Dr. Dean St.Mart: Steroid Doses - Preventing Side Effects & Early Death

Dr.

Dean Saint-Mart, renowned for his knowledge of bodybuilding pharmacology, PhD in synthetic chemistry, and product formulator for supplement needs.

He is a renowned pharmacologist for his no-nonsense approach and open-ended transparency in regards to bodybuilding and the dangers associated.

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 an antithetical 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 and 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.

How you been doing?

It's pretty late there right now, huh?

It's eight o'clock in the evening, so we're just getting ready for the madness of bedtime with the two boys.

So

I ducked out and said goodnight to the two of them.

We have a six-year-old and a four-year-old, so

my wife will put them to bed.

But

my parents are visiting for for the weekend, so they've granny and granddad up, so they're being spoiled.

Oh, that's nice.

When granny and granddad come through, is it like,

does it make the weekend a little bit more busy or is it a little bit more on the helpful side in regards to the

kids?

No, it'd be definitely a lot more helpful.

I mean, we live three hours away from my parents, so when they come to visit,

It's definitely a big help because without them, we're a little shorthanded.

We've got Morgan's father and that's really it.

So

it's full on during the week between me and my wife, me being in the office here.

And then my wife has her clinic at the side of the house for her

sports therapy business.

So

it's good that we have a bit of help when they come up.

It takes a bit of pressure off.

Oh, that's nice.

I was actually about to say, because one of the Q ⁇ A questions was addressing this too.

So, I mean, I'm curious myself because building a family is something that is probably one of my biggest goals in the near future.

Yeah, I mean, that was, I mean, we'll get into the podcast.

That was one of the

you have your own aspirational goals.

Um, and I guess maybe we'll save it for the podcast.

I mean, I'm never running already.

Oh, running, cool.

So, we're straight into it.

We're straight into it.

So, yeah, I mean, to answer the question and building a family, I guess I stopped competing from 2017 to 2022.

So I took a five-year break.

And during that period, we had our two sons.

And I guess

I'd sort of thought in my head that I was done in 2017.

But my own personal goal from a bodybuilding perspective was never to be a professional, never to be like

top-level amateur seeking a pro card.

My sort of initial

goal when I left kickboxing to bodybuilding was to win it like a national class, win Mr.

Ireland.

And

every year that I tried from 2011 to like 2017, I'd be in the top three, top six.

And then eventually I just we were, I

gave it a break so we could have a family and get married and all those sort of things.

That

2022, I sort of said to my wife, it's now or never.

I was 34.

And

you sort of think, okay, if I don't go back now, am I ever going to go back afterwards?

So 2022, I went back to competing and

ticked that box of winning Mr.

Ireland.

But

during that prep, there were parts where you have this

moral decision on your mind where you're eating like your last meal and you're thinking, why am I doing this?

You know, some of the risks that are involved

that

you get this just sort of sense of morality that if I didn't wake up tomorrow, you know, I'm leaving behind a family.

And of course, that's the same regardless of being a bodybuilder or not.

I found that

once that little baby comes home, your world changes away from like me or I or even us from a couple perspective to a family unit where you are responsible for this tiny little person.

And then obviously as they evolve and they develop into their own little personalities, that's even the,

I guess, the best part of it all.

I mean,

after 2022, I retired.

I was happy.

I ticked the box.

And then I was diagnosed celiac in 2023.

And that gluten intolerance kept playing on my mind of what if, because every time I competed, I was obviously celiac without even knowing.

And I decided to go back competing last year to sort of settle that what if in my mind.

And what was great about that was setting the example to my two kids that they were able to come to the show, that I won the overall, they were up on stage, they, you know, they were given medals by the organizers, the confetti came out of the stage production, and like just being able to show them the positive aspects of

staying physically fit and

being able to juggle business, family, bodybuilding.

One of the main,

I guess,

caveats or proposals my wife put to me was that if anything suffered, if this turned into a prep to speak, that was it.

You're not competing.

And last year was a, it was interesting because I never once felt like I was dieting.

Now that I had like all the

cards in alignment with the celiac, the mitochondria stuff that people are listening to, it literally, it was like

at some points, I was even thinking, how is this even possible?

What's happening?

My calories were like three and a half thousand.

I'd gone back to Callum Raestrick, who was my coach previous year.

So I said to him, You keep an eye on the physique, you make the changes as necessary.

And we never made one single dietary adjustment in the 20 weeks we worked together.

It was,

it, even to him, it was mind-boggling.

And it showed how powerful getting the gut in order, getting you know, that mitochondrial optimization aspect

aligned, even cardio.

Cardio is like 20 minutes a day in the cross trainer and 10,000 steps.

Sure, I'd done that, you know, walking the kids to school to and from the school twice per day, you pretty much racked up close to 10,000 steps.

So it literally

you never felt like you were on prep, the amount of food I was eating, you never felt that you were being denied of anything.

So it really showed

all the years of being like a hardcore bodybuilder of like like it's it's all or nothing on that end goal.

When you don't have that pressure and you enjoy the journey with people around you,

it's a totally different experience.

Yeah, bro, 100, 100%.

And it's funny to hear that a lot of these podcasts are starting to discuss this more and more often.

I know there's a lot that discuss this.

I'd say Fuads is a good one where he always explains with his, even in his Bro Chat episodes, how like enjoying the process kind of makes all the difference.

But in me discussing this with so many other people, John Joe Doff, of course, being one of them who discusses Alex static load.

And then my podcast that I really enjoyed with,

oh, God.

Oh, man.

Brain freeze.

I do this sometimes.

I know exactly who he is, but sometimes I just have this, I have this really bad thing with names where it's like in the back of my head, even though I've said it a thousand times.

I am the exact same.

I am horrible.

Someone could tell me their name 10 or 20 times, and I'll have to ask them, sorry, what's your name again until I make some form of mental association?

The part is sad is like, I followed this guy for like, I don't know what, how long, 10 years now, Sadiq Hatzovic.

It's like, I don't know why I would forget his name in an instance, but it happens.

Yeah, yeah, Sadiq.

I mean, he was very open about, you know, family, moving away and looking at family life and everything.

I mean, that's

that's something that I've been very, you know, open about when I started educating surrounding health, the sort of pharmacology stuff with bodybuilding.

It was to try and make young guys, I'm going to say young, not like it could be even as you like in your 40s.

Not to make any sort of stigma towards age, but even you know, someone who's in their 20s starting on the journey, you get away with a lot of things when you're in your 20s.

You know, you can make silly, silly decisions, follow silly protocols, and walk away relatively unharmed, to speak.

But

the worry there is then that walking away relatively unharmed at that moment in time doesn't mean that something's not going to happen when you get to late 30s, 40s, when

bodybuilding of your 20s is a thing of the past.

You've got your family, and then all of a sudden you drop dead of a heart attack in the front garden,

where you would have thought you were healthy, and all these little things from the past are catching up with small plaque deposition as years go on that you're not even paying attention to.

And I just felt some sort of moral obligation to try and speak out and make guys aware that try and really take care of protecting your health now because your future self will 100% to thank you for making these small little decisions surrounding like your nutrition, your supplementation, your sleep, your recovery.

That when you leave bodybuilding, you want to be just as healthy as when you entered it, relatively speaking.

Yeah.

That's kind of a crazy thing to hear: leaving bodybuilding, being just as healthy as you were when you entered it.

Do you think that's possible?

I mean, at the pro level?

Well, I've worked with quite a few retired pros who have kept me surrounding like

blood analysis, looking over health issues.

I think if you are relatively diligent and you don't ignore blood pressure being probably the main one that can silently go unmanaged, and that was sort of where again I spoke about people using maybe blood pressure medication unnecessarily if they didn't have hypertension.

But absolutely, if you need to stay on top of your blood pressure medication, lifestyle, cardio, nutrition, supplementation, I think, like I said, relatively speaking, you should be able to retire, provided you didn't do anything crazy.

And again, just put your head in the sand and didn't take care of yourself during your journey.

I think that you can walk away relatively healthy.

Now, when I say relatively, I think depending on the time frame of androgen usage, they are probably going to need to require TRT or some form of androgen replacement therapy, not more so for the lack of their testes recovering, it's more so for their metabolism.

I've worked with a couple of pros who have retired,

basically said, I don't want to even do TRT, I'm done with this whole, you know, association of having to do injections and everything else like that.

They recover their HBTA and they're shocked.

I'm not.

It's very rare that someone doesn't recover their HBTA unless they've really severely damaged the neurons in their brain which is very rare or they've caused a lot of scarring in their testicle which again is quite rare if they are diligent with their antioxidants and everything else

that

when they recover because they've been at such an optimized testosterone level and the genetic influences that testosterone has on our body, going from a very optimal, like even T TRT level back to a low normal testosterone, let's say in US measurements, it's 450, 500,

because they've maybe sat at 800, 900, or even TRT,

you start to see some of the metabolic inflexibilities start to show themselves.

So you start to see liver inflammation where ferritin has gone up.

You start to see issues with the triglycerides and cholesterol.

You see mild elevations in liver enzymes.

And that's basically their body, in terms of their instant sensitivity and their flexibility of utilizing fats from the diet changes because they're going from such an optimized testosterone level back to sub-par, even though it's normal and natural.

And quite often they're left with a decision of, you know, can you continue to stay in a scenario where your liver enzymes are elevated from inflammation, your triglycerides are raised, your ferritin is raised, all these signs of oxidative stress, just to avoid the decision of going back to TRT, which might actually be more optimal for their body in that perspective.

And

for

a couple of them that I've worked with, as soon as they go back to TRT and go from, you know, 500 back to 800, 850, the blood work completely changes because of that epigenetic control.

Your genetics from being exposed to androgens for so long have accommodated to that optimized testosterone level.

So, when your free testosterone level is a lot lower than where it was previously, you start to see some of these genetic deficits occurring.

That's a long-term risk that a lot of guys don't think about.

That recovering the HPTA, recovering your brain, recovering your testes is relatively straightforward.

It's that recovering of your

metabolic flexibility of your insulin sensitivity, how you use fats and how you digest them and transport them in the liver.

Even

some of the cognitive aspects where an optimized testosterone level is influencing your dopamine metabolism of your brain, you're going from an optimal testosterone, again, of like 800 back down to 45,500.

You end up in that scenario where your

brain chemistry is still looking for that higher androgen exposure or that optimized androgen exposure.

And so the person experiences low libido, low mental drive,

all these classic things that would look like androgen deprivation.

And it's because their body's just so accustomed to that higher optimized testosterone level.

Would you see that,

of course,

I mean, of course, like at superphysiological levels,

you're not going to be expecting

good, decent levels of oxidative stress.

But

do you ever see these changes maybe in a different form when someone is going from a super high superphysiological level down to, say, like 800 versus 800 to 400?

Not that I've ever really noticed or paid attention to where someone says

on a cycle of steroids and then they move back to TRT.

I think if oxidative stress and everything like that is being controlled, then that move back from supraphysiological to physiological in terms of this metabolic flexibility, I don't see a huge change in that epigenetic control versus going from 800 down to 500.

But you do often observe when someone goes from

their cycle back to TRT or health phase, some of the dopamine aspects, the drive, and everything that's come from having that high testosterone level does wane a little bit.

And guys try and figure out why am I not as motivated to train, or why do things just seem a little bit flat versus when they were on cycle.

And again, that's just that brain chemistry.

But it tends to manifest a lot more when you fully come off because mentally you are looking for these

deficits that are occurring from the low, low androgen level.

Right.

So

I don't ever want, because I understand that, especially back then, especially like 10 years ago, for example, you're looking at these forms.

People just talk about how shitty it is to PCT or to cruise.

And I feel like that kind of just gives everyone this feeling, this energy of whenever they're thinking about doing a cruise or doing a health phase, like, I don't want to fucking do that.

So

I,

for myself, whenever I've been in these moments in time, it's like, it's almost like

felt inevitable in a way, but I've always implemented things such as cold showers, uh, early morning sunlight, um,

just a host of random things that I know that can, you know, maybe temporarily raise my baseline dopamine levels.

But is there anything that you happen to recommend for people so that they're not so scared of taking the health phase when they need it?

This is a great question.

I mean,

years ago, the very first probably piece of education I put out online was about PCT, but also about blasting and cruising of,

you know, the old adage of blasting really high dosages and then cruising on moderately high dosages that

you really have to view as you do a cycle and then you do a physiological phase, a TRT or a baseline physiological phase.

And

it comes down to your mental perception of your body that you have to accept that your body looks at a physiological level, albeit if it is optimized psychologically, you have to accept that you're going to lose some level of muscle mass from that lower androgen exposure.

So some of the tissue is going to dissipate because it's not being exposed to androgens to retain the amino acids for the protein or for the muscle protein.

You're not going to be able to facilitate

your top-tier strength, although you should be able to maintain quite a lot of what you carry coming out of your cycle.

But, like you said, putting certain practices in, you could look at utilizing nootropics that are going to help with preventing the breakdown of dopamine in the brain, whether they're natural or unnatural ones.

We could look at supporting our magnesium intake, which is going to help with our dopamine metabolism.

Pay attention to our estrogen to testosterone balance because that's going to predicate our serotonin and dopamine, like homeostasis.

So we want to make sure that we're fine-tuned, that we're not allowing estrogen to dominate and allow serotonin to be the more dominant neurotransmitter, which could have you feeling a lazy, lethargic, low-libido.

So there's a fine balance between the two.

You could

look at even during that health phase, looking at certain hobbies that you may not do during a full-on off-season.

So during your health phase, start engaging in more fun types of cardio, whether that is, you know, any sort of combat sport, if you're not have a high risk of injury, doing something more challenging from a functional aspect, again, considering your injury risk, but using something where you're not hyper-focused on

how you feel when you're at that supraphysiological level versus back to the physiological range.

But it does serve a purpose in that

one of the other things that I said years ago was when you were at a supraphysiological level of androgens, the stem cells of your liver cannot infiltrate your liver to repair itself.

So one of the things that blocks our liver from repairing is when we're at a supraphysiological level.

And this was one of the main worries when someone does a pre-contest cycle, has orals piled in towards the end.

And then there's the old rebound cycle where you come out of your cycle and you go straight into another superphysiological cycle, rebounding

that

you're not giving, you know, we're laughing and this is something that happened.

Now, most people,

Most people don't do it now because of all the education we've done.

But when we look back historically, it makes sense why quite a few top-tier amateurs suffered liver problems because they never allowed the liver to allow these stem cells in to repair itself.

Yeah,

I'm laughing not because I'm judging, but because

after this last prep, this was the first time I did do a rebound.

