1172: TRT & Steroids | Skeptical Sunday

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Speaker 1 Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger.
Today I'm here with Skeptical Sunday co-host, writer, and researcher Nick Pell.

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Speaker 1 Welcome once again to Skeptical Sunday, where we take a closer look at things people take for granted, misunderstand, or get totally wrong.

Speaker 1 Now, if you're listening to this podcast, there's about 100% chance that you do, in fact, have internet access and you've probably gotten an ad for those hormone clinics at some point.

Speaker 1 That is testosterone replacement therapy or TRT. I've even talked about it a little bit here on the show, not shilling TRT or hormones directly, but clinics that do things like that.

Speaker 1 They're kind of a dime a dozen these days, and some of them are really great and life-changing. We'll get to that in a little bit.
This treatment, though, is almost exclusively for men.

Speaker 1 So fair warning, there's going to be a lot of dude talk in this episode. Yes, there's menopause stuff and hormone replacement for women.
I feel like it warrants a separate episode entirely.

Speaker 1 So, here, when we talk about steroids, that's going to be shorthand for anabolic steroids, not cortisol shots or stuff you get in your knee from your doctor when your shoulder hurts.

Speaker 1 I don't know, whatever. Well, probably you wouldn't get anything in your knee where your shoulder hurts.
Depends how shitty your doctor is. Nick, your doctor works in a storage locker.

Speaker 1 So, they might offer something like that. Anyway, 10 years ago, TRT testosterone replacement therapy was this exotic thing that you might have heard about.
I don't know. I'm like Joe Rogan.

Speaker 1 And you thought, ooh, gosh, isn't that drugs? But now it's everywhere. And you probably already know somebody who's on TRT or test as the cool kids call it.

Speaker 1 And it's not limited to testosterone replacement therapy either. What used to be a taboo warned about in after-school specials, Reid Rage or whatever, if you remember those.

Speaker 1 is now so much more widespread. I'm talking about the use of performance enhancing drugs.
We'll call them PEDs. In Hollywood, they use them.

Speaker 1 In Pro Sports, they use them down at your local gym where people are chasing after superhero bodies and throwing caution to the wind. But why is this? And maybe more importantly, is it safe?

Speaker 1 Here today to help me thread the needle on the use of PEDs is writer and researcher Nick Pell. Nick, are you juiced up for this episode or what?

Speaker 3 I pinned this morning.

Speaker 1 So for those of you who aren't roided out gym freaks like Nick, pinning is what they call injecting steroids.

Speaker 1 One of the reasons that I asked him to handle this episode, is it fair to say you're a pretty loud and proud steroid user? Is that fair?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I've been on TRT for six years now, and I would very comfortably say that it saved my life.

Speaker 1 Meaning what? You're going to die from a critical lack of excess body hair and testosterone or what?

Speaker 3 No, but here's the thing, and we'll get a lot deeper down this rabbit hole as we go along. Low testosterone doesn't always cause a lot of side effects, but it did in me.

Speaker 3 In fact, my issue wasn't even that my testosterone was low. It was on the high end of normal when I got got my blood checked.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you just had to throw that in, didn't you? I think a lot of people are on the low end of normal or in the middle of normal and they still go for it, but that's not really what matters, right?

Speaker 3 Naturally, but I also had very poor levels of what they call free test.

Speaker 1 So free test, for our listeners, is the amount of testosterone that your body, I'm going to oversimplify this, the amount of testosterone your body can actually utilize.

Speaker 1 So if your testosterone is through the roof, but you don't have enough free testosterone floating around, you're going to have a bad time.

Speaker 1 So the short version is that total testosterone is what you have and free testosterone is what you're actually using.

Speaker 1 Think about you could have a million dollars in the bank, but maybe they give you a $500 withdrawal limit. That's your free test.
That's the bottleneck.

Speaker 1 Okay, so what were the symptoms for you then of low testosterone?

Speaker 3 A little bit of background to give here. I've suffered from chronic insomnia since I was a kid, which I learned much later in life was the result of PTSD.
Now, does testosterone cure PTSD?

Speaker 3 No, but it does make it easier for me to sleep, which is a common thing men report after going on testosterone.

Speaker 3 Other things related to low testosterone were depression, and I mean severe and extreme depression, which is also probably related to PTSD.

Speaker 3 But the testosterone made it both easier to deal with that and less of an issue generally. I had very low energy.
That was the big one that I was like, I think that I'm a TRT candidate.

Speaker 3 Honestly, if testosterone did nothing but clear up those problems for me and did not make me into into a jack-tulking freak, I probably still take it.

Speaker 3 I love being a jack-tulking freak, but it's more of the other stuff that keeps me doing it.

Speaker 1 Any negative side effects for you? I mean, we haven't hung out in a while. You got boobs now.
Are you bald now? Wearing a wig? I don't know. Is there anything like that?

Speaker 1 I know you can't wear jeans anymore. I'm not sure if that's a side effect.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I legitimately can't fit into jeans anymore because of my monster thighs.

Speaker 1 What a flex.

Speaker 3 Yeah, but I can't wear jeans. So I have to take something called an aromatase inhibitor every couple of months.

Speaker 3 And canary in the coal mine for that is I get really gnarly back knee, like nasty zits on my back.

Speaker 3 But the aromatase inhibitor is an additional medication that I take to prevent nasty side effects, which are typically caused by the body turning excess testosterone into estrogen.

Speaker 3 That process is called aromatization, hence the name aromatase inhibitor, which thankfully has nothing to do with smells.

Speaker 1 Yeah, thank goodness for that.

Speaker 1 Yikes.

Speaker 3 Yeah. so that said, major symptoms are pretty rare at the dose I'm taking, which is at the limit of what can reasonably be called testosterone replacement therapy.

Speaker 3 I take more than what most doctors would prescribe you unless you're John Cena and you've totally wrecked your endocrine system from years of massive PED abuse.

Speaker 3 Me and my current wife have been trying for a kid for two years now and nothing.

Speaker 3 So fellas, especially you young bucks out there, know that if you take testosterone, you could potentially permanently nuke your reproductive ability.

Speaker 1 Yikes, those raisins. Okay, why is that? What's going on there?

Speaker 3 Because when you start introducing external sources of testosterone, your body stops producing it from the regular sources. That means that it stops making the stuff your body needs to produce sperm.

Speaker 3 And unfortunately, testosterone alone won't make sperm. You need other hormones for that.

Speaker 1 Young guys are unfortunately thinking, whatever, I don't even want kids, which, yeah, you're 24. Of course you don't.

Speaker 1 But as you get older, you might change your mind, like 90, whatever percent of the population. And then if you're taking tons of testosterone and other stuff, it might be too late.

Speaker 1 And I do think, Nick, it's a little ironic that a lot of guys, maybe not every guy, but a lot of guys take this stuff so they can land a girlfriend or a wife.

Speaker 1 And then when they finally succeed, they find out that they're shooting blanks as a result of shooting all this stuff.

Speaker 3 So there's things you can do to reverse that, but they might not work and they're expensive. My startup cost for the regimen that I'm on now was, I think, $4,000.

Speaker 3 And I am shelling out less now because I found another source, but I was shelling out about $400 or $500 a month.

Speaker 1 For the fertility stuff.

Speaker 3 For the fertility stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Gotcha. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And there's operations and stuff, but let's just say the things that they can do if your raisins are switched off, that hurts a lot more than the kinkiest stuff that you are able to pull off with your new friends due to all your big muscles over there.

Speaker 1 I don't want to get too deep into the weeds on the side effects. Let's come back to this later.
I guess the big question on my mind is, are these drugs meeting a legitimate medical need?

Speaker 1 Or is it kind of like, hey, medical need, but it's a vanity play and a cash grab when you take the dressing off?

