Mark Bell's Power Project - MBPP EP. 684 - The Guerrilla Chemist: Supps That Work + The Origin of Testosterone & How It's Made

Episode Date: February 28, 2022

Bryan Moskow aka The Guerrilla Chemist is an Organic and Biochemist who has a Bachelors Degree from The Georgia Institute of Technology in Chemistry. He is here today to school us on all things supplements, PEDs and how they are used. Follow him on IG: https://www.instagram.com/theguerrillachemist/ Find all his supplements here: https://chemixlifestyle.com/ Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 15% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢https://eatlegendary.com Use Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢Bubs Naturals: https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢Vertical Diet Meals: https://verticaldiet.com/ Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% off your first order! ➢Vuori Performance Apparel: Visit https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order! ➢8 Sleep: Visit https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Paraproject family, how's it going? Today we have a great episode for you. We talk a lot about compounds as much as we know you guys love those. That's why we have the guerrilla chemist, Brian Moscow on the episode today. We talk a lot about different things and supplements that you've never heard of, the origin of BCAAs, people getting on TRT and why it may or may not be useful. And like how to make testosterone. Like we got deep in this episode today. I wonder how the hell do you make tests? But we're going to find out today. And fertility because no one thinks about babies.

No one can look into the future. Absolutely. But we also talked a lot about blood work and getting your levels checked, which is why we work with Merrick Health owned by Derek from More Plates, More Dates. And we want to talk to you guys real quick about the Power Project panel, which has 26 different labs that are going to help you understand what you may be deficient on and what you may need more of. And it's super easy to work with Merrick. So, Andrew, tell them about it. Yeah, absolutely. So you guys got to head over to MerrickHealth.com slash Power Project.

That's M-A-R-R-E-K Health.com slash Power Project. And you guys are going to see the Power Project panel. This is a panel that Nseema was just talking about with 26 different labs. It covers everything from, you know, uh, testosterone, estrogen, and a bunch of other things that maybe you're not even aware of to check, uh, to check for all of the things. And then it also comes with a client care coordinator, uh, that's going to give you a consultation to help guide you into what you need to do next. That's huge because when it comes to getting all these labs done, when you get the results, sometimes you're not sure what you're

actually looking at. So Merrick is going to make sure that you know exactly where all your levels are and where they should be. Again, merrickhealth.com slash power project at checkout, enter promo code power project to receive $101 off of that panel. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Hope you guys enjoy this episode. You can't do shakes anymore? No. My stomach,

I recently got stomach issues, so I have to be really strict on what I eat. Oh, wow. But I was in college and grad school, I was taking shakes every day. Do you find anything actually wrong with your stomach? I have IBS, but there's no cure for it.

There's a couple of medications. None of them did anything. And they're super expensive. So I was like, I'm not taking these. So I had to change my diet a little bit on things that are more inflammatory than others. Did doctors just want to give you antidepressants for IBS? My doctor tried to give me antidepressants. I'm like, I'm microdosing mushrooms.

I'm not taking antidepressants. Yeah, I thought that was weird. Whoa, yeah yeah yeah my doctor says i forgot what the fuck he said but he i was just like isn't that an anti like he didn't even tell me what it was thankfully i knew and i was like i'm gonna forego that this was before i ever you know knew mark or anything so now it's gotten way better since. I thought that was weird. Okay, again, antidepressants for irritable bowel syndrome. That's weird. So first off, I don't know how much you know about this. To approve a drug,

the FDA, it needs two clinical trials that show that it works better than the placebo, statistically significantly. But you can do a million tests until you get the two that work or you can pay to only have one so they did a huge meta study on all these antidepressants and they found out that they really don't do shit like as far as compared to the placebo

for ibs or just for a for depression like they made up the term chemical imbalance as a marketing term to produce to put these products out there. And now they're like the number one prescribed thing everyone takes. Coming out the gate hot. Where do you think that comes from when you say they? Big pharma. Yeah, the pharmaceutical industry. Yeah.

I mean, it doesn't seem like people have a lot of success on a lot of these things. No, it works for some people. but the placebo effect is so strong. I mean, that's a proven. The placebo effect is so strong that it could just be the fact that they're taking something, they believe it's going to work. Yeah, the doctor said it's going to work. They take something. Placebo effect is real.

But all that stuff is natural. It does the same thing. Dopamine reuptake inhibitor, serotonin reuptake inhibitor, monoamine oxidase inhibitors. That's what keeps everything. We'll get into it, but that's what they do. For your stomach, I've heard more recently that some people believe that BPC-157, which is a peptide, is supposed to be very helpful for your stomach.

And if so, in what way? It's an anti-inflammatory. It helps the leaky gut. I believe that's why it was first invented was for that syndrome. And then we found out that it increases, what is it, angiogenesis. So it causes new blood vessels sorry which helps healing but the bpc part for your stomach was originally for ibs and for um uc ulcer of colitis so that was the first purpose for it and i've tried it and it helps it's just you finding a

reliable peptide source is very hard. Everyone, you, I had buddies that were in the peptide industry and they told me I'm just going to push your microphone closer to you. They told me that since China got shut down and stuff India's making a lot of them and they're just not as potent.

So I don't even know who to trust anymore. What else does BPC-157 do from just some of the research that you've heard and some of the things that you've seen? Accelerating healing through making new blood vessels, getting blood into your – or getting the growth factors that are released into your muscle cells or wherever the injury is to help it recover and heal properly, I would say is the best thing for it. And then the TB500 or 400, there's two of them. That just kind of accelerates it. Yeah, for myself, my shoulder was jacked up, and I've heard so much about these two, TB500 and BPC157.

And I was just like, well, I'm just going to give it a go because I don't know what I did to my shoulder, but I can't move it. And I utilized it for a handful of days along with getting some other treatment as well, just getting some active release therapy on it. So that could have been effective as well. And I would say it was probably three to five days that it took where it started to get better. I started to notice an impact pretty much right away. My shoulder still doesn't feel like a hundred percent, but I literally could not put my left arm on my steering wheel.

My shoulder was so weird. And again, I don't even remember how you did it. I have no idea what the hell I did. So I was in a bad way. And that particular combination seemed to help. I don't have any evidence other than just my own experience with it. But it seemed to help a lot. There's a lot of studies on it. And I think Ben Greenfield did a deep dive on it. And I read his protocol, which is similar to like what I tell people to do. So there is research backing it.

It's not just made up bullshit like everything else on the internet. Right. And what is BPC 5157? Because I've heard like if you're a certain athlete in certain sports, where can't you use it? Even though you should be able to, but where can't you use it? Probably WADA. WADA?

I would think. I don't know 100% the band list because I don't, like a lot of the athletes I work with aren't drug tested that way. Yeah. But I have worked with professional, like Olympic level before, and I know they couldn't take certain things. And then I was trying trying this isn't recording right no we're recording

if you need me to edit that out I can though no just how to time things so that you're not going to get tested but who knows that was what he really needed so yeah I think I want to say maybe I heard like some of that stuff's gotten banned

recently, but then also how would you even, I don't like, I don't know. I guess there's a way to test for everything, right? Yeah. Um,

usually they do like GCMS, which is gas chromatography, mass spectrometry, and which is basically you put the sample in and then you blast it with electrons and it breaks the molecule up into different pieces of different masses and you get this spectra. And one of the masses is like one proton away from being the molecule.

And then you test it that way. Or if it's something in the urine and a metabolite we know what it metabolizes to that's how a lot of the steroids get popped because we know how they're metabolized and so they test for that so you don't test positive for you know windstraw you test positive for the metabolite of windstraw like what your body does to it it's a crazy thing though like because if i'm incorrect bpc 157 is mainly used for something to help an athlete recover from an injury, right? Or can it be used in other senses in terms of helping performance or increasing performance? I think it's mostly injury, not preventative, but injury repair.

Injury repair. Yeah, and then the stomach thing we talked about. But I don't think it's something that I haven't read research that personally that says it can increase performance but what if uh like you you train really hard and you're extremely sore like can it help that or like you strains i mean obviously we just talked about injuries but like because people talk about like steroids that help you recover faster so you can go back and hit it harder or just as hard can i do something like that or is it not that's a different process yeah okay your body yeah that like the increased anabolic effect from those is not present in the bpc so like steroids were made for burn victims you know to and aids patients so they can help not lose mass. So they have that natural animalism where BPC is more for if you have an injury,

it can help you reduce the inflammation on it. We need the steroids to be made for what they're used for, I think. You know what I mean? I think that's what we need to move to next. I mean, I know they kind of tried with SARMs, but literally, like, it would be really helpful if it was made to, if they were designed out of the gate to help with the augmentation of the human body, I think.

Well, you know where they originated, right? I do not. Germany, World War II, they, I believe, Super soldiers? They extracted testosterone from bull testicles. I don't want to use the word crazy. They were innovative

scientists over in Germany that extracted it and started giving it to their soldiers and documented the results. Then I believe it was first synthesized a few years later. Then what chemists do, like I'm a chemist, what we do is you look at the molecule of testosterone,

you know what the androgen receptor looks like, you see where the key binding points are. So you're familiar with what testosterone looks like, right? The actual molecule. So if you're looking at it from left to right, there's a double bond oxygen at the front. There's the OH that's the one that is the one that sometimes they methylate for an oral.

That hydroxy group, that ketone, and that... Yeah, there it is, right there. So can I walk over there or no? Or can I just point at it? You can just point, yeah. Okay, so bottom left ketone and that double bond right there next to it on the carbon 4, 5. So that's carbon 3.

Sorry. Yeah, right there, 4, 5. That whole part is part of the binding process. The methyl group on 19 right above that. Nope, the other one to the left. This one? Yep. Here, sorry.

That one, that's the one that's missing on DECA and other nor-tosastroenteratives trend. And then the OH on the far right is another key group. And those are... That's my right. Oh. It's also his right. I mean, it's all of our rights, isn't it? I think so.

Yeah, whatever. That's a key binding point. So like androstenedione and own stands for ketone, which is what that double bond oxygen is. And the OH is a hydroxy group. So the androstenedione has a double bond there that has to be converted to that alcohol in order to bind. If it doesn't have that alcohol, it has like zero anabolic ability. So what a chemist does is see where it's metabolized, where it fits in the ender receptor, and how we can make it work better.

