Barbell Shrugged - [PED's] In Defense of Doping w/ Dr. Alexander Hutchinson, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash #758

Episode Date: July 31, 2024

Dr. Alexander Hutchison, a prominent figure in fitness and wellness based in Dallas, Texas, stands at the forefront of discussions surrounding doping in sports with the release of his third book, "In Defense of Doping: Reassessing the Level Playing Field." Through this groundbreaking work, Dr. Hutchison offers a thought-provoking reassessment of conventional notions surrounding performance enhancement in athletics. His distinguished academic background includes serving as the Editor-in-Chief for the esteemed Journal of Cellular Physiology, where he continues to shape scholarly discourse on exercise science, nutrition, and immunology. Hutchison's athletic journey is equally impressive, from his collegiate swimming career to his success as a coach, guiding athletes to triumph in Ironman triathlons and prestigious marathons like the Boston Marathon. Drawing upon his firsthand experiences and scholarly insights, Dr. Hutchison can delve into the historical precedents and contemporary realities of performance enhancement, challenging prevailing narratives and advocating for a nuanced understanding of the ethical implications at play. Dr. Alexander Hutchison brings his expertise to the forefront in discussions on the ethics of doping in sports. Through his work, he continues to push the boundaries of conventional discourse, offering fresh perspectives and insights that resonate deeply with athletes, scholars, and enthusiasts alike. Work with RAPID Health Optimization Work with Dr. Alexander Hutchinson Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, Dr. Alexander Hutchinson's coming in. We're going back-to-back weeks talking about the enhanced games, but today, a little bit different last week with Dr. Escalante. Talking a little bit about kind of the structure of it, the rules and all that fun stuff. But this week, we're going to be talking about the actual performance enhancing drugs, because Dr. Hutchinson is the author of In Defense of Doping, which I highly recommend you go read if this is of interest to you. I was able to kind of scan through a lot of it before we hopped on the show because he sent us a copy of it. And finding

out all of the science behind all of these performance enhancing drugs and these like buzzwords that you've heard probably your whole life since Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa were hitting moonshots over Fenway at the All-Star game in like 1995 or something like that, making me feel really, really old saying that number. But this stuff's been in our life for a very, very long time. The fact that the enhanced games exists coming up after the Olympics next year, which I hope you're watching the Olympics. I think they're cool. The athletes are great. I love having it in front of my kids, but I highly recommend getting over reading his books. You can just learn about all of these things that you hear about when it comes to sports, what they're testing for, why they're

testing for it, why athletes are using it, and how Lance Armstrong won all of those bike races. As always, friends, make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That is where Dr. Andy Galpin is doing a free video on the three-step process that we use for you to unlock your true physiological potential. Exactly three steps, how we make the rest of the world better. And you can access that free video over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larsen, Coach Travis Mash on Barbell Shrugged today. Dr. Alexander Hutchinson. I even did that pre-show too. You just sent over your new book with us, In Defense of Doping.

We're going to dig in today. And last week, maybe two weeks ago, kind of depending upon when those shows air, we were just talking about the enhanced games, kind of like the market product market fit. Is the world ready for a the open market to performance enhancing drugs inside sports? And today I want to dive into a lot of really at the baseline talking about health and safety when it comes to PEDs. And then all the way from the least scary, most used things like cannabis, coffee, things like that, and where the performance enhancing kind of like mechanisms are, the research behind it, and then scaling it all the way up to the scariest of scary things that people just know you mean business if you're trying.

Or you're not smart, but I'd love to dig in. Where, how did, how did you, uh, how did, how did this become kind of like the, the life's passion and digging into this, this subject? It's been a long road to get to this point. Um, I, you know, I do have a PhD in exercise fizz and I did that between 2003 and seven prior to that in 99, I got my master's degree. And that's really where the story starts. So at that same time, I mean, I'm a big cycling fan and Lance Armstrong is still is one of my favorite

athletes of all time. So when he came back, you know, from, from testicular cancer, and of course I followed that. I myself had testicular cancer in 98. So two years after he did, and to see him come back and win that tour in 99, it was just amazing. Uh, at the time, you know, I didn't, I wasn't really leading, reading any of the other skeptics out there who were saying that they thought he was doping at the time. I just wasn't exposed to it until a few years later. But then as, as things started to progress and I talk about this in the story, he was doing things on the bike the bike uh in terms of like passing people on a time trial like his sixth win he went maybe a minute behind jan ulrich which was his big you know competitor at the time his big rival and he caught up and made up a stagger of

a minute in less than 15 miles and when i saw that i was like there's no way it's this this can't happen between athletes at this level so that was the first time i that, I was like, there's no way this can't happen between athletes at this level. So that was the first time I was absolutely, I was like, I'm totally skeptical about this. I think that this has got to be doping. And then as time went on and then more and more people started to come after him, it became pretty clear where there's smoke, there's fire. Now at that point, you know, I was very much still in the eyes, the idea of, you know, doping is bad. But then as you start to do more research as an exercise physiologist, you don't have to go down this path, but I was interested in it. I wanted to see, well,

