Barbell Shrugged - Sex, Stem Cells, and Regenerative Medicine with Dr. Amy Killen Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #512

Episode Date: October 14, 2020

This week only, save 20% on the 20 Rep Back Squat Program for functional fitness athletes using the code “20rep” at checkout. Sale ends Friday.   In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   The science of stem cells. What is regenerative medicine How does training improve sexual dysfunction How does medicine help us age younger What is the perfect combination of science, training, and medicine.   Dr. Amy Killen on Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   This week only, save 20% on the 20 Rep Back Squat Program for functional fitness athletes using the code “20rep” at checkout. Sale ends Friday.   ————————————————   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa ————————————————   Please Support Our Sponsors   Legion Athletics Whey Protein, Creatine, and Pre-Workout - Save 20% using code “SHRUGGED”   Fittogether - Fitness ONLY Social Media App   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   www.masszymes.com/shruggedfree  - for FREE bottle of BiOptimizers Masszymes   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://bit.ly/3b6GZFj Save 5% using the coupon code “Shrugged”

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, we are talking to Dr. Amy B. Killen. We're talking about sex, stem cells, regenerative medicines. You could live to until you're like 145 years old and still look like you're 23. I don't know if that's possible, but if there's somebody that can do it, this podcast is going to teach you how to do it by combining kind of the science, a little bit of the medicine, a lot of training, a lot of nutrition, and a complete package so that you can live forever. You're going to be immortal just by listening to this podcast. That's a really good deal.

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Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'ms varger doug larson coach travis bass dr amy killen how you doing all the way from salt lake city you have the coolest last name ever thank you my full name is dr amy b killen amy that's like my rapper name i love that yeah so, it's good to be here. This is awesome. I'm so excited because I feel like I'm going to live forever and you are the anti-aging MD. We're going to talk about skin a little bit. My skin's good complexion here. I don't have a lot of questions about that. Just keep going, right? Yeah. We're going to talk about sex, but I want to start. This is like three S's in a row. You mentioned stem cells earlier in the pre-show, and I would love to dig into some stem cells because I wouldn't even say this is really new technology.

But before we get into that and how I'm going to live until at least 120 years old and still be able to score a minimum of 315. How did you get into this? What's a little bit of the background to becoming the sex and skin person? So I was actually an emergency physician. I was an ER doctor for about 10 years. That was what I actually trained in, did residency in ER, worked in the emergency medicine hospital in Austin. And towards the end of that, I had my three kids within a two-year period. And I started to have a lot of just all the stress that comes with having three kids in two years. And my husband was out of the town. And it was a whole thing. But basically, realized that I needed to get myself healthier if I was going to survive this. And so I started

learning a lot about preventative medicine and integrative medicine and anti-aging medicine, and eventually left the ER about seven years ago and started to practice doing a lot of hormone optimization, so bioethanol hormones. And what happened was I have all these patients would come to me for hormone problems, and we'd kind of start to fix those. And then they'd come back again a few months later and say, hey, I'm feeling a lot better. I'm losing weight, et cetera. But now can you please help me with either my sex or my skin? And so I started becoming really interested in some of the new things that we can do to help those particular parts of people's lives. You talk about hormones. And one of the scariest things in the world to me is the people that are talking about hormones that don't have an MD

after their name like you do. The misinformation and the amount of content that goes out about hormones is really, really terrifying to me. And I have a daughter. And hormone females is a really weird one because just stages in life and there's so much that goes into it. I guess to actually bring a real conversation to hormones, how can people start to understand what hormones actually do in their lives? I feel like they're just lumped into this big category and you're supposed to eat more vegetables and they just get fixed, but nobody knows what fixed means. Yeah. I mean, you're totally right. There are so many people out there, so many sort of influencer types. I think that's true in everything. That's true

with the diet world, the exercise world, right? There's people who don't actually know that much. They've taken like a course and read a book and they think that, you know, they're like, ah, I'm good to go. I'm going to tell you what works. And that's true of the hormone people as well. Hormones are complicated. They're the main chemical messengers that basically communicate with different parts of your body. So it's not like there's one thing to know about them. It's really a whole thing to know. And the easiest way to learn about them is to work with a physician who has been trained specifically in hormones. So either an endocrinologist who is a specific you know hormone doctor or someone who's had advanced training in like bioidentical hormones and knows all about the

intricacies of those uh definitely not somebody you want to you know do all on your own you got to get information from other people who who actually know something about it well the biggest one for our audience is going to be testosterone which everybody wants more of and unfortunately this little thing called time is catching up. Yeah. And I need more of it throughout the rest of my life. Yet, I have a feeling that the books and all the science are going to tell me that the testosterone is going to be going down as this time thing keeps rolling on. What is like the high level understanding of testosterone? Because as we dig in, I really want to, you know, understand how, how do we use the best, you know, your information and the best products and the best care for ourselves to be able

to increase it slash keep it as long as we can for, to live our best lives. Well, you're, and you're totally right. Testosterone is really important. It's not just important so that you can lift heavy muscles and be super strong, although that's clearly important as well, but it's important. We know that guys who have lower testosterone are more at risk for heart disease, for dementia, for diabetes, for obesity, and for just increased risk of all cause death. Like they, they have a higher mortality rate. So keeping your testosterone up in sort of that mid to upper normal lab range is really important. I always talk to patients initially about lifestyle. So starting from lifestyle, things like lifting heavy weights,

you know, doing a lot of good cardiovascular exercise, making sure you're getting enough branched chain amino acids, making sure you're getting enough vitamins like vitamin D and zinc, and you know, get a little sun every now and again. Things like that can make a huge difference. And then of course, if you need further help, there are proper ways to supplement testosterone, to replace testosterone. If you've tried the lifestyle and it's not enough and you're still having declines in testosterone levels. Yeah. What are these? What are the- I have a question about, Juan, regarding- regarding happens every time it's a part of, it's a part of the zoom lifestyle. We live here regarding testosterone and getting older. Like I feel like almost every single time a friend of

mine who's in their thirties and is relatively healthy. We live in the health and fitness strength conditioning world. All my friends lift weights. They all do cardio and Metcons and CrossFit and whatever else. And almost every time one of them goes and gets their hormones tested, they come back and they say, my doctor says I have the testosterone of an 80-year-old man. What's the deal? And it happens, I feel like, more often than not. Like, how is, that's anecdotes for sure. But number one, have you seen that in your experience? And what's the deal with that being so common? Well, our testosterone levels as a population have declined significantly over the last 50 years.

So if you look at the normal levels, you know, 50 years ago versus now, we have quite a much lower normal level now than we did then. In fact, the reference ranges, the labs have actually had to move the reference ranges, those normal lab ranges down to accommodate for the fact that so many of our men have lower testosterone levels than they used to. So it's contributing to lower sperm counts, more infertility, just increased general weakness, increased obesity, belly fat, difficulties with lifting weights, all the things that a lot of you guys probably see a lot of it in working with people who are just starting weightlifting and such. But it's a problem in the whole population. Certainly a lot of its lifestyle, we're just not as active as we used to be, we don't, you know, go out and, and hunt things and

lift heavy things and, and, you know, get sunlight and all of that, like we used to. But there's also probably an environmental toxin component to it. The foods we eat, the lotions we put on our body, you know, the air we breathe, all of those things can also affect how our endocrine system is working and how we're how much testosterone we're making. Is there good science on cosmetics? You mentioned lotion. Is there good science on shampoos and soaps and lotions and whatever else? Yeah, there are actually a number of the components in skincare and lotions and cosmetics that are considered to be endocrine disruptors that basically work on some component of the endocrine system. So whether that's testosterone or thyroid or affecting different parts of it, but basically can disrupt those normal hormone messengers.

