TMGP Ep 18 with Male Hormone Expert Dr Moeller

oo another white boy with a podcast pronouns Jim bro another white boy with a podcast you want to see the video it went viral hi gains gurus and welcome to tmgp the muscle growth podcast episode 18 I am your host Rosco and today we are welcoming Dr Michael Mohler onto the show Dr Mohler known as Dr MO is a naturopathic doctor and a leading expert in optimizing male hormon like testosterone for improved body composition who has dedicated his career to helping men optimize their health and age gracefully after receiving his bachelor's degree in premedical Sciences from Southern Illinois University carale in 2013 he went on to earn his Doctorate in naturopathic medicine from Basta University California in 2017 the majority of Dr Muller's clinical practice focuses on testo and optimization therapy intravenous nutrient therapy specialty lab testing and he is passionate about using natural evidence-based approaches to help men address issues like low libido erectile dysfunction muscle loss and cognitive decline in addition to his clinical work Dr Moher is an accomplished researcher writer and educator he has conceived implemented and completed multi-year doctoral research projects involving intensive historical investigation Dr Moher also hosts his own podcast called the Michael Mohler mentality where he shares his expertise on men's health hormones and optimal aging when he's not in the office you can find Dr Muller in the gym hiking in nature or spending time with his family he is known for his bold passionate and enthusiastic approach to helping his patients achieve their health goals whether you're dealing with joint issues want to build muscle without heavy lifting or simply opt imizing your hormones Dr mola is an invaluable resource in today's episode we can look forward to insights from Dr Mo related to naturopathic doctors and their practice of medicine several bodybuilding shows during his undergrad shortcomings of modern medicine including dealing with intitial citis inflammation and UTI symptoms common symptoms of low tea the importance of lab work safely doing trt minimum effective trt dose maximum non- delarius test dose estrogen AIS heart health HTG and other peptides and trt supplementation hey gains gurus before we dive into today's episode we have a special shout out to our sponsor heart and mind sa if you're looking for a delicious way to boost your workouts their creating gummies can be found on te lot and they are the perfect fit they're not just effective but also a tasty treat you can look forward to every day so fuel your gains with heart and mind essay where your heart mind and muscles come together if you're injured or in recovery check out the injury consultant.com and consider getting a free consultation to see whether I can help you heal restore and Thrive now let's get back to building muscle with science welcome Dr Mo to the muscle growth podcast where we explore subjects related to muscle science and hypertrophy I'm thrilled to have you join us for today's conversation let's Jump Right In and dig into some exciting topics together cool yeah I'm super glad to be here Rosco it's a pleasure I like talking all things uh Men's Health and if uh Muses got to be towards the top of that list that's for sure can you briefly introduce yourself and your journey into the world of hormones sure yeah um grew up in a small farm town in Southern Illinois and play you know four sport athlete football basketball baseball and track and then uh as I got into college uh picked up weights and uh had a lot of fun with that started working at a GNC got into supplementation and when I was working there a buddy of mine was running the Mr SIU show and he's like hey man we got to get some people on the show you want to jump on in I was like man I don't want to I don't want to I don't want to do that but uh jumped in did my first show fell in love with working out and bodybuilding and then I got sick myself with something called interstitial cystis went through the broken Medical Care system and then uh decided hey I'm become a doctor and then I found out about naturopathic medicine and if you know much about naturopathic medicine um it's really about biochemistry physi ology and figuring out what's going wrong and so went to naturopathic medical school in San Diego California basier University and then fell in love with regen Med and you know with my track record fell in love with hormones seeing uh really kind of what's going on there out there right now with men's and and low testosterone and hormone uh definitely suboptimal for a lot of people and really thought it works you know we there's plenty of studies showing you know testosterone and muscle growth but obviously Mental Health Energy and all that stuff so yeah I graduated 2017 so for the past um six seven8 what is that even I can't even give my math anymore 2024 um that's basically what most of my practice is now is hormone replacement therapy in in uh in men so and where is your practice based so I have a office in both carlbad California and then also in Meridian Idaho so San Diego SoCal and then close to Boise and Idaho okay and how many doctors do you work with right now is I have one other nurse practitioner so me and the nurse practitioner I had a man we could talk about business headaches like you know starting up a podcast and the uh the logistics that go with all that I'm in you know finding balance I had a bigger I had a larger kind of infrastructure in in Laguna Hills and I just literally just cut a bunch of fat last year so it's just me and the nurse practitioner right now so okay cool so you guys are running the sh yeah and I have a medical doctor so um naturopathic doctor term can be taken kind of weirdly in the state of California I'm licensed as a primary care doctor same thing in Idaho so I can prescribe testosterone I don't need supervision uh my nurse practitioner does so we do have yes a medical doctor that's also on with the company um but and again that just kind of depends on the ND thing can be a little weird certain states were not even regulated meaning I can't get a license and then other states I can do minor surgeries prescribed Controlled Substances that's a whole other conversation with um you know bureaucracy the end of the day you got it's it's lobbying and and I got to show them that I have