#1150 Dr. Richard Huntsman | Doctor Explains How To Increase Your Testosterone

Dr. Richard Huntsman is a chiropractor with a master's degree in nutrition, he also has a practice that focuses on creating healthier humans by improving their lifestyle and nutrition. In this conversation, we cover insulin resistance, estrogenic foods, testosterone, magnesium, vitamin D, sleep, stress, TRT, & much more. ======================= Announcing LYCEUM | Miami, a day-long event on March 4th, 2023 in Miami hosted by Pomp. We’re gathering an explosive group of experts to engage in a series of fascinating discussions. We'll cover topics from investing, emerging tech, scientific research, sports, music and more. We have some massive names being announced via Twitter throughout January so stay tuned for details. This will not be your typical event and it certainly won’t be one you want to miss. We’re going to learn a lot, make some smart friends, and as always, we’re going to have fun. Spots are limited so head to lyceummiami.com to buy your ticket today. ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 200,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/ =======================

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. We have no advertisers on this podcast, so it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. Dr. Richard Huntsman is a chiropractor with a master's degree in nutrition. He also has a practice that focuses on creating healthier humans by improving their lifestyle and nutrition on a daily basis.

• 0:43Anthony Pompliano?

  In this conversation, we covered a lot, including insulin resistance, estrogenic foods, testosterone, magnesium, vitamin D, sleep, stress, TRT, and much more. I really enjoyed this conversation with Dr. Huntsman, and I learned a lot. I hope that all of you also take a lot from this conversation. Once you get done listening, jump on Twitter and let us know what you agreed with, what you disagree with, what you liked and what you didn't like. I always appreciate the feedback and it helps us build better conversations and better episodes for you. Here is my conversation with Dr. Richard Huntsman.

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• 2:29Speaker 04

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 2:53Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Dr. Huntsman here with me. I want to talk to you because the testosterone level in America and really around the world has been dropping at an alarming rate. And there's a lot of debate as to why it's happening. Can it stop dropping? Can we actually reverse it? And there's a macro conversation around society's testosterone level, the average testosterone level dropping. But there's also what you can do on an individual level. And so maybe a great place to start is just like, why has testosterone been dropping so aggressively over the last couple of decades?

• 3:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, so it seems like what we're finding, they've done studies, is we're dropping about a percent per year on average. And so what that means is, you know, when you're in your 40s, your testosterone is about what your dad's would have been in his 60s or what your grandpa's would have been in his 60s or 70s. I think the biggest reason comes down to mainly two things. Insulin resistance, which is a growing epidemic. It's the most common condition that people suffer from in the world. And then the estrogenic chemicals that are in our food. And so it boils down to basically, we're getting poisoned every day by all these chemicals and our nutrition is just not what it used to be. We're eating way more sugar, way more processed food, all the seed oils that we can get into. But It's lifestyle factors that are driving this down.

• 4:09Anthony Pompliano?

  So what is insulin resistance? Let's start there. You're saying that's one of these two factors. What exactly does that mean?

• 4:15Speaker 05

  So insulin resistance, I define it with two things. They have to be in a state where their body, certain, it doesn't have to be every cell in the body, but some, some of the cells of their body are not responding normally to the hormone insulin. And insulin is what dictates what our body does with sugar. Insulin's the hormone where it'll tell our body, hey, put sugar here, put sugar there. And then the second point for insulin resistance would be that they have too much insulin. So we call them hyperinsulinemia, just meaning their body is producing way too much of it. And this is what, you know, if you've ever been told you're prediabetic or you, you hear those types of terms. Prediabetes is insulin resistance. Insulin resistance will be going on for 10 to 15 years even before someone gets diagnosed as a diabetic.

• 5:00Anthony Pompliano?

  And what are the tests that somebody would take to know whether they're insulin resistant or not?

• 5:05Speaker 05

  The, there's two, two tests and it's pretty simple. It's a simple blood draw. You would take a fasting insulin and that, that number will range anywhere from, it depends on the lab, but three to 23. I want to see people under seven.

• 5:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 5:21Speaker 05

  And on a fasting insulin, so you'd go in, you haven't eaten breakfast, they draw your blood. The other test that you can do, and it's a bit more involved, but it's a better test would be what they call glucose tolerance test, but you take it with insulin as well. So what you do is you go in, they take your blood. Then you drink what's basically the equivalent of a couple of cokes. It's 75 grams of glucose. And then every half hour or hour, depending on the lab, they'll take your blood again. And they're seeing how is your body responding to that glucose?

• 5:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Interesting. And for a healthy person, what would their body's response be? And then for an unhealthy person, what would that response be?

• 5:56Speaker 05

  Yeah. So for a healthy person, their number, you know, I would want to see after a meal, you know, on a glucose test, it's different, but after a meal, typically your insulin will triple. So if you're starting at five and we triple to 15, great, then we're just going to go back, right back down. But some people, I ran, I ran a lady's blood the other day and she's starting at 27. So now she goes and eats something like that. She's going to spike up to like a 75 or even to a hundred if her insulin's not working. Cause it, cause it can't get the blood out of the sugar, the, sorry, the sugar out of the blood fast enough.

• 6:28Speaker 05

  And so we're just looking for those levels to spike up for a second and then they come right back down within a couple of hours is ideal.

• 6:34Anthony Pompliano?

  And if the higher your insulin level is, like as a base, or kind of in a normal or fasted time, is it fair to say that it's likely to spike even higher? Like, there's an extreme to the spike because you're already starting at this elevated level? So if a healthy person spikes 3X, an unhealthy base would actually spike 4 or 5X?

• 6:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's definitely, definitely possible because the reason they already have that much insulin is their body isn't responding to it. That's why we call it insulin resistant, right? Basically, these cells grow so big, insulin makes them grow, insulin makes fat cells grow. And it's the cell saying, "I'm done. I can't take anymore." And so then that pancreas, which is where insulin comes from, has to kick out more insulin to get the same response that it could have if these cells were responding normally.

• 7:21Anthony Pompliano?

  I told you before we started that, like, I'm not a doctor. I'm super, super naive when it comes to a lot of the stuff, but I've done enough reading online where, like, maybe I'm dangerous. And so is it fair to say that, like, a quote-unquote "healthy, skinny" person that doesn't have these, like, inflated fat cells, is kind of how I would describe it, they can actually accept more insulin, process the insulin, and therefore their body is kind of working as designed? Whereas people who have the fat cells, who have actually been kind of enlarged, that's where they are resistant to being able to accept the insulin? Is that like a good way to think about it?

• 7:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, we'd have to, we'd have to be careful with that anymore because we're finding more and more that there are so many people who are skinny, they look slender, they look healthy, they're still insulin resistant.

• 8:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Interesting. Why is that?

• 8:10Speaker 05

  It all boils down to what they're eating. I mean, insulin resistance is driven by what we eat. And so these people may be eating like garbage and just for whatever genetically, you know, they won the lottery where they can eat whatever they want and they don't gain weight, but metabolically, they're still unhealthy. They've done a, they did a study a few years back where they looked at, I don't know, I can't remember how many people, but they found 12% of Americans are metabolically healthy.

• 8:37Anthony Pompliano?

  12% are healthy?

• 8:39Speaker 05

  12% are metabolically healthy. And the way they were determining that is this way they measure it called metabolic syndrome. And metabolic syndrome is insulin resistant. So they checked their waist circumference, their... Triglycerides, HDL, blood pressure, there's a few things like that. 12% of people were healthy in every category and that was it. And that includes obese people and, you know, skinny people.

• 9:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Is it, if it's possible for a skinny person to be metabolically unhealthy, is it possible for a person that is above kind of the average weight to be metabolically healthy?

• 9:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, in general, it depends on how much we define overweight, right? But if there, if someone's gotten actually 10 to 15 pounds, 20 pounds, yeah, they could be metabolically healthy. Now, if someone's got 50 pounds of extra weight, no, they're, I don't care how good they feel. Metabolically, there's something that needs fixed.

• 9:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, and you said, the first was insulin resistance. The second major contributor is this like estrogenic kind of food composition. What exactly does that mean?

• 9:41Speaker 05

  So there's, there's a bunch of different chemicals that we call estrogenic. Estrogenic means when it gets into the body, it's going to act like estrogen. So our cells have these little like receptors that just can take on different hormones, take on different substances, right, and kind of turns them on. Some of these chemicals will get in there and they turn on our estrogen receptors. Now, how this plays in the, you know, context of testosterone would be now as a man, I have a lot more estrogen activity than I normally should, which will suppress testosterone, right?

• 10:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Because the more estrogen in my body, the more my body is told, don't produce testosterone generally.

• 10:17Speaker 05

  Essentially, yeah. The body is just in a state of higher estrogen. So the brain thinks, oh, I don't need to produce testosterone right now. Because estrogen is converted from testosterone everywhere. All estrogen was testosterone first. And so if the bodies, if the brain sees, oh, there's a bunch of estrogen around, oh, I must have produced enough testosterone, I'm good.

• 10:39Anthony Pompliano?

  I can skip a skip.

• 10:40Speaker 05

  Exactly. It just, it just starts to shut things down. Now, this, these chemicals are in our food, they're in our water, they're in our cosmetics, body wash, soap, you name it, these chemicals are just everywhere right now.

• 10:55Anthony Pompliano?

  And why is that? Is this the food companies that are putting it in there? Is it just like a natural byproduct of them trying to, I don't know, refrigeration or the way that we filter water or like, like it's not like things that are actually made to enhance your desire for the food? Like how much on the spectrum of conspiracy theory maybe, do you think like the actual increase in estrogen in food is?

• 11:21Speaker 05

  It goes to a little bit of both of what you said. Some of it is like, take food coloring, for instance, that's purely put in there to make the food more desirable. Red, red forty and red three in particular are the ones that get pointed to as this estrogen issue. The only reason they're putting red forty in food is to make it look better, make it look more appealing. You'll find it in a lot of kids' food. Like, my wife, my wife bought some Lucky Charms the other day and I looked at the ingredients. I said, that's got red forty in that. We're not eating that. Not the, not that we eat a ton of cereal anyway, but the other, the other side of it is like plastics. So they use these ingredients in plastics that for whatever reason, they're cheaper, they make the plastic a little better, like BPA or phthalates are the two most common. And they just leach into the water,

• 12:04Speaker 05

  they, they absorb through our skin if we're putting them on our skin, things like that. So some of it is just cost, I'm sure. A lot of these ingredients are cheaper. And a lot of these ingredients have been banned in other countries. You look at the EU and even China, you know, places like that, they, they have banned a lot of these things. In America, you know, we're not big on banning things and I, you know, I'm, I'm for that generally, but some of these chemicals, we just shouldn't be using.

