Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum on What Your Doctor Should Tell You About Exercise

Episode Date: August 7, 2019

What’s the easiest way to make your life better in every way? Exercise regularly. You’ll have more energy and mental focus, you’ll sleep better and get sick less frequently, and, of course, let���s not forget the fat loss and muscle and strength gains, either. Most people know they should be more active, but don’t know exactly what to do and how to go about it and often choose to do nothing instead. Unfortunately, the professionals who are in the best position to offer a helping hand here—doctors—are often just as clueless as their patients when it comes to effective exercise and nutrition. Why is that? And what can be done about it? Those are two of the questions I explore with Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum in this episode. If you’re not familiar with Jordan, he’s an elite powerlifter, strength coach, medical doctor, and the founder of Barbell Medicine, so he has a unique perspective on the failings of medical school in preparing doctors to offer pragmatic exercise advice to patients. In our conversation, we discuss: - Why Jordan unironically refers to barbell training as “medicine” - Major “blindspots” in medical school curricula - The problem with the “health at any size” movement - Red flags for supplement companies and Instagram influencers - And more . . . 3:54 - Why did you choose Barbell Medicine as your company name and what does it mean? 7:43 - What are the healthiest things you can do? 13:36 - Why don’t doctors learn about exercise and nutrition in medical school? 43:01 - What do you mean by a dose dependent response on exercise? 54:00 - What are the top 5 red flags for supplement companies? 1:06:08 - How much does it cost to make a bottle of collagen protein? 1:10:30 - Where can people find you and your work? Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.legionathletics.com/signup/

Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider supporting my sports nutrition company, Legion Athletics, which produces 100% natural evidence-based health and fitness supplements, including protein powders and protein bars, pre-workout and post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more. Head over to www.LegionAthletics.com now to check it out. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout and you will save 10% on your entire order and it'll ship free if you are anywhere in the United States. And if you're not, it'll ship free if your order is over $100. So again, if you appreciate my work and if you want to see more of it, please do consider supporting me so I can keep doing what I love, like producing podcasts like this.

Hey there and welcome to another episode of Muscle for Life. I am Mike Matthews and I have a question for you. What is the easiest way to make your life better in just about every way? Exercise regularly, of course. You probably got that right if you are a regular around here. If you exercise regularly, you are going to have more energy. You are going to have more mental focus. You're going to sleep better. You're going to get sick less frequently. And of course, let's not forget about the fat loss and the muscle and strength gains either. Now, that's not exactly news to most people.

Most people do know that they should be more active. Maybe they don't know how important it is, but they will be the first to admit that they should be exercising more, moving their body more, doing more than just sitting down a lot, right? But at the same time, most people don't know exactly what to do and they don't know how to go about doing it. And so they often just choose to do nothing instead. Now, unfortunately, the professionals who are in probably the best position to offer a helping hand here, doctors, are just as clueless, or at least often just as clueless, as their patients when it comes to truly effective exercise and nutrition protocols. Now, why is that? And what can be done about it? Well, those are two of the questions I explore

in this episode with Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum. And in case you are not familiar with him, he is an elite powerlifter, strength coach, medical doctor, and the founder of Barbell Medicine. So he has a unique and from the inside perspective on the failings of medical school and just the medical community in general in terms of preparing doctors to be able to offer practical exercise and nutrition advice to patients as well as encouraging them to do so. And in this conversation of ours, we discussed a number of things, including why Jordan unironically refers to barbell training as medicine, hence his brand name, Barbell Medicine, some of

the major blind spots in current medical school curricula, the major problem with the health at any size movement, red flags for supplement companies and Instagram influencers and more. So I hope you liked the interview. Here it is. Jordan, thanks for taking the time to come on my show and talk with me. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Good to be here. Yeah. Yeah. So I thought a good place to start with this would just be actually the name of your brand, Barbell Medicine, which is basically kind of summarized what I wanted to talk to you about. So why Barbell Medicine? Why did you choose that name? And what does that mean? It was interesting. I mean, I got involved in training with barbells, specifically powerlifting

back in 2007, did my first meet in 2010. And I started Barbell Medicine in 2012 when I started medical school. But the idea, you know, I'd been a coach for probably about five years before I started medical school. And I had seen the robust amount of changes in people's health and quality of life from all different angles, how training had positively affected their lives. So I obviously had this bias that resistance training specifically with barbells was a good idea and had a potential huge effect from a public health standpoint. So I wanted to create this company because I could also see during my initial introduction to medicine. So, you know, prior to medical school, you could do all the shadowing and you talk with other doctors, you know, about what you're going to do with the rest of your life. And you sort of get an

impression of the field to make sure that you don't want to do it. You know, you don't hate it. And none of them knew anything about resistance training other than the very cliche, like, oh, I think it's dangerous for you. I think it's bad for you. I think it's going to hurt you. Or the other side of it is I'm not sure that it's actually helpful. I saw this need for somebody to bridge the gap between medicine and strength and conditioning. And I was like, well, I'm going to be a doctor in a few short years. And I've been a strength coach for a while, and I'm obviously personally involved in this. So let's put those together. And so I was searching for a name. I was like, what can I call this thing? You know, nothing immediately came to mind. And then there

was an article published in 2011 by one of our colleagues, Dr. Jonathan Sullivan, the title of the article was barbell training is big medicine. And the running joke with like big medicine is like big pharmaarma and you're associated with all these other corporations with self-interest, but like big medicine, that was kind of funny. So I was like, barbell training is big medicine, barbell medicine. Oh, that's interesting.

I like that. And it kind of catchy. And I went immediately and I was like, has anybody trademarked this? Or like, is anybody else already doing this? And the domain was available. So I instantly bought the domain, registered trademark on the name and kind of went with it.

The second part was I wanted to come up with a slogan because, you know, you need like a catchphrase. And in medicine, we have this idea of like translational research where you figure something out in the lab, like the lab bench, and then you translate it to the bedside. So things you find in the lab and you kind of go through a series of different studies and tests and everything else to find that it actually works and you bring it to the bedside. So things you find in the lab and you kind of go through a series of different studies and tests and everything else to find that it actually works and you bring it to the bedside. And so I was like, huh, maybe if I do this with you from bench to bedside,

kind of a play on bench from the laboratory bench or the bench press to bedside. And the girl I was dating at the time, it was funny, I told her this, she was in medical school as well. And she goes, that's the dumbest catchphrase I've ever heard. That'll never take off, no. I think it's actually pretty good. See, there you go. So we

broke up shortly thereafter, not supportive, but yeah, I mean, the overall idea is that still today a huge gap between strength conditioning and even just exercise science period and medicine. And that extends to all different facets of just exercise in general, both the preventative sort of aspects of exercise on disease, the adjunctive sort of treatment benefits you can get for people with chronic medical conditions. And there's just a huge, huge gap between the two fields. And we're trying to bring modern medicine to strength conditioning and strength conditioning to modern medicine, because it goes both ways, right? In the strength conditioning field, there's a lot of myths

that are being perpetuated by people who maybe don't have the same amount of training in the public health, clinical medicine type of field. And so we feel like we can do some good on both sides of the equation here, both again, bringing strength and conditioning to medicine and then bringing some of that medical science to strength and conditioning, kind of shore up the gaps and knowledge there. Would you disagree that I say this often, I think exercising is probably one of the healthiest things you can do that. And I don't know for me to be a prior toss up between that and sleep hygiene, probably that it just benefits every aspect of your physiology, your psychology, your life just gets better in every way. If you start exercising, even if you don't know what you're doing on the diet side of things,

just starting exercising makes a big difference in so many ways. Yeah, I would agree. And there's a robust amount of data that actually supporting that. I mean, probably the biggest data set we have is from the EPIC trial that was performed in the 2009 is when the first publication came out. Half a half a million subjects, like 500-something thousand people were involved in this. The people who were physically active in some sort of exercise for three and a half hours per week or more had decreased incidence of diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular disease in the 90% range for cardiovascular disease and diabetes compared to the sedentary controls. And then all forms of cancer that they were studying, there was a decrease in incidence

of about 40%. And that was just from minimal formalized physical activity. I would agree that physical activity, human body needs to be exercised. It needs to be active. We need to do it. I mean, there's just more and more data that keeps coming out. I do agree that probably one of the biggest sort of things that's lacking from a public health perspective is this big push to be more and more active. I see it as probably one of the main goals or should be one of the main goals of any like public health organization.

