Mark Bell's Power Project - MBPP EP. 612 - The CRAZIEST Supplements You've NEVER Heard Of ft. Lucas Aoun

Episode Date: October 21, 2021

Lucas Aoun is Australia's leading biohacker, with over 7 years of experience researching and experimenting with nootropics and other performance enhancing compounds. Today he blows our minds with powerful supplements that we've never heard of for sexual health, cognitive function, weight loss and more. Subscribe to Lucas' amazing Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/boostyourbiology Follow Lucas on IG: https://www.instagram.com/ergogenic_health/ More info on Lucas here: https://www.ergogenic.health/ Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Vuori Performance Apparel: Visit https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order! ➢Magic Spoon Cereal: Visit 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

Power Project family, this episode is going to come with some heat. So with that being said, here's a medical disclaimer. Mark Bell's Power Project podcast does not contain medical advice. We are not doctors nor are the featured guests. The contents of this podcast, such as videos, text, graphics, images, and other material are intended for entertainment, informational, and educational purposes only, and not for the purpose of rendering medical advice. The contents of this podcast are not intended to substitute professional medical advice,

diagnosis, nor treatment. Although we make efforts to keep medical information on our channel updated, we cannot guarantee that the information on our channel reflects the most up-to-date research. Consult your physician for medical advice. Always seek the advice of a physician or other qualified healthcare providers regarding a medical condition. Never disregard or delay seeking professional medical advice or treatment because of something you heard on a podcast. Enjoy. We be ready. Using drugs for an unintended purpose, a qualified physician should make a decision based on each person's medical history and current prescriptions. Enjoy. We be ready. You ready?

Mm-hmm. I guess I didn't get the memo about the, um, what color is that? About the thing? About the shirt color. Technically, what color would this be? And is this the exact? It's not mustard. It's not yellow. It's not brown.

I mean, we somehow are wearing similar clothing today. I don't know what happened. Yellowish tan. Caramel. Well, this is the cool thing about Viore. Number one, Mark, touch my shirt. You feel how soft that is? It's that strato.

Yeah. It's soft on the outside, but so hard underneath. Wow. Are you hard like this everywhere? That's the Viore, actually. But no, seriously, guys. This right here, it's my and Andrew's favorite t-shirt. It's called the Stratotech T from Viore.com.

And if you guys want to check it out, along with all their other clothing, I'm also wearing Viore pants. These are called the Ridge Stop Pants from Viore. They're also very comfortable. check it out along with all their other clothing i'm also wearing viore pants right these are called the ridge stop pants from viore they're also very comfortable and uh he also gave me a butt slap right there thank you oddly aroused oh look at a nice thick booty thank you he's got a lot of junk yeah but i'm not seriously this is like this gym these clothes i almost feel bad wearing them in the gym because they look so good but they're supposed to be used for working out what size shirt is that this is a 2x i have this same shirt in an xl2 because i like this shirt so much i have a 2x and i have an xl filling it out pretty good bro yeah yeah yeah i gotta actually i have a uh gray version of that on under but i'm cold

so i'm not gonna you know pull it out right i'm gonna whip it out yeah but i also don't look the same on a shirt that's supposed to fit me. So I'll just keep that hidden for now. Yeah. But it is comfortable. And I do like wearing it everywhere else. You can wear it to dinner. Including the gym.

But yeah, no, I just, dude, it's, this clothes is phenomenal. Mark was explaining it like, I think sometime late last year, early this year about just like, you feel like a million bucks when you wear this stuff. Yes. Like it. And I was like, okay, cool, whatever. But like, no, dude, you actually do feel really good. Like, cause it looks good.

It fits good. And it just, yeah, dude, it's awesome. They got a lot of different types of clothes too. Like Insima is wearing a little bit more of what's like a, like a cottony kind of sports shirt. That's got some good stretch to it, but they make some like, uh,

like mesh wicking under army, uh, under armor ish type of shirts for people that dig that. So they got like a wide, a wide variety of, uh, shirts, tank tops,

long sleeve. They got some long sleeve shirts that just, it makes you look like you're all dressed up and you ain't even trying. You're just in a long sleeve shirt and it doesn't break the bank. Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's another, another big factor.

And the pants are nice. They have like kind of a pants that you could wear, you know, if you're going out somewhere or pants that you can wear, like if you're training, you got like a wide, a good wide variety. And then the stuff on top of that is kind of like universal. Make you look good anywhere you go. Yeah, so the amazing clothes that won't break the bank but will make it even easier for you because when you head over to V-U-O-R-I dot com slash power project. So V-U-O-R-I dot com slash power project. You guys will receive 20% off your first order.

No code needed. Just hit the links down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Uh, one more time. Cause I need the practice V U O R I.com slash power project. Again, links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes head over there ASAP.

They, uh, have a commercial on TV. I saw they did. Yeah. I saw, yeah. The other day I was watching,

uh, he was watching some football foosball yeah and they had they had a that a commercial on TV I was like damn sick were we in it it's like these guys are killing we should be mm-hmm yeah we you know we definitely should be cuz yeah cuz we're phenomenal yeah quick rundown on today's guest, Mark. Yeah. Who is today's guest? How do we say this guy's name?

Lucas Aoun. No, Lucas Aoun, I'm guessing. We'll ask him how to say it when he gets on, but I'm guessing it's Aoun. Yeah. Sounds good. I don't know. He's checking out a lot of the stuff that he had on YouTube and his Instagram. And he's got tremendous information.

Man, there was a lot that I was listening to this morning. Um, and it's like, he's talking about, uh, alternatives to like melatonin. He's talking about alternatives to NAC, which is a really popular supplement that more recently got banned by the FDA. Um, he's talking about a lot of things, TUDCA or liver toxicity. He talked about sleeping on an incline and the impact that that can have for people and some of the testimonials of people that sleep on an incline. And Andrew, you might find this interesting. Some people are finding that it helps relieve some back pain sleep better supposed to help with sleep apnea anything for the brain because I remember aspirin back in the day

maybe I'm misremembering but he called it like a brain wash because it allowed like the fluid in your head to like literally wash out that's the way they have you sleep in the hospital I guess supposed to help aid in recovery and I, um, I guess there's, you know, a lot more to be learned about some of these things. I think main thing to keep in mind when we're doing this show today is that the, all these things that we're going to mention, these are all just like, we're just kind of pulling some straws here. You know, we're just grasping for straws. Like no one really truly knows like all these different things, but these are like anecdotal and researched, uh, information about how a particular supplement may, uh, help you

burn fat a little bit faster. Uh, I just want to make it clear that like nothing is going to do the work for you. We're not there yet. You'll always have to train your ass off. You'll always have to have good habits. But how cool would it be to know that you could take things maybe in a systematic way that can make the good habits that you form easier? Fuck, man, that'd be great. Because if you're just in a good mood every day and you feel good every day, it's a lot easier to make great decisions. And that's why so much of this podcast is dedicated to talking about training and talking about nutrition and talking about sleep.

Because we know if you have those three pillars intact, that it'll give you a better chance at staying connected to those good habits every day. And one thing to remember too, whenever we have guests on like this, where we're talking about like biohacking or things that maybe they haven't been shown in the research, just remember that sometimes it takes clinical research a long time to catch up to what certain people are actually doing. So there might be stuff here that in the future is found out like not to be that useful, but there might be a lot of stuff that in the future is found out like, wow, they were onto something. So the thing is, is just don't always just lay, oh, the research says this or that hasn't been researched yet because you don't always need the research to tell you something to try before you actually try it and see how beneficial it is for you.

That's all we're saying. So just keep that in mind as we get into this episode, please. As I was researching stuff, I was just like, we've had a lot of great guests on the show. We listened to a lot of great people. There are people that have novel ideas and concepts. people um there are people that have novel ideas and concepts um but for the most part i know the guests that we're having on i i'm pretty aware of what they're going to share and in this case i have to admit that i was completely unaware of almost all the different

stuff this guy's talking about. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of times I'm like, oh, I heard that because I've been around for a long time. And I'm like, oh, that's what Dan Duchesne was talking about 30 years ago. Or that's what Charles Poliquin used to say. Or I heard that from Ian Danny or heard that from this guy or that guy. With some of this guy's information, I haven't heard a lot of these things before, and they're just small offshoots of some stuff that you may have heard before but said in some slightly different ways. I love the fact he's given alternatives to pharmaceutical medications. Because I think pharmaceutical medications, while they do have tremendous ability to assist people, I think it's kind of intimidating for people to sometimes take a pharmaceutical and they might be reluctant.

