 Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Mind Pump. We often talk about how the most important things for your health and fitness goals are to eat well, sleep well, and to train well. But you know, sometimes it's nice to have a little bit of help, and that's where supplements can come in. In this episode, we speak with pro bodybuilder, human movement, scientist, and sports nutrition researcher, Eric Trexler. Now, Eric is also with Stronger by Science and an advisor for Joy Mode. In this episode, we talk about supplements that support testosterone, improve sleep, and make sex a lot better. Finally, I want to remind you we have another channel called Mind Pump Clips, where we have short clips from this show. Go over there and subscribe and enjoy the interview. Eric, welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me. Now, for our audience who aren't familiar with you and what you do, first off, I love your content. I've been reading your stuff for a long time. I think you're one of the people in our space that does a great job of disseminating applicable data, because there's a lot of data and studies around health and fitness, and sometimes we communicate the wrong stuff. You do a very good job of breaking it down. And I can also tell you have a background and exercise, by the way, you communicate it because you do a good job of that. But why don't you give our audience a little bit of your background for people who don't know? Yeah, sure. I'll try to do the fast version. I started lifting when I was like 12 and I was like, this shit rocks. I want to do this for a while. So I started lifting at 12, was really into it, started training for sports, and then just loved the training more than the sports I was training for, which is kind of a common thing in fitness. You see a lot of that. So when I was like 18, the moment my competitive career ended as a wrestler football player, I got into strength coaching, did undergrad masters and PhD in areas that kind of combined exercise and nutrition. So a lot of my research, when I was working on my PhD, you name it, you know, citrulline, nitrate, creatine, protein, carb supplements. I mean, a lot of supplement work and a lot of metabolism work. And so after that, started working with stronger by science with Greg Knuckles. And now, you know, between stronger by science and our monthly research review called Mass and our diet app called Macro Factor, that takes a ton of my time. And then on the side, I still like to do some of the supplement stuff. So I help out some companies with formulations. So when you started getting into like the research side of things, you've already been working out at this point. You've been in the fitness and health, I guess, space as a consumer. Obviously, you like information. I'm sure you read all the magazines, all the content that you could find. Yeah. How different was it doing the research versus some of the stuff or how similar was it to the stuff that you had thought was to be true or learned just through consuming, you know, popular information? Yeah, it was really different. You know, I remember when I got into, you know, taking supplements when I was like 15 or 16 years old, a lot of the workouts I would do straight out of the magazines, like one of my wrestling coaches, we would train together and do a lot of bodybuilding type stuff. And eventually I did compete in bodybuilding as well. But anyway, yeah, so I had these ideas about supplements, what they could do, what they couldn't do. And then the more I got in the lab and started researching them, it helped me really kind of reframe, you know, it's not that I kind of started to reject supplements, but I was better able to contextualize them, because it's one thing when you see the magazine ad with Ronnie Coleman and his, you know, his, you know, biceps and veins are just like popping off the off the image. And you're just like, okay, looks like Arjunine's pretty sick for blood flow. You know, I got into early 2000s, everyone's taken Arjunine because Ronnie Coleman's vascularity is like off the charts. And then then you get in the lab, you start actually measuring like blood flow and performance outcomes. You're like, all right, so maybe not Arjunine, right? So you get a better idea of contextualizing the utility of supplements, the magnitude of effect and, you know, where they make sense and where they don't. Hope you're enjoying the show. How would you like to win maps anabolic? To enter simply put a thoughtful comment below in the comments section. We're going to read through all the comments in the next 24 hours and choose our favorite one. If yours is chosen, we'll put a notification for you right under your comment. Now be sure to like, subscribe and turn on notifications so that you can be notified when you win. One more thing, there's only 24 hours left for our October special map symmetry and map strong. To get these before they're gone, click on the link at the top of the description below and enjoy the rest of the show. So I'm a huge, I love reading data and studies. I don't have formal education, but it's definitely a passion of mine. He doesn't have a lot of friends either. All my friends are in this room. But what I used to find most interesting, or I should say what I find most interesting now is taking old, I don't know, strength training, bodybuilding, you know, strength athlete wisdom. And they explained it wrong. But there's value in some of the stuff that they said. Like for example, you know, someone may say, oh, you know, make sure you do preacher curls because it works the lower part of the bicep and then do concentration curls because it works the peak. And so they said, you got to do both because you go, you want a longer bicep and then you learn the science like, well, you can't really make your bicep longer and doesn't really work that way. And then you learn, oh, points of tension, there's more tension at the squeeze, more tension at the lower part. So there is value in combining those two exercises. Did you find stuff like that where you're like, did you go through that phase where you're like, all that stuff is stupid and then like, oh, wait a minute, they explained it wrong. There may be some value they just didn't understand where the value came from. Yeah, I think there's definitely numerous instances of that. And there was kind of a there were multiple shifts in that trajectory, right? So like, when I first started embracing, you know, a really hyper critical look at the research, you start to say, okay, all the really big strong people from the past who didn't look into the studies, they don't know what they're talking about, we have to go to the research. And then, you know, you kind of make that second shift where you say, oh, it seems like with some things, they were off base, but with some things, they were actually a little bit ahead of the curve. And the research helps us to kind of cross reference, you know, when we have, for example, a lot of conflicting anecdotes from people who are big and strong, the research helps you kind of sort through some of those conflicting anecdotes and say, okay, which which of these different ideas seems to have more credibility when we really stress test it in controlled conditions. So I mean, you know, I lean on, you know, I used to do a lot of coaching one on one coaching. And of course, I would lean on the research all the time. But you know, I'd also lean on, you know, what was I doing when I was working toward, you know, trying to become a pro natural bodybuilder, like I would still lean on stuff that was I guess you'd say more in the trenches observations. And, you know, I think evidence based practice, even if you look into the journal articles about what that is supposed to mean, it's not ignoring an individual's experience and leaning on meta analyses. Instead, it's integrating multiple sources of data, which does include properly contextualized anecdotes, you know, so it would be a shame to say that unless I have a PubMed link for it, I cannot believe it or implement it. You'd be missing out on a lot. Yeah, totally. No, I love that you said that because that's one of my biggest challenges with our space and the fitness space is you either seem to be the, I don't know, for lack of a better term, bro, with all the, you know, gym, quote unquote wisdom and advice, or you're the the data person that is only like there's no evidence that this works or the evidence shows this and it ignores the potential for, you know, massive potential for individual variants and all that stuff. Were there any of you and did you find any of those frustrations entering into our space? Because this is a very frustrating space, I think, for people who really want to do a good job. Yeah, it is frustrating because you do see people that it is a challenging balance to strike between trying to integrate academic and non academic sources of information. And you see so many people who miss really far in either direction, people who have no value for, you know, the scientific research, people who have absolutely no value for anecdotes. And I my general approach to life is that if someone is just a world class athlete, whether it's bodybuilding, powerlifting, whatever, I can probably learn something from them that I can't learn from a meta analysis that's looking at what typically works best for most people in typical situations that have been tested. And I think that gets at one of the main limitations of the people who lean too much on just the published research is it ultimately rests on a fundamental error in assuming that the knowledge that's currently published is a complete set of knowledge. Right. You know, there are things that we simply don't know yet. And there are people doing things that that are currently outpacing the literature in some regard. Or do you remember some of your your greatest epiphanies going through your master's and PhD? Because you've been living since 12. So you already have some some experience there. You start going through the education. Do you remember like big aha moments where you're like, Oh, wow. And then you went and applied it to your own regimen, whether that be nutrition or exercise that really made a big shift in your results. Do you remember some of those? If I could be totally honest, I think it might have been that I stopped looking for big aha moments. So like, I think that's a good point. The more that you get into the literature, you start to embrace more of an incremental approach to knowledge development. You know, so a lot of the kind of like gimmicky things and fitness, it's it always takes the form of a paradigm shift where it's like, forget everything you thought you knew about the topic. And it's like, right, but should we throw out like 85 years of incremental knowledge and just start over and assume that all of that was wrong and fake, like probably not. So I think the biggest thing with getting into the research was developing a level of patience and an appreciation for incremental changes to one's approaches versus like looking for that magic quick fix, the one weird trick that the doctors hate you know about, you know, whatever the gimmicky thing going on by that every ad of ever. Yeah, so I think it was more just like the more I got into research and people would say like, you know, like right now I'm really into this idea of exercise energy compensation. So the fact that when we really ramp up exercise energy expenditure, we do seem to down regulate other like resting elements of energy expenditure. So I'm really fascinated by that. And it's a rapidly evolving area of literature. And people say like, you seem really excited about this. And I say, yeah, I mean, it's moving so fast, we might have some real answers in 10 years. But a lot of people, like before I got into science, I'd say like, yeah, this is moving really fast. I'm hoping to have a breakthrough by the end of the afternoon. Right? You know what I love about that research that you're I mean, if you don't mind just going into that a little bit. What I love about that research is it's showing a lot of what those of us that worked in gyms observed for years and years and years like we would see the person, okay, average person walks into your big gyms, right? So I grand opened 24 fitness gyms for years and I own my own box and or gym, I should say wellness facility and average person comes and wants to lose weight. I want to lose weight. And the average person who doesn't know any better, or should I say who's somewhat ignorant to exercise and diet and stuff. The first thing they do is they say, well, I'm going to go and just burn as many calories as possible to get on cardio and they do a shit ton of cardio. And I would see this over and over again. They'd come in, they'd lose some weight, plateau real hard, lose motivation and then leave. And we'd see