One of the main things we need to focus on is increasing physical activity participation. I mean, right now, the latest survey suggested that only 20% of American adults are meeting the physical activity guideline minimums, which is you need to participate in either 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous intensity activity per week or 150 minutes to 300 minutes of moderate intensity of activity plus resistance training twice a week. That's like the minimum. And only 20% of Americans are actually hitting that. And they're probably overestimating their activity levels anyway. So when you read the like scientific consensus report for these 2018 physical activity guidelines, you see like all the potential benefits of physical activity. If people just would meet those minimum requirements, I want people to train more because there's a dose response relationship between the amount of exercise, physical activity that you do and health improvement effects. That goes beyond just, yeah, you can perform better because you're better trained. But this is just from like a health benefit standpoint.

But if we can at least change that stat from 20% of Americans hitting their physical activity minimums to 40%, can you imagine the public health benefit there? Yeah, the ripple effects. I mean, even if you look at the economics of it, on both sides of the coin, you have then a lot fewer people who are going to get sick. And then you have also a lot more productivity that's going to come from those people. The things that we know, like people are going to get sick here. I just mean, they're going to get sick here. I just mean,

they're going to get colds less often, flus less often. They're going to feel more energetic. They're going to find it easier to focus on their work. It would transform society. I mean, it sounds a bit sensationalistic, but I think it would. I would agree with that. And the one comment we get people with cynical views of the healthcare system is like, well, they don't want to prevent disease because then you lose a paycheck if you don't have to treat all these people. And, you know, I think that other industries where technology has come out and, you know, the problems that previously plagued industries were now solved. It's not that those industries crumble, just the problems change, what you're doing changes. And so I don't know

of any physician who's like worried about not having job security because too many people start exercising and, you know, therefore are preventing diseases of westernized society. Like I think if you pull doctors and you ask them, hey, should people be more physically active? Nearly a hundred percent are going to say yes, but then it gets into the nitty gritty. If you asked a secondary question like, okay, cool. So what would you advise them to do? And then they'd be like, uh, that's the problem, right? When we look at this, we infection, the person you go to there. Only about 10% of the primary care doctors even know what the current exercise guidelines are. And that's a representative sample. I think it was close to 10,000 primary care doctors they surveyed. And then of those 10% that actually knew what the exercise guidelines were, less than half of them were actually recommending it to their patients, which is again, a huge problem. I mean, you think that one of the

major barriers between people and being physically active is just even knowing what they're supposed to do, not necessarily like how to do it, like how to squat or like how to organize a program, like anything like that, but like, Hey, should I be resistance training? Like that is a very basic question that you could answer in the clinic. Should I be engaging in high intensity interval training? Or should I just walk? Like, what's the recommendation, you know? So that would be one of the primary barriers to being physically active among many others. Yeah, I mean, I have a couple neighbors. Well, there are a couple. They're both doctors. One is he more specializes in cancer research, but the other is primary care. And she's asked me even, you know, on some papers on high intensity interval training,

where she was like, this sounds good. Is this, would you agree? Just because she knows that I have more practical experience getting people in shape. So she is somebody who knows a lot of things that I don't know, but even in that area, she didn't receive much education on these things in school. So she's not sure. And she's also aware that, okay, so one paper says this, but you can find another paper that says that. And it takes time to really sift through it all and see where's the weight of the evidence on anything. Why do you think that is though? Why don't doctors learn more about the benefits of exercise, of resistance training, and proper nutrition when they go through school? I think probably the biggest constraint is just time spent in the

preclinical years, the first two years of medical school, and then your additional learning that takes place during your clinical years, third and fourth year of medical school. You're pressed for time to learn the basic concepts or basic pillars of clinical medicine from the didactic subjects of anatomy, pathology, pathophysiology, all these things. So you can kind of give yourself a framework to sort of understand disease processes. You're drinking from the fire hose for four years. It's not that it wouldn't be beneficial to layer in strong preventative medicine learning component where you learn about exercise and exercise recommendations and why and how to do it, counseling practices. And same thing with nutrition.

It's just I think if you asked most education boards that are kind of responsible for generating the curricula, they're going to tell you like we just don't have time, which makes sense to me. I'm not trying to be an apologist, but it makes sense to me because I know how long it's taken me to understand, get a sense of where we're at on different issues, you know, from basic stuff, like how much resistance training should the average person be doing per week? And what should that look like? Or like how much protein should someone eat per day? Like, I know how long it's taken to kind of get a sense of here's what the data says. Here's the limitations. Here are the caveats. Here's how you would explain this efficiently.

And so that's a long time to understand that. And I think probably what you'd find out if you asked some of these education boards, like why aren't we teaching this stuff? They'd cite time and then they'd say, and even if we had a little bit of extra time, it would be difficult to impress upon our students a usable knowledge base on this stuff. Do you believe that? No, but. I'm thinking like, I don't know.

I talk about a few books for most people. You know, it's very simple. The recommendations are very straightforward. You know what I mean? The recommendations are very straightforward. You know what I mean? But that comes from our year and I's current understanding of the stuff having been inculcated in this field for a substantial period of time. And so we feel like, no, it's actually pretty simple.

Like we could do this, right? But from an outsider's perspective, they're like, wow, this is daunting. I don't know we can do this. And further, how do we hire the staff to do this? Because we're going to need some specialists. I think that comes down to getting the right personnel in place and, you know, asking the right, you'd have to ask somebody outside of the organization, outside of the education board, for instance, to weigh in on this.

And so if they asked me, right, they'd be like, oh, this guy seems to know what he's talking about. And he's a doctor. I would tell them straight up, here's what I think every med student should know by the time they graduate. And then you could structure a very simple curriculum around that. That would be in addition to what they're learning. And I don't think that would be overwhelming.

And I think there's a huge potential upside there. It's just, I think if you had to look for answers on why it's not being done right now, you'd cite time and then just lack of knowledge by the people who are generating the curricula. Because if they were aware of the potency of these interventions, I think that they'd be hard pressed to leave them out. I mean, there would be politics. It goes back to the cynicism you were talking about. And while the problem could be more take big pharma, right?

Yeah, it would not be so great for their bottom lines if you had a lot fewer people with diseases who needed their drugs. However, it's like those companies would just disappear. They would just have to work on other problems. Yeah. So I think one of the biggest pushes you see now in the pharmaceutical industry is developing exercise memetics. So basically medications that give you the same benefit of exercise. And I think that you would just, again, it's not that all their problems go away, they're just different problems. And there are people who will not be able to exercise up to a level that benefits them clinically where they wouldn't need

any medication. And there will be a lot of people who won't do it. Exactly. So I think shareholders and pharmaceutical, like I feel like your money is safe. Yeah, I think I agree. There's definitely a political, some aspects there. And then there are bad people out there, no doubt. Sometimes they're very ambitious and they work their way up into very powerful positions. I think of somebody like Lyndon Johnson, if you just look into, just Google Lyndon Johnson racism and read about some of the stuff, some of these stories. These are not heretical stories. and read about some of the stuff, some of these stories. These are not heretical stories. These are like inauthorized biographies of the dude was an actual piece of shit, but he was an incredible hard worker and he was incredibly ambitious and you know, look where it took him. So there are those people out there and they run in the circles they run in and I'm sure big pharma has its share.

