Barbell Shrugged - Physiology Friday: [Testosterone] How to Naturally Optimize Testosterone Without Drugs, Doctors, and Destructive Diets w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash and Dan Garner Barbell Shrugged

Episode Date: October 11, 2024

In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged: The role of testosterone in health and performance How micronutrient deficiencies can lead to sub-optimal testosterone levels How excess body fat turns testosterone into estrogen The relationship between cortisol and testosterone Practical advice on how to optimize your testosterone levels Connect with our guests: Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram Dan Garner on Instagram

shrug family this week on barbell shrug physiology Friday is back and we're gonna be digging into what you can do all the steps that you need to take before want to optimize your testosterone but before going and getting on TRT this is like the path I'm seeing so often is people seeing a number on their blood work that says you have lower or low testosterone and they immediately go to a doctor that says oh you have low testosterone let's go add testosterone into your body and this is not the path that we want you to be taking we want you to understand why there is low testosterone to begin with

which is dealing with root cause issues versus symptomatic pieces to this puzzle because of course if you just inject testosterone into your body, you're going to have higher levels of testosterone, but your body really should have natural levels, naturally high levels specifically. And if we can figure out what is stopping your body, what is creating the deficiencies inside you and eliminate those constraints, eliminate those deficiencies, get those things to an optimal level, then we can actually understand what is your total T, what is your free T, and that way you can not have to worry specifically about going on testosterone

or going to your doctor, but let's go solve root cause issues. In today's show, that is what we're going to be talking about. As always, friends, make sure you head over to rapidhealthreport.com. There is a free case study for you on how Timothy Jones, our good friend, cut his cholesterol in half and got completely ripped in the process. And you can access that free case study over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Strong. I'm Andrew Gard. Doug Larson. Dan Garner. Today on Barbell Shrugged, we are going to be talking about TRT and is TRT right for you? When is it actually right for you? When isn't it right for you? And all the questions you should

be asking yourself before actually going on TRT. Dan, this is like one of the number one things that actually comes up in all of the, I shouldn't say all, but many of the calls that we have with people coming into Rapid is they've got this low energy thing, they've got a low libido thing, and then all of a sudden they go to the doctor, the doctor runs their test and it says,

ah, you're at like low 400s, maybe 200s, maybe 300s, but it's somewhere below whatever is considered normal. And then they get thrown on TRT. And the problem is a lot of times it doesn't end up solving the issues that they originally went into the doctor for. Yeah. Is there a right time or what should people be doing when they're talking to their doctors? Because this is obviously place number one, that it comes up and in their search for solving whatever these issues are. So let me kind of open up this podcast, really was something I haven't said in a podcast before. Because it'll probably alienate 80% of my

audience. But when it comes to the way in which the body operates, I'm always like just something that constantly keeps coming up in my career and in my search for knowledge and wisdom to help people become better versions of themselves is that lots of times we should be working with the body rather than against the body. And we just keep learning that every time we think we're smarter than biology, we're reminded that we're not. And I just I don't think that this is a situation that is removed from that. So we have this this testosterone reference range of depending on what lab you're going

with is typically from 300 to 900. It's quite assumed that when you're younger, you're going to have a higher testosterone. And as you get older, you are going to have a progressively lowered testosterone. Is that such a bad thing? Like, I think that honestly, that could actually be some form of adaptation that people aren't asking questions about yet, because I think less testosterone progressively and not pathologically over the course of time could actually serve to be an evolution into wise old man, as opposed to young bull, because you actually you become more patient, you become more compassionate, like these are things you actually want around when you're raising your kids.

You're less likely to cheat on your spouse. You're less likely to have the crazy competitive drive that men have to where we'll actually put ourselves in harm's way just to win a bet or win a conversation or something like that. And with compassion, with patience with um loyalty to your spouse because your sex drive is is lowering um with the fact that you're not going to put yourself in harm's way due to purely um alpha male competitive drive like i'm not totally convinced that a progressively non-pathologically lowered testosterone over time is that bad of a thing? Like, am I crazy here, guys? No, that's called 32 years old for me. I like to call it the day

that that happened. I like to tell you exactly where I was, where I was like, I don't really give a shit if I squat 500 pounds anymore. I think I have bigger things. Like I'm supposed to get married right now and breed some little humans and live a much saner life. And I just happened to be 32. And then that exact second, I was like, I'm going to go do different things now. I'm a different person all of a sudden. It's actually really interesting. Most people are not making a case for the benefits of lower testosterone.

I rarely see that being done uh almost anywhere but but i have actually noticed that like you know i'm 39 now and you know some at some point in the last like five years like i i have i have noticed that like the percentage of the time that my mind is focused on sex has decreased it used to be like 90 fucking percent it was like all day long i was like i was just thinking about it all day long and so at some point over the last five years like certainly i think about it still quite frequently but it's not what it was it's not it's not like all day long all day every day um and i i had that conversation a while back with someone like like it's it's easier to remain faithful when i'm not like, every time I

see a female in any context, the first thing my mind jumps to is like, I could mate with that thing. Like I could do this. Like when I was 25, it's like, they weren't even a person. It was just like, I could put something in that and that would feel good. And that would be good. And like, that was about as far as my mind wins. But now that I'm almost 40'm almost 40 um it it's easier to be a dad and a husband when when that's not the first thing on my mind and so there there is some benefit there but at the same time almost anyone that's coming to us to get help with energy or sex drive they they think something's wrong if you're going to get trt you feel like something's wrong it's not it's not like the normal decrease like you're saying um you know if you take it all the way to the end as far as as

far as sex drive goes like people have performance issues like they they just can't get an erection or like there's just no mojo left like maybe their wife wants to have sex and and they're just like i don't know like i just don't feel like it which is like would would be a very weird thing to say like i've never got i've never gone that far where like, by why I want to have sex. And I was like, nah, nah, I don't want to do it. But that happens to people. And then if, if that, I presumably if that happened to me and, or if I couldn't actually get an erection, I'd be like, fuck,

