Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Dr. Spencer Nadolsky on Testosterone, Carbohydrates, and Supplements

Episode Date: April 29, 2015

In this podcast I interview Dr. Spencer Nadolsky from Examine.com and we talk boosting testosterone levels naturally (5:00), low-carb vs. high-carb dieting (12:25), supplements that actually work (26:30), and more... SPENCER'S WEBSITE: http://drspencer.com/ ARTICLES RELATED TO THIS VIDEO: The Definitive Guide to Intermittent Fasting: http://www.muscleforlife.com/the-definitive-guide-to-intermittent-fasting/ The Definitive Guide to Why Low-Carb Dieting Sucks: http://www.muscleforlife.com/low-carb-diet/ 8 Signs of Overtraining That Most People Don’t Know: http://www.muscleforlife.com/8-signs-of-overtraining/ The Definitive Guide to the Multivitamin Supplement: What Is and Isn’t Worth Your Money and Why: http://www.muscleforlife.com/best-multivitamin/ The Definitive Guide to Leptin and Weight Loss: http://www.muscleforlife.com/leptin-and-weight-loss/ How to Speed Up Your Metabolism for Easier Weight Loss: http://www.muscleforlife.com/how-to-speed-up-metabolism/ The Ultimate Guide to the Best Protein Powders: Whey, Casein, Egg, Soy, and More… http://www.muscleforlife.com/best-protein-powders/ How Much Protein is Needed to Build Muscle: http://www.muscleforlife.com/how-much-protein-build-muscle/ Which Form of Creatine is Most Effective? http://www.muscleforlife.com/which-form-of-creatine-is-most-effective/ 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.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Hey, it's Mike, and I just want to say thanks for checking out my podcast. I hope you like what I have to say. And if you do like what I have to say in the podcast, then I guarantee you're going to like my books. Now, I have several books, but the place to start is Bigger Leaner Stronger If You're a Guy and Thinner Leaner Stronger If You're a Girl. I mean, these books, they're basically going to teach you everything you need to know about dieting, training, and supplementation to build muscle, lose fat, and look and feel great without having to give up all the foods you love or live

in the gym grinding through workouts that you hate. Now, you can find these books everywhere you can buy them online. You know, Amazon, Audible, iBooks, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and so forth. And if you're into audio books like me, you can actually get one of them for free with a 30-day free trial of Audible. To do that, go to www.muscleforlife.com forward slash audio books and you can see how to do that there. I make my living primarily as a writer, so as you can imagine, every book sold helps. So please do check out my books if you haven't already. Now also, if you like my work in general, then I think you're going to really like what I'm doing with my supplement company, Legion. As you may know, I'm really not a fan of the supplement industry. I've wasted who knows how much money over the

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to the show. All right. Hey, Spencer, thanks for coming on the show. I appreciate you taking the time on a Sunday of all days. That's right. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, yeah. Sure thing. So let's just start with a quick introduction of who you are and just for the listeners don't know. And then we'll get into the fun stuff. if the listeners don't know and and then we'll get into the fun stuff cool yeah so i'm a actually a board certified family physician and also obesity medicine physician i grew up in michigan dad was a biology teacher and also wrestling football coach and i grew up with an older brother really in athletics and the short story is is basically my brother is really good at athletics and I came into high school right after he graduated

and went on to wrestle for Michigan State. I thought I was going to be awesome and I wasn't great at first. I thought I was just going to be good because of my last name. So I got into nutrition and exercise science. By the time I was a junior, I ended up becoming a state champ in wrestling and all-state football and all that stuff. But started off JV my freshman year, whereas my brother was already a state champ that year. You were walking in his shadow.

Yeah, and so I really got into nutrition and exercise science and that helped my dad was also a biology and chemistry teacher um and into nutrition as well and then um went to college wrestled that um originally went to play football at michigan state long story short i ended up wrestling as unc chapel hills's heavyweight for three years. Did pretty well and used the same exercise, nutrition science, to become good at wrestling and football, but wanted to use that information and spread it across the general population to improve their health.

So I wanted to go to medical school. My brother decided to go to medical school as well. Um, so I went to Virginia techs, uh, osteopathic medical school and, um, basically decided to use lifestyle as medicine. Um, so went to residency. So four years of medical school, then three years of residency is the training. And I did family medicine. And yeah, now I'm board certified in both family and obesity medicine and trying to use the exercise and nutrition science that I used for performance, but now for general population for health purposes. So this is where I am. That's awesome. And you're also, what's your role exactly at examine.com?

Yeah, so I'm their medical editor. I was actually like their director, the head honcho of them for a little bit, but it was too hard to kind of juggle that along with my clinical practice, so I just said, hey, why don't I just kind of do the medical editing, making sure a lot of their stuff is more clinically relevant as opposed to bench research type of stuff. So like, you know, for example, some random supplement that's out there may have some little pilot study in rats of some sort and showing some sort of benefit.