Speaker 3 I think it's honestly both. I don't think it's an either or thing.
If you look at testosterone levels in the average American male, they've dropped considerably over the last few decades.

Speaker 3 I think that there are some pretty clear reasons for this. We actually have an episode coming up all about it, about xenoestrogens and endocrine disruptors.
They're everywhere.

Speaker 3 They're in the water you drink.

Speaker 1 So the water I drink is making me into less of a man. I guess that shouldn't surprise me.
The label on the bottle is French for crying out loud. So should have seen that one coming.

Speaker 3 There's estrogen in the tap water. And this is not Alex Jones.
The frogs are gay paranoia. You're drinking estrogen every time you drink tap water.
Not making this up. You can check the show notes.

Speaker 3 I don't like them putting chemicals in the water that turn the friggin' frogs gay.

Speaker 1 Just in case anybody was missing that reference. I love that soundbite.
That's probably one of my most used sound bites, even though it never fits in the context that I use it in.

Speaker 1 So I'm glad that it actually slid right in there. Okay, I will defer to the show notes on this one, plus I'm reading the notes for the next episode.
I have heard.

Speaker 1 that we drink birth control hormones because they come out of people's urine and they aren't filtered out, which is crazy to think about.

Speaker 1 What are some other reasons for this? I mean, it can't just be all esoteric hormone pee in the tap water stuff, right?

Speaker 3 No, it's not. There's obesity, there's sedentary lifestyles, chronic stress, which leads to much higher cortisol levels, which nukes your testosterone levels.

Speaker 3 And there's kind of a feedback loop that develops where one starts causing the others and then they reinforce each other.

Speaker 1 Okay, meaning what exactly? Show me the loop here.

Speaker 3 So you have chronic stress because you sit on your butt all day, which makes you more stressed out, which makes you want to sit on your butt more.

Speaker 1 Okay, so it's kind of like hashtag modern life.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's the crux of it. The modern Western lifestyle is very conducive to producing low testosterone levels.

Speaker 1 So assume that there is an actual crisis of testosterone levels among American males, which is so funny because whenever you look at old photos of people, men and women both look way older.

Speaker 1 You find out they're like 29 and you're like, why does this person look 45 in this photo?

Speaker 1 And then also, maybe this is just a weird cognitive bias of mine, but when I look at pictures of men from like the 60s and 70s, they look way more.

Speaker 1 And again, this could just be like style and aesthetic. They look way more manly than guys do in 2025.

Speaker 1 Again, I'm open to just, this is like anecdotal, my observation over the last few days before this episode. So could be nonsense, but that's kind of how I feel about it.

Speaker 1 Telling me that testosterone levels have gone down in the past few decades, it just completely tracks somehow.

Speaker 3 Yeah, Sean Connery's like 30 years old when he's playing James Bond, and he looks like a 50-year-old today.

Speaker 1 Yeah, in the photos, you mean. okay.
And what about the cash grab part? If there's a serious problem, is it a cash grab at all or does it just go over the line at one point?

Speaker 3 So in one sense, yeah, I think they're addressing an actual issue. In another sense, guys come to me all the time like, oh, should I go on testosterone?

Speaker 3 Because I'm the guy they know who talks about being on testosterone. And I have very few opinions about how another grown man should live his life.

Speaker 3 I figure people more or less know what works best for them. But the first thing I ask them is, how do do you feel?

Speaker 3 Because a blood test reading of your testosterone can tell you a lot, but you can more definitively answer this question by answering questions like, how are your energy levels?

Speaker 3 Do you have a sex drive? Are you depressed? And I get different answers. Some guys say, oh, I feel fine, but my blood work says I have low test.
And I'm just like, bro, who cares? You feel fine.

Speaker 3 Who cares what the number on a piece of paper says? And I get the opposite. My numbers are fine, but I feel terrible.
Okay, so a number on a piece of paper is fine. So you have to suffer.

Speaker 3 Just go talk to your doctor, man.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Okay.
So do you think that many of these clinics are pushing treatments on men that they maybe don't need?

Speaker 1 Like the guy who feels fine, but he supposedly has low test and now he's just shooting stuff up every three days?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think the clinics probably do this. They're also stupid expensive.

Speaker 3 My totally reputable and legal clinic that only accepts Bitcoin as payment and only communicates via ProtonMail mail charges something like 35 bucks for a bottle of test C that lasts me like two months.

Speaker 3 And some of these clinics are getting like 200 bucks a month or more for the same bottle.

Speaker 3 Now, granted, they're providing additional services on that, but they'll be like, oh, we'll send you the needles. It's like a box of needles is like 12 bucks.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it is interesting. One, they figure you can't get it anywhere else.
Two, yeah, they send you the needles. And three, they're like, we're monitoring your blood work.

Speaker 1 And it's like, well, okay, depending on the clinic, it really does depend. Like, my clinic, by the way, I'm happy to refer anybody to mine.

Speaker 1 I don't take testosterone, but I take other stuff, and they're super responsible with it.

Speaker 1 But yeah, you hear about these clinics where, like, the doctor looks at your stuff annually and is like, Yeah, you're not dead yet, give me $12,000 more dollars, and I'll send you a pallet of testosterone or whatever, and another pallet full of needles.

Speaker 3 And I've totally had that experience, by the way, where it's like I had elevated PSA levels, which is prostate stuff. And it was like, yo, I have elevated PSAs.
We need to talk about this.

Speaker 3 It took me like two weeks to get somebody on the phone. And then they were like, did you have a bladder infection recently? Yes, I did.
Okay, well, then you're probably fine. We'll monitor it.

Speaker 3 Nothing to be worried about now, but it's like, okay, well, I just spent two weeks thinking I had cancer.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's super scary. That's like phone call that day or the next day.
Or text me back, did you have a bladder infection?

Speaker 1 Okay, it's probably that, but we'll still have you talk to the doctor in a week, but it's probably that. So relax.
That would have gone a long way. That would have scared me.

Speaker 1 That would have probably been a deal breaker for me.

Speaker 3 It was a deal. That's why I stopped working with that clinic.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it sounds like you have a very serious board-certified clinic you use that does not violate any laws or federal regulations whatsoever these days.

Speaker 1 Indeed. Yeah.

Speaker 3 For the record, I do have an endocrinologist, and we do discuss my blood work levels dosage.

Speaker 1 He's fine. That's interesting.

Speaker 1 I like that because I'm sure as a doctor, he's like, I have to obligatorily tell you not to buy your stuff from the internet, but your blood work looks this way and that way.

Speaker 1 Like he still, he didn't refuse to do his job because you're not buying the stuff from him.

Speaker 3 The thing I said about after I get my wife pregnant, I may want to blast again, which we'll explain what that means later. And they were like, oh, no, it's cool.
We got pro athletes. We get it.

Speaker 3 Yeah, they get it. Yeah, it's harm reduction.
That's it.

Speaker 1 That's a good way to put it. To circle back a bit, you said that testosterone saved your life, which is a pretty bold claim.
And I know you don't really say stuff like that unless you mean it.

Speaker 1 So everyone should be on testosterone. You're not saying that, right?

Speaker 3 No, like I said, I don't know what you listening to this podcast or some stranger should do. That's a medical decision for you in consultation with a doctor and whatever personal research you do.

Speaker 3 It's not a decision for me to make. Maybe it's great for you.
Maybe it's not. I don't know.

Speaker 1 Fair enough.

Speaker 1 Let's say that I've decided I want to go on TRT and I want to not pay for it with Bitcoin and get the kind of medication somebody produces in a storage locker off a highway exit on the outskirts of Tempe.

Speaker 1 How easy is it then to get it legitimately?

Speaker 3 It's pretty easy, especially if you're willing to shop around. You walk into your local male enhancement clinic and tell them you want to go on testosterone.
They're going to oblige.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's the cash grab part then.

