Digital Social Hour - Addressing Health Myths and Health Gurus | More Plates More Dates DSH #337

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

Derek aka More Plates More Dates comes on the show to address some health myths. APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://forms.gle/qXvENTeurx7Xn8Ci9 BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] SPONSORS: Opus Pro: https://www.opus.pro/?via=DSH Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you have a trend that is positive, it is still based on health parameters. If you can get it to trend down, and that is reinforcing to do the good habits, could be worthwhile. It's just not really scientifically validated to a degree that I would put any stock into. Wow. Oh, you're probably going to live to like, you know, let's say you're 50, and it says you're 30, you're probably going to live to 100, because you would have otherwise died at 80.

Like, I would certainly not say that and wherever you guys are watching this show i would truly appreciate it if you follow or subscribe it helps a lot with the algorithm it helps us get bigger and better guests and it helps us grow the team truly means a lot thank you guys for supporting and here's the episode socialschlauer I'm here with Derek from More Plates More Dates how's it going my man good how about yourself man I'm good so I know you're in town for the longevity conference right yep yep how's uh how's that going so far that's with your americ health company yeah yeah it's uh there's like presentations expos and um it's kind of just a good networking opportunity. So it starts in before then. And yeah, man, looking forward to it. Nice. Yeah. I want to dive into Merrick Health

because I saw you say on another show, you really see a lot of potential in that company, even more than your supplement company, right? Yeah. Yeah. Probably long term. Yeah. So what's sort of the model there? In general, it is broad spectrum preventative medicine so by preventative medicine it's kind of like an approach to taking care of your health to prevent disease before it actually occurs rather than treating symptoms once they actually manifest themselves rather than waiting until you have a literal heart attack to go you know see what's wrong or see what my cholesterol is you actually check this stuff ahead of time yeah and proactively assess how do i optimize things do i have any genetic predispositions i should be aware of how do i essentially avoid getting to a state of disease or deterioration and optimize function so

that is kind of what we pride ourselves on is trying to assess as elaborately as possible how do we make sure you are in that position so you can confidently you know enter each day knowing you've peaked out your not just performance but also you're not going to end up with you know a heart attack 15 years from now yeah that's cool so what are some common genetic predispositions people are walking around with that you see probably one of the most notable is uh there's a gene that predisposes you to well there's a uh an assortment of them but ultimately you see the manifestation of it in your blood work as it's called lipoprotein little a which is like the most atherogenic and when i say atherogenic like potential for

atherosclerosis buildup as in plaque in your arteries leading to, um, heart attack down the line or what have you. So this marker is very, very difficult to modulate with diet and lifestyle. So typically when you see somebody's blood work, there are a lot of things that can change dramatically just by losing weight, fixing your diet, um, addressing like the low-hanging fruit stuff that everyone is aware of essentially but with lp little a it's very uh genetically determined so even if you have perfect everything i've seen people with the most dialed blood work and then sky high lp little a yeah and had um like calcium scores equivalent to like the worst of their age group, even though they were objectively very healthy from what you could see visually and every other biomarker on their

blood work. Wow. So if you get this checked, even if, and it's very cheap, you could get it for like, I forgot what it is off the top of my head, but I think it's like 20, 30 bucks or something. Oh, for blood tests. Yeah. But if you get this checked because it's so not manipulated by diet and lifestyle to any significant extent like there are you know some impact there is some impact but not enough that you wouldn't notice it being high like it's not like it's transiently changing so even if you check at one time you'll know essentially yeah you'll either be you know uh in an area of you know i'm probably not genetically predisposed or it's going to be very blatant that there's something going on

and that is problematic because no matter what you do lifestyle wise whatever if you think that you're good to go and you're missing this kind of background factor you could be stacking plaque in your arteries without even knowing it dang so that would be like the lowest hanging fruit thing i can think of off the top of my head as far as genetic predispositions that one might want to look for um i think it's like the leading cause of death among cardiovascular related genetic predispositions wow yeah and then um what was the question again what are predispositions yeah some common ones you see yeah um i suppose like there's a lot of genes that could in uh concordance with one another create a state of unhealthiness where it's not necessarily down to one specific gene like for example i could point

out oh if you have a mutation in the gene that encodes for it's called mthfr i'm sure you've heard of it yeah and we're probably going to discuss gary but anyway he highlights the importance of that like the high hell and a lot of people have it like to the degree where i had it yeah within this room like i have it you have. It's probably a good likelihood. He has it too. Most people, if you walk in a room, it's like over 50% of people have some sort of like deficiency in this enzyme functionality. And you could see the reflection of that in your blood work as high homocysteine,

which is also like very pro heart disease among other things. Yeah. And like, that's an example of a very common genetic predisposition that could be harmful but you can point it out pretty easily if you just look at your homocysteine your blood work you don't need to get a 600 genetic analysis to figure out like okay maybe i have this thing that then maybe leads to a you know a biomarker being elevated like you just check the biomarker and if it's elevated maybe you can work backwards from there and implement some of the changes to actually

correct it but um those are just two off the top of my head is like very common that makes sense so when it comes to gene breaks are those you can't really fix those right those are just set in stone yeah like genetics is not necessarily my area of expertise so i don't want to speak totally out of turn but my understanding is if you have a mutation in a gene that encodes for you know the development of the creation of some sort of uh enzyme or protein in your body it's not like you can just you know go manually change it necessarily like there are things you could do to enhance the expression of a gene that could be you know protective or kind of offset the deficiency or impairment of a certain. Like, for example, with MTHFR, there's evidence to suggest that if you just take a few milligrams of riboflavin per day, you could actually correct your MTHFR entirely rather than have to do a whole bunch of complicated stuff. stuff um but in general like your genetics are set and it's kind of what you do with those that

makes a difference because they will express or upregulate depending on what's going on and i'm sure you've heard of epigenetics sometimes the circumstances you impose on yourself will actually dictate what processes and signaling happens in your body even with the same genetics so that's why if you have risk factors or certain lifestyle habits that are like blatantly bad for you, like smoking, you know, like it'll affect the way your genes, you know, turn on or off or work, work well or don't work well and so on. Yeah, that makes sense. What's your take on people that say you can treat diseases and such naturally, holistically, that your body has the capabilities to heal everything? I think to some extent.