And I like to refer patients to the environmental working group website, which is, it's like the ewg.org. If you have a, you know, a lotion or something and you want to see what's in it and whether it's, it's considered to be healthy and such, you can just go to that ewg.org and it'll, you can actually go through all the science. Like if you type in, you know, whatever your thing is, parabens, and you can, it can give you all kinds of information about the studies that have been done,

the potential problems, you know, it's, it's a great resource for people who are worried about that kind of thing. That's awesome. I'm curious, you know, you said that you work with people on their hormones and then they come back and they're saying, now, will you help me with sex? Doesn't that go hand in hand? A lot of people who like, you know, let's say they have low testosterone or even women who have like low estrogen and testosterone, but normally when you fix their hormones, doesn't that also fix their libido as well? Oftentimes it helps for sure. And certainly, and you're absolutely right. Certainly if you have

low testosterone, whether you're a man or a woman, you oftentimes leads to low libido. But it's not always as simple as fix the testosterone and everything else, you know, falls into place. It's, it's, there's a lot of other variables and components that are associated with sexual health and being able to have sort of optimized sexual function. So what I see is that people start to care more though about their sex lives after they're starting to feel better. So obviously you want to get over the hurdle of like the fact that you're depressed and you have no energy and you're gaining weight and you know, you have no motivation and all of that. But once you kind of get over that hurdle, you're like, Oh, well, what's the next level of health I can

achieve? Yeah. What is? I'm asking. I mean, that's what I'm here for. I'm here for the sex. I mean, all the other stuff is cool, but where do you go past that? I come to you, I'm like, all right, I'm taking testosterone. I feel better. Now I want to have lots more sex. What would you say?

Yeah, so the thing for men is to use it. I'm asking for a friend. Yeah, no, for all your friends. He's a weightlifting coach so you want you know you're keeping your penis healthy and keeping that system healthy is is incredibly important and no one really ever talks about how you can do that so things you could think about testosterone we just talked about um keeping your nitric oxide up is really important you know also same thing for you know strength and conditioning but men especially over the age of about 40 your nitric oxide up is really important. Also, same thing for strength and conditioning.

But men, especially over the age of about 40, your nitric oxide levels are about half what they were when you were 20. And nitric oxide – Do you need a supplement? Yeah. So supplements and exercise and sunlight and some of these things. But keeping nitric oxide – nitric oxide is the chemical that tells your blood vessels to basodilate, to go from being small to being big to deliver the blood flow.

So in order to have an erection and keep an erection, you have to have nitric oxide levels that are high enough to get that blood flow where it needs to go. And that's one of the problems that we see with aging people, men and women, is that you can't make as much nitric oxide when you're older as you can when you're younger. And so supplementing is key. Avoiding antiseptic mouthwash is really important. I know. Before we go too far into that, you just said supplement and then didn't name any

supplements. I'm sure everyone's wondering, well, what supplements do I take if I want to maintain an erection? That sounds like an important specific thing. I can see inside Travis's brain. He wants to know for sure. So things like L-arginine, L-citrulline have been well studied. Beets and beet extract. I like the brand Neo40, which I don't have any affiliation with, but they have a really good nitric oxide product that's been studied a lot in some of these things. There's a product called Affirm. But basically, a nitric oxide boosting stimulant, often with L-arginine, L-citrulline, and other things, can increase your ability to make nitric oxide or increase your nitric oxide levels.

Sweet. I know in your body there's specific types of nitric oxide. And there's one specific type that works for. And there's like one specific type that works for erections. And there's another type that works for other things. If you just take like a pre-workout supplement, like NO Explode, since it has NO in the title, is that good enough for the sex category? Is that just used for vasodilation pre-workout just so you get faster blood flow, more blood volume, whatever, before you train? Generally, if it works, if it works at all, if it works to help get the blood flowing,

then it should work as well for sexual function. It's not necessarily that you have to take a specific one for your penis, but you do want to take something after the age of 40, unless you're eating a lot of nitrate-rich foods and you're avoiding some of the other things like the mouthwash and such, where you're able to get nitric oxide from food. So if you're not getting it from food as well as other places, then supplementing is a good idea. When people come to you with this stuff, do you typically find that there is a hormonal imbalance or are they just bored out of their minds with their life and every aspect of it? And the biggest problem is that they just need a little bit of excitement to get them going again. Like go lift some weights, go get off your ass and go do things. And potentially that'll, that'll increase, you know, every, all of the other factors that lead to wanting to

actually have more sex, which is being happier. That's definitely a part of it, for sure. I mean, when we talk about sexual health, you have the physical part that plays into it, the blood flow, the blood vessels, the health of the penis, etc. But you also have all these other things. You have mental health, emotional health, spiritual health, relationship health. All of those also play into it. So I'm not a sex therapist, and so I don't necessarily –

I talk to patients, but if they have a lot of problems with either their relationship or just like their life in general or that kind of thing, then I recommend that they talk to someone who does that. But I can help with the physical part, the blood flow part, the nerves, the cells, that part of it. But you're right. It's everything. What about vitamin D? Do you need sunlight, or could you just supplement with vitamin D?

You can definitely supplement. The vitamin D is necessary to make testosterone. But we know that sunlight actually will also increase your nitric oxide levels. So if you want to kind of get a two for one, then not that you don't want to burn your skin or things like that, but go outside for 10 minutes. Just lay outside and get a little bit of sun. It's great for you. I have a big question because of my skin type, you know, like I don't tan really well. So I use sunscreen.

So if I go out and I have lots of sunscreen, will I still get vitamin D and not just oxide or what? Not too much. So for you or for someone like you, I would do a supplement with vitamin D. And then you can even do something like red light therapy at home. Do you know what that is? Like, there's like, there's like, red light therapy is fantastic for all kinds of things. But basically, it's either oftentimes like panels that red light it's spectrum of light between like six and seven hundred or so that is not going to burn your skin it's not going to cause any kind of skin damage or problems it's not painful not dangerous but it can activate atp production in your mitochondria so increasing energy production in your cells so it's great for all kinds of things including increasing nit oxide, as well as helping with skin and hair restoration. It does a lot of things, but just look up red light therapy. It's fantastic.

Juve. Do you work with any companies? Do you want to tell them that they're awesome? Juve is the only people that we've ever really- Yeah. I mean, I don't have any affiliations. Juve is a popular brand for sure, but there are a lot of good brands out there. When it comes, when it comes to the mask, do you want to, what's up? Oh, um, when it comes to the, the, the anti-aging piece, what is like, is there a natural decline to a lot of this, like a general sex drive? Do I need to be supplementing testosterone? I mean, we're all trying to stay slightly ahead of the curve, but what is almost like the normal decline before there's not really anything wrong with you? You're just kind of getting older and you may need to supplement to stay slightly ahead of the curve.