Speaker 3 Yeah, being a libertarian, like, I think they're just meeting a market need. If a guy wants testosterone, like, sure.
I don't even care if he actually needs it. It's his body.

Speaker 3 He can put whatever he wants. He could sell his kidneys for fent for all I care.
But you're right. It is the cash grab part.
part.

Speaker 3 If you look long and hard enough, you're going to find a place that totally doesn't care if you actually need testosterone or not.

Speaker 3 And chances are good that you're not going to have to search very hard or very long to find a place willing to accommodate you.

Speaker 1 Is there actual evidence for this? Are you kind of just guessing?

Speaker 3 I don't know if there's any statistical evidence for it, but anecdotally, I've never, ever met a guy. who says, oh, yeah, they turned me down because my testosterone was too high.

Speaker 3 I don't see why there's any stigma around taking it anyway. If you feel like shit because you're getting old, take testosterone if it makes sense to you.

Speaker 3 No one's given out prizes for being depressed and having low energy. And I honestly just hate the kind of doctor who responds to these complaints with, heck, well, you know, we're all getting older.

Speaker 1 It sucks. Yeah.
It's look, I'm not saying everybody should go on testosterone, but I am saying everybody should get their hormones checked because one of the most common complaints I get.

Speaker 1 just from my friends, but also in the Feedback Friday inbox is like, man, I turned 42 and I just not the same person and it's not is this just midlife stuff and it's like have you heard your hormones checked and most of the time they haven't or it's been like five years or they can't remember the last time or it was two years ago and then i go get a full blood panel get your hormones checked and when your doctor says you're in the normal range don't just say okay bro i'm curious what the number is because guys will come back and go i'm in the normal range and it's like okay you're 35 and you have i don't know 250 or whatever yeah i was gonna say like 250 or something right yeah and and look maybe that's normal maybe that's what your body wants but i'm 45 and mine is 1100 and something

Speaker 1 so you're in the normal range and i'm in the normal range but i am gonna say that there's probably a fundamental difference in how much free testosterone i have what testosterone is doing to me my brain my body and it's just very different like oh yeah you're in the normal range So is my 83 year old dad.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 if you have the same test levels as my 83-year-old dad and you're 35, is that really normal?

Speaker 1 And like you said earlier about having symptoms, even though you're in the normal range, I just think that there's this massive normal ban and blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1 Well, anyway, I'm going off on a tangent, but this is one of my pet peeves about a lot of doctors, especially general practitioners. Not all doctors.

Speaker 1 I very much am a guy that follows my doctor's advice.

Speaker 1 I consult many doctors, but many sort of old school guys and gals, they just seem to refuse to realize the fact that a lot of symptoms of aging can be mitigated with medication or exercise or lifestyle.

Speaker 1 Usually it's all three, exercise, lifestyle, and medication. But doctors either go straight to medication or they just kind of go, eh, nothing you can do about that.

Speaker 1 And it's like, no, you can definitely build bone density. You just have to start jumping rope and lifting heavy weights or medium heavy weights.

Speaker 1 And yes, you can turn back the cardiovascular age that you have and make your heart healthier, even if you're 60.

Speaker 1 You don't have to run a marathon, but you have to stop watching Murder She She Wrote all day or whatever the hell you're doing now. So anyway, cut me off, Nick, before I continue down this rant hole.

Speaker 3 No, and I think it is partly a generational thing. I think younger doctors tend to be much more progressive and forward thinking on these types of issues than older doctors.

Speaker 3 But back to the cash grab, it's so super aggressively marketed.

Speaker 3 Like guys who maybe don't even have any of these issues see an ad and they're not imagining it, but your mind is pretty amazing in that it can create realities that don't otherwise exist if you pay attention to certain things and not other things.

Speaker 3 So you start reading about TRT and low testosterone, and all of a sudden you have symptoms, quote unquote, that you didn't have before because you focus on and lean into the negative and you didn't even notice it before.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So this kind of like hypochondria is applied to your endocrine system.
Like, oh, I slept a little bit later this week. I'm tired now.
Maybe I do have depression.

Speaker 1 I'm kind of sad about the lions losing, you know, whatever.

Speaker 3 And you're not doing it so you can get drugs specifically in some conscious way but your brain's just doing this to you exactly you're not faking it but it wasn't a problem before and if you stopped thinking about it it would go away a lot of these places use very fear-based marketing do you have low t

Speaker 3 tired of being fat or really vague language about regaining your vitality That's when they show the gray-haired couple and the guy's like smiling at the wife and she's smiling back.

Speaker 1 And it's, you're supposed to read between the lines like they're about to go go have sex somewhere because he can still do that.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Or it's like a 75-year-old dude who's super jacked and has an eight-pack.
And it's that guy is not on TRT, my friend.

Speaker 3 He's got some additional supplements that we're going to talk about a little further.

Speaker 1 And his penis is inflatable now. The last time that man had a natural erection was the Clinton administration.
All right. So that raises an important question.

Speaker 1 Are men actually optimizing, or is this kind of like Botox for dudes?

Speaker 3 I think it depends on the guy. I think it's mostly optimizing, but there's probably a fair amount of Botox for dudes.

Speaker 3 Myself as an example, there's absolutely no way that I need to be taking, and people who know are about to be like, you're taking what? I take $250 a week. I believe it's milligrams.

Speaker 3 I just fill the needle up to the five. $250 a week is not TRT.
It is drug use. And guys are taking this much.
and lying to themselves about what they're doing because it came from a doctor.

Speaker 3 So did the stuff that killed Elvis.

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Speaker 1 Now, back to Skeptical Sunday.

Speaker 1 So, quickly, earlier in the episode, you said I'm at the top range of what could be considered TRT. And now you're saying this is not TRT, it's drug use.
So, which is it?

Speaker 1 Are you in like a gray band of you're admitting it, but other people would maybe not admit it at the same dose?

Speaker 3 So, the euphemism for this is sport TRT. I'm not on TRT.
I mean, I am, but I'm not.

Speaker 1 I see.

Speaker 3 It's definitely like anything above 200 is a little questionable, but most guys who have a legitimate TRT need, it's like 125.

Speaker 3 Yeah. It's like about half what I'm taking.

Speaker 1 Gotcha. But I feel good.

Speaker 3 So it's like, who cares? I feel good, which is the point taking it.

Speaker 1 As long as your doctor is monitoring it, it's kind of like, all right, you're making those choices yourself.

Speaker 3 We'll watch your blood and watch your diet.

Speaker 1 There's longevity stuff that goes along with this.

Speaker 1 I think we're going to get into in a little bit, but I do agree that I think a lot of the danger here, not with your particular use, but I just mean using it in general, is a lot of this stuff.

Speaker 1 They will take $250 a week or $500 a week or whatever they're doing. And it's all kind of like whitewashed because, hey, it's from a doctor.

Speaker 1 And thing too about optimization is you're not even talking about treating a deficiency anymore, like with 125. You're talking about a way to have an edge in life.

Speaker 1 So even if a guy doesn't go to the gym, he's optimizing and trying to be more driven than the other guys at the office. Do you see that as a problem at all?

Speaker 3 No, not really, whatever. He's probably lying to himself about it.

Speaker 3 Beyond that, I don't think there's really an issue with it. Like you said, is your doctor okay with it? And are you going to a a real doctor? But other than that, no.

Speaker 3 I mean, if guy wants an edge and testosterone gives it to him, sure, why not?

Speaker 1 We talked a little bit about the side effects earlier, but I think this is a good opportunity to jump into the downsides of all this because you're not just going to get a magic serum that makes you the ultimate Superman or gives you that edge without any risk.

Speaker 1 So what are the risks?

Speaker 3 That's an important point to bring up. One biggest one is what it does to your blood.
My lipid profile is not great.