I need some testosterone replacement therapy because this is not right. And so like for those people, you know, is TRT what they need to do? Like, what's the what's the landscape of, of options in that case, you don't have to just talk about sex. But you know, TRT, certainly, you would think has some merit or wouldn't be as popular as it is. It's like, it's like, it's like a big thing right now. When I was growing up, like, it was like, steroids were bad. And then all of a sudden, there's TRT clinics everywhere, everywhere you go. And all of a sudden there's trt clinics everywhere everywhere you go and all of a sudden steroids are awesome and they're like and they're like publicly they're like all of a sudden like totally accepted because it's not

steroids it's trt yeah right so so so there's a big there's a big landscape there like like filling the gaps for me for sure so like and i think um that why I said, I think a few times in that explanation that I said non-pathological because if you like, there is pathological low testosterone, there's also dysfunction and this, and the outcome of the dysfunction is low testosterone. So for example, arsenic like is a, is a heavy metal, and it can actually bind to testosterone receptors. And you can imagine a testosterone receptor like a like a parking lot space, arsenic will take that parking lot space so that testosterone cannot park there and exert testosterone action on the body. Like there's a big difference between hormone and hormone action.

One is just something in circulation. The other is the thing in circulation is doing the thing that you want it to do. So arsenic can actually take up parking spots. Another heavy metal is mercury. Mercury actually impacts an enzyme called 11 beta hydroxylase. And this enzyme converts progesterone into cortisol. So 11 beta hydroxylase converts progesterone to cortisol, but it doesn't have an accelerated rate. So it actually feeds that pathway. So we're going to have more cortisol than we otherwise would have. Cortisol runs antagonistic to testosterone. So the very fact of having higher cortisol levels is going to result in lower testosterone levels purely due to the teeter totter antagonistic relationship that they have. So you have something like arsenic blocking receptor sites.

You have something like mercury accelerating enzymatic pathways to take resources away from testosterone. There are certain things like plastics and environmental pollutants that have been shown to accelerate estrogen pathways at the expense of testosterone. There's many things dietary and lifestyle related, such as stress, such as sleep, such as the amount and quality of fats coming in the diet. There are many things that can impact one's testosterone level. And I suppose the point that I'm that I'm turning around to here is that those those are true dysfunctions. And low testosterone is basically the outcome of those dysfunctions. So then you do experience things such as fatigue and a loss of libido and the many other things that come with low testosterone.

So those pathologies and dysfunctions absolutely can and should be addressed to improve overall systemic health. But the relentless pursuit of a thousand nanograms per deciliter of testosterone, I just don't think based on how the intelligence of our body, I don't think that that's necessarily the pursuit everybody should be chasing. Because if you ask the average guy, like, hey, how dumb were you when you were 25? Well, how dumb were you when you were 20? They'd be like, Oh, dude, I was so stupid back then. Like, I didn't do the cause. It's not the cause, but I think that progressively lowered high testosterone mentality

can sometimes allow you to get, enter that type of wise old man state. And I think a point that I didn't mention is that it also allows you an opportunity to enter a state of willingness to be the mentor as opposed to the one always having to be on the front lines grinding, you're actually thinking about the next generation, you're contributing to them in ways where you're not actually after the credit. So I think that non pathological

progressively reduced testosterone levels isn't necessarily a bad thing, provided you're not symptomatic. If you do struggle with erections, if you do struggle with a lot of fatigue, if you can't build muscle, that's a problem. I've had tons of clients, CEOs, athletes, whoever it's going to be in their 40s, 50s, 60s. I even had a guy in his 70s build muscle and drop body fat at the exact same time. The before and after was insane. That's somebody who is functioning. So if you're symptomatic, 100%, we have to identify where your low testosterone is coming from, and restore it to a normal level so that you're no longer symptomatic. But the the the hunt, the never ending hunt for like some sort of crazy number, for the sake of having a crazy number, I don't always think is

a wise pursuit for long term health. Yeah, I think there's also like a psychological element to it for people. It's almost like when if you were to get to 12% body fat, you'd look in the mirror and go, well, I also need to be at eight now, I want to invite you to come over to rapid health report.com. When you get to rapid health report.com, you will see an area for 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 rapidhealthreport.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. It's almost like if you were to get to 12% body fat, you'd look in the mirror and go, well, I also need to be at 8 now. And then you get to 8, and you're like, well, why can't I get to 5?

