Mark Bell's Power Project - Signs of PED Abuse? Dr. Hotchkiss Analyzes Nsima’s Bloodwork || MBPP Ep. 929

Episode Date: May 8, 2023

In this Podcast Episode, Dr. Adam Hotchkiss, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about Nsima's recent bloodwork from Marek Health. Dr. Hotchkiss does his best to see if Nsima is Natty or Not. Follow Dr. Hotchkiss on IG: https://www.instagram.com/dr.aehotchkiss/   New Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw   Special perks for our listeners below! ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code PowerProject to save up to 25% off your Build a Box ➢ Better Fed Beef: https://betterfedbeef.com/pages/powerproject   ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject Free shipping and free bedside tin!   ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!   ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM   ➢ https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject to save 15% off Vivo Barefoot shoes!   ➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements!   ➢ https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off!   ➢ https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order!   ➢ https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori!   ➢ https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep!   ➢ https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off!   ➢ Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150   Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject   FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell   Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en    Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz   #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

The science can go kind of either way on whether cholesterol has a major impact on heart disease at all, though, right? Is that about right? I'm like halfway a doctor. Don't ever trust anything I say, basically, because I could be halfway wrong or you could be halfway dead. I guess you could maybe say that that is low-ish. So maybe he did donate blood. I know that could be TRT. Usually probably between 20 and 30 would be optimal, and yours is at 40.

These are going to be the biggest thing that somebody can look at to see if one is natural or not. When you look at this, it tells you right off about your pre-diabetic. Hop on this hot dick with Hot Kiss. Does that stay in the podcast or no? Yeah well keep it in all right we're rolling guys yeah dr who on the air today one of those days dr hot hot kiss hot kiss hot kiss hot dick like well nah what are we doing today in semen with the gang faces on gang faces oh yeah you gotta be serious yeah yeah so i got my blood work done again at Merrick. I got it done last year and the year before, opening up a gorilla mind, energy drinking. I just spilled it all over myself.

That's because you can't aim it in your mouth. Yeah, what is wrong with me? You're just like my girl. She can't ever get water in her mouth. She's always drinking and then it just drips. She has a drinking problem. Yeah. And then that just gets so hot, gets me bothered, and then I'm just like, ooh, let's go.

But I got my blood work done. Hands up all blood all over glasses and everything i've seen this before yes you know you have it that's offensive mark well i mean you're a married man am i is that a big deal no you know what she never really did answer me when i proposed to her she just like cried i was like well that's i've seen this reaction before to me uh wanting to be with somebody for a longer period of time really so she just like cried she never said yes right wow she claims that she did have you looked at the paperwork no but i'm pretty sure she owns everything so i'm glad i never looked oh man anyway we have dr Hotchkiss. And Merrick did a blood panel and everything.

So we wanted to have him just go over on air things that he thinks I should adjust, things that he thinks may be helpful. Because things look good for the most part, but there are always things you can improve. And we talk a lot about getting blood work done, whether you are on anything or not. done whether you are on anything or not and it's good to understand where your levels are so that you know as you progress and as you're doing things athletically you can make sure from year to year or every half every six months that you are at the peak of your game i got some tournaments coming up too so i want to make sure that i'm feeling good optimal yeah dan garner did a bunch of blood work on me before and when merrick's looked at my blood work they're just like this is a fucking biohazard we don't know what we're looking at this is too thick

you got six minutes to live so we're gonna check out and see my blood and see what's going on whoa I'm in tannin Wow he's got a special background yo why why is your hairline so sharp? Yeah. Doing well. How are you? I'm good, man. Haven't seen you guys in a while. How have you been? Thanks for going good, man.

Ready to dive into some of this blood work? Hell yeah, I'm definitely ready. How important do you think just in general is blood work for someone just to get a base in their health? Oh, it's absolutely important. It's like just getting a look under the hood. is blood work for someone just to get like a base in their health? Oh, it's absolutely important. You know, it's like just getting a look under the hood, you know, you could be driving a car and you think everything's fine, but if, you know, the engine's all effed up, then, you know, and I liken that to the human body, you know, you could feel okay. There's a lot of people, I mean, Mark, you and I have had our experiences with, you know, a lot of gear, you can feel really good and you're like, hey, I'm feeling good.

But it's not doing a good thing to you. So just because you're feeling okay doesn't necessarily mean that everything's working okay. So that's where lab work, you know, really can help. And actually, I have a quick question, too, because it's like the lab work that I got recently ended up, I think I got to the clinic at like 2 p.m. So there is a, and I was fasted, but there is a difference in you getting blood work in the morning versus getting it later in the day. So when you get it done, do you want to be making sure that you get your lab work done usually at the same time of day each time you do it? Or does that matter that much?

Yeah, it definitely matters, especially when you care about like testosterone. That's the big one. Testosterone, it kind of fluctuates throughout the day. It's called a diurnal pattern where it's highest in the morning. So right after you wake up, your testosterone will be the highest by the end of the day, it could have potentially dropped by like 200 points. And so, you know, you could be going at the end of the day and your levels are coming back as low, but they're not actually low, you know? Um, so for that reason, it's definitely beneficial to go first thing in the morning. Also good to avoid training for a few

days. I just looked over yours and some things that we'll get to, you know, it looks like you may, obviously you train a lot and it may have impacted your labs in some ways. Um, so we'll usually recommend not training for a few days before and then getting them first thing in the morning so that we get that accurate reading on your hormone levels. Yeah. That's a, I'll say two things. That's a tough thing because I never really have multiple days off of training. But the one consistent thing that's been with my labs, cause you guys have had my like three or four pieces of lab work done is they were all done usually around two or 3 PM. So at least it's the same time of day, but I'm exactly, Yeah, that's fine. I mean, as long as you

know that, you know, because it's like I said, some guys will maybe they're producing adequate levels of testosterone, but they go at the end of the day after working all day, et cetera. And it's a little bit lower and they could inappropriately maybe hop on some TRT when they didn't necessarily need to. So it's not a terrible thing, but it's just good to try to get that the highest level of day. But I mean, I guess the argument could be made for some guys who maybe their levels are crashed into that low range that, Hey, at the end of the day, I have low testosterone and that's why you do need TRT. So as long as you just kind of remember, and then bring that up with a provider too, because otherwise, you know, the provider doesn't know, and they should take that kind of stuff into account when they're reading your labs. Gotcha. What's the, what's the line,

you know, in terms, is there like a gray area in terms of like prescribing certain medications? Somebody comes to you, they have it in their head, they're going to Merrick and they're going to get steroids and they're going to, you know, blast all this stuff and get big and huge or whatever it might be. But if someone does have like a normal range of testosterone, medically, are you guys allowed to, you know, boost somebody up to like a more optimal level so they can pursue? Maybe they really like bodybuilding. Maybe they really like powerlifting. Is that allowed or is that something you guys try to stay away from? How does that work? The weird thing is legally, it's actually not allowed as stupid as it is. And I

think we talked about this the last time that I think it's just absurd. It literally in most state licenses, there's a paragraph on the use of anabolic steroids and growth hormone that literally says that these cannot be prescribed for performance enhancing benefits, which, you know, is just so stupid. Like, yeah, I could get into the reality of that a lot. But if a doctor feels like, you know, somebody with a 400 testosterone is feeling symptomatic and they would have better health outcomes, the doctor can prescribe it off label. The doctor just theoretically wouldn't be allowed to dictate in their chart that I'm prescribing this so that Johnny can get bigger biceps. You know, you have to actually say like, Johnny has experiencing a lack of more interactions.

He's been fatigued. He, you know, has a loss of libido, et cetera, et cetera. Tough to get it up when you're pissed about small biceps though, right? That is true. That is true. He's probably not getting any, you know, because his arms are too small. You see? So, but yeah, I mean, yeah, if you feel feel like, if the provider feels like there's a, you know,

something in their health could benefit from it outside of just performance enhancing, then they can write for it off label. Nice. What are some things that you can recognize in someone's blood? And if you're, if you have opportunity to see that person, blood. And if you're, if you have an opportunity to see that person, whether it's via zoom or in person where you can tell that someone's pretty much lying to you about their health practices, like, is there stuff that shows up in the blood where you're like, bro, like, I know you're not sleeping. Like this blood shows me that your sleep habits are not great. It shows me ABC. For sure. Yeah, definitely. That happens all the time.

I mean, also it happens on the, where people say they're not using things. Like, you know, maybe we'll be able to, you know, trick or find and see my out today that he's been lying to us the whole time. But I think my very first client I saw at Merrick came on and his LHFSH completely suppressed. I mean, his brain's not signaling to his

test. He's his testosterone super low, but his estrogen is super high. Red blood cell count, super high, all of these things basically, you know, yell steroid. And I'm like, dude, you could tell me. And he was just lying through his teeth. Nope. And I almost wanted to be like, well, then I'm not going to prescribe you testosterone. I totally would. If you would just be honest with me, cause then we can maybe talk about some cycles we did you know like we can we can have a normal conversation but that would be one but yeah there's other times when you know i feel like you know that meme of like jerry springer when it says like you know you said this and this but you know the lie detector says you're lying like that's how people would be like i'm super dialed in but they're fast and insulin sky high

they've got a pre-diabetic A1C. Their lipids are all skewed. You are not big. Their IQ of one is low. Exactly. I'm like, you are not living the lifestyle that you're telling me that you are. I can tell. How about manipulating labs? Because I've gotten some blood work done fairly close and like the testosterone levels were pretty drastically

different so in my head i'm thinking like well shoot if i want this outcome to be you know if i wanted to if i want the results to show like a lower test because i my doctor's not really getting with the program um can somebody actually like purposefully lower their testosterone levels to get the labs drawn so that way they can get prescribed something? Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, back when I was first like bodybuilding and stuff, it was pretty common. You would read on the forums ways that you could actually suppress your testosterone, which nowadays, you know, TRT clinics are on every corner. They're like Starbucks and you just have to have a pulse at this point. But back in the day it was like, you know, drink the night before, be dehydrated. I don't know all the other masturbate. I don't know all these things.

