Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 400: 2025's biggest NEW Health "Hoaxes"

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

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Welcome in everybody to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue Podcast. As always, I'm your host Danny Matrenga. And in this episode, episode 400, we're going over the latest and not so greatest in fitness, wellness, and just general health adjacent bullshit. There is so much crap and also so much good out there. It's also just hard to find what's going to work. So my goal today is to circle up some of the latest fads, some of the latest things in the zeitgeist that are health, wellness, fitness adjacent, talk to you about them, give you my two cents, give you the evidence basis,

and let you make the decisions you need from there. Enjoy the episode. the evidence basis and let you make the decisions you need from there. Enjoy the episode. This podcast has some awesome partners and one of my favorite of course is Legion Athletics. Legion is my go-to supplement manufacturer for what I like to call my big rock supplements. This would be my protein powder, my pre-training formula, my post-training formula and creatine, and my kind of ancillary vitamins and micronutrient protection. So why do I like Legion so much?

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five grams each and every day. I take it on the days I train, as well as the days I do not, because Recharge also contains L-Carnitine, which can help with promoting muscle recovery and decreasing soreness, as well as some ingredients to help with creatine utilization. And of course, my favorite supplements for my ancillary micronutrient health are legions, multivitamin and legions greens powder. Not only do these two products contain a ton of high quality vitamins and minerals, they also contain unique adaptogens like KSM 66,

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That'll save you 20% on your first order and you'll rack up points that you can use the same way as Cash every time you use the code and you'll also be supporting the show. Okay folks, so some rules for the road. In the past, I've highlighted various different supplements or fads or things that I think may be a scam. For example, something like a branch-chained amino acid supplement being sold as a great

fat burner, being sold as a great muscle builder when in fact it is not, or maybe it's intermittent fasting being a better option than just a plain old calorie deficit. Looking for opportunities to see what's being sensationalized and what may well need to be debunked. And the first item on the list is a supplement. It's from this supplement category. It's actually something, interestingly, that my wife and I are rather familiar with,

and that is colostrum. Colostrum is the first milk that a mammal makes when it is about to give birth or it has given birth. Colostrum is uniquely nutrient dense. It has a lot more nutrition than regular mammalian milk. In fact, it has beneficial bacteria, vitamins, minerals, all kinds of stuff that just simply do not show up even in very nutrient dense breast milk. My wife and I learned about colostrum when she started producing it prior to delivery.

About two to three weeks before she gave birth, her body started producing colostrum, which looks very different from breast milk. And bovine colostrum, our first entry into the 2025 Is It Bullshit, If You Will contest, has become extremely popular. Now, you've probably seen bovine colostrum supplements marketed primarily as immune health and beauty supplements. Now, more research is definitely needed to say whether or not colostrum is even worth taking supplementally, but I'm almost positive you've heard of it already. Now, visually, colostrum is thicker and more yellow than regular breast milk, and we actually

see this in the powdered products too, even bovine colostrum. And the theory is because colostrum is high in antibodies, because of course a newborn is born with basically no immune system, and it needs to get some of that help from its mother, would I benefit from taking bovine colostrum? And that, for those of you who have not yet caught on, bovine is not human colostrum.

It is colostrum from cows. And just watching my wife kind of begin to harvest colostrum and realizing how difficult it is in the process, I started to wonder, like, how much of the bovine colostrum being sold as genuinely colostrum, rich milk that's been powdered and turned into a supplement, how much of it is just plain old milk? And outside of that, when you look at the literature,

you also see that you need to take this stuff in pretty high doses and when you combine that with the fact that literal for like literally years, they've referred to colostrum as liquid gold because of its yellow color. It's also super fucking expensive and a lot of these colostrum supplements guys are a couple hundred bucks a year and by or over a thousand bucks a year based on the math I'm looking at right now. When you break it down into a thirty month or I'm sorry a thirty serving daily base use. So one you would need one serving a day to get through thirty days which would mean 12 products a month. Many of these products are going to run you over a thousand dollars a year.

