Barbell Shrugged - [Micronutrients] Why Calories and Macros Are Not Enough for Health Optimization w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash and Dan Garner Barbell Shrugged #642

Episode Date: May 18, 2022

In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   Why micronutrients are the base of all chemical and hormonal reactions in the body Why micronutrients are responsible for total health and how good you feel Why micronutrients are overlooked and how this is detrimental to your health How do you know you are getting optimal micronutrients in your diet What your health is missing if you only track your macros   Connect with our guests:   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   Dan Garner on Instagram   ————————————————   Diesel Dad Mentorship Application: https://bit.ly/DDMentorshipApp   Diesel Dad Training Programs: http://barbellshrugged.com/dieseldad   Please Support Our Sponsors   Eight Sleep - Save $150 on the Pod Pro and Pod Pro Cover at eightsleep.com/shrugged   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   BiOptimizers Probitotics - Save 10% at bioptimizers.com/shrugged   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://prxperformance.com/discount/BBS5OFF Save 5% using the coupon code “BBS5OFF”

Shrugged family, this week on Barbell Shrugged, we're talking about those pesky micronutrients. You know, the things that keep us healthy, that are in charge of signaling every single chemical reaction that happens in our body. Yeah, if you would like to have really good hormones, guess what? You need micronutrients. If you want really good enzyme reactions, guess what? You need micronutrients. If you want to be healthy, guess what?

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go to masszymes.com forward slash shrug and use the coupon code shrug to save up to 48% off select packages to get the most full spectrum and effective digestive enzymes ever. That's masszymes.com forward slash shrug and use the coupon code shrug to save up to 48%. Let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Andrew Garner. Doug Larson. Coach Travis Mash. Dan Garner in the house today. We are talking about micronutrients. Is there any piece of the nutrition puzzle that gets forgotten about more than the actual vitamins and minerals that we need for all of the chemical and hormonal reactions to happen in our body.

Because there's so many of them, they just get forgotten about. And they don't have much to do with our physique, really, until you start actually understanding total health and how you feel on the path to reaching your goals. Dan, I want to kick it to you. What is the role of micronutrients in someone's nutrition protocol? I mean, the role of micronutrients in someone's nutrition protocol is something, you know, we could all talk many, many hours about because there is no biochemistry without nutritional biochemistry. Everything always costs something. There are millions and millions and millions of

reactions happening per second in physiology. It's crazy when you start looking at the numbers. And 22% of all these reactions are rate limited by a micronutrient, meaning they cannot happen unless there is an adequate micronutrient in place in order for that thing to happen. Like, for example, creating a thyroid hormone requires selenium, zinc, and iodine. If you want to create adrenaline hormones, for example, you're going to need vitamin C, copper, and vitamin B6. These things all require some form of micronutrition in order to facilitate whatever that programmed cell's function is trying to do. Now, probably a good idea for the audience is to just kind of break down what a micronutrient is before we dive too far into it. You've got your macronutrients, which are proteins, carbs, and fats. And those are called macronutrients simply because they're bigger. We take them in way larger quantity than we take in micronutrients. Micronutrients are called micro because they're very small. We take in way less quantity than we take in micronutrients. Micronutrients are called micro

because they're very small. We take in way less of them in order to get their efficacious dose than we do our macronutrients. Now, micronutrients, they take in a lot. There's a lot of categories of micronutrients, but the two big ones are your minerals and your vitamins. And then those are also broken down into two separate categories. You've got your macro minerals, which are your bigger minerals that you can actually take in quite a bit of, such as your electrolytes. And then you have your trace minerals, which you take in a very small amount of in order to get the efficacious dose, something say like nickel or chromium or copper or iron. So you've got your macro minerals and you have your trace minerals that basically makes up your mineral status of

the body. And then you also have your vitamins and vitamins. A lot of people are familiar with the two categories those get broken into, which are your fat soluble and your water soluble. Fat soluble and water soluble kind of just represents absorption and assimilation in the body, but also excretion. So your fat soluble vitamins, that's A, D, E, and K. We use fats to help uptake these vitamins, but then they're also stored in the fat. So then their excretion and utilization is very slow, very drip fed. Whereas your water soluble vitamins, these don't require any fat at all for optimal absorption. That's why you can take say vitamin C or a B complex on an empty stomach and absorption rates, it won't matter.

