Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Q&A: Hybrid Training, Chronic Sleep Deprivation & Gains, Conspiracy Theories, & More

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

From the potential downsides of TRT for individuals with moderate testosterone levels to strategies for mitigating the effects of chronic sleep deprivation, in this episode, I dive into a wide array... of topics based on questions from my loyal Instagram followers.  I also get into a few “fun” ones, including updates on my new house, my most hated trends of the decade, and my favorite conspiracy theories. :) As always, these questions come directly from my Instagram followers, who take advantage of my weekly Q&As in my stories.  If you have a question you're dying to have answered, make sure you follow me on Instagram (@muscleforlifefitness) and look out for the Q&A posts. Your question might just make it into a podcast episode! If you like this type of episode, let me know. Send me an email (mike@muscleforlife.com) or direct message me on Instagram. And if you don’t like it, let me know that too or how you think it could be better. --- Timestamps: (0:00) - Please leave a review of the show wherever you listen to podcasts and make sure to subscribe! (1:26) Try Phoenix today! Go to https://buylegion.com/phoenix and use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% or get double reward points! (3:37) Potential drawbacks of TRT if you have moderate testosterone levels (5:43) When will you ship Legion Whey protein products to Canada? (6:15) Is fish oil overrated? (9:53) Legitimacy of the hybrid athlete trend (11:01) Mitigating chronic sleep deprivation effects for gains (15:21) New house progress update (26:03) Legion One-on-One Coaching: https://www.muscleforlife.show/vip (27:45) Most hated trend of the decade (28:46) Increasing vascularity during a bulk (30:07) Calculating activity levels: working sets vs. total workout time (30:54) Favorite conspiracy or conspiracy theory? (35:28) Plans for improving the Stacked workout app (36:13) Why did you stop taking Legion Pulse? (36:34) Does coffee contribute to water intake goals? (37:14) Opinions on Hamas (40:32) Subscribe and please share the podcast with a friend! www.muscleforlife.show --- Mentioned on the Show: Legion Phoenix: www.buylegion.com/phoenix and use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% or get double reward points (6% cash back)! Legion One-on-One Coaching: https://www.muscleforlife.show/vip How to Increase Testosterone Naturally: https://legionathletics.com/how-to-increase-testosterone-naturally/ Legion Whey+: www.buylegion.com/whey and use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% or get double reward points!Legion Pulse: www.buylegion.com/pulse and use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% or get double reward points!

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello there. This is Muscle for Life. I am Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for a Q&A episode where I answer questions that people ask me over on Instagram. So quickly, what I do is put a story up every couple of weeks, asking for questions, you know, the little question sticker, get a bunch of questions, go through them, pick ones that are interesting to me or that are topical, ones that I haven't answered a million times before. And I answer them briefly on Instagram and then bring everything over here to the podcast where I can answer them in more detail. So if you want to ask me your questions, follow me on Instagram at Muscleful Life Fitness, watch my stories and submit questions when you see the question story. And so today I'm answering
Starting point is 00:00:40 questions on TRT, specifically if there are any downsides to getting on TRT. If you have normal testosterone levels, I answer a question regarding the hybrid athlete trend. Is it hype? Is there something to it? There's a question here on mitigating the effects of chronic sleep deprivation. Is it possible to do that aside from just sleeping more? I have a question here on the most hated trends of the last decade. Vascularity while bulking, is it possible to get more vascular when you are bulking? My favorite conspiracy theory of them all, if coffee and decaffeinated drinks are dehydrating, and more. You definitely don't need supplements to lose fat, and no fat loss supplements are going to make a major
Starting point is 00:01:34 difference in your bottom line results. How you eat, how you train, how you sleep, those are the primary factors that determine how quickly you lose fat. But if you have the budget and you have the inclination, supplementation can help you lose fat a little bit faster. And that's why I created Phoenix. It is a 100% natural and stimulant-free fat burner that speeds up your metabolism, enhances fat burning, and reduces hunger and cravings. And in terms of bottom line, real world results, when you combine Phoenix with proper diet and proper exercise, it can help you
Starting point is 00:02:14 lose up to an additional one to two pounds of fat per month. And the reason Phoenix is so effective is simple. Every ingredient is backed by peer-reviewed scientific research and is included at clinically effective levels, which are the exact doses used in the studies that found benefits. And all that is why I have sold over 200,000 bottles of Phoenix and why it has over 1,904 and five-star reviews on Amazon and my website. So if you want to lose fat faster, and if you want to experience less hunger and cravings when you're cutting without having to pump yourself full of harsh chemicals or stimulants, you want to try Phoenix today.