So having that double bond oxygen and then that double bond carbon, like one off of each other, it's called conjugation. And that means the electrons around that oxygen are, quote, talking to the electrons that are in that double bond and that is a main factor in how it binds. And so DHT doesn't have that double bond

on the bottom screen there. That's dihydrotestosterone, meaning they added hydrogens there so it doesn't have the double bond and that changes the way the ring can bend in 3D so though all these things like if you put a i think a chlorine group right where that double bond starts it prevents the breakdown of that double bond so that it's more potent and more anabolic there's just so many things you could do uh if you put them on oh eight a hydroxyl group or ketone on 11. That's what halotestin has that along with the 9-fluorine, but that helps it bind to the corticosteroceptor,

which also has anabolic activity and increases the anabolic activity of the molecule. So chemists look at this and they derivatize. There's that book by Vita. Have you heard of that book? I have not. Julius Vita made a book called, it's either androgenic and anabolic agents or anabolic and androgenic agents. And it was basically, they made every possible derivative and then tested it to see if it's

anabolic or not. And by adding methyl groups, halogens, which are fluorine, chlorine, bromine, adding different parts to the different molecule and tested it. And that's where Patrick Arnold went, got that book, looked at what was out there that hadn't been marketed and made it and became a new pro-hormone. A lot of the pro-horm hormones actually came from that book and that book was i believe in 1969 it's an old book i actually had to get it in undergrad i had to get it from another library they transferred it to my library so that i can read it and i actually

photocopied the whole thing this is before i found a pdf online because we're talking like 05, 06 and I photocopied the whole thing and read all about it and he goes into detail on why this one works and this one doesn't what's the most powerful steroid that you've ever seen? anabolically?

yeah or androgenically either way um methyl trianilone is the standard that they that they go against to see anabolic activity so that's methyl trend and and the methyl group is where the hydroxyl group is it's they're together so that because that pervades the breakdown of that hydroxyl group is that usually an oral thing it is an oral oral. And then there's the... And then that one must have probably a lot of side effects,

I would imagine, because of the strength of it? It's the most liver... It never made it to market because it kills your liver. Absolutely kills your liver. The doses were micrograms versus milligrams.

What is the action that can be harmful to the liver when we're talking about steroids? Or especially the oral steroids? So your liver is responsible for demethylation of those compounds. And it also, if you have too much of that, you have buildup of bile. I think it's called cholestasis, where your liver begins to fill up with bile and not be able to process things because it's doing this so much into your body, like breaking down these compounds that are very toxic. So that's why – what's – blanking on the name.

What's that liver one that has the – that's real expensive that everyone uses? Oh, like a supplement? Yeah. It's really hard to get good stuff of it, but it's real expensive that everyone uses. Oh, like a supplement? Yeah. It's really hard to get good stuff of it, but it's really expensive. There's NAC and there's… No, the other one. Tudka? That's the one.

Tudka, yeah, the taurine-based one. That's the one that's… And what's that for, by the way? For cleansing your liver from cholestasis. So if you're using gear that's methylated, that's the one you want to use. NAC helps, but your liver from cholestasis. So if you're using gear that's methylated, that's the one you want to use. NAC helps, but your liver is really resilient. That's where the guess of the name liver comes from

because you can't live without it, and it's very resilient. But the Tudka is probably the best thing if you're taking a heavily oral regimen. What are your thoughts? Because you mentioned that this whole thing started from being extracted from bull testicles, which to me sounds actually pretty natural. Right. Now, later on, I believe, and I don't understand where this stuff comes from,

and I don't have the biochemistry background that you do, so help us understand. I believe that testosterone was later synthesized from like yams or potatoes or something like that. So my kind of question here is, why do people try to go with these outside resources of plant-based things? We had Andrew Huberman on the show. We've had other people on the show

and they tout these certain things that increase your testosterone levels but sometimes when I look at some of these things I'm like well if we're going to increase our if that's the goal then we should just take testosterone and I know that certain things are illegal

I understand that there's a market for some of these things but it's my belief that taking a shot at testosterone is healthier in some ways than messing around with some of these things that we don't know much about. Because I would say, and this is just my own belief, I believe that there's more information,

there's more research on steroids than there is on something like phrosia agresta or however you say that term. Phrosia agresta. is on something like phrosia agresta or however you say that term. Phrosia agresta. So one of the main problems is if a

university laboratory isn't funded to do this research and a supplement company wants to do it then they have to pay for it. And these studies are very expensive. Hundreds of thousands of dollars to do, right? So a lot of the stuff that I base my product development on is research from labs.

Some of it is just in vitro. Some of it is in vivo, meaning in cells versus actually in humans taking it. And the natural stuff contains compounds that are similar in action, or they have some kind of binding affinity to the AR, but there's no natural testosterone found in any of these things. These are all things that are mostly signal your brain to increase luteinizing hormone or follicle stimulating hormone, and that's how they work to boost your testosterone. But you can't synthesize testosterone from yams. I don't believe there's an active in there, but you can find natural things like DHEA,

and then you can synthesize testosterone. There's ways to do it. Where does testosterone come from? In the body? No, I just like... Oh. Only in the body, as far as actual, the molecule testosterone. But how do they make it?

Like, there's these labs and stuff. Oh. You get a... It comes from a how do they make it? Like, there's these labs and stuff. Oh. You get a... It comes from a plant, doesn't it? No. Well, so in real chemistry, not like home chemistry, if you're in a real lab, you can buy standards from companies like Sigma Alders, which make all these raw materials that are 99%, 0.99% pure.

And you take that, and then you look at the molecule and you see where you have to connect certain things and you just synthesize it. Like you add them together, you stir them. Sometimes you heat them. Sometimes you cool them. You add different reagents like reducing or oxidizing. And then you make the molecule at the end.

So it could be a three-step process. It could be a 15-step process. It just depends on what you're trying to do. So for like- It's derived from something in the beginning, right? DHEA is the main one in the body. And then that can convert to androstenedione, which converts to androstenediol. I guess I'm trying to ask, like testosterone, when they put it in a bottle, where does that come from?

It comes from standards that they make. But it kind of comes from something from the earth, right? Not necessarily. Chemists make stuff. But you can't make something out of nothing. What's it made out of? You mean like carbon, nitrogen, oxygen? It's not made from bark they don't extract bark it's all it's not like synthesized from anything no not

anymore everything is all chemically made it's like synthetic like all like we were talking about vitamin c nobody's squeezing oranges and taking that and extracting vitamin c anymore we make we know how to make it we uh synthetically from a starting point. And to circle back to the Patrick Arnold thing about THG is he found a birth control pill that had the same alternating double bonds, those three alternating bonds that make Tren. And it was, I believe he just, it had an ethyl group instead of a methyl group on carbon

19 or 18 one of the two and he and it had a double bond and he just reduced the double bond and there it was and it was super undetectable and potent so like if you know what you're looking for you can chemically alter them and if you're if you know what to're looking for, you can chemically alter them. And if you're, if you know what to do, but to answer your original question, no, the, you know, you can't extract testosterone from any plant or anything like that.

We use like different, uh, anabolic things from like the insect hormones that are big now. Like, um, laxagenin was a big plant-based one that has anabolic properties, but it's not testosterone. It's just another, it's their form of an anabolic hormone in their body.

Is it a good idea for someone to try to boost their testosterone through some of these means? I don't think it boosts testosterone as much as it just has an anabolic effect. So a lot of the times these compounds, just the pathway by which they go increases muscle protein synthesis, which is the end game, right? Testosterone does the same thing. It's just a matter of how you do it. You don't necessarily need to activate the antigen receptor. You can activate mTOR, like how leucine does that.

Insulin does that. And then there's another pathway it goes through. mTOR, like how leucine does that, insulin does that, and then there's another pathway it goes through, and then it can just increase, it turns on genes to increase building muscle. You know, we were kind of talking about this earlier, but everyone's like, most guys are here about testosterone,

like I want to increase my testosterone so I can get bigger, et cetera. And I know that you focus on the chemistry, but I know a few people who have low testosterone who have built amazing physiques, physiques that people would think they're on drugs, but their T's low. So, you know, you got a lot of young guys in their late teens

or early twenties trying to seek out testosterone to get bigger. Do you think that, I mean, is that what they should be seeking out? Because everybody's seeking out things like doing cycles of tests, et cetera. I have a huge issue with anyone that takes steroids under 25. 23 would be pushing it.

That's the prime. That's when your body's making its most ever. So all you're going to do is continually lower your natural. And maybe if you're young, it bounces back more easily. But at my age, it didn't. So I don't recommend kids doing that. But I've known plenty of kids. In my high school, I knew kids that did it.

And in college. So I don't think they realize. The same thing we talked about. We talked about dopamine. You've got to get that release, everything online. Your attention span is so small. People just want results. And obviously, gear is going to give you results much more quickly.

But, for example, my workout partner is 23. He just graduated from college, and he's natural, and he's into competing. And I told him, please wait until you're 25. I promise you, it'll make a world of difference. Because once you start there, it's almost impossible to start making natural gains once your body's been introduced to such like super physiological levels of testosterone

or any other type of that substance. And that makes me wonder what amount of like, so guys are doing everything they can to increase testosterone. Like example, Andrew Hooper came on, he talked to us about Fidozia, aggressive and tone Connelly. So I was like, fuck it.

Let me see what that'll do. My test levels. It had actually quite an impact on my luteinizing hormone. My test went up very minimally, but I didn't feel much of a difference. But a lot of guys like, let's say that they do want to use some tests or something, even though they should probably wait. What amounts are the necessary

amounts that are going to be the things that allow you to see a change? Because if a guy goes from like 300 to 600 or 300 to 700, that's not going to be something that makes a huge difference. Or am I wrong there? If it's somebody who's never done anything, I just, I literally just made a post about this, about this, how if you're first starting off your first cycle, you can 250 milligrams a week, you can grow if you've never done anything before. But if you start at 500 or start at 600, you can't start it. You can't go back and get gains at 200 or 250. So I may, I am a very big believer in minimal possible dose to get results.

