BiohackingU: How Steroids Damage Your Brain & Emotions and How To Prevent & Improve it

Brandon Eisenlauer, known as Biohacking You, known for his vast knowledge in optimizing the brain and improving longevity through neuroprotective lifestyle modifications, smart supplementation, and mitigating neurotoxicity even when exposed to exogenous androgens.

Before starting this podcast, I just wanted to say that ideating steroids for a full show is not widely accepted because it discounts the real work which is the backbone of this sport.

And unfortunately, spreads that an unsafe chemical solution is all you need for results.

Both of these are antithetical to society's understanding of the sport, and while there will always be some that claim that PEDs are all you need, I would like to deliver an honest message of what is required for achieving top performance, as well as the dangers associated with this route.

I received this comment from a user named Night Skarrens.

But just as a rock climber, The athletes undergoing this path in the sport are willing to put their life on the line for their passion, just the danger between the two sports is different.

Luckily, we do have safety nets in the sport, such as organ imaging and regular blood work.

But that doesn't change the high risk one must accept in taking on this competitive lifestyle.

My like girl best friend's like, you need a new haircut.

I'm like, really?

Come on.

Really?

Yeah, dude.

What did she say about it?

She was cooking me.

She just said it's so like bland, like white, like I need like a fade or something.

And I was like,

okay.

Because I told her, oh, I told her, I was like, I'm going to go, I'm doing some like, I'm going to do this podcast.

And she's like, oh, you're going to, you're going going to do it with that haircut.

And I was like, what's that supposed to mean?

Damn, she's a little savage, huh?

She is, yeah.

She must like you.

A little bit, yeah.

I think so.

She, uh, I mean, I don't know.

Fades are kind of out of, they're starting to run out of style.

So they are.

I think she's a little behind, honestly.

I think she is too, yeah.

So.

But I'm going to keep my fade forever.

So.

She also likes black eyes.

So.

Yeah.

Explains a lot.

Exactly.

I was going to say, take with that, take without what you will.

Hopefully it's not filming right now.

Anyways, i hope everybody enjoys greg you said in the background he's going to entertain us because um i'm not really entertaining so we need a little bit of greg to help us yeah um

but uh

when you guys all the welcome brandon

eisenlauer eisenlauer yeah

it's a tough one i don't even try to like when people are like what's your last name when i'm out and about i just spell it for people because it's hard to hard for most people to sound like german or something it is german yeah nice yeah see i know this because i'm cultural yeah that was good i'm actually not That was good.

My girl's last name is German, though.

They say it like Lutz, but I think it's supposed to be pronounced like

Lutz.

Lutz or something.

I have family in Germany, actually.

I've never talked to them before, but I do.

Yeah, no, never.

How close to you are they, like in terms of

they're distant, but they're there.

Like my dad's side is from there.

And so they always tell me, like, you have a bit of family in Germany.

Okay.

So they're there.

I don't even know the connection, though.

I just know they're there.

So whenever people ask, I always say, yeah, I have family in Germany.

I feel like that's a cool thing.

Are they like twice removed, three times removed, four times?

I don't think they're that, I don't think they're that far, but they're definitely not.

It's not like my cousin or anything like that.

Okay, yeah, but actually, my other cousins and my aunt is Japanese because my dad's brother married a Japanese woman.

So, whenever I tell people that, they always get confused.

So, this is why you live in Orange County, huh?

Oh,

yeah,

oh shit.

Okay, um,

Well, I wanted to thank you, by the way, for helping me out in the DMs and everything.

Cause I don't really know hardly anything about this space, but it's always been something that intrigues me because I feel like I'm getting more and more dumb every year that passes.

Yeah.

It's a little concerning.

And, oh, hello.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I love those.

I put my number on the do not call list and it never changed anything.

Yeah, I feel like that never works.

Yeah.

Whenever I people I get scam calls and spam calls, they always tell me like, oh, just go put your number on this list or get this app.

I always do it and it never helps.

I still get them.

Yeah, it's BS.

Yeah.

It's the matrix.

They want you to get ads.

Yeah, they're trying to, trying to get us.

Yeah, but

I really don't know much about this space and it's something that intrigues me.

And also, I didn't even realize till like yesterday, but

there's a fuck ton of people I know that like follow you or at least know you.

Yeah.

Or connected with you through other

potential means.

It's interesting.

Yeah, because I feel like it's deceptive because I don't have a massive following, but I know so many people in the space.

Like if I was to go through my contact list, I think people would be surprised because a lot of people I'll talk to kind of behind the scenes and just help them out with their various issues and stuff.

Just because it is a passion thing.

I think it's cool to, cool to help people and see people kind of work through their issues.

And, you know, you start with someone being in the DMs like, hey, I'm kind of struggling with this.

And it's like, okay.

And then you kind of see them evolve.

And once you see them work through the issues, that's a super, super cool thing.

It's super fulfilling.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um,

I had a few people like respond to the story that I posted of you and also

like even add into the QA.

It's like, oh, this one's going to be awesome.

Like, no questions.

It's going to be dope.

Or, like, oh, hey, Brandon, or whatever.

Sweet.

I think fucking Foo was like, hey, Brandy Pooh or some shit.

Yeah.

Wait, who?

Foo?

Foo.

Yeah.

I think.

I think Foo.

Foo.

Is that short for something?

Asian kid.

Foo.

What's Foo's?

I feel bad if I don't know who this is.

I probably do know who it is, but

you know what?

We're just going to move on, and when I go to the QA, we'll see it.

And then we'll cover that at the end.

Perfect.

That way we don't insult poor Foo.

It's probably even somebody else, but anyways, someone called you Brandy Pooh.

Okay.

Wow.

Male or it was a male or a female?

I think it was a male.

Okay.

Still

a homie.

I'll still take it.

So

I guess where I want to start off with is

something that's not often discussed,

but we all have an awareness of is

how

I believe our neurological processes can degrade over time, especially if we're not,

I guess, using our brains

in an effective way.

Now you add certain compounds on top of that, right?

Yeah.

Certain drugs, certain medications, certain PDs.

And there's like a wide variety of,

I think, all these substances that have potentially neurotoxic effects.

Yeah.

Especially if you're like in bodybuilding and you're doing PEDs.

There's the 19 ores, there's the NPP, there's the DECA, there's everyone's favorite.

So,

and I have explored

using these myself, and I've enjoyed using NPP for a cycle before.

Yeah.

I also tried the Deca only cycle.

Oh, interesting.

So shits and giggles.

Okay.

I keep wanting to say things that I'm not allowed to say in terms of verbiage, but I was fucking dumb.

I felt really dumb on it.

Interesting.

But I also just felt like cloudy, kind of like just like, you know, not really there, kind of like very,

like, I don't really care very much.

Like, eh.

Yeah.

But not, not in a, not in a good way of not caring.

Because I feel like there's like a middle ground where right well, that's the thing, is right, like it could be it could actually be kind of beneficial for some people.

Like for me, I think it almost benefited me in a certain sense because I wasn't overly anxious and I was overly like

interesting.

Yeah, I didn't care too much about certain things, yeah.

Because when I do care too much, there's there's issues that come with that too, of course.

Um,

but on the other side, it's like life was just not as

great,

life was just not

as

loud.

Yeah.

I was kind of just time was just like passing by.

I don't think that's how I want to live life, especially if I feel like

my brain is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, um,

I guess, first off,

since this is something that you focus on a lot, what would you say is best for someone to do in this state if they're if they care enough enough to because even in even when i got my genetics done i believe that i am uh i'm genetically prone to alzheimer's oh interesting um my mom my grandma has alzheimer's right now or is it dementia gets alzheimer's oh

that's not good that's not good yeah so it runs in the family so i have to be very very conscious about what i'm doing you know So what would you recommend someone do first?

Yeah, in terms of just cycle design, like if you're an enhanced athlete, if you're a bodybuilder, like what should you do to optimize your brain and kind of protect your brain?

Right.

I guess because you've talked about like basics as well.

So I guess let's just start at the basics because I'm sure most people understand that like we care a lot about longevity.

And in this podcast, I do want to talk about literally everything I can, but I normally talk about these things with the assumption that my audience already understands that, you know, food, diet, of course, sleep, et cetera, all of these things are the basis of what you should begin with.

so i guess let's just start at the basics yeah yeah so when it comes to the basics of being enhanced and kind of protecting your brain i think one of the whether you're enhanced as a bodybuilder or whether you're on trt one of the most important things is neurosteroid supplementation and that can be done through either hcg alone or through hcg and hmg

The reason why this is important is because when we make testosterone in our body, it's through an LH and FSH pulses.

And there's more to the process than just making testosterone, right?

So our body makes things like pregnanolone and other neurosteroids that are not only neuroprotective, but they're important in kind of regulating our mood, our emotions.

Our bodies are very complex and there's very complex biological processes.

So when you pin testosterone, a lot of people think, oh, my testosterone levels are good.

I'm good to go.

But there's more to it because when you pin testosterone, you're just getting testosterone, but you're missing out on that LH pulse, which then downstream gives you those neurosteroids.

So I I think it's important for a lot of people that they do supplement with neurosteroids in some capacity, whether it's using HCG and HMG, which HMG and HCG can get expensive, especially HMG, or even just using a DHEA and pregnantolone supplement.

I think that's super important because then you're replacing those neurosteroids.

And a lot of those neurosteroids are super, you know, neuroprotective.

So that's kind of the basics, right?

And then of course, too, the other issue that I see with a a lot of guys who are enhanced is that gear will put you in a very sympathetic state so you're very driven you're very motivated yep but your sleep becomes compromised which is why a lot of us like to do more when we're prepping which is kind of contradictory to what people would believe exactly yeah and and that's and that's a good and we'll we'll touch on this more too later but that's a good state of mind to be in like it's good to be motivated and sympathetic but you always need that balance and so i think that's another issue too with some people being on androgens is they think because they feel very confident, very motivated, very on top of the world, and they're in that mindset 24-7, that it's inherently a good thing.

And if we look into it more, being in that kind of hyper-dopaminergic state can actually be a negative thing, you know?

So I think creating that balance too is very important.

And one of the reasons why it's negative is because it can negatively impact sleep.

So I tell people too, if you're on androgens, make sure you're tracking your sleep because sleep is a bit deceptive.

in that you might feel like you're sleeping good or you might even be sleeping eight, 10 hours a night, but you might be struggling from things like sleep apnea.

You might be having really poor REM sleep.

You might be having really poor deep sleep.

So it's important that you track your sleep, see where your kind of gaps are.

And then when you see where your gaps are, you can kind of create sleep protocols and sleep stacks to kind of address it.

So I always tell people, go off how you feel with sleep and then also track it.

You know, and if you feel like your sleep is compromised, sleep studies are super good.

The aura ring is good, a whoop, whatever you want to get.

I know there's a lot of debate on the devices, but track sleep and then make sure your sleep is optimized.

And so go off the metrics and then also how you feel, because some people too, it's a little, and this is what happens with cannabis is people say, how many people have you heard say, hey, I use cannabis to help me sleep, but THC actually decreases deep and REM sleep.

No, so you're actually screwing up your sleep even worse.

So I always tell people, focus on sleep when you're on androgens and don't just go off how you feel, but also go off the hard data.

And sleep tracking devices aren't perfect, but they at least give us kind of a basis ground.

So sleep is huge because sleep becomes compromised a lot.

The neurosteroid supplementation is huge.

I think a low inflammatory diet is huge too, just for your overall brain and kind of cognitive function, because even though gear might not inherently be inflammatory when you're pinning that much oil, and especially if it's from like UGLs, that can become problematic too.

So even a low inflammatory diet is super important.

And then I think just setting up a lifestyle for yourself with gear is also important because what's interesting, I think, is a lot of the times, especially with a lot of influencers who are on gear, right?

They kind of fall into this very fast-paced lifestyle.

And so when you're living, when gear is already going to be raising your dopamine, right?

So 19 NORs are neurotoxic because they're progestins.

DHTs, so a lot of people you'll hear say DHTs are really good neurological drivers, which is true and that they're motivating and they help your brain work better.

But also the flip side is Adderall is a great neurological driver, you know?

So just because something's a a good neurological driver doesn't mean long-term it's a good solution.

So what people fall into a lot with gear and their lifestyle is they hop on gear, they feel very confident, but it also because they're in this very dopaminergic state, they tend to lean into more risky behaviors.

They tend to kind of seek out more of that dopamine, dopaminergic behaviors, right?

And medications like cabregoline, which are dopamine agonists, have actually been found to increase your likelihood of doing risky behaviors like gambling and stuff.

