Habits and Hustle - Episode 432: Kris Gethin: The Natural Blueprint for Building Muscle After 40
Episode Date: March 14, 2025Can you build muscle naturally as you age? In this week’s Fitness Friday episode, I talk with fitness expert Kris Gethin, as he reveals that declining testosterone may be the hidden culprit behind ...your struggle to maintain muscle mass after 40. Most middle-aged fitness enthusiasts who maintain impressive physiques rely heavily on hormone replacement therapy (HRT), but Kris shares a completely natural approach that works. We discuss surprising testosterone-killers lurking in your daily environment—from cooking with Teflon to the metal fillings in your teeth—and provide practical, scientifically-backed strategies to boost your hormone production naturally. We also dive into cutting-edge biohacking techniques like red light therapy, ice baths, and even how dental work dramatically improved Kris's own hormone levels after suffering from long COVID. Kris Gethin, a renowned transformation expert and entrepreneur, has revolutionized the fitness industry with his no-nonsense, results-driven approach to bodybuilding and coaching. As the founder of Unmatched Supps and former CEO of Kaged Muscle, he has established himself as a pioneering force in the supplement industry while developing the innovative DTP (Dramatic Transformation Principle) training method. Through his podcast, he shares evidence-based fitness insights with a global audience, drawing from his extensive experience coaching elite athletes and celebrities. What we discuss: Natural testosterone optimization vs. HRT dependency Environmental testosterone killers Compound exercises that stimulate hormone production Red light therapy benefits and application techniques How ice baths and saunas can elevate testosterone levels Unexpected connection between dental health and hormone production Natural alternatives to Ozempic and GLP-1 medications for fat loss Supplements that support testosterone (vitamin D with K2, creatine, progesterone, DHEA) Blood sugar stabilization techniques for maintaining muscle and losing fat Thank you to our sponsor: AquaTru: Get 20% off any purifier at aquatru.com with code HUSTLE Therasage: Head over to therasage.com and use code Be Bold for 15% off TruNiagen: Head over to truniagen.com and use code HUSTLE20 to get $20 off any purchase over $100. Magic Mind: Head over to www.magicmind.com/jen and use code Jen at checkout. BiOptimizers: Want to try Magnesium Breakthrough? Go to https://bioptimizers.com/jennifercohen and use promo code JC10 at checkout to save 10% off your purchase. Timeline Nutrition: Get 10% off your first order at timeline.com/cohen Air Doctor: Go to airdoctorpro.com and use promo code HUSTLE for up to $300 off and a 3-year warranty on air purifiers. Bio.me: Link to daily prebiotic fiber here, code Jennifer20 for 20% off. Momentous: Shop this link and use code Jen for 20% off To learn more about Kris Gethin: Website: https://www.krisgethin.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/krisgethin/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/krisgethin Find more from Jen: Website: https://www.jennifercohen.com/ Instagram: @therealjencohen Books: https://www.jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: https://www.jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagements
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Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it!
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I used to be super muscular, right? And then as I'm beginning, as I get older,
and I've worked out like a fiend up for forever, like since I was like in my teens, right?
And so my body is adapted so well to that.
But as you get older, the same things that worked when you were 20 or 25 don't necessarily have the same effects it has when you're 40, 45, 50. What can, how do people as they're like middle age maintain and also still build muscle
and look the same like you, like you're 50 years old and you're still ripped. And I presume
you're not on any steroids since you are natural, you know, no HRT, nothing like that.
Nope, not even HRT. Cause cause what I was gonna actually ask you and I didn't want to be rude
but now that you mentioned it like
most of the people I I know who are in their middle age like 45 50 and 55 whatever who look
Really muscular they're on a lot of HRT. They're on like they're on testosterone
They're cycling a lot of like other other you know, HGH. They're they're cycling a lot of other HGH, they're doing a lot of
peptides, they're really doing a lot of injectable things to kind of get them to that place where
they can really lean out.
