Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 138 - Anthony Jay

Episode Date: November 8, 2018

Dr. Anthony Jay is the President and CEO of AJ Consulting Company, LLC, specializing in scientific consulting, speaking, and personalized DNA analysis. He works with complicated and abstract concepts but knows how to “keep it real”. He is also a husband and father, avid outdoorsman, scientist, and bestselling author of Estrogeneration, explaining how estrogenics are making you fat, sick, and infertile. Buy Anthony's books online: https://www.ajconsultingcompany.com/store/c1/Featured_Products.html ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Stitcher Here: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play here: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud Here: https://soundcloud.com/markbellspowerproject FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

Got a lot of buddies there. Where do you live at? Rochester, Minnesota. Minnesota, eh? Do you know the Emmerichs by any chance? They were just here recently. They're a keto family. No.

Yeah, we had Maria Emmerich and her husband and their children out here. She's written a bunch of keto books and stuff like that. Really good people. Great information. books and stuff like that. Really good, uh, really good people, great information. Um, one of their books actually, uh, it breaks down, um, like all the nutrition that's in, you know, steak and all the nutrition that's in like eggs. And it, it was really cool because a lot of times when it comes to like steak, I mean, people just know it has like fat and protein. Right. They might know that it has iron. So then their knowledge starts to kind of wear down after that.

But in this one, it was really cool because it listed everything. It showed that it has, you know, just things I didn't know before. I didn't really realize that steak had potassium in it. I just didn't know that. Yeah. Have you studied carnosine at all? No. Carnosine is exceptionally interesting.

So obviously plants don't make it carn carno right meat and uh it binds to sugar it's an amino acid right it's made from two different amino acids yeah so animals make it but you know steak is loaded with it obviously but what it does is it protects against advanced glycation end products, which is basically, have you heard of ages advanced glycation end products? No. Most of the stuff we talk about today, I probably never heard any of it. Yeah. I mean. I'm not as well versed as Rob Wolf.

I saw you on his podcast. Yeah. Well, so advanced, advanced glycation end products, when you have sugar in your body for too long, it starts sticking to things. So you get these sugar, chunks of sugar sticking to your proteins. It doesn't sound healthy. No, in fact, it cross-links, it sticks two proteins together. So, you know, in the morgue, when they fix a body, they use formalin, right? Formaldehyde. Wow, yeah. And that preserves it because what that does is it cross-links proteins. That's exactly what formaldehyde does. And that's what advanced

glycation does. That's one of the problems with sugar. Wow. You have too much sugar all the time in your body. You get ages advanced glycation, which is a perfect acronym, right? Yeah. And carnosine protects against that. So in other words, you can have a little bit higher blood sugar if you're eating meat because you're getting protection with the carnosine. That's actually crazy interesting. I've never, uh. That's why I think that's one of the secrets of the carnivore diet that most people aren't even talking about. Right.

Is you get a lot of carnosine. Well, I think, you know, the carnivore diet is, is great. I think that there's, um, there's a lot of interesting things that happen. And I think that, um, whenever you just start taking interesting things that happen and i think that um whenever you just start taking out junk out of your diet that's when you're going to start to see a lot of magic and so i think that sometimes people forget that um and there's a lot of people that will say you know if there is a superfood out there it very well could be red meat or it could be liver heart or some of these things that are nutrient dense right

yeah it makes a lot of sense uh steak has a lot of fat and protein in it and stuff and a lot of other nutrients that we need but i think it's the absence of junk you know when you commit to a keto diet a whole 30 diet a paleo diet you start to commit to like cutting things out and maybe maybe for the last 20 years um you've been having cereal every morning yeah maybe you don't know that you don't do well with grains yeah maybe you never realized you don't do well with milk took me a long time to figure it out yeah it takes a long it takes a long time to figure these things out and it takes an even longer time to really put them into practice to the point where you're like, no, I'm not doing that anymore because I don't like the result. It doesn't feel good. What I'm doing this way

feels so much better that I'm not going back the other way. You just mentioned that you kind of have a reaction to choline. Maybe too many eggs or something might give you a headache or certain products and stuff like that. Oh yeah. Yeah. I think when I was doing my PhD initially, are we live, by the way, right now? Yeah. We're going. Yeah, rock on.

Yeah, we're going. I always do this where I just talk too much and then realize. If you could just pull the microphone up a little bit closer to you. Yeah, I felt like it fell in on me. Yeah, it did. It got a little lazy on you. That's cool. But no, I think when I was doing my PhD, right, when I was starting, I didn't fell in on. Yeah, it did. It got a little lazy on you. That's cool. But no, I think when I was doing my PhD,

right, when I was starting, um, I didn't believe in this idea that gluten was a problem. I didn't, you know, you're kind of taught that a macro is a macro, a carb is a carb,

whatever, that sort of thing. Calories in, calories out. Yeah. Yeah. That's what we're taught. And then I had a daughter who,

uh, was clearly dairy sensitive and gluten sensitive. And it took me like a year. Embarrassingly, it took me about a year to figure that out. And then once I did, once I, that was a huge awakening, a huge epiphany for me because then I started tinkering with that stuff on my own. Yeah.

And I realized, okay, my wife's got the dairy sensitivity. I can do dairy all day long, but gluten for sure gets my system all messed up. Makes me really tired, for example. Well, great. And then choline, like I said. Right. Yeah.

A great way to set an example for your kids is to, you know, just basically start to kind of eat. You know, you have a certain eating regimen and then they adopt hopefully a similar one. And so for yourself with your daughter having these problems and your wife having these problems, did you just for yourself, get rid of some of those things as well? Oh yeah. We're pretty much no grains and pretty much whole foods. I mean, I shot a deer last week. I was just talking to the guys here.

Yeah. You love to hunt, huh? Oh yeah. Cool. Yeah. I shot four last year and with my bow. And then I thought that'd be enough meat for the year. That two chest freezers.

And it was done by, by the spring. Didn't even get me through the summer. Yeah. Crank, cranking through it pretty good. So this year I think I need five deer, but. Yeah. Yeah. I try and just do whole foods and, you know,

get back to the basics. It's pretty damn cold in Minnesota. Is it tough to hunt out there? Yeah, but that's one of the things I like. Yeah. It's one of the, it's, it's fun, huh? Yeah. Well, the deer get a

lot more desperate with the food supply and right if you can find a good food source right yeah they come right into it so speaking of food sources what what has kind of happened to our food source i mean you know um yeah you hear these people kind of make these analogies and they'll say uh the pussification of our society and and how men aren't as manly anymore. And, you know, um, we're not like digging ditches and carrying buckets of water and going out and, you know, jumping on a wild boar's back and breaking its neck and things, things like that. Right. Um, you are, but yeah, most people aren't. Well, I do it just for the practice, just for fun, you know?

You are, but most people aren't. Well, I do it just for the practice, just for fun, you know. But, you know, we're not as like, we're not kind of forced to do these things, maybe not forced to use tools. And so therefore, yeah, maybe we're not, maybe the women aren't as womanly as they normally would be under normal circumstances. You can take that at whatever way you want. And maybe the men aren't as quote unquote manly, uh, as they used to be. And maybe some of the stuff has to do with our, our food and our water. Oh yeah. Yeah.

It's a really hot button topic right now because of all the gender identity stuff and politics. But from a chemistry perspective, I mean, there's no dying. Obviously there's differences between men and women in terms of hormones and chemicals in your body. And yeah, I mean, in science, they oftentimes call it male feminization. And I, I mean, a lot of scientists try and skirt around that, you know, they, they say, yeah, they try and avoid that term, but if they're being honest, I think, you know, a lot of times you see that and that's for men. Right. And just an example of that would be lower testosterone.

Right. Which we see, you know, since 1990, the average man was about 500. Then in the 2000s, it was about 400. And now it's about 300 is the average testosterone in men. And the other companies, the lab companies have even dropped their base, their, you know, what they consider normal. Their normal range has dropped. So in other words, if you come in with 250, you know, in 1990, they'd say, oh, you're shit. You're low.

Right. And today they say, well, you're good. You're normal because that's normal. And that's an example of male feminization. But you also see problems in women too, because puberty is getting a lot younger and younger. You know, for example, doctors are seeing a lot of eight year olds with puberty, you know, girls. And you see it in boys too, actually, but more so in women. And they're doing the exact same thing there.

And I wrote about this in my book because they're trying to redefine the normal age range of puberty now because it's become so common. And that's, I think that's because of these artificial chemicals that we're exposed to in our food, in our water, in our personal care product, which is a huge source that most people are overlooking. So just the general basis of it is that maybe the automobiles that we have and maybe some of the ways that we care for our crops and maybe just, I don't know, the toxification of the earth from us living here. Maybe all these things have contaminated our foods with things that could potentially raise our estrogen levels and your estrogen and your testosterone levels, I would imagine there's some give and take on that. Like your estrogen is being elevated by

something, maybe your testosterone might drop and maybe vice versa. Yep. And it's especially through the protein called SHBG, which I know you know a lot about, but basically in my book, I call that the limo service for hormones to try and make it simple for people to understand because testosterone and estrogen, they both float on water. It's like cholesterol. They're made from cholesterol, both of them. And that's one of the definitions of a sex hormone. It's a hormone made from cholesterol as opposed to... So it's like, would it be, is it fat soluble? Is that correct? Yeah. And that's like, uh, would it be, is it fat soluble? Yeah. Is that correct?

Yeah. And that's one of the issues with the artificial estrogens, they store in your fat. Um, but basically just to get around your blood stream, you know, your blood is aqueous. It's like water. So they can't just get around your blood. So they need to get in the limo, right?

They need to get on SHBG and both estrogen and testosterone both ride that same limo. They both ride SHBG to get around your blood. So they're competitive with each other. And that's one of the ways your body kind of detects and regulates that relationship. And it's a delicate balance. Right. And the other aspect of estrogen, natural estrogen and testosterone, frankly, is they're at the nanogram levels in our body.

Nanogram. And that's 10 to the minus ninth grams i mean that's yeah that's a difficult thing to measure and so you know when i'm talking about men's estrogen usually i'm talking about 20 nanograms per liter that's the natural level right usually women interestingly enough they're also about 20 up to 400. They range depending on the time of the month. So most people would think, you know, women are in the thousands, right? They think women are so much more estrogen and that that's true. If a woman is pregnant, they start getting over a thousand, but for the most part, they're

pretty similar to men. Again, it goes up to 400, but. Is the main difference, uh, between a male and a female from a hormone perspective is, is the main difference just, uh, that men have more testosterone rather than there being like a greater absence or more estrogen? It's both. Yeah. Little combination of both. Okay.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I mean, when you talk about male feminization, like say there's other things, you obviously look at gonads, right? Another. I don't look at gonads right another i don't look at going i mean in a lab i caught a peek i mean here and there a guy was squatting he was in front of me i you know i mean when you go to the bathroom you kind of peek over yeah you know just just to kind of measure up yourself see if you're doing you know you're adequate yeah see if you're doing okay

yeah the gil gonad check okay maybe it's not so obvious but in the research lab it's obvious that you would look at gonads to determine sexual differences and sexual changes and they call it uh um you know sexual dysfunction obviously so like for example they found fish with issues in their gonads right and fish And fish have internal gonads, so it's more complicated, but, and then they start looking in the water and inevitably in all these different lakes where they find these deformations of fish gonads, they find artificial estrogen chemicals, including

birth control. And, you know, I mean, the levels that we're talking about for those chemicals are in the thousands of nanograms per liter. So they're way above our natural estrogen level. So that we're talking about for those chemicals are in the thousands of nanograms per liter. So they're way above our natural estrogen level. So when we're drinking that, you know, I mean, you can argue about how much is absorbed through our gut lining. So like these guys that are driving around with these nuts hanging off the back of their truck, they kind of have a point, right?

Are our sacks shrinking because of some of these things that are going on yeah in fact there's something called anogenital distance um and that's shrinking like that's becoming more and more feminine in males today there's a lot of things i mean most of it's just i have to check around down there i gotta get a mirror you don't see well you see it basically in the future generations. You won't see that shrink in your own body, hopefully, because that's more of a development. That was a close call. Yeah. Oh my gosh.

Yeah. But like I say, it's a controversial topic because a lot of people don't even want to acknowledge differences between men and women to begin with. Right. But obviously there's differences and scientists that are being real honest, they're, they're noting these differences and they're also doing experiments with atrazine, for example. Right.

Like if you looked up atrazine and male feminization, you'll find papers on different animals. You don't want to do this in humans, obviously. You don't want to dose somebody with a bunch of this herbicide. It's a herbicide.

Got it. And they spray it on grains and, you know, it causes male feminization of frogs at about 200 nanograms per liter. And what's, with atrazine, right? So if you put 200 nanograms per liter in the water, you get a male frog start turning into a

female frog. Wow. And what's crazy about that is the EPA allows 000 nanograms per liter of atrazine in our drinking water supply so how much of an impact is that having on us right you know and i think the biggest the biggest way that we see it practically speaking we see this feminization in males today is through motivation because that's where the studies are real clear if you give you know again during the developmental stage yeah you're going to change these things like anal general distance and these weird things right but um you see if you affect more general things as well yeah well in in adults it affects motivation so if you give an adult rat a bunch

of these artificial estrogens like bpa or phthalates or whatever estrogen, whatever estrogen chemical, it drops off their motivation, sex motivation, but also just general motivation, you know, to do anything. And I think that's what you really see in our culture today. You see a lot of men that just aren't motivated to do anything. We get, I mean, that's why people tune in. They're like, you know, I need to get hyped up. And, you know, I do a lot of these podcasts I do on my own as well. And I try to walk people through, you know, this kind of recipe of how to kind of stay motivated, how to stay out in front of things. I try to teach people like, you know, you do have a lot more control over things. And, and I don't know a lot of the science behind, I don't know, you know, dopamine and all these different things that go on in your head. But I do know that, uh, the more that you can try to get ahead, if you can figure out a way of even just, and you don't have to be

ahead of everybody else. You just need to be ahead of yourself. So, um, if you can figure out a way of kind of going through a checklist every day and hammering it out the best that you possibly can. Let's say you get five good tasks done every single day. The better that you start to master that, the more momentum you're able to get. And I'm sure even that process sends a cascade of different hormones that are probably going in your favor. Even something as simple as I really heavily recommend that people start to prepare their foods and people start to now there's intermittent fasting there's different things but you should still know like children don't leave the house without mom or dad saying hey you got your lunch

or the kid eats at school or whatever the case may be but adults leave the house with no they don't have anything set up and the reason why i think it's important is because there's a lot of, it sounds silly to say it, but there's a, there's a lot of stress and anxiety about, Hey, where do you want to go eat for lunch today? You're like, well, I don't know. And maybe I'm trying to eat certain way. And you're trying now, now we really don't know where to go. We only have an hour.

Our boss is going to be pissed. We're gone any longer than that. Parking's a pain. It just causes this cascade of problems. And we've talked about these little things. You may lay out your clothes the night before. Just these little tiny things. Now, I'm not going to say that that's necessarily going to build testosterone and you're going to be this burly, you know, burly person or whatever your goal

is. Um, but it will build willpower and it will help you get ahead and it helps help you stay ahead. And when you get in that position, you don't really need external motivation. It's a, a lot of it's coming from within because you want to do more because you want to try to become more. Yeah. And I agree 100%. I mean, I'm seeing it left and right. I got people that come up to me at trade shows and stuff and they're crying. And I'm saying, hey, man, I didn't force you to listen to my shit.

I know it's boring. You don't have to cry out loud about it. Stop drinking tap water. Yeah. All over the place. But they're very emotional about the fact that they can't seem to find their way or that we help them find their way or any of those combinations of things. Yeah. And I think that's one of the aspects of marijuana here in California that a lot of people are overlooking is that the marijuana smoke can act like estrogen. So eating it fine,

they've done a bunch of studies, but for some reason, when you smoke it, it has an interaction with, it acts like estrogen. And I include that in my book, which is of course not particularly popular, but it's just a fact I want people to know, especially in teenagers. And I think that's one of the dangers and the risks of teenagers. Joe Rogan somewhere, he's getting pissed. He's calling bullshit. No, and I've done a YouTube video on this recently because that's a big problem. If you're trying to motivate yourself and you're struggling, but you're continuing to do something like ingesting a chemical that's acting like estrogen, that's inhibiting your motivation motivation then it's a completely uphill battle right and you know again i think that's one of the reasons they find that's a big factor with

teenagers using marijuana and again no issue with marijuana in fact cbd is really you know unbelievably healthy anti-inflammatory and i think there's even a positive interaction between thc which is the chemical that makes you high right and CBD, which is the anti-inflammatory compound in marijuana, which is kind of overlooked. Those two in concert act in a positive way. And I think, you know, I've been doing a lot of digging into that topic. Every time you dig deep into it, you see a lot of teenage motivation slash infertility that are related to, you know, apathy, that kind of thing that are related to them smoking marijuana. There's so much to this story. You know, it's really wild.

