Andrew Huberman

00:03Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. TRAIN BY DAY. JOE ROGAN PODCAST BY All right. Here we go. What's up, man? Great to see you. Good to see you, too. So, we were just talking about Ari Blacking out, trying to keep up with uh Shane Gillis, who is uh a superhuman drinker. Like, it's bizarre the volume you could put down. And you were you were saying you were about to say something. Yeah. I mean, obviously there's a tolerance that's built up with drinking a lot, but I believe the number is approximately 8% of people have a mutation in a gene such that when they drink alcohol, it increases their dopamine levels very quickly and they get euphoric. They feel great. These are the people like that character in Madmen, the Don Draper character, like he would go out and just get plastered and the next day, you know, he's all

00:58fresh and and ready. And pop part of that is tolerance. But in certain Scandinavian countries, northern European countries, this gene tends to be more prevalent. And these people are the people that can just keep drinking and drinking. They feel great when they drink. Whereas most people, they feel disinhibited at the beginning. You know, you have a couple drinks, the forebrain shuts down a little bit because that's what it does. They start talking more, talking more, but if they keep drinking, they're blacking out. You know, they're stumbling. They're slurring their words. This 8% of people by way of this genetic mutation, alcohol affects them very differently. It offsets all that seditive property and they could just go and go and go. This is the person who's doing a case a day or at the party and just shot for shot and just looking like

01:36they're improving in function. Obviously, they're not, but you put one of those people against a arafir. Yeah. [laughter] And that's what you get. Yeah. So, e even for those people though, it's still has a negative effect on your body, right? Oh, yeah. I mean the toxicity of the alcohol is universal but in terms of how it impacts brain function and you see this across all these different categories of drugs too right you know uh somebody takes rin aderall modafinyl or arm modafanyl these are the common prescribed drugs now and people use them recreationally for ADHD in fact in researching an episode for our podcast on ADHD turns out that more than 80 80% of college students will rely on ADHD meds quote unquote recreationally, not prescribed. They buy it from each other in order to study% 80%. And those drugs work mainly by increasing dopamine and

02:32increasing adrenaline and they make your focus like this narrow and you're you're in a trench and you can function. But a number of people take them and feel super distracted and lousy. But this is of course what they prescribe to kids with ADHD. Yeah. Now when you modafanil that's that's providial. Is that what that is? Yeah. Now, there's some It's very expensive. Um, it it's like $1,000 a month in some cases. Really much. It was originally for narcolepsy, so to offset daytime sleepiness. That was the original use of the drug. And then it also does work for enhancing focus, right? I mean, that has drawbacks. It's not perhaps as detrimental as like recreational drugs to um to increase focus. But most of the students out there and the tech workers and this is big in the finance world too are relying on rolin aderall and things like

03:23viveance. And to be clear, they have legitimate clinical uses. What is viveance? It's another one of these drugs for ADHD. Here's the the story around why these drugs initially came to be. If you look at kids or adults with ADHD, like true attention deficit disorder or hyperactivity disorder, you don't always have the hyperactivity. What you find is they can focus really well if it's on something they like. So a kid with ADD or ADHD that loves video games, that kid will play video games with laser focus for 3 hours. That sounds like me. But then you put them in front of something they don't want to do and they just can't anchor their discipline. They just don't have the discipline. That also sounds like me. [laughter] Although I doubt that. I don't know. We we uh maybe it'll come up later, but your discipline for fitness and ice baths and training come

04:06I like those things, right? Well, well, and if you can arrange your life such that most of your stuff is around that, great. But, uh, these kids, if prove that if you like something, you can focus. And right, it comes as no surprise then that the drugs for ADHD universally increase dopamine because dopamine is this incredible molecule that enhances focus, motivation, and drive, and literally narrows the aperture of your visual attention. And we've all experienced that. And of course, drugs like cocaine and fetamine do that to a hyper extent and then there's a crash. But with these drugs, if prescribed in the right way, in the right situation, they're terrific. They teach the kids' brain how to focus. But nowadays, there is rampant adult ADHD and ADD. Part of that is probably due to the phone, probably part of that is probably just due to all

04:59sorts of things. But there is also a lot of recreational use of these prescription drugs, not illicit drugs like cocaine and fetamine but prescription drugs that increase dopamine and supplementation for increasing dopamine as well. I had read something about modafanyl, new vigil, providial, which whichever one it was that initially it was created as a performance-enhancing drug, but they needed some sort of an ailment for it to, you know, to be prescribed and that was when they decided to prescribe it for nosy. Had you heard anything like that? I thought it was in the reverse, but I'm open to to hear. Um, and listen, that the course of a lot of these drugs and how they hit market is super interesting. I've been learning more and more about this because one of my colleagues who works on aggression and mating behavior which fascinates me

05:45has identified some peptides that can really reduce anxiety. They put these to the pharmaceutical industry. Pharmaceutical interest wasn't interested in them at all even though the safety margins are huge. So you say why why wouldn't they want this? Well, it turns out these same drugs failed in a schizophrenia trial a long time ago. So no one will go near it with a 10-ft pole. So what the way the pharmaceutical industry generally approaches drugs is they love to remarket drugs for which there's already FDA approval because then they don't have to go through all the safety stuff. And when they do that they can renew the patent. This is crucial right because if you can get the generic version now with things like Good RX and these like little apps you can get. I mean you can go into a pharmacy you hit good RX and it'll say oh yeah we've got some stuff

06:26that's about to expire. This $300 a month drug is $10. I I've had this happen. It's a, you know, amazing. If they can keep it out of the generic market, that's huge. And the way to do that is to find a new clinical use. So, I don't know which one came first in narcolepsy or these these focusing ADHD uses, but or as a performance enhancer. But if the pharmaceutical industry, the people that own the patent of that drug can find a new legitimate use, they just bought themselves, I think, another 10 years on on the on the patent. So this was originally prescribed for schizophrenia and then they were going to use these peptides for mating. Yeah. So here so in terms of the aggression this is really interesting. This is the work of a guy at Caltech named David Anderson and he works on mating and aggression and the relationship human beings

07:11in well he has work related to humans and the neighboring lab works on humans but in mice and in humans but these areas of the brain are really conserved this this we can talk about which brain area but what he discovered is that meaning um sorry that in mice and in humans these brain structures look identical okay and that the same classes of neurons exist that if you were to stimulate them because neurosurgeons have done this people go into a rage or in animals if you stimulate them the animals go into a rage. In fact, there are these videos online, they're incredible, where this is Dulin's work when she was in David Anderson's lab. So, you take two mice, a male mouse and a female mouse, and they're mating, right, as it were. And then they stimulate these neurons because they can do that now in a using light, believe it or not. And those, the

07:54male immediately tries to kill the female. You can even just put him in a cage alone with a glove filled with air. He's walking around. and you stimulate these neurons and he just goes into a rage, right? Just just trying to destroy this glove. But here's what's super interesting and no one understands. If you put this animal into a cage alone and stimulate, looks pretty normal. It doesn't do anything. So it's not like it attacks itself and you know, and every time there's this, you know, horrible news event like the school shooting thing or something like that, I always think, you know, like what's going on in the there's a certain brain area. It's called the ventromedial hypothalamus. This is a brain area that's really interesting because it has a population of neurons that control mating. You stimulate them and animals

08:35will just start trying to copulate with basically whatever is around. If you give them a choice of their usual preference of, you know, females if they're male, males if they're female, because that's the way mice mice go, one or the other, they will just try and start mating. You stimulate the other group of neurons and they will try and kill the other mouse. Is so these are like switches in the hypothalamus. And are these like very distinct like when you we talk about like neurons and switches like how how do you distinguish between the one can you see them like what is the difference? Great question. So for many decades it was known that if you stimulate this brain area you could get aggression. This is actually Nobel Prize winning work of a guy named whose last name is Hess. And what they found was if you stimulate this brain area cats would go

09:18into either two kinds of of aggression. It was either defensive aggression kind of with with you know hair up or you would stimulate a little bit more and they would do the the you know predatory aggression right I'm probably doing this wrong but you know like ears forward and you know you're you're the hunter last time I'm still learning about you know animal behavior in this way but what's really interesting is that for years no one could understand why if you also stimulated this brain area and you used a different pattern of stimulation you get mating behavior and it turns out that the neurons are mixed in there like salt and pepper David Anderson's lab figured out that these are molecularly distinct neurons and what makes them distinct is really interesting. If they stimulate only the neurons that have the estrogen receptor,

10:02they become aggressive. And this again goes back to this thing that we talked about a while ago, which is that testosterone aromatized, converted into estrogen, has these incredible effects on aggression and masculineization of the brain. And a lot of people think, in fact, people heard me say that last time and said, "Oh, you're trying to say that estrogen is doing everything testosterone is doing." No, it's that things like testosterone and estrogen control gene expression. And so, the fact that it's estrogen or testosterone, it doesn't really matter. It's the fact that these are molecularly distinct neurons, they can trigger these neurons and they can get very distinct outputs of behavior. But what's crazy is you stop stimulating, the animal just goes back to doing whatever and then goes, "Oh yeah, I think I'll try and mate again."

10:40Now, eventually the female's like, "Hey, this is getting confusing." But this it's clear that these sorts of things are also happening in humans. But normally we have kind of a waiting of aggression versus mating behavior. Right? Some people choose to combine those, right? There's kind of extremes of that. Rape, there's rough sex, there's all sorts of, you know, it's a it's uncomfortable for people to think about that, but there's a continuum between a aggressive versus approach type behaviors. And for whatever reason, this drove me to start looking at different mating behaviors of animals online. Like if you watch ferrets mating, it's like he's biting the back of her neck. She's squealing all over the place. Like this is uncomfortable for some people. See, some people probably like watching this stuff. But you look at animals mating and there's a

11:26kind of a a balancing act between, you know, what looks it's not you wouldn't call it love making. Let's put it that. You'd call it mating that's pretty aggressive. And that's very common in in the animal kingdom. So is it common in the animal kingdom? Because for in order to have strong genes that pass on, you need a strong animal. And so they express themselves in this aggressive way to prove to the female that they're strong enough to mate and and procreate. Like what is the reason for for that sort of aggressive? Is there a reason? Well, it's a it's a great question. So there's this theory called hydraulic pressure theory. This was developed by Conrad Loren, which is another Nobel Prize winner who studied animal behavior. And here's the idea is that all of these dis different populations of neurons are in the hypothalamus. This

12:10is a little tiny tiny thing. I mean, it's the size of like a little gobstopper candy, like a little gumball. And you've got neurons for aggression, neurons for mating. Neurons that turn on to make sure that you that animals don't try and mate with the wrong species, right? We take this for granted, like how come a cat doesn't try and mate with the dog? Now, the dog might hump, but that's a different thing alto together. So, it's all harbored in there. And this hydraulic theory is that all of these things are kind of weighted probabilities. So there's never zero probability that any of this will happen unless they're in sleep. But maybe it's 10% aggression, 80% mating while they're mating. Maybe another male enters the arena and now there's sort of like a confusion like am I going to have to fight or can I keep mating? These kinds

12:52of things because often times these animals are communal in some way. And so the way that Anderson explained this to me and we had a conversation about this recently is that the brain might actually get confused in certain moments that you know and there's also a kind of opioid pain relief thing that gets released during sexual activity. Pain threshold goes way up right and we were talking about this in the context of fetishes because you know if you look at fetishes they're not random. True fetishes are like can be pathologies where people actually require the presence of some thing in order to become aroused. And those things almost always if you look at true fetishes are things like feet, dead bodies, feces, animals, things that are all very infect infectious. Exactly. Your facial expression illustrates it perfectly. My facial expression for those listening

13:41is yuck. Exactly. So you know that's disgust. And you have circuits in your brain that are for disgust that are about getting you away from that thing because it's infectious, putrid, disgusting, and out of context. And then you think about sex and food appetite and all that. And it's it's all appetitive as they call it. It's moving towards it. It's bringing in more of those molecules as opposed to trying to get away from like vomit or something, right? But the feet thing, isn't it like guys like pretty feet? It you know, we're very visual animals and so it may cross over into visual perception and what arouses people differs. Obviously, people have their different proclivities, but true fetishes are a kind of a confusion of this circuitry, right? Where people confuse or learn arousal associated with something that's actually quite

14:25dangerous. I mean, you take the extreme one like dead body. It's like incredibly Is that normal? Excuse me. Not normal. Common. Like the dead body one. Not common. Not common. Common enough that you brought it up though. Well, I've been reading up on this because I'm I'm fascinated by the primitive as a in addition to the more evolved parts of the brain. Uh so the way Anderson describes is, you know, you'll see animals mating and then all of a sudden, you know, he'll bite the back of her neck or sometimes she'll bite him. And the theory is that some of the neurons, and they've seen this in brain imaging in real time because they can do that in animals, some of the neurons that are responsible for aggression will just suddenly, you know, spike up there, right? And and we'll kind of overtake the other behavior and then they'll go back to mating. Now,

15:07when you're talking about studies on animals and they're doing this, it's kind that there there's these ethical questions. If you're going to do a study on humans, if you wanted to stimulate those same neurons and tried to incite aggression or hostility or even arousal, but has anybody done it? They have. They have. They have. So, a good friend of mine, Eddie Chang, he's the chair of neurosurgery at UCSF. He's spends his life and he makes his living probing around in the brain of people who have epilepsy looking for the site where if they stimulate the person will have a seizure so that they can burn that area out or make some other manipulation. and he's told me that he's been poking, you can't poke around at random, right? You can't, you know, every scientist would love to just do that experiment, just go in and kind of search. But there are

15:53sites where they'll stimulate thinking they might evoke a feeling of pleasantness or no feeling at all, and the person will go into a rage in the in the O in the operating room because they're wide awake. You know, you probably seen these things of people with neurosurgery and they're playing the violin or things of that sort. Occasionally, they'll hit an area where the person will say, "I'm feeling super angry right now." They'll say, "Let's back off a little bit from there." And they'll chart where they were in the brain. That is wild. So there's just like a spot. Yeah, there is. And we have switches, right? I mean, we have switches for rage, switches for all these things. I mean, that's like the psychologist Carl Jung, you know, this idea that we have all things inside of us. I mean, people vary in their propensity for rage or for

16:35love or for anything. But at some level, we do have all things inside of us. We have the circuitry within us. And do you think feel like that variation is neurochemical that there's I think it is neurochemical and I think it is learned as well. This peptide that we were talking about earlier becomes relevant in in this context. So David's lab discovered there's a peptide called tachikinanine. It's related to another molecule that's involved in pain relief called substance P that we all make. Tachikinine has a bunch of different forms, but in humans there's tachikin one and tachikinanine 2. In mice or humans that are socially isolated for a period of time, tachikinine levels go through the roof. This is very relevant to the recent past of around the pandemic. In my opinion, it goes through the roof. And what happens? It creates anxiety, anger, and in particular

17:24aggression. And so there are drugs that are tackyinanine inhibitors. And I asked David, I said, "Well, why aren't we giving tachicine inhibitors to people that are feeling anxious and and aggressive and you know, kind of tamp that down?" And we just had yet another school shooting. And we could talk about what that's about, but or not, but and he said, "This drug is actually approved. It's very safe." When Stop. What are you What are you saying? There's a drug that can block But you're saying what that's about, but we're not Oh, sorry. the the the tacky I mean is was it elevated in for instance the kid that went and and shot all those kids in how could they find that out postmortem I think they could do what's called mRNA and C2 hybridization they could see how much of the gene for tachikinum was being made I think they should do

18:10postmortem I don't know how he was killed if his brain is still intact um I think like most people there's very little concern about him and more concern about the victims as it should be but just like with CT and football players you you want to know where the dam damage was and also whether or not there was a brain thing there. And if that brain thing was there, it doesn't mean necessarily that he was born with a bad brain. He might have been born with a dysfunctional brain, but social isolation increases anxiety and aggression. There's no question. And actually, I was in social isolation increases aggression. Absolutely. Really? Absolutely. Feelings of aggression and kind of friction with the world. Us them kind of thinking this is Oh, okay. I was in New York. This is a few months back and it was it was the most eerie experience because we were there

18:55recording some podcasts and something came over the news that you know there was literally killer loose and it was like guy in Brooklyn went into a subway released some smoke bombs and shot people right they found him in the lower east side walking around someone found him so like killer on the loose in New York became a real thing for the time we were there and it was super weird because we're staying down near the Lower East Side and they get the guy and what do they say? They say the same thing they always say about these guys. He was a loner. He was really socially isolated. Then you find the angry posts. You find the things online, but it's never like, oh, this, okay, you've got crazies like the BTK killer and people who were like in their church and stuff, but were so, you know, sociopathic killers on the on the sly,

19:35but these kind of random act what seemed like random acts of aggression. Almost always these people were highly socially isolated, which and I'm not evoking sympathy. I want to be very clear. You know, I mean, nothing makes me more I think everyone is furious and frustrated about this situation with the shooting. But I asked David about this. I was like, why aren't these drugs being used or prescribed? And he said because years ago there was a trial at a pharmaceutical company exploring the role of this drug in schizophrenia for reasons that aren't clear and it didn't work and it cost the company a ton of money. So now no companies want to go near it. there's this kind of, you know, blacklisting of drugs that failed in trials and as a consequence there's probably dozens if not hundreds of very useful medications out there that are just not being explored.

20:19So when they do studies on people to try to find out what areas of the brain that you can ignite to get people hostile, how do they how would they perform those studies? So unfortunately, I guess fortunately for guys like Elon because they have uh companies based on this, but unfortunately for for kind of the exploratory purposes making this easier, they shave the head in a little spot. They drill a they make a tiny little hole in the skull and they're lowering electrodes down there and they're the way these electrodes are built, they're not just a single wire. It's actually pretty cool. It's like a a barrel of wires and they're able to like put them to different depths. So, you know, you imagine a hundred or a thousand wires all at different depths and, you know, probing around and stimulating at different levels. So, it's all happening

21:02very fast. And then they'll hit a spot where the person will say, "I feel like I'm about to have a seizure." Or sometimes we'll have a full-blown seizure and they go, "Okay, that's that's the spot." Wow. And so, in kind of poking around the dark, they are I mean, the brain I'd love to tell you that we understand so much about how the brain works. I think we understand a lot but most of what we know about how human brain structures work are from experiments like the one I just mentioned which is clinically oriented but then you're doing some experimentation along the way or case studies like the famous HM they always [clears throat] give their initials not their names because to maintain anonymity but we know more about human memory from one guy who had both his hippocampi lesioned because he had epilepsy and his hippocampi this is a memory encoding

21:45area they kept them in the laboratory for years and studied him and they learned things like uh you might appreciate this if you went in and you said hey I'm Joe nice to meet you he'd say hi I'm you know whoever he was HM Henry whatever and you'd say great you walk out and come back in and say hi who are you and you'd say I'm Joe I'm going to tell you a joke they did this experiment and you tell him a joke and he'd laugh you leave you come back you tell him the same joke he doesn't remember the joke but he laughs a little bit less and the next time a little bit less so something in his brain is familiar here, right? This speaks to the importance of novelty and surprise and comedy, but he can't remember that he remembers. And so that starts to open up all sorts of interesting questions about consciousness and novelty. Oh, wow. So, he like kind of sees it

22:29coming, but he doesn't know why he sees it coming. Yeah. He doesn't know why it's it's not as funny the second time. I mean, it's never as funny the second time, right? But are the people that are saying it, are they saying it with the same enthusiasm? Is it the same person? They didn't control they I don't know that they use good comics or good jokes. Most of the jokes are pretty lame. They're kind of laboratory style jokes which are always lame. But they always my understanding is that a lot of the joke if the laughter evoking quality of a joke is the surprise. Although I have to say when I saw you go uh do comedy at the Vulcan a few few months ago. There's some bits you call them. Yeah. Okay. Uh that you do where like I'm thinking to myself, "Oh no, he's not going there. Is he? Is he really?" Like you're leading us down this path and I'm

23:12thinking, "Oh no, he's not going to say that. Is he?" and then you go there and that's what's funny about it. So I realized when watching that I took a mental note to myself. I was like, "Okay, so jokes aren't always about getting hit with the surprise. Sometimes it's you know you're going down this path that is really really uncomfortable." Well, it's it's very hard to describe what comedy is cuz you don't even know it unless you're doing it. Like while you're doing it, you like you're trying to work out bits. It's almost like you're on instinct. You're trying to like sort your almost like you're like the way you're probing the brain in the dark. You're kind of doing that a little bit with comedy. Some of it's sneaky. Some of it you're like sneaking things in on people. You're catching them before they like cuz like you're the

23:53worst thing is when you know where someone's going and you see the setup and you you anticipate the punch line, then the punch line comes and you don't think it's funny cuz you're like, "Ah, I thought that myself. I saw that coming." The best ones are when you think something's gonna happen and then another thing happens instead and it's even funnier, right? Or when you you get you recognize this thing that this person's saying that you didn't think other people recognized and you're like, "Yes, right." You know, there's that, too. But you don't know what you're doing while you're doing it sometimes. I saw you do a uh question and answer part at the end. I was there with Lex and he turns to me. He's like, "I can't believe he's going to do this." I'm like, "Why not?" It's like cuz that's real time. I mean every I guess you're Yeah. You're [ __ ] around.

