Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - The Best & Worst Supplements to Boost Your Immune System (According to Science)

Episode Date: May 25, 2018

God I hate being sick. Truly. I would smoke a handful of Bill Clinton’s cigars if it meant never getting sick again. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll ever get an invite to the DC spirit cooking parties, so I’ll have to accept the fact that getting sick is just part of my abject existence as a lowly human. That doesn’t mean I can’t do things to help prevent sickness and reduce the duration and severity when it strikes, and that’s why I got the co-founder and former lead researcher and writer of Examine.com, as well as the Director of Research for my supplement company, Legion Athletics, Kurtis Frank to come on the show and talk immunity. As you’ll discover, this is a muddy topic with a lot of bad research and bad interpretations of research, but Kurtis has spent hundreds of hours reading through dozens and dozens of papers, and in this podcast, he breaks down his findings. So … if you’ve wondered what supplements do and don’t work for improving your immune function, and if changing your diet can really help you get sick less often or recover from illnesses faster, then you want to listen to this show. 5:19 - What is the immune system and how does it work? 6:35 - What are the jobs of the cells in the immune system? 8:51 - How do you improve your immunity? 9:25 - Does Vitamin C reduce the severity of sickness? 13:40 - What are your favorite immune system boosters? 19:10 - What is pelargonium? 21:18 - How does pelargonium work? 23:02 - What is akinesia and how does it work? 25:40 - Is garlic good for immunity? 27:30 - What are the benefits of having garlic every day? 28:03 - Is spirulina good for immunity? 29:42 - Are mushrooms good for immunity? 34:58 - What is kombucha? 38:14 - Are probiotics good for immunity? 44:35 - What is a gasotransmitter? 45:58 - What supplements should people take daily to keep a healthy immune system? 47:38 - What are the benefits of Vitamin C? 50:02- What type of mushrooms do you recommend to eat? 57:48 - What’s the easiest way to get potassium in your diet? 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/

If there's something wrong with your upper respiratory tract, particularly acute bronchitis, and is characterized by a dry cough, take Pelargonium as soon as symptoms arise. Take it for seven days. The duration of sickness goes down, the length of sickness goes down, and the intensity of sickness goes down to the point where multiple side effects of acute bronchitis are reduced over 80%. Thank you. Продолжение следует... Thank you. Продолжение следует... So This is where I would normally plug a sponsor to pay the bills, but I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead, I'm just going to quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my one-on-one coaching service. So the long story short here is this is the personal coaching service that I wish I had when I started

in the gym many years ago. Every diet and training program that we create for clients is 100% custom. We provide daily workout logs and do weekly accountability calls. Our clients get priority email service and discounts on supplements, and the list goes on and on.

Furthermore, my team and I have also worked with hundreds of people of all ages, circumstances, and needs and goals. So no matter how tricky you might think your situation is, I promise you we can figure out how to get you results. If I have piqued your interest and you want to learn more, then head on over to www.muscleforlife.com forward slash coaching and schedule your free consultation call now. I'll tell you, there's usually a wait list and

new slots fill up very quickly. So if you're interested at all, don't wait, go schedule your call now. Alrighty, that is enough shameless plugging for now, at least let's get to the show. Mr. Curtis, you are back going to talk immunity, which should be good because that's something I think about, at least that's why I take Genesis every day. And I'm excited that we're, I mean, you've already put together the formulation for a pro-immunity supplement. So because I hate getting sick, fortunately, I don't get sick very often. And if I do, it's usually not very severe, but getting sick sucks. So here we are to talk about the immune system, how it works and some practical

strategies for keeping it running optimally. And then if we do get sick, which unfortunately is inevitable, I think they're one of the guys, I think Kareem, it's been years since he's gotten sick. I wonder if he's drinking like, you know, virgin blood every day or something. I have to inject that stuff. It doesn't survive digestion. like, you know, virgin blood every day or something. I have to inject that stuff. It doesn't survive digestion. Well, you know, spirit cooking, though, if you combine it with satanic ritual, it works differently.

I didn't consider it the satanism. I'm not an expert in satanism. So whatever biological shenanigans they do, I have to respect it. They disobey a lot of logic to great effect. You can't argue with Podesta's emails. I mean, come on. No comment. All right. So here we are, immunity. I think we should start with some basic information on the immune system. How does it work? What are the major moving parts?

How does it keep us from instantly dying every day? Okay. So just to preface this, I'm not a complete expert on the immune system. Like, when it comes to all the systems in the body, the immune system is probably the one that I'll proudly say I'm not an expert, because it's just so bloody complex. Imagine an organ that was not in any one area of the body, an organ that was like 10% of the organ was in your legs, and then you sneeze, and then 5% of it just leaves and goes to your lungs. Like it's a mobile set of cells of which communicate with each other better than some organs do when the organs just, you know, physically existing one area for the entire your entire existence. Once you just rip it out.

So it's just a mobile set of cells that are created, modified, as sentient as cells can get, move all around your body, assessing, neutralizing, and sometimes creating threats, and then they die. And before they die, they send out signals saying, this is what my life was like. Everyone adapt and improvise in accordance with what I've detected. Just basically a bunch of cells that are highly advanced. Pretty neat. What kind of cells specifically? Okay. So I tend to use a police analogy for this because no analogy for the immune system is going to be perfect or absolutely comprehensive, but we do need some sort of base to fall back on. So macrophages are probably the most well-known cell of the immune system. They're the Pac-Man cell, the ones that just like literally go up to an infection and go, I don't like you and eat it and then digest it, which is cool because normally cells can't

digest things, but macrophages can. So if macrophages are the like basic police officer, the foot soldier that is just on the beat all the time, natural killer cells are another type that have the ability to sequester and destroy but they're significantly more potent and like they actually have a process known as oxidative burst where like you know how oxidation can damage yourself there you have a like highly evolved process to shoot things with oxygen radicals kind of like a submachine gun and they just destroy it natural killer cells are actually the link between how the immune system hunts down and