You could do all these things, not sleep so that your levels would be lower when you went in. I definitely remember that was like a sticky on some of the forums on how to get legal TRT. Before we go diving into in SEMA stuff, I'd like to maybe get some quick information from you about semaglutide and drugs that are similar to that. Seems like to be kind of all the rage and people are utilizing that to lose weight. Seems to be pretty effective. I think I may have heard it's helping a lot of people lose like 20 or 30 pounds. What are the side effects? What are the negative impacts? What are maybe things that people aren't looking at? Yeah, I mean, it has a ton of side effects. It's around 40% of people will experience some nausea. It's a pretty significant amount. That's probably the most common thing that people get is nausea with it. That will usually persist

for the first week or two and then usually dissipates. It can also cause either diarrhea or constipation. Constipation I see more frequently because it is slowing gastric emptying. That's part of how it makes you feel full is your food moves down your gut slower. So it can kind of block you up. And people get heartburn as well. More of the scary side effects with it are either medullary thyroid carcinoma or what's called neoclinic dysplasia. And that's pretty rare. It's not actually ever been shown in human trials or in human participants.

It's just been linked to a possibility due to seeing it in rat models. So if you have a family history of that thyroid carcinoma, just avoid it. But for some people, that's kind of scary knowing that it could potentially be associated with it. So yeah, there's definitely side effects. There's been kind of talk recently from people like Peter Atiyah, who he feels like it may, you know, kind of eat away at muscle, but I would push back pretty hard on him on that one. Cause I don't think there's anything inherent to semaglutide or tricepitide or any of these GLP-1 receptor agonists that cause muscle wasting. I mean, it's just like

any other cut. If you go into a drastic cut and you don't have your protein high, you're not resistance training, then of course you're going to lose muscle. We all know that anybody in the fitness space knows that. So literally all this is doing is taking people and you're not resistance training, then of course you're going to lose muscle. We all know that anybody in the fitness space knows that. So literally all this is doing is taking people and making them not hungry. So they stop eating. And of course, we're going to see that in obese test subjects who don't train and don't need enough protein when suddenly they reduce their calories, they're going to lose muscle mass. So I think that you can dial in your protein and probably doing so, like I'll usually suggest get protein shakes because you're going to get full quick. So you're going to need to prioritize your protein where I tell

them if you've got a plate of food, hit the chicken breast or the steak or the salmon or whatever first before moving on to the carbs and vegetables, because you may get full halfway through and you want to try to hit that protein. So if you just really try to hit your, I don't know, you can say gram per pound of body weight and protein, you're likely going to be fine just like you're on any other cut. Cool. Let's check out the blood work. All right. Do you guys got it on your end to pull up? I can email it over to Andrew real quick. I don't know if you got the magic over there to pull it up on the screen. Are you a wizard like that?

I don't know if you got the magic over there to pull it up on the screen are you a wizard like that? me or Andrew Andrew's definitely a wizard but I could I'll work on it I could maybe do it on mine I've got it on a different computer I have it right here I can forward it to Andrew include attachments

and then Sima you're cool with us putting this out for the world to see? I signed the documents. So, yeah, I know. Smokey wrote me a few times, like, you got to make sure he's okay with this. And I was like, I think he's probably okay with it. Yeah, yeah, it's all good.

Andrew, you got – so in that is two attachments of – but, Adam, do you want to pull up the one that's the lab report? Because the lab report is like, I think it has Merrick. Let's do the LabCorp ones and not the Merrick ones. We can just talk about raw data so that people see it from LabCorp. Otherwise we could have altered yours, you know, because we made the other one for you. Gotcha. All right. So Andrew, you'll see the LabCorp one. So actually, before we get into it, something really interesting that Merrick does is there are normal reference ranges, and then there are the reference ranges that you guys suggest. So what is the difference with that? Because if somebody goes to a normal doctor and they have certain levels, the doctors will say, oh, you're in the reference range for normal testosterone. You got 400. That's fine.

But Merrick has optimized reference ranges for normal testosterone you got 400 that's fine but merrick has optimized reference ranges for everything yeah this is a question i get a lot because people are like holy crap these are so drastically different why and that's because what lab corp or quest or whoever puts out those are normal labs and nobody or us we don't want to be normal right and so normal means that they take the second percentile all the way up to the 97th percentile. That's a massive range. So you literally have, you know, the second where you're at the bottom of the barrel. And if you think about the people who are getting labs, they're usually pretty sick. And this is coming from a population of people getting labs and you take the average or you

take that that range of second to the 97th. So that's insane. And so there's no wonder why they say that a normal testosterone is like 200 to 900. And everybody knows you're going to feel significantly different at a 200 than you are at a 900. And so what we try to do is say, where can we tease out of the data where the optimal human beings are that aren't only disease free, but are actually thriving, because a lot of what medicine does right now is just to either make you disease free or make it so that you can live with disease and just basically not die. And if you want to do more than just not die and you want to thrive,

then maybe you should opt for these ranges is what we tell people. Cool. So yeah, I mean, I guess we can, I'll just start right at the top. I don't know if you want to follow along and see me too, like on your phone and ask any questions there are but you know at the top of lab corpse right off the bat we get your tsh and your free t4 so these are your thyroid hormones tsh stands for thyroid stimulating hormone it's the hormone that we can basically say your brain starts to signal to your thyroid if it needs to make thyroid hormone and thyroid for responsible for metabolism, energy levels and things like that. So in my opinion, I'm usually looking for a TSH below 2.5. But as you can see, you know, the normal one for LabCorp says 4.5. So that again, is a big range

at Merrick, our guidelines are actually trying to get people below 1.5. I think 2.5 is okay, but you're at two, I would say you're good. And your levels of T4 are also pretty good. For some reason, LabCorp never puts T3 on there and you got to scroll all the way to the bottom. Sorry, Andrew, have fun and post on this one. The T3 is all the way at the bottom. Yours came back at 2.8. So I would say you're a little bit suboptimal as far as that goes. I would usually like to see levels above three. So that's actually vital to get to.

And this is something that most doctors wouldn't order. They don't order the T3. They only order the TSH, maybe the T4. But the T4 is your inactive thyroid. And then it converts over to T3, the active form. And so some people have a normal TSH and a normal T4, but still have all the symptoms of low thyroid, like poor metabolism, their energy's low,

they have cold extremities and their doctor's telling them their thyroid's fine, but then you can see your T3 and it may be super low. And that can usually be due to nutritional deficiencies. So things like zinc and iodine and selenium. Iodine, unless you're, I mean, if you're using iodinized salt, you're probably good, but a lot of people have gone after pink salt and stuff and don't get enough iodine. You know, that's why I stand up for Dean's always

harping on that. Zinc, you probably get a good amount of in like meat and shellfish, but selenium Brazil nuts, I think are the best source. And a lot of us aren't eating a lot of Brazil nuts. So you may require some supplementation with like a multivitamin that has selenium in it. And that may help to convert that T4 into more optimal ranges of T3. Cool. So I guess I'll scrub back to the top again. I just want to point out real quick that people that maybe don't know, you can get T3 and or T4 or a combination thereof prescribed, and it just comes in a pill form.

And for some people, it's damn near life-altering for them. A lot of women experience issues with their thyroid where they have fatigue, and they just don't really know what's wrong. And sometimes a simple prescription of some T3, T4 can sometimes really be impactful on somebody. Yeah, absolutely. It's something that I actually even kind of took for granted before. We have two PCCs actually have taught me a lot on it. We have one of our clinicians really good at thyroid as well. And one of the PCCs is on TRT and actually had hypogonadal, like he's got a genetic issue where he had low testosterone. He optimized that, but his thyroid was also messed up. And he said

that optimizing the thyroid was significantly more impactful than the testosterone was. So he felt night and day difference with better thyroid than he did with better testosterone. So again, I'm always harping on testosterone is all the end all be all. And so you make a great point, Mark, like it's a huge thing. If all the end-all, be-all. And so you make a great point, Mark. Like, it's a huge thing. If you have low thyroid and you're not checking that, you're only ordering your testosterone, maybe you're actually hypothyroidal and you feel like crap, you know. But getting into this CBC, which is basically looking at your blood, this is where we can start to kind of tease out whether Hansima is a natty or not.

So the main thing I would look for here is a red blood cell count and your hemoglobin and your hematocrit. So your red blood cell count coming back at 4.46, which I went down just a little bit. So previously you're 4.64. So you're very normal as far as red blood cell count. Which means he donated blood before he got the right before the day before. It is possible, but we'll be potentially on some other labs too.

So I'm going to try to be as like critical as I can and see if I can find, you know, anything I'll try to, of course, somebody in the comments is going to say we're lying, but I'll try to be as like devil's advocate as I can. So yes, he certainly could have donated blood. And Mark knows, but the listeners may not, that taking testosterone increases your production of red blood cells. And so we usually will see at least a little bit of elevation. In TRT, it's usually not as high as, say, like steroid use. But still, I wouldn't expect to see a 4.4 on somebody even on TRT.

Unless, of course, he did just donate blood but also his hemoglobin and hematocrit are well within range so hemoglobin is the protein the iron-containing protein that carries around oxygen throughout your blood and then the hematocrit is basically just a percentage of how many red blood cells are found within your blood and both of those are totally normal too so again I mean it looks pretty natty if you're just basing it off of this alone, but like, you know, Mark said it, that's not the end all be all. Nothing else really in this part of the lab called the CBC. You look normal, all your cells, your different neutrophils and things look normal. So that's all good. So then we can scroll down to the, what's called a CMP or a comprehensive

metabolic panel, which is kind of looking at your kidney and your liver health. And then this is something, like I said, with athletes, it's important to have a provider who understands athletes and can look at their labs because right off the bat, we can see your creatinine is high and your GFR, which is your glomerular filtration rate, meaning how efficient your kidneys are filtering things out is super low. So we would almost think that, you know, something's wrong with your kidneys and your doctor may tell you, you've got an issue with your kidneys because your creatinine is so high. Um, but with athletes, a lot of things can increase creatinine. Um, creatinine is a by-product of creatine metabolism. So we all have creatine. We make it every day. People who eat

meat have more creatine. People who supplement with creatine usually have more creatine and creatinine. So I'm guessing, I know you eat a lot of meat. I know you train and break down a lot of muscle. Do you supplement with creatine too? Every day. Yep, exactly. So for that reason alone, your creatinine will always be elevated. And so it's important to look at that and tease it out. I don't even like to look at it. And any of the guys that's coming that are coming through, unless they're like a sedentary individual who doesn't supplement, because for most guys who are listening to your guys' podcasts and using the power project lab panel, they've probably lifted some weight in the past 24 hours or ate a steak

or something that's going to elevate it. Um, so I think you got it on here, but we'll usually order what's called a cystatin C, which is a more accurate reading of your kidney function. There's also a newer one called an SDMA. So we can go into depth on athletes and really kind of see how their kidney function is, regardless of any supplements or activities they're doing. Question real quick. Is there anything remotely problematic about having a high creatinine? Because I remember actually when I was in my early 20s,

I got a blood test done at the hospital just like a routine checkup. And the doctor's like, oh, your creatinine's high. So it's been high like forever because I've been supplementing creatine since I was like young, right? Is there anything dangerous about it? Is there anything I need to think about or I'm good? Nope. No, because yours is totally normal. Yours is high due to the other things. So it could be high due to either producing large amounts of that from the creatine breakdown, totally normal. It would be problematic if it was high because your kidneys weren't filtering it all

out. And so I guess I can't say that for sure, looking at your labs, because we don't have that cystatin C. But if we had that cystatin C, then we can do the GFR calculation and see what your GFR based on cystatin C would. And I would guess that yours is probably, you know, perfect. We should do that next time around though, just to see where your kidney function actually is. Okay. The other one on here that was elevated for you is the AST, which is a liver enzyme. And then this is another one that I'm sure if you went to that same doctor, they would tell you not only your kidneys are fucked, but so is your liver. And then again, you know, you have to look at it and kind of be nuanced about it here. So you have two kidney enzymes or two liver enzymes here, your AST and your ALT. I'll show you your alkaline

phosphatase too, but your ALT is normal and your AST is high. ALT is found more in the liver. So it's more liver specific. I just remember that kind of from school, like that has an L in it. So it's more liver specific. And that is normal, but your AST is high. AST is also found in muscle and heart and brain. And so most of the time athletes are going to have elevated AST at least, especially if you've trained within the late days leading up to it. And it will look like your kidney function is screwed or your liver function is screwed when it's not. So again, I would guess you're probably fine. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Yeah. Your analysis here, not a lot that it's going to tell us you look normal.

