Barbell Shrugged - Increase Testosterone, Understand Your Thyroid, and Fix Your Jacked Up Adrenals w/ Sam Miller, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #463

Episode Date: April 29, 2020

In today’s episode the crew discusses:   Why do so many males struggle with Low Testosterone Why fit individuals are struggling to lose weight Understanding maintenance, surplus, and deficit calories How long should you stay in a caloric deficit The affects of overtraining on your hormones  Is adrenal fatigue real and what is actually happening Why doing the little things have a massive benefit on health. And more…   Connect Sam Miller Science Instagram: @Sammillerscience  Podcast: Sammillerscience on iTunes and Spotify Website: https://www.sammillerscience.com/free   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   Travis Mash on Instagram   ————————————————   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa   Please Support Our Sponsors   Paleo Valley  - Save 15% at http://paleovalley.com/shrugged   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   Purchase our favorite Protein, PreWOD, PostWOD, and Amino Acids here and use code “Shrugged” to save 20% on your order: https://bit.ly/2K2Qlq4    Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://bit.ly/3b6GZFj Save 5% using the coupon code “Shrugged” http://magbreakthrough.com/shrugged to get a 10% discount with coupon code SHRUGGED10.

Truck family, Sam Miller of Sam Miller Sciences on the podcast today. I need to tell you something. When I left San Diego, I was terrified that I was losing all of my fitness friends because SoCal is like the hub of the fitness industry. Well, guess what? When I moved to Raleigh, Sam was the very first person that I met that, in my opinion, was crushing it. I was super stoked to connect with him.

I was on his podcast we shot an awesome series on testosterone on our youtube page which you can go back and check um and make sure you watch just tons of good information and he is now he's really the go-to resource that i use for all things hormone related specifically in the men's health side of things, thyroid, testosterone. And he also does a lot of women's health as well. I just happen to be male and I happen to talk to more males. So he is the go-to resource. I highly recommend you getting over to his website. You can get into the show notes. You can also get over to sammillerscience.com forward slash free. He's got a ton of resources in there. If you've ever just really wanted to have a deep

dive on understanding testosterone, what it does, how training, nutrition all plays into it, getting outside, getting some vitamin D stress, and then some systems that you can implement into your life that are easy to add to your life without things getting so cumbersome. I highly recommend getting over to sammillerscience.com forward slash free. Also, make sure you get over to barbellshrug.com forward slash store. Doug Larson's EMOM Aesthetics program just went up. It's a body part split training program that is just crushing right now. Tons of good workouts. The e-book is in there. So you can get over to barbellshrug.com forward slash store.

Make sure you pick it up. Body part splits. You're going to get super jacked. Upper body, lower body splits. Just some really cool, quick workouts that you can do with minimal equipment because we're all in our houses right now so barbell shrug.com forward slash store uh the imam aesthetics program is live it's the brand new program uh from barbell shrugged also want to thank our sponsors at organifi i love them I have these beautiful shakes. I put the green drink in there.

It tastes delicious. And I think that everybody right now is probably struggling a little bit on the nutrition side. You've been super focused or you may have fallen off. And I think that from day one to 30, everybody was holding strong. And then as we get into month two of social distancing, being the stay-at-home orders, it's going to get continually more and more difficult as our willpower wanes. So having a really good green drink to get your vitamins and minerals is incredibly important. So you can get over to Organifi.com. This is the one we've been using for three years.

The green drink, the red drink, and the gold drink are the three that you need in your life. Start with the green. You take it in the morning. You just get a hit of all the vitamins and minerals that you need. So your digestion and all the systems in your body are working well. Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. You save 20%. I'm taking at least four scoops a day.

And they're just a phenomenal product uh most greens if you find them in the store taste like ass the ones that organifi they taste delicious um and they've just got the super high quality uh greens that you need so organifi.com forward slash shrugged i going to thank a couple more sponsors at the break, but Sam Miller Science. It's a great show and loaded with information. So if you take notes, this is your jam. Do it right now. We'll see you at the break. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged.

I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Bash, Sam Miller from Sam Miller Science. Dude, we're going to talk about some hormones today. Thyroid, testosterone. We hung out on YouTube about, man, was it like three months ago now? How's that possible? This was pre-quarantine, pre-social distance. Yeah. We actually got to be within six feet of each other. Right. When you say pre-quarantine, it's going to be like AD, like before Christ, after death, and pre-quarantine or post-quarantine. PQ. Yeah, we've got new things coming. And, dude, we talked about testosterone, and we talked for like an hour.

And I feel like we only scratched the surface of moving some of the big rocks of nutrition training. So if you want to get over to YouTube and watch the four part series that we did on testosterone with Sam, please do it. Today, we're definitely going to dig into testosterone and the thyroid, just a lot of the endocrine system and how that affects overall health and wellness and performance. Dude, I'd love to hear. I actually just in in talking to you over text message a little bit more of your story and how you kind of started to go down this rabbit hole um tell the audience how you how you started to get into chasing hormones and figuring out this the system of health i mean so when i started out it was really I think, trying to just accomplish some basic fitness goals like

everybody else, you know, maybe look a bit, look a little bit leaner, maybe perform a little bit better in the gym. And that kind of sent me down this rabbit hole. But at the same time, you know, in my late teens had pretty significant head injury. So pretty severe concussion, TBI's are closely integrated with a lot of endocrine system issues just because of the role that the hypothalamus and the pituitary play in your hormones. So we'll talk a little bit more about that later. But, you know, in terms of my personal journey, I sort of, you know, wandered down this path as a result of my own health issues and still wanting to, you know, be lean and be strong and actually be able to perform at the level that I initially desired. And that was

really hard when, you know, post head injury, having a lot of fluctuations in terms of thyroid hormone, testosterone, and like my own natural production, I really wanted to figure it out. So that kind of set me down that rabbit hole of learning about testosterone, learning about thyroid hormone, spent more time in an endocrinologist office than I probably spent at parties for a teenager, which is, you know, not, not super normal, went off to college and kind of began that process, started to work with clients and noticed that they, you know, oftentimes had those issues as well. Did you say that you had TBI? I mean, I guess. Yeah. So I was snowboarding. I actually,

I was snowboarding in Vermont and actually kind of caught an edge and flip kind of backwards down the mountain. So I had a helmet on, but actually had a pretty, pretty severe concussion. Ended up going on a skyboard that day and just kind of didn't realize the ramifications. So they ended up years later, I got a, this was probably a year or two later, got an MRI on my pituitary and I actually had what they call in medical terms, heterogeneous enlargement of your pituitary gland. So it was a little swollen, a little bit larger than it should be, along with some like random cysts and stuff that were going on in there. So didn't necessarily realize

that until I got some lab work done. So one thing that Anders and I talked about on the YouTube was just how symptoms, you know, and biofeedback play a role in kind of triggering what, you know, maybe I should take a deeper look and maybe I should get some blood work or maybe I should get this scan of my brain. It was never really something that, you know, I kind of brushed it off because when I had the head injury that day, I ended up snowboarding down the rest of the mountain, met my friend at the bottom who had taken a bathroom break. And he was like, dude, no, you got to go like into like the little medical services tent that they've got set up there. We got to get you checked out because I got to the bottom of the mountain. I didn't even really,

he's one of my best friends from when we were, we even went to like toddler daycare together and could barely recognize him. He was, you know, six feet socially distant at the time before we had to and got to the bottom. And, you know, apparently I was just repeating like my name, like my parents info, like my address. It's like you hit like a code red button. And I was like, here are the people that you contact because I'm broken. So apparently I was repeating, I was like, here's my address and my phone number. Fortunately, I didn't know my social security number at the time. So like, you wouldn't have been able to like fraudulently apply for a credit card in my name. But yeah, it was pretty bad, man. I got to the bottom and I don't think I was fully aware of what had happened or how long I was really out of it. And apparently

he had been looking for me since, you know, it was just kind of like, oh, well, I'm gonna run to the bathroom. And I was like, okay, I'll get one more in while you're doing that. And then, you know, ended up falling backwards and hitting my head. So had a pretty severe TBI. Also coupled with this, so transparently for the folks listening, you know, it was a TBI, but also I wasn't doing, I wasn't taking the most intelligent approach with my health, fitness, and nutrition, which exacerbated an existing issue. So now had I known how severe of like a stress on, you know, my body, basically the TBI had already caused some fluctuations. I probably, you know, would body, basically, the TBI had already caused some fluctuations, I probably,

you know, would have done things differently now, based on the knowledge that I have. But at the time, you know, being a teenager who wants to be leaner or stronger, or just kind of more athletic and playing sports at the time, you know, I didn't realize that like playing sports and lifting were a stressor on my body, air quotes there, and realizing how I needed to fuel and the amounts that I needed to eat. So it was kind of a combination of head injury plus some under eating. And really, it was, I think I didn't really acknowledge the severity of it until I actually, you know, I had an endocrinologist who's like, we actually need to like, go get a scan of your brain. Because that day, you know, they basically, they check you for like, if you have internal bleeding. But other