Starting point is 00:02:57 Go to buylegion.com, B-U-Y-L-E-G-I-O-N.com, slash Phoenix, P-H-O-E-N-I-X, and use the coupon code MUSCLE muscle at checkout and you will save 20% on your first order. And if it is not your first order, you will get double reward points. That is 6% cash back. And if you don't absolutely love Phoenix, just let us know and we will give you a full refund on the spot. No form and no return is even necessary. So you really can't lose. Go to buylegion.com slash phoenix, use the coupon code MUSCLE when you check out and you will save 20% or get 6% cash back and try Phoenix risk-free and see what you think.
Starting point is 00:03:37 Adam Fiala 1 asks, any downsides to TRT if you're at moderate levels and want to get in the high range? Yes, there are downsides like some long-term risks and long-term side effects related to cardiovascular and prostate health. You should be aware of that. TRT is not completely without risks. Now, sometimes the benefits outweigh the risks, but the risks are still present. And additionally, once you start TRT, you won't want to, and eventually you can't stop. And you are going to get sick of the regular injections. Everyone does, but you'll just have to keep going. And it's also worth noting that going from middle to high normal isn't going to do much for you. Maybe you'll notice a bit more energy, maybe a bit more sex drive,
Starting point is 00:04:36 maybe, but it's not going to make any noticeable difference in your body composition. It's not going to make any big difference in your performance in the gym. And so then why bother, especially if you haven't done everything that you can do naturally to improve your testosterone levels, such as eating more calories, eating more carbs, eating more fat, especially healthy fat, mostly polyunsaturated fat. Not that saturated fat is quote unquote unhealthy, but eating too much saturated fat is unhealthy. And to eat enough fat requires that you eat quite a bit of unsaturated fat versus saturated fat and a few other things. If you want to learn more about that, just head over to legionathletics.com, search for testosterone naturally in the website search. And then you'll find an article I wrote called what 17 studies say about
Starting point is 00:05:32 increasing your testosterone naturally. And that'll give you the big levers and buttons you can pull and push to increase your testosterone levels naturally. Okay, next up, we have Carol Astrop asking, when will you ship your whey protein products to Canada? And she's referring to Legion, my sports nutrition company. And Whey Plus, which is our whey protein isolate, is going to be up on Amazon Canada this year. We are right at the tail end of getting that live on Amazon and more products to follow. Excited to be able to offer better shipping and lower prices to my Canadian customers and followers. Chris Heilemann, EOS implementer, asks, Washington Post story, marketers overstate the value of fish oil supplements.
Starting point is 00:06:26 Thoughts? So I hadn't read the article at the time of answering this question, but every year or so in the mainstream or legacy media, there are such articles saying that fish oil supplements are not as valuable as fish oil supplement sellers claim, sometimes even saying that fish oil is harmful. And what is true is that most supplement sellers do indeed overstate or just outright lie about the efficacy of their products. And with supplements, generally speaking, if claims sound even slightly too good to be true, they probably are. And if a company is willing to sell even a single product dishonestly, they are probably willing to do many other dishonest things to make money. So if I didn't own a sports nutrition company and just use my own products, if I were buying sports nutrition supplements, didn't own a sports nutrition company and just use my own products, if I were buying sports nutrition supplements, I would only buy from companies that a provide transparent formulations.