There's definitely an age-related decline. Even if you're as healthy as you can be, you'll have some decline in testosterone levels, some decline eventually in erectile function, things like that. But certainly the things that you're doing on a daily basis, what you're eating, you're sleeping, you're stressed, you're exercising, all of that makes the biggest difference in trying to slow that decline down. As far as whether you should supplement, it really depends on where your levels are and how you're feeling. So if you feel great and your testosterone levels are really pretty solid

and pretty good, then I wouldn't say you need any extra. But I would keep an eye on it, you know, make it your blood check once a year or so and see what's happening. And if it starts to go down, or especially in sort of the lower part of the normal reference range, then that's the time to kind of talk about what are the options as far as supplementing. Yeah. Go ahead. I was just going to say, what about for females with testosterone? And I've

heard lately of females actually supplementing testosterone, you know, small doses. And then, of course, with estrogen, what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, absolutely. So women also need testosterone. Their levels for us are about a 10th of what levels are for you guys, but it's still really important. And for the same kinds of things, for motivation, for libido, for burning fat, for getting rid of, for building muscle. So I definitely have a lot of women who take testosterone in addition to either progesterone and then after menopause, estrogen. But testosterone and progesterone are two hormones that even before menopause, like, you know, even starting at age, you know, 35 or so can start to go down, you know, in a way that is noticeable as far as

symptoms and workouts and things like that. When you start to get into kind of the the stem cell side of things which we were we were talking about a little bit earlier how does that play into kind of the longevity of just being active and and living a healthy life all I really know about stem cells is that you have a bum shoulder and you don't want to get surgery and we can kind of go in and recreate the wheel but what does that look like really on like a health and wellness longevity side of things? So stem cells are, you know, you have stem cells all over your body and they're like the master cells that basically if you have any kind of injury or, or any kind of problem in any tissue, the stem cells are the ones that can actually actually replicate themselves and create more

cells for that tissue. So all it's not, you can't do that with all cell lines. So it's very important that you have stem cells. And what happens over time is you begin to have a reduction in the number of total stem cells that you have, first of all, so your stem cell pool goes down and the stem cells that you have are just not as active. So like they're not cranking out as, as many of themselves as they were before. Which, which, you know, this makes sense intuitively. Like, you know, I know that I, I was mountain biking last week and I, and I cut myself or, you know, I had some road rash from mountain biking and that my, my road rash will take me, you know, weeks to heal at this

point. But my 10 year old daughter was road biking and she healed up in like three days. And that's stem cells. She has young person stem cells and she has lots of them. I have older person stem cells and not as many. So what we're trying to do with any of these sort of stem cell therapies is we're trying to activate a person's own stem cells to get them to be more regenerative, to get them to crank out more of the things that keep the tissue healthy. So that's a general idea, whether we're treating a shoulder or skin or hair or a penis with stem cells. Wait, you can – yeah, hold on. Talk. Slow down a second. What are you sticking into me?

Producing more. You can make the body produce more stem cells. It's like a field trip. Can we go and do this? Yeah. Let's hear about this. Come to Utah. come to utah it's the only place they got it so we do there are procedures that are actually super simple it sounds it sounds like it sounds like it'd be hard but basically where i take um stem cells from the patient like do take it like take a little bit of fat and take some cells from their fat or even do a bone marrow aspiration usually i just get some fat like you can do a little just take a little bit of fat and take some cells from their fat or even do a bone marrow aspiration. Usually, I just get some fat. You can just take a little bit of the patient's fat from a love handle, get the stem cells isolated, and then I can inject those stem cells back into the penis with a very small needle after numbing it with just a numbing cream. It's actually a super simple-

Probably doesn't hurt at all. Sounds painful, not painful. It's not painful. It's one of the least painful things that I do, honestly. But you're basically injecting it right into the corpora cavernosa, which are the two tubes that fill with blood when you have an erection. So the cells in there tend to get older as you get older, and they become less stretchy and less functional. The blood vessels get older. They get atherosclerotic.

So essentially we're trying to increase the blood flow, the blood vessel formation, repair some of the cells that have kind of gotten old a little bit. And so I do these procedures all the time and try to either treat someone who has erectile dysfunction and has some problems, or I have a lot of guys who are just like very health and sort of longevity minded, who want to do these kind of procedures to try to prevent, you know, problems from happening in the future. The erectile dysfunction thing. You just mentioned that. What, what is a lot of the like root cause of that?

Something about that doesn't make sense to me at all. I don't understand. Do you not believe in erectile dysfunction? I totally, I know it's a thing. It just something about it doesn't fully make sense. Like, I don't understand. One of the cool things about interviewing is I hear these words, they happen in public and you turn on the TV and like, there's every commercial break, there's a commercial for fixing erectile dysfunction. I'm like, who are these people? They're clearly not walking down the street with the sign on their chest that says,

I have ED. Like they are in the commercials. And then by 20 seconds later, they're like happy and in a hot tub on a cliff. But like, why is that a result of not living your life optimally? Or what are some of the like leading causes that actually get you to a point where you just look down and you're like, what happened? Where did it go? That's a great question. I'm glad that you asked. I'll make sure, just so I make sure I never do these things. Right. Trying to stay ahead of this thing, man. I thought you wanted to come see me in Utah.

It's like, do not swear. I will never swear again. I promise. So ED is interesting. The most common cause of ED is some kind of vascular problem. So vascular meaning, you know, bleeding blood flow problem. The cells in the penis, the smooth muscle cells, the ones that become stretchy whenever you have an erection, those oftentimes get replaced by like fibrous cells or even fat cells, either with age or with inflammatory lifestyles. So people who are diabetic, people who have high blood pressure, people who are sedentary, all the things that cause general inflammation in your body,

all the things that are kind of bad on our bad list, that causes the cells within the penis to essentially age quickly and become less functional because they actually turn into different types of cells that are not as stretchy. And so all of a sudden you don't get, you can't get, you know, as big an erection and you can't keep it because the blood just flows right back out. So that's one cause. The other cause, which is similar, is that the blood flow that goes to the penis, so the actual arteries that supply the penis are similar to the ones that supply your heart or your brain or other places like that. So if you get atherosclerosis, like you get plaque buildup, again, from the same kind of reasons, you know, diet, lifestyle, hereditary, things like that, but essentially plaque buildup, we see the changes, we see the plaque buildup,

the effects of that in the penis before we see it in your heart or your brain. So a lot of times ED is like an early warning sign that, you know, hey, in 10 years, you could have a heart attack, or in 20 years, you could have a stroke. Essentially, we're seeing the changes in the penis first, because the blood flow is not getting to the penis because you have plaque. So again, a lot of lifestyle stuff contributes to plaque formation as well. So those are the most common reasons that we have ED. And even just aging itself obviously contributes to both of those pathways. Yeah.

I imagine when you're in an office – For people that have those issues and the cells have changed and the blood flow isn't what it used to be, does Viagra work for those people temporarily or is that not off the table as well? No, it does. And so Viagra and all of those medications, Cialis, Viagra, what we call the PDE5I inhibitors, basically what they do, and this is actually kind of interesting, I think, is they keep your nitric oxide in the penis around longer. So they kind of prevent that nitric oxide from getting broken down as quickly.