So when you pair your, if your lifestyle is just go, go, go, you're partying all the time, you're a new woman every night, you're constantly going out to the bars, plus being in that hyper dopaminergic state from androgens, that's where you kind of run the risk of, of crashing out.

And it doesn't happen right away, but you know, it over time, you're going to need more and more of that dopamine.

And that I think can be very problematic.

So even having a balanced lifestyle, and it sounds so simple, but taking time to meditate or go, you know, if you have a girlfriend, go out in nature, leave your phone at home, like having that balance in life, I think is so, so important for a lot of guys who are on gear and not just falling into the trap of like, I mean, cause, you know, we live down here in SoCal, how easy is it to, you know, you're an influencer, you're making good money, you're on gear, you feel good, fall into that lifestyle, just go out, go out, go out, go out.

And eventually that'll catch up.

And I think that's part of the reason why some of these guys we see, and I don't want to reference names because I never like to do that for like cloud or anything, but that's why some of these guys are inherently crashing out.

And again, it doesn't happen right away, but guys we've followed and seen and, you know, guys we used to look up to now who are kind of a part of that, you know, aesthetic generation.

Now we're seeing that they're crashing out and that they're, we're like, wow, what happened to this guy?

Like, he seems so normal, and now he's mentally just unstable.

It catches up to you.

It's not a next day thing, but over as the years go on, it will catch up to you.

So, yeah.

Damn, bro.

New woman every night.

Fucking speak for yourself.

That's not me, by the way, but some guys I know.

This is something that's very interesting to me because

I've only been, I guess, extra conscious about it in the last couple of years or so.

I think I have realized that I tend to be someone that rides a little bit more sympathetic in general.

Of course, the androgens only compound that.

But I think I've always been, I don't know, it's kind of hard to say, but sometimes I feel like that's more of

Maybe that this is something I'm still figuring out, but maybe that comes from nurture and the way that

I Don't know this kind of Asian culture that I was brought up in and how I need to always consistently be studying I need to always consistently be working I need to always consistently be focusing my dad would always put a huge emphasis on focus focus focus like you always need to focus like if you're not focusing you're not getting anything done properly um so

I would find times it would be even hard for me to like rest at night unless I just did not sleep yeah properly, say like the previous night, and then I just had the crash.

Yeah.

But but normally getting into that parasympathetic state was an issue for me, unless I literally just decided to go to a buffet or something.

Yeah,

so

now these days I've thought about that a lot.

And when I first started bodybuilding, when I first started, not bodybuilding, sorry, when I first started really getting deep into social media and I quit my engineering job and all these things,

I was in this state where I was consistently in a calorie deficit, always on a DHT, whether it was premium or mast.

Yeah.

Trying to stay shredded all the time, always going to the gym to create content, and then always editing that content.

Yeah.

I was never recovering, really.

Yeah.

At least I didn't feel like it.

Yeah.

And being on the DHTs for a long period of time, it's like the sleep is never really like good.

Of course, it's not.

It just doesn't feel like it.

So, and

you telling me this about that like aesthetic movement, it kind of like honestly feels like it makes some sense to me.

I'm like, if our bodies are always in a state of a calorie deficit or we're never really, you know, getting to that place where we're in a surplus, where we're in a place where our body has the stores to recover and we're getting the proper sleep and nutrients that we need,

I feel like that would only make it a little bit harder to get into a sympathetic state.

Yeah.

And

I think about someone else I think about too, that I remember experiencing,

I think,

he was a really good friend and a really good person yeah so sometimes it's hard to talk about things like this yeah um

like this dude would literally talk to anybody for hours at a time that were strangers and most people that are in content that have a giant following don't do this but Jostetics yeah he was always shredded and always working bro yeah always did his cardio was always going straight to work always doing content going straight home to do more work and edit and stuff.

I feel like the only times he rested was probably when he was like cuddling with his girlfriend or something yeah but other other than that he was working yeah and um

i don't know what it was but i think after some

time some years and i think also after he passed away i understand that a majority of what happened with him was genetic yeah his aunt died of an aneurysm maybe a couple years ago or so uh but

it still obviously scares me that each one of these things that we're doing yeah compounds that we're adding in,

things in our lifestyle are adding up to the risks that we have, you know, whatever risks they may be.

So I think after that happened, it kind of scared me out of this lifestyle.

And I had always wanted to be a pro bodybuilder, but I actually focused on doing the whole staying shredded thing for years on end and just growing my social media because I thought being a pro bodybuilder and going on stage was more unhealthy.

Yeah.

And then I realized I had never been giving my body an actual real break.

Yeah.

But pro-bodybuilders do if they're doing it, I would think the quote-unquote right way, you know, like pro-bodybuilders have an off-season.

Yeah.

They have a time where literally during their entire offseason, they are literally focusing on recovering.

And I have seen this where the people that seem to end up being the best bodybuilders are always the ones that know how to relax easy.

For sure.

Right.

Like

I can think of a few names off the top of my head.

And even though one of them doesn't even seem like it, because he's very smart and he's always, he does, he does chill a lot.

But like Martin,

he just recently became pro like a year ago, a couple years ago, but James English, like he and I weren't discussing how he's like, he honestly just doesn't do anything.

Yeah.

The whole day he just eats, goes to the gym, fucking like, he's just bloat and slump all day.

For me, it's like hard.

Like when I get back, I do two cold showers a day.

I have to do one in the morning, and then after my gym workout, sometimes I'll try not to do a cold shower because I'm scared about the whole like suppressing of hypertrophy and shit.

But sometimes I just have too much work to do, and I still do another cold shower as long as it's like

longer than four hours before I go to bed.

Yeah, so I can work more.

And I realized that, along with how body bullets also take like a proper health phase, et cetera, and try to make sure that their biomarkers are back up to normal.

Like all of these things, I think, contribute to something that's very important for us.

And I can't explain what it is, whether it's related to our bloods, it's related to just being in a parasympathetic state so you can recover, or if it's also just related to how it affects our minds.

But I just realized that doing that whole go-go life thing was just actually probably more unhealthy for me than being

a competitive bodybuilder and having time off

and doing it the right way.

So I don't know.

That's my personal little experience in that field.

And I'm still learning so much.

I still don't know anything.

But

I guess what would you is there anything that you would recommend for people aside from first?

You said

the basic neurosteroids, such as like

prioritizing those by taking things like HCG and HMG.

I guess in terms of lifestyle, what would you recommend for people?

I think it's, I think it's interesting because I think, again, so this comes down to, I think there's this fault, like we view androgens very physically.

How does it change our body physically?

Even when we're talking about discussions about protecting ourselves from androgens, it's been how do we protect our heart, our liver, our kidney, and all that stuff, kidneys and that stuff, which by the way is super important.

But I think we forget that androgens are inherently psychoactive compounds, right?

They change your psychology, they change your neurology, and they do change kind of who you are.

And so if you were to tell someone,

if someone was to tell you, hey, I take Adderall every single day.

I've been taking it for the past two years.

I take it every single day.

Go, go, go.

You'd probably look at them and say, dude, you might have an issue.

Like, you need to calm down on the Adderall, right?

And they're like, no, no, no, but it's this neurological driver.

I have this motivation.

I have this energy.

And you'd be like, yeah, but dude, you're blasting Adderall every day.

But if someone was to tell you that, hey, I've been taking Mastaron at 300, 400 milligrams every day or primo, and they're like, I get this great neurological drive from it, makes me more motivated.

You probably would be less likely to see that as an issue.

And you'd be like, okay, well, if your blood work looks pretty good and you get the good mental motivation from it, sure, that sounds good.

Like, I'm glad, you know, maybe I should structure my cycles.

And I even kind of, I've fallen into this before where it's like.

When you're on androgens, you are really go, go, go, and it feels good and you're more motivated.

But again, androgens are psychoactive compounds.

And when you're constantly in that hyper dopaminergic state, whether it's from androgens, it's going to be problematic.

So I think it's just something people don't really think about because they think of androgens purely from the kind of like myological side, muscle building side of it, and not from the psychological side of it.

So again, if you were to tell someone, hey, I'm on Adderall, that's a problem.

But if I'm on mastron for all this time, you wouldn't think about the neurological potential side effects from it.

But DHTs are inherently very dopaminergic and they make you more likely to kind of overwork.

So I think too in our space, what's kind of interesting is there does seem to be a overlap now, especially on social media with the entrepreneurship, bodybuilding, biohacking space of kind of this idea of like, you have to be go, go, go, resting, relaxing, taking time off is a bad thing.

If you do that, you're never going to be successful.

And I mean, we see it with a lot of these, you know, new influencers coming up.

And there is that kind of crossover.

You know, I mean, like I said, bodybuilding, biohacking, entrepreneurship all seem to kind of cross over.

And so I think that creates a very, a breeding ground for overworking.

And just like how overtraining is going to take you out in the gym physically, mentally, it's, it's the same thing.

So from a lifestyle perspective, I always tell people, you know, to have balance and to be aware of the recovery, just like how you take deload weeks physically, deloading mentally is equally as important, you know?

And so if you're just constantly working and you're not sleeping and you're constantly stressed, eventually you're going to run yourself into the ground and crash out.

And even if you're for six months super productive with that, month eight, 10, 12, eventually you're going to fall apart.

And it might even result, because as we know, mental stress will negatively impact your physical health.

So

even allostatic load.

Yeah, exactly.

So I always tell people when it comes from a lifestyle perspective, focus on things like meditation and mindfulness.

And it sounds so, so basic and so, you know, kind of rudimentary, but it really, if you're religious, you know, pray, meditate, whatever that is, spend at least three times a day of just being mindful and slowing down, practicing gratitude and not feeling in this kind of constant state of got to go, go, go, or I'm constantly falling behind, but just take time.

And again, if you're good with your time and if you're someone who works hard, you'll be able to do that.

Or even, you know, like I said, figure out four or five days a week, work hard.

And then maybe on the weekends, take the weekends off, relax, go out.

see a movie with your girlfriend, go hang out with your friends, go put the phone down, turn off your WhatsApp, turn off your messages and just relax.

And for so many people, it's so hard because they swing so far the other way, but I think they would realize that if they did give themselves that time to relax and it's and meditate and calm down, and again, it's so basic, or even, you know, we're in Orange County, we're in LA, go to the beach with, you know, your friends, just chill out a little bit, be in nature.

It sounds so basic and so rudimentary.

And I know with my page, people always want like the most complex protocols.

But I think for a lot of people, that would just be absolutely life changing.

And they would realize I'm actually more productive now when I give myself those days off.

So I would say, just like how you periodize your stress in the gym, periodize your neurological stress as well in your lifestyle.

Figure out how to do it.

Because again, you can still be very successful not running yourself into the ground constantly.

And it's hard because some of us are young.

And again, I'm 23 myself.

And can I get away with running myself into the ground for the next two years?

Maybe.

But then it's like year three.

If I keep running myself into the ground, not sleeping, what's going to happen?

You could suffer a stroke or a heart attack or any of that that stuff.

So I think periodizing your stress is the biggest lifestyle hack that you need to do.

And actively, just like how you actively focus on recovering your body, actively focus on recovering your mind through, you know, meditation, calming down, and all that stuff.

I think that's a huge lifestyle component that a lot of people miss out on, especially with in this day and age of social media and entrepreneurship.

And you scroll through your feed and you see 10 videos of guys yelling at you and saying, you're not going to be successful if you don't, if you relax or if you go out and blah, blah, blah.

Yeah.

So I think that's huge.

Yeah.

I feel like your age is going to make a couple people angry.

It will.

When I first started, I was like, when I first started, I think I was like 19 or 20, and I'm not even going to lie.

When I was coaching people, they were like, How old are you?

And I was like, oh, I'm 22, 23, 24.

Just because I was like working with like university professors and I was like, I'm this 19-year-old kid, you know?

So,

yeah, I am young, though.

Yeah.

Fire.

Um,

Most of us understand everyone works at a different rate, so it doesn't matter, you know.

Just like some of us are born five foot tall and some of us aren't.

Yeah.

Not me.

Three times a day.

I feel like that's, I feel like that's so much more than most people would think.

Yeah.

Like I even, honestly, I even try to

practice gratitude once a day in the morning and that's already difficult sometimes.

Sometimes I forget.

You know, sometimes I forget, honestly.

And I even have reminders for it.

Yeah.

Is there a reason why you recommend three times?

I like to do it just upon waking, before bed, in the middle of the day, just so you have that kind of bridge in between.

And again, they don't have to be long or crazy sessions, but if you plan out your day, I think that's a good, good kind of balance to have.