It's still gonna absorb to an optimal amount because it's dependent upon water for a simulation. But as far as excretion goes, your water soluble vitamins, there's about eight B vitamins and vitamin C. So if you can just remember A, D, E, and K, fat-soluble, and then B and C are water-soluble. You've pretty much got your fundamental knowledge in place for what belongs in what category. But your water solubles, they just take water in order to optimally be assimilated. But their excretion's

fast. I mean, there are so many water-based chemical reactions happening in physiology per day, but we also urinate a lot per day. We also sweat a lot per day. And in all of these reactions and sweat and urination, we lose B vitamins and we lose vitamin C. So it's very, very difficult to overdose on a water-soluble vitamin, but it's very easy to overdose on a fat soluble vitamin. So just kind of like bird's eye view, your micro nutrition requires it takes it, there's no calories involved in it. And it's broken up into minerals and vitamins. And these things, you know, to for your original question, what role do they play? They play every role because creating hormones, protein synthesis, even life-sustaining functions, they are all completely dependent upon

micronutrients for our health optimization. When you, at the end of that, you're talking about it's hard to overdose on them. What happens if you overdose on fat-soluble vitamins? You become toxic over time. So there is, and this is very easy. You can look up vitamin A toxicity, vitamin K toxicity. These things are, you just become toxic like it would be any type of, say, poisonous substance. Too much of anything is not a good thing. Just like if you were to have too much iron, you become iron toxic.

You have too much copper. Too much of anything is going to create a lot of storage in fat and is not going to serve you at all in the long run. So like most things in biology, there's a bell curve. You don't want too little. You don't want too much. You want to find that nice sweet spot in the middle. I'm actually, just because you said that, I just looked up vitamin A toxicity and it doesn't look good. Yeah, it's definitely not. It's not a good thing. You don't want the first thing in Google to say mental status changes are common

following vitamin toxicity. That's not a good thing to start your day. It must be relatively hard to do to become toxic in these things though, because I feel like if it would be much more common, you would just like see people walking down the street and it would be really difficult. Yeah. But instead, when you look at the data, when you look at people walking down the street, most of them have subclinical deficiencies in this stuff. Well, that's the deficiency, not the overdose, right? Yeah. And when I say deficiency on these podcasts, I'm actually, I'm glad we're talking about this because some people kind of take that to the extreme, but like, okay, like, what do you mean deficiency? Like,

doesn't that mean I get scurvy? Doesn't that mean I get rickets? You know, and that's not, that's not the case. Okay. So, I mean, well, I mean, technically that is the case. If you have no vitamin C, you will get scurvy like the pirates used to. If you've got no thiamine, you'll get very, very, if you've got no vitamin D, you will get rurvy like the pirates used to. If you've got no thiamine, you'll get beriberi. If you've got no vitamin D, you will get rickets. These things do exist, but they typically don't exist anywhere in today's society because, well, we overeat, but we do get enough in order to not run into that serious of a deficiency. What's important to understand, though, is that a subclinical deficiency will still hold you back from true health optimization. So there's a very cool thing.

And this, so I think everybody who's very, who's interested in super nerding out on this stuff, there is a researcher named Bruce Ames, who's absolutely brilliant. And he wrote a paper in 2006 on what's now known as the triage theory. And the triage theory is the idea that our body has an innate intelligence to it, and that dependent upon the availability of a micronutrient, it has a tissue specific hierarchy of where that micronutrient is going to go. So for example, if you only have a little bit of a certain micronutrient, it will go first towards preventing short-term death consequences at the expense of going down health-promoting longevity pathways.

So a good example of this is actually vitamin K. And I'm actually going to bring this full circle to explain why I have a philosophy that I do in coaching. Vitamin K, 65% of the US population is estimated to not get enough vitamin K. Now that's a big problem because vitamin K, two of its biggest roles that it plays in physiology are, number one, blood coagulation, so it helps keep the blood thicker, and number two, the prevention of the calcification of arteries. Those are two big, important things that we have vitamin K playing a role in in physiology. Now, when you look at the triage theory, we've actually seen in human trials,

by the way, if you take away vitamin K from a person's diet, I just said vitamin K plays an impact in blood coagulation. If you take vitamin K, not all of it, but almost all of it away from a human's diet, their blood coagulation actually doesn't change at all. So the thickness of their blood stays the same. And that's important because if you have no blood coagulation, then there's internal bleeding and it's short term death consequence. Yeah, that's a wrap. So if you take almost all of their vitamin K away, their blood coagulation actually doesn't change at all. And that's because of this triage theory, Your body's saying, okay, we hardly have any vitamin K. We have to now go and put this vitamin K towards ensuring blood coagulation still takes place so that we don't die in the short term.

But what does happen when you remove vitamin K is calcification of the arteries continues to happen. So there is a tissue specific hierarchy at which the body utilizes micronutrients in where it's going to keep blood coagulation the same to prevent short-term death at the expense of health-promoting long-term longevity pathways, such as creating the proteins in the liver, which is what vitamin K does, creates proteins in the liver to grab onto that calcium and deposit it, say, into the bones or into muscle tissue to act as an electrolyte. Now, that's really important to care about because that

hierarchy takes place. We like zinc for, say, testosterone. We like magnesium for anaerobic energy production, but magnesium's involved in brain and neuronal development. So we might like magnesium for certain exercise performance, but where do you think building biceps is on the tissue-specific hierarchy that our body has in place? Way down. If you're 25, it's survival. But for the rest of your life, it's way down the list. True. Good point.