So nitric oxide, again, it's like opening the blood vessels, getting the blood flow to the penis and the Viagra keeps it there for longer periods of time. And so they do work for sure. The problem is that in guys over 40 or so, if they're not taking extra nitric oxide or doing things to supplement their levels, they don't have nitric oxide to begin with. And so I have a lot of patients that will be taking Viagra, you know, consistently, it works, it works, it works, it works. All of a sudden, they're having to double their dose, it's not working as well, it's not working as well. And then all of a sudden, it's not working at all. And a lot of that is because they don't have the nitric oxide for the medicine to even work on. So some simple things, like I was mentioning before, like getting rid of your your mouthwash with that, which actually prevents you from being able to make your own nitric oxide from food,

is something easy you can do to help keep your levels up or taking a supplement or exercising regularly. So I can't remember your question, but hopefully I answered it. Wait, comment on the mouthwash thing again. What was that all about? So antiseptic mouthwash, the kind of mouthwash that's like Listerine, the kind that kill the bacteria in your mouth. What happens is one of the ways you can get nitric oxide, especially after the age of 40, is you can take it in with food. So foods like green leafy vegetables, spinach, arugula, things like that, beets are high in nitric oxide, even like dark chocolate. But you have to break it down from the food, the nitrates in food in nitric oxide even like dark chocolate um but you have to break

it down from the food the nitrates in food into nitric oxide in your body and that happens in two steps and one of the steps is in your mouth it's the bacteria in your mouth that live there that are breaking the nitrates into nitrite and if you use mouthwash that kills those bacteria then you don't have the ability to convert that food into nitric oxide in your body. So it's a super simple thing that guys don't even know about. But if you're using daily mouthwash that kills those bacteria, just get rid of it. So but that's not toothpaste. That's just mouthwash. Yeah, no, still brush your teeth. Just don't. Just don't.

Don't want to kill all those bacteria because the bacteria, you know, it's part ofwash. Yeah, no, still brush your teeth. Just don't. Just don't. Don't want to kill all those bacteria. Because the bacteria, you know, it's part of the microbiome, which I'm sure that you've heard about. You know, we have this bacteria all over the place. And in our mouth is one of the places. And we actually want to keep the good bugs, if you will, in our mouth. We got to take a break. We got to thank our sponsors, Organifi.com forward slash shrug.

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So yes, Masszymes is the one that I choose. We work with them. They're beautiful. I love them. They send me all kinds of delicious products and this is really the only one that I choose. We work with them. They're beautiful. I love them. They send me all kinds of delicious products. And this is really the only one that I take. MassDimes is awesome. And it's their initial product that they launched and it's been around for a very long time. I highly recommend you take it. And on top of that, you get to save an awesome amount of money by going over to buyoptimizers.COM forward slash shrugged. That is where you can use the coupon code shrugged to save 10%. That's B-I-O-P-T-I-M-I-Z-E-R-S.COM forward slash shrugged. It is the lowest price you're going to find. Use the code shrugged to save 10%. And of course, our friends over at Legion. Let me tell you about Legion. This is another company. I love them. I love their proteins.

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Oh, that's scary because you're not telling me what it is. You just called a proprietary and the FDA doesn't even back it. And trust me, I was at Olympia. I saw all the scariness. I saw all the scariness of the supplements. That's why we chose Legion because Legion's legit. They do not really mess around. Everything's scientifically proven, naturally sweetened. It's awesome. And in order to ensure that you are happy, they have a 100% money back guarantee and free shipping. So here's what I do, team. After I work out or before I work out, one of the two, I'm taking two scoops of the vanilla.

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pre-workout, some vitamin D, creatine, omega-3s, and the one that I take the most, whey protein. So those are the five that work. You should totally go buy them over there. Super high quality products, taste delicious, mix great. And you can save 20% by using the code shrugged at bylegion.com forward slash shrug. That's B-U-Y-L-E-G-I-O-N dot com forward slash shrug. Friends, we're going to get back to AIMB KILLING. I brush my teeth less than most people tell me i should mainly because i think that bacteria is good the whole barbell shrugged universe just figured out that i brush my teeth less than average but i think that there's a lot of

mainly because of what you said uh and and having the bacteria i feel like being a little bit dirty is is more normal than being squeaky clean i don't think she's saying that at all but no no she's talking about mouthwash but that's how i conceptualized her thing before talking to you so now i can brush my teeth like a normal human being dr killett says don't brush your teeth ever. Yeah, don't do it. Just let them get out of your mouth. Well, then you're not going to have sex anyway. That's true. That'll solve that problem. That's why we're doing Zoom calls now because of me.

I would imagine that you walk into your office and you open the top drawer and it's just filled with all the goodness. There's testosterone in there. There's some stem cells in there. There's probably some HGH, like everything that is like, like a playground for meatheads or people that want to live forever or just be stronger or have better sex. But how long does it take before we get to, before we get to play in that playground and, and you're kind of prescribing these, changes, you know, what is the process to actually working with somebody before we just start shooting them up with the real deal?

I mean, it depends on the person. You know, we do intakes of every patient. And obviously, if someone's already very healthy and doing all the sort of lifestyle things already, and they still have problems with their symptoms or with their lab, then we can then kind of move into using other therapies and therapeutics. If there's someone who really needs a lot of help with lifestyle first, then we'll start with that. And then there's some patients who will kind of do them, you know, both the same time. For instance, if you have someone who is overweight and diabetic, and they have really low testosterone, it's sometimes helpful to go ahead and start a

little testosterone because that gives them a little bit of motivation and then they can get to the gym and then they get to the gym and they're working out and also the blood sugar is starting to come down because the testosterone can help with that. And so they can work synergistically. So I don't have a hard and fast rule like I'm not starting anything on you until you've done this thing for a year. I think it's really depending on the patient and what they're doing, what they're wanting, what they're needing, all of that. What are the risks of hormone supplementation, like testosterone? Are there risks?

There are. With testosterone, when you're supplementing testosterone, you're shutting down your own body's production for the most part. Because if you think about it, your body's like, oh, hey, I'm already getting testosterone. I don't have to make it. Your body's super lazy. I'd rather just sit there and be chill. So you're going to shut down your own production from your testes. So you can get shrinking of your testes. So that's something that a lot of guys don't love. And if you get off testosterone, then there can be a period of time where your levels were even lower than they were when you started. So you don't want to be like, you know, a 30 year old guy taking testosterone, if you can help it, because you have many years ahead of you that you would prefer not to have to be on testosterone, you know, every day or every week. But if you're a 55 year old guy who has low levels, you're probably not going to, you know, increase your

testosterone a lot, at least on your own. And so taking testosterone replacement makes more sense. But yeah, there are some risks. What about babies? You know, like a 30 year old, if they're on testosterone, does it like make it harder for a man to produce sperm if they're on testosterone? Yeah, I can. If your testosterone levels get too high, it feeds back and affects the hormones that actually create your sperm. So it is something that can cause infertility if you're on really high doses. So you definitely want to work on that with a specialist if you're trying to have, if you even want to have kids now, or even like you're thinking, I want to have them in the future i don't i try to avoid putting younger guys you know younger than 40 ish on testosterone if i can help it because i really don't want to shut down

their own bodies production um because they can usually make it on their own they just need some help figuring out how it's one of the sad things about you know being a powerlifter and expower a lot of my friends you know because of the nature of my sport, where people take testosterone too early, a lot of the guys can't have babies, you know. Now they're my age, you know, they can have kids and they can't. So it's definitely something that any young person listening should be aware of. If you're going to go down that route, know that that's a big issue.

