I think personally, I think that's too high. Sorry, Barlow's herbal elixirs. Most I've ever taken was 600 milligrams per day. And I'm happy to share my experience with these. I did a lot of experimentation with blood work on myself, trying to find something that was mild. And then Solarae, Tonga Ali, both are relatively inexpensive.

There are a couple of brands out there now that are, since I've talked about this on a few podcasts, that are using my face to advertise. Have you seen my face on anything, it's at the Huberman lab podcast or Mark's Instagram. I didn't approve it or my Stanford webpage. So, and again, everybody's different and you also have to check the sources of the naysayers,

right there. People are often selling things so that those will help some people and men and women have taken those. And, and I feel comfortable just saying, yeah, check with your doctor now, then there's TRT, then there's high TRT, and then there's full blown blasting cruise. Right. And if you want to go there, we can, but in terms of, I'm just trying to think if there are any other supplements that are relevant here. You know, there's some reports that boron, you know, two milligrams of boron per day can reduce sex hormone binding globulin, nettles and things like that. The problem with nettles is it can give you weird prostate effects.

Always check your PSA, your prostate specific antigen, if you're male. And then if you want, we could talk about peptides too, but I want to make sure i we could cure insomnia if i stay here right i'll just cure all the insomnia i'm going to mention this because after you uh after you talk to us more about the fedosia agrestis and tonkot um i'm gonna i'm gonna get another blood work panel done because i've done a blood work panel with our company that sponsors our podcast merrick health um you guys by the way if you do want to get a blood blood panel, they have a panel like it's called the power project panel. It's 26 different panels for men and women that can pretty much show you everything you

guys need, but I'm going to get a panel done soon before I start taking tone cotton and Fidozia because I'm, I'm very curious what it's going to do to my testosterone because people expected me to have a really high free and total test. Oh yeah. This is super important that people hear this. Yeah. I think my free testosterone is the higher number, right? Or is it the lower number?

I'm not sure. It's the lower. Yeah. Your free testosterone is lower. Yeah. So my free test was 16.5. That's okay. So I will say just to pause.

So 15 and above is a great free testosterone level. That's a wonderful place to be. And my total was 640, six 39.5, but six 40, like I'm not going through the roof of tests. It's modest, modest. Right. Um, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna get my blood work done again in the next two days. And then I'm going to start taking Fidozia and tone caught consistently for maybe a month or a month and a half. And I'm going to get it done again to see if it's boosted me in any way. And to see if I actually feel physically feel a difference. Great. Cause I don't necessarily feel low on energy or anything, but right. Yeah. Well, and, uh, you will notice an increase most likely in

luteinizing hormone. I'd love to see the blood work before and after you're willing to share. Also, I have no relationship to Merrick health. Um, I I'm in early discussion with them, but it's great when people can get blood work done. I do think after hearing Dr. Kyle Gillette, who's a medical doctor, I am a fan of the MD. Okay. I know there are a lot of kinds of doctors. Hey, I don't have an MD. So I can say this.

I am a fan of the MD because I teach medical doctors and the neuroscience and neuroanatomy and medical doctors in training. The MD degree is very comprehensive. There's a range of quality of schoolings and backgrounds and individuals, but the MD is a powerful schooling, right? A PhD is about this. It's about becoming really lasered on something. A medical degree is a very broad training.

And so I'm a huge fan of the MD. I'm a huge fan of Kyle Gillette. I heard about him from your podcast. And we've been in early conversation. He seems so balanced, rational, and he really understands that there are women's issues, there are men's issues, there are age-related issues, there are sports training issues.

And I'm so glad that you brought up that this issue of free testosterone and testosterone and B and that you're open enough and willing to share yours, because I think most people would look at you and think that guy's testosterone has to be 1700 minimum after two nights of no sleep or something like that. What it tells me is that you are very likely to have optimal balance of ratios between hormones. They probably also look at you and think that your estrogen is down to zero, but you don't want your estrogen to zero. Anyone that's ever had their estrogen to zero

will tell you it kills the libido, joint pain, connective tissue pain. So I think in the next 10 years, but hopefully in the next two years, the world is going to have a much more nuanced and sophisticated view of these drugs and the hormones and the supplements. To the point where we can find, Mark and I were talking about this the other day, the right constellation of things that makes you a balanced, happy person who can lean into effort but also can lean back every once in a while. lean back every once in a while.

And I think, and can have a healthy romantic life, healthy training life, healthy friendships, you know, who isn't going to make everyone leave the room because you, you smell like, you know,

you smell like a testosterone derivative. I wasn't referring to myself, by the way, or anyone else in the room, you know, but it's, or have acne like crazy. I made the joke this morning while we were training that it's proof that you're natural, that you don't have a single pimple. But it's true.

It increases acne and oiliness of the skin. So I think it's really, really key. And I think Merrick and Kyle Gillette are second to none, really. I'm not aware of any other clinics that are out there. They're not paying me to say this, by the way. I've never even worked with Merrick yet, but I would like to, that are that open and honest about all the nuance. This is not something to wade into because someone in your college dorm or someone at

your gym tells you something. You want the best information from the best sources. Let's just say I've done some experimentation in my time. And one of the experiments was to take a shot every single day for a month. Of how much testosterone? 200 milligrams every day. Every day? Every day.

Typical TRT, folks, is 200 milligrams or less per week. And often less. Those are bullshit dosages. How long of your life did you do that for? No, I just messed around with that for like one month. But I've also taken three cc's of like a mixture of testosterone and Trenbolone every other day for, you know, a couple of weeks, you know, prepping for a competition. You know, it was just for me, it was always about like, uh, Hey man, let me see what the, what I can do. And the drugs, to be quite honest, were just a part of it. They were, they were the same part

of it as, uh, you know, me investing in getting a training belt and me investing in getting good wrist wraps and, uh, having the proper equipment and having the proper training protocol. The part of the training protocol was to utilize anabolics to lift the most amount of weight. And I competed against other people that did the same. So it was like, you know, this is you show up with whatever you got. I'm going to show up with whatever I got and I'm going to do the best I can under these circumstances. What I would also say, though, is that while I did lift some pretty heavy weights, would also say though is that while i did lift uh some pretty heavy weights um the differences that you might think would occur are are not true at least in my experience um you cannot correlate

testosterone by looking at somebody you cannot you cannot look at someone and say that guy's testosterone is probably 2000 because look how jacked he is. It does not, in my experience, it does not work that way. I don't know why it doesn't work that way. It seems cut and dry that someone would have astronomical testosterone levels. But I have not, it has not been my experience that it works that way. I have seen my testosterone levels be as high as over 5000. I've had seen them be as low as 141. over 5,000. I've had seen them be as low as 141. Folks, the typical upper range is 900 nanograms per deciliter, sometimes 1,200 in certain countries, and very rarely 1,400 nanograms

per deciliter. So what you're really talking about is a 4X or more. I broke a lot of records in that area as well. I had doctors look at it and they're like, we've never seen it. And by the way, I just want to say, I don't think it's think that people – I don't think it's a wise idea. I mean I'm glad that you're here and you're healthy and you're with us. But I do think that what you're describing is dangerous. Not to describe it, but that what you did was dangerous. You're a very resilient one. It could be.

People don't have studies on it. So the verdict is still out. My point in bringing this up, though, is that I had my testosterone levels at up over 5,000, which shocked even me. And it wasn't that long ago. It was just like a couple months back. Whoa. And I had no idea that they were that high. And I was like, is there something wrong with this?

Is there something wrong with the math on your? Yeah, the blood work. Or is there something wrong with like, am I taking something that I didn't even know? Okay, just because I think this is so this is a barbed wire topic. But your blood levels were 5000 nanograms per deciliter. And you were taking. I thought I was taking a reasonable amount apparently not apparently not yeah um i mean i'm this is why you need to do blood work this is why people need to

do blood well i'm definitely uh haphazard yeah what were your many were your blood lipids dangerous or were they in good shape i mean you want an ldl hdl ratio that's yeah there was yeah other things were compromised um but they weren't – nothing was too crazy. They weren't astronomical. They weren't astronomical, and I wasn't even big. I wasn't big at the time. I wasn't even – so I guess my point in bringing it up is like it doesn't – in my – again, my own experience and just even being around some other folks, I want to point out to people that taking these dangerous amounts is not going to lead you to what you think it's going to lead to.

