 Dr. Grawl, welcome back to our show, one of our most, uh, I guess I'd say shared people, people really love your stuff. So it's always great to have you on the show. I appreciate that. That's great. So today, um, we're going to talk about inflammation. In my opinion, this has to be the topic of inflammation has to be one of the most maybe misunderstood topics in health because we're constantly told that inflammation just bad hammer it down, don't have any inflammation. I know through fitness that inflammation is a signal or for things like muscle growth and repair and that hammering inflammation can actually cause problems as well. So let's just start with inflammation. What is inflammation? What does it do? Why do we have it? Is it good, bad? Yeah. A lot of people think of inflammation predominantly with the acute phase of inflammation, which is the fever or the heat on the skin or it's happening from an injury. And so working out is actually an injury to the body, right? So you're breaking down at a microscopic level muscle tissue and that muscle tissue then needs to repair. And so there's two parts of that process. There's the repair process, but then there's the also the cleaning out process. So when you do break down muscle fiber, white blood cells have to come in. They actually have to remove the damages and make sure that that is the senescent cells are actually removed from the body. If not, it causes more inflammation. Same happens with skin based aging. So if those skin cells and they actually have peptides now to help remove those senescent cells, uh, you're going to end up aging faster and you're going to have a lot more inflammation, which makes it does lead to more muscle soreness, but it actually leads to what's called, um, exercise dysfunction or the inability to get a lot of the benefits from exercise because you're always exhausted from it. So you have what's called like flu like symptoms or myalgic encephalomyelitis. So myalgic encephalomyelitis and I want to go off in the deep end here is basically you go to do a workout and you feel so exhausted the next day, it almost feels like you have the flu. And some people have that that's exaggerated inflammation. We can't have that, but you need some level of inflammation actually build back up the muscles. And the last part I'll say to this is that if you do a lot of the cold plunges directly after your workout or you do things like take a NSAID, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug like Advil, you're actually hurting your gains and your transformation in the long run. Yeah. I've read studies on that where, uh, can people who use NSAIDs on a consistent basis to help them work out, right? So athletes who are pushing it really hard or whatever, they find that they build less muscle and they have increased risks of things like tendon ruptures and ligament tears. Is that because they've blunted the signal so much that the repair process is just not as efficient or effective? Yeah, absolutely. So there's incomplete repair. And so again, there's two parts of that as well. If it's not a complete repair of the muscle, tendon or ligament, what you're also left with is more scar tissue. So there's less scar tissue in children for a few reasons. They have much better in-check inflammation. They have higher levels of growth hormone, which is going to help improve everything from stem cell function to repair, to rejuvenation, to improvements in sleep. So it's vitally important as we age, we do the right things like not blunt the inflammation but also not take it so far. So one of the biggest, I would say, examples is when someone's taken two months off from working out, three months off from working out, they're like, I'm just going to dive back in and they do a full workout and they're super sore. And their body now has to recover from that major workout where they don't necessarily get much more benefit from doing that than they would have easing back into it because it's called a graduated exercise protocol. So you do a little bit at first, you gauge, am I sore the next day? Yes or no? If there's no real soreness, you can continue to increase from there. So we do that a lot in a clinical practice as well, because if you do have someone with like long COVID or myalgic encephalomyelitis or Addison's, whatever you want to say. Okay, we're going to start with walking. We're going to move it up to then aerobic based cardio and then bodyweight anaerobic, and then we're going to move it up to a hit and sprint training those types of things. Is it safe to say that inflammation? There's a sweet spot, essentially, that, that too much isn't good. Too little isn't good. What's, because you talked a little bit about what too much inflammation looks like. Yeah, I want to get back to that, but what's too little feel like? I want to ask Cabral to explain something because he's in that space right now, and it's something that you share on the show all the time. And I saw explains, uh, this really well for in layman's term, and I'd like to hear you explain more in depth, like what's happening. We talk about people getting stuck in what we call a recovery trap where it's like there is this, there's, there's this sweet spot of training. And, and a lot of people don't realize that more is not always better. What is it that caused you to get, you know, quote unquote, what Sal would say, the recovery trap where you're just, your body's constantly trying to recover. It's not really adapting and growing and building. Yeah. And that's the complicated part about this is that it's not one thing. And so we're looking at, so I call this the de-stress protocol, but it's, it sums it up. So it's, what does your diet look like? Your exercise, your stress, meaning like how stressed are you outside of the gym? Like, so that's our hermetic stressor, right? So when we do really hot sauna, really cold, uh, plunge, we do a really hard workout, anything pushes our body beyond the limit is our hermetic stressor. And so that's actually a good thing. And we'll kind of come back to your point about what's too little inflammation, because if you have no hermetic stressors in life, then you just fly off the deep end whenever you do a counter one, because you can't handle it. And that causes exaggerated inflammation. So you actually need small boats to stay healthy and age at a much better degree. So, but we have, uh, toxins as well, heavy metals. We chatted a little bit about that before the show. So that's kind of building up inflammation, the emotional stress that I talked about, and then a lack of nutrients. So vitamins, minerals, omegas that help balance overall inflammation. So when someone is kind of moving into that recovery bay zone, it's saying, well, you're just not eating well enough. And I have a hard time with that because we have so much info, information now along eating that most people have at least a basis of where to start. And so their nutrition is pretty good. So obviously we're looking at nutrition first, but then we're saying, um, you've met a threshold for some very strange reason that we need to dig deeper on. So I always say this, if you do five exercises and you only do one set and it's just body weight, how much less can you really do? Right? Like you can't do a whole lot less than that. So it's like, okay, you can do three exercises. So we start there and you're still inflamed. Okay. Well, we're looking then at a much deeper immunological based issue that we need to take care of as to why you're getting inflamed from just body weight exercises. Right. So it's like, uh, my gosh, I'm, I'm scaling everything down so much. There's got to be some other reason. It can't just be that I'm deconditioned. There's got to be some other stuff going on. Absolutely. Now you mentioned things like nutrients. You talked about supplements. You mentioned Omega threes, um, and we can get there. But what that, that leads to the following question, which is, or assumption that nutrients can either be pro or foods, uh, more broadly can be a pro or anti inflammatory. In other words, they may come contain compounds that enhance the inflammatory process or they may contain compounds that, um, blunt or reduce the inflammatory process. So we've got that balance. Yes. Let's start with the pro inflammatory foods first. What do those