He's just given over the counter herbs that he thinks can help in a similar way. So I think that's really cool. There he is. Gents. Here we are. Can you tell us how to say your name first, please?

Yeah. So it's Lucas. What's your last name? And then surname's Owen. Owen. Yeah, it's spelled really weird. Yeah, I was wrong. Okay.

Great to have you on the show today. Thank you so much for your time. You mind kind of kicking things off and telling us how you got started in all this because, you know, when people talk about, you know, investigating different supplements and investigating nutrition and sleep and all these things, they always refer to it as a rabbit hole, right? And I think that your YouTube channel is definitely that because people are going to run into all kinds of things that they probably haven't heard of before. So how did you get into some of this and how did you kind of come about finding things that you wouldn't normally find

with a regular Google search? Yeah. Well, first of all, Jan, I just want to say, yeah, thanks for having me on the show. I've been watching all of your episodes. I love what you guys are doing. So yeah, I guess my journey really started out, my dad's a pharmacist. And so I had a lot of experience working in the pharmacy at a very young age. And, you know, I became the vitamin specialist very early on and started reading labels. And then from there, I basically got involved in a nootropic startup where I had the opportunity to sort of formulate a nootropic stack. And back then, I used an ingredient that was – it then became the most popular ingredient in all pre-workout formulas, which was something called tea cream,

which is like a caffeine derivative you guys might be aware of. And since then, like I sort of, you know, I fell in love with the whole idea of biohacking. And then I transitioned and started studying naturopathy, which I've just completed my naturopathy degree. So I'm a fully qualified naturopath. I had the choice to go down the path of either becoming a pharmacist or a naturopath. So I would say I tend to leverage the power of both sides. I do like things that pharmaceutical medications can offer,

but then also I love the botanicals and ethno botanicals and things like that. Awesome, man. I think a great way to kick this show off is what everybody wants to hear about, and that's how do we improve sexual performance? I saw one of your videos talking about penis size and various things like that. So are there some supplements? Are there things that you've noticed in your recommendations that are things that can really be of good positive impact? Yeah. I mean, when it comes to penile size, there was one key hormone that i you know started investigating and researching and and that was dht and you you guys have spoken about it before and the importance of dht specifically in youth um so you know when i was looking into various compounds i could

you know ramp up dht production i then fell in love with, you know, there was a particular. Well, I would say that someone, somebody, I'm not the best candidate for that because. You're too large. I managed. Well, because I maxed out my own testosterone naturally to, you know, 988, but then there was a particular device which you spoke about, Mark, which is the Phoenix.

The Phoenix? Yeah, it was previously known as the Rocket. And so it's basically acoustic wave or shockwave therapy for the penis. Shockwaves on your junk? You can't shock the penis back to health, can you? Well, the premise behind it is that it causes micro-damage to the actual blood vessels and then it regenerates blood vessels and causes a process known as angiogenesis so it can help to revascularize the penis.

What about any supplements that you think might have some positive impact for men in terms of sexual performance? So I'd say there are certain ones such as cystanch. It's also known as cistanche in your pants. Um, that, that one there was actually Genghis Khan's favorite herb. He actually used it quite a lot to populate. I don't know what percentage of Asia. Um, yeah, that one there is awesome from a from a fertility perspective but then also

um increasing resting hang size so flaccid length as well so if you're a grower you can sort of turn into a shower there amazing wait wait so how do you wait first off how do you spell cistanche and why have i never heard of cistanche that's the interesting thing in your pants yeah i've never heard of that uh you spell cistanche it's c-i-s-t-a-n-c-h-e cistanche um well the reason why we most of us haven't heard of it is because it's um kept a secret by traditional chinese medicine they they um they use it as part of many of their botanical formulas for like male fertility and increasing kidney function, improving mind function. There's so many benefits to cyst damage. I could talk about it forever.

Okay. Now, real quick, I want to hop back to this DHT thing that we were talking about before. So what role does that really play? And I guess you said it mainly plays a role in individuals' developmental periods? sub-optimal DHT production, then it's known to influence the overall vascularization and also the total development of the penis. So that's why it's really crucial that as a youth, this is what I'm planning on doing in the future, is loading up my son with natural DHT boosters like I did. I was using Cordyceps. I was using creatine.

I was using glycine and all those DHT boosters. Wow. And what age? Because my son's about to be nine months old. I'm just curious when his protocol is going to get started because yeah i want to make sure he's you know nice and strong um let's say between you know like 15 or 16 around that age yeah so you got you got a long way off andrew cool i got a long ways to stock up and also these pancakes taste so weird but i mean also like as far as development like

does you know does doing normal things like getting outside getting sun like what normal things increase dht production i'm just curious yeah uh so normal things such as lifting weights um like and sprinting in fact if we compare uh weight training to sprinting um i've seen some studies where there's you know massive increases in dht following a sprinting session and i've personally noticed this myself particularly after sprints i feel like really really good um yeah i'm so happy i played soccer okay And before we skip over this, because we kind of just mentioned this Phoenix, I looked up the Phoenix now that you mentioned it. And man, first off, it's named pretty well, because people don't know Phoenix's, you know, they die and they come back to life. So apparently this thing will bring your dick back to life. But outside of that, this looks really like, what do you do with this thing this thing like do you just point it at your your junk and how does it work exactly yeah when you when you first turn on the machine it sounds like a jackhammer so uh just it's pretty confrontational because like like, obviously, when you're exposed to – when you feel like you're in danger,

the automatic response by the body is to restrict blood flow. So you do see a – when I first turned it on, I was like, oh, my God, what is this? Like, am I jackhammering my penis? But basically what it does is that you do go through different lines. They've got instructions. They've got, you know, obviously videos and stuff. But you go down certain pathways.

And what it does is it causes microvascular damage. And then eventually it will clear out plaque, which builds up as you age. Wow. And so what that does is it also helps to, you know, revascularize the penis and cause a process known as angiogenesis. So it's quite a lengthy, it's no pun intended. It's quite a lengthy process in terms of, you know, it's like a 12 week program. Does it feel like, does just like 12 week bulk, 12 week bulk. Can one have activity the same day or is it like resistance training where you feel kind of fatigued afterwards and you can't do your thing for a little bit?

Like how's that recovery wise? Yeah, yeah, you're spot on. So like what happens is following the session, you do feel a little bit of soreness because it's actually, it does, it's like going to the gym like gym for your penis basically it does cause some degree of soreness the following day and also blood flow and actual penile functioning is slightly inhibited that day but it's then it's the next few days where you start to see like all the benefits wow okay. Okay. How did you, you, you kind of mentioned you maxed out your testosterone, uh, at a young age. I mean, I'm sure that young kids or teenagers, probably their testosterone levels are probably pretty good a lot of times anyway, but where did you take your

testosterone from? Where did you take it to? And then I'm also interested to know, like, what did that actually do for you? Cause I think that, I think sometimes we're chasing after things that maybe aren't as clear as we might think. Like, we might think like, oh, if I increase my testosterone, it's going to have this, you know, impact on recovery and impact on, but doesn't always, you know, things don't always kind of work out that way. So what were, how did you get those results and what did those results do for you? Yeah. So I started out around 680 total

testosterone nanograms per deciliter. And this was about two years ago. I was really interested in everything that we can do naturally to optimize testosterone um being a young man so i was like i dove into the research and played around with various supplements various diets various training methods and then the final frontier i think was actually icing my balls um which i don't know if any guests have spoken about it yet on your show but that that practice there was i think what really uh moved the needle was icing my balls um how did you ice like did what did you use did you just like get a plastic bag put some ice in and just dunk them in there what was the process um so literally all i did was grab one of those like flexible ice packs those ones that sort of bend and basically all you

do is you apply it directly to your underwear where your balls hang and sit. And I was doing that before training as soon as I woke up and then also before bed, so three times a day for like 10 to 15 minutes. And every single guy that started the practice that I've told about, I did a video on YouTube and stuff talking about it, like literally every single guy who starts doing it reports benefits, reports better morning wood, better

libido. And also we've seen blood work. I did my own blood work before and after, and it definitely moved the needle. And what did it do for you? Like did you have better performance in the gym and were you doing anything else other than icing your nuts? Were you taking some supplements too or something? Yeah. So I definitely felt a lot more, I wouldn't say aggressive, but more dominant and more, I guess, just having the typical effects that men talk about when they go on TRTs. They just feel confident, motivated, very outgoing and social. I noticed those benefits pretty much straight away. In terms of my lifts and things in the gym, I felt good. I felt really good getting into the gym. But then as you said, obviously with the

