Mark Bell's Power Project - 585 - Leo & Longevity LONGER PENIS, Longer Life, & TRT Do’s & Dont’s

Episode Date: September 3, 2021

Leo Rex, AKA, Leo and Longevity is a wealth of knowledge that stems from years of running experiments on himself and six years of training in advanced statistical analysis, mathematical analysis, and study design, all of which color his studies of academic publications on the subject of human performance and longevity. Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT15 for 15% off ALL LABS! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Eat Rite Foods: http://eatritefoods.com/ Use code "POWERPROJECT25" for 25% off your first order, then code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off every order after! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Subscribe to the Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Okay, so one quick thing I want to mention is Andrew the other day. Uh-oh. He told me that I don't ever see you work out. You always talk about lifting and you never lift. So yesterday I felt really fucking good and went in the gym and did some deadlifts. Oh, deadlifts. I didn't see that. Because I took your shit personally.

Okay. Yeah. Well, that was for you. I'm glad I was able to motivate you in a positive way. Yeah. Fuck you. I love you, Zaddy. I love you too. And it was funny that- How did deadlifts go in a positive way. Yeah. Fuck you. I love you, Zaddy. I love you too.

And it was funny. How did that lips go? Great. Phenomenal. Yeah. Great. It was funny though, right after Jessica was like, well, we never see you. So she co-signed.

So just, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't alone on that Island. Yeah. This still doesn't negate the fact that you don't work out. wasn't i wasn't alone on that island yeah this still doesn't negate the fact that you don't work out yeah it's just proof that you're genetically a mutant and a freak and just on a different level than all of the rest of us but i will i will say that's not true but i will say i will say um it's great like the the all the because i haven't deadlifted heavy, like heavy. If I, if I deadlifted heavy, I would have recorded it. So I don't think it was like, I didn't deadlift heavy at all in 2020.

Um, it's been a while since I've moved in any weight like that. And it wasn't over 400 pounds in a while. No, no. And I did, um, I worked up to a 605 double, uh, and the second rep was paused. So I was just moving up doing one clean rep and if the rep felt good then i'd do a paused rep so i did 495 and 495 pause then i did 545 and 545 pause and then 605 and then 605 paused and they were fast and smooth and there is no breakdown and they all look the same i just find it really interesting because like even though i haven't

been moving that heavy load all the training that we've been doing, all the training that, that that's been done has been like keeping all of my structural integrity and actually getting things even stronger. Cause I feel no fatigue right now, dude. Like no fatigue. What about heavy? Like you train heavy on anything. Like, I know you're a big fan of like those rows and things like that. Like, is there anything, I'm not doing anything below five reps. I haven't been doing anything below five reps for a while. Um, and I don't really look at five reps as heavy work. And even when I do five reps,

I usually have about two reps in the tank. So then maybe we can maybe say that because you've kept your mobility and maybe even, maybe even increased your mobility, it's increased and your conditioning is better over the last several years. And maybe your work capacity is, well, your work capacity is definitely improved. Yeah. That you just haven't lost any strength.

Yeah. Like it's still there through doing kettlebell swings, 45 degree back raises, uh, all the other exercises that you're implementing. Absolutely. Absolutely. But that's the, that, that's, again, it's a thing that is so like interesting as I expected it to feel harder than it did. It didn't feel hard at all, even though I haven't touched that for a long time. So, um, I think that a lot of athletes, even powerlifters, like even if you transition to something else, as long as you keep certain things in line,

you can maintain a lot of that. Because with the way that six, I know I could have done seven. Tom was there too, Tom File. And with the way it moved, I was like, yeah, seven's there. I just don't need to touch it. Like I know it's there. I think the one thing that is also unique about you though would be the fact that you are maximally contracting muscles when you're doing jujitsu, at least here and there when you're going against other athletes that are high level. So I know it's

not the same, but I think that people that are listening, like they might want to just kind of keep that in mind. And you do that a lot and you've practiced jujitsu a lot. So it's like another, I want to just kind of keep that in mind. And you do that a lot and you practice jujitsu a lot. So it's like another, it's another thing that, you know, for you, it's, um, you know, it's just important for people to just to know like the whole, kind of the whole, the whole picture there. Yeah. Cause I think it's like part of it, but for some people it might be a negative, especially

in the beginning when they first start jujitsu, all the extra activity is probably going to make you feel really weak. Yeah. That's the big thing. Getting used to that. But after you get through that phase of like how fatiguing it is on your body and because it's all different movements, you'll be good. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about today's guest, Mark. Oh yeah. We got my boy Leo on. I'm really excited for him to be on our show.

He knows a lot about just a lot about the human body really but mainly like the brain and mainly hormones and specifically more on the men's side than the women's side so we'll be able to dive deep and ask him all kinds of questions that are on our brain or any kind of question that's on our penis or anything in between and he'll have some great answers for us. Andrew, can you put the disclaimer on the screen? Just so that it's all, I don't know if this is live or not. Oh, like literally like right now? Yeah, because I don't know if it's not live, right? I don't have a file on this one, no.

It's not live, but. Oh, okay, then that means we don't, okay. Yeah, but no, what's funny is, say it again. This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only we are not medical doctors and i think that's if there's anything we need to add to that no just uh go ahead and read what the screen's showing right now you can pause it if you need to i don't see what's on the screen no i'm just telling because you know i'm editing it as i'm speaking into it i see i'm speaking it into you want existence hit the pause button yeah i know keep asking

some oh yeah does it throw you guys off when somebody pronounces it differently is that a different one yeah the guy in uh leaf of faith when he would pronounce Gratum. Really? He caught me every time. Chris Bell was in the gym working on some stuff for Biggest Drunk Fest 2. Oh my god. Because he had seen North Huge. Oh yeah.

This morning I do have the treat, the Grande Nitro Cold Brew with a splash of heavy cream and the pumpkin cold foam when you get your blood work back next time it's gonna be a wreck because of this concoction that you're making over here what is this what is this nonsense you got going on over here it's so tasty the the this is all sugar no oh okay the heavy cream of the nitro cold brew the only thing that has some sugar is the pumpkin cold brew.

I was kidding. I know you wouldn't be doing shit like that. There we go. I know you're too smart for that. Yeah, man. But most people, a lot of people, their coffee's got a lot of sugar in it. A lot. Yeah.

A little bit too much. Lots of calories, lots of sugar. Yeah. Too much. All right. Well, today's show is sponsored by Merrick Health. We appreciate their support. well today's show is sponsored by Merrick Health we appreciate their support and uh you know it's it's important that people get their blood work done I've actually shared my blood work with our

boy Leo who's over here now nice yeah absolutely guys you guys need to check out Merrick Health especially check out their um their actual patient care so obviously we have the power project panel that has 26 different panels for men and ladies ladies we have a panel there for you too but they also have um individuals that you can work with so you can click a box so you can actually work with somebody who will tell you what blood work you need to get tell you what panel you need to get and then tell you what uh where you need to go in terms of what either it's like hair treatment hormone replacement therapy anything you need to do that's on their site so yep check them out check them out links to them down in the description below or if you guys are listening to this on the audio side it's just merrickhealth.com and when it comes time to

actually uh purchasing your labs and stuff make sure you use promo code power project 15 and you'll get 15 off all of those labs again links to them down in the description below, as well as the podcast show notes. What is happening, Leo? Oh, we can't hear you. Oh, I can't hear you. Oh, you know, I have a mute. My bad. There you go.

My mistake. Sorry. Hey, what's up with all those books in the background? Have you read all those books? Not all of these. It's a little bit of a bigger library, but it's just convenient to film here because I live in an apartment. Hopefully, when we move over to a house, it'll be a little bit different. It's great to see you guys.

You too. I was going to comment on Merrick Health. I wanted to say I've been very impressed with them. They have probably the most evidence-based hormone optimization clinic with some of the best staff around. Just wanted to say that. I also consult with them every so best staff around. Just wanted to say that. I also consult with them every so often. Nice. Yeah. How did you come to your expertise in these many different fields? Because you know a ton about the hormones in the body and you know a ton about how the brain

works and you know some really sophisticated stuff. How did you come to learn some of these things? Well, Mark, the main reason I think is that throughout my life, I've been trying to be a better version of myself. And I've been limited by various things. Like when I was younger, I was trying to be in athletics, and I'm naturally weak and not gifted in that sense. So that's how I first started reading about steroids in 2002 or so. And later on in life, I faced other issues like I wanted to be a high performing individual at work and originally at school and I had an attention deficit issue. So I worked around that. And then later on, of course, I experienced anxiety disorder, alcoholism, other issues.

And I worked through those issues also. So whenever I face an issue in my life, I try to learn as much as I can about it. And I think that's the source of all of it. And for you, like when you were in school and you had this attention deficit disorder, what was it that you were studying? Was it something within science? Was it something different? What was it that you were trying to go for or that you were going for? Actually, my undergrad was in a business school, the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon. But all my, I was trying to study quantitative optimization. So it's a field called operations research. And I was really limited in my first year or two by my ability to pay attention to a book. I mean, I would try my hardest, but I physically was unable. And throughout high school, it was the same thing.

But my parents had always sort of, my father had always guided me against using medication. In college, I decided to take the risk, and I went to a psychiatrist, got diagnosed with ADHD, and it tremendously changed my academic trajectory. So I went from failing, actually, like the second calculus course to the next semester getting a 4.0 and then having mostly 4.0s then onward. So I noticed, that's one of the first times I noticed the having mostly 4.0s then onward. So I noticed that's one

of the first times I noticed the incredible effects that pharmacology could have on someone. And what did you utilize? At that time, I was prescribed by a doctor at UPMC 15 milligrams of Adderall. Later, I discovered that, and he also told me to take it every day. So these are some of the lessons I learned later. Taking it every day causes a downregulation in the dopamine system to where you get tempted to use higher doses over time. I think that's the reason a lot of people use high doses. If you start initially at a low dose and don't do it every day, like to take two, three days off a week, you can maintain the same dose for much longer periods. But that's what I was prescribed originally.

And I suffered with side effects from that because it was a daily prescription. I'm just curious, when it comes to Adderall, I know people who've just taken it even though they've never been diagnosed with ADHD, but is it not something that you need to take to be able to focus? Can you take it on a certain day

and then the next day you're still able to have some effects from it? Or is it something that you need to continue taking? Because the people that I know take it like they're like oh i have a lot of work to do so they'll be just they'll just be especially in college people would just be popping adderalls interestingly by the way that's been going on for 100 years that's first started in germany 1920s people were already uh popping what's called pervitin which is methamphetamine to study in in the medical school. And in fact, there's some interesting evidence of that. But this is a great question

you ask. So if you take it four days a week, those other three days, you have less stimulation than probably you did originally in the status quo, because you're now a bit adapted to that role. But what I've noticed over time is that although you have a little bit of a trough in drive and workability for those three days, the average over time is that although you have a little bit of a trough in drive and workability for those three days, the average over time is superior to what you would have naturally. But you commented also on another subject, which is some people are not diagnosed with ADHD and take these medications and see performance advantages. That's a very interesting question. So some people, like for example, my wife, if she tried even a low dose, two milligrams of

amphetamine, she'd feel like she's in a club, like she's partying. She can't focus. So this is somebody that really does not benefit from this drug. This drug is not a medicine for her, right? But surprisingly, a lot of people can use low doses of this drug and find benefits. And the reason I believe is because ADHD is a poorly described phenomenon that has multiple etiologies, meaning ways in which the disease develops physically in the brain. And it's really just a phenotype describing people who have difficulty with

attention. A lot of people have that, you know? You personally utilize a lot of different medications for all kinds of different things, even without necessarily having symptoms. Is that right? Like maybe to perhaps prevent you from getting dementia when you're older and things like that? Yeah, so this is something I do on my own. Obviously, the medical professional would consider it risky, and I'm not a medical doctor. But there are some medications, like, for example, metformin has been talked about a lot. trial in the U.S. led by Nir Barzilai that is the first trial in history funded by the U.S. government to test if a medication can extend life simply without disease. So there are medications like that that doctors are suspicious may extend life in all people, but they have never been

trialed. So for example, like ezetimibe is a cholesterol medication with low side effects. It also lowers systemic inflammation. That's one of the drugs I take. Metformin is another one. Empagliflozin, a new class of drugs called SGLT2 inhibitors, slow down the progression of chronic kidney disease. One of the only medications that do that. Well, men in general, kidney disease is sort of a disease of masculinity because androgen signaling increases kidney deterioration over time. So all of us at some point in our 60s or 70s will have some form of chronic kidney disease. So this is something I think of ahead of time. And I know this medication has very little side effects and is very well tested. So I'll include some of those medications. You were talking about dementia. There are many kinds of dementia, of course, for many diseases like

Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, ALS, and so on, and vascular dementia. But they have some things in common, which is the death of cells in the brain. And cells die less in the brain when you have more growth factors. Growth factors don't just split cells, but they protect cells from death. So I imagine something like an SSRI, long-term use, SSRIs work by upregulating growth factors in the brain, may protect some of the cells from death. They also lower inflammation in the brain, which is a common cause for dementias in general. I really want to know about this. When we were talking about symptoms for different types of diseases, one thing that I've noticed is a lot of friends, especially when you see a lot of things on social media, primarily let's talk about ADHD. There's a lot of people that are talking about their experiences with ADHD and then people are like, oh, I have that symptom and that symptom.

