Mark Bell's Power Project - Dan Garner Pt.1 - How Your Mindset is IMPACTING Your Testosterone and Bloodwork || MBPP Ep. 802

Episode Date: September 14, 2022

In this Podcast Episode, Dan Garner, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about how there are MANY different things that impact your testosterone levels, even your mindset.  Follow Dan on IG: https://www.instagram.com/dangarnernutrition/ Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!! ➢Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject Code POWERPROJECT20 for 20% off Vivo Barefoot shoes! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://eatlegendary.com Use Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori! ➢https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep! ➢https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ 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 ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell 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 #testosterone  #PowerProject #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast

Power Project family, how's it going? Now, on this podcast, on almost every single episode, we talk about sleep, because sleep is important for your workouts, for your recovery, for your nutrition, for your fat loss, for your muscle gain. Literally everything comes down to getting great sleep at night. That's why we've partnered with Eight Sleep Mattresses.

Now, they have something called the Pod Pro Cover. Now, this cover is something you can put over one of Eight Sleep's mattresses or your existing mattress, and it temperature regulates through the night so that you get the best sleep possible at every phase of your sleep. Most people think that you need to have your room temperature at 68 degrees Fahrenheit. But our temperature is different. I sleep hotter than most people. You might sleep cooler.

So that's why the Eight Sleep mattress for yourself and your partner, either side of the mattress can have its own temperature regulation. And the cool thing is that the 8Sleep app watches your temperature through multiple nights, and it'll literally change the way the temperature is set based off of the way you sleep. It's crazy. It's literally the Tesla of beds. Andrew, tell them about it, dude. Yeah, dude. This technology is insane. It's like the most high technological, can't even say that word, piece of equipment that I have in my whole house.

So you guys got to head over to 8sleep.com slash power project. That's eight spelled out. So E-I-G-H-T sleep.com slash power project. And you guys will receive $150 off of your Pod Pro cover or your Pod Pro cover and mattress combo. And I must say that that mattress is actually extremely comfortable. They didn't skimp out on anything on this product. Again, 8sleep.com slash Power Project. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. You're talking about aliens? I love talking about aliens.

That's not illegal aliens either. That's how I got here. Don't get them in trouble, Andrew. Chill. I think Biden's building the wall. You guys hear that? He's building the one too? Yeah.

Fuck. Finally. I'm waiting for the fucking wall. Hey, as a Canadian, just relax on the wall. Just relax on the wall. Can you guys relax for one second on the wall? From Canada to here, there's like a dirt path. Yeah. There's not. Noada to here there's like a dirt path yeah there's not no yeah there's like a little like path that's the border oh dude we're just letting those

dirty canadians walk in here dude in montana there's like this one shack that you could totally just drive by that like two people are employed in yeah yeah yeah give them like a little wave and you're good a nod yeah yeah you can come through it's like getting into a hotel so you've been abducted by aliens before um yeah i mean we can definitely start there i've been abducted by aliens and uh and i actually was in boulder Boulder only a few months ago to discuss nutrition for multi-planetary travel. Yeah, and that's a real story. What are we going to eat?

I don't know if I want to talk about being abducted by aliens because I'm still suffering some trauma from that. But I was at Boulder just recently. And basically the purpose there was to identify a way in which to make human physiology resilient enough to survive multi-planetary travel. And it was really fascinating being around those types of minds, man, because I'm there to – It was like NASA people? Yeah, yeah. So like – It's weird that we didn't get invited.

I mean, duh, right? Yeah. They must not be familiar with our work. I got the email. I got the email, but I just forgot to let you guys know. So that's my bad. It was really fascinating stuff. Like Blue Origins was there.

It was Jeff Bezos' space company. Oh, yes, Jeff. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Good old buddy, Jeff. He probably called you to come, and you guys just, yeah. Ignored it. Yeah. He's muted on my phone. Yeah. Oh, and you to come and you guys just – Yeah. Just ignored it. Yeah.

He's muted on my phone. Oh, and it's crazy, man. Like the stuff that they're putting together to create multi-planetary travel, there's another company there called Deep Space that made a satellite that was like no bigger than a microwave. But it actually orbits the moon and it's identifying realistic real estate. And they're building – the plans are to build a base on the moon. There's this artificial intelligence thing that they were talking about called Alexa in space. It's fascinating stuff. And then like the – I'll tell you guys something really cool.

So basically what they're saying is that to get to Mars, for example, is not a rocket problem. It's a physiology problem. So the rockets can get there, but it's really hard for us to get there, let alone thrive when we get there because it's a totally different ballgame when you're talking about space stuff. So you can send a bunch of metal through space, but a person is a different thing. A person is a totally different thing. And then like I'm sitting there doing checks and balances, right? I'm like, okay, so if you're in a zero gravity environment, what's going to happen? Well, there's going to be an alteration to red blood cells, because there's not a stimulation of your muscle tissue. The oxygen environment's different,

which is all going to alter red blood cell status. You're likely going to have a weakened immune system because you're in a sterile environment for freaking so long on the way to the moon. You're going to lose skeletal muscle mass. You're going to lose skeletal muscle strength. There's all of these adaptations that begin to take place. Forgive me for being so dumb, but are we getting further from the sun or getting closer to it when you're traveling to Mars? I think we're getting further. Yeah, yeah.

So you'd have problems with that too, right? Yeah. There's problems all across the board, man. And I'm thinking about all the things in our world of physiology. I'm thinking about that. Like, okay, from an onboard nutritional and training perspective, what can we do to offset those adaptations to maintain strength and red blood cell count and all of these things? And perhaps even with pharmaceutical intervention, our astronauts aren't being tested so is there a way in which we could utilize pharmaceuticals in order to maintain a percentage of our physiological potential on this journey and then the conversation actually

evolved and it was crazy man because it's like why are you trying to send an earthling to Mars when what's adapted to live there is going to be a Martian? So perhaps the human that is going to survive in Mars is one with low bone density, with low strength, with low muscle mass, with altered red blood cells. So the idea is actually— That's cold. That's cold. That's cold. I'm down. He's going to be the leader there. I'll set up shop.

Andrew edits all this out. So then it's like, why don't we actually create the Martian here in a zero gravity environment? Because that's actually what's going to survive the long trip, because that's the physiology that's already adapted to survive the long trip. So then the conversation evolved, like we're currently Homo sapiens in the area of evolution. And then what we were creating is Homo Astra. So man amongst the stars.

And it's at this point in time in evolution where we're intelligent enough to kind of decide our next move. Do we want bionic arms? Do we want to have lab-grown organs to keep us alive? Do we want that sustained lifespan? Do we want – we can actually – do we want Neuralink in our brain? the next evolution of what we even are. And then we're in there discussing Homo Astra, which is man amongst the stars to survive multi-planetary travel because we've basically fucked this planet up. What would they try to eat? Did you start to kind of figure out they're going to bring branch chain amino acids

with them and some Tren? What's going on? They're throwing ideas around of steak shakes and T trends. I know a guy that makes steak shakes. Yeah, dude. They're like, what the fuck is that? Yeah, dude, steak shake and bench press, and then we're good to go. I think dehydrated ribeye or something, right? Yeah, the food that they have on there is completely different, dude. Even the way they shower and sleep, it's a completely different world to try and unpack.

And what kind of needs to happen in this fascinating way is basically like a Noah's Ark. Because we currently don't know enough about physiology. The sun is offering us more than just vitamin D. Like does the wind actually alter our chemistry in any way does being near water like we were just talking about water being in nature so it's like bringing um different types of dirt to bringing all of the different types of animals bringing different grass and leaves like basically creating this noah's ark that can go there to sustain what we don't currently understand about ourselves so like that uh that that whole thing was absolutely fascinating man so that's cool to

be part of something like that oh yeah on the ground floor of homo astra i was like wait why am i here yeah i'm currently like i'm benching 405 in a couple weeks and i'm here talking about this stuff my mind when you were talking about like how like bone density degradation and all these things my mind was thinking of like, okay, so the human becomes weaker, but not necessarily the human just becomes different. Yes. To be able to survive. What's a dysfunction or an adaptation?

That unpacking that, there's a very brilliant man there named Cody Burkhart. And he's done, he's had so many amazing accomplishments. He's one of those guys that you talk to and you're like, oh, that's a smart person. If I stand beside LeBron James, it's like, that's why I'm not in the NBA. I get it. When you talk to someone that smart, you're just like, wow, this is a different level kind of thing.

But he said something that was profound. And it wasn't even his answer to the question he was asked. But he said, we're not currently in the stage of problem solving. We're in the stage of problem understanding. And I was like, wow, that's actually that beginning of your next actual answer. Like I actually wrote that down because I think in so many cases in nutrition and in labs and in training, we think we kind of jump right to problem solving in a lot of ways based on our existing biases, our existing things that we've been taught, the kind of verbal copy-paste that we've used, that we've heard other people say. We go, this is the

solvent. We solve it with this. We solve it with that, this supplement, that drug. And when you can go back, there's a way of thinking called first principles. When you break it all down, you've heard of this before? I think it's fascinating. You break it down to its most simplest form and work your way back up to understand the problem before you solve it. way, then we're probably going to come up with different solutions than the solutions that we're currently offering that we're basically just regurgitating from someone that we know, like, and trust. So it's just a very cool way to kind of approach it. Yeah, the original problem, if you only hone in and focus on that, you could be distracted on what the root problem is that caused this reaction in the first place.

Just as we were talking about vitamin D this morning, somebody having a vitamin D deficiency, any trainer, coach, or fitness enthusiast, or anybody listening to podcasts would just be like, well, I've heard other people recommend taking vitamin D supplement and that will up your vitamin D. And if you've tried that before and gotten your blood work done, you may actually see that your vitamin D goes up. But as we were discussing in the car, I was like, I don't think that's a good idea because I think like the habits that would help the variables to allow your vitamin D levels to be higher

if that was potentially something that even did benefit your health in the first place, which I don't even really know the answer to that. But if you slept better, if you had better eating and better hydration and those kinds of things, well, then that would probably boost your vitamin D up. And I have always kind of looked at vitamin D a little bit like ketones. People years ago would take ketones and they're like, I'm in ketosis. And while you may have registered that you're in ketosis, you took something that got you into that position, but you didn't put your body through it in the same physiological fashion so that your body is now producing ketones on its own due to your dietary intervention and

what you did to get there. Yeah, totally. And like vitamin D is a huge one. I've had a problem with vitamin D for years. And it basically like when you zoom out and just sometimes, okay, like it's really fun and cool to talk advanced mechanistic pathways and stuff like that. But then when you zoom out and you're like hold on like I got clients in Arizona and Florida and California and they're all coming up with low vitamin D and they're in the Sun a lot they're tanned like this is this is currently not really making sense and then the the recipe book approach to blood work is something I hate it's like if this is high take this or if that if that is low, take this. There's always an iceberg underneath the water of why the body created the tip of the iceberg and why that's what you're seeing.

You're measuring labs. Basically, lab markers are measurements to give you an insight on what's happening beneath the surface. And it's our job to actually try and figure out what's going on with biochemistry. to actually try and figure out what's going on with biochemistry. And vitamin D is a great example because environmental pollutants have been demonstrated to lower vitamin D. So do you have low vitamin D or are you exposed to environmental pollutants? Heavy metals alter vitamin D status significantly. A lot of people don't know vitamin D plays a role in heavy metal uptake. D plays a role in heavy metal uptake. And in the presence of lead, our body as a protective mechanism lowers vitamin D so as to not uptake and absorb more toxic lead. So do you have low

vitamin D or do you have lead? And then you supplementing vitamin D is actually offsetting the body's own process of lowering vitamin D status to try and protect itself. So now you think you're doing something for your health, but you're actually up taking more lead. Boron's been demonstrated to increase vitamin D status. Magnesium is required to synthesize vitamin D from its inactive 25 hydroxy form to its active 125 hydroxy form. That conversion also happens in the gut. So gut health plays its own whole role in that department as well. Vitamin D, it just has so many different roads at which you can uncover as to why you're low that are very different from the vitamin D itself. And this happens, you actually kind of, and again, zooming out, like you listen to some coaches and they're like, okay, you get low vitamin D.

You take 5,000 IU of vitamin D. You get a recheck next month, didn't go up, okay, 10,000. Like, does that make any sense? Like, why is that just more? More is what we know. There is an adaptation currently taking place at this point in time. How would your body ever get that in the first place? Like, where would that come from? Where would you just get a sun solar bomb of 10,000 IU? 50,000 IU. Yeah. And then sometimes you hear like injectable 100,000 IU.

And I'm like, what are you guys doing? Like, how much are you trying to force this one marker to go up without addressing all of the reasons of which it can be down. Glutathione is another one. By the way, everything I'm saying has been demonstrated in human research. It's been demonstrated that increasing glutathione status in the body via NAC supplementation increased vitamin D status. NAC is a precursor to glutathione or something like that? Yeah, N-acetylcysteine precursor to glutathione. You nailed it.