icing, that's one thing. But then was you know stacking that with like um a potent anti-serotonin like a drug that lowers serotonin um i was using you know ciprohect so uh vitamin b one in high doses vitamin e heaps of taurine cistanche pine pollen um and tonka dali so i was combining a lot of things are really efficacious there. When it comes to these kind of natural ways of doing things, is it similar to perhaps getting on like a TRT protocol? Because my question here would be, when you think about taking performance enhancing drugs,

you end up in a situation where you end up with the question, and then what? So do you end up in the same situation when you boost your testosterone levels naturally? And is there any detriment that you're aware of? Because if we raise it, what goes up must come down. So I'm wondering, if you bump your test up to 1 a thousand, does the body have a response to that and say, Hey, you know what? You should actually, you should be chilling way down here. And maybe it takes you even lower than where you were previously. Have you kind of noticed some things like that or what, what's your opinion on it? Yeah. I like that concept, but I also

respect the fact that the, that the human body, particularly like a young man who's training hard, like it's conducive to training. It's conducive to all aspects of performance. And so like with the things that I use to really ramp up testosterone, I was working on a lot of the enzymes and pathways that help to convert cholesterol into pregnenolone and then down that pathway so there's no real negative feedback there's nothing that's going to cause suppression of that HPT axis so it's we're looking at more of a longer term you know benefit there um if I were to retest anytime soon I'd imagine it would still be around probably 950, a thousand. Um, so yeah,

I like the idea of like, you know, sustainability, um, there. Also, I'm, I'm curious about this because there seems to be just kind of a focus on testosterone for the past few years. It's something that always comes up when we talk to guests. Um, why, or what are some of the big reasons why you think male testosterone levels are lower nowadays than they were in the past because i mean they are lower now than they were in the 60s 30s 20s etc yeah that's a good point so i think the key reason would be uh just really crappy lifestyles so not getting enough sleep um inadequate nutrient intake, so deficiencies in zinc, magnesium, selenium, copper. You know, even obesity we know can increase C-reactive protein

that can cause lower testosterone. Some underlying cause that's not really addressed much is varicocele, so an enlargement of the veins draining back the testes. So there's like an enlargement of the veins, the spermatic cord that drains the testes. That's actually a huge, huge cause of low testosterone that I think guys need to focus in on because it's neglected. For some guys that do blood tests, they never, ever get that checked. And that can be a real cause of low T.

Why does that vein get larger? Or why is that? Or how has that gotten larger? It's just by the natural, like, they say it's like natural evolution or having tight underwear. Like wearing tight underwear doesn't make it better. It definitely makes it worse. Oh, okay. And as far as icing your nuts, can anybody just literally hop right on that ice pack? Or do you like, is it like, I don't know, do you have to do any?

Yeah, exactly. I couldn't think of the right word, but like any pregame things to jump to do that? Or can anybody in their 20s, 30s, 40 40s 50s just start doing it and start getting some of the benefits it's pretty straightforward i mean all you have to do is like there's there is no pre like there's no pre-warm-up or anything in fact if you if you warm up that's that's the opposite advice if you if you want the using a sauna was traditionally used as a male contraceptive. So any sort of heat to the testes we know can damage sperm. So this one here, I mean, that's one rule of thumb whenever I use the sauna is always bring an ice pack in the sauna because that's the one time

when you want your T to be higher. Yeah, what are a couple other things with the sauna? I saw you had a video. I didn't have an opportunity to watch it. What are a couple other things that you should be aware of uh if you're going to use some heat therapy yeah so the other aspect there is something that not many people like realize is that you know sauna can raise prolactin um and it can also uh release um endorphins and some of them there's something that can bind to the kappa opioid receptor and so

this is a little bit you know complex but basically when we're binding when the opioids are released and they bind to the kappa opioid receptor it's actually very dysphoric which is the opposite of euphoric it can actually make people feel really um like flat and deflated following the usage and i personally noticed this i've got my own clear light infrared sauna behind me um the day after that i use it it's always around like two or three o'clock the following day when i i do feel like depleted and just a bit flat and i keep thinking it's electrolyte based or um it feels like I've been sucked. My dopamine has been sucked away a little bit. Um, so that's something people

should be aware of is the prolactin spike there. Interesting. Okay. So, um, that's something that's not a benefit, but you said that you contrast it with cold plunging or, or using a, using cold. So how is that beneficial and are there any drawbacks to cold plunging sauna but what like what is the benefit of doing a sauna and then a cold plunge afterwards um so the combination there so like if i if i were to you know use a sauna and then cold plunge um what i actually do now is i just bring an ice pack in the sauna for convenience. I'm literally just icing. But, I mean, the benefits of alternating between super hot and then super cold is we're getting, you know, awesome vasodilation followed by super vasoconstriction. And, I mean, I'm sure there's some other crazy neurochemicals that are released in the brain when we do that alternating therapy.

Like, it's very, I mean, I'm sure you guys have noticed that mark even when you alternate you feel pretty good the next day or like just after yeah you feel brand new you feel like you're recovered from your workout whether you're recovered or not what are some uh maybe uh tips and tricks you have in terms of like building muscle when it comes to supplementation. I've heard you talk about a really wide range of stuff, some things even helping with like insulin sensitivity and stuff of that nature. And I would imagine that if you can drive more nutrient to the muscles, it might help you look more jacked or might help you be more jacked. So do you have anything, you know, I know people talk quite a bit nowadays about essential

amino acids during the workout and people have all kinds of different practices when it comes to gaining muscle do you have anything up your sleeve in terms of like recovery or in terms of just being able to load the muscles with more nutrients yeah there's one molecule that i'm really excited about it's not exactly released yet but it will be fairly soon um everyone's heard of bcaa's everyone knows about leucine isoleucine valine so those three amino acids there is one that's a derivative of leucine called dilucine it's um two leucine molecules bound together to create a dilucine peptide. And that one there, based on some initial human trials, that one there increases protein synthesis by up to 40% more than leucine by itself.

So that's something that's going to be really cool. When you say it's unreleased, what do you mean by it's a molecule that's unreleased? Like, how did you get your hands on it um i work i work real closely with with sean wells he's like a he's considered the world's greatest formulator so i do get my hands on some nifty ingredients and if you saw my pantry i mean it's full of exotic botanicals and and weird compounds um but it will be it will be released i think later towards like towards the end of this year um i'm hoping to see it released just in isolation so that guys can literally use it on its own like post-workout maybe like adding uh less it's like less than two grams in your shake. That's really exciting. I'm really excited about that one. What about some of these things that people

are utilizing to help them manage their blood glucose levels? There were some of these pharmaceuticals that you were talking about that can maybe assist with people losing body fat and things of that nature yeah um so the one compound that really excites me from an insulin sensitivity perspective is um again a lot of people know about berberine but there's something else called dihydroberberine so dhb not dihydroboldanone dihydroberberine that that one there is really interesting because a lot of the drawbacks associated with berberine is the really poor bioavailability you have to use really high doses if we're trying to match like let's say metformin you have to use you know 1500 to 2000 sort of milligrams to really see a difference but dihydroberberine we can use such a small dose like 50 to 100 milligrams

per day and it's got better bioavailability it then gets reconverted back into berberine in the small intestine and it doesn't it doesn't come with any of the drawbacks like bloating, cramping, or all the other side effects. And dihydroberberine is awesome because it improves GLUT4 expression, activates AMPK, and increases adiponectin and all these awesome pathways. And that's still something that, is that something that people can get their hands on currently? Yeah, it's released. It's released. I just did a post about it a couple of days ago on my Instagram for those

because a lot of people have been waiting for that ingredient. How would somebody, how would someone go about utilizing that? Would that be something you would want to take with a high carbohydrate meal type of thing? Exactly. Yeah. with a high carbohydrate meal type of thing? Exactly, yeah. So my premise there is to use it about 20 to 30 minutes before your highest carb meal of the day. So for me, that's like in the evening.