I must have ADHD. So when it comes to self-diagnosis, especially of anything, what are the main things people need to pay attention to? Because I, I feel like when it comes to a lot of things, you could find some aspect of that, that you have. And then to say, oh, I have that might be a little bit too quick of a conclusion. Yeah. It's, it's really difficult to, uh difficult to analyze ourselves, you know, in general.

So the field I specialized in in graduate school is called sometimes the heuristics and biases approach. Like that's the field where confirmation bias and all those kind of things came from. It's a decision science. So in that field, if you study that field for long enough, you come to a conclusion we're all very biased and can't make good decisions on our own. I'm personally naturally predisposed to hypochondria. So I can read any description and figure out that I may have something to do with it. At the end of the day, I think you need a specialist, a doctor who deals with people that experience that a lot. So for example, in the case of ADHD, unfortunately, ADHD is mostly tested for with a questionnaire.

So they ask you, do you have problems paying attention? If you want the drug, you can pass that test very easily. The question then becomes this. Say you take a reasonable amount of the drug, like five milligrams of Adderall. Does it improve your performance? If it does, technically, that's a medicine for you. It may be a medicine with side effects later on, but it's a medicine. There are people who will take five milligrams and not perform better.

That's the key really there. Does the medicine improve your health? Got it. Have you seen any supplements be able to help with stuff like that too? Like, you know, I like Kratom a lot. Are there other things that people can take that are maybe more over the counter rather than pharmaceutical? In regard to dementia or ADHD?

Yeah, in regard to ADHD or just wanting to get more focus, that kind of stuff. Yeah, there's certainly – I'll tell you something. There's certainly a lot of – where you find these phytochemicals, which means molecules that come from plants, is in nootropics formulations. Like at Gorilla Mind with Derek's company, we have a nootropics formula. Now, if you look at the back of these formulas, you'll find different kinds of phytochemicals that have different roles in the body. One of the main methods that people have been focusing on for nootropics formulas is manipulating what's called a cholinergic system. So there's a hormone in the brain, a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine, that's very much involved with memory retrieval and the storage of memory and so on. So some of these formulas will include things like ginkgo biloba, cuprazine A, berberine,

or bacopa monieri, which are all potent acetylcholesterase inhibitors. What that means is they inhibit an enzyme that breaks down that hormone in the brain, leaving more of that hormone in your brain throughout the day. In fact, interestingly, this is one of the approaches to treating the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. There's a drug called donapazil, which is the pharmaceutical acetylcholesterase inhibitor, which improves memory acutely. Many people that are in the nootropics world use that drug as well. I feel like there's a lot of room for development further in that nootropics world because they've been focused a

lot on the cholinergic system, but the dopamine system really drives a lot of habit formation and attention. And so they have used some things that are dopaminergic. For example, a precursor to dopamine synthesis in the body is called L-tyrosine. It doesn't pass the rate limiting step. So you can't just like overdose it and get more dopamine like you could with L-DOPA, which is the next step. But L-tyrosine, if you have enough of it, you'll be able to produce what your body can produce with dopamine. So if people take like a gram of L-tyrosine in the mornings, they'll often find their five milligrams of Adderall to be more effective. That means they were somewhat nutrient deprived.

People have used that. They've used uridine monophosphate, which upregulates dopaminergic signaling via the cholinergic system. But nobody has, for example, used dopamine agonists, which is something I want to use in the first formula that I designed. There are phytochemicals that are dopamine receptor agonists, which could really up the anti. Nobody's done that before. And there's a lot more opportunity. There's a lot of things that

are interesting, like huperzine A, for example, that acetylcholesterase inhibitor, has a dual action. It also blocks a group of receptors called the NMDA receptors. Those receptors are the targets of ketamine, which is a new antidepressant drug, if you think about it, and PCP. And those receptors are interesting as well. So there's a lot of phytochemicals, and I believe that we're in the infancy of developing nootropic formulas in this age. Would you say that it's better, it's more effective to take one of those choline inhibitors as opposed to taking like an acetylcholine precursor? I'm just thinking maybe it's either person- person dependent or is there like a generally is one better than the other? That's a good question. So I think you're

talking about a precursor like alpha GPC. 100%. Yes. Yeah. What I would comment on is alpha GPC is unique advantage. And I have evidence of this in a paper on my website with a citation is that alpha GPC causes you to release reserve choline in your body acutely when you take it. So the choline gets in your bloodstream and is more likely to pass the blood-brain barrier. That's why alpha-GPC has an acute effect on concentration. It's not because it's giving you the nutrient, it's because it's releasing whatever nutrients you have as well. If you want to supplement with choline in your diet, you could use phosphatidylcholine,

which is a natural source, or something like CDP choline at one gram of choline per day. Now, the American requirement from the government for men is 550 milligrams or so. And it's really not based on much evidence. So I think you can use quite a bit more. Now, remember, choline is a vitamin. Without choline, you develop non-alcoholic fatty liver disease automatically. So choline is a vitamin, you need it. You want to get about a gram a day. unless you're eating a lot of egg yolks and a lot of liver, you're probably a bit deficient in it. Once you have that gram, say from CDP choline, then in the mornings, you might want to release the choline into your brain acutely, so you can focus acutely. So that's where you use the alpha-GPC. And then you can use an acetyl

cholesterase inhibitor. Now what you'll notice is, if you use a potent acetylcholesterase inhibitor like donapazole, the pharmaceutical version, if you use a higher dose, say 20 milligrams of donapazole and use the same dose of alpha-GPC for a few days in a row, a few days in, when that drug starts working, you'll find that that dose so potent you'll have to half it or less than that. So it's a very acute effect. When you block acetylcholesterase inhibitors, when you take off a gpc how powerful that is or for example if you use a nicotine pouch you'll notice it's too powerful you got to get it out of your mouth quickly so it really up regulates the system you were talking earlier about uh having some alcoholism in your past um what in your opinion like what is the hardest part for someone to detach themselves from any drug?

Really? I've heard you speak about this a little bit on maybe I think it was your own podcast. I actually think that like when I actually think that when someone feels really good, making decisions is a lot easier, like making good decisions a lot easier. Not obviously, if you're completely drunk, then it might be hard to make the correct decisions, but almost like being slightly high or people are really big into like microdosing stuff nowadays. And I found for myself that like microdosing of like mushrooms, LSD, taking Kratom, things like that, they seem to assist me with staying on my plan a little bit more. They seem to assist me with staying on my diet a little bit more just because the opposite of that, just like dealing with day-to-day life in a normal phase is just more monotonous and not as fun, not as exciting, and therefore your overall mood

might be down a little bit. What are some of your opinions on that? I have a certain opinion on it that I don't think anyone's ever voiced before the way I think of it. So what I think of it is this. Initially, the question, so let's use your example, using kratom and microdosing psilocybin, which I'd love to talk about microdosing psilocybin at a different point, but using those two has relieved, you said, your boredom and increased your ability to focus on your goal. So first of all, kratom acutely, as well as psilocybin acutely, increases dopamine transmission. So in a way, it has some effect similar to an amphetamine or something like that. So it may help you focus acutely.

That's why some people notice if they use 100 to 300 milligrams of like a golden teacher mushroom before working, they can be actually more focused. It's not a psychedelic effect. That's not serotonin. Remember, psilocybin binds and psilocin bind to serotonin receptors. But downstream, they cause some transmission of dopamine that's acute. So that's how that might be working. The other question is, or the other example is a more interesting one,

is you're saying that you feel bored otherwise. So a lot of us addicts feel that. I'm not saying you're an addict, but I mean a lot of addicts feel that feeling like it's a little bit boring. I want something to look forward to in the day or I want some... They actually want to think differently, to feel differently. I believe that the reason for this is because something in a lot of, not all addicts fall on this path because there are some people that get addicted, for example, to opiates accidentally. But I'm talking about somebody that got into a drug because they used it, for example, with their friends one day,

their friends used it, the next day their friends want to go back to work this guy though felt such a difference from his status quo to when he used the drug that that huge difference becomes a temptation the next day it's it's a huge opportunity cost the other person doesn't have the same opportunity cost where does that come from I think that comes from not having a psychology originally that is suiting toward yourself. And using that drug somehow improved your psychology. The problem with those hedonistic drugs is they're not sustainable. The effect usually declines with time, requiring you to use a higher dose, or you get to a point like with benzos where they just don't work, as we see from what happened to Jordan Peterson, unfortunately.

And that's an accidental example, right? Someone's feeling anxiety, got to using a medication, and the medication, you know, destroyed. And benzo withdrawal is the worst withdrawal on earth, you know, the most painful. So basically, the issue that I'm thinking is, that's how addicts get into addiction, usually, that they have something in their neurotransmitter systems that the drug changes that feels better for them, gives them a sense of relief. And then the other stage of it is when they quit the drug changes that feels better for them, gives them a sense of relief. And then the other stage of it is when they quit the drug. This is very interesting and requires some looking into neuroscience. So when you have neurotransmitters upregulated, like when you're using a drug all day, it's not just serotonin that increases neurogenesis. When people, for example, use

amphetamines, they have more plasticity in their brain from more neurogenesis. The same happens with most drugs. So what does that mean? That means you adapt to the drug you're using and the lifestyle you have when you're using it. And when you suddenly cut that drug off, cold turkey, like if you go to AA, you have the solidarity of AA, you have the prayer, you have all these kinds of things, but your brain has now just became really rigid because you've cut down your brain is used to those the interference from the drug so your brain is down regulated all its systems and once you stop the drug the brain is really rigid it's stuck on its old ways so i think a lot of the ways that alcoholics can be treated and other addicts is with uh you know sophisticated use of pharmacology that tries to address the actual issues they had. Like if it was alcohol

that you enjoyed, you probably have some GABAergic deficit. GABA is the main inhibitory neurotransmitter system in the body. You know, if you're using amphetamines, you may have some other kind of psychological pre-construct that needs to be altered. You know, that's my view of it. Sorry to be long-winded. No, that's actually, that's really cool. And that's amazing. That makes me wonder when it comes to, let's say someone trying to build a good habit or break an old habit and think you were just talking about alcohol, right? What is a way that people can maybe use supplements or pharmacology to aid with that? I think it'd probably be more helpful if I mentioned something specific. You gave the example of alcohol, but let's say that somebody is, they have a really bad habit of they get depressed or they get angry and they just reach

towards a certain type of food to help with that, right? Because some people, they use food to help them feel better. So how can people use those things to kind of- That's an interesting question. You know, that's a really interesting example too, because you mentioned food and food usually addresses people's depressive tendencies or whatever. It's a source of comfort because food, especially sugar causes a dopamine transmission in the brain. So you're going for dopamine actually, just like when people go for drugs, the reason drugs are called dope is because they all, all in some way affect dopamine. So it's interesting. They're sort of using it like a drug. The funny thing is

what causes people to habituate themselves to something in terms of hormones in the brain is actually dopamine. So if you can upregulate dopamine signaling, actually, it's interesting. So sometimes when there's elevated dopamine signaling, people will be more prone to doing these kinds of things like eating a lot. You'll find people who use a lot of amphetamines, sometimes eating a lot of sugar, doing things like that or gambling. So sometimes they lose control actually. But it seems that dopamine habituates something to what they're doing. So for example, if you're studying something you don't like and you are responsive to an amphetamine,

you take a 5-milligram amphetamine and you study that same subject you don't like for four days a week for a few months, you will now like that subject. It will change the way you interact with it. So that's one thing about dopamine. The other thing about changing habits is that in general, so when we're children, our brain can birth new cells in every part of the brain. It's completely regenerative. As we age, particularly after we pass puberty and particularly in our 30s, the rate of new neuron cell development in the brain diminishes dramatically and only happens in two areas of the brain, one called the subglandular zone and one called the subventricular

zone. So you have much less potential to create new neurons, which means you have less potential to change the structure of your brain. Neurons that fire together, wire together, but they're much less likely to rewire when you have less growth factors and less plasticity. So that's really why I believe you can't teach an old dog new tricks. The old dog doesn't have growth factors in its brain and the brain is not plastic. So I've noticed personally, for example, one of the great benefits of SSRIs or other neurotrophic compounds, which there are many, like cerebral lysine, for example, a very potent one, is that if you have upregulated neurogenesis for a while and you start to change your behavior, the behavior becomes much easier to adapt to.