Well, that's a really key point. You have to train your ass off and you're still not going to look like Phil Heath. You're still not going to look like Nsema. I've never looked like Nsema before with the amounts that I've taken. So I want people to understand that you can't just go and get it from a bottle. Even with hard training, you're going to have to know what you're doing. You're going to be really resilient and you're going to have to do this stuff for a really long time and you're going to have to know what you're doing. You're going to be really resilient and you're gonna have to do this stuff for a really long time. And you're going to have to love it for a really long time. Yeah. Those are excellent

points. And I, and when I, by the way, I said, when did this is danger? I didn't mean, I think this discussion is healthy. I actually think this is so to be clear. Um, and I, I, I really appreciate your honesty and your, your brother's honesty and what you guys have done with bigger, stronger, really appreciate your honesty and your, your brother's honesty and what you guys have done with bigger, stronger, faster, you know,

waking the world up to the fact that, you know, no protein shake or, or supplement is going to get you to look like the stars that, that you see. And, and many of them are augmented, not all of them because you've got guys like Nesima that, that are sitting at six 40 anagram per deciliter testosterone.

It's got a really above 15 is a really nice, healthy, free testosterone. That's good. People work very hard to optimize that. Sunlight, sleep, food, relaxation, meditation, having a relationship that's not super stressful, but has enough friction to be interesting. This is something people, passivity of all kinds is bad, right? You don't want the complacency and passivity

or anti-growth, these kinds of things. You want challenge in your life, but you don't want friction, obviously, to the point where it's detrimental. But if you're going to talk about testosterone augmentation, maybe, now, Kyle's podcast with you, everyone should see that, because he's the medical doctor who can comment to these things.

But there's some general rules of thumb with TRT that maybe we could talk about. Oh, by the way, Andrew, can you tell the people just like the code for Merrick and how they get their hands on it? Oh, I thought you meant me. I was like, I don't know. We have the same name. That's been throwing me off all day, by the way. Somebody will ask Andrew for a really, really cool thing. And I'll be like, oh, you're not talking to me.

My bad. No, but yeah, so we've been gushing about Merrick Health. So head over to MerrickHealth.com. It's M-A-R-R-E-K-Health.com. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. And when it comes time to pay for these labs, use promo code POWERPROJECT15 for 15% off all the labs. And you'll be speaking to a client care coordinator, and they'll help coach you up on everything. Again, links to them down in the description below, as well as the podcast show notes.

Thank you, Nsima. Going into TRT. Yeah. So, and here, as I'm talking about this, I think your example is a really interesting one. We represent the range, actually. This is diversity of testosterone. With no correlation to any other kind of diversity. It's true, right?

Yeah. I mean, right? We're purely talking about individual differences here, right? To be really clear. You blasted the so-called blast and I don't know if you cruise. No, there's blast, just blast, all gas pedal. Right.

He's the David Goggins of testosterone augmentation. No, all gas pedal. Go all the way in, all the way in. Meaning just every day, all the way in. Okay.

You're, you haven't touched it. Right. Okay. And I can honestly say that I'm, that I didn't touch it. Testosterone from an exogenous source until I was 45. Okay?

And I did it. I'm actually writing a book and doing research about testosterone and other hormones and peptides to develop a rational guide to this kind of thing. Okay? That's my goal. Writing a book after using it for six months. No, no, no. I'm still, isn't that interesting?

Well, well, I'm not going to do the experiment you did on myself, but why not? I'm going to write a book about it. You should know a lot about it, right? This is early days.

Okay. This is early days, but I think people need the information and, and it's, and I've been working with some sports teams and things. I mean, I'm just, I'm not going to out any sports organizations, but there are major sports organizations where if someone has an injury, the players are allowed to take up to 200 milligrams per mil per week.

Really? Well, yeah. And if you look at the transformation of some very salient pro athletes, you can see it. Wow. Yeah. It's totally, they've made it legal within their organization. Okay. So now we have to ask ourselves about TRT, sport TRT and blasting. Okay. Cause we represent the, so I'll disclose what I've done. You've disclosed what you've done. You've disclosed where you're at. And what I did is I didn't touch anything until I was 45. Okay. Which is good. I think a good long stretch. I trained as much as I could smart, you know, three, four days a week a week all the ways we described and then i had my levels tested first this is so key if there's one thing that i could inspire young folks to do would be get your if you can afford it and i realize it's

tricky but if you can afford now you have the merrick health code and this kind of thing get your blood work done at an age when you're not taking anything, no TRT, no exogenous hormones of any kind, and get a baseline and compare that to how you feel. Because if you're 25 and you feel great, you want to know what you're free in. I wish I had this information. I didn't do it then, right? It was very hard to get that information.

Now, years ago, I had my, about six years ago, and I keep all my blood work organized, scientist after all, it's added about 600, 620. One day it was 590, the other was 620 and it's in the morning and there's some variation there. Then I did the, I eventually found the Fidojia, Tonga Ali combination. It brought that up to high sevens, mid eights,

consistently for several years. Okay, which for me was a really significant boost just psychologically and i felt better more resilient i worked very long hours and i like to train i had no guilt about it i actually did a sperm count test because i don't have children but i wanted to make sure i was still producing sperm it's great fedogia doesn't seem to shut down luteinizing hormone production actually my luteinizing hormone was a little bit high so that actually is different than something like hcg which we could talk about which will is luteinizing hormone essentially and will kill your luteinizing hormone levels okay so then in january of this year i decided that i would take a small amount of trt

i just want to see what the cognitive effects were and what they were i did blood work i'm working with a doctor very carefully it's all legal and above board. And the typical dosages suggested are 160 milligrams per week, you know, 0.7 mLs of 200 mgs per ml of sapienate, this kind of thing, and divide it into two doses, 0.4 and 0.3 in the syringe, you know. And what I found was it gave me a ton of energy, but almost too much. Trouble sleeping, a little bit of anxiety. And a few days after the injection, then I'd feel better and better and better. And then you'd re-up and then you kind of, it's like, ah, so something's going on here. So I, I cut the dose way, way down

and do every third day or so taking a little, what could be called a microdose of about 20 milligrams, which is basically 0.1 in the 200 big per mil syringe and feel really, really good. I've also had my blood lipids checked. Okay. And those are in check. Actually, my blood lipids improved when I went from 800 to 1400 nanogram per deciliter testosterone improved.

I came off the Tonga Ali in the Fidochia. So just to be clear, and I feel comfortable disclosing it because I represent the kind of middle ground between nothing blasting, although you're not blasting now, as far as we know. um we wouldn't know i'm on like your dosage now okay yeah and look at him and look at me so there's proof that the levels are you can't predict right and look into sema so you i experienced all the effects that you one would expect a big part of this also was to do blood work about four weeks in.

And then I personally decided not to take anastrozole, which is an aromatase inhibitor that prevents the conversion of testosterone into estrogen. Why? Well, anastrozole, even very, I had it recompounded at 0.1 mg, which is a miniscule amount of anastrozole. And immediately from running, my Achilles heel would kind of, it almost felt like it was like grinding. Came off the anastrozole. And immediately from running my Achilles heel would kind of,

it almost felt like it was like grinding came off the anastrozole. Oh, great. Anastrozole can mess with your memory. Excuse me, lowering your estrogen too much. No drug does anything. The effect of something can lower your libido can low.

I didn't have that effect, but I didn't feel great on it. I can, uh, memory was kind of off. So I'm taking no estrogen inhibitor. Okay. So yes, I'm running this experiment for this book

because my levels were sitting around 800 with the supplementation. So I didn't need it, right? But I felt like it was important if I was going to write a book about androgens and how they function in the developing and mature brain that I needed to get some understanding. And I will say it's a tremendous shift in perspective. It actually makes you have me personally have energy, but be calm. There was a Bob Sapolsky, who's a professor at Stanford

knows a ton about testosterone, spent a career, wrote the book, The Trouble with Testosterone, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, et cetera. He came on my podcast and he said, look, it makes you more of whatever you were before. And I think that's right. If you were a jerk before, it's going to make you more of a jerk. If you were mellow, it's going to make you a mellow person. You're not going to change fundamentally, but it does give you a capacity to do work that we were talking about before. It also allows you to be a little bit more liberal with your diet. I, however, I noticed I completely lost any appetite for sugary foods, completely. Really?