How do we do it naturally?
Okay, well, that's a very open-ended question.
So the one thing that I really focus on is there you know, there's a lot of estrogenics in
our society, you know, estrogen mimickers.
You know, we could be cooking with Teflon, we could be utilizing the microwave, we could
be open ourselves to a lot of EMFs.
Some people are more electro-sensitive than others.
You know, there's plastics.
People are utilizing plastics all the time.
They're eating out of plastics and then obviously it can be in our water.
So I always look at people's air, water,
and their environment to ensure that, okay,
the skincare products that you're using,
the hair products, the laundry detergent,
is it natural or is it synthetic?
Have they got estrogen mimickers in there?
Because obviously that's all gonna
lower your testosterone levels.
The one thing that I say is the big thing. People knock out fat from their diet and they
knock out their sleep and their testosterone levels are obviously going to tank. And then
they go on TRT, but they haven't fixed the root cause. Now they're just putting a bandaid on it.
So I always look at the root cause first, you know, are they getting sleep? Are they getting
sunlight? Maybe there are testosterone precursors that they need to take such as vitamin D with K2, obviously,
and creatine, progesterone, DHEA. There's so many things that you can do to help elevate your
testosterone levels, number one. And then when it comes to maintain that muscle, obviously testosterone
helps with that. You may need to, as you're getting a little bit older, decrease the frequency
of your training and the volume of your training.
So I used to train like six days a week.
I recover very, very well, fortunately for my age.
So I brought it down to four times, five times a week now, but some people
that may have a higher biological age than myself may need to bring it down to four days a week,
possibly three days a week.
Again, focusing on the quality,
taking larger, longer rest between sets
to ensure that you're pushing heavy,
and then maybe you are focusing a little bit more
on your compound moves
to ensure that you are releasing your testosterone,
because testosterone in that respect
is released more on compounds. And then as we know, things like the sunlight or red light therapy can help with
testosterone as well. So, consorna and ice baths. Ice baths have been shown to really elevate
testosterone levels in more and more studies as of recent. Thomas over at Morosco Forge is leading the charge with that.
Really?
Yeah.
So, so ways to naturally enhance your testosterone is ice baths, red light therapy.
I have this amazing, I use this like tri-light from a therisol, it's like a bendable red
light.
Which one do you use? Are you using a panel
or what are you using? I've got them all, I think. I know. Yeah, so I've got the panels that I'll use
in the morning. I've also got what's called a serothrive on my head and I use it for the belly
as well for gut health. And I have a lumaflex that is specifically for joints, you know, so I use them all.
I'm a big fan of red light.
So wait, if you have all these different body parts, how does it work?
Are you basically just, is it like a, are you in like a blanket?
Are you just like have pads all over your body or?
No, the serrathrive is two different modalities.
One is like a band that goes around the head and that's focused specifically on brain health.
And then you have another one that's like a pad so big that you have on your belly that
is specifically targeting for gut health.
And then I have another one that's a small one that I usually take when I'm traveling
for joints, but maybe I'll use that to help set my circadian rhythm in the morning.
When in, or wherever I'm traveling to, I have the panels at home
that I'll get under naked because I want to make sure that I am shining it on my balls
as well for my testosterone production. And of course, for my collagen and help set the
circadian rhythm and skin health, et cetera.
I'm shocked that you've never tried that Trilite though, from Therassage. It's like you can
take it wherever you go. You can travel with it. It can
go anywhere. Your stomach, your balls, your face, wherever you want. Okay. I'll check that out.
Please send me a link. I'll check that out. I don't know if I've ever seen that one. Absolutely.