destroys cancer cells they're basically the SWAT team of the immune system then there's uh t cells and b cells t cells those want to talk about more because they're regulatory cells they have a sensing role they go around the body they sense, and then they direct the other cells to action. And they're the ones that are highly involved in how when we eat stuff and it's in our gut, how does the stuff in our gut, even if it's not absorbed, somehow affect the periphery or blood? And it's because the stuff in our gut talks to dendritic cells which are stationary immune cells the dendritic cells then train the t-cells kind of like a police academy would train just the desk worker then the t-cells will go and start mobilizing and like you know

talking to the other cells and directing them to action and then there's like multiple other cells um mast cells in particular are important in allergic reactions. Like basically whenever we get an allergic breakout, that's because of mast cells exploding, literally exploding. It's kind of freaky. Interesting. That's a good primer on how the immune system works. So now let's talk about improving or boosting immunity because that's's like, that's a, that's a marketing hot button that's used for, to sell all kinds of things ranging from diets to supplements, even like modes of exercise and so forth. What does that really mean? And what,

what can you actually do? Like, maybe we should start with some of the things that definitely do not work and that are people commonly believe could increase immunity uh so i'm going to define like what people should care about when it comes to the topic of immunity but before that i just want to give the opposite of a shout out to vitamin c and lysine you guys suck like isn't isn't there isn't there some research that shows if you are sick and you take a gram vitamin c vitamin c every hour it can reduce the severity only for upper respiratory tract infections and high intensity athletes so it's kind of a very niche setting but then people added lysine to it for some reason and there's just absolutely no evidence and not even good logic to it like people literally take what by people i mean marketers will take studies on like african children dying

of mirasmus and it's like oh if we get them protein they're healthy yeah no shit like they're starving to death everybody protein i mean that's that's what I... Their lysine levels went up. Yeah, it's the first time they ate it in a month. Well, I don't know. I mean, what I get from that is everyone should have protein. They'll be healthier. I don't know what you're saying. Yeah, pretty much. Well, because if you have protein malnutrition, you have great, hugely increased susceptibility to infections. That's because your lysine levels go down. So if you replenish lysine levels in this state, you get normal resilience to infections. Pretty much every single person in the Western world has enough lysine in their bodies that they don't need to care about extra lysine.

And yet we're sold it anyways because no one reads the science. I can't even blame the consumers on this one. It's just the people selling it intentionally obfuscate the topic so it's hard to research it's just stupid that reminds me of a glutamine i don't think it's as popular now as it was uh years ago but remember when glutamine was being touted as like an anabolic because there was research in like aids patients that showed that it reduced muscle wasting yeah it's just like this person has third degree burns all over their body that totally like is representative of a weightlifter yeah yeah i.e glutamine is a steroid but basically back to the topic of what to measure the complexity of the immune system should not be used as like a way to confuse people like it's

complex sure but there's ways to simplify it. And one of the ways to simplify it is just in practice, what it means to boost your immune system. Basically, it means A, you get sick less often. B, when you are sick, you aren't sick for as long. And C, when you are sick, it doesn't feel as bad and that's pretty much it like a good immune booster will affect one or more of those parameters i have yet to see one that affects all three of them potently but generally speaking if you just have like one of them like if you get sick often but when you're sick it doesn't really harm you that much, then no big deal. But if you get sick infrequently, and you're absolutely bedridden during this time, then maybe you won't want to get something that

reduces the frequency, because you never get sick that often. But you want to get something that reduces the intensity. So you know, as long as you focus on those three parameters, then you can look at the research on those three parameters and select accordingly. Makes sense. And the place to start there would be lifestyle, right? Would be the basics of diet, exercise, sleep, hygiene, stress management. Because if you don't have the fundamentals in, I doubt taking a bunch of pills and powders is going to help you all that much. Well, they could help if you don't have the fundamentals down, but the fundamentals are free. And I'm not sure if it's more effective than pills and powders, like at least the ones that work.

But, you know, get the fundamentals down and maybe you'll avoid spending unnecessary money on supplements. So supplements can make that much of a difference. The right ones, at least. I would say yes yes but understand that the science on immunity boosters aside from like one particular one that's very well researched and proven the other ones are they're in that middle ground they have like five human studies that all say the same thing so you want to put all your eggs in one basket but there are five

small studies so you just have to like just for prudency twiddle your thumbs and wait for more there's a few of them in that category okay well let's just let's jump right into it then what are let's go through your your favorites for boosting immunity and let's also go through some duds as well you mentioned vitamin c lysine but there are also some others of course the the ones that people probably most frequently take are really not the best choices simply because what drives them is is high profit margins and high advertising budgets and so forth oh yeah like you know it's bad when most people who sell immunity boosters pretty much go for what's already on the counter and then they

sell it at lower doses for higher costs and like without giving too much information when i was uh sourcing the immunity boost that we are to sell in the i'm not sure if it's near future but future at some point it's probably going to be later i'm thinking q4 this year. Okay. But yeah, Kareem and I were like, selecting specific African retailers to source a particular thing. And I'm going through all the data sheets. It's just like, what the heck? Like, there are some of them,

like where it's obvious, they just literally grabbed a plant out of the ground. Is this good? Don't care. Put it in. It's like, no, no. Like, yeah, we actually put in some effort for that particular ingredient. Like the other ones were kind of easy to source. This one, no, no. Like, yeah, we actually put in some effort for that particular ingredient.

Like the other ones were kind of easy to source. This one, no, difficult. And that's something that's worth just highlighting to everybody listening. That's been the case with several supplements where you've been in several formulations, you've been very specific with certain ingredients. Some ingredients, we don't necessarily need to standardize extract because the general quality of whatever it is we're going for is fine. But in other cases, you're very specific as to I want this form of this.