Yeah. Because I think you should incrementally increase. And it doesn't have to be every cycle. If you're doing it properly and coming off and going on and with adequate breaks, you can probably use the same dose of something and get similar results until you start to jump. And I made a whole big thing about, there's a ton of coaches I know that are just drug pushers,

and people send me stuff. I have a lot of friends that are pros. They send me, what do you think of this? What do you think of that? And I kind of laugh, and I said, cut it in half. Everything in half. Whatever we just told you, cut it in half, because that's so

much and unless you're you know like Dallas McCarver was one that you know push the limits I think I love Nick Walker I love his physique he grew super fast I have no idea what he's taking like we're not cool like that we're just I'm just gnome but I know that these guys are pushing the envelope and younger and younger, like you said.

I just think it's everyone at 23 thinks that they're invincible. I did. When I was 23, I'm sure you guys did the same thing. You never thought it would catch up. But then, you know, Sean Roden dying at 46 was a huge wake-up call because I'm 40. You're close to 46.

I'm not sure how old you are. 29. You're young. You're a baby. You're still invincible. It's just, it catches up to you. And I don't think anyone's really thinking that way. Everything is the short term.

I want to be on stage now. I want to win this trophy now. And if you're getting paid for it and if you're willing to sacrifice it, that's a personal choice. So it's really up to them. But some of the old school bodybuilders, you know, did minimal stuff because stuff like these fancy things weren't around. You know, you had the few compounds that everyone used and it was kind of like an experimentation, like this does this, how much. But nobody was using,

like I've seen people using 100 milligrams of oral Winstrol and they cringe because it's going to kill your good cholesterol and that can give you heart issues, heart failure, plaque buildup. You also need that for, you need estrogen for cell repair, sex drive. So all of these compounds have very negative effects, and people think Winstrel is kind of healthy, but it's really not. What's Winstrel for, by the way, again? It's a horse steroid. People think Winstrel is kind of healthy.

That's a great quote. On the scheme of things, people think it's a less harmful one than, say, like halitacin or Tren or something like that. But in reality, the effects it's having internally are far worse than just taking more testosterone. Testosterone is the natural ligand, and ligand just means the one that binds to the receptor. It's the natural one. So once you start derivatizing them and making them stronger to do this or that, you also have the side effect change

and how it affects your circulatory system and your cardiovascular system and all that stuff. And an interesting thing is, if somebody who trains regularly just took Winstrel and didn't make any changes to their diet, they would look leaner. They would look like... I'm not saying that they can to their diet, they would look leaner.

I'm not saying that they can have whatever diet, but just everything's the same. They normally look a certain way. They train a certain way. So they would look healthier, but it could be some big repercussions going on. Yeah. I always, and again, I just made this whole post about getting blood work done minimum twice a year physicals from your doctor and then if you are an enhanced athlete all the time like a pro, you need to be

getting blood work done on and off to make sure what's going on because that's the only real way to know. I gave two examples you can do on your own monitoring the color of your urine is always a good thing to do. If you see it change dark, that could be a kidney thing. It could be a liver thing. Your body could be breaking down muscle tissue and that's what causing it to be dark. Like I had rhabdo. I went to the hospital for rhabdo and I didn't, I just felt weak out of nowhere. I just thought I was tired, overworked.

I was training real hard. I had just gotten back from Australia, and I was training like six days a week. I was big at the time, like in the 240s. And then all of a sudden, I got real tired, and I was in bed, like literally couldn't get out of bed. I was so weak. And my wife, luckily, after about eight days, took me to the doctor. They admitted me to the hospital,

and it took them two days to figure out it was rhabdo. And my urine was super dark, Eight days took me to the doctor. They admitted me to the hospital. It took them two days to figure out it was rhabdo. My urine was super dark. My creatinine levels were really high. My CK kinase was high. C-reactive protein was really high. My AST and LST, which are your liver enzymes, were in the hundreds. And it wasn't from gear.

They think it was just from overtraining and your body just says enough and starts rapidly breaking down muscle tissue. And that's just one thing you can look for. Another thing is edema, water retention, especially in your feet. Then if your feet are constantly having water around your ankles or something, that's another signal that your blood pressure could be high

or your heart's not pumping enough blood properly. So those are two simple things you don't have to go to the doctor for just to realize I need to go to the doctor, something's wrong. You know, I want to also ask this since we kind of talked about Tren earlier. Tren is something that I see a lot of young guys doing too,

especially on TikTok, bro. You'd be surprised. There seem young guys on TikTok talking about their trend cycles and how great they're doing because they're getting bigger. So I want to ask, what exactly does trend do?

It's positive. And then along with that, if people are deciding to take the step of going on trend, because they obviously are, what do they need to be careful of? And what are the potential long-term ramifications or short-term that they need to keep in mind if they choose to do trend? Because guys are talking about trends super liberally. Like, it's just, it's cool. It's trend.

Because it works really well as an anabolic and an androgenic compound. Can you explain those two a little bit to us? Sure. So if something's anabolic, that means it helps build muscle. And if something's androgenic, that's more of the secondary side effects. Sex drive, body hair growth is on balding. You can't

accelerate balding because of DHT. But mostly, Tren is very, very anabolic at lower doses but it's not in my opinion not a beginner one it's something you should do once you've had at least testosterone and maybe something like eq is another light one that i think is relatively safe or premium bowling if it's real is relatively safe comparatively to these trend is just it got so popular as uh culturally just every gym rat was always yeah you gotta take trying to or do you you know you meet the big guy in the gym yeah talk about it that that's the go-to

and and all these kids ask me the same thing it's like oh i'm on this bunch of trends of why what have you done before? Oh, it's my first cycle, and I'm doing like three things, and it just blows my mind that they don't, nobody really researches anything. They just ask random people in the gym because they have a great physique, and I'm guilty of that as well.

Like my first introduction to this was making a friend at the gym who was really big and asking, and it started about natural stuff. And then he told me about other things, and it was just an exploration from there. But I then got really into researching it myself. And then, you know, the influence of Patrick Arnold actually made the choice to go back to school for chemistry to really understand it. the choice to go back to school for chemistry to really understand it and then hopefully educate people from my position of which i feel i have credibility versus somebody who's just big in the gym yeah so uh the the common opinion about like low testosterone um or i guess in a um not an

effect but people say that they're tired so that their testosterone must be low. It seems like that's the correct opinion of that side effect. But like Nsemo was pointing out, there's some people that will show their blood work and they have low testosterone, but they're still shredded. They seem to have high energy. Why do you think it varies so much from person to person? Genetics play a huge role in a lot of things. I have friends that I am extremely jealous of that walk around at 6%.

They eat whatever they want. He's across the table from you, by the way. Got it. He's a new friend. And he's right here. Oh, yeah. Jesus Christ. Genetics just control everything.

You know, like for example, and I don't know how substantiated this is. This is an educated guess. And I believe it's been around the internet. He, he was a fisherman and weighed one 85 before he ever touched a weight. So people speculate that his genetics may possibly,

he might have naturally lower myostatin levels versus someone else, which is the reason why he was able to get so big so quickly. I mean, starting at 185 and you've never touched a weight, that's a pretty big base. So at his age, and he was young, he was either 19 or early 20s. And so people underestimate the power of genetics. And some people can have low testosterone and just stay ripped because their metabolism is really fast.

Or they can hold on to muscle better like there's just so many different pathways by which your body maintains its muscle mass that it doesn't just come down to testosterone there's other things there's other factors that help you have energy or stay ripped or and a lot of it is just having the attitude i'm sure you you probably just have a good attitude about yourself and have confidence and know that, you know, I'm, I'm, I look this way, I'm going to look this way. I trained for this and stuff like that. So there's just a lot of variables, but genetics is a big one. Yeah. Real quick. Um, the, cause we meant, we talked about how trend was like effective, but I also like, what are the, like, what do guys need to think about if they choose to go down the road of currently using it

and what are the ramifications like down the road of using Tren? It's extremely suppressive, way more suppressive than testosterone because all of the 19 NORs, which mean they don't have a methyl group on the 19th carbon, all of those are much more suppressive and harder to bounce back from. And then long-term, I think it would be more of the plaque buildup

because it's such a more powerful compound. And especially if it doesn't aromatize. So if things aromatize easily, that's better for you, not from a physique standpoint, but it's health-wise because you're getting estrogen still in your body, where Tren would probably lower your estrogen more so than if you're taking even D-ball, because D-ball aromatizes very easily. So does that answer your question? Yeah, Tren, I think one of the allures of something like Tren Ballone is that it will increase your strength, it will increase your muscle mass, and you'll look leaner. Again, without a lot of changes to your diet. It's not like you're going to get shredded if you're a big fat dude and you take Tren. But if you train, you'll certainly look a lot different.

And it doesn't take very long. Right. And if you train, you'll certainly look a lot different. And it doesn't take very long. If you go on a cycle of testosterone, you've never taken testosterone before, it's going to take a couple weeks for a longer-acting ester to kind of pile up in your body and then for you to have higher testosterone, higher free testosterone, and for things to be favorable going in the right direction for a handful of weeks, maybe four or five weeks. I usually tell people, like, might not notice much for about four to six weeks.

With Trenbolone, if somebody took it for 15 days and they were in shape, you'd be like, whoa, like, what the fuck happened? Like, if one of you guys took it, like, out of I mean, it, it's a little hocus pocus. Like it, it's fucking, you know, we talked that one time on the podcast, not,

not, not too long ago, just a few weeks ago about devil pussy. Yeah. Well, this is the devil steroid. Like this motherfucker is calling you. It's like,

yo, I got your number, bitch. Where are you at? There's, it keeps calling you. You're like, no,

I shouldn't take it. I shouldn't take it. I shouldn't take it. He's talking about shutdown and stuff like that. Yeah, it can mess with your dick. It could shut down your testosterone levels for a long time. And the recovery from it could take a really long time. So you have to always think about an exit strategy out of these things. If you just took a little testosterone, I think if you took 200 milligrams, even if you took it for a year straight,

I don't see a lot of negative side effects from that. But if you took a good amount of testosterone or a good amount of Trenbolone for a year, good luck with the recovery on that. It's going to be really difficult. Yeah. And I forgot to mention, it can help burn fat due to its modulation of glucocorticoid steroid receptor. So it does affect that, which can help with carbs going into your muscles rather than storing as fast. So it can give you that leaner look because of that. I forgot to say that. Okay. Wow.

