Barbell Shrugged - The Secret to Digestion and Understanding Gut Health w/ Wade Lightheart, Anders Varner, and Doug Larson - Barbell Shrugged- #478

Episode Date: June 17, 2020

In today’s episode the crew discusses:   Simplifying the digestive system and how we get nutrients to the muscles. Why we suffer from so many digestive complication and how to solve them Understanding gut health and why it is so important 5 Processes of Digestion How do you create products for helping the gut biome and digestions How the gut is the number 1 player for healthy immune system Relationship between gut and brain and development of Cognibiotics And more…   Learn More From BiOptimizers    www.cognibiotics.com/shrugged10  Code: “shrugged” - 10% off   https://www.facebook.com/BiOptimizers/ https://www.instagram.com/bioptimizers/ https://www.youtube.com/user/BiOptimizers   Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram ————————————————   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa ———————————————— Please Support Our Sponsors   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   www.magbreakthrough.com/shrugged - use coupon code SHRUGGED10 to save up to 40%   http://onelink.to/fittogether - Brand New Fitness Social Media App Fittogether   Purchase our favorite Supplements here and use code “Shrugged” to save 20% on your order: https://bit.ly/2K2Qlq4    Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://bit.ly/3b6GZFj Save 5% using the coupon code “Shrugged”

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We're basically giving everything to you. And you're going to get a cool product shipped to your house, which I'm super excited about. So barbellstruck.comcom forward slash store make sure you get over all of the bundles you're going to get free bands and a free program bands body weight for hypertrophy this week on the show wade lightheart from bioptimizers we've been working with them for a long time now uh all the way back to last year when we started testing out their Masszymes product. It was their very first gut health digestive enzyme program. Which I highly recommend getting to masszymes.com forward slash shrug to check out. They also have some really cool programs or products for people that are in ketosis.

They're also launching a new neurotropic called Cognibiotics. And you can save 10%. So it's a gut health digestive enzyme that also has neurotropic properties. Cognibiotics, C-O-G-N-I-B-I-O-T-I-C-S. And in this show, we dig into how the digestive system works, problems that people have with their gut, and what the root causes of that are, and then really understanding what actual gut health means as it relates to your immune system. So if you want to check out all their products,

I highly recommend the Masszymes, masszymes.com, forward slash shrugged. You're going to save a bunch of cash going over there using the code shrugged. And then you can also check out Cognibiotics. That's the brand new nootropic that they have put out. It's a digestive enzyme plus nootropic. So you're going to get tons of brain stimulation, clarity, as well as increasing gut health, immune system health. And you can find that at Cognibiotics.com forward slash shrugged 10. The code shrugged is going to save you 10% off.

I'm a massive fan of all their products. I'm on the road right now. I always take the digestive enzymes. As we talked about at the very beginning of the show here, it just makes us feel significantly heavier. It feels like you digest food quicker and adding some neurotrophic properties to that. So you're getting the mental clarity and sharpness side of things. It's a very cool product. So Cognibiotics.com forward slash shrugged 10. Use the code shrugged to save 10%. And let's get into the show. For about 10 years. And then a few years ago, we incorporated it in Nevada to take advantage of some of the distribution channels like Amazon and things like that. And then last year, I went full force by getting my visa to come to the United States, which was a

long trajectory. And I'm like, yay, I'm going to come to California. We're going to be able to hang out with everybody in the fitness world. It was my dream, excited, spent all this money, spent all this time, got the house by the beach in Venice. I'm going to gold. I'm hitting bulletproof labs. I'm like, yay. I get six weeks and it's over. Sometimes you do everything right. And it just doesn't work. It's, it's, it's, I mean, it's the craziest times i've ever seen i mean i don't know and i'm very concerned i'm really concerned from everybody who's running a fitness facility right now because i don't see how these facilities are going to stay open under these covid rules i think the atmosphere the environment is going to be crushed how you do these six feet rules

the cleanliness stuff like making appointments to come in and stuff like this is i i don't i don't see how gyms can survive that i really don't see it and um kudos to them to anybody that figures it out but i mean i i don't get it i mean what's your guys' thoughts? I think that most people go to the gym to relieve stress. Yeah. They're going to find that it's the most stressful part of their day trying to adhere to rules that are not fun. Like the gym is supposed to be fun and it's not going to be fun. I don't think that they're going to make it. I don't think people will want to deal with the stress and they're just going to realize we work with a company called PRX performance. Yep.

And you know, when you go to someone's website, like all of our websites and the little pop-up comes up and it's like, do this, save some money, get on our newsletter. Their pop-up now says we are limiting the amount of equipment you can buy. Their lead magnet says, stop. Stop buying everything. They cannot keep up with the demand

because everyone's going in their garage. It's just not going to be fun it sucks but i i think that the the market moves like super high-end personal training yep and that the middle but then there's the consequences now they're talking about tracking devices and now you're tracking trace and so if you're a high-end client going like your coach going to you know those elite clients are you violating some criminal law are you like are you subjecting yourself to some sort of you know imprisonment or major fines are you going to be named as the spreader right Right. Yeah. I think that the people like, um, you know,

out in the LA world, like the Ben Bruno's, um, the gunners, like those guys are, they're going to smash because they've got the clientele that can pay an extreme amount of money that can't afford to get sick. Um,

they want their privacy. Like that is in that space. I actually emailed, I was talking to a business owner cause there's a, um, like an F 45 right down the street that was struggling before this. And now I walk by there every day waiting for them to hand me a rower to just say, just take it. Just buy or sell. Just take everything. We don't care. And he was like, do you think that any business, specifically a fitness business could fit in there? I just looked at it. I was like, why try? Like, why take the risk to build it? It's a risky business. It's a risky business just to get started in this stuff anyways.

There's an overt amount of risk if you're running a gym and requirements and margins and getting yourself up to speed. Under these environments, the uncertainty, even with a really well-type proven model, is going to be very difficult. Yeah. You can run it out of your gym or out of your garage if you have space like i've got a full rack doug's got a barbell and bumpers like you could run an entire business out of your out of your garage if you can find and connect with the clientele that can pay to keep everything going. I just can't imagine.

