Kurt Havens: Science of Enhanced vs. Natural Bodybuilding

Guys, this is Kurt Havens.

You're not going to get any bigger by just staying on a huge amount of gear all the time than you would by blasting and cruising.

Most of the successful guys that are big and lean and ripped are blasting and cruising.

Expert in bodybuilding pharmacology, training, nutrition, PDs, all of the science.

Androgen receptors upregulate in the presence of androgen.

The more androgens you use, during protein synthesis, the translation stage, new DNA is created, and part of that DNA is the androgen receptor.

Growth hormone has like more grow-myths probably than anything else out there.

It's expensive and it's rare, and most people don't understand it.

So they just like make up things and then they just repeat these silliness.

TRT in theory should improve cardiac function in men and testosterone is cardioprotective in men.

So when we see heart attacks in the ER almost all the time they have elevated

your hypothalamus senses the amount of hormones in your body all the time.

If you constantly ran a gram of gear that becomes homeostatic at a certain point your body's not going to continue to grow on that gram.

You'd have to bring it up.

If you're on a cycle and growth comes to a halt, you see a lot of the bigger dudes, what they do is they blast all the time and then they hit a plateau.

they have to increase the dose, and that's where they end up on these 10 grams gear.

Before starting this podcast, I just wanted to say that ideating steroids for a full show is not widely accepted because it discounts the real work, which is the backbone of this sport, and unfortunately spreads that an unsafe chemical solution is all you need for results.

Both of these are antithetical to society's understanding of the sport.

And while there will always be some that claim that PEDs are all you need, I would like to deliver an honest message of what is required for achieving top performance as well as the dangers associated with this route.

I received this comment from a user named Night Scarens.

But just as a rock climber, the athletes undergoing this path in the sport are willing to put their life on the line for their passion.

Just the danger between the two sports is different.

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

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

It's It's very laudable, I think, and kind of mind-blowing just how much they're able to take on while still having, you know, the energy, the

like the love and the time to give to their kids.

Yeah, I just, you become very good at managing your time.

So I, I, I segment my days into sections.

So I

generally the morning, I get them to school.

I go to the gym.

I go to class.

And then I don't, I do clients between 12 and 5 like i'm very strict with my clients i talk to my clients all my clients on the phone i have 113

i talk to all of them on the phone unlike most coaches that just like do like whatsapp whatsapp and shit right um so i physically talk to all of them on the phone but i'm very strict about the 12 to 5 because after five um it's for podcasts and family that's it like i don't i don't because otherwise what happens when i first started getting busy is you allow them to kind of leech into your time, right?

And then I wasn't spending time with my family.

And that's, I think, what's what you have to do when you have kids and a wife is you have to make sure that they get,

you know, at least an equal, if not more, time than you devote to shit like work, right?

Yeah, 100%.

Because I'm not a, I've never believed in the more you put in, the more you get out.

I think that that's for suckers that are middle class.

Like you make more, you work less.

Right?

Like, I don't think you work 100 hours a week.

All you have to do is dilute what you earn per hour.

You're not necessarily going to earn more by working more.

You know what I mean?

I think you can to an extent, but it depends on what you're doing.

Yeah, to an extent for sure.

I think it's even more productive to work.

I think I switched my words around, but I think it's even better to work more productively or at least focus more of your energy

in the time that you can.

Because for me right now, for example, I'll be working like 12-hour workdays, sometimes even more.

And obviously the last like four hours or whatever, I'm like working at half the speed if even that, you know what I mean?

Heads basically not even there.

So, what do you, what else do you do beside podcasts?

So, I do the podcast.

I have my own YouTube channel.

Um, I was doing TikTok.

That's how I, I think, initially had most of my growth, but I haven't been able to keep that up in the last two years anymore because it's just been too much.

Um, Instagram posting and everything, and then as well as

obviously trying to get to Olympia and then

trying to start up my own business.

So, doing what?

It's something I haven't really discussed very much.

Oh, you don't need to.

I don't mind.

I don't mind.

It's a creatine candy.

So essentially,

well, you know, I'll describe a little bit more in detail later, but you get the general gist.

It's something that I've always started, and I have a passion for candy, even though sugar is not obviously the best thing for bodybuilders.

It's not the worst thing, though.

All carbide has become glucose.

Right.

I mean, like, you you know, if you're using it around your workout, right?

During your workout or whatever.

Yeah, I mean,

I don't fall to a lot of the

I don't fall with a lot of the bodybuilding dogma because a lot of them, I have 20 years of schooling in this shit.

It doesn't make a difference.

Like, you could literally eat table sugar.

It's the same as a fucking potato.

It doesn't matter.

Like, a guy's get very hung up on what they're eating.

It really doesn't matter.

The human body has no idea the difference between the two.

Insulin is not responsible for obesity.

There's no correlation there.

It's just a satiety thing, right?

If you just ate nothing but table sugar as your carbs, you'd be starving all the time.

And you have no micronutrients.

But that being said, body has no fucking idea.

What do you think rice is?

It's literally turns into the same damn thing.

By the time it's in your bloodstream, it's the same as table sugar.

Can you explain your statement that insulin isn't responsible for obesity?

Well, the insulin model of obesity was disproven 30 years ago now.

So they used to think that, you know, this is when they came up with the glycemic index and those things.

So

that has just been disproven.

So it has nothing to do with insulin levels causing obesity, right?

If that were the case, bodybuilders wouldn't inject insulin.

Okay, but so it's a you have to be in a calorie excess, right, to store fat, you have to be a calorie deficit to lose weight.

It doesn't really matter what insulin is doing, you can still lose fat even if your insulin's elevated.

Is this separate from insulin resistance?

We're talking about normal, healthy people, yeah, not diabetics.

Okay, gotcha, gotcha.

I think people, bodybuilders overplay a lot of that stuff, though, right?

Like

I carb cycle more for, with my guys, more for mental reasons

than for any physical thing.

Because at the end of the day,

it's the energy balance through the course of the week that really matters, not so much what you do on a daily thing.

You know, you're not going to gain or lose any weight any faster by carb cycling.

They do it by doing static calories.

What about timing in regards to GI?

Yeah, I mean, so I mean, glute-4 translocation occurs from muscle contractions.

You do want carbs around your workout, right?

That's when your body's going to be the most receptive to take it in.

But that's not necessarily

like an insulin thing per se.

I do believe, yeah, I mean, I would usually put most people's carbohydrates closer to the workout, right?

Pretty intra and post.

So it's not that I disagree with these things.

I think that people take it a little too far because they get like nutty with it.

Like eating nothing but chicken and rice is not healthy.

I see.

If that makes any sense.

Versus you can, like, I have some bodybuilders that eat, you know, I have guys that eat 9,000 calories a day.

They're sure shit not eating 9,000 calories of chicken and rice.

Like I'm using gummy bears, marshmallows, honey, table sugar, whatever they can get in, because it doesn't really matter on a high day.

You know what I mean?

I mean, what about, well, what are your thoughts about consuming that sugar, say, for example, like later in the day whenever you're,

I guess you're less predisposed to storing those as glucose and then also consuming those sugars with fats or more fats?

Well, they're two different things.

So that goes back to glute four.

So when you're at a state of rest like you are right now, assuming you didn't just work out, glue-4 is not necessarily at the cell surface.

So the cells, not the muscle cells aren't going to be as likely to absorb as much glucose.

But that being said,

when the cell senses glucose

at the cell receptor, at the cell membrane, it's still going to translate to glucose for and

you will accept glucose.

Maybe not as much.

Maybe, I'm just a round number.

Like maybe if you could take in 100 grams of carbs in the post-workout period, maybe you can only absorb 75 or 50.

But it's not like this dramatic, like all of a sudden you can't use carbohydrates because you haven't been lifting.

Yeah.

The fat thing, yeah, but the fat thing just doesn't make any sense because the body primarily burns glucose, right?

It's going to burn glucose first.

And if you're in a calorie excess

and you have a ton of glucose in your blood, it's not going to use those fatty acids, right?

When you eat dietary fat, it's already packages as triglyceride, right?

It enters the thoracic duct.

It's in circulation as the form it's already going to get stored as.

So it's going to just get stored as adipose tissue.

Right.

So it doesn't make a ton of sense to eat a bunch of fat with a bunch of carbs.

The only time I would do that is if someone goes hypo or they really have trouble like keeping their blood sugar stable from a certain amount of carbs.

Or if the carbs are lower, we might bring the fat up.

Right.

But I generally wouldn't do high carbs and high fat at the same time.

That's basically what I was going off of is like trying to

make a distinction between consuming sugar when you're consuming a meal with a lot of fats versus oh no no no no no no no no i wouldn't do that no that's that that's crazy that's what that's the american diet that's why people are fat yeah yeah you know and sick no that's a different thing i meant for for like what we do

i mean it wouldn't matter if you ate gummy bears or rice at the end of the day that doesn't mean you should go have chicken and gummy bears but right it doesn't the body the body only recognizes nutrients when they're in your bloodstream it's not like your stomach is like oh shit that's a potato we're gonna do something totally different with that than we are gonna do with you know some table sugar it doesn't give a shit right you know i think that's the reason why i mean i i think that's one of the one of the reasons for example why uh maybe we just weren't being descriptive enough earlier but um

you know it's it's harder i think for a lot of uh people regardless of whether or not they're a competitor or not um

to

really separate out their carbohydrates from their fats unless they're really on top of their diet or they're just following a structured diet period you know what i mean um and how many people are actually doing that?

I'd say really only just the top bodybuilders or competitive bodybuilders in general or anyone that's in a prep.

Or, I mean, my clients, you know, I ask that they, most of them cook their own food.

I think it becomes a problem when you're buying stuff that's packaged, right?

If you just go to the store and you buy

whatever that comes in a box, most likely it's a mix of carbohydrates and fat, right?

That's why people like...

along with the stigma for carbohydrates, people, you know, just assume things like cookies or carbohydrates, right?

When you actually look at them, there's more calories from fat in them.

It's not necessarily the carbohydrates in the cookie that are, that are, it's the mix of the two.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, that's the problem.

And most, because most people, you and I understand what a carbohydrate is and what a fat is, right?

And we know how to separate them.

And that's why you would do something like eat rice because it's pure carbohydrate.

You're not going to go buy some franken food and try to get ripped.

eaten garbage like that.

You know, that's what I meant.

I meant it was from a carbohydrate point of view, it really doesn't matter what the source is.

If it's laden with fat, that's a whole different story, right?

Yeah, that's the fun part about these podcasts: we, we always, I think it's very easy for us to discuss things, assuming that like everyone in the audience under, like, knows and assumes, like, oh, training is in check, oh, nutrition is in check, all these things are checked, which no one ever assumes that when they're listening.

Exactly.

I mean, going any, go in any gym in America and look around.

Most people don't have their training in check.

What are your, what, what's your ideal training regimen and style?

Um, I've been training for 37 years and I pretty much,

when I was natural, I pretty much stuck to upper and lower.

Okay.

And I did,

I've always done less volume.

I respond well to exercise, but my nervous system seems to get burned out faster than some guys.

So I was doing Monday, Wednesday, Friday rotating.

And then cardio on the other days.

I did that for years and years and years.

When I became enhanced, I went to push-pull legs.

And that's pretty much where I always end up.

Like, I try other things randomly sometimes.

You know, if I'm working out with someone and they're doing something different, I'll jump in.

I seem to go there, and I kind of like training four days a week.

I do cardio every day.

I kind of like doing Monday, Tuesday, take Wednesday off, Thursday, Friday.

I like to push.

a little harder and do less volume.

I usually do two warm-up sets and one one working set to failure.

I don't use intensifiers anymore now that that's been proven not to do anything.

Wait, can you explain that?

So it doesn't add, so drop sets, force reps, rest pause.

In reality, it doesn't show to add anything to a set that you wouldn't get out of just doing a straight set to failure.

Okay.

So.

Can you explain that a little bit further?

Well, mechanical tension is the driver of growth, right?

So volume is not the driver of growth.

There is a minimal amount of volume required, but but you can show that volume doesn't drive growth because in every exercise study, there's growth experience on the first set and then it goes down.

Right.

So people that

have volume stuck in their head are assuming that the training stimulus goes up as you do more and actually goes the opposite way until you're getting almost no stimulus out of the later sets.