• 12:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. The one example I always use, almost every single one of my friends has some story where they went to a European country at some point in their life. They ate like absolute not, you know, nonsense. They ate the pastries, they ate all the bread. They, like, everything that you're not supposed to eat, right? And they came back and somehow they still weighed the same or less. And some people, it's because they don't ever move and they were walking a lot or something. But there's many people who are like, I've measured, like, I took the same number of steps in Europe as I did in America. How can I eat so poorly? But really, it boils down to, from my understanding, it's just like, they use better ingredients. And so, yes, maybe you're eating more carbohydrates or breads or whatever. It's just nowhere near what's actually put in the food in America.

• 13:16Speaker 05

  Yeah. Well, and a big part too is the sugar. You go eat somewhere outside of America and you eat the same exact food, it's gonna taste like half as sweet at times. A lot of people come to America and they're like, everything tastes sweet because we put so much sugar. And then if we get on the estrogenic side, the two biggest ones when we're talking pastries and breads and things like that would be glyphosate, which is Roundup. And atrazine, which is another herbicide type, you know, weed killer. Atrazine is banned in almost every other country. We use it by far the most. We use 80 million pounds of it a year in America, mostly on corn. The next closest country I think uses 200,000 pounds and that's Brazil.

• 13:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Wow.

• 13:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, like it's unbelievable. The EU has banned atrazine, China has banned atrazine, and it is highly estrogenic, meaning it gets in the body and activates those estrogen receptors. And so if you're eating corn, if you're eating, they spray it on soy as well. If you're eating either of those, you're getting atrazine, unless you're eating organic. And then glyphosate, which is Roundup, that's the one a lot of people have heard of because of Monsanto and the lawsuits against them over this chemical. It, it's not estrogenic per se, but it damages the testicles in men. They've tested this in rats. They can't really run these tests in humans because it's not ethical, but... So you get these two chemicals, the glyphosate mainly on our wheat, but also in the corn,

• 14:36Speaker 05

  and then atrazine, and basically anytime you eat some grains, you're getting bombarded with these chemicals.

• 14:42Anthony Pompliano?

  What does it do to the testicles?

• 14:44Speaker 05

  So they've shown in rat studies with glyphosate that it damages what are called the Leydig cells or Leydig cells. Those are the cells that produce testosterone. That's just one of the things that glyphosate does. Glyphosate has been tied to cancer. It's been tied to leaky gut, which is one that you hear more and more about where the, you know, just gut dysfunction, basically. And that's why there's, there's multiple class action lawsuits against Monsanto right now over Roundup. And that's one where it, that's one that really bothers me that they use it a lot because a lot of times they are spraying it on the wheat or corn, not necessarily because of the weeds, but their crops will ripen faster when they spray it with Roundup. So then they get their crops quicker.

• 15:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Higher yield.

• 15:30Speaker 05

  Higher yield, exactly.

• 15:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And why do you think America hasn't banned this stuff? Is it just there's large corporations, they're making more money because of higher yields? They have, you know, less loss because of weeds and things like that? And so it's like a pure, we use this because people make more money or are there other reasons?

• 15:45Speaker 05

  I think it's a mix. I think there's definitely big, big food is very powerful. And big food is really linked to, you know, Big Pharma, not to get too conspiracy, but they're very linked, their lobbying power is very strong.

• 15:58Speaker 05

  I also think part of it is, you know, in America, we're not big on banning things. That's kinda, you know, we kinda like to take the government out of things. At least I do. I like to keep the government out of my stuff. And so I think that's a big part of it, too, is we just don't look at it. But the F, I think the biggest problem is the FDA. They move so slowly at anything. Atrazine, we've known as a problem for a while. They spent five years doing a study of how much atrazine is in our food and our water. It's what's turning the frogs female. When you hear, you know, Alex Jones and those saying it's turning, they're turning the frogs gay. Well, it's, it's not really, but frogs are being turned infertile by atrazine.

• 16:38Anthony Pompliano?

  What, what is happening there?

• 16:40Speaker 05

  I don't know.

• 16:41Anthony Pompliano?

  I have heard the, I've seen the headlines and I was like, okay, whatever, right?

• 16:44Speaker 05

  I don't know the exact mechanism on how it damages frogs, but I do know that atrazine is being shown over and over again to make frogs infertile, make fish infertile. And again, we can't really study it in humans, but it's not that big of a leap to say, maybe it's doing damage to us as well. The, the amount that it takes to harm frogs is something around 200 units in the water. Our regulations from the FDA allow 3,000 units in our water. And so we can have 10 times as much, they say is safe. In the EU, zero is allowed in the water, you know, places like that. So I think a big part is the FDA just dragging their feet and not doing their job.

• 17:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. With water specifically, um, what is like the best practices, right? So, uh, don't drink tap water is like, I think generally something that people now are starting to kind of wake up to. Uh, it's important to call out that there's places in America that, you know, uh, Jackson, Mississippi, right? Uh, I think Flint, Michigan had a huge issue as well, where like literally the water is, looks like it's a third world country, right? So like, those are the extremes outliers. And I think everyone kind of, uh, understands we should immediately address those. And like, if you live in America and don't have clean drinking water, like that's bullshit, right? And we, and we should solve those problems. But what you're talking about is not the extremes. You're talking about like literally pick any city in America.

• 18:03Anthony Pompliano?

  And if I go to the faucet and I take tap water, it has these elevated, uh, levels of various chemicals that are in it. Is it simple as like I put my water into like a Brita filter thing that I store in my refrigerator? Or like what should people be doing?

• 18:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, filtering is key. I mean, that's bare minimum what someone should be doing. Get a Brita filter, get one of those that you put on your tap. Now, they're not the best filters out there. That's why they cost, you know, they're fairly expensive, which is great too for someone who who needs that.

• 18:34Speaker 05

  Everywhere you are, our water has contaminants in it, right? There's no purely, very little pure clean water anymore. Now, if you live in somewhere that's a high ag place like Texas or some places in the Midwest, you're going to have a lot more of these type of chemicals in your water. But somewhere like here, like, you know, down here in Florida, I know you've got high levels of estrogen in your water, just straight estrogen.

• 19:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, great.

• 19:02Speaker 05

  It's turning you more feminine, just from birth control. Women are taking birth control, they go to the bathroom. The filtration process that the cities do does not pull out what the chemical called EE2. That is birth control. And so, but charcoal, a charcoal filter, like a Brita, will do that. It will pull it out. So that's, in my house, I have an under the counter two-stage filter. Costs like 200 bucks. And that's all we drink. That's all we cook with. I'll wash dishes with the regular tap water, but for drinking water, we filter everything. And my kids know that. We've just trained them where there's some in the fridge, they can grab some or they get it out of tap. Like, and we live in an area where we're considered to have some of the cleanest water in the country. Yeah, out in Wyoming where I live, I'm still filtering everything.

• 19:47Speaker 05

  Because I just don't want any of that stuff.

• 19:49Anthony Pompliano?

  And how big of an improvement do you think it actually does to the water, right? Like, I'm assuming you can't get to perfect, but it's a pretty big leap by just simply filtering?

• 19:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, the only way you're going to get like the purest, cleanest water you could get would be through distillation. You get a distiller, they're fairly expensive, they're kind of a pain in the butt. But if you want pure clean water, it's going to have everything out of it. Get a water distilling station.

• 20:14Anthony Pompliano?

  How much does it cost?

• 20:16Speaker 05

  You know, and on the counter one for, you know, that'll make about a gallon of time, you're about five, 600 bucks. You can get them cheaper on Amazon or somewhere like that, but they're out of China and I don't really trust the components. If you want like one that's gonna do, you know, 12, 20 gallons at a time, you're into the thousands then.

• 20:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 20:33Speaker 05

  But they're great. Like I, I used to only drink distilled water and I did notice a bit of difference, but with a good high quality filter, you're still gonna get out over 99% of stuff. And the, the thing with water is you're probably not gonna notice a huge difference when you start filtering your water. As far as your health goes, you're not gonna notice this big, oh my gosh, I feel so much better. It's more of a, let's just stop doing as much damage as we can.

• 20:57Anthony Pompliano?

  It's a compounding thing.

• 20:58Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 20:58Anthony Pompliano?

  You're heading in the right direction now.

• 20:59Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 21:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, the water quality that comes in a water bottle is the next thing I want to talk about. So compare that to the tap water. Forget the plastic component of the water bottle, right? But just like what's actually the water in the water bottle, how much cleaner is that normally than a tap in, you know, any city in America?

• 21:18Speaker 05

  Depends on the company.

• 21:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 21:20Speaker 05

  Some of these companies, and I'm not gonna call anyone out by name because I don't know, but some of these companies literally are taking tap water and putting it in a bottle of water and selling it, you know? That's what they're doing. Now, if you take a company like, I will, a company I do like and what I tend to buy when I'm out and about is Smart Water. And it is more expensive. Smart Water is distilled. They, they distill their water and then bottle it. And so, yeah, you'll still get some plastics, but I know that the water when it got put in there, you know, assuming they're not lying about their process, is clean. And so that's, that's where I tend to go. You know, spring waters and, you know, all these other companies, I just don't know what they're doing. Are they, I, I usually tend to reach for spring water if I can't get a, you know, if I can't get a Smart Water, um, I, you know, ones that just say, you

• 22:05Speaker 05

  know, bottled in Atlanta, Georgia or whatever, I tend to avoid those because I just assume they're putting tap water in there.

• 22:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And then the plastic bottle, what is that doing to the water? So if you put clean water, and let's say this, the Smart Water, you put that in there, uh, and it's as good as you're gonna get, you know, in a kind of prepackaged, uh, consumption, what does the plastic bottle do to change that water that's so bad?

• 22:26Speaker 05

  So the plastic is gonna leach into the water, for sure. When, when plastic is heated and there's a liquid inside, some of that plastic is gonna get in there. So, and I'm even talking like room temperature, it doesn't have to be real hot. So when they're being shipped and all that. And so everyone knows about BPA. Most people have heard of BPA. And so a lot of, a lot of companies are moving away from BPA, but there's this other chemical called phthalates, which actually starts with a P. It's PTH, um, phthalates.