Like, I still have this, like, I can grab skin and pull it out. Like I'm not completely emaciated. And like, it's like, dude, you're 12% body fat. What, like what, what does eight get you? And if someone's at like 400, they see 800 as like, well, that has to be where I'm low. I'm not even at like the 500 number, which is some, some sort of like, well, that has to be where I'm low. I'm not even at like the 500 number, which is some sort of like average normal. And then the psychological side of it kicks in. And I would imagine that's actually more detrimental because they start feeling like they're losing the game that doesn't even exist when it's really their body saying, this is where you're at. Let's just be as healthy as possible. And our testosterone levels will just

land where they land instead of worrying about where you are on this like scale of 200 to 1000 and hoping insurance is going to cover your new drug addiction. I don't want to call it drug addiction, but your new injectable decision making process like you gotta go to the clinic you're at 412 and you're like why uh okay yeah i'm low what my friends are gonna make fun of me it's like that doesn't if you're if you're healthy your body's going to be where it's at and and those psychological games just get in the way of just making you feel worse than you actually already or or than you actually really feel. Totally. And like that, that's why I like one, one big thing that I've said in my career is don't lose weight, get healthy. When you focus, when you put health at the forefront, those are the

things that are actually going to make you feel better. Like to, to assume that it's all because of one hormone and that's going to change your life forever. It's just, it's never going to happen. Just like magical supplement doesn't exist. A magical hormone doesn't exist. A magical anything doesn't exist, but you have to look at health holistically as a whole. And when you look at it holistically and you see everything working in tandem together, there's such a thing known as efficiency too. Like there's, there's plenty of of I've had UFC fighters with testosterone in the 400s. And you would think that what like, shouldn't they be 900 or 1000 or something wild? No, because there is such a thing as efficiency, you can have

anabolism, you can have protein synthesis, you can have all of the things that you want from testosterone at a lower level, if you're efficient with its conversion and utilization and free testosterone so if you're someone who actually has a testosterone of say 400 500 or something like that but your sex hormone binding globulin is high and is binding up a lot of that testosterone and you're not able to utilize it for its action within a cell then you'll have symptoms of low testosterone but But if that testosterone binding, that elevated sex hormone binding globulin was due to other hormonal factors, or perhaps low magnesium or low boron or low zinc, all of these things can drive up sex hormone binding globulin,

you get rid of that, then testosterone can actually stay between like 400 500. But free testosterone goes up. And all of a sudden, here comes the libido, here comes muscle mass, here comes fat loss, here comes daily energy, all of these things come back. So like, looking at health, holistically as a whole, sometimes you're chasing one rabbit. And it's something completely different that you could actually have have focused on. And I i mean even here at rapid when people come to us i mean how often do people have a symptom of fatigue oh we're gonna do a whole show maybe a whole month we have energy yeah they're so and that's that's my point it's like once i'm

like man i'm fatigued maybe i should go on trt it like, that's a enormous assumption. That's a big jump. That's a leap. It's a huge leap. Like you're not considering all the other factors associated with fatigue that we can get into for a month. Like there are lifestyle factors, there's environmental factors, there's biochemical factors, there's genetic factors. There's so many things that will contribute to something that we're categorizing umbrella categorizing as fatigue, and then also assuming it's testosterone. Now, when you go ahead, nope, finish. Cool. So with all of this said, in no way, shape or form, am I against TRT? That's like the big message I want to get across because somebody might listen to this so far and be like this dude wants low testosterone he said something about being a wise old man and now he's talking about health like what what's garner on about didn't he just bench

405 i thought this dude cared about us so can you get into a thousand is that possible yeah i hear words coming out of your mouth but i'd like a thousand yeah exactly so i i'm not against trt um at all when it's required that's the thing i feel like testosterone has really gotten uh has become like the the catch-all for everything and um i don't talk to all of the people in the world obviously that are on trt but most of the people in the world, obviously, that are on TRT, but most of the people that are coming to us that are already on it suffer from the exact same symptoms that they had before they went on TRT and then thought TRT was going to solve all of those problems.

And it turns out it had nothing really to do with the actual testosterone levels or something was going on inside their body that was just hindering the energy levels or the libido or whatever, whatever was the symptom of that. And whether it was their doctor, whether they went in specifically asking, maybe they went to a clinic, which imagine that the clinic is like very good at giving you the thing that they sell. But most people think that testosterone is going to like solve all of the problems and it solves the problem of putting more testosterone into your body, but it doesn't really solve all the energy problems. It doesn't solve the libido problems. That stuff has to come from a different place.

What if you were to go actually need TRT, like you're in the 200s, and it's not what what is testosterone TRT actually going to solve when you go to, I mean, it's obviously going to raise your, your levels, but like, if it's not, if the people that we're working with, specifically, if it's not solving their energy issues, if it's not solving their libido issues, if it's not solving muscle mass, what problems does it solve? Or does it just create more problems because they are pouring gasoline on a fire that is on a system that's already broken, really. Yeah. And you mean, you really answered your own question there in a beautiful way. Because what happens is low testosterone was the outcome, but not the issue that led to the outcome. So what happens is people then get low testosterone. And of course, they're going to have symptoms of low testosterone, because they are low testosterone, but then they inject

testosterone, and then they feel fantastic. You will have more energy. You will have a better libido. You will put on muscle mass. These things are incredibly well-documented. All of this will begin to take place. But the reason as to why you had low testosterone to begin with that huge question that you should be asking never actually got addressed. Do you have environmental pollutants in you? Do you have a parasitic bacterial fungal problem in your gut? Do you have heavy metals? Was it a problem, a psychological problem in your life that's resulting in certain stressors that is suppressing your testosterone? Sometimes it doesn't have to be fancy, you guys,