I mean, this is a very, very noticeable effect of having higher neurogenesis. You feel less stuck in your patterns. And when you change your pattern, you can really adapt to it. You know? So cerebral lysin, that is like something from pigs or something like that, right? and when you change your pattern, you can really adapt to it. Cerebral lysine, that is like something from pigs or something like that, right? Yeah. Mark, I wanted to ask you about it really because as a powerlifter, I imagine growth hormone, the main benefit of growth hormone for powerlifters, I've asked some elite powerlifters about this. They said they never got strong from growth hormone, but

the super heavyweights were able to get much bigger from it. But also they said it affected their recovery in some way. Well, the way that growth hormone affects recovery for a power athlete, I imagine cerebral lysine may be even more effective. Cerebral lysine has purified growth factors from the brains of pigs. It's used in actually many instances, but mainly for acute brain trauma. actually many instances, but mainly for acute brain trauma. So when someone gets a brain trauma, goes to a hospital in Eastern Europe, they'll give them a course of cerebral lysin for a few days. Because remember, those growth factors in the brain protect cells from death.

So that's one of the interesting things. But it also is interesting, but cerebral lysin potently raises IGF-1 and lowers markers of systemic inflammation, like tumor necrosis factor alpha, across all studies. Now, I've had a few athletes started to use cerebral lysine, sort of the way an athlete would use growth hormone, because it will importantly improve sleep quality, similar to growth hormone. In fact, it has a synergistic effect when you combine it with growth hormone, like two units of growth hormone with 5 ml of cerebral lysine. But what I'm interested in really finding out now is whether it can speed up the rate at which powerlifters recover from nervous system fatigue when they blow out their nervous system on max

effort days. I believe it may be able to do so better than growth hormone and maybe a new PED for that world. And you utilized it to overcome anxiety, right? Well, I had already overcome anxiety using an SSRI, but I've always been interested in other, because the main problem with SSRIs for people, there are a few problems. One of the main problems is that they cause a lack of sex drive eventually at high doses due to the serotonin system downregulating the dopamine system. Remember, dopamine keeps prolactin low, and there may seem to be another effect that's hormonal through estrogen we don't know exactly but the point is the sex drive issue limits a lot of people from being able to use it so i also and what also inspired me was i noticed that ibogaine you've got guys have heard of that

molecule so ibogaine i've used many times ibogaine is very interesting it inhibits opiate withdrawal in people now i always wondered how does it do that i've tried it myself i've noticed after you use ibogaine, for example, if you smoke cigarettes, you'll be much less likely to want to smoke them. Dopaminergic things are less attractive. You're less likely to cheat on your food. So that was interesting. And then I really looked at all of the papers on ibogaine. And I found some interesting papers from 2017 or so showing that ibogaine potently upregulated growth factors in the brain, like brain-derived neurotrophic factor, same factor that SSRIs upregulate, for a period of weeks after a flood dose, but only after a flood dose.

So that's why the microdose... Do you mean a flood dose, meaning a heavy dose of ibogaine? Yeah, they call it a flood dose within the ibogaine world. So some people use lower doses of flood dose, something like 800 milligrams to 1,200 milligrams. Very dangerous because it's cardiotoxic. So that's the problem. It's cardiotoxic, but it seems to inhibit withdrawals for people who use opiates. So I saw this neurogenesis aspect,

and I wondered if there was something that could increase neurogenesis really potently, would it also inhibit opiate withdrawals? And I've always been looking for neurogenic compounds. I came across cerebral isin, tried it myself, and I noticed it was the most potent activator of growth factors in the brain that I've ever tried in my life. So using it for five days in a row, you get to a point that it takes about six to seven months with an SSRI. So it's very potent, very quick, and you can notice these effects. Surprisingly, once I started using it myself and some people following the channel did, some opiate addicts used it and totally inhibited

their withdrawals also without harming their hearts like Ibogaine does. So that was one of the ways I got into it. I just really used it experimentally. Sometimes I want to learn about things, not necessarily to help myself, but just generally, you know and with with ibogaine like did that make you like sick and like is i mean my brother had like a weird experience with it but he liked it but it also like made him throw up a bunch and things like that cerebral isin or ibogaine ibogaine oh ibogaine is a horrific experience the first two days my god that's one of the other reason not to use it you know because it's psychedelic but it's so potent of an activator of so many neurotransmitter systems in your brain that when you take it, you can't do anything but lay in bed and sort of like you live within yourself. You have these weird, you can't even, you see things, but they're not even clear to understand.

Like one of my experiences was a lot of people experience seeing their own death really freaky kind of and it's not a valuable experience it's not like when you use a mushroom or or lsd or something this is like you can't really tell what's happening you lay in bed for a couple of days you feel very weird and then the neurogenesis hits you just like you if you use cerebral iso for a couple of weeks or something like that that's interesting because the way chris bell um explained ibogaine to me he's like he, yeah, it's scrubs old patterns. The phrase he used was like scrubs old habitual patterns that you have. I'm guessing that's kind of like what you were talking about there. And that's what Cerebrolysin does, but in a shorter amount of time and a way less harsh experience. Not a shorter amount of time, a little bit longer. So the problem with ibogaine is it potently raises heart rates. Like when you do the flood dose,

you may be surprised to look at your Apple Watch and find your heart rate is 180 sitting down. Oh, Jesus. So that's the problem is that some people are prone, some people have genetically predispositions toward short or long, what are called QT intervals. And that could make them, if they had that elevated heart rate for a couple of days in a row, get an arrhythmia. So that's the danger. That's why I only use it a couple of times at the flood dose. I just use lighter doses to experiment with.

Cerebral isin doesn't have that effect. So it's a bit safer in that regard. But what Chris is describing, exactly how it feels when you have that huge boost in plasticity of your brain. You can go anywhere. And that actually, I'm curious about what you just mentioned there with the plasticity, because I mean, you mentioned that as you get older, your brain becomes less plastic. So it's harder to make those changes. You have to be more intentional. So does that mean that things

like cerebral license or Ibogaine, will you gain some neuroplasticity back for a period of time where you can really make shifts like you would as a kid is that the type of plasticity we're talking about or something different let me give you an example of what it feels like and this is on a lower dose this is an ssri so you can get this with cerebral isin or with ibogaine as well but by the way to do with ibogaine you have about two to three weeks of that of that plasticity you got to do a bump dose to keep that going. Otherwise, it won't continue. And the same with cerebral isin.

It lasts a few weeks. But cerebral isin obviously doesn't have that cardiotoxic effect. But I'll give you an example from my use of SSRIs, which is what I mainly use to cure myself of anxiety disorder. So I had a generalized anxiety disorder. But obviously, like many people who are anxious, it would show up sometimes in social interactions. So I tried to figure out how I could get around this. I got to a point where my SSRI was highly dosed and I had a lot of plasticity. I could feel it. Sleep very well at night, positive affect, positive outlook, not ruminating on thoughts like I used to, so it's working well. So what I did was I joined, there's an organization called Toastmasters. I don't know if you guys have ever heard of it. So Toastmasters is like AA for people who can't speak in public.

It's a group that supports people who are fear of public speaking. And obviously one of the most intimidating situations socially is when you're public speaking. Now, I used to be a good public speaker when I was younger, but I was very nervous at that time. So I said, what I should do is join this organization, go there every week. At first, I'll sit there, won't speak in public, and I'll slowly ease my way into doing some speaking sessions. Doing that with the neurogenesis for a period of a few months just annihilated my social anxiety. I was able to get around it. I didn't shake it.

I used to have a tremor as well that would show up when I'm anxious. I no longer shook in front of people when I would go interact with them. Now, if I did that without the SSRI, I highly doubt, and maybe for many reasons, like maybe having a negative attitude because SSRIs also change affect, a little bit more positive thinking. But I think it was mainly the neurogenesis, the fact that my brain could reassociate and get those neurons to fire together. So what specifically would be happening in social anxiety? Your brain gets used to this being a tense situation. So it starts sending adrenaline signals, specifically noradrenaline, when you get in that social situation. You can train that noradrenaline or your brain not to associate that social situation

with a fight-or-flight response. But to do that, you need that plasticity and adulthood. So I think you're the first person I've ever spoken to that's spoken positively about SSRIs. First off, why do they have such a negative connotation? And then two, I guess what, I don't want to say like, what are you taking? But like, what is there like a dosage thing? Because like I said, I've heard nothing but negative things about them and yes with every guest and then every person i've spoken to in person um it's usually avoid them at all costs try alternative medicine um you know and then of

course we've all kind of discovered um psilocybin but it's never like anyone has ever said anything the way you've said that you've now said said for dementia and then for what you're speaking about now. So I'm curious, yeah, where does that come from? And I guess, is there a dosage thing or is there a certain type? What is it that allows you to speak positively about them? That's a good question. So just before we even talk about that, we could say that if I was talking about statins, you could say the same response. You probably had most guests demonize statins as well. Statins are the most life-saving medication in the history of cardiology. There's no question

about that. But people will tell you statins will ruin your life. In the world of psychiatry, other than tranquilizers, which are given to schizophrenics or people with bipolar disorder, the most successful medication ever introduced were SSRIs. So this is just objectively true. The issue is this. There's a few issues. So first of all, everybody has idiosyncratic brain chemistry. So some things may happen that may affect other people worse than others. So for example, by the way, most of this happens when you use a high dose initially. One of the keys of SSRI treatment is to use almost a micro dose initially and only raise the dose when there's no acute effect noticed. You're not supposed to notice SSRI in your system for the first two to three months.

And then it sort of kicks in invisibly without you noticing five to six months in. Now, when you don't do that, when you use a higher dose initially, what happens? Let me give you an example in the brain, literally. So what do SSRIs do? They inhibit the reuptake of serotonin. So you have two cells in your brain. One happens to communicate serotonin to the other one. The other one has receptors for serotonin. And the other one, after it receives the serotonin, there's a thing called the serotonin transporter. It takes serotonin out of the synaptic cleft into the extracellular space. SSRIs inhibit that transporter. So the second cell feels serotonin more. Now the second cell can have all kinds of different receptors for serotonin that cause it to behave a little bit differently.

The first receptor of all, called 5-HT1A, is what's called an autoreceptor. So what does an autoreceptor do? Once it's agonized, it downregulates the rest of the serotonin receptors. So one key reason why you can't use a high dose initially, almost all psychiatrists use what I consider to be too high of a dose. And I've had these bad experiences with SSRIs before where I got off them four months in, I said, this thing doesn't work, it makes me sleepy. It was because of the dosing schedule. So if you downregulate the serotonin receptors, what happens? The acute effect is actually you have an opposing effect of what SSRIs normally do. Your dopamine system gets elevated. So some people can feel anxiety

or things like that. Also, other people feel a tranquilizing effect, not because of the down regulation, but because there's just too much sudden serotonergic signaling initially. The key is this, guys. This is really related to psilocybin. SSRIs only really work through two receptors in the serotonin system. They're called 5-HT2A and 5-HT2C. Those are the molecular targets of psilocybin and LSD. What those two receptors do is when you agonize those two receptors, neurotrophic factors, growth factors in the brain upregulate. So the SSRI's main goal is just to agonize those receptors. And so you want to do it very slowly and you want to have that incrementally agonized so the neurotrophic effects happen.