look like and what is it in these foods that encourage the, the inflammation to happen? Yeah. And so if people don't really know what inflammation is, it's, it's important to understand that it is a function, essentially of the immune system. It's not typically the immune system messing up. It is actually going after something that it sees as pathogenic in the body, or we consume a food that's highly inflammatory that then causes, and these are the symptoms that people should look for if they're not lab testing, brain fog, fatigue, groggyness upon waking, that exercise and tolerance that I spoke about before, you shouldn't be sore all the time after every workout. I mean, if you're really, I mean, if you're doing like 10 by 10s, like, you know, if you're doing something like heart, I get it, I understand, but if you're doing a normal workout and you're always sore and exhausted the next day, there's absolutely a, a very high inflammation based on that, not to interrupt, but on that, would you say a good signal for that or flag would be I've always, I've worked out like this for so long, all of a sudden the same workout and not a lot of other stuff in my life has changed, all of a sudden I just, I have an intolerance to what was usually a normal, like totally tolerable workout. Would that be like a red flag? Like, okay, something's going on. 100%, you know, and it's like, if you do the same volume, you can look at it that way. And now you're getting a different effect on your body, this time negative because your recovery is worse than there's absolutely, it's not the workout, there's something else going on inside your body. Got it. Okay. So let's get back to the pro inflammatory, I guess compounds and foods. What are those look like and, you know, what's making them pro inflammatory? Yeah. So the reason for the low mood, low energy, low libido, low drive is your body's inflamed. It's exhausted. And so, because if you're always fighting against inflammation, your body's always has a war zone going inside of it. So the most pro inflammatory foods, and we do with the put foods at the top of the list, because this is the easiest way to decrease inflammation or increase inflammation in your body, like 100%. So the most oxidative based foods, the highest inflammatory foods are going to be vegetable based oils. So a safflower oil, sunflower oil, soybean oils, canola oils. These are highly inflammatory, I don't even want to call them foods, processed based foods that are ubiquitous in the standard American diet, but it's not just America. Like I've done internships in China and India, canola oil is everywhere. And so if that and soy is now becoming prevalent all over the world, it's not hard to imagine now, well, these skyrocketing rates of heart disease, high blood pressure, type two diabetes and cancer have gone up, because those were all inflammatory based diseases as well. And they claim the lives of over 75% of us. And so it's really important that we focus on even if you look and you're functioning fine and you don't have a whole lot of those symptoms, the inflammation can actually be in the arteries. And a lot of that is from the, and I don't want to say seed oils as much because that does matter. When you take a nut or you take seeds and you turn them into an oil, there's a really volatile process that takes place. And that's what creates an oxidative stress in the body. Oxidation in the body means that your body is literally rusting from the inside out, creating free radicals, which is then robbing your body of a lot of the nutrients that you need. So for us, it's removing those first, the nuts and seeds, which we'll talk about in a moment, are actually not pro-inflammatory. They're anti-inflammatory. You turn them into an oil, now they become pro-inflammatory. So it's the process of making them in oil. The end product of that is, yes, exactly, of that is what you get. All right, everybody, it's the final hours for the MAPS Anabolic Advanced Launch Special. So I'm going to give away another free MAPS Anabolic Advanced Program. Here's how you can win. Leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode. Also, subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. If you win, we'll let you know in the comment section. Everybody else, MAPS Anabolic Advanced is still on sale for the next few hours when this episode drops. That means it's a discounted price plus you get two free ebooks. So instead of paying the retail price of $157, you only pay $97 and you get the advanced training techniques ebook and the carb cycling diet ebook. OK, so if you're interested, go to anabolicadvance.com and then use the coupon code AA60 for the discount and the free giveaways. All right, here comes the show. Now, are there any beneficial effects to some of these inflammatory foods or are there examples of that? Because from what I'm gathering is it's probably better for you to focus on getting that hermetic kind of stress that that bit from from exercise versus like getting that from food. Yeah, exactly. You're right. So the you actually get benefits from exercise because you rebuild stronger. So that's that's the whole one of the whole points of exercise is you're continuing to tell yourselves in your body that you are young. I mean, that's the biggest part to it. So a lot of people say, yes, it's the aesthetics and all that. That's fine. But you should be weight training your entire life in order to be able to kill off the old cells faster, kill off the old mitochondria faster because they can't keep up. And then your body says, oh, well, if this is the demand on the body, I need to produce stronger mitochondria, stronger cells. And so that's really important. And then going back to the food then, well, there are inflammatory foods. So arachidonic acid is an inflammatory food. So meat, for the most part, and we'll talk about that. And dairy is typically inflammatory. But I learned this a long time ago. I actually used to write for Conde Nast self. And I forget the other one. They were all kind of one conglomerate. And I was I was commissioned by them for three years to write a daily article as part of their four person team. And the head of that team, I was super young. I was like in my early 20s, I was just lucky to have the position, the job. She was she she knew it all about inflammation based ratings. She was a PhD. And she actually for her her not thesis, but basically her paper for a PhD, she went through the inflammation rating of foods. And so what I realized was, yes, there is a whole list of anti inflammatory foods. But your body actually does function best if it does have some of those inflammatory based foods, because there's actual healthy properties to them. And at the end of the day, what you're trying to do is balance inflammation. So it's not like the whole thing about moderation, I don't necessarily agree with, I agree with like balance for each individual. Some individuals can do much better with more meat in their diet, because they're more athletic, they work out more, they are repairing their tissue more. You don't need that if you're prone to gaining 50, 60, 100 pounds. And you need something maybe a little bit more catabolic. So as we start to talk about like the arachidonic acid and the higher levels of that and meat and insaturated fats in general, it's not that you should be devoid of that. It's just needing to balance that with the anti-flammatoid. Have you seen the studies on arachidonic acid and muscle gain? Yeah, absolutely. They've that was a supplement for a while where you could buy it. And I don't remember what was called or something X. I remember I told I took it as a kid because what did you not do? I had a guy at the lab. I had a friend. Yes. So but but they sold it and because why? Because there were studies that showed that people who supplemented with arachidonic acid. And of course, these are small studies, you know, healthy college age males built significantly more muscle and we're stronger. Now, when you went on the forums, people would say, yeah, I'm getting more muscular and I'm stronger. But man, I'm really sore and it's really interesting. I supplemented with it because like as a kid, I took anything that I thought would help me build muscle. And it made my joints. This was as a like 17, 18 year old kid made my