 Welcome to Mind Pumping. Today's episode, we interview Dr. Steven Cabral. He goes over some blood tests and saliva tests with Adam, Doug, and Justin. Talks about testing, health, and wellness. You're going to love this episode. Here we go. All right. Dr. Cabral, welcome back. Thanks so much for having me again. Our last episode was awesome. Got a lot of great feedback. You went through some of our hair sample tests. Yes. In today's episode, we did more tests with you. We don't know the results. So we'll get to that in a second. But before we do... Sal's very nervous, but he is very nervous. You know, you can rank us for second, third place like last time. No, but I want to talk about the paradigm around preventative health. I know this is something you wanted to kind of talk about a little bit on the show before we got into tests and all that stuff. So let's start there. Let's start about the paradigm around preventative health and where it's at and where it probably needs to go. Yeah, I actually thought it was going to shift to an even greater degree over the last two years. You know, with the pandemic, with COVID, I just thought that would be more of a push from mainstream society to say, Hey, there's a lot we can do in order to improve our overall health. Like let's start with good quality and nutrition first, get people off the standard American diet, less processed food, less hydrogenated oils, and let's move people to moving their body. It just maybe start with seven to 10,000 steps a day, then maybe get into some body weight training, then progress up, but it hasn't happened. And that to me is really discouraging because if it's not going to happen over these past two years, where we know that, you know, the ability to be able to not necessarily prevent sickness, but to be able to recover faster. And we know that for sure. I don't think that if I don't think that is going to happen unless podcasts like yours and other people are pushing it forward. So it's my mission even more now than ever to be able to say, listen, there's so much that you can do to improve your overall health that you don't need to have the same level of worry. Now there's concern. I understand that, but you don't have to have the same level of worry about getting sick in general. And you could control a lot of these things, even autoimmune issues. Yeah, you know, I think there's a couple of reasons why I think there's a challenge there. And I'll start with the first one is I think a lot of people believe that they need to do a lot more than what their maybe schedule allows or maybe what they're willing to do in order to reap benefits. In other words, someone may say, oh, you know, walking 15 minutes a day, like what that's what's that going to do, even though they're not doing any of that now or, oh my God, changing my diet. I have to overall hold everything to notice any results. I mean, maybe talk about that for a second, how small changes. You still get some great benefits from even just the smallest changes. Yeah. And a lot of it, so it's nothing extra. So like the extra in people's day, because I understand how busy everyone is. We're talking about like getting 30 minutes back for yourself a day, like towards your health, towards your fitness. Everybody still has to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, or even if you're just doing lunch and dinner, you're still going to have those meals. So now it's more of a one-for-one replacement. And what I talk to a lot of people, if you're making your own food, you think it's difficult, I have no problem in the beginning. People just saying, oh, I'm just going to have some frozen broccoli you know, ready for me in the freezer. I'm going to have some frozen foods, whatever might be. You can literally take out a piece of wild frozen salmon, some frozen broccoli, some if you're if you're not looking to do rice or grains or anything, some frozen cauliflower, put in the oven, frozen at all. 30 minutes later, you have a meal. You can add a little olive oil, a little sea salt. It's delicious. It's like a gourmet meal for for no real work. So what I like to do is just share with people, whether you're going out for food or you're eating, we have to make that one-for-one switch to have it be healthier. And it also doesn't mean that you can never have a flex meal or cheat meal, whatever you want to call it. You just have to reach your goals first. Once you reach your goals, I'm sure that you three probably agree. It's like you can then enjoy yourself if you reach your goal. So why not have a drink if you choose to or have pasta and bread or whatever it is that you'd like. And then in terms of exercise, that's that's just that is part of being a human being. I really believe that we are meant to be active and that we put a lot of emphasis on nutrition, but and I agree with that. But nutrition cannot make up completely what your body is meant to do in terms of physical exercise. I think it is something that people just greatly overlook that the research clearly shows that simply walking for seven to ten thousand steps a day extends life. Just that the longest lived people. I agree with weight training. Don't get me wrong. But they never did any weight training. Now, they did physical activity. They walked up hills. That was a big thing, you know, with people who live a longer life. So you're taking the stairs or you're doing these things. And they seem like nothing. And here's why they seem like nothing. Eating better for that one meal, walking seven to ten thousand steps a day. That day, it does absolutely nothing. Next week, it does nothing. Next month, it does nothing. Over the course of months and years, it adds up. Yeah, it makes a tremendous difference. And when you're talking about how we were meant to move and what we're meant to do, here's the second reason why I think people have such trouble with that is that in the past, it was a part of culture. It was a part of your life. Now we're in this strange new world where you have to schedule exercise or you have to find time to move. And then with nutrition, we ate healthy almost on accident because either A, we didn't have a lot of food, so we didn't overeat. And B, we had to prepare our own food anyway because there weren't there wasn't a lot of availability. And even today, the cultures that seem to do the best are the ones where exercise is a part of the culture. Like there's certain cultures where walking after a meal is kind of part of the meal. A study just came out of the show. There's just a little two minutes of walking post-prandial, post meal will reduce the impacts of blood sugar. So I think that's that's a really big. I think I think it's more and I guess this is I feel this way because I just came off of a three day fast that I did. And I'm always I'm always fascinated in my own behaviors and cravings and things that I go through during a process like this. And it always blows my mind that when I restrict from food for that that extended period of time, how like the most simplest foods sound amazing. And I feel like we have just over saturated our bodies and we're so spoiled that we can have access to so much all the time that what drives us that make our decisions is these these explosions we want in our mouth. And if we could just pull back a little bit and restrict for a little bit and maybe not give ourselves food for a while and actually truly feel what it feels like to feel hungry a little bit. It's amazing actually what sounds good. Like I remember just being like, oh, my God, I just want a Brussels sprout right now. I hated Brussels sprouts growing up. But it's just like just something nutritious. I wanted any a piece of chicken sounded so amazing. Are you familiar with any research around that around the I don't know, for lack of a better term, desensitizing ourselves to perceiving flavors because heavily processed foods are just they just bombard us with so much. Is there any evidence? Because I mean, I've experienced it and a lot of people have. But do you know of any? Yeah, there's there's actually a really good book on it. It will these are the three words of the book. It's basically sugar, salt, fat. Yes, that's not the name of it's close to that. And it talks about the biochemicals in your body. So basically, it's called the neurotransmitters that are actually released when we eat these foods. So we know that one of the biggest reasons for addiction in general and that can include alcohol is to produce more dopamine. And that gives you that that fix. And it lasts for a little bit, but then it drops. And what they found is that maybe when you eat those carbs, that processed food or whatever it might be, blood sugar can raise. And then it comes back down to baseline. And if your body is healthy, it will just stay a baseline. But dopamine actually dips lower than when you had that that sugary food previous to that. So that means that that neurochemical for reward actually goes higher every time you have that cheat, which is technically why some people do so much better with no cheat meals or flex meals in their diet. Because once they have that one, it can actually set off their neurotransmitters in an unbalanced way. Now, some people it's because of gut health disorders. So when you put that extra fructose from alcohol or processed carbs into your gut, it's starting to feed the candida and it's starting to feed the C build a small test of bacterial overgrowth. So then you take it away and there's a greater craving because these are actually living things. But back to your point. So I'm actually doing my fall functional medicine detox right now. And the first two days of that are liquid fasting. It's almost no calories. It's just a micronutrients to keep up liver detoxification because we live in a more toxic world, which just means that there's more plastics, phthalates, everything coming into us at all times. Exhaust fumes. We talked about that on the last show. So these micronutrients just help to basically give you that phase one and phase two liver detox. But by the time day three comes and it's lunchtime, it just your interest in food is so great that you're happy to be eating a salad or vegetables or whatever. And it's a resetting of the system. And I think that that it's absolutely amazing. But there's one other part to it. Humans are meant to do hard things and our lives have got soft. They really have like mine included, you know, like I can be in air condition all day. The temperature can always be at 70 degrees like all the time. I can take an Uber here instead of having to walk a mile like you were just talking about. So the exercise you're right. We didn't have to think about walking because well, we walked or we did manual labor and not even a hundred years ago, there wasn't refrigeration of the degree that there is now. So none of these things even existed three generations really previous to us. And as humans, we have to start actually doing hard things to build up a callus, a hermetic stressor so that real stresses in our life, then they actually feel stressful, not the easy things, not the things that maybe we shouldn't be all stressed out about. Free access to map split. Also, we got a sale going on right now. The skinny guy bundle 50% off and the fit mom bundle 50% off. So if you want to get signed up for either one, click on the link at the top of the description below to get the 50% off discount. All right, here comes the show. You mentioned the change of temperature and I've noticed that just anecdotally, if there's like a dramatic shift in say the weather or like the environment that I'm in, typically if there's anything floating around, I'm a little bit more susceptible to catching it. Is there any like, have you gone through any of the studies or science like kind of like in that direction? Yeah, and the best studies of those are actually on heat or cold based therapy. So there's sauna, right? So if we my I have two different types of sauna. So I have an infrared sauna and then I have a barrel sauna. My barrel sauna, I can crank up to 200 degrees. Now, just 200 degrees, it's a six foot sauna. So if you put my head to the ceiling, it's 200 degrees and it's insanely hot. But when you're seated, it's somewhere around like 170, 180. So it's still obviously very, very hot. And you're not really meant to be in that for more than 20, 30 minutes. I know some people try to like make it a competition, but you have to be careful with things like that. But you can actually test the blood before and after. And when you test the blood after you've been in that sauna for about 30 minutes, it looks like an absolute war zone. Your blood, it looks terrible. But what happens is your body is reacting to that stress and it's actually getting stronger. That includes your immune cells. That includes your it's called your HPA axis, your hypothalamus pituitary adrenal axis. So you start to produce more amounts of norepinephrine or normal amounts of norepinephrine as well as cortisol. So a lot of people with depression and anxiety, low mood based disorders will say actually get tremendous benefit from heat therapy as well as cold therapy. Oh, interesting. Because they produce oftentimes less dopamine and less norepinephrine. Two things that you get a surge of whenever you do those two modalities. Yeah, I use that example with exercise. When people talk about when they take a study that looked at one metric, like, oh, these inflammatory markers went up or this one thing went down. I'm like, man, if you did a blood test on someone