Now, psilocybin would do the same thing to you, really. It agonizes those receptors directly. So it's working through the same mechanism. The difference is the SSRIs maybe have more of an effect on other serotonin receptors, which could be less effective maybe if there are eventual proper trials of psilocybin, which there are some trials, but they're not very detailed. But that's how it works. So it works through the same receptors. If you titrate slowly, there are thousands of people that have said that SSRIs have changed their life for the better,

saved their lives. People talk about it similar to how people talk about TRT. It's just that obviously it's not a one-size-fit-all. And keep in mind something, a lot of psychiatrists who prescribe these drugs have never ever used them themselves, have never been depressed or anxious, have never felt that sudden upregulation. Because I felt that. So I had to figure out why is this happening when the dose is too high initially. And then I learned about the 5-HT1A receptor. You would be hard-pressed to find a psychiatrist who knows what that receptor does. So sometimes they're messing around and people will find side effects. I don't know if I missed anything else.

Oh, yeah. For dementia also, by the way, psilocybin could be an equally effective strategy. It does the same thing with neurogenesis. It doesn't lower inflammation in the brain, but it does the same thing with neurogenesis. neurogenesis. It doesn't lower inflammation in the brain, but it does the same thing with neurogenesis. And is psilocybin, would that be used more as a preventative or can it actually help reverse dementia? So once people exhibit dementia, so let me give an example, Parkinson's disease, people don't exhibit tremors until they've lost over 60% of their dopaminergic neurons in the brain.

That means the neurons that synthesize or deal with dopamine. So you have to lose. There's something in the brain called cognitive reserve. Our brains function really well, even if we have massive brain damage, unless it's really, really massive. So once you see someone exhibiting dementia, you could do things to lower inflammation, deal with their symptoms, and you could try to slow it down. But once they've already had it, the brain is probably very diseased. It has a lot of, like depending on the disease, like Parkinson's disease has

these kind of proteins called alpha-synuclein proteins that get deposited there, cause inflammation. In Alzheimer's, there's beta-yloid plaques that get deposited there this person probably has those things deposited there now there are things that can potentially clear them but the science is really in its infancy i don't think that you can really reverse it very well yet but you can probably really put some effort in preventing it from happening at least earlier do you think it's important for people to work towards coming off of these medications sometimes? So like maybe, you know, you're on like a protocol and you're on it for maybe even a couple of years, but I would imagine it's probably not great to be on them for decades.

So this is why, Mark, this is why I'm hesitant about things like cerebral isin or psilocybin even, because there aren't long-term studies on them. There are 30-year studies on SSRIs. They don't cause brain cancers. Like they upregulate growth factors in the brain. There's no brain cancers. So there's some important thing. People could be on SSRIs forever.

I haven't been on SSRIs except for two months in the last year probably. So I go on and off depending on how I feel and to keep the system sort of fresh so it doesn't downregulate too much. But I don't think there's any specific reason about SSRIs. If you're using cerebral isin, I would think that you are growing the brain so much you could be developing brain cancers eventually if you used it like all year round. But there are also no studies that show that from cerebral isin. How about your caution on psilocybin? Because you mentioned something there.

Yeah, Mike, the caution is just that there aren't long-term studies of it. So, for example, I know maybe it's not so much cautionary. I don't think that they're – well, here's a couple of notes. So, those same receptors that grow the growth factors that are the targets of LSD and psilocybin, they're also the main receptors in the serotonin system that produce anxiety. So that's where you feel anxiety when you megadose a mushroom or LSD. You have the psychedelic effect, but there's also an anxiety effect, right? So I wonder if you just isolated those receptors with psilocybin, which is an agonist, would you eventually potentially develop,

despite the neurogenesis, some anxiety or some kind of psychedelic effect long-term? But on a positive note, SSRIs are also known to reduce inflammation in the brain. Can psilocybin do that? We don't know. I'm not against it. I'm just saying we don't know as much about it. And I want to know about this because we mentioned BADNF earlier, right? One of the main reasons I started doing some fasting a few years ago is because I've heard a lot of anecdotes of people saying I'm able to focus better when I'm fasted, like when I'm not eating or I'm not focused on food. So that's why I started doing it. And I noticed that effect. And people have said that

it does increase BDNF when you're doing some intermittent fasting or long-term fasting. So what I'm curious about is on the side of the brain, does doing some intermittent fasting or long-term fasting. So what I'm curious about is on the side of the brain, does implementing some intermittent fasting actually benefit your ability to focus or is that more of some woo-woo stuff about fasting? Yeah, no, it's very accurate. I know what you're talking about. So basically the way this seems to work is that ketogenic diets were developed for epileptic patients at Johns Hopkins University originally.

You know that, right? So what it does is it seems to be that ketogenic diets either reduce glutamatergic activity, which is the main excitatory neurotransmitter in the nervous system, or they increase GABAergic activity. So they seem to make people a bit calmer. The other thing that people have noticed and really where I paid attention to this was, you know how, Mark, there's these rodent studies about caloric restriction and fasting that David Sinclair and so on talk about a lot? Many people don't know that depending on the rodent strain, if you give the rodent a low-protein ketogenic diet, they can live sometimes as long as caloric restriction. But the interesting difference is that they have the best integrity of their brain later in life. So it seems to be that either insulin resistance or glucose

or sugar, in fact, could be damaging to them. We know sugar is, because by the way, dopamine is a neurotoxin. If you cause too much dopamine release acutely, it's excitatory, cells downregulate in response to it. But if they don't, they die. So for example, if you're eating a lot of sugar all day, you may experience some kind of excitotoxicity. But I really think it's just this insulin resistance and high glucose levels in the brain causing detriment over time. So what I think is happening with you probably is what happens to me. So I do time-restricted eating. I still eat salads and stuff like that. So I'm not eating a ketogenic diet.

But because I'm only eating for about eight hours a day, by the next morning, I have some kind of fat adaptation coming along, and my brain is much clearer thinking. I would advise the audience, if anybody in the audience tries a real ketogenic diet that's not high in really toxic saturated fats, it's not like all butter, for a couple of weeks, you'll notice your brain thinks clearer. You can think from the top down better. Your short-term memory is better you notice that too exactly so that's one of the best it's one of the best ways without pharmacology and supplements to improve your concentration what are some things people should be aware of when it comes to their heart you know we have there's a lot of people that listen to the show that love lifting

a lot of people love power lifting and some people maybe even are maybe taking some performance enhancing drugs and or just even doing TRT. What are some things we need to have concern over when it comes to the heart? So, you know, there's like this thing called the athlete's heart where the athlete with the heart grows and loses some of its structural integrity with time. But the cardiologists tend to tell you that if you have athletic heart, like I have a larger heart or used to at least, that it may be safe because you're exercising a lot, right? When you add androgens in, a couple of things happen. The same thing that happens with the athlete's heart happens. The left ventricle hypertrophy is accelerated. It seems to be, I've looked into this, that the reason for the left ventricle hypertrophy is not the androgen signaling itself, but the increased adrenaline that

you have because of it. And then adrenaline speeds up your heart rate throughout the day. If you notice, if you've ever been on a big cycle, when you're resting, sitting down, you'll notice your heart rate is 80 or 90 or something like that, which it usually isn't. So that extended heart rate for a long time causes the heart to beat faster, causing it to grow and causing it to lose structural integrity. So one of the things I've suggested I do myself is if I used, for example, a pre-workout androgen, after my workout, I block adrenaline. So there's a thing called a beta blocker which can block some of the adrenaline receptors. And some of them are short-acting like the one I use for six hours or so.

As you guys know, when you do cardio, when you exercise, your heart rate remains elevated for six to eight hours. As you guys know, when you do cardio, when you exercise, your heart rate remains elevated for six to eight hours. So I like to block that to sort of attenuate or lower the potential hypertrophy that can happen with time. Now, what's the negative aspect of this? Well, the main reason growth hormone synthesis increases after you exercise is because of adrenaline, not because of GABA or anything else. So you may blunt that growth hormone synthesis afterwards a little bit, but you may protect your heart from that enlargement over time a little bit again. Now, you could also take a long-acting beta blocker, like nebivolol has become very popular,

because nebivolol doesn't actually limit your max heart rate when you're exercising, because it has an effect on nitric oxide synthase. But I don't like to do that. I like to have my heart free-reined, except for a few hours of the day. The next thing that you'd want to consider, really, especially in terms of androgens, is on average, when people are on steroids, their LDL cholesterol increases by about 30%, and their HDL cholesterol decreases by about half. The HDL cholesterol seems to, or at least the particles seem to be important for reverse cholesterol transport.

But the main thing I rely on is the LDL cholesterol. If the LDL cholesterol is, this is the medical consensus, if the LDL cholesterol is very low, you have much less likelihood of developing plaque depending on your inflammation levels and so on. So what I try to do is keep LDL cholesterol very low, which is really easy to do if you're on androgens. So a lot of people that are not on androgens

that have high cholesterol levels, they'll be scared of taking something like a statin because it can have psychological effects. It can give you brain fog. It can make you a bit insulin resistant. It can lower your sex drive, although it improves erectile function. But if you're on androgens, you barely notice most of these side effects. You don't have to use a statin. So the lowest cost option is called ezetimibe. It's a drug called Zetia, 10 milligrams. That drug stops you from digesting dietary cholesterol. So you could eat 10 egg yolks a day and it doesn't affect your cholesterol as much.

And it stops your liver from pulling cholesterol from bile fluid. This medication has almost no side effects. You almost will never notice you're taking it. And it does extend life and it lowers systemic inflammation. Then if you wanted to add like another, there's like three other drugs. You could add statins, benpidoic acid, which is a new drug, or a PCSK9 inhibitor. The PCSK9 inhibitors are very expensive. They're injections that are taken twice a month, lower cholesterol, LDL cholesterol by 60% on average. The benpidoic acid is more specific a little bit to the liver, may have some advantages over statins. I use a statin.

more specific a little bit to the liver may have some advantages over statins. I use a statin. If you use, for example, there are two statins I like are called pitavastatin and rasuvastatin. Both of those are not affected by CYP enzymes in the liver, so they have less drug-on-drug interactions. Pitavastatin is lipophilic, so it passes the blood-brain barrier, but it's the only statin not associated with insulin resistance. Rasuvastatin is hydrophilic, doesn't pass the blood-brain barrier, so it causes less brain fog, but it has some more effects, for example, on insulin resistance. So if you take 5 mg of rosuvastatin once a week, you'll lower your LDL cholesterol by an average of 24%.

5 mg once a week, you won't notice you took it. I take 20 mg every day. So I have a flat, very low LDL cholesterol. It's never been shown in studies that someone can develop plaque at an LDL cholesterol lower than 70 in the U.S. metric. So usually most doctors will try to get your LDL to 70. I think anybody on steroids that has this chance of his heart enlarging already should be considering keeping LDL to 70, either through diet means or pharmacology. And then the final thing is blood pressure.

So if your blood pressure is higher, your heart has to pump harder, the hypertrophy will increase further. So you always want to make sure your resting blood pressure is 120 over 80. I really try to get it 110 over 80 because sometimes I get upset, so the blood pressure will go a bit higher. So I try to keep it 110 over 80 because sometimes I get upset so the blood pressure will go a bit higher. So I try to keep it 110 over 80 just to be careful. Now, I'm curious, individuals that are bodybuilders and powerlifters that are using drugs, what are some signs that they can be looking for? Or what are some habits that they need to have as far as testing to make sure that nothing's going on with their heart? The main reason I asked this is because we had Tony on yesterday, Tony Huge, and he had the flu.

That's what we're going to call it so YouTube doesn't put us in jail. But we were talking about how bodybuilders have thicker blood and if they do end up getting the flu, it could actually be fatal for them because of their heart, their lungs, and just blood doesn't pump as well. So what do these individuals need to be doing to make sure that over time that their heart health is okay?

I mean, the thing about that is you're talking about a particular event, which is this clotting issue. So the clotting issue, there's actual medications for it, like heparin, which I covered recently in a video. But there's also, by the way, supplements like EPA from fish oil potently inhibits clotting in the blood, like potently, as potently as a baby aspirin does. But I don't know enough about how this flu causes the clotting. I've never actually, to be honest, because I have a channel now, I don't look into everything because I try to be as creative as I can.