Yeah, you're going to the space camp next time. All right. Hell yeah, dude. But that, so like, do you have low vitamin D or do you have low glutathione status? And I think that's very reasonable because low glutathione availability is associated with a higher level of inflammation. How many people are walking around inflamed? How many people are walking around with low vitamin D? Funny correlation that is, isn't it? There's so many ways that you can unpack this thing.

Quick question though. Quick question about this. So the individual or the coach that's like, well, then just supplement 10,000, 20,000 IUs a day. Now that you're going through this process, they'd be like, you haven't told me why it's bad. You haven't told me why I shouldn't do it. So like, is there a danger in over supplementing vitamin D? Yeah, absolutely. There's a danger to over supplementing anything. The body, one of the reasons, like the one of the ways in which I look at labs is I always think, why did the body think this was a good idea? That's like one of the best hacks that you could ever use to look at a lab and actually understand it rather than just know information. Knowing and understanding are two very different things. Somebody who knows the benefits of vitamin D is just going to supplement

to take more vitamin D. Someone who understands that might uptake your lead or not address your environmental pollutant exposure or, you know, have not addressed the glutathione status. It's the same way with, for example, TRT. A lot of guys are in low testosterone. You know how many things can lower your testosterone that you should probably check off the list first before you inject it? Yeah. Like, I've got no problem with TRT. Eat well.

Sleep. If you need it. Lift some weights. Get some sun. Get some sun. In so many cases it's been my experience that men don't lose their testosterone they give it away that's what they do it's through a higher stress lifestyle and then not them not dealing with their problems through

crappy sleep fucking pussies through alcohol abuse through body fat percentage through a lack of activity smoking too much weed potentially sometimes. Yeah, through being a fucking pussy. Don't give it away, bro. There's so many ways in which like the hormone. Hormones are a great example, by the way. You measure a hormone to analyze the enzymes. A hormone is an endpoint.

You measure hormones to analyze enzymes because that synthesis process, your endpoint is either high or low. But that's not the hormone's fault. It's the path at which it got there's fault. It is the synthesis or excretion of that hormone, the activation or inactivation of certain enzymes that's taking place. Until you actually look at your client or yourself with a non-recipe book approach to becoming a better version of yourself, you're never actually going to solve the root cause problem as to why you had low testosterone to begin with. And that's like if there's something that I could really pass on to the industry is that symptoms are nothing more than a cry for help from your body. Your body can't speak English to you, but anxiety is a language. Not being able to get an erection, that's a language. Low energy, difficulty with fat loss, no competitive drive. These are all symptoms, and a symptom is the only way in which your body has a communication pathway to

tell you that something's wrong and that you could investigate further. But if I have all of the symptoms of low testosterone and then I inject testosterone, I will be managing symptoms. But whatever the root cause problem was as to why I had low testosterone to begin with never got addressed and is creating unknown problems underneath the surface for the rest of my life. You know, I think this is a good thing for us to kind of go down because we work with the company Merrick Health and they help people get their blood work done. They don't immediately lead to pharmaceuticals.

They help people deal with like, what is the lifestyle things that are going on? Okay, what may be supplementation that we can deal with? And if an individual is in the right place, right age of group, all that type of stuff, then they'll head to, okay, pharmaceuticals, right? But what you said within the industry right now, there are too many young guys that are just like TRTs the way. And it's used so liberally that it's just like people don't seem to be looking at potentially long-term ramifications because we haven't seen the long-term ramifications yet. So we talked about lifestyle factors that could lead to lower testosterone on this podcast, but maybe you can educate us on other lifestyle factors that could lead guys to thinking they have low tests or to be like, I have chronically low tests.

And maybe the things that you should think about before going down the rabbit hole of TRT since it's so normal now? Sure. Yeah, absolutely. So from a high level view, there's many ways in which we can approach this. First off, your body synthesizes testosterone from fats, zinc, vitamin D, and vitamin B5. So B5, zinc, and healthy fats in the body, and vitamin D, those are all worked together because nothing's free in physiology. Everything costs some degree of micro and macronutrients. If you want to talk about creating a protein, an enzyme, a hormone, there is a cost to that.

And if you can't fuel the supply and demand chain, then it will be a less efficient supply and demand chain. So I'd be looking at micronutrient status of the body, quality of health. And I would also be looking, stress is another big one. There's many reasons guys can be low testosterone, but stress is one that a lot of people don't address. And it can be as simple as, hey, do you need to have a tough conversation with someone that you're kind of just running away from right now? Do you need to have a tough conversation with someone that you're kind of just running away from right now? Do you need to switch jobs? Do you need to get off of shift work? Do you need to whatever it's going to be?

It could also be how you perceive it, correct? Totally. Okay. The moment you change your perception is the moment you change your physiology. Perception is physiology in so many ways. And it can either make or break you in a lot of cases. in so many ways. And it can either make or break you in a lot of cases. And when it comes to stress, your body, we're still very hardwired to have that type of fight or flight response when it comes to stress. So stress means survival. Back in the day, if we had stressors, it was a big

animal looking to eat us. It was someone invading our tribe. It was serious things that necessitated evolutionary biology to make stress the top of the hierarchy because stress means survival. I will do anything to this body to ensure that I survive the next day. That's how stress is designed. It's highly catabolic. It breaks us down mentally and physically, but its purpose is to allow us to survive another day. Testosterone, on the other hand, is a reproductive hormone. So as much as we love it to build our bench press and build our biceps and do all the fun stuff, at the end of the day, from evolutionary biology perspective, its primary purpose is to reproduce so that we can spread our seed and keep the species rocking and rolling. Reproduction and stress are antagonistic.

Why? Because if you have a tiger in front of you, it's a really bad idea to have sex with your girl. Right? So this antagonistic relationship exists as a protective mechanism. You're like, back and forth. Well, so through process of elimination those people are gone so they're like made the wrong choice the ones with the correct physiology are the ones who are still here today and have survived or at least their ancestors had the correct physiology i

don't know about everybody else today but that's that is that antagonistic relationship exists for a reason and that will absolutely tank your testosterone. And in that exact same example that I just used, if you have a stressor, you will also have an antagonistic relationship with things that are inhibitory. So like GABA, serotonin, melatonin. Why? Because if there's a tiger in front of you, it's a bad idea to go to sleep. So that antagonistic – it's automatic shutdown mechanisms. So if we have stress, it suppresses reproductive hormone, which is going to lower testosterone. But if we have stress, we're

probably also going to sleep like shit, which also reduces testosterone. So we kind of get that double whammy. So I'd be looking at stress. I'd be looking at sleep. I'd be looking at micronutrient and macronutrient status. If you're training, what your body fat percentage is, if you have heavy metals. I mean, mercury accelerates the cortisol pathway, which is going to hurt your antagonistic relationship even more. But something like cadmium and arsenic, they actually block the Leydig cells receptors on the testes themselves. So we do that LH and FSH pathway from the brain to the testes, LH to stimulate testosterone, FSH to stimulate spermatogenesis. Heavy metals can offset both of these. So it might not have anything to do with your testes, and you damn

well better believe that an adaptogenic herb isn't going to do anything for you because you're addressing the wrong problem. So all of these things need to be exhausted. Like the commercials we see with Frank Thomas. Yeah. What is it called? Total something, right? It's the Paul Genix. I have no idea what we pulled up that one day.

Isn't it Nugenics? Nugenics. N-U-G-N-I-X. What am I missing? What happened? Just those commercials. It's for like a herb or something that's supposed to increase your testosterone but it's i think it's like an adaptogen type thing of course and he's like a huge black dude that's like hey you want oh god oh dude this guy's like all sad and bummed and oh my man there there's big frank yeah i guess i could pull up the perfectly named the

big hurt that guy damn where's that audio i need this supplement here we go total t text heft now it's not total bullshit that thing might actually in less energy less drive oh it's not your fault it happens to every man testosterone levels drop as you age it happened to you so he's like fuck no it didn't happen to me he's like it happens to everybody he's holding on to his golf club his forearms are fucking jacked up i love it dude but're right. A tool is only ever as good as it is applied. That'll probably increase testosterone if the context demanded it. But if it didn't, which in a lot of cases it doesn't, then it's not going to do shit for you. And that's why a lot of people almost have – I actually like using supplementation.

There's some people that are just totally against supplements. I like supplements. In the right context, they're powerful and useful tools. But people, supplements can get a bad rep, not necessarily because the nutrient itself, but the user of the nutrient doesn't know what they're doing. And so therefore, they don't get the adaptation. Like you get some guy who's lazy and has a thousand reasons why he has low testosterone. He takes that. This product didn't work. It sucked. It's like, no, you suck. You're not doing enough other stuff to line yourself up to being healthy. Totally. It's like you're kind of ketogenic example too. Like those are the things that

actually led to the thing that you want, but it's that under the iceberg stuff that's going to get the job done. And you're just kind of seeking that final measurement. But those habits, those behaviors, those have got to be in place. When you've coached as many people as I've coached, you understand that there's no real quick fixes to things and that consistency beats intensity 10 times out of 10. I love you, Dan. You're speaking my language.

Testosterone is really misunderstood too, right? Like we can't just look at, right? too right like we can't just look at right i mean you can't just look at testosterone no uh somebody has 1200 whatever the fuck that means yeah testosterone uh and they're a badass that might be kind of cool but the next guy um might have 1200 testosterone and he's not able to get it up, right? I mean, it's all over the place, right? It's not a direct marker of much of anything, is it? I don't know.

I mean, correlation is not always causation. You get a lineup of badasses and there might be testosterone there, but it doesn't mean that anybody with a lot of testosterone is going to be that badass. It's like a lot of people, a big thing, like a lot of people don't understand testosterone's actual functions. But one thing that guys associate with testosterone a lot is sex drive, but they don't know estrogen actually plays a larger role in male sex drive than testosterone does. And one of the reasons why testosterone brings up your test, your sex drive is because estrogen follows it. Estrogen plays a huge role in sex drive and libido in males um so it's

testosterone is not the only rabbit that you're chasing and it's not going to solve a lot of your problems it's just one piece in this dan i'm not chasing after a rabbit i know what i'm chasing after it ain't a rabbit it's pussy yeah that's right dan i want I want to... It's a cat. It's a cat. No, it's a cock ring. Oh, God. Did you lose it already? Speaking of testosterone. But no, but real talk. I like how you just have it there, like on this fucking desk, and you're going to use it.

He's probably not going to wash it either. Use promo code in it's actually code i think power project at fun factory.com yeah for real yeah yeah code power project you thought we were playing i can't go from nas NASA to cock ring this fast. You can. You just did. But when you're talking about stress, I think this is a really big deal how people are undermining the habits because, number one, a lot of these habits, they take time to change. Like an individual's perception of the stress that they have going on in their life. of the stress that they have going on in their life.

Like there are obvious ways that you can deal with your stress or be able to better deal with that. Getting better sleep, handling your nutrition, exercising, those will give you tools to deal with stress. But if a person's perception to life stressors are consistently negative, right? And they don't have the tools to be able to deal with that, then they're like, okay, they're perpetually in that drive of like continuing to be stressed out. But then they're like, okay, let me perpetually in that drive of like continuing to be stressed

out. But then they're like, okay, let me just do some TRT. And they're still stressed. What does that do potentially in the long run? I know it could go in so many different directions, but what can one, what can one see as their future if they don't have the tools to deal with stress and then they just choose TRT without dealing with that. There's many negative outcomes that will never go away. Like you're not taking testosterone to have biceps. You're taking testosterone because you want to feel better. Like at the end of the day, you want to be a better version of you. Cleaning up and having a better shell is great.

But I know a lot of fit people who are unhappy. And that's a huge part of why stress management is key because you're never truly healthy until you marry psychological, emotional, and physical. So when you kind of suppress stress, like to me, stress is a state of mind designed to motivate you to find a life that doesn't stress you out. That is what it is supposed to do.

That is a state of mind designed to motivate you to find a life that doesn't stress you out. It's supposed to be uncomfortable, my man. That's what gets your ass moving. You've got to do that. And there's a difference, right? I feel like there's exogenous anxiety and there's endogenous anxiety. So endogenous anxiety could absolutely be a chemical imbalance that we need to address via whatever means we need to address it. But the majority of people in my experience suffer exogenous anxiety.

So they are nervous for a reason that is within their control to prepare and become more confident in. Like, for example, if somebody – like the number one fear when people are pooled is public speaking. So if I go up to the average person and say, yo, what's going to happen is you are going to do a 60-minute public speech in front of 50,000 people in a stadium. They're going to be stressed out as fuck. They're going to be like, holy crap. And I'm like, yo, you got to do it tomorrow too. And they're completely out of their mind, right? And then at the last minute, I say, okay, never mind.

All you're going to have to do is go up there and recite the alphabet. And their complete perception of the situation changes. Why? Because they're prepared. Preparation is the seed of confidence. They've recited the alphabet a million times. So they are now prepared for the situation. And therefore, they're confident in the situation.