I mean, yeah, it sounds awesome. That's the allure. Yeah. And it's also, oh, sorry. And normally it's acetate. The most common found one is trying to acetate, which is a very quick ester. And if you're doing it three times a week, sorry, that's my dog. That's Christina.

Can we get her on camera real quick? Oh, yeah. Come here, baby. Yeah, scoop her up. This is Christina. Oh, hello. Say hi. She travels with me everywhere.

So she's our little buddy for today. Why is she traveling with you? What's going on? She's a, I hate flying. And this is an adult onset claustrophobia so instead of taking medication she keeps me calm

and I can not have to rely on something else that can keep me calm she's an amazingly trained dog man yeah she's

she's super smart she knows hand commands she knows everything so say hi to everybody baby what was nope tangled up what was the original question man. She knows everything. So say hi to everybody, baby. What was the original question? I'm sorry. I got distracted.

I was going to ask you, do you think this is a good place for people to start? Sometimes somebody is looking for extra results. Maybe they've been training pretty hard. Maybe they have some whey protein. Maybe they got some BCAAs. They feel like their diet's pretty good. Do you think that's a good place for people to even start to try to mess around with their testosterone? Aside from performance enhancing drugs, I'm just talking about even just a supplement that will boost your testosterone. Or do you think they should maybe be looking somewhere else? I made a product. It's not up here, but it's called Natabolic, and it's a natural testosterone booster slash

natural anabolic. So there's compounds in there that work to increase luteinizing hormone that we talked about. So your body starts to produce, gets the signal to start producing more testosterone. And then there's compounds that are natural anabolics,

like they're not SARMs, but they're SARM-like, meaning that they're not steroidal, but they activate the angiointerceptor. And so I put those in there as well. And like Korean mistletoe is one that's been shown to increase muscle protein synthesis. Korean mistletoe? Yeah.

Whoa, okay. I did. So a little background. But when I make a product, I usually have a minimum of 20 papers to go along with everything that's in there. I don't just do this. That nootropic took me a year to make. I'm waiting to see how it's going to do to me. Yeah.

There's no caffeine. Some people bump caffeine in it to make it because they going to do to me. Yeah, there's no caffeine. Some people bump caffeine in it to make it, because they're so used to caffeine. It's like the biggest addiction in America. But I purposely did it without caffeine so that you can feel the focus. I don't know. Do you want to segue into that stuff,

like Kana and what we were talking about, or do you want to stay on the anabolics for a little bit? We can go wherever. Yeah, I guess I'm just asking is someone going to see a real big impact or should they be just kind of looking somewhere else?

Should they just switch up their training or maybe a sleep product might be a better idea or some other type of recovery or do you think that bumping your testosterone levels up? I know you said earlier that it's not your actual testosterone levels that you're really looking to just bump up you're looking to bump up your free testosterone right yeah so boron is probably the most underused of testosterone booster because it specifically increases free testosterone. And Dante Trudell is a huge believer in boron.

And he and I have a very good relationship and we talk a lot about stuff. And he's the one that's like, you got to try boron to increase your free testosterone. And then you start reading studies and it really works. Like the data is there. So boron is one that really helps with the free testosterone versus your total count can be 2,000. But if your free levels are less than 40, if they're like 20, I think my blood work, obviously going through what I'm going through on fertility meds was like 22, which is half of kind of what it should be. That means that only half of my total testosterone is actually working. that means that only half of my total testosterone is actually working.

So you need to have the free testosterone number be more, that's more indicative of what's actually going on in your body as far as building muscle and utilizing it. And as far as like dosage of boron, because I did my blood work with Merrick Health. The first time I did my blood work, a supplement that was recommended there was boron. So with that being said, is there like a, is there a general dosage of boron? And is it something that, because before we started the episode, you said you believe in cycling everything. So is that something that you think should be cycled? Is it something that people can just take ongoing or do they need to watch out for their boron levels? Boron's not toxic.

And a lot of boron comes in the form of boron citrate or some type of chelate, meaning that because boron's, you know, like an atom. It's not a molecule. It's just an atom. So citrate, which is a molecule, so it kind of interacts non- I don't want to get too chemistry related, but it kind of just sits. It helps protect it and helps deliver it. Okay.

Right? So six to nine milligrams was the study dose. A lot of times you'll see, you know, 200 milligrams of boron citrate, but remember boron molecular weight is, is, is way lower than citrate because it's a big molecule. So the percentage of boron of that 200 milligrams is in probably that six to nine range that we're talking about. Okay, so when people look for a boron supplement,

will it come in different forms? Like you know how there's creatine monohydrate and creatine whatever. Is there a specific one that people should be looking for if they want to purchase boron? The citrate one is the most commonly used and it's pretty effective. That's the one the study used.

Got it. So I don't think there's a need to get into a different one, like an amino chelate. Because a lot of the multivitamins now include zinc or magnesium with glycinate, so they add amino chelates for better bioavailability. But I think boron citrate works well. And as far as cycling, if you're younger, you probably cycle on and off. If you're over 30, I would say it's probably something you could take for the rest of your

life to help keep it up there. Why cycle boron when you're younger? I know that was probably obvious, but why? Just when you're already making so much testosterone and you should have some type of free already, you're usually going on some cycle for a reason. Like you're in a mass building phase or you're competing or something like that. So you maybe want to increase your free testosterone for that period of time. It shouldn't go back down too much though, like when you come off. Because it's not something that's a synthetic hormone or anything. It's just something that helps free up testosterone from sex hormone binding globulin,

which is what makes it inactive. Power Project Family, how's it going? Now, on this podcast, on almost every single episode, we talk about sleep because sleep is important for your workouts, for your recovery, for your nutrition, for your fat loss, for your muscle gain. Literally everything comes down to getting great sleep at night. That's why I've partnered with Eight Sleep Mattresses. Now they have something called the Pod Pro Cover. Now this cover is something you can put over one of Eight Sleep's

mattresses or your existing mattress. And it temperature regulates through the night so that you get the best sleep possible at every phase of your sleep. You know, most people think that you need to have your room temperature at 68 degrees Fahrenheit, but our temperature is different. I sleep hotter than most people. You might sleep cooler. So that's why the 8 Sleep mattress for yourself and your partner, either side of the mattress can have its own temperature regulation. And the cool thing is that the 8 Sleep app watches your temperature through multiple nights and it'll literally change the way the temperature is set based off of the way you sleep it's crazy it's literally the tesla of beds andrew tell them about it dude yeah dude it's this uh technology is

insane it's like the most high technological can't even say that word uh piece of equipment that i have in my whole house um so you guys got to head over to 8sleep.com slash power project. That's eight spelled out. So E-I-G-H-T sleep.com slash power project. And you guys will receive $150 off of your pod pro cover or your pod pro cover and mattress combo. And I must say that that mattress is actually extremely comfortable. They didn't skimp out on anything on this product. Again, 8s sleep.com slash power project links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes what can uh high estrogen levels cause like so what are some of the side effects um something like because we spoke off air you know my estrogen levels are actually really high right now something that i'm like out of nowhere i've

i've talked shit on this podcast a bunch about never having acne and of course now i like i have a lot of back knee to where like sometimes putting on my backpack really fucking hurts which is embarrassing because i've never had acne but here i am and my estrogen level is very high but is there anything else i should be worried about having high estrogen levels and i'm currently going through this being on fertility meds i cry cry a lot and I'm not ashamed of it. I can't control it. You get real emotional and

health-wise, it's good for you to have higher levels of estrogen for your heart and it helps with cell wall protection and it helps with sex drive. 90 is a little high for for a male i would try and bring it more into like the 40 50 range but the the acne is another thing that's a that's a biochemical process from hormone related stuff so i think that you need you do you need to monitor estrogen people that have super low

estrogen because they take all these aromatase inhibitors that doctors i think over prescribe can have more of a detrimental effect than having higher estrogen i'd rather have higher estrogen so i'd have higher htl versus lower estrogen and then not have a sex driver, not have good cholesterol and things like that. What about some of the over-the-counter stuff that's for lowering estrogen and for cortisol? I think I know even females will mess around with some of these products because they think it's going to assist them in getting leaner or looking show-ready.

So what are your thoughts on that? and getting leaner or looking show-ready. So what are your thoughts on that? I actually was the first to market to bring an actual cortisone inhibitor, a natural cortisone inhibitor. Patrick Ronald made one that was a derivative of an anabolic one, and I believe it was 11-oxo was the name of the product but uh you had to take super high doses of it and it wasn't very oral bioavailable and um it was also hormonal so this one is based off imodin and i was i've been sitting on this for years um and i finally had

the opportunity to make it and imodin what it does is it blocks the conversion, enzymatically blocks the conversion of cortisone, which is inactive, to cortisol, which is active. And this is a product that you can notice within two weeks that it's working because you'll lose body fat, specifically around here. And I give it to all my competitors and people swear by it the it works like elevated cortisol levels over time is like metabolic syndrome you know you gain weight

you have insulin resistance and so i think a modin is is a really good natural solution to lowering cortisol you take it safely just for like a handful of weeks maybe and then cycle off of it. Yeah, we recommend on four weeks on, four weeks off. And the dose, we make 250 milligram capsules and it can go up to a gram. The only drawback is that you can have gastric distress for a couple of days until your body gets used to it.

So I get a lot of messages like, I just took this and then I had bad bowel movements. It happens. There's nothing you can do about it. It's just a property of the molecule. But your body adjusts. It took me, I think, five or six days before I could take more than one a day. So I always tell someone to start with one. But most people only take two.

Stack 3D wrote a review on it, and they said they were taking two, and within two weeks they were noticeably leaner in the midsection. So there are things that can naturally lower cortisol and estrogen as well. There's, what is it three five androstene seven seventeen dione like arimistane is the trademark name of it that has been shown to inhibit aromatization but it's on that like fda warning list like not it's not banned but it's not you know you can't buy it on amazon or anything like that, it's not banned, but it's not, you know, you can't buy it on Amazon or anything like that.