So if I get in the COVID space, there's too many people reading about that. So the clotting thing is a little bit unique to the flu. But other than the flu issue, so how could bodybuilders check their cardiovascular health? There's a lot of metrics they don't test, they don't know about. So they may look at their LDL cholesterol and their hematocrit. What else do they look at? So for example, uric acid is an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Homocysteine, which can be treated nutritionally, is an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Symmetric dimethyl arginine is also and is also a good proxy for kidney health that not

many people know about. Then there's also looking at inflammatory markers in the cardiovascular system like lppla2 actually if anyone goes to my website i have a list of biomarkers on on a blood test that's a little bit exhaustive it has some cancer markers that may be unnecessary for these guys but it's a very detailed picture of the cardiovascular system. You want to get those. And the other thing you want to do is if you're a bodybuilder, you owe it to yourself to get an fMRI scan of your heart every three years at least. Because if you've never seen a picture of your heart, the echocardiogram, all this stuff doesn't show a detailed picture of how your heart looks and how your peripheral blood vessels, whether they're clogged, not just the blood vessels close to the heart. So I was so relieved when I got my fMRI scan. I was still lifting at the time intensely.

I didn't know what my heart was like. And I was very relieved. I've been trying to popularize it. Many people do a CAT scan, for example, a CAT scan for calcium in the heart. This is not a good approach. So calcium gets developed 10 years after plaque. And the CT scan is the most damaging radiation scan you can have. And literally, there's academic evidence that it damages the structure around the heart every time you do it. So instead of, you might want to do that once,

and you'll know what kind of level of calcium you have, but the fMRI scan is not damaging, except for potentially the dyes, but it's not damaging. And you can get a much clearer perspective of how much plaque you have right now, not how much calcium has developed to heal the plaque from 10 years ago. But the clotting thing is a difficult thing to work around. I mean, I don't know how many medications they should really be on. I don't know if a baby aspirin makes a big difference to them or EPA would. I talked to Tony about this on his channel recently, actually. There are a lot of drugs that can be recommended for the flu. Like, for example, I talked to him about naltrexone. I gave him some citations, naltrexone,

SSRIs, donapazil, the cholinergic drug we talked about. SSRIs and donapazil inhibit some adrenaline signaling. Adrenaline signaling has been shown to be one of the causes of fatalities when people are responding to the flu in their cytokine storm. So beta blockers are also used. There's a lot of drugs. EPA, parenteral fish oil has been recommended for people in really bad states with the flu. Parenteral meaning they inject it directly into their veins to reduce inflammation. So there's a lot of different things.

And I guess I don't want to shift too much, but there are some, there are a lot of people that watch this channel that don't use any type of drugs, right? But you've mentioned so many things that would be beneficial for people that do, but for individuals that don't, that are looking for longevity of the brain, the body, and they don't want to take a cocktail of a lot of different things. Because from everything you've mentioned, it does make me wonder how many things you do take, because it seems like there's so many things. But what can people that are on an entry level of this stuff, and they want to just take some simple things or look up some simple things that will help out, what would you suggest? Well, let's talk about that briefly. So just to be clear, if I was the most focused on my longevity, I would be much

more conservative with what I take. A lot of the reasons I take these things is because I'm curious to learn about them in order to help others learn about them from my channel or so on. So I would be more conservative otherwise. The person that is the most educated on this, at least if we're talking about longevity and health, the person that's most educated on this that has a conservative view, his name is Walter Longo. He works at, he switched over to USC now. He used to be at UCLA. So Walter Longo has a book called The Longevity Diet. I would recommend that book to my family members or anybody else who's interested in living a healthier lifestyle. In that book, you'll learn a lot about the periodic fast, which Mark talks about often, but you'll also learn about sort of a consensus view of the epidemiologic research on how diet affects health. And Walter

always takes the most conservative view. So for example, David Sinclair, he uses a statin, he uses metformin. Walter Longo doesn't. So Voltolongo takes a very conservative approach. I would highly recommend that for health. And I would highly recommend also Sachin Panda's book, The Circadian Code. Those two books, have you read that book? Yeah. That was a wonderful book. So The Circadian Code may be a little bit better written and more concise.

Longevity diet is a bit longer, but it's easy to work through for anybody that doesn't have a background in it. I would personally start with having a circadian diet and eating the right foods. And then past that, if you want to supplement with things, you can choose the most evidence-backed supplements. For health, you can start with things like EPA from fish oil, if you don't have a risk of thrombotic embolism, or you could try coca or turmeric or these kind of standard anti-inflammatory phytochemicals, the most valuable of which include garlic, for example. And I'm doing supplement reviews in my channel, but I usually get a little bit lazy, but I'll

try to do one every month so people get a good idea of which. Those are for that purpose. Now, if it's for concentration and mental performance, I think the first step should be to have that time-restricted eating to the point where you have clarity of thinking in the morning. Then past that, you can think about, instead of supplementing with a lot of things, you can take a nootropic formula that you trust, like the one from Gorilla Mind, for example, which I know where they source it. I worked on the formulation. I trust them very well. And you can use that supplement by

itself in the mornings, something cholinergic, something that increases dopamine signaling a little bit. How did you come to experiment with performance enhancing drugs? The main reason was because when I was a teenager, I wanted to get stronger to defend myself because I was being bullied. And when I was trying to get stronger, you know, I'm always trying to increase the amount of variables involved in any task I do. Because I don't, I always have the background that I'm not intelligent, and I don't have any gifts. So I always try to look at how can I make this problem more complex, so I have more variables I can use. So even when I was 15 years old, I immediately realized there's something called

steroids. So I went on the bodybuilding.com forums. I was one of the oldest people on those forums, only posting the steroid board. I was 15, you know, I wasn't taking any steroids, but I was posting constantly. So I did that for a few years, but then it became dedicated to my schooling. So I never ended up using them. Then later after I did well in school, I said, you know, I got to try these things that I never tried before. And at the time I was powerlifting in high school, but by that time later, I wasn't even doing anything. I just wanted to try them. And then a few years later in my twenties again, I tried them again, but this time for two and a half years or three years while I was arm wrestling. Mainly for the purpose of just trying what it feels like. And trust me, it feels like something very interesting. It's worthwhile.

Pause. You said arm wrestling though? Like were you doing arm wrestling competitions? Yes. Yes. I was mostly an arm wrestler in my 20s i stopped powerlifting because i hurt my back a bit in high school and i was always into grip sports specifically like even when it was an unknown thing and so i got into arm wrestling because i happened to be living in la scott mendelson had an arm wrestling practice in his gym and so i would go to the practice and that's how scott and i became friends i was never gifted in arm wrestling but i i enjoyed it a lot okay these these two guys uh don't know what's coming next but here we go how do we make our dicks bigger whoa let's go that's a good question also so it's a great question so i so, I'll be efficient with this.

There is a way to enlarge people's penises. There's a lot of, unfortunately, scam artists and con men in this world. And so it's really difficult to decipher what's true or not. There's a lot of people on the forums online that honestly do weird stuff, like claim they made gains that they didn't. They never have pictures. So this world has been very murky for a long time picture bro yeah exactly it's true you should you should have a picture if you said you gained six inches right at that point you should have a picture so a lot

of those people didn't have pictures but basically there was a there was a board in 2008 and way before that called thunder's place i joined it when i was in college and undergrad and in thunder's place i i tried every single mechanism including, what they call chemical PEP is penis enlargement. I tried using pumps, using clamping, hanging, and all these different kinds of things. Now, I want to just tell you the synopsis of what I learned. What I learned is basically that you can increase the size of your penis through improving its vascular structure, its blood vessel connectivity. And you can do that. It has a temporary effect that goes away if you stop doing it for, say, a year and a half or two years. It will eventually revert. But the good thing about

this approach is it actually makes your penis a little bit healthier. It's more responsive. It's like taking Cialis. You end up with a permanent Cialis effect, sort of. You get hard very quickly. You have no difficulties with it. That's one side. The other side is there is a way to actually lengthen the penis. But this regards, so if you think about the penis's exit point from the side, there's a suspensory ligament at the top of the penis. This ligament can be easily stretched.

Now, depending on how the person, how tight the person's penis is to that ligament, they can gain half an inch to even two inches of length by bringing that exit point lower. So technically, the penis is long. That's what I'm talking about. So how you do that is with – unfortunately, I don't want to recommend this guy's product because he's a bit of a suspect person. But there's a product called the Bibb Hanger, which most people use. But there's a product called the Bibb hanger, which most people use. And that hanger, if you use it in a position, unfortunately, it's very – you only got to do this for two months, though, to get it done.

If you put your pelvis up so your legs are up like on a desk and you hang straight down at the opposing angle of where the ligament is attached, it's the quickest way to stretch the ligament. Like in a belt squat? No, it's sort of like sitting on your desk and yeah, sort of like a belt squat. Yeah. But, but, but rooting your pelvis up. So if you do this for about two months, the, the, the suspensory ligament is fully stretched and it doesn't really go back ever fully. So mine never returned after I did that. So I gained something permanent from that, that never, never atrophied. On the other hand, pumping is the most effective way to get that vascular development. And that goes away after a while, but dramatically improves your sex life while you're doing it.

Wait, okay. So the bib hanger, that's what people should use. Yeah, but just some notes on that. You don't want to use, some of us were trying high weights and stuff. You don't – you actually – what you're trying to do is plastically remold that tendon, that suspensory ligament. So to do that, you want to use the lowest weight possible for you to feel an ache directly at that suspensory ligament. You'll feel an ache every time you do it.

You do it for – to be honest, the more time you do it per day, the faster it happens. But unfortunately, pumping is not like that, but hanging is. So you get that ache, and you want to keep that dull ache going consistently for a couple of months. And then it'll remold, and it'll never return back to what it was. Okay. So, okay. Now, as far as frequency, what are we talking about here? So with the hanger, honestly, there were people doing it for 10 hours a day for months

straight so that that is the quickest way to do it but you get all of the suspensory ligament benefits within a month or two okay those people were trying to extend the actual penile tissue which is not possible in adulthood it's not possible like we haven't seen in semen weeks i'm curious. It's like, okay, now are there, because I'm looking at bib hangers, right? Are there different ones? Are there one that works best than the other? There's a starter and there's a normal one.

All right. You need to send us some leaks so we know which one to grab. Yeah, you want the one that, I forgot what it's called, but the one that looks the most robust. There's one that's like a bit smaller and less, it has like more plastic and less foam. You don't want that one. You want the full bib one.

And then what you want to do is you get obviously a weight pin and you want to use the lowest weight possible to get that ache. And then you keep that going. You could probably do it for an hour a day, say for two months. It might work. Yeah, it's very inefficient.

I'm glad I got that over with. I don't have to sit there take notes on your phone or something read a book you know yeah i would be watching tv in college doing that yeah it was a it was a big waste of time because we didn't know that the the tissue itself couldn't stretch we thought it was just a more than the ligament so we got past the ligament and kept stretching for no reason some people holding 40 pounds from from the swinging it also so there's a there's all kinds of useless stuff that happens. You got to get full range of motion.

Hey, man, all about stretching and mobility. We're about to do some smooth pamphlet for that. Zech, let's go. All that we did was building scar tissue, making those tendons stronger so they're harder to stretch. It's a lot of waste of time for sure. You have a lot of recommendations for erectile dysfunction and stuff as well? Yeah, I mean, it depends on the source of the erectile dysfunction. So the thing that is the most effective of all is the second thing I mentioned, which was pumping. Pumping is as a

vacuum that you insert your penis into while it is erect. And it's a vacuum. Usually you can do water pumping. It's safer with water inside the pump. But the point is, you basically have a vacuum stretching the penis out and stretching the vascular structure out while blood is there. So the way you can think of this is sort of like PRP for your joints. What do they do when they do PRP? They take your blood and they concentrate. Mainly what they're looking for is the growth factors in your blood, not just IGF-1, but there's so many other small growth factors. So they try to concentrate that and put that in a tissue, and it causes a reduction in inflammation there. But eventually overall, including from something called VEGF, vascular endothelial growth factor, you'll grow new blood vessels in the area. So pumping forces blood to remain there

and also elastically stretches the tissue a little bit. This produces, after about six months of every other day, 20 minutes a day work, something more powerful than Cialis. You get a much better blood flow in the area. You actually get better sensitivity in the penis. It gets bigger, of course, but that's not the goal. And it gets much more responsive. So this has been, I've covered this a little bit on my channel. It's been used for, for example, for diabetics that can't get hard. It solves their problems. It's been used for people that have what's called Peyronie's disease, which is fibrosis in the tissue. But there's also, you know, medications.

It's much easier to pump if you're using Cialis at the time because you have to be erect when you get inside. There's another medication called Doxazosin, D-O-X-A-Z-O-S-I-N, which manipulates the adrenaline system, a different system than the PDE5 inhibition of Cialis that can also increase erectile function.

