The Joe Rogan Experience - #1683 - Andrew Huberman

Episode Date: July 14, 2021

Andrew Huberman is a Professor of Neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford University, and host of the "Huberman Lab" Podcast.

the Joe Rogan experience yeah anyway I'm just a giant fantasy video I use it constantly I use it for like I use the roll-ons for muscle aches and I use gummies and, and CBD MD is one of my sponsors, but this, uh, Kill Cliff company, this is a, this is actually a drink that I designed. It tastes really good. Thank you. I like it. Yeah. So many of the questions I get are about anxiety. People are like, how do I control my anxiety? People are stressed. So the CBD is supposed to help with that it's supposed to help with that and I think it does a little bit one things that I found is a CBD with THC it alleviates even more I

can add a little THC to it yeah I can imagine yeah THC probably takes the edge off but it's also a balancing act you know the problem like I used to get CBD with THC from a local company in LA and they were so inconsistent in that. Like I'd take like I had a thing. I do like three droplets. I'm like, OK, I got three droppers full. And then one day I did three droppers and I was on the fucking moon. I was like, what are you what have you people done?

Street side chemistry. Yeah. They're all bathtub chemists. Well, that's the thing. The I think with supplements, they're so poorly regulated. I'm not pushing for regulation. The last thing we need is regulation on it. But it's like melatonin.

I was talking to Matt Walker about this, my friend Matt, amazing sleep scientist. Melatonin, if it's listed like three milligrams or six milligrams, it can vary anywhere from being 15% of what's actually listed on the bottle to 85% more. And if you look at how much melatonin is actually made by the pineal gland, it's a tiny fraction of the three milligrams it's supposed to be. So melatonin, it's all over the place. Does that mess you up if you take melatonin? Does your body say, well, I don't need any melatonin. I don't need to make it. It might. The bigger problem, I never suggest melatonin for sleep for a couple of reasons.

One is the reason kids don't go into puberty until a certain age is because they have chronically high melatonin. Really? Melatonin suppresses puberty. So does it suppress your endocrine system? So in humans, it's probably not as dramatic as it is in animals that are seasonal breeders. But long ago when I was a graduate student at Berkeley, we would do these experiments on these little what are called Siberian hamsters, these little hamsters. And these hamsters only breed in long days because light basically suppresses melatonin. So in short days, long nights, seasonal breeding animals shut down breeding, right?

Humans can breed all year long, of course. But if you give melatonin to a male Siberian hamster, its testes go from the size of standard marbles to the size of a grain of rice within a week. Wow. And the females, their ovaries involute. They basically turn into like little shriveled, not even raisins, but little specks. So when I hear about people taking a lot of melatonin and you've got this whole issue

with falling testosterone, dysregulated estrogen in men and women, I just think it's not the best sleep aid. The other thing, and Matt and I have talked about this a lot recently, just we've been hanging out and chatting about science or as he would say, splashing around in the science of sleep. As know he's a brit after all um the problem with

melatonin is it will help you fall asleep but it won't help you stay asleep and so some people have this problem they take melatonin they fall asleep and then they wake up three or four hours so it wears off yeah there are much better things for sleep what what do you choose for sleep yeah my favorite sleep cocktail based on really good solid peer-reviewed science is magnesium threonate. It's T-H-R-E-O-N-A-T-E, threonate. And something called apigenin, A-P-I-G-E-N-I-N, which is basically a derivative of chamomile. Those two things work really well to, they essentially shut down the forebrain thinking, thinking anticipating part of your brain allow you to drift off into sleep really well. I need that all day then if you shut that down.

Well, and then theanine is also that is the third thing in the cocktail. Isn't theanine that is also a nootropic. So theanine also turns on what's called the GABA system. It's like an inhibitory neurotransmitter and helps suppress anxiety and kind of turn off thinking it helps you make the transition into sleep yeah so it's magnesium three and eight I'm a right sure thing yeah and sleep is obviously pretty good but it's always these are a game changer I'll be amazed if it doesn't help so it's magnesium three innate th are e o n a T e and that's important because there are a lot of T-H-R-E-O-N-A-T-E.

Three and eight. He's got it right there. There it is. Young Jamie on the ball, as always. And basically, you know, people will probably want to know about Source. In this case, you just go for price, right? I mean, if you have a favorite brand, go for that, but go for price. So magnesium threonate can cross the blood-brain barrier

because when you take magnesium, it goes into your gut. It doesn't necessarily get into your brain. You've got a barrier around your brain that prevents certain things from getting in because this tissue doesn't regenerate, right? So the threonate form gets brought across the blood-brain barrier by a transporter. Other forms like magnesium malate, magnesium citrate, those are good for other things. Magnesium malate is great for muscle soreness. Magnesium citrate is a great laxative. But magnesium threonate is going to be the one that's going to allow you to drift into sleep better. You know, it's interesting that you're saying this because one of the things that I've found that relaxes me more than anything is Epsom salts. You know, I'm a big proponent of

the isolation tank and the sensory deprivation tank is all filled with magnesium. It's all filled with Epsom salts. And it can go transdermal. Yeah. So that's a really unusual situation where if you, you know, you get, and there are some magnesium creams and things like that. But you're not going to get it in the kind of volume that you get it when you lie in it like that. And when you're doing that, what, what magnesium is that? So that's usually a magnesium biglycinate, which is another one of these forms of magnesium that can get transported into the brain really easily. And most people actually are magnesium deficient. I think most people could people would do well by increasing their magnesium intake. I supplement, but I think I supplement with citrate.

Yeah. So citrate has its value. Malate, again, it's good for muscle soreness, but three and eight, what you want to take is about 300 to 400 milligrams. But what you'll notice is on the bottle, it'll say elemental magnesium and then magnesium will be 300 to 400. And then it'll say equals 1000 milligrams. Basically just go for 300 to 400 milligrams and you're good. And then the other thing is apigenin, A-P-I-G-E-N-I-N. And this stuff is terrific. It basically, that's the only source I'm aware of. Oh, this is like a cocktail. Yeah. And I should be very clear that maybe because I've been blabbing about this. How is this cocktail put together?

Did you just put this together? No. So I want to be really clear. I have no relationship to these brands or anything like that. I've been blabbing about this on my podcast. Oh, that's why. And so someone is clearly making money out of the Amazon partnership thing or whatever. That's why they put it.

But those are the three things. Well, I bet a bunch of people just started buying it together because this is just frequently bought together. Right. So those are the three that I recommend. And then L3, and so for apigenin, it's 50 milligrams. Women see the prostate health thing and they freak out.

50? Oh, women see prostate health thing and they freak out? Well, they think, oh, is it testosterone in a bottle? Oh, for guys, right. Yeah, whereas all the gym rats are like testosterone in a bottle. Yeah, they guys, right. Yeah, whereas all the gym rats are like testosterone in a bottle. Yeah, they get excited. Yeah, fuck it, bro.

So apigenin turns on a chloride channel. The way neurons work is you've got stuff going in and out of them, and the chloride channel tends to turn off neurons a little bit in a good way and creates a kind of a little sedative role. It kind of helps you drift off into sleep. And it's the same stuff that's in chamomile tea. So this has no negative side effects for women? Not that I'm aware of.

Uh-oh, I hate that term. Well, you know, okay. So I know a number of people, including women, that use it and are fine, are still fertile, you know. I don't know. I mean, I haven't tested their fertility personally. What is the idea of the benefits for prostate health? So it does seem to have a small amount of estrogen antagonism.

It can block estrogen receptors a little bit, but it's a very weak affinity. Maybe it calms some ladies down. I said that. Not Mr. Huberman. Thank you. Just a joke. Years ago. Stop screaming.

Years ago, I worked on hormones and development. We could we could go there. Hormone effects on the brain. That was my master's thesis. But the but theanine, T-H-E-A-I-N-E is also has a little bit of an anxiolytic and anti-anxiety effect. And there is something to think about with theanine. People now put theanine in energy drinks so that people will drink more energy drinks and not get the jitters. And so it's showing up. I recommend taking these 30 to 60 minutes before sleep. And what do you recommend for a dose for theanine? For theanine, it's going to be 100 to 400 milligrams. However, if you're a sleepwalker or you have what are called night terrors where you have really disturbing dreams, leave the theanine out because the dreams on theanine are intense. Really? I like them, but it's intense.

But I'm into dreaming. I think dreaming is a really interesting thing. I think theanine is in that neuro gum, isn't it? Young Jamie? Yeah. I think it's in there. They're putting it in everything now. The one thing about magnesium threonate I should mention is that there are some data, not a ton, that it's also neuroprotective. So there's at least one study, peer-reviewed, independent, you know, not a company paying for the study, but done by a laboratory with no bias, that shows that magnesium threonate can offset some forms of atrial cognitive decline.

So that's another reason. So the cocktail of the three of them, the reason for putting the three of them together? There seems to be some sort of synergistic effect because some people, of course, will take something for a long period of time and then it'll stop working. You can take these, they're not habit forming. I mean, I've taken them consistently and then taken breaks and then go back on them. And they really, in most cases, I mean, I guess if someone had a heart condition, a serious heart condition, anytime you mess with magnesium because you have neurons in your heart, magnesium is involved in neuron function. Obviously, the usual things, check with your doctor. And obviously, I'm not a doctor and professor, so I profess things.

I'm not prescribing anything. But it's helped a tremendous number of people get into sleep better and stay asleep. Interesting. And I think Walker would generally agree. I can't speak for him. He's really into all this new, like, I don't want to take away his next kind of, he's planning some really amazing public education stuff. I've pulled him into the mix. He freaked a lot of people out on my podcast.

Well, he scared people a bit. Yeah. Yeah. So we talked about that. I mean, like, I think first of all, that was an important podcast. It just what, it wasn't just a brilliant podcast. It was important because people were ignoring sleep. We heard be a heart, go hard driving, hard driving, hard driving. And it's very important that people understand that the fundamental layer of health, mental health and physical health is regular quality sleep. So he scared people appropriately, I think. And now he's shifting to how can you get better at sleeping? And we're joining forces in that mission,

but I want to be really clear, he's doing it on his own too. He's got, I don't want to give away what he's got planned, but basically he, so Matt, David Sinclair, me, Lex, all the nerds, we're kind kind of like we're trying to get out there with the scientific information and help people and so Matt's got some really terrific sleep science and actionable sleep tool

plans for the world well when is he going to do that I'd love to have him back on when he's ready to launch that okay Matt I'm going to out you now so he and I had a discussion recently he is talking about doing a brief weekly podcast on sleep health Mmm launching sometime in August or September

Oh great, which I just think is gonna help so many people sure and brief would make it nice because it's easy to digest Yeah, I still haven't learned the brief thing. I'm not well known for being concise. Well, you're talking to me man I can't shut the fuck up. Well, I would say I have kind of a scientific Tourette's. It's like some people with Tourette's, they shout out like explicatives, like I'm shouting out scientific information. I can't help it. Well, that's great. It just means you love what you do. I do.

I can't help myself. Now, theanine, using theanine to help sleep, it seems so strange to me that it would also be a nootropic, that it would also be something that enhances brain function. Because it kind of – I take – AlphaBrain just released it today, AlphaBrain Black Label, the strongest version of AlphaBrain, which I've been testing over the last six months. Actually, more. Is it AlphaGPC at high dose? No, I'll tell you what exactly. You know, we had our original alpha brain from Onnit, and then there's an ad for it that they just put out today.

There's a new version of alpha brain that's been really beneficial to me. It's just, for me, like, you know, we did some double-blind placebo-controlled studies at the Boston Center for Memory when we first released AlphaBrain. So what do you think about this stuff here? So it's got theanine in it. Yep. So the theanine is going to take down some of the stimulant effect of the caffeine.

You know, the best way to work, the best nootropic is something that's going to put you in alert but calm. Right. You don't want to be super jazzed. You don't want to be on amphetamines. No. I mean, if you're on them, you think you want to be on them. You don't want to be on them. So the theanine is going to take the edge off. The caffeine anhydrous is the right form of caffeine. You guys have good people working on this. The phosphatidyl stearin is going to be, it's going to actually be a little

bit of a reduction of cortisol, which is good. Most people are riding high on cortisol and not a good way. You want cortisol each day and we can talk about how to time it, but you want to time that peak in the right way. The acetylcholine is going to increase acetylcholine, which is involved in the brain's ability to focus, to create that tunnel of attention,

which is critical, right? I mean, you can't be all over the place. And the Lutamax 2020, I don't know, that looks like a proprietary blend. Let's see. Marigold, carotenoids. Oh, lutein, that's going to be good for... So those are going to be good for eye health. And actually, I looked into it based on our last discussion. So for moderate to advanced macular degeneration, the data on lutein are good. It supports healthier vision. Yeah, I take lutein every day now.

I spoke to my chairman of ophthalmology at Stanford, asked him, what's the story on lutein are good. It supports healthier vision. Yeah, I take lutein every day now. I spoke to my chairman of ophthalmology at Stanford, asked him, what's the story on lutein? He said, for moderate to severe macular degeneration, there seems to be a positive effect there. For people that have mild or early forms of macular degeneration, the data aren't there yet. And I said, but is it reasonable to consider taking it as a preventative? And he was like, yeah, I think that's a reasonable thing. Whatever has happened with me over the last year or so, my vision has stopped deteriorating. That's great. Yeah.

I have another theory, which is you're living in Texas now. No joke. And because this isn't a joke, because you're living in Texas, you're actually getting longer vista views. You're looking at things at a distance more often. I'm guessing. I don't know your home environment or your lifestyle terribly much, but at all really. But we know that long distance viewing and getting outside into sunlight can offset macular degeneration and myopia, nearsightedness. There's a huge, meaning thousands of subjects, study that was done in the US also overseas to the multiple site clinical trial, showing that if children get outside for two hours a day, even if they're on their phones, hate to say it, but even if they're on their phones, and they're reading and doing their thing, they don't develop nearsightedness.

And just being outside in natural light seems to help offset vision loss. And the reason is that when you look at things up close, the eyeball actually lengthens. And because there's a lens there, the light gets focused in front of the retina, not on the retina, which is what you need in order to pass that information to the brain. So that when you put on eyeglasses, you're basically giving it another lens to focus at the right place. When you look at things at a distance, you use the musculature of the eye in a process called accommodation. People can look it up.

We don't have to get into the details. That lens becomes and remains bendy. The lens in your eye bends. It actually squishes and bends. It's not like a standard rigid lens. And so looking at things in the distance, getting natural light, actually blue light is good for us in this sense during the daytime, improves eye health. It reduces myopia, nearsightedness, and can offset

the progression of HLA macular degeneration. Now, people shouldn't be blasting themselves with bright light because that can cause other issues. But as long as the light isn't painful to look at, you're in safe territory. So if someone is experiencing the beginning of macular degeneration, do you recommend going somewhere where we could see long distances and just concentrate on just how often should you do something like that? For every 30 minutes of looking at a screen or a phone, you should look off into the distance for about five minutes. Now, that doesn't mean you have to do the thousand mile stare. Just get outside. I hate that we weren't designed because I wasn't consulted at the design phase and no one I know was either. So I, but we, we evolved from lifestyles of looking at things up close and far away. And we're just spending a ton of time now

looking at things up close and the visual system and the brain will adapt to that. So kids that grow up only looking at computers and screens and don't go outside, they require like Coke bottle thick glasses that the nerd thing, like like Coke bottle fit glasses. Right. That the nerd thing, like that nerds wear glasses. Part of that is because nerds spend a lot of time reading. Right. So it's, it's real. It's a real thing.

Yeah. Yeah. It's not just that they have glasses so that they become nerds because people pick on them. Right. Self-imposed nerdiness, or I guess you'd call it. And you mentioned last time, I think maybe it was offline that you have a friend who's a hunter. Yeah. Who's got great vision into his later years yeah that's my friend cam haynes this motherfucker the runner yeah he sees perfectly yeah it's ridiculous yeah

how old is he's my age that fuck i see his his running videos it's impressive freak well he's david running and yeah they're both mutants. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. They're mutants. Like legitimate mutants. Yeah, they're mutants. Yeah. Absolutely.

I don't understand how his joints are holding up. That's what's driving me crazy. Like my knees, I'm getting stem cells shot into them. You do the PRP, the whole thing. I do all kinds of shit. I'm just trying to keep them active. I think running, I guess, has got to be different than kicking things. Kicking things and jujitsu are very hard on the knees.

Yeah, I've been- It's very hard. I think it was because maybe Jamie mentioned it or you mentioned the knees over toes guy. Yes, yeah. I'll tell you why I love this guy. He's amazing. I don't know him, but I'll tell you why I love him.

I have always had an anterior tib machine in my gym. Ah. Because, and I didn't know why I needed this thing, but I knew I needed it. I would get hip problems and like a sciatica on one side. Because I like lifting. I've been lifting since I was younger and it just makes me happier, saner human being. And I noticed I would get this tweak on my right side.

And then I started using the anterior tib machine and it went away. Now, he could probably tell me why. It's got to be some ankle up to hip alignment. So I bought one of those. And people always laugh. Like in my home gym, i've got a tib machine a glute ham raise i got one of these louis simmons reverse oh those are the best because of last time he yeah gave me the how great is that machine amazing my posture is better it's still not perfect i still you know i'm kind of that thing saved my back really amazing because i'm still doing stupid shit

with my body you know at 54 almost 54 next month very healthy beating it up though and the the reverse hyper is kept it strong enough so that I can be really active and still do things like jujitsu and kickboxing and well you look at measures of longevity and and of course Sinclair is the is the ninja on all this but how fast people are able to stand up. You know, some people say, okay, let's go. And they kind of, it's like a slow, low gear movement that takes half an hour, you know. And other people, they just pop up.

The ability to jump, they're very well correlated with health and well-being and the ability to, I think, as Sinclair says, you know, hip fractures are a big cause of early death. It sounds weird. You think it's a hip fracture. But then you're sedentary, circulation slows down, everything gets messed up. But knees over toes guy is, I love his stuff because he's really pointing to the fact that this, this muscle on the shin, right, is so vital for knee health. And for me, it's really helped with the lower, the lower back thing. And it's an odd thing to sit there and kind of point your toes like ballerina exercises, but you feel stable when you run. So strong feet, strong shins.

Anyway, it seems to- It's really interesting when you realize how many of these things are connected to each other. Like one of the things that I've found is that stretching your quadriceps also stretches your lower back. You know that stretch where you sit down on your heels and then you lean all the way back?

Oh, yeah. He's amazing, the knees over toes guy. Oh, yeah, the stuff he does is- He goes all the way back and with no hands comes up. I can't really do that. I can't go flat on my back and come back up, but I can go flat on my back, and when I do that, I feel a deep stretch in my lower back,

and it makes me realize, like, oh, like there's some tension in my thighs that's fucking in my lower back and it makes you realize like oh like there's some tension in my thighs that's fucking with my lower back like for me stretching is so imperative it's so important stretching and massage and i went without well i've kind of always stretched at least a little bit you know like maybe at least 10 minutes after after training but i've been doing a lot more i've been giving myself a full 35 minutes after after training but i've been doing a lot more i've been giving myself a full 35 minutes after training to just to stretch but then massage every week i've been doing that every week for the last month or so is it that deep tissue like oh my god

it's so painful these ladies beat the shit out of me the roll thing it's just deep tissue it's just horrific deep tissue painful massage like when they do my thighs i don't know what it is it about that guy that guy's a freak this guy that's a freak he's a freak and he's up in sacramento or something i don't know one of the things that i really love about this guy is that he gives away all this information for free yes like all this stuff that he puts on his instagram this can benefit so many people and his program is very intensive if you go to the you to his, I think it's called the Athletic Truth Group. Is that what it is? But just go to Knees Over Toes Guy on Instagram.