Again, your kidneys are probably fine because we don't see any protein or glucose or anything in your kidneys, and we didn't know previously either. So just more evidence as to, you know, your kidney health is good. If somebody's kidneys are maybe a little bit more out of whack. I know you would probably recommend more testing, but if you dug a little bit and found more issues with the kidneys and maybe more issues with the liver, there are some like over-the-counter supplements that can be pretty effective for those as well, right? Not rather than just immediately going to prescription. Yeah. So for like liver specifically, and liver is a good, it's not a good one, but if you had to damage one or the other, I would damage my liver because it can rejuvenate so quickly. But liver things like Tudka, which is a bile salts and acetylcysteine,

which converts downstream into glutathione, which is a potent antioxidant, which helps your liver, or you could even supplement with pure glutathione and you can get that in like an injection form. So there's a lot of things that can benefit the liver. Um, milk thistle used to be the go-to. I think that's kind of been debunked all the time. I know so many people would take milk thistle with their anadrol and stuff, but I would rather somebody take, uh, you know, Tudka or NAC, um, cause those ones are good. And then kidneys are tough though. Cause kidneys, I mean, after their damage are usually damaged. So it's some, you can take like astragalus, that's probably the one that has the most literature on it. And then there's some medications that can help like

something like canagliflozin or even semaglutide can be beneficial for kidney health. Supplements, it's hard though. I mean, kidney health is something you should be really cognizant of and unfortunately a lot of bodybuilders and power lifters aren't and they damage them due to elevated blood pressure so kidney health monitoring getting that cystatin c or the sdma which you'll get if you get a full panel through merrick is important because you don't want to screw up those kidneys all right. Let's see. Lipid panel would be next on you. So lipids are like your cholesterol and your triglycerides.

So your triglycerides are great. Triglycerides are more a marker of your metabolic health rather than just like your cardiovascular. I mean, it is a good marker of cardiovascular health because it can affect your cardiovascular health. But if trigs are high, it's usually due to being insulin resistant and having poor metabolic health. So yours are nice and low and great, very metabolically healthy. This is another one to look at for seeing if somebody is on TRT or PEDs is your HDL cholesterol, your high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, HDL.

Yours is good. It was 61 previously and 58. On one of my labs, looking at back and when I did cycles in the past, I have single digit HDL at one point. I don't think I've ever had above 30, even being on TRT. And I eat, you know, take in significant amount of fish oils and do everything that I can to boost my HDL. But testosterone is highly suppressive on HDL cholesterol. So this is one that I kind of look at to see if guys are natty or not. And if their HDL is not suppressed, I'm usually like, okay, they're probably pretty natty because I don't know, Mark, have you seen the same on your labs with your HDL over the years?

I've seen it as low as like 16 or something like that. Oh, I got you beat, man. But I think that also was from, I mean, this is years ago. I think that was also from some anti-estrogens. They dry that shit out pretty good. Yeah, certainly can. And it's like I said, TRT, just testosterone as it is, will usually suppress your HDL. It may slightly increase your LDL too.

Some of the other things do that I don't think it's a great marker, but looking at your LDL, your previous one was 57 and your current one is 80. Both of those are pretty darn good. There could be an argument for like optimal cardiovascular health. Having an LDL C around 70 is probably the best, but you know, an average of your last two, you would put you around there and that's pretty awesome. So I don't know like your diet model basically, but you tend to, you know, you're, you're doing well as far as your lipids go. Just a quick on my diet. Like I generally eat high fats. There's some days I'm usually low carb. Some days when I feel really depleted, I'll just eat extra carbs because I feel like I need extra carbs. But it's always high fat.

I did have a question about HDL because there are some people in the audience that are on TRT. Is there anything that they need to take into account if their HDL is very low? Is it something they need to worry about or are they okay because that's what TRT will generally do? That's a, that's what TRT will generally do. That's a tough one. At one point, you know, everybody knew HDL was the healthy cholesterol and we wanted to do everything we could to boost HDL. And then there was some trials where they developed drugs that boosted HDL and it changed nothing. So their clinical outcomes were the same. People still had the same amount of heart and heart attacks and strokes and cardiovascular incidents. So the thought that HDL is this protective, healthy cholesterol has definitely kind of changed. And so, I mean,

I definitely tell myself that to sleep at night, like I said, mind suppress. But we don't really know, even lipidologists will tell you, we're not so sure what it does anymore. The idea used to be that it was this reverse transport where it grabbed onto the LDL or quote unquote bad cholesterol and brought it back. But, you know, the thought is kind of changed now. Regardless, I would still say have a robust amount of omega-3s in your diet. Most people don't. The standard American diet has a lot of omega-6s, not enough omega-3s. So you may need to supplement with a fish oil or an omega-ethyl ester or eat more fish, something like that to make sure that you're getting a good amount of omega-3s in. And that's probably the best thing that you can do for your HDL. And just like poor heart health and or lipid profiles are mainly just from energy toxicity to simply eating too much.

And I think that people want to try to pin it on something specific like it's sugar. I know it's sugar. I know it's saturated fat you know and it's it those things can have an impact on them but i think it's when you combine those things it just makes it easier to overeat eating processed foods things like that are going to put you in a compromising spot for sure i have seen where people will eat too much saturated fat even in a a deficit, and get an increase in LDL cholesterol. Where before I was actually, I argued in the fact that it was probably had more to do with energy than anything. Like you said, eating too much. But recently I saw a guy with a pretty severe eating disorder, only eating like a few hundred calories a day, but all basically from saturated fat like bacon and fatty steaks.

And his LDL-C is actually sky high. Probably a genetic component there too. I think that's a result from losing weight though too, right? So sometimes when somebody loses 30, 40 pounds, like you'll be like, whoa, bro, like your blood is, and then they'll maybe tell you that they may have lost weight recently, right? And that for lack of a better term, this shit's just kind of floating around in their system. You're definitely right. Yeah, that's spot on. Actually, you're definitely true. So yeah, that was probably playing a component too. And then there's just genetic variation. So most people don't have their cholesterol levels impacted by dietary cholesterol. When we eat it, the actual dietary cholesterol is too big of a molecule to be absorbed in the majority of us.

Some people do though, some people absorb that so they can eat eggs and their cholesterol goes sky high. And that's not most people. So usually I tell people don't stop eating eggs. They're a great source of protein. If we've tried everything else and cholesterol is still high, then maybe we can pull it out and do a test to see maybe are you this genetic outlier. But most people aren't. So most people don't need to pull out eggs. Just a little side note there. But the saturated fat does seem to increase LDL,

but I mean, in SEMA, you probably eat a lot of red meat and you're doing pretty darn good for not taking any cholesterol lowering agents or anything. So, so Mark's argument that it comes to energy balance is probably, you know, pretty accurate. I eat a lot of full yolk eggs too. I never take those yolks out there. balance is probably you know pretty accurate i eat a lot of full yolk eggs too i never take those yolks out there yeah that's what i was gonna i was gonna ask so like i crush a bunch of eggs every single day and my ldl came back at 134 everything else was within range that was the only one that actually popped up you know with the big scary red you know uh markers on it um so should i try to chill out on some of the eggs or should I just be okay? Because

like even the triglycerides, the ratio was like four to one or something like that. So everything seems pretty good and I feel good, but I'm just like, what does this even mean? Like a high LDL. So I'm just been curious about that. Yeah. So I, I would say, I mean, you could try to take them out. I would change nothing else and just take out the yolks for maybe a month or so and retest and see if there's a lower in there. And then if so, maybe you are that, that genetic outlier. Um, I definitely fall into the camp that lower LDL cholesterol and more importantly, what are considered APOB containing particles, which LDL are, are definitely atherogenic meaning that they they create plaque. There's people like Paul Saladino who argue that, you know, you can't create plaque without other things too, like inflammation and insulin resistance, high blood pressure, et cetera.

