Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 594 - Joel Greene: Master Your Gut, Live Longer!

Episode Date: September 21, 2021

Close friend of the Power Project, Joel Greene, is BACK for another amazing conversation. Joel is one of the smartest guests we've ever had on the show so get the note pads and No. 2 pencils ready. Buy Joel's Book The Immunity Code: The New Paradigm for Immune Centric Health and Radical Anti-Aging: https://amzn.to/3ksaj04 Follow Joel Greene on IG: https://www.instagram.com/realjoelgreene Grab the new Power Project "think LESS" shirt, supplies are limited: https://markbellslingshot.com/products/think-less-tee?variant=39468915261534 Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Magic Spoon Cereal: https://www.magicspoon.com/powerproject to automatically save $5 off a variety pack! ➢8 Sleep: Visit https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT15 for 15% off ALL LABS! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Subscribe to the Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

I've been loving my eight sleep. How about you guys? Loving it. Dropping the temperature down a little bit. Yeah. I don't sweat in my bed anymore. I'm not like peeing in my bed when I sleep anymore. Joel, you ever experience these like new mattress tops that some of the companies make and it

helps lower your body temperature? You ever mess with those things? I have not, no. Damn, they're fucking sweet, man. Just you wait. We'll dive into some sleep with you in a minute. Yeah. I can't wait to dive into his bed with you in a minute. Yeah. I can't wait to dive into his bed.

Wait, no, just his sleep, not his bed. I've been noticing it's been making a big difference for me with my sleep, and I keep kind of almost forgetting about it since it's just on the bed and it's lowering the temperature, but my sleep has been vastly improved since incorporating it. So it's been as simple as just putting a top on top of my bed and just setting some of the settings to what I thought was comfortable for me. And it's been working awesome.

And the mattress topper can go like as low as 55 degrees or as high as 110. But I like to keep my shit cool. But the cool thing is like with eight sleep, you have the topper and the mattress or cause, but the cool thing is like with eight sleep, you have the topper and the mattress or cause Mark already liked his mattress. He just was like, I'm just going to use the topper on my mattress. So you could go either way if you already liked the mattress you have at home. But man, it's great not sweating when I sleep and it's great. Just like I fall asleep faster because my mattress temperature is cooler and it changes through

the night. Joel, in your book, uh, immunity Code, you talk about some tricks to help get to sleep. And I believe one of them was some sort of thermal regulation through like just running your hands under water or something like that, right? Yeah, it's heating the extremities. So you heat the extremities, you cool the core. Yeah. Ah. Yeah. So you heat up your hands.

And because you heated up your hands, your body kind of reacts to it by kind of cooling down. Is that somewhat, am I getting that somewhat correct somewhat correct yeah it's so the direction of temperature is going to flow one way or the other so if you actually cool the extremities what you'll notice is that heat will flow from the extremities into the core it's like when you're really cold your body's going to try and heat the core up right when you cool the extremities it's the opposite so it's and i like things that are easy to prove. You can prove this one either way. So the opposite of it is just during the day, putting your hands in like ice water, cold ice, and you get super energized. Right. You get very energized.

Like, ooh. And it's the opposite. So you heat the hands up, you heat the feet up right at bedtime, and you get a nice little like calming down, cools the core a little bit. Yeah. This ends up being really nice because when you lay in your bed, as soon as you lay down, you get the kind of warmth and comfort of your blanket, but then you get some coolness of the actual bed itself, depending on like what temperature you want to set it up. But for me, uh, I'm a sweaty pig, so I like to, uh, have it be pretty cold when I go to bed. Yeah. My favorite thing thus far, all of it's my favorite thing, but the one thing that's like really, really been beneficial for me has been the fact

that it'll wake you up. Like you set like a certain time, like I have mine set for like 430, but it won't. If you're not ready to be awoken at 430, it'll wake you up somewhere around there when you're like sleep cycle is forgot which one it is. But it doesn't wake up my entire house the way my alarm clock does. So it actually just starts vibrating all around my head and stuff and i wake up and it's just like dude it's that alone right there that's totally worth it but um yeah we're gonna dude so you guys got to head over to what is it eight sleep.com slash power project that's e-i-g-h-t sleep.com slash power project and whether you get the the mattress and the topper or you get just the topper, you're going to receive $150 off automatically links to them down in the

description, as well as the podcast show notes again, eight sleep.com slash power project. Really? You guys highly recommend it. Head over there ASAP. What is the deal with the super sleep you've been talking about? That one took off.

What's super sleep that took off? Yeah. How do we do it? I mean, I think you said you're sleeping for like 10 or 12 hours? Well, I've had this thing that I've done over the years, particularly as I started getting older, which was a couple times a month, just try to get in a good 12 hours of sleep.

So I'd make it a point. I'm just going to move your microphone a little bit more this way since you're kind of naturally leaning towards me a little bit more. So I'm just going to go. Is that okay? more this way since you're kind of naturally leaning towards me a little bit more. So I'm just going to go. Is that okay? Yeah. Can you give it up? Thank you.

So it was a couple times a month trying to make a job out of going to bed early. So just try and sleep from about 7 to 7. And then what happened to me a few months back was I kind of hit a bit of a wall. And it just was I'm going to be 57 in a month. And I just kind of had a dip in testosterone. And when your hormones dip, it'll, it'll wreck your sleep. You know, so it's, it's really important to keep your hormones up. I have this, I've talked with Carl Lenore about this and kind of have this closet idea that essentially, as long as you're sexually viable, it's a benefit to the herd. And as soon as you're not, you're just competing for resources. So your body works to get you out of the picture as soon as your hormones dip. So that was one element why my sleep, I kind of finally figured that out. And then the other element was that, um, I, I had stopped using the blanket that I use

and I was just kind of sleeping without a blanket and it wrecked my sleep, wrecked my sleep. So I just did a lot of research and I kind of figured out, oh, okay, it's hormones and it's skin temperature. I kind of figured that out. And so I corrected the two and then voila, sleep's back to normal. Got my testosterone up. Okay, great. And so from that, now I'm just trying to catch up. And so I did this post called calling it super sleep. And then everybody's like, how do I do super sleep? But basically, it's just number one, it's making a job to get to sleep. And then just a huge list of checkboxes so that you can get a lot of sleep and a lot of deep sleep.

And so I think it's a really good practice as you get older to just kind of try and do a couple of times a month. Yeah. So how did you realize that your testosterone was going down? Cause you say you hit, you hit a wall. Did you like get some blood work back and you saw your test was down and you also like physically, you felt something within a week or something. How'd you realize that? One's just the boner measure. Oh yeah. So boners during sleep. Boner measurements. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that during sleep tells you just about everything you need to know. Okay. And as long as you're kind of in the teenage zone, you know, everything's working. The other thing too is energy.

Wait, like when you wake up, like having a morning, like morning woods, what you're talking about? Yeah. Yeah. Well, all for the night. All for the night. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, don't, don't tell me you don't do that right now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So that's a huge piece of the equation no wait that's actually a big deal to talk about no pun intended how big yeah like here we go how big of a deal but this is no this is really interesting because that's something that i like i only really thought about morning would i never thought about is it something is it normal just have a boner through the night so that's something that you think that men should pay attention to as far as their hormonal levels, as far as their vitality, having a boner through the night. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. Because most people don't think about that, man. I didn't think about that until you just mentioned it. Well, you don't think about it when you're young because it's there all the time. And then as you get older, you don't think about it because it's not there. You know, you only think about it when you restore it and you're like, oh, my gosh, I missed that. So that's there now. Yeah. So it's a big, it's a big, you know you'll you only you only think about it when you restore it and you're like oh my gosh i missed that so that's there now yeah so it's a big it's a big you know predictor of things

and the other thing is just energy um when when you're so testosterone and energy production are kind of related you know testosterone helps any ideas on what the hell's going on inside the body to make you have a boner randomly in the middle of night night? Yeah, you have hormone production. Just like a cascade of testosterone maybe? Yeah, your hormones are working. So anyways, all that to say, you consistently see that with people over 50. When their hormones get disrupted, their sleep gets disrupted at the same time. And so you have to correct both.

You can't leave the one or the other. Actually, that's a big cycle. I'm sure we'll talk about sleep here. But anyways, restored that, restored, which is another interesting thing is skin temperature. So we're talking about like, you know, cooling the body down and heating the body up to get to sleep. And it kind of creates a lot of confusion, like, should you get cold? Should you get hot? And what I found for me was the answer is that it's neither cold nor hot. It's a range. Okay.

So there's a range where the skin needs to be. The skin needs to be between 87 and 95. And I'm not talking about the room. I'm just talking about the temperature at the surface of the skin. Okay. And when that's between 87 to 95, it induces sleep. And everybody's number is different. Some people give you 95, some people give you 87.

But whatever your sleep, no pun, sleep number is different. Some people give you 95, some people give you 87. But whatever your sleep number is, whatever your sleep number is, if you're too far above that, like your back is sweaty, you're not going to go to sleep, if you're too far below that, like it's too cold, the cold will wake you up. So there's just a range. And again, I like things that you can just prove.

So that's an easy one. Just pull your blanket off at night if you have a really cold room and watch. The cold will wake you up. Cover yourself, get the right amount of blanket, you'll sleep sound. So, yeah. So those two big things, um, I kind of got all that corrected and, and then, um, been working on just getting my sleep caught up, which, um, I'm discovering as you get older, uh, you know, the, the big animal, the big dog in the fight is ATP synthesis. So there's a scientist, I think it was James Blackstock in 1989, he calculated the amount of ATP the body needs to make every day. And I don't know if this is true, but if it's anywhere near true, it's fascinating.

And what he calculated was that you need to make your body weight in ATP every day. Your body weight. So 220 pounds of ATP, you need to synthesize every day. Your body weight. So 220 pounds of ATP, you need to synthesize every day. Okay? That's astounding. So if you think about, how do I do that?

How do I synthesize 220 pounds of ATP? You know, is it through food? No. No, it's through breathing. Breathing is the way you do it. And ATP in the body works like money. Works very much like money in a factory. So if you have a factory that makes Teslas

and it has these robots and the robots, they make the cars, but then they also maintain the factory and they do all these things. The money, or ATP, is what you need to pay for the robots to maintain the factory and to build the cars. The cars are analogous to protein, and those proteins maintain everything.

If you don't have enough money, you've got to cut back. You have to cut back on the robots that maintain the factory. And once you cut back on that, the factory starts going to hell quickly. So ATP is like the body's currency. And sleep, the principal thing with sleep is to restore ATP primarily. So that when you wake up, ATP levels are restored. What you see in people as they get older is they're just not making ATP at the same rate they used to. Let's back up just a second.

What is ATP? Adenosine triphosphate. So it is the body's it's the cell's primary source of energy. Energy being defined is the ability to move stuff around. The ability to do work. So like within the cell, we need to do all kinds of things. Something needs to move into

one position. You need ATP for that. You need to make proteins. You need ATP for that. You need ATP for everything. It's the power. So if you took like an automated factory and you pulled the cord, nothing would happen. The factory would be dead. So the production of ATP is the thing. Your energy source. I can see why you're fascinated by this because last time we talked, you talked a lot about kind of a young body versus an old body, and we can get into that a little bit later. But some of the stuff that you're saying about sleeping, we've heard different opinions about. We've heard people say that you can't restore sleep, that you can't make up sleep. What are some of your thoughts on that? Are you finding something quite different for

yourself, or is there kind of newer research maybe showing something different yeah i think there's conflicting evidence on that and i'm just sorting through i mean i'll say just for myself i feel like i can make up sleep um now i would also say like if i had you know seven days of three hours of sleep i could also understand that that's i might not ever really get that back you know but i'm talking about like a bad night isish or two of rough sleep and then being able to make it up on the weekend and getting a little extra snoozing in. It seems like it does something, but I don't really truly know because I never actually really measured it, but I do feel better when I do that. Well, I think there's two pieces to that equation. I think the first piece is that there's an optimal level of ATP repletion when you wake up that leads to a feeling of being energized when you wake up.

And the worst thing in the world is waking up and dragging ass. That is the worst thing in the world because then you don't have the energy to really think. You don't have the energy to go work out. You don't have the energy to do anything. So that's kind of like priority number one. The other piece of that would be damage that occurred from lack of sleep during a period of time. And can you ameliorate some of that? You probably can to some degree, to some degree.

You know, we can repair a lot of things. So, and if I, just thinking back to different studies, I think the evidence is mixed for it. So, but regardless of whether or not you can or you can't, getting to a place where you're waking up, like feeling energetic and refreshed is sort of like a non-negotiable. Like you have to have that, you know, you need that because it's tied to everything else. It's tied to your ability to perform at your job, your ability to do anything, your ability to think, your ability to, you know, do all the things that you wanted. You have to have adequate ATP replacement. So. Can you talk to us about breathing real quick? Because you mentioned breathing and it's really interesting how much more breathing is being like talked about currently.

For example, we had Andrew Hoobman on our last podcast, but in his podcast about testosterone, he literally had a whole section on why nasal breathing is massively important for hormonal and testosterone health, nasal breathing specifically. So what about breathing helps the production of ATP? And something I've noticed for myself, and I mentioned this to Mark this morning, I typically try to use mouth tape every night. And on the nights I forget, I typically,

I don't use an alarm, but I sleep longer. On the nights that I use mouth tape, every single time I sleep like 45 minutes less, I wake up energized. I'm just like, I can hop out of bed. Always. I need less sleep. What might be going on? Have you measured your deep sleep one versus the other and your heart rate variability one versus the other? My HRV is usually a little bit better when I have mouth tape on. Um, deep sleep can vary depending on the time that I go to bed on certain nights. Some nights I go to bed at 1230, some nights I go to bed at like 11. So it ranges there, but always I sleep less and wake up feeling more energized

when I use mouth tape. And it's not like when I, when I don't use mouth tape, it's not like I wake up with a dry mouth, but my mouth sometimes is probably falling open a little bit here and there throughout the night when I don't use mouth tape versus when I do. So I'm just curious about that. Yeah. Well, I know some of the research in that talks about that you're, you're, especially when you talk to like some of the dentists that are really on the forefront of that, which you find a lot, some of the people that know the most about that are dentists that are really into this. You oxygenate the brain better.

So that's one component of it. I think another piece, just generally speaking, is that in order to make ATP, your primary fuel source is not food. It's oxygen. So you pull oxygen into oxfos, and that's how you're making all that ATP. So you have kind of a linear equation with respect to oxygen and ATP production. So the less oxygen, the less ATP you make. And I'm trying to think of the research I've seen on mouth breathers. the less ATP you make.

And I'm trying to think of the research I've seen on mouth breathers. I think, to my knowledge, just almost universally, when you correct mouth breathing, you correct a lot of things. You correct cancer risk. You correct obesity. So what you see, this is really interesting. When you look at childhood obesity rates, first of all, this isn't any one thing. It's a bunch of things that are tied together. But when you look at childhood obesity rates. First of all, this isn't any one thing. It's a bunch of things that are tied together.

But when you look at childhood obesity rates, the absence of chewing hard foods and a lot of, okay, and this is a radical opinion within dentistry, but a guy you should have on the podcast is Dr. Gregory Clibon. Man, this guy is the nicest guy you're ever going to meet in your life. Super nice guy and really knowledgeable. And he can really speak to this stuff, but just to paraphrase some stuff he might tell you,

what you see is some of the older orthodontic techniques, they were based on removing things from the jaw. And so what happens is the jaw and the facial structure never properly develops. There's a whole bunch of epigenetics going on here. It's a whole bunch of gene stimulation from the ability to chew and chew hard foods. And so what you see with childhood obesity rates is there's these high correlations with chewing soft foods, with improper airway flow.