By adding,

it's not to say if you didn't hit, I mean, you really want at least...

There's five effective reps in a set toward failure.

If you don't hit five and then you were to back off a little bit and get another couple reps, that could be an effective way to use a drop set.

But to just

do,

you know, progressive overload and that is automatically just dropped for no reason to an arbitrary amount at the end, you're just building up calcium ions and just causing fatigue.

So you wouldn't, you know, you could probably tolerate it your age because your nervous system is young.

You'll see as you get older,

it'll fatigue you.

in a much greater way.

And you're not going to make any more progress doing it because at the end of the day, that's not what's driving growth.

You don't want metabolic stress.

Metabolic stress actually interferes with mechanical tension.

So that actually can slow down growth.

Where people...

Well, I'll elaborate.

So there's four pathways of growth.

There's one through exercise, that's mechanical tension.

And then there's three pathways through hormones.

Where the confusion gets real in the fitness world is that guys that leverage drugs are...

Most of the time, they're not leveraging the exercise pathway.

They'll do pump work and they're just relying on the three hormone pathways to cause the growth.

And then they'll say things like, well, see, it doesn't matter what you do because I still grow.

They're not leveraging the one pathway though.

So guys like Dorian Yates actually leveraged all of them.

It's probably why he's bigger than all those guys

because he actually trained correctly.

You know, he still did some things wrong.

He didn't, you know, the four steps and that kind of stuff is just not needed.

But he was actually paying attention to his training.

and training as you know as correctly as he knew at the time and he was leveraging the drugs right where most guys that are doing doing pump stuff are literally just relying on the gear pathways.

Okay.

I did a video with Paul Carter on anabolic bodybuilding about that.

We went in depth, we went back and forth on those pathways.

What did he think?

What was his stance?

I mean, we agree.

So he covered the exercise part of it, and I covered the drug part of it.

What are your thoughts on the differences between focusing on myofibrillar

and sarcoplasmic?

So

they occur in tandem.

So back in the day when they thought that sarcoplasm would occur on its own from pump stuff, when you actually look at what's going on in a muscle cell, the sarcoplasm might start first, but the myofibular growth occurs.

They're basically at the same time.

So you're not getting, there's no such thing as a guy that's just built up sarcoplasm without myofibular growth.

What you're probably seeing.

So where guys would try to argue this to justify that examples, they'd say, well, look at a bodybuilder.

He's 300 pounds and he's not nearly as strong as the 200-pound powerlifter.

That's a neurological adoption.

And you can test that on yourself.

If you train just for strength for a couple months,

you'll get very strong, even if your weight doesn't go up.

That's just because you've created a neurological adoption to lifting heavy weight.

As soon as you stop doing that, your nervous system downregulates.

That's just the ability to recruit those fibers.

It doesn't mean it has nothing to do with the muscle size.

It's because most of those 300 pound bodybuilders don't train like a powerlifter.

So they're not necessarily as strong for their size as someone who trains for strength.

That's a training adoption.

That's not a muscular adoption.

Now, bodybuilders also might grow more slow twitch fibers, right?

Because steroids will allow all fibers to grow to some degree that you're not necessarily going to get when you're natural.

And assuming, I'm making an assumption that the powerlifter is natural, but you and I both know that most of them do the same amount of drugs that bodybuilders do.

They're just not training in a place where they're probably getting as much type one growth.

Who isn't?

Powerlifters?

Like a powerlifter wouldn't be, right?

Because they're generally doing triples.

They're doing a full max effort stuff.

So they're not really training.

Whereas you and I might pick up a weight and curl for 15 reps, right?

So you're going to get initially, you're going to get type 2 fibers pulled in and then they're going to drop out.

And then the slow twitch fibers are going to come in.

So you're going to get some, you're going to get mixed fiber growth more than someone who's just training for strength.

Right.

Yeah.

Real quick, guys.

So while I was looking at the YouTube analytics, I actually saw that

85% of you guys that watch this channel are not subscribed.

And I want to ask very little of you guys, but if you enjoy this podcast, if you find value in it, then then please do me this one favor and subscribe to the channel because doing so helps me get bigger and greater guests like the guests you are listening to today also this channel is not sponsored which means only the companies that i work with which are young a la and huge supplements are the companies that can help fund this channel by you guys using the code nile so code nile gives you a discount of 50 off of young la and code nile also gives you a discount of 10 off of huge supplements and if you decide to purchase anything from any of these companies it will help immensely for me by using my code and this way i can travel to other guests and also upgrade and equipment to make this podcast bigger and better for you guys i know your stance and this is a stance that i've always held as well in i don't know how many years as long as i've been bodybuilding for um but

i just you know as bro sciencey as this is for me to say i have actually i think i've been slowly slowly, slowly convinced and converted over to believing more

that

these top Olympian bodybuilding coaches do have some kind of

good reasoning or at least anecdotal evidence into why they're doing, say, for example, and I've talked about this in other podcasts, people have heard it, but like Patrick Tour's SST sets or Hanny Rambaud's FST7 sets.

Have you heard of those?

Describe them.

Maybe I have.

Okay, so

these are just training methodologies that they've created themselves.

I think

there's one aspect about Hanny's that is different than Patrick's that I think might

not align with my argument here.

But basically, so Patrick's SST sets are,

he calls them sarcoplasmic.

like stimulation training or something like that.

It was just a name that he used, but essentially he has four different types of, you could call them intensity modifiers but what he actually likes to use the the definite the word he likes to use is density instead okay and so basically he will add one of these four options

you choose yourself as his athlete which one you feel like would uh just which one you resonate with at that current time what do you feel with your body would work best for you

and basically for example one of the options is like drop 30

and then

make sure that the eccentrics are four seconds long.

Or for example, another one is like a cluster set where so you did one working set and then you did this SST set following.

And then for the cluster set, it was like you wait 20 seconds, you go to failure, wait 20 seconds, go to failure, and you repeat all the way till you only have one rep left.

And

he only has one SST set at the end of every exercise.

But then also you have like your working sets, like one or or two working sets before that happens and his argument is that um a lot of bodybuilders in the past have tried to do this pump work um but it's just as important to have this metabolite training in the beginning of your in the beginning of your session as in the end of the session because obviously like you stated in the beginning of the session is when you're fresh this is when you're recruiting the most and um

that they happen in tandem the microfibrillar and the sarcoplasmic happen in tandem so that's his argument is that that's why he places that SST set at the end of, say, for example, your first exercise and then your second exercise.

So you're still focusing on progressive overload at the beginning of that exercise, doing like, say, your eight reps or your 10 reps of like max weight of like your, you know, your mean compound or something.

But then at the end, the last set, you do the SST.

Okay.

So it just goes back to

So he's not right and he's not wrong.

It's he's still leveraging the mechanical tension, right?

In the beginning.

The rest of the stuff he's leveraged.

So the other three pathways are the android receptor, the IGF receptor, and what they call P13K downstream.

So that's mTOR and protein synthesis that way.

So basically, he's doing what I just said before.

He's just leveraging the drugs, which is not wrong.

They work, right?

Steroids works.

No one's disagreeing with steroids work.

So it's from a pure training point of view.

If you're natural, that ain't going to work.

Right?

You're not able to leverage the android receptor, the insulin growth factor one receptor, or really the p13 receptor outside of when you're fed and you have protein to stimulate mTOR, but it's not adequate to cause growth from that.

So most likely you're just going to overtrain.

But he's dealing with

people need to look at it under a different lens.

So you're talking about Olympians, right?

So you're talking about 0.1% of the bodybuilding population, not even the world.

These guys have the most extreme genetics.

There's 300 odd genes, genes that control muscle growth.

These guys have all 300 of those perfectly expressed, right?

They have a very controlled environment and they're on five to 10 grams a gear, right?

Bottle growth hormone day.

It doesn't matter what they do.

No, I'm sorry.

It doesn't really matter what they do.

You could train,

there was a joke that Paul Dillett, do you remember Paul Dillett?

He's probably before your time.

He was like when Lee Priest.

It was a joke.

Lee Priest used to joke that Paul Dillett was so gifted he could grow muscle by bonus lawn.

So it, at a certain point, you have the genes, you do enough drugs, it doesn't really matter what you do.

And that's why you see

the one variable that you see different between elite bodybuilders is their training, right?

Most guys eat about the same.

Most guys do about the same gear, right?

So if you look at cycles across the board of the top guys, they're all pretty much the same stuff.

There might be one or two compounds that are slightly different based on personal preference, but

they're about the same.

It's the training that seems to vary, and that's because these guys are leveraging these other pathways.

It doesn't really matter.

If you took a natural population and you had them do that, they would get basically basically nothing out of it.

So, and also when you do a force, when the eccentric part of an exercise, when the muscles elongated, you open the calcium, you open the ion channels.

So that's where damage can occur because they open up and the ions go inside and cause, they aggravate the nerves.

So again, for a natural lifter, you don't want to do that because that's just going to cause a huge amount of fatigue.

You want to obviously control a rep.

You don't want to like, you're not trying to swing the weight around, but you don't need to be forcing a negative.

You're going to get nothing out of of that as a natural lifter outside of fatigue and damage.

Okay.

Okay.

And natural damage doesn't cause growth.

Right.

You know, that's not good.

That's kind of the answer I was looking for because I knew the distinction was that there was a difference between natural and enhanced lifters when it comes to these training styles, too.

It's literally those three pathways, and they can't.

A natural guy cannot mimic those.

You know, so it allows guys like you and I, assuming you're on stuff, you know,

get more out of training doing all sorts of wacky stuff that like natural guys just can't do.

Right.

And And it's why natural guys shouldn't follow what Ronnie Coleman does.

Yep.

It doesn't make any sense.

Yeah.

You know, besides the fact that he was on drugs, he was gifted.

Yeah.

So copying that doesn't really make a lot of sense.

100%.

Cool.

All right.

Really and back to nutrition, and then we'll go all to the dirty stuff that everybody loves to listen to the podcast for.

But

before I mention anything, since I like to do the intro halfway through my podcast because I'm fucking weird, guys, this is Kurt Havens.

This is an expert in bodybuilding pharmacology, training, nutrition, PDs, all the science, all of it.

Just want to say thanks for coming to the podcast, dude.

Of course, man.

I'm honored.

Thank you.

Yeah, I'm honored to have you on as well.

I actually really wanted to see you guys at Olympia.

I was just talking to Steve beforehand.

He was like asking me if I was going to come through, but unfortunately, the company that

my company I work with, Transcend, has gone to Olympia the last two years, and they would compensate and sponsor me to go, which was freaking amazing.

You know what I mean?

But I felt like with all my traveling and stuff this year, how much it costs to get at a hotel there and travel all the way over there and then buy it.

That's just fucking expensive.

And you could see it in the crowd because it was a lot less than the Arnold.

Oh, damn.

The cost just to be there was pricey.

Are you going to the Arnold?

We have another booth there.

Okay.

I think I do want to go to the Arnold this year.

I should have been in that.

It's a better scene.

It's so much fun, too.

Yeah.

I'll give you the booth number.

I think Chase is getting it now.

All right.

Bet, but

Chase had a question in the the Q ⁇ A too, so I didn't make sure to do that.

Chase has a question in the Q ⁇ A.

Yeah.

All right.

So

a little bit back to calories and nutrition.

So

I recall from, I think, one of your videos that you side on not eating in as much of a caloric surplus compared to, say, like your average pro-bodybuilder or pro-bodybuilding coach.

Could you explain this?

You mean for me personally or my clients?

Well.

Oh, you mean just pushing food up super high?

I think basically you decided on the stance of just not yeah not pushing food as high as a lot of these guys do yeah so i mean

you have when you when you're looking at muscle growth like if you step back and actually look at all the things that have to go into you know the process of building muscle there's many places that the human body will put a stop right there's many stop gates that'll stop you from progressing and getting more muscle that's a natural

That's just a natural thing.

Nature doesn't want you to look like you want to look.

That being said, the ultimate stop, like your rate limit on muscle growth, is how many nuclei you can recruit from a stem cell and add to an existing cell to make it larger, right?

So your stem cell pool is really what is going to dictate at the end the ultimate thing is why things like growth hormone work.

Food is not the rate limit in exercise, right?