And he's definitely right. Just in my opinion, like the cholesterol is a common denominator there. And we know that it's always going to be involved. So it's necessary. It's not sufficient, meaning that, you know, it's, it's necessary to cause plaque, that it's always going to be involved. So it's necessary. It's not sufficient, meaning that, you know, it's, it's necessary to cause plaque, but it's not sufficient. You need those other things, but I wouldn't want to take that risk, you know? So I say, try to get that lower too. So for you, Andrew, I maybe would try to do that self-experimentation

where you do pull out eggs just for a month or so, and then see if you are. And then if you are, I wouldn't even tell you to stop eating eggs. I would say maybe just implement some medication, something like exetamide, which will block that intestinal absorption. And then you can continue to get all the benefits of choline and everything else that the eggs have. One more question. I'm so sorry. You mentioned of choline. We've got some L-carnitine, injectable L-carnitine that is mixed with choline. Now, if anybody starts using something like that, the L-carnitine choline type thing, will that choline, will that have an effect for someone like who's maybe LDL might be an issue for them? Should they be careful with that or is that something to think about? It probably would

have maybe a positive effect and it's going to be good for your liver um the concern with like colon and carnitine more is consuming it orally not the inject i think you guys got injectable right yes yeah so the reason why somebody would pick injectable over oral of either of those two is that it they get broken down by the gut microbiome into something called TMAO. And TMAO has been at least linked to cardiovascular disease and colorectal cancer. That's where there was a scare a few years back saying that, you know, red meat associated with colorectal cancer or whatever it was. And, and there's, you know, you can poke holes in that data and it was more

correlative. It's not really causative, but because of that, I would say it's probably just better to inject the stuff because, one, you're just going to actually get the product. You're not going to be breaking most of it down at a TMAO and wasting your money. And, hey, if there is a link there, then we already eat enough red meat. Let's not make it even worse by consuming a lot of these in their raw form. One thing of note there there too, if you are consuming those, you can eat more garlic. Garlic contains something called allicin, which will stop the conversion of TMAO or of carnitine or chlorine into TMAO, which is cool. Cool. Okay. The science can go kind of either way on whether cholesterol has a major impact on heart disease at all though,

right? Is that about right? Kind of, but kind of not when you look at what are called Mendelian randomization trial, where they basically, they can, so we don't have any causative data, like no randomized control trials where you, you ramp people's LDL-C up and you give them a heart attack or so, but they can do this Mendelian randomization where you basically let nature do the randomized control trial for you with these calculations that are way over my head. And it'll show you, hey, LDLC and ApoB-containing particles are a causative factor. Again, it's not a causative factor in isolation. Somebody certainly needs to have insulin resistance and inflammation and all that other stuff. I just feel like those things are easy to have issues with sometimes, especially inflammation.

We're all going to get some inflammation. Our arteries are all going to get some wear and tear. Also, a pretty interesting thing to think about is when you take like a teenager or like a 20-year-old and you look at their arteries after they're dead, they already have a little bit of plaque in there. And so they probably haven't been exposed to much insulin resistance or much blood, high blood pressure, things like that. And they already have plaque. So we're all going to die with some amount of plaque. I think we should try to limit it to some extent. And I, you know,

I don't tell people not to do carnivore or whatever, because I think they can do it very safely. One would be just take medication that can block the cholesterol. But a lot of people who are in the carnivore camp are pretty anti meds, which I get. So I think you can still eat like a carnivore S diet would not have to load yourself up with saturated fat. You know, you can have Piedmontese beef like you guys do where the beef is super lean. I don't think I've I had chicken today, but most probably seven days a week, I have beef 96 four ground beef, essentially the same fat content as a chicken breast, you know? And so you're getting all the benefits of beef and you're getting very minimal saturated fat could also eat fish. I know some are kind of wearied about the plastics, phytochemicals or whatever in fish, but if you're

down with fish, you can eat a lot of fish, you know, and get some health benefits out of it. So you don't have to be like, you know, and get some health benefits out of it. So you don't have to be like, you know, you don't have to not be carnivore. You can just do things a little bit more cautious and cognizant of those and maybe increase your fiber intake a little bit too, which I know you, Mark, eat a lot of fruit and some vegetables, even like Paul Saladino, a lot of fruits. He's probably getting a lot of fiber and a lot of antioxidants, which can help to offset the inflammation that could cause a heart disease. And so you can be smart about these things and not have to not be carnivore. All right. Cool. Well, I was, oh, and again,

sorry, Andrew, you're going to have to scroll down on this one to the very bottom because for some reason LabCorp does not include ApoB with the triglycerides and lipids and all that. But ApoB, like I said, is actually the more important one. I think at Merrick, we've now gotten to a point where we don't even draw the LDL-C and the HDL-C. We just get the ApoB because like I said, the ApoB containing particles, which LDL contains ApoB, are the ones to be, you know, worrisome of or be cognizant of. So yours is 78. That's pretty darn good. Again, what people would consider normal would be below 90. I would say 60 and below is where we know that cardiovascular disease is probably not occurring. So, you know, you're not terrible by any means, especially, again, knowing you're not on medication.

It can be extremely hard to get to 60 without medication. No, I would almost say impossible. And the fact that you do eat such high amounts of saturated fat, like, you know, again, to Mark's point, the energy balance is probably really working out for you. Well, because you burn so much. I got a question on that. Through Merrick, people can get some genetic testing as well, right? Right. I got a question on that. Through Merrick, people can get some genetic testing as well, right? Is that right? So if people can see if they are – maybe you can clarify it better than what I can say, but it's my understanding.

You can get tested to see if you're at risk with ApoB and stuff like that, right? It's more the LP little a or lipoprotein little a. Oh, there we go. Yeah, which we also got in here. I'm like halfway a doctor. You'll never trust anything I say, basically, because I could be halfway wrong and you could be halfway dead. You're right, like half the time. The LP little a or lipoprotein little a, which is on its upper page from the ApoB, and it's right under vitamin D.

the ApoB and it's right under vitamin D, that's a marker that it's again, another one of those lipoproteins that wrap around the fat, the cholesterol, and it's very atherogenic. I mean, it causes a lot of plaque. And if you have the gene that codes for that protein, then you're more at risk. You and SEMA do create some, but probably not clinically significant amount of some. So it's usually, I'd like to sit below 15 years is that 40. So you're likely okay. Um, if somebody gets this back and it's like 200, I would urge them to probably not do something like the carnivore diet and just be pretty caught. Like, you know, it's, you're kind of risking it because you already have this marker. So I'll tell people if they do come back with this, you know, level super high, it sucks. There's nothing we can do about it at this point. There is a drug that's undergoing trials right now that may have some impact on it, which would be cool.

But if you were going to pick up smoking and eating McDonald's every day and stuff, you know, just don't because you're already at risk with you when you have this. So if you were to have that level high, just try to get your APOB down as low as you can and try to stay very insulin sensitive and reduce all the inflammatory, you know, things that you can, because you do have a risk, but you and SEMA are okay. Cool. Okay. And another thing of note there too, is you only really need to order that one time because you've got the gene or you don't. And so, you know, if people see it high, they don't need to keep wasting their money or over again because it's gonna keep staying high power project family we talk about beef and meat all the

time on the podcast that's why we partnered with certified piedmontese beef but did you know this that 85 of all grass-fed grass-finished beef in the united states is imported from other countries 85 but certified piedmontese is made in the U.S. of A. America. America. Fuck yeah. So go ahead and get some of the best tasting, some of the leanest, some of the best beef from Piedmontese. Andrew, how can they get it?

Absolutely. So you guys can head over to cpbeef.com and check out enter promo code power to save 25% off your entire order. And if your order is 150 or more you get free two-day shipping again cpbeef.com links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes fuck yeah all right where are we at now so lipid panel then going down to iron so this is where we can try to see if he gave blood beforehand And so his iron came back at 61. I guess you could maybe say that that is low-ish. So maybe he did donate blood and maybe he donated blood right before he did the last one too, because his iron store is a basic.

The internet says it. Yeah. So it's possible. I mean, they're not super low. When you see guys who over-donate, usually the iron is lower than 60. This is not terrible, but it is actually, I would say very healthy. If I were looking at this, I wouldn't think this dude just donated blood. I think you have really healthy levels of iron for a man. So I'm actually kind of cool. Yeah. I'm happy to hear that kind of, when I was a teenager, um, I was anemic, uh, and my mom was too. So I actually

started supplementing iron eating a bunch of spinach as a teenager. I don't supplement iron anymore, but that is something that I've kind of kept in mind over the years. Cause like it was, there was a one day when I was like 16, we ended up getting, going to the doctor because I fainted in upstairs and I fell into the bookcase and a bookcase fell on me. And then I went to the doctor. He's like, you're iron, you're, you're anemic, just like your mother. So interesting. Yeah was higher so i mean that would i was i was anemic so maybe is that iron is that mean low iron because i was technically anemic yeah but not yeah there's a few different types of anemia it can be due to low like uh iron it could be due

to a low b vitamin but um yours i think was, was due to iron. Obviously, they gave you iron. And that could explain why yours is kind of on the lower-ish side. It's not low by any means, but it's, you know, not robustly high either. Okay, now this is a big one, you know, testosterone. Here we are. So your previous testosterone was 640 or 639.5, and now you're at 701.4 pretty damn decent um great i know that could be trt i guess um one thing we can look at just looking here at the testosterone is your free testosterone we would call your free testosterone suboptimal we find most guys feel better if their free testosterone is above 18, probably around between 20 and 30 years came back at 11. So if you were on TRT, I would imagine that your free

would be higher. If you were on steroids, your free would certainly be higher because it will suppress what's called SHBG or sex hormone binding globulin, the protein that binds the testosterone and makes it so it's not readily available or free. So the fact that you have an 11 free testosterone, if you were on TRT, I would say that sucks, dude. Like, you know, you're not, you're not a great responder at all. But we can scroll down to the bottom and look at your SHBG real quick, just to see what it is. And yeah, your SHBG is actually kind of high. You know, one could make that argument. Usually probably between 20 and 30 would be optimal and yours is at 40. Is there anything that could be done to raise your free testosterone that maybe isn't just a testosterone injection? Are there peptides or some other route someone could go to just bump that up a pinch?

bump that up a pinch? Yeah. So if, and SEMA came to us and I saw these labs and he was like, I don't really want to go on TRT yet, but I'm just kind of feeling the symptoms, which may be so because it's free is lower. The first thing we would probably try to do is lower this SHBG sex hormone binding globulin. Cause by lowering that we theoretically free up more testosterone. And so you can take things like boron, magnesium, even tonkat LV, which, you know, Huberman's a huge fan of, and just talk to you guys about a bunch of all those will lower that SHBG. Another thing that can help is adding in more carbohydrates. And so, and Simu, you already said you need relatively lower carbohydrates. Usually higher SHBG is a marker of good metabolic health in a younger guy because insulin is suppressive on SHBG. So we see crushed SHBG in say like a type two diabetic because they have such high insulin

because they're insulin resistant. And so some of the times we get a guy who's doing carnivore or keto and their SHBG is sky high. And the fix could be just adding in some complex carbohydrates to lower that SHBG on top of things like boron and tonkat and magnesium. Yeah, it was interesting. When I got my lab work done before, it was after I did the Fidozia tonkat thing from Lou Huberman. And two things happened. My LH went up quite a bit. I think my free T went up quite a bit, like a little bit too. But my LH went up a lot, like two or three points or some shit like that so i'm not doing

able to see it yeah it's it might be on there um i don't take like i take tonkat like every now and then very inconsistently but maybe i should start taking it more consistently i take maybe two or three days a week or even the boron you know boron could be good for you too. And, and you could consider adding a little bit more carbohydrates for people listening to. And we say that I'll always tell people, make sure that you pull that out of like your fat calories. Cause you don't just want to blindly add in more carbohydrates. As you guys know, you know, making weights, you're going to increase your calories. So reduce it from somewhere else,

probably fat to fill in with more carbohydrates. If you're going to go that way. Let's see. So we're on testosterone. And then again, sorry, Andrew, we should scroll to the LHFSH as he just kind of alluded to. These are going to be the biggest thing that somebody can look at to see if one is natural or not. Like you said before, yours was higher LH since for luteinizing hormone. It was 8.9, which is pretty high, which makes sense because you were taking Fidoja, which causes that to be higher.