who is doing what, what impacts does it have on the body? And then more importantly, I started to get into CrossFit hadn't happened yet, but I started doing a little bit weightlifting. The first time I saw CrossFit was around 2008. And I was getting beat to hell. I just could not recover fast enough between workouts. And all these different things happened. But the long and the short of it is that testicular cancer made the one remaining testicle that I had wear out around 2010, right after I got married. That was not a very popular thing to happen in my household, obviously, with a brand new wife. So hormone replacement therapy had to happen. And initially, it was HCG so that I could generate my own testosterone and still have a sperm count. Once we finally got to the point where we could actually, we had one miscarriage in the way, when we got past the

first trimester of the second pregnancy, my doctor said, you can switch over to testosterone now because HCG was not covered by insurance. It was every other day I was giving myself an injection. And we did that for almost two years. I was done giving myself injections every other day. So when I switched over to testosterone, I noticed an immediate difference in terms of my capacity to do work in the weight room at this point in the mid thirties. So I'm right around the time when people start to notice that there's a dip and getting just that physiological level of testosterone allowed me to come back up again. So he combined these two things that are happening in my life around the same time

and then doing more and more sports that I hadn't had a chance to do before, because I was a swimmer in college. And then I started to do weightlifting. I started to do triathlon. I started to do a lot more. I did boxing for a while. I had one professional bout got, I won that one, still got pounded to death. But you start to, you start to see, you know, if I'm doing this at basically a recreational level, what the athletes who are actually competing at the highest level are doing

has got to be even tougher than what I'm going through. And, you know, you look further into, like, stuff like the Tour de France in particular. And the number, I mean, they're flying down alpine mountains on what are basically goat carts that are remarkably narrow. At 60, 70, even 80 miles an hour. Sometimes in the rain. Until the early 90s, they weren't even required to wear a helmet. So when we talk about, you know, drugs being dangerous to the athletes,

if they're not more dangerous than the sport itself, I think that that's just a complete misnomer. So, again, the ideas keep progressing. I love that you bring such logic to this. Like, you're going 80 miles an hour down a freaking giant mountain, and you're like, yeah, but your testosterone is a little too high. How do you think I thought it was a good idea? That's why testosterone exists.

So you go do crazy stuff like that. Well, especially if you're taking super physiological levels, the crazy aspect of it may play into it. With a cyclist, they're taking small, small levels because they need undetectable levels. And also think of a cyclist the last thing they want is bulk right they want a strength to weight ratio that's really really high uh and so you know again the idea is you know my mindset is slowly starting to shift over time and then you have a couple of like these big events that take place that really just say, this is just nuts. And the primary one that really just sent me over the edge was three years ago when

Sha'Carri Richardson at the 2021 Olympic trials was disqualified. No kidding. She had THC in her system. And I must have had just an absolute conniption fit while I was watching the TV and hearing the story. So, you know, you have a system in place that punishes a single athlete. And her reason for taking THC, it was perfectly human reason. She was raised by her grandmother. She didn't have a relationship with her birth mother. Two days before the finals, this investigative reporter,

apropos to nothing, ambushes her with the question, what is your response to finding out that your birth mother is dead? Her birth mother had just died. She didn't know. That's an ugly, nasty way of going about your job as an investigative reporter. So she freaked out a bit, as anybody would probably do so her her method to alleviate that anxiety was while in oregon where it's legal to go out and find some tea some weed i'm not sure if she smoked it or ate it uh but she knew full well that she was going to get tested she knew full well that it was against the rules and she knew full well that she was likely going to get caught that's how desperate

she was to alleviate her anxiety and so because because of that, this drug that has absolutely no performance enhancing benefit whatsoever, she's left off the Olympic team. Now we're going to get to see her in Paris, which I'm very happy to see, but that should never have happened. Particularly when you contrast that with what the Chinese just got done admitting to, they did with their swimmers, 27 swimmers on their team were given a drug uh i'm still i still don't know exactly which one it is although there's lots of speculation out there as to what they were actually given but the chinese anti-doping agency said this was because of contamination and wada just accepted it no suspensions nothing they got to compete the whole way through the

last olympics money was exchanged guaranteed money exchange well you know again when you look at the the rogue states that are allowed to do these things and get away with it you have china and then if you if you look at the if you go back and watch the documentary called icarus which is on oh god yeah and you'll hear about rusada okay so why is it that these nations are able to get away with these things well it's clear like Like you said there, it's mostly money. But if there's one thing that an organization really loves, especially when they're trying to put on a big event, is totalitarian dictatorships because they get shit done.

They don't have to go to a committee. They don't have to go to Congress. They just have one ruler who says this is going to get done or everybody's going to die, and it gets done. And then they hand over a big old check to the I ioc and all of those guys make money off of it the athletes don't make any money they make money so that china they do i had to i have to correct that like in china they do like if you look at luise aljohn not only him but his coach too gets paid a whole lot you know by the state sponsorship program those athletes within

their countries do absolutely i'm talking about the other athletes that are coming to their country to compete in the games oh hell yeah we don't get paid a dime nor do the coaches no yeah so so the product that's on the field that i'm paying at least through my advertising dollars or expenditures to see those athletes don't get anything. So the product, nothing. The organizers, they get all the cash. And that's not a good system to have in place to begin with. But anyway, to your original question, how did I get to this point? That is the progression over about 20 years to finally get to the point of saying,

there's got to be a better way. Shark Family, I want to take a quick break. If you are enjoying today's conversation, I want to invite you to come over to rapidhealthreport.com. When you get to rapidhealthreport.com, you will see an area for you to opt in, in which you can see Dan Garner read through my lab work. Now, you know that we've been working at Rapid Health Optimization on programs for optimizing health. Now, what does that actually mean? It means in three parts, we're going to be doing a ton of deep dive into your labs. That means the inside out approach.