I tend to refuel on carbs in the evening. And so I'll use it about just the same way that bodybuilders would use metformin. They would use dihydroberberine as a substitute there. And for you, actually, since you kind of mentioned that, in what ways do you schedule out your food during the day for work productivity? Yeah, so I do fast a little bit. I was telling Mark that I do aim to get 20 000 steps in a day because i got i got a um treadmill desk set up so i do a lot of content creation on on the treadmill but as soon

as i wake up in the morning like i'll do 10 000 steps you know fasted um once i hit that 10 000 steps mark i bring in my first meal which is always like 40 50 50 grams of protein with some sort of fat. So it's high fat, high protein. And then I shift everything and then I stagger the carbohydrates back and carb backload. It works really well for me from a productivity perspective. And then also the sleep aspect as well. I find I sleep really well when I shift majority of my carbohydrate sources towards the end of the day.

And also, when you mentioned dihydroberberine or berberine, do you notice any shift in how tired you feel after? Because if I eat a high-carbohydrate meal, if I don't go take a walk, I'll feel pretty lethargic, kind of tired. Do you notice that that kind of goes away when you use that? Yeah, it does help to blunt the post meal fatigue a little bit so you do get just like even when i've played around with metformin i've noticed my carbohydrate tolerance and also mega dosing hydro mega dosing vitamin b1 that one there is so effective to um reduce the crash post meal because it really ramps up glucose oxidation.

So you get like a really good ability to handle carbohydrates when you, when you have like, let's say 400 to 800 milligrams of just vitamin B1 on its own. A lot of people think that, oh yeah, I get B1 in my B complex, but when you use B1 on its own like in isolation like that one there is really it's really effective um for reducing postnatal fatigue so much has been made of the gut microbiome have you kind of seen anything uh that can help make

a more favorable microbiome to help us uh get the most out of our food maybe the most out of our protein that kind of thing yeah i mean there is one molecule that i really like and that's being used in the bodybuilding scene quite a lot um it's a peptide uh bpc 157 um it's the healing peptide i'm sure you guys have either played around with or used um that one there it doesn't there's no research to suggest that it can improve the microbiome as such but there is a lot of research to suggest that it can heal a lot of these inflammatory conditions in the gut and also help to seal the tight junctions so reduces um intestinal hyper permeability so a leaky gut and that one there like i've i've seen many clients that have used it in the past

that have um you know use bpc 157 after three or four days their stools are literally back to normal like just perfect stools and that's that's always a really good sign of healthy um gut health shit i didn't know it had that uh that use i thought it was more just for injuries yeah i mean it's primarily used that's the reason why i first tried it in the first place because i tore my medial meniscus playing soccer um and i took bpc for like five days or so and And literally on the sixth and seventh day, first of all, I was getting like super deep sleep. It bumped up my deep sleep to three hours, 15 minutes, which I've never seen before. And then, um, yeah, and then it healed my knee and

I haven't had any, I was going to get surgery, but I never needed it because I just had BPC. It was awesome. Uh, what about other supplements for getting deeper sleep? Cause I know you had some info on, um, was it no, no, no. Serotonin or melatonin. I'm not sure which one I think it was melatonin, right? You did. Okay. So other than, or I guess explain why there's dark side to melatonin and if there's something else that we could be taking to help get better sleep. Yeah, there is one molecule. It is pharma-grade. It is a prescription item, I think, in Germany.

It's called agomelatine. It's a derivative of melatonin. Traditionally, I mean, well, not traditionally, but pharmaceutically it's used as an antidepressant um because it can antagonize um the 5-ht2c serotonin receptor but agamelotin has been shown in some studies to normalize the circadian rhythm following jet lag or sleep disruption schedules. So that one there is pretty cool.

And then there's another one known as Blue Lotus. I did a post on Blue Lotus extract. That one there is awesome because it shares some similar properties to like Valium and some other benzos, but without any of the, you know, major drawbacks such as tolerance and habituation so blue lotus like what does it do it just like what does it do inside of you does it just like yeah what exactly does it do uh so blue blue lotus extract um it's it's a herbal so it's traditionally used as a what's known as a nervine so it calms the nervous system um and it binds to the GABA-A receptor which is similar to the same receptor

that alcohol and taurine binds to so it activates those the inhibitory aspect of the brain um and you know there's some studies suggesting that it can improve both slow wave sleep and also rem sleep um so that's a pretty cool botanical to you know experiment with and i saw a video where you're talking about uh having your bench or your your not your bench your bed on an incline, um, and what that does for people for their sleep. Um, what are some things that you've seen that improve? Yeah, that, that was really cool. Um, so it's called inclined bed therapy. Um, and so all it is, is basically, this is like, this is like OG biohacker stuff here. So, um, all you have to do with inclined bed therapy is raise the head end of your bed by um six to eight inches so you're you're basically sleeping your whole bed is on

an incline you can't just use pillows to prop it up you need to actually incline your whole bed and what that does is it actually increases um a process known as glymphatic drainage, which is the brain's ability to detoxify. It needs to clear out. A lot of detoxification in the brain occurs during our sleep. And so by enhancing glymphatic drainage, people, what I noticed was like you wake up with definitely more energy. You don't feel sometimes some people get dizzy when they wake up. That goes away.

Some people have back pain. Those that have back pain see huge reductions in back pain. Then also reductions in acid reflux or heartburn because you're sleeping inclined. And then the other benefit is increased morning wood as well. Great benefit, right? And then do you have to sleep on your back can you be on your side or it doesn't even matter i've never looked into the the differences but um

i guess um i would say probably sleeping on your side is probably um the best position okay yeah cool and then what about so i've actually never heard of this but you emailed about it and i'm super interested uh nine dash mbc because i'm i've before i met mark i was a pretty big dork for um nootropics and stuff so like i would mess with all of the um the uh the nootropics in the racetam family and then of course alpha gpc like everybody but i tried solbutamine all kinds of different compounds couldn't really ever get the um the effect that i was going for but this sounds really really interesting so i'm curious to hear what you have to say about it

yeah this is the one that really excites me um i I call it the ayahuasca inspired nootropic a family of alkaloids called Hamala alkaloids. And these are like those monoamine oxidase inhibitors. And so 9-MBC is really awesome because it shares similarities with those, but then it also has been shown to regenerate dopamine neurons, particularly in Parkinson's disease in rat studies. And basically what people notice is that 9-MBC can restore sensitivity to stimulants. So they become more sensitive to ritalin,

Adderall, caffeine, and other compounds there. It's really powerful uh in that regard so recent so that means like for example if you're someone who's you drink a lot of coffee right or maybe you've had consistently you need 800 milligrams of caffeine a day to actually feel it if you use this you can resensitize yourself to caffeine like how would that work in application if somebody was trying to use this yeah so um when it comes to dosages and like timing so it's a compound that i actually prefer to use more sparingly because it's very potent and there's again not there is no human research on this molecule yet. It is a research chemical, but looking at the literature, you know, it's pretty amazing.

We see like regenerative properties, protective effects, antioxidant effects. I did a whole, you know, blog post talking about all of the literature behind 9-MBC, but we'd be looking at about 10 to 15 milligrams, you know, maybe once or twice a week i like to use it on sundays just in just because like sunday is always that like recovery day um and then maybe sunday and split it and then use it maybe wednesday and then you definitely you start to notice that

you get that that typical dopamine buzz or you know push that you that you used to get from like caffeine and other stimulants as well and where can you get this is this something like anybody can buy or is it still like unknown and kind of underground uh it it was underground and unknown but there's a few vendors the one that i use is the one that I've got on my website. I'm affiliated with Science.Bio. They're an awesome company. They're based in the States, so it's easy for you guys to get that. Sick.

And how long can you take this? Or is just keeping the two doses a week kind of a moderate dose to where you can just kind of prolong that? Yeah, I think some guys online, some guys in the PsychoNaut community have used 9MBC for like four weeks straight. But they're those guys that have really abused their brain with Ritalin and Adderall for years, and they're trying to recover. They've seen benefits by running it for a longer period of time and can you sorry uh would you be able to like stack this with other nootropics and

kind of do the same thing where like you know if i take alpha gpc i don't really feel anything but if i take this for a couple weeks and then i take that and it's just like holy shit like it feels awesome again yeah Yeah, yeah. It does stack really well with other choline-based nootropics. It stacks really well with a lot of the dopamine precursors. So L-phenylalanine or L-tyrosine, it does stack beautifully with that. And then also another compound known as uridine, uridine monophosphate. That one there increases dopamine receptor density.