I want this patented ingredient because of reasons and so forth. Well, yeah, because if you have, let's say, a mushroom, because a mushroom has the stem, it has the fruiting body, it has the mycelium, and then it has like the i'm not sure if you'd call them roots but the things under the ground they all have different bioactives in them but they also share some bioactives so if you want a particular bioactive and it's found in any part of the mushroom you can go i don't care whatever's the cheapest just give me x amount of the bioactive other times it's found only the fruiting body so like give me the fruiting body will the mycelium work no fruiting body we have some roots no like i'm actually surprised at how often the people that i can't really blame capstone for a lot of this stuff it's almost like they're the people that we work with are trying to like they have like i don't know a doctor where

they have like say like go for the lowest price go for whatever it's a high profit margin or whatever but 90 of the time it works the other 10 of the time it's frustrating yeah i mean we are their pickiest customer i guarantee you no one else is as picky as we are with ingredients and i mean we ironically uh they're they sometimes make mistakes and we receive emails with things that we aren't supposed to receive. So recently we received their entire AR. So we solve their accounts and all their balances with everybody and everything, which is hilarious. which is hilarious. But I can tell you,

no one else that they work with gives a shit like we do and spends the money that we spend across the board on our cost of goods relative to our prices. So that's all. They've learned along the way because in the beginning, reiterate several times.

Oh, apple extract? Want more apple extract? Can I talk about that? So I wanted, in some of our products, you have grapeseed extract. And the reason I have grapeseed extract is because it's a cheap and basic antioxidant. That's it. Like you eat it, it gets absorbed. It floats around your blood where we want it.

Like we don't necessarily want it inside a cell. We want it in the bloodstream so it can help support nitroxide synthesis. And it just kind of stays there in the blood for a while. And once it's done, it just leaves the body. Very simple, very basic, but, you know, effective and highly cheap. And the main component in grapeseed extract that does this is pro-C-antidin B2. So I think it's been three times so far. I've said I want grapeseed extract.

I don't care, like, the overall amount of the grapes. Just give me 90 milligrams of procianin B2. And the expected price for this is less than a dollar a bottle. I'm talking like probably about 10 cents a bottle on our side. Then they come back. Oh, we found some apple extract, 17 bucks a bottle. Is that acceptable? No, not at all.

It went from 10 cents to 17 bucks. What the hell's going on? It's like, three times that happened to us. On the whole, I mean, they have done well for us. But again, they're just not used to working with someone like you. They're used to working with, in some cases, it's companies who come and they're just like, yeah, I don't know. Give me a pre-workout. I don't care. In other cases, they do have formulations, but these are companies that are relying on retail or MLM. The margins are super high. So their production budgets are very low, very basic. And in some cases, these companies don't care. They wouldn't even follow up. They'd be like, yeah, sure, whatever. Just as long as it can say this on the label, that's all I care about. Yeah. Like they almost

never screw with us, but that just makes their accidental screw ups memorable. Anyways, back to immunity. Okay. So yeah, getting back on track. All right. So they were talking about sourcing particular ingredients. So let's start at the top. This is one that you like for boosting immunity, right? Pelargonium. Okay. immunity right pelagonium okay yes so what's that and why is it cool it's cool because for every other immune booster i have good evidence but at the same time the evidence is not complete and i have to like twiddle my thumbs for more evidence and like it's in a state where i could be confident in the evidence but if a medical doctor were to walk up to me and critique the evidence i'd have to be cautious with my words and i say this is where the evidence is good this way the evidence is bad

blah blah blah and all that pelargonium is one where i can just literally print out the studies staple them together slap the doctor in the face and he's gonna like it the evidence is just solid we're talking over a dozen studies all these studies have well over 100, at times over 300 participants. And it's quite simple. If there's something wrong with your upper respiratory tract, particularly acute bronchitis, and is characterized by a dry cough, take pelargonium as soon as symptoms arise. Take it for seven days. The duration of sickness goes down. The length of sickness goes down. And the intensity of sickness goes down to the point where multiple side effects of acute bronchitis are reduced over 80%. Some studies say that they're just like effectively ablated.

Like I've yet to see a pharmaceutical option for acute bronchitis that has these numbers. Like it is just, it is the standalone immunity boosting supplement. It's just incredible quality of evidence, incredible reliability. And I believe in Germany, it's called the phyto-pharmaceutical, which is basically a plant that's so good. It's like, okay, bring in the pharmaceuticals. It works. Why not? And what are some other upper respiratory tract infections? What are some common... Because if people are like, what does that mean practically speaking? Are we talking about colds here? What if I have a flu? Should I buy this? So the studies have the best evidence for acute

bronchitis. But basically, if something with your lungs and throat is off and is characterized by dryness, dry coughing, the whole type of sound, then there's a chance the pelargonium will work. Yeah, what is that? How does it work? It's very similar to how cranberries work for urinary tract infections. They pretty much just prevent the bacteria from adhering to the mucous membranes of the lungs and the throat. Because the bacteria goes in and has to stick to something before it can affect it and if it just can't grab onto and just like slips away then it just

leaves the body it literally just prevents the bacteria from having a chance of doing anything neat and where is it found in nature it's african geranium so it's just like an african plant i think it's more southern like mid and southern africa than it is northern i think it's just like an african plant i think it's more southern like mid and southern africa than it is northern i think it's exclusively in that area it's not like a north american or an eastern plant or anything okay and i know you can buy it on amazon right like i've bought it before i mean i was i was taking it when i had gotten a cold for a few days so not exactly applicable but i was like yeah curt, Curtis likes this stuff. I'm buying it. Yeah. It's niche, but it's damn good in that niche.

Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. So now let's talk about one that you don't like that is commonly used or promoted as

either helping prevent sickness or reduce the duration or severity. I'm super on the fence about echinacea. I was going to ask about that because, okay, so the common thing, right, is vitamin C with echinacea. That's supposed to be the stack. Yeah. Echinacea is weird because if you were to cherry pick evidence for it not working, easy to find. If you were to cherry pick evidence for it working, easy to find, and you can get some really good studies it just seems that echinacea is unreliable that's like the entire thing and the unreliability doesn't seem to be in the human that ingests it it seems to be more in the sourcing of the plant and the molecules

within it because like when it comes to pelargonium the bio bioactive is umcolin. And umcolin is just one molecule. You put umcolin in your mouth and umcolin is coming out of your body. When it comes to echinacea, it's the acrylamides, an entire group of molecules. And they can freely interchange from one into the other. Like they just metabolize into each other, like in the plant and in the body, in a seemingly, at this point in time pretty unpredictable way and we don't really know which one of them or if multiple of them are the bioactive in question and there's even evidence just that that's all just been a red herring and there's actually other things that are like the bioactives there's one study