24:38Yeah. Well, it was it was amazing. I mean, I think that for us where we're just thinking like, wow, like you're for two scientists, like two super nerds to put yourself into a situation deliberately where you don't know what's going to happen. It's like the worst. You're trying everything about science is trying to control variables. It's all about control. Right. Right. This is probably why Lex is still single. [laughter] Just kidding, Lex. There's so many There's so many women that want to marry. No, no, no, [laughter] no, no. Oh god, he's going to kill me. He's the black belt in jiu-jitsu, not me. Oh no, Lex, I'm so sorry. Um, he's over in Russia right now. I hope he comes back. He's not going to listen. He'll be so far behind on podcast. He's not going to listen to this one. Don't worry. He'll probably come back with a wife.

25:17Maybe. Maybe that's his move. Find himself a nice lady over there. We'll understand him. [laughter] Uh, oh goodness. There's so many things I want to say here, but I have to be very careful. Uh, whoever Lex Mary's will be one lucky uh woman and vice versa. The only thing I would worry about with Lex is that he's so busy I do not know if he has the time for a relationship. We actually discussed that on a podcast I did with him on his podcast that's going to be released soon. He was talking about whether or not he has time, you know, like he has time for a relationship. He's not sure if he does. Well, he's also going to have to start following a somewhat more normal schedule because this guy's basically nocturnal. I get texts from him like 4 in the morning. Yeah. But that's what he likes. Yeah. There's nothing wrong with it, you know.

26:01Well, I think some people's minds work best at I write my best material really late at night. What's really late? 2 or 3 in the morning. But you get up early, right? Yeah. Yeah. But what depends on the day. Like if I I stay if I write till like 3:00 4:00 in the morning, I try not to get up before 10:00. But normal days I'm getting up at 7 or maybe even a little earlier. But when I come home from shows, oftentimes my mind is very excited and that's when I like to that's when I like to write. Yeah, you know, there's a really cool phenomenon where in early in the day or after we should say after someone's been asleep for a while, for that first 0ero to nine hours of the day, I call this phase one just cuz got to label everything with a name to make it clear. During that time, we know that dopamine, adrenaline, and cortisol, healthy levels

26:51of cortisol are highest in your system in those first nine hours. You might not wake up quickly, but they're highest. And then those start to taper off and molecules like serotonin start to predominate. And the way these molecules like dopamine, serotonin, they do a lot of different things. They're involved in tons of things, but we can generally say that they modulate, they're called neuromodulators. They bias the probability that certain brain circuits and areas will be active and certain ones won't. So when dopamine and epinephrine are really turnurning around in your brain, you're really good at linear types of things like math, organization, working out, sets and reps, this does this, does this, we're going here, itineraries, where there's a right answer and you're just trying to plug and chug. As serotonin and other

27:31molecules kick in, which is later in the day and at night, the brain becomes much better at these. I call this phase two of the day. They become so like 7 to 16 hours a 10 to 17 hours after waking. So 0 to nine for phase one and 10 to 17 for phase two. Your brain is much better at nonlinear thinking, creative thinking, brainstorming. Um I don't know what the writing process, comedy process is for you, but you know, if you're doing anything creative, you're organizing existing things into new ways. You're kind of playing with ideas and it it actually can be beneficial to be slightly sedated. This is actually why so many um great writers and musicians and maybe comics have used a little bit of alcohol, a little bit of cannabis to put their brain into that kind of liinal state where you're not you're not super lasered in. You're not

28:18looking for the right answer. The the right answer just kind of comes to you. And for some people, they have a hard time accessing that when they're in this hyperdrive mode. and jazz musicians, right? Famous for abusing a lot of substances because jazz is all about the spontaneous incorporation of of notes and etc. So, I think that late night creativity makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Tim Dylan and I were just having this conversation because Tim is sober and you know Tim used to have a like a real problem with substances and he says he does his podcast really late at night. Like they don't even start filming until like after midnight. Is that why he's got the aviators on? Yeah, that's pro. But it's also like that's sort of his drug, you know, like he's sleepy and he's kind of just like half out of it. And you know, when he puts the sunglasses on, he just it's

29:08almost like he's in an altered state of consciousness, but without having to snort ketamine or whatever the [ __ ] he was doing. Good. You know, he's definitely a healthier approach. That guy used to snort ketamine. I don't know. Ketamine is now legal, but please, I can't imagine snorting ketamine is good. Ketamine is legal though. You can get you could do ketamine therapies which are really weird like a lot of people are doing them for depression. Why? So here I've got colleagues who study ketamine. I've been spending a lot of time trying to understand how this drug works. It's a dissociative anesthetic. So it is it's like PCP. It works by blocking something called the NMDA and methyl daspartate receptor if people want to look that up. It's very similar, right? Carl Hart was telling me that it's almost the same thing as PCP.

29:51Absolutely. This receptor is a receptor that becomes active only when you're hyperfocused on something and it ch and it has the capacity to create brain change in a very dramatic way. Sort of because your brain can't they say oh your brain is different 5 minutes after this conversation than was before. That's that's [ __ ] Basically your brain doesn't change unless it needs to. And that signal of need to comes from something being really intense, really stressful, really exciting, really novel, right? Makes sense, right? Why reprogram the machine unless there's a need? And so you have a chemical signal. Ketamine basically is was initially used to block memory formation after trauma. So people would come into the into the emergency room. Let's just imagine like horrible scenario, right? And someone was just in the passenger seat and watch

30:38their closest loved one get impaled on a steering column. That person is in a state of shock and they're never going to forget what they see. So what do you do? You give them ketamine. to try and dampen the plasticity, the brain change that would occur to remember that incredibly traumatic event. Now, it's being used as a way to bring people into the clinic or it seems like it is pretty rampant use now and put people into this dissociative state so that they see themselves having an experience. In fact, I've talked to people who've gone through ketamine trials and they describe it as watching themselves get out of their own car. They're like third personing themselves. This to me sounds like a horrible state to be in. But a lot Why is that? I mean, I've been working my whole life to just be comfortable with the body I'm in, and I'd like to stay in it. Not

31:21because it's always comfortable to be there, but because, you know, getting good at that seems to be the key to having a good life, being able to tolerate discomfort. This is about getting out of yourself. Yeah. But isn't the point for these people to try to figure out what they're doing wrong with their life so they can look at it objectively as a third party? Yeah, that makes sense to me that they would look at like for instance their suicidal depression and say, you know, that like this the newagy kind of thing is like you are not your feelings. That's a tough one for people to incorporate because when I have really strong feelings, it certainly feels like it's happening inside me. So this is allowing them to get next to their feelings and see their feelings as a experience, not them. Yeah. I mean, but even when you know that you you're it's definitely

32:02happening to you, you know that you are also sometimes not burdened by those feelings. That's right. So, it's some sort of an external factor or even if it's an internal factor, it's a thing other than the core of what you are, right? It doesn't define you, right? It doesn't define you. I think that's what they're trying to do. They're trying to figure out like why are they so overwhelming to the point where they want to leap off of a cliff like what what is causing that? Yeah. And it seems to work quite well for intractable depression as it's called. What's really odd about the fact that it works, at least to me, is that if you look at the other new emerging very effective treatment for severe depression, it's the exact opposite. It's this incredible work that Matthew Johnson and colleagues are doing out at Johns Hopkins giving people macro doses of psilocybin.

32:45I I talked to him, we had him on the podcast, and he and I asked him, I'm like, "What are your thoughts on micro doing?" And he was like, "Macro dose." And I thought like, "Whoa, this is an academic saying this. This isn't like some guy who's, you know, trying to push psychedelics for his own agenda. This is a guy who's studying these in like purely through the lens of science. What are you talking about? What's critical about the macro dose of When you say macro, what kind of dose are you talking about? I don't know how they do these, but this would be like in the gram range. How many grams? One gram. I'm get I need to check with we should check with Matt before people run off and start taking it. But certainly not micro, right? They're hallucinating. They're feeling a lot. And I said, "What's the key thing? you're seeing success after success after eating

33:25disorders, depression, late, you know, and he said, "It seems to be quote unquote letting go." And I'm like, "Well, that's not science, right? What is letting go? Are you talking about heart rate 50% above baseline? Are you talking about breathing?" You know, and he said there does seem to be something crucial about the people in these trials experiencing what would normally give them a complete panic attack and being able to just let go and go into the experience without trying to control it, without trying to tamp it down or ramp it up, just be in it. What kind of experience that would give them a panic attack? For some people, it's um you know, he said there was one woman in who came in. And I believe it was a woman who there was a painting on the wall and she thought she could jump through it and so that you know they're holding her back,

34:11you know. Yeah, they're holding her back. And um and they do give them tools to control their anxiety. So my lab works on a lot of breathing tools for real-time rapid control of anxiety and we handed some of those off to Matt. So they give these to people as tools. They also have defibrillators in there. They have everything because it's a you know it's a university setting just in case. And he said that the key thing is that they kind of feel overwhelmed, but then they feel supported enough by the therapist to lean into whatever is happening and they stop trying to regulate it. And that's where apparently he thinks the breakthrough is. And so that reveals something very fundamental. that says that there's something powerful in terms of long-term depression relief that can be learned in those states that has to do with not

34:57regulating oneself or one's need to run for safety. And I find that fascinating because, you know, it raises all these questions. For instance, do you need to hallucinate? Maybe not. Maybe it has nothing to do with hallucinations. Maybe it just has to do with getting the person into a state of like real fear and then allowing them to lean into it. I don't know. That's a speculation. But I think that what's interesting about all this work on psychedelics is it's clearly working in these clinical trials. I mean, overwhelmingly the data are more positive than negative. And yet, no one knows exactly why it's working, right? No one knows what's being rewired in the brain. There's all this speculation like, oh, dendrites grow and there's plasticity. Sure, but like in what direction? I mean, trauma is plasticity, too. So something powerful is happening

35:41under these under the control of these psychedelic drugs in these clinical settings that are teaching people something valuable they can export and it everyone has a different narrative like oh I saw this face or the green gremlins or what whatever you know melting reality but it seems to be the the ability to let go of the attempt to control one's internal state. The one of the weird things they found out when they started studying people while they're under the influence of psilocybin was the lack of brain activity. Do you do you aware of that? Well, I know there's more. So, the the receptors for psilocybin are many, but one of the main ones is the serotonin 2C and 2A receptor and those are in this layer of the cortex, the outer lining of the of the brain called layer 5, which is extensively involved in lateral connections. And so, it's absolutely

36:32true that you see more broad act activation of the brain by any one stimulus. You know, show someone a picture. It's very broad compared to when they're not on these drugs. And when you broaden the amount of activity, I can imagine you reduce the total amount of activity in one in any one area. But my understanding is that these brain states are just so atypical. They're not like anything you see in sleep or dreaming, although they're similar, right? Um, there was a guy at Harvard for years, Alan Hobson, a genius, a neuroscientist, and he was saying, "Dreams are reparative. They help people through trauma. It's part of the trauma release process, blah, blah, blah. And psychedelics basically mimic that." And he may very well be right. He may very well, but don't they also mimic u normal human neurochemistry, right? Like the most

37:18potent ones like DMT and even psilocybin is some sort of relationship to DMT, isn't it? like like when when it's um when the body processes it, isn't it? Something like four four eloxy n dimethylryptoamine like there's there's some things that are happening while your your body is processing it that mimic what it is actual possible for your brain to produce. That's right. I mean you have two component parts. One is made by the pineal and the other is naturally made by neurons and those have to be brought together. I've I've never done an iaska journey admittedly. I've just haven't done it. Have you done mushrooms? um in my youth, you know, back in the old days. Back in the old days and not responsibly. I kind of regret it because I mean I was I was like a wild punk rock skateboarder kid. I was not this, you know, I wasn't a university professor

38:04and honestly I regret doing it at a time when my brain was so plastic. I wish if I had done it, I would have done like clinical trial and gotten data and that kind of thing, but I'm a nerd. So, but but you could always do it again. Sure. Yeah. I think that um Have you thought about it? Well, I was part of a a clinical trial looking at uh this was originally intended to be three dose of MDMA. Um I did the two and then I decided that was enough. This again was part of a clinical study. I found it to be incredibly beneficial. I mean I I thought I was a nice guy before, but um it made me it made me not afraid to feel feelings. And I think before that I could feel from the neck up and from the waist down, but I had this block. And I remember taking MDMA. There's a physician there. They're talking to you. And all of a sudden, I felt like, now I sound like a crazy

38:55person, but this is how it felt since from a sensation perspective as if like my body had been in Saran Wrap before and it just kind of unzipped. And from that point on, I've sort of been able to feel things bodywide. And then I started thinking about all sorts of things like uh there I've unusual number of deaths and losses in my life for somebody who wasn't in the military or didn't grow up in the inner city. It just had some bad luck, you know, like you know, knew people that had bad luck. Um and all of a sudden I was able to kind of digest that and think about it in a more reasonable way. I think before that I was just pack it away just work work ignore it or try and um sub sublimate it or trans turn it into anger or fuel which you know it can be its own use as you know but at some point I was like you know I think I need to actually spend some time

39:43on this and yeah I think I think it made me a nicer person to myself. Yeah, I think there's real benefit in those things, whether it's MDMA or psilocybin. I think there's real benefit in a lot of them. And I think there's definitely benefit in macro, but I think there's benefit in micro, too. I know a lot of people that micro dose and they just feel like an elevated mood all throughout the day. I don't think you're going to get these sort of transformative, life-changing experiences where you transcend whatever it means to be a person and get a chance to look at yourself and look at the way you interface with reality in a different way. But I think what it does do is it alleviates a certain amount of anxiety and tension for people and it allows them to have a more enjoyable experience just in like regular everyday life without being intoxicated. That's

40:27the key. It's like it doesn't change the way you you your motor functions are. Doesn't change your visual. Well, it does actually improves your visual, which is really weird. Um I forget who the the scientist was but he did um study on um being able to recognize um whether or not uh it was like edge detection and being able to recognize u the changing in parallel lines and he did it. See if you can find out who this this scientist was but he was a very straight lay scientist. He wasn't a whack job and his joke was it seems like you can detect reality better when you're high than when you're not high. which is people that were on psilocybin were able to detect. So if you have two parallel lines and they move one slightly off parallel. The people on psilocybin were able to detect it quicker than the people that were sober. I believe that um for a number of

41:22reasons. Well, first of all, psilocybin at a basic level when we think of it as like a drug, but it's like in many ways it's a lot like the so-called SSRIs like Prozac, Zoloft and those things that they they work on serotonin. It mainly increases serotonin but different receptors than things like prozzac and zoloft. The ability to that would be we call that a psychopysics experiment. They'd vary that ever so slightly as you you described. Um the thresholds for that are are going to be different for different people, but if anything that can more narrowly tune attention is really going to help. I was surprised to learn this. I'd be curious what your thoughts are. I'm not a cannabis smoker. I just never really liked it. Um, but I had a guest on my podcast named Paul Ki mainly works he's a MD mainly works on trauma incredible trauma therapist and

42:08work has written about trauma wrote the book on trauma that I think is the one in my in my opinion and then we got into a discussion about like different substances and do they have application. So we talked about ketamine etc. Asked about alcohol just by way of comparison and he said there are basically zero therapeutic uses for alcohol right therapeutic but then I asked about cannabis. Now this isn't something he does in his own clinic. He does talk therapy, not drug, not drug therapy, although he's a psychiatrist, so he can prescribe things, but and he said, you know, cannabis is interesting and it may actually have some therapeutic potential, but the main effect of cannabis is to narrow attention and focus. It actually can increase attention and focus. Now, the problem is it's not a very good filter. So, people can narrowly attend to just video games

42:52or just to their anxiety if they're already anxious. That's a problem. But when it comes to psilocybin, psilocybin seems to increase creative thinking, new kind of new rules and algorithms about what could be an answer. So I'm not aware of how it might directly impact visual perception unless it narrows focus. But most of the drugs that impact serotonin are going to increase focus to some degree or another. And that can be good if what you're focusing on is pleasant. It can be really bad if what you're focusing on is really unpleasant. I knew people I'm sure you don't who just smoke weed and they have a panic attack. Yeah. The the the smoke weed thing is a weird one because it just it it's it's like many things. It's completely dependent upon the individual. Like the their individual genetics, their biology, whatever it is that they've had

43:41in their past. I know people that smoke marijuana and they're high functioning. And I know people that smoke marijuana and they don't get anything done. And I don't know if they're relate. Those two things are related. I think people who generally have um drive and discipline, marijuana gives them uh a break. It gives them a nice little just a little rest stop. And I think that's probably beneficial. And I also think it makes you a little kinder, a little more compassionate, a little more sensitive, which is probably very beneficial to someone who's hyperfocused. Like people that are like type A personalities are trying to get things done all the time. You smoke a little pot and you're like, "What am I doing?" let's [ __ ] relax a little and then you get back to it. You're all right. I think it's it's that's there's a great benefit to that.