It was kind of an agreement with my coach that this is the route that we would take since my blood work seemed to come back surprisingly well.

And that would always, you know, and that's why I've always said, even with when someone has asked me questions around like, what's the best supplements to take?

You always make decisions off your blood work.

Even PCT, we're covering the HBTA.

Use blood work to give you the decision or give you the data to drive the decision.

So like in your case, if post-prep, your blood work, your liver, your ALT and AST ratio is good.

your GGT was in a good position.

The bilirubin was nice and low, showing that there was no cholesterol blockages in the liver.

If all that was, you know, in good range, everything looked optimal, you could go into a rebound cycle.

So, you know, you're, you always want to make the decision based on bloods, which historically wasn't the case.

It was sort of like, okay, you finished competing.

Now, here's your rebound cycle.

gain 15, 20 pounds, and then move into your offseason properly with that added rebound weight.

Okay.

Well, I guess playing devil's advocate to that statement, I do remember seeing in one of the lectures that you were presenting that you had a title saying, not all problems will be solvable with blood work.

Correct.

So I'm wondering, yeah, what would you

in that instance?

When things aren't solvable with blood work, normally what I'm speaking about is hormones.

So hormones with regard to blood work, especially estradiol.

Estradiol is the most villainized marker when it comes to blood work, and it's completely taken out of context because estradiol is made inside your cell first

and then it comes out into the bloodstream.

So, whatever's not used by your cells technically spills out into your bloodstream, and that's what you're detecting with serum blood work.

So, you could have an estrogen level in US terms of 20, let's say, which is relatively low.

UK measurement, we're looking at somewhere around 100, 90 to 100.

And you think everything is great, but then you know yourself that you're suffering some level of estrogen overload symptoms or estrogen dominant symptoms.

What you're seeing in the serum is not telling you how much you're making inside your cells, like your brain or other cells of the body.

And if that estrogen that's made inside your cell then interacts with the

estradiol receptor inside that cell itself.

You'll never see that occur in your blood work because the estradiol interacts with the receptor and then gets broken down.

So, that's where I like to use.

There's a thing called a Dutch test, the draw urinary test for comprehensive hormones.

And what that does is a 24-hour measurement of the metabolism of your sex hormones.

So, it's able to show you that although your estrogen could be 20, when you actually look at the total output of estradiol and the estrone metabolites over a 24-hour period, they could actually, in reality, be quite high.

So, when we're always looking at blood work, stuff like hormones, thyroid hormone, testosterone, estradiol,

we have to look at where they're made.

And if they're made inside a cell, what's in your bloodstream is what's basically come out of the cell itself.

Same with minerals.

When we look at minerals and blood work,

could have a very good serum magnesium level, so the amount of free magnesium in your bloodstream, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you've got good magnesium stores inside your tissue and cells.

And normally what you'd do is you'd try and correlate the ALP enzyme, so alkaline phosphatase that's on the liver panel.

Its core is made of magnesium.

So when that is,

according to the research, below 70, in theory, that person could be magnesium deficient.

You can look at red blood cell magnesium content to see how much magnesium is inside the red blood cells, which uptake quite a bit of magnesium also.

And so, what you might find is your serum magnesium could be great.

It could be 1.1.

And then you look at what's inside the red blood cells or your ALP enzyme expression, and they could be actually quite low, which is saying, well, the magnesium is in your bloodstream.

It's not being transported correctly.

So

when we're looking at blood work, most definitely, you have to understand the context of what the marker is saying versus where it's produced or what its mechanism of action is.

And even then, I've often said blood work,

when you're looking at blood work, you're trying to make an interpretation.

It's almost like trying to tell someone's fortune.

You're trying to

take that snapshot in time of what was pulled out of the bloodstream and try and correlate what happened in the past and then try and predict some level of future events happening.

You know, if cholesterol is raised, you're trying to predict, okay, well, if the cholesterol is raised, what's the risk of plaque forming, you know, six or seven months ago?

And now what's the risk of a heart event, cardiovascular disease, plaque triggering, you know, maybe a heart attack in a year's time?

And you're trying to, you're trying to

fortune tell, to speak, or make a very good assumption from the data in front of you.

And that's where it can become almost a scale of trying to connect all the dots of, well, that piece of the blood work is saying this picture.

And if I look down here, it's telling me something else.

Gotcha.

So, in terms of

magnesium systemically versus

seeing a discrepancy in what's stored in the cell.

And I guess same thing you can say with hormones.

I'm assuming that these discrepancies can be caused by a multitude of factors.

Yeah, so I mean, if we look at estrogen,

we have to look at

fat cell expression is mainly going to predicate how much aromatase you're making.

Sort of the fatter you are, the more CYP19 you're expressing, which is the aromatase enzyme.

You can look at estrogen clearance from the liver.

So, your liver will convert estradiol to estrone, and then it'll convert estrone into hydroxy metabolites.

So, it'll transform the estrone.

And then, the estrone will be further metabolized with phase two liver metabolism to help your body take it out of it, whether that's through your urine or through your feces.

So

when we are trying to understand

what's happening in terms of estrogen metabolism, there's aromatase, there's the CYP enzymes of the liver, and then there's also, you're looking at the gut microbiome, whereby certain bacteria can produce an enzyme that will remove some of the conjugates that your body uses to help you get rid of these hormones out of the body.

So, these bacteria basically feed on this part of the excretion molecule.

So, one of them is glucuronic acid, and this is why people take calcium D-glucrate as a supplement.

The glucuronic acid is fed on by the bacteria, which then leaves you with the hormone again, with nothing conjugated, and that just passes back out into your bloodstream to circulate again.

And that's where, you know, people have gut issues and they have certain dysbiotic bacteria which produce a lot of beta-glucuronidase,

it can lead to estrogen dominance from that aspect of their gut because the estrogen isn't being cleared properly.

So there's a lot of things that when you're trying to line up what's going on,

if you had high estrogen in your serum blood work,

then there is probably a good

correlation there that you have high estrogen inside your cells.

So, in that instance, you might make some level of adjustment, whether that is lowering the aromatizable compounds, utilizing an aromatase inhibitor quite intelligently or selectively to marginally drop that aromatase expression.

And then look at these other aspects of the gut, the liver.

these conjugates like glucuronic acid, glutathione,

and see how you're going to support getting rid of that estrogen.

Because,

again, if you are using an AI, you're going to block aromatase from working, but you're still making estrogen, even though it maybe might be 70% lower.

That 30% estrogen that's being produced still

could be recycling back into your body if you're not helping with phase one and phase two liver metabolism, or you're not helping the gut for excretion.

For lots of these

issues regarding oxidative stress,

how helpful do you feel

is

because I know we have a lot of different antioxidants that we can source from.

I think a lot that most people take, of course, is orally.

But

how effective compared to, say, your regular oral antioxidants, such as NAC, is,

would you say, is

consuming glutathione through IV or injection?

Yeah, so glutathione is a peptide, so it's three amino acids.

You've got cysteine, glycine, and glutamic acid all stuck together, and that's what glutathione is.

And when you take N-acetylcysteine as a supplement, you're feeding your body the rate-limiting amino acid to make glutathione, which is cysteine.

So, most people don't get enough sulfur-rich foods in their diet.

So, supplementing with NAC is just giving that cysteine source in to build it yourself.

If you take something like injectable glutathione,

you're basically ensuring that you are bypassing the stomach.

So, you're bypassing

digestion or

the stomach's acidity, which will destroy glutathione's structure.

So, if you're taking glutathione straight up as a capsule as a supplement reduced glutathione it's relatively useless because your stomach just destroys it

that's where

people came about creating um s acetyl glutathione as a supplement and we we use that in our pump formula and because the acetyl group protects glutathione from the stomach and then your gut removes the acetyl group and the glutathione goes into your blood circulation.

So, if you are looking at an oral glutathione supplement, I'd choose S-acetyl over.

You've got people who are selling like cetria glutathione, which is trademarked glutathione, but it still gets destroyed by your stomach's acidity.

So, you're only absorbing a very small amount of it.

Whereas IV injectable, the bioavailability is way over 95-96%.

So, you're absorbing pretty much all of the dosage.

And that's where you can then look at other oral forms like liposomal technology.

So we create with supplement needs a liposomal glutathione, which is like a nano-fat particle.

So it's made of phosphatidylcholine.

And obviously, our cells are made of phospholipids.

So you basically

spin phosphatidylcholine with glutathione really fast and the glutathione gets pushed inside these little fat nanoparticles.

And when you ingest them, they bypass your stomach's

acidity, they get absorbed by your gut, and then the liposome can go straight inside your cell where you have a lysozyme, an enzyme that destroys the fat particle and releases the glutathione inside.

So, if anyone's sort of looking for what's the best oral version of any antioxidant, that would be CoQ10, vitamin C,

glutathione, even curcumin or resoertrol.

The liposomal versions are generally going to be superior.

Might be a little bit more expensive up front, but it's guaranteeing that you're getting over 95-96% absorption with the liposomes as well.

Okay.

How much of a higher percentage are you getting with absorption with CoQ10, liposomal CoQ10 versus the regular?

So,

regular CoQ10, when we look at some of the studies that were done with ubiquin known, which is the

always forget the oxidized or the reduced.

I think it's the oxidized form, and ubiquinol is the reduced.

Don't, if anyone's listening, don't hold me to that.

I always get the two confused

with ubiquinone, the coQ10,

basically the initial one.

Someone's fighting in the background.

I promise it's not me.

Someone's sawing away in the background.

someone had like a bell last night

wait

with ubiquinone the

oral version um you're only going to absorb maybe five to ten percent

whereas with the liposomal you're looking at again with we've data from our uh laboratory the liposomal laboratory where we're getting somewhere around 90

absorption with the liposomes, and that's just as a consequence of the size of the liposome,

which is very important.

So, if people are looking at purchasing liposomal products, you almost want to make sure that they're sub-100 nanometer particles.

But that's sort of where when people look at buying supplements,

like 100 milligrams of CoQ10 looks like a good dose, and then really in tier, you're only getting 10 or 15 milligrams.

It's low, yeah.

I mean, but the other side of it then is something like ubiquinol is relatively similar, but with ubiquinol, you don't have to do the conversion process.

So, in our bodies, we have an enzyme that will basically recycle ubiquinone to ubiquinol or convert it,

and that's where people often will buy ubiquinol for its superiority.

But

up to about the age of 40, you're making the enzyme that can do this conversion quite efficiently.

So I'd wait until you're, you know, above 40, let's say, before you start buying ubiquinol as a supplement because ubiquinone, your body will be able to do that conversion.

Okay, cool.

I got a few years then.

I've got three years.

It's creeping up on me.

All right.

To be honest, I have a million questions, but

there's also a really good Q ⁇ A.

So I'm excited to ask these questions too.

Maybe in the next 20 or so.

But

going off of,

I think the first thing that I want to ask you, though, is I was re-listening to the podcast that I, because I actually first came across your content on Fuitz's channel from your podcast together like years back, maybe like three years ago.

And,

you know, I really enjoyed it.

And then I started seeing you pop on Steve's channel.

And as Steve knows, I'm

infamous for loving to steal all of his friends from your podcast.

So,

yeah, when I was listening to the podcast with Fuad, I realized you were the only other person that I've heard say the same thing that I've said on my podcast multiple times.

People will tease me for it because it's honestly kind of funny.

I get so excited when I talk about it, but you also got genetic, or at least you recommended people get their genetic results from 23andMe, map from 23andMe, and plug it into like Prometheus or genetic genie.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Now, the only thing I know about that is the results that I got and what I learned from it, which is fucking, it was fucking awesome.

But I guess I just kind of want to hear your entire perspective on doing so.

What have you found that that people have learned that's very productive, especially in the bodybuilding realm?

Just all sorts of things.

And I know there's a lot of also productive things in terms of like your long-term health and your

genetic predispositions to disease.

Yeah,

I guess 2017 to 2016 was when I went down the rabbit hole of genetics, my own genetics personally.

And

I started to

connect the dots with a lot of things that ran familiarly.

Um, the first one that popped up for me was MAO

A,

which meant my MAO enzyme, which breaks down serotonin in your body, and runs extremely fast.

And so, knowing that, it then made sense why my mother suffered with depression and why

there was like a history of chronic depression on my maternal side.

And that's because that MAOA enzyme is running really, really fast and it's depleting your serotonin.

So obviously you take an antidepressant medication to try and keep that serotonin in your brain.

But

it never manifested in me because I ate high protein all the time.

So I'm feeding these precursors into the system.

Whereas an average person, perhaps my mother, aunties, etc., weren't falling at sort of optimized nutrition.

Have you seen testosterone supplementation help a lot with this?

So,

testosterone androgens can do two things: they can either interact with MAO or they can interact with COMT.

And then, obviously, testosterone improves your dopamine synthesis of your brain, which then aids with positive well-being.

I guess what I found probably has kept some of that depression away has been nutrition mainly.

Um,

and in saying that, it probably explains why, um, when I was younger and doing kickboxing, I was quite aggressive, and that's that

being able to utilize some of that neurotransmission expression.

But being quite aggressive can

basically flip-flop the serotonin of your brain, so then you end up feeling quite down, quite low.

That's obviously where nutrition picks you back up

with

other things then like the CYP metabolism like genetic genie.

I think it was CYP3A4 was one of them on mine that came back as working quite fast.

And that does play into testosterone synthesis or testosterone metabolism,

which

for my blood work, luckily it's never been expressed.

So even though you have the genetics, it doesn't mean that it's being expressed.

But that would mean that you are a fast metabolizer of testosterone.

Um, and I think the other one was um

sip 1A.

I'd have to look at my notes here, but basically, most of the antidepressants are metabolized through this enzyme, which then

historically lined up with why the psychologist had to keep giving my mother higher and higher dosages of medication because her body was basically metabolizing it very fast.

And, you know, to a psychologist who isn't,

I guess, within that realm of knowledge of genetics, he just thinks, okay, there's no response, so give more drug.

But if you knew this sort of personalized genetics, and I think that's where medicine hopefully will start moving into, and that was why I got really interested in genetics, was personalized medicine, that then you know your your overall

toxicology genetics, which would mean then you're giving giving very accurate prescriptions of drugs based on your body's genetics, as opposed to

conventional prescriptions are basically trial and see.

Give a standard dose, look for an observation and an outcome.

And if it's not achieved, do you need to titrate the dose up?

And I, again, was sort of with my mother higher and higher dosages of

an antidepressant medication.

