In this episode of the Joe Rogan Experience, Joe talks about his new nootropic drink, Red Gummy Fish, and why it's so damn good. Joe also talks about the benefits of caffeine and how it can improve memory and enhance attention.
00:00:41.000So I think it was the first time I was on you asked me about Gorilla Mind and the nootropic formula that I used before podcasts and to get cognitively dialed.
00:00:51.000And at the time, it was a capsule-based formula.
00:00:55.000But taking what we could to suspend in a liquid format and getting it into something that's more like publicly and widely accepted and that they would want to drink on a regular basis and is something you could use daily.
00:01:08.000So we included essentially like a daily use version of the Gorilla Mind formula, which includes the tyrosine precursor for dopamine as well as other neurotransmitters, catecholamines like adrenaline or adrenaline.
00:01:24.000Also, Alpha GPC, most bioavailable form of choline.
00:01:28.000It crosses the blood-brain barrier and is pretty efficacious and also just a good choline source in general, which most people are deficient in as a nutrient and I think completely unaware that it's actually important to be supplementing with potentially.
00:01:41.000Pretty hard to get an adequate amount of choline.
00:01:48.000And in general, it's just like the highly nutrition dense foods that you would get it from.
00:01:54.000A lot of people aren't focusing on specifically either because of caloric density or it's like an animal-based like nose to tail thing or fill in the blank.
00:02:03.000A lot of people who focus on it could probably relatively easily, but it's still one of the things you have to focus on actually kind of like maneuvering into your diet typically.
00:02:14.000So in general, most people are at least maybe like 50% of the way that are at best.
00:02:20.000And that's even among people who I would say are relatively balanced diet individuals.
00:02:45.000So it's like the fine line balance of not too much, something that is still tolerable, sustainable, going to be widely accepted and widely impactful on a beneficial level, but not overdoing it and 200 is kind of what we landed on.
00:02:57.000And then uridine monophosphate, pretty unique ingredient.
00:03:00.000I haven't seen anybody ever include it in a drink, let alone even in supplements typically.
00:03:06.000So it's also something that operates via the cholinergic system, but in a different way.
00:03:12.000Mainly it's utility is kind of enhancing your sensitivity to stimulants.
00:03:18.000So somebody who is otherwise desensitized from like heightened exposure to things that either desensitize them to caffeine or nicotine or things of this nature, even something like the ADHD medications.
00:03:33.000This can actually, at least the literature suggests strongly that it enhances dopamine neurotransmission potential.
00:03:39.000So like almost restoring function and damaged dopamine producing neurons in the brain.
00:03:44.000So you can kind of get a heightened impact out of the same level of stimulant.
00:03:49.000So a caffeine dose that might otherwise be, you're used to it now, you start to feel it again more than you used to without having to increase your caffeine intake.
00:03:58.000So it's a pretty cool ingredient and it seems to have some neuroprotective properties potentially as well.
00:04:04.000And some interesting literature on like Alzheimer's and whatnot, but it's more like fringe and to be determined how impactful it is.
00:04:11.000And then on top of that, we have L-thenine.
00:04:14.000You're probably familiar with its effects, stacked with caffeine, increases alpha waves, good for verbal fluency, as well as just general attention, concentration, but keeping you a little bit more balanced and mellow while you have the heightened stimulatory activity from the caffeine and the other kind of like dopaminergic compounds.
00:04:32.000And then also saffron extract, which is a totally unique inclusion in my opinion.
00:04:37.000Still don't really see it in nootropic formulas, let alone in drinks.
00:04:40.000And it's something that in literature has shown to be as efficacious as pharmaceutical SSRIs without inducing the same erectile dysfunction inducing effects of it and without causing the same anhedonia inducing effects, which is kind of like the muting of like pleasure in the brain.
00:05:03.000It seems to be pretty impactful for depression, for anti-anxiety, and it also operates through a seemingly different mechanism, even though it's often stacked up against SSRIs for its comparisons and outperforms them or matches it with a relative lack of side effects.
00:05:20.000It is something that operates through seemingly antioxidant activity, some dopaminergic, some serotonergic, and just a little bit more of a benign way to achieve what is a similar outcome, but with a seemingly lower, if not negligible to non-existent side effect profile.
00:05:36.000I'm not saying that's what our drink does.
00:05:38.000I'm just saying that's what the literature on saffron does.
00:05:40.000And anyone can go look that up and reference it.
00:05:44.000Probably the most impactful acetylcholinesterase inhibitor that you can include alongside like choline precursors.
00:05:51.000So it inhibits the breakdown of acetylcholine as opposed to being the fuel, like the precursor, like choline, acetyl, alpha-GPC, CDP choline.
00:06:00.000These are things that provide the substrate to actually produce the acetylcholine, preventing the breakdown of it too.
00:06:06.000Could otherwise get like a one-two punch where you get the heightened fuel substrate, but then also an inhibition of its breakdown.
00:06:13.000So you have just like a heightened level of cognitive capacity through both like the one-two punch.
00:06:20.000How did you determine these like doses and what you were going to include and not include?
00:06:28.000So a lot of it derived from the original capsule-based formula.
00:06:32.000So back in, I don't know, 2021, I had already been using this thing for daily use, essentially.
00:06:38.000And it was something that was determined based upon years of experience, personal anecdotes, but digging through hordes of clinical literature ultimately.
00:06:49.000There's a lot of these compounds that have clinical studies on them for different applications.
00:06:54.000You can kind of sift through what are the efficacious dosages, where are they impactful, whereas a sustainable level, you could actually take this long term without it being negatively impactful on, because sometimes if you overdo it in one area over time, it might be problematic.
00:07:07.000So trying to find the fine balance of where's a dose that moves the needle, but isn't going to kind of like push you in too far of a negative direction that it's unsustainable.
00:07:17.000Because sometimes that this stuff, it's like a hammer solution.
00:07:22.000You might see an energy drink that's like 300, 350 caffeine.
00:07:25.000And it's like, okay, you know, you've essentially like singled out a lot of the customers who might otherwise benefit from it.
00:07:30.000Even if there was other good stuff in the drink, it's like only stim junkies can use it now, you know?
00:07:36.000So this is kind of like the fine balance of what I thought to be the most sustainable version of balancing, you know, dopamine input, serotonergic activity, getting some of that, you know, anti-anxiety support, and also getting a reasonable hit of caffeine.
00:07:51.000And did you, so in pill form, so did you start out by using each individual supplement and then trying to use them in combination to see if there's a synergistic effect?
00:08:04.000I guess maybe that's a bit more interesting than digging through literature, but when I was a university student, just like being a nerd mixing stuff in my kitchen like a chemist, essentially, and just measuring raw powders back, you know, in the day, what we would do, or at least, you know, like biohackers and what have you, we'd buy just like off of different websites, raw bulk ingredients, and then you'd measure out with little micro spoons in these laboratory increments to try and get, okay, the microgram equivalent of this.
00:08:32.000And you'd make some disgusting shake with a concoction of different unflavored powders and create what is your ultimate kind of combination.
00:08:45.000Yeah, it's just keeping a log almost like, you know, working out like, how did you respond to filling in the blank?
00:08:50.000Or did you take into account like sleep, all these different factors, diet?
00:08:56.000Many variables at the time, obviously a bit more rudimentary and crude when you're like 21 years old and you're just trying to like get cognitively locked in to study for finals.
00:09:06.000But back then it was just what is the most impactful things that I've heard work.
00:09:11.000And then also digging further into literature, looking on the limited forums that existed back then online because it's a lot more of a like a niche community back then.
00:09:20.000It's not like this was ever widely discussed.
00:10:05.000And it was, you know, I do morning radio.
00:10:07.000When you're promoting, like I was doing Cobb's Comedy Club, when you were doing a comedy club, you'd show, this is back in the day when radio meant something.
00:10:14.000You'd show up in the morning and you'd do the morning drive.
00:10:17.000And they would go, oh, Joe Rogan's appearing at the comedy club this weekend.
00:10:40.000Is there, you know, other forms that we're missing?
00:10:43.000But your formulation seems like very comprehensive and also fucking delicious.
00:10:49.000Yeah, that's one of the difficult things too is making it taste good while still being able to suspend the active ingredients because they could just fall out of suspension or a myriad of different issues, carbonation problems, even exploding cans in transit that you're not predicting are going to react a certain way.
00:11:07.000Even the black lids, dude, like it's stuff you don't even think of, but absorbing heat.
00:11:11.000It's like, oh, it's going to be more prone to blowing up now because of that.
00:11:42.000Yeah, but in general, it's going to irritate your gut or it could cause GI distress.
00:11:47.000And for some people with extremely sensitive gastrointestinal issues, it can for sure.