in particular that was just interesting because it basically said how bacterial contamination of echinacea which led to a high lipopolysaccharide content which normally causes a lot of inflammation in rat models that the lipopolysaccharide contamination actually led to an immune boosting property for echinacea supplements because of contamination. And then another one just said that it was because they had brawn proteins and they're similar to spirulina. And like, it's just all over the map. No one knows what's happening with echinacea. It's just unreliable. And if it slips into your mouth, good job, keep on taking

it. But I cannot recommend people go out and buy it because there's just a good chance it will not work and no one knows why and if it does work what are we talking about a slight reduction in duration of sickness uh i think frequency stays the same and side effects become a little bit more tolerable according to self reports so even then like it's nothing major like nothing revolutionary okay well i mean if it were me just because i hate being sick and i wanted to get it could be over as quickly as possible if there was even a chance that it was going to work honestly i'd be like yeah it's cheap i'll try it yeah i'd recommend other stuff instead of echinacea what's next then what do you recommend let's go back to a good one garlic is definitely a good one i eat

more garlic than i then uh i probably should be eating for the sake of people around me oh yeah they can suck it up they can suck it up i i eat a lot of garlic every day i love it yeah but basically garlic is kind of cool because it was the first time that i heard of a particular remember how i said that macrophages and NK cells were the ones that hunt down and kill infections? Right. They were the foot soldiers in the SWAT team. Yeah.

T-cells, the ones that regulate, are normally the desk workers. But there's the first time that I heard that T-cells can actually be modified to become pretty much assassins. It's the equivalent of going postal for an immune cell and garlic can encourage this that's that sounds amazing yeah so um garlic from what i've seen does garlic can make your t-cells like lose their shit pretty much that's cool i like that the evidence isn't the best best but it's enough uh it does not reduce the rate of what you get sick nor does it reduce the length you get sick

but it reduces how much the sickness how bad the sickness makes you feel and like the studies that i've seen measuring this actually just measured work days like when people are sick they call into work and say i can't come in i'm too sick does that go down with garlic and yes it goes down severely like a lot of people who are still sick say i'm good enough for work when they're taking garlic supplementation it's like i think a 50 improvement like half the people who normally call in sick don't interesting so what about and you don't need to take it every single day like as soon as you start feeling sick then you can start popping the garlic and severity should go down and just because we're on the we're on the topic what are the benefits of having garlic every day eating it or supplementing with it um just anything related

to hydrogen sulfide signaling which is nitric oxides underappreciate a little brother so better blood flow better antioxidation protection better cognition better organ health probably better longevity but that's you know a hard thing to prove outright it's just put garlic in your face now right right now literally right now yeah a clover day keeps the everything away. What about spirulina? Spirulina is a weird one because I haven't seen major... I love spirulina. I'll recommend people put five grams in their face now and forever more. But there isn't much studies on sickness rates at this moment in time. What are your thoughts?

Just based on your understanding and the research you've done, even though there aren't studies on it per se. I believe that because its main mechanism is the, remember the oxidative burst I talked about earlier, the SWAT team's shotgun? The submachine gun, I think it was. Submachine gun, yes. Spirulina prevents this, but it has other compounds in there that boost immunity. So I do believe that it has a position where it could make you get sick less frequently but if you are sick and you start super loading it it may not be the best idea interesting because

it might might prolong the the sickness or increase the severity because your body isn't able to fight it a general rule of thumb is that anti-inflammatories are also anti-immunity just because to reduce inflammation you have to impair the immune system's function in a way spirulina is on the verge of being both pro-immunity and anti-inflammation but it's nothing is panacea when it comes to these two topics because they are like the yin and yang they oppose each other so in that situation, if you want your natural killer cells to kill, you probably don't want to have high-dose spirulina preventing them from doing their job. So practically speaking, then it's like take your spirulina every day, but if you're sick,

maybe not take it while you're sick. Yeah. It's prevention, not therapy. Makes sense. What's next on the list? What's either good or bad? What else is worth talking about? Probably the mushrooms in general. Okay. talk mushrooms which mushrooms i usually refer to reishi or ganoderma lucidum initially because it's like my favorite mushroom but mushrooms in general have bioactive polysaccharides that just promote overall proliferation of white blood cells in the intestines and this isn't good or bad at default.

And this would apply to any and all mushrooms, right? Even just white mushrooms or portobello, like mushrooms you would just eat. I wouldn't say every mushroom, but I would confidently say more than 50%. And yes, the white button top mushrooms do apply. I have seen some research on that. What about crimini? Is that how you pronounce it? Crimini? Crimini? Yeah yeah i think it applied to that one as well like this general motif like the medicinal mushrooms have it stronger but generally speaking it's a mushroomy effect it's just for like most fungi that are in the human diet and don't kill us at the same time well even the deadly ones will help us in this way but then they just by another way kill us so you're

you're more immune for for a little bit and then you die yeah but basically the mushrooms proliferate white blood cells in the intestines overall and this may or may not lead to improved immunity but it forms a good base so if there is going to be like a good mixture of immune boosters having a mushroom in there is probably really effective. It's the same way how fiber-heavy diets improve immunity because they just support the gut and allow white blood cells to be created in higher levels. And what else about reishi? Because I know that's something that's in Genesis, obviously, and it's an expensive ingredient. You wanted it in there. You're willing to spend a good

amount of money on it because to get the right dosage that means that you had to forego other things you know oh yeah that's just because it's one of the only supplements that has evidence that it has like straight up anti-cancer properties like you have people with butt tumors literal tumors in their colon they take ratio for two months the tumors are either smaller or gone wow yeah like that exists and another reason for like why it exists is because when cancer gets to an advanced stage the cancer cell starts to learn it's like oh we shouldn't be here time to protect ourselves and the natural killer cells uh they go to the cancer cell try to kill it they do this a few times so the cancer cell learns to get like a coating around it to have the NK cells bounce off.