And therefore, anxiety has diminished. There is many people who lack preparation of situations that they can control, and you know what? You deserve to have anxiety. If you're a hockey player working under me, and coach, man, I got a lot of pregame anxiety. Okay, cool. Did you do your hockey-specific mobility? Did you follow your hockey diet? Did you do your hockey-specific strength training? Did you do your recovery work? Did you do your sleep routine? No. Okay, cool. Did you do your hockey-specific mobility? Did you follow your hockey diet? Did you do your hockey-specific strength training?

Did you do your recovery work? Did you do your sleep routine? No. You deserve anxiety. I'm sorry, but you deserve anxiety. So that exogenous stuff, that's in your control, and nobody is going to care about your life more than you. Nobody wakes up and says, man, how can I make Dan Garner more money?

How can I make sure he's got less stress how can i make sure that his biceps are the biggest on this show like nobody's gonna ever do that for you only you've got to do that for you and the process of figuring that shit out is the exact process at which you're going to reduce stress in your life and increase testosterone at the same time because you became the fucking man. Yeah, but life's hard, man. Yeah, it is hard. Cut us some slack, Dan. That's what makes it good, though. Like, for real.

Why is a six-pack admirable? Because it's fucking hard. That's why. It's not because it looks great. It looks great because it's difficult to achieve. That's why we fucking like it. So that hardness, I like that shit's hard because it separates the good from the great. It separates losers from winners.

I like that shit. You're able to find out people really quick about how they respond to challenges. You were talking about putting a 100-pound plate on each side. Yeah, that's how we're starting. Oh, you don't want to do this? Okay. There's another bench over there. Start somewhere else. If that's how we're starting. Oh, you don't want to do this? Okay. Yep, you're out. There's another bench over there.

Yeah, you're starting somewhere else. Yeah. It's like if that's how you view challenges, then get out of here, my man. This is a different situation. You're going to be the average of the five people you spend time with, and that's going to either bring you up

or pull you down. What have you seen? Because you're studying the blood, you're studying the urine, the poop, the saliva, right? You're studying like so many things. Have you seen anything common amongst people that are fairly happy? Have you seen like, is there something that shows up there where you're like, this person's probably got a pretty chill life. They're probably pretty relaxed, probably pretty calm.

Can you identify that with hormones and the various things you see in readings? Yeah, yeah. I mean, like a big thing when you're looking at, for example, blood chemistry is if you're looking at, say, a stress response, if somebody has heightened stress, then they are going to have higher fasting levels of glucose because cortisol is what allows glucose to rise in the bloodstream. So glucose is almost like a surrogate marker for cortisol at times. And in that same situation, there's many other great blood sugar markers like glycomark and hemoglobin A1C and fructosamine.

These are all C-peptide, insulin, all great markers in their own unique way that in a lot of ways can lead back to stress. So we would see changes in that in someone who's happy. Someone who's happy is also going to have a greater level of immunity because stress in the short term, cortisol is actually immunostimulatory. Cortisol will actually stimulate immune function in an acute sense. But in a chronic sense, it's going to bring your ass down. And this is why a lot of fighters that I work with are – you're totally into combat sports, right? How many guys are susceptible to getting sick in those last two weeks of fight camp? Yep.

Huge, right? It's chronic stress suppressing immunity over time. And they're a lot much more susceptible to getting sick and more susceptible to injury because of that immune status as well. So you would see a difference in the robustness of their immunity. You would actually see a difference as well in white blood cell differentiation. So like when it comes to blood, there's this whole fascinating thing known as hematopoiesis. And this is if anybody wants to learn how to read blood work, learn hematopoiesis. And this is, if anybody wants to learn how to read blood work, learn hematopoiesis and you're going to be able to do what I do. A lot of people talk about erythropoiesis, which is the generation of red blood cells. And a lot of people only know

that because Lance Armstrong took erythropoietin and that's what jacked up red blood cells. Yeah, yeah. EPO allowed you to crush the Tour de France, right? So a lot of people, right? Yeah. Yeah. If you allowed you to, uh, to, to crush that tour de France, right? So a lot of people know erythropoiesis, which is a synthesis of red blood cells. But if hematopoiesis is that hematopoiesis is the creation of all blood, all blood, not just red blood cells. So if hematopoiesis was a tree, erythropoiesis is only one branch of that tree. And it's this whole fascinating process that begins with a hematopoietic stem cell in your bone marrow.

And then your blood is formed based on existing cytokine status. So your body will say, hey, there's a bacterial infection over here. Or hey, we're running low on iron over here. And your body will actually see the checks and balances of cytokine status, and then that hematopoietic stem cell will say, okay, I guess we're making blood this way

right now. And then you get your own unique blood signature. What happens though in that department is lymphocytes. That is a branch of white blood cells that is responsible for a lot of things, but in a big way, it's responsible for dealing with viral infections. So you'll actually see a high lymphocyte status in someone who has really low cortisol. And one of the reasons why this is, is cortisol actually suppresses lymphocytes. So when some, and this is like you know like a functional medicine practitioner a lot of these guys really screw this stuff up because if you have low cortisol lots of times it can have nothing to do with your adrenals and that's

actually a protective mechanism to not down regulate lymphocytes because you currently have a virus and when people have a virus when they they have the flu, number one symptom is fatigue. Get your ass on the couch. You're not going to be able to train. You're not going to be able to work properly. You're going to be exhausted. That exhaustion is coming from a state of low cortisol that's not a dysfunction. It's an adaptation. So if you have some type of viral load, then you will have low cortisol. But in someone who is, again, to get back to Mark's status, you're going to have a more robust immunity. And that white blood cell differentiation is going to be on point because they're happy, healthy.

There's nothing offsetting the current state of white blood cell status. Stress is not going to be as present. So you're going to see better testosterone scores. I mean it just goes on and on and on, right? Like a healthy mind is a healthy body in a lot of ways. On the fact that like, have you heard or you probably know, like people have done research on individuals who continuously win at certain challenges and they tend to have higher testosterone, correct? Yep. So I'm curious about the person right now that has stress and they have quite a bit of anxiety. But things or they haven't necessarily set up ways in their life where they can have some actual wins.

You know, people who are always they're perpetually down in the dumps. So I'm just going about another bad day, et cetera. Would this be a type of situation where someone needs to set up ways for themselves to have triumphs to potentially lead in that direction of having higher testosterone over time? losing in business and school's going horribly and your relationship sucks and you just these things continue to make you feel as if you are stressed because you are stressed yep what is the what is a way where you can set your life up in a way i don't know just set things up so that you can have more wins because your mind will then take that and move your hormones in a positive direction yes yeahiology follows psychology. So that mind, that initial decision change is already going to kick off some favorable chemistry in your mind because it's preparing. It's setting up.

The body knows what the mind wants to do and there's a lot of adaptations that are going to work in your favor in order to facilitate that change. But it really depends on who you're working with. There's no real one size fits all pathway to, you know, creating happiness and health. To provide two examples here. One example, some people need it is just a shock, like a, like, like a, so when when something goes really bad in life, let's say you have family trauma, that is like a broken bone. And then if you don't do anything about it, that bone actually heals in the wrong direction. And then you're almost trapped in this new perspective of life. And the only way to get that bone realigned is to fucking break it again. And you re-break that bone back in the process and

allow it to heal. And some people need tough love. Change. You've got one life, man. This is it. So a lot of people need that broken bone strategy because they healed in the wrong direction. And it's okay. Trauma is real. It's brutal. Many of us have felt extreme trauma in our life. But at some point, you are going to have to re-break that bone through a shock of changing your diet, changing your training, changing your mindset, and then healing in the right direction so that you can actually be the person you were meant to be. That's one strategy. Another strategy for small wins is to get small wins and stop listening to coaches who only recommend the bone break strategy. So for example, small wins.

Okay. So we've got somebody who's obese. Let's say they're 400 pounds. Okay. They wake up in the morning. They have eggs, bacon, and French toast. And then for lunch, they just go to a local fast food joint and get a burger and fries and then for dinner most people actually kind of have a square dinner of meat

starch and vegetables but then this person's also going to have a dessert after dinner okay so if you show that to a nutrition coach they're going to be like oh we're going to need a complete rehaul here but the small win strategy is extremely effective for that population. So what I would do is, OK, you got eggs, bacon and French toast. So for breakfast, why don't we actually just switch from bacon to turkey bacon? You cool with that? That's an easy change, right? Yeah, it is, coach. Perfect. All right. Let's have a look at that lunch. You are having a burger and fries at a local fast food joint.

I'm not even mad about that. But for the fries, could we actually just keep the burger, enjoy the burger? I love burgers too. But why don't we switch that out to a side salad? You cool with that? I can still have the burger? Yeah, you can still have the burger. Let's just have a side salad instead of fries.

Now let's look at dinner. You're already having a meat, a starch, and a vegetable. I ain't even going to touch that at all. But for dessert, do you like a fruit bowl? Is that cool? now let's look at dinner you're already having a meat a starch and a vegetable you're not even gonna touch that at all but for dessert do you like a fruit bowl is that cool like yeah you know i actually you know and it's been my experience that's uh people actually don't have a problem eating fruit they're fine so i was like cool let's let's have a fruit bowl for dessert it can be any fruit you want i don't care and then it's like that person's like jesus this coach is really reasonable but then someone might look at my recommendations and be like, you recommended him that?

I thought you were like some world-class nutrition coach. And I'd be like, fuck you. I just created a 700-calorie deficit for that person. The fries alone are probably 400. And then the switch from bacon to turkey bacon, another maybe 100 or so, depending on how much they had. It could be extremely substantial if they have a lot of bacon every morning. And then the dessert being swapped out for fruit. Not only is it less calories, it's more satiety, it's more micronutrients, and it's more hydration from the water in those fruit too. I'm making a healthier person with the easiest changes possible.

So this is an interesting thing because we've talked so much on the podcast about China's shift mindset. But there are so many people who they don't think that a mindset can make that much difference. But the individual who's the all or nothing type, right? So let's say they go through that day and they do everything right. But they then at night they cave and they have a dessert, right? And then they really beat themselves up over it. They look at their whole day as a fucking failure. This diet thing doesn't work. Fuck it. They binge for a few days or they just end up perceiving that day as a failure because they chose to have dessert because they

have that all or nothing type of mindset rather than paying attention to all the things that they did correctly. That mindset in and of itself compounded over time is messing with their physiology and their hormones is a big simplification of kind of what you're mentioning here yeah right yeah yeah and i think that like i like that example of someone doing great all day and then having a dessert and thinking the day was a failure yeah you almost have to look at it like a like a batting average like your percentage like how many how many fucking hits are you getting here man you got a got a lot of hit. You got a lot of base runs. And then it's only one at the end.

Consider your health as a continuum or a batting percentage. And is it a failure if you freaking hit nine balls at a ten? No. That's a really good game. So you're doing just fine. This is not a sad story. This is something you can actually celebrate and continue to to go with because you're making more good decisions than you are making bad and consistency

beats intensity every single time those people that are susceptible to the binary mindset of um i'm either on or i'm off yeah those people who are susceptible to that their batting average is really low because then they take those three days off. And then also those three days are binges too. And their batting percentage actually totally reverses itself. You're never going to win that game because biology adapts to averages over time. No matter how intense you diet in the short term, you will never hold on to those results in the long term until you figure out a way mentally and physically to remain consistent.

long term until you figure out a way mentally and physically to remain consistent. Isn't your, at some point with some individuals that are obese, isn't their gut almost overriding their brain to a certain extent? Like, don't they get conditioned to getting used to those foods and those urges and cravings maybe are amplified in a way that maybe your average person can't understand? Yeah, absolutely. And that's like in some cases or in many cases, I think, you know, I think in some cases, obesity is a choice. And then in some cases, I think it's a lot more complicated than that. And that their satiety signals are low.

Maybe initially when you were 60 pounds overweight, maybe you could have slowed that whole thing down. Yeah. But once you got further than that, maybe it's not up to you anymore. Well, here's the deal. You got swallowed up by it somehow, right? Yeah. Like, here's the deal, man. Like, fitness is a lot like a credit card.