Obviously, I didn't do anything to affect me. I got four, but, you know, maybe I should have taken more. But my friends, a lot of my friends are sterile. So it's a sad part of it. It's very sad. And I think it's really important if you're going to take it to work with someone, again, to work with a physician who knows what they're doing. It's best not to get it from the shady guy in the corner at the gym who's handing out needles and injectables. I think taking the actual testosterone versus some of the synthetic

steroids is better, and then keeping your doses in a healthy range. And then checking your blood levels, checking your estrogen levels, checking your red blood cell counts. These are things that can be really affected by testosterone, your lipids, like your cholesterol. And if there's no one checking them, then you can get really, really out of whack and you can have a lot of problems from that. Yeah. Don't your HDLs get really low? Do you abuse testosterone too much? Yeah. Yeah. Your HDL can get really low and that's your kind of good cholesterol. And so in people who are either taking really high doses of testosterone or they're taking, you know, other anabolic steroids, you can get low HDL.

It doesn't always bounce back. Like sometimes it just stays low, you know, even when you get off of it. I don't know why. Does that put you at greater risk for cardiovascular issues? I can't. Yeah. Heart attacks and whatever else. Yeah. It's one of those things you, you definitely want that number higher. What did you do to counter that? Let's say that, say you're on testosterone and the ACLs are dropping, you know, how do you counter that? Usually I'll adjust the dose of the testosterone. If you're on a dose that keeps you within that

normal lab range, like my goal for patients is usually to kind of have them towards the upper part of that normal lab range. So for instance, if the lab range is between 300 and 1200 for testosterone, for a healthy man, then you know, if I can get them 900, 1000, 1100, somewhere in that kind of upper part, then then usually you don't start to see changes in HDL. It's really the guys who are at testosterone of 2000 or 3000. They're just way higher than you're going to really start seeing a lot of those problems. How often are people coming to you really actually for the performance enhancing side, or do you handle purely the health and longevity piece?

I do mostly health and longevity. I am certainly not opposed to performance enhancement, but that's not really my specialty. I don't do a lot of that in my practice. I am certainly not opposed to performance enhancement, but that's not really my specialty. I don't do a lot of that in my practice. I try to focus on getting people to feel better, look better, et cetera, and then stay healthier. Yeah. You work with a good or have done a podcast with our good friend, Evan DeMarco, and I just want to look like that guy looks. Yeah. Whatever you did to that guy, double the dose and send it over i'm sure i could i'm sure i could not take responsibility for that man is so damn shredded and yeah other things man match i'll i'll put you in contact with him so you can figure out what he was on

um what actually when when we think about longevity, though, it's a very interesting conversation to me because I really believe that with some of the advancements in medicine, how long should I plan on living for? If I live optimally, I do everything that I'm supposed to do, and I'm one of your patients, and we're properly dosing me, how long can I live for with a pretty good quality of life? That basically means I can still back squat, let's be honest.

I think it depends on how old you are when you get started. There's a lot of numbers out there. I'm planning on 40, because you just said 40 is the number. Yeah. There's a lot of speculation that the new age of where we're going to be is more like 120, 150. Like my kids, for instance, may live to 150. I may live to 120. There are new advancements coming in out every day, you know, everything from stem cell therapies to, you know, getting rid of sedentcent cells and gene therapy. It's all these things that are just coming down the pipe right now that within the next five years or so may be available for the masses to try and to use. I think that those things will be even more game-changing

than what we know about nutrition and health and all the things that we're already learning like that. What are those things? I keep hearing more and more about senescent cells and autophagy and that whole world. What's the actual science say there? So senescent cells are, as your cells get older, one of the things they can do, they can die and just be gone

or they can turn into these senescent cells, which they're often called zombie cells. So the zombie cells kind of stick around and they are kind of angry and they release these called zombie cells. So the zombie cells kind of stick around and they are kind of angry and they release these harmful inflammatory things. So they're like, they're toxic and, you know, to the cells around them. It's like an angry person at a party. That's the senescent cell. Like it's toxic to the whole environment, right? Like you'd rather they just leave the party than be senescent. So that's what the senescent cells are. And so they have a lot to do with aging. And

there's a lot of research that shows that if we can get rid of those senescent cells, like we can kill them, get rid of them, and get rid of all their anger and inflammation that they're causing, then they can slow down the aging process. One of the big groups in this sort of anti-aging longevity research is researching senescence. How do we get rid of these cells? You know, what's safely, what are some safe ways to do it, et cetera. So I hear people talk about fasting in relation to that and or potentially sauna use, if I remember correctly. What are some of the methods to potentially kill off some of those senescent cells to hopefully increase longevity,

delay aging, et cetera? Yeah, intermittent fasting is one of the best studied ways. And they know that fasting at about three days of fasting, of no food, just water or minimal food, can kill off a lot of those cells. Even shorter periods of fasting, like maybe 24 hours has been shown to promote cell turnover in certain cell populations. So even briefer periods of fasting

can potentially be a good thing. There are also a lot of different medications out there that are like rapamycin, which you might have heard about, which is already an approved medication for something else. But we know that actually it works really well to kill senescent cells. So there's quite a bit of research into that type of drug and other things in that class. So I think, you know, in the future, I think that we'll see some drug therapies coming out that are options for taking, you know, maybe once a month you take this drug and you get rid of some of your senescent cells and then you just, you know, carry on. And that could have some benefits long-term for aging.

I have a sauna right behind this thing. Should I be in this thing every day? Like, what are the real benefits for me turning this thing up and trying to cook myself? Yeah, saunas have been pretty well studied, especially like in the Finnish saunas. The biggest things- We went to Sweden, Bash had one in his room. Yeah, it was awesome. The best. They're big over there. I got it every day. There's supposed to be a lot of cardiovascular disease benefits, so improving things like heart disease risk and plaque formation and high blood pressure and some of that is supposed to

be really helpful with saunas. I don't know if there's other people who talk about getting rid of toxins and this and that, but I think that most of the evidence that I've seen is around like cardiovascular disease and even some studies on cancer prevention and things like that. So there's still a lot to be learned, I think, but you know, it feels, it feels good and it's fun. So I say, get in there. I would, I would like to add, you know, like if someone's out there who's wanting to think about hormone replacement i would definitely recommend going to someone like you who knows i've heard of i've heard people going to the general practitioner to get you know testosterone and like the advice they're getting

is like i'm like i know enough to know this it's crazy like you know one guy went one of my friends and they're gonna they're gonna take like like a half a cc, let's say 100 milligrams once a month. And I'm like, it's impossible. Because it's like a seven-day active lifespan of the testosterone. And I'm like, it can't work. It's like all it's going to do is make you plummet your own and it's going to shut you down and you're not going to get any benefits. It's like the worst of all worlds. Right. Right. Yeah, no, absolutely. And,

and that's the thing, you know, coming from emergency medicine background, I didn't learn anything about these, you know, I learned about the hormones in general, but like very, very, very minimal stuff. And so I didn't know much about it until afterwards. And I went through a fellowship program specifically looking at, you know, using these hormones for longevity and, and all the benefits. So absolutely. I think that people, I think people are becoming more and more aware of the benefits of some of these hormone replacements and bioidentical hormones, but you definitely want to have a physician that is, you know, that is aware of the science and knows how to use them and, and is, you know, is, is will work with you know, is, is,

will work with you because everyone is very different as far as dosing and what works best and things like that. When I'm 40 and I come to you and we, we get hooked up on all the good stuff, the, is there a big problem if I stop using it? Like is, is, is there, or is there a way to come off of testosterone without having massive negative repercussions? You can come off of it. I mean, certainly there are some things you can do.