And if you shoot for three and you end up even getting one or two, I think that's better than just shooting for one.

And then it's like, if you don't do it, you know, then you fall short.

So I think three is a good balance.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I can see that too.

I mean,

only

no, I've been doing this for a minute, but I mean, it's always been so, so constructive for me to take those periods of time where I go on a walk or go meditate

in between.

I can't remember how long my bouts of work used to be.

I would normally time it, but I don't know if it was like an hour and a half or so or what, but I would try to time like a good 10-minute period where I was just still-minded.

Yeah.

And it was always just, it's kind of weird.

It's almost like approaching the 10-minute mark where I feel just different afterwards.

Like I just feel

more excited to go back and work again.

I feel

like it's just the battery recharges very quick during those 10 minutes.

So, and then same thing with before I go to sleep.

Like, I cannot go to sleep unless I meditate.

Yeah.

That's like a mandatory for me now.

And that's just my own personal thing since I am very sympathetic.

And I've talked about this on my Instagram stories, how I have insomnia, you know, occasional insomnia here and there.

Are you, are you happy?

I mean, quick question.

I know this is your podcast, but are you happy that you're more of a sympathetic person and that your parents kind of instilled that in you?

Or do you ever think to yourself, like, I wish I was more of the guy who was just like relaxed, carefree?

Because I kind of deal with that.

battle internally myself because i'm i'm the same way i'm like go go go and if i don't do 30 things in a day i feel at the end of the day like wow i really fell short today and i think to myself like sometimes maybe it'd be better if I was just more chilled out.

And if my parents didn't, because my parents were the same way, I don't know if they were as intense as yours, but um, I think to myself, sometimes, like, I wonder if it'd be better, but then I'm like, no, because it pushes me to be the best version of myself.

So, I don't know if you've ever had that internal thought or kind of conflict of like, sometimes I wish I was a bit less sympathetic.

I think I've had the conflict for all,

I think I've had the conflict for wanting to be better and then also wishing that I was more chill.

Yeah.

I think all of it, to be honest.

Yeah.

It's interesting.

Yeah.

It is interesting.

Times where I feel like there's people that are working harder than me and there's people that are doing better than me, et cetera.

But then I realize, and this is more of a recent,

I think, finding for myself that I've actually had trouble relaxing for most of my life.

And only recently, when I tell myself, relax, it's good for you.

Does it click and does it happen for me?

Like, I used to, even like, say, five years ago, when I would smoke weed, it would make me uncomfortable because it would impair me, you know, and I wouldn't, I would feel useless and I would feel unproductive and I would feel

like

just incapable.

And it was just a really uncomfortable feeling.

Yeah.

But now, if I do it, and I remind myself like this is a time where I need to wind down, for example,

it just feels different.

Yeah,

it feels more constructive.

Yeah.

I feel this.

I do the same thing where, like, if I do something, like, even using cannabis or weed, I feel guilty.

And I've heard a lot of people say this before, too, because I'm like, I should be doing something.

I should be working.

Like, I shouldn't be relaxing.

And then, you know, I've smoked with a few of my friends and I've kind of told them that about feeling guilty.

And they were like, because they're more chill.

They're like, you shouldn't feel that way.

And I'm like, I know, but it's hard, you know, to kind of take a step back, relax, and realize, hey, I worked hard the last 10 days.

if i relax tonight it's not the end of the world so yeah i have similar similar guilt when engaging yeah and that stuff

and um i think now that i realize and also you know i've been listening to a lot more uh i guess experienced people in the field of bodybuilding yeah um experienced coaches uh j3u2 for example as uh on top of that

I like how they all emphasize the importance of overall stress.

Yeah.

You know, how John Jewett consistently states that you need to kind of, even though it's hard because they're not very quantitative,

they're not, a lot of them aren't measures that you can

put into number, you know, that aren't quantitative.

But if you can try to kind of create this like

approximate measure for what your total allostatic load is, I mean, it'll give you a good idea of what you should be doing in a daily life to help yourself continue to exceed without plateauing, such as like going on a fucking vacation, you know?

Yeah.

Something as simple as that.

And

that's another thing that I like tying all of these experts and what they say together, like what John Jewett says about allostatic load, figuring out when you should take a rest and stuff, maybe sometimes that's not in your training programming.

Maybe that's

in your mental state and all the things that you have going on.

And then Austin Stout on the other side says that if you are feeling those issues and you're getting digestive stress and you you don't know where that's coming from, what food is causing me this?

What is it that I'm digesting that's causing me this stress, this digestive problem that's also making it hard for me to recover, also making it harder for me to sleep?

Go on a fucking vacation.

He says, there's been a bunch of times where he literally tells his clients, like,

either to take some time off or they will say, like, hey, I went on vacation.

And for some reason, like, I just.

did what you said and ate whatever I wanted, not give a fuck, and my digestion got better.

Or they would even just like eat some of the same foods but the fact that they were on vacation and not doing

things that stressed them out not doing their work that was causing them some mental stress their digestive their gi track just

became

i guess problem free yeah

so um

it's just so interesting because it's difficult for us all to figure out when that when to do that you know i think it's hard yeah it is for sure it's a it's a tough even um i don't know if you you probably do know him but joe joe sullivan is someone who i talk about with this all the time of balancing you want to be the best and you want to be highly successful but at the same time if you fall too far down that pathway you're going to live a very unfulfilled existence you know and even for me 23 figuring out my 20s I've seen what happens when I just stay inside and work all day.

And I've seen how that's actually inhibited my growth as a person versus letting loose a little bit and going out and having those more fun experiences.

Because again, at the surface, you're just going out with friends, you're having fun, but those experiences, I think, are integral and kind of building who you are and developing your character in your 20s versus just sitting inside all day.

Building a business is cool, but it's limited, you know?

So I've even had that back and forth too.

You ever listen to Scott Galloway?

No.

You should listen to him.

Is he good?

I think he's dope.

Sweet.

Of course,

any of these people that'll discuss some politics and stuff are going to have haters well yeah um

i think scott galloway has less haters than someone like jordan peterson though but okay uh he just says like fucking if you're young if you're a young man go out dude and like get drunk get fucked up make mistakes you know like exactly hit somebody up

hit somebody up on a

i don't know on a dating app i guess well i mean i think he advocates more for like just going out into the world and meeting people type shit because that's one of the biggest issues with young men these days is this giant discrepancy between

women and their standards and men who are staying at home unmotivated to do things.

Maybe they have, they could even have a lower level of testosterone or maybe they haven't addressed that, but they have any of these various reasons for them having this lack of motivation and drive.

And they are acting upon that lack of motivation and drive in the wrong way by searching for dopamine and other methods, such as like going on their phone or like playing video games or fucking jacking off the porn, you know, some shit.

So

he says, just go out

and live life, bro.

Like party or something, you know, meet some people, like have some fun.

Yeah.

And I mean, I think that's the first step for a lot of young guys.

Cause

this Gen Z era is weird, bro.

I like,

like,

I feel like my culture when I was growing up

was a little bit more.

I don't know.

I feel like most of the people that are my peers lean a little bit more towards millennial than Gen Z.

But I resonate a lot with this new Gen Z

generation, I guess.

Yeah.

Just because I was,

you know, I was an only child.

in Texas called Station Texas as an Asian kid that was super overweight, who didn't have any siblings, whose parents didn't let him out or see any friends.

Yeah.

So,

you know, what was, what was I to do?

Yeah.

Literally, I spend most of my time

alone at home

hacking to my parents' computer so I could play video games while they were asleep at 3 a.m.

Yeah.

Fucking play RuneScape, watch anime, do all this shit.

And then Gen Z comes out and all their TikToks like pop off and shit.

And I fucking love all of them because I'm like, this all makes sense.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's just like, bro, that was never very, that was just never constructive to me.

The only place where that was constructive for me was

being able to relate to other people through anime.

Yeah.

But aside from that, like

it wasn't until I actually went out, started training, started meeting people.

I moved away from home at 15.

So I like joined this math and science school.

I lived on campus there and then immediately went to college in a different state.

So like doing all of that when I finally came out, I think that was a really cool opportunity for me to surround myself with other people and peers without,

I think, my mind

being subconsciously impacted by the two closest people to me every day being my mom and my dad, who I didn't have connection with.

So like.

moving out of the house

really just made me into a different person,

whether intentionally or not, just because I was every single day and night, I was surrounded by a completely different culture.

Yeah.

Completely different mindsets, completely different everything.

And that was super constructive.

And then obviously going to San Diego and then dabbling in a little bit of psychedelics and then continuing to be around other good mindsets that were even better for me in terms of like positive thinking and love and et cetera.

That was probably the most, the most

constructive experience I've ever had.

Yeah.

So.

Yeah.

And the whole, the whole psychedelic space too, because you brought that up.

So I'm going to run with that a little bit.

That's another, I mean, I don't talk about it as much because I still feel like it's kind of coming up, but the whole, like what psychedelics do a really good job of, and ketamine is an atypical psychedelic.

It's technically an anesthetic dissociative, but what a lot of them do a very good job of doing is promoting something known as neuroplasticity, which is a concept of your brain is able to mold to situations better.

So it's like when you have those trips, when you have those experiences, that's the goal kind of now in depression research.

My friend is studying it over in Europe and he said that the main goal is not neurogenesis.

It's neuroplasticity, which is again, the concept of getting your brain to be plastic.

Because when people are depressed, their brain's very rigid.

You're stuck in that rigid mindset.

You can't think past.

You know, it's like if you had your girlfriend break up with you, you can't, the first few days, you can't think past like, oh my God, my life's over.

Like I can't break past this.

Neuroplasticity is allowing your brain to mold to the situation, understand the situation and move past it.

So psychedelics and even those experiences with new people, I think is so crucial.

And I think there's almost been this toxic, I definitely don't advocate for people to be lazy, of course, but I think there's been almost this kind of toxic work culture push that we see.

And you see it on TikTok and stuff too, where it's like, you see these young kids who are in the gym and they're like, I've cut off all my friends.

I've cut off everyone I know and I'm just going to focus on the gym.

And it's like that life set, like that mindset, I think, whether it's the gym or entrepreneurship or whatever, is inevitably going to lead you to a very unfulfilled life.

And the thing is, is that you can always do both.

So I think, again, it's super important to just balance both.

Again, you don't have to be lazy and unmotivated, or you don't have to be someone that all you do is party.

You can be the entrepreneur four or five days a week, build your business, build your brand.

And then the other three days, have those experiences.

You know, I think it's so important to go out and take a little bit of mushrooms, hang out with your friends till 3 a.m.

at the beach, have those conversations.

I think that's so crucial in building up you as a person and building up those connections and that neuroplasticity.

And those are experiences that you can be the best entrepreneur and have the best business.

But if you don't have that other side and those human connections, I genuinely believe you'll be so unfulfilled.

And so I think there's kind of this toxic culture being bred online a little bit on one side where it's like, you need to put your head down and all you need to do is work and if you go out and if you have fun and if you have any kind of hedonic activity that's a bad thing you know and I think I really think that's gonna screw a lot of people up real quick guys so while I was looking at the YouTube analytics I actually saw that 85% of you guys that watch this channel are not subscribed and I want to ask very little of you guys but if you enjoy this podcast if you find value in it then please do me this one favor and subscribe to the channel because doing so helps me get bigger and greater guests, like the guests you are listening to today.

Also, this channel is not sponsored, which means only the companies that I work with, which are Young LA and Huge Supplements, are the companies that can help fund this channel by you guys using the code Nile.

So, Code Nile gives you a discount of 50% off of YoungLA, and Code Nile also gives you a discount of 10% off of Huge Supplements.

And if you decide to purchase anything from any of these companies, it will help immensely for me by using my code.

And this way, I can travel to other guests and also upgrade an equipment to make this podcast bigger and better for you guys.

And I want to say that I don't think any of that is really wrong.

You know what I mean?

I don't want to say, like, these mindsets are totally wrong.

And that's like a terrible way to go about it.

Because if you believe what you like, if that's what you believe and that's what you want to do, then fair.

But I think it is just a very easy tendency for this world, for all of us,

to just go in these repetitive cycles where we are one way and then

and it's very polarizing yeah

so it appeals to people in that way and then over time

we fucking swing to the completely other side of the equation like we're seeing this in politics man oh it's so weird too how just like all of a sudden I don't know, it's just, it's like, I used to be a liberal.

I used to be a Democratic Democratic.

My parents were always Republican.

And there's a point of time where I was like rebellious.

And I was like,

stop being racist.