Starting point is 00:07:29 So every ingredient listed every amount of every ingredient listed, no proprietary blends, I would also only buy from companies that make reasonable claims that are backed with peer reviewed research that I can review myself, which I would. I would spot check, not necessarily review every citation for every product, but I would spot check quite a few of those citations to see how they are representing the data. And if you want to do that, but you don't have access to the various journals that are being cited. And therefore you can only see abstracts, which is not adequate for determining whether research is high quality or low quality or dubious quality. Then you can use a website like Anna's Archive,
Starting point is 00:08:19 or you can use a website like SciHub to get access to the full papers. And then you can use a website like Sci-Hub to get access to the full papers. And then you can properly vet the research. And finally, I would only buy from a sports nutrition company that uses natural sweeteners and natural food dyes. That does not use artificial sweeteners and artificial food dyes. That's not a huge point in general. I'm not an alarmist about those things. However, if you are going to be taking several supplements a day, so there's going to be a number of servings of sweetener and a number of servings of food dyes every day, I don't think it's best for your health and particularly your gut health to be having eight to 10 plus servings of sucralose or ace K or aspartame plus artificial food dyes basically every day, basically forever. And I would say that as more evidence comes out on artificial sweeteners, more so than food dyes, artificial sweeteners seem to be more of a more so than food dyes. Artificial sweeteners seem to be more
Starting point is 00:09:26 of a hot topic than food dyes. But in both cases, as more evidence comes out, I would say it generally supports that position rather than refutes it. Again, not saying that these chemicals are dangerous per se, but I don't think it's optimal for gut health and therefore systemic health to have several servings of them basically every day, basically forever. Isaac Downing asks, is there any legitimacy to the hybrid athlete trend or is it just hype? Well, the primary benefits for most fitness folk are just the additional benefits of doing regular cardio in addition to more fun, which is also valuable because fun stuff is fun because it adds a dimension of entertainment to your fitness. In addition to the investment dimension, the investment in health, in longevity and so forth. And that can greatly improve
Starting point is 00:10:41 compliance, which can greatly improve results. Now, aside from those things, the hybrid athlete concept and trend is just marketing. And a lot of it is just hype that's used to sell you stuff, to sell you programs, to sell you books, to sell you supplements, and so forth. All right. Kay Buckley asks, is it possible to mitigate the effects of chronic sleep deprivation to achieve gains? Well, ironically, research does show that most people, A, they don't need as much sleep as they may think, and B, they can perform fairly well mentally and physically on an amount of sleep that some would consider as sleep deprivation, like, for example, about six hours of sleep per night.
Starting point is 00:11:31 And finally, C, some, if not much of the negative effects that we experience when we don't get enough sleep or what we think is enough sleep are psychological, not physiological. And specifically what studies show is that most adults don't need more than about seven hours of sleep to optimize their health and performance. And that's mental health and physical health and performance. And it also shows that most people can perform fairly well on just five and a half to maybe six, max six and a half hours of sleep per night, more or less indefinitely. And finally, research shows that the primary physiological side effects of not sleeping quite enough, five and a half, six, maybe six and a half hours, is negative mood. That that
Starting point is 00:12:19 is well rooted in physiology, but a lot of the additional side effects that people experience are probably more psychological than physiological. Now, that's not me telling you to just sleep five and a half or six hours per night. That is not optimal. More sleep than that is definitely optimal. Again, a large amount of data shows that around seven hours per night on average for most people is optimal, not just enough, but is optimal, better than more, better than let's say eight to nine hours per night on average. Now, a caveat to that is other research shows that you can use oversleeping intentionally to improve performance, physical and mental performance for let's say a big test or a big game, in which case the night before you would intentionally
Starting point is 00:13:12 oversleep. But that would be something that you would use almost as an intervention, not as a lifestyle. As a lifestyle, forcing yourself to sleep nine to 10 hours per night is actually associated with worse health outcomes than say seven hours per night. So coming back to the question of mitigating the effects of chronic sleep deprivation, depends what you mean by sleep deprivation. If you're talking about less than five and a half hours of sleep per night, yeah, that's sleep deprivation. And that is going to be hard to mitigate aside from maybe you could take an afternoon nap, say 30 to 45 minutes, no later than 3 p.m. So you don't disrupt your sleep that night. The shorter duration, the 30 to 45 minutes will make sure that you don't get into deep sleep because that in particular is what can disrupt your sleep at night. And the 3 p.m. cutoff is to
Starting point is 00:14:14 ensure that you are not taking a nap too close to bedtime because that too can disrupt your sleep. Now, of course, taking a short nap in the afternoon is not going to fully mitigate the negative effects of sleeping just five hours per night Even if it is an effective pick-me-up because your body responds well to naps And you go into your nap feeling pretty ragged because you only slept five hours and you come out of your nap Feeling much better, which is me. That's how my body works I respond really well to naps, even short naps. Even if I only fall asleep for 15 to 20 minutes, I can go into the nap feeling pretty rundown, pretty tired, and then come out of the nap feeling fully energized, ready to work out.