the sufficient education to to participate in whatever type of uh medical modalities we're trying to do so for sure for sure and we'll get to some of the bureaucracies and things later on in the show I'm sure so football I'm assuming that's American football American sorry yeah just to just to confirm what do they call it Pig Pig's head or you guys have pig ball or something it's not really a foot you know you only kick on field goals I've just heard you know some you know across the pond people make fun of it no that's actually not football that's the oval pig skin you know oh yeah no no no I'm not sure what what they call I think we just call it American football here in in South Africa yeah yeah yeah but yeah football here would call sucker yeah whatever M out that's side so um GNC how long were you there uh about a probably a year and a half and so this was 201 uh 11 to 2013 yeah about a year and a half uh that was back in the bodybuilding.com days know yes on the forms yeah you had to go on the forms to learn things back then and yeah you really do aot yeah in a lot of different ways for me me um you know there there's definitely some help with Bro Science there's anecdotal evidence there's things that have that have worked and we don't understand how but the reason I fell in love with like with my degree is we get tons of um biochemistry and Physiology at The Graduate level so it's not just like hey here's a stat it Lowes cholesterol you know we learn about cholesterol SE Sy synthesis and then oh yeah red yeast rice well that works in the same way that a Statin works and so I really fell in love with figuring out how the body works you know if I if I put in a new drug right now how does that PHA how does the pharmacology affect things you know the difference in like um uh different aromatase Inhibitors different drugs that are modulating estrogen or even with testosterone half-lies those things are super important um especially if you're trying to modulate and optimize hormones you just something as easy as you have testosterone and throw an ACG right you have two different half-lies there how do they work endogenous endogenously versus xjly what's that's going to do for you know side effects and a ton of other things so um GNC helped with that because I just learned about supplements you know pre-workout I really like you know how do you optimize um you know your workout at the end of you want to build muscle like sorry if you don't have enough protein you're just not going to build muscle like I don't know I don't know what else to tell you there's no biohack in the world if you don't have enough Amino aets so and then you know look creatine B alanine go down the and then looking at especially the supplement industry clinical dosing oh cool I have the supplement that has 500 milligrams and it has caffeine and creatine well okay I definitely can feel that caffeine so there's at least two to 300 milligrams but that's telling me I have 200 milligrams of creatine you and I probably you got that's nothing that's enough that you put it on the thing for selling it right you want three five GRS at the end of the day at least at least yeah so you know you go down you start going down those rabbit holes and then you you know you get your bro science but then trying to defitely put the the the pieces together and then um I don't want to say going my own way but figuring out how all these things then kind of work together so I I enjoy GNC because I had guys you know when you're 22 and then the 18 oh bro how do I put on muscle like you know let's do it bro let's walk around the store and we'll talk about and even back then I was still you know fish oil or probotics you know other uh CoQ10 there are other things besides the protein and the Pre-Workout you know that are essential you know can use sleep zma right favorite supplement of mine so that all definitely kick started things in the direction of definitely medicine and ultimately performance at the end of the day so living our best lives for sure well since we you mentioned the supplement industry let's do a very shallow dive into into that because I know we could probably talk about the supplement industry for a long time so what are your kind of overall overarching thoughts on the supplement industry back when you were there as well as today yeah I mean man we could get into influencers and it's like it's it's rough because you know right now we got and I'll call him out he's been called like I got Gary Brea I got all my patients coming in I've been down the MTHFR pathway and Snips and all that um and and I get this is what this is I get where you have a good heart and you want to help people um but in almost all all forms of even running a business like I say this hey if your shoulder hurts and you come to me and I say well one I can give you fish oil two I could do bpc 157 three I send you to PT or four I I say hey what about stem cells right them stem cells are going to be 10 grand and I'm going to make $5,000 it's really hard to not be biased when money's involved it's basically what I'm saying so I think major things to be mindful of in the supplement industry is clinical dosing right you get this pre-workout especially pre-workouts are the worse they've you know back it used to be all proprietary blend right used to be one scoop 500 milligrams and here's 10 different things um I I need you know most of the clinical data on B Allan is like you know three grams so if I need three grams of B alanine I need five grams of creatine and the supplement has 500 milligrams and that's when I I just started making my own I yeah just going you know you can buy them bulk and then I would just weigh them and and because I wanted to make sure I was getting the actual dose and you know if they have CA caffeine and you want to work out at night you know that can be rough like nowadays man they just there's so much caffeine in in all those and that's coming from a caffeine addict but I need to you know if I've had too much caffeine early in the day I don't want to load up a bunch before bed right so I can just I have my balony over there I have my creatine over there I have my Alpha GPC over there so I think my two cents for most people is one one you got to be mindful of of clinical dosing two is how the company makes it and stores it so shill real quick I work with a company in the States