More replication than survival you're searching for mates at that point that this is why i always say things like um uh the body will adapt to the degree that it is healthy because if we're only getting in a small amount of micronutrients, well, then those micronutrients are going to go towards life-sustaining processes and not towards adaptive training processes. It's a total non-brainer. And that will play itself out no matter what system you're looking at. That is, biology is survival of the organism at the end of the day. It is always going to be that way. So in order to

drive maximal adaptation from training, we have to have maximal health in place first to first give the body everything that it needs in order to fulfill that hierarchy so that we have enough left over to allow for adaptive and health promoting processes to take place. Yo, I'm curious about this. Like the more I learn about micronutrients, like they're, they're obviously like a foundational thing as far as your health goes. Like you, if you don't have them, then nothing operates correctly. All they're converting food and energy just like doesn't happen or at least doesn't happen at the rate that you need it to. Like when you go to a doctor, why, why is CBC, CMP, like the standard blood work that you get at doctors? Like, why is

there not like the standard blood work? Why does that not include, do you have all the micronutrients that you need in your system? That seems to me to be like a base level thing that doctors would want to know. So that's an awesome question. And a question that's actually still being exercised in research because micronutrient status of the body is incredibly difficult to measure. It's very difficult to measure. And even in the lab-based nutrition, we're collecting saliva, urine, stool, blood. I'm never treating one data point as God. I'm always creating a consensus of many data points to correlate to certain micronutrient status of

the body. A good example of this, the gold standard of testing magnesium is known as actually magnesium loading. It's done through, you can put a bunch of magnesium in an IV bag and give it directly to someone's blood. And then you measure the magnesium excretion in the urine after that magnesium load. If they retained a bunch of the magnesium, that means they were deficient and the body was really asking for it. But if they excrete a bunch of that magnesium, then they weren't deficient. That is the gold standard of testing magnesium in physiology. Now there's papers out there where you can actually measure someone's magnesium loading and create two different groups. Magnesium status is normal and healthy,

and magnesium status is truly deficient. There's papers out there where serum magnesium never changes. So even if you're completely deficient or completely sufficient, serum magnesium, which is in the standard blood lab, doesn't change. And that's because of this triage. The body needs to keep magnesium in serum at an optimal level in order to regulate blood pH and very important processes that magnesium is involved in. So a lot of people, you know, if you're going to look at blood work for micronutrient status, if you're going to look at urine, urinalysis for micronutrient status, a lot of these things are, to be honest, very shaky still in the research. And that's why I like to collect over a thousand biomarkers and create just like you would in real research, just like one study, you can find one study to prove anything, but that

doesn't speak for the weight of the evidence. I like to collect over a thousand biomarkers on people and see where the body of evidence on this given physiology is leaning. Now, if I have, you know, say three, four, five different things all pointing towards a B12 deficiency or three, four, five different things all pointing towards low magnesium status. That's when I start really, um, uh, taking action on improving that person's micronutrient status. But to answer that question, um, the medical world takes an extremely long time to introduce new procedures. So that'd be the one reason that micronutrient testing isn't done in your, in your standard checkup. The second reason is because there's no ultimate way to check a lot of micronutrients in the body.

Like the assimilation and excretion rates just for water soluble vitamins alone. Like that's very hard to track and you would likely need, um, ongoing data, um, like we do with our clients over the course of time to see how things are tracking and trending and what's happening to their physiology. And moving on, even from that, there are inferences that you can gain from blood work. So for example, MCV is a pretty good one. MCV is a mean corpuscular volume. So mean, average, corpuscular, red blood cell, volume, size, MCV, average red blood cell size. If that's inflated, it actually represents suboptimal B12 and folate status. So that's, you know, you can gain small inferences there. RDW is something a lot of people don't use.

That's red cell distribution width. So red cell, red blood cell, distribution, all of the red blood cells, and width, meaning the size. So RDW basically means that we look at all your red blood cells, and then we look at the very smallest one and the absolute biggest one, and we measure the difference between the two. That difference in size is dependent upon micronutrient status. So if there's a big difference, then the micronutrients involved in erythropoiesis, like zinc, like B12, like folate, there's many involved, like copper, that actually represents micronutrient status. But if all the red blood cells are pretty close to the same, you're ideally looking for an RDW of less than

13%, then that actually represents the idea that red blood cells, they have a four month lifespan, that your micronutrient status over the past four months was adequate in order to properly induce erythropoiesis and have red blood cells functioning optimally. So measuring micronutrients directly is difficult, but you can gain an insight on micronutrient status through understanding the physiology behind certain blood chemistry markers like MCV and RDW as an easy example. If it's that challenging to actually get the data and kind of see the comprehensiveness that you need to actually dig into this, like if you were to ask the lay person on the street, like where do you

get your vitamins and minerals from? They would be like, you have to eat a lot of salad. Like everything happens in the salad. And if you go and you pop on Instagram, you're going to see that the liver king is telling you, you have to only eat liver every single day, like four times a day. Yeah. I love that. I've just brought up the liver King on barbell shrug that makes me so happy. I've worked that in. Don't ever do it again, please. No one's ever actually seen him eat the liver. He just talks about it. I don't want to. How does like a person that's not going to be able to go through the entire gamut of tests and all that, just ensure that they're at least checking the boxes across the board?