And it's like, holy shit, what could you get for a thousand dollars a year? You get a bunch of personal training sessions with a good coach. You could hire an online coach for many months. You could basically have automatic training protocols from any coach that you like on your phone, whether that's PDF or app based. And these things will probably help more when you talk about immune and skin as well. Things like collagen and in my opinion, vitamin C, both of which are synergistic, they work better together. They have more literature supporting their efficacy for both

immune on the vitamin C and collagen on the skin, although again, it's relatively dubious. I would still, I would just take that. If I were thinking about my immune system in my skin, I just take vitamin C, it's very affordable. So where zinc and vitamin D and collagen, if I wanted an extra layer of help for my skin, some of the prices on this stuff is just absurd. And the current evidence just does not robustly support

using bovine colostrum in the general population. I'm now reading an article here from the Mayo Clinic. And again, just colostrum is rich in protective antibodies, particularly immunoglobulin G, IgG, immunoglobulin A, IgA. These are things that we generally make in response to being sick. So maybe that's a good time to use something like bovine colostrum, maybe you could save it.

I don't know how I feel about using it daily, if it would be a good return on your money, but I, again, it's not my job to tell you what to spend your money on, I just think there's a million things I would rather take for the primary stuff that this is claiming to fix. Okay, the next one that I would like to talk about is just in general, beef tallow versus seed oils.

What do we know about beef tallow? What do we know about seed oils? What the fuck is really going on there? It's become super political because the Trump administration has appointed Robert Kennedy head of health and human services and Robert Kennedy as the head of health and human services has focused tremendously on talking about seed oils. He believes seed oils are a principal problem in the human diet and Robert Kennedy also believes that beef tallow is a fantastic

alternative because it tastes better. These are his words, not mine. The fries in Europe suck. But the fries here are the fries here suck. The fries in Europe are good because they use beef tallow, but we need to start using beef tallow here to fry the fries. I'm sure you've seen this is very much in the cultural zeitgeist. All these people are now talking about opening seed oil free restaurants and shifting to beef tallow only restaurants. And I think what we really need to break down here when it comes to seed oils and beef tallow is we probably don't need too many more added fucking fat in our diet to begin with. Okay. Most people are overweight. Many people are obese. Fat is nine calories per gram.

Seed oils and beef lard or beef tallow are not particularly nutrient dense when compared to other fats like olive oil or avocado, which I believe are probably the best fats you could possibly eat along with the Omega-3 rich cold water fatty acids. Now cold water marine fatty acids like salmon and cod liver are so high in these amazing high quality omega-3s. You can also get those in plants like hemp, chia, and flax, which have omega-6 and omega-9. And I would say in general you're better off eating more hemp. That's a seed oil by the way. More chia, that's a seed by the way.

by the way, more chia, that's a seed by the way, more flax, that's a seed by the way, all of those have healthy fats, all of those fats are categorically fucking seed oils. But then people go, okay, well what about expeller pressed, you know, industrial lubricant grade, rape seed oil, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, okay, all of the evidence we've got basically says that it's a net neutral or a net positive

when you swap fats from animals, be that beef tallow, be that pork tallow, whatever the animal saturated fat is, be it butter, okay? That when swapped for even a low quality seed oil is probably a net neutral on cardiovascular outcome. That's why so many of these seed oils have heart healthy on them. You see wellness influencers shit their fucking pants about this for no reason. How come seed oils are heart healthy, but they're on to there in Twinkies. Twinkies are not heart healthy because Twinkies drive obesity. Obesity is a confounding variable for heart issues. If you wanted to

develop heart issues, I would recommend having more body fat than you need. But when it comes to are seed oils categorically worse than beef tallow, the answer is no. And I don't actually think beef tallow is very healthy. In fact, I think people should be very skeptical of anyone selling them on the health benefits associated from switching from beef tallow or seed oils to beef tallow. If you give up eating seed oils because they are cheaper to produce, they tend not to smell and they tend not to impart flavor. Because of that, they're used in so many processed foods.