00:11:53.000But in general, at the dosages used and just having it even conservatively, which most people are going to be, it's like pretty benign, at least from the literature I've seen.
00:12:02.000One of the things that we had noticed when we first came out with AlphaBrain was for some people, it's a small amount, but for some people, they would get headaches and they felt terrible after taking it.
00:12:19.000There's a lot of folks like that out there.
00:12:21.000But yeah, some of these, if you're not careful, it could be, you know, pushing you into like we vetted this out beforehand, but one of the first formulations or prototypes of Gorilla Mind in the capsule form, we had something called Velvet Bean Extract, which standardizes to L-Dopa.
00:12:40.000So like Levo Dopa is used for like Parkinson's patients because it's a direct precursor to dopamine without a rate limiting step that kind of like in hit regulates the conversion.
00:12:51.000So rather than using tyrosine, we were like, we thought, and we didn't end up releasing it because of this, we could just go, okay, let's get a straight precursor and see how impactful this thing is because we really want it to hit.
00:13:02.000And oh my God, I had like dopamine overdose myself.
00:13:07.000Had my girlfriend at the time also fuck herself up and my parents fuck themselves up.
00:13:12.000And somehow it didn't, it didn't occur until like three incidents later.
00:13:18.000I'm like, okay, this thing is unsustainable.
00:13:21.000And I guess my business partners didn't really even think worth mentioning, which was kind of crazy at the time because they just trusted me to do the formulations and whatnot.
00:13:31.000But they had the same experience and didn't bring it up.
00:13:33.000And I'm like, guys, like, we can't release this shit.
00:13:38.000It just like makes you extremely nauseous.
00:13:41.000You feel like you have to keel over on a couch and just lie there until you feel like you can actually regain composure and start moving around again.
00:13:50.000Dopamine, a lot of people think more is better.
00:13:53.000You're going to have more motivation, more drive, more, you know, it's the more the better is what a lot of people think.
00:13:58.000But similar to probably even worse than stimulants, because at least stimulants, you have kind of like a direct biofeedback through your heart rates going through the roof and you're getting the anxiety with dopamine.
00:14:08.000If you overdo it with something that you can't like rate limit either, you just like get sick and you just end up having to lie down for hours.
00:15:14.000A lot of people don't realize the studies done for caffeine-induced performance enhancement are all looking at like three to six milligrams a kilogram, which is like, unless you're a tiny woman, 400, 500, 600 milligrams are the doses that actually really move the needle when it comes to acute performance enhancement.
00:15:34.000Chaos Sunnin used to take it in pill form.
00:15:37.000Because he was saying that there's a level where they'll test you where you'll pop, where they'll say, okay, you're in a stimulant level.
00:15:46.000Like you took a stimulant before you fought.
00:15:48.000Yeah, they have a they had threshold concentrations that they would deem inappropriately high, perhaps for safety, perhaps because they thought it was an unfair advantage.
00:15:58.000It's kind of I think that's what they were looking at it.
00:16:00.000It kind of depends, though, because I think it was removed, and I don't think that threshold exists anymore except in the NCAA.
00:16:06.000I'd have to revisit it, but I'm pretty sure caffeine is like essentially you could go full bore at this point.
00:16:12.000So 500, 600 milligrams was what the efficacious dose was.
00:16:18.000So you can get performance enhancement as low as, I think some people was like a milligram per kilogram.
00:16:25.000It depends on the person and tolerance, of course.
00:16:27.000But in general, the most tried and true studies when it comes to repeatable, high impact with a proportional relative lack of side effect, but not none, was like three to six milligrams a kilogram.
00:16:40.000And some of the studies go even higher than that.
00:16:45.000Like acute strength enhancement, offsetting like any sleep-induced deprivation and performance outcomes mentally.
00:16:55.000You can pretty much offset like a shitty night of sleep and all the kind of detriments to your performance via a pretty solid dose of caffeine.
00:17:04.000Yeah, most of the stuff is kind of energy, acutely offsetting performance decrement related, but also in a context of strength, high intensity activity, you can absolutely get a benefit from it.
00:17:17.000And there's a reason why, you know, sprinters will take, you know, modafinil or high-dose caffeine or powerlifters will take, you know, massive doses of, you know, pre-workup before a lift or whatnot.
00:17:29.000Like it's all impactful for your psychological state to get really like locked in in a hyper-vigilant state to really max out on what you're trying to do, whatever it may be.
00:17:38.000This episode is brought to you by Happy Dad Hard Seltzer.
00:17:42.000A nice, cold, happy dad is low carbonation, gluten-free, and is easy to drink.
00:17:48.000When you're watching a football game or you're golfing, watching a fight with your boys or out on the lake, these moments call for a cold, happy dad.
00:17:57.000People are drinking all these seltzers and skinny cans that are loaded with sugar, but happy dad only has one gram of sugar in a normal size can.
00:18:05.000You can buy happy dad on the GoPuff app and your local liquor and grocery store, including Walmart, Kroger, Total Wine, and Circle K.
00:18:14.000And you can't decide on a flavor, grab a variety pack: lemon lime, watermelon, pineapple, and wild cherry.
00:18:20.000They also have a grape flavor in collaboration with Death Row Records and Snoop Dogg.
00:18:25.000They have their new lemonade coming out as well.
00:18:27.000Visit happydad.com for a limited time offer and use code Rogan to buy one Happy Dad trucker hat and get one free.
00:19:04.000They're getting pretty high, you know, because the recommended was like five milligrams, I think.
00:19:09.000And now everyone's saying, actually, the real benefits are at 20 and at least 10.
00:19:15.000But you're getting a lot of what happens when people have sleep deprivation.
00:19:22.000And I'll butcher the science, so I won't try to repeat it.
00:19:25.000And I recommend anybody listen to the episode.
00:19:28.000But what he was essentially saying was it bypasses all the problems that occur and you could at least have a bridge to your performance would not be impeded by a lack of sleep, at least for a temporary day or whatever.
00:19:44.000Yeah, definitely want to touch on that.
00:19:46.000But one thing to mention on the caffeine, too, is I think a lot of people, when they hear the stuff like, you know, I heard you can go up to 20 grams of creatine or, you know, the highest impact dose in caffeine literature is, you know, three to six milligrams a kilogram.
00:20:00.000It's not like I or I imagine Chris is like blindly recommending anybody start there.
00:20:05.000And it could easily get misconstrued that way in like a clippable format if people just like hear the headline and then run with it.
00:20:12.000Like in, you should start as low as you can with caffeine and you could get a ergogenic effect as low as, I think the lowest dose was like 50 to 100 milligrams probably if you equated to body weight, but it's all like tolerance dependent.
00:20:25.000It's just when you look at the studies, like these are the repeatable high impact outcomes are typically in, and especially in like trained athletes where you're trying to see how hard you can push them.
00:20:36.000It's kind of like, you know, for max stress resilience, max, you know, acute force production, these are the kind of dosages that are just used in the studies.
00:20:42.000So anyway, with that caveat, and same with the creatine, you know, you might shit yourself if you go to 20 right away.
00:20:48.000Like you don't, you don't want to start that.
00:20:50.000And I mean, like, like Rhonda Patrick, amazing content.
00:20:55.000And she tolerates 20 grams well, which is kind of like surprising because I know a lot of women who don't.
00:21:01.000I think she does a probably micro doses it throughout the day and is really regimented about making sure she's diligently spreading it out.
00:21:09.000But some people who they bomb 20 at a time, even guys who think they have iron stomachs.
00:22:15.000I keep them around because I think it's a great thing.
00:22:17.000Like if I hadn't had enough lately, I'll just pop a few.
00:22:21.000It's like the best gateway drug, if you can even call it, it's not like a drug, but to get people who otherwise would never try it to actually see the benefits of it.
00:22:29.000So like, I know so many women who literally refuse to take the powder because it's like, even though it's kind of tasteless, it's still a nuisance.
00:22:38.000Can be a little bit messy depending on the scooper shape of it and everything and how you're going to try to convince a chick, like, trust me, it's really good for your health if you like, you know, fucking swig this thing dry and then chase it with water every day.
00:22:55.000So the gummies are good for that, in my opinion.
00:22:59.000And yeah, I mean, going back to the 20 grams and the offsetting of, you know, performance deteriorations, I do think it's basically offsetting kind of the deficiencies in like ATP production, especially locally in the brain.
00:23:14.000And also kind of offsetting the pulling of resources away from like methylation support and whatnot in order to produce the endogenous creatine as well.
00:23:24.000These things can all be impactful to kind of like get you back to almost baseline.
00:23:29.000So if you're in a deteriorated state, being able to offset the performance decrements from an otherwise, you know, sleep deprived state or, you know, you're traveling or what have you, like it can absolutely be super impactful.