So I basically sit back and go, yeah, but is this really clinically relevant? If I had a patient, would I tell them to do this? Maybe like seven keto or something like that. Yeah, pretty much. So that's kind of what I do. I don't do as much with them anymore, but I'm still there as a medical editor to help them out in that regard. That's cool.

And I was thinking that for this podcast that, cause you know, I've talked to myself on a lot of different subjects and had a lot of people talking a lot of different subjects, but one area that we, I don't think there's ever really been a podcast on is just supplements in general. I've written a lot about it.

But so I thought that, you know, given your involvement in examining, just given your, your, your knowledge, um, especially, especially with weight loss, which is, you know, it's, it's probably, yeah, it's a bigger, it's a bigger button than, than, than muscle building, but those would be the two areas that people are most concerned with, um, that we would dive into some supplement stuff. Yeah, that's great. A lot of my patients ask about supplements too, so it's a good thing to have something,

some knowledge in that realm other than Dr. Oz's recommendations. Yeah, but he's a doctor, man. That's true. All right, so let's stop at the top here. So I get asked a lot about, I mean, just because it's pushed so much, there's just so much, there's

just so much marketing on it these days on, on testosterone levels or your testosterone levels, low raising testosterone levels, et cetera, et cetera. So I guess this is a two part question. One is, are there any legitimate natural ways to, to boost testosterone levels enough that is, you know, significant in any way? And the second part of that is, does that really even matter? In the bigger picture, even if you could increase your testosterone naturally by 10%, who cares? Or is it something worthwhile? Right. No, that's a great question.

In fact, that's something that my brother's an endocrine fellow right now, and I get a lot into endocrinology with my patients. One of the things on the Internet, there are guys asking, hey, I heard this supplement may increase my testosterone by 10% or eating more saturated fat, this and that. The short answer is that basically if you're within the normal levels, increasing by small percentages in the physiologic range probably won't matter in the long run. Right. The long answer is that it may depend. So if, for example, I did a natural bodybuilding contest last year.

test last year and I went from a testosterone of 600, which is right smack dab in the middle of the normal range. Normal range is anywhere from like 300 to a thousand. And so I was like right in the middle. I went from 600 down. That was at the end of my cut. From a clinical standpoint, just not eating, people that do intermittent fasting, it's not the actual intermittent fasting that's making their testosterone levels lower. It's the fact that they're intermittent fasting too much, meaning they're not even getting enough calories yeah to support their hypothalamic gonadal access meaning their brains basically not communicating with their their testicles anymore because it thinks it's

starving right which would be like too big of a calorie deficit or just too long yeah yep and it's not necessarily intermittent fasting people think oh you're you're crapping on intermittent fasting it's like no actually people it People think, oh, you're crapping on intermittent fasting. It's like, no, actually, people, it's working so well that they're just not getting enough calories overall. Yeah, I mean, my take on IF has always been, I guess, there's some research out there on the health benefits of fasting, but I would kind of argue that you can probably get a lot of those benefits from exercise alone. I don't argue that you can probably get a lot of those benefits from exercise alone. But I've seen with working with people that if people have trouble controlling food intake,

it can help with that because it's harder to overeat when you have only eight hours to eat all your food. Yeah, exactly. So from that standpoint, that would be a clinical benefit. If you're not eating enough and you have on the lower end of testosterone, just increasing your caloric intake, maybe scaling it back on your workouts, actually getting the sleep instead of five hours a night, getting the seven to eight hours of deep restful sleep. That may have a clinical impact of your testosterone and may increase your gains in the gym and

performance and everything like that. After about a month of going back to my normal diet, I went back up to about a 550 testosterone. That alone- Dr. Justin Marchegiani That also makes a good point that it's not like you permanently damaged your endocrine system by what you did because that's also something that's out there is this idea that if you don't eat a ton of fat, because low carb, high fat is very trendy right now. And if you're on a lower fat, not a low fat, but maybe something about 0.3 or 0.4 grams per pound of lean mass,

that that's not enough to support hormone levels. You're going to crash your endocrine system. You're going to destroy it. No, you're not. Right. No, exactly. And that's another thing. Yeah, people are like, okay, so say I had a 600 testosterone and they're like, well, if you eat a little bit more saturated fat or something like that, you could increase it by 10% or whatever. So I go to like a 600 to a 660 or whatever. Let's keep it benefit now. Let's say 700, the big 700. Yeah, so it goes to 770.

It's like that wouldn't even be like that wouldn't even do anything. You wouldn't notice any difference. Yeah. And to be clear, you wouldn't notice any difference in terms of? In terms of muscle gain, probably well-being, anything related to testosterone, androgen type. Sex drive. Yeah.

You're already at a high level. That little bit is not going to matter. And where, just for listeners that are probably wondering this, at what point would you start noticing it? If you're in that low to normal, and I'm going to say around that 300 to 400. Now, this gets a little bit more complicated because then you start calculating a free testosterone. Yeah, this gets a little bit more complicated because then you start calculating a free testosterone using sex hormone binding, albumin, all this type of stuff.