joints feel stiff and I just did not feel good. And I had to stop taking it. And of course, looking back, it's like my my inflammation went through the roof with it because I also eat a lot of red meat on top of it. And I know red meat is a natural source of arachidonic acid. So yes, really interesting, really strange. Now on this, on on inflammation and you're talking about how it affects the organs and the heart, what we're really looking at are kind of low, low levels of excessive inflammation. So you're not in that sweet spot. It's a little higher than it should be. And if you look at it from an acute, you know, standpoint, not going to do too much bad to you. But you do this over five, 10, 15, 20 years, then you start to see some damage and some problems. You mentioned heart disease. When the arteries are slightly inflamed from what I've understood and I've always wanted to bring this in fact, I've wanted to ask you about this for a long time. From what I understand, your body uses cholesterol as a way to bolster the walls of your arteries, almost like spackle to kind of prevent the what's happening to cause any problems. And then over time, that becomes a problem. And that's what we get. That's when we get heart attacks. Is that did I say that right? Well, 100 percent. But like, so that's why cholesterol and heart disease and we'll say it's atherosclerosis, where we get the hardening of the arteries. So I mean, let's think of it this way, like people like to say it's well, arachidonic acid is the bad guy. No, cholesterol is the bad guy. And it's like, well, that's not how it works. And the reason is that not everybody who has high levels of cholesterol has a heart attack, right? It's only like 50 percent of people. Well, the other 50 percent of people don't have high cholesterol. So like, how is that possible? Well, it's because there's so many layers to this. So there's LDL, which is the more oxidized based cholesterol. It's actually just a low density in which it means is that it actually falls to the surface of the artery, the endothelial tissue, like you were just saying. So when there's in from inflammation, it needs to be patched. And that's really it. If not the literally artery itself, the wall will collapse or explode. So it uses that, but it also uses calcium. And here's the interesting part. So calcium calcified tissues right becomes hard. So now because cholesterol is not necessarily hard, it's just like glue. It's like toothpaste. And so that by itself, that's fairly flexible. Though as it builds up, you can't push the blood through as well. And when eventually it's completely occluded, OK, well, that artery no longer functions. And so now we have occluded artery and now we're talking about like double triple quadruple bypass, right? So now you're trying to open up all these arteries and they've got some really wild medical interventions now for that, like things that literally like cork screws that go through. It's wild. By the way, the reduction in deaths from heart heart attacks. I had a cardiovascular surgeon that I trained for a while. And he said that it was one of the greatest breakthroughs. They can actually put a device in the artery, close off two ends, put an anticoagulant in there and literally like wrote it over and have it wash out. And he says that because I said, do you think these statins have reduced lots of heart, you know, deaths? And he goes, no. He goes, it's this. And he told me because that really made a big difference. Kind of wild. I'm very suspect on statins. It causes cardiomyopathy. It weakens the heart. You can die from a weak heart just like you can die from, you know, heart attack, high cholesterol. But the why this is important is because we can't look at cholesterol alone. We actually have to look at these high levels of omega sixes, creating inflammation in the arteries. And then as those arteries become stiffer, well, now what are the main causes that or what could that lead to? OK, hypertension and cardiovascular risk. So now those are the two main reasons for all like mortality, right? So it's like those are the top two. Then after that's diabetes and then there's cancer. And so when we look at an inflammation causes can cause diabetes as well. So this is really important to look at this particular topic and the other reason why I bring up arachidonic acid is because your first symptom and I heard this not too long ago, the first symptom of a heart attack. I don't know if you guys know what this is. It's it's pretty wild. It's not pain and numbness in the left arm or, you know, a little bit of stiffness or flushness or fever. The main symptom of a oncoming heart attack is actually sudden death. And that's the wild thing about it. Meaning like there's no symptom for over 50 percent of the people. All right. Oh, there's no second chance. Like there's no getting in the hospital. Like that's it. There's no warning. And 25 percent of the people who will have a heart attack, 75 percent of those people are men. But 25 percent of those people will have that before the age of 55. And so it's not just like something that we should think about when we get into our sixties when it's most prevalent, right? Because a common age for a heart attack in the mails around 65 in a woman that's around 72, 73. But 25 percent of those are before the age of 55. And so this is why you bring it up for your audience now. It's like, pay attention to it and nobody's going to pay attention to their 20s. They'd be great if they did. But 30s, 40s, like because you don't get occluded arteries two years before you have a heart attack. Is that getting worse or better? Like, is that number coming down? Was it like 55, 60, 70 before and now it's in its fifties? Are we getting worse or better in that situation? We're getting worse. And you can look at the early 1900s versus the early 2000s or kind of moving out of that pace now. And heart attacks was not one of the top killers back then. And so that's why you can't just blame it on food like meat alone. Like that's not fair to do that because I think back in the day, there was also just less consumption. So like you could eat foods. You were more active. Activity plays such a huge role in this of telling your muscles that they actually need more protein. So think of it this way. Standard American diet, you're reading lots of meat, lots of fat, lots of grains. All right. So very high in arachidonic acid and omega sixes. But you're not training. You're not exercising. And so there's no uptake in protein synthesis. There's no need for any of these things. And so it just goes to what? Well, just pure inflammation. So arachidonic acid increases something called prostaglandin series two. Very, very inflammatory. And that is what Advil or natural herbs due to kind of block that. So there's something called butter burn, corset tin, which you guys probably talked about before. Those things are all kind of natural anti-inflammatory stinging nettles, which you could use instead of the Advil if, you know, if you choose to. Again, I think give my disclaimer now, I'm not here providing medical advice, medical treatment plans, medical cures. But, you know, we can look into that as alternatives. My recommendation is balance your omega threes to your omega sixes. So you don't really worry about the food end of it, you know, as much. Speaking of supplements, you mentioned statins earlier. What do you think of red yeast rice extract? That's a natural statin from what I understand. And I've had friends and clients who, you know, were told that they needed to lower their total cholesterol. Take that you might over the counter and like low, like effectively lower their numbers just from taking that over the counter. Is it as bad as a statin for you or is it better because it's, you know, more natural or the counter is exactly the same. Yeah. So I, I just did this on my podcast last week. I talked about this and it's because there was a medical doctor. I don't know what company they work for, but they came out and they said that nutritional supplements for lowering cholesterol do not work. And I said, OK, challenge accepted, you know, went on and because we've been using this in our practice for years and I'm like, I don't have the studies off the top of my head and I'm like, OK, here we go. Red yeast rice. I'll