post-workout, it would look terrible. Nobody would want to work out because it looked like this is a pro-inflammatory cancer causing, you know, death, you know, causing activity when in reality what it does is it strengthens and increase and improves our health. You know, back to the perception of taste, we've talked about this on the show. I've had clients where these were people who had terrible diets, they didn't exercise, they hire me and they drank diet sodas because they preferred the flavor of diet sodas to regular sodas. In fact, regular sodas weren't sweet enough. And I know that artificial sweeteners are, I mean, gram per gram far sweeter than sugar. My observation or my guess is that it changed their perception of all sweetness. Maybe there was a downregulation of receptors or maybe they don't get the same dopamine hit. Have you experienced this with any patients? Without a doubt. I don't know the exact science between I know what you're talking about in terms of sweetness, like even stevia is 300 times sweeter than sugar. And so it's not that. And I have no problem with people using stevia. People like to say, well, it, you know, causes this, causes that. I haven't really seen that. Not only have I not seen in practice in 15 years. I haven't really seen in the research. If anything, it looks like the stevia sides actually help with the gut microbiome and potentially even Lyme disease. So I don't, you know, monk fruit, stevia, I'm totally fine with those. But I'm also just as OK with some organic maple syrup or some raw honey and just a smaller amount, because it is the natural sugar. It's a natural amount of sweetness that we may get. And I'm much more of an advocate of that than something like aspartame, which people say, oh, it's no big deal. Studies say it's OK. Well, OK, studies say it's OK for a fraction of the dose and a certain population. But I can show you people where we have autism or have chemical sensitivities that that creates massive issues with what's called glutamate or glutamate acid in their body, like without a doubt. Like cytotoxin, right? Cytotoxin, well, a cytotoxin, the way that for them, they can't break it down properly. So some people can literally not metabolize that as other people. You've even seen in children. So some kids do totally fine with things that have artificial flavors, natural flavors. They don't doesn't really change their mood. You give it to another kid. They're off the wall. They're literally hitting other kids. And that's why I think we need to look into that more for ADD, ADHD, because their body can't metabolize that glutamate. And so like even taking glutamine, so glutamine is a phenomenal nutritional supplement can help with recovery from workouts, muscle mass. It can help with it helps with burn victims. It helps with HIV, keeps muscle in the body, essentially, makes you more animal. The abundant amino acid and skeletal muscle growth. 100 percent, it's one of the first ones besides zinc and vitamin C gets depleted during stress. But some people, when they put a higher amount of glutamine, like 10 grams plus a day, they can't properly metabolize that glutamine, which does eventually break down to glutamic acid. So that's why we're always looking at the bioindividuality of the person. So I don't know if that answers your question, but I'm not an advocate whatsoever of artificial sweeteners, even if people are saying the studies are OK. I have an every word that some certain dies will really trigger some of his, you know, he's neurodivergent. So ADD ish, ADHD. And I don't remember what color dies, but I mean, it's a profound effect. And they've talked about this. This is not I'm not, you know, this isn't just him. This is actually a kind of a known thing. What role, because I've seen studies and there's some scientists that'll do this to kind of try to prove a point. Although I get what they're saying, but I also disagree. Is they'll show, well, all these negative effects of sugar, all these negative effects of certain foods. When the calories are low enough, then we still see improvements in health. Like, what role does just eating too much play? In poor health. Without a doubt, that's a factor. So you can look at it a couple other ways. So like when I go back to the rain barrel effect, right? So there's a lot of people who can eat the same exact foods that they always eat when they typically have a reaction if they fast for the majority of the day. And why? It literally goes back to the rain barrel effect. So they're emptying their rain barrel for 16 hours, 18 hours, 20 hours. And then they have that one meal, which contains gluten or hydrogenated oils or chemicals or whatever they typically have. But their body right now is at a cleaner slate. And now it's ready to be able to process inside of the liver, the kidneys, the immune cells. So it doesn't overwhelm them. So it doesn't overwhelm them. It doesn't overflow that rain barrel. Interesting. Yeah. But now that, but that to me, that's conventional medicine in a nutshell. It's a band-aid based approach and it's not looking at the root causes to why. And it's also not looking at bio individuality. It's also not looking at reality. Who the hell eats in a caloric deficit all the time? Nobody. I mean, and those foods can contribute to behaviors that make you. Yeah. And the reality is that even with the people that go on great diets and keep themselves in check, like you're going to over, you're going to over, you're going to overfill the rain barrel eventually. And eventually you're going to always go back to what you would consider like a normal or average diet. Yeah. So I have no problem with people doing a 21 day reset or, you know, maybe up to six weeks. But there has to be a plan that takes you from whatever that, you know, really stressful 21 days is to then less stressful, call it a phase two, to then a phase three, which you're eating all the time every day, except for your one or two flex meals per week. That is the way that people are going to be able to maintain and help anybody I know who's in great shape, great health, all of the greats mentally as well. Mood wise, they are enjoying themselves once or twice a week. But they're doing the other things in order to be able to earn that food. Yeah. So now that I have you here, I've been wanting to ask you, this is a little bit of a turn, but I, I've been reading about antioxidants in particular, some of the ones that are most important for the liver. I know you could take a supplement, NAC, which will raise what's the thing that raises the glutathione. You could also supplement glutathione, which helps the liver. This was because during the pandemic, there were some studies that showed that low glutathione levels was strongly connected to poor outcomes with with COVID. But I also read that taking too many or too much of like glutathione, for example, could cause also an adverse effect. You can have too many antioxidants. You could go in the opposite direction. What does that look like? And is there a huge individual variance with that? So it's it's almost impossible to create an antioxidant overload on the body if it's coming from food. Right. So the body will always be able to process that, use what it needs and then get rid of it. The problem is it's not building up those reserves. So you have to get it on a daily basis or near daily basis. So if we take a step back, so antioxidants are needed because oxidation and oxidative stress continue to build up on the body. The more that we do and the older that we get. So that's why when you do sauna, when you do cold plunge, when you do hard workouts, when you fast, these are just some of the things that we're doing, like as I don't want to call them, you know, bio hacks. But these are things that we're doing and we know more about to keep ourselves healthy. The problem is all of those things, including breathing and eating, cause oxidative stress in the body, which means it creates free radicals. So we're missing those oxygen based molecules. We're missing those electrons. We need antioxidants. That's the difficult part about saying carnivore only diet, keto only diet, because we're missing unless you are getting all vegetables to stand to your carb load for the day, which you could do. You're not going to get those antioxidant loads. So just to go back then to glutathione, glutathione is what we call the master antioxidant. That's what we're looking to produce. The body produces it endogenously. It just needs the raw material in order to be able to do it. And so phase one of lever detox is typically your vitamins and minerals. So you're looking at like zinc and selenium, which is also used in phase two. All of your B vitamins like folate, B12, the methylated forms in glutamine. And then the second phase is from sulfur based amino acids. You talked about anacetyl cysteine. There's to ring. There's a bunch of others that also then help to create glutathione. So there's the first pathway and the second pathway. The second pathway is which people are typically missing. Like if you take a good methylated daily activated multi or something like that, you're covered on phase one, but very few of them cover you in the sulfur based ones, which come from cruciferous vegetables. So the Brussels sprouts, the broccoli, the bok choy, those types of things give you the sulfur based and even garlic items like that. And then they make glutathione glutathione unless you're taking it intravenously, which then you could definitely overdo it is difficult to be able to absorb in the body right now. You can take reduced glutathione or liposomal glutathione, but it's almost better. We've seen a lot of great results with using anacetyl cysteine NAC as the precursor. And it's funny because I'm pretty sure they know this because Amazon banned NAC, I know they're now seeming to allow it back potentially. Well, the FDA said that they were going to take it off the market. That's right. Yeah, which was kind of interesting timing. Yes. Perculiar because it's been out a long time. Yeah. All right. So what we did with you, the tests that we did with you were blood and saliva tests. And for the audience, this was an at home test. So we got a kit. You take it home. There were some vials that you fill with saliva or you feel to a certain point with saliva. And then there was a blood test where you prick your finger and you, you put out a number, how many drops of blood? It was something like 15 or something like that drops of blood. And then we send it into the lab. That one took a lot of effort. Yeah. Milk in my face. I didn't have the nurse advice until later on. Yeah. I wish I had help. No, all the stuff that Justin said, like we should have done to actually get the blood out. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Courtney told me like, where are you, where are you even prick it? Oh, interesting. Yeah. And then I even like, I noticed a huge difference by coming from your elbow and coming down like that. Oh, interesting. Yeah, yeah. So, so we did that. I learned a lot on that test. We gave all the tips today. We sent them in. Now, what are these tests looking at? What's the saliva test looking for? And what's the blood test looking for? Yeah, and it's good to differentiate between the two. So, saliva is the absolute best lab test to find out your hormone levels. Now, you can do hormone through blood. Like you can take your testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, etc. through blood and there's nothing wrong with that. You just always want to run the free form of something like testosterone because in the blood about 95 to 99% of hormone in the blood is bound up by proteins. And so you don't actually know if that's able to be used or not if you're just running total testosterone. So like sex binding, sex hormone binding globulin. Yep. So sex hormone binding globulin is increased actually with oxidative stress and that could be from heavy metals. It could be from gut inflammation. It could be from mental, physical, emotional stress overdoing your workouts without recovery. Anyone of those things can increase SHGB, sex hormone binding globulin, VG. Now, I just recently shared with you that I did a three day fast. This was after we did all the testing. It was actually just a little over a week and a half ago. How much would my test be different had I tested right after that? Do you, would it be significantly different, a little bit different or would nothing be different if we would have tested me like right after I did it like a three day fast? Yeah. So there's two scenarios based on the constitution and strength of the person's body when they did that lab. So if someone has a really strong, healthy, robust body, your body will boost testosterone. It will boost DHEA and it will boost cortisol. So it's putting you in the beginning of like adrenal-based stress. In a post-fat, like right after the fast. Right after. Oh, interesting. And the reason it is is like you're in that alpha state where you need to go find food. You need to go out there and whatever is challenging you. But that only lasts for so long. Growth hormone and these hormones begin to drop after about 72 hours. Okay. So after that, you're in a much more catabolic state. That's why after, that's why in a fast some people, I mean, me included, I'm energized. I feel sharper. Yeah, no, I felt great. But I remember one of my concerns because I was doing this fast. I was also fasting from sex. And right after the fast was when Katrina would be most likely to get pregnant. One of my