Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 128 - Vinnie Tortorich Redux

Episode Date: October 15, 2014

Vinnie Tortorich, America's Angriest Trainer, visits again to discuss No Sugar No Grains and vitamin supplementation. Also Dr Steve is a douchebag who doesn't remember a major plot-point in Vinnie's book, yet claims to have read it. Doh!   amazon.doctorsteve.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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talking it over with your doctor, nurse practitioner, physician, physician, assistant, pharmacist, chiropractor, acupuncturist, yoga master, or whatever. All right, very good. Hey, you know, our buddy Vinny Tortorich has something new, and it's called PurevitaminClub.com. He's not advertising, but, you know, Dr. Scott isn't advertising either, and we plug his shit. Vinny's a friend of ours. I lost 30 pounds because of Vinny, and he changed my life. so I'll plug his shit. Age as hell, though.

Huh? What's that? It's a tough way to lose 30 pounds. Gave me a disease, and I lost a bunch of weight. But it's Purevitamin Club.com. Here's the thing. Dr. Scott has his simply Herbales.net, and he's got uppers and downers. He's got his stress relief, and then when that makes you too sleepy, you can take his energy thing.

What's the energy one called? Fatigue reprieve. Fatigue reprieve. And it sure does sound like what my mom did in the 60s and 70s where she'd take her little up her in the morning and her downer at night. Mother's little helper. Yep. But this shit works.

That's all the matters. But Dr. Scots is all, you know, just food, really, right? I mean, kind of. It is. That's all it is. And this thing of Vinny's is all food, too. And he's going to talk about it in an interview that we're going to do with him in a minute, which, by the way, sounds dangerously close to. an infomercial and I apologize for that but halfway through it I was like well I am being one of

these got people on the infomercial it's like well but isn't it difficult to roast a turkey in the oven Ron but well you just said it and forget you know that's how I felt right that's great but I really had only just heard that he had some vitamins out and was really interested in what he has saying Vinny's got a really strong personality and so it was it was was a really kind of a, it was a weird situation for me. So if I sound a little bit boosterish and it sounds like an infomercial, sorry. But Vinny is a friend of the show. And, you know, if you're a friend of the show and you want to come on and plug something.

But we also talked about no grains, no sugar. Right. And also just about nutrition in general. And so here's our interview with Vinny Tortorich. Okay, we have with this today. Vinny Tortorich. America's angriest trainer. He's trained everyone from Hollywood celebrities to soccer moms and is the author of the book Fitness Confidential available on Amazon.com. He's also the author

of my recent 30-pound weight loss and changed the life of our mutual friend, Robert Kelly. Vinnie, thanks for being on Weird Medicine. Thanks for having me on. This is my second lap, right? I've been on once before. Yeah, absolutely. You're the first person, you know, celebrity that we've interviewed twice. Wow. I'm saying wow because I'm not really a celebrity. Well, I don't know about that. You are to people on this channel, that's for sure. And we, you know, I was looking at, and by the way, the second could say more about you or it could say more about me. It could be that, you know, we never could get anybody to come on twice or we just liked you so much we had to have you on. But we actually have a reason for having you on again today. And we'll get to that in a

minute. I just wanted to say when I saw Bobby on Louis, I know that probably didn't help your business too much right then, because when Bobby was on Louis's show, he was as big as I've ever seen him. But it turns out that was actually before he started your program, wasn't it? Yeah, you know, we got a lot of tweets about that. I got a lot of Facebook stuff, and people are like, boy, you really failed with Bobby Kelly. And I'm like, no, you know, people don't realize it's not reality television. They're not shooting it the day. of when you're an actor a lot of times, to give you an example

Serena's coming out in a movie one of those a big giant movie with all the big actors. I can't even tell you the name of it. It's called Inherent Vice. She shot that a year ago, folks. You know, it's just coming out now. Yeah, yeah. You know, in December. It's coming out like a year

and three months later. And that's what happened with Bobby. It was shot well over a year ago. Then Bobby contacted me and said, I'm as heavy as I've ever been in my life and I need to do something about it. Yeah. Yeah, what people need to do is take a look at him now. And I haven't talked to him about how much he's lost and that's, you know, that's private information. But it's a shitload. How does he look now? I haven't seen him in a while. No, he looks great. I mean, he could probably still do some more, but he looks great. Yeah, I'm,

I'm going to try, I haven't even called him yet. I'm coming into New York and you're not in New York. in Carolina. I'm in Tennessee. Like I said, Carolina. Right. Right. Somewhere. Yeah, I'm going to be in New York overnight. Carol Olt, the supermoder, flying me in to do her show. And it was funny because those people called me out of the blue.

And the producer said, Carol Olt loves your book and she wants you on the show. And I wrote back and said, because I thought it was a joke. I wrote back, wait, Carol Oat has a show. And she goes, yeah, I'm the producer. I kind of halfway insulted them, but she has this popular show about health and fitness and the whole thing. Did you know that, by the way? No clue. No clue. Because we went on wise television.

When was the last time you turned on a television? Well, I mean, I'll admit to watching some HBO stuff, but it's all delayed and on my Apple TV. But I just wonder what channel she's on, because, you know, there's so many channels now. I could tell you, wait, I have it right here. It looks like she's on a Fox affiliate, which, again, I haven't watched network television in years. I used the Apple TV and watch exactly what I want to watch when I want to. Oh, yeah. Yeah, as far as sitting down and watching something when it comes on, we haven't done that in years.