When I owned my gym, we handed over $14,500 to be three blocks off the beach in Pacific Beach in San Diego every single month. And at the time, it didn't seem like a big deal because our revenues were here and our expenses were here. And now I look back and I'm like, I was just handing some guy a used car every month like it's so insane to me that i built the gym to get to the point where i thought paying nearly fifteen thousand dollars a month was like a good decision and to to build

the gym to that level now just seems impossible for like multiple more years. There's no way someone's going to have that many people in a gym. Yeah. Yeah, it's not to mention the increased staffing costs and all this stuff. And then who knows what kind of regulatory risks you're going to run in if somebody breaks the rules like how do you even police 25 people in your gym not being in six feet or you know you know I mean the gyms are let's face it this is this is a germ sharing virus sharing environment and the whole point is is you're healthy and you have this robust immune system because you're

exposed to that that's how the immune system. And I do believe one of the benefits of being in the gym is it forces you to be in a robust environment. And we know through the evolutionary process that people who are exposed to higher levels of, uh, you know, viruses and bacteria and stuff to cultivate superior immune systems to the general public yeah that's that that's an that's an unadvertised benefit that's couched in real biological science

and to see you know this unelected medical officials who are have financial incentives or institutions like the cdc who makes 50 of their money from from vaccinations dictating policy that's not science that's called a conflict of interest to see theoretical models that are funded by people who have a financial interest in creating fear, and then to see constitutional rights of people being implemented when the legitimate clinical data, not the theoretical models, doesn't warrant any of that stuff. So people want to get down to science and things. It's like, okay, I mean, I've got friends in other parts of the world right now. I had some friends escape out of South America.

And there's food shortages. People are starving right now. There's 130 million people that have just been added to the potential starvation list, which is probably an underestimation of the data. That just came out from the UN the other day. Because food distribution channels are being shut down so so so like how soon does that come here when you start getting to 20 30 percent unemployment oh I had a really we're going to start the show really soon I promise but I had

I have love going into the Costco down the street. Doug's heard me talk about this way too much, but I love talking about chickens because the number of chickens that we go through as a country just in Costco. In one thing, I asked the cashier for like 10 straight times going into Costco. Every time I checked out, I was like, how many chickens come through here a day? Like I want to know how many. And just the rotisserie chickens, not the eggs, not the frozen, not the processed, just the rotisseries was, we roughly got to about 5,000 a day in my one Costco.

That doesn't include McDonald's, Chipotle, Burger King, Hardee's, all of the other just gigantic processors and it's like how do you keep that going and when people start starving like it's it's gonna work its way up the chain it's like the food system is so wild um it is a great video i don't know if you've seen it called eye pencil have you ever seen that video going to now yeah so it's a great video, I don't know if you've seen it, called iPencil. Have you ever seen that video? Going to now. Yeah, so it's a great video because it was written quite a long time ago and they just kind of made a little interesting video about it. And there's no single person in

the world that can actually make a pencil. It's impossible, it's virtually impossible to make a simple pencil. And then it goes into all the corollary industries and people. And to make one single pencil requires thousands and thousands and thousands of people and industries all over the world and systems. When you have institutions, whether they're well-meaning or corrupt, for example, like these medical officers or government things, trying to evoke whatever mitigations they think, it's impossible for them to comprehend the scale of the impact when they try to do something. Because there's a trickle effect here and a trickle effect here. And so it's almost like a like a nuclear train chain reaction you're just firing electrons into the system and something goes kablooey at some point and then the whole thing lights up in a chain reaction and that's what i see happening here as it's it's it's so yeah i mean you know the all just all the physiological components in the human in yeah i mean you know the all just all the physiological components in the human body yeah i mean you you affect this and there's a trigger here you do this there's

a trigger here i mean we've got millions of researchers there's no free ride in physiology none biology that's what he says all the time it's my favorite line all the things he said it's no free ride so i think it's i think these uh very low resolution solutions have extraordinarily bad consequences down those down the line um we could talk about oh look at that i gotta decline that one i didn't know that even rang through let's cut that off. Do you want to talk about some gut health? Because I could talk to you about this one forever, but we should probably talk about like the real thing. Yeah, let's do it.

Let's get on to the real show. Right? Gut health and deaths of enzymes. You want to do that? Are you still a vegetarian? Yeah. I hate the label. I know.

I hate it too, but it's the easiest way to ask the question right off the bat. Yeah, sure. I'm only wondering just because my mom is a – she loves the keto, and every time she shows up, I hand her the Kpex, the new product you guys have, and she loves it. A lot of people are – I mean, I like it because I'm using, I'm doing right now, I'm doing an experiment during this whole lockdown with, I do 12 hours of eating from 8 a.m. to 8. And then I do 36 hours of fasting every other day. So I'm doing three 36-hour fasts per week.

And then I have a two-day where I eat fully those two days. And those are my, my heavy days of lifting where I'm, you know, I'm going at, I'm going at it harder. What I can do with a set of dumbbells and some bands at my house, you know, I got a set of dumbbells and I thought someone gave me a new Ferrari. So that's what I've been doing in the apex is awesome for that. I take, just take four caps in the morning and, and you know, I got sustained energy all day.

It's specifically for the, the, the keto lifestyle. So I handed it to her, but Doug and I love the mass time stuff so much from last time we interviewed you. He's never stopped. I ran out, but now I got it. Yeah, but Doug and I love the mass sign stuff so much. From last time we interviewed you, he's never stopped. I ran out, but now I got him on there.

Yeah, what do you guys notice with him? Me personally, I just, I feel like it's going to sound absurd because I'm going to tell you exactly what it says on the bottle, but I feel like I digest food significantly better, and it doesn't just kind of hang out and i feel like it processes faster which is exactly what it says on the bottle that it's supposed to do which i guess means it's a great product yeah but you know i feel like i'm more likely to have like the perfect poop yeah when i when i take it like i feel like there's a very distinct

difference the times that i've taken a taken time off from it and then gone back to it like i i noticed there's a significant change there which you know i'm happy about every time yeah you know i was talking to someone the other day i was on some show and people going why is it you know they were noticing the same things and i said here's here's what I really believe. If you look historically of the human digestive system and what we were accustomed to far as dietary components, enzymes and probiotics were a natural part of what we would constitute as food. Every species on the planet gets naturally occurring probiotics and naturally occurring enzymes because they eat their food in a raw state and it's been unsterilized and all this stuff. Over the last 100 to 150 years, we've solved the calorie issue through food distribution

and production. However, we've created massive deficiencies, not only in the vitamins and minerals, but through sterilization and chemicalization, we've eliminated the enzymatic content and diminished the enzyme content in production. And we've eliminated the natural probiotics that you would get out of a carrot, or if you were eating animals at home, or eating stuff rare, or whatever that happens to be. We don't get any of that stuff. So really, our definition of food as what's natural for our species that's evolved over billions of years is actually incomplete. And that definition, I believe, is leading to significant levels of distress just on what's not in the food. And then you add herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, all of those interrupt enzymatic activity in bugs. And that's how it kills them.