• 22:56Speaker 05

  Smart Water for one. Uh, if you see, if you look at the bottom, you know, every plastic thing has its, you know, little recycle symbol and a number. Number one is, has phthalates. That's what Smart Water uses. So I've kind of even like on them, like, gosh, I can't even drink them because now I'm getting phthalates, which are very estrogenic. Again, going back to that, they turn on your estrogen. Phthalates, they say are the most common chemical we are exposed to every day, and that is from plastic. And so, yeah, anytime you're drinking plastic, you know, bottled water, you're going to be getting some plastic. Now you have to kind of weigh that. When I travel, like, like I am now, I drink bottled water. I just know I'm going to be getting some plastic, but hopefully, you know, the, hopefully the water in there is going to do less damage than, you know, if I were to drink the water out of the sink.

• 23:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Uh, there's a liquid death right there. Uh, I'm so scared to do this, but if you grab that, let's see what they have because, um, I'm an investor in this business and it had nothing to do with healthy water. It literally was cool branding. They're going to go, they're going to sell this, right? But in it is water and also they don't have plastic bottles, right? It's the, uh, kind of more like a beer can, if you will. Um, that one, I think maybe flavored. So it probably has some stuff in it.

• 24:07Speaker 05

  They even, they even say death to plastic on here. They're anti-plastic. I love it.

• 24:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Yeah. Well, they're definitely against the, uh, big plastic is going down.

• 24:16Speaker 05

  We're on board.

• 24:16Anthony Pompliano?

  But, but I wonder, you know, forget the branding for a second, forget any flavors or whatever, like if water companies simply put water into a can rather than a plastic bottle, that seems like, based on what you're saying, like that'd be a pretty big improvement for most people.

• 24:31Speaker 05

  I, I think so. You know, I haven't studied too much the interaction that it would have with, with, you know, this, this made aluminum or something like that. But yeah, I, I think it would. Now cost wise, you're probably increasing your costs quite a bit to do that. Yeah. The, the less plastic we can use, especially from our drinks, the better. A lot of people will drink their, you know, coffee through a plastic lid. They're just pounding plastic the whole time they're doing that.

• 24:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Maybe I shouldn't do that.

• 24:56Speaker 05

  Now take that lid off. And even a lot of-

• 24:58Anthony Pompliano?

  I use a straw. That's plastic.

• 25:01Speaker 05

  Get yourself a metal straw. It'd probably be better. Like, it really would. And even a lot of those coffee cups are lined with plastic. So you put, when you put a hot liquid in some to plastic, you're making it even worse.

• 25:12Anthony Pompliano?

  I'll drink iced coffee. I guess I'm avoiding a little bit of plastic, maybe. Okay, so where else are plastics like really kind of infiltrating our life? Obviously bottled water is like a no brainer. It's something that people, they go to the grocery store, they go to the gas station, the airport, wherever, like they're picking it up, they're using it. They give it to their kids quite a bit, right? Sporting events, things like that. Like it's literally has infiltrated society. Are there other big areas where you try to avoid interacting with plastics? Hey guys, what's going on? I hope that you're enjoying this conversation, but I wanted to interrupt for a quick second and tell you about a brand new conference that I'm hosting on March 4th at the Miami Beach Convention Center. The event is called Lyceum Miami,

• 25:53Anthony Pompliano?

  and tickets are completely free for anyone who wants to come. I'm bringing together many of the most popular guests from the podcast over the last couple of years. Some of the guest speakers that we've already announced are people like Vivek Ramaswamy from Strive Asset Management, or Delian and Mike Solana from Founder's Fund, Chris Williamson from the Modern Wisdom Podcast, Cody Sanchez from Contrarian Thinking, and billionaire Christian Agermeyer, among many others. I've got a number of amazing surprise guests as well, some that you definitely will not expect, and others that come from walks of life that you will be scratching your head as to how I even got them to show up. But come check

• 26:34Anthony Pompliano?

  out Lyceum Miami on March 4th. The Lyceum was a public gym in Athens, Greece, where people used to come together, talk about ideas, and debate topics that were important to society. I want to meet people in person, in real life, once again, after three years of a hiatus from real life events. And so, I'm hosting the event, and as I mentioned, anyone from anywhere can come to this event completely for free. All you need to do is go to lyceummiami.com, and you'll be able to pick up a free general admission ticket. You claim your ticket in order to get in through the doors. Lyceum Miami is going to be a great time. So come check it out. Come hang out with me.

• 27:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Many of the popular guests from the podcast and other like-minded individuals. Lyceum Miami, March 4th, Miami Beach Convention Center. I hope to see you there. All right, let's get back into this conversation.

• 27:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's hard because like I said, plastic is so pervasive. There's some companies that do make chicken, you know, and they will inject these brines or, you know, something like that into the chicken before they sell it. A lot of times those brines will have phthalates in them, not just contamination from the syringe. There's literally that ingredient is in what they're injecting. So even some of our meat, like you just can't avoid it altogether. It's impossible. Like I said, they have found phthalates in polar bears, you know, up in the North Pole. These, these polar bears have plastic in them that they got from eating the salmon that got from the water, you know? And so I think doing the bare minimum would be to avoid drinking hot drinks out of, you know, plastic when we can.

• 28:16Speaker 05

  And just minimize the use of those type of things. You'll do, you do pretty good because even like if I go buy a steak at the grocery store. That's wrapped in plastic, there's gonna be a little bit of contamination there. But it's not enough that I'm going to worry about that steak. I'm still, because I think the benefits of being the steak are going to far outweigh the little bit of plastic that I got in there. But the other, the other big part would be cosmetics. These products that, you know, lotion, sunscreens, that type of stuff, soaps even, they will have these chemicals. So you want to look for phthalate free on labels. And if they don't have it on there, and that's just one of the problems with cosmetics. But if they don't have phthalate free on there, I'm just assuming that there's phthalates in there.

• 29:00Anthony Pompliano?

  And what are the other problems with the cosmetics? And I actually saw a graphic where I think it had a. Woman and it was like, you know, women are being bombarded by all these chemicals and it was going through, uh, you know, nighttime skin routine, uh, makeup, uh, perfume, like it had kind of like, like the average American woman, here's all the different things and they were trying to basically compare it to decades ago. Uh, some of this was still there, but some of it wasn't. And so what else are things to be concerned about from a cosmetic standpoint?

• 29:31Speaker 05

  That would be the parabens is what they're called. Um, and, and more and more companies are figuring this out. You will see paraben free on a lot. Parabens are used to, and phthalates both are used to kind of help carry fragrances. So if you're using something that has a fragrance in it and it doesn't say paraben free or phthalate free, you just assume it's in there. Um, cause sometimes they're hard to spot on the label. Like I can't even remember all the different scientific names they put on these things to try to hide them. Um, so yeah, parabens, again, just they're another one. They promote the estrogen, which in women is a huge problem for breast cancer. Breast cancer is very much an estrogen driven cancer. And I, you know, I'm not going to say that that's why we see rises in these

• 30:12Speaker 05

  things, but it's not helping for sure. And so, yeah, if you're really looking at cosmetics, you want to avoid ones that don't say paraben free on them if they have a fragrance. And then another, another one that some people are going to hate to hear is lavender.

• 30:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Hmm. What's going on with lavender?

• 30:29Speaker 05

  It has been shown to promote estrogen, just like these other ones. So lavender in particular, they, they've looked at it with like young boys even, like, you know, their mom puts the lavender lotion on or whatever. Lavender's everywhere, right? Everyone like smell lavender and these boys will start to get what we call gynecomastia, you know, where they basically start to grow breasts in these 12 year old boys.

• 30:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 30:51Speaker 05

  And they have linked that to lavender. Yeah. And so I personally, as a man, I avoid anything with lavender in it. Um, and you know, even lavender essential oil. I don't think the essential is as bad as some of this, but I just, I just don't even want to risk it. I'm just going to stay away from it.

• 31:05Anthony Pompliano?

  So when it comes to lotions and I guess shampoos and soaps and like all this stuff, do you just try to go for scent free? Or what do you try to optimize for?

• 31:16Speaker 05

  I I'm lucky enough where I live, there's a company that makes soaps, makes things like that. So I'm I'm mainly avoiding lavender. And then with them, I know they're making it from goat milk. And I know they're just using a few other essential oils that I'm not worried about. So I use that. That's what I have switched to using.

• 31:32Anthony Pompliano?

  What is the name? Do you remember?

• 31:33Speaker 05

  Salt River, Salt River Soap Works. They're out in in Star Valley, Wyoming, where I live. And so that's one one avenue you could take is is going that route. I also don't use a lot of cosmetics. I really, my wife hates when I say this, I don't wash my hair. My hair doesn't need washed. It's not getting dirty. Now, if I go work out, maybe, but even then, I really, I just rinse it out and clean it out and I'm good to go. And so even on, you know, my body, I don't use a ton of cosmetics. I think we use way too much. Like you said, when people lather stuff on.

• 32:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. I've never been someone who does that. I actually, I've told a story before, I think I was like 27, 28 years old. I was talking to my wife and she was like, where's your face wash stuff? And I was like, I've never washed my face before. She's like, what do you mean? And I was like, well, the most I had done at that point in my life was like the bar of soap.

• 32:22Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 32:23Anthony Pompliano?

  In the shower, like whatever, I got some dirt. And it blew me away in terms of how much people put on the face. Now, face wash, I'm sure is not nearly as bad as if you're going and sticking on, you know, a pound of makeup every day.

• 32:37Speaker 05

  Right.

• 32:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? But is there things that you can do? For example, I know that there's been this huge rise in what I'll call men's skincare. So obviously, traditionally and kind of as a generalization, women have really, really been focused on taking care of their skin. Men, probably not as much. Kind of, I was like the quintessential example. But there has been this rise now of nighttime skin routines or like lotions to put on your face, you know, for the day or whatever. Is that all kind of just nonsense? Or are there maybe like healthy versions of it? What do you think? You can say it's nonsense if you think it's nonsense.