You know, fucking just like relax.

And it's just gone so extreme.

It's gone so extreme to the point where it's like most of us that were on that side before don't feel comfortable anymore.

And now like the Republicans are becoming, it's becoming more of like a

just becoming more masculine.

Yeah.

There's like this divide by gender and it's very strange.

Yeah.

And that, I think that is just, you know, that happens in our culture as well.

It happens in our styles.

We're seeing styles come back, you know, like in the 70s, 80s.

Yeah.

Which is pretty sick in my opinion.

I agree.

But then we also see like,

you know, it's just like

there's just this pride that's built on not needing the validation of others.

Yeah.

Or

I guess,

you know, like being social and shit used to be something that I guess was considered popular back in the day.

Yeah.

Now it's not, right?

Now it's the opposite.

It's like if you're doing that, that's mainstream.

That's fucking annoying.

Yeah.

Like, I don't need that shit.

I'm Sigma.

I don't need fucking nobody.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And it just, it just always swings back and forth to these extremes.

And in my opinion, like, yeah, it's fun.

It's fun to talk about the shit.

It's fun to make memes of all the shit.

Whatever.

But like, if you're being really serious about what you want to do in your life, I think balance is always the key.

Always finding some kind of balance that's good for you.

Cause, yeah, and I think that's something that also bodybuilding.

The, I think, the industry and bodybuilding is bringing that to the surface more now than ever before.

Yeah.

One, because there's all these experienced people that are actually starting to talk about it on podcasts.

I think that's one of the biggest places.

Um,

and then we have video,

where's Greg's shirt?

Greg's shirtless now.

Where did his shirt go?

He's sweating.

What is this video?

And then there's people like Greg.

Yeah.

Actually, I don't know.

But

like, for example, Fua talks about like the way that you become the most successful in bodybuilding is you fucking enjoy it.

You enjoy the process.

But back then, it was like

train till you fucking break.

Eat till you can't hold no more.

Do all the hardest things as hard as fucking possible.

But what did we find out that does for some people causes them injuries and and then they don't have a long-standing career?

Yeah.

Causes them these bloaty and GI issues that cause them to have these guts that stick out on stage because they're just doing these extremes in diet.

They're not being conscious of their food volume, GI tract.

We're just seeing these extremes of like,

maybe you should actually care about allostatic load.

Yeah.

Maybe you don't have to be perfect all the fucking time.

You can pull back when you feel like you need to, and that'll actually propel you forward.

And then one of the biggest examples of that recently, I think, too, is Chris, Chris Bumstead, who basically said like this last prep, his last Olympia, where he say, like,

sometimes if I felt like I didn't need to do cardio because I was ahead, I just skipped it.

Yeah.

And no, like, I don't think people should just be lazy.

Hell no.

Like, you should fucking work hard to try to get there.

But there is some people, like, I think like us, and I think there's actually a lot of people in bodybuilding that just do too much because they don't feel like they're enough.

Yeah, it's tough.

The messaging is tough because inevitably when you say stuff like that, some people will take it as an excuse to be lazy.

So it's always hard to push that message across because, again, if it gets to the wrong person, they're going to use it as an excuse to skip their cardio.

But I think a good example too of what you're saying is even if you look at, what was it, pumping iron with Arnold?

Like Arnold had a great physique and the bodybuilding was there, but Arnold was much more of a lifestyle.

Like the pumping iron was much more of a lifestyle.

And it was much more, he was around the women and he was at the beach.

And it was like, it went past the bodybuilding.

So I think that was one of the, and he's one of the most popular bodybuilders ever.

And I think the reason for that was because it went past just bodybuilding and he had the lifestyle with it too.

It was, it was a lifestyle.

And so I think,

again, that balance, that lifestyle is, is so, is so crucial.

to have.

And I think the more you have that balance, actually, the more people are going to be attracted to the lifestyle and it's going to be much more enjoyable.

But I always use Arnold as an example because I always think he went past just like pumping iron, like wasn't just him in the gym.

It was him out in Venice Beach, exploring and hanging out and having fun and all that stuff.

So I think just another proof of concept that the balance piece is so, so important.

Yeah.

And it varies per person too, right?

So of course

there are some people that I think like if they feel best eating literally just

the exact same meal five times a day,

doing the same thing regimented.

Those are those types of people.

Yeah, they will probably excel in that type of way.

Of course, it's probably what will get them the best physique.

But there's a lot of people, in fact, there's a majority of people who don't really excel on doing the exact same thing perfectly every single day.

You know what I mean?

So,

just like you said, I think it's just important for people to be very

is the word self-conscious or maybe

conscientious.

Conscientious.

I don't know.

Just like study yourself, I guess.

Like there's some of us that do this.

I like, I think you probably do this as well, but like writing notes regularly about like how you feel, documenting your journey, like journaling about like the things you're doing and how it makes you feel and how you react to it.

I think just being

conscientious of all of this over a long period of time, it takes years.

You know, I think that's also another reason why it's like the best bodybuilder.

or the best of anything really doesn't happen in the shortest period of time in a couple of years.

Even if you do blow off, blow up on PEDs, like in order to have a long-standing career.

It's very,

it seems to be

even more beneficial when someone is conscientious

of what type of person they are.

So, you know,

types of training methods, type of diet,

parasympathetic or sympathetic, being cautious of all of these things, I think, is going to help someone excel.

Oh, yeah.

Now, we talked about all the lifestyle stuff, though.

Um,

one of the things that I wanted to talk to you about first in the first place that we didn't even get to.

Um,

so

previous to this podcast, you and I were talking about like neurogenesis and neuroprotection, and which I think can be important for anyone, especially those, of course, under the influence of various compounds like

nandrolone.

So, um,

I guess what are the ways that we can protect our brain and avoid these neurogenitive diseases?

And what are these like,

what are also some of these, like,

these, like,

peptides and nootropics and stuff that we were discussing?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, for the enhanced guy, I think, again, so we talked about neurosteroids, we talked about sleep.

I won't harp on that again because there are peptides and stuff that can help with sleep and obviously HDG for neurosteroids, but we already touched on that.

So,

when it comes to protecting the brain on androgens,

I think one of the most important things that we can do is number one, cycle design.

So if we lean more into cycles that are focused and kind of centered on things like GH and insulin, those are actually going to be like people use intranasal insulin as a nootropic, right?

And growth hormone is very neuroprotective and good for the brain.

Typically, if something's a growth factor, like one of the most popular peptides is dihexa, and that works through the hepatocyte growth factor so typically a lot of these growth factors like growth hormone and insulin are a bit more

uh they're actually neuroprotective whereas androgens tend to be more um

harmful to the brain so leaning more into growth factors like that and again there's a million other factors when it comes to cycle design but i would say if you can lower your androgen load and focus more on the growth hormones and the insulins if they work for you by all means you should probably do that just to take some of that androgen load off because androgens are kind of inherently neurotoxic so that's the first thing i think promoting

i say i mean i say neurogenesis carefully because again i just talked to someone who's in the field of depression and all that stuff and and mental well-being and neurogenesis is actually something that's very hard to measure and very hard to kind of elicit and in fact compounds like nsi189 which are very potent at creating neurogenesis failed in studies so more so neuroplasticity which you can get through neurogenesis, but focusing on raising BDNF and focusing on raising neuroplasticity, I think is very good for the brain and very neuroprotective.

And it's going to help you also from a protecting your brain and also from just how you feel in your mood mentally, I think is very important.

So neuroplasticity and raising things like BDNF, whether that's through something like cerebraliacin or Semax, both those work really well.

But I think that's very important.

Addressing neuroinflammation.

So, just like how when our body becomes inflamed, it can be problematic.

Neuroinflammation can also be fairly detrimental to our brain.

So, I think addressing neuroinflammation is very key.

Glutathione does a great job of that.

There's a nootropic called glutathione from transcendent.

She must plug.

Yep.

Glutathione from Transcend.

Yeah, that one's great.

If you pin it, you'll notice too, you're maybe calmed down a little bit.

J147 is a great nootropic.

It's derived from curcumin, actually.

And that one's really good for lowering neuroinflammation.

And the final thing that I think would actually benefit probably a lot of people is to raise serotonin levels.

This is going to help kind of stabilize your mood on androgens.

So I noticed a lot of guys who are on androgens.

And again, there's a lot of debate.

And I know a lot of people hate SSRIs.

And if I say the word SSRI, people kind of freak out and say that they're these evil compounds.

I don't think any compound is inherently good or bad.

And I think they work well for some people and they don't work well for other people.

But I think a lot of bodybuilders would benefit from raising serotonin levels because it stabilizes your mood very well.

So a lot of guys on androgens have androgens have high highs, low lows.

They get angry, they get frustrated.

But when you raise serotonin, it's probably the best neurotransmitter for stabilizing your mood.

Because if, you know, you could use something like that's GABAergic and that calms you down, but the GABA system is very, very fragile.

You know, and if you overuse the GABA system, you risk a lot of downregulation.

So I think serotonin is a key neurotransmitter that a lot of bodybuilders should focus on when it comes to keeping that stable mood.

And probably one of the best things, and I know Leo would always talk about this, is flavuxamine.

It kind of does, it is an SSRI, but it kind of does everything.

So it kind of, it's a sigma-1 receptor agonist.

So it helps with neurogenesis and neuroplasticity.

It raises serotonin levels.

It helps with neuroinflammation.

And so I found that to be very effective for guys, especially guys, you know, guys are always impressed because, you know, when they pair this with something like Trent or a 19 NOR, they're like, wow, a lot of my emotional and my mood issues are gone.

I can take it without kind of having issues.

So that is an SSRI.

I don't want people to, I know a lot of people are very anti-SSRI.

So I always preface it with that.

But I think that's one of the best things that we as gear users can do to kind of protect our brain.

In addition to that, I would say upregulating your colonergenic system is very crucial to protecting your brain.

One of the first line compounds for Alzheimer's is dinapazil,

which it inhibits the breakdown or it inhibits an enzyme that breaks down acetylcholine in the brain known as acetylcholinesterase.

So I'd also focus on upregulating your choline system as well.

I think that's a very neuroprotective thing that we can do.

for our brains as well if we're enhanced.

Does taking like choline or like choline in an austerol do anything to help that?

Yeah, choline, there's a lot of different ways to kind of upregulate your choline system.

I mean, even

something like nicotine, I wouldn't recommend smoking it, but like even something like nicotine gum, you have nicotinic cholinergenic receptors, and that is also good at kind of helping to upregulate choline.

So yeah, choline supplements, Hooperzine A, Dinapazil, even nicotine, if you use the gum.

All of that is great for kind of upregulating your choline system.

I feel like okay, everybody might be getting enough HooperZine A if they're any bodybuilders.

It's like in fucking every pre-workout now.

I know it is.

I have like three products, and it's like it's in the, it's really good before bed, though, because REM sleep is actually your brain's active during REM sleep.

You dream.

So if you're struggling with REM sleep, Hooperzine A can be super effective before bed.

It's not very stimulating.

Okay, that's cool to hear.

Yeah.

As far as the GABA system goes,

taking GABA doesn't do anything like it doesn't down-regulate.

Yeah, so I mean a gab a gabba supplement in itself is not i don't think it's strong enough to really downregulate anything significantly like there should so there shouldn't be any problem with like taking gabba regularly there shouldn't be no um if i was to take gaba though i would use there's one from russia it's a modified GABA.

I think it's GABA with like a niacin attached to it.

Don't hold me to that.

It's called piccomelon or pica.

I always say it wrong.

It's some Russian nootropic.

But that one allows the GABA to cross the blood-brain barrier much better.

But the GABA supplement itself is not problematic.

I don't think it's, yeah.

I don't think it crosses the blood-brain barrier enough to be super worrisome.

But on the other hand,

if someone were to be taking GHB

or.

Yeah.

What's the other thing that bodybuilders used to love?

Fenibut, maybe.

Yeah.

Fennebut, yeah.

Yeah, and if you go on Reddit, there's a whole, I remember Fenibut used to be in everything, there's a whole R slash quitting Fenibutt.

And there's some, there's some intense stories on there of people like whose lives have been ruined by Fenibut.

And of all the systems,

dopamine, serotonin, all the neurotransmitter systems, if you screw up your GABA system, that's one of the hardest ones to overcome and kind of bring back.

Yeah, it's super, super sensitive.

So that's why it's even like short term.

Yeah, you can use GABA urgent compounds to calm yourself down, but it's like long term, it's just not a very usable strategy.

What would you recommend for people trying to to bring back their system?