Of course. So like I've said many times in the past, I'm working with the absolute top of the top. So I'm creating a true no-stones- unturned approach when it comes to this. But in many cases, following basic recommendations can go a long way like a really two really easy ones I like to utilize are one source of fruit and one source of vegetable per 1000 calories in the diet. So if you're at a thousand calories a day, have, and when I mean source, I mean one cup, that's considered a serving size. You have one cup of fruit and one cup of vegetables in the thousand calories. If you had 2000 calories,

two cups of vegetables, two servings of fruit, 3000, and you just kind of go on and on like that, that's going to create an excellent, excellent micronutrient diversity in your physiology through having fruits and vegetables. But what's important to point out here is that people who eat clean can create deficiencies in the same way that people who eat like crap. And what do I mean by this is you can be so obsessed with food that you only have chicken breast, rice and broccoli. And like, that's it. But then when you're only consuming the micronutrients that are involved in that specific meal for 95% of your income,

or intake, I should say rather, then you are missing out on a ton of other vitamins and minerals that are not in huge amounts in those foods. And that's kind of what happens a lot in the whole, you know, if it fits your macros, the IIFYM approach. That in its truest form, when people understand that it can kind of be a double edged sword, because they almost use IIFYM to ask the question of what can I get away with rather than what supports my nutritional needs? Those are two really different questions because you can, if your calories and macronutrients are in check, dude, you can have Big Mac, you can have ice cream, you can do this stuff every single day. You can have Pop-Tarts. The problem is they have almost no micronutrition to them. So you may be able to get away with it from a body composition perspective, but it doesn't

answer the question of what's nutritionally optimal for me to consume. So I've never taken the idea of IIFYM. It's critically important for you to know your calories and macros, but you should also have sufficient micros in there as well. So it's, it's, that's like one thing I want to say is that just because you have your calories and macros in check and that you're very privy to that stuff, it doesn't mean that your micronutrient nutrition is on point. The second recommendation that I would say beyond the one serving of each per thousand calories per day is variety. So that's kind of, that's kind of why I introed that recommendation with the statement I just made on IFYM. It's because you shouldn't just be having broccoli.

You should be having broccoli and asparagus and spinach. Spinach is one of the best sources of vitamin K, which we've already talked about on this podcast. You should be having oranges, apples, blueberries. If you can get more colors and textures, that's better because that represents a different internal micronutrient status of that specific food. And meat as well is like a, you're going to get vitamins and minerals out of that as well, but not if you just eat ground beef like me only. Yeah, totally. You want to create a distribution to that as well that have a distribution of chicken that's 90 of my of my meat intake and you didn't put it on my freaking nutrition plan dude yeah it's his fault yeah definitely your fault i didn't even i don't even

know what to do anymore yeah dude everything should be in variety. It's just so delicious. When you, as you line up kind of like all of the vitamins and minerals that we need to trigger all these chemical reactions in our body, if we are deficient in one specific one to a large degree, we're very deficient in say vitamin K or whatever, where does that, in order for those chemical reactions or whatever it is to happen that are triggered by vitamin K, if we are deficient in vitamin K, where does it pull that energy from in order for those reactions to happen? Or do they just stop completely? So if you have absolutely no vitamin K, then it will stop completely.

And that's what causes death. So you guys have all heard of RDIs, the recommended daily intake. And I only just used vitamin K specifically. It could be any of them. Totally. Yeah, yeah. So everybody here has heard of the RDIs. So RDIs are typically

only set at two standard deviation points above what murders a mouse. That's how you get your RDI. So it's two standard deviation points above what kills a mouse. So that's very far away from what's optimal for an Olympic lifter going to Greece who is trading crazy. And that's totally, totally different. And your body will rob from Peter to pay Paul. So for example, if we don't have enough calcium to undergo certain processes, we will degrade our bone tissue. If we don't have magnesium, we can degrade our bone tissue as well. We have certain areas in our body that contain certain things that our body will absolutely

rob our physiology from in order to continue those processes. And that's why people who have deficiencies look horrible. They're truly breaking down their tissue. It is completely stressful on physiology because physiology has such a little intake that it's beginning to cannibalize itself. It's beginning to totally offset long-term health-promoting processes to suffice this short-term survival strategy

that's currently taking place. If RDIs are barely barely above, you know, keeping a mouse alive, you know, where, where would like, you know, the lay person find, you know, what's optimal? Like, is there like a book or is there, I mean, I already downloaded your boy, the triage therapy from the, but like, you know, do you have like, you know, obviously there's to go to you guys, but let's say that, um, where do people start? Um, to learn more about micronutrients, uh, I would say get a coach, unfortunately, just because I could say, download the Bruce Ames study, but a lot of people don't know how to read that.