get back to that just a second. Believe it or not, cinnamon, berberine, garlic, like all these different things, lower cholesterol and supplement form. And so in my practice, what we always did was red yeast rice and chaioluk garlic. There's a company called Chaioluk and that's the garlic. It was one of four has the less and then in it because the less and then is really powerful as well. And so, you know, from a clinical perspective, I can tell you that it absolutely works. Now, I also don't believe that you need to be on those supplements for all that long three to six months. And that's because through other interventions, you can actually get to the root cause as to why your levels may be an elevated in the first place. Now back to statins. What is statin? It's an extract of red yeast rice. So the fact that this doctor said that red yeast rice doesn't work like blew my mind. Like, I was just like, are we even having this conversation? I'm like, do you know what the extract of from a status? It's you can look it up. It's ready. No, no, the studies on rest. It's it's it's like super established that it'll it'll for sure lower your 100 percent. Yeah, 100 percent. What about psyllium husk? So I every time I get blood work done, my cholesterol numbers come back and the doctor always comments and says this is some of the best numbers I've ever seen. Now I eat and we'll see what my inflammation test comes back. So this might I might really boost your comment. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. But from a cholesterol standpoint, my numbers always look phenomenal. I've been using psyllium husk regularly now for probably 10 years. It helps with my gut health issues. And I know that studies show that it does lower cholesterol. Is that because it reduces cholesterol that you absorb through the gut? Or how is it working? That's correct. OK. So anybody, excuse me, on a low carb diet, if you're on a higher meat diet, lower carb diet, call it carnivore, call it whatever you want. Your LDL cholesterol numbers typically go up. Typically, HDL goes up as well, but your LDL definitely goes up. And part of that is that, especially if you're in more of a state of ketosis, your body is going to use something called acetylcoenzyme A. And it's going to use that as a precursor to ketones or a precursor to cholesterol because it makes both. And so you're making all this acetylcoenzyme A, which is coming from a vitamin B5 precursor as well. And then your cholesterol is going to what? Well, it's going to your testosterone, cortisol, estrogen, progesterone, all your other numbers. There's cool. That's right. So like that's the starting point. That's your building block, that's your clay. But what happens is there's so much circulating cholesterol, if you're eating a lot of it in your diet or your liver is producing it because you're on a lower carb diet, too, that it just says, OK, we're going to move this down to what's called the terminal ileum. That's the end of your small intestine before it goes into your cecum. That's the first part of your colon. So your small reason why I say that your small intestines, 21 feet long, about 21 feet. So it's long. So it puts at the very end, specifically, through a duct from the liver to the intestine. And then it immediately just moves it out of the body. The problem is, for a lot of people, it gets reabsorbed. And so that's why you have higher circulating levels. That can be a problem. So by taking cillium husk, there's not a lot of magic behind it, except that it creates bulk in the stool. It absorbs the cholesterol itself and draws it out of the body. So it's very beneficial. Interesting. Very beneficial. All right. So we talked about inflammatory foods. You mentioned seed oils in the process of turning a seed into an oil makes them inflammatory. What about anti-inflammatory foods? The obvious ones that come to mind are like wild caught salmon and things high in omega 3s and green leafy vegetables. Like what are foods that you can eat to reduce your inflammatory load? The way I like, because I like to really make this actionable for people is that it's the Mediterranean diet without the pasta and bread. And so what you're left with is that it's not nearly as fun. That's right. So I mean, I try to live a Mediterranean diet. But then like on a Friday, I'll have the fun stuff. You know, Friday night, like I love pasta and bread because I love that. And I'm always going to eat it. If you stay a healthy, well-balanced individual, you can absolutely enjoy a flex meal once or twice a week. There's no doubt about that. So when we look at it, it's brightly colored fruits and vegetables. So it's your berries, lower glycemic. It's your lettuces. It's your, believe it or not, tomatoes and peppers are very powerful anti-inflammatories. People right away will jump to the fact that those are night shades, which they are like they absolutely are. But unlike the their cousin, which like the deadly night shades, these are night shades that contain solanine or solanine. And these are triggers in some people, but not everyone. It's probably less than 10% of the population. And well tolerated. Well tolerated. Yes. And they contain lycopene, which is a really powerful, great, great antioxidant for men because it helps with inflammation of the prostate. So it's like we don't necessarily need to stay away. I don't eat a lot of tomatoes. I don't need a lot of peppers because although I love hot sauce, it is anti-inflammatory because for me, they're more they affect me more, but that's not everybody. Right. So that's some individuals. So Mediterranean diet, brightly colored fruits and vegetables, a lot of wild caught fish. Most powerful ones are sardines, wild salmon, trout anchovies, mackerel with the skins on, believe it or not. I want to talk more about that when we get to the labs because you see not a one or two X. It's more like a five X in results when you eat the skin where a lot of the omega threes are. Oh, I didn't know that. What about fish row? Yeah, fish row, a powerful omega three. OK, absolutely. OK, excellent. All right. So that's good. So all right, we'll see what these tests look like. And so pretty. What about oil oil or yeah, is olive oil because our friend Max Lugavie, our good friend of ours, and I love talking about this kind of stuff. He's very well informed. He says olive oil is like magic. He's like it's such an incredible oil. Would that be considered anti-inflammatory? In my opinion, the most powerful anti-inflammatory. Really? And way more than a lot of people using avocado oil now. It's not even close. Avocado oil has more omega sixes than omega three. It's not saying it's bad. Like we still need. I don't want to. I don't want to demonize omega. Yeah, they're essential, right? Yeah, they're essential. Yeah, like 100 percent. We need omega sixes. And actually most balanced humans like really well balanced are about a three to one and healthy can be a five to one of omega sixes to omega threes. So it's not that we don't need omega sixes. We do. It's just that the standard American diet provides about an 18 to one omega six is two omega threes. And so now we're so lopsided in terms of inflammation. But we actually need them for cell membranes. We need them for the nervous system. So omega six is a very, very important. Olive oil. I didn't believe this. Like I'm just by nature. I'm very skeptical. So I said the best oils to cook with have to be like animal fats, right? It has to be butter. It has to be lard. It has to be tallow. It has to be these types of things. And so I said, OK, let's just prove that. And so that's what I did or coconut oil because they have a higher smoke point. So I went in. I actually looked at the studies, looked at the research and those are that is absolutely true. The problem is is that olive oil has something very unique about it. It's not the highest smoke point, but it contains an antioxidant that most others don't called oleic acid. And oleic acid prevents it from oxidizing at the same level as the others. So it's actually healthier to cook with olive oil. Now, again, try not be on a medium heat. Or when you're marinating meat, you can marinate in olive oil and it will help to reduce acrymelides, which are really carcinogenic on meat when cooked on like a grill or something like that. Wow. So