this over and over again. And as trainers were like, oh, you got a strength train, like building muscle such a better long term approach. But back then there weren't really any studies on strength training except for like athletes, like, you know, athletic performance, there weren't any on longevity. There weren't any on fat loss. In fact, strength training for shit for a lot of my career in the late 90s was not a fat loss way of working out. But this data is now showing like just trying to manually burn calories. Your body does a pretty damn good job of making up for that, like as maybe this evolutionary thing that we have. I mean, what is the data showing that you're that you're reading now? Is it really as remarkable as it seems? So yeah, this is one of those examples where, where like I said, like people in the gyms kind of knew kind of had a sense for this before a lot of the research started putting names and numbers on what we're observing, you know, so the magnitude of the effect and kind of naming the effect. But yeah, this is one of those instances where the research is coming along that helps us kind of say, oh, yeah, so so that's what was going on. What's really interesting is that, you know, this is getting popularized. Now there's a great, a great researcher over at Duke named Herman Ponser wrote a book called burn that talks a lot about this stuff. And so it does seem that there probably is we can speculate an evolutionary basis for this, because, you know, if you're ramping up energy expenditure to a really high level, who knows, maybe you're hunting foraging for food, you know, whatever the case may be, there is a biological cost of not having a constraint where we kind of keep our total energy expenditure within a workable range. And so what we see is there is some degree of compensation where, you know, where you ramp up activity level a lot and resting energy expenditure goes down. But what's really fascinating to me is the way that it's very contextual. So going from low energy expenditure to like kind of moderate, we don't see a lot of energy compensation. But when you go from very active to extremely active, we see a much larger magnitude. And that makes sense, right? Because there would be no evolutionary constraint that would say, oh, we shouldn't go from unusually low energy expenditure to moderate energy because that's just searching for food and working. Yeah, it's just a very typical level of energy expenditure that that, you know, we should be able to accommodate through, you know, the means of gathering food. So it does seem to be biased toward very high activity levels. And then there are also a variety of just kind of observations about like who is is having the greatest magnitude of of compensation, right? So for example, for whatever reason, larger magnitudes of comp compensation seem to be observed in people with higher BMI's. And it's not entirely clear why that would be the case. So that that's still kind of a pending question. Like I said, people with very high activity level, it's pretty intuitive to see why they would have greater magnitudes of compensation. One of the ones that really I found illuminating was it seems to be influenced by energy status. So if you're in a caloric surplus or neutral like energy balance, or if you're in a caloric deficit and unsurprisingly, when people are in a caloric deficit, they seem to have a higher magnitude of compensation. So so they're they're having even greater reductions and resting energy expenditure as they ramp up activity level. And that that's extremely intuitive. And to me, that really filled in the gap of you would see the people who were specifically exercising to lose weight, combining it with a caloric deficit. And they're it just didn't seem like they were getting the bang for their buck. Yeah, they'd hit flat toes. Have you seen the data on those like biggest losers, the contestants, they'd lose 100 pounds. And in order to maintain their weight loss, it's like they had to do circuit training and cardio every single day they're eating like 15 calories a day. It's like, holy cow, like that's not sustainable for most people. Yeah, you know, it's really it's really interesting that you brought up that cohort because Kevin Hall, he's like the lead nutrition researcher at the NIH. He's done some incredible modeling work on on energy balance. He he has forgotten more about energy balance than all ever know, like he's he's really top in that area. He was he was kind of the lead person doing some of those biggest loser studies with those actual contestants. And he actually published a paper this past year, where he revisited an old publication and he said, you know how we found that their the resting energy expenditure was like way lower than anticipated. It was like kind of an outlier in the research of looking at how much does metabolic rate kind of adapt to weight loss. And he kind of reevaluated the data in light of this energy compensation idea. And he said, what we were seeing there, that that suppression of resting energy expenditure, it wasn't just weight loss. It was a combination of adapting to weight loss, but also kind of adapting to this extremely high level of activity that was being used to maintain the weight loss. So so he specifically went back and re contextualized his previous work and said, we really should have what hindsight's 2020. But as more data came out, it was more clear that this exercise energy compensation was specifically within that cohort, a much bigger factor than previously thought. Interesting. You know what I find fascinating is the range of, you know, and this is just for the layman, right? The range of calories that your body can burn with the same lean body mass, the same seemingly everything's the same. In other words, you know, we talk about building muscle, boost your metabolism, losing muscle, might slow down your metabolism, blah, blah, blah. But there's like a range where it's literally like the signaling that you're sending your body and this could be you could maybe see it through hormones, which I want to get to with you because I'd love to talk about testosterone with you because it's a big issue that we're seeing in young men especially. But it could be you could maybe see it through hormones. You could see it maybe through catecholamines, but it's really not completely understood. But there's this weird range of more and less efficient with the same kind of person. Like how complex is the metabolism? Why don't we start there? Because I think people talk about the metabolism like it's not the second most complex thing that we know besides the brain, right? Yeah, the reason I'm smiling is I mentioned that Kevin Hall has done some great modeling work on like energy balance, like basic stuff, calories in calories out, right? Yeah, basic. Yeah. And that's the thing that people will always talk about calories in calories out as if it's like the simplest thing in the world. And then I dig up one of his papers and I say, if you look at the appendix, there are 64 sub equations that go into the calories in calories out model with Greek letters that I've never seen in my life, you know, like it's complicated stuff. And now people use that to kind of invalidate the basic tenets of thermodynamics. And that's an inappropriate weight of view that thermodynamics happen to work out that, you know, physics has a strong track record of being pretty repeatable. But yeah, I mean, the factors that influence both sides of that equation, like I said, you you dig into it and what looks like a simple equation, calories in on one side, calories out on the other, it's like 64 equations that I couldn't even try to fight my way through with all the all the mathematical nomenclature. It's crazy, are you familiar with the studies they've done on modern hunter gatherers where there was a study done on the Hodza tribe where they measured their metabolic rate and they're like, oh, they kind of burn similar amounts of calories to John, who sits on his couch in, you know, Nevada all day long. I remember when I first read that, I was like, and then of course, evolutionarily speaking, makes perfect sense. You don't want you don't want to be burning 7000 calories a day when your your main source of food is what you can hunt and find. Yeah, I mean, it turns out humans are pretty adaptive, which is probably a good thing for us. But yeah, it's very, very complicated. Even stuff that has kind of been pushed to the side and not thought about very much, like, I don't want to overstate this finding. It's more interesting than it is actionable. But when I was working on my PhD, we did a study on brown adipose tissue, which is a kind of a special type of fat cell that has it's just like the fat burning fat they would call yeah, yeah, it has high density of mitochondria and it's very responsive to cold stress. And so we did the study where we would put these these pads on like on the main arteries, you know, kind of the main conduit arteries that were kind of superficially accessible. We'd put these pads and run cold water through the pads and just kind of get there there, just provide a cold stress. And what you want to do to activate brown adipose tissue is make individuals cold but not so cold that they shiver because you don't want to have if you're trying to look at simply the energy costs of that adipose tissue, you don't want to know that muscle. Yeah, so but but yeah, so we did this study and it was really remarkable to see just the physiological ramification and the direct change in energy expenditure from simply a cold stimulus. And so yeah, I mean, the number of factors that can influence influence this stuff is really, really fascinating. And I just want to I know a lot of people have taken that and run with it and said, oh, well, here's a cold, yeah, kind of protocol to help you get shredded. And the math doesn't really work out on that. But but but it is just an instance of the multifaceted factors that can contribute to expenditure. Yeah, yeah. And just to kind of put a cherry on that, it's an extremely complex system and identifying one part of that system that has an influence means probably that other parts of that system will will move and change and compensate and either negate the effect or amplify the effect or we don't know. So it's it's almost impossible to break down, you know, the metabolism would be like, oh, it's this one thing because who knows how that one thing is in effect, almost everything else in that particular system. And we know that they all it's all connected. It's all on a chain. So since since we all agree on that and before you move on from this, you know, Eric, and I want to do this for the audience so we don't lose everybody. What are some things that you would caution somebody that is about to enter into their fitness journey? I'm getting ready to head to the gym first time, I want to make some choices about the way I eat the way I exercise based off of what we just talked about and how complicated the metabolism can be. What are some things that you might tell someone before they get started that would caution them like, you know, be careful, maybe not do this, maybe not do that when you get started. Yeah, I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that complex, complex systems require really complex strategies. And fortunately for us, that's not the case. Like, if you had to personally manage your blood pressure on a minute by minute basis, that'd be pretty complicated, but you don't have to. Like it's pretty automatic, right? And if there's a perturbation in that system, it becomes pretty, pretty noticeable. And then you intervene, right? So I think while metabolism is complex, and, you know, when I was going through like nutritional biochemistry in school, you'd have these charts that were interrelated pathways of like every major like macronutrient and metabolite and all the processes. And then you look at, you know, Kevin Hall's paper with energy expenditure and it's 64 equations and like, yeah, there's complexity there. But when you're just getting into fitness, there's no reason to wrestle with all that complexity and to act as if you have to personally manage the element. You know, so when people are first getting into it, this is going to sound excessively like over the top simple. The first thing that if someone that I really cared about was getting into fitness and I wanted to foster their long term success, the first thing I would focus on is how do I get you to fall in love with fitness in whatever way it takes. And, you know, because there's a lot of different ways to do it. So you hate cardio, you love strength training. We can work with that. You know, you hate strength training, you love cardio. We can work with that too. You know, like we got to start somewhere, fall in love with it. And then we can kind of hash