That's really cool. I always thought penis pumps weren't real. I thought people were just like, oh, penis pump. I didn't know that it was actually healthy for the penis. Tons of academic evidence, lots of papers, controlled trials. It works for sure it enlarges the penis and really improves erectile function all right there's no question about that yeah so with that being said um if you could just like after this like send andrew the links for the

legitimate ones because there's a lot of there's probably a lot of just weird scammy stuff online you'll buy and it's just like doesn't work right but it perfectly for example like when we were on oh sorry interrupt when we were on the forum in 2008 um we i was on the thread that first created water pumping like putting water in a in a cylinder to reduce the amount of vacuum on the exterior of the penis on the skin so less blistering potential and stuff actually there's no blistering potential when we came up with that on forum, I wasn't the guy who came up with it, but I was like the third responder. A group of people on the forum realized a business opportunity, I guess. So they went and suddenly within six months, Bathmate was opened. So Bathmate, they sell pumps. I don't know if you've ever heard of them before. I've never used their pumps. I've always used the same pump I used

originally, which is called LA Pump. You can find a link to it on my website. They're very easy to use. And I have two videos on pumping that explain how to use it. You got to get used to using it. But once you do, it becomes a trivial issue. And once you see the results, which takes a few weeks, maybe a couple of months, when you see the results, you get addicted to it and you keep doing it. Honestly, I would still be pumping if I was more sexual in my life because it just adds so much value. It's like going to the gym if you were an athlete you know this is the best podcast we have ever done hell yeah this is amazing i told you guys leo would be dope he knows everything i know shifting gears

leo um how do you eat and how do you recommend other people to eat to be healthy just in general? So what I try to do is sort of like what Walter Longwood did, which was try to get an understanding of what are the plants and fruits that have the most value for our health. So in the vegetable family, there are two families called the cruciferous and allium families. Cruciferous are where like broccoli sprouts come out of, which Rhonda Patrick popularized, which is very healthy. And then on the other hand, you have the allium family that have sulfur-related compounds. They're called organosulfur compounds that are very healthy. So the allium family is garlic, leeks, onions, and so on. So I try to include both of those as bases in a salad that I make every few days. And then in addition to that, I pick the other fruits according to their color. So I'll even include beets, for example, even though they are very high in nitrates. I include tomatoes.

I choose according to color. So I eat this salad with lentils, which are the most healthy legumes. Lentils and chickpeas, the most healthy legumes. And I'll make like hummus, if you guys have heard of this Arabic side dish. That is chickpeas. And I make it at home healthy. And I'll mix my salad with this so I don't feel like I'm grazing. So I have like a dip, you know, so it tastes like something real.

Also, I'll include in my salad walnuts, which are, in my opinion, the two most healthy nuts are walnuts and pecans. Then later in the day, I'll eat berries, specifically blueberries or blackberries with raspberries or cranberries. The ideal scenario is blueberries and cranberries, but I hate the taste of cranberries. And ideal scenario is blueberries and cranberries, but I hate the taste of cranberries. And then I mix this with pecans in a small bowl. If you eat too many fruits, you'll notice you'll start to get insulin resistant. I used to eat like a big bowl of berries, and I noticed, no,

it's still, even though they're berries, you'll get insulin resistant. You'll get a little bit of fat, visceral fat. So I eat that too. And then I eat also 15 to 30 grams of chicken liver pate, which I make at home also. And in addition to that, recently I've been going to the gym a little bit. So I've been eating some red meat, but I'm going to cut down on that a little bit. I've been eating too much high protein. Yeah, you're not a big fan of protein. I know Walter Longo's stuff is not.

What's the deal with protein? Why can protein potentially be not great for people? So the two things that seem to age people the most from their diet is sugar and the other side is protein. Sugar maybe through insulin signaling affects cancers. It causes metabolic syndrome, which affects everything else. But on the other hand, protein, what it does is upregulate growth pathways in our body. We often think about foods as nutrients or building blocks, but they're also hormones signaling molecules. So in protein, you have methionine, which signals

for the methylation cycle and a few other things. And then you have leucine, which potently activates what's called the mechanistic target of rapamycin, which then activates growth hormone, IGF-1, and all these other growth pathways. When you fast, you're trying to turn on something called the AMP kinase pathway, which is a nutrient sensing pathway that senses when you're in low in nutrition. So you're not in a stage to grow, you're in a stage of repair. Once you add protein into your diet, you screw that up. So I remember I saw my friend Steve, when he came on the show, he was talking about the fasting mimicking diet of Walter Longo.

What you'll note in that diet is there's 500 calories from fat, 500 calories from plants, which could include glucose. Low calorie total, zero protein. There is very low protein. It's just protein from the nuts that you eat there. The protein is the thing that most clearly seems to age people. But the problem with that is if you have low protein for extended periods in your life, you're going to have atrophy of your brain and of your heart because of low IGF-1 levels. So there's a sort of a balance between

protecting yourself from cancer and protecting yourself from dementia and heart disease. About how much protein do you eat in a day and what do you sometimes recommend to other people? So now I've been eating like 150 grams or so, but I was eating like 60 to 80 grams. And I think that the evidence, all of the evidence shows that people should basically, if they want to live as long as possible, should minimize their protein, except from like plants and vegetables, until they reach the age of about 60 to 65, at which case they should raise their protein consumption to over 100 grams or so. It seems to extend life at that age.

But unfortunately, it's very opposing to our desires as athletic people. Yeah, have you lost any muscle doing that? Well, I lost all my muscle originally. I didn't lift weights for like three years. And I just started working out and lifting weights because the climbing gyms are closed and the flu has basically thwarted my life. So I went back to working out in gyms recently. And as we were all addicted to lifting in some way, I knew that's why I wasn't lifting weights, because I knew once I go there, I'm going to want higher protein. I'm going to think about anadrol again.

Things are going to happen. So that's what happened. I ended up going, I raised the protein. But anyway, I'll fast soon once what I've gained solidifies. up going i raised the protein but anyway i'll fast soon once once what i've gained solidifies yeah this i'm kind of curious this might sound kind of dumb but um when individuals you know lower their protein intake and actually in a caloric deficit those individuals end up living longer but it makes me wonder when there's a presence of uh a lot of exercise now i'm talking about not just lifters but a lot of exercise running, et cetera, right? And that individual has a decent amount of protein, so maybe 0.8 grams per pound. But they're highly active individuals. Do you think that because of that high level of activity and that high level of protein utilization that they could still get the effects of good longevity because of the presence of high levels of exercise or no?

This is a great question. And I actually talk about this on my channel every so often. I've been wondering why certain elite bodybuilding coaches like Chad Nichols, for example, I talked to Chad about this. Chad, when he had his top off-season bodybuilders in their off-season, he would have them doing cardio for two hours a day, some of them. So I'm like, why would you have somebody do two hours of cardio and keep his calories higher and his protein higher instead of just reducing the calories a little bit in the protein? Well, I think the reason is, he didn't say this word for word to me, but it's because,

remember, they're signaling molecules. They don't care about your total. I mean, they do care. It does matter if you're in a calorie deficit or not in total, but the protein still signals for growth no matter what. So if you're exercising a lot and you're not somebody that's gaining weight or anything like that, you might think you're in a nutrient sensing pathway, but there are so many different studies using leucine as a supplement showing that leucine can completely inhibit that once it's added. So enough leucine from protein from like, and you find higher rates of leucine in meat so once you add that meat and you're not in that nutrient sensing pathway now you do have other effects

like i've reviewed the effects of exercise on longevity on my channel and clearly cardiovascular exercise extends life and elite cardiovascular athletes tend to live longer not true for power athletes by the way they barely live longer if you look at olympic power athletes, by the way, they barely live longer. If you look at Olympic power athletes, they barely live longer. They usually die of heart disease, even though that's tested. So exercise is great for you, but doesn't solve this nutrient sensing growth pathway issue. In fact, what could happen in the long term? If you have mTOR elevated constantly, your cells are constantly going to try to divide. They eventually reach something called a hayflick limit. At that limit, it's like a dead end. They either die in what's called apoptosis, or they become these zombie cells called senescent cells. Senescent cells, a lot of evidence shows,

are the main reason that older people feel joint pain. So what you may notice instead is you may be a great athlete eating all your protein and exercising, and you might start to degrade really quickly, like we see a lot of these athletes do with replacements. With that being said, now I want to talk about training. I don't mean just people that are bodybuilding. I'm not talking about bodybuilding. I mean people that are eating moderate protein diets, 0.8 grams per pound, in the presence of weight training and a good amount of cardiovascular exercise.

I think a great example of these types of athletes would be a mid-level crossfitter, right? Who does quite a bit of cardiovascular exercise and that strength trains. Would that be kind of the, not crossfitting being the ideal type of exercise, but would that be the ideal type of work to have good longevity where you have a great cardiovascular health and you're strong? I think that the key, that sounds like the perfect plan, if you incorporate one other thing. I think the key is a cyclical approach to the reduction in calories and protein. If you do it all the time, you're going to get the diseases of having low growth factors. You're going to have brain atrophy and heart atrophy, like the caloric restriction guys.

You're going to be very skinny, always cold, and so on. But what we've seen in blood tests from people who periodically fast, if they're not using androgens and growth hormone, because we've tried with those guys, it doesn't show. But if it's a natural guy and he fasts for five days, he gets lower IGF-1 signaling for about two weeks after. So there's a period of time where there's a repair process going on, and there's less of that signal for growth. So if somebody, for example, fasted five days every month, but throughout the month was

eating a lot of protein and that kind of stuff, which is what I did for a year, by the way. I fasted five days for a whole year. Well, originally seven days, and now I was doing five days every month. So when you do that, though, you end up losing so much body fat, you have to eat more the rest of the month. I think that's fine. I think you get that two-week reduction and that two-week growth stimulus. I think that some kind of cyclicality is the key. And do you think that the fast doesn't need to be a consecutive five days or can you do like a 24-hour fast? Like could you do that five days throughout the month? So there's a couple of common factors that happen in blood tests after about the third day. They don't happen in the second day. The first two days, you tend to have

high ghrelin signaling, which is that hunger hormone, which also the reason why you have high growth hormone signaling, why it's difficult to sleep and so on. The third day, you tend to adapt to it. And of course, by the way, the more times you do fast, the easier it becomes. At the end of my year, I was doing five-day fast. I was barely feeling hungry until the fourth or fifth day. So the third day, something happens. If you go do your blood test on the third day, you'll find your uric acid is high. Your testosterone is low. Your triglycerides are low.

There's a repetitive pattern. My goal would be to get that in the blood test and then keep it for two days as a minimal effect. I used to fast for a week, but I found out this seemed inefficient. would be to get that in the blood test and then keep it for two days as a minimal effect. You know, I used to fast for a week, but I found out this seemed inefficient. Most of what happened, happened in the first three days or so. One day fast can be useful in the sense that they could increase insulin sensitivity throughout the, but I don't think you're going to get in that phase of regeneration that, that Volta Longo has so many studies on in two days. Could you, could you could you

speed up the effect of a five-day fast with high levels of cardiovascular exercise while you're fasting let's say you're doing weight training and cardiovascular exercise could you get the effect of a five-day fast in a three-day period or a two-day period if you're doing that i'm quite certain you can and people have been now experimenting on my channel with using things like thyroid medication because the thyroid hormone declines during the fast and is one of the reasons that you expand less energy. So the fast, a lot of it seems to have to do with the nutrient sensing issue and then cellular stress. If you could exaggerate that stress a little bit, it may speed up the

whole process. So using something like thyroid hormone or doing more cardiovascular exercise, which I was doing on my fast, I would do a lot of, and it would speed it up tremendously. You could notice, especially like you get rid of your glycogen stores faster. So you enter into that phase faster. It usually takes a day to two days to get rid of those glycogen stores, the excess ones in the liver. But this can happen very fast if you're doing more cardiovascular exercise, or if you enter the diet in a ketogenic diet, or if you use thyroid hormone, or if you're doing more cardiovascular exercise or if you enter the diet in a ketogenic diet or if you use thyroid hormone or if you use clenbuterol or so on yeah i remember years ago when people were talking about the fastest way to get into like ketosis and one of the fastest ways was just to uh not eat walk walk a lot like there was some people that like literally kind of walked all day and the other thing they did is they didn't drink water and it somehow kind of expedited the whole entire process, which is, I don't know.