they're called full script and they're all everything that they bring on their website is third party tested already like you have to pass a bunch of tests for them to carry it on their website and they're they're big names like um you know pure encapsulation um integrated Therapeutics most kind of holistic or natural functional medicine doctors um the supplements that they now Sports is on there you know now is a is a more popular sports one um you know versus and I've bought stuff on Amazon but you know if you're buying fish oil on Amazon that that that fish oil could be sitting in in outside Las Vegas Nevada right now at 120 degrees that's going to go rancid and you have to worry you know and I can buy supplements at a discounted price cut it with rice powder and then throw it on Amazon to compete um so you know you got to be super mindful trust the company make sure that they're doing good testing on their stuff um and then get educated on the clinical dosing and then figure out what you're trying to do you know I mean like even in the supplement world people are like well this is good okay like you know El quarantine Alpha GPC creatine and caffeine and you go okay what are you kind of what are you trying to do and the other thing I see is a lot of overlapping you know of maybe if you're trying to get more energy or fat loss it's not like you can stack 10 different anti-inflammatories and you're 10 times less inflamed right turmeric bellia fish oil like there's kind of a limiting step and honestly on my end I'm very much less is more most of the people that come to me I'm like which supp these which supplements do you think are actually doing something yeah and not to say that there isn't clinical evid you know like with vitamin D there's lots of correlative studies showing higher vitamin D disease prevention not only for bones but autoimmune disease and high testosterone yeah so you know that's one I'm a little more nuanced on but you go down this rabbit hole and I'm you know and again I've probably tried them all you want to talk about you know methylene blue NAD glutathione lartin like these wide variety of you know especially like with your mitochondrial health I kind of think there's a limiting spot of like you're trying to do a 100 different things for your mitochondria it's like probably 8020 one or two of them are going to you know really help out your mitochondria so I just say a more focused approach when I had kids come in you know let's just do everything you know if if they had the money the other thing is for spending you could easily spend $2 $300 a month on supplements so yeah yeah so what's your bang bang for your buck and you know now we have um who's the other is it a Johnson or whatever this guy that's all about Johnson yes Johnson yes him and then but before him was was it kurur wall that would take 300 supplements a day do you know that I think Ray cruzell he's a big guy on The Singularity same thing he's like taking just bags and bags and it's like well Vel carine's good and you know but it doesn't have the aceto group maybe I should do both aceto lartin and lartin it's just kind of like I mean I guess man but I don't know you know you're going from 99 percentile to 100 it's like I don't know if that's worth it yeah I know Brian Johnson takes a 100 PS every single day and I'm just like what's what's being absorbed in then are they counteracting each other you know real quick rant on this whole if you you're familiar with Gary BR the whole like snip stuff right and so I think one if you're actually interested in that one of the best books is called Dirty Jeans by Ben Lynch and it's it's more comp it's like you have a thousand people and you're trying to check on the strength of 10 of them it's like okay now you know these 10 but like when you look at an MTHFR you got four different Snips and then you have the mtrs and then you have your cytochromes like this a large picture like I did that back in like 2013 and I had 30 40 pages of snips and so and then trying to figure out if this one is downregulated right like that's the whole thing like you take um right tyrosine and you turn that into dopamine and then adrenaline right and you have enzymes that speed that up and you need co-actors you know like your B vitamins and so at the end of the day how quickly you can activate and unactivate your B vitamins is is important don't get me wrong but when you have all these different Pathways it gets super complex so unless you want to sit down with like a geneticist I don't see a whole lot of fruit of paying $600 and then ultimately you just take methylated B vitamins I'm like dude just take b i that's one supplement I do think most people it's not it's a low hanging fruit you'll piss out extra B12 B9 B6 and I think a lot of people have issues with focus and those usually help with your your choline and aceto choline so not medical advice but that's usually one I think people can take and actually feel better and then you can measure your homosysteine which is an inflammatory marker so you can actually take this do blood work do you feel better and is their blood work showing that it's effective cool like you know you get subjective I'd use both subjective and and objective data so trying to find that balance of figuring out if this if this thing is doing something for you otherwise you're just you know having expensive urine so exact exactly it's that 820 principle like you mentioned where you're trying to get get the maximum result from the minimum effort basically so while we're on supplements uh and tell me if it's going to take too long but could you give your like full stack like what you take and like this is obviously for you and it's not medical advice for just yeah for interest say yeah yeah um so in the morning I usually have um I play with the different things to increase acetylcholine okay so for you people who don't know acetycholine is a neurotransmitter that's really important for Focus so it works really well most people I do some caffeine in the morning so you kind of have to bring that in caffeine is going to increase your serotonin and your dopamine so choline you can get it from eggs spry of them more popular in the yolk that's why they tell you you want to keep your your yolk in intact um but there's a couple different ways you can take these precursors um Alpha GPC is one choline CDP is