out the details from there. Spoken like somebody who's trained people before. Right. Yeah. So it's the behaviors that that push success, not necessarily mechanistic. It's complex and how it works. But to get the way to get the body to work the way you want, that's not necessarily complex, I think would be one another way to put it. So let's talk about testosterone because it's not very often I get someone like you that I can talk to testosterone now has been observed over, I don't know, the last six, six decades maybe more to have to be lowering in men on a relatively consistent basis. This is not a new observation, by the way, this has been observed, like I said, for the last six decades or so where doctors and scientists coming out saying, Hey, something weird's going on. Testosterone levels seem to be declining. So let's talk about that for a second. What does that decline look like? And do we have any ideas? Because there's lots, lots of speculation as to why and then I'd like to get into how the individual can maybe raise their own testosterone levels and why that's an important thing to do. Yeah, there does seem to be kind of a population level trend where testosterone is kind of steadily decreasing over time. And one of the ways that I try to cling to credibility is if I don't know an answer, I don't give one. So like if you look into the research on why is this happening, there are several plausible mechanisms that have been put forward, plausible explanations. But it is still an area of active debate. And as someone who's not doing original research in that area, I'm more inclined to kind of wait on the sidelines and patiently say, OK, let's let's see how these trends continue and see if we can identify the exact causative mechanism or mechanisms, because that's the thing is you put all these mechanisms on the table. And a lot of times you feel kind of a pressure and it says, you know, pick one. Yeah. Well, there could be multiple, right? So it could be a combination of several things going on. But while I am not eager to be loudly and confidently wrong, I do try to be helpful whenever possible. So when people come to me with questions about Eric, I'm seeing this population level decline seems to be extending over decades. What's causing it? I'm not really certain. What can I do about it? Now I actually have some answers. And so that's what I try to focus on. OK, so yeah, that's great. So what does the data show on how a man can effectively raise testosterone or bring their testosterone to, you know, levels that optimize things like mental clarity, motivation, strength, fat loss, all the wonderful things that healthy levels of testosterone can bring us. What is a data show? Yeah. So one easy way to do that is to put exogenous testosterone into your body. That's a pretty straightforward solution, right? But but a lot of times the question that I get is coming from people who aren't quite ready to take that step for a variety of different reasons. They don't want to go that route and they're looking for other things they can do to support kind of natural endogenous production. And there are a variety of things you can do. Some of those things are kind of pretty basic habits and behaviors that can facilitate optimal testosterone production. And there are some some dietary supplement ingredients that can support natural testosterone production. So I like to view the supplementation route as supporting rather than boosting, because what you see in a lot of the actual studies there is that if you're putting in an ingredient, you know, so like for example, if you have like a zinc deficiency and you correct that, then you can restore, you know, that could be something that is limiting testosterone production, you can restore that and see a positive effect. If you already have plenty of zinc, it's probably not going to do anything, right? So that's why I talk about support. But but you know, before we go into like specific ingredients, basic behavioral stuff, you know, maintaining your body fat level within a particular range seems to be helpful. Do you know what that range is? Is it? So it seems to differ a little bit from person to person, which is always a safe caveat to throw in just about any conversation. But it's very clear that you don't want to be too shredded. And that's, you know, when I was doing bodybuilding and, you know, had a I spent one one day competing as a pro bodybuilder. But when I was like prepping for bodybuilding shows, like and if you're going to win your pro card in natural bodybuilding, no one's really that big. So you have to just get absolutely shredded. So I know low testosterone intimately, because every time I prep for a bodybuilding show, I drop well below the lower boundary of the clinical range or the reference range. You know, I have clinically low testosterone. And so yeah, that's a very common observation. You don't want to be absolutely shredded. But if body fat levels are too high, that also is associated with low testosterone. When would you notice the biggest symptoms of low testosterone at what body fat percentage of you? Because I noticed that for myself after going down, once I get below 8%, I start noticing. And I know this is different from person to person. Yeah, the range is the range of 10 to 15. Isn't that kind of ideal over 20s? You know, I think I've read you start to see testosterone levels get affected in under eight or so or under, you know, maybe nine. Yeah. You know, for me, you know, it definitely it's I remember one time getting my testosterone checked when I was prepping for a show. And you know, I still had a pretty long ways to go to get on stage. And it was very, very low. And I was like, well, this this isn't going to be fun. But yeah, I mean, for me, it was, you know, right around that eight or nine percent body fat level. Yeah, maybe seven. But but yeah, it's right around there. It's when you start getting into like the mid to high single digit level. That's where a lot of people start to notice testosterone fall off a little bit. And part of that is the fact that you're pushing hard on the diet. So there's the kind of acute low energy availability of being in a big deficit and training really hard. And then there's the chronic element of just having really low body fat. Yeah, that's such a good point, because you probably would see a positive effect. Let's say you were shredded, but then you went on three, four days of feeding really well. And like a calorie surplus, we probably see an increase, I would think into testosterone, even though you're low, right? Yeah, I mean, definitely the fact that just it's not even necessarily getting into a surplus per se, but just not being in that huge deficit, you know, that's definitely a big deal. And there's like an analogous situation with with the menstrual cycle in female athletes, where it's not always the leanest female athletes who lose their menstrual cycle. At some certain body fat level, it's almost a certainty. But also there are people who aren't quite that shredded yet. But because their their relative energy availability is so low, because they're training like crazy and not eating enough, enough calories, body fat aside, you know, they might still lose their menstrual cycle. So it's kind of an analogous scenario where if you're really pushing that the deficit super hard and training like crazy, and maybe your diet and program aren't properly calibrated, you might run into issues a little bit earlier in that process. But generally speaking, you know, if you if you want to try to hedge your butt, your bets with body fat to facilitate testosterone usually, you know, somewhere between 10 and 20% body fat is common. Now there there are people above 20 20% body fat who have no deleterious impact on their testosterone. That's kind of a person by person thing. But but yeah, and that's a it's speculated because fat is somewhat estrogen sensitive. So maybe that's causing, you know, the changes in testosterone. But basically, to underline it, it's, you want to be relatively healthy lean, like in a relatively healthy lean body fat percentage is where you want to be any anywhere outside of that. And the odds that you'll negatively affect your testosterone, the further you get away from those ends, the higher the chances are that you'll negatively affect testosterone. Now what about forms of exercise, obviously improving your health overall, if you have low testosterone should cause positive effects to testosterone. But what about specific forms of exercise for testosterone? I'm quite familiar with the effects of strength training on testosterone. And it seems to show done properly, kind of across the board, and also increasing energy and receptor density, which is another important thing to talk about. Is there anything I'm missing? Or do we see anything else in the exercise literature? Not really. I mean, the biggest delineation there is just inactive versus physically active, you know, so that's the biggest difference. Yeah, it's just just being generally physically active versus being quite sedentary. That's where we see the biggest impact of exercise. You know, and then on the on the top end, you know, if you're absolutely pushing endurance training really, really far, there is something called I'm going to butcher the name because it's not very into it's not it doesn't roll off the tongue, but I'm going to get crushed for this because the guy who came up with the name was my professor in grad school. I think he called it the exercise hypokinadol male condition, the male exercise hypokinadol condition. Interesting. Some combination of those four words mix them however you wish. But basically what they observed was male endurance athletes who were just pushing really, really high volumes of exercise, not really recovering effectively. They were noticing reductions in test testosterone. So it's kind of that same idea like with body fat, you want to be, you know, lean ish but not shredded with exercise, you want to be quite active but not into that overreaching over training type of range. Yeah. Now what about diet? Obviously being too much of a calorie deficit probably will cause some some negative effects on testosterone. But what about within an appropriate diet? So you're not cutting too much, you're eating an appropriate amount of calories. Does the data say anything about the macros, proteins, fats and carbs and its effect on testosterone? Yeah, so there were two there were two meta analyses that came out within the last year or two about macros and testosterone. And it was funny because the first one came out and it was, I forget the exact order, but one came out and said like, if you excessively restrict fat intake, it's bad for your testosterone. And so everyone who's already dieting that way was like finally vindicated like, you know, like, and then another meta analysis from the same research group came out and said, so one of them said if you excessively restrict carbohydrates, you're screwed. The other one said if you excessively restrict fat, you're screwed. And so the high, the high fat, high carb dieters, both of them felt vindicated on one end and then really pissed off on the other end. But you know, when we look at the literature, like the most important thing is making sure that you have enough calories, like a huge energy deficit is not ideal for testosterone levels. But beyond that, it looks like just having a fairly moderate macronutrient distribution is the best way to hedge your bets. And the way I normally tell people that is, you know, 20 to 35 ish percent of your calories coming from fat. Those aren't exact numbers, but that's more of a vibe that's pretty compatible with the meta-analyses. 20 to 35 ish percent of your calories from fat, enough protein to support your goal in terms of whatever your fitness endeavors are. And then the rest of your calories coming from carbs. And as long as you're eating enough energy, you should be there. Here's a question. So we know that a higher protein diet contributes to more muscle growth and strength. And it's like, I don't know, if we get specific, it's like 0.6 at 0.8 grams per pound of body weight or something along those lines for, you know, appropriate weight individual. Can a high protein diet indirectly positively affect testosterone through the muscle building process? In other words, it might not be in a direct effect raising my protein intake doesn't directly increase my testosterone, but we know building muscle tends to have a positive effect on testosterone. Is that a fair speculation or am I stretching? You know, I'd be a little bit nervous about going there. Because what you might find in some situations, I'm not really confident that the the small beneficial effect on like just the sheer amount of muscle that you're building there and facilitating, I haven't seen enough evidence to convince me that that would necessarily lead to a meaningful increase in testosterone. And at the same time, I have seen evidence to suggest that if you're on a low ish calorie diet, and you're taking your protein so high that you're displacing fat and carbohydrate, then you're getting into those ranges that that the recent meta analyses would start to say, well, you might actually be pushing your protein so high that you're putting your your fat or your carb. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of a zero sum game in that situation. And you might be pushing those out of optimal range. Interesting. Now, one more thing about androgen receptors, because there was a study that I read that compared men and their how they reacted or responded, I should say, to strength training. And they looked at their free testosterone. And then they also looked at androgen receptor density. And androgen receptor density was a greater predictor of how well they would react or how their bodies would adapt to strength rank. So for people who don't know what that is, the androgen receptors are what testosterone attaches to to exert its effects. So what the study is basically showed was, well, you know, this guy over here is got lower testosterone, this guy over here. But his androgen receptor density is high. And so and he's building more muscle because of that. So like, what's your take on on some of that stuff? Because that was interesting to me to read that. Well, yeah, I mean, I think that I mean, ultimately, when we talk about hormones, it's not just how much happens to be floating around in your blood, right? It's how much is available in a bio available form, and actually free to interact with its receptor, because a hormone that's not interacting with its receptor isn't really doing you much good, right? And so like, that's what we see with like insulin resistance. It's not that there's a shortage of insulin. It's that we have an issue with the actual that the process of the hormone binding to the receptor and then causing the downstream effects. So yeah, I mean, with testosterone and and for that study was probably looking at like hypertrophy outcomes. Yeah. Ultimately, all the testosterone in the world isn't going to be doing you much good if it's not actually interacting with its with its receptors. So that strikes me as a highly plausible observation for sure. Now, the same the same rules apply, though, to improve that, I would think, as we said earlier, the sleep strength training, all those the same rules would still apply, though, to improve that. Yes. With androgen receptor density or is that the genetic thing you either have it or you don't have it? You know, I'm not really of I'm not really familiar with many studies. They could be out there and I haven't seen them looking at like behavioral interventions to increase androgen receptor density. I know there are some people push carnitine for that purpose, but I'm not really on board with that. I'm a little bit I'm not really convinced by that strength training from what I've read is the is the most reliable way of I mean, basically do something that tells your body to build muscle and it improves its ability to do so through different mechanisms, which would be that. Yeah, I do imagine any behavioral intervention that would facilitate greater androgen receptor density is probably stuff you're already doing if you're trying to build muscle. Yeah. All right, let's get to the stuff that everybody wants to hear. So I'm glad we basically said look that your lifestyle interventions most important when it comes to raising testosterone, because everybody wants to know about supplements, everybody wants to know about herbs and products they could take. And they just to be clear, they don't compare to lifestyle interventions, right? If you have crappy sleep, poor diet, you're not working out right, you can take all the great supplements in the world. It's not going to help you. However, if you are doing all those things, then there are or are there compounds that the data shows actually makes a significant difference because, you know, five percent increase in testosterone, like that's statistically insignificant. Like, does the data show that there's actual compounds that actually make a difference? Yeah. Yeah. And there's a few different kind of categories that I think you can put them in. So the first, the first one that gets the, I would say the broadest acceptance, even among people that are supplement skeptics is just looking at, you know, are there micronutrients that you might be short on, that if you rectify that, it would facilitate, you know, better testosterone production. Yeah, you mentioned zinc earlier. Right. So zinc is one of them. Another one that is broadly pretty accepted is magnesium. So magnesium and zinc are going to be present in a lot of different supplement formulas that aim to increase testosterone. And there's pretty good evidence there for zinc and magnesium. Again, if you're correcting a shortcoming. Now, those are relatively, it's somewhat common, right, that people don't get enough zinc and magnesium. I think I read one paper that said something like 60% of people are not consuming enough or getting enough magnesium. I don't know what the numbers are on zinc. Is it some, is it relatively common for people to not be getting enough of these? It's common enough that I think, you know, the question is, you know, I don't want to like plant a seed of fear in the head of every listener who's saying, oh my God, am I short on like every micronutrient? But it is relatively common or common enough at the population level that it's it's worth looking into. There are plenty of folks who would benefit from increasing their zinc and magnesium intake. And for some people, it could be a kind of rate limiting factor that is keeping their testosterone a little bit lower than it otherwise would be. One other micronutrient I've mentioned in that conversation, just in the interest of being thorough is vitamin D. And vitamin D is it's a tricky one because it is correlated like low vitamin D is correlated with low test testosterone. But so far, the interventions that try to use vitamin D supplementation to boost testosterone, they just don't seem to be panning out the way you would expect. Okay, I'm going to do something that you probably won't like because you you're a science guy and science people who are really, really versed in science hate speculating this way. But I'm going to try and get to get you to do this. Sure. So I have a theory around that, right? So in other words, they notice low testosterone is correlated to low vitamin D or low vitamin D is correlated to low testosterone. Then what they do is they take people and say, Oh, low testosterone, low vitamin D, let's raise your vitamin D that should make your testosterone grow up, go up not necessarily true. I have a theory. I'd love some speculation. I know you're going to hate doing this. But I know that going out in the sun helps synthesize vitamin D and that's through the through the process of converting cholesterol, or there's something to do with cholesterol and using cholesterol as a way to synthesize vitamin D and also cholesterol as a base molecule for our hormones. Could it be that people just don't get enough sun that low vitamin D is one of the side effects of that. But one of the main one of the other issues is we're not taking that base cholesterol and converting it into usable hormones like testosterone hormones like testosterone. Yeah, you know, there's a paper that you would love. It's the title. I don't know it verbatim, but it's talking about the link between vitamin D and testosterone. And it says something along the lines of mechanistically dazzling, but clinically disappointing. And it's getting at that same thing, though, which is that you can draw many plausible mechanisms where you would say this ought to work because of this reason and that reason and this pathway, that pathway. And the question is, you know, ultimately, why is there this correlation that we don't seem to be able to very effectively or predictably act upon? And the most intuitive and kind of parsimonious conclusion would be that the correlation isn't quite causative. There's something else going on, right? And so yeah, it could be a sunlight thing. Part of me wonders, honestly, if not being exposed to sunlight during the daytime hours also correlates with low physical activity levels, or perhaps because you're not getting that light exposure, you know, maybe physical activity is something that's in the mix there. Maybe it's sleep because, you know, really poor sleep is associated with testosterone reductions. Maybe you're not getting out early in the day getting that sunlight exposure that facilitates good regulation of your circadian rhythm. It's disrupting your sleep. You have lower sleep quality. You could, I mean, we could do a whole other episode just speculating as much as we would. And I'm comfortable with speculating for sure. As long as it's tagged, you know, don't take this too seriously. But yeah, I mean, it could be sunlight, it could be the relationship between sunlight and sleep. It could be just being out and physically active. There could be a lot of things going on there. And another thing that could be playing a role is that I have noticed talking to clinicians that correcting vitamin D deficiency seems to be kind of tough, like kind of unpredictable, where some people need these really big doses of supplemental vitamin D and some people they just need a tiny bit. It's very odd. Yeah. Yeah, we did blood tests. And it's like some of us supplementing with 10,000 I had a lot to move the needle. Yeah. And so it's really interesting. Yeah. There's another element called boron, which I know I've seen in supplements. In fact, boron was one of the very first things that I that I read about as a kid to take for testosterone. I remember reading this in like Flex magazine back in the day. So we so it feels like we've known a lot about boron's effect on testosterone. Is that is that one of those ones where if it's low, you're going to have negative effects, negative effects, I should say, on testosterone. Yeah. So this brings me to kind of the second category of supplements where I would say there is evidence, but it is evidence that in some circles will cause some some disagreement or some argument where there's, you know, there is evidence there, but people will kind of discuss, you know, how convincing they believe it to be, which is good. It's good to have, you know, nice academic debates over those types of things. So boron, there are studies indicating if we really aggressively restrict boron intake, you know, testosterone might go down. And then if we replace that via supplementation comes back up there, there is research to indicate that there are some studies that have tried to use boron supplementation to increase testosterone where the results haven't been quite as good. But but you can definitely point to peer reviewed, you know, pretty solid studies that that indicate that boron can increase testosterone and specifically free testosterone. So some percent of the sex binding globulin hormone globulin. Yeah. Yeah. So some percentage of testosterone is going to be bound to sex hormone binding globulin. And it won't be essentially free to release and interact with its receptor. So there's some research with boron showing, okay, it didn't increase total testosterone here, but maybe it increased free testosterone, you know, so there is pretty good evidence there. But it's not like unanimous evidence where everyone kind of across the board says, oh, boron is a no brainer. It's one of those ingredients that I would say it is definitely worth a shot when you look at the risk profile and the positive evidence that does exist. Okay. Now, now, what about where we get that? Is there anywhere to get that naturally or is that we would have to supplement that who I'm actually not sure of food sources of boron off the top of my head because it's one of those things. It's like, you know, it's not like, Hey, where do I get vitamin C vitamin C? You hear about it all the time. It's like, Hey, have a glass of orange juice. But boron is such like a niche that's why I think it was like shellfish and or an organ meats, but maybe Doug can look it up. That sounds right to me. Yeah. Yeah. So it's it's a and it's it's often, what does that say there? Oh, wow. Coffee, milk, apples, dried and cooked beans and potatoes. Way off. Coffee. And Jesus. Okay. So way off. So Justin's boron intake has got to be through the roof. Really high. Interesting. You know, I had no idea. You know, it's funny. So we all did like we all got hormone panels done or whatever. And Doug had high total testosterone, but his free testosterone was low and they recommend you take boron. Yeah. That was one