I certainly don't want to suggest that you need drugs or anything to fix all ailments or whatnot, because that's certainly not the case. And most of them can be corrected by basic lifestyle, diet, training, nutrition, sleep hygiene, etc. But there are certain things that are very difficult to get around to like the LP little a good luck just going on a treadmill, getting that down to single digits, it's probably not going to happen if you're very predisposed. And some people with familial hypercholesterolemia, which is like, pretty much a sky high LDL level in your blood work, you're not necessarily going to be able to fix that just by dieting your way down. And it'll,

it'll help by all means. But some people have unique predispositions that almost like supersede the stuff that for maybe an average person might get you to like negligible to almost no risk. It's very dependent. Like some people smoke until they're a hundred and they will outlive a guy who's like a dialed biohacker that's true what do you think causes that is that their genetics just different from everyone else's um yeah it seems to be that they are able to essentially deteriorate slower than the next person and that is

essentially dictated by uh genetics but also you know like you could easily argue that person if they had a perfect diet training etc maybe they would have lived to 115 instead of like 105 or something yeah but we don't really know it's not like we have a controlled experiment where we can compare well you smoking and not giving a but anything versus you having dialed in you know biohacker level stuff how much of a difference does that actually make on longevity it's tough to say but at the end of the day i do think there is like a huge the cards you're dealt component and then with those cards how do you you know optimize accordingly because there's certain things that you know with the the lipid predispositions like the cholesterol

stuff i mentioned some of those, you might end up dying like decades sooner if you did not intervene early, but then some stuff like, I don't know, maybe cancer cell proliferation and some, you know, thing down the line for all we know, if you had a perfect diet and lifestyle,

you could get it at 75 instead of 80. I don't know. Like it, it's hard to actually quantify and i would love to give some sort of like hard numbers to it but at the end of the day you can with the cards you're dealt do all the things that are natural and oftentimes those will get you to a point where you've minimized your risk to whatever natural potential you can and how many years that will help you with who knows yeah but at least the quality of life on your way there too

we can say with near certainty is going to be significantly different versus poor lifestyle etc yeah i think just control what you can right people overthink it yeah like i would love to say everyone with bad genetics or even average genetics could get to 100 plus years old just by doing everything perfectly and it's definitely not the case right so in terms of longevity has there been any compelling studies or research done there any supplements that have been proven to you know prolong life um in rodents yeah we will see uh it's called the itp and they do like drug analysis studies every year on rodents and assess what are like the most longevity enhancing things and each year they will add to the list with things that have moved the needle the most and some of those include

like metformin rapamycin recently they just added some others i believe um astaxanthin was added the other day which is like found in krill oil it's like an antioxidant um 17 alpha estradiol also notable which is interesting because it's like now dudes are putting estrogen essentially on their like estrogen cream on their body really like brian johnson that biohacker dude oh he does everything yeah yeah but um yeah there's a lot of things that in rodents will show you know 25 plus percent increase in lifespan just by implementing one or two different things in humans does it actually play out like that not really but there are certain things that will help we just couldn't say with concrete metrics you know use rapamycin and you will listen

you know extend your lifespan by another 20 years yeah i would i would assume that's far-fetched but a lot of people will use the literature available to then extrapolate out and say based on the clinical data in humans what is the risk profile of this drug is it low enough that i'm willing to risk whatever downside which may be potentially negligible depending on the compounding question for the potential upside which could be you know significant enhancement and vitality longevity kind of to be determined but um and that's where the advent of some of these guys come out where they're just trying everything under the sun like brian johnson yeah what's your take on him because

i tried his blueprint for a bit i'm not even the full blueprint because he takes like 110 supplements i tried about 30 of them and i just i couldn't do it honestly yeah like how would you even do it though it hurt my body like i was taking so many supplements i would feel i don't know if i was drinking enough water honestly but i just were you eating interesting because i do think what he is doing is interesting and worthwhile to follow and use as some sort of reference of you know a guy who was trying everything under as controlled of conditions as he can yeah but when you actually take away conclusions that are replicable at scale you can't do that which often he will you know say

something did or didn't work or it affected me in this way but the consideration among he has so many variables changing all the time yeah and he And he has his own, you know, genetic predisposition that is unique to him and not anyone else. So to think of that, we can take from what he's doing to apply actually going to be, I don't know, something we could just cookie cutter copy. I don't think he would assert this, by the way. I don't think he'd say copy exactly what I'm doing, even if it's working for him. But some of the stuff he does, I just like don't really understand. For example, calorie depriving the hell out of yourself just to use testosterone like maybe you could have just ate more and not had to use exogenous hormones you know right i'm not to