You have something to add to that, Andrew? Yeah, no, I was just going to ask, like, how fast would that, like, affect somebody? Like, I mean. That's a good question. Probably a differential, right? Because old Billy back in the day, he had one marijuana cigarette and they turned into a chick no but like you know i mean like is it like a continued use like i think yeah if you dig a little bit deeper in it i think it's a really cool topic because there's a lot of weed heads that it doesn't bother me it doesn't do anything to me yeah there's a couple things right so one of the one of the services that i provide people is 23andme dna analysis and i recently for example did ben pokalski's dna on

air you know nice and one of the things that i look at when i'm doing dna analysis is your genes involved in marijuana processing one of those is estrogen How does your body deal with estrogen? One of those is paranoia. How paranoid might you get just based on your genetics? We all differ in that regard. The gene is called AKT1. It's pretty well established. The scientists usually call it psychosis because that sounds a lot more negative because there's a lot of negative context with marijuana in the scientific community, which I think is

BS, but it's just a historical fact. But, um, paranoia is one estrogen, like I said, is one. And then another one is schizophrenia, right? You want to look at the genes involved in schizophrenia. It's crazy. You can find out all these things through your genes, through just, uh, well, some of it's genetic and then some of it's environmental. So everybody's going to have somewhat of an estrogen response in my mind from the marijuana smoke. But if you've got great genetics to handle estrogen, to break down those chemicals, then you break it down quick and it doesn't impact you that much. But if those compounds are staying in your body

a lot longer, you're going to have a longer impact. You know what I mean? And then there's just another study done, you know, literally just a few months ago on epigenetics with marijuana. Can you explain what epigenetics are? Yeah. So epigenetics are marks on your DNA. It's kind of like tattoos on your DNA.

Understood. That was a big breakthrough in science when they discovered epigenetics and the way they discovered it was through the Dutch hunger winter. It's called the Dutch famine or the Dutch hunger winter. The Nazis apparently blocked off the food supply in the Netherlands. And there was a whole population of people, literally like a million people that were starving for a whole year. And then boom, they got food.

And they died, right? A lot of people died, but then people that survived through that, the ones that had, um, babies that in their womb, you know, the ones that were pregnant, um, during that hunger winter, of course they had smaller babies. Right. Right. Because they were starving.

Right. But what blew scientists' minds was that the babies of those babies now, which are coming out now, they're smaller. And that doesn't make sense, right? Because with DNA, you know, mutations take decades, you know, generations, right? Hundreds of generations usually. But in this case, we're seeing a change right away. And it's not through nutrition because these babies now, they've got plenty of nutrition, but they're still smaller. And that's how they discovered epigenetics. These marks on the DNA

actually get passed on. Right. So this is something I've wondered forever. Can you make marks on your own DNA that you pass on good or otherwise? Yep. Yep. And that's, that's one of the reasons I love choline. You know, we started off talking about choline and the reason it's bothers me so much that my body doesn't handle choline very well. And it's probably not choline. It's probably some byproduct that's also in there, something like that. But choline is a super beneficial, positive regulator of epigenetics. It changes marks on your DNA in a positive way.

And those get passed to your future kids. Wow. Damn. You know, and that sticks with you. So similar with, uh, salthuraphane, which Rhonda Patrick was always talking about. The reason it's, and by the way, I know I work in the lab at Mayo Clinic with the guy who discovered that, or he probably co-discovered it, but he's published a million papers. That's crazy.

Yeah. He's from Germany. And, uh, the reason salthuraphane is so darn good for you it changes those marks on your dna that's the root cause of why it's so beneficial so not only does it improve you for years and years to come it proves your kids because you actually pass that on so epigenetics has been just you know completely overlooked because we didn't even know what it was until recently it's such a crazy thing. My son has kind of asked me about that.

Like, you know, because I lift, you know, is he somehow affected by that? You know, is he, is he affected by, you know, is, uh, you know, he, is he going to be stronger or whatever, you know, stuff like that. Yep. Yep. And I think, I think even your gut bacteria are impact your future generations because those get, you know, your gut bacteria carry those marks. You know what I mean? Like bacteria carry, they have marks on their DNA.

Right. And that gets transferred to the maternal bacteria, you know, so it's like a memory. It's kind of like an organism, a single cell memory. Right. And it's really powerful. You know, when we discovered that bacteria have kind of their own immune system, have you heard of CRISPR? Yeah. And yeah, that's all that shit's pretty wild. I don't own immune system, have you heard of CRISPR? Yeah.

And yeah, that's all that shit's pretty wild. I don't understand it, but it's. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the reason, the reason we have CRISPR today and what CRISPR is, if you don't know what it is for people out there, it's basically gene editing

technology. It uses a guide RNA strand, it cuts a piece of DNA, and then you put in an RNA and it kind of like a template that you want the dna to be you and it basically changes the dna into a way that you want it's editing right it's just that's exactly what it is so we do we possess the ability right now to kind of like modify dna to yeah modify dna and have it like but we are not doing that just we're not humans we're not messing with it yet in china probably no i do it in the lab i've used crisper myself and cells right human cells in the lab

the problem with crisper that most people overlook is that it has a lot of off-target effects so you're cutting you think you're just cutting the target sequence of dna but then you also end up cutting hundreds of other spots on the dna well, there's, you know, with every, with, you know, it's, it's just, this happens all the time and, you know, every, there's for every like effect, there's like a defect, right? Exactly. And sometimes the defect of something is the effect that you're looking for. I've, I've seen this a bunch of times with supplementation, you know, somebody will find

like this peer reviewed, you know, paper will say, Hey, this works a lot better with, you know, glucose or sugar basically in some, in some way. And, uh, the effect that they're going for after they kind of found this research or this study, um, they didn't realize that maybe long-term use, or they didn't really realize it would cause this cascade of other things. So while you may be getting, the getting might be good for the moment, it might be causing a problem like down the road or like, who knows what, maybe just, this is just a random example, but saying like ingesting 50 grams of carbohydrates post-workout. Yeah. Maybe on a piece of paper that does look good. Maybe it looks good for six weeks. Maybe it looks good for eight weeks, but maybe over a period of time, maybe your body starts to reject

it. I mean, our bodies, it's way smarter than we could ever possibly imagine. This machine that we, that we live in every single day, it always seems to do like the opposite of what you want it to do. Yeah. You try to make it do something. It's like, nope. Well, in science is always like the LDL is you wanted to do. Yeah. You try to make it do something. It's like, nope. Well, in science is always like the LDL is another good example or cholesterol because that's such a sinkhole of scientific information where we thought we had it figured out. And then we realized,

oh, there's these different particle sizes. Yeah. So we thought we had that figured out. And then we realized, oh, there's LP little a, and that should really matter,

but it doesn't really matter in certain contexts. There's all this complicated additions on top of additions. And, you know, like I say, it's a sinkhole and it's led a lot of people off. Heart disease is a great example because, uh, if you have one marker that's off for heart disease, let's say that you're, uh, uh, let's say that you, um, I don't know, you say you have high LDL, but yeah, there's potential that you, I don't know, let's just say you have high LDL. Yeah, there's potential that there could be some danger to it and you might need to investigate further. But most likely, like if you don't have symptoms

and if you are relatively healthy and you're training and you're doing all these things and you don't have any other signs that you have any sort of heart problem, you're probably okay. Even if you go and you don't have any other signs that you have any sort of heart problem, you're probably okay. Even if you go and you determine, you find out that you have higher levels than expected, you may want to keep poking around because it is your heart and you don't want to take that lightly.

But usually there's like three or four different things going on at one time that's kind of setting you up for disaster. Yeah, well, I think inflammation is always at the root cause of that. But I mean, the point is, right. Scientists oftentimes, you know, make those one, that single discovery that they think is everything crisper, you know, Oh, we've got to figure it out. Now we can edit DNA. And then you realize, Oh, there's all this other stuff. And it's great in the lab. You know, I can change genes in and out and modify different genes. And that's awesome in a dish.

You know, but to actually do that on a fetus or something, I mean, that's pretty ethically sketchy. But again, people are doing that already in China and things like that. They are. People are doing that already. Oh, yeah. Are there people walking around that have had that done? I doubt it. I doubt it.

But it's going to happen. That's probably going to be the new wave of doping, you know, changing your myostatin gene or something. What about doing that in animals? Like, let's say for like a cow, like to kind of have the perfect cow, you know, like, like for meat, you know, and for, are they doing, are

things being done like that? Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean. Go ahead and crank that thing way down. Yeah. I feel like my microphone. Might need to get a counterbalance on there. ahead and crank that thing way down. Yeah, I feel like my microphone might need to get a counterbalance on there.

Just keep cranking. Keep going. Yeah, buddy. Just a squeak. That's alright. All this estrogen is leaving his microphone kind of limp. Exactly. That microphone stand is a perfect example of what's happening in America right now with estrogen levels.

Placid microphone stand. You ever mess with, like, because you're saying, sorry to totally change the subject, but it's just driven me out that you're saying choline gives you headaches. Me personally, and a lot of people, because Joe Rogan mentions that on his podcast

with his Onnit. Yeah. What's it called? Alpha Brain. Yep, he talks about that. Because I've heard of people taking too much of the racetam family. Yeah.

So they'll have a prem or racetam without enough choline, and that gives people headaches. Yeah, that's probably because it uses choline. There's actually a gene, too. It's called COMT, and I think the mutation is V158M. You can look at your 23andMe data and it actually determines whether you metabolize that properly. Do you think you just have a shit ton of acetylcholine running through your brain? I don't know.

I don't even want to speculate because I'm not even sure if it's the choline or if it's some, like I say, some contaminant in there. Do you think everyone should have a 23andMe test? If you can afford it. Do you think it provides you some good information that could be really useful? I wouldn't do it if I didn't, you know, and I've done it for my family, my extended family, because I can, what I always say is knowledge is power.

Right. If you, if you understand, and that goes from, you know, that's what Socrates learned, you know, 2000, three, 4,000 years ago, Socrates. A long ass time ago. Yeah. And Socrates. I you know, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 years ago. A long ass time ago. Socrates. I mean, yes. Yeah. Bill and Ted's excellent adventure. Yeah.

What do they say? Strange things are afoot. That's okay. But when he went to the Oracle at Delphi, you know, I've been there. I've been to Greece. I learned the Greek language. It took a couple of years in in college i was a classics minor and the this guy went to a lot of school and stuff a lot of trouble well the oracle at delphi he said to socrates you're the

wisest man in the world he says no i'm not i don't know anything and the guy said well that's why you're the wise man because you you know yourself. A lot of people think they're wise, but they're not. And the real irony is when I went to, to Delphi, apparently there's a natural gas leak there. And so the Oracle was probably just high all the time from methane gas or something, which is a different topic. Yeah. But that was pretty funny. When I went there, they were just discovering that.

Interesting. But I think the words of wisdom were that he knew himself and that's a philosophical knowledge but you can take that physically too and say okay how do I do in terms of power training how do I do with endurance training how does my mind work in this situation that's all part of knowing yourself and your DNA is a huge part of that also we're all so obsessed with being right that we you know don't ever pump the brakes and think uh you know rather than getting mad at at your some of the information you may uh give about estrogen and rather than me getting

like upset or emotional about it in any way why don't i just try to think about what you're saying rather than like a lot of times people are kind of like balling up their fists i can't believe he said that this is uh this is not why there's more transgender i can't believe he even implied it or even went down that road it's disgusting i can't believe he said it and and all they're thinking is like what they're gonna say in response and it's like's, let's, let's hear everything out and maybe we can all learn something. And, uh, you know, maybe there are, maybe there are reasons. I mean, you know, there's, there's so many things, you know, that happen in our society, um, that cause

this giant cascade of things. You know, if you, if you look at people being obese and diabetes and heart disease and some of these things um you know there's there's there's people are more sick now than than pretty much ever um it's it's just it's gotten to be out of hand there's more heavy children there's more there's more problems with all that um and then somebody might say oh well because it's the it's the food pyramid it's like actually look at the food pyramid i don don't really think, I don't think people are getting that fat from just doing the things that are on the food pyramid from just having some bread and having some fruit and having some vegetables. However, uh, we turn the food pyramid, uh, into a mess because people tried to

profit off of it. And people started kind of going that low fat route. And I don't think the low fat movement is why we're fat either. I think we got fat because people saw opportunity to make money and they put heart healthy stuff on a thing of sugar smacks and, and they started doing these things because they're low fat. And then we're thinking, okay, well that's still, even though that tastes really good, that's still good for me. It has a heart thing on it. And I'm, I'm going to go for that. And so some of those things I think, uh, did lead us down the wrong road, but we just eat too much and we eat in a disgusting way and we don't really think about it. We're not, we're not

conscious of it, but I would imagine a lot of these prepackaged foods probably are full of some of these nutrients that you're talking about. Estrogens, you mean? Estrogens, yeah. They're not nutrients. Yeah, no, not nutrients. That's the fifth macro. It's ketones and then there's estrogens. And then there's estrogens.

Chemicals, I guess you'd say, right? Yeah, yeah, for sure. Because they're man-made. They're not found in nature. There was a study done on mitochondrial dysfunction in rats with atrazine, another example with atrazine. And they gave the rats the exact same amount of food. You can control that in these animals.

Except one of them, they gave low levels, low dose, and I'm emphasizing low dose here. They give them low dose atrazine with their food. And the ones with this estrogen chemical, they got fat. Same exact calories, you know? Right. And so anytime a scientist and you freak, that's usually the, the people you hear this from the calorie counting, you hear it from the scientists.

Anytime you hear a scientist say it's all about calories, you know, you can go to that study, mitochondrial dysfunction with atrazine in rats. And, and it's a perfect example. I mean, there's other examples too, but estrogen, artificial estrogen causes fat. I mean, and then low testosterone too, you know what I mean? That's, it's, it's, it's always an interesting question. If somebody has low testosterone, you can ask, does that cause them to get fat? Like say somebody is obese and they've got low t right was it because they had low t and then they got obese or did they get obese first and then their

testosterone dropped out and and the answer to that i think is maybe both you know in one case it might be one way in the other case it might have been the other way and there was ways to figure that out for example if you lose the weight and then your testosterone is still low it's probably because you had low testosterone and big enough and that, if you lose the weight and then your testosterone is still low, it was probably because you had low testosterone and bigotry and that's why you lost the weight. And the hormones are just super important for weight. Right. And that's one of the reasons pregnant women, they gain a lot of weight in fat because it's such an efficient form of energy. That's the body's most efficient storage form. You know,ogen not that efficient you burn it real quick fat awesome you get 30 you know you get 100 atps from only got single fatty acid compared to 30 with the with the when you're burning sugar right um and so what the tricky thing about

estrogen is that if you're ingesting are these artificial estrogen chemicals in your fruit loops or whatever they're telling your body store more fat. They're telling your body you're pregnant. You know what I mean? That's, that's wild. And, and, you know, there's a reason for, for pregnancy, increasing estrogen and estrogen causing fat storage. It's because our ancestors didn't always have access to nutrition, right?

So like if a woman was pregnant, you know, she needed, maybe she didn't have the food, you know, maybe it wasn't there. Right. So she needs to store more fat. So then if she, she can't find food, there's energy there for the fetus. Right. Whereas today we all have plenty of food. It's not really a thing, but the hormones are still the same. They're still doing the same thing.

but what gets really wacky is when us, you know, Mark and Andy and whoever, we're all taking in these chemicals and telling our body, Ooh, better put on some fat, you know, because we're pregnant. That's what we're signaling to our body. And I call it the estrogenic paradox because estrogen chemicals signal, they store, they tell your body store more fat and they sit in the fat. They store in the fat. It's like you were talking about their fat soluble. So they actually are sitting there and it's hard to get them out that way because they're in the fat. And the average lifespan of a fat cell is a year and a half. Oh shit. Yeah.

And they can last up to 10 years. They've done radioactive studies with the atomic bomb. You know, these people that were exposed to the atomic bomb and all these radioactive chemicals in their body. And they were able to do different studies to show, and there's multiple papers on this showing how long different cells survive in your body. And again, you know, the average lifespan of a fat cell is a year and a half. So how hard is it to get these chemicals out of your body? It can take years. Yeah.

Literally. If you lose body fat. Yep. I've always felt, and I don't know if this is true or not. I always felt that that was kind of a, a very natural way to detox your body. Yep. In a sense. Yeah. Yeah.