If you give up seed oil, you will eat way less processed food. Like it's just a guarantee that's going to happen. That's really good for your health. I don't think it's fair to ascribe the health benefits you gain from removing seed oils from your diet to the seed oils. In fact, I think that's kind of stupid. I think it's completely and totally unreasonable. What we know is that we eat too many calories. Too many of those calories come from fats and both seed oils and beef tallow are lower tier fats than the alternatives. We shouldn't be talking about swapping these. We should be talking about eating less of both frankly. And if we were to compare the two, it is unfair to label seed oils as the greater evil here

because the data just genuinely does not parse that out. Now, when would you want to use beef tallow? I think you have to be honest with yourself because beef tallow does contain some vitamins, it does contain some nutrients, but not enough to actually impart onto what we're cooking, right? Like olive oil contains vitamins and nutrients and so does avocado oil. But when I add it to food I'm not like unless it's a salad Because it's there I'm not cooking it off a lot of times when you use these oils you're using them to cook in Not to cook not to like make us you're not gonna make a beef tallow salad dressing. Okay, maybe you will but remember beef

Tallow is often solid at room temperature. So we opt for different fats But that's besides the point. The point is where beef tallow might excel is in that it has a low smoke point, which might lead to less oxidative stress in the body when cooking with oils. Oftentimes when you cook them at really high heats, it can cause destabilization to occur and those oils can have oxidative or create oxidative stress in the body. So if you're gonna cook something super duper duper hot like a steak and you want it to taste beefy and not generate

a ton of smoke and smoke in a low smoke point cooking a low smoke point oil beef tallow could be great. If you're frying french fries and you want to impart that beef flavor that could be great. I just wouldn't be like these are absolutely healthier. It's like there's still a lot of calories and still really high in fat. Okay the third thing that I'm seeing an awful lot of in 2025 is red light therapy and what I like red light therapy for our skin, hair and tissue related things specifically. Okay. Red light therapy is also known as LLT low level laser therapy. Okay. LLT. Many of you have probably seen this in tanning beds is pretty common. But red light therapy has frequently been touted as

a beauty product and is now being often touted as something that can help with body fat reduction. And I don't know exactly where I fall on that. I think most research points to it being just, I mean, could it make a difference? Maybe. Here's what I think happens generally. Because to do legit LLT, like real deal treatments, like with panels that are, you know, better than the ones you would buy for hundreds of dollars, it's going to cost a fuck ton of money. And I don't think that's even close to worth it. Like what med spas are selling.

I see med spas selling this. Not even close to worth it. If you wanted to buy a red light therapy panel, not to break up fat cells in your body, but to like help with collagen synthesis, to maybe help with skin, maybe help with hair growth, sure, by all means, put it at the appropriate distance, use it frequently and with consistency, and be reasonable about what you could actually accomplish

I would say that my from what I have seen with red light therapy You get low to modest increases in the quality of skin elasticity and joint pain Maybe even a little bit in the hair growth department. I think to promise this to people as a fat loss Accelerator for the cost of like going to the spas and using this high end equipment. Personally, I don't think that's super duper fair. So I'm going to spin off of that and say that red light therapy is probably not going to help at all with body composition.

It's all going to come down to diet and exercise, but red light therapy may be beneficial for other things. What's going on guys, coach Danny here, taking a break from the episode to tell you about my coaching company, core coaching method, and more specifically are a one-on-one fully tailored online coaching program. My online coaching program has kind of been the flagship for core coaching method for a while. Of course we do have PDF programming and we have app-based programming.