44:27But I should also say that it's very popular in the jiu-jitsu world. Oh, yeah. I I always thought that had something to do with um uh the kind of creativity part of it like that you you can't plan jiu-jitsu, right? You have to improvise like jazz. In a lot of ways, there's definitely that, but it's also the focus thing that you're only thinking about that. Like while you're rolling, you're really only thinking about rolling. While you're smoking cannabis and then rolling, you're hyperfocused on it. And physical strength, you feel fine. You don't feel lethargic or anything. No, not at all. I actually enjoy it. I actually enjoy it when I lift weights, too. Oh, haven't tried that one. Yeah. I feel it like I feel it in the fibers. It's almost like I'm more aware of like what's going on instead of like this uh blunt sort of um you know you know almost like

45:20distant from uh each individual muscle fiber which I am normally normally I'm just trying to warm up and then I warm up and then I start getting going then I you know lift light first then I work my way up to what I normally use but when I'm high it's like I could feel like where it connects to the bone that just I feel everything. It just makes you more sensitive about what you're actually doing. And for um martial arts techniques, particularly for striking, I feel like I incorporate leverage better into things. I'm I I have better balance in terms of like not trying to execute a technique when I'm off position, you know, and it just makes me uh just more aware of like what's going on with my body. And that's super powerful. We had the the the nerd in me wants to say in neuroscience they call that interosception. Like people vary

46:09tremendously in their awareness of their internal state. You can know if you have a high or low degree of interosception by trying to count your heartbeats without taking your pulse. Some people can just do that. It's a skill you can build up over time. This is great for some people but some people are highly anxious. It sucks to have a lot of interosception. But we know of course that the mind muscle connection is really powerful. And it's not just mind muscle connection as a whatever they call bro science thing. The reality is that from peer-reviewed studies that if people focus on the contraction of a muscle during resistance training as opposed to moving the weight, right? Something that's hard to measure if they're actually doing it, the strength and hypertrophy gains are much greater. I think it's like a 15%. We need I had

46:52Andy Galpin on the podcast and he would know the exact number. Um, but I always wonder about this like in gyms where they're mirrors and people are watching themselves lift in the mirror. I mean, you're exterptting. You're not focused as much as you could on the actual feeling. So, you know, there's always a waiting between exterception to the out everything beyond the confines of your skin and interception. And if cannabis allows more interception, you can imagine that those workouts would be more effective in that way. But isn't there a benefit to observing yourself in a mirror because you make sure that you use the proper technique? Absolutely. I mean it right. I mean you always see those people like their shoulders hunch and they're you know they're making a mess of themselves um overworking their strong parts and you

47:32know I mean some people walk in the gym and it's clear they've never actually looked at like you know the lower half of the of the mirror. Right. Saddest thing. That's so sad. So weird. The skip leg day thing is a cruel joke but it's a cruel joke in the right direction because there's nothing worse than uh an imbalanced physique. I mean where someone has done a lot of work to try and create something. It's just so bad for your body. It's like having small legs and a large upper body is so unhealthy. every you like for sure your lower back's going to be [ __ ] well structurally and also just neurally you know again as a neuroscientist you think the nerve to muscle connection is what contracts fibers and if you think about somebody who's you know big upper body small legs that person that the neurons in their brain that represent

48:18their body are also completely contorted now but what do you think about a person like I bring him up all the time because he's so odd Jones like Jon Jones has the smallest calves of any man I've ever seen who is an elite athlete. And obviously he's an elite athlete. He's one of the greatest fighters of all time. And even now, while he's worked his way up to heavyweight, so he's he hasn't fought in two years because over that time he's been building himself up. And now he's like a legit 255 lbs. He's [ __ ] huge. Tiny calves. Well, what's going on there? What's really interesting is if you look at elite sprinters. Is that real? Yeah. So look how short the the muscle bellies are on his calves. Mhm. But if you look at elite sprinters, you Olympic sprinters, they'll have big legs, but if you look at and sometimes they'll have big bulging calves, but

49:06their calves are very short. That's actually going to lend itself to sprinting. You don't see Manny Pacquiao calves on sprinters. Interesting. Not good ones anyway. But he's not a sprinter. No, but he's got a lot of explosive power from what I understand. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm not a I'm not a knowledgeable about MMA. Pretty much everything I know about MMA I've learned from you and from Lex. So, look at him there. Even at 255 lbs, I mean, he's Yeah. He's got tweezers down there. These are very small calves, which is it's really unusual for someone who's built the way he is. Mhm. But his explosiveness out of those calves is probably uh met by that short muscle belly. Well, he's not the fastest guy, you know, and his whole thing is he's the best at uh controlling distance because he's very tall, especially for light heavyweight. not going to be as tall for

49:54a heavyweight, but he's fantastic at controlling distance. And if you're a person who wants to maximize your like you have a certain amount of weight, you can be you could be 205 lbs and that's it. If you want to be championship weight at 205 lbs, he's got the perfect physique. So, because he's really long, long arms and legs, long arms and legs. So, you can't get close to him. And he's a fantastic striker. And he uses those arms and long legs in a great way with his wrestling and his submissions cuz he has fantastic leverage. He's really like the perfect build for fighting. How tall did you say he was? Is it six plus? I think. Yeah, John is 6'3, 6'4. Is he back in it? I know he had a steroid pop, but is he back? Oh, yeah. No, he's back. That was a long time ago. That That's the steroid pop is a weird one, man. You know, he he kept 6'4. That's so he's skinny.

50:45Yeah. for 6'4", 205 lbs. Exactly. He kept um he, you know, I don't know what I don't know what happened, but the the story was that he got some tainted supplements, right? Which, uh may or may not be true. Um the problem is he I'm sorry, I just laugh when this last time we were talking about the Deca Burrito, the Olympic I mean like anyway, sorry. Go on. I just I couldn't help but chuckle. But some guys do get tainted supplements. That's a real issue. You know, I know one of the ways I know it's a real issue is we didn't get uh um steroid that what what happened? Oh, we didn't get steroids that showed up in um on its supplements, but when we were initially starting out, we used this uh third-party company that would uh mix our ingredients and they would mix ingredients for other supplement companies as well. you know, it was a

51:41company that packaged stuff for you. And so we did third party tests on some of our stuff and we'd find vitamins in there that weren't supposed to be in there and then we just trace them out. So we realized, oh, they're getting it from the vats. Like these guys aren't cleaning the vats properly that they used for the previous supplement. Now, if you're getting a lot of cheap stuff, particularly if you're getting stuff that's made overseas, that's the same companies that are making steroids. So they're making, you know, wherever it is in China or what have you, they're they're allowed to do that or whatever. It's not regulated. So there's guys that are buying off-the-counter, real, normal supplements that are supposed to be steroid-free that have steroids in them. Now, there's also unscrupulous companies that will add steroids to their products

52:27just to make them more beneficial, just to make them more functional. And that that's that's true, too. So there's a guy named Tim Means. He got busted with tainted supplements. And if you look at Tim, he does not at all look like a guy who takes steroids. I mean, not at all. And he was just taking some normal stuff that he bought from some health food store. And it turned out he popped for a very small trace amount of this stuff. Previous tests is nothing. And then this tiny small amount which would indicate that and this was what they said about John as well. The problem with what John did is like John tested negative and then he tested positive but the positive amount was so small that like it it's almost like he's getting off of it. So he would have to be on it for a long period of time. Like he'd have to be on it for weeks in order to reap any

53:18benefit. But meanwhile, it was less than that time ago he was negative and now he's got this trace amount in his system. So there's a lot of things that seem to lean towards the idea that he was accidentally dosed that he took a tainted supplement. However, there's Do you know u more plates more dates? Yeah, Derek. Derek. Yeah, I like Derek a lot. I was really pleased to see him on here. Love that guy. I love he's great and I love his show and he's super super knowledgeable. Um, and he calls [ __ ] and he's but he calls [ __ ] on a lot of guys in in the UFC and he goes over their specific blood work and what he was concerned with was more the uh testosterone to epit epi testosterone ratio. He said it was off, way off and not normal. And also the amount of testosterone that John had, the free testosterone in his

54:14system, he also felt was so low that it seemed to indicate that he was coming off exogenous hormones and that, you know, there's maybe some masking don't going on or whatever, but it was enough to make John ban him. Uh he blocked him on social media. Yeah. Which may Derek goes, that seems to indicate, you know, he hit a sore spot. Yeah. the blocking uh the blocking move implies a a worry at the very least. Yeah, Dererick goes deep. Yeah, he goes really deep. He went over Paul Costa. There's like quite a few guys that he who Paul Costa is another guy who's built like a bodybuilder. He's like a freak specimen and he kind of calls [ __ ] on him, too. He calls [ __ ] on a lot of these guys. Yeah. Well, and the lines have become really blurry because there's, you know, it used to be if anyone was taking any exogenous androgens, they were quote

55:01unquote on steroids. But now of course there's TRT which is up to 200 milligrams per week if that you can't do that in MMA. It's not legal. No, that's not allowed. I've looked over the list for um Duncan French sent me the list that they have for UFC athletes is interesting. I still want to sit down with Jeff Nitzky sometime. Jeff, very interesting guy. Yeah, I mean uh he would definitely have a conversation with you about this. He's also um a guy that is really honest about what they can and can't catch. He's like there's a real pro and also honest about the list of ban supplements. If you go to the USADA website, the amount of [ __ ] that you can't take because it's tainted, it's crazy. Like it's like hundreds of supplements or because it works. You know, last time I was on here, we talked about Tonga Ali, right? And there

55:45are now additional papers showing that yeah, it raises testosterone and estrogen a little bit in parallel with that. it, you know, it looks like it's not going to cause people to, you know, to flag red on in most leagues, but but the increases are not what one sees with, you know. What about testerone? Turquestone hasn't really been looked at by it's not on the list that I saw, but it's supposedly pretty [ __ ] effective. Yeah, it works through this estrogen blocking mechanism and it seems pretty effective. Derek sent me some. I'm yet to take it. But there are things that are short acting that like for instance women uh in a lot of women's sports they'll use lowd dose oxandrallone anavar right which is DHT dihydrotestosterone it doesn't convert to estrogen that's the stuff that makes your hair fall out uh exactly and makes beards grow and it

56:31also hardens people up it gives them that really dense look and people will take it before workouts because it immediately makes you feel or pretty quickly makes you feel kind of aggressive and like you want to train not angry aggressive but you want to move your body but then it also blunts and a lot Doctors prescribe it for this reason. It reduces sex hormone binding globbulin, SHBG. There aren't a lot of things out there that can reduce SHBG. SHBG is what prevents testosterone from being free testosterone. And I asked Aia, Peter Tio, like what's the healthy level of free testosterone that a normal person should have, normal male should have? And he said it should be about 2% of your total testosterone. And there aren't a lot of tools to do that. So if someone has a testosterone of, you know, of a thousand and their free

57:15testosterone is five, that's bad, right? You'd expect it to, you know, be up in the 20s. So, you know, as the oxandrolone anavar can adjust that, but it also can crank up liver enzymes, but it's very fast acting. So, a lot of athletes, especially female athletes, will take this and in the short run and then, you know, train with it, cut with it. That's how they get the like I have this theory, and again, this is just theory. A lot of these female CrossFit athletes, they get those turtle shell abs. Some of them might have low body fat to begin with, but sometimes you'll see a look and you just have to, you know, you're projecting, but it's it's like, okay, they're taking something. Um, they don't look androgenized, but they look like they're definitely taking something in. Well, I could speak for the jiu-jitsu world and especially in competitions

57:58where they're not testing, there's a lot of girls that are taking things. Um, I have a friend who used to date a girl who's a competitor and she started doing steroids and he started getting weirded out. Well, clitoreral enlargement is a real thing. She didn't get that yet. U, this is quite a few years ago, but he was just weirded out that she was like taking testosterone and just to try to, you know, be better at strangling people. But it's really unregulated in a lot of ways. It's like um I mean some jiu-jitsu competitions test, but they kind of test in the realm of the old UFC testing where it's really just a an IQ test because if you're smart, you know what to take and when to get off of it and when to cycle off before you weigh in and you know it's not that big of an issue. But these in between competitions is where they're making all their gains,

58:47right? So in between competitions, what USADA does is they do random drug tests throughout the year. And even Derek says even that like is you can get away with it. He's he explained what they're testing for and why you can get away with it in multiple videos and I don't want to [ __ ] it up because the science of it I'm sure I'll butcher he's very skilled at at at all that. I mean I think the testosterone replacement therapy part has also contaminated the public discussion. Like I really appreciate that years ago you you just kind of outed with it. You're like yeah, you know, TRT. But yeah, I've been telling people from the moment I started taking it. I'm not ashamed of it. I don't. No. Why? Well, not only that, like I I'm interested in all kinds of things that make my body function better. And uh I'm also interested in telling people. I

59:33would never take something and not tell people that I was taking it. If it was good, I'm like, what if it was good? Why wouldn't I tell you? And if if it wasn't good, why would I take it? Like, so if I'm taking something and it doesn't work, I'll tell you that I'll tell you it doesn't work. But if I'm taking something that works, like I don't understand this fear of expressing, you know, what supplements you're on or what what things you're taking. It's very bizarre to me. Yeah. I don't know what part of human psychology that reflects either. I mean I think that I mean look it's clear that testosterone whether or not it's replacing or maxing out or whatever not maxing out like super physiological doses but to raise testosterone through injection or whatever of cipionate in reasonable dosage with the doctor you feel better you effort feels good you

60:21recover quicker etc there are limits to that right you can convert to estrogen it has to be done properly but that's very clear you don't want to have hyper physical levels those are dangerous no you get people retain water they get puffy they get really emotional, they get gynecomastia. I mean, there's all sorts of issues. And then there is this issue that if there's a pre-existing prostate cancer, it can make it worse. But I don't think there's any evidence that it can cause prostate cancer. Actually, probably the opposite. If estrogen is too high and testosterone is too low, that's actually worse for prostate health. I mean, young guys don't tend to get prostate cancer. They can, but it's pretty rare. But in general, as it relates to sports, it's tricky because like for instance, last time I kind of walked around this issue, but this time

61:01I'll just say it. I mean, I don't like basketball anyway enough that I would worry that it be I know someone who's a professional basketball player. And I asked him about steroids. And he said, "Well, if you get injured, you can take up to 200 migs a week, which is considered a TRT dose, but that's a actually a pretty big dose. That's a one typical one mil injection. That's a that's a significant difference. That's going to Wait, wait, hold on. One milliliter." So what? So the typical dosage of of testosterone is 200 mg per mill per. So one cc is how many mill? One mil. One mil. So these guys are taking two. No, they're taking one one of those a week is what they're allowed to take. [ __ ] huge, right? Cuz most people are either break it. We talked about this I think before, but breaking that up into some smaller

61:44injections amounts is probably better to just keep androgen levels more reasonable. What's a normal level that people take per week? 100 to 200 milligrams per week is pretty typical. typically spread out like 210 of a cc. So you right. So if you're thinking cc's like someone might divide that into so half a cc on Monday, half a cc on Thursday, right? That's a that's a reasonable thing. But that's still a lot. It's still a lot. I mean half a cc that's I couldn't take that much on a Yeah. You'd be raging. Exactly. Most typical now people will take somewhere it pays to think about it in milligrams. people is take somewhere between, you know, 10 and 40 milligrams every third day or so, right? You just think about that. So, 10 and 40. Really? Yeah. Somewhere between Yeah. Because some people, you know, came into it with their testosterone at 650. And when you

62:32talk about replacement, you know, nowadays people will prescribe 40 is so high. 40 milligrams every 3 or 4 days. That's still 120 milligrams, you know, per week or so. Seems a lot. 40 on Monday, 40 on Wednesday, 40 on Friday. I take 1.5 every four days. 1.5 Yeah. Like like if you look at a 1 cc you take the little Yeah. A little tiny amount. That's 30 milligrams every four days. Yeah. But you probably have 1.5 is 30. Okay. Wait, we're talking is it 0.15 or 1.5? 1.5. So like you know like if if 1 cc is 10. So you're taking goes to 10 I take it's like that big. Yeah. But with it's 200 migs per mill. So for every little notch on there, every major notch on there, not the little tiny ticks, but every little that's going to be 20 milligs. That's what So even so what? So if it reads one, that's 20 milligrams. So it goes 0.12.3 up to one. If it's a 1 ml syringe, one cc one cc.

63:33And so are you taking the whole syringe worth every four days? No. No. No. No. Then you're taking far less just to the number one. Yeah. So you're doing the 0.1. So if you look close, so you're taking I'm taking point one point like it reach right reads one two three four five six seven it when you get to 10 that's one cc correct I take one and a half every every four days so you are taking you're taking a very low dose you're taking if it's 200 migs per mill which almost certainly it is in this country testosterone cipionate it's going to be you are taking 30 milligrams every four days so someone did Some people take up to four. We'll take Some people are taking essentially more than three times what you're taking is allowed according to this player, right? I don't want the NBA to come after me. Either either they're going to come after me to Yeah.

64:27I'm looking into an article about just to see what they were saying. This was on ESPN a couple years ago. It says like the it's a little secret that nobody knows about and they're talking about sleep deprivation. And the whole article is about sleep deprivation, but testosterone is mentioned a bunch. What What about sleep deprivation? You know, I was reading something about that with sleep deprivation and jet lag. They were talking about one of uh a game that was played where the players flew in the day of and didn't have the best performance. And they were talking about in a WNBA game recently, the players were complaining, not WNBA, was regular NBA. Yeah, I just know that that happened in WNBA game like last week. They were complaining about that. But it does happen in it must be a factor. Like you would never do that in a fight.

65:08Oh, huge. That's what they're talking about. It dropped these players down to like a 20-year-old down to a guy with that was like should have been in his 50s. Oh, so they did a test the test on their testosterone. Okay. So, Hoyer and his staff considered their efforts to counter sleep loss like deep breathing exercise to optimize sleep to be all but a band-aid for a broken bone. By the 2014 2015 season, Royer and his staff had fully committed to their investigation of sleep deprivation, tracking 18 players over multiple teams in each conference. When the season began, those players testosterone levels ranked on average in the 88th percentile compared to males their own age. After two months of NBA play and travel, their levels had fallen to the 70th percentile. by March the 32nd percentile, a 64% drop in just five months. So that's just being worn the

65:57[ __ ] out. Yeah. I mean, I get called a lot, do some work with military, do some work with any kind of high performance teams that are dealing with this kind of thing. They want to know how can we maintain hormone levels and performance. And you always start with get regular sleep as much as you can. How it's everything. And how do you, you know, one night no big deal, but two nights, three nights you're impaired. And a lot of these guys also are really disciplined, but some go out and party afterwards and that whole thing. So, it's always maximize exposure to sunlight in the first half of the day. Number one thing for just making sure that you sleep well that night and then limiting artificial light exposure by dimming lights from 10 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. Very few people do those two things. But they have an outsized effect on sleep.