00:23:39.000And the literature has shown that time and time again.
00:23:41.000What's interesting is that creatine in the 1990s was thought of like steroids.
00:24:19.000I mean, that's like fucking M1Ts over the counter from, you know, like some 19-year-old kid who's just like manning the counter and doesn't care and will like fuck your endocrine system up to sell it to you.
00:25:00.000I felt like a fucking gorilla when I was taking it.
00:25:03.000I felt so strong when I was taking it.
00:25:05.000I literally gained, I think it was like I was on it for five or six weeks and I gained 10 solid pounds of muscle.
00:25:11.000The amount of people that have inadvertently gotten gynecomastia from those days when they were sold some irresponsible pro hormone over the counter without like any knowledge of what they were taking and then had to just recover naturally with no support, it's a shame.
00:25:28.000Yeah, well, there was so much of that stuff, like werewolf blast.
00:25:44.000But in Canada, for relatively recently, even it was still available over the counter, even though Canada is like super tight on regulation when it comes to the most weird stuff.
00:25:55.000Like when it comes to caffeine, you can't even have a can with 200 milligrams.
00:26:18.000But anyway, so ephedrin, for whatever reason, was still over-the-counter available in GNCs up until like a handful of years ago.
00:26:27.000And it was, you know, the bestseller in GNCs in a lot of supplement stores, not just because it worked as a bronchodilator, but also because people were buying it in bulk to make meth.
00:27:35.000And what's crazy too is back then it was proprietary blends on a lot of the products and it was still the norm with no education available, no YouTube to really tell you what to look for.
00:28:12.000Because you could get stuff that really worked, like worked like something that's highly illegal.
00:28:18.000And you could buy it with a credit card.
00:28:20.000And the sales tactics were just like so ruthless, but you couldn't really prove them otherwise.
00:28:24.000It was always like a pit bull with like giant muscles on the cover of it with like lightning bolts.
00:28:30.000It's funny, too, because some of these companies, it's like now we're in the mix competing with them on shelves or whatever.
00:28:36.000But I remember being like convinced back when I was a teenager by them, oh, you need, you know, Gakik, Lukik, and Creek Kick in this combo that costs 250 bucks.
00:29:47.000It's crazy because now it's almost full circle because, you know, I was back then, you know, at least at the time when I didn't know any better.
00:29:56.000Oh, you know, I guess this guy must be natural because he told me so or whatever.
00:30:00.000And it's like, I'm skeptical, but like, and, you know, in hindsight, it's absolutely ridiculous.
00:30:05.000But now a lot of bodybuilders are pretty forthcoming because it's more normal to be transparent and also not mislead people and you know, unethically sell things and just reality check people on the what it's going to take to be at that level.
00:30:20.000And is it the risk you want to, you know, subject yourself to?
00:30:23.000Because back in the day, too, it was like you didn't know if you had good genetics or not when it came to certain dosage responses.
00:30:29.000So you would like always think the next guy's just taking more than you.
00:30:33.000And it would result in guys unspokenly thinking this guy must just be taking 5x the amount of shit I'm on.
00:30:40.000So I need to go to like five to 10 grams of total gear per week now.
00:30:45.000And you would just like, that's what led to so many early deaths in bodybuilding too.
00:30:50.000So I think there's another thing, another factor is that the consequences of lying and getting caught now are huge.
00:30:57.000Because if you lose all credibility and people know that you're just a bullshit artist, and then they'll never trust you again.
00:31:04.000Like you have one chance to tell the truth forever.
00:31:09.000And the moment you violate that, you're always a liar.
00:31:13.000And that's a giant fucking issue with whether it's actors or anybody.
00:31:19.000You know, like all these guys who prep for roles and they're talking about it now.
00:31:23.000Like, oh, I took Anivar, I took this, like Mickey Rourke did when he was talking about that movie, The Wrestler.
00:31:28.000You know, I remember they were asking him on whatever talk show he was on.
00:31:32.000He's like, oh, I fucking took everything.
00:31:58.000So, they had him on in a sit-down interview, and they were like, So, you know, what's it take to be actually recent?
00:32:03.000Yeah, it's like last year, within the last year, right?
00:32:06.000If not months ago, is this when he was talking about Anivar?
00:32:08.000Yeah, and he talked about his TRT protocol and kind of like the realities of how impactful it actually is and improving his performance and how it makes him feel.
00:32:16.000And he was just like pretty non-sugar-coated about it.
00:32:19.000Well, he's a good example because he was clean for a long time.
00:32:24.000Yeah, like he had like very low testosterone because he was just going on willpower.
00:32:28.000He was really just working out on willpower.
00:32:32.000Actress Star lifts the lid on fitness, recovery, and the reality behind the scenes physiques.
00:32:36.000Frank Illo 60 gets real about Hollywood steroid use.
00:33:56.000And there's a lot of speculation about if it's like a health thing or what, but that's tough to know because he just had the role where he gained the most size he ever has, too.
00:34:10.000But it's like, would you have subjected yourself to that if you knew?
00:34:14.000I don't know if he would have known, but you would have think proactively he would know how close he is to kind of like an issue.
00:34:20.000Um, being probably pretty close, 50 years old and getting up to 300 pounds.
00:34:24.000Yeah, I just mean, I think he probably had more preventative screening before that role to know he could even subject himself to it without dying because it's like a pretty risky endeavor to go become the biggest you've ever been at that age.
00:34:39.000So to then downsize after the theory is that he was literally about to die essentially.
00:34:44.000So that's why he lost so much weight now.
00:34:47.000And I'm thinking, I think maybe he's just like trying to take like a health phase and kind of like come down and wait for a bit and he'll probably like crank it back up.
00:34:57.000Honestly, I think just this is pure speculation.
00:35:03.000I think based on what he tried to do with the smashing machine, I think he's trying to win an Oscar and trying to be a real actor because he was really good in that movie.
00:36:38.000Well, Dave Batita lost a lot of weight, too.
00:36:40.000Yeah, but I guess I mean like typically when actors are trying to get taken more seriously for more impactful like artistic creative roles, it's almost like the jack meathead guy downsizes to do something more, you know, like, I don't know, artsy.
00:38:50.000I think I can't imagine talking about peptides and putting the feelers out there would not eventually transition to like, you know, it was recommended to me by my doctor to be on, you know, hormone support or whatever.
00:39:56.000It's just proportionally to relative to what he was.
00:40:00.000You know, it's kind of like anybody who used to be a bodybuilder or had significant amounts of size, even me, like people in my videos are like, where you're, you know, you've lost everything.
00:40:09.000And it's like, okay, I'm not like non-existent anymore.
00:40:12.000I'm just like not a bodybuilder anymore.
00:44:09.000I haven't watched it, so I could be way off base that it was kind of like one of those artistic kind of like versatility in roles kind of thing.
00:44:17.000What is Sidney Sweeney look like in that movie?
00:45:01.000That was the last movie that you could ever do like that before Woke kicked in and essentially ruined great comedies because you couldn't go too far.
00:46:53.000And it used to be that you knew that when you went into these movies before everybody was like looking for everything to potentially be offended by.
00:47:29.000And I don't want to give away too much, but it has something to do with aliens and aliens send a transmission to Earth and there's like this insane impact on society.
00:47:41.000But it's like fucking total left field movie.
00:48:54.000Like, good luck seeing the next season, bro.
00:48:56.000Well, not only that, like, unfortunately with House of Dragons, it's got to follow Game of Thrones, which is like one of the best series of all time.
00:49:03.000And the characters just aren't as compelling for whatever reason.
00:49:07.000And so I don't know who the fuck anybody is.
00:50:53.000It's like oddly overlapping with the Stranger Things.
00:50:56.000I feel like I'm kind of watching the same show all the time.
00:50:58.000of like obviously totally different overall stories but like you know you have kids and these kind of like and evil things And I don't want to wreck an episode, but they mention it, not specifically it, but a story about an extraterrestrial evil being called it in a Stranger Things episode.
00:51:18.000I'm like, this is a weird fucking reference for these being at the same time right now.
00:51:54.000Well, I think Stranger Things is so big they could fucking watch it at three o'clock in the morning and it would still get 30 million views.
00:52:47.000You know, it's getting to the point where, you know, there's no excuse for waiting three years because you could have AI generated scripts and do it in an hour.
00:53:07.000For, I think, right now, it's the first time in the last 15 years they've had three drivers coming down to the final race to win the championship between them.
00:53:27.000That might have been the race that just happened, but it was nuts, dude.
00:53:29.000It's because right now you had McLaren, who was like a shoe-in to have their main driver, or at least the guy who was in the lead, take it, but they're refusing to favor one over the other, which is a typical strategy for whoever's in the lead.