Starting point is 00:14:57 But that doesn't mean that physiologically speaking, I have undone the damage of sleeping just five hours per night, especially if that's a regular occurrence. And so then the real cure to chronic sleep deprivation is you got to figure out how to get more sleep, how to get closer to at least seven hours per night on average. Keith K TX asks, how is the new house coming along? So I've been building a house, not personally, I've been paying for a house to be built. It's been about two years now. So it tells you a bit about how it's coming along and yes, it's a custom home and it's decently sized and there are some complexities in how it's being built and some of the details and finishes and so forth. And it is moving now nicely, but I have learned a few lessons that I
Starting point is 00:15:58 wish somebody would have just told me before I started. So one is you want to vet your architect thoroughly before hiring because an unprofessional architect is going to make construction very painful. In my case, we relied more on portfolio and reputation. We chose an architect who has done a lot of nice stuff for a lot of years, has had homes featured in Architectural Digest and thought this is a professional dude with a professional team. We were wrong and subsequently learned from other people who have been screwed by this guy, who we hadn't spoken to, unfortunately, before hiring him, that he's notorious for sloppy work, unfinished plans, low attention to detail, low degree of care to give us a good set of plans
Starting point is 00:16:55 and a good experience. For example, the trusses weren't designed properly and that had to be fixed. And then that meant that we couldn't have this barrel ceiling that we wanted in a hallway because of the mistake in the plans. And there are quite a few examples of that where plans were not done correctly. So vet your architect, get references, and then look for references that they don't offer to you. And that's pretty simple because you can get their portfolio of work, their houses built, and you can go contact those owners yourself because references they give you are always going to be positive. And yes, that's the first thing you ask for, because if somebody doesn't have positive references, that tells you everything. If they do, that tells you that they have at least a few happy customers, but there
Starting point is 00:17:56 might be a lot of unhappy customers out there, right? Survivorship bias. And so to check for that, you need to go look for references that they don't give you. And so that's the first lesson. And the second lesson is all of that for your interior designer as well, which is much more important than interior decorator. Starting out, I didn't know the difference between those things. And I didn't fully inform myself about how important the interior designer is and how important it is to start with not just fully completed architectural plans, but fully completed interior design plans, because there's a lot of work that goes into that, especially if you're picky and my wife is picky and I'm picky too and we have the same taste and a lot of the finishes in this house are not your typical Florida finishes so my builder is
Starting point is 00:18:56 used to doing typical Florida homes and his clients typically are buying the stuff that he's used to working with from the vendors he's used to working with. It's simple, but that's not the case with my house. Probably literally every single detail and finish that is going into that house is something that is unusual for my builder. And that's fine. He can build the house. He's a good builder, but he can't help with sourcing basically anything because he's not used to working with these different materials and these different finishes. And so you would typically rely on an interior designer to do that work for you. You would go to them with a bunch of pictures of all the stuff that you like, a mood board, so to speak, for every room in the house.