Speaker 1 Okay, what does that mean?

Speaker 3 It's your fat, your cholesterol levels. I think I'm naturally predisposed to bad cholesterol.
I'm pretty sure that my old man has bad cholesterol.

Speaker 3 No matter what I do, no matter how clean I eat, I always have elevated LDL and triglycerides and low HDL.

Speaker 1 Yes. And I remember used to be a vegan, if I can out you on that.
So if you had bad cholesterol, then genetics are often the culprit at play.

Speaker 1 For those who aren't blood work nerds, like Nick and I, he's saying that he is high bad cholesterol and low good cholesterol.

Speaker 1 And take a statin already man oh look at me i'm jordan i'm a millionaire who can afford doctors don't you have insurance no thanks opal all right moving on what are some other side effects that are a serious issue as opposed to like zits on your back that's gnarly but okay you go out in the sun for the afternoon every saturday and it's like manageable uh blood thickening which is an issue for me or has been an issue for me that sounds one gross and two super dangerous what is blood thickening it's pretty much exactly what it sounds like, but the process is that your blood gets more iron than it's supposed to, so it gets thicker and puts you at a risk and stroke.

Speaker 1 Please tell me there's something you can do about that and that you are also doing that.

Speaker 3 Yeah, so some guys,

Speaker 3 maybe me, maybe not, go to the blood drive every other month and definitely don't lie on the forums about whether or not they're there to dump blood. and leave them with a pint of blood.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's called blood dumping. I didn't know about it for two years after I went on test.

Speaker 3 And I was talking to this dude at the gym who was like, you've been on test for two years and you haven't dumped blood. You need to go to the clinic like now.

Speaker 1 Intense. So what do they do with the blood then?

Speaker 3 Apparently it gets flagged for elevated hemoglobin levels and then they either throw it out or they send it away for research. So I see maybe these guys are helping with blood research.

Speaker 1 Is it like the whole vat of blood or like just your pint of blood?

Speaker 3 No, it's just the individual donation. They test all that stuff before they do anything.
But if the hemoglobin levels are fine, they just use it for transfusion.

Speaker 3 The only reason that you're not supposed to do it, I think, is twofold. One, they don't want every guy on gear showing up and using them as a free phlebotomist.

Speaker 3 And the other one is that you fail all of the like, do you use

Speaker 3 needles?

Speaker 3 questions. I'm not like sharing a dirty needle at a trap house.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. They're like, do you use needles? And it's, yeah, but not like what you mean in this question.

Speaker 3 In the same way that a diabetic does.

Speaker 1 Like, yes, I use needles for insulin, not because I'm mixing up fentanyl or whatever. What's the one where you melt it in a spoon?

Speaker 3 It used to be heroin, but that all got chased off the market by Fent, so probably nothing now.

Speaker 1 I see.

Speaker 1 So anyway, it's not like you're going to accidentally kill someone with your thick blood or they're going to have to toss out a huge vat of otherwise healthy blood or something because I was about to let you have it for that blood dumping.

Speaker 3 No, there's literally nothing wrong with elevated tests in your blood other than possibly elevated hemoglobin levels, in which case, yeah, they're going to throw it out or send it to a lab.

Speaker 1 I see. So what else do guys on high doses of testosterone have to worry about?

Speaker 3 So I mentioned infertility, which is a byproduct of your body stopping producing testosterone once you start introducing it from an outside source.

Speaker 3 It's called exogenous testosterone for people who like the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle. The blood thickening and the bad lipids put a strain on your cardiovascular system.

Speaker 3 And I think probably the biggest one is the emotional dependence. If I miss a day or two, like people around me are going to notice.

Speaker 3 Mood swings, body dysmorphia is correlated to it, but I very much doubt it's caused by it. I think it's more the type of dude who's, I have horrible body dysmorphia.

Speaker 3 And I think that's just a function of how many meatheads are on test. Does a bro culture influencer, Don Bazzetti, who you apparently do know from My New Haircut.

Speaker 1 Girls love My New Haircut. Everybody who's 40 plus remembers being emailed this video on a fax machine or whatever.

Speaker 3 And everybody who grew up from South Jersey to Revere Mass remembers the guy.

Speaker 3 The day you started lifting is the day you became forever small because you're never going to be big enough is the thing he says. It's true.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you're doing good with the downsides, though, because I love the real talk. I don't like to glorify something that has real downsides.
Tell me more about the body dysmorphia.

Speaker 1 I want to do like a whole show about body dysmorphia in men and then another one about women because I feel like this is the other silent epidemic. Women will get eating disorders and stuff.

Speaker 1 I want to talk about that, but guys do this. I mean, I guess it is an eating disorder if you're eating 400 grams of protein per day because you want to gain 25 pounds every year until you're 30.

Speaker 1 Like that's also disordered eating.

Speaker 3 It's a whole other episode, and I have opinions on the exact specific thing you just said, and you should have me on for that one. Sure.

Speaker 1 Orthorexia. That's what it's called.
Yeah. Guys are wearing their poop on a scale in the morning.
Weird stuff like that.

Speaker 3 Yeah. So I definitely have body dysmorphia.

Speaker 1 Dr. Mike talked about it on his episode, Dr.
Mike Isratel.

Speaker 3 I'm sure that much like me, Dr. Mike Isratel looks in the mirror every morning and thinks, man, I'm such a small, skinny, fat sack of shit.
That's it. I'm like 225.
I've got like 15% body fat.

Speaker 3 Teenagers come up to me at the park and at the gym and stuff and are like, how do I get big? How do I get big muscles?

Speaker 1 Right. And you're like, why are you asking me of all people here at the dog park? Yeah, that's interesting.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 I got a wife who's constantly telling me how hot I am and how big I am and how great I look. And none of it connects.
I just am like, well, I could be leaner and when I get leaner, I look smaller.

Speaker 3 And, you know.

Speaker 1 Your wife is the last person you can trust about how good you look. She's either the top choice or the last choice of who you can trust about your body.

Speaker 3 She's the only choice, honestly.

Speaker 1 That's the right answer. Interesting.
Man, this is. Super fascinating.
It's also insane to me, but I don't mean that in a derogatory way. I obviously believe you.
I've seen it everywhere. All right.

Speaker 1 So with all the downsides, why inject testosterone in the first place unless you have some super serious deficiency? Body dysmorphia aside, if you didn't have that, would you be doing it?

Speaker 1 I don't know. I guess that's probably a separate question than the one I just asked.
But why inject it if you don't have some super serious deficiency in the first place?

Speaker 3 Everything in life is a calculated risk. You can mitigate most of these symptoms and you're not necessarily going to have any or all of them.

Speaker 3 I'm not doing the better better to live a day as a lion than a lifetime as a lamb thing because go find someone on their deathbed and ask them if they think that's true. They probably don't.

Speaker 3 But do I take more than I should, maybe, to be the most stacked and jacked dude at the gym? Yeah. Can I imagine my life without test? Not really.
I was miserable.

Speaker 1 Yeah. To be fair, I've seen you pretty miserable while on testosterone as well.
So it is something you do occasionally.

Speaker 3 Yeah, well, life circumstances matter a lot.

Speaker 3 And I think that the point, at least in my specific case, and this will probably resonate with other people, it definitely makes being miserable easier to deal with.

Speaker 1 So when does therapeutic TRT turn into doing drugs, as I believe you said earlier? What's the line? I meant to ask you this and forgot.

Speaker 3 I think probably 200, 200 milligrams is probably like the line. Above that, you're taking a dose.