• 33:12Speaker 05

  Well, it depends on what your goal is, right? If your goal is to make your skin look more like a woman, then, then okay. You know, and I say that because, not, not in a bad way, right? If someone wants their skin to look like that, great, you do you. But these chemicals that are gonna be in there are literally turning men more feminine. That's not me saying that, that's scientific journals saying that. So I, yeah, I think the less we're putting on, the better. Because skin will readily, readily absorb these chemicals. And so I, yeah, I, I, unlike you, I've never washed my face. Granted, I didn't suffer with acne like my wife did her whole life. But I think if she had used less of those things, I think her acne would have been better than it was.

• 33:54Anthony Pompliano?

  When I was in seventh grade, I had really bad acne. Like there was like a, I don't know, a six month period, it was horrible, right? And it's like, uh, there's like a confidence component to it that you're just like, oh, get this shit off my face, right? Whatever.

• 34:06Speaker 05

  It's brutal.

• 34:06Anthony Pompliano?

  And I remember, uh, that I went, uh, with my mother and, uh, there was these like pads that you could get, you could do it. And it actually would like burn a little bit, right? Because you're putting this stuff on there or whatever. And I remember thinking to myself, like, thankfully after, you know, six months or whatever, I was able to not have to do it anymore. But there's people who've been doing that for years, right? Even into, you know, kind of their twenties or thirties, uh, they use that. And I can't imagine that those chemicals are good for you, right?

• 34:33Speaker 05

  No, definitely not good for you. Now, might they help the acne and that has some benefit for sure. When, when I work with some of these kids that have acne, it's, it's terrible. Like it destroys their confidence, destroys their ability to talk to people. But yeah, to do that for decades, yeah, I can't imagine that's doing anything good in the body.

• 34:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. What about like colognes and perfumes? Do you wear any, are there concerns around them?

• 34:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, there are. I, I haven't, I haven't worn a cologne since I got married because I didn't feel like I needed to anymore, right? So I haven't worn a cologne, maybe my wife would say otherwise, but you know, I haven't worn a cologne in probably 10 years, but. Again, it's got a fragrance in it. It's being carried by a phthalate, most likely. And so, yeah, again, you're spraying. Now, if you're just spraying it on your clothes, you're probably not getting too much. So if you're someone that wants to wear some cologne or something, or some perfume, I would say spray it on your clothes. Don't spray it on your skin, would be my recommendation.

• 35:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I mean, and maybe that's kind of like the middle ground, right? Is people like, hey, I don't want to smell like shit, but I also don't want to be basically killing myself, right? And then in terms of not washing your hair that much, use, I'll call it a special soap, but just kind of a healthier soap. Is there anything else that you do from like a personal care or cosmetics, anything like that, that's noteworthy?

• 35:49Speaker 05

  No, I mean, for me, thankfully, I've been blessed with pretty good skin and that kind of stuff. I got some Latin American heritage. And so I personally haven't had to do much other than that. And my skin, you know, my skin, everything stays pretty healthy.

• 36:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. The, um, the reason why I originally found you on the internet was you had this thread, and you were talking about how at the age of 24, you had a very low testosterone level, and you were able to increase your testosterone as you got older.

• 36:19Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 36:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Help me understand, like, what is the average testosterone level of somebody in America? Or like, what should it be? And then like, what's a low range and a high range? Just so we can start to understand, like, how you move these numbers?

• 36:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, so we'll talk about it in terms of total testosterone, since that's what most people know. It's not the best measure. I prefer a free testosterone measure, and we can get into that, too. But for total testosterone, except at 24, 25 years old, I was about 250 nanograms per deciliter. That's really low. That would be considered hypogonadism.

• 36:52Anthony Pompliano?

  What is that?

• 36:53Speaker 05

  Meaning your testicles are not working like they're supposed to. Like, literally, you're not producing nearly as much testosterone as you should. The upper range, the upper range that labs will put on testosterone would be 900 to 1,000.

• 37:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 37:07Speaker 05

  Which, when we're in our teenage years, boys, we're gonna be, we're gonna have levels of around 1,000, 1,200, even 1,500 for a really high T kid. And I don't think physiologically there really should be an upper limit. I don't think if someone's at a thousand and the range says 900, I don't think a thousand's bad at all. The average in America right now is going to be between 350 to 450 in most middle aged men. That number should be double that. We should be in the 600, 700 range.

• 37:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. And natural, we'll just talk about natural testosterone for the moment. So no TRT, none of that stuff, but natural testosterone levels, can you have too much? Whether you're a kid or in middle age?

• 37:47Speaker 05

  I don't think so. Some people, you know, try to tie testosterone to aggressiveness and criminality and it's never been really shown to be true. And so I really, the things that testosterone does, let's go through that. It increases your sex drive. It increases your muscle mass, increases your bone mass, helps you look leaner and, you know, makes your appearance better, gives you better energy, better focus. Like, how can we have too much of that? Like, everyone benefits from that, men and women. Everyone could benefit from a little more of all those things.

• 38:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. So you went from 24 or 25 to kind of mid 30s and you were able to more than double your testosterone level. And maybe we can kind of go through like, what were you doing over that period of time to really kind of keep moving the testosterone level up?

• 38:36Speaker 05

  Yeah. So last I checked my levels, I'm somewhere in the 630 to 650 range, somewhere there. And rule says as I'm getting older, it should be going down. So mine has gone up. I think the biggest key for me was, I was in chiropractic school and I was having a lot of focus issues, couldn't, couldn't really function. I couldn't figure out why. I went to a friend of mine and he, he's a big gluten guy. He's celiac. He thinks a lot of people have gluten issues. So he convinced me to go off gluten for six months. Now, I'm not saying the gluten was the problem. I was insulin resistant and I didn't know I had stopped working out nearly as much as I had, you know, in my undergrad, partly because of a back injury. I blew out my back, herniated two discs,

• 39:18Speaker 05

  ended up walking with a cane for a year. And so I just was not active, was still eating the same junk that I'd been eating, you know, pizza for pizza for dinner every night. You know, we would go to Little Caesar's and eat the entire $5 pizza by ourselves, you know? And so inadvertently, what I what I've realized is as I took gluten out of my diet, it reduced my carb intake massively because I wasn't really replacing it. And so my carb intake probably went from 300 grams a day to 75 or 80 grams a day, not quite to the ketogenic level, but getting in those ranges. And so by fixing, working on that insulin resistance, just by accident, everything got better. Everything in my life improved. My focus got better. My energy was better.

• 40:02Speaker 05

  My sex drive increased and I was newly married at this time. We were trying, we were trying to have kids is why I started down this down this route of looking at my testosterone. And so for me, that was the biggest key. Now I've added things since then where I work out more, lift more weights. I've never, never been a big weight lift guy. I don't love it, but I do it now. I strength train now. At least I'm going to do 100 pushups a day, at least build some of it, just work on that muscle. And then just cleaning up the diet in general. I eat way less sugar than I used to. This estrogenic chemical world, that's more new to me. I've really started going down that in the last six months or so of getting those things out of my diet. And I expect that's gonna, I'm gonna see more improvement by doing that.

• 40:43Anthony Pompliano?

  And then alcohol as well. I think you cut out alcohol or did you bring it back?

• 40:47Speaker 05

  Well, no. So I actually, so, so I put that in the thread about that thread was, you know, I'm giving advice on what people can do. I don't drink. I never have. In my religion, we don't use alcohol. And so that wasn't something I cut out. But if someone wants to help their testosterone, they need to cut out alcohol, at least significantly reduce it. A lot of people are having a beer every day. You know, and when we were taught, we were taught, if you know, man for have one to two drinks a day would technically in the medical world be considered alcoholic. And so what alcohol is going to do is really going to deplete your B vitamins if you're drinking too much. But B vitamins are very needed for healthy testosterone levels. They help suppress certain things, keep them down so that our body can make more testosterone.

• 41:29Speaker 05

  So yeah, cutting out alcohol is a great idea if you want to boost your T.

• 41:33Anthony Pompliano?

  And then what about the relationship to weight, right? Cause I saw that you said like, if you lose weight, your testosterone levels naturally go up. And this goes back to some of the insulin conversation we started with.

• 41:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, it goes back to insulin a bit, but also just the fat cells themselves can be a problem for testosterone. So in men and women too, where that testosterone to estrogen occurs, part of that is in the fat cells themselves. This is called aromatization. So literally the fat cells, which have receptors for testosterone, testosterone gets to the fat cell. And the fat cell says, I'm going to turn you to estrogen. And then testosterone levels start to decline because literally it's just being converted. And so reducing your body weight, even 20 pounds can make a significant difference on your testosterone level because you won't get that conversion happening nearly as much.

• 42:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Really? 20 pounds could be a huge, huge difference.

• 42:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, cause most people were talking, most people are in the 30 to 40, 50 pound range. And so, you know, overweight, you know, sometimes morbidly obese is a different conversation. But yeah, you draw, if you're 40 pounds overweight and you lose 20 pounds, you're going to make a big difference for, for your energy, for your insulin resistance, but also to your testosterone levels.

• 42:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I had a friend who told me, uh, six foot, 200 pounds is kind of anyone who can be six foot and under 200 pounds. And obviously people are optimizing for different things or whatever, but like the average person, uh, that was like a line. He's like, once you start getting up into 210, 215, 220, uh, for a male, he's like, literally your height is not increasing, right? It's just you're going wider and, uh, there's this like big difference in the physiological components and measurements of your body being under 200 versus over. And I thought it was fascinating where he was just like, yeah, every height kind of has a weight that.

• 43:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Muscle mass, all this stuff kind of changes the number a little bit, but definitely being under a certain weight will completely change the way you feel and kind of the things you do on a day-to-day basis.

• 43:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the biggest, so for me, I'm 5'6", 5'7", I'm a pretty short guy. Biggest I've ever been is about 210 and I felt terrible when I was that, that big. And even if I let, let myself get up to the 190, 192 range compared to where I feel at 175 even, it's night and day difference. I have much better energy, just every part of my life feels better and that's a 15-pound difference. Now, ideally, at my height, I'm probably more closer to the 160, 155 range, depending on muscle mass, but even that difference between 175 and 190 makes a huge difference for me.

• 44:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. You also mentioned sleep. I, two years ago, was not sleeping at all. Like, I was horrible. And two years ago, I was like, I want to get better at this. And it's probably the single most important thing that I changed in my life over the last two years. And it's just like, sleep eight hours. There's all kinds of fancy stuff that you can try and do, and I've probably tried a bunch of them, right? But like, literally just sleeping eight hours, I feel like a different person than if I sleep six and a half.