Cause it's one of those ingredients is water band. Acetin is another one that I use that has pretty good data for just blocking estrogen. There's a lot of polyphenolic compounds that are naturally around that can help lower estrogen either by stopping the conversion from, like when DHEA makes estrogen, it stops that pathway, or when DHEA goes towards androstenedione, it prevents that from going to estrogen.

There's a lot of different ways that they work. You mentioned, I'm not sure, you mentioned fertility medication, but it got me thinking about athletes, men and women, who need to take drugs and their future fertility. So I wonder, in that context, what do people need to be careful of if they do plan on having children in the future? And then number two, what if somebody isn't already, let's say they did the groundwork of getting a fertility test before they did anything and they're already slim as far as like their fertility potential. And then they choose to hop on. How could that affect them?

Like, could that mess up their potential future fertility? I just want to like have people think men and women about that aspect of things because I don't see that talked about much. So I can give you my personal experience if you want. So I was on, after my bodybuilding, I competed for a few years and then went on to TRT when I was 30, 29, 30. And my doctor didn't give me HCG. And he told me, you know, when it's time to have kids,

you can come off and we'll give you a protocol and all this stuff and then now nine years later i'm trying to have kids and it's been seven months of me taking fertility meds and trying to get them enough to increase a sperm count and get my testosterone back to normal so if you're already on the low end before you start anything and you take a like a sperm mobility test and see what you have or if you're already on the low end before you start anything and you take a sperm mobility test and see what you have or if you have low testosterone in general, then if you don't want kids, then you're fine. If kids are something that's important to you, then if you go on, I highly recommend a lower dose of HCG throughout your cycle. And I believe that it will help preserve your LH function so that your body is not completely at nothing. Because when you put something in your body that it tells your body in the signal, well, I have all of this. I don't need to make it. And that goes with a lot of things, but specifically

with testosterone. So if you're getting that signal saying, I don't need to make it. And that goes with a lot of things, but specifically with testosterone. So if you're getting that signal saying, I don't need to make it, then you're not going to. But if you're also giving the signal, like a low dose of HCG, which is luteinizing hormone, then it can help you be more fertile.

I know that Dante swears by that. And then I've also seen anecdotally or heard anecdotally that your testicles don't atrophy as much as if you didn't do it. Okay. So first off, guys need to probably, it would be a good idea because I haven't heard anyone mention that.

It would be a good idea. If you want to have children in the future, get a fertility test before you choose to go on testosterone to understand where you're at yeah okay i think that's important like always get a sperm test to see where you are yeah and then go and that's you should use that because if you don't have any already or if it's the low chances already you might want to plan around that how about women women? So women who take things have a different

effect. I am not 100% positive about fertility because most of these fertility drugs are made for women. They just happen to give them to men because they work. But they're mostly to induce ovulation for women. When women take things there's big hormonal changes

and lowering their estrogen a lot. So they might have problems releasing eggs. I'm not 100% sure, but that could be one of the main factors. Got it. What's going on with this nootropic? I've heard you talk about, I think it's Kana, is that how you say it? Kana, yes. And that has some good research behind it in terms of like depression and anxiety and

things like that yeah so kana originates in south africa and it's a plant and they chew it and it gives you like a little euphoric buzz but it's because your body's releasing serotonin and then blocking the reuptake of serotonin so serotonin is like the feel-good hormone dopamine is the reward hormone so most most antidepressants are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors so this is a natural serotonin reuptake inhibitor so you're releasing it you feel good and it's blocking it from being metabolized so that's why I like it a lot. They said it hits something like 76 receptors in your body. But when I first heard of it as a supplement, it was under the name Zembrin, which is a trademark.

And they were touting their study using 25 milligrams. When I researched how much the people in South Africa are taking, it was between 500 to 1500 milligrams at a time. So that's a huge difference between taking 25 milligrams versus taking a thousand. So I opted to go with it. Like I've messed around for a while with it when I was formulating that. Cause it was also in my original pre-workout. And I just remember take adding that to the stimulants that I had in the pre-workout, and it was just like a light bulb went off, like this is something to look into

because something's happening. You feel good. I think I trained arm for like two hours just because I was so focused. Yeah. And then I looked into other ingredients that were dopamine releasers and dopamine reuptake inhibitors. So dopamine and serotonin are called monoamines and you have an enzyme called

monoamine oxidase which breaks them down. So I looked into natural monoamine oxidase inhibitors and how they work and I found one in ivy leaf which prevents the breakdown of serotonin and dopamine and norepinephrine, which is similar

to adrenaline. So by having those, blocking that enzyme, you have more dopamine and more serotonin now in your body, so you'll feel it and you'll be in a good mood. And the way that Adderall works is that it's a dopamine reuptake inhibitor, so it releases dopamine and then it blocks the reuptake so you still have it. So the reason people need Adderall is because they don't produce enough dopamine and that's why they're always looking around because they need outside stimulus to give them dopamine. Like we talked about earlier with people on screens and stuff, that's giving them a dopamine release.

Like we talked about earlier with people on screens and stuff, that's giving them a dopamine release. But if you're normal and you have a normal dopamine, you don't need to take those kind of medications. But when you take them, they really put you in an extreme state of focus. And with this supplement, let's say someone got it because you mentioned that like, it's like, is this something that somebody can take every day? And then you mentioned that with this, they would have to cycle it. What is the reason for the cycling? And can they can take every day? And then you mentioned that with this, they would have to cycle it. What is the reason for the cycling? And can they take it every day? I purposely made this for three weeks on, one week off,

just so that your brain doesn't get used to relying on things. I just, my personal belief is that if you keep using something, and this is kind of based on how addiction works and stuff, is that everything is keep using something, and this is kind of based on how addiction works and stuff, is that everything is treated as a foreign object in your body and it tries to expel it.

So it will either increase the number of receptors you have and that will break it down very quickly, so it won't last as long. But if you take a break, then you're not producing all those receptors, and then you'll have a better effect over the long term. Like caffeine, I think within five days, your adenosine receptors are completely filled,

and no matter what, you kind of keep having to take it more and more to get it used to. But if you take a break for seven days, it's a reset. So I recommend people, when I was taking caffeine every day, I would go 10 days every month without taking it. And then it helped out the next time I took it. I really felt it. You think reducing helps at all or is that not enough?

It can help better than not. But I do think that you actually need the break from it to work. You think that might be true of dieting even as well? Like go three weeks pretty good and then give yourself a week, not to just have at it, but maybe a week where you're not counting and calculating and being so precise? Mentally, 100%. Because if you get really into meticulously dieting for so long,

and especially if you're in a caloric deficit, you're going to go nuts, right? So I think that's like the purpose of cheat meals. And then the nutritional purpose of cheat meals is to kind of keep your thyroid going along. Because once you're restricting calories for so long, your body thinks that you're going into starvation and it can actually store more body fat than lose.

And you can be on a caloric deficit and still not be losing weight. You'll burn muscle before you burn fat. That's just from like an evolutionary standpoint. That's how our bodies were made. You know, as hunters and gatherers, you never knew when your next meal was. So you always had to,

you had stored fat that you could use as energy until you got your next meal, whatever it was. So from that standpoint, I think that giving, having cheap meals or even a cheap couple of days or something like that can give a huge spike in your thyroid levels, which will keep your body humming along and continue to burn fat. If that's your goal.

And give you things to look forward to because you'll get excited about that couple day break that you might have and then you'll get excited to get back on your plan again. Yeah. And it's like, as you know, it's a lifestyle. It's very hard for people that aren't into like working out to make it a lifestyle. So for most people that are just trying to diet to keep sane and to actually keep continuous use of this diet, they have to, you can't just say,

you can never eat this, you can never eat that, because they're going to give up. So I think it's a good idea to always say, like, yeah, you can have this on a certain day or have two days a week where you don't eat on your diet and then you go back on. And it breaks that monotony and kind of gives us, like you said,

something to look forward to. And that also releases dopamine, you know, when you have a nice big chocolate cake or something in front of you, you get real excited and you feel good about it. So yeah, I think that's positive. What about with steroids? What about them?

Three weeks on, one week off? No. Three months on, one month off? Three months on, three months off? I think. What do we got to do? A rule of thumb is time on equals time off. And that time off does not mean you're PCT.

So that's like time on, then PCT, then time off, then time on is like a general rule. But most people just cruise. And the repercussions of that is you could become sterile or you can have a plaque buildup. You're always on something, then your body's never going to produce anything because it's always getting that exogenous signal saying, I don't need this, I'm getting it already. So I think it's very important, especially when you're younger, to come on and off.

When you're older and you have kids and you've just decided this is what I want to do, then it's a different conversation. Yeah, even with with TRT, a TRT dose? I think when you make the decision to do TRT, the only reason you would come off is if you're trying

to have a baby. Even then, there's countless stories of people that have had babies on gear. From a personal standpoint, it makes me so frustrated because I know people that have accidental baby, deca babies babies or whatever you want to call them. And, you know, we're trying for so long and I'm doing all these fertility meds and I don't know if it's in the cards. I'm trying to be optimistic about it, but I don't know.

We'll see. Got it. Deca baby. Yeah. So low dose is okay. Long term, like just you're good to go. If you make that decision with your doctor, hopefully it's with your doctor, then he will tell you that this is a long-term thing. Just like if you get on a thyroid medication from your doctor,

it's usually for life, meaning that your thyroid levels are just declined, just like testosterone declines at age. So, like, if you're in your 30s. She sensed that what you were just talking about about not being in the cards, and she came right over to you, man. She knows she's my number one. She knows that. But if you've made the decision to do that,

then I think between you and your doctor, you come to terms with being on gear. You'll be on testosterone for the rest of your life unless you want a baby. Relax. It's okay. That's okay. So that's actually an interesting thing about TRT

because TRT right now is, I think it's taken very lightly. It's something that can definitely be beneficial. And I've said like, you know, if I get into my 50s and things start really slowing down and I still have my lifestyle in check, still sleeping, still got nutrition,

but it's not there. I'll do some TRT. But in what situations do you think TRT is necessary? Because a lot of people just get on it very liberally. Still young, but 20s, 30s, 40s, guys are getting on TRT just because it's the thing now. The internet is to blame for all of this, if we're being really honest. TRT is a term that's kind of thrown around, and then all these TRT clinics have popped up in the last 10 years, right? But normally, you'd have to go to an endocrinologist, and they would assess your blood work and say, these are your options.