knock it if he wants to be leaner and he also wants to sustain you know vitality libido quality of life and muscle by all means dude but to assert like i'm in the top whatever percent for testosterone it's like oh is he injecting it i didn't know that he uses a cream i think oh it might be a patch but either way he's on test yeah dang i thought he was all natural that's that's a shame yeah but it's like he's he's up front ish about it but then when you assert certain like you know uh strength metrics or like you know asserting your free androgen index is like i'm the top whatever percent it's like well what would it be if you weren't on test i'd be curious yeah that's true so yeah like some of the stuff he does really interesting dude um i think

what he's doing is an interesting use of his money too like obviously it's maybe better than sitting around yeah playing video games all day or day or going on vacations perpetually, essentially. And I follow it loosely here and there. So I think what he is doing has some validity and he's willing to use experimental compounds that a lot of people wouldn't inject into themselves. So I'll watch with a relative interest, but I don't take from what he's doing a lot of practical takeaways often and other than the basics like i think a lot of people could get inspired to change their lifestyle and actually diet dial in their sleep and gamify the process which is something i think that is cool that what he's doing he's like a leaderboard that shows you know whose rate of aging is the best and compete

against me my sleep score and whoop is constantly top whatever percent and then he presents kind of this dynamic where you kind of want to see what you can do and see if you can beat yourself and yeah that's cool yeah the only thing that sucks about that though is the gamification though too it's good for trending and actually seeing you know what patterns are leading to good outcomes necessarily but But at the end of the day, these aging analysis scores are essentially. You can't actually determine, you know, your biological age and rate of aging equals this based on an array of markers that could change transiently. Like, it's very hard to take from that and say, you know, i'm the equivalent of a 30 year old when you're like 45 it's not the case like right now the way your uh health status looks transiently perhaps

looks like the rate of aging of that younger individual but it's like there's been plenty of studies at this point that have shown you could change those numbers literally within days just by changing the way you're eating your lifestyle sleep hygiene so like i could look like i'm you know like 40 tomorrow and then 20 the next day by just like changing a couple things dang i wish i talked to you before black friday i just ordered uh david sinclair's tally health genetic test the cheek swab one the thing though is and this is similar what i said about the gamification although it's not like that practical if you have a trend that is positive it is still based on health parameters right so if you're like you know if you have some arbitrary oh you're 30 but it equals it says you're 25 if you can get it to trend down and that is reinforcing to do the good habits yeah could be worthwhile it's just not

really scientifically validated to a degree that i would put any stock into wow oh you're probably gonna live to like you know let's say you're 50 and it says you're 30 you're probably gonna live to 100 because you would have otherwise died at 80 like i would certainly not say that and i would also be very cautious to not buy products that are designed specifically to impact the biological age score because that's what a lot of that's where it gets really finicky yeah the monetization of these tests yeah people are making a ton off those and he always talks about how he's 18 years old on those tests yeah i would be very curious what the verbiage is exactly what he says because he's got to be careful i would think if he is rigorous about his um assessment of what is legitimate or not because he very much prides

himself on making decisions that are data backed rather than just you know what seems to be useful based on his own you know intuition or what he wants to do it's like i eat the sludge because it's based on longevity analysis it's like the best thing i could be doing which is obviously questionable but you know for him to say i am the equivalent of an 18 year old that would be misleading so if he's saying my rate of aging in like this organ equals that of an 18 year old maybe i could i think that's more of what he's saying i was kind of paraphrasing sure sure ever mid 40s and you're healthier and you were a few years fantastic you'll probably live longer and have much higher quality of life on the way there and that's the takeaway not

necessarily that like like an 18 year old would still smoke you when it comes to a lot of metrics that you would assert you're equal to them yes you're basically saying a blood test is enough metrics and data you don't need to take the extra step with these aging tests. Not what I'm saying. I just think that it gets a bit finicky when you're using it to determine either where you actually stand health wise, because I don't think that's going to factor in. Like, for example, the LP little a predisposition is like a biological age analysis going to tell me that I have the predisposition to stack plaque in my arteries until one day i have a jammer probably not it might you know have some sort of concordance with insulin sensitivity and other metrics that could avoid cardiovascular disease but there are some

things that are just like you need to get granular with actual literature backed uh information and not base it on you know my methylation score equals this therefore i'm healthy like yeah yeah and he uses elaborate blood work by the way he doesn't just use these like clock things as his assessment so worth noting and he's pretty rigorous but at the same time it's like again the takeaway is what can we take from it when you're on a hundred plus things and you're adding in like very potent drugs and often experimental all the time we have no idea how that affects everything else and frankly he has no idea either like he added an oral minoxidil the other day for hair growth which is helpful but also a really primitive anti-hypertensive

medication that affects your ability to regulate fluid dynamics and it's just not a great drug it can lead to arrhythmias it's way better topically there are other ways to enhance how good it works topically yeah and he just adds in willy-nilly and doesn't really like like how that's going to affect your blood pressure how it's going to affect everything else you're doing like one change could influence the i don't know takeaways of a hundred other things you're doing wow yeah and if you're taking a hundred a day who knows yeah like these are potent drugs in this protocol too like a lot of them are just basic supplements and stuff but often it's you just chuck in like phallostatin gene therapy or like thymus and