So we're not going to be guessing your macros. We're not going to be guessing the total calories that you need. We're actually going to be doing all the work to uncover everything that you have going on inside you. Nutrition, supplementation, sleep, and then we're going to go through and analyze your lifestyle. Dr. Andy Galpin is going to build out a lifestyle protocol based on the severity of your concerns, and then we're going to also build out all the programs that go into that based on the most severe things first. This truly is a world-class program, and we invite you to see step one of this process by going over to rapidhealthreport.com. You can see Dan reading my labs, the nutrition and supplementation that he has recommended

that has radically shifted the way that I sleep, the energy that I have during the day, my total testosterone level, and just my ability to trust and have confidence in my health going forward. I really, really hope that you're able to go over to rapidealthreport.com, watch the video of my labs, and see what is possible. And if it is something that you are interested in,

please schedule a call with me on that page. Once again, it's rapidealthreport.com, and let's get back to the show. There's a lot of these drugs that are reasonable to take, particularly during times of injury and recovery. There's other drugs that should never even be on the list at all, particularly the illicit drugs, because they have no performance enhancing benefits whatsoever. And the water or water should not be in the business of telling athletes what they should do in terms of their morals and ethics. That's just not your, that's not your business. What I want to take in terms of other

drugs. And then it's the, finally, the last thing really comes down to, let's contrast how our domestic leagues handle doping versus how it's handled on the international scene. The restrictions are significantly less in terms of which drugs are on the banned list for the NFL, NBA, MLB, and hockey. And in addition to that, if you get caught, the suspensions are significantly less.

And they also put in an educational component there to prevent you from doing it again, if it's just a matter that you're not really thinking clearly, as it were. What's the difference between these two groups? Well, one of them has got a labor union, ours do, and the other one, they have no representation whatsoever, and they get no money. So one of the primary things that I'm really driving hard for is to try to get athletes to speak up for themselves and form international unions so that they can actually have some bargaining leverage with world athletics or world swimming to get pay or to exchange pay for being able to use drugs. It's probably going to go the other way. They'll probably maintain the restrictions, but then at least get some money back on the back end,

which they should get. For drugs like cannabis, are they only banned purely because they were illegal when the rules were set and now they're becoming legal. And then it just is taking a while for the, the band classification to now follow the legality changes. Yeah. And that's, that's really what it comes down to.

I think that cannabis is starting to be off the list, I'm pretty sure. For several of them. The NCAA has taken it off. The NFL has taken it off, as has the NBA. Now, if you test on the day of a competition and you're stoned, you're going to get in trouble. But they're not going to do any amount of competition testing in our domestic leagues for marijuana specifically.

How this initially came to be was that because weed in particular is illegal in most countries around the world they have designated it and other illicit drugs as being drugs of abuse and they've taken on this moral stance that our athletes should be of the highest caliber in terms of the morality etc etc you can argue cetera. You can argue that if you want to. If it's meth, I get it. If it's weed, I don't get it. It just doesn't make sense to me. So what you have now is now that people are very clear that there's very limited evidence, if any, particularly for marijuana, that there's any performance enhancing capabilities.

Now WADA has really pushed hard to see, is there some way that we can make this argument that they are performance enhancing? And so what they've really leaned into is this idea that when you take in THC, that it allows you to focus better. And the anecdotal evidence that they get is mostly from NBA players who say, if they're high during a game, they shoot better than if they're not. Maybe, but if, again, I mean, if you're going again, if you're going to be able to focus as well doing that as you would if you took, let's say, Ritalin or Adderall,

then why not just allow them to take the THC? Yeah. I mean, what's wrong with that? That really is the most interesting. Should all nootropics be banned if that's the case? I know. That would be an argument that they could make if they want but if if any of those nootropics are going to have the same uh negative connotations

associated with them as does marijuana in large swaths of our population and the world population then you might see those things i mean personally i think marijuana is the opposite like i don't want to take marijuana and go compete like i'm gonna take marijuana and the opposite. I don't want to take marijuana and go compete. I'm going to take marijuana and go chill out. I don't understand. I feel like it's the opposite of a benefit. I agree. That's what I put in my book.

I put in my book that specific thing. I told the story about how my wife and I, we went to Washington for my sister's wedding, and then we took a trip down to Portland. The night that we were in Portland, we had some edibles that we picked up in Washington. It's legal in both places. And when we put our kid to sleep, we each had a couple of bars of chocolate. And, you know, within an hour, I couldn't get off the couch. I mean, I could not move. Right. To conceive of trying to do, you know, my best deadlift or snatch under those conditions it

would be a joke it would never happen no way yeah no definitely not for strength power speed sports two and a quarter after a little puff there mash not a chance not a chance everybody wants to be lifting lots of weights in a very parasympathetic way. It's a decent path. If you just want to go be one with the barbell, it'll help you. I want to go be one with the couch. I will play on the counterpoint of this that it is possible. I'm sure you can do it.