And so some of the net things that you see from that are kind of this thing. You'll see kind of this this kind of posture leaning forward and the reason you see that is because you're unconsciously need to get more air so you see kind of this humpback kind of you know posture like and you can you can you can test it you could just okay well stand really straight and breathe i'm not getting as much air you know put your head forward oh yeah i get more air okay but a lot of that is coming from the lack of development of the palate and the mouth. And there's a book I'm reading right now called epigenetic orthodontics. Okay. And it's incredible. Like the pictures that you see in this book of the facial correction that goes on when people undergo

the expansion of the palate. I know that sometimes people start to hear this stuff and they think that we're crazy because we've been talking about this for quite some time. But like my understanding is that there's some stem cell production, chewing on hard things. And that's what helps kind of recorrect. And we're not really saying that, that mouth breezing is causing people to be heavier because we know what the root cause,

but as Joel pointed pointed out it it can be a potential another issue uh that compounds a already complicated issue and so people's decision-making skills you can you can start to just think about on days when you're really really tired think about your decision-making skills and how poor they are. And so now think about if you started to feel that way every single day because you had sleep apnea or some sort of obstructed breathing, not just during sleep, but even throughout the entire day. Now you're really screwed and it's going to be very difficult to make changes or want to investigate what's going on with your diet. It's going to be that much harder for you to be able to kind of fight against it.

I have seen from coaching clients, I've seen things like, um, I have seen, you know, whole body resonance imaging of like the airway. Okay. And you can literally see these tiny airways, tiny airways that are restricting airflow. Okay. tiny airways that are restricting airflow. Okay. And these are things that if you just run the math on what, what, what your probabilistic outcomes are, you need oxygen to make ATP. In my book, I talk a lot about the hypoxia protein, uh, HIF1. So our body has a backup system when you don't have food that's called body fat. Um, it also has a backup system when you don't have food. That's called body fat. It also has a backup system when you don't have air. Okay, that's called HIF-1. And basically, each cell controls its own sort of need

for oxygen tension. Oxygen tension is kind of like a little lever, a little meter that says, we don't have any oxygen. Let's go to the backup system. What you see hand-in-hand with lots of different types of cancers is when you have sustained hypoxia as a whole and within cells, you see this high, high correlation to cancer. And it's because you're not getting enough oxygen because your cells start running on glycolysis. running on glycolysis. Okay. And then you see sort of these inflammatory mediators and you see these inflammatory cascades within immune cells that, and the way to understand it is in my book, I talk about the macrophage as kind of like a central focus point. The macrophage is a white blood cell and they're kind of like the SWAT team, like the SWAT team of the body. You know, they patrol and, you know, they see something that's out of whack and they go kill it. Okay. But they're also the body's doctors.

And so they kind of have dual roles. And there's a time when you need, sometimes you need a SWAT team, sometimes you need a doctor. But what you see with macrophages is generally when you have issues with hypoxia, they show up because there's a problem. And the metabolism of the SWAT team macrophages is very inflammatory by its nature. And that's necessary. You need it to kill things. But when there's too much of that, the whole system gets wonky. And you get these inflammatory cascades that are very oncogenic in nature.

So when you look at restricted airflow, you see these very high correlations to cancer and obesity. And it starts in childhood. cancer and obesity, and it starts in childhood. So just simple things like in childhood, correcting airflow and reintroducing back a number of different small things. I don't think there's any one cure, but introducing back hard chewing and a number of other things, I think over the long term can pay huge dividends. And in saying that, you know, I understand there's a lot of orthodontists out there in dentists that would be violently opposed to that idea. That's just BS. It's like ridiculous. There's a small contingent of dental professionals that are sort of really looking at this and seeing pretty amazing results. and the way I've seen people like correct their energy just by correcting sleep at night, by just breathing through the nose, I would literally lay money on time will favor that sort of position.

So, and then real quick, as long as, as far as the production of ATP breathing more, so you're, you're pretty much saying exercise can massively help that because you increase your breathing rate during exercise, but exercise in accordance with breathing through your nose too. Like, uh, I know like at a certain point with certain exercise, when you get fatigued enough, you're going to have to open your mouth at a certain point when it gets extremely physical, but during a majority of it, you want to be breathing through your nose. Will that help with production or does that matter? You think? I think it does, you know, like an old track and field thing was you're breathing through your nose, you know, during sprints, you know, that, that you're, you're going to perform thing was you're breathing through your nose you know during sprints you know that you're you're gonna perform better when you're breathing

through your nose um top of my head i can't think of any research not that it doesn't exist but just because i got a head full of too much stuff so yeah what about the um because i remember i used to just get every single supplement i could find and there was atp supplements yeah and i bought them because the person sold them to me. And I remember I would take them and be like, oh, my God, I had the best workout ever. But I have no idea what it was doing. So is there any benefit to taking a, quote, ATP supplement? I think there is.

Creatine would be in that category, right? Yeah. So I think there's this amazing repurposing of bodybuilding supplements for longevity. Top of the list is creatine. For the reason that... Let's fucking go. Creatine dance. Let's fucking go. Let's go.

That was pretty good. That was good. All right. All right. By the way, so we were talking about this before the show. Seema's going with me to Comic-Con next year. Yes. Yes. And he's going to wear a body paint black panther suit yes he's gonna cover his junk obviously nobody wants i don't know maybe somebody wants it i don't want to say anyways you're gonna get mobbed dude you're gonna get mobbed you're gonna get so many tiktok followers

you should do it any body paint i think he just just take his shirt off right that well yeah yeah you gotta you gotta do the body paint if it's you gotta go out you gotta yeah no i'm seriously you're gonna be mobbed just yeah i'm down to do it if mark comes as omni-man i'm in that's the other thing my viltrum my friend yes oh my gosh the spitting image of Omni-Man Yeah Oh you need some white Wow White hair right here Oh my gosh

You know He's Omni-Man For Instagram For this segment You gotta make clips And tag him Omni-Man I mean when is it Look it up Andrew

I'll look it up Yeah 2022 Oh my gosh Wait Okay so we'll go with both you guys Yeah together You guys will be mobbed

Mobbed. Sweet fun. Sweet fun. It looks like Mark. I'm going to have to start lifting weights for this. I've said this. I've been saying. Okay, but we were talking about Creepy.

He's been really excited about it. Oh, my gosh. Speaking of boners. Stay behind the podium. I got you. It's hidden. It's hidden. So, yeah.

Looks like it's in July. Oh, it's in oh no no that's a different one so well returning to adulthood here so yeah i i think that there's this uh just fantastic repurposing of bodybuilding supplements for longevity uh particularly with people 50 and over because one of the um not too much talked about issues with longevity is cell volume, keeping the volume of cells plump, keeping them plump. And there is there are there's good research that shows that fluidic cell volume is related to ATP production. The two kind of relate. And so when cells start to kind of like with age, get kind of withered and, you know know the the phospholipid membrane doesn't work that well and they're just they lose their let's call it plumpness that aging accelerates and so things like creatine that plump up the cell I think periodically things are really good case

for those and then along with that is would be peruvian ribose so I think there's a really good case to be made for... Those are old school. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but I think repurposing them for aging, I think that's got a lot of mileage. I think there's a lot of potential therapeutics to that. Would hydration be in there somewhere too? I'm way off.

Yeah, it's in the same thing. So again, these things are always one thing. They're never separate things. But what you see with age is that the cell membrane, the phospholipid membrane, starts to lose its permeability, starts to lose its flexibility. And then you get these imbalances of things like potassium, calcium within the cell. And that's a problem. That's a big problem for aging. So keeping the cell membrane sort of open, keeping it fluid, keeping it from getting damaged has a lot to do with really aging well.

And not only that, the mitochondrial membrane, all the membranes within the cell, keeping them working well. What are some of your thoughts on like why, you know, my seven or eight year old, I think eight year old nephew can come in here and just plop down into a squat and like lay on the floor and pop up and like run around and like just no joint issues amazing mobility like like why is someone at that age that way um and someone that ends up being you know 30 40 50 years older than that what starts to happen to our joints over time why Why do they get stuck or why, you know, why would, like if someone came in the gym and they're about your age and I say, hey, let me see you do a squat. Usually the first thing they say is what?

Because they like want time to kind of regroup and think about what they're about to do because they don't want to just drop into a squat. It's rare that they can really just drop down into a squat out of nowhere. Sometimes as crazy, it might sound to someone who's young, they might even need a little bit of a warmup or a little bit of like prep work to do a squat. What are some of your theories and what do you think is happening in the body that ages us to the point where those joints don't want to do that anymore?

Yeah. Again, it's never one thing. It's a bunch of things, but in that list of a bunch of things you would look at sort of, In that list of a bunch of things, you would look at the either just kind of into like long-term wear and tear or injury, there are sort of different types of fibers and different types of things that get loaded in to repair these things. And sometimes they are stiffer. Sometimes they work differently.

Sometimes they're inflammatory by nature. You also see just a general decline in the ability to circulate blood and sort of get the circulatory system with age. That's a big factor. Another issue has to do with the decline of the gut and translocation of inflammatory mediators that affect other parts of the body. So you'll typically see these. Let me just back that one up just a second so we don't get talking too fast for some people uh so you're kind of saying that over a period of time maybe the stomach doesn't have the same ability to utilize healthy nutrients to help fend off things that may be inflammatory to the body something along those lines more along the lines of like um once what you see with age is the gut starts to open up. And when that happens, you get what's called...

There's always these big words for stupid things, like moving. So the big word for when things move is translocation. It's translocated. It's moved. So things move from the gut, principally cell wall fragments, like peptidoglycan and lipopolysaccharide. So lipopolysaccharide, it's a cell wall fragment. And basically, it's a toxin. It's what's called an endotoxin. And when that penetrates the gut, you see it's very inflammatory by nature. So it activates

very specific receptors on immune cells, turns on the inflammatory machinery. And you see these correlations between things like colitis and arthritis. And you see these correlations between issues in the gut and sort of like joint-related issues. How do you keep your body from, you know, how do you keep your body from like, I guess, acting that way? What I would offer, it was the reason I had to write a book, to my mind, was that we need an approach to health that is immune-centric by its very nature, which, you know, we're in an industry where a lot of people say a lot of stuff for the sake of being novel. I didn't see that as just, oh, let me say something novel. To me, that was central because when you look at obesity or you look at age, you find in a lot of ways, you're really talking about the same things happening. One thing that seems to be pretty clear is that you see this perfusion or opening up of

the gut. Okay. The gut just doesn't seal the way it used to. When you say opening up, like what exactly, like what does that mean specifically? So the function of the gut the gut lining is to act as an interface okay it's to act as a like a it's like a club where the guy at the door is going you get in you wait in line you know you don't get in that's the function of the gut and when the doorman ain't doing his job the club gets mobbed by all these, you know, deplorables. These people that don't belong there. The deplorables mob. Yeah.

So what happens is when the deplorables pierce the gut lining, you know how it is. You throw a party and the wrong people show up and they wreck stuff. That's what happens. They wreck stuff. So what you see in obesity is that I'll take the case of lipopolysaccharide. So again, LPS, lipopolysaccharide, LPS for short, it's a cell wall fragment. When you have a fever and that fever breaks, you get a little nauseated. The reason you're getting nauseated is the body's heating up to kill bacteria. When it kills bacteria, these bacteria die and they're they break

open and their guts spill out and these toxins uh spill into the gut so things like lipopolysaccharide spill into the gut and what lipopolysaccharide does is it sort of like acts like uh it's sort of like coming up to the club with a gun and going i'm coming in okay and okay okay you're coming in so it penetrates into the serum and like in the case of obesity uh it finds your body fat and then it translocates uh moves moves into your adipose mass okay when this thing from the gut this toxin finds your fat mass what it does is a number of things one of the things it does is it can penetrate into the cytosol of your fat cells okay and there it um it activates these key key enzymes that essentially create these a very special kind of cell death okay uh it's like it's like killing a cell in a horrible way and what that does is it recruits all these inflammatory

signal mediators these macrophages or these the SWAT team to your fat mass and what they do is it's like having it's like having a SWAT team outside with 100 cars and the sirens all going off. Okay? It's crazy. So if that happened here, Mark would be throwing his hands up. So would I. We'd be looking for the van outside. If that happened here, business would stop.

There'd be too much chaos, too much confusion. We can't work. So it's very similar in your fat mass. When you get too many of these immune infiltrators into your fat mass and the sirens are going off, your fat doesn't work the way it's supposed to. And if you trace all this back, it started in the gut.

It started with penetrating the gut with these toxins. And the same thing happens in aging. So that takes us back to, okay, well, so how do we deal with like obesity? Part of the answer becomes, well, we have to fix the gut first.

We have to fix this infiltration. These people get into the club. They can't come anymore. So, yeah. You helped me a while back resolve some issues I had with digesting lactose. There's probably a lot of people listening who are like, what the hell?

How were we able to do that? So what is your protocol for that? And why do you suppose that people end up with like lactose intolerance? Because it seems like a lot of people can drink milk when they're young. And then for some reason, they get to a certain age it just doesn't seem to sit right with them anymore. What is going on in the body? Yeah, it's very interesting. So when you look at the guts of young kids, they have these proportions of the phytobacteria that are exponentially greater than adults do.

And then correlated to that, they have these energy levels that are insanely more than that of adults. Okay. You also see some other very interesting things. There's a really cool doctor I've gotten to know, and she just did a study on COVID and bifidobacteria in the gut. What you find is that there's this incredible correlation to having bifidobacteria in the gut and protection from viral immunity. Let's put it that way. Okay. And what you see is that when we talk about digesting carbohydrates, that's a genetic

question because we need to make enzymes. Okay. The majority of enzymes required to break down the spectrum of carbohydrates are not really found in the human genome. They're found in bacteria. Bacteria do a really good job of making the genes to break down different types of carbohydrates, lactose being a carbohydrate. So what you find is that when you have certain species of Bifidobacteria present,

like you did when you were a kid, issues very often seem to go away with digesting milk. And what is Bifidobacteria? So Bifidobacteria is part of the, it's a phyla, it's called the Actinobacteria, and it is probably the single most important bacteria to human health. Like, by far. You could make a case that one other, Acromantia mucinilfa, is of equal importance. That's a debate, but whatever.

But definitely those two together are kind of a key to human health. And Bifidobacteria, it is that first bacteria we got with mother's milk. And it is tied to human immunity to a very large degree. So it's what's called

a commensal, meaning it's part of the bacteria, part of the species of bacteria that confer optimal human health. And when you study what some of the different species of Bifidobacteria do, it's pretty interesting. So Bifidobacteria seems to help the infant gut develop its immune system. And one of the ways that it does this is with antigen sensing. So, bifidobacteria, their cell walls make these proteins. And what these proteins do is, within the gut lining, you have these very specific antigen sensing cells called dendrites or dendritic cells.