There is an energy requirement.

It's smaller than people think, and it's only during the translation stage of protein synthesis.

The body's just looking for some energy.

It's one of the reasons reasons why if you carry a lot of body fat, you don't need to be in an excess because you can pull from that.

It's just looking for energy.

Because in nature, you're not going to grow tissue if there's no food, generally speaking.

Most of my guys, I try to keep lean all year round.

It's just much easier to get them on stage when they don't have to diet.

So I generally don't push.

I mean, food is relative to the person.

You have guys that eat, like I said, I have guys that eat 9,000 calories, but their maintenance might be 8,000 calories.

So it's,

I just don't push it to a place where these guys are getting fat and then I have to pull back down because there's no, there's no benefit to getting fat in the offseason.

That's right.

It's really that.

It's not that I don't push food.

I have tons of guys that are eating a lot.

They're just not eating enough to get fat.

Okay.

So one of the reasons that I really love talking about these things, especially on podcast forums, is, you know, there's just, especially nowadays, there's this crazy, crazy little fight between science-based lifters and

old-school bro science bodybuilders and shit, right?

um and both have uh i i think great reason to you know stand on what they do but

i like to discuss like this middle ground where it seems like um both have i think both are normally right but i think most people just don't really make the distinction of in which specific scenarios that they're right if that makes sense or where that seems to happen most often

so

for the calorie thing i was always on the stance of like oh man like you don't really need any more than like, say like 200 to 400 calories and a surplus.

Maybe 400 is probably even too much of a surplus in terms of being in a growth phase.

But I've seen after talking to a lot of experts, Olympian bodybuilders and some Olympian coaches that

the amount of calories they're pushing up to me is always surprising.

Well, what was their maintenance though?

That's the question.

Right.

And that's the thing is is, like,

I think here, I want to ask you a question before I tell you what I'm thinking.

But

hypothetically, so how many calories would you say that an enhanced guy should consume in his offseason if his maintenance as a natural was 3,000 calories?

The problem is there's a lot of variables there, right?

What gears are?

Like what he's on?

What's his genetics?

Bodybuilding, physique.

I say bodybuilding.

I mean everything.

It doesn't mean you have to get on stage and pair trunks.

Whatever we do, right, we go to the gym just to to look better.

I'm calling that bodybuilding.

The problem is, it's a genetic game just like anything else.

It's no different than basketball, football, right?

You either have great genes for this or you don't.

You know, people don't want to accept that, but you're either made for this stuff or you're not, just like anything.

So that's a huge factor, too, right?

Like I said, there's a ton of genes that dictate muscle growth and fat storage.

And that plays a huge role in how efficient your body is at

utilizing food.

So some guys, their body,

Samson is a great example of this, right?

What does Samson have for breakfast?

He has three eggs and a cup of coffee.

If I had three eggs and a cup of coffee, I'd be dead.

His body is super efficient at taking nutrients and shuttling it toward muscle, right?

My body burns a lot of food, which is waste, right?

It's wasteful if you think about it from a bodybuilding point of view to have to consume a ton of food just to grow muscle.

Yeah.

So I can't be enjoyable.

What's that?

I said it can be enjoyable.

No, no, no.

So the problem is

there's a lot of variables there.

I mean, how much,

how much gear are they using?

Are they using 500 milligrams?

Are they using 5,000 milligrams?

Are they using growth hormone?

Are they using insulin?

Are they using Incrolux?

You know, there's so many.

The more gear, the more you could push the food up.

The more growth hormone run, the more you could push the food up.

And you got to figure, if you're talking about like top Olympian guys?

Like open?

Well, like you were saying, like the more gear, the more calories you have to push, which I do believe is not linear, though.

Like, obviously, there's a plateau as you keep increasing.

You know, it's not like the more gear you run, the bigger and faster and more food and everything you get.

And we know that.

And even that, you know, and you can watch as androidceptors get saturated, it starts to flatten out with the dose.

And you can also see even the dose response, right?

Even in like those early Bayesian studies, the difference between 300 and 600 milligrams of tests in those untrained people, there was a difference between six and three, but it wasn't like a straight shot.

It like started to curve down.

And you see that at a gram of test, it starts to really flatten out.

And then at two grams It's almost completely flat as you saw with chase like he didn't gain exponentially more Muscle by going to 10,000 milligrams, right?

He probably didn't gain any more than he would have on

You know whatever three grams, you know four grams.

It was more an experiment to see how much he could get his blood there and what he could tolerate when his organs would do.

Exactly.

I love Chase.

I'm not dissing Chase, but I don't know if there was any more response for the dose, just like you're saying.

I don't think you have to,

you don't have to like calculate that in but i would figure if you're talking about open elite bodybuilder i mean i hate to say it it's five to five to ten grams of gear

you know and a bottle of saristim a day they eat a lot of food these guys are 300 pounds also yeah i like the guy nick sorry no no you're good um it's i think the open bodybuilder talk is always super interesting but i think most people are mostly interested in uh even though they're interested in what the top does i think uh the most marketable stances or the the most marketable like divisions are the ones that people are really looking to find info from for themselves so classic yeah like classic for example because i mean i could i guys the higher the higher drugs the higher the food um the harder you go the how the the change in how your physique will look and its proportions and its symmetry and the change in the size of your gut and everything.

And I don't think everyone wants to have

a giant gut.

And especially these days.

Especially these days, the IPB ibb is obviously pushing more aesthetics over just straight size yeah so um i think if you consider that i agree that i feel like i mean it just seems that everyone on that stage is basically pushing about the same kind of stuff and yeah although my i have pros in all the divisions and i would i would say on average though

the physique guys

Genetics are the, I think at the end of the day, genetics are what determine what class you're in, right?

Like a guy like Ryan Terry,

he's most likely the best in physique because that's where his genetics kind of top out, right?

And I don't know if he wants to be any bigger, but that's most likely where his genes top out.

Like you and I both have limits as well.

You're probably never going to be 300 pounds.

I know I wouldn't be.

Yeah, no chance.

Most of the physique guys I know don't push this much stuff, right?

Which makes sense.

I have one guy, a pro.

runs 500 milligrams in the offseason.

You know, he's super concerned with his health.

He doesn't need a ton.

He's got great genes.

I have another guy who does pretty well.

He played second in a pro show recently.

I'm not going to give people's names or what show because I don't want people to, you know, I'm not disclosing people's drugs.

1,500 milligrams normally, a gram in the offseason, 1,500, including orals, going into a pro level show and taking top five, you know, in classic.

I also, some of the classic guys probably push more.

I don't see that as much.

I do see the open guys because it correlates to their food and their size.

They tend to push more.

And obviously, we keep titrating up doses as we, you know, as every year goes by.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And we, and I'm, I don't, again, I don't know your experience, but I've had the same thing.

The heavier I get, the more I need of everything.

Yeah, I agree.

Which I wanted to ask you about that leader, too.

I know we have a fuck ton of shit that we can talk about on this podcast, but

we could always do part two.

Yeah, we could.

But before going on to that,

when we were discussing discussing calories and food, I just wanted to point out, so I have two examples of basically

this discussion regarding how many calories would an enhanced bodybuilder hypothetically consume on average versus, you know, everyone.

I didn't answer the question.

No, no, you're good.

We get on tangents all the time.

It's very easy with so much context.

If it's a guy like you or me, I mean, I was significantly lighter when I was, I'm way past my natural limit.

I was, I'm just, I'll use me as an example because I can speak to the food.

So I was, my, I think I topped out naturally somewhere 170 to 180.

I'm 5'7 ⁇ ,

you know, and that was like

very lean at that weight.

And I'm 220 now.

So

I eat probably twice as much food, if not three times as much food now as I did then.

Damn.

Right.

Between the weight and the gear.

Yeah.

I would say the gear definitely adds

The gear definitely adds a couple hundred calories a day in leeway, right?

That you need to eat, that you didn't need to eat when you were natural because it wasn't going going to go the right places.

I would say growth hormone probably has an even greater effect.

Yeah.

At least as far as fat storage is concerned.

You're just, you know, if you're using enough and it's good, you're not going to get fat.

I've got two examples.

So, first example is

me, when I was first natural and competing, I think the highest I ever really went in my bulk was 2,800 to 2,900 calories, and I would still get fat.

This, I mean, this sounded kind of right because I would assume my maintenance would be somewhere somewhere around 2,700 calories.

So then,

and that's what my aura ring tends to say too.

I don't ever know how accurate that is, but even to this day, my aura ring still says that.

And I don't know if that's basically if it's detecting me, if I was a natural, how much I would be expensive.

Well, it can't, it couldn't possibly take drugs into account.

So I don't know.

It is going by your

weight and your heart rate.

Exactly.

And other variables.

What's your, sorry to back up, I, because I don't know the answer.

What was your, what's your height and weight back then versus weight now?

Yeah.

so my my height is five seven and a half at least that's what the ipc measures me at okay and then um my weight

my stage weight back then was

um

was about

i'd say 162.

okay um so we're similar we're similar size i'm just curious when it was 162 when i was a natural um when i won my pro card it was about 168

um and then my last pro show

well, like this first pro show that I did just like a month ago, my stage weight was between 177 to 180.

So now when I did my bulk before this pro show,

my highest calories were at 3,800.

So this is with like, say, 10 to 15 pounds on, and then also me running of muscle, and then me running 500 tests, 450 primo, and

two to three IUs of GH every day during my offseason.

This is my first first real offseason.

That was just something intriguing for me to see is like with I think I'd say like some a base level of gear in the offseason and then like 10, 15 extra pounds, I was a thousand calories higher in my normal bulking

diet.

So I mean I used to diet when I was like similar to you when I was natural and lighter.

I would diet 1200 calories.

I don't think I could live on 1,200 calories now.

I couldn't at all.

I'd be dead.

I did.

Yeah.

When I won my pro card.

When I won my pro card, my lowest calorie count was 1,100.

I was dying.

I was just eating a box of, you know, those boxes of five-pound, like, is it five pounds?

Boxes of like spinach and kale.

I would literally just grab those like chips and I would just eat those in the kitchen the entire day because I was really depressed and really hungry.

Um, and then not a lot of food.

Yeah, and I think the lowest my calories went for this show was 1700.

So I was like 500 to 600 calories higher.

Over, yeah which is still low for you so

you're doing a lot of food but um

uh and then my second example was i just had a podcast with mike summerfeld you know the one who just got second place um next to c bum so he made like some crazy improvements right that's what everybody thought he should have won in my mind he looked nutty he looked insane um i did see their side pose though um chris had

Chris's conditioning stood out a lot more in his side poses than Mike did.

And obviously there's a lot of other variables, you know what I mean?

Totally.

I'm just saying, I thought he was impressive though.

He was very impressive for sure.

I understand the whole,

what did they say?

I think they said that it was like a, it was like a,

it was basically a tie

or almost a tie.

Yeah, because the poses that that Mike had, you know, Chris didn't, vice versa.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But anyways, I think it's.

it's very highly discussed right now that Mike had had the most insane improvements in the last year.

Not only in conditioning, but obviously in structure and muscle mass.

And so I was asking Mike about this, and he said he gained 60 pounds in four months.

And so what he did was initially they were already at the weight cap and they kept him there.

So what they were doing in the beginning before this show, like in previous years, they kept him at 3,000 calories throughout the offseason.

So I think this was basically like a maintenance.

Like he didn't really gain any muscle mass.

And I said that's low for him.

Right.

Well, this time he needed a real offseason to make those gains, not that they changed the weight cap and he really wanted to take advantage of this

so what he said is they upped his calories by 1500 calories he went up to 4500 calories

and um

i'm i'm fairly sure that the gear the increase in gear was not very much maybe a small amount and um

he made some crazy gains and out of the 60 pounds in four months he kept 12 of those okay i mean some's glycogen fluid, right?

We all do that.

We gain weight.

This excess garbage that goes with it.

That's not tissue.

I will say, like I was talking about before, with bodybuilding being a genetic sport.

So

it's your genetic response to food, gear, and training is what makes you a great bodybuilder.

And what I found is the best bodybuilders, like him,

they respond to low amounts of gear.

Like you just said, his gear didn't actually have to go up that much, but they also can tolerate a high amount of gear.

Like most people,

either they get side effects at some point, right?