Because you need enzymes are essential to everything from thinking to blinking. Every chemical process in your body is over 25,000 chemical reactions that are contributed to enzymatic transactions. So they accelerate that process, let alone the digestion, absorption and utilization of food, which is a key component, which enzymes, HCL and probiotics are the three things that are really, really critical to that process. Well, then you add preservatives, then you add dyes, then you add Roundup, and you add like all these other things. And it's like, no wonder there's 100 million people in on any given day that have a digestive issue and 25% of the population that's on some sort of

prescription med for some sort of digestive condition. And now we're at, you know, gastrointestinal related emergencies are just scaling up relatively because these things left unchecked over time leads to things like colorectal cancer and, you know, people getting their intestines cut out because of problems and, you know, like constipation, bloating and gas are one thing. But those are the symptoms of on the superhighway to serious disease down the road. And I always love hearing when people say, hey, you know what, I actually feel my food digesting better, because I think that's the way food was supposed to be in the first place. But we don't get it that way anymore. Did you have the Oh, sorry, with with processed food, I think a lot of people kind of intuitively know that processing removes all all kinds of

things that you would want to have in your food. and it kind of just leaves, you know, dense calories more or less to oversimplify things. How does cooking factor into degradation of enzymes or removing probiotics from, from food as opposed to actually processing the food, just, just cooking in general? Yeah. When you, when you take, first off with enzymes, as soon as you take a temperature over 114 degrees, that's it. Goodbye enzymes. They're gone.

And now what happens is that puts a biological manufacturing load on the organism in order to digest that food. And you also interrupt the natural digestive process because the first 36 60 minutes of digestion this is where enzymatic activity begins the you know you your bigger amino acids start to cleave in that first 30 to 60 minutes and then beyond that as hydrochloric acid comes in you've got a change in ph where some enzymes become activated some become deactivated this is part of the natural digestive process well when you interrupt that first phase You've got a change in pH where some enzymes become activated, some become deactivated. This is part of the natural digestive process.

Well, when you interrupt that first phase, what you're sending into the intestinal tract is partially undigested food, which is prepping it for the microbiome to take on to the next phase or that third critical phase, because hydrochloric acid I would consider the second phase and then the third phase with the gut flora, which because you're getting a different type of food or food that's not in its pre-digested state to the level that it needs to be, that allows the proliferation of some organisms that would not normally proliferate, which we're going to

feed on those undigested proteins. And that's contributing to a variety of conditions as those things start crapping literally in your blood and producing endoscale, so brain fog, confusion, you know, issues in production of neurotransmitters, which have a whole range of mental effects that you see. And, you know, Dr. Howe, years and years ago, decades ago, predicted this in models that he ran out with all these different species of animals, because he could run the generational components, like you could get generations of rats, or generations of rabbits in, you know, in a year or two years, what you would see over the course of 50, 60 years in humans, normal reproductive cycles and generational components. And he predicted all of these

things happening, which are now happening today since the advent, the acceleration of food production and distribution in North America, particularly. And it's like, how many people will go to a place like Italy and say, hey, I was eating pasta and bread and I didn't feel any digestive issues. Well, guess what? They're using ancient green seeds a lot of times. They're not growing on monoculture farming. They're not full of Roundup and these endocrine and enzymatic disruptors.

So the same thing with bacteria is also subject to that. So, for example, if I go to my mom's garden, we pull out some carrots, or you go to your local farmer's market, you get the vegetables there, they haven't been washed. And so you wash them off, but there's bacteria are pretty resistant creatures, you're going to ingest some of the bacteria. And that bacteria is actually comes with that food because they work symbiotically together. Well, are, and I'm not saying that we shouldn't be sterilizing things or cooking doesn't work as far as sterilization. There's all kinds of cases of why that is effective

and why we should do it and why that makes sense. But it's like everything else. There's consequences to it. It's like there's no disputing that antibiotics have saved millions and millions and millions of people's lives. The overprescription and proliferated use of antibiotics over the last 60 years has now unforeseen consequences where we have one of your greatest risks of entering into a medical institution right now, like a hospital, if you're doing surgery,

is the fact that you get a antibiotic-resistant strain. Super bugs. Super bugs. They're the scariest. Totally. Did you listen to the radio lab about them? No, I didn't hear that episode. Oh my gosh. I don't even know when it came out. They're frightening. I've got one of my friends. He's a medical doctor from Harvard. He was involved in putting the first stent in the body. So this guy is a vascular surgeon. He's taught over 28 department heads.

He's got a wound healing clinic. He just retired recently. I think he turned 80. He had a wound healing clinic for the last three or four years running out of Bullhead City, Nevada. And for particularly these cases, people who go through surgery, people who have these open wounds that simply do not heal after surgery. And it's the most crazy, grotesque stuff. And you know what he was using?

You know what he was using to cultivate it to fix the cases? Highly acidic, low pH water made from an ionizer. He was spraying the wounds with it. And out of 165 different wound healing clinics and clinical trials, he was able to produce better results by using highly acidic water, which is developed in Japan in order to disinfect those wound things and had an incredible recovery rate. So the solutions are relatively simple, cost-effective and stuff, but we've got to rethink some of the strategies that have worked long-term and recognize that, and this relates to gut health.

Why does that relate to gut health? It's because we are entering into a world of a rapid expansion of these superbugs, of these antibiotic-resistant strains. And one of the reasons on our side, because I've been in this conversation for years after my own digestive issues, is, hey, what are we doing to counter that? Because if they've got superbugs, we need super probiotics. We need targeted, scientifically developed and researched probiotic strains that are going to help us deal with the complications that we've created over the last, you know, 50, 60, 70 years of the food production

and the reliance on medical intervention with the use of pharmaceuticals. And so it's not about creating a bad versus good. It's just about here's, you know, Darwin's theory. It's not the survival of the fittest. It's the most misquoted statement ever. You read his book. It's the survival of the most adaptable. So right now, I think whether it's fitness, which we were talking about before, whether it's about health, whether it's about, you know, the economy, whatever we are in this

kind of crazy world, it's about, okay, science has said, we need to be adaptable. We need to be fluid. We need to be thinking in a different way. And that's why I'm great to be here on the show because I know you guys are all about that, about, okay, how do we adapt? And I think that's why I'm great to be here on the show because I know you guys are all about that, about okay, how do we adapt? And I think that's part of the psychology that comes from people who are in the fitness industry because we know how the body acclimatizes to just about everything that you do if you want to improve your performance. So you've got to cultivate these concepts and the thinking that allows you to evolve so that you can hit higher levels of performance. And I think our industry is actually on the forefront of the thinking paradigms that are going to allow humanity to thrive moving on into the future. How do you explain gut health to people? Because

someone will ask me about it and And it's happened on the show before where someone will just say like, well, can you explain gut health? And I'm like, okay, here we go. This is going to sound like the most bro science possible. There's a whole lot of stuff in your stomach. Some of it's good, but conceptually, I get it. But how do we get people to be more aware of it and explain it in a simple way so that they can understand what's going on when you eat a piece of food and it gets digested and then goes into your body to be used? Beautiful. And I'm going to lay that out in five simple steps that people can follow along

and will completely grasp this concept it's not all the nuanced components of biology but anybody is going to be able to understand this because i've worked on a long time to be able to break this down so if you guys are ready i'll hit it off let's do it awesome so basically there's five essential stages to digestion the first phase is when you taste, touch, smell the food. For example, if I say dill pickles right now, a lot of people will start to salivate. Like if I say dill pickles, sauerkraut, these types of things, there's a salivary response. There's a Pavlovian response to food. Or maybe your favorite, you know, grandma's apple pie or whatever, there's an associative