00:53:42.000You'll have the other one kind of like block people for them to make sure they win the driver's championship.
00:53:48.000Yeah, they're like making sure they can have equal opportunities to win, but the net result might now be none of them win, and a guy from Red Bull takes the thing.
00:53:58.000Is it because the drivers aren't willing to do that?
00:54:01.000I guess, but also just lack of enforcement from the pit boss, like team guy, who's like supposed to be enforcing team principles and whatnot.
00:54:10.000It is kind of funky that that's how you win.
00:54:35.000They're still competing against each other.
00:54:36.000And sometimes they can get pretty reckless where they're, you know, one is not willing to compromise and he'll like blow the whole thing up to make sure that he has the best opportunity, understandably, but it's also like you guys are getting paid tens of millions of dollars.
00:54:49.000Maybe you should listen to your fucking guy who's telling you what to do.
00:54:54.000The holidays come with a lot of traditions: gathering with family, cooking those once-a-year recipes, and leaning into the little rituals that bring everyone together.
00:55:04.000That's something I always look forward to.
00:55:06.000But there's another tradition I think we should all start doing during the holidays, and that's taking some time for ourselves.
00:55:12.000This season, you do so many things for the other people in your life.
00:55:16.000You plan get-togethers around everyone's schedule, you spend hours picking out the right gifts and cooking the right food, but you also deserve just as much attention.
00:56:34.000I guess it's just problematic because it's so bandwidth intensive too to manage the two drivers that if they're equally trying to win and only one is more likely to, what may very well happen on this weekend is they both don't win.
00:56:50.000So I got a tour of the McLaren pit last year and they showed me like all the different technology that's involved and they gave me a like a rundown of how much engineering is involved in these things and explained everything.
00:57:48.000This is all like very straight-edge, like really tried and true neutropics that work through kind of like endogenous pathways or things that otherwise backfill neurotransmitters similar to like the creatine deficiency that we talked about.
00:58:03.000If you backfill it and you can otherwise, you know, have a readily available source of phosphocreatine to offset ATP deficits, L-tyrosine, stuff like that, similar just in regards to dopamine, for example.
00:59:26.000Like a sugar, but it also has a hyperhydrating effect that you can hold upwards of an extra pound of body water if you have it as a supplement.
00:59:34.000So, some endurance athletes will use it before events in order to retain more water in a way that is not, it enhances like thermoregulation, your ability to tolerate stress.
00:59:46.000You don't lose as much, you don't dehydrate as fast.
00:59:48.000There's a lot of upsides for its kind of like unique application.
00:59:52.000Maybe even avoiding pissing at nighttime could be really potentially, yeah.
00:59:57.000Oh, that would help because I always have to pee.
01:00:00.000Yeah, one thing that stopped that helps me is sauna before bed, though.
01:00:04.000Sauna before bed, I can generally sleep through the night.
01:00:58.000Um, I haven't cold plunged in the last three weeks because I got some stem cells and I'm still sauna-ing, so it seems like there's a lot of controversy about this in terms of like what you should and shouldn't do post-stem cell injection.
01:01:16.000I have a very minor Achilles tear when I was elk hunting in September.
01:01:22.000I twisted my ankle pretty bad, and I didn't think anything of it.
01:01:26.000I stopped limping after like 15 or 20 minutes, and I was like, I think I'm okay.
01:01:30.000And I have, and I was wearing at the time, I was wearing very light boots.
01:01:36.000They're like, you know, just a real light boot that you wouldn't do for heavy mountain trekking.
01:01:44.000And we did some steep elevation, and then the real problem is going down.
01:01:49.000And you're, you know, when you're going down like several thousand feet over the course of like an hour, it's fucking brutal.
01:01:57.000And I twisted one of my ankles, and then the next day, I put on a much higher, more rigid boot with great ankle support, and I was fine for the rest of the trip.
01:02:07.000But then it's the fucking worst when you just got to like stare at the ground the entire time you're walking because the littlest off step, you just roll your ankle or not only that, you go down, you know, you could die.
01:02:19.000We were in pretty steep country in Utah, but interestingly, I didn't notice anything was wrong until I'd get into a push-up position, which is weird.
01:02:30.000So, when you know, I do 100 push-ups every morning, 100 push-ups, 100 bodyweight squats.
01:02:34.000That's my warm-up before I do anything.
01:02:36.000And so, when I got into like a high push-up position with like my butt up in the air, it's a lot of stretching on the Achilles.
01:02:44.000And my left Achilles was fucking killing me, like sharp pain.
01:03:37.000And there's a lot of debate about when you should be able to cold plunge after stem cells.
01:03:44.000And a lot of the literature seems to say three months.
01:03:50.000It doesn't seem to think sauna, there's more indication that sauna is probably therapeutically beneficial for the stem cells because the idea is that the stem cells are still in the area trying to heal the tissue.
01:06:33.000You know, and like it might be a completely useless interpretation for your specific nuanced scenario.
01:06:39.000And if you hear hordes of anecdotes from everyone in your circle you trust who actually knows what they're talking about, has been in the trenches, knows their body well, you can't really ignore that.
01:06:50.000What was the narrative about female hormones and why did they, why did they do that for so long?
01:06:56.000So I think it was in the 90s, the Women's Health Initiative were assessing the viability and safety profile of hormone replacement therapy.
01:07:05.000And I might butcher this a little bit, but in general, the overall context is relatively accurate, I'm sure.
01:07:12.000And it was like of a thousand women or something that they tested HRT.
01:07:16.000When I say HRT, I put in air quotes because like estrogen.
01:07:20.000Not even like human bioidentical estrogen.
01:07:23.000Was like equine horse piss derived estrogens.
01:07:37.000And also a synthetic progestin that is not bioidentical to progesterone.
01:07:43.000It's just like a progestin analog essentially that fulfills activity at the receptor, but is otherwise like, you know, the equivalent of putting you on like a micro dose of nandrolone or a micro dose of, you know, fill-in-the-blank progestin-derived compound or 19-nord-derived compound that facilitates progestogenic activity, but just is not progesterone.
01:08:05.000So it's like to try and say, you know, this horse piss-derived estrogen formula and the synthetic progestin we apply to these women is the equivalent of you having been on what you would otherwise produce as a young, healthy, vibrant woman from a bioidentical estradiol and progesterone perspective.
01:08:23.000Simply not accurate, but that's like essentially the comparison that they made and, you know, presented it as such.
01:08:29.000And the result was a relative risk increase of breast cancer incidence, I believe, to the tune of like one of a thousand women.
01:08:38.000And the absolute number was like three of a thousand in the placebo arm had breast cancer incidence.
01:08:45.000And then I think four out of a thousand had breast cancer.
01:08:48.000So then the media ran with a 26% increase in risk.
01:08:56.000And like I might be misinterpreting one or two variables, but like high level, that's essentially what it was.
01:09:01.000And it caused mass hysteria and panic and basically dictated the facilitation of black box warnings being put on hormone therapy.
01:09:09.000So the most aggressive FDA warning that shows basically any clinician that's looking at it or anybody who's going to like take the risk of using it, this is the most dangerous drug you could use with the highest risk of like lethal side effect potential.
01:09:25.000And then on top of that, it just like wasn't representative of what is actual replacement therapy with what is the hormone you would be producing naturally.
01:09:33.000So for years, you know, we went thinking, oh, it's going to cause clotting issues.
01:09:41.000And only in the most nuanced edge case scenarios is it justified because, you know, that person just absolutely has a quality of life deterioration that is so significant that it's worth it to take the risk to use hormone replacement therapy.
01:09:54.000And it's like now, similar to some of the like common sense interpretation of things, like this doesn't make sense.
01:10:00.000Like, look at all this literature showing the cardioprotective effects, showing the neuroprotective effects, showing the bone support and integrity.
01:10:06.000Look at what you lose if you don't take these hormones.
01:10:09.000Like you were essentially giving yourself a worse quality of life, inevitably, and deteriorating your health unquestionably.
01:10:18.000Like with men, there is some semblance of residual activity you can maintain.
01:10:22.000And some men maintain vibrant, you know, reasonable testosterone production until old age.
01:10:27.000But with women, it's kind of like right when the lights shut off.
01:11:02.000And it's like, even the mechanism by which they argue it would cause it doesn't even make mechanistic sense because it's like the only way you're going to increase the prostate growth is via bringing.
01:11:14.000And it's like, of course, when you use hormones that are androgens, like you're going to grow tissues that they're exposed to, but it doesn't mean it's a bad thing necessarily.
01:11:23.000And if you're a hypogonadal male who has low T and it goes up to just the threshold of barely acceptable, that's where the growth essentially stops.