66:41And there's a really nice study out of Israel this last year that showed that if you had people, this was men and women, go outside for 20 minutes three times a week and try and expose as much of their skin as they possibly could to sunlight while still being decent. All right? That it raised testosterone and estrogen significantly. Why? Because skin isn't just a organ to, you know, tattoo and protect our organs. It's a organ that actually functions as an endocrine, as a hormone organ that like vitamin D, right? This kind of thing. And there was this whole pathway they delineated in this study. Really interesting based on caratinosytes, which are these particular skin cells and p-53, which is a cell cycle molecule. Super interesting. It showed getting sunlight on your body, getting sunlight exposure to your eyes early in the day increases

67:27testosterone and estrogen, increases feelings of well-being, improves sleep, etc. It's like all the things we know, right? But people are think are finally catching on to this. And even though I kind of blab about this ad nauseium on my podcast, people always say, "Well, can't I just crank up my phone really bright in the morning and sit there?" There's always this kind of negotiating like you're you're not going to out negotiate the sun, right? Right. I mean, and then people think, "Oh, the sun that's really kind of woo technology." No, we evolved to get sunlight during the day and to avoid light at night. Have they done studies on people that live in like say the Pacific Northwest where they don't get a lot of sunlight and whether or not that affects their testosterone and estrogen? Yeah. So they definitely it depends on where they start out because there's

68:10some genetic variation. I mean the variation in testosterone levels is huge. Hence the huge reference range of like 300 NOGS per teslier all the way up to you know 1,200 right this is what makes TRT kind of a a tricky topic but more seasonal depression for sure greater requirement for sunlight viewing but the uh in order to keep mood high and hormone levels high but the good news is people that are very susceptible moodwise and hormone wise to lack of sunlight respond best when they start getting light so there's this really nice study that looks at like night owls and people that don't get much sunlight during the day. If they start doing getting some caffeine, exercise, and sunlight in the early part of the day and caffeine. Mhm. Just to ramp up their energy levels early on, get them outside, but also eating in the earlier part of the day,

68:56you know, just trying to bring their active schedule into the earlier part of the day. But doesn't caffeine just make you feel like you're not tired? Ah, so this is a really cool mechanism. There's actually a trick to avoid the daytime uh the afternoon crash. It's not a trick, it's biology. But caffeine is an adenosine antagonist. It basically as the longer you're awake, adenosine or Matt Walker would say adinosine. Aden adenosine builds up in your bloodstream. It's what makes you feel fatigued. Caffeine essentially blocks the adenosine receptor. But then when caffeine wears off, the adenosine that's still around binds to that receptor and you crash. You feel really sleepy. So one thing that you can do is when you wake up in the morning, don't ingest caffeine for the first 90 minutes or so. Like really push that off so that the adenosine and adenosine receptor

69:46interactions can all take place and dissipate. Then you drink caffeine and what you'll find is that if normally you would crash around 2 or 3 in the afternoon, you don't experience that crash anymore because the caffeine wears off but there isn't a lot of adenosine there to bind the receptor. The crash that I experience from caffeine is lack of caffeine or caffeine and then getting off it is nothing compared to the carb crash. Oh, carb crash for me, like if I have a sandwich, like if I go to like uh [ __ ] Jimmy John's or something and have a big giant sandwich. How often does that happen? Very rarely, but when I do, I'm like, "What's wrong with you?" They used to play a place called Cavarettas in uh the valley that I used to go to, and they would have these meatball subs. They were [ __ ] sensational. And sausage

70:28and pepper subs. was like an oldtime Italian deli and uh every time I would eat one I would just go into a coma. But you are mostly low carb meat. Yes. I I actually talked to uh Paul Saladino um a while back and he's you guys now eat fruit as part of the carnivore diet, right? Well, I do. Yeah. Some people don't. Some people are just eating meat and that's it. That's their whole life, you know. That's rough. Is it rough? Well, I mean I love meat, right? I I really do. And uh but I love vegetables and fruit also. Mhm. But I do like a nice bowl of rice or oatmeal after I train. I'm kind of old school that way. Yeah. But I eat butter and cheese and all that kind of stuff. I don't do it in huge amounts. I mean I little bits of butter and little bits of cheese. I try and limit it, but I do love toolini and pasta and pizza. I try not to eat it, but

71:15I love it. That's not the problem. The problem is the way it makes my body feel. It just it doesn't feels good. I feel like [ __ ] I feel like I ate glue, you know. By the way though, some pasta makes me feel less like that and I don't know what that is. And you know, I speculate on and I don't I don't know how much you've looked into glyphosate and how much of an impact glyphosate um contamination has on people because we we looked at it the other day. There was a study that showed how um they they went over a bunch of different things u different plants and produce and things and the amount of glyphosate they found was pretty stunning. Glyphosate, which is Roundup, which is a very common pesticide or herbicide, I guess. Is it herbicide? Was that a pesticide? Well, I forget. But either way, it's [ __ ] really bad for you. And there's

72:07many people that speculate that what a lot of people are calling gluten sensitivities is really you're having a reaction to glyphosate. I mean, I should be clear. I try and eat plain rice or oatmeal when I do eat the clean carbs, if there is such a thing. I I hear you. I mean, if I eat a lot of carbohydrates, I crash. Do you know anything about glyphosate though? Well, I was going to say I was in Copenhagen recently and give a talk about totally unrelated things, but earlier in the week, Sha Dr. Shaina Swan was there. I think she was on here. This is the woman who wrote that book. Shannon Swan, excuse me. And she gave a talk about the phalates. The world's most impossible to pronounce word starts with a P. Phalates. It's like opthalmology. Um, most There are opthalmologists that can't spell opthalmology. I'm an opthalmology department. I see it

72:53misspelled all the time. Um, her talk was amazing, right? And you asked about kind of regional differences and uh related to light in terms of testosterone. But what I took away from her talk was that people who live in rural areas because of the use of pesticides that sperm counts and testosterone counts are way way down. They're really suppressed in those areas. And stunningly and I mean why that isn't front page news. I I don't know. I mean maybe there's a political side to it, maybe there's not. This is also recent finding. I mean, I believe it was 2015 when they figured out the phalate connection with people's dip in testosterone, dip in sperm count, and then also an uptick in women having miscarriages. But I would think that would be from I don't know, maybe it's just the way my Yeah, I think the problem is there's no solution. And so when there's no

73:40solution to something like that, plus it could harm the economy, like I think people panic and those they don't know what to do about something like that. If there's a thing and this thing has a solution like you know like oh don't drink this eat that because if you drink this this [ __ ] you up but if you eat that you're going to be good you know there that's something that they would talk about but when something like this when you find out that the average person eats a credit cardized portion of plastic and microplastics every week when that's a little weird too right we tried to figure that out the other day that the the calculation of that might be a little fazy but you guys actually did the did the math I love it like scientist pulled something out. There was an article that sort of described how they modeled it, like how

74:22they came up with that uh credit card thing. It's like clearly variable, right? Like some people will have more, some people will have less. But when they say the average person, it's like it's a little But the point is that's a real issue. And that's one phalates are one thing, Roundup is another one. This glyphosate thing is a real issue and apparently it's in a lot of foods. Yeah. [snorts] I don't eat many processed carbohydrates. I mean, I look more and more at what we eat at home, and it's stuff not in packages, but I don't know if you get away with it. I see I I think glyphosate is a commonly used thing in just on crops. I don't know if like by eating clean, you're getting away from glyphosate contamination. So, like if I rinse the organic strawberries, I could still be ingesting glyphosate. I mean, the problem is it's only legal.

75:15It's legal here, but that [ __ ] has been like eliminated from a lot of countries. A lot of countries don't want people taking that in, but in this country, it's like widely used. Like how many Google how many countries allow glyphosate use? Or how many country just Google how many countries have outlawed glyphosate? I mean, I feel like you can do things to offset some of the damage like getting sunlight, getting exercise, trying to eat well, but yeah, not direct compensation. Look at this. Following the landmark case against Monsanto, which saw them being found liable for a former groundskeeper, 46-year-old Dwayne Johnson's cancer, 32 countries to date have banned the use of glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup weed killer. Okay. Because So, it's an herbicide. Yeah, it's that's it's some scary [ __ ]

76:05That is scary. I saw Dwayne Johnson. I thought the rock for a second. Different Dwayne. Dwayne. Different Dwayne. It's a for fairly common name that Dwayne but um that but someone I was reading this whole thing about someone equating gluten sensitivities with glyphosate because they were saying that how many how much of wheat is contaminated with glyphosate and they were saying that may be what people are calling gluten sensitivities with some folks it might be actually that well her talk freaked me out um and this freaks me out because I care a lot maybe I'm getting old or because I care a lot about next generation. I really do. I mean, I feel like I've kind of made it through the shoot. You know, if I get hit by a, you know, bullet cancer or something tomorrow, like I've had a really good life, I want to keep going. But, um, I worry I think about the

76:52school shooting thing. I worry about what that represents at a larger thing in terms of just people feeling that disenfranchised and then people feeling that scared and concerned all the time that things like that are going to happen. And if you can't trust the food you eat, like, what can you trust? Right. Right. Right. And I'm not a paranoid person, but I I like to think that we are emerging or have emerged from the last few years, the whole pandemic bit with people more focused on what they can and need to do for their own health. Some people it seems that way, but then again on social media, you get a limited window, but I I worry tremendously that people are still waiting for some large governing body to deliver the the school lunch that's going to make everybody healthy. Like I think it's very clear at this point that everybody has to take

77:37responsibility for their own health. And that's two things. That's learning information and then trying the things that are going to, you know, accessing the things that are going to work. I mean, that's a huge part of what my life's about these days. And this this is why I I find that whether or not it's a discussion about carnivore diets or vegan diets, I mean, I look at the debates around that and I just have to chuckle mostly about the way the debates are playing out because it's so theatrical. like Liver King on the one hand and then the these like do we be vegan scientists many of whom I'm not talking about Stanford colleagues of course but others that are just like so combative in different spheres and there's no there's no solution to come from that. Yeah, the liver king thing drives me nuts cuz that guy's on steroids.

78:19Just shut the [ __ ] up. I know he's eating really healthy. It's clear he's eating all these animal foods and you know he's eating organ meat which is very rich in nutrients. Well, that's true, but he's dodging the the main bullet. Well, it's too late for him now cuz he said no. So So if he is even on TRT, he's he should come out and just say it. Well, look at him because Yeah. I mean, just do you know how rare it is to have a physique like that and not be on steroids? You would have to be in the 0000.1% of the human population. Just the rare genetic freaks. I mean, I don't care how much you lift weights. Like that is a freak physique. Like pull up a photo of that dude. Well, one of his main assertions and others have made this assertion is that when you eat an organ like a testicle or a liver, that the nutrients in that

79:10organ are specifically channeled to the organ that it would most benefit from. Is that real? Is that true? I mean, that might be that looks like I mean, if am I going to just if I were to just put that through my knowledge of hormones and biology and I would say TRT. Oh, that guy. Yeah, the photo. But I'm saying what you just said. Oh, so the direct No. So there's no evidence that I am aware of that if you eat say liver that the nutrients are specifically directed towards your liver. Right. There's no evidence. There's some old old studies using radioactive labeling of of organs, having animals ingest those organs, and then slicing up the brain and body and looking. And there was some small but interesting specific diversion of brain to brain. But in my opinion, if you're eating brain and it's diverted to your brain, that's actually

79:59a concern, not a benefit because of prons. Pons. Yeah. So, I'll go on record saying to my knowledge, there's no evidence that eating testicles, for instance, supports your testicles because it's directed to the testicles. Now, there may be some bioactive may be some bioactive hormones in there that go and support testicular function in some other way, but when things are brought into the gut, they're broken down into their component parts and they go out into the bloodstream. And then which organ gets that stuff depends on whether or not there's say a blood brain barrier, which keeps a lot of stuff out of the brain, or a blood test barrier or a blood ovary barrier. Every organ, like the spleen, etc. has a barrier. So, some things get in more readily than others, but to my knowledge, zero evidence that eating spleen helps your spleen.

80:46Right. So, but why do people say these things? Is this like old wives tales? Is this or is it just bro science? Well, I think it's because I think it's because that there are nutrients for instance in liver like very high concentrations of choline precursor to acetylcholine. It is true that liver is one of the most choline-dense foods in the world. Far more than an egg, far more than any vegetable or nut is going to give you. And now I'm sure some some celery warrior will come after me about warrior something like that, you know. And the momentary, as you know better than I, the moment you say one thing categorically, you know, you're kind of inviting it. But I've kind of learned to to in to enjoy that response. I learned from it. Um, and correct me if I'm wrong, but liver incredibly high in choline. So, you could see how the the

81:31the lore would emerge that eating liver is really good for you because it is if you're interested in getting a lot of choline and vitamin D and or vitamin A and other things of that sort. But the idea that it would be diverted specifically to your liver, that seems kind of crazy. Now, there's also this idea, I won't name names here, but there were people on social media for a while saying, "Well, walnuts are really good for your brain because walnuts actually look like a brain." [laughter] And that's why, and you know, testicles look a lot like testicles, too. But the point is that walnuts have certain things in them that are good for lots of cells, not just for brain tissue. But they have healthy fats, right? Definitely. I love walnuts, especially the red red walnuts are amazing. My my girlfriend's obsessed with all this like

82:13hard to find like oldfashioned food like red walnuts and make I don't even know what a red walnut is. They're red. They the skin on the on the walnut is red. The the nut isn't red, but the the skin on them is delicious. I don't think the skin Yeah. You know, like once you crack them Yeah. Once you crack them. Does it look brown? And the thing Oh, they're so good. And it looks like a brain. Okay. I have seen those before. They're delicious. I was thinking the outside shell was red. I was confused. No, they're delicious. And um whether or not they're better for you than standard walnuts, but walnuts are good for you. Walnuts are great for you. I mean, you know, they're caloric calorie dense, but they're great for you. So, one of the things that Paul Saladino always wants to talk about is plant defense chemicals and about eating

82:52plants that plants don't want you to eat them. And so when you eat them, they're excreting these plant defense chemicals. Now, my thing on that is, and this is uh one of the things that Rhonda Patrick likes to talk about, is that that may [clears throat] have a hormetic effect. So there might be benefit to that, just like there's benefit to cold therapy and hot therapy, and that there's some foods that eating them, even though they do have these defense chemicals, those defense chemicals, at least in certain doses, might have a beneficial effect on your body. Makes good sense to me. I I'll say this. I'm going to try carnivore because I I told Paul I would. I'm going to do blood work first and then after. But I'm not giving up my athletic greens and I'm still going to eat cucumbers which he says are a fruit and so I'm home free.

83:31Told me I have to cut the skin off them too. So I'm I'm going to try it and see what happens. But I've also talked to Rhonda and she's really big on this broccoli sprout thing and it a lot of things that are incompatible in the Instagram space make a lot of sense to me scientifically like eating some greens but also eating some meat etc. In terms of plants being bad for us, I mean there are a lot of toxic components of plants. Typically the further out on the branch you go towards fruit, the less toxic they become, right? Eating the bark is generally more dangerous. Although bourberine, a commonly used substance for lowering blood glucose, right? Like metformin. So poor man's metformin is made from tree bark basically. Aspirin is as well, right? Aspirin derivatives, things of that sort alkaloids. There is something interesting about plants and I've talked

84:15to Paul and other you know serious colleagues in the in you know amino acid science space. So there is something called nonproin amino acids. There used to be a guy at Stanford who studied these and he's a world expert in non-proin amino acids. Many seeds and plants contain amino acids that can't be incorporated into proteins and may have some toxicity to them if they they are ingested. Now, there's never been a widespread systematic exploration of all the seeds and all the plants that people eat to see whether or not there are a lot of non-protein amino acids, but these things act in a sort of pronlike way when they get into the brain or they get into different tissues. And so, you know, I don't want to spark fear that every, you know, sunflower seeds are going to give you pre pronike syndromes, but it's conceivable that by eating

85:02certain plant compounds, one could ingest these non-proin amino acids that they would get incorporated in to existing proteins or that they would look enough like protein amino acids that they could sneak their way in across the blood brain barrier or into cells and cause certain kinds of dysfunction. And this particular lab's focus was on figuring out whether or not neurodeeneration was a downstream effect of some nonproin amino acids really. So in that sense, what was their conclusion? The their conclusion was that a lot of plants and in particular a lot of types of seeds contain non-proin amino acids that if they were to be incorporated into mamalian tissues and cells that that would be very bad. There's also like low levels of certain chemicals that are in seeds that are really bad for you like uh apple seeds, right? Don't ask. Yeah.

85:50Yeah. And and there was this idea years ago that um the marijuana plant could inhibit the reproduction of animals that want to eat it by way of increasing aromatization, the conversion of testosterone to estrogen. And then when I was in college, there was this thing everyone would say, "Don't smoke the seeds. It'll make you sterile." People used to say that. Maybe that's But they were high. So [laughter] that's funny that that was in college. Yeah. I remember people saying, "Don't smoke the seeds. They'll make you sterile." Yeah. That's ridiculous. Yeah. Um I don't know that there's any that children were accidentally birthed because someone smoked the seeds like don't worry baby I'm smoking seeds. Yeah. I guess we should say as a universal rule never use the argument that something lowers sperm counter testosterone as contraception. Yes.

86:33Right. Because I know a former pro bodybuilder who was juiced to the gills and told me that he conceived both of his children on his heaviest cycles ever. Really? Yeah. Somehow he maintained, you know, some function. Yeah. Well, the whole you just need one sperm idea, you know. I guess either she was hyperfertile or he was hyperfertile or both. But there there are two kids that he claimed were conceived on everything from Debbox and to What do those kids look like? They're actually great goodlooking kids. [laughter] He's now SL he lost all most of that muscle. He's now walking around like a normal human being. Did you uh hear about that child who uh is abnormally large at 2 years old because the father was taking testosterone cream and uh the the kid started showing pubic hair and an enormous penis at 2 years of age? The conversion of testosterone to DHT

87:22which causes penis growth. Will um well the question is will that kid think or or punish his father later? Well, I don't know. The question is are other people going to try that now? Uh that would be terrible. So, here's the boy. 2-year-old showed signs of puberty after he was exposed to his dad's testosterone gel. He developed pubic hair and his height was off the chart. So, he's like the size of a 5-year-old at two. And then on top of that, they talked about his sizable penis and his his uh raging erections. How'd they say it? What was what was the word? Goddamn popup ads. What did it say? They they talked about his something about his he's 26 pounds at the age of one. Put on over two pounds a month between the ages of 12 and 18 months. He's had massive sustained erections. Well, [laughter] it's it's happened in the other

88:10direction. Women who were using a lot of evening primrose oil common in a lot of um lotions and things like that. It's a very strong estrogen. And there were yeah there were examples of uh their male sons getting premature or not even premature breast bud development from contact with their mom. Whoa. So primrose is like a thing that women put on in lotions and that's an estrogen lotion has enough estrogen-like properties that certain that boys were showing estrogenization of some some of their features. Are women aware of that that that that [snorts] stuff has estrogen quality to it? Probably not. I mean, you know, I've I've gone on and on social media and elsewhere about the fact that I am not a fan of melatonin. You know, low doses every once in a while for treatment of jet lag or something, but melatonin has a specific role which is to suppress puberty during

89:01development in addition to all its effects on sleep, etc. And the idea that people are prescribing that to their kids, I don't know that it's screwed up their kids puberty trajectory, but just the idea that you would take high doses of hormone. Look, we're talking about low, well-controlled doses of TRT. People freak out. But then people can pop melatonin like it was M&M's and they give it to their kids when they're clearly better alternatives. I mean, it makes no sense at all. I don't think they think of melatonin in that way. I don't take melatonin, but I I I don't think most people think of it as a hormone. Well, now there's some evidence coming out that it may have other negative effects. I mean, I don't like to be the the scare tactic guy, but it just seems to me there are a lot of reasons to just avoid it unless you really need it and

89:40occasional use. But the stuff in kids is really serious between the Dr. Shaina Swan stuff about phalates and then you're talking about evening primrose oil or you're talking about I mean this kid I have a confession as as um that didn't happen to me but when I was a kid I had um when I was five or six I had hair growing on my Adam's apple and my voice was the same as it is now. They called me they called me froggy when I was a little kid. I this grew into my voice and so I had a genetic test recently and I actually have a mutation in an androgen receptor. Now that didn't make me super strong. I wasn't a super impressive athlete or anything like that but the this particular mutation probably is what allowed me to work really long hours. It relates to kind of cortisol production and things like that. M um and when you start exploring you find

90:28that yeah about 12% of young males have mutations in one or the other of these these hormone pathways that sort of shift you towards being able to for instance like I can work very very long hours and it's not cuz I'm I'm no David Gogggins right it's just I can just like work a lot and there are other mutations that are more subtle like you seem to have I can't believe you can do four podcasts a week the MMA thing and the comedy thing like to me doing one podcast a week is like it it is feels like a lot. Plus, I run my lab, but that just feels like a lot. But I asked you a while ago if you, you know, your voice ever goes or you ever get super tired and you're like, "No, I think some people just naturally have more androgen receptor or they make more androgen." And then, of course, if they supplement androgen through TRT or something and

91:09get away with lower dose because it just hits their system more efficiently. For me, with podcast and MMA and comedy, it's all things I really enjoy though. I think that but that's the big thing. Like people say, "You work really hard." I'm like kind of I kind of don't work. Yeah. Well, that's how I feel, too. Yeah. I do a lot I put in a lot of effort. There's a lot of effort involved in my life, but uh there's very little work, you know? You know what? You know what I have to work? Talk to Jamie when I have to do ads. That's [ __ ] work. I'm like, [ __ ] Like, I [ __ ] them up. Like, [ __ ] [ __ ] I suck at this. I'm [ __ ] terrible at it. I have to do them three or four times. Jamie knows the truth. It's still not that long though. It's still easy. It's still easy. It's still easy. It's