one uh you can take uh urine phosphate is is blocks its its breakdown like coopering and so I have all four of those and I rotate them and so like Alpha GPC you want to do like 600 milligrams who Coline CDP 500 milligrams so I'm usually taking something to help with my Coline because I usually jump into work in the morning and then I'll have some coffee or some tea or some I'll do energy drinks like I'm not you know I'll do a ghost or a a zoa energy um I do have a supplement that has a lot of the um amino acid precursors like it has stopan and tyrosine so that can help right those are the the building blocks of dopamine and serotonin so I'm a big fan of atopics and then I have other forms of like methylene blue I have NAD I have dihexa and I kind of rotate those um and like I haven't even used any this week so some weeks I'll be like if I'm feeling kind of lagging or my brain isn't really there um so it just kind of depends and I've played with a lot of those um I have a liposomal vitamin C supplement that I like when I'm sick and I throw U it actually has some phosphat choline in it too which is another form of choline um and then past that um bedtime I rotate a zma supplement sometimes I take it sometimes I don't just kind of depends um one of the main ideas behind zma um zinc magnesium and B6 are required to turn trip fan into serotonin and then you get melatonin so a lot of guys benefit from taking a zma supplement at night magnesium just helps with relaxation in general uh zinc is a slight actual aromatase inhibitor for people don't know which you know maybe we can get into talking blocking estrogen later um and then B6 just seems like it kind of helps with that serotonin and kind of calming um so past that I mean you know off the top of my head things that I really consistently kind of move around I've supplemented with DHEA DHE is a precursor to testosterone it has good research in showing that elevates testosterone in women um that's a whole maybe other can of words we could we could talk about DHE and and preg alone and if it's warranted to supplement or not I think when I travel or I'm feeling a little bit sick I'll take a little bit more of the DHEA um and then past that uh you know my pre-workout supplements which I rotate I'll I'll buy some cans every now and then like I'm not really worried too much about some of the fillers and colors like it's my pre-workout um I try and keep my caffeine under 300 so usually 200 250 before the workout I'm usually looking for three to four grams of beta alanine in there th000 milligrams of tyrosine um what else do I really like in my pre-workout usually again it's good to throw in some more cooline like the alpha GPC seems to help with nitric oxide as far as the cocoline um nitric oxide boosters your citruline your Arginine Arginine nitrate um an acetol and and a what is that one in arginine and acetol now they have you know a lot of different of these forms that boost your nitric oxide um I think that's that's the meat potatoes unless I'm forgetting something right now and I've I've run through them all you know and then I have some injectable NAD I do from time to time um I'm not a great responder to that um there are some people that do the NAD and respond really really well energize mental Clarity and all that I don't and so that's what I'm saying it's kind of one of those subjective things like if you're going to spend two $300 on a bottle to inject it sub to you I'm like I want it to work you know be worth it yeah but then again you can make arguments like right as you age you lose NAD NAD is super important for mitochondria to create energy so it may be worth a lot of people you know to kind of quote unquote you know anti-a I guess because you know you got strong mitochondria you need mitochondria they're the PowerHouse of your cell and if they're not you know that's why I like El quarantine also right pulls fatty acids in the cell so also increases Androgen receptor density so that's a real low hanging fruit for a lot of people I think El quarantine has got really popular in the trt realm the last two to three years um is that injectable El quarantine yeah I right so the the fear is you get more tmao um from orally ingesting El quarantine which is kind of a uh I it's with your bacteria that gets this ferment this fermenta process and this tmao is inflammatory and has been linked to cardiovascular disease um so a lot of people are like trying to bypass that by just doing an IM which you know anytime you do anything subq or IM you can do way less right you have anytime you eat something half of it it go straight to your liver your liver is probably going to get rid of half of that so you can do less when you inject something subcutaneously or IM um man El cartine stings though man like there are certain things like that that that vitamin C that's absorbica acid like I've done subq IM of that your you're it's acid that you're injecting in your glute don't feel great man um and again you're looking at a price difference of you know depending on where you're getting that quarantine from if you know underground maybe 50 bucks but if you're getting it from a legit doct you're looking at$ 150 to dollars for um you know 30 30 30 grams right so people will inject 500 milligrams right where you know you can get a bottle from now for like I think I have a I think mine are I think I have 30 I have a three gram per tablespoon Now Sports that was like 30 or 40 bucks you know so it depends like and then you can measure your Labs like do you have t high tmao like is that even something you need to worry about you need to spend five times as much and then you need to inject it yeah right because and every time you're injecting you are increasing your chance for cellulitis like one in 10,000 one in 100,000 right you have staff and strep on your arm so every time you inject you're pushing that bacteria into your skin you know one one time out of a million right you want to see horror stories look at the the lateral quad testosterone injection has been completely demonized my opinion it's a lot of underground de and some bodybuilding Bros who you know reuse the needles you should always alcohol the top of the vial you alcohol where you're going to inject get the bacteria out of the way and then you're fine um but you know they've gotten to the point where the cellulitis was so bad it basically