Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Q&A: When to Consider TRT, Colostrum Supplements, Sauna Benefits & More

Episode Date: January 1, 2025

In this episode, I discuss when to consider TRT, the benefits of sauna use for recovery and overall health, whether colostrum supplementation lives up to its reputation and lots more. 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 ([e-mail]) 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: (00:00) Intro (05:38) Lower reps with more sets? (13:07) Hip pain as I age? (21:59) Caffeine on empty stomach? (22:10) Vitamins D, K, C with Triumph? (24:28) Recharge results timeline? (24:59) Kettlebells for resistance training? (25:53) TRT now or later? (26:52) Shoulder pain when lifting? (27:41) Colostrum worth it? (28:58) Partial vs full range reps? (29:23) Morning motivation? (29:36) Whey vs casein for muscle growth? (29:46) Favorite shoulder workout? (30:36) Back position when squatting? (31:14) Saunas and steam rooms? (31:58) Supersets in programs? (32:20) Heavy compounds or isolations? --- Mentioned on the Show: Liposomal Vitamin C Thinner Leaner Stronger Triumph (men) Recharge

Hello, hello, this is Muscle For Life and I am Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for another Q&A episode where I answer a bunch of questions that people have asked me over on Instagram. If you want to ask me questions, go to Instagram, follow me at Muscle For Life Fitness, watch my stories and every couple of weeks I put up a story asking for questions, get a bunch of questions and then I choose ones that are interesting or topical and answer them briefly there on Instagram and post all of the answers as stories and then bring everything over here to the podcast where I can answer the questions in more detail. And so today I will be

answering questions like my thoughts on kettlebells as a primary source of resistance training? TRT, am I on TRT? If I'm not, would I consider TRT? Under what circumstances would I go on TRT? I also have a question regarding shoulder pain, especially top of the shoulder pain and how to address that. Long length partial reps versus full range of motion reps, which should you be doing and why colostrum

supplementation is it as good as many people claim way versus casing for muscle growth and more. Before we wade into today's episode, I need to tell you about a new liposomal vitamin C supplement that I take every day from my sports nutrition company, Legion. And why do I take this every day? Because research shows that supplementation with liposomal vitamin C can support immune function, enhance antioxidant protection, support metabolic health, increase iron absorption, and more. And how does it do all those things? Well, vitamin C is an essential nutrient that plays a crucial role in many different bodily processes

including neurotransmitter production, collagen formation, antioxidant activity, immune function, wound healing and iron absorption. And while it is easy to get enough vitamin C through your diet to meet the recommended daily allowance, the RDA, of between 75 and 90 milligrams per day, and if you do that you will prevent a deficiency, research suggests that this may not produce optimal health and longevity, especially for active people, which should be the ultimate goal with our nutrition,

support optimal health and longevity. Therefore, if you want to maintain an intake of at least several hundred milligrams of vitamin C per day, which is advisable for several reasons, especially for active people, that can be difficult to do through diet alone because it requires eating several servings per day of foods that many people don't eat or don't really like to eat including citrus fruits, potatoes,

tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, strawberries, Brussels sprouts and more. And if you love those foods and eat a lot of them, you might be getting enough vitamin C. You might be getting to several hundred milligrams per day just through your diet, but many people, even people who eat well don't. Also, you have to keep in mind that fruits and vegetables often contain less vitamin C than they did in the past and that food processing methods can remove up to 50% of the vitamin C from foods. And those are the main reasons why many health conscious people who eat well, like myself, also choose to supplement with vitamin C. Now, why liposomal vitamin C rather than ascorbic acid

or buffer vitamin C or another form? Well, I know it sounds like marketing gibberish, but it's actually not because liposomal vitamin C is vitamin C that has been encased in liposomes, which are microscopic spheres made of phospholipids, which are molecules that consist primarily of glycerol and fatty acids. And research shows that this liposomal form of vitamin C