91:48not like working in a coal mine. Yeah. It's not It's not like a [ __ ] laborer in the hot sun all day, but none of what I do is work. That's how I feel. I love podcasting and I love You love science. And I love science. I mean, I have a I have like scientific Tourette's, right? I just want to learn learn and share, share, share. There's a meth there's a like a real lesson in that for people. If you can find a thing that you really truly enjoy, I mean, people have said that throughout time. Find a thing you love and you never work a day in your life. Do do that thing that you love. That's that's how I feel. I don't feel like I'm I work a lot. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I'm bas when I was six or seven, I'd spend the weekend reading about medieval weapons or like frog biology or something and then I'd come into class on Monday and I'd just

92:26ask if I could give a lecture and now I just [laughter] I would they took me a psychiatrist and they're like, "Yeah." My parents were like, "Is he okay?" And they like [laughter] he just I used to go This is so embarrassing. You know those carnivals where you um you used to throw a ping-pong ball into the thing and win a goldfish. Yeah. Well, I loved aquarium and goldfish, but I knew that most of those fish were going to die because people weren't decllorinating the water. So, I used to go buy decllor and go to these carnivals. My mom used to take me when I was little and I would give a I'd give you free declor for the fish if you want it, but you had to listen to me lecture about the decllorinization process. Oh my god, how old were you? I was like six or [laughter] seven. And I didn't charge for it. And I felt so good just knowing like these fish are

93:03going to survive. They're going to have a great fish. Like I just loved but mostly I just wanted to tell them about declor. Wow. And now I do it like on a podcast. That's hilarious. Six or seven. I was just I'd never stopped talking. Can you imagine being a [ __ ] carney with three teeth on meth and some [ __ ] kid comes up and wants to talk to you about chlorine the goldfish. This I got uh [ __ ] for this the other day cuz I won't say where we're living but uh at all. But a certain neighbor has some very high level security next to them, right? Not a super fancy neighbor. It just so happens that I'll just say that they had the the Secret Service are parked near me now. And so I got to be friendly with them, walking back and forth to the mailbox and, you know, kind of learning thing. And they're real friendly people. Real

93:44hardworking. They work super long hours. Shout out to the Secret Service. Yeah. Then they don't choose who they protect. What do you say? Uh, you elect them, we protect them. And I said, careful who you decide who elected who. But um, I'm independent. But the fact of the matter is that they're really nice, but we've gotten into discussions around sleep because they're on these crazy sleep cycles and how to regulate sleep and fitness stuff. And this one real uh nice secret service agent, she said to me, um, "Are you always like this?" And I said, "What do you mean?" And she said, "Every time you walk by here, you end up giving us a 30-minute lecture about [laughter] biology and then you give us a supplement." I do that to people, too. What's funny, like I'll have a conversation with someone at dinner or something like that, and

94:21they'll ask me a question. I'll say, "Well, actually, I had a guest on my podcast that explained this." And then I'll like have this like I can retain information if it's very fascinating to me. If it's something that I'm really interested in and I can say what you know the studies were and what what the you know and these conversations I've had with people they're like oh so you're in like podcast mode. I'm like that's just how I am. The one of the reasons why the podcast works is because I would be like that anyway right cuz like just like you were saying like it's hard doing a podcast a week. It's just talking to people. Yeah. I like talking to people. Well, I do these solo episodes. Those are hard. That's a lot harder. Yeah, the interviews are fun, but these solo episodes are long, you know, like two and a half, three hours going over

95:02very specific data and you have like a whole thing that you want to get out. Yeah, it's what but I love it. I love that it's hard and then and as I kind of ratchet through it and kind of go through the various rhythms also, I'm learning and I love it so much. And of course, if I make any mistake, I mean, my goodness, the internet is harsh. This They're the best. It's It's amazing. I love the critique. I I do. I love it. At first, I was like, "Oh, this is rough." And now I've learned to just so embrace it. Like even the people who have dedicated their entire lives to finding my mistakes, I'm grateful. I just spend time going, "Okay, fantastic." Yeah. There's a lot of miserable [ __ ] out there. But there they can be beneficial because they can find some things that maybe you missed. Oh, absolutely. And and I'm certainly

95:40grateful for them. I do worry about them though because some of these people are like presumably have other things they're trying to pursue and they don't realize that they're kind of circling the drain slowly by focusing so much on other people. But but look, everyone makes choices in life. I mean, I've decided to try and like you, make new things and be a creator. But, you know, it was Lex that said, "You should." He told me, "You should start a podcast." And then he said, "Uh, whatever you do though, just make sure it's not just you blabbing." That's basically what I did. [laughter] But that's hilar. But that's not He's not correct though cuz like some of my favorite podcasts like Bill Burr's podcast is just Bill blabbing. Tim Dylan just Tim blabbing. Giannis Papus just Giannis blabbing. You know, like some of my favorite podcasts are these

96:22interesting people that just start talking [ __ ] Yeah. You know, they're really interesting guys and and in your case, you're you're you're talking about like really important things to a lot of people. And the way to get it out is really to do it the way you do it. And I'm curious about it. And thank you. Yeah. I mean, I we've done episodes on grief and on eating disorders. I thought when I did one on eating disorders, especially anorexia, they were going to be like, "Oh, you know, this white guy with a shaved head who lifts weights. what does he know about eating disorders? And the feedback was wonderful. People were like, you know, I didn't know, for instance, that the frequency of anorexia is not going up. It's been constant since the 1600s and maybe even earlier. Wow. This is a it's also the most deadly psychiatric disorder. Wow.

97:06So, you know, all this idea that social media is impairing body image, yeah, that's probably true. But true anorexia, people be getting an aversive relationship to eating, that's, you know, I learned about that and then the therapies that you can point people to. So, on and on. But, but like the you mentioned Rhonda, like I'm obsessed these days with deliberate heat and deliberate cold. I know we've been we've been talking about this. I'm freezing right now because I just did the cold plunge. How long? I have one right here. 3 minutes right before I come here. How many days a week are you in? I'm in it almost every day now. Amazing. Yeah. What but I break it up though because I've read that you have to wait two hours after lifting. Like so uh to to get the benefits of hyper hypertrophy. Struggle with that one. You need about two hours

97:48post-workout before you plunge. But I get in the sauna immediately after every workout. So sauna is almost every day. And then cold plunge is at least 5 days a week, maybe four days a week. That's a lot. And and and with good reason. So there's a scientist out of Scandinavia. Her name is Dr. Susanna Soberg. Um S Oe Berg. and she showed up on social media a few, you know, six months ago and then published this really amazing paper in humans. What they showed was that they figured out the thresholds for how much deliberate cold exposure you need and how much sauna for it to really start having beneficial effects. Now, the all the nutrition PT people, which seem to me some of the more frustrated human beings on the planet, I don't know why, but online like nutrition and physical therapy are where like there's a lot of contention. I don't know why.

98:36Neuroscientists are nice people. Contention in what way? They love to nitpick and and so and I respect that they know a lot about what they do, but there seems to be a lot of infighting in nut around nutrition and around physical therapy. I don't know why. It probably relates to some childhood feelings of powerlessness. I don't know the the [laughter] but what's very clear is that from Susanna's work is that if you put people into deliberate cold up to the neck like uncomfortable cold people always say how cold it should be I want to get the hell out but you can stay in safely and that's going to vary but person to person even dayto day but if you get people into that for 11 minutes total per week so not one session but they're doing three minutes three minutes three minutes whatever get to 11 minutes at that 11 minutes per week

99:19threshold they observe legitimate increases in brown fat, the good kind of fat thermogenesis, like the the oil in the candle goes up. People become more comfortable at cold temperatures and metabolism increases. The increases in metabolism aren't huge and the PTS and nutrition folks have really been like those increases in metabolism are like a a cracker or something. But that's just one of the effects. One the big effect of the cold is that you get this 2.5x increase in dopamine that lasts many hours after the cold exposure. I mean it really puts your brain into an anti-depressed state and to a more alert motivated state and norepinephrine as well. Yep. So norepinephrine, epinephrine and dopamine are called the catakolamines. The those three catakolamines all increase substantially and that can be from a very brief exposure to very cold.

100:08So like one minute or three minutes really cold. Or in the study that was published in the European Journal of Physiology where this initially was first shown, they put people into 60° Fahrenheit water up to their neck for like 45 minutes or an hour, which isn't seems annoying. Super annoying. And they're sitt [laughter] chairs with weights. So they're just sitting there. Oh god. But you can do a much shorter exposure. Rhonda was telling me you can even do like 45 seconds really really cold and still get that blast effect, which makes sense. What would be really really cold? Well, for for you or for Cam Haynes, like you'd probably have to go to almost dangerous levels. Like I've seen some of the cold he's he's like like I saw a post with Cam and he's like grabbing ice and like putting on himself. He's making it tougher, you know? Oh, the cold plunge. That's the

100:52Yeah, he has the same one I have. The Morasco. Yeah. Yeah. That thing is really nice. I mean, they're they're getting beautiful now. There's the the plunge, the Morasco, and then the blue cube or whatever. Yeah, the blue cube is what we have here. I like, you know, the interesting of that, the blue cube, the water is like circulating like you're in a stream. Well, that's where, so the circulation actually is key. So, if you get into cold water and you're completely still, like you're super stoic, you're building a thermal layer that's keeping you a little bit warmer. So, if you really want to make it tougher, you can sift your your body a bit because you break up that thermal layer. So, the Morasco is 34, 33, 34° and this one's 37. That's not distinguishable the difference, but this one moves. Yeah. So, it's cold. water. It [ __ ] sucks.

101:33Yeah. You're breaking up that thermal layer. You can't And you can't And if you try not to huddle or you go hands in, feet in. Yeah. No, I go up to my chin. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. It's I mean, it's a it is an anti-depressant effect. Again, the met metabolism increase probably isn't super big, but it's still there. And then there's but it's mostly this neurochemical effect and the resilience and the inflammation control. But then with sauna, it's really interesting. It seems like the threshold total for the week. I mean, you can do more, but is it, believe it or not, 57 minutes per week. Um, is this here? Yeah, there we go. This is yours. This is her information. Yeah, she's terrific. See her? Uh, her. Okay. Susanna. Oh. Oh, I follow her because of you, Susanna. Soberg. Um, she actually posted something on something that I posted.

102:20And so, and then I saw that you were quoting her, so I went to her. She's terrific. Terrific scientist, terrific person. I met her in person when I was over there in Scandinavia. We didn't cold plunge. But is she in Scandinavia? Yeah. Yeah, she's in Denmark. 57 minutes a week has healthy benefits. Uh, heat increase heat shock protein. Heat shock proteins are important for cell communication. Heat shock proteins repair damaged cells. Heat prevents nerve. Nope, that's there. Damaging diseases potentially. Oh, interesting. Heat prevents nerve damaging diseases potentially. Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and diseases. Scroll it. No, right there. But on the the big thing. Okay. Yeah, there's some growing evidence. There's a she hashtags sober principle. So, there's this thing in science where if you name something after yourself,

103:07then you're a narcissist. But you can name things after other people. So, I named this sober principle is if you really want to get the maximum metabolic effect when you end if you're and you're doing heat and cold, end with cold. Yeah. Because then you have to warm yourself back up. Yeah. Cam told me about that. Now I've been doing it. Sucks. [clears throat] Drink water before, if possible, during. Why would I drink during? I thought the whole idea is to like make your body cool itself off. I don't drink during. I don't know what that's about. Maybe that's maybe that's related to sauna. Do you drink water in the sauna? Yeah, but that's what it is. But if I do drink in the sauna, I have to be [ __ ] I have to have made a mistake where I'm like I'm really tired and I'm I'm really struggling and then I always go back in after I drink the water.

103:49And you're going hot. I recall we were texting back and forth about this at one point. I mean, typically it's going to be about 184 to about 210 um is a good range Fahrenheit. Um and that's hot. Although, you know, I mentioned that I think on a social post. I said, you know, that's really warm. Approach with caution. And all the Eastern Europeans, the Fins and the Russians where they were like making fun of me. They're like, "You're a wimp. We do it at 2:30 this." But they start it when they're when they're little kids. I mean, they Yeah. Or if you ever go to a ba these Russian banyas and they hit you with the leaves and the Yeah, I Yeah, I've done more than 200 before. I was doing 220 for a while because Lar Hamilton was doing that, but I was actually burning my throat like I was I was my voice was and it was and I was realizing you

104:40[ __ ] idiot. You're cooking your mouth. Well, he's a [laughter] nut in the best sense. layer goes in the barrels on with the aerodyine bike. Yeah. And pedals with oven mitts on. He wears oven mitts cuz the metal gets so hot you can't touch it. So he's in there a dining oven mitts on. He's a savage. But it it's also why at I believe he's 56, 55, 56, he maintains incredible athleticism. He's still like one of the top, you know, big wave riders, surfers on earth. It's like it's crazy [clears throat] the amount of work that he puts into it, but clearly there's benefit to it. But I look forward to it. I really do. I look forward to the suffering of these sessions because I I'm like kind of addicted to the benefits that I get afterwards. That dopamine rise is real. Um, a woman you had on your podcast, Dr. Anna LMK, the dopamine nation, she talked about a

105:32patient who was in getting off of cocaine. He was feeling low, so he started using ice bath as a way to wean himself off. M you know it you can't argue with a 2.5x increase in dopamine that's longlasting big spikes in dopamine that crash that's bad cuz it's like up and then down but this you know 2 3 4 hour increases in dopamine epinephrine and norepinephrine you're alert you feel better you're kind of your RPM are set higher is there any benefit to reemerging yourself in the cold like once it starts to wear off like doing it more than once a day well you eventually become cold adapted and you need to start doing things to make sure that it's still a stress stimulus because that stress stimulus is what sets that all in motion. So if you get really comfy, then you're going to have to start making the water colder, sifting the water around. I mean, you

106:16can only make it so cold before you eventually have tissue damage, but that's a wide window. That's why heat is great, but the upper threshold for, as you mentioned, like your throat starts hurting, you're actually burning tissue is bad. Uh there's an amazing finding on burn that I can't help myself but share. There's a a paper that came out that showed well there's based on observation burn victims showed dramatic fat loss not burned by the fire or the burn. So for many years they become leaner and leaner and leaner and no one ever understood why this was. But turns out that burn and local heat application can set in motion a whole bunch of biological cascades that burn up body uh body fat. Wait a minute. So that means those belly fat things are real? Well, they're now using um local heating and these are I they're people people really need to be

107:06careful with heat because you know burning yourself to burn body fat is just dumb and dangerous but using uh they have a this UCP uh adi device, excuse me, but in the laboratory but what they're doing is they're using a laser that heats up locally the tissue and they're seeing a systemic increase in body fat utilization. Do you remember those cold sculpting things they used to do to people? But apparently it [ __ ] people up. Do you know what I'm talking about? Well, I remember the belts. I don't remember the cold sculpting. No, they were doing a thing where they were like cool sculpting where they were saying that they're going to like blow cold air all over your fat area and it was going to make your fat and people like calling [ __ ] on it. I'm calling [ __ ] on it because I think that it's probably some general

107:51systemic effect of being cold and metabolism going up, right? And and of course, we should say this be uh if you're eating more food than you're burning off total, you're you're not going to lose fat, right? I mean I mean that that the rules of the laws of thermodynamics still apply cuz sometimes people hear you can do anything and still lose fat. That's not true. Body waist belts that people put on, are those legit? Cuz they do heat up that area. You know, there may be some truth to this. You know, the but it's not going to be spot reduction. This is where it gets misleading. Even though it's applied locally, it's not spot reduction. They're talking about heat causing a systemic increase in body fat utilization. Again, on a backdrop of caloric deficit, more body fat burn. That's the argument. That's So, why do people wear those big rubber

108:34neoprene things that go around their waist, those belly fat trainers? You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Well, I have a theory about the same reason women wear corsets, although there are other reasons for that, too, which is that they like the way that it makes them feel and look. There's a kind of What's the other reasons? That women wear corsets. Yeah. Cuz they potentially look hot in them. If you like corsets, right, but the way they feel and look, but they also but they were originally designed to bring the waist in. Corsets were like to cinch it in to give them hourglass shape to accentuate the you know the features that they want accentuated, right? Of course. I thought there was something else. No, no, no. I just was thinking about corsets for a second. Okay. [laughter] The um but the the I think this is actually characteristic of a lot of

109:11things in the health space. So for instance, I get asked a lot about sauna and people go, "What about infrared sauna?" In my opinion, most infrared saunas don't get hot enough, right? And I got really interested in infrared light. It's like, what's going on with infrared light? Does it have real uses? Right? Um, turns out there was a Nobel Prize given, I believe it was in 1908. I might have the date wrong. Maybe it was 1916, but there was a Nobel Prize given for phototherapy for the use of light to treat lupus, for instance. So, this is not a new idea, but I think a lot of people like red light because of how they look in the red light sauna. It gives that really smooth look to the skin. It's kind of like that nightclub sexy feel. So, people like, "Ooh, infrared sauna." I think it's also the name infrared. It sounds high-tech.

109:56It sounds high-tech. And yet, there are legitimate uses of infrared light. For instance, viewing infrared light, long as it's not too intense in the early part of the day. If you're over 40, there's amazing data out of University College London, my friend Glenn Jeffy's lab, showing that can help improve mitochondrial function in photo receptors and offset age related macular degeneration and and visual loss can be offset. What about like those Jew lights? So there's JWV, there's Cozy, there are a bunch of these brands now and I've there three main areas where they've shown some real efficacy in good studies. One is for wound healing and acne. there really does seem to be some therapeutic repair of tissue. The other is the eye stuff. So, exposure to red light and near infrared light as long as it's not too intense and you have to be over 40 to see the effect,

110:43etc. But there are real improvements in vision in animal models and humans. That's been shown. Wound healing, huh? Yeah, wound healing. It sets in, you know, red light is different than other light because it's long wavelength and that means it can pass through tissues. Short wavelength doesn't go as deep into tissues. So that's why the red part is important, not just that it looks cool. The when it passes through the upper layers of the dermis, it appears that it can go and and trigger some activation of things that in the so-called stem cell niche that creates new hair cells, new skin cells. So they're using it for hair growth. I doubt it has a massive effect on hair regrowth. Yeah, I saw a thing the other day where the guy this guy had a helmet on and he was talking some sort of laser helmet and the helmet was making him regrow

111:25hair. probably would assist in maybe augment some existing therapies for for hair um for increasing hair. And then there's a growing population of people that are interested in using it to increase testosterone by putting the red light on their on their on their testicles. Um and of course they're the they're the the um the anus sun viewing people. Oh yeah, that's Whitney Cummings. Really? Yeah, she does that. She does that. She she takes she'll go to her Instagram. [laughter] There's a picture of her with her feet up in the air with her dogs. She might she might just be being funny. Well, I think the result that's relevant there, which is a real result, is the one we talked about earlier, which is getting sunlight exposure on your skin, provided you don't burn. Obviously, people wear sunscreen if you need it. But sunscreen is interesting

112:08conversation, too. If getting sunlight onto your skin can increase testosterone and estrogen, feelings of well-being, etc. It's not just about viewing it with your eyes, right? But red light has different effects than just protect just sunlight. Right. Right. You've got red wavelengths in sunlight, right? And you've got but the near infrared wavelength combined with red is what's used in these acne treatments, scar healing. And there is one study in rats showing that red light exposure to There she is. There's my girl. Look at her. [laughter] She's so great. She's just being funny, though. I mean, she probably's doing that for real, but she's also being funny. I love [snorts] her post because she seems to really be enjoying life. Look at what it says here. Self-care pennium pennium sunning day. Next up, 42 cold plunges, nine saunas, 5 hours of

112:53throwing a tire down a hill, and then four sticks of butter and one espresso. I love it. And probably and 10 new pitbulls. The number of dogs that she accumulates. I know. She's a dog mom. Yeah. Um, so but those red light things like the Jew, don't they also do they do something about collagen in your skin or something too? The idea is they can trigger skin repair through the through the skin cell niche. The And what are you showing me? Yeah, the same doctor from before has a whole post on infrared therapy and everything you just said there that has increases and all that stuff. Interesting. Yeah. So stabilize. Okay. Stay until you feel uncomfortable but safe. The benefits. So this is infrared only, correct? Okay. So different kinds of sauna. So they have maybe there's just a different thing. Maybe it doesn't get as hot but it does something else. Says benefits

113:42blood vessels and activates neurosep nerve receptors in the skin. you sweat more at a lower temperature. A good alternative to traditional sauna. Traditional sauna more efficient, more stressful with increase of heart rate. So that's exactly what we're just saying, right? It's something to to supplement with. Stabilizes the heart. Uh PVC2 early contractions in the heart. Increase elastin and collagen in the skin. Improve recovery after training. So elastin and collagen in the skin, how would infrared sauna increase the collagen in your skin? I'm not aware of any peerreview data, but you know, you get your infrared devotees. I'm only aware of the eye stuff and the wound wound and acne stuff and then infrared for inf just for infrared light. I don't think there's anything unique about combining heat and infrared. Oh, okay. So, these are and so JW and Cozy Light

114:33and these other companies that Yeah. the big panels. So, that is technically infrared. It's red light therapy, but it's infrared. That's right. It's usually it's got a panel where it's a red light and then it's a like near infrared. So you can stare at those like you can actually look at those red lights and it's not damaging for your eyes. You don't want to get too close. I mean it how close? So a good rule of thumb is if you feel like you need to close your eyes cuz it's painful. It's too bright, right? So you want to be at a distance that it's comfortable to look at. You don't ever want to be, you know, tearing up or squinting. You know, these natural mechanisms that are built into us to protect our eyes and uh I would trust those. Well, this is a place that I went to that has a a more robust bed and they have like these goggles and they tell

115:13you with this red light therapy that you should put goggles on. Yeah. If you're going to hit your skin really hard with red light or near what's called NI, near infrared light um you then you wear those little uh um uh little they look like little suction cups that go over your eyes cuz you don't because it's really bright just like a tanning bed or something. So the kind that like a Jew has is not the same as like a commercial light. Those get the JWV and the cozies get pretty bright. So, you want to stand far enough back that you're comfortable but not as bright as those like high-tech like commercial units. Correct. And it also, you know, it depends on where you hang it. If it's on a wall and it's coming right into your eyes, like flashlight to your eyes, it's very different than if it's on your body and you're getting it indirectly to your eyes.