than that, like, there's not I mean, concussion protocols have come a really long way in the last decade. And so for me, this would have been over a decade ago now. So we've got a lot more awareness because of sports and football. And you know, a lot of a lot of concussion protocols have been put in place. And I think medical professionals are more well trained on it. But at the time it was like, oh, well, you know, and I'm brain bleed. So you're good. Like go just make sure, you know, you wake up tonight a few times, don't lay on one side for too long and, you know, have your parents or your friend check on you and then keep going. So yeah, that was, that was kind of my injury history. Ended up getting that scan, you know, years later,

along with some second opinions from endocrinologists. I tell folks that, you know, before the age of 25, I probably had more labs done than, you know, most people have by the time they're 40 or 50. So that's a lot of where this like firsthand experience came from. But it seemed because of my awareness of my own health issues, I became more and more aware of clients issues that were coming to to me. I was like, this doesn't make sense. We're doing the basics as you would be taught in a personal training certification or nutrition certification. and reps and how many calories I'm consuming. And now those are those things are your big rocks, they're super important. But if there's underlying health issues, those things need to be manipulated differently. And that's really what brought the awareness for me was, you know, I went through

that experience, but I think it created a better platform for me to be able to help other people specifically who had some of those issues that maybe weren't even aware that they had. Yeah. Dude, when you're in the healthcare system or when you have a TBI, first off, I don't think many people even recognize a concussion as having like a TBI. And when they hear concussions and they go, they instantly think of like the NFL. It's like, well, I haven't gotten hit by a linebacker. So it can't be that big of a deal. But I would imagine everybody that is on this right now has had at least one concussion and then gotten up and gone back out and played whatever game it was and tried desperately not to miss a play or not to miss a shift, whatever it is.

How long did it take for you to recognize like, oh, we have a really big problem here? Was the medical system even capable of really diagnosing and saying, here's some health interventions that we need to be taking? Or are they trying to like pinpoint the thing to put a prescription behind it and fix you all of a sudden? Yeah, so that's a great question. So for me, what it looked like is going to my primary care physician and sort of mentioning, hey, I'm having some issues with immunity. I'm having some issues with fatigue. I didn't really have the typical endocrine systems or symptoms, excuse me. So

when I went within the healthcare system, the symptoms were kind of like, well, like, you know, try this or try that. And they didn't really realize, well were kind of like, well, like, you know, try, try this or try that. And they didn't really realize, well, I was like, no, I'm already living a very healthy lifestyle. This shouldn't be a problem. I'm not like someone with all of these comorbidities or health issues that should be, you know, causing this. And so I remember my freshman year of college, the way that, you know, my schoolwork, we had a J term or winter term, and I was sick for the majority of it. And so for me, you know, what prompted me to reach out for more help was I was just things that weren't necessarily explained just through the limited research I had done thus far, the certifications I had. But for me, it was, you know, going to

a primary care and not really being thrilled about it. He's like, well, if you want, I can, I can recommend you to an endocrinologist, but it was actually my, uh, post TBI. It was my chiropractor who was like, Hey man, like you might want to get heavy. Did you get any labs done? Like did anyone check you for anything? And he, he more so brought the awareness at the time and was more into, so it's interesting. He's super into like strengthening, conditioning and track and like, you know, um, just all, all things related to performance. And he kind of brought, um, brought my attention to it. And now granted, I think sometimes chiros get a bad rap and of course he had like trying to sell metagenics in his office and, you know, doing like the muscle testing stuff.

But the main win coming out of that was he's like, Hey man, like go get some labs. And then, so I did and then kind of talked to my primary care. He's like, well, we can send you over to an endocrinologist. He's like, but if you don't have, like if you don't have typical symptoms in terms of, you know, issues with libido or sex drive, but it's, it's something else. They don't necessarily like, they're not really an advocate for you. Yeah. It's like you're a teenager. You don't need anything.

You don't even need a brain. Yeah. You can just go. You don't really have one anyway. Yeah. Exactly. So it was that plus, plus like thyroid ramifications i mean we've got cells and receptors like thyroid is just incredibly important for guys and for females causes a lot of cycle issues for females as well but thyroid is kind of i think overlooked at times and usually they're related so when there's a stressor, usually we're triggering the HPA down-regulating the thyroid axis or gonadal axis. So for men, that's testicular axis. For women, that's kind of like the relationship between your brain and your ovaries. And we don't necessarily realize that we're doing that through those various stressors. So

whether you have an internal stress or inflammatory stress or external stress, that can be a really big problem. And so to just kind of wrap up the end of my story, and so we can cover some of the science of this, is really what it did amount to is, yes, they did try to put me on different medications. Different doctors sort of hypothesized different things. I've been told that I had a pituitary prolactinoma, which is basically like a tumor giving off another hormone in your pituitary, like near your brain. I've had folks who are like, no, you don't need that. Don't do

anything. I've had people who they want to give you pills or creams or gels or anything. And so, you know, I fortunately was able to work with a decent endocrinologist and then got some second opinions. I was kind of like an episode of Grey's Anatomy at Duke because I was going to, so Travis and Anders will know this being in North Carolina, but Elon University at the time. So in between those, we've got some good universities like Duke, Chapel Hill, Wake Forest. So getting some second opinions from like institutions like Duke, even though my, you know, original endocrine was in the Northeast. So I got that second opinion,

kind of learning more about it, more labs, that MRI that kind of revealed some things for me. And I think I actually have my folder of blood work over here somewhere, but basically started to see more frequent patterns. Didn't necessarily love the idea of like being on a medication for the rest of my life. And so decided to sort of work to how do I get out of this? And that's, that's where this rabbit hole really kind of started was, was that managing it naturally. And for the people out there, like definitely want some awareness around the TBIs. But also, like I said, you know, I was doing a lot of training at the time. I was an athlete, but I was following like a diet that I might find in men's health and

nothing against men's health. But if the protocol is for a 40 year old with a beer belly and you're a 20 year old athlete, you don't need a calorie deficit and to cut all your carbs in order to, you know, make progress with your body composition, your performance. So quite the opposite. Yeah, it was a mismanagement of, you know, internal and external stressors. And so I think I was training. Yeah, I definitely loved. I loved I loved training. So for me, I was like, this isn't a stressor. I love training. You know, I like doing this. And I was like, but you know, I want to be lean. So I'm not going to eat like fat ass. So I've got to control my

calories. And then did the basic awareness at the time or, you know, whatever books or magazines that pick up at Barnes and Noble, I think I had that basic education by the time I was 17 or 18. I think I had done my first personal training certification. And then nutrition came like shortly there, you know, thereafter. So that's when I started working with clients and seeing a little bit more of this. I pretty much trained as my side hustle all through college. And, you know, and then thereafter and kind of leads us to where we are today. But I would definitely say it was a combination of having an internal stress and then rather

than acknowledging it and putting recovery protocols in place to alleviate some of those symptoms and issues, it was probably worse than it needed to be because I also, you know, was being fairly aggressive with the nutrition and had, you know, body comp goals or aesthetic goals. And that, you know, certainly I think gets overlooked at times when looking at, you know, hormones in the health and fitness space. Well, that's the rabbit hole that gets everybody, right? You start to try and control everything. And once you, you can't control, nobody like controls it and keeps ratcheting it up. They always ratchet it down. And especially when it comes to food or dialing in every single tiny little detail, which leads you to standing on stage at a bodybuilding competition, which is probably the most unhealthy thing you can do to yourself.

Yeah. Ask John North. It's a true story. When did you do your bodybuilding competition and what stage of this did you go stand on stage? So actually in multiple phases. And one was kind of like I was starting to feel a little bit better and kind of got a little, um, overzealous earlier on. Um, I was still in college.

That was like my first one and did like a little regional competition. And that was, that was bad. Also had like over prescribed, you know, the coach I was working with at the time, probably over prescribing cardio and like energy systems work and lots of, I mean, I was still lifting, but, um, you know, certainly had some issues. I think I got an upper respiratory infection, like prepping for that show and didn't pull out. Coronavirus. Yeah. Yeah. At the time it was like arts, uh, acute respiratory distress, but like, you know, 10 years ago. So that was my first foray into that. Post grad school for me, I did do some additional competitions, but I was a bit more stabilized at that time. That was

like, that was like, oh, you just got a pituitary tumor. You know, that's kind of like I was at that phase. Yeah. And then, yeah. So just kind of at that phase of things and did well, but that was also, um, and I think you guys had them on your show. So mid twenties for me, I actually did things intelligently and found a good coach. Uh, so I learned a lot from John Meadows, um, as well as his pal partner in crime now, Scott Stevenson. So those guys really taught me a lot in the bodybuilding space. Um, Scott kind of raised my awareness around how to, you know, do some things naturally with the HPA or HVTA. John just has a lot of knowledge around training intelligently and nutrition and peri-workout

nutrition and things for both natural and enhanced athletes. So that was kind of a blessing for me because I learned how to be more intelligent with my approach and then was able to carry that into working with clients. Um, and then probably took a couple of years off. The one thing I did differently than a lot of people is there was only really one year where I had like multiple, multiple shows in a year. I would like prep, recover, like reverse. And then I might wait like a couple of years before I competed again. I think a lot of people get, get the itch to, you know, compete. And then they're like, Oh, I'm going to do this show in April. And then this one in May. And then they turn like their whole, there's no periodization.