The other problem is not just the fact that I lose coordination and I lose balance. I lose my competitive spirit i don't do anything but hug you and hang out yeah and so that's not the time i'm gonna go in for my best competition i mean i gotta get my head on sometimes if i want to definitely not before competition yeah me too cannabis is very popular in the jiu-jitsu world some people love it they they swear by by being high at practice i tried that one time that did not work for me at all i was i was i was super relaxed if i was just drilling maybe but like i was so relaxed like anytime somebody like did anything fast moving or aggressive i was like whoa Whoa. Whoa. That's calm. That's calm this whole situation down.

It didn't work at all. No. No way. I'm super interested, though, in kind of the progression of these things. And a lot of this stuff people never associate with actually performance enhancement. Like, I don't think there's been, especially when I was competing in CrossFit, a single training session I did without at least 20 ounces of Starbucks in me, which is really close to meth in my opinion. Like that is the most burnt, wired up coffee that exists. And you clearly haven't done meth.

Necessary. Yeah. We get it. We know what you're saying. As close as I know um one why do you say why are why are people like this oh that's not a that's not a performance enhancing drug when it clearly is um but then like globally some of these things are just accepted and allowed but then we have this weird line in the sand that says like now now you're cheating when all of them are are there to enhance

your performance right yeah so caffeine was on the list for a very long time long take it you could take it but if you had a if you up to a certain threshold then now you're cheating right now and so then what they would do then is that they would test you before and if you were at that threshold you weren't in big trouble but you couldn't compete that day uh but over time it just became so ridiculous because this is so entrenched in our culture and every aspect of ours and everybody else's they're like well we can't we can't have caffeine on here anymore we just can't have it so they pulled that off but yes it is a performance enhancing drug there's obvious benefits to taking a significant amount of caffeine before and during and even after your competition um obviously it allows you to be you know focused uh it is also created alleviating pain so if you if you look at

like um excedrin maximum strength excedrin that's aspirin and a shitload of caffeine the two of those combined make it so that you get your headaches go away very nicely. It takes away the pain quickly. So for our intensive purposes as athletes, if it's going to dull your pain, great. If it's going to give you focus, great. And if it's going to give you a little bit more endurance, all the better. Clearly a performance enhancing drug. So remember, now W water has, there's three of these criteria. Only one has to be met in order for it to be considered a doping agent. One is that it allows for performance enhancement.

So we've already covered that one. The second one is that it's not healthy to the athlete. Okay. So again, it's difficult to say what is or is not healthy to the athlete because they're not going to test the, in the athlete because they're not going to test these in these conditions because they're not going to get an irb approval to do so um can't go to mcdonald's then mcdonald's should be you know illegal absolutely the well i mean in terms of for for a lifetime i would agree we should not allow people to eat it if they want to over the course of their lives because it's not healthy but in addition to that well i mean i'm not i'm not being glib when i say this but even stuff like

water if you're a triathlete or a marathoner running in very hot conditions and you over consume water without taking in enough electrolytes you can become hyponatremic this happens a lot yeah and so athletes will be collapsing because they're over hydrated and they have not taken enough salt tablets or whatever the case would be. And so to say something by itself is dangerous to the athlete. That's, that's a really big blanket that you're throwing over this thing. And then the third one, and this is basically the catch all, if that drug or, or the thing that you're doing, the act itself is not covered by the first two,

then you say that it's against the spirit of sport. And so everything could be conceivably against the spirit of sport. And so it's a really low threshold to be met. And it's not really backed up by any particular science, largely because it would be remarkably unethical to do these studies, to see which of these drugs is dangerous at what concentration, at what dosage and frequency, and then what impact does it actually have on performance? You just can't test all the different elements of performance to find out. So it's largely just speculation. Now, some of these drugs we know for sure

have performance enhancing benefits. Anabolic steroids, for sure, we know. Cortisol, to a certain degree, can assist with recovery and make you feel better. I mean, just think about if you had a sinus infection, you go to your doctor, you say, Doc, can I please get a taper pack of prednisolone just to make me feel a little better so I can go to work? And the first three or four days, you're feeling like superman. It keeps you up at night, but you feel a hell of a lot better until the taper pack goes away. So that's really what we take cortisone for. Human growth hormone is particularly taken to heal up soft tissue, connective tissues. So we're talking mostly ligaments here. I'm sorry, mostly tendons, mostly tendons. And usually we'll see people take HGH in conjunction with anabolic steroids

because the anabolic steroids make the muscles grow huge rapidly, but the tendons can't keep up because they're not as vascularized. The HGH helps in actually shoring up those tendons and making them get a bit bigger. So those are great things, particularly for recovery from injury. And then the biggest of all is erythrocoedin. So EPO, if you take an injection of that, it's going to increase the number of red blood cells cells you have in your body and your endurance will go through the roof so we're talking 10 to 15 percent increase in performance for endurance athletes which is just a massive massive difference so those ones we know those are classic ones have been used for decades all the rest of them we're not all that sure about i mean isn't isn't this really more like a quote-unquote kind of political conversation because obviously there's nothing intrinsically wrong with trying to improve

your performance that's why you train and do everything else that you do you're trying to be the best that's that's everyone is trying to be the best if you're if you're competing at a high level that's the spirit of sport that's why you train that's why you sleep that's why you eat well that's why you that's why you go to your fucking, why you do everything you're trying to try to improve your performance. So there's nothing intrinsically wrong with, with performance enhancement. That's how you get better by enhancing your performance. Yeah. So I completely agree with that sentiment, which is basically the sentiment of the book. However,

what I will say is a few things. One of them is that there's, there is a dark history of athletes being doped against their will or without their knowledge and specifically we're talking about like east germany east germany man if you look at what the east germans did yeah as young as 12 as young as 12 now they doped both men and women but obviously women are going to have a greater response to getting additional anabolic steroids than will men. But they doped them both.