He shows all these different exercises. That shit that he's doing in that one, that is so hard to do. I think that's like a Jefferson dance. Oh, with the toes. Yes. With the toes up at that angle like that, to be able to do that with a box and to drop a kettlebell down He's going way below his toes. That's incredible flexibility Yeah, I look, you know, I think as somebody who is big on putting information out on the internet free

Yeah, public education. I I love what he's doing I also think that he's also can do all the things he's talking. Yeah, he's dunking basketball. Yes And he's had multiple knee surgeries too things he's talking about doing dunking basketball yes um and he's had multiple knee surgeries too oh yeah yeah multiple knee surgeries i believe he's actually had a um a cadaver meniscus graft oh wow which is crazy that means his knees are fucked dead people in yeah i've got dead people in one of my knees do you yeah yeah this knee i got a cadaver acl it's actually not an acl they take the achilles tendon, which is thicker and stronger, so it's 150% stronger than the original ACL, and then they replace it. And then the other one, I have a patella tendon graft ACL.

Wow. Yeah, I mean, I agree completely with your statement. It's all connected. Mm-hmm. And, you know, this is a—these days, I'm still a neuroscientist, obviously, thinking about the brain a lot. But the connections between the brain and body and all this stuff going on in the body, we now know impacts the brain. I mean, it's a, it's a whole system. And I think that, um, maybe he was on here a few years ago, Kelly Starrett. Yeah. Oh yeah. He's awesome. Great

guy. Um, and he always says, you know, if you injure a joint, you want to work things above and below that joint, you know, and for years he's been telling me, you know, I've got like a shoulder that sits and the sciatica thing. And he's like, well, train your neck, train your ankles, train your, you know, it seems crazy. Why would I train my neck if my hip is off? But, you know, Kelly just replaced his knee. Did he really? Yeah. He had a bad ski accident a couple of years ago and really just mangled the inside of his knee. And he was doing his best to, uh, to try to repair it and try to keep it healthy, and it just wasn't working anymore. Couldn't squat.

Couldn't do a lot of things. He's a big guy. He's a big guy. And he just had a knee replacement. Wow. Yeah, resurfaced his knees. But if you go to his page. What do they call this?

Ready State? Yeah, the Ready State. The Ready State on Instagram. He had the knee resurfacing multiple months ago. I think it was like five or six months ago. And, um, he's already deadlifting doing all kinds of crazy stuff. And apparently the way they do it now, if you go to a really good doctor, you know, there's obviously you want to be real careful with something like this, because this is something that it's not necessarily really permanent.

If you beat it up, because they're using different surfaces, different people using different plastics and ceramics and different things to resurface the knee. But he's able to do all kinds of wild shit that he couldn't do anymore. So for him, it was one of those choices that it's an unfortunate choice, but he had to make it. Michael Bisping, former UFC middleweight champion, he actually just got both of his knees resurfaced. Wow. Yeah, because he's too fucking tough for his own good.

He was running while his knees were just mangled. So the inside of his knees, the cartilage was all shot and the meniscus was shot because all the years of wrestling and kickboxing and all the fights that he's had and so he just got both of them resurfaced and he's running again wow yeah martial arts team is really hard on the knees i i grew up uh skateboarding i wasn't real close with him but danny way the guy that jumped the great wall china and all that he's had his knees replaced so many times i need to get him oh and recently he's been posting some stuff um he's had his knees replaced more than multiple times and danny he put videos up on instagram of

them suctioning all the stuff out of the knee and he was doing some of this no anesthesia just so you could why because he's a he's evil kenevil i used to but why is he doing that i think to put it i don't know i don't know why he's doing it. Why is he doing no ASD? I mean, when we were kids, he was like that too. Is this Rampage? He's with Rampage, I think, at the doctor's office. Oh, my God. So they need wheelchair assistance. Yeah, so they went down to Columbia, I think it was,

and we're getting the people. Oh, the bio-accelerator place. Yeah, and burring inside of the knee joint. But Danny's my age, right? And I mean, so what's interesting, recently there's a lot of discussion about broken ankles. So when Danny Way jumped the Great Wall of China, I think it was 16 years ago recently, it was in July.

When he did that, that's one of those- Devo's there. When he jumped the Great Wall of China, he broke his ankle ankle legitimate break of the ankle the day before and and then jumped it three times on a broken ankle and i have validation on this because the photographer for my podcast is a guy named mike blayback he's the dc photographer and he shot all this they got all this on film so that the ankle was like this big oh my so the other night when i saw that fight yeah I don't know much about UFC,

but I'm still learning from friends, and I saw that ankle break. My first thought was, well, you know, Danny might just wrap it up and keep going. That wasn't an ankle break. He broke his tibia. His tibia and his fibula. Yeah, it looked higher than the ankle. Yeah, it was higher. It was an injury that they had sustained, that he had sustained in training.

He got it scanned. If you go to Laura Senko's page, she's, is this him? This is on a broken ankle. This is him getting practice. Yeah, so. Oh, my God. So a week. Oh, my God.

What's wild is a week before this. Next day with a fractured ankle. A guy on a mountain bike died doing this a week before. Really? Yep. On a mountain bike? Yeah. On the same ramp? This is on fractured ankle. A guy on a mountain bike died doing this a week before. Really? Yep. On a mountain bike? Yeah.

On the same ramp? This is on a broken ankle. Look at this motherfucker. Oh my God. Yeah, when we were kids. What a bad motherfucker he is. Jesus Christ. That is so wild. The amount of air he's getting is insane.

Wow, that's incredible. Look at him walking like that with a broken ankle like it ain't shit when we were kids we'd go to these what are called lock-ins they'd lock up the skate park at night you could skate all night but if you left you couldn't come back in and danny and his buddy call him a k they were this little gang they call themselves the red dragons and they would just for every time it's like one run when you drop in and take a run danny would get 20 runs to everyone's run. He'd just start.

I mean, he's always had that. Yeah. Listen to Slayer, like, just, that's him. Wow. And, well, that's, you know, that's that. So John Kavanaugh, who's Conor McGregor's coach, said that, that's Laura. Laura Sanko is one of the UFC commentators, and she did an excellent interview with Kavanaugh, and they went over all the things that happened. And one of the things that happened in training camp was they think it probably cracked in training camp,

and he got it scanned. And, you know, they said there might have been something there, but it's hard to tell. It's probably some sort of a hairline fracture. And they did their best to just stay healthy until they could get into the fight. But if you go to Laura's interview, it's really excellent. And Kavanaugh explains that. And it looks like John Wayne Parr picked up something, too. It looked like the shin was compromised on one of the leg kicks, too.

Not the one that Dustin thought. Dustin thought that it was probably damaged more than once because Dustin checked one of the kicks and then pointed to Conor's shin. Like, I know that hurt you. But this one, this is from John Wayne Parr's page. He throws his kick. If you watch Conor's shin, see, look,

it kind of buckles right there. See that? Oh, yeah. That ain't good. Something's happening. Now, right after it buckles there, this is what John put up. Right afterwards, Conor then throws a front kick, and that's right there, and that front kick hits the knee.

Now, as it puts it down, his shin is shot now. Now he goes to throw a punch. He throws a punch, and then as he steps back, he doesn't have it on his. If you go to mine, you'll see that. If you go to mine, go to my Instagram, and you'll see I reposted it from Eric Nixick from Extreme Couture. Extreme Couture. So he throws this front kick,

and as he throws the front kick, it hits the elbow at the point. He's throwing it up. See that? And bam, it catches it, and then it goes down. And right now, he's standing on that fractured. So he puts it behind him.

Watch. He puts it behind him, and then he throws the punch, and then when he goes to throw the punch he picks the foot off the ground Right here's the left hand that almost look like it, but watch this it did bend back But watch this bang then it just gives out completely see it folds over So it was snapped Above the ankle it wasn't actually the ankle it was above the ankle here's what's really crazy. There's been so many fights in the UFC,

and to have all these breaks in a row. There's been Jacare Sosa got his arm broken. Chris Weidman got his leg broken. There's been a ton of breaks over and over and over again. I wonder if something's going on. Just people are getting good at breaking people's bones. It's really what it is. And the Chris Weidman one's a freak accident.

The craziest thing is Chris Weidman, there's only been, I think, one, two, three, four. There's been four leg breaks like that in the UFC in the history of the UFC. Chris Weidman's been involved in two of them. The odds are insane insane Anderson Silva threw a kick he checked it Anderson broke his knee he threw a kick Uriah Hall checked it or Anderson broke his leg rather he threw it Uriah

Hall checked it he broke his leg crazy it's crazy the odds the odds of these things happening like in this this number are nuts that is crazy yeah brutal sport yeah like i said i'm only recently exposed to it i i do not understand the ground game because as an outsider there's just no way to comprehend i can't i can't tell who's in control basically yeah it's complicated it's like watching chess if you don't understand the rules like you're like why is he allowed to move like that with that piece right you know it's it's? It's a real problem for judging because a lot of the judges don't understand the ground game either. It's getting better.

The ones in Nevada are getting really good, and that's the gold standard. But the problem is in other states, we'll go to these different states, and the MMA commissions are very new. So they're using boxing judges, and the boxing judges don't understand some boxing judges, don't understand these submission techniques. If they've trained, that's ideal. Ideal, you really should be at least a blue belt or above as a referee or as a judge, rather. It seems right. In science, we don't let people review papers unless they have been in the game a long time. Yeah. Careers are on the line.

Ground game's complicated. I mean, I've been training since 1996, and there's still some shit that I don't understand. There's some moves. Like, there's a local Austin internet streaming jiu-jitsu competition that happens every month. It's called Who's Number One. It's the elite of the elite. It's really amazing because we get to go see it at the Marriott here. We'll go live and watch it.

And sometimes there's techniques that these guys are doing that I'm like, oh, the ankles? Okay, I see. Oh, how did he do that? And then I'll have to go watch a video and go, oh, he sets it up with the wrist. And you see like these weird ankle locks or some new foot lock or some new way to set up a heel hook or some new kind of like a choke. And you're like, it's wild.

Like jujitsu is, you know, there's two arms and two legs and a neck, right? These are basically the things that you're trying to submit. But the combinations and the variables, when you add them all together there's just so many possibilities of things that you can do to someone and things that you can do to counter someone when they're trying to do something to you it sounds super scientific i keep asking lex friedman to give me a tutorial he'd be perfect for it yeah he'd be great break it down like a scientist like nerd to nerd just tell us how it works and he's a legit black belt so it would yeah you would enjoy it i think i think you'd enjoy especially because you're such a physical

guy i mean i like i like i like physical effort yeah um it's it's a it's a serious time commitment right i mean you're not going to go in you're not going to do 45 minutes in and out you're there for a couple hours you're there for a 90 minute class yeah and and you recommend if someone were going to start they maybe two two three times a week or is it, it's a daily commitment? No, you don't have to do it every day. I mean, if you did, you'd get better, but you'd also get injured. So I think, uh, I think in the beginning, two times a week is really good. And then build up to more if you enjoy it. And I think you'd probably enjoy it. Um, but I I've seen people get pretty damn good inside of six months especially someone like you is very physical and already in shape maybe i'll give it a shot it'd

be fun man there's a lot of places on me there's a lot of places in uh where you're at out near uh in the bay area but there's a lot of places here too so there's um and this is uh john donahoe is actually moving here now, and he's moving That's the literally the best jujitsu team I think I saw your podcast with him and Lexus He's a is he a New Zealander guy? Yes. Yeah, he was a philosophy professor at Columbia Wow and fell in love with jujitsu and now he's I mean his dedication to it is obscene It's just so I mean he's seven days a week He teaches a class seven days a week. He teaches a class seven

days a week and he never takes days off, including holidays. He takes no days off. He has no family. He has no girlfriend. Just jujitsu. Just jujitsu. And when he's not doing classes, he's studying tape. Sounds like a scientist. Well, he's the, literally you couldn't ask for a better coach because he's so obsessed. And because of that obsession, it's almost impossible to get a better coach. No, it's impossible to get a better coach. Literally impossible. You get a really good coach. There's great coaches. You cannot get a better coach. It's not possible. There's guys that are probably as good as John. I never met him, but there's guys that are really good. Eddie Bravo is really fucking good.

He might be as good as John as a coach, but to get a better coach is not humanly possible, and to get a more dedicated coach, they don't exist. You're not going to find someone that can teach the way that guy does seven days a week and also afterwards study tape all day. So something will happen in class where someone will catch someone with some sort of a technique, and then they'll say, okay, what is the counter to this? Like how does someone get out of this?

Let's start in that position and let's analyze it. So they'll do that, and then he'll go home, and he'll find incidences of this technique being used in MMA, this technique being used in wrestling, this technique being used in wrestling, and he'll analyze it and he'll break it down in slow motion and then he'll take notes and then he'll come back to class the next day with some new strategies. I love it. It's wild, man, because it really is a science. Jiu-Jitsu is a science. Yeah, the way you describe it is the way a scientist gets obsessed with a problem and goes into the literature and then starts tinkering

around in the lab and it's a process. It's an amazing art. It really is. It's, it's just too bad. The human body breaks so easy. Well, there are things, there are things, I mean, I think that the, uh, you know, we hear a lot about age longevity, you know, living a long time, but, but there's the other one, which is performance longevity. Yes. And I'm, I'm very interested in that. And Stanford has a whole, uh, growing interest in human performance. And I've had an interest in this for a long time. I mean, you know, there are all the things that we talk about for normal health and well-being for the general public, all the stuff that before 2020, no one thought about. And now people are saying, oh, maybe I should take some responsibility for my mental and physical health, sleep,

hydration, physical exercise, all the things that you talk about and that I certainly believe in wholeheartedly people should do. In the world of high performance, you know, those same things, it's going to be light, temperature, hormone, you know. The hormone augmentation thing is always a little bit of a complicated discussion, but there's so much that's happening there right now

that's really interesting. Like what? Well, for instance, sort of back to the topic of supplements, I always say, look, behaviors are the fundamental layer. You have to do the right things for anything, for sleep, for learning, for sports performance, but then there's nutrition, supplementation,

prescription drugs, and then off-label stuff, right? And so we always think about when you hear hormones in sports, you always think just the raw conversation about anabolics, all the band stuff. We can talk about that stuff and how it works. Years ago, I used to work on androgens, testosterone and its derivatives and how it impacts brain development and body function, fear and also mental states. that for most people who aren't exploring testosterone augmentation for sport work very well to increase testosterone by about 100 to 200 points, not, you know, 300, you know, not a tripling or anything like that. And the main ones are two substances. One is called Tongat Ali. Oh, yeah. That stuff's real, huh?

Oh, yeah. Because what happens is the testosterone molecule, it's basically carried in a cargo. So it can be in its free form, unbound form, free testosterone. And everyone says, oh, I want more free testosterone. You want more, but these, what are called sex hormone binding globulins. So there's something called sex hormone binding globulin

and albumin, they carry the testosterone molecule to the different tissues of the body. So you don't want all your testosterone free. You want some of it bound up so that it can be delivered to the different tissues, including your brain. But if you have too much sex hormone binding globulin, the testosterone can't really do its things. Okay. So Tonga Ali, about 400 milligrams per day, has the effect of raising free testosterone and overall testosterone by about 100 to 200 points. of raising free testosterone and overall testosterone by about 100 to 200 points.

And so we're not talking about full TRT or blasting or now that I'm always amused on YouTube, they now call it sports TRT. That's when you get above 200 milligrams per week. Sports? This is basically, you know, you've got TRT, which is typically about 200 milligrams per week. And when you say 200 milligrams, when you're looking at a syringe, what is that? Is that a,000 milligrams? So the typical dose of testosterone replacement therapy is 200 milligrams given once every week to two weeks. But when you look at a full syringe, what is that? So for one cc, one mil, that's 200 milligrams typically of cipionate, which is sold.

One cc? A full cc is only two? One cc is not going to be that much. It's a, yeah. So it depends if you have a little narrow syringe. Okay. Right. Right. But if you have a syringe that goes up to 10, what is that? That's 10 cc's. That's a lot. That's 10 cc's. Yeah. That's a thousand milligrams. That makes sense. So it would be two on that and that's 200 milligrams. That's right. So, well, okay. So as long as we're going down this path. I thought you were saying like two full syringes. Yeah.

I mean, I actually think that a lot of people who think they need TRT, when I hear about guys in their 20s and 30s, look, I'm in my mid 40s and I can tell you that you can get and maintain very healthy testosterone levels without TRT if you do the right things, the behaviors, the nutrition, all the other stuff early on. There's sometimes people that have hypogonadal syndromes and things like that. There's a lot of issues with guys with head injuries. And with head injuries. And absolutely.

And it'd be an interesting conversation to talk about the role of testosterone in neural repair. It's very interesting. But when you look at TRT, I mean, the way that the clinics and the doctors typically do it is to give 200 milligrams and then send people out for two weeks and then they come back because they can charge them to come back repeatedly. It's clear that without any TRT, the testes normally make anywhere from seven to 15 milligrams of testosterone per day.

So taking this massive dose and then waiting two weeks is absolutely foolish. It doesn't, it's amazing to me that the medical profession does this because it doesn't match anything about the normal patterns of endocrinology. It's just not how the body works. The way it's been described to me to do it is to do it with an you know, 20 to 60 milligrams every, every few days, every third day or so that much more closely matches the normal pattern of release and avoids these estrogenic crashes. And a lot of problems that are, that are layered onto estrogen are

actually problems with prolactin, which is a molecule that's involved in milk letdown and lactating women, but it actually shuts down the sexual desire and aggression. You know, when this is interesting about prolactin. So this happens in brooding birds and it happens in humans. They've done this, a study published in the journal nature, which is our kind of apex journal showed that when the husbands of pregnant women, because of something, maybe a pheromone, maybe some odor of the pregnant woman actually increases the man's prolactin when they're pregnant, puts body weight on the guy, starts laying down body fat, presumably to prepare the father for the long sleepless nights ahead because humans have always co-parented.

Wow. I'm mostly co-parented. We all know women do far more, but it's true. Dudes out there who get fat don't feel bad. Yeah. That's what's going on. The dad bod is in part due to an increase in prolactin. And testosterone and prolactin are kind of working in opposite fashion. So it's a very interesting thing, but the way you describe it is correct. Now, for people that aren't getting prescribed TRT, but want the increase in testosterone, there are these plant compounds like Tonga Ali and another one, which is very interesting. It's a Nigerian shrub called Phaedogia agrestis, and it mimics luteinizing hormone,

which is the hormone that comes out of the hypothalamus that stimulates the testes if you got those and your ovaries if you've got those to make more testosterone or estrogen. And so those two herbal supplements together can give a significant boost in free and active testosterone. So you said Tongkat Ali can give you 100 to 200. Yeah, about that. What does the other one give you? Fidoja is usually taken at about 600 milligrams. And the most dramatic effect I've ever seen was somebody who had his testosterone down in the low twos, or I think it was like low twos.