olive oil, 100 percent the best way. Hold on. So if I'm barbecuing meat, because I've always heard that, right? If you barbecuing, it gets a little charred, you know, carcinogenic. So I could put olive oil on the meat and then barbecue it. And the olive oil will help protect against some of that. Yeah, we'll reduce it. No shit. Oh, wow. That's a great little hack. That's doing that for sure. Now, how much? So I mean, I grew up Italian, so my family's just I mean, we have bottles of they drink it. Yeah, we have it on everything. How like how much do do people who get this kind of optimal effects from all the way? How much they consume? I would look at it as total percentage of diet. So if I were to say two to three tablespoons a day for the average person, I think that that would be probably pretty good overall advice. But that's on, let's say, like 1,800 calories a day. You know, like what if you're eating 3,600? Well, yeah, five or six tablespoons might be totally appropriate just because of the total percentage that we're looking out of. Got it. Now, talking about fatty acids, is it a big? Is it a big enough difference considering somebody eats a lot of meat and they've been eating meat for a long time? Is it a big enough difference when something is grass grass fed versus, you know, grain fed? Because I know it does change the fatty acid composition of meat a little. It's not a huge difference, but it changes it a little. Is it enough to make a difference to say grass fed, that that'll make a big difference. I'll stick to grass fed. It actually makes an enormous difference. I very rarely, well, I actually will never eat meat in my own home that is not grass fed because I can control it. But let's say we went out to dinner. That's my rule. Like there's no restaurant that serves grass fed. Almost none. There was one in Boston, like that was it. And they only had one cut of steak and that was it. And like, that's what they got. And so it's fine. So like, if that's my flex meal, cheat meal, whatever you want to call it, I'm just enjoying dinner out with my friends. That's just what's going to be all my family. But it's not even close. So it's about a 17 to 18 to one of omega sixes to omega threes. But not only that, the arachidonic acid is multiples higher. So it's if you're eating meat right now or processed meat that is not grass fed and grass finished because the big thing is for the last three to six months, they're taking these grass fed cows and they're just grain finishing them to add another three, four hundred pounds for sale. And they make it more marble and it's tastier. Like grain fed meat is just tastier than for most people believe this, then grass fed. I believe that. But I still eat the grass fed because it's not even close. It's somewhere between a three to five to one of omega sixes to omega threes versus 17, five, five X. Well, it's about a five X. That's a huge difference. Wow. OK, but it even goes deeper than that because you're getting like 10 grams less fat per steak. That's true. Then you would I mean, anybody who's had it, you could taste that. I mean, that's what you tell to be honest, like grain fed meat is just it does taste better. It's it's tasty. It's got more. That's why there's so much resistance to it. Let's be honest. There's more fat and the fat makes it have more flavorful. Yeah, that's really. I remember years ago when great when grass fed started becoming a thing. My dad, you know, who came to this country when he was 19, he goes, oh, it's so weird. He goes most a lot of meat was grass fed back then. And we used to have to look for grain fed because it tastes so good and that was more expensive. Now it's the reverse. Oh, my God. Markets are funny, aren't they? It is. So it's it's more expensive. But again, we're talking about your health and this is one of the most important things. Well, I love that you have the exact same rule that I have. And we've talked about it on the show before. When I'm cooking from home, I do all of our, you know, butcher box grass fed. That's what I always do. If I go out to a restaurant, then obviously I'm going to enjoy grain fed. Same. So how do we test for inflammation then? How can someone besides symptoms? I feel stiff and achy and flu like symptoms or whatever. What kind of testing can we get to see what are, you know, what inflammation looks like for us? So once a year, when you go to your PCP, you go to your doctor, you want to ask them to run your HSCRP, that's your High Sensitivity C-Reactive Protein. HSCRP. A lot of doctors will. Some won't. Some will just run CRP. CRP is good enough. If that's all that you can get. That tests acute inflammation in your body, but it does not tell you in any way, shape, or form what it's coming from. It typically means like potential autoimmune, potential immunological issues, low levels of antioxidants, high levels of inflammation. So that's really important that we test for that. If there's any rheumatoid arthritis, things like that in your family, they might test for things like sedimentation rate, ESR. That's great to look at. Very few people are actually going to go into the inflammatory markers. So when we talk about these things today, Omega-6 is, why are they inflammatory? They're creating a specific series of prostaglandins, series two. They're creating something called leukotrienes. They're creating throboxines. And so very rarely, if ever, will a doctor ever test those. So besides that, besides very high levels of LDL, but I actually don't even just look at LDL at all anymore. I'm looking at VLDL. I'm looking at APO, I'm looking at APO-E genotype. I'm looking at APO-B. So like all of those things matter. So a complete lipid profile, again, that starts to get more expensive. What I recommend is this, keeping just normal cholesterol levels. I don't think that that's a radical approach. And then also looking at your Omega-6 to Omega-3 levels, which can be run through a phlebotomist-based blood draw or even easier now, at-home lab tests, which we've done now for over a decade, which you just take a couple drops of blood like you would for your blood sugar, and it will show you a breakdown of your Omega-6s to your Omega-3s, but even more so. And I just think this is just important. You're gonna see it on your labs here today. It will show you a arachidonic acid versus your EPA. So your most inflammatory fatty acid, we'll call it that, versus your most anti-inflammatory Omega-3. And so when you look at that, now you start to get a much deeper picture of just, oh, Omega-3s look decent, but my arachidonic acid is just way too high. So there's a ratio. There's like a ratio we're looking for that's ideal. Three to one is ideal. Okay. Yep, three to one will actually reduce. So it's three to one. And then it's what's called a 9% saturation rate in your blood of Omega-3s, meaning like total Omega-3s. And that actually reduces risk for certain cardiac death by 90%. Holy cow. It's the most remarkable marker I've ever seen. Holy cow. Did any of us hit it? Did any of us hit it? Sorry to say that. I'm sure. But you will. So basically, there's things that you can do that we guarantee that you will hit that within 12 weeks. We guarantee it. Oh, sweet. So when somebody comes to you, they do, because you're like, so for people who don't, we did labs with you and you're gonna, and we haven't seen the results. Like we did last time, we're gonna bring them out and tell us kind of what's going on. But if somebody comes to you does his labs and their inflammation doesn't look good, and then they through changing their diet, lifestyle, get those numbers to look good, what do they notice and how they feel? Do they feel different? Without a doubt. So there's overall, when you wake up, you have more energy, less stiffness, less pain, less groggyness. When you have high levels of inflammation, you're in a lower mood, typically. You don't have an interest really in exercise because you have that exercise intolerance, meaning like, oh, I'm gonna get sore from this or I'm gonna be run down. So it affects cognitive function, mood, and overall energy. So all three of those should improve. You generally feel much better. Generally, because you just started swollen. Like you're literally not as inflamed. And whenever that happens, you're gonna feel better. All right, are