memory or a taste touch. maybe your favorite, you know, grandma's apple pie or whatever, there's an associative memory or a taste touch. And one of the things that's very interesting, if you look at the dietary habits of most people, they're actually most attracted to finger food, pizza, french fries, hamburger, think of all the finger foods that people eat are the most common because there is a sensory response when you actually physically touch, smell, taste your food. So that's the first phase where you're putting in your mouth. At this point, your body is registering and saying, oh, it's this type of food. Does it have the enzyme present? Does it have the bacteria present? What's going to happen? And if it doesn't,

it's going to start altering its enzymatic production and capacity inside the body to encounter what's happening. And that's a learned response. Our bodies are so adaptable. We chew the food in that first phase, and then the food travels down the esophagus. Now, I want to be clear about something. The biggest misassumption that people make that gets them in challenge from their digestive system is just because you put food in your mouth or because food is in your stomach, it's not in your body. It's a single canal all the way from your mouth to your butt. And the reality is the food is in that tube.

And this process of converting that food into usable energy units or building blocks is what digestion is about. And if there's a disruption in that, you start starving yourself of the nutrients that you need for energy and for the building blocks. So after that first stage of chewing, it goes down to the esophagus and into what's called the upper cardiac portion of the stomach. You've got 30 to 60 minutes where the enzymes present in the food are supposed to be breaking down. If it's not, it's just sitting there as your body starts to produce hydrochloric acid. Hydrochloric acid is going to come in and start mixing the chyme with a little bit of contraction and stuff in the stomach at that point. And the pH is going to be changed with that whole chime.

As the pH lowers from say, let's say you ate a food and it came in at seven or it was eight or six or on the pH scale, slightly acidic or slightly alkaline, that hydrochloric acid is going to do two different things. This is the second really, or it's technically the third phase but it's a very critical component the hydrochloric acid comes in and changes the ph which activates some enzymes deactivates others the second thing this is the disinfecting cycle this is what kills the bacteria the viruses the parasites the super bugs all that stuff and if you don't have in if you have insufficient levels of hydrochloric acid, your first strike on the immune system is now compromised. And of course, if you're not producing the little finger on top of the esophagus stays open, and you get some of this mixture of

hydrochloric acid in your food that splashes up and you get heartburn or acid reflux. And so what do you do if you go to the medical doctor? They give you a proton pump to stop the acid. So now you further compromise your natural immune system response and you disrupt your digestive system right there. And that's why if you look at the medical literature, people should only be on those for no more than four to six weeks. They need to correct their lifestyle, their dietary parts. So after that stage, your body releases what's called bicarbonate minerals. So hopefully you have enough minerals in your body to make that a function. Because if you don't, that's when you start getting spill over that hydrochloric acid, that those minerals neutralize that acid,

and you'll start getting burn holes in your intestinal tract, because it's not designed for that high acid environment. So people that get gastritis or they get duodenal ulcers or these type of things is because they're getting acid leaking out the other side, okay? Because something's disrupted in their mineral function inside the body. Then it goes into that maybe the most critical stage of the digestive process is when the food enters into the intestinal tract where there's anywhere from 200 to 500 different strains of bacteria. And I like to qualify these as the good, the bad, and the ugly. There's 10% good, 10% really bad, and 80% which are opportunist. This microbiome is extremely dynamic and it's changing all the time. So for example, if I was to decide today to go on a ketogenic diet, right now I'm a plant-based

guy and have been for a long time. So my microbiome has adopted or adapted to the dietary practices. So some bacteria strains are going to grow really well and other ones are going to starve off and not exist. If I'm to switch to a keto diet, like my business partner, who has been keto for 20 years, I've been plant-based for 20 years, he's going to have a completely different microbe because his body's adapted to break down the food that he has. And this is why a lot of times when people go to foreign places or try different foods, they get stomach upset because what will happen when new food comes in, some of their good guys start to serve off, some of the bad guys start to proliferate, or some of the opportunists say, hey, it's

a party now. This is the kind of stuff I like. And this causes disruptions. And you feel, oh, I feel bloated, or I'm constipated, or I've got the runs. Because now that stage of digestion has been disrupted on some level. And so I always say the first stage of digestion is like cutting the grass, you know, with the enzymes and hydrochloric acid and the probiotics are like mulching the grass and converting that into small enough units that will then be converted into either energy

and building blocks. And if you don't have that transmission there, at that point, you're literally starving yourself. And then the final stage is the peristaltic contraction, which is moving this whole chime, will then push out the waste out of the body as and that that's the elimination part. And we all kind of know, here's a funny thing I've always known is like, everybody's kind of fascinated with their own crap. And what I mean is, is like, there's this,

you know, there's a sense if you're not going to the bathroom in a way that's normal, or there's, you know, chain like radical changes in your stool or whether that's the smell, whether that's consistency or whatever, you kind of look at it and you go, uh,

something's not right here. There's an intuitive understanding that you, that. And most people aren't comfortable talking about it until they reach senior citizen levels. And then they talk about it all the time. Because by that stage- That's all they talk about. There's nothing else going on. Yeah. Well, also by that stage, the 20 30 years of of challenges has now amplified into serious complications and you know and that's something that i think you know people start to pay attention at that age because it's like okay i've got some real problems here and um they're

over the embarrassment because it's like oh here, here's something I haven't done. And so I think people have to be, I think people have conscience on one of the biggest Google searches is actually around stool and farts and things like this. So people are secretly looking at this stuff. They don't necessarily want to bring it to conversation and that's why I like to bring it to conversation.

So let's talk about this crap because it could save your life or certainly let you have a higher quality of life. How do we get people to kind of understand this? Like in fitness, someone's going to come to me and say, how do I eat to get strong or how do I eat to get lean? And then I say, well, here's your protein, here's your macros and total caloric intake. And if we do that less than maintenance, we're going to lose some weight. You're going to get leaner. If we do it a little bit more, you'll probably put on a little bit of fat, hopefully a lot of muscle. And now you've reached your goals, but that doesn't solve the long-term health implications of not having a healthy gut. Well, and I'll go back to my own story is way back in the day. Um, you know, I followed all that

kind of training, you know, program. I had the best coach in the world. I was on my way to the Mr. Universe contest. I competed at the Mr. Universe contest, you know, taking in 250 grams of protein a day, assuming that that's what I was getting into my muscles. And after the, after that contest, they gained 42 pounds of fat and water and went through, you know, the bloating, the edema, the gastrointestinal leases, you know, all this sort of like I wrecked my digestive system. And I had the good fortune of meeting a medical doctor who was an expert in this and had been using enzymes and probiotics. And I mean, this is in 2003, I guess it's 17 years ago. So nobody was talking about this stuff. And he was using these models to correct serious health conditions with his clients.