So credit card, like, when you have a little bit on your card, then you have to pay a percentage on top of that to pay it back off, right? But credit cards should like basically be illegal because the greater your debt is on that card, the higher your percentage gets. So I actually think in a lot of ways that that's fitness because when you are really obese, your payments include a lot of interest. And then in the beginning, like your knees and your hips kind of hurt going to the gym. You probably have low testosterone. You have low confidence, which is even going to hurt you to even want to go to the gym. The weight might not like things might not work in your direction for habit change. And that's because you're paying a lot of interest for every amount of principle that you're putting on your debt. But the beautiful thing at the end of

the road is that when you get to a zero debt balance, it's so much easier to maintain fitness than it is to attain fitness. So when you get to zero debt, there's no more interest. You're getting an ROI now. Now you're in the gym. You're enjoying it. You have a pump. You're confident. You're ready to rock. Things come easier to you. You're more insulin sensitive. You have more testosterone. Your thyroid is more effective. Your satiety signals are operating at full steam. There's no more interest to pay. So you just kind of have to absolutely suffer. Nobody was ever going to tell you who's being honest. Nobody's ever going to tell you that it's easy. But once you you get the job done maintenance is so much easier than attainment might take four or five years but so what so does a diploma takes that amount of time too right totally and like when when you

have a very low level of fitness what an example that i've used that's really hit home for some of these people is um it's like when you've had a low level of fitness it's as if you're walking into the middle of a forest and you did decide to change your life but now you have to turn around and still walk all the way back out like that if you if you did five years of terrible habits don't expect a four-week protein sparing modified fast to reverse all of that biochemistry. Your new adaptation is this person that you've created for the past five years. I applaud you. Let's turn around and let's walk out of the forest. I can probably get you a quad and we can drive out of there faster than you walked in,

but it's still going to take time, man. You got to get all the way out of there. And I really think to bring this back to labs, that's one of the most efficient ways to get that, man. You got to get all the way out of there. And I really think, you know, to bring this back to labs, that's one of the most efficient ways to get that job done. Is there a, like a lab way, like a ones and zeros way where somebody can actually see on paper that they are under a shit ton of stress? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, you can measure. So that's one of the salivary measures I'll do is I measure a circadian rhythm function via salivary cortisol

and salivary melatonin. So you can actually look at that relationship. Cortisol, it's a hormone of energy. Once cortisol passes a certain threshold, that's what actually wakes us up in the morning. And back to evolutionary biology, we didn't always have these awesome lights so that we could remain productive. So we had to get our productivity done when the only natural light was on. So then our biochemistry kind of picked up on that. It's okay, cool. But you know, we got to hunt, build, and gather while it's light out. So things excitatory are higher, dopamine, cortisol, epinephrine, norepinephrine, you're going to have higher elevations in the morning. And then these are going to taper off as the day goes on.

But then the equal and opposite curve that you'll see is the melatonin curve. We'll go up the other way. And it's a biochemical way in which to look at circadian rhythm function or sleep-wake cycle. Basically, high cortisol and excitatory stuff upon waking. And then it tapers off at the end of the day. Low inhibitory stuff at the end of the day. Low inhibitory stuff at the beginning of the day, but then high at the end of the day because we need to prepare the body for sleep length and sleep quality. So to answer your question, we will not see that relationship play itself out.

If somebody is more in the acute stressor, then they're going to have a very high cortisol for the entire day. But if somebody has achieved burnout, then they're going to have a very high cortisol for the entire day. But if somebody has achieved burnout, then they will have very low cortisol throughout the entire day. That is measurable, and free cortisol readings are extremely accurate. The problem with free cortisol readings is that they're susceptible to variation. So I like to do a minimum of three tests to create an average.

Because California traffic can increase cortisol on a given day. Your training can offset cortisol. Your stressors can really alter those. So I like to create an average over time to get a better representation of your total stress load. And the average that I create, it's going to determine, you know, what type of stress you're under. So that probably be like just one of the many ways to finding an answer to why something's not firing off, like whether it be testosterone or even maybe like muscle fatigue and stuff like that. Yeah. And here's the thing. You can be psychologically and emotionally stable, but still have cortisol dysregulation because cortisol is not specific to psychology and

emotion. You can have physiological stressors. If you have environmental pollutants, if you have heavy metals, if you have a bacterial infection, these things all jack cortisol up. So you could be the most meditative, breathwork, psychologically and emotionally stable, high income. You're killing it. But you can absolutely run into full and complete cortisol dysregulation because your hidden stressors are off. Your visible stressors are all in check, but your hidden stressors are off. And that's most of the people that come my way is I don't get like the normal guy anymore. I typically just work with pro athletes and actors and or like very high level CEOs. So all those habits and things

generally are in check. And then they're like, coach, I feel like I'm doing all the right things and I'm not getting the ROI that I really would expect. And I promise I'm following it. Like I don't know what's going on. I'm like, OK, I believe you. You probably are doing all the right things. But have you done a comprehensive blood, urine, saliva, stool analysis? No. What the heck's that?

OK, cool. that. Okay, cool. Well, let's look at that because there is absolutely at this point in time, a hidden stressor robbing you of your adaptive capability from the goals that you're trying to achieve. And I want to ask this because I know we're going testosterone, testosterone, testosterone. I know we're going down that rabbit hole a bit, right? But I want to, obviously we're going to get into how you, all the tests that you have people run. But going back to when you were talking about the individual who's obese, I know that there you have people run. But going back to when you were talking about the individual who's obese, I know that there's some people who are like, well, I want to just do some TRT to get the ball rolling for myself. And maybe I'll stop doing it down the road. So I'm curious

what you think about people with those types of thoughts and how they maybe should try to look at things. And then secondly, when does TRT, when do you think it is actually a viable option for the – because I know there's so many factors, right? But generally, when can someone honestly say, OK, I can – this is a viable option for me? Once they have exhausted those other factors. their factors i just really think that okay if you ask imagine going outside right now and pooling the people um in this city like hey uh did you get blood urine saliva stool analysis in the past year how many people would you have to ask for one to say yes probably not find anybody i don't think we'd be able to find anyone who's had it would be thousands yeah you would have to ask thousands of people yeah and they would have and many of them probably didn't even get their blood work done.

So there are people just absolutely jumping to the solutions to problems they don't even understand. Yeah. So I think that – They don't even know if it's a problem. Yeah. Kind of like back to the vitamin D example. You might have low vitamin D, but what are your symptoms? Do you even have low vitamin D, but what are your symptoms? Do you even have symptoms?

Like are you coming to me with a real problem? And maybe the solution has nothing to do with vitamin D. Yeah, and same with testosterone. Like some people go to testosterone because they're fatigued. How many things can be the root cause of fatigue? Low iron associated with fatigue. Fungal overgrowth associated with fatigue. Dehydration associated with fatigue. Low iron associated with fatigue. Fungal overgrowth associated with fatigue. Dehydration associated with fatigue.

Poor sleep associated with fatigue. A hypofunctioning thyroid associated with fatigue. Like these things are associated with fatigue that have nothing to do with testosterone. So you're coming to me because you're tired and you want a testosterone injection. It might not even help you. And whatever was the actual problem, you're not currently addressing. But we love prescriptions. Yes, we do.

We're America. Yeah. We love all those commercials. You know, we have like, I think 80% of the television commercials or something now are pharmaceutical ads. I wouldn't be surprised. Jesus Christ. We're just a bunch of prescription thugs.

Yeah. Hey, there you go. Moderate. Nice plug. Moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis that's yeah that one moderate to severe this moderate to severe that i'm like wouldn't everybody be in that category moderate to severe like if they explain a bunch of shit you're like i think that's me and then a side effect is moderate to severe a side effect is

moderate to severe death yeah like you may die i might say it's super fast okay oh that's good yeah i'm gonna go out they glance over that part terribly what do you think is like uh one of the main issues uh in america when it comes to the epidemic of obesity um and yeah people like people being under muscled and over, I guess you'd say. Not enough people are taking Tren. How do we get more people? Man, if the whole population was on Tren, just imagine the anger. Yeah, that would be great.

The road rage? Oh, Jesus. I just think we'd get to solutions way faster. Yeah, just more people would die. Like if we're on Tren and we have a disagreement. In the population. Exactly. This podcast would be one less guy we have like a disagreement. In the population. Exactly. This podcast would be one less guy because he would probably kill me.

I'd probably kill myself. In terms of the reality of obesity, I think that in a big way, it's a lack of activity. We were just talking earlier today. way. It's a lack of activity. We were just talking earlier today. When you focus on something that's really hard to change, sometimes that is going to facilitate no change at all. So if somebody has a high body fat percentage and you only focus on body fat percentage, like, oh, God. Or if you focus on nutrition habits and practices that they're not even ready for, it's so hard to change your diet. But like just asking you guys here, what would be the biochemical change in someone going from zero training to

just two or three full body strength workouts a week? Yeah, it'd be beautiful. It would be substantial. It would be substantial. They would be giving themselves a warehouse to just posit their glucose. That's just chronically high, it would be going into the muscle system, the strength would actually increase the resilience of their connective tissue and joints. A lot of people run into obesity and even addiction because they got injured. So just two, three strength training sessions per week improve your resiliency to injury and therefore your resiliency to obesity and therefore your resiliency to obesity and and possible addiction the injury thing is interesting because that's real like somebody's

like yeah i used to lift they said i hurt my shoulder and then they say they used to be part of some softball league they used to be part of this it used to be part of that and they get run out of everything because they had some sort of injury they weren't sure how to manage it and the thing got worse and worse now they can barely move their whole uh right side or something like that yeah like or you see somebody in like those buggies at walmart yeah and they've got a big knee brace on it's like you know that's probably a major so weird i'm 45 and i see people around i'm like i think some of these people are like my age i I'm like, this is weird. I see them younger. Yeah, yeah.

They're like my age now. Yeah, I'm like, what's going on? You know a cool thing you can do? You can actually, so there's a validated biological age calculator. So you use nine biomarkers from a basic blood chemistry. Things like creatinine, lymphocytes, MCV. It's very, very basic readings. And you can get your biological age calculated.

Because what we're talking about right now is the difference between chronological age and biological age. We know someone who's 45 and is killing it. We know people who are 45 and look 75 and move like they're 75 and are probably knocking on the door of some serious health ailments. And that's so young to run into those problems. There's just a big difference with chronological age and biological age. And I hope or I wish coaches could actually hear this and use that to facilitate change. Imagine working with someone obese who is 32.

And I'd be like, hey, man, I know you've been on this earth for 32 years, but when I'm looking at the inside of you, you're 42. And I think that that would be like, Oh, Whoa. Cause now it's not, um, it's not me telling them to change. It's, it's not their family or their friends telling them to change. It's not a program. It is raw data from their blood work saying, this is where you're at. And that would be a huge facilitator of change. And it's something that's very readily accessible. When we were talking about obesity in this country, I was saying, in my opinion, the easiest thing. And I guess easy would be up for other people to determine.

Maybe they need more options. But I always just thought lifting weights would be a good option because that doesn't take away anything. It might take away a little bit of time from somebody, I guess, but could you go in once during the week and could you get in two sessions on the weekend? Could you buy a dumbbell or kettlebell for the house or a jump rope? There's a lot of options when it comes to resistance training. It doesn't have to be just that you go to a gym, but that's what I think would be, you know, one of the easiest solutions would be something like that. But it just seems

like people don't want to budge. They don't want to like, they don't even want to give up a little bit of their time to make this, this strong turn. So I don't really know what some of the answers are. I think it's a major health problem everybody is still trying to understand. But that like 20 to 30, if you did like a 30 minute EMOM and you just bang that out two,

three times a week, I think that people and then that kind of becomes its own snowball, right? Because then they get those endorphins. They kind of get that high from the session. Like, hey, I saw a vein today. It's like lift, walk. Yeah. Like you make a friend at the gym too. Like you get social connection. I think a huge problem is actually social isolation that keeps people unhealthy too. And so like that increased connectedness along with the biochemical changes of training, that's gotta be like the lowest barrier to entry way. That's not a pill that can help so many people. And yeah, go ahead.

I want to, I'm curious about this because Mark was talking about this the other day and we were talking about how younger individuals get their blood work done. And even if they're out of shape or maybe they're overweight or obese when they're younger, a lot of them say, my blood work's fine. I'm healthy. It came to the healthy at every size type of thing because they say it's healthy, right? I'm within range on everything. I'm within wange. Within wange on everything.

I'm within wange on everything. That was a, hey, man, I'm a baby 40 and slipped. All right. Anyway. It's whipped. It's whipped out of my mouth. Anyway. So, you know, I'm curious, like when somebody comes to you and they want to start working with you, could you talk to us about the different things you have them do, the different tests you have them take?

But also when someone's looking at their blood work and they say, but my blood work's fine, even though I'm overweight. What overweight? How do you respond to that? You know what I mean? It's really important to look at the Weflin's wanges. The Weflin's wanges. I'm probably going to do it now and actually do it. But for real, the reference ranges, I've created my own proprietary reference ranges over time.

I've done over a thousand blood chemistries because I've got a health scale that's like super basic. But my health scale, there's three points on it. There's death, fake health, and real health. Death means you're dead, you're deceased. That's pretty easy to understand fake health is where 90 of the population lives because they believe that the absence of disease means the presence of health that is not real health real health is waking up with a libido having energy crushing your bucket list um you know you're psychologically and emotionally well your

hormones are on point you're hitting the gym, you're confident, that's real health. That's someone who's vibrating at a different frequency. Those are the people that that's someone I aspire to be. Those are the people I want to be around. That's real health. Fake health is purely the absence of disease. If you have low energy, low libido, you've got a high body fat percentage, you know, like you look terrible, you feel terrible. You utilize a lot of forms of escapism, such as alcohol and drugs to escape this reality you've created for yourself. Do not tell me that you're healthy. Do not tell me that everything's within range. not tell me that you're fine you just simply aren't currently uh exposed to some type of state of disease but one thing that i can tell you without any degree of uncertainty is that you're fine until you're not you are a reference

range is you walking to the edge of a cliff until you fall off that cliff. Oh, you got diabetes. It's like, well, now you're at major risk of a heart attack. It's like, bro, why didn't you tell me that 10 years ago? Because there's a big difference between high and trending high. Big difference between low and trending low. Why didn't we actually pick up these patterns before? And why aren't we creating optimal ranges for real health rather than just disease ranges for fake health? Those are two completely different lenses. And those disease ranges are to prescribe you drugs. Yeah.