like, like, honestly, the amount of people, like what percentage of people complain of fatigue? A high percentage, right? What percentage of people are on their phone before bed? Most. Right? Like, sometimes it doesn't have to be wild. Like, that blue light exposure has been demonstrated, already documented, to reduce melatonin 40 to 70%. Like five, I mean, sorry, yeah, 50 to 70, rather five zero to seven zero. That's an enormous reduction in melatonin,

which results in enormous reduction in sleep quality, which by itself would have caused fatigue, let alone the fact that poor sleep also causes low testosterone. So when we don't address these things, we actually didn't address our sleep issue. All we did was eject testosterone. How many other things is sleep connected to again? Seven million. When it comes to cardiovascular health, when it comes to all of the other hormones, testosterone is one of hundreds of hormones in the body. Sleep is connected to so many things and probably likely, like since sleep by itself would have overcome your fatigue in a huge way, and would have allowed you to have more regular testosterone levels. In my opinion, looking at holistic health, and actually solving

people's issues at the root causal level, I think that would have been way more beneficial. Nothing makes you feel better than having a good night's sleep. That's why I say don't lose weight, get healthier. That whole holistic thing makes you feel so much better than if you just fire some shot in the dark to overcome symptoms. Yeah. I was just having a half-baked thought while you were talking about that of like, what if instead of like testosterone clinics on every corner that you could go to, to inject testosterone, so you get more energy. It was like, well, here's the, here's the clinic down the street. That's going to reduce cortisol. So you actually just sleep

better. It'd be a lot, be a lot cooler. We'd be able to get to sleep, have less stress in our lives. And everything else would kind of work itself out. All the shit that like we should kind of already have. Like how about the guy in the corner that actually teaches you how to optimize your taxes? Like that's we don't learn that in school. How about the guy in the corner that tells you how to have a productive schedule? Because a lot of people aren't productive. They're just busy.

And busyness leads to a lot of activity, but no results, which is a very stressful and shitty way to live. So what about the guy to teach us about our taxes? What about the guy to teach us about optimizing our schedule? What about the guy to teach us about our sleep? What about the guy to teach us how to eat healthy? How many people have fatigue issues who also don't eat healthy? I don't think these correlations are wild. Well, isn't that also like the balance between, I mean, really in our world and our program between you and Galpin, it's like we have to have the internal health dialed in. We also have like the performance and lifestyle optimization plan to go along with it because

we can do the inside. But if you're still just beating your head up against the wall and you can't figure out how to structure a day if you can't figure out how to go to bed at night you don't wake up early enough you don't go out and get some sunlight at least sometime in the morning to set your circadian rhythm like you're kind of just spinning your wheels it doesn't it doesn't work unless you have both sides of it for sure and there's almost always some sort of root cause problem like happening like the amount of people like i asked you guys previously how many people come to us fatigue how many people come to us with some sort of gastrointestinal

symptom a ton yeah a ton right yeah so the percentage is enormous. Now, what percentage of those people did a stool analysis before they came to us? Zero. Basically nobody. I would say zero to five percent, maybe. Right. Lots of times we'll uncover a gut issue that led to an issue somewhere else. And the reason why that issue was allowed to exist is because a, they're not actually looking for root causes. They're looking to manage symptoms, but B because of those symptoms, the solutions that they have are incorrect. Like when we were, um, when we were in Boulder together and then we did that podcast with that guy that was smarter than all three of us combined cody burkhart yeah um yeah yeah that was he only asked questions like how do we train people to get on mars i'm like i was thinking like maybe adding a couple pounds of muscle lose body fat what let's just do some lateral raises we're gonna be solid take this thing all the way to mars yeah so like you're not asking the right questions

well i hadn't thought about mars well that's saying that he had a quote that wasn't even his answer he said we're not in the stage of problem solving we're in the stage of problem understanding and i was like god damn like he's about to answer something else and i'm already writing down his non-answer because he's so smart i'm writing down his preface rather than his actual answer let me just steal your framework here real quick i'm gonna steal his preface rather than his actual answer. Let me just steal your framework here real quick. I'm going to steal your preface. But he said we're in the stage of problem understanding and not in the stage of problem solving.

Man, that hit me like a freaking brick because that's what people do right now. They have a certain symptom. Dude, you're not ready to problem solve. You don't know what the problem is. You're solving the problem with TRT when you don't understand the problem that led to low testosterone you need to actually take a step back my man you need to start problems uh understanding rather than problem solving you skipped a huge step and now we have no idea what's going on underneath the surface because now you feel good you You are on TRT,

man. You will feel good, but I'm telling you your body on the inside does not. And whatever was there, um, is not going unaddressed. And I use that example of like somebody coming to us and having never done a stool analysis before, and they have gastrointestinal symptoms. Like, yeah, we're going to find's that is probably the reason why the root cause behind whatever issue you came to us with be it fatigue um and you've only done blood analysis before or you know another like thing um how many people do you think have been exposed to environmental pollutants a ton of them. When was the last time somebody got a heavy metal test or an environmental pollutant test?

Almost never. So we find these things freaking all the time. And it's just a huge systemic solution to improve someone's total health rather than just isolate it into one thing. So I don't understand how many more ways I could get that through to people because I'm a fan of TRT.