And they went across the board. Swimming is just the one that we look at the most. But the impact of what those drugs did. What about the East German where they would get a girl pregnant, make her abort the child for the increase of HCG? I mean, it was insane i've i've read reports of this but i have never seen anything that was actually documented with evidence that it did happen i mean it would be impossible to find the evidence from any of this other than just like speculation because unless you were a doctor they kept they kept remarkable records and when when the berlin wall fell down that's how we have access to all these things right so you don't think they documented that maybe i wonder uh i bet they would

have if they i mean these some of these were old nazi doctors so they documented just about everything i know like i studied this but i can't remember like it was it was in a class but so i but i won't speculate and saw and say that i saw a study, but definitely heard. I would not put it past them at all. But even if we leave that out and we just look at what they actually, we know that it's still horrendously diabolical. So then you have that. You have that for sure.

Then you have a series of deaths that take place that are specifically attributed to some of these performance enhancing drugs. So when the Tour de France in 1966, we had a British cyclist, Tommy Simpson, who died on the way up the Von 2 on a hot day where he had taken amphetamines and he chased it with brandy. He just got over hot or overheated and dehydrated and that's what killed him. So if we are to look at these things and say, if this is not done correctly, danger is right around the corner. And that's true. But I don't think the answer is to just obliterate it. Make it safer.

Do it the right way. Because making things illegal doesn't make it go away. It just makes it more dangerous. And we look at that for if we look at alcohol in the 20s and we look at the war on drugs currently, they're unmitigated failures because you cannot legislate out people's behavior. You just can't. Then the next thing that I'll add on to that is this, this one point, we all dope for performance enhancement, not just in sports, but in every aspect of our lives. And the point, the example

that I put in my book, there's a couple of them. One of them is Adderall and all of my, not all, but many of my college students, when I was a professor would take Adderall and all of my, not all, but many of my college students when I was a professor would take Adderall without a prescription that they would get from a friend so that they could perform better in the classroom or even to have more confidence when they went to parties and talk to somebody of the opposite sex or their same sex or whatever. So, I mean, there's obviously people do that all the time. And then this is the really amazing symphony players, symphony musicians. They have their own national organization and they take polling data of their participants. And so in

2015, 534 symphony musicians were asked, have you ever taken beta blockers? Now, if you don't know what a beta blocker is, it is a drug that blocks the beta adrenergic receptor on your heart so that adrenaline can't attach to it and speed up your heart and make it beat faster or sorry harder if you have a hard fast beating heart it's difficult to hold your hand steady while you're trying to play an instrument yes then you want to know the percentage of of those musicians who admitted to taking it 77 77 wow that's a performance-enhancing drug. And they're taking it just like you said for the purposes of performing at their job better

so that the paying audience behind them is entertained appropriately. Well, if sports is one thing and one thing only, it's entertainment. That's why we pay money to go and watch it. I'm not doing this for any other reason than to be entertained. And I want to be entertained by somebody who's performing at the highest level

i feel like the performance enhancing drug thing doesn't get brought up in like in the arts like if you're if you're a musician or an actor and you're you're taking you're taking steroids you're doing psychedelics you're you're doing any like you know creativity drugs so to speak nobody's nobody's looking at you winning your your grammy or whatever you're winning and going oh that guy cheated he took mushrooms like this is not a thing it's like it's very it's very siloed it's very siloed to sports for some reason totally business is the same like do you remember when uh when when bezos there was like there was like many years where he was doing some like really out there like blood transfusion stuff everybody thought it was great biggest company in the world bezos knows what he's doing for longevity that dude's straight up doing

performance enhancing drugs staying young like as young as possible for as long as possible and i thought it was great no it's true and i think the big separator between the symphony and sports is i don't root for anybody in the symphony like I do the Houston Cougars or the Houston Texans. Like that is my team and I have a vested interest in that. And so I have an emotional stake in sports that I don't have with anything else. That's one. Second is records. Records really matter to a lot of people uh and so when you think that you can't compare the era of steroids in baseball to

prior to that because they were on steroids that might offend a whole lot of people i think that time has passed because there's nothing about sports today that's like it was in the 40s or 30s or prior everything is different travels better recovery is better nutrition is better people are not smoking you know in the dugout they may do so after you wait a minute they don't have a fifth of bourbon that they're swigging as well nobody's owning that anymore so all these things are you know and then if you look at the nfl i mean what's the primary thing that's going to make records irrelevance it's the schedule we went from 12 games to 14 games to 16 games. Now we're at 17, an

odd number, which I hate. They're going to go to 18 games. We all know it. All the records are completely irrelevant that are being broken now because they have extra time to do it. So, you know, that aspect of it, it makes sense emotionally why people have that vested interest in making sure that things are on a level playing field.