That's what they're for. It's a practice. Oh, no, I can prescribe you metformin or blood pressure medication or whatever it might be, right? medication or whatever it might be, right? They keep altering those numbers so that they're more in range so they can be very liberal with how much prescription they do, right? They're also altered based on population norms. But we're sicker than we've ever been. So it's like, hey, if you want to be as healthy as the average patient, use their reference

ranges. Who wants to be as healthy as the average patient? Nobody. Nobody's goal is to be average like that's just that's not you know i just want to be average you know like even when i don't even understand sometimes and this is me kind of just being a dick but but when someone says you know what i just want to maintain right now like i don't even really know what that means i've never in a state of maintenance i'm'm chasing something. I don't want my legs to grow. Shut up.

Just shut up. Your legs ain't going to grow anyway. You never trained hard today in your life. Shut up. I want to do a marathon. I want to bench 405. I want to box jump. I've never seen you do five sets of five squats. You got nothing to worry about. Your legs ain't going to grow.

Yeah. Fuck. For real, dude. seen you do five sets of five squats you got nothing to worry about your legs ain't gonna grow oh fuck for real dude that uh like the those optimal ranges are big man and then uh like so that's a totally different lens at which to view blood work but then um you also have to consider what pulls things up and down like there there's a huge, there's levels to reading blood work. Like some people think that they know how to read blood work, um, until they're exposed to someone who really knows how to read blood work. Like, uh, um, albumin is probably a good example. Um, albumin is actually pulled up. It's a, by the way, it's a very important protein that does a lot of things in, in, in physiology, but it's pulled up in a state of dehydration. But albumin is also an acute negative phase reactant. So that means that it is pulled down in the presence of inflammation. So you can actually have a normal albumin, but be dehydrated and inflamed. How many

people are dehydrated and inflamed? But it was within the reference range. I'll call you if I see anything abnormal. Click. Then you never get that call. But if you're not actually talking to the person, having them go through a questionnaire, it's like, wait, he was dehydrated. And so it's likely that that's actually being altered by inflammation. I need to figure out what's going on with inflammation at this point in time. Like Billy Rubin is another one. Like Billy Rubin is on every single test.

It's a marker of red blood cell destruction. So Billy Rubin, um, your red blood cells, they have a turnover rate of approximately 120 days. So every four months you've got new blood. So if you want optimal blood work, you know, I'd say minimum three times per year, every four months, check out what your new blood looks like. Um, Billy Rubin will be increased in response to hemolysis so hemo blood lysis breakdown so if bilirubin's high there's a lot

of red blood cell destruction that you need to figure out why that's happening but bilirubin's also a fat soluble antioxidant so in the presence of inflammation it's actually brought down so it can actually appear normal in a state of hemolysis. And then here's where actually kind of drug users come back into play too, because testosterone and anadrol and EQ, these things can bring up red blood cells. So you can actually, if someone was in a state of hemolysis, they would have high bilirubin and low red blood cells. Like this is a lot of breakdown taking place. But if that person's inflamed and on testin anadrol, then they're actually going to have a normal bilirubin and a normal red blood cell count.

So then you have to look even further. If you look at blood work, you have sodium is usually like at 140, whereas potassium is about 4.5 average and magnesium is around 2. The reason why sodium is 140 and potassium and magnesium are so low is because potassium and magnesium are intracellular. Sodium is extracellular. So then if somebody – like this is a huge context and weird point I'm making here, but it's to articulate the complexity of labs. So someone could have a normal

bilirubin, even though they're in a state of hemolysis, which would have brought it up, but it's being pulled down because bilirubin is also a fat-soluble antioxidant. So that appears normal. And then now, red blood cells should have been low in the state of hemolysis, but it's being pulled up in response to testosterone, anadrol, or EQ, or erythropoietin, whatever is your drug of choice in that scenario. And then, so then you would actually see in hemolysis, this is what wouldn't be corrected, magnesium and potassium will be high because red blood cell destruction is taking place. And therefore, intracellular minerals are leaking out into the system. But unless you know how to see that, then you don't know how to tell that story.

So that's why I say, like, dude, a lab is the tip of the iceberg. And unless you understand that what is under the surface, then you're never going to be able to actually help that person. And that's why I hate the recipe book approach to labs. Like, this is high, take this. This is low, take this. That's bullshit. Human physiology is so much more complicated than that.

And until you respect its complexity, you're never really going to help anybody. Power Project family, how's it going? So no matter what diet you're on or no matter what supplements you take, it's necessary as you get older to know what's going on under the hood. That's why I've partnered with Merrick Health.

They're the premium telehealth clinic owned by Derek from More Plates, More Dates. And we have a panel that will allow you to get all of your labs done and checked in a super easy fashion. Andrew, how can they get it? Yeah, you guys got to head over to MerrickHealth.com slash PowerProject. That's M-A-R-E-K Health.com slash PowerProject. And at checkout, enter promo code PowerProject to save $101 off of this comprehensive panel. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes.

That's a lot. Tell us about the frog. Dead frog. Sure. You guys want to talk about dead frogs? Wait, what? There's a dead frog? Hey, yeah, yeah.

You're just supposed to eat the frog in the morning, right? I think so. Yeah. Oh, that's that book. Yeah, that is that book. That's a good way to put it. Wait, we saw a dead rat, too? Oh, that was gross. Oh, that's that book. Yeah, that is that book. That's a good way to put it. We saw a dead rat, too. Oh, that was gross.

Wait, what? Was this on a run or something? Yeah. It was after the run. We were on a walk. We just saw a dead rat. Like a sewer rat. It looked like chewed up or something, too.

I don't know. It looked horrible. Getting eaten from the inside. It was big. It was like that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Oh, Shredder. Shredder? Or was it Splinter? Splinter, sorry. Yeah, Shredder was the bad guy. He was the bad guy. like that teenage mutant ninja turtle. Oh, Shredder. Shredder?

Or was it Splinter? Splinter, sorry. Yeah, Shredder was the bad guy. He was the bad guy, yeah. But he told me a story about dumping sodium on a frog or something. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. We should probably – Hold on.

The mutant ninja turtle, that's not good content? No, it's good. It's good. No, for real. So let's say electrolyte status. I'm just talking about magnesium, potassium, right? If you guys imagine you had dead frogs in front of you right now. If you sprinkled sodium on that dead frog, his legs would start to kick.

And that's because sodium causes muscular contraction. You'll see this in some Asian cuisine. You pour soy sauce on tentacles and they start moving. Oh, gross. That's why that happens. Yeah, yeah. I don't know how that's appetizing, but it's a thing, right? Your dish is moving at you.

But that's because sodium causes muscular contraction. But if that same dead frog's in front of you and you sprinkle potassium on his legs, his legs will relax. That's because sodium causes muscular contraction. Potassium causes muscular relaxation. And both these need to be in check because what is a contraction without a relaxation? It's a cramp. You're locked up. contraction, potassium causes muscular relaxation. And both of these need to be in check because what is a contraction without a relaxation? It's a cramp. You're locked up, right? But the thing is,

magnesium is what regulates intracellular and extracellular concentrations of sodium and potassium. So you could actually have optimal sodium and potassium, but if you don't have magnesium, then no one's showing up at the door to work that day to allow sodium potassium to go in and out of cells and therefore regulate high velocity and peak strength contractions followed up by muscular relaxation for optimal performance so that that electrolyte um synchrony happening there is something you can pick up at labs and is really important. Like you're doing those hot runs. That's a lot of sodium and potassium and magnesium loss. And

where that balance takes place is what I've got to identify and then restock with your food and your supplements. Now, rewinding real quick to the blood work aspect of things, you talked about how like hydration and there's so many different things that can lead to different types of blood work, including obviously getting at different times of the year when you recycle that blood, right? But if somebody, because we work with Merrick and we have people that are continuing to get their blood work done, how can they make sure that they're actually doing things in a fairly consistent fashion to really see how things are at that snapshot in time and not having too many random variables affecting their tests that they're getting done. So you're basically referring to the consistency of the measurement?

The consistency of the measurement, yes. Create the same context. So if you fasted 12 hours last time, fast 12 hours this time. If you got it done at 8 a.m. last time, get it done at 8 a.m. this time. Because these things like testosterone and white blood cells, they're diurnal. So depending on when you get your test, that's going to impact your measurement to a great degree. So we got to fast the same length. We have to get it done at the same time. And then I actually also have my people consume about 12 ounces of water 30 to 60 minutes before the test. What does that do? It hydrates you because dehydration will ruin your test results. Really? How so? Absolutely. Okay. So in a state of dehydration, creatinine

will be elevated. Hematocrit will be elevated and red blood cells will be elevated. So then we get an offset reading of really important stuff, like red blood cells, hematocrit, creatinine. Like if creatinine is flagging, yeah, it can flag in the presence of muscle mass and high protein, but it's going to flag in the presence of dehydration as well. Your blood urea nitrogen will be higher than it otherwise would have been. Albumin is another one that will be higher than it otherwise would have been. I am of the confidence that if you're dehydrated going into a blood test, I want you to do another draw. Okay. Yeah. It's, it's thrown off that much. So get, you know, if people think fasting is no food and no water, no, you go hydrated into that test.

And that's, what's going to give you the most accurate readings of creating that context to ensure before and after, um, results are accurate. And there's also a very cool thing that the British Medical Journal came out with. And they actually, so you can actually uptake, upload your results into a free calculator, by the way. And it will measure. So what it takes into consideration is internal variability and test-to-test variability. So you can actually put your measurements in this calculator from the British Medical Journal, your before and after,

and then it will actually eliminate the noise for you so that you can see if it's truly a statistically significant change that you've made. Yeah. Okay, that's dope. And real quick question, Biaza. You mentioned the biological age calculator thing, because people are probably wondering, wait, what website do I go to to enter my numbers? And where do you get it or where do you find it? The legitimate one, because there's a few, right?

Yeah, yeah. So I think there's a website called Longevity Advantage. I can't remember the exact – I think it's called Longevity Advantage. And they've got a free calculator on there. But it's also just research that I can actually, if you want to put it in the comment section or the notes section, I can totally just give you guys the study and the calculation. But yeah, we can do that. Okay. How easy is it for people to pass certain like drug tests? Because, you know, PEDs are pretty prevalent and we're seeing more and more people getting

prescriptions. And I think the UFC for a little while, I think they allowed people to have prescriptions, but I don't think they're in the same boat anymore. What's some of your opinion on that? Okay. Basically the testing organization of the sport, what organization it is kind of just determines what compounds you can play with and which ones you can't. There are some organizations where it's more of an intelligence test than a drug test and that you know when it's coming up.

And if you fail, then you kind of deserve to fail because you've got absolutely no idea what you're doing but um if you have a more stringent organization then um you basically the compounds that you have available to play with are the ones that are endogenous and then you're just fucking with the levels a bit so for example growth hormone insulin testosterone um even um injectable choline or injectable carnitine. These are things that you can toy with. Injectable carnitine isn't illegal at all, is it? Or has it become illegal? I don't know.