Yeah, appointment television has been gone since, what, the 90s maybe, maybe early 2000? Oh, I think so. I mean, we used to sit down and, well, no. Nobody gives a shit about this, but I will say that we used to every Sunday night sit down and watch the Sopranos and curb your enthusiasm. And if you weren't there, you missed it unless you VCR'd it somehow. Right. And it's just, I love the fact that everything is streaming now. Oh, it's great.

You know, sometimes always things on my computer, because my computer is set up at my desk and I have my indoor bike right behind it. Yeah. So I'll just pull things up on a computer and just watch it right there. Well, speaking of streaming, can you talk about something that you might be involved in in the near future, or is that not something you can talk about? The vitamin thing? Well, we can talk. Yes, that too. Oh, oh, I think I know what you're talking about.

You mean the Sony deal? Can you talk about it? Because I can edit this out if you can't. You know, I'll say this. Sony has offered me a, what do you call it, an option? You see, I don't even know Hollywood terms. I've been in Hollywood 20-some-odd years, and I still don't know the terms. They've optioned my book, which was the reason I was on your show the last time.

My book, Fitness Confidential, had come out. It was a breakout hit because we had self-published a book. The book has done, it's still selling like hot cakes, which is odd. It's been out for like a year and four months now. And it still sells like hot cakes. Sony stepped in and optioned the rights for the book. we haven't signed the deal yet, so the option agreement isn't real yet, but I will be signing that deal because something like this, Steve, just does not happen to, number one, a guy like me,

and number two, for a fitness book. I mean, Sony is taking a chance on a fitness book, which this may be a first in television. Right. Well, it's not super shred, and no flies on Dr. Smith, but your book is a personal story. And people buy it and they think, well, this is going to have a, you know, it's a diet book with recipes in it and some sort of plan. I mean, you talk about your philosophy of how to eat. And really, you boiled it down to one paragraph. And the rest of the book is really how you get there, how you get your mind right, how you sort of work through all these issues. It's completely different than any other book out there.

And I'm not just blowing smoke up your ass. I mean, it was very unique. well you know i can i can say that about the book also without sounding braggadocious it's not like any other fitness book um it does tell you what to do literally in one paragraph and the rest of it is they are meant to motivate you to to go ahead and do it um and that's kind of what i did and uh people people kind of glommed on you know and they still are yeah so i could see somebody making a a TV show out of this because it's so different. It'd be hard to do it with a book that's just full of a bunch of recipes.

But, you know, the thing is that, I mean, it changed my life. I was as heavy as I've ever been. And I was sitting in front of the television. And I bought my kids a bag of Heath bars, you know, the little ones. And they both, you know, both of my kids are athletic and they both ate one. and I sat there and ate the whole fucking bag. And I couldn't stop myself. I felt like shit.

I was getting loggie. My stomach was starting to hurt. And yet I couldn't stop. And I realized I have a problem. And we had had you on. And I was always a supporter of your ideas, but I wasn't actually doing them. And that day I said, I'm getting that book out again. I'm going to read that one paragraph again and get on this program.

I've been on it ever since. And that was, you know, third. pounds ago. And on top of that, I feel better. I'm more alert, less fatigued. I guess that goes with it. And I feel like I have more physical strength as well. So it's just been good for me all around. And the other people I've turned on to it have been, have had similar experiences. So I wonder if you'll talk a little bit. And now I want to get into the main reason that we're talking today, which is vitamin supplementation. So if people are listening to this, have heard this part before. Stick with us because we're going to talk about something new. But if you can just

talk for a second about what your hypothesis is, why this works so well for so many people, because it was quite amazing for me. Well, you kind of said it when you were telling the candy bar story. You didn't have a choice. No matter how much your stomach was hurting, once you start taking in those, you know, simple carbohydrates like that, you know, your body starts releasing, you know, ghrelin and leptin and insulin and all of these hormones that conspire you to want to eat more. I always say it's like a woman who goes through menopause and she has a hot flash. There is no way to stop a hot flash when it comes on. You could dive into an ice bucket and you will not stop that hot flash. That's hormones conspiring to do what they're

going to do. You couldn't stop eating that until they were all gone. And a lot of people will do that and continue to go find something else to eat. Things that they would just go take a bowl of sugar. I've had clients I've interviewed who said I was out of everything else. So I just found some powdered sugar. And they were like, you know, Tony Montana and Scarface and they just had their face buried in the stuff. You know, that's the problem. And the way you make the problem go away, is by taking the hormone factor out of it as much as you can. And if you just cut out grains and sugar, the thing that causes your body to release those hormones,

you can stop the problem. I mean, look, Bobby Kelly is a perfect example. He's a guy who does not know how to stop. He can't stop. Right. You know, and when he can't stop, he feels like a loser and he feels pathetic and everything else. Along comes, you know, me with this program.

all of a sudden he can do it. It's something that a fat guy can do, and he doesn't have to feel like a fat guy anymore. You know, he's losing weight. And you said something that everyone says, before they lose one pound, they start to feel better. Right.

They feel energetic. They don't feel like they're going to pass out every time they bend over to tie their shoes and so on and so forth. My craving for carbohydrates basically disappeared after one or two days. too. It wasn't like I continued to crave

carbohydrates. I did while I was taking them in, but once those hormone levels evened out, basically the craving went away, it was the easiest addiction to kick. I just had to take that first step, which was quite amazing to me. You got really lucky.

