The Peter Attia Drive - Qualy #99 - The steroid controversy: Mark’s use of them and Peter’s perspective

Episode Date: January 23, 2020

Today's episode of The Qualys is from podcast #28 – Mark and Chris Bell: steroids, powerlifting, addiction, diet, training, helping others, documentaries, and living your best life.   The Qualys is a subscriber-exclusive podcast, released Tuesday through Friday, and published exclusively on our private, subscriber-only podcast feed. Qualys is short-hand for “qualifying round,” which are typically the fastest laps driven in a race car—done before the race to determine starting position on the grid for race day. The Qualys are short (i.e., “fast”), typically less than ten minutes, and highlight the best questions, topics, and tactics discussed on The Drive. Occasionally, we will also release an episode on the main podcast feed for non-subscribers, which is what you are listening to now. Learn more: https://peterattiamd.com/podcast/qualys/   Subscribe to receive access to all episodes of The Qualys (and other exclusive subscriber-only content): https://peterattiamd.com/subscribe/  Connect with Peter on Facebook.com/PeterAttiaMD | Twitter.com/PeterAttiaMD | Instagram.com/PeterAttiaMD 

Welcome to a special bonus episode of the Peter Atia Qualies, a member exclusive podcast. The Qualies is just a shorthand slang for Qualification Round, which is something you do prior to the race, just much quicker. The Qualies highlight the best of the questions, topics and tactics that are discussed in previous episodes of the drive. So if you enjoy the quality, you can access dozens more of them through our membership program. Without further delay, I hope you enjoy today's quality. So for this competition, are you using anabolic steroids or diuretics or any of the sort of

aids that one would you know? You know, as as in bigger, stronger, faster, you know, I talked about utilizing them from the time I was 25. I've been using them. You know, I've been I say in the movie, I'm going to probably be on and off them the rest of my life. And that's what I believe. It's direction I chose.

When you choose a certain thing and you like the result of it, like I don't feel like there's any reason to go back. And for me, for now, as well, I get it prescribed, which is kind of added bonus to making sure that it's like, I guess, more on the up and up. But to me, it doesn't really make any difference whether you grab it from some dude at the gym, whether you get it from a doctor, I actually think that the, I think that, you know, they're not gonna be all that regulated anyway, no matter how you slice it, but.

But what are the, again, I don't know anything about how body builders use steroids. What are the, what are the, you know, body masses the main thing. So people get confused about what they actually do. People get confused about what steroids do, I think. People think that steroids automatically make you strong, and they don't necessarily

automatically make you strong. What they do in most cases is they allow people to gain more weight. Now, there's some cases where people don't gain a whole lot of weight, and they do gain strength. But if you don't continue to gain weight, at some point, that strength will only level up so much So when you introduce steroids steroids don't multiply on top of themselves

They only work to a certain level So you're you're on level one with your lifting and you progress and your genetics and everything allow you to get to level four You take steroids and maybe over a period of time you get to like level six But you still not going to be able to get to level eight, nine, or ten, where these guys like Jay Cutler and some of these mammoth people are because of their genetics, because of their environment as children, because of X, Y, and Z, you're probably just never going to be able to level up to their potential. But- Which is an important distinction.

Yeah, a lot of people- You're starting points. Yeah, well a lot of people look at, you know, let's just pick Phil Heath, because he's the best in the world today. There's going to think it's all drugs. I don't think people understand, like, I could inject a human being with every antibiotic steroid period.

Like, let's get the world's supply of antibiotic steroids and inject it into me. Yeah. I couldn't look one-tenth of what that guy looks like. And the best coaching and the best whatever is people like to make things easy and simplify it and they can't come close to fill heath they can't even you know come close even with a ton of drug so they just want to say oh it's a steroids it's not it's not like oh this guy works harder this guy's better and i do think that steroids cloud the sport i do i do think that if there was a way to get steroids out of the sport,

that it could be more popular across the mainstream. However, part of the reason why it has become more popular because they do have like men's physique and they got some of these different categories now where you're seeing more men and women. It's gone more mainstream with some of that stuff. But the body types don't look as crazy, right? Yeah And now there's a category called classic physique. And it's like, it's interesting because like, in the very first year of classic physique, my friend Danny Hester, he won Mr. Olympia Classic physique.

He's about 190 pounds, he looks awesome. He always looks awesome, he's about my height, 190 jacked shred, it looks amazing. And then the next year, the guy that wins, it's like 240. You know what I mean? He's you like this is not classic because he can't anymore like yeah like what happened to the little guys that were in great shape You know and the guy that won looked he looked amazing, but it's and it's a different look than the bigger bodybuilders But it's not like and it's not yet a natural thing It's not like one guy's natural one guys on's on. It's like, they're just on different levels, right?