And then now your LH is 7, which I would say is very normal. Your FSH is 6.5, very normal. It wouldn't be impossible for somebody to have higher levels. You could potentially be taking something like Clomid. And that kind of goes two ways. Like I've seen guys on TRT take Clomid and it makes no difference in their LH and FSH stay low. Some guys it does stay high. And I've been surprised where I'm like, oh crap, I would have not thought you're on TRT, but they tell me my other clinic put me on Clomid to preserve my fertility and not shut me down completely. And I'm still able to keep these

levels high. So for all the internet trolls, this, you know, and SEMA's LH and FSH being normal, I guess, are not, you know, conclusive that he's not on TRT. We would really need like, you know, urinalysis and look for metabolites and everything. But I would say, based on the entire picture here, he looks extremely natural to me. He could be pulling one on off solo and just taking Clomid, you know, leading up to his blood work, I guess.

Getting huge off Clomid. Yeah. I mean, he could be, you know, on TRT and Clomid, but then he probably would have had to pull back his TRT for a while and try to get it to have a low free. Like, you know, just the odds, in my opinion, it's in his favor here that, you know, all the labs look super natty to me, but I don't know. Everybody's in it. People are going to hate, right? Can't win them all. The next one, this one's super interesting. Your hemoglobin A1c. So when you look at this, it tells you right off about your pre-diabetic and everybody listens, like what the hell? Enzyme is pre-diabetic, you know, and that's kind of what I thought too, which is crazy. Hemoglobin A1c is a great reading. It's a measurement of your blood glucose over the past 90 days. It can, basically

what happens is as your glucose is elevated, it will bind to the hemoglobin and it kind of changes it. It does what's called glycosylate it. And so when they look at your red blood cells under the microscope, they can tell how much of the hemoglobin has been kind of exposed to glucose and they give you a percentage. So your percentage is 5.7, which puts you in pre-diabetic range. It's not the best test though, because it can be affected by a lot of different things. So some people have red blood cell lives that live longer than others. So normal red blood cell lifespans around 120 days. If yours is, I don't know, say 130 or 140, because you're genetically different, yours is going to look falsely elevated. Also in people of African descent, usually they have some differences

in their hemoglobin and it can skew this too. So a lot of African-Americans are erroneously diagnosed with prediabetes or diabetes due to their genetic differences. This is why we would recommend something like a continuous glucose monitor for you. I actually got in a little bit of an argument the other day on Instagram with one of these evidence-based guys who was like, you know, continuous glucose monitors have no role in people who are not diabetic. And I would argue the opposite because, you know, this A1C isn't the best. And for Encema, it may be super insightful for you to wear a continuous glucose monitor for a few weeks and take your own averages of your blood glucose over the days. Cause maybe, you know, you're coming back at like 80 or 90, which would not be a 5.7, a one C that'd be like a 5.1 or so. So, you know so

looking at this, I would argue you're probably not previously it was high too, you know, and I don't think that you're a pre-diabetic individual. We also like to get the insulin fast and insulin, which is down on the second to last page. Um, yours, the past few times have been low, which is actually kind of interesting. And so I think may like, you know, if you were somebody that we were working with, I'd probably look into this a little bit more because this could be evidence of say like type one diabetes, because that's possible that you don't produce enough insulin.

Um, so you would maybe have to order things like a C-peptide or there's various antibodies that you can look at, pancreatic antibodies, and see if you have that diagnosis of type 1 diabetes. I think you're probably just very healthy. I mean, you don't have any symptoms of diabetes, right? Like chronically urinating or feeling thirsty all the time or, you know, yeah, I would guess you're probably not, but. I have a question. Being like

West African, there's a lot of people, like I have something called sickle cell trait. I don't know if you know anything about that. I don't know if that has anything to do with this or if it can. It has everything to do with it. Okay. What, what, how does that affect it then? So it can affect the reading because the sickle cell has to do with the red blood cells and traits on them. And so it kind of changes everything based on, so it's an abnormal red blood cell basically. So when I said people of African descent, that's kind of what I was getting at is they have different hemoglobin than others do. Okay. And so, yeah, that kind of explains everything.

So it makes a lot of sense. One thing, though, too, that high A1C is in your favor for Mark accusing you of donating blood. If you had donated blood previous to that, your A1C would actually probably be pretty low because usually right after donating blood, you produce a lot of red blood cells to replenish the red blood cells that were just donated. And they would probably have a very low reading of glucose. Not much of them would be exposed. So if you see a super low glucose or an A1C on somebody, I'll usually ask that you just give blood because it

may be kind of falsely low. So yours would have been lower if you donated blood. So another check for the natty. We should have a tally going. Would something like berberine or something like that, do you think, I mean, if he has any issues with glucose, do you think that would be helpful in any way? Yeah, I don't think he has any issue with glucose. But if this wasn't in semen and it came back and, you know, a guy with a 5.7 for sure. Berberine would be great. Also metformin, both of them work to help to sensitize the tissues, specifically the muscle tissues to insulin so that the glucose can be shuttled in.

Metformin can also stop the liver from overproducing glucose, which happens when your glucose metabolism is kind of deranged. Your liver is just kind of inappropriately cranking out glucose. Metformin can stop that from happening. So, yeah, if this was not in SEMA and we didn't know his history and everything, then that would be a great tool. Okay. DEA. That's in the – or DHEA, not DEA, screw the DEA. DHEA, um, is, uh, is basically a neuro steroid. It's also a precursor to testosterone. Um,

this one is one that's actually really important that a lot of people don't look at, um, as a neuro steroid, it plays a vital role in our brain health. So it can help to, if guys have lower DHEA, they may be experiencing things like brain fog, maybe some anxiety. It can have a role in libido and sleep quality. DHEA is one that I never looked at in myself for years. And I did years of anabolics, which can have a suppressive effect on DHEA and its counterpart, pregnenolone. And I got to a point where I just randomly felt all this low libido and kind of down in my mood. And I didn't know why. And I finally drew these and mine were basically zero. So it's important to look at them. They are also implicated in neurodegeneration. So as we age, they usually go down and there's some papers kind of suggesting that they play

a role in our brain health. So having good levels of this, which you do, I would say around, you know, if you're not symptomatic of having low DHEA, like this, you know, anxiety or brain fog or things, there's probably no need to supplement it with where you're at. We usually try to get guys like 300 and above, but I don't want to just start supplementing if there's no reason to, if you're not actually low. So this looks good. You could be supplementing with it, but for a lot of guys on TRT or steroids, their DHA

is usually low like mine was. Okay. Yeah. Cortisol. Next one. We all know cortisol being a stress hormone. I don't like to put a lot of weight into just the blood reading of cortisol unless it's crazy on either side of the spectrum,

just because cortisol is fluctuating all the time. And so, you know, if you had a stressful time getting to the lab, you know, you got cut off or, or whatever, you were pissed at the guy in front of you. And now you're anxious about getting your blood drawn. Sometimes you may see your cortisol is a little bit higher and most people are getting their cortisol done first thing in the morning or their blood done first thing in the morning, which we expect cortisol to be higher. So yours is actually, I would say maybe on a little bit of the lower side, but you took it midday. Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. So it's cool. You probably have totally fine cortisol, but if people are more interested in getting a more accurate look, they can do something called a Dutch test, which is a urine test where you're urinating throughout the day. And then you get a better reading of your cortisol over a 24

hour period to see if it's appropriately being produced. Um, some people who have issues with sleep have cortisol dysregulation where their cortisol spikes in the middle of the night when it shouldn't. And that wakes us up. And so if you're waking up in the middle of night like craving carbs you're hungry maybe look into looking at your cortisol because it could be an issue with that all right um again we're now we're just going past your lhfsh which look very normal um we're at prolactin again so um prolactin I know we've talked about with you in the past and same because you were historically high in prolactin. And I think we chalked it up to the use of kratom because we know kratom can elevate prolactin. And then this

is one that a lot of people took away from the last podcast because I always have guys like, oh, it was so insightful because I had all these symptoms. I thought I had low T, but I actually had high prolactin due to things like, you know, maybe kratom or marijuana use is another big one. But high prolactin, again, if you guys didn't listen to the previous one, it can kind of masquerade as low T. You can feel low libido, poor erection quality. You may feel like you're unable to achieve orgasm, which for some guys maybe that's good you can go longer but it can also be annoying and then you know your refractory period can be extremely long too so it can take you forever before you get interested to do it

again um prolactin you know being it's made right after we have an orgasm and you know as all guys know right after that you pretty much just feel like you're asexual for a few minutes you know why the heck was i even doing that you know why was i looking at that thing um and that's if your prolactin is high you can kind of feel like that chronically so as far as my prolactin is concerned if you can actually see the previous state it was at 18.8 now it's at 12.4 so i still use kratom but I don't use as much as I was before. Because before I was like, it was something I'd be using maybe five times, but also a fairly high dose of it. I just decreased my frequency in the amount I take. I do smoke weed every now and then. But

my prolactin did come down quite a bit. So. Yeah, it did. Are you taking P5P? I know, I think we were suggested you did. I haven't taken that yet. What is P5P?. Are you taking P5P? I know. I think we were suggested you did. I haven't taken that yet. What is P5P? Yeah. What's P5P? So it's the, uh, the active form of vitamin B6 and it can have a suppressive effect on prolactin. So if you guys have high prolactin, that's usually the go-to, you know, I try to, uh, as Mark will remember, a lot of guys will take like caber or something. I would suggest people don't mess around with that. I would try, you know, B6 first or active form of B6, specifically P5P.