And you know, I'm not trying to sound, has its share. I'm not a person to say to look for conspiracies everywhere, but let's not pretend that conspiracies don't exist. Cursory review of history will show you that a lot of the biggest events in history that moves things one direction or other are conspiracies. Yes, people who are in power, who have money and influence work often together to make sure they maintain their power, money, and influence. And they don't want to give it up. Even if it would be the best for everyone in the world, if they just went and fucked off and died, they would never see it like that. They would never see it like that. They would fight tooth and nail till the bitter end to try to maintain

their position. So I do understand when people get like, yeah, you know, there are so many people out there that, or there are people out there who it's so against their self-interest to go for something like that. And because they can push big buttons and pull big levers, there is resistance. I think they can be overcome, but I do think there'd be a bit of that. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really

helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. I have a little bit more experience in the education process than most other medical graduates. So prior to medical school, I did a master's program at St. Louis University School of Medicine where I did clinical anatomy and physiology. And then I taught anatomy and neuroanatomy to the medical students. I was involved in the education process. And then I taught anatomy and neuroanatomy to the medical students that was involved in the education process. And then I went to medical school in Virginia. And so I kind of went through, I had two separate experiences in the clinical curricula,

as far as like how that was developed. You have basic scientists with PhDs who are teaching a lot of the preclinical classes, like anatomy, neuroanatomy and stuff like that. And then you have clinicians who are teaching, who come in and lecture on their specific field of interest or topic of interest in a course like pathophysiology, like a person who's, you know, really geeked out on liver pathology is going to come in and teach you about all of that when it comes to that section in the course. What's interesting is that, you know, if you were going to look at this from a cynical or conspiracy type point of view. Nearly every major health organization in the United States has a very clear and strong recommendation for physical activity. So this starts at the top with the 2018 physical activity guidelines for adults, for Americans rather, and that was commissioned by the AHA and the ACC. So the American Heart

Association, American College of Cardiologists and like the obesity society, like every acronym that's associated with a big organization has basically signed on to this. And then they all come up with their own kind of take on that. So again, the American Heart Association has its own, you know, slightly or stronger recommendations, the American Diabetic Association, they all have these recommendations that revolve around physical activity, and they all look very similar. But the point is there's all these papers and position stands that are published. And so then you really wonder like, all right, well, all these papers, all these recommendations are out there and they've been out there since 2008 when the first guidelines came out. If all these organizations fight, feel like physical activity is so important.

Well, why are we not educating the future doctors about this? And yeah, we didn't. I mean, my medical education in both those instances, there was no discussion of exercise. And here's how exercise can even affect these diseases from a very basic level. And then there was certainly no discussion of, and here's how you counsel people on exercise. Here are the recommendations and here's how you should communicate that. But there was specific education on how to identify barriers to or resistance to behavioral change, like how to address those, how to use motivational interviewing to get somebody to change their behavior, how to discuss side effect, like all those things are in place. So the processes are in place, right? But we're not extending that to, again, what I would consider

to be a very strong recommendation by nearly every health organization that we should be promoting physical activity, which I think is why you have that terrible statistic where less than 10% of all primary care doctors even know what the physical activity guidelines are, and less than half of them who do know what it is even recommend it. So yeah, it's frustrating. It's frustrating to be where I'm at here because I'm just like, I feel like I have the strong potential to help people, particularly doctors, like actually recommend this stuff. But I'm fighting an uphill battle because there's only one of me. So anyway, try to do some good. But yeah, there's there's a lot of that up to a mixture of just reactionary responses and incompetence. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so most doctors, you know, are really invested in their patients outcomes.

And so I think the best sort of communication is usually peer to peer with respect to like communicating ideas about patient care. And then again, we're fortunate now to have this robust amount of evidence that you can provide for like, yeah, and actually here's how physical activity works to either prevent or reduce the burden of disease from cardiovascular disease or cancer or brain, you know, all sorts of cognitive decline or quality of life just at a general level. And so upon seeing that, I think that you have clinicians who are more apt to be like, oh crap, this actually is a big deal. I need to be doing this. But, but yeah, the resistance is right now, if you just went and told your doctor, when you see them for your annual, if you're like, Hey, are you recommending everybody exercise?

And they'd be like, oh yeah, I tell them to exercise. You're like, well, do you tell them how to exercise? And he's like, ah, no, I don't have time for that. Well, you should, you know, they might dismiss that because they're like, you know, whatever. All right. This guy's in great shape, but whatever. He's, he's not a doctor, you know? And so that, yeah, there's some resistance right there, but I think the peer to peer thing is important, which is what we're trying to do here. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. I think there's also something to be said for just the, a number of ways, the general decline of people in our culture. I don't mean to sound too pessimistic, but I mean, just look at even,

it's not the majority of it, but it's definitely probably the noisiest element of it, of this whole body acceptance or body positivity, fat acceptance, where health at any size, like this is actually just science denial. It's completely just fake news. And it's extremely harmful because it's enabling people to just destroy themselves. Basically, it's just encouraging people to kill themselves slowly. Correct. Yeah. So 2014, the obesity society and a handful of other health organizations came out with formal like rebuttals to this idea. It's interesting that all of these organizations like vehemently reject like fat shaming, you know, or any sort of,

they don't want to do that. Okay. And they cite some evidence like why that's less effective or getting people to change their behavior. And like, and then they go through the obesity pathophysiology, but they talk about these medically healthy obese individuals. And so that's a person who has excess adiposity, carrying too much adipose tissue as defined by BMI and waist circumference being in excess of what we know is correlated with good health outcomes. But you have no other medical problems. So again, they call these medically healthy obese.

It is viewed at this point based on evidence that this is a transient state, meaning that you're just passing from like actually healthy to now you're about to be suffering from diseases of excess adiposity. You're toward the right of the bell curve, but you're moving in. Don't worry. Just give it time. Yeah. And so it's not that they say in a roundabout way, like we shouldn't be making these people feel bad about being obese, but rather we need to identify behaviors that need to be changed in order to prevent them from worsening obesity and then also then correcting the underlying pathology. And so that would be weight loss and physical activity. So. But that's one of those nebulous,

the fat shaming term, it's kind of nebulous. So what does that mean exactly? Is it because some people would say simply saying something like, hey, you should probably lose some weight, you should probably not be obese. Oh, that's fat shaming. Yeah. I mean, it's certainly. Oh, that's fat shaming. conjure negative emotions that make somebody resistant to behavioral change. On the other hand, some negative emotions can be leveraged to create behavioral change. So like fear, I mean, the fear of reality of what's coming. Yeah. So like we use this trans theoretical model of change. I know I'm getting in the weeds here, but this trans theoretical model of change where people are like, okay, pre-contemplation, I'm not ready to make a change in the next six

months. And usually people who are there, they don't have any insight into their problem. So this would be a person who's like it with respect to obesity. They're like, yeah, it's not a problem because I don't have any other health problems. So I fit at any size, you know, healthy at any size. And so you need to bring awareness to that person in a way where they understand it that like, Hey, yeah, you might not have any medical complications right now, but the evidence strongly suggests, for instance, that, you know, have a much higher risk of developing diabetes. You have a much higher risk of developing high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, having cancer. Yeah. Yeah. You go down the line, right?

There was a headline that was making the rounds just recently that obesity was poised to overtake smoking as the leading, that wasn't just the leading cause of cancer. It was like leading, that's under our control, basically. It's not just- Sure, it was a modifiable risk factor for- Yeah. And I think it was, now there's enough research to, it was 13 different types of cancers. Basically, you're at an increased risk of, a greatly increased risk of if you're obese. Yeah. Not only just developing it, but having a worse outcome, meaning that the cancer is more aggressive and more invasive and you just do worse with treatment.

So again, if somebody is in that stage where they have no awareness, the point wouldn't be, well, Hey, fatty lose some weight, right? Try to make them feel like a failure as a human, but rather bringing to light things that sort of, yeah, again, you can create fear in a way that motivates them to make a change. You can give them insight into the problem. You can use other emotional tactics like, hey, is everybody overweight or obese? You know, and if not, like, do you identify with being that person? Is that part of your social like sort of it? So you're trying to identify like, well, why is this person engaged in these unhealthy behaviors?