I find it pretty, pretty fascinating. I personally have never done that protocol because I'm like, it doesn't seem like a great idea. I like to train as well. So, but I have done fast from water before, along with fasting away from food. I've done that combination before and it actually feels really powerful. Have you ever messed around with that? Well, because I grew up in a Muslim country in Dubai, we fast for 30 days, for a few hours every day, from water and food.

So I was experienced with that from childhood. I never noticed any benefit from fasting from water, personally. And I know that there are people that believe that fasting from water may be beneficial. I've never seen any academic evidence of this. What I'd be concerned about is that the most harmful thing for the kidneys is acute dehydration. It's much worse than hypertension. It's worse than, I mean, anything except maybe injecting yourself with a poison IV. It's very damaging to the kidneys. So my concern would be that there's some damage there. And I don't know, maybe there is some benefit.

Maybe we have some water sensing pathway we don't know about, but we don't know about it for sure. In the, like these types of fasts that we were talking about, these very specific fasts to help with like a cyclical type of diet, would using electrolytes during that fast, that wouldn't take away from anything, right? That would just help with hydration. Let's say that you had an electrolyte, sodium, magnesium, potassium, would that be beneficial during, or would that take away from anything we're trying to do? You wouldn't want to use potassium, but you could use magnesium and sodium. In fact, I do, and I'll tell you how I usually do it.

So usually supplement with maybe like 500 elemental milligrams of magnesium, which could be much higher than that depending on what it's attached to. So there's a variety of kinds of magnesium. Magnesium orate, for example, is an inferior one. Citrate is all right. I use sometimes L3 and 8 or bisglycinate. Bisglycinate is the most absorbable form in studies, but they've never compared bisglycinate to L3N8, which seems to get into the brain better. Anyway, I supplement with around 500 milligrams of elemental magnesium or up to 800 milligrams of elemental magnesium daily. The magnesium seems to be the only thing I always require. Then sometimes the third day or so, I'll start to notice I'm lightheaded a

little bit. If I notice that, I'll just take a pinch of salt and put it in a glass of water and drink it. It usually resolves the issue. A lot of people think you have to really go hard with it. It depends how much you exercise, obviously. I used to go to the sauna sometimes, which would make this all worse. So I would have to take sodium almost every day and more magnesium. But it's a good idea to do so. You don't want to do the potassium, though. You may go a little blood pressure. okay um now i'm i want to know your thoughts on on kratom because like i like taking kratom i don't take it every day i've never had any type of addicted tendency towards it um but i've heard some people do uh now i'm curious like what your take is on it and like if we are using it for its cognitive benefits what should we be careful

for what what what what does it do what what do you think so you know i know that you guys are very partial to kratom and i talked to chris before as well so my so what are the good sides of it that i think of first of all it's a complex plant so So it's difficult. The more specialized the drug is, the more adaptation your body can have to it. When it differs every time you source it a little bit, your body responds a little bit differently. One of the worst things, as we said earlier, about hedonistic drugs is this idea that they're unsustainable. So Kratom seems to be more sustainable than other opiate medications. I think we can, there's a consensus on that, really. A lot of people have left heroin use and have been able to be somewhat stable with

kratom use. So that's a great thing about it. It's also unusual in that one or more than one of its molecules agonizes adrenaline receptors. So there's, depending on the strain, you'll notice an uplifting feeling sometimes. Generally, adrenaline and dopamine go side by side. And also, when you agonize the moon opioid receptor, it causes dopamine transmission downstream. With that said, kratom use in the literature has been associated with liver damage because some people take huge amounts of it. And you can feel it, actually. If you take enough, you can sometimes feel a little bit liver toxicity but my general

fear about it is this there are so many hedonistic drugs that are somewhat safe like GHB, marijuana low doses of psilocybin like many people never tried 500 to 800 mg of psilocybin it's a really nice dose to go out

and instead of having a beer with your friends, you won't get that psychedelic effect, but you get a nice uplifting mood effect. The fear with opiates is, for example, my mother is addicted to opiates. So just seeing somebody that became permanently addicted to opiates, it scares me a lot. And so for people that have never used Kratom or don't have any pain issue and may have an addictive tendency and not know yet, they may be 18, 19 years old, that's where my fear comes. And the only other effect is this. If you agonize the mole period receptors, it is a potent inhibition of steroidogenesis in your gonads and has even direct toxic effects to the testicles. So a lot of people that are on methadone, for example, on heroin will notice they have low sex drive.

I don't know if this happens as much with Kratom, of course, because it's more complex. But those are my thoughts on it. So the liver damage you were talking about, that's heavy doses. So you just want to be one of the big things is making sure that you're not overusing it as far as your dosage is concerned, right? Yeah. So you can easily figure out if this is happening to you. You just do a blood test the day after you do a heavy dose and look at your ALT in your liver enzymes. That will rise if you have toxicity to the liver acutely.

So if your ALT – now, the problem is the ALT and AST on blood tests in the U.S., the reference range has steadily moved upwards as the U.S. has developed non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. So about 30% of Americans have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and that causes a bit of inflammation in the liver. So these ALT, ASTs of 40 and 50, the reason why they're there and they seem average is because of that. Your ALT and AST should on most people be between 15 to 25 maybe. And if you notice your ALT uniquely high and your AST lower right after you did the kratom, you have that toxicity.

If you find both of them are in their 40s or 50s, you may have non-alcohol fatty liver disease, so it may be unclear to see what's going on. Now, you mentioned younger individuals, and now I'm not even talking about Kratom. I'm curious about drug use, specifically different types of steroids, because I've heard Derek talk about how, like, he used the example of Tren and how it can affect a young developing brain, a guy that's using Tren at 17 years old, how it can permanently affect their brain. But a lot of young kids are starting to just hop on steroids because the information is out there and they have the ability to purchase that stuff. What do they need to be being careful about, not just for

their body and their hormones, because there's a lot of stuff going on there, but their brain specifically. So just before I mention that, can I mention also when we're talking about liver toxicity from kratom, this is not unique to kratom. There are a lot of herbal formulations. For example, ashwagandha is notorious for causing liver failures. It does this frequently in the literature. You'd be surprised. And for example, kava kava, which is a GABAergic supplement as well, similar to kratom. Kava-kava is way more toxic than Kratom. So I just want to mention it's not unique to Kratom.

And then about – so the studies – there are studies on humans. I've reviewed these studies of how androgens – like PED supplementation with androgens affect brain chemistry. The most interesting element of what you can see from the studies is in young rodent studies, juvenile rodents. There's an interesting difference. If you give an adult rodent, for example, the study was actually on nandrolone, if I remember correctly, which is DECA or NPP. If you give an adult rodent nandrolone, they experience a reduction in serotonergic signaling acutely in the brain. Remember, serotonin modulates the neurogenesis. That's the target of LSD and psilocybin. And they experience more hostility acutely in the brain. Remember, serotonin modulates the neurogenesis that's the target of LSD and psilocybin. And they experience more hostility acutely. But when you take out the drug,

the hostility decreases and they return back to normal function. If you give it to a juvenile rodent, a male rodent, and you take out the drug, they remain hostile in adulthood and have reduced serotonin signaling in adulthood. So there may be permanent effects from using androgens too young in terms of the brain chemistry. But particularly, it seems like, I don't know if you've ever heard of before, if you use testosterone with an AI in studies, it is neurotoxic at high doses. NPP, for example, where nandrolone is always neurotoxic. But if you use testosterone at high doses, it becomes neurotoxic when you use an AI. What does the AI do?

The AI stops testosterone from increasing estradiol, and estradiol increases serotonergic signaling in the brain, thereby protecting brain cells from death through the neurogenesis. So when you use these drugs, the acute effect is you're harming the serotonin system. When you use these drugs, the acute effect is you're harming the serotonin system. That's a lot of how you develop the hostility, the lack of feeling of well-being, contentment, not from all PEDs, but from some of them. Now, Tren is one of the most psychiatrically effective PEDs. I mean, that is the worst one, really. I don't even know. Nobody could take halotestin for three months straight.

So there's really nothing you can compare Tren to in terms of that effect. I believe that if somebody takes Tren at a young age, they'll end up with symptoms of like, they do it for six months, symptoms of like PTSD. Not everybody responds the same way. Of course, some people have a higher sympathetic nervous drive naturally. They're on edge naturally. And those people are the ones who are going to have the most effects from it. there's so many other choices that don't have psychiatric effects like primo bolan has no psychiatric effects equipoise does primo and equipoise both potently increase hematopoiesis so they're comparable but primo has no psychiatric effects uh test generally doesn't do these things

to people especially if they let it aromatize um nandrolone i've noticed in my experience a lot of people who use a lot of deca have bizarre personalities later in life like they just get weird it's very interesting because deca signals on the progesterone receptors from what we can tell and it doesn't aromatize so they have that low estrogen weirdly high progesterone for a man and they have different kinds of i've just noticed this a lot of people use deca so they're not all made equal. Anavar has barely any psychiatric effects, maybe a little irritability. It's not very liver toxic. So there are choices people can make, you know?

You've been in a powerlifting gym before, obviously, training with Scott Mendelsohn. I agree with you 100%. I mean, I've seen that firsthand where dudes that are normally pretty calm are now getting into a fist fight about the liftoff they got or something like that. And it's not always just necessarily the testosterone. It's a lot of different hormones flying around as some of these people would prepare for competitions. Exactly.

Well, it's a very unique thing in the powerlifting gym. People are very excitable there. And there's a lot of ego and a lot of, I don't know if this is true for Westside Barbell, but here at least there's a lot of ego and a lot of uh i don't know if this is true for west side barbell but here at least there's a lot of ego and stuff like that but the the weird thing is when you when you're talking to someone and they're anxious when they're talking to you they are they they're dodging moving around they're not comfortable in their seat you can see the person's not content you can only imagine how are they sleeping how is this affecting them long term you know it causes damage to the psyche is it crystal meth or is it deca hard to tell friend acts like that sometimes yeah you could you could think the guy's on

on meth sometimes depending on the person yeah that's true then so i'm also young young kids like 18 19 20 21 uh and trt as far as testosterone you said there are barely any effects on the brain but i don't know i don't know much about stuff, but I feel like there is a reason to be careful, especially you're not done developing. So what would your advice be there in terms of making sure they're careful? Well, there's a lot of reasons to be careful about that. So, for example, one reason to be careful when these young kids want to hop on TRT. these young kids want to hop on TRT. One reason is this. If you have a higher androgen level, irrespective of whether you've done damage to your brain or your gonads or anything,

your sex drive will adapt to that level. And when you lower your androgen level, even if your balls work perfectly fine and you have a good test level, you're not at 3,000, now you're at 1,000. You're going to have lower sex drive. You're going to have lower energy. 3000 now you're at 1000 you're gonna have lower sex drive you're gonna have lower energy you adapt to that you acclimate to it and it never is quite the same after so when someone experiences that crazies it's not gonna come from trt maybe but when you get on a gram of testosterone it's never quite the same after so one one guide is this if somebody does want to use performance enhancing drugs always use the minimal amount don't think of it in terms of cycles. I got to get the most out of this cycle and then get out of it. Use the minimal amount that you get results from and only raise it when you need to, you know, and then keep track of your health as you do. So you never get to 2002 grams of testosterone and get this crazy sex drive.

Then you get off it and it takes you a year and a half to have the sex drive back. So in a young man, this could cause psychological issues. He could get worried, doubt himself, have confidence issues. The second thing I want to mention is this. A lot of people use TRT when their balls work, which doesn't make any sense. So why does it make sense? When your balls produce testosterone, they also produce progesterone and they also aromatize the testosterone and 5-alpha reduce the testosterone. There's a lot of complex mechanisms that happen when you produce testosterone locally. When you inject it into your muscle, it is metabolized completely differently. And so, for example, it affects sex drive less per the nanograms per deciliter of testosterone you have. If it's

injected, you'll have less sex drive. So it works a little bit differently. It's less 5-alpha reduced, less aromatized, and so on. The other thing becomes this. Well, how do you know if your balls work? Well, if you do a blood test, you check your testosterone level, and then you check your luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone. If your luteinizing hormone is, say, 5 or 6, well, you know, hey, if my brain just signaled more, if my brain said seven or eight luteinizing hormone to my balls, I would produce more tests. So why get on testosterone, strangle my balls, suffocate them? They can't produce anything because they have all these negative indicators to my brain. When I could have just taken HCG and acclimated the dose.