But I crave meat and protein and fat like nobody's business. I crave egg yolks. You know, it's almost, and then we have to remember the longevity aspects of this. And we'll talk about a few other hormones. But the fastest rate of aging that you go through at any point in your life has a name. It's called puberty.

Kid goes home for summer, comes back the next year after puberty. They've aged a lot. They've changed a lot, but they've aged a lot. So testosterone will accelerate your aging. It will increase your vitality, but it accelerates aging. We know this. Okay. Just the genetic programs that it turns on are programs of maturation.

Yeah. We know people where someone's like, yeah, he's 32. We're like, what? Exactly. It looks like he's 57.

Right. So if you, you know, I'm friends with David Sinclair, right. Harvard medical school, NMN and the whole longevity thing, you know,

everything that extends life is about actually, what is it? Fasting, cold exposure and stress, hormesis, eating stressed plants, starving yourself in Eastern traditions. They talk about not having sex to the point of ejaculation, not losing chi. It's all about conserving energy. Right. It's all about energy conservation in terms of vitality. It's all about conserving energy, right? It's all about energy conservation. In terms of vitality, it's all about energy expenditure. Right?

And so, and testosterone raises your capacity to do things, to engage in work. It definitely has those effects. However, as you pointed out, if levels are too high, many people feel worse. They feel anxiety, their libido drops. So it is not the case that if your testosterone is brought up to 1600 nanograms per deciliter that you're going to feel much better in

all dimensions of life you might feel much worse okay you might feel better but chances are you'll feel worse there's a sweet spot for everybody and you need to work with a physician to find that sweet spot now here i'm not getting into the discussion about all the derivatives, the tremolones, the et cetera, but it is worth mentioning DHT because then there's also a tool for people that aren't augmenting. So dihydrotestosterone is the more powerful androgen in old world primates and we are old world primates. Okay. Dihydrotestosterone is what causes beard growth on the face, but also hair loss on the scalp. Propecia and things of that sort, finasteride, are DHT blockers. Androgens of all kinds, not just DHT, but they miniaturize the hair follicle.

What are androgens? Oh, androgens are any testosterone or testosterone-like derivative. Yeah. So they have androgenic effects and anabolic effects. Androgenic effects is like male hormone. Yeah. So they have androgenic effects and anabolic effects and androgenic effects is like male hormone. Yeah. So it's, um, you know, Adam's apple growth, deepening the voice growth of body hair, facial hair, body smelling like, like a, like a junior high school locker room, male, male junior high school locker room, right? All those things. So DHT as the more dominant androgen is what's going to underlie most of the increase in strength, in hardness of muscles, in aggression, but mitigated

aggression, willing, you know, the effort type aggression, not violence. And all aspects of what you would think in your mind is kind of extreme maleness. Okay. Nandrolone, decadarabaline is DHT essentially. So if you see somebody who's balding and they take Propecia, oftentimes it's because they're trying to lower their DHT. However, you have tons of DHT receptors on your genitalia and prostate. This is a source of a lot of the sexual side effects of things like Propecia and Finasteride. So nowadays there are topical Finasterides and Propecia type things that people use as

shampoos rather than taking it systemically. I think it's a terrible idea unless there's a real medical need to reduce DHT levels. Now, there are a few other things that increase DHT that are over the counter. One is creatine. Creatine increases DHT, and you might've heard out there, creatine makes you lose your hair. People have talked about that, hair loss. People are sensitive to different degrees, but DHT is a hormone that we don't often hear about. Now, there are other aspects of DHT that are powerful. In the developing embryo, we won't go there for too long, but in the developing embryo, DHT is what establishes what are called primary sexual characteristics.

The growth of the penis, for instance, is dependent on DHT, not testosterone. And it actually has to do with signaling from the mother and things like that. There's a phenomenon in the Dominican Republic where there's a genetic mutation where the babies don't bind functional DHT. And there are boys that are born with female appearing genitalia. And that at age 12, the testes drop, they secrete testosterone and the penis grows somewhat.

And they call it those kids, the huevidosis. They call them basically penis at 12. And then sometimes they're raised as males sometimes as females that stud set of studies was actually the way that the enzyme alpha-5 reductase which converts testosterone into dht was discovered now there are a few things so increasing dht by way of creatine is good for most people right creatine has a lot of positive cognitive effects too. It's interesting. Now, if it makes your hair fall out

and you want to keep your hair, that's a different issue. But in my case, I'd rather, I mean, I'm losing a little bit of hair here. Where you lose your hair depends on where your DHT receptors are. When you see someone with a really thick beard, that means they have a lot of DHT receptors on their face.

Doesn't mean they're more masculine necessarily by way of hormones. You actually can't predict someone's hormones either by their body hair distribution. So a lot of it's cultural and genetic. Okay. Now, a few other things about DHT, which are relevant.

DHT levels are greatly increased by competition. So it's this sort of, we often hear about testosterone so much that we forget about DHT. And I think this sort of, we often hear about testosterone so much that we forget about DHT. And I think this is where you might, um, we might be able to reflect on what you said, which is, you know, levels can be 5,000 or someone, you know, an eczema, your DHT levels would be very interesting to know what, what those are. I'm guessing that they are mid to high. Was that in the panel?

I probably have it. Yeah. It'd be really interesting to see now who knows because it could just be the, the orchestra between the different, different hormones. Now I've had mine really high before and they basically just kind of said, look, you got to back off of what you're taking because having that high of DHT could have prolonged negative impacts on your prostate.

Yes. Yeah. You don't, you know, when your DHT is really high, you can run into serious troubles with your prostate, and you don't want prostate issues, right? There's also this question, as long as you mention prostate, whether or not TRT causes prostate cancer. Young people don't. Young people generally have high T and don't get prostate cancer. That's correlative.

There's a really terrific lecture by a medical physician, not a, not a bodybuilder or anything like that about medical uses of TRT from the Cleveland clinic. Forget his name at the moment that I highly recommend people listen to because it's more about TRT for aging males who are not so much in the fitness part of it. And he goes through the data on prostate cancer. If there's a preexisting prostate cancer, taking testosterone can accelerate that cancer. If there's not, it does not appear that it can, but DHT levels are really key.

And actually a number of people in their sixties and seventies have asked me about TRT and I passed it to, to, I passed that particular lecture to them. This would be a great question for Kyle Gillette as well. Dr. Kyle Gillette, excuse me. Now, one thing that sometimes we don't hear is that curcumin, turmeric severely blunts DHT. Some people, when they take turmeric, they get all the great anti-inflammatory effects

and their libido plummets they feel less driven on turmeric and of course the dosage is going to matter but every couple of years something comes out remember a couple years ago it was like the turmeric craze it was like turmeric was in everything and a couple people reached out maybe because they feel comfortable talking to me about this stuff and i'm like like, I don't get it. You know, flatlined libido, what is going on? And I always say, how's your sleep? Oh, okay. Are you taking turmeric? Yeah. I take two grams of turmeric a day, kill the turmeric. Everything's good again. So I don't want to demonize turmeric, but look, some people are very turmeric sensitive. So you have to be smart about this stuff. So we covered dosages,

spreading out dosages is becoming more common with TRT rather than the once every week 200 milligram injection or Mark's daily 200 milligram injection. We used to say if it's not full, it's empty with the syringe. Oh, my God. You just got to load it up. Yeah. I don't even know what to make of that. I was asking you earlier about testosterone and depression. Do you think that testosterone in the future will be, or maybe even now, I guess prescribed

to people that have depression and maybe even people that have other maybe issues like ADHD and things of that nature? Absolutely. I'm not recommending it, but I actually know women that are on very low doses of testosterone from an MD for test for depression and doing much better, far better than they did on so-called SSRIs like Prozac and Zoloft and things of that sort. They feel calmer.