Because, again, if you lined up 10 people who are all obese and you ask them, hey, what should you eat? What's healthy to eat, right? Most of them are going to say, and we actually have some survey data to support this. Yeah, fruits and vegetables, lean protein, though most of people will answer that. It's not this lack of like formal education. But then when you go a step further and you ask them, well, cool, do you know how to prepare food? Do you know how to like measure portion sizes or whatever? You know, then you start to see this real like lack of education. And also even how to navigate social pressure and social events and how to navigate eating out just practical problems that people. Yeah. It's a lack of skills. So once you draw attention, get somebody to have some insight into their problem and you can move them from that pre-contemplative state to the

contemplative state where like, I'm ready to make a change soon. The way you get tip somebody from I'm thinking about making this behavioral change to I'm taking action now is skill acquisition. So giving people skills, practical tools to make the change. And so I think that the fat shaming deal is, you know, again, it's going to be different for each individual, but if you're interviewing strategies, if you're counseling strategies, ultimately don't produce this change from I'm not considering making a change in the next six months to I'm going to make a change soon. Now I just need more skills than I think that you're probably falling into some

fat shaming or basically just poor interviewing techniques techniques that's really not moving the needle here. So that being said, there's probably people that if you yell at them and tell them, hey, that they respond positively to that. That's just like coaching, right? There's some people who just want you to yell at them. You might feel weird doing that in public, but that's what they want. And other people, if you yell at them once, they'll never show up again. So I think there's a huge spectrum inter-individual variability there. Yeah. And what I think is most definitely not the solution is to encourage or glorify or celebrate obesity, which is what we're seeing in popular culture. It's definitely a thing. And why?

Well, I guess that's another discussion, but it's only a thing, but it's like a multi-pronged. But it's not only a thing, but it's like a multi-pronged, we see it in a lot of places across entertainment and I guess just popular culture in general. And trying to convince people that like, no, this is cool. This is beautiful. You should look like this. You see this 400-pound woman. She is beautiful. Like, no, sorry.

She's not. Yeah. I mean, I think people deserve to feel good about themselves, you know? Sure, but I mean, do I get to say that I don't get to just make up my age? I don't get to just make up. I don't get to say that most of her squatting is 365 for a couple reps. I don't get to say that I'm on your level as a power lifter. Like, there are just- Oh, you can just say kilos.

You just say kilos. You're like, oh man, he's so strong. Aesthetic is a thing. I'm sorry. There are things that are just say kilos. You just say kilos. You're like, oh man, he's so drunk. Aesthetic is a thing. I'm sorry. There are things that are beautiful and not beautiful. You can feel good about yourself in other ways, but if you're not beautiful, you're not beautiful. And some people are not, and some people are, and that's just is what it is.

Yeah. I don't take issue with people thinking, Hey, I'm happy. I like the way I look, for instance, like that doesn't bother me until that transfers over to like, yes, but you're suffering from a very real, very costly, very dangerous medical condition that needs to be addressed. So for instance, if I had a person with a BMI of 40, who's very obese and they're like, yeah, but I like the way I look. I'm like, okay, but I know I need to make a change for my health so I could be around

for a long period of time and enjoy my time on this planet. I'm like, okay, but I know I need to make a change for my health so I can be around for a long period of time and enjoy my time on this planet. And I'm like, you know, I'm cool with that. On the other hand, if the attitude, like I like the way I look and I don't want to change, then I know that I need to try to pull some different levers to get them to have insight into the problem. I agree that you can't just make up your own definition of like, yeah, I'm as aesthetically pleasing as this other person, you know, because that's society is going to ultimately determine that. And there's a bunch of different inputs, whatever. But if somebody is happy with the way they look, they don't hate themselves, like, cool, great. As long as you still have insight into, yeah, but I still have this problem

that I need to manage. So I think the problem with the kind of fat acceptance movement is when it precludes people from having insight into the issue and that prevents them making behavioral changes. That's when I'm like, oh, I wish this wasn't a thing, but I still don't want like every person who's suffering from being overweight or obesity to be like, I feel terrible about myself that I feel like I don't want that to happen. Yeah. Same. No, I agree. And I mean, in some ways, obviously, it's a reaction to extreme standards in the other direction, right? Where there's been so much pressure and just so much attention put on being thin, as skinny as possible.

And where it's like eating disorders are held up as examples of ultimate beauty in fashion and things where then young girls see that and they think like, oh, that's if you're not like that, then you're not beautiful. And so I understand that as well. We need to be somewhere in the middle, I think, between these two extremes. Yeah. The interesting thing with the, especially now with social media, you have these unrealistic- Social media should just be banned. It should all just be shut down. Yeah. Well, it's like you get, you have these unrealistic expectations due to, I mean, a lot of stuff is staged, obviously, and photoshopped, photoshopped and highly retouched and all these things. Right. But

people are getting rewarded for their incentivized to do so. And so then you have this person who has some platform where a lot of people see it. And then everything about the picture is fake, the whole thing. Yet they're incentivized to do that because nobody's saying, nobody's associating a negative sort of reaction to that, or at least not big enough yet. And so then susceptible individuals will see that picture,

like this is what I need to look like. And then engage in unhealthy behaviors to attain that look. That's, yeah, it's a huge problem. It happens with guys too. I mean, yeah, it's a huge problem. It happens with guys too. I mean, yeah, I don't know if I have a solution for that, but I agree that being somewhere in the middle. I think it could be more like healthy, right? Truly healthy.

Because that also means healthy would take into account body composition, not just BMI. I think body composition is a better way to look at it. And so if it was more of the standard of beauty was tied to health and that healthy is beautiful, I think that would be healthier for society. We could add that to the World Health Organization definition of health, just in addition to all the other things they mentioned.

Healthy is beautiful at the end. That's a nice tagline. I like it. And I don't think anybody would disagree with it. We live in a society where so much money is spent on just getting us to buy worthless shit, just knickknacks. At least here in the West, obviously, we have a hyper consumerism type of culture. But imagine if, I don't even know how much you'd really need, if a percentage of that, it's not just money, but it's resources in general. So it's people's time, it's their creativity, it's all the work that goes into creating the whole engine that just keeps us buying things. That's really what

keeps the economy going. So driven by demand like that. But imagine if a portion of that effort were spent on just educating people. Commercials were not trying to sell you on anything to buy, Commercials were not trying to sell you on anything to buy, but sell you on positive things to do. Almost like a PSAs, but we see so little of that. It's me rambling, but if you had people that work on the caliber that work on big political campaigns, for example, or the Madison Avenue firms that are selling McDonald's to 85 million people a day or whatever it is, if you had that level of creative people who really understand how to influence people working on something like this, I bet you a big difference could be made that way. There was a athletic training conference at Sloan Kettering. ESPN sponsored this and they put up all these lectures on YouTube. So highly recommend

anybody who's listening to this, check those out. I'm going to butcher what this person's actual job title is. It was like an app developer, but he does more than that. He was the guy, part of a team that was involved in creating all the notifications and sort of how you receive, if someone liked your pictures or DM'd you whatever, like the time scale for that to ultimately engage in more app use behavior. And so it's like, he's trying to basically hack your brain to get you to use the app more. And so he was like, yeah, so now we're working on not Instagram, but him as part of another team, using what they learned with that to get people to be more physically active. The idea is that you're going to use different incentives and different sort of social levers using a platform like that to get people to engage in more physical activity. And I think that's the same sort of thing. If you

had the same advertising budget as Coca-Cola does or political candidate- For one year. Just imagine one year. Yeah. For exercises, medicine, physical activity in general, I think you would see a big benefit. And just do what they do. Just gather up celebrities who are fit and make ads. And how many people would be influenced by that? Yeah. Yeah. But unfortunately those ads right now are, Hey, look how fit I am. Please buy my fit tea. Please buy my waist trainer. Coop tea is the technical term. Yeah. Just something that, well, here's the other thing, right? So you and I both are in the supplement game. All right. Dun, dun, dun technical term. Yeah. Just something that, well, here's the other thing, right? So you and I both are in the supplement game.