Cause I mean, if these, uh, parabens and estrogens and all these weird things are kind of getting caught up in this fat tissue, uh, it would make sense. Like if you lost 20 pounds, 30 pounds that you're ridding your body of a lot of these things for sure and one of the interesting things and this is a little bit off topic but i'll bring it up anyways because it's interesting um a lot of people that i consult for they have they're taking these psych meds these days you know like uh clozapine or whatever and a lot of them just balloon right you know, like, uh, clozapine or whatever. And a lot of them just balloon, right. You know, they get super obese real quick. They're perfect.

They're skinny, you know, and they'll go up to 300 pounds. And the reason for that is you, your body has never seen these chemicals. They're manmade and it thinks they're poison. And so you're protecting your brain because your brain cells die real easy, right? They're real sensitive. Neurons are real sensitive cells. So what you do is you make fat cells to store that drug, to put it somewhere safe, right? So the fat cells are actually important because your body needs those to buffer against killing your nerves, you know, killing your brain cells.

So, you know, in that sense, your body is, you know, two thumbs up. You're doing the right thing. Your body thinks you're doing the right thing, even though the drugs aren't technically poison, your body thinks they are. So you get all this extra fat. But then, yeah, when you try and get rid of that, you know, especially if you continue taking the drugs or if you continue eating the, you know, parabens or whatever. And there's parabens in the food, but not just in the personal care products. I used to, one time I went to consult with a NHL hockey player from the Lightning team down in Florida, Tampa. And I literally brought a package of corn tortillas because on the ingredient label, there was like four different parabens, methylparaben, propylparaben, butylparaben, you know, in the food. It's in the ingredients.

It's like, you don't think these estrogens are all over the place. Yeah. You know, it's nice to have a little visual aid sometimes when you're making a point and it's hard to believe, but you know, if we keep eating these things or drinking them or rubbing them on our skin, because yeah, they're going through our skin, they're fat soluble. They're happy to go through the skin. Right.

Just like testosterone cream and goes through the skin. and they're fat soluble. They're happy to go through the skin. Right. Just like testosterone cream goes through the skin. You know, they're going through, they're storing in the fat cells, they're telling your body, make more fat,

store more fat. It's hard to get it out. And that's one of the reasons saunas are so darn beneficial. Because you're sweating that out. They've done skin patch testing. Have you ever heard of this? You can sweat out some of the toxins, right? Yeah, they have patches that are like nicotine patches, but they don't have nicotine. They're just blank patches and they put them on people and they have groups of people that sit in the sauna, groups of people

that don't sit in the sauna. People that are in the sauna, they take those patches off and they're full of BPA and phthalates and all this junk because you're sweating it out. You're getting it out of your fat cells. You're moving those molecules faster. You know, that's why water boils up steam, you know, moving the molecules faster. Shit's extremely fascinating. You know, back to what you said about the calories, you know, this calorie in calorie out equation. What I, what I've always been frustrated with is that, um, yeah, calories are our only measure. And I would agree that, um, under normal circumstances, calories, like calories, not even under normal circumstances, they always matter to some extent. You can't just go hog wild

and eat whatever you want, even if you have a healthy body, you know? Um, however though, I would, I think it stands to reason that if we can, you know, figure out ways to make our body more efficient and figure out ways of, of, uh, of allowing our body to burn more calories through something like gaining muscle, then we should also understand that if we tweak the natural hormones in our body in the wrong direction, that it's possible that we may need fewer calories. And if we tweak them in our, in our favor, such as adding testosterone, which will help build muscle. We can also kind of alter some of that. So in the case of, you know, somebody that, um,

their estrogen levels start to get high or, um, they're ingesting, you know, foods that are really just crappy for them. They have these bad habits, but their caloric intake stays the same. Um, yeah, they definitely can definitely can pack on some on some body fat and they might have to adjust for that. You know, so it's like, again, you will have to still probably, you know, figure out some sort of reduction in food or a different plan. And that's always been my argument too, against some of the, you know, if it fits your macro style of dieting and flexible dieting. And I'm a fan of any form of dieting, anything that gets people excited to follow something. But the more that you stay on track with things that, um, aren't insulting your metabolism, things that aren't dangerous for you, probably the better off you're

going to be. I mean, I think we, I think we like know that deep down inside. Yeah. And that's where, that's where the motivation kind of comes full circle too, because if you're taking in these chemicals, number one, you can't eat as many macros. Right. Right. And then number two, your motivation goes down to actually stick to anything. Right.

And so it's an uphill battle from all kinds of different directions. And so it seems silly that, you know, people would even want to keep hitting these chemicals, putting them in their body. Right. And I think the biggest problem is people just don't even know. A lot of people know BPA is bad just because things say BPA-free, but they don't realize it's bad because it acts like estrogen. And phthalates are the same way.

It's like, oh, you go BPA-free, but then you've got phthalates. It's just another way for somebody to still be able to sell you something that's still not great for you. Exactly. Basically. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So phthalates might still be in your, uh, drinking water that you have from, you know, just plastic bottles or whatever. Yep. Yep. And I mean, and they're even putting them in personal care products. Some people are rubbing them on their skin. I mean, the FDA has this long laundry list of personal care products, and then they, they tell you how much, how many phthalates are in all these different products. I mean, they're very well aware of the presence of these chemicals and even BPA, you know, scientists are very well aware of how prevalent they are. I mean, you can't, you almost can't find a person without BPA in their body.

You know, you do these urine tests and you find it. find a person without BPA in their body. You know, you do these urine tests and you find it. And their studies, I cite in my book, they had to go to these native tribes in Alaska to try and find a control group because you know, what happens if you don't have BPA? We don't know, cause nobody has no BPA. Everybody's got this, this stuff in them.

So you gotta go to frigging Alaska, but then you've got this totally different genetic background and who knows what you're really studying you know you're studying these people out living in the wild you know probably in other ways they're all kinds of healthy in different ways so you know it's it's a tricky situation these days with all these chemicals and what really gets to me as a scientist is that people in labs and, you know, across the board, this is true of chemicals. What we do is we do toxicity studies. So we're looking at how toxic is BPA, how toxic is a phthalate, right?

Or paraben or whatever. And what that means is how quickly does it kill a cell or how quickly does it kill a mouse? You know? So you've got to give them a hundred grams to kill them. And oh, it's as safe as table salt because, you know, table salt, you give them a hundred grams and then that kills them.

The problem with that thinking and that logic, and that's super ingrained in science, this idea of like, well, let's check the toxicity. And if that's okay, then we're okay. Right. The problem with that, it totally ignores a couple of things. It ignores bioaccum a couple things it ignores

bioaccumulation so it ignores the fact that we store this stuff in our fat so we can eat a little bit today eat a little bit tomorrow eat a little bit the next day and now all of a sudden we've got three times the amount in our body that we had the first day because we're accumulating it that's one thing we overlook the other thing we're overlooking is epigenetics right so we're actually changing marks on our dna and that's that's why i called my book estro generation because we're overlooking is epigenetics, right? So we're actually changing marks on our DNA. And that's, that's why I called my book Estrogeneration because we're passing estrogen on, it's changing future generations. Shit, man.

So like, you know. It's a real problem. I mean. What, you know, what is, what are some things that we can do? Like there's estrogen in our foods, it's surrounding us. Well, I mean, that's why the whole food diet

works so well, right? Because the more processing you do, the more of the, the more of these chemicals you end up putting in, it's, it's almost carte blanche, carte blanche way to get rid of these chemicals is just to get whole foods. I mean, that's the first thing. And I mean, yeah, meat is usually packed in plastics and whatnot. I mean, when I, I bought a cow this past year because I ran out of venison and I know the butcher, I told him, Hey, I want it wrapped in butcher paper. I want, when I, I bought a cow this past year because I ran out of venison and I, I know the butcher, I told him, Hey, I want it wrapped in, in butcher paper. I want it in wax paper, not soy based wax paper, you know, and, and they do that. And that's pretty standard, but I was

very emphatic about it. And, but even if they're wrapping meat in plastic, it's not liquid. So there's not that much transfer. You know, the problem is if you've got liquid, there's a lot more transfer. If you've got oil, there's a lot more transfer. If you've got oil, there's even more transfer because these chemicals are oily. They'll transfer into oil a lot faster. It doesn't cook out. No, you can't boil it or anything. They've done studies on like extreme heat with BPA, for example.

There's no loss of the BPA. It's just there. Yeah. Yeah. It's a very hardy chemical. Yeah. And that's one of the reasons plastics, you know so long it's designed that way um yeah so i think just switching like i say going towards the whole foods going towards personal care products that just don't have these

these estrogens in them to begin with it's not that difficult it's just the awareness i feel like the breast cancer awareness thing is way overdone, right? Like, oh, we've got to raise breast cancer awareness. Let's dress everybody up in pink, like newborn baby girls on the football field, like Bill Burr says. It's like, well, that's not really accomplishing. Just the fact that we know breast cancer exists and it's up 250% since 1980, by the way. And by the way, artificial estrogens, all these things increase your risk for breast cancer. Let's talk about that. Let's not just say that it exists and that it's going up. Let's figure out why. And, and at least with artificial estrogens, raising awareness,

I think is more important because once you have the awareness, then you say, Oh, I should filter my drinking water. Activated charcoal gets rid of all these chemicals. That's not that hard to do. Like a Brita filter has activated charcoal. You know what I mean? It's not that hard. It kind of motivates people to just pull them out of their life. And meanwhile, here we are always trying to search for a cure, which would be fantastic. But maybe we can... Good luck with that. Yeah, maybe we can just... I don't know if we can eradicate it that way, but maybe we can... A lot of people could dodge it perhaps.

Yeah. I think that's what you have to do. You have to be a little bit more proactive because in the United States we have a lot of issue with money influencing politics. also aligned Europe's laws with American America's laws on all these chemicals. And you go down the list, it's like parabens. Yeah. China has tighter regulations on parabens than the United States. Europe, atrazine is totally illegal here in America. We use, you know, millions of pounds of atrazine every year. It's the second most used herbicide after glyphosate after Roundup.

Um, you know, I mean, these chemicals are just everywhere in america and in europe most of them are illegal or they're regulated one of another another really important one to mention is is uh the one found in grain it's uh mycoestrogen it's called mold estrogen so mold one of the problems one of the reasons it's so unhealthy and like when you get remediation you got to come in with like a biohazmat suit and stuff you don't even want to breathe it in right it's because the mold secretes an estrogen chemical and that totally whack out your hormones, just like agent orange or something, you know, and, and grains these days have a lot more of that mold than they used to because of our giant, you know, storage facilities. And in America, we don't even have a upper legal safety limit for xerolinone, which is the mold estrogen, microestrogen. In Europe, they regulate it real carefully. And not only they regulate it in human food, they regulate it in animal food.

So like if the cows feed has a certain amount of mold, it's not even allowed. They're not even allowed to feed it to the cows. What they do is they ship it over here and put it in your cornflakes, you know, because it's, there's no limit. Is there any chemicals that people have been exposed to that are, uh, I guess positive, like, uh, you know, like incredible Hulk type type stuff, you know, like gamma rays or, um, has there been anything because like a manmade

chemical or an artificial? Yeah. Just, yeah. Like, um, you know, like there's, you're talking about all these things that are just kind of now in our environment. Are there, is there, you know, or anything. Like more complex than like caffeine, right? You're talking about.

Yeah, like, well, I know like there was, there's that chemical DNP. I don't know if you ever heard of that before. DNP is like, I don't even know if people use it anymore, but it's like a bodybuilding, like fat burning drug. Okay. And my understanding of like the way that it was found is like these factory workers were exposed to it. Oh.

Their body temperature would get, they would get really hot for being exposed to this chemical. It's like a brown fat activator. And they, yeah, they were, it, it somehow uncouples your fat or something like that. Yup. It's called UCP is the protein, uncoupling protein. And so this, I guess this chemical is found in

like pool chemicals and different things. Now that's not necessarily a positive thing, but, but, but it, it could potentially, you know, uh, burn a lot of fat off of people. I mean, this, this, uh, particular drug, uh, was known for like burning on like a half a pound of fat off of people, uh, per day. And I mean, it's, it's wild, wild shit, but it does change your body temperature. It's not like, uh, it's not like just a thyroid med, which might have this tiny, uh, it's like you have a fever

all the time, basically like a small fever. Wow. Your body's like cooking, you know? So you're, are you aware of anything like, you know, as people, people have been exposed to something that, that has led to, I don't know, uh, you know, research, um, of something positive or is it all been pretty, all been pretty, it's all been pretty damaging, huh? I can't think of anything. Yeah. That's a cool question. I've never been asked that question. So I haven't really thought about it. And probably I'll get something in the comments and that would be cool. If somebody knows something, I'd love to know. Yeah.

Like these factory workers were doing something and all of a sudden, like six weeks later, they all got jacked out of their minds. They all got abs. I was going to ask, you kind of touched on it a little bit, but in a, you know, raising estrogen levels in a male, it's going to make us you know uh less motivated probably gain more fat or whatever yep what does it do fat and sad fat and sad yeah i think yeah that's one we can't have one without the other uh what does it do for females yeah sad is important because it does cause depression like even children that had higher bpa in their urine they're associated there's an association there with higher depression rates extremely higher yeah um but i'm sorry the question was the question just yeah because i'm i mean i'm just thinking like a bunch of dudes are just like oh shit i can't have estrogen but females like

okay well at least i'm okay because i naturally produce it that's super common i that's a big question i get is okay yeah i get i get that the men are impacted because we don't want estrogen. But that's why it's important to realize that women don't have that much more estrogen than men. Between 20 and 400. So the most they usually have is up around 400. That's not like 10,000 compared to 20. And what you usually see with women is fat. Weight gains that are really difficult to to get through you know like they plateau on weight gains now do you think it's important

to also share that like uh you know okay the estrogen may have played a role here um the the artificial estrogens that you're taking in from the foods you're eating but at the same time like there's a lot of factors there's a lot of factors and there's still there's still things we can do about it so yeah because i see a lot of people like i got a thyroid issue and they're just like they just give up yeah um and maybe they do have a thyroid issue but maybe it's because of these estrogens maybe it's have you seen anything like that where it's like causing problems with uh to uh to start or your thyroid maybe it's uh messing or your thyroid, maybe it's, uh, messing up your, um, insulin and,

uh, glucose levels and things like that. Yeah. Um, soy especially causes a lot of thyroid problems. Damn it. Here comes soy. Yeah.

I know you love soy so much, Mark. Yeah. My son, my son was, uh, he's like terrified of soy. Like my wife puts soy on the table.

Cause sometimes we'll have rice with dinner or something. And he's like, get that the hell away from me. I don't want to, I don't want to turn into a girl. Well, what's funny about soy. So they did a study in Canada with over a hundred food items and they were just looking at plant estrogen, phytoestrogen, they call it. And all the plants, you know, all of them were under 1000 nanograms of phytoestrogen

per 100 grams of food, but just nevermind the units, just a thousand units. They were under a thousand units except for soy and flax. And those were both over 100,000. Oh my God. So, I mean, soy and flax are both incredibly high in estrogen, but get this. So soy sauce, when you, if you actually ferment it, not the fake stuff that they pretend like they ferment it. Real soy sauce is

under 100 so soy over 100 000 soy sauce under 100 soy sauce is good any natto um anything right these fermented soy products tempeh i guess is one of them right those are all fine because you're fermenting it the bacteria the microorganisms break those estrogens down. They love to break that stuff down. You know, that's what they do. And that, that includes your gut bacteria. That's why people are differentially, different people are affected by soy

differently because how healthy is your gut? Well, I don't know. I mean, as a scientist, it's pretty, it's hard to predict. You know, that's a, that's insanely interesting. Could you, uh, could you potentially do that to other foods to predict. You know, that's a, that's insanely interesting. Could you, uh, could you potentially do that to other foods to make,

uh, like could you ferment foods to make it eat up the, the shitty chemicals that are in there? Oh yeah. Potentially. Yeah, for sure. I mean,

flax is another good example. You soaking it and things like that. Oh, okay. Um, like sourdough bread since it's, yep. Yep.

The bacteria, yep. These little microorganisms, the yeast, they break all the kinds of stuff down, glutens and things. But, um, um like sourdough bread since it's kind of yep the bacteria yep these little microorganisms the yeast they break all the kinds of stuff down glutens and things but um yeah it but it's difficult to predict right because the different microorganisms you might have are going to do it differently what's really interesting about soy and flax is some of the breakdown products are actually healthy for you so if you do have great gut, you can break those estrogens down

and then it's actually healthier. But then you study the next guy taking soy and he gets man boobs. Right. I mean, like, so in my mind, a lot of people ask me this and I just say, I'd avoid soy.

Right. I mean, let's just, let's be honest, except for soy, like if it's fermented, I'm fine with it. But straight up soy, I'm not.