is more bioavailable than more common forms on the market like ascorbic acid, buffered vitamin C, and even natural sources like acerola, cherry extract, and rose hip powder. And so what that means for you is that with liposomal vitamin C, you can get greater benefits with smaller doses. And that helps prevent gastrointestinal problems

associated with Superdosing vitamin C and so if you want to see what adding some extra vitamin C to your regimen can do for you You can get 20% off your first order of Legion's liposomal vitamin C and everything else in the store if you wanna buy anything else by going to buylegion.com slash vitamin C that's B-Y-L-E-G-I-O-N.com slash vitamin C and using the coupon code MUSCLE at checkout. And then if for whatever reason,

you don't like our Liposomal Vitamin C or whatever else you might buy, all you have to do to get your money back is just let us know and then we will give you your money back. You don't even have to send the stuff back to us. So again, go to bylegion.com slash vitamin C now, try the liposomal vitamin C risk-free and while it cannot bulletproof your immune system, it cannot detoxify your body, it can support your immune function, it can support antioxidant protection, it can support metabolic health,

and it can do those things without the upset stomachs or loose bowels. Big Tim 27 asks, lifts over 80, and by that he means 80% of one rep max or around eight rep max for most people, eight reps to failure. Is it okay to do lower rep sets and just add more sets to equate volume? And by that he means doing let's say four reps or max five reps per set with the weight that you could do eight or maybe even nine reps with rather than pushing right up to failure,

maybe doing seven or even eight reps with your eight-ish rep max weight. Now, as far as building muscle goes, the problem with doing just four reps per set with your eight rep max weight versus seven or eight reps per set is twofold. One, you are doing quite a bit less volume in terms of total weight lifted or you could look at it in terms of total reps. Even though your total

sets are the same, the amount of work that you are making your muscles do is substantially lower if you are doing just four reps per set with your eight rep max weight versus six or seven or eight reps per set. So that's the first part of the problem. And the second part of the problem is because doing just four reps per set with an eight ish rep max weight doesn't bring you very close to failure, those sets aren't going to generate as powerful of a training stimulus as sets that would bring you closer to failure. So doing six, seven, or even eight reps per set with an eight-ish rep max weight. And that's important because those last couple reps in a set taken close to muscular failure are more productive.

If we're talking about muscle hypertrophy. They are more productive of muscle growth than the first half of the set, than the reps that you do that are easy and are not even close to failure. Now that's not to say that the first half of every set or the first three quarters of every set doesn't generate any meaningful stimulus whatsoever, it does generate a training stimulus. However, the majority of the stimulus that is going to produce progress, that is going to get you bigger and stronger is going to come from the minority of reps that you perform toward the end of the set as you approach failure. And so then coming back to the question, which is basically,

can you just do more of this submaximal training where you are not pushing close to failure, this lower intensity training, can you just increase the number of sets that you do to equate the volume in terms of total poundage? That would be the way to do it. So by the end of your session, you didn't come close to failure in any of your sets. You left four or even five good reps still in the tank in every set but you increased the number of sets so the total poundage lifted is equal to what it would have been if you would have taken your working sets closer to failure. If you would have done the extra two or three or even four reps per set rather than the four reps per set. And so the answer is yes, that is viable. That does work to a point.

It works better with strength training, with pure strength training, where you are really just trying to get stronger. And any muscle growth that occurs is just a byproduct of chasing the goal of getting stronger. But if your primary goal is to get bigger and you consider strength as more of a byproduct of getting bigger muscles. So maybe you are following a bodybuilding program, or maybe you are following a hybrid strength and bodybuilding program, a power building program, as it's usually referred to. And all of my programs basically that I've created are power building

programs, a bit of pure strength training, a bit of bodybuilding. And so if you are more interested in getting bigger muscles than you are in. Just increasing raw strength, then you should know that rarely or never pushing even close to failure, let alone to failure in your working sets is probably going to produce inferior results, produce less muscle growth over time. Even if you are equating volume by just increasing the number of submaximal sets that you're doing. And so if your primary goal is to get bigger