went gain green right you're basically the the the bacteria gets in there and it festers and then just starts eating your your you know starts eating your muscle up so it's something to consider if you want to do injecting like there's a slight chance versus like I don't you know drinking a little bit of elar quarantine I don't I don't maybe a belly ache every now and then but so risk verse reward as always as always yeah did I miss any supplements anything in particular I think um we talked about creatine before did you do you take creatine yeah it dep I creatine is one that I'm bad at that I kind of do rotate and it kind of depends on where I'm at in my life if I'm in like kind of a bulking or like um I don't feel like I notice a whole lot of cognitive improvement from like if I do L quarantine I feel oral like I feel pretty noticeable cognitive Improvement um I'm a bad doctor because I do think of all the supplements creatine is probably the most well researched it's the most um coste effective it's probably one of the low most low hanging fruit with that being said I also eat a lot of red meat um you know usually probably pound a day at Le you know pound a day might be right on the at least half a pound a day I almost always eat some beef so I'm probably getting a gram or two there it'd probably be better if I would do that you know five to 10 grams a day um what about you you're a creatin or yeah definitely and uh actually recently started on the creatine gummies so just take two gummies a day and I get like I think I get six grams for two gummies I think it's three grams of gummy so I've seen them man I've seen those I think on Tik Tok and stuff or whatever people talking about right yeah yeah because the the mag I do magnesium gummies too and they taste good by calm I try and do those once one or two of those before bed sometimes with my zma yeah actually uh shout out to um hard and mind essay the creating gumy sponsor for the show actually all right man after to hook me up and send me a bottle I must I must we'll we'll organize something let's segue um to the broken medical uh care system that got you into all this right in the beginning yeah yeah I mean uh so I talked a little bit about I you know I was in college and undergrad not eating well and you know we're not educated at least here in the States you get the the food guide pyramid used to be super popular and again I didn't know any better like I we never had health health class yeah stting at that stage um I was a history major and um I was kind of figuring out what I wanted to do I actually took ancient Greek philosophy human skeletal anatomy and organic chemistry like I was like okay let me look at some of these like dude I I graduated undergrad my under graduate degree in the States you need 100 usually about 120 credit hours I graduated with 160 just because I was like I was just eating everything up and trying to in my opinion that's what college should be you should learn a little bit about everything like the issue is people get so hyperfocused um so I was a history major and then I was like man I you know I don't need to be get too political but in the states man it's uh it you know history is it's political it's a Republican versus Democrat like white you know sorry evil people people versus good people the but then the you know the Victor writes the book you know and it's like it's kind of contradicts itself because if the good person like I won't even get into that but that was you know 2011 2012 um and so I was like man I I don't want to teach history because I don't even like our the way we're taught the Civil War the way we're taught um there's a lot of different topics I could get into that I think are are more nuanced and I'm not saying I have the right answer but you look at you know in the states September 11th okay cool let's go invade Iraq I'm like I don't think that has anything to do but you know what I mean a lot of people would say something like that like oh Civil War slavery it's like well that was a big political history at the time but there's way more Nuance to that you know people want a short you know cut and dry issue so I get into Health ad and I got sick and then that's when I really kind of looked at this I'm like man 12 servings of grain a day like I know as a bodybuilder I'm only taking those if I need them like if I can get my calories from sweet potatoes if I can get my calories from something a little more nutrient Den like bread is that's just empty calories at the end of the day like not saying that I didn't have a pizza my reed day or it tastes great I love carbs I'm I'm a big cinnamon roll guy that's like my thing man cinnamon rolls like you know good juicy cinnamon roll after leg workout I'm in um but you then I just kind of looked at all of it and I'm like huh and I grew up on a farm so I get like they subsidize the corn the wheat and the soy and I'm like oh so they're just getting us to mass-produce this so that you know Cheetos and Doritos and Tombstone pizza and Coca-Cola are cheaper like and then they try and sell us that you know so I you know was already kind of knowledgeable of that and then I had what's called uh I I basically woke up and I had a discharge out of my urethra my penis right so I had like s i b basically I go on urgent care and like yeah you have an STD which was not really possible you know I'm like that's I don't know how this happened but you know and then they I was like I assume it was just like a uh a urinary tract infection or something and they're like no that's not possible you're a guy those are dang near impossible to get and I'm like ah and then they gave me the whole like you need to be more careful being sexual that and all this stuff and I so whatever I get a big antibiotic shot and that's how they do it in the states like if they think you have an sced they just they just treat you for it and they tell you you have it and um I just started seeing a girl too you know I mean I'm like one of the things like oh how do I tell her you know like so anyways my Sy I I get the shot I leave and then a week later my symptoms come back so I call him up and I'm like hey um this thing's happening again like oh yeah we you know when we did your blood test you were negative for all your STDs you don't have any STDs I was like were you guys G to tell me I was walking around feeling like you know