Speaker 3 If you've ever blasted, that's meathead lingo for 500 or more in a week that's not that much okay the guys at westside barbell do their do the what they want a total at the powerlifting meet in a week like that's nuts but yeah if you've ever done a blast 500 or more in a week you're doing drugs crazy yeah that's wild so you talked to me about the whole blast and cruise thing so for those who don't know this is when you spend several weeks taking a huge dose which is a blast then you taper it down to the semi-normal dose which is a cruise

Speaker 3 Yeah, I'm 100% on a cruise dose. Okay.
And I'm fine with admitting that. That's kind of one of my things about it is I'm not going to lie to myself about it.
I'm on a cruise dose.

Speaker 3 I've blasted in the past. I'm not sure if I would again, but ask me after I make another kid.

Speaker 3 The other thing is, if you're taking anything other than testosterone and an aromatase inhibitor to keep your estrogen in check, you're doing drugs.

Speaker 3 We typically refer to the other stuff as orals because they're almost all taken in pill form.

Speaker 3 I mean, somebody's going to shoot an email over about the one secondary anabolic that you inject, but they're almost always pills. HGH is injected.

Speaker 3 There's probably other ones, but I honestly like, I don't take them, so I don't really know.

Speaker 1 I see. So testosterone, human growth hormone, aromatase inhibitors, what else? Have you ever taken anything else?

Speaker 3 Peptides.

Speaker 1 What are those again?

Speaker 3 They're short chains of amino acids that kind of hack your body to get it to produce more of a hormone that you want to have. I'm actually on an IGF cycle right now.

Speaker 1 Insulin-like growth factor? Is that what that is?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think that's what it is. That's like the peptide version of HGH.

Speaker 1 So wait, how is it different from HGH then?

Speaker 3 So rather than just injecting HGH, I use IGF to tell my body to make more of it.

Speaker 1 I see. HGH, again, human growth hormone.
And IGF, the insulin-like growth factor, tells your body, hey, man, we need to pump out more HGH from your liver or whatever.

Speaker 1 So why why do that instead of just injecting the HGH? I don't get it.

Speaker 3 It's supposedly safer, and I choose to believe that so that I can have traps to my ears. But supposedly it's safer.
That's what they say.

Speaker 3 The experts, the doctors, and I don't honestly know if this is true or not of HGH, but you can also only take IGF for like nine, 12 weeks, and then your body's used to it.

Speaker 3 But what's cool about it is you keep the mass, you know?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I did check a lot of this with an endocrinologist just so people aren't like, oh my God, this guy's just shooting from the hip. We talk casually, but we've checked this stuff.

Speaker 1 And so obviously, you should talk to your own doctor, but we aren't just talking out of our butts here. I think that's important to note.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And the thing, too, is like, my wife, she is supportive, but like, my wife is always, whenever I'm like, I'm going to do this, she just, well, I trust you.
You do your research.

Speaker 3 You're not stupid about it. You always know what you're doing when you do it.
I've got a kid who I'd like to live to see grow old and maybe meet my grandchildren one day.

Speaker 3 So I'm not just like, YOLO, bro, whatever. Like I said, it's all calculated risk.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Have you ever taken any other steroids?

Speaker 3 I have a bottle of Anabar that's an oral. That's most commonly used by women looking for that like CrossFit bunny look.
But sometimes pro bodybuilders take it to retain muscle mass while they cut fat.

Speaker 3 It's been sitting in my medicine cabinet for like five years at this point. And the only time I ever took one was when I reached for it and thought that it was my my bottle of Cialis.

Speaker 1 Okay, so that's a boner pill, not a steroid.

Speaker 3 Getting old sucks, kids, but

Speaker 3 I don't take orals for a few reasons. One of them is that a lot of them do have what you might call Reut Rage as a side effect.

Speaker 3 Like testosterone, even dose I'm taking, Reid Rage is, I think Reid Rage is overplayed, like generally anyway, because not to get on too much of a tangent, but as a good example, there was a wrestler in the 80s named Dynamite Kid.

Speaker 3 He was actually Chris Benoit's hero, and Chris Benoit is probably another good example of this. Dynamite Kid's wife is, I don't want to hear about Reut Rage because he was always on Reuts.

Speaker 3 It was the CTE that made him crazy.

Speaker 1 The concussions and the brain damage, yeah.

Speaker 3 That's also what I think about Chris Benoit is like football players and all of it.

Speaker 3 When you start talking about Reutrage, it's a real thing, but it's also way overplayed when you're not factoring in the spot on the Venn diagram that's guys taking high doses of Roids and guys who basically ram their head into a brick wall 12 times a week.

Speaker 3 You have to be looking at both of those things.

Speaker 3 We've talked about this either on the show or in person, but I really suspect that there's a non-trivial amount of guys who are in prison because they had a really short fuse and they started taking one of these oral steroids like Diana Ball and they punched a cop or their sister or god knows what.

Speaker 1 Right. Yeah.
As a lawyer, I usually advise my clients in the past anyway, not to assault police officers. Not because I currently advise them to do so, but because I'm not practicing.

Speaker 1 I should clarify that. But you're right.
I know tons of guys that do steroids. Some of them do mega doses and it really does vary.
They might have the thought, but they have impulse control.

Speaker 1 You're right. A lot of people with poor impulse control do end up in prison.

Speaker 1 And if they have poor impulse control and then they add steroids on top of it, now they're aggressive and they have poor impulse control. So that's a pretty bad combination.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And there are orals that are specifically designed to make you more aggressive.
Check drops.

Speaker 1 Trend, right? Is that one?

Speaker 3 No, trend is just to like put tons of lean meat on your frame. I think check drops is specifically like boxers and MMA guys to like make them like super.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there was something Tyson was taking.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Yeah, Tyson.
I didn't want to say it because I didn't want to put him on blast, but yeah, Tyson was on check drops.

Speaker 1 I think he talked about it, so I think it's okay. And if not, then I'm wrong and I apologize.

Speaker 1 I'm not trying to slander somebody, but I could almost swear I heard him talking about this particular thing on a podcast.

Speaker 3 So the most common beginner cycle for guys who are like getting serious about it is testosterone and D-ball, which is a cool kid name for Diana Ball.

Speaker 3 That, in combination with each other, is going to give you that kind of like puffy, bloated, but also super massive 80s pro wrestler look.

Speaker 3 I thought about taking it, and a guy I know who competes in Strongman and takes a ton of it basically said, if you're a little temperamental, it's a really bad idea.

Speaker 3 And I took him at his word because I definitely can have a short fuse and was like, I'm not cutting this fuse any shorter than it already is. Orals almost always result in liver damage.

Speaker 3 And perhaps more importantly, for a man with a lustrous and leonine head of hair, such as myself, hair loss. You take orals, you're almost certainly going to go bald.

Speaker 3 And that was a deal breaker for me, too.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's longevity issues. We should link to, anybody who's thinking about doing this, got to get down on that Dr.
Mike YouTube channel.

Speaker 1 This is a man who's taking steroids and is don't do it unless you know what you're doing. And you probably don't.

Speaker 1 He sort of readily admits like your longevity is going to be cut short because of it, but he does it for other reasons.

Speaker 1 If you want to live till you're 95 and stuff like that, then this might hinder that. It's hard to say.
The problem is it's hard to run a study for someone's entire life when they do this.

Speaker 1 But a lot of guys who really do a ton of this stuff have heart problems and whatnot. But what's the upside then? other than you get to look like Hulk Hogan joined a biker gang like you?

Speaker 3 To be honest, looking like the Road Warriors would be pretty cool, but competition, you need to assume that all competitive strength and physique sports like strongman, weightlifting, powerlifting, are filled with drug addicts.

Speaker 3 I mean, this is why Mark Henry left Olympic weightlifting because he was tired of competing against guys on drugs.

Speaker 1 I see. So, what about drug-free competitions?

Speaker 3 First of all, there's no such thing as a drug-free competition. There are drug-tested competitions.

Speaker 3 Mil Mann had to take random drug tests for his job as an iron worker for years, and he never failed to won. He smoked pot every day of his life.
He'd tell me how he would pass them.