They get 10 average people get them at a lower dose.

These guys can also make progress at a lower dose, but they can also handle a big dose.

Same with training, they could grow on almost nothing, but they can also handle high-volume training.

Right?

With food, the same kind of thing.

You said with his food, 3,000 calories.

It's not a lot of food for someone his size.

So he's very efficient.

Like I was talking about, I'm not efficient with food.

His body's very efficient with food.

So he was able to grow with a modest amount of food and put on a huge amount of weight.

Right.

And he can also tolerate a large amount of food as well because he won't get fat.

But most humans are not fitting into any of those categories.

You might have one, right?

Like I have two.

I respond well to gear and I respond well to training.

Food, I'm just, I just need too much.

I don't think he's actually gaining any weight on 3,000 calories.

Oh, whatever is about 4,500, whatever.

But that's still for a guy his size, that's nothing.

You think so?

He's a

maintenance is 50.

My maintenance is like 5,400.

That's crazy.

That's, I have a stupid metabolism.

Yeah, that's stupid.

That's something that's not efficient.

So I need to eat a lot of food.

Right, right.

I think his metabolic rate sounds more like mine.

Mine tends to be in a lower end for someone my size.

Yeah,

that's why he was eating.

Yeah.

Or how much size he gained.

But like, I just found it interesting that he upped it by like literally 1,500 calories.

And then he made all those amazing gains in his offseason.

So it's just something that I like to

have no science on that, right?

We have no science on bodybuilders.

No, that's the problem.

Like when you talked about before, like the during the bro stuff and the, and the science is like the stuff that I study, we don't, we don't apply that to you and I.

Like study HIV, cancer, wasting.

Like, I'm not studying growth hormone on you.

You know, I know the numbers.

I know how it works.

I know what the response is in a population, but I also don't, with polypharmacy, I couldn't tell you what the outcome is if you mix anadrol test and growth hormone together because we don't study the three together.

We study one at a time.

So it's like then bodybuilders are correct about a lot of stuff because they're the only ones who actually experiment with all of these things together.

How many viewers you have in your YouTube channel?

The main YouTube channel or the podcast?

Oh, either one.

So the podcast I have, I think it's like at 33 K subs now or something.

Wow.

And then

the main YouTube channel is at 500k subs.

But the main YouTube channel, though, I used to post a lot of, I did a lot of different types of videos.

And if I have any advice for anyone who's trying to build a YouTube channel, stick to the same thing.

That's what I do.

That's the one main area that you really love and just run hard with it.

That's all I do.

My business, because I only became public in the last year, my business is off the hook.

It goes up like 70-ish% a month.

Nice.

So I don't, I'm not looking to grow it.

Like, it'll grow organically.

I don't need to push it it anymore because I'm already too busy.

I'm sorry about that, man.

That's kind of just the

kind of what we just signed up for when we decide to be a coach.

I know.

I was a coach for some time, too, and I canceled or I quit for the exact same reason.

I'm going to phase it out over the next couple of years.

I'll keep like five or ten guys that I like and just do education.

You know?

Yeah, it's a good move.

My forum should,

my forum should kick off, you know, probably a quarter of a million dollars by the end of the year.

Damn, that'd be awesome.

Oh, yeah.

Do you want if you want access?

I'll give you free

stuff.

I got like an Anabach library and stuff in there if you want.

You can use the research part.

You don't have to ban, you don't have to talk to anyone.

Thanks, bro.

I appreciate that, man.

Really, truly.

We put up, like, I put up the stuff that I can't put up on Instagram.

Okay.

You know, and I'll have the conversations that I'm not having in public up there.

You know, are there actual things that would like be banned on Instagram or something like that?

No, but I think that's it.

Well, some of the stuff that's like maybe stuff that's up and coming, I'm not supposed to talk about, or I wouldn't necessarily talk about my,

this doesn't really matter because I'm sure it's out there.

I, I'm not huge on talking about like what I do,

you know, on there.

I definitely don't talk about my family.

I don't talk about personal stuff on Instagram, right?

I mean, how many, you know, you have a lot more followers than me.

I have a lot of followers.

I don't know any of them.

You know, I just don't, that stuff's permanent.

Right.

Okay.

Yeah.

I don't really care about doses for me.

It doesn't make a difference.

My parents are well aware.

You know, I'm an adult.

I do this for a living, but it's,

you know, we keep personal stuff under those firewalls because it makes more sense than, you know what I mean, just discussing it.

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

Okay, reeling it back a little bit, can you explain to me

the concept, the more drugs you use now or while you're younger, the more drugs you'll have to use later?

Or anyway?

It's probably not so much.

Well, it would be based on two things.

Androgen receptors upregulate in the presence of androgens, right?

The more androgens you use,

during protein synthesis, the translation stage, new DNA is created, and part of that DNA is the androgen receptor.

Right.

Which I think is why a lot of guys like to make the argument that they can just run gear forever year-round.

Well, you can cruise.

Like I don't come off test, right?

Like I'm cruising right now.

I'm just changing it.

I think it's an argument they say that they can blast basically.

No, no, you don't want to do that.

No, so you got a couple of things.

So the more gear you do, the more androgen receptors you make through protein synthesis.

That's just a normal thing.

So you'll have to use more because in order to get saturation it'll require more androgens to do so over time also the more muscle mass you have the more weight that you built with drugs the more it's going to take to hold that right so like

i i don't know i don't know if how much you've built with chemicals or not but like i've built a significant amount with chemicals there's no way that i'm going to be able to hold that on 200 milligrams of test because

So my TR my TRT is significantly higher than that just to hold my weight.

As long long as my labs are fine, my organ scans are fine, I'm not too worried about it.

But that's the unfortunate problem.

And then also, if you start when you're very young, when you get to my age, God knows what you'll be doing.

That's probably why most guys stop doing it when they're my age.

I didn't start doing gear until I was 40.

Hopefully I can continue to do that until I'm very old.

But yeah, sorry to interrupt with you.

What else were you saying about the more drugs you use now, the more you'll have to use like your next cycle or later?

Just to hold your, just to hold your size.

Yeah, and like you're not going to grow because it becomes homeostatic, especially if you tried to stay on a blast all the time.

Your body gets very used to what your hypothalamus senses the amount of hormones in your body all the time.

If you constantly run a gram of gear,

that becomes homeostatic at a certain point.

Your body's not going to continue to grow on that gram.

You'd have to bring it up, right?

The way to grow, like if you're on a cycle and growth comes to a halt, you got two levers to pull, right?

Or really three.

You can add more gear, you have more food,

or you back off a little bit, right?

Take a break for a little bit, and then you blast again.

Those are really the only three logical things to do.

You see a lot of the bigger dudes, what they do is they blast all the time and then they hit a plateau.

They have to increase the dose and increase the dose and increase the dose.

And that's where they end up on these 10 grams of gear.

Would they be better off probably just backing off a little bit and then,

you know what I mean, continuing down the road that way.

Right.

And

I think most of us in the industry, most of my listeners and most of us that are experienced like you and I or other pro bodybuilders understand this already, but there's still always those that like to make the argument

that

they can continue blasting.

And the reason is there's no desensitized, there's no desensitized.

Jesus Christ, I can't even say it.

That's correct.

But the problem, the actual problem that you run into that they don't understand.

So you have

You have a pool of stem cells in the human body that are what they call pluripotent.

They're not designated to be anywhere.

They're just in this pool.

And the body commits them to a cell line depending on its needs.

So normally in a natural person, as your organs are starting to wear, your body will commit

these stem cells.

That's one of the things that that one mechanism, that steroids work through the P13K

pathway, that's one of the things it does.

It causes cell line commitment of stem cells.

it will

and this is where steroids come into play it will

basically

if you're running a superphysiological amount of steroids, which in textbooks is over 300 milligrams of testosterone, your body will no longer be able to supply the stem cells it needs to your liver, your kidneys, your heart, your lungs, your brain, because it's now sensing that that P13K is

regulated, is upregulated, and it'll commit available stem cells to muscle growth.

So the long-term problem is you will have no new cells to repair your organs.

So like as your liver, especially then you're doing oral.

So now your liver is banged up.

You have no new cells to go to your liver, right?

Your kidneys are stressed.

You can't repair them.

So it would be really dumb to stay in a blast all the time.

Okay.

So it's primarily basically connected to the quality of like your bloods?

Yeah, but you can't see the stem cell stuff in your blood, but you just don't want to be running,

right?

Like you don't want to be running huge amounts of gear 24-7.

Yep.

It's just, it's dumb.

And you're not going to, and your progress will halt.

I don't know if you've ever tried it to run a cycle for long, long periods of time, your progress comes to a halt.

It's not like it just continues, you just continually, magically growing if you stay on the same amount of stuff.

So the problem is it doesn't work either.

Now you're just dependent on that amount of gear.

And then when you go back to a cruise, you feel awful because now your body's, your body now said that as homeostasis.

And now, now, like a normal amount of androgens feels even worse.

And things like TREN make that even worse because it has a huge,

like,

it has a huge nerve stimulation effect that your body's constantly bombarded with this signaling.

It's through the shape of the trembling molecule, the way it hits the android receptor.

It causes a ton of stimulation.

And when you come off TREN, you notice it's almost like TREN's addictive.

I don't know how much you've used, but guys always end up right back on it because they kind of crave that stimulation that they're not getting anymore.

Same kind of thing.

Yeah.

So

I guess I'm just trying to find an easy way to explain to people why it's a good idea to come off.

okay

the health i mean the health is the health is easy right but the health is easy if you want to get bigger make an argument yeah about getting bigger if you want to get bigger

you're not going to get necessarily any you're not going to get any bigger by just staying on a huge amount of gear all the time

than you would by blasting and cruising most of the successful guys that are big and lean and ripped that look good are blasting and cruising.

They're not staying on.

Now, their cruise might be more than the blast of some of the guys that watch this show, right?

Some of these guys might be blasting two grams of gear to hold their size, but it's still for them, it's a cruise versus the six or seven grams or whatever they're running, you know, it's blast.

But like, you have to, you have to come down at some point.

I think you explained it fairly well earlier, but I mean, I think I'm just looking for a scientific way because a lot of people just use the wrong reasoning.

They'll just talk about desensitization.

Desensitive, why can't I say it right now?

It is not,

It's not an androgen receptor.

It's like android receptors don't.

Yeah, android receptors are not going to desensitize to androgens.

It would not make any sense.

And that's been disproven.

Like we proved that in the 1980s, actually in 1980, that was proven that

AR outregulates an androgen presence.

And it has nothing to do with the receptors, but it has to do with...

Like, it's just like, like,

I try to think about the best way to really properly explain it so it's digestible because just like any drug that you take, you know what I mean?

You build some kind of tolerance to it, or it just stops working.

Yeah,

homeostasis.

Everything becomes natural, right?

You drink, you drink a gallon of water every day, right?

That became your new normal of hydration.

So now go drink half a gallon of water.

You're

you're so thirsty.

You can't even deal with it.

But yet a half a gallon of water is more than most Americans drink.

It's more water than most people in other countries drink in probably three or four days.

And it's, it just, you set the bar here, your body gets used to it.

If you pull it back down, right?

It seems extreme, but you have to go with drugs, you have to come back down at some point in order to continue to make progress you just cannot make progress at the same amount i mean that seems really ridiculous if you if you're an alcohol like if you drink and you drink six beers the first time you get drunk drink six beers a day by the end of the week you're not drunk anymore you just build up a tolerance to it yeah exactly you know that's all that is like how do you how do you describe scientifically this tolerance to steroids

it literally is just homeostasis it just became the normal amount that the body senses so the body is very aware your hypothalamus is constantly aware of your android receptors, your estrogen receptors, progesterone, blood levels, LH, FSH.

It's constantly monitoring all these things.

And at a certain point, that just becomes the norm for your body.

Now, at what point that occurs, it's been debated that it was at day 50, right?

There were some animal studies that show that it was then, but that's probably not the case.

But there's definitely a point where you're in a cycle where your gains definitely come to a halt.

Right.

And increasing is the only way short of coming back down to go up.

But like the young kids listening to this probably don't want to do like

if they want to not look awful when they're my age, they probably shouldn't just keep pushing drugs super hard all the time in their 20s because they'll either be dead at my age or they won't look very good.