All right. Dun, dun, dun. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. Big supplement. Nefarious. Yeah.

But neither of us will engage in paying people to post a picture of our product with one, if they don't use it too, if they're supporting other nefarious activities like CBD oil or a fit tea, poop tea, as you said, or a waste train. You know, it's just, no, I cannot support that. Even though I know I could make more money if I just put an attractive person in front of this product and had them write something stupid. That being said, these individuals with these huge platforms are making conscious decisions

to support terrible brands. And I think that responsibility falls on them. It's like, hey, you have this huge platform. You could do so much good, right? Having the potential to do good, but then not to serve your self-interest. That annoys the crap out of me. I'm just like, why are you doing another CBD oil ad? This is terrible.

Or like, why are you promoting this band device to make your butt look bigger when you don't even work out? Like you've had this butt for your whole life. You don't use this stuff. You're just making people buy this crap. That's totally unrelated. No medical school class on social media. Had to be a better social media influencer. Ironically, it would be nice if that were something that more doctors cared about. Simply. And the reason I said it is because I'm assuming it's still the case to some degree even with the younger generations, but definitely with my parents' generation. It was like your doctor knew everything. Your doctor was the guru, whatever your doctor says you do.

And while that may not be so much the case now, I do think there still is. People are generally deferential to doctors and assume like, all right, this is a smart person. They've, they had to get through medical school and that takes a lot of work and a lot of persistence. And I'm going to listen to what they have to say, even though like we've been talking about, they may on the, on the, say on the, if it's on the topic of diet, nutrition or exercise, their advice might not even be great, but a lot of people would listen. And as much as I dislike social media and do think the world would be a better place if it all just got banned, but it is a great way. Speaking of Instagram, it's a great way and being an influencer, it's a great way to reach people and engage with

people and get people to like you and listen to you. And so, you know, this year I've been putting a lot more effort into my Instagram in particular, whereas previously I kind of just neglected it because I was being stubborn, like fuck social media. Dude, same. And it's a mistake though. That's why I changed it. And I'm using it in a way that I feel good about where it's not about just me like showing off abs or something over and over. Although I guess I do that a little bit to be like, it's more just like, all right, this dude's in shape. I'll listen to him kind of thing. But it's more about just sharing the educational stuff, the articles I write, the podcasts

I record, the videos I record. I like to get people into reading my books because there's a lot of great information in the books and the books are, they're books, they're cheap, they're simple. You know, you have all the information there. If we had more people who could influence people and who are willing to do it honestly and in a way that's much more helpful than harmful, it would be better for society in general. The reason why you don't have more like actual subject matter experts, including doctors, but even people in other fields engaging this way. I mean,

and some certainly are, but I see this as a two pronged approach. So particularly in medicine, the big A is a problem. It's fr So particularly in medicine, the big A is a problem. It's frowned upon in medicine, the big A being advertising. Oh, you're advertising or you're saying that you're a better doctor than this other person who also graduated from medical school and did residency or whatever. Is that what you're saying? That's generally frowned upon. So most doctors kind of are, that attitude is pushed upon them.

And so they're like, well, I don't want to market myself. I just want to let my skills speak for themselves. So they don't even want to come to the party. That's not becoming of a medical professional, even though I think that there's an important message to be shared. Right. And so that's one part. The second part is that let's say you are a subject matter expert in something and you're like, you know what, I'm going to commit, I'm going to start sharing information. And in this very digestible manner on a popular platform like Instagram or YouTube, the second biggest search engine in the world, I'm going to engage. But then it's super frustrating because you're like, you and I are both putting out legitimate information, right?

Like my YouTube videos have a reference section that's, it could have been a paper that we submitted, right? It's long, like we're directing people to useful resources. I try to make them entertaining. I know I'm not the funniest person or most attractive person, but we're trying here, right? The production quality is high. You are whatever you say you are, Jordan. There you go. I like that. But then, you know, and I'll get 30,000 views in a couple of weeks or something like that, or on an Instagram post, I'll get, if it's a good post, 2,000 likes, right? And I feel pretty good about that. But then I go see, you know, a picture of somebody way less clothes on than me. No caption. It's just like a purple heart, right? And it's just them and

showing their butt off and it's 50,000 likes. And I'm like, come on, man. Like I can't even. And then the next one is the poop tea, you know, cultivating the audience takes work, right? Finding your voice in a social media platform takes work. And I think that the discouragement that you get when you compare yourself to these other people who, for whatever reason, are maybe more marketable or have a bigger audience than you right now, like that's frustrating. I think that could be a barrier to subject matter experts participating in the conversation. But I would encourage you, if you are a bona fide subject matter expert and you have something to share and it can benefit people, like just start doing it because we have to drown out this anti-science movement.

We have to drown out this vapid materialistic kind of push. It'd be great if I got on my Instagram and started scrolling through the explore page and it was just a registered dietitian, doctor, strength coach, you know, over and over and over again with just good information. And if you have to post an ad pick to earn trust, that's fine too. I'm okay with that. But if 90% of your posts are about your body,

I don't know if you're doing it right. I think that's, yeah. So yeah, we got off topic there, I guess, but it's just, it's super frustrating. We'll keep fighting the good fight. We'll see what the future of clown world has in the wings for us. But you said something earlier that there's a dose

dependent response to exercise. And I thought it might be interesting to explain a bit more on that and what exactly you mean by that and how does that look specifically? Yeah. So when you go through, if you consider maybe there's like nine or 10 big sort of outcomes that you'd be looking at from exercise. So for instance, you'd be looking at things like cardiovascular disease prevention or treatment, cancer prevention, all cause mortality prevention, exercise and pregnancy and outcomes, exercise for older, like you're just going through like listing like here's like large categories, right? How does exercise either apply to this population or the specific disease? And so what you find overwhelmingly when you look at the data is we call it a dose-dependent response of the amount

of exercise or exercise volume that somebody's participating in and the health benefit effect. Or so for instance, in blood pressure, with respect to managing high blood pressure, there is a dose-dependent response of exercise volume and blood pressure lowering effect, meaning that the more you exercise, the more you can lower your blood pressure. So a recent study by Nacy et al. It looked at 391 studies. Half of the studies were on actual antihypertensive medications, so blood pressure meds, versus the other half of the studies were on exercise and the effects on lowering blood pressure. And so when you restrict the population that you're looking at to just folks who have high blood pressure, so this case is 140 millimeters of mercury systolic blood pressure,

whereas normal is 120 millimeters of mercury. It looked like the amount of exercise you did was the strongest predictor of the blood pressure lowering effect. And in fact, that's what they saw. So if you just looked at resistance training and its blood pressure lowering effect in people with high blood pressure, you see that it lowers blood pressure about eight millimeters of mercury. So if you're at 140, it'll take you down about 132. There was a time when it was thought that lifting weights might be bad for your blood pressure, right?