concerns was, boy, maybe I didn't time that food fast very well. Like because I'd be low on nutrients, maybe my testosterone levels would naturally dip. But you're saying that it actually probably would have spiked? It depends on the individual because someone who though is already in an exhausted, burnt out state drives their testosterone lower. Like it depletes you. Yeah, and what effect would that have on sperm? So not as much. Oh, okay. Yeah, not as much. Now, so that was... Your libido could decrease though. Yeah. So the saliva test was for hormones. Yes. And I noticed we did several of them. So you're looking at hormone levels throughout the day, right? That's right. Not just a screenshot. That's the important thing and you'll see it on all of your labs today and this is why it's so important. When you go and have your, let's say if your blood work run with your PCP, it should always be before 10 a.m. Yeah. You really want it fast and before 10 a.m. to look at your lipid panel for your cholesterol and all these numbers. But your hormones, especially testosterone, is really going to be highest in the morning, your estrogen, all these numbers, although that is diurnal as well. So when we're looking at these, we're looking at all of your hormones for the first tube, which is a larger tube. That's the one you take upon waking or within the first 20 minutes. And we're looking at that for our cortisol but our testosterone DHEA, which is a precursor to testosterone. It's an important number that we talk about here today because the better your DHEA, the better your immune system, typically. So it's a really important number and it decreases with age, which is why our immune system, typically, weakens with age. And then we look at progesterone and estrogen and that goes from men and women. And the reason is that men can start to convert too much testosterone to estrogen and that has negative effects as well. And then before lunch, you're going to do a small tube of saliva. Then before dinner, small tube of saliva, and then before bed. And the reason is that cortisol works almost called the diurnal rhythm. That means it's basically two parts to it. So it should be a cortisol waking response about 20 to 30 minutes after you wake should be peak cortisol, somewhere between six and eight in the morning, ideally. But you can change yours depending on when you wake up. And then after that, it just starts to drop throughout the day and it should be at its lowest point at around 9.30 or so at night. And if it's not, then your body is most likely not getting the deep sleep that it requires, the REM sleep that it requires, and you're not getting the recovery, which then leads to lower testosterone, lower DHEA over time. So when we go through our labs, I want you to challenge each of us when you get to something that's like off on the charts. On if, so when you're doing, let's say when you're doing Justin and let's say DHEA or something you're going over, I want you to ask him, do you think you're higher than the rest of guys or lower than the rest of guys? I want to see how well we know ourselves. I think that we'll all know each other and ourselves pretty well and I'll be interested. And by the end, you'll have absolutely be, you'll be able to predict the future. So my goal with this at-home lab testing is that everyone learns how to read their own labs. I do case studies twice a month and all my podcasts try to do things that just teaches people. I want you to be able to pick up this lab and know how to read it. Now, you don't have to be the expert, but you should absolutely know how to. I love that. Like if they've been going through your workouts, guys, girls in this program for years, they should know how to put together a program. Now they go to you because you're still the best at what you do, but they should be able to know how to structure a program. For themselves, at least. No, that's right. I mean, that's part of our, that's what we've always been in our mission for sure. So that's the saliva test. Now, what are the blood tests? We're looking what the blood draws. And it's important too because saliva cannot accurately test everything. And that's why we always look at, are we looking at here? Okay, that shows excretion of the body. Saliva, it shows what's usable. That's the hormones, the sex hormones we're looking at. Blood, we're looking at capillary blood. And so with this, you cannot look at your thyroid through saliva. So we have to do the blood spot. Now, for people at home that have never done this, like how can you get blood at home? You're doing the same thing that you would use for a finger stick for type two diabetes, just to get your glucose. So you do a small finger prick and we can give you the tips today how to make that super easy. Standing is one thing and warm up the hands, all those things. And then you're putting that on the card. It's gonna give you not just your TSH, which is typically what your PCP is gonna run, that's thyroid stimulating hormone. Doesn't tell you anything. Just tells you the amount of stress the thyroid is under to produce more or less thyroid. Then just like free testosterone, we wanna look at T3. That's the most important one. That's the most active. That's the most active. Exactly. It will show T4, show T3 so we can see if there's any breaks in the links. And then we also look at TPO antibodies. And then the final part of the test that has to be done in blood again, this is the finger prick, is your hemoglobin A1C. It's basically a weighted average over the last 90 days of what your blood sugar looks like. And then there's insulin, which is that moment in time, what does your insulin spike look like? What was that one you said, TPO3? TPO antibodies? Antibodies, what are those? So your body will produce antibodies based on subtype of autoimmune based process. And unlike, let's say RA for rheumatoid factor for rheumatoid arthritis, TPO is the antibodies produced that attack the thyroid. And so there's a lot of Hashimoto's. Got it. One out of eight women are dealing with low thyroid. So you could have theoretically normal looking thyroid labs, but then have such high antibodies that your body's not utilizing it right and you could be having low thyroid symptoms. Is that correct? Yes, but by the time you typically get to, so we hope to do more preventative based health. So when we see that TSH getting above a two, so TSH should be a 0.5 to a two. Got it. When you go to your typical lab visit, and again, people might have the best PCP in the world and that's fantastic that that's great. Just most are not trained in this. Usually the marker goes to a five. By the time you get to a five for TSH, your thyroid's been defective and dysfunctional for years. Oh, wow. So then your TPO antibodies could start reacting from 90% of all autoimmune issues now are tied to the gut, they can see that. Stress is related, but gut is a big part of it. Heavy metals can be at infections, viruses. So there's other factors, but this was actually a study that I just shared and it was either Mayo Clinic or Harvard said that Hashimoto's specifically tied to increased gut permeability. Now, 30 years ago, not quite 30 years, when I had my illnesses, you were laughed out of the doctor's office. Oh yeah, leaky gut syndrome. You said that and they were like, oh god. Fibromyalgia, leaky gut, adrenal fatigue. What's wrong with this person? Now there's a medical term for it. You said it, intestinal hyperpromeability, which I think is absolutely hilarious. Okay, so question around gut, the gut. You said that 90% or so of autoimmune issues connect to the gut and you talked about stress. I know that stress can also affect the gut and the gut can also affect your stress levels. So do we know what affects what more or is it just this two-way street? So you can't look at one without looking at the other. That's right. And so that's why people say like, if I can only work on one thing, if you could only do one thing in your practice, what would it be? And I always say, well, I can't do one, but I can do, if you could give me two, then I could fix and help 90% of most people. And that stress and it's gut. And we don't always know what comes first. That's the thing. So it's called neuroendomunology. And it's something that I love to study. It's how the nervous system, so our peripheral stress, so it could be stress from the outside world or inside world, inside of our brain, affects our hormones. So you'll see today a rise in cortisol, which is a stress hormone, right? So good in the short-term, it's also powerful anti-inflammatory, bad in the long-term in terms of chronic stress in the body and causing gut-based permeability. And then the immunology, people say, well, I don't have any digestive issues. So what's the issue? Well, the issue is maybe Candida overgrowth, maybe SIBO, the bacterial overgrowth, maybe parasites, maybe H. pylori. But what happens is the gut wall is basically a single cell. It's hard to imagine, but it's a single cell, only allowing the good stuff to come into the bloodstream. Your amino acids, your glucose molecules, your fatty acids, et cetera, and the bad stuff out. But what happens is that becomes more permeable. I know we've talked about this before on the show. And that is then, if you have 80% of your immune cells right around the gut lining in and outside of the gut, well, that's what sets off the immune system. And then that's when genetics matters. So back in the day, I had Addison's disease, I had rheumatoid arthritis, I had type 2 diabetes, I had all these issues. I don't have any of them now, but I had the same genetics. So I didn't have it at eight years old. Had it at 17 years old, don't have it now 25 plus years later. Well, why is it same genetics? Because I don't have the gut permeability. I've worked on my stress to a massive level to be able to control that. And so people can heal. I mean, they really can. Interesting. All right, so I wanted to ask you about the blood-brain barrier, because when I first started learning about the blood-brain barrier, it was communicated that it was like this impermeable wall. There was no, nothing got to the brain that the gut didn't communicate with the brain, and then recently we found that there were some direct connections between the brain and the gut. I can't remember what these connections were, what they found, but how about how the brain is affected by all of this and how that affects your behaviors and psychology? That's right, so gut-brain axis is what it's been termed. And looking at your gut is actually your second brain. So some of the buzz quotes that are thrown out there as well, 90% of all the serotonin in your body is made and produced in your gut, which is true. But it's also overlooking the manufacturing of vitamin B12 from certain bacteria in your gut and the jejunum and other parts of the actual digestive system. So the problem is, when we don't have enough of these neurotransmitters and neurochemicals, we aren't able to produce the mind and mood that we want. But at the same time, a lot of people have massive levels of inflammation in their digestive system. I mean, if we look at our digestive system, it's about 26 feet. And when we have inflammation in our gut, we can't tell, we're not able to tell ourselves that there's something wrong on our gut. So we get signals of irritability, of anxiety, of overwhelm, of not feeling well. None of that affects all of our life and how it affects our life because then we take different actions. We don't have the same energy. So we start to fall behind in everything else that we're looking to do in our life. Like, if you feel terrible, you don't want to exercise. If you feel terrible, you just want comfort food. You don't want to make food. You don't want to go out of your way to do these things. So it's really a two-way street. Yeah. Now, is it true that the heart is the third has some of the, maybe the third highest serotonin receptors, that it was a brain, the gut, and then the heart? Is that true? I don't know that. I do find it interesting, though, that for thousands of years, before we knew all this, we would say things like, listen to your gut or I feel it in my gut, which kind of leads me in this direction. Yeah, which kind of points to the fact that it is a second brain, if you will. And I think it is well beyond serotonin in these chemicals. I actually, so the enteric nervous system is essentially what we're talking about around the gut. And have you ever looked into Heart Math Institute? No. Very interesting. Sounds interesting. They actually study the resonance of the hearts. Like the electric, because your heart is electrical. Right. I have not gone as deep as I would like to with that, but I find it very interesting. And then the same with the gut. I actually think that, well, if you look at traditional Chinese medicine, you look at other forms of medicine, and again, I don't necessarily go down this path, but they believe every organ has its own, I don't want to say the word feeling, but let's just say electrical charge and feeling inside of the body, like delivering when something's wrong with it, there's more anger, there's more irritability. Again, it's more of a meridian-based thing in traditional Chinese medicine rather than the actual organ itself. But I find it fascinating, and I truly believe, although it's not what I do, I believe that the future of medicine, we're talking about maybe hundreds of years from now, will be more energetic in nature. I don't know what that looks like. I just