So that's another awesome compound as well. I hope people have a pen out during this show. I hope they're trying to write all this stuff down. You know, I have an irrational fear with certain, like, the reason why I think I've kind of used supplements sparingly within the years is because I kind of have a fear that a certain supplement like I heard about melatonin, how I can actually buy your actual melatonin production. Right. So from the things that we're talking about here, how can people kind of look at their overall supplement intake in a way that it gives them benefit with no drawbacks? overall supplement intake in a way that it gives them benefit with no drawbacks, you know, because that's, that's what I look for. Like what, like icing my balls, I can see that being a benefit with no drawbacks, right? So with all the supplements that we're talking about here, how can people use these things? So it doesn't have any drawbacks for their production of anything

that their body actually does produce, but instead just helps it. And if they do stop taking it, it doesn't blunt any of their actual normal production of anything. Yeah. I'm a huge fan on that with that perspective as well. I'm always looking at supplements in that way or compounds and things. Are they sustainable? What happens when we withdraw from the compound? And that's always like the first rule of thumb is like whatever compound I'm selecting or playing around with, I need to understand, first of all, the mechanism of action. Once you understand how the supplement works or the pathways that it targets, then we can have an understanding and sort of reverse engineer it and check in and figure out, hey,

reverse engineer it and check in and figure out hey is there like a negative feedback loop um just with like hormone therapy or um is it gonna cause some other weird downstream effects where it's gonna displace some other enzyme or deplete some other vitamins so yeah it is it really is an art to know how to stack things together um but yeah, I think it's, there is one molecule that I really liked. It was one that was good because it had benefits even three months after withdrawal. And that really excites me because it just, it's just like an, it's like antibiotics. You do a course, you see, you know,

you undergo changes on on a molecular level and then once we cease the compound or once we stop the compound a lot of the benefits still linger for months after use and that's what really like that particular aspect is really what excites me what was that molecule that you were talking about uh it's called it's one of my favorite it's called bromantane uh bro man that's dope sick what is it what's it do it's actually it first of all it's banned by water it's um it's it's a performance Shucks. Count me in. Bromantane is awesome. It was first developed to help Russian astronauts cope out of space. And also a lot of the Russian Olympians were using it to combat stress and improve performance.

It's technically the very first synthetic adaptogen ever developed. And adaptogens are designed to help the body cope with stress. And bromantane is definitely one of those compounds. And when I first used bromantane, I'll never forget the day, the first day I tried it. I remember I i actually i had it first thing in the morning and then i went to the library i was doing some study i stayed there for like four hours and i was like this shit's not even doing anything i don't feel anything and i was like i was basically i thought i had placebo and i was like i didn't feel anything at all then you know um i came back home and when i came back home i was like all of a sudden I just felt like I really wanted to train.

And so I did a workout, went to the playground. I did like a calisthenics workout and I just felt so, so good. And I just will never forget that workout. Nothing will trump that workout. Have you found anything that's like discipline in a bottle or motivation in a bottle? The one that I mentioned before, uridine monophosphate that one there helps you get shit done like that one there completely stops that procrastination um you know that that just it shuts off rumination like it stops that overthinking bullshit voice in your head that like ruminates and just stops you from taking action when i when i use uridine and when am i when i've

prescribed it um people notice that they feel way way like a lot more goal oriented and less so like pleasure hedonic seeking any drawbacks as far as like because you know for example people take adderall sometimes they feel like massive levels of fatigue for some reason later on. Any drawbacks with this, uridine monophosphate? deficiency. So it can deplete vitamins B6, B9, B12, and it also needs to be combined with DHA and EPA, so plenty of fish oil. What about things for the brain to try to enhance memory? Maybe something that someone could take while they're studying or they're trying to learn something. What are some recommendations on some things that might be able to assist with that yeah so um recently i spoke about the benefits of methylene blue um which i won't mention what it's i won't mention the major benefit here because it is being used to treat you know what at the moment but um uh methylene blue is awesome because well first of all it's the very

first synthetic drug ever developed but by by mankind it was like 1800s or something um and methylene blue when we're using it at a micro dose so i'm looking at less than one milligram we're talking super low dose, it can massively improve various aspects of memory. So short-term memory, spatial memory, contextual memory, and all other aspects of memory. That one there is one that I was using around the time that I was prepping for exams and studying because it just helped

so much when I was reading material. I could play it back in my head a lot easier, which was, you know, cool compound. And how do people get their hands on methylene blue? Is it, is it something that's about prescribed to you? Is it like, what's how's that work? The same company that sells that nine NBC, they also stock methylene blue. And it's again, it needs to be pharma grade because it's also used

to clean fish tanks as well so yeah clean fish tanks what do people need to be careful about with methylene blue uh first of all there there are there are major side effects particularly if you go pretty high dose one of the one of the side effects is a blue pit like blue urine so you urinate blue um that's now you gotta mention these things man you gotta mention these things right after man i'm peeing like an alien it's wild it's sick it's not sick because i'm just thinking it reminds me of like mountain dubaha blast and like man that's just delicious but then it's like you know you're peeing it oh that's true that did happen okay

wow all right so also yeah and stay in the tongue the tongue blue so you get a you get blue tongue lizard effect as well wow i know that some P it's popular for some people. They want, they want to get like a crazy pump in the gym. And, uh, for a while people were using like nitric oxide type supplements. Um, have you found anything, uh, along those lines that can help people feel more pumped and more jacked during their training sessions? Yeah, there's, there's one flavonoid that I really like that came,

like it was pretty popular about five, six years ago, but then it just died off. I don't know why it died off. It's called amentoflavone. It's a flavonoid that inhibits PDE5 slightly, so similar to Viagra in that regard, but then it also increases calcium. It just dumps a lot of calcium into the muscle cell.

One of the benefits of caffeine that not many people realise is that caffeine, part of its ergogenic benefits and part of its performance-enhancing benefits is that it can help to release more calcium into the muscle cell and calcium is needed for muscular contraction. So one of the benefits of amento flavone is that it's got a calcium releasing effect a hundred times stronger than caffeine. So we're getting like really wicked muscle contractions and really really powerful you know muscle pumps as well wow so i guess anything else or are there any other supplements that you think would be beneficial in that room um i do like some of the um glycerols the um there's one called hydromax

that's um like a glycerol based a powder and that one there just super hydrates the the cell so like it just makes you hold a lot of fluid in the muscle cell it can give you that puffy like less ripped look but if you've got if you're literally chasing the pump um glycerol is really powerful in that regard how about because i mean creatine can help hydrate a muscle, um, and help with performance. So do I guess as far as creatine, do you, you know, there's like other forms of creatine that people talk about that most people say is fair or fairly useless. Do you see any benefit in any of those versus creatine monohydrate? Cause creatine monohydrate is the one that everybody talks about. And does this glycerol thing that you mentioned work in a similar fashion or no?

So I actually prefer to use creatine monohydrate again, because most of the research is on that. And then in terms of some of the ones that are popping up and like there's cre-alkaline and creatane nitrate and all these ones. Look, I think there's, I'm excited to see further research in the other ones. But again, I would stick to the one that we love and know, which is cre-ethane monohydrate. It does work. It's, you know, it's powerful in that regard.

And then how it compares to glycerol. I would say glycerol has like a three to five times stronger effect to actually holding water in the cell compared to creatine. Just from my experience, like using a mega dose of glycerol with heaps of water, like you've got to drink a lot of water. That one, that's like a really awesome, you know, awesome supplement to use, particularly in hot environments as well. Rewinding real quick, because you mentioned something that was pretty interesting. I had my blood work done with Merrick for the first time a few, I don't know if it was like early this year, but I found out my prolactin was kind of high. And I thought it's just because at the time I use a little bit of kratom every now and then and I smoke a little weed. So I thought that was the only reason why.