I'm actually not sure about that one. But, I mean, it's probably not something that you would want to share with a lot of people, especially since even IVs are illegal in those organizations. Yeah, the last time we checked, I think it was still okay under usada yeah andy triana he's this guy he came and he just schooled us on injectable l-carnitine oh cool he was mentioning how crazy useful it is yeah yeah so i mean you're basically just messing with levels of things that already are within you and ensuring you understand the half-life like that the half-life of growth hormones so so it's like 90 to 120 minutes so like you're taking growth

hormone pre-bed is by the way the best time to take it and then you can wake up the next morning and get tested and pass that's why everyone says yeah there's a lot of stuff to take too that like just these governing bodies they're just not even aware of at the moment right because things are moving so fast all the time right things are moving really fast and then when you understand half-lifes and excretion rates too like even something like modafinil like modafinil is a very very powerful stimulant for for neurological function um and it has a half-life of about 15 hours and when you really dig into the literature and how it's actually tested and screened for,

they're screening for this type of alkaloid that's in the urine. And then that specific alkaloid belongs to modafinil. But that alkaloid is quite, according to the literature, it's gone in about 20 hours. So it's something that is consistently usable and passable in that case. So it's not just the fact that a lot of these governing bodies aren't aware of what people are doing, so therefore they can't test it. But if you know your biochemistry, your half-lifes, your excretions, your alkaloids, your metabolites, then it's basically just a game. And then the more prepared you are, the more confident you are

to win that game. Yeah. Do you work with people like, as I think in the, that Frank Thomas commercial, one of the symptoms was like brain fog. I think that's in there. Maybe I just imagined it, but that's just because I've heard that before. But like, do you help clear brain fog and that sort of thing with like, whether it be supplements or like habit stuff? Yeah. A hundred percent, brain fog and that sort of thing with like whether it be supplements or like habit stuff yeah 100 man so yeah so like um uh previously i said nothing's free in physiology um a lot of people's brain fog is low dopamine but dopamine so we we can synthesize dopamine from phenylalanine and tyrosine so like just creating a metabolic pathway phenylalanine and tyrosine being on this side and then that's converted into something known as l-DOPA. And then provided we have enough vitamin B6, then we can synthesize dopamine. And I'll know

if you synthesize dopamine based on homovenilate, which is a urinary metabolite. So if you come back with a very low homovenilate, then I know there's lower systemic dopamine, which then makes me consider vitamin B6 deficiency or inadequate phenylalanine and tyrosine. So in some cases, brain fog can be a supply and demand chain problem. And then that actually continues. So after dopamine, if you have enough vitamin C and copper, then you can make epinephrine and norepinephrine or adrenaline and noradrenaline that more people know it as. One's a hormone. The other is a neurotransmitter. So if anything in that chain is absent or in low quantity,

then you're going to have brain fog. Like if you have a very low amount of tyrosine or a low amount of B6, you can imagine your thoughts like a five-lane highway, okay? But then if you have low B6, that five lane highway now goes down to two lanes. So now cognitive output is lower. And when you reintroduce B6, you can actually get that back up to a five lane highway. So those traffic and that thoughts can keep rocking and rolling. So that's going to have a big impact towards brain fog. But then also, of course, stress management, sleep quality, brain fog, hormones play a big role in that too. Like the testosterone,

a lot of people don't know, testosterone's original prescription basis was for antidepressant use. And that is being prescribed for psychological effects because hormones have a big impact on our mind. We also see hormones having an impact on the mind during PMS. This absolutely impacts our mind. So if you have hormonal imbalance, then that is a very key area of intervention towards eliminating brain fog and improving things like memory, attention span, focus, reward, all of the cool stuff that comes with that. Got it.

This is you explaining brain fog by the way i'm sorry that's all i can think of hey if y'all watch it's always funny that yeah yeah i've never actually seen it but it's a great show andrew was like he's shooting from the hip with that he was waiting for me i just had it loaded up he had that image ready and was just waiting for draw yeah so but that makes a lot of sense because like you know sometimes you know morning we'll either have coffee or like a monster monster has b6 and i believe it has tyrosine in it as well and so like after drinking this like yeah our conversation starts to kind of pop and get a little more, uh, in depth. Yeah. That's intentional. Yeah. They're providing the

precursors for your body to do with it what you want out of the product. Yeah. I mean, uh, and it works the other way too. Like we're talking excitatory, it works inhibitory too. So from tryptophan, we synthesize serotonin and melatonin, but again, only if we have enough B6. So that's a supply and demand chain as well. So serotonin is a big one too. You can actually see certain markers for serotonin in the urine as well. And it's really like a part of my overall process working with athletes is to look at as many things as I can. But when you look at a neurotransmitter in the urine, the problem with it is that it's peripheral

and not central. So you're looking at neurotransmitter status in the body and not necessarily in the brain and spinal cord. But serotonin is one of the prime drivers of pain tolerance. So if somebody has a very low amount of serotonin, our gut actually makes 95% of our body's serotonin. So if we have an unhealthy gut or a lack of serotonin production, for whatever reason, you can run into pain problems that are amplified greater than they otherwise would have been if your diet was in check and you were being provided these things. And I think that's actually a contributor when people say, well, if you lower your inflammation,

you lower your pain. That's absolutely true. But I also think you're improving gut health and providing your body the micronutrients to synthesize the things to allow you to tolerate that pain to a greater degree, which is key for combat sports stuff. How would someone increase their serotonin? If somebody wanted to increase their serotonin, tryptophan has to be there. And one of the, two of the greatest sources of tryptophan are cottage

cheese and ground turkey. So I'm prone to, and it's funny how like, you know, like bodybuilders haven't caught his cheese before bed. I'm like, Hey, let's get some tryptophan in the body. Yes, it's a slow release protein, but it's pretty cool. We got a get some tryptophan in the body. Yes, it's a slow-release protein, but it's pretty cool we got a lot of tryptophan in there to provide the body what it needs for serotonin and melatonin synthesis. So giving your body just the amino acid. Tryptophan is not overly abundant in a lot of things, but it's abundant in turkey and in cottage cheese. And those are very lean, easy sources of protein that we can kind of incorporate into our macros at no problem or major adjustment.

And then basically getting in B6 on top of that would allow the body to synthesize more serotonin. Having a healthy gut would go a long way in this department. And then also, you know, sometimes we can look at metabolic pathways and be fascinated with them. But then we kind of forget perhaps it's just being in, you know, inhibited by stressors that, you know, because you're never going to have a lot of serotonin in the presence of a lot of stress. It's just going to absolutely reverse that part. And that would just be something else entirely. reverse that part and that would just be something else entirely. What are some things someone can do to help heal the gut

if they already have decent health practices? You get a stool analysis, man. Yeah, yeah. It's so underrated the amount of valuable data that you can get from a stool analysis. And I'll just tell everybody, I order the

Genova Diagnostics GIFX. That's the test that I have all of my pro athletes and celebrities run. It's a fantastic test and that'll basically allow you to identify where the problem is in your gut because a lot of people they will have gut problems but then again go to the doctor and everything's fine. Get out of here, right? But then you're like, no, I've got bloating. I've got distension. My gut's uncomfortable. I've got loose stools. I wake up in the morning with abs, but then I go to bed looking like I'm pregnant. This stuff is not what it's supposed to be. And I'm like, I agree with you. But for me to

guess or give you a protocol in the absence of hard data is a terrible coaching practice for me. So I like to order that stool analysis and then look at all of the markers that that comes with. And, you know, like sometimes like your solutions within striking distance. It's like, man, I want to do this gut health protocol and I want to do this. I want to do this really hard diet. It's like, man, do a stool test. and I want to do this. I want to do this really hard diet. It's like, man, do a stool test.

You'll probably look at your problem right in the face and then you now have an actual... I actually like seeing bad things on labs. I really do because the only thing worse than getting a bad thing on a lab is seeing nothing on a lab.

Because now it's like, maybe I should try paleo. Maybe I should vegan maybe i should go fasting like you're still in the land of question marks dude i would rather see something bad and go fuck yeah that is the next thing i need to target in order to become a better version of myself so stool tests are available they're ready to rock get an expert to look at it and that is step number one to where it's actually finding your solution instead of just taking like digestive enzymes and reducing bloating. You know, like those enzymes will work so long as you keep taking them. The moment they're gone, the bloating is going to come back because you've never solved the actual root cause problem.

Okay. Cause we still need to get into all the, that you do because we haven't even laid that out. But when you were talking maybe we're looking at when we do that? And maybe also the things that we need to be careful of with cold water therapy, like really cold water. Sure. So like you get that protein expression that people talk about when you're getting the cold water immersion. You get a reduction in inflammation. I think that there's a huge element of improving psychological resilience. Your ability to stay calm under stressors, your ability to nasal breathe under stressors, that'll translate to many other areas in life. So psychological and physiological benefits are great. However, it is a recovery modality. And the way I view recovery is the way I view training. So like if you're constantly doing the

exact same workout all the time, you will adapt to that workout and it will stop getting you the results that it gave you in the beginning. So it's very natural for us to switch up our workout routine in order to create a new stimulus that we need to adapt to, to continue progressively overloading over the course of time to become a stronger or better version of ourself. But nobody thinks that way about recovery. And I don't have any research to discuss this. So this is just my opinion. But I like to, you know, like the world of recovery is parasympathetic activity. So sympathetic, there's two branches of the nervous system, your sympathetic branch and

your parasympathetic branch. Your sympathetic branch is fight or flight. Parasympathetic branch is rest and digest. So the moment you want fight or flight during training, but the moment you're out of training, you want to activate as much parasympathetic activity as possible. So all of these recovery modalities are great for parasympathetic triggering and accelerating recovery. But if you do two minutes at 40 degrees in a cold plunge, and the first time you do it, it's like euphoria. You did it. It feels amazing. It's all of these freaking things, right? And then you do it again the next day and the next day, the next day, the next day. It's very hard for my brain to accept the idea that I'm getting the exact same adaptive response to the same stressor every single day. So when someone does like two minutes in the cold plunge and then that's their routine, I think just like if you did the same training routine constantly, then if you do the same recovery routine constantly, your body is going to set

up certain protective mechanisms. Therefore, the overall stress is reduced because you have adapted to that stressor and therefore there's no longer a stress response. So instead of having an ice bath be your daily thing, what I like to do for my athletes is actually just give them a parasympathetic menu. So a mobility routine, meditation, a breathwork session, cold plunge, contrast showers. And then you can actually self-select from your parasympathetic menu what you want to do that day based on how you feel. But if you already do all of it. Yeah. Then you don't adapt to your recovery so then and then you can actually self-select on what you want to do because there are times too like

when you're told to meditate and sometimes like man i don't fucking want to meditate and then i still do it but it's not the same yeah because i didn't even want to do it but i could have done a breathwork session i could have done a con like you can actually self-select on what your brain wants and what your brain wants, the body is going to respond to better. Makes sense. What about the heat? The heat? I just – I don't mind the heat type of stuff, but I don't like it post-workout. When people talk about – I train and then I get in the sauna after training,

it's very common for people to do that. But I don't like it because, I mean, there's a handful of reasons. So number one is after creating a state of dehydration from training, you're going into the sauna to be more dehydrated. So I don't like creating more dehydration because even slight states of dehydration have been demonstrated in the literature to increase cortisol. So after training, when we're supposed to be maximizing anabolism, we're actually increasing catabolism through getting in a sauna and becoming dehydrated and creating a stress response. So I don't like it for the purposes of catabolism. I don't like it as well because dehydration has already been demonstrated in humans to increase glycogen depletion. So we're

actually dehydrating and losing a lot of the fuel that would otherwise help us recover. And even when you look at, like when you have post-workout, I like to call it the three R's, you have post-workout, I like to call it the three R's. Rehydrate, refuel, repair. Rehydrate with water and electrolytes, refuel with carbohydrates, and then repair with protein. If you get in the sauna right after training, we're not really repairing the muscles as much because of the cortisol response. We're not rehydrating because we're in the heat, and then we're not refueling because the accelerated glycogen depletion. So I'd like the sauna. I've got no problems with it, but a tool is only ever as good as it is applied.

So just keep it away from the post-workout window and you're a-okay. Quick question about the dehydration aspect because whenever I sauna, I always make sure to take multiple packs of electrolytes and water with me. And I'm drinking that throughout the whole time. I have multiple packs of electrolytes and water with me, and I'm drinking that throughout the whole time. So, I mean, there's probably holes in there, but I feel, and I may be wrong, but I feel as if I'm dealing with some of the dehydration aspect of things. But if one were to maintain that habit, what can they do to mitigate some of the negative aspects that might be happening from doing sauna post-workout? I would just be, I would be more inclined towards putting more electrolytes and fluid in that post-workout shake. Basically post-workout, it's a really good kind of rule to have half a gram of protein per kilo of body weight, and then one gram of carbohydrates per kilo of body weight. And then that's basically a rule, kind of like a pretty good rule to follow

regardless. And then if someone was doing sauna, I would probably just add more water and more electrolytes to that solution to offset the, uh, the otherwise things that could reduce the effectiveness of the three hours. Makes sense. What about the, uh, the post-workout window that you just mentioned for the cold plunge though? Cause that's something that I've been, you know, it's kind of been one of the things that hinders my experience jumping into the cold plunge because I'm like I just worked out like this morning I'll wait to do it tonight and then tonight comes and it's like I'm kind of a pussy and it's really really cold so I'm not going to do it I'll do it tomorrow and then just kind of the cycle keeps going so how big is that

window and is it really that that bad of a hindrance well it's been demonstrated to blunt adaptive response from strength training and that's because um so strength training is a intentional inflammatory spike so inflammation is never static it always looks like this throughout the day but when we train it will go boom and then that spike of inflammation is the stimulus that forces our body to adapt because it says, holy crap, where did that stressor come from? I better come back bigger and stronger than I was previously, so next time I am better able to handle that level of stress.