And I went to him and I asked him that exact same question. I said, you know, Dr. Michael, how is it possible? I'm following all the advice i followed my macros like a spartan discipline of doing everything i'm supposed to be like what's happened how did i turn it go from mr universe to mr marshmallow and and he said to me well wait also friends make sure you go and hang out our friends over at organifi Organifi.com forward slash shrug. Saving you 20% on the greens, reds, and gold juices. All of the micronutrients, the vitamins and minerals that you need to be healthy. Keep all of your systems.

Look, I'm on the road right now. Here's the deal. I've been gone for two weeks at the in-laws. It's not that they're unhealthy, but I don't have all of the resources that I normally do in my life right in front of me so i have to kind of hit like the cheat code i gotta hit the the button for how do i get all the vitamins and minerals i need even though i'm on the road not sleeping as well and i probably don't have as much control over my dinner my lunch all of that at the same time so

what is the secret that's right organifi organifi.com forward slash shrugged. I take a green in the morning all the time because it's so delicious. A red and a gold. Those get me set all the way through my day. The ashwagandha and the green is just really good at stress relief. And it's pretty, it's pretty well tested. So get over to Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. Save your 20%. And I am in the middle of a 30 days of bands setup over at the Fit Together app right now.

Fit Together is a brand new social media app specifically being used for fitness. So here's the deal. Right now, Facebook is a disaster. If you get on Facebook and you're happy, I don't know who you are. It's just a bunch of people yelling into their computer. It's terrifying. I hate it. If you get into the Instagrams, it's a little bit better. but man, you just get so, you just get bombarded with so many people's opinions and politics. And honestly, I probably should be more engaged in politics, but I'm not, I just like to do fitness. So I found fit together and we started working together because I was so stoked that there was an actual social media platform that was built just for fitness. So you can get over there, you can log all kinds of daily goals. I'm doing the 30

days of bands challenge over there, which I'm just posting a new band movement every day, which goes along well with our sale. And you can go and check out the Fit Together app. It's in the app store on all of your devices at F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R. Fit Together, all one word, the Fit Together app in your app store. Now, come hang out with me. You can find me at Anders Varner. We also have a group called Barbell Shrugged. And the Fit Together app, download it on your phone right now.

F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R. and the Fit Together app. Download it on your phone right now. F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R. Fit Together. Let's get back to the show. Turn it, go from Mr. Universe to Mr. Marshmallow. And he said to me, well, Wade, you've learned to build the body from the outside in, not the inside out. And I mentored under him, and he started explaining me the role

of enzymes and what happened. He started explaining to me how, you know, dysbiosis and dietary practices over time and the consumption of, you know, massive amounts of protein can ultimately lead to digestive distress. And you and I all, I think we're all aware of how many people that kind of go a certain ways down the performance side of the fitness industry. And we classify by optimizers, which we focus a lot on digesting and optimizing health, we have a triangle. And we have, there's aesthetics, there's performance, and then there's health. And usually early on in our career, we're focusing on aesthetics. And that may go over to performance. But as people mature and get older, they start to recognize, well, the real goal here,

now that I've hit kind of the apex of where I could go with my own genetics and performance and exercises, like now I'm seeing my health decline. So now I'm going to focus on that. And that's usually when people start to enter into this conversation about, well, you know, I hate being so cliche. I hate it. It's just the way it is. Yeah. Yeah. That is my path. You nailed it. Yeah. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that path. I think that the trajectory of that, of being young and we have all your faculties and the advantages of a less compromised biological system, the less responsibilities in life oftentimes as you're younger and the ability to dedicate yourself to a high level of performance as well as the endocrine supporters

in life. Well then, hey, you know what? Great. Because why not go after everything? Why not push that envelope of performance? Because what you learn along the way in observation and about capacity and adaptability and training science and pushing yourself will give you a bitter fighting chance when you turn your focus back to health and or health span and performance over time. So I don't think there's anything wrong with that cycle. It's even better if you can start off early on. But let's be honest, radically honest. The world of high level performance is not about health. It is about achieving a certain level of capacity in a very narrow window of time. If you look at any, there's, you know, other than the few exceptions of the Tom Brady's of the world, who spends probably a million dollars a year on his body or Shaquille O'Neal to extend the performance parameters, because guess what? They got started

earlier. It's like Tom Brady talking about TB12. He says, I wish I had started this at my first of my career, because he says, if I had have, maybe I could have extended my career at 50. So right now we're on the bleeding edge of changing that model. We're seeing it in the highest levels of performance. And now people who start out when they're 18 or 20 or 22 with what we're talking about, not only are they going to hit a higher level of trends, but they're going to create a longer duration. So, you know, it's just part of the evolution of sport, fitness, and health. You know, it's just the way it is. Yeah. The first time I actually ever thought about digestion,

we were interviewing Ben Pakulski, and he comes from the bodybuilding world as well. And he was talking about a lot of the, you know, sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems and the fact that people have it's very easy to understand the fight-or-flight it's almost like we've been told that for so long but nobody actually understands the rest and digest part and how important it is and especially in today's culture dealing with stress and having the ability to manage the stress of your own life. Things that you don't even know are stressful cause massive problems because you just accept that as your daily life. How do we kind of change the conversation to be able, if it's possible, especially in current times when everyone's freaking out and nobody has any stability to be able to manage stress better.

You know, this is a very critical point for people to understand. So we've got a couple of significant well-proven stressors. The stimulation of blue light with modern technology has probably had one of the biggest impacts on our circadian rhythms. And our circadian rhythm is a 24 hour clock that virtually every living organism is run. We're all really connected to the 24 hour sun cycle of evolutionary biology. When we stare into screens or we are extending our exposure to these light stimulants, that is also stimulating bigger responses. When we're sitting in front of a computer and munching down our food, that is not the natural state of where we would be normally consuming food. You go out, whether it was attacking the K-Bear or picking berries.

Once that whole thing came down, you brought the food back home, you celebrated it, you sat by the campfire, whether it was attacking the K-Bear or picking berries, once that whole thing came down, you brought the food back home, you celebrated it, you sat by the campfire, whatever it is, or you pick the blueberries in the field, chilling out and enjoying the sunshine. That's all been disrupted as well as by the food chain, let alone the natural things that you would have got exposed to in that time as well. So that's number one. Second thing, I think not being out in sunshine, if you look at outdoors is about 100,000 candle watts on a cloudy day, okay, compared to your, you know, your life-saving 60, energy-saving 60 watt light bulbs, that's a huge effect on vitamin D,

which is considered a master hormone with your nervous system response. You know, you can track this now with sleep cycles by, you know, blacking out your curtains at night, going to bed before 12, as opposed to after 12 stimulation to these, you know,

light disruptors, EMF pollution off your plugs around your bed, all these things that we never had to deal with for billions of years in evolutionary biology. Yeah, they do have an effect and they are impacting us. Now, I'm not suggesting that we should give up flying in planes or using cell phones or talking on computers. I love all this stuff. But as people who are looking to optimize our biological performance and optimize our digestive system. Keep in mind, viruses, bacteria, parasites, these smaller organisms are even more sensitive to the shifts in these levels because there's less complication. They have less reactive components or contemporary forces.

