Biohacking Expert: How to Optimise Your Testosterone, Energy, Sleep & Longevity

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Speaker 1: Lucas Owen, welcome to Project 100, mate.
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Speaker 2: Thanks for having me, Mark.
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Speaker 1: You have a science, an exercise physiology.
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Speaker 2: Bachelor of health science.
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Speaker 1: Bachelor of health science. But you have a scientific background. But you would be what is commonly known, and you're very popular in this zone, as known as a biohacker. Would that be?
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Speaker 2: You could say so.
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Speaker 1: Is that? Because, you know, just to give people a sense of, you know, what you do day to day, you always tend to be– sharing with people what you're learning.
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Speaker 2: For sure.
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Speaker 1: And you're learning from a scientific base, though. Absolutely, yeah. You're not a former tennis player who's talking about scientific outcomes.
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Speaker 2: Definitely not. Yeah, yeah. So I'm the son of a pharmacist. So my dad was a pharmacist, got early experience in the pharmacy, decided not to go down that route and become a naturopath, more like holistic. Yep. Because I thought better to treat the root cause than to you know, just smack it with a pharmaceutical drug, basically. And then, yeah, pretty much just went about sharing a lot of my research to the rest of the world on social media.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and you've got pretty impressive social media and you've got some impressive followers, like I see Andrew Huberman follows you, and that's a pretty big kick. What have you noticed in this process of sharing what you're learning with your community? What have you noticed about By the way, is it mostly men's health or female?
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Speaker 2: Predominantly, yeah, men's health.
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Speaker 1: Men's health issues.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. I tend to handball the female health-related issues to more qualified practitioners. Yeah. That sort of love handling that. But I really am passionate about natural testosterone optimization.
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: And also fertility in men because we're seeing a huge drop-off and it's affecting– Millions of men around the world and a lot of guys are walking around without knowing that they have low testosterone. And I think it's affecting them in ways that they wouldn't even think are possible.
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Speaker 1: That's interesting. So can we just talk about the connection between testosterone and fertility? Do they go hand in hand or they're not related?
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Speaker 2: Typically, what you see, guys naturally have high testosterone. They typically have higher sperm production and fertility. But you do have cases where guys will jump onto like TRT, for example.
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Speaker 1: And their fertility basically plummets. So maybe you could explain that for us, if you don't mind. The process of production of testosterone, you know, your various hormones before that LH.
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Speaker 2: Yep.
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Speaker 1: And FSH and how they sort of stimulate the testes and what the testes then does and then blah, blah, blah, what the process is.
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Speaker 2: For sure.
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Speaker 1: Just to give us some context.
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Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah. So testosterone production basically starts in the brain. And so the process kicks off in the hypothalamus, something called GNRH, gonadotropin-releasing hormone. Basically, that sends a signal down into the pituitary and then you got that LH and FSH, like you said before. And then that LH does a really important job, right? It goes directly to the testes to actually stimulate testosterone production at the testes.
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: So, this is why it's really crucial that guys actually support and protect their testicular health.
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Speaker 1: Yep.
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Speaker 2: Which can be things like mitigating microplastics... loading up on certain antioxidants that actually protect the testes against damage.
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Speaker 1: Tight pants.
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Speaker 2: Correct, yep. Polyester underwear is a no-go zone. In fact, there's a study done, it was like 40 years ago, where they subjected a group of men to wearing tight polyester underwear and actually caused azoospermia, which is like low sperm count, just by wearing polyester. Which has got to do with the heat regulation.
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Speaker 1: Temperature, yeah.
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Speaker 2: Exactly.
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Speaker 1: Because what most people don't realize is that that area, the scrotum area, which holds the testes, is a couple of degrees cooler than the rest of our body.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Which is pretty important because if they, is it right to say that if they sort of sense that the temperature is a bit high, they just stop producing?
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Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah.
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Speaker 1: To stop producing sperm.
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Speaker 2: It basically arrests spermatogenesis.
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: And I think it was actually that post that got Huberman's attention for my content.
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Speaker 1: Right.
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Speaker 2: When I posted about that.
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Speaker 1: And then he followed you the next day.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
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Speaker 1: So let's just work it through this. So the hypothalamus, which is in your brain, it's sending a message down to this pituitary gland. By the way, pituitary gland is a very busy gland because it does all sorts of things.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: It sends a message to your adrenal gland too and, you know, creates cortisol, all sorts of things. So it's sending a little message down to the H going down to the P, the pituitary gland. The pituitary gland then is producing two substances, one called luteinizing hormone, LH, and the other one called FSH. One of those, which one is it? I can't remember now. You just told me. But one of those ends up into your testes. LH. That's the luteinizing hormone. Yep. And then that then tells the testicles or something within the testicles, like inside the actual testicle, to produce sperm.
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Speaker 2: Correct.
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Speaker 1: And then that sperm travels to somewhere else. Where does it go?
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Speaker 2: If we're talking sperm, the FSH is more for that Sertoli cells in the testes. Yep. And that's to actually help with sperm production. So the sperm itself- Then it travels up to your prostate. Some of it, yeah, in that there's a particular spot where it's, anatomically, it's kind of like a spot where they're housed.
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: And they're stored. And if they're too hot. Yeah. And if they're overheating, that's when you get issues such as it can destroy these sperm cells because they're very sensitive to heat, which is a reason why I've been telling guys to bring an ice pack into a sauna to keep their test. Sauna use is fantastic, but there should also be icing available.
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Speaker 1: Oh, icing the testicles. Yeah. Well, keeping them at the temperature they're supposed to be at.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Otherwise, they're just going to stop producing sperm.
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Speaker 2: For sure, yeah.
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Speaker 1: And it's interesting, sperm itself, what's interesting about sperm itself is that it's not ready because it's got a little tail on it, you know, and that's the thing that propels it. And it's not fully mature until it gets into the prostate and gets all the semen that's in the prostate that's sort of … Sentinel fluid. Yeah, sort of nutrients of … And that's why men have got prostates and women don't have them, I guess. I'm assuming that's the reason, the evolutionary reason. And it's from the prostate that it gets pumped out during ejaculation. And because the prostate is like a little muscle or a little pump. But it's also a little nutritional spot. It sort of looks after them and they They get nutrients in that point. So if we don't have enough- GnRH. GnRH.
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Speaker 2: Gonadotropin-releasing hormone. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: If we don't have enough of that, is there something that people should be thinking about? I mean, apart from the fact that someone might be injecting themselves with too much testosterone or something like that, they're not going to produce it because they've got this homeostatic process which just says, wait, we're going to stop sending any messages down to your testicles from here on in because you've got enough testosterone in your system as it is. But let's assume that's not the case. Let's assume someone's a little under. Could there be a problem with the hypothalamus? The hypothalamus is not sending the right messages after it notes you don't have enough?
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Speaker 2: There could be. It's less likely. It's usually the cases for low testosterone in men is some of the downstream effects, downstream pathways, such as like, for example, There's a really strong link between cortisol and that GNRH.
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Speaker 1: Oh, really? Yeah.
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Speaker 2: So cortisol is an inhibitor. Stress. Yes.
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Speaker 1: Well, yeah. Something that gets you excited. Yeah.
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Speaker 2: So that can actually put the handbrakes on that GNRH. So then you're hitting the top, you're blocking from top down. And that's where people, and then there's various other factors such as heavy metal toxicity. For example, mercury is known to also affect that GNRH pathways. Microplastics, we're starting to see research on how that can accumulate in the brain because it's fatty tissue and microplastics love fatty areas. Certain nutrient deficiencies. So, for example, if you restrict a guy of zinc for long enough periods, let's say, for example, he decides to go vegan or vegetarian for a prolonged period and he's not conscious about hitting his zinc requirements, low zinc can then also affect that GnRH level. pathway as well so what you said before around that so you some guys will be on trt and what happens there is that it's a negative feedback.
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Speaker 1: Loop yeah because it says the hypothalamus we've got enough spot on we've got it we know and hypothalamus somehow knows we know how much testosterone is flowing free testosterone is flow flowing around the the body And the hypothalamus, okay, we've got enough, we're not just going to reduce anything.
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Speaker 2: The body is incredible. It's very smart, you know, the way it's built, right? It's conscious of things that are tipped too far, and there'll always be a price to pay.
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Speaker 1: What about when there's not enough, though? So let's say you're low on testosterone. We'll come back and talk about what low means later, but you're low on testosterone. And we'll also talk about the difference between free testosterone and total testosterone, and maybe we should even talk about sex-binding hormone globulin or sex hormone binding globulin, SHBG, and the importance of that. But we'll talk about that in a second. But let's say we won't talk about the reason, but let's say you are low on testosterone for some reason and your hypothalamus goes, well, he's low. What would be something that you've discovered and you've learned that could be the root cause there, up there in the hypothalamus area, as opposed to what might be going in the pituitary or might be going on in the testicles?
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Speaker 2: Well, when we're looking at, let's say a guy does have low testosterone, one of the things we need to focus on is actually getting that body in a state of health and vitality in order for GnRH to actually be switched on and activated. So if you look at all the different sort of studies and protocols on what actually moves the needle for testosterone and free testosterone, The research always comes back to healthy body weight, good quality sleep, good nutrition, making sure you're not deficient in any sort of nutrients. And then you've got various botanicals, herbal extracts, various supplements that have fairly new research that I think is pretty promising. If a guy's optimized all those other sort of areas, such as managing stress, optimizing sleep, doing weight training, because we actually do have research showing that explosive activities and lifting weights, especially hitting the legs because they're big muscle groups, that can actually help with secreting both growth hormone and also testosterone as well.