But just to keep it simple, just because I'm just playing readers that write to me because these are the things they ask. Yeah, no, so exactly. So if you're in that 300, 400 range and then you go from that 300 maybe to a, you know, and you're not eating a lot to going up to that 500, you're going to feel better. And it's maybe, it's possibly not even necessarily from the testosterone. It's many other things. It could be your thyroid, partly everything, just your energy mood from just eating what you want and not being so restrictive.

But yeah, that will have a clinical, you'll, you'll notice if you go from that, you know, slightly deficient range to a normal, a good normal range, you'll, you'll notice it.

Okay. And then if you're normal, what you have to start, you probably have to approach the top of physiological. Yeah. Yeah. That's why, you know,

like, I mean, if you end up using super physiologic, uh, exogenous why if you end up using super physiologic exogenous hormone, just if you took a bunch of androgel or something like that on top of your normal, in the normal range, then you go into the ranges above the thousands, then you'll probably notice something too. But in that physiologic range, at least as far as I know, I haven't seen any study to say it's made any difference.

Yeah, no, I mean, I actually have seen a study out of, you've probably seen this out of McMaster University, where this was basically the conclusion of the study is that, you know, with resistance trained men, the small fluctuations or differences in their hormones hormone levels uh anabolic hormone levels and it wasn't just testosterone but it's also a growth hormone igf1 it just it didn't make it like on the program the guys on the lower end of the anabolic uh profile i guess you could say gained uh just about as much muscle strength as people on the high like the difference wasn't significant right exactly but then you look at steroid studies and then so you start going beyond that and you start bumping up to 1500 2000 plus ngdl and now it really starts to make a difference yep exactly and that's i think it's a point to drive home to listeners that so these little things that you can do uh sure you know if you if you do if you're switching from a lower fat to a higher fat, yes,

you can, you probably will see a small increase and there may be some supplements out there that maybe would give you a small increase, but what are you doing it for? And this is something I know Spencer, cause I've seen a post of yours going from low carb to high carb. And one of my arguments against doing that is unless you have an insane metabolism and you just get to eat absurd amounts of food, you have to raise your fats. You have to sacrifice your carbs. Right. Exactly. And I mean, if you want to speak on that real quick, cause I know that you, you had written a whole thing on that. Uh, why is that bad? Like if you're weightlifting, let's say you're, you're a guy or a girl and you're lifting heavy weights, uh, three to five times a week, you're doing a bit of cardio and your goal is to,

you know, the same goal as everybody else. You want to, you want to be muscular and lean. Why is going higher and higher in fat and lower and lower carbs counterproductive unless you have some strange body problem that requires it? Right, exactly. I think with the whole low-carb, high-fat push for those with more of a metabolic syndrome type picture, those with insulin resistance who seem to have some improvements with their metabolic profile with going low-carb, that's spilling over into the healthier crowd who could really benefit from the carbohydrates to fuel their workouts. I mean, you don't need carbohydrates to do low rep, high weight intensity exercise. But once you start getting into that glycogen type workouts, you know, kind of like a CrossFit workout, you're

going to see a big performance decline if you don't eat the carbohydrates. Yeah. So I've noticed a difference. You've been training a lot in the, probably with about anywhere between 75 to 85% of my one rep max. So it's like, it's heavy, but it's not necessarily, it's not a power lifting type of program. And so I'm not really into the really super high rep stuff yeah but even even working in that four to six five to seven six to eight rep range uh it it it pulls on glycogen because if my carbs are low i mean if i carb you'll feel it yeah if i carb up i could i could squat 30 pounds

30 more pounds just by eating a bunch of carbs the night before. Yeah, isn't it amazing? And so, yeah, the whole thing is to use it for diabetics, people with pre-diabetes, insulin resistance, and that type of thing. So now it's spilling over into, hey, well, maybe we should use this for athletes and healthier folks. And there is some data for that. Maybe it does help some certain people. And there is some data for that. Maybe these carbs are fueling me and it's, and I'm actually leaner than I was halfway through my bodybuilding cut at a higher weight.

So, um, yeah, exactly. So coming back to the testosterone then. So if there are, let's say there's somebody that they go get blood tested and they are on the lower end of,

of normal and they want to do something about it. What are some general things that they should look into? It could be dietary or nutritional or supplemental. Obviously, you can't make recommendations unless you know what's going on with the person. But what are some of the common things? Here's your checklist. You need to check these things out because these are some ways that most people can naturally increase testosterone in a significant way. Yeah. So I have a lot of patients that are like that. It depends. So if it's a younger guy that's

like that, I really look into how many calories they're eating, just like what we talked about before. If they're at all trying to restrict themselves, we take a break from that for sure. If they're at all trying to restrict themselves, we take a break from that for sure. The other thing is with younger guys is going out and partying a little bit. Alcohol. Alcohol, but not only that, but also just not sleeping, just having disrupted circadian rhythm. It's all over the place. They sleep in one day until 10, and then they're up the other day going to work, whatever. It's all over the place. They sleep in one day till 10 and then they're up the other day going to work, whatever.