But if they're really honest with themselves, you can't compare players of different generations to each other you just can't i almost for sure thought one of the reasons you were going to list was going to be gambling as well um gambling is such a giant money maker and and people rely on there being an equal playing field and and kind of like looking for those advantages, there's got to be somebody in Vegas that does not want that going on. Some second string guy that's going to come in that's going to be playing significantly better than his position on the team would allow one to think.

Yeah, but some of them want that. But I would disagree. Some of them want that. If you have the advantage in that, then you would want that. Yeah. Those dudes want the advantage. They're not trying to gamble. They're trying to take your money.

You're playing devil's advocate for a minute. The only part of the kind of doping thing that I do agree with is, like, if there's a set of rules and we're all competing with the same set of rules and someone's not following the rules if we're doing a shooting competition and i have open sites and you have a red dot site or a scope or whatever then we're not now we're not we're not competing even granted you know the argument is well everybody's doing it so everybody's doing it that's that's also a part of it so i think we we were talking about discussing the enhanced games like is really just do whatever the hell you want the only answer here that's the only way to do this fairly because it's not in america we do test a heck of our athletes you saw the man you saw the testing ryan at one night and then again at 7 a.m the next day like so like it's impossible if you If you take drugs in America, you're getting

tested unless you have a lot of money and you know you're paying them off. But then again, then we're going to get state-sponsored programs. Like you said, Dr. Hutchinson, you know, you're going against China. It's state-sponsored. And so, of course, they want to win. It's a state-sponsored program.

So then they don't have the same, you know, every once in a while there's a new-sponsored program. So then they don't have the same, you know, every once in a while, there's a new WADA type of WADA that actually tries to go there. But you're in this huge 3 billion person or what is it, 1.5 billion people country. And then the rumor is you go there and you think you're testing lube, but is it? How do you know it's lube?

It's a state-sponsored program. So the only way to make it fair is, like, take the gloves off, in my opinion. Yeah, this is something I'm super interested in. When you kind of look 10, 20 years forward, like, how does gene therapy play into this? Because if they're just making humans, and that is their genetic code, how do you even test? How would you know? And that's clearly like the,

the most advanced form of a lot of this stuff is going to be like physiologically all the way down to the, your, your genetic code making you a more advanced athlete than your, the normal pun and square would want to allow you to be. That's true. I don't know that we're very close to doing that because we'd have to make alterations in a single cell, just one part, a single cell embryo and then obviously have it grow from there.

That hasn't been done very effectively up to this point, but I mean, ostensibly it could happen. And if that does actually happen, then the stuff that we're talking about now with, with PEDs is completely irrelevant. But back to your point, when we are going up against rogue states, whom we have no control over in terms of what they do

or do not do, it's already an unlevel playing field, as has been evidenced by the documentary with Icarus, which I really recommend people go and see that. I know, because I was so mad i couldn't sleep but yeah but when you're when we're talking about that it's like you know is the only answer to just open up everything i don't know that we have to open up everything because there's some

drugs out there that have not been even tested by the fda to see if they're safe in humans that are being used for performance enhancing purposes i don't know that those should be on the market or those should be allowed but it's a difficult question to ask. And the answer is like, when do you allow it? Are we only gonna allow this during times when people are trying to come back from injury? Can they use it to prepare themselves for a competition, et cetera, et cetera.

The biggest point that I would make, if you go back and look at Icarus is that you have two big people there. So you have Dick Pound, who was the original president of WADA. And then you have Don Catlin, who was the guy who opened up and ran the doping lab at UCLA from the 1984 Olympics until very recently for a long time.

These are the experts of the experts. And when they're asked point blank, can you cheat these tests? So they say, oh, yeah, absolutely. It's totally easy to do it. All you have to do is microdose and know your calendar and make sure that you're not tested during a time where you're going to be hot. You can avoid being tested positive. It's not a problem. And so if you know that in 2024, in other words, we go back to 1999,

and the technology has not advanced any further than to stop somebody like Lance Armstrong from testing positive ever during his career, then nothing's really changed. And so when you see an athlete and they say, I've never tested positive, that doesn't mean anything other than they haven't been caught yet. That's the only thing. Now it could mean that they haven't done anything, but the only thing we know it means is that they haven't been caught that's all agreed i've never tested positive

neither of us there you go uh i also feel like there's a big just like with specifically with the lance armstrong thing like he was so bold about it um it kills me when somebody's going through like a life threatening or not life threatening when a life scenario and they just want to go have some thc and go to sleep and and actually just not have that anxiety on their brain lance was pulling up a bus and doing like crazy stuff right in front of news crews and then walking off the bus as if nothing ever happened. He wasn't the only one, though. He was as brazen as... He should have tested all people. I feel like the bike world

probably is, and track and field, are probably the dirtiest sports. They have the most money, too. That's the only reason Johan Blake beat me in the race, Matt. It's the only reason he cheated. I saw him take the two money, too. That's the thing, too. That's the only reason Johan Blake beat me in the race, Matt. It's the only reason he cheated. I saw him take the drugs right before.

It's like, that Anders guy is coming down to Jamaica. I'm going to take this special sauce. Well, you've got to, if you look at Lance, that part of it, everybody else was doing very similar stuff, there's no question. But there was nobody else who was as outspoken every minute of every day as Lance Armstrong. He knew that he was lying his ass off, and he and his attorney still sued the London Times, the Sunday London Times, and won the case. I mean, that's incredible. Gotta prove it.