So it becomes even more amplified. And that's why I think we're seeing this explosion of digestive health issues and these immune system compromizations, because this is also the first phase, like the most primary stage of your immune system is in that gastrointestinal track. So not only is it important for just digestive health, but it's also important for immune system function. And under the current conditions where we're removing people from these robust environments with bacteria and viruses like gyms and things where people getting exposed, we're actually weakening. It's like, hey, I used to be squatting, you know, 300 pounds on the bar for 10 reps. Well, now I'm going back to a band workout. Well, what's going to happen to, you know, for three months, what's going to happen to your legs? Well, I know what's going to happen to my legs. I've been doing that myself. And they're starting to, you know, it doesn't matter how hard or how volatile, like there is my, my, the muscles on my legs are getting smaller during

this thing, because I'm not exposed to the robust environment of the training components of the gym. There's no different inside your immune system. And I was talking to one of our researchers today who does genetics, epigenetics, microbiome stuff. And she said, what's really interesting about when you do get to the gut is the models inside there, it's so easier to deal with than you're dealing with the complications of human biology. Like in the gut, it's very simple. Do this, do that. Don't do this, don't do that. And there's very quick response times. And that's why so many people, when they start taking care of their digestive health, you know, getting away from the computers and stuff like that when they're eating,

using things like enzymes and probiotics and hydrochloric acid at a consistent level, they instantly see benefits. And that does make them more resistant to stress. That does make them more robust in their capacity to function in life. And of course, right now, there's nothing that's more important. And we're seeing that. We're seeing an actual bump. More people are coming to our brand and purchasing products for us as they're seeing the benefits to their health systems with the current anxiety that's going on. How long did it take from you having digestive issues and coming back and finding mentors and understanding, you know, gut health and building your body from the inside out to actually

developing the first product? great question so when i had that blowout in 2003 so that was in november of 2003 when i ended the contest and then i i met i met dr brian just before that and he kind of put this bug in my head and then of course i the explosion. I went and started to mentor under him. So I started on a radical, um, high dosage volume of enzymes and probiotics myself under his tutelage. And within six months I recaptured my health and vitality. And I mean, I was as screwed up as you could get. And not only did I get my physique back, but my mental clarity, I had no more joint pain anymore. You know, I felt amazing. Again, my need for the protein requirements went from 250 grams to like 100 grams. And at that stage, I started to say, okay, well, what are the applications in the strength science world? Like what is the applications in fitness strength science world like what is the applications in

fitness and matt galant who is my business partner at the time we had started a bodybuilding education program and that was back in the day of boards and all that sort of stuff we were running google ads back then and all that sort of stuff and over the next four years we coached 15,000 fitness enthusiasts all over the world and we're getting real clinical data this isn't double blinds like feedback from their results we started producing uh after about a year of that a year into that our first enzyme blend which was mass times uh we've now done there's three different versions so we're always you know the company's called by optimizer so we're always looking at optimizing our formulas optimizing based on the data and and support and then we got all that data and then we

started producing our proteolytic probiotic you know michael and the lab team worked on that they were using that and we got the ability to utilize that product and distribute it and and then and got the licensing for it and everything which was really great now we have it as our own so which is awesome and that was a proteolytic super probiotic strain the very first one that we could see and that evolved and then about five years ago, we moved to a digestive health company because we realized this is rarely, you know, if we want to optimize health, this is the first stage. You know, there's other things that you can do, but we've got to get your ability to absorb, assimilate, and utilize whatever you're eating in a great way and eliminating the bad stuff. So we started doing that. And then now we're up,

I think around 75 or 80,000 clients that we've been able to get feedback from and data. And we've, we're one of the few companies that have our own university PhD teams, which are literally running tests in the lab based on not just on the effectiveness of the probiotics, like we've got a new one out now called Cognibiotics, which is extraordinary, but we've got all these other components that are, we can test the doubling rate of the probiotics. We can test the mediums that they grow best on. So what dietary choices are going to influence growth or proliferation? like we're looking at what kind of agents can disrupt the form and functions or growth rates or ability to colonize and stuff so we're now in a position where we're moving into really cultivating and development strategically made ends or probiotics strains

and probiotic blends and the cultivation and development of super probiotics, like our, you know, our probiotic blend that is able to go out like, you know, P3OM, which is a super probiotic. It does things that other probiotics can't because we put it to conditions like the Navy SEALs would do. You put them in a very systematized way of building those probiotics and growing those and the survivors now have capacities that a regular strain doesn't have and i think that's where the future is now because to meet the demands of what's happening uh right now uh as far as what's going on for digestive health it's possible for the the current strains to be able to be able to cultivate and develop over the periods of time in the future so we're really excited about that and that's why we're moving

forward at full-fledged because i think this is going to be the future of health and performance i'd imagine a lot of people listening right now they're they're at some level wondering like what the quality of their digestion is you know know, it's not going to be binary. It's either good or bad, like on the spectrum of quality digestion. How do you know if your digestion is very poor, kind of just okay, or really, really good? Great question. So a couple of things that we find that people can look at is you look at the early, what I call symptomatic signs that you would go to a pharmacy or go to your medical doctor to address over time. And basically the first thing that people will notice is bloating or the feeling that

bloating feeling if you're eating. Usually if that's the early case it's probably an enzymatic issue. Second thing is if they're getting acid reflux or heartburn, oftentimes that's a hydrochloric acid issue. And usually by the time a person's entering into their, you know, mid thirties to forties, your hydrochloric acid production is maybe 30%. And nine times out of 10, it's not that you don't have enough acid or you've got too much acid. It's because you don't have enough acid. And that's why that flap is staying open and you're getting splash up. Third stage, if you're starting to notice problems either with,

you're getting either diarrhea or constipation consistently, or you're getting a lot of skin breakouts or you're getting, you're're getting affected you're catching every bug that goes through town you're you're you're you're not very resistant immune system wise chances are you have some sort of dysbiosis inside your gut skin conditions are a big indicator of that as well so those are the symptoms that people start to look at which is the early stages of digestive distress. And those can be addressed by those three things that I addressed earlier. Enzymes, hydrochloric acid, and quality probiotic strains that are able to beat down the bad guys.