and your secondary goal is to get stronger, then I recommend taking all of your sets close-ish to failure, anywhere from zero good reps left to maybe three good reps left. And the three would be more suitable to your big compound exercises, like your squat, your deadlift, your bench press, your overhead press, and your zero would be more suitable to your big compound exercises like your squat, your deadlift, your bench press, your overhead press, and your zero would be more suitable to

isolation exercises with smaller muscle groups or actually just isolation exercises in general. Think of a leg extension for example. That's training the quadriceps. That is a big muscle group but you can safely take that right up to failure. Zero good reps left, where you can't even finish the final rep of the set because it gets so hard with no risk. You're not going to get hurt doing that. Whereas doing that on a barbell back squat is riskier, especially when the weights get heavy, especially when you get stronger. I think there is a point where it is not worth the risk unless you are a competitive strength athlete and that is just part of the game. But if you're not, if you're just an everyday gym goer

or a lifestyle bodybuilder, the risks associated with pushing your heavy sets of your squat, of your deadlift, of your bench press, of your overhead press to failure where you can't finish the rep or maybe even zero good reps left. So you finished the set, but you almost missed it. So the risks associated with training that intensely on those exercises are not worth the negligible rewards compared to ending sets with let's say one or two or maybe even three good reps still in the tank. Now that said the submaximal style of training that I was mentioning previously where you leave four plus good reps still in the tank in every working set can be useful if you are feeling

physically or psychologically ragged. Your motivation to train is non-existent and you really want to skip the workout. Well, rather than skip the workout, how about you just make it easier? And an easy way to make a weightlifting workout easier is to leave more good reps in the tank, more reps in reserve in your working sets. So rather than pushing hard on that squat to let's say one or two good reps still in reserve, you end each working set with four reps in reserve or maybe even five reps in reserve. You're still using heavy weight. You still are getting some volume in, but it is just quite a bit less volume. And those sets are obviously much less difficult. It's going to feel more like a deload workout or something in between

a deload workout and just a regular workout. And that can be enough to take the edge off of the session and just help you get through it. Okay, Daniel Mufti one asks, Mike reaching 40 and now I feel a bit of hip pain kind of like a pinch what do I do? So the first thing I would recommend is to assess your lower body mobility and your flexibility. Flexibility becomes more of an issue as we get older, especially as we train for longer periods of time and maybe we don't have perfect movement patterns and we've developed some imbalances. And so if you are experiencing some hip pain, really of any

kind, I will bet that there are some significant deficiencies in terms of mobility and flexibility that are contributing to the problem. And I've experienced this myself. For example, I used to have significantly worse internal rotation on the left side of my hips than the right side of my hips and that was causing low back pain. Also SI joint pain, particularly associated with deadlifting. And once I worked on that and improved my internal rotation, that problem resolved. And then more recently, also on the left side of my body, the tensor fasciae lata muscle,

the TFL has been aggravated. That can also piss off your SI joint because it's supposed to help distribute the loads that you place your body under properly and evenly on both sides of that joint. And that has been in part because my hip adductors, adductors, the muscles that bring your legs toward the midline of your body, were quite inflexible. My butterfly stretch was pretty bad. And so I've been working on that stretch for several months.