Gotta prove it. And so, I mean, but what do we tell people who say no that person's lying about me i never did this well if that's the case they go sue him for libel and they never do because they don't want to spend the money and they don't want to put themselves into the circumstances of having to be deposed not lance i'll do it yeah i'll be deposed you betcha and i'll lie in a court of law on top of that but that's why he got hammered with a five million dollar settlement from the federal government when all the all the shit came down so he's a different animal though i mean the stuff that he did to defend himself against the charges of doping is the same stuff that allowed him to compete at the level that he did it's a mentality that most people in the world just don't have. Most people in the Peloton don't have that same mentality.

And here comes a big part of the disconnect between us in our group here that we're talking here today and the general populace. We come from a different ilk in terms of our genetics when it comes to competition and what we're willing to do to win at the next level. The rest of the population just can't get it let me give you an example did you guys watch the the the roast of tom brady oh yeah i didn't watch hilarious it was fantastic but the one thing that they just hammered him on was the fact that he lost his wife you know and his family and for what he wanted to come back for one more crappy

eight nine season with the tampa bay buccaneers and go out in the first round. You know, I would never do that with my wife, but particularly if I was married to Jajel. Never, ever. But I'm not like him, and he's not like me either. Yeah. He's going to get another chance. One more time was more important than to try to keep his family together.

That's my assumption in terms of what happened. I've read a lot about it. But that's the point I'm trying to make, is that if you're willing to fly down a mountain at 80 miles an hour without a helmet on. You're willing to do whatever it takes to win. You'll do whatever you have to. And that doesn't make you a bad person.

It just makes you a very different person. Can I get an amen? Yeah. I totally agree all right so i was gonna say how do we move forward from here like we we seem to be very much on the same page about much of this but how do we how do we move forward and actually kind of quote unquote change the world here yeah i don't think it's going to be a single track in terms of what's going to happen i think one thing that's already happened is that we have, as we were discussing before we started recording, the advent of the enhanced games. So for those of your listeners who don't know, although I'm sure most of them do, this is going to be a parallel games to the Olympics that'll happen in 2025. I don't know

that it's going to happen in a single location. I think they're going to have it in a couple of different places. And they're not promoting or advocating people taking substances of any kind. They're just not going to test. And that's going to allow for people to take substances. Now, instead of testing, what they're going to do is they're going to test the athletes for their health on a regular basis. They're going to be heavily, heavily screened to see if there's anything wrong with them. And if they find signs that there's something congenital or something that may be related

to a drug that they're taking, they're going to remove them from the games at least that's why i better not say that there's going to be some there's going to be something that they're going to do to prevent that athlete from being in danger it may not be removing from the games i don't want to speak at a turn there so there's that now in addition to just the the that element of the games they're going to pay uh i think they said was was $50,000 for a gold medal. If you break a world record, that's a million dollars. Now, that has never happened in games of that magnitude before that athletes are paid directly for their wins. And then what do we see?

Immediately after they've announced this, World Track and Field, which used to be the IAAF, then announced, we're now going to have prizes for our athletes at the Olympics. So it's just like what happened with Live Golf, right? Many golfers in the PGA Tour were saying, look, we've got to get paid more. This is a joke. Either we get paid more or we're going to start something else. The PGA didn't listen.

Live Golf came in, gave out a bunch of money. And then what happened immediately after for the PGA to try to remain relevant? They jacked up the purses for the tournaments. So you're only going to respond in a situation where you have to. So that's the first thing that I see that's happened. The second thing that I think needs to happen is, like I said at the beginning, you have to have player representation within their respective sports.

They have to have a union of some kind to represent them and negotiate a collective bargaining agreement with their governing body for the purposes of determining what drugs will or will not be on a banned list and also pay they've got to get paid um where do you feel like this is going to kind of trickle down to college sports because they're they're clearly not innocent in any of this um and and innocent is probably not the the right word but um it happens there consistently i used to train with uh guys that played d1 college baseball in south carolina they were like everyone on our team was loaded uh it's just like part of the culture and that was you know uh slightly after the the bonds

mcguire kind of like that era of baseball and it trickled down to college in a bad way um i feel like it's almost all of the um governing bodies are almost going to have to open up to it if this enhanced game thing works you Did it trickle down or did it start there, is what I would say. Because when I was at Appalachian before the Barry Bonds thing, it was rampant. Let me just say that. Really? Way before.

Oh, yeah, man. Interesting. 91 to 95? Yeah. What? What did you say? No, you're good. Yeah, it was the NCAA. We got tested by them. I got tested by them. I don't know that it would have started in one place or the other if I had to guess.

It happened at the same time. This whole thing where players are going to emulate their favorite sports heroes, I don't agree with that. They're going to do what it is that they need to do. There's going to be lots of athletes who just say, I don't want to do that. They're not going to. Where I have concerns with athletes at that age is that some of them are

still 18 and they're still developing. I don't want anybody who's still in the process of developing to take these drugs. That said, how are you going to stop it? You're going to have to maintain that regulation there. If you want to screen it as much as possible beyond college, what I'm much more concerned about would be at the high school and below.