It turns into this perpetual comp season, uh, which is not very healthy, uh, both in terms of like sustaining that level of body fat, but also, you know, in terms of, you know, what you're doing with your training, nutrition, sleep quality, things like that. Stress. Yeah. So, so I fortunately learned, you know, I think at most he might let me do, we might do like a September, October, and then take some time off and then go into the next year. The year after that was really the only one that got a little out of hand, but for the most part, you know, it was one or one or two a year close together, like close together and then get out like close together, get out. And so I always advise that. Um, I think, I think it's, it's scary and we'll see this. I mean,

it's not just, I know bodybuilding gets a bad rap with this stuff, especially if you're competing naturally, there's a lot of transient hormonal changes, but the same could be true for a number of different styles of competing. This can apply to strength sports. This can also apply to, you know, this can apply if you have to cut weight for your particular athletic pursuit. You know, it's not necessarily a great idea. And sometimes we'll see these amateur athletes where they're cutting and then they don't achieve their goal or maybe they don't get the placing they want. And they're well i'm just going to keep i'm going to do the next one and then the next one and then their season that was they didn't have a plan for their season and now it's well i'm going to

compete until i qualify well what happens if you go three to four shows you don't qualify you've now put yourself behind in terms of recovery for the next season and that's that's something that that i've seen a lot and when i coached, I've tried to steer people away from, from that, because I think it sort of diminishes your longevity as an athlete. And that's a problem. But personally, very fortunate to find some like old sage wisdom from some like 40 year old dudes when I was like 20, which really made a difference for me and really accelerated my learning. So I not only not only up till this point, do I have 13 years of mistakes and failures that I can learn from, but I've also had some really amazing mentors and influences that I've allowed, I've been able to learn from their 20 plus years of experience times, you know, however many coaches there were, which, you know, I feel feel really great. And then, you know, Meadows coaches there were, which, you know, I feel, feel really great. And then, you know, Meadows also is like tied into Dr. Serrano and a lot of really well educated folks when it comes to endocrine system, metabolism, etc. Plus, if you're constantly looking at your

own labs every month and going to an endocrinologist office, you're kind of getting like a unofficial endocrinology residency. So that certainly helped the learning process as well, though I wouldn't really wish that on anyone, but it turned out to sort of help my purpose and being able to help other people. I think the world of Olympic weightlifting has experienced that. But, I mean, it wasn't to their fault. It was because the qualifying process forced them to compete um

from started at the end of 2018 until well it was supposed to be right now so they had um a little less than two years to to uh do six international meets and so uh at least six so then people bomb out so people were just competing over and they had to. It wasn't their choice at that point. It's like, if you want to go to the Olympics, you do this. And so I saw exactly what you're talking about. I saw people literally ruining. Like, they start here. By the time it was done,

if they didn't do it super intelligently, they were ruined. I saw a girl break down and we were in Thailand and she lost her mind and was was crying she said i quit you know she her body had she had started it out like amazing at an amazing level and ended like she had lost a solid five to ten percent of strength it was uh it was insane because you're right stress is stress and people don't understand that like the very point of training is stress

that's that's the whole point. If there isn't stress, then there's nothing going to happen because that's the way homeostasis works. And so those are great points. And I think another thing, too, that I'm curious, I'm excited to hear from you, is that the whole point that a lot of the old Russian protocols don't work is because those were set up for athletes who didn't have a lot of stress. They didn't have social media. They didn't have to worry about money. They were totally controlled by the government. So they had all their food, all their sleep, all the rest, everything was handled. So, and they were on drugs. And they were trying to apply. That shouldn't have been the last comma there. So yeah, I mean, the drugs definitely make a

massive difference. There's a few, I don't, what was, is it Icarus? I guess there's something, there's some Netflix documentary on the Russian dope Icarus. Yeah. I was like, which Greek or Roman, you know, figure is the name of it? Flew too close to the sun. Flew too close to the sun. So yeah, with those protocols, I think what's interesting is your, your body is adaptive and all of these topics sort of are interrelated. So you can't talk about adrenals or thyroid or even gut health or testosterone without really thinking about the other areas. And what's often happening is we're imposing, you know, we're creating this stimulus or stressor that we want a desired adaptation to,

but we got to be careful what stimulus we're under because our body is going to adapt to it. So in that example, she likely had a very high volume of stress. Her body continuously was trying to basically keep, you know, in our evolution as humans, while we've changed dramatically and have way more technology and our lifestyles have changed, our internal physiology has really not changed that much. Our inner workings are hardwiring system. So when we have a threat or a stress, there's a response and our body will compensate for a period of time and become efficient at trying to deal with that stressor.

However, eventually the body will downregulate because it's kind of this internal, you know, WTF response of like, what are you doing to me? You know, why, why, why do we, why aren't this internal, you know, WTF response of like, what are you doing to me? You know, why, why, why do we, why aren't we in, you know, why are we in this situation? And why haven't we dealt with this threat? And so when we look at the difference between, you know, social media, technology, blue light, food quality has changed since that time period,

you know, having to worry about making an income, having to worry about all these different things not being controlled. I mean, certainly like knowing, you know, getting plenty of sleep, having your food provided, having that structure and being in more of a camp environment certainly can help athletic performance. I think the drugs go a really long way in terms of adaptation, because instead of having a down regulation of certain hormones, you basically have an exogenous substance or source of those hormones that are preventing you from dipping as much as you maybe would otherwise as a natural athlete i mean there's there's only so much there's only like a small body of research on athletes and transient hormonal changes because

just like with many strength and conditioning studies like like it's hard because a lot of the funding for research is for like large scale health issues. Like, you know, there's tons of studies on metformin for type two diabetes, but it's because it's a huge global health issue. And a lot of people are dying now in terms of strength and athletic performance, it's like a little bit harder to get some really great research on this. But we can look at, you know, anecdotal situations and what happens to people and use our understanding of physiology to basically look out a bit further in our scope. So I think in the example that Travis was discussing, we've got to look at, well, none of this is occurring in a vacuum. We have your life and we have your training. Both are stressors and they're not, you know,

in one case, they're, they're being modulated, we've got external stress in your life being modulated by the government or your training team, or whatever the case may be, we've got your internal stress managed by potentially a drug protocol, the food, you know, inflammatory response, all these different things. And I, you know, that's why those protocols, you know, they're very, they're very aggressive and require a certain level of resiliency that a lot of people likely don't have that internal bandwidth from like a thyroid, adrenal or testosterone perspective to be able to handle that. If you were to put females through that nowadays, you probably end up with a lot of lost cycles. If you put men through it, you probably end up with a lot of low testosterone. And that's, you know, that's

something that I think gets overlooked when people look at, you know, some of those training programs that worked in a vacuum. But when we move into real life, we no longer have that vacuum. All of these things are very closely integrated and overlap with each other. Yeah, I wonder when you when you sit down and look at a client's like actual life and the number of stressors that they're taking in, whether it's just rush hour traffic, sitting at their desk for eight hours, fluorescent lights, you start thinking about the number of darts that are getting thrown at people all day training and like getting to the gym at night starts to become sometimes when you look at like the whole pie of their life this tiny piece

that creates a lot of damage versus being a real positive and how do you start to reshape the conversation with them of having them like reframe what training is or strength training in general because the way that they've probably been sold it through Under Armour commercials and protecting the house and being super intense and slamming battle ropes with rap music in the background just isn't the thing to do. How do you start to get people to tap the brakes a little bit and buy into a little bit different understanding of strength training. So in my kind of like intake process, working with folks, there are a few different things that we do. But before we get into that, I want to highlight something that Anders mentioned,

which is, you know, in our modern society, stress has been decoupled from movement, it's relative or uncoupled from movement. So historically, anytime we had a stress response, a fight or flight response, which what the stress response is, is basically to help us deal with, you know, we have, you know, fight or flight and then kind of a feast or famine response. And ultimately that will influence fertility. So we always want to remember those five F's. We've got feast, famine, fight, flight, fertility. That's how we sort of integrate the adrenals, the thyroid and the HPG or HPT axis. We're talking about male male hormones here. Now, because it's been decoupled