What about like edamame? Isn't that soy? That's fermented. That's soy or is that? That's soy. Yeah. But it's fermented, I'm fine with it. But straight up soy, I'm not a fan. What about edamame? Isn't that soy? That's fermented. That's soy. But it's fermented usually? Yep. Miso soup? Yeah, I think that's fermented.

Yeah. I mean, you can look it up. Right. Yeah, so that's a huge important factor for your son. Right. Make sure it's fermented. Right. It's not an alcoholic.

Yeah. Is there any estrogen in in rice just like plain white rice nope okay so we're good there yep cool most foods don't have estrogen again with the plants so some people say well soy's got a lot of estrogen right well so does chickpeas chickpeas are nine they have nine micrograms soy's got over a hundred thousand it's not even the same ballpark right you know like you can just go down the list and it's just astonishing how low most plants are. Right. And these days you can't trust people's gut bacteria.

You know, you, we're not living out in the wilderness. We're not running around, you know, eating dirt and just living healthy. We're stressed out. We're eating a lot of processed garbage, a lot of sugar, especially it's throwing off our gut bacteria. And we're eating a lot of processed garbage a lot of sugar especially it's throwing off our gut bacteria and we're not processing you can't assume that somebody's going to process the soy estrogen very well so in my mind it's just not worth the risk and you were asking about women breast cancer right that's a big one for women depression is a big one fat like we talked about and then the other one that connects with women and men with artificial estrogens is infertility which we're seeing a lot of these days you know infertility is definitely on the rise and what's this doing to our like physiques you know because

i see yep you know i see a lot of guys that just yeah they're they're have kind of a womanly build you know you got small shoulders big boobs and wide hips. And you're like, I don't know what happened to that guy. Big butt. Almost every one of those guys. Every time. They're pregnant. Every time I have those guys in my consulting practice, they've got problems metabolizing estrogen. Sometimes they have high SHBG genetically as well. So that binds up all the testosterone. So then your body can't use it because it's got too much of the testosterone is in the limo, right? And it's not getting out to your cells. But more often than not, I see problems, uh, breaking down estrogen and that includes

artificial estrogen. So for those people, I always get real extreme and, you know, and I want them, you know, avoiding plastics like the plague. I want them really cleaning up their personal care products more than the average person, because the average person, it's not that big of a deal to have some of that stuff once in a while. Your body clears it. It's the problem is, is three times a day, every day. Then you've got bioaccumulation. It's in your fat. It's just a never ending problem. You know, I kind of want people to get too paranoid about this stuff.

There's Arnold. Yeah. Arnold had a baby. problem you know i kind of want people to get too paranoid about this stuff there's arnold yeah arnold had a baby with um so with these uh so these these changes that you can make in a given day um just as a random example can you kind of give us an idea of what you've seen in consulting people um like how much estrogen are some of these people in your estimation, how much are they exposed to? And then just by simply removing plastics and doing some of these things that you do, uh, you know, what was the, what was the difference? I guess you'd say. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's hard because most there's not a standard lab test for BPA or phthalates or parabens or whatever, or all these chemicals.

I have a top 10 list in my book and you just go down and there's no standard lab test for any of them. You have to go into a research lab like the, like the one I work in and actually run out the mass spectrometry and all this. You have to basically start from scratch, which is really expensive, really technically challenging. And it's a lot of work. Right. So not a lot of people do it. So what you have to do generally is just go to the studies and say, look, like for example, women that use perfume, pregnant women, they're always testing pregnant women because, you

know, the fetus is going to be more exposed and that's going to have a bigger impact. Pregnant women that use perfume have 163% higher phthalate levels than women that don't use perfume when they're pregnant. What does that do into us? Dudes. Probably, probably something if you're breathing in phthalates all the time, but certainly not as much.

I tell people don't worry too much about the fragrances if it's on your clothing, you know, breathing in and not that big of a deal. What about the fragrances depends on the fragrance at the house and stuff like that like yeah i avoid a lot of the the cheapy ones the cheapy ones my wife uses all that bullshit i'm like i'm a guy it's supposed to stink in here leave it leave it stinky no but obviously what about like essential oils yep the only essential oil that's problematic well there's two of them that are potentially. Soy oil.

Soy would be a problem. Lavender essential oil. No. Is the big one. That one's been studied in multiple studies. New England. Your nipples have been leaking milk. My fiance is listening and we are cutting out lavender oil at

night. Yeah. It's gone. Yeah. Lav, lavender. It's gone. Yeah. Lavender is anti-inflammatory. So a lot of people get benefits from it. But there's really good evidence that it acts like estrogen in your body. Multiple studies have been done. They've done it on different brands. A lot of people complain to me because the wellness community that I'm a part of and that I love, a lot of us use essential oils, right?

A lot of people out there right and they hate that i don't like lavender because all of them are using lavender because again it's not beneficial it's also not that you don't like it it's just that it has it acts like estrogen so i don't like it it's just a fact right i mean no i know it is and and there's been more and more case studies with doctors finding children that have man boobs little boys that have breast development and as soon as they, little boys that have breast development. And as soon as they cut out the lavender, the breast development goes away. Not only does it stop, they stop growing breast tissue.

Right. It just shrinks right up. And then they've, they follow that up. It makes it nice. You don't have to find a girlfriend. Well, these are like, these are like six month old babies and stuff. Oh my gosh. And they followed that up. Well, I was going to say a babies and stuff oh my gosh and they followed that

up well i was gonna say a lot of people complained to me and they say wow that study just used an off-brand of lavender essential oil it's like well it's 100 pure lavender essential oil number one and you can say that about anything right like any study that anybody ever does you can always say well i don't trust the brand or this or that right it's like well we're not going to get anywhere if you do that to every study but But then number two, a lot of studies have used different brands and they always find the same thing. And the most important thing they find is in cells, they do it with cells, they find that it triggers the estrogen receptor.

And that's kind of the gold standard for me. So instead of being negative, is there any essential oils that kind of block estrogen? I don't know about blocking, you know i think they all have different positive benefits in different ways but tea tree oil and lavender are the ones that are sketchy in terms of estrogen and tea tree oil is not super well established lavender i think is more and more they just published another paper this year on it and it's becoming more and more obvious in my mind that that one is one you should avoid, especially if you're sensitive to estrogen. Yeah.

There's some things that we can ingest. You know, there's a lot of information about like fiber. And one of the guys I've listened to on YouTube is Ray Pete. I don't know if you ever listened to him, but he's got some wild ass information out there. But basically kind of talked about, you know, eating these certain types of fiber and how these fibers can actually pull some of these estrogens, these artificial estrogens, kind of pull some of these things out of our body. Is that true? And what have you seen?

Is it effective? Yeah, a lot of people talk about that with activated charcoal. They say take a charcoal pill. Yeah. And that's true. Activated charcoal absolutely binds to artificial estrogens and natural estrogens. The problem is it's in your gut.

You know, just imagine like a pipe going from one end to the other. That's where it is. That's where it stays. So, you know, yeah, your gut has blood vessels lining it. So in theory, you can get some that are leaking into the, leaking through your gut, you know,

crossing the gut barrier, getting into the activated charcoal. And once they get in there, they're going to stay in there and fiber can act the same way. But I don't think it's like a super effective strategy. I think sweating is the ultimate, you know, I think that's why saunas are so beneficial in terms of all cause mortality.

Right. You know, they're, they improve your health in, in, in every parameter. But even just sweating in general might be productive as well. Yep. But most people are too lazy to work up a sweat. Have you ever seen any studies that show that people that tend to sweat more, that they have less of these problems than others? I haven't seen the studies.

I almost guarantee you that would be the case. Yeah. That's because, I mean, like Lauren, who we work out with, sweats his face off. Yeah. It looks like there's this water dripping on top of his head nonstop. But in thinking about sweat, what about like deodorants? Is that messing us up too? It actually came from one of our live listeners right now.

Yeah. That's a great question. It could be, yeah. I mean, it's potentially messing you up. So like if, for example, you're going to work out in the morning, you know, don't put on deodorant, just let that sweat come out

and then take a shower and then put on deodorant or something. That would be an interesting strategy. I think, you know, it's fine. I use deodorant, certainly. But there's other chemicals. I think a lot of the fragrances and the deodorants and a lot of the chemicals have artificial estrogens so you have to be careful what deodorant you use um i don't have any i don't make any money off any product

stuff but the one i use is called schmitz because i've tried a million of them and most of the natural ones just don't work they just don't't. They're just glycerol based. Right. You keep sweating. Might as well not even use them. I made some changes a few years back, you know, under the recommendations of Charles Poliquin, RIP, who's passed very recently. But yeah,

I got rid of some of the parabens. You know, I didn't go crazy. I didn't like, you know, get rid of every weird cleaning product that I have. So what are you using for deodorant? I can't remember the brand,

but I do have it here with me. I can show it to you. Oh, yeah. I'll tell people this. There's a little bit of a period of time where you're going to stink a little bit. So at least that was my experience. Yeah, like an adaptation process.

And then what happened is I actually, and maybe people around me would disagree. I don't even think I need deodorant anymore at all. Honestly. Sometimes, I mean, um, I'm here for a long time. We worked out earlier today. So a lot of times after training session, I'll put it on, but I, I don't, I don't even really mess with, uh, deodorant anymore, but yeah, I tried, I just made, I think the important

take home from this is, is not to freak out, not to go crazy, but to just think about your day, think about all the different stuff that you interact with and just try to improve upon it. Yeah. And it's, like I said, it's not that hard. A lot of people overdo it. They get way too, you know, like I'm pretty extreme. Like I avoid this stuff pretty carefully.

Right. And I don't obsess over it. You don't have to. Why obsess over something that you don't have to obsess over? Right. There's also, well, there's also no guarantee that you're going to live to be 185 years old. Yeah. Right.

You know, so it's. Not that I know of. Yeah. Um, what about like, uh, a lot of us, we, we do prepare our foods and a lot of people that listen to the show, we prep our foods. Yeah. But you know, the containers. Now I know we can get like glass but

uh is do you feel it's that much more important to get something different to put your stuff in yeah i'm okay with people putting it in plastic plastic number five is the best by the way if you're looking at the little recycling symbol plastic number one stands for polyethylene tera phthalate and it looks the best because it's the cleanest look. It's really real crystal clear. Right. So it's pretty. Plastic number seven. Write that down.

Plastic number five. Yeah. Plastic number five is my favorite. So like if you buy a five gallon bucket of coconut oil, like I do every once in a while, you know, you're not going to find it in a, in a glass five gallon bucket. You want to find the ones that are in plastic number five, for example, and then aliquoted out into glass, you know, like a, like a canning jar or something. If you're going to aliquot, that's a scientific term, meaning you just put it in smaller jars.

Yeah. We're like, what? Yeah. Maybe Margaret is nodding. That's amazing. But plastic number seven is BPA or BPS, which is just as estrogenic. BPS stands for bisphenol S. They also make BPAF, BPF. They make a laundry list of different bisphenols. So you can have something BPA free, but then it'll be BPS. It'll be just as estrogenic, which is just as bad

if it's plastic number seven. What do you do with your, you know, leftover food? So I do, I use glass. I use, but I don't travel a lot with my leftovers. Well, the bottom is glass, but the top will still be plastic. Top is plastic, but it's not really in contact. Okay. But the other thing is, what I was going to say is I'm okay if people are putting their food, you know, liquids, I'm not a fan, especially hot soup or something. I really don't want to see that in plastics.

And is there a study that I can cite? No, but I've seen enough leaching. I've seen enough studies about how much plastic leaches out, even just PEX piping. Right. You know, people piping water into their houses in plastic pipes. There's a lot of leaching.

Right. Um, but what, what really gets me is when people heat it up. So if you're going to, if you're going to store your rice in plastic, that's fine. I don't have a huge problem with that but i don't want to see you throw that whole thing in the microwave and crank on the heat because you are going to get a lot of transfer there i want to see you take that out plop it on a ceramic plate put it in

glass so have a plate at your office put that on then throw in the microwave something like that is it like a paper plate okay no because those are coated with plastic okay i mean again once in a while no big deal yeah i think that's the overall you know uh recommendation that i have is like you know don't become a hypochondriac about every little tiny source of plastic once in a while no big deal i'm traveling you know i'm going to be grabbing a paper cup with plastic coating you know but i'm certainly not doing this every day, or at least that I'm making a big effort not to. They've even done studies on coffee specifically.

And they found, for example, if you have caffeinated coffee in a BPA mug, there's more BPA transfer than if you have decaf. Even just the caffeine molecule can grab out the phthalates in the area of the BPA, excuse me, and transfer more out. So it's a complicated thing. And every, every situation is a little bit different and it's kind of a deep rabbit hole.

But again, you don't need to become a hypochondriac. You can just, just try, just get rid of the big ones. Yeah. I'm over here. I'm just thinking, I just ate food out of a plastic container. I'm drinking coffee out of a plastic cup. I'm feeling my chest. I think I'm starting to develop something.

Some man boobs you're feeling grow right now. Yeah. I'm getting a little nervous. Like Pinocchio's nose. What happens with a lot of us, you know, cause we, you know, kind of do like bodybuilding, powerlifting and we're feeding ourselves, you know, all day long, you know, the minimum that someone around here is going to eat like four or five times a day, if not six or seven times a day.

going to eat like four or five times a day, if not six or seven times a day. And we, in preparation for that, we prep a lot of our food and then, you know, what do we do with that leftover food? We microwave it, you know? And then, so yeah, you're, now you're doing it, you know, you're starting to really multiply these things. It's happening, you know, four times a day, six times a day. And so, uh, that information is is uh really valuable and especially for guys like you that you really can't have that estrogen you know there's there's like

an average guy like me not that big of a deal i'm not performing athletic feats at a really high level you know right um pro athletes i do a lot of consulting for next week i've got a guy from the nfl active player yeah and obviously that guy you know don't want him taking in a bunch of plastic you know we want to really minimize this stuff especially if he's got estrogen gene problems i haven't looked at his dna yet but right you know there's a different grade depending on your lifestyle and your goals and and your health issues you know like if you've got estrogen-like symptoms, then maybe, yeah, you should maybe be a little bit more compulsive about it. If you don't have any issues, you know, do the big ones and watch out for your kids.

Yeah. Do you, I mean, it's probably a very unsafe practice, but what if we just said, screw it, I'm going to keep living how I'm living, plastic everything. Yeah. But I'm just going to start injecting tests to kind of combat the high estrogen levels that's funny because i'm trying to work on a book about testosterone because i have a lot of interesting findings about testosterone that a lot of people don't know about especially raising it naturally um because one of my pet peeves is when people are injecting testosterone like hormone replacement i think that's. But the problem is a lot of people today, they have really low T because they're doing some stupid things in their lifestyle. And rather than fixing it from that end, they're just injecting testosterone.

Like for example, aluminum decreases testosterone, just to like a quick random example. There's a hundred examples. Let's throw aluminum in there. Um, let's say you're cooking on aluminum foil. You've got, if you took a hair test, you cut off a piece of your hair, which I don't have, but some people have hair and they can actually do a hair test of aluminum and see how much aluminum they have in their body. And let's say it's really high. Well, that's going to inhibit, that's going to lower your T, but let's say you continue ingesting aluminum and then you're injecting testosterone on top of that. That's a problem because now you're, you're still putting a bunch of aluminum into your body and that's neurotoxic. It has all these other problems. And then, yeah, you brought your testosterone up, but you're doing unhealthy practices. So the best strategy in my mind is do everything you can to naturally bring up your T.

And if it's still low, then yeah, rock on, like, you know, take the testosterone because it probably is your epigenetics. It's probably marks on your DNA that were passed on from your parents or something like that. And yeah, you're behind the eight ball. Fix it, you know? Right. And that's super healthy. I'm a big fan of that.

Yeah. We had a question from Instagram actually from maschetti.fitness. And he's just asking, can anyone restore proper hormone levels naturally? Oh, yeah. He's asking for a friend, probably not him. He just wanted to emphasize that. Like I know a lot of bodybuilders I work with, they've been taking testosterone for so long, their body just doesn't even produce it anymore.