But I also sauna quite a bit. So is the prolactin increase from sauna, is that something that's substantial or is it pretty minor? It only happens and it goes back down to normal. Yeah, I would say the effect is transient. So it's a slight rise in prolactin, I would say maybe for six to eight hours, and then it should come back down to whatever your baseline is. Gotcha. But if your baseline prolactin is already medium to high,

then I would incorporate, you know, a lot of these dopamine bo boosters like the one I mentioned before, Bromantane, which is a dopamine-based nootropic which can suppress prolactin. I would avoid some of the really powerful pharma-grade prolactin inhibitors. Some of them can lead to some degree of withdrawal. But yeah, I would check up on some of the dopamine boosters yeah and how often do you like with with because one thing i wonder is like what's your supplement stack look like because it's like you know about all these compounds but how often do you get like your blood work checked with like some of these these compounds you use to see how like kind of does affect testosterone and all these different

things uh i probably should be doing more frequent blood work i do it probably every six months ish i would like to do it maybe every three months because i'm always incorporating new compounds um i'm really careful though like although it sounds like I blast myself with so many subs and, and, uh, just take everything under the sun shotgun approach. I'm very, I'm very meticulous and very strategic in what I use when I use it. I'm very like, I would say I'm very, uh, just mature in that regard. I'm not like, um, abusive in that, in that realm. Gotcha.

mature in that regard i'm not like um abusive in that in that realm gotcha you brought up uh caffeine having some benefits for muscle and um i'm going on three weeks and three days of no caffeine but who's counting um so for sober october we've tried to give up caffeine and we're doing good for the most part um but one thing mark and i were talking about because we were just kind of we went on a walk and we were just explaining like our experience with it and one thing mark and i were talking about because we were just kind of we went on a walk and we were just explaining like our experience with it and one thing for sure that is happening with me is i'm eating so much more yep i am i we're talking we're like this just has to be us like in our own heads like oh i don't have that coffee so now i'm not uh you know i'm not fasting whatever it may be so is there any truth to that or are we just tripping?

But it seems like caffeine would suppress the hunger. So does caffeine suppress hunger? And is there anything else that we can do to suppress that nasty gremlin hunger, gremlin, nasty little guy? um so the the way in which caffeine would suppress appetite um would most likely be due to um its activation of the sympathetic nervous system so you know two branches of the nervous system the sympathetic and then the parasympathetic because caffeine stimulating the sympathetic which is the fight or flight um if we no longer get that stimulation from caffeine um it's going to start to shift the balance more towards parasympathetic tone and when we're more so in a parasympathetic state all we really think about is rest digest and sex so like these are the three things that I guess would be more stimulated

when we're withdrawing from caffeine. So I guess you guys have been, what, three weeks without caffeine so far? Yeah, about that. I'm a week ahead of them, but – No, not them, him. Sorry. And Seema did kind of have a couple of cups here and there, but you're having less though,

right? I'm having one cup of coffee a day, but the appetite thing is very true. When I wasn't drinking any caffeine and I stopped for a while, I found it much harder to fast. Like I was just like literally cutting it short because I was so freaking hungry and I was able to start putting down a lot more food. The other mechanism there could also be um caffeine does increase ketones so maybe by um you know getting a reduction in ketone bodies during a fast your

body's like oh shit like i need to find some sort of fuel source so that could be a possibility there as well what's this uh supplement that could uh kill sweet tooth we talk with a lot of people that struggle with having a sweet tooth it's very common for many people after dinner uh the kind of evil side comes out and we start looking through the pantry munching on everything so uh what are some ways that we can kill sweet tooth and is this even a good idea or good practice yeah there's um there's a herb known as gymnema sylvester um and it's known in india um as the sugar destroyer um because it it actually binds to the sweet tasting receptors on the tongue and even in the stomach. And it blocks the ability to taste sweet flavors. Jesus.

Yeah. It's pretty bad. Is that a bad idea? I mean, like, can you, can you not take like a, let's just say you start,

you're trying to make healthier decisions and now you just want a bite of like an apple that you probably can't taste the apple either. Right. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, if you, mean if you if you chew a marshmallow on um gymnema like it just tastes like like you're eating carpet would that make you in some way would that make you eat more because you're like not getting what

you want out of it satisfaction yeah yeah i thought about that as well um i i think it would but there's probably other compound like components in the actual herb that will also by blocking that sweet taste receptor there's probably other compounds within the herb that also activate regions in the brain that maybe trick the signaling there um these these these herbs are really like some of them are really smart they contain compounds that we think won't like occur but they have got they've got compounds in there that can sort of offset some of the deleterious effects which is pretty cool and is this another supplement that's readily available because like a quick google search and it's like all over the place and it's really cheap so that makes me think that it's like i'm not looking at the right thing um so it needs to be it is available pretty easily

but um it needs to be an alcohol based extract um and it needs to be a one to two ratio um and it needs to also be in that liquid tincture form because you actually want to dump the herb liquid on your tongue. It's fairly easy to get, and people are using it for mostly diabetes management, type 2 diabetes. Wow. Along with that, because we talk about fat loss a lot on the show, is there any supplements that you think are actually beneficial for true fat loss? Because we maybe talk a lot about diet habits, et cetera. We don't really talk much about supplementation for fat loss, but do you think there's anything that people should maybe think about

in association with good sleep, good habits, exercise? Yeah, I do think there's a few things we can incorporate. um yeah i do think there's a few things we can incorporate um there is one molecule which is um it's a metabolite of valine so one again one of the bcaas um it's called l l baba l and then b a i b a um that one there is really cool because it stimulates um the beijing like the browning of white fat so it increases brown fat production similar to cold therapy cold plungers we know the benefits there is increasing brown fat um but this albaba is awesome because it you know it um it's actually released following aerobic exercise. Um, and in the mice studies, it increases insulin sensitivity. It reduces lipogenesis. So the creation of fat cells,

um, yeah, it's a really cool molecule. Cool. And I guess since we're going down this breath, how about, uh, cause there's a lot of videos on your channel about supplementation for individuals who have anxiety. So is there anything that you think is truly useful there? Because we know a lot of people end up taking actual pharmaceutical medication for that. But is there anything that people can turn to that's not in that sphere? Yeah, so I've seen huge benefits with the amino acid taurine. So I'm seeing huge benefits with the amino acid taurine.

Pretty high doses, like 3,000 milligrams to 5,000 milligrams is really good for activating the GABA network and activating GABA receptors. And a lot of people notice reductions in social anxiety. They just feel a bit more fluent and less inhibited socially. So taurine's pretty, again, versatile. It has a whole heap of other benefits, but then it also is definitely psychoactive at high doses. Is there anything to be careful with at higher doses of taurine? And what other benefits does it have? There aren't many side effects.

I mean, there's been some pretty long studies like i think it was like a three month long study at about 3 000 milligrams in adults and there were no untoward um side effects if anything it improved uh liver function kidney function it improved um the antioxidant capacity of the body it's's considered a longevity amino acid, just like glycine. So it really doesn't have many drawbacks. For some people, it might make them slightly tired or fatigued because it has that cortisol lowering effect. But otherwise, it's quite good. They put taurine in um a lot of

energy drinks though right yeah yeah they do that they do that um like the doses that they use i think they're using about a thousand milligrams and well part of the other benefit there is that taurine can um it can double liver glycogen stores So it can actually help the liver to store more fuel to help to increase glycogen storage in the liver, which is your backup source of energy. Which, you know, those Red Bull and energy drinks, they contain so much sugar. But then they've got taurine, which lowers blood sugar. So it's actually a pretty smart move by the community. Got it. Well, so since I haven't had an energy drink in a while, I actually, I'm feeling way better, but this is probably because of too much caffeine, but I'm noticing that like my anxiety

levels are actually gone down significantly. So do you think that's just because I'm having just obviously 100% less caffeine, kind of like you had mentioned earlier, like it kind of puts you in that fight or flight state. Do you know anything about that? Because I was curious because I did notice this and I mentioned to Mark and Seema, but like, I don't know anything about it. So I was just curious if there's anything actually there.

Yeah, it's a good point. So what happens following withdrawal is because caffeine can also um block it so you can block GABA-A receptors so that's the receptor that taurine binds to so caffeine by blocking um GABA-A receptors when we get a withdrawal from caffeine now that GABA-A receptor is going to start functioning again. And so, you know, that's going to reduce anxiety because the GABA network is the neurotransmitter system that modulates anxiety and things like that. So we'd also probably see, you've probably noticed a reduction in n epinephrine or noradrenaline as well because caffeine can stimulate noradrenaline levels interesting and in regards to gaba because

i've taken gaba just straight by itself and it was the weirdest thing like i couldn't like i kind of fell asleep and i forgot to breathe like i would wake up gasping for air and i'd start sneezing like crazy um so i haven't messed with it since then. But I'm curious because you mentioned GABA-A receptor. I wasn't sure if taking straight GABA would actually improve that or if I just probably just leave it all alone. Yeah, that side effect is a real side effect. And heaps of bodybuilders have had that side effect

where they literally forget to breathe. It was crazy. It would have been so scary. It's only at really high doses, though. Anything above 1,000 to 2,000 milligrams can really induce that effect. Lower doses, like 250 to 500 milligrams, I use all the time with no side effect, like no breathing issues at all. In your opinion, what's better than caffeine or maybe another option from caffeine? Yeah, there's another molecule.