I really am. It's safety profile is good. The benefits are kick-ass, but I really think that you should run through the enormous list of things that result in low testosterone that you should address, but also result in a lot of other unfavorable things that don't get solved. If you just mask your symptoms with TRT.

So a few things, can you, can you handle both sides, like the short and the longterm? If you got all your labs done and you want a short term relief, could you do TRT for a period of time while you're cleaning up all the other things that led to it? And,

or if you go and try and clean up all the things that may have led to it, but then for some reason, it still doesn't change, then are you a candidate for TRT? Like you just said that there's, you'd like the safety profile, there's benefits to it, etc, etc. Like, at what point does someone say, okay, now's the time? So at that point, where I would personally say now is the time is way beyond just symptoms. It's like lots of times people just say now is the time based on symptoms. I would actually want to do blood, urine, saliva stool. OK, we're going to find something.

So then let's solve that thing for the next six months and then retest. If we've confirmed that we've solved the thing, and then your retest is still low. Yes, in my opinion, now you are a candidate. You're a candidate for whatever it was. It may I don't know, it could be estrogen, it could be DHEA, it could be testosterone directly, it could be androstenedione. It could be just the conversion of androstenedione to testosterone, which is a lot of times a problem. You need vitamin E, lipoic acid, CoQ10, and zinc all just to convert androstenedione to testosterone. And many people are low in vitamin E and zinc. That's hyper common. So like these things, they're out there and they exist. And in many, many, many cases, you will exhaust people's root cause issues, and their hormones will restore to balance. And because you took a health first approach, many other things restored to balance

along with hormone status. But if you have removed all root causes, and it's still low, then yeah, knock yourself out, man. It's pretty, it's pretty common, um, that you would have about one milligram per kilogram in, in medical TRT dose, one to two milligrams. So if somebody is a, is a a hundred kilos, then they would have a hundred milligrams of testosterone per week. Uh, that's on the lower end. And then if symptoms don't improve in the medical world, they'll bump you up to two milligrams per kilo. And then you're at, so that's a 220 pound person. Now it's like a 200 milligrams of testosterone per week. And mostly everybody feels pretty darn good in there. But more off-label, underground kind of dosing is like alpha male type TRT is more like three milligrams per kilogram. So if somebody

was 220 pounds, they'd be on 300 milligrams per week. But basically in the medical world, you'll get one to two milligrams per kilo. But, um, if you talk to somebody in the underground, work in an endocrinology for sports performance, uh, you're probably going to be around three milligrams per kilo. So that's for testosterone specifically, but you probably going to be around three milligrams per kilo. So that's for testosterone specifically, but you just mentioned DHEA and androstenedione and other androgens. Like when you say TRT, do you usually mean testosterone? Is that like 90% of the time that's the case? Like when, how does somebody know if DHEA is the answer or any of the other androgens? So they don't unless they get tested. So TRT is testosterone replacement therapy. HRT is hormone replacement therapy. So I would just change my verbiage to HRT if I was talking

about DHEA or androstenedione or anything like that. And in that scenario, you would only know if you did your testing, eliminated the root causes, and then did your testing again? And then you could fill in the gaps where you need to fill in the gaps. But DHEA is a is an over the counter option that's actually has an excellent long term safety profile. So it's kind of an it's it's an underrated one, especially if you've already exhausted your other root cause, your other root cause issues. When we started the show, you mentioned the range for total testosterone and then and then mentioned later that free testosterone really is the thing that that matters the most. Like, why? Why do people continue to mostly reference total testosterone when free testosterone really is the thing that is kind of actually getting the job done, so to speak? I'm I wouldn't even be able to answer that because that's an excellent question.

I would say probably because, and this is a guess, but it would be because adding free testosterone to a lab is a lot more expensive. So it probably just gets researched less. So that's just basically availability of data and what they can calculate total serum testosterone to rather than serum testosterone plus free testosterone. But I completely agree. And that's where efficiency comes into play. And you won't just see that in testosterone world either. Like thyroid's enormous for that. You can have like a low TSH and a fairly low T4 output. And I don't mean pathologically low, I just mean trending low, but then an optimal T3,

you're like, damn, that's just efficient conversion taking place. That's efficient conversion within the gut bacteria within the mitochondria within the liver and bile is doing its job. So that's it, that total amount, you'll see it in thyroid, you'll see it in testosterone, you'll see it, you'll see it everywhere. And efficiency matters. And that's why I like here at rapid, we do a we do a full hormone panel looking at absolutely everything, because you want to see what that entire pond and stream looks like and see what enzymes are being overactive and begin your your overall diagnostic process from there. So you take a person who they jumped the gun, so to speak, didn't get any of the lab testing, never searched for a root cause, and they just jumped right to TRT and they do feel good. And maybe they're taking on the higher end of the dosing, they're on the two milligrams per kilo or beyond, or maybe they're just straight up, quote unquote, doing steroids or abusing their access, et cetera. And they're hearing this and they're thinking, man, I don't know.