And I just, I, you know, that'd be kind of a bullshit answer for me because I remember when I first started and someone would say, go read this paper. I'm like, I don't know how I'm in high school, man. I can't read this. So, um, I, I would probably just recommend get a coach and get a coach who doesn't have a thing. Um, that's like the worst when somebody has a thing, like if you are the liver King, or if you are the paleo guy, or if you are the intermittent fasting or the vegan, if somebody has tied their business to include restrictions, they're probably not the coach for you. Especially when it comes to the idea of having a well-rounded diet for well-rounded micronutrient intake. So doing the best that you can to find the coach who utilizes results as his

measurement of success rather than creating restrictions. I feel like there's too many coaches that only look at macros right now. Like, you know, even RP, I feel like all they really talk about is macros. I think you made the most brilliant statement like several shows ago. You said that calories, you you know determines how much you weigh macros determines what you look like and micros determines how you feel which to me means how you perform so like it's becoming more and more clear that uh that all coaches out there should be thinking more and more about micros totally And you just kind of sparked something

because I've actually got messages before from coaches online who have popular Instagram pages, who show their abs and they eating ice cream or burgers or whatever. And basically like, ha ha, look what I can get away with. Cause I know my calories and macronutrients, but then they DM me and say, Hey Dan, I feel like shit. I've got no energy and loose stools. What should I do? Seriously. Like, bro. Like, why would anybody hire you, man? Like, what you are putting forward is what got you to where you are and why you're messaging me today. So maybe we should take a step back. Right. Right, man. You're literally walking people down this road where you feel terrible,

and you're – I mean, you say, hey, man, I feel terrible. Help me out of this. Meanwhile, look at my abs and everybody else. So you can feel like shit. Stupid. Man, the whole internet thing, there's pros and cons. But luckily they have you to talk to so they don't get retarded out there. Anyway.

So here, let's cycle back to a comment you made earlier about the the one fruit or vegetable per thousand calories can you can you expand on that how how does that give the people enough variety is that something they would just that's a good day-to-day structure but they would want to rotate those fruits and vegetables each week or each day or how do you how do you approach that yeah so just get the more simple someone can make it the better when i say variety i don't mean like this that's a people the health world's full of extremists so they'll want a different one at every single meal and then even those those are rotating and then everything is getting crazy and

i'm like calm down just get what's on sale that week or get what's in season you know like just there's a lot of ways to go about this where you don't have to be a neurotic psycho to get the job done. Like just even if it's one per week, you could eat say broccoli this week and then asparagus next weekend, spinach the week after that. And then a Swiss chard the week after that. That's very, very simple way to approach it, but get what's in season, get what's on sale, get what you feel like, get what you've never tried. Another way to go about this too, is if you're somebody, this is something I've done a lot, because I've done a lot of

traveling to do like seminars and stuff. Whenever I ate out, I always ate a meat and a vegetable that I didn't eat regularly at home. So let's say I never have steak at home, then I would order steak in the restaurant. If I never have asparagus at home, I would make sure asparagus is my side. If I always had rice at home, then maybe I'm going to have a tomato, potato with that meal. So just have something that you don't normally have. But yeah, just variety in the diet and don't overstress about it. Just do it in a way that you can remain consistent with. And like, I feel like now, like more than ever, we're finding like what I thought was a vegetable is not considered a vegetable. Like, you know, like is a carrot a vegetable? I mean, I don't even know anymore. Like, you know, like can you talk about like what is a vegetable?

What is a fruit? Sure. Yeah. It sounds easy, but it's not as easy as it sounds yeah yeah your fruits are typically anything that uh is going to be a lot carbier so like your bananas your apples your berries um peaches oranges those kinds of things and then your vegetables i typically like people sticking with um green vegetables um it has almost no impact on your calories and macros, which you absolutely should still be tracking like that. I'm in no way saying don't track your calories and macros, only eat quality foods. I just say instead of either or why not both let's track our calories and macros and then also eat quality foods. So I like using things, especially green vegetables, because you'll get a lot of volume for a low calorie penalty. And that keeps people really satisfied even in a calorie deficit. So things like broccoli,