I call it caffeine's older brother. It's called tea cream. This was that ingredient that I mentioned at the start of the show was the most used ingredient in pre-workouts um because it's so good because it doesn't increase it has no effect on blood pressure no effect on heart rate and no effect on anxiety so you're getting all the benefits of caffeine such as the mental alertness, wakefulness promoting effect without any of the major side effects. And we're looking at dosages between like 100 milligrams to 200 milligrams of tea green. Any drawbacks to tea green?

It's hard to find major drawbacks um it's approved by it's got grass status so it's safe in sports it's just it's overall just a winning compound so i was taking anywhere from like four to six hundred milligrams of caffeine a day and when i came off of it i had pretty shitty headaches for like almost two weeks. If I were to take tea cream instead and then maybe try to come, I mean, not, I mean, I guess I wouldn't come off anyways if there's so many benefits. But if I were, would I have the same reaction? So like as if you withdrew from tea cream? Yeah.

So like if, would I get the same symptoms from caffeine withdrawals as I would with tea cream withdrawals? There might be a little bit of crossover there, but what's crazy in some of the rat studies with tea cream, they administered it for eight weeks, and even after the eighth week, they were still getting the stimulation and energy effects, whereas caffeine, you have to keep on escalating the dose.

You have to keep on rising the dose to get the same stimulation. But tea cream, it didn't build any tolerance to the stimulation, which is awesome because, again, we don't need to use higher and higher doses to achieve the same effect. Um, yeah. So another question about that, and this one might be a little bit, uh, way out there, but the reason why I gave up, uh, caffeine was for my wife who gave it up for our son because she's breastfeeding and we were having a hard time figuring out like, dude, like he's, he takes a takes a nap and then by time we walk out of the room he's already awake uh middle of the day he would be you know just he'd wanted anything except a nap but he was tired right like

that that um energetic tired feeling is a terrible place to be and he was a kid we couldn't figure out what's going on and so we cut out caffeine and within three days he's putting himself to sleep he's staying asleep longer he's sleeping more throughout the night so it's like holy shit like okay this is what we do now but i'm curious if she were to take tea cream would the effect happen also where the tea cream would get into the breast milk and then get into my son's uh system um i haven't seen any literature on that i would just be yeah i'd still be pretty cautious again because yeah tea cream like it's literally exactly like caffeine but just with an extra methyl group attached so it's it probably have the same uh effects on you know breast milk

are there any really popular supplements that you think people should start being careful of i saw that there's a video you have talking about lion's mane and sex drive and i'm not sure like first off how much of an effect that that that may have but are there any supplements that are super popular that you think people should have a double take at yeah um so the lion's mane one is mostly around the the dht inhibition um a lot of guys maybe maybe like two or three out of ten guys notice a reduction in sex drive like dramatic reduction in libido and sex drive following uh lion's mane um my theory there was one it might be a mild DHT blocker, and then also it has a compound that can bind to the kappa opioid receptor, which is, generally speaking, it's not a fun receptor to agonize or bind to. In fact, ibogaine is a really strong,

In fact, ibogaine is a really strong – oh, sorry, salvia. Sorry, salvia, the smokable, is actually a really strong kappa opioid agonist. So I think, yeah, lion's mane is one that guys should be careful of. Dr. Andrew Huberman spoke about curcumin as well. I also believe that as well. I think curcumin can inhibit DHTT and it has a serotonin boosting effect that, again, like in general, we don't want too much serotonin

because if we're looking at the constitution of someone with awesome testosterone and DHT, like they don't have high serotonin. Those individuals have high dopamine, which promotes DHT, like they don't have high serotonin. Those individuals have high dopamine, which promotes DHT and stuff. So what would, like, as far as serotonin, what should people be careful of in terms of, you know, potentially increasing it or what should people be careful with in terms of serotonin in general? Yeah. Well, there's one herb again, it's ashwagandha. Ashwagandha, it's awesome for lowering stress. It does increase testosterone, but it does have a bit of a dark side and that is it can sort of desensitize a particular serotonin receptor that regulates the total production of serotonin in the brain. And so with high serotonin from ashwagandha, people are getting a lot of the side effects associated with SSRIs.

So they're getting the blunted effects, so blunting of emotions. Things don't feel as pleasurable as they used to. Sometimes it can affect just in general um anticipatory pleasure so they don't get that that thrill or excitement leading up to their something that's fun um that's something to really keep an eye out for because again it's i've got a folder on my computer here just keeping tally of all the guys that are being affected by um ashwagha. And I'm just trying to get the message out there. Just be careful with ashwagandha. That's funny you're saying that because ashwagandha,

like it was a month ago, you know, ashwagandha was a supplement that was kind of going viral on TikTok and IG and everyone was talking about, oh, ashwagandha is going to increase your testosterone. So everyone started buying and taking ashwagandha, but you weren't hearing about anything like this. Yeah, it's rarely spoken about because it's only one little study back in i don't know it was like at late 1990s um but again we're just we need to respect um personal experience and anecdotal experience as a form of evidence because like i'm just seeing more and more i

literally will just ask guys like hey have you started using ashwagandha they'll be like yeah i started four weeks ago i'm like have you noticed this this and this and like shit i have like i've noticed all those symptoms and i thought it was supposed to be good for me but something to just really keep an eye out for what's the deal with with like earthing and just getting your feet into the ground? Like what are some of your thoughts on what that does for us or why people should look into having that practice? Yeah, I'm a huge believer in grounding or earthing. So the premise here is that it basically helps to re-synchronize the cortisol rhythm in the body so it can help to have a has a normalizing effect on the cortisol awakening response which is

the also known as car and by exposing the body just like we did thousands of years ago where we didn't wear shoes everywhere we're actually making contact with mother nature with earth um it actually it's like it's like a potent antioxidant so it can donate electrons in the body and it can influence our antioxidant status in the body and we've seen studies where you know, they're using earthing mats for professional cyclists. Um, and they see improvements in recovery reductions in DOMS. Um, so it's something I believe in. I've got myself a, um, earthing mat underneath my desk, underneath my, um, you know, on the treadmill desk. And that really does help with just in general like getting that

earthing in what are some things that can help us with fasting we talk about fasting quite a bit on the show are there things that can help uh with hunger or are there things that can accelerate the impact and effects of the fast yeah um things that work really well for fasting, I like the L-phenylalanine, the amino acid, at about 1,000 milligrams. That can suppress appetite by increasing coal cystokinin, so that suppresses the appetite regulatory hormone in the stomach. But then it can also keep on, it can also also increase dopamine so i can sort of make that fasting a lot easier because you're getting you're getting that mental clarity effect

during the fast um and you also feel more energetic as well you said what was this called again alphenylalanine it's a an amino it's an essential amino acid alphenylalanine. It's an essential amino acid. L-phenylalanine. Hmm. Okay. That's awesome. I heard you talking about potential supplements to help with fear. And it just all sounds so crazy at times to learn some of these things that we once thought were impossible, that these supplements can potentially help with something like fear. What is the mechanism behind that? What's the supplement that can assist with that?

Yeah, so the fear response can be regulated through a pathway known as histone de acetylase. And in a lot of the fear-based research studies where they're actually assessing the ability of a mice to explore a new environment. So what they do in these studies is they check to see if the rat or the mice, when they expose them to a novel, it's called like a novel environment,

whether or not they want to actually explore, whether they actually want to go out and see things, which makes sense in humans. Like if you're scared or fearful, you don't really want to leave your home or explore novel environments. So by inhibiting histone deacetylase, so HDAC, histone deacetylase, through the use of compounds such as black seeds, so black seed oil, which is Nigella sativa, that particular medicine, whilst it's used to treat so many other conditions, it does contain something known as thymoquinone, which in studies demonstrates histone deacetylase inhibitory properties. And so people have noted just in general when they use black seed oil,

and from my experience, it definitely has a, it sort of makes you feel less inhibited and a bit more fluent in social settings. Can you, okay, black seed oil. This is interesting. My mom, like I think last year, and she still does. She went down a black seed oil rabbit hole and now she's taking black seed oil every day. And she's like, you need to get black seed oil. So what other benefits come with black seed oil other than this?