with movement, we're already running this higher level of let's say I get an email from Sally and HR and it stresses me out. And then I'm sitting at my desk, I've mobilized energy through my stress hormones. Their job is to create alertness. Their job is to perpetuate a response that would help me survive and move blood flow away from certain areas to other areas and to change my brain to be more prone to respond to a stressor in a certain way. And that's something that I think we forget at times is our body's stress hundreds or thousands of years ago was largely movement. Like it would then be paired with a movement immediately after we were basically, here's your energy. Okay. Use this energy, this alertness, maybe a little bit of this anxiety that you're feeling to then, you know, ensure your survival. And now we don't have that. So one thing that I try to encourage clients to do or even other coaches and working with their clients is looking at sort of drains and charges in their life. I think everyone, you know, has an iPhone or a smartphone, they can understand that

they need to charge the battery in order to essentially replenish and recover. And so what we can do is even take a simple piece of paper and the listeners, you know, in the audience can do this as well, is fold a piece of paper in half, look at your restorative activities or things that actually help bring you back to baseline, or perhaps enhance your recovery beyond baseline, and then look at things that are potentially detracting from that. And our goal is it may not always be perfectly in balance, but we want to sort of look at that T chart and establish, okay, what's putting me into more of a sympathetic nervous system state or a fight or flight state versus what's putting me into more of this rest and digest or parasympathetic

state and that's often you can't you can't like disintegrate the relationship between the adrenals testosterone gut health etc because that stress response ties into so many things my stress hormones are elevated it's going to influence my testosterone production. If the stress hormone is elevated, it might influence what's going on with my thyroid hormone conversion from my thyroid reserved to metabolically active hormone. So it's very hard to separate those, yet we see people trying to do it all the time. So I start with something that's kind of drains and charges. I'm big on client education. So if anyone comes through to me, I always explain that your physical goals, your performance, aesthetics, longevity, always preceded by physiology. And the way that we influence your physiology

is through perception. So like your relationship with food relationship with exercise community, and your practices, that's like, okay, practices could be well, you like fasting, or you like tracking macros, or you want to go carnivore. Those are all practices. You know, how you train is a practice. So I try to create a frame for them to work through and say, hey, you're adding this plus this. This is your current state, and this is the goal that you have. What do we need to look at? And then let's zoom in at, okay, so what's actually draining your system right now?

How do we protect against that? Okay, cool. You know, you have a stressful, stressful job. Okay, well, how do we carve in some parasympathetic time? Is it walking? Is it breathing? Do you need more sleep in order to train? And I view those basic things in terms of walking, breathing, sleeping, as like your permission slip, it punches the ticket for someone then to go and train intensely. Otherwise, we need to sort of modulate what we're doing with training volume, training intensity, training frequency. And that's why oftentimes people can handle different programs, because depending on their level of stress

in their life, they have this bandwidth or this resiliency to be able to adapt to, you know, if Travis is going to put them through a squat everyday program, they can then handle that, you know, the training frequency for that particular movement that they're going through. So that's how I like to kind of frame it. And then I dive into more specific details depending on the situation from there. Is there any continuous way to monitor testosterone levels? Like, like, yeah, like a continuous glucose monitor, you can you can get a very consistent readout throughout the day, as opposed to getting blood work done once a quarter. So I mean, we don't, as far as I know, I think they prioritize that for folks who are like diabetic or pre-diabetic glucose, you certainly can have a continuous

monitor. As far as I know, I've never actually used one. If there is one, it's probably very expensive. And I'm not sure that any sort of insurance would ever cover that. If there is one, it's probably very expensive and I'm not sure that any sort of insurance would ever cover that. So cost is definitely a big factor, but you may not have, you know, to sort of quote Dr. Serrano here, any monkey can read labs. So it's not just about the labs, it's connecting them to biofeedback. So even if I had a continuous testosterone reading, it's less about the actual reading on the paper and how is it showing up in your biofeedback in your life. So I use a model called Shreds. We look at sleep, hunger, recovery, energy, digestion, and stress. So Shreds are your main thing. Hold on, Travis is writing that down.

You got to slow down for a second. The man likes to take notes. So the reason we look at those, can you say those again? We talked about it on the YouTube and I thought that it was an awesome model. It's not just for aesthetics though. So, you know, but mind your shreds. Your sleep, your hunger, your recovery, your energy. So that would be like fatigue levels, digestion and stress. So these are all like perceived by the client, but I turn them into, they're both subjective and objective. So whether you're training someone in real life or you're training them online,

you can incorporate these into a little questionnaire or check-in form of sorts, or do it in person, just in a regular conversation. And, uh, well, once we get to do that, when we're out of quarantine and social distancing and, uh, you know, you'll be able to walk through those things. So let's say I'm seeing changes in their sleep. Well, it doesn't, it doesn't require a lot for me to know that improving sleep will improve testosterone levels. There's research to support that. Let's say their energy is off, they're seeing fatigue. If I'm seeing issues with sleep, that first S, E, and then maybe, you know, digestion, some gut health issues, or maybe there's something else going on, that might be a signal to me that I need to look deeper and that I need to go get labs. It's a lot more affordable for folks to look through this model first, before just pulling

like 1000s of dollars worth of lab work. And it gives you a framework to compare and be consistent over time. You know, hunger will also include things like cravings, you know, appetite, you know, your ability to, you know, we want some hunger, right? So if you have no hunger, that's not necessarily a good thing. But we don't want too much hunger either. So that's giving us a signal of what we need to be doing with the diet. You know, sleep can be both training and diet related as well as its own little area by itself. So I like to work through those and then say, okay, I have this pattern or this trend with my clients. Now, maybe it's the time to get blood work. And then I can change toggles in the transformation, which might be movement, it might be sleep, it might be what they're doing, like relationship wise, it might be their

morning routine, and changing those toggles, manipulating that then when you get labs, you actually know what you changed in order to improve the status of the individual, especially if they're a natural athlete. Now it's important to monitor these things too, even if you're on TRT or HRT or, you know, even for performance enhancing drugs and super physiological doses, you should still be tracking these things, you know, regardless any good coach, I think, you know, at this point at this day and age, like needs to be looking at biofeedback and making informed decisions for, you know, their clients. Have you ever heard of Omega Wave? It's a new testing protocol where

it monitors, you know, your DC brainwaves, it looks at your echocardiogram, and then also your heart rate variability to tell, you know, like, the also your heart rate variability to tell you know like um the heart rate variability is going to tell you if your you know pns is um is performing properly the uh echocardiogram will tell you you know about your energy systems and then the cms is going to tell you a lot about like you know gas exchange also like hormonal um issues but i'm curious it's because it's something i don't yeah so I don't have a ton of experience with that particular method I am familiar with HRB I've used aura rings with clients I've seen clients who use whoop you know or ring has it yeah whoop each you know

aura ring what's nice is it gives you body temp in the morning. I track body as a indicator of both thyroid health and cycle health in females is super important for men. You can also use it in terms of like recovery and just, you can tell when someone's getting sick. So body temperature is a affordable way to look at that along with HRV. I think a lot of people, you know, Travis is fortunate in his coaching. They used to work with a lot of athletes and people were very dedicated to that process. You know, also for folks, you know, if you're a coach and you work with average, you know, clientele, average Joe and Jane, it's important to have tools that are accessible to kind of the everyday individual. I think that Omega wave stuff sounds really cool. Um, but most of the coaches that I either work with in our mentorship program or clients, like the coaches don't necessarily

have the ability to use that with their clients based on, you know, maybe they don't have an in-person facility where people are coming in. Um, and then, you know, with clients, it's also looking at how can I do this in a way that's, you know, affordable and effective, but also, you know, gives me as much information that I need. I'm still working to draw the relationship and parallels with HRV and things like testosterone, thyroid, et cetera. I think it can vary person to person, depending on other factors that are going on. Cause one person could, you know, have a less, you know, their HRV may not, might not be great right now, but if it's a recent change, it's going to be different than someone who might have a slightly better HRV, but they've got internal health issues, like maybe

some gut health stuff going on. They might have, you know, totally different problems. So I've heard of it. I like where the technology is going. I definitely recommend, you know, for guys and stuff like, so I'm personally, you know, I'm wearing an Oura ring right now. I've been trying to use that, but I use it mostly for the sleep tracking. So I really, you know, I'm wearing an aura ring right now. I've been trying to use that, but I use it mostly for the sleep tracking. So I really, you know, I'm really big on sleep. Sleep and non-exercise activity, I think, don't get enough attention when it comes to fat loss, transformations, performance, recovery. So, you know, looking at how much deep sleep someone's getting, like making sure your

delta sleep or slow wave sleep is in a good spot, because that's very important for hormone production as well. And we can see pretty substantial percentage changes in hormone output just based on the sleep that someone's getting, as well as what happens with, you know, your resting heart rate lowering in the night and then in the morning. And that's part of that's a big, you know, creator of that HRV differential is you're looking at lows versus highs. So, you know, it's one, I mean, if you're HRV differential is you're looking at lows versus highs. So, you know, it's one, I mean, if you're sleeping well and you have the bandwidth, if I wanted to adjust my HRV, I would push really hard briefly to get a high heart rate in a training session. And then I'd just try to like sleep and get it really low. So I think it's, it's a, it's a indicator, like kind of a once a day thing that's, that's coming. I think we're getting more