So I can just go on Amazon and type in P5P and just get a supplement like that? All right, let's do that right now. It's supposed to help you with your refractory period as well, right? Exactly, yeah, we can lower that prolactin. Some people, like i've seen some influencers i've seen some influencers recently talking about like uh p5p causing neuropathy and i'd say they're kind of wrong on that because p5p is the active form of vitamin b6 and the un-bioactive form, just plain B6 can cause neuropathy. But kind of paradoxically,

this P5P does not, and it may actually help neuropathy. So just, you know, people have heard people saying these things, I would disagree with them. And if you look in the literature, P5P actually probably doesn't cause neuropathy. So you're likely okay. Cool. All right. Do you know what your testosterone levels are at? How about your estrogen? How about your prolactin? How about your cholesterol? If the answer is, I don't know what they're at, well, we've been talking about blood work for a long time now. That's why we partnered with Merrick Health, a company owned by Derek from More Plates, More Dates. Now, with Merrick, you can get yourself something called the Power Project Panel, which will give you 26 different labs that will help you understand what's going on underneath the hood. After that, you'll be able to be partnered with one of their patient care coordinators, which will give you 26 different labs that will help you understand what's going on underneath the hood. After that, you'll be able to be partnered with one of their patient care coordinators,

which will give you interventions that range from lifestyle supplements to potential hormonal health treatments that can help move you in the right direction. But it all starts with knowing on what's going on down here. So get your blood work done. And, Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, we have two options for you guys. Head over to MerrickHealth.com slash PowerProject. That's M-A-R-E-K health.com slash powerproject. There you guys will see the powerproject panel that Nsema was just talking about. And at checkout,

enter promo code powerproject to save $101 off of that panel. Now, if you want to custom select your own panel, you guys can use promo code powerproject10 to save 10% off all labs. Again, that's at merikhealth.com slash POWERPROJECT. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Next is your PSA, prostate-specific antigen. So this one, again, may or may not be elevated when you're on TRT or steroids. It may elevate a little bit. You definitely look in the natty realm, but I mean, I think my PSA is the same thing. And so my prostate hasn't really been affected by the androgens or for the years. And so, you know, that one's hard to tell, but your prostate looks healthy right now. It's,

it's, you know, it's not in a high range that you would have to worry about that. So we can't gather much office. It's not high or anything. Got it. Um, and then, yeah, I don't even get into prostate, but I think you're fine there. Um, IGF one, your, you went down a little bit, you were at 200, you're now at 162. Um, again, you took this in the middle of the day, so that could be playing a role. IGF is probably going to be higher in the morning, right after sleep, because we produce growth hormone while we sleep and growth hormone stimulates your liver to produce IGF-1. And so, you know, it's going to be lower midday or at the end of the day than it would be first thing in the morning. IGF-1 is one that I don't really

worry about too much. I know a lot of guys love to chase it because they think it's correlated with their growth hormone and everything. But, you know, Mark and I have had this conversation, like growth hormone. It's not always all it's cracked out to be, you know, like some people love it. But like all I ever experienced was water retention on it. You know, I never felt like I got any leaner. I never felt like it got me stronger or bigger. I think I got a little bit uglier when I was taking it. Honestly, I felt like it was aging me.

It's kind of interesting. That's about it. All right. Let's see. Your vitamin D looks good. I mean, you're previously were a little bit better. You were at 70. Now you're at 51. I usually opt for about 50. Uh, most people probably need a mixture of both of, uh, you know, supplementation and sun to get good levels. You're pretty good. Do you supplement? I supplement inconsistently, a bit more consistently the past few weeks after I saw this. But also one thing that tends to happen, and it also happens with my mood, it happens with my weight, is when it starts to get sunnier, I'm outside so much more. I'm literally sitting outside in the morning. I'm sitting outside midday. I go for more walks. When wintertime

comes, because it's interesting, when my vitamin D was taken before is during the summer months, I'm always outside. I'm even fucking darker. But when it gets to the winter months, I, I don't get outside as much. I usually weigh five pounds heavier. I'm not, you know, so it's a, I think that's probably has a lot to do with it too. Yeah, I agree a hundred percent for sure. And I would say that the, the lack of sun affects a lot of us and most people just in our normal day-to-day lives, we don't get enough sun. And so I would definitely recommend supplementing and doing our best to get some sun, which I know you guys preach all the time. And I like you to just, you know, get some fricking sun exposure of some sort, at least 10 or 20 minutes a day.

If that's all you can get, uh, it's going to do a lot for you, for sure. We already talked about the LP little a. Now we're at CRP. And this one's an important one when you're considering your heart disease. This is a marker of inflammation. This was interesting. So yeah, the CRP previously on you was high. You were almost at four. When I see a super high CRP in that and what seems like an otherwise healthy individual, it's likely more than inflammation is a normal. It's of normal origin. The thing about a CRP is that it's very sensitive, meaning that it will pick up like all bits of inflammation, but it's not very specific. We don't know where it's coming from. And so, you know, you could have had a cut on your body. You could have been fighting off a cold. That's why it could have been elevated. You know, I'm more concerned with somebody that has a really low grade

inflammation, like maybe a one or so, because that's more indicative of maybe that chronic low grade inflammation that we're concerned with that's associated with like heart disease. Recommendation is usually the same either way, which is just increase your antioxidant intake. Probably the best way to do so with food. So either increase fruits and vegetables or just fruits and even organ meat. Make sure that you're getting some bit of antioxidants in your diet. Then you can supplement with it too. Same things we talked about before, the N-acetylcysteine, the glutathione.

I like melatonin a lot as an antioxidant, omega-3s, all of those things can help. Glutathione, you've actually mentioned it multiple times and I just took some today at the suggestion of Jake Benson for recovery. So can you kind of explain some of the benefits of glutathione? Just because like even me, he said it's great for recovery, but even I'm not sure exactly what it's doing for me. Yeah, glutathione is like – I was actually really impressed with it myself, and I usually feel like nothing lives up to its name. I've tried everything. I'm always bummed.

First time I tried Trane, I'm like, this is kind of lame. Growth hormone, all those things. I never thought that it was as cool as they were advertised but glutathione was pretty damn impressive um i got roped into one of those spartan races where i had to do like a 10k and i do almost no cardio and you know i do just a little bit here and there but i was like fuck it i'll just go do it and i did the whole thing and ran the whole thing we got decent time did every obstacle and i thought i was gonna have rhabdo for sure so i hit myself with a ton of glutathione right afterwards. And the next day I was barely sore, which was like mind blowing to me because the whole time I was cramping. So I was impressed.

I was like, okay, this, this just convinced me. But glutathione is basically produced by every cell in our body. It's the most potent antioxidant that we have. So it helps to fight off free radicals, reactive oxygen species, things like that that would cause inflammation or damage to our cells. So having robust levels of glutathione are great because it's keeping your body less inflamed. So that's where it can be beneficial. People will take it for their skin, too, because it has a positive effect on skin. I think it has some skin lightening effects.

So I don't know. Be careful on SEMA. You might get white hair soon. You're going to be looking like Michael Jackson. No, I don't think it's that intense, but I've heard it does have some skin lightening effects. But yeah, I think it's amazing for recovering. If you have high inflammation markers, it's something that we found very beneficial. Any type of dangers or anything to be careful with when trying to use glutathione? Because you say it's so great, right? There's going to be someone who's going to be like, okay, I'm going to take glutathione every day.

So is there anything to be careful with? So I can't back this up because I didn't really dig into the literature. But having a conversation with another intellectual I respect a lot, it was telling me that he thought there was some negative feedback with supplementing with glutathione, meaning that like when you take it, you're just like if you take testosterone, you stop producing testosterone, there may be some negative feedback with glutathione. And so I like to use NAC or N-acetylcysteine as well, because that's a precursor to glutathione. And so if you're taking it also maybe take the oral and supply your body with what it needs to produce its own. Again, I can't substantiate that. I just kind of took it at face value and was like, okay,

sounds, it makes sense. But that would be my biggest concern with it. Okay. All right. I'm just going to make sure not to use it extremely frequently. That's what I'm going to do it concurrently with a supplementation of like an acetyl cysteine. Okay. Gotcha. Cool. Let's see. GGT, another marker of liver enzymes. And this is a good one to get to. And this is why we throw it on the panel for athletes is because if your GGT is not elevated, but your liver enzymes are, then there's some, we can kind of safely say your liver enzymes are probably just elevated because you worked out before, like we talked about with you.

So your GGT looks good. It's another liver enzyme, probably okay. Progesterone, that's an important one. People think of it as only being a female hormone, but it plays a vital role in men too. Certainly, you know, being a female hormone, but it plays a vital role in men too. And having too low of progesterone can cause poor libido and poor moods, anxiety and things like that. And it can be kind of a cheap man's marker for checking your pregnenolone because pregnenolone downstream will convert into progesterone.

And so yours is okay. I mean, we could try to get it up a little bit higher. It'd be interesting to see what your pregnenolone is because you may benefit from having some higher levels of pregnenolone, which downstream would be good for progesterone. Okay. Um, one thing of note here too, is that a lot of guys come to us because Derek's like the hair God, you know, he does everything about hair loss and everything. So a lot of guys are interested in that and they want to know if they could take finasteride.

And this is an important thing to look at as your progesterone before starting, because the, the five alpha reductase, the enzyme that finasteride blocks, it doesn't only block the conversion of testosterone into DHT. It also blocks things like the conversion of progesterone into allopregnenolone and allopregnenolone is a vital neuro steroid that plays a role on our brain. And so your people will talk about having post finasteride syndrome where they have brain fog and low libido and it may be due to it blocking some of these neuro steroid cascades so if you're already starting out with a low progesterone you may not want to start taking finasteride oh i'm good on that man

i think you're good you know what't want the afro? Fuck no. You know what? My head's so big that I think I even look better bald. Maybe I'm just coping. I might be coping, but I'm okay with it. I don't know. I think you pulled off well. Thank you.

You had some pictures before with hair, right? I think I saw it once, and I felt like you looked weird, honestly. I was like, you looked way better like this. Hey, you know what? I'll take that. I feel kind of hurt, but at the same time, I'm a bit more confident. Yeah. I've only ever seen you bald, but you pulled off well.

And then when you see with hair, I'm like, no, he's like bald's perfect. Even if you could grow it, I would suggest that, man. You look good. Thank you. Thank you so much. You're welcome, man. Let's see. We talked about insulin.