don't, I just believe that it is. I agree. And the verbiage and language they use, the language they use is what turns off Western medicine people, right? Like they say your chi and your energy and all that, I remember I had a surgeon client and we were talking about acupuncture and there were studies that were showing it was efficacious especially for pain and I'm like, how can this be? And this and that and we're going back and I said, the nervous system is very interesting. I mean, they use a word like chi, but we know that when you have pain in your left arm or when you feel pain in a particular area, it's corresponding to a particular organ. And he agreed with me. He goes, yeah, I think that's probably what, they just had different verbiage. They didn't say nervous system they said. Doug, can you actually look up heart math and write down some names? I would love to interview. That would be such a fun interview though. That sounds really interesting. All right, so let's get into these tests. So we all sent you or we sent the labs saliva and blood tests. I know that my saliva test got rejected because I didn't have enough saliva or something. We want to tell everybody what really happened. You didn't spit in a good game there, buddy. What's the truth behind this? Doug won't let me do it. So you just have blood for me, but everybody else has saliva and blood. So maybe we can kind of go through that more. So you automatically lose, and now for the audience, we do not know these results at all. It's literally you're telling us first time here. Now we can edit out what we don't want. And I don't want to take the wind out of your sales, but we don't have any of your specific numbers. Okay. Oh, nothing, nothing. Oh, wow. I know, wow. Big loser today. Well, hey, that gives you guys a chance to look healthier for us. They get a big asterisk there. So we'll do this. We'll do a part two. I'll give you your follow up for sure. So yeah, if we can go through it, we'll go through Doug's, then Justin's, then Adam's, and in the specific order for a reason. But I also don't... Oh, that shit talking, Adam. I'm gonna have to get sandwiched here. Usually we do an intake. I don't have yours. I actually enjoy doing it like this, because I don't know necessarily what any symptoms you might be feeling. No, I think that's why the audience liked it so much is because we have no idea. You got very limited information about us. Just save your data. Yeah, so that people get to hear us work it out. And that's why I want you to challenge each of us individually, because I bet, I mean, I hope we're pretty in tune with what we've done. Or maybe ask the other guys about the other guy. Yeah, well, both. We can all answer, right? You can be the judge cell if you want. Oh, that's my favorite position. So I think a good one would be, yeah, who has the highest levels of stress? Like looking at that, I think that would be great to look at. Well, last time it was Doug. It still is Doug. And he can't be champion. The winner of that, for sure. Stress King. He's a stress. I would actually say Doug, Justin, myself, and Sal. Sal and I will be close, but you don't have sales. But I would think it would be that order. I mean, I got a lot of kids, man. Yeah, I don't know. Oh, yeah. I don't want to go into the stress. Yeah, for sure. All right, so on Doug's first, just for people who are not maybe seen this on video and I can, you know, pop this up as well. Doug, why don't I actually give you this? OK, thank you. How this lab is run is basically goes red, yellow, green, yellow, red for the bar. So if you look at a bar graph, you want to be within the green, ideally. If you're in the yellow, it says, OK, you're suboptimal. We can work on that. And if you're in the red, it means, OK, we've got some work to do. And of course, they'll give you an H for high or an L for low. So Doug, when we're looking at yours, let me just put yours on my laptop here. And we want to look first at estrogen. So normal estrogen levels, we're just going to talk about men here for today. Again, the lab will give you the specific range. And again, the labs that we're using are all what's called CLIA certified. That means these labs follow things by the book. There's privacy policies. Your lab results are not shared with health insurance. They're not shared with your PCP unless you want to, which is really nice because health insurance is doing some really strange things now if they know your genetics, if they know other factors. So it's better to keep these things private. So nobody can see this unless you want them to. That's right. So it's just our team, which is HIPAA compliant, the lab itself, which is HIPAA compliant and then the patient or wellness client. Beautiful. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So on our estrogen levels for men, we want it to be between a 0.5 and a 1.2. That's our goal. So when we're looking at Doug's, we are looking at a 1.6 for estradiol, which is the main, excuse me, form of estrogen. So we have a little higher level of estrogen that we would like. One of the reasons why men will convert more testosterone, because what happens is it goes cholesterol to pregnenolone to dihydroepiandosterone, which is DHA to testosterone to estrogen. That's basically the flow chart. Okay. Could having a little white poodle dog play into that at all? Not a poodle. I'm going to have to go back and get it right. It's a maltese. I'll be afraid from commenting it out. Hey, you guys, your tests are last, bro. I know, that's why I got to talk shit down. I already know the way he set it up. I'm going to get it. So let me have my minute, bro. That's funny. So a little higher than we want. And we'll talk about that with different symptoms. That could be progesterone. We want that under a 50. You're at a 37 dog. So that looks great. Testosterone is on the lower side. It's a 42. I have a question on that. Yeah, absolutely. Because I've done labs, blood labs, and every quarter. And I actually have my lab results pulled up. And last time it was at 9.39. Yes. Which is your total testosterone. Total testosterone. And the one prior to that was 10.86. What was your free dog? Because they'll measure your free on that. Well, it was 10. Out of a 7.2 to 24 range, so it was low. And I know my sex-hormone-globulin, or sex-hormone-binding-globulin, is elevated. So I'm very curious why these different numbers seem so different. They actually say the same exact thing. Oh, do they? Yeah, this is free testosterone. Yeah, he's just saying, yeah, you said 10. He said 9. So Liva doesn't measure the same. And that's why I like to do these. So what I do with every lab that I run is I actually have my blood work done. And then I run this lab while I'm having my blood work. Compare the two. To compare the two. Oh, beautiful. And so, and this is, I mean, this is the premier at Home Lab. But what you're saying is a really good question. So basically, this is a really good case study of your testosterone levels. Total testosterone is OK. We'd like it a little bit higher, but not bad at all. But what's happening is your testosterone is being bound up. Because of, I'm about to show you in a second. And then it's also converting to estrogen. So it's not staying where it should as free testosterone. So my goal, so when we look at age-wise, I want you at an 85. So basically double where you are to 100. And that would be totally normal and natural. And so we need to do things in order to get you there. But the things that we do are not necessarily supplemental in nature. We could do some of that. But actually, to reduce this next thing, which we're going to talk about, which is cortisol. But it's a good question. And they actually say the same exact thing. Now, I'll get to the DHEA. The interesting thing is this. You do have a strong body because your DHEA is a 7.9. Typically, when I see testosterone this low, DHEA is below a 4. And so your DHEA is still a 7.9, almost 8. And that should not be holding as strong as it is unless you were healthy and taking care of yourself. Because your cortisol now, so all four, if I can just give a quick synopsis, are in the red. So that means they're all high all day long. So you're producing high cortisol upon waking, high at noon, high at evening, and the worst one's actually before bed. Wow. That's what you're working the most, right? That's affecting then your sleep. When you get off the phone with Adam, probably. Yeah. He's got you on the dog. At the right, a little doctor's note today to get out of those late nights. I'm waiting for Adam for the next two days. So what this is though, because this is the sleep mode. Talking about revenue at midnight. Oh my God, Doug. This is no wonder I'm in the red zone. I literally was like, hey, revenue's been awfully low this last week. Because for me, it was a midnight. Hey, I was up though. I know you are. It's always my sin. I know you're up too because you're at 1.5 for your cortisol, which means your mind is not able to shut off. And that's the big thing. So the problem is though, so we can try to do all sorts of things to raise your testosterone, but the number one thing that lowers testosterone is stress. Environmental toxins, phthalates, plastics, cadmium, arsenic, sure, all of those things. And not getting the nutrients, which we'll talk about vitamin C, vitamin D, zinc, et cetera. But cortisol, and these levels of cortisol, your cortisol levels for the day, if we add them all up, they should be between about a 10 and a 13. Yours is about an 18, 19. Oh wow. And so you're at least 50% higher than you should. I'm an overachiever. Yes, but even though your body's holding up now, there is that sign that it's starting to become more catabolic. Which means you're gonna have more difficulty keeping muscle mass on, building muscle mass. You'll start to add potentially a little bit of body fat. You'll have more irritability, more brain fog, more lower mood, groggyness, those types of things. And so what we wanna do is we're gonna lower this through lifestyle, food, and nutritional supplementation. And then we're gonna track your sleep overnight to make sure you're getting 1.5 hours of deep and two hours of REM. And that'll be a really great sign that your testosterone's gonna rebound. Now the nice thing is, you don't have to run this whole lab again if you don't want. You can just run your testosterone DHEA number. Okay. And just with one tuba saliva in the morning. So it's super simple. That's awesome. To retest. Could there be any nutrient deficiencies that can cause SBHG to be too high, like boron? I heard a boron deficiency can cause that. All of the ones that would raise testosterone naturally, a deficiency would also, not all of them, but would also affect sex hormone biting globulin. Got it, got it. So testosterone can basically convert over to DHT and DHT actually has two pathways. It can convert over to estrogen or it can convert over to, what did I just say? You said DHT and you said estrogen. Estrogen or be bound up by sex hormone biting globulin. Got it, got it. So those are three ways. And we want it to pool as free testosterone that it can be used or dihydrotestosterone which can be used. Okay, so what stress relieving techniques have you seen have the most success? Besides total lifestyle change, because obviously sometimes you just got to change your lifestyle, whatever. But have you seen great results from things like meditation from maybe not having electronics on two hours before bed? Like where have you seen some of the best success? With sauna, infrared sauna. Based on all of those things. And this is, so when I first was in my practice, I was saying, okay, binaural beats, those are phenomenal. Meditation, fantastic. Qigong, tai chi, yoga, sauna, not necessarily cold plunge, which is more stimulating, breathwork. But then I say to the individual, what are you actually willing to do? Because that's the thing that matters. Well, Doug's the bad guy, he'll do it all. Yeah, he's a great client. And that actually is for some people too. So I say, okay, we don't want to do it all because then that's more stressful too. So what are the one or two things that you would actually enjoy doing? Because the goal here is to take Doug out of fight or flight and to put you more in what's called the rest and relax or parasympathetic nervous system. So what to you would allow you to calm down the fastest? My goal is always to be able to help people catch themselves in fight or flight. So we use HRV testing or we do just biofeedback on the hour, which just takes you back to your breath. So there's a lot of biofeedback based devices. Hanyu Health has one, Leaf has one, and or just a phone app that you would literally just entrain your breathwork. Breathwork is the number one way to get in the parasympathetic. Now I'm assuming, cause he's high throughout the entire day that if there was like an order of operation of which, where would I attack first? I would think it would be before bed, like get that like organized, right? Absolutely. So put a routine or start really trying to get that fixed. And then hopefully it'll. Something else you said that was, I mean, I want to go back to you because I think it's so important for people to hear. As I said, you know, Doug's a great, I used to train Doug way back in the day. He was one of my favorite clients cause he would literally apply, you know, whatever I recommended. And you made a great point. You said, no, some people do everything and that that's just more stress. And that for Doug, that's perfect because I remember he did, he did the, one of those sleep rings that measures your sleep and made him sleep terrible because he was thinking about it constantly and trying to beat his score. So he had to take it off. So such, and this isn't just for Doug, this is for anybody listening right now where sometimes doing everything is more stressful than just doing one or two things. And you're actually going to give yourself worse. Well, I imagine the advice you give is very similar to what we give with strength training exercises. You probably would say, listen, let's, let's pick one of these, let's crush it. Yeah. Let's be consistent with it and then we'll add on it and then we'll add on it and we'll do it that way, right? 