It's all over the place. So we try to talk about that. The other thing is they may be doing too much exercise. They're killing their body. They're going out and doing long runs and then all of a sudden they're going to a CrossFit thing and then they're going to

doing some high intensity interval training later in the day type of thing. And they're not even letting their body rest. They're not sleeping. They're working out too hard, and they're not eating enough. That's pretty much what I see with younger guys. Now, for olders, folks, those in their 40s, 50s guys, what I'll see a lot is development of something like sleep apnea is that they've gained a little bit too much weight and now they're snoring.

Their brain's not getting enough oxygen. They're not actually getting into those into the deep sleep. And the other thing is along with that, with the excess weight there's a lot of causes of the low testosterone. Adipose tissue turns the testosterone into estrogen. The other thing is with a little bit of that extra fat, the adipose tissue, there's inflammation going on at the site of the brain, which is communicating with, you know, the testicles. So there are a lot of different things. So you look at it.

So younger guys, usually they're doing too much exercise, not eating enough, not sleeping enough. For the older guys, they just need a healthier lifestyle. So anything, you know, if they need a sleep study and get a CPAP, that's one thing. If they just need to go from their standard American junk food diet to more of a lower-carb Mediterranean type of diet, that can help as well. Just having them lose some weight, exercise, almost like the opposite of the younger guys, doing too little versus doing too much. Those are pretty much the standard. Of course, if they are really in that pathologic low testosterone range, you want to work that up, of course. If they're on the lower end of normal

and some doctors may be pushing testosterone. I see it all the time. It seems to be such a thing these days. I don't know what the deal is. Maybe it's just easy money because it's such a big it's like a hot button for for so many it is and what i've seen is that these patients end up on it for a long time and then i why'd you get started on this you could have done this naturally and they go i don't know the doctor pushed it so then you have to wean them off which is miserable because your body is not producing it anymore but you can you can restart them if it's not been too long and they weren't abusing it so

um yeah that's pretty much it with in terms of sub i don't like supplements for testosterone boosting in fact men's health got a hold of me a few months ago and was asking me about it. They wanted to, they were, some company had their, they wanted you to, to plug one of their, I think so. It's better than steroids supplements. It's, it sounded kind of like,

like that. Yeah. They, they, they pushed the biggest bullshit products ever. And so I was, I was kind of like, wow,

you're going to be mad at me, but there's really nothing, you know, nothing out there that's really that great you know obviously there are pharmaceutical things that you can use that aren't testosterone that that work really well and i use them a lot with my patients if if they were in that um if they are in that low normal and they need to need some help so but supplements not not so much would you say something like if somebody has a vitamin D deficiency,

is that relevant? Or vitamin mineral type deficiencies? Or like a zinc deficiency? Or it just doesn't happen? Yeah. If you're deficient in vitamin D, going into the normal range, which isn't that hard if you get a little bit of sun and supplement with like 2,000 international units.

That's been shown in some studies maybe to be beneficial. Same thing with zinc. If you're working out hard and you are zinc deficient, that is definitely something. So taking a multivitamin daily may help. At Examine, we talk about being more targeted towards the multivitamin mineral supplementation as opposed to just shotgunning it. Yeah. You know, kind of looking at that.

It's hard. You can test for zinc and all that stuff. I tend to just, if you're working out hard and sweating a lot, it may not be a bad idea to supplement with that. But, yeah. Cool. Yeah, awesome. One other thing I just kind of just came to as you were talking is, is there any correlation between body fat levels and testosterone production?

So, obviously, as you were saying, as body fat levels rise, we know that that depresses testosterone levels. But so we start getting to the lower end though, is, uh, is there where you can be too lean where that is going to mess with your testosterone production? Or is that not really an issue unless you're like, for instance, um, I, myself, I kind of tend to stay around probably 8% body fat, give or take kind of depends on, you know, how much, how I've eaten on a week to week basis. Cause little things matter. Um, I, I mean, I, I don't get blood tested cause I don't really have any reason to,

although I could just do it for fun. Uh, I don't have any, I don't have any symptoms of low testosterone, but I know that there are, um, it's just something I see out there in the random chatter of the fitness space of that this idea that it's just unhealthy to be under 10% body fat for any period of time. And I see that more as an excuse of people that are too undisciplined to do it. But what's your take on that? Yeah, so actually there is a mechanism and it may and the threshold may be different for different people. So, like, for instance, my brother, I don't know if this is from epigenetics or what, from a young age, he's always been lean, like very lean, with a good six-pack and everything like that. And he's gone up and down with his testosterone just when we tested it for whatever reason due to probably sleep and residency and training.

But like other people, if they were that lean, they may not be able to support testosterone levels. The mechanism is leptin. I'm sure you've heard of leptin. Sure. The leptin is secreted by your adipose tissue. So if you get down to a low level of body fat, your leptin is going to be very low. there's a mechanism with the brain and your hypothalamus and pituitary and communication to your testicles that if you don't have any leptin, there's this decrease in that permissive effect of that communication. So the other thing is, though, people have been dieting so much to get down to those body fat levels,

and so your current caloric intake dictates how much leptin you create as well, too. So it's kind of a... And carbohydrate intake is relevant also. Yeah, exactly. So you have a few things here kind of playing a role into it. Those that maybe have been sitting at a low body fat and kind of maintaining that, they may be fine. Yeah.