And bifidobacteria helps stimulate those cells to pull antigens into the body. And what happens is it helps you develop immunity because with bifidobacteria secreting these proteins, you have your antigen sensing is that much greater. You can pull antigens sort of into the gut and the dendritic cells will present them to T-cells, T-cells will bake up an answer for that, and then it affects these inflammatory cascades, or these anti-inflammatory cascades, down the line, which seem to be very

pro-health, pro-longevity, pro-being lean. And it does a number of other things. It correlates, certain species of Bifidobacteria correlate really well to, um, sanitarians to living like a hundred plus years, um, correlates very well to being lean. There's, there are mechanisms you can look at that, that get beyond correlation that

you can literally say, oh, wow, this is a mechanism. Uh, one of them is a protein that humans make when they're fasting. It's called fasting induced adipose factor. One of them is a protein that humans make when they're fasting. It's called fasting-induced adipose factor. The bacteria that you find in the human gut from the Western diet suppress that protein. The phytobacteria and acromantia make that protein. So the net of that is when you have more of that protein,

the same protein that humans make when they're fasting, it drives fat oxidation up. What aspect of the Western diet suppresses that? Is it the processed, like massively processed foods? What aspect of the Western diet suppresses that? Too many calories? Well, again, it's number one thing. You have too many refined sugary carbohydrates combined with too much bad fat and that combination alone has been shown to to break energy balance in the body

that's been shown to basically act like an accelerator on eating and cut the break line on cessation of eating and when you say bad fat specifically, like examples? You know, just when you look at the types of saturated fats that are, it's not the saturated fats on their own are a thing, it's when you combine saturated fats with these refined sugars

together in the diet, that's when you get into issues. There does seem to be some good evidence that it is the energy density itself of these foods when you have foods that are like you know i think we've all had the experience of eating like you could eat like oreos yeah yeah yeah stuff like that they wreck your ability to say no and would you agree with kind of the statement that most things are probably not all that dangerous as long as we don't overeat them? Or do you kind of think a little differently than that? Like if you don't overall, like I would say that like, you know, you hear the kind of

people say that fat turns to fat the easiest, right? But that's only in the case of if you overeat. They say carbohydrates are second, but again, that's only in the case of if you overeat. Or sometimes people say sugar is really bad because it does A, B, or C. And it could be, it can be, but I think what's the ultimate culprit is continuously overeating day-to-day for long periods of time and not expending enough energy. Well, sure. Yeah, that's the basic equation of this era that we're in. This era has inverted the probabilities of energy balance. So it's easier to take more in than it is to expend it. So that's the core problem. its own thing. When you look at obesity, the evidence probably seems to suggest that cutting fat intake will have a bigger effect than cutting carbs. So taking fat much, much lower seems to have a stronger effect on fat loss. Why do you think that is? I think that's interesting. I

actually feel very similar to you. I actually think that that might be true. Yeah. Because to me, that's a really simple conversation because it's not a real change in someone's diet. I would love to see somebody go like more meat-based and to go lower carb, but that is a huge I know that you love burgers. If you could just make your burgers at home and use a leaner source of protein, you could still make the same burger pretty much. It just will have less fat calories in it. So why do you suppose that cutting the fat back would have the biggest impact? Well, I think one issue has to do with inside the mitochondria. I think you can make a case that it isn't just any one specific type of fat.

I think there's a lot of fats that will fit the bill here. But when you start to see what happens inside the mitochondria with different fats, particularly in an obese state, particularly within adipose tissue, you see a lot of different issues with, um, burning fat, storing fat, and you see like, for example, certain types of fats you'll see, um, you won't see conversion to triglycerols. You'll see a greater buildup of diglycerols, which when you get too many can be toxic. Okay. Um, so I think that's, that's a big deal. Um, anecdotally, I grew up in kind of the, you know, the old school bodybuilding era when what you would see bodybuilders do pre-contest was they just take fat very low these guys got peeled like a stupid peeled so um i think that there's a lot to certain populations taking fat intake really low keeping

your fats healthy but taking them really low and you see the needle move. It also might be, you know, just thinking about this, it might be easier for individuals who let's say they don't exercise as much. Right. Maybe they, because like you notice that like people that exercise a lot, especially when their fats are low,

their, their hormones take a tank. But if you're not someone who exercises a lot, there's probably a lesser need for high amounts of fat in your diet. Not that it's bad, but like if you have high amounts of fat, you need lower amounts of carbs. But most people aren't going to be able to actually stick to that. You might be able to say the same thing about protein. Yeah.

Yeah. If you don't exercise as much, you probably don't need as much protein. It's almost like me or you or you who do quite or Andrew that do a lot of exercise every single week. me or you or you who do quite or andrew that do a lot of exercise every single week so plus don't you mean isn't it true that like people that intake less calories generally uh live longer is that an idea that people have out there uh it's yeah it's i think it's fairly well supported in the research i mean they're you know so it's called oxidative metabolism for a reason. So it's oxidative. And so just taking in less fuel over time, think of an engine,

just burning, when an engine burns really hot, like you're running nitrous in it, it's just not going to last as long. So taking in fewer calories probably extends lifespan. You know, like the evidence probably on pretty good ground with that. 20% less calories. Yeah.

Okay. Back to the lactose. What did you do specifically to help with it? Because actually I think I need to do it again because it's been a while. And like the last time I had ice cream, I had disaster pants. Yeah. Yeah. I shot myself the other day too.

Anyway, let's disaster pants. Yeah, yeah. I almost shot myself the other day, too. Anyway, let's keep going. Yeah, yeah. So spinning up bifidobacteria, getting more in your gut, is kind of like the go-to thing with that. And it's not that hard to do. Generally speaking, you can just do it through dietary means. I think the thing I told you to do was human milk oligosaccharides. So mother's milk has these sugars. And these sugars are what are called

glycan sugar proteins. And they have a lot to do with feeding both the phytobacteria species and... Help us out, ladies. Yeah. I actually have a freezer full right now. Support our gut health. Support our gut health. Support our gut health.

The address to Super Training is... Just give them our address. I know, right? Send as much milk as you like. Actually, someone asked me that. Anyways, I won't tell you. Yeah, so getting more bifidobacteria. Human milk oligosaccharides feed bifidobacteria really well.

They also feed acromantia really well. So that's kind of a one-two punch. And you can get these in colostrum. There are supplements on the market now that have them. We get them when we're younger. They're in mother's milk, and they go a long way to do that. But you can also just bananas will feed bifidobacteria dark fruits polyphenols will feed bifidobacteria you had me go to the store and get baby food yes yeah you're like go get baby food i had the one

that says it has hmo and i was like okay so i put a scoop of baby powder in my protein shakes for like a month and it worked well. It didn't make me like immune to lactose, but whenever I had like pizza or ice cream, I noticed a lot less complications. Let's put it that way. Yeah. What you'll find is that we tend to think of these things like they're linear and they're just solved once forever. And the truth is they're more like muscles you work out. So what you'll find is that the body's ability to digest fibers,

the body's ability to handle different kinds of foods is much like a muscle. And if you neglect it, it gets weak. If you kind of pay attention to it, it gets strong. And so understanding that the phyto bacteria is something you can acquire, you can do it rapidly. It's kind of like a skill and it's really not that difficult to do. It's just understanding how do I feed that, what foods feed it and um it gets into other things um so it gets into this super fascinating thing that you can make a really good case that species of bifidobacteria um mimic mimic fasting and help fasting to a very large degree. And there's probably a good narrative rationale for it.

You know, like thousands of years ago, we were starving, didn't have any game. So, you know, we went and just ate whatever we could get. You know, we found some berries, we found some roots, we found things that feed bifidobacteria. And then what you find, nature usually has these sort of complementary things that work together. So like in a starved state, you're feeding exactly what bifidobacteria needs. Bifidobacteria seems to check all the same boxes, activates the AMPK pathway, certain species do, and activates very much the same pathways you see activated with fasting. And so rationale, narrative-wise, probably a really good reason to that. But in the science, mechanistically,

yeah, wow, there's really good science that supports that. So if you were trying to amplify fasting, you could potentially wake up and eat a couple handfuls of berries or some banana or something like that? Yeah, what I talk about in the book is doing that the day before you fast. So the idea is that the day before you fast, you're

giving the body the substrate it needs to amplify, or rather spin up species of bifidobacteria. And the thing to understand about bacteria is they go quickly either direction. And like everybody knows this is true. They ever got sick, you know, you ate the wrong thing and you were sick within hours. Okay. Bacteria multiply really fast. Well, that's true. That's true in a good way too. They multiply really fast just when you feed the right bacteria. So that's why these things are like muscles. It's like working out and you worked out, you saw a little bit of improvement, you know, you ate the right things, you see a little bit of improvement. And so this gets us into, um, what I think is the next level of things. And I think the industry's, I think the Titanic slowly turning, which is

getting away from like, these are the good foods. Those are the bad foods and let's fight about it. And getting into like talking about timing and sequencing. And that's really the future and understanding like, no, if you eat these things now, it does this then. And then that helps that, you know, and that's a four hour podcast right there. Just in terms of lactose or amplifying fasting, spinning up the phytobacteria prior to a fast, I would offer, has a lot of benefit. And Seema over here doesn't eat vegetables, so

I'd just like to... Mark, don't put me under the bus. No, you don't do that shit either. He doesn't really eat. I don't eat much. I don't eat much in terms of vegetables either, yeah. Seema does a lot of fasting, and we mess with him about it. But... I don't eat much in terms of vegetables either. Zima does a lot of fasting, and we mess with him about it. Based on a lot of your theories and based on a lot of the stuff in your book and based on some of what you even said today,

you're a huge fan of allowing your stomach to do these certain things. I kind of asked you recently, because whenever I have weird questions, I just throw them towards Joel. I'm like, what's the deal with pickles? You know, and he'll give me this whole like write up on like pickled foods and all these things. And his kind of response to it was I like to allow the stomach to ferment stuff naturally. You know, and that process of of breaking down roughage or breaking down some vegetables or some fruit can be really beneficial as you're talking about it, feeding like the gut, uh, bacteria and stuff like that. Um, that seems to be like kind of the basis of, of most of the stuff I hear you talk about is

you're allowing your gut to break some of these foods down. And what is the importance of somebody in your opinion, in somebody utilizing vegetables and or fruit to help feed these bacteria in the gut well probably the strongest argument comes back to the production of butyrate in the gut probably the strongest argument and which by the way i think on our our last podcast about almost two years ago um there was actually a lot of concepts that were broken to the... Yeah, we talked about it a bunch because Ron Penna is not a vegetable guy either. Yeah, we talked about... I think we broke acromancy on that podcast and talked a lot about butyrate.

So butyrate is a fat. It's a short-chain fatty acid. It's the product of bacteria in the gut pooping out this metabolite. And it is essential for the gut. It's essential for human health. It has these effects on the gut of causing the gut to seal up and have tight junctions in the gut. That's awesome. We need that. It also feeds the colon, feeds the colonocytes, feeds the cells in there. So, there's a lot of different ways to make butyrate and you know i've heard i've heard these sort of like commentaries on butyrate since that time of like well there's other short-chain fatty acids but it's kind of like saying yeah there's other there's other lubricants there's other things in the car

other than there's other fluids other than oil in the car and it's like yeah there are but the one that matters is motor oil okay um when you look at how butyrate can be made and you look at the different pathways and you begin to break them down really the optimal way to make it is through fermenting fibers that is the best way to make it and there's a lot of reasons why that's true one of the really important reason has to do reasons has to do with flavonoids what you see with obesity is there is a, particularly post-weight loss with obesity, you see this depletion of flavonoids in the gut. And what experiments have shown is that when you replace those flavonoids, fat oxidation goes up, uncoupling protein goes up. You need

those flavonoids in the gut, but you also need the optimal ratios of propionate, acetate, and butyrate. You need the optimal ratios. You can have too much of one, not enough of the other. And so you can make butyrate from amino acids, okay? But the pathways, the way that it gets made, there are some key differences. One pathway is called the lysine pathway or the ketogenic pathway. And one of the differences in that pathway is your the lysine pathway or the ketogenic pathway and one of the differences in that pathway is your end products are a little bit different you're not getting the flavonoids you get some antioxidants but you're not getting the flavonoids in the same way you get ammonia and then one of the one of the kind of key arguments for making butyrate from fibers is that there is a acetate salvage

pathway that leads to the production of more butyrate. So you get these ratios of butyrate and acetate that are sort of optimal. Long term, when you're making butyrate from amino acids, we can make a really good argument that it's not quite the same, and it's not as optimal to make it that way. So that gets to, you kind of need these things in the diet, optimally for the gut. And just structurally, you look at the small gut, look at the small intestine, it absolutely needs, in a perfect world,

it sort of needs the full array of amino acids. And so meats and things like that feed it optimally. They really do. It needs that robust sort of array of aminos. But when you get to the colon, what you see is that you kind of need fibers in the colon. You kind of do, to be optimal. So you kind of need both. And so that's that argument, I think.

I think a lot of people would be wondering then. So Joel, when it comes to these fibers, what is the minimum amount? Or maybe what is the, if I were going to add a few foods to my diet each day, what are like maybe some staples that this is okay, I can add this and this is what I need to do. And then I don't need much more than this, but I could do much more, but I don't need more. If I'd been asked that question like eight years ago, I would have answered it totally differently.

Not because my opinions changed that much, but because we're in this era right now where you see a lot of people who've done certain, you know, they've done keto for three years, fasting. Oh, man, they did. They've done carnivore and their guts have shifted to the place where they can't do fibers. Okay, so again, it's like a muscle. It's like a muscle. And so what I would say today is very small amounts is where you start in terms of like, you know, what are the amounts?

The amounts are tiny, like titrated in very, very small amounts. Like, you know, it could be just start in the morning with a few raspberries, you know, and then at lunch, add in like this much, you know, garbanzo beans, you know, at dinner, add in one asparagus stock, start really, really small. Cause what you're going to see is you need bacteria to break those things down that are not going to be present. And you have to build those bacteria back up and it takes time. So when you titrate in very small present. And you have to build those bacteria back up. And it takes time. So when you titrate in very small doses over time, you can build that muscle back up.

The other thing in terms of the types of foods, generally speaking, there's an array. What I would say is you've got fruits, starches, and then kind of your cellulose, your veggies. And your fruits, I think, are optimal in the morning. And there's a different range. So the dark fruits I like, like raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, things like that. You can also look at bananas.

Bananas are really good. Starches, you can look at things like potatoes. And then for vegetables, you can look at things like potatoes. Um, and then for vegetables, you can look at cruciferous vegetables, things like cauliflower, things like, um, green beans. You could look at like asparagus, inulins and asparagus. So, you know, find, find the thing you can handle, find the thing you can tolerate and do very, very small amounts in just a little bit. Not, not much. Yeah not much yeah and is that like a the same protocol for kind of getting over a gluten intolerance um yeah because my my wife she was diagnosed with

celiacs and i don't know if she was misdiagnosed or not but when she does have something with gluten in it she does you know have a pretty adverse reaction to it so because of that i completely went away from gluten also and then when i would have it i would feel terrible but then i just kept i don't know because, because carbs and gluten is really good. So I kept eating it. And now I feel fine, but she's still pretty messed up. But if somebody doesn't have celiacs, can they kind of do the same thing? Yeah, for non-celiac gluten intolerance, I have seen that you can train it away over time.

If you start small. What a lot of people do is they hear oh gosh well inulins are good and so they go eat like you know a bunch of asparagus stocks all at once and they get bloaty and sick and all that so again just you know you treat it like it's just like weight lifting you know when you start off weight lifting you're not starting off with a max you're just starting off with light weights and just kind of easing your way into it and after a month or two you can go and you know train a little heavier so yeah okay and then uh just because i do have access to breast milk um if i were to start how much are we talking here can i put like an ounce or two in a protein shake

want to share some of this protein shake with me too just to maybe help that that old gut health and all that good stuff yes step stuff. I think she's watching too. You're asking me a question on breast milk dosing. Yeah. If, if I'm going to ask anybody, it's going to be you. I'm going to know this one.

Yeah, I don't know. Okay. So then if it was just like the baby formula, what was it? It was like a small, it's just like a scoop. I think.

Yeah. Yeah. Baby formula comes in like, you know, either pre-measured scoops or whatever but you can just go straight to the hmos and do like a few grams of that all right yeah why um you look disappointed you're like yeah like well i just wanted i wanted to know the other the rest off air i'll throw something you wanted an excuse yeah gosh you look you look crest crestfallen i don't even know what that means you uh i think you mentioned before um that uh reds might be a good idea so like there's greens that are sold uh people know about these uh powders that are that are full of uh vegetables and stuff like

that but they make ones for fruit as well. And I think you've mentioned before that that can help with gluten intolerances or something along those lines, right? Yeah, anything that's spinning up kind of the broad family of Bifidobacteria will most likely help you with things like that because the enzymes you need to break glutens down are going to be in certain species of Bifidobacteria.