100%. And I always go with the 80, 20 rule. So the 80, 20 rule, and again, I'm sure you've chatted about this, but it's 20% of your actions. So it's like the few things that you do that give you 80% of the results. So I could do a lot of things to get 100% of the results. I'd rather one or two things that give you 80% of the results. More likely to be consistent in all that stuff. Consistent with what you believe you'll do. So I think meditation is great. However, when most people are done with meditation, it's done and that's not beneficial. You need to be able to bring it with you throughout the day. So it's like, what can you do that keeps you at more of a sense of calm? And a lot of times in the beginning, it's just setting alarms every hour to just check back in, do a little bi-feedback, breathe, because you're trying to get your body back and it's really your nervous system to a more even resonance. Something I do, Dr. Cabral, this was just worked really well for me. It was really hard for me to be present and have space to do so, especially if I have my phone near me, our business is media-based and it's so easy for me to get on there. But when I go to the gym and I go in the sauna or steam room, I can't bring my phone because it's too hot. So I've combined the two. So I'll go in the sauna and then I'll meditate or pray, which is my form of meditation. So now I don't have my phone, I'm in the sauna and I'm already here so now I can sit here and do this. And just a tip for people watching right now, if they find that it's really tough, sometimes putting yourself in a place where the hiking for some people works real great too because they're hiking and they get no reception anyway. So it's like, cool, I'm already off my phone now as well. That's 100% agree. I call it three anchors. So I have three anchors throughout my day because I'm much more prone to overproducing now that my body's healthier. So in the morning, I have basically a half hour to an hour before my family's up, that's my time. It's not looking at my phone, not doing work, nobody's up yet, I don't need to be texting or emailing or whatever it is. So that's my time to just kind of ease into the day, enjoy the day, do something inspirational, meaning like listen to something inspirational, read something inspirational. And then after lunch, not only is it healthy for my body, but I go for a walk. I have my phone, but I'm not looking at it because I put on binaural beats. And then that mid-afternoon, before I get home, I like to just do a workout. That's my time. It's like afternoon and then like, okay, the stress is eased away. And then try to pick one more before bed. These things are short, like you don't have to do a lot of these things. Maybe it's a sauna, maybe it's a relaxing shower, do something to just calm things down. Okay, excellent. All right, so any more on his saliva or do we move on to the blood now? Move on to the blood, yep. So the good thing is that, well, we'll do one at a time. When we're looking at your free T4, you want it between a two and a three, okay? So you want that between a one and a two and you're a 1.5, so that's excellent. For your free T3, that was T4. So basically it goes from TSH to T4 to T3. And then if your T3 doesn't look good, because it can be actually converted over to something called reverse T3. And the same reasons for sex hormone binding globulin being high, reverse T3 would be high. Now, Doug, though yours looks good. And most, I'll tell you this, women are much more prone to thyroid based issues than men. It's double the amount. Any reason why? Because I knew that fact, but I don't know why. Does it have to do with their hormone profile or? My hypothesis is the same reason as to why they're not able to do as long of a fast. So their body under stress begins to lower metabolism. So the scientific part is there. Child bearing. That's right. So their metabolism drops way faster than men. And they do terrible on extended skipping of breakfast typically for a long period of time. I'm not saying every woman in the world, but if you put a woman's endocrine system under greater stress, her TSH will go up showing lower thyroid, her cortisol levels, especially before bed will go up, her estrogen levels remain normal, her progesterone levels will just drop. And it causes estrogen dominance and cause infertility. It's one of the number one things we see in our practice. Men, not to the same degree. I had a female client that was fasting till three o'clock every day, loved it at first. Then she started, her hair started falling out. She started getting all these symptoms of stress. So it's exactly what you're saying. And that's right. Everyone feels better in the beginning because one, 30% of the energy you typically use per day is going towards food. So if you're not putting any food in your stomach, okay, well we got a little bit more energy back. And then also a lot of people have gut-based issues. So when they put food in their stomach, there's a slow parastaltic movement. Food sits there for longer, it begins to ferment. That causes bloating and gas. Nobody feels good from that. So there's different reasons for that, but in the beginning people can feel better. And then yes, you start to get depleted and more catabolic. Interesting. Men just takes much longer. Okay, very interesting. So overall thyroid, your free T3 was between a three and a four is a 3.1 that looks good. Your TSH levels, thyroid stimulation hormone should be between a 0.5 and a two for optimal. Yours is a 0.9, so it's excellent. Your TPO antibodies should be below a 50, yours are a eight and they look great. So no issues there. Your insulin in the morning should be between a two and a six, yours is totally normal. Hemoglobin A1C should be below a 5.7, yours is a 4.9. Perfect. Your vitamin D though is low at a 38. So conventional medicine will tell you that the normal range is between 30 and 100. It's an insane range, which is why again, people do not have the proper immune system that they should have. And the optimal range is between 50 and 70. Not above, because that's pushing your immune system too much and maybe even a little bit of what's called hypercalcemia. So it's pulling more calcium into your arteries, which we don't know what. And yours is a 38. So it's not gonna take a lot more, but if you're not using any vitamin D right now, are you using any vitamin D? I am, which is again interesting because I did the blood test back in July and it came out as a 66.6 and then prior to that in February it was 65.3. So I find it interesting that I'm so low on this. Are you using the same exact dosage of vitamin D? Yeah, about 5,000 I use a day. And it's not, so it's how many months removed? Two months removed, maybe a month and a half removed from when you're doing it where you're getting less sun towards the end of August? Or towards the mid-end of August? Probably, I had more. We were in Mexico in the end of June. So that, and that's the way to, again, this is all to bio-individuality. So my goal for you is like when you're in Mexico or you're getting a lot of sun, you don't need to supplement vitamin D. But when you're not, and something like you, where you have a pretty good base, you may only need 2,000 I use a day. Like you don't need 4,000 I use, which a lot of people do. I supplement with vitamin D in the winter months much more than I do in the summer. Summer months sometimes are not at all, winter months I bump it. But so this highlights that it's important or that it could be very important to test yourself maybe two or three times a year. That's right, especially for vitamin D. Got it. And that can be a single vial as well. Actually, that's a blood spot. Sorry, vitamin D is always tested with blood. As a sample there. Interesting. So overall, your results, when we're looking at these, we want to lower the conversion to estrogen. So typically we always recommend, well, one is we're gonna recommend reducing stress. That's first and foremost, because then that will help with testosterone not converting to more estrogen. The second is increasing cruciferous vegetable intake, which will then help process the estrogen and remove it from the body faster. So that's a big thing. Is that from DIM that's in? That's right. You can take a supplement, which is DIN, as well as I3C. Got it. We call that estrogen balance. It combines both of those together. So, and these don't have to be long-term. So once we get the stress levels, namely cortisol lower, testosterone will begin to rebound, estrogen will begin to naturally lower. Your thyroid's already good. We're gonna add a little bit more vitamin D if you're not maintaining a 10. And that's gonna help with the testosterone. And then three of the things that I just wanna say are great for testosterone, which I think are already put in here, are vitamin C, zinc, vitamin D, which we just chatted about. And then if you're not using any magnesium, a little bit of magnesium and ashwagandha, we use a product called, well, you can use two. One's called Adrenal Sude. The other's called Daily Testosterone Support, which would have vitamin C, zinc, et cetera in it. But again, I don't want people to supplement their way out of high levels of cortisol, right? Your goal is to lower the cortisol, use Adrenal Sude in the beginning, which is ashwagandha, ethylene, fossil saring, so people can get these anywhere to be able to lower those levels and then reset the diurnal rhythm. So diurnal rhythm means up during the day from about, let's say, seven in the morning to seven at night, then turn it off from seven at night to seven in the morning as best you can. The question for you, because last time we did the hair test and my magnesium was high when I did that. But when I got the vitamin stack from you, you included magnesium. I was curious why that was included. Yeah, so if I'm remembering correctly, on your minerals and metals test, you had a four high, which was all of your electrolytes were elevated, calcium, magnesium, sodium, and potassium. Now the interesting thing is these are two completely different labs. They don't share data at all. You had a four high on that lab showing high levels of stress. Your all four of your cortisol were elevated today as well. Two different labs saying the same exact thing. So the way that we calm fighter flight is with we don't supplement potassium, but we can supplement magnesium, especially the latter half of the day. Excellent. Okay, yeah. Any other questions? All right, yeah. It took a while with me. I'm like, all right. And so that explains the overall test, so the first one you kind of always get the most and then we'll be able to, you kind of know all the different parameters. All right, so for Justin's same thing, estrogen should be below 1.2, 0.5 to 1.2. Yours was a 1.9. So again, a little bit of stronger conversion of testosterone to estrogen. We'll get to that in a moment. Progesterone was really great at a 24. Testosterone, so typical testosterone for your age range would be 90 to about 120. Now that does not mean, so the range actually for healthy goes up to 148. Let's call it 150. You can be at the top end of that range. So there's nothing wrong with that at any age. Like you can be 60 years old and be 140, 150. Nothing wrong with that all. And you can do it. It took me a long time. I used to have low testosterone, high level of estrogen as well as a teenager. Like it was awful. And then again, get body healthy. My testosterone on average is the high 130s or low 140s. And that's just using all natural based solutions. But mainly it's from calming that sympathetic nervous system at night and sleep. Like that's one of the biggest things. So Justin, your testosterone was a 163. So it was a little high out of range. Now you're using some testosterone replacement therapy or treatment, TRT. So why I bring this up is if you're going to use TRT, you wanna use it exactly like Justin's using it. It's the perfect amount of TRT for your body. It's just at the high end of normal. Which means that it's not gonna have any of the potential ramifications that can happen with using too much testosterone. So back in the day when, let's say even 10 years ago, when doctors were using TRT and actually a lot of doctors are still doing this unfortunately, they are not retesting free testosterone and they're just doing it and just giving anything based on symptoms. And the problem is that not today, not tomorrow, not even next year, in your later 50s and early 60s, you can end up with heart disease or heart attack. You can end up with higher blood pressure. You can end up with enlarged prostate. You can end up with low sperm count. You can end up with higher levels of estrogen and potentially sleep apnea as well. And so it's important just to be cognizant of that because TRT is just very, very common now. And so you just wanna make sure that you're using the appropriate dosage in order to get you to optimal levels. So you said it's converting now though on the higher end of estrogen? That's correct. So then you just need something to block that estrogen. Address that. That's right. And it's not too high, so it can go up to a 2.2, but for me, I'm always about optimal. Like what's optimal? Well, optimal is 1.2 or less. So first I'm using a product called estrogen balance which contains dim and I3C. I'm also gonna make sure liver function is good and I'm gonna get those cruciferous vegetables in your diet every day, at least two cups to three cups. Now, can you do that in conjunction with running TRT? Yes, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So question I have around that. So with testosterone replacement therapy, typically usually it's done through, well, it can be done through injection and they use what's called long acting ester, meaning you inject testosterone and the highest peak is the day after, two days after, and then it slowly declines to your next dose. Could the timing of this test be affected by the timing of your testosterone injection? 