of the recommendations that they and it actually helped. It actually made a difference. Yeah. And you know, I think it's important to clarify. Like I try to be when I talk about supplements just as transparent as humanly possible. That's why that's why you're on our show. There's enough there where if I really felt like it, I could say, Oh, boron done deal. No one would possibly dispute it. Here's a PubMed link. But I try to give a really well rounded assessment of, you know, to what degree is there kind of unanimous consensus across the board among the more academically inclined, especially within that within the academics, there's kind of a particular cohort that's very supplement skeptical. Right. And so they need a high high level of evidence to kind of win them over. So boron if I had low free test astronaut, I would absolutely say there's enough evidence to throw it in the mix. Okay. Appreciate that. All right. So let's talk about non nutrient supplements. In other words, obviously boron, zinc, magnesium, like these are somewhat essential. Well, zinc magnesium for sure. I'm not sure if boron is essential, but these are essential nutrients. So if you're low on them, then then replacing them or supplementing can make a big difference. But then there's compounds that you don't, they're not essential, but the data shows that they actually have a positive effect. Oshwagandha is the is the big one now. That's the one that I've seen some of the best data on on raising testosterone. And that's the one supplement I've taken, where I actually notice a difference. There's very few supplements I'll take where I can notice a difference. Oshwagandha is one where I can where I can tell what is the data showing on Oshwagandha and it's all the same or the types of Oshwagandha. I've heard about, like one that's called like, I don't remember that there's there's different types of Oshwagandha and also as a dose dependent. Yeah, let's go into that for a second. Yeah. I mean, so with Oshwagandha, it's kind of interesting because it's one of those supplements where when you start talking about it, people really feel like you're pulling their leg, like you're kind of full of shit. So like, because if you look at like, you could make a solid evidence based argument that Oshwagandha is good for sleep. And then you can make a solid argument that it's good for testosterone. You know, there are, you know, randomized trials where Oshwagandha does lead to statistically and arguably clinically significant increases in testosterone, just as a standalone intervention. There are also, I'd say the strongest evidence for Oshwagandha actually pertains to relieving symptoms of anxiety and zeolitic. Yeah. So you look at someone, you say, take this. And they say, what does it do? Well, you sleep better, you're less anxious or testosterone. And they're like, all right, give me a break. Sounds like when you ask people about cannabis. But, but, you know, hey, I have no problem with, you know, an ingredient that has evidence from multiple outcomes, you know, but, but I think, I think just the sheer breadth of outcomes, a lot, it does breed a lot of skepticism. But yeah, Oshwagandha, there's, there's a paper a couple years ago that was like, you know, back in the day, everybody in the test booster world was pushing Tribulus. Yes. And there was a paper that in the title, it just said Moving Beyond Tribulus, basically like enough, we're done having this conversation back and forth about Tribulus. What are the other test boosters that makes sense? And it kind of went through a variety of different ingredients. And okay, what are the trials here? What's the magnitude of increase? And when you take that broader look at, if you were to say on the front end, I want to take some kind of herbal ingredient. And I want it to increase my testosterone. I think Oshwagandha has one of the strongest cases. Now, again, that is an area where some people, especially more supplement skeptical folks, will dispute that and will argue over the quality of the studies and things like that. And that's fair game. But if you were to say, I want to take an herbal ingredient for testosterone, Oshwagandha is the one that I would direct people toward for that purpose. And like I said, one of the nice things about it is, let's say, let's say it doesn't increase your testosterone, there might be, you know, quote unquote side effects that are actually pretty nice, you know, kind of unintended positive stuff pertaining to anxiety symptoms, sleep, etc. And to answer your question, there is a particular form KSM 66 that that seems to really be the kind of ideal type of Oshwagandha in the clinical trials. In terms of dosing, you know, for each individual outcome, you kind of have to make your own dosing assessment, you know, for what's the necessary dose for anxiety for sleep for testosterone. But broadly speaking, you see a lot of products dosed in the range of like 400 to 700 milligrams. And that seems to be a pretty good, well rounded dosing range where you would say that that's that's probably sufficient without being totally overkill. I noticed the benefits at 700 milligrams, and I've gone as high as 1200 milligrams and not really that big of a difference between the two. So, you know, it's interesting. So this is a class of herbs that's known as adaptogens. And adaptogens are like you said, it sounds like snake oil, because when you look at the class of herbs and adaptogen, you know, that category, it's like, helps your body deal with stress. All right, what does that mean? Boost immune system, but also modulate immune system if it's overactive, you know, helps with sleep, but also gives you energy and it's like, okay, what's going on here. But Ashwagandha, besides the data, Ashwagandha has hundreds, if not thousands of years of anecdote, right? It's one of the primary herbal medicines in Ayurvedic medicine. Am I correct? Yes. Yeah, for sure. So you've got a long history of it being I like, I like looking at stuff like that because, you know, the science tends to follow a little later. But we've got, you know, Ashwagandha has been used for these things for a long time. You mentioned tribulus. You know why tribulus got so many people confused for so long? Because it can boost libido a little bit. And that's why people thought it raised testosterone. Yeah. But really, it raises libido through other mechanisms that aren't necessarily completely clear. Am I hitting the nail on the head? That sounds accurate. Yeah. There are a number of herbal ingredients that, you know, that there are some studies saying like subjectively they increase libido a little bit. What's the mechanism of action? I'm not quite certain. Probably varies from from each one. But yeah, I think I think some people do kind of subjectively say, man, with my libido this high, I must have just testosterone through the roof. And and those are they're related things, but they are separate. Yeah. But Ashwagandha has been shown to actually raise testosterone. Yeah. What about DIM? I know that's what is the full name of that compound? Dientilil methane. Okay. So how does that work? Because from my understanding, it changes your the estrogen that your body produces from a more active to a less active version, thus changing the the ratio of testosterone estrogen. So whatever testosterone you have now becomes, I guess, for lack of a better term, more effective in the body. Am I explaining it well or am I off? Yeah. So when we think about estrogen, I think it's we can think of estrogens as kind of a class, the way that we might think of androgens as a class, you know, so there are different forms of estrogen, you know, kind of subtypes, basically, and then different metabolites from there, you know, when we think about the full kind of metabolic scope of androgens as a class of hormones and metabolites, obviously, there's there's a lot of stuff going on over there. And with DIM, there's research to indicate that within certain dosing ranges, it can essentially reduce the activity of aromatase. And so there can be a little bit less conversion of testosterone to estrogen. Got it. And there's also some evidence suggesting that it can shift some of those, it can facilitate conversion from some of the more potent forms and metabolites of estrogen to less potent forms. And so you might say that those converted compounds are still under the estrogen umbrella, but have less, you know, physiological estrogenic impact, so to speak. The way that different, you know, when we talk about different androgen compounds and say, OK, but what's their anabolic profile versus their androgenic profile, we can think of it similarly to like the estrogenic profile in terms of the the tangible physiological impact. So it's like testosterone versus DHT, one is far more androgenic and than the other. And you see that with DIM is one of the other things that I actually felt. Yeah. So I've taken it before it was marketed as an anti estrogen. So as a young, you know, person working out and, you know, you're trying to build muscle, you're like more testosterone, less estrogen. This is what you think because you read magazines, this is everything. And it's one of the ones I felt actually noticed a difference. They've also given it to women to help with their hormone profiles, depending on the type of. So this is a well known compound and the data shows it to be pretty effective at what you just said. Am I correct? Yeah. Yeah. It's it's the thing with research is that, you know, like, like I was saying earlier at the beginning of our chat, it's you have to develop a tolerance for time scales that are just irrationally long and extended, right? So you might say, oh, yeah, this supplement, we've known about it for 15 years, but there's like, you know, a couple relevant studies and we're going to have to wait another 15 years to really say this is irrefutable conclusive proof of an effect. You know, so I would say DIM, it's another one of those ingredients that there's evidence there. There's evidence that would certainly promote well, it's a big worth creak. Yeah. Give it a second. Damn, I haven't felt like that in a while. Welcome to California. Rolling one. Yeah. Where are you? It's still going. Look at Justin's guitar. You're a bit of an earthquake or no? Well, we're due for one. That was a big one. That was a six, I would say. Still rolling. Yeah. No, Justin's guitar still moving right now. Geez. Yeah. Yeah, what do they call like the aftershock? Yeah, the aftershock. We'll get one of those. I think we're done. OK. OK. Yeah, so with DIM, you know, there's definitely evidence there to to support the mechanisms mechanisms that we just talked about, right? So kind of shifting that profile of estrogens and some of that aromatase activity. But but it does fall within that category of supplements where, you know, like zinc and magnesium, you're not going to get a lot of pushback. If you say correcting those deficiencies going to have a really positive effect for testosterone. There are other supplements where there's enough evidence to have really defensible optimism and say like, if we're trying to be pragmatic, this makes sense and there's evidence to support that. But it we're talking earlier about just the general timescale of research and it takes decades and decades and decades of unanimous consensus and especially supplement research. It's so like niche that it just doesn't happen very quickly. You don't get 30 randomized controlled trials just right up right out of the gates. So with DIM, you know, there's definitely positive evidence there that would inspire a great deal of optimism and it's it's a very defensible supplement to include. And this is where I kind of wear two different hats where when I'm critically reviewing one study or like like I've reviewed for like peer reviewed journals, supplement work, I'm a pain in the ass about what claim you can print and say we now have evidence to say this conclusively. But when it comes to formulation, if I'm advising a company, I say, well, we need to be pragmatic here because, you know, the evidence is not fully complete yet. But if we have an ingredient where we have a very legitimate mechanism supporting evidence in humans and a very acceptable risk profile, at some point you have to say this makes sense, you know, there's enough there to include it. And when you're putting together a supplement formula, you of course want to, you know, first thing is safety is non-negotiable, right? You need to have good quality evidence in humans. Even if there's not a unanimous consensus across the board, you want to make sure that you're not leaving too many really defensible stones totally unturned. And there's that balance of you don't want to just throw the everything in the kitchen sink into a formula because it's a devoted overpriced mess. But if you go too rigid with it and