derivatives or whatever what did you think of his recent study about measuring the boners while he while he sleeps yeah i haven't looked at it intricately to see what was the takeaway that he said uh he measures how long he's hard at night and he's trying to increase that time how does he measure it uh some device he puts it on his and then i think he's hard for two hours and 20 minutes or something and what's the optimal i guess that's a measure of health i don't even know that's a good question yeah because he's i know he got divorced and he likes to sleep alone to get those high sleep scores yeah yeah um he said it's actually harder to get those sleep scores when there's someone sleeping with you so that's interesting yeah

there's extreme levels to this stuff man yeah yeah like obviously i wouldn't necessarily do this but yeah i think that i don't think anyone has i don't know if anyone's ever assessed that so that's you know interesting but in general when it comes to like hormone balance, if you have morning wood versus not, like that's kind of a good sign or proxy for some level of like hormonal imbalance or deterioration. Because when you're younger, you're pretty much waking up with morning wood every day. And then at some point, oftentimes people realize they're becoming less sexually driven or, you know, morning woods gone. They have erectile dysfunction in the bedroom. Like these are proxies for actual actual health status. But, you know, the measuring like duration of boner while sleeping.

How much importance do you put on testosterone? A lot of people talk about it um i think it depends if you're symptomatic because a lot of times people will look at the number and then get very uh i don't know numbers oriented to where they'll look at a piece of paper and have it dictate whether they take hormones for example or if they psychologically believe that they need something to optimize it sometimes people with very low test levels objectively actually perform better build more muscle are in a better better state of mind have better health in other organ systems etc even with a lower testosterone level like some of the most jack guys i know are like really 500 total t's oh wow i didn't know that yeah so it

depends on your sensitivity to the hormones and a lot of times people need to understand the number is of how much you're producing that is in your blood at that snapshot in time and the reason your body produces a certain amount is to achieve an outcome so it's like if i need less testosterone to achieve a function it doesn't necessarily mean that's a bad thing because there are certain circumstances where people will have like 1200 total testosterone which objectively on paper to the layman they'd be like wow look at that you're pretty much like the pinnacle of masculinity you make so much test gregor gregor gallagher yeah well like that amount presumably unless

you're intervening with something to achieve it your body has dictated you need to produce this much in order to achieve functionality in like whatever it is you're needing to accomplish in order. So like it doesn't mean it's good necessarily that you need to produce twice as much to get the same outcome as another guy yeah with that said there is a level of deterioration too where if you'd go below you know a certain amount for you maybe that number is higher or lower for you specifically but there is a level where deficiency typically will result in you know symptoms and that's why this reference range it's just like a gauge at the end of the day and averages but it doesn't dictate that this is definitely oh if you have a you know less than 300 equals you're a hundred percent going to have every low testosterone related issue or that if you're at 1200 it's guaranteed that anything it's just uh it's a reference at the end of the

day but you need to this is why working with a professional is so key to interpret this stuff like yeah alex ramosi used to walk around with like in the hundreds of like it was like 100 and something his total team what the guy is yoked out of his tree that's it functions well damn yeah i didn't know that was possible that's the lowest i've heard yeah yeah i think he said on a graham steffens podcast the other day he has like 124 total but like right now or back then now what he's jacked yeah so so with that said though um he's always had those levels which is weird too and he has started hrt and he could speak to the more detail around why his test is so low still on hrt presumably it's just missing shots and being

lazy about it um but at the end of the day like he has still been functioning okay yeah that level granted i would even tell him like dude you should maybe get that taken care of or stick to your shot schedule better because you're more prone to sickness right yeah like there are there's a certain level where in general the majority of people will experience some level of suboptimal function so like that's kind of a gauge where I'm like, dude, you're almost in female hormone territory, essentially. So it's worth looking into further. So don't disregard the number, but just be aware and cognizant that if you have a 500

total test and your buddy has a 900, it does not mean that you need TRT to get up to his level necessarily. Are you interested in coming on the Digital Social Hour podcast as a guest? Well, click the application link below in the description of this video. We are always looking for cool stories, cool entrepreneurs to talk to about business and life. Click the application link below

and here's the episode, guys. You're speaking straight to me because I had a 552 and I thought that was low. So I started, I didn't do any of that, but I did some holistic stuff. Okay. Maybe there was no need for it. Maybe, started, I didn't do any of that, but I did some holistic stuff. Okay. Maybe there was no need for it. Maybe.

But at the same time, it's like you could also see corroborating data from other biomarkers to assess. Like, was that whatever changes you implemented, was that worthwhile? Is your insulin sensitivity better? Is your, I don't know, liver parameters, kidney parameters? Are these things improving? Or are you just chasing a total T number? Because it's like sometimes medications people get put on are you just chasing a total t number because it's like sometimes medications people get put on are actually just chasing a number and don't

actually really improve anything else wow so that's where you kind of got to dial in what is leading me to try and optimize it do i have any symptoms could i am you know is there a spectrum of where i think i've deteriorated and i'm okay at functioning but i used to feel better my libido is kind of like 70 percent of what it was does everything else my blood work look okay um you know that kind of stuff is all you need a complete picture before you just especially get on something that's gonna shut you down yeah so what type of supplements are you taking i know you own gorilla mind which is a huge supplement company and you super successful there are you taking anything on a daily basis right now yeah yeah i uh let's see

where do i start oh you're like brian johnson no no um vitamin d and k2 i take that essentially daily ubiquinol i also take daily um what does that do ubiquinol is like um it's pro heart health and it is something that as you get older you convert less coq10 into ubiquinol it's kind of like the downstream metabolite of it that is active in the body okay and it's uh i don't know pro mitochondrial health health uh cardiovascular support but it's kind of like a fail-safe for me. I just want to make sure I get enough of it, even in a state of... I don't know. I do take a baby dose of a statin, which does deplete CoQ10 levels. So I'm kind of supplementing to kind of offset that.