I've gotten it much better and that has improved the TFL tension, which then has improved the SI joint function and situation, reduced the amount of discomfort that I feel when I do certain things, certain positions, it's not always. And also what has been helping with the TFL is massage. In addition to that, the psoas muscle on my left side has been particularly aggravated and so massage has been helping that a lot as well. And so within a couple of months,

the SI joint saga will finally come to an end once these few muscular issues are resolved. And these things occurred because I was pushing it hard in my training some time ago, particularly with deadlifting and the discomfort was increasing and it was driven by these muscular issues. And I was being stubborn and basically just ignoring the growing discomfort and trying to stick to the plan and push for PRs and so forth. And fortunately there was no acute injury, but there was a point where I decided to stop ignoring the growing discomfort because it can lead to an acute injury. And often simply stopping what is aggravating, whatever the problem is, is enough

to resolve it. Often you don't have to do anything else really. You just stop doing what is causing the problem and you just find alternative exercises that don't cause the aggravation of whatever area of the body that we're talking about. Or maybe on a scale of 10, it's like at most a three, it doesn't ever get to even pain. Maybe it's just slight discomfort. And you do that for long enough and the issue just resolves itself. However, that doesn't always work. Sometimes you do need a specific intervention to get back to normal.

Sometimes it is massage, sometimes it is stretching, sometimes it is physical therapy. And so if a problem doesn't just resolve itself within a couple of months, it's smart to start looking into those interventions. And you can start with things that you can just do at home like stretching, like massage, which sometimes you can do yourself with like a massage

gun or lacrosse ball. You can achieve the same effect. Sometimes though you need somebody to work on you because you just can't get to the affected tissue or the necessary tissue properly. And so then when you are trying these different interventions it's important to understand that you're looking for quick improvements within a couple of weeks of regular stretching or massage or physical therapy, whatever it is, not major improvements but noticeable improvements within a couple of weeks. If you've been doing something consistently for a couple of weeks and you're not noticing any improvement, it's probably time to look elsewhere. It could be a different intervention or it could be a different muscle group

that you need to target or you need to include in your regimen. So in my case, working on the TFL massage, it's helping. However, if I didn't also address the adductor issue, it probably wouldn't be enough. The problem would probably just persist where I would get a little bit better with the massage and then a little bit worse because of the adductor issue and you can just rinse and repeat that forever. We will resume today's episode in a couple of minutes but first I need to tell you about my best selling fitness book for women who want to lose up to 35 pounds of fat or more and gain whole body muscle definition in just

three to five hours per week and without giving up delicious foods or doing grueling workouts. Now the book is called thinner, leaner, stronger and while it cannot give you a toned Hollywood babe body in 30 days, and it is not full of diet and exercise hacks for gaining lean muscle and melting belly fat faster than a sneeze in a cyclone, it is a science-based nutrition and exercise book that will demystify muscle building and fat loss

and show you exactly how to get a lean, strong, and fit physique without spending hours in the gym every day and without giving up your favorite foods like hamburgers or pizza, even ice cream. And the kicker, you will see visible results in the mirror and in the gym in just your first month on the program that comes with the book.

Now, how is all of that possible? Well the truth is muscle building and fat loss just aren't nearly as complicated as you've been led to believe. You don't have to obsess over clean eating, you don't have to avoid unhealthy foods like sugar or meat or bread. Some foods are more nutritious and should be eaten more frequently than others. That's about it. You also don't have to grind through hours

of punishing workouts every week, sweating buckets, getting really sore, training until you are bone tired. Those things are completely overrated for gaining muscle and strength. You also don't have to slog away on the treadmill. In fact, you don't need to do any cardio at all to get rid of belly, hip, and thigh fat.

Cardio can help and cardio is healthy, but you don't have to do it to get into great shape. And those are just a few of the harmful lies and myths that keep women weak and overweight and confused. And in my book, Thinner, Near, Stronger, you will learn something that most of those women unfortunately will probably never know. And that is how to cut through all the confusion,

all the clutter and create clear, structured, no-nonsense diet and training plans that are tailored to your fitness goals and your circumstances and your preferences. And all of that is why Thinner, Leaner, Stronger is one of the most popular women's fitness books of all time, with over 500,000 copies sold in 13 different languages, and why it has helped tens of thousands of women of all ages and abilities transform their body composition, fitness, and health.