I guess it just takes a long time, I'm assuming, right?

Yeah, GABA is takes a long time.

GABA is a tricky, tricky system because other systems, like dopamine is pretty easy, especially with some of the things we have, like 9MABC and bromantane is really good, or dopamine fasting is really good for bringing back your dopamine system.

Some systems, like it's like, so whenever you're trying to upregulate something, typically what you want to do is you want to antagonize the receptor.

And if you antagonize it, it'll, you might feel a bit worse, but it'll bring it back.

The GABA system, though, is so tricky.

I mean, that's why benzodiazepine addiction is one of the worst you can have.

There is a racetam called, I believe, phasoracetam, that's been shown to upregulate GABA receptors.

But even that is, even that one's tough.

I would say if you're stuck on a GABAergic medication or you feel like you're falling into that, like tapering down is a good thing you can do.

But I would definitely work with a psychologist or, you know, your doctor to come off that because that's one of the trickiest forms of addiction that's so, so hard to get a grip on.

Yeah.

Obviously, none of us are doctors, by the way.

So they'll disclaim it.

Yeah, exactly.

That wasn't already super clear.

So just plain devil's advocate, because one, this was always my perspective in the first place, but also I understand that most people will probably feel this way about this subject just because it's also not very discussed in a positive fashion.

I don't know.

It's been very contradicting because there are some people where it helps immensely, but SSRIs in general.

Yeah.

I guess

from the most basic point of view, why is there such a negative connotation on SSRIs?

Yeah.

So SSRIs, this will, I might, might yap a little bit here.

So if I'm yapping too much, you can come up with it.

But

this has been one of the kind of biggest things that I've been trying to push because I feel like in our space, people gravitate more towards if something's a pharmaceutical, it's bad.

And if it's a natural supplement or if it's a research chemical, it's good.

Or if it's testosterone or an androgen, it's good.

But if it's a pharmaceutical or a psychiatric medication, it's bad.

And what I've been trying to kind of explain to people, and by the way, I have no bias towards SSRIs.

I don't make money from being pro-SSRI.

I am on one myself and I've had great success with it, but I don't have any financial incentive or anything like that.

But people have always kind of had this biased against SSRIs for whatever reason.

And I think part of it is because there are a a decent amount of people who take SSRIs and have negative experiences.

And a lot of those negative experiences derive from the fact that SSRIs, especially in the first few weeks you take it, will downregulate dopamine.

So you'll be less motivated.

You might feel a bit worse.

But the key component with this to remember when we're talking about these medications, and it's going to get a little graphic here, but You don't like the reason why some of these psychedelics are actually struggling in the clinical research is because when you're giving someone a antidepression medication, you don't want them to have high dopamine levels when they first take it.

Because if someone's depressed and they're unmotivated, it's not a huge deal.

But if you have someone who's potentially suicidal and depressed and you give them a drug and it makes them very motivated, we actually see in the data that that could give them the energy and the motivation.

to potentially do something like commit suicide.

So as graphic as that sounds, that's kind of one of the reasons why I think people don't like them is because in the early stages of taking them, it'll make you feel a bit worse.

So I think of any drug, and I think the other thing too, that people fall into is I think they think they're just like a byproduct of big pharma.

And they're like, okay, these are just pushed on the masses by doctors because of big pharma.

And I'm not in any way pro big pharma, but a lot of the nootropics that people like the research chemical based nootropics that people love so much, those are also created by big pharma with the end goal of being able to sell them as psychiatric medication.

So I feel like sometimes people don't understand that even when you're taking research chemicals, the people who are creating the research chemicals are still big pharma.

So I feel like there's also kind of the big pharma bias behind it.

And I'm not pro big pharma at all, but I'm also not because big pharma made something, it's inherently bad.

My whole thing with SSRIs is that I just think, I think they can be very valuable for some people.

And I think they can be not great for other people.

But especially when it comes to the bodybuilding population, why I think they might be helpful is because of all of the kind of emotional dysregulation that some bodybuilders have, where they're super, like I said, they're super high sometimes, they're super low, or they're just all kind of all over the place.

I think a lot of bodybuilders' neurology, and I'm not even saying all of them, I'm just saying some, would really benefit from the mood stability from having some higher serotonin levels.

And you don't have to do that through an SSRI.

I mean, I mean, you can do it through other things as well.

But again, I think a lot of the bias just comes from the fact that one, they're pharmaceuticals, so they come from Big Pharma.

And I know a lot of people hate Big Pharma.

And by the way, again, I don't think Big Pharma is good.

And I think the other thing too is there is a lot of negative experiences.

But again, that's true for any kind of compound.

But I don't know if there's been specific criticisms you've heard against them that, you know.

I think the biggest thing of all, which is something that I think we all know, but we just don't really address unless.

And also, most of the people listening to this are probably bodybuilders.

There is a lot of naturals on this podcast that listen to this podcast, which is cool too.

But I think

more of these people are a little bit less

avoidant at taking any type of substances that they feel like might

enhance their life in some kind of sense.

But I think a majority of people have this fear of using anything that's not natural, anything whatsoever.

And that's all the things we we see, like fucking they're demon, they demonize things in food, yeah, demonize medications.

And yeah, I honestly, I, I can understand that feeling because, yeah, there's a fear of the unknown, especially if it's not something that

I guess is created from the earth.

You don't really know sometimes, like, we have research, we have some credible studies and stuff out there, but there is a risk if everyone does run a risk of certain things.

Yeah, so I think there's the, I think the argument is like,

dude, are you, are we really on this podcast to tell bodybuilders that are already taking drugs and steroids that it's okay to take those steroids as long as you combat those steroids by taking also an SSRI to help your hormone levels, your dopamine and your serotonin.

Yeah.

And that's, I mean, that's in itself too, another issue that I even, I've even had to take a step back and look at what I do and look at like the protocols I write.

Because the other thing, too, I want to avoid is I want to avoid being in a spot where it's like, I'm on this cycle.

So now I'm going to take this compound for this side effect.

But then the compound I'm taking for that has a side effect.

So now I'm taking this.

Yeah, because you get caught in that cycle.

So it is, it's, it's such a hard space and there's so much nuance that goes into it.

That's why I'm always very careful with putting things or putting ideas in like a box and saying it very definitively.

And as much as like, as much as that makes for like a cool sound bite, I think, you know, staying away from making those definitive statements is so important with this stuff, especially with neurology, because the reality is there are probably a lot of bodybuilders who would take an SSRI and would respond terribly and they would feel terrible, but there's probably a lot too that would respond well.

And I think it's just more about grasping the idea of just starting to develop protocols and systems for your mental health is the most important kind of overarching concept, whether that's through an SSRI or methylene blue raises serotonin through the monoamine oxidase inhibition.

You know, whatever it may be, I just think, or whether it's cerebrolysin, I just think the most important takeaway here is not that this guy is pro-SSRI.

It's that I'm trying to push the idea of we should have strategies in place to protect our brain and to protect our mental health and our emotional stability, just like how we have protocols in place for our

liver, our kidney, our heart, our hematology, and all that.

So I think that's, that's what I really hope doesn't get lost in translation is that I'm not advocating advocating a blanket statement of bodybuilders taking SSRIs, but it's more, okay, how can we start to develop protocols and practices and apply what we know from psychiatry to our space?

And how can we start to address these issues?

So if a bodybuilder is really struggling with anxiety or depression, we can best go about handling it the same way we would with if their blood pressure is high or if their liver values are high.

Right.

Yeah.

It is a very hard space to discuss.

I think it's cool nowadays that we're having a lot more advancements and a lot of more experienced people that are older that have done many of these things that I think can be good advocates in a way.

Even though he also has a lot of haters, though, I think RFK Jr., for example, is someone that's like a good advocate for TRT.

And

I don't know.

I don't know what else he does, but he probably does an assortment of things, to be honest.

This guy probably advocates for anything,

anything that has to do with balanced hormones and a healthy lifestyle, even at the age of 70.

Dude's doing fucking like upside down pull-ups slash muscle

shit at 70 years old.

Yeah.

Fucking nuts.

I do,

I think it's scary for people to just be relying on something.

It's scary to just think like, oh man, I'm going to have to take this for the rest of life or I should.

Like that's people are already scared of that from testosterone alone, taking TRT alone.

So much more like if you're.

I understand what you're saying.

Like, if someone's feeling these symptoms or experiencing these from taking gear and they have to take the gear for for their career or they have to do it because they don't care.

They're not going to do anything else, but they're going to compete to be number one in this space.

Like if there's something that helps your mental health,

maybe this can be something that's beneficial for you, like an SSRI.

But like, this is something that would you recommend that they come off of this at some point?

Yeah.

So typically, I mean, and again, it gets tricky because if a guy's cycling or if he's enhanced, then it's like, okay, how long do we keep them on this?

But typically the strategy I would employ with SSRIs, if it was a more normal person, and because there is a like a period that it takes for them to kick in and for you to start getting the neurogenesis and the neuroplasticity.

If it's a more normal person, or if you're maybe even a bodybuilder, I would say what you could do is if you if you really, and again, this is where it gets tricky because it's like,

if trend, if you need an SSRI to handle trend, well, maybe we just drop the trend or we don't use trend and we find another growth pathway to use.

And that way, instead of trend plus an SSRI, we just don't use trend, then you don't have to use either, you know?

Right.

So which I think is

the foundation of our discussion in the first place.

I don't think you ever mentioned the whole like, what's your best cycle thing?

Yeah.

But, um, so I mean, I would use it.

I, I don't think, I don't believe in being an S on an SSRI forever, but I would say if you're going through a very intense cycle on your neurology, or if you know one's coming up and you know the issues that you have and you're still, for whatever reason, determined to use TREN,

then I would consider implementing it for that.

Or if you're a normal person and if you've just gone through a hardship, I would consider implementing it for that.

The other thing that you can do if you're a bodybuilder is blocking glutamate, I find to be very effective through an NMDA receptor blocker like memantine, which I think is a lot, I think it's a bit less effective, but I think if you don't want to go the SSRI SSRI route,

glutamate is excitatory in your brain.

So if you're blocking some of that excitatory neurotransmitter, it can again help to kind of calm you down.

So a good one for that is memantine.

I mean, that's how ketamine works, is it's an NMDA receptor antagonist.

So memantine is another strategy.

It's not serotonergic, that can block some of the excitatory sympathetic neurotransmitters and help to kind of calm you down and give you that more stable mood.

The only issue I've noticed with those is that as time goes on, you become a bit like more, like you were describing earlier, like head in the clouds, a bit just disconnected because you're blocking some of those excitatory neurotransmitters.

But there's so many things you can do and implement and kind of pivot from with SSRIs.

I mean, cerebral lysin is

another great one.

Okay.

Yeah.

I think the most important thing that we say now is,

and Brandon and I were discussing this in the very beginning before we even started the podcast, but we're discussing like what your best cycle would be, something that we agree upon.

And so even though we are discussing these peptides and various medications or compounds that people can use to help enhance their lifestyle,

I never liked the ideas of SSRIs ever.

But

I mean, the thought of just neurogenesis and neuroplasticity, honestly, in general, is something that has always intrigued me.

That's why I like psychedelics, for example.

So it's not even to patch anything up.

It's for the simple state of just.

growing

and helping my ability to, I guess, grow in places where you can just see so many many of these people that are like, they even like hit a menopause or they're late 70s and stuff.

And it's just like their state, their mind is in this state of just like

it's just unaccepting just of anything, any new potential possibilities, new technologies, new perspectives.

Like their culture is like in one place.

And that was like back in like the 60s or something.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And that's something I do want to escape because I want to continuously be open-minded.

But

I think the most important thing that we stated was like, your best cycle is

the one that doesn't cause you any problems.

Right.

Yeah.

Which means like picking first the compounds that don't cause you the

mental catastrophes,

the physical side effects, the detriments to your blood work in the first place.

Yeah.

So that's something that Stefan Keynes will discuss too.

He's like, if you have phonetic problems, don't choose EQ.

If you have anxiety issues or libido problems, don't choose Nandrolone.

Yeah.

If you have,

if you really, really don't like hair loss and that's something that is very prevalent for you, maybe you avoid like Primo or something, you know, whatever.

Exactly.

Just figure out something that works best for you first.

And then I think finally, if you get everything in check, I think find

you can probably delve into this space where there are some new peptides.

Yeah.

Like people are discussing SLUPP332 a lot.

Mozi, methylene blue.

I don't, these are super new, so I get scared of anything that's especially new.

Yeah, I'm someone that's a little bit more.

I used to feel like I have every disease, so I would get good.