asparagus, but you know, you know how much spinach you have to eat. Imagine a hyper caloric diet on spinach, like you would have to, you'd get vitamin K toxic, like you'd have to eat so Imagine a hypercaloric diet on spinach. You'd get vitamin K toxic. You'd have to eat so much of the stuff in order to get it done. I typically like green vegetables rotating every single week, and then just fruits of all colors rotating each and every single week. All right. I feel like with respect to vitamins and minerals, that's intuitive to say that there's a lot of vitamins and nutrients in spinach. Everyone associates spinach with being really healthy because it has low calories and high nutrients, so it has a high nutrient density. But what foods have a lot of vitamins, minerals, and just a high micronutrient status but also might have a high caloric status so they're not necessarily nutrient dense but you still do objectively get a lot of vitamins and minerals as a part of eating that food whether it's steak or like nuts or that type

of thing i was just about to say steak and nuts you you literally stole it throw throw softballs at you left and right yeah right at the end i was i was waiting like a caged dog i'm gonna say steak and raw nuts and then right at the end you stole you stole it from me. Way to go, Doug. Yeah, yeah. So like if you're after something. He actually texted me just now and said, hey, ask me this question. It's easy. And please don't say steak and nuts.

But you did. Yeah. So like your B vitamins, very, very rich in steak. If you want magnesium, it's excellent sources. Almonds. If you want antioxidants, actually pistachios, that's an excellent source of antioxidants. B vitamins, despite popular belief,

are also quite rich in chicken breast as well. Very, very high. People typically only ever talk about red meats, but chicken breast has B vitamins in there as well. You can get micronutrients. Like I don't want to say that, uh, you know, something that's extremely nutrient dense is the only way, only thing that you should be using. Basically, if it's, if it's real food, then, then you're going to have some form of optimal micronutrient status.

Like people, when you look at nutrition research, people have done like, historically speaking, they've done well on balanced diets. They've done well on low carb diets. People have done, like historically speaking, they've done well on balanced diets. They've done well on low carb diets. They've done well on high carb diets. They've done well in Mediterranean diets. People have done well on paleo diets. You know what diets people have never done well on? Processed food diets. Nobody has ever done well on a diet that you can get while still in your car. Okay. Never ever. So you can make any kind of diet approach work. If it's real food, like that's 50% of what this podcast is really all about today is eat real food. If it came from the ground or it was alive once,

then that's something that's going to have a good micronutrient profile to it. But if it's in a package or you can get it from your car or the gas station, it's probably not going to be a good micronutrient profile to it. But if it's in a package or you can get it from your car or the gas station, it's probably not going to be a good thing to have in your plan with respect to micronutrients. Let me ask you about testing because I know that you guys are big on testing. Let's say that somebody just wants a great place to start. where would you suggest that they can start for a reasonable amount and then work their way up to you guys or with you guys? Yeah. Comprehensive blood chemistry is always going to be my answer.

The amount of how brutally that's being underutilized in our world is a crime. That's something I really want to change in the industry. You can gain inferences on so many different micronutrients from a comprehensive blood chemistry alone. So that's like a CBC and CMP that I've mentioned before. And get somebody, the value never comes from the lab. It comes from the interpreter of the lab. So get that and then have an excellent interpreter. If you are wanting to go more into it,

there's a lab called micronutrients from SpectraCell. That's something that you can look into that offers a wide range of different micronutrient status of the body. There's also a lab called the NutraVal from Genova Diagnostic that offers a very wide range of micronutrient status as well. So at the basic level, what's affordable and usually covered by insurance for everybody, get that comprehensive blood chemistry done and get a real expert to look at it. And then if you do want to dive to the next level, SpectraCell's micronutrients or Genova Diagnostic's NutraVal are both good options to gather more data points to create a better consensus on the physiology you're working with. Sweet. What do you think about-

Let's shift real quick and talk a little bit about mental health. In my experience or my opinion, it seems that mental health rests at least in part on a foundation of physical health. So to have adequate dopamine, to have adequate serotonin, you have to have like the initial amino acid building blocks, and then they have to be converted using micronutrients into dopamine or serotonin. And if your dopamine and or serotonin are low, and then your other neurotransmitters as well, then it seems unlikely, or dare I say even impossible in some cases, to feel good, to feel like you're

supposed to feel. Can you touch on that about the pathways involved with converting nutrition into adequate neurotransmitters for mental health? Yeah, absolutely, man. And I think that's such a good point because neurotransmitters, the way in which you can manipulate them for nutrition can really help somebody change. So there's a couple of things. I basically have a biochemical answer to this and then a type of theory answer. We'll start with biochemistry. So if you want to make something like dopamine, which is responsible for motivation, drive, attention span, gives you a reason to get up in the morning and a reason to get to the gym, which is going to make you feel a lot better and continue that process. That requires vitamin B6.