Starting point is 00:19:51 And they would work through that with you to bring it all together in a coherent way. Then they would source and price everything for you. And then with all of that done, you go to your builder and say, here are the architectural plans. They're fully complete. And here are the interior design plans fully complete. And the builder then can know exactly what he's getting into. And you can avoid all kinds of delays and all kinds of budgetary issues. Because what can happen otherwise is you might think that it is simple enough to put together a bunch of allowances for everything that makes sense, that bring you to a certain price per square foot, maybe according to your budget. And you think you have set that high enough for what kind of look and what kind of experience you're going for. So you get underway with your builder. You have your architectural plans. Those are done. Your interior design plans are not done. You have not chosen everything,
Starting point is 00:20:54 but you think that you have adequate budgetary allowances in place. So you get underway. And then you start looking for all of the interior design elements. So let's say wood floors and you have allocated, I don't know, let's just say $25 a square foot for wood floors. And you think that has to be enough. And then you go looking for what you want specifically, and you find a product, or maybe this is the product in the picture that is your inspiration for your wood floors. And then you find out that the wood floors in the picture that you really like that you put into your mood board. And that's what that's what you were thinking with when you put together that budgetary allowance. Yeah, those wood floors are some of the most expensive
Starting point is 00:21:47 you could possibly find. They cost $250 a square foot. And that happened to me, by the way, that's exactly what happened. And then you have to decide, are you going to spend over a million dollars, in my case, on your wood floors or not? Yeah, not so much. So now you have to go find something else. And that may be easy. That may not be easy. And in my case, my wife went and found something else that was still quite expensive. I think I want to say $50 a square foot for wood and rinse and repeat that for basically everything in the house. That's what can happen if you don't work all of this out before you begin. And there are several problems with that.
Starting point is 00:22:39 There's obviously the budgetary uncertainty. And so if you're going into a project with your allowances at the maximum amount you can possibly spend, you will actually run out of money. If you exceed those allowances, that's risky because you're going to go over your budget somehow, some way. Now, fortunately for me, I went into this process assuming that it was going to cost up to 50% more than was reflected in the overall budget in all of the allowances all totaled up. And that is about what it's going to be. So in that way, I'm fine. However, the other problem that you run into is time. Because when you don't have all of your selections made and when you want something that's very custom and very specific, it can be difficult to find materials that you like and that you want to use and that work with everything else that you chose. It can take a lot more time than you might think. Now, if you don't really care that much and you are fine
Starting point is 00:23:50 basically just flipping through some catalogs from some vendors and just picking some things and hoping it all comes together, then again, you won't run into this issue, but if you are pickier than that, then assume it's going to take more time than you think to find all of the stuff that you are actually going to want, especially when sometimes you're going to find things that you're just not willing to pay for, like in the case of the wood floors. And so anyway, all of that is to say, if you are going to build a high-end custom home and you're picky, make sure you're working with a high-end interior designer. Ask for references, go check references that aren't offered and do the same for your builder to vet your builder in the same way. Visit his job sites. Are they clean? Are they organized? Ask for references. Go seek out references that are not offered. And yeah, those are the big lessons that I've learned. If I would have just started with fully completed plans, not just architectural, but also interior design plans, I would have avoided probably at
Starting point is 00:25:06 least 80% of the delays and the headaches. And that's unfortunate because I'm on my third interior designer for this project. The first one turned out to be totally useless, had to fire him. Now the third, a woman who has been useful, but who is very hard to work with because she has too many projects going and she gives bad service. She's not organized. She disappears for one to two weeks at a time. for one to two weeks at a time. And then she will pop up on a Tuesday night at 9.30 PM or something. Literally, this has happened many times. That's when she can talk, Tuesday, 9.30. And you got to do it because if you don't do it, you are going to delay your project even further because you have to get decisions made. Okay, enough of that. Let's move on. Do you want to transform your body, but you just can't seem to break out of the rut? Have you read books and articles, watched videos, listened to podcasts, but still just aren't sure exactly how to put all the pieces together for you? Or maybe you know what to do, but you're still struggling to stay motivated and on track
Starting point is 00:26:27 and do the things that you know you should do. Well, if you are nodding your head, I understand getting into great shape is pretty straightforward when you know what to do, but it's not easy. It takes time. It takes effort. It takes grit. And that's why I created my VIP one-on-one coaching service. We take people by the hand and we give them everything they need to build their best body ever. We give them a custom diet plan, training plan, supplementation plan. If they want supplements, you don't have to take supplements. We coach them on how to do every exercise correctly. We give them emotional encouragement and support, accountability, and the rest of it. And we are pretty good at it too. We have worked with thousands of men and women of all ages and
Starting point is 00:27:17 abilities and lifestyles and help them build a body they can be proud of. And guess what? We can probably do the same for you. Our service is not for everyone, but if you want to find out if it is right for you, if there is a fit, head on over to muscleforlife.show slash VIP. That is muscleforlife.show slash VIP and book your free consultation call now. and book your free consultation call now. Leah Gordillo 17 asks, your most hated trend of this decade? I would say it's a toss up between a few things.
