 Next question is from Nathaniel L. Watson. Have you had a hernia and what is the best way to avoid them? Justin, you have, haven't you? I've never had one. Yeah, I did and I don't... I mean, for me it was just excessively... I was picking... I wasn't deadlifting. I wasn't even introduced to deadlifting until later on in terms of... I thought you said it's just sexually transmitted, no? No, that was the other thing you had. Yeah, that was the lump. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, but I didn't have it. It wasn't like an extreme one. Sometimes you need surgery for this. So basically your intestines almost pushing its way out, right? And so it's not something to mess with. Obviously you need to rest and recover and allow your body to fully heal. But for me it was just more of a pressing thing where I knew that it was very painful. It was a very painful experience for me and I'm pretty sure it was due to improper technique lifting something super heavy and awkward. Yeah, so hernia is essentially when an organ or sometimes deep muscles poke through usually the core muscles of your body. So intestines can come through that. Your stomach can come through that. And so if you think of your core, right, there's layers of core muscles and they surround your internal organs and they act like a shield and they stabilize the body. Well, sometimes there's a tear that can happen and the organs can poke through that and if it's not treated sometimes it can continue to get worse. And like Justin said, oftentimes it requires surgery. Believe it or not, some of the more common reasons why people get hernias, of course we all know about lifting improperly, right, straining constipation. Constipation causes hernias for a lot of people, that constant pushing and straining. Pushing that big ol' log out. Weakness, weak core muscles. Of course it's usually in combination with weak core muscles. Another way people get hernias, coughing or sneezing. So you got weak core muscles. You might be overweight on top of it and then you cough or sneeze and then you get a tear and stuff pokes out. Overweight, being overweight can happen, can do this as well. Because we carry more visceral body fat than women do. So, visceral body fat is the body fat that is deep. It surrounds the organs and it tends to be under muscle. So it's like, you know, do you guys ever have a man in your family, uncle or whatever, they get this big belly. But then you touch the belly and it's hard. They're like, what the hell? I had an uncle like that. He had a big ol' belly. Rock solid Buddha belly. Yeah, he'd eat all these bowls of pasta and he'd be like, but it's not fat, come here. Why is it all like hard? It's because the fat was underneath the muscle and it was pushing everything out. And what happens when that happens is, think of your hamstrings, for example. Imagine putting your hamstrings in an extreme stretch. How strong are your hamstrings in that extreme stretch? They're very weak. When your core muscles are pushed out and stretched, they lose strength. Look, right now my wife's going through this. She's a pregnant third trimester. The baby is growing. This has to happen in pregnancy. It's a normal process. But because her core muscles are so stretched out, she has very little core stability compared to how she had before. So this happens when people are overweight and then you throw on top of that. You go lift something or you cough or you sneeze or you're constipated. Now you have a problem. So best ways to avoid a hernia, have good digestion, regular bowel movements that you don't struggle or strain to pass. I hear you laughing, Justin. I'm laughing because I'm sure that was a factor. Yeah. Take it back. Yeah. So they have the best diet. There's that. Make sure your body weight is appropriate, allowing yourself to get really overweight. People who are really overweight have a much, much higher rate of hernias than people who aren't. So maintain a healthy body weight. And then when you work out and lift, make sure you have good core stability. But here's the deal, okay? Because I've had people tell me that they were afraid to lift heavy because they don't want to get a hernia. Yeah. If you lift heavy like an idiot, it's like saying, I'm scared to hurt my back if I lift weights. Yeah. If you have bad form, if you're not worried about mobility and stability and you just go lift haphazardly, the risk is high. Same thing with a hernia. If you lift weights properly, controlled, stable, good core stability, the risk of hernia is very low. And not only that, but because you're lifting weights properly, your risk of hernia long-term is lower. Yeah. So because you're fit, your risk of hernia is a lot lower. Now, you do see this sometimes in advanced lifters, but you're talking about extreme examples. It's like, you know, it'd be like a car, you know, twisting its axle in half. Like, when does that happen? Well, you have to put 600 horsepower. Yeah. I was going to say, I was just talking about this with like those nitro drag racers, right? Like, they can't, they can't even maintain the engine. There's so much explosive pressure internally there that it's like, it's hard to manage it. Yeah. You don't want to look at the extremes and then be afraid of what might happen at the extremes. I mean, if you really want to get scared, you know, something that can happen to Olympic lifters, this is legit, like they generate so much force and power that they've actually, some of them have actually blown their, yeah, their insides out of their butt. I mean, this has actually happened. It's happened. Yeah. And so those are extremes. Don't YouTube that. Yeah. Please don't look that up. I did that once. It was terrible. But, you know, if you work out properly, good stability, good form, the way that we promote all the time on the podcast, if you have a healthy diet, you're not super constipated, your risk of hernia is lower than somebody who just doesn't do anything at all and just lives the standard American life.