The Thinner, Leaner, Stronger system of eating, training, and recovering is also supported by 367 peer-reviewed scientific studies that are referenced in the back of the book. And Thinner, Leaner, Stronger has been regularly revised over the years based on the latest findings in nutrition, exercise and supplementation research with the latest version, the fourth edition released in 2023. So the bottom line is this, you can get that head turning

beach ready body without following weird extreme or complicated diet exercise or supplementation strategies and Thinner, Leaner, Stronger will show you how. So head over to Amazon, get your copy now and start your journey to a fitter, leaner and stronger you. Okay, Darla S. Vobbs asks, is caffeine on an empty stomach a no-no? No-no? It is a yes-yes. You're gonna feel it the most like this. F. Urbina O. asks, do I need the vitamin supplements D, K, C if I'm taking Triumph? Which of course contains D, K, and C. Triumph is my sports nutrition company, Legion's multivitamin. Very well formulated, I may add. And the answer is you probably don't need more D or K, but you could benefit from more C because Triumph's dose of C is intentionally lower. It's enough to prevent a deficiency,

but not enough to get some of the potential benefits associated with higher levels of vitamin C intake like one to two grams per day. And the reason I didn't go with one to two grams per serving of vitamin C in triumph is it's already eight pills per day to get a full clinically effective dose of everything that's in it, which I would recommend splitting up into two doses of four separated by several hours after you eat food. And eight pills per day is already a lot to ask. I didn't want to go up to 10 pills per day just to get more vitamin C in the product, which is why Legion also sells a vitamin C for people who want to get even more vitamin C and also add with Triumph.

Many people don't want to do eight pills per day. They're okay with four per day and they go to two or they just go for with one meal. And ironically, because of how poorly formulated most multivitamins are, most multivitamins are part of the profit center of a supplement business, meaning they are trying to spend very product and charge anywhere from eight to 10 times what it costs them to make a bottle. Half dosing my multivitamin triumph is going to provide more nutritional value,

more health benefits than full dosing many other multivitamins, which are often just one to three pills per day. And anyway, if you want to check out Triumph, you can find it over at bylegion.com slash triumph that's B-Y-L-E-G-I-O-N dot com slash triumph. And if you want to check out my vitamin C, it is a liposomal vitamin C and you can learn about that, what that is and why I chose that form over at bylegion.com slash vitamin C and you can learn about that what that is and why I chose that form over at bylegion.com slash vitamin C. Okay moving on to get fit with Nikki she

asks how long before you start to feel slash see results of taking recharge so recharge is legions post-workout supplement with creatine and a couple of other ingredients to help with recovery and muscle soreness. Seeing and feeling results within about two to three weeks and that's mostly because that's how long it takes to increase your body's creatine stores enough to produce noticeable effects. Joshua J.I. Lutz asks, what are your thoughts on kettlebells as a primary source of resistance training? Well, kettlebells are great for conditioning or metabolic style training that is focused on improving muscle endurance and just general preparedness.

So your ability to just exert physical effort, but they are not optimal for whole body strength or hypertrophy because your exercise options are just more limited than they are with a barbell, dumbbells and machines. And that makes it harder to train certain muscle groups like the pecs, for example, and the posterior chain. That said, you certainly can generate enough of a muscle group for the purpose of maintaining muscle and maintaining strength. So it just depends what you're trying to do. Curse San Diego 93 asks, are you on TRT therapy? Can you foresee yourself doing it? And if not, as you get older? So no, I'm not on TRT.

I got blood work done a couple of months ago and my testosterone, my total testosterone was in the 700s, I'm 40. So I'm fine. And my plan is just to hold out as long as I can. But if my testosterone ever gets low enough to negatively impact my quality of life and also imperil my health because clinically low testosterone

levels are actually unhealthy for men. It's not only that they feel terrible and they perform terrible, it's also bad for long-term health. And so if that happens and I can't fix it with diet, I can't fix it with training, with supplementation, sleep, those things first, then yes, absolutely, I will start TRT. And again, it's it's for quality of life and health. Lee Penrose five asks any advice for dealing with top of shoulder pain when lifting. So this could be an ac impingement and dead hangs can be great for that. I've recommended dead hangs a number of times in the podcast.