Starting point is 00:27:56 One is the total information war that is being waged by the establishment, by the superclass against us peasants. I hate that. I hate the ascendance of social media. It is a net negative in society. I hate the levels of racial and political polarization, the obesity epidemic, ridiculous, especially in youth. That's actually sad to see because an obese child is like a vegan cat. We know who's making the decisions here. They are not. And lastly, there's the economic rot, especially as it's impacting the lower class and the middle class. That is also sad to see. Lyndon Sepp asks, is it possible to get more vascular while bulking? Yeah, you can. It does depend though on how much muscle you gain
Starting point is 00:28:55 and how much fat you gain and how quickly you gain those things and where you gain the muscle, as well as the fat where you tend to preferentially store body fat. And that pattern can change from person to person. There are general patterns, but then there are outliers. So for example, let's say you're bulking, you gain a fair amount of muscle in your arms, and you have not gained an excess amount of body fat. And also you don't tend to store much fat in your arms, especially in your biceps and triceps in that area, then the result can be more vascularity in your arms, despite overall body fatness increasing because the bigger muscles, they push the veins up against the skin. That's one component of vascularity. And then leanness is another component.
Starting point is 00:29:46 And genetics is another component. Some people genetically tend to be very vascular and other people tend to be less vascular. In my case, for example, I have to be pretty lean. I have to be at least, let's say, 10% body fat or leaner to have noticeable vascularity basically anywhere. That's genetics. MacMellon asks, count working set time or the entire time spent working out when calculating activity level. Count the entire workout time unless you're doing something kind of unusual, like 60 minutes of single rep sets followed by five minutes of rest. That of course
Starting point is 00:30:27 burns a lot less energy than a more typical strength training slash hypertrophy kind of mix type of routine, like bigger than you're stronger, for example, where you're doing a lot of four to six rep work and some six to eight rep work, and you're resting a couple of minutes in between sets. Now, if you are doing something unusual, like an hour of single rep sets followed by five minutes of rest, I have to ask, why are you doing that? Probably should be doing something else.
Starting point is 00:30:54 All right, Max Mazzetti asks, favorite conspiracy slash conspiracy theory. Well, I suppose it's the conspiracy theory that conspiracies are mostly just theories, that there are no nefarious conspiracies occurring in the halls of power to any meaningful degree at any time. That is a conspiracy theory because so many of the world's cultural and political machinations make more sense if you're just willing to understand and willing to accept that the principal goal of the super class, of the elites, the establishment, different terms can be used for these people. The one goal above all others among at least a very powerful faction of these people is global government. This has been an obsession of the superclass for at least a century now. And so many of their sub goals and initiatives and interests align toward that. And that is an irrefutable fact. If you can simply read a few books that provide their own arguments for global government in their own words. If you're willing to read just a few books, I would start with New World Order by Sean Stone and then read Tragedy and Hope 101 by Plummer, which is a distillation of some of the juicier material in Tragedy and Hope by Carol Quigley, which you can read if you have a lot of time on your hands. Make sure though that you get the unabridged version, the version that was originally published, not the later publications that had material taken out and there's a whole story there. But you'll probably want to just go with Tragedy and Hope 101 because Tragedy and Hope is, I think
Starting point is 00:33:01 it's like 1200 pages. It's very dry. It is, it's a slog, not easy to get through. But Tragedy and Hope 101 by Plummer, very easy to get through. And if you like both of those books and you want more information directly from a primary reliable source, I guess you could say, read the Anglo-American Establishment by Quigley.