I've been doing this for a long time, but I'm kind of worried what it's doing to my body under the hood. Maybe I should maybe I should take a step back, maybe get off of it or reduce my dose or or get off of it and try to find the root cause. They want to they want to revamp their whole situation. How would you go about doing that while managing the inevitable symptoms that are likely to arise? I don't think you have to come off to do labs. Like I would really, because the testosterone is not going to take away your mercury. It's not going to take away your arsenic. It's not going to take away your environmental pollutants, it's not going to take away all these other contributing factors, we'll still see it, it'll pop up in your your biochemical circadian rhythm function between cortisol and melatonin, it's going to pop up in

your heavy metals going to pop up in your environmental pollutants going to pop up in your stool analysis, like testosterone is not going to impact your stool analysis at all. Like, so we're going to see all of those things in there as well. So I actually wouldn't even come off. If you're feeling good, I wouldn't even tell you to come off. I would just get all of your testing done anyways, because we're going to see any kind of issue anyways. But as you were answering, as you were asking that question, I realized I didn't even answer your previous question about somebody, if they could go on while they work on the root cause and then come off. I wouldn't recommend that because it's probably just going to delay suppression. The quickest way for your body to stop doing something is to give a free source of it. So if there's any incoming exogenous hormone,

say testosterone, if you inject exogenous testosterone, your endogenous production will absolutely shut down. The quickest thing to shut something down in the body is to give your body a free resource of it. Why? Because your body is the ultimate efficiency machine. If it doesn't need to do something, it won't be the whole, if you don't use it, you lose it kind of thing that's real in the body, your body reacts very quickly. So if somebody has low testosterone, and they want to supplement with testosterone while they work on the root cause, I think it would be a defeating tactic, because you're going to feel pretty good on the testosterone, and then you're going to remove the root cause. But then when you come off the testosterone, you need to restart the

wheel again on the hypothalamic pituitary gonadal axis. And that takes a while that your body is basically talking with my hands. For the for the audio listeners, imagine there being like a high line, a high horizontal line and a low horizontal line. When your body it when you for hormones exist between these two lines, when hormones pass the high horizontal line, that's when there's going to be endocrine shutdown because your body says, hey, I've seen this much currently in circulation, so I'm not going to make any more. So your body, once it passes a certain threshold, it's going to shut down the hypothalamus pituitary gonadal axis and completely shut down hormone production. Now, hormones have a half-life. So for example,

testosterone cypionate is going to have a half-life anywhere from, say, seven to eight days or seven to 10 days, depending on what research you look at. So that half-life is going to take a while to come down. So like, for example, if you inject 500 milligrams of test cypionate this week, and then you inject another 500 in seven days, well, let's let's pretend that the half life is a magical seven days. If you inject 500 milligrams today, and then you inject another 500 milligrams next week, it's very common in bodybuilding cycling dosages. Well, half of that went through its half life. So that means we are, we still had 250 milligrams of testosterone

in our system, uh, by the time of our next injection of another 500. And then that went through its half-life. Well, now we had 500 left in the system and we injected another 500. So now that goes through its half-life and you can see how that matters when designing, um, a performance enhancing drug course. But you are designing, every single drug you take needs a purpose. It needs a function. You need to understand the half-life. You need to understand the metabolization rates

because this is all gonna work in your favor or not, depending on how you design your cycle. Like if you just go on a forum and like someone says, week one to 10, do this. Week one to four, do this. It's like, there's barely any utility to that. It's a fucking horrible way to approach this.

You need a real coach, but you know, I'm getting sidetracked here. As those half-lives continue to build up, you've got a lot of testosterone in your system and it's going to take a long time to metabolize down to that lower line that I talked about in the beginning of this insane rant. So you are going to metabolize on all those half-lives for probably eight to ten weeks, which is another fucking stupid reason why people start their PCT after their last shot. Like, motherfucker, you're going through half-lives for like eight weeks. I don't know why you're starting your PCT right now. Doesn't make a lick of sense. But again'm gonna get in another rant so let's not do that um you're you're gonna half life your way all the way down until you reach the bottom line

now the bottom line is hypogonadism your body says holy shit there's no hormones here anymore now i've got to restart lh and FSH to go kick off testosterone production again. So that huge long rant was basically outlining when your body passes certain threshold of injectable testosterone, you're going to suppress your natural testosterone because you're eliminating your root cause during that entire time, you're going to be building up levels via half-life in your system to quite high amounts. And that has to half-life its way all the way out of there. So that's going to take eight to 10 weeks until you hit hypogonadism. Then once you hit hypogonadism, then hypothalamus pituitary gonadal access restart takes place which doesn't happen overnight which

is another climb of your body trying to get lhs lh and fsh and testosterone back online to then you'll finally fucking feel good maybe 12 to 14 16 weeks later, sometimes longer. So I'm very big on eliminate that root cause and then let your own natural levels go up without the suppression. If you do the suppression, the whole process will take longer for what you're trying to accomplish. So you keep mentioning the hypothalamic pituitary gonadal axis, and you just mentioned LH a couple of times. Like, at what point is Clomid a better option than straight injectable TRT? Or is that not a good option in your mind?

Dude, like, this is contrarian, but it's not. So if you go on, like, forums and shit, you are suggested to run, say, like a combination of Nova and Clomid and HCG, a lot of these HPTA restart things. If you go to an endocrinologist, they'll just take you off of everything. Like it's very, very common. It's just like, oh, you've been on steroids for that many years and you've lost your fertility and now you're trying to get pregnant again. Okay. Come off everything. I'll see you in six months.