you guys ready to get in these labs? I think the score right now, I think Justin's leading. I think we've all been, you and me and Doug have all been hammered. No, I haven't been hammered yet. Justin did have the best scores for the... Yeah, Justin, I think Justin's winning. Was it the hormones? Yeah, I think it was the hormones. I'm pretty sure Justin's winning. I wasn't getting hammered. I remember Doug did what the stress was. Well, by hammered, I mean, I think you, each of us have had... I'm pretty sure, yeah, but I don't think I've ever been at the bottom. I don't know. We didn't get your hormones. That's the only one. Yeah, he avoided that. No, I sent it in. I don't bleed very easily. You know what I mean? And you got time to bleed. No time to bleed. What movie is that? Anybody? I have no idea. Predator. Oh, it's one of the best movies of all time. I was gonna say Commando, but... That's when Jesse Ventura gets, he gets shot. He's like, you shot, you're bleeding. And you got time to bleed. You got time to bleed. Big movie. That's a real man right there. That's funny. He's still around. He's still doing his thing. He is. He's all into the weird stuff. Because this is like, is this test number three or four we've done with you? This is three, right? Pretty sure it's three. We did the Minerals and Metals test. Minerals and Metals. We did the Hormones test, which was like really comprehensive. And then there was a Stress test. Or was that the... Well, no, that was part of the Minerals. Oh. Now, are there things that make a difference for you reading our test because you have all three versus just doing it one single isolated test? Like, is it... That's a great question. Yeah, so we're kind of working through our, what's called Big Five. Okay. So we have something called the Big Five Labs and it tests your food sensitivities, your hormones, test your mineral levels, your vitamin levels, your gut function, and what else is the one that I'm missing? Yeah, vitamins, minerals, heavy metals, all of those things. So we have done now the Minerals and Metals test for your mineral levels and your heavy metals. We've done your Hormones, which looks at cortisol, testosterone, kind of made some tweaks there too. You know, like just really sharing with guys too, because there's a lot of great clinics that are popping up, is to, if you're doing testosterone placement therapy or anything like that, is that you're checking your levels to make sure they are good, which I know you guys are. And instead of just doing it once a week, hopefully you start to do it multiple times a week. And so you don't get the highs and the lows. You just get, and you do it a little bit less. And so you don't have to go real high so that it stays normal by the end of the week. You can actually just go moderate and you stay moderate like every, you know, third, fourth, that. Yeah, yeah. Adam's waiting for the poop test. He's so excited about that. That is the one I want to do. I want to do the gut one with you more than anything. Anyone with, you know, previous autoimmune skin, like any immune things. Yeah, absolutely. That's why I want to get to that for sure. All right, let's look at inflammation. All right, so this lab, this amazing lab, again, we're looking at lipids, we're looking at fats. You ideal ratio is three to one, five to one is fantastic if you can get there. Anything over 10 to one, not ideal. So let's get into it. So I'm going to go from the, what's the best way to say this? Cause we're all friends here. The most egregious. The most egregious. Biggest offender. The biggest offender, I like that. And then we'll work down. But again, like I said, these can be corrected within six to eight weeks, but definitely within 12 weeks. All right, say it, Doc, come on. All right, so Justin is up first. Oh man. Justin's on the line. Finally, finally. Hold on, hold on, hold on. My rise in the sun. Did you say it was over very earlier? Cheese Matthew. That's where it's come from. I knew that. That's why I was, he's talking. I'm like, dude, I'm like so high dairy hand meat. This is the two like biggest diet. I am not a fish guy either. He gets cheese shaped like frog wings. Okay, lay it on me. Let's go. All right, so when we look at the control, so every study has to have a control that to know the range you're kind of working against. Average American 8.1 to one for the omega-6 to the omega-3, you were an 11.3. So we're above the 10. So we know that we need to get that down. Cause again, even if you're not feeling a lot of these symptoms that we just spoke about, the mind, mood and energy, we want to be able to improve that cardiovascular wise. Like I said, reduce that risk for sudden cardiac death. So then we get to the arachidonic acid. Remember the most inflammatory. So just real quick, omega-6's flow from linoleic acid, basically that's in like the nuts and seeds, not as offensive. And then we moved to DGLA. DGLA people actually supplement with for mood and energy. I wouldn't recommend that, but there's actually the anti-inflammatory benefits from that. And then arachidonic acid is more from the meats, cheeses that we just spoke about now. Where does CLA fall on that? Conjugated linoleic acid is not part of that family, different fatty acid, but yeah, fantastic in his own right for fat burning, et cetera. So when we look at the arachidonic acid to EPA, so again now omega-3's goes from ALA, alpha-linoleic acid, that's from your flax, your walnuts, your chia seeds, things like that. Even some olive oil. Then we go to EPA and then we go to DHA. Okay, so we're kind of matching them up because if you take in more EPA, what does it do? It actually lowers a arachidonic acid. So really powerful, the overpowered. So this is a ratio we're looking at. Always a ratio. And so average American, 18.3 to one. Not good, right? Because that's very, very inflamed. You're a 19. So you're right up there, which we never want with fellow Americans. So we have to reduce that for sure. He's always trying to beat everyone. Oh my God, that was going on for his big numbers. You won for sure, so you get those levels. So you're talking about eating more on like less cheese, bro. More fish, bro. He balanced it, right. So like that's the thing. So if you'd love cheese. Small nuts and all, like I'm just, you know, in terms of like options. He's like, what else can I eat besides getting rid of my cheese? That's the real fucking question you have to ask, you duck. Well, so we'll talk about cheese. If not, everybody's eating a lot of cheese right now. He eats bricks of cheese. Listen, while he walks around with that. In fact, see all the studies, people. I bet you checked his pockets right now. He's gotta promote the cheese. It's great for health. But it's the new asshole. We always want to look at it like this. It's like, I'm not anti-meat. I'm not even anti-arachidonic acid. It's always like, if a little is good, a lot doesn't necessarily make it bad. Like that's what tips it, right? And so one thing for cheese though, just make sure it's grass-fed, right? Coming from grass-fed cows or go with buffalo, buffalo, mozzarella, buffalo, cheese can be a great one. And goat and sheep-based cheese is much healthier, less inflammatory, far less inflammatory than cow's base. Okay. Yeah, so go. All those ones you don't like. But then, even if you love your cheese, might just reduce a little bit, but then you'll do more omega-3s to balance it. Again, it's about balance. So like fish. Yeah, some fish would be probably a restaurant. Yeah. And then again, for people, I know there's a lot of people that aren't gonna eat fish and it's not all fish. So it's like, it's your mackerel, your sardines, your anchovies, your wild salmon, your wild trout. And those are oily fish. And if people aren't eating those, then we just give them two grams of an omega, daily omega-3. There you go, bro. But it's higher EPA, really important. So just quick on supplements. Don't take any fish oil. You have to make sure it's cold processed. And that it's tested for heavy metals. Because if not, it's oxidized just like a regular omega-6 polyunsaturated fat. And then it's not good. It's now inflammatory. That's right. So that's why you can't just buy it at Costco. Okay, what percentage would you say are like that are on the market? 