So you can actually take either phenylalanine or L-tyrosine, which are amino acids. And then those get converted into L-DOPA. And then L-DOPA, if you have enough vitamin B6, gets converted to dopamine. You have dopamine. And then you have all of those feelings of drive, motivation, attention span to get up and start the day, attack your to-do list, and create the momentum that you need in your life to start feeling better and have the mental health that you know you deserve. That's one option. Another example, not option, I should say example. Another example

is serotonin. Like Doug said, L-tryptophan is amino acid that's quite high in turkey. It's also quite high in cottage cheese as well. Tryptophan is the amino acid we need to make serotonin. Serotonin is what is utilized in almost all pharmaceutical versions of antidepressants, SSRIs, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Those drugs keep serotonin in the body. They just keep circulation. That's what helps people feel a lot better because the neurotransmitter serotonin is responsible for reducing anxiety, but also improving mood and just overall feelings of

wellness. Tryptophan requires, once again, vitamin B6 to be converted into 5-hydroxytryptophan, which is then converted into serotonin and downstream from that, melatonin. So serotonin can help you feel good, but melatonin is going to get you a good night's sleep, which is absolutely going to help you feel good as well. So where dopamine is going to give you feelings of motivation and get you to the gym, those are two things that really help mental health. But then your serotonin and melatonin, that'll help you get to sleep, but then also help you feel positive, which are two other huge things that help give your life the momentum it needs to

move forward. So that's kind of two basic examples of biochemical pathways that can really hold back somebody's ability to feel well, because you could, you know, try and introduce a breathing routine or meditation to feel better. But if you feel like you've been doing that for a long time, you're not getting anywhere, it could absolutely be a chemistry problem, and not a routine and ritual problem. That's my biochemical answer. The second kind of answer that I have here is like a type of theory on one's perspective on the world holding back their ability to be happy or enjoy life to the fullest extent. So we talk a lot about root causes here on this podcast. So we talk a lot about root causes here on this podcast. And

we talk a lot about root causes in the program that we offer that helps a lot of people. We're always trying to identify that root cause. Now, some people's root cause could actually be their perspective. So your body will follow your mind, Like physiology follows psychology. And if you have a poor perspective on the world or of your circumstance or environment, that could actually be the root cause to your health ailments because that stress begins in the mind and ends in the body. So what people can do nutritionally is provide the precursors for neurotransmitter, which are amino acids, say like the examples, phenylalanine, tyrosine, and tryptophan. Provide precursors, but then also provide the cofactors involved. And in this example, B6 was it for both of them.

So now we have precursors and cofactors. So we have everything we need to maximize those neurotransmitter pathways. So in nutrition, we can actually drive those pathways up to get them to a point of thinking where they could consider a new perspective on their circumstance and environment. So the root cause of one's problem was their perspective on life. We can provide precursors and cofactors to drive up neurotransmitters to give them at a chemical level the opportunity to view things through a new lens, a new positive lens. Failures, they're not truly failures. They're just obstacles. I am not

a product of my circumstance. I can change my actions every single day. I mean something to people. That perspective change can be the root cause that you altered through proper nutritional intervention. So that's kind of the two ways in which we can approach making somebody truly feel better about themselves within themselves is maximizing chemistry, but through maximizing chemistry, offer them the opportunity to view life through a new perspective. Dang, man. That is beautiful. Thinking about how those two worlds need to come together more, you know, because after just going through a whole semester of sports psychology, I feel like they should probably talk more about how it's married to,

you know, biochemistry. Absolutely. Similar to the question I asked earlier about like, why don't doctors test for micronutrients and. Oh, can you hear me? Yeah. My mic cut off. Yeah. Let me make a note real quick. Go ahead. So a similar question here. Like if you, if you're depressed and you go to a psychiatrist or psychologist, like why, why, or maybe they do this. I don't even know. Do they test you

for B6 deficiency? Like before they put you on SSRIs? To my knowledge, no. And I'm sure, I'm absolutely certain that just like in our industry, there are some trainers that are horrible and some that are good. There are some nutrition coaches that are horrible and some that are good. I'm sure in that industry, it's just like any others. I hope at least that some do and consider the dietary and lifestyle changes, but I'm also sure that there are others that just throw a pill at them. Yeah. What do you think about some of the supplements, like the green juices, especially like the newer ones?

Because I remember when I first started taking green drinks and they literally tasted like just hot dirt. And then all of a sudden they like started tasting better. And I was like, I don't know. Anytime you start tasting better, it sounds shady. Some haven't. And I always believe that supplements, you know, make up for such a small piece of the bigger puzzle.