There's no long drawn out bodybuilding, NOVA, Clomid. And this is from an endocrinologist. Somebody who's actually a specialist in this field has tons of formal education, tons of clinical experience, all kinds and has to manage a ton of risks due to insurance and things like this um there is years it's very very common for them to just hey come off of everything and allow the body to restart and i think that in a lot of ways we can kind of trick ourself by moving by doing a kind of protocol that includes say nova clomid, that kind of thing. I know where you're going because Clomid is good for FSH stimulation as well. So we can get some

chromatogenesis in addition to LH getting testosterone synthesis. So Clomid can do those things, but it is a fertility drug. And I think in a lot of cases, we kind of make ourselves feel better, but we kind of only just went from one drug to the next. We're just going from, and then we're chasing another rabbit and then we're chasing this, we're chasing that. And there's no actual systemic break for the body from drug use. So, um, again, that this, this actually does depend upon blood work because you will have predispositions where someone may be more, maybe more predisposed, I guess I'll stick with that word for Nova use or predisposed for Clomid use or predisposed for

HCG during a cycle to maintain fertility, there's a lot of things that would either support or negate use of these compounds. But the fact that they're mandatory is garbage. And the fact that they are prescribed blindly without labs to bodybuilders everywhere and strength athletes in general, I think is complete garbage as well. So a lot of that was said within the context of post-psychotherapy. Um, and I, I met my mostly met for,

for like the, the person who's not doing steroids and they're not looking to do, um, who's that guy? I know like crazy. Hold on. What are we talking about? Yeah.

We just lost our whole audience. Dan said, it's okay to have low testosterone. If I heard him correctly at the beginning because it makes you wiser. And then no steroids. Bummer. No, no.

Do all the steroids. The moral of this episode is to get on every cycle with no labs or professional direction. Just take all the drugs. Yeah, just take drugs. You'll be fine. Go to Tijuana.

I don't know if you've ever been to Tijuana. If you walk around with anyone with any amount of muscle mass, you will be offered steroids at every street corner like diana ball at your local pharmacy it's like yeah okay well once one small handful with breakfast is the prescription so then you're just you're good to go you don't actually need to do any of this stuff just go to tijuana yeah. Yeah. It's really crazy, actually. Have you been down there? It's literally like advertising. I've never been down there.

It's like on the front window. It's like we've got Clareton. We've got Advil. We've got Diana Ball. You're like, whoa, that really got escalated quickly. They got it all. And I trust none of it. I'm like, I have no idea what's in that box i'm not taking it if you're going somewhere where the diana balls beside the

advil you're like wait yeah so no that that that question was mostly uh if a person is just they have all the symptoms they go to the trt clinic and then maybe they get some type of testing aside from just testing their testosterone levels uh their LH is low. And then the guy says ongoing, you can take Clomid to stimulate LH production and thereby testosterone production. And then you don't need to do injectables at all. So it's not post-psychotherapy. It's just, it's just in perpetuity. You could just, you could do this, take a pill rather than the injection. How does that compare? What are the pros and cons of each? How do they compare to each other? The problem with Clomid is actually connected to poor mental health outcomes. So it makes problems to bring this question back to bodybuilding PCT. It makes

PCT worse a lot of times because people are already losing their muscle, they're losing their strength and decreasing their testosterone due to shutdown. But then Clomid actually exacerbates certain mental health issues on top of that. But if you're somebody who who doesn't have any adverse mental health effects to Clomid, and your doctor has looked at the context of your case study and said, yeah, makes sense here for ongoing hepatic ignition, we'll say to keep this thing rolling, then I don't really see any, any, any problem with that. It won't compare it to TRT. That's for sure. Cause you're still going to be within the confines of your own production. So if like a real hammer solution is what you're

after, nothing's going to be injectable testosterone. And injectable testosterone will likely have positive mental health benefits rather than negative ones. So I would be more inclined based on my knowledge and also likely heavily biased from the populations I've worked with. I would be much more inclined to utilize injectable due to it avoiding the mental health outcomes and still having an excellent safety profile when reasonably dosed. Gotcha. Because I know a lot of clinics,

they probably have a handful of clientele that show up and they go, well, I kind of want the benefits, but I really don't want to take a shot all the time, you know, every other day or once a week or whatever, whatever track they're on, you know, for the rest of my life. Uh, what do you got for me? You got anything else that doesn't inquire? It required me to, you know, not just take the shot, but like have needles around all the time and take them with me everywhere I go. And then all the hassle around disposal. And like, you know, a lot of people just don't want the headache. Sure. So you can get a pellet injected into your body that slowly breaks down over time and

releases hormone. Test gel also exists as well. So you could go with testosterone gel. You could go with the pellets. You could go with something like Clomid or Nova, or you could just get your shit together and find out why it's low. Because I think 99% of the people listening to this have some sort of root cause that just goes unaddressed due to

a lack of analyzation of their hidden stressors you mentioned the zinc and boron and a handful of different vitamins minerals and whatnot like um as far as vitamin and mineral deficiencies, what are the big ones that could really cause trouble with testosterone or any of the other important hormones just for feeling happy and normal and full energy, et cetera? Sure, yeah. So vitamin E and zinc are big

in converting angiocene diode over into testosterone. Magnesium and boron are very important in breaking and unbinding testosterone from sex hormone binding globulin. Vitamin D deficiencies are associated with lower testosterone as well. And same with just magnesium and zinc for that matter. Beyond the pathways I just discussed, zinc, magnesium and vitamin D are extremely well demonstrated in the literature, when low, when restored back to good status, they will increase testosterone, but more isn't better. Once you've got adequate status of those vitamins and minerals, you will have improved testosterone, but not if you have too much of

those vitamins and minerals. Those are all big one as well. Vitamin B5 is required when combining cholesterol with vitamin B5 to form pregnenolone. And pregnenolone is your mother of all sex hormones, you need it to make anything you need pregnenolone to make progesterone, cortisol, androstenedione, testosterone, DHEA, all of the estrogens that all begins with pregnenolone. And that requires B5 that's synthesized with B5 and cholesterol in the mitochondria of cells. So that's a big component as well. Vitamin B6 is another one that's kind of underrated and under discussed.