I've also kind of worked my calories up to, I haven't really tried to push them beyond 3,000 a day, but maybe my average intake is 2,800 a day. I'm 190 pounds. Yeah. So that, you know, you may be, you're probably fine. Someone else maybe if they went down to that level, they may not. So, yeah, it is true. So the thing is, the people that are like contest ready, shredded lean. Well, they may not. Yeah, it is true.

The thing is, the people that are contest-ready, shredded lean, if someone can maintain that Without drugs, no, they can't. I've tried. I've tried to make, I've gotten down to, I mean, it's hard to really know because I didn't get Dexed, but where there's not much left. You can't pinch anything anywhere and i tried to maintain that for about a month and i found that my calories i couldn't get them over 2400 without gaining fat i didn't feel good uh it just didn't work exactly and so you know if they're maintaining that it would be questionable whether they're using exogenous hormones to

maintain i mean i can't say because my brother looks pretty good and maintains it with a healthy range, although he is at the lower end of normal a lot of times when we test his testosterone. But, you know, other people, they may have to maintain a higher body fat percentage in order to keep their hypogonadal pituitary axis maintained there. So, yeah.

I guess the takeaway there is if you want to stay really lean and you are maybe experiencing symptoms of low T or you're worried about it, then you can go get blood tests and find out where you're at. And then, like Spencer was saying, you can, I mean, you can slowly increase calories, uh, called, you know, known as reverse dieting, where, um, you are basically the idea is you're trying to speed up your metabolism, trying to get your body to, uh, just require, burn more energy without putting on fat. So that's kind of like how you can work your calories up and, you know, but I guess, I guess Spencer, some people though, their bodies just might not like

being at a certain body fat level huh yeah exactly and you know i don't i don't know if it's truly been you know teased out of yeah but i i think you know there's there's definitely epigenetic type of things even maybe things that your your your mom did while she was pregnant with you all that type of stuff it's it gets pretty pretty crazy when you start diving into that stuff. Yeah. All right, cool. So that's testosterone. Let's now talk a little bit about building muscle because, of course,

muscle-building supplements are – it's fat loss and muscle-building are the two. Those are the ones that the vast majority of money are spent. So let's just go right to it. Are there any supplements that actually help directly help you build muscle? Yeah. So pretty much the standard that I talk about and pretty much everybody talks about is protein, whey protein,

leucine, branched chain, amino acid type things. Yeah. Um, and creatine, beta alanine in a, in a distant,

not a, well, maybe a close, yeah, kind of an indirect, right? Cause it increased, can increase your workload of a distant, well, maybe a close. Yeah, kind of an indirect way. Maybe a close. Because it can increase your workload of your workouts, which if you push yourself, then the more weight you add over time, the stronger and bigger you're going to get.

Exactly. So whenever anybody asks me about supplements, my go-to is generally whey protein. I know the vegans tend to get mad at me for recommending that. What do you think about a brown rice pea blend for them? Oh, yeah. I think it's great. The thing is, a lot of them, in fact, one of my doctor buddies who's a vegan, he's a bariatric surgeon, smart guy, really into nutrition. He just doesn't think people need that much protein you

know and it's true i don't think people need it but if your goal is to to gain muscle and if that's that's your goal not necessarily uh longevity for life you know just trying to see how long you can live which you know but there's but you can see an argument that like it's kind of – there's quality of life. Hey, if I make it to 90, I'm happy. Anything beyond that, if my body is still working well, then I'll stick around. Right. But I want to enjoy myself as well. Exactly.

So I mean if your goal is to build muscle, you need to hit that leucine threshold which you know of course um dr layman and lane norton and all those guys have looked into that threshold and you need some pro you need good quality protein and that's i think that's number one so that's so that's the advantage of way then it's because very leucine rich right yeah i mean one of the advantages i guess yeah exactly um and and that's generally my go-to if somebody says what supplement do i take it tends to be whey protein because of first of all the convenience i mean people yeah people that don't have very good eating habits we try to focus on that first but honestly it can be one of the easiest little quick things it's not even i don't even consider it a supplement i think i think of it as food.

I kind of like it. Because you have it at the office. If you're at your practice, you're busy, you know you need to get... You haven't eaten protein in however many hours and you don't want to have to eat 100 grams of protein and meat at dinner. Yeah. Exactly.

I love meat, but I don't want to force feed myself. Five ounces and I'm done. I'm fine. I have a shake a day. That tends to be what my first recommendation to patients is. They all have jobs unless they're a housewife. They're still taking care of their kids. That's a job. You know that. If they're taking care of their kids too.

But if they're in the office, someone, whatever, they're running around, they got to do this and that. They don't have time for whatever. It's always easy to have a jug of protein or just a shaker bottle with some powder added into it to add some water later.