For instance, you can stop taking testosterone and you can start taking HCG or Clomid, which are going to increase your own production of testosterone, which are some medications that can be used for that. Yeah, I mean, it depends on how healthy you are coming in. But in general, you can get off of testosterone, and we can kind of bounce you back. But it does take some time in some people. So that's why you don't want to start unless you really need to.

Yeah. I know some people go to Clomid before they go to straight injectable exogenous testosterone is there any benefits there over yeah you know for for younger guys so first of all both clomid clomid is actually a female fertility drug so it's that's what it's fda approved for so it's used off label for men um very commonly used but it is used off label same thing with hdg it's used off label so but basically those things are great for men who I think are younger and still have testes that are working, if we want to increase their own production that way. So I can get, you know, the younger guy who's maybe you're 35 years old or 40 years old and have never been on testosterone or steroids or anything,

have low testosterone levels. If we can try Clomid or HCG for a period of time, as we're working with them on their lifestyle, and they're getting them into weight lifting and getting them into other things to boost their own levels, then the goal would be to eventually get them off of the Clomid and HCG because we kind of jumpstarted their body's production of testosterone. And then they continue that jumpstart with all the things that they can do in their lifestyle to keep it going. So I do use it in the younger population quite a bit to try to prevent me from having to put them on testosterone where it's going to shut down their own production, you know, from then on, at least for a little while.

Why does weightlifting work so well? Keep them from ever having to or just, or it just delays how long they wait until they actually do it. It usually delays it. I mean, it's depending on the person. But some people, it delays 10 years. Or it can be something pretty significant if they can make other changes to their life. So in theory, all guys at some point, for the most part, are going to have low testosterone at some point.

You may be 80 years old at that point. You may not care. But some people people it happens to a lot faster too so we're just trying to kind of you know move that that curve a little bit so that we're not seeing the low levels as early in in life yeah here mash mentioned kids a few minutes ago uh i have a female friend who has one single kid and even a couple years after um you know she was done birthing and all that uh she just like couldn't get horny just like no there's just nothing there so she went and got her testosterone checked and it was super super low and they said yeah you have to be like at

this minimum threshold before horniness is even a thing like can you put numbers to that or give me some more details there for any of the ladies listening? It's interesting with women, the lab values, although they matter, I don't think they matter quite as much for testosterone as they do with men. What I mean by that is that you can have a relatively normal testosterone level in a female and still have symptoms of having low testosterone. And if we get you a little bit higher, you can definitely feel that. The lab values for testosterone, I don't have them on top of my head, but they're basically about a 10th of what men's levels are. So you want to check your lab, you check your values, see where you are. You always want to check free testosterone as well as total testosterone.

And that's usually, if you have a doctor who knows what they're doing, they'll do that as well. But the free testosterone is what's actually available to use in your body. So that's what's actually working right now. The total testosterone, a lot of it's bound up in protein and such. And so it's less of an indicator of what's actually happening. But yeah, with women, you know, absolutely. Testosterone as well as progesterone can make a huge difference, even in relatively younger women. What happens when your free testosterone is potentially even more important than your total testosterone? I keep smashing Anders on questions.

Is your free testosterone more important than your total? And I've been told that like 2% of your total should be your free. So if you're at a thousand, then you should be at 20 for your free. Does that make sense? Yeah, it can be a little higher for your free though. So I'm having, you know,

40 or 50 is not an unusual free testosterone for men. But yes, free testosterone in general is more indicative of how you're actually using testosterone and how you're really feeling. So I look at both of those numbers. You know, a lot of the studies that have been done in men for testosterone, whether that's heart disease studies

or ED studies or whatever, did look at total testosterone. So we do check both because they both have utility. But yeah, the free is what's actually active in your body. So it's good to know what that number is. What happens when women actually get pregnant? Because the testosterone must be through the roof because that turns into just the sex drive is beyond.

It's at a level that I can't meet. Yeah. It's not possible what happens at that time. I had never met my wife until that happened. And then I was like, look, we're going to have to talk about this. You've exceeded expectations. I can't keep it up at this rate. Yeah.

That is very common with a lot of women. Not everyone, but that's something that certainly happens for a lot of people. All of a sudden, it just turns on. She turned into a savage. I couldn't even know what to do. She just looked at me like I was some serpent that I was just otherworldly capable. And I said, look, we've got to back this down. I can't keep up.

These marathons. You need to go see her and let's see you keep up. I don't know. Who's the problem? Is hers on the rise? Next time she gets pregnant, I'll be like, look, I need help. Get me through this. Get me through this.

It was incredible. I didn't know that was possible. Give me a shot, man. Totally is. The other thing that we do that's me a shot, man. Yeah, totally is. The other thing that we do that's really cool. I'm not sure. Have you guys talked to the gains wave people? Have you guys talked about the shockwave therapy for recalifunction? No. Oh, that's so fun. So there, so there's,

there's something called acoustic wave therapy or shockwave therapy that we use to treat. We treat, we treat ED with it, but we also treat a lot of guys who don't have that. Again, it's kind of this preventative thing, trying to increase blood flow, keep the nitric oxide turned on, recruit stem cells. But essentially, it's an office-based treatment that's totally non-invasive.

There's no needles. It's 20 minutes, essentially, with a medical assistant or someone in the office that we use this device, and we send these sound waves into the penis and you do like a series of treatments over the course of a few weeks, it makes huge differences. And doesn't it hurt? No.

Well, we use a numbing cream. It doesn't hurt, but if you didn't, it would hurt a little bit. It's a little zippy. I've had, I've had shockwave,

but not on my penis, but on my hip. Yeah. It's the same thing. It's the same hurt. Yeah. It's the same thing. It's the same technology. Basically, it's the same idea, too. You're increasing blood flow to the area. Yeah.

Tissue regeneration, stem cell recruitment, all the same things that work for shoulder pain also work for your penis. Oh, I would. That's awesome. Actually, it's kind of game-changing. If you haven't done it, I would highly recommend it. You'd have to numb it because it feels like on my hip, I feel like you're stabbing – I feel like it's my chiropractor.

I feel like he's stabbing me in the hip is what it feels like. Yeah. You don't have to keep that away from my penis, man, unless you just – you have to numb it, do something. The numbing cream works great. You put it on for like two minutes, and the whole thing is numb for like four hours. That's actually the worst part of it is people are like, when am I going to start being able to feel my penis again?

That'd be so weird. Yeah. Hold on. I actually want to know what, what the hormonal thing is with women when they're pregnant though. Does their testosterone shoot through the roof? Things go up and down. Progesterone goes up.