information on what to do with it. But for right now, like I still try to keep it simple for clients and not overwhelm them with like too many data points because then sometimes folks like almost stress themselves out thinking about their HRV and that defeats the purpose. Want to take a minute to thank our sponsors over at BiOptimizer. What is the number one mineral to fight stress and fatigue? It's magnesium, but not just any magnesium. The one I recommend is Magnesium Breakthrough because it combines all seven essential forms of magnesium into one convenient supplement. Most magnesium supplements fail because they are synthetic, not full spectrum. When you get all seven critical forms of magnesium, pretty much every function in your body is upgraded from your brain to your

sleep, pain and inflammation and less stress. With this one simple action, you can reverse magnesium deficiency in all its forms. Go to magbreakthrough.com forward slash shrugged to save 10 using the coupon code shrug 10 that's mag breakthrough.com m-a-g-b-r-e-a-k-t-h-r-o-u-g-h.com forward slash shrugged mag breakthrough.com full spectrum magnesium get the full upgrade and then our friends over at paleo valley uh the most delicious healthiest grass-fed beef sticks for all of your captivity needs actually i've been loving these things i take them i eat like one or two a day just as a snack throughout the day we're in the house it's way easy to eat something that's like carbohydrate jankanky, processed, like the lowest level of food just because you're in your house staring at the pantry all day. Highly recommend not doing that,

especially for long-term nutrition. But here's the thing. If you get over to paleovalley.com forward slash shrugged right now, you're going to save 15% on your order. I think you should get the smoked summer sausage. You should get the jalapeno one. They're delicious. They're super healthy. You save a little bit of cash using the code SHRUGGED. So get over to paleovalley.com forward slash SHRUGGED, and let's get back to the show.

You mentioned walking a little bit earlier, and then you just kind of re-hit on the non-exercise movement piece. What is it about walking that on the recovery side of things kind of the fat loss side of things just a systems balance side of things that people just clearly aren't getting enough of that but is you know why why is that piece so easily left out and why is it so important to overall health? Yeah, so walking, especially if done outside, I mean, one crucial component is vitamin D levels. Most people with hormone issues don't necessarily have, I'd say a lot of times, probably more than half the time, don't necessarily have sufficient vitamin D levels.

Getting outside helps with that, helps with your circadian rhythm. So being outside, getting some natural sunlight, especially earlier in the day, can help with your circadian clock and what's going on with your adrenals and making sure you do get good sleep at night. I think a lot of people think only about what they do in the evening and their evening routines when it comes to optimizing hormones. But being outside earlier in the day and getting that sunlight, going for a walk can actually enhance your ability to sleep later on. I think part of it is if you keep your heart rate in the proper range, you're not going to be in a sympathetic state, you're moving, but you're parasympathetic, which is super rare. There's

very few things in life where you're like, actually calm and not having this huge stress response. But yet I'm also burning calories at the same time. So that's really cool. Plus the vitamin D plus the circadian rhythm benefits. I think it's really overlooked now, granted, like during the winter, if it's raining, like get your movement in somehow, and then maybe supplement with vitamin D if you need to. But, uh, that that's, I think maybe three of the reasons why it's super important would be circadian rhythm. You know, your, your vitamin D since that's a hormone, we want that status to be good. Um, and, and that's usually your hydroxy vitamin D, since that's a hormone, we want that status to be good. And that's usually your hydroxy vitamin D levels in your labs. And then lastly, it's, it's sort of this mixed movement with not a super sympathetic response, which can allow us to generate blood flow throughout the body, but not have an incredibly high heart rate,

a little bit lower stress and helps, you know, from a number of different perspectives. Also, if you're hunched over a desk all day looking at a computer, it can be helpful just to like get up and move. Yeah, that's kind of just an auxiliary benefit there too. Yeah, the dude, the circadian rhythm thing is always so it's very tough to explain to people. And I would love to hear how you explain it and and how you feel like that influences you know people's sleep cycles when they wake up in the morning how how great their sleep is at night just because we are so disconnected from our natural environment as humans now sitting in offices doing podcasts on the internet staring at a computer screen

to sit there and say like oh we need you to get outside in the morning so you see morning light it's different than night light and we need to get you outside sometime in the middle of the day when the sun's really bright to get your vitamin d it just doesn't resonate that much with people yet i find myself when i practice it like noon will come around. I'm like, I just got to get outside. I start to get this like cabin fever of just staring at a computer. And it's it's very different in the health, just the way that my body feels. It's like playing a video game. And I get the hit the recharge button as soon as I get outside and like feel the warmth of the sun on my body. Yeah. So the way I would sort of

simplify that, and I think you can, you're almost having like this urge to, to, to get out and you know that it makes you feel better. For most folks, you know, it's what we're looking at is you have a cortisol awakening response in the morning, which basically means you should be more alert in the morning. And then that should gradually decrease throughout the day, especially in the afternoon. Now, the problem is, for a lot of people, this is inverted. So when we have high levels of stress hormone, it inhibits the release of melatonin from the pineal glands. Melatonin is that hormone, that kind of shot that fires, that signals sleep in the body. And it's hard to do when you have higher cortisol. Blue light kind of does a similar thing, but it's going through your optic nerves that's actually influencing that hormone

production. So by getting outside, getting sunlight earlier in the day, you're getting it on your skin, which actually has a very important role with your health. Also, in terms of your eyes, seeing that sunlight through your optic nerves and everything is incredibly important as well. The way I would describe circadian rhythm for someone unfamiliar, it's basically a biological clock, a rhythm that we operate on on a day-to-day basis. It's kind of your body's natural schedule in terms of your internal health that influences everything from how you sleep at night, when you poop, like it really influences a lot of different things. And oftentimes it's overlooked and it's kind of low-hanging fruit and improving a transformation.

So having some bookend routines morning and evening can be incredibly helpful for that, you know, appropriate amounts of sunlight. And then I think further down the road, I think sometimes people start to get into like biohacking and stuff and they're taking supplements at like the wrong times. You know, we don't necessarily want super stimulating things in the evening. And, you know, we want to be careful with that as well. But you can see this, you know, show up in health, you know, in health pretty easily. You know, folks who work night shifts tends to show up in hormones, folks who, you know, do that over the length of a career. I mean, there's, I think they're still running this study, I'm not sure, but it was like a retrospective study on nurses who worked night

shifts for the majority of their career, and they had to hit a certain point. And because of that circadian change and how it influenced their melatonin production, which melatonin can kind of have this, we're sort of looking into it as like an anti-cancer sort of effect. And so melatonin being off with these night shifts, those women were more likely to develop breast cancer. So it has a lot of health implications long term. So to help clients understand the value of circadian rhythm, sometimes I'll tell that story in kind of a simplified manner,

but not as like a scare tactic, but just being like, hey, guys, having adequate levels of melatonin can be incredibly important. Having these, you know, that's a hormone, we have neurotransmitters as well, having the right ones at the right times will help you not feel like shit. So I try to start with something basic, like a morning routine or things that they like, some movement. And then just being mindful of different things throughout the day. It might be something as simple as breathing or when they're training and being consistent with some small thing, you know, as Anders would say, kind of the big rocks of a transformation. But circadian rhythm is definitely a low hanging fruit. Just think of it as most people, their schedule is kind of set for them. They don't necessarily

take initiative to really control the framework of their day and what they're doing at what time. Yeah, they're very reactive with it. And so the more proactive you can be with your schedule, get to more like your ancestral roots with things, can be super helpful. You know, throwing on some blue light glasses at night or using the Flux app or Night Shift on your iPhone can be super helpful. Or eliminating electronics in the evening altogether

can be super beneficial. But also if you're getting like no sunlight during the day and not moving, you might still have a hard time sleeping even if you have the most expensive blue light glasses. Yeah. You know, i did an interview yesterday and someone was asking me about all like the the fitness tips that people can do for like at-home workouts and i i knew that they were like trying to pinpoint like go do the push-ups and do the 10-minute amrap and do this and i wanted to just be like, before we do all that, like go outside in the morning, set your day off

and like get some sunshine, let your body know that it's the morning. And then in the middle of the day, do your 10 minute AMRAP and go on a little bit of a walk. But there was just so much depth to the conversation. Like you're explaining here of like getting into a rhythm and a system with the ecosystem that you're living and wake up an hour early so you can go outside and move a little bit i don't know about you guys but since we started doing these in the morning like i have

to go do like one of doug's 10 minute amraps before we can even like hop on the call because i don't want my first word coming out of my mouth in the morning to be recorded for all these people i got to do something to get get some blood blood moving. Right. Yeah. That's super important. And I think, you know, one thing that just to illustrate how important this can be, if you're not having the right cortisol response at certain times, um, you know, and that's influencing sleep, sleep helps to modulate inflammation and also helps with hormone production. So it starts this vicious cycle of I'm stressed during the day. I'm not sleeping at night. I'm not getting this inflammation, modulation, or balance. I'm not getting the hormone production that I would. Sleep improves insulin sensitivity, which makes you more tolerant of carbohydrate. So when all that,