Because, oh, it must spike it. It must, you know, that's the last thing you want to do if you have high blood pressure. Well, that's true. So all exercise raises blood pressure, meaning that you can't exercise. There's no form of exercise that causes your blood pressure to go down from baseline. And in general, what you see is dynamic exercise, which would be like running, cycling, rowing, any sort of exercise where there's no significant isometric component to it, meaning that you're creating force and the muscles are staying the same length. Blood pressure goes up a little bit from baseline. If you had normal blood pressure, 120 over 80, your blood pressure is going to go to

150, 170, and it's graded based on how intense the activity is. So the more intense the activity is, the more muscle mass you use, the more force you have to produce, the higher the blood pressure gets. But in general, dynamic exercise doesn't raise your blood pressure that much, even though it does go up. You cannot exercise and not increase blood pressure. If it's isometric, so like a hand grip dynamometer, you're testing hand grip strength, or like the way they test like lower extremity strength is usually on like a leg extension

that's set at a certain angle. And you just like crank against that thing and see how strong your legs are. Both of those raise blood pressure the most out of any type of exercise. And the deal is because the muscle fibers themselves are creating force, they're contracting, they actually compress on the blood vessels themselves in the muscles. So you get this like mechanical sort of compression in addition to an increased heart rate, in addition to non-vital tissues having vasoconstriction to those tissues. So like, for instance, you don't need to create a lot of urine or absorb a lot of food while you're

exercising. So blood flow to those organs decreases, whereas the blood vessels in the muscles dilate. However, when you're isometrically contracting, you're actually clamping those blood vessels off too. People in hand grip dynamometer tests, their blood pressure gets into 300s regularly. But then like resistance training, like squatting, bench deadlift, press, stuff like that, that's a combination of dynamic and isometric. And you see values that are intermediate for the most part. So, but in any event, all blood pressure goes up during every form of exercise, not possible to do otherwise. It was thought at one time that blood pressure

would actually go up in response to resistance training, but that's never been shown in data sets. Never. So prior to last year, when this huge study that I just started talking about earlier came out, what we thought based on all the meta-analyses of resistance training on people with high blood pressure that we thought resistance training could lower blood pressure by about four millimeters of mercury. So again, if you were 140, it would take you down to 136, something like that.

And that is a very modest effect. So it was really hard to get jazzed about how good resistance training was doing. But so this new study came out, again, a lot more data, way bigger sample sizes, and said that resistance training on its own, no cardio activity or whatever, could lower blood pressure in those with high blood pressure by about eight millimeters mercury. It's doubling of the effect. And you're like, oh, wow.

Wonder what they found out there. They just looked at better data sets and restricted it to just folks with high blood pressure. And that was the same for endurance exercise. But when you pair those together, as your exercise volume went up, they found that exercise, when you combine both elements at a higher exercise volume, the blood pressure lowering effect is about 14 millimeters of mercury. So yeah, much bigger, which was interesting though, because that was greater than the average blood pressure lowering effect of the medications when restricted to the people with high blood pressure.

So in fact, the title of the study is exercise lowers blood pressure more than antihypertensive medications. So, which was interesting. And so this is really cool. And they go on and on about this dose response relationship. And you see this with the rest of those disease processes we were talking about, like brain health, cancer prevention, cardiometabolic disease, improvement in pregnancy outcomes, stuff like that, that the exercise volume is the biggest predictor of health benefit,

that the exercise volume is the biggest predictor of health benefit, meaning that you'd want to get people more active, which duh, right? Like if someone said, Mike, so I have two potential options here. Option one, I can train one day a week and I can go balls to the wall, RPE 10, the max intensity or every big lift. Just, just obliterate myself right crush myself or i could train four days a week at like moderate intensity what would be better and you would say moderate intensity four days a week exercise more don't be a dumbass and but now we have the data to support that so each one of these disease processes when again you look at big big data sets they all tend to have this dose response relationship between exercise volume and health improvement effect. So one of the biggest fights we've been having internally in the strength and conditioning community, people have been hanging their hat on

like this intensity thing, right? They're like, you don't need to exercise more, you just need to exercise with a higher intensity needs to be heavier, or harder. And I don't dispute that progressive overload isn't a thing. I'm not disputing that what we find is that this exercise volume tends to be perhaps even more important component than if you're working out at 70% versus 80%. Yeah, right now you're talking about improving health as opposed to maximizing strength or maximizing muscle gain. Those are different things, right? Correct. Exactly. So like if I was trying to improve somebody's one RM, yeah, sure. They're going to have to expose themselves to the relevant intensities that we know improve one RM. And a lot of those are very heavy. I mean, you're going to do some singles above 90% to get better at that. And then you're going to do most of your strength

work at what is classically considered to be high intensity, which in the literature is above 70%. But they don't say, and the literature doesn't say that for strength outcomes, 75% is better than 70%. That's too granular. Rather, they say, your training should be relatively high intensity. And then it's funny, because even in strength outcomes, when you restrict those to like a one RM or a five RM, that there's a dose dependent response between exercise volume and strength outcomes, and same thing with hypertrophy. between exercise volume and strength outcomes. And same thing with hypertrophy. And so the way I think about this is that exercise intensity tends to tell you

the type of adaptations that you're gonna make. So for instance, if you train at high intensities, let's say 75 to 85%, then you're probably gonna get better at doing sets of like five to eight. That's the intensity range, right? It's gonna determine the type of adaptation, whereas exercise volume is going to determine the magnitude of the adaptation, how big a robust the adaptation is. And that applies to performance and that applies to health.

And so, yeah, if I could impress upon people one thing, it's like, I think you need to exercise more, not less, you know, whereas other people are like, I'm worried about my gains though. And I'm like, you know, particularly if you need to lose weight or if you have cardiovascular disease or if you have something like that, I don't know that if I'd be worrying about the maximum amount of strength improvement you can have in the shortest period of time, I'd rather be worried about increasing your work capacity, for instance, and just physical activity baseline in general. But hopefully that made sense. I'm working on a new updated second edition of a book of mine that's meant for more intermediate and advanced weightlifters. And one of the chapters is going to be called the more for less method, because I think that summarizes that's what it takes to continue progressing as an intermediate and advanced weightlifter, at least in term. Well, I'd say in terms of gaining muscle and strength is in the end, you got to just keep working harder and harder for less and less.

Sure. Yeah. Diminishing returns. Absolutely. But what you're saying is that the people have to undergo more training to get less of an adaptation. Like those workouts that worked for your first year were now in, let's say in your third year, sure, you could maintain on them. Maintaining is pretty easy, but you're not going to, no, you're gonna have to work harder, period. you have to do more hard sets every week per major muscle group. So if you start off, let's say it's 10 or 11 or 12 hard sets per week per major muscle group, and that'll get you so far until it just doesn't work anymore. And in the end, the number one thing that's gonna make a difference is 15 hard sets per week. Yeah. More volume. Yeah. And you can't hack that

through intensity or hack that through intensity or hack that through intermittent fasting or anything else. You're going to have to work harder. I'm sorry. Yeah. There are no biological free lunches. Yeah. You have to put in the work and yeah, that's frustrating to people because they're like, I'm just working harder. It's like, well, I think you could work at the same level of hardness, but you just have to do it more for less. Yes. It's just not very palatable for many people. The more for less method. That's like the opposite of clickbait, right?

Like who's going to sign up for that? Yeah, no one's going to buy your program. They'll just be like, you know, no, man, there's this girl who's selling fit tea, who also happens to look very good, who's selling the less for more method. And that's what I want. Yeah, it's just testosterone boosting tea.

And I'm just going to drink that. Do you think if you like created like a top five list of just red flags, just for like social media followers, what do you think that would involve? Like, so for me, it would be like anything that's claiming to boost testosterone, like just automatically unfollow, block, it's not worth your time. Anything that's promoting like fit tea or poop tea, like again, block, unfollow, like whatever. CBD oil, I just, I can't like, no, just block and follow. Get out of there.