A lot of my friends that started doing gear when I was younger,

you know, they most of them stopped doing gear because they ran into health problems because they did stupid shit when they were young with it.

And now they look like the same fat middle-aged men as the guys that didn't do drugs.

If that's the look you're going for, then by all means, destroy your health when you're young.

So

how do you explain that common statement where some guys just look worse when they take too much gear as they're younger?

Well, it definitely ages you

because, again, that probably goes back to the stem cell thing.

You just don't have the cells to repair your skin, your hair.

You know, look at, and certain drugs are worse.

Like, you notice like guys that use a lot of mastron, they look very dried out.

Their skin's wrinkly.

Yeah.

You know, trend probably ages you because you're not sleeping.

Um,

I mean, any super physiological amount of steroids is going to cause stress on the body, right?

Nandrolon's cardiotoxic, trend is cardiotoxic,

you know, through different mechanisms.

It just, you run enough of these drugs for long enough, and you're going to destroy your body.

It's going to age the shit out of you.

Yeah, no, I agree with that as well.

Um,

I just

always wish, uh, I'm trying to find a good,

like,

approximate

maybe range to express where taking too much gear is really just biting you in the butt um but

it's kind of hard because it's really all anecdotal right and it's individual and there's no i find for me a cycle is too big when my sleep is disrupted my sleep goes to shit it's too many drugs It's time to lower the drugs or go back to cruise at that point, right?

Because you all touch your.

And it doesn't matter what it is.

If you've taken enough testosterone, when you get to a couple of grams of test, your sleep goes to, for me, at least my sleep goes to shit.

It doesn't matter what it is.

There's a point where your brain, your nervous system, is just taxed from it.

That's not a good sign.

Gotcha.

At least in my mind.

Sleep is super important for everything.

I just, you're not going to get any bigger if you're not sleeping.

Have you noticed the amount of like sleep cycles you need per night increase when you take more GH?

I never actually looked into the specifics with that stuff, but

I will tell you firsthand that younger guys definitely see through the night.

When you get to my age, you definitely wake to pee.

I don't wake to pee on GH.

Oh, wow.

Nice.

I use it pretty significantly.

I generally use like nine, like a half a bottle of saristim, so it's pretty significant.

Yeah.

I sleep like a rock.

I've always woken up to pee like twice every night.

I did until I started using GH.

I started using GH 15 months ago.

Okay.

What have you found for yourself in terms of benefits from these 15 months of GH?

Sleep.

If it just did the sleep thing, I would still use it.

Maybe not that much because the cost is stupid.

But

sleep for sure, I think it gives you a sense of well-being.

It might think my skin is improved.

Like I don't have as many wrinkles anymore.

I would say my hair is nicer, except it all fell out, so I don't really know.

Fat loss for sure, right?

Like it becomes near impossible to get fat on GH if you're using enough of it.

How much would you say for you, I guess?

It depends on the person.

I mean,

you know, I found for me

three didn't really seem to do a whole shitload of anything for me.

And again, it's only Zenforma stuff.

So three didn't, which is a milligram, didn't really do a ton for me.

And three, you split it up at different times.

I did it once.

So I can get to the dosing of GH if you want to talk, want me to talk about that because I've come full circle.

And I kind of ended up back.

It's where the bro science and the real science differ.

And the real science is right on this one.

I've tried all different ways dosing it three times a day to once in the morning to once at night.

With the three, I was just doing one shot.

Okay.

I've never used less than three at any one time.

Okay.

I've never used less than three either.

So I went from three to six.

Six seemed a lot more dramatic for fat loss.

Nine seemed a lot more dramatic for muscle.

Like you change quickly.

And then 18 was like you change daily.

Damn.

Do you feel, and you don't feel like the 18, the changing daily was really just mostly that the water?

Oh, it's fluid and glycogen, but you're definitely like you wake up every morning and you're like what the fuck.

How long does that last for?

At least did it last for you?

Uh, I didn't use it long enough at that dose to make it permanent.

So I can get into that too if you want to know, because we know the answer to all that stuff.

Um, I did 18 the first time for one month, and I was gaining between one and two pounds a day

for the first three weeks of that four.

Um,

but it's like you said, like a bunch of it was fluid.

I probably kept you know

a third of it, maybe.

Um,

I ran 18.

My last push, I just did an eight weeks, like where I pushed the gear really hard.

I dieted down pretty close to show condition.

I had strided glutes, like, I got like without really suffering, or out, and I was trying not to use a ton of gear to do it.

Um, I died it down as lean as I get, figuring that I could benefit from a rebound to some degree.

And then I pushed the food and the gear up really high, a bottle a day again, and i went up to 220

um

and i managed to keep i'm just on i'm just cruising now i managed to keep all of it i think i lost two pounds

um

the the amount to keep it so it looks like

the amount so again we don't know the amount of growth hormone with steroids right there's too many variables because how many steroids what steroids you know what there's too many variables we know growth hormone alone in order to get permanent hyperplasia takes six milligrams or 18 units Okay.

So when guys are like five IUs is what caused hyperplasia.

That was made up.

There's zero evidence that that ever occurred and most likely will not occur no matter what stirrups you're using.

When they did

18 units or six milligrams for less than when they did it for a short period of time, after six months, the new tissue was gone.

So it looks like at least six months.

in order for that to be permanent.

Six months.

On 18 units.

18 units.

yeah and then again it's an hiv so we don't you know we don't really have any data on you using 18 units because they would never study you on that amount of growth hormone okay and also they don't combine it with steroids all right yeah the hyperferric change activist is kind of on the money with that stuff if you feel like any of the medications that we spoke about today may benefit you such as bpc 157 gh acreagogs such as tessamarellin igf1 oxandrolone chrochee semaglutide then you can obtain these from trans and hrt and the link for that will be in the bio if you feel like you're experiencing 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.

That's obviously the stuff that's the biggest concern to me, the hyperplasia, the organomegaly.

And then the second thing is obviously how much that increasing the dose will help contribute to your waist growth.

I think that's the second one.

Probably none.

So that's a whole different story.

So

we'll go on that in a second before we forget about this one topic.

But in terms of the organomegaly,

I had a Muhammad al-Dura on my podcast, and he said that he, I think he ran, I think it was 10 units for his Olympia show.

And the judge said that his waist grew, and he noticed that his waist grew as well.

And at that time, I think he also got

a

what did he do?

I think he got an echocardiogram before and then months after, and his heart grew by a certain amount.

And then I think maybe six weeks after, he just dropped it down to like three or four I use again.

And his heart went away.

Yeah, it went away.

It went back down again to a healthier,

a sustainable

size.

Okay, so I

the waste thing, you want to address the waste thing first.

I guess it's possible.

It's so multifactorial that it's not, so it's not growth hormone.

It's so multifactorial.

My waste is not grown at all on growth hormone.

So some of the myths started with we use growth hormone clinically for something called short bowel syndrome.

It's not, it's, you're born with intestines that are not the correct length.

So you're not absorbing the nutrients from the food that you need to.

So growth hormone is used as as a treatment, but growth hormone is not growing your bowels.

What it's doing is it's allowing better absorption of the food.

So, I think people interpreted that by reading the abstract of studies, assuming that the growth was occurring in the intestines and not just absorption.

So, that's probably where that myth started.

And then, bodybuilders with the distended guts, they were like, oh, it's growth hormone.

Look, growth hormone came on the scene when the gut got big.

IgF can cause your organs to grow.

The problem, so if you're a genetic freak and your liver is able to produce an adequate adequate amount of IGF from growth hormone, perhaps that could happen to you.

But for me,

your limiting factor in IGF is your liver, right?

You could take all the growth hormone in the world.

Your liver still is the stop there.

How much IGF can your liver produce in response to that growth hormone?

For me, not enough to cause organ growth.

I just actually had full body sense and I had a strain echyocardiogram, which is the most sensitive one.

that they're using cancer patients to detect early onset of heart growth, and my heart does not change at all, even from years using steroids.

So again, some genetic stuff, who knows, right?

We don't know how.

You do cardio every day too, though, right?

I do seven days a day.

I remember you saying that.

Do you think that contributed though?

I just started doing that in the last six months.

Okay.

I hadn't done it in years, but I was an athlete when I was younger.

So who knows?

I mean, there's so many things that we just don't understand.

It's not to say that it's not possible because he might produce more IGF than a normal person.

So things like Incrolux will cause organ growth, right?

So a lot of these pros use Incrolux as well.

And they're using using way more than the dose, the medical dose is 250 micrograms.

These guys are usually using one to two milligrams.

That will cause organ growth.

What do you use?

Incrylux is prescription IGF.

So it's LR3 is junk.

Real Incrolux is the only actually effective.

What about IGF?

What about deaths?

No,

you want Incrylux.

I wouldn't mess with the other stuff.

That's why it's not used medically.

It just doesn't work.

So we use it in cases where a child has a growth disorder, but the liver is not working properly.

So you give them growth hormone, they don't get any IGF.

So then they go right to the IGF.

In bodybuilders, so again, now you're taking the liver out of play by just directly injecting IGF.

So now you can get your IGF levels really crazy high.

That can cause organ growth.

So it's possible he might not have admitted that he was using that as well.

So a lot of the guys even in classic use Inkolux

at the top level.

He's very, very open about...

He's known to be

right.

Yeah, I understand that.

But his liver might just be more efficient at producing igf versus mine you know i'm just saying my waist has not grown if anything my waist stays smaller from it uh i mean the the gut thing i mean look these guys are eating huge amounts of food yeah right everything grows when you get to 300 pounds your structure has to change in order to support that weight right everything is going to grow right you're not going to keep a 27 inch waist and weigh 300 pounds i think kion is probably the only person in the world that's been able to do that There are some people that are really

super tiny waist.

Thanks, man.

I have a tiny waist, but yours is like absurdly small.

Mine has still grown a little bit, though, as I've gone bigger.

Because you get bigger.

It has to.

Yeah, but there's just some people that have been able to.

There's just some bodybuilders that have been able to actually keep that at bay by doing certain things versus others that just went hard in everything, and obviously it grows.

It's going to grow.

You stretch it out.

It's an organ.

Your stomach is an organ, you can stretch it out.

It's one of my big goals in life is to figure that out, figure out why, figure out how.

Yeah, but I mean, I wouldn't blame Growth Hormone directly for that because that's not what you see.

Like, I know guys with HIV that have been on Serastim for more than than a decade and they have zero weight i mean these guys are skinny as hell there's not causing any growth right so i wouldn't necessarily associate organ growth with that amount because when you see gh you know when you see giantism in those things and you look at this the igf in those guys it's way higher than what it's way higher than any amount of gh that you could inject would even produce right the human body the most it can absorb it any in any one 24-hour period is 28 units yeah

it their serum levels are way higher than even even that.

So it's not something like, because there's something wrong with the pituitary gland, it's just pumping out GH all the time.

Yeah.

I don't think it's GH either.

And

I was discussing on another podcast about how this IGF-1, it's like what sank the Titanic.

And

like, did the tables do it?

Like.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I just, I wouldn't blame GH for it.

That's not my experience with GH.

And I have a lot of experience with bodybuilders and,

you know, on clinical side with it.

And I don't see any enlarged guts.

I do think the majority of it is food in terms of the gut growth.

I think almost all of it is food, but I feel like there's some kind of contribution to like how much androgens and anabolics they're on, like test and stuff.

And then they're going to cause things to grow too, right?

Yeah.

Is IGF locally produced from those things?

It could be another one that you see that's not really

like widely discussed, but at the end of a prep when you crush your estrogen, right?

So the the standards of either the pull-in test and you're using a ton of AIs, or you're doing both.

When you crush your estrogen, your bile production goes down, goes to shit, and it'll cause your stomach to be distended.

When you crush your estrogen, if you bring your estrogen into like nothing, yeah.

So, like right before a show, if you really, you know, you know, the way a lot of times you'll bring your estrogen to like nothing right before a show, yeah, mostly your digestion gets all screwed up because you don't produce bile.

So, estrogen is going to mediate bile production.

And you see this morals are taking, yeah.

So, you see this in postmenopausal women, right?

Their stomach starts to stick out.

And then, but you see the same thing in bodybuilder.

So that could also be attributed.