01:11:32.000And if you go beyond that into like medium normal, high normal, even super physiologic territory, your prostate doesn't linearly grow in exposure.
01:11:40.000Otherwise, bodybuilders would have massive prostates like busting out of their bodies.
01:11:48.000Well, how come it grows enlarged clitorises in women?
01:11:51.000Because the physiology is essentially interchangeable in that you could have gone in any direction dependent on your exposure to these hormones.
01:12:04.000So if a man exposes himself to significant amounts of estrogen and has no, has hormone deprivation, there are some irreversible anatomical changes because they've already like matured that will not go away.
01:12:17.000But like with women, it's like the inverse and you could otherwise get closer to that like extreme scenario where you're once your voice box gets to a certain like anatomical development, you can't necessarily go back to your high-pitched, you know, problem with D-transitioners.
01:12:44.000Trans men never develop a voice like, you know, Isaac Hayes.
01:12:48.000Yeah, that's one of the one of the tough things with HRT, too, is like, as much as I think it's so amazing that it's being educated about and there's widespread attention being brought to the importance of it.
01:13:01.000There's also the cowboy docs who almost go to the hyper extreme of optimization and are putting women on aggressive dosages of testosterone, saying, you've been lying to, you know, this is actually what you need to feel good.
01:13:14.000And for a woman who's been, you know, asexual for years and feels, you know, has no energy and they are told this guy is, you know, the cutting-edge doc who everyone sees, they will probably trust his guidance.
01:13:26.000And as early as before I started Merrick Health, which is my company, my mom was getting hormone therapy guidance from a doc who was relatively well respected.
01:13:38.000And the dose he put her on of testosterone was so aggressive that her voice was changing within weeks.
01:13:50.000So like you're essentially low, low normal, healthy male territory, not like actually, but like on a clinical reference range, and absolutely potential for masculinization.
01:14:19.000And testosterone can be helpful in women for sure.
01:14:23.000And it's an overlooked hormone that is absolutely important in women, just the same as it is in men.
01:14:29.000It's just like you got to kind of know what you're getting yourself into too When it comes to what is reasonable for a doctor to tell you you need and at what concentrations you should expect, you know, blood level targets to be.
01:14:43.000Because if you just go in blind, you might end up with the most exotic, you know, like Beverly Hills doc who thinks you should be on like the craziest cocktail ever because he knows you're going to feel it and respond really, really well immediately, but then also might just like fuck you up permanently.
01:15:02.000Well, this is also the problem with transitioners.
01:15:04.000When you're becoming a trans man, right?
01:15:09.000The initial impact is alleviation of anxiety and euphoria.
01:15:14.000You start feeling great because that's what testosterone does for you.
01:15:18.000It doesn't mean you're supposed to have that.
01:15:20.000Your body's going, what the fuck is this?
01:15:22.000And now you're, you know, essentially you're changing the whole cocktail of your body.
01:15:28.000And you're, you know, and you're going to give permanent changes that if you make a decision when you're 14, 15 years old, they put you in this stuff.
01:15:37.000Those detransitioners are some of the saddest stories, man.
01:15:44.000And, you know, lose their tits because they go to a doctor that thinks you should have your memory glands chopped off when you're 15.
01:15:53.000We're in the weirdest of times with all this stuff because it's like what gets accepted and not accepted.
01:15:58.000And what, you know, what becomes, again, like we were talking about in the zeitgeist, when a thought gets out there and then it's very difficult to move away from that.
01:16:05.000It's like, oh, you're affirming your true self.
01:16:16.000It sounds like this might be a social contagion that is like sweeping through the land.
01:16:21.000And one of the things that's really interesting is the drop-off of kids identifying as trans is it coincides directly with Elon buying Twitter.
01:16:33.000Like immediately when you could, because he used to not be able to talk about it.
01:16:36.000He used to like literally, if you dead name someone from Twitter, meaning like if you changed your name to Dominique and I called you Derek, I could get banned from Twitter for life forever.
01:17:09.000So like, oh, I don't want to be a bigot.
01:17:11.000Yeah, I think as much as I think access to drugs is super, like you should have the full liberty to do whatever you want.
01:17:19.000That's where the importance of educating yourself is so critical because you really don't know what you're subjecting yourself to.
01:17:25.000If you have an immature brain too, you have not even had full frontal lobe development to try and think you're going to make a sound decision with how you're going to impact your lifelong physiology.
01:17:48.000I've had conversations with people on this podcast.
01:17:50.000I have friends that have trans kids and they knew right away.
01:17:53.000Like, are you sure they didn't have a fucking insane mother and a gay child?
01:17:56.000Because that might be what was going on.
01:17:58.000And now this gay child will never have an orgasm again because you've convinced them that they're not a gay child, that they're a woman, which is in fact completely homophobic.
01:18:07.000Interesting extreme of the scenario, but maybe on the opposite is guys who are in their in adolescence who are so hyper-educated that they use the knowledge to biohack their development into becoming as maximally tall and like infrastructurally sound as adults as possible.
01:18:26.000And that's a really interesting predicament because it's like any like a reasonably ethical doctor will be like, there's no fucking way I'm touching that like case of any overseeing anybody's care who's doing that kind of thing.
01:18:39.000I was watching a podcast about this where this guy was talking about his son and he's short and his son is short and his son's friends were also short and their parents got the kid on growth when they were and they grew like a lot bigger than the parents.
01:20:08.000There's a lot of evidence that they were doing that to their athletes.
01:20:11.000The fact that they wouldn't do it to their most dominant wrestler in the history of the fucking sport and the guy who was the absolute biggest freak in the history of wrestling.
01:20:49.000So he grew to what is otherwise an acceptable adult height, but he otherwise was destined to be literally a dwarf, whatever the socially acceptable term is.
01:21:01.000So they either paid for his pharmaceutical growth hormone and admitted, like got it for him, paid for it, made sure he was taking it, or he didn't become the greatest, some argue, you know, the football player of all time.
01:21:14.000Well, it's also you have to take into consideration, like, how much of an effect did that have on his performance?
01:21:19.000I mean, that guy can do things that no one else can do.
01:21:22.000Well, he definitely wouldn't have grown to the height he is.
01:22:10.000It was like you either take this at the dose that is going to like push you to maximal IGF-1 output territory and we get you to as high of maturation as possible or you're not going to be a professional player.
01:26:09.000But what Bo Nick, Bo Nichols, an elite wrestler, like a top shelf blue chip wrestler.
01:26:15.000And one of the things that wrestlers have is this ability to close distance because they're, you know, they're on the outside and they can just shoot doubles.
01:26:22.000So that explosion naturally lends itself to closing the distance and striking because, you know, it's the same kind of thing.
01:26:29.000If you develop good striking, and Hadolfo Vieira, who's like fucking super jacked, but he's a Gi Jiu-Jitsu guy.
01:26:36.000Gi Jiu-Jitsu is all about strength and control technique as well, but it's a tight game.
01:26:43.000It's not a game of like jumping, moving across distance quick.
01:26:47.000It's a game of they're gripping each other.
01:26:49.000And then, you know, it's a lot about strength and it's a lot about technique, but it's not about closing distance.
01:26:54.000So Hadolfo Vieira is like a plodding, like really super jacked guy.
01:26:59.000And Bo Nichols just light on his feet, moving on the outside and just closing distance, cracking them, getting out.
01:27:05.000And he hits him with this fucking bomb head kick and puts him to sleep.
01:27:09.000But it's that ability to close the distance.
01:28:36.000And he chains things together so well.
01:28:39.000And if you're not training with guys like that, like Schaub told me that he went to see Chimayev when Chemayev is in training camp for Drickus Duplicis.
01:33:24.000I mean, everyone is fucked because there's no, other than John, there's no one that can wrestle with that guy in that sport.
01:33:33.000And the thing about a guy who could wrestle like that is if he could strike like that, the problem with wrestling is you're always worried about the takedown.
01:33:40.000So that opens you up to strikes because you're always like every feint, you're thinking he's going to shoot for your legs, but then boom, he catches you with a left hook.
01:33:47.000And the speed that guy has, it's like a lethal combination of athleticism, speed, power, size, and an insane wrestling pedigree.
01:33:57.000I mean, Olympic gold medalist, as good as he gets with wrestling.
01:34:01.000I think the last time I heard you talk about a guy like this, at least when I was on, was Pereira before he came in.
01:34:07.000Similar kind of thing, where he's a specialist.
01:36:50.000Some people are more of an endurance fighter and they don't hit as hard, but they can just get you with combinations and they put you away eventually.
01:39:03.000Yeah, I think more attention is going to come to how to actually ensure your brain stays safe in the sports for longevity purposes as people kind of realize how impactful the weight cutting especially can be, but also if you end up getting knocked out, you might not come back the same.