I literally got a sleep study that was like fucking, I spent like $4,000 on this fucking sleep study to find out that I don't fucking have.

Sleep apnea.

Sleep apnea.

But

yeah,

would just say like

the sound of taking SSRIs are scary because there are

sometimes I feel like it's almost like 50-50 that SSRI is just going to be dog shit for somebody versus be so helpful for them.

It's crazy, yeah.

So it's like if you want to take any of these things, I think remember that like someone could literally act the opposite of you, yeah, could like respond the opposite of you.

Yeah, so you are running a risk

in order for you to find something that will actually benefit your life in all areas.

So like Prozac, for example, I know that like some people, it literally helps them from depression completely.

Some people does the opposite and also completely kills their libido and destroys any stimulation, any kind of like sexual stimulation.

Yeah.

So, which obviously only

affects your mental health worse.

Yeah.

Way worse than most people will assume, right?

Like nobody ever wants to run around with literally like zero

sexual life.

Of course.

Yeah.

Maybe.

Maybe some.

I know some entrepreneurs who want it lower because they say they say it's distracting, but I think that's a small subset.

I mean, if you're running some passing trend and shit, like it's kind of distracting.

Of course, yeah.

Yeah.

But yeah.

But yeah.

For sure.

Yeah.

And I totally, and I think the thing is, too, is, is with how like drug culture kind of is now.

I think people are very black or white about it.

And it's it's like, you know, either this drug is the best thing ever, or this drug is terrible and it's the devil.

And we have to get rid of it.

And if you take it, or if you recommend it, or if you say it's good, you're an evil person.

And so I think really with just drug, whether it's, you know, androgens or psychedelics or psychiatric medication or cholesterol medication or supplements, whatever it is, I think the most important thing is just to understand that with pharmacology, you're dealing with,

I think it's pharmacogenomics, if that's the the right word, that might be the wrong word, but how essentially your genetics respond to the pharmacology.

And I think in our society, there's too much of this pharmacological determinism, and that word I know I'm saying correctly, where people think that because you use a compound, X, Y, and Z has to happen.

You know, because you use TREN, you have to become a raging lunatic, or because you do this, you have to do this.

So I always tell people that, you know, when it comes to pharmacology, and especially with this space and all the new peptides and all the new practices and protocols that are out there, I always just explain to people, like, the answer is probably somewhat, you know, in the middle.

And if anyone ever tells you that this compound or this peptide is infallible and it's the best thing ever and it's perfect and there's no side effects, they probably have an agenda.

And if anyone ever, you know, tells you that this is the worst thing ever and that no one could ever benefit from it, there's probably an agenda on that side too.

So I always tell people just to be, you know, diligent in your research and diligent in kind of, you know, exploring these ideas and these practices and all that stuff, because the the truth oftentimes lies in the middle and the middle is oftentimes kind of, kind of boring.

You know, it's much more entertaining for me to say that SSRIs will save every single person on trend and it'll fix all your problems than for me to say, you know, it might work for you.

It might make it worse.

It might, you know, it's, it's obviously a much less entertaining, kind of clippable answer, you know?

So I think that's where a lot of the black and white kind of thought processes come from.

Right.

And I think also

aside from just them having an agenda, I think the other thing too is like if uh say that it worked terribly for them or something and they're just someone that tends to believe that everybody, yeah, responds the way that they do, or everybody feels the same way that they do.

There's a lot of those people out there.

I'm not trying to like pull any shade or anything, but it does get a little annoying.

Do you see with androgens too?

I mean, like some people love Mastaron and some people hate Mastaron.

And it's like they'll go back and forth and like, oh, it's useless.

Well, you never should run it.

And some people think you should always run it.

And it's like, maybe Mastaron just works better for some people than for other people.

Why can that not be the conclusion?

Right.

I know.

It's just kind of hard for some people to grasp that things work differently.

I just don't really understand why.

But I don't know.

We'll see.

I feel like it.

Yeah, we'll definitely see.

But SSRI is definitely controversial for sure.

It is.

It's fantastic.

Yeah.

It is.

It is a controversial topic.

I mean, I do agree.

It's just like if you, I don't know.

It's tough.

Yeah.

And I'm also, yeah, I'm not.

Yeah.

It's, it's just the way that I see it is, it's like any substance like we talked about.

Like, it's the same thing.

I mean, it's the, I think the percentage risk is so different.

But

for example,

um,

finasteride.

Yeah.

Bro, like, what is the percentage for finasteride?

Like 0.001% or something.

But, like, that percentage is just, the side effect is so insane.

Yeah.

that

it's just like

it's almost a little demonized taking finesse right like don't fucking do that like it's her brusso with the lion's mane right so i mean yeah and you know i agree the risk is scary so like if you don't want to risk it just don't do it i think exactly the most important thing for anybody is like don't ever like don't demonize things yeah it's about the people that use them yeah and so first off and first and foremost

educate yourself on every single potential 100 and then make your decision based off of that.

Yeah, and whatever happens, happens

and like accept it, you know?

Yeah.

And for SSRIs, I think, you know, you can come off these, and even though it may suck a lot for a few weeks, once it's done, it's gone.

You know, it's out of your system.

At least that's to my knowledge, right?

Yeah.

Unlike for Nastride, for example, where like that one percentage that

could potentially be forever, so that would suck.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But like in terms of SSRIs in in general, though, the one that you would recommend specifically was that one fluvoxamine?

Fluvoxamine, yeah.

Because it's a sigma one receptor agonist, so it's especially good for neurogenesis, neuroplasticity.

And I mean, again, I respond well to them, but at the same time, I'm the first person to say if you don't respond well or if you think it might not work well for you, then don't take it.

You know, right?

What are like potential side effects of that one?

It's a bit less risky on the

sexual side effects because I do believe downstream through the sigma one receptor, it can raise certain neurosteroids.

I mean, emotional not like the, so the biggest difference with SSRIs and psilocybin, I've noticed, they're both serotonergic, but psilocybin, you stay a lot more emotionally connected with things.

Even when you microdose it, you're a lot more.

Whereas SSRIs will take you out of that as emotionally connected state.

I've always been super anxious, so I've always been too far on that state.

So SSRIs SSRIs bring me back to a nice middle ground.

But if you're someone who maybe to begin with isn't super emotional, they could make you become a bit too, I don't really care about anything, because they do blunt the emotions a little bit.

Again, for me, it brings me back to more of maybe a normal ground because I'm always been anxious.

For some people, though, it might be.

And also the sexual side effects are still possible.

Yeah.

Like with anyone.

That makes sense.

Which, yeah.

I think another thing that I would like to preface is

for anyone that might delve into these things is to remember that there is a possibility there is a potential possibility of things changing and the way they react with you over time.

Yeah.

I think that's something that's also very interesting.

It's like, you know, allergies, you can kind of

just thing where you can like get a different allergy every seven years.

You can suddenly lose one.

Like I was able to eat a jar of peanut butter before.

Yeah.

And I've been allergic to peanuts my entire life.

Yeah.

Shit can happen with medications too, drugs as well.

NPP, I used to react well with.

Recently, I started taking NPP and I had a little anxiety.

Don't know where that came from.

Not sure if it came from like what was going on in my life or not, but whatever was going in my life was so undistinguishable or so minimal that I really couldn't make any, I couldn't differentiate any actual distinguishable difference.

Yeah.

So it seemed like it was just the NPP.

Yeah.

I think that's the problem is like when you're at a place where you can't actually like pick out the things in your life

through your lifestyle, through the kind of people that are in your life, through all these things, you can't pick them out

because

it's like it's just

there's certain circumstances where it's so difficult.

You don't know what's affecting you in certain ways.

Sometimes, um, sometimes it's, you know, it's inside, sometimes it's intrinsic, sometimes, or sometimes it is the people that you're surrounded by, sometimes it is the environment.

Yeah, sometimes it's fucking asbestos.

I don't know, fucking random shit, dude.

Yeah.

But if you can pick it out, I mean, at a certain point,

I think just realize like if you're taking a substance, if it works well for you, fine.

But if it starts working terrible for you, maybe figure out if there's an alternative to like coming off of it or something.

Oh, yeah.

Or vice versa, like just never using it.

And then the one time you just feel like, this is the one moment where I feel like this will affect me.

And it's,

then maybe try it out for a second.

Yeah.

You know, I don't know.

It's weird, bro.

I think talking about any of these things is kind of a really touchy subject.

It is, yeah.

People, people kind of inevitably make it, I think, overly touchy.

Because, again, it's like, like I was saying, like, maybe a drug works for you, it doesn't work for someone else.

I'm like, that's an okay reaction.

Like, why can that not just be the reality?

You know, why does it have to be, oh, no, no, no, this is, you're this for this?

And it's like, yeah, you see with androgens a lot too, and what cycles best.

So, well, most of the people who don't give a fuck about it don't ever talk about it to you.

So, it's like how many people have we come across that are like at parties just railing coke and shit and literally don't give a fuck.

Yeah, you know, like just

copious amounts of drugs.

Yeah.

I want to ask this Q ⁇ A but real quick before we jump into that so about SLU PP332.

Yeah

that

MOT C methylene blue what are your thoughts about it?

What do they do I guess I understand that SLU and

MOT C are beneficial for fat burning insulin resistance.

Yeah.

But I guess what else if there's any valuable information for people to know?

Yeah, I mean, it's kind of part of the new wave of upregulating mitochondrial function.

They all work differently.

Like methylene blue,

some of them work more directly with the mitochondria.

Some of them, like SLUPP332, are estrogen-related receptor agonists.

So

I think it's preferentiated for the estrogen-related receptor alpha2.

But it's all kind of comes back to upregulating mitochondria.

And when we do that, we typically see more fat loss, more energy.

Mentally, you feel better.

Methylene blue is also a monoamine oxidase inhibitor.

So you get, it's, it's inhibiting the enzyme that breaks down serotonin in the brain.

So you get more serotonin from that too.

But we see with these mitochondrial stacks, you just have more energy, more cardiovascular output.

Mentally, you feel better.

There's some anti-aging effects too.

So it's kind of the newest target of...

It's like a new pathway people are targeting.

Yeah.

Have you found any,

have you heard of any experiences where people have negative side effects or negative experiences?

Nothing.

I mean, honestly, some people have gotten estrogen issues from SLUPP332.

It's not super common.

It's not directly raising estrogen, but it's still an estrogen receptor agonist.

Some people have gotten...

They'll feel like symptoms of high estrogen when it isn't.

Yeah.

Okay.

I think that's something that's common with, or that's happened with HCG too, right?

Yeah.

Well, HCG is super estrogenic because anytime you're raising testosterone through kind of your intratesticular production of it, it's always more estrogenic than just regular testosterone.

Really, like the biggest critique people have about the stack is that for some people, it just doesn't work well for them.

For whatever reason, that is, they don't respond well to it.

And some of these are more expensive.

And so they're like, damn, I wasted $200 and I'm not really getting any benefits.

Gotcha.

That's honestly been the...

biggest thing I've seen so far.

Okay, I see.

Yeah.

I was talking with someone, I can't remember who on my podcast too, but they were discussing that even if like you take ACG and like your estrogen ends up being within range, there have been a very small cohort of people that feel

sometimes feel symptoms of high estrogen.

Yeah.

Even though the estrogen is not high, even though their estrogen doll is within range in their blood rig.

So

that's just what I was meaning to say, but I don't know.

I think the percentage is super tiny.

Yeah.

It is.

Yeah.

It's just because, I mean, the estrogen you get from HCG is probably a little bit different than just pinning testosterone because it's, again, a byproduct of that full LH pulse.

So maybe downstream through that, there's some other processes or something that's, you know, raising estrogen in a unique way or agonizing estrogen receptors or things like that.

Yeah.

Is there any reason why you would recommend methylene blue?

Again,

what exactly is like beneficial?

Like, what's the main reason why people would want to use that?

Yeah, so there's especially if they're a bodybuilder.

Yeah, so it does help, I believe.

and I always mix this up how I explain this, but so first mentally, again, it's a monoamine oxidase inhibitor.

So it's going to help with

it's going to raise serotonin.

It's going to give a slight nootropic effect.

It's also, I do believe it helps with kind of oxygenation of the blood.

And I'm like 90% sure of that one.

So it's also good for your endurance.

You're going to notice your cardiovascular performance goes up with it.

It also helps with mitochondrial function.

And there are also some interesting longevity studies on it.

Some people say it has anti-cancer effects.

It's kind of an early studies for that.