• 44:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:33Anthony Pompliano?

  And what's going on in my body when I'm actually sleeping eight versus six or seven?

• 44:37Speaker 05

  Yeah. So when we don't sleep enough, our cortisol level will rise. Cortisol is, it's kind of known as the stress hormone, right? Cortisol increases your insulin resistance. So if you, one bad night of sleep, just one. So say, you got a young kid, I got young kids. Sometimes you don't get the best sleep and you feel like crap the next day. That one night of bad sleep will make you more insulin resistant that next day.

• 45:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Wow.

• 45:03Speaker 05

  Just one night. And so imagine someone who's been doing that for decades, right? It's that increase in cortisol. Cortisol decreases testosterone, to tie it back to the testosterone, and again, also increases insulin resistance. And so, yeah, the key is sleep eight hours. Like, I have so many patients tell me, where they're like, "Yeah, I sleep three hours every night and I feel great." And like, dude, you're not- The exception to the rule. There are some exceptions. There are some people, Matthew Walker has done a lot of studies on these. Um, he wrote the book, Why We Sleep. And yeah, there are, this is a very, very small percentage where they do function well at four hours sleep.

• 45:42Speaker 05

  Ninety nine point nine nine percent of us, we need eight hours of sleep every night. And that's, like you said, that's the easiest thing people can do to make themselves feel better.

• 45:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. I think it's Ryan Holiday. Uh, in one of his books, he talks about like, um, most people aren't disciplined to sleep eight hours. They don't have the discipline to do it. And his point was, uh, for most people, your job, your life, your kids, your family, you know, what, something in your kind of day to day requires you to wake up at a certain time. And some people that's, you know, five AM, some people that's eight AM. Whatever the time is, you, you, you got a kind of a hard start.

• 46:18Anthony Pompliano?

  And so the discipline is actually not when you wake up, it's when you go to sleep. And we are programmed as a society to stay up later, TV and, and, you know, phones and dinners and like all these type of things. But his point was like, if you have the discipline to go to sleep at eight or nine o'clock, which just saying someone's gonna go to sleep at eight o'clock, they're like, whoa, you're a weirdo. Right? Why would you go to sleep at eight o'clock?

• 46:39Speaker 05

  It's when my kids go to bed.

• 46:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, right. Like you're not a kid, you're an adult. But like having the discipline to go to sleep at an earlier time actually will increase the odds you get eight or more hours of sleep. And then that allows you to wake up the next day, you have more energy. Like, like it is this kind of, uh, uh, circular thing. But it's hard. It's really hard for the average adult in America to go to sleep at even nine o'clock.

• 47:02Speaker 05

  Well, and these, these problems kind of compound on themselves too. Because if you're not sleeping well, or if you're not sleeping enough, say you're going to bed at midnight, you gotta get up at five, then you're having all those issues from the, the sleep. But also when we get more insulin resistant, when we get more of these type of things, well, one of the symptoms or one of the things that insulin resistance can cause is sleep issues. So now you're compounding the issue by not sleeping and then you're getting more unhealthy. So then you can't sleep. So yeah, I, I tell people, schedule when you go to bed. Don't, don't schedule when you wake up. I mean, we, you know, you need to know when you need to wake up. I gotta get up at 6:30 every day. So I need to know, I gotta be in bed by 9:30 or 10. Because for me, I'm one, it takes me a little bit to fall asleep, takes me a little bit to wind down.

• 47:47Speaker 05

  I need to give myself a window of probably nine hours, counting that, you know, half hour is going to take me to fall asleep. And so you really need to plan, and I, you know, I get caught in it too. My kids go to bed at eight. I'm like, okay, now I can, you know, do some stuff.

• 48:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Now I'm free.

• 48:01Speaker 05

  12, 31 a.m. rolls around, I'm like, oh gosh, I gotta get up at seven. And now I know the next day, I'm not going to be at my best. You know, I, I try to do those on, you know, when I have a day off. And so it's not as big a deal, but I shouldn't do it physiologically. I'd be better. I, I need eight hours every night. Regardless.

• 48:17Anthony Pompliano?

  The two things I notice, uh, related to sleep outside of like mood and all that type of stuff is, uh, one, if I don't sleep a lot, I eat like an absolute animal the next day. And so there, there's gotta be some relationship. Maybe you kind of understand the science. And then the second thing is, uh, I always say that there's like, uh, people who step on scales. And then people who like, when you wake up in the morning and you go to brush your teeth and you just like look in the mirror, you pretty much know, I'm getting bigger or I'm getting smaller, right? Like whether you want to admit it to yourself or not, like you know. And one of the things I, uh, I've noticed over the years is like, if I sleep eight or more, and especially if it's eight and a half or nine hours, uh, you feel and psychologically have convinced yourself that you're actually slimmer.

• 48:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Like your body almost feels like it is, uh, processing food or what. I don't know exactly what it is, but like, it feels like this is more in tune with like the way my body wants to be than if you sleep six hours and you kind of wake up and you feel like shit. And then you eat horribly, like it kind of compounds on itself.

• 49:14Speaker 05

  Yeah. And that's not just a mental thing. There is a physiologic answer to that.

• 49:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Interesting.

• 49:19Speaker 05

  To both of them. So those cravings you talked about, right? I mean, I mean, you like garbage the next day. That's cortisol. Cortisol increases our cravings for sugar and that type of stuff. So when you get a bad night's sleep, your cortisol is going to be elevated the next day. And it's, it's again, it's a compounding problem because now you're more insulin resistant because you had a bad night's sleep. Now you're going to eat a bunch of sugar. You're. Blood sugar is going to go up, you're going to get more insulin resistant that day. Now, I'm not saying one bad night's sleep is going to make someone insulin resistant forever. But the other part, on the slimmer part, sleep plays a huge role. If someone wants to lose weight, they need to be sleeping eight hours every night.

• 49:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Why is that?

• 49:55Speaker 05

  Again, cortisol. Cortisol, another effect of it, will make you retain water. And so some of that is the body shedding water. But yeah, you want to shed that water, your body shouldn't hold on to it. And so cortisol plays a big role in managing our weight as well. That interplay between it and insulin is huge.

• 50:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you have any sort of like nighttime routine to increase the odds that you're going to sleep well?

• 50:18Speaker 05

  I got four kids, there ain't no routine. No, for me, I really don't.

• 50:27Speaker 05

  No, I've kind of, I've ruined myself in some ways. I can't fall asleep if I'm not listening to something. So for me, that's what I found in college was, I've always struggled with sleep issues, kind of since I was a kid. I think I ruined myself as a kid reading. I actually, I was the type of kid that got grounded from reading because I was reading too late. You know?

• 50:45Anthony Pompliano?

  You're like my brother, I got a brother who literally, he's actually a doctor, so it's funny. But there was a story where once, my parents were worried, like we were all sneaking out of the house and all this stuff. And they would go to my brother's room, he'd be under the covers with a flashlight reading Harry Potter.

• 50:59Speaker 05

  Harry Potter, yes, absolutely, me and your brother should talk. But what I have done lately is I did get a pair of blue blockers.

• 51:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Interesting.

• 51:08Speaker 05

  Glasses. I notice a massive difference when I use them. Because a lot of times when I get home, once my kids are in bed, I still am reading a lot. I study a lot. And most of that I'm doing on my phone. And so I just, you know, I know about blue light, I know the damage it can do to your circadian rhythm and your melatonin hormone. And so I went to a buddy of mine who's an optometrist and had him make me a pair of blue blocking glasses. And they just look like regular glasses, they're not like the yellow tinted one. Yellow tinted ones are fine, but I do notice a real big difference in how long it takes me to fall asleep if I put those suckers on as soon as I get home.

• 51:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Really? So when you get home, six, seven o'clock, whatever, you're putting the glasses on and pretty much trying to wear them till you go to sleep?

• 51:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, pretty much.

• 51:49Anthony Pompliano?

  And will you also wear them even if you're not staring at a screen?

• 51:54Speaker 05

  No, I will take them off if I'm not watching TV or on my phone or something, then I just take them off. Cause I don't need glasses, they're not prescriptive. So yeah, but if I'm at a screen at night and I've been kind of neglected for a while, but I've been trying to do it better lately. Just anytime I'm at the computer, on my phone, whatever, I'm trying to have those glasses on.

• 52:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. The only two things I've ever done that seem to have an impact, and again, I'm always worried that like maybe it's placebo stuff versus like actually working. Is I now try to read before I go to bed. I used to be on my computer all the time to like read a physical book. And that seems to help, and I'm sure it has a lot to do with the screens and things like that. But the second thing, I'm scared to admit this, but every night I drink chamomile tea. But I get it with, it has a little bit of melatonin in the tea bag. And I don't like, you know, I've traveled and stuff and I don't have it and I don't feel like I'm like missing it or have like a really bad night of sleep or anything. And so I don't know how much of it's just like, it's part of the routine before I go to bed is I drink some tea and then go to bed versus like it's actually doing something.

• 52:57Anthony Pompliano?

  How much should people worry if they're drinking whether it's chamomile tea or something else, and especially if it has melatonin in it before they go to bed every night?

• 53:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, chamomile by itself, I would, you know, great. Yeah, they're for centuries, you know, millennia, people have used chamomile tea to help them sleep. Like, I don't think there's anything wrong there. When you bring melatonin into the picture now, I was taught in my nutrition, you know, program. That if you take melatonin, you're going to suppress your body's natural ability to produce it, right? The more I've studied that, I cannot find how that mechanism actually works. I have never been able to sufficiently prove that to myself that that is true. So depending on the dose, you know, I, I'm not, I kind of live by the mindset of we shouldn't have to rely on any outside chemical to feel good, right?

• 53:43Speaker 05

  But if you're taking a milligram or two of melatonin at night and it gets you to sleep, whereas you wouldn't sleep if you didn't take it, great, take it. I want you to sleep. That's more important. And because melatonin is cheap, it's easy to get, it's really not going to have any side effects. So I, I personally wouldn't worry too much about it. I told a patient the other day, this 17 year old girl that I'm working with, she doesn't sleep. She'll lay in bed till five in the morning and her parents are like, we've tried melatonin. I said, how much have you tried? They said, oh, you know, five milligrams. I said, give her 15. I said, yeah, like for short term, I'm not going to do that long term, but. And I'm not telling people do that, but for her, I need her to sleep so we can fix her other issues. And if she's getting two or three hours of sleep a night, it's not gonna happen.