If they want to do the ready-to-drink shakes, the more expensive, whatever. I always question the quality of the protein. I do, too. I don't trust any of them, to be honest. Yeah, and some of them kind of – I kind of like the taste of some of them, but then they have weird aftertaste. I don't know. Exactly.

I don't. Every week now it seems like there's some new story that's breaking about how shady the supplement is. Oh, it's. You almost can't trust anybody, and I really don't trust those ready-made drinks. It's, yeah, it is, it's hard to trust anybody. You know, and then like the housewives, so I have a lot of patients that are housewives. They, you know, they don't have to, they're taking care of their kid. They're trying to do this and that.

They're running errands and things like that. their kid they're trying to do this and that they're running errands and things like that it's easy to throw together a shake you know and without having to cook a meal and while they're taking care of the kids and things like that too so that's whey protein you know you can get a blend as well but whey is generally what i i recommend first um and then pretty much i go to creatine um which is pretty much standard and one of the most studied supplements out there. Yeah. And there's various mechanisms, like you said, with the beta-alanine and creatine. It can help you work out harder.

There's also some cellular swelling that may help with hypertrophy in and of itself too. So those tend to be my go-to yeah same and just uh so listeners in case you're wondering in terms of uh dosages creatine the normal would be five grams a day right spencer yeah and uh beta alanine about the same yeah yeah there's a yeah a couple grams you know you could do i do it generally once a day forAlany, I generally do like a few grams just in my morning shake. Sometimes I do another one after my workout. Right. I hate the tingling, but once you do it.

I like it. Really? You like it? I don't know. I'm a masochist. It doesn't seem like I need to like rub my skin, like my scalp. I'm like, ah. Yeah.

But it goes away. Once I've been doing it chronically, it goes away. Yeah. I still get it. I mean, I have, I guess, I don't know, I guess I have about five grams a day because I have a line of workout supplements. And in the pre-workout, there's five grams of beta-alanine per serving. And I still get it every day.

Yeah, you get a pretty high dose all at once then. That's why. Yeah. Oh, true. Yeah, if I were to cut that in half and then. Yeah, if you have like a yeah you know the thing with beta alanine i'm i'm not sure you know i take it every day along with creatine in a way but um you know some people question the the safety and everything like that i

don't see why it wouldn't be safe i i don't have any reason to believe it's not safe along with creatine just the thing with creatine is if you... I mean, creatine is so studied at this point. How can anyone say it's not safe? I don't know. I mean, the thing is if you see your doctor and you don't tell them you're on creatine and you go and get a... Well, sure, and you're creatinine levels.

Yeah, you get a basic metabolic panel. One of the numbers is the levels of creatinine and that looks at basically how well your kidneys are filtering. Well, one of the byproducts of creatine it'll switch into the creatinine maybe make your levels of point one or two higher than um what it would be without the creatine add that to the fact that you are working out and sometimes that can increase it and then also having a little bit more muscle that will have you'll have higher levels it may look like you have uh decreased functioning kidneys when in fact it's just it's it's it's not real it's just because of your supplement so i've had

people write me uh saying hey my doctor says i'm i have kidney disease because i'm not asking you tell him that you saw them with creatine do you yeah how much protein you eat does he know you're lifting weights five days a week? Exactly. Make sure. Oh, no. And then he comes back like, oh, never mind. Doctor says it's fine.

Yeah. And the other thing, yeah, you may need to print out some studies for the doctor because they may have never seen that. So if they're not used to patients who are big lifters and supplementers, they may get scared of that. So something to bring up with your doctor if you do those things. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. All right. So now let's talk about fat loss. Um, what are, let's say like, what would be your go-to supplements for, for helping with fat loss? And, and also of course, I mean, most of the listeners are pretty clued in on, on, uh, the basics of like energy balance. And yeah, of course you're dieting correctly. You're in a calorie deficit. You're, you have your protein intake where it needs to be so you can preserve

muscle. You're, you know, you're not beating yourself to death as exercise, but you just want to accelerate fat loss. Yeah. So my, so I'll just, I'll reiterate that it's again, whey protein is one of my go-tos simply for the lean mass preservation because of how crucial that is. And so, like as you said, they're going to need to be in a caloric deficit. I want them having that strong leucine-rich protein because of how well it helps you retain that lean mass. Beyond that, though, I'm a big supporter of caffeine. The data behind caffeine is very good, not only for a little bit of a fat loss, but just performance. So if you're

in a caloric deficit, you're going to need a little bit of extra help in working out. So for my bodybuilding competition, I got down, I think I was down to like 2,200 calories at one point. I mean, I'm

used to, right now, I'm getting 35 to like 4,000 calories a day. Wow. So, like, you can imagine that I was just so tired, but the one thing that was able to help me was a little bit of caffeine. Yeah. Are you going to be burning the fat peripherally, meaning actually helping you burn the fat, versus something centrally acting, meaning decreasing your appetite versus actually increasing your peripheral burning? So, you know, there are some things out there that can help. I mean, the caffeine may have both. Maybe it will. Some people think it does help with appetite. Well, I guess there's like, what, there's some research on that if you raise adrenaline and noradrenaline levels,

that that alone can decrease appetite. Yeah, exactly. So that's why, that's thought to be how maybe caffeine helps. Obviously, you know, getting more fiber and helping you fill up your stomach, glucomannan supplements and that type of stuff can help with your appetite. From an actual peripheral fat-burning standpoint, things like that Dr. Oz pushes, things like raspberry ketone, I don't know. The data is not very good behind that, you know, green coffee bean.