I'm going to buy you a present. I'll get you one. Send me your address and I will send you one for
being a guest on my show. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. You're welcome. The other thing that
I was going to say, and maybe this person would be a great guest for you in the future, is Dr. Domey from Germany. He's like the
world's leading bio dentist. And the one thing that I noticed when I got long COVID, my testosterone
levels really, really dropped and I had difficulty getting them back up. I had two metal implants in
my mouth. He removed those implants. I
also had a gold tooth because it looked cool and I had got it knocked out years ago by
a donkey of all things. But when I had this-
A donkey?
A donkey. My sister owned a donkey and I was stroking the donkey one day and it decided
to headbutt me. So not a real cool story. But nonetheless, when I had this dental intervention,
and Domi talks a lot about this,
he's got a great book out called
A Health Starts in Your Mouth.
It's quite common for people's testosterone levels
to be drawn down from, you know,
maybe they've got mercury in the mouth
from amalgams from years ago,
or maybe they've got implants.
And I noticed two things
when I had this dental intervention, and it
may sound very woo-woo. My testosterone went up and my liver enzymes came right down like
almost immediately. So I think there's something to be said there, but Domi would be able to
explain that a lot better than I can because he's got a plethora of professional athletes
and people that have had the same and it's fixed them. Maybe they had a molar here that
was connected to the knee, for instance, because it's all interconnected from our mouth. And now
they fixed that molar and now that professional footballer's knee is better. It's so bizarre.
It's beyond me. I've never heard that before. So really, when you got that, when the donkey actually
did you a favor when he kicked that gold tooth out of your mouth. Well, no, he kicked, he
hit my tooth out of my mouth. I put a gold tooth in there just to replace it to look
cool, you know? Oh, that's true. Okay. And then that gold tooth was the one that had
the mercury. No, no, no. That gold tooth, basically, he said that's acting like an antenna, you know,
because I have the mobile phone, we're exposed to Wi Fi, but the implants were leeching into my body.
And of course they were in a place where they shouldn't have been. So he replaced them with
ceramics. He does ceramic implants. Wow. So that's interesting. How crazy is that? So all these things can be
lowering your testosterone and we don't even know it. Yeah, a lot of it is hidden because like,
if you look at the history of our testosterone levels, you know, most of your listeners will
know that it's been plummeting, plummeting year after year. Well, our DNA hasn't changed. What has?
Our environment, our air, our food, obviously, satellite, EMF, et cetera, et cetera.
I could go on and then obviously, you know, we could talk about, like I said, the hygiene
products that we use on a daily basis, the deodorants, et cetera, you know, they all
have a negative effect.
So we can do a lot to manage it.
Of course we can't completely avoid it, but we can definitely keep our heads afloat. Wow. So before I even get into your daily, your own daily routine, you said something earlier in
the beginning about how to like, how to kind of naturally lose body fat. And you mentioned,
was it Burberry or some other supplement?
Dihydro Berberine. Yeah, there's a product that I use, it's called GDAID.
Dihydroberberine is one of those ingredients in there.
Sean Wells, as I'm sure you know, was the guy behind that ingredient and it's a lot
more powerful than berberine itself.
But then you have other ingredients like chromates.
There's just a lot of blood sugar stabilizing ingredients out there that you can take, particularly
before a carb heavy meal. You know, like a lot of people in the biohacking industry,
they'll take metformin before bed, which is fine, you know, but I just take the dihydroberberine.
Actually, can I tell you something? I've never heard of that. And you mentioned this guy's
John Wells. I don't think I met him before. Oh, okay. He's good friends with Darsh. And
he's known as the world's leading formulator,
but he speaks at a lot of biohacking conferences as well. And yeah, he's a great guy.
I'm sure.
Good friend of mine. I'm actually hosting a retreat with him in April in Mexico.
Really? What kind of retreat?
It'll be a retreat. It'll be myself, Jay Campbell. I don't know if you know Jay,
he's like the peptide guru and Jeff.
I met him.