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my team today. Number four, cold plunges. They've been around for a long time. I have a cold plunge. I like using a cold plunge, but what do I think you can actually get out of a cold plunge? Number one boost creativity number two boosted energy number three increased resilience and number four and this is extremely valuable depending on your form of exercise massive reductions in soreness now if you're a bodybuilder and

Your goal with your training is to build muscle, I would not jump in the cold plunge all the time because there is clearly, and this has been shown in a lot of literature, an ability for cold plunging or too much CWE, cold water immersion, CWI, cold water immersion, to affect your ability to fully heal and fully build maximum muscle. It could be because jumping into cold water immersion is so anti-inflammatory, it could actually push back. But what I've started to see, and this I don't like so much,

is this idea that somehow cold plunging is going to be super duper good for your hormones. And I see this a lot, like cold plunging boosts your testosterone, cold plunging boosts dopamine by bajillion, trillion percent, cold plunge is gonna do this, that, and the other. I think a lot of the benefits that you feel, like, okay, maybe that big elation after,

maybe that's a surge in dopamine. It could also be like, I'm not freezing anymore. I feel better. It could be, I just did a hard thing. I feel better. The testosterone benefits, I just genuinely don't see. And I think we need to be more honest with people about how a cold plunge will enhance their life and improve their training and that it might help them recover.

It might make them less stressed. It will definitely help them battle soreness, but it's not going to make them more of a man. It's not going to boost your hormones through the roof and it's not a substitute or like a dopamine bomb that you can just go to every day. I think that they're effective tools and they work better with sauna and in a contrast environment. But you need to be careful with them. If building muscle is your ultimate goal. Okay. Number five. And this is one that I think is really, really bothersome to me. It is fucking hormone optimization clinics or TRT clinics. I am seeing way too much of this shit and I think TRT is becoming the new

fake natty. It's like fake natty was a thing that would happen when body builders and influencers would use steroids, go on the internet, build huge audiences and tell those people the entire time that they're natural or that they don't use performance enhancing drugs or they would withhold that and they would omit it. And I think that's problematic because I think it's created a, you know, it's a huge reason we have so much body dysmorphia and so many young men and women who grow up

feeling poorly about their body is because of a lack of transparency, a lack of education, a lack of communication. And I know that telling people you take steroids is technically a federal offense. I think they should decriminalize drugs to that degree. I don't see any reason for steroids to be federally criminalized. But now I see so many men using testosterone replacement therapy to replace testosterone.

They go beyond the level that is therapeutic into the level that is, shall we say, super physiologic, and they go, oh dude, I'm not on anything. I'm just on TRT. And I think that's crazy, because we've got this idea going now that I'm not doing anything other than optimizing my hormones. It's like, okay, TRT is being prescribed at insanely high levels now

to almost anyone who wants it. If you want to go get TRT, guys, if you want to go get testosterone replacement therapy, it is so fucking easy to do. And does hormone replacement therapy work? Yeah, it works really well, especially for women going through menopause or women of menopausal age and men who are hypo gonadal. But do I think testosterone works really well for a lot of these guys I'm seeing in their

early 20s who have low testosterone because of poor lifestyle and eating habits? Does it work well when you use those therapies as drugs? To look better. Yeah, but for how long? And what I worry about is, are these hormone optimization clinics really just steroid dealers? Like, it kind of fucking feels like that's what it is.

I see so many young men in their 20s being like, hey man, like, you know, I see so many young men in their 20s being like, hey man, get your TRT from this clinic that I use. It's the best TRT. And I'm looking at these guys, I'm like, there's no way. I mean, you're too young to be hypo gonadal. If you're hypo gonadal, the only reason you are is because of steroid abuse or extreme dieting and extreme low fat intakes and over exercise. And it's like, okay,

it does worry me. The proliferation of the hormone optimization clinics everywhere worries the shit out of me. I see it all over the place. Med spas that do red light therapy. We do GLP one injections. We do testosterone. I'm like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. We do GLP-1 injections. We do testosterone. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa The med spas pumping out TRT. We've got a problem They are not that fucking shook me when I saw local medical spas. I live in California So I don't even know if this is legal, but I'm sure because of our regulatory environment if it's legal here or it's happening here It's happening everywhere else

There are people getting testosterone shots at the same place their wife gets lip injections. And I've got to wonder, uh, is the nurse practitioner, whoever's, you know, legally allowed to administer that medication, are they also the one prescribing it? Like who's making, who's calling the shots here guys? Like I do wonder how much is TRT and how much is just, I'm just starting a little steroids. And I don't care if you're starting a little steroids, just think we need to be more honest about it, not less.