Yeah. Garcinia cambogia. Yeah. Those types of things. You know, the, the effects are modest when you start looking at human studies. Green tea extracts pretty good.

And that's one of the more research things when they pile all these things together. I, and that's one of the more research things when they pile all these things together. I tend not to use a lot of them in clinical practice because of this. So, like, there are a few drugs that are used for obesity that have a lot of clinical data behind them, and they're potent. You know, I got some people losing maintaining a hundred pound weight loss over a few years um whereas like a supplement i would probably you know use that maybe in bodybuilders yeah at the end of the you know when they have the last few pounds to lose

maybe and anything can help so like you'll you'll him being or something like that yeah what about something like sinephrine you know that can have some of the same centrally acting um appetite uh suppression as well um and some of that type of stuff and that 5-htp seems to be good for that as well a lot of people that wouldn't take it with food yeah and so actually there are some obesity doctors that um use that along with something like fentermine, which is another centrally acting agent to help with appetite. They hit in a few different receptors in the brain. So I'm careful about supplements that have those mechanisms because they're not studied as well. supplements that, that have those mechanisms cause they're not studied as well. Um, and you know, as a physician, I gotta be careful about, um, what I recommend. Cause you know, and like

you said, you never know what you, what you get when you, when you recommend supplements. That's also a problem. They go out and try to buy it and it's, you know, unfortunately if they get lucky, it's just like, they're not getting something harmful, but it's just rice flour. Yeah. Well, so yeah one of them there's some reports of supplements that are reported fat burners having um subutramine in in it which is a weight loss drug that was taken off the market in 2010 due to cardiac um uh adverse adverse effects and events. So I'm very careful about the fat burners. I pretty much stick to caffeine.

5-HTP does have some things with especially carb craving and probably some of the central appetite suppressing effect too. And then, you know, I have used yohimbine and forscolin in the past during my bodybuilding competition right at the end because I was like – Also, it's that last stubborn fat at such an age. Yeah, and so it's like, well, you know, these aren't, they're the ones that tend to have the most evidence behind them as far as I know for fat burning. And I was like, well, I'm doing my diet pretty much as well as I can.

I need, I'll try anything as long, you got to be careful of the yohambine though. Some people get, due to its various adrenergic effects you've got to be careful of your blood pressure and other cardiac stuff. But if you use it in safe doses, if you do it I would work with a doctor that knows how to use it. But just be very careful because I've seen some bad things happen with people take too high of doses of that. Yeah, yeah.

I've written about yohimbine and I think the standard dosage is like 0.1 to 0.2 milligrams per kilogram of weight. But start on the low end of that. Assess tolerance and don't abuse it because you have, like you said, and I rarely hear from people that they get any adverse effects that some people just get a little bit jittery and then just don't take it then. Yeah, exactly. So that's, that's kind of my thing with fat loss. It's biggest thing is the lean mass retention.

And that's why I say the whey protein, even though people don't get excited about that. But once you get down to that level and you just want that extra little bit, you know, I talk about caffeine, yohanbein, fourscolin. Yeah, I mean, that's funny. The fat loss product that I have, so the formulation is you have sinephrine, naringin, hesperidin, which those are all, the naringin and hesperidin are in the same fruit, the bitter orange extract. And there's research on that increasing basal metabolic rate, 5-HTP, salicin for the blood flow effects, and then 4-scolin.

And then hortanine also is different. um, Salison for the blood flow effects. Um, and then for skull and, and, uh, and then hoarding, you know, also is a different, but you know, the, what you're talking about are like, that's what we kind of narrowed down as.

All right. Well, there, there is enough research on these to where there's a very, it's very likely that it's going to help. And we've gotten a lot of good feedback, especially from experienced bodybuilders, like what you're talking about,

where you're, you know, they know what they're doing and they know how their body responds. They know what, how to, how to diet. And, uh, so, you know, where they'll come back, like the, probably the most common, like from those types of people like you is when you, when you put it all together with caffeine, we left caffeine out of the formulation just because I like some coffee. Yeah, seriously. That's why, I mean, I always hated that about fat loss products, even if the formulations are okay, that I didn't, I don't want 200 milligrams