You said earlier that you were eating 250 grams of protein a day, and then once you got healthy, you were down to a hundred. And I'm sure that raised a lot of questions for a lot of people because they're probably eating roughly 200 grams, uh, one pound, you know, or one gram per pound of body weight. And then the average male is 200 pounds. And everybody just said, well, do I need to be eating 75 grams? How did you get to that number? And if you could just explain what it actually means to be digesting all of your protein so you only need 100 grams? Yeah, great question. So over the course of that first four years of integrations, and that was when I was on the crux of my athletic career

I started working that out and what I found is as my digestive system became more efficient and optimized I was able to assimilate more percent or a higher percentage of protein over what I was consuming in the past and I could measure this by how quickly I was recovering between workouts. And what I got down to, so in 2007, I made a comeback and literally went to the world championships. Again, won two more national championships on 85 grams of protein a day, all from raw food plant sources. That's how efficient my digestive system had

become. Now, I'm not suggesting or advocating that that's what people need to do for their diet. I'm a dietary agnostic. But through the feedback that I got, my own bio testing and my own, you know, results being at the high performance level, I got to down to that level. And right now today, I fluctuate between 85 and 150 grams a day. And I'll couch that. Right now I'm doing, as I indicated earlier, I'm doing alternate day fasting. So I have up my dosage to 150 grams of protein on my, on the days that I am eating because I'm spending 36 hours without eating and only 12 hours of eating three days a week. So now I do need enough amino, I need more amino acids, I need to convert that protein into the amino acids for recovery. I've also reduced my training volume at that point just with the current condition. So all what a long story short with that is the fundamental assumption

is if you're taking one gram of protein, that doesn't mean that you're getting one gram of amino acids into the body. You're getting some percentage of that based on the quality of the protein and the quality of your digestion, which tends to, on the digestive side, diminish over time. If you optimize your digestive component, you are going to need less and less of the absolute amount of protein consumption inside your body. And then the next phase that are going to influence that is the type of training in the type of, you know, whether that's volume, your age, hormonal environment, recovery rates, and other external stressor factors, which may be pushing down on your recovery capacity. So it's not a one size fits all. But what I would say is, virtually everybody who increases or optimizes their digestive health, see corollary responses in recovery rates, reduced anxiety levels, better cognitive function,

and ability to sustain your health span at a higher level than if you didn't do those things. Yeah. When you guys are creating these enzymes and keto shows up, it's been around probably a little while, but it becomes very popular now you're a vegetarian or plant-based and carnivores show up and now we have completely different digestive systems and gut bacteria and and the makeup of people's guts but you know what goes into creating the the individual products and and what are the differences because it's not just protease and we have to like figure out how each person's gut is organized based off their diet what's coming in and how do we optimize it to get the right things out of it yeah great question you

know it's ironic because one of the great successes and I don't know, flukes, if you will, of our company, if you will, I just call it the Providence or something, is my co-founder. So Matt and I were both high performance trainers and personal trainers for many years before we started by optimizers together. And so we got addicted to helping people. Now, here's the funny part. He's been a keto guy for 23 years. And I've been a plant based guy for almost 20 years. And for probably it's 15 years, him and I have been in a back and forth debate about the advantages and disadvantages of those dietary components. And so when we produce mass enzymes, this product here, which was our foundational product, this was an all-encompassing, it's got 17 different enzymes. It's got the most prolific amount of proteases, which break down protein.

Amylase breaks down carbohydrates and lipase breaks down fats. That particular product, although effective as a universally applicable product, particularly for people in the fitness realm who are looking at the amino acid conversion, it's not the optimal product for someone on a ketogenic diet, someone on a carnivore diet. But good news is Matt is on that. So he went to work as well wanting to prove me wrong because I had experimented with plant-based keto. And the problem for me, which is the problem where I think some people don't adapt to the ketogenic diet very well, is I couldn't digest the fats. When my fats hit a certain level, I'd start to literally see oil in my stool. I knew I wasn't breaking it down. And I said, I can't do this, Matt. My body doesn't metabolize fats very well. For him, I can handle carbohydrates really well. My body does well on

carbohydrates. He doesn't do so well on carbohydrates. So the advantages of our dietary choices being so far apart were great. So he went off and developed this product, Capex, which had our world-beating proteolytic formulation, the tri-phase protein that we developed, the protease that we developed. And then he went one step forward and created the Lipo-4. The Lipo-4 was four different types of lipases that would cover and metabolize and digest virtually any type of fat that a person would consume. And then he went one step or two steps further. He added agents like HCL and he added, you know, some herbal products like dandelion

root to activate bile production. And then he went another level further, he added L-carnitine to help fats get transported into the mitochondria. I wrote a paper on mitochondria in my first year of nutrition on L-carnitine and how that transports fats into things. And then he added the 7-keto DHEA to improve mitochondrial metabolisms, kind of spin up, create the propeller spin, if you will, to the conversion of electrons. So we've just gotten more and more sophisticated in being able to create digestive health products that are relative to the dietary choices that people are making. And then, you know, it's been really great that way. And we've been very fortunate to have, like I said, to be dietary agnostic. I think people should select the diet that's, you know, right for their genetics, right for their nutrition, right for their epigenetics, right for their lifestyle and what they feel the best on.

That's the diet you need to be following, but not to paint yourself into a box that you stay in that place the rest of your life. Because the one thing that we can know about life, things tend to change. And as old Darwin said, life is not survival of the fittest, it's survival of the most adaptable. And as we live in these echo chambers, unfortunately, thanks to mathematical algorithms and Facebook tribal identification, we start building these biases into our psychology, which actually limit our adaptability. So

Warren Buffett once said, he doesn't give himself the luxury of an opinion until he's considered its opposite position thoroughly. And that's allowed him to be one of the greatest successful investors in the history of the world. And I think all of us would be well serviced. And so I love having conversations with people on the carnivore diet. I love having conversations with people in the paleo diet and I love getting their feedback and their information so that we can curate and cultivate the digestive aids relative to where their digestive system is, as opposed to trying to dictate what I think they should be. I'll use their feedback and then, you know, supply their needs as that goes forward.

It's worked really well for us. You mentioned the new product you guys are developing. Is it Cognib Boost? Is that the… Yeah, Cognibiotic. Cognibiotic, yeah. So, I'm really, really excited about this, and I'll tell you why. I just got it. I'm really excited about it, too. I haven't gotten into it. I just got it from you guys. Yeah, so what we did here is there's a huge issue going on inside of the industrialized

nations of the world, and that is there's a- And I'm going to caveat a couple of things here for legal reasons. There are a lot of people that are having an assortment of challenges that they're relying on prescription medication due to neurotransmitter imbalances or lack of production. And that leads to low moods. It leads to a higher higher stress response a whole variety of conditions which are being treated by the medical community and and pharmaceuticals and things like that and i'm not suggesting that we're going to interrupt that but what i am suggesting is like okay well what if what if the real issue is they don't they're not able to manufacture the

neurotransmitters one of the anecdotal things that we noticed when people were on mass times is that we seen not just a small amount, but a lot of anecdotal evidence of our clients talking about how they felt better. Um, even going so far as we had some senior citizens who had been on antidepressants for 30 years coming off them. And I was like, okay, not saying that this is up, but what would be the potential mechanism? And people have to understand that 95% of your neurotransmitters are actually made in your gut. The neurotransmitters are important for the various neurochemicals that you made to allow your brain to function properly. And going back to Charles Poliquin, God rest his soul, who was a fellow that trained, I think it was gold medalists in 27 different sports, which is insane. And he learned a ton of languages