01:39:20.000And some of the strategies that should be employed after those fights as well to actually restore as quickly as possible and avoid permanent degradation.
01:39:28.000Well, it's like there's two schools of thought.
01:39:30.000There's one school of thought that I'm in, which we need to expand the weight classes so we have more weight classes and we need to somehow or another institute some sort of hydration policy where you cannot dehydrate yourself and weigh in and pretend that you weigh 170 when really you weigh 210 because there's a lot of guys doing that.
01:39:51.000And the other school of thought is they should be able to hydrate with IVs.
01:39:56.000Because they used to be able to hydrate with IVs.
01:39:58.000The blood-brain barrier and the hydration of the brain, it takes much longer to rehydrate your brain than it does to rehydrate your muscle tissue.
01:40:07.000And so these guys are going in there, their muscles are full, but their brain is dehydrated and they're vulnerable to getting knocked out.
01:40:14.000And I think that's what happened with Pereira, particularly with the Izzy fight.
01:40:18.000But Izzy caught him with a picture-perfect right hand, just right on the chin, and then followed it up with a left hook.
01:40:24.000But it was just he didn't have the durability at 185 that he has at 205.
01:41:14.000I don't know if Islam even wants to make 155 anymore, but Ilya said he would fight him at 170, which is crazy because Ilya is smaller than me.
01:41:41.000Dude, I don't know where with the wife.
01:41:43.000I don't know if it's a coincidence, but I mean, you can't.
01:41:46.000I'm sure the internet has their speculation, but the timing is very odd with like one of these interviews he did where somebody was almost seemed to plant in his head that like if you meet a wife in Miami, that she's probably like not a, you know, good, you know.
01:42:09.000Somebody, I forget who it was, but somebody like jokingly said, Oh, you met, like, it looks like you can meet quality women in Miami crazy.
01:42:39.000I didn't know that he met her in Miami.
01:42:41.000I don't know if that's even true because he lives or if it even is like relevant at all, but it's just weird timing.
01:42:47.000I would imagine it's relevant meeting a woman in Miami.
01:42:50.000Like, I mean, the factors certainly support that it's like a more likely chance that she's not the person she represented herself as potentially.
01:43:13.000But it doesn't really lend itself to the kind of sturdy, stay-at-home mom support for a world champion because the discipline involved in being not just a world champion, but a world champion on Ilya's level, you know, like a two-division dominator goes up, knocks out Charles Olivera like it's nothing, which is crazy.
01:43:34.000Not only that, had a celebration the night before the fire celebrating victory.
01:43:40.000That was almost like Gordon Ryan shit, like times two.
01:46:02.000I mean, you know, that's what it is, regardless of what he's saying, you know, when he's like, I got to get my personal life in order and the timing of everything.
01:46:09.000And I think there's actually, is it publicly media about the, there's like a divorce now or something?
01:46:39.000This is the mother of your children, and this lady is a monster.
01:46:42.000There's nothing worse than feeling like psychologically duped by somebody, too.
01:46:47.000Well, I don't know if it is psychologically duped or if it's like once she's not on your side, you know, then it's just burn the house down.
01:47:20.000Well, I'm going to fucking take you down.
01:47:22.000And women, that's what they love is reputation destruction.
01:47:26.000That's what they're really, that's what they really are experts in when shit goes sideways.
01:47:31.000What's the typical outcome of these cases where it's like super famous person, wife claims that she is 50% responsible for their success, tries to take half?
01:47:41.000Is that like, if there's no prenup, that's kind of just what happens?
01:48:06.000Is that everybody wants to put out this pretend image of perfection, that everything's perfect.
01:48:14.000And so you have photos of you holding hands and walking together and kissing.
01:48:19.000I love you more than anything in life.
01:48:20.000And you post it out there for the world and you're putting on a show for the world.
01:48:24.000But meanwhile, there's like all sorts of internal bullshit that's going on.
01:48:28.000You're trying to work through and you're hoping it works out.
01:48:32.000And then when it falls apart, you're like, fuck.
01:48:34.000And then you got to go back on your Instagram and delete all those pictures.
01:48:37.000Isn't it better to just like not talk about any of it publicly and just like keep your relationship shit like private?
01:48:43.000I think most of your life you should keep it.
01:48:45.000I think social media in general, and not just for famous people, just in general, is way worse for people that it is good, especially Instagram.
01:51:08.000And then they think they can manage it.
01:51:10.000And then the fucking psychology behind it and the spinning that goes on in your mind when you're trying to go to bed and you're worried about all the mean things people are saying about you.
01:53:01.000And you know, you could set up Do Not Disturb where certain people can get through.
01:53:04.000Like my wife can get through, my kids can get through, best friends can get through.
01:53:07.000But it's just like, I think that for the most part, what you're doing is you're using very valuable resources on things that aren't valuable at all.
01:53:18.000Yeah, it's part of the reason I work best late at night as much as I would love to have the perfect circadian rhythm and go to bed at the perfect time and align it with the sun going down.
01:53:28.000It's like the only time my phone and all this stuff is not blowing up is in the middle of the night and I can just focus and not have to think about stuff blasting me.
01:57:33.000But that I think is probably valuable because it's keeping you informed.
01:57:37.000It's the endless, mindless scrolling that I think is the most detrimental and the one that robs you of the most time because, you know, you could be sitting down at the kitchen table and all of a sudden you have this plan for the day.
01:57:53.00045, you get a brutal fucking workout in 45 minutes, but you didn't do anything.
01:57:57.000There's nothing more guilty feeling than having wasted like your six to eight really sharp mental hours, any part of that on something that dumb.
01:59:01.000There's a lot of people that will succumb to the pressure at the max level and check the, you know, what people are saying about them, who's going to win.
01:59:19.000Bodybuilding is the worst for it, too.
01:59:21.000I'm sure it's just as bad in MMA, but it's like your entire physique is like your social media brand.
01:59:28.000So it's like you post your physique and then the feedback you get, you kind of have to look at, I guess, because it's like what you compete with, too.
01:59:36.000So you're literally taking judge feedback that's subjective and taking what they're telling you is wrong with your body to fix.
01:59:44.000And then you're just bombarded by people in the comment section that are like, you lost because of this.
02:00:04.000And it's like back in the 90s, I don't know what it was, but it was like some of the lighting too was almost so bad that it gave this granular, sharp, kind of like pixelated but like etchy look to the physiques.
02:00:18.000And it would look like they were more cut and defined and just better downlighting overall.
02:00:22.000And some of these shows, they're so washed out with the high resolution and like the perfect, and when I say perfect, it's like almost overexposed lighting to show what's going on on the stage that they look watery and fat, even when they're like, and I say watery and fat, like, you know, like the fucked up perception of the fitness industry.
02:00:41.000It's like proportional to what you're expected to look like.
02:00:44.000But it's like they could be shredded out of their mind and like having worked so hard to show up in shape and then just get like decimated online from some fucking keyboard warrior who's like, your back is like too watery, bro.
02:00:57.000Go back to the fucking elliptical, you know?
02:01:01.000Well, it's also like bodybuilding is the sport of ego, right?
02:01:06.000Because it's only about what you look like.
02:01:51.000There's no way if you saw the two of them, you would say that guy on the left that has no abs and is smooth is going to fucking destroy the guy on the right.
02:03:12.000Yeah, I mean, it's almost like a limitation for some people where you're just like sapping up so much oxygen carrying capacity to supply the tissue.
02:03:20.000But it's all, you know, it's also, there's a skill gap.
02:03:22.000I mean, Benavidez is super fucking skillful.
02:03:25.000And this is the guy that people say Canelo has been avoiding.
02:04:32.000Like, I used to bounce downtown Vancouver and we'd have the teams come by that would play the Canucks and they would come party at the champagne lounge and the club that I was bouncing at.
02:04:41.000And he'd be like, this guy is like, you know, a professional athlete.
02:04:46.000It'd be the whole team and half of them looked like, you know, some dude that's like, you'd do like a fucking keg stand with at like, you know, a party.
02:04:54.000And that's like the max of his athletic capacity is being like held up to chug some beer or something.
02:05:16.000I bet they're shredded from the waist down.
02:05:17.000Yeah, it's crazy seeing like the sport-specific translation in actual like physical like physiology that's conducive to your sport.
02:05:25.000You see a sprinter and it's like, you know, he's a fucking 100-meter sprinter.
02:05:29.000And then you see, you know, another guy and it's like you might not even think he plays sports.
02:05:32.000You know, I thought that when I went to the professional soccer team here in town, Austin FC, these guys have these fucking quarter horse legs and then like real thin upper bodies.
02:06:53.000And then Benavidez, you would look at him and you go, oh, that's not the best genetics.