They have their drive back. Now, of course there's always this issue of trying to protect against some of the androgenic effects because most women don't want facial hair growth or deepening in the voice. But these are, so these are very low levels and they're definitely work with both a, um, work with an endocrinologist. You know, they're out there. I think a lot of people don't know how to access those people. Um, you can call a urology department if you're, if you're male or, or female, but, um, in general, find a good endocrinologist who's

willing to work with you. Merrick and Dr. Gillette can probably help you with that as well. That's really important. I think that for people that are depressed, it's not always a neurotransmitter issue. Now, hormones work at a layer deeper than neurotransmitters. So neurotransmitters are a little bit like text messages. They go back and forth really fast. Hormones are more like a mass email. They send out a signal to the system about the general conditions of the body. So when testosterone levels are, are,

are at a certain level, it's sending a signal to the body about you're able to do lots of different kinds of things. Okay. It's not just one or the other. Hence, Dr. Sapolsky's mention of testosterone just makes you more of the way that you are

so i think that um and then there's the fertility issue and i think that this is something that's not often discussed enough which is that testosterone it's not perfect contraception but it is contraceptive like okay an injection of testosterone will cause you to shut down your own luteinizing hormone and testosterone production from the testes and will shut down sperm production. It's a fact, okay? Because luteinizing hormone, you can think about your pituitary, it actually sits in a way that it interacts

with the bloodstream quite well. Think about it kind of like a thermometer sitting on the side of the community pool, okay? And if testosterone levels are low, it sends out more luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone to the ovaries and gonads for them to make the hormones. If testosterone levels are very high, and they don't even have to be 5,000 nanograms per deciliter, but if your testosterone levels are high, then there's a feedback loop where it says, no, no more signal to trigger activation.

So when you take testosterone, then there's no reason for you to make testosterone from your testes. And testosterone in the testes is what actually stimulates sperm production. Power Project family, you know how much we talk about sleep on this podcast. A lot. Because sleep is one of the biggest things that you need for muscle gain, fat loss. I can't believe your cravings. You need good quality sleep. And that's why we are super pumped to be partnering with an amazing sponsor, Eight Sleep.

Now, Eight Sleep is a mattress company that has something called the Pod Pro and the Pod Pro Cover. Okay, this is a cover that regulates the temperature of the mattress. So you can actually sleep cool. And they've done a lot of research showing that people that sleep on the Eight Sleep mattresses actually fall asleep 32% faster. But the great thing too, people, we over here at The Power Project are hot sleepers. And what I mean is that we sweat. We have many times in our old mattresses woken up in a puddle of our own liquids being sweat. And let me tell you, that has not once happened in this eight sleep mattress because it keeps you cool while you sleep, which helps you get better restful quality sleep. Andrew, tell them more

about it. Absolutely. Yeah. So, and then another thing also is if you sleep with a partner and they maybe don't run as hot as you, you actually have dual temperature zones. So I can set mine extremely cold. My wife can set hers not as cold, but still cool. And that really is like that in and of itself is like, it's so helpful. And especially again, like I said, when you sleep with a partner, they're happy, you're

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Links to them down in the description, as well as the podcast show notes. Head over there right now. can use it as contraception. In fact, I know one person who took not quite as much as Mark, but did during one of his heaviest cycles of steroids, he got somebody pregnant twice. Yeah. Yeah. I won't reveal who he is. He's quite well known.

So, and he has a happy family and that's great, but you know, he never would have expected that now. So you can't use it as contraception. However, sperm, sperm counts generally plummet to zero or about a third of their normal level.

This is why if you're going, you may not think you want kids now, but you might want them later. So you might want to bank sperm or you might want to think about this. Some people take HCG, human chorionic gonadotropin. It mimics luteinizing hormone and the schedules for HCG are different

for a lot of people. It just may be a moment on HCG. Some people decide to just take HCG, not take TRT, but HCG also increases estrogen. And I've known several people in the fitness industry. I don't know why people talk to me about this stuff. People, I don't know, maybe I'm, maybe I make them feel safe, which would be fine. Maybe it's cause I'm not a physician who have taken HCG because they didn't want to go into TRT, but they didn't want to do nothing. And generally that has not worked out too well for them. It's made them kind of puffy and made them feel a little bit better for a

short while. They felt like really elevated and then, but it doesn't do anything for the recovery and just wasn't good overall. So HCG while on TRT or while tapering off or trying to do post-cycle therapy to bring the testes back to functioning, that's very common. And there's a huge range of dosage recommendations. Some people recommend enormous doses for short periods of time. Other people every other day, short, small amounts. For this book that I'm writing, I'm doing these experiments actually with measurements of fertility and everything. It's actually quite interesting. And what I can say is that more is definitely not

better with HCG. The amount used in fertility is way different than the amount that people use to bridge steroids or however you want to put it yeah um i think it's like almost 10 times the amount uh in the fertility studies like five to ten thousand uh whatever the i use yeah yeah and um whereas with men post-cycle therapy or maintaining fertility while on TRT. It's about 250 IUs every other day. Seems to work well for a number of people. These are real issues. You know, if you think, oh, I don't care about any of that and then I'll just go off later, very few people go on TRT and then go off completely. In fact, I've never met anyone that's come off completely. And I think that's because they taste that difference in being able to lean into life at that capacity and they don't want to give up that resilience.

Well, there's quite a bit of reward, quite a bit of upside with very little – I personally cannot think of a downside. Yeah. And you have children, right? Yeah. Yeah. So obviously I, I, yeah, but I, you know, I had my son before I ever got into anything and I'm not talking about the abuse that I did with steroids and I don't recommend that. And I was, I was pointing those things out just as an extreme example, not trying to brag about those things or advise anyone to do anything even remotely close to that. Um, I just wanted to put people into the, into my head for a second and give them a glimpse of just, that was my mentality. You know, and I think other people have had mentalities where

when they're in competition, they're like, Hey, I don't mind this compromise because this is what I'm going for. And so for me, it kind of aligned with those things for me, whether it was right or wrong. I have no idea because I was I was just heading towards my goal. I was like, this is this is going to help get me to my goal. And it never seemed like a shortcut or never seemed like anything like that, because when I would communicate with other athletes and other lifters at that time, they're like, yeah, that's totally normal. Like it was just it was part of it. So for me, it was kind of part of the culture just like when you were skateboarding, it might have been part of the culture to go do something that might split your head open because you might fall and – Yeah, I wasn't one of the more daring guys. But I was – that example actually came to mind.

I mean Evel Knievel never said to everybody, hey, go jump over trucks on a motorcycle. It's just what – that's what he and all his siblings did. I think that whole family was the Knievels. Well, the fertility issue is serious hcg is human chorionic kinetotropin it used to be isolated from pregnant women's urine um now they synthesize it so um yeah uh pregnant pregnancy test is looking for hcg okay no so wait waiting for that second line. Is there truth? Is there evidence that testosterone, I mean, we hear it all the time. I never personally felt this in a way that it's described, but they say that, I guess they say it's about monk steroids in general, but testosterone helps recovery.

Like what does it, what does it, I don't really even know what it does. I don't even know if we know what it does. Like what does it do in terms of like gaining muscle mass? What I've noticed is that it just simply helped me put weight on, which made everything else easier. It helped me to be bigger, which made being stronger a little easier. But it doesn't feel like it – I could be totally off, but it didn't feel like it did anything for my central nervous system necessarily. I don't think it does anything to help you recruit more motor units when you're lifting. So from a powerlifting perspective, it's not like giving you a boost because it's making your body more in tune with your central nervous system.

It's just from what I've noticed is it helped me to gain body weight. But from what I've noticed is it helped me to gain body weight. And I actually kind of – anyone that I've ever recommended to just gain body weight gains strength a lot of times, especially when it comes to bench pressing and squatting. But does testosterone – does it really help with recovery? And if so, like in what way is it doing that? Yeah, great question. I think it varies from individual to individual. It definitely will – it increases protein synthesis rates. So let's take an example of a naturally occurring testosterone augmentation called puberty.