And those red phenols are a very good fuel for the family of bifidobacteria. They work very well. Why do you think it might not be a great idea to utilize greens? Like a lot of folks are using greens kind of every morning and they just do so like it's just they do so almost like they're drinking coffee in the morning. just do so like it's just they do so almost like they're drinking coffee in the morning. But I've heard you talk against this practice before, which I think is a little controversial because people are like greens. Like I need these green supplements, super healthy, you know, to have these greens every morning. In your opinion, why would someone maybe not want to do that?

I don't think it's so much the greens. It's more the practice of just dosing them with probiotics or with bacteria. Yeah, it's the practice of dosing them to the nines with probiotics. So what I have seen over the last five years is this sort of massive growth of gut-related issues from taking probiotics too much. And that would be the thing. So it's not so much the greens themselves, I think. It's just the excess of taking in probiotics too much. And that would be the thing. So it's not so much the greens themselves, I think. It's just the excess of taking probiotics. There's this massive, massive thing with SIBO right now, having the right bacteria,

but just having them in the small gut, having them in the wrong place. And the range you see is like, I got issues to like, like my life is wrecked. So I think there, there was this jumping on the probiotic bandwagon and, oh my gosh, probiotics are good. Let me just take them until I drop. And I think what we're seeing now is like, and then that'd been a great idea. So that's my opinion on it.

We actually had a question from Steven in the live chat. He has kimchi every morning and he was curious if that's a good or bad idea. I don't think it's inherently one or the other. I've come around a little bit. I used to think that just letting your body do the fermentation was optimal. So fermentation makes bacteria. And after just seeing so many people with gut issues, so many people who just don't have the bacteria anymore to do things, I think fermented foods can be really good for people who have gut issues.

They're already fermented, so I think that's a really good thing, and it can be very beneficial on the gut. So, yeah, as long as it's working for you. Yeah, and Paolo's asking about kefir. What do you think about that? Same sort of thing. It's under that umbrella of fermented foods. or what do you think about that? Same sort of thing. It's under that umbrella of fermented foods. Mark asked me about pickles and I just put it in that same category of fermented foods.

I love pickled foods. Yeah. Yeah. I was curious. We've mentioned fasting a few times. We do OMAD sometimes. I don't do it all the time. But within the fitness industry right now,

there's a lot of people that talk about fasting like an elixir of health and it massively increases longevity. And then there's another party of people who will take that content and be like, this is bullshit and this is why fasting might be useful or not. Are there legitimately any benefits to fasting as far as longevity is concerned? And maybe with the way that we're looking at fasting as a protocol, what ways do you think we might be getting it wrong with how we use it? Yeah, good question. I'm just after what actually really works. And to get to that question, you have to factor in over time.

You have to factor in long term because there's this misconception that things work kind of in a straight line. And that's not true of almost anything. Like almost nothing works in a straight line. What you see is most things work fantastically well up front and then there's attenuation down the line. So then workers get down the line. Some things dip under the curve and then there's negatives down the line. So then workers get down the line. Some things dip under the curve and then there's negatives down the line. That's how things actually work.

And I don't care what you're talking about. We know that's true with SSRIs. They work fantastic up front and then later on you've got to take a car full of the things. That's true of most things. And fasting is not excluded from that. I'm just saying that based on my experience over many, many years. So fasting is fantastically beneficial for longevity, for so many things. You know, it is a great practice.

and what I've seen with other people is that it doesn't work in a straight line. So you can see fantastic benefits up front, and then there's an attenuation effect as you get a few years into it, three, four, five years. And I've seen this pretty consistently with people that I've spoken with, and you start to see kind of a cluster of things. One of those things is suddenly they have trouble dropping fat down the line. Another thing is that their hunger gets dysregulated.

Another thing is that their sleep can get dysregulated. And so you see this cluster of things. So what that speaks to is what's the right dosing? That's really the question. What's the right dose? What's the right dose of fasting? Is it like, yeah, a way of life all the the time or is it better in sort of strategic doses that that's the the main question to my mind with fasting and then is there a way that we can take fasting which inherently

when we start to break it down and go why is fasting work and we're just talking about let me ask we're just talking about like 16 and 20. We're not talking about multiple day fasts currently, right? Right. And I also have found it to be super beneficial just to go, I don't know, six or eight waking hours without food. And that could mean I wake up and eat and then I don't eat again until later on in the evening. Or it could mean that I wait all the way until the evening and eat twice, you know, at three and then again at seven or something like that. So I've found that to be really beneficial. But I understand what you're saying. It kind of sounds like what you're saying is the longer that someone practices fasting, the more likely over a period of time they are to move away from it,

which would be kind of proof that maybe it is causing some of these things that you said, like dysregulated hunger. And I have noticed some of that in myself to where sometimes I'm like, holy shit, this, I think this has made me hungrier. I think I can be, I think, I think this has almost re-regulated my hunger because I think my hunger was like dampened for many years because of the way I was eating to be a 330 pound power lifter. People are usually surprised that I didn't eat that much. Now I feel like I could enter an eating competition at this point with the way I can eat now.

That's good. Yeah, what I would offer with that is like where my road has taken me, you know, after 40-plus years of doing this stuff is that I approach everything like mixed martial arts. All of these things are techniques and I can use any one of them. The question is, when do I want to use it? That's all. Let's say fasting is like calf kicks.

And the question is, well, hey, are calf kicks good? And the answer is like, yeah, they can be fantastic, but I wouldn't make my whole fight game based on calf kicks you know i mean you might win a fight i don't know but you know that there's times when you might have to throw a punch you might have to like grapple you might have to go for an arm lock and it's really more about like carnivore is that bad or is that good no it's a great tool it's it's like that's like a that's like a, that's like a overhand, right? Is keto a great tool? Yeah. That's like a head kick. Okay. So when do you use these things? And it's like, the answer is, you know, this thing we're talking about is much more like a fight. It's much more like

mixed martial arts than it is this. It's not a punching bag. It's like, you know, you can go to the punching bag and you just, you just practice that, that Tyson body punch uppercut. You just practice that all the time. And you're really good at that. Okay. But that's not what fights are like. Okay. F fights go wherever they go and you got to be prepared so you know that's that's the way i approach it these things are all good um but like you can overdo calf kicks you know that so yeah so that's how i look at it yeah and something also interesting with like fasting nowadays and i don't know if you mentioned this to me over the phone or something recently but like nowadays I'll still look at it like

fasting, but I just had a protein shake with some like coffee and there's like some, there's some heavy cream with coffee, but I'm, I'm not going to eat again until probably this evening. But I, even though that's calories, I'm still looking at that as like a fast, you know what I mean? Um, and technically I had calories. So a lot of people be like that's not fasting but i don't necessarily need to like there are some days where i won't

have something in the morning but i'll have something like that or i'll have a protein shake throughout the day and the the thing that happened with me over the years is just my hunger is not as voracious as it was where if i would get hungry i would have to fucking respond or else on my mood would get it like i'd annoyed or whatever. I'm not controlled by that anymore, but I can intermittently eat whenever I want and just be perfectly OK. It's like I have better signals of how much I should eat and when I should eat. And it's it's very auto regulated. Like I don't count anymore, but it's very just intuitive. Yeah. Let's talk about that for a second.

That's OK. You've done something pretty fascinating. So where I'm at now with this and what I put in the book was that, let's break fasting down. Why does fasting work? So we start to break fasting down. We go, well, you get autophagy, you get ubiquination. So you get the breakdown of stuff

that has to go in the trash, kind of keeps things clean. Okay, that's good. You get the signal pathways activated. You get the sirtuins activated. You get AMPK activated. Okay, that's good um you get the signal pathways activated you get the sirtuins activated you get activated okay you know that that's that's good um and you start to just break fasting down into its concomitant mechanisms and you go okay well can we activate those apart from fasting and yeah wow wait actually we can so one of the best ways is through the gut so we can manipulate

the bacteria in the gut to to produce the phytobacteria to produce bacteria that really help those things that help those pathways turn on that help um and you just keep making your list like hdoc inhibition that just means that we're making better copies of dna so we can make proteins okay well we can do that with bifidobacteria you know in the gut you can do it and you just keep going down this list and it's like wow yeah so there seems to be probably a pretty good case that we can activate a lot of these same pathways before fasting so that we don't have to fast as long and then on top of that when we turn to the insulin side of the equation and we go well why what let's keep going what's

another reason fasting works well one reason seems to be that you get this sense you get this cessation or pause in signals down the igf1 iIS pathway. So when you look at glucose transport, and when you look at what gets turned on when cells bring glucose in, you have the metabolic pathway, and that sort of uses mTOR as kind of a throttle.

So in the metabolic pathway, mTOR works like the accelerator. It's like, back off on the gas, or we need more gas. The other side of the equation is a pathway, the MAPK pathway that controls progression of cell cycles. And so there's a theory on aging, the signal pathway theory,

that has probably pretty good reason to believe that the more signals down that pathway, the faster you age. And if you just look at the signal pathways in bringing glucose in the cell, it kind of makes a lot of sense. It makes a ton of sense. So fasting kind of turns that off, gives us a little break. The other thing is that fasting also helps replete acromantia. So acromantia is the other half of the commensal bacteria equation. It's the one we need to keep the gut lining working the way it should. And very difficult to feed through food.

You can, but it's tough. But fasting repletes acromantia. So acromantia doesn't like dietary protein. The best way to understand it is your mouth makes saliva and that saliva has glycoproteins or proteins in it and you have bacteria in your mouth and that's what they feed on. So acromantia feeds on saliva secreted in the gut, and it likes that. But when you have too much protein in the diet, you're activating these growth signal pathways, and you're advantaging other kinds of bacteria that prefer their nitrogen from the diet. So there's a lot of things to think about here, but it seems to be complimentary that when you are spinning up

the phytobacteria, that helps acromantia. And if you do it before a fast, then you fast, you're spinning up acromantia and you have this balance of things that you can make a really good case is optimal. Then the other side of the equation becomes, so when you're fasting,

you're ceasing, you're ceasing for the most part, the production of insulin. Okay. That's not bad. You know, periodically. The other side of that equation is certain types of fibers tend to potentiate insulin sensitivity. Okay. So you have all these helper hormones around insulin, you know, like insulin doesn't do its job alone. You have the incretin proteins, which is GIP, GLP-1. You have adiponectin. So you have these other hormones, the family of insulin hormones that help insulin do its thing. And so you can make this case, and I tried to make it in the book, I hope I made a good case, that there's this way of eating that takes all the benefits of fasting and makes it better. You get insulin sensitization through fibers prior to fasting.

You get this pre-activation of signal pathways before fasting. And I think that there's a proof of it. I'll probably have you guys try it, which is if you do it, you get hungrier way, way faster. Hunger is sort of one of your indicators that you've been fasting okay what you see like when most people start fasting initially is they don't get that hungry they're like i'm kind of good feel pretty good you know you have them start doing fibers the day before like man i'm starving what time what time what time we eating we were going to do we were going to do a uh a 2024 let's let's just dial that back let Let's eat at lunch. Yeah. You see it pretty fast. Okay.

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You guys will see the variety pack. That's four different flavors and it's really an awesome way to kind of dip your toe into the cereal bowl. So that way you guys can figure out which flavor you like the most. And when you go there, you're actually going to receive $5 off that variety pack. Again, magicspoon.com slash power project links to them down in the description. Let's get back to the video. Um, rent, rent done. One, one of the, uh, one of the other areas that I see you talk about quite a bit is, and this is, I've talked about this with training. Um, the best program is the one you're currently not doing.

And that always seems to be the case. You know, as soon as you start leaning towards like, I'm going to be stronger, you work on being stronger. And because you focused your efforts in on that, now maybe you're missing another piece of the puzzle. The next month, you're like, I'm going to work on mobility. And you work on your mobility and maybe your strength diminishes a little bit. And it's hard to keep all these plates spinning at the same time.

But the same thing happens with our nutrition. And as you pointed out, one of the few people that I've heard point this out, and this has been beneficial to me in me kind of relaying message to people, I got to be a little bit more cautious or careful when I do something or try something. I, I, I try to give it more time because you're like, there's a honeymoon period, you know, where it's like, Mark, if you were to switch over to eating four apples a day, you might see profound impact on, I mean, you might have these great results just because it's so different than what you're currently doing. And so I think that's something for people to keep in mind is like, when you switch from one diet to another, there is this honeymoon period. But I'd also say that it makes a lot of sense to

investigate and to want to continue to change your diet and to have your diet evolve. I've always liked a ketogenic style diet every year. At some point I'll probably go back to it where I eat a lot more fat than I am right now. Um, I also kind of like bodybuilding style diets where I eat, you know, rice and potatoes and lower fat foods. Um, but I like getting some different foods in there here and there. Why have you kind of chose that route yourself to kind of put that forward in terms of education of letting people know that it's probably a good idea to mix your diet up here and there? I think you could make a really good argument that seasonality and variability are sort of endemic to human history. That, you know, we didn't have refrigerators for a long time and as a result when you and i i've actually gone and looked at like you know both locally where i

live going and looking at what the indians ate and then just through research looked at you know what what ancient populations ate it's actually pretty varied and a lot of it depends on the season. A lot of it depends on availability. So the rule of thumb is you're going to eat what's available. That's the rule of thumb. And, you know, sometimes what's available right in front of you is just berries and roots. Sometimes it's a water buffalo. Sometimes, you know, it's a seal. I mean, it just depends on what's available um and then with that there's

the notion that seasons change and with seasons uh availability and various things changes and that there you could probably make a really good case that based on the lat lines or ancestors lived at there's even some advantages to changing it up during things like winter versus summer you could probably make a really good case for that. It's not universal because there are genetic components of it. But generally speaking, I think that if you look at the latitudes that your ancestors lived at, you'll probably see, you know, kind of like an inkling of what's best for you. A good example would be like in winter, your testosterone is a little higher. I think it makes a case during the winter for you know

certain populations to have more of certain types of foods maybe more protein during winter and you can make these cases how about calories? is that a thing? because in winter naturally I start to eat more food

my appetite gets higher in winter and during the summer months I don't necessarily feel like I eat as much it's like hot, you don't want to eat more food. Yeah. My appetite gets higher in winter and during the summer months, I don't necessarily feel like I eat as much. Yeah. It's like hot. You don't want to eat. Yeah. Right. I think that's,

yeah, I think that's, I think that's natural. Um, and I think there is a lot to that. I think that again, it's season, seasonality,

availability. I think that, um, yeah, all these things factor in like at certain times of the year, you're going to eat less certain times of the year. You're going to eat more, you're going to eat more of different things and i think those are good

things i think that when you eat the same thing all the time just in my experience what i've seen is you see a lot of autoimmune issues you see allergies you see stuff so variability in the diet and when i say balance you know i talk about in the immunity code about balance but i don't want to confuse that with the four food groups that's not what it is what it is is that you can have your season you can have your your summer months of you know i did keto during the summer but during winter you know it's it's there's a good idea to get a balance overall across time in the diet yeah and calories um i mean that's a whole podcast but um let's just say that um you know, calories absolutely matter. I mean, you'd be an idiot to say that they don't.