The other things that come out of it,

which again,

one thing about genetics is you have to be

very emotionally neutral on what the results are going to show you, especially when it comes to your disease risk.

And what I mean by that is

my genetics came up with Apo E2 and IV.

So ApoE is apo-lipoprotein E,

and it's one of the carrier lipoproteins of cholesterol into your brain basically

if you have apo e2 and four

you're at risk of vascular disease and you're at risk of alzheimer's or dementia and again this correlates back with why my grandparents then suffered with dementia

because of you have this expression of those apo e204 genetics so as you get older you have to be very careful then of your fat metabolism to make sure that there isn't any of these entanglements going on in the brain that they potentially think that links to Alzheimer's or even neuroinflammation.

And so

if you're not emotionally prepared for a result like that, where it's telling you you're going to develop a cognitive deficit,

you may go around worrying, oh, when's this going to happen?

When's this going to happen?

And it might not ever happen.

Like I said, just because you have the genetics doesn't mean that the epigenetics, which is the environmental control of your genetics, is expressing it.

It just means you have that risk present.

Right.

And I guess I completely breezed over it, but

it was only when I went back after the celiac diagnosis

that I seen that I have the HLA genetics that leaves you susceptible to developing potential autoimmunity issues, whether it's thyroids, guts,

and that is present in my genetics, which obviously what happened was when I got into some point in my 30s, is where my sort of bowel issues started happening.

That was when the genetics switched on, you know, all the way up until I was late 20s, I had no issues.

And then I couldn't really figure out what was going on until I had that blood test done in 2023.

So

knowing that you have these genetics doesn't mean that they're present.

And a lot of companies are now starting to actually do

epigenetic profiling, which will look at how active are those genetic traits.

So whether they're switched on or not.

So you look at the methylation aspect or the histone, acetylation.

So how well are those,

I guess, pieces of DNA free to be accessed to express?

And that might be something that's useful to do rather than looking at a whole screen of things where it's saying, okay, you're at risk of X, Y, and Z, but you might not ever develop it.

But it can be useful.

I mean,

that was sort of where the whole scientific explanation of fast responders,

poor responders, or fast metabolizers, slow metabolizers came about.

And that when you understand these genetics of the drug toxicology, you can see why someone might need more of a dose.

And I've seen this several times.

You look at blood work.

Someone's taken 125 milligrams of testosterone and you expect their test level to be 25 nanomoles, which I think is about 800 nanograms per deciliter.

And you see a result of almost double that number, which is saying that their clearance of that drug is

half the rate of a normal person.

Right, but they're both experiencing the same.

And that's where then, you know, someone will probably need less dosage to get the same effect as someone who might require higher dosages.

And it just proved where

for a long period of time, people were just following blanket recommendations of just take this dose and it's going to get you huge.

For some guys, it never resulted in anything.

And perhaps if they'd done their bloods, they might see that they are that fast metabolizer.

And so it just gave a good insight that you can almost map out,

regardless of

your just pure serendipitous response to taking anabolic steroids, you could probably plan whether you're suited or not to bodybuilding based on those genetics.

Well, would you say that,

like, does this rate of metabolizing have any effect on

the capacity of side effects one may experience, or is that completely a different like genetic predisposition?

No, that would be like I mean the ACE enzyme expression, so angiotensin converting enzyme, that could leave you susceptible to blood pressure problems when you use anabolics or androgens because we know that that influences the angiotensin

one receptor and then obviously ACE andiotensin II being made from ACE.

So if you genetically are predisposed to making a lot of copies of ACE enzyme, your risk of making angiotensin 2 goes up.

And then you're taking anabolics on top of that.

And all of a sudden you're heading towards high blood pressure, kidney issues.

And in that instance, knowing that you have angiotensin converting enzyme genetic issues would mean that prophylactically, you're probably a candidate that has to take some form of

ACE inhibition medication or angiotensin receptor blocking medication because you know your genetics leave you susceptible and that's quite often if someone sees a response to taking these medications towards their blood pressure and then without the medication the blood pressure goes back up there's quite a high likelihood that there's an underlying genetic factor with ace

so

As we get older, we also increase our expression of ACE.

And that's sort of where when we look at even like drug pharmacology and what we've designed over the last 150 years from a medication perspective, aside from insulin for type 1 diabetics, blood pressure medications have been selectively created to go to that genetic root cause of blocking either the ACE enzyme or blocking the andriotensin receptor.

And so you're giving someone who has genetic issues with blood pressure control a chance to offset some of the disease that comes from elevated blood pressure.

So, I mean,

I guess because

I'm not very knowledgeable about

this

portion, so I'm a little bit confused on whether or not

the speed at which they metabolize, say, testosterone is related to this that you were just speaking about.

So, let's say someone is a normal metabolizer and their genetics is making them produce double the amount of ACE.

So the normal person and they've issues genetically with ACE and it's creating double the amount.

But is that, but like, there could be different combinations of those two, right?

Yeah, and this is where I'm trying to get to then.

So you have like someone then who's a fast metabolizer of testosterone.

So now the testosterone is leaving their body quicker, but they have this genetic susceptibility to ACE.

In theory, they're still making probably high amounts of ACE enzyme,

but the testosterone's influence to angiotensin II on top of ACE will be slightly diminished.

And then you have the other side where someone's a slow metabolizer, where the drug is staying in their system a lot longer, having the ACE genetic issue.

And now the testosterone is staying in the system longer influencing the angiotensin one receptor and then also you've got the genetic aspect of the ACE enzyme at double capacity let's say

so the ones who are a normal metabolizer will have relative middle of the road risk the ones who have a fast metabolism will probably experience lower amounts of angiotensin receptor expression because the drug is leaving quicker but then obviously they're not getting the benefits of the dose that they're taking from an anabolic perspective.

And then you've got the guy who's a slow metabolizer who, in theory, gets double the effect of a standard dose.

But now that double effect, even though it's a low dose, it's staying in the body longer, influencing more angiotensin receptors and the ACE genetic issues.

So out of them all, the slow metabolizer is probably the one that will have to manage side effects more than the fast metabolizer.

Hmm.

Okay.

But

this is given for the same dose that they are taking.

Correct.

Imagine that they were taking a dose where they reap the same benefits.

And this is like all coming from hypothetically a person that has the same genetic,

all the other same genetics being the same.

Yeah, so I guess if they like equaled the benefits by adjusting their dose as needed, would

the side effects theoretically be about

the same, too?

Probably.

I mean,

the fast metabolizer is obviously going to need

double the dose of the slow metabolizer to meet in the middle.

Because the fast metabolizer is breaking down the molecule at a faster rate, whereas a slow metabolizer is keeping the drug in the system longer.

So if the the fast metabolizer doubled his dose in theory to try and meet the same blood level as the slow metabolizer, then yes, I'd say from a risk perspective, all three scenarios probably end up meeting in the middle.

So it really then comes down to

refining from a genetic perspective what the overall outcome is going to be.

And I guess that's where it's really important.

If you do your genetic tests, and anyone that's listening, I'm sure you've said yourself, Niall, you can buy like a cheap

ancestry test from 23andMe, where you basically just get all your raw genetic data.

You don't even need to go through 23andMe's like reports, health reports, and you just plug it into Prometheus, you plug it into Genetic Genie,

you have other things like self-decodes and seeking health.

Um,

I guess that the

two very good things that will come out of

Seeking Health's pathway is it will show you how all of your neurotransmitter metabolism occurs.

And that was how I found out about my MAOA issue.

The self-decodes is all

AI-driven now at this point, where it's consistently updating the algorithms

of analyzing all of your epigenetics or your polymorphisms.

So, out of the two,

self-decode, I think it's about $80

for a subscription for the year.

It's well worth it.

We have your raw data put into there, and it'll tell you: basically, here's all

your potential health risks, traits,

biohacking, little things that you can understand surrounding, like how to optimize your liver health, how well are you able to methylate,

how well are you able to break down histamine, How well are you able to break down protein from a stomach acidity perspective?

It gives you such an insight that,

I mean, you could spend hours upon hours going through your genetics to try and figure out little tiny health optimizations like for your sleep, for your digestion, even training response by going into your genetics.

Or you can just do the old school way and just trial and error.

So I think, you know, the future of healthcare, if it does ever get to that point of personalized medicine or personalized prescription, it would be incredible that if you had a problem, it's no longer a hit or miss approach where you're spending several months trying to find the right drug, the right dose,

even for blood pressure, that you'd be able to say, okay, this drug normally metabolizes.

So we will go with this one.

Whereas your genetics are showing you've got fast metabolism for this blood pressure medication so it's probably not worth trialing it and you get a very quick solution and even from a combination therapy perspective you might be able to say okay well your genetics are showing high andiotensin risk right so we're going to start immediately with even triple therapy calcium channel blocker ACE inhibitor and a receptor blocker because you're at high risk.

So they're not doing what would have been in the past to give you one, assess, give you the next one if it didn't fix it and then give you the next one all whilst you're at potential high risk that that high blood pressure is causing problems in the background

i really like that you said this because i think there's a huge misconception with a majority of ped users um i think maybe not a lot of ones that listen to podcasts like this or try to get a little bit informed more on um new knowledge but i think there's this big misconception that uh the number of the dose

like the bigger the number,

the more likely you are to die, the more shit genetics you have for bodybuilding, when really it just doesn't matter, right?

It's simply a number and it differs per person.

Exactly.

I mean,

when we look at even some of the dosages that are in

top level Olympian IFPB pros,

what some of them are utilizing now in terms of physique refinement to stay where they are is, of course, going to be a lot lower than what they required to get to that peak level of body weight and musculature.

So

there is no doubt that, you know, when people ask about increasing the dose, there is some point where you have to continuously titrate up to

cause more adaptations of androgen receptors.

So again, you've got more androgen receptor expression upregulation to allow more muscle tissue, provided the train and stimulus and nutrition and everything else underlying is optimized.

You are going to have to slowly titrate up to where your desired end point is, which you're physically.

Because of the more muscle tissue and more androgen receptors.

Exactly.

And then you're trying to leverage some of the other secondary aspects of androgens, like the non-genomic aspects, like the calcium signaling for stronger muscular contraction, or the nervous system priming aspects, so you help with strength development.

So now you've got higher force production, you've got more high-tress motor unit recruitment when you're training.

So there's all little things that add up that you might need to start increasing your dose.

Let's say

that person's not using oral steroids that work in a slightly different fashion, like anadrol or anivar,

where you might put them in to take advantage of that non-genomic signaling, which is obviously increasing your dose.

If you're adding in 50 milligrams of ANIVAR before you train or 80, 100s, by the end of the week, you've increased your total androgen dose from that oral use,

where it might not, you know, and this is again, people look at their cycle and they completely underestimate what they're taking orally.

When they add in like 50 milligrams of ANIVAR, winstrol, et cetera, in a prep setting, it's adding hundreds of milligrams to the total weekly dose that just because it's not being injected, it sort of goes to the wayside that you forget that that is part of the overall total dose as well.

Right.

How many is four anadrols a day?

So normally they're like 50 milligrams is what the standard compounded doses would be

200 milligrams anadrol would be a very uh

a very heavy dose we'd see a nice effect on your strength nice effect

yeah

although you might see some certain side effects as well but um

200 milligrams of anadrol is is serious territory

would you like add those up be like 200 times seven be like 1400 total that'd be yeah that'd be that'd be a total milligram and that's where that's where you know what we laugh at it but that that's so serious like you know you look at it it, you're like, well, I'm only taking 300 milligrams of test, and then you're adding 300 milligrams of anadrol pre-workout or daily.

And at the end of the week, your 300 milligrams of testosterone is nothing compared to the 1400 milligrams of anadrol that went in across the week.

So, Ferosi, you were a savage.

So, it's, you know, and it's when you look at

that aspect, it tends to go sort of ignored where you lose sight of those milligrams adding up to the total weekly dose.

Gotcha.

Oh man, so many questions.

I'm glad you, I remember you stating before

you were talking about jumping on gear to young.

And I was wondering, I guess,

because I do have a lot of

a lot of my audience

is younger.

And I mean, I have both.

I have a wide range of

a wide aid range, a big age range.

I don't know.

I can't talk right now, but

I know a lot of them are interested in competing or have competed, but a lot of them haven't taken PEDs before.

A lot of them are natural as well.

And they kind of just like to learn for the sake of learning.

But I know that they have

the potential possibility in their minds, minds knowing that they may lose their nanny card someday.

So I'm wondering what age, if one feels like they want to be Mr.

Olympia, like that's their biggest goal,

would you recommend?

Because I know I think with C-bum being such a big

representative of the

sport, it's a little of a weird controversy on what age you should be starting for that type of pursuit.

I guess from a,

if you were to be really strict scientifically, we know that males' brains don't really fully develop until we're 24 or 25 in terms of like emotional stability and everything else.

If we were to say that that was our end point of

development as adults or adult humans, men particularly,

perhaps 24 or 25, depending on that aspect.

If we look at someone who's like elite level, if they start at 18 and then they're Mr.

Olympia by the time they're 24, 25,

I guess, from a developmental perspective, in theory, there's been some level of impediment to brain development.

If we consider we've accelerated male development by exposing the body to higher levels of testosterone.

But

I guess

the other side of it, to sort of stay neutral in the middle, would be that person's

overall aspirations and goal.

And again, it comes back to the genetics.

I guess if we had like a 16 or 17-year-old who just,

from

a familial perspective, doesn't have the greatest bodybuilding genetics when you look back through generations,

that

yes, work, ethic, and everything else could still develop an amazing physique.

But at that age,

are they going to yield huge benefits of going up to a very high level of testosterone so young?

Probably not.

They'd probably be better off

taking two, three years at that age, 17, 18,

progressing their physique naturally, looking at their blood work, seeing maybe they are hypogonadal and they might need some hormone support,

but they'd be best off

getting a foundation first before progressing into that sort of

dark side territory.

Gotcha.

Then the other side, I mean, is someone who's 20, 21, who's a little more emotionally mature, and they're not at that 24, 25 level where we're saying, okay,

scientifically, you're fully developed.

At that age, if they had the emotional stability, they had

a responsible view on their health, so they'd learned everything,

they've got good disposable income in order to take care of their health, look at their blood work, supplementation, eat correctly, then perhaps, I mean,

there's a lot of things like what we discussed with with John when we were on about the sort of journey of like amateur into the professional ranks that it's not just a matter of going off and finding anabolic steroids, it's quite easy to do that nowadays.

It's everything else that underlies that decision: have you got a good stable routine, like sleep, training, nutrition?