Number six is a high fat carnivore diets or just carnivore diets in general. These have become exceptionally popular despite there being really no evidence that they're worth a fuck and there's actually a lot of evidence that they're just straight-up dangerous. We touched a little bit on the saturated fat stuff earlier and we were talking about beef tallow and all this carnivore shit is really beef tallow adjacent but when we talk about the benefits of something

like a carnivore diet, it's always in comparison to a traditional Western diet, the standard American diet, which is an objectively terrible way to eat. People know this, people understand this, people have known this for an extremely long time. It bothers the fuck out of me that every diet that is floated out there, a fad diet, whether it is veganism, whether it is, and I, you know what, that's wrong. Veganism is not a fad diet. Veganism is actually a pretty principled way of eating. It's just one used as a weight loss tool.

I think it is a little bit ridiculous and a little bit unsafe often. But whatever diet is in the cultural zeitgeist, we often go like, oh, it's so healthy. It's so this is so that it lowers this. It raises that compared to this. All of the stuff that you see around fasting or carnivore keto or vegan, whatever, it's all in comparison to the worst diet ever, which is the Western American standard American diet. This ultra processed rich alcohol rich rich, sugar sweetened beverage

rich, protein devoid, fiber devoid, dog shit diet. When you switch that for a carnivore, and like let's just say you switch the standard American diet for like eating one rib eye a day, it's probably healthier to just eat that one rib eye a day. Getting protein, B vitamins, iron, and none of the garbage in the ultra processed food. However, you're also getting no fucking carbohydrates and a lot fewer vitamins and minerals than your body needs to thrive. And that's kind of why your carnivore like this dumb.

Like everybody I've seen on the internet who was once a carnivore advocate has kind of slowly transitioned like some weird, like slow roll of a gender reassignment. They're like, Oh, I'm actually carnivore, but fruit. And it's like, Oh, wow, you know, I fucking knew you were doing that the whole time. But thanks for telling me. It's like, we all have that one friend who we love who we know is gay. But we were like, dude, just come out and tell me you're gay. I love you. I don't care. And then when they finally come out and tell you you have to act surprised

It's like when the carnivores told me that they were eating fruit now I'm like, yeah, I bet you've been eating a bunch of other shit the whole time. This diet seems so performative And really where it wins is in comparison to the worst I'd imaginable and it's like wow. Congratulations carnivore You're the second worst I am imaginable. Like, I don't know, man. I just, no matter how much research I look at, no matter what I see, I just cannot square like, how could this be made worse by adding fruits and vegetables? Like what would be worse about the carnivore diet if it featured nutrient dense fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nothing, nothing would be worse about the carnivore diet if it featured?

Nutrient-dense fruits vegetables whole grains nothing. Nothing would be worse. It would be better And I really do think this one's that simple Okay, number seven Mouth-taped guys. I see so much mouth tape. I see luxury mouth tape. I think it is so funny I think think it is sometimes so goofy, the stuff we spend our money on. I am all for sleeping. We all need better sleep. Better sleep is good for your health. Better sleep is good for your heart. Better sleep is good for your stress. And taping your mouth closed during sleep might in fact improve nasal breathing, which is generally good. Nasal breathing is good.