So, yes, they absolutely matter, but they're not the only thing. Other things matter, too. Do you think they're grossly miscalculated? Like the calories outside your body seem to be quite different than what your body's actually registering and accounting for once it goes inside your body? your body's actually registering and accounting for once it goes inside your body. Like the way that I digest an orange might be different than the way that you digest an orange. But for purposes of like having some sort of valued measure, it's easier just to say, hey, it's got four calories per, you know, once we get into fiber and once we get into protein, like shit just gets really complicated. And there's probably still a lot of stuff that we don't know. There's probably certain fats that don't get digested the

same and so forth. Yeah. So what you're speaking to is energy intake versus energy net or energy harvest from the diet. And they are two different things. The gut has a lot to do with that. So the bacteria in the gut have a lot to do with that. It's not just carbohydrate digestion either. It's also surface area of the gut. So certain bacteria like acromantia shrink the gut have a lot to do with that. It's not just carbohydrate digestion either. It's also surface area of the gut. So certain bacteria like acromantia shrink the gut surface area. And so what you see is that people with healthy populations of acromantia, they don't absorb the same amount of calories as people who have dysbiotic bacteria. What you see in obesity is people with, let's call it the obese gut, they have an excess harvest of short-chain fatty acids from the diet.

So they're actually taking in more calories from bacterial fermentation. And so, yeah, there's other factors that absolutely affect that. 100%. You can't say that there aren't. What's the deal with sugar alcohols? Because now there's like a lot of keto stuff popping up and we're seeing more and more products hit the market. And it will say keto-friendly. It'll be circled in the thing.

And then you look at the back of it, and it says it has 23 carbs, and you're like, I don't understand what's happening here. What are these sugar alcohols, and what are some of your opinions on them? Well, there's different ones. There's different, you know, like Xylitol, for example. Some of these in the research have been shown to benefit the gut. It's a mixed bag. And I think there's a lot of variability with individuals. There can be things like different density of receptors in the gut, you know, glut receptors, different things. So

I just think it's a mixed bag. And I think in small amounts, they're fine. I think like anything else in excess, you probably don't want to do that. Do you think they literally don't register as calories? I think that's what they're professing, right? I don't know that anybody knows. I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. I think that it depends on a lot of factors, I think. So I don't really know. Earlier in the episode we didn't actually get into what you did or what you started taking but you mentioned that your

testosterone hit a wall now we didn't go into okay so what what are you doing as far as like maybe supplementation or anything to to yeah to help with that and also i mean just like what are you doing but then what would you suggest to any man that's listening? Yeah. Things that they could take. I started recently just taking Fidozia and ToneCot just to see what it does. Yeah, yeah. What would you suggest? Yeah, I have a different take on that probably from a lot of people. So, I'm holding off on like the TRT and steroids and all that stuff.

Like I'm shooting for about 60. I want to see how much mileage I can get out of just, you know, without that for the reason that I think that the body's got a window of use of that stuff of about 30 years. And I'd like to make a really clean 90, you know. So I'm just trying to kind of get by right now. And I was doing really good for a number of years, just kind of with a routine I had, which wasn't too much, really. Doing really well. And then I'm going to be 57 in a month. And I really hit a wall about

three months ago where like oh is this what it's like and i've always been of the opinion like like people ask me questions about what should you do at this point in time and my answer is like i don't know until i get there i won't know and and so like i kind of got to one of those points and i i definitely noticed definitely noticed my energy dropped. I wasn't sleeping well, and it took me a couple months. I finally fixed it. And the answer was I threw everything at it. So to go down that checkbox list of boxes on the T side, so kind of all your standard stuff, ZMA, high vitamin D.

ZMA, high vitamin D. So fenugreek testophen works really well, but it aromatizes like crazy on me. So I can't take that stuff. I thought that that would lower your estrogen or no? Well, it increases prolactin. And so it just it doesn't work for me. So I can't take that stuff. Then long jack, ton of long jack, like three grams. Whoa long jack yeah okay yeah ton of that and long jack for people that know is tonka dali same yeah same thing yeah yeah yeah yeah um

tonka dali and then mixing in a high fat meal three times a week at bedtime like a really high fat meal okay yeah to help testosterone synthesis during the night. And then some DHEA. And then I just recently tried terkesterone. Oh, that's been going super popular recently. I know nothing about terkesterone, but what's the big deal with it? Is it just a supplement? Well, back in the mid-2000s, yeah back in just a supplement well back in the in the mid 2000s yeah it's a

supplement but back in the mid 2000s ectosterone was like this plant sterol that kind of blew up like um uh what's his name vince um gosh i don't mean to do him a disservice really cool guy worked at quest um blanking uh sorry his name will pop up yeah it'll come up yeah it'll come up um he had a supplement line that was really good and they had a tea product that had ectosterone in it. It worked pretty well. So it's a cousin of ectosterone. It's a plant sterol. That works pretty well. But I think it works pretty well in combination with all these other things. Another thing is there's a

Japanese... What is this stuff um blanking on the name of this there's a japanese uh sublingual or not a japanese a chinese sublingual that uh it'll pop into my head in a second um and then unichi oyster along with that unichi oyster yeah that so i like i said i'm just throwing everything at this um oysters i think are natural aphrodisiacs. Oh, yeah. Yeah, oysters. So that, gosh, what else? I'm running through my supplement cabinet here in my brain.

There's more. That's giving you an idea, though. I've heard people talk about maca. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's never worked for me. Ashwagandha has never really worked for me either yeah people went crazy with that too yeah so um but that's that's kind of like your your yeah so i feel like i've corrected it now um all that kind of together taking most of that in the evening and then again taking it in the morning gotcha so yeah did you ever mess with any of the pro hormones from back in the day

the only thing... Because there was some wild shit out there. Somebody asked me a while back how I think trend got popular. And I think it got popular because there was a product that was on the market that was called Trend. Here's my trend story. And it was really popular.

You could buy it at Max Muscle. Really? Yes. 15 years ago? even that long 2006 even when i was messing around with stuff like i can you can go to like yeah max muscle whatever and it'd be in the glass container in the front kids faces would get so swollen they'd be like oh yeah i'm taking trend and they'd get strong and their face would be fat and you're like what the fuck yeah so 2006 there was this

company called something labs and they made a product called trend and unbeknownst to anybody it had real trend in it okay so i bought a bottle of that stuff and i'm at the gym one day and i'm like 30 stronger i'm like why am i so strong geez what's going on with this stuff and then um like i got a zit on my back and i was like i'm not digging that so what's in that so i don't know like a month later the dude behind the company went to jail a lot of people got tons of acne from that i remember that yeah that's great everyone's like it works look at all the acne i got yeah and that was the end of that product. Remember Hot Stuff had some bullshit in it too. Remember that product? Yeah, Hot Stuff

had everything. It had Diana Ball. Did it have real Diana Ball? I think so, yeah. Did it? I thought it was it had Bulls Balls. It had Orchic. Yeah, I don't know. Hot Stuff was like... I guess I've had Bulls Balls. You probably have.

Summer of 87, hot stuff comes out and i remember the ad it was a bill phillips i think he probably wrote the thing uh or i don't want to do a disservice to him maybe he didn't but it was like one of these long wordy ads and it was like what happened to me when i changed out my hot stuff my game stop and this it like it had everything you can think of in it but it actually had like a lot of ahead of its time stuff it had yohimbe um it had um gosh it had just so many things in it had like 50 grams of like um liver protein in it it was the first supplement to have um like to throw the kitchen sink at you the kitchen sink had everything It had everything. It had everything in it. It had caffeine in it. Everything. Yeah.

It had vitamins and minerals in it. There it is. That's the one. That, yeah. Okay, then I can read you off what's in it then. Yeah. That's, that's, that's not the original head. Okay, well, okay, then go ahead, because if this isn't the original, I don't want to talk

You know what really worked? I mean, like. Ultimate Orange? Ultimate Orange. Ultimate Orange. This is, I've heard about this. These guys have heard about this before. Yeah. Huberman was talking about it, or you Ultimate Orange? Ultimate Orange. Ultimate Orange. This is... I've heard about this before.

I've heard about this before. Huberman was talking about it. Or you were talking to Huberman about it. Yeah, we think there's crystal meth

in there. Ultimate Orange, man. Well, it was the Mawa. It was the Ephedra. Oh, yeah, the Ephedra. Duchesne designed that. Dan Duchesne, man.

You guys had all the great supplements. Supplements used to be really fun. They worked. Wow. I mean, they just worked.

Like, really the Wild West. They send you right to the emergency room. They're awesome. Yeah. Ultimate Orange was like, go hard or go home. Or to the hospital. It made you crazy, some of those things. You mentioned something

lightweight. You mentioned that certain things, you think they only, you have a theory that they only work for 30 years. What do you mean by that? I just mean looking at people that have, I've seen use steroids for a very, very long time. There's a look the body has like when I've seen people that have just first gone on them, and it's this what I would call a youthful look where the muscle bellies just pop. They just pop in this very inflated kind of way.

And I've seen people like in their late 60s that have never done anything and then they go on steroids and they get that incredibly youthful look in the body. Muscle bellies are full, everything pops. And then I've seen people who've done them for very, very long periods and it doesn't look the same. They get these really big

forearms but really kind of weird estrogen-y traps and don't seem to so there seems to be something with that. Maybe it's receptor attenuation. I don't know. And it's just, you don't have any proof of that. It's just kind of what I've observed.

Okay. I might be wrong, but that's just, so for me, I'm just kind of tracking with what makes sense to me. I have definitely noticed something similar, and I think that it might have more to do with injuries than maybe anything else, because a lot of these guys are just like... That's a good point. They're fucked up. They've torn a lot of muscles and maybe aren't able to train the same way.

That's such a good point and that gets to stem cell repletion in the muscles and basically clearing adhesions in the muscles. Our buddy Ron Penna has really great muscle bellies. Ron has fantastically full muscle bellies and I used fantastically full muscle bellies. And I used to think he was on stuff, but now I'm more convinced that he gets a lot of body work,

and that body work gets those adhesions out of the muscles. Wow. Yeah. And I noticed when I started doing that kind of stuff, the muscle belly started to pop again. I think that's a key component to people having a natural look. Maybe you would agree. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where the muscle tissues, even though someone like Encima is totally fucking jacked, his muscles, it's hard to say that they look soft because that's not the correct wording, but they don't look like they're super tense.

They look supple. They look supple. There you go. A fuffle. They even feel supple. Yeah, go ahead. Oh, yeah. You can really get

beefy. It's different than molesting Stan Efferty. Different feel, huh? You've molested both. Stan is so hard. I hit Stan after a set one time. It's like a rock. After a set of squats that he did, I was like, ah, good job. And I hit him in the back, and I was like, that was literally like slapping the monolift.

I was like, what the fuck is that? It's like, ding. I'm like, holy shit. That is such an interesting point. Like, I've just seen enough different bodies. I kind of know a natural body. Like, this guy's got a, I can just know he's just on a natural body. But, yeah, it gets to that kind of like supple, full muscle belly.

It's a certain kind of look that you just know it when you see it. Interesting. I think some guys that use stuff, like if you were to press into, we're getting a little weird feedback over here. I don't know what that is. I don't know. Who's wearing a wire? Joel, put your right arm up to the mic real quick. I thought that's what it was.

His hand. No, it's not that. UFO interference? Aliens? Hello? It's the government. Oh, there it is. Wait a second. Let me just set this over here.

Joel has, he's been chipped. You know, he's got a thing in his brain. That's where he gets all this information. Yeah, the aliens, they inserted their... Are you saying something about muscles? Yeah, anyway, I was going to say that I think some individuals that use stuff, and you've talked about this before, old muscle versus new muscle, old body versus new body kind of thing, or young body rather.

When you look at individuals that use stuff it almost appears that their muscles um like if they were to get like a massage you're just kind of imagining that it would it would probably hurt you know whereas i think if you look at his muscles if he was if you were to dig in on his muscles i don't i mean you could probably hurt him you probably find somewhere that hurts on him, but I think most likely he probably doesn't have like adhesions and scar tissue and his muscles probably just aren't tense and they're probably not a mess. I don't know why that is or what that's part of. I really believe that I've noticed in myself and other people I've witnessed over the years that when I was in my twenties, thirties, it was kind of, I was kind of always

pumped. And then as you get older, you just look flat. And then once I started doing kind of body work and sort of rolling the arms out and stuff after working out, the being able to get pumped kind of came back and keeping it kind of came back. So I think the adhesions have a lot to do with it. It probably helps stem cell repletion as well. I just like my whole body when I was on a lot of stuff and when I was power lifting, my whole body like always felt like it had a lot of tension in it. And it did for a reason.

I mean, I was trying to be as strong as I possibly could. So I just, that energy was kind of almost sitting there all the time. But if someone was to like, just just for example step on my hamstrings to like loosen my hamstrings up that would just probably send me through the roof as opposed to now someone could probably walk on them and i i doubt it would hurt my calves are still pretty tight but for the most part the rest of me um has gotten to be uh a lot more supple but still working on it work in progress yeah i think there's a lot to that can we talk about some some of your like physical practices because um you know you've come on the podcast and talked about

sprinting we could talk about that again but you've been also uh talking a lot about the ancestral squat on your on your page um and yeah yeah like and also you mentioned something um about flexibility and mobility and one thing that a lot of within, again, within fitness, there's a lot of people that are like, yeah, being flexible is somewhat useless. You don't need to be flexible. Obviously, you want to be you want to be mobile and strong. But there's also a sect of people who are like, it's useless to be flexible. You shouldn't be. That's that's unnecessary, et cetera.

What would you talk about as far as maintaining a young body with physical practices? Well, one important thing is the ability to rapidly change directions without getting injured. That's huge. Um, and what you see with, so I'm just, I feel like, I feel like I'm channeling Dorian Yates at this point in my life. Like if you, if you listen to Dorian Yates, you know, he's talking about like, yeah, I'm, I'm really interested in, I'm not, I've had big muscles. I'm over it. I'm interested in my mobility, my flexibility, my energy, you know? And I think that's kind of a, I think that's where this path leads a lot of people is that when you've, once you've kind of like had your fill of more plates, more dates and all, I don't mean that any disservice to Derek or anything. I just mean, you know, out of that

ethos. Um, I think once you've had your fill of that and you start to get older, you start to see what starts happening. And it's, and it, number one thing is, um, limitation of mobility as you get older is like becomes the number one thing. Number one thing.

Like, like you take for granted when you're younger, the ability to get up and go and do what you want to do. But as soon as you start losing that, um, it's very terrifying. And I had a scare in 2014 because I took Cipro,

nearly blew out both Achilles. I lost 25 pounds. I couldn't walk for like two months. What did you do to do that? Cipro. What is that? It's an antibiotic. Oh, shit.

Yeah. And since then, I've talked to a bunch of people that the exact same or much, much much much worse happened to them and what so you know it was like everybody every other dummy in a room the doctor said just take this I'm like oh great yeah okay sounds good and then boom like whoa and I didn't know what happened took me a long time researched it finally figured out oh this causes mitochondrial

toxicity which is another way of saying it kills you slowly. And, oh, yeah, this is a big thing, man. Like, in fact, I've I just. Is it just a normal antibiotic that they just prescribe? It's really strong. It's a it's a it's a quinine. Why did you need it? Or why did the doctor think you need it?

I just had a skin rash. That's all. And the doctor gave me that. And like it dealt with a skin rash and then it dealt with everything else, too. So one of the things you see with Cipro is it's kind of not uncommon to see Achilles blowouts. And I came to the cliff of blowing out both Achilles just from walking. And so I literally was at a point for a couple months in 2014 where like I had to get on crutches to get into the kitchen and I was on the couch most of the time and I just lost all this weight. And that was pretty scary.