You know, there's different contexts where people are in different situations, but most people, they have a pretty good shot at restoring it naturally if they're doing the right things. But like I said, if you can't do it, you know, if you've tried everything, I mean, by all means bring it up because it's worth it. And I'm not saying bring it up to 50,000 nanograms per deciliter. I'm saying like get it up to a thousand or some, some level that's historically been super healthy because a 250, where most men are these days. And trust me, I see the blood tests every day, you know, on these DNA consults I do. It's amazing how many guys are at like 250, 300, and that's just not healthy at all for a lot of

reasons. Yeah. Rabbit hole, but it's, it's important to know. Yeah. Plus with all the different stress that you, you know, run into during the day, you know, it's just not, it's just not ideal. Is there anything that we can ingest that would help promote more, you know, more testosterone or anything we can do that would help promote more testosterone? And is there anything that we can do that would help decrease estrogen other than just avoiding these plastics and some of these foods? Yeah. A lot of people, in terms of the second part of your question, they use diindylmethane, DM it's called. It's like from broccoli or something like that. Is that a fiber? I don't even, I'm not sure. No, it's a molecule, but you know, but yeah, exactly. It's found in broccoli. The problem with that stuff is if you if if you don't dose

it properly it can actually increase your estrogen and that's the trickiest part about all this stuff we're talking about is you know even if you've got high levels of testosterone for example if you don't have any receptors to pick it up it's not going to do anything even if you're free testosterone is super high right and nobody the, in the, in the medical community, we're not testing testosterone receptors, meaning, you know, it's kind of like antennas on your car. If you don't have an antenna, you're not going to pick up the radio waves and you're not going to get a signal. So even if the radio waves are coming in, all, all the channels are coming in, hitting your car. If you don't have the, the, the receptor, if you don't have the antenna,

and again, nobody's testing for that. and that's one of the interesting things there's a lot of research that's you know that's really important being done right now on receptor number like how many receptors are there how sensitive are they i mean again that's complicated but the problem with diendylmethane is if you don't dose it properly it actually increases your estrogen because it increases the receptors. You know what I mean? So your body says, oh crap, my estrogen is getting low. Let's actually increase our sensitivity to it. And then you actually end up with more estrogen effects. So you got to be careful with some of those things. What about like some of the prescribed things that

inhibit estrogen, I guess you'd say. Yeah, aromatase inhibitors I think are awesome. I think those are real important, especially if you're taking testosterone because your body is trying to turn it into estrogen, especially if you've got a lot of fat because fat cells have a lot of aromatase, as you know. Right. Yeah, I'm a big fan of aromatase inhibitors.

I think if you're taking testosterone, you really need to be tracking your estrogen and making sure your body either doesn't convert testosterone to estrogen a lot, or you just straight up need to get to figure out those numbers. So, you know how much aromatase inhibitor to take. In consulting some people, have you noticed, you know, body composition changes from mainly just avoiding estrogen yeah mainly just the avoidance of estrogen and not real concrete you know changes in their diet or exercise yep i mean it's always hard because yeah i always get people fired up and then they get into the yeah i'm sure yeah but I, I had one guy recently, he, his testosterone went up 290% just from avoiding estrogen.

Wow. And he sent me all the lab stuff and it's all excited about it. He wrote a blog piece on it, I think. And I mean, that's pretty common. Right. For men. Do those two have a relationship like that? Testosterone and estrogen?

Sometimes. Yeah. They, uh. Especially artificial. Yep. They, uh, run alongside each other. Not always. Not in everybody. It depends on your DNA. times yeah they uh especially artificial yeah they uh run alongside each other not always not in everybody it depends on your dna um but i think the relationship is more related to shbg that the

you know how much shbg you have so it's more related to free testosterone right so your total usually doesn't change that much although this guy's did that was his total but your free usually changes and that's one of the best ways to monitor your artificial estrogen exposures is to track your testosterone. So, um, you know, get a before test, test your testosterone right now, get off all these estrogen chemicals, you know, read my book, find the top 10 list, whatever, go through that, get them out of your life and then retake, you know, retest your testosterone. It'll be up, especially if you're free, you know? You know, it seems like, it seems fairly easy to, to, uh, do like, it doesn't seem like, um, you're asking for a crazy compromise in people's life. Now, obviously they could take it to your level and, and make it tougher and, uh, be

harder on themselves. But, uh, if you, again, back to what I said earlier, if you're just thinking about your normal, think about your normal day, not where you're traveling or whatever, think about your normal day and then start to kind of work your way into, you know, what does it look like for me to, uh, buy this, uh, plastic number five, instead of not paying attention to what I have. Uh, you know, what, what does it look like when I start to use some different containers? What does it look like when I start to use some different containers? What does it look like when I start to avoid some packaged foods? Just, it sounds pretty simple.

And even if you still love to eat fast food and all this different junk, I mean, you could still avoid a lot of estrogens and a lot of these plastics, regardless of your of your, uh, maybe poor dietary habits. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just it's, you know, it's always a grade and you just do what you can in your life and in your situation. I think another number that's valuable for people to know. And another topic that's interesting is the grass fed versus, you know, versus a standard

beef. That's another big one I get. And my, one of my favorite studies on that was they looked at cow blood. They just took blood from standard feedlot cows and remember, and just, just to swing back to the frogs that turned into females and male frogs, the princesses, um, these frogs were turning from male to female at 200 nanograms per liter. They've done studies on cow blood with that same

chemical atrazine and the blood is at 700,000 nanograms per liter of atrazine. So I think it's important. One of the big ones for people is to just get grass-fed cow, you know, buy a whole cow from a farmer. Like I said, I, I get two chest freezers. They're cheap.

They're like 150 bucks, which is surprisingly cheap. And then you unplug one as you use it up and then you just have one running. So the grass fed beef may, may potentially have a lot less estrogen in it. Yeah. It basically doesn't have any.

Yeah. Um, and you know, some, a lot of the dairy products have a lot of estrogen. That's one of the reasons a lot of people are sensitive to them because it messes up. It also messes with your immune system. So if you have immune problems, you want to be more careful with estrogen. You know, uh, the, the reason for that again, goes back to pregnancy because like when a woman is pregnant, you don't want your, you, you, you need to fight off disease.

So you need your immune system to be hyper activated. Estrogen causes increased activation of your immune system, but it also suppresses it because you don't want your body to destroy the fetus. Right. So you actually have this weird, they call it estrogen is immunostimulative and immunosuppressive, meaning it stimulates your immune system and it suppresses it, which makes no sense, but it does. Right.

And so one of the things about a lot of the dairy products these days, because they're feeding the cows, all this corn and all these chemicals and all the mold in America. Right. A lot of people are more sensitive to that, especially with epigenetics because our parents screwed up and passed on these messed up marks on our DNA. because our parents screwed up and passed on these messed up marks on our DNA. They're getting a lot of skin conditions and things like that that are related to your immune system being off balance. And it's just not, you know, I think if you go and find a good, if you know the farmer and you know what's going on with your beef, it's not that expensive to buy a cow.

I mean, in California it is, but it's becoming more and more normal and more and more affordable. And I recommend that pretty strongly as well. What's a estrogen, what is this estrogen doing like just to our overall health? It's different for different people. Yeah. Okay. It's so variable.

Yeah. And I mean, like I say, in the population, you can track all of these things and they're all becoming a bigger problem. You see allergies are increasing, you see track all of these things and they're all becoming a bigger problem. You see allergies are increasing. You see breast cancer is increasing, et cetera, right? We're supposed to be so healthy because we understand all this stuff. But it's like you said at the very beginning, we're actually becoming more and more unhealthy as a, as a culture. And it's chronic. It's not just, you know, one acute thing like, you know, that comes

up and then it goes away.'s just a chronic thing and i think the reason for that mostly is inflammation most people have too much inflammation and that's not related to estrogen that's related to a lot of that's related to not working around it's related to crappy diet it's related to a lot of things stress but estrogen is another big one and i think inflammation is talked about to death but nobody's no i, the reason I wrote my book is because nobody was talking about it. And I couldn't believe how much research has been done on all this stuff. And I mean, I, you know, my PhD was on cholesterol and fats and hormones. So I was already immersed in it. Um, and it's, it's, it's really frustrating as a scientist because, um, like for example,

as a scientist because, um, like for example, testosterone is harder, was harder to get ahold of in the lab than cyanide. And I, the reason I know that, I mean, they, it's, it's amazing. They check every nanogram that you use, all this red tape, all this paperwork, extra paperwork, like it's some kind of illicit, you know, like illegal.

That's crazy. The reason I know that specific example, cyanide is because the person down the hall, he's a PhD scientist. He killed his wife with cyanide. He gave it to her in her creatine shake. She was a medical doctor in Boston and he's in prison now. And I mean, I worked with this guy all the time and it was ridiculous because he was

able to just go and buy cyanide. Nobody cared. Nobody tracked it. He almost got away with it because he tried to get her rushed into cremation and, you know, and destroy the evidence. But then some nurse noticed that the blood was brighter red than normal.

And so they, she tested for cyanide and found it. Wow. And then they went back to his lab and looked at how much cyanide he'd used. And of course there's a bunch of unexplained missing cyanide and they finally caught him. But testosterone, you would never have that because they check, they, they monitor the hell

out of you if you're using that stuff. And it's insane. Yeah. It's ridiculous. That is, that is pretty, yeah. That is pretty crazy that they care, they care some, they care so much about. Something that's good for you.

Yeah. For the most part. It's, it's politics. It's like what your brother talked about. Bigger, stronger, faster, frankly. Does the estrogen negatively impact a lot of other things? Does it negatively impact your sleep? Does it negatively impact other hormones in your body, perhaps? Not too much. Possibly. Does it negatively impact other hormones in your body perhaps? Not too much. Yeah.

I mean, possibly. It's just kind of its own animal, its own problem. Yeah. I mean, it's mostly relating to your sex hormone balance, your natural estrogen, your natural testosterone, and the impacts that those have. Right. Again, if you just think of, okay, what happens during pregnancy? You know, you start thinking like that. Right. Then you say, oh, you get fat gains. You get, sometimes you get depression, right?

You throw that estrogen balance off after you have a baby. You get postpartum depression. You know, all kinds of things, right? You get breast development. Right. Right. Breast tissue development. Well, that's not something a man wants. Right. You know, or even a woman, if you're, if you're increased risk for breast cancer goes up. Um, and yeah, and the biggest problem is it takes years, you know? Right. I mean. It seems like it also kind of builds on itself

because if it's causing you to, you know, loaf around, it's causing you to be kind of sad and it's going to cause a lot of other problems. And also too, like, yeah, if you, you could get fat first and you could have an estrogen problem for whatever way it happens, uh, it doesn't really really matter you end up in this situation where you don't feel good about yourself whether you're fat or not fat or whether you um have a lot of meaning and purpose or um it's it's almost um it's uh regardless of of what actually is going on it's actually just

the way that you feel and if these emotions bad, then everything else is going to be really thrown off and it's going to promote itself. So, uh, I've mentioned that many times on this podcast that, you know, sitting on the couch promotes sitting on the couch. And the hard, the hard thing is that when you don't do the thing that you're supposed to do in exchange for something that's not really that productive, then you're really falling behind because you just did something that that had no value. Sometimes entertainment and things like that, sometimes hard to place in your brain of like, OK, where does this kind of fit in? And you might be an asshole to yourself about like, hey, should I be just kind of chilling, watching a movie or should I be like working or doing something?

But that's not really what I'm talking about. But I'm talking about, you know, when you know there's certain things that you should be doing, could be doing to make you better and you blow them off. And that's the kind of stuff where you start to fall behind.

And I just see that time and time again. And that's why we get so many messages here people are like you know looking for how do i stay motivated how i stay on track yeah and then i start breaking things down talking about sleep and how you set up your day and they're like i don't understand how does that have to do with do you have a song or something like yeah i got music i can just play or like can i just get fired up in the car? Like you have a supplement, you got a pre-workout supplement. Yeah, more caffeine, more, yeah, more stimulants. What about supplementation?

What about, you know, vitamins, minerals, different things? Are these capsules, are these things that, these things are produced in, are they coming with estrogen as well? I mean, they're in plastic bottles a lot of times. Yeah. That's a pretty astute question. Most people don't realize a lot of the, the really high throughput, big giant pharma companies, they're putting their, their pills in these capsules, which actually have phthalates in them. They actually have estrogen chemicals. And again, these are acting at nanogram levels, so it doesn't take a lot, you know, chemicals and again these are acting at nanogram levels so it doesn't take a lot you know right to trigger the estrogen system so that's oftentimes you know people that are taking 20 pills a day for a million different things they're actually building up a lot more estrogen response and

they don't even realize that's that's a component of why they feel so much better when they got rid of all that junk supplements yeah you know and why one of the reasons why you have to be careful what what supplement companies you have and they're trustworthy and all that sort of thing because it's imperative it's more important than people realize what are some of the main things that we should be avoiding like like kind of by name um and like like what are things that you look at you know when you when you're purchasing something and let's say you're looking at like a supplement or a new um i'm sure there's some processed foods out there that occasionally you eat just because they're more convenient or taste better or whatever. What are some things that you're looking at as a consumer to try to steer clear of?

I'm looking out in the woods, walking around with my gun, you know, um, for real. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Staying away from everything else right but i mean when i go to the store i don't actually my wife does all the shopping but she she does a good job of getting whole foods she's a lot better than me i'm actually pretty bad if i go to the store i come out with a bunch of junk right um and sometimes it's frustrating because you you find things that you think are good and then you get home and you read the ingredients and you realize oh there's

junk in this you know so you just do it would do the best you can you know i'm not i'm not like like i said i'm not super compulsive about it right but i i do try i think whole foods are an easy one and for supplements i mean i honestly look to guys like you mark because you have to find people that you trust it's not not just a, you know, these days, you know, you can't just go to the store and look on the ingredient list because there's a lot of things they don't have to list. For example, in the personal care product industry, they don't have, they can, they can use the word fragrance and they can put all kinds of junk in there under that term because they have these proprietary formulas, meaning it's like their secret formula and they don't, it's a trade secret. So they don't have to reveal that. Wow. And they'll actually put phthalates in there and call it fragrance because

phthalates carry the fragrance farther in the air. That's one of the scientific justifications people use. Oh, we need phthalates in our perfume because it carries it farther. Right. In reality, it's just a cheap filler. It's petroleum based. It's dirt cheap. So they're putting a bunch in to make it inexpensive.

And then they're out competing other people. And most consumers are just looking at the bottom line. They're just looking at the dollars and saying, oh, this one's 10 cents cheaper. So I'm going to buy that one. You know what I mean? So you have to basically look for people and look for companies that you trust. I think that's the biggest principle when you're looking at things that are not just whole foods. What about cortisol?

How does cortisol kind of play into this? We see the commercials, you know, they got stubborn belly fat and our cortisol, what was that? Our cortisol and estrogen, are they related to each other in some way? Estrogen? I'm not a hundred percent sure, to be honest. Even testosterone. Boy, we're really getting shut off of YouTube here. Yeah is that yeah it's just reconnecting sorry about that that's okay actually surprised you guys heard that coming in coming out yeah my bad no but cortisol is a complex

issue because some people have low testosterone irrespective of cortisol and some people have it because of cortisol and a lot of the studies get it all muddled up and right and it's hard you know a lot of people are just measuring perceived stress as like a questionnaire like how stressed are you on a scale of one to ten and they're not actually measuring anything and then they're correlating that to testosterone so it's a messy area of research, but in terms of estrogen, I'm not super, I don't think there's a real tight correlation. I'm not sure. How did you get into all this stuff? Um, in college, I went to college in Florida and somebody from the, the, uh, local, you know, water treatment plant or whatever, they came and gave an orientation talk. This was way back. And

they said that there's birth control in the water. And so you don't want it. You want to filter your water. That's what they said. And I couldn't believe it. I never heard anything like this, right? You're like, what? Like, I don't want birth control.

I don't know why, but it doesn't sound like something I want to be drinking. Yeah. This guy's full of shit. There's no way. Why would there, why would the government allow for that? Crowd control. Well, what's really crazy. And I'll come back to the water supply in a minute, but they found parabens in polar bears now.

They've studied 11, they had 11 polar bears in Northern Alaska. They took out their fat tissue and every single one of them had parabens. Wow. And so it goes to show you how pervasive this stuff is. and that's where I, you know, I've really been trying to be on the front lines and telling people like, this isn't just harming us as humans, this is harming the whole planet. It's causing infertility and coral reefs. And that's why Hawaii just made sunscreen illegal. And I put sunscreen in quotations because it's not really sunscreen. It's, it's just the estrogen chemicals in sunscreen.

It's oxybenzone. The heck? Yeah. They're putting these estrogen chemicals that are illegal in Europe. Of course, we've got them in our sunscreen in America. Yeah. And it's wiping out coral reefs and all these other animals. And then we're blaming humans, right?