Got it. Is at least what I've determined as potentially worthwhile use to use it daily. But it also seems to be just very pro-heart support. So I've used that essentially for years um what else off the top of my head um beef liver if i don't feel like eating it that day i will take an actual like desiccated beef liver supplement liver king yeah one of the things he says that i think is actually like worthwhile um what else um sometimes n-acetylcysteine, which is like a very potent glutathione precursor, which is like the master antioxidant of the body. Um, let's see what else.

So not too much actually. Well, I feel like people at this point are probably already thinking, Jesus Christ, that's so much. Sometimes sleep enhancing stuff. Like i have a product called gorilla dream which is like an array of different herbs and um vitamins and minerals that supports essentially getting into sleep and staying in deep sleep okay um yeah those are kind of like the heavy hitters yeah that's not too bad i thought it'd be way longer there might be like a there's definitely a couple things i'm i'm misremembering or forgetting. I should say, but it's all good. Yeah. Maybe I'll think of them in a sec, but yeah,

you're not afraid to call out people. I noticed on your YouTube, you've went out liver King, you went out Logan Paul, you go after these people taking steroids. When did that start? Or have you always done that? Um,

yeah, it, uh, I'm trying to think of like the first call out video I did. It's kind of hard. But were you like that before like YouTube, were you calling people out? Like no, necessarily um yeah but i was also like pretty naive i guess in high school and whatnot like if somebody told me they were doing you know uh some natural supplement

and they were actually taking in a dianabol i'd be like oh that's crazy and then do their exact thing and not get any of the results. So I don't know. It was just over time. I started to notice it more prevalent. And I'd see we would always talk about it behind the scenes. And even on podcasts, I'd see like Joe Rogan talking to his buddies. Like, do you think the rocks on gear?

Like, no way. Yeah. You know, speculating about who's taking what. I'm like, we all talk about. So I might as well make a video about what I think is people ask me all the time, too. So I started to just make videos analyzing certain like trending topics and situations that were relevant to my areas of interest. And I don't know, some of them picked up steam and it kind of went from there. And yeah, some of the videos that are like more aggressive call outs, I feel like

almost need to be done to educate the consumer um before they buy something and use it for a long time because people will hype up stuff that is either i don't know like objectively a poor quality product and they just mislead the shitty to you like logan paul or um they will overhype something but not give caveats and context like there's a lot of stuff that just needs to be said to give the consumer full both sides of the story like you're even asking me like you know gary brekka i took his gene test and what do you think and it's like he was very convincing presumably and speaks very articulately concisely um when you hear him talk you very much believe what he says because the guy speaks so confidently and even with like enthusiasm about being able to educate people about the

subject matter. Like he various, he seems very passionate about it, which oftentimes is either good acting or it's people who are really rigorous about what they're doing and believe in it strongly. Yeah. So go out there and, you know, yell it to the high heavens about something and believe in it strongly yeah so go out there and you know yell it to the high heavens about something they believe in but when you listen to that guy it's very hard for a lot of people even very educated people to know if it's bs or not like you know he was on

joe rogan's the other day and joe is on you know certain supplements now because of him oh is he yeah wow so he got joe rogan too yeah yeah he's very convincing man no but i think said some of the stuff he says is not like it's pretty benign like if he says get on a methylated b complex it's not necessarily going to be problematic especially when it's something you can just urinate out the excess but to assert that you know almost everyone's issues are a result of a lack of you know methylfolate or whatever yeah or that you know like he told joe his hypothyroidism was probably caused by low methylation in the gut from t4 to t3 and it's like that's not how t4 is converted to t3 right

at all so to just say something so confidently but only guys with your background will even understand exactly 99 of people will be like oh that's crazy yeah yeah i mean they see dana white So to just say something so confidently. But only guys with your background will even understand that. Yeah, exactly. 99% of people will be like, oh, that's crazy. Yeah. I mean, they see Dana White talking really highly of him. And no one has your background to really dive in and analyze these numbers. Yeah, like sometimes I even see charlatans or people who are misleading speak so confidently about a subject that I thought I knew that all fact check myself on google i'll be like wait like am i wrong because he was so you know die hard about the way he said it i'd be like that sounds really weird to me but then i go check i'm like no that is not how it works

so i don't know it's uh it's weird though because it makes me wonder is this guy just delusional or does he actually like does he really believe what he's saying or is it to like uh you know to sell products or yeah i don't know but anyway so a lot of those guys though they have good messages overall like barry brekker would absolutely say like fix your diet lose weight do this do that so yeah it's just about uh learning how to identify i don't know high quality information and letting it dictate what you're putting in your body yeah you gotta like be pretty rigorous about vetting the people you trust as like health gurus yeah it's tough making claims in the health space because you'll have so

many people you know there to fact check it yeah and then even when you're trying to fact check the fact checkers oftentimes people respond and they sound convincing because like i think gary was on impact theory the other day too and then he was responding to something lane norton said about his claims oh yeah and he sounded pretty convincing when he was saying it and then it's like oh is he right is lane wrong and no lane's right but interesting yeah i've never seen him respond to lane because lane always comments and i've never seen gary he very tactfully navigates around the subjects yeah and there's always new trends like what do you think of this cold plunging stuff i think cold plunge oh man this claim by gary is ruthless he'd be like no diet or exercise is as effective for burning fat as cold exposure which is like bafflingly absurd so obviously not the case yeah however i think cold exposure is good for

pushing endogenous release of catecholamine so by that i mean like your fight or flight hormones you can really wake up and get yourself alert and functional by doing it however does it have any actual like health benefits or performance enhancement i think in an anti-inflammatory context for athletes it could be useful for recovery purposes and rehabilitation and whatnot. But for like anything to do with fat loss, it's not the lowest hanging fruit and it's pretty expensive and also time intensive to like set up and do everything versus just like take an extra thousand steps or something.