Some people, like Bobby took two weeks, just for, you know, since we're talking about Bobby here, you got it in two days. Most people start to be able to, as we call it, crossover. between four and seven days. The real hard cases go 10, 12, 15 days. But, yeah, that's about as quick as you'll do it as two days.

Well, we're very data-driven on this show, and I'm always criticizing people for bringing anecdotal evidence to the table. So I'm just, what I can say is that these kinds of diets, there is data that shows that the paleo-type diet, although your diet really isn't paleo because they can have some things that you don't advocate. And it's not really gluten-free because they can have things that you don't advocate. But it is very easy to do. But diets like this have some pretty good data behind them, not only success in weight loss,

but maybe in preventing things like a cardiovascular disease as well. And I think most of us in medicine know, at least by this time, that insulin is the enemy, and when you've got high insulin levels, you're going to have bad things happening. They've done studies on dogs where they injected insulin into one artery and didn't inject it into the other one. The one that got the insulin got atherosclerosis, and the other arteries didn't. And that doesn't prove a lot other than atherosclerosis can develop in the presence of insulin, but it is certainly shocking. If you can extrapolate that into the American diet, which ends up having people with high insulin levels because they're

eating so many carbohydrates and what that can do to us over the long run with cardiovascular disease being the number one killer in men and women now. I agree with everything you just said. I just want to make one point, and hopefully you agree with me on this. We need insulin to live. And you kept saying high insulin. So I just want to make that distinction that insulin is a hormone. that our bodies have and we need it, and it's there, you know, as part of our homealostasis,

but what you were talking about, Steve, is the abundance of insulin, too much insulin being released all the time until we become resistant to it, and then that becomes a problem. Right, exactly, yeah. If I didn't make that clear, I meant to. It's the, you know, when you eat, for the people out there, they're listening, if you eat, say, a piece of bread, then the body detects that, and then there are a host of things that happen, but one of them is that your pancreas start to secrete insulin, and it can overshoot. And when it overshoot, your blood sugar goes down, and now you've got a situation where you've got a high insulin level and a low blood sugar. And after a while, the body will dial down its sensitivity to that insulin

because it hates low blood sugar, even more than it hates high blood sugar. And when you dial it down enough, you end up with high insulin levels and high blood sugars. And that is the so-called type 2 diabetes. And what Vinnie says is right, you have to have some insulin because people who have no insulin, like my partner on the show, P.A. John, he has type 1 diabetes. And so that's also a real significant problem. But let's get to the part that we really want to talk to you about today, unless you've got something else to say about that, Vinny. No, that was about it. I'm just dying to have you in my show because, you know, you put this stuff so eloquently that I would love to have you come. You know, we love having doctors. And as you know, I've been trying to get

you onto the Angriest Trainer podcast for a long time. You've got to come on, Steve. Yeah, absolutely. We'll work it out, I promise. I really want to be on there as well. I want to talk to you about vitamins today. A lot of doctors say Americans have the most expensive urine in the world, because of their fascination, mostly with water-soluble vitamins, is there really a benefit to vitamin supplementation, in your opinion? Yes, and the doctors are correct also. Vitamins will create the world's most expensive P. But taken correctly with a good diet, with a good strong diet, they can be beneficial. Now, do you absolutely have to have a vitamin supplement to live? If you're on a great diet, no.

But, you know, we don't live in a third world country. We live in America. And we, you know, we go out of our ways to be extra healthy. And it's good to supplement because in our life, we don't get everything we need on a daily basis. So in other words, an example, you know, we have 13 essential vitamins. Essential means that you have to get it from diet because your body won't make them. Right. Because, you know, we always hear that the 13 essential vitamins.

vitamins. Well, what does essential actually mean? It means that your body does not make it. You have to get it from food. And we generally do get it from food, but on any given day, if you don't have everything you need, it's good to have a supplement of that particular vitamin. Case in point, you might have enough A, you might have enough D, you might have enough C, but you might be very low in your B for that day, right? Well, you're going to pee out all the other stuff, but your body's going to use the B, and it's going to use it the way it's supposed to be used. That's why vitamins are important.

And now we live in a world with all of this toxic stuff around us. We're breathing in toxic air. We're in toxic environments, and that can whittle away at your body, at your vitamins. So it's always good to have extra multivitamins in. Yeah, there are reports that come out that says, vitamins, expensive P. And then other reports come out right behind it, saying that you need vitamins for an optimal diet.

Okay. So, you know, you hear it both ways. There was a study in the Journal of Nutrition. It wasn't too long ago. And it showed an increase in exercise endurance in children that were given micronutrients and multivitamins. That was one of the most positive studies I've seen for a real benefit from multivitamins. And, you know, if you're not looking for that, and we talk about this on my show quite a bit, too, when you do a study, you've got to decide what you're going to look for.

So if you're going to take a multivitamin, well, how are we going to measure if it benefits people? For example, vitamin D, there are so many people because we're living inside, that's at least one of the hypotheses, that a lot of people, there's an epidemic of low vitamin D levels, and that's associated with disease, heart attack, cancer, stroke. And we don't know yet if supplementing vitamin D will prevent those diseases or if it's just a symptom. But so how do you figure it out? You take 1,000 people and you give them a placebo. You take 1,000 people and you give them vitamin D. And then you follow them over time and you have to decide what your endpoint is. And there's a point to this, Vinny.