I'm going to do it again. So you just simply dead hang, like you're going to do a pull-up and you want to work up to maybe a couple of minutes. It's also good for building your grip strength, but you want to start with, try to go for at least 30 seconds. Basically, you're just going to grip failure each set and do a couple of sets, maybe three sets every day if possible. And that can work wonders that can resolve long standing shoulder problems

in the matter of weeks. Liza Mumm asks, is colostrum worth the hype? I get so many ads. is it worth the money? Well, there is some evidence that colostrum can enhance immunity and gut health and reduce oxidative stress and inflammation. However, there are two things. One, similar to probiotics, you need to make sure that the colostrum product you're buying contains enough bioactive components, which can be killed by aggressive methods of processing, can be killed by unhygienic handling and management.

And the easiest way to do that is just to buy from a reputable brand. Don't buy from a random Amazon brand, for example. And another issue with colostrum is dosing. So if you review the literature supporting the claims that I just made, you'll see big doses, 20 grams per day, up to 60 grams per day. You don't see 500 milligrams per day, one gram per day.

You can find a little bit of evidence that the 500 milligrams to one gram per day can, I guess you could say support immune health, but the more significant benefits that would warrant buying the product are going to require much larger amounts. Again, 20 to 60 grams per day, which you can do if you want to, but it is going to get expensive. Mario Hugon asks, long length partial reps vs full range of motion. Just stick with full range of motion until you have gained most of the size and most

of the strength that is genetically available to you and then once you're already jacked you can start playing around with stuff like long length partial reps. But if you are not jacked yet, just don't bother. PriceLife36 asks, what gets you out of bed in the morning? Well, it's mostly soaring cortisol levels, barking dogs, and raucous, riotous kids. Randy Connor Tattoo asks, can you explain the difference between the effects of whey versus casein for muscle growth? Yep, no meaningful difference, So just use what you prefer.

Rebecca B77 asks, what's your favorite shoulder workouts? Pretty simple. It is a few sets of compound pressing close to failure or maybe to failure if it's a machine. I don't like to press dumbbells to failure. I don't like to press barbells to failure, but perfectly comfortable pressing machines to failure. And then I follow that with a few sets of side raises close to failure or maybe to failure.

If I'm doing a cable side raise, I'm comfortable going to failure less so with a dumbbell side raise followed by a few sets of rear raises also close to failure or to failure. And then if I want to get fancier, maybe the final sets of the side and the rear raises are drop sets or rest pause sets just to get a little extra volume for those little muscles that refuse to grow. Sandy Amara3 asks, do you keep your back straight in doing a squat or have a posterior tilt at the bottom. Well, you definitely don't want a posterior tilt unless you are full squatting, which will require at least a little bit to reach full depth. But parallel squatting requires a neutral spine throughout.

You should not feel your butt tucking under when you are parallel squatting. And you don't have to full squat, by the way. Parallel squatting is just as effective if your goal is to just build a muscular and strong and functional lower body. Tduke77 asks, what's your take on saunas and steam rooms? They are great. Many proven benefits related to cardiovascular health,

respiratory health, neurocognitive health, metabolic health, respiratory health, neurocognitive health, metabolic health, mental health, and more. And the key, like with exercise, like with diet is consistency. You are going to obtain the biggest benefits from sauna, from steam rooming when you go regularly. So let's say four to seven times per week for at least 15 to 20 minutes per session. And ideally hot, let's say between 180 and 220 degrees Fahrenheit and 10 to 20% humidity. If it is a sauna wellness, workshopping asks, should supersets be included in a program?