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Speaker 1: So is the starting point then, let's say someone's worried about fertility, they're just not feeling themselves, they're not feeling great, feel a bit of fog, maybe not sleeping well, not energetic. So Is the starting point a blood panel?
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Speaker 2: Correct.
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Speaker 1: So when someone goes to the doctor and they say to the doctor, well, they're my symptoms, and they say to the doctor, well, let's get a blood test, is there one specific thing or are there a couple of specific things that you would like to see them ask their doctor to get put onto the blood panel? Absolutely.
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Speaker 2: So the first things that I would recommend, and I've been obviously doing this for years, is blood. There are certain hormones and certain blood test markers that most GPs, I'm a big fan of GPs and doctors, but a lot of them will neglect hormones and biomarkers that are actually incredibly important for a man's wellbeing. So let's start with, I'll start with like the top three. First one is free testosterone.
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Speaker 1: All right.
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Speaker 2: So before you mentioned total and free and SHBG, The free testosterone portion is the portion of testosterone that's biologically available to hit the receptors.
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Speaker 1: And not bound on to anything else.
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Speaker 2: Correct.
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Speaker 1: So maybe you could just explain the difference. So you might go and get a testosterone test and the doctor might just get total testosterone. It's sort of okay, but it's a bit meaningless, is it?
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Speaker 2: Look, it's not meaningless, but it's give... Put it this way, it's... When I'm looking at optimizing free testosterone, the strategies to optimize free testosterone oftentimes involve boosting total test. So it's not like you can just selectively target that free testosterone and just like, I just want to increase that. You know what I mean? So it's kind of like you have to hit the total testosterone portion, the SHBG portion, which is sex hormone binding globulin. And we'll break it down for your listeners. So that SHBG portion, basically binds up most of your testosterone. I think it's like 90%. It's quite high.
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Speaker 1: It's a molecule that grabs hold of testosterone and it hangs onto it.
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Speaker 2: Correct.
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Speaker 1: And keeps circulating around your system.
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Speaker 2: Yep. But there's new research showing that even though it's bound to SHBG, some research is saying that it's actually helping with the transportation of testosterone. So we don't need to look at SHBGs like the devil's hormone, like it's just ruining men's quality of life. It is still important. But when it's way too high, that's when you run into issues.
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Speaker 1: My understanding, or what I've learned at least, is that lean people like you and I tend to have higher sex SHBG. And to some extent, it's better to be lean and not overweight. Sure. But at the same time, it usually means you have less as a total percentage of your total of testosterone, you probably have less free testosterone because you've got, a lot of us can be bound to the SHBG.
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Speaker 2: Correct. Yeah. So we've seen, you're spot on. Generally speaking, it is better to be on the higher side because they're seeing studies.
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Speaker 1: High side of what, sorry?
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Speaker 2: SHBG. Yeah, right. Because if you have very, very low SHBG, there's actually studies linking that to type two diabetes and, you know, liver complex. It's not, It's a good thing. Correct.
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Speaker 1: But it's a bad thing too.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. It's really nuanced.
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: Just whatever the research is showing. Yeah, yeah.
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Speaker 1: But basically don't get too skinny. But at the same time, that's sort of what it's saying. Because if you get too lean.
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Speaker 2: Correct, yeah.
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Speaker 1: Like if some guy's got 6% fat.
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Speaker 2: Well, their testosterone is going to be tanked. Anyway. Getting to that level of leanness will tank your testosterone. Like think about it. Calorie deficit. triggers stress hormone release, cortisol, and therefore your sleep is tanked.
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Speaker 1: Your sleep is totally compromised, which is when you produce your testosterone.
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Speaker 2: Why does your body want to be fertile if you're starving? It doesn't want to be fertile.
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Speaker 1: Nature doesn't want you to reproduce.
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Speaker 2: Correct.
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Speaker 1: There's too many of you.
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Speaker 2: Exactly.
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Speaker 1: And there's not food going around. No, but that's evolutionary system.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. So there are things I want to talk about there with SHBG. So insulin... is released when you eat sugar, right? And some protein, well, protein also can stimulate insulin as well, but most people know insulin is the hormone that helps to shuttle glucose out of the blood into the muscle and the brain, right? So insulin is important for facilitating that transport. Insulin actually has a suppressive effect on SHBG, which is why the guys that go on a ketogenic or a carnivore diet and I've seen this with blood panels, they have high total testosterone, but then they have low free testosterone because they cut the carbs, which is why I think if the goal is fertility and testosterone, cutting carbs is not a good idea. But if the goal is longevity and extending lifespan and you finish with fertility and all that, then cutting carbohydrates keeps insulin nice and low and low insulin is definitely pro-longevity. Like if you want to live a long time, keep your insulin between three and five or two and five. Yeah, yeah.
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Speaker 1: I think the point you made there was a pretty important one. If you're past reproductive period in your life or you just decide you don't care about that stuff, then if you're past it, then that process of staying super lean and having low sugar is probably a good idea. But on the flip side, if you want to start to be reproductive, there's a point. You don't want to be high sugar, but there's a sweet spot.
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Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah. The HbA1c sweet spot. The HbA1c.
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Speaker 1: Which is in the blood markers. Yeah.
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Speaker 2: So we'll talk about that. So let's say we actually want to look for a data-driven sweet spot. Yep. HbA1c should be 4.9 to 5.2.
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Speaker 1: Right.
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Speaker 2: That's what I think.
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Speaker 1: So that's another blood panel you should be, that's another mark you should be seeking on your blood panel.
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Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah. So HbA1c is measuring your average blood sugar over the past three months. Right. And that is crucial because you can't cheat that one. You can cheat the blood sugar, you can cheat a blood glucose blood test in the morning. Yep. You can just fast extra long or whatever. But you can't trick or fake a HbA1c because that's a three-month average.
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Speaker 1: Yep.
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Speaker 2: You know, so it's a very reliable biomarker. The other one I mentioned, insulin. We spoke about SHBG, free testosterone. And then the other one that's super important that we don't see enough emphasis on is free T3, thyroid hormone. So not TSH. Most doctors will order just a TSH panel. Make sure anyone listening to this, go to your doctor and request a T4, a full thyroid panel, basically. So that free T3s. Really important.
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Speaker 1: And what does the thyroid panel tell you in relation to the production of testosterone?
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Speaker 2: Great question. So one thing I like to emphasize with men is that T3 is.
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Speaker 1: Actually- By the way, that's nothing to do with testosterone.
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Speaker 2: No.
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Speaker 1: This is a thyroid hormone.
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Speaker 2: So this is a hormone that's produced from your thyroid, your butterfly-shaped gland here in your throat. And it predominantly produces T4. And then that T4 has to get converted into T3. Now, T4 is weaker than T3. T3 is stronger. T3 is the stronger thyroid hormone, right? And a lot of the benefits of thyroid come... from that T3. Now, did you know that... I think it's like 95% of cells in the body have thyroid receptors, which means that it's extremely important.
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Speaker 1: Which means the cells are looking for it.
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Speaker 2: They're hungry for it and they need it to function well. So one thing I like to point out is T3 actually... opens up the door for something called steroidogenesis pathway. So actually helping to facilitate the conversion of cholesterol, which is the building block of our hormones, into pregnenolone, which is the mother of all steroids.
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Speaker 1: It's a cortisone.
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Speaker 2: Yep. Pregnenolone and then progesterone and then DHEA. So put it this way, without enough T3, you're not converting cholesterol into... Pregnenolide.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, which means you don't end up getting enough testosterone.
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Speaker 2: Spot on.
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Speaker 1: So that's interesting because I often think to myself about these processes of reducing your cholesterol read and, you know, statins and all that other stuff, which, you know, sort of may be important. But the effect it could have on your testosterone production, because cholesterol is like the building block of just about everything, right? If all of a sudden you, let's call it, suppress it, what effect may that have on your testosterone production?
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Speaker 2: A very negative effect overall. The goal with cholesterol, I don't want to get too into the cardiovascular sort of debate because there are experts. But when we're talking about hormones, yes, cholesterol is the building block of all sex steroid hormones and.
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Speaker 1: It's just about every cell like every cell needs it.
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Speaker 2: Yeah and actually there's um research on increased risk of all-cause mortality with very low cholesterol yeah which is just you know so the link there actually i want to mention something really important back in the 1970s they used to prescribe thyroid hormone to lower cholesterol And then later on, they invented these cholesterol-lowering drugs. But that goes to show you that the body knows how to lower cholesterol. The body knows how to regulate cholesterol. You just got to optimize your thyroid.
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Speaker 1: Right. That's interesting. So we're looking at the blood panel, and you mentioned total testosterone, free testosterone, S-B-H-G-B, whatever it is.
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Speaker 2: Insulin.
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Speaker 1: Insulin.
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Speaker 2: T3. Yep. T4, T3.
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Speaker 1: Let's say the pathology comes back and says to you, you're outside of the range.
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Speaker 2: For which?
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Speaker 1: Any one of them. It doesn't matter. But how do I know? Let's say I'm just on the edge of the range. Let's say the lower range is, let's call it, let's just look at testosterone for a second.
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Speaker 2: Yep.
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Speaker 1: Let's say the range is between nine and 30.
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Speaker 2: 30, yeah. Okay.
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Speaker 1: Let's say I'm 10. So the doctor's going to go, tick, you're okay. What should someone do when they know they're 10?