And then secondly, as far as the fear negating, it makes me think of like those horror movies. When you hear somebody with a chainsaw, one guy's like, I wonder what that is. And then the other dude's like, let's go the other way. Right. Is there any type of problematic thing where like, it will make you not fear something that you should definitely be afraid of? not fear something that you should definitely be afraid of. Yeah, that's a good point. It's not strong enough to induce complete fearless states,

but I mean, yeah, in certain situations, I could imagine, you know, by planting that fear response, yeah, it can have a bit of a deleterious effect. But like seeing as though your mom was using black seed oil, I mean, the other benefits, there's so many other benefits from modulating the immune system. It does have super potent anti-cancer effects in rat studies. It also is a potent antioxidant

and it can also protect the know protect the kidneys protect the thyroid there are so many benefits to black seed oil wow so it wasn't just a fat now that that's that's super cool it probably helped with confidence too right yeah social social confidence again if you're stuck in your own head ruminating in a social environment that's just gonna hold you back big time well look have you yourself gone into the the side of like psilocybin and anything within within that like do you know much about other benefits that psilocybin has and do you mess with that stuff much um out of all the things that i've tried i mean we're talking like 200 plus or more different compounds like i've been really cautious with psychedelics yeah um because i know which path it can send you down and i'm aware of like becoming too spiritual i guess in a sense and

losing my my discipline and motivation which i pride myself on being very focused and disciplined yeah um but i i still see them as powerful modalities and i definitely have seen you know been like huge benefits with some of my friends and and the clinical trials like i'm just so excited to see more research there what's uh kind of the craziest thing that you've seen that you uh you know it kind of just really blew your mind sounds like you're really fascinated by all this stuff, but like, it was there kind of like one thing over the last couple of years where you're like, fuck man, I'd never thought that that was possible. Jeez.

That's a good question. Um, well, this is, this is a really good question. So what happened is I actually experimented with um uh so it was the same medicine that uh that killed was it socrates or hippocrates uh socrates so he socrates was was poisoned by a plant uh known as um conium or conium maculatum and i didn't obviously i didn't use the herbal extract i didn't want to try it but it's used in homeopathic medicine and again a lot of people will as soon as i mentioned the word homeopathy there's going to be people say ah it's all placebo it's bs it doesn't work and all that sort of stuff and i i was always like that i was always skeptical of homeopathy but um when i did use

conium it gave me some really weird like weird side effects first of all the first side effect that i noted was like my face just started twitching um like i just got some really weird spasms and things around my face um and then i just felt like i felt like my fear response was like massively increased like i was so scared of just everything um so that wasn't a pleasant wasn't a pleasant experience why did you choose to do that um because if if you look at the applications for that medicine it's actually used to treat like um dizziness and like low blood pressure which i was sort of experiencing at the time i was getting dizzy turned out to be just iron deficiency um but yeah that was that was crazy all right

what's something i could take i'm about to go hit the gym in a couple minutes here what's something i can utilize uh pre-workout that would may assist in making me stronger have you seen some supplements that like literally can improve strength uh well acutely if we're looking for something that can acutely increase strength we actually want to be we do want to increase the sympathetic nervous system so this is one of the reasons why acutely um anovar and even um tremolone can really ramp up strength because it stimulates the sympathetic nervous system um so i would I would lean towards something acutely, some sort of stimulant. I don't know what you have on standby, but yeah.

I just kind of was more referring to like are there things that we can take to, I guess, kind of trigger or warm up our central nervous system or get our central nervous system more heightened for the workout in a safe fashion? You could always lean towards something I've been playing around with is inhaling peppermint. I've got like a peppermint oil. It's not a vape, but it's actually an inhaler.

And that acutely really does wake up the brain and, um, could be beneficial, you know, pre-workout cause it's very fast acting. You don't have to wait like 30 minutes for it to kick in. Awesome. Very cool. Thank you so much for your time today. Uh, where can people find you? Um, yeah, they can check out my YouTube channel, Boost Your Biology, and also Instagram at ergogenic underscore health. Yeah. Thanks for having me, guys. Yeah, thanks again. You crushed us with tons of information. I got this kind of mad scientist-looking thing over here. I've tried to write down

a lot of stuff you were saying, so I'll have to go back and even listen to my own show, get some notes on everything. So thanks again for your time. Thanks for the information and have a great day. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks, Mark.

Thanks, gents. Cool. Thank you. Yeah. Fuck. I did it again. Yo,

yo guys, just go subscribe to his YouTube channel. They go follow him on IG because just the sheer amount of just like hundreds of videos, hundreds of videos that honestly deserve way more views of just like things that we haven't really heard much about. Talking about depression, anxiety, stress. Yeah. Look, man, what if these things assist a bit? I mean, that there, you know, I realize that like there is a kind of a yin and a yang to everything. Right. I realize that there's kind of a yin and a yang to everything, right?

But he's basically talking about amino acids and supplements, and I think it's worth looking into. Everything will be linked in the YouTube description, as well as the podcast show notes on where you can subscribe to him and follow him. We talked a little bit about getting blood work done. So you guys know that we work with Merrick Health. It's directed by Derek from More Plates, More Dates. And if you guys are interested in getting your blood work done,

which you should. I've got to get more blood work done myself. Yeah, I'm about to get my blood work done in about a week. Again? Because, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm doing that Fidogea Agrestis and Tonkot. So I need to see how my test and DHT and all that stuff has changed. Yeah, be cool.

See what happened with it. I also am very curious of like, yeah, where does someone go after, So I need to see how my test and DHT and all that stuff has changed potentially. What happened with it? I also am very curious of like, yeah, where does someone go after, you know, you utilize stuff for a bit, you know, do your levels, do they come, do they crash down or do they come down slow or, um, yeah, it's just very, uh, very curious just to kind of see how that works out. And, and also like, I guess before you get the test done, have you, have you noticed anything? Have you noticed any improvements in strength or any improvements in, you're kind of always improving.

So it's kind of hard to say, but like, I mean, you know, like I think that people think they're going to like get their testosterone checked. They're going to take some of these supplements that supposedly raise your testosterone. And their testosterone is going to go from 600 to 1200. And they're going to be they're going to feel really fucking strong.

But I don't think it works that way. But I don't know. Yeah. To be perfectly honest, I haven't, I haven't felt a crazy difference by taking these like 600 milligrams of Adogia and 400 milligrams of tone cut every day. I haven't felt a massive difference. Maybe I do feel, I don't know. I haven't felt anything that's like, oh, this is life changing for me. Um, but also I did have good habits as far as sleep, getting sun, taking walks, good nutrition. So I do feel that maybe there could be a good little boost, but nothing that's changing my life.

Right. Could be one of those things, I guess, where you're just like, oh, I'm going to take this for this period of time because I'm going to induce more stress because I'm going to train a little harder and I'm going to do A, B, and C. And then when you're not doing those things, maybe you cut back on some of these things. I'm not sure. I don't know how to, I guess it sounds great to hear people talk about the practice of taking them, but I don't know what the practice of not taking them looks like, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Andrew, take us on out of here, buddy. I will. Thank you everybody for checking out today's episode. And again, because he needs more subscribers, make sure you guys subscribe to Lucasas's channel links will be uh down below in the the youtube description as well as the podcast show notes uh make sure you guys uh let them know that we sent you guys there and uh

please follow the podcast at mark bow's power project on instagram at mb power project on tiktok and twitter oh and uh shout out and thank you to viore for sponsoring today's episode. That's V-U-O-R-I dot com slash power project to save 20% off your first order at Viore dot com. And my Instagram and Twitter is at I am Andrew Z at the Andrew Z on TikTok and SEMA where you be. How can they get Merrick? Oh, my bad. And Merrick health dot com slash power project for the power project panel. Or if you just want to be like in SEMA and just go your test uh tested um at checkout you can use promo code power 15 i have to check that i think it's power 15 isn't it it's been a while okay caffeine withdrawals are happening right

as we speak it'll be in the description power 15 for 15 off all of your labs sorry about that guys but yeah so make sure you guys do that ASAP. And yeah, links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Thank you, Ansema. Where are you at? Ansema Inu on Instagram and YouTube. Ansema Inu on TikTok and Twitter. Mark?

If you go over to mindbullet.com, you can actually order your MindBullet with a credit card nowadays. Really? Hell yeah. So check it out. So check it out. Before you get mad at me, you have to understand that it's still a little tricky to be able to do it. And so the program that you're going to be going through, they're going to want you to like sign up. And so you do have to go through some extra hoops. But the way that way that it works is you're able to basically purchase a like a gift card.

And then with that gift card, you'll be able to purchase your Kratom as if it's just a normal credit card. And then you could probably use that for other things that you may get that don't receive normal payment. So there you go. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later.