Do you have the money to afford if you have a health issue, going and doing blood work?

Do you have extra income for supplementation or even ancillary medication if that arises?

Do you have the knowledge at that age if something goes wrong to turn to someone, whether it's a coach or whether that is someone else who's knowledgeable to outreach to?

There's so many factors there that I think, yes, age on one aspect, we have to be very careful not to start these things too young or influence decisions to use these things at a very young age.

But we also want to make sure that when someone does reach the appropriate point in their journey where they decide to make that jump, that they have all the education or they know the positives, the negatives,

which I think today is great that we have so much education.

We're putting all this information out.

We're making it very accessible to very young people who are on YouTube or who are listening to podcasts, who are 16, 17.

who are being influenced by the online world of seeing physiques and thinking oh i want to i want to look like that but also making them aware that looking at someone on social media in that instant doesn't really tell you where they took that journey to get to that point

that then themselves need to take a step back and realize this is a lifelong pursuit where the drugs are a very small aspect to the overall whole goal of it.

If they can take that time in their early years, 16 up to 21, to earn their stripes to speak, like Steve always goes on about.

Almost like getting a natty passport of you've sort of fulfilled all your exams of natty status, and now your next step is going into

the enhanced area.

And, like, I mean,

I had a consult years ago with a very top-level natural bodybuilder, and had won pretty much everything nationally

in his country.

and his next step was um i want to go into the ifbb league i want to get my ifbb pro cards i think at the time he was 23 or 24.

very impressive physique had a consult with me and basically what i've often said is if you're going to go down this route just double or triple your natural testosterone level do your bloods get your baseline numbers and then test the waters with double or triple your testosterone level and assess what assess what happens.

See, are you a slow metabolizer, a fast metabolizer?

What aspects of your blood work changes with that double or triple exposure to that androgen level?

And then from there, make the decision of, okay, yeah, I got all these positives.

I didn't get any negatives for someone else.

It could be, I got very minimal positives and I got all these negatives.

That you're able to then make a decision, is this really something that I want to do for the rest of my bodybuilding career to speak?

And

are you equipped then with the knowledge of slowly progressing with that enhancement where you're not tempted to go from like 300 milligrams of testosterone straight to 750 because someone told you take more and you get bigger quicker?

You view it from a responsible perspective that you diligently track everything so that you can make those data decisions like with your blood work.

What would you consider appropriate from an age perspective, given like everything we see online?

I think that's the hardest thing for me to say, obviously, because I think it differs greatly per person.

And the problem is I don't want to put anyone on blast, but I see, I will see kids that have started gear and now are pros at the age of 21 or 22.

But they have an amazing head on their shoulders and they're very well educated and it just everything seems to be working out because they know what they're doing.

And then I see kids that

are like 25 years old, started running gear.

I mean, maybe they're more like 23 or 24, but that

I think it's fucking hard for me to say because I'm

trying to not sound negative, but it just looks like they're pushing their life down the drain.

in a way that's kind of just

their their mental thoughts and I guess their values and morals and the direction it's going is being

in a way that's not going to be productive for their future.

Yeah, no, exactly.

I mean, even

we have to view that when androgens start acting on our brain, which we obviously all know from that dopamine perspective.

If even from like an emotional stability perspective, if they have underlying issues

surrounding OCD or some of these these dopamine-driven behaviors, it can change their personality.

Even though that personality is always

something that is there, the androgens are just amplifying it.

It can

make them really

create a life where it's almost like bodybuilding or nothing.

And then they eventually realize, well, that was not the greatest decision because they've lost so many different types of relationships by being hyper-focused on bodybuilding.

Um, and not like you said, not to put anyone down, they might not have the greatest genetics, that they're not going to end up anywhere conducive.

That

if they had taken a step back and said, Okay, I enjoy bodybuilding, I enjoy the physique I get, having this very um erratic behavior or OCD behavior is very destructive to everyone around me.

That

being able to have that self-awareness to take a step back is probably going to be better for that type of person long term.

So, I think

when I'm often asked, you know, what age,

even when someone asks me, and I get this all the time in DMs, I hear everyone speaking about TRT, I'm thinking about doing it.

And it's like,

let's hang on for a minute and try and think about what you're asking me.

You don't make the decision to do TRT because everyone around you is doing it.

You require TRT if you have symptoms of hypogonadism.

When you sort of

blanket it or cover it as TRT, it's really, I'm thinking about taking steroids.

What do you think I should do?

And we're slowly falling into that trap of,

I wouldn't say glamorizing, but we're making an awareness to TRT, which is great.

But we have to view that TRT in of itself is quite strict in how it's prescribed or spoken about towards dosages that when you have potentially, you know, someone looking to do

now, don't get me wrong, there are TRT doctors that prescribe 250, 300, 500 milligrams of testosterone, depending on what side they sort of view their ethics.

But if we're looking at something like that to mirror that generally, you're almost pretty much

giving yourself permission to stay on cycles to speak.

And

when someone sort of, I remember I had a consult with someone who came to me about thinking of doing TRT.

And it was because their friend in the gym had started taking 250 milligrams of testosterone themselves as TRT.

And

when I asked, you know, did your friend do his blood work to see where his testosterone level was?

No.

Well, then,

how does he know what that testosterone of 250 milligrams is yielding in his body versus his natural level?

How do you know that dose is appropriate for you?

Like, if you mirror what he's doing,

if this guy's level is 10, which is like 300 nanograms per deciliter, I think, and now you're taking 250 milligrams that has you at, I don't know, 12, 1400,

going that huge jump, it just doesn't serve that person from a TRT perspective.

They're really taking a very high superphysiological level of androgens.

Yeah.

That

glamorizing TRT, we have to be very careful with what we're speaking about because

we're having great influence over people's decisions to run these hormones

and not understand the consequences both

physically and mentally and everything else.

Right, right.

Yeah, it has kind of become this

sort of like a blanket statement for the sake of like self-validation and comfort.

So

I agree that I think it's something that people kind of need to remind themselves that there is a difference.

Like TRT serves a very, very big beneficial purpose in very many areas of your life.

So

it's important to make the distinction because doing so

can kind of hurt you if you're not doing it the way it's prescribed.

It's, you know, it's slowly becoming a, like you said, a self-validated way of avoiding saying oh well i'm on a cycle of steroids or i'm on a cycle of testosterone it's sort of um

socially acceptable now to say the word t or t whereas you know 10 15 years ago t or t was heavily stigmatized

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 But I kept hitting plateaus from burnout, fatigue, joint issues and injuries, and other factors that at the time I didn't really fully understand.

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

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.

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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 checkout.

Is there a reason why you say specifically two to three times your testosterone level?

So, I think if you were to take what we do with TRT, T

and let's say someone is at the very bottom of the physiological range and we bring them to the upper physiological range from that point, most of the time that multiplication is either double or triple their natural level.

So what you're really doing in this point when someone is going from physiological to superphysiological,

doubling their exposure, their body to the level of hormones that they make naturally allows them to assess what are the benefits or negatives that they're going to get from that doubling in exposure.

So you're being selective in how much you're exposing your body to rather than picking an arbitrary dose of like 500 milligrams.

And again, that could be you're a slow metabolizer, a fast metabolizer, sitting in the middle.

I think if you don't see any positive benefits from doubling your testosterone level naturally or tripling it,

is everything underneath those sort of core basics like your training, your nutrition, recovery, and everything else

really lined up that you should be able to get benefits of doubling your natural testosterone level from a physique perspective, libility, libido, vitality, everything in terms of what we'd consider a benefit of having a higher testosterone level.

If you don't observe all that with that small increase

from

even a health risk management perspective, going to that double or triple level just means that you're not

at risk of spilling over where you're overshooting your androgen exposure.

Obviously, if you have a very high dose, you are going to upregulate your androgen receptors to try and accommodate that increase in dose.

Don't get me wrong, but you've also then got an increased amount that could aromatize, create

DHT from five alpha ductase, or you just waste it, your liver metabolize it, and you excrete it.

So, doubling or tripling your natural level for the first sort of exposure to see what occurs on top of having everything stable, like

your nutrition is nailed, your training is immaculate.

your recovery is in a good position.

I think that is pretty much your, I wouldn't say safe point, but it's a more intelligent way to assess is going down this path for me or not.

Okay, that's cool to hear because

there was a clip from my podcast with Fuad where

I'm wondering if part of what he got this from was from you guys stating this or maybe from you, but

he was saying if people had just instead of just picking some arbitrary numbers and escalating up

to doses that are probably higher than they really require or is beneficial, most beneficial or most optimal,

he says, why not just check your blood work, say with a clinic, for example, and reach for somewhere between like two to three times or maybe even two to three thousand

in your level of testosterone.

And that way you at least know that you land somewhere that is in a good range.

Yeah, I mean,

I'm not very good with US measurements, but from a UK perspective, let's say someone is at 20 nanomoles per liter naturally.

And we know roughly from research, human research, 250 milligrams of testosterone enantate will create a level of around 45.

So that's that's just over double their natural level.

If they were to take 250 milligrams and go to that 45,

whilst that in theory is viewed as perhaps a T or a T dose, they've doubled their natural level.

And so now they can assess, they can assess, okay, I've gone to double my natural level.

What have I gained?

Similarly,

knowing that initial baseline number, you can then create multiplications of that and then try and

work out an appropriate dose to get to that level.

So, again, triple

a 20 nanomole level would be 60.

And on average, somewhere around 300, 350 milligrams would bring you to 60.

If that person decided, okay, I'm going to follow what's on a form and I'm going to go straight in at either 500 milligrams a test or 750 because someone put it online,

500 milligrams is going to yield a level of around 90 to 100, which is, you know, four to five times their natural level.

Of course, they're going to get brilliant benefits from that four to five increase versus the double or triple, which is a lot lower.

But they'll never be able to truly assess: well, what benefit did I get by improving my testosterone level by a lower margin to start and then titrating up based on response?

And you can then gather, like I said, looking at how does your lipid metabolism change?

How does your

sleep in terms of like your dopamine metabolism?

Do you start to run issues with your sleep because of now you're like wired from too much dopamine in your brain, so you find it quite difficult to switch off?

That it's a lot easier to

assess if it's for you or not rather than following just some blanket number,

you know, 400, 500 milligrams.

Look at your natural number, look at where that appears double or triple of that, and then try and figure out based on that standard dose of 250 milligrams, where I need to adjust to get to that multiplication level.

It's just, I think from there, then, you know, you've got two choices.

You either start to see benefits from the testosterone, so you don't see a lot of aromatization, you don't see a lot of 5-alpha reduction.

That you could probably try and milk that dosage, depending on your training performance, your nutrition, sleep, and everything else.

You then either increase the testosterone up another touch, knowing that now you're putting in more that could aromatize and could five-alpha-reduce, or you start going into the realm of adjusting the anabolic to androgenic ratio by adding in non-aromatizable DHD-derived compounds, adding in DHD-derived oral steroids.

You just have to figure out where's my end goal now that that I understand what these things do to my body from a lower exposure.

And then obviously figuring out where you want to go from that point.

Okay, gotcha.

Would you say that, um, so understanding that good blood work helps build muscle in a way?

Would you say that there is

like already understanding that

and assuming that to be true, would you say there's also another reason to why it is beneficial for someone to start at lower doses?

Because I know there are a lot of,

whether they're young or whether they're not, there's a lot of

lifters or a lot of athletes that like the idea of progressing as fast as possible from the very beginning,

yeah.

Um,

I guess

let's say they did jump the gun and go straight in at 500 milligrams instead of starting at 300 or 350.

Is that a huge mistake?

Probably not,

but it just brings a lot more molecules going into the body from that higher dose that can have four

different ways of of being utilized by the body.

So if they were to obviously go straight in at 500 milligrams,

pretty much most of the androgen receptors within their body naturally at that point are going to be activated.

So there's going to be quite a large increase in total testosterone level that naturally all of those androgen receptors, specifically within muscle tissue, are probably being activated and creating this positive benefits.

And then from that point, because there's such a high level of testosterone, the cell has no choice but to increase the androgen receptor expression to try and accommodate that higher dose.

In theory,

they might see faster progression, but the other side of it is there's risk of what I'd call like spillover.

So now they don't have the androgen receptors within muscle tissue.

Now these molecules have to go somewhere.

somewhere, and whether that is aromatase,

bivalfa reduction for DHT,

or like I said, liver metabolism, they might start seeing issues with gyno, blood pressure, hair falling out,

you know, prostate issues, skin issues.

There's so many things that can occur from jumping a gun that, yes, you probably see a rapid improvement in physique development, no doubt, versus a lower testosterone dose.

But

had they been patient and then titrated from the 300 to 500, let's say over the course of 20 weeks,

they might be able to mitigate some of that spillover because they're able to stop at the point of, okay, now I'm heading into territory where maybe I'm not maximally utilizing that dose

and it is interacting unfavorably in my body.

So

I don't think there's a right or wrong wrong of how you do it.

It's just from an intelligent way, going double or triple, we'll just let you assess some of the positives, but also get ahead of the negatives rather than going up to 5x or your natural level.

Okay, cool, cool, cool.

A question for me personally, and I think also some of my audience that has been interested in this topic, but we love the talk about

supplements, which comes after, of course, you know, us all implementing as good of sleep and

nutrition as possible.

Since a lot of us really want to become the best we possibly can, but also

optimize all levels of our lives to progress further.

I think one of the areas that I find issues with, and I know some of my audience that has contacted me in the DMs has also told me that they have an issue with insomnia.

And a lot of times more

an insomnia that is a little bit more induced psychologically.

Um, and

I know this differs per person, and some people have found their own solutions.

But I'm wondering what are your best recommendations for getting proper sleep, and then if there's any supplements you also recommend,

yeah, I guess this was

this is where it all started for me with getting into supplement formulations and an interest in supplement science was sleep.

I did actually hear from you before that has helped me, but I used to have a problem with melatonin, of course, waking me up three hours after I took it.

And then I implemented 5-HTP at about 200 milligrams.

And I've noticed I've had a lot.

I've just slept through the night a lot better.

It's been amazing.

And

that was all stemmed from I was

a a chemical engineer before I even went into supplements so I like bodybuilding supplementation was a hobby uh to ironically and then I left my job of nine years to join Lee full-time with supplement needs but you know doing everything with supplement needs was just a hobby to help people and I guess selfishly create products for myself that's what I've always said and sleep sleep stack I'd

basically I was working rotating rotating

shift patterns.

So I'd work a month of night shifts and then a month of day shifts.

And these are 12-hour shifts, seven to seven.