I'll get to it in just a second. Sure. And if your endpoint is heart disease, well, you compare the two. was there a statistically significant difference in heart attack in the two groups? And if there is, then you can say, well, vitamin D supplementation is helpful. In this study, who would have ever thought to look at exercise endurance? They might have been studying, you know, attention deficit in school and completely miss the fact that these kids are doing better physically on multivitamins if they hadn't looked for that endpoint. So I think that there may be endpoints out there that we haven't even thought to look for

that may be interesting to look at with regard to multivitamin use. That's all I'm saying. Well, you know, you bring up a lot of interesting points. And just going back to the vitamin D thing, another study showed that I read a while back that because of all of the sunscreen we use, we don't get enough vitamin D even when we do walk outside. Right. And so they're looking at sunscreen now. but the bottom line is everyone is starting to agree that vitamin D, as in dog,

is important to ingest because we're just not getting enough of it. But the bottom line is if you're eating a healthy diet is still important to get supplemental vitamins in, just to lay on top of what you already have. Will some of that come out as expensive P? Yeah, probably. But the bottom line is you're going to get the ones you need also. To that point, when I started working and developing, think about it, a multivitamin, why would somebody create another one?

You know, there had to be a need for someone to create another one, and that's what I started looking into about a year and a half ago. Actually, I've tried to make a vitamin several times, but the powers that be kept telling me I was barking up the wrong tree. Sure, there's a whole, you know, stores full of vitamins, who needs another vitamin. I don't want to sound like an infomercial. Let's get it out there that Vinny's coming out with a line of multivitamins. Because I don't want to creep up to it because that's what the infomercial is doing. This is not an infomercial. This is a talk about vitamins and why I did.

Right, right, right, right. You know, the bottom line is, I kept going through life trying to find a vitamin that I wanted to take because I didn't just read what was in the vitamins as far as supplementation. and I would always read all of the other stuff and then go look it up. And one of the things I would always see in vitamins was a product called titanium dioxide. Right.

It's like a lot of them have titanium dioxide. And it's like, well, what is this? It's a whitening agent, right? Well, what did it? Yeah, it turns something white. They use it in paint. And they use it just to whitewash the vitamins so that you can then add another substance

in to color it, you know, that orange color you want it. Yeah. So they're not treating. titanium deficiency. No, there is no titanium deficiency. It's dioxide that can... And then I found another study that showed that titanium dioxide, they found it like in people who died naturally,

not naturally, but like in a car accident or died soon, and they were able to get a hold of their bodies and dissected in the whole thing. A lot of these people had pre-cancer or cancer in the colon, and in every one of these cases, they had titanium dioxide in their system. Wow. And in the same study, people that did not have titanium dioxide wasn't in any danger of getting that same cancer.

So I started looking at these things going, what else is in there? And a lot, like if you take something like Centrum, Centrum has 45 or 50 extra ingredients in there that you don't need. One of my favorites is always silica, which they try to call a supplement now. It's sand. It's sand. It's grout. You could grout your shower with silica. Okay.

What do we need that for? We don't. They use it as a filler. There are other things in every vitamin called excipients. Even the ones that say that they're super pure, right? They have excipients. So I went and looked into that. I said, why do you guys put an excipient in?

And what the hell is an excipient? Well, it's a flow agent that helps the vitamins flow through their machines and their machines don't get clogged up while they're trying to make your vitamin. Okay. And they're binders. So, you know, the ones that aren't filled into a capsule, they can bind them together. You know, all of the stuff goes into your body

along with the stuff that's supposed to help you. Sure. And when I set out to make the vitamin I wanted to make, every company in North America said, you can't do it. I literally found one company who said, we don't like to do it, but we will. And that's what I created.

I created the world's purse. First, pure vitamin. How do you do it without a – well, two questions about the binders. How do you do it without a binder? I'm assuming this stuff doesn't just hold together. And number two, would the binder prevent you from – and is there any data on this? Because I know what you're going to say, but I want to know if there's – if you can back it up. Well, the binders prevent some absorption of the vitamins because they're designed to bind the stuff together.

Well, I used a very, very simple experiment. Since I've been taking vitamins my entire life, whenever I would take a vitamin that's bind it together, like in a caplet or a tablet, you would often see it in your stool. I'd see it in a toilet. And I've talked to other people who said there, and it turns out that there's no guarantee that this stuff will even break up in your system so that your body can absorb the, you know, the actual vitamins. So the first thing I had to do is go to a capsule

because you don't have to use any binders in a capsule. You just fill the capsule. Sure, of course. The problem there is when you get the optimum level of vitamins without overdosing someone, without causing, you know, because I went into that too, I didn't want to cost expensive P. I wanted to give people exactly what they need it. So when you do that, you know, you have extra ruminal pills,

and that's when they start putting in things like sand and sugar and grains. They put all kinds of stuff in that's really cheap that they get stuff in there. So literally, instead of putting that stuff in, I added other nutrients. I added, you know, calcium and magnesium and other things people might need along with their... So you're getting a multi-cap, you're getting a vitamin and, you know, supplements from, you know, everything else in there. You're not getting anything that's not good. Wow. I'm looking, by the way, going back to the titanium dioxide, it's used in sunscreens. I'm looking this up on the web while we're talking. Also, the dust, when inhaled, has been

classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as an IARC group to be carcinogen, meaning it is possibly carcinogenic to humans, and that's possibly, and that'd be inhaled. people probably aren't snorting their vitamins. It's probably pretty, you know, benign if you take it by mouth. But very interesting. So, and if you don't need it, why the hell is it in there? Exactly. So like I said, the one thing you're taking for your health can be the most unhealthy thing you could do. And we succeeded at creating, you know, this pure vitamin. And it's, I'm very proud of it. I've been taking it for about six months and it's different forms. And, you know, we have a team of other people who have been taking it. Everyone loves it. They want more and more. I've been giving it away for free for six months to my test group.