They can be, I wouldn't say they should be. And I think the best use is just to save time. And if you want to learn the most effective way to superset, head over to LegionAthletics.com and search for superset and look for the article I wrote on supersetting. All right. Zach's camera asks, should I go real heavy with just compound exercises or isolation as well? I don't recommend going heavier than let's say about 85% of your one rep max or about four or five reps close to failure with isolation exercises.

And I would keep most isolation exercises around eight reps give or take, let's say two, so maybe six to eight reps or eight to ten reps per set. And if you are going to go heavier on an isolation exercise, you just want to make sure that the exercise is conducive to the heavier lifting. So any sort of biceps curl can work well, for example, with four to six reps per set. Most triceps exercises can work well with heavier weights, but shoulder exercises not so much like side raises and rear raises.

It's just too awkward. Once you get heavier than let's say six to eight reps taken close to failure. We will wrap up today's episode shortly, but first I need to tell you about a new liposomal vitamin C supplement that I take every day from my sports nutrition company Legion. And why do I take this every day? Because research shows that supplementation with liposomal vitamin C can support immune function, enhance

antioxidant protection, support metabolic health, increase iron absorption, and more. And how does it do all those things? Well, vitamin C is an essential nutrient that plays a crucial role in many different bodily processes, including neurotransmitter production, collagen formation, antioxidant activity, immune function, wound healing, and iron absorption. And while it is easy to get enough vitamin C through your diet to meet the recommended daily allowance, the RDA, of between 75 and 90 milligrams per day, and if you do that you will prevent a deficiency, research suggests that this may not produce optimal health and longevity, especially for active people, which should be the ultimate goal with our nutrition support optimal

health and longevity. Therefore, if you want to maintain an intake of at least several hundred milligrams of vitamin C per day, which is advisable for several reasons, especially for active people, that can be difficult to do through diet alone because it requires eating several servings per day of foods that many people don't eat or don't really like to eat, including citrus fruits, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, strawberries, Brussels sprouts, and more. And if you love those foods and eat a lot of them, you might be getting enough vitamin C. You might be getting to several hundred milligrams per day just through your diet.

But many people, even people who eat well don't. Also, you have to keep in mind that fruits and vegetables often contain less vitamin C than they did in the past and that food processing methods can remove up to 50% of the vitamin C from foods. And those are the main reasons why many health conscious people who eat well, like myself, also choose to supplement with vitamin C. Now, why liposomal vitamin C rather than ascorbic acid or buffer vitamin C or another form. Well, I know it sounds like marketing gibberish, but it's actually not because

liposomal vitamin C is vitamin C that has been encased in liposomes, which are microscopic spheres made of phospholipids, which are molecules that consist primarily of glycerol and fatty acids. And research shows that this liposomal form of vitamin C is more bioavailable than more common forms on the market like ascorbic acid, buffered vitamin C, and even natural sources like acerola, cherry extract, and rose hip powder. And so what that means for you is that with liposomal vitamin C, you can get greater benefits with smaller doses and that helps prevent gastrointestinal problems associated with super dosing vitamin

C. And so if you want to see what adding some extra vitamin C to your regimen can do for you, you can get 20% off your first order of Legion's liposomal vitamin C and everything else in the store, if you wanna buy anything else, by going to buylegion.com slash vitamin C, that's B-Y-L-E-G-I-O-N.com slash vitamin C, and using the coupon code MUSSLE at checkout. And then if, for whatever reason, you don't like our liposomal vitamin C

or whatever else you might buy, all you have to do to get your money back is just let us know and then we will give you your money back. You don't even have to send the stuff back to us. So again go to bylegion.com vitamin C now try the liposomal vitamin C risk free and while it cannot bulletproof your immune system, it cannot detoxify your body, it can support your immune function, it can support antioxidant protection, it can support metabolic health, and it can do those things without the upset stomachs or loose bowels. 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

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 muscle for life.com muscle for life.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.