I had you know and it would have been for those who don't know chamian garia which unfortunately unfortunately in the state is very much like a cold anymore like oh yeah here goria here's antibiotics like you're fine see you later um and they're like oh yeah maybe you do have a an a um what do you call Uti yeah yeah yeah so I come back in more antibiotics I'm better for a little bit I leave symptoms come back they go we don't know we're going to put you on more antibiotics and then you have to wait till you can see a urologist more antibiotics wait a month see the urologist oh yeah you have you have what's called prostatitis which again now that I know you know like um uh you know uh IIs just means inflammation okay my prostate is inflamed that's all that means right Pro prostis your prostate is you know um like all right so now what oh more okay so they give me more biotics all right I'm gone for a month Simpsons B come back oh no you have chronic chronic prostatitis I'm like okay that just means longer right you mean like you start looking at these words you yeah wait okay and so I had prostatitis now I have chronic prostatitis just means I've had it longer cool more antibiotics comes away comes back and they're like you know what we're going to do a stetoscopio effects Okay and like I said I'm like dude these guys I don't feel like having I don't know what's up yeah I don't want another camera my my penis again so I went home and I started researching and and I said okay well you know you can look at what things inflame your bladder right you know artificial dieses in colors pesticides herbicides um gluten wheat and D like a lot of these things can irritate it so I kind of I juice fast which I don't really recommend as much anymore hit the sauna ven I did some venue I think I did uh no I did milk thistle Daniel L root a lot of guys in bodybuilding and working out milk this is great for your liver Danel L Root's a diuretic so it helps your your kidneys so I kind of upregulated my detox cut out a lot of the junk um and I got better crazy you know it hey could have been that last round of an could have been could have been but I got better and then I'm like you know what I actually kind of En I didn't enjoy the process but I have a passion for you know kind of figuring that out but you fixed yourself yeah so then I'm like well go be a doctor and then I was like I kind of looked at the different philosophies you know you have a in the states medical doctors are mostly Primary Care hey here's this like here's your pill and and I'm not here to rip I have lots of good MD friends it's just the way our our insurance system is set up like hey you got a headache and you going to the doctor you're he's got 10 minutes he can't ask you about your diet he can't ask you like are you a painter he can't ask you like um you know did you hit your head are you maybe it's a combination of this new Med you put on they don't have time like uh here's a med see you later like that's just the way our system is set up here that's crazy you know versus me like well and and I get it it's it's it's it's it's McDonald's for medicine yeah you got to see you got and the thing is you and I know this now being on my end like you have to see that many people to make money if you get you know I mean if you're making $50 a person you gotta pay that doctor two 300K a year you got a front desk you got malpractice you got to pay the front desk you know it's like it's expensive to so yeah man I so I was like man I don't want to be an MD that's kind of the guys who weren't in the position to give me the more Optimal Care and again I know great MDS out there and then I looked at the philosophy of an osteopathic doctor and I got so excited I remember I I was like Mom I found about osteopaths they're way kind of more natural blah BL like you've been seeing it and and again I had a pretty good primary care doctor but it was still he was a do who basically in the States you know a lot of the Dos are mostly like MDS now they've kind of fallen into this like they take insurance they have to play that game and and then I looked at Chiropractic and then I looked at acupuncturist and then I found out my degree and I'm like wait a minute I can I can prescribe medications and I can also learn all these herbs and I can learn about supplements and I can learn you know I even learned how to adjust so I learn a lot of the stuff the chyros do Physical Medicine we learned how to use uh ultrasound machines red light therapies and all that I was like that sounds yeah that sounds great it does yeah in San Diego so so I'm like heck yeah I'll go go go figure out what this is about the issue the issue is like it's harder to make a living right I can't just get out of school and then go to the hospital and make 150 200k a year like I have to char you know i' $2 $300 for a half an hour to an hour at the time you know and that's it can be frustrating because there's a little bit of a a pay Gap there you know like only certain people can can really afford that um so it's definitely a different game sure as an ND versus an MD or a do D what's that what's the D it it stands for osteopathic doctor okay so and you know Osteo bone um there and this is you know we'll get into the we talked a little bit about the flexer report so in the early like I think it's was like 1910 1920s they kind of looked at all the medical people in the United States and this guy's name was flexner he was paid by Rock You Know Carnegie and Rockefeller Big Oil big steel and they went around the United States and basically said hey if you're not a medical doctor you're not really a doctor they shut down like 90% of the medical schools and then they started funding all the curriculum at you know Harvard and Stanford and stuff and um the bottlenecked everything and so the MDS became like the primary person who became a doctor and then everyone else was kind of a quack and then they kind of had to earn their reputation back sure and you know again if you look like you know if you watch some you know Wild West movies you have you have like a barber or you have a dentist and your hometown they just did everything you know I mean like if you you had a barber and you had a cut you know he would he'd Stitch you um you dentist like you had kind of like a health care person that did everything they had herbs they probably had some drugs