• 54:26Speaker 05

  So I said, put her on 15 and we'll see what happens.

• 54:29Anthony Pompliano?

  See what happens. Yeah. The, um, uh, maybe I should just try the Camobilt tea without the melatonin and kind of go from there. Um, while you're sleeping, do you do anything? Like is, uh, uh, environment?

• 54:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, okay.

• 54:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Anything like that? Like what, what, what do you kind of do to optimize for the actual hours that you are sleeping?

• 54:47Speaker 05

  Yeah. So the, I had three pieces of advice. Two are pretty common and one's kind of off the wall. Keep your dark, your room dark. Easy. I mean, I, I live, I live in a smaller apartment. So like my computer's in my room and our modem can be in there. And so I literally take electrical tape and I cover up every light that I can, even those little bit of, you know, little green light that shine on a power brick. I cover them all up as best I can. So keep it dark, keep it cool. You want your bedroom cooler at night, you know, I, ours, we, we put it at 67, 68, somewhere in there. The other piece, so I, so I married, so, so for people that sleep with someone else in their bed, get separate blankets. Do not share a blanket. That is, that is my best advice. And we've done that our whole marriage, but

• 55:31Speaker 05

  that way you're not being woken up by your spouse or your, you know, your girlfriend, boyfriend, whoever turning and rolling. Like get separate blankets. It will make a difference. And then high quality mattress, high quality pillow are huge.

• 55:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 55:41Speaker 05

  Um, a pillow can make, just buying a better pillow can make a significant improvement in your sleep.

• 55:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. The, um, I haven't gone really, really deep down the pillow thing. And two years ago, when I started getting serious about the sleep thing, um, I was introduced to, uh, Mateo, who's the CEO of, uh, Eight Sleeps, got the cooled mattress.

• 55:57Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 55:58Anthony Pompliano?

  And, um, I literally knew nothing, right? And he was like dark, cool, like the whole thing. And he's like, that's why we built this mattress. So I started sleeping on it. That is the only thing that I've done where when I travel,

• 56:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 56:10Anthony Pompliano?

  I can tell a huge difference.

• 56:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 56:12Anthony Pompliano?

  And the only way to do it while you're traveling is like you just crank the AC, you know, and try to make it as cool as you can. But what I noticed is not so much, uh, the amount of time that I sleep, but it was actually the deep sleep, right? I sleep with a watch on, so I get some of the, uh, The measurements, I don't know how exactly accurate they are, but, but it seems like I get deeper and deeper sleep, the colder that it is. And so it's funny because like, even if you don't have a mattress and kind of all this special stuff, like you literally can just turn the AC on, right? And that could be a huge difference in the amount of sleep that you get.

• 56:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, where I live, just open the window.

• 56:48Anthony Pompliano?

  So it's one

• 56:49Speaker 05

  How cold is it right now? It's one degree at my house right now. So open up your window, you're gonna be as cold as you want. But yeah, temperature, temperature and light, light exposure are easy things that anyone can do. It doesn't cost you anything. Like I said, you know, if you don't have AC, then maybe there's an issue there, but it'll make significant improvement in your sleep just by making those changes. And then there's the other thing that we talked about, you know, chamomile, melatonin, magnesium can help a lot. I do, if I know it's gonna be a rough night, you know, for whatever reason, my mind is wired up or something, I'll, I'll take some CBD and then I'll hit that with some magnesium as well. And that seems to at least help me calm down on those days. I don't do it every day, but.

• 57:26Anthony Pompliano?

  What, what is the magnesium? And then what does the CBD do specifically for sleep?

• 57:31Speaker 05

  So magnesium, magnesium is one that most people are deficient in, should take every day. Now magnesium is not going to help you fall asleep any quicker for most people. And I take a blended form. There's so many different kinds of magnesium, but it's gonna make your sleep quality better. You're, it works on what we call the rest and digest system, your parasympathetic nervous system, which is where a lot of that repair happens while we're sleeping. Our brain is repairing, everything's repairing. Magnesium is involved in a lot of those processes. And so by giving your body what it needs, your rest is going to be better. Now the CBD, you know, how the mechanism exactly works, I'm not entirely

• 58:10Speaker 05

  sure, but CBD is just known for its calming effects. And so I, I'll usually, you know, I'll take a 25 milligrams of that or something. Just, it seems to When I do take melatonin, which is rare, but I do take it. If I take the CBD with it, for me, it seems to mellow the effects of the melatonin as far as the hangover the next day that you can get. Some people get that real bad groggy feeling from melatonin the next day. CBD for me completely takes that away.

• 58:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I um, when I was in the military, this is like one of my deepest, darkest secrets, probably.

• 58:49Anthony Pompliano?

  We didn't have access to a lot of different stuff, right? And so when I was deployed, a lot of guys got addicted to NyQuil. Because it had that same kind of thing. It helped me go to sleep and we were sleeping at weird hours because sometimes we'd go out at night. Sometimes we'd go out during the day and so you're kind of like off. And I remember coming back and like, it was pretty hard to get back to sleeping normal when you're not used to like you take something and it knocks you out. And what made me think of it is melatonin. I've never had kind of the hangover, but you take enough NyQuil. You wake up the next day, you're like, ah, it's gonna be a tough morning, right? Because you literally do feel that grogginess.

• 59:24Speaker 05

  Well, in all NyQuil, the, the active ingredient that's putting you to sleep is the same that's in Benadryl.

• 59:31Speaker 05

  You know, the antihistamine and so it's diphenhydramine or something like that. But yeah, so and that's the same with like you've take a Tylenol PM or any of those. It's got Benadryl in it. Now Benadryl is one, if people are relying on that to sleep, they need to fix it because it is messing with your brain. Long-term use of that kind of stuff has been tied to Alzheimer's and dementias and things like that. So yeah, if you're relying on NyQuil or something like that, talk to someone that can help you fix your sleep.

• 59:57Anthony Pompliano?

  I used it for like a year, probably.

• 59:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 59:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And it was a thing where once you got back kind of to like a normal schedule and all that. It wasn't easy to get off, but it definitely was like, hey, you probably don't need NyQuil to go to sleep every night. Another thing that you've mentioned is zinc. What, what is that in terms of raising testosterone?

• 1:00:16Speaker 05

  So zinc, zinc is needed to produce testosterone. You can't produce testosterone without it. And a lot of people just, again, are, we're so nutrient deficient everywhere. And, and men in particular need, need more zinc than women. So taking some zinc can, you know, and you don't have to take a lot, 50mg to 100mg maybe. Has been shown, if you're severely deficient, it can improve testosterone. Now, some people will take zinc and they're like, I didn't notice anything.

• 1:00:46Speaker 05

  Which it just tells me, okay, zinc deficiency wasn't one of your issues. The other thing that zinc can do will suppress a different hormone called prolactin. And prolactin, based on the name, it's actually what makes women lactate when they're breastfeeding. But men have it as well. Prolactin suppresses the production of testosterone. So if we don't have enough zinc and B vitamins and some of these other things to keep the prolactin levels down, then we can have a decrease in testosterone from that.

• 1:01:14Anthony Pompliano?

  You've mentioned zinc, magnesium, a couple of these things, like would just a normal daily vitamin, kind of like a everyday vitamin, replace enough of it? Or do you think it should be more targeted than that?

• 1:01:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, it depends on the company. I work with some, some companies that, you know, and they're professional lines that are sold by physicians that their, theirs are pretty good. But most things, if we're targeting something like magnesium, take separately because most, if you're buying it off the, you know, off the shelf at Walmart or something, the magnesium in there is going to be a crappy form because it's cheap. So it'll be magnesium oxide most likely, which is the cheapest form, which is basically rusted magnesium. It's not really going to help you that much. And so for most things, I, I don't, I don't personally take a multivitamin. I think most people don't, I don't think it's a bad thing to do. I don't think you necessarily need to, but if, yeah, if you're targeting magnesium, zinc, vitamin D, things like that, just, just take them on their own separately.

• 1:02:10Anthony Pompliano?

  And then vitamin D is another thing that you've mentioned before in terms of helping to raise testosterone?

• 1:02:16Speaker 05

  Yeah. Vitamin D again is, it's, vitamin D is an interesting vitamin, right? We call it a vitamin. It's really acts more like a hormone in the body.

• 1:02:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Interesting.

• 1:02:27Speaker 05

  It's even, you know, it's, it's got that, if you look at the actual name, it ends in that OL, you know, OL letters, which means it comes from a... Comes from a cholesterol, synthesized that way. And most people, I think the numbers on vitamin D is something like 75, 80% are deficient. And it's involved in so many processes in the body. Now, how it, how it helps with testosterone

• 1:02:52Speaker 05

  is again, it's kind of a building block for some of the things we need to make testosterone. So having our vitamin D's optimal, vitamin D levels optimal is just going to make that production happen quicker. Now, for someone like me, you know, I got some vitamin D on my walk over here this morning because it's sunny here where I live. It might be sunny, but we ain't going for a walk outside in the winter, you know? And so that's where I live, I, I take about 5,000 units a day of vitamin D in the winter. In the summer, I don't take as much because I'm out fishing or I'm out doing, doing what I do in the summer. And so I'm really try, I try to build up my stores in, in the summer quite, quite a lot and spend it. And it doesn't take long, 15, 20 minutes a day out in the sun with

• 1:03:35Speaker 05

  your skin exposed, not putting on sunscreens, which sunscreens are a whole different ball game, whole different route we could go down, but you'll produce enough vitamin D that you're good for a while. And if you do that all summer, even where I live, you're going to have pretty good amounts stored up. Vitamin D gets stored in the body, it's, it's stored in fat cells and, and so you'll be pretty good. But you know, living in Miami, if you spend enough time outside, you probably don't need to supplement much with vitamin D.

• 1:04:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, you'd probably be good.

• 1:04:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:04:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And is that what people who live in sunny areas, like literally you can just go outside, if you're outside for 30 minutes to an hour, you should be good on vitamin D?

• 1:04:09Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. As long as you're not, like I say, as long as you're not covering yourself up with sunscreen while you do it, because sunscreen is going to block the UV rays. Our, our skin converts to things to vitamin D from the activation of the sun. And so if you're blocking that sun, then you're not going to be producing the vitamin D.