Again, that was an interesting one for you. Probably just very metabolically healthy. This is really important to look at. man. Let's see. We talked about insulin. Again, that was an interesting one for you. Probably just very metabolically healthy. This is really important to look at. This will tie back into what's normal and what's optimal too. Like if you see on there, the range for normals basically goes all the way up to 25, but there's some pretty clear literature that below five is when somebody's truly insulin sensitive. So your body would be producing higher levels of insulin if it was insulin resistant, especially in a fasted state, you shouldn't be producing insulin. So you're just probably extremely insulin sensitive because you're so

damn fit. And that's why yours are low. So we actually look at like one to five as being optimal. So I don't say this is too low. I don't think you have that type one diabetes, like I said, but I think you're very, you're very insulin sensitive and this is important to look at. So, you know, like Paul Saladino talks about if you have insulin resistance. So if your insulin was fast and you're at like 15 and you also have a high ApoB and LDLC, it's not a good thing. You know, you need to improve that insulin sensitivity and the berberine like Mark brought up can help, but more importantly, reducing calories and exercising and the more muscle you can build, the better, because

you're going to have more of a reservoir for glucose. And so just exercise and eat less, you know. Okay. Ferritin. Ferritin is a protein that carries around iron, but it can also be a marker of inflammation. I think like, you know, if you saw our lab report, you probably told you you were high, but I don't always kind of agree with that. You kind of have to look at the whole picture and your CRP looked okay. I don't think you're probably overly inflamed, but for some people, if their ferritin is really high, it could be a marker of inflammation. So it would be something to consider. And again, same type of things. A glutathione is great at helping your liver to metabolize ferritin. So it would help to lower that. Got it. And then the last three we've already talked about your T3. Again, we

need to boost that. So I would say supplement with some selenium and keep an eye on this and we'll see if we can get it optimized. You take like a thyroid support complex um your shbg a little bit higher that's why your free is low so we're going to supplement with some boron maybe or magnesium which you've already supplemented magnesium i think but and the apob the cholesterol marker so yeah you basically just got taken through the whole merit process here is you know we would go through all that in your lab review cool i think it's cool to see like how, for example, P5P, I've never taken boron,

so maybe I should try taking that. It's cool that just normal supplements can have a very big effect. Because I think people downplay the effect that normal supplements can have and like, we'll just go straight to hormones, you know? Yeah, true.

Even food, you know, like for the selenium, I mean, you could just start eating Brazil nuts and maybe that's the option you want to do. Some people do that. So you could put in a few Brazil nuts a day and some oysters and things that contain zinc, probably good on that on meat. But yeah, food and supplements can go far. work with Merrick, you not only are talking to a doctor, but you're also talking to a patient care coordinator that is going to be kind of the middleman that you can ask tons and tons of questions to because you're not always going to have access at any second to the actual doctor themselves, but you get more than enough help. And I think a lot of other TRT clinics I've heard

from other people just, I'm kind of complaining, like I'm trying to ask these questions. I'm not there. You know, I don't know how to get answers and stuff like that. And I haven't found that to be the case with you guys. You guys are on top of it. Yeah. We've actually kind of changed their name over to health coach because that's what we want them to be is a health coach that can be there to coach on all the things. want them to be as a health coach that can be there to coach on all the things.

So coaching on nutrition and sleep and supplementation, and they'll do the lab review with you like this. So, you know, we more just did a, an educational lab review here. That wasn't diagnostic in any way. You know, I didn't tell you, you had anything, you know, I didn't, I didn't really interpret your labs just kind of gave an educational entertaining kind of review. And that's what the health coach can do with you. And, you know, they can say like, oh, and see me, you know, your insulin's low. This is interesting. It could be linked to these things. We'll see what the doc says, but at least you get that first,

right. When you get the labs and you can do this with the doctor and then they'll talk to you even after that and go over all the treatments that the doctor has laid out. And they're going to be checking on you, making sure that you got your package good and you're using your meds good and you understand everything. So, yeah, there's a lot of like that one-on-one concierge care, which is cool. Yeah. That's one thing. You know, like everybody has different lifestyles.

Maybe someone's a nurse. They don't get much sleep, you know. Or you have kids, so you're waking up multiple times during the night and you're super active, right? And a normal doctor may not necessarily pay attention to all those individual things. And a normal doctor may not necessarily pay attention to all those individual things. But over with you guys, like you guys pay attention to people who are athletes and have super high creatinine or X, Y, and Z. And it makes a difference because, I mean, I've been to a doctor when I was much younger. I was told I had high creatinine.

And he's like, are you? Maybe you need to decrease that protein intake and stop lifting as much. He legit said that because he's like, things may not be functioning well, but I'm just an athlete, you know? Exactly. I think it's a cool place for people to come who want that kind of health optimization because like we've preached a million times, we're not a TRT clinic.

We're a health and longevity clinic that will do hormones if necessary. There's somebody, not so many, but occasionally, you know, we get a stray guy who comes through thinking it's just a TRT mill. And I think those have their place and that's awesome. But if you want 200 milligrams of tests and some nandrolone and anavar and some growth hormone, you know, there's other places to do it.

And like I said, the outset, you know, there's a lot of clinics where if you've got a pulse, they've got somebody who will write you that. And we're just not bad. And so if you're really, you know, if you want what you and I just did here in semen, where we dig a deep dive into your health and we talk about lipids and inflammation and everything, that's where we shine. Cause it's just, you know, we don't really like to work with somebody who just wants to ramp up their testosterone. It can be one part of a complex plan to make you an optimized human, but it's not the end all be all.

Thank you so much for your time today. Appreciate it. Of course, man. Yeah, it's fun. Where can people find you? And what's the name of this new podcast you got going on? Yeah. So my company is Atlas Optimization.

Merrick doesn't actually hire any doctors or providers. They hire, you know, they will put you with a provider who's their own entity. Essentially, they're kind of the matchmaker. The PCCs and health coaches are with Merrick, but the doctors and providers aren't. So my company is Atlas Optimization that I work through. And it's my wife and my company. She does nutrition coaching. And then our company is Atlas. and we have the Atlas Hour on YouTube, which you just search Atlas Optimization. You can find us. Then my Instagram, at Dr. Dr. A.E. Hotchkiss.

That's my name. And then you can find me there. And our Instagram is Atlas Optimization. And then Merrick, of course, obviously. Merrick, they're really the reason we're all here, and I love Merrick. It's awesome. I'm so happy to be able to do stuff like this because we change lives every day. It's awesome.

Great. Have a great rest of your day. Take care. Thanks, Doc. You guys too, man. See you guys. Thank you. All right.

Deep dive. Very cool. cool yeah deep dive into your blood no i i'm i i like getting my blood work done i'm probably going to get it done maybe again another six months or something like that just because it's like right now i'm in the midst of training like i'm training a lot i'm doing a lot of sessions of jujitsu a week uh some days double days so six to eight sessions a week right now. And I'm still lifting with that because I'm getting ready for competition. So I'm happy to see that everything is where it needs to be

because I do feel a little bit run down on certain days, but it's nothing I need to necessarily be worried about. And also, I'm also pumped because I do eat a lot of saturated fat. I do eat a lot of red meat. I do eat a lot of calories fat. I do eat a lot of red meat. I do eat a lot of calories. And it's nice to see that that isn't having any negative effects on my health because of my activity level, right? So that's just – I'm happy that that's all dealt with.

What are you training for? I got Worlds in like six weeks. I'm on the waiting list for two competitions this month. So hopefully, I'll be able to get into those comps and uh yeah have you ever trained this frequently before yes yeah most of the time this is a little bit newer like the only thing that's new is traveling okay my frequency of training has been there there's a period of time especially when we were really ramping in a podcast for maybe six months where I had to only train three, some weeks if I was lucky, five sessions of jiu-jitsu. But for years, it's literally been more like four to seven to eight.

Now it's six to eight on average. And it's just – I'm feeling good. And I also told you like one of my body weight is between 245 and 250. That's when I feel good. And I also told you like my, one of my body weight is between 240, 245 and 250. That's when I feel good. When I get above 250, I'm okay. But that's when I like, I feel a little bit slower. I don't, I don't feel as quick. So I'm feeling really solid. That's great. That's, that's quite a time commitment. You know, it's like if you're doing six sessions and eight sessions and so on, you're looking at probably about two hours a pop. You have about an hour of travel sometimes when you're going to San Jose.

Three hours each way. Three hours each way. But since I take the train, I can get work done on the train. Yeah, the train is helpful. But there's this comment from Brian Boudreaux. He trains over at Super Trading Gym and it's from our podcast where we, it's titled TRT, what it feels like benefits and drawbacks. And Brian's on TRT, but he mentioned this.

My only regret is not getting labs done before I built the habits, then started TRT. Brief recap of my journey. Five years ago, I was obese, 300 pounds with bad anxiety and no direction. Got my nutrition figured out and got down to 185 pounds with diet and exercise, which took about 18 months. Found Mark and crew. Got serious about training consistently and adopting good habits. Built myself up to about 205 pounds. Got labs done and decided to get TRT at 37 years old.

Weight went up to about 225, 230. This man got huge, by the way like he's competing though so he's yeah yeah it's for a purpose yeah yeah but i'm just saying like physically he's just like you know like he wasn't when i say huge i don't mean fat i mean brian got hub yes that's what i'm saying um but waist uh 220 to 230 but waist is still almost the same as it was at 185. All my pants still fit around the waist but are tighter in the thighs from legs getting jacked. My labs are better now than ever. Lifts have all gone up.

Sleep has improved. Motivation is higher. Attitude is more positive and optimistic. Please listen to these guys when they say build the habits first. Test will amplify what you already are. So be who you want to be prior to getting involved with hormone optimization and then watch yourself

grow physically and mentally in the right direction. Thanks MBPP for always spitting hot fire and dropping knowledge bobs for the masses. Love you guys. Love you too, Brian.

Damn, really well said. Yeah. Yeah. It's awesome. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Is there any other precautions you're trying to take with like that much training? Like I know you mentioned, we talked about you have implemented some carnitine.

Is there any extra attention like sleep or sleep habits? I know you have good habits, but are you just like, I don't know. Is there anything that you're just like maybe more diligent about or you've been on point in the past, you think? The big thing, and it's things that we've learned from a lot of the guests that have come on, like Cador, Cador especially. And there are a few like Ben Patrick and a few people that have come to mind on the whole movement spectrum, even Human Garage. And the big thing that I do now is I make sure every single day to get in positions that typically you don't always get in. So, you know, Kador has his practices of sitting on his knees and sitting on the floor. I'm always sitting on the floor now.

I'm always putting myself in different positions because, first off, jiu-jitsu requires that. And I don't want the only time I end up in those types of positions to be when I go to the mat. And then the rest of the day I'm either standing or sitting in a chair or whatever. My body, everything feels so loose because I make sure that I always venture into those positions. I've actually been doing some of the fascial maneuvers from Human Garage. I sent you one of the simple ones and all their stuff is free. But I noticed like there was one day when my lower back was feeling a little tight when I woke up. I did this totally twisted maneuver from their page. And there's multifactorial.