So in a young male, testosterone generally skyrockets for a short while and they eat like crazy. And unless they started off heavy, typically it's hard for them to gain weight if the weight they do put on is generally solid weight. It increases protein synthesis. The conversion of amino acids, especially leucine, into this mTOR pathway, mTOR-regulated pathway, muscle cells grow. And you might even make more of them. Is this known with testosterone or is this known through puberty? That's known through puberty. It's also known with testosterone.

This is one of the reasons why people who diet, who take testosterone, hold on to more muscle because you're balancing out catabolic and anabolic functions. However, for recovery, it may be less of a potent stimulus, as you pointed out. And actually, people who take testosterone and train really, really hard will oftentimes report that they're having a hard time recovering, even though they're training like crazy and they're taking testosterone, they're eating like crazy, and they're sleeping like crazy. And that's generally the time when athletes will start asking questions like, well, what about IGF-1? Or what about growth hormone? Or what about supermorelin?

Because those things, we have to remember what those hormones do normally. IGF-1 and growth hormone are involved in metabolism. We always think about metabolism as burning off fat, but metabolism is the synthesis of proteins as well as the burning off of energy. So things like thyroid hormone and growth hormone are very active in repair of tissues, but especially growth hormone secreted early in the night. If you want to increase growth hormone, a couple of ways you can do that without taking it. One is get good sleep early in the

night. It's secreted for the first three hours of night or so the highest levels. The other is it's very apparent that sauna that, uh, up to 16 times increase in growth hormone with late night, it was sauna before sleep. So sauna and then warm shower and then sleep and your temperature will drop after the sauna to help you get into sleep. Feels so good.

Yeah. And a lot of people are, are obsessed with infrared sauna. And I, I invite people to send me any papers that are, that contradict the statement. But to me, the infrared sauna is, is just a, it's a little bit, there's the evidence isn't really that great. It's a little bit more of a gimmick. It's not quite hot enough to stimulate growth hormone release and the heat shock proteins. Frankly, I think people like the way they look under the red light makes their skin look, and it's kind of like nightclub-ish and it's kind of cool.

How hot do we need it? Well, people vary and you don't want to cook your brain, but 190 to 210 is a good hot sauna and alternate with cold exposure if you want, or just do that sauna, sweating out, you get great vasodilation, your heart beats, you know, again, don't cook yourself, but your heart beats more quickly. And that's, it's actually really, really good for removing plaque from the, from the arteries. Um, it's, it's a great health promoting tool and then a warm shower, cool off, and then, um, you know, not super hot shower and then, and then get into bed and growth hormone goes skyrockets in these cases. It's amazing sleep as well. Now it's not everyone has access to it. That's hard. And then not everyone has access to it right before sleep,

but I'm not eating for two hours before sleep can help, but pretty soon you're starting to lump so many protocols that, you know, you're not going to completely flatline your growth hormone. If you, uh, if you eat within a couple hours of sleep. Then nowadays, there are all the peptides, right? I might also be researching this for the book, which is, and I don't know that I'm going to release this as a book, by the way. I might just put the information into the world. I just like doing research. Taking growth hormone is a complicated thing

because it will cause growth of all tissues, all tissues and organs, Acromagali, Andre the giant, right? Warhead Ridge and the whole thing within a species, the largest animals within that species tend to live the shortest. Okay. So a bulldog mastiff,

short life, right? Golden retriever, longer life, right? Little cheat suit dog, you know, long life,

you know? And, and it's because of levels of IGF one and growth hormone. So again, longevity and vitality are two different things. Um, growth hormone, which I've never taken, but it will increase recovery time. Excuse me. It will decrease recovery time for tissues. It healing is faster, reduces body fat, these kinds of things. Um, there are a number of peptides out there now. Healing is faster, reduces body fat, these kinds of things. There are a number of peptides out there now. Sorry, one more note about growth hormone. Growth hormone itself can cause muscle tissue hyperplasia. You can actually make more muscle cells. And there is this weird synergy between growth hormone and testosterone that when people

have taken those in the few studies that exist, it does appear that they have synergistic effects. And this is why, you know, in the 1990s, bodybuilding really took off the way it did. And everyone's like, oh, they're not doing this or they're not doing that. And that combination is really what brought along that era. Yeah, I'm going to say if you're going to take growth hormone, now you have to take insulin. And insulin can kill you, right? Yeah. And insulin can kill you, right? Yeah. And insulin can kill you, right? It can make you jacked.

Yeah. And it can kill you because a spike in insulin can – especially if people go hypoglycemic with high insulin, people can die. So that's a very dangerous game. So that's a very dangerous game. Nowadays, especially in Hollywood, there are a lot of actors and actresses exploring peptides because peptides, A, are legal. B, they don't sound as scary and as dramatic as hormones. And those do work. I mean, these are things like seromoralin, tesamoralin, GPC-157, TB500.

First of all, let's talk sources because I'm not directing people to sources. There are tons of them available out there. Everyone knows where to get these things with a couple – you can just find it with a couple of quick Google searches. Not for human use. Yeah, it always says not for human or animal use. I'm just going to scratch my ear here. Not for human or animal use, but of course people are using them. They're relatively inexpensive.

There are two major issues about the sourcing. One is that most of that stuff in peptides or just short chains of amino acids are synthesized in China. They're not compounded in the States, and it is unclear if they are what they say they are. And the batch variation is

high. Same thing is true with a lot of your supplements, especially amino acids. Oh, good to know. To know they come from China and yeah, they're not really regulated. So yeah, just might want to keep that in mind.

Yes, absolutely. Cause you know, people's health is paramount. And the other thing is that with a lot of these peptides, the issue is that even if they are what they say they are, they often have something called lipopolysaccharide. LPS isn't cleaned out of them.

LPS, we used to use years ago in the lab to stimulate fever injected into the body and it acts as a pyrogen, which it means it triggers fever. Some people have bad reactions to these things locally or systemically. And it's because the LPS isn't getting cleaned out. There are recompounding pharmacies that, that do it. But you have to work with a doctor for those, but things like Sermoralin and Tesamoralin,

you know, for instance, in my case, I decided as research, I took Sermoralin with a doctor's supervision, but my prostate specific antigens went up way too high. I was like, this is not worth it.

And but it did. What's interesting is it did increase recovery. You felt like you could train every 12 hours and you recovered faster. And the sleep you get on those things is amazing. I mean, the sleep is so deep. Things like testamoralin and ipremoralin and there are a bunch of others have other effects. Some of them touch the prolactin pathway. Some like tesamorelin do not, as far as I understand. It's all out there now. And I think, I do think

peptides are the next big rage, but nobody knows how to use them. Nobody really knows what they're doing. And there's no doctor that's willing to guide any of this stuff. And if there were, that would be really terrific. So one of the reasons I decided to research them is because they're becoming – they're rampant use. A few of the better-known people in Hollywood that I've talked to about this that have used them for roles to help get lean and things like that, have said they start getting joint pain from taking it. That's cartilage growth. Growth hormone has done that to me personally as well.

It's weird because you're like, I thought this was supposed to make me feel great. And your hands hurt. Your elbows hurt. Your knees kind of hurt. It feels like they're bloated or something. It's weird. It's a little bit like puberty. In puberty, sometimes kids get growing pains. That knees kind of hurt. Like it feels like they're like bloated or something. It's weird. Yeah. It's a little bit like puberty, right? And puberty, sometimes kids get growing pains. That's from growth hormone. Um, actually when I was a kid, my dad told me that when I was

going through, I come in the middle of the night and he'd straighten out my legs cause they'd be all like bunched up because you're growing in your sleep and it's not always perfectly coordinated by the day. And so, um, and I think with peptides there I'm just you know people are gonna do what they're going to do but I do think it's important to be cautious because now you've got issues unlike with TRT where you can get a prescription you can have a reliable source from one of the big pharmaceutical companies you and I should say never buy these things from somebody at the gym that That's just foolish.