Reishi actually eliminates that coating. So the NK cells can straight up kill the cancer cell once more. And Reishi increases overall NK cell count. So it is just somewhat demonstratively proven anti-cancer mushroom that also has immune boosting properties and potentially cognitive health benefits. And what are those potential benefits for cognitive health? Oh, nothing major, just the general protective effects. I wouldn't say it's anything super potent or to put your faith into, but it might make you feel a wee bit better. That's literally it. It's a definition

of something you accidentally want to fall into your mouth, but you don't want to buy a supplement on its own for this purpose, which is why we slipped it into a mix of multiple things. Yeah. And it's not something that we even promote in terms of in the sales copy for Genesis. There's nothing in the way of cognitive health just because the effects aren't strong enough, right? Yeah. Well, I think about it this way. I would probably never buy reishi by itself, but because reishi is in Genesis, that serves as a major reason for me to buy Genesis. Because I mean, if I'm going to be putting a powder into my face, I want some goodies in the powder. And reishi qualifies as a goodie. Yeah. That's one of my favorite supplements we have. I skew

more toward just the health and longevity stuff, because you can only do so much, uh, in the way of supplementation to help you get jacked and shredded. So I like Genesis a lot. Uh, triumph is awesome. Has so many good things in it. Fortify as well. I really like it just cause I guess as my personality, I'm a bit more mindful of preventative actions. Like In life, I try to be proactive more than reactive. And so I'm just naturally drawn towards supplements that are more proactive in nature that prevent problems from occurring. So I don't have to deal with problems that are not fun to deal with. I just want problems that are the good problems to have.

I want as few stupid and shitty problems as possible. Yeah. I call it the maturely lazy way to do things. That's a good way of putting it. I just don't want to deal with these problems. So I'm just going to make them not happen in the first place. Boom. Exactly. So on the mushrooms, are there other mushrooms other than reishi that are worth mentioning

in the context of immunity? I think, I personally believe reishi is the best for immunity turkey's tail is a dietary supplement and it's more catered towards cancer research cordyceps is a very popular mushroom for dietary supplementation yeah i think people are a lot of people are hearing about that these days probably because uh there's like that mushroom coffee that is has been blowing up and i know it's i think it's reishi cordyceps and a couple others oh yeah that i remember seeing it but it's probably trash it's probably trash because i wouldn't say like it's trash but at the same time like i don't like the idea of

putting funguses into coffee it's like no like did i tell you about kombucha at all? No. Kombucha is fungal tea. It's quite literally... I've drank it and it's not very tasty. I find it okay. I want to go back for seconds. Let's just put it that way. Is it good though? Because that's even more popular than the cordyceps.

That's like mainstream you know insta instagirl status stuff now everybody's uh drinking kombucha uh kombucha is not insanely healthy like it has antioxidant properties um it may or may not be an immune booster research is just not there it's stunningly average but it has a kill count that's kind of cool well because like if kombucha is made properly it's completely safe and it's marketed towards a demographic that does not respect biological processes particularly related to fermentation they think oh bacterial infection that's more probiotics am i right then they drink it and die like no kombucha is the last thing you want to make at home you want like

an actual factory with sanitation to make it for you or at the very least take responsibility for the fact that it might kill you if you brew it horrendously wrong which apparently some people have i didn't know that i hadn't heard that that's like one of those headlines that would have stood out to me yeah anyways like beyond, there's also a lion's mane mushroom. And the lion's mane is marketed more as a brain booster, but it also has the immune boosting properties. And how does it work? The proposed mechanism for brain boosting is essentially the same mechanism as bacopa. It increases BDNF.

So if an area of brain wants to grow, there's now a growth factor in that area to allow and support growth. But the cool thing about this one, Lion's Mane, is that it might also increase BDNF in the spinal cord. So there's no research on it, but some people have been interested in pairing this with Agmatine for spinal injuries. I have no clue if that's been successful or not,

but something to think about. Lion's mane. It also has a whole name. That sounds pretty cool too. So what's next on the list? Well, I'm just on the examined list for bioactive mushrooms and the only last one is king oyster,

but I have no clue what king oyster's niche is. I've never even heard of it. Oh, it's just a really big mushroom that if you cook it correctly, it tastes like meat. And it's probably one of the only ones that you know legit might taste like meat just because it's really like thick and absorbs moisture well so what's the next what's the next supplement then oh weird there's actually a study showing that it increases testosterone in elk oh great um so it's time

it's time to make a testosterone booster then never Never ship this up to Canada. Moose is strong enough as it is. They might just take over. They can't defeat the goose. Nothing. Defeat the goose. That'll be the final war. It'll be like Frost says, the world will be in fire or ice.

Is it going to end with the elk or the goose on top? Pretty much. The Australians are just going to be alive. It's just like, yeah, we got our own problems. The castle warriors are beating up the alligators and everything else. All right. So what's next on the list that you wanted to discuss just supplement wise? Good or bad?

Can't really think of anything else aside from maybe probiotics. But that's- I mean, that's probably that would really warrant its own that's something i've asked you about over and over and you keep on telling me to fuck off well it's just because there's so many different probiotics out there that i just don't feel sufficiently researched on them yeah no i know i could say a bunch of random things about them i thought i just want random things man i have a random thing that's not at all related to immunity please share

right to you so there is actually one probiotic that i really like uh it's called lactobacillus ruteri and like lactobacillus acetophilus is one of the more popular ones lactobacillus ruteri is a different type of lactobacillus obviously and it was initially tested for just reducing stomach ulcers you know how stomach ulcers related to i think it's the bacteria heliobacter pylori like do you not know that but now i do okay so there's something called h pylori and if it gets in your stomach goes ha ha you have an ulcer now bitch and it is very common surprisingly so a lot a lot of people have ulcers and they don't realize it per se they don't realize i wouldn't say that a lot of people have ulcers and they don't realize it per se like they don't realize i wouldn't say that a lot of people have ulcers but when you have a stomach ulcer i'd say

there's like an 80 chance that h pylori is in there screwing things up h pylori i've definitely heard of i don't remember the context but i i feel like if i were to hear i'll be like oh right i guess maybe that's why and I just didn't put it together. But anyway, so because when I say lactobacillus ruteri, that's kind of like saying just any other plant named Bacopo monieri. And those plants can sell variants and bacteria can still have more subsets. And this particular subset, PTA6475, I've actually remembered that because it's so cool there's a study that like i can link it to you after this is done so you can share it with everyone it's a free to access study it basically gave this probiotic to rats and showed a glow of health and by glow of health

skin quality increased hair quality increased vitality increased fertility increased it basically did an all-around more youthful effect on rats and it was all tied into increasing a particular interleukin which is basically remember i said immune cells signal to each other a lot of their signals called interleukins so the signals themselves are called interleukins not there's a lot of signals but so yeah but but i just want to make sure i'm understanding that that that's what that is it's a signal yeah well think inter as sure yeah like have you ever read a study on like exercise inflammation you saw the acronym il6 interleukin 6 that's like it's basically just a way to assess the activity of the immune system but yeah i believe it was interleukin