So it's a kind of an all-around really complete product that's just good during, like, I know

anti-cancer effects sounds crazy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There is a lot of anti-cancer peptide theories, but obviously that's very, yeah, very theoretical.

But it is interesting to dive into it.

Yeah.

Like a lot of the immune system boosting peptides are very, I know Alex Keekel has protocols on it.

I know he gets attacked pretty hard for putting them out

for saying anything with cancers, which I get.

It's super controversial.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it reminds me of

poor Tanner.

I feel like Tanner gets attacked so much just because he talks about trying to help bodybuilders not have terrible kidneys and

heart health.

Yes.

I know some topics

really upset people.

Right.

It's interesting.

Yeah.

Just because

I don't know.

I think maybe it's just still such of a niche topic to discuss that's only in the bodybuilding community of

guys taking literally like prescribed medications from their doctor that are validated by their doctor to help bring down their blood pressure or help

I don't know just help protect their kidneys and just I don't know I just feel like this isn't really

I don't know I feel like the outside industry the outside yeah outside viewers are like oh man they're taking more medications again the same kind of

yeah it's a yeah it's definitely an interesting, it's, it's hard.

Again, it's a hard sell for for some people because they will just view it as you're taking more medications.

But again, I try to explain it as like, okay, if you're going to put yourself in, you're putting yourself essentially with androgens in a high-risk category for certain ailments.

So then if you're going to be in that high-risk category, then you need to address it accordingly, you know?

Like if there was a lot of bad side effects for it.

or studied side effects, then I would understand if those things actually would detriment to your health in the long run.

Yeah.

I mean, of course, those would be terrible.

Like, you shouldn't ever resort to a drug just because it makes you maybe feel better or whatever.

But I mean, in this kind of state, it's like taking something like a zetamide, bro.

Like, what are the side effects of azetamide?

Yeah.

And if you're blasting, if you're okay to blast androgens, but you draw the line at azetamide, it doesn't really make sense, you know?

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

So I think that it just

a higher level of consciousness and awareness

for all the ways that these compounds react, I think is important in making the decision.

So for nootropics and any cognitive improving stacks, what would you recommend?

Yeah, so I mean, of course, the lifestyle.

I don't like to ever, I mean, we've talked about lifestyle stuff already.

I like to kind of periodize my nootropics.

So, I'll typically, for a lot of guys, and again, this is,

I like to do neuro, like from a daily perspective, I like to raise

BDNF and I like to also support neurotransmitters and I like to upregulate choline.

So CDP choline is good.

Alpha GPC is good.

Tyrosine for supporting dopamine is good.

And then also things, again, however you want to raise BDNF, whether it's through Semax nasal spray or kind of however you want to do it.

And then addressing your blood work, of course.

And then twice per week, I'll typically have guys who are like CEO level.

Maybe they'll have like two.

high stimulant days where they'll take like modafinil or something.

And that way they still have those two very productive days but the rest of the week their neurotransmitters are very well supported so that way they're not hitting crashes or depleting anything too bad so well supported as in like there's still a certain level of like nootropics or something in there that's still correct yeah it's it's kind of like how twice like the the thought process of like taking anadrol or a powerful oral twice per week is a thing bodybuilders do yeah it's the same thing with like a heavy stimulant you know it's like okay if you want to have two days per week where you really want to focus on your work we'll do two modafinil days per week, but then the other five days we're focusing more on, again, raising BDNF, raising neuroplasticity, raising neurogenesis, and then supporting our neurotransmitters with things like choline, with things like carnitines, with the things like the more kind of natural, sustainable things.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

So in terms of the nootropics everybody loves and people aren't scared of because people.

Yeah.

more commonly these days like alpha gpc for example yeah uh

which of these things can you take regularly like every single day that you don't have to cycle?

And then in terms of like, I guess, the harder nootropics, which are the things that may cause side effects that people should be very aware of?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, I mean, it's, there's, there's a lot of them out there, but I would say anything that's very stimulatory, modafinil, nuridolin, your adderol, if that's your thing.

I would keep those two if you really, really want to use them once or twice per week and don't go past that.

You know, set your boundary.

If you start to go past that, take a step back and say, okay, I'm not able to handle these.

So I would keep those once or twice per week.

Again, you don't want to become overly reliant on them.

Things that you can use kind of every single day.

I still would probably,

some of these I would still cycle off.

I think Nuopep's a good one every single day, four to six weeks on, then take two to three weeks off just to give your brain a break.

Everyone says, like, do you really need to?

And it's like, probably not, but again, it just keeps you sensitive to it and it keeps it effective.

Right.

Alpha GPCs, CDP cholines, your tyrosines uh phosphatidyl serines are all really good ones to have in play again so really like your daily strategy should kind of be to support your neurotransmitters and i think if it's a natural nootropic and you're taking it daily or if it's something like newopept or paracetam i think you're you're probably good the main ones i wouldn't overdo it on is anything that's very stimulatory very dopaminergic.

The one too that I wouldn't overdo is dihexa.

So, dihexa works through the hepatocyte growth factor pathway.

And that one people think is just so powerful that you have existing, like an existing brain tumor, it could cause that brain tumor to rapidly grow.

So, that one's literally so strong to the point of where I would say, be cautious on how much you use that one.

I'd keep that one more limited.

Is there any

are there any like anecdotes or good empirical data out there?

People micro-dosing TXA?

So it's it's interesting.

So some of these, some of a lot of the people on Reddit who use Dihexa, like the big ones that I've seen on Reddit actually, that kind of become problematic is Dihexa and NSI-189,

which NSI-189 was designed as kind of a novel antidepressant that raised neurogenesis.

People on Reddit have reported that when they've used them in excess, they start to, it starts to kind of go the opposite way with Dihexa and NSI 189 and not using them together.

Just, I'm saying dihexa and NSI 189.

I've seen Reddit anecdotes where people who have overdone it and have used it too much.

It seems to go the opposite way and they start to get too much of it and they start to get these weird side effects that I've noticed, like some weird personality changes and some weird brain fog and stuff.

And so with some of the more,

you know, novel ones or ones that we really don't know as much about, I always too typically lean to using it a bit less.

Even like 9MBBC and Bromentane,

really good, but again, we still just don't know enough about them to where I'm comfortable to say, like, hey, use it indefinitely.

Could you theoretically and not have issues?

Yes, but we still don't know enough about them.

And we know too, like something like 9MABC, which is really good for repairing dopaminergic neurons, it's a beta-carboline.

And typically, beta-carbolines are actually neurotoxic.

This one seems to be the exception, but still it's kind of like, who knows, you know, long-term.

how it would go.

Okay.

And then just simple ones like alpha GPC,

that you feel like doesn't really need to be cycled or is there still kind of a good idea in cycling it just for the sake of effectiveness?

Yeah, I mean, for effectiveness, it's hard to put like a cycle date on it.

I mean, if someone was like, if I use alpha GPC every day, most people, I think alpha GPC is more kind of the background player that's building up your brain in conjunction with other things.

I mean, I would say with...

anything that I take, I mean, a good rule of thumb is probably like four to six weeks on, then just take two weeks off just to give your brain a chance to kind of reset and adapt.

And again, it's a rule of thumb, but you can even like, you can even kind of periodize things.

So if you use Nuope for four weeks, you can switch it out with paracetam for another four weeks and kind of go back and forth and just be monitoring your blood work, be monitoring your personality, make sure nothing weird is going on.

And you should be good to go with most of them.

Yeah, the funny thing is with personality.

I think that's something that I think not very many people really stay conscious of when they're trying to take a bunch of these like nootropics and stuff, right?

When they're a a lot more focused on their mental state and their

the effectiveness of how fast they work.

Yeah.

So that was me in college.

And then I was taking Adderall and realizing that like, damn, this shit like literally just demolishes my fucking personality.

So

weird.

Yeah, it's interesting.

You made me want to go on a lot of these things, Sam.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, um, I, I, I've had like little dabbles in a bunch of these, like Deaxa.

And, uh,

I've considered taking Newpept after my podcast with Dr.

Mike Israel.

He was like talking about how he really enjoyed Neoopept on both him and Jared.

Still haven't tried that yet.

But

to be honest,

after all these years,

I played this game called Memory.

It's like this card game for kids where you have a bunch of cards that are flipped down and there's animals behind them and you have to flip two and pair them.

It has to be the same card and if it's not then you flip them back over yeah and then you just play with a group of people and you just keep flipping until you have the most cards because you found the most identical cards right you just gotta fucking remember what the animals were that they flipped over yeah i did fucking dog shit bro everyone beat me including the oh wow the the eight-year-old in the 11 year old

i did pretty fucking bad so um

That's why I felt like it was a good time for me to hit you up.

Yeah.

Maybe learn a little bit more about this.

Cause

I don't know, bro being in my 20s i feel like uh my memory should be a little better by now yeah memory's all choline based so if you gotta you just gotta focus on upregulating your choline system i feel like it's the biggest thing for memory okay but yeah

you already mentioned uh some things regarding choline but um yeah if someone was to focus on choline up regulating their system what are the main things that they should remember from this podcast.

Yeah, so there's again, there's differing levels of upregulating your choline system.

I mean, a supplement stack, I think, that combines CDP choline with alpha GPC with something like phosphatylaserine is probably a good stack with maybe a little bit of hooper-zin A.

I would say that's kind of like a basic stack.

If you want to get more advanced with upregulating your choline system, you can deploy something like a nicotine gum, which, I mean, nick.

Nicotine, I know a lot of people don't like.

Really, a lot of the issues with nicotine come from smoking it.

If it's a gum, it's a lot better.

The other one that's a bit more extreme, like I said, is the dinapazil, which is given, it's not just given to Alzheimer's patients.

It's also given, it's been given to kids who had ADHD and stuff, but that's going to be a very potent acetylcholesterase inhibitor.

And that acetylcholine esterase is, again, something that breaks down choline in the brain.

So when you get rid of that, you have more freed-up choline.

So the basic, I mean, basic stack, CDP choline, alpha-GPC, phosphatidyl serine is really good.

Make sure you get enough choline in your diet because choline is not the neurotransmitter.

You eat choline and then in your body, it becomes acetylcholine, which is it attaches to the acetyl group and it becomes acetylcholine.

So a choline diet, eggs are high in choline.

Yeah.

And then again, there's differing levels depending on how much you want to upregulate it.

But CDP choline, alpha GPC, phosphatidyl serine is a pretty good

stack.

Yeah.

Okay.

I've been training for over 15 years now and I was too lazy to track anything training wise for about the first 10 years because science-based training is for pussies.

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Realizing not everyone is built to handle the intense, insane workload and injury resilience as Tom Platz and Ronnie Coleman, sad face.

I wanted to speedrun that shit, but the reality is dudes that have always known their body best are the ones that have been lifting for at least a decade.

Shit takes a long ass time to figure out.

I started tracking all my trading on the notes app on iPhone because I don't know what paper is.

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IMO, there's a sort of middle ground where you track your progress and make sure all the variables are right in your food, sleep, gear, progressive overload, and then you go to the gym and slam those heavy PRs until your blood pressure is higher than Miley Cyrus.

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Code nile at checkout.

The new videos you have, by the way, um, the new like quality that you have the new style with like your it's pretty fire yeah i like the way you do that thank you yeah i have my my camera guy's pretty good i don't know any camera stuff so i just have him do it and take care of all that yeah yeah that stuff looks good it looks real professional and everything is this freaking

oh as long as it's still greg it's still greg yeah

shirt with a shirt on this

yeah

um the uh

the covers that you have too though i think are better as well yeah not having like the same, I think not having the same repetitive type of cover, but having instead like just whatever the video actually is, I think is really helpful.

Yeah, and then with like whatever the text is kind of like what I do with my mini clips, yeah, for the podcast, yeah, no, for sure.

I really wanted to ask you specifically about a lot of these peptides, but god, there's so fucking many, bro.

Oh, yeah, I know.

There's there's a lot, yeah.

JP Moore says, No question, this one's going to be awesome.

Oh, nice.

Um, Andre Cole13 asks, what's the best combo of aminos from modern aminos?

Zeus juice with motivator with maxrev?

Yeah, so I mean, that's a good one.

I mean, the aminos, I always tell people with the aminos, like if you're okay to pin, like the injectable amino acids work really well, or like injectable ulcitrilline, there's really no downsides.

It's just you have to inject it.

But yeah, Zeus, the pump from Zeus juices is pretty crazy.

If you ever try injectable aminos, I don't know if Transcend does something similar.

Yeah.