I mean, that's just that is very dangerous. I think that with a physician's prescription, you still have to ask yourself about the sourcing. And a recompound pharmacy that's licensed is very different than just some site on the Internet. But look, people are doing it and they're going to continue to do it. And if you want to be part of that experiment, you know, I can't stop you, but my, my interest is in trying to figure out how these things work. And really nobody knows how to use peptides properly. People are using GPC-157 to try and recover from injury. I have a friend and she is very active. So she damaged her shoulder. She had shoulder surgery. So she decided to inject GP 157.

She was taking ipomoralin. And her period cycles got completely crazy on ipomoralin. So she came off that, stayed on the GPC 157, and then eventually just decided, look, I'm going to invest in other like cold water therapies and heat therapies. And seems happier doing that. So it's not always the quick path to paradise. Oftentimes the slow route is better. And I'm not just saying this to be Mr. Conservative and balances the scientist guy.

I think there isn't a handbook, you know, that there isn't a way of really knowing. And, but remember, anytime you increase growth hormone, you're increasing your rate of aging, period. Vitality goes up, longevity goes down. I don't know that we can say the same thing about reasonable use of testosterone therapies. Or in the case of women, and we haven't talked a lot about that because it's mainly been about testosterone. But during my podcast episode with Bob Sapolsky, we talked about this, that postmenopausal women, some take

hormone therapy, some don't. The timing is really key. If they wait too long to get on estrogen hormone therapy, the outcomes are really bad. All health metrics get way, way worse. If they do it immediately as they exit menopause, outcomes are much better than had they not done anything at all. So timing is key. So again, just to zoom out and then I'll stop talking, which is get your blood work done before you get into any of this, get your blood work done, work with a physician while you explore this, if you decide to explore it. And I'll quote a friend of mine, he's actually my physician. He said, you know, better living through chemistry still requires better living. So if you're going to do all these things, especially double down on your

best behaviors, sunlight, sleep, et cetera, you know, get the most out of it. Don't, don't just think, oh, well now I've got this buffer. I can do whatever I want. I can sleep whenever and I can eat whatever that that's a, it's a waste and you will hit a brick wall. Yeah. We talked earlier about things that you don't eat, how that could maybe have a huge impact, you know, people eating fast food and eating processed foods and some of these things, they must be having kind of a negative impact on your testosterone levels. And then we didn't really mention alcohol or substance abuse or anything of those, of those things, but can you maybe kind of just talk briefly about some of those things as well? Yeah, I'm not a big drinker. I might occasionally have a little bit, but I just, it's not my thing.

And I'm, I personally don't smoke weed. I'm not into cannabis. It's just not my thing, but I don't judge. Cannabis will increase prolactin in some individuals. So the marijuana plant makes, it causes elevated levels of aromatase, which converts testosterone into estrogen, actually to limit the number of animals that eat the plant itself. It's plant-to-animal warfare. It's very clever actually, right? Limit the number of reproductively competent males of the species that want to eat you. That's a – mammals do it in a much more fierce way. If you put two animals together, they're in competition to mate. Oftentimes one will just try and rip the testicles off of the other. That's the ultimate form of animal animal warfare, right? Prevent them from mating, right? These days people do this through much more civil, but still diabolical, uh, approaches, right? Of limiting people's progression through society. It's really, it's crazy when you start to zoom out, look at yourself as an animal.

The sorts of things that we do start to take on a completely different picture. But marijuana isn't going to do that for everybody, but it'll do that for some. I have no reason to believe that CBD does that, but it might. But I doubt it. I think it's really THC in the marijuana plant. And actually, when I was in college, I knew a number of people that smoked pot and developed gynecomastia, development of male breast tissue, only because they smoked pot. Wow. And then had to have it surgically removed.

So, which, by the way, you know, since there seems to be a lot of interest online about gynecomastia because it's just hard for people to hide. You see UFC fighters nowadays showing up with it and a lot of times that they're blaming marijuana because that's actually allowed whereas gear isn't. So I think that most

people that have a propensity for it end up getting it cut out and that's very common in the circles that you see where people are augmenting with a lot of exogenous testosterone. They're taking a lot of steroids. They generally have their gyno cut out so that it just – technically, it could come back, but it tends not to. It's obviously not something anyone wants. These days, people will take things like clomid, Clomiphene to try and reduce it. Um, but there are other effects of those drugs.

So, um, drugs like cocaine, amphetamine, I couldn't, um, be more adamant that that's just a bad idea. It's just a bad idea. I'm sorry. I know that there are people that are out there saying that that's an overstatement and everybody's different. I just, I think dopamine is such a fragile pathway. We talked about this earlier. Um, alcohol, it's be careful. I mean, especially beer and hops are estrogenic. Um, you don't want to drink too

much of that. And I know it's considered at least in this country and other countries is like manly to drink alcohol or something, but I never got that. I, but then again, I'm one of these people that I can just relax and have a good time without alcohol. I don't need it, but I understand that some people enjoy it. But it will lower your testosterone and it will increase your estrogen. There's no question about that. If taken to excess and everyone's slightly different. Opioids will crush your testosterone and will increase your estrogen. In fact, a lot of people that take opioids develop gynecomastia.

When you see someone on the street who is psychotic and they often have gynecomastia, males often have this, it's very sad. It's actually, those are schizophrenics who are taking dopamine receptor blockers, and that's in the pathway. So I think if you're interested in having the kind of life which is about pursuit and healthy pursuit and leaning – being forward center of mass, then obviously opioids, alcohol, those kinds of things don't really have a place in that. alcohol, those kinds of things that don't really have a place in that. I know that in the training world, painkillers and things of that sort become an issue because people are constantly broken and hurting.

And all I can say is that looking to healthier alternatives and hormones and peptides and supplements and sunlight and avoiding porn and all those things are, are part of that picture. And depending on your age may or may not be right for you. But yeah, I think, um,

are there other drugs out there? I don't know. Nicotine, obviously not good for your lungs. Nicotine, great for your brain. Uh, people don't talk about this,

right? Well, I don't chew it, but you know, a Nobel prize winning neuroscientists that I know choose like five pieces of Nicorette an hour. And, um, cause it makes you sharp, but without that Nicorette, he's not good for much. Um, and people used to smoke to get that stimulation, but nicotine stimulates the release of acetylcholine in the brain and gives you focus. And, uh, so some people do use nicotine toothpicks and I've got friends

that dip Nicorette. And my, my thing is, you know, I mainly rely on black coffee and water to lean into a workout or to hard work. Try not to rely on other things too much. And then if I do need it, a lift, I might take some alpha GPC and some L-tyrosine occasionally. And then it feels like a real thing, you know? So I think that probably hopefully answered your question. Yeah. It did. Yeah.

I do have one more question. Sure. Because I think we're on Mark's TikTok right now too, and this is something I try to ask individuals that have a lot of expertise in this area because when it comes to hormones and testosterone and steroids, it's getting really popular amongst like younger guys, teenagers, 16, 17, 20. That just makes me so sad. Yeah.

It makes me sad because the best growth that they're going to get is right around the corner. What do they need to pay attention to? Yeah, just like exactly. What should they be – things that they should be cautious about? Well, they should do the things that we talked about. Learn how to get good at sleeping. Learn how to get good at training. Learn how to get good at studying if that's part of your trajectory. And if you're not going to study, be the best whatever, you know, paper boy, garbage man, school teacher, whatever it is. Just learn how to go from back on your heels to flat footed. Sometimes that's the best you can do. And from flat footed to forward center of mass, learn how to do that. Get sunlight,

eat well, train well, also surround yourself with really good people if you can. And if you can't, then find them online and surround yourself with those people. Um, earlier we were talking about pre-workouts and I have to say the best pre-workout for me is walking into a gym with you guys. Like I did today for the first time going, okay, like we're going to train today. I mean, you know, having consistent training partners and pushing each other is so key. I mean, and this is true for everything. I mean, I record a two hour podcast each week in addition to everything else I'm doing and having my podcast team, as you guys are probably familiar with, is it's a huge stimulus, right? You're like, all right, we're here to do this.