say, no, we're only going to include the one or two things that are just irrefutably proven based on 80 years of research, you're going to be left with a pretty sparse formula that misses out on opportunities, frankly. Yeah, no, I appreciate you saying all that because that's why I have you on the show because if I have someone on with a science background, I'd like that person to have a lot of integrity about what you are, especially when it comes to supplements because the supplement space is so filled with crap. It's incredible that it still is unregulated, not that I'm promoting that I think it should be regulated, but man, when they, when they, you know, talk about trying to regulate it, I go, well, I get why you guys are making the case because that is a crazy, ridiculous space. Let's talk about sleep because you mentioned sleep. We didn't talk too much about sleep with testosterone, but we know some of the natural things or behavior things you could do like get light, sunlight during the day, reduce your exposure to electronic light within a certain period of time before bed, not eating too close to bedtime, you know, exercise and health and how it affects sleep. Am I missing anything with the kind of behavioral stuff? No, I mean the biggest things, you know, have a reason to be tired at night, you know, get out, be active, you know, don't, the only other thing I would add there is just kind of routine. So like with sleep hygiene, we know like the activity stuff, the light stuff, but the routine can be important too, which is try to give yourself a regular sleep schedule that's repeatable day to day if you can, and try to have a pre-bed routine that doesn't just involve avoiding bright lights or artificial lights in the blue wavelength spectrum, but also just like trying not to be too cognitively busy. Like sometimes people will say, oh, I'm going to wind down and get away from my device and then do this like super complicated like brain teaser puzzle. And it's like, well, I don't think that's really good for promoting a restful state of mind. So yeah, just being repeatable with your schedule and having a wind down routine that isn't just about light avoidance, but is also just about truly getting into a calm, really relaxed state. So when my wife brings up stressful conversations right before bed, that's terrible. Like the bills? You have a built-in excuse to say in the interest of being compatible with the sleep literature, we're going to have to let's hold up on that until tomorrow. All right. So I have you here. So let's talk about supplements for sleep. This is murky for me because I know some things can make you feel drowsier, but do they actually improve the quality of your sleep? I know you can knock yourself out with some compounds, but does that necessarily contribute to better outcomes? Like what does the data show on things you can take that are non-pharmaceutical that can help improve your ability to fall asleep and the quality of your sleep? Yeah. I like the way you frame that because if we were just looking at like hey, what can I take right now that makes sure that I'm still tired in 12 hours? That's pretty easy, but actually facilitating better sleep is a much more challenge. You have to really thread the needle there. You can't just say, yeah, we're going to hit you with like 10 really strong things and you'll be out for a long time, but then your sleep schedule is just completely dysregulated for days, right? So melatonin is one that I think it's really I think it's really unfortunate that melatonin has this like kind of it's getting kind of a bad reputation among certain kind of sectors of the fitness world. And I think that it comes down to just inappropriate dosing. 100% I'm so glad you said that. I see kids with melatonin, 3mg 2mg, I'm like, what is going this is a huge dose of melatonin, especially for a child but not let alone adult. I've read the literature it's a much smaller dose that's effective for sleep quality, right? Yeah, I mean you can find studies where we're talking about dosing in like the 0.1 to 0.3 milligram range where it seems to be pretty effective. But yeah, you'll talk to people who they're like, you know, yeah, I've tried melatonin but I'm so tired the next morning it's like dude, you took 10mg like of course you are, you know, so what we want to do is try to facilitate you know, serotonin is going to change throughout the course of a sleep wake cycle melatonin is going to change. What we want to do is facilitate that without just completely obliterating the entire cyclical rhythm of those fluctuations. So you know, melatonin I think is a fantastic sleep supplement but I don't really like to I like to keep it in the range of like 0.1 to like maybe 1 milligrams on the high end. Which by the way is almost impossible to find. So that's how I use it. I try to find 1 milligram or less. Yeah. And if you go and you look for... Do they sell as low as 1? I thought like 3 or 5 is like the lowest. Bro, I found 1. I found 1. I could not find less than 1. It's almost impossible to find. Like I can picture 5 and 10 all day long but I can't picture 1 or 3 or anything lower now. I assume a very cute very adorable melatonin supplement that is formulated for children. But yeah, it's 1 milligram and you can only find it in like a pediatric formula. Like it's hard to find a 1 gram melatonin and I would love to go even lower than that but I just can't find it at the store. So melatonin I think is fantastic as long as you're not just taking that sledge hammer approach and going way overboard with it. Another one that I like is theanine. Love theanine. That's one of my favorite supplements to take before bed and with caffeine. What a wonderful combination with caffeine. It gives me the nicest euphoric high and you know I'm selling it now but that's just legit. I've talked about it so many times. The thing that's nice about theanine is that it doesn't really have a direct sedative effect. Like you don't take it and say like oh man I'm totally just like drowsy but it has a very calming and relaxing effect which is why it pairs well with caffeine. It doesn't have that sedative effect that counters the caffeine. It's not making the caffeine less effective but it does kind of smooth out some of that jitteriness that sometimes comes with caffeine. So before bed it's not, theanine is not going to knock you out but it does help with just like I said getting into like a really relaxed state and of course there are behavioral things you can do to facilitate that but theanine helps as well for sure. And that's just an amino acid. Found in tea, naturally occurring and yeah 100-200 milligrams is usually a really nice dose for that. Now what about magnesium? We talked about it earlier for testosterone. Most of the or a lot of the supplements I see around there for sleep involve some type of magnesium. Now the problem that I've gotten from friends and people who've taken magnesium is it just it's a laxative. And it's my understanding they're taking the wrong type of magnesium. So are there differences because there's like 50 million different types of magnesium. What's the best one for sleep? Yeah, there's a few different routes you can go with it. There are some magnesium some types of magnesium that are more likely to cause GI disruption, diarrhea, things like that. And another factor is that some forms of magnesium don't seem to they don't seem to have the same degree of bioavailability and the same ability to cross the blood-brain barrier. And so if we're interested in sleep, that's something that we definitely want to prioritize. So I would say for sleep, there's really two pretty solid options for magnesium. One would be magnesium 3 and 8, which appears to cross the blood-brain barrier quite efficiently. That was created by MIT, right? I don't know who created it, but I'm glad they did. Yeah, I think they think MIT scientists created it because they wanted to find a form of magnesium that crossed the blood barrier. Is that what's in Mellow? That's the one I've talked about before. Yeah, that was a game-changer for me. I didn't realize how deficient I was. My sleep was mostly improved just from taking magnesium at night every night. Yeah, so that's a good one. Another one that is worthwhile I think is basically a magnesium salt that's paired with glycine. So magnesium glycinate? Yeah, magnesium glycinate. And the reason that that might be another good option is because glycine itself as an independent ingredient does seem to help with sleep in certain circumstances as well. So I would say with either of those two forms, you'd be in pretty good shape. Okay, anything else that hasn't shown promise for sleep quality? Yeah, one that's a little bit outside of the norm, it's finding its way into the sleep supplement space but very slowly, and that's actually tart cherry extract. That's anti-inflammatory, right? It's got some anti-inflammatory effects. It is, yeah. So most of the tart cherry research that any of us would have looked at is mostly looking at acute recovery from really intense exercise. You know, they'll do like, hey, let's do some just unbearable downhill running with a bunch of like, just ramp up muscle damages as much as we can and see if tart cherry can help with recovery over the next 72 hours. But tart cherry also has a compound in it that influences tryptophan metabolism. And that's pretty, you know, tryptophan you know, everyone knows about it because basically John Madden talked about it during football games on Thanksgiving, right? So much tryptophan into turkey makes you tired. Yeah, and like some of that evidence was a little bit, I just said evidence about John Madden talking during the Thanksgiving this morning. Yeah, so a lot of people don't know this. John Madden was not a clinically trained scientist, so I don't mean to Oh crap. Yeah, a lot of people don't know that. But no, so some of the the claims about tryptophan were a little over exaggerated, especially you know, acting like turkey is like the only place you find it, of course, that's not the case. But yeah, so there's a compound in tart cherry extract that influences tryptophan metabolism and kind of it, you know tryptophan in its metabolic pathway kind of reaches a fork in the road where it can go left or go right, you know and if it goes left, it can facilitate production natural endogenous production of serotonin and melatonin as well. Now it's a small impact, it's not like going to ramp up your melatonin like crazy, but it facilitates you know, serotonin and melatonin like I said, they should be fluctuating throughout a normal sleep cycle and you don't just want to say, well yeah, crank them both to 11 and leave it there for 10 hours, right? And so this is a very subtle way to kind of nudge tryptophan instead of going toward a pathway where it creates canurinine, which isn't really doing much for us in terms of sleep, it nudges it toward that other pathway of metabolism where it's facilitating serotonin and melatonin production. Interesting, I did not know that about tart cherry. Tart cherry is one of the most effective natural anti-inflammatories I've ever used. Now that you're saying this, I have used it at night and I did get better sleep, but I thought it was because of its anti-inflammatory effects because if you've ever over-trained, which I'm sure you have you competed as a natural bodybuilder, so you over-trained a lot Yeah, it's basically my lifestyle from like the age of 16 to 25. Yeah, it's like when you you could take any anti-inflammatory and get better sleep when you're over-trained, that's what I thought was going on which might be part of it, but I had no idea. Yeah, it's called Procyanidine B2 and yeah, it's a very unique compound that is getting more attention but very slowly, like I said, the stuff moves really slowly. The first paper I saw really highlighting it was in like 2020 and if I would you know, you kind of twisted my arm to do a little speculation here one thing I would speculate with a decent level of confidence, I think you're going to see more tart cherry and sleep formulas over the next 5 or 10 years. Interesting, cool. Okay, so when we open this and even off-air you talked about your education and you're kind of coming of age in this education, early 2000s and you know, that was like the era, I like to call that the supplement era of pre-workout pump formulas that's when they hit the market, you know, before that you're younger than I am, but that category of supplements didn't exist so when I was, you know, working out as a teenage boy in early 20s, there was no pre-workout formula. There was Ultimate Orange, that was the only one, that was just like a Cephedra, caffeine, you know, the ECA stack or whatever and then all of a sudden you have this category of supplements that comes out, Super Pump 250 being one of the biggest ones and brilliant