but then carbohydrate helps to balance the effects of cortisol because carbs and insulin can, are counter-regulatory to cortisol, can put us in a parasympathetic state. So I can actually, it's like, which, which way do you want to run on the hamster wheel? Or do you want to get off the hamster wheel? Oftentimes we're on this hamster wheel of I'm lacking sleep. So I'm inflamed. I'm not super like my carb sensitivity is off or my glucose levels are elevated because I'm stressed. And you'll see that in the morning blood glucose as well. And then, you know, their training suffers. So they're not setting PRs, their exercise activity is off, they're tired. So then their NEAT goes down, which is that non-exercise activity. It's a vicious cycle versus if I can get you walking,

you go outside during the day, get some sunlight, vitamin D, modulate what's going on with stress hormone and cortisol, sleep well at night, improve that inflammation. I might feed you more carbs. Then you're going to set PRs in the gym. You actually have enough energy to walk. We've upregulated your thyroid and testosterone levels. And now I'm playing on a whole different, you know, I'm in a whole different ballgame, whole different field than what you were doing previously before, because now I'm using your body systems in your favor, all starting with some really basic triggers, which could be walking and getting outside and dealing with that stress response. Because when that stress runs elevated, and we're not getting the sleep that we need, you know, that shows up

first place as we see it, definitely hormones, inflammation. And sometimes what we can do with the diet as well in our training sessions. So I view it as, you know, let's feed an appropriate response. This is why this is, that's also kind of the science behind why a lot of times reverse dieting can work. And then carbs are further used. They can help to blunt what's going on with cortisol. And that stress and inflammation can show up in everything, even in people's serotonin levels, why they feel anxious, why someone's on an SSRI, why they're at the, you know, depressions, all can start with something as simple as like playing into that cycle, which is a big part of what circadian rhythm is. The biggest problem is people are getting that cortisol surge sometimes later in the day, or they're not getting one at all.

They feel flatlined. That's a really big problem. So we want some cortisol. I don't want people to walk away from this podcast being like, well, shit, I can't have any stress hormones. No, you want them sometimes. And it's meant to help your body, you know, move or respond to a threat. And that's good. Or if you want to go train, like, that's great. But then afterwards, let's breathe or let's do some ability work or let's, you know, let's get some carbs in your system to put you back in a parasympathetic state. I think that's the stuff that gets overlooked a lot of times when trying to move the needle with, you know, transformations and performance. Yeah. I think that has there been any studies on, on meditation or mindfulness and testosterone levels or just hormone levels in

general? I think there have been, and they're definitely looking at it in terms of HRB and indirectly testosterone. But if you think about it, you know, if meditation or even breathing, I mean, you wouldn't need a study to really prove this. But let's say I do a four count box breath, right? I inhale through my nose, I pause for four seconds, I exhale for four seconds. If I'm controlling the reactions through my body, through my breathing, my diaphragm, what's going on mentally, I'm moving out of that threat response. I'm now back in that parasympathetic state. And, you know, one thing that a lot of people don't think about with stress hormones and hormone optimization and stuff is cortisol can inhibit what's going on with steroidogenesis or creating our own natural

steroid hormones on a very basic level, on a cellular level. And that's usually through this little guy called Star Protein. I kind of, when I teach about him, I talk about it like Jason Statham in the Transporter movies. But that's something we got to pay attention to that oftentimes gets overlooked. But yeah, I think, you know, I don't have like one specifically to reference for you, but I'm pretty sure that's out there. And even if it's not out there, I would still feel really confident that there's a relationship. What about like all the, the supplement based testosterone boosters? Like there's, there's a million of them out there. I generally, I generally look at them and, and my, my, my first assumption usually is that it's probably bullshit. Um, but they're probably not all bullshit.

What kind of things are out there that might have some measurable effects? And or if you have any research to quote, I'd love to hear it. Sure. So I think there's some good research behind ashwagandha, which is more of an adaptogen. But what's happening is we're adjusting the perceived stress response. And that's starting in the brain. So a lot of like your testo jack 9000s and stuff at GNC, like, that's like, I mean, it might do something for like your libido, or maybe it has something in it for blood flow, and it's more of a PD five inhibitor, which is like designed to help blood flow, but it doesn't necessarily show up in your performance.

I think there's been some research around ashwagandha and, and, you know, a bench press or leg press and overall stress response and, um, fertility, like what's showing up in terms of, uh, sperm or semen health. Um, that, that I think is when you start to see that relationship in multiple areas where, Hey, like there's some decent stuff here on maybe training and exhaustion and fatigue. And hey, maybe there's some stuff here on fertility. Well, if I combine those things, I know that kind of the parallel there is testosterone. So, or the common thread, I should say, not the parallel, is testosterone. So looking at adaptogens, I think can be helpful because if it helps with your circadian rhythm and helps with your stress response, it'll indirectly help your testosterone.

I think a lot of people overlook low hanging fruit like vitamin D, even minerals. So like zinc, boron, those are very important as well. So don't, you know, don't step over dollars to pick up pennies. You know, that's something that I think there are supplements that are good, but a lot of them get a bad rap because there's a lot of crap out there that's underdosed. It's a proprietary blend. It contains no like adaptogens or supportive minerals or anything like that. And that can be problematic for sure. So if it can help your stress response, or if it can help, you know, what's going on with with the communication between our brain and our balls, that's a good thing.

And that can help with testosterone production for sure. I've been wondering what the, when is the actual right time or is there a right time for having an intervention with TRT, HRT, like how far down the road is it finally time to walk into the doc and say, let's bring in some sort of exogenous testosterone or something because we've tried everything. Like how long until people realize or actually that becomes the right viable option? Yeah, it depends. And just for the folks listening, like I'm not a doctor, I can't determine what's best for you without knowing you. But I'm pro situationally pro TRT, pro HRT, I think quality of life wise, it can it can help a lot. But also, so I'm going to give you like two reasons behind my answer, which are not what you think they're going to be. It's not performance. It's not, um, you know, even related to, to overall, um, like

the gym really at all, but more so your cardiovascular health and your mental health. So men with lower testosterone have left lesser aromatization, estrogen, lower estrogen levels are actually quite detrimental to long-term cardiovascular health. So it's not just being jacked about being jacked and swole and sexy and having like energy that doesn't stop. It's like, it's more about your internal health. And also testosterone can sort of be a little bit anti-inflammatory in a sense. So testosterone is not bad. TRT, when administered appropriately with a physician that knows what they're doing, that's another problem and another story for another time. But if you have TRT and you're using it intelligently, what it should do is actually

mitigate some of your cardiovascular risk if you had the symptoms of lower estrogen or lower testosterone. This is also a huge issue with anxiety and depression amongst men. A lot of men are mistakenly put on SSRIs or depression and anxiety medication as opposed to treating the testosterone levels when the hormones themselves would have, you know, there's also downstream effects that we're not paying attention to. But I'm always looking out for, is this person in a place where they continue to go this way? And I'm looking at things like inflammation or their lipid panel or their family history. So for example, my dad has some history of heart issues and has had a

stent. He's had blockages. He's had several different things going on. You know, even despite having a healthier lifestyle as he got older. And so for me, what I'm paying attention to is, well, I don't want my estrogen levels too low. That's unhealthy. You know, I don't want to be in a place where, you know, mentally or cognitively I'm compromised. So that would be an instance where, you know, that's something I would consider. For other folks, it's important to think about as well in terms of your family history, where you're at. I think if you're, if you've already, if you're optimizing your sleep and you're truly, truly doing everything you can to improve sleep, you're not eating in a caloric deficit. You're not under recovering from maybe too much training volume or training intensity,

then you're, you're doing the right things. Give that a shot for a while. Sometimes it can take months, not just like days to make that difference. But after that, it may be worth getting some, getting some labs, going to a doctor and really evaluating that because you may have had a head injury or you may have had testicular trauma of some kind, or there there's some other stressor going on in your body that you're not necessarily aware of. And so it's, it's supporting, you know, your body in the best way possible. And the truth is, is that having lower levels is potentially worse than having those supplemental levels and using TRT or exogenous testosterone, especially if you're using something bioidentical,

and we're literally talking about like testosterone analog versus, you know, maybe intense amounts of performance enhancing drugs. I think it can be, you know, used intelligently for sure. So I'm definitely pro, I don't want anyone here to think that just because I'm pro natural stuff, that I'm not pro TRT. I actually work with a lot of folks who are on TRT or HRT. And, you know, it's something that I'm, I support as long as you're not, you can't skip, like, don't pass go with your sleep, your eating, your training and your stress management, and just grab a vial of tests. That's not addressing the underlying issues. I think if you've got those things in place, and then you put testosterone on top of that, now you're kind of supercharging a healthy lifestyle versus masking unhealthy decisions with, you know, a prescription. So that's kind of my take on it.