But is there any benefit to taking some of these green drinks? I think there absolutely is, but it's always the context, right? If you've got somebody who hates vegetables, like I've worked with a lot of young athletes, a ton in between like 14 and 20 years old, and you could even provide them these micronutrient examples and they're like, okay, coach. And then they still just don't do it just because they're dumb teenagers. So in that scenario, for real, in that scenario, I have the ideology of always something rather than all or nothing. Let's give you something because that's certainly going to provide a benefit. But if you are somebody who is having no problem eating fruits and vegetables every day,

a greens drink is going to have no additive effect on top of that. Yeah. I'm actually so happy they came out with ones that taste delicious because they used to be so bad back in the day. Like you can go to the health store and it was like this giant glass and then you'd have one drink. You'd be like, I think I just wasted $50. Everything was bad back in the day. Everything. Yeah. And it was so expensive.

It was like literally $90 for one of those giant, ground-up, gross. Tubs of dirt. Yes. What do you guys recommend? Let's say that you have athletes that just absolutely refuse to eat fruits and or vegetables. What's one of those that you would suggest? OrganicBuy.com forward slash shrugged.

Oh, you guys sell fruits and vegetables? We lose all credibility right there? Oh, sweet. No, they're awesome. We've been working with them for five years now. Sweet. They've been around a while. I can't answer now. I can't answer now.

All right. Sorry, Dan. All right sorry dan set go um oh i can't answer okay um maybe i'm biased because i'm a canadian um but there's a company called uh progressive here and they make a product called veggie greens and they make a product called veggie greens, and they make another product called Fido Berry. One is a purified vegetable extract, and the other is purified fruit extracts. So it's excellent. There's no additives, no sweeteners, no nothing in either. And you get the nutrient load of, I think it's about six servings of vegetables in the veggie greens and six in the Fido Berry. So that's when I've leaned on a lot with athletes in the past is the combination of those two. And then of course, like we're still throwing in an omega three and a multivitamin as well. Yeah. I've been taking multivitamins now for like six months from Thorne that you recommended. I

really, really enjoy them. I don't know what it does, but it makes me feel better. Yeah. I was actually on a podcast. I was on a podcast recently on an MMA podcast. It's like, what are the three supplements all MMA fighters and jujitsu fighters should take? And I was like, well, at the risk of being the most boring guy in the world, here's my answer. And it was a multivitamin, omega-3 and magnesium. But then he was like, then I broke down basically the biochemical pathways and how that actually correlates to MMA and jiu-jitsu. And he's like, I had absolutely no idea. Because people get swept up in whatever's the new mushroom extract

for oxygen transport or whatever's the new nitrate utilization. It's easy to get swept up by things and forget that nutritional biochemistry does not happen without vitamins and minerals. And unless that foundation's in place, all of the stuff you add on top of it is not going to have nearly the same effect. Yeah.

I feel, and then this isn't actually the commercial. I just really enjoy the Organifi ones. They taste delicious. And I want to say they have the same micronutrient density as kind of the product you were talking about that's from Canada. Well, send me one then. I've never tried it. I've got a whole pantry full of them.

All right, let's do it. I'd love to try it. I'm going to wait for the pumpkin spice one to come out though, before we, before we start sending this internationally here. You sound like a white girl in the fall. Like where's my pumpkin spice one? I get excited about it.

I get excited about it. It's the most delicious one. Dan Gardner! Add some credibility back to this show. Now that I just ran a commercial right in the middle of this thing. Where can people find you, man? At Dan Gardner Nutrition on Instagram.

There it is. Coach Travis Mash. Mashlead.com. And Dan, did you say progressive? Is that who you said? Yes. Mashlead.com. You can go to Mashlead Performance on Instagram.

Yeah. Doug Larson. Doug Larson on Instagram. I want to give a very special shout out to a man by the name of Ben Hakes that resides out in Southern California. I believe there was a glass of wine, maybe an alcoholic beverage involved at a baseball game not too long ago in which Dan Garner was a part of. And I know that there was an alcoholic beverage enjoyed because as soon as the game let out and Mr. Ben Hakes,

one of our awesome clients, got home, the text message was sent to me, when are you going to tell the people that I have a better total physiological health score than you? And my throne has been overtaken by Mr. Ben Hakes by seven physiological health score points for anybody that's just hearing this. Uh, that's one of the things that we're, we're very proud of in our program is actually quantifying physiological health scores. And my 65.2 was leader in the clubhouse for like six months.

But there's always gotta be a, but he's been working with you for two years already that's like cheating that's cheating for him he's got a 72 it's the it's the biggest one we've seen and uh way to put him in his place man right it's also uh it's a testament to your work that the guy that's been with you the longest also has the highest score, which is really awesome. So Mr. Ben Hakes, there's your shout out, buddy. I appreciate you. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We are Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. Make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. All of this fun information that we're talking about, we're kind of like walking through my labs and you can actually see my my specific lab reports um over at rapidhealth.com set up a call if you want to talk about how we can get you as healthy as

possible and figure out your physiological health score rapidhealthreport.com friends we'll see you guys next week