It was like, wow, this is what it's like to not be mobile. And that just scared the heck out of me. was already there which was like particularly with age what's going to mean more to you with over time is to keep your body energetic supple and and and able to be within what i call an athletic range that's like athletic range is not the same thing as gym shape it's more the ability to engage in athletic stuff without getting injured you know maybe it's jujitsu maybe it's a sprint maybe it's uh a handjitsu maybe it's a sprint maybe it's uh a handstand whatever but it's it's things that you could just do because you had a little kids or you know they're indestructible they can do whatever you can't hurt them um and it's getting

as close as you can get to that that i'm finding over time that means more to me and keeping that means more to me so that's a big piece of the equation with mobility and flexibility for me yeah so i think on your instagram you doing like a it's not a handstand but it's like frog stance yeah is that what it's called yeah well that's what i call it i don't know what it's called frog stance frog stance whatever it's called you're like on your head and your hands or no you're on your hands and your knee and your your i'm sorry your elbows are supported by your knees oh and you're upside down basically there we go yeah just it's just a simple strength warmup like thing. So I'll do those.

I'll do like, I'll do planks, you know, with the body extended in the air, just athletic stuff, trying to do athletic stuff, you know, and just the thing with that kind of stuff is that if you try and do something every day, you can hang on to the body's range. And if you stop doing stuff like that what you find is when you start changing directions quickly you get hurt okay that's where injuries come from so when when the when you're when your body's used to doing athletic things or it's used to just changing directions quickly and taking force and and stopping you you keep the body kind of supple you keep it young Do you mess around with other exercises that can assist

with change of direction? Like are you like, I don't know, throwing a med ball or jumping down from a box or jumping up on a box? What else are you doing? I like to mix in just kind of around the house fast directional changes on my ankles and my feet. So there's a... What's that guy's name? Are you guys familiar with Speed of Sport? Sounds familiar. He trains a lot of MMA

guys. He trains Dos Anjos. He trains a bunch of... probably a lot of other guys. Well, his whole thing is that as you age, one of the things you lose is the ability to produce power through the feet. Directional changes in power through the feet. And when you were young, you is the ability to produce power through the feet directional changes in power through the feet and when you were young you had the ability to produce tremendous power through the feet okay and take tremendous directional changes through the feet and what

happens as you get older is the feet get weak yes let's talk about this yes the feet get weak the like like and and i i i didn't know this i didn't i never thought about it until i heard him talk about it. And then, you know, I just thought back to my sprinting days and yeah, I was like, yeah, man, I used to like really put a lot of power through my feet. And so I've made it a point over the last few years

to just work on power through the feet and directional changes through the feet. Just by, you know, just stupid little things. Bouncing around like you're, like boxing almost type thing. Kind of stuff like that. Yeah. And it's, particularly with age, you know, you're always seeing like you're boxing almost type thing. Kind of stuff like that, yeah.

Particularly with age, you're always seeing ankle rolls and all this stuff. So the feet get weak. People even do it when they walk. Sometimes people walk and then they hurt their ankle because they kind of stumble on a curb or something. If it happens to you when you're 20, you're probably totally fine. But if it happens to you when you're 65

or something like that, that could be the thing that sidelines you that ends up leading to all kinds of crap about to do something that's never been done um oh what is this it's that uh speed of sport yeah yeah yeah look at that so there you go this is all stuff to train power through the feet uh nick nick curzon you ought to have him on the podcast follow him yeah andrew whoa oh there we go yeah this is why i wear these okay these are these are called vivo barefoot shoes right they're minimal soles they have a wide toe box so that your toes can spread right and you're not your feet aren't like smashed into your shoe mark has some too um but like your body your foot's really able to feel the floor

and because of that like i feel like i want to move more it's like there's like it's almost like being barefoot that's why like i have a bunch of these but like the foot weakness that's that's been a big thing on my mind for the past few months just because it's like when we wear these shoes that like have massive levels of padding and you're not able to actually feel the ground they're nice and comfortable but your feet get weak. Yes. You know what I mean? And it's just like,

that's a big deal. Especially as people get older, you see people wearing like these new balances with the biggest things ever. Yeah. And it's like memory foam. Like if your feet are weak, that's where you produce a lot of forces in athlete. It's important.

Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. I do. I go barefoot a lot. I do a lot of like stuff barefoot. My wife kind of like goes, eh,

ground gross. Why do you, but, uh, yeah, it's of like goes, eh, ground gross. Why do you, but, uh, yeah, it's, it's, um,

for that reason, like just when I was, when we were kids, I think most kids run around barefoot a lot and I, you know, I try and replicate that. Like I, I'm barefoot a lot and just,

I just do dorky stuff, changing directions on my feet every day. So yeah. We were talking earlier about supplements and sleep and stuff like that. Have you found any supplements that seem to actually assist with sleep or do anything that you've noticed? Oh, gosh, tons, yeah. Yeah, so, again, in the research, there's this – I love these words that they come up with in the research for, like, stupid things. Like, there's this word called combination therapy.

Like, oh, what's that? All it means is the kitchen sink. All it means is just throwing everything at the problem and in my experience i talk a lot about this in the immunity code that there's never almost never like the rosetta stone panacea like one silver bullet kills all it's never that but what what is very realistic is a five percent improvement from one thing and then about 10 things that give you a five percent improvement and then you get a real lift you can see measurable changes so with respect to sleep like for me the last few months in correcting that i just threw everything at it you know so in that list would be um both cbd and cbn cbn yeah

um both cbd and cbn cbn yeah so cbd helps with sleep onset uh cbn helps with sleep duration okay it's a it's a it's in the family of you know those endocannabinoid receptor simulators does the cbd have thc in it no no actually gosh your brother would probably sometimes i have tiny amounts and some yeah dosages uh i i kind of tend to do a lot on that so they come in these little bottle droppers and you know it says just do one dropper i'll do like three whatever the bottle droppers are naturally yeah uh yeah but so cbn is it's it's a cousin of cbd and i've noticed it definitely helps with middle of the night like that 2 a.m waking thing definitely helps with that um and then along like that 2 a.m. waking thing definitely helps with that. And then along with that, for me, megadosing oleamide.

So I'll do like a gram and a half of oleamide. Oleamide? Yeah. What is that? So it's another endocannabinoid antagonist. It's kind of in that family. But oleamide seems to really help with sleep induction, helps with quality of sleep. seems to really help with um sleep induction helps with quality of sleep and then along with that i will do um i tell you just flat out works is um lavender on the soles of the feet and then on the forearms oh yeah okay really works and just you know just go down the checkbox uh one thing that

really helps a lot yeah i was just curious about lavender though though. I don't remember his name, but somebody had mentioned that it can suppress testosterone or elevate your estrogen levels or something like that. And just because somebody mentioned it, I've gotten all the lavender away from my son. Like, we threw it all out of the house. But that's why I was just curious about that, if there's any concern. I haven't studied that, so I don't have an answer for that one thing i know that it does help with sleep and anything that helps with definitely does that we had this like combination of of essential oils for him he could be freaking out and then we'd have a little combo of things and he would you know rub it on his feet it's like dude totally different baby but then i looked and

i'm like lavender get it out of here just because just because i i don't know but just in case i don't want to mess with anything of his as far as his development i wonder though like even so like yeah because i know what you're talking about the lavender stuff but when it comes to sleep if lavender which one's more beneficial especially if lavender let's say it does do a little bit of testosterone suppression but during sleep we have all these other things going on what if it's massively actually it's just great for your sleep and you get all this recovery and it's not going to like it's not you're not going to have those effects all day long

yeah and also what about like that makes a lot of sense what about the effects of like alcohol you know like some people are like man if I have a drink it actually helps relax me it helps me sleep and then the science kind of says different, but people's empirical evidence, I think means something. Sometimes people will say, yeah, I'd like to smoke some pot and it helps people. It helps chill me out and it helps, you know,

and then again, there's, there's some research, but who knows how the research being is being done. Whenever I, I'm very resistant to research a lot of times because I will a lot of times say, well, that ain't me. Like I, the research that they do on people I think is usually not done on people that are maybe as active as me. So maybe I'm foolish in saying that, thinking that I get a pass from that, but I'm usually like, well, I don't know. You know, like even, uh, I was going back and forth with Stan Efferding more recently about, you know, running and trying to maintain size and this and that. And I was like, I'm just going to see for myself. You know what I mean? Like we can go back and forth on this all day, but I ain't like those other people that you're

talking about. And I want to see what I'm actually able, able to do. And if I lose a little muscle mass, I don't care. And I'm not, you know, I can admit it, but what, what do you think, you know, in terms of somebody getting to sleep and, and, um, maybe not making it a huge habit, but having a little bit of alcohol or smoking some weed or something like that. Just anecdotally speaking, um, people that I know that, um, you know, smoke weed prior to sleep. Sometimes it's the thing that helps them. It's the thing. Nothing else worked and then that worked. I have a couple friends I'm thinking of

that they just like to get to sleep. I have a friend who's an attorney. It's a really stressful job. For a while, that was the only thing working for him. You hear this thing nowadays of people waking up at 2.30 and they're just pegged, adrenaline pegged from 2 to 4 a.m., which is a thing.

It's a lack of clearing cortisol and all that, and that's the thing that helped him. And then, yeah, so alcohol is another animal. I just don't like it at all anymore just because i found the negatives far outweigh the positives but um you know definitely helped you get to sleep i found most people it wakes them up in the middle of the night so it helps sleep onset it's terrible for sleep duration um but it's great for thermogenesis while you're sleeping, which in college we called the sweats. So there's that. Help with some fat burning as I did the bottle of wine a day.

How'd that work out for you? Great. Yeah, it was actually awesome. Was it a ketogenic wine? Was it a dry farm wine? Yeah, there's a company that's a a company that sources uh wines that have less sugar it's called dry farm wines and they they had a lot of great taste in wines so just yeah crank through crank through a bottle of day it was actually kind of it was interesting because you know day one was kind of fun and then you get like two three days into it

and you're like this is kind of weird and then trying to figure out how to manage my day you know and i don't want to be drinking and driving and things like that that got to be weird so tesla i was like yeah yeah test yeah but i saw somebody uh had an accident on this on tv and they were they were drunk driving and trying to have their tesla on autopilot autopilot but I think they were like. Really hammered. I think they were, they were pretty hammered. Yeah. So before we hop off here, we have to announce this because it's about that time to announce

this, but Joel has been helping me with some supplements and we have our, we have a product that is on the way. If it's okay. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. We talked a lot today about fasting, and we have the first ever fasting gum that's going to be hitting the market

pretty soon. We should be, yeah, it'll probably take about three or four weeks to get it all completely finished and on the website, but we have fasting gum on the way that you'll be able to purchase very, very soon. Can you explain some of the stuff that's in the fasting gum and why it's in there? Yeah, boy. You know, there's this thing when collaborators get together that, you know,

they're going to be overly rosy and ass kissy about something, you know. I'm not. This is, oh, my gosh, this thing is fantastic. Like, I'm in. This thing is absolutely fantastic. It's fasting gum. And so Mark asked me to design it. And it's got, number one, it's got trehalose in it.

So trehalose is a sugar that helps with autophagy. And we've combined that with apigenin and then rutin. And apigenin does a lot of things. It helps restore flavonoids in the gut. It increases fat oxidation. It does a whole bunch of things. Helps even replete NAD. And rutin is a cousin of curcumin. So all the things that you see, all the pathways that need to be activated with fasting, you see it helps a lot with that.

And it's got a little bit of caffeine, which is interesting. It's only got 25 milligrams of caffeine, but the amazing thing is like, because it's right there on the tongue, it's like the perfect, just perfect, like pick me up.

It's really good. Like you kind of like, I had one, you know, like, pick me up. It's really good. Like, you kind of like, I had one, you know, another hour and a half. I need another one. It's great. Yeah, I think it's, I think you got a really great skew here. I mean, it's pretty cool. Yeah, I've had it and it tastes good. Really good.

It tastes good. Really good, yeah. Yeah, I'm excited for it. And, you know, we, it was hard to, the hardest part was just trying to, you know, squeeze all those nutrients into a thing of gum and then to try to figure out like, okay, probably people are going to have two or three of these every single day. So, or maybe even four, depending on how long they're fasting for. And, you know, I've used gum as a strategy before for fasting, just as I've used coffee and anything.

So there's going to be some people just kind of, as always, they're going to say, why can't you just chew regular gum? You certainly could, but this is just going to help encourage your fast, maybe make it a little easier, especially with caffeine may suppress the appetite just a pinch. So I'm just like, I'm really pumped about it, really excited about it. And it's kind of the first of its kind. It is. Geez, I wish I'd come up with it. I mean, it is

I think this could be big. I really do. Tony Huge was like completely baffled. I handed him some. I don't know if you know Tony, but I handed him some and he's like, what the, what is this? I was like, I don't know, give it a shot. He really liked it a lot. Oh my gosh, yeah.

It's right into that thing I've been talking about of amplifying fasting. So you take this in the morning when you're starting to fast. The other thing is you don't get hungry. Right. You don't get hungry on this stuff. So it's a great tool set. I mean, it's really fantastic.

How can people find out more about your book? Oh, yes. The Immunity Code. If you haven't read it, read it. And if you have, I'll probably offer this. So we're coming up on two years since I published it. And we broke a lot of ground on this podcast, actually, talking about acromancia.

Yeah, by the way, I heard somebody describing who Joel Green was. And the introduction was that he's been on Ben Greenfield's podcast. I was like, give me a break. Anyway, they should have mentioned that you're on this podcast. No, I'm just kidding. You know, the thing was, we broke mentioned that you're on this podcast. No, I'm just kidding. You know, the thing was we broke acromancia on this podcast and nobody had ever heard of it. And now it's like exploding

around acromancia. There were a lot of concepts that were in there. So Amazon, you can get it. You can get it on nutrition.com. And then in this I talked about a new approach to long-term fat loss. And there's a course I have now called the Immune-Centric Fat Loss Course,

which I've had quite a few people go through. And I'll be releasing some of their testimonials here probably this month and just really wonderful testimonials to it. It's the first fat loss program that's ever dealt with what happens post-fat loss. And so there's all these things that happen post-fat loss that really for about 95% of people mean they're going to regain the weight. And so it's the first time we've ever put something in place to correct those things for the average person.

And so it's been working. So yeah. And then my Instagram is realjoelgreen. So love to have you follow me. Yeah, it seems to be a huge problem for a lot of people. A lot of people have figured out how to lose weight. A lot of people have found diets that work, and they drop 10 pounds, they drop 20 pounds. And sometimes, for many reasons, they end up not only gaining the weight, but they end up gaining the weight back.

And over a period of time, what you sometimes see from people is this kind of perpetual yo-yo dieting and they will kind of continually without really recognizing it they're not trying to do this but they're compromising their body fat percentage kind of over and over again because it goes back and forth between a lot of under eating and then a lot of overeating and when they overeat they're not necessarily overeating the nutrients that would help hold muscle mass or help build muscle mass. And they're not, they don't have any habits that are lending itself to improving muscle mass or improving body fat percentage. And so therefore, every time they try to diet, it continually gets a little bit tougher. It gets a little bit harder. And I've

heard you talk about this and I have not heard anyone else ever talk about this but you talked about the fat cells shrinking and how the fat cells you can almost envision them as having like bands hooked to them and they are just as as it shrinks that band tension continues to increase and increase and increase and the very second that you start eating back to your regular calories that you're used to, the potentiation of the bands is now going to be invoked by you starting to overeat again, and it's easier and easier to put on body fat again. Yeah, it gets to this really interesting phenomena. I call it the fat loss paradox.

I've got three more books I'm going to do. Never say never. One of them is going to be on that. Another is going to be on the immunity, or rather the immunity code diet. But it all ties into this, which is something that, like I'm just after what seems to work

long term for real people. And when you look at the average person, the studies show like 80% of them are going to regain the weight in 12 months, 95% within five years. Okay. And you start to go, why, why is this happening? Um, when you dig into the biology of fat cells, you start to see some, no one's talked about kind of very fascinating things. One of those things is fat cells exist in Spider-Man's webbing. Okay. Think of Spider-Man's webbing. Okay?