• 1:04:27Anthony Pompliano?

  One of the things, uh, when I moved from New York to Miami that I noticed is, uh, and it sounds stupid, but like I became happier and, uh, some of it was like the seasonal depression stuff. Like I never really believed in that. And then like, I just went back to New York and I was like, oh shit, man.

• 1:04:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Different, different area, right? Um, but also I think a lot of it was just like pure sunlight, right? And again, I don't know what the science exactly is, but like you feel if you can go outside and there's sun, for whatever reason, maybe it's just me personally, like people are different, but you definitely feel happier. And I'm wondering if there is science behind that.

• 1:04:59Speaker 05

  A big part is vitamin D. I lived in Northwest for a while. I went to school out in Portland. So we were out in Northwest for four or five years and seasonal affective disorder is huge out there. Now in Portland, it starts raining in, you know, end of October, early November, and it doesn't stop. And you don't see the sun until like May, you know, like it can be brutal. You can literally go weeks without seeing the sun. At least where I live right now, it's cold, but we get sunlight. And so that depressive disorders are huge up in the Northwest. And a big part, the biggest evidence points towards vitamin D levels. And yeah, taking it in a pill form is, or liquid form is not, you know, not ideal. But if you live, it's better than not getting any at all. And so that's, that's why I supplement it myself.

• 1:05:43Anthony Pompliano?

  What about stress? Reducing stress can drastically increase testosterone levels as well?

• 1:05:49Speaker 05

  That goes to the cortisol conversation. Yeah. So when you're, when you are stressed out, when you're not sleeping well, all those things that increase our cortisol. Cortisol actively suppresses testosterone. And so if your cortisol is high, your testosterone is going to go down. And then again, if cortisol is high, insulin resistance is going up. So it's that cortisol testosterone balance that you're trying to find. And so, yeah, reducing your stress is huge. And that's easier said than done for some people, you know, if your job is the biggest stressor in your life, not everyone can just quit their job. And I've had conversations like that with patients, but again, the best way you're going to reduce your stress is sleeping.

• 1:06:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. The, uh, maybe like the extreme example of like a Warren Buffett who sits, and I think he says to read 500 pages a day, right? And like, got a pretty stress-free life if that's the type of thing you're doing. Versus, you know, you can imagine like the most stressful job in the world. How much of it is a Warren Buffett where, you know, he's doing it every single day? And it's like pretty low stress versus the compounding effects of like high stress every day? Like, is there a balance where maybe you don't want like zero stress? Uh, and it's actually healthy to have some stress sometimes, but on the balance, you want to have like a low. Worse stress life like how do you think about that? Hey guys, I hope that you're enjoying this conversation. As you probably realize, we don't run any ads on this show.

• 1:07:06Anthony Pompliano?

  That's right, all the other podcasts, all the other YouTube shows that you watch, they have advertisers. We don't have any direct relationships with advertisers and we simply create this because we enjoy doing it. Now that we do that, though, we have a team and if you'd like to support us, one way you can do that is to go subscribe to the Pomp Letter. It's a daily letter that I write to about 235,000 people about my personal opinion on financial markets, business, technology and Bitcoin. Just go to pompletter.com and you can sign up there. I'd love to have you join us and it's a great, easy way to support the work that the team and I are doing on a daily basis. All right, let's get back into this conversation.

• 1:07:44Speaker 05

  Well, if you're offering me Warren Buffett's life, I think I'll take it most days, but yeah, I think the lower stress, the better. But some people thrive on stress too, right? There you get these high, just active individuals that like they need that to mentally, they need it. Now, maybe physiologically it's doing some things, but yeah, I think finding that balance of where you're pushing yourself and increasing that stress. But we need to increase our stress tolerance, right? So the stress tolerance would just mean that you can handle more of it and not crash because of it. And that goes to just finding these balances. The other thing in talking to the testosterone conversation is that the more testosterone you have, the better you can do in those situations.

• 1:08:26Speaker 05

  Because it's literally having some effects on the brain, on the amygdala. The amygdala is where like our fear center is and things like that. It makes you want to push and want to drive if you have more testosterone. So then you are going to work better in those high stress situations.

• 1:08:43Anthony Pompliano?

  There's something else that you talked about and I'm going to butcher how I pronounce this, but it's Ashwagandha?

• 1:08:50Speaker 05

  Ashwagandha.

• 1:08:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Ashwagandha, there you go. And what you said about this was actually pretty surprising. It can increase testosterone by like 20%, it can increase sperm count by like 170%. But these are like big numbers. What is that?

• 1:09:02Speaker 05

  So Ashwagandha is an herb. It's been used in, I think it comes out of India, somewhere, somewhere back, you know, that, that area. It's been used for, you know, millennia by people over there for all kinds of ailments. But what they found is it, the way that it helps testosterone and sperm count in particular is it has a protective effect for the testicles, actually. Testicles are where these are made. And it does that through an antioxidant effect. So it's reducing the amount of oxidative, what we call oxidative stress in the testicles and everywhere in the body. But ashwagandha is probably the most studied herbal type thing on testosterone. They've done many, many studies

• 1:09:44Speaker 05

  and generally the studies are favorable. That particular study I cited again showed 20% improvement in those men and they were testing lower testosterone men, right? And so someone, you know, like, you know, someone that's got optimal levels already or in 500, 600 range, they're probably not going to notice a 20% increase, but they they'll they'll have some some increase from ashwagandha for sure.

• 1:10:07Anthony Pompliano?

  And what form do most people take that?

• 1:10:09Speaker 05

  Capsules. Capsules. You can take ashwagandha tea, I think. I don't know how it tastes like hay or what, but yeah, most time it's gonna be capsules.

• 1:10:18Anthony Pompliano?

  And things like this, and maybe even some of the other vitamins, when people hear that it increased your testosterone level, they think, well, if I take it, does it almost have like a caffeinated effect where it'll make me hard, it'd be harder to go to sleep and therefore I shouldn't take it at night and I should take these in the morning? Or does it not really matter?

• 1:10:32Speaker 05

  It shouldn't because it's not having an immediate effect. Like someone's gonna have to take ashwagandha even for a few weeks probably before they're gonna notice a difference. Or, you know, Tonga Ali is another one you hear a lot about and it can boost testosterone quite a bit, but it it shouldn't have that type of effect.

• 1:10:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. What about caffeine's impact on testosterone? Is it something that helps or something that hurts it?

• 1:10:53Speaker 05

  That's actually, I'm not sure on that. That's not one that I've studied. Again, I go to, if you're having to rely on caffeine every day to function, you got something metabolically we need to work on. You shouldn't have to rely on it. But yeah, as far as testosterone goes, I'm not sure.

• 1:11:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's interesting because I saw a, I've seen a couple of studies and again, my uneducated brain reads this stuff, right? I'm like, I think I think I get the main points. But one of the things that they're now claiming is that actually drinking a certain amount of caffeine, usually through coffee, two cups or so can help prolong your life. And so it's from a longevity standpoint, which, okay, if you're optimizing for that, that's great. But I also do wonder then, when you introduce, especially if you drink a lot of coffee, what are you doing to the physiological components of your body, which then potentially changes your cortisol levels or these other things that then can have the knock on effects. And so I've always joked that the human body is kind of like the economy, super complex. We all think we understand it, but nobody actually gets it.

• 1:11:51Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:11:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Right. And so that's one that I don't think I would change my caffeine intake necessarily, but it would be interesting to understand how it has an impact on testosterone.

• 1:12:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, and I've seen those same type of studies that show longevity. And we talked before the show, like, I don't drink coffee personally, I never have. But when we talk of sleep issue, some of these people that come into me saying they're having sleep issues, and I say, well, when was your last cup of coffee? I had one at four in the afternoon. There you go. That's why you can't sleep. So I just tell people, be careful. Don't drink your caffeine 12 hours before you gotta, 10 to 12 hours before you gotta go to bed. Be done with your coffee or your tea or whatever you're getting your caffeine from.

• 1:12:31Anthony Pompliano?

  It is one of the things that I haven't measured, but you just intuitively learn your body. I drink, I wake up 6:30 ish, 7 o'clock. I usually don't actually drink coffee until 8:30 or 9. And then I used to drink a coffee at like 1 o'clock. And I noticed that if I don't drink that, or I just move it to like, maybe 10:30, 11, huge difference. I started to realize I was sleeping better. And again, small brain, you're just like, okay, I guess like, it must be that. And so you just kind of like slowly learn your body, right? And you start to change your habits so that you can at least give yourself a higher probability. Like, I think that's like the average person is like, look, I'm

• 1:13:15Anthony Pompliano?

  not a professional athlete. I'm not getting paid for better or worse sleep or whatever. But like, if I can increase probabilities, I'll do that because it's just gonna help me over the long run.

• 1:13:24Speaker 05

  Yeah. Well, and I would say everyone, you are getting paid to have better sleep, right? I mean, think of everything you've got going on in your business and all that. Like, my business suffers when I don't sleep well enough, you know? And a lot of people will have that 1:00 PM, 2:00 PM cup of coffee because their energy's crashing. That tells me you've probably got a blood sugar issue. Let's fix your blood sugar issue. Make sure you don't have that afternoon crash. Then you're not going to need that coffee. And then along the way, it's going to help your sleep, too.

• 1:13:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. The next thing I want to talk about is metabolism. And what is the relationship between testosterone and metabolism? Is it as simple as higher testosterone, faster metabolism?

• 1:14:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, generally. Now, how they interplay exactly one with another? It's kind of complicated, but to the point where I don't even understand. Small brain over here, too. But the things that affect metabolism that are going to decrease your metabolism are the same things that are going to decrease your testosterone in general. The cortisol, the insulin resistance. So by working on those things, essentially, your testosterone and metabolism are going to boost together. Now, if someone gets on TRT, you know, they're going to notice a big improvement in their energy, which is metabolism, right? To define metabolism simply, it's your body's ability to produce energy. And so, yeah, when you take TRT, you start raising your testosterone.

• 1:14:46Speaker 05

  Your energy levels are going to increase because your body's going to be functioning more efficiently.

• 1:14:51Anthony Pompliano?