Well, one of the issues or I would love to hear just a way people can understand because I think when one of the things that I worry about in the TRT and HRT game is like, okay, you're on it. You're just doing this for health and longevity. You're not really competing in strength sports where it would be a massive performance enhancer. Maybe it's enhancing your life performance, work, mental clarity. But in general, you're just using this to feel better every single day. Are you stuck using TRT for the next 60 years of your life just to maintain a general level of health? Or is there a way to reverse diet and away yourself off of TRT so that you can maintain the benefits without having to go

to the doctor every quarter? Good question. I've wondered that in the past myself. I wouldn't necessarily, if you were working with a physician, which in that instance you should be, if you're younger, they may try a secondary approach to this or like an off-label sort of approach, which might be with HCG or a CIRM, selective estrogen receptor modulator that blocks feedback at the, at the top part of this chain that we're talking about. And they might try to increase endogenous production. So HCG is, is luteinizing hormone, which will signal your body to produce more of its own testosterone or something like tamoxifen or clomiphene and be used to as a CIRM. Now, granted, like there aren't tons and tons and tons of doctors that do this, but there are some

doctors that want to try to increase your endogenous production. That may work for some people. Some people get side effects. They don't like it. They'd rather be on TRT. You can also do things in conjunction cohort with your TRT, your exogenous hormone to, you know, uh, not necessarily have as many like fertility concerns and things like that. But, um, as I mentioned, you need to, one, it's going to be dependent on your labs. Like we need to look at those precursors for testosterone. Like where are your, you know, where's your LH, where's your FSH. Those are those signals coming from the pituitary signaling the body to manufacture that testosterone. And then also looking at your free testosterone, not just total

testosterone, looking at where your estrogen is. And estrogen is actually a family of hormones. It's not just one hormone. So there's, there's several that are in there that could be causing issues. And then, you know, those considerations and also, you know, making sure you're getting minerals, eating the right amount, sleeping, you could start with using something to enhance endogenous production, which would be like what we talked about. ACG or LH is kind of injectable, whereas these other ones are tablets. Some people don't want to be on injections for the rest of their life. So doctors will give them a, you know, the CIRM. But that's, that's not super common as far as

tapering off of exogenous testosterone i think if you're already in a place where your endocrine system is compromised that would challenge the body i think if you're young and and you signal the body hey this is where testosterone should be and maybe you you taper or come off and then support your body doing that um i don't know that we have enough evidence to really support that. But I think there might be some cases where it works. If you're over the age of 30 or 40 and you're going on TRT, you should be making an informed decision of potentially using it for the rest of your life. It's healthier. Fluctuating levels are almost as bad or just as bad as just having low levels. So it'd be better to have a stable,

consistent level and be healthy versus going high than going low. Plus, you know, coming off, you're going to get a lot of symptoms in terms of like, you know, potentially less energy or depression or brain type like fog type stuff. So I wouldn't, I mean, I think not being a doctor, I gotta be, you know, go to the side of like, Hey, chat with your doc about this. But my, based on the doctors I know, and that I have a good relationship with and what we've done with clients and how we kind of partner with it is they may try a first line method of let's increase

endogenous production if you're a younger dude if that doesn't work um and we may increase endogenous production just with sleep and some food that doesn't work we've reverse dieted maybe there or also there's a case where if you're obese or you're overweight you've got to lose body fat to improve your t levels even potentially you'll then you'll see even more benefits from trt so there's two sides to this there's the guys who maybe overtrain and under eat and don't get enough sleep and are go, go, go, go, go. And then there's the other side, which is being at an unhealthy level of body fat can compromise your testosterone levels because you're aromatizing more of your testosterone, you're converting it into estrogen, which is what's making you feel less good per se. So I don't love the taper concept

unless you really got like a super solid game plan and you're working with a doctor. Otherwise, I think consistency with your levels is super important. Yeah. And finding a dose that kind of works with you based on your labs and stuff. Yeah, I think one of the biggest things that people start to think about, or probably what leads the, you know, maybe there's like a brain fog or lack of energy, but, uh, as a human, most of this boils down to the fact that like your libido matters a lot in your life and it really controls a lot of decisions. And it's, it's, I think that the numbers, when I hear, uh, there's a lot of factors that play into it clearly, but when I hear the numbers of erectile dysfunction or what porn is doing to our society,

and how do you structure that conversation about libido and understanding where some of the pitfalls may be? I would love to hear any of the research. I think porn has become like just some crazy thing that has taken over and testosterone levels, libido, actual human interaction is, is almost not needed, but it's wrecking,

you know, the way people live their lives and, and hormone levels for, for one, but just, you know, general health and, you know, how and how they interact with people, society. Yeah. So I think there's a couple of things going on there. I know we're starting research on-

You don't have to be the porn guy. It's more of the libido side. Right, right, right. So we'll definitely dive into the libido. I'm going to give you my take on what's going on with the libido stuff. As it pertains to porn though, is our body has a certain amount, we kind of have a relation, important relationship with dopamine. And we have this kind of drive to, it's like a seeking behavior or tendency. Now, when that's constantly available to you in the form of porn all the time, and you're not necessarily seeking, it's just there. And then also, when men ejaculate, you have prolactin released, which sort of is this natural preventing us from being like rabbits and overproducing our population. Prolactin works. So dopamine, a dopamine agonist will antagonize

prolactin, they kind of have this opposite relationship. So if your prolactin is super high, that's going to influence some of those behaviors. So if you prolactin is super high, that's going to influence some of those behaviors. So if you're like masturbating all the time, chances are, I'd be curious. I mean, I'm, this is just my theory. I don't, I don't know if this is substantiated or not, but I'm wondering like, is it because your prolactin levels are super high or you're just so numb mentally because you're being exposed to the stimulus all the time. If you think about it thousands of years ago, or even before, you know, internet porn and stuff, like you would still have a seeking behavior. And

there's kind of this reward system built in. And and then there's a relationship that follows with which then would be, you know, something like prolactin, which helps, you know, that balance. And that's oftentimes why guys have a refractory period from like a sexual health standpoint. So prolactin definitely plays into all that dopamine definitely plays into all of that. That would be my internal health kind of science answer to that in terms of libido. I would caution the audience and you guys like, and speaking from personal experience, libido is not always, like you can have lower T levels and still kind of have libido and not have erectile dysfunction. There are guys who see it more in terms of brain fog, fatigue, immunity, maybe different pains in the body.

It's definitely there. Like if you have that as an issue, you may for sure want to get your testosterone levels checked if you have libido issues, but there are guys who maybe it's coming from the thyroid side of things, or it's coming from the cortisol side of things that are maybe okay. Like they can, you know, they have good sexual function. They can be with their partner. They're fine, but they're really not fine. And it shows up in other ways. You know, and that could be a number of different things. And one thing we should probably tackle too, is just for the audience, like relationship between sleep apnea and low T as well.

But in terms of libido, I'd say it's not always the only sign. Like I said, immunity can be a big one, fatigue, brain fog, perform, you know, gym fog, gym performance. We see a lot of changes across the board there. And also in terms of looking at your cardiovascular health and things like that can be super important. It's the relationship between testosterone and estrogen. You might have no sex drive because you actually have no estrogen or maybe estrogen is way too high. It's not actually only testosterone. So guys need estrogen. So estrogen gets a bad rap and people associate it as a female hormone, but we actually need some estrogen to have good erectile function to even lose body fat. Um, we need it for that balance

for cardiovascular reasons. And also a lot of what goes on in our brain convert, you know, in our body converting testosterone, estrogen is good for our brain as well. So libido is definitely a consideration, but I wouldn't put like, that's, don't put all your stock in that and evaluate other things that are going on. People with anxiety, depression, more likely to potentially have issues there. Also, it's related to the stress response in the sense that sex itself is kind of this, this balance between stimulation and relaxation at the same time, like you have, you have a stimulating response, but then also let you don't want to be like too stimulated. So it's especially for guys in terms of overall sexual health, there's a delicate balance there between if you're

never able to get into a parasympathetic state in terms of your life in general, and you're just super excited or stressed all the time, that's going to show up. So pay attention to your nervous system, not just your testosterone levels, you might have okay testosterone levels. But if you're not controlling that balance between that fight or flight and rest and digest response, that may show up sexually as well. Yeah. When we get into something you said made me really go down the thing about the libido track on this, but I also wanted to go back to the TRT. And at its most basic level, you're increasing testosterone. But the difference is, and I think we're getting better in the conversation, just because of the amount of education that's coming out from people like you.

I mean, TRT has become a very popular thing. But most of the time, I would say, when people think about taking exogenous testosterone, they're thinking about, I do steroids. And now I'm going to break out in acne all over my body. And I'm growing hair in weird places. And I'm going to start like roid rage and fighting people. What can they, one, the differences in going to a doctor and then going to the bathroom and locker room at your gym to get testosterone are very different places.