100%. Okay, so if you did it the day before, you may see a much higher range versus if you do it the day before you're supposed to do your next injection. And if you're going to do it, I just say always do it right. So the easiest way to do it is you'll just get, like how often would you do it? Last week. Usually once a week. Okay, so there are some people who are doing tiny amounts daily, they're doing the same for growth hormone and there are some people that are doing two to three times a week and there's some people who are doing weekly. So it really depends. Now, what I would say is, okay, get three tubes that you're gonna do the day after, two days later and two days after that because what if you're like really low six days later? Okay, well like let's do a little less, but let's do it twice. So again, you'd have to use a different type because there's a long lasting and so it wouldn't work, you wouldn't wanna, but you would know when you drop and it helps your doctor out because your doctor is not gonna be running these labs most likely, some will. And for you to run a venous blood draw is not only a pain and it's painful but you're spending a lot out of pocket. Yeah, and it's just inconvenient but I actually divide mine into two doses. So instead of taking one dose once a week I do two. Are you still doing that? And I feel better. Oh, I know you experiment with that. I didn't know if you were still doing that. I feel better, but I mean, they say, you know, they'll say it doesn't make a difference. It does for me, I feel better. I don't get the highest peak but I also don't feel like I go down as loud. If people are going to do it, the smaller, more often dosage is gonna be mimicking more naturally what the body would naturally do anyways. Makes sense. Some people now do sub-queue with the oil. They actually use tiny little doses throughout the week, sub-queue, which is really weird, but that's a new thing. Yeah, okay. I don't know as much about that. Going on to, so basically what I'm saying is the amount that you're using, at least yours was the day before, is the proper amount, no doubt about it. Now does it drop too low six days later or five days later or maybe? Because remember, it's impossible to say does it last a week. It depends on liver clearance. Like how quickly are you gonna bind up and clear this testosterone for your body? That's different for every individual. That's a genetic thing. We had to manipulate that. So the doctors and I had to go back and forth a couple of times where I started at every seven days, then six days, and then five days because of that. It was drop, I would get, I would look great the day or two after and then I would actually drop even lower than what I did coming into my testosterone test. That's right. And that's the worst part because your highs feel amazing but your lows are depressive. They're awful. So yes, you have to, well it can be not just depression but it can be irritability, mood swings. You have like all the symptoms of like low blood sugar but you're not low blood sugar. Right, it is Adam. Yeah, mood swings. Yeah. Well, we'll get to Adam's. So your DHEA though, Justin's perfect. It's 12.4. So super strong a DHEA. Your cortisol in the morning should be between a six and nine. Yours is 7.6. So excellent. Your cortisol at lunch is elevated. So it's a 3.8. Okay. Cortisol is not massively elevated but it's certainly elevated. Cortisol in the evening is almost double. So it is high around dinner time. Interesting. I figured my in the morning was gonna be the lowest which you want that to be the highest. You do? Yes. Yours is normal in the morning but the problem is, it's gonna feel low to you. So this is the beginning of more of a, it's not getting burnt out but it's moving to suboptimal and the reason is that your evening is also high normal. So everything in your day is high, high, high normal and then morning is gonna feel like low because if it's not high normal as well, for you it's gonna feel like a low and so you're gonna feel like maybe a brain fog in the morning, tough to get going, a little slower, those types of things. It's always been that. I just said it explains a lot, right? Probably way worse even, it's getting a lot better. What effects does caffeine have on the stress hormones? Cause I know caffeine is a stimulant. Yes. It's energized. Does it, let's say your cortisol is a little out of whack. Is that one of the first things you wanna try to lower or remove? So caffeine for someone with lower cortisol and lower dopamine, cause there are people more of an endomorphic body type. They don't produce as much cortisol. They don't produce as much norepinephrine. They're slower to get going. For them a cup of coffee in the morning can be fantastic. Like it's not, and you can actually measure these results. I would have no problem. I always, again, I like to use, so up first and foremost, I don't have any issues with coffee at all. If someone have high cortisol in the morning, like I wouldn't recommend coffee for a dog, caffeinated coffee. You could do a Swiss water process. Decaf, organic, like that's totally fine. You get all the antioxidants from it. Coffee is super high in antioxidants. Basically what I do, I avoid caffeine for the most part. Excellent. And we're gonna use a product for you that has, again, ashwagandha, alfionine, some fossil saring to get these levels down while you're getting the lifestyle things to stick. Cause lifestyle takes six, 12 weeks to really like get it to stick. The supplements can help right away. Right. And the meditation, the breath work. So what we're gonna do for you is lower the second half of the day cortisol and then give you a little boost in the morning. Now a boost in the morning would be something like rhodiola, licorice root, all of those things herbal wise or you can do a couple of coffee. Like it's not that you can't. I just don't want that to extend through the day and I don't know how that would look. So if you do use coffee in the morning. Oh yeah. Okay. We already see that. She does coffee IVs. They make fun of me how frequent it is. So for you then, if you're saying it's coffee throughout the day, I would do coffee before noon because your caffeine has a half life of at least six hours. And so if you're having another one at two, three in the afternoon. I can feel that too by the way. If I go past 12, it's yeah. Absolutely. It goes too far into my sleep. Yeah, I notice a huge difference on that too. So we'll certainly wanna work on that. We'll keep that. You can do decaf to help wean yourself off and then that would work as well. Yeah. So your overall thyroid levels, again your thyroid T4 should be a one and a two. Between a one and a two, you're a 1.2. It's great. Your T3 should be between a three and a four. You're a 3.8. Your TSH should be a 0.5 to a two. You're a 1.5. So even though it seems like it's climbing, no problem at all. Again, this is also a snapshot in time. So anytime you do blood work, it's a snapshot in time. And that's kind of what I was saying to you, Doug, as well as like when you test blood work, that's what it was that day. Now vitamin D should be pretty steady if you're getting same levels of vitamin D and it's also a fat soluble vitamin. But hormones could change from day to day. Like that's important to look at that. So it should always be done on a normal day. And that ends usually within your range as well. Your TPO antibodies are below a 50. They're a 22. So that's great. Your insulin in the morning is a 7.7, which is certainly showing a little bit more of what's called a stressor in the morning. Sometimes it's called the cortisol awakening response. Sometimes it's dipping into low blood sugar or sometimes just the mind's racing right when we get up. There's some type of stressor there. And your hemoglobin A1C is great and a 5.0 should be below a 5.7. And your vitamin D is a 31. So you're within the conventional medicine normal range. But again, I would like to bump you up. Yeah, and that's probably just recently got up because I've been getting a lot more sun being out at practice and whatnot. Like before that, I was feeling the effects of low vitamin D for sure. And I think it's really important that most people, and again, this is my opinion, but it's also backed up by tens of thousands of labs we run, most people do well with a lower dose, like 2,000 I use as an adult daily. And the reason is that vitamin D effects almost everything in the body. Like every hormone, all of your metabolism, your skin turnover, your immune system. So I would rather earn the side of use 2,000 I use a day unless you're literally going to the beach that day or getting a lot of sun. Because if you think about it, I mean, well actually you go into practice, you might be wearing shorts and a t-shirt, so it's almost full body exposure. But a lot of people like, oh, well, I'm outside for like 20 minutes a day. Yeah, but like their entire body's covered, like my body's covered. So I can't really get vitamin D exposure just on my face, it's not gonna be enough. Don't some scientists call consider vitamin D almost like a hormone? That's right. Absolutely, and because it affects the hormone pathways in the body. So thyroid and testosterone. Now your testosterone is good, but we wanna look at that. Yeah, well I barely ever supplement with vitamin D so that would be something I would like to see the effects if I started doing that. And then, so you always wanna take vitamin D with something like a daily activated multi or we use the daily nutritional support. And the reason is vitamin D needs all the cofactors. So a lot of people take vitamin D and their levels are still low. You need K2, you need magnesium, you need calcium, you need these things that help shuttle it into the cells. Got it, okay. All right, so overall it was good. And again, what I'm saying too is monitor your testosterone replacement therapy. Just always make sure that it's the level it should be. Now the thing is, once you dial all of this in, let's say you reduce your stress levels, it may actually boost your testosterone, will boost your testosterone potentially naturally. So you might even need a little bit less of a dose, but you only know that until you start testing. And you can really optimize your health that way. Very cool. All right, Adam is up. Oh boy. Here we go. Here we go. And the big winner today. I'm saying we'll see what's going on here. Go easy on me, doc, go easy on me. There weren't any bets here. Everybody got real quiet once the labs. Well, your freaking cell got disqualified, it's lame. It would be good, but it's okay. Part two. So estrogen again should be that 0.5 to 2.2 but ideally below at 1.2. Yours was the lowest at 1.4. So it's close and I know you're doing things to actually optimize that. I would have guessed that for sure. And I wish I would have thought to remember to bring this to today's interview because when I took the test, I did write it down in my bathroom and I don't remember what it was because I wanted to know when I got my labs that I could tell you, oh, this is four days after my shot or five days after so we could actually be a little. So I have that. So for the audience, I'll go back and look. But I think it was towards the end. I think it was like on day, I want to say like five. So right before I was supposed to take another shot. As an aromatase inhibitor or for... Just testosterone. Just testosterone. Well, both actually, because the way it goes, it goes, I take my shot, then the next day I take one milligram of aromidex and then 48 hours later I take another, or then the next day I go aromidex and then I'm off until I take my next shot again. That's kind of the order. And we've had to tweak that a lot because my estrogen levels have been up and down and up and down. So that's been one of the most challenging things for us to balance. Okay. And so your progesterone was a higher at a 55 that men typically are. I'm going to explain that in just a moment. But when was your last injection of the TRT? Well, before the lab test. That's what I have written down. I don't know. Oh, okay. Yeah. So I think it was, I think, I haven't written down at home. I'll double check. Because it says one day on this lab. Oh, did I write it? Yes. Okay. I knew I wrote it down. I didn't know if I wrote it down on the, okay, great. So the lab actually asks you what