And he got it up to the 700 range, which, but that's it, but that's an outlier, right? Most people are going to see about a three to 400 point increase. And that's what the two of them synergistically. Fidogeo will actually make the testes grow. It's a, it's a, it's a noticeable difference. So everybody wants that. Well, the reason I know about this stuff, people are probably thinking like, you know, Huberman's running gear out of the back of his cars. And that's not what this is about is that I do a certain amount of work with military and I do a certain amount of work with professional athletes who cannot take androgen compounds out of a syringe because they'll lose their job. Right. Or they've been doing that and they want to come

off. Although, and I'm not going to out the organization, but there is one major professional sports organization where let's just say if somebody gets injured, they have permission to take up to 200 milligrams a week of testosterone. Soccer. No, no, no, no. But good guess. You almost got me there because I almost countered with the actual thing that it is. Hockey. No.

Although those guys have the head injuries. So actually, so that the head injury thing is head injury thing is a serious problem, obviously. So testosterone has the effects we're all aware of, like deepening the voice, facial hair, muscle growth, recovery, et cetera, mostly because testosterone increases protein synthesis. You look at a young male in puberty, it's a protein synthesis machine. They eat, they eat, they eat, and they just grow and grow and grow and they're putting on muscles and they're lean. So most often they're lean. But in any case, testosterone has some very interesting effects on the brain.

The major mental effect of testosterone is it makes effort feel good. Oh, that makes sense. And the reason it does it is that the amygdala, this fear center in the brain, this anxiety center in the brain has androgen receptors. It has testosterone receptors. And so the way this works in animals and in humans as well is that for most species, the males of that species never get a chance to mate. Right.

So if you think about I'll probably pick an example where you'll know the exception because I know you know a lot about natural animals and animals that are hunted. But if you think about animals with antlers like rams, there's been a lot of research, believe it or not, on rams. It'd be fun. I'd love to work on rams. Trevor Burrus You know, rams have enormous balls. John Pletka And they have to fight for the right to mate. Trevor Burrus Yes.

John Pletka And the fighting is a choice, right? And the decision to walk away is a choice usually. They usually don't kill each other, although I know some of the injuries can lead to death. So testosterone, these surges in testosterone that happen seasonally in certain species like rams or even these little hamsters, the males will rip each other's testicles off

in order to fight for the right to mate. So males of a given species have to actually overcome the fear of pain and punishment. And the surge in testosterone is what causes the shift to the willingness to engage in battle. And so when humans are taking low doses or reasonable doses of testosterone, or they're increasing their testosterone, or they're going through puberty, effort and leaning into pain and challenge actually has the effect of making the body feel soothed and good. It's a drive, just like sex is a drive or drinking water when you're thirsty is a drive. This stuff is all anchored deep within the hypothalamus. This isn't a cognitive thing. really driven to hard exercise and sports that are very difficult that require extreme effort completely makes sense yeah and why when people are testosterone depleted they feel depressed and

when people have a surge of testosterone they feel relief and anxiety provided it's in the appropriate range my friend steve ranella has a podcast called meat eater and uh he had a squirrel expert on and they were talking about squirrels and squirrel estrus. So when the female is an estrus, the males only have a small window. They have like a six hour window and it doesn't happen very often. And so when you see squirrels chasing each other around, screaming, going nutty, that's generally what's going on and they throw each other out of trees. It's like the last call at a bar. It's a what's going on. And they throw each other out of trees. It's like the last call at a bar.

It's a lot worse than that. So the last call at like a barbarian compound. Because like when the male will be breeding with the female, another male will come along and pull him off and throw him off the tree. So these squirrels will fall like 60, 70 feet and bounce off the ground and run right back up the tree. They actually can survive falls. That's amazing. It's nuts.

But they were saying that, you know, these squirrels, they're only in estrus for a short amount of time. So when the males recognize that she's ready to go, they just start chasing her and then all the other ones come around. They start fighting. Animal aggression is amazing. I saw this nature show. I forget which one of the Attenborough ones it was, but it was a lion that was getting attacked by these hyenas. Oh, yeah. And the hyenas know to go after the testicles and they it's incredible because this is an animal whose natural innate drive is to kill the other competition within his species, kill the other lion, and instead puts his own life on the line to try and rescue the other member of his species.

to rescue the other member of his species. And lions don't sit around and think like, oh, I'm going to post this later on Instagram or this is the right thing to do for my species. It's a switch in the brain. And those switches reside in the hypothalamus, this kind of core area of our brain right above the roof of our mouth. This is where all the fundamental drives are managed and regulated. And there are chock-a-block full of testosterone receptors and estrogen receptors. On the female side, it's also really interesting.

So in species where there's pair bonding, humans are a really good example of that, but also other animal species where there's strong elements of pair bonding, there is female-female competition. Female animals of a given species start being nasty to one another in different ways. Sometimes it's actual physical aggression. Sometimes it's resource allocation. They start blocking other

females from getting access to the, to the, the sires, the males that were are desirable there. So they're playing this game around DNA, but they're not conscious of it, obviously. And humans do this too. When, you know, you know female female competition when there's a male desirable male in the equation is can be brutal i mean you know remember i think there was this astronaut lady who yes like drove in diapers down to kill somebody who you know she was having an affair with this guy and she she uh there was either the guy's girlfriend the guy's wife but she drove like for a full day to go to meet the lady, maced her, try to get her to open up the door.

The girl wouldn't open up the door. She maced her and she had worn a diaper so that she didn't have to stop to go to the bathroom. So she just fucking nutty. It's a, it's a nutty story. It's crazy. Yeah. Yeah.

It's really wild. And you know, there are all sorts of interesting facts around how hormones regulate brain development. One of the ones that always makes usually men kind of kind of go wide eyomically you can see, the masculinization of the brain is not by testosterone. It's by testosterone that's aromatized, converted into estrogen. So estrogen is actually what masculinizes the male brain. Absolutely. Wow. And so going back to the sort of the TRT discussion and the testosterone discussion,

these days there's a lot of discussion around, oh, you know, if your testosterone is too high, then, you know, it converts to estrogen and that creates these effects like, you know, gynecomastia, growth of the male breast tissue, reduction in libido, all these things. Most of those effects are not actually caused by estrogen. This is a common misconception. It's those effects are created by excessive levels of prolactin. And the more common medical practice now is to not include estrogen blockers when people are doing testosterone replacement.

No anastrozole, none of those things, because they actually have very bad effects on the vasculature of the brain. Is that clomiphene as well? I don't, I'm not familiar with clomiphene. If it's an estrogen antagonist or an aromatase inhibitor, then you want estrogen. You don't want a ton of it, but for longevity of the brain and health of the brain and for repair of the brain, you need ample levels of estrogen.

So prolactin is what's causing that growth of breast tissue. Cause I went down a rabbit hole the other day and I watched a bunch of YouTube videos of guys having their their what they call bitch tits have never moved yeah the end gynecomastia is it's rough it's it's a mass it's it looks like it's fluid and it's vascularized I've spent some time with cadavers I teach in our Anatomy and I years ago we used to do I would do the labs also now I don't do the lab part you occasionally see this as I have a colleague he's a physician he always says you know the male breast tissue it's it's one of those things that it's there it's just not very interesting it just happens to be there and it's very small but if there's a big increase in prolactin then

you will see that people who take opioids like with the opioid crisis or heroin users, the reason why they get breast development is because dopamine inhibits prolactin. So dopamine and testosterone are close cousins. And this will immediately be familiar to you or anyone else that has had that experience of really being in the zone and hard driving and you're getting wins. And we know that testosterone goes up as you're succeeding.

We know this. I mean, I didn't do the blood serum analysis, but you can bet that in the Poirier-McGregor fight, if you did blood draws before, I don't know whose testosterone would be higher. It doesn't really matter. But afterward, you're going to see a significant decrease in the loser. And you're going to see a significant increase in the winner. You see this in day traders. You see this in school teachers. Day traders. Yeah, because testosterone feeds back on the brain and releases more dopamine because the brain is trying to learn what was the behavior that led to the win. Is this a similar thing that happens with women when women succeed?

Yeah, so women have some testosterone. They mostly make it from their adrenal glands, these little glands that ride atop the kidneys in the lower back. And at the core of the adrenals, they can release these androgens. Occasionally, and just as a kind of a side note, occasionally a child is born with a female child is born with a very enlarged clitoris. There's oftentimes you'll find like a tumor on the adrenals in the pregnant mother. It's not entirely uncommon. There could be other reasons for that, but it's from elevated levels of androgens, testosterone. And when females of a given species, humans included, when they have a win, they succeed, get a degree or something good happens to them, whatever that is,

they will release more dopamine and testosterone will go up a little bit. And testosterone is responsible, a little increase in testosterone each month during the menstrual cycle is responsible for an increase in libido about 10 to 14 days before ovulation that kicks in right around ovulation for the purpose of trying to fertilize the egg. Wow. And so can you measure the difference between the way a man's increases versus a woman's increases? Like, is there? So, you know, this is, yeah, this gets into an interesting area because there aren't a lot of good studies on exactly what you're asking. There's another androgen, another testosterone

related molecule, which is called DHT, dihydrotestosterone. That's what causes you to go bald. It's what causes you to grow bald. And it's what causes beard growth. It has an inverse effect on the, on the hair follicles of the face and on the hair follicles on the head. And how many DHT receptors you have is very strongly genetically determined. You go to some areas of the world like Chile and the men are all bald with like serious beards, legit beards, not like mine, like which is an attempt at a beard, right? They have real beards or in afghanistan serious beards that's genetic okay so dht has 600 times the affinity for the testosterone receptor than actual testosterone testosterone and nandrolone deca that the bodybuilders take to give that

really hard look and the females in particular female bodybuilders like that gives that really hard kind of crisp grainy look um deca has it's basically it's anabolic but it's not androgenic it causes a lot of the muscle growth the muscle repair without creating the deepening of the voice actually an olympic runner was eliminated sadly um because she was a phenomenal runner for a um you know uh urine urinalysis that was positive for deca recently she blamed it on a pork burrito that she ate from a taco truck or something a couple nights before and my mind on this is i hope she did deca only because if she lost her career from a pork burrito that's tragic right but if she took deca and lost her career well then you know the odds are she took deca right it would be very unusual for a meat to maintain that especially if the if

the meat was cooked so no one asked me but a few people reached out and i have some relationship to some olympic committees uh not the ones that drug test, but Olympic teams, I should say, to be specific. If that pork was cooked, the deck is destroyed. And you can't really eat pork that's not cooked. Yeah. It seems very unlikely. It seems extremely unlikely. Didn't Canelo Alvarez use that as an excuse for why he had testosterone, some sort of steroid in his system? So he, as you can tell, I'm fascinated by this topic. I'm fascinated by the relationship between hormones Bodily changes, but also brain changes he I believe got popped for clenbuterol

Yes, which is a beta-3 agonist so you've got receptors on your heart and on your blood vessels that dilate or constrict them and there's a drug clenbuterol that, that creates a lot of increase in core body temperature, helps you burn fat, but it also has this effect of maintaining muscle. So it's not really a steroid.

It's not working on hormones. It's working on the so-called autonomic nervous system, heating and cooling of the body. And this is, I believe, because he cuts a lot of weight. And I don't know that. Yeah, because when guys cut weight,

one of the things that happens during these, I mean, it's not just starvation, but it's also massive dehydration and you have a lot of decreased bodily function that's directly related to that. Yeah, the kidneys don't like dehydration. No, it's terrible. And salt balance is so key.

And I mean, gosh, I always, I always say this, you know, people who think they have low blood sugar, please try putting a little bit of salt in a glass of water and drinking it first. You know, most, my sister used to think she had labile blood sugar would like pass out, all this stuff. She's a bit of a hypochondriac anyway, but anyway,

the, there's a genetic thing there, but the, I said, look, just consume a small teaspoon of salt in your water. Completely transformed everything. And especially if you're on a low-carbohydrate diet, you're going to be excreting sodium. Neurons require sodium to generate what's called the action potential, the firing of neurons. So if you're doing keto and trying to lose weight, drink a glass of water with a little salt in it. And if you're drinking distilled water, you're pissing out all your electrolytes. That's why fighters do that.

They're getting dizzy. Yeah. Yeah. So don't do that anymore, by the way. They're getting educated. Yeah. They stopped doing it. Fighters used to drink a lot of distilled water, but there was some disastrous weight cuts. And one Brazil that I'm aware of where a guy died. Yeah. I think some bodybuilders died from clenbuterol. So could he have gotten clenbuterol from bad, uh, meat? Very unlikely. If you think about the cattle industry and what they want to do, they want to make bigger, heavier cows, but they don't want to make big, heavy, super lean cows. They want marbling in there and all that stuff. Again, I didn't look at the blood analysis.

If he got popped for clenbuterol and he didn't take it, that's tragic. If he got popped for clenbuterol and he did take it doesn't seem to be harming his career and listen dude I don't know what he's doing but I do know that he is he's one of those guys that's maintained his power as he's gone up and wait which is really rare it's rare that you can knock a guy out at 175 pounds who used to be a world champion when you were 154 pound champion. It's very rare. It doesn't mean it's unheard of. Some guys just carry that kind of punching power. Manny Pacquiao won world titles in eight different

weight classes, which is insanity. It's insanity. But there's also always been talk of him being elevated. Well, they have great knowledge of these plant compounds and how they affect the hormone system overseas. You know, over here we are, you know, I'm a serious patriot, so it hurts me to say this, but we are miles behind what other countries are doing in terms of hormone augmentation and sports performance. In the realm of hormones, but also temperature modulation. There are incredible plant compounds out there. Like there's this thing that's now kind of going wild on the internet. I've never tried it, but it's called Turkosterone. Yeah, they call it Turk. And this is basically it. And I actually reviewed, I did one episode of my podcast all about hormones, and I went deep into this literature, and Turkosterone side-by-side with DECA or another testosterone derivative, it essentially acts the same way.

It increases testosterone and performance and recovery. How much does it increase it by? Equivalent. Really? So this plant compound is equivalent to DECA? Essentially. Wow. Where do you get this stuff?

People buy it on the internet. How do you spell it? Turkesterone. T-U-R-K-E-S-T-E-R-O-N-E. And I want to be clear, I'm not recommending people cowboy their endocrinology. Too late. Turkesterone on Amazon. Yeah, that's probably not real.

It's not? No, because, see, this is the problem. If you're not getting a prescription from a doctor, how do you know what you're getting? Oh, so the stuff that they're selling on Amazon is fake? Yeah, so this actually, I thought it came from Turkey and that's why. So these ectosterones, you see where it says ectosterone? Ectosterones are actually known to, they are insect hormones. That doesn't mean people are ingesting insects, but in insects, they have hormone systems that

are similar to ours, but different. And they get their hormones often from plants. You might appreciate this one. There's a very interesting relationship between the marijuana plant and estrogen and testosterone. And I want to say this is a very controversial area. And when I say this, a lot of pot smokers get upset. For some people, not all, marijuana and certain components of the plant, including the seeds. Do you remember that rumor way back when, when I was in college, they say, you know, the seeds will make you sterile. Turns out that certain elements of the marijuana plant increase aromatase, the enzyme that converts testosterone into estrogen.

And in talking to some of my colleagues who are plant biologists, they said, yeah, I'm not surprised at all. There's an active component of plant to animal warfare where in order to control the populations of animals that eat a plant, a plant will make certain hormones that will sterilize the males of that species. Wow. So I'm not saying smoking pot will make you sterile. There's one study that shows that it increases testosterone and several studies that show that it decreases it. So the literature all over the place. And this is consumed in what way?

Edible or smoking? They had people smoke marijuana in the two out of the three studies. The other one, it was edible. But I have to say the studies that I was able to find are not what we call published in blue ribbon journals. They're okay, but it is interesting. So some people who will smoke pot during puberty will get the gynecomastia,

the growth of the male breast tissue. And that means that they probably have a genetic predisposition towards high levels of aromatase. So it's all over the place. It's just like some people do real well on the carnivore diet. Other people do well on a vegan diet. And some people like me are omnivores and we're happy that way. There are going to be people that just don't do well hormonally on marijuana.

And there are going to be other people that do. And, you know, it's highly individual. It is highly individual. And it's so interesting when it comes to whether it's diet or when it comes to consuming something controversial like marijuana, that everybody wants this one size fits all approach. And it's not realistic. It's not realistic. For diet, it's not realistic. It's not realistic for exercise. It's not realistic for anything.

You have to try certain things. Like for me, I know that fasting in the early part of the day, I'm more focused and I can, and I'm a little bit high, strong early in the day. And so I train then, and then I dig into work and then I eat low carb throughout the day. So I'm effectively low carbohydrate because when you're low carbohydrate, because carbohydrates trigger the release of serotonin, they have a calming effect. We know this. You have a big plate of pasta. It kind of mellows you out. It soothes you. It blunts cortisol. Whereas if you don't eat carbohydrates, you tend to have a little bit of adrenaline in your system and it's go, go, go, go, go. And then in the evening I eat pasta and rice and less protein so that I can get to sleep

easily. And I repack all the glycogen that I burned throughout the day training and doing a bunch of things like that. So this idea that you have to be low carb every day, all day, or you have to be high carb, that's crazy. I mean, I think I do know people who've done well on the carnivore diet. I only learned about it through your podcast and through, I forget his name, the guy was- Paul Saladino. Which is weird because he has salad in his name. Someone pointed that out to me. I was like, you're right. That's so true. That's right. Well, he used to be a vegan. Oh yeah. Yeah. So that always is reassuring to me when someone's done it both ways yeah

but you know rich roll i know rich well and you know he thrives on a vegan diet yeah yeah and you know and guys got you know calves this big and he's you know runs like a machine he runs ultra marathons yeah and he's a strong you know know, he functions well. Yes. So I do think that people should try it. They should be scientists. Yeah. Up for themselves. They should just be a scientist. Run the control experiment.

Be a vegan for a month. Be a carnivore for a month. Try it. When I eat any kind of high-carbohydrate meal, I crash. I just want to go to sleep. Yeah. And that's great if it's late in the day and you want to go to sleep. It's terrible if it's lunch and you have to do a three-hour podcast four times a

week if i am uh if i have like uh something with like if i have sushi right like a lot of sushi with a lot of rice i just want to nod off like immediately my eyes get heavy and i start talking slowly and i'm out sedative yeah but but most days, if you're not doing that, do you sleep okay? Could you transition to sleep? I sleep pretty good. Yeah. I sleep like a brick.

But I'm always so tired. By the end of the day, I'm so exhausted. I shove so much shit into my day. What time are you up? Are you up early? Seven. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

And I'm almost, like every day, there's some kind of heavy exercise going on, pretty much, except for Sundays. And sometimes Saturdays I take off too. But unless there's something crazy going on where I can't work out during the day on a weekday, most weekdays there's a pretty brutal workout session in there. And so by the time the end of the day comes with podcasts,

then I'm doing stand-up at night a lot of these nights. I'm tired. So I just – I can crash. That's probably because you're training early in the day. First thing always. So one of the reasons you wake up is this increase in body temperature. And that's going to increase throughout the day. And once your temperature starts dropping in the late afternoon and evening, you're headed for sleep. I wanted to ask you about this.

There's quite a few of these companies now that are, I had one for a while. I forget the one that I had. It was one of our sponsors, Jamie. There was a cooling pad that puts over the bed, but Jamie uses one called, what is it? Eight something? Eight sleep. Eight sleep. Yeah. Lex is big into eight sleep. Do you use any of those? I don't, but so there's a really interesting thing around temperature. You know, we hear so much about light, hormones, nutrition. To me, temperature is the untapped power tool. It's just amazing what you can do with temperature.