We're saying, oh, the polar bear population is way down because of, you know, human interact, like, oh, we're out shooting too many of them or something like that. And maybe, you know, maybe that's in certain contexts that might be true, but in a lot of cases there's infertility. It's rampant, you know, especially in the, in the, in the oceans where we're dumping all these chemicals. Yeah. I seen, um, you had a, uh, um, I think it was on your YouTube channel talking about

milk. Yeah. What's going on there? Well, I could say these cows, they've even a lot of the whey proteins these days, they have a lot of these estrogen chemicals because, you know, they're running them through, they're running out the milk in plastic tubing. They're feeding the cows, these grains with the zero lino and micro mold estrogen. They've got the atrazine. They've got all these different chemicals coming in. And one of the other big ones is it's called alkyl phenols. It's a,

And one of the other big ones is it's called alkylphenols. It's a, it's a detergent that acts like estrogen. Um, so they put, they put that in a lot of the dairy products. For example, like just standard dairy has about 10,000 nanograms per liter of, of alkylphenols oftentimes. And then they're storing it in plastic jugs, right? Right. So milk has a lot that's, it's behind the eight ball in a lot of different ways in terms of having artificial estrogen and the youtube video i i was you know i went through

some of that data um and talked about the practical effects i don't even remember the studies that i was citing in there but just how that impacts us specifically in tangible ways you know so here's here's how much estrogen it has here's what you see in people that have more dairy consumption in these studies and does it matter like all types of milk like whole milk skim milk um i think the you know a lot of the dairy just the conventional i think it's a question of conventional versus grass-fed free range that's where like i'm a huge fan of carry gold Yeah. I eat that stuff by the stick, just about. Does organic make a difference?

Oh yeah. Yep. And even in the mold, which shouldn't be the case, but it is the case in the studies, mold is way down in organic products. I think it's just because people give it more care and more attention. Right.

It's not because they don't store it in giant facilities, which they sometimes do. It's just, you know, it's just the, the attention that it's given. And do you think because of that reason that it might be a decent idea too? Like if you don't always have the option for grass fed and, and all the different things, maybe just to do local as well? Oh yeah. Yeah.

Especially if you can, if you get to know the farmers, I mean, it's outside of a lot of people's realm, but other people. They go to a farmer's market or something like that. And you can run into these people actually. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. And you can always tell the industrial farmers,

the people at the industrial stand, and then the people that are actually out there in their own fields, paying attention and on top of it. And that's why I like the Weston A. Price Foundation. I don't know if you've ever heard of them. I absolutely have. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm giving a talk there next week at their, at their convention or their, their conference. And I was really impressed last year when I went to their conference because, uh, they have a net, a network, a national network of farmers. And it's really well organized. You know, you can find like your local chapter and then ask them, Hey, who's the local guy I

can get my eggs from? Oh. And then who's the local guy I can get my eggs from. Oh, and then who's the local guy I can buy my cow from and go out and meet the guy or women or whoever it is. And that's what I've done personally. And I've seen that help a lot of people. And because it's pretty,

it's organized. It's a good group. Keep talking. I'm gonna take a pee break. I'll be right back. Yeah, man. I was nervous.

So you said in corn tortillas, it has a lot of bad shit yeah i'm mexican i've been eating tacos my whole life yeah yeah you should try and get organic that explains why i can't bench 225 maybe i can't bench it either and i don't i don't i eat organic corn but i'm i'm pretty particular about corn being organic yeah that's one that I don't cheat on. It's, you know, or I, maybe sometimes I do, but for the most part, I buy corn chips that are organic. Right. I buy, even if I can't find the organic tortillas, which you usually can't, it's weird, right? You can find organic everything, but then you go to the corn tortillas and you can't

find them organic. They're probably just not popular. People that purchase them don't really care at that point. You know, they probably think it's low carb. So it's like, oh, that's fine. Just get whatever I want. Yeah.

Most people pay no attention. Whatever is most affordable. Well, I mean, most of them have parabens and stuff, the corn tortillas. So there's a whole other layer there, but my wife actually makes tortillas. She makes them homemade. I can't remember the size.

And you didn't bring any. Dude, i would have been all over those things yeah she presses them on a cast iron thing yeah yeah she's the best but um but that's one area where i don't cheat too much cool so like uh i mean i remember i can't remember as a documentary a while back where like two dudes like they did a study on corn and how like it's in everything yeah so is that like is that okay or like i mean i don't have an issue i mean the corn itself isn't a problem necessarily i mean yeah it's really high carb right and that's a problem for a lot of people because

most people are already way too high carb right but you know assuming you've got that under control and kind of figured out i think, I think corn is fine. You know, it doesn't have a lot of these inflammatory proteins in it. I mean, that's the other aspect of dairy, right? A lot of people think they're sensitive to lactose, but they're actually sensitive to casein, which is a protein in dairy. And a lot of the grains have a lot of these inflammatory proteins, like lectins and things like that. Yeah, somebody had asked about lectins.

Like, are those okay? Depends. Yeah. I mean, in different people, it affects them differently. I'm really interested in that work on lectins, you know, and how it changes your immune system. And I'm also, I'm also fascinated that glucosamine, you know, this stuff that you find in your joints actually sticks to lectins and that's you can you can take advantage of that by taking a glucosamine supplement while you're eating a

bunch of lectins and it'll bind up bind the lectin so then they don't get out disperse through your body and mess up your joints for people that are super sensitive to lectins that's actually one of the last resort diets for people that i consult for that have a lot of genes involved in, um, you know, different joint disorders, either osteoarthritis or, uh, you know, uh, rheumatoid arthritis, you know, osteo just means your joints are inflamed and rheumatoid means your immune system is eating your joints and they both kind of feel the same way, but they're different on a molecular level. But, you know, a lot of people have genetic issues with their joints in those two categories. And if they've tried everything and nothing else works, I've found a lot of success along with Stephen Gundry's, you know, lectin-free diet. It's pretty extreme.

I don't think most people should be doing it because, you know, why eliminate things if you don't have to, why make your life miserable if you don't have to, but if you're struggling, then it's an, it's a valuable tool in your arsenal, I think. Yeah. Um, you know, there's more and more depression going on, you know, and you hear people talking so much about anxiety and these different things. And it seems, it appears that we live in, in that we live in an easier world. It seems like we have easier times than we used to. It seems like technology has helped with a lot of that. But, you know, do you think there's a huge link to some of the things that are going on with our food and this depression?

Definitely. Yep. Lower testosterone is definitely linked to depression high estrogen especially high artificial estrogen linked to a depression so those two things right there are what we're dealing with across the board men and women um you know less exercise depression you know i mean like a lot of these things are related and they snowball because you know if you're depressed, you don't want to exercise and then it's harder

to get off the couch and you're, you know, you're smoking the marijuana. So you're getting more estrogen and getting less motivated, more apathetic. Is there, is there, are there things, uh, like in your genetics that could maybe link you to be predisposed to depression? Oh yeah.

Yeah. And those genes are so varied that it's hard for me to just say, you know, like Alzheimer's genes are pretty predictable. It's usually cholesterol related. It's heavy metal related or it's inflammatory, you know, or sugar. I guess those are probably the four.

Yeah. It's linked to diabetes in some, in some ways, right? Yeah. Sugar, how your brain deals with sugar. How sensitive it is to insulin and things like that. Yeah, and I did a couple years of Alzheimer's research, so it's kind of a fascinating thing for me. But it's unique

because, again, we've discovered a lot of those genetic factors. Whereas with depression, it's all over the map. You know what I mean? But I think one of the common themes with people that are oppressed is definitely these estrogen chemicals. And again, can you find people without estrogen chemicals these days? I mean, it's pretty hard. Right. So, yeah, you're, you're not going to find depression in these, in these, you know, in these tribes that are living around the equator or whatever,

that are living outdoors. But is that because, you know what I mean? It's so very, there's so many factors there. It's so complicated. Right. But you definitely, as you find these chemicals increasing in urine, you find more depression. That's kind of says it all to me. The other thing that's interesting. And I was talking to Chris Bell, your brother about this in India. And of course I have a bunch of this in my book but in india um there's massive suicide rates among the farmers it's just like astonishingly high just among the farmers and it's just a recent thing and scientists are all baffled by this and i haven't published anything on this but there's a lot of publications just documenting

this happening and they're just saying this is what's happening it's an awareness thing but they're all they're all saying we don't know why maybe it's more alcohol in those communities or whatever but they're just totally spitballing they don't really they don't really have any answers they don't really have any data but what but what is true and what is data is that they've all been using more and more industrial chemicals including atrazine in their um you know in their, in their farming practices, they're becoming more, you know, modernized over there and that's correlated strongly with the depression, you know? So yeah, it's not cause, you know, a lot of this stuff isn't cause, but in human studies, it's really hard to prove cause. So you just have to look at the associations and when you see it over and over and over again

with all these different chemicals, it just becomes really, it becomes obvious to me at least that let's stop arguing about the details and just be honest with ourselves and try and get these chemicals out. What are some of the things that have surprised you the most

in the last couple of years that maybe you didn't recognize that were things that popped up where you're like, holy shit, I had no idea that that caused that or that this happened this way. Oh man, so many things. I think one example is artificial red dye. Artificial red food coloring acts like estrogen. Um, you know, it, it's actually, it's not illegal in Europe.

Um, you know, it, it's actually, it's not illegal in Europe. Um, it makes my top 10 list because my top 10 list is all about which chemicals are exposed to every day. You know, like I said, agent orange disrupts your estrogen, but we're not exposed every day. I hope. And, you know, if you were, I'd make my top 10 list, but, and that was a good example of, of how long this takes. Right. Because we did, we thought agent orange was fine in the scientific world until we started seeing these problems come out 20 years ago. There's even a drug called diethylstilbestrol.

It's DES, abbreviated DES. Diethylstilbestrol was prescribed by doctors for pregnant women to prevent morning sickness, but it acts like estrogen. And sure enough, all those babies that were, you know, being born that were, not all of them, but you know, a lot of them had major problems that came out 20 years later, 30 years later, they're infertile. For example, a lot of people I do consulting for, they've had this.

What are some foods that have that red dye? Like, yeah. So going back to the red dye, right? Like that's one that makes my list because we are exposed every day. Sorry, I get off topic. It's so easy. that makes my list because we are exposed every day. Sorry, I get off topic.

It's so easy. But in Europe it's legal, but you have to put a big warning label that says it may cause adverse health problems. So nobody uses it. They use beet juice. They use natural beet juice and that's fine. But over here we use artificial red dye. So you see these pro athletes drinking, you

know, Gatorade with red 40 or whatever. And what really, to Mark's question, what really shocked me, um, you know, and there's a million things, right? Yeah. But one thing that was really enlightening for me was most scientific researchers today were actually putting red dye in with our cells.

So we're growing, so we take out some fat tissue, like I'm doing at the Mayo Clinic, I'm growing stem cells right now. For example, I'm studying stem cell epigenetics and stem cells, trying to reprogram them in positive ways, re-inject them, improve your joints, whatever. So say I took some of Mark's fat, if he's got any fat right now, it's pretty lean. He's pretty chubby. And I grow that up in a dish, in a plastic dish and ding dish and ding ding ding you heard the word plastic right

so already i'm kind of behind the estrogen eight ball because i'm growing cells in plastic what's that going to do probably a lot of different things it's going to affect the cells it's probably going to even kill a lot of the cells that aren't adapted to estrogen so then the cells that i'm studying they're probably more robust. They have a strong resistance to estrogen. So then if I add other estrogen chemicals, they're already resistant kind of, so they're, they're okay, but that's not what's happening in your body. That's just because you've killed off a lot of the other cells, but let's pretend we're not growing them in plastic. 99.9% of scientists do grow in plastic, but okay, we take the cells out of Mark.

We put them in a dish. We're growing them. They don't just grow in dry air. You have to put liquid in there. The liquid imitates blood, right? The liquid that we use is usually called DMEM, DMEM, right? And they put red dye in that stuff. And the reason they do that is because it's a pH sensitive dye.

So as the cells burn through the sugar, and by the way, it's ridiculously high sugar. It's not, you know, these cells, another thing we're doing is we're growing them in a ton of sugar and not fats. So we're kind of disposing the cells to burn sugar in a weird way. So then when we study the sugar burning effects, it's all skewed, but that's a different topic. But the red dye, as they burn through the sugar, it turns yellow. So you can see it. So then, you know, you need to replace that liquid because they've burned through the nutrients in there. The problem with that, it acts like estrogen.

So another issue, right? We're growing cells in plastic with estrogen dye. And the dye is more important, more potent than the, than the plastic, in my opinion. And, um, and there's some debate about how estrogenic it is, how strongly estrogenic it is because they've done a study way back on rats. Um, they, they, they inject them with a bunch of red dye and then they look at the uterus and they weigh the uterus. They put it on a scale. They cut it out of these, they kill the rats. And then they have rats with and without red dye injected.

And they found the uterus was the same. The weight was the same. And they say, oh, so it doesn't act like estrogen. That's kind of one of the arguments you can look at. Problem is, is if you put it in cells and it triggers the estrogen receptor, you know. So just because it's not making the uterus heavier, it doesn't mean it's not acting like estrogen. So it kind of, there's some muddy water in the research on red dye, but you know, most scientists are aware that it acts like estrogen. The molecule is very similar. And the point is we're growing ourselves in a whole bunch of estrogen.

Right. Shocking to me because I was, I was doing that myself so now at the male clinic i'm literally growing myself in red dye free media liquid um and i'm very emphatic about that you know and the other day i was doing a study and i ran out of some of my stuff and had to go next door and borrow somebody's and sure enough it's bright red right now and it's like man i'm probably messing up my experiment but that's the culture we live in so we have all these studies where the cells are already adapted to living in estrogen right and then we do a study where we add more estrogen like adrazine or bpa or whatever and then the cells respond well because they're already adapted to it they're okay with it

and then we say oh look at look at this. This is fine. You know, the cells are doing good. It's because they're already adapted to it. You've killed off all the ones that are sensitive to it. So it's a, it's a mess. It just muddies up the water. So then you can say, well, how much can we actually trust? You know, it, it makes it really frustrating when you're trying to go through the estrogen

research and you have to dig in into these studies and dig deep. You have to put the glasses on, you know, not the rose-colored kind, but you have to put the glasses on of awareness that this is what's happening in the research. It's interesting to me that, so, this stuff that's in different foods and different things that we use, is it really estrogen or is it just like act like estrogen in the body? Yeah.

It just tricks your body into thinking it's estrogen most of the time. And different. So it's just a chemical basically. Yeah. And then it kind of in the body it will mimic or make your estrogen, your own estrogen levels rise. Correct. Yep.

Both of those things. And there's no goddamn chemicals out there that would make your testosterone. Yeah. I thought, no. Yeah, because, I mean, we had a question like just, well, then how do we raise our test levels? But I think you kind of answered it by getting rid of estrogen. Yeah. And there's a lot of metals.

Surprisingly, if you go through, you know, the micronutrients, a lot of guys say, oh, make sure you got lots of micronutrients if you want to increase your testosterone. But there's a lot of those that are seen as really beneficial, but they're actually lowering your testosterone. Tim Ferriss had a whole piece in his book, The 4-Hour Body, about manganese, not magnesium, but manganese and how that's important for your testosterone. And it is, but there's a really important caveat. If you take it all the time, it actually lowers your testosterone. So if you, if you just take it a little bit and if you're deficient and you take it, it increases your T. But if you're constantly taking it, it actually ends up lowering your T.

And that's true of a lot of these, like I say, micronutrientsents you don't want to overdo it with those and because testosterone is unusual if your body detects it as high it starts to down regulate the receptors you know there's this complicated feedback response and that's true of estrogen also there's it's a complicated system there's crosstalk there's shbg there's limo right it's yeah it's it's hard to pin down and i don't have all the answers in terms of exactly how it's functioning you know but what we do in the lab usually is we do what's called a luciferase assay and i know that sounds really boring and you're falling asleep already but it's it's literally firefly lucifer so you know what a firefly is? Like at night you see them glow green. That green color is a fluorescent protein called luciferase.

It's an enzyme. And you can actually put that gene into cells, which I do this all the time, right? Most scientists do that work in molecular biology. And you put it on, where the estrogen genes normally are, you put that gene. So then you add something that acts like estrogen and it'll actually light light up the cells green and that's how you tell if something is acting like estrogen it lights up cells green physically so you can see the change so you trick the cell right you literally use crisper or something and switch out the dna and so you know it's just a really obvious that's's crazy. That's some comic book shit though. Yeah, dramatic. Well, you should go on your computer

and look up GFP, green fluorescent protein. Look up, type in the letters GFP and then space and then mouse, GFP mouse. Right, and show this to Mark because. Mouse will just be lighting up all over the place. Yeah, you can literally change the DNA on mice. Yeah, perfect. Yep, so that's a green mouse.

You see that? So that's not a great example of that one. But if you go back. It's just their eyes are green. And cross like X out of this page and I'll, or I mean, minimize that picture that you've got it on there. And minimize. Yeah, there you go. Now, oops.

Oh, there you go. Left. Go straight left. There you go. Click on oops. Oh, there you go. Left. Go straight left. There you go. Click on that one. So this is an example. They took out the single cell, like the embryos, and they put in the GFP gene, the green fluorescent gene.