And when you join a company like the one that I was in,

big corporate global company, they give you occupational health

talks surrounding like this is what you're supposed to do when you're on night shift.

And it was all like backwards stuff.

It was like, go home, you know, if you're going to

drink, you know, alcohol like you would in the evening, you know, do it, watch a bit of TV, all this stuff that just didn't make sense.

That

I wanted to figure out how can I optimize my sleep more so because I was competing during that period.

So I was thinking in my head, well, if I'm going to do a prep for the Irish national shows and I'm working, you know, monthly day shifts and month to night shifts,

I need to be on top of my game mentally with how

demanding my career was, but also I had to be on top of my physical recovery so that I was not experiencing any roadblocks in my prep or fat loss.

And sleep, sleep was then,

you know, even me personally, I've tried all of the old school products that was like

one of the very first couple of products I tried personally was like Fade Out or

Ronnie Coleman had Resurrect PM and like these things are just sedatives basically.

Resurrect PM's first formula had fenabut, and fenibut is basically phenylated GABA and it just literally just takes a sledgehammer to your brain and just puts you to sleep.

But these things that put you asleep don't actually bring you through sleep cycles.

So you're unconscious, but you're not actually going through like deep sleep, REM sleep, light sleep phases.

So I had to sort of look at how do we fall asleep and how do we stay asleep.

To fall asleep, we need to have low levels of dopamine in our brain.

So, this is sort of where the wired and tired, over-stimulated aspect of our brain comes from.

Where you go to bed, and as soon as you lie down, your mind starts thinking about this, this, this, this, this.

And then,

the hard thing about dopamine is once you start thought chasing, your brain starts making more and more dopamine, and you're getting more and more excited and away from the

sleep inertia of bringing you to sleep.

If you're that type of person,

your

sleep onset association is very important.

For most people, sleep onset association is your head to the pillow.

As soon as you put your head to the pillow, it's sort of telling you subconsciously, it's time for us to go to sleep.

But if you start overthinking then these what ifs or what happened during the day, what's happening tomorrow, Your brain is moving away from that association of going to sleep.

To actually, I need to plan out what's going to happen tomorrow or worry about what happened today.

If that is happening to someone,

supplementation might help to some extent, where you take magnesium, preferably magnesium besglysinate, to help COMT, the enzyme that breaks down your dopamine in your brain.

COMT and MAO are the two that break down dopamine.

So what you're trying to do there is encourage that dopamine to be cleared out of the brain.

But if

your psychology is encouraging dopamine, you're not going to override it.

So if you are that type of person, the best thing you can do is leave your bedroom, go to your kitchen, go to your study, go somewhere.

and brain dump write down absolutely everything that comes into your mind onto a piece of paper and by writing it down mentally you are clearing that thought from your subconsciousness that as well you're able to then see what is worrying you and where you can create strategies based on what's going around your brain rather than thinking in a cyclical fashion of all these thoughts when you're just lying in bed

by doing that brain dumping you're psychologically setting yourself up for sleep but you're not doing anything biochemically as such but you're helping get rid of some of that dopamine that would be there where you're just clearing your thoughts journaling, meditation.

You're just allowing these random thoughts that are coming into your heads that are disturbing your sleep onset

by just getting it down on paper.

And you can go right in the morning time, I will look at this and I'll deal with what problems are on it.

It's time to go to bed.

The

other thing then to fall asleep is

high serotonin, which was the 5-HDP.

Serotonin makes us feel content, but also makes us feel quite lazy, and which can help feed into that relaxed brain environment to fall asleep.

So

5-HTP mixed with vitamin B6

or peridoxam 5-phosphate, if you want to go with the active form, you're encouraging that 5-HTP to be converted to serotonin.

And what I noticed when I looked into it was

your

serotonin that you create in your brain is actually what creates creates the melatonin that keeps you asleep.

So, when we're looking at sunlight exposure during the day to help increase melatonin levels in our pineal gland from the sunlight, that melatonin is used to tell our brains from a circadian rhythm perspective, it's nighttime, get ready to go to bed.

What keeps you asleep is that conversion of the serotonin to melatonin.

And if you wake up in the middle of the night, it's more than likely that you've run out of serotonin conversion to melaton.

Your brain's decided, okay, time to come out of the sleep process.

And that's where, historically, like even anecdotally, people use carbohydrate-based meals before bed to help with tryptophan going into the brain to create serotonin, to create melatonin, to keep you asleep.

And that's where melatonin as a supplement is useless because the half-life is about, I guess, about 60, 60 minutes.

By the time you get to three, four, four hours into sleep, the dose of melatonin you took before bed probably got you asleep, but now your brain just isn't doing its own conversion and wakes you up.

Do you ever find any benefit to taking L-tryptophan with 5-HTP

and magnesium?

So

L-tryptophan has its own enzyme that converts to 5-HTP.

And you've also got

what's called the long-chain amino acid transport or the L-N-A-A-T, I think it is, that brings tryptophan across your blood-brain barrier into your brain to create serotonin.

But that requires insulin.

Again, this is the carbohydrate-based meal before bed, in order to bring that tryptophan into the brain to then go through that hydroxylation process to serotonin.

I've never personally taken tryptophan alongside 5-HTP.

In theory, you can.

The problem, I guess, with 5-HTP is you you have to be very careful not to overdose it, because if you massively increase your serotonin,

you probably can be at risk of serotonin syndrome the next day, which can be

low mood, volatility.

It's quite an unpredictable thing that certain people just don't get along with 5-HTP because of that influence under serotonin.

But for those who can,

that conversion of your natural serotonin to melatonin is what keeps you asleep.

So that process is important for falling asleep and staying asleep.

But the main thing that inhibits you more so from an insomnia perspective is dopamine or a lack of GABA to tell your brain to relax.

And that's where,

as woo-woo as it is, a lot of dopamine

clearing activities before bed, like avoiding excessive stimulation.

So, at one stage, people are on about blue light exposure before beds.

Blue light is stimulatory, but more so the research said that the devices that emit blue light are actually the culprits of the stimulation.

So, if you're like scrolling on social media before bed, your brain again is getting dopamine hits from likes, comments,

engaging in content,

arguing with people online, someone messaging you.

All these things are stimulatory to your brain.

And so, eliminating some of these activities, you know, an hour and a half before you go to bed, just put your phone on silent and put it in another room and forget about it till the next morning.

Or put your phone on, do not disturb, and just give yourself an hour before bed where you just allow your brain to process what happened that day.

The

light exposure, so a dim environment is more so from a circadian rhythm perspective to help your brain make the association that it is nighttime.

That's not to say, you know, light exposure is going to stimulate your brain to stay awake.

But if you can, if possible,

have more red light-based colours, and whether that is, you know, salt lamps, even replacing some of the bulbs in your house with softer orange glowing bulbs rather than the bright LED bulbs that we have in rooms.

What else can we do from like even an adrenaline perspective?

One thing that can happen for a lot of people is they can fall asleep and then 2-3 a.m.

they can have what's called a catecholamine dump where your body basically just dumps all the stored noradrenaline into your body, which can then cause a surge of adrenaline.

And that's sort of where you wake up like 2, 3 a.m.

wide awake and you're like, I can't get back to sleep again.

And that's because you've kick-started that adrenaline and cortisol response.

Utilizing cold water exposure two hours before bed can help from a nervous system perspective, use up that nervous energy.

So obviously the cold induces

termogenesis.

So even shaking to get rid of that nervous energy out can help with that aspect of insomnia if you find that you're waking up at random times times in the middle of the night.

It can also be a sign of magnesium deficiency.

So making sure that you're getting adequate magnesium.

I guess like sleep

for most people sleep problems are either some form of nutrition deficit or some level of cognitive behavior behavior aspects where

Sleep hygiene is like cognitive behavioral therapy where you're trying to figure out what can I do to optimize my neurochemistry so that I'm in a calm, relaxed environment to go to sleep.

You know, from an evolutionary perspective with sleep, if your brain is on high alert that someone's going to kill you, you're not going to fall asleep.

Like your brain, for us to go to sleep, our brain has to basically think that it's in its most safest position,

that it's allowing you to enter that vulnerable state of sleep.

And if there's any sort of underlying subconscious alert,

your brain is not going to allow you to fall asleep.

And quite often, when people are dieting hard and they're finding it hard to fall asleep at night, it can be because of blood glucose regulation where your body is saying, well, if you go asleep,

your blood glucose is going to drop.

So I'm just going to keep you awake.

in case something like that happens in your sleep.

So we have to view everything when we're approaching bedtime.

How safe is our brain perceiving our environment?

And again, it can be

something as simple as if someone's worried about the neighborhoods they live in, can offset subconsciously how they fall asleep.

If they don't feel safe in their neighborhood, that can manifest as insomnia, even though perhaps day-to-day psychologically they might accept their environment when they're trying to go asleep at night.

There's some level of underlying subconsciousness of the perceived threat that's stopping them falling asleep.

It's a fascinating thing when you delve into sleep, but

once I sort of looked at that biochemistry of serotonin and melatone and nutrition and all those crazy things, it didn't matter whether I went to sleep at 9 a.m.

or 9 p.m.

I slept the exact same.

So I'd sleep like 9 p.m.

to 4 a.m.

or 9 a.m.

to 4 p.m.

So whatever way I worked the 12-hour shifts at the time, it didn't really matter.

I was able to flip my sleep schedule knowing all these little things.

That's amazing.

That's freaking insane.

Yeah, sleep has always been the most interesting thing to me, and it's something that I've been trying to improve, obviously, for I don't know, half of my life or so.

Well, no, that's actually wrong.

Uh, when I was a teenager, I used to wake up in the middle of the night so I could sneak to the office room, hack into the computer, and play RuneScape and watch anime.

So that's not so true.

But

these days, though, there's so many things I've implemented.

I've noticed that my sleep is actually a lot lighter than I thought compared to others, maybe.

And

it's, it's, I can, I feel it's frustrating because I know some people that listen to this podcast are probably like, yeah, I sleep like a baby.

But then there's others like me who literally the smallest thing, like you said, not feeling safe in the environment or not being in an environment that is the bed that you normally sleep in just affects your sleep

abnormally.

um so i mean the things that i've implemented myself uh i like upgraded from blue light glasses into these little like these big ass like futuristic orange and red glasses i got from amazon that i'll wear two hours before bed and immediately like two hours is up and i already feel tired and like i don't want to do anything anymore which has been really helpful And implementing all the things you've said.

Now, I don't know if my stack is too much.

Potentially maybe.

I've done a little bit of trial and error to figure out what works for me.

But mine is, of course, not using melatonin, but I have,

I don't know if it's 750 milligrams of GABA,

the 200 milligrams of 5-HTP, magnesium is glycinate,

and then

or actually it might just be magnesium glycinate.

Do you think there's a big difference between those two?

There isn't.

It's just a percentage of magnesium.

That's the difference.

One has one glycine, glycine, the other has two.

And the percentage varies then of the

what's important is the actual elemental magnesium.

So like magnesium bisglysinate is 10% magnesium.

So the total dose you're taking, you're getting 10% magnesium.

Gotcha.

Okay.

So yeah,

some collagen and then basically those, the GABA magnesium glycinate.

I added L-tryptophan because of a friend who was like recommending it to me when I was taking melatonin and waking up in the middle of the night.

And I'm assuming he recommended it to me because one, he didn't want me to consume carbs before bed and two, 5-HTP or serotonin.

But then I added 200 milligrams of 5-HTP, which

I did in the past.

I didn't ever feel like it really helped so much.

And now that I realized that I have been waking up in the middle of the night, what the purpose was was not to help me fall asleep or for the sleep latency, but it was actually keeping me asleep.

And now I realize the 200 milligrams of 5-HTP has has made all the difference, which is fucking amazing.

I feel so much better.

So I thank you for that, by the way.

Yeah, I mean, bringing that to the forefront with

the other side was like Treansomnia, which is all about the elevation in dopamine from being such a strong androgen, the interaction with COMT, the magnesium deficiency.

You know, prior to delving into all these things with sleep, I remember in my early years before I got really interested in all this deep biochemistry you'd wake up at 2 3 a.m in the morning and go right just do my cardio because i'm not going back to sleep because of that aspect and then

around like 2016 2017 when i got really interested into deep biochemistry and all this it was that prep

aside from you know as i've gotten older all these little tips and tricks you learn 2017 i used to sleep like a baby it didn't matter what was going on And that really showed me how powerful that underlying biochemistry of getting your body to do the work, basically, instead of fenibut, which basically just knocks your brain out, like I said.

And that's where guys fall into the trap of taking,

you know, barbiturates or even sleep medications and end up with a mild addiction to them because xanaxia that they never really delve into getting their body to do the work itself.

And that was what fascinated me with functional medicine around 2016, 2017 was when I went down that deep rabbit hole.

I've learned all this stuff about drug design, biological processes, but really, I've never really thought about, well, what is the root cause of a certain problem?

And sleep was the first one when I really went in deep on it.

Right.

The other thing, like, if you've got light sleep, like what we talked about with genetics, when I looked at my genetics, I have

something

not right with the ADA gene, which is your adenosine gene.

And so I can't remember what exact polymorphism it is, but basically, it makes me susceptible to having very light sleep.

So perhaps one of the ways you get around that is by using something like silicon earplugs, where you basically just mold something inside your ear canal and and you cannot hear a thing.

But

when you're a dad and you've got a family, you can't just put this thing in and go, right, see you later.

I'll see you in the morning when I wake up.

You know, you've got kids who are crying out for you in the middle of the night that you have to be on alert if something goes wrong.

But silicon air plugs make a big difference to the level of sleep quality you get because you don't have that disturbance of any small noise.

And again, your brain is looking for when you're asleep, your brain is still looking for threats that a small noise you will get woken up, provided you're not in complete, heavy, deep sleep.

That noise disturbance, it could be something tiny going on in your environment that just wakes you up because you're a light sleeper.

So, silicon airplugs are very cheap.

You get them, I don't know, here you can get like a pack of eight silicon airplugs for about four

uh british pounds so you probably get them on amazon for a few dollars damn valuable um

another thing i guess is

i said it long ago is clock watching so make sure that you've got no visible clocks in your room something as simple as stopping yourself looking at a digital clock or your watch during the night um

will ensure that psychologically again you're not counting away your hours of sleep.

And I remember, you know, when I was younger, before I'd put all these little hacks in,

you'd be working your shifts and you'd wake up at 3 a.m.

knowing that you have to get up at 5 a.m.

or 4.30 a.m.

So you're only getting another hour, hour and a half of sleep.