pharmaceuticals you're taking and what natural therapists you're taking. Oh, good. So I did write it down. Okay, good. And that helps me read the lab too. Because sometimes they're like, why is this? I have women come in that are not going to, like you're all seeing good, whoever the doctor is is good. They're very good. There are people that call themselves functional medicine doctor and prescribe these hormones and the levels are awful. Like they're ridiculously high off the chart for women as well. Like this was my experience. I had, I went through a different clinic before and they just were, they were terrible. People aren't, they have to be specifically trained in this. Yeah. I knew they weren't as, I'd ask, I know I'm not very knowledgeable and I'd ask questions and that I knew more of the answer than they know that this is just can't be good. That's always a dead giveaway. All right. So looking at your testosterone though, again, normal range 44 to 148, but really we want you around a hundred. Okay. So for your age range, you're at a 223. Now the upper limit we would say is 150. Now if you're using TRT, you can of course be a little bit higher. What I would say is this is a higher level than I would like to see. Now there's two things we have to think about. You're almost a one right after this. Yeah. Right. So now what does it look like? Six days out, seven days out. It doesn't drop then to that low level still or not. Yeah, it actually really drops. That was part of why we actually increased the dose was because I did have a, I forgot how he described it, but a faster rise and drop. Metabolize it very quickly. So let's say you're used, let's say though that once you're on it, that this is the plan for most people. You're not typically coming. Right. Right. Okay. So let's say you're using this, you're living to a hundred years old. Let's say you're using this for the next 60 years. Got it. It's worth experimenting right now and this will only get better and better. Is it better for you to use a shorter acting every other day? I'm going to know. I mean, after hearing, I didn't know Sal actually went through and stuck with it, but I have an experiment with that where I actually break the smaller dose. Or you might keep it more level. Yeah, I know. You could also do a propionae, but then you'd have to inject every day or so it's kind of a pain in the butt or... I think just simply breaking it up in two will make a big difference. Talk with your functional medicine doctor about that. You know, whether they want to look at that. But, and here's why I wanted to share a little bit more. So it's not just affecting your testosterone that day. So it's a little on the higher side that I would like to see, meaning like, because I want you to find something that you can then just do forever. And it works with your body. And everybody's body's a little bit different. But your DHEA, it should be between idyllia six and an 18. Yours is almost a 40 to 39. So, but you might say like, well, why is that? Well, it's the same reason progesterone's a 55. So if you look at the hormonal pathway, again, it goes cholesterol, pregnant alone. And then it goes DHEA, testosterone, estrogen. But then on the other pathway, it goes progesterone, cortisol. You have so much hormone in your body that it's totally satisfying testosterone. But then it's raising progesterone and it's raising DHEA. And if you see in your lab now, it's raising cortisol as well. Your AM cortisol should be between a six and a nine. You're a 17.4. So high levels of cortisol. You're a three at noon. So you're just out of range. You're a 3.3 in the evening. So you're almost double the range. And at night, you are a 0.8. We want you at a 0.4 or less. So you have, when you look at like the bucket of hormone, your bucket's overflowing. You have so much hormone in your body that it has to go somewhere. So he's hormonal. He's hormonal. There's a lot of hormone in this body. So when we're looking to optimize, we're saying like, you may feel well, but it's too much. Question. Got a question for you because he was, because we're also, and same for me, like my wife, we're gonna have a baby in the next couple of months. So along with my testosterone replacement therapy, I was also put on HCG to maintain sperm production. HCG mimics luteinizing hormone, which drives the production of all these other hormones. Taking testosterone, that can't get converted back to DHEA, right? But the HCG could boost the DHEA. I know you're using HCG as well. Could the HCG be more of what's responsible for the elevation of the other hormones? Potentially, but if we look at it, once testosterone needs are satisfied, and your body, so your body's essentially shifting it to say, how many total places can this hormone shift to? Could shift to aldosterone, which we haven't talked today, which could cause high blood pressure, right? Water retention and all that stuff, right? That's, and that goes with estrogen and aldosterone, that's correct. So what we wanted to say, are there any symptoms? Again, I don't have your questionnaire or anything, but you can start to feel like you're burning out, because everything is just being pushed to the max. Hard to turn your mind off, more aggressive, more anger, more competitive, more irritable, forgetful, or trouble focusing, trouble sleeping, and then for men, when they start to have more estrogen and higher levels of cortisol, they can start to put on belly fat, fat underneath the armpits, like right around the pecs, muscles, and that's kind of like a giveaway that there's too much of a high stress-based process going on in the body. Okay, so right away, I already know I'll probably, because here's the challenge, because again, this has taken a day after, and this is some of the stuff that Dr. Ran and I have talked about, and why I had moved up the dose, and we were pushing these things, was because by come day five and six, I really go the opposite direction. And so, they started me off at a lower dose, and it wasn't, and I probably would have tested much better after the day, or two days, you know, afterwards to this test, but then if you got me four days later, I was really low. So, I definitely think splitting it would be something that will help. What are some other natural things that I can do to improve this? That's actually what I was going to recommend, because there's only so much that you can do in terms of a pharmacological intervention, but you would feel better towards even the end of this if we reduce some of the higher cortisol stress-based production. And so then, you wouldn't be zapping your testosterone naturally as much, like lowering it. This would hold, and you're, well, again, at some point your own natural testosterone is going to start to shut down if it's at a higher level. So, we just want to be cognizant of that, so then you'll be dependent on that, which, again, is okay, but we just don't want to believe then we can kickstart our own until you are lower dosage or off of it, right? But the cortisol will absolutely make you feel better about that. Less estrogen conversion will make you feel much better. Your DHEA is already fantastic, which will help you feel well. But then, and I don't know that I'd necessarily recommend the daily testosterone support for you. I don't think it would have the same effect. However, I would recommend something like the adrenal soothe, a magnesium, which I believe you're already taking right now, optimizing your vitamin D, so not to cut to the chase, but your vitamin D was a 26. So, we want to optimize your vitamin D as well. And all of these things in conjunction with working with your doctor to find the right dosage or timing for you is what's gonna find the sweet spot that you always feel level, because you actually just want to feel level. You don't want to feel like go, go, go, can't turn it off or then you're burning out. Yeah, well, complete transparency for the audience, and I just want to admit this so you know too. After we saw you last time, I was really good and consistent for about a month or a month and a half of taking the supplements. When it ran out, now I've missed my adrenal soothe. I've definitely had some days I've missed my vitamin D. So I've been inconsistent with the supplementation that you had already put me on before. So, you know, just another reminder for me to get back to being consistent with those things for sure, in addition to maybe splitting the dose up. And I might, because I actually feel really good right now. I do feel really good. I do feel my sleep is not the best right now. I think I'm heavier than I normally am. I've woke myself up a few times. Katrina has mentioned that she's heard me snoring, which is not normal for me. And so I do, I think that can be improved. And so hopefully leaning out in the next month or so will improve that, splitting my dose up and then making sure I'm taking, which you had already prescribed me. I mean, you've told me the adrenal soothe was on my list and so was the vitamin D. Anything else? We want to make sure that your, whatever you're doing, because it sounds like there's a little extra inflammation as well, that we're, so we've talked about your autoimmune based issues in the past. So if we're, again, if we're going back to the beginning of our conversation and we're looking at stress cortisol and we're looking at gut, we just want to make sure your gut function is good. And I don't know if we've ever run a gut lab. We haven't, but that's the next thing I want to do with you. Yeah. So we want to look at that and we want to do a true holistic picture. So we can fix stress, but if there's the gut issues, okay, it's going to be causing more inflammation, more likely for sleep apnea, more likely. So your testosterone placement therapy will work better if everything else in your body is working better. And you'll be less reliant on it for how you feel highs and lows. Got it. Yeah. And it'll work even better. Yeah. Okay. Excellent. So thyroid for you, again, free T4 should be between a one and a two. You're a 1.7, it's excellent. Your free T3 should be between a three and a four and you were a 2.8. So you might say, oh, it's a little bit low. We'll get to that in just one second. Your TSH should be between a 0.5 and a two. You're a 1.3 and your TPO antibodies are super low, they're a six. So then if you go to your free T3 and you're like, oh, that seems a little bit low, you should not make a big deal out of one specific number if your TSH is still below a two. And the reason is, is that there isn't necessarily a need or a call, most likely in your body, for more thyroid, because if there was, thyroid stimulated hormone would typically be higher to call for it. So if TSH was like a 2.8 and your free T4 was a, or your free T3, which it is 2.8, I'd say, okay, we're not getting enough for that thyroid made. First reason, higher levels of stress. Higher levels, again, I hate to say it, but women's hormones have a much more difficult time staying balanced than men. This scenario, again, 70% of our practice is typically women, 30% men. You'll see these thyroid numbers all like literally so dysfunctional because of high levels of cortisol. So yours is strong, they look good. I wouldn't necessarily do anything there. Your insulin in the morning is a little high. It's a 7.8, should be between two and six. Again, that can be higher levels of cortisol. It's called the cortisol awakening response. It's highest upon waking. When cortisol spikes, remember, it's a glucocorticoid. It can actually be increasing your own glucose levels without you even eating anything. And all this could be caused by what I was saying about having bad sleep and maybe even snores. Yeah, sleep apnea is a tough one or just wakes throughout the night. Your hemoglobin A1C is great though, it's below four and your vitamin D we want to optimize. It's a 26. So even if you were to get sun over the next two, three weeks I would still supplement vitamin D to get it right back up. Excellent. So who got the most green? Okay, so it wasn't Adam. Yeah, we do what was to be there. Let's see here. Oh, I didn't mean to hand out your labs to you. It was Justin. Yeah, the big winner. Gold star, here you go, Justin. So healthy. He's the most nourished. Oh, so healthy. Yep, so healthy. So optimized. But the nice thing is, as I said before, so Adam for you, what I would do is get your lifestyle, tier T, your supplements where you want them to be, then retest this again. Yeah, yeah. And that would be great. I think this really highlights the importance of looking at the big picture. I mean, you, for example, you said, look, if your T3 is a little low, we also have to see that your TSH is high to say, okay, this is an issue. Otherwise, whatever your T3 number is so long as it's not super low. That's right. It's what your body needs and your body's utilizing it well. So it does highlight, and that's just one example that highlights that, one test, one thing, one metric. I mean, it doesn't really tell you the whole story, unless it's in a danger level, doesn't tell you much. You got to look at the whole picture and that's a lot of what you guys do. Absolutely. And even if it is in the danger level, well, what are the underlying root causes rather than prescribing something in order to fix that, like a pharmaceutical drug or whatever it might be. So I think that this is accessible. The thing I'm trying to share with people is, I learned about this because I was sick many years ago, two years without a diagnosis, going to the best