Okay. So you know Jay. Yeah. So we're hosting a retreat there specifically for people who
want to kind of get away from the busy lifestyle that they deal with all the time and learn
about proper nutrition training, stabilizing your blood sugar levels, staying in a parasympathetic
state. So we'll be doing like ice baths and sound baths and mezcal right on the beach there.
We'll go sunote hopping, but we'll also have educational seminars every day.
And we'll be hitting the jungle gym there on a daily basis.
It's gonna be a good time.
And so can you give me some other, other things?
Because, you know, let me say this.
I mean, you know, this is no secret how
Ozempic has taken over the weight loss world, right? Like, now you can't, you know, you can't
shoot a cannon without like, you know, hitting somebody who's had who uses everybody in the
world in the world, especially in Los Angeles is on Ozempic, or one of those GLP ones. What is your take on it? And can you give me some other natural ozempics that people
can maybe take without relying on a GLP one like that? Yeah. Yeah. Uh, for sure. Yeah. It's become
very prevalent. You know, you were at A4M, there were so many booths there that had GLPs there
exhibiting. I have a problem- So many actually.
It's become like the new kale.
Yeah.
Yeah, that again, that again.
Hopefully that doesn't recycle ourselves.
Yeah, exactly.
But yeah, I have an issue of the way that it's prescribed
because it's never prescribed with an outcome.
It's always basically you're on this forever.
Regardless of what that person's doing
or what that person's eating, there's never a nutritional protocol or a training protocol
that accompanies it. As we know, if you are slowing down the gastric emptying process
and you're now eating less, then of course you're going to lose a lot of muscle as well.
That is not going to be good for mobilizing fatty acids. It's not going to be good for your metabolism. If you do eat something, the chances of you storing that as body fat is going much
higher. So you're changing your body composition as well as losing weight. And we should be focusing
a little bit more on losing fat. But if you're losing fat and muscle that helps you burn fat,
then obviously we're going against the grain.
There's never a talk of how many amino acids or how much protein that you should be consuming,
and there definitely needs to be some sort of weight-bearing workout that's associated
with it as well so you don't lose muscle. Further from that, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a physician,
but I can't talk about certain things that I've heard from people
that I know.
Someone said they got a cancerous tumor from it.
Whether that's true or not, I don't know.
But I think there needs to be a lot more studies done on it to ensure the safety and efficacy.
But that aside, it just needs to be prescribed in the right manner.
Like I know somebody that's been on it for over a year, doesn't really look any different.
They just look softer to me because they're still eating crap, just less of it. But now they've lost
their muscle as well. So it just looks bad. Yeah. You know what I find a lot of people are doing in
our industry, like the health and fitness industry, they are on it and they're microdosing
GLP ones, right? So they may not be taking the full dose, but they are microdosing it.
So that's part of the protocol of them trying to look thinner and leaner or thinner. You know,
you haven't heard this whole thing? You don't know a lot of people who are microdosing it?
I don't know of anyone personally who's microdosing. Most people that I know are microdosing psilocybin
or LSD.
The people I know are microdosing both of those, you know? One has nothing to do with
the other. So then what are some natural ways we can get the same effects that maybe an
ozempic will give, but still maintain our muscle and be more natural and things that
we can maintain?
Yeah. So there are a lot of like probiotics out there, like acumencia has been shown to
sedate your appetite a little bit. You know, there is something that, you know, it's called
immunoglobulins that you'd get from colostrum. That has been shown to help to be as a GLP.
And then fiber, just making sure that you get a lot of fiber in your diet.
That is one thing that people usually ignore.
And I don't mean just getting fiber from vegetables, but actually supplementing with it as well.
Something that's going to bind and expand.
That could be like a psyllium husk, just as an example.
But a combination of those things usually help a lot of people.
And the other one thing that I mentioned before is the blood sugar stabilizer,
to ensure that you're taking like a GDA, for instance,
to stabilize your blood sugar levels.
A lot of people are hungry and they eat unwavering,
you know, amounts of foods,
usually because their blood sugar levels have crashed.