02:06:57.000Like, if he was a bodybuilder, you'd like, get the fuck out of here.
02:06:59.000Yeah, it's crazy, too, because sometimes you might just have like nice-looking round muscle bellies, but you don't actually have like mitochondrial density to support athletic endeavors.
02:07:08.000So you're kind of just like a show thing.
02:07:11.000It's like a cosmetically pleasing athlete, but not actually able to translate it into anything.
02:07:42.000Like if they have like unbelievable looking physiques, is it just that they're not doing as much because they don't need to to look great?
02:07:50.000I think there's definitely specific training for purposes that would be conducive to sport, that maybe some might be neglecting for sure, and ways to optimize for like, for example, you don't do hypertrophy work for bodybuilding because it's not conducive really, to what you're trying to get.
02:08:07.000And I think some, some people, they want the best of both worlds and they want to like, look the part and also perform.
02:08:13.000So they might be, you know, sapping bandwidth that could be allocated towards more optimal things that don't make them, you know, as cosmetically pleasing.
02:08:21.000Yeah, there's definitely things you can do from a uh, support standpoint when it comes to, you know, nutrition supplementation etc.
02:08:29.000But like you are ultimately going to be capped to some extent by genetic coding when it comes to like, density of certain receptors, and like you can upregulate it to whatever capacity you can, but like you can only push it so far before you've kind of, you know yeah, chapped out.
02:08:43.000It's interesting because, like the really bulky guys, they just never have the same fluidity that the guys that are built like Benavitez have, where the the, the punches, flow in this effortless combination.
02:09:08.000And you have to have an intentful approach to making sure you can maintain the flexibility that might otherwise just be innate to somebody who doesn't have to deal with a giant deltoid that like right, right, right.
02:10:13.000But there's, you know, you watch like a Levi Morgan, a world champion, pro archer.
02:10:18.000Like, as the shot breaks, their arm just goes back like naturally, just like flows.
02:10:23.000His just goes, it just moves a little bit.
02:10:25.000When I was at my peak of bodybuilding size, I was in the middle of a job as a lifeguard and teaching swimming lessons to kids.
02:10:34.000And part of the teaching swimming lessons would involve showing how to do the different strokes of, you know, back crawl, front crawl, breaststroke, all the different things.
02:10:42.000And when you're like a 265-pound bodybuilder, it gets pretty difficult because not only do you just sink harder because you're, you know, mostly muscle, but also like just even trying to get a straight arm past your head, it's impossible.
02:10:55.000So I actually had to stop teaching swimming.
02:11:00.000Your ears, your fucking shoulders are slamming in.
02:11:02.000Like it would look like you couldn't even do what you're trying to teach like a fucking six-year-old or something.
02:12:49.000I was like trying to be a competitive bodybuilder and I just kind of realized that I could look good for Fitness industry, I guess, for kind of looking jacked for Instagram or whatever and like doing okay at like a regional level for you know a lower tier level of physiques,
02:13:06.000but like bodybuilding to take it to that next level, it was just like a level of stress I wouldn't be able to one be willing to sustain, and then two it just wouldn't have been worth it because it was like I had tried pushing drugs and like I just wasn't responding to a level I knew I needed to to continue and justify using that much.
02:13:27.000Yeah, so it's like your uh androgen receptor content is a uh largely predetermined thing.
02:13:35.000There are some things you can do similar to like mitochondrial density and things of that nature that you can do to upregulate and improve it and certain supplements you can use, but ultimately your number of muscle fibers are going to be limited.
02:13:48.000Like there's going to be people who are just at baseline, you know, chihuahua looking humans that if you put them on gear, they just become bigger chihuahua humans essentially, but like they're never going to be checked.
02:14:02.000Yeah, they're never going to get to you know Mr. Olympia caliber.
02:14:05.000And there's a certain like muscle belly that's more conducive to looking bigger and also being able to support certain body weights is even like a health thing too.
02:14:14.000It's not just how well do you respond to drugs.
02:14:15.000It's also how long can you take them without dying.
02:14:19.000You know, so it's like some of the most highest performing and like excelling athletes are individuals who can tolerate this stuff and not go crazy from the some people mentally cannot handle these level of androgens and they, you know, it wrecks their sleep, it wrecks their blood work, it wrecks, they get really early cardiovascular disease.
02:15:48.000I mean, at his peak, he was one of the sauciest dudes, or at least, you know, he was like the perfect hybrid of athleticism, meets, like crazy-looking physique, I would say, at least at the time, from what I can recall.
02:15:59.000Well, the TRT Vitor was Vitor, so Vitor on the gear when he was younger, and then no gear for a while, low period.
02:16:08.000And then when they had TRT in the UFC, where they allowed it when it was legal, which was a crazy few years that people call it the TRT Vitor years, where Vitor was just dominating everybody.
02:16:33.000Yeah, like stuff I've never seen UFC athletes do, but I would think would be really conducive, especially to like scrambles and weird grappling positions where you want to have strength and like odd, like odd positions of your body where you're stretched out.
02:18:49.000Yeah, melanotan 2 is a one of the, I don't know if it's an obscure one, but I guess maybe proportional to some of the more widespread ones nowadays, but it's like a melanocortin receptor agonist.
02:19:01.000And actually, an analog of it is used for women for a hypoactive, like low sexual drive.
02:19:08.000So it actually enhances sexual drive too.
02:19:11.000So there's like a component, there's a version of the drug that doesn't tan you that just like makes you hornier that women are prescribed called Vilecy.
02:19:18.000And then men, there's no drug approved, but you could theoretically take it, but it gives you boners and also makes you tanned if you take the melanotan too.
02:22:00.000Yeah, it's like some of the exercises don't even translate the way you think they would to.
02:22:04.000Like you do a, you get really good at the bench press, and then you do something else that you think is like pushing related or like force production.
02:22:09.000It's like, oh, I'm weak as shit here for some reason.
02:22:12.000Even though you thought it would translate, but there's not like a, it's almost training neuronal patterns too, more than even just like the muscle.
02:22:20.000And you get hypertrophy, but you're also kind of just like training yourself to get really good at specific movements in a way that has like no application to a lot of sports, typically.
02:22:31.000There are more like functional choices, obviously, but like the ones most conducive to bodybuilding and not getting injured are oftentimes like, you know, the typical kind of like beach body style things.
02:22:43.000But there are, there are more intelligent choices for sure.
02:22:54.000Like, and then they wind up getting fucked.
02:22:55.000Like Ronnie Coleman wind up really getting fucked up.
02:22:58.000Ronnie was like famously one of the heaviest lifters as a bodybuilder.
02:23:02.000And for what it's worth, I'm absolutely not like above this style of training.
02:23:06.000Like this is like what I still kind of do, to be honest.
02:23:08.000So it's like, I do, you know, I'm still a fan of bodybuilding.
02:23:11.000I don't want to like speak poorly on it or anything.
02:23:13.000And we oversee some of the best bodybuilders on the planet right now as well and make sure they can do it as safely as possible because it's still a dangerous sport.
02:23:22.000And, you know, you got to take modern knowledge to not screw yourself up nowadays.
02:23:28.000Do you ever tell a guy like you just don't have the genetics to ever do this at a professional level?
02:23:33.000Do you ever have to have that conversation with people?
02:23:36.000Like you're pushing the gear so hard and it's not responding.
02:23:39.000Like if I had a friend, I guess maybe similar to your like heart to heart you had with Shaw about MMA at the time when it was like not really worth continuing to expose danger-wise.
02:23:51.000It's, you know, often a lot of these kind of situations happen in bodybuilding where it's like you have a close friend who's taking exorbitant amounts of drugs and you know it's just like killing him.
02:24:35.000You know, they have the secret, you know, fill in the blank thing that the guru at the Olympia level who's coaching all the top bodybuilders has.
02:24:42.000And you just need to get to the next level and get your IFBB pro card.
02:24:45.000And then maybe I'll get to work with that guru and then he'll give me access to that drug and then I can take it to the next level.
02:24:51.000And then before you know it, a lot of these guys are still grinding for really like low-level shows or like to place poorly even at like the entry level of professional and their health is a wreck and they're not really going to make it to where they think maybe they're on the path to.
02:25:11.000I think the more, you know, transparent look into it has made a lot of people more self-aware to check themselves and also to know if they're even.
02:25:20.000Because you have to respond well from a health standpoint too.
02:25:23.000It's not just how good do I look in the mirror.
02:25:25.000If you have wrecked blood work or you have a abnormal anatomical structure of your heart before you start subjecting yourself to hormones, these are things that are all checkable now proactively.
02:25:38.000And you could tell beforehand if you're a good candidate, not just from a muscular response standpoint, but also from a health tolerance standpoint.