But vitamin B6, like go ahead and just Google vitamin B6 and mental health, vitamin B6 and mood. B6 is deeply connected to a lot of mental health outcomes. And mental health is deeply connected to testosterone levels. So I really think like through the back door, B6 plays a big role. B6 also lowers prolactin. So if somebody has slightly higher prolactin, you'll be more prone to looking at B6. But B6, as far as its effects on dopamine, its effects on serotonin, its effects on melatonin, there's even B6 deficiencies connected to schizophrenia. Like B6 is wildly important for mental health, protein, protein synthesis and all these hormone pathways. So, um, I, uh, to, to relist all of those, it'd be quite a bit, but it was a vitamin E and zinc for androstenedione, uh, zinc, magnesium, and vitamin D for testosterone in general, but specifically, uh, magnesium and boron for unbinding it from a sex hormone

binding globulin, vitamin B5 for the formation process of pregnenolone. specifically, uh, magnesium and boron for unbinding it from a sex hormone binding globulin vitamin B five for the formation process of pregnenolone. And then, um, and then, uh, what was the, the, the final one that I went into? I've just lost it. Uh, very last five, six. Yeah. B six, B six, the last one for the backdoor reasons. Yeah. So all of those, you know, that's a big reason why I'm big on actually multivitamins and multiminerals. Some people kind of pick on those, but multivitamins have some of the more research behind them than anything else.

Like vitamins that if I was going to go to an island, I wouldn't be taken and sit in a weird situation where you can only take one supplement with you to this island. It'd be a multi. That's what I would say. When you look at nutritional biochemistry, it all involves vitamins and minerals. And curcumin is not on this list. That's a rate limiting factor. You know, these certain herbs and adaptogens, they're good within certain contexts, but no pathways operate optimally without max optimal vitamins and minerals. And again, how many people have had those tested?

Very little. So a lot of a lot of people jump into these things, which, again, by the way, if it's not obvious, I'm not against it. I work with a ton of people on TRT. I also work with a ton of people who take illegal TRT. I work with a ton of these people. I'm just a big fan of promoting health first and only using it when you need to. So as a blanket statement for most people,

no need to find a root cause, like before you take a multivitamin, just go take a multivitamin. It's a good catch all for the vast, vast, vast majority of people. The downside is very low. The upside is potentially high. Yeah. And the classic old supplement ZMA is actually pretty, pretty good. ZMA is a combination of zinc, magnesium and B6. And people are notoriously low in all three. Plus, that helps with sleep quality. So the fact that you can take that that's why ZMA does have some connections to testosterone literature purely because of what it contains. So that enhancing sleep quality, plus providing the minerals for optimal hormone synthesis, I would say a multi plus ZMA would be an excellent overall kind of foundation to make sure a lot of

these hormonal pathways are operating the way that they should. Yeah, for a quick recommendation, for the most part, we offer our clients and we take ourselves the that thorn two a day multivitamin if someone's looking for a good source that's a good option yeah absolutely yeah thorn their uh their multi their basic nutrients is excellent um their elite athlete ampm is excellent as well um they have a magnesium bisglycinate as well that I'm a real big fan of for basically just foundational use. And then I really like their basic B-complex

just as a foundational supplement. Very, very common. I'll put it in people's protocol. But also they have a basic B-complex 6, which is still the full B-complex, but a greater emphasis on B six for a lot of situations just like this. Dan Garner, where can the people find you? I can be found at Dan Garner nutrition on Instagram. Don't send me your lab work with your testosterone levels on. I got

a bunch of this on those after a recent podcast. I can with mark bell they just sent you all a picture of it can you just do the same thing i just get dms of lab screenshots of labs i'm like guys i can't just do this on instagram dm it's way more complicated than this but give me a follow at dan garner nutrition on instagram check out my courses at coachgarner.com. Get your blood work at insidetracker.com slash Garner. And that's it. You never know what the downstream effects of doing something incredible are going

to be. Like doing a live lab reading and then your DMs get loaded with everyone's labs. Yeah. That's incredible. Yeah. Fantastic. Turns out you should probably be a client of mine that process that's so good doug larson yeah and by the way you can go listen to that it's like you did like four hours or something like that with mark over over a two-part episode on power

cast so yeah five hours of dan garner spitting knowledge to Mark Bell. So go check that out. I'm on Instagram, Douglas E. Larson. I'm Anders Varner, at Anders Varner. We are Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. Make sure you get over to RapidHealthReport.com where you can see Dan Garner read my labs and then don't send them to him in the DMs either. He doesn't need to read your stool sample in his Instagram feed. That's RapidHealthreport.com.

And you can actually see him talk about my low testosterone that I had last year when I got all my labs done. We'll be doing them again here at some point soon so we can write that. rapidealthreport.com.

Friends, we'll see you guys next week.