Then on top of it, they do take diuretics.

So now their electrolyte balance is skewed up, right?

If your cellular potassium thing is screwed up, you're not going to transport glucose.

Then they carb load on top of that, right?

So now they have a ton of carb sitting in their stomach with no electrolytes to transport it.

So they're on diuretics.

And

if they're using ankrilux, you got enlargement, you got steroids that causing enlargement.

You got no estrogens, now you have no bioproduction, so protein and fat can't be digested.

You just have this whole like circus of things going on inside their body that's going to cause them not to look good.

Versus, like, if you look at the bodybuilders in the 80s, it was more they just didn't do as much stuff, right?

They didn't do all this trickery to get on stage.

Right.

These guys ate canned tuna fish and used DECA and got on stage and looked okay.

You know, and now it's everyone throws every single thing at the, you know,

right.

Yeah.

So, I mean, there's too many things going on.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's a lot of variables, that's for sure.

i think i mean it just makes sense and it would help explain also why i think everybody just wanted to point out gh insulin in the massive monster area for the reason why it's not fruit but it's exactly not gh yeah it's not insulin like why insulin's not making your gut grow i feel like i feel like the only thing that insulin might be tied to is because you know with the the new occurrence of insulin also came like this uh

this propensity for bodybuilders to consume more carbs through

whatever you put the fruit here that was the point of insulin it wasn't insulin.

It's like magically anabolic on its own, right?

You're going to end up in a coma if you don't eat enough on insulin.

The point of insulin was it allowed you just to tolerate more food.

That's how I don't think a lot, like, I don't know, people in your audience might not understand that either, because I don't think a lot of younger guys get that.

They think insulin is this like magic thing that's going to make you huge.

It's just a tool to get more food in.

If you're not eating enough food, there's no point taking insulin.

I've never needed it because my pancreas works just fine.

You can add a ton of carbs.

I think most haven't.

I think most haven't.

I think a majority of top bodybuilders just don't even, just don't even use insulin or don't even like worry about it.

Because most of my guys, when I diet them down in prep, they have to take the insulin out because they go hypo.

They can't use it.

Right.

They might use it in the offseason when they're fat and they have to shovel the food in.

But like you get someone stage lean, you give them insulin, they're going hypo for sure.

You know, very rarely.

I'm sure there are prep coaches that do leverage it when they carb load and stuff, but that's risky because then you can spill.

Right.

Right.

it it i think it throws way too many risky variables at something i don't i don't screw it that make it right it's so dumb because then you got to clean up with more diuretics

i can understand if you're really i can understand like maybe several years ago for open bodybuilders for pro open bodybuilders maybe but i think these days the insulin use is dropping Yeah, I mean, like I said, I don't see most of my guys, I don't see a ton of it anymore.

In the offseason, some of them use it.

A lot of them don't, though.

I have pros that don't use use growth hormone.

Not open guys, but I'm just saying, you know, there's nothing that's required.

If you have the genetics, you can be a pro-bodybuilder using very minimal amount of stuff.

It's the guys with the mediocre genes.

You tend to use a lot of stuff that are the ones that are going to get sick from it.

I do think the scariness of growth hormone has been overblown, though, in the last 10 years.

I think we're realizing more that just like as you're discussing, what point of how many units actually seems show like tissue growth and all these other things is it's much lower not as you not as crazy as people thought no because the fda wouldn't approve six milligrams for hiv if it was causing organ growth that's not the goal the goal is to sell new cell mass not how many units again is six milligrams 18 if it's diluted the right yeah i mean the the tricky thing about but growth hormone has like more bromyths probably than anything else out there it's just i i don't know if it's because it's expensive and it's rare and most people don't understand it so they just like make up things and then they just repeat these silliness with it.

So growth hormone is always measured in milligrams, not measured in IUs.

That's insulin.

If you talk to a doctor about growth hormone, you have to talk about milligrams.

Right.

Because we don't dilute the pharmaceutical stuff like Sarasim, I don't dilute with 18.

I don't make it 18 units.

If I'm shooting a bottle, I'm only putting 0.5 in.

If I'm shooting half a bottle, I might mix the bottle with one and then shoot 0.5 twice.

You don't care about the dilution.

It's more bodybuilders came up with a standardized thing so they could equate, so we could discuss it and it makes sense, right?

Because if you're using some Chinese stuff or whatever, that way you can be like, I'm using three units, I'm using five units.

Yeah.

You know, because you don't even know the milligrams in some of the stuff.

Patrick Torre believes that growth hormone is one of the most important substances ever used for bodybuilding.

In fact, maybe even more than testosterone.

And he also states that

if you were really trying to keep your waist small, you had to be careful with how many anabolics you're on because the harder you push, the more your waist tends to grow.

And, you know, obviously he's Keon's coach.

And no, he's got a lot of great stuff.

I think Keon's one of the most crazy, amazing examples of no, he brings really great.

His look is always

his coaching look that he brings is always great.

And all his guys, no, I agree with that.

I think growth hormone

for me, like, I could easily just live on testing growth.

You know, I think growth is super dramatic.

It's funny when guys don't think it does.

Like, I was like, I never got anything out of growth.

The growth is either junk or they're not using enough of it.

Because it was, I don't know what your experience was.

Mine.

Maybe they're just analyzing a short period of time way too quickly.

Yeah, like a week or something.

I don't know.

But like, mine was pretty fast.

Like I saw,

I saw changes like really quickly with it.

It wasn't like it didn't take months.

I don't know.

I don't, I don't think it's, I definitely think

it's probably my favorite thing.

Yeah.

I would, I would rank it above testosterone as my favorite thing.

Um, I think let's, let's jump to the Q ⁇ A here in a second.

But before we do that, and maybe if we just do another podcast, then I can ask you all my other questions.

Yeah, we can talk about it.

Just tell me, give me another date.

I'll jump on it.

Before we do that, you mentioned GH timing.

Sure.

You want me to talk about that?

Yeah, yeah.

I want to know your stance on GH timing.

Because I got my own.

It's kind of interesting.

So

medically, it's always used in one bolus at night before bed.

Food does not matter.

Right.

This is like a, like you read the instructions for genotropin, serostim.

Not once is it mentioned you need to be fast.

And sure enough, in a hospital, when we give it or we instruct a patient to use it, it's the same thing.

And I've tried it splitting it up.

The problem, so the initial problem becomes you have about four hours before it's fully absorbed, right?

So if you're using it in the morning for fasted cardio, unless you're waiting four hours, what do you get in an hour?

Unless you inject it intramuscularly, though.

No, so you lose 22% efficiency if you use it I am.

So you don't want to use it IM.

It's sub Q.

I can give you the, if you want the, I have the data on it.

That's why it's, so when you look at, when you look at a lot of these drugs, the pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars researching this stuff.

If there was a better way to use it than what they designed, they would be using it.

Right.

They don't,

the chemists at Emo, Serrano, Merck don't give a shit about

if the needle is going to hurt or not.

They're not like, oh, no, we're going to give it sub Q because it feels better.

I mean, sub Q is desired the most efficient way, because absorption is the rate limit in growth hormones.

So technically, IV would be the most efficient way to do it.

But like, no one is instructing someone to do IV drugs at home.

Yeah.

That's not medically sound practice.

So you wouldn't do that.

You don't want to use it I am.

Same as you don't want to use steroids of Q.

Like this whole new thing of like

using, you know,

the practice came from guys as the HRT industry grew, not to go off at 10, as the HRT industry grew, you get a lot of men that are afraid of needles.

So doctors started saying, well, if you use an insulin needle, it doesn't hurt.

And then it became this widespread thing where everyone's like micro-dosing and doing all this silliness with with insulin needles with growth.

You also lose efficiency in the testosterone when you put in your fat.

It's designed to be deep intermuscular injection.

And in sedentary people, it should be in the glute.

Like in bodybuilder, because they're more active, I guess you could technically do the shoulder, but glute is still going to absorb better.

No, growth hormone goes sub-Q and it should be used as a bolus at night.

So if you're using it,

the main issue with using it throughout the day is the majority of the response you get from growth hormone is through IGF.

So the bigger bolus you inject, the more IGF production you're going to get out of it.

You're mimicking your natural largest response that the pituitary is going to put out right before you go to bed.

You have a large insulin response after you fall asleep that's going to help lower the blood sugar naturally.

And you're not going to become diabetic.

If you're injecting two or three units every couple hours, when is your body able to use glucose?

That's the problem.

So now you have this, you have super elevated blood sugar all the time.

because you're never letting your body actually turn to its regular metabolism.

So if you just, you know what I mean?

And that's, and again,

it's funny because when Chase and I started talking about this stuff when he was doing his initial 18 units, he was just doing it at night.

Sure enough, he was right.

I tried to split up 18 units.

I couldn't keep my eyes open.

Like if you do it at night, it doesn't, so you sleep really well and you wake up and you're fine.

Okay.

And that's also like, so when, then, when I brought it up

to a bunch of doctors in the hospital about it, they they laughed.

They were like, what do you mean split it up?

Who splits it up?

Like, well, I'd better split it up.

They're like, why would you split split it up?

Well, they thought there's more fat loss, and they're like, Seems like you're going to become diabetic.

So it's kind of like,

Yeah, um, I think that's the, I think this is where one of the fun arguments come

versus you know, with bro science bodybuilding versus you know, the science, what the science says.

But you know, obviously, what the science says is always directed towards non-bodybuilders, people that are using it for purposes that have that are nothing related to gaining muscle and HIV.

Probably composition,

right?

In HIV.

but um

for something as extreme as a bodybuilder like i can absolutely see your point and that's a stand that i think i believe for a long period of time um

i was talking with stefan kinzel and you know patrick tor about this as well and i know that their stance is also aligned with your old school kind of well i don't know if it's considered old school but you know with like bodybuilding bro science in a way but

like patrick discussed is like obviously one of the scary things about when you're using GH, especially if you're doing multiple injections, is

the issue with insulin and growth hormone, right?

And you don't want to, you don't want to get into that place where

what were you saying earlier that you don't want to become like insulin

resistant and growth hormone prevents the body from using glucose, right?

So growth hormone itself would make you insulin resistant.

So you don't want to keep it elevated all day.

Like there's a reason why in the human body it's pulsatile.

The problem is when you inject it frequently, you're overriding the pituitary and you're basically making this steady state of growth hormone output artificially by injecting it all the time.

And then your body can't use glucose.

So then the cell can't take in glucose.

And then what do bodybuilders eat?

They eat chicken rice.

Right.

Now the body's not trying to use the rice.

Now it's trying to use fatty acids in the blood.

And then you see it in their A1C, it starts to go up.

The fats of glucose goes up.

And then bodybuilders then to combat that, then they'll inject insulin.

But to me, me, that you're just, you're making it more complicated than it needs to be.

Yeah.

And that's what I would be thinking.

But,

you know,

I think right now I'm fighting anecdotal evidence

versus what we see in science and the critical science papers.

And,

you know, a lot of these really successful guys that have gained tons of mass, like say, for example, Keon and still been able to keep a good look, have been doing this protocol with GH, for example, like either fast in the morning or 30 minutes after a meal with carbs,

pre-bed, maybe post-workout,

all for different reasons, but I don't think the main reason is because of fat loss over the day.

And I think seemingly from these coaches,

it's to increase IGF-1 and keep it high for the point of gaining as much muscle as possible over the course of time, but also being conscious of trying to make sure that they don't become insulin resistant.

And, you know, that's kind of a weird, I don't know, I don't know exactly what Patrick's like.

I get what he's saying.

The problem is the science doesn't line up with what he's saying because the problem is you got that lag time, right?

So it doesn't matter, like you take it post-workout.

Now it's hitting you four hours post-workout.

So really what you're not actually hitting anything.

Well, he didn't, I just use that as an example for bodybuilding.

But IGF is actually elevated in correspondence with the dose size.

So if you split it up to like, for example, two, two, and two, and two, you get a much smaller IGF response than you would from six milligrams at once.

And IGF will still elevate it for more than 24 hours.

So it's

like walking in your kitchen and turning the light switch on and then standing there and trying to turn the light on and on and on and on.

It's already on.

You're not going to get any more IGF out of it by doing these little, that's part of that is because the body is trying to regulate.

The human body doesn't want you to keep growing.