So what happens, you create this intentional inflammatory response, but then the cold plunge will suppress it with anti-inflammatory, and that's why vitamin C has been demonstrated to blunt adaptations from training. Vitamin E has been demonstrated to blunt adaptations from training. Cold plunges have been demonstrated to do that. And I believe it was resveratrol as well, reduced aerobic adaptations from training. But basically your rule is to just not NSAIDs, non-steroidal, those do it. When you are blunting the reason you're there, it's just I would just be way more inclined to

have that be as far away from the workout window as reasonably possible for your schedule. And then and or even on that day, choose something else from your parasympathetic menu. And then on non-training days, you could do the cold plunge thing. But yeah, and that actually kind of brings me back to labs. When you're looking at inflammation, if you're chronically inflamed, then your inflammation is up here. And then your stimulus actually gets lost in the noise. So chronic inflammation induces something known as anabolic resistance so when you're chronically inflamed you lose the signal in the noise that is the stimulus that you're trying to create in the gym so

that chronic inflammation can absolutely suppress so it's a game of management and and the more you learn about physiology the more you realize the truth is always somewhere in the middle. Like always, always, always, always. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Everything operates on some sort of bell curve. Like too little of something sucks. The right amount of something is great. And then too much of something also sucks.

And so inflammation, you don't want it too low because you're blunting adaptive response. But then you also don't want it too high because you're blunting adaptive response but then you also don't want it too high because you're suppressing adaptive response so then that beautiful inflammation management rather than suppression or acceleration is where is where the truth of health is found in this context do you believe that there's just uh some mutants out there that doesn't matter what peds or what the fuck you try to put in your cereal every morning that you're not going to be able to, because you work with some high level people, right? So you've probably seen people where it's like, this guy just kind of has it due to genetics and maybe due to upbringing and environment.

Yeah. I mean, I worked with a NHL goalie and he started his strength and conditioning training in the nhl he got to be a professional hockey player without training and then he started to strengthen conditioning in the nhl because the team it's mandatory the team's got a coach and you kind of got to show up and go do your thing but this guy is six foot four 245 didn't train. Also had professional athlete level athleticism. Shit. Those things –

Did he play a sport before? You just mean he didn't strength train, but he did play sports before, right? He played sports. Okay. But he didn't strength train. He didn't lift. Yeah, he didn't bench. Woo!

Yeah. So it's crazy. And then you have other people though, man, who their whole dream is to become a pro athlete. And every macro and calorie and every manipulation of training volume, intensity, and frequency is optimized and they don't make it. Genetics are an enormous factor. You learn that real quick too when you work with these level of people, what they're able to do. They're just the ultimate compensators. That's the way to put it

um they think they believe in themselves differently too maybe because of some of that history right like uh the guy that wasn't really lifting like he probably just believed he didn't need it well maybe because he believed it maybe he didn't actually need it totally and i don't know well like he actually um i actually asked him we were uh we were strength training at this time. So it was during a training session in Irvine. And I asked him, I was like, dude, what does it feel like to, like, you're the goalie in a shootout? Like there's got to be so much pressure in a shootout. And he actually said that that's his favorite time.

So he said that's my favorite time to express my skills so i was that's a totally different way of thinking so the belief in himself was absolutely there and you know that that'll translate i think everywhere one of the most like kind of big examples would be in combat sports you get two athletes of equal ability and one's more confident who's going to walk out of that cage? The one who's confident there, and you can feel it. You can see when a fighter, when they start like, when someone is not worried about what you're going to do to them, the total energy of the fight changes,

and that person can really just begin to take over. And that, in a lot of cases, that can be mindset and genetics. Belief in what you do. Another good, I keep talking about hockey, I'm really being Canadian on this podcast. Don't build the wall, okay? This will be my last hockey example, okay? But in the belief category,

one of the best hockey players in the world is Sidney Crosby. And he's known for his pregame meal being a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Right? And then so like on paper, I could be like, you know, Sid, I know you're the best hockey player in the world, but you're doing it wrong. Okay? So here's what we're going to do. And then I could actually give him a scientifically better pregame meal.

But because that's a part of his routine and his ritual and the way he gets geared up for it, I may actually reduce his performance by trying to optimize it. And that's a huge area. That's like the art of coaching versus the science of coaching. Sometimes you just got to leave shit alone. And a lot of that has to do with with that mindset you know it's really funny because there's this guy his name is julian baldy um he's a football player and has he's he has one of the most insane transformations i've seen but as i talked to him his his just general way of outlook and training and outlook on everything just his belief systems are so

hardcore that i'm not surprised he was able to have the transformation he's had so many people think he's done steroids and different drugs etc um but they also just don't realize the just sheer amount that this man has done to get to where he is and still the type of things that he's currently putting himself through holy crap yeah that's Julian yeah the stuff he put himself through like most guys like ah juice juice juice but and actually his nickname is juice um that doesn't help that doesn't help that his nickname is juice but also like when speaking to him it's like no one's no one's doing near the shit that you're doing no one's even attempting it because when you talk about the things that you currently do and the things that you've done, immediately people are going to say, well, that's – I can't do that. Well, that's too hard.

I can't do that. That's going to lead to injury. It's just his belief is insane and his expectation of what he can do is also at an insane type of level but that then there's so many things where like your expectations and your beliefs can inform your physiology that it's just like i think some of these guys also just have different belief systems for most people totally from when they're young from when they're young i uh i've coached um sean o'malley you know sean o'malley yeah you have c yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so i've been his coach for like three and a half years

now we've done eight fights together um and his mindset is iron like it's it's so awesome working with him um like i'll send him a plan and there's no questions or correspondence. It's done. Yep. Done. Like everything. And, uh, like a lot of people see the hair, him smoking weed, a lot of that kind of stuff. They've got no idea. The iceberg of discipline is the, it's like, oh, that's why you're that good of a striker.

Well, that's why you've got that many knockouts and you're an animal. Like he's had some wild injuries too, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's had some, uh, several lower body injuries that, um, that we're an animal like that he's had some wild injuries too right yeah yeah yeah he's had some uh several lower body injuries that um that we've worked through but he um dude that guy's and his mindset is iron and in when you're in the training room with him too because he can be silly and he can joke but um there's like the energy of the room will change when it's time to train it's like whole like if he starts nasal breathing it's like okay that's you've just turned into the cage fighter now like the guy he's he's a beast man that uh that mindset and that belief coming from where

he came in montana and then doing what he's doing now is is exactly what you're talking about with this guy do you know how and man you mentioned nasal breathing multiple times but i'm like i'm don't know if we need to save that for another podcast or not but either way do you know how – and you mentioned nasal breathing multiple times, but I don't know if we need to save that for another podcast or not. But either way, do you know how people – because we kind of talked about belief systems earlier. But how can someone go in the direction of like really restructuring that? Because on the internet, when people look at people's transformations, people look at people lifting weights, getting big, getting strong, et cetera. There are some people that are, I would just call them just, they're nihilists, where they're just like, there's no way that's possible. I can't believe I can't do that, blah, blah, blah. They've already stopped themselves because they've already think that

anything that they want to be able to do needs to be induced pharmaceutically. How can you shift somebody out of that belief system? Man, that's tough, dude. And that's kind of why I like specializing in biology and not psychology. Let me look at your labs. I don't really want to talk to you. Because that's a huge conversation to unpack. And you also work with people that already believe in themselves.

Yeah. And those people are winners, man. Michael Jordan is not a hater. Michael Jordan is not a hater. Anderson Silva is not a hater. These people, when they look at success, it inspires them for change. I always try to do that personally as well. I love when other people get wins. I celebrate with them.

But then there are also people in my life who I can't tell my wins to because they have a negative response or a negative reaction or they're not really authentically happy for me. And they're taking it as if I'm bragging. But really, man, I'm just so fucking happy about this thing. I want to share it with people. I had a win. I work with a cool actor.

I work with a cool athlete. You know, I did something um you want to tell people that you love about these things because you assume that they're going to be happy for you and a lot of times they're fucking not um they're just not yeah it's very rare to find people like i'm not hanging out with him anymore. He name drops all the time. Yeah, exactly. Hockey players, actors. Yeah. People are energy. And it's one of the reasons I like doing podcasts like this is because I get energy talking to you guys. I get it.

And I can't stop it. I want to be around positive people who are winning because the opposite of that, people can feel like mud. Like when you're talking to someone who's negative, it's like going through thick, sticky mud. It's hard to get through the conversation. It's five minutes, but I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted talking to someone who's negative. And you can try and pretend that outside influences don't influence you, but they do. They absolutely do.

You can pretend, nah, I don't get affected by that. But you do. We all do. And eliminating interactions with negative people is probably the first step towards that mindset shift. Is that you're probably in a state of negativity because you're surrounded by it. But if you find yourself a new clique, you find yourself people who are in alignment with your beliefs. Hang out with younger people if you're feeling old. Yeah.

Hang out with younger people if you're feeling old. I'm not too young now. You don't want to be that guy. Don't go to parks. Guys, get the fuck out of parks. Chuck E. Cheese, stay away from it. Hey, just hit the brakes. We're not talking about young people. Chuck E. Cheese on the same podcast that Encima pulled a cock ring out of.

This is true. That is not what we're talking about. It did happen. It did happen. You guys, we can't be bouncing from aliens to dead frogs to this. Sums up this podcast as a whole. It does. And there's still so much

to talk about. That's true. Barely scratched the surface. We haven't scratched the surface on lab stuff. Yeah, yeah. We can dig into all kinds of fun stuff.

What about, like, muscle biopsy? Ever looked into anything like that? Like, would that, I mean, I would imagine that would tell you a lot about somebody, right?

It would tell you a lot about somebody, but none of which I would be able to tell you. I'd refer out to my man and the master of this. It was Dr. Andy Galpin. That guy is a monster. He's a super, super bright and intelligent dude. I'm very happy and lucky to be working with him.

And he's done a bunch of biopsies. He's got his own labs, the whole freaking deal. He would definitely be the guy to do it with. Are you working with him on the retreat thing as well, or is that something separate? No. Well, he's a part of that company. We're both a part of XPT. He did the Malibu retreat. I'm doing the Costa Rica retreat.

But that's XPT. So we're involved in that. But where me and him do the most work together is at Rapid Health. in that, but where me and him do the most work together is at Rapid Health. So Rapid Health is the company that we've formed to do all of this testing. So basically, if you want the professional athlete experience, you go through Rapid Health because we'll do your blood, urine, saliva, and stool testing. And then Andy and I join forces to create your program. So it's not just me. It's me and Andy. And you're getting over 1,000 biomarkers tested.

And you get truly like a perfectly tailored program for you. Because with that, like we're not just looking at the snapshot of your physiology. We're looking at the whole movie. We get everything tracked and measured and tested. And then only once we've got all of that data, then we start putting together your program. And the transformations that we've had in there, the mentally, emotionally, and physically, have been outstanding. And it's just because quality of data in equals quality of data out. When I know everything about you, I can make the everything about you program.

When I know everything about you, I can make the everything about you program. Yeah. And that's really what Rapid Health is all about and how me and Andy, you know, that's like the project that we've been doing the most. And XPT is the retreat type of thing that you were mentioning to me where people are, they're training, like they're doing ocean swims and all kinds of crazy things, right? Yeah. Laird Hamilton. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Type shit, right? Yeah. Laird Hamilton. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Type shit, right? Yeah.

XPT is Extreme Performance Training. Laird Hamilton and Gabby Reese are the head honchos there. And then Andy and I are XPT advisors. So basically Gabby and Laird run the show. They do the retreat. They're bosses. It's great working with them and what it basically is is you do uh fitness retreats um and it's it's like you're going somewhere and what

happens is basically you'll touch down in costa rica and then we'll train well two three times a day it's a fitness retreat um and then in between sessions i'm lecturing or andy's lecturing or laird hamilton's lecturing so you basically do the workouts and then in between them you learn all about it um i mean you you're you're hanging yeah we're training on a beach we've got all your meals covered we got your supplements covered you just show up and then uh we have a lot of fun yeah yeah so it's it's it is really cool xbt's got an app too to try and um have a lot of fun. Yeah. Yeah. So it is really cool. XBT's got an app, too, to try and get a lot more breath work and recovery stuff out there. They're excellent in the world of recovery and all this parasympathetic menu stuff I'm talking about.

And their app is actually what I use for my pro athletes to do breath work and stuff at home. What's the app called? XBT Life. XBT Life? Yeah. Sick. at home. What's the app called? XBT Life. What are some things that people should be aware of when it comes to the blood work in terms of trying to keep

some of the organs healthy, like the liver, the kidneys, even the heart? What are some of your opinions? I know it's like a big question, but what are some tests that we should be looking at? Let's just say we're talking about our average listener who's probably between the ages of like 25 and 45.

Yep. So somewhere in that age range, like what are some things that – look, man, you're at this age where it would be really smart for you to start to look into getting these things tested. Yeah. Because these can be things that can help you avoid a lot of bullshit down the road. Yes. And blood chemistry is king. So like it's really fun to talk about the cool stool, saliva, urine stuff, but we can't forget blood chem is still king.

There's a reason why you can get it in Hong Kong and in Moscow and in Hawaii and in Toronto and in LA because it is the most scientifically valid and reliable. It's been around for decades. It has the most research behind it. The problem is most people just view it in the lens of fake health rather than real health. So that's basically where we switch things up. But that's where I still recommend it. If you go to your doctor and you ask for a CBC and CMP, so complete blood count and comprehensive metabolic panel, that will give you a ton of markers to give you a ton of insight on all of the organ health that you're talking about. And in a unique context, you could add specific add-ons to that. Like you'll get great insight on liver health with AST and ALT.