00:23:05
Speaker 2: Well, put it this way. Testosterone, the reference range for testosterone over the years has actually decreased. So the upper end of the reference range has actually come down. Oh, really? Yeah.
00:23:16
Speaker 1: It is 9 to 30, isn't it?
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Speaker 2: Correct, yeah, yeah.
00:23:18
Speaker 1: Something like that.
00:23:18
Speaker 2: It actually, many, many years ago, it would have been up to 37, 36. Oh, the top end. Top end, right. So it's actually come down.
00:23:25
Speaker 1: Why have they done that?
00:23:26
Speaker 2: Because there's a global decline in testosterone.
00:23:29
Speaker 1: So it's not based on what you should be. It's based on what the participants are.
00:23:33
Speaker 2: It's the average population.
00:23:35
Speaker 1: Of the population. So it's data off what we are testing, as opposed to saying we, an endocrinologist, a specialist in this territory, believe you should be at 37. They're not sort of telling us where they think we should be. They're saying where we all are. And they're putting you within a population.
00:23:51
Speaker 2: Well, it's a bell curve.
00:23:53
Speaker 1: So it's basically- So you sit within, there's a mean, so it's probably, I don't know, 15 or something. It would be more than 15, it'd be 20. And they want to see how many standard deviations you are away. Because, you know, I would have thought if you're two or three standard deviations, which is two standard deviations would be right on nine or 10. Yeah. Because it's 50% of 50%. So- I would have thought that's sort of a long way from the mean.
00:24:22
Speaker 2: Well, if you're sitting at 9 or 10, I'm raising the red flag. Yeah, yeah. Like, it's an immediate issue. Like, personally, I'm sitting at around 32. Yeah. So, I'm sitting at around 990, the other conversion, 990 nanograms per deciliter naturally without TRT. Right. Just through supplements, lifestyle, and, you know, good looking after my body.
00:24:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's mad. That's crazy. That's great. Yeah.
00:24:49
Speaker 2: But that's also with all the other things, icing your balls, doing all the biohacks have incorporated, built out, helped, you know, obviously been helping men do the same thing with this for years. And I'm hyper-focused on this one thing. As a naturopath, I always knew I'm going to focus on one thing and it was testosterone.
00:25:07
Speaker 1: Right.
00:25:08
Speaker 2: So, I love this. But going back to the reference range, if a guy is sitting at like 29, great. You know, great. Because there's Very unlikely that he's going to be symptomatic or like he's going to have any symptoms of low testosterone, which can vary so much.
00:25:26
Speaker 1: And what are some of the symptoms?
00:25:28
Speaker 2: The biggest one that I would say is lack of motivation because testosterone fuels dopamine. And testosterone and dopamine go hand in hand. Dopamine is the motivation, drive, confidence, get shit done sort of neurotransmitter. testosterone upregulates that dopamine pathway.
00:25:46
Speaker 1: So it increases it.
00:25:47
Speaker 2: Correct.
00:25:47
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:25:48
Speaker 2: Which is why guys are going, it's why guys that boost testosterone feel good. When they say they feel good, they don't mean that they just want to sit on the couch and just relax. Like, no, they want to go out there and conquer and get shit done and be productive, which is how I think most men should be. The other thing around low testosterone is they may wake up not noticing, well, they might lose their morning wood. You know, morning erections. Yeah. I call it morning wouldn't. So that's something that is a little barometer way to.
00:26:21
Speaker 1: That's also a good indicator cardiovascular health, et cetera. Yeah. Or just vascular health generally.
00:26:26
Speaker 2: Spot on, yeah. Nutric oxide production, that plays a huge role in the nighttime erections. Number three, I'd say is body composition changes. So for guys noticing that he can't build muscle and he's gaining excess abdominal fat, that's a classic- sign of low testosterone. Despite doing everything right, they might be training hard, doing all the right work. But they're just not building muscle. Testosterone is anabolic. It's an anabolic steroid. There's a reason why bodybuilders have been using it for years because they know so much about what it does. They know exactly what it's going to hit, how it's going to do this, etc. I would also say There's another symptom that a lot of guys miss, and that's actually night sweats. If you have low testosterone, that can actually cause night sweats.
00:27:18
Speaker 1: What do you mean you're sweating at night?
00:27:19
Speaker 2: As in you're waking up at nighttime just drenched.
00:27:21
Speaker 1: Drenched, oh wow.
00:27:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've seen guys report that. That can also be a liver issue as well in Chinese medicine. They talk about that. And then also I'd say, I mean, yeah, like fertility-related issues also.
00:27:37
Speaker 1: I think sleep too. I think, as I understand, like you don't sleep well if you don't have enough testosterone, if you don't have testosterone. Yeah, yeah.
00:27:44
Speaker 2: Because there's a really strong correlation between cortisol and testosterone. So, you know, as cortisol goes up, testosterone goes down. There's a strong relationship there, as I said before, going.
00:27:57
Speaker 1: Back to- As a percentage of each other.
00:27:59
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:27:59
Speaker 1: So, like if your testosterone is low, therefore your cortisol is going to be higher.
00:28:03
Speaker 2: It's, it's very likely that's, that's the case. Yeah. Yeah.
00:28:07
Speaker 1: In which case you're not going to sleep properly.
00:28:08
Speaker 2: Spot on.
00:28:08
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:28:08
Speaker 2: Cause cortisol suppresses melatonin. Yeah. So then you've, you've got this cycle of not sleeping well.
00:28:14
Speaker 1: Fragmented sleep.
00:28:15
Speaker 2: Low motivation, no lack of energy, not feeling confident, can't recover from hard workouts. Like you've done a really brutal workout and just can't recover.
00:28:24
Speaker 1: So where that takes me in all these places. Um, okay. So the dude has had the tests. Um, he's at the lower range. Um, in all the categories um perhaps you should get a few mineral uh so some minerals and vitamin tests like for b vitamin b tests and zinc and all those other things and it looks like he's at the wrong end of the range for everything and uh comes along to you and he says here's the position um and these are my symptoms um how do you fix this stuff.
00:29:00
Speaker 2: First things first is address the low hanging fruit on the blood test. So like, for example, let's say his vitamin D is on the lower end of the reference range. That's the first thing that I'm going to address with a supplement. If he can't get outside, you know, if he can't get outside.
00:29:15
Speaker 1: Which is, by the way, is a lot of times. A lot of people stay working, they got to catch a train, they're sitting in the train the whole time. They're not working outside in the sunshine like a carpenter might be, for example.
00:29:25
Speaker 2: Exactly right.
00:29:25
Speaker 1: Or a landscape gardener.
00:29:26
Speaker 2: Or if they are going outside in the sun, they're slapping on the sunscreen. Yeah. Which has got its own testosterone lowering effect. Right. Because of the bloody chemicals in the sunscreen.
00:29:37
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:29:37
Speaker 2: Unless it's a natural sunscreen, you know. But I'd address the low-hanging fruit. So like the vitamin D, if that's low, I'd boost that up. It might be 10,000, 20,000 IU vitamin D for three months. Redo the bloods. Check where your vitamin D's at. And by the way, just correcting vitamin D for that individual, that would lead to about a 10% to 15% increase in testosterone. Wow. That's a decent amount. And then you stack that with all the other corrections. Maybe he's got low zinc. Let's fix that. Get that zinc up into the reference range. Maybe needs 20 milligrams of zinc a day for like two months. Redo bloods. Check that. It's in a good spot.
00:30:15
Speaker 1: Boom.
00:30:15
Speaker 2: There's another 10, 15% to your total testosterone. Now you've boosted it up 30% just from correcting the things that you should be getting from your lifestyle and diet.
00:30:26
Speaker 1: But they're exogenous things. They're things that come from outside. Yeah. What about lifestyle changes? So you just mentioned, you know, like crouching over a bowl of ice water or something. What about those lifestyle things? Are we talking about ice baths? What are we talking about?
00:30:45
Speaker 2: No, we're talking about icing your balls. So applying an ice pack up against your underwear where the balls hang. So doing this three times a day.
00:30:53
Speaker 1: While you've got your undies on. No. Absolutely.
00:30:55
Speaker 2: You don't want to Burn your scrotum. No.
00:30:59
Speaker 1: Oh, actual ice.
00:31:00
Speaker 2: Well, an ice pack, yeah. Oh, okay.
00:31:02
Speaker 1: Oh, really?
00:31:03
Speaker 2: Yeah. Wow.
00:31:05
Speaker 1: Do you do that?
00:31:06
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
00:31:06
Speaker 1: What do you carry when you're out? You've got a freezer in your office and you put it in the freezer?
00:31:10
Speaker 2: I'm proud to say, yeah.
00:31:12
Speaker 1: And how long do you do that for? How long would you do that for?
00:31:15
Speaker 2: I'd be doing it three to four times a day.
00:31:17
Speaker 1: No, but like for a half hour, 10 minutes.
00:31:19
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's a quick little icing session.
00:31:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
00:31:22
Speaker 2: On the way to the gym, before bed, these are the best times to do it. Definitely before the gym because when you train, you're getting hot. Obviously, it's not good for testicular regulations. You're doing it pre-workout. When I'm like sitting at my desk, just overheating down there just by sitting near my laptop and then doing it again before bed.
00:31:43
Speaker 1: So let's say you work in an office environment, you don't have that opportunity. So otherwise, everyone's going to think you're a bit weird. You would do it first thing in the morning, last thing at night or something like that?