Speaker 3 If a random iron worker in Boston can pass them, then, you know, a guy on the U.S. Olympic weightlifting team.
can do it. Obviously, there's somebody out there, but Russia got banned.

Speaker 3 Russia's not making a lot of friends in the world in general. But a bunch of these competitions aren't tested.
Most of them aren't. You can go do a novice class, Strongman for funsies.

Speaker 3 I registered to compete in one before COVID hit, and then it got canceled.

Speaker 3 But if you plan to compete in any serious level in an untested sport like Strongman or powerlifting, if you're not doing drugs, you're going to lose.

Speaker 3 Chris Bell's documentary, Bigger, Stronger, Faster, does a good job of exploring this topic and was produced by a guy I went to high school with. Shout out to Leland Anderson if you're out there.

Speaker 3 Nice.

Speaker 1 I also remember Dr. Mike Isratel again, episode 1109.

Speaker 1 He told us that even if you take drugs and then stop because you have a competition, your body is still getting an advantage from those drugs years later in the form of muscle memory.

Speaker 1 Because I was like, well, what happens if you take steroids in your 30s and then you don't lift weights for 10 years and then you're like, ah, midlife crisis. And you get back in the gym.

Speaker 1 Do you get the muscle memory? Do you get the all the advantages of having built a ridiculous physique from those steroids?

Speaker 1 And he's like, yeah, there's definitely, I don't know what you would call it, like an afterglow that just stays with you because your body's like, yeah, I remember when I used to have giant ripped pecs and abs and shoulders.

Speaker 1 Maybe you won't get all the way there because your hormones are now at a normal level. I don't know how muscle memory works or whatever, but that stuff is still there somewhere.

Speaker 1 So guys are using hardcore steroids to win the local strongman competition at the county fair. That just seems kind of dumb.

Speaker 3 It is. It absolutely is.
Arnold Schwarzenegger talks about how

Speaker 3 steroids are a fact of life if you plan on competing. But he also says don't do them unless you're absolutely certain you're going to make a career out of your sport, which I think is good advice.

Speaker 3 For younger guys, I cannot stress enough that there is literally zero upside to taking drugs to be the gnarliest looking dude to the gym and being able to swing your dick on social media about how strong you are when you're 25 years old.

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Speaker 1 what about what is it called sarms for those who don't know those are quasi level baby steroids i guess they become more popular with the tick tock generation they're touted as a safer alternative to anabolic steroids what are these is there any truth to that well you know it's all the danger with none of the actual results okay sarm stands for selective androgen receptor modulators so Here's the thing with the SARMs versus steroids debate.

Speaker 3 And this is literally like what I tell every 16-year-old kid who wants to know, oh, I can go get SARMs at the supplement store. Should I do that? No.

Speaker 3 And you know why? Because if I want to run a cycle of testosterone and deball, I know exactly what the risks are. Remember, we talked about calculated risk.
I know exactly what the risks are.

Speaker 3 I can calculate the risk. Guys have been doing this since at least the late 60s, probably earlier.
Guys used to like drink tiger piss to get more testosterone.

Speaker 1 Get out of here.

Speaker 3 No, for sure. Really, it was a thing in like the 30s before they had synthetic anabolics.
Guys have always been looking for some kind of an edge.

Speaker 3 But test and deball guys have been doing since at least the 60s, probably the 50s, maybe the 40s.

Speaker 3 There's a massive body of existing scientific literature that studies at least 60 years of the long-term effects of testosterone and deball.

Speaker 3 Those two specific ones, because those are the two granddaddies and the most commonly used. I know what it's going to do.
I can calculate the risk.

Speaker 3 People have been doing SARMs for 20 years and we don't know what the long-term effects are. And from what I've seen personally, I don't see the results.

Speaker 3 There's a term, SARMS goblin, because you look like a scrawny little goblin on this stuff. Who cares? What's the point? You're going to risk,

Speaker 3 you don't even know what you're risking. You don't even know what you're risking to look like what?

Speaker 1 To get less results. It's like risks, black box results, definitely less.
Why make that trade? That's kind of what you're saying. I see.
Okay.

Speaker 1 So this isn't a SARM, but I remember back in my college days, there was something called Andro, and I can't remember what it was, but it was like this over-the-counter crap you could get at GNC, which I remember asking guys that knew about this kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 And I was like, oh yeah, is this good? And they were like, no, we sell it like crazy.

Speaker 1 And it's flying off the shelves, but no, it raises your testosterone for about 20 minutes, which is long enough for them to do a lab test and then claim it raises your testosterone.

Speaker 1 And then it has, by the way, all the side effects of using real steroids, but it really doesn't do anything for muscle building.

Speaker 1 But again, it's $80 a bottle and people can't buy enough of it because it's quote-unquote legal and it's a supplement. So it's just the dumbest trade ever.

Speaker 1 And that kind of reminds me of this SARMS thing. I doubt anyone takes Andro anymore because it's useless.

Speaker 3 I don't think you can even get it anymore. I know a guy who he has boobs from taking Andro.

Speaker 1 Oh, gross.

Speaker 1 They don't go away unless you get surgery so yeah that's called gynomastia or something yep yeah you have to have the fat removed from under your nipples ouch that sounds brutal what role does the fitness industry play in all this guys are again they're on instagram for six hours a day looking at these disgustingly jacked and ripped dudes and they're developing feelings of inadequacy no surprise because they don't look like those guys from just like guys who watch too much porn they're like my dick is small i mean you never hear the end of that do you think that the instagram stuff social media stuff contributes to this in any way this dysmorphia dysmorphia that causes steroid use?

Speaker 3 Probably. You've probably seen more rip dudes today than most people who've ever lived saw in their entire life.
I don't think it's the only factor, but I think it's definitely there.

Speaker 3 Here's the thing. There's this guy whose whole thing on YouTube is exposing fake natties.
These are guys who say that they're natural, but they're definitely on gear, juice, steroids, whatever.

Speaker 3 And he asked somebody at some event if he was natty or not. And the guy said, is anyone in our industry? And that's kind of it.
None of these guys are natural.

Speaker 3 Yes, even your favorite who swears up and down that he is.

Speaker 3 You are not ridiculously jacked and ridiculously lean all year long and not on drugs. Just doesn't happen.

Speaker 3 You can be one or the other at any given time, but you're not going to be both at the same time all year round. Go right now and Google pictures of Arnold during his peak when he's offseason.

Speaker 3 He has the body of a furniture mover. He's a big, hulking, hunk of man, but he's not ripped or shredded at all.
He didn't have to be. He needed to look that way for an hour on stage.

Speaker 3 And now with Instagram, these guys got to look like this all year round.

Speaker 1 How much do you think social media is really driving all this stuff then?

Speaker 3 I think it's a little overblown.

Speaker 3 I think the sheer amount of dudes that you have to look in any given day, the scale matters, but I grew up in the 80s and I was super into, I was like obsessed with professional wrestling.

Speaker 3 I loved Hulk Hogan. I loved the Road Warriors.
I love Bruce Beefcake. I loved all these big dudes.
And like every other kid in the 80s, I loved Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Speaker 3 He was the biggest movie star of the era.

Speaker 1 So Slystalone looked ridiculous in the Rocky movies, too. It was like there was just veins on top of the veins on his abs and stuff with the crazy, just wild, greased-up tan, too.

Speaker 3 Yeah, he looks nuts in the, especially the third and fourth Rocky movies. But the whole phenomenon of guys looking at rooted out freaks and wishing they had their bodies, like that's not new.

Speaker 3 You might see more of them in a given day, but that's not a new thing.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we had action figures we were supposed to look like, and they all had crazy abs. Bust out any G.I.
Joe. They were all like shirtless dudes with eight packs or whatever.
It's totally ridiculous.