02:25:46.000I wonder what, if any, what factor genetic engineering is going to play into bodybuilding.
02:26:17.000So it's kind of a unique time because not only do we have really aggressive fat loss agents that actually work now that are not simply stimming your brain to, you know, to high hell, which a lot of the previous drugs worked like that.
02:26:32.000Now it's like we have these effective things, but they make you eat so little that we, now the next thing is there's all this attention on how to lose healthy weight and not, you know, a bunch of muscle weight because there's more education around the importance of losing, you know, fat and not muscle, which is metabolically active tissue, health supporting.
02:26:51.000Whereas if you just end up skinny fat, you might be no better off than when you started, depending on the person.
02:26:57.000So some of the more refined, currently being developed drugs are like these, fat loss, appetite suppressing agents with concurrent like thermogenic properties for energy expenditure, and then muscle preservation mechanisms built in that inhibit myostatin or act through other pathways to try and keep the muscle on you.
02:27:20.000Yeah Brigham, from Waste TO WELL, was explaining that they're using some people, rather are using Glp1s in conjunction with Igf and they're they're combining a bunch of different things to offset the bone density and muscle loss and then also encouraging weightlifting while they're doing it, because a lot of people are just taking them and then just shriveling because look, if you starve yourself, you will lose weight, but you're gonna lose bone density, you're gonna lose tissue, you're gonna lose everything.
02:27:46.000Yeah, that's like one of the I think most important components of the usage of them is especially with, you know women, who might be otherwise not even integrating it into their regular life.
02:27:56.000They just end up eating less of what is already a nutrient poor or protein poor diet and aren't Strength training as much as, I guess, proportionally to men.
02:28:06.000It's becoming more prevalent among women, obviously, which is great.
02:28:09.000But like the bone loss and muscle loss is significant among anybody who is depriving themselves of nutrients like that.
02:28:53.000He didn't have a phone for, he has one now, but he didn't have a phone for the fucking longest time.
02:28:57.000Even his fucking, his, when you text him, his, you know, the little image that shows up when you go, it's a phone with a fucking red line through it.
02:29:10.000He decided not to have a phone for a long time because he realized it was negative for his mental health and he wanted to lose a bunch of weight, but he did it naturally.
02:29:46.000There are a lot of people with unhealthy behaviors and psychological tendencies to just be, you know, it's easier to be lazy than not.
02:29:52.000And just, you know, it's also the food addiction because you have to eat.
02:29:56.000But there are some people who just, if you ultimately have a genetically higher baseline, perpetual level of appetite signaling, it's kind of hard to tell that person, like, just fucking, you know, wrench it out, bro.
02:32:35.000And the guy who did that, what's interesting is he also lost skin.
02:32:40.000So his skin shrank along with his body, which I thought was fascinating.
02:32:45.000Yeah, I mean, I would imagine that to some extent there's some elasticity depending on how long you've been fat and also like, I don't know, maybe just the tissue itself.
02:32:58.000I'm sure your body's fiending for energy from anywhere it can find it if there's some way to, I don't know.
02:33:03.000But I think the interesting thing is he didn't come around, come out of it looking like a lot of these people do where they have to get all their skin removed.
02:33:11.000I mean, I feel like there's got to be loose skin to some extent.
02:33:43.000And then once you start eating again, how do you just keep the fucking floodgates from?
02:33:48.000That's the interesting thing is some people psychologically, it's easier to adhere to something when they're full bore.
02:33:53.000And then I know a lot of people who they'll do commit to a competition because they know I'm accountable to step on stage and I don't want to look like shit when I'm on stage.
02:34:33.000Dude, his moon face is like the best in the league, probably.
02:34:38.000So here it says, 382 days from June 14th, 1965 through June 30th of 1966.
02:34:47.000He consumed only vitamins, electrolytes, an unspecified amount of yeast, a source of essential amino acids, and zero calorie beverages such as tea, coffee, and sparkling water.
02:34:56.000Although he occasionally added milk and or sugar to the beverages, especially during the final weeks of the fast.
02:35:02.000Barbieri began his treatment in the hospital, but for most of the 382 days he lived at home.
02:35:08.000Okay, it says stool samples were not taken, but he reportedly went up To 48 days between stools.
02:35:44.000Now, one of the things that's tough is it's like, even though maybe that case study exists and there's people who just brute force willpower their way through it, some of those people otherwise might have genetically been able to tolerate, you know, the hunger signaling better than somebody else who literally cannot focus on work or anything when they're that hungry.
02:36:04.000And it almost sometimes doesn't even come down to the diet quality as much as somebody might tell them.
02:36:11.000It does to some extent, but and it's certainly getting rid of the shitty processed foods and getting on a good exercise regimen and doing all the things to set yourself up in the best position will probably take care of most people.
02:36:21.000But there are some individuals who just like at baseline, even on the inverse side, I know a lot of people who simply aren't hungry and they have to force feed themselves to gain muscle because they're just perpetually shredded and they have like the opposite problem because their hunger signaling is so low.
02:36:39.000So it's like people look at them as an example in the fitness industry of like, oh, this guy has the best discipline.
02:36:53.000And he's like, I don't know, like a teenage, well, he's like in his 20s now, but teenagers look up to him as kind of like a fitness industry icon of aesthetics.
02:37:01.000And he's perpetually had a shredded six-pack.
02:39:06.000Even, I mean, it's obviously like the best possible lighting for that effect.
02:39:10.000There's distribution of fat and water that some people just looks more shredded than another person who might otherwise store any excess fat on like their ass or like their love handles or like whatever.
02:39:24.000For a guy like that, not only is he diced, and, like, obviously he's just diced, but he has, like, a dry look to the skin that enhances the kind of perceived leanness.
02:39:41.000I forget what the terminology is, but it's like it's like white guy something.
02:39:46.000And it's just like if you're certain white physiques are known to look more like you're almost so pale and dry that it like enhances the perceived leanness, if that makes like any sense whatsoever.
02:39:58.000That's the weirdest thing about bodybuilding, right?
02:40:01.000You have to be super dehydrated to look great and you're almost dead.
02:40:56.000It doesn't seem like that's one of the weird things when you're such an OG of the industry that you just have like weird residual fan pages and you don't even know if it's the guy or not.
02:43:17.000I think I even mentioned this at one point that we have all these refined AI tools and drugs and some of the most developed and refined, nearly side effect-free drugs for some things that are pretty significant roots of disease, but like hair loss, like no one has a clue how to fix it without.
02:46:33.000Well, it definitely is, like I said, the most extreme of circumstances to impose for what was seemingly a poor quality clinic.
02:46:43.000And then also trying to go from a height that's objectively tall to a height that's objectively, extremely tall with the most heavy guy that's probably ever done the procedure, you would think.
02:47:21.000But to his credit, I mean, like, the guy literally couldn't even walk before and he's optimistic about it still and he thinks he's going to make a full recovery.
02:48:04.000I mean, if anything, it would be it would help in some of the recovery for Bone, but it would also keep him yoked and like more pressure on that, too.
02:48:15.000So like maybe it's a bit of a double-edged sword there.
02:48:56.000this guy as far as i know he is a bit of a unique case in that he was actually correcting an asymmetry so he had i'm almost positive I don't want to misspeak.
02:49:06.000I'm sure he'll correct it if he sees this, but I'm pretty sure he had one leg was like unusually asymmetrically shorter than the other one.
02:49:15.000And then he was kind of evening it out to what would otherwise be his, you know, like genetic symmetrical match.
02:49:52.000I think there's a lot of people that don't want this to work though, too, because it's like, if it's almost too easy or like, you know, doable, it's just like some people, I say a lot of people unreasonably shit on these people.
02:50:04.000And it's just like, you know, just take the content for what it is, you know?
02:50:09.000But I'm saying about with the genetic engineering, there's a lot of people that are going to not want that to work either, but tough shit.
02:50:15.000You're not going to hold back science because you don't like the fact that, especially if someone has poor genetics and they just look gross in their whole life, they've looked gross.
02:50:23.000And then all of a sudden something comes along.
02:50:24.000It's like, and now you're a fucking supermodel and you're six foot six.
02:50:58.000He's hitting himself with a fucking hammer?
02:51:00.000A kid was just using like a trophy, just banging his face all day.
02:51:03.000He's like, I've been doing this for years.
02:51:05.000So they like think that they can induce acute like bone remodeling in the area to kind of like enhance like, I don't know, Zygoma development or what have you and get better, you know, whatever asymmetry or deficiency they deem to have cosmetically corrected.
02:51:23.000And some of them, they're just punching their face essentially before they go out at nighttime to get like a temporary pump in their cheeks.
02:51:32.000So like think about back in the day when you went to the club and you're like, I want to hit push-ups first.