marketing they showed a before and after workout look at the pump he got, you know, it's because of this supplement, we filled it full of organi and all that other stuff so it was brilliant, created this whole new category of supplements but because you came of age in your education during this period of time, it sounds like that was one of the main places you wanted to start studying supplements was pump and blood flow. Am I right? Am I hitting the nail on the head? Yeah, I've always been fascinated with the pump, I mean, when I first fell in love with lifting, which like I said should be the first step for anybody starting a fitness journey, it was when those pump related products were just like the supplement market and I just was yeah, I just loved the process of experimenting with them and I wish I could go back into naively just I used to like switch from Super Pump 250 to NO Explode and say like I think this might be what I've been missing, you know and it's just like dude it's not but yeah, I was really interested in the physiology behind it and it was a line of research I wanted to follow up on and so I did some research on pomegranate extract and blood flow but eventually for my dissertation research I looked at citrulline and nitrate. Okay, so let's talk about, well first off this is a very interesting study, this is a very interesting category of study because for us fitness people the pump is good, it feels good it can improve athletic performance but the mechanisms that increase the pump are also very valuable to the medical community because vasodilation, relaxing the blood capillaries, improving blood flow lowers blood pressure it's better for the heart, I'm seeing citrulline and we'll get to this in a second, I want to talk about citrulline but I'm seeing citrulline marketed to people for heart health and for blood pressure so it went from bodybuilding to hey, my grandmother takes it because she's got high blood pressure, she takes citrulline a few times a day so this is like a big field of study that started with hey, get a better pump in the gym and now it's like oh and then erectile dysfunction huge market with erectile dysfunction and pharmaceutical drugs that treat erectile dysfunction, literally they work on the pump in essence let's talk about citrulline, why citrulline and why not arginine? I always pronounce it arginine, I have no idea if that's correct I'm in the precarious line of work where almost everything I talk about, I've never heard spoken I just read it in paper I've just made up my own kind of nomenclature for all this stuff my own pronunciation guidelines so arginine was kind of the first one that hit the market and for good reason, arginine is the direct precursor to nitric oxide so a lot of the nitric oxide research really kicked off in the late 90s and it actually was medical in nature originally so there was this mystery compound that seemed to be making blood vessels dilate and no one really knew what it was and then a group of scientists did a series of studies and said hey, you know that mystery blood flow thing? I think that's actually nitric oxide which had been known in like environmental and atmospheric research for a very long time, they didn't know that it was actually doing anything in the body or occurring in the body and so in the late 90s they said hey that like weird vasodilating factor that we haven't named yet nitric oxide and then it was like the Time Magazine molecule of the year in like 1998 some folks got a Nobel Prize for it oh yeah, I actually bought that magazine, I remember the cover right now yeah, so some folks got a Nobel Prize for it but so arginine was as far as we knew at that time there was one pathway for nitric oxide production in the body and that was your body converts arginine into nitric oxide so it makes sense, take arginine and you use the nitric oxide synthase enzymes to make that conversion happen but what we found with arginine supplementation was two things, first at lower doses the bioavailability was too poor to really move the needle too much, it just wasn't an effective way when you're taking arginine orally it just doesn't seem to improve blood arginine levels to the extent that they would hope and so then you go okay, we'll bump up the dose well at higher dosages it causes GI upset so bump 250 was also known as super dump 250, this is literally what we used to call it in the genealogy because that's what would happen yeah and so then you're in this situation and it's like well do we under dose it and miss the effect that we're trying to get or do we go really heavy with it and say hey, your first exercise of every workout is actually going to take place in the bathroom which a lot of people did like you remember right and so eventually they find okay well if we take citrulline citrulline is actually a precursor to arginine so we're just going one step higher in that chain so you take citrulline really great bioavailability it increases blood arginine levels and now you have what you need to produce nitric oxide when the time comes so yeah that brings me to an important point which is you know why not just supplement with nitric oxide itself right why deal with all these precursors and there's a couple reasons nitric oxide is a gas and I just don't think the supplement consumer market is really going to embrace gaseous supplements in a wide, wide spread faster yeah I don't think people are ready for that it's not a good route of administration but also nitric oxide you'll see papers that debate it's half life in the body so nitric oxide gets produced in the blood and it's there for like maybe a second and then it's gone and so you can't just say well even if we had some non-gaseous nitric oxide supplement the bio you know it's just it just vanishes so quickly it's half life is so short you got to go with a precursor so that you have the precursors there so that when the time comes and the physiological stimuli are present you have the necessary things to create it at that moment cool so so citrulline raises arginine in the blood in the blood better than taking arginine and because of this we're seeing improved blood flow yeah so okay good so because I hate it when people take studies and say oh it does this therefore it probably does this like no no I want to see the end result so we see supplementing with citrulline does improve blood flow and does have positive effects on things like blood pressure do we also see it with erectile dysfunction because theoretically in vasodilation should improve things like erectile dysfunction or the quality of erections yeah I mean like you said you know when you compare something like citrulline to something like Viagra you know they're all working toward enhancing blood flow through mechanisms that are not exactly the same but pointing in the same direction they're trying to make more nitric oxide or just make the nitric oxide production more effective for vasodilation and so yeah there are studies showing citrulline does enhance blood flow and there are studies directly looking at various indices of sexual function or erectile function and there is human research indicating that citrulline can be helpful and citrulline's effects on blood flow are a little bit dependent on a few fact you know it can be modified by a few factors number one is if you have poorer vascular function at baseline it has a bigger effect on vascular function which makes sense and also you can make citrulline a little bit more effective by pairing it with an antioxidant and the reason for that is nitric oxide is produced like I said it's going to go somewhere very quickly right it's got that very very short half life the question is where does it go one pathway or I guess one direction it can go is toward a place where it can be recycled it can kind of enter this nitrate nitrite kind of cyclical recycling process or it can go and form peroxy nitrite which is just not what you want you know there are a number of reasons why you would prefer to not have nitric oxide immediately convert to peroxy nitrite and one thing that kind of nudges nitric oxide after it's produced the other direction is having an abundance of antioxidants present so like vitamin C exactly vitamin C very simple effective antioxidant that can make you know you'll also see glutathione being used with citrulline but what you're trying to do is make sure there are antioxidants present so you know citrulline will increase arginine increase nitric oxide but then what we want to try to nudge that nitric oxide into ways where we can recycle it and kind of reuse it rather than have it just create peroxy nitrite and waste it awesome now earlier you mentioned nitrate so let's talk about this because I'm not super familiar with this compound yeah aside from I read like two articles that said that this is like the be all and all way to boost nitric oxide in the blood in comparison to everything else that we've that are that's natural that we've seen that's what the promise was what does the data say I'm a big nitrate guy I think if if you made me choose citrulline or nitrate and my purpose my intention was to increase blood flow I would go with nitrate actually the good thing is you don't have to choose because what's really unique about nitrate is it uses a different pathway to create nitric oxide so you could take it in combination absolutely have a synergistic effect yes wow and so and the combined approaches aren't quite as well studied because it took people a minute to say hey why are we why do we continue to choose let's let's do both so that research is coming and there is some but yeah so like I said with with arginine to nitric citrulline to arginine to nitric oxide you're relying on the nitric oxide synthase enzyme and just like any other enzymatic reaction you can basically saturate that and kind of reach a bottleneck where it's like okay the enzyme can only do so much at per unit time but nitrate actually has a non enzymatic pathway where it goes from nitrate to nitrite to nitric oxide so it's very direct so it's it's more direct it's not dependent on that enzyme system so you can actually use both of those pathways simultaneously so so nitrate is is absolutely a fantastic way to boost blood flow and like I said if I had to pick one I probably would go with nitrate where do you find where do you find this naturally all over the place so so nitrate is pretty ubiquitous when it comes to the stuff that we kind of wish we didn't have to eat so like green leafy leafy vegetables have a ton of nitrate if you're if you're looking at like you know where would I go for like the most direct dose spinach is great arugula or rocket is great some fruits like pomegranate have some nitrate but a lot of fruits and vegetables tend to be pretty high in nitrate okay now what about any herbs that can help like you talked about ashwagandha earlier does that help or is there anything else that has been shown to help boost blood flow yeah so when it comes to you know supplements and we're if we're looking for blood flow for erectile function versus exercise performance okay when you start getting into like herbal ingredients for erectile function or sexual function then you get into this world of research where there's there's all these like single studies that have never been replicated and you're like that that doesn't look like it makes sense like that effect is so big and has never been replicated and will never be replicated so I will say that one of the areas of literature that I find most frustrating to wade through is the herbal ingredients that are intended to increase like testosterone or libido or erectile function you just get into this entire world of research that's really it's really tedious to sort through but there's a couple ingredients that come to mind as kind of like being the top of the pack when it comes to a dietary supplement to specifically enhance erectile function and blood flow to the penis and that would be one would be yo-him-bean. Yo-him-bean does have some good research in terms of stimulating you know more erections erections that are subjectively rated as you know greater firmness you know there's a variety of subjective tools that researchers use in these studies to say like hey we gave you yo-him-bean did it increase you know the quality of your erection or your sexual performance and people with yo-him-bean often report positive effects in randomized controlled trials the problem with yo-him-bean is that for a certain percentage of the population it does seem to induce some anxiety symptoms isn't it a beta 2 agonist I'm not certain of the exact mechanism but I think you're correct. Yeah, it's a stimulant. I don't like it for that reason right there if I take it I'll take a little bit to work out but if I'm trying to take it for like you know if I'm going to you know have sex with my wife or