Speaker 3 I was a He-Man kid. So yeah, there you go.
I think people can really overstate this crisis of male image stuff.

Speaker 3 There's a YouTube fitness influencer, Alexander Bromley, and he has a really good video about it on YouTube that I'd recommend people go watch because he has a really balanced take on it.

Speaker 3 I think most of these takes are just clickbaity nonsense. Are there people who are experiencing serious mental health crisis because of what they see on social media? Probably.

Speaker 3 I think most statements that broad are true of somebody, but is there like a serious public health crisis that needs addressing because guys are bummed out that they don't look like somebody on Instagram.

Speaker 3 Like, no, I don't think so.

Speaker 1 Do you feel like people should be more honest about their steroid use? This is a complicated one, right?

Speaker 1 Because on the one hand, you should be responsible, but on the other hand, then you might encourage it. I don't know.

Speaker 3 You're right. It is complicated.
So let's take a guy like The Rock. He does not look natural to me.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 But not remotely. He's huge.
He's giant. He's got peach genetics.
I'm not denying that. Like he's, he's an incredible specimen of man.
But, you know, he comes out and says that he's on steroids.

Speaker 3 Every 16-year-old gym rat on planet Earth is going to be buying steroids off sketchy guys my age in the gym locker room.

Speaker 3 And I think on a certain level, the responsible and ethical thing for him or somebody else in his position to do is to lie about it, which is probably what he's doing now.

Speaker 1 The Jordan Harbinger show does not take any position on Dwayne Johnson's alleged steroid use.

Speaker 3 Well, he supposedly had to take months off WWE to get his gydo boobs cut off. So there's that.

Speaker 1 The Jordan Harbinger show also does not take any position on Dwayne Johnson's alleged steroid use, nor his alleged breast reduction surgery.

Speaker 3 Yeah, okay. If he's on drugs, he absolutely should lie about it.
I would hope he would do that.

Speaker 1 That's an interesting point. So I'm a little torn.
I think I agree, but I don't know if I agree. I genuinely don't know.

Speaker 1 I haven't given it enough thought, but I see your point about how guys in the position of of the rock or whoever do have some kind of responsibility.

Speaker 1 And a lot of people go like, they didn't ask for that. Yeah, you kind of did when you became a wrestler for kids, which is what it is.
And then you became a movie star.

Speaker 1 Like, you don't get to choose if you want responsibility when you're an A-list celebrity. You just have fame and thereby responsibility.

Speaker 1 But do you feel the same way about Johnny Meathead on Instagram, who's just, look at me, I can do a handstand on this cliff?

Speaker 3 I think that people who aren't the rock should let their conscience be their guide in this respect, but also should take into account what we said about the rock.

Speaker 3 The main thing is that I think people who are following these guys on Instagram or TikTok or whatever need to be a little more savvy and not be so surprised when they find out that the liver king is on the sauce.

Speaker 1 Yes, y'all have seen the liver king. He's the most ridiculous person on Instagram.
He's got muscles on muscles.

Speaker 1 He's all bright red and he's got the beard and he's always like biting into, I don't know, a cow's raw liver. The dude's like 50% parasites, basically, by now.

Speaker 1 But yeah, he didn't get jacked merely by using the line of supplements that he himself sells for a living.

Speaker 1 So again, this is the guy who claimed that he was gigantic and lean enough for eight-pack abs with veins on them because, oh, I'm just eating all this organ meat. And somehow people believed him.

Speaker 1 And then he got rich AF off of a supplement line, which is supposed to be like organ meat powder, whatever. Of course, his emails were later leaked, and he's on enough steroids to kill an elephant.

Speaker 1 And he kind of did this like fake apology, and then was like, you know what? Never mind. I'm just a con man.
Here we go. It's kind of where he is now, allegedly.

Speaker 3 I think that there's this kind of combination of ignorance and wishful thinking.

Speaker 3 Ignorance, because I think that people just don't really know what's possible and what's not possible without the juice.

Speaker 3 If you want to see the limit of what the human body is capable of without juice, this is peak human genetics. I.e., not you.
You need to look up a guy named Eric Bugenhagen.

Speaker 1 I don't know who that is, but I'm Googling, and he's an absolutely massive, you're right, pro-wrestler-looking dude, just absolutely gigantic.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and he's definitely not, oh, I could look like this guy with enough hard work. No, you can't.
He's a genetic freak.

Speaker 3 You would not look like him no matter how much you lift, no matter what you eat, and probably not even if you do all, you have the world's perfect drug regimen. It's genetic.

Speaker 3 I've been been trying to look like him for years. I am never going to be as big as Eric Buggenagin, no matter what I do.

Speaker 1 So people saw Liver King and wanted to think that if they just put in enough hard work and dialed in their diet, that they were going to look like that.

Speaker 1 And it's kind of like, well, no, dude, you're not even going to look like that, even if you did take steroids because genetics still play a role.

Speaker 3 Exactly. And there are some influencers that are a little more candid about their PED use.

Speaker 3 I think that's honestly a step in the right direction, provided provided that it's coupled with the negative side of things. And I wanted to give Dr.

Speaker 3 Mike a shout out because he's honest about it in a way that includes like, these are the trade-offs.

Speaker 3 Those other guys were just like, yeah, I'm on steroids, but he's good about this is the balanced reality of it.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Again, he was on episode 1109.
He's coming back on the show. I do think he does a good job walking the line.
He's like, I will die younger because of this. I made the choice to do that.

Speaker 1 I'm a professional and you shouldn't do it. And then he shows things like, here's me getting surgery to remove skin and the changes that have happened to his body, good and bad.

Speaker 1 It's really, he's a really good person, actually.

Speaker 3 You know him. I just watch his content.
He has really good energy. And to be honest, Soviet Jews are some of the most awesome people I've ever met.
And he's one of them.

Speaker 1 Yeah. It's funny that you should say that.

Speaker 3 Good dude, backed hard. Yeah.
They're a wonderful contribution to our country just as a group, but especially Dr. Mike.

Speaker 3 So to circle back to the fake natty thing, which is guys pretending that they're natural when they're not, there's this other phenomenon of movie stars getting just ridiculously, insanely jacked and shredded out of nowhere.

Speaker 3 If a guy gets insanely shredded, just lean and muscular, that could just be diet and exercise.

Speaker 3 If a guy is super jacked after the age of 30 and also has like strirated shoulders and an eight pack all year round, there's a chance he's on juice that approaches total certainty.

Speaker 3 This is not a thing people do without chemical enhancement.

Speaker 1 I feel like to a certain degree, it's become a lot more normalized, thanks in part to, I hesitate to say this, but like the Joe Rogan and company, who's just another one of these guys who are super loud and proud about the fact that they use testosterone and I think also human growth hormone for better or for worse, right?

Speaker 1 He didn't want to lie to people, but it's okay, does this encourage other people to do it? And it's like, he's stuck between a rock and a hard place with that.

Speaker 3 I mean, even if he hadn't admitted to using human growth hormone, that dude's head on news radio versus today. His head? Yeah, man, his nagging.
John Travolta is another one, man.

Speaker 3 You just don't grow two full hat sizes when you're 45 years old. HGH.

Speaker 1 Yeah, John Travolta does have a huge head. Good call.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and he didn't used to have a huge head, did he?

Speaker 1 That's an interesting point. You're right.
The dude is half forehead.

Speaker 3 Go watch Staying Alive. It's a wonderful film that everybody hates for some reason.

Speaker 3 But anyway, HGH grows everything in your body, including your organs, which is one of the reasons why it's so dangerous. But, you know, Joe Rogan is Oprah for dudes under 50.

Speaker 3 So I wouldn't say he endorses it. But like you said, he's very open about his TRT and HCH use, which I think the transparency part of that is very cool.