And they can't get enough of it. Everyone has their kids on it. The adults are on it. Everyone's on it. And just for our full disclosure, just to let everybody know, I just heard about this yesterday. I didn't get any fucking free samples. So there's no quid pro quo here.

We're just having Finney on because this is fascinating. Yeah. Would you like a free sample? Sure. Can I send you a vitamin? Now that we've had you on, I can take the free vitamin. I guess. Hell, I don't know what the rules are.

But, yeah, so, okay, so I'm assuming you're selling this stuff. Go ahead and get the plug out there and we'll take care of that. And then I'm going to plug your book, too, using our Amazon site. Oh, cool. Now, by the way, this is going to sound like an infomercial, but, you know, bear with me, Steve. Okay. The way it's being done and the way we're able to do it, because I didn't want to just create a vitamin. I wanted it to be for every man.

Because whenever you see the top-in vitamins, which, by the way, still have sand in them, they want 50, 60, 70 bucks a bottle sometimes for this stuff. I did a huge buy, and I created a website so that I could cut out shelf space at a store and advertising and everything else. So if you go to PurevitaminClub.com, that's the only place you can get it. And I'm able to do it for $10 a month. What? Yeah.

Yeah. I've cut out almost, as a matter of fact, every accountant said that I'm out of my mind because I've almost cut out my own profit. Well, every, okay. Now look, and I swear I'm not one of these infomercial shills. It sounds like it, though, right? It does sound like it. Because every other thing that's out there from that, what is that, when stuff that you put in your hair at some, you know, it's, oh, you can only get it from this one.

Everything is so crazy overpriced. And then they want you to do this subscription. And it's like, I don't want, I just want to buy one little thing and try it out. And they won't let you do it. I've never had anything where I was surprised at how low the price was. Yeah. Well, here, and again, full disclosure. I don't know how you can do that.

But anyway, cool man. Well, because I did a big buy, and I bought a ton, you know, the money, you know, when you're still looking at where money comes in, when you buy bottles, because you have to bottle the stuff. And when you buy labels, I took a big chance and did a big buy up front to cut all those costs down. Yeah. I'm not putting any advertising dollars into it.

Cost comes down again. It's not going to be in whole foods or sprouts or any of those health food stores. Cost goes down again, no shelf space. So when you cut all of that out, and you buy a lot of ingredients up front to make the stuff, you could cut all of that out of the equation, and then instead of doubling or tripling the cost, I just literally add it like a buck,

you know, so that I could keep doing the stuff because I seriously just wanted to get it out there to my people, and it turns out that a lot of people want to try this stuff now, so we might have a hit on our hands. So the way, and by the way, again, full disclosure, it's $9.95 for a month, but we have to charge pick, pack, and ship, right? Sure. There's no way around that.

Right. And that's like $450 or $460. I can't remember where it came to. So that makes your monthly supply to your door, you know, $14.50. So what I wanted to do was figure out a way that I can literally get it to people for $10 bucks a month. So what we figured out was if we ship one bottle and we ship 90 capsules and give people a three-month supply all up front, now you got one bottle, one shipment. Since I'm giving you 90 versus 30, I could cut that cost back just a little bit. So that came to like 2495 or 23. I can't

remember now, but it came to like 2495. You add the $450 to that, and now you're truly under $30. Right. You know, for the whole thing, which is less than $10 a month. And you know, you do sound like a Pope Peel commercial, but wait. It does. It does. We'll add another three months for it. But still, you know, you can, look, I'm giving people two options. You can buy the one month or you could buy the three month, but if you want to save some bucks, you buy the three months. Yeah, okay. You know, it's just how it is. Yeah, that's very cool, man. And so give out the website again.

It's purevitamin'club.com. Okay. You'll see my mug there because, you know, I wanted people to know it was my site. It says, you know, as seen on the Angriest Trainer podcast and all that. I'm very proud of this product. Steve, I can't wait for you to try it. You know, if it starts making any money, maybe I can advertise with you guys or something, do a couple of ads. Oh, I think he just did for free.

But it's the only way I could do it right now. Are you not terrified, though, Vinny? I mean, here's the thing. I'm scared enough giving out advice to people. I'm always saying, go to your doctor, don't listen to anything I say on the show without talking to, you know, I would be absolutely terrified of just the liability risk. But that's, you know, that's the difference between you and me. You came out with a book. I'm scared to, you know, you're coming out.

with a supplement, you're going to have a TV show, and I'm sort of huddled in the corner, all scared and, you know, with my arms around myself because I'm paralyzed by fear to do anything. And my partner here, Dr. Scott, is a traditional Chinese guy, and he came out with his own line of supplements and stuff. And here I am with my dumb show for 150 bucks a week. But anyway, does the liability scare you at all, or is that just what you have liability insurance for. Well, you know, you have insurance to cover that. You have, you know, look, three years ago, I was just a guy training celebrities, and I had almost died a couple of years before that. So at some point, you get unscared in life. And by the way, now I have attorneys around

me. You know, that once you start becoming something, now you have to protect yourself. And, you know, there are attorneys that look at everything that goes on. And, you know, I just have to deal with that kind of thing. But that's, this is what I'm doing. You know, I'm just taking a big chance. It's a big financial chance. The same as I took on the book. Yeah. You know, so we'll see. You know, people may prove me right. They may prove me wrong. If people buy in, then we can all enjoy a great supplement. There's nothing else like it on the market. And if no one wants it, then I've spent a lot of money for nothing. Yeah. Well, I, if I've learned anything from O.P. Hughes over the years, I can't let you get by with saying I almost died a couple of years ago

without taking you right back to that. What the hell happened? I had leukemia. Holy shit. No, I didn't know that. You didn't know that? No, not at all. Yeah, I had leukemia.