So when you wake up in the morning, your temperature is increasing. If you exercise early in the day, your temperature will undergo a further increase. And then what you effectively do by exercising early in the day, your temperature will undergo a further increase. And then what you effectively do by exercising early in the day, especially viewing light and exercising early in the day, is you time the onset of that melatonin pulse to come on 16 hours later, which is going to put you to sleep. Okay. So, but in order to get into sleep and stay asleep, your temperature's got to drop. And that starts for most people around four or five o'clock in the afternoon, although it depends

on when you're waking up. As that temperature drops, it's going to be much easier to get into sleep. So there are a couple of ways to accelerate that transition. One is to get into a sauna, which sounds counterproductive or take a hot bath or a hot shower. But when you do that, the body actively cools. And when you get out, your body is dumping heat like crazy. And then you can, you would have that kind of almost coma like feel where you get into sleep. That's interesting because that's something I also do. I get in the sauna almost every night.

Oh, that's magic. Yeah. Before I go to bed. Well, there you also get something really powerful. I know Rhonda Patrick has talked a lot about this and knows more about this than I do. But in researching some of the literature, if you do 20 minutes of sauna or so in the evening and you crank it up, you're getting up to the 200 to 10 zone or 190 to 210. And that has this huge effect on growth hormone release, 16 fold increase in

growth hormone release. If you do it regularly, you kind of adapt to it and you might say, well, how does that work? Well, temperature. One of the ways to coordinate the systems of the body is by changing core body temperature. And it sounds so obvious when you hear it, but we don't often think about that. So when you wake up early in the day and you view sunlight, you're creating an increase in body temperature by the signals that go through the eye to the hypothalamus and to the systems of the body.

And then that exercise in the day also sets you up for a lot of energy during the day, and then kind of a crash into sleep later that night. The other thing is they say to keep the room cool at night while you're sleeping, or if you need it, one of these eight sleep things, or Chili Pad, I think is the other one. I don't have any relationship to either one.

I asked my colleague, Craig Heller at Stanford, who's a world expert in thermal regulation, temperature regulation. I said, why keep the room cold? And he said, well, that's interesting because it turns out that most of your heat dumping occurs through three locations on your body. It's called a glabrous skin. It's very interesting.

It's the hairless skin, which is on the upper part of the face, the palms of the hands and the bottoms of your feet. Now you can dump heat through those, they're like portals where you dump heat and you actually can pass cool and heat into the body too, but this is a separate conversation. So you're asleep in the middle of the night. And if you start heating up, what you'll notice is you start putting a foot out or a handout. And what you're doing is you're dumping heat in order to stay asleep. You just

do this subconsciously. Whereas if the room is too hot, what are you going to do? You're going to put your hand in an ice bucket. You'd need to have some cooling device in the room. So this is why it's good to drop the temperature in the room at night. And these surfaces are super interesting. They have what are called AVA's, arteriovenous astimoses. It's a fascinating aspect of how we're built and how animals are built. Normally blood goes from the heart through arteries, then goes through the little capillaries, which are like the little fine ones and then to veins and then back to the heart. There's some exceptions that that's basically how it works.

In the palms of our hands, in the bottoms of our feet, and in our upper face, it goes direct from arteries to veins, these AVAs. And animals and humans where there's, it's because there's no hair follicles there. Even if you're not really hairy, you have hair, little tiny hair follicles everywhere, except these three locations. And we dump heat very readily from the body through them. And so this is why I was going to say, in the hot months, it's actually really hot here in Texas,

if you're overheating, people will put like a cold ice bucket or a blanket or something around their neck. It's terrible. It cools the blood going to the brain. The brain thinks that you're cooling off and the hypothalamus starts to heat up the body. This is how people cook their organs. The best way, and they do this now with firefighters,

have done some work, and we're starting to do some work, Craig and I, with military and with the UFC guys, with Duncan French, we've got something planned here that's spinning up now. You want to get the palms or the bottoms of the feet into cool water. And that has the effect of cooling or the bottoms of the feet into cool water. And that has the effect of cooling off the core of the body much, much faster.

And this has profound effects on athletic performance and job performance. We always think about the athlete stuff, but there are a lot of guys working construction sites, they're out in the desert, you know, sitting around like shooting bad guys and doing all sorts of stuff. And you need, hyperthermia is dreadful. So you can cool the body

by effectively taking like something like this. There's a device that Craig has, they have, there's this company called CoolMit. It's only available now to athletes and to military, but it should be available to consumers soon where you can cool the core of the body simply by holding something of the appropriate cold temperature. Now, if it's too cold, it'll constrict the vessels and it just shuts down the system. Not good. So this is amazing. They've done some experiments in Craig's lab with the guys from the 49ers who could come in, they give them 10 sets of dips. This is wild, but it's published peer review data, 10 sets of dips. One of their athletes, I forget because he's a pro athlete, did 40 dips on the first set.

And then it kind of drops 10, 10, with three minutes rest in between. Comes back in a few days and now they have them in between sets for three minutes. I think it was three, maybe two minutes. Hold on to the appropriate temperature cooling device. Now he punches out six fold more dips. He can just go set after set after set.

He's increasing volume and repetitions. So he's not getting stronger, he can do more. I know it's crazy, but the way it works is very well understood. Do you have, when your muscle works, like let's say you're doing curls on, yeah. This is cool, man. So this is at work in a lot of special forces guys, 49ers.

We're watching a video for the folks that are just listening. And it also, okay. That's it? So it's on his knee? Well, he's got his hand in a, yeah, on a cold pad. And it's only one hand. It's only one hand because you're passing, you can't really pass cool into the body,

but you're cooling off the heat of the body. And we don't often think about the relationship between heat and performance, but it's very straightforward. So when you, let's say you're doing a set of curls, curls always seem to be the example, but you're doing a set of curls. The bicep is heating up and eventually you hit failure. The reason you hit failure is not because you don't have the strength to do it. You just did a rep with that. It's because muscle contraction is dependent on an enzyme called pyruvate kinase. And as the muscle heats up, pyruvate kinase can't work and you can't convert energy into ATP in the muscle.

That's failure, is the heating of the actual muscle tissue. So when you cool the body at its core, pyruvate kinase can continue to convert ATP into energy and the muscle keeps contracting. And they've done this with endurance also. It's a, it's a really interesting area. And this literature actually goes back about 10 years, but no one had ever devised this. So they could do this to fighters in between rounds. So what we're planning with UFC is we're going to get, so there is to have people cool between

rounds properly, not by putting ice on the back of the neck, which just feels good, but by actually cooling the core of the body. And we think this is going to have important effects, not the hypothesis is it will have important effects, not just for performance, but also a lot of the brain injury that occurs. You know, part of it is the head hit, but part of it is the hyperthermia, the dehydration. is the head hit, but part of it is the hyperthermia, the dehydration. You know, if you look at the history of fights where guys died in boxing, when they went from 15 rounds to 12, fewer people were dying. And it could be more head hits, but the idea that we're going to test Duncan and the folks out at the UFC and the folks at Stanford is that we know it improves performance, but that it will also help with recovery and hopefully that it'll help with some of the brain injury issues.

I think one of the things that happens with boxers in particular, with deaths, is most of them, like the vast majority in the lighter weight classes, which indicates that these guys are, again, they're dehydrating themselves. They're cutting weight, which is one thing that I've been really vocal about that I've tried to get people to listen to, but right now it falls on deaf ears, except for fans and athletes who agree, is to cut weight cutting out. And I think there's got to be a way to do it. My position is that it's legalized cheating. I think when you look at what weight cutting is, weight cutting is essentially you're pretending you're lighter than you are. And then they usually like eat afterwards, right? They're coming back up. Oh, way up. How long between the weigh-in and the actual walking in? More than 24 hours. It used to be around 24 hours. They used to have to weigh in at 4 p.m. in the afternoon or whenever it was,

depending upon the local commission. And then they would fight the next day the fights would start somewhere roughly in that same range now they start early in the morning and what we do is what's called the ceremonial weigh-in so I'll host the weigh-in but they've already weighed in so I say when they step on the stage scale it's kind of stupid really it's like they're not they're on a scale for no reason like we already know what they weigh it's kind of some weird fucking game we're playing. People like to see the weigh-in. I guess. But you say official weight.

So now I say, you know, Jamie Vernon, official weight, 190 pounds, and Jamie flexes, and then he gets off the scale. So the thing is that person is probably, when they get on that scale for the official weigh-in, anywhere in the range of 10 pounds heavier. And then as the day goes on, they'll continue to slowly rehydrate. They have it down to a science. You know, there's people that are very, very good at it. And they know exactly how to dehydrate these athletes and to get them to this literally death door. I mean, you see guys shuffling to the scale.

Neurons need salt. Sometimes blackout. Yeah, neurons need salt, potassium and magnesium, the electrolytes, to fire. You take away those, you piss out more water, but you also, the brain's ability of function goes down. Imagine you're doing this 24 hours before you engage in a cage fight it's the dumbest fucking thing we do it is literally the dumbest thing we do in the sport and i would love it if they instituted some sort of a radical change where they um there's a company called one fc i don't know how they do it they're out of singapore and they have some sort of a

hydration test that they use on athletes i know they also out of Singapore and they have some sort of a hydration test that they use on athletes. I know they also have this in wrestling. They have hydration tests that they use particularly, I believe in high school and college wrestling. They want to make sure that these guys aren't, because in those days they're making weight the day of the event. At least the UFC athletes have ample time to rehydrate, but it's still, it's a ridiculous stressor on the body to make someone dehydrate to the tone of, so for some guys it's 30 pounds. That's crazy. Well, what I don't understand is it seems like, you know, one of the reasons athletes take steroids is because they want to break records and crowds love it when athletes

break records. No one wants to see everyone run progressively slower in the Olympics every year. So, you know, now you don't let them take anabolics just ad libitum because otherwise that would just be a mess, although they do it anyway, let's be honest. There are so many ways around these tests. But in terms of dehydration and weight cutting, you would think in the UFC that the fans would love it because they would see better performances. I think you would see better performances. I think you'd see longer careers because there's some guys that I think there's quite a few issues. And some of them are just related to the organization itself. I believe we need more weight classes. There's not enough weight classes and there's large gaps in between these weight classes, which encourages this dehydration.

Like, especially when you get into the heavier weight classes, like there's a gap between middleweight and light heavyweight. It's 20 pounds. That's an enormous gap, 85 and 205. It's just enormous. And if you're a guy who's walking around at 195 or whatever and you decide to fight at 85 pounds, you're cutting 10 pounds, you might have a guy who's 215 pounds and decides to get down to 85 pounds. And when he gets down to 185, what he's going to do is try to grab a hold of you. A lot of these guys, or they'll have more punching power, or they take a shot better because they're just larger human beings.

And again, there's bad weight cuts where it doesn't work out well, and the guys have poor performances, and they blame it on a bad weight cut. And it's true. I would like all that to be factored out, and I think it's 100% possible. And I've spoken to the UFC about it multiple times, but I'm like, all right, no one's listening to me. It's like it should be too big of a change, but I think it would be very important for the health of the athletes,

the longevity of the athletes, the longevity of the athletes, and then also the integrity of the sport. You're pretending like, I'll give you an example. Take a guy like Kamaru Usman. He's the UFC welterweight champion, one of the best to ever do it. He weighs in at 170 for about fucking an hour. He's 170 if he's that. And then he gets up to around 200 pounds.

He's fucking big. You stand next to him. That's a 30-pound dumbbell. You stand next to him and you go, how is that guy 170? Well, he's not. He's 170 at the weigh-ins. And he's not even the most egregious. There's been guys that have cut way more weight than that.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe on fight day he's 190. Maybe. But he's a big guy. There's no way he's 170. He's not even close to 170. And he's the 170-pound champion. And this is not a knock on him because I'm a giant fan of him because everybody does it. You go down to 155. The champion Charles Oliveira used to fight at 145, and he was killing himself to make 145, and he kept losing. It just wasn't sustainable. And you could see he lost, he misweighed a couple of times, and then he goes up to 155, and then he becomes the champion. But even then, he's really not 155, he's probably 170. He's probably walking around at 170 and then he dehydrates himself down to 55 and then weighs

in and then rehydrates himself up again. It's just bad for you. It's just bad for you and it's a terrible thing to do a day before you're about to do the most difficult thing in all of sports. Yeah, where your life is essentially at risk. Yeah, that's the big difference between these fighting sports and other sports. If someone misses an Olympic lift, sure, they can get hurt, but someone else isn't trying to put them to sleep. Exactly. Someone is trying to get you. And so because someone's trying to get you, you want to get every advantage you possibly can. And a lot of these guys, they just want to be as big as they can be.

And that's totally understandable, but it should be illegal. And the only way to really make it so that it makes any sense is you've got to give these guys more options in terms of weight classes to compete at. I think at the bare minimum, there should be a weight class every 10 pounds. And in boxing, it's a lot more than that. In boxing, you have 147, which is welterweight, but then you have junior middleweight, which is 154. That's nothing. That's seven pounds. That's's nothing and then you have six pounds more than that is middleweight that's nothing yeah it's one pork burrito yeah exactly with or without and then

eight pounds over that is super middleweight right i mean it's uh and then uh seven pounds over that is light heavyweight 175 is light heavyweight so it's like boxing has a better system in my opinion i think there it's it's there's more weight classes and i think it's more exciting i don't think i think one thing that people have a problem with is too many champions in boxing but that's because there's four massive governing bodies that are the organ you have the wbc wba all these belts i'm totally confused there's too many belts that's why when you get a rare the very very rare Undisputed champion of the world, you know where the guy owns all the weight classes It's so rare and box the last person to have that good question. Somebody probably has it today

I don't know. I think Tyson Fury had the opportunity if he fought Anthony Joshua to or you know, either one Those guys are so big. I'll tell you when I saw the heavyweight fights the other night. That's UFC fight It's an Australian guy. Yeahians that want to fight just scare me anyway i've been to australia people fight for fun in australia well he's the most scary because he drinks out of people's shoes oh yeah what was that he drinks beer out of people he calls it a shoeie they all call i guess they call it maybe it's a rugby shoe is that just some random random dudes random dudes would give him a shoe and he'll pour a beer in it and drink the beer i love australia ty's an animal he's an animal he's a crazy and he'll pour a beer in it and drink the beer. I love Australians. Ty's an animal.

He's an animal. He's a crazy person. Tried to drink a beer out of my shoe one day when I was interviewing him. I go, get the fuck out of here. Amazing. Australians are amazing. This is like David Sinclair. Every once in a while he'll say something.

He's hilarious. He's brilliant and he's hilarious. And he's Australian, so he's very irreverent. They think outside the box. I don't know what it is down there that makes them think. They don't worry too much what people think about them. Well, it used to be a prison colony. True.

What a dumb move England did. They sent all their prisoners to a way more beautiful place. It is beautiful there. It's an amazing place. It's incredible. It's an amazing place. I mean, it's definitely filled with a lot of shit that can kill you. There's a lot of spiders and snakes and crocodiles and sharks and a lot of stuff that can kill you. There's a lot of spiders and snakes and crocodiles and sharks and a lot of stuff that can kill you, but it's also beautiful. Yeah. They're really

comfortable with it. Years ago, I was down in Australia for a meeting called vision down under, and it rained the whole time we were on this little Island called Frazier Island. And on the last day we were boarding the boat and it was beautiful. And I said to the guy who was riding the boat, I was like, Oh man, I wish I'd gone swimming here. I wish the weather had been nice. And he said, you know, you can't swim here. This place is loaded with tiger sharks and these jellyfish that will kill you. I said, but there are no signs, you know, in the U S like they got a sign for everything. And he goes, Oh yeah, well, everybody knows that. And I thought, Oh my goodness. Like basically the bad weather saved my life. Cause I would have just gone during one of the breaks that are probably during one of the

sessions, the jellyfish will fuck you up. Those things scare me because I've have just gone during one of the breaks or probably during one of the sessions. The jellyfish will fuck you up. Yeah, those things scare me because I've been around the little ones that can't hurt you and you think you can just push them away, but they're everywhere. They're in your shorts. They're everywhere. Yeah.

It's bad. Yeah, one of my kids got zapped by a jellyfish, the smallest of jellyfish. Like some little tentacles touched her in Costa Rica and she was in agony. Oh, yeah. And it wasn't even that bad. It wasn't like a poisonous one.

I mean, it was poisonous, but it wasn't something that can kill you. And they have buckets of vinegar on the beach. And so you would grab vinegar and pour it onto the wound. That makes sense. The acid will kill it. You know, in the laboratory, we have all these toxins, fugu toxin from the pufferfish, TTX. We've got alpha-latra toxin, which is from black widow spiders. You have alpha bungarow toxin from the pit vipers. These are research tools that are used to block transmitters,

what, you know, the chemicals that neurons use to communicate with one another. And they were all derived and discovered from these animals. And the animal actually that can kill you the fastest is one of these cone fish or it's a cone snail, excuse me, it's like a snail that sits on the bottom of the ocean and it shoots this little tentacle up into the body of the fish. And it puts in these neurotoxins that their potency,

they work at what we call pico molar concentration, which for the non-scientists out there just means very, very tiny concentrations. And so in the lab, you have a tiny vial that could kill, you know, 40, 50 people. They're all regulated, of course, because these are bio-warfare. They're actually botulinum neurotoxin,

you know, from cans. Remember, cans could have botulinum that would cause freeze-up of the muscles. That's how it kills you. You can't- That's also why chicks get Botox. That's Botox. And some strange guys.

It blocks the- It seems like more and more nowadays. It's so odd when you're talking to a man and he can't move his forehead. Like, hey man, is this worth it? Exactly. It looks, it's progressively worse and worse. There's this runaway effect of the Botox. Yeah, well they get shiny for some reason. It doesn't move.

And why is it shiny? Like I'm shiny, but I swear to God I don't have Botox. I'm guessing it's because the sweat gland, as we were talking about temperature, the sweat gland is actually controlled by the same receptor, the acetylcholine receptor, as is the muscles that contract. When you move a muscle of any kind, it's because you have acetylcholine receptors. Botox blocks acetylcholine receptors. It's alpha-bungarotoxin from the pit viper. They're injecting it there, so there's acetylcholine's released and the muscle can't contract.

It just sits there flaccid. So it's this like flaccid paralysis. So there are all these things that can kill you that you have in the laboratory that uses a research tool. You're obviously very careful with them, but it was reported, I don't know if they ever verified it that before he was killed Saddam Hussein had botulinum spores. He was growing botulinum in laboratories over there because all you would have to do is release a small amount of these spores into the air and you could kill an entire city with botulinum easily.

You would just, everyone would just asphyxiate. Their lungs wouldn't work. You couldn't move your lungs. You couldn't breathe. Jesus Christ. So bio, bioterrorism is something that we don't hear about as much these days because, you know, now we hear more about information terrorism and control over, you know, information grids and internet viruses and the whole thing. But these toxins work at extremely low concentrations and they all come from the natural kingdom, you know, pit vipers and the black widow's spider. One is, I can imagine, be a particularly bad death. Alpha-lactotoxin causes the nerve

that releases acetylcholine to vomit all the acetylcholine at once. So if you had a lot of alpha-lactotoxin injected in your body, every muscle would be completely flaccid. Every nerve cell would dump all the acetylcholine and you would just, it's got to be the most horrible death ever.