I mean, there are days I'm like,, maybe a little more time, this and that. I don't necessarily have slept the best day before. You walk in, they're all excited, fired up to do it, and now you're pumped. Exactly. And so you can find it through these things. Now, young guys getting on TRT, I mean, unless there's a serious clinical hypogonadism, which means they're not producing enough androgen, provided they're managing their stress.

If that still exists, okay, fine. Work with a doctor. But I think you want to be well in personally, you want to be well into your late 30s or 40s. And maybe, you know, I did this experiment at 45 and I could have waited, but I don't think I, I have no wish that I'd done it any earlier. I know some people are like, Oh, I wish I had done this a long time ago, but doing it so young is just seems to me like you're just, it's very precarious. Let's say you have a 17-year-old son. He's been lifting for two years.

Would you rather him do steroids or would you rather him smoke pot and drink? Oh, that's a tough one. Okay. I mean, teenagers are doing shit that's way more dangerous than just testosterone. I don't want to say that testosterone is not – I do believe it's not a great thing for underdeveloped people to take, you know, people that are teenagers. I don't think it makes any sense because the reason why you're going to take steroids is to kind of expedite this whole entire process that is strength training, bodybuilding, whatever you want to call it, right? You can make gains really, really fast when you're new, and you can make gains really, really fast when you're in puberty.

So you have a lot of great advantages. So there's not, in my opinion, there's not a lot of great reasons or compelling reasons to take steroids when you're a young kid. Plus, I do have concerns over what it could do to you from a sexual performance standpoint. But what I would say is, like, man, teenagers are doing a lot of shit that's really fucking dangerous. what it could do to you from a sexual performance standpoint. But what I would say is like, man, teenagers are doing a lot of shit that's really fucking dangerous. And testosterone wouldn't be high up on my list of things that are dangerous.

Yeah, it's definitely in terms of at reasonable dosages, it's definitely less dangerous than, you know, I mean, it's hard to compare to alcohol and marijuana because alcohol plus vehicle equals deadly. I've lost a lot of friends to drunk driving accidents sadly, right? These are – they were like anybody else but they made a bad decision or got in a car with someone with a bad decision, right? I sound like a public announcement but it's true, right? They're not here anymore. It's really sad because it's just – it's really sad. I think 17 is awfully young. I mean, again, I think if they knew their levels, right, they might be at 1400. So getting on more testosterone isn't a smart decision then. I think as no matter what people do, they want to work with a doctor because if that 17 year

old kid says, okay, I want to, I want to do this. I want to accelerate things. Well, then you'd love to just know where they're at because if they're already at 1800 nanograms per deciliter, 20 nanogram per deciliter free tea, and then they're getting on, that's not going to help them. They might actually feel worse, right? Whereas maybe there's a smarter alternative. If they are absolutely hell-bent on doing something, well then, maybe it's, okay, they're going to do some oralin or do hypermoralin or they're going to take a look at some of the other kinds of things that are out there. And also when you're 17, you're just not thinking about would you want to conceive a child at some point, right?

You're not thinking about long-term health at all. It's just very hard to think in that way. So it's tricky. I would hope it wouldn't be a choice in that way. But look, I can only speak from my experience. I weighed to 45, and even then I probably could have pushed out. My goal was to actually to never actually have to be like being the SEMA. Um, but in wanting to research this book truly, and also wanting to

get some understanding about what the landscape is out there, uh, I thought it was the right thing to do. Yeah. And I, and I might, you know, I didn't say whether or not I was going to stay on, right. It's a, that's a, that's a, that's a question. But you never seen anybody come off. I've never seen any, I've never seen anyone permanently come off. Yeah. They switch off and then it's a few days later. They're like, well, maybe the cream, maybe this. I've never seen anyone come off ever. Never seen anybody taking the cream that hasn't taken an injection either. Right. The cream thing seems sketchy it can you can rub it off on other people your spouse and kids and things and some people love it but um yeah no kids walking around with a mustache well this is actually interesting so you know do you you know it has anyone ever heard of evening primrose oil evening primrose oil and there's a lot of um natural um shampoos and stuff that women use and it's very estrogenic and there were cases of young boys spending time with their mom getting hugs for their mom like any you know healthy you know family kind of thing and developing gynecomastia because it goes

transdermal so evening primrose oil this is why i always say before you use somebody else's shampoo who stayed over your house look at that what's in's in that thing, right? Yeah. Oh yeah. Big time. It's probably not good for them either though, right? No, I don't know. I mean, I probably not, probably not evening primrose oils. I mean, estrogenic compounds in, in nature. There, there are a lot of them. There are fewer androgenic compounds in nature, but we talked about a couple of them, Tonga Ali and Fidogea agrestis. Those come from plants, right? Tonga Ali is a Nigerian shrub. Let's go.

Are you Nigerian? Yes. Oh, nice. Full-blooded. Nice. So this explains it. We solved Nasima's unbelievable hormone and natural profile. It's in our plants. It's in our plants.

Berries all day long. Exactly. There's Fidoja and breast milk in... You got to show them the teepee that you were born in on the dirt floor. Oh my god. We don't want to be canceled. I'm kidding.

Too bad I can't rewind that. It's a joke Come on. I'm kidding too, but I can't rewind that. It's a joke, guys. So I'm lost. He was born here. No, I was born here, but I have a lot of family in Nigeria. And my 23rd knee, it's health, but I got a 23rd knee intestines. And it was stupid because I was like, is there something else in there? It came back 99.9% West African.

Literally, 99.9. Yeah. Did you learn anything interesting from your 23andMe? Um, there's, there's, I have zero Neanderthal variants just because everyone was there. So, I mean, compared to, it's, it was like you have less Neanderthal variants than 99% of 23andMe customers. And it's because, I mean, anyone who has everything in West Africa or everything in Africa, they're not going to have any Neanderthal variants.

So that was interesting. That is a 1%. Huh? You said there was a 1% of something or 0.5% of something? Oh, yeah. So when I got it first done, there was a point – there's like a 1.5% unassigned, but then it went up to 99.9% West African. Wow. But the Neanderthal variant thing caught me off guard because I never really thought about that.

It's interesting. It makes sense. I did a genetic test for the first time recently, and I noticed there's some interesting mutations in there. I won't share what they are, but some of them are trivial like lactose intolerance and the kind of things like Eastern European stuff that happens. But yeah, I think genetic testing is is interesting i think if people can afford it or if you know i would say so young people if someone's asking you what you want for your birthday you want a blood lipid profile a hormone profile from merrick right is that and you want to do your genetic testing right and i think that what

more valuable information is there? I mean, it could inform you about steps you might want to take, which would be great if you might realize that you're in a terrific place or there's a better place to be. I personally can't think of anything I would have wanted more than that for my 18th birthday. Wow. Yeah. Now the activities on my 18th birthday, I'd want to do something different. I get the blood test. It's not your birthday gift to get a blood test, but the information is extremely valuable. And I think everyone, male, female, just get it because you'll want that information for the long haul. And if you just look at it and everything's great, then you're done. That's it.

But, yeah, I think that pretty much covers the spectrum on, on hormones. I mean, there's a lot that we could, you know, there's a bunch of deep dives we could do down the prolactin pathway and some of these other pathways. But I thought, uh, Dr. Kyle Gillette did such a great job of that on the show before. And, um, and then you start getting into personal choice, right? That's really what a lot of this has been is like here here are the biology and the psychologies of these things as we understand them yeah hopefully people take that information and you have to filter that through people's own wishes and desires and i mean i think we really do

reflect the the constellation of of choices there's probably other choices about how to approach this stuff i'm curious mark before uh if we uh are rounding up i want to know so um you have been able to i mean you're not at maxing out your levels as you were before right you seem healthier you're running and keeping the ticker going yeah i take uh 200 200 milligrams of testosterone a week in two different two divided dosages and that's it and i've been doing that for probably about six months uh i have been getting blood work done for the last uh me on and off for the last about four or five years so i've been paying attention to it quite a bit um even even at times being you know in the past being reckless i still got blood blood work done just to kind of see like what was going on, how, how, how bad is this information? And

there were times where my blood work was pretty compromised. When I started making a lot of changes towards being healthier is around the time where I, you know, was looking at my blood work with Stan Efferding. And he was like, he's like, Hey, you know, you gotta just pretty much, it's time, time for you just like to shift gears and like make some, make some good changes. And I was like, okay. Cause I would do that after competition. One thing that I did do that was very helpful is I would compete and I would come off stuff. I would always lose weight.