And psychologically, seeing that time, you're sort of thinking, what's the point in going back to sleep?

Or I've only got another hour of sleep.

And that, again, can stop you going back to sleep properly.

So, clock watching, stopping yourself looking at any visible clocks or any visible LEDs in the room that light pollution to speak is another useful strategy to avoid

sleep disturbances.

And then,

something like even caffeine, you know, stimulants.

We can completely underestimate our stimulant usage where you

don't realize, again, from a genetic perspective that you could have slow metabolism of caffeine.

So that when you have a coffee or a pre-workout beyond 2 p.m., 3 p.m.,

you've still got a considerable chunk of caffeine in your system when you're trying to sleep, which again is stimulating your brain, blocking those adenosine receptors that would be caught that would cause the sleep pressure.

That you create some level of rule that your caffeine exposure, you know, that you have a cut-off point where it's 12 p.m., 1 p.m., and you don't play into like

any silly games of having pre-workouts after work, trying to find some way of, if you are fatigued mentally, try and figure out some way of addressing that fatigue, which could be dehydration from not drinking enough or not getting enough electrolytes during your workday that's having you fatigued.

having a 15, 20 minute nap before you go train in the evening to try and offset some of that tiredness rather than reach for something that is completely overstimulating that is going to mess up your sleep that night and then your recovery for the next day's training is impacted.

So before we go to the QA, going off of what you were mentioning about trend

and trend driving up dopamine and trend insomnia, but

I think this is going to be going down a little bit of a rabbit hole.

So I know we don't have to really go too in depth about it.

But I was curious.

I've heard a lot of different perspectives.

I think what I believe from the guests I've discussed is I feel that there is no perfect compound or there is no best compound necessarily for the general population.

But what is best is

the one that you can use the longest with the least side effects and the least detrimental effects to your health.

For me, that's test and primo.

Just that's my combo.

Some people I know have a lot of different, I think, non-testosterone compounds that they like to use.

But I was wondering what your perspective is on some of these compounds, if there's any few that you find tend to be the most optimal for most or have yield the least side effects.

From my understanding, I know I used to like NPP at one point, but I understand that can cause some anxiety in some people.

I don't really understand why, because if the prolactin is managed, if these hormones seem imbalanced, I don't know why those 19 ores still seem to cause these side effects.

So that is down to COMT.

And that again was where I was able to figure out one of the ones that

anecdotally causes a lot of anxiety is baldinone or equipoise.

And you often find people have to stop equipoise because it just has them feeling really on edge, that paranoid as to speak.

And that sort of

anxiety-inducing aspect is from too much dopamine in your brain, from COMT slowing down.

So, when we've got too much dopamine in our brain, it can lead to almost nervous anxiety where your brain is

perceiving threats that aren't there.

Obviously, we have two

systems to our brain: one that is very primitive, and then one that is quite cognitive.

And they're both always making assumptions of of our environment to keep us safe.

If we have too much dopamine, you have all that nervous energy, you're looking for threats that don't necessarily exist.

And again, it comes back to COMT

as an enzyme breaks down estrogen alongside dopamine as well.

So if we're slowing down COMT,

we're going to end up with that increase in dopamine in the brain.

So

what we want to basically do is ensure COMT isn't overworked from an estrogen perspective because it's handling estrogen as well.

That we have enough metal donors, the methylation aspects, your folate, B12, that you've got no issues genetically with folate and B12 recycling.

And then, also, making sure that we're supporting COMT with magnesium, which is the core of that enzyme as well.

So,

when people have these anxiolytic effects where they have nervous energy to speak, it's more than likely CRMT telling them things are working a little bit slow here.

And that tends to be

with MPP or Nandrolone as well.

We do know that it can be neurotoxic or it is dopamine inducing.

And again, what we can experience is a burst of dopamine from nandrolone, which could, in theory, damage that neuron's sensitivity as well.

So

it's coming back to what we spoke about, where it's like your individual tolerance to these compounds.

There's some people who can take a thousand milligrams of Tren

like it's nothing.

And you're going to have someone who takes a hundred, 150,

and it completely changes their mentality, their mood, their psychology.

I guess from a

safe perspective, I hate that word safe, but what's tolerated probably is the best way of saying it.

It is generally generally like testing Primo, like you said.

And then you've got obviously perhaps a substitute from Mastron,

but

Mastron and Primo Bolin molecularly look quite similar in how they look from a molecular design.

And that's sort of where people thought that the two of them are interchangeable.

But their molecular weights are different in that there is a different amount of molecules on a dose-per-dose basis between the two.

So there is a slight difference there.

You've also got potentially the primabolin mastron having an ability to bind into the estrogen, the aromatase enzyme to stop estrogen production, but not inhibit the enzyme suicidally.

So it's not going to be a full antagonist of the enzyme.

And what I mean by that is if a primobolin molecule goes inside aromatase, it means a molecule of testosterone can't go inside at that time.

So it's blocking testosterone from entering into that binding site.

And that can lead to a lower estradiol level because of your competitively blocking off testosterone, which for certain people, could be a negative thing or it could be a positive if you have an overexpression of aromatase.

So again, it comes back to from a personal perspective, how well you tolerate the compounds, and then

being in tune with yourself.

Um, you know, if certain people have issues from a mood stability with TREN or Nandrolone as a 90-nor perspective, from the brain chemistry aspect,

that they almost ignore it just for the sake of how well these compounds work from a strength perspective,

cortisol lowering, the anti-catabolic effects, everything sort of from a positive physique perspective.

But mentally, they end up turning into an asshole that they don't want to stop using it because they've effectively chose to accept that side effect of the compounds.

So I don't think there's a right or wrong thing of, you know, these are the golden compounds.

I mean, even

the older older I've gotten,

the

um,

I wouldn't say more cautious, but the more scientific I've come at it, even towards the usage of TREN to speak.

And I mean, Steve done the calculations along with me of like what was the most effective trembolone dose.

Um, and when he worked it out to be 25 milligrams, it wasn't too far off.

Well, I, you know, I took a chance when I last competed and done 10 milligrams on my training days.

So that was four training days a week, 10 milligrams 90 minutes before training.

So 40 milligrams total per week that you're telling someone this very low number and they're calling BS.

And

the pictures of my physique shone, what the result was that

there was no need to go to what anecdotally would have been, you know, classic dosages of 1, 200, 300 milligrams.

Yeah,

I think because um

i mean

i mean at this point i do feel like we're kind of just fighting that very very tiny small population that doesn't quite uh remain open-minded about the subject or um

um open to education new knowledge but i i think there is this old perception that uh that massively crazy fullness um where you are just your muscles are bulging and the veins are popping and everything is like the ultimate goal and how pros should look.

However, I kind of, from my discussions with some top coaches like Stefan Kienzel and P.

Tor

and even other,

even other very

accomplished creators in the space that it's not necessarily true and differs per person.

Because when you go on stage, sometimes if you're titrating these things up to a level of fullness that's so incredible, you know, this will take away from your detail at a certain point.

And for some people, that's kind of detrimental to their placing.

I think for me, maybe for Samson, for example, Samson, who had to lower his doses a lot for Olympia, also lower his carbohydrate intake and his nutrient intake a lot.

Now he's coming in as detailed and now he's Mr.

Olympia.

And I'm sure he's going to continue doing that with his wife as his coach.

So I think people need to realize like this depends on the person, how high you want to titrate up those doses.

And then also,

like we've all discussed, there's a lot of other compounds, a lot of other hardening compounds that you can utilize to get there without having to utilize trend.

You can just use trend for those, for the

anti-catabolic effect and the

cortisol decrease.

Pretty much nail it.

I mean,

last year when I went back to settle that what if, you know, pretty much the first eight to 10 weeks was TRT with 300 milligrams of primopolin, and that was it.

And then you're, you're, you know, people are looking and they're going, is that it?

And you're going, well, yes, that's it.

And you're,

you know, from a physique perspective, obviously, I compete in classic bodybuilding.

I didn't need to retain, you know, 100 plus kilos or 230, 240 pounds of muscle tissue.

So your, your intake is going to be reflective of your overall musculature as well.

So, there's no point in deluding yourself, thinking I need 800, 900 milligrams to hold a body weight of like 200 pounds.

So, that also has to be taken into consideration.

That

even in hindsight, when I thought about it, I was like, well,

the 300 milligram number was not picked arbitrarily to speak it.

The way I viewed it was: if 125, like TRT

is having my testosterone triple where it would sit naturally, so my natural level is very, very low

prior to going on TRT,

that

if that is triple the level, and if I sort of equate 125 test to 125 preimobolin, even though this is a very basic assumption without getting very technical,

When I go to 300 milligrams, that's nearly nine times the amount of androgen molecules as the TRT to speak.

That I could probably have halved that number if I was being very, very conservative.

But you sort of view, okay, well, what's the

where am I, from a risk perspective, going to tolerate putting this number?

And I guess that, you know, there was no right or wrong way.

If I had been very intelligent or selective in that approach, 150 probably could have even done that prep.

But you know, when you're looking at trying to get ready for national shows, you're thinking in your head, okay, well,

where am I being conservative, but where am I being optimal as well?

So it's like I said,

it's so inter-individual that a lot of coaches to speak that give like arbitrary

cookie-cutter cycles get found out very quickly.

Um,

because of there is no personalization to that person's own biochemistry.

So it is, it's

important

to assess how you respond to each compound.

And by all means, like what we talked about earlier with going in at the beginning,

first time sort of cycle design, you pick one compound on top of test, see how you respond.

Do you need to increase the dose of that second compound to continue getting an effect, or do you now start putting in another family of anabolic stirrings, the 19 NORs, or any of the oral DHT derivatives?

It's there is no perfect recipe or perfect guidebook that you hand someone and go, okay, well, you take this, and then your next adjustment is this, and at the end, you're going to end up on the Olympia stage.

It is such a trial and error.

And I guess that goes back to what I said about existing medicine being a trial and see approach that we don't have

yet.

And I guess, again, this is back to genetics.

If you know your drug, metabolism, genetics, and everything else in the future,

with how advanced AI is becoming, it could tell you, well, here's your perfect anabolic stack based on all these genetic markers that I've assessed for you and blood work.

And you then have a head start where you're not doing any of this guesswork to speak or the figuring out, which is some of the fun of the journey of figuring out what works for you versus someone else.

Um,

that would you want

like a blueprint handed to you of this is how you optimize your genetics straight out the gay.

I think uh learning the lessons is is a lot more fun, I think.

Yeah,

yeah.

Um,

I think getting getting that genetics tested too and just figuring out like, holy shit, like these things that I felt for like the last five to ten years are true according to my genetics or at least the percentage of possibility.

It's is

it feels freaking good.

It's pretty cool.

Honestly.

I wanted to ask you a lot about gut health and hair loss and some other things, but

I think if you're okay with it, let's just jump to the

Q ⁇ A because I want to make sure that my audience gets enough of their questions asked.

Yeah.

Let's delve into it.

Grey Bolk asks, red potatoes or yellow potatoes?

Red potatoes or yellow potatoes, geez.

In Ireland,

You'd be surprised that we don't have as an exotic potato aspect as the US.

Like, we don't don't have purple potatoes or

anything of such like yams and that.

You go down to the supermarket and you've got a choice between like

pinkers,

roosters.

There are all these crazy names of different types of potatoes in Ireland.

That

it's

not as

stereotypical as you put it that we all eat spuds.

Maybe growing up with my parents, yes, but not today.

But the potatoes is away.

You freaking Asians.

Oh, this is a question for myself, actually.

It's kind of a silly question,

but I think it's just one that some people like to ask as well.

And I've never asked it myself, but

do you feel...

I kind of feel like I already know the answer, but do you feel like there is ever a difference beneficially, whether it's to

androgenic response or

even musculature.

I don't think so, but

to having a high test and a low

DHT

versus a low test and a high DHT, for example, like test and primo, test and masturbating your offseason.

The way I view it is exactly how I sort of set up myself.

If you've got a stable TRT dose or a stable test dose that you know is very predictable, then

anchoring that and then leveraging the sort of 50-50 androgenic anabolic ratio of testosterone with a more androgenic compound is more sensible in my view.

That's not to say that you can't run a high dose of test and then a very low, moderate dose of an anabolic underneath.

It's just that,

like what we discussed, if you go to a very high level of test,

you you might lose some of it to estrogen, you might lose some of it to DHT, you might metabolize it and not utilize it.

That if you know, even from a super physiological dose, let's say 300 milligrams is stable for you and very predictable.

As you add in primabolin, let's speak, as you titrate that up,

the only real variable that might change is your estradiol level might go down if it starts to interact with the aromatase enzyme competitively.

But aside from that, you know, your DHT production from that 300 milligrams is being kept static.

So, from a hair loss risk perspective, if that is something that you're genetically disposed to,

you're offsetting some of that risk by not going to sky-high dosages of testosterone.

And you are just more favorably ensuring that that ratio is more anabolic than androgenic.

Okay.

Sorry, I'm brainfighting for a second.

Which ratio is more anabolic than androgenic?

So if you went to a more anabolic than a 50-50 split of anabolic to androgenic, so if you went to a thousand milligrams of testosterone, Nona in theory, it's 50-50, both androgenic and anabolic, and then you're adding in a low dose of primobolin on top, you're still at a very high percentage of

androgenic to anabolic in the makeup of that cycle.

Whereas if you've got 300 milligrams of testosterone at 50-50, and then maybe you add in 600-700 milligrams of primobolin, you've pushed that ratio of the anabolic side of the equation much higher.

Okay.

Yeah.

That's what that's some, that's the knowledge that I had about it too.

However, I was always unsure whether or not there would be a big difference because I know that most of the people that

the ratio that most people pick for themselves is normally determined based off of how what their estrogen level lands at, right?

From aromatase.

And I think that's one of the problems that I have is that I wanted, I've always wanted to try titrating up my primo and keeping my tests at a lower dose.

But my issue is I always have to have my tests around 100 above my primo, which makes that impossible for me.

Otherwise, my estrogen gets to like 20, you know, or below in US units.

And that's the intra that potential competitive uh blocking and i guess it really then comes down to what side effects you get from that low estrogen as well and the only way of getting estrogen up is to put in something that aromatizes which is testosterone so that's why i said if you go with a stable anchor of testosterone and you start titrating more primobolin one of the risks is low estrogen and that of itself can bring side effects like hair loss because you need to have a balanced ratio of testosterone, estrogen, and DHT for hair follicle health.

Quite a considerable amount of hair loss can come from low estrogen because estradiol is what helps with blood flow to the scalp region.