Yeah, so classic doesn't mean drug-free. It means you're trying to produce a phenotype that is... You're trying to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger is like, what's funny is like, now they have a category. Arnold Schwarzenegger was Mr. Olympia seven times. He was considered in the Guinness Book of World Record, the greatest male physique, which is just a title to him. He couldn't win a California bodybuilder.

That's what I'm saying. He can't win anymore. So if you look look like Arnold you'd win classic physique now. Which is kind of crazy. So who's your favorite 70s 80s bodybuilder? Frank Zane Mike Menser Mike Menser. Yeah and Arnold Arnold's a really big influence fan of the Vignettes too. You know we blood and guts. A lot of that was my hands. He was later, right? 90s. Oh yeah. And mencer and yates actually have quite a bit in common. They trained together too. And I trained with Mike Mencer when I first came out here. When I moved out here in 93, like you see people at the gym and you're a meat head, first

thing I did was I'm training with Mike Mencer. I don't care. He blew out my knee because he had me do these crazy squats and the squat machine and it messed up my knee for like six months, but it's I still had got to train with them that which was cool. But at the time, I got to train with them. I showed up at the gym and he was outside smoking a cigarette and he's all fat. And there was just like, this is Mike Mencer now, this is what he is, you know, and it's like, you know, a lot of times in life, especially me me I've met all my heroes and pretty much everybody's let me down So just the way life is I guess have you ever met a hero that where they exceeded your expectation? I don't know let me see have we yeah, we have many times. I'm sure I'm sure we have

Ed Cone yeah Ed Cone Just don't let us don't cold Steve Austin's one of my favorite people in the entire world. He's so intelligent. Joe Rogan's fucking cool. He's so well researched. Like he just, he's just awesome to be around. Like there's, there's people like that, I think,

where we, Jake Butler was like, the rock is amazing dude. Like when you meet the rock, you're like, well, it's all probably just an act, but the rock will look you in the eye, shake your hand and say, how's your mom doing? And he means it. You can feel that he means it.

And that's important, especially when you're that big of a celebrity and stuff like that. One of the things I struggle with, and I was actually talking about this a little bit when I was on Joe Rogan's show, I've been pretty vocal and open about my view that once I really spent like five years learning everything there was to learn about anabolic steroids, they came to the conclusion that, well, I can't speak to what happens in bodybuilding because I think that takes it to a different level. But certainly within the level of how they're used in cycling or, you know, more physiologic levels of use, I can't see any evidence of harm.

Now, EPO is different. You can certainly take too much EPO and cause problems. But once you start talking about testosterone, stenazelol, oxandrolone, these drugs that are typically used in sports, again, I was having a very hard case. I'll show you right here, my tricep. That's torn. I was bench pressing 455 after it, my triceps hurt a little bit. They were sore, and then I popped my tricep.

I've never been hurt lifting in my entire life. At the time, I was on a ton of juice. So you're giving me that you just didn't have the tendon strength necessarily. Yeah, and I attribute that to steroid use for sure, 100%. So to say that there's no ill effects of them or no side effects, you know, I guess I'm thinking more of the cardiometabolic.

Yeah, liver kidney cardio, cardio, no. But can you injure yourself? Joey Diaz, one of my favorite people in the world, he's hilarious. He says he's like, you see these guys in the gym and they're like 50 years old and they used to take steroids. Now, they just like a bag of shit. I kind of agree with that statement too

that there are a lot of people that have taken steroids and abused them and gotten really crappy skin and crappy, like just, you know, things that don't look good, not necessarily aesthetic and probably not healthy. I'm sure that they've driven a lot of people's blood in a bad direction, which could lead to other things possibly, right? But not definitely. So I think that's where we're looking at like the detrimental effects of steroids would be among. It's like among the users that are losers, if that makes sense. It's

among the users that that aren't paying attention to everything else. Yeah, and I guess under medical supervision though, when you're again doing these things within physiologic doses, which is pretty different than what the average person is doing. We're talking like something that a doctor would prescribe. Like 200 milligrams. Well, you know, for example, you take somebody who's testosterone is like two standard deviations below the mean

and you revert them back to the mean or median level of testosterone. If we're going in that respect, I would have to go back and say that you're 100% right. I haven't seen anything like even a muscle tear on a normal dose. But I was, I was using pretty good doses. I haven't seen anything, like even a muscle tear on a normal dose. But I was, I was using pretty good doses. I was using trend.

I was using trend, well, at the time I was using trend balloon and I was using testosterone together and then I was taking some other oral stuff. It was like, right after I got out of rehab, like I got to get jacked, you know, and it's funny because I tell you in AA that if you're on steroids,

it affects you from the neck up and you're not a lot of take them. Hope you enjoyed today's special bonus episode of the quality. New episodes of the quality are released Tuesday through Friday each week and are published exclusively on our private member only podcast feed. If you're interested in hearing more, as well as receiving all of the other member-exclusive benefits, you can visit peteratheamd.com forward slash subscribe. This podcast is for general informational purposes only

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