On that point, I'm surprised you feel that strongly about, I'm curious why, like, and I actually, I recently wrote a long form. It got longer than I anticipated going into it, but it was interesting to put together article. And also then I recorded a podcast on CBD oil. So I'm on the same page. It's just a fad. It's a sham and you don't even know what you're getting. That's the thing that I dislike the most about it is you have people, a lot of people out there, they don't have much in the way of moral scruples. And so when they can add THC into your CBD oil and you're like, fuck, I feel good. You better believe there are a lot of people out there who will do that. And that's what the research shows. That is what's happening. A lot of these products either contain no CBD whatsoever. So that's like one end of the spectrum

of the scam or on the other end of the spectrum, it's yes, it contains CBD, but it also contains THC and you may or may not be okay with that, but you could be developing other issues by what you think is like, oh, this is just natural and safe. There's no psychoactive properties. And it's not like I'm smoking weed. Like, yeah, actually you are. This is essentially an edible now. It's an oil. You might as well be vaping THC. Yeah. Yeah. So I think the quality, what people are getting over the counter is very suspect to me. So most of the studies done on quote unquote CBD oil or similar type products in the literature were done with Epidolix, the pharmaceutical, the prescription CBD cannabinoid product that is used as an adjunctive treatment for two very rare forms

of seizures, adjunctive meaning they're taking other medications and it doesn't work that well, but there's reduction in drop seizures. And so they felt found some benefits, very expensive. Again, it's not what you can get over the counter. And when they study that, this pharmaceutical grade cannabinoid oil for, you know, all of the things, the panacea of supplements, it lowers inflammation, it's better for pain, it's better, you know, all these things, it makes your skin better, like whatever, makes you sleep better, like anxiety, depression, when they actually study. Lose testosterone, sure, why not? Yeah, whatever, yeah, throw it in there, right? And there is a risk profile to it. So in fact, when you look at like anxiety like anxiety and depression makes it worse for some individuals. And that's, again, the pharmaceutical

grade. So right now, based on the evidence, I don't think you can recommend that CBD oil does anything useful. But then the risk gets much, much worse when you talk about the supplement companies, because they're not doing this highbrow type CBD oil production process where everything's CGMP certified or NSF or informed consent, like where everything's been validated, lab tested. That's not what's happening. They're just not. They're just putting it in a bottle with random concentrations that, again, not evidence-based. And in many cases, they don't even know where it's really coming from. They don't care. They're just buying it from probably out of China. Again, I haven't looked

into sources because I don't give a shit about it at all. As far as like, I'm never going to sell it. I'm never going to use it, but there's plenty of it coming out of China and similar to like protein powder. Sure. If we wanted to cut our cost of goods on our protein powder dramatically, we could just buy shit protein from China. Hey, FDA can't say it's not whey protein. It is. And there you go. Who knows what's in it? Similar with the CBD oil. It's just marketing. It's just bullshit. Yep, exactly. And these companies are new, right? So we don't know anything about them. And again, if you're selling this product, which already has dubious benefits and a significant risk profile, then I don't know if I think very highly of your brand just as a

general rule. But when you consider other products, one considered to be fairly reputable brands have had major problems with contaminations. So for instance, like nature's way, their vitamin C, there was a bunch of people who ended up with mascanizing and virilizing features because there was an anabolic steroid contaminating their vitamin. Yeah. So that happened a few years ago yet. Yeah. Oxy cut had acute liver failure cases. And these are again, like these companies had been around for a long period of time. That was a USP Labs, right? There was also Prozac. Yeah. And so you're like, okay, so the supplement contamination is not a new thing.

Just so people understand how that works. I mean, you know, because you're in the supplement space, but how it works is there are manufacturers out there who don't care what it is that they're bottling for you. You just have a shipment. So what you do is you would, and I know a big company, this is what they were doing. So they work with firms in China to produce the powders, whether it's going to be for pre-workout or what's going to go into pills. And they would be laced with, in the case of the pre-workout, it would have been some sort of meth type analog. And in the case of the pills, it could be like what we're talking about. It could be Prozac. It could be something that was causing liver failure. It gets all shipped over to a manufacturer and the manufacturer,

normally manufacturers supposed to test, like a reputable manufacturer would not be okay with that. They would not be okay with not knowing what they're about to put into bottles and what the labels say, all these things need to match up. Then there's testing that's done. And if the FDA were ever to come and audit them, they would be able to show that they're in compliance. But there are plenty of manufacturers out there who don't care about that. And they will put whatever you want in a bottle and they'll print whatever you want on a label. If they print the labels, all they'll just take labels and they'll just slap them on bottles. And so that's how it works. And so you can have weight loss pills that contain DNP, for example, unless you like dying in a terrible way where your cells just uncouple

and you basically burn up from the inside. Yeah. And so you're like, okay, so supplement contamination is not a new thing. So the fact that people are already on the bandwagon tells you what you need to know. And I agree with that point, like a testosterone booster. I tell people that's a red flag. So you have the person, yeah, if they're promoting it, unfollow, but also the company that's selling it, do not buy anything from that company, period. Because if they're willing to lie to you about that, and they know they're lying, there is nothing that you can take naturally that is going to significantly impact your testosterone levels in any way. There may be something like diaspartic acid might make a slight difference in some people for like two

weeks and that's it. But that's not a very sexy pitch. You're probably not going to buy my DAA now that I told you that. If a company's selling a testosterone booster, do not buy anything from that company. If nothing else, just to teach them a lesson, like vote with your dollars, right? And be like, nah, you're trying to scam me. And I don't care if your other stuff is good, but no, I disagree with that. And there are plenty of other supplement companies out there. There are a dime a dozen. I'm sure you can find someone who doesn't sell. And same thing with CBD oil. It's in the same category for me. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I think the interesting thing from a public perspective is people are like, yeah, but these supplement companies have my best interests in mind compared to the pharmaceutical,

big pharma, right? But you don't realize that the supplement company is a $43 billion a year industry. A lot of money flowing in there. It's in their best interest to keep the FDA out, to keep regulation out. And I think, yes, just like you said, speak with your dollar and let these people out of business. I'm sick of dealing with it. You know, something that annoys me also about CBD is this whole, like, again, it's a glorifying, it's this weed culture. And that if you smoke a bunch of weed, you're not a pothead. You're somebody who recreationally uses cannabis. Like now you're a fucking drug addict. Let's stop pretending. So that also just annoys me that it's like, takes things that are bad for you. It is one flavor of degeneracy. That's just dragging society down and euphemizes it. Like, it's okay. It's just using cannabis.

It's like, well, I mean, I'm sure there's some people out there that responsibly will you, but yeah, the idea like this every day for all of your needs, like that's yeah. Bad news. I think the other two things like a bone broth protein, I'm like, why are you making this? It's like, look, you need a high quality whey protein. And if you can't do high quality whey, then you need a high quality vegan protein source, which you get from soy protein isolate or protein isolate. If you, you know, if you're vegan and that's your, that's your jam, as long as the essential amino acid content is good, then you're set, but you don't need a bone broth protein. Oh, the last thing. Yeah. Number five. Perfect. Why didn't I think about this earlier? Keto specific products. Just stop.

I don't want it. Yes. Anything keto. God, please stop. It's a joke around the office that like, I'm just going to do a keto cookbook next, just for easy Lambo money. I saw this guy was like, I'm about to start keto and he posted a picture of his door key taped to his toe. And I thought that was pretty funny. One of the last supplement manufacturers that we use, we just recently switched because we had some issues with them. But one of the issues was the guy was trying to get us to expand our line. And I was like, man, I don't think I want to do anything else right now. So just stop asking me. But he's like, have you thought about like a keto supplement, like a keto oil specific? I think it'd be great for your audience.

Keto CBD oil poop tea that also boosts testosterone. I'd be glad about that. Yeah, yeah. Well, look, if Barbell Medicine starts going south, that's the product that's going to save our company. That's also a joke around the office is the blowout. What would the full sellout, what would it look like? It would start with me getting on steroids, of course. It'd have to start there. Yeah, you'd have to start there. Yeah, you'd have to do that.

And you're on a carnivore diet. Carnivore, yep, absolutely. That'd be also fantastic. And I could start shilling collagen protein. That's another one on my list. Oh, yes. Oh, man. Okay, so I didn't want to say it because I was like, I actually don't know if he sells collagen protein.

Then you'd have to say it. You have to call me a fraud right on my own podcast. I know, you'd be like, well, this is never getting posted. Guess what's getting edited. Yeah, right. So the collagen protein is interesting. So we actually looked into this because there was a couple of papers that came out. They combined collagen and epicateinins and vitamin C.