Is that extremely toxic to the point of death? Absolutely. Black widow spiders? Yeah. So it's very low concentration in one black widow spider, but in a vial of alpha-lactotoxin, which we use all the time. I've heard of people getting stung by black widows.

I used to see them all the time in California. Yeah, I don't like those things. They were everywhere. The wood piles, they love those things. Yeah, well, they were everywhere. I do not. You know, it's weird. I don't really have a problem with spiders,

but snakes freak me out. Yeah, I'm not a fan of anything that's cold-blooded. They freak me out. Like, I don't like reptiles. That's how I feel about organ meats. I don't like smooth muscles. Oh, I do. I love organ meats. I only like skeletal. But I try to buy, it's kind of an asshole thing of me. I try to buy as many alligator products as I can. I fucking hate alligators. When I was a kid, I lived in Gainesville, Florida. And I remember a lady

got hurt. It's hard to remember because I was 11 years old either i was there or i heard about it you know it's one of those things but i saw a lot of alligators and a lady's dog got snatched by an alligator she was walking the dog i definitely didn't see it i would remember that but i was either there when people were screaming or they were warning me about it the next day and this lady was walking her her dog along the lake and a fucking alligator just jumped out and snatched up her dog. And then recently in Orlando, a fucking baby got killed at Disney World. Are you serious? A baby got killed at Disney World by a monster. A monster came out of the lake and ate a baby. So there's little toddlers walking around by the water and this fucking alligator came

out and snatched the toddler and dragged it into the water and ate it. Yeah, I don't like alligators either. I fucking hate those things. So since I was 11 years old, I fucking hated them. And I buy alligator skin as much as I can. Like whenever, if I find out that something's made out of leveral, I'm like, hmm, I wonder if they make it out of alligator. And I try to find.

226 alligators were removed from Disney World world since toddler's death five years ago imagine yeah let's just hope it's just imagine let's just hope they start crawling around the rides all the time people have like caught video like hey look at that giant that number is so crazy right 226 alligators at the happiest place on earth they're getting invaded by monsters. I can't say I like alligators. I have this friend. You may know him. I don't know if you've ever crossed paths. His name is Michael Muller.

He's a famous kind of celebrity photographer in Hollywood, does all the Marvel stuff. But he also takes pictures of sharks. Oh, that's where. He took some of Whitney's early photos because he does, you know, does a lot of photos. Anyway, he I've gone out there with him to Guadalupe and he dived with the Great Whites and he does this thing of cage exiting and the whole thing. He was down in Cuba when they opened up Cuba and he was getting virtual reality footage. He's doing these incredible underwater movies for sake of conservation.

He's got one now. I think it's called into the now is amazing. Amazing to see in VR, these sharks coming right up close. And, but then they were swimming with these saltwater crocodiles. And I remember he came back and he said, check this out. Those scare me. The sharks are kind of more reasonable because I've been down there at Guadalupe with Michael. I've actually done the cage exit thing. I don't recommend people do it, but the sharks are busy grabbing tuna, doing their thing. They're not really hunting you. They're kind of checking you out. And if

you understand their behavior a little bit, you can maneuver there. But these saltwater crocodiles, they have no soul. I'm with you on this one. There's something, they're just a killing machine. They just sleep and kill. And when, so he had the VR camera

and he's got this croc, whatever, the salties or whatever the Australians call them, but they're in Cuba and it's coming at him. And after that, I was like, Muller,

you have three kids. You know, you had a loving wife. He's got a great wife and kids, but you know, get out of there. Yeah. Get out of there. Yeah. I'm, uh, my friend, Jim Shockey, he is a, uh, he's a famous hunter. Uh, he lives in Canada and they actually hired him to go to, I think it was Zimbabwe. It was some, there was some river in Africa where the local people were getting preyed upon by crocodiles It's such an alarming rate that everyone in the village had scars

There was the guys missing an arm a lady would miss a leg people with like bites taken out of their thighs These things would just snap and while he was there setting up one of the women who was washing clothes got snatched up From the beach. They're everywhere there. And they're fucking huge. These are enormous, like 18-foot crocodiles that are just snatching people. It's crazy. And they actively hunt people. And so he was hired to go down there and set up shop and just start whacking them.

Just put away as many as you can. But, you know, you're putting a dent in a population of super predators. It's probably established itself very deeply. Like the roots of those things. It's probably so many of them. You're not really going to do enough to keep these people safe, but they would put these poles in the ground and set up almost like a crude fence around an area where they could gather water and then, uh, you know you know and and wash their clothes and stuff and the crocodiles would figure their way through it yeah they're dinosaurs basically they've been

around for yeah in that form i think they're older they are dinosaurs because they're older than the um the impact the um the impact of the yucatan so i think i think they go back more than 100 million years yeah they're primitive they primitive. I've seen alligator brains. I spent a lot of time, I work for a journal called the Journal of Comparative Neurology, where you compare the eyes and brains of a lot of different species. When you look at the brain of a given species, you get a really good picture about what that species cares about. If you look at the brain of a scent hound, these are scent hounds that went down in veterinary clinics. Never want to kill a dog, love dogs.

But they have huge olfactory bulbs compared to a sighthound which has small olfactory bulbs right or a bulldog which basically has no olfactory bulbs you know because it snows it's all smushed yeah it's not a good breather right um but the bulldog is interesting the bulldog has a tiny amygdala the fear region and you know you always think of the bulldog they're fearless right i had a bulldog unfortunately put him away last i had to put him down last week it was terrible but. But he got skunked over 100 times. Because this bastard, you would hear rustling in the bushes, and he would just go in. It's like the Marine thing.

They just go in. They don't ask questions like, what's there? So he's an English bulldog? He was an English bulldog mastiff. Oh, that's interesting. It's crazy. I don't want to cry because I just put him down. So I don't want to talk about him too long because I had him 11 years. His name was Costello. He had a head like

this 22 inch neck. And I'll actually, I'll come clean now. Cause maybe the veterinary world will come after me about eight years into owning him. He had all these health problems. He was putting on weight is shedding like crazy. It was joints were aching. And, um, a friend of mine said, well, why don't you put him on a little bit of testosterone? I had him clipped when he was younger, neutered him. So I started giving him 10 to 20 milligrams of testosterone a week. Everything changed. His appetite came back. He stopped shedding. He leaned out. And I asked my vet, I said, what's the story here? And she said, there are a lot of things that we could do to make animals' lives better that we don't? For instance, hormone therapy, give them cough medication. Wait a minute.

Why not just take, not have them clip? Well, I didn't think of that. I was too late and you can't put them. So many doctors are so, they're so eager. Did you clip Marshall? No. Okay, so you're ahead of the curve because- Well, I had a great doctor.

I had a great doctor in Los Angeles that told me, he said, there's no reason to do this. He goes, look, people don't want unwanted puppies. He goes, but you're not letting your dog just run around and breed with things. He's like, there's a risk of prostate cancer. That's the thing. But, you know, dogs kind of get prostate cancer anyway. He goes, there is maybe an association between not being clipped. But that's also with humans. You know, there was a thing that just was published very recently that said there's a direct correlation between castration and life extension. Sure. Well, do you remember that? I mean, along these lines, your doctor is a good one because whoever that is, because there was an article recently, I think it was Wall Street Journal, maybe it was Washington post that said that they've been pulling vets and vets are starting to say, yeah, if you really ask me, it's not the right thing to do for their health. Just think about the joint pain. I mean, Costello was a 90 pound bulldog mastiff. He has to carry that. Right.

And he's, you know, and he can't repair his joints. The moment he started getting regular TRT, I mean, I'm, I'm coming clean. My dog was on TRT. Usada, come after me. He was happier. He slept better. His breathing got better. Everything was better. At the end, like a nerve degeneration thing got him. But, you know, what we do to these animals is terrible.

You can't castrate a male animal unless you have an exceptionally good reason to do it. I think it's actually cruelty to animals to do it. And I confess I did it not knowing better. It's a, you know, it's a, there's a reason why they give testosterone to help depression in male species. Well, there's a, there's a lot of people that are trying to influence people to do it. Like when you go to your vet, like I had a bulldog who, or who's a mastiff rather, who died a few years back. And I brought him to the vet, a different vet. The other vet, unfortunately, died. And when I brought him to the vet, the lady was pointing at his balls.

And she goes, what are those there for? I go, those are his balls. And she goes, why does he still have them? I go, because I want him to. Like, this is not, what are you doing? Like, this is not what he's here for. He's here for something else. I think they scare people or something.

Well, she was just making it seem like it's a mandatory thing that you have to do to a dog. And I'm like, why? Because I know I did it to one of my dogs in the past. And he immediately got lackadaisical. He lost a lot of his enthusiasm. I did it to him as an adult. Yeah, that's rough. Yeah, and he lost all his energy. It was crazy to watch it drain out of him. And I female dogs, you know, estrogen prolongs brain health.

I mean, you ask any post sort of perimenopausal woman how they're feeling. It's generally not they're feeling better than they were before. Right. And estrogen replacement therapy makes people feel better. Their brain functions better. I think the same is true for female dogs. Yeah. I mean, this I don't know how this whole thing got started.

Somebody who knows the veterinary world better than I will probably. It's unwanted puppies, I'm sure. I'm sure it's unwanted puppies. Yeah, but like you said, they're not running the neighborhood anymore. I agree. I mean, look, with cats, it's a different story. I've had male cats before, and the problem is they piss all over your house. They spray.

Yeah, I'm not a big. I mean, I'm not anti-cat, but, you know. I like cats. They're cool, but they kill billions of animals every year. B-I. Billions of birds and mice. And when people let their cats out, you're basically letting a genocidal, homicidal maniac out of your fucking house. They are really good hunters. cat she was a rag doll and she her name was spaz and she was this little fluff ball you wouldn't imagine that she would want to kill anything and she would go outside and immediately turn into a fucking assassin and just start stalking things and even i had a courtyard in my house it was a contained courtyard in california so it wasn't even she was out there in the wild just in the

courtyard or something fucked up and landed in that courtyard, she would just slowly creep up on it. It was just 100% instincts. Would she do the teeth chatter? Oh, yeah. I had a bit about it in my act. Oh, did you? Yeah, about one of my other cats. There's a known mechanism.

Do you know about this? No. So the forebrain, so basically the forebrain is controlling all the other stuff, all the impulses. So when you want to eat something, you're like, I shouldn't. That's your forebrain.

It's what we call no-go. We have go functions and we have no-go. Don't do it, don't do it, all the impulses. So when you want to eat something, you're like, I shouldn't, that's your forebrain. It's, it's what we call no-go. It's a, it's a, we have go functions and we have no-go. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't pick up the phone. Don't do it. Don't say this. Don't do it. Okay. When the forebrain is damaged, you know, like that Aaron Hernandez documentary was a really good example. People blame steroids, upbringing. It was probably multiple things, but if you combine impulses, young male, probably on androgens, you look at a size change there or not, maybe naturally high androgens. And then you take away the forebrain. You're essentially taking the break off behavior antisocial personality disorder, if you look in the psychiatric handbook. Forebrain damage is part of that. I mean, an inability to regulate behavior. Sociopaths are a little bit different

because they're very calculating. It's not impulsivity. It's more they're playing long game kind of terrible stuff. In any event, when your cat shifts into seeing something it wants to eat, complete transformation. And then the stalking is a lot of top-down control, as we call it, the forebrain going, no-go, no-go, no-go.

And that teeth chatter is a little bit of behavior sneaking through. It's like in that tonic, tonic, as we call it, tonic paralysis, and then bam, it just does the attack. And so it's a beautiful example. Predation is a beautiful example of the brain regulating its own behavior because it gets one shot to bolt out after that mouse or bird or whatever it is. And so that tooth teeth chatter is just a little bit of reflex that is creeping through that, that, and then it, the valve. I had a bit that I did in my act about I put a post up on my Instagram. I go, this is some meat from a deer who liked to kick babies and was about to join ISIS.

And then I wrote hashtag vegan. And because I wrote hashtag vegan, it got in the hashtag vegan world. So like people look for other vegan posts, Like people who are really into veganism, they look up other vegans and they're all excited about vegan posts. And so by me having this hunk of deer meat and a joke, you know, that it was a deer that liked to kick babies and was about to join ISIS. When I did that, all these fucking people came after me and like the most mean Vicious way like what do they do they said so compassionate these vegans? But one of the things they did was this one lady came at me in this really Ruth When people get really mean one of things I always like to do is like to try to see this is before I stopped reading People's comments by the way, this is quite a few years back Lex and I have been talking about that

I want to get very important so I get to the quite a few years back. Lex and I have been talking about that. I want to get back. It's very important. So I get to this lady's page and she's a fucking complete lunatic. And one thing I see in one of her hashtags is hashtag vegan cat.

And this is a total true story. Cat is a carnivore. Exactly. It's classified in the biology books as a carnivore. An obligate carnivore. Carnivora. Yeah. The order of carnivores.

Yes. So literally in my bit, I go, fuck, should I click this? Because it was late at night, and I was like, god damn it, this is going to keep me up all night long, because I know I'm going to go down a rabbit hole. And I did, so I went down this rabbit hole. And what I said is, it's a series of photographs of cats that look like they're in a house with a gas leak. Like every cat is just like, and it's like vegan cat. My cat loves spinach.

This cat's like, where the fuck is the real food? Well, this is a good example. You've taken an animal. Like I have, I think a lot about animals and I confess in my research career, I've worked on animals. I have worked on a lot of animals. Nowadays I work on humans, which feels much better because they consent. But an animal research is important.

I mean, you have to be thoughtful about what you do and why, but it is important because you're not going to put experimental stuff into humans. You know, you could, but you legally you can't. So when we take these animals and we domesticate them, sometimes it's kind and we enter this reciprocal symbiotic relationship with them. But sometimes you're depriving the animal of some basic instincts that's so innate that you're actually torturing the animal. You are torturing a cat. If you make that cat eat soybeans.

This is why I'm not a hunter. I know you're a hunter, but I've been talking to hunters. Andy Galpin, I learned as a hunter. And I think Andy's terrific. And he's awesome. He knows so much. Brilliant. He's been absolutely a critical resource for me.

It's a great follow on Instagram too and on Twitter as well. He really parses the literature on sports performance physiology. I mean, he does it right down to the muscle microscopy, but he also works with athletes and typical people. He's a real practitioner. I mean, I really have respect for him. I love these people. I guess it sounds like Donaher is his name. People have just really poured themselves into something, but he's a hunter as well.

Hunters and ranchers really understand the relationship between animal and human. And they understand that before this thing is your pet, before it's got its name or it's your dog or it's your cat, it's an animal. And if you look at the brain of an animal, you can understand that this brain needs certain things. And if you deprive it of those things it is a form of animal cruelty people need to understand about hunting that it's highly regulated too the idea is that you're going to kill all these animals well listen you are not going to kill all these animals you're you this they had a problem in the early 19th century when there was essentially a mass extinction of wild

game animals on this planet because of market hunting, because there was unrestricted, unregulated market hunting. So people, this is before refrigeration, people would run around and they would shoot as many things as they can and they would sell them at markets. And it led to a massive decrease in deer, elk, bear, everything. Now they're highly regulated and there's more deer in America today than when Columbus came here. They're very well regulated. Don't they even have them in Hawaii or something? Yes, that's axis deer and that's a real problem because those were brought by the King of India, brought them to King Kamehameha, who was the king of Hawaii at the time.

And they brought in this incredibly prolific animal with no predators. So in the island of Lanai, you got to say it right. I usually say Lanai, but it's Lanai. They have 3,000 people and somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 deer. Wow. It's nuts. When you're there at night and you drive, like we were there and this lady turned the headlights on for us and turned towards the field, and you see a fucking thousand eyeballs.

You can't believe how many eyeballs you see looking back at you. It's madness. Just seas of axis deer. And they are delicious are they i was gonna ask they're delicious they're so good but they evolved around tigers so they're from india so they're insanely hard to hunt unless you're using a rifle so this is how hard they are to hunt um when i went there i went there with cam haynes who's probably the best bow hunter on earth and john dudley who's probably neck and neck with him.

And there's like us and a couple other hunters who are like top of the food chain, like Adam Green Tree and Remy Warren. We were all successful in bow hunting these animals. They're very difficult to kill. What makes them hard? So I'm very interested in predator-prey relationship. Like so these access here, just they hear you from here, just, they hear the way they get away is they drop all their body weight down so they load their limbs they load their their you know their muscles and then they spring out of there can they jump up oh my god like gazelles so they take off right and they're they're insanely

fast so i have a video of this axis deer that i shot out at uh it was like 80 yards. So I'm like lined up on this thing. The bow goes off, the arrow's going towards him. He hears the arrow going towards him and maybe 30 yards away, he's gone. He takes off. So we actually figured out that the best time to hunt them is in the afternoon because it's windy. And when it's windy, they can't hear you. But you have to be in the right position. You have to sneak in. You got to get close enough. We were successful. There was 150 hunters after us over the next year.

One was successful. Wow. Every single one of them gave up on the bow and started to pick up a rifle. I said, listen, this is crazy. And the guys are like, I'm telling you, this is hard. How long? Because I know nothing about this.

Maybe you could explain because I'm curious. So you'll set off on one of these hunts. How long are you going to be out for? Well, one of the beautiful things about Lanai is that you're there and there's a four seasons there. So you stay in the four seasons. And so you, or you could, you know, you could rent a house. One of the guys rented a house and a few of the other hunters stayed there. And there's, but there's only a few, it's paradise essentially.

So you're, you're staying at the beach in paradise. And then you hang out all day, lift weights, fuck around, swim in the pool. And then in the late afternoon, you go hunting. So you go hunting, you leave at like three o'clock in the afternoon. That's when the wind starts to pick up. And that wind will disguise your sound and your movement. And we found that to be the most effective way to hunt. We figured out somewhere along the line that we're way more effective in the afternoon than we were in the morning. And because I was there with my family as well, I said, okay, this is what I'll do. I'll just dedicate my entire day to hanging out with my wife and kids and then the afternoon will get the hunt again

Very primal, but it's a family. I'll kill it's also it's one of the best places to hunt It's an odd place to hunt because it's kind of unnatural right you're in paradise and it's also an invasive species But it's one of the best places to hunt ethically because they must kill these things because they're very overpopulated. They don't have a disease problem, but it's always a possibility that something could be introduced into the population, whether it's brucellosis or CWD or something that does. Well, this whole thing, whether or not it was from a lab or it was from an animal, this whole thing with the virus out of China, it was definitely an animal. This whole thing with the, you know, the virus out of China, it was definitely out of China. We know that much, um, tells you that the relationship between animals and humans is a very thin veil. It's a very thin veil. And there are little bugs and parasites and

intermediate animals that act as what we call vectors and they, they will cross the line for us. So are you aware of CWD? No. CWD is a prion disease. Oh, I know what prions are. I have no interest in getting that. Yeah, it's terrifying. It's essentially the same thing as Jakobskrotzfeld's disease. It's mad cow disease. And it's extensive in deer populations now. If you cook the meat, it's preserved. No, it doesn't jump.