You can either go on Clomid and ACG and try and bring it back up to normal that way, or you can go on synthetic testosterone. It's something that you could do for three months and we check your blood work. And if it's fine, then we can taper off and then give you the right drugs to take after. Or most people just, like you were saying, it's thrown around. Most people just, like you were saying, it's thrown around. But if you're 40 and your testosterone is low, you should probably talk to the doctor about it. But I don't think that kids or even 30s should even do it on, I don't think anyone should just do it on their own. I really think you need to have a doctor monitoring your stuff.

Or if not, you need to be monitoring it. And you need to know what you look for. And most people don't know how to read blood work. So that's another issue. And I'm curious also because you mentioned, because again, we work with Merrick. And the frequency of blood work and if you are interested in children, fertility stuff. How often do you think people should get their blood work and if you are interested in children fertility stuff how often do you think people should get their blood work done and then along with that how often should you get fertility

tests done if you're doing trt or whatever you're choosing to do what's the frequency that you think someone should take into account at least every three months kind of see where you are. And then if kids are a priority, I would get like a sperm motility test done to see, hey, am I making sperm, am I not? And then from there, decide when you want to have a kid. Because sometimes your sperm could be fine. You could have a high sperm count on testosterone and have kids but i think every three months is a is a good rule of thumb for checking everything health wise fertility wise just everything that's going on in your body because things accumulate over time slow and you might not notice them but they're because they're internal yeah uh hematocrit is a big one um meaning that you have high iron in your blood

and you say your blood gets thicker and that is a huge problem. So a lot of doctors prescribe bloodletting where you, or I tell people to just donate blood every six to eight weeks to thin it out because if your iron gets too high and your blood gets too thick, it comes, becomes much harder to pump and to circulate and that can cause many health issues. I was going to ask about the nootropic. So can you break down the choline?

You said you had a precursor and then something to kind of make it stronger. I didn't know about the second part, but because a lot of nootropics will, you'll see, and you definitely know this, will use 50% alpha-GPC in literally everything and call it a nootropic. So can you explain why you use two different chemicals or compounds?

Sure. Okay, so the only reason alpha-GPC is 50% is because it's extremely fat-soluble, and the 50% is a carrier. So the molecule itself is like an oil. So to put it in a powder, you need to have a carrier. so that's why it's 50 percent uh i use cdp choline which i like a lot personally it's less choline by weight versus alpha gpc it's about 18 percent where alpha gpc i think is like 20 or 22 percent but it's a it's a straight powder you don't have to worry about it being an oil. And that is what increases acetylcholine, which is the neurotransmitter that wakes you up. Where like GABA is the neurotransmitter that makes you tired. So the other thing that you were talking about is huperzine A, right?

And so that is an acetylcholine esterase inhibitor, meaning it blocks the enzyme that breaks down acetylcholine. So by doing that, you have more free acetylcholine circulating in your brain, which allows for more focus for memory formation and stuff like that. And then in comparison, because the second you start searching for choline, you recognize that it's in foods and people will point to to eggs right away. Eggs and nuts. Yeah. So in comparison to something like that, like, like I had five eggs for breakfast, but I've also had eight capsules of this nootropic. So like I should be floating anytime soon, but like it's different, right? Or is it about the same? It's so, it's a subtle thing as far as choline. Like it's, it's something that you'll,

It's a subtle thing as far as choline. It's something that you'll just notice you're sharper over time. It's not something like taking a prescription type of medication where it hits you. But having choline from eggs, it will still convert to acetylcholine, which is what it has to do. It has to get acetylated in order to be the actual neurotransmitter. But these are all choline donors. So they break off. The choline molecule breaks off of CDP choline or alpha-GPC,

and then that would turn into acetylcholine. So whether you're getting it from nuts, food, or supplement, the easiest way with a supplement is you can just get more. I don't remember the exact amount of choline that's in an egg but i know the dose that i like to use is around between three and four hundred of cdp choline alpha gpc i think's a little higher because it's a 50 material so most people like a the bare minimum dose i think is 300 which is 150 active so i think double that is probably a decent dose yeah i used to like taking a lot of uh caffeine and l-theanine together um i've i've tried basically the way i explained it was like l-theanine is just kind of takes the

edge off the top is that accurate because i just i just felt good i never liked it personally i tried it because you know it's it's a thing that i like experimenting on different things and and see how they work together i personally didn't like the combination which is why i didn't use it in anything i didn't use it in my sleep formula or anything like that but but some people do like it um but again i'm not a huge caffeine person anymore i i only take it before I train. And when I wake up, I try not to take any of that. I usually take the nootropic or something along those lines just to get my brain functioning. And then we also talked about I do microdosing, which helps me a lot as well.

We definitely got to get into that. But I wanted to ask you about like paracetam or any of the racetams yeah um i've messed with almost all of them and solbutamine and a couple of other fucking timing yeah that's the yeah i i can't read but i can fucking take them uh what's your what's your thoughts on uh the racetams unfortunately fuck they are drugs and they're not supplements right okay because I Nupept was one of my favorite

yes and back before we got super strict it had been in products before and I really really liked it phenylparacetam was probably one of my favorites

taking it I really like it's expensive yeah but those they work and the

same way as almost they are drugs. They're not supplements. So unfortunately, you can't use them. But they are potent. They definitely help increase focus. Similarly to a prescription medication that you would get. The racetam, that whole family, there are natural things that contain that, sorry.

There are natural things that produce the same effect, but you have to take so much of them that it's either cost prohibitive or you're not getting the bioavailability you need, that kind of thing. Where's the line drawn and who draws it on what's a supplement and what's a drug? Yeah, I never heard anybody call racetam a drug. It's a drug because it's synthetically made. It's not naturally occurring. And the FDA does that, and they have the D'Shea Act, which says that it has to be a natural metabolite or amino acid or something that is naturally in your body in order to be a supplement or food.

So those things are not because they're completely synthetic so like if you guys remember dmaa that the what the fda basically said was you can't make something in a lab and then try and find it in a plant but if you find it in a plant at a very small amount, then you can, instead of taking 10 kilos to make 1,000 grams of something, you can synthesize it to be bioidentical to that compound. But that was the court case a couple years ago. I don't know if it's changed since then. years ago. I don't know if it's changed since then. But you can't just make something in a lab and say,

oh, this is awesome, and then try and go somewhere where it's at 0.000% in there, and then call it natural, because it's all spiked. And that was a big problem in the industry. So when it's pushed over to a drug, it's probably more regulated.

Yes, much more regulated than a supplement. But again, I mean, you could buy NuPep online. I haven't seen a whole lot of regulation, except I think you can't do it on Amazon. So they're really strict about stuff. But you can, I mean, there's plenty of sites where you can buy NuPept and just like peptides, just like any research chemical you can buy online.

There's always going to be some not for human consumption clause or whatever that's on there. But I mean, there's a market for it. If there's always a market for it, somebody's going to fill it. What are some things that we can take that can help sleep, help us get to sleep, help us stay to sleep, help us wake up refreshed? So I didn't bring that either. I made a sleep product. And I have in-depth videos that I break down all these things.

But it took a while for me to find compounds because everyone likes to throw out GABA, right? And GABA and melatonin. Melatonin has never worked for me ever. And I've had insomnia for a very, very long time. I have a sleep doctor. And so it was a personal endeavor to make this sleep product. So I really dug deep into

how do prescription sleep meds work? Where do they bind? And are there natural alternatives to that? And so I found quite a few that bind. So you have your GABA receptor, but then you have what's called, in chemistry terms, it's called allosteric sites, which means it's not the actual main binding site. It binds on a different part of the enzyme, but increases the activity. And that's how a lot of the sleeping

meds work, like all of the benzodiazepines. They allosterically bind to the GABA receptor and they increase its effectiveness. So I look for compounds like that. And I actually found a research paper that was fairly new, I think from 2019, that they discovered all this stuff in Africa in some bark and it had multiple compounds that they identified that work as that. So I put that in the sleep product and, um, different, different things that have that allosterically bind to the GABA receptor.

Yeah, that's the one. So can you, you pull up this supplement facts panel on that? Yeah. It's very small though. Yeah. But there's like like there's ingredients

in there that most people have never heard of like magnolia bark extract is is a big one and so magnanol and honokyle are two natural compounds that bind to your GABA receptor and they work really really well for sleep the. The first ingredient I think is commonly known as Skullcap. That has a compound called bacillin, which is another potent allosteric GABA receptor modulator. Apigenin helps work for sleep. The Zimmermanie is the one, African one I was talking about

that I found all those compounds. And then I put black pepper extract in there and I have a huge problem with people just throwing it in there. There's a very specific reason I put that in there because it helps certain products from being expelled in your body. Many people just throw it in there and they say, oh, it increases bioavailability, but it doesn't.

It does it for certain things. It's a very specific way it works. And so I put that in there because some of those compounds that are polyphenolic can be expelled very, very quickly through a process called glucuronidization, which is basically adding glucuronic acid, the sugar molecule, to the compound to make it very water-soluble and then pee it up. Have you ever tested this with any sort of tracker, just for yourself?

Have you ever just take the product and track your sleep versus not take the product and track your sleep versus not take the product and track your sleep? Yeah. I've done that on my – every product I make, I do on myself first. So yeah, after finding these combinations, I tried them by themselves. Then I tried add one, add two, see how they work before I came up with a final formula. And I gave it out to friends. Like, hey, try this before

you go to sleep, uh, coworkers. And it seems to have a very positive effect on people. It had an effect on me for sure. My body is used to taking prescription ones because I had that before I made this. But, uh, this is something where if I don't want to take my prescription med, I can take this instead. And, uh, so I can alternate. So my body's not getting used to just the prescription medications.