17 interleukin 10 and 17a meaning it gets really complex but basically just this probiotic by itself increased like all these parameters including fertility testicular function and male rats testosterone as well like it just overall gave an incredibly youthful appearance and effect on these rodents from a goddamn gut bacteria i guess that's not entirely surprising based on all the research that is i mean at least it's getting the research that's out there is getting more attention now and on just how many different ways our gut health impacts us right ranging from not not just physical things but also well i mean you could say it's physical but mood and psychological states

and so forth well there's more of the magnitude like anyone is listening who wants to read up on the study the fur on the rats basically went from basic and stringy to deliciously lustrous oh wow like it was a big effect good thing we are just big rats right so we should all just take it oh yeah pretty much no what are your thoughts what are your thoughts yeah where does it go from here has it been studied in humans yet um i haven't followed up on the particular strain because uh like it's actually one of the lesser popular strains like one of the other strains for infant colic i think it's called yeah infantile colic yeah seems to work for some reason also like apparently infantile colic is all related to

the intestines at least from what i've seen of these studies apparently babies cry if their stomachs are pissed off who knew i can attest to that my son had colic when he was younger it was uh not fun for a little bit yeah i do not envy you for that but now now now he's cool though so it's okay let's do a recap then just so if people listen let's put it together in terms of okay so here's here's something if you want to um here's a daily if you really wanted to do do with supplementation do everything you can to boost your immune system. And then if you do find yourself sick, you could add these in as well. That would be a somewhat healthy diet with plenty of fiber in there. A mushroom of sorts, dietary mushrooms are fine. And then adding garlic against supplementation or dietary inclusion are fine. And for people listening,

supplementation or dietary inclusion are fine and for for people listening what i do personally is i i mean i tend to eat the same meals same foods every day just because i eat stuff i like until i get sick of it and then i change it so but i eat a fair amount of garlic of it's probably i mean it's probably like three or four cloves um a clove being an individual nodule right yeah what's what's the what's the entire thing called what a bulb right yeah your bulb and then you then you have so so i'm eating a few cloves of garlic every day i'd say like three or four and then i'm probably eating uh let's say have you ever popped one into your mouth before a workout no i know you said that you're into that because you're weird but well i i'm into it, but I've done it before.

And like, if you ever buy a pre-workout and you're like, oh, wow, does it really reduce blood pressure? Like you're skeptical. Pop two cloves of garlic into your mouth, go to the gym, try to do an overhead press or don't because you will fall unconscious. Holy crap. Like a clove of garlic in your mouth will reduce blood pressure and you will feel it because you'll get woozy. It's that potent.

So don't do that. You guys should do like an entire podcast on hydrogen sulfide because, you know, I like it more than nitric oxide, to be honest. Something I know nothing about, so I would just sit and learn. Well, like, because have you heard the term gasotransmitter before? Maybe it sounds familiar. It's a signaling molecule in the body that just happens to be a gas rather than like a liquid or a solid and all that and there's three of them known nitric oxide hydrogen sulfide and carbon monoxide carbon monoxide is an antioxidant also might kill you at high amounts right will will yes will they're all toxins that are produced

in our body that had beneficial effects and like that's just interesting but hydrogen sulfide itself is blood pressure reducing brain protecting antioxidant it's awesome interesting so but you can get more of it through through, obviously. Anything that provides sulfur to the diet. So, garlic, methionine, and cysteine. So, like a lot of the benefits of protein that are beyond the amino acids themselves are tied into providing sulfur to the diet through methionine and cysteine. Sure. Taurine can actually provide sulfur to the diet, as can the supplement MSM, methyl sulfonyl methionine i believe it's called it's just you know methionine with an extra sulfur on it yeah comments that you find in

joint supplements a lot right yeah and like sulfur actually inherently can help joints right well i shouldn't say it helps if you don't have sulfur in your diet your joints suffer okay so those are the diet things. And then supplementation wise, if somebody were wanting to do everything they could to keep their immune system working as well as it can, what would the daily regimen look like? For somebody who gets sick frequently, but not to an overly potent degree, I would recommend spirulina daily. Well, I'd recommend spirulina daily to everybody, but for these particular people, I double recommend. And that's five grams a day, right? You can go as low as two grams a day,

but I'd recommend five as a basic. Also, if your nose hates you, if like snot builds up a lot, spirulina is your best friend. Trust me on this one. My nose hates me. I noticed that I was getting some allergic reactions this year to the pollen, which I haven't experienced in a long time. I guess that I was getting some allergic reactions this year to the pollen,

which I haven't experienced in a long time. I guess the pollen was pretty intense and spirulina helped with that. I mean, I take Genesis every day, but there were a couple of days on the weekend when I didn't take it. And I noticed that I was, I mean, it is a milder, it's not, my allergies were a bit more intense when i was younger but i noticed i was sneezing a little bit more on the weekends um that's my experience with that yeah the only downside of a sarline is that you have to take it daily just the effects don't last in the body experience that firsthand but anyways but continuing if you get a sickness anything related to the throat that is dry consider pelargonium cidioids or african geranium and

finally if you get sick either frequently or infrequently doesn't matter but as long as your sickness has a high intensity to it up the garlic we're talking three to four cloves a day level or if you want to supplement about 1200 milligrams of aged garlic extract okay and what about vitamin c it's not completely worthless right in all scenarios and it's cheap yeah if you exercise and because you exercise you feel sick and that's it like it's directly related to the exercise then consider some vitamin c really it's that i know you'd mention that but i thought you were just referring to because there's just not much evidence like that's the only scenario where it's seen to be beneficial, but I assumed that...