00:31:52
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah.
00:31:53
Speaker 1: Every day?
00:31:54
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
00:31:54
Speaker 1: For like 10 minutes?
00:31:55
Speaker 2: Yep.
00:31:56
Speaker 1: And it's basically one of those ice packs you buy from the pharmacy.
00:31:58
Speaker 2: Every guy that I've told about, every guy that I've recommended this protocol to, every single one of them has reported huge benefits.
00:32:05
Speaker 1: My balls are feeling hot sitting here talking to you.
00:32:08
Speaker 2: I'm serious.
00:32:08
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, shit, I feel a bit hot down here. I'm going to have to get an ice pack. But no, no, because the camera's only up above here. I could actually have the ice pack on now. So icing your testicles, yes. What other things? We talked about those. What other lifestyle things should we do?
00:32:24
Speaker 2: Lifestyle. Okay. So avoiding microplastics as best as possible.
00:32:29
Speaker 1: So that's a hard one though. Yes, it is. And what do you mean by avoiding microplastics? That water, by the way, comes from a glass.
00:32:38
Speaker 2: That's why I'm sipping it.
00:32:41
Speaker 1: On purpose.
00:32:41
Speaker 2: Perfect. Look, don't get me wrong, Mark. I mean, look, it's very hard to avoid microplastics. microplastic intake. I get it. I understand it's difficult. I was just living in Dubai for six months before the war broke out and everything was plastic bottled there. And it was also really hot. So then you're melting the plastic in the bottle. It wasn't ideal. My fiance's, her estrogen doubled from drinking out of plastic bottles.
00:33:08
Speaker 1: Her estrogen?
00:33:09
Speaker 2: Her estrogen on a blood test. We did a blood test before and after Dubai. It went up. It doubled.
00:33:14
Speaker 1: Wow.
00:33:15
Speaker 2: From the exposure of all the Because we're drinking out of plastic bottles for so long.
00:33:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you can't drink the water. You've got to drink out of it. It's full of bloody sand. Yeah, yeah. So, okay, avoiding microplastics.
00:33:28
Speaker 2: Microplastics, I'd be avoiding all those spray deodorants with all the chemicals. Choose a natural deodorant. In fact, I just make my own, like literally coconut oil, bicarbonate soda. And bentonite clay, and that's my natural deodorant.
00:33:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, because we don't know what's in all the stuff that we use, like toothpaste. There's probably 150 chemicals in it. There's probably 150 chemicals in... We talk about cigarettes, all the 200 chemicals that are in cigarettes. There's chemicals in everything.
00:33:59
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:34:00
Speaker 1: Everything we put on our body.
00:34:02
Speaker 2: Which is a reason why regular sweating is great, because it actually helps to detoxify these chemicals from the body pretty well.
00:34:10
Speaker 1: So you can get rid of- Microplastics. Microplastics from sweating, do you think?
00:34:14
Speaker 2: There's some theories that it is helpful. There's another pathway that I'd really encourage, and it's actually postbiotics. They can actually do- What are they? It's the production. So it's basically a probiotic, what it produces after it ferments.
00:34:32
Speaker 1: Right.
00:34:32
Speaker 2: It's called a postbiotic, and there's certain postbiotics that can actually degrade microplastics in the gut. Wow. Which is really cool. So just keep an eye out for new research on that. It's very early days, but in the future, I'm thinking of formulating a microplastic detox product to help detoxify the body because everyone's got them in them. It's just inevitable. But good thing is, I want to actually make special note to one of my favorite amino acids, taurine. You've heard of taurine?
00:35:05
Speaker 1: I take it every night. Amazing, amazing.
00:35:07
Speaker 2: So taurine actually has a protective effect on the testes. It actually blocks the damaging effects of BPA on the testes, which is another reason why I put in my top five supplements to take every single day. Taurine, three to five grams a day is what I recommend.
00:35:26
Speaker 1: Wow, that's a fair bit.
00:35:28
Speaker 2: It is a pretty big dose, but I mean, if you look at the research, they've used up to six grams a day for like 12 months without any major side effects. That can do a pretty good job at shielding the testes against these microplastics.
00:35:43
Speaker 1: Also, taurine is good for downregulation of your whole body, your system, in order to go to sleep.
00:35:48
Speaker 2: Very parasympathetic activating.
00:35:50
Speaker 1: Which is the reason I have it, because of the rest-digest process.
00:35:55
Speaker 2: Well, speaking of compounds to lower cortisol, that's a great supplement to do so.
00:36:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's why I take it.
00:36:02
Speaker 2: Spot on, yeah. So, you can also stack that with glycine.
00:36:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do that as well. I do it at home. About 6.30 at night, I have a small stack of my own.
00:36:10
Speaker 2: Perfect.
00:36:11
Speaker 1: Ashwagandha, taurine, glycine, glycinate, also theanine, L-theanine, and L-threonate.
00:36:22
Speaker 2: Yeah. So that'll be the combined effect of all those ingredients. You've really knocked your cortisol down probably like 30%.
00:36:29
Speaker 1: It's in order to get– for me, it's a sleep thing. It's a sleep program, protocol, but nonetheless– It's taken me a while to work it out, but it works for me. Yeah. I don't take it in one hit. I take these as separate. Okay. They're all separate. So you can buy some supplements where it's all in one. The problem is they always have B6 in there and then you end up having B6 or just about everything you have and you overdo it. And you get a bit of brain dull.
00:36:56
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:36:57
Speaker 1: I've had it. I've actually had it.
00:36:58
Speaker 2: Did you have B6 toxicity?
00:36:59
Speaker 1: Yep.
00:36:59
Speaker 2: Yep.
00:37:00
Speaker 1: And I stopped. As soon as I stopped, I cleared after about a month.
00:37:02
Speaker 2: I was on ABC News talking about that.
00:37:04
Speaker 1: Really?
00:37:04
Speaker 2: Yeah. They interviewed me to talk, literally to talk about it.
00:37:07
Speaker 1: Because everybody, we should explain this, but as I understand, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but a lot of supplement companies, they put vitamin B6 in there because the thing that you're actually after, the active ingredient in the supplement is more bioavailable if you have B6. That's what they say. But they all do it. They all assume you're only taking one supplement. But you take five supplements and you take B6 five times.
00:37:32
Speaker 2: A lot of people are B6 toxic.
00:37:35
Speaker 1: It does dull your brain.
00:37:36
Speaker 2: Well, it causes nerve damage.
00:37:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I found out about it. But the clarity I have since I stopped doing it is amazing.
00:37:46
Speaker 2: Way better, yeah.
00:37:47
Speaker 1: It's amazing. I'm not joking. 50%, 70% better.
00:37:51
Speaker 2: Unreal. Clearer. I mean, I can believe that. I know how that would work. The other bad part is they use the wrong form of B6 as well. Have you seen that? No. How they use the pyridoxine hydrochloride versus the P5P. P5P is the active form and that's the one that should be used. But a lot of supplement brands, I know how they do it. They just want to cut costs. So they use a cheaper form of B6.
00:38:12
Speaker 1: Pyridoxine. And what I ended up doing was I ended up doing an AI audit on all my supplements.
00:38:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, good.
00:38:17
Speaker 1: I ordered everything.
00:38:18
Speaker 2: Good.
00:38:19
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:38:19
Speaker 2: Full review.
00:38:20
Speaker 1: Full review. I found a lot of stuff and pyridoxine was a was in most of them.
00:38:26
Speaker 2: It is. It is. I know which brands you're talking about. I'm not going to mention them.
00:38:29
Speaker 1: By the way, it's a highly reputable brand. I got a shock on my life.
00:38:34
Speaker 2: I think I know who.
00:38:35
Speaker 1: You're talking about. Yeah, I'm not going to. We won't say.
00:38:39
Speaker 2: So we covered off.
00:38:40
Speaker 1: The exogenous things that could be causing problems. Then we covered off lifestyle things that could be causing us a problem with the production of testosterone. What about endogenous? So something within ourselves that's not working. I mean, how do you know, for example, let's say someone's been, um, an MMA fighter and, um, has had damage down there.
00:39:04
Speaker 2: Or even up there as well.
00:39:05
Speaker 1: Or up there as well.
00:39:06
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:39:07
Speaker 1: Or a rugby league player or a boxer. Um, those endogenous things. How do you know what's going on in those environments? Let's say everything else is good. I'm taking all the supplements. My bloods are okay. Um, I'm, um, pretty good in terms of my lifestyle i'm icing everything and i mean i don't wear tight polyester underwear or whatever um and uh so that's all good you tick it off as they're sitting there talking to you then you think wait a minute what happens there there's something wrong with his pituitary he might have a growth on there or there's something wrong with his uh testicles he might have been kicked in there a number of times might have some sort of trauma there yeah or um something wrong with the brain.
00:39:46
Speaker 2: Good good point so um One thing I'd point out is a prolactinoma. So this is a growth of a pituitary tumor, basically. And what that can do is it can actually increase the secretion of prolactin. And that's, by the way, I probably should have mentioned before the blood test, I'd say prolactin should be on there. It has to be on there. Let's just blanket statement for the audience. Prolactin puts the handbrakes on testosterone. It literally puts the handbrakes on testosterone production. It basically is a hormone that's associated with infertility in men. It lowers libido substantially because it affects dopamine. There's an indirect relationship between dopamine and prolactin.
00:40:31
Speaker 1: And there's a relationship between dopamine and sex drive.