90%. What? Unless it's a functional medicine brand, like pick your favorite brand. Obviously I formulate for Equalife, but pick your favorite functional medicine brand. They're gonna do cold process. They're gonna be testing for mercury. And the other brands are doing it as cheap as possible. And here's the thing, they use hexane. They use literally solvents to create them. It's awful. Yeah, so wow. So I mean, are they almost like irrelevant then taking them? I mean, if someone takes off more mercury, they may as well, well, I mean 90%. I mean, that's a lot, bro. So let me ask you this. So one thing that I learned from a friend of mine who's in your space is she said, poke the capsule, smell it. If it smells rancid or bad, it's not good. It's not a bad idea. Yeah, not a bad idea. And then she also told me to freeze them or put them in the refrigerator to keep them. You can. Yeah, so the biggest thing about your oils, and that includes fish oil as well, let's say olive oil, is that you want it in a dark bottle. So most supplements, you're gonna do that. So that's easy, right? You want it in a cool space and you want it not sensitive to light. So basically dark bottle, covered bottle, keeping your fridge if you want. You don't have to. We've been using Omega-3s in my practice for probably 15, maybe even longer years. And again, you just wanna go with the right brand. The right brand will take your numbers, Justin, and just drop them into the healthy zone within 12 weeks. And it's only two soft gels. That's all that it is. But here's what you wanna look for. They're on the back of you, you'll see total Omega-3s and then you'll see EPA and DHA. So you want total Omega-3s above two grams and you want EPA to be double, at least double that of DHA. So two to one, EPA to DHA. Or even higher, yes. Because here's why. Not the DHA is an important. DHA is great for the nervous system, et cetera. But EPA easily converts to DHA, but DHA does not easily convert back up to EPA. So that's why we've run tens of thousands of these labs. This is how we found out about it because we used to use higher DHA to EPA, which most Omega-3s are. We're like, oh, DHA is way up, but EPA is not. Found the one product and then we ended up formulating our own to be two and a half to one and then that changed everything. Yeah, without a doubt. What about fermented fish oil? I've seen fermented fish oil with like they add butter to it or something like that. What's the deal with that? I'm not a fermented fish oil guy. There's some decent research behind it. Here's why I'm not because fermented foods don't work for a lot of people with gut issues or inflammatory issues because they have higher levels of histamines. And that's gonna trigger more histamine. Absolutely. So skin issues, headaches, high blood pressure. So I just don't do it. And also they tend to be a little bit more oxidized. I just want cold processed, small bottles, not the Costco bottle. So you use it within 30 days and you're done. Beautiful. And then you just get the next week. It's like, stop telling me, bro. Yeah, it's like literally. Or again, the brightly colored fruits and vegetables, I still definitely recommend that. They have phytonutrients besides just the omega-3s that are anti-inflammatory as well. All right, so next up is Doug. And... Looks like Adam and I might be... You are a 7.6 on your omega-6s to omega-3s. So not bad at all. Doug, typically people are living a healthy lifestyle. They're gonna come in between the sixes and sevens. That's what I see in my practice. So if you're not supplementing, you're just eating fish every once in a while, be eating a healthy balanced diet. You're typically a six or seven. And that's not bad. Now your arachidonic acid though should be below a 10. It will be always a little higher typically. Yours is a 15. So AA to EPA is a 15. So all that means is that your EPA intake, which is really you're only gonna get from fish or a fish oil supplement, to be honest with you. Like that's the only effective weight that we've seen. We need to reduce that so you're 15 right now. So we'll get that down. I'll tell you, food-based is taking a meal that you would typically do meat at. Like let's just say lunch. I have a lot of clients that do this. And they get wild caught sardines in the can. They have packed in olive oil. Portuguese, my background's Portuguese and Italian. So I know a little bit about this previous, which I didn't know it had health benefits to it. And you take those and you just plop it on, a bed of rice that already has the olive oil in it, or a salad if you wanna do low carb. And if you do that three to four times a week, it'll raise your levels naturally. You wanted the supplement. Okay, so question on the sardines though, they're smoked typically, right? A lot are smoked, not all, but you're right. And they are some come boneless and skinless. And so you don't get as much benefit from the skinless. Boneless is great to get because they know how to eat around the bones. But, and you can actually eat the bones of sardines. They're very small. They provide a lot of calcium. Okay. And then the olive oil that comes in the sardine can, I can only guess is maybe not the best quality. I agree with you. I don't use that as the olive oil. I just try to make it easy for like first level steps, but I would drain it and then I would add my own healthy olive oil. Yeah, that makes sense. All those times you guys made fun of me for eating sardines. Now they make sardines and tomato. They do them all sorts of different types of things. So. I've never tried this. Like part of me wants to try just because of what we're talking about. I eat the sardines because I like the protein, but then also the fatty acid and they're cheap. This is like sardines are inexpensive and they don't taste bad. People confuse sardines with anchovies. Anchovies, which I also like, but that's the strong tasting one. Anchovies are not strong tasting. They taste pretty good. And if you put them on, or excuse me sardines, if you put them on some food, on some vegetables, add some olive oil, it's actually really good. Yeah, I would give it a shot if people are willing to do it. And it's very inexpensive. Like you just said a couple of dollars, you get your protein for your lunch. Great source of protein. All right. So we've got Doug and next up is Sal. Oh, you beat me. Bam! Wow, look at that. So Sal, you're at a 7.1 for your omega-6 to omega-3. So again, start a note pretty well, especially for no supplementation and probably not a lot of fish. Your arachidonic acid was the highest though. To EPA, it's 22.2, so quite high. Yeah, I ate a lot of meat. And actually, one thing we didn't talk about is that arachidonic acid is much higher in organ meats. So if you've been adding liver to your diet or things like that, quite high in purines, which we won't get into today, but an arachidonic acid. And so it's at least something that the fish oil would help with that for me. Yes. And this would be a good case study because I only ever give people low-dose fish oil, so two grams, but you might, depending if you have a higher level of meat, you might need three grams. We're not talking about like 50 grams of fish oil, we're talking about just one more. And so for you, I would retest in 12 weeks after just doing two grams a day, and then see if that's the right, because it's always about, if you find this out now, you really never need to retest again in your life if you keep the same diet. That's the great thing about this type of lab. So you retest once, find out you're at the perfect level, you're good. Like you just move on to like, what's the next thing? All right, so that is that. And the last thing I wanna share with people is about game meat. Game meat is typically much lower, oftentimes in arachidonic acid and saturated fats. Again, I know that we're not having a discussion around saturated fats today. Again, there's a lot of benefits to it, overdoing it, some people don't do as well. But that could be a really nice thing, is doing buffalo sometimes, doing elk sometimes. Those things can be great. Venison is lower in it, unless you eat the dark meat of the venison, which is then higher in arachidonic acid. Okay. Where's veal land? It's a good question. I don't know off the top of my head. The thought of games, meat, no. You're gonna see too many veal