And then as the cell divided, every cell had green fluorescent protein. And then you can see the couple of mice that didn't get that. Right. And they've done with those pigs. They've done with all kinds of animals. And they're just bright green. Yep. Or do they light up? No, they're just bright green yep or do they light up no they're just bright green yeah they've even done it with night crawlers in the fishing community you can buy green worms and why haven't we done this with

people yeah looks awesome can we put that in our protein let's just have dudes jacked in the gym looking all green so are they hulk right you dressed up as hulk for halloween yeah are they under like a black light or is that just... These ones probably are. Okay. But they're green. Like even in the, you know, ambient light. It's just like the night crawlers. Like have you ever seen those worms? You open the package,

they're green. I mean, you can certainly make them light up better, fluoresce if you put them under some bright lights like this. That's crazy. But that's a way that we do the estrogen testing is we use these fluorescent proteins like this. We just put them behind the estrogen gene so that instead of your body simulating estrogen, it actually just makes this fluorescent color. Could you make that fluorescent color like not bother anything? Like just, I don't know, make some fluorescent candy and sell the shit out of it.

Well, yeah, they've, they've, they've monetized it by putting it in fish for kids. So they have zebra fish that are green that glow in the dark in different ways. Crazy. So that like you have a black light and then it'll glow really neat. But in my, for me, from my perspective, it's just really fascinating in the scientific realm, right? Because like, for example, just going back to stem cells, they've done studies with women, pregnant women, and they have like heart attacks, right? And die. And they find that there's, you know, like if you had a male fetus and you had a heart attack at the site of the heart attack where the arteries all plugged up, you'll actually find male cells from the fetus. So what can actually happen is those stem cells can go throughout your bloodstream and actually heal injury sites. And they've done this with mice where they punched

holes in the mice with needles and things causing injuries. And then they'll find, and they'll have a normal mouse with green babies, green fetuses, right? And then they, they injure them with the needle and then they find all these green cells lighting up all the injury sites because those stem cells are going through the bloodstream. And that's one of the reasons I'm interested in stem cells now, because it's, it's epigenetics. So it connects to all the stuff I've been doing with estrogen. But, you know, I think stem cells are a really powerful, positive way to improve ourselves. And it's also kind of a misunderstood area. And I'm interested personally.

Yeah. But they can figure out where those injury sites are. The stem cells can hone in and bind and fix those sites. And that's one of the ways you test for it. But there's green fetuses, at least in animals. What are some of your thoughts on stem cells? Like, like where are they at right now? And do you feel like they've been super effective or?

Yeah. I mean, stem cells, it's a rabbit hole by itself for sure, but. There's so many different ways to get it done and all these different things. That's the root of it, right? Because if I took stem cells from you, you're a healthy dude. So your stem cells are going to be totally different than the average American. And if I'm studying yours versus somebody else, I'm actually going to get a totally different outcome in my, in my study.

And maybe also too, maybe some of the usage of, you know, we kind of haphazardly are using them, you know, like I, like for me, I had an elbow and a pec injury and I got stem cells and I'm like, they don't work, but it doesn't really mean that they don't work. It just means that. Where did you get the stem cells from? Yeah. Like it didn't, in the scenario that I was in and the injury that I had and the type of stem cells I used, whatever that procedure was, it did, it was ineffective. You know?

Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Other people have had it done and they've had different ways of getting it done. Well, and that's the complicated part, right? Because if you're getting stem cells from average Americans, they're probably some crappy ass stem cell. And then if you're getting it from a man versus woman, those are different. And if you're getting it from a kid versus an 80 year old, those are different.

There's a lot of different scenarios. Just where you got the stem cells and who you're putting them back into. Right. That it makes it really complicated. And there's some that you can get, I guess, uh, there's different delivery systems of it too. Like you can shoot it directly into an area or you can just get it and it's supposed to kind of take care of your whole body, I guess. I'm not sure. Yeah.

Yeah. That's what they do with these mice. Right. I mean, that's what the fetuses are doing in the womb. The stem cells are actually going through the, you through the uterus through the percent of whatever and they're getting into the blood um so what what's where i'm frustrated right now with the stem cell world is you know most people won't tell you this but the orthopedic surgeons that the doctors don't aren't they they they pay lip service to stem cells, but they actually don't really want

them to succeed because they're making more money with surgery. Right. So it's a lot cheaper to inject stem cells and have a positive outcome than to do a big full blown knee replacement. Right. So there's an issue there because there's a lot

of, you know, conflict of interest. And so what a lot, and the FDA of course has gotten more behind the doctors in this regard, and they're outlawing a lot of different manipulations with stem cells. They say you can use stem cells, but it has to be minimally manipulated. That's how they're doing it right now. And what that means is it means you can take stem cells out and put them right back in, but you can't grow up a more. So it's like, well, what's the point of that? You know, like you already have the stem cells.

The ideal way would be if you take them out of your fat and then you grow up a billion of them, you know, and then you've got to, and then you manipulate them with like infrared or some other way, like I'm doing in the lab and make positive epigenetic changes, change them in a healthy way and then put them back in, in a, in a specific way. But what the, the field right now is going towards, uh, uh, exosomes. So these are little, little fat balls that stem cells secrete, and they've got little

factors in them, like proteins and different signaling factors. Um, and the reason the industry is leaning and promoting exosomes is because they're patentable so they're very simple there's not that much going on with exosomes stem cells are super complex right difference between different people different sex different age blah blah just explain it's too complicated you can't patent one person's stem cells and do a full clinical trial just on that person. Right. Right.

So there has to be this kind of vague difference between different stem cell clinics. You know, everyone is going to differ. You know what I mean? It's just so complicated that you just, you either have to do a full, um, you know, you have to do what the FDA has done and say, you can't do anything with them. Or you have to say you can do everything with them, you know, because it's going to be different in different people's hands. And then eventually it sorts itself out that this clinic is awesome and this one's not awesome. And consumers have to make that decision in my mind. But right now the FDA just kind of put their foot down just this year.

And so I'm, I'm, I'm kind of irritated by that, honestly, because I was hoping to really get into the stem cell world, but now I'm kind of leaning towards not. What's the idea of a stem cell being able to heal something anyway? Yeah. So like, for example, with these people that have broken spines where the neurologist, and this is

not super common, but it's definitely happened enough where it's, it's something we should pay attention to. People break their back and a neurologist will say, you're never going to heal. You know, they've, they've seen a million of these cases. None of them have ever been able to walk again. Can't do a surgery or anything for it. Nothing.

Exactly. And then they'll put stem cells in and the guy's walking, you know, a couple of years later and what the stem and, and the problem is if you broke your back and then 10 years later, you did that same stem cell injection, it's not going to work because you've got too much scar tissue development. So if you catch it early enough, which is key, which is why we shouldn't be inhibiting the research because timing is everything on this.

If you catch it early enough with your elbow or whatever, when you did it before that scar tissue forms, that's an important factor, you know, in the whole process. And stem cells are just going into your blood and they're one of their functions. And this is happening right now in your body. You know, your body is shedding off stem cells and they're going, they're cruising around your blood and they find inflammation. They find sites of inflammation. cruising around your blood and they find inflammation. They find sites of inflammation.

Like for example, TNF alpha, one of the chemicals, interleukin, another chemical, interferon, another chemical, like these are well-known chemicals. We're not testing for those in your blood tests. You know, we're looking for frigging cholesterol. We're looking for frigging, you know, CRP or whatever, which is an okay marker of inflammation, but that's more often related to bacteria, inflammation from bacteria or something like an infection. But the inflammation that, you know,

usually most Americans have, you know, when we talk about like you have a highly inflammatory diet or whatever, it's usually because it's stimulating TNF-alpha and or leukin interferon, NF-kappa beta, you know, these molecules that we're not even measuring in our blood tests. And that's what stem cells are looking for. They're going through your blood, they're finding those sites of inflammation sticking in there and secreting things called exosomes that are unique to that situation. And that's why it's difficult with exosomes because you can patent an exosome and say, look, let's do a clinical trial on just this exosome, right? Which has one protein in it or one peptide or whatever. And that's positive, right? Problem is, is like in a different person, in a different situation, that exosome, like the stem cells secrete different exosomes based on the context.

And it's too complicated for us to figure out. So right now we're just putting them in and hoping for the best. And some people it works awesome. Some people it doesn't work. It's not super well understood or characterized. And some people it works awesome. Some people it doesn't work. Right. It's not super well understood or characterized and I'm okay with that. As long as there's not, we're not killing people and we're not causing harm.

You know, I would love to see that research continue, but right now you got to go out of the freaking country. The, uh, you mentioned something about, I think you mentioned C-reactive protein, correct? Mm-hmm. Um. Yeah.

Or hemoglobin A1C, all that all that stuff yeah i thought c-reactive protein thought that was like kind of more checking inflammation of your heart uh or is it just checking overall body inflammation period usually it indicates overall i mean they look at it in relation to your heart because you know if you've got a lot of c-reactive protein usually it leads to plaques in the arteries right but i don't know a whole lot of C-reactive protein, usually it leads to plaques in the arteries. Right. But I don't know a whole lot about C-reactive protein and where it originates, to be honest. Right.

But I know that, like, if you have an infection. Right. Then it could be through the roof. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've had that before. Like, I get my blood done every about four months or so.

Yeah. And, you know, I went one time. It was, like, just staggering. But two weeks prior, like tore my calf or something like that. Yeah. So they were like, well, could be that. It could have a cold.

And the next time I got it tested, it was in the normal range again. It's, you know. That's important. Checking your blood is a really interesting thing. Sometimes it's only a snapshot of what's really going on.

All the time. What do you think are important things for people to get done when they get their blood work done? Like if you had to, you know, go over maybe a list of a couple of things you think people should be checking in on. Yeah. When I was outlining this carnivore diet study, did you see that study I was setting up? I didn't, but I'm aware of it. Yeah.

You did like, I think you are working on like a 90 day study on the carnivore diet. Yep. Yeah. I feel like there's just no data on the carnivore diet. Yep. Yeah. Um, I feel like there's just no data on the carnivore diet. You know what I mean? There's anecdotal evidence. That's what Joe Rogan keeps flipping out about

the whole time. And it's like, okay, definitely there's, uh, there's not a lot of research on it, but it sounds, I understand where he's coming from, but it sounds absolutely insane and ludicrous that we'd be testing something that, uh,

has been part of, we wouldn't be here. Ancestry. Yeah. We wouldn't, we wouldn't be here if we weren't able to survive on meat. And I think that there's, you know,

probably been a lot of cases of that over human history. Like for, for me and my consulting, every once in a while, I put somebody on the carnivore diet and usually I have really good results too, but, but I don't totally know the best timing for that. I don't, I can't say, oh, this, you're going to do

really well for the carnivore diet because you have this, this, and that. Because there's really no data. Right. And. It's great to have that, that extra information. Yeah. So you can know where, where and when to apply it.

Yeah. Because just last week I had, I had a lawyer of all things, which makes me nervous. And I had put him on the carnivore diet and he had heart palpitations and all kinds of problems. And I don't know if that's related to keto and releasing toxins from his fat cells and other things. And that's what I told him, you know, like, this is an option. It's probably better to pull off of the carnivore diet because I don't want to, you know, I don't have any more serious issues, but I don't know. You know what I mean? Um, but yeah, usually I find really positive things, especially related to inflammation. So with, so what I'm doing is I'm initiating a study

where people are going on the carnivore diet. They're already going on in any ways around America. A lot of people are doing it. So I figured if you're doing it anyways, and a lot of people are getting their blood work done anyway, then send me that data. You know, like I hate to just have this one person over here in California, one person over here in Oregon, you know what I mean? Like one person in Minnesota doing it and

nobody's compiling the data and publishing it for other people to utilize. Again, it goes back to knowledge is power. Um, so with that carnivore diet study, we're asking which blood markers I'm interested in most. I outlined a whole bunch of them and it's pretty much the standard ones. Right. Me personally, like you have to check for the cholesterol and all that stuff, but I'm not super enamored with that stuff. I'm more interested in, you know, super enamored with that stuff. I'm more interested in, you know, your, your thyroid hormones.

Um, and by the way, there's a lot of genes that, that are related to low thyroid that I find frequently. And, you know, those same people often struggle with low energy when I'm doing consulting. That's a big, a big win when I find low energy and I'm able to fix it. I mean, that's why I do consulting for everybody, not just pro pro athletes it used to just be pro athletes because i'm busy but i opened it up to everybody because it's so valuable for people you know and that's a big one um thyroid hormone um crp i check blood sugar you know i want to see this in the carnivore diet. Hemoglobin A1c, which is kind of a longer term snapshot of blood sugar. Gosh, I don't know. Just the basic. I mean, iron.

I do want to see iron for the carnivore diet. I mean, everything that people want to check, you know, myself included. Just the standard stuff for the most part, you know, because again, people are doing that anyways. Are you doing the carnivore diet as well? I did it for, let's see, I did it for about 20 days and I actually got lightheaded and I'm super busy, you know, and I did the keto for 30 days and I had a phenomenal experience where I was, you know, just really productive, really felt awesome. My lifting went down a little bit but as you

can see just by looking at me i'm not a super lifter to begin with but just because i do monitor where i'm at with my my routine right my lifts went down but i know that stuff goes down and then goes back up usually but with the carnivore i had some side effects that i didn't like in terms of productivity was messing up my work so So I stopped and Sean Baker, when I was consulting with him about, you know, this carnivore diet study that I'm setting up and it's, by the way, it's a crowdsource study. I don't have money to pay anybody because I'm putting this study together myself personally. So I'm not, you know, and I'm not desperately looking for people, so I don't have to pay people.

Most people, most research studies, nobody will participate unless you throw money at them. But a lot of people are irritated by that, but I'm saying, Hey, look, you don't have to participate. I'm not forcing anybody to do anything. I just want the data, you know, it's a valuable thing. But, um, but what was I, oh, and I was

consulting Sean Baker. Yeah. He, I was going to do this as a, as a 30 day, but he said, no, it's got to be 90 because he's got, of course he's compiling a lot of data just from the stories that he's getting in. And, you know, there's definitely kind of a slouch period or, you know, whatever you want to call it. There's a period where you're kind of adjusting and then you pull out of that and then you start to see the benefits. And again, usually the benefits are related to immune overactivity and things like that. Yeah. The main thing that I would question with something like the carnivore diet, um, I've

utilized it myself. I'm a huge fan of it, but, uh, what I'm always looking at is just like, why, you know, like if you don't have to cut everything out of your life, maybe why now i i do i will also say that like maybe having like 80 90 of your food come from uh you know that's probably more meat sources probably makes sense uh that's but like you know with ancestry yeah just enjoying some damn blueberries and having some spinach and uh eating a potato a potato here and there. Seems pretty harmless. I think the reason this particular guy had heart palpitation issues too, again, maybe he had

some heavy metals that he was storing and he's finally releasing that. I don't know, but he also had some other genes that, you know, indicate that he's really needs methylfolate, for example, and you're not getting that from meat. You get that from leafy greens. And there's a lot of people that experience

heart palpitations with their deficient in methylfolate and they've got that mthfr mutation right for example um i went on like a really hard like hardcore keto and i've never done this before i i've messed around with different styles of keto diets for a long time since like the mid 90s but yeah uh you know more recently you know my brother and i did like the mid nineties. But, uh, you know, more recently, you know, my brother and I did like the war on carb stuff and we messed around with carnivore stuff, but I went on like a full blast, like clinical ketogenic diet.

And I was trying to see what I do too. I wanted to check my, you know, uh, ketone levels and all that stuff. I was all in, I was just primarily eating fat. Yeah. That's 80% by calorie. Yeah. Dumping oil on everything and all this stuff.

And I ended up with some heart palpitations and I was like, whoa, I don't know what this is going on. And I can't say that it was directly related to that. I can't, I can't, you know, truly say like, oh yeah, it was definitely that. Cause, um, it wasn't like anything extra stressful was going on in my life at the time. But, uh, um. Well, there's a couple of things because. You know, I can't, I can't like nail it um well there's a couple things because you know i can't

i can't like nail it down to just that one thing though you know well you find heart palpitations real commonly with heavy metals right you know so possibly you had some fat that your body was burning which happens in the keto diet right i mean you're teaching your body to burn fat which is awesome but then oftentimes your fat cells are shrinking because they're you know releasing fat they're burning fat they're burning through it and they're dumping all these chemicals like i was talking about you know that are storing in that fat and then that's triggering heart palpitations that happens heavy metals or chemicals and it's hard to pin down the other one is magnesium you know oftentimes if you're deficient in magnesium for some reason that's really intricately involved in

heart um beat you know signaling and what else is really interesting to me it's something you For some reason, that's really intricately involved in heart beat signaling. And what else is really interesting to me, and something you probably don't know is, in your body, different tissues, like your brain, prefers to burn sugar. So if you give it proteins, carbs, and fat, your brain will burn the carbs first. It doesn't mean it's the best for it.