Speaker 3 I also think that there's definitely an aspect of human psychology that sees someone else doing something and then feels like they've been given permission to do it.

Speaker 1 100% agree with that. How does this tie into the overall anti-aging thing that we see all over the place now? I mean, that sounds like another episode of Skeptical Sunday.

Speaker 1 From blood boys to drugs to supplements, man. What the hell?

Speaker 3 So I don't know that it's going to make you either appear younger or be what they call biologically younger. I suspect it's going to do the opposite in both cases, but I don't know.

Speaker 3 But my friend Jack Donovan wrote a book called The Way of Men. You may have heard of him.
He once called TRT vampire life, meaning that you're going to feel 19 until you're 60 years old.

Speaker 3 which is great. At a certain point, you do have to stop taking it, or at least highly advisable, because your body might be able to handle having blood the consistency of used motor oil at 55.

Speaker 3 But, you know, you approach retirement age, it's going to get a little older.

Speaker 1 Ugh, that sounds gross. The thick blood thing freaks me out too, man.

Speaker 3 It should see my blood bag when I go to the...

Speaker 3 Anyway, you might have some increased vitality and feel young again, but I don't know any evidence. that exists that it actually makes you younger in any meaningful way.

Speaker 1 How is this all different from women taking hormones during menopause, for example? Again, we got to do a whole show about that, about menopause.

Speaker 1 But how is the TRT thing different from HRT menopause stuff?

Speaker 3 I don't think it really is in any significant way, though. Like you said, that's an episode for another time.
But also,

Speaker 3 like you said earlier, there's a whole school of thought among certain doctors that, oh, getting old sucks. You just need to deal with it.

Speaker 3 And in my opinion, TRT is no different from women taking hormones to deal with menopause or even diabetics taking insulin.

Speaker 1 I see. What about all the side effects we talked about? Doesn't that make it different?

Speaker 1 Insulin doesn't have physical and mental side effects that can negatively affect your life and your longevity and stuff.

Speaker 3 Well, here's the thing. If a drug doesn't have side effects, it's not a drug.
It's a snake oil. All drugs have side effects.

Speaker 3 And consumers and medical professionals make decisions about whether or not the benefits of the drug outweigh the side effects. Some people don't have any.

Speaker 3 Some people have sides that are pretty minor that they barely notice. Some people have side effects that are so bad, they start looking for alternatives to solve their problems.

Speaker 3 But all drugs have side effects.

Speaker 1 I think that's a pretty fair assessment. Honestly, you're not just going to get something for nothing in nature, especially.
So you've pushed TRT on me in the past. I say that tongue-in-cheek.

Speaker 3 I have absolutely not.

Speaker 1 That's true. You haven't pushed it on me.
That's fair.

Speaker 3 I've simply told you things I probably shouldn't repeat on our family-friendly podcast about what it's it's done for my life.

Speaker 1 You are pretty balanced about TRT, even in private conversation, I should say.

Speaker 1 But ultimately, I've just decided the downsides are not worth it for me, especially the part where you're basically a steroid addict. I was about to pull the trigger on this.

Speaker 1 I was like, oh, I should probably get TRT, blah, blah, blah. I can't even remember why.
It was one of the many dumb reasons that everyone has.

Speaker 1 Oh, my levels are a little bit lower, even though I totally feel fine. And then my brother-in-law showed me a Dr.
Mike video. This is years ago, about why you should not do TRT.

Speaker 3 And this is the first i'd ever seen of it this is a couple years ago and not only did that make me a dr mike fan but it also scared me well away from trt at least for the time being yeah that's a big one we haven't talked about the steroid addict aspect coming off of testosterone is like coming off of heroin or ssris you know like prozac and its cousins you can't just randomly decide you don't want to take it anymore and then throw your gear in the trash you need medical supervision to start coming off and if you don't bad things are going to happen And that's definitely something to consider if you've just decided on the basis of this episode that TRT is the answer to all your problems.

Speaker 1 When you come off testosterone, you need to do what's called post-psychleapy, or you're going to suffer from severe depression, fatigue, libido collapse, which is as horrible as it sounds.

Speaker 1 It could be months actually before your normal testosterone levels resume, if they ever do at all. It depends on your age and your genetics.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's super scary. And the thing is, post-psychotherapy might not even work.
I see. Especially if you've been on juice for years and years.

Speaker 1 Right. Yeah, that's right.
I think the biggest takeaway here is that TRT can potentially improve your quality of life, but also you don't get something for nothing in the natural world, especially.

Speaker 1 Anything else, there's going to be drawbacks. And one of the drawbacks is that once you pop, you kind of can't stop because your body's not just going to pick up the slack.

Speaker 3 Yeah, you don't get something for nothing is just like a general guiding principle of reality.

Speaker 1 So where can our listeners find out more about testosterone, whether they need more of it? I'm happy to refer people to the clinic that I use where they don't just like hardcore push stuff on you.

Speaker 1 Again, I don't take testosterone, but I take other stuff and they've got real doctors there. So if anybody's interested in this, just email me, jordan at jordanharbinger.com.

Speaker 1 But what do you recommend if people just want to research more about this?

Speaker 3 There's information everywhere. It's worth talking to your doctor about.
But like I said, a lot of them just don't care that you're slowing down as you get older.

Speaker 3 But an increasing number of, especially younger doctors, are more open to the idea of people using TRT, even if it's just for what we've called optimization. Talk to your doctor.

Speaker 3 If you don't get the answer you want, try a clinic. A lot of these clinics are fine, by the way.
I use one for my endocrinologist, and I have zero complaints about it.

Speaker 3 I wouldn't be able to advise anyone on where to find a good clinic or how to tell a bad one.

Speaker 1 So where did you find your good clinic?

Speaker 3 I used your affiliate code, dude.

Speaker 1 Nice. I don't even know if I have a code.
I think I just have to introduce people to them. And again, I'm happy to do that for people because finding a bad one is, yeah, can be really bad.

Speaker 1 And people could simply again email me i'll point them in the right direction fyi again i am not taking testosterone the clinic does offer that if that's what you're after that's what you need i use other things to help keep my testosterone and hormone levels up that are not testosterone i don't really want to get into the details on that because most people don't care and by the way if you're under 35 you almost certainly do not need to be messing with this stuff at all because when you're like 15 to 35 your body is a testosterone mega factory anyways would you agree with that yeah if there's any teenagers listening to this like for the love of god stay off the juice.

Speaker 3 Just don't. I get asked, kids asking me about this all the time at the gym.
Don't.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 You're 16 years old.

Speaker 1 It basically won't do anything and you get all the negative side effects and it's expensive and it can hurt you.

Speaker 1 So whether you're considering TRT, you know somebody who is, or you're just wondering why it seems like every guy on Instagram looks like he's been airbrushed onto a protein tub.

Speaker 1 We hope this episode gives you a clearer, more honest look at what's really going on. And thanks to Nick for helping me inject some clarity into a super complex topic with a lot of cultural baggage.

Speaker 1 Thanks, Nick.

Speaker 3 Pleasure to be here.

Speaker 1 Thanks, everyone, for listening. Topic suggestions for future episodes, straight to me, jordan at jordanharbinger.com.

Speaker 1 Show notes on the website, advertisers, deals, discount codes, ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram.

Speaker 1 You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. This show is created in association with Podcast One.

Speaker 1 My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Tata Sedlowskis, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi.

Speaker 1 Our advice and and opinions are our own, and I am a lawyer, but I am not your lawyer, and sure as heck, not a doctor. So, do your own research before implementing anything you hear on the show.

Speaker 1 Consult your doctors before you start taking stuff you bought from a storage unit off the side of the road in Tempe. And remember, we rise by lifting others.
Share the show with those you love.

Speaker 1 If you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge we doled out today.

Speaker 1 In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn. And we'll see you next time.

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