I'd always get leaner. I'd always get in better shape. And then I would start to train for another competition maybe a couple months down the road. So I did take little breaks off of being too much of a meathead or too much of a knucklehead at the time. And I think that was helpful. But, yeah, getting my blood work done consistently. Probably in the last two years, I had like I don't know eight or ten panels done I'm getting it done frequently and I'm watching certain numbers you know get into

better ranges and stuff like that and my lipid profile and stuff like that is really good most everything is checking out to be fairly optimal every once in a while there's something a little off but it's like not a major I haven't had anything where they're like, Oh my God, like, you know, you're, you're in serious, you know, danger. You need to, you know, be, be careful. So livers enzymes are good. Like a lot of stuff is, uh, is on point and it's been great. Yeah. Working with Merrick health, they've been, uh, massively beneficial because I'm not only working with a doctor, but I also have good communication. They have, they have great communication with you as well, where I have communication on, I can just ask them any question at any time. I can say, Hey, I, you know, wanted to up my

magnesium and they could look at the blood work and just say, you can try it. But, you know, from the blood work, it looks like your magnesium and your electrolyte balance looks to be great. So I don't know if it's going to have any profound changes. And then they might say, hey, well, actually, now that I'm looking at it, you might want to take a little more vitamin D3 or something if you're looking to feel better or whatever the case is. So it's been great to be able to modulate that and watch it. I think that's terrific. Yeah. You have to be a scientist of yourself earlier when we were in the gym, you, you mentioned something, don't think too much with training. It's more about get in there and train by the general principles of the overload principle. You know, don't train hard, which means you can't train too long. If you're actually training hard,

get your nutrition, right. Et right etc it sounds like with the hormones and blood work and supplementation aspect that's a place if you're going to get cerebral about it and you want to track data and numbers that's a place to to also be intentioned right know why you're doing something and so what this i'm just kind of paraphrasing from what the the gestalt of what i've heard here is that there is a place to, to be scientific about it. And that's the place. Yeah. I always had a, in training, I always had a main intent of the day and I tried in whatever way I could to make sure that that happened. So if it was like a max effort day and, uh, you know, I'm, I'm training and I, I go through my steps and I kind of find out like, I'm not sure why, but it's just not there for today.

I can just I can I can change what I'm doing. You know, I can be flexible. I can say, well, you know, I was supposed to get a PR on this lift today. You know, how do I get a PR? And I'm a real simple person. So for me, I'm just like, well, let's just go with a seven rep max. I've never tried a seven rep max before. So therefore, this would be a personal record.

This would be a personal best. I can feel good about what I did for today. Or I can just say, you're not as strong for whatever reason or your back kind of hurts. Maybe you can get in some more repetitions and more work, more, more maybe volume rather than just going for like that max set. So I've always tried to just figure out how do I, how do I still walk away with like a victory, you know?

And sometimes it was to the point where I was too beat up and I, I wasn't intentional about the previous workouts. I overdid it. I over-trained and I had to mainly just go in the gym and do like assistance exercises. Like it's still fairly wise to, you know, put a lot of thought into your training. That's, that wasn't really my point in, in, in us talking earlier. My point was that for me, it lined up really well with allowing me to be consistent because

that is where my interest lies the most is in being able to audible and being able to be flexible. interest lies the most is in being able to audible and being able to be flexible. If you tell me to follow stuff on a sheet, I just don't want to do it. I don't know. You know, I don't, I'm not, I'm sure that I could, I'm sure I could adapt to it, but I literally don't, I don't want to do it for some particular reason. I have done that stuff before and it has actually worked and been really beneficial but it feels forced and I don't like to force myself to for some reason I have some sort of thing with basically anyone telling me what to do I don't I don't I have a hard

time responding well to it but like I said I I can be adaptable I can figure out a way to work my way into it. But it would have to really align with me understanding and it being like my idea. Maybe I have an ego or something. I'm not sure. But it would have to align with me understanding like, okay, that is in my best interest. If I could see that pretty clearly, then I will do it. Yeah, you're a reasonable person. Sometimes.

Andrew, take us on out of here, buddy. Yeah, if I can really quick, I know we're wrapping things up and we're out of time, but for women taking, what's it called? Fidozia aggressive. Or Tongkat Ali.

Yeah, because you had mentioned like some women actually can benefit from taking a little bit of testosterone and that sort of thing. So would they benefit from taking this at all? Well, all I can say, again, not a doctor, I'm not prescribing. I think that there are women that are taking Fidojia and or Tonga Ali and seem to like

the effects. Someone actually who was dealing, this is actually an Olympic sprinter, I won't reveal any more than that, who was dealing with some pretty intense depression issues, started on those and whether or not it was placebo or whether or not it was real, um, wrote to me saying, I really appreciate it. I'm doing far better now. I feel excellent. I'm able to train again that they are monitoring their blood work and got a nice lift in a

number of things they wanted to lift in and, um, feeling pretty good. So, you know, everything's available to everyone nowadays, it seems, and that's part of the solution and part of the problem, right? So, yes, there are women that are doing those and taking those. One just brief mention about Tongali and Fidoja. There's no rule that says you have to take both of them, and you can take none of them. But sometimes starting one thing and then doing the other is good, too too to figure out if you actually are going to benefit from both.

That's the single variable is always better than multiple variable. Scientist guy in me. But I spent – I got into supplementation and training and was interested in the mental mental side too when I was started when I was 16 and then in college I found all this stuff to be very helpful for navigating hard work over long periods of time and um so I have notebooks that go back to you know 19 you know 92 um and so I've you know I could we could do a whole episode and all the stuff that didn't work for me but you know and I had the great benefit of you know I formed a friendship with Mike Mentzer who was

kind enough to say stay off hormone augmentation it's bad deal unless you're going to go into this world that he was in and encouraged me to study and do that kind of thing but I I think there's so many choices out there get the basics right that he was in and encouraged me to study and do that kind of thing. But I, I, I think there's so many choices out there.

Get the basics, right. I think as we close out, I just like want people to get the basics right first. And then the rest is, is on an individual basis, but cool. There you go. All right.

Thank you everybody for checking out today's episode, especially everybody on the live chat. You guys were fired up today. I really appreciate that. We were talking about Merrick health links to them down in the description below, as well as the podcast show notes. And when you go to merrickhealth.com, you're going to see right away, what do you want to do here? Men's health or women's health. And then you can fill out a questionnaire, and you can even book an appointment. And when it comes time to actually pay for the labs,

if you're speaking to somebody on the phone, you can just mention promo code PowerProject15. Or if you check out manually, it's just PowerProject15 to save 15% off all labs. Please follow the podcast at Mark Bell's Power Project on Instagram, at MB Power Project on TikTok and Twitter. My Instagram and Twitter is at IamAndrewZ. Jean-Claude Van Daddy, where are you at? Thank you, Zaddy. At Nseema Nyang on Instagram and YouTube, at Nseema Yin Yang on TikTok and Twitter. Dr. Huberman. Where can people find you? Yeah, so I have a weekly podcast called Huberman Lab Podcast.

We cover all things related to health, fitness, mental health, cover topics in depth. It's a lot like a university lecture, but there are a lot of tools and it's all there on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify. You can find Huberman Lab. I also teach neuroscience on Instagram, Huberman Lab on Instagram. And there's information there often that's not on the podcast. And I am on Twitter, but Instagram and the podcast are the main place to find me. And then if you want to see what my laboratory does, the stuff we're doing on stress and human performance, you can go to hubermanlab.stanford.edu. And that's the real geeky stuff that you can see what I do for my day job.

Dude, come to TikTok. I know, I know. I don't know. TikTok will love you, man. Come to TikTok. I'm hearing I should go to TikTok from some trusted sources and good friends here, so I'll always consider. I'll consider. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell everywhere.

Strength is never a weakness. Weakness never strength. Catch you all later.