of caffeine from pills. I want pre-workout. I want, I mean, I drink coffee. I wish I liked it, but, uh, but yeah, I, I've, I've heard from quite a few people that were like prepping for shows and stuff where they noticed that with the supplementation with caffeine, they saw about maybe about a half a pound extra weight loss a week, somewhere between a quarter and a half pound extra weight loss a week, which makes sense in terms of when you, when you look at, you know, the numbers of what those things should do. Yeah, exactly. Cool. All right. So, so then I guess just to, to, to recap people. So, you know, cause people go on Amazon, they go look for fat loss products,

and they're going to see Garcinia cambogia. They're going to see – and again, that's like – you look at the research on that. It's just not very good. I mean I don't think it's enough to sell it at all. No, no, no. And green coffee extract is also very popular. Would you say don't waste your money on that or wouldn't waste wouldn't waste the money you know or yeah or raspberry ketone

raspberry ketones um carnitine kind of had its 15 minutes of fame for fat loss yeah i mean it it would make sense but it just doesn't work, it's one of those things. You know like Iodiamine, you feel hotter, but it doesn't help you lose fat. Yeah, exactly. Which is actually funny that a lot of companies, they include Iodiamine in their fat loss supplements just so you feel like, oh, this must be doing something. Yeah, I think so. I think that's why they put a lot of caffeine in it. Pre-workouts, a lot of times have a lot of that.

I think it's similar to – which actually caffeine is one of the best things for – Yeah, I love caffeine. Thank God that caffeine doesn't destroy you as long as you don't abuse it. Yeah, no. It's one of the most well-studied and best things out there for workout performance and things like that. But a lot of these places put a ton of it in just to make you feel it you know and it's as they pixie dust the rest of their yeah yeah i mean it's the it's the prop blend scam of uh you know whatever's first

in that prop blend could be 99 98 of the entire blend and it's always going to be something cheap that they just load up or or there are manufacturers out there i mean i know from whatever from being in the business that plenty of manufacturers out there that don't care they'll do anything you want like you want you like that thing that came out of new york state is the attorney general oh you want house plant and asparagus in your pills and you're gonna cool sounds good we don't care what you sell them as you know what i mean yeah exactly okay so now let's say someone's on a budget something i get asked fairly often and they only can afford a few supplements um let's and they want to uh they want to build muscle let's say what what would be so it would be whey protein creatineine, beta-alanine would be your...

Those would be my go-to. And if someone wants to lose fat, then it would be whey protein, something with caffeine, and is there one or two other things that you would... If they were really on a budget,

I may still say the creatine, even though their weight may stay up. Yeah, just for retaining lean mass. Yeah, and continuing your performance. So, yeah, that would probably be my go-to way, creatine and caffeine. Cool. And then yohimbine if...

Once they get down to the... once they get down to the. But I hate to even say you'll hear me. I it's it's very it's controversial. Like, you know, because I've seen such bad things come in. I used it myself because, you know, it wasn't banned in the competition that I did. I did the natural whatever INbf or wnbf or whatever it was um so they're everything everything's pretty much banned but yohim bean wasn't and it has a little bit of good data behind it yeah yeah but you have to be in a in a fasted state probably should just mention that right like the insulin the higher insulin levels

are the the more it doesn't do anything for fat loss, right? Yeah. I mean, I'm not, I think the effects are modest regardless, but yeah, as far as I understand. Yeah. I've used that many times. I've noticed that, like you said, when you start, once I start getting under 10% and that, and then it starts to slow down, I've noticed your, him being in caffeine together, um, has definitely helped just, you know, keep the, where you're, you're just trying to squeeze out that half a pound a week.

Right. Yeah. So I, I hate to even say like for, I wouldn't even want anybody to use that unless they're really like bodybuilding. Right. Um, and they're at that last little bit and they want,

it is a very niche product. They want an edge. So I would still say the, um, I would still say the whey, creatine and caffeine. I know it seems so like, oh, that's boring, but it's... Yeah, but supplementation is boring. That's all, you're right.

It's tried and true, so... Yeah, there aren't that many things that you can do to improve performance, build muscle and lose fat. It's just the majority of it is eating right, resting, and putting in the work. And, you know, if you have the money, this is how I always pitch it. Like if you have some money that you want to put into it, there are some things you can buy that are probably worthwhile.

If you don't have the money or you don't want to, then you can still do great. Exactly. Cool. Okay, awesome. So that's all I've got. Where can people find you, find your work? So people can find me. I have my own personal blog.

It's just drspencer.com, D-R-S-P-E-N-C-E-R.com. I also have a blog with my brother, docswholift.com. We try to promote doctors who push exercise and lifting weights. And then, of course, I have a Facebook page, Dr. Spencer Nadolski, and then Twitter is at Dr. Nadolski. So that's pretty much it. Awesome. Well, thanks a lot for taking the time, Spencer.

I really appreciate it. And thanks for having me on. Hope you enjoy a good day down there in Clearwater. Oh, it's heating up. I bet. Summer is basically here. Hey, it's Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast.

If you did, go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness. Also head over to my website at www.muscleforlife.com where you'll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you'll also find a bunch of different articles that I've written. I release a new one almost every day. Actually, I release kind of four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I'm involved in over at muscleforlife.com. All right. Thanks again.

Bye.