Think of Spider-Man's webbing holding a bunch of globs up. Okay? And that's called the ECM. It's the exoskeleton that surrounds your fat. What happens is when those cells shrink, you're stretching Spider-Man's webbing, and some of those strands break. Okay?

A lot of them break. And so what happens is in the process of them breaking, they're pulling the fat cell. Think of it that way. And the fat cell gets a little bit damaged. The ECM gets damaged. So that's got to get fixed. The cheapest way to fix it, as far as the body's concerned, is just fill the cell back up.

That's cheap. It doesn't cost anything. So just fill the cell back up. The more expensive route is to repair things. Repairs cost money. route is to repair things. Repairs cost money. So what you see is that in the process of re-shrinking the ECM to make it fit the fat cell again and fixing everything, collagen fibers that are sort of reactive in nature get loaded into the ECM. And so you see like a greater density of different types of collagen. You'll see what's called collagen 6A3.

density of different types of collagen. You'll see what's called collagen 6A3. And we see this in obesity. That's like a clear-cut case. So if you have someone with obesity, they have loads of collagen 6A3 in their extracellular matrix. And the net of that is that you get these imbalances of the wrong kind of immune cells in your fat. It gets inflammation going on. You can't fix that just by shrinking the fat. You got to take other steps. You also see it with repeated weight loss. So what happens with repeated weight loss is you start to see a greater density of inflammatory collagen fibers, and it's a reaction to an injury. It's just like your knee. You did sports, you injured your knee, you fix it, you go back, you re-injure it. And over time, what happens is the knee doesn't work like it used to you see something very similar with body fat you start to see a stiffening of the ecm you start to see inflammatory signals

in your body fat over time and so that nets out into this phenomena of like yeah you know i'm getting really hard to drop body fat used to be easier you know what's going on well yeah part of that absolutely is metabolic issues and things like that but there are unaccounted for things that are just now being recognized that i i went to like a lot of length in the immunity code to kind of lay those out you have genetic issues so you have genes that are very specific um they don't happen in everybody so you'll always have outliers you'll have you know this person didn't didn't work for me but one thing that's never really been talked about is the first timer phenomenon. So what you'll see is when someone is a first timer, meaning like, you know, they were

kind of, kind of overweight their whole life and they decided I'm going to make a change. And I've talked to doctors about this and everybody says the same thing. It's like, oh man, I salivate when one of those comes in. Cause that is your easiest win. Like they don't have this history of weight cycling. So that's the one where you can do the big before after pictures and go look blah, blah. and they have the highest likelihood of it sticking okay um and that's because they they don't have this history of shrinking expanding shrinking expanding the adipose mass but what you see most often is you see all of these mechanisms post-fat loss that start to kick in. And now this last year,

science finally starting to recognize it. There was a conference held on what's called the weight reduced state, which is all this stuff I'm talking about here. And they're still kind of in the infancy of that. They're not really talking about like the specific proteins and genes and collagen fibers and all that we need to correct. But if you study this, what you come to is like, wow, there's this massive missing piece of the equation. It's more important than the fat loss piece. The fat loss piece is hard, like really hard. Very often get people drop body fat. The harder part is getting them stable in that first year. Okay. And so there's a period of about four months to a year where you have all

these things going on that are unique to that stage. You have these genes activated. You have these collagen fibers being made. You have hormones, you have adiponectin, you have all these things going on that are unique to that stage. You have these genes activated. You have these collagen fibers being made. You have hormones. You have adiponectin. You have leptin. You have all this stuff going on. You have what's called the energy gap. And all these things at once are like odds.

You have on one side of the equation the things against you, and then the other side of the things for you. And for most people, it's like this. Now, you'll hear kind of in the fitness landscape things that are sort of, no, that's BS because you just got to do X, Y, and Z. Well, if you think about it ancestrally speaking, when our ancestors were starving and they got game, what did they do after they got game? They had to go back out and hunt again. So they had to go expend a bunch of energy to go and get more food. Well, in this modern ecosystem, if you're not in

the fitness ecosystem, you don't do that post diet. Most people just, ah, I got busy and I had to do this, I did that. So they're not replicating going back out and hunting. So they're not making up for what our ancestors used to do. And so that kind of skews our view of things a little bit. But if you just think about the average person in the average working their 9-to-5 job, they go on a diet, they lose some weight, blah, blah, blah, and then all these mechanisms kick in that nobody's really talked about, that are totally uncompensated for, and then

then they get into chronic weight cycling. That's the problem. Because once you see with chronic weight cycling, number one, you have probably a higher risk of all-cause mortality, and then you see long-term diminishing returns it's very very hard to drop weight over time and that i see that all the time i see people yeah you know i did i did this program i did that program in the 90s then i did this then i did that

and gosh i just can't lose weight anymore i was lean i was so ripped look at my pictures you know so yeah what's the deal with jello You mentioned before, waking up more jacked after having Jell-O. And then Ron Pennant was like, I noticed that too. What's the deal with Jell-O? Is this any Jell-O? Like Jell-O you get from the store? Oh,

by the way, Jell-O, Jell-O, Jell-O was what turned Ron on me. Ron was like, I wasn't sure if you were full of crap all those years, but I think you might be onto something. What?

So, yeah, yeah. So, you know, glycine uh what's in jello it it's beneficial in a lot of different ways uh it's great for the gut it's really good for stimulating adiponectin so um there's a there's a little test you can do which is taking jello at bedtime. And more often than not, I've heard people who do it. I've done it.

And just, yeah, yeah, a little bit leaner when I woke up. I could tell. Yeah. And so it's glycine. Glycine in decent doses, doing that at bedtime, you get better insulin sensitivity. You get a bunch of things. It's like glucogenic kind of, right? Even though it's a protein source or amino acid source it just helps um it helps the helper hormones around insulin so it helps adiponectin which helps insulin sensitivity so yeah very cool i have a question and this is a

selfish one because we kind of touched on it but can you talk to people about the benefits of the ancestral squat and why you do it as often as you potentially do it yeah you poop better for one thing there we go there we go yeah um so uh yeah it's funny um in when i was writing the book in 2017 2018 i was doing these seminars to proof the ideas that worked and the ones that didn't work and the first thing i would do is have everybody get in a circle you know we get all ancestral and we squat down and then i had this little speech where i was like for thousands of years humans got in circles and talked yeah you know the only thing that was missing was drums and a fire um yeah so when you look at little kids when you look at communities ancestral communities many times a day people get into a squat when they go to the bathroom when they're

just kids are playing in the dirt and there's's a number of benefits that, um, seem to be connected to that. You could probably speak to it better than I could cause you're far more down that road than I am, but just cursory, um, it helps the muscles in the, um, in the colon helps them to kind of align properly. So you poop better. Um, it helps strengthen the joints and you know, the, the ligaments and all that stuff. And it's, um, it's, to me, it's part of keeping the body young is is just daily kind of at bedtime i do yoga flows at bedtime and then i always kind of i do two to four and i just i kind of finish in the squat before i go to palms to the ground and i just kind of finish in the squat for 10 to 30 seconds but how long does uh yoga stuff take before you go to bed?

It's like brushing your teeth, probably a few minutes. Not too bad. I think that you need every day. So we've talked about how often do you get to the gym, me, and I love to get in more. I've been kind of making the only thing I can guarantee is Saturdays. But every day you have to do something. That's the key.

And so no matter what, if I miss everything else, I never miss those bedtime yoga flows, no matter what, ever. What's the deal with these tangerines that you've been talking about? Oh my gosh. Yeah. Um, tangerine. Yeah. Uh, tangerine is, uh, so there it is. Yeah. Um, yeah. Tangerine it's, it's it's a i guess you can call it a supplement it's a it's a flab on it's something that you find in citrus peels and it um it does a lot of different things um it's funny i posted that on my instagram and then i went to this peptide conference and two days later you know it was here for all the thought leaders tangerine go take it out there but um it's it's it's um probably like something to investigate and check out and see if it makes sense it's kind of hard to find right now but eat the peels so citrus peels there's a lot of goodies in citrus peels. I think, you know, we, we look at citrus, um, Orontium and things that come from that.

Um, Tangerenton is a compound in citrus peels, but there's a supplement called Centriol and life extension has a bunch of them on the habit and you can, it really helps with cholesterol and probably helps with some other stuff. So it's, you know, you can research it and see if it makes sense to you.

Guys, you got to go to, like, if you're listening right now, go to goals, go to Joel's page and follow him. Because there's so much info in every single post. It's like you will learn a lot.

So go follow right now if you haven't already. Links in the description as well as podcast show notes. Real Joel Green. Learn anything cool or weird at the peptide conference that could help make us more mutants than we already are? Plasmologins. Of course. Plasmalogens, yeah. Plasmalogens, they are phospholipids. So there are these fats that, phospholipids are just fats that are present in cell membranes. And I heard a really fascinating talk on plasmalogens that really correlates to the lack of them being the thing with, uh, Alzheimer's and cognitive decline. So like I saw some amazing graphs and some correlates between

like early death, lack of plasmodogens, um, Alzheimer's and lack of plasmodogens. And I was, I was sold by the graph. I was like, okay, I i need these i learned of them a few years ago and uh there wasn't really a great way to get them and now there's some supplements that have them but they're kind of pricey um but you know i think i think we'll see them blowing up here any type of habits i know i asked you that out there but any type of habits to preserve the plasmodians that you currently have like daily habits things that might help with that well Well, that gets under, so there's an umbrella that used to kind of be the thing. And that was, that was phosphatidylcholine or choline and its sort of cousins having that in the diet to keep cell membranes doing its thing. So lecithin and things like that.

And it's, I think over the years it's been supplanted by so many other things it's kind of like going to the natural product show and there's a billion products and you're like they're all essential which one so um i just think that comes back to keeping cell membranes supple and keeping them uh injury free over time is is one of the most important pieces of the equation and under the umbrella of um choline's and phosphatidylcholine's and all the derivatives of that um there's a really good case to have that as part of what you do whether it's in the form of lecithin or you can go more advanced and there's a lot of products out there that help with that um that you know you

could look at plasmologens are kind of the latest um but yeah they got me sold on it so keeping cell membranes supple big idea on things to do for that we've probably already talked about some stuff like that but uh omega omega fats are kind of the big thing for that so you just you know you need them in the diet the main thing with the omega fats is that you got to have some antioxidant when you're taking them because you can get too much oxidation of these phospholipids in the serum, and then that works the reverse. So you see with sanitarians, very long-lived people, you see they're very good at negating the oxidation of these types of fats in their serum.

So mainly it's just the simple thing is just take some antioxidants when you're taking them, vitamin C, emergency, something. Cool. Yeah. Learned something new there. What are a couple of maybe take-homes people can have from this show? I want people to understand that even though you use a lot of words that people may be unfamiliar with,

your immunity code book breaks things down really, really well and is very concise and anyone can read it. And you actually, you go over the jargon, you go over the science, and then it kind of says key points. And that's what I, that's what, that's what I refer to. Cause I'm like, I don't know about reading this whole book, but I keep looking at the key points. And then I'll go back and I'll kind of read some of the stuff you wrote.

And it makes it easier for me to understand and digest. organization of food and thinking of your food and maybe, uh, thinking about what you, what you've eaten previously, what you're about to eat and what you're going to eat later. And you have had me try this before and it actually was really effective. Um, and we've talked about this on this show before, but the second meal effect, um, where you were saying, Hey, you know, maybe have a protein shake and like half an avocado or a protein shake and some extra virgin olive oil before you have your meal when you're coming off of a fast and it could help regulate your glucose levels a little bit better. Things of that nature. So what are some good take homes like that that people can kind of implement or practice when they get done listening to the show? Probably the simplest is the preload meal.

So the preload meal is a little tiny meal prior to your lunch or your dinner. And so think of it this way. What's really common, particularly if you have weight issues, is that number one, you chew too fast. And number two, you don't get full fast enough. So what happens is you're, you know, you eat your meal and I'm not full. So I'm going to eat some more. And then so that is one of the greatest offenders of excess calories,

is you don't feel full fast enough. So a hack or a way to trick the body is that you take what's called a preload meal. So you take a small meal prior to that bigger meal. And under the aegis of preload meals, there's a lot of different functions, a lot of different ways you can do this. But one that's very effective if the goal is satiety is like a small fat meal. So it could be like an egg or a tablespoon of peanut butter. What happens is it gets in the gut and activates those satiety signals.

It takes about 20 minutes. And then by the time you get in that main meal, so you're plowing through that main meal, and then the satiety signals start to hit earlier. And so the net is you took in a little more calories prior to the meal, but you ate a whole hell of a lot less at the meal. You remember when we were like, like we still do this, but like eating eggs as like, just like, so, so I still do this. And I didn't realize that that might, that might be a thing that's going on, but like a Costco has

boiled eggs that are already pre-made. And we also got this, uh, this, uh, egg maker from Amazon. That's really dope but if i'm ever feeling like i'm kind of hungry i'll eat like three eggs or five eggs or whatever and then after i eat that i'm like am i actually hungry and then like i'll like then i might eat something but i don't eat nearly as much uh if i have some eggs beforehand it's usually like it's like it's my litmus test if i'm truly truly hungry, that's pretty funny. That's dope that that works that way. Yeah. A lot of times when I've come home from the gym, I'll eat something small. And some of the, some of this based off of what you were saying and some of it I was doing, I think intuitively I'll eat something small. Then I take a shower

and then I come back and I eat my dinner with my family usually. And I also have been doing this for years in, um, in, uh, if I go to like a restaurant or especially if I'm going to go shop, I always eat something small before I go shop. Cause I'm like, I'm going to buy a bunch of crap if I, if I'm super hungry. So I'll go to the grocery store. I ended up making a little bit better choices. And by the time I come home and cook, I'm not like as ferociously hungry, you know, I had something. So I think for people to kind of, uh, you know, feed yourself and, you know, give yourself something. So that way you can kind of be a little bit more calm going into the situation of you're about to eat.

And I think you could use this for anything. I mean, you can even pre you can even kind of preload yourself before you go and have. Let's say you're going to an Italian restaurant or a restaurant where there's not a lot of great, uh, there's not a lot of great healthy choices. I think you can eat before you go and you most likely will probably eat quite a bit less, or you might be more reasonable with your meal, um, rather than just going and having, you know, a 2000 calorie bomb of whatever the heck it might be. Yeah. There's, there are, there are kind of simple big moves that I think the average person can do to knock out like the majority of what's doing damage. And one of them is just you're eating too much.

So the preloads are a great way to kind of get back up the time of the satiety signals and get them in the range of like you're still eating. I'm starting to get full. I'm good. And so that's a big deal. Getting people to get full within the meal versus 20 minutes later after the meal. That's a huge deal. And that's just stupid simple. Preloads, you can

do a lot with preloads. So we're talking under the umbrella of satiety, but you can... There's other umbrellas. We could go into basically getting glucose and insulin to function better. So you can do other types of preloads prior to a meal that actually help clear glucose better. In other words, glucose area into the curve and help insulin work better. And there's good research on

that. You could do a whey protein shake, add some cinnamon, you add some berry phenols and resistant starch. You add all that, wait 30 minutes. And there's good data on this showing like, wow, you get these improvements in all kinds of parameters by, by doing that. So preloads, preloads are kind of like, um, what's the analogy? I guess it's like, it's like a choke. There's variations on the choke. You know, there's all kinds of ways to, I get around SEMA, I start talking in jujitsu talk. So there's all kinds of variations on a choke and, um, you can do the choke from different angles different adjustments different little things and you get these sort of different outcomes currently you're focusing on gaining muscle in your 50s oh yeah yeah what has what are some big

things that you would suggest for some of our viewers that are in their 40s and 50s that maybe they need to pay more attention to as they're trying to put on some muscle currently. I can just tell you what I'm noticing. You're still looking pretty damn jacked, I got to add. Thanks, man. And I know you said you don't have the time or you're not able to make the same commitment as you were previously, but you still look great. Thank you, man.