So

I like to use me as an example because

there's a lot of people I know that are in my position.

Obviously, it's the easiest example for me to use.

But

in terms of

if, say, that I wanted to test that out, increase my DHT, lower my testosterone.

The thing is, what I do, and I know what a lot of younger guys do too, is I inject every day.

And that's always been very stable for me.

And it's always felt really, really, really good for me.

Now, you know, I wouldn't really want to add anything on top of the test unless I decided to take HCG for a reason.

But

would you ever recommend,

like, is this ever a place that you would recommend something like a less frequent dosing, such as two times a week?

Do you think that would ever help that situation?

So, if you do

lower dosing frequency, the peak plasma level is higher in theory

between those two doses, as opposed to five or six smaller, frequent, lower dosages.

But when you get to, you know, week six, week seven, if we're looking at an ante as the ester, where the half-life starts getting balanced,

overall,

the

level will be relatively stable between the two, but the peak to trough between the

bi-weekly injection and let's say five days per week is still going to be quite significant in terms of what plasma level is achieved the day after the injection.

And so, if you,

let's say, we just say it's 300 milligrams and you've split that into 150 and 150 instead of five days of 60 milligrams,

that 150 is creating,

in theory, nearly three times the spike of a 60 milligram injection, which, when that level spikes in your system

24 hours after injecting,

it will start to basically go down whatever metabolic pathway is available to itself, whether that's an androgen receptor, whether it's 5-alpha-reductase inside a cell, or whether that's aromatase inside a cell.

And so, that higher peak plasma level might actually help with your estradiol production because that higher peak plasma level might be lost off the estrogen more favorably favorably because it's a higher amount going into the system among go.

But this is just pure theoretic

observation that you'd have to almost do boats and arrows and draw blood work to see what happens relative to your body.

That is sort of where when we come down to you know, discussions of more frequent micro dosages, what you're looking there is to basically offset that large peak level and create a more stable hormone environment day-to-day, which would mimic in theory what happens with your hormone production daily, anyway.

Where it's relatively,

aside from

peaking slightly in the morning and dropping off at nighttime in most younger men, it's a relatively stable trend of testosterone.

That what you're trying to do with those daily micro injections is mimic that day-to-day variance

as as opposed to two big massive spikes in hormone level right well I think what I'm asking is about uh aromatizing you know so you say like for example have a a crazy less frequent injection like a I don't know maybe once a week or something or compared to every day I would assume that the

aromatizing into estrogen your your estrogen would end up being at a higher range so in In theory, that was sort of why we came to that like daily micro dose instead of the once once per week massive dose going into the system.

That historically, TRT would have been prescribed that way.

They started to move away from that once per week.

If the patient could comply to having to do a small frequent injection daily, it created just a more stable level and then less of it is lost to aromatase or you're not, you're creating less estrogen.

So yeah, if you've done one injection of testosterone, once per week and it was a massive dose, you're probably going to generate a huge spike in plasma level.

And I've seen this on blood work where someone does a shot of 300 milligrams of testosterone the day before they draw blood.

And then the next day you catch that big spike in plasma level from the 300 milligram that

you gather no

data from that test dose because of that massive peak in hormone level.

which is telling you this is what happens in serum when that dose enters circulation, that the estrogen that comes from it could be quite high, which might be beneficial if you suffer with low estrogen symptoms.

Because you definitely don't want to do, you know, we've got some recommendations of taking estradiol or ethinol estrogen, like synthetic estrogen to raise that, which would be just

something that I would not suggest guys go down that path.

So I guess that's what I'm wondering is I don't think this is anything that I would ever want to do because I just feel like like it's extra.

And I feel like the stable

everyday injection is, if it's good for me and it's stable, then I feel like that's the best route of action also to minimize side effects.

But I guess hypothetically, if someone wanted to titrate up their Primo dose and that would cause their estrogen to go

to the bottom of the reference range, is that something that you would find beneficial to lessen the frequency in order to increase that estrogen so they could titrate up their primo or their mastron dose?

Yeah,

I've never trialed it or I've never seen it trialled, but it would be definitely something for someone to consider if that was the issue in theory.

That would be one of the solutions to consider.

Otherwise, they're going to have to lower their primo and just push their test up higher.

Yeah, um, and accept that they might need then some level of AI control if that test starts getting unpredictable, or some level of five alpha reduction blocking if, let's say, hair, hair is is a big thing that they want to preserve.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Cool, cool, cool.

Awesome.

Chef Cheng.

Chef Cheng asks, proper prep to start first cycle.

Proper prep.

So I guess we sort of touched on it briefly.

I think

very first thing, blood work and assess, assess your natural hormone level.

And also assess like your genetic risk.

See, is there stuff that you've never seen before in your blood work?

for all that person knows, they could have iron metabolism problems, they could have hemochromatosis that's never been caught or diagnosed.

And now, if they start taking testosterone, they're blocking their body's ability to break down iron even more so.

So, they're setting themselves up for even more disease risk.

So, doing that first set of bloods up front lets them see

where to make that educated guess with their first cycle dose, See what health detriments are already present naturally.

Is their current diet maybe not the most correct or could do some modifications to see some benefits to the blood work and then carrying that into the cycle?

It's really probably the most important part aside from like going and even sourcing anything or supplements or whatever else.

Blood work.

And then from that point, see what needs to be

addressed.

You know, all things considered, saying stuff like nutrition, supplements, sleep, and everything else being optimized, it should be a given,

you know, in the first place, as it like an optimized natural.

That all you're doing is you're doing the blood work to give you an insight into what's happening under the hood.

And then you're basically going and replacing the engine with something a little more powerful.

Awesome.

It was also cool to hear you say earlier about the lower of the

lower testosterone causing higher ferritin levels, liver enzymes, potential other diseases associated with the liver.

Because when I started, basically,

one of the reasons I started this podcast is my own mistakes and not being educated.

I took some orals basically from a coach when I first started

like my seventh show.

I wasn't doing well at

nationals.

And

after that was all over, I assumed that the cause of my liver enzymes,

increased ferritin, and also the doctors asking me to get a biopsy because they're scared of me having hemochromatosis.

was also potentially caused by the fact that I literally had like no testosterone running through my body anymore because I've been on orals for so, so long.

My testosterone was well below range.

I assumed that it was simply just from the orals, to be honest.

Um, so it's kind of cool to make that connection, honestly.

That's because the testosterone taking TRT helped a lot.

That's what I see quite often when

a lot of people reach out for some level of guidance with PCT.

And quite often, I do, you know, educate them that ferritin may increase during that low hormone environment because of there's a level of inflammation occurring at the liver.

Um, and the scary thing about ferritin is when it's in your bloodstream, it doesn't have any iron.

So, ferritin is the storage form of iron in your tissue.

When we do a blood work assay, there is no iron in that ferritin protein, so it's empty, basically saying that the iron that was in it has been dumped off into your cells.

And iron is pro-inflammatory in our body, so it it is a cause of oxidative stress.

So, you make the correlation that when ferritin is elevated in the bloodstream, there is oxidative stress because that iron is damaging your tissue, and you use glutathione as an antioxidant to quench that iron, to get rid of it out of the body.

Gotcha.

Okay, so it's one of the things that if someone's going through a natural recovery phase for fertility or for whatever reason,

if their ferritin is raised,

you almost have to then view then what risks is this putting me at?

And then what strategies do I need to put in place?

Do I need more NAC, more glutathione, you know, to keep up with getting rid of that iron out of my body?

Gotcha.

Awesome.

Yeah, nice.

Shameless blood work or shameless, shameless blood, Glias.

Get my glutathione from TransFin.

It's fire.

I've had pristine blood work and haven't been sick since 2021.

I'm pretty sure.

It's yeah, it's

powerful stuff.

Every time I travel, I mean backwards and forwards, because obviously we've got a new gym in the UK with Essa and Hub.

I literally live off glutathione, like glyposomal glutathione.

When I'm traveling backwards and forwards, I'm pretty much taking two or three servings for the first few days when I land in the UK and then when I come home.

And yeah, so far I've not had any sort of colds or flus because of how powerful it is for your immune system as well.

So it's definitely something if people get access to it through you and the US, it's definitely a very powerful thing to consider.

Are there any other

kind of silly question, but just for the sake of it,

us understanding that there's a lot of other factors in order to reduce oxidative stress and make your health the best?

But if you had to pick three supplements in the entire world to reduce oxidative stress, become a healthy bodybuilder and live the longest, what would they be?

So, at the very top,

I'd put glutathione, considering what it's involved in and what depletes it.

That would remove any need to worry about like NAC, sulfur sources, like cruciferous vegetables and all that.

The second one would be a full-spectrum vitamin E complex.

So, it would have all four tocopherols and all four tocotrianols.

So, there's eight forms that make up the vitamin E family.

Vitamin E is the most powerful antioxidant when it comes to quenching oxidative stress internally in our body.

So it readily sacrifices itself to quench oxidative stress.

And then our vitamin C

replenishes vitamin E's ability to do that recovery.

So if you're taking vitamin E as a supplement, you wouldn't need to really worry about vitamin C's electron donation into it.

So glutathione, vitamin E, and then one more antioxidant.

What would be probably the best out of them all?

That's a tough one.

What would I consider

probably CoQ10

or

CoQ10 or NAD?

It's a toss-up between the two of them.

I guess CoQ10, probably because you're helping with your mitochondrial function, but also

glutathione, the main source of glutathione depletion in our bodies is the mitochondria.

Ironically, when the mitochondria make energy for us, they create a lot of free radicals.

And evolutionary, we developed the detox pathway of glutathione to put out the fires that the mitochondria are creating making energy for us.

so that's where glutathione is pretty much ranked at the top because between the immune system the mitochondria and all that we use up quite a lot of glutathione to keep our body protected nice awesome okay give me one second i think there's an error here if you feel like any of the medications that we spoke about today may benefit you such as bpc157 gh acreagogs such as tessamirellin igf1 oxandrolone charche semaglutide then you can obtain these from transit hrt and the link for that will be in the bio if you feel like you're experiencing symptoms of low testosterone, such as depression, anxiety, lack of motivation, as well as lack of sex drive, then you can get this checked out as well by getting your blood work done at Transcend and they will provide you expert medical analysis.

Transcend HRT has worked with many professional bodybuilders and pro athletes, such as Thor Bjornsson, Phil Heath, and Jeremy Bundia.

And if you feel like this podcast has any relevancy to you, I do believe that this clinic will provide of great benefit to you as well.

Lots of of my audience is super awesome, and they're always asking me, Why don't I do three-hour podcasts?

They should be longer.

Makes me feel good about it.

But to let you guys know, the reason, one of the reasons why I don't do it is because the moment I start reaching like two to two and a half hours, all my devices start getting ears.

I don't know if that's because I'm poverty or what, but I'm sorry, guys.

It starts causing problems.

I've got a Sony Z V1 set up here on this mic, and that's that's about about as technical as my office has gotten with podcasts.

Yeah, it's enough.

It's enough.

I think your brain compensates for the rest.

But as oh wait, what was the last thing I was going to ask?

Where did your screen go?

Yeah, my technical difficulties.

Okay.

I think we only have time for maybe three more questions.

Sorry, guys, that I didn't.

You got asked a ton of questions, um, so I feel really bad that we're not able to get to basically any of them.

But hopefully, we can try, maybe do a little speed run if you're up for it.

Let's do it, let's do it.

Uh,

oh, nice.

You are D A R M asked the same question we literally just asked.

He asked top five supplements for overall health.

So

hmm, doesn't uh

Jonah Sadef asks, when should you you use aspirin on EQ?

Feels wrong to do it before checking blood work.

Yeah, I mean,

so

aspirin works to inhibit platelet adhesion, so it stops platelets from clotting together.

Um,

I would go by blood work.

So the main two markers on bloods to check would be hematocrit, which is the percentage of red blood cells, and then looking at the platelet count.

If the hematocrit is above 53, 54%

and the platelet count is very high,

well, aside from potential therapeutic phlebotomy, you know, drawing out blood,

low-dose aspirin would, in theory, inhibit platelet aggregation, so it stops the platelets from sticking together.

But that effect

can carry over for about two weeks post-use.

So

just bear that in mind.

I guess if you're taking EQ, it doesn't matter, but if you had a surgery and you're utilizing aspirin, it could make surgery difficult because if you had an event where you bled out, your blood wouldn't clot.

But on top of that, I don't think you're going to a surgery taking EQ anyway.

So that's that point muted.

But

I'd go by blood work.

I wouldn't just throw in aspirin from the very start, unless you had maybe some familial risk of stroke.

But even then,

check your blood work, check your iron level, check your hemoglobin, hematocrit, and platelets and make the decision from that.

Awesome.

And Jay, Josh Tayread asks, born with no thyroid, recent test level of eight to 27.

Oh, level of eight, 27 years old.

What can I do to make the most of my health?

So I'm guessing that level of eight is probably UK measurements, eight nanomole, because if it's eight in the US, it's very, very, very low.

low.

Yeah.

So they've no thyroid is what they said.

Warm and epityroid.

So in that case, then they are going to be hopefully on some level of thyroid medication, whether that's tyroxine, T4, or even a combination of T4 and T3.

With their testosterone being at 8,

the

British Society of Sexual Medicine's guidelines for TRT

is a test level below 12, which I think in US measurements might be about 380, 400,

and a free testosterone of less than 0.22, which is

the very bottom of acceptance for free testosterone.

If his free testosterone is more than likely below that cutoff, having a low total number,

he might be a candidate for TRT.

But the other side of that is

if you've no symptoms of hypogonadism at that test level, it could be optimized for your body.

This is where it gets very subjective in that just because your total level is below that cutoff of 12, if there's no symptoms where there's healthy libido, you know, healthy erectile function, nothing showing in the blood work metabolically,

if all of that looks relatively good and there's no symptoms or signs of hypogonadism, they might not need some level of optimization.

So

I guess the main thing with no thyroid is ensuring that they remain on a stable, steady dose of thyroid medication.

I hopefully the endocrinologist is keeping an eye on all the time.

Because thyroid health is very important towards not only our metabolism, but our moods, our hair, our overall well-being.

So it's a very critical hormone that

some of the signs of hypogonadism might be overlapping with signs of hypothyroidism.

So, yeah, it's a very complex one that I'd

probably have the discussion with his endocrinologist because he's probably working with one surrounding his testosterone level and seeing what the opinion is there.

But

even when we're looking at TRT, someone might have the hormone levels above those cutoffs, but have all the signs and symptoms of androgen deficiency or androgen resistance.