Something that you're going to want to cycle on and off as well? I like to cycle on and off everything. Just because your body, if it gets used to it, it's going to lose its effect over time. So yeah, I recommend. This is something you can do longer, probably 12 weeks and then take, uh, maybe a six week break and then go back on. What I like about what you mentioned about that is because that doesn't do well for your sales. Like you mentioned that with this,

uh, you know, this nootropic, you mentioned that that sleep product, you just mentioned 12 weeks, then take six weeks where you're not taking your products. So six weeks for the consumer, you're suggesting consumer doesn't purchase your product that hits your wallet, where you're not taking your products. So six weeks for the consumer, you're suggesting consumer doesn't purchase your product that hits your wallet, but you're suggesting it because you do care about how everyone responds to the stuff that they're taking. A lot of people will just sell shit. Yeah.

They'll be like, yeah, just take it. It's all good. Buy it. Once you put, put on a renewal, renewal every fucking month.

But I like what you're saying here because you really care not just about the effectiveness of your product, but about the effect that the consumer is going to have in the long run that's important not not many people actually talk about that when it comes to supplements it probably does hurt the bottom line and my partners probably don't like me saying it but they know that i've been honest like from day one and and i truly feel that you need to cycle off things, specific things like stimulants for sure. Like, even though I would love everyone to take my pre-workout year round, because I think it works and it helps you with performance at the same time for your health

reasons, I think you should take a break from stimulants, even if it's just for a week or two weeks, it doesn't have to be a whole month on a whole month off. Just as long as you're not doing it six days a week for months on end, then that's what happens when people have to take one scoop, then two scoops, then three scoops, and then all of a sudden you're at 800 milligrams of caffeine because most people dump 400 mg in a scoop now, and it's just overstim stimulation of your central nervous system and then that causes increased cortisol levels which then can cause you know insulin resistance

and body fat storage and the opposite of what you want so disclaimer to my um to my partners i'm sorry but this is the truth. But some things I don't think you have to. They could be longer cycles. So the product we were talking about earlier, I think it's this one, the ATP, that's something that you can take more. It has creatine in it, which I don't think you have to cycle.

Oh, that's your pump formula? No, this is something that you take before that allows you to train longer and increases performance. So when we were talking outside earlier, I mentioned that when you work out, your body breaks down muscle tissue, which has amines in it from the amino acids, and you break down ATP, which goes into AMP,

and that breaks down the amine groups. And so you have floating ammonia in your body. And so what ornithine does is ornithine will bind to that ammonia, chemically bind to it. And that way it will circulate it through the urea system and then you'll pee it out. So you don't have all this ammonia floating around because ammonia not only is toxic,

but it can, it's a precursor to help forming gaba and gaba makes you tired so just by taking the studied grant the study dose was four grams so when i when i tried that just by itself i noticed an immediate effect on training longer so i really like that product a lot i take it before i train all the time. And then we talked about the D-ribose is critical for the synthesis of ATP and the resynthesis of ATP and your nucleic acids like DNA, RNA, all that stuff. So D-ribose is another really underused ingredient. So I like that product a lot. I was very proud of that one because it's kind of unique versus people that just throw stems at you

for performance and stuff like that. Branched chain amino acids are supposed to help clear ammonia as well. Is that right? I'm on my way off on that. I haven't heard that. I know that... How or why did they become popular? Are they effective? Do you want to hear the...

Can I tell the true story of how BCAAs came to be? Let's go. I will I tell the true story of how BCAs came to be? Let's go. I will not name the two names of people, but they were two prominent people in the industry that took a study that showed that leucine increased. Charles Poliquin, Dr. Serrano? No. Just a guess.

No, no, no. I'll tell you who they are off air and you'll know exactly who I'm talking about. I'll tell you who they are off air and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about but they kind of misquoted the study a little bit to say that BCAAs are super anabolic and then that just

boom the sales you need BCAAs you need BCAAs to turn on muscle protein synthesis and build muscle which they do the actual study said they reduce muscle breakdown, but it was flipped and then BCAA became a thing. But the real thing is BCAAs are three of the nine essential amino acids. So your body doesn't produce them.

So you have to get them either through food or through supplementation. Eggs are a great source of EAAs. Meat, chicken, protein powders, those are a great source of eaas you know raw meat chicken protein powders those are all great sources of them so i made a product called eaa that has all nine at high doses of specific i drew it from i took those doses from three different studies that i read and kind of said okay this seems like the dose that worked well i used used a high dose of lysine. I used a high dose of phenylalanine. Most people don't use high doses of methionine because it has sulfur and it tastes really bad or tryptophan because it's expensive, but you need it. You need tryptophan because it's

precursor to serotonin. So I think that the real reason is you need all of them because your body is going to pull them from something one way or another because it needs them to make muscles, enzymes, tons of things in your body. You can break down muscle if you need those EAAs that are in those peptides if you're not taking enough. BCAAs, in my opinion,

are not enough to just build muscle. You need all nine EAAs to actually have the full effect. Is that why EAAs to actually have the full effect. So is that why EAAs kind of, they sort of took over, but I guess like a lot of people were left behind and just didn't switch over. It's a lot cheaper just to have BCAAs, right? And then EAAs just don't taste as good.

Some of them don't, but it's more expensive. And yeah, some of them have a bite to them. But like John Meadows was a friend of mine, and he was always a big EAA pusher. And there's a couple other guys in the industry that were very much behind EAAs over BCAs, but it's a cheaper product if you just put the three BCAs in there and then make claims like increased muscle protein synthesis

and stuff like that. So that's not the route I chose. So at the end of the day, if you do want to take one of these, you should probably find yourself EAAs. Do you have an EAA product? I do. You do? Okay.

Yeah. All my products have their own, like the name. They're just called EAA or nootropic or pre-workout. Just because when you come up with really cool names for stuff, some people get thrown off. They don't know what it does. So I tried to make it as simple as possible. So I did leucine.

The three grams is kind of the industry standard based off of studies to increase muscle protein synthesis. But if you look, there's large amounts of, you know, like threonine and tryptophan and phenylalanine and lysine, all the other essential amino acids that most people leave out. I heard you earlier say that you looked at several different studies to come up with some of these things. I think that sometimes in the supplement industry, and I'm not saying that you're doing this, but I've seen other people do this where they talk about how it's scientifically backed. And I do see on your packaging that it does say that.

But in what you said, I thought it was great the way that you worded it because you didn't word it as if your product, that the stuff that's actually in there is in these scientific studies. your product that the stuff that's actually in there is in these scientific studies i kind of hear people kind of when they mention that their stuff is tested i'm not gonna name any names right but when they mention their stuff is tested they're trying to tout that their product was somehow involved in these tests and i'm like that is very inaccurate very inaccurate and would cost you an absolute fortune to try to figure out. So some ingredient alone can be studied and that's how they get patents and stuff like that. God dang.

Like nitrosagene, I think, has 10 patents. And I don't know if I can even say this, but no, I'm not going to say it. I understand what you're saying. I mean, like as a whole'm not going to say it. I understand what you're saying. I mean, like, as a whole, EAAs are studied. Not necessarily the EAAs that are in that product. Is that fair to say?

The doses I took were from three studies that compared them to a specific amount of just whey protein and whey protein plus carbohydrates. And they showed that the blend of EAAs was just as effective as taking the whey protein with carbohydrates. So it shows that this like, quote, anabolic window where you need like aminos and carbs,

you don't necessarily need the carbs right away. You need the aminos definitely to get in your system. So that was something interesting I found out from one of those studies but that's where i based it you know i'm curious the very hot supplement that everyone's talking about is terkesterone yeah and um you know mark lobliner was here yesterday and he kind of talked about how terkesterone's kind of bullshit it's been here it was apparently here in the 80s it's been around yeah it cycles that it comes back under something else and it comes back so what's the deal with tricasterone because a lot of people are selling turk products but some people just say it's actually just kind of useless and then we did have greg on the podcast

and he said it has drug-like effects so you know what what's the deal so there was like i think i told you guys off air there were most of the studies were in the 60s and 70s from Russia, and so it's very hard to find the actual paper. From Russia. But I did find a paper in Reddit that compared it to D-ball. Yeah, that's what Greg said. Yeah, and it showed that its anabolic activity is real. Now, whether it's, I don't believe it's binding.

Sorry, it does have an affinity to the antigen receptor, but it doesn't have the same effect as other synthetic agents. But the terkesterone is in a blend. So my product has a 10%, standardized for 10% terkesterone, but there's also other actives in there that work and so that it's a combination of all of the things working together synergistically um because they don't you can't just get terkesterone you'd have to have somebody like a chemist make it synthetically and this is pure terkesterone

and they don't they don't have that on the market. I believe 10% is the highest that they make because when I was looking for it, that's all I could find. And I know Dante's product uses the 10% one as well. And like I said, there's other actives in there that are responsible for anabolic activity as well. Yeah. So I'm guessing you have it in your product. Do you think it's because a lot of guys are like trying to like sweep the shelves for Turkesterone? You know what I mean? Is it as useful as a lot of people are trying to tout that it is?

Is it something that like you really got to get your hands on some Turk? From a personal standpoint, and we talked about this on there, Dante sent me some to try when initially when I said, hey, I off testosterone we're trying to have a baby i don't want to lose as much mass he sent he personally sent me his product to try and he's like take this much uh every day and it should help preserve your lean muscle and that's strictly through you know the way that it increases the anabolic activity and protein synthesis. Now, is it something that is, it's not like a SARM or anything. Like it's not a drug that's going to be super strong. And like I said, there's only 10% of it is the highest I think you can get. But from my personal experience taking that, and then I also took a liposomal version of it.

And for those of you listening who don't know what liposome is, it basically is a water-soluble compound on the outside and fat-soluble on the inside. So the compounds like terkesterone, which are fat-soluble, go on the inside, and then you have an enzyme called lysase that breaks it open, and then you get the terkesterone out where it's supposed to go. It's like a liquid, right?

No, well, you can have liquid, but they make a pill based off of, what is it? Phosphatidylcholine, I believe. But I used both of those. And for me, who was going to be rapidly losing size, I felt that it, at the time, helped me keep some of that size. And when I went to the gym, versus not taking it. So I do think it has a positive effect. It's not Andro or anything like that.