something like that I wouldn't take it because that would happen at night and then I would be up all night. Yeah, it's very stimulatory and one of the reasons that I'm not super well versed in the mechanisms is my personal approach like my bias as a person who interprets research is I go from effect to mechanism not the other way around because if you start with mechanisms and say what should this do you can go a lot of different directions that are fantasy they will never pan out so I like to say what does this supplement do before I start digging into why and how and now before I would you know recommend a supplement I'm doing that whole process I'm not just saying well it works and I don't care why but in order I mean in my line of work with what I do if I work the other way around I would I don't know how I would have time to eat throughout the day you'd have to chase so many pathways and mechanisms so with with Yo-Himby and I looked at the actual outcomes first and I said okay I'm seeing this prevalence of anxiety symptoms I'm seeing some degree of some anxiety episodes that are and just stimulatory effects that are unwanted to the extent that you see people who are really reporting like I really disliked this in these trials and I look at it and I say whatever it's doing and however it's doing it I clearly this is not a supplement that I'm really really eager about you know now does it work for erectile function there actually is some pretty good evidence is the you know the anxiety related side effects that's not necessarily ubiquitous it's not like a hundred percent of users experience that but you know my personal bias is someone who's been pretty prone to just being a really anxious person I don't need help becoming anxious you know it's super common in quote-unquote fat burning pills where you'll mostly see Yo-Himby because of the stimulatory you know gets you hyped kind of like caffeine type of fact yeah yeah so Yo-Himby and based on the research does seem to work for this outcome but you know one of the things I often ask myself is can we get a similar effect or a comparable effect with a just a slightly better side effect profile and for me the one that sticks out there would be red Korean ginseng there's not quite as many controlled trials but they do exist showing improvements in you know erection quality sexual function things like that they call it the king like herb like this is like one of the main Chinese medicine plants or herbs that has been used for a long time and the number one it's classified as an adaptogen but one of its number one uses is libido yeah I know this because my uncle is a he does Chinese medicine and he's at ginseng like that's the first thing that they that they use when it comes to libido for especially for men yeah and there's also research you know with ginseng there's stuff looking just directly at you know libido sexual function erectile quality things like that but there's also research looking at mechanistically you know does it actually specifically influence blood flow itself you know via nitric oxide related mechanisms and the answer appears to be yes so so ginseng is a nice well-rounded supplement that's getting at sexual function from a few different a few different directions and kind of having these multifaceted impacts now there are definitely skeptics of ginseng and so that's why I would say if you're looking into you know again like we talked about with testosterone I want to facilitate you know erectile function sexual function using just a combination of lifestyle modification and supplements I'd say first line of line of you know the first thing you want to address basically is you know vascular function is a big deal and a lot of people treat vascular function as if it's dichotomous you have acceptable or unacceptable vascular function but that's not the case you know it's a very kind of graded thing where you could go from good vascular function to excellent vascular function so focusing on things like cardio respiratory or aerobic fitness level those types of things you know sedentary time being more active potentially getting to a body fat level that's more compatible with cardiometabolic health those are kind of first line of defense kind of things where you could say let's do some lifestyle stuff first and then of course when it comes to sexual function there are stuff there are things outside the realm of physiology that I'm not an expert on but you're going to want to focus on the health of your relationship right like there's like social effects there there's psychological you know some things that have like performance anxiety and stuff like that so there's a whole bunch of other stuff you can address but then if you're getting into the supplement realm I'd say the first thing you want to do is blood flow stuff I think it's the most direct thing it's the stuff that is least disputed by by skeptics where it's like yeah citrulline nitrate and maybe throw in an antioxidant to help out along the way those things should be quite effective if you are experiencing you know just mild reductions you know sexual performance erectile quality things like that and you said Korean ginseng right because there's other there's Siberian ginseng which is not ginseng by the way I love this myself they call it Siberian ginseng but it's not the same plant whatsoever there's right there's Korean and then there's other stuff yeah it's weird like somewhere along the line people started using ginseng as like kind of a generic herbal term yeah versus like yeah versus like the actual like the actual you so that yeah there's like 11 like 11's like just like off the top of my head number there's a bunch of things that are colloquially called ginseng that aren't actually ginseng but red Korean ginseng to me if you're going to say aside from the blood flow stuff I want to throw in an herbal in an herbal ingredient with human evidence with a really good side effect profile that's that's kind of my number one now Eric I got a hold of you through joy mode which is a company that makes supplements and we get contacted by supplement companies all the time and so I do my research and I look at the products and I try to talk to the founder I have to like the people I have to like the compounds and then I have to like and respect the people that help advise them of their formulations because as I said earlier and I think this is I can say this and I don't think anybody would dispute this the supplement industry is just full of garbage there's so much garbage that's out there I'm sure you learn this first hand as a kid taking every other supplement trying to make something work and nothing happened but I was impressed when they said that you advised them or worked with them because I'm familiar with your work and I said okay good they got somebody who you know I would trust this person's advice and you know what they would recommend how did you like why work with this company because there's so many companies to work with why did you choose to work with them or why do you advise with them is it is it is it do you know them personally or what's what's the deal there no so I mean they reached out to me because I was doing like my dissertation research was on blood flow with citrulline and nitrate I wasn't looking at a rectile function I was looking at you know the pump you know I was looking at muscle blood flow but nonetheless there's obvious overlap in parallels and they said you know we're working on this this formula that is for you know sexual performance and the way they frame it is kind of like a pre-workout for sex you know they're not saying like oh here's like an erectile dysfunction drug obviously you don't want to make that type of claim in the supplement world but they're like yeah we're working on this thing it's kind of like a pre-workout for sex but it's going to utilize blood flow stuff and we start the conversation from there I like the general vibe of what they're going for with the lineup of products they're putting together because it's it's very focused on feeling great you know it's it's kind of like a really evidence-based look at male wellness you know and not just male you know like you know if you look at something like a sleep product obviously that works across the board but no we started talking about like what's their vision for the company their direction and that stuff was important to me but the thing that really jumped out to me was just being receptive because the first formula they sent my way I said this is very good but could be better and they were all ears oh cool and then they made changes so they were like and we'll talk to somebody else yeah because I will say like once you get a PhD even though I think people overstate how much that really qualifies you to do some things sometimes companies will reach out and they'll say well we don't really want your feedback we just want your you need a PhD stamp of approval for the website yeah and like it was very clear to me that that wasn't the case they said we want to make these products the best they can be and when I said well I think they could be better they said how and then they made changes and to me that was the thing that really I said okay yeah let's do this so I'm only familiar with one of their products what all do they have then I didn't know they had other things so yeah they're kind of first like flagship product was for sexual performance which is why they reached out to me with my blood flow background but but then we start talking and another product that came out pretty early on was a testosterone support product and those go hand in hand right because you know we talk about all these herbs for libido but I can tell you from my natural body building days good luck with libido when your testosterone's you know 140 blood flow you want yeah yeah I mean yeah good luck so those two are you know really complimentary kind of approaches and and I think I'm allowed to say yeah I'm allowed to say they're working on a sleep formula as well that that should be coming out soon which I'm I'm pretty pretty stoked about so so for now that that's the line up very cool how annoyed do you get when you see PhDs in our field who are just say crazy shit and are just obviously trying to make a buck because you mentioned you know PhD isn't necessarily qualify and I'm sure that's because you've seen people in our space like I'm a PhD take this crap and you're like come on man yeah I mean I I don't know my general philosophy toward life steers me away from getting super annoyed by stuff I can't control so you're not like our friend Lane Norton who just goes after I would say I'm completely the opposite of that approach where I what I try to do if we want to get really philosophical I'm actually a practicing Buddhist okay and one of the the really key philosophies in Buddhism is that the point of speaking is to be helpful you know so like I don't I say okay I could bring awareness to this by attacking someone and calling them out and getting into the whole big thing or I could try to just put out really helpful information and do my best with that I notice that I feel better and happier when I focus on being helpful rather than nitpicking everyone's mistakes or exaggeration so I do I like and I don't want to just I think there's there's value in having people who very vocally call out information that's incorrect and deceiving and things like that but my approach is I'd prefer to just put out the best information I can and focus really meticulously on being as helpful as possible I also think that's a much happier way to live yeah for sure like I said I have a I used to be very prone to anxiety and those types of confrontations would be the kind of thing that they rally up and yeah they get a lot of eyes and ears on them but do I feel good when I'm doing it no do I feel good after no did I really change that many hearts and minds just by being upset no so if you can just put out alternative information say well I would be happy to talk you through why and how this is more suitable information with some good evidence to back it up that's just kind of the approach I take excellent well that's why we had you on the show Eric I appreciate you coming on man yeah I appreciate the invitation good time thank you how do I incorporate cardio and not lose muscle seen people do this before where they'll start to lose the sharpness of their muscles or they'll start to lose the sculpt a little bit and that's disheartening but if you do it right then you minimize that muscle loss or that metabolism slow down in fact if you do it right you can actually speed up your metabolism at the same time that you build stamina endurance you just have to be able to kind of program it properly and the way to program it improperly is just go do it as much cardio as you can for as long as you can right