115:50Right. Right. But as a rule of thumb, you know, getting healthy amounts of sunlight as long as you don't your skin doesn't burn. And getting that to your eyes and your skin is is good. If you've ever had a cut, you'll notice it heals much quicker if it gets sunlight. Interesting. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And that's because of the way that these long wavelength lights trigger the stem cell niche that controls skin and the caratinosytes and repair. Here's a weird one. This is a mystery, but I heard this the other day and I'm totally obsessed by this. If you have a cut somewhere on your body, a wound of any kind, it takes a little while to heal. If you bite your cheek, Yeah. it heals almost perfectly like newborn skin. Nobody knows why. And you have tons of bacteria coming in through this hole. You're eating stuff like there's a you know dog hair saliva contain healing

116:35properties. It does. And so there's a group at Stanford actually and elsewhere also of course that are studying why is it that the environment of the mouth is so effective at healing itself. I mean it's crazy. I mean I've got scars from you know 20 years ago but I've bitten through this cheek a bunch of times. It's painful but then it's it's perfectly fine. Yeah. Like the next day. The next day. So, so there's interesting biology there and people are starting to think about that. Sunscreen. Yeah. So, so there are two areas aside from nutrition that feel I feel like are really hot button issues. Like for the moment we talk about this, we're we're going to catch a lot for this, but um I'm getting used to that nowadays. You got to stop reading comments. Well, it's sounds like you're affected by them. The comments and hate mail and death

117:22threats, the whole thing. [laughter] So, you getting death threats? Uh yeah. You know, I think uh you know, there's some What are people mad at you for? Um, more so there's there's kind of this idea that because we cover topics like trauma and some mental health issues. There's more the idea that that we contain answers there and you know, people aren't their thinking isn't all always so correct. No, no one has said I'm this upset with you about something you said about butter or something that I that I want to kill you. Although some people might feel that way. And um for that reason, I now live in New Zealand and you're welcome to look for me there. So is like the mitigation of mental health issues or something like that. Yeah, it's sort of a fixation stuff or people or people thinking that um you know that there's some secret message in

118:05what's coming through. So sometimes it's really that that way. Okay. But um but I would say 99.9% of things that come back have been supportive or critical in a way that's that's rational. Um sunscreen and EMFs are like the two third rail topics. Um so glad you brought that up. Yeah, here's what we know. There are compounds that exist in commercial products, not just sunscreen, that can cross the bloodb brain barrier and that are bad for neurons. Period. No, that is indisputable. Some of those compounds have been shown to be in abundance in certain sunscreens and other cosmetics. So, I'm not saying that all sunscreen are bad. I'm saying that there are some sunscreens that contain some things that were they to get across the bloodb brain barrier would be bad. You know what are those things? Um these are these are small molecules

118:58that can cross the blood barrier into neurons and that can cause neurodeenerative like conditions. What things? Um well these are typically associated with tricloans and some of the other things that are shown to be in certain detergents and soaps like they're they're detergents and soaps are now off market because they contain some of these very small molecules related to tricloan tricloans and related products but there are healthy there are safe sunscreens there's no question like what's a good safe sunscreen ah so there we get into brand names I that's a tricky one I don't want to get too outside my wheelhouse I'm researching this for a future episode this is really a place where I want to I want to tread carefully. Here's what I think is important for people to know. Not all sunscreens are safe. Not all cosmetic lotions are safe. Not all

119:39cosmetics are safe. I think we're probably going to arrive in a place not that different from the silicone breast implant kind of landscape where it turns out depended on what implant and how long they were in and you know what they were packaged in. Like so many things like tryptophan, the amino acid that was people used to enhance sleep. Now you get it readily but it was banned for a long time because a few people actually took tryptophan that had contaminated binders. It was the stuff that was in there with it and they got very sick and and there were some fatalities even and so it was taken off market for years for all the wrong reason. I mean taken off for good reason but that it was the binders not the tryptophan with sunscreen. There are many things that are good about sunscreen like avoiding skin cancer but many sunscreens

120:23are bringing in these tricloans and other small you know if a molecule is small enough it'll cross into the blood brain barrier and we don't know what the long-term effects of those are but I think it's worth paying attention to similarly and I used to teach this in a big undergraduate course if you look at the data on EMFs and you look at the data on cell phones you will find animal studies that show that if you put a cell phone under a rat's cage cage or a litter of rats cages and two separate studies. You'll find dramatic decreases in testosterone in some studies and you'll find subtle increases in testosterone in others. I don't know what the effect is or how it's working but clearly there needs to be an exploration of this and clearly it's going to be a really inconvenient thing to do that right. I mean I use the earbuds I I use the earbuds but nowadays

121:12I sort of wonder should I maybe use the wire things more you know I've been using the wired ones more. Yeah. Yeah, because I'm I'm chicken [ __ ] I'm hearing things. Well, but I don't know what's real. People like start freaking out about EMFs. I'm not sure if they're right or if they're tinfoil hatnet. Yeah. And I'm in the same boat. And I'm sure that some of my colleagues, you know, the moment we say, you know, EMFs and sunscreen, people are going to freak out. And yet, I will go on record saying that some of the very scientists who say, "Oh, like don't even worry about this." They're some of the most unhealthy looking people I've ever seen, you know? So, they're not really incentivized to get it right, nor am I a conspiracy theorist. But here's my wish is that we look at everything and we look at it objectively and that we take

121:52into account that there are some animal data that point to the fact that getting these EMFs in close proximity all the time might might not be the best idea. There's certainly some kind of an effect. It depends on the individual and the dose and a lot of stuff. But that what you're saying about scientists is is an issue as well. there there's certain people that they're talking about things that affect your health and they're clearly unhealthy. It's like, boy, that's a hard pill to swallow coming from you. Well, and I think what you know, we go back to Liver King and some of the other more colorful aspects of online nutrition and health information. People wonder, I actually saw some I made the huge mistake of going on to Twitter in the last couple years. I never really was on Twitter and it's such a weird landscape as you know, but one of the

122:36things I discovered was that a lot of the people in the science and medical community are there kind of poking fun at online health and nutrition and they wonder why they're so like how is it that this person has millions of followers and so on. And the reason is actually because they're doing such a poor job of communicating health information in a meaningful, clear, and like actionable way. And so it provides this enormous opportunity for someone to just show up and kind of just say whatever and grab a hu huge audience. But let me push back against that because they're just how would someone who's a legitimate professor make some kind of an impact online. Come on my podcast. But that's maybe the only way. Like you'd have to find an established portal or create your own. And that's a long laborious task of building up an audience and providing them with good

123:26content and hopefully getting on a podcast where people like have a large audience and an appetite for that kind of a thing or or I mean or more realistically go on your podcast. I mean that's what I was saying. I mean yeah I mean I think that what you know what you do and to some extent what I do what Lex does and of course there are others is you know try and provide a venue for people that would otherwise be locked away in their laboratories or locked away in their claims to get information out there and to have someone across the table for them like this you know kind of pushing and you know saying but tell me more like what what exactly what do we know what don't we know mice or humans you know like how many people this kind of thing because in the absence of that I really think that people are just left to kind there's a kind of gravitational

124:07pull towards the thing that's most sensational. So they go, "Oh, like maybe just eating testicles is like the key to a good life." Or maybe just eating plants is the only way to live and be healthy. And I think that there are in I mean there's incredible science and incredible medicine. And I think most, at least my experience has been that most scientists want to share what they know. We've never had someone tell us no. And we've had Howard Hughes investigators. We've had, you know, we've got a few future Nobel Prize winners and Nobel Prize winners coming. You've had dozens more than we ever have. I've learned so much from Shaina, from I found out about, you know, AIA. I mean, Matt Walker, David Sinclair, I mean, it goes on and on, you know. I mean, could list it off. I think that scientists want to be heard. I re I think they really do. They just they

124:49need the opportunity. Yeah. But I mean, but saying that they've done a poor job, I don't think it's because they've done a poor job. It's because that's not what they do. I mean, that the quibbling on social media. Oh, yeah. Well, that's I think a lot of that is just frustration because if someone does spend their time researching and writing papers and you know you'll see papers online with like a thousand views, 2,000 views and these, you know, like how many people are looking at these peer-reviewed papers. Yeah. They're not reading them with Oh, I mean those of us in the game of science, I still run a lab, so I'm familiar with this. It's the number of people that will actually read a paper start to finish who are qualified to parse what's in there. Yeah. is you can count on one hand maybe two and for really you know blockbuster

125:34papers that have a huge impact that number might get into the hundreds or thousands right so when someone starts talking about like how does this person have millions of followers well it's because people have an appetite for these things and if you don't like that that person has millions of followers and you wish you had more it doesn't just magically come to you have to put in effort it's like it's like someone wanting to be a touring comedian they go that person sucks sucks. Why are they selling out everywhere? Why Why aren't I? Well, because you're not even on the road, you [ __ ] idiot. Like, this is the same kind of conversation you're having with these scientists. Like, if someone's upset at you, and the thing about the social media, the the bickering that I do see, the one thing that it does do is make me know that you're an extremely

126:19flawed person. This person who is like concentrating, whether it's nutrition or whatever it is, which which I agree with you, there is this weird sort of I don't know what that's about. It's wanting attention. It's not not feeling you're getting enough attention for your own research and then finding whatever one thing that you think someone's doing wrong and going after them and attacking them. And then there's also people that are legitimately upset that people are pushing out fake information, [ __ ] Like Lane Norton's great for that. Oh yeah. He's always got like someone's pissing him off. Oh yeah. He uh we've exchanged a few notes online. He actually uh I saw him on I think it was a Tia's podcast and he did a masterful job of explaining nutrition. Actually his persona on podcast is very different than his social media presence.

127:01Yeah, he's a little extreme on social media but he's a great guy. Yeah, he's very smart and he actually uh we align on this thing about eating organs directs uh those nutrients to specific organs. He doesn't believe that either and he actually used to work on amino acid labeling of proteins and things like that. Um, no, he's a good example of where of where somebody can sit straddle both sides, but he likes to mock a lot of charlatans because there's quite a few. Sure. I mean, and he does a really good job at finding those people and pointing those things out. But that's the thing is that there's this appetite for information. So, when someone comes along and says something that's counter to what everyone's been told, it reinforces this desire to have like, oh, there's some secret information out there that I didn't know about. All I have to do is

127:44eat testicles and I'll have more testicle power. Like that kind of [ __ ] is like for whatever reason very attractive to people. Yeah. So it's very important that someone in his I'm not talking about him when I'm talking about bickering really. I'm talking about some like very bizarre characters that haven't developed these online followings but try really hard to get them. And I also think there's probably a bunch of like social issues that these people have as well. But, you know, he's he does a great job of mocking these folks and and like a good counter to some of these more preposterous claims that you do see very very prevalent particularly in the alternative health space. You know, you you see it from a lot of these like vegan people and all these alternative health people. It's like there's so much horseshit going on.

128:31There's so much weird nonsense that these people push and that's how they make their, you know, that's how they get attention. Yeah. And Lane has done for instance a pretty good job of using kind of more sensational like content to combat sensational content. So he does these like oh and these you know that's not the style that I use. Although I will say he um called me out on something that's worth mentioning because I think I was grateful that he did. I mentioned in a tweet that there there is evidence that alcohol can increase the aromatization of testosterone and estrogen. and he pointed out quite correctly that it depends on dose and there might be some individual variation. So that's where like someone saying wait a second hold on that's not the whole story right allowed me to see data that I wasn't aware of and made it more clear. So that

129:17to me is a is a great example of the use of social media to bring a more nuanced conversation about and I actually wrote to him and thanked him and no well you're great about that. I've seen you do that before when but that's also science, right? Science is like you have a certain amount of data and you discuss that data and then someone else who has a a deeper understanding of it can maybe point to some other study that maybe you weren't aware of and you add that to it. As long as everyone's not dogmatic. But when you get into the heavy duty carnivore space, when you get into the heavy duty vegan space, my problem with a lot of that is it's very dogmatic. And a lot of people claim that they have all the answers to all the things like you know Paul Saladino likes to do is this [ __ ] like you ever see that? Yeah. His like little he hits the

129:57[ __ ] thing. Yeah. Well, he does a whole No, he does these things on social media like olive oil is olive oil [ __ ] Throws it. Yeah. Well, he he talks about this is what's wrong with this the the defense chemicals, the this, the that, the that, the committed to like a complete animal-based diet. The guy looks great. He does look to be in great shape. And I asked him straight up. I just said, "Listen, are you on TRT of any kind?" And he said, "Nope." And he's in his 40s. And he said he he looks really healthy. Yeah. He looks very healthy. He's also but very active, constantly working out. Yeah. I mean, moved to Costa Rica just so he could surf every day, you know, and like live in the jungle and eat like organic papayas and [ __ ] Doing really well, you know. He's obviously whatever he's doing. One thing he's not doing,

130:41he's not poisoning his body with junk food. He's not eating [ __ ] and processed sugar and nonsense. and he's very physically active and he's getting a lot of sun exposure. So all those things that we know to be absolutely without a doubt beneficial, he's incorporating all those into his life. So he's got all that. Now, would he be just as healthy if he ate a salad every day? I don't know. I mean, I don't think he would be unhealthy. I don't think salads are bad for you. No, I love them. I think pesticides are bad. Herbicides are bad. And I think if you get that [ __ ] in your salad, that could be an issue. Well, one of the things that I believe and this is really hybridizing as we say uh nerdy speak for crossing over two separate things. I think that people that have a lot of different kinds of friends can look at any

131:24conversation about politics or about guns or about nutrition in a more nuanced way. I've always enjoyed I I believe this is you as well speculating here, but this what I see is that you know I've got friends who are hippies, punk rockers, Republicans, Democrats, libertarians, gun owners, gun haters, all of it. by being friends with a lot of different kinds of people, you just kind of get you just come to understand as you put it once to me and I really internalized this like it's about people. Yeah. Right. One the dogmatic stuff is when you you know 99% of your friends are of one orientation or another your worldview just shrinks to the size of an atom. There's also a problem with people wanting to be right, you know, and they want they want to win. Like if you believe that the Democratic party is the only way forward for a rational peaceful

132:13society and you have this confirmation bias that only the Democrats have the answers to this to that the other things or if you're a person that believes in God and the Republicans and we need the first and second amendment and this and you're so committed people get so committed to these ideas that they're not willing to entertain any other idea And then they fight rigorously rigorously. They fight as if you're defending your own life, your own your own soul. You don't fight. You don't discuss these things on the merits of their, you know, whether or not this is a good concept or that's a good concept. You you're literally almost arguing for your very existence being valid. And it's very strange because people equate themselves, they attach themselves to ideas. And when their idea gets challenged, they get emotional, they get excited, they get angry, they get

133:12aggressive, and it's so sad to watch. It really, especially as people get older, when I see like a 60-year-old man who gets hyperaggressive and starts yelling at people about ideas, it's like, god damn it. Calling people morons, calling people [ __ ] It's like, just talk about the idea. Just just don't attach yourself to it. Talk about the idea. you'll look far better. You'll see appear far more intelligent. It's a far more evolved way to communicate about things. But so many people are just completely incapable of it when they're challenged on their ideas. They can never say, "I'm wrong." They can never say, "Oh, I was incorrect. I thought this." Like, they don't have they literally don't have the ability to do that. They will find some way to try to pretend that they were wrong or that they weren't wrong. It's very bizarre.