00:40:35
Speaker 2: Spot on.
00:40:35
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:40:36
Speaker 2: So guys that have high prolactin, their ability to get an erection is compromised. They're not going to They have no libido. They feel like they're lacking motivation. They're not driven. They're not feeling confident. Prolactin should be less than 120 in our Australian reference range, ideally.
00:40:57
Speaker 1: If the prolactin is, they're not going after it.
00:41:00
Speaker 2: No.
00:41:00
Speaker 1: They're going, I don't care about that.
00:41:01
Speaker 2: Exactly right.
00:41:02
Speaker 1: Sex I'm talking about.
00:41:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly right. Exactly right.
00:41:04
Speaker 1: And they're probably not going after anything. The drive is down generally.
00:41:07
Speaker 2: Put it this way. Prolactin is the hormone that stops a guy from getting hard after the first round.
00:41:13
Speaker 1: Hmm.
00:41:13
Speaker 2: It stops the second erection. Right. Which is why when you were younger, you could obviously go multiple rounds.
00:41:20
Speaker 1: Totally. You know. It's not necessarily a shared activity from both sides either, by the.
00:41:31
Speaker 2: Way.
00:41:32
Speaker 1: That's not always happening. But I've got to be careful on that. So you could have a prolactin issue.
00:41:38
Speaker 2: Correct.
00:41:38
Speaker 1: That's another thing that should be on your blood panel. Right. what about it can the hypothalamus get um damaged as such that it stops.
00:41:48
Speaker 2: Doing its job it can it can this.
00:41:51
Speaker 1: Must be pretty serious head trauma i.
00:41:52
Speaker 2: Guess yeah i mean it's very rare.
00:41:55
Speaker 1: Okay so let's go to the pituitary the pituitary could have a growth on there and so you.
00:42:00
Speaker 2: Should get that stuff checked yep it needs to be scanned.
00:42:03
Speaker 1: And then brain send down low um in the testicles um.
00:42:07
Speaker 2: There's also a physical structural thing we need to talk about that's affecting one in seven Aussies right now, which is a varicose cell.
00:42:14
Speaker 1: A what?
00:42:15
Speaker 2: A varicose cell.
00:42:16
Speaker 1: What is that?
00:42:16
Speaker 2: Which is an enlargement of the veins that drain the testes. Have you heard of the bag of worms? No. That analogy?
00:42:22
Speaker 1: Sounds horrible.
00:42:23
Speaker 2: It's basically where the veins enlarge. It's called... If you... It's basically when a guy's veins in the testes are enlarged and it causes testicular overheating.
00:42:35
Speaker 1: And that causes- Like as in varicose veins.
00:42:37
Speaker 2: Correct. It's varicose veins in the testes.
00:42:39
Speaker 1: Wow.
00:42:39
Speaker 2: And it's affecting like one in seven Aussies.
00:42:41
Speaker 1: But young men or old men?
00:42:43
Speaker 2: All ages.
00:42:43
Speaker 1: What's causing that?
00:42:45
Speaker 2: They don't really- Strain? They don't really know the reason why it develops. It's really bizarre. They think it's got to do with upright posture or something like that. Whoa. I don't understand it really.
00:42:57
Speaker 1: Sounds hectic.
00:42:58
Speaker 2: But it needs to be examined and it's very easy to treat. They do something called embolization where they just put a catheter.
00:43:06
Speaker 1: Doesn't sound good. Yeah.
00:43:07
Speaker 2: It's not good, but it's also something that guys won't know unless they get it checked.
00:43:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
00:43:12
Speaker 2: Because as if a guy's going to ever really be, I don't know, a guy's going to feel their testes and be like, oh.
00:43:17
Speaker 1: What's going on there?
00:43:18
Speaker 2: Yeah. They're not checking that.
00:43:19
Speaker 1: No. Yeah. I know it's a bit. I mean, this conversation is getting a bit out there, but it's pretty good because these are important things. I mean, these are things that are semi-taboo or whatever, not taboo, but like just men don't think about. I don't know. I obviously can't speak for men, but men don't think about a lot of this stuff because ultimately what we're trying to get to here is how do I get the things properly balanced in my system for me such that I'm leading my best, let's call it best life?
00:43:49
Speaker 2: Well, that's the goal. That's the goal with a lot of these programs. biohacks, if you call them biohacks. It's not really biohacking. It's just kind of living a very healthy, optimized lifestyle. You're dialing in your sleep, but it's also going a step further. Now that we have the resources, we have the tools, we've got the Whoop device, you've got your CGMs, you've got your DEXA scans and all that. You've got the tools there. You've got the technology to assess. It's one thing to get the data, but then it's another thing to know what to do with the data and actually... what to implement and action from that data. That's what's really important.
00:44:25
Speaker 1: So could we look at, let's look at an action plan. Someone's listening to, like just say, you know, I mean, obviously they should go and see someone like yourself or like an expert in this area, but let's say they don't. And sure, they should go and get the test and, you know, and the tests that you were just mentioning to them in terms of blood, their bloods, the blood panel, the things you sort of should be asking for and looking, looking out for in terms of the results. But, Just generally speaking, how should a male live his life in order to optimize this really important hormone?
00:45:01
Speaker 2: First things first is addressing the factor that has the biggest impact on testosterone, and that has to be sleep.
00:45:09
Speaker 1: Right.
00:45:10
Speaker 2: Sleep is the most important factor for supporting testosterone production. That's number one.
00:45:16
Speaker 1: Can you explain why that is the case?
00:45:18
Speaker 2: So sleep is important. extremely important to shift the body into that recovery recharge. It basically enables the body to recalibrate. So the reason why I always focus on sleep when we're optimizing testosterone is because most guys will be typically getting maybe like six to seven hours of pretty light quality sleep and they'll think that's fine. But really we've seen studies that show that when sleep is affected, even one week of poor sleep can actually drop testosterone by like 20%, which is substantial. You know, this is incredibly important. So that's the first thing that I'd be focusing on.
00:46:01
Speaker 1: So get a good sleep strategy.
00:46:02
Speaker 2: Great. Yeah, get a good sleep stack and strategy like what you've got, you know. And that also includes sleeping in a very dark environment, you know, making sure your room's cool. I use an eight-sleep mattress that cools down my mattress. I even use a vagus nerve stimulator on my ear that stimulates the vagal nerve.
00:46:21
Speaker 1: I've tried it.
00:46:22
Speaker 2: Which one? Did you use the Polsetto? Yes. Polsetto or the Neuro?
00:46:27
Speaker 1: No, Neuro.
00:46:28
Speaker 2: Neuropod?
00:46:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, Neuropod. I didn't probably try it for long enough.
00:46:33
Speaker 2: Left or right ear?
00:46:34
Speaker 1: I think it's my left ear.
00:46:36
Speaker 2: I think.
00:46:36
Speaker 1: I can't remember. It was my left ear, I'm pretty sure. I can't remember now. Yeah. Well, it should be on a particular ear.
00:46:41
Speaker 2: Left, I'm pretty sure.
00:46:42
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure. I read the instructions. I ordered that. I think it was left ear. Yeah. But I didn't.
00:46:47
Speaker 2: You didn't get a subjective effect?
00:46:49
Speaker 1: I didn't. Well, I monitored it over a period of time, but I didn't sort of get any HIV change.
00:46:53
Speaker 2: Did you get the tingling? Yeah.
00:46:56
Speaker 1: Like a little stingy sort of feeling. Yeah.
00:46:59
Speaker 2: What's your HIV generally, though? 40, 42.
00:47:01
Speaker 1: Your HIV? Yeah.
00:47:03
Speaker 2: Okay.
00:47:03
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:47:06
Speaker 2: What's your resting heart rate?
00:47:08
Speaker 1: 52, 53. Okay. Yeah, yeah.
00:47:11
Speaker 2: Did it not boost it up at all?
00:47:12
Speaker 1: No.
00:47:13
Speaker 2: Okay.
00:47:14
Speaker 1: Yeah. Look, I think, I mean, you can- But I might not have used it. I mean, perhaps you've got to use it for a period of time. I probably only used it four or five times, maybe six times. Yeah.
00:47:23
Speaker 2: I mean, there are other things that can help with the parasympathetic. Have you ever used the acupressure mat?
00:47:32
Speaker 1: No.
00:47:33
Speaker 2: Where it's got the nails?
00:47:34
Speaker 1: No.
00:47:34
Speaker 2: And you lie back on that?
00:47:35
Speaker 1: No. Bit of nails.
00:47:38
Speaker 2: So basically, it's like a little acupressure mat. Yeah. And it's like a little half yoga mat thing. And it's got spikes. It's got those little, they're not nails, but it's kind of like little plastic spikes.
00:47:49
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:47:49
Speaker 2: You lie on that and that massively dumps endorphins into your bloodstream.
00:47:54
Speaker 1: Lay it on the ground. Yeah.
00:47:56
Speaker 2: You're lying down back flat with your back.
00:47:58
Speaker 1: Before you go to bed or something.
00:47:59
Speaker 2: Yeah. Right before bed. Right literally just before bed. And that has helped me with sleep onset.
00:48:05
Speaker 1: Oh, really?
00:48:05
Speaker 2: Dramatically, dramatically, yeah.
00:48:06
Speaker 1: I sleep all right. I have no trouble, like I literally go to sleep in a second. But it's probably, and I think I'm sort of one of the, I'm sort of hyper alert type person.