It doesn't jump yet. But nobody who's sane wants to eat a deer that's been infected with CWD. Have you ever seen what it looks like? Let me see. Jamie, pull up CWD infected deer. It's a really heavy subject of contention amongst deer hunters because some people are in denial about it. And one of the reasons why they're in denial about it is like many things that are – look how fucked up that deer is. It's like many things that are look at look how fucked up that deer is

One of the reasons why they're in denial about it is because like many things there's a financial incentive to to ignore right this this disease and because a lot of in in certain parts of the country and even right here in Texas they breed deer and They have these deer farms and what they're doing is they're trying to get deer with these giant antlers, and then they'll bring them to an area that has, you know, like a private land area, and they'll let them loose. It's really kind of shifty. And it's really gross, and in the deer hunting world, it's it's not respected these animals because they look like freaks like pull up. How should I phrase this farmed deer giant antlers. They give these deer this preposterous concoction of protein-rich pellets.

So they feed these deer. And look at those. Look at the antlers. Oh, it looks ridiculous. Yeah, what the fuck is that? Yeah, this looks a lot like the Botox people, but the antler version. It's really like a tree. Yeah, it looks like coral or something.

Yeah, it's madness. That's horrible. It's madness. No, so to me, that is manipulating biology for sake of whatever financial gain. It's terrible. It is for the sake of financial gain, but it's for the sake of dumb men. It's mostly men, I believe. It may be dumb women too, but let's just not be sexist.

Dumb humans that want massive antlers from a deer. Because here's the thing. That deer might be a year old that has those antlers too, by the way here's the thing, like that deer might be a year old that has those antlers too, by the way. That's why it's so fucked up. The whole idea of a large rack and a big animal means that's an animal that has evaded predators.

That's an animal that survived like nine years. That's like rings on a tree. Yes. That is a survivor. Like there's a place that I hunt in Utah and it's a really rare place. It's a beautiful place a tree. Yes. That is a survivor. Like there's a place that I hunt in Utah, and it's a really rare place. It's a beautiful place in the mountains of Utah. And the people that run this enormous ranch, it's like 250,000 acres.

The people that run this, it's all like free range, wild animals, but they won't allow anyone to hunt an animal that's less than nine years old. They won't allow anyone to hunt an animal that's less than nine years old. So every animal you're hunting is an animal that's evolved or evaded rather bears and mountain lions. And they even have wolves there. They've started to see some wolves in this one area. So these are wise animals. And that's the idea is that this animal has bred. They have passed on their genetics and they have successfully bred for multiple years.

Now, here they are in, you know, when you're around nine years old, an elk, if they're lucky, lives to be like 11 or 12. Oh, that's the full lifespan. I mean, maybe if you have them and you have no predators and you feed them, maybe they can live longer. But the odds are i mean if you find a 15 year old elk in the wild that's crazy and usually they're going downhill like usually their antlers are shrinking their body's shrinking like an old man and they're they're deteriorating so when someone gets a an animal with large antlers it's a good for conservation because you're not taking an animal

out before it spreads its genetics. In fact, it spread its genetics for multiple seasons. And then B, it's fair chase because you're getting an animal that's wise, that's seen it all, that's seen mountain lions, that's seen bears, and they've avoided all this. So you're getting a champion. That's the idea like this is the one who's who's fought off all the other males and been able to breed because they kill each other all the time then this ranch they'll find every year they'll find at least one elk that's been stabbed death by another elk yeah no they this right to breed yeah is fundamental that's what the antlers are for the antlers are for violence they just they injure each other they just fuck each other up

and this this idea of taking that and bastardizing it and feeding these animals this insane diet out of fears so these these animals literally will wander up to the feeder in the afternoon because they know it's about to go off they're on a timer and there's they'll they'll spread these pellets so they'll hear the noise of the machine go off and they'll they'll spread these pellets so they'll hear the noise of the machine go off and they'll wade towards the pellets like it's dinner time like a fucking dog that's no different than large animals in a zoo it's very similar like i understand zoos play a particular role in you know breeding programs conservation not all zoos are bad but i have a particular problem with large carnivores in zoos years Years ago, I used to go to the San Francisco Zoo when I was a postdoc.

One night I was at the movies in San Francisco. And someone said, you know, tigers escape from the San Francisco Zoo and are eating people. And I was like, that's crazy. And this was kind of pre-internet. Oh, I remember that. So these kids actually went to the San Francisco Zoo. The moats were too low. And these kids, it was around Christmas.

They were throwing pine cones. Yeah, they were throwing stuff at them. I had a bit about that too. So this tiger, Tatiana was her name. I knew about her because she had taken the arm of a zookeeper. At the time, I was trying to date this woman who worked at the zoo, so I was hanging around the zoo. Not to inappropriate levels. Not in a creepy way.

Not in a creepy way. Anyway, eventually, Tatiana the tiger, after taking the arm of one of the keepers, climbed out of the moat because they didn't have the glass guards there. Got out. Crowds were spreading. This was near closing time. Tatiana wove, this is what's amazing, wove through the crowd and went and killed one of the kids that had been throwing things at her. So it was targeted revenge. It was not random killing off of humans.

Right. And then basically slashed up the other kid and then just sat there kind of, you know, sampling the blood or whatever. The police showed up, they shot Tatiana the tiger. This is all documented. And for a couple of years, I didn't know whether or not to rejoin. I had joined the zoo. I wasn't like a donor to the zoo. I had no money. I was a postdoc at the time, but I was very conflicted because it was like, it seemed like they gave the animals a good life. And yet clearly large carnivores in the zoos, you're depriving them of something fundamental, which is their need and desire to roam. And the reason I put my dog down is because he needed to roam and smell things, and he lost control of his legs.

It's not just roam. They have a deep desire to kill. That's part of what they do. There's a reason why they exist. They exist because there's a balance in nature. You have prey population like antelope and these axis deer, which are the ones that evolved with tigers. And it's why they're so fast. And then you have predators. Like, you know, it's horrific to say, but there was a video of a zoo in, I believe it was Iraq. and right after the war, right after the war, the soldiers filmed the way they would feed the lions and the way they would feed the lions is they would let a goat out

and the goat would wander. The goat was like, oh, I guess I'm just hanging out out here now and then the lions knew that once they opened up the cage, the goat would be out there. They were accustomed to it and so they opened up the cage

and this door opens and these lions just come pouring out. And they grab this goat and fuck it up, and they start tearing it apart and fighting each other over the pieces. And it's wild shit. But that's what they want. They don't want a cold plate of dead meat. That's not what they want. As you're saying this, my neurobiologist mind goes to this. Yeah, this is the video.

This is the video. So these goats are hanging out. Hey, how's everybody doing? And then boom, all these cats come rolling out and this is how they fed them. But this is what they want, man. I mean, people would say that's cruel, but listen, you got to kill the fucking goat to feed these things anyway. Like why is it cruel if they do it, but it's not cruel if you do it? Cause it's going to be more humane because you're going to kill them with a bullet? Like, I just don't think the goat is going to really care one way or another. This is the last day of its fucking life. And this is what a cat is supposed to do.

Sure. And they're pretty effective killers. It's not like they're going to torture it like a house cat will. No, this is a circuit. That's what's sick about house cats. There's a really interesting study. There's a guy at Caltech, great university, obviously a guy named David Anderson who studies things like aggression and whatnot. And he's looked at these, that the hypothalamus is really interesting. It's

like this group of neurons are all densely packed together, but with modern methods now you can really turn on and off the different populations of neurons. So they did this study a few years ago, look in area of the hypothalamus called the ventromedial hypothalamus. And for years, people were confused about this area because you'd lesion it in an animal and the animals wouldn't fight, but they also wouldn't mate. And what they eventually discovered is they have two populations of neurons in this structure,

some that are responsible for mating and some for fighting. So then using modern methods, what the Anderson lab showed is that if you trigger activation of one set of neurons in these, in this ventromedial hypothalamus, the animals will just, the males will go and mount the female and mate as a mice. If you, at that moment, turn off those neurons and turn on the neurons that are right near them, that are responsible for aggression, the male mouse will try and kill the female mouse. But it's so extreme that if you just give a male mouse a glove filled with air or water and you turn on these neurons, the mouse will just go into a rage and try and kill the glove.

Wow. Yeah. It's incredible. And just to kind of explain just how strong these switches in the brain are, last year, that same lab published a really interesting paper. You know, animals mount to mate. They do it from behind, basically, almost all animals. Last year, that same lab published a really interesting paper. You know, animals mount to mate. They do it from behind, basically, almost all animals.

Some primates don't. Humans obviously switch it up. But basically what they discovered is there are two sets of neurons in the hypothalamus for mounting. One is for males mounting females to mate. And another set of neurons is for males mounting other males for dominance. So you know when you go to jujitsu or the dog park phenomenon where you people always say if your dog is mounting another dog, they always say, oh, yeah, they're dominating them. And female animals have this circuit, too. You'll see a female pit bull at my my ex partner. I we had a pit bull as well as an amazing dog. But, you know, she's pretty female pit bull at my, my ex-partner and I, we had a pit bull as well.

She's an amazing dog, but you know, she's pretty dominant pit bull. And we take her to the dog park and she would sometimes mount another dog. And that isn't sexual mounting. That is dominance mounting. And there's actually a separate circuit in the brain for dominance mounting. And we, you know, people have been puzzled by this for a long time. You know, is it sex? Is the sex the dominance? And

of course, in humans, this is a very thin line. Yeah. And who knows, right? But let's face it, all of that would not fetishes and mounting and subs and doms and all that stuff would not be as much interest it was if that circuitry didn't exist. So in mammals, there are circuits for mounting for dominance that is independent of any desire to reproduce. Super interesting, at least to my mind, because what this tells us is that deep within our biology, these drives exist. So when you show the lions attacking a goat,

there has to be a circuit in the hypothalamus that says pursue, kill, and then eat. And if you just give animal meat, you're essentially depriving it of some basic function. Now in humans humans it's different because you have to have societies that get along you can't have people just running their hypothalamus like like unregulated that's why you got the part up front but i do have to say that there is a part of whatever we're made out of that deeply connects with hunting if you're a meat eater

and when you kill an animal and then eat it that day over a fire, it is like a door opens up to the past. And you get this rush of whatever the endorphin is that I'd never experienced before I did that. And it convinced me on the spot that I was going to be a hunter for the rest of my life. I was like, that day, I can remember that day, my my friend Steve Rennell that I talked about earlier took me hunting we shot a mule deer and then we're eating its liver We cooked it over the fire. Is it good? Cuz I know one's gotten me on the organ meat thing yet It's very good for you. Okay. I don't know for whatever reason I always like liver I was like liver and onions I eat like when you shoot an elk you get a liver That's about that big so I eat that liver all year. need to try i still have some left i need to try this from last season um i love it but my fucking

kids hate it man i tried to get them to eat it what if they didn't know what it was they would still think it's disgusting they don't like the taste but i know how good it is for you too that's part of the thing and i also knew that the comanche would eat it raw with bile on it they would squeeze bile from the gallbladder uh salty bile on the actual raw liver and they they prized it that's what they they really enjoyed hearty people um the gall you know we i'm fascinated by organ meats because you know you hear about gall like someone has a lot of gall yeah well that's because the gallbladder actually contains a number of androgen-like compounds that literally make your mind and your body stronger.

The gall of him. Exactly. Or the liver. I actually take liver, but in capsule form because I want what- I do as well. Because heme iron, H-E-M-E, is the most bioavailable source of iron. And so women, because they menstruate, they lose a lot of iron. And men, if you exercise a lot, you can get away with ingesting more iron.

You don't want to go too high. That's not good. But the liver is absolutely the best source of bioavailable iron. I take Paul Saladino's stuff. Oh, he has it? He has a series of supplements. It's called Heart and Soil Supplement. It's really good.

It's all desiccated liver and heart. They just basically dehydrate it and put it in a pill form. It's excellent. That I'll take. I've never tried that one. I forget which brand I take, but I'm a big believer in this. It's high in B12. And what's nice to learn, I learned a lot from you today about hunting. And I think that it just sounds like such a humane and fundamentally grounded relationship between human and animal. There's nothing humane about going and getting some factory farm meat at the grocery store And I mean if you can have a good relationship with ethical ranchers

Yes, there are really great ethical ranchers where they have these cows that live an amazing life And they have one bad day Yeah And that one bad day what they do is they lead them down this corridor they lock them into this thing Like they don't even know what's going on and then boom they get a bolt through the brain. It's instantaneous death what they do is they lead them down this corridor. They lock them into this thing. They don't even know what's going on. And then boom, they get a bolt through the brain. It's instantaneous death.

Yeah. I have a friend from childhood. Her name is Anya for knowledge. She has Belcampo Farms. Oh, yeah. That's a great place. They're great. And, you know, they've got the cows up there. I've seen the ranch.

That's an excellent example of an ethical farm. And the quality of their meat is incredible too. Yeah, I've known her since high school. Both her parents actually are Stanford professors. And early on, she was obsessed with animal welfare and like the relationship between animals and humans. And look, it's very hard to do in talking with her. You know, it's hard to do that at scale.

That's the problem. How do you grow that? And that's the issue. But I think what's great is as people start to understand more about how, what they, I would say the five pillars essentially of health are like light, temperature, movement, nutrients. And then there's the other stuff like breathing and all, you know, all the other stuff you do. But, but in that nutrients category, it's like the quality of what you eat is without question as important as the amount and all that. And I think that a focus on food quality and sourcing is it's such an important conversation. I think that hunters

and ranchers, they understand this relationship. That's what I was going to say, because the quality of meat from wild game is far superior. It's far richer in protein. When I show you, have you ever seen an elk steak, like a raw elk steak? No, I keep hearing about these elk steaks on your podcast. I salivate. The Pavlovi response. How long have you been around for? How many days a year? A couple days.

You're here for a couple days? I'm going to hang out with Lex for a bit, yeah. Man, my fucking schedule is so crazy. I'd like to cook some for you. Let me see if I can figure out how to do this. But it's a dark ruby red, like dark. Amazing. It's so dark.

It's like a super athlete. That's what an elk is. They run up a mountain like it's so dark it's like it's like a super athlete that's what an elk is it's an they run up a mountain like it's nothing and they live this wild life and what i'm doing is i'm dipping my toe into their world i'm entering into their world i gotta earn it i gotta go hike these mountains and find them sounds like they have the advantage oh they definitely sort of i get one every year you know yeah but Yeah, but the other 150 schmoes didn't get one. Well, there's a lot of, that's different. That's lanai. That's axis deer.

I've been really fortunate, but I also have a really good guide that takes me. And I also work out like a fucking animal. Like, that's a big part of it. Like, you have to have the ability to get up to that mountain. You get up to the top of the mountain, and you have to chase these things down. What about carrying it out? I've always been curious. So do you clear the guts and all that out there and then carry it out?

Yes. Well, I eat the guts. I eat the liver, and I eat the heart. So I save those, but you bring game bags. It's heavy. Yeah. Well, I guess this is why Cameron, I follow his account.

I think, granted, I don't understand the whole thing and what it really means. You should talk to him on your podcast. He'd be great to talk to. Because he's also a human performance freak because he does ultra marathons. Him and David. He runs the Moab 240.

He runs 240 miles. He runs three days of fucking 24 hours of running. He's a psychopath. It's impressive. Yeah, he's beyond impressive. But he did that. He got into it to be the best bow hunter he could be because it's very difficult.

Bow hunting success, general bow hunting success, and a lot of this you have to factor in public land, which is I generally hunt private land, A, because I have the financial resources, and B, because I don't want to be around that many people. It's just like public land is, it's kind of, you're hunting two things. You're doing two things that are difficult. You're hunting a wild animal, and you're in competition with a bunch of other people that are hunting the wild animal. To me, I understand that there's an access issue that's tied to finances, and I

understand that for a lot of these people, there's a badge of courage's tied to finances and I understand that for a lot of these people there's a badge of courage to be able to be successful hunting on public land but these animals are heavily heavily pressured right and it's many times what would like these like real hardcore guys do is they'll hike into the backcountry 20 miles so they get away from people that aren't willing to do that. Well, now, because of people like Cam Haynes, because of a lot of these like Aaron Snyder and a lot of these crazy backpacking people, other people are doing that now too.

You'll go 20 miles in and you'll see a fucking wall tent filled with five guys. You're like, shit. Okay, got to know another 10 miles. And you're trying to get the fuck away from everybody. I want to be around animals that behave like wild animals, animals that if you're lucky, they've never seen a person. Or maybe they saw someone from a distance riding a horse and like, what the fuck is that? And they got out of there. The more undisturbed they can be, the better. And I find that's more likely the case on private land. The issue is an issue of economics. The issue is an issue of access and whether or not these

highfalutin fuckheads like me who can afford to go to these private places, whether it's just as much of an accomplishment. It's certainly of more opportunity because there's more animals and they're more undisturbed. So they're not going to be as jumpy. Like there's a real problem with that. If you go to a place that's a public land place on opening day, like I was in Wisconsin for opening day

of deer season. And it sounds like World War II. Oh, because most people aren't using bow hunting they're using guns so this at first light this was my first day um i was with my friend doug duran and he lives in wisconsin he takes me out first light the sun's starting to rise here boom boom boom boom boom and then further back, boom, boom, boom. You're like, where is that one coming from? You hear fucking gunshots for like all day long.

Wow. You hear gunshots. It's crazy. Well, and I guess when you're out there, people eventually sometimes get shot. Did Dick Cheney shoot a guy? In the face. And he apologized. The other guy apologized.

I'm sorry. I look like a bird. It's amazing hunting with a murder like dick changing well it's it's um that's a different kind of hunting he was doing like real canned hunting what that what that means is they literally open up a fucking gate and let these birds out no that's the birds go flying shooting it's wild shit that's different that's a that's a creepy kind of hunting but that's a very common hunting where they they let pheasants out and these guys just stand there and blow them out of the sky. It's kind of fucked up.

Have you gotten into the spearfishing thing? No, I have not. But I do have a friend. Well, Ronella is really into that. But Valentine Thomas, she's got – go to her page. She's amazing. yeah she's got go to her page she's amazing and she's um she's one of like the premier um fisher people that's spreading the word of like how uh fun it is and wild it is and she used to be she was a lawyer in montreal and decided to be a uh spearfisher very beautiful as ever yeah

she's beautiful but look at that she killed a fucking marlin beauty and marlin confirmed i mean who the hell does that who the hell kills a marlin with spear but she's just really into the idea of uh promoting oh that's her and i look at that what is that oh is that one of the ping trip ones there's a guy named ping trip and he takes uh things from the podcast and takes them and edits them. So it makes it look like he'll take one of this, and it'll make it look like you and I are having a conversation. Oh, man. Where I'm like, what the fuck, dude?

And then you'll be like, hey, man. And then he makes a little play out of it. It's very funny. Have you seen, there's this kid, Michael. He goes by Guanjo Sound on Instagram, and he's been doing these song mashups of lex and donna her and you and dare i say me they're hilarious so he does like remixes like songs of them and uh they're pretty funny the internet's amazing you're doing some funny stuff you're not aware of but i'm sure well i wanted to get back to the i didn't finish my thought about these animals these crazy animals

yeah the problem with these animals the crazy antlers is not just that it's gross and that they feed these animals then they release them on these properties and these guys shoot them and make it look like they did a big thing when they really are basically shooting a tamed animal. The problem is they spread CWD. And one of the main ways that CWD gets spread is the captive cervid industry. So there's a whole thing about this where some people that have a vested interest in this captive cervid industry are in denial about CWD and how dangerous it is. And it's spreading. If you like, see if you can, I had a scientist, God, I can't remember his name, Brian, who came on with my friend Doug Durin.