There are great insights towards liver health. But you can also add on something known as serum bile acids that detect liver injury before ALT. So if you're very interested in that area of life, perhaps due to a predisposition or drug use or whatever it's going to be, that's an add-on you can do. In the blood panel, what I just mentioned, it'll already come with glomerular filtration rate, creatinine, and blood re-nitrogen, which are all great kidney markers. But kidney markers are kind of tough. So I really like if somebody has a predisposition to kidney issues, or if they've had a high blood pressure or drug use over time, add something called Cystatin C. That's a great kidney marker. So you'd be getting insight on that. As far as the heart goes, that's when you'd be looking at things like HDL and LDL, triglycerides, total cholesterol, and also kind of just the picture as a whole.

Because your heart, it's working 24-7, and it's never stopped since the day you were born. It's dealing with a lot. And you want to make that passageway as clean as possible. a lot and you want to make that that passageway as clean as possible and this is actually i'm glad i went in this direction because my brain's freaking on fire when you ask that question there's so many ways to go but uh one of the biggest things that hurts people's heart in the world of bodybuilding is they get very thick blood from drug use but then will take stimulants and then the heart rate increases and it's trying to push this thick mud through the vascular system. And so many people do not know, again, free calculation.

I do it in my practice, but anybody can do it. It's a blood viscosity calculation. You can go online, calculate your blood viscosity, and it is a validated evidence-based way to measure viscosity of the blood. This is connected to heart health. This is connected to many other organ health. It's connected to dehydration as well. It's connected to so many things. And I truly, truly believe that we could have avoided many of the recent deaths that we've seen in the bodybuilding scene if we if more people did blood work more often but more importantly did blood viscosity calculations you can see problems so long before they're problems like

it breaks my heart for people because um like you can you can be an alcoholic for a long time before you get liver cirrhosis you can eat like an asshole for a long time before you get liver cirrhosis. You can eat like an asshole for a long time before you get type 2 diabetes. Like our bodies are very resilient and they're very adaptive. But if you continue to insult it over time, eventually you will walk to the end of that cliff and fall off.

And now you have an ailment. Now you've got a real problem. And you can see these things like a decade in advance. It's so, there's so many early signs that just don't get picked up on. That breaks my heart for people. And I want like the industry to really start knowing about some of this stuff because because so many things you could be preventative towards your health rather than reactive towards your health. towards your health, but you'll only ever be able to be preventative if you view health through the lens of real health and talk to someone who gives a shit about how you feel and not just whether you have a disease or not. I can hear the keyboard kind of clacking right now because when you were

talking about blood thickness, we've kind of had this discussion with a few people on the podcast before, and there's always a few comments that are like, if they didn't get that vaccine. Right? You've probably seen that before, right? Yeah. How much legitimacy does that comment actually even have? Oh, man. I hate this discussion because it's so emotionally rooted. I know.

But I can only speak from experience. Vaccine users and non-vaccine users, my clients are both, I don't see a difference in their blood. I don't. So when nobody does more blood work on their clients than me. I don't have an ax to grind. I don't have a conspiracy. I just give a shit if my client's getting results or not.

Plenty of my clients have got the vaccine. Plenty haven't. I don't see a difference in their labs. difference in their labs. So in my opinion, I do not think that that is something that is as big of a deal as so many people make it out to be. Now, having that opinion on the vaccine's impact on health doesn't mean I'm in alignment with forcing people to get the vaccine or forcing people to get a vaccine. You can have an opinion that the vaccine is not impacting health. That doesn't also mean that you are for crazy regulation and forcing people to do things. I'm not in that mindset. I just, it's been my experience that it doesn't impact blood work

and that's it. Is, uh, is donating blood as effective as we think it is for trying to get that viscosity down or whichever direction it is to thin it out? Yeah, yeah. You can donate blood like every 90 days or so and not run into any issues. It will really bring down viscosity and red blood cells. But if you have the same practices and routines and habits, then you're just going to bring that viscosity back. So you're basically, you know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's kind of just like a temporary band-aid. And also, like maybe it's worse. Maybe you have a high level of viscosity and you take it away and then you have a high level again because this is something we've actually seen and it's known as glycemic variability.

So if you ask someone on the street and say, hey, would you rather have chronically elevated glucose or would you rather have glucose that is low sometimes and then high sometimes? The average person is probably going to say, you know, I'll take the low high. That's glycemic variability. It's been demonstrated in research that creates more endothelial damage and more oxidative stress than chronically elevated glucose.

Variability is actually worse than chronic elevation, and this can be measured by something known as 1,5-anhydroglutitol, or it's easier to pronounce its trademark name, Glycomark. Nobody knows Glycomark. It's FDA approved. It's available for people to get. It measures glycemic variability. And what happens is that low to high creates an insult

and a stressor to the system, as opposed to the system simply being able to just adapt at a higher level of glucose. And, you know, it's my position that perhaps that viscosity could just be another type of insult continuing to take place similar to variability. But in either case, we don't want it. Yeah. Yeah, because my shit's always been really high just because I snore a lot. So I've been trying to correct that. But then I'm like, well, maybe I should go donate some more blood. Yeah.

There's an awesome company that a lot of people don't know about called Absolute Rest. They're one of these guys that like they haven't done much marketing because they're so freaking smart and everything is going fine with the people that they're working with. Dude, they've got so much cool technology coming out. Absolute Rest? Yes, Absolute Rest.

Yeah, the guys are monsters. They do amazing sleep studies. Yeah, they have stuff at home. So there's this thing. It's very small, but it's an environmental scanner. So it'll actually measure CO2 clouds if you're breathing in CO2 during sleep and offsetting sleep quality. It's looking at temperature. It's looking at noise pollution.

It's just something you put in your room, and and you basically it'll scan your room and tell you if it's a good environment for sleep or not like it's the coolest shit man and they take into account like wi-fi and all that other weird stuff that might disrupt your sleep i mean i don't know about if it does any kind of emf wave stuff but um those dudes, I've met them on several occasions and worked with them. So my clients a lot of times don't have a budget. So it's like if they've got a real sleep problem, then let's use the boys from Absolute Rest

because they are the head honchos in this field, in that department. Yeah, yeah. That's a great resource. Are you a fan of uh mouth tape at all yeah yeah yeah just enforcing nasal breathing i'm a fan of um the uh nasal those ones too yeah it's great for snoring have you tried it yes that's actually how i've been able to correct it is the the breathe right strip uh mouth tape and then uh and then a uh i clean up

the air in my in my room that's really how I've been able to solve it. Nice. Yeah. Not nothing. I'm like, you guys are whispering. It totally distracted me. I couldn't hang on. I tried.

I'm not a full-on pro yet. Sorry, honey. Yeah. It is tough when your thoughts are like, my brain turns into electricity. It's like, zzz. It was so funny how bad I crumbled right there. I was like, don't lose focus, don't lose turns into electricity it's like it was so funny how bad i crumbled right there i was like don't don't don't lose focus don't lose focus and it's gone

it's all good though we were just saying how we're doing another podcast with dan because dan has a lot of knowledge and we need to break this thing up oh yeah i was gonna say like man before we get into the sleep shit because i know you got a lot to say about the sleep, the breathing. We still haven't gotten to all the testing. Like, we got to break this motherfucker. What if I just, like, you know, gram him and just keep asking questions over you guys and just keep going? Why? You need to bleep that.

No, I don't. That's cold. Don't do our boy like that. I thought it was a known thing. Dude, on Bloodwork alone, we could do several more podcasts and help a lot of people. Like Bloodwork's a big one for me because it's the cheapest test to get. And lots of times it's covered by insurance. Just nobody knows how to look at the damn thing.

I think all three of us have some Bloodwork too. So maybe we can give you some of that. Maybe print it out or something like that and you can have it. Dude, if you can bring it up on the screen, we can just do readings and I'll just go through it. All my stuff's really old. I definitely at least have mine. I'm open to you interpreting on air. I don't care.

Mine's a few months gone. I don't care if it shows that I have a giant penis. It's not going to bother me. We all know you have a monster cock. I've seen it. Oh. It used to be bigger. it's got a little smaller with age but well i haven't been using my pump as much you slinging kind of like andrew but andrew's the king of the podcast i'm telling you he's got three percent congolese in his blood and

that shit shows brother it's crazy you're just setting yourself up for like fail like uh you're gonna be so mad. Like one day we're going to be on the road somewhere. Maybe sharing a hotel. Do you remember when you were asleep on the plane first class? Yeah. Yeah. You don't remember that well, do you?

You don't remember that well. I was asleep. You were asleep, but you don't remember apparently. I don't know. I woke up with like morning wood, but it was in the middle of the flight. And I was sitting next to you, right? Why does that happen on planes? Why does that happen?

A crazy fucking angry penis on the plane for some reason. For no reason. And I'm like, I have to pee, but this fucking thing is like knocking on the ceiling. What the fuck? How do we get that cabin pressure in my bedroom? It's like in grade seven when you're trying to do math and then you just have a boner yeah but then the teacher calls you up and you have to walk like this to try and point it down or do the the in the in the strap in the boxer strap oh yeah i was so lucky that my i asked

my mom mom can you buy me some spandex she didn't know why i was just i just need spandex just keep this thing because i was just fucking yeah everywhere. You get on a plane and then you got to go pee. It's a problem. It's a huge problem. Yeah, why does that happen? I remember you had to put your books in front of you. I'm like, why is it carrying his books so weird? Your dickhead friend knocks your books out of your hands or something,

fucking with you. You're like, oh, shit. See, now we're talking about the real issues. This is the stuff that we need to too many boners this is how you know the podcast starts get good when we're just talking about penis the whole time that's that's penis that's a world that i want to live in yeah yeah you guys have any more questions that are in alignment with what some of what we talked about we We can probably catch up next one. I think we should save it for the –

because I think all the stuff that I have questions about are going to fall in line to the next podcast we do. Yeah, but that was fantastic. Fuck it. Let's get out of here. Andrew, take us on out of here. Thank you, everybody, for checking out today's episode. Sincerely appreciate it.

Drop those comments down below because there was a lot of stuff going on today so we want to hear everything you guys have to say uh make sure you guys like the video before you guys head out and subscribe if you guys are not subscribed uh please follow the podcast at mb power project on instagram tiktok and twitter my instagram tiktok and twitter's at i am andrew z and sema and sema any on instagram youtube and sema uni on tiktok and twitter hit up the discord guys guys. Discord. Yeah. Just pop it in there.

Dan, where can people find you? Instagram's the spot to find me, at Dan Garner Nutrition. If you want any of my courses, they're at CoachGarner.com. And if you want to work with Rapid, go to RapidHealthReport.com. What's in your courses? I'm very, like, what's in your courses? I've got nutrition and training courses. Yeah. And then next year, I'm very, like, what's in your courses? I've got nutrition and training courses. Yeah.

And then next year I'm going to have lab exclusive courses, lab interpretation courses because that's a very underserved area right now that I think can create a huge impact. Awesome. That's the first time I've announced that. Breaking news on the Power Project. Awesome. Thanks for joining me in the run. And on the run you told me that you ran a marathon.

I don't think you really trained much for it. And then maybe just a few months later, benched 405. Yeah. So first of all, benching 405, you're allowed to wear a tank top into the gym if you want. I didn't pause. It was touch and go. Can I still do a tank top? You still did it.

Yeah, you still got it. Yes. It's fine. Thank yeah i uh yeah dude i ran a full marathon in mississauga on may 1st and then less than 90 days later i pressed 405 i ran the marathon around 190 and then pressed 405 around 210 and now i'm back to like 190 just because i was tired of eating that much weight moves weight so i wanted to get jack Jack to get that done. But yeah, I probably look smaller on this podcast now. People are like, did he bench 405?

Go to my Instagram. The video's there. Oh, video proof. There we go. That means it happened. I had to collect. I had to do the video because I was like. Yeah, when I invited him on a run, he was like, yeah, I'll try it.

And I was like, oh, man, is he going to really be hurting and suffering? Do I need to really pay attention to him? And you did great. Thanks, man. You're cruising right along. We got to prove it, though. Oh. Oh.

405. Oh, he's cheating. Smelling salts. Smelling salts. You see those slangers? Yeah. He's got some slingshot sleeves on there. That's the strong belt, too.

Mm-hmm. That's the strong belt. Oh, yeah. Totally cheating. How come there's not a spotter? Because I'm a fucking animal. Living on the edge, too. Oh, yeah. Totally cheating. How come there's not a spotter? Because I'm a fucking animal. Living on the edge, bro. He was prepared.

There we go. He knew it was going to happen. Jesus. It hit the test. It touched the chest. That was very clean. Yeah. Let's go.

There you go. I feel emasculated. I never got 405. It's okay, me neither. Hey! High five. Click. That sounds like something a martian would say oh my god i'm at mark smelly bell strength is never weakness weakness never strength catch you guys later bye