And I almost died. It's all chronicled in the book. And that's kind of what they're looking at. I did read the book, but I guess I might have skipped forward a couple of chapters to get into the feed. To get it to the meat of it. Right, right, right. You missed the whole part where I almost died. Oh, shit. Well, I've got to go back and read that again.

Yeah, that's the part everyone loves. That's the part Sony wants, and that's the part you passed out. I'm an asshole. Yeah, I was literally getting ready to do another ultra-cycling race, and literally my doctor called me on a Saturday and said, I know you're out riding and training today. You need to get off the bike immediately and come to my house. And, you know, for a doctor,

to do that on a Saturday. So I went from riding a bike. I was still in my riding gear. I went straight over to the doctor's house. And I was able to do that because the doctor was a friend of mine. She was an oncologist. And she says, I have bad news. And then I have other news.

Okay. Wow. The bad news is you have leukemia. I said, well, what's the other news? She goes, 80% of your bone marrow is not bone marrow. it's leukemia. You need to go on chemo right away. Wow. And I was like, oh, boy. Okay. And the book chronicles that whole thing. Well, now I've got to go back and read the first half of the book. Yeah, well, go get it on audio. Do you do an ad for audible.com?

Nah, not on the XM show. We did on our serious XM show, though. I mean, the riot cast show. yeah the book is up for audible it was up i lost i was one of six books you know audible dot com is like the biggest audio selling company for books in the world and my book was up for audible book of the year wow and um we lost but you know it's one of six books i was very honored to be nominated you know always better to win but still and i got to be honest with you when you uh when i pick up a a fitness book, I always skip over what I consider to be the shit in the beginning and go straight to the middle of the book to where the good stuff is. And I found that to be very compelling. But hell, man, I'm sorry. I completely missed the biggest part of the book. So I'm going to go back

and read it again. Dude, you got to go. It's kind of, you know, my life story. And it's, I am such a prick. You missed a compelling part of it. And I've been pushing your book all this time, too. And I didn't, You're right, and I miss the best part. But anyways, you were pushing it for the right reasons. You know, people need to read it to get healthy, you know, but you miss the story. Come on, it's a story there. Come on, it's a fitness confidential.

You can get it at amazon.com. You can also get it apparently on audio book and audible.com. And anywhere else where fine books are sold. Yeah, it's out there. Look, I'm shocked. I'll be the first to tell you. I'm super shocked. I was happening with this book.

Yeah. It's got like close to 800 reviews. It's got a 4.7 rating or something like that out of five on reviews on Amazon. It's, guys, go to Dr. Steve on Amazon and click through. And you help him, you help me. That's right. All right, man. Well, anything else you got to plug today?

I learned a lot today. I really appreciate you coming on. I feel like it was a plug fest. I want to come back on when we could just kind of shoot the shit and, you know, just do a regular piece. Yeah, I love to talk about evolution and the evolving of our diet over time and how we were at once, maybe a little bit more in tune with our environment than we are now since agriculture. Agriculture is what fucked us up. It allowed us to become a society, but it spelled our ultimate doom until we had Vinny Tortridge figure out how to get us out of this. Exactly. Oh, by the way, there's another, have you ever read the book, Anthropology? I'm sorry, Manthropology.

No. Dude, you would love that book. Okay. I wish I could think of an author right now, but it's called Manthro, like Anthropology with an M in front. Okay. Anthropology, get that book, Steve. When you're done reading it, give me a call, get me back on. We can, we could just geek out on that for like three hours. Yeah, it's the science of why the modern male is not the man he used to be. Is that it? by Peter McCallister? Okay, all right. Yeah, that's the one.

Check it out. You can get it at Amazon. Dotterstein.com as well. Yeah. All right, man. Listen, I really appreciate it. Vinny Tortridge. Go to Vinny Tortorich.

Go to Vinny Tortorich.com. Also, check him out, check out his book Fitness Confidential, and then give the website again. I didn't write it down. The website is purevitaminclub.com. And, you know, the America's Angriest Trainer podcast. There you go.

Check them all out. And thanks again, Vinny, for being on a. show. Thanks, Steve. All right. So there you go. Now, okay, was I lying? It sounded pretty infomercialish, right? Absolutely. I have, let me just tell you something about his pure vitamin club. And again, it sounds like he's a sponsor. He's not a sponsor of this show. And I probably won't bring this up again. But I, the trick on this is, look at all the shit that's in this.

Let me see. Let me see. If you can read that, because. I ordered it the day that I did the interview with him, and I got that the next day. It was insane. Dr. Scott can't read it. I can't fucking even see it. Oh, okay, you're laughing, asshole. Can you read it? Yeah, vitamin A, vitamin A, how much?

How much vitamin A? Because I know what the answer is. $500. Shit, you can't read it either. There's so much stuff on that label you can't read the damn thing, and that's my only criticism of it. You go to my simple aerobles now. I have it all where it's legible. Yes.