My friend Doug, who owns a large farm in Wisconsin, a beautiful place in the driftless area. Do you know what that means? I don't know. Where the, the, the, it was passed up. Brian Richards.

It was passed by the glaciers. The glaciers didn't hit that area. So it's beautiful, hilly, gorgeous country. I think of Wisconsin as just kind of flat. That's the area where the glaciers flattened it out. This is an area where the glaciers missed. So it's the driftless area of Wisconsin as just kind of flat. That's the area where the glaciers flattened it out. This is an area where the glaciers missed.

So it's the driftless area of Wisconsin. It's gorgeous. It's called Casanovia, Wisconsin is where he's at. And they are finding like, you know, a large percentage of their deer that have the CWD. And the problem with CWD is when an animal's infected, it starts oozing out of its mouth like this. that have this CWD. And the problem with CWD is when an animal's infected, it starts oozing out of its mouth like this.

See if you can find pictures of it. It's really gross. They probably lose the, because prion disease, Stan Prusiner won the Nobel for prions. No one believed him, by the way, that this prion thing existed. What year was this? Oh, this was, gosh, 2000s.

You know, usually get, people usually get the prize a little bit later. It takes a while. But they knew about mad cow before that, right? Yeah, but the, You know, usually get the people usually get the prize a little bit later. It takes a while. But they knew about Mad Cow before that, right? Yeah. But the, you know, the Swedes take their time making a decision.

The Nobel Prize is never controversial who wins it. It's often controversial who doesn't. But who wins it? It's always, at least in the sciences,

it's always an absolute slam dunk. Interesting. The people get ruled out, cry about it for years, you know, but, you know. In any event, Prusiner was talking about prions,

and basically the neurons degenerate. They kill themselves. So nasty stuff hunters find on and in their deer, oozing green gunk, huge warts, parasite against XMR. The green gunk is what you have. That's disgusting, those parasites. But the green gunk is what you have to look out for. Those are just ticks and stuff. See if you can find CWD oozing deer.

Yeah, that's what it looks like. See that deer? Small in tongue. Yeah, they start dripping CWD. That's blue tongue. I guess that's a different disease. They start dripping this CWD out of their mouth and nose, and it gets into the tree, see if we can find some other versions of it, it gets into the plants, and when it gets into the plants, it actually, I don't want

to fuck this up, but I think it actually gets into the DNA of the plants, and somehow or another, it stays in those plants. It has a really long fucking half-life. And these new animals come along, and they can eat the plant and then get CWD from it. So the odds are, and these things, deer travel, right? They can travel for miles. And so they're traveling, and they're spraying this oozy shit out of their mouth

and it's getting onto these other plants. And then other deer are coming along and getting it and doing the same thing and spreading it. And it's now all through most of the country and it's jumped from – it's now they found it in mule deer and I believe they may have found it in elk. I'm pretty sure there's some instances of elk that have CWD as well. Elk are far, they roam far longer distances. Elk is, I'm so naive.

Elk is a much larger animal. Much, much larger. Yeah, it's one of the largest of the deer species. Also good eating. The largest. Amazing. Yeah, so deer are good eating. Elk is my favorite.

Elk is my all-time favorite. But moose is amazing too. And moose are the biggest of the big. And that's also that thing that's directly related to cold weather, right? The cold weather mammals, is a huge animal. That could be like 300 pounds. Whereas a whitetail deer in Texas, they're little tiny guys. If you see them around, like I see them in my neighborhood all the time, they're very small. Like 150 pounds is a big one. Can a coyote get a deer out here? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

A little pack of coyotes. Yeah. Yeah, they get them. They bite their legs. They take their legs out from under them. That's brutal. Same thing wolves do. They snatch their legs out.

Brutal. Yeah, and there's a particularly nasty type of coyote that lives in B.C. that they took out a woman in, I want to say it was like 2007 or something like that, a young singer. She was a very promising singer, and she was apparently really talented, and she went for a walk, and a pack of coyotes ate her goodness i mean i think the mountain lion thing is common up in northern california yeah i've spent a lot of time recently in topanga canyon i've been trying to write there and you

see them cruise through every once in a while they're fucking they're gross they are yeah they are big animals i never understood beautiful they're beautiful they just scare the shit out of me because they kill hikers every now and then. Every once in a while, a video will come up of a kid where one's tracking him for a long period of time. Yeah. You've seen the one where the mama mountain lion's running at the guy like this? Have you seen that one? No, I haven't seen that one. Oh, you need to see this one because it'll freak you out.

Because apparently, the mama was walking with her cubs, and this guy was on this trail, and she crossed. And he's like talking because he's he filmed he's like whoa what is it and then the cat sees him and starts walking towards him he's like fuck off get out of here get out of here she's like and she's running out of this is it watch this give me some volume because it's crazy volume go away no whoa No. Whoa. Hot. Yeah. No. Wow. Yeah, I mean, he's backing up, too. Holy.

Isn't this wild? I don't want that experience. It keeps going, too. He's not getting away. Gosh, fuck. Where's my gun? Perfect thing to say. I mean, I'm a big fan of mountain lions.

I love them. I'm glad they're real. But fuck being around them because they will kill people. They killed, I mean, in one year, they killed one guy in Seattle and one guy in Oregon. And it was really, it's really rare. They come down into the suburbs occasionally. I think one person was a hiker and one person maybe was a biker. I think they were mountain biking.

I think it's also they're like regular cats where something goes by them fast. They're like, come here. Give me that. It's that reflex. It's these ancient circuits. There's not a lot of thought process. It's a bunch of switches get flipped, and in a certain order, it's happening. It's weird that we try to manage that world you know to manage the world of animals

and we have this like really these rigid ideas about what should and shouldn't exist and how we should and shouldn't do it and you know and we should be able to keep these things alive and put them in a zoo and we're doing it for their own good and like man i was uh driving limos once i think that was when i was doing i was doing something i was driving home and i uh there was a zoo i was in massachusetts actually i probably wasn't driving limos i was probably just driving but this was around the same time um because i remember i thought about this for fucking weeks still to this day I think about it and I pulled into this shitty little zoo somewhere in Massachusetts and there was a polar bear and the polar bear was in a room about

as big as this room and he just wandered maybe twice as big as his row no one alive but it wasn't big that's torture just wandering around in circles just like a crazy person like someone's just completely lost their mind just pacing going around in circles and I I'll never forget it. I just stood there. That's the only thing I saw in the whole zoo. I watched that polar bear and I'm like, I'm getting the fuck out of here.

I'm not doing this. And then, but watching that polar bear made me think, like, what the fuck is a zoo? Like, what are we doing? Like, put that goddamn thing back. Like, find where that thing belongs. It's probably captive its whole life, unfortunately, right? But if it it's fine where the fuck that thing's supposed to be and let it go just leave it alone yeah large carnivores and zoos and even the elephants and i to me it just

it breaks my heart it's awful it's awful all of it's awful the only thing that i had a joke about this too the only thing that does bother me is giraffes because they don't seem pretty happy they don't well they're herbivores. They just want tall trees to grow. Well, they let little babies feed them. I have all these videos of my kids feeding giraffes at the zoo. The joke was they're like,

another day with no lions and they're just kind of strutting around. That's a happy life. They don't seem to give a shit about the zoo. They have a good time there. But that's it. The zoo should be giraffes.

A giraffe has a tiny brain, by the way. Oh, I'm sure. The thing is so small. It's unbelievable. The zoo should be giraffes. A giraffe has a tiny brain, by the way. Oh, I'm sure. The thing is so small. It's unbelievable. Given its body size, it's just an absolutely minuscule brain. They fight the weirdest way, right? I don't know how they fight.

Oh, you don't know? No. Oh, you need to see this. I can't even imagine they do fight. What do they do? Do they spit or something? They fight to the death. They fight to the death using their necks.

They whip their neck like a whip. Those little things that they have in their... Those little stupid horns that they have? Those little stupid horns are their weapons. Watch this. They whip each other. Wow. Look at that. See, they whip each other and they try to stab each other with those stupid horns on the top of their head. That's what those things are for. They don't look very effective. Oh, it's terrible hunting, but look how they do it. They're like drunk swinging at a bar. One guy caught that guy right there they're trying to discourage each other that's what they're trying to do and here's

another thing like the darker like patterns like when the when the patterns are deeper and darker that's generally the older dominant male yeah this looks it looks more like an attempt than a success it's stupid this terrible way of fighting one of these one of these giraffes should learn jujitsu. Or leg kicks. They should learn some leg kicks. Just take them out of the legs, man. Just while this guy's trying to hit you

with that stupid neck, just karate chop his legs. It is literally one of the dumbest things in all of nature. They're beautiful animals. Their markings are absolutely striking. How do they die? They accidentally, one wins and breaks the neck and they just leave it? Yeah, they definitely do that sometimes. Oh, wow. Oh, yeah. They're gorgeous. Their markings are absolutely striking. How do they die? They accidentally, one wins and breaks the neck and they just leave it?

They definitely do that sometimes. Oh, wow. Oh, shit. Oh, someone went down. He fucked up. What happened? I think he just missed. Oh, they're slow-mo.

Yeah, he missed. Look at him. He whiffed and broke his leg. That's basically, he broke his leg. It's Conor McGregor and Dustin Poirier. Yeah, they eat them, too. Like, people hunt giraffes, and it's one of those weird things where people don't want to be photographed with giraffes because people come after you because uh you know if you're standing

there with a rifle with a giraffe down oh my god yeah we think of them as very placid yes and they are well this is like the like the obsession with pandas you know i i find this amazing i look i have nothing against pandas per se but i it gets me a little irritated like how we elevate the panda they are rapists you know we elevate the panda. They are rapists. You know, we elevate the panda. It's like they're as the only animal that we care about. It's conservation. You know, publicly that seems to be the case. People, everyone loves pandas, but there are all these other incredible animals, as you've pointed out. But the panda gets a disproportionate amount of love and praise.

Especially if you see their mating habits, they're ruthless little fuckers. You ever see pandas go after each other? Oh my God. I don't know if you could Google panda rape without getting investigated by the FBI, but give it a shot. We're in Texas. They're very aggressive and they're nasty to each other. Like this idea that they're these cute little fluff balls. But that's always drove me crazy about bears in general. Like people get mad at people,

shoot bears. Like don't, don't kill bears. Like, listen to me. First of all, if you don't shoot bears, you're going to have bears everywhere because bears don't have any natural predators other than other bears. And if you think you like bears, you're not going to like bears. They eat your family because that's what they'll do. Cause bears have been eating people since the beginning of time. Well, and if there are sufficient numbers, I mean, actually you might find this interesting. I was researching taste recently, the sense of taste, and there are these five senses, right? Salty, sweet, but you have the umami, the savory receptor. That's what gives like that really nice taste of meat. It's actually cuing the brain and the gut of the presence of amino acids, which is one of the most important things to ingest, amino acids. Lions and bears and carnivores have 5,000

times the density of umami receptors in their mouth, but they have, except for the panda bear, which has 5,000 times more sweet receptors. So your dog actually doesn't have sweet receptors in its mouth. It only has umami receptors. So it can actually doesn't have sweet receptors in its mouth. It only has umami receptors. So it can taste salty. It can taste sour, but it has the taste of meat for a bear. This is the mountain. This is, well, this is definitely the other kind of mountain. That's just mating. That seems pretty normal. I couldn't honestly bring it. Googling what you did. There's a Simpson scene, apparently, and all I'm getting is Homer Simpson and pandas.

Well, this is just regular old panda sex mouth breather once a year with females only able to conceive that's that's another interesting thing about uh animals is that they have seasons where they breed right you know that's regular you know what okay they're duking it out yeah they're fucking vicious here you go this is a good example they're ruthless to each other Fucking vicious. Here you go. This is a good example. They're ruthless to each other. Two wild panda fighting for mating rights. Either they're fighting to mate or they're fighting for mating rights, but they're not like what we want to think about. They're bears. They're kind of bear. The seasonal breeding thing, excuse me, is interesting. So light turns on this testosterone and dopamine system. Dopamine,

more than a molecule of reward, is a molecule of motivation and drive. It makes you want to do more of whatever it is that led to more dopamine. Oh, interesting. So light, viewing sunlight, actually triggers the release of dopamine. So that's why it feels good on a sunny day. That's right. So seasonally breeding, right? So seasonally breeding animals, there's more light, more dopamine, more testosterone, they mate. Days get shorter, less dopamine, less testosterone and estrogen, and they don't mate. But the other thing that's really fascinating is that in animals that during the winter, their coat is white. And in the summer and spring months, their coat is dark. Dopamine has a precursor. It's a molecule called tyrosinase. Anytime you see ASE, that's an enzyme.

The tyrosinase molecule is actually what causes pigmentation. So sunlight causes the pellage, the color of the fur to go dark because of dopamine. Wow. Yeah. And so people who are albinos or animals that are albinos, it's because they have a mutation in this tyrosinase. So with the white, you know, white, red eyes, typically not always red eyes, but often red eyes, white fur, they, they can't actually take sunlight and convert it into this, into melanin. Basically it goes sunlight. And then there's a bunch of other biochemical steps in melanin. So there's this beautiful relationship between light dopamine, testosterone, mating hair color, right? And temperature, because in long days, generally it's warmer than in short days where it's cooler. So light and

temperature are kind of pushing on a bunch of physiological mechanisms to make some animals want to breed at particular times of year. And the break on breeding is what we talked about earlier is melatonin. When there's very little light, you get a lot more melatonin and it shuts down dopamine. It shuts down breeding. So melatonin, you want it a little bit, but you don't want too much of it. And when you're saying that light makes the brain produce dopamine, I wonder if there's long periods of rain and a lack of light, if then once you hit sunlight, you have more dopamine. Oh, yeah. Is that what it is?

This is, I mean, if you go to Scandinavia, I have a relative, my stepmom is Danish. You go to Scandinavia, you go to Denmark in the winter, and everyone is, some people are resilient too, but most people are a little bit, I'm not gonna say clinically depressed, but everything is depressed. It's darker, it's darker.

People put their head down, it's cold. Days are extremely short. The spring hits and literally people start going, or at least they did when I was in college, you know, like women and men start going topless in the sun, in the parks. People are definitely mating a lot more than they are in the winter months, even though they're drinking more alcohol in the winter months, for sure. They're mating a lot more. People get spring fever. Spring fever has a biological basis. And near the equator, like the Brazilians, they're like that all year long. I have a lot of Brazilian friends, so I realize that. Yeah, I do as well.

I was thinking about this because I went to Prince of Wales Island, which is, I think, the rainiest spot in North America. And we were there for a week. It was crazy how much it rained. It rained every single day, except for a few hours, we were able to start a campfire one day. When I came back, I came back to LA and of course it was sunny, because it's always sunny in LA. And I called my friend up, I go, dude, I don't know what's going on. I've never been happier in my life. Exactly. I am so happy. That's a dopamine surge. Yeah. It was a surge. Like I was on a crazy drug. I'm like, if you could keep this high all the time, like what a wonderful world it would be.

Well, there's another hormone that's super cool that actually that people are now abusing, unfortunately, which is called a melanocyte stimulating hormone. A melanocyte is a kind of cell basically that creates pigmentation in the body, makes you go tan. And melanocyte stimulating hormone is in the pituitary. And when, makes you go tan. And melanocyte stimulating hormone is in the pituitary. And when you get sunlight, you release this melanocyte stimulating hormone. It makes your skin tan from the, it actually causes pigmentation,

not by tanning because it burned your skin a little bit, browning you. You're actually, the melanocytes are darkening your skin from the inside. Does it protect you from the sun as well? It does. So you can take this melanocyte, achieve a tan? Well, so melanocyte-stimulating hormone does two things. It causes pigmentation, and it reduces appetite. So who are the two people?

What's the one group on this planet of people that want to be tan and reduce their appetite? Hoes. Bodybuilders. That's what I was thinking, too, to be honest with you. Not bodybuilders. Insta- Come on man Bodybuilders take something Called you know there's this whole world of peptides That we should you know maybe

The peptide world is blowing up I would love to talk to you about peptides Let's get into that next So melanocyte stimulating hormone has a name There's a peptide that's sold called melanotan. Melanotan has three major effects, which is why people are now taking it slash abusing it, etc. Which is it makes you tan. You don't have to stay in the sun.

It just because it mimics this pathway makes you tan. It reduces your appetite and it gives people almost hair trigger erections that last hours. Cut to me three weeks from now. So you're talking about this effect, or I talked about this effect in Scandinavia. If sunlight comes out, people have dopamine. They have also melanocyte-stimulating hormone. They're not as hungry.

They want to have sex a lot. That's MSH. Alpha MSH is the molecule. So- You can buy this stuff? People buy it. Why do they buy it msh is the molecule so you could buy this stuff people buy it i'm not saying well okay so now we're getting into these people now we're getting into taking it what's going on with her face though that's fake tan bro she's got chocolate body shop um i am definitely not suggesting people play around with these things well i am because i want i want to hear your stories so um So that's what these guys are taking? Summer sunless tanning, nasal spray.

Wow. So he's probably doing this spray, but yeah, people, it can bypass the blood-brain barrier through the nose. Because, you know, the neurons of your olfactory bulb are part of your brain. And they're just getting crazy boners, too. That's why he's got that piece of paper over his wood. Look at the second picture. He's got the paper forward and right above the crotch. Yeah, I don't want to push people towards any particular sites because I...

That's fine, but I will. You tell me what to say. So I've never... Oh, man. So peptides are very interesting. Oh, you got off the melanocytes real quick I see no so melanocytes are a peptide what's the negative side effects

of this stuff I don't know nobody really knows no negative side effects well how about that one of the smartest people I know says go for it

so no side effects in quotes Andrew Huber no next Instagram ad there's gonna be a picture of you with a stethoscope on

you don't even have one they'll photoshop your head and a doctor some scra scrawny-ass doctor. I'm not putting it online, but this might not be real as a potential side effect. It's from Reddit, so I don't know. Reddit user claimed to inject themselves with melanin-2 to get a dark tan. Yes. What?

He went too far. Oh, my God. Is that real? Yeah. That's part of like, it could just be that guy putting people on Reddit to get. Well, that would be a real problem with some of these crackpots to think they're transracial. Well, they take. Right.

Well, they're taking. He's going on someone's lips. So no one really knows how much of this stuff to take. That's the issue. It's all worked out by these, you know, bodybuilding communities. Reddit sub threats. Exactly. The Internet.

So what's incredible is. So Melanotent, there are sites online where people can just look for peptides and you can buy these things. And it will say not for use in animals or humans. But people are buying them and they're injecting them. Let's be honest. But what is it used for then? It's not for use in animals and humans. And so I've definitely, I've never taken.

Oh, is that real? White German model claims she's well on her way to becoming a black girl now that she's undergone a series of tanning injections to darken her skin And somehow is convinced an African hairdresser to give her black textured hair That is crazy, is that real? Yeah, it also could be a tabloid, but I feel like I saw this a couple years ago Well, melanotan is darkening the skin from the inside I have vitiligo, so I have these spots. You can see it on my knuckles.

Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. Luckily, I'm a white guy for this, because if you're a black person, it's very, like if I had really dark skin, you could see it very clearly. When did that start? I really didn't see it until I was in my 20s. And I arrested it. I had it for quite a while, and then it stopped advancing because of vitamins initially.

That was the big thing. And then I started doing UVB treatments and a bunch of different things. And now it just doesn't get worse, but it doesn't get any better either. And the one thing that actually did help it, which is odd, because I only did it for a month,

was the carnivore diet. The carnivore diet. I started noticing like some of my, um, some of my white spots were filling in. That could be downstream of dopamine and not everything leads back to dopamine. Um, but many things do because things like dopamine are basically a, uh, a kind of a trigger for a menu of a bunch of other things, of testosterone or estrogen primarily in females, but also for motivation, for sexual behavior, for drive, for tan, for pigmentation and these kinds of things. It sets off a whole program. You were asking about peptides.

But while I'm asking about this, do you think that shit would work with my vitiligo? I've never even heard of that. Well, the issue is that it would make every melanocyte in your body turn on more melanin. So you would get darker everywhere. I don't have melanin. You might not have melanocytes there. I don't know much about vitiligo.

It's an autoimmune issue. I can ask a colleague. I mean, we have great people in dermatology at Stanford. They would know. Okay, please do. I will. We'll talk soon. Yeah. So anyway, more about peptides. Yeah. So peptides are getting a lot of interest now. Yeah. BPC-157 is all the rage. It is. So peptides are just small strings of amino acids. They can act as hormones. So a hormone is a molecule that released in one point in the body and goes and acts on a bunch of other areas of the body.

There's like testosterone doesn't do one thing. It does many, many things. So it acts kind of, as we say, systemically peptides can act as hormones. So melanotan obviously changes the skin, changes libido, all sorts of things. There are peptides like GP one five, seven gastric peptide one five, seven. This is a peptide that is naturally made by the body, but people have synthesized and turned into a compound that they take and inject that does seem to have the ability to repair damaged tissues of various kinds. It mimics some of the downstream effects of growth hormone. So this is actually, I actually trained with him once, although he with far more weight than I,

this guy, Ryan Crowley, who tore his pec recently, this very dramatic Instagram video where you see him doing an incline press with like 515 and it rips off the bone. Now, I'm not going to say whether or not Ryan's using GP 157 or not, but I don't think there's anyone needs to do a natty or not video on him or maybe they do. It doesn't matter. or maybe they do, doesn't matter. The point is that things like GP157 definitely do accelerate the healing of an injury. And there's no question about that. That's interesting because I talked to a doctor and he was trying to tell me that it didn't work.

And he was saying, if you even inject a saline into an area, it will alleviate some pain. And I was like, I don't think you're right. Yeah, but this is like the TRT discussion or the steroids conversation 20 years ago where people say do they really work I mean people this guy was very incredulous I mean when it was listen this guy talked about I was like listen I've used it myself and I had a tendonitis in my elbow that I just could

not fix yeah I started using bpc-157 it was gone in two weeks yeah a lot of people are using GP 157 I don't have a team BPC and GP 15. It was gone in two weeks. Yeah. A lot of people are using GP-157. What is the difference between BPC and GP-157? It's the same thing? BPC is a different, I think it's either a different string of amino acids, excuse me, or something related. The gut has a bunch of stuff that it secretes that tells the rest of the body about health status. This is why the gut microbiome is so critical. As a not unrelated aside, I have a colleague upstairs from my lab at Stanford, Justin Sonnenberg, who's shown that the ingestion of two or three servings of fermented food per day dramatically decreases the levels of interleukin-6, these inflammatory cytokines. Increases levels of interleukin-10.

It's like kombucha. Kombucha, kimchi. There's actually, it sounds disgusting. I've never tried but fermented cottage cheese is out there. In Iceland, they eat the fermented shark. Those people are animals. Those people are different. They are different. I've been eating just fermented cabbage recently. Perfect. I got it from a grocery store. I was like, this stuff is good. It's weird. The Sonnenberg Lab published a paper in Cell, another one of these premier journals, super, super stringent journal today showing that if you ingest two or three servings of these fermented foods, you basically what you do is you create an acidity in the gut that's perfect for the anti-inflammatory environment.

Or I shouldn't say it's perfect. It's ideal. It pushes you in the right direction. I shouldn't say it's perfect. It's ideal. It pushes you in the right direction. And GP one, five, seven, and these other peptides are things that when the gut is happy, the body starts secreting these things that allow you to heal faster. This is why when people are like when they're sick in a hospital or they can't move, they

get sores that turn into massive infections. Right. And it's not just because hospitals have a lot of infection. It's because when you were sedentary, the gut suffers when we're eating the kind of garbage they feed you in most hospitals, the gut suffers. And then the whole system crashes. Which is so crazy that they're doing this in hospitals, right? Hospital cafeterias are among the worst food in the world, which makes no sense.

It's so crazy. It really is so crazy. And also the amount of doctors that dismiss nutrition as a viable way to stay healthy. Well, look at them. Yeah. I mean, this is why 2020 to me has changed everything. Because, look, I work alongside many doctors. I train and teach medical students.

And I have great reverence and respect for the field of medicine. However, it's clear that most places are not updating the training to stay modern. This is a great thing about Stanford. You have people, the scientists and the physicians talk. And so, and there are other places too. But I think that this kind of communication, when that happens, then the physicians learn about all the modern studies. I mean, that's why, God forbid, you have to go to a hospital, try and go to a hospital that's related to a research institution because they hear all the latest. Now, with BPC-157 or GP-157, whichever one is most effective, is there one more effective than the other?

Not that I'm aware of. GP-157 is the one that I hear more athletes and various other communities who need to repair injuries taking. Now, are they taking it locally or are they taking it subcutaneously? So you take it systemically, but people have this thing, just like with testosterone people, it would act systemically, but people like if they want to repair a tissue, they'll inject locally. And there are local effects of these hormones and these peptides. So there's some benefit to injecting it locally? Perhaps. Perhaps. Enough so that it's not going to hurt you because it's also going to be systemic, right? Higher concentrations delivered to a particular area that's going to,

maybe, you know, if it has to be distributed systemically, you have receptors everywhere, putting it locally can definitely enhance the effect. So like similar to the way they treat stem cells, like stem cells, they shoot it locally, or you can get an IV. Yeah. And I should say the stem cell therapies are very controversial because the academic community and the clinics that are doing these in various places they haven't joined forces i'm i'm all for communication i'm not like for or against i'm all for more research and let people talk have you ever talked to dr neil reardon i don't know dr neil reardon is uh a guy who uh he's written many books on stem cells got peer-reviewed papers on it and he runs a clinic

out of Panama. And, uh, you know, we were doing the bio-accelerator guys. Danny and those guys. He has a similar setup down in Panama. And I actually sent my mom down there because my mom had a really badly injured knee and they were trying to get her to have a knee replacement. I sent her down there and nothing for six months. Like she was like, well, it still hurts. It still hurts. Six months later, all of a sudden the pain went away six months. She was like, well, it still hurts. It still hurts. Six months later, all of a sudden the pain went away. Amazing. And then eight months later, she's like, I can walk with no pain.

This is crazy. And Mel Gibson sent his dad down there when his dad was 92. When he was 100, he was getting boners, which Mel wanted to tell us about for whatever reason. Melanotan. Maybe. Maybe. But Mel also had them. I had some stem cells in Santa Monica shot into my shoulder or maybe, no, this was Vegas.

And this was Dr. Roddy McGee did some stuff in Vegas and then we did an MRI eight months later, I believe it was. And I had a full length tear in my rotator cuff. It was gone. Amazing. The tear just healed up, which is wild. That kind of experience will shift somebody's view of these things for sure. For mine, because they were telling me that I had to get surgery. I went to a doctor and the doctor was doing all these tests on it.

And he was like, lift here, press against this, press. And he goes, well, he goes like, you got a lot of stability there because it's pretty strong. You got a lot of muscle around it. He goes, but you're going to have to have surgery. Like you're just putting off the inevitable. I'm like, you got a lot of stability there because it's pretty strong. You got a lot of muscle around it. He goes, but you're going to have to have surgery. Like, you're just putting off the inevitable. I'm like, huh, okay. And so I went to a different doctor.

This guy, well, Dr. Davidson out of the UFC sent me to this guy, Dr. Roddy McGee, and he shot me full of stems. And Roddy's been on the podcast before as well. He's very careful. He's a funny podcast guest. Very careful because, you know, I like to get silly and say a lot of wild shit. He's very careful. He's a funny podcast guest. Very careful because I like to get silly and say a lot of wild shit. He's very careful to keep me on track. He's legit. And we did this MRI, whatever it was, I believe it was eight months later. And he was like,

this is absolutely insane. I've never seen this before. I've never seen a rotator cuff tear, full length rotator cuff tear go away. Well, surgeons like to cut. No problem now. Like I do everything. I mean, I'm doing kettlebell swings and presses with 70 pounds in each hand and I have no problem. Like I'm not in pain. I have full function.

It's, I sleep on it. It doesn't bother me. It's crazy. And I also got a series of injections while I was in Texas from this company Ways to Well and just it's remarkable stem cells are remarkable and I just think there was such a scare in this country because people thought they were coming from fetuses and they were encouraged there was all this yeah there was the embryonic thing during the Bush administration there was all this like fear of it but they're using umbilical cords from when it was a young woman

Gives birth she can sell her umbilical cord and they take that umbilical cord and they convert it into stem cells and His radical healing properties when it's utilized correctly, but in Panama they can get away with a lot of shit They can't and the same thing Colombia There's a reason why Danny and and rampage are going down the Colombia's because they can do a lot of shit and they can't and the same thing columbia there's a reason why danny and rampage are going down to columbia's because they can do a lot of things there they can give you fucking trillions of cells again right well there there have been uh in fair i agree um with everything you're saying there in fairness there was a case in florida of an eye clinic treating macular degeneration with stem cells injected these people to try and save their

vision they were going they were early stage and they all went blind yeah that was the fda shut them down so i do think when you talk when you talk about the brain and the eyes which as we talked about last time i was on here are two pieces of brain hanging out outside the crying you know vault there you have to be very very careful a brain or an eye is not a knee and what i understand that was a very unethical application this clinic was making claims about curing blindness alzheimer's all this stuff they're shut down now yeah but so also when that happens it sets back the field of stem cell therapies in

this country 10 years or more so it's a slippery slope and i think this is why i think people need to approach this with caution it's one of the reasons why people are looking to peptides because, like, for instance, you have what are called secretagogues. Sounds like synagogue, but secretagogue, which is basically a hormone stimulating hormone. So growth hormone, as we know, various people use AIDS and growth hormone really causes metabolism and repair. That's really what it controls. Makes organs grow, but it also increases metabolism, burns fat, et cetera. You heal faster. But there's growth hormone releasing hormone, and those go under the names like ipomoralin, tesamoralin, things of that sort. And now there are a lot of people who are taking those peptides in order to stimulate

their more growth hormone as opposed to taking growth hormone directly. So now there's this whole class of peptides that are not hormones per se, but that they stimulate more hormones. Are those effective? Well, they absolutely work. Whoa, the way you said that is scary. Wasn't it scary?

They absolutely work. Things like tesamorelin, ipamorelin, absolutely. They'll cause you to release more growth hormone. You burn fat. You recover quicker. All the stuff. This year's Olympics, you're going to see some amazing record breaking in people that are not taking the banned substances. Because they can take that stuff?

Because they can take certain peptides. Because every time something's on a banned substance list, all you have to do is get right outside the list and take something that is chemically similar enough. They don't ban pathways. They ban particular molecules. So you can't take clenbuterol. You can't take test. You can't take DECA. You can't do all that.

But people will take hormones, stimulating hormones. You could take this ipamoral and stuff and compete in the Olympics? I don't know if it's on the USADA list, but I mean, there are, let's just say there are, there is lots and lots of peptide use in order to get into these pathways. So there's some stuff that is effective that is not on the list because they haven't discovered it yet. They haven't banned it yet. Right. And things like sermoralin, which is another growth hormone secreting peptide. These, you know, there are 10 or 20 of these things that can promote the release of these different hormones. And so the peptides are an area that is considered gray market. They're not illegal. They're not legal. They're not prescribed by doctors, except sermoralin is actually prescribed by MDs for growth hormone deficiency. And it actually was a popular diet

a few years ago where people were given sermorlin and told to go on very low calorie diets. And because of the way growth hormone can preserve muscle and kill appetite, people were losing weight. And so in Hollywood, peptides are really big because unlike steroids, unlike hormones, peptides don't scare the category of people in Hollywood who don't want to put on muscle. Let's just say it's big with the ladies.

They're big because it keeps your appetite down, you burn fat. But some of those people I've spoken to, and they've said they're getting joint pain. Well, if you take growth hormone secreting peptides, you're going to start making more collagen. Your skin will look more youthful, but you'll also start building more cartilage in your wrists.

And you know, the skeleton has to contend with that and oh so everything grows cartilage problems like with your knees would that help heal them uh it likely would really absolutely yeah oh what about um what about meniscus because meniscus is a real issue like meniscus tears one of the problems with it uh is there's not a lot of blood supply. Right. So Danny, those guys, I don't know how to find the videos. I don't know if they're still up there. Maybe they were in the stories. But when they would go in for meniscus tears, they're going to burr away a lot of the bone and other hard scar tissue that's in there. And they're putting stem cells in there from what I could see in these videos. And then they're also going to locally treat it with some of these peptides like GP157

and other things like that. So you're creating an environment of well-being and health and mobility for a joint that's battered. What they do at Ways to Well is they combine stem cells with BPC157 as well. So that's a common thing. Yeah. And so when you say, you know, do these things work?

They absolutely work. What are the risks? Well, you're tickling cells in the pituitary to secrete more hormone. So you're going to get some balancing out of other hormones. You know, if guys want to run out and just increase growth hormone, you're going to increase, you'll increase testosterone and you'll also increase estrogen in parallel. So people have different sensitivities. And so this is why it's an experimental science. And this is why most MDs are not going to prescribe any of this stuff, because an individual has to really be able to think intelligently and know they have to understand their system. It's clear, you know, your system, you know, when you're feeling good and you know, when you're not feeling good. But we see all these crazy videos on the web of guys getting ridiculous gyno and like tanning to the point where they look like a different human being. Yeah. It's because people just have this more is better mentality. Well, also people, you know, they're doing it for Instagram likes. Right. There's part of what they're doing is like there's a giant group of people online that just experiment for YouTube views. I mean, they're willing to try all kinds of crazy shit for YouTube views.

It's crazy. Yeah, it's a wild world out there, man. We're living in strange times. But there's a lot of interesting stuff that can be learned from these things. And health information. I mean, one of the reasons, you know, 2020, thanks to you coming on your podcast, thanks to Lex and his encouragement, the whole reason for teaching about science and health and practices about sleep and light and stress and hypnosis and all this stuff is because 2020 sparked a health communication crisis. I mean, it was, I'm not going to name names, but it was very clear that the big ups in the in government,

in the National Institutes of whatever, and etc, well intentioned, very educated people were not coming out with public statements that were clear about how people should manage their stress, how they should manage their children's stress, how they should stay on a sleep schedule. And so that's why I essentially just stepped up. I mean, well, I got a mouth and I know the literature and where I don't know the literature, I can communicate with these amazing colleagues that I have. I can ask four of the best MDs on gut health. I can talk to Matt Walker, the Stanford Sleep Clinic and find out what are the three things everyone should do to optimize their sleep. And so from pulling from these various sources

and communities, you can put it out there. So I feel like social media has this very dark and kind of strange side. And then it also is the opportunity to just put information out there for free. And I think, you know, all this stuff about peptides and hormones, et cetera, that's kind of the more niche, but for most people,

they're just struggling to figure out, like, get oriented. What is happening in the world with viruses? And should I take vitamin D3? It's so hard to get good information. Yeah, it really is. And that's one of the more rewarding things about this podcast is that I can have people like you on and Matthew Walker and David Sinclair and all these people that are experts in health and wellness and they understand all these things and you can, I mean, it's, it's just an amazing resource and it's free and people can get educated about this stuff and, and understand that you can take some control over your own destiny in, in, in a, in a small way by actually a pretty large way. Oh, absolutely.

By benefiting your health. I mean, the peptides and all these various things, they have a cost, but the basic things of viewing light in the morning, controlling your breathing as a way to modulate yourself. It's great if you have a sauna, but you can also take a hot shower. Most people have access to that.

Not everybody, of course, but most people fasting for some portion of the day, trying to make better food choices. These things don't just have a small effect on health and wellbeing. They have a huge outsized effect and no one is going to provide it in pill form. It's never going to be delivered by the government. It's never going to be delivered in schools, although I would hope it would be someday. But basically what we're trying to do, those of us that are interested in public science and health education is provide a

kind of a user manual for all this stuff, this technology that's been built into us. I mean, we always think about a device technology, but the eyes, this dopamine, the gut, I mean, everyone's equipped with this stuff, but we never actually learn how to use it. And so that's what, like you said, David and Matt and Rhonda Patrick, who I don't know, but has done great, you know, I think is doing great work. I'll introduce you. She's amazing. You guys would get along great. Yeah. I think it's, I think we're entering a new era now where people are feeling comfortable to do it. And I, you know, and I'm grateful to you because I think this podcast, it's actually, I'm absolutely

clear that this podcast has promoted more health information than any other media venue, clear directives or opportunities to explore. You know, I know a few months back, things got a little crazy around stuff and even Fauci was commenting back, but that just told me that this podcast is actually a primary source of public health information and for people to go ferret out the people,

the resources, the papers, enter the discussion. And I think that is fundamentally important. Without that, we are never gonna make it. And I think that is fundamentally important. Without that, we are never going to make it. And because we have that, I think I speak for many people, I'm extremely grateful, not just for this opportunity to come on here and speak, but for the opportunity for people to learn about choices, basically. Well, I'm extremely grateful for people like you that come on here and are willing to share all your information and help educate people about this stuff because it's super important. So tell me,

we hit three hours, believe it or not, just flew by. It's four o'clock. Tell people when this podcast, you're doing a podcast right now and it is called? Huberman Lab. Huberman Lab. And how long have you been doing it now? Since January. Since January. Since January. Yeah. Once a week.

Every Monday we have an episode. It's not just about my lab's work. In fact, it's mostly about other people's work. And basically- There it is. Oh, thank you. Yeah. So every episode's about 90 minutes or two hours.

And we do the deep dive on some topics. But we cluster them. So like the month one was all about sleep and how to get better at sleeping, what dreams mean, if you're a jet lag or shift worker. I care a lot about the firemen and firefighters and police officers and military. They have shift work. They can't do the perfect schedule.

So we did an episode about that. Then we'll just spend a month on hormones, growth hormone, peptides. And we spend a month on sleep and eye health and just basically everything. So it's kind of a class that you can go and watch or listen to. And then I also teach on Instagram, just Huberman lab.

Yeah. I was about to bring that up. Your Instagram posts are fantastic. They're really good. Everything you do is awesome. But all this stuff, is it available on all platforms? All platforms. Everything. Yeah. Spotify, Apple, YouTube, and all the other various places you can find podcasts and the Instagram, obviously on Instagram. I'm on is your Instagram Huberman Lab Huberman Lab and uh Twitter as well or you use that yeah okay yeah thank you it's awesome as always I appreciate you very much I appreciate you thank you um all right that's it bye everybody Thank you.