So it's GH is pulsatile like that for a reason during the day because it's not trying your

body doesn't want to just grow.

Yeah,

I get what you're saying.

I mean, bodybuilders are still trying to to fight that, though.

You know, that's why we're really of course, but they're not necessarily fighting it correctly.

Right.

So, I think there's a lot of arguments that could be made for what happened with my own experiment.

But I experimented with taking all like three and a half IUs at night, and my IGF-1 would only ever be

around 250.

Okay, I can talk about serum too if you and then, yeah, we can talk about that as well.

Um, and then with age, again, I don't know your age, but the problem is the three I use might not be more than what your pituitary was secreting, so you might actually be getting less out of doing three for you okay

and then and then I did I split up three and a half to twice I would do one in the morning and then I did one before bed and my IGF-1 levels jumped up to 412.

Okay.

So serum IGF, I probably said this in a hundred podcasts now.

Serum IGF is not a bodybuilding test.

It's like serum DHT.

It's not telling you anything useful.

Outside of you can use it to see if perhaps your GH is okay.

Right.

Like if you shoot it, wait a couple hours, go get your labs, you can tell maybe your GH is okay.

It's not chunking.

That being said, when it's in serum, it is bound to binding proteins.

And the binding proteins are direct reflection of your estrogen level.

The higher your estrogen, the more binding proteins, the more bound it is.

It'll go up in serum.

It is useless.

You don't want it in serum.

You want it intramuscular.

Look at Chase's IGF.

It was like 150.

He gained like 50 pounds.

It doesn't matter what the serum is.

The serum test that we do is not.

I'm not looking at it because I'm not looking at it because I'm looking to see if someone's going going to get more muscle.

We're looking at it for disease.

So if it's high in serum, you have other things going on or you have giantism.

There's other sorts of systemic growth that you don't want.

Like a bodybuilder doesn't want high serum IGF.

That's not what they're looking for.

They're looking for intramuscular IGF, which you can't test outside doing a biopsy.

And this is also where the myth of the running high estrogen came from.

Guys would let shit aromatize.

They'd let their estrogen run wild and then their IGF went up.

But that doesn't mean it's causing anabolism.

Estrogen is an anti-androgen.

It is a rate limit in growth that's why women are not women are not as muscular because they don't need as much igf and that's what estrogen does estrogen basically takes the igf and down regulates it so it can't be used

right that's why you look at any woman they're not as muscular as you estrogen is not an anabolic hormone so estrogen basically renders the igf useless so you don't want you don't want to have either so the serum stuff doesn't matter you know whether it was four 450 technically means that perhaps you had more in your muscles or perhaps you just had more in serum that was bound.

I would have to guess that one IU for you at your,

what I'm guessing to be your age is probably not enough.

All you did was shut your pituitary down.

It was probably less than you produce.

So it's probably going to cause less of a result,

if that makes sense.

Yeah.

I mean, it wasn't injecting one if it's splitting three and a half.

It was about 1.8 and 1.8.

Still, I'm just saying, I would imagine that.

You probably still produce more naturally than that amount.

Hmm.

Than 1.8?

So like four, so for an example, four to six i use right two to three milligrams is what a teenager produces

so this is also one of the reasons why i've used four to six units and people are like oh this hyperplasia occurring i don't know you see hyperplasia in teenagers i don't think so it's that that's a that's a normal physiological range for a young person

right three is basically what you are at like 35.

so if you're over

if you're under 35 and you're injecting three I use of growth, you're really just canceling out your own to get the same amount.

It's kind of a waste.

Like if you're my age and you're three, I might, it'll revert me back to when I was in my 30s, but like that's just health.

That's not.

So

every

growth hormone has a lot of bullshit behind it.

And it's literally based in nothing.

And the people perpetuating the bullshit have never read a book about it.

So they wouldn't even know the end.

They're literally just repeating what they've seen.

The problem is when you test on someone like Keon,

Like I said, you could give Keon, you could inject him with HCG and he'll grow.

So I don't know if using those guys as an example of what causes more growth in a genetic, he's the best in the world.

Be like,

I gave, you know, it'd be like, if you gave,

I mean, I think we're just trying to take in all the anecdotal evidence we're going to get.

Oh, totally.

I'm just using an example.

Like, if you gave

Usain Bolt, give him new shoelaces, and you're like, fuck, look, I gave him black shoelaces, and now he's faster.

It doesn't matter what shoelaces he runs, he can run, but no, she run barefoot needs, he'll beat you.

It's like, it doesn't matter what Keon takes, you know, and that's not disrespectful to him.

I just don't think it matters.

You know?

Hmm.

Okay.

Interesting.

Because you're, well, first of all, n equals one.

So it's not a study.

It's one person.

And two, he's the best in the world.

So that's, we would never study the title.

Yeah, that makes absolute sense.

I think,

yeah, we can go on a, we could definitely do a full podcast on this another time.

We can just move on to the next topic.

Do you have my GH book?

No, I don't.

I don't.

I'll send you my book.

Why don't you read it?

You can read it in a day.

Yeah, I'm definitely intrigued.

I'll send it.

I'll email to you later.

You can read it, and then we could do a whole thing on GH if you want.

Because it seems like your stance on GH kind of just fights the entire bodybuilding industry on GH.

Yeah, because unfortunately, I don't think the bodybuilding stuff is based on anything.

I think it was based on, so like the five, like I'll give you another example, the five on, two off, that wasn't based on efficiency.

That was based on cost.

Right.

Like when Dorian Yates had it, it was so expensive.

He couldn't afford it.

He would never, taking two days off from GH doesn't make any sense because now IGF is nothing.

What about the argument that people are aligning the five days on, two days off also with doing every other day, which is based off of that one study on kids.

You know what I'm talking about?

You could do every other day.

So every other day and daily are the two medical ways to use it, right?

And that's every other day is if there's side effects experience.

So like the dose stays the same.

Let's say you give six milligrams and you give it every day and then

your blood sugar becomes a mess.

What we would do is we would then reduce, we would keep the dose the same, still six milligrams and give it to you every other day, test you again, see if the side effects went away.

If they didn't go away, then you remove the GH.

You can't use GH.

It's never been a thing five on, two off.

Every other day counts because you're still getting every, you're only lapsing 24 hours.

Once you've lapsed 48 hours, there's no IGF response.

Okay.

You know, so then what you're actually losing the benefit that you had.

Okay.

That's like, that came from a cost thing.

There was no like science there.

All right.

Yeah, I'll be interested in reading your book.

I can't really make any other statements because I don't really know much about this area very much.

So I'm just stating things that I've heard.

But I'm definitely intrigued in reading your book because I always thought that you could use the IGF-1 test and Bloodwork to kind of monitor

how your GH is and also how your use of GH is working with your body.

I was probably the first one to bring it to the public eye because I didn't realize that people were actually using it.

So

I would have become public with all this stuff earlier if I knew that there was so much stuff out here.

I didn't ever pay attention to the internet.

I still don't really watch YouTube.

I don't pay attention to that stuff.

I have to study.

I have stuff to learn.

And me, content confuses me because then I'm bombarded with stuff that's mostly garbage.

And I have to retain real information.

So it's like,

what got me was,

not to go off another tangent for what got me originally with the serum when I realized that people were misreading this is they were looking at trembling studies where they were adding estrogen to the cows.

And they're like, look, they're getting bigger because estrogen.

Well, first, cows don't have binding protein one.

They don't produce the same binding proteins that we produce.

We are not a bovine.

So you can't compare cattle to humans.

And second of all, the estrogen is not added for muscle growth.

The estrogen is added for marbling, which is intramuscular fat.

So it's the problem is people are reading the abstract of a study because they don't have access to the full study.

Like the average person can't read a full trembling study because they can't log in.

So they're reading an abstract.

They're making an assumption

on what actually the data was, what they've never seen the data.

And then they're trying to extrapolate data from a cow into a human.

And then they're making this false thing about...

IgF levels and estrogen.

And this is where this just perpetuates.

And that's why I started trying to clear some of this stuff up, just so there's less confusion.

Hmm.

Okay.

It's actually not that confusing when you, when you, yeah, when you're told the way this stuff actually works, you're like, oh, well, that makes sense.

Yeah.

You know, gotcha.

Okay.

Um, before we move to the QA, one last question.

So, um, what would be uh your argument or what would you say in response to me stating that um

you know when i took when i took gh at night um it was like 250 i 250 i got 250 igf1 and then um when i split split it up, it was like 412.

And then when I was natural, it was about like 112.

I tended to be at the lower range.

Which, again, doesn't necessarily mean anything.

Just because your serum was at the lower range doesn't mean your intramuscular wasn't elevated.

Right.

You might have to do it.

You never know what the IM would be.

Yeah, if your estrogen is lower, it's very possible that most of your IGF that was being produced was actually going into your muscles and doing its job.

That's so interesting.

Yeah, that's very opposite from.

Yeah, well, that's, I think, again, the basic understanding comes from learning how to read.

Like, I had to learn how to read labs, right?

The same I learned how to read studies.

When you read labs, I'm never looking, I'm not looking at IGF for the function that bodybuilders are looking at it for.

They're looking at the opposite thing.

That's not the design of that lab.

I would say there's just so many variables that control it.

It doesn't correlate with muscle growth.

So it doesn't necessarily mean that it went up because you split it up.

More was just bound.

Why was it bound?

I don't know.

Something else might have changed.

Yeah.

Unfortunately, there's zero correlation there between the serum level and,

you know, the only time you see super high stuff, like I said, is giantism, pituitary adenema, you don't ever see elevated serum IGF that's super high in people that are healthy.

Like, that's not a good sign.

Like, if it's an 1100, that's bad.

And they're generally not muscular.

They're not like,

they're not walking into the office like yoked.

They're generally thin.

Right?

It's when they have a pituitary issue.

So, um, damn, 1100 is a big number.

You see it with with tumors on the pituitary gland.

Gotcha.

And like I said, there's no correlation.

They're not muscular.

So it's not doing anything there.

And you don't think that's just because, you know, those are not people that are training, et cetera, doing all that.

I have a guy that actually did go to the gym all the time, and he was on TRT, and he wasn't, and ran that.

And sure enough, did an MRI and he had a pituitary tumor.

Damn.

Yeah.

No, it just, it doesn't correlate when it's there because it's bound.

Okay.

Cool.

All right.

That makes sense.

Okay.

Let's jump to the Q ⁇ A real quick.

Sure.

At some point, especially if we want to run another pod, I would definitely love to discuss

your perception on androgen receptors and

fibers.

If you want links and stuff to data, I can give you whatever you want to.

Well, it's more of like a discussion between you and I.

I'm just saying, if you ever want studies, you can always, and you have my info, but you can always DM me, dude, and I'll send you whatever you want.

Yeah, thanks, man.

Thanks, thanks.

I was just intrigued at something you said before at

another podcast about how,

oh, I think it was you and Paul.

You guys discussed that.

Some guys just don't respond well, so they likely don't have a ton of androgen receptors and also likely probably have like a lot of slow twitch muscle fibers.

Yeah, not, yeah.

So it would be,

so you have, you have three different locations on a cell for androgen receptors.

You have the classic one, which is in the cytoplasm, which when it senses an androgen like testosterone, it...

goes to cell surface, releases a heat shock protein, grabs onto the androgen, goes to nucleus and causes protein synthesis.

That's what you and I want to occur.

You have ones that are in the cytoplasm that cannot move, that only Winstroll interacts with, that we don't know a ton about that receptor.

We don't know why it's stuck there.

We don't know exactly what it does.

And then you have ones that are permanently bound to the membrane, they cannot go in.

Those are non-genomic responses.

So when you take halotestin and you get really strong in two days, that's a non-genomic response.

There's nothing to do with protein synthesis.

That's just purely nerve stimulation.

Or

that's so the guys that are the low responders, because I have some,

that no matter what gear they take, they just don't really get bigger or muscular.

They don't have a ton of classic endoreceptors because they're not responding, but they tend to get side effects too.

And the side effects are because the one on the cell surface is being activated because that's still there.

And it's hitting that one and it's causing all sorts of nervous system things, heart palpitations, anxiety.

So that's usually what you see in non-responders.