But 10 bucks for that. Nobody sells their shit for 10 bucks. No, that's a pretty good deal. Yeah, plus shipping. Was it like a daily supplement? Like one a day or whatever type deal? Yeah, like it's pure vitamins. There's no fillers and none of that crap.

There's no titanium dioxide, like he said in the interview. And Steve, you know, those vitamins, I love them. I think we need more vitamins. I think that it looks like a good stuff. It looks like good stuff. I talked about one study that was done in kids in the interview. What's your evidence that taking a multivitamin is good for you? Because there is evidence out there that doesn't seem to have much effect,

but they're looking at things like all-cause mortality. And we talked about in the interview, too, you've got to decide what you're going to measure. So what are we measuring and what is that? evidence that vitamins are actually good for you. I think there's a lot of evidence out there. You've got to dig through it. But you don't have any on the tip of your top. Not that I don't, but I'll bring some next time.

I'll have some for the next trip. Okay, fair enough. But, you know, for a lot of the stuff, I mean, especially like my stuff for the Chinese herbs, because that's really what I'm an expert in. We're just turning this into the plug show, everybody. So now Dr. Scott's plugging his show. No, I don't want to sell it like a plug. But in all seriousness, there's a lot of good research.

You know, I think, and I think if you look at our diets today and you look at a lot of the things we miss, and I think, you know, we talked about before that if people are taking vitamins, there's a chance. Maybe they're doing some other good, healthy things in addition to that. So I think there's a whole cascade of well-being. And so I don't think it's just the herbs. I think you bring up a good point. I think it's a lifestyle. You can't just take a fucking pill and think everything's going to be okay. It's a supplement.

People who are interested in this are mostly people who are already. doing other good things for their life. And so I don't see the heart. Somebody text or tweeted me, he said, well, I thought doctors didn't think, you know, vitamins were a good thing. And it's like they're not a bad thing. You have to have vitamins. Right.

I mean, that's the definition of a vitamin is something that's essential to metabolism, but you can't make it yourself. You have to get it from the environment. And if you're missing something because of your, you know, a crappy American diet or if you're trying and you think you might be missing something for $10, I don't see that it's going to do any harm. He doesn't have enough of any of the stuff that can cause problems to cause problems. So it may do some good.

Hell, I don't know, but it doesn't seem like it's going to do any harm. And for $10, now, if he was selling it for $100 a month, he and I might have had an issue. The one thing I do like about it is that it's just one daily. Right. And it's not buying some capsules. And then taking two daily, and then you're thinking, oh, well, now I've spent this much and I've got what I thought was a one-month supply. Right, and it's fit, right, right, right. Once a day, it's easy.

And it's in a capsule, and there's no binders or anything. It's just in a capsule. He said, when you take all the vitamins, well, you can, you heard the interview. If you put it in there, there's room left over, so he just said, well, fuck, I'll put some mineral. Now, I know how that goes. I remember we talked about vitamins years ago. And I bought these, by the way. I did not get them free because I want to be honest in our appraisal of things on this show.

I don't want people to feel like when, especially when we're talking about medical stuff that I've been influenced in some way, just like our buddies. Citrusat, citrusin, citrusin, citrus salt. You know, they got their own jingle because we mentioned it so. much because it's it's just great stuff and um i'm going to try this i'll just tell you this is a at will be a totally anecdotal i'm just going to try it if i have any adverse effects to it i'll let you know i'm not expecting anything stunningly uh positive from it but uh i'll by god won't have any vitamin deficiencies now when i first came on this show i think it was years ago we we were talking about vitamins one time and correct me if i'm wrong but didn't you say like

If you take vitamins and you don't need them, you'll just piss them out anyway. Like, it's not going to harm you like. It's just the water-soluble ones. Now, there are fat-sliable vitamins that you can overdo it on. The nemonic for that is ADEC. So it's vitamin A, D, E, and K are fat-sliable. Okay. Vitamin A is the one you really don't want to overdose on because it can cause some significant problems.

But if you take it right around the RDA, you'll be fine. There is a thing called hypervitaminosis D, too, but you have to take so much of it to get there. I don't know how anybody would ever get there. And we're deficient in vitamin D as a population. I'll be honest with you, ever since I started doing Vinnie's diet, I'm eating healthier than I ever did. I'm eating fruits and vegetables where I pretty much rarely have ever did. But now that instead of having, you know, tons of bread with your meat or something like that, now I actually eat vegetables and have fruit for dessert, you know.

Right. That's great. I don't know. I know. Vinny's great. And there isn't, I've told him this too. There isn't anything really new in what he's doing. It's just that the way he presents it and he's so good at it. And, you know, he's the one that finally convinced me to change my life and nobody else did. Yeah. But this was not that far away from Adkins, which I had tried before. But it's way more liberal and I like it a lot better. Now, Vinny will tell you not to drink beer. And I tell him, fuck you. I'm drinking me some beers.

That's right. It's liquid bread, though. Hey, beer, listen, there was, there was, I read a report yesterday, and I, I don't think I email it to you, but it was, beer actually does increase intelligence. What? Clinical study, absolutely. I'll, I'll send, I think I sent you that email yesterday. Is this the old joke because it made Bud Weiser? Is that what it is?

No. No, I swear I sent it to you yesterday. No, no, no, no, that was not a joke. I see it. I see it. Yeah, GVAC's pointing at the new acoustic foam I put up is starting to fall down. I've got one fell right behind my head over here. Why is it all happening now?