And what the papers suggested that these people with MRI diagnosed tendon, basically a loss of tendon area in the quadriceps tendon. These individuals took the supplement and then exercised the specific exercise protocol compared to controls that they grew back more tendon remodeling and repair. And so we thought, huh, interesting. Well, let's follow the research. So about 75 papers later, all we could find was that in a total of 16 human subjects, it appeared that collagen increased tendon remodeling put to no significant clinical effect, meaning that pain wasn't better.

Okay. Meaning that their function wasn't any better compared to controls, but rather on MRI finding, it looked like they had some increased tendon remodeling, which could have just been reading error or they were at a different angle or they were more hydrated or literally anything. But it didn't actually improve clinical outcomes. Maybe, you know, for the people who are more interested in like hair, nail growth or like skin remodeling, something like that. And there's no data in humans suggesting that the collagen protein does that compared to eating unless you were previously on a protein deficient diet. So it's like I get the selling points.

When you look at mechanistically, we know that what the body does with that collagen protein is that breaks it down into amino acids like every other protein. Yes, correct. It's not like you're getting little collagen molecules floating around your blood stream and attaching to your joints and rebuilding the cartilage and so forth. It doesn't work like that. No, you're just getting some proline, which you're getting from other completed protein sources. And yeah, so that's the irony of it is collagen protein is actually a trash to your protein. We're talking about like, why are we eating protein? And this is not just for people who are into exercising, but I would say even for everyday, even for sedentary people who benefit from a higher protein intake is because we want more essential amino acid. Oh, collagen protein sucks in that regard. So why exactly are we eating this protein? Oh, that's right. Because

it's cheap. It's literally garbage. It's made from like parts of animals that are ground up where they're like, fuck, what are we going to do with all these pig noses and like feet and cow hooves and tails and stuff? I know. Let's turn it into collagen protein and then use the fit T influencers to sell it to unsuspecting suckers. Yeah. Well, so that's the thing. It's so cheap to make, right? So as a manufacturer, you're like, oh, if this thing took off, I'd be crushing it. But it's so expensive on the market. I'm looking at it right now.

It's 65 bucks for two pounds of this trash protein that literally costs way less than whey protein or pea protein, isolate rice protein. Like, did you get any quotes? I haven't because,

well, when it first hit the market, I was like, this has to be bullshit. And then I went and looked into it. And also I have a, I'm sure you're familiar with examine.com, right? So Curtis Frank, who's the co-founder and was the lead researcher and writer worked on that project for seven years, wrote most all of the technical stuff on the website. He works with me in Legion and creating the formulations. He's worked with me since the beginning on that. And so I was able to go to him too, initially and be like, Hey, so what do you think about this? And he's like, yeah. And then, and then broke it down.

And then we turned that into like a long form article, but so I never even got quotes on it. What would the cost be at a decent MOQ? Do you know for collagen protein? I would guess it's got to be less than $10 a bottle. Oh yeah. We do two pound. That's our main protein size. It was like $9 and 20 something cents after labeling and everything, bottling. Do you remember the quantity? Was that a large order? Oh, sorry. That's making a thousand. Yeah. A thousand bottles. You bump that up to what is a hundred thousand bottles. Like you probably cut that number in half almost.

Yeah. So it's just so funny because originally I thought, well, let's look into it. Right. And then you look into it and you're like, okay, yep, this is trash. But then when you tell people that, right, you tell the person who's slanging collagen protein, you tell the person who's selling CBD oil that, hey, here are the limitations. You can't actually say what you're saying. This is actually fraudulent. You know, it's a personal attack. I would never be duped.

Me, I would never be tricked. And I was like, well, you're not a scientist. So I tell people when you're looking at a supplement company, like they should have scientific advisory board, or at least somebody who's like educated in this space and has some formal credentialing or track history that you can vet this stuff against that's ultimately advising them. But if it's just a person who's getting paid to advertise this stuff, you can't take their word for it. They have no idea what they're talking about. 100%. And I've said this a number of times.

So people who listen to a lot of my stuff won't go through the whole spiel again. But for those listening who have not heard me say this, creating supplements is incredibly easy. I mean, you could just go to a manufacturer and you could say, Hey, I know absolutely nothing about supplementation. I actually don't give a shit about it. I don't give a shit about people's health wellness. I don't care about exercise. I hate exercise. All I do is sit around and watch Netflix and smoke cigarettes and blast CBD oil a day. I want to make a pre-workout of this, that, whatever. What do you got? The manufacturer will say, oh yeah, here are shitty off the shelf crap formulations that are created by super

scientists. Don't worry. They're really good. And more importantly, they're really cheap. So look at these margins. Look at this. This is this pre-workout, $5 a bottle, you sell this for $50 a bottle, cha-ching. And you just kind of go on the line like that. So you can have supplement companies, they don't even know what they're selling and they couldn't care because they're just marketers. And there are some, I know a couple examples. I know one is a very big Amazon brand, probably 30 plus million dollars a year on Amazon and their stuff sucks. And the person behind it, he's not into fitness. He doesn't care about this stuff. He just likes the shekels. He just wants to make his gorillas and shred up on Instagram.

Yeah. It makes me feel bad just about, I like to think, Hey, I'm a smart guy. I could like figure this out. Right. But we're missing something. Cause we're not doing the 30 million a year or anywhere close to that. Well, it does come down to marketing. That's one of the ironies of business really is marketing is a matter of perception. It's not a matter of having the best product or service. It's about convincing people that you have what's right for them, right? And so what you'll commonly see, and this is in all fields, is you have in one circle here, you have people who have

true expertise and they really take their time to inform themselves and they probably have the best products and services. Then in the other circle here, you have the people who are the best marketers and who have a lot of money to spend on that and whose products and services are trash, but that allows them to use those big margins to play the marketing game well. And so it's rare to find overlap in that little Venn diagram. It's rare to find that sweet spot where you have people who have good products and services who also have the marketing chops to compete with the expert marketers who are not experts at anything else, even though they might pretend to be. So you're just saying that I'm never going to make it. That's what you're saying.

Not at all. I'm just speaking honestly that if I were you, I would view it as a marketing challenge. That's all it is. It's just a marketing challenge. Coming from the medical field and again, saying the resistance to advertise just because that's just, again, it's part of the culture where you're just like, you don't do that. It's been a challenge. That leaves that void then is filled by scum. Yeah, correct. So that's actually my motivation.

I'm like, well, if I can stamp out these other companies or at least take a chunk out of their profit margins, that makes me feel better. And then also if I can get into publicly humiliate their marketing shills on Instagram, then I feel good about that. It makes my day better. So it's a service to society. Right, right, right. All right, man. Well,

this was a great discussion. It was fun. I have to pee really badly. I feel like we can keep on going, but I feel like this is a good place to wrap up. So where can people find you? I mean, where do you want them to go to find you if they like this discussion? And also, do you have anything new and exciting coming up that you want people to know about? You can find us over at barbelmedicine.com. That's where we have all our articles and long form content. We also have a forum over there that we're actively responding to questions. So if you post on there, we can get to you. Also, we're on YouTube, Barbo Medicine's YouTube channel. And on Instagram, it's Jordan underscore Barbo Medicine. We also have a regular Barbo Medicine account. So those would be the best ways to contact us. We do have a couple cool new projects coming out. One is the Marvel

Medicine book. I'm hoping that comes out before the end of the year. We just got to keep editing on that. And we're also working on some online education courses that will be worth both CMEs and then CEUs if either fitness professional or medical professionals. So that'll be our another cool thing. Other than that, we're just out here chilling protein. I got a collagen protein coming. Yeah, right, right, right. No, no, gosh, you'd have to edit that out. Yeah. So anyway, it was really awesome to be here. I appreciate you having me. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for taking the time.

Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider supporting my sports nutrition company, Legion Athletics, which produces 100% natural evidence-based health and fitness supplements, including protein powders and protein bars, pre-workout and post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more. Head over to www.LegionAthletics.com now to check it out. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout and you will save 10% on your entire order. FL at checkout, and you will save 10% on your entire order. And it'll ship free if you are anywhere in the United States. And if you're not, it'll ship free if your order is over $100.

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