Maybe my body warmed up a little bit. But after I did that for like 15 minutes, I felt good, right? These are the little additions. But the main thing is getting into positions that I typically don't get to outside of jujitsu. Even now, like, Andrew, can you go to my story real quick on ig um i'm working on this back bridge thing because like you know in jujitsu you're always here so how about full extension uh wrestlers are able there are some wrestlers that are able to walk and even run in that position so i'm trying to get myself more used to that position and i have been and that's

been helping so these are just things that like I think these are just habits whether you're at work, whether you're sitting at home, even little things like when I eat, I'm usually standing and my foot's up on something when I'm eating and then I always take a walk after. I just – I try to keep everything lubricated and that's why my body has been feeling really good. But go to my story, dog. Like that was a few days ago next door likes to be lubed up yeah so nice next one i know setting it up yeah so now i'm able to finally do push-ups in this position and there's more extension in it too so the everything's feeling really good awesome oh humble yeah lots of lots of habits uh you know all all smashed together is there anything like uh that you're trying to not do like not eat certain foods or anything are you just

again you have good habits so maybe you're not overthinking it i'm just trying to make sure not to eat too close to bed because i have noticed that that does affect my sleep quality um it's it's not necessarily even i could eat something really healthy like a good steak or whatever, but I'll notice like my heart rate is a little bit elevated and I don't wake up feeling as rested. But the thing is I get hungry at 9 p.m. So I'm just trying to be more diligent at like having my last meal at maybe 6 or 7. And then if I do eat something, maybe it's a little bit of fruit or whatever that's not as heavy. Smaller, yeah.

Because that affects sleep and we've gone deep on how if you don't recover in your sleep, well, you can go work as hard as you want. You're not getting everything out of it. Even the stuff that you train, you're not going to be able to remember it as well if your recovery isn't as good, right? So I'm making sure I do that stuff, making sure I get to bed at the same time, you know, because I have noticed when I sleep a little bit later, even if I get the same amount of sleep, I don't wake up the same. Right. So, yeah, just trying to keep everything dialed in, trying to keep the body moving, trying to also like walk after every meal. That's something I've been trying to be more diligent about, too.

And it's an underrated thing because I notice my digestion and the way I feel. Yeah. If I can just take a 10 or 20 minute walk after I eat, I feel so much better than if I just eat and then just sit and chill. You know, that's, that's a huge one that goes a long way. And you talked about that a lot, right? Yeah. You know, I'm not even necessarily suggesting that someone do this, but you know, it's been explained to me before, and I don't practice this enough, but it's been explained to me before you should be able to go on a light jog as soon as you're done eating. So, I mean, it's a nice practice. I don't think any of us are going to get it until we're like 55 or something. We're going to be older and we're going to be like, I'm doing this new thing.

But it's kind of hard sometimes. You're in the moment and you think you need to eat all this fuel. Being an athlete too, you're like, well, I better just, you know, I better just hammer all this food. We practice some fasting, some intermittent fasting. And so when the food is there, you're like, man, I should just hammer all this food. I ate four, I ate ate four piedmontese fillets the other day they were just too good i just couldn't stop i was like in a total frenzy my wife was just looking at me like what is wrong with i was like i don't know just like these are perfect they're so good was it the petite tender or which which was filet yeah it was uh yeah i think they're yeah they're not they're not huge you know

they're they're little round uh suckers but i I don't know, it was probably like three and a half pounds of meat or something like that. God dang, man. I just went all in on it. Let's, yeah, let's not underestimate the power of like just eating food at home. You know, I think even if you try to get healthy food. It's such a great healthy habit. Yeah.

Even when you get food inside, you don't know how that meat was cooked. And I'll, I know, I, I noticed the difference of how I feel when I'm just cooking all my meat and cooking everything at home versus when I might, you know, get food out.

You just feel the difference. Movie road trip. What about it? With the French toast. Horatio Sands. He's like, the guy takes the French toast. Cause the guy sendsands. He's like, the guy takes the French toast because the guy sends it back. And he's like, oh my God, I'm so sorry we got that wrong.

I'll take care of that for you. And he takes it back to the kitchen and he throws the French toast up in the air. And then he catches it like in the back of his pants. And he's like wiggling around doing like a little shake. And then he throws it in the pan and he brings it back to the guy. He even walks out and he like serves him extra coffee and he's like yeah the chef's you know they're they're working on it right now but it's like still in the back of his crack as he's like giving the guy coffee who's in this movie was it the guy from ozark or adam sandler or am i wrong on both wrong on both okay then i may have not

seen road trip then it's a great movie. Yeah. I don't know any of the, Stifler was in it, I think. Right. But he wasn't as Stifler. Tom Green was in it.

And then some other dudes that didn't really do anything else after that. Oh, Road Trip. Okay. No, this, damn, I have not seen it.

It's a great movie. Austin, Massachusetts. Oh, Roach. Okay, no. This, damn, I have not seen it. It's a great movie. Austin, Massachusetts. Oh, yeah. Dude, what was the other shot that you took today? Glutathione. Did that hurt? No, glutathione didn't hurt at all. Okay, because that choline stuff's burning.

Yeah. Glutathione tripped me out because apparently you got to reconstitute it, and I didn't know what the fuck that was, so was talking with jake benson you got to tell me maybe after the podcast it's simple but um i don't necessarily feel anything but he said like you know it's gonna help you on those recovery days and today is going to be a chiller day than yesterday so yeah the other thing you mentioned that you have to be diligent about is your body weight right like you've kind of noticed that in training when you are rolling that like there's an optimal body weight for you, right? Yeah.

It's so interesting. It's like it's between 245 and 250. And like I was telling Adam, sometimes during the winter months, I don't move as much maybe. I don't walk – like I'm not outside as much. So I can get i mean there's i got to 258 once but once i'm above once i get to like 255 254 eating your calzone crying in your simply lemonade that's my favorite story dude my ankles we already told this story but my last jiu-jitsu tournament i got second and i went back to my

hotel room i got my whole stuff a whole big old stuffed pizza with a whole with a 52 ounce simply uh lemonade watermelon and i woke up the next morning like 259 from 249 good thing you get your blood work done then right like you're gonna die i was walking to the airport and my it hurt to put my ankles in my shoes, dog. It's like. They're like squishy. But outside of that, when I am like, if I slowly crept up in weight, I'd feel okay. But like when I eat a bit too much, let's say, and I ended up being 252, 253, I can literally feel inflamed.

I can feel the inflammation. I can feel the inflammation. I can feel the stiffness. I don't move as loose. Right. Um, so for me, my best body weight is between 245 and 250. And I, I know like if I weigh in at 252, I'm just going to keep in mind, okay. Sometimes it's a, just a hydrated 252. Sometimes it's a, wow, you ate 4,000 calories, 252 sometimes it's a wow you ate 4 000 calories 252 it's a very different 252 you know what i mean so yeah yeah i'm very careful with that it's awesome man and then uh what are what are things you're tracking with your you got your watch and you got your or ring and then we also have the eight sleep like are you paying attention to some of that and have you noticed any real differences with some of that technology yeah yeah dude like um the big thing about the

eight sleep in the aura is like the heart rate the sleeping heart rate um again the nights that i ate too close to bed i could have a sleepy heart rate at 60 and that's high for me um a good sleeping heart rate for me is 52 to 54 maybe 55 right but when it's higher i also wake up like i can wake up being like oh i know when i look at it it's going to be your sleeping heart rate 60 and your hrv is like 18 i'm like yeah okay don't eat right before you go to sleep right so these things like motivation and in a way exactly and it kind of backs up the things you already know that's what that's why it's it's really dope you know i don't want to do this but it's in my best interest i'll

just do it yes yeah and then that's why the the eight sleep itself is so cool because like you know you just you sleep cool you know what i mean it's super helpful it's getting warm again yeah which is nice but the hrV also has like, my HRV is different too when I eat a little bit farther away from bed because my sleep ends up being better. So all these things add up. Awesome.

Andrew, take us on out of here, buddy. Alrighty. Thank you everybody for checking out this episode. Drop those comments down below. Is Nseema just a really good athlete or is he really good at hiding these uh lab results and you know he's getting creative with it let us know in the comments i know it's smoky things i do as well maybe smokey can comment in this comment section uh follow the podcast at mb power project all over the place and make sure you guys hit that subscribe button if you guys are

not subscribed my instagram is at i am andrew z and seema where you at discords down below guys join on in we'll probably be doing another q a soon so you can ask your questions there and see my in there on instagram youtube and see my yin yang on tiktok and twitter mark andrew maybe you can tell them uh where they can get their blood work done and how they can get the uh power project oh yeah yeah so that's over at merrickhealth.com slash power project so that's m-a-r-e-K health.com slash powerproject. Links will be down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. But when you go there, you guys are going to see the lab. I believe it has 26 different labs.

And then it does include a, they're going to call it a health coach that's going to help, you know, kind of do what Dr. Adam Hotchkiss did today. They're going to break down everything because sometimes when you get these labs, it's like, I don't even understand what these numbers mean. It's like they're speaking in code sometimes. So you have somebody that's going to break them down for you as well as give recommendations. And those recommendations aren't just going to be like, yep, here's a needle, go get the testosterone, you're going to be good to go. No, it might be some of the stuff that we heard today, like that P5P I've never heard of. That was really interesting. That's now in my cart on Amazon. So stuff like that, it's that's now in my cart on amazon so stuff like that it's not just necessarily going there and uh you know like i said hopping on stuff and this i

believe this is like this is the best way like especially if you have a significant other that thinks like oh you just want to get on steroids it's like no i went with a legit doctor you know not just somebody on the street corner like this is a legit thing. So sometimes that's one of the barriers for dudes. And so this is seriously the absolute best way. Again, MerrickHouse.com slash PowerProject at checkout. Enter promo code PowerProject and you receive $101 off of that entire panel, which includes everything we just talked about today. Yeah, I realize there's a cost associated with it, but I think it's worth it. I realize there's a cost associated with it, but I think it's worth it.

Even if you only go there one time and you get it done one time, especially if you're natural now, I think it'd be great to have those markers. If you're 30 years old and you feel totally healthy, I still think there's a reason to go and get the blood work done. Now when you, you know, maybe someday when you turn 45 or 50, you can say, wow, look at my testosterone is very low. I actually do need this medically. It is going to help me a lot as opposed to somebody that just takes it kind of more randomly later, you know, whenever they decide to take them. They don't have any idea what their previous base was. So highly recommended. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.