they probably had a little bit of everything um and you can you know a lot of the MDS say well that was great we got rid of all the quackery we got rid of all the disregulation and and look there's there's I'm looking at everything on both sides I get it there's plenty of snake oil salesman like I'm in this field and I've always you know I've learned plenty of BS don't get me wrong you know even you you know supplements the detox tea you know you got the girl with five million followers and she just shows her butt the whole time and she sells like green tea it's like that's not she didn't get her butt from the green tea she'll tell you she did yeah how many guys in the fitness industry are like Juiced to the gills and they're like this is the one bicep workout it's like dude that's 500 milligrams of trend a week dude that's not your bicep C routine you know like at least that is one thing I like that a lot of the more recent influenc are coming out like look dude I'm on gear like you're not you're not getting like this from my way pro team so for sure for sure no I definitely appreciate the transparency from the new wave of influences and uh I think it's great that we're moving in that direction yeah no I think truth ultimately is is what's going to set everyone free I get it there's issues with that with regulations because you know technically like it's funny um you know I've had some experiences in with psychedelics and you know them being kind of illegal and then talking about doing it it's like I'm kind of admitting to doing things illegal you know I mean like if you're um I mean Joe Rogan did it so I was like well if Joe Rogan's talking about smoking DMT and got away then we're good but you know in the states testosterones are controlled substance right so that's you know that could be jail time you could get hit with major fines which I think is absolutely AB asinine my opinion 4,000 people a year die of Thailand all overdose you know me DI have testosterone overdose very few I haven't heard of one but that's a controlled substance because it's dangerous right testosterone is dangerous but Tylenol over the counter you drink it you would it' kill you Joe so it's a weird system you got there in the states yeah I mean there isn't the issue is I don't really think there is a perfect one you know I grew up again during the you know the ederra era were I you know dosing of a feta 10 25 milligrams and there a kid uh in my from a a high school was a couple years older than me I think he took three or 400 milligrams and you basically blew up his heart you know ultimately that's a beta 2 Agonist so I mean at that high of a dose that was that was back in the hydroxy cut days and before they made it and then they're like no we're baning aedra which sucks because in Chinese medicine aedra is a great herb for uh trading treating lung issues like that was actually kind of one of my go-to if I ever have a cough or I'm not feeling well number one it gives you energy but then two it vasodilates your lungs so it really helps with preventing um like mucus buildup and stuff because in in lung issues it's a negative feedback loop that you get mucus buildup and then you get inflamation and then you're having a um more it gets more and more worse ultimately so vasodilating your lungs when you have lung issues is super heal like in covid oh man sorry I said the word so um yeah I liked I liked it but I get now it's like super regulated you know it's illegal I think completely you can get some of the suda suda feder over the counter I think Bron a you can still get too okay so ECA stack was real popular too when I was first getting a bodybuilders right a feder caffeine aspirin yeah sure yeah right all three of those that worked I tried it so you mentioned is that the must SIU what does that stand for uh my college was Southern Illinois University so harb Andale and they did uh just a bodybuilding at the at the college so got second well done run out it's all right yeah and then I did I did two more three I signed up for three I did two more shows after that that was when physique became really big right 2012 2013 and I mean that's again that was actually my favorite time actually for me growing up I really liked uh you ever get Greg plit right like that guy he had a he had a physique that I I really really admired I was never about getting huge but I just kind of likeed the Aesthetics and that's why I really liked to physique there for the first couple of years two three years and then it just I mean those guys are ginormous now right they're all like 58 240 or whatever I'm like to me it's just like what is it what is kind of like a peak physique look that you may be able you may even be able to pull off I was natural like in all of my stuff like I touched Clomid at I think 28 if you want to say that's breaking my you know taking my Natty vard so I was natural and and and I think there's a certain aesthetic that most people now you can look at a guy and be like oh okay and again there's nothing against that like I'm on testosterone I'm not ripping on it but just from an aesthetic standpoint of like you know what is beautiful um from an artistic standpoint I was more about that that first like three to four years of physique where now it's like they're just smaller bodybuilders my opinion but teach the natural guyss can't compete with the enhanced guyss anymore not actually yeah no there's no and and I and I wonder how much of the guys that claim I mean like Michael her like they it's actually um it it hurts to think that these people think that we believe like Li King it was like like either like and people would would argue about it and they'd argue for them and say that we just don't train hard enough and we don't eat um bull balls and it's like yeah just like naive unfortunately a lot of people are um and it's not just uh the influencers it's um professional Sportsmen as well like uh in most my opinion most sports I think it's pretty rampid you can't be the best in the world if you're not doing what the best in the world do it's like like they work and if you want to be the best like you got to do what the best do hey man and and and it's funny as someone who's been on both sides of the fence like I like I said I started taking Clomid at 28 which I don't recommend I will chat about that but I you know I had a 500 pound deadlift I had a 335 bench