Not that you could even burn the fat anyways from that, but it's just wild that this is highlighted as one of the attributes which it's not you should be using it for uh mental fortitude getting awake and alert or anti-inflammation i think are the three kind of main things i would be using it for yeah and yeah like if you're waking up and you're sluggish and need to get going instead of popping an Adderall and getting a cold plunge and you'll be, you know. You'll be awake. Yeah. Yeah.

I was watching My First Million and the owner of Plunge.com is doing $100 million a year selling those things. They're 5Gs each. Margins are not great though. Oh, they're not? Okay. At least from what I know. But like, it's cool. Like, I like the product.

I would be curious how they're going to monetize beyond it though because it's like it's a fad right but it's also like a one-shot kill product like once you sell it what are you upselling with it is there some some sort of upkeep or subscription model like at least with things like eight sleep or whatever it'll be like stay on our subscription to be able to interpret your metrics and get active live auto recommendations and adjustments. Whereas the Cold Plunge, it's like I just question. I think it's cool, by the way. I think what they're doing is awesome. I think their product looks sick.

I think we've even worked with them at some point through Merrick and might even have a partnership set up. But yeah, I'd recommend checking them out. I'm just wondering from an economic standpoint how that stacks up. Yeah, the subscription model, even Oura Ring now now i remember when i bought one five years ago they didn't have a subscription and i just bought another one because i lost it they have like a monthly subscription though and maybe i'm wrong and maybe the economics must make enough sense for them to be you know leaning into it so hard and maybe a little pivot into have they done saunas yet i don't know i just found out about them today i mean the fact they're killing it like

that is crazy to me good domain to have too yeah plunge.com did they have at plunge or what is it uh plunge.com but like their handle oh they're i'm not sure yeah i just found out about them i didn't realize how many people were doing cold punches yeah i wonder what the seo is like around that yeah type in cold plunge if that's the main thing yeah but anyway yeah their product looks cool and i think in general a lot of people do use it as a way to change the trajectory of their lifestyle which i think is super impactful yeah yeah you call out i should have mentioned this earlier you call out a lot of people that take steroids but they won't admit it i know people are questioning if logan paul was on them oh yeah during that last fight what did you think of that i couldn't say definitively um i know that their drug testing was like in competition

testing essentially meaning it's like around the the window of the um the fight so you could easily be prepared to clear it out of your system in time should you know that that is the only time you're getting tested so you know does that mean he cheated not necessarily and it doesn't seem like there was rigorous rules around like you know testing anyways so technically didn't do anything wrong if he did and the wwe well i guess i don't know i'm sure there is like don't take gears probably some in the contract but yeah i haven't seen it and in the wwe you're kind of like unspokenly encouraged i would say so i don't know like it's uh with him he certainly looks the part but he also is a genetic specimen so the guy even if he's even as a natural like looks nuts

so you know for him to be training for boxing and to be putting on size during that it's kind of odd but i wouldn't say impossible for him to look the way he does natural but you know it's it's pretty uh on the fence dude yeah i would say there's like a high probably thing but you know it would just be you were the you were the first one to call out liver king right for steroids uh well with proof yeah probably you got the emails leaked right yeah i saw that video that was crazy yeah that one got a lot of views yeah no um yeah wild situation dude and it's like yeah you hear about these things it's like you know the natty or not discussion and you don't really know for sure you can never say or prove you kind of just speculate with relative certainty but this is a good example of like here's at scale what

actually happens in misleading marketing yeah and i don't know why he leaned into it so hard because he definitely made it more difficult for himself once it you know push came to shove and it came to light because you didn't need to like on people who take TRT, for example. He could have easily just said, you know, doctor prescribed hormone therapy is reasonable for guys who need it. But I don't do it. If you wanted to lie in a polite way, at least he would go on podcasts and say you're subprimal. If you use hormones, you should be do it naturally. Like me, eat testicles and you do it naturally.

You're pathetic. I was like, dude, so over be do it naturally like me. Eat testicles and you do it naturally. You're pathetic. Well, I was like, dude, so over the top. Unnecessary. He went hard, man. I've also seen you talk about hair loss. A lot of people are experiencing that. Your hair looks great, man. So what's the secret there?

I try. I wish I could. I might get a transplant at some point. Oh, yeah. You don't need it, though. You look good right now. Yeah. It's hair. Subjective, right now. Yeah. It's hair.