133:57It is bizarre. I mean I immediately think of like neuroplasticity is robust early in life and it tapers off right it's and there you know brilliant people like uh Richard Fineman the great theoretical physicist I mean he was known for doing crazy things bongo drumming naked on the roof of Caltech but also deciding to become an artist not a great one but an artist late in life or um he also wrote a lot of theorems and did his work in strip bars in Pasadena. He loved being among different types of people and he believed he wrote a lot about this that remaining curious genuinely curious and I define curiosity as being interested in something without being attached to the outcome right you you legitimately want to find out what's on the other side that that maintains this youthfulness and this plasticity and I think when one approaches a conversation

134:41of any kind from the stance of I don't want to find out I want to be shown to be right curiosity is dead right and and that I mean I I think that's tragic. It's just very difficult to get people to sit down and have civil conversations when they have hot button OB hot button topics that they're opposed to. Like if one person is hardcore right-wing and one person's hardcore leftwing, to have them sit down and have calm, rational conversations is incredibly difficult because everybody wants to win. Everybody wants to because you're literally defending yourself. You're defending it's not just an idea. Like say if you want to talk about the first amendment and whether or not freedom of speech should be uh like the first amendment protection should be um extended to social media or whether or not social media should be thought like

135:29things like Twitter which is it the town square or is it a private company like these kind of discussions like people will get [ __ ] emotional and furious and angry and ad homonyms and they and they lose jobs. I mean, grown grown adults throw themselves on the steak. It's so wild. It's wild, but it's also it's indicative of what we are as a human as a human species. Like, we have this incredibly strong desire for validation, an incredibly strong desire to have our ideas reinforced, not challenged, because we attach our our idea to our own self-v value and our own self-worth. I've done my very best to distance myself from that as much as possible. And as I've gotten older and had more of these kind of conversations, I've gotten better and better at it. But you seem like you straddle multiple viewpoints on a number of things or

136:22willing to have that. I was curious, has anyone ever walked out of here like it would felt so confronted that they just Oh, I'm nice and when if I don't get along with somebody, there's been people that I've wanted to attack, believe me. Or that you wanted to walk out of here. Well, there's no some people that I've just like, God, you're so sloppy and lazy. Like these thoughts are just so weak. And then I will see them, you know, talk about the experience on Twitter and I'm like, "Oh my god, you're just so lucky I didn't go after you because it's like there's so many people that have these sloppy, lazy ideas and they exist in these echo chambers." Well, this is one place where I think a scientific training is useful independent of whether or not one decides to become a career scientist. When you take your so-called oral defense examination,

137:05you get up there and there's five or six different faculty and your qualifying exam and they they ask you questions until you say, "I don't know." They the idea is to find where your cliff is. Right. Right. Like the moment that you start wondering and stumbling, that's when you actually know you're doing a good job. I mean, you don't want to do that too early, but they'll ask crazy questions, hard questions that are unrelated to anything you think you should have to prepare. And I I sit on these committees now. I sit on the other side of the fence. Social media for me has actually become a good kind of repeat of my qualifying exam because occasionally something comes in that I go wow like I never thought about it that way. You're absolutely right. But the moment you say I don't know, that's when you are allowed to pass up to the

137:47next level in science. It's not when you know, it's when you are willing to admit that you don't know that they say now you can go pursue a dissertation. Then you do a dissertation and then you have to defend it. And everyone thinks oh you have to defend it by showing it's it's watertight. you actually defend it. But a really good defense committee, we all meet beforehand and we're like, how are we gonna beat this guy or this gal up and we decide we're gonna find where the leaks are and get them to admit that their study is wonderful perhaps but not perfect. And then you become a doctor of science. Then you trust them. That's right. Because you trust that they're only interested in information that's factual. They're only interested in the facts. They're not interested in just getting their ideas reinforced. That's right. But it's it's a a

138:27complicated dance that human beings do because your ego is involved and your reputation is involved and that for a lot of people that's a lot of who they are. A lot of who they are is how other people see them. You know there's a lot of folks out there that you know daytoday their life depends I mean I'm sure you've met people that got offended by something that doesn't seem logical to be offended by. I I tempted to raise the story, but I'm not going to because I don't want to draw fire again. But no, I I once credited a colleague who was an amazing colleague and someone picked up on something in the article about them that was totally unrelated and was of of the times and what and it was like suddenly the conversation shifted completely and then you realize it's all about them. It actually has nothing to do about the topic and and that's where

139:14I think things can get really diverted. I mean I tend to not respond to comments too often. occasionally, you know, thanks for your interest in science and like give people cue people to an episode. I do not get into online debates. I'm happy to do it on a podcast, but I don't do it in comment sections. It's too hard. It's a shitty way to communicate, too. You know, when if you sit down across from someone, you look them eye to eye and have a conversation. People tend to be more civil. They tend to be more kind. It's so easy to be shitty with text over Twitter. Yeah. It's just so easy and so many people engage in it. I was watching a friend of mine who's a comedian arguing with people back and forth. I was going to reach out to him and I was going to go, "What the [ __ ] are you doing? Don't do that. So bad for you, too." And I'm

139:56looking at his timeline and it's like, "This is taking place over many hours in his day." I'm like, "Bro, that hour those hours you're never going to get back. That day is gone. That day, that day is toast." And you're arguing with people about some [ __ ] that has very little to do with you. It's more to do with your ideological position. like you're standing in this whatever group you're in, right or left. Yeah. And as a creator, the goal is always to create new and better what works. And so it it really does seem like a a true time sync. Well, it is a time sync and it's also like your time is [ __ ] valuable. You're giving your time to something and that's robbing you of effort. It's robbing you of whatever you could be doing to increase your proficiency in something, increase your knowledge, and your enjoyment, doing things you enjoy.

140:43You don't [ __ ] enjoy arguing with people on Twitter that you don't even know. That's crazy. Yeah. I I didn't become a lawyer for a reason. I don't really, you know, I actually have rules for my engagement on social media and the podcast. I always try and put out information that's really about the audience. I want them to benefit. It's not about me. like I you know occasionally that can get murky because you'll say I you know I you know I learn this thing and it can seem like it's about you but it's really about them getting something that I think will be useful to them. And the other one is I ne I don't generally get angry anyway. There are things in life that make me angry but I never bring that to the to the table. That's very important. Now, when you're talking about all these things for optimizing health and fitness and

141:24performance, how much of obviously you're very fit and you work out a lot, but how much of your own body and your own experiences do you use? Like, do you experiment on these things so that you could have more data or you could have at least anecdotal data? Absolutely. I mean, I try and do as many things. So, I'm just at a top contour, I'm lift every other day, run on the days I don't lift. That's kind of like lift, run, and what about your recovery stuff? I do I get into the cold. I hit that 11 minute threshold per week by getting in three or four three minute sessions in the cold. I do have a barrel sauna, so I'll try and get in there for an hour total per week or more. Oh, yeah. So, you have to go get ice. No, no, I have a I have a a different one. I have a plunge. I don't have any like commercial relationship, but the

142:09plunge, it makes it look like a bathtub, porcelain tub. I So, I use a a cold plunge. There's no ice actually floating in there. So, I'll get in there. So, I do the cold, I do the heat, I lift every other day for about 45 minutes or an hour. How cold is your cold thing? It goes to I said at about 45. I'm not as tough as you and Cam. And he's I'll catch up. It's not [laughter] a tough thing. You do that. You just get used to it, you know. So, I'll do that. I mean, so you do that for 11 minutes a week. Yeah. And I I eat, you know, between 11:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. I know right now intermittent fasting became really controversial recently because there was a study showing that there's no additional benefit of fasting for weight loss as compared to caloric restriction. But right, but that's weight loss. There's other benefits clearly and that set off a storm and it

142:51was a storm I was happy to sidestep and enjoy watch go by because it was really interesting that the the headline in the New York Times was frankly was terrible because it said study shows no benefit to intermittent fasting. But what the actual finding was is that the study showed no additional benefit to fasting over caloric restriction for the for obesity for Fox News got it right in this case and I have no bias. I don't subscribe to any of these things. So, um, canceled all my subscriptions. The New York Times got it blah, Fox News got it right, and then the sort of science post. How did Fox News label it? They said no additional benefit, I believe, or something like that to fasting over caloric restriction for weight loss or something like that. Something very true to the concluding arguments of the paper, right? Um, the other ones were really designed

143:40to like say fasting bad. And you know, like here you've got millions and millions of people have now figured out a way to control their appetite because they're better at eating nothing for certain periods of the day than eating like half the muffin because there's all these neural mechanisms. When you start ingesting food, there's this desire to eat more food. And for some people, not eating for a period is better than eating. And and then some of the smaller new sites got it somewhere in the middle. But so I do I'll eat my first meal somewhere around 11 am. But occasionally I'll have like a protein drink at 9ine if I'm really starving when I wake up. But I do those things. I do the red light therapy. I stand in front of the red light to get the eye benefits. And I don't I'm not trying to heal acne or anything, but I just kind

144:19of do it all over my body anyway. Um early in the day a few times a week. Um I definitely have a what I call non-sleep deep rest protocol. So instead of naps and meditation, I'll listen to like a yoga nidra script or I'll do some sort of hypnosis script three or four times a week to just do what I call deliberate decompression to just take my mind into a space not unlike the one you were describing for cannabis for some people where I'm just like not thinking about anything to in order to reset. There's an amazing study out of Scandinavia uh hospital in Denmark did this study in humans showing that with posetron emission tomography imaging so brain imaging in humans showed that a 30 minute yoga nidra so just lying down and listening to this deep relaxation script increase dopamine resting levels in an area of the brain called the strriatam by 65% basically

145:06putting people into a state where they're ready for action again when they come out of it I find it incredibly rejuvenating the the CEO of Google has written about NSDR non-sleep sleep, deep rest. That's a acronym I coined because I didn't like the words yoga nidra and meditation. All sounds kind of magic carpety and acts as a barrier for people. So I'll do NSDR almost every day. Um 10 to 30 minutes. Uh what else do I do? I dim the lights at night. I make sure I get sunlight in the morning. I'm I try and eat well good minimally, excuse me, processed or um unprocessed foods. Um what else? I try and do some uh stretching. I try and stretch and do that sort of thing. And I'm also really trying to avoid toxic people in interactions. Um, that helps a lot. Helps a lot. That's real. It's huge. And I think one of the probably the biggest surprise in

145:57researching the podcast over the last 18 months because that's when we started was the EP decided to do an episode on gratitude. And I thought, okay, gratitude. We did it for Thanksgiving. I thought, okay, it's going to be thanking people and things. Turns out that if you look at the research on gratitude, first of all, the increases in dopamine and serotonin and feelings of subjective well-being from people that have a regular effective gratitude practice, we'll talk about what that is, is immense. It's immense. These are these are skyrocket effects. What is the most effective gratitude practice? It turns out it's not sitting there and being thankful. It's receiving gratitude or observing someone else receiving gratitude. I thought that gratitude was all about being grateful. It's actually receiving gratitude or observing some

146:40instance in which somebody is receiving genuine gratitude. Totally surprised me but and so this means give gratitude right give thanks but also be in a position to receive thanks. And so it's these kind of nuanced things might seem small but one thing I try and do is you know I try and since I can't walk around asking for gratitude and that's not my style. I like to think my ego is at least slightly more in check than that. I try and really let people that I care about and I'm grateful to know that. But I do that for them, not for me. And so that's that's something I pay a lot of attention to. It feels kind of weak sauce. It's kind of like people go that's kind of like weeny stuff like gratitude. The data show that gratitude and avoiding toxic people and focusing on good quality social interactions, physical contact with animals, kids, and

147:27loved ones like you know that huge increases in serotonin, oxytocin. These are not these are no longer the kinds of things that are just talked about at the end of a yoga class, right? This is real science with brain imaging and measurements of chemicals from the brain and blood. And so I've tried to incorporate more of that stuff that isn't as um kind of forward center of mass, you know, like get after it kind of stuff. I do that stuff, but I also try and, you know, have a good life and surround myself with good people. Well, just think about the way it makes you feel. When you're around good people and you enjoy your time, you feel better while you're doing it. That's got to be good for you. when you're depressed and things are bad and you're lonely and you feel shitty like that doesn't feel good like that has to have some sort of a

148:09effect on your physiology. Well, I think of it absolutely does and I think of it as not just good in the present but it's also buffering me and everyone who does these sorts of things against the inevitable, right? I mean, [ __ ] happens and people die and terrible things happen and and so in order to be in the best position to really see that stuff and react to it in the best possible way and also continue to move forward and do what's important to me in life. I feel like all the stuff I'm doing is great in the day-to-day, but it's also about the long-term arc. I mean, my parents are getting to the age, look, I hope they live to be another, you know, 20 years more, but chances are they're going to go in the next 20 years. I want to be in the best position to support them and I want to be able to the best position to

148:51support me frankly as well. So I think that doing all this stuff positions us to be, you know, like leaders and supporters of ourselves and of other people. And I know that all sound kind of like, you know, word mumbo mumbo jumbo, but it's the day, you've talked about this before. It's the daily rituals. Like none of the things I described are something that you can just take and it's all done. And of course, I do take supplements, so you know, we advertise these, so sure. But I take omegas and I take athletic greens and I take some Tonga Ali and I do as many of the things as I possibly can. I actually really enjoy that stuff and I think they're good data on all of it if you're one is willing to look and be open-minded. But even if you don't have access to those things, there's so much that you can do with sunlight, exercise,

149:34gratitude, hydration, yoga, nidra, 90% of the really effective things don't cost anything except time. It's just time and discipline. Well, when we're talking about there's another there's a benefit to what we're talking about with intermittent fasting is that you give yourself structure and that's very important for people even for people that are disciplined. Like I find myself when I have a full day off and I have to do anything. I find myself putting off my workout to later and later in the day and then I kind of like lazily get through my workout and I go, "Oh my god." Like I'm better off when I'm busy because when I'm busy I have a structure. And I think there's a thing about like tell like I used to think that or I I do still think that about like sober October like when we do sober October I'm not drinking or doing anything for one month and that

150:20structure helps me you know and I think when you say I'm going to cut back on my drinking what does that even mean? [laughter] Everybody I know says that because I'm not a drinker. Although these days I'm hearing a lot about all these delicious whisies in Texas and I I don't have a problem with alcohol so I'm always willing to try. Yeah. Well they're not really delicious. They're delicious in comparison to whiskey. Kool-Aid tastes way better. What alcohol do you actually enjoy? I'd enjoy whiskey, but I wouldn't say it's delicious. Huh. Then why drink it? Cuz of the way it makes you feel. I like the way it makes me feel. I like a little bit of the flavor. I do. It's a It's a different thing. It's like a It's a smooth weirdness to like a whiskey, you know? There's But it's not A steak is delicious. Steak is delicious. There's a difference. Like I wouldn't

151:02say a whiskey is delicious, even if it's great whiskey. Yeah. And I don't smoke, but I have to say I I used to smoke the occasional cigarette when I was in graduate school. And gosh, I miss nicotine. Nicotine's great. I love I love the taste of tobacco. You try a vape pen? No, I'm afraid to do that. Why? Cuz I think I'll just attach that thing surgically to my mouth. [laughter] I mean, I know where where I know where that line is. For me, it's adrenal clarity of mind, clarity, and energy. I mean, adrenaline, nicotine, like those those are vices for me. Cigarettes give you a wild head rush. I like that head rush, but I' i've found that there's some really good vape pens that give you that head rush, and I don't feel like they're going to [ __ ] your lungs up as bad, but but kids are vaping like crazy now, and that's got to be bad.

151:43It's not good. Well, they're also doing it all day long. And some of them are doing it with those lunchbox ones, those gigantic those big vape boxes. You ever seen them? They're huge. Some of these vape pens, they're not pens. Call them vape pens. They're as big as a cell phone, but thicker. Wow. and they have like this big robot dick hanging off of it and they're sucking on this thing and blowing giant clouds of of vape smoke. A lot of things can be overdone, right? But that's also the the case with fast food. If you want to eat fast food all day, good luck. You're going to have a [ __ ] heart attack. It's going to be terrible for you. I don't think I've had a fast food in ages. I think I watched your election night episode and there were and there was like all the comments coming through where about there there might have been

152:28a fast food hamburger on the table. No, filet of fishes. We had a couple of filt I love filt of fishes. McDonald's filt of fish. Oh, they're delicious. Terrible for you. But it was one of those things. It was like, I don't do that every day. I don't even do that every week. I don't even do that every month. No. Clearly, you take good care of yourselves. I I mean, for me, the vices that are, you know, like croissants, pizza, back to that. Oh, yeah. But the but the first drag off a freshly rolled cigarette is like nothing else. It's crazy, right? It's It's unbelievable the clarity of mind and the taste and you know cigarettes smell disgusting. Why don't you just only have a first drag? Impossible. You might have a problem. It's like first drag of a cigarette, one tattoo, you know? It's like come on. You know, it's impossible. Impossible.

153:14You can't have one Lays chips right in that. Yeah. One one uh Yeah. One uh Pringle or whatever. Do you What What vices do you have? Do you have vices? Adrenaline used to be a vice. You know, I I used to do risky behaviors. Not risky in the, you know, in the uh illegal sense, but sports stuff. Yeah. I mean, I went KJX at shark dive and loved every second of it. Great white sharks. And, you know, until I had an air failure down there. What happened? I had to call over another diver and do the share air thing. And holy [ __ ] I was alone in the cage. Oh my god. It was I went with my buddy Michael Mueller, who's this fantastic photographer, like celebrity photographer, but he also takes pictures of sharks. We were studying fear, so we decided to go do VR of great wiks of Guadalupe. I went the first year, stayed in the cage, didn't exit. We got my

154:03scuba certification. Second year, this is 2017, went out, bunch of friends, Brian McKenzie, who's kind of a like performance guy and former SEAL team guy. And anyway, we're out there, I'm in the cage, three divers leave to do the cage exit thing with their film, the VR, and I was just I'm on the hookah line. And then at some point, what's a hookah? It's like a It's a line up to the surface that you're breathing oxygen. Oh, but I was alone in the cage. I've been there the year before. So, the sharks are coming in all over the place and they're huge. I mean, the girth is insane. But I'm in the cage and they're out of the cage. And then all of a sudden, I got no air. I'm like, Jesus Christ. So, I look up and the the hose had kind of boa constricted up on itself. So, I was like, So, I pop up. Remember, no scuba on me cuz I'm just in the cage.

154:50And the thing's like concrete. Clink, clink, clink. And you're down 40 feet below the surface. It's like, oh god. So I drop down to the corner. There's a spare tank down there. Open it up. Nothing. Nothing comes out. It's empty. It's empty. So I go to the other reserve tank. Open it up. Nothing. Okay. So now I'm I'm screwed. So I'm getting real I haven't had any air in a little bit, but probably only 10 15 seconds, but freaking out. So I get up on top of the cage. I've got a weight belt on and I'm like, "Okay, I guess I shoot for the surface because I can see the boat up there because if I stay down here, I'm clearly gonna die." And then I'm thinking, "Okay, well, shooting for the surface is exactly what they like. Are they going to eat?" You know, you're just kind of I started to kind of panic about Oh, Jesus. And at that point, one of the divers

155:37Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's me there. That's while I'm in the cage. Um, see, they're big. They're They're big animals. So, and how are they attracting these fish? We You're not allowed to chum. So, um, they just come in. They're super meat. Okay. Uh, so yeah, you film that from the cage. So, that was neat, though. Yeah. So, you can you can keep tuneup on the surface, but we're down in the deep cage. There's a surface cage in a deep cage. So, then what happened? Yeah. Mulleller shot that for our VR in the lab. So, then what happened was this guy Brock, who's one of the divers, that's Muller. Mueller wears a yellow suit to look more like a tuna, so they come closer. Oh, [ __ ] Yeah. Yeah. He's a [laughter] You guys will get along. He's he's a longtime Hollywood guy who's a kind of a you photographer who does these adventures. Um so then one of the divers

156:25saw me and I was like you know like I need air and he kind of looked at me but and so he kicked his way back over but that was a long wait and then we did the share air thing but now two divers are out and we're there sharing air and there's only so much air before you eventually run out and there's nothing in the reserves. Eventually they came back and then we we pulled the rope and got out and it was yeah it was enough of a scary experience for me that I was like oh god. So we and actually I got out and guy from the SEAL teams came over to me super calm like typical of those guys. He's like so what do you take away from that experience and I was like check the safety tanks. He was like check the safeties. But I will say this I'm not tough. Like this is not to kind of you know um inflate myself but the next day I woke up and I was seriously

157:09freaked out. And so I actually went down the next day again and I cage exited. And the reason I did it is because first of all this when I cage exited I was on scuba. So I felt totally contained. I knew I wasn't going to die of an air failure. And the other reason is everything we know about trauma and the treatment of trauma is that if you live with that bug in your brain about quote unquote almost dying. In fact, I don't even like to say that. That stuck in you. So I went down there in the cage and then I cage exited and and what you keep saying cage exit. Swam out of the cage with the sharks. Turns out when they're swimming at you, if you swim toward them, they bank off. If you don't, if you shoot for the surface or something, they go, "Oh, you're prey." And they can go after you. But if you just swim toward them, then they bank off pretty early.