What can they actually kind of expect if they do go down the exogenous testosterone route, going through a doctor and going through all the right channels to get a very pure testosterone and doing things the right way. Yeah, so I think there's a lot of misconceptions around that. Now, the difference between testosterone replacement therapy, the goal is to get you into a place where if you are at high or good levels and replacing your natural production, that's maybe not quite there. That's the goal of TRT. And now with, you know, exogenous use in a super physiological fashion, that typically involves, you know, maybe doubling or tripling or quadrupling what the body is producing naturally. And oftentimes in terms of dosage, you know, a,

a mild dose of anabolics might be three to six times the dose of conventional TRT. So to put it in perspective, you know, and when people are thinking about hair and all of these things, that's also where's the testosterone going. So we have different downstream effects of hormones. So, you know, if you have a lot of DHT production, for example, that can be an issue. That's like if you get prescribed, also you're talking injections, want to make the audience aware that oftentimes when you go into a doctor's office, conventional wisdom and lots of medical sales folks have gotten doctors to be prescribing things like Androgel or creams. Where you put the creams and gels matters in terms of like what Anderson said in terms of hair. Like if you take, you know, a gel or, you know, the one that goes in your armpit and you

have a lot of DHT going on there, like that's going to influence what's going on with your hair. If you're on exogenous testosterone and injection and you're blocking the conversion to estrogen, that testosterone may go down a pathway where it becomes DHT. And that DHT may be what folks are seeing in terms of hair loss, because there's this process called 5-alpha reductase that basically makes that happen. So in terms of that difference, I wanted to highlight, one, there's a massive difference in dosage. Two, if you've got your labs done, massive difference in what you're seeing in your labs. Your biofeedback is going to be very different. So they're kind of two different animals, even though it's the same hormone, the effects you're getting. As you go higher and higher with testosterone, your body will want to create

balance and create, it will basically use an enzyme to convert your testosterone to estrogen. So it's more about achieving a balance. And even if you are going with the performance enhancing super physiological route, I think a lot of people go even higher than maybe they need to, because then they start, they get into polypharmacy where they're taking so many things to balance out these one or two things you're taking. And then all of a sudden now you're on eight, six to eight different drugs to try and deal with what you're doing. And so there's, there's an intelligent way to do it.

And there's a way that's not very intelligent to do it. In terms of TRT, what that looks like from your doctor, um, will depend on the doctor. So I think some common mistakes I see with TRT is, um, the dosing of the injection relative to the half-life of the actual prescription can be a problem. Um, sometimes people just following what bodybuilders did conventionally in like the 80s just because those doctors like don't know any better um and some hrt clinics may be giving out things that they they shouldn't shouldn't be um you know walking in and all of a sudden you've got like a script for deca um that's that's definitely different i think there are a lot of but you know while there's there's a bad rap for some of the folks in the industry there are there's a cohort

of good docs who will prescribe testosterone in a responsible manner and make sure your levels are consistent and monitored, and they will teach you about how to inject, how often to inject. There's also companies out there. Actually, Anders, there's a guy, a private equity firm here in Raleigh, that's invested in oral testosterone because a lot of people don't like injections. The problem with a lot of oral testosterone is if they make first pass at the liver, it influences our liver health, kind of like over-the-counter things like Tylenol or

Advil might. And so we're looking at these oral ones and how to work with the half-life and how to make testosterone dosing more available. But that's usually the issue is like the mode of delivery. So it could be a injection, a pill or cream. They're even doing like scrotal creams now, which actually are a little bit more effective in terms of libido and you get better absorption there versus if you have a guy who's overweight and he puts the cream on an area where he's already very fat, that's going to likely create some more issues because of that aromatization relationship we talked about. So DRT can go a lot of different ways. It could be pills, it could be gels, it could be injections. When done intelligently, right now we have the most research, I think, and kind of the gold standard is injections even dating back to like, I think we've got research on test injections all the way back to like the 1950s or

earlier. So there's, there's definitely some good body of data out there. But like I said, what you need to talk about with your doctor is frequency of how often are you actually injecting to stabilize your levels, you may not need to necessarily block estrogen or even modulate it too much because we want some estrogen in the body. And that that's, that's really what that difference can be. And the last thing about roid rage that Anders talked about, testosterone is kind of happy kid on the playground, like he's not always looking to cause trouble. He's just kind of like playing on the monkey bars, doing doing his thing. So I think people people like criticize testosterone, but a lot of times there may be an imbalance with,

with other hormones in terms of testosterone and estrogen and folks who are on these super physiological doses. You should not be like filled with rage on TRT. Um, you know, you should be the happy kid on the monkey bars. Yeah. Um, dude, we did it again. We got to come back next time. We're not going to be in quarantine we're going to get you out to lewisville and come hang out eventually and do this thing live um i appreciate you coming on this early we got to go be dads it's almost eight o'clock in the morning and uh kids are kids are calling we got your slide pushes your driveway sled pushes right um dude where can people find you and, uh, some, some resources that they can learn a

little bit more. For sure. So I've got a lot of, uh, free stuff at just, I've got the similar science podcast. Um, we have a men's health episode and a women's health episode and a thyroid Q and a on there interested in this stuff. Um, similar science on Instagram, similar science.com is my website. And if you are a nutrition coach or a fitness professional, um, I have a free Facebook group for you guys, um, called the nutrition coaching collaborative on Facebook. But as far as social media and website and podcast, it's

similar science. So similar science.com, I've got some freebies. I think we did this for the YouTube so I can bring it back for the listeners is we did like a free little testosterone preview guide that was like an excerpt from an ebook. I think we have one for thyroid as well. And I'm actually working on, you know, it should be out by the time this podcast airs, but it'll be a metabolism miniseries. So a five part, small video series for the listeners. They can check that out and get a lot of resources as well. If you really want a deep dive, I've got a resource called the hormone blueprint, which is a great, great resource to turn to if you need help with stuff like that, but love answering questions. And there's a lot of really good free info on the,

on those different platforms. So definitely check that out. I spend a lot of time on, on Instagram. So similar science on, on IgE is a good place to find me. I love it, dude. Coach Travis bash, Ashley.com or Ashley performance place to find me. I love it, dude. Coach Travis Bash. Mashley.com or Mashley Performance on Instagram. Yeah, I just followed you, Sam Miller Science. Thanks, man. There it is. Boosting it. Right?

Plus one. Tell that algorithm what's up. Yeah, right. Doug Larson, where can they find you? You bet. Sam, thank you for coming on, brother. Appreciate it. You can find me on Instagram, at Douglas E. Larson.

I want the whole world to know two things one when i moved to raleigh i was terrified that i was like leaving my fitness bubble in socal where all the people hang out and like you're so stuck in socal that you think nobody outside of san diego knows anything about working out and you were one of the first people i met. And it was really rad. I've really appreciated getting to know you over the last year. Number two, Sam Miller Science was the number one, the very first person to make the tweet about coronavirus and Cheetos. Doritos. Doritos. That went so viral and all the influencers were stealing it.

Call it their tweet. And it wasn't true. That's the influencers are stealing it. Call it their tweet. And it wasn't true. That's the dude that created it. Sam Miller science invented that tweet. And I know the guy that made it go viral. I feel like I've always wanted to know the guy that made the viral thing. And now I know I felt like a celebrity myself. I'm glad you signed it out for them.

When everybody was stealing it, I was like, dude, I know that guy. That has to be him. He wouldn't steal it. He made it. I'm Anders Varner. At Anders Varner, we're Barbell Shrugged at barbell underscore shrugged. You can find us at barbellshrugged.com. Free resources, programs at barbellshrugged.com.

We'll see you guys next week. Awesome, boys. I'm off to class. I knew you had to go. All right. All right, buddy. All right, buddy. Wanted to get get yours that's a wrap friends make sure you get over to sam miller science.com forward slash free to download all the free resources from sam miller if you enjoyed this conversation on

testosterone thyroids adrenals um overall hormone health uh sam miller science.com forward slash free for all the free resources. Also make sure you get into the barbell shrug store and check out the EMOM aesthetics ebook that Doug just put out body parts split to get you super jacked, super shredded. Um, and it's a really fun program. It's a, it's very, very digestible. Um, and you can, you can do it in your own garage, um, or wherever you're, you're at. Minimal equipment. Super fun. So get over to barbellshrug.com forward slash shrugged. Also want to thank our friends at Bioptimizer, magbreakthrough.com forward slash shrugged.

Use the coupon code shrugged10 to save 10%. Also our friends at Organifi, organifi.com forward slash shrugged to save 20%. And then Paleo Valley, the healthy, delicious beef sticks. You're going to go to paleovalley.com forward slash shrug to save 15%. We will see you guys tomorrow. Actually, we've got a bonus episode coming out with Devin LeVake because he's going to bear crawl the New York City Marathon. It's so gnarly.

We'll see you guys tomorrow.