Subjective, I guess. Yeah, it's kind of like body dysmorphia, I guess, and fitness, too, with hair. Because if you know you could get a lot better, then it's hard to overlook. But anyway, the most impactful things I've done, and if I start them, this is kind of the, I don't know, manifestation of my content is this is stuff I wish I did sooner because I could have probably prevented any permanency of loss to where I even would think I need a transplant. I could have stopped it like dead in its tracks. Oh, yeah. Similarly to atherosclerosis, like there's ways to manually intervene. The problem is it is with drugs often so you know i don't want to say you should get on drugs similarly to if

you have you know sky high lipid parameters that are very unaffected by lifestyle but it's certainly worth consideration to think like what are the pros and cons and then making that educated decision for yourself and with hair loss it's like ultimately the main hormone that causes hair follicles to miniaturize which is like essentially the hair follicle shrinks until it's like visually you can't even see it anymore it's so unhealthy yeah dht dihydrotestosterone is the main androgen that converts from testosterone so when you produce testosterone in your testes it converts to either the two primary ones are estrogen which a lot of people are familiar with estradiol or dht dihydrotestosterone and on the spectrum of like feminine to masculine estradiol is like the most feminine hormone and dht is the most masculine and essentially what dictates if somebody's a male or female is the ratio between these and you could literally manually change

somebody's gender visually essentially essentially, by manipulating these. And this is what we see in bodybuilding all the time, professional sport, people who are transitioning from male to female or vice versa. Like, you can manipulate this. Oh, just through those two things? The balance of androgens to estrogen is essentially what dictates if you're feminine or masculine. Wow. masculine wow so if there is somebody for example a guy who is then deciding to transition to female they there are certain characteristics you won't be able to reverse because they're very uh infrastructure oriented like for example your vocal cords the way they've developed from

androgen exposure in adolescence it's very unlikely you're going to get to a female level voice because once you've masculinized the actual structure you're not going to be able to just reverse it necessarily no turnabout and similar to like certain features in the face like the way your bones have grown yeah the cheeks right yeah like there's certain things like your jaw that aren't necessarily going to be in a lot of people like look exactly like a female after transitioning and vice versa. But ultimately, these are the hormones that dictate what do you end up like after you are going through adolescence and to what extent. And with DHT, not only does it determine size, masculinizing characteristics, body hair growth, a myriad of things body hair is a bit more genetic but ultimately hair loss is dictated by localized exposure to dht in the scalp so by inhibiting

the conversion process through it's called a five alpha reductase inhibitor like finasteride you can essentially manually impede this process and halt hair loss more or less depending on how aggressive it is and there's more extreme drugs if you have like really aggressive hair loss where you inhibit all your dht essentially or compete with dht for receptor binding in the scalp with other drugs which is like reserved for the most hardcore prevention regimens but then it gets to the question is what is the side effects elsewhere because these drugs as much as we'd love it to be locally active where you want it and not active anywhere else they're not refined and progressive enough to actually do that so even with topical formulations of things

like finasteride they will still go systemic and cause reduction of dhd everywhere which for some people the majority of people goes essentially unnoticeable like you will in general not have noticeable change in libido quality of life anything but some people do get pretty significant side effects to where it becomes this like you know scary wing of pros and cons it's like do i want to lose my hair do i want to potentially have these side effects etc etc so that's where you're at right now yeah so like for me i took the plunge years ago and i had no notable side effects that i can perceive okay so for me at least to date it's been a good trade-off because i would for sure be bald by now otherwise dang seriously yeah wow yeah so that that's worked for you then i do notice a lot of weightlifters are because I would for sure be bald by now otherwise. Dang, seriously? Yeah. Wow.

So that's worked for you then. I do notice a lot of weightlifters have some hair issues. Oh, for sure. Yeah, the more, because again, similar to what I said earlier about these hormones that dictate masculine versus feminine, the more you push on this vector of masculine, the faster you will accelerate whatever you're genetically predisposed to.

So if you're injecting hormones and spiking your hormone levels to like 10x or something what they would naturally be you will assuredly expedite whatever it is that you are prone to that is dictating you know masculine characteristics so some people fortunately are essentially unscathed and it's like a very rare genetic predisposition that no one is even aware what the constellation of factors are that makes you so immune to it but some people will live to like old age and have you know 18 year old hairlines essentially like ronald reagan best hairline ever yeah yeah some dudes just look phenomenal regardless of what happens um but then most people in general i I think I forget the statistic,

but it's as you get older, almost everyone will have some regression and it's determining, you know, are you okay with that or not? And you said DHT levels to turn a penis size. Yeah. So exposure to DHT, it's not necessarily just like what is in your blood. It's more like at the tissue,

like how much do you need to actually mature? So you could look at someone's dhd levels on paper and know if they have a big dick or not no not necessarily similar to the test level though remember when i was like why is hormosi so jacked even those test levels low yeah his response to testosterone is different got it so it's the response yeah like he might have more muscle fibers than the next guy for all we know he might have more androgen receptors or express harder when he binds with that testosterone. And with size, it's like,

you know, it's going to be dictated a lot by how much hormones are there, but also like your response to those hormones. But in general, you could say with essential certainty that the more you push DHT higher, you would be closer to maxing out whatever your genetic potential is yeah in adolescence though like once you're fully grown you kind of like the boat has sailed a little bit interesting what do you think of ty lopez i think he said if if this fingers forget which one if

this one was longer you have high testosterone or something something like that oh yeah it's like the digit ratio or something yeah yeah i asked uh huberman huberman about that because i think his lab was the one who like determined this and i forgot what his answer was there's definitely like a pattern but i wouldn't necessarily like read too much into it yeah at the end of the day yeah people overthink stuff like that i think he says what are you gonna do what actionable yeah for sure like if you needed to see your finger was shorter to get a blood test get the blood test yeah has there been anything you've uh heard from huberman or peter atia that really impacted you and you started implementing their advice um yeah i think uh huberman's