Transcendent doesn't have i've had it before and they work well pump is pretty nuts it is i just get fucking so tired of injecting anything extra exactly yeah but yeah that's a that's a solid stack for sure when i was doing it though it was fucking phenomenal it's fun right um

but then after a certain point i got to the place where like

I just uh glutathione and then like my normal PED stack for bodybuilding and then the GH that that was like enough for me.

Yeah.

And then having to do like L-carnitine on top of it.

Yeah.

And also like

aminos, injectable aminos and stuff on top of that shit too.

That was just,

it started getting tedious, man.

I felt like,

I don't know, one of those little dolls.

Yeah, yeah.

They're fun, but yeah, dude, the pinning becomes excessive for sure.

Chan Smith asks, anything that can help avoiding too much water attention from compounds?

There are things for that.

But I mean, I would say it's probably going to come down to like an electrolyte balancing issue.

So I would say balance electrolytes.

There is a medication called impagaflozin, which is an SGLT2 inhibitor, which is typically given to diabetics that has a diuretic effect, which is actually probably the most kidney protective medication you can take.

But a lot of bodybuilders flatten out on it because you essentially are just peeing out all the glucose and stuff.

But for most people, it's usually an electrolyte balancing issue.

Even from just

astragalis alone, I feel like I'm just peeing consistently every single day.

Yeah.

It's

it almost like disturbs my sleep how much I'm still peeing.

It's crazy.

Um, Lenny C70 asks

info side

in info side effect dosage on tessamarillin?

I watched your video about MK and Tessa as well.

So, yeah, so tessamarillin's the GH secretagogue that specifically was given to AIDS patients to help with their, um, to reduce their fat reduction.

Yeah.

For fat reduction.

Lepodystrophy for their their lipodystrophy, yeah, that's the word.

What is it?

I think you have to dose it pretty high.

I think it's like a couple milligrams or like a milligram every day, yeah, yeah.

I, it was in the milligrams, I don't remember what it was, though, but it's I feel like it was like a milligram, yeah, it's an expensive one to if you want to run like a real cycle of it, I think it's a milligram or a couple milligrams at least a day, yeah, for sure.

Yeah, so that's an expensive one, but I do remember it being very pricey.

I mean, obviously, it's not as expensive as I think pharmaceutical GH, yeah, uh, but I mean, who buys pharma GH these days?

Yeah.

Majin broad.

Not a question.

Love you, Brandy Pooh.

Thank you.

That's cute.

I love you too.

What about diving into the world has benefited you the most and cost you the most?

Into this world, sorry.

Oh, diving into this world has cost me the most and benefited me the most.

Yeah, what about diving into this world has benefited you the most and cost you the most?

That's interesting.

Benefited me the most is just, I mean, when you have your biology optimized, it's probably one of the best things.

I would say, though, the thing that's benefited me the most is probably the psychedelic experiences I've had.

I think those have been the biggest things just because they've allowed me to view the world with a much more open mind.

And I think if I didn't have those, I wouldn't be nearly as open-minded and been able to explore and grow and expand my mindset.

So I think that's for me the coolest thing.

Cost me the most.

I don't, I don't know.

I mean,

some of these compounds are expensive, but I I get a lot of them honestly for free.

So

I think I, oh, I signed up for a ketamine clinic.

I think it was like 400, 500 bucks a month, and then I stopped it.

I guess that cost me the most.

My boy Dion also did that too.

Yeah, it's expensive.

He did an actual ketamine therapy, and they would do it for him in the morning where they would like, I think at one point they injected in him a whole 100 milligrams of ketamine, which was insane.

Oh, I bet.

Yeah, he went into the universe.

Yeah, so it was fantastic.

That sounds fun.

Yeah.

I agree, though.

I think the psychedelic experiences have been

the most constructive for me as well, even though I said that earlier.

Yeah, they're cool, they're very powerful.

Yeah,

it was like five minutes.

Do you even work out?

KSI Maria asks: best tests to take to make sure peptides won't negatively affect you.

Best test to take to make sure, well, I mean, that's a pretty broad question.

If you're taking any growth hormone peptides, I'd say make sure your blood glucose and stuff is in check, your prolactins in check, because obviously they're going to hit on that.

There's really not a single test.

A lot of the kind of anti-aging peptides, I would just say

make sure you don't have any pre-existing cancer.

A lot of the healing peptides promote angiogenesis, which can be negative for cancer.

A lot of the growth hormone ones produce and raise growth hormone, which can be negative for cancer.

And a lot of the anti-aging ones can extend the lifespan of damaged cells theoretically, which can also be bad for cancer.

So I would say that the biggest one I'd say is make sure you don't have existing cancer, which is

easier said than done because it's very difficult.

Right, right.

Unless you just want to do a full cancer screening,

which is super smart.

Yeah, you could also do the, what is it, like a 3K pernuvo scan?

I've seen that, yeah.

Right.

I was about to do that too, except that my own personal doctor just really is against the pernuvo scan just because it can

create alerts for certain things that actually have

no reason for you to really be concerned about, you know, it's yeah, it's tricky, yeah, right.

It has some misleading ones, so then it ends up leading some people to pay like thousands of extra dollars for extra testing when it's actually not needed.

So it's, I don't know.

Yeah.

It's hard.

This is another question that he kind of asked, but I'm just going to refuse it a little bit.

But what's the best peptide stack for sleep?

Best peptide stack for sleep.

I think I really like delta sleep inducing peptide, especially as a nasal spray.

That one seems to really help with.

deep sleep specifically.

Another one that I think is really good is epitalin or epithalin, you can say it both both ways.

That one doesn't directly raise melatonin like how it would when you take a melatonin supplement, but it helps your pineal gland restore how well it secretes melatonin.

And I really like pinellin before bed.

That's a peptide bioregulator.

And I know there's a few theoretical mechanisms of action on that, but I found that those three together are pretty, pretty solid before bed.

Yeah.

Okay.

Peptide specifically.

I mean, there's other sleep medications and stuff, but yeah.

Are there any sleep medications that you would recommend?

I think

fairly, that would be fairly beneficial for people.

And I talked about it earlier is considering incorporating Hooperzine A before bed, which is cholinergenic.

Again, REM sleep, especially if you struggle with REM sleep, Hooperzine A can be very beneficial for, you'll have some crazy dreams on it because again, you're...

During REM sleep, your brain's not shut off.

It's still very active.

So you're kind of fueling that active state you're in.

Choline is very important for sleep,

and I like aguomelatin, which is a melatonin receptor agonist, so it's not melatonin, it's an MT1 and I think MT2 receptor agonist.

That's uh medication, though.

So, you'd have to go through your doctor.

Okay, gotcha, yeah.

Jacob Boylan asks: What brain health subs do you recommend for someone who's suffered multiple concussions?

I would probably run a course of cerebroliosin.

If you have severe damage like that, I would probably do cerebrolyosin with maybe some glutathione to reduce the neuroinflammation.

If you've had concussions like that, I think that'd be the best course of action.

There's a few different things, but that's probably my go-to.

Okay.

Yeah.

Do you think BPC and TB for inflammation would be beneficial in this sense?

Yeah.

So a lot of the healing peptides actually have neuroprotective effects too.

So you could, yeah, you could add BPC.

I would do BPC as a nasal spray because it just crosses the blood-brain barrier a bit better.

But I think BPC and TB500 are both have neuroprotective effects as well and neuro-regenitor, regenerative, regenerative, regenerative, there we go, effects too.

So you could add that in as well.

I think cerebralysin would be kind of the main driver, but there's a lot of complementary compounds you could kind of stack with it for sure.

Cool.

Yeah.

Tifa2 asks, opinion on Tanner Tattered.

Opinion on Tanner Tattered?

I like Tanner.

I think what he's doing is good.

We've talked in the DMs a little bit, but I think,

yeah, I think anyone, it's kind of interesting because I feel like most people who are my age are more so on, like, the, I guess, what do they say, degenerate side of things.

But Tanner's more on the educational side of things.

So, I think what Tanner's doing is good.

Yeah, I think what he's doing is awesome, especially for this generation.

But there's always going to be haters out there.

Maybe that was a bait question.

Maybe they wanted me to say something negative.

Tanner's great.

I actually fucking love that guy.

Yeah, he's a good guy.

Um, J smith 4590 asks what are your favorite immuno blends from aa

um from aa i really like the the stampede which is an injectable atp and amp blend i think that's a really good you get a good mental boost from it and you get a good physical endurance boost too cool all right uh last question i was going to ask too but uh you made a video on on PEDs and skin.

Yeah.

So what would you say are the

most important ways for someone right away to address that if they're having issues with their skin through PEDUs?

Yeah, I think probably one of the most

diet lifestyle is always important, figuring out if there's certain things in your diet that are inflammatory for your skin.

I think when it comes to

medication-wise, I think tretinoin is probably one of the best things.

And again, if you go on like a tretinoin subreddit, you'll see some people respond really well and some people respond really negatively.

But I think tretin, like the best stack is copper peptides.

So GHKCU, KPV, topical KPV, which is another anti-inflammatory peptide, tretinoin, and clindamyosin.

Beef towel is good too, but kind of what you're doing with that stack is the tretinoin and the clindamyosin are directly going after the acne.

And then I've noticed the GHKCU and the KPV are very good for more of the

tretinoin is good for anti-aging too, but keeping your skin healing, keeping your skin recovering well, because some people take tretinoin and even Accutane and their skin just gets super dry and kind of crusty and stuff.

So I've noticed that peptides plus kind of the typical acne medications, topical peptides plus the typical acne medications is a really good stack.

Of course, lifestyle optimization, hormone optimization, but I've noticed that's a really good place to start.

And then a lot of things too, like NAD is

good as an injection if you're using NAD regularly.

I've also noticed there's some good anti-aging effects because gear isn't just about acne, but it also can age you faster.

Oh, yeah, for sure.

Yeah, for sure.

It's kind of about attacking both.

Yeah.

I really like the GHKKU CU2.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think honestly, just me being Asian is what's helping me the most.

But yeah.

Let's say your skin, no homo, but your skin does look good.

Oh, thanks, bro.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think that, I don't know, maybe, maybe the NAD and the glutathione help a little bit, though.

Yeah.

So I have one last question that I ask everybody at the end of every podcast.

But if you were to disappear from the world tomorrow and you had one message that you could send out to the entire world today, what would the message be?

I think the message, and I mean, we kind of touched on this the whole podcast, but is never view things as black and white.

Always view things kind of in the middle.

I think when you fall into thinking of things as super black and white, you, you know, it makes you more likely to just fall into the various traps of the world that people fall into.

Because I think whether, you know, we always, we oftentimes view things from like,

like, what side are you on, right?

Are you, like you were saying, politics, are you Republican?

Are you Democrat?

I think the bigger issue is you're viewing things just way too black and white.

And I think if you view things more from the middle ground and with more nuance and more seeing life as it is, which a lot of it is gray area.

you know, you'll be happier, you'll be more productive, you'll find your purpose easier in life than trying to view things just from this black and white lens.

So I think

play it in the middle.

You know, don't be so black and white, be open-minded.

I think that's the most important thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think the world is a lot more complex and interesting

than some people will tend to simplify it into.

So I do think I really agree with that statement a lot.

This was an awesome podcast, bro.

This was epic.

Yeah, this was good.

Thank you for having me.

I appreciate it.

Where can everybody find you?

My main place is on Instagram and YouTube at biohacking and then just with a you.

Yeah, Instagram, YouTube.

I have a Reddit too, but Instagram is my main, my main place in YouTube.

So cool, cool.

Yeah.

A Reddit too, huh?

I do have a Reddit.

Yeah, people have mocked me.

Not people online, but like when I tell, like, if I'm talking to a girl or something, I tell her I have a Reddit.

It doesn't

come across well.

I'm like, I swear, like, it's cool, like, it's advice, but she's like, oh, you're on Reddit?

Like, what do you mean?

That's funny.

It's not like the R slash sush Reddit, though, is it?

That is, that is a chaotic place.

I've gone through that a a few times, and I'm like, oh my God.

Yeah.

It's a scary place.

It is a scary place.

No, it's not like that, though.

Okay.

What does the U mean in your username?

It stands for university.

Okay.

That's what I was thinking.

Yeah.

Cool.

All right.

Guys, we got JT3U.

We got biohacking you.

We got all the use.

Yeah.

All the places for you to find all the information that we've all been looking for.

So thanks for coming on again, bro.

I think that was really dope.

And I think a lot of people will find a lot of value from this one because

you basically feel like everything you said was shit that I just didn't know.

So awesome.

I learned a lot from this too.

Yeah, thank you again for having me.

All right, love you guys, peace.