That again, just because you have this golden number of a cutoff of saying, well, if you're above those numbers, your testosterone level is fine.

It's so interpersonal that

you could have some level of

resistance within your body to that testosterone level where your androgen receptors just aren't functional.

We know that there is issues with genetics that make the androgen receptor quite non-functional.

That just because your testicle can make a lot of testosterone doesn't mean that it's accessible to your body.

So, again, it's a very

individual thing to consider.

So, I'd probably have him have his discussion with his endocrinologist and see

he might not need everything, could be perfect, and he's just looking for

reassurance that everything is fine metabolically.

Yeah, I agree with that.

Isqui asks: Can a woman maintain stage lean in if on all HRT?

Um, so if a woman is on HRT,

um,

let's say they're on estrogen and progesterone as their main hormone replacement therapies.

We'll leave testosterone aside for a second.

If everything is

optimized and they are

pre-menopausal, so we're assuming that this woman is early 30s who's still capable of having menstrual cycle and follicular reserves.

If their HRT is able to mimic the natural menstrual cycle of increases in progesterone towards the end of the luteal phase, so like day 21 to 28, and then their estradiol is being titrated around ovulation

and then dropping off into that luteal phase.

They in theory aren't really relying on nutrition to create their female hormones.

And this is where female hormone recovery or health recovery post-show is very important from a nutritional standpoint because they create their sex hormones mainly within the ovaries, but also in the adrenals.

And it becomes a delicate balance that there's not enough nutrition overall from a calorie intake perspective.

The mitochondria, which is what creates the hormones, just won't focus on creating hormones when there's a complete energy deficiency, where they're really trying to compensate with keeping you alive rather than making neurotransmitters and hormones.

So

I'd say if their HRT was relatively predictable, yeah, they could probably stay stage lean.

But then you have to feed into

the psychology of hunger hormones that might be unstable.

So it's from a nutrition perspective, yeah, optimized hormones, you remove that aspect where they need that nutrition to create hormones.

But on the other side, psychologically, elevations in,

I guess,

ghrelin, leptin suppression.

but you could then argue if they've got correct nutrition set up with refeeds and everything else like that.

I can't see why they couldn't stay state lean.

Okay,

so I guess I know this is kind of a hard question to answer, but I understand that when it comes to

being a woman, the realm of bodybuilding and hormones is just wild.

It's crazy.

And I guess

it's kind of hard for me to ask too because I understand that everyone has their own perception on when they want, how long they want to stay natural and not.

But I guess, how beneficial do you see HRT or hormone supplementation for women that are getting stage lean for PrEP on a regular basis, even if they're doing off-seasons?

Because I know it could be very detrimental to their mental health as well.

Yeah, I mean,

I guess

women, androgen exposure, let's say they utilize a very low dose of testosterone or a very low dose of a non-aromatizing androgen that's not feeding into estrogen production in their body.

I guess

I always have erred on the side of caution when it comes to PD use and females because it is such

an open-ended book of possibilities that when a male takes anabolics, there's two main things that really happen.

We know fertility is suppressed, and for most men, it's sort of whatever, I'll try and deal with that when I come off, or they just don't care.

If I don't have kids, I don't care.

And then the other side of it is health issues with oxidative stress and heart disease, etc.

It's sort of like black or white.

With women, androgen exposure, the like main main side effect is virilization and

irreversible side effects,

the voice, larynx, bone structure, bone

mineralization.

These things that

aren't as easily corrected if something goes wrong, that just don't manifest in men.

That alone could be psychologically disturbing for a woman to viralize unexpectedly and know that there is a chance.

It really depends.

Some women do get lucky and they catch the viralization very early.

And over time, the virilization is

never really eradicated, but it's diminished that it's now not as observable as it was.

The infertility aspects,

I guess,

from an

ovary perspective and the follicles, the eggs,

oxidative stress might in theory damage some of that egg reserve, but I think regaining fertility after using

HRT or androgens as a female

is relatively on par to recovering HPTA function with a male, provided that we understand getting getting back into that groove of the natural cadence of their estrogen and progesterone production in their body naturally.

That

it's

such a hard question to answer.

On,

you know, if they utilize HRT,

are they in a more positive position overall for their career?

I'm not sure.

I'm really not sure.

And that's where I'm like, obviously, I'm very good friends with Victoria Felker.

And I'll always,

if I'm not sure of female health, I'll reach out to Victoria or we've got Olivia on the SN education team.

The two of them are my sort of crutch when it comes to female health issues because, again, it's such a

complex environment with women that, like, with men, it's black or white.

Take steroids, you're going to have these health problems, and you're going to have potential infertility.

And with women, it's not as black and white.

There's a lot of grey.

And both from even like making emotional decisions on

if they don't care about any of these potential consequences.

Well, then it falls into the same conversation as having with a man that, okay, yeah, fertility is suppressed.

Don't care.

Don't want kids.

If viralization is going to happen, so be it.

I'll just accept that risk.

That it's not as straightforward to say there is, again, an optimal way that women should remain natural all their career.

Women should consider HRT for the guide the menstrual cycle better, or they should use a low dose of testosterone to help with muscle building and metabolic processes.

There's no real

right or wrong way.

And that's where

I'm a little standoffish when it comes to

female performance enhancing usage because of

there's just so many

avenues that can go wrong that it's it's not a black or white conversation with with women and that's generally where i'll if someone reaches out for any sort of like consultations around this i'll just um put them in touch with victoria because she'll do a much better job than me from the nuance to the conversation cool cool okay yeah um i don't know I really know nothing about the subject either, but I have heard and enjoyed a lot of experience and visuals discuss it, especially, I guess,

well,

I guess I can just hope that like if a woman is taking in any hormones or anything in an HRT level, that's a dose range that they have realized is

within the

good reference range for them that doesn't yield viralization and other side effects.

From what I've heard, it seems to be pretty beneficial, depending on the person.

Say that they have things that are associated with side effects, such as like depression or anxiety that aren't really totally solved by just taking an SSRI.

I've discussed some conversations with Ryan Root out of our podcast where he's had clients that that has been pretty beneficial.

So I guess it is very

there is a lot of gray area.

And that's where when I see like experienced individuals some level of education on like female pd use and

not that it's it's bad enough like with males not glorifying anabolics use but making it as an open accessible conversation

with women like we've said here it's very gray that there's so many possibilities that there is no like what we said about earlier about what are like your best compounds to consider with females, there's

there's a very short short list of

utilizable compounds if they want to do it in a sensible fashion.

If that sort of sensible aspect isn't really a negotiable, then everything is on the table, but then that of itself just opens up a can of worms.

It's it's just I'm I've tried to stay away from doing like female-based education on PDs because of it, like I said, for

some women, HRT from estrogen, progesterone could be amazing, could yield very positive benefits to moods, to their overall physical health, alongside some testosterone replacement therapy as well.

But the dosages are very,

and this is where again,

TRT aside, for women, those dosages are so inter-individual that it is basically like a trial and error.

There can be standardized dosages, but you almost need to understand that females' natural rhythm of hormones by themselves and then try and mimic that with bio-identical replacement.

Gotcha.

Okay.

Last question.

Let's just try to, we'll just do this one super, super quick if that's okay.

But Boros asks: any approaches to combat potential brain degeneration caused by PD use or 90-NORS?

Wondering if you would recommend any methods or simply just many peptides and nootropics.

Yeah, I guess this is the one side effect of PDs that

I warned about years ago that

most were completely unaware of, and that's those cognitive deficits that can arise from PD use.

I guess the

main study we have is obviously the change in IQ of the guys who used steroids versus the guys who didn't

but in saying that

when we look at neurodegeneration there's so many things that play into the decline of our mental health

you can have a decrease in sensitivity to the neurotransmitters so the receptor the neurons receptor threshold could be too high where you're just not getting the sensitivity to the neurotransmitter you're making

which is where something like a MAO inhibitor or

an SSRI to speak,

or the

other forms like the serotonin dopamine receptor inhibitors, the SDRIs.

We have all these classified classified medications that help to keep the neurotransmitters in our brain,

which would help with our neurotransmission.

We've peptides, bioregulators.

You know, there's research into dihexa, cortigen,

Semax, Adamax,

Celanc.

You know, you've got all these peptides that have

potential mechanisms with neurogenesis, which is the creation of neural branches.

So you're basically helping with connections between existing neurons.

I guess the

Probably the scary fact is once a neuron is damaged, that's it, you can't repair it.

And your brain just has to compensate with creating more connections or neural branches between the existing neurons.

But we can't necessarily feel when the neurons are getting damaged from the exposure to the anabolics as well.

So there's no real

cognitive feedback that I am doing damage to my brain at this moment in time.

until you're maybe in your 50s, 40s, 50s, when you start having issues with memory, short-term memory loss, forgetting where you put your keys, like silly little things like that, that

aside from stress could be a sign of neurodegeneration.

Brain training is probably another thing to do where we completely overlook aspects.

I know since I left like high school or secondary school, I am terrible at doing maths in my head.

You know, as soon as I have to calculate something, I have to take out a calculator.

I am atrocious.

My engineering degree is completely useless.

You know, it comes down to

just laziness.

Your brain just says, right, the calculator is there.

Just use the calculator.

I found I should probably be doing some level of brain training in that aspect of doing arithmetic in my brain to keep those neurons active.

But in saying that, if you're doing other activities

that are

cognitively challenging, it could be playing an instrument, could be playing video games, could be doing eye-hand

coordination tasks, stuff that is stimulating task development and neural branch connection in your brain is probably going to keep up with some level of that neurodegeneration.

But at its very top, at the very top, I should say, is oxidative stress and the damaging of the neurons.

The next root cause would be the

overexcitation of the neuron, where the neuron is getting damaged from too much neurotransmitter.

And then the third one would be that lack of brain development where you're just not

training the brain to speak of

fast communication between sections of the brain.

So, you know,

it's one that

probably the only way you could

investigate if there was any deficit would be like an MRI of your brain to see if there's lesions or damaged areas within your brain from steroid use.

Other than that, your antioxidant, like the whole thing we talk about, like your glutathione, vitamin E, all these antioxidants, maybe some of the peptides to help with neurobranching, some of the functional mushrooms, lion's mane, cordyceps, et cetera.

But there's there's no like standard protocol to offset it

because there's no way of actively figuring out that you're at risk, that you're damaging neurons at that moment in time in your brain,

which is scary.

Yeah, it is.

But I appreciate that input.

It helps a lot.

I think many of us do forget to do a little bit of arithmetic and help train our brains.

I mean, that's kind of one of the reasons why I started this podcast too, is like I just realized that I was so, I was just being so lazy.

I wasn't

taking the effort to do the things that I knew that I needed to do and that I even wanted to do for the sake of my knowledge, my IQ, my brain.

But

in honestly, just having this podcast and talking to individuals like you, it not only forces me into the space, but also inspires me to want to learn more.

Yeah, so I mean,

even something as simple as this office is covered in books,

reading a chapter of a book every day to help with your cognitive health.

Doing crosswords, Sudoku,

anything that challenges your brain daily.

You know, when people sort of look at sleep trackers and it says, oh, your REM sleep was down, normally REM sleep is a sign of doing activities that have

stimulated your brain in some aspect where that's like a cognitive task or it's a learning ability.

So you have REM sleep to consolidate that information that you learned or you tried to create that day.

Not that I take any like these sleep trackers, when we talked about sleep, I take them at a pinch of salt sometimes.

That

what they tell you is, again, very objective.

That if you wake up feeling refreshed and the aura ring or whatever tells you that you slept horribly,

that it's a complete, you know,

it's lying to how you feel.

And we, I done it.

I had this exact conversation with my partner, like, just a couple of weeks ago.

So, about our aura rings.

And I tell you what, with your partner, I've done the same with my wife years ago.

I've got a Fitbit on this hand and the aura ring on the right hand.

The aura ring was telling me that I was sleeping horribly, and the Fitbit was telling me I was sleeping amazingly.

I'm like, which one is telling the truth?

So, I swapped the two of them and I put put the O-ring on the left hand and the Fitbit on the right hand.

And all of a sudden, the O-ring said I slept amazingly.

Oh, shit.

What was happening was the O-rings picking up my wife moving in the bed beside me.

And, you know, that's picking up then as sleep disturbances.

So,

yeah, this is where I always say these trackers, really,

if you share bed with someone,

and it tells you the next morning you slept horribly, but you feel amazing, some of the movement in your sleep could have been the person beside you moving about in their sleep, and this is picking it up.

Yeah, um, and that's why I've always sort of then wore one on each hand, so you can sort of then, when you're looking at the data, sort of go, well, which one is to tell them the truth?

And it's normally a mix in the middle.

Oh, that's cool.

Okay, I love that.

Thank you, bro.

Um, so my uh, my audio is airing again, guys.

So I'm sorry we got to cut the podcast.

Um, we were obviously an hour longer than projected, but um,

clearly we have a lot of information to talk about, man.

You have so much to say that people

just

so much information that people want to hear and is really, really helpful to all of us.

So I just wanted to thank you for coming on the podcast.

It's been an absolute pleasure, Niall.

I'm really, really glad to have been asked to come on.

It's been an absolute pleasure.

So where can everybody find you?

Oh, wait.

Actually, I have one last question.

I ask everyone this.

If you were to leave the earth tomorrow and you had one message you could send to the entire world today, what would that be?

What I've said from the very start, and that would be to protect your future health.

So, always what you do today is going to be a reflection of what you effectively will live out in your future.

So,

every decision you make,

and I've seen this years ago, it'll either take you closer to ease or it'll take you one step closer to disease.

So think carefully when you make your decisions on protecting your future health.

Nice.

Where can everybody find you?

So I've got probably my main place is Instagram, DNSTM.

We have an education website, sneducation.co.uk.

And then obviously I have the supplement company, Supplement Needs.

We do ship throughout the world, but we tend to stay within the UK and Europe.

So that's supplementneeds.co.uk for anyone who's in my area of the UK and Europe.

But Instagram is going to be the best place.

I have YouTube that Steve hounded me at, but I just don't have the time to commit to doing YouTube.

I'm happy to come on podcasts and share information that way than sit and edit things myself.

So if anyone is listening and they want to follow me, Instagram's the best place.

Awesome.

Thank you, man.

Thanks for coming on again.

That's awesome.

Would love to have you on again someday in the future.

There's a ton of QA's that we didn't get to.

So I'm sure

I'd love to hear from you again.

Absolutely.

Thanks, man.

Love you guys.

Thanks for staying tuned.

The comments and the support always help a lot.