157:52So, how do you get to the surface? Well, you get back in the cage to get back up. So, that you get into the cage at the top, they lower it in a crane, right? Then you all go out on scuba, and then you're swimming around getting video. The sharks come at you, you go at them, and then they bank off. So, you're saying you cage exited, meaning you swam around with them with the scuba deer, not you went to the surface. Correct. I we the next day I woke up and and I was just so distraught about what happened the day before. I decided there's only one way to deal with this and that's to cage exit to go down there, but this time leave the cage and this time leave it on scuba. And then it felt like a victory, right? I'm here. And so, but when you go up to the surface, do you go back in the cage to go back up to the surface? Yes. Cuz you don't want to just swim up to

158:34the top cuz they might bite your legs off. Correct. But in the culture of cage exit great white shark diving, there's a interesting twist. For years, guys have been going out to Guadalupe and doing this stuff. It's a real kind of machismo culture. Who can get closest? Who can get the camera almost into the shark's mouth, etc. And for years, there was a lot of kind of oneupping and posting things online. And then a couple years ago, out of what seemed like nowhere, Ocean Ramsay, this female free diver shark expert, shows on BBC video her swimming with no scuba with the biggest great white shark anyone's ever seen. I think they call it big blue. And she's holding on to the fins. So all these guys, like all this testosterone of like, I cage exited and I got this close and that close. And here comes this lady and she just demolishes the scene. Like no one has

159:25done what she's done. This shark is so big. This is This is her. This is insane. Her husband shot this footage from what I understand. Oh my god. Imagine your wife doing this and you're going, "Baby, what are you doing?" So, she doesn't even have [ __ ] scooby. She's holding on to this shark. So, she doesn't seem to mind either. I mean, when I look at this, I mean, I get nervous. I al It's also beautiful. But what I love about it is, you know, there was so much pigeon chesting around. She looks like a fish, too. I would eat her if I was a shark. Like, doesn't like her like even the way her legs are with that uh outfit on, she looks delicious. Look at the size of that thing. Biggest one ever seen on record. Really? Yeah. How big is it? Oh, I don't know. I mean, a 10 or Oh, there's someone else. A 10 or 12 foot shark is a big shark because the girth

160:16is what's freaky, right? That's probably a 16 foot shark. I'm probably going to get this wrong. I'm sure the the sharkistas will come out all that. Look at this. She's petting it or he's petting it. Yeah, these people are out of their [ __ ] minds. Yeah, they're out of their minds. The um you're just lucky it's not hungry, right? And there are a lot of tuna out there. So, Guadalupe is an amazing place. It's just this big rock jutting up out of the ocean. And I wanted to learn the history of this place. Turns out that if this is true, what I was told by one of the local officials is that the some dolphins playing with him. Those dolphins are [ __ ] with [laughter] him. Some politician in Mexico, his wife had an affair with some guy and apparently they put the guy out there on the island. But the island is known, maybe

161:03that's just lore, but people were spearishing out there and getting eaten. They were putting the, you know, bloody fish on their hip and getting munched. And so they realized this is filled with great whites. And when you when you drop anchor there, it's like I remember every time going out there and we've been there twice now, I was thinking, "Oh, we're not going to see any sharks." You drop anchor, a shark breaches. They're just they're everywhere. It's just shark soup. Is it just because of the high amount of tuna or tuna? And I think they probably breed near there. There's something called shark cafe, which is not far from there, that oceanographers like to study. Anyway, anyway, uh so that's one of your adrenaline things. Yeah, that's right. So you asked me. Yeah. So, I used to do stuff like that, which is frankly stupid, right? Because

161:42I make my living on land and I'd like to someday have a family and all that kind of stuff. And that's not productive for that sort of thing. So, yeah, that sort of thing is the kind of thing that I should avoid if I'm going to have a long life. Jamie, who are you telling me that someone got their hand bitten off? One of them Jackass guys. Yeah. Yeah. You didn't want to watch the video, but yeah. And Jackass like the promo during Shark Week. Yeah. Got it bitten off. Not off. Not off. It got mangled. Bitten, I guess. and it was [ __ ] up and he had to have surgery and I believe he still has his hand so those guys are crazy shooting themselves out of cannons that kind of thing never appealed to me but um you know I'm not a fighter got in fights when I was a kid I'd loved the clarity of mind that came from the adrenaline it was boxing in

162:24ring so you know it's it's fun I mean it but I think as a 46-year-old you know and where my you know that my brain is my living this kind of thing yeah not good to get hit in the head what are your vices my ask um yeah I I do like junk food occasionally. I do like to drink probably more than I should and joy. The problem is I do shows all the time. They're in nightclubs and you know we have a couple cocktails and then next thing you know a couple is three or four and then we do podcast and podcast a lot of times would be drinking. If it's anything that I should do less of it's definitely booze. But I'm around a very boozy culture. You know, a lot of my friends drink and drink pretty hard. And when it comes to how many of them are actually healthy, oh, it's a [ __ ] small number. I always worry about the number of like

163:13suicides in among comedians or early deaths like the Belushi thing. Now, granted, I'm I'm not really aware or um Richard Prior or things like that. Seems like stuff hits early in that community. Well, the Belushi thing and the Prior thing are probably both related to drugs. you know, I was around prior in his dying days, um, unfortunately because, uh, he was when he was doing really poorly, he decided to go back on stage and I think it's like, you know, try to to try to recapture his lost love, you know, like his body was failing him. And so, the thing that excited him or got him at least to give him some sort of sense of purpose was to go back at the comedy store. And I worked with him for about five maybe six weeks where he was going up all the time and I was always going on after him. So it'd be Richard Prior then me. Um, and so I got to see him, uh,

164:07they had to carry him to the stage and then they had to put him in the chair and then they had to crank up the sound like like you he was really loud because his voice was, you know, he had no energy and I remember thinking like he's not old enough for this like whatever this neural neurologically degenerative disease that he has like whether that happened because uh he was, you know, had a genetic propensity predisposition for this or whether it's because of a lot of cocaine. Cuz I know a lot of people, I don't know if there's they're they're related, but I know a lot of people that did a lot of cocaine in the 70s and the 80s and they developed like some serious neurological problems as they got older. Sure. And what it's mixed in with, I mean, one thing we know for sure is that amphetamines kill neurons. Yeah, there's no question.

165:04Wouldn't cocaine have a similar effect? It's seems likely. Seems very likely. I mean, the early studies of MDMA and whether or not it was neurotoxic actually had to one of them had to be retracted because it they accidentally used a amphetamine and cocaine-like substance instead accidentally in these monkeys and they showed nerve degeneration. How did they accidentally confuse MDMA with that? Laboratories are you know human human error is a big thing. You mean CO 19? Is that what you're saying? You saying the Wuhan lab? You're saying that? Well, that's that's another that's another discussion. Although, you know, I mean, look, my lab works with pseudo rabies virus, with different herpes viruses, with different ado viruses. Humans pipet those viruses. It it's there reason you have biosafety protocols. It's because people make errors and protocols prevent error.

165:51So, these people accidentally gave these animals uh an amphetamine, right? And then later they discovered that what they had given them was not what they thought. And so they quite responsibly retracted that paper. There is evidence that high doses of any highly dopamineergic drug so cocaine, amphetamine, things of that sort can be neurotoxic. Um if you make neurons really really active, exceedingly active, they will die, right? They're electrical cells. They electrically active cells, they can they can die. Excytoxicity, exytoxicity. There's also neurotoxicity. I mean, there's all sorts of ways that this can happen. And yeah, I'm not saying that Michael J. Fox has Parkinson's because he was a cocaine user. I mean, I I saw the movie Bright Lights Big City. I don't know if he was actually a cocaine user or not. He was in that movie. But

166:35we've seen I mean, amazing talent. Like, I'm a huge Joe Strummer fan, Clash. And the Strummer was an, you know, died so young of a heart attack. Known amphetamine user, right? Sadly. Um, Michael J. Fox and Parkinson's. Is that related to recreational drug? I don't know if he did anything. I don't know. I always think family ties. So I think of like this really conservative uh kid. So I'm not saying he did. Um but Prior or John Candy? I don't know if Candy was Candy was enormous. He was so And um John Belalushi died of a speedball. He died of mixing cocaine and heroin. The same thing the River Phoenix died from. Yeah. I mean there's a susceptibility. Guys I grew up with these names won't mean anything to people but guys that were kind of famous in the San Francisco skateboarding punk rock scene. A lot of them that died young died of heart

167:22attacks five or six years after they stopped doing a lot of cocaine because their body was still [ __ ] I think it it it can I think there is evidence that it can adjust um the function of calcium channels on the heart and then later you know it takes a smaller insult to to put them under. Anyway, that's it's sad. I mean it's it's not as we were talking about with hormones and all the other things and light etc. It's not just about the effect it has in the short term. It's the long arc. And the long arc can be negative like we're talking about or the long arc can be positive. Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm almost 55. I'll be 55 in August. And uh I'm very happy that I can still use my body the way I can cuz uh I always assumed that when someone got to be 55, they were done. Like that your body's going to fall apart. No, it turns out the measures and

168:09I know Aia talks about this much more uh in a much more sophisticated way than I can, but one's ability to get up off the ground without assistance, one ability to jump and land, one's ability to hang from a bar for a minute, these are measures not unlike blood pressure and heart rate, resting heart rate and things of that sort about how well your nervous system can communicate to your musculature and whether or not your musculature and ligaments and bones can handle all that. And so I think being the one thing we know is that being physically active is superb at extending your life and improving your life. Yeah, improving your life is I mean I I don't know how much you can really extend. Here's the deal is like we really don't have a lot of data on people that started working out when they were like in their early teens and

168:55kept going supplementing their hormones, supplementing vitamins, supplement and then got into their 50s and 60s and 70s. We don't have a lot of those people. Because first of all, people don't put in that kind of effort because it's not mandatory, right? If you're a professional athlete, you don't put in that effort because you're not going to be a professional athlete when you're 60 and 70 years old. You're just not. So, a lot of times when people that are professional athletes, they get to the point where they retire, one of the things they do is they get fat and they stop. I mean, it's really kind of bizarre. Well, this is the old thing about um that they used to say, you know, you stop lifting weights, you'll quote unquote turn to fat, which is impossible. This is because people kept eating and they stopped training. My

169:32role model in all this is actually very perhaps surprising to some people. Um, recently I had Ido Portal, you know, on the podcast. You know who my my hero is? His mother. He has a video of his mother when she's in her 60s. Started training at 58 and this was like seven years ago doing pull-ups for reps. Wow. Doing back bends, doing all the kind of stuff that you know, eo-ish stuff, but in her 60s, which means that now she's in her early 70s. and he told me that she's still doing five sets of five pull-ups, dips, like like legitimate work. And to so to me, if I can do that, if I'm dipping and I'm doing pull-ups and I'm running, then I'll consider myself a winner at that age. I'm going to send you something, Jamie, um my friend Jesse, uh she's a uh stuntwoman and she does Ninja Warrior. I'm I'll send you her uh go to Jesse Graph G R A FFF PWR. She does a lot of

170:29wild [ __ ] but you can find videos of her mom and her working out. So, her mom does these ninja warrior workouts and her mom is doing chin-ups and all kinds of wild stuff. Her mom is super super impressive. Like, this is her mother. Oh, look. Ocean Ramsay commented the the shark person. Ah, there you go. So, they're all in a club of badasses. So, I met Jesse at uh Taran Tactical where she was uh working on her gun skills. But look at look at her moming like swinging and and catching uh chin-up bars and doing all this wild stuff. And and Jesse, she does those ninja warrior competitions and like I said, a lot of stunt work as well. She like super physically fit, but there's a bunch of videos of her mom and her going through these like incredible workouts together. And her mom is just amazingly fit. That's awesome.

171:20But it's like just keep going. The thing is like to keep using your body. If you stop, it's very difficult to sort of regain that kind of mobility and and physical strength and coordination and and your V2 max and all that stuff. But if you don't stop and you just continue, as long as you're smart about it and you don't push yourself too hard, you don't injure yourself. And injuries are a big problem, right? Because injuries require a long time where you're not you're going to have to at least be semi-edentary and let your body relax. At the very least, you're not going to be able to go full full boore, which I think you kind of have to do. Your body has to know, hey, this crazy [ __ ] wants to do this stuff all the time. We need to have that kind of mobility, that kind of physical strength, that kind of joint function. Well, I think that the

172:07transition from unfit to fit is where people see the most dramatic effects and and that should be encouraging. Uh I have a colleague, her name is Wendy Suzuki. She for years she studied memory. She's at NYU. Now she's the incoming dean of students at NYU. The reason I'm so happy about that is that she's talked about and published really good scientific studies on 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise early in the day. And now she's a 10-minute cold shower person because she lives in New York. harder to get access to ice tubs and things improving focus, stress resilience, cognitive function. I mean, finally, there are data to point to the fact that doing cardiovascular or weight training exercise if it's intense enough and it comes early in the day especially, but also if you do it late in the day, they've also shown that people's

172:54cognitive function actually goes up. This was all correlative before. It was like well you exercise your heart your cardiovascular system is better therefore your brain is better therefore there's this indirect effect on mood and performance but now they know everything from grip strength to attention capacity to uh task switching there all these measures like the stroop stroop test of all these things of cognitive uh flexibility and they all of that improved by physical exercise categorically over and over doesn't matter if it's boys girls men what age and so now we no longer have to speculate as to whether or not exercise is good for the brain Also, it absolutely is. And her work is now being transferred into basically curriculum for students. Her goal is that students are going to go through college not just getting their grades, but coming out

173:38healthier than they came in. And hopefully that'll wick out to everybody, not just people in college, obviously, but will wick out to everybody. So, they're going to be running studies, getting data from these kids. I think it's really important because I think that everything is kind of murky and kind of indirect up to a point and now they're actually really solid data. Well, there's also this prejudice unfortunately that uh anything physical is not an intellectual pursuit. That it's almost the opposite. It's a vanity pursuit. That's ridiculous. But that that is a prejudice that many really intelligent people, otherwise intelligent people have, right? Yeah. Well, um a colleague at Colombia has a Nobel Prize. Richard Axel um plays squash like multiple times per week. He used to play basketball, although he says not very well. Um, Eric Kendell,

174:24Nobel Prize in uh for research on memory. Swam a mile three times a week. Now it's half a mile because he's in his late 90s. He still does it. Torren Weasel Nobel Prize for vision. My scientific great-grandparents 96 years old still jogs every morning 45 minutes and still mentally sharp, right? So the smartest people, most accomplished scientists I know, all extremely physically active for decades. M. So I whatever smart people think that physical activity is just for meattheads and jocks or they're obviously not smart enough to know how it really works. It's just it's not that they're not smart, it's just this unfortunate prejudice that people adopt and then have a very difficult time shedding. You know, I think they associate um physical fitness and physical activity with being a pursuit of people that are kind of like claw hoppers.

175:13Yeah, I think you're right. I think there's also a little bit of the tone that um came back to me early on like you know some colleagues have been really interested in like oh I'm really excited about you know eating more omegas or eating more fish or you know whatever taking athletic greens etc and then some of them like oh it's all pills and powder kind of stuff they they don't they see it as over there and when they don't realize that sure you don't need those things but a general theme of taking care of oneself physically can translate does translate to taking care of oneself mentally the reverse is not true right plenty of intellectual ual smart people who look like melted candles, right? And who function like melting. They sleep with their mouth open. They have sleep apnea. I mean, they're they're a wreck. And that wreck shows up somewhere in their

175:5560s. And I see this all the time because I've attended no fewer than 10 funerals for brilliant people. Yeah. And those funerals, with one or two exceptions, were all because they took terrible care of themselves. Well, I in my world, in the comedy world, uh obviously I see that because most of my friends don't take care of themselves. you know, a good percentage of people in that world when they get to a certain age, like there's friends that are my age and they look like they're my dad. Do you I almost wonder whether or not they somehow pair the idea that their talent and their ability is linked to their being unhealthy. Oh, yeah. There's many crazy but it's just an excuse. It's just an excuse. It really is. It's like a thing. I used to think that uh I shouldn't meditate and I uh because meditation and any sort of enlightenment

176:42would [ __ ] with my comedy because it would somehow or another make me more peaceful and kind and that wouldn't wouldn't be good for comedy. You lose your edge. Yeah. But it's really just an excuse. It's just an excuse. Comedy is a totally different thing. It's an art form. It's not going to [ __ ] your art form up. But I you know when you're young and insecure, you don't really understand why you're funny at all. So you're like, [snorts] "What if I [ __ ] it up? What if I lose it?" You know, it's it's a fleeting thing as it is. I'm only funny like five out of six times right now, but you know, but if you [snorts] look at the top people, I say like you or you look at a Chappelle or you look like the people that are like I talked about no like three Nobel Prize winners that their work will carry on for health and

177:19science for thousands of years if we exist that long. Yeah. So in that top tier they get it. In the lower tier, I don't know. But in the middle tier is where I see a lot of the the unfortunate behavior of not preserving oneself. So, do you if you look at like the best of the best, do you see good self-care there? The most important thing is focus on your craft. That's the most important thing. There's a lot of great guys that don't they're not taking care of themselves, but like like Chappelle, Chappelle smokes and he drinks, but my god, he he focuses on his craft. Like, he really cares about comedy and he cares a lot about he's a really interesting, thoughtful person. He spends a lot of time thinking, you know, he's not flippant in his perceptions and his thoughts. That's the most important thing. That's the most important thing.

178:05Focus on your craft. You know, there is a great benefit to being healthy. Great benefit in in many many many ways and in emotional stability and your ability to have energy to keep going. And that's one of the things that I try to relay to young people that aren't that healthy, but are young comics. I say don't think of it as like I don't want to be an athlete. I want to be a comic. Think of it as you your vehicle for doing anything is your physical body. That's all you have. When you're tired like you do two shows a night, you know, like two shows a night is weird because like it's not just you're doing two hours of comedy. You're doing two hours. It's like I have a 7:00 show and maybe a 9:30 show, right? So that means not only I'm doing an hour, but then I have to wait two and a half hours to do another hour. And then, you know, if you're not smart

178:52with I eat fruit in between. I make sure that I'm, you know, well hydrated. But I think of these things because I'm an athlete. Whereas other guys, they're [ __ ] off and they're just drinking and the second show rolls around and they're drunk and they're tired. I've been there before and I've had bad shows because of that. It's very embarrassing. And so, you have to really be careful like when you're, you know, you're looking at your body. Don't look at it as just it's just life. I'm just living life. Like, no, no. There's a specific thing you're going to need out of you're going to need to have a certain amount of energy. You're going to need to have a certain amount of tension and that you're going to need that in about two hours. So, prepare prepare wisely. I'm just thinking about two shows a night. We did some live shows recently

179:31and uh related to the podcast and it was it was draining. Oh my goodness. I much prefer to be behind the microphone. Well, it's draining if you're not accustomed to it, but if you're accustomed to it, it becomes invigorating. Like when I get home from a show, I'm not drained. I'm usually excited. I mean, I enjoyed it. It was nice to interact with people because podcasting a little bit like shouting into a tunnel, especially the solo episodes. It's nice to know there's people out there listening. You see them. Definitely. It was It was nice. And to get questions in person felt really good and it's a lot like the classroom that I came up in, you know, lecturing as a little kid at the carnivals and then you know the carnivals. It makes it sound like I was a cary, but [laughter] wasn't a carne. But as a just telling people about chlorine.

180:10Oh my goodness. Dlor I could tell you more about aquaria and fish tanks than you ever want to know. I always say if nothing else I'm going to cure insomnia, you know. [laughter] Well, listen, man. I appreciate you very much and I appreciate your podcast and all the information that you put out there. You very very much helped me and uh I think people like you are a really valuable research and um a resource rather and I'm really glad that you're not just contained to classrooms and that putting out that podcast and making it accessible to so many people, it's really really valuable. So, thank you. Thank you. My pleasure. Yeah, you've been a huge inspiration. you and Lex and a few others have really paved this road and I'm very grateful. I do believe that people have should have access to information and education and so just trying to do it.

180:53We're super fortunate that we have these kind of platforms that this exists cuz this has never been a thing in history before and it's a thing now. We're very lucky and now they can't put the lid back on. Now they're [ __ ] [laughter] All right. Thank you, brother. Thank