00:48:19
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:48:20
Speaker 1: So, with everything. So, I'd say that's probably, I'm on sort of, cortisol alert all the time, if you know what I mean.
00:48:27
Speaker 2: For sure. You're doing so much.
00:48:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. But I think I've been that, like my whole life, probably that type of personality. There's probably something to do with some genetic thing going.
00:48:37
Speaker 2: On.
00:48:37
Speaker 1: So therefore, maybe some of those things don't work. But the important thing about this now is not about anyway, but I guess what you're saying is something that can allow you to get yourself into that parasympathetic or that rest and digest zone is really important.
00:48:55
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah. The sympathetic state is going to negatively affect your sleep.
00:48:59
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:48:59
Speaker 2: So that's from a sleep standpoint. I'd love to talk about some nutritional strategies.
00:49:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, please do.
00:49:05
Speaker 2: Because I'm talking about things that I know you love. Extra virgin olive oil.
00:49:09
Speaker 1: Yep.
00:49:09
Speaker 2: You know, that's been shown to support testosterone production in men. Good quality olive oil.
00:49:16
Speaker 1: I heard Brian Johnson say something like that the other day.
00:49:18
Speaker 2: Wouldn't surprise me. Yeah. Look, from a fat standpoint, I'll just give you a rundown on what I've done to get my testosterone to almost 1,000 naturally. I'm going to run you through roughly what I've done.
00:49:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:49:30
Speaker 2: Go for it. Plenty of eggs.
00:49:32
Speaker 1: Yep.
00:49:33
Speaker 2: Not just the whites. I'm talking the whole thing with the yolk, like four to five a day. Right. Which might sound like a lot, but you probably, I don't know, do you do something similar? Yeah, yeah.
00:49:42
Speaker 1: Well, I always have three.
00:49:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, three eggs a day.
00:49:44
Speaker 1: Minimum three.
00:49:45
Speaker 2: Then I'm doing avocados as like the main fat sources. I'm cooking with olive oil, coconut oil, sometimes grass-fed butter.
00:49:53
Speaker 1: Yep.
00:49:53
Speaker 2: Plenty of steak, plenty of red meat. Occasionally organ meats, so chicken hearts, beef liver, because they're obviously the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet.
00:50:04
Speaker 1: Which, by the way, there was a big debate about this stuff, but Just have a look at nature. The thing that the predator goes for straight away is the liver.
00:50:13
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, yeah.
00:50:14
Speaker 1: Straight away. That's the first thing they eat.
00:50:16
Speaker 2: Yeah. The muscle meat is last for the hyenas. Yeah.
00:50:20
Speaker 1: They go straight for the liver.
00:50:22
Speaker 2: Because it's literally– the good thing about liver is you only need about 100 grams a week as a human. Wow. That's nothing.
00:50:29
Speaker 1: That's as big as the palm of your hand sort of thing.
00:50:31
Speaker 2: That's literally nothing. You can literally just freeze them and just shot them basically.
00:50:35
Speaker 1: They pretty taste disgusting. I mean, I don't like to taste them, but it doesn't matter.
00:50:38
Speaker 2: Neither do I.
00:50:38
Speaker 1: That's another issue.
00:50:40
Speaker 2: Carbohydrate sources, this is where it gets really interesting. So some people will say, oh, look, he's not correct on this. But you know what? I think white rice is an absolutely fine carbohydrate source. You know, some people say it's very insulinogenic. It spikes your insulin, you know. But personally, it's lower. I mean, compared to brown rice, it's lower in heavy metals. It's easy to digest.
00:51:05
Speaker 1: And the reason for that is because the brown rice has a skin on it, which holds the heavy metals.
00:51:10
Speaker 2: Spot on, yeah.
00:51:12
Speaker 1: But someone might also say, yeah, but the brown rice has more fiber in it, which is better for you.
00:51:17
Speaker 2: But I'm doing my fiber through other things. I've already outsmarted the system. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:51:25
Speaker 1: Well, that's what you do.
00:51:25
Speaker 2: Yeah. I figured a little hack on that. There's a particular fiber that I've been sprinkling on top of the white rice. It's called PHGG.
00:51:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know it. Yeah.
00:51:36
Speaker 2: So I'm doing the partially hydrolyzed guar gum on top of the white rice, basically tasteless. And I've just made my own low GI rice by adding fiber. But anyway, the GI rating of the rice, you don't just eat rice by itself. You're having rice with chicken and probably with meat or a bit of veggies and fat. So it's already the GI ranking on white rice is Is debunked. You know what I mean? Because when's the last time that you would sit down and eat just a bowl of white rice by itself?
00:52:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know.
00:52:09
Speaker 2: No. You're adding it with meat or fiber or fats, and that lowers the GI.
00:52:16
Speaker 1: But overall- I'm worse than you. I'm worse or better. But after a training session, I'll eat rice flour.
00:52:26
Speaker 2: On top of the yogurt?
00:52:28
Speaker 1: No, I get rice flour and I put some water in. I just put it in the microwave for a minute.
00:52:32
Speaker 2: Post-workout?
00:52:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, post-workout because just to get your carbs back up.
00:52:36
Speaker 2: That's probably the best thing you can do.
00:52:37
Speaker 1: Because it's the quickest you can absorb. It's better than white rice. White rice is better than brown rice and brown rice is better than black rice.
00:52:43
Speaker 2: Correct, yeah.
00:52:44
Speaker 1: But black rice has probably got more nutrients in it, overall, black rice. But it just takes forever to get into your system.
00:52:50
Speaker 2: It's also very heavy. to digest. Black rice is heavy.
00:52:54
Speaker 1: It takes a lot, it's sitting in your gut for a long time.
00:52:56
Speaker 2: Same as quinoa as well.
00:52:57
Speaker 1: Yeah. Quinoa is also heavy. I'm not big on the quinoa, but I agree with the white rice thing. I mean, especially if you're trying to replace what you've just spent.
00:53:05
Speaker 2: Look, there's research showing that if you replenish your carbohydrates within six to 12 hours, you've heard about the study where like, if you're going to train back to back, let's say you're training today and then you're going to train again tomorrow. If you don't refuel those carbs, carbohydrates within 60 minutes post-workout, that's actually more important for determining performance than protein. So what you're doing there makes sense.
00:53:30
Speaker 1: Well, I got this from talking to a couple of guys I've been on the podcast.
00:53:33
Speaker 2: Was it the Barbell guy?
00:53:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, both Seb, but also with Paul Haslam. who was Mr. World.
00:53:44
Speaker 2: Dr. Andy Galpin as well?
00:53:45
Speaker 1: I've got Andy Galpin as well. But so they've all said, like, as soon as you do a workout, don't be one of these guys who wants to be lean and mean. Like, you've got to put the carbs back straight in. And you've got to have something you can absorb fast. Yeah. And there's no point getting on these, you know, like oats or whatever. They're great, but, like, just you want to get that– your muscles are dying to get this stuff back in. Otherwise, you start to deplete.
00:54:08
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:54:08
Speaker 1: It's the one time– Especially at my age. Because it's hard enough to build muscle as it is, and you're actually chewing into your own muscle.
00:54:16
Speaker 2: But also that spike of insulin is more like it's anti-catabolic. That's why you want to get that insulin spike post-workout straight away. And then also it's the one time where you actually have permission to have high GI carbohydrates.
00:54:34
Speaker 1: So it's okay.
00:54:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's fine. I mean, from a longevity standpoint, it's fine. Like if you're doing that straight after a workout, it's completely fine. Yeah.
00:54:42
Speaker 1: And I find it actually makes me feel better straight away. Like literally within half an hour. So you're working on the carbs as well? Yeah.
00:54:50
Speaker 2: So I'm doing a lot of Greek yogurt.
00:54:52
Speaker 1: Yep.
00:54:53
Speaker 2: Like that's a staple with raw honey. And honey's got its own benefits. You know, it has to be good quality honey again. Like it can't be just that shit from the supermarket. Like it has to be good quality honey with all the polyphenols. So honey, Greek yogurt, I'm doing– White rice, I'm doing milk, good quality milk, organic milk.
00:55:12
Speaker 1: As in raw milk?
00:55:13
Speaker 2: Well, here and there, even I'm pretty sensitive to raw milk, like the digestibility.
00:55:19
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:55:20
Speaker 2: It's actually, I know a lot of people say it's easy to digest. I'm actually pretty sensitive.
00:55:24
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:55:24
Speaker 2: I've noticed. I think I've got to build up tolerance.
00:55:26
Speaker 1: As in cow's milk? Yeah. You're talking about, yeah.
00:55:28
Speaker 2: Yeah. They're my main, and fruit, and then fruit. Yeah, like lots of berries, you know, blueberries.
00:55:34
Speaker 1: How do you go with the berries? Do you soak them or what are you doing?
00:55:37
Speaker 2: So what I'm doing is I'm ordering, I'm getting the wild, like the organic ones, frozen.
00:55:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, frozen, yeah.
00:55:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, the hack.
00:55:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, the frozen ones. So you're putting them in a drink or something, aren't you? Oh, I'm just sprinkling them. Yeah, type of yogurt. Yeah, I don't know if you can buy them fresh, but I don't think I've ever seen them fresh.
00:55:57
Speaker 2: I think they're like 15 bucks a punnet.
00:55:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're pretty expensive, yeah. But you buy the frozen wild berries. Yeah, they're fine.
00:56:04
Speaker 2: Organic, frozen, wild, they're fine.
00:56:06
Speaker 1: And you just sprinkle them over yogurt.