I mean, there's this huge variation and depending on what part of the pregnancy you're in um yeah i mean there's there's huge fluctuations testosterone does go up at some point progesterone you know everything is just going crazy um and not every woman feels that but it's pretty common for especially later in the pregnancy like when you're you're super swollen pregnant you know it's it's yeah it was so that normally happens towards the end like when they're super pregnant depends on the person you know a lot of a lot of women are sick and kind of feel tired really fatigued in the first trimester so it doesn't a lot of them don't

have the ability they're not even wanting to get off the couch like that's how i was i was like so tired um that was like me when she hit that stage. I was like, it's my turn to sleep. Yeah. Yeah. But it's a difference of the person, but it's often very common towards the end for that to happen. Where does DHEA fit into all this? Is that beneficial for rectal dysfunction or just sexual performance in general? You know, it's interesting. So DHEA is the precursor to testosterone. So it's in the steroid pathway. It's a hormone that's used to make testosterone in some of the pathways. And in women, if you give them DHEA, you can see an increase in testosterone,

and so then you can see an increase in libido and things like that. In men, because testosterone levels are so high to begin with, usually adding in DHEA doesn't actually increase their testosterone levels that much. DHEA can still be helpful, especially in people who have a lot of problems with cortisol regulation and stress and things like that. It can kind of help to kind of deal with that. It has its own benefits, but it's not as great for libido know, libido and, and erections and things like that as actual testosterone is. Um, for guys that, that are on testosterone, um, you know,

there's side effects there that, um, that many men don't want, like they lose their hair and they got to shave their head and whatever else. Are there reliable ways to, to kind of damper that effect and, and minimize the hair loss specifically? Great question. So one of the problems with testosterone therapy, or just even high testosterone levels in general, is that part of the testosterone gets converted into DHT, which is dihydrotestosterone. And DHT, this happens to everyone, which is a good thing. DHT is a good thing. DHT is a good, a good, a good hormone,

but some people, some men, especially in women are sensitive to DHT at the hair follicle. And that's why you have male pattern baldness. So people, men and women who are more sensitive to DHT are more likely to have their hair fall out. Um, and that oftentimes happens if you increase testosterone levels, all of a sudden testosterone goes up and then DHT goes up and then all of a sudden you start losing your hair. So there are some things you can do. The best things I think are probably just to treat the actual problem at the hair follicle. So like topicals that block DHT, shampoos that block DHT, you know, medications that you put on your head versus taking systemic

medications. They're like Propecia, for instance, is a, I'm sure you've heard of it, but it's a daily medication or a weekly medication that blocks the formation of DHT in your body. So you have testosterone, but you just don't convert it to DHT. And it definitely helps with hair loss. It's great. But DHT is really important for erections. And it's really important for a lot of other things in your body. It's a really strong androgen. And so if you're not making it, then you can also get retinal dysfunction. Sometimes it doesn't even go away, even when you stop medication.

So that's the sort of post-fidasteride or post-propesia syndrome has actually gotten to be something that people talk about a lot because you know all of a sudden you could shut down your ability to make dht like forever for some for some people by taking this these medications for your for your hair so i like topicals and there are a lot of them out there that you can use for that i took propesia for like a month and realized this is not going to happen for the next 60 years of my life. Buzz, gone, that day. Took me about two weeks of trying to be consistent with taking medicine and I was like, wrong person. This stuff is going to fall out. Yeah. Whatever it is. It's tough though. I mean, some guys feel like they have to choose between

their hair and their sex lives. They're like, I kind of want both. If your hair is the biggest factor, you've got a personality to work on. You've got a problem. I agree. You've got confidence to work on. Plus, if you're jacked, a bald jack guy is the best. Let's be honest.

At least that's what I'm telling myself. You've got a deadlift to work on more than your hairline seriously i like it i'll tell my patients that yeah what is the future of stem cells like the immediate future kind of next five ten years of stem stem cells in general not just for not just for sex and skin but just what what does the stem cell world look like right now oh my gosh it's gone it's gone crazy. I mean, there are so many companies, so many biotech companies, pharmaceutical companies that have stem cell products

that they are going through clinical trials right now. There's a lot of research into using stem cells, like even just IV stem cells for longevity. And it's actually, there was a study done in the last couple of years where they took umbilical cord stem cells. So a healthy baby, you know, placental umbilical tissue donated, they take the stem cells from that tissue and essentially put them in an IV and gave them to elderly adults. And then they, they saw what happened in the months afterwards. And they saw

that in the time afterwards that a lot of the symptoms of these sort of frailty symptoms like inability to walk very far and you know decreased strength and and things like that they got better and improved just from getting a single treatment of IV stem cells from a placenta and so there's a lot of work being done looking at you know this is a simple this is like as simple as going to your doctor and getting an iv put in that you know and it's in for like take 30 minutes and you'd walk out like this is something super simple if it can get you know go through the trials and then get brought to the masses and has been shown to work so i think we'll see a lot more of that kind of thing where we're using stem cells not just to heal specific areas of our body but for for general longevity, for general healing, regeneration, things like that. Sign. There's no way I'm the only one on here with us strong people that like to lift weights

that have gone to like a GNC and seen testosterone boosters in the store. Is that a void at all costs or is there a little bit of science? Is that something that people can play with? Because that's a way cheaper route to go. A lot of those that are in the store, the ones that actually work, a lot of them have a little bit of Viagra in there or a little bit of – they're not supposed to. Supplements are not regulated by the fda so

it takes no one's really testing these things to see what's actually in them so i you know i like supplements in general i think that you should use them um judiciously but you always want to know the brand that you're taking you know are they a quality brand is it you know you definitely don't buy supplements at your gas station like it's one of the things where in general supplements don't help testosterone that much. Um, you know, if I would say if you're going to try them to do that, go through a physician or at least someone who is knowledgeable about supplements. Cause a lot of them do have things in there.

Like a lot of them have, we'll have like, you'll him be in there and you'll him be increases your blood pressure. And so, and it also makes your heart, your heart race. And so it's, it's something that, you know, some people that's dangerous for them or it makes them feel weird. So you just kind of got to be careful with all supplements if you're not really sure what's in there. If you were to put together like a, an actual supplement stack to kind of increase testosterone with, with some ideas of longevity, but just a basic starter kit without having to go and actually see a doctor or somebody that is looking to kind of figure this out on their

own and doesn't have a doctor near them like you, what can they kind of add? We talked a little bit about vitamin D, but just where should they start this process of kind of figuring it out for themselves? I mean, I think without knowing the person, something like vitamin D, zinc, selenium, those are oftentimes needed to make testosterone and can be low. Maca can be helpful sometimes for testosterone. There are a lot of other herbals, but again, a lot of them have side effects. So I wouldn't say this is something that everyone should take. But the easiest thing really is just to go and get your levels checked.

If you are, if you're curious, or even, you know, if you, even if you are 40 years old and you feel amazing, get your levels checked because then you know what your baseline is because every person is different. So if you know, you feel amazing at 800, that's where, that's where you want to be. So that in, you know, five years from now, all of a sudden you're feeling pretty crummy and you can go in and have, and you know, like, have you gone down from that? Is it testosterone or something else going on that's causing you to feel bad? Yeah. What do you think are like the top keys for longevity of life? If you, if someone came to you and like, Hey, well, you know, what should I focus on to live as long as possible? Like,

what are like the top five? I hate that word, but I mean, top whatever. It's the, like, it's the simple things like that your grandmother told you to do like it's the exercising right like avoiding you know avoiding sugar and and a lot of high glycemic foods sleeping uh stress reduction is really important we know that stress high stress reduces mortality and you know and it causes all kinds of chronic disease problems. So stress reduction, being social and maintaining relationships, I think is really important as well. So those are the things that we know from the Blue Zone data.