But I don't know if we can really say that spending, and hey guys, I'm not gonna lie to you, I have seen some of these mouth tapes that are, I'm gonna look this up before I misquote myself, you guys. These are the top mouth tapes on the market. These are sleep products, OK? Sleep products. For let's call this product A. OK, for product A,

for mouth tape A, we want the full mouth tape in the main color color and we want a one month supply. That is $35 for a one month supply or $300 for a year supply. We also have let's call this brand B. Very aggressive. Black. This one's black. Okay. HSA eligible. So you could buy this with tax free money. That sounds a little bit ridiculous. Wow. So for an one month supply,

$25. Okay. So just tape your mouth guys, 25 to $35 a month, people are selling these mouth tapes and saying, and that's to help you nasal breathe. What could you do instead of this? You could go to any store that sells the light tape that's designed to have a little flex in it, not the heavy ankle tape, but the breakable medical tape. You could use something like that. I really think if you are using mouth tape to promote nasal breathing You should probably work more on nasal breathing when you're conscious not just in your sleep every time I've tried to use mouth tape in the past like and yes guys I have tried this like part of the reason I talk about this because I've been gamed by this it always fucking comes off

Which sucks? This shits everywhere. I'm seeing it all the time I don't see a use case for these luxury mouth tapes. If you want to tape your mouth and promote nasal breathing, just wear a Breathe Right nasal strip. Those are actually pretty expensive too, and a little bit of that medical tape over the mouth's way cheaper.

Okay, the last one is Methylene Blue and just Food Dye in general. Food Dye's gone crazy. Again, it's kind of adjacent to Maha, the RFK, Make America Healthy Again, shtick. I don't want to get too political. But people really worry about dyes in food because there are correlations between certain food dyes and behavioral issues in children. So we move to ban certain red dyes such as red dye number three. But what do we think about food dyes in general? Are food dyes such as red dye number three. But what do we think about food dyes in general? Are food dyes really this dangerous? And I'm going to say no,

but there are some that again are linked to various different behavioral things. We can't say definitively that these cause these behavioral things. For example, almost every single child with ADHD has consumed red dye three because all you know diagnosed kids with ADHD went to the doctor in the Western world where they were probably exposed to some product that had red dye 3 in it and like literally 99% of American children probably consume red dye 3 before they go get screened for ADHD. So it's not totally fair to be like, look, we see this in every case,

but let's acknowledge the correlation. Maybe the junk food we're eating is bad for our kids and their development and their behavior. And is that because of the dyes? And I think that's where I would be like, okay, let's be a little skeptical of that. I don't think it's just the dyes. I think there's lots of chemical additives

in ultra processed foods. It's probably not just the seed oils either. Could be the too many calories, could be not eating enough nutrient dense stuff to get the right stuff going, could be not related to nutrition at all. Right. And in 2025 tons of US States like California and West Virginia have already enacted bans on certain food dyes. So this is the thing. And it's not necessarily a bad thing, right? Like I can't give you a compelling reason to use artificial dyes in the food. The reason that they're used is because they make people want to eat more of the food. I think that's generally bad. So I'm not going to give you like the use case for the food dyes. I'd be a 100% down for 100% natural fruit flavor dyes.

But I just don't think that removing these food dyes unfortunately is gonna drive positive health outcomes might not make a big difference. In the dye category, there was a new anti-aging energy boosting bullshit. And that is methylene blue, which is a food grade dye in some cases. I would imagine when you buy it on the internet,

it probably is food grade, but I have used methylene blue for years as somebody who keeps fish to kill parasites and fish tanks. When you welcome a new fish to the fish tank, you often bathe it in a hospital tank to make sure it doesn't have any bacteria, protozoan, any weird diseases. And one of the things you use actually is called methylene blue, and it'll stain the

shit out of your tank if you treat the fish with it in the big tank. So you'd usually treat a new fish when it arrives with a little methylene blue to give it a quick wash. Many fish are actually shipped directly to fish holders in bags that contain a little methylene blue. And somewhere along the way, people were like, yo, this is good for your brain. Maybe this is good for anti-aging, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, okay, this is a dye too. And not only do I think it provides very little benefits, all the people I know taking it

don't want dye in their kids' food. So I would just caution on the hypocrisy there and say that it's probably not a high upside thing to engage with. Alright folks, that does it for the episode today. Hopefully you enjoyed debunking some of this crap. If you enjoyed the episode, be sure to share it, tag me, give me your feedback and leave me a five star rating and review on Spotify as well as Apple. It helps more people find the show and I'll catch you on the next one.