00:56:08
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:56:08
Speaker 1: What about nuts and things like that?
00:56:09
Speaker 2: So the nuts, yeah, that's a good point. So there's actually research on a particular type of nut called tiger nuts. I don't know if you've heard of tiger nuts. No. It's not actually a nut. It's kind of like a legume, but there's animal studies showing that that can actually increase testosterone. So that's one. And then Brazil nuts, I'm having like three or four.
00:56:28
Speaker 1: They're the bigger ones. Yeah.
00:56:29
Speaker 2: The Brazil nuts are easy to find in bullies and coals. So I'm just having like three or four of those a day.
00:56:35
Speaker 1: Just three or four? Just three or four nuts themselves.
00:56:38
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:56:39
Speaker 1: That's not much, eh?
00:56:39
Speaker 2: No, it's not much because, I mean, the selenium content can vary pretty dramatically. So you don't want to have too much selenium because you can actually get selenium toxicity as well.
00:56:50
Speaker 1: Wow.
00:56:51
Speaker 2: If you're having 10 a day, like you're probably going to- Oh, really? Yeah. One of my lecturers from university was like banging on about that. Just be careful with that.
00:56:58
Speaker 1: And what about training regimes? Yeah.
00:57:01
Speaker 2: So really important.
00:57:02
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:57:02
Speaker 2: So four testosterone, hitting legs twice a week. That's an absolute must.
00:57:06
Speaker 1: Are we talking heavy or lots? Are we talking reps or?
00:57:10
Speaker 2: Eight to 12 rep range.
00:57:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you're talking about 80% of your max.
00:57:14
Speaker 2: Sort of thing. Yeah, about six sets per.
00:57:17
Speaker 1: Six, whoa.
00:57:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
00:57:20
Speaker 1: Are we talking about, what are you doing, two exercises or more than that?
00:57:25
Speaker 2: I'm doing probably like eight.
00:57:28
Speaker 1: Eight different exercises?
00:57:29
Speaker 2: Six to eight, yeah.
00:57:30
Speaker 1: Different exercises on your legs?
00:57:31
Speaker 2: Yes. Yeah, like a big volume, yeah. The thing is I'm eating like 450, 450 grams of carbs a day.
00:57:37
Speaker 1: Right.
00:57:38
Speaker 2: So it's like I've got a shitload of fuel.
00:57:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
00:57:40
Speaker 2: So my workouts, the leg workouts are fine because you can, at almost a thousand testosterone, like that workload doesn't feel that difficult.
00:57:49
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:57:49
Speaker 2: You know, but if you're not fueled, you're going to die. Like it'll just destroy you.
00:57:55
Speaker 1: And what about cardio? Yeah, so this is where it gets difficult.
00:58:00
Speaker 2: I'm torn with this because I want to keep my VO2 max really high, which I know is associated with longevity. My VO2 is like 53, I think, at the moment.
00:58:09
Speaker 1: It's not amazing.
00:58:12
Speaker 2: But we know the research shows that sprint training and high-intensity efforts are the types of exercise that actually cause the biggest testosterone surge.
00:58:21
Speaker 1: Yep. And growth hormone as well.
00:58:23
Speaker 2: Yeah. Whereas the longer-distance cardio, like marathon, look at a marathon physique versus a sprinter's physique.
00:58:29
Speaker 1: I'm not into it, but yeah. But some people, I get it. But it's like- For sure. Yeah. But I think, I just, what I'm reading seems to be more resistance work and more of that sprinting style work is probably better overall for your longevity.
00:58:45
Speaker 2: Yeah. Even like 12 really hard efforts on the assault bike.
00:58:49
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:58:50
Speaker 2: Mate, that's so good. So good for, you can still elicit some VO2 max gains from- those really high intensity 10 to 15 second bouts. But, um, yeah, I'd say hitting legs twice a week, upper body I'm doing, twice a week. And then I'm also hitting at least 15,000 steps a day as well because I've got a treadmill desk at home. Right.
00:59:15
Speaker 1: And you're just walking all the time.
00:59:17
Speaker 2: Okay.
00:59:17
Speaker 1: What about saunas?
00:59:19
Speaker 2: I personally don't use a sauna that frequently because I actually do care about my fertility. I haven't started trying yet, but I will next year. But I think sauna usage, if you're going to use a sauna, just make sure you bring the ice pack.
00:59:34
Speaker 1: And what about red light therapies?
00:59:37
Speaker 2: I'm more keen on hyperbaric oxygen chamber.
00:59:41
Speaker 1: HBOT. Yeah. So let's talk about hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
00:59:48
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:59:50
Speaker 1: Why is that important? What does that do?
00:59:51
Speaker 2: I personally think the research is stronger for HBOT versus something like red light therapy for– Specifically, what I'm most interested in is increasing my body's production of stem cells. Right. Which I know you're a fan of as well. There's debate around whether it needs.
01:00:10
Speaker 1: To be 1.5 or 2.0. Just for clarity, what you're meaning by there is atmospheres.
01:00:14
Speaker 2: Yeah.
01:00:15
Speaker 1: To make it easier, that makes it relatable to depth if you go diving, for example.
01:00:20
Speaker 2: Right, yeah.
01:00:21
Speaker 1: There is some debate around how much pressure you should be applying to yourself. But I think that the part where there's no debate is that you should be also in taking oxygen whilst you're there. So just so people understand, hyperbaric therapy is not, we don't have the bends. We're not like we're trying to get rid of the bends, which is what those things were invented for originally. But we're also, we're using that to put pressure on our system to push our blood further into our body. And at the same time, we are oxygenating through pure oxygen with a mask on for an hour.
01:00:54
Speaker 2: Yep, so we're saturating the plasma with oxygen, and that is helping to get oxygen to tissues that don't typically get enough oxygen. So you're hitting areas of the body where it's like they might be starving of oxygen, and to facilitate that healing cascade.
01:01:11
Speaker 1: And I've used it for healing, and I have to tell you, I couldn't heal something. I had a torn abductor and two torn glute tendons. I had an accident. I fell over, actually. I fell in a hole. I wasn't looking. I was talking and eating and not looking, and I fell in a hole on a footpath. But anyway, short of having an operation, an orthopedic surgeon, a mate of mine, said to me, look, just up the road here, he said, come and try the H-Bot therapy. He said, I always prescribe everybody to try before and after an operation. And I did it for about three months, and now I do it every week, once a week, for the last two years.
01:01:51
Speaker 2: For the last two years? Yeah. That's impressive.
01:01:54
Speaker 1: Initially, for people listening, it's a bit tricky when you're getting these things. This is a lay down one. You feel like you've been put in a coffin a little bit. And then when the pressure comes on you, you feel it in your ears.
01:02:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, the popping and clicking. Yeah.
01:02:08
Speaker 1: But it doesn't last that long. You get used to it. And I have to say, I feel energized when I come out of it.
01:02:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. It can go either way. Some people get the relaxed. Have you seen some people report the really strong parasympathetic? Yeah, I do. Yeah.
01:02:22
Speaker 1: After about 10 minutes.
01:02:23
Speaker 2: Yeah.
01:02:24
Speaker 1: I fall asleep.
01:02:25
Speaker 2: So you fall asleep?
01:02:25
Speaker 1: I actually fall asleep.
01:02:27
Speaker 2: Well, there you go. Yeah.
01:02:28
Speaker 1: I'll sleep for about 15, 20 minutes and like it's a deep sleep.
01:02:31
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
01:02:32
Speaker 1: And then I wake up and feel amazing.
01:02:34
Speaker 2: One of my best mates keeps on falling asleep in his like for hours. He's fallen asleep in about two and a half hours.
01:02:40
Speaker 1: Whoa.
01:02:41
Speaker 2: He's got the same one that I've got.
01:02:42
Speaker 1: Roger Federer uses one and he uses it every day of his life. He used it for performance, not for injury. His view was that he performed better.
01:02:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, well, he must have a coach who knows what he's doing.
01:02:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, he's got a medical practitioner type person who advises him, and this is part of his protocol. Look, it's good to use all of them. At the end of the day, it's hard to work out what does and doesn't work. Just try them out, you know. Don't you think?
01:03:11
Speaker 2: Oh, for sure, yeah. Just experiment and see.
01:03:14
Speaker 1: Yeah.
01:03:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, experiment, but also, like, do some blood testing here and there.
01:03:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but see the result.
01:03:20
Speaker 2: Do the tracking, you know, as well. Yeah, yeah. Here and there. You've got to be smart. Obviously, if you're starting HBOT therapy, don't do that at the same time you just started something else. It can get easy. You can easily get carried away with starting so many things at once.
01:03:33
Speaker 1: You've got to build controls.
01:03:35
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah. But the ultimate goal of this is just to feel and perform better. That's the ultimate goal.
01:03:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's not necessarily going to be you're going to be the world champion, but if you can feel better, that's pretty cool.
01:03:47
Speaker 2: Yeah.
01:03:48
Speaker 1: A mate of mine, by the way, who's 85- told me that he got a blood test only yesterday, and his testosterone was 26.
01:04:01
Speaker 2: At 85? That's bloody impressive.
01:04:04
Speaker 1: And he's not on TRT or anything like this. That's amazing.
01:04:06
Speaker 2: That is incredible. Yeah, wow. My dad's 66, and he's sitting at around 26, which is good.
01:04:17
Speaker 1: That's equally impressive.
01:04:18
Speaker 2: Decent, decent, but I've got him on all the stuff that I– talking about.