specialist around Boston. So just for people that know that, hey, I don't know if you're gonna do this or not, but you can run this with an integrative health practitioner, with a naturopathic doctor, with our team, and you can get your results whenever you want them. You can do it right at home, which is great. This is about as individualized of an approach as I can imagine, because when you're looking at the gamut of testers' hair, blood, saliva, and then gut testing. Did I hit them all? Yeah, so we look at just here for what's being excreted in the heavy metals, some minerals and metals. The gut testing can be done in three ways, blood spot for your food sensitivities, urine to look at candida overgrowth, as well as vitamin markers, permeability, and then you can look at stool for parasites and bacterial overgrowth, as well as H-pylori. So are we all good? I think we should all do that one too. We should all do the whole gamut. Yeah, I'd like to look at the overgrowth one. Yeah, yeah. Because I feel like we'll have the complete picture after that, right? Absolutely. Because I mean, I wouldn't even think to ask you that, like all the things that were kind of off on me, what if I had something like SIBO, could that be dramatically affecting a lot of those things too? Well, it could be absolutely affecting your inflammation to a great degree, which would potentially affect something like lowering testosterone, lowering these things. But that's why I think it's so important too, that to me, I have no problem with people using TRT, but don't use it to mask other symptoms that might be going on. Because you're gonna feel great, of course. Like, it's difficult not to feel great when you're boosting those testosterone levels. Yeah, what the audience knows that maybe you don't, because I don't think I've communicated this, it was almost two years that I went trying to do this all 100% natural. So I was constantly, no, I didn't have access, I didn't have you, I didn't go through you. I wish I would have done that early on to see if really try to dial some things. And I try to deal with my level of education on it with every natural way possible. And I had saw some improvements, but I didn't get it into the optimal range. That's my highest recommendation. So again, I have no issues with testosterone placement therapy. What I want people to do is optimize all of the numbers. I want them to be able to get the nutrients their body needs in order to produce the levels of testosterone they need to produce. And if it's still not working, after let's say a four to six month period of time, okay. This was a lot of our motivation for this partnership was we knew that we would be working too with a DRT clinic. We also were concerned about our, we did not want our community to think like we want to push people into just taking testosterone because all of us on the podcast have always said that. We always recommend going the holistic way first and doing everything you can in your possible naturally before you go that route. It doesn't make any sense if you're tired all the time because you're not sleeping and so you're just gonna take more stimulants, right? Or your head hurts because you're banging it against the wall. So let me just take some painkillers. It doesn't make any sense. So it's most important that you look at all of your lifestyle factors. And then if that doesn't work, Western medicine does a great job when it comes to certain hormone deficiencies or whatever. But up until that point, is it your lifestyle? Is it something you're missing? Look at those things. Otherwise it'll happen is if you feel bad because your testosterone is low because of something in your lifestyle, then you raise your testosterone. You may feel better, but whatever was causing that to be low in the first place is still there, causing other problems in your body. So it's very important. Exactly right. And that's the thing. So focus on your nutrition, focus on your supplements, focus on your weight training, two, three times a week minimum. Not overdoing that if you're someone that's more of a hard gainer or high nervous system output. And then if I haven't said sleep, you know, focus on your sleep. And if you can do those things, you're going to be able to boost your testosterone levels to your greatest ability possible. And then after that, you say, hey, I did everything I can. My body is healthy, yet I'm at the age now or particular point in my life where I need to supplement a little bit. Dr. Gabral, do you recommend when people, I'm assuming there's already a selection bias when people come see you, but do you recommend to people testing based off of symptoms right out the gates or is there like a, like these are the ones I recommend to everybody to get started with. So we always recommend something called the big five lab tests. Like if you can run those, everyone should run it once a year because if you go by symptoms alone, it's not going to be fast enough for you to catch what the underlying causes are that eventually lead to disease. Some people feel totally fine. Then they go to their PCP and they're like, oh, white blood cells are a 300. Like that's a problem. You know, what was going on there? So the big five are looking at your heavy metals and minerals, your gut function vitamin levels. So you just know, like, do you need these? Yes or no? Your omega six to omega three levels, we should run that lab. If we haven't run that lab yet, just to know like, hey, if you're not using any omega three supplementation, great, well you may not need it, but do you know yes or no? Most people, they have no idea and they do need it. And like that's the thing is I don't, I like to just take the ego out of it and just say, I don't know either. Let's go lab tests. Let's check these things. You can check your food sensitivities and you can check your hormones. And then the nice thing is not everything is going to be off. So you only need to optimize the one, two or three areas that need to be optimized. Then you can retest if you choose to 12 to 16 weeks later. Now it's optimized. You're good to go. You'll feel the difference. So we've been partnered up for almost like a quarter and a half, two quarters now. And you have, we have this great community that we're building. I believe we're over 10,000 people in the forum or approaching 7,000 somewhere around there in the private forum, which by the way, if the audience doesn't know it's absolutely free for you to join. MP Holistic Health, right? That's the name of it. Correct. Tell me a little bit about what you're seeing with our community. I mean, are there common themes that you're seeing or is there things you wish that people would ask or tell you more like, give me a little bit of insight on our community and what you're seeing. So one of the great things is, your community is more educated than your average consumer or client. They know more about nutrition. They know more about exercise. They're more into biohacking and they're more open to doing. They're also better looking than most people. It is online, so I haven't seen as many as that. So that is the nice thing. So we have, we can have, well, people can enter at any level. So they shouldn't feel bad about coming in and asking a question. But we have some high level discussions in there. There are at least 7,000 people in that group, which is pretty amazing because it's only been like 10 or 12 weeks. And our coaches and myself get in once a week. We get on there live. We're also answering questions daily. And we're trying to just be more approachable and able to steer people in the right direction through lifestyle, what is called my de-stress protocol. So diet, exercise, stress reduction, tox removal, rest, emotional balance, which is such a big part of it, scientifically backed supplements and then a success mindset, like being able to do it. One thing I wanna add, Dr. Cabral, is two things. One, and I've seen this so many times with clients, is someone says, I'm fine, I feel okay. But the problem is that they felt bad for so long that their context of what good is or whatever's totally warped. So then we start changing their diet and exercise and like, oh my God, I had no idea how bad I felt before. And then two, maybe you are doing everything right. I think it's important to do tests to get a baseline to know when I felt good, these are what my levels looked like, because as you said, there's a range and there is an individual variance with the ranges, maybe a little higher, maybe a little lower for you. So even if you feel no symptoms and you are healthy and you are good and you exercise, you eat right, it is nice to get a nice baseline. This is where I'm at right now when I was doing all these things, I was consistent with exercise, I was sleeping good. That way later on, if you start to feel off, you've got a great reference point that you could point to. 100%. And there is no, I'm doing everything right. It's only, are you doing everything right for you? Like, so if you're following someone else's plan, it may or may not be right for you, but until you, and again, run the lab that you feel comfortable with, but until your numbers say, yeah, you are doing everything right, I think that's a hard one, because you can say, I'm eating all the right foods, okay, I'll use, I'll literally go down and I'll look at people's micronutrients, forget macros, and I'll put in all the foods they're eating, everything, to the last morsel. And I can tell you, and including myself, it's really hard to get 100% in every area of every vitamin and mineral you need per day. I mean, look at all of us. I mean, we've been doing this for a very long time. We're surrounded by experts like yourself. I like to think we know what the hell we're doing. I mean, none of us are perfect, and there's tweaks that all of us can make. Well, my tests aren't here, we don't know yet. It's a good thing. Wish they were, you'd have been last place for sure. Last time I wasn't, I think I was second or first. Anyway, well, this has been awesome, very, very educational. And again, I recommend, I implore our audience, whether you feel good or not, especially if you don't feel good and you just can't figure out what's going on, your doctor can't figure out what's going on, like you wanna find the root cause. But even if you feel good, I think it's important to get a good baseline. Have that at your disposal so that if and when something goes wrong, you can refer back and be like, this is where I was at that moment and you know kind of where you need to go. This might be an ignorant question because I do have, lucky I have access to you in a different way that I can literally just text you. Do you, have you structured it with like different types of packages where you have like, you know, we recommend these tests and if you do, and you should do it, do your stuff and then retest it again, like if someone actually scheduled out, like their year of testing or something like that, or do you just do it by, okay, you do. Well, no, it really depends on like where the person's at and obviously there are price ranges that people wanna be in. So what we try to do is all the things that would be fairly expensive, like all of your consultations, all of those things. We include them with the lab. So like this lab you just ran here today, this is called the stress mood and metabolism lab. So it literally looks at stress, mood and overall metabolism. So when you run this lab, you get a 30 minute call with one of my team members that's going to read your results, just like I did, make sure that you understand them. They're gonna listen to your story and they're gonna help you put together a plan just basically like we did here today. And then you can choose to then run additional labs if you want. They're basically all a cart. So all of my labs are at stevencabral.com forward slash labs. But this lab is at stevencabral.com forward slash MP. And what we wanna do is, because we've done this before is something just special for your community. And so this lab though is going to be one that you're gonna be able to do with basically a cell. So you're gonna be able to run this once a year or when you're filling off or even a follow up with just your testosterone is needed. So the big five is everything but if you wanna pull them out, you can. Maybe you just wanna look at gut function or maybe you just wanna look at food sensitivities or you wanna look at the heavy metals or you just wanna look at hormones. You can do any particular lab you want without having to go to your doctor and request this. And the nice thing is we sign off on this lab for you to be able to run it. The lab gets shipped to your house. You ship it back to the lab so it's an outside lab. They run it, we get the results, we go through it and that's that. And that's stevencabral.com forward slash MP. Steven spelled with the pH. Correct. Excellent. Thanks again. Yeah, I appreciate it. This was great. This one's really important and that is to phase your training. If somebody trains for a full year doing a bench press and they're always aiming for five reps, if you compared that person to a person who did bench press where they did three or four weeks of five reps but then they did three or four weeks of 12 reps and three or four weeks of let's say 15 to 20 reps and then they'll throw in some supersets at the end of that year, you're gonna see more consistent progress from the person who's moving in and out and less injury, that's another thing. You'll see less injury as well.