See, okay, I have now I've used a thousand units of HCG other day, and I have the same test as I used to. Well, now I know my baseline replacement dose for LH, and I can raise it a bit higher for a short time period if I need a higher test for resilience or whatever. And the difference here is when I take the HCG out, all I've got to do is block estrogen in the brain, and my brain will restart signaling glutenizing hormone much easier than if I went on TRT at 18. And three years later, I decide I want to go off it. Well, my balls literally have necrosis of tissue, dead tissue. That's what happens. Yeah, there are post-mortem studies of bodybuilders. I found an interesting study showing fibrosis in their testicles. Fibrosis happens after you get necrosis, scar tissue develops.

So you're losing the integrity of your balls when you're 18 years old. Why do that? You know, so if you're going to do anything, the first step I would always think is maybe HCG, FSH, and then maybe I could use something in addition to it. It may not be TRT. If I'm trying to gain muscle, maybe just Anivar three days a week. Well, now you could use Anivar because you're replacing your brain's luteinizing hormones. Your balls are always going to work. You have a test base. So you don't have to go and do a huge cycle. You could just do three Anivars a week and see, do I gain from that? It's a much easier way like like instead of jumping in a pool just putting your feet in going slowly boys and girls uh make sure you prescribe to utilizing uh like a fit chick

who's gonna prep for a contest type of protocol rather than like a full-on bodybuilder exactly i really i really liked your explanation, especially because it got to be complex. And it's like, that's another reason why people that are young just probably shouldn't fuck with it. Because once you start to pump testosterone through your body,

there's a lot of other things you got to think about. Yes. I mean, genuinely, obviously I never had the potential in athletics as being a top athlete. But if I had potential, I may have done it differently. But keep this in mind just for the audience to realize, any young people listening.

I started reading about steroids when I was 15. I only used them at 23. And I was really – I knew anything like a normal bodybuilder knew about them. But I just didn't know enough. And the more you know – I just recently answered a question on my channel. Someone was asking, like, should I use ezetimibe, that cholesterol medication, for controlling my heart rate? And I was like, brother, if you have made that big of a mistake, this is a cholesterol medication, you're talking about your heart rate, don't use any of them. Go study.

You got to go. And we have, thankfully, because of YouTube now, we have videos and stuff where people can learn. Don't use something if you're not completely comfortable with the mechanisms that it's manipulating in your body even if a doctor is comfortable he may not know what he's doing really and you may get yourself in a bad position it's really cool that you're you're mentioning all this because again like it's it's this stuff can be done safely but like a majority of 99 of people don't know an eighth or actually just even 10% of what you're talking about. And they're blasting stuff at 20, 21, 22 years old. And then they're putting that information out for people on the Internet to say, hey, do what I'm doing. It works.

It's crazy. I'll tell you, brother, there was actually a history behind this. There was actually I've tried to document this on my channel. There was a guy called GH15. I don't know if you guys have ever heard of him. There was an account online called GH15. In 2000, he was on the Get Big forums. In 2006 to 2000 and say 12, he popularized this trend cycle thing.

That's where it came from. It wasn't Zs. I don't know if you guys have heard of Zs too. Zs was influenced also by the GH15 thing. But it was that gh15 guy he was going around saying that pros pro bodybuilders are using 300 milligrams of trend a day they use uh you know at least a gram of equipoise at least a gram of deca they used it so there was this huge and this spurred in that in those years this idea of using mega cycles and then in 2015 rich piano and Piano and my friend Boston Lloyd came out and popularized it even more on YouTube.

There was a source behind all this mega dosing stuff. It really all started with that GH15 guy who, personally, I've determined it seems to be Nasser Al-Sombati started the account and then left it to his friends after he died. And they tried to start selling drugs from Eastern Europe. So a lot of it was misinformation. And that's where a lot of people started thinking, hey, if I use a crazy amount of drugs, I might mutate. I'll change in a month. And what they don't know is when they use that amount of drugs, that amount will never work the same for you again. So if you started with three grams and you use 500 milligrams your next cycle, you're not going to develop anything. And you just burn that out. Evenregulate has been a little bit it's going to take years to upregulate back

to what it was and if you're a young guy you may be doing damage to your psyche things that you might not recover from easily leo what's it like adjusting to having a baby oh wow it's i i have a sleep deficit you know i look a little bit funny because I couldn't sleep well. It's wonderful, Mark. I can't tell you. I mean, obviously, you know the feeling. But right now, I've started to interact with my daughter. She's a month old now. She's going to be a month old in a couple of days.

So now there are times when she's not crying or drinking. So I can sit and chat with her. Obviously, she doesn't know what I'm saying. But it's a lovely thing. It's lovely to have a wife I love and a daughter. And now I realize why soldiers or assassins shouldn't have families. Because you care so much about that family. It just overwhelms your day.

I spend all my day thinking about them. Yeah, I have a seven-month-old. And one thing that I actually did want to bring up, and this is actually perfect for it. I've been wrestling with this issue. I think I'll call it an issue, but these things, caffeine, as you know, right now, some nights you're not going to get much sleep and it's gotten a lot better. So I don't want to blame my son for it, but I do find myself wanting to reach for more caffeine. I try to do it as early as possible, but I always

in the back of my head, I'm just like, man, all the stuff that I've been telling other people to try to avoid caffeine towards the end of the day, I am now that person that's like, man, I think I should probably just have one more just to finish out the day. And then tomorrow is going to be a different thing. But as far as caffeine use, I guess, what's a good guide to follow or what are some pitfalls to avoid? Let's comment on this. It's very interesting. So first of all, you're talking about using caffeine later in the day. Obviously, that's going to harm your sleep.

And we should recommend that Walker, he has a great book on sleep. I'm sure you guys have maybe interviewed him also. But on this topic, so your adenosine receptors in response to caffeine in all studies downregulate. And they upregulate quickly when you take the caffeine out. So my feeling is if you're drinking it later in the day and still managing to sleep, you probably have downregulated adenosine receptors. And therefore, the caffeine is less potent for you also. But on that note, I have a video on caffeine. If someone search caffeine, Leo on longevity, they'll get the video.

I also have one on coffee separately, but the one on caffeine is interesting. So the empirical evidence shows that up to 600, if I recall correctly, to 800 milligrams of caffeine a day is associated with better health, both cardiovascular health and mental health. I've reviewed the studies in that video and all the studies are put into the screen. So I was really surprised by this myself. It seems that caffeine has a good effect on brain function, despite not just coffee, but caffeine, and that it's not as bad for our cardiovascular health as we would think. Now, you would think if it's so bad for sleep, it should show negative effects on overall health, but it doesn't at those doses. 600 to 800 milligrams. Which is a lot, if you think about it.

That's way more than I drink. I'll feel like a normal person at that amount. So, quick question. 600 to 800 milligrams, you see a benefit for cardiovascular health. You don't see any detriments lower than 600 milligrams, correct? It's not like there's a... No, the detriment is above 800. At that point, there comes issues with cardiovascular health.

If I remember the cups, it's up to like five cups of coffee a day, something like that. And it's that it doesn't damage cardiovascular health and has so many different beneficial effects on mental health and all the other things like that. Got it. I haven't reviewed the video for a while, but it was surprising to me because I thought that the major effects of caffeine on health came from the polyphenols in coffee, which are very potent, you know.

But it turns out caffeine itself is also maybe helpful or at least not harmful. Cool. Thank you so much for your time today. Where can people find out more about you? Well, Leo and Longevity on YouTube. Thank you so much, Mark. I really appreciate it.

Have a great rest of your day. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It have a great rest of your day appreciate it thank you thank you thank you it was a great pleasure to talk to you guys see you later see ya hell yeah wow there was a lot and kind of all downhill after the penis i was gonna say we're just that's all i could think about i pulled it up on amazon and it is on there how many penis pumps and hanger things? Let's go to his website.

Yeah. Cause he has the right ones there. Cause I, man, I mean that, yeah, I'm going to check it out. I value mobility. I value,

I value flexibility of all joints, all tendons. Yeah. Why are you stretching your hamstrings? Stretch my dick. Wang too. Yeah. Right.

Wow. Zach. And it uses the physics of resistance to grow that tendon right doug bignoli should have a section of this in his book physics of resistance exercise the zick we can uh be affiliates for the pump hey and the uh what's the other thing hangers i gotta pretend i don't know about it like i don have You're about to see me fucking limping around the office And see what happened Nothing

It was a good workout this morning I get what he means By hanging Ball necrosis though That's scary That is a little You know That's wild man There's so much good stuff though yeah that's scary that shit that is a bite that is a little you know that the whole thing is wild man so yeah fuck there's so much good stuff today there's nothing wrong with steroids i don't

take any but there's nothing wrong but y'all just gotta be careful yo like you you cats gotta be careful because you know all this shit he knows i'm i'm a majority y'all don't even know that much not even close yep so do your fucking research so you don't fucking hurt yourself. Please. Good with any, any drug, any substance you're going to use, you know,

just learn about it. And then when ask around, ask a bunch of people, find out as much information as he can. Yeah. And then when, when he was saying, um,

take a, a big dose of Kratom and then go get some blood work done i'm just like man like no no one's gonna do that you know like and i'm not saying like his information wasn't correct or it wasn't good advice it's just you know what we're talking about here it's like man people want to do all these things but they don't want to take the extra step to make sure that they're okay and then when he's talking about getting your your heart scanned or uh image image imaging done just like damn like yeah there's there's so much more to just figuring out the proper dosage and you know proper compound and all this stuff it's really really complex you know i think a part part of the reason why some people don't and even man even

when i was getting my my blood work done fromrick, I was a little anxious because I was like, I hope nothing comes back negative. I hope I'm okay. Right? Because I have nothing necessarily to be worried about. But at the same time, it's like, what if there is something wrong with my heart? What if there is something here? Right? So especially for individuals who are on PEDs, you know, and you've never gotten anything checked.

I know there's probably anxiety there because you don't want to see something. But the thing is you have to make sure. You have to get your blood work done. You have to get these tests done because you need to make sure you're in good health so you don't knock out randomly at a young age. Just a little comment on that is, first of all, good job on anybody that does go and get their blood work done. So you should be kind of proud of yourself that you went and did that. work done. So you should be, um, you should be kind of proud of yourself that you went and did that, but just be accepting of whatever comes back, you know, and be, be prepped, be prepared that like, yeah, there could be some, but the, all it

is, is information, you know, and it's like, Hey, you know, your vitamin D is actually really low. Your cholesterol is way out of whack. Um, don't allow those things to move you off of, off of what you wanted to do in the first place. And that was to figure out a way. I mean, you were checking on your health, right? Now you have information that your health was not as good as you thought it was. And now you have an opportunity to do something about it. So I actually have some friends that have gotten blood work back before, and they are so upset about a certain finding and i'm like i understand why you're upset but at the same time this is great because now we got new information so now you can figure out a way to attack it you didn't know this before you know you didn't know that

this this may be kind of the root cause of some of the symptoms that you've had or some of the issues that you've been having lately and so now we found it now we can figure out a way to attack it yeah absolutely fucking leo so many so many things and he totally sounds like a super villain that accent right man i i was more so just marveled at his ability to communicate these things so clearly and so succinctly because he didn't waste a word or breath i don't know if y'all noticed that he was like there you go and he like went to go off tangent a couple times and he's like that never mind doesn't matter and he just kept going yeah yeah like damn bro gotta love it yeah take us on out of here andrew i will so we just heard a bunch of amazing information and we were just talking about how important blood work is and yeah just go go get it done uh we made it really easy for you guys you can go to merrick.com

um well for the whole whole power project panel it's merrickhealth.com power project that's a panel of 26 different labs in case you don't know where to get started you can go there and use promo code power project for 101 off of that or you can get, you know, sign up for some treatment. And when it comes time to pay for those labs, use promo code PowerProject15 for 15% off. Links to Merrick Health down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Follow the podcast at Mark Bell's Power Project on Instagram at MBPowerProject on TikTok and Twitter.

My Instagram and Twitter is at IamAndrewZ. Jean-Claude Van Daddy, where are you at? Thanks, Daddy. And it's Ima Inyang on Instagram and YouTube. And it's Ima Inyang on TikTok and Twitter is at IamAndrewZ. Jean-Claude Van Daddy, where are you at? Thanks, Daddy. And it's ImaYinYang on Instagram and YouTube. And it's ImaYinYang on TikTok and Twitter. Mark, you need a nickname with all the stuff you got going on. You need a nickname. What are we calling you?

I don't know. We got to figure it out. We'll have to work on it. All right. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.