because he said there was cultures where research dominated in various issues. You'll follow where I'm going here in a minute, but he was the first person to connect Chinese medicine with neurotransmitter dominance. So the different phases of the divisions in Chinese medicine actually correlate with neurotransmitter dominance. So you could be dopamine dominant, acetylcholine dominant, GABA, demolent, serotonin, which determines your nervous system, your training response. And he started cultivating, he'd have athletes in the same sport. One person is training like six times a week, twice a day. And someone else in the same sport is training three times a week, you know, for one session. And they would go, what, why is

this? And he was basing it on neurotransmitter dominance. So we looked at the same issues from a digestive health and a health function. And we was like, well, what are the probiotic strains that actually make these neurotransmitters? And can we cultivate the right amount of prebiotics, the right amount of Chinese herbs, and the right amount of prebiotics to grow those probiotics so they don't starve, that it will colonize inside that system to make something that's going to enhance the neurotransmitter function of any given person at a time. So we got to the lab with our teams and we started testing different strains and growing different strains and putting out different prebiotics and then throwing in different Chinese herbs, which have been used traditionally for thousands of years to enhance

people with various cognitive conditions. And lo and behold, we came up with Cognibiotics. And what Cognibiotics is, is it's a blend of proprietary strains of probiotics, which manufacture neurotransmitters in the gut. Prebiotics that support the growth of those, because one of the reasons that we don't get colonization for a lot of the probiotic strains is if they don't have the food that those strains live on, they die. They'll die within 24 hours because that's like 10 years in the realm, like a day in the realm of a probiotic is like 10, 20, 30 years for normal humans, right? So we have to realize the life cycle of these bacteria. They need to have food. So that, and then the combination of Chinese herbs, not taken individually because when you cook up Chinese herbs together, like if you go down to the Chinese market or you go to a Chinese practitioner

they'll give you a bunch of herbs you got to cook it up it stinks like heck but the actual blending of them together creates a synergistic effect more effective than the herbs taken independently on their own so we actually contracted a neuroscientist who is an expert in Chinese medicine and neurotransmitter dominance to put together their herbal formula. We contracted the probiotic experts who understand the interrelations of the different probiotic strains and the neurotransmitters they produce and the prebiotics they need, put them all together into one capsule and said, hey, try these things. And the bottom line is,

it's one of the best mood enhancers that we've seen. And we've been able to test it with a number of my friends to struggle in those areas, whether it's been frame focus, or they're on various medications for challenges with their neurotransmitters and things like that. And virtually across the board, they're reporting positive effects. We're still early into this. It is, you know, I want to caveat this, we're working on cultivating and developing trials with our research team that will be able to produce white papers on this. We do believe it's the future, but we're on the bleeding edge. And so for people who want to try it, they can go and try the CogniBiotics and then send us in her feedback because that helps us get data. If they don't like it or they don't need, they don't see improvements. We just

give them their money back on their, the first bottle they purchase. It's no big deal, but we want to gather that data and encourage people to try that because the more positive effect we get out there in the market, the better we can go back to the lab and tweak these out. But the early stages are very promising right now. I love it. Man, we could go on forever with the, but I want to be respectful of your time. How do people get over to Masszymes, KPEX, find the diet that's right for them? Where can we find all the information yes so if they want to give a shot on the uh coggy biotics they can go to uh coggybiotics.com slash shrugged 10 and if you put in the code shrugged you get a 10 discount on your bottle of cogney biotics as well they can use that same code

for any one of our products whether that's the mass signs we talked about, HCL or whatever. We have a 365 day money back guarantee. So your first bottle that you try of any of our products, what you can do is try it. If you don't absolutely love it or you're not blown away, give us a call, send us a text, do whatever. We'll refund all your money. That's no big deal. You can send the rest of theics products back or you can simply put a question into us because we have specific videos specific educational components that will allow you to you can leverage to utilize the product in the way they want i answer abandon over 8500 questions on this particular topic and i and i actually take the answers of every single question that comes in to make sure we're providing the right education

i'm a massive fan of the mass times um i don company to make sure we're providing the right education. I'm a massive fan of the Mass Times. I don't know exactly when we're going to start the show and all the fun political COVID stuff we were talking about earlier. But Doug and I have been taking it daily for over a year now. And I love the Mass Times stuff. Yeah, it is probably about 18 months

since we met you out in Venice. I'm a massive fan of it. And every time someone asks, especially like on Instagram, they hear us talking about it on the shows. They're like, is that stuff real? Is our enzymes really a thing? And I'm like, just take it. I've never had anybody come back and say that was a waste of money.

I wish I hadn't done that. It's always positive feedback. So that's like, it's just my two cents. I think everybody should understand and learn about enzymes. They make a massive difference. You feel so much better when you're actually digesting your food efficiently. Doug Larson, where can people find you? Get the perfect poops. Can't beat a poop. Perfect poops. Doug Larson, where can people find you? And you get the perfect poops. Can't beat a poop. Perfect poops. Doug Larson. Yeah, Wade, thank you so much for coming on.

You know, I echo what Anders just said. You know, I think all your guys' stuff is really high quality, and I really appreciate your time and coming on the show and hanging out with us. You know, it's my pleasure. And hopefully this stuff will get done someday, lockdown, and we can go back hit the gym and throw some iron around like uh it seems like that was a lifetime ago now and i hope we can get back to that place to some sense of normality so you know my pleasure being on here and i really

appreciate you bringing me on and sharing that information with people and i'm really delighted we've been in public service for as long as can we're on a a mission, you know, to end physical suffering and to activate awesome health. And that's what we're all about. And to have your platform as impressive as your guys have, we really appreciate it too. So thank you so much. It's beautiful. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We're barbell shrugged at barbell underscore shrug.

Get over to barbell shrug.com. And more importantly, make sure you go check out mass signs. That's the one that I talk about the most. My mom loves Capex. I'm not a keto person, so I can't, uh, tell you everything about that one. And I'm really excited to check out the new, um, cognitive enhancement side of things. I just got those. So I'm really excited about it. Um, look forward to hanging out with you again and, uh, appreciate it. We'll see you guys. Killer friends stoked for the sale to start next week the bands of body weight ebook program or bands of body weight for hypertrophy ebook program as well as free bands

getting shipped to your house all you gotta do is buy a training bundle in which you're automatically saving between 75 and 85 percent on five to seven programs with a specific goal. That's over at barbellshrugged.com forward slash shrugged. Also, make sure you get to our sponsors, Organifi.com forward slash shrugged to save 20%. Cognibiotics, C-O-G-N-I-B-I-O-T-I-C-S.com forward slash shrugged10 to save 10% and then fit together brand new social media sharing app just for fitness. No politics allowed. No politics allowed.

Fit Together app. It's in your app store. Make sure you download it today and come find me at Anders Varner and get into the group Barbell Shrugged. We'll see you guys on Monday.