01:04:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
01:04:22
Speaker 2: So what would I say for guys over 60?
01:04:24
Speaker 1: Over 60? Yeah, your dad, for example, what would you.
01:04:27
Speaker 2: Say to him? He's on the supplement that I've made, that I've formulated.
01:04:31
Speaker 1: You have a supplement?
01:04:32
Speaker 2: Yes. Okay.
01:04:32
Speaker 1: It's like one you take?
01:04:34
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, he's using all the ingredients in that stack, which is basically eight natural ingredients that I've formulated over the years.
01:04:44
Speaker 1: Can you share those?
01:04:45
Speaker 2: Sure. Yeah, absolutely. The product's called Peak Tea.
01:04:48
Speaker 1: Peak?
01:04:48
Speaker 2: Peak T.
01:04:49
Speaker 1: Peak T, yeah.
01:04:50
Speaker 2: It's not just for those over the age of 60, but it's also for guys above the age of 21. So it's basically, it's a product that I've formulated after working with hundreds of men around the world, looking at blood work before and after me prescribing certain ingredients, and I figured out which ones actually move the needle.
01:05:09
Speaker 1: Right.
01:05:10
Speaker 2: So what I've got in the stack is boron, boron at 10 milligrams, tonka dali at 100 milligrams, Pine pollen, which is from traditional Chinese medicine. Yep.
01:05:20
Speaker 1: I've got two- By the way, it's the only place you can get proper pine pollen from is from China.
01:05:26
Speaker 2: Yeah. Our one's actually, we get it from, we get wild harvested from Canada, actually.
01:05:32
Speaker 1: Okay. You can't get it here.
01:05:33
Speaker 2: Not here.
01:05:34
Speaker 1: Yeah.
01:05:34
Speaker 2: We manufacture in the US, by the way, so it's a US company. Then we've got two trademarked ingredients in the stack, which actually give us the ability to make claims- that it can actually increase free testosterone by 20%. And those two ingredients are, the first one is Tesnor, which is a pomegranate extract combined with cacao, which is bloody. Pomegranate is one of those fruits, by the way, that's actually been shown to really help with fertility and testosterone.
01:06:07
Speaker 1: Then the other ingredient- So you take the active ingredient out of the pomegranate.
01:06:10
Speaker 2: Yeah. So there's actually a trademarked combination called Tesnor, which is in peak tea. And that combination with cacao, because there's also some compounds found in cacao that have beneficial effects.
01:06:23
Speaker 1: Like as in flavonoids.
01:06:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, the epicalogatic ECGs and all that, the catechins, epicatechins and all that, has been shown to increase free testosterone. And then also another ingredient, which Jocko, do you know Jocko Willink?
01:06:38
Speaker 1: I don't know him, but I know who he is.
01:06:40
Speaker 2: It's funny, when I released my product, he also, he has a stack that's strikingly similar. I don't know how that happened, but our products are pretty comparable. He's also including this trademarked ingredient in his stack, which is called Test Factor, which is a combination of mango tree bark extract and Indian globe thistle extract. What a lot of people don't really know about me is that I've just been collating a list of ingredients. I'm the son of a pharmacist and naturopath, so I've just been I've got an Excel sheet, Mark, back in my computer, which has just got thousands of ingredients. And I've just been tracking meticulously before AI. Like this was way before AI. And, you know, I've also included a little bit of zinc. So zinc bisglycinate at five milligrams. And South American herb called mirapuama, which is a really famous aphrodisiac that actually increases dopamine, which is really important for how guys feel, like we spoke about. And then we've also got, what else have we got? Test factor, pine pollen, and boron. Yeah, that's the stack.
01:07:55
Speaker 1: When did you bring it in?
01:07:56
Speaker 2: I do have it over there. It's literally in my backpack. Go and get one.
01:07:59
Speaker 1: Let's have a look at it.
01:08:00
Speaker 2: Okay.
01:08:00
Speaker 1: The boys didn't want to give me. They want to give it for themselves. So this is it? Yep.
01:08:05
Speaker 2: This is Peak Tea.
01:08:08
Speaker 1: Peak Tea.
01:08:09
Speaker 2: Okay. So that's my supplement brand that I started with my brother. It's called In Before is the supplement brand.
01:08:16
Speaker 1: Right. But Peak Tea is the product name.
01:08:19
Speaker 2: Yeah.
01:08:20
Speaker 1: And how long have you been out in the market?
01:08:22
Speaker 2: Seven weeks. Serious?
01:08:23
Speaker 1: Only seven weeks? Yeah.
01:08:25
Speaker 2: Whoa. And I've been building stacks for like four or five years.
01:08:29
Speaker 1: And how many of these do you need to take? What do you recommend?
01:08:31
Speaker 2: Three capsules in the morning with your first meal. And that's going to- With food? With food, yeah. You don't need to, like, put it this way. If you're taking Tribulus or Tonkat.
01:08:41
Speaker 1: Or any other- I'm not taking any of those things.
01:08:43
Speaker 2: Yeah. This is covering your basis because it's got eight ingredients that you need, basically.
01:08:48
Speaker 1: Yeah. And it's not like if you don't need it, it's not going to hurt you either.
01:08:52
Speaker 2: This is something that obviously it won't suppress. It will not affect your fertility negatively.
01:08:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
01:08:59
Speaker 2: Obviously, that's the whole point.
01:09:01
Speaker 1: Yeah.
01:09:02
Speaker 2: It's naturally to support your body alongside all the other things.
01:09:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Because I think your point being there is it's not going to overproduce testosterone, which will cause you a problem with your fertility.
01:09:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
01:09:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, it'll sort of- It actually will likely boost your- Fertility.
01:09:19
Speaker 2: Yeah.
01:09:19
Speaker 1: I've got four kids. I'm more past that part. But yeah, I'll try these out.
01:09:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely.
01:09:26
Speaker 1: And I'll share them with the boys. I can see them all. So just to round this off then, I mean, it's been a really interesting conversation with you, to be honest with you. That's your stack. That's your prescription, which you use, and it's now available for other people. You talked about sleep. You talked about– exercise and, you know, using the cold pack, et cetera. I keep thinking I'm going to cross my legs when I'm going to kick. No, I think I'm going to over my legs up here. So is there anything else over and above all of that?
01:10:01
Speaker 2: I'm going to say something a bit more like spiritual kind of thing. It's more so like making sure a guy actually has a mission and purpose and is living in alignment to that. Because I feel like that, if you don't have that sense of purpose and an all-encompassing mission that's greater than yourself, I think that energetically can do something to your biology that nothing else can.
01:10:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's very interesting. You've got to have a purpose in life. Absolutely. Yeah, it doesn't have to be a great purpose. It doesn't have to be to conquer the world, but you've got to have something to do every day and something that interests you, something to enjoy doing. What's interesting about this conversation is that Not too many people actually talk about testosterone. It's nearly like a conversation you shouldn't have. It's my final question. When none of these things work, is TRT a solution? Testosterone replacement therapy, is that a solution?
01:11:02
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah. TRT is absolutely necessary for certain individuals. It's usually... the best point of action for guys who have exhausted all of the natural things and they still feel like shit.
01:11:19
Speaker 1: Well, and also that their panel. Yeah.
01:11:22
Speaker 2: And their blood work is.
01:11:24
Speaker 1: Doesn't, nothing changes.
01:11:25
Speaker 2: Yeah.
01:11:26
Speaker 1: And or is stubbornly sticky, whatever the words are, doesn't move. So none of these things have moved the needle for whatever the reasons are. Yeah.
01:11:35
Speaker 2: Or they're still symptomatic. And like, let's say.
01:11:38
Speaker 1: They feel like shit.
01:11:38
Speaker 2: They still feel shit. Yeah. If they still feel really bad, it's like, all right, well, this guy's tried almost everything. He's been trying for a year.
01:11:47
Speaker 1: And when you get someone like that, what do you do, Lucas? I refer on to a doctor. Yeah, you send them on to a selling health or a local GP or whatever.
01:11:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not my domain. It's then passed on. I've helped as much as I can.
01:11:58
Speaker 1: And let's move on. And just finally, what's the success rate of this look like, of people coming to you? For natural optimization?
01:12:06
Speaker 2: Natural. Natural. Geez, I've consulted hundreds of guys. Most of them are based in the US, most of the guys that I work with, because I've built a presence on YouTube quite extensively. But I'm taking guys from 400 nanograms per deciliter all the way up to like 750, 800 naturally. So that's like in Australian terms.
01:12:28
Speaker 1: That's like from 12, 13 up to 30 something. Yeah, like mid-20s.
01:12:30
Speaker 2: Yeah. Which is reasonable. And then a lot of them are saying that they're actually feeling better. Like they're actually feeling the benefits of what they're hoping to achieve.
01:12:45
Speaker 1: And a lot of people just think of testosterone as building muscles. It's actually feeling better, better dopamine levels, just generally feeling better about yourself, sleeping better, everything.
01:12:54
Speaker 2: My favorite thing that Dr. Andrew says is testosterone makes effort feel good.
01:12:59
Speaker 1: Yeah.
01:12:59
Speaker 2: It's just spot on.
01:13:00
Speaker 1: That's a great place to stop.
01:13:02
Speaker 2: So good.
01:13:03
Speaker 1: Testosterone makes effort feel good.
01:13:05
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
01:13:06
Speaker 1: That's awesome. Thanks very much. Appreciate it. That was awesome. Thank you.