It just means that's what it'll do. Right. But if you give your heart, if you have cardiomyocytes, if you've got heart cells in a dish and you give them proteins, carbs, and fats, they burn fat. They prefer to burn fat, which is interesting. And it probably plays some, you know, has some role there where you're changing your heart over.

The other thing, and the reason I bring it up is interesting. It's a little off topic, but your immune cells actually prefer to burn protein. They burn amino acids. If you give them, you know, the three macros. And the reason that's super interesting to me is because if you've got cancer in your immune system, you might treat that differently than if you have brain cancer in terms of your diet, or if you've got some other type of cancer, you might want to look at what is that tissue that you have the cancer in and how can you, how can you change your diet to assist getting rid of the cancer, you know, to basically promote killing cancer on top of whatever therapy that you're using.

Yeah. We had a Joel Green on our podcast a while back and man that guy he was he's insane he's got some really great information but uh he talked about like you know it was actually really interesting how he planned his diet i never really heard anybody talk in this fashion but he kind of had like um he had kind of specific rules that he followed all the time, but then he would kind of go all in on a specific plan that's more strict to specifically kill cancer, even though he doesn't have it. You know, I was like, that's actually really interesting. And I thought like, and that's in a way, that's what you're promoting. You know, you're saying, look, we can, we can't cure cancer.

We can't prevent it necessarily, but we can certainly work towards avoiding our risks, I guess you'd say, right? Yeah. I'm giving a talk on that next week at the Weston A. Price Foundation. One of my talks is about estrogen, of course, because I'm the estrogen guy, unfortunately. The estrogen man.

As unfortunate as it is. Estrogen man. But the other talk is about epigenetics of cancer and how these marks on the dna like for example you might not have any genetic risk for any type of cancer you know and you can look that you can look at your 23andme or whatever and you can find that but then you might actually change your epigenetics through your lifestyle through crappy diet or drugs or whatever and you might actually develop risks that you pass on to future generations,

making your offspring more prone to getting cancer, that sort of thing. And it's such a new field. I mean, there's nothing definitive. You know, you can't say this is definitely the way it's going. But at least I'm trying to get the word out there that there's a lot of powerful information that we need to pay attention to because that's the future of science, I think. You know, this epigenetics, these stem cells, these things that we're just barely scratching into right now.

I mean, it's cool stuff. Yeah, it's definitely, there's definitely a lot of great information that's come from some of this talk. We had Dr. William Davis on the podcast recently and he was fantastic as well, you know, former cardiologist, but, you know, going back to what you said about magnesium a little bit, he, uh, mixes Alka-Seltzer with a milk of magnesia and found that that's a really effective, uh, way for him and a lot of the people he's worked with in the past to get magnesium. And it was actually,

you know, I guess milk and magnesia is like, it's actually kind of a crappy form of magnesium, but by mixing it with, uh, the Alka-Seltzer, uh, it was,

it becomes really effective. And, uh, cool. He said he's gotten some really good results off that. And he's very specific about it being Alka-Seltzer and not just like, uh, sparkling water or whatever.

I just found, I just found all these things like really interesting it's like uh you know first of all how the hell did he even stumble upon and how the hell did he even stumble upon that and then he talked to us about this yogurt that he found that uh is really effective for gut health and all these different things it's just yeah he's a cool guy i like him man it's just it's uh it's wild and it's unfortunate that some people are just for whatever reason not born with the capacity to kind of deal with all this uh crap that we have in our society and other people are and they don't have to ever really think about it a whole lot well magnesium inherently is anti-inflammatory and that's one thing that's super important for people today because most people have too much inflammation but then the other thing about it is it's deficient in most people.

So it should be everywhere, but we're deficient in it and we need it more than ever. So it's a really important thing. Yeah. Well, when I start to think about these different supplements, I have a lot of like, I take a lot of shit. There's stuff everywhere at my house. Yeah, me too. You know, it's I like vitamin C and I just kind of everything. And I try to get everything through food too. Um, I understand the importance of that, but, uh, I have all these things and, you know, I'm obsessed with it. I think it's going to like make me, you know,

superhuman or whatever. And, uh, you know, when you, when you, uh, are, you know, utilizing all these different little tricks and all these different things, you know, you're kind of thinking that it's going to cause, you know, this thing versus causing another thing. Like I had supplement with magnesium. Um, you know, I have all different kinds of, uh, you know, yeah, all different kinds of supplements, uh, or the nerds or the supplement nerds. Yeah. Total, totally get nerdy about it. I've also. My wife hates it.

Got a million of them. Oh yeah. Yeah. My wife is just like, let me just take over the house with my supplements. They're just, they're everywhere. They're everywhere all the time. Um, you know, is, is there anything that you've noticed, uh, from a supplement perspective that's helped kind of, uh of keep some of this in check?

Oh, yeah. Well, I think it's so personalized, you know? I mean, even the infrared, right? Like people that respond differently with infrared based on their nitric oxide genes and things like that. I mean, that's something I'm always trying to figure out is, you know, how can I help somebody best in their unique situation? And that's why one diet isn't a fit all thing because different people respond differently to different things. And yeah, there's certain principles, you know, like, yeah, you want to be burning fat. I mean, I don't care who you are, if you're a human being, you know, but then there's

other things that are really customizable and that's something I'm always trying to achieve. that are really customizable and that's something i'm always trying to achieve and the science you know again the epigenetics it's such a young field as that matures we're going to have a better and better knowledge base to figure out but the problem is most of modern medicine isn't interested so they're not helping in the cause so a lot of it you have to figure out on your own and you have to dig in you know so but that's what i try and do i just try and figure out on your own and you have to dig in, you know, so, but that's what I try and do. I just try and figure out customized approach. Some people need magnesium a lot more than other people. Some people don't need methylfolate. Some people can do the folic acid thing, the B vitamins. I, sometimes I find, for example, people genetically that actually can handle the vegetarian diet pretty well. And sure enough, when they do it, they feel fine. Most people, they can't, you know what I mean?

Or they have to supplement really carefully. And even then, for some reason, it just doesn't work that well. Things like that, right? Like you just have to customize your, you know, your approach based on your own body. I would love to not have to take any supplements, but I actually, as I started to think about these things more clearly, I'm like, well, there's a lot, there's a lot we're up against nowadays. Yeah. So yeah, I could

probably be on a specific diet where I try to get in everything, but there's, there's external forces that are fighting against you every day, such as these plastics and these heavy metals and these, these, these things, they, uh, they weren't really around before. They're man-made, right? There's these chemicals that are in our foods, that are in our cups, contaminated in our water. And so therefore, when you think about not necessarily just supplements, but like vitamins and minerals,

it kind of makes sense that you might have to go outside of what you normally would eat. I mean, even the stuff that you hunt is not the same stuff that you would have been able to hunt a thousand years ago. I know. You know, it's all, it's all changing and things, things have, things have gotten to be kind of out of hand. And so you can combat some of this with some supplementation and obviously you want to try to do everything you can with your diet. What are some kind of take home things that people can, can walk away with for today if you

had to give them like three or four things? Yeah, I think filter your water, hit the sauna, watch your personal care products. I mean the basics. Filter your water with. Activated charcoal. Okay. Some of the filters surprisingly don your personal care products. I mean, the basics. Filter your water with. Activated charcoal. Okay. Some of the filters surprisingly don't have activated charcoal.

They call it carbon sometimes. It's not really carbon because it's activated carbon. It's activated charcoal, but sometimes that's okay. If it says carbon on your filter, that's fine. That means. I'm buying a goddamn sauna, by the way, Andrew. Nice. Tired of you holding me back.

Put it here in the gym. Ben Pekulski's got one in his gym. I was using it. Put it right here in the podcast room. Let's do podcasts all sweaty. Yeah. I mean, I love this. I think saunas are the greatest thing.

We'd have to go a lot faster than normal. Start getting lightheaded. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that, you know, just, just try and get the big wins and, and, and just trust the science. It's like vitamin D, right? Like when you take, if your vitamin D is low, take it, whether you feel a difference or not, you know, bring it up because the science is pretty clear that if you're below a certain level, you're going to have joint issues. You're going to have all kinds of different, you have to trust the science to some degree on this because there's not the dramatic changes. Like you're not going to, you know, you're not going to get a migraine if you've got artificial estrogen, something that you feel immediately. Some of it's a slow process.

And usually as you know, from working out, I mean, the slow, gradual changes that you make to improve your life are the best kind, Yeah. But they're also the kind that require dedicate, like they require commitment and dedication that you don't get immediate feedback from. And you also, and also that doesn't happen overnight either. Yeah. You know, I'm more dedicated now than ever. So it takes, it takes a long time to like build, build up that resolve. I'm sure the same as is with you and your profession you're

probably you know maybe you know five years ago you weren't as upset you know but now you're just you keep finding these things and you're like for whatever reason like more obsessed more on fire yep think about it non-stop your wife's telling you look i can't handle this anymore you mentioned the word epigenetics one more time i'm'm going to put my foot in your ass. You'll like this. Our friend, our good friend, Daniel Orego, who used to work with Quest Nutrition and has been a friend of ours,

been on the podcast before. His license plate says epigenetics. That's how nerdy he is. Mine has a deer on it. He's aced you in the nerd category. My priorities are... You got to step up your game here. Man.

Any other questions? Yeah, we just had one. Have you ever heard of A2 milk? Yeah, A1 versus A2 mutation. It's a casein mutation. Okay, no, I guess a company is actually called just A2 milk. Yeah, that's good. That's good stuff there. Well, there's a difference company is actually called just A2 milk. Yeah. That's good. That's good stuff there.

Well, there's a difference between people that are sensitive to lactose and people that are sensitive to casein. Most people don't know the difference, but you can determine that difference by, you know, just tinkering around, trying something with lactose that doesn't have casein, trying casein without lactose, something like that. And you need to figure out if you're sensitive to lactose. But yeah, I'm a fan. I mean, you can just simply get milk from a Guernsey cow, you know, or a different breed of cow. And they, they're actually don't have that. The Holsteins, the ones that we use in our mass production of dairy,

they've got that A2 mutation. So it's more inflammatory. Have you remember when people were supplementing casein back in the day? Yeah. Not too long ago. You know, it's the slow release. Right. The reason it's a slow release protein, it's

because when it gets into your stomach, you put mucus around it. So you get this big ball of mucus coated casein and then yeah, it's slow release. And the reason you put mucus around it, because it's so inflammatory and your body's like, whoa, like whoa like hang on we can't have this massive influx of inflammation so i'm like i'm definitely leery about casein in general um certainly i don't recommend supplementing it although again that a1 versus a2 mutation is a really important topic and

i think people should but as far as like estrogen levels is there any different with no that doesn't change the estrogen. Gotcha. What about, you know, milk sometimes comes in a box rather than in a plastic container. Yeah, BPA coated paper. And if it's grass fed... Oh, so it's paper that still has shit on it. Yeah, because if you put liquid in paper, it can soak right through.

So they coat it with plastic. They don't usually talk about that, but they do. Trader Joe's is actually really good. They have a BPA, a free policy, just as a whole organization. I'm just going to get milk in a paper bag. In a glass. Old school. They used to put it in aluminum.

I don't know what they're called, but big aluminum. I understand, yeah. In cases, and then they're called, but big aluminum. I understand. Yeah. Cases. And then they would pour it into glass bottles. It's funny. My daughter, she's, she's eight years old and she's reading all these books, you know, like Laura Ingalls Wilder and things. And just the other day she busted out a term. She said something about a, a scansion or a stansion, excuse me, stansion.

And I guess that that's like the platform that you milk a cow on. So like my daughter knows all about these old school like dairy that's great i don't even know the words she's using anymore but basically the way they used to do it awesome you know and where we're doing it now is pretty iffy but so you know taking out the delivery system literally like what it's physically in is almond milk okay as far as like okay cool because that question came up a couple times interesting and then our boy bobby just asked so i had to ask but um i'm yeah i'm fine with almond um soy i drink raw grass-fed milk but

it probably doesn't make any difference by estrogen there right depends is it in glass i mean if you get it now from the farmers yeah it's not they that same company used to make it in glass i mean if you get it from the farmers yeah it's not they the same company used to make it in glass they don't make it used to it used to be illegal to sell raw dairy in america and the weston a price foundation actually they were the front runners in making it legal i think it's legalized in over 40 states now because of them and you can actually find farmers that sell raw milk in glass or you can just show up with a bunch of glass reusable jars instead of the single use plastic crap that everybody's doing.

Um, and that's awesome because a lot of people are also sensitive to the, the denatured proteins that are from the pasteurization. The more you pasteurize it, like my brother, for example. I love raw, I love raw whole milk. It tastes freaking delicious. Well, my brother, have you seen that there's on some of the labels that'll raw, I love raw whole milk. It tastes freaking delicious. Well,

my brother, have you seen that there's on some of the labels that'll say, I think it says you, you pee something like UPC or something. It means ultra pasteurized instead of just regular pasteurized, meaning you don't have to refrigerate it. They pasteurize it so much that you don't even have to put it in the fridge. You can have like a bottle of milk that just sits out for a year.

Like these Starbucks, you know, like drinks with the Darien and whatnot. They ultra-pasteurize. And my brother is much more sensitive to that than he is to the pasteurized. And if he goes to a regular non-pasteurized milk, he's perfectly fine, which kind of tells you how important it is to even factor that in. There's a lot of things, but if you can find these farmers, what's really funny, um, is that sometimes they're not allowed to legally sell you raw milk, but they can sell it for your animals.

A lot of people show up with their glass jugs and say, Hey, I want some for my cat, you know, and they're drinking it, but that's the loophole. Right. They're allowed to sell it, but you have to tell them that it's for your animals. Usually, you just have to find somebody you trust. I'll have to go to my Davis co-op. I live in Davis, California.

It's like hippie central. They'll hook me up. They'll get me some milk and a glass. Even if they have to run outside and milk a cow for me, I think they'll figure it out. That's awesome. I've heard that milk straight from a cow is just insane, insanely good. I think they'll figure it out. That's awesome. I've heard that milk straight from a cow is just insane. Insanely good.

I've never had the opportunity to try it. I have a friend in Florida who's got it. It's awesome. He herds the cows. They use helicopters. They have these wild cows in Florida. They're a lot smaller. They're tiny. They're ridiculously tiny. They live out in the swamplands. They herd them up with helicopters.

He's got a whole bunch of these. He milks them, tames them up and milks them and stuff. And I've drank, that stuff is awesome. You know, it's pretty crazy. All right. Well, uh, appreciate you coming on the show. Where can people find you? Where can they get ahold of some of these books that you've written and stuff like that? Yeah, just the books are on amazon and whatnot but um my website is called ajconsultingcompany.com um that's kind of where i have all my stuff i even have a page on there it's called ajconsultingcompany.com slash what i use and that just tells people the personal care products it doesn't give an exhaustive list of everything it just says hey here's what i'm

using because i get asked that so much i put down here's the soap i use here's the shampoo baby wipes have estrogen in them oh it depends on the fragrance it depends where you get it probably not oh man they're sitting in plastic bpa free boxes though yeah yeah but just one outside one outside layer has we know what's funny is i just got a reverse osmosis filter for my water supply, but I got a stainless steel one and it has a pump on it. So it doesn't have a plastic storage tank. A lot of them have like a stainless storage tank. Sounds like you're heading into Ben Greenfield land.

Yeah. Like Ben Greenfield just like lives in like a bubble with like a helmet to prevent all this. Wearing blue blockers and red light on his penis. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. He's got a special light on his balls or whatever, on his gonads. Well, I think, the thing for me, right,

like if you're going to get reverse osmosis anyway, it's like why not get a stainless unit that actually is cheaper? The ones that were sold by the Kinetico or the Culligan system, they wanted $1,000 for it. And this one I found on Amazon for 500 and i installed it myself i drilled a you know through the granite or through the quartz countertop i actually bought like a diamond hole saw and drilled it and all this is pretty cool you know you could just look stuff up on youtube these days

and do it all yourself and it's not that difficult but you know i mean it's cheaper right and it's better for you that's the kind of stuff I want to tell people about. They used to have those giant jugs. Weren't they, uh, weren't they glass at one point? For water? Yeah. They were probably, I mean, probably heavy as shit, but. Yeah.

I'm kidding. Yeah. But I mean, anyways, that's where you can find me. That's where I've got some information that's free and useful for a lot of people. Answers a lot of questions, Answers a lot of questions. Saves me a lot of trouble. Yeah, we'll put links to your books and stuff in the YouTube description. And then iTunes or Google Play or wherever you're listening to this. It'll be in the show notes.

There you go. Thanks, guys. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later.