Well, the evidence in other scenarios has just shown it to be pretty much useless. Okay. That's good to know. That's the scenario where it shines. It's just if someone works out hard enough to make themselves sick, then whatever vitamin C does in the body prevents sickness there. I mean, what does that really mean though? How do you work out so hard that you get sick? Like, yeah, you just train seven days a week and try to squat one RMs every day or something? It just refers to the frequency of, I believe in the studies, there's upper respiratory tract infections again. But basically, if you have two groups of people,

if you have like 200 people on the left, 200 people on the right, and you follow them both for a year, you can measure how frequently they get sick. And the harder you work, like if you work out moderately, rates of sickness go down. But if you work out intensely, then there's a chance that after your workout, you will be susceptible to infections. And so you just be susceptible to infections. And so you just kind of catch something. It's kind of like you work out hard enough that your immune system is so busy that it can't keep an eye on everything else. Right. So then practically speaking, then you're talking about like, what do you think would be reasonable in terms of intensity?

I mean, I think of some of the crazy shit CrossFitters do or... The studies in particular were done on teenage and young adult skiers so i would say like you don't need to like bust a lung in particular but honestly i'd say crossfitting intensity is probably comparable yeah as long as you do it every day of the week or six days at least yeah yeah so yeah. So some of the more intense CrossFit folk out there. Yeah, I think that's totally reasonable to suggest vitamin C for. And that would be in the case of sickness though, right? Or would it be to prevent sickness?

It would be to prevent sickness. Okay, now what would be how much? 500 milligrams at the minimum. Per day. Perfect, perfect. Great. And on the mushroom side of things any any general recommendations there i would just recommend uh reishi as the default unless you have a lot of white button you diet every day and if you do have a lot of white button mushrooms in your diet you probably already getting the benefits so you don't need another and if you

aren't taking any brain booster but you want to like for one supplement, like double down on immunity and brain boosting, then you can try out lion's mane. But beyond that, consider most of them interchangeable. And in terms of amount, what's reasonable? About one gram of the water extract daily for supplementation if you're doing it food wise i'd say it's about 10 grams after water is taken out so a loose handful well you can probably tighten up a little small apple size how many i'm just like making a pop right here i was like wait how do i show how many grams does this apple weigh, man? Come on. I don't know.

50 grams fresh. Okay. All right. Perfect. Yeah. Fresh just means with water in it. No, it's a handful or two of mushrooms a day. That's reasonable.

Well, I think that's everything, huh? Yeah, pretty much. Well, thanks for taking the time as always. And what should we talk about next time? If hydrogen sulfide isn't the topic du jour of that inevitable day which it should be to be honest because i'm have no other major ideas here perhaps just like a general overview of uh like how eastern medicine is like just because it has shit evidence doesn't mean the actual medicine itself is shit yeah we

were talking about that before it sounds very interesting and you need a bit of time to digest the massive book that you're in the middle of but i think that could be a very interesting episode i think also i think also life science i think also probiotics could be a good episode because they are trendy and you have a lot of supplements because they are. A lot of people hear about them. A lot of people are searching about them. And you have a lot of fake news supplements that ironically, I just got emailed from, I won't say who, but somebody who I actually warned him that it's probably a bad idea to go too much into the affiliate land in the fitness space where you just start whoring your list out to anybody who has a decent EPC or whatever. I don't even know. I've never even promoted an affiliate offer. That's not true. I promoted Greg Knuckles' Greg's and Eric's and Mike's monthly research review because it's actually really good but i've otherwise never never done an affiliate offer but you know where

you see like hey they're promising look at look at people are earning on average uh you know a dollar fifty per email subscriber they're sending to and it's some bullshit probiotic product that the headline basically promises that you are going that, what is it? Ferocious, friendly probiotics that guarantee more muscle building and fat burning without making any changes to your diet. And I've seen this offer actually going around, again, simply because probiotics are very mainstream right now. There's a lot of talk about them. There's even like stupid shit out in New York and I think LA where they have probiotic bars, so to speak, where you go and get special probiotic shots, $20 little cups of yogurt.

Well, that's better than me thinking of shots. Because when you said shots, my first thought was needles. I'm like, oh, no. That would be really good. But no, no. They're just little yogurt, little squirts, little 20-hour squirts of yogurt. Here you go, idiot. Thanks.

Yeah, it's... Why? Like, why? To sell probiotics under the name probiotic. Because Lambos, bro. What are you talking about? Why? To say, here's a probiotic.

Eat this probiotic. And not specify the species. Like, say, hey, I have plant specify the species like saying hey i have plant do you like plant eat this plant do you know the benefit of plant this plant is known as green green do you not watch dr ozman you don't know about plant oh green plant ketones there's a supplement right there actually she won't that domain uh just because I grew up on the internet and there's something irreparably wrong with my soul. I really would like to, at some point, spend a lot of time just making fake supplement websites with fake brands that make fun of existing stuff just for fun. But greenplantketones.com.

I'm actually going to Google the main one. Greenplantketones.com is mine. Nobody can have it. Make a bone supplement, right? And there's vitamin D, iodine, calcium, and vitamin K in that order. And just pretend that calcium with this initial C-A, just forget about the day, the A. So you have-i-c-k sell it in horse pills it's pretty good it's pretty good pretty good i do want and i do want some vitamin dick in my life are you 50 years of age well you need some dick vitamin dick that is and the worst part is you could argue it's a good bone health supplement see see a part of me wants to do that and actually just sell at least one bottle just to say that i sold a bottle of vitamin

dick like when people ask like what do i do like oh what do you do oh i sell i sell dick i sell i sell dick i mean how what kind of how can you beat that answer going to a block party in my neighborhood with all these. I put it on my CV. I have one sold dick without breaking laws. This is the kind of shit I think about when I live in Northern Virginia. It's mostly just kind of whatever professional older people that I'm just strange to. So I just think of when I go to a block party or something. Oh, what do you do?

I sell dick. What do you do? Oh sell dick. What do you do? Oh, I'm a lawyer. I'm the head lead counsel at this huge whatever, Fortune 500 company. What do you do? Oh, I sell dick. Yeah, definitely. That would be worth it.