And then, again, you're going to come down to the point where the parents have got to be responsible for the kids. I've got a 13-year-old daughter. I do not want her taking anything. I would not allow her to take anything, and I watch her like a goddamn hawk to make sure she's not taking anything. That's my responsibility.

That's not her coach's responsibility. That's not her favorite swimmer's responsibility. that's my responsibility that's not her coach's responsibility that's not her favorite swimmer's responsibility that's my responsibility so when it comes to like when they had the the congressional hearings for baseball and their reason they said over and over again is won't someone think about the children i that's not barry bonds's responsibility to take care of no no i didn't look i didn't want my kids looking up to Barry Bonds way before steroids. He was just an arrogant person. You know what I mean?

I love him. I love him. He's an awesome player. But I didn't want my kids emulating Barry Bonds, my lord. It's not their responsibility. That's weakness from any parent that would say so, in my opinion. I agree. I agree.

That's on them and on me you just hold on when rock starts uh starts hitting 15 years old yeah and you go oh man he he's chasing after that guy he's been chasing after his whole life now you oh and uh i won't blame anybody though. You know what I mean? That'll be on me. Yeah. I would love to just get your opinion on where you think the world is on kind of like the essentially product market fit

of the enhanced games. Like, do you think the people are ready to see something that is just an open market. Just bring your best and let's see what humans are capable of. I think as a curiosity, if nothing else, people will tune in the first time just to see it. Just to be curious. Yeah.

Beyond that, I think there's a whole other sect of people like us who are like, yeah, let's see this jacked up games. I want to see this. It's going to be incredible. But if this had happened 10 or 15 years ago, I want to see this. It's going to be incredible. But if this had happened 10 or 15 years ago, I'd say no way. It never happened. There's just too much of a moral outrage against it. But the longer this

goes on, particularly in our country, especially when we hear about China and Russia, we're just like, what's the fucking point? I mean, come on. And then in addition to that... The moral high ground. Exactly. But if you like... So here's my example of this. Jimmy Garoppolo is going to miss the first four games of the fall the next football season because he was he popped for peds i don't

know what he took i know he's coming off of injury my suspicion is he took something to try to get better so he can get back in the playing field if that had happened 10 or 15 years ago it would have been a huge news story i had to look and look and look just to find i saw a quick nose clip and that was it no one talked about it because no one cares okay so we have gotten to the point just like you know when you have that one parent or that one coach their only go-to is to scream at you all the time and you drown it out the same thing is happening with these doping things initially we're all shocked and dismayed that someone would yeah but now we're like oh everybody dopes who cares so i think with that attitude i think it's going to be popular yeah i think what you just said is um and we're seeing it like crazy in political it's hard to

hide anything like facts are facts and there's so much information in the world right now that like everything is being exposed, whether it's in sports and politics and medicine and it's, it's, it's all out there. And it, at least we have, uh, with the enhanced games, a place you could say, actually, this is just like, what's possible. We're not hiding it. It's, it's completely transparent. These guys are just showing up whether we're not, we're not hiding it. It's completely transparent. These guys are just showing up. We're not testing them for what they're on. We just want to know what the absolute

best is and what is exactly best in the world. And transparency is like the thing that I think people want the most when it comes to just feeling good about decisions they're making or what they're watching and information coming in. Just tell me me the truth and now we get to go see it and one of the biggest things that needs to happen is is education we just need to that's why i wrote the book i want people to read it and have an open mind when they go through it i was talking to my dad the other day he's very much against what my my philosophy on this He's still supportive of the book, obviously, but he's against the philosophy. And that's fine.

He doesn't have to agree with me. But I just can't wrap my mind around watching professional soccer, he calls it football because he's from Scotland, with a bunch of dope athletes. And I was like, Dad, you've been watching that for your entire life. You don't have to, man. Nothing is really going to change. This is really not going to change.

There are sports where you're going to change. This is really not going to change. There are sports where you're going to see huge changes, but overall, you're not going to see any big changes. Yeah, like fencing is going to take off, guys. I think they're going to show up in the 100-meter dash. It's going to be the same 100-meter dash.

It's not going to go from like 9.6 to 9. No. We're all on it. They're there. It's not going to go from 9-6 to 9. No. They're there. We've already known. That's what those people are doing. 9-5, we saw it. Yeah. Totally agree.

Plus, all the people who say... Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Tell people about the book. We have a copy. I thumbed through it, getting prepared for this and have thoroughly enjoyed the excerpts that I've read on going through

the topics I am personally interested in. You bet. The title of it is In Defense of Doping, Reassessing the Level Playing Field. You can find it on Amazon. If you want to track me down, my website is goodegg.fitness. So G O O D E G G.fitness. I've got all my books there.

I've got every podcast I've ever done. And this one will go on there as well. So, and it's got my email addresses there as well. So people can track me down and ask me questions if they ever want to. Fantastic. Coach Travis Mash. Mashlead.com and go to gymware.com and read all of my articles for free on the blog section there you go Doug Larson

bet I'm on Instagram Douglas E. Larson Dr. Hutchinson this has been this has been fun when your name popped up and Casey

sent me all the information told me there was a book coming on the way I've been very excited to talk to you so I appreciate I appreciate you coming on I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner, and we are Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore shrugged and make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That is where

Dr. Andy Galpin is doing an eight minute video on the exact three-step process that we use to unlock your physiological potential. You can access that free video over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.