information about dopamine and actually using it as a way to drive um i don't know like goal seeking and how to not like burn yourself out how to go about modulating exposure to it being careful about when you are taking certain drugs um even situations that might spike it being cognizant of what's happening in your brain has been impactful um and some of this stuff about like you know circadian rhythms and light exposure i think is pretty um useful to understand which i was like pretty uh um new to when i had first come across this stuff um light exposures like in the morning get exposed yeah yeah like it makes a big difference in setting your circadian clock essentially for telling your body like okay this is when you get up this is where your cortisol should be higher this is when you should be up and alert and then as you've most people are aware

of not having blue light blasting in your face at nighttime yeah but a lot of people aren't familiar with the converse side of that where it's like in the morning actually getting light in your eyes and making sure you're exposing yourself to the circumstances that tell your body like now is the time to get up and get moving kind of thing yeah so that's you know some of that stuff i think is impactful um for sure and with the tia a lot of it has been my understanding of cardiovascular disease and how preventable it could actually be so what i mentioned with the uh lipids and atherogenic atherosclerosis potential he he's pretty clear in that despite it being the leading cause of death in the states which is by a significant amount more than cancer even

dang he thinks that it doesn't even need to be in the top 10 of leading causes of death so and it's the only thing that you can actually with certainty, manually intervene if needed. So obviously, he as well as I, as well as many others, would recommend optimizing lifestyle, diet, sleep hygiene, all that stuff. But whatever you're left with after all that stuff, if it still looks like you could be in a position to accumulate plaque or you even got like imaging done to see and you have some level of uh plaque accumulation like you gotta really make a judgment call and if you want to get on be the natural ancestrally consistent guy or be on drugs because yeah one of the two is like the right answer but one of the two is the wrong answer potentially for those really genetically predisposed and you know to be able to learn that there is some level of manual intervention that could essentially wipe out the chance of heart disease in like almost everyone it was pretty enlightening for

me because i wasn't aware i was under the impression that as long as you optimize your lifestyle and everything's perfect like you're probably fine yeah that doesn't seem to be the case yeah i guess they'll always be outliers though. Right? Yeah. But I would say the outliers are more common than you'd think. Wow. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not to say that everyone's going to be prone or whatever,

because some people with really high, for example, those markers I mentioned earlier, there are some people that do actually live really long lives despite having high numbers. And then it begs the question like how did they live so long when these numbers are supposed to be like equals heart disease in a lot of people right and that's when it comes down to genetic predispositions and it's like what do you

want to hedge your risk on you know yeah so there's there's ways to fact check through imaging organ imaging and whatnot and actually see heart structure function blockages in real time but it's like that's crazy it's just rigorously understanding this stuff is uh it's pretty overwhelming when you get into it and learn about the realities i didn't know cardiovascular was number one man yeah by a lot do you think uh it's mainly diet or what are your takeaways from what's causing that um yeah i think it's people being fat, exercising, shitty sleep and diet for sure. Because a lot of these numbers could dramatically change just by losing weight. Also, blood pressure often overlooked because everyone thinks about all the cholesterol, the plaque buildup. A lot of people don't realize the actual health of the artery is going to be dictated to by how much pressure is in it.

So if you have high blood pressure, which so many people walk around hypertensive and don't realize it, if you're damaging the endothelial wall, like that is how you're opening the floodgates to actually allowing this like deposition of sterols in the arterial wall anyways to actually build this kind of like problem to begin with. Yeah. So that's super lifestyle modulated so if you are walking around hypertensive and not and thinking your diet is perfect but ignoring certain things like you know in general i think the the natural stuff is super impactful yeah it's worth i try to be as natural as possible but like you said if you need to do certain things yeah and like i would love to take as little drugs as possible so and i think most people could um you know have very high quality um uh high quality lives and be very healthy without having to take anything necessarily but it's just being realistic about what the data shows too and yeah if you need to dig into it further and you know potentially

intervene then being open to what the literature shows i think is is worthwhile because um yeah it's certainly uh as much as i would love to think ancestrally consistent practices and doing everything you know naturally is going to equal longest life possible with highest quality life like the entire environment we're putting is unnatural to begin with we're sitting in like a room right now with all these lights and cameras and stuff and you know sleep regimens like nothing in this world is really natural at this point i think kind of just getting over that mental hurdle of i'm trying to be like a caveman or something or i just don't want to take any drugs a certain genetic predispositions for all we know have developed over time to be protective

years ago that maybe we still have with us now that aren't as protective like there are certain predispositions that would uh you know prevent you from getting i don't know like uh you could eat raw meat and be less likely to get have any issues from that for example back then right yeah yeah and then like things as they develop is less relevant when you know current cooking practices time to change yeah yeah or like why do i have an appendix which just like does nothing you know like there are certain things that over time wisdom teeth yeah so anyway yeah that's kind of the takeaway i would say as much as i don't want to lean in

and say you take drugs it's kind of just be very open-minded and unquestionably no one would disagree optimize lifestyle diet sleep circadian rhythms etc there it's been a blast man anything you want to close off with promote any websites um yeah if you want to check me out it's more plates more dates on all social media essentially um if you want to check out merrick health it's my preventative medicine platform where we implement a lot of this diagnostic oversight and develop rigorous recommendations

based on the most cutting edge literature. And yeah, you can get a doctor in your camp to oversee this stuff and make sure you're on the up and up. And yeah, I think that's probably it. Love it. Thanks so much for coming on, man. Yeah, thanks for having me.

I appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks for watching, guys, as always. I'll see you tomorrow.