That's the data, the places in the world that have the healthiest populations that are the ones that are living to be the oldest. Those are the Blue Zones. And we know that those are kind of some of the keys. Social interaction, community spirit, having a purpose, eating right, exercising, the things that we should do. I've been eating

too excited for a minute. I've already seen some pretty massive differences. It's really just coming out the sugars. It could be one of all those. It could really just cutting out the sugars. Well, I mean, it could be one of all those.

It could be the sugars, the milk, the lactose. It could be whatever. It's a big difference. What are you doing without all the monsters, dude? How are you waking up in the morning? I was waiting for one of you guys to compliment me on my boy. Dr. Amy, we record typically at 6 30

in the morning and my boy mash will wake up and just start smashing pre-workouts and then wash it down with a monster energy drink you know he's bringing just the fire at 6 30 a.m when you see him with the with a monster i have to tell you i have a little bit of a monster problem myself. Oh, really? Hold on. What's your favorite flavor? I like the blue, like the blue no calorie ones. Yeah. No calories.

What is it then? What do they put in there? I have no idea. I have no idea. I don't want to know. If I don't know, it's not bad. It's all pre-workout. It's like a drink, but just pre-workout.

My friends harass me. I know I have all these things I do right, and then, you know, we all got to have, like, a few things that we're not so good at. Got to do it. You got to do it. Just do it on Fridays, Vice Friday. There you go.

There you go. I do it every day. I was. 30 days, I'm going to avoid it. Do you feel like you're having withdrawals without the Monster? No, you know, tired a little bit, but, like, I feel so much better. Like, my body feels better. Yeah. I don't feel – my stomach feels smaller already.

Like, I feel like I'm not as bloated, like, with eating all that. You know, if it's gluten or lactose, sugar, or I guess all the above, I feel a lot better. I've lost a lot of weight already in 40 days. It's crazy. Have you really? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I lost 7 pounds in 4 days. Stop it. That's awesome.

Look at that guy. I think it's mainly because I'm so bloated. I just feel like... Yeah. A lot of water weight. Your body's just getting rid of stuff. My stomach just feels so much smaller. I feel so bloated. I just feel like. Yeah. A lot of water weight. Your body is just getting rid of stuff. My stomach just feels so much smaller. I feel better. So we'll see. But can I do it 30 days?

I hope so. You can. I'm sure you can. Olympic lifting, power lifting, bodybuilding. One day. Do it like Corey G. I want to see that six pack, bro. Oh, you want me to do the trifecta?

You caught it. Yeah. We'll see. Let's get through this 30 days. I'm one day at a time is what I am, one day at a time. There you go. Dr. Amy B. Killen. God, that's a great name.

It's pretty fun. When I was in the ER, my coat used to have Dr. Killen written on it, but it was in cursive. And so my patients would be like, is it Dr. Killer? Kylan Killer? Don't kill me, please. How did you leave the ER to go into the new field? Those two don't seem like they match too well.

Sounds risky. It was risky, but it was one of those things where I felt like I was just stressed out. I was sleeping like two hours a day. I was not very nice. I was not exercising. Do you miss the high of being in the ER all day long and just madness? I miss my team, the team of people that comes together. You just do something amazing, you know, in a moment, but I don't miss the, the working

weekends and holidays and getting up at 3am to go to work and just the chronic stress. I, I am, you know, I admire so much my ER friends who are still working, but I, for me, it was, it was too much. I actually was with a friend whose neighbor is an ER doctor and they tried for a very long time to get pregnant, but the job was so stressful that her body had basically, this is kind of like how she described it to my friend, was like, my body was just under so much stress that it was deemed by the eggs that this is not a safe zone for a to to bear a child yeah she had to take a bunch of time off and as soon as she took the time off and the

stress kind of relieved itself yeah twins that's a really it was like the body couldn't it was so excited to have kids right but just waiting for the perfect time to just dump all those eggs out. So stressed out that there was just no way that it could happen at the time. Yeah. It is stressful. Yeah.

Yeah. So, where can people find you? So, I'm really active on Instagram, Dr. Amy B. Killen. And I also have, I know,

and I do Facebook as well, but mostly Instagram. I'm on YouTube at Amy Killen MD. And then Dr. Amy, wait, what is my website? I always Instagram. I'm on YouTube at amykillenmd. And then Dr. Amy – wait, what is my website? I always forget. I have all these different things. Dr. Amy Killen is my website.

Amy Killen. Amy Killen. Coach Travis Mash, tell them about your new abs and where they can find them. Are you going to post selfie pics? I'm going to wait seven days, and I'll take some you know did you take did you take a did you take a pre-hole 30 pic you know yeah i'll tell you what happened is i was working out and it got super hot i took my shirt off and then i looked at the video i'm like no okay no i gotta change you messed up dude you take before pictures and you push your gut out. You're like full chest hair.

I look pretty. I don't want to do anything. I need to work. I feel so much better already. I'd like to get my – when my wife met me, I was ripped, and that was like the last time. That was in 2007. So I got bait and swish shirt, you know.

I've been prepping my diet coming after you for this vacation we have next week that now you're you're a professional waiter i was gonna be i just wanted i was gonna be so shredded for mash look at my look at my sad little office this is you know how how do you feel about those fluorescent lights beaming down on him it's trapped stuck in my energy right now how bad are fluorescent lights last question uh they could they could be definitely pretty bad they can mess up your circadian rhythms quite a bit affect your sleep uh yeah there's there's some some bad things like that that happen you want to try to you know we actually didn't even talk about sleep what is the relationship with sleep

and testosterone uh well you make a lot of testosterone while you're sleeping, as well as growth hormone, as well as HGH. So if you're not sleeping, you're not making as much testosterone or HGH, which are two things that are pretty key to feeling motivated and good and healthy and weightlifting and all of that. So testosterone levels are highest in the morning when you first wake up, but they're not super high if you are not sleeping. Kind of important.

Take your tail to bed is what she's saying. Get your sleep. Get your sleep. Coach Travis Mash, where can I find you? What's the name of their website? Matchly.com. The elite ones. The strong kids. Doug Larson.

You bet. Find me on Instagram. Doug Larson. You bet. Find me on Instagram. Douglas E. Larson. Amy, thank you for coming on the show. I really enjoyed this. Thank you. I did too. This was super fun.

I took notes. Yeah. Awesome. Listen to Steve's. I'm Anders Varner. Oh, go ahead. I was just saying, contact me if you have questions. I will.

Boring. Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We're barbellstruck.com. Barbellstruck.com. Forward slash store. Programs. E-books. Nutrition. Mob Varner at Anders Varner. We're barbellstruck.com. Forward slash store. Programs, e-books, nutrition, mobility. Making strong people stronger. We'll see you guys next week. Blah, blah.

That's a wrap, friends. Make sure you get over to barbellstruck.com. Forward slash store. That's where you can find the 20-hour back squat program. Put in the code 2020REP. 20REP. 2-0-R-E-P. Save 20%.

Get super jacked. Grow big legs. Be the fastest person in your class. People are going to wonder why you're so cool all of a sudden. Tell them Anders Varner put you on the 20 rep back squat program for functional fitness athletes and now you're a gangster. It's pretty good. Bilegion.com

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Use the code shrug to save 10% and that is where you are going to get your massive zimes that's it friends we'll see ya