my hand cleans were you know 250 I wasn't strong you know that's decent numbers for most people in their life and I hit that around 22 23 and it was just a slow decline from until 20 you know over five years I kept training hard but it's hard to just continue like at some point your body is just like look I don't I could keep eating more and then you have your natural decline of testosterone you're just not and that and that's to me is when it really started to become obvious when I was still eating really well working out I knew what it was like to get big and strong and I know the difference between when I was 22 and 28 let alone 35 40 so when I'm like I see a dude walking around who's 50 and he's like 6% body fat and has 20in arms I'm like and good for him I just I know he's on the sauce and he's and he's full of it if he tells me he's like no I just yeah eat bull testicles I'm like whatever else you sleeping night man like I I mean I'm not you know I think we're at that point now in society where maybe it used to be something that was very stigmatized I think growing up in that baseball era oh steroids ah TR you know um and now I'm like you know what I think most people like live your life man if if you at 55 20 in arms is something that's super important for you cool I ain't G I ain't going to hate on it um the issue that you can have is then if you're making YouTube videos and you're selling yeah protein pows yeah and you got a 23y old kid he's like I remember yeah uh did you ever you know bow flex no do you know this this used to be on Late Night infomercials and it was basically um like one of those all-in-one machines and you could hook up and you could hook up and then and yeah dude had a guy on there was like 62 240 P you know what I mean yeah and I and I'm like wow I want to look like that guy I need to get a bow like that guy's not using a bow Flex he's going to the gym and he sace out of his mind you know it's like know it's crazy crazy but like like we said it's it's it's becoming right and I think we briefly mentioned in a little preview talk about the enhanced games and you what are your thoughts on that for for next year yeah yeah I'm all I'm all about like I told you I grew up outside St Louis so we had the in in 1998 we had the Mark McGuire versus Sami Sosa they were chasing the home run record right and that was like all the the rage I mean to me that I think that really brought baseball back um Lance Armstrong you know that's it it it it brings people you know brings them some interest in it so I think as long as the rules are clear uh I mean I'm actually more for probably bringing more transparency and bringing maybe even you could maybe even put some rules you know like what yeah like hey testosterone's fine this is fine like and then maybe they do what they want because I I've talked about this I've had some military guys come to me and if it were up to me like I not only would most of our military all be on testosterone but also I think the future will probably be like low doses of ox angelone and angelone with it I think the same thing for for surgery like you're a 55y old guy and you're about to go into back surgery like they should put you on testosterone and some n like nonmedical advice but we know like I you know people get hurt like it's funny I had a guy reach out to me who was using things and I told him don't use any things but he's like yeah I'm gonna come off my stuff because I hurt myself and I'm like dude all those things that you are on are really really yeah for a generation right like those things are are going to be more B he's like yeah I'm coming off cycle because I'm hurt I'm like you recover way faster not that you should you should stop because all those things are very very dangerous and illegal uh but in a world that they wouldn't be yeah right and so when you you want to talk about the enhanced games you want to talk about sports it's like what's the point you know that's where you're in Phil philosophical debate of like MMA you you're there to watch two people beat each other up who cares with like you know as long as they're using weapons but the whole point is like what is optimal physical condition yeah and that and and the other issue I'll bring up is this and I've gotten issues with this before right caffeine right is technically a an insecticide and it's meant to kill insects that eat it and it blocks the adenosine receptor which in bugs will they die right in humans it's such a low dose that it actually number one it blocks the receptor that basically tells us to be sleepy but then also it has a a paradoxical reaction that then we we um we release endorphins to fight it right um and that's they've used this like glutathione kind of has that like you can induce high amounts of damage and then your body upregulates glutathione production to regenerate more so my issue with this becomes you know with the Natty Maxis go out and nature and find me five pounds of or five grams of creatine anywhere you're GNA have to take the beef and sensus you have to synthesize it out so where does that line of like well we'll allow you to do high doses of Vitamin C um you know IV ozone therapy you can do high doses I love it it makes me feel great um but that's not natural like we're but it you know it's just is not natural either it's like you said you have to make it in a lab and uh so that's the big issue is like I what I don't like and this is the that have become scrutinized right now are the peptides right these peptides are coming under scrutiny um which which ones are legal and not like bpc157 is found naturally in your gut lining um can I use that you know for instance you know thyroids another one but when when you do eat you can eat things and a lot of times your stomach will denature them but um you can get granular thyroid right bovine thyroid so people use nature thid MP thyroid these are created by animals and then you take them you're taking thyroid from another animal that's hormone replacement and then the other issue becomes like okay what if what if I you know lost my testicles when I was seven in a biking accident like can I be on hormone replacement therapy then to hear the answer to this question you're going to have to tune in again for the next episode of the muscle growth podcast goodbye gains Guru thank you for listening and see you on the next episode of tmgp