Starting point is 00:33:22 And you can look up who Quigley was before reading the book and why I'm saying he is a primary reliable source of information on such things. And you will find the Anglo-American establishment much more approachable than Tragedy and Hope. He wrote the Anglo-American establishment later after publishing Tragedy and Hope. And it's a couple hundred pages. It's not easy to read, but it's, I think, 300 pages versus 1200. And it is specifically focused on this modern movement for global government, especially among the elites. And if I remember correctly, I read it years ago, but if I remember correctly, it starts with Cecil Rhodes, early 1900s, and then it brings us up to the 50s or 60s. a scheme is underway, that there are some very powerful people in the world who are very convinced that a global government is the ultimate solution to ending war and poverty and disease and all
Starting point is 00:34:35 manner of human suffering. And maybe they also believe that that end is so good, it's so virtuous that it justifies basically any needs. So again, read the books and decide for yourself if there is enough evidence to at least suggest that something like that is underway. You may not be wholly convinced that it's happening with just those few books, and I would understand that. But if you wanted to learn more because after reading those books, you conclude that there is good evidence that such a conspiracy may exist, well, then there are more books you can read to decide more conclusively one way or another. But those three books are a good place to start. Patrick Laban asks, any plans to improve your workout app stacked? Yes, I would like to do that. But realistically, I'm gonna have to hire somebody
Starting point is 00:35:38 because I just have too many other things that I'm working on right now. And so that is on the to-do list. It's not at the top of the to-do list, but I would like to hire somebody to take that project over completely and greatly improve it. I do think it has a lot of potential. And if anyone listening is interested in that, and if you have some bona fides, if you have some experience and you've had some wins in this space and you want to learn more about the opportunity, email me, mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com. Permdog22 asks, why did you stop taking Pulse? Pulse is Legion's pre-workout, by the way. And I take Pulse every day. I just take my stim free pulse because i get my caffeine from espresso so i do two to three shots of espresso in the morning and that's it for my
Starting point is 00:36:31 caffeine and so i use stim free pulse rick bruno asks does coffee count as water goal or count toward water goal or your water intake throughout the day? Yes, absolutely. Caffeinated beverages count toward your water intake. Any claims related to dehydration are incorrect, completely false, disproven by scientific research. That's not my opinion. Yes, caffeine is a very mild diuretic, but it's very mild. The liquid that comes with the caffeine is much greater than the diuretic effect. So the hydration of the liquid is much greater than the diuretic effect. Okay. Yisro Levine asks, thoughts on Hamas and how so many people refuse to condemn murder of Israeli citizens and babies. to condemn murder of Israeli citizens and babies. Well, I am staunchly opposed just on principle to the murder of innocent people anywhere, under any circumstances, whichever side of whichever
Starting point is 00:37:37 conflict, period. Now, as for this specific conflict, I really don't know enough about it to have a strong opinion. I don't know enough about the history of the back and forth. I know there are two diametrically opposed narratives. That's what I see about what has been happening over there for at least the last few decades. And then of course, there is a larger ideological conflict that goes back thousands of years. But the modern conflict has two narratives that are completely different, completely removed from each other. And I really haven't studied the matter enough to determine which is more plausible. Now, instinctively, I would reject as propaganda, the pole positions, the positions on either extreme of this spectrum of what is actually
Starting point is 00:38:34 happening. So I would instinctively reject the position that Israel has never done anything wrong, that they have never mistreated these people. They have been nothing but fair and benevolent and so forth. And I would instinctively be very resistant to the opposite position that basically everything Israel has ever done is bad and unfair and evil, and the Palestinians are the morally upright, oppressed underdog, and so on. One of those positions may actually be true, but typically that's not how these things work. Typically those extreme narratives are just propaganda, and the truth is somewhere in the middle. And that isn't to say that the truth is inevitably right in the middle, that both sides are equally good and bad and have done equally good and bad things. And you can't place more blame or guilt or responsibility at one doorstep than the other. No, no, no. Sometimes one side is clearly in the wrong more than the other side. The other side did do wrong things, but in terms of units of
Starting point is 00:39:56 wrongness, side A may have accumulated 5,000 units of wrongness in their behavior and side B, 500 units of wrongness in their behavior and side A can't try to justify their behavior because of the 500 units of wrongness on side B. That's not how it works. And so anyway, being ignorant of the details, I would bet a fair amount of money that one side in this conflict is more to blame than the other. I'm just not sure which side that is. Well, I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did, subscribe to the show because it makes sure that you don't miss new episodes. It makes sure that you don't miss new episodes.
Starting point is 00:40:47 And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which of course then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you. And if you didn't like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com, and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you'd like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I'm always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode, and I hope to hear from you soon.

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