We had a fun little workout today prior to this. That was fun. Yeah, got to see these monsters. Yeah, your brain warm up you're like i need some energy and andrew's like i'll get an energy drink and then you're like hopped in the gym and started bench pressing that was cool like i've never done i've never done the uh bench to the floor like yeah yeah floor press yeah so we did we did uh like you showed me um this cool variation for the tries just benching to the floor. That was really cool.

And then you had this crazy lap machine. Oh, yeah. The seal row. The seal row. That's cool. That thing's amazing. You are our first guest that we had witnessed drinking Redline, by the way. I remember years ago, The Rock took some Redline, and he thought it was the beginning of the end.

He thought he was going to die. I didn't even feel it. See, you're a better man than The Rock. Now we got proof. Dwayne, if you're listening, he said it. You're going to get a rock bottom, man. Don't kick my ass, yeah. Yeah, so that was cool doing that.

Muscle, right now, I'll just tell you what I'm figuring out right now. So I went through COVID. Um, I did the COVID munch, put on some pounds just from isolation and all that lockdown. And then, um, I just, gosh, man, I lost about six, seven pounds of muscle just because there were no gyms open. And, um, I got so desperate one day I drove down in corona del mar down back alleys looking for a gym i found a gym but i was like please okay you know bribe this guy let me in let me give me a key he's like okay shut up so i found a gym um and so but then what i was noticing is just um it's it's

something harder to put back on it but one thing is just getting back to some of the basics of you still have to lift heavy and you still have to eat a bunch of food. There's no getting around those things. You know, like you have to, for me, like 2x calories and definitely go a little heavier. The trick with going heavier, though, is you have to be much, much more careful about injury. So I'm just very careful and I don't have quite the set volume that I used to have. There's that and then um a big big piece of the equation is a lot of post-workout work on the muscles and massaging the muscles and you know all that stuff and just kind of throwing everything at it um one thing that gosh really worked well for me was the

ems suit man that was amazing um yeah i did this ems suit company called lightning fit in costa mesa and wow oh my gosh what does it do does it like pulsate the muscles oh dude okay you guys should come on down i'll get you a workout in it um man so what it does is it hits 100 of the muscles 100 of the time and this particular suit they have figured out these magic algorithms that burn some insane amount of calories it does yeah no it does but here's the craziest part and here like i know this is not bs because it's worked on me and i've i've heard tell of nfl athletes like i turned some other people onto this and who knew a bunch of people and said oh i'm gonna bring in my nfl guys brought in some nfl guys you do these stupid lightweights you do like these fives and these eights, you know, this isn't going to do anything.

You're wrecked with a K after it. You're destroyed. Okay. And I don't know. For me, they want you to work up to two workouts a week. I was like, I need one, you know, for about a month. And then now I'm, I took a couple months off. I was doing other things, but I've gotten back where I could probably do two a week now. I just was putting muscle on in places I hadn't you know and you notice like and my strength

went through the roof i was 20 stronger 20 stronger does it kind of feel good too because sometimes those ems things they kind of feel good like especially if it's like i don't know hook to like your back muscles and stuff like that or does it kind of hurt uh you can overdo them is it hooked all over the place for the whole workout only thing that it's not hitting is the delts even when you're doing curls you're like oh there's like a a thing on your butt or something every muscle every muscle in the body's going so it's a full-on suit on your legs too yeah yeah your hamstrings are flexing while you're doing a tricep push down you guys are gonna come down for a day i'll get you on one so then do you even have to have a movement?

Like, can you just wear it? Yeah, you need to have a movement. But you just don't need as much as you think you do. And you'll scoff initially at the weight. Is it pulsing in some sort of opposite directions or something? Yeah. Can you contract your

hamstring and your quad at the same time? Like, won't you fuck yourself up kind of or no? No. Well, you can. So there's levels to the suit. And when you're doing this particular suit, there's a trainer who's dialing everything in and making sure and going, yes, no, yes, no. But, man, I got kind of cocky one day. I thought, oh, I can handle more.

I can take more. So I had them really dial it up. And I thought I had rhabdo. Literally, man, I thought I blew out my bicep. It took three weeks to heal my bicep from that oh my god yeah so you can overdo it but um you know when you're with the trainers that understand how to work these things and they keep you in the right range uh it's they are the future there's no question um these are gonna these are gonna change the world because aged populations have options they haven't had. And athletes, they've got crazy data on athletic performance.

Like NFL-level athletes improving their 40 going from like 4'3 to 4'2, 7", like crazy numbers. What if you used it just on a walk or maybe you just did some like bodyweight squats and things of that nature? You think it would be pretty effective even for that? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's hitting all – So even just – I'm thinking like pulling a sled you know you pull a sled forward

backward i mean you could maybe you can kind of already get great workouts from that but i'm just kind of curious like and if this thing's zapping your whole body you know and you're doing a movement like that it might be really effective all right and are you able to even like i guess keep your balance like if you're if your quads and your hamstrings are going at the same time, one's trying to pull, one's trying to push, flexion and extension. I'd imagine you're like kind of spazzing out the whole time. I don't know. I just feel like your central nervous system would like just be fried if everything's firing off. You're not fried.

You're just by the end of the workout. You come in scoffing. You come out humble. That's what I found. You come in scoffing. You don't know what you're talking to. This thing's bullshit. Then you come out going,

oh, okay, that thing fucked me up. It's working. You're doing curls, but it's working the back, the chest. It's hitting everything all at once so your energy expenditures through the roof on this thing and then at the same time your uh your time to work out in this particular suit it's like 15 10 minutes it's crazy so okay just because it's blowing my mind but like if so if you're doing a bicep curl is your tricep working also yep so then

how did how does your how do you how does your muscle know which way to go then if it's, again, like I said, if your arms, you're trying to pull your forearm. Well, if you think about it, if you flex your bicep, you kind of almost can't flex your bicep without flexing your tricep too. Like if I came over there and grabbed your tricep while you're flexing your bicep, your tricep would be hard and full you know it is it is uh lengthening or stretching or whatever but it's like not as simple as it just so i think i think it makes sense that you would be able to flex everything what if you're trying to do a bicep curl and also flex your tricep at the same time i've noticed that um i don't know the ins and outs of how it all works but what i've noticed is like you can get an arm lockout really easy. Like, okay, turn it down.

Oh, shit. Yeah, yeah. So I guess that's probably what I'm thinking about. Things firing off too many. That makes sense. You can definitely do that. The craziest thing with those is strength gains. That's the craziest thing I've noticed with strength gains.

But I got to know the CEO a little bit. I was like, hey. She's like, yes, it does. So, yeah, both of you guys would really dig it because you guys are kind of like, you know, competition level. It'd be really interesting to see like what you guys noticed in, you know, your performance markers. That would be really interesting.

That would be very interesting. Yeah. And you, my gosh, the freak of the decade here would be, holy cow, I can't imagine you on this thing. I think it'd be really cool for people who have issues like activating certain muscle groups during workouts because a lot of people have that mind muscle connection issue yeah you know where they just can't get things firing yeah right yeah that would be and an older population's probably suffered a lot from that especially if they've never exercised older probably no no no no no no it's not

i didn't point at you i I was just pointing at nobody. I'm just thinking of older people. He's like, Joel, you know that wasn't what I meant to do. And older populations... I'm not saying anybody. That's not what I meant to do.

People who haven't worked out before. You've been working out since you were 13. It's not you. It's just people who haven't. Have you noticed any increase in mobility? Have you tried that and did your ancestral squats? I'm imagining if it's making things flex and fire. In my head, the way it works out is it would definitely help a lot. But I'm not sure.

I think what i noticed on it was just the trainers put you through different workouts than you'd normally do like it's easy to kind of get in your thing and they make you just do different things and so that was a big part of it i don't know specific to yeah probably just doing different movements great thank you so much for your time today. Andrew, take us on out of here. I will. 8sleep.com slash power project. You get $150 off automatically off of your Pod Pro mattress and cover or just your Pod Pro cover. Links to them down in the description below, as well as the podcast show notes. Joel's Instagram and his book will be down in the description as well. If you guys need to go follow him ASAP. And then if you want to check out the book, there's links to that down there as well. Follow the podcast at Mark Bell's power project on Instagram at MB power

project on Tik TOK and Twitter, my Instagram and Twitter's at, I am Andrew Z and SEMA. Where you at? And see me in Yang on Instagram and YouTube. And then see me in Yang on Tik TOK and Twitter. Joel, once again,

you are at. Oh, a real Joel green. Yeah. Instagram. Yeah. All right right just because i like to embarrass and sema whenever i have the opportunity you've been a huge fan of bodybuilding for a long time right here we go how does this guy kind of stack up to some of your favorite bodybuilders that you've seen over the years i think sema i honestly think this dude i think that you are

this generation's ronnie coleman if you want it to be like, if we don't know how I would respond, you know how some people are hyper responders to like those things. Sometimes some people don't respond well. Just stop. No. Have you heard about that? No,

stop. This is you. If you wanted to gear up, man, you're like the second coming of Ronnie Coleman, if you wanted to. And, and you know, it's, you're like the second coming of ronnie coleman if you wanted to and and you know it's i actually like your vibe i like what you're doing which is like you're you're

you're just you're just not on anything and i can tell and you know it's it's showing people what's possible which is fantastic um but just just just to see the car crash i would love to see you i just love to see it you know like like how far could this guy take it oh we should do it i like jujitsu i like walking around i like feeling good in clothes ronnie cole probably pretty good at jujitsu he probably would kick ass in jujitsu could you imagine ronnie coleman doing jujitsu bruh he would just hug people to death like could you imagine ronnie arm around your neck? You can't arm bar off Ronnie Coleman, by the way. Right.

Because his arm will not extend. He'll just curl you in. It's a really good defense. Yeah. No, you just, I call him T'Challa. I think it's just pretty, it's remarkable. It's cool to be next to him on the podcast every day and have the three of us doing our thing here. But what I think is cool and interesting is the fact that he's

not trying to be a bodybuilder especially at the moment that's what we like to tease him about because we're like oh we don't ever see him lift and he never eats and we just he does work very hard this is your athletic sort of like you're training more athletically

but like if you were just like you know everybody want a body build body nobody want to lift heavy weight you lift heavy weight and you're in i mean good like wow i don't want to think like be crazy crazy you think you would grow faster now than you did previously because it seems like your bot well maybe just because you maybe it's just because you keep getting kind of leaner. But it seems like your body has changed more in the last year than it did in the previous years that I knew you. But that could also be just because of what I see because you're getting leaner and it's more apparent. Yeah. Well, I mean, if you look at the DEXA scans from like two years ago or a year ago to a year and a half ago to now, it says I put on like a pound and a half of muscle.

Right. And I'm not perpetually eating in a surplus of calories. Some days I'm on a deficit, some days I'm on maintenance. It's like I've been keeping around the same weight. And you look way different than what is registered on the body fat exam. But I also think that if I did go into a dedicated surplus, focusing on trying to gain muscle, I think that I would put on quite a bit of body fat while putting on a little bit of faster muscle.

No, no, but, but, but, but follow me here, Joel, because I can't like,

I've been training for a long, like a lot of years now. I think that I would put on muscle a little bit faster, but I would in like, let's say that I gained 10. I went from two 42 to 60 this year. I think that probably a good 12 pounds of that would be fat and a good eight pounds of that would be good lean body mass, which is good for my training. Your genetic potential is so under fed right now. I think if you fed to your genetic potential i think you'd be like

yeah so i hit 300 pounds and i didn't i gained it i gained a half pound of fat yeah you were right i was 270 back in 2000 like uh you have a different capacity now your work capacity is a lot better so maybe it would be different yeah 300 might be a stretch 300 would be a stretch i think i could i don't think it's a stretch for you 300 joel i'm 240 right now that's 60 pounds 240 and you don't eat i eat okay no okay obviously you eat but i'm saying is you eat once or twice a day imagine if you had more meals what that would look like i guess you eat you eat in a in a mount right now that is allowing you to continuously get a little bit leaner whether that's a caloric deficit or not is probably somewhat debatable it's like if we're looking at a weekly intake it's a it's a caloric deficit

but there are some days where i'm gonna i'm some days i eat like 3500 but some days i eat less because i'm not as hungry right but if we're looking on a week-to-week basis it's probably a slight deficit. It's not like daily. Bodybuilders are listening and they're like, he eats like a CrossFit chick. Dude, so yesterday I tracked and I ate over 3,000 calories and I was really, really hungry.

I didn't eat like the greatest of food, but I just wanted to see where I was at. And so if I'm putting down 3,000 calories easily and you're saying you eat 3,500. Oh,000 calories easily and you're saying you eat 3,500. Oh, yeah. On a big day, you eat 3,500. But I'm saying I don't eat 4,000 calories or anything like that. There's a huge discrepancy between you and I.

And if you're only eating that much more, imagine what you should be eating way more. But again, it's the years. Because I've been like, even if I've dedicated time to just bodybuilding and gaining weight, I've already been lifting for a long time that that muscle gain is just like, I could, I think I could get to a, I think I could get to a lean 260. Like, and when I say, when I say lean 260, I mean like 12%, 11% body fat at 260. I think I could do that. But 272, like 270, but i know i'm different now than i was in 2015 but 270 was kind of uncomfortable 260 10 body fat let's go for it okay okay listen i think

you are in the range of like flex wheelerish genetic potential flex went from uh 220 to 260 40 pounds you know and we talked to Flex on that. He was like, yeah, I felt better, actually. I think, and you're taller than Flex, so I think you could, I think you're in that range of, like, capable of similar things, but I think it would turn into 50 or 60 pounds in your case, you know? When we asked Flex about certain things, he was like, yeah, that took me three or four, and I thought for sure he was going to say years. He's like, months, and I was like yeah that took me three or four and i thought for sure he's gonna say years he's like months and i was like oh my god do you think so 300 pound in sema is still

natty no okay no no no see that's what we're talking like i like i can't like that's what i was talking oh i mean no i don't mean that no i mean i mean car crash got it oh car crash okay yeah okay yeah i was like what yeah okay no no i don't mean, I know. I mean, I mean, geared to the nines. Like just, I can agree with that. Oh, okay. I think everybody wants to see that. I don't. Why don't you guys do a vote and see like, yeah, everybody want to see.

No, I think that would be the first time we ever put a poll out that gets zero for now. Everyone's going to want to see it, but everyone already thinks I'm on. So like, it's like, it is what it is. Isn't that funny?? I've seen enough bodies to know. Where I could tell it with you is in the buys and the tries. That's where it really shows it. What is it?

It's your relative muscle belly density to the rest of your body. Your back is like, oh, the guy's on something. Christmas tree back and all that. You're also not like, your body looks very chill right now right whereas somebody that's on stuff a lot of times especially if someone's on a good amount of gear their body will look it's weird to say but their body will look aggressive it will like look like angry you know it'll like be very

uh like vascular and yeah and uh the skin type even kind of looks a little different it's also the way that the muscle belly seams sit you know it's the way the seams sit they're just there's a natural sort of like um there's a natural wateriness there that you that you see in natural athletes that you're not out of proportion which is a yeah usually a telltale sign someone has just fucking gigantic biceps or gigantic chest exactly that's what they're kind of missing elements of some other pieces of the puzzle you're like that guy probably always had a fairly big chest then he get on shit and then bam like that stuff just grew

yeah gotcha all right we're done embarrassing i want everyone in the comment section to say we want 300 pound enzima let's make it happen let's make it happen i'm at mark smelly bell strength is never a weakness weakness never strength catch you guys later thank you