run around. It's a good question. How is it fed? Usually they're fattened, right? So they're probably not being grass fed and all that, although they would not be typically as grass fed, because they're drinking milk. Yeah, no, that's how I'm asking, because I eat it, I like it. Yeah. All right, so Adam is last, in this case, I guess, first, right? So it is 6.5, so coming in, I think, right at that normal, healthy starting level, close to the five to one. Again, we wanna get you down to three to one. And even for arachidonic acid to EPA, we wanna get you to three to one too. And so you're at 9.9, so you're right below the 10. So that's good. So I actually had a question for you then. What are you doing maybe different than the other three guys that might be keeping your arachidonic acid levels a little bit lower? You're the most consistent with fish. Yeah, I eat a lot of sushi. So sushi's on a pretty regular. That makes sense. Yeah, I'd say that's probably the biggest difference. Yeah, at least once or twice a week have fish. Yeah, I'm pretty good about it. I'm pretty good about it. I'd say you eat more fish than I know. I rarely ever eat fish. Doug eats fish. Yeah, but some weeks I don't. Okay. Yeah, I'm pretty consistent. And even though I haven't been supplementing with my omegas, I've been inconsistent with that, but that's kind of my thing is if I don't do fish two or three times a week, I try and at least get the omegas. Because I'm not very good with being consistent with supplements, but yeah, I'd say probably the fish. I also, I'll go ahead. The other thing that's how much of your training level could affect some of these? Like if I had like a much higher volume of training or a lower volume of training, because the other thing I'd say that's different about these guys, I'm probably training the least. So I don't know if that's impacting it at all. I'm doing sauna and cold plunge stuff more often than these guys right now, but other than that, I'd say we eat pretty similar. Do you eat the same? The exercise shouldn't really affect this to the same degree. It's typically food consumption based. Do you eat less total food or less total? Yeah, I would say I'm lower calorie than these guys right now. Because I'm not exercising, I'm really low. I've incorporated fasting more often than I normally would. So yeah, I'm staying pretty low calorie. So maybe that too. Yeah, to kind of bring it all home is that to reduce inflammation, we talked a lot about nutrition and so that's the biggest part that you can do. But reducing your overall alcohol consumption, smoking in general, highly inflammatory, getting enough sleep that I know hopefully we talk about in the future, like these things are really, really powerful. But it is important that you do exercise a couple times a week, at least three. Like that's the bare minimum for most people. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, try not to ever get more than two days off in a row because that helps to modulate inflammation. So even when you have these higher levels maybe of omega-6s or recadonic acids, what do they do? They're gonna create these prostaglandins in the body. Okay, well, what does that mean? Well, if you exercise, you can modulate that faster. So you can clear the inflammation to a greater degree. So I think that's why exercise is wildly overlooked. Besides just obviously for aesthetic-based purposes, it does so much for health and longevity. And then the last thing is the anti-inflammatory diet. So I mean, just kind of going back to that, I've used vegan-based fish oils for people that are on a vegan-based diet. You need to use quite a bit. They use a lot of solvents to create them out of algae. And so we've looked at even formulating our own. We can't do it in a natural way. So we're just not doing it. So fish oil is gonna be the biggest game changer. Again, two and a half to one EPA to DHA formula. And then the other part is incorporating, if you can, fish three to four times a week. But then the other part to that, I feel like it's important to note is that you need to make sure that you are not getting a lot of the higher mercury fish or farm-raised fish. So if you just eat regular salmon, it doesn't count. There's actually higher levels of omega-6s in salmon than omega-3s. It's like beef. Yeah, exactly. And it was, why? Well, what's farm-raised fish fed? It's fed inflammatory-based foods, corn and soy and believe it or not, things like skittles and stuff like that, which is wild. Yeah. Have you ever seen the studies showing that they feed cows, skittles? What? Yeah, well, I don't know. We can go deeper to that if you want to. I don't know, I was in the dairy industry for a long time. Found it absolutely ridiculous. The only reason anybody ever found out is they were doing this massive skittle delivery to a farm and we're talking about an entire dump truck of skittles ended up on the road. And so like, well, these aren't in bags. What's this going on here? When the skittles are expiring or expired, they put it into animal-based feed. And the reason they do that is it spikes those blood sugar levels. It makes them even hungrier. They eat even more. But can you imagine all the dyes and the paints and everything going into those animals and then people are eating? But they won't do that at a grass-fed farm. I have never heard that before. Yeah, so like, I mean, they'll feed other animals, they'll feed chicken feed to chickens. It's like, it's really, yeah, it's not ideal. Wow. Anything goes with grain-fed farms. Is it safe to say that exercise helps the body have a healthy inflammatory response? It kind of trains the inflammatory system to be more balanced, right? And then you, so okay, that works. And then you mentioned my arachidonic, I know my arachidonic acid is high. I exercise quite a bit. I'm like five, six days a week, an hour, quite intense. Does that reduce the potential negatives of that arachidonic acid being so high? Well, if we're looking at the arterial damage that may take place, cardiovascular work would actually help with the flexibility. Got it. So that's why for body transformation, I don't really believe that cardiovascular work is ever really needed, although walking or low-intensity cardio is great for fat loss and just moving the body. But if you do cardio even just for 15 to 20 minutes, a few days a week, it helps with cardiovascular flexibility, which is what you want. So you want those arteries to not be as stiff and you actually can pull more calcium into your bloodstream doing anaerobic-based work. So like the more I've been in this industry, the more I'm like, ah, you know, the young 22-year-old me, you know, always talk down on cardio or aerobic-based cardio, but now I see the benefit in terms of longevity, you know? And so I think that that matters and I think that we need to like, just look at that an overall picture. Again, not saying it does phenomenal things for body transformation, but it does if you want to live to, you know, 90, 100 years old for sure. Well, Dr. Gural, this is great, man. So I wanted to share this too, and I know we talked about this before the show, but we're going to do a limited amount of the labs and it's at stevencobral.com forward slash inflammation for your community. You can actually get one of these labs, just pay for shipping, and it's for first-time lab customers only, so I wanted to share that. So first come, first serve? First come, first serve. You know, obviously we have a limit to what we can do, but I believe that labs like this, more people need to be talking about them. So to get your numbers, like now that you know your numbers, you can't unlearn them, and now you can actually just do simple things to be able to do it. Excellent, perfect. Yeah, well, thanks for that offer. I always appreciate that. Yeah, I appreciate you, thank you. Thank you. Today we're going to teach you everything you need to know to build a strong, well-developed chest. When I think of weak points and areas that I struggled with developing for a really long time, chest was up there with the work part. Yeah, it was for me, it was for me for sure. I got more caught up in the weight I could lift versus how I was developing my body. I think it's one of the most challenging muscles to develop for most people because the form and technique.