Too cool. All right, man. Well, I vote for probiotics. I think that would be worthwhile. And, you know, actually, now that you bring up bone supplements, bone broth is another thing that is – I'd have to check on Google Trends. I feel like it's heating up, though. I'm hearing more and more. Are we going up?

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And popular. I'm going to check right now. I'm going to check right now. It should die. Oh. Don't betray me, humanity.

I've opened you. Put it in right now. Google Trends. Look at this trend. Oh, yeah. It's way more popular than berberine but not nearly as popular as the ketogenic diet my friend oh what do you know china and india have this shit right there's one surging berberine more than bone broth france too go france so

that could also be a that could also be a a podcast worth doing i think how france has their shit together sure not fr how france has their shit together sure not france does not have their shit together come on now don't don't say such blasphemous things but they're better than the bone broth yeah they have that going for them i guess all right man well this was a good discussion what do you have coming up on the on the blog which i mention this every time and i should mention it again. Curtis writes over at legionathletics.com slash blog, writes all kinds of amusing educational things. We have an ongoing game now of writing ridiculous intros and his intros, I think you've been beating me actually because I've been

buried in like other stuff and I haven't been able to put much brainpower into creating more and more alluring introductions. But what do we got coming up? So recently we had the gut health supplements as well as a potassium deficiency article, which I recommend because everyone needs more potassium. Yeah. Quickly, what's the easiest way to do that? Because supplementing is kind of a pain in the ass, 99 milligrams per tablet. Like, how do you do it with diet? So for diet you just have to eat more veggies and and what what kind of veggies

like what what do you do uh for me personally i tend to go towards beans and pretty much any veggie i can shove in my mouth like guilt-free like i don't need to track the calories for it that kind of stuff for me but also um in grocery stores, there's something called the salt substitute. It's supposed to taste like salt. Doesn't do a good job. Yeah, it doesn't really kind of taste shitty. But yeah, the thing is like you buy it in grocery stores called the salt substitute and it's straight up potassium hydrochloride. And you can sprinkle that on your foods for extra potassium.

So that's like really the only way to get high levels of potassium in your diet without just buying like 20 bottles of pills yeah i mean you can also i i like to eat a banana as well that's on average about 500 milligrams of potassium right i don't remember the exact numbers i think that's what it what it was i remember because i was looking at this like okay i want to make sure i get enough potassium i want to have to supplement or use salt so i'd say i would prefer to just get it through food and anyways well i make chili a lot so i just throw the potassium hydrochloride in there yeah that works yeah plus obviously chili lends itself to beans so yeah it's weird that that's my potassium source chili you'd think

it'd be green at least whatever works man i know right and what do you have what do you have coming up uh there's going to be a nutrient deficiency article in the next week. And there's one other article that... It was an op-ed, which I'm actually kind of proud of, where I was talking about three supplements that are highly potent, and that's why you should not take them. Just dangerous ones. To anyone who has used the term soy boy unironically,

you should feel ashamed because i'm actually going to talk about a true estrogen in that article what what are the three you'd have to go into the specifics but i just i just want to know uh raw wolfia vomitoria a plant that is aptly named after his ability to make people profusely vomit and is a wonderful combination of yohimbine, reserpine and antipsychotic, uppers, doubters and other psychoactive agents. A wonderful thing to sell to old little ladies who just want to have the bones stop hurting. Puerorimorifica or white quail craw and it is basically more potent of an estrogen than estrogen itself.

Wow. Potent enough that if you took one gram of it and put it in your bro's protein shake as a prank it may constitute a legitimate crime and the last you're giving people you just gave a lot of people uh ideas right there amazon sales are about to spike no because i know people are going this herb has been used to give men in the transgender community titties that's how powerful an estrogen it is they use it to grow tits like when they can't get estrogen otherwise and so i'm actually wondering it's like when being a soy boy isn't enough yeah like you just that's the headline soy boys are like level one mobs you

grind on in a video game compared to this thing being the end boss. Ah, so you show up kind of emotional but not lactating yet. And then... Yeah, pretty much. And the last one is Thunder God Vine, which has the best name ever. Thunder God Vine. Thunder God Vine. Yeah.

It's not named after Thor, surprisingly. I don't, it has a kill count. Basically, it's a traditional Chinese medicine for rheumatism. And it is a very potent anti-inflammatory. But if you accidentally take a wee bit more than expected, and it's a plant, so the bioactive levels change depending on how it's grown. It may or may not kill half your immune system. But regardless of what happens, rheumatism goes down.

So, sort of a line. Like, rheumatism is basically your immune system. Yeah, like, rheumatism is basically your immune system attacks your own body. So, you just kill half your immune system. Calm down. Yeah. Or if you just go full Thanos on them, both of them work to, you know, reduce rheumatism. It's just, if you kill half your immune system like

thunder god vine has given people cancer well like like cancer scabies ovarian failure numerous cases of just outright death it's like oh wow i feel good dead so yeah thankfully it's not really sold in the west anymore but if you find like a little mom and pop store like that has like old chinese owners they're just like oh what do you want and it's like well thunder god vine i can kill a man with that so yeah don't take thunder god vine or marifca you can take vomitory if you want but your stomach won't like you fun fun perfect i think that's it for now huh yeah all right thanks for taking the time, man. Okay. Talk to you later. Hey there, it is Mike again.

I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did and don't mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you're listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search

visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any of the new goodies. Lastly, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback, so please do reach out. All right, that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead, I'm going to just quickly

tell you about something of mine, specifically my one-on-one coaching service. So the long story short here is this is the personal coaching service that I wish I had when I started in the gym many years ago. Every diet and training program that we create for clients is 100% custom. We provide daily workout logs and do weekly accountability calls. Our clients get priority email service and discounts on supplements, and the list goes on and on. Furthermore, my team and I have also worked with hundreds of people of all ages, circumstances, and needs and goals. So no matter how tricky you might think your situation is, I promise you we can figure out how to get you results. If I have piqued your interest and you want to learn more, then head on over to www.muscleforlife.com forward slash coaching and schedule your free consultation call now. I'll tell you, there's usually a wait list and new slots fill up very quickly.

So if you're interested at all, don't wait. Go schedule your call now.