I wouldn't make that comparison. But if you're looking to just be a natural athlete and something that can help keep muscle mass on you or possibly gain muscle mass if you're eating the right way and dieting and training, then I think it does work. What's the deal with SARMs? That's a lot to unpack.

Where do you want to go? You think they're pretty effective? I do. I think that they were marketed completely incorrectly, and there was a lot of misinformation when they first came out. And like we talked about, a lot of companies just made mega doses of stuff. And the studies were very, very little. For example, LGD, super potent, probably one of the most potent ones as far as muscle building.

The only study that I found when it came out was in monkeys and they used 0.1 milligram human equivalent where people are selling 10 milligrams so that's a huge difference taking 0.1 milligram or one milligram to 10 milligrams you're talking about a hundred time difference right so the the companies just overdosed everything and then there was this huge misunderstanding that they don't cause any shutdown. They're just pure anabolics. You could take them all you want. But then studies started coming out showing, no, they decrease your LH. They decrease your FSH.

They decrease your testosterone levels. So they're not the pure anabolic they're supposed to be that the goal from a from a pharmaceutical standpoint is to make a pure anabolic compound for hormone replacement so that way you don't get the androgenic side effects that come along with it but that we're not there yet as when i say we i mean the academic community is not there yet there's i mean it's a very ongoing topic there's papers published all the time about signs and i try and keep up with what's going on but there's a lot. There's different ones. They're based off

different things and I think the main problem was they were just overdosed and misunderstood. They can be used in low doses and I think they're very effective. How do we inhibit the myostatin gene so we can be super jacked?

There's another big misconception that falastatin does that. The study was injecting falastatin drastically reduced myostatin. I think you've probably seen the picture of the mice that had the

jacked mice. The problem is they used a virus vector probably seen the picture of the mice that was like they had the jack yeah right but the problem is you they used a virus vector to deliver it so that virus got it into where it needed to go if you buy phallostatin as a peptide it it doesn't have that delivery system it's not going to work it's just a waste of money so right now there's nothing that really, I mean, things do that. Like BCA is lower myostatin to a degree. Testosterone lowers myostatin to a degree. But if you're trying to be like,

like the Belgian bull, that's just not going to happen right now. Damn. Real quick, just because I was trying to remember, but the SARM YK11 was supposed to be able to inhibit the myostatin. Is that true? So the study touted that it increased grip strength, I think, in mice,

and then it increased phallostatin levels sorry, in theory should reduce myostatin. But I don't think it was ever. I mean, come on. I don't think it was ever really proven that it drastically reduced myostatin. It was just marketed that way. I was going to say, because, yeah, you look up YK11 and that's all you're going to see. Yeah, but does anyone have a PhD that's writing those articles saying that it does? I mean, you know, maybe they took a class once or a cousin did and they paid attention to their books one day.

That's all. But no, not at all. I don't think that we're there yet. Damn it. You mentioned that you had to hop off and you were losing some muscle. I'm curious, since you've been in this space for a long time, obviously steroids can help an individual reach their natural genetic potential and then surpass their genetic potential. But from what you've seen, if a person does choose

to hop off and not take anything anymore, and let's say they don't take anything, let's say they don't even go on a TRT dose. They just stop. They do what they need to do to stop safely and they stop. How much of that do they keep? I mean, it's probably individual, but can an individual expect to have a good amount of kept muscle from when they were using steroids? Or do they go back to what their peak would have been if they stopped taking it? That is a very individualistic thing i personally know somebody who uh was a good friend of mine when i was an undergrad that came off everything to get to have kids and his testosterone was super low like below 30 or something like that but his regimen from diet and training and cardio and everything he was doing he probably lost a a little bit of weight but stayed super lean, stayed muscular.

He was pretty big? Yeah. Oh, he was probably 240, 250. He was a big guy. He was a small guy. I mean, he had been doing things for a while, but he was able to successfully use fertility meds to have kids and maintain his mass. successfully, you know, use fertility meds to have kids and maintain his mass. So for me, one of the biggest issues, if I'm being completely honest, is the lack of motivation to go to the gym helped or allowed me to lose more muscle weight than I wanted to. But inherently, not having high

testosterone, having high estrogen kind of changes your body composition to store fat versus to burn it and, you know and drops muscle mass. Because like we talked about, you don't really need muscle anymore. Like your body's holding onto it and you have to exercise to use it. But if you, but we're not hunters and gatherers,

we don't need to carry it. So your body doesn't, your body will use it as fuel first instead, to break down. So that's why a lot of people just lose that initial whatever it is, 10 pounds, 15 pounds. Like I lost a lot. But I also came off after nine years of TRT without using HEG, which is my fault. Yeah.

The driving motivation thing you mentioned is actually a very big deal. I don't think a lot of people think about. Let's say that before you started something, you weren't really finding that much motivation to go work out. You start and now you're motivated and then you come off and your motivation goes down and you're not training enough to stimulate that muscle tissue. You might just go back to where you were because you never liked the gym in the first place. Right. That that's not the case with me. Oh no, I'm not saying, yeah, no, I'm just saying in general. Mark's talked to me about the mental aspect of that stuff, and that's wild.

Yeah. I mean, there are plenty of – I have had plenty of personal experiences with friends that have never gone to the gym ever, and the first time they went to the gym, they wanted to take something, and that was their motivation to go to the gym. And then those are the guys that either fall in love with the gym and continue to do stuff,

or when they come off, they don't go to the gym anymore. So, yeah, it's real. I mean, and Mark's an intense guy, obviously. And Mark loves to train. I've trained with Mark before, and he's also one of those genetic freaks that just stays ripped year-round and all that stuff. So he's right about that. Oh, I was meaning this Mark.

Oh, I thought you meant that Mark. Well, yeah, Mark, same thing. You're dedicated to it. It's part of your life. But if it was never part of your life and then you hopped on gear and it didn't become part of your life, then there's no point. You would just lose it and possibly even be more spot than you were before. What does testosterone do to our brain?

Are you pretty well informed on that? I know that it can affect your brain. It can affect you. I don't think the quote, road rage, is a real thing. I think it brings out different aspects of your personality, but it definitely has a detrimental effect long-term on your brain. There are papers that show correlation between high testosterone levels and certain different types of brain issues.

Off the top of my head, I can't remember, but I've definitely read studies on that. So if you do a quick Google search on that, you should be able to come up with something that shows high androgen levels will affect this part of your brain or that. But I don't think that, I think that if you're an asshole, it'll make you a bigger asshole. But if you're not,

you're not just going to turn into this giant asshole. But your emotions obviously change. Just like an estrogen, they change. So it's just a swing. They can kind of help with motivation though right yeah i mean there's a study that showed that i thought this was funny that if you watch clips of yourself doing something in a sporting event that boosts testosterone so like if you watch before you went to work out if you watch you do a pr of something then you go work

out like you actually increase your testosterone it Fascinating. I thought that was very cool. And they did it with athletes, I think football players, basketball players, and weightlifters. It was interesting when I read that. I wasn't expecting it. I mean, I don't know if that's narcissistic. I was just thinking that. We're so bad,

we're already filming ourselves working out and then we're watching ourselves as we're getting ready to hit another set. I think that'd be amazing so i'm really not big on filming my self-train i'd rather film from an academic standpoint explaining stuff my ultimate goal with i would love to be the neil degrasse tyson of this industry as far as like he breaks things down to people as simply as possible you learn a lot like that type of thing I listen to his podcast all the time he's a big influence on spreading the word of you know science to people getting more people one of the best things I ever got from my Instagram was I've had over 10 people say

you've inspired me to go back to school for chemistry, which that was the ultimate goal. And Patrick Arnold did that to me. So if I can pass that along to somebody where they're really into working out, but they don't know anything, so I'm going to go to school for it. That's the real goal.

That made me really happy. Awesome, man. Thank you so much for your time today. Where can people find you and where can they find out more about your products? So, chemxlifestyle.com is where you can find all the information on the products. There's

whiteboard videos of me explaining all the ingredients, how they work from a chemistry and a mechanistic standpoint. My Instagram handle is atthegorillachemist, spelled gorilla like guerrilla warfare, two R's two L's. l's and then uh working on setting up a youtube page now to get that going let's go yeah so and i wanted to do a

podcast i don't have a co-host so i feel it would be weird just me talking no hooverman does that i'm gonna say hooverman does a good job does Does he? And you just speak facts, man. So you could kill it. We're working on it. I have some ideas. But yeah, I just want to spread information. That's my real goal. I like being in this industry. I'm really into supplements and how they work.

And I would love to just inform people so they don't go down the wrong path. Yeah, just have Christina co-host and you'll be fine. Yeah. Like she was today. Yeah. All right, Andrew, take us on out of here,

buddy. Thank you everybody for checking out today's episode. Please make sure you guys like today's episode and comment something down below something that maybe you learned today. That would be fantastic. So we can kind of go through the comments and check out what you guys found fascinating and subscribe. If you guys are not subscribed already and turn on all those bell notifications so you don't miss another episode.

Follow the podcast at MarkBell's Power Project on Instagram, at MBPowerProject on TikTok and Twitter. My Instagram and Twitter is at IamAndrewZ. And Seema, where can people find you? Also, peeps, make sure to check out Merrick Hull because we talked about them multiple times during this episode about getting your blood work done, etc. So we'll probably have that somewhere in here. Yeah, yeah yeah it'll be in there and see me in you on instagram youtube and see me in you on tiktok and twitter and i was feeling your nootropic yeah it's pretty like i because i didn't even take any uh mind bullet i sometimes take kratom and kratom is pretty strong yeah um but i only took this and it's not as strong as it but i was focused as

fuck so it's i like it it's dope yeah and i think, but I was focused as fuck. So it's, I like it. It's dope. Yeah. And I think if people like broke down my words per podcast, you know, cause I'm usually just back here kind of in, you know, in,

in doing my own thing, making sure we don't like fall apart as far as like the podcast, like cameras and stuff is what I mean. Not like verbally us falling apart as a team breaking up, falling apart. But like, I definitely spoke out a lot more. I have way more confidence

during this episode than previous whatever episodes. So I think you got a winner in there. I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks again for your time. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength. I'm Matt Marks, Melly Bell. Catch you guys later.