They probably also just don't have a ton of, they probably also don't have a ton of fast switch fibers because they probably aren't actin 3 dominant as a result of the low android receptors when they were little, right?

Like as you matured in the womb, your body will start to develop based on the presence of androgens and IgF and things you're getting from your mother.

These muscle things all develop.

If there's no androgens to stimulate these things, the muscles aren't going to, you don't have the same potential as someone who is stimulated by those hormones.

Gotcha.

Okay.

Interesting.

I was just interested in hearing that because I got my genetics tested and I'm predominantly slow Twitch fiber.

Which again doesn't mean, and you can also, well, can you upregulate?

That's debatable.

You can still make great progress.

You clearly have, you know,

it's most people are like a 50-50 split.

There's very few that are all fast Twitch.

I was a sprinter.

My lower half is probably all fast Twitch.

It's also probably why I fatigue faster.

Like I don't have the oxidative fibers that you do.

So I can't do high volume training.

Yeah.

I'm pretty good at high volume training.

So like I can't, which makes sense because your body, your muscles can use oxygen, I cannot.

Gotcha.

Okay, so who knows?

But I get genetics are fascinating, but honestly, the end I'll put your pro bodybuilder.

So why does it matter?

You know what I mean?

I'm not a pro.

Questions really, really quickly.

How many questions are there?

Oh, there's a fuck done.

So we'll just try to skip.

We'll try to pick some good ones.

SMC225 asks his favorite overall gear stack.

Mine?

Yeah.

It depends for what.

I mean, tests, testing growth hormone.

Depends on the level you are.

Testing primo.

I mean, if you're skinny and you need to put size, I mean, there's nothing wrong with testing DECA.

I mean, if you're an advanced bodybuilder, I mean, nothing's going to put size on you.

Then this doesn't mean a 20-year-old needs to do this.

But I mean, test, anadrol trend will put size on you like nothing else.

But I wouldn't say either.

That's what I use my last one for eight weeks.

I mean, NEQ works, but I wouldn't, I don't think if you've never run a Gramma gramma test, I wouldn't mess around.

There's no need to use those other things then.

Yeah.

I usually have guys titrate up a test first, see what they tolerate a test.

You get a ton of growth out of tests alone.

Okay, gotcha.

Or test and primo, whatever.

SMC also asks how to mitigate the mental side effects of gear, like anxiety.

That's like what I was talking about before.

Lower the dose.

Not everyone tolerates everything, right?

Some people are allergic to aspirin, some aren't.

Avoid things that are, you know, super androgenic and use a lower dose.

Maybe use less.

Maybe it's less test.

And

maybe that's a good case for less test.

And maybe adding some Primoin or something that's a little more benign.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of situations, such as estrogen being too low or being on MPP when you don't react well with Nandroload.

Yeah, don't use EQ.

Don't use Nandrolo.

Don't use Trent if you're having anxiety.

Ask him who was right about a vial of Sarastimidae.

Chase.

Is that from Chase?

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, he was right.

I said he was right.

I always give him credit.

I even did a real today on Instagram about Chase being right.

Dave B.

Drizzle asks, do you guys generally take breaks from GH when cruising?

I do not.

I don't see a reason to.

I mean, I reduce it.

I'm also older.

You know, I mean, you can.

If it becomes, I would rather someone...

I would rather see someone use less for longer than a big blast.

And like I said before with the growth from it, you're not going to get as much growth for short-term use.

So you'd be better off

using it longer.

So growth hormone is biphasic in its response, meaning it has two peaks.

At six months is a big peak, and at a year there's another big peak and then it trends up.

So if you're using it for two or three months, you're not going to get a ton out of it.

Like you said, some glycogen.

Right.

Would you see the same with like, say, test and primo?

Lower for longer?

That's a hard one.

I don't know.

I'd rather, if I'm going to push, I'd rather push hard and fast and get out of there and then cruise.

I mean, I don't mean like six weeks typically.

I just happened to gain a bunch of weight in eight weeks and the anadrol was making my stomach weird.

So I was like, I think I've had enough of this.

I would typically do, you know, 12, 16 week whatever blast and then lower it.

I don't know if you're going to get a ton out of, unless you're a huge responder, I don't know if you're going to get a ton out of like

200 milligrams of tests and 200 milligrams of primo.

I don't think you run that indefinitely and it's not going to do anything.

Right.

I don't know a ton of guys that are growing on that.

Brian T.

Weir asks, do you really think there's a difference between farm grade GH and UGL?

Yes.

So it's the binders and fillers.

Baloxone specifically is like a polymer that's added to the...

So all the Chinese GH is made in like one of three factories.

There's one major one.

I'm not going to give names of them.

I don't know who watches this.

They use binders and fillers to keep them stable in shipping because when they're shipped, they're shipped in a shipping container.

Unlike pharmaceutical stuff is shipped on an airplane in a temperature controlled environment and then kept.

The machinery is also incredibly different.

I've been in these in these labs.

The stuff that the black market stuff is made on looks like a gigantic cold, like an ice bath that a bodybuilder would jump in.

The stuff that the pharmaceutical GH is made is the size of a house and it's airtight that humans don't go in it.

You wear a full suit if you enter the room.

They're not even remotely the same.

And I would have to say that anyone who's used both would would tend to agree with me.

There's a few people that I've met that don't seem to notice a difference.

I notice a huge difference.

I wouldn't waste my time, and honestly, I'm like, some of the generics almost lose weight.

Like this diet, they put diuretics and stuff in it, it just dries you out, makes you stringy.

I don't know, big difference.

Damn, well, you can ask Chase about that stuff, too.

We both, we both mess around with different things.

There's, you know, there's a reason why the pharmaceutical stuff is so expensive.

Sean Creener asks: Any advantage to pull tests way down during health phases?

I heard you keep yours minimum 250.

I have never been below 300.

Not sure where that came from.

No,

I mean, it depends on your person again.

Like, what what is the amount of test that you can run that will keep your size within reason right for a period of time and your health markers are okay

that's the goal of the cruise is to maintain and to get healthy whatever dose that is i i mean yeah if you if you're only blasting 500 grams 500 milligrams of gear

yeah you should be cruising on two or two like you should be cruising on trt you know if you're a guy who's using hundreds and hundreds of milligrams of stuff you're gonna cruise on a lot more than that.

Gotcha.

My cruise is generally

twice TRT at least.

Fantastic says, crit is a man.

Love your stuff with Big Paul and start to see the episodes with you and him.

Thanks.

Isaya asks, would taking orals in the evening slash pre-bed be better since you grow in your sleep?

I don't think it depends.

The timing, like outside of Deball, the timing doesn't really matter.

Because most, like, Windstraw has a 24-hour half-life.

Again, that's another one people made up with the nine-hour thing.

Oh.

I mean, I don't know.

i don't know if it would really make a difference i personally wouldn't like

i would rather leverage them before workout with breakfast and get like any sort of acute nogenomic strength response like if i'm gonna take anivar or something i'm gonna use it for that or anadrol i don't want to take anadrol and go to sleep

at least me that'd be savage you know i guess yeah yeah

anytime i've taken orals before sleep it's been a disaster so i was gonna say it'd be like pinning i can't pin before i go to sleep either because my sleep is dog shit because it starts to peak yeah I pin early in the morning away from, you know.

Yeah, I wouldn't use roles at night.

Unless you have, like, unless there's a reason why you're dividing it, but that's probably not based on anything.

Dimitri asks, any idea why I'm getting overly sore, even with low volume?

Diet, gear, sleep are in check.

I find for me, food seems to be kind of the regulator in the recovery.

Like, if I pull my food too low, I get sore.

Like, it doesn't matter what gear I'm on, right?

Like, if you're, if you're getting sore, revisit your diet.

It's generally a carbohydrate thing, at least for me.

I don't know how you feel about it.

I mean,

it doesn't like I could use grams of gear.

If I'm not eating, I'm not going to recover.

Okay.

Will Cody asks, do you have any info on the compound?

I don't know this compound.

Mibavadimab.

Just got asked to do a study with it.

Never heard of it.

Mibav.

Mibava.

We can look it up and talk about it next time.

I have no idea.

Oh, shit.

Okay.

And then FDS asks, peptides risks.

Which peptides?

Like, BPC?

What does that mean?

He's just like...

Peptide risks.

So I'm assuming you're just...

IGF is a peptide.

Growth hormone is a peptide.

That one definitely has some risks.

Yeah, I mean, if it's like BPC or TB500, I would say there's probably no risk unless you're just really done with it.

I mean, growth hormone we talked about before, IGF.

Yeah, I mean, IGF is not something I, unless you're very advanced, I wouldn't screw my IGF.

I think the other, like, like, over-the-counter, like immunoasylum, like peptides, like, whatever, like I don't think there's any risk with those.

Would you say there's any other risks aside from like being concerned about like, I don't know, like tumor growth or, I don't know, tissue growth with IGF?

Are there any other risks?

Hypoglycemia, severe hypoglycemia.

So if guys,

some of the consult stuff I do with some of the open guys is they have to figure out, we have to determine how to use insulin, what the dose is, because you have to change these things when you add IGF.

You have to change the timing of them, to change the dose, because it you can go really hypo if you mix the two like you don't want to use igf and and uh insulin together gotcha okay and then last question troy jenkins asks risk of using peds with a slight heart murmur

um yeah i mean if you have structural stuff with your heart i mean i would have a cardiologist look at it because a lot of times those heart murmurs are misdiagnosed like if you were a general practitioner diagnosed it i would go get echo cardigram.

I'd do stress tests.

I would do all sorts of cardio workup before I would, right?

Now, TRT, in theory, this is not, I'm not giving medical advice to someone I don't know or I've never seen because that's not legal.

I would say TRT in theory should improve cardiac function in men and testosterone is cardio protective in men.

Estrogen is sexually dimorphic.

Estrogen is not cardioprotective in men.

Unlike what was said on more plates, more dates, it is cardioprotective in women.

So when we see heart attacks in the ER, almost all the time they have elevated estrogen and low testosterone.

So it's the opposite of what bodybuilders have been spewing about estrogen.

So in theory, TRT would be cardioprotective, but I'm not telling this kid to do TRT if I don't know what's wrong with his heart.

I mean, isn't there a different situation, though, if testosterone is high and estrogen is high?

Isn't that different than estrogen being high when testosterone is low?

Well, that's going to be even worse for you, but there's no reason for estrogen to be out of range.

It has no function out of range in a manner.

Or like, yeah, I mean, like high within range, I'd say.

As long as it's in range, it doesn't make a difference where it is.

Like, that's an individual thing.

I feel best with mine around 30.

Some guys like it, you know, a little bit higher than that.

But there's once you've gone, you know, out of range, it's literally just out of range, not doing anything.

Yeah.

Okay.

Gotcha.

Making you wet and moody.

Making you wet and moody.

And not wet in a good way.

All right.

Cool, cool, cool.

I have one last question I ask everybody at the end of every podcast.

But if you were to disappear from the world tomorrow or leave the world and you had one message you could send to the entire world today, what would that message be?

Oh, shit.

um,

that's a tricky one.

I have no idea.

Tell my wife and kids I love them.

We'll keep it there.

That's a good one.

All right.

Thanks for coming on, man.

That was awesome.

That was awesome.

Very in-depth.

I'd probably have to listen to it like three times myself just to absorb everything myself.

We could do more.

We could do more.

I'm super done.

Super done.

Thanks for coming on again.

Where can everybody find you?

On Instagram, Kurt.havens.

On YouTube, Kurt.havens.

And I have stuff on anabolicbodybuilding.com.

I have stuff on Justin Harris's website as well.

My GH book is on my website, which is

atomiclifecoaching.com.

And I also have a forum,

which allows more people to interact with me if they have questions for me and they can't do coaching or whatever.

That is forum.atomiclifecoaching.com.

Oh, yeah.

I'm really glad to see all your success, man.

Awesome, brother.

Super awesome.

Hope it continues to climb.

Thank you.

Thanks for watching, guys.

If you guys would like to support us, raise us a five-star in Apple Podcast, Spotify, or anywhere you find podcasts.

Subscribe me to the YouTube channel and click on the bell button.

This is what gets us sick, knowledgeable guests like Kurt today.

Thanks, bro.

Thank you.

Catch you next time.

See ya.

Peace.

Peace.