Oh, you know why? It's because it's cooling down and the ceiling is contracting. Yeah, it's getting chilly. Yeah, but anyway. All right, let's answer a couple questions, and then we'll get out of here. Steve, this is Steve from New York. I'm the guy that sent to the article about... baldness and prostate cancer.

About what? My question to you is, is there something I should be worried about? Yeah, man. There was a recent study on baldness and prostate cancer. And what it showed was is that men with a certain pattern of baldness at age 45 had a 40% increase risk of developing aggressive prostate cancer versus men with no baldness. Now, GVAC, I need you get your calculator out. Okay. We're going to do some calculating on the fly.

Oh, boy. Just use your head, GVAC. Yeah. I am pretty good at it. He is amazing on that. But what they found was a high hair loss pattern associated with higher risk was frontal baldness plus moderate baldness on the vertex. So this is what P.A. John has. Or the crown of the head, which about 10% of the men in the study recalled is having at age 45.

Now, what they did was from 2006 to 2008. 8, researchers provided questionnaires to men asking them to choose one of five illustrations that most closely resembled their hair loss pattern at the age of 45. The median age of the 39,000 men who responded to the survey was about 70. After a median follow-up period of 2.8 years after they respond to the survey, about 1,140 cases of prostate cancer were diagnosed. half of them were classified as aggressive. Okay? So first off, let's figure out what the risk was.

So what's 1140 divided by 39,000? 0.029. So 2%. So 3%. Yeah. Okay, 3%. If we round up. 2.9%.

Okay. About 53 of the total group recalled some form of male pattern baldness at age 45. So overall, men who had any of the baldness patterns at age 45 didn't have a statistically significant increased risk of any form of prostate cancer later in life versus men with no baldness. However, men with frontal plus moderate vertex balding, okay, vertex being the very top of your head, 10% of the men in the study had a 39% increased risk of aggressive prostate cancer versus men with no baldness. all right so look the the risk in the first place was only 3% over this period of time so 10% of the men in the study had a 39% increased risk so 10% of the 2% is 0.2 and then they had a 30% so you know the absolute numbers are low again right so if you're if you have PA John pattern baldness the risk that you're going to get aggressive prostate cancer is still low, okay? It's just higher than if you were somebody like GVAC who has a full head of hair at a... How old are you?

48. Okay. Are you really? Yeah. Oh, okay. I would have guessed you were younger than that. I would have two. So, well, that's because he has all his hair.

Compared to you, how old are you? 14. Poor John. 14. All right. Now, let me tell you something. Now, knowing this, though, P.A. John is less likely to die from this, even though he's at increased risk of getting it. Why is that? Because if you are at increased risk of something and you know it, you'll get tested. You're going to get tested and they'll catch it earlier and you have less risk of dying.

And I've got 39 years of diabetes type 1. So I'm at an increased risk of stroke or heart attack. Yeah, you won't make it to 70 anyway. So, pretty much. Right. So there you go. Future's so bright, you got to wear your shades. That's right. So fuck that study.

Bring on the prostate cancer. John just broke the curve on it. And if I do get it, and I am lying on my deathbed, I will have a smile on my face saying, fuck you diabetes. That's right. That's right. You didn't get me after all. That's right.

Yeah, hey, Dr. Steve, I just heard the last week's show, and it was weird hearing about the overuse of caffeine. That was me at college. I just had this conversation with my girlfriend about... Remember this guy? He called on either the first or second weird medicine, and I remember sitting at Anthony's chair and calculating how much caffeine this guy was taking in. You remember that? Yes. And it was kind of a cool moment because, you know, we looked up.

the LD-50 while he was talking to us, calculated how much he was using and calculated what percentage of the lethal dose of caffeine he was taking, all while doing a radio show. I thought we did a really cool job with that. It's one of my, I really remember that, but anyway, so this is the guy. I was three or four weeks ago that I used to load up my coffee, and I told her I was hitting about 10% of the limit where it'll stop your heart. Needless to say, I've cut down, so I think I drink one cup a week. I'm lucky, and I don't know,

throw a couple espresso shots there, and I'm good. But that's it. Just figure I'd give you an update. Take it easy. Love to show. Hey, thanks, man. That's cool. Yeah, we talked to him.

That was 2007. That's all. Seven years ago. He heard us talking about him. 10% of least. Yeah, he was. That's impressive. But he was still 90% away from it,

but he was, you know, 9.5% too fucking close to it. That's pretty insane, right? Yeah, he was really, he was doing like 4% 13 double espresso shots, you know, six times a day or something like that. It was crazy. Right. I was at a place the other day, and the guy behind me in line, I was waiting for my order, and the guy ordered a medium coffee with 10 sugars, no creams.

And the woman behind the counter went 10, and he's like, yes, 10. And I'm like, could you imagine that much caffeine and sugar? Like, the guy must be a mess. Have you seen that thing with that dog that's got the underbite? And supposedly it came from a guy that went to Starbucks. know how they're classically don't spell people's names right and they said, yeah, my name is

Stephen with a pH and when he got his coffee had Ph-T-E-V-E-N. Stephen. Hello, Stephen. Stephen. I believed it because I chose to believe it. Anyway, all right, listen, many thanks to our listeners whose voicemail and topic

ideas make this job very easy. Until next time, check your stupid nuts for lumps, quit smoking, get off asses and get some exercise. We'll see you in one week for the next edition of weird medicine.