  You laid out eight foods that people should eat every single day to increase their testosterone or metabolism. And when I read through these eight foods to increase your metabolism, some of them I was like, okay, got it, right? Expected. Some of them I was not expecting. So let's just start with the first two, steak and eggs. I think, obviously, the food pyramid would tell you, don't do that. How do you kind of think about steak and eggs for metabolism?

• 1:15:17Speaker 05

  So, not every, but most dietary recommendations I'm making are in the context of, I want your insulin to go down. So that's particularly for steak and eggs. I want you eating more protein, less carbohydrates. Because protein will minimally spike your insulin a little bit, but it's going to be a very short spike and it's going to come back down. Carbohydrates are going to push your insulin way up and stay up there. So that's part of why I would say steak and eggs, but also steak. And eggs both, very high nutrition, like not just the protein and the healthy fats they have. They're full of vitamins. Like I've started calling eggs just like little multivitamins in, you know, in food form. Like people think of them as protein and cholesterol, but they've got vitamin A and selenium

• 1:16:00Speaker 05

  and all these other things in them. So steak and eggs are, eggs are like my favorite food too. So I eat, I try to eat three to four a day minimum and or in a lot of times like five or six with a steak, you know, and just keep my body low insulin with those meals.

• 1:16:16Anthony Pompliano?

  And we get to kind of into the weird parts of like, are these just normal eggs? Are they like organic cage free eggs? Are they like egg whites?

• 1:16:24Speaker 05

  No, not egg whites, never. I mean, I'll, I'll eat an egg white, but the yolk is where most of the nutrition is, right? The white is the protein. So we need both. How much from a nutrition standpoint, does it matter, you know, cage free versus, you know, not? I don't think nutritionally it makes a big difference. Now, as far as talking chemicals and that kind of stuff that can be in the eggs. Yeah, you're organic, free range are probably going to be a lot better. And you know, where I live, a lot of people have chickens and I, I have people come to my clinic and pay me in eggs and I love it. You know, I

• 1:16:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Are you serious?

• 1:16:55Speaker 05

  Oh yeah, it's absolutely like, you know, they'll, I'll pay them, you know, I, you know, pay, whoops. I pay them, you know, $4 per dozen that they bring me. So they want to pay off their whole visit in eggs? Great. Bring me eggs.

• 1:17:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 1:17:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, I do it all the time.

• 1:17:07Anthony Pompliano?

  And then you go ahead and just make the eggs and you're good to go?

• 1:17:10Speaker 05

  Oh yeah.

• 1:17:10Anthony Pompliano?

  I love that.

• 1:17:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:17:11Anthony Pompliano?

  I need to move up.

• 1:17:12Speaker 05

  Barter system.

• 1:17:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, apple cider vinegar.

• 1:17:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:17:17Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't even know what that is.

• 1:17:20Anthony Pompliano?

  But you're talking about, uh, taking some of this or drinking some of it before you eat a meal to help it digest. And explain what's happening here.

• 1:17:27Speaker 05

  So that's going to do two things. It's going to, it is going to increase your acid production a bit, which is great. You know, a lot of people anymore are on these antacids, you know, they gotta, they get heartburn all the time. For, for a lot of those people, it's actually, they don't have enough stomach acid in their system. And it sounds counterintuitive, but it's just because they're, they don't have enough acid to actually close all the valves and stuff. So they get acid up in their throat. What apple cider vinegar is going to do is get, you get that acetic acid. That's, that's the chemical in there that does the magic. So kind of any type of vinegar will do. Apple cider vinegar is just known for it and it's been studied. It's also going to decrease your insulin response. They did a study where they took, I think it was like 50 or 60 diabetics.

• 1:18:11Speaker 05

  And half of them just did their normal thing. They were the control group. The other half, they added in, I think it was two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar before each meal. The group that did the apple cider vinegar over the course of the study, lost like five to six pounds on average. The group that didn't, lost nothing. They didn't change anything else.

• 1:18:33Anthony Pompliano?

  It's just literally taking.

• 1:18:34Speaker 05

  Literally, they had them take the apple cider vinegar and it's because of, the acetic acid has some interplay and it's, this isn't fully understood, but it has an interplay with our blood sugar to keep that insulin level from spiking. And so you're becoming less insulin resistant, literally by taking apple cider vinegar. And one to two tablespoons right before you eat. Now, some people, they struggle with that because you know, it's vinegar, right? So it's pretty acidic. So I'm, put that in some water, shoot it right before your meal. You're gonna notice an effect.

• 1:19:03Anthony Pompliano?

  And do that every meal?

• 1:19:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, ideally, ideally if you can.

• 1:19:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. It's just fascinating. Avocados?

• 1:19:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, avocados. Avocados help metabolism because they're healthy fats. The mono unsaturated fats in there, we need those to make hormones.

• 1:19:23Speaker 05

  If you're not making hormones, your metabolism is gonna tank. Every hormone is made from fat. Every hormone is made from fat. And so when someone's saying low fat, low fat, low fat, no, let's eat more fat, let's, more healthy fat, right? And avocados are just a great source of that, that kind of stuff to give your body what it needs to make our hormones and the other things it needs to do.

• 1:19:44Anthony Pompliano?

  And then what about chili peppers and oily fish? These two, fish, I was like, okay, we're starting to get into areas where, yeah, I would expect, but chili peppers was not something I expected.

• 1:19:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, chili peppers is an interesting one. They've just shown that

• 1:19:58Speaker 05

  eating, so the active ingredient in those, the spicy ingredient is capsaicin, right? And so what the mechanism entirely is, again, they don't really understand, but they have shown that chili peppers can boost your metabolism. And I may have said in the post, but I think it was something like 10% maybe. And it's a, it's a short-term effect, but. Putting some spicier food does seem to have an effect on metabolism.

• 1:20:26Anthony Pompliano?

  And chili peppers, obviously, being a food, but what about things like hot sauce on the eggs? Like I've heard people be like, oh, that speeds up metabolism or whatever. Is there any science that seems to back that up?

• 1:20:38Speaker 05

  I mean, it may just go to the same with chili peppers. I don't know the last time I ate eggs without hot sauce on them. I'm the type, I've got 20 hot sauces in my fridge. You know, I'm kind of a hot sauce nerd, but yeah, it definitely isn't going to hurt. You know, as long as it's a hot sauce that's not full of sugar and, you know, all those caveats. But yeah, it could be because of the chili peppers.

• 1:20:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's just fascinating. One of the things as I've learned more and more about kind of the science and biology and a lot of like the diet and workout stuff and everything is the military actually has a lot of this stuff like kind of built in. You'd be very hard to walk into any chow hall on any military base and not see people eating eggs like pouring hot sauce on them. And I used to always think it's because there wasn't a lot of condiments. Maybe there's some more science.

• 1:21:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, there you go.

• 1:21:25Anthony Pompliano?

  And then the last one is ginger, which I've never really heard anyone talk about. What's going on with ginger?

• 1:21:31Speaker 05

  Ginger is doing, doing a couple of things. Ginger is an antioxidant. It's also going to help, you know, ginger is very soothing to the gut. So if there's some gut issues, it's going to help with that. And then I think ginger kind of works on that, a little bit of the same principles as chili peppers. It's a very warming, you know, root. It's got kind of those same bioactive chemicals that are just going to speed things up a bit and just get things going.

• 1:21:56Anthony Pompliano?

  And we've talked a lot about like raising testosterone, increasing metabolism. Naturally, when people start to hear this stuff, I think there's been this explosion of interest in like, well, why don't I just artificially supplement my testosterone? And from my understanding, there's pills you can take, there's things like TRT. There's, you know, all sorts of human growth hormone, whatever. How do you just like, if you were just starting out trying to understand what even the options were like, what does that spectrum look like?

• 1:22:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, so most, most testosterone boosters that you hear about on the radio or you see on a late night commercial, those are garbage, man. Most of those aren't going to be doing much. So as far as like actually replacing now, some of the supplements that we've talked about with the Tonga Ali and Ashwagandha, even Fadoja Agresta, some of those. Those actually do have have some benefit, but if someone's looking down the testosterone route, I mean, the only one that's really going to get those big improvements as far as if we're talking the pharmaceutical side of things is going to be the TRT. Now, I always encourage people to go down the natural route first. Let's work on your nutrition.

• 1:23:07Speaker 05

  Let's work on your exercise and try to boost it these, you know, more natural ways. But for some people, the effects of that low T are so great and affecting them so much. Or if they're old enough, if they're in their 50s or 60s, then yeah, maybe go have a conversation with with a testosterone specialist. Now, if you're if you're going down there, you want to talk to someone that has been doing it for a while that knows what they're doing because it's more complicated than just, hey, give yourself a shot, you know, once a week. Like, you really need someone that knows what they're doing.

• 1:23:34Anthony Pompliano?

  And as somebody kind of goes down that path, once they start, are they pretty much signing up to be doing this for the rest of their life?

• 1:23:41Speaker 05

  Pretty much. Once you start injecting, you know, synthetic or, you know, an outside source of testosterone, if you're if you go down that route, yeah, you're signing up for a lifetime treatment.

• 1:23:52Anthony Pompliano?

  What is the side effect if you start and then you come off of it? Is your body just like shutting down testosterone production and so it's hard to restart it?

• 1:24:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, it probably depends on how long you've been on it. Now, if someone's been on TRT for a month or two and they jump off, they're probably going to be okay. Again, talk with your doctor, but that is the issue. So when you're injecting that testosterone and they inject a high amount, average male will produce seven to 15 milligrams a day. A lot of the ways they do the the TRT is they'll inject like 200 milligrams at a time and they're doing it like once every other week or once a week type of thing. So physiologically, that's just a massive boost of testosterone in the system. And so that goes up to the hypothalamus, which is what kind of starts all this up in the brain. And the hypothalamus

• 1:24:43Speaker 05

  says, I'm good. We don't need to produce any more testosterone. And so you start to get that feedback loop of I just don't need to produce it and you're literally your hypothalamus will shut down that pathway.

• 1:24:53Anthony Pompliano?

  What about human growth hormone, IGF-1, like there's all these things that when you play sports, you hear of professional athletes all trying to do all kinds of crazy stuff, whatever. What are those and how are they related to some of this testosterone stuff?

• 1:25:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, so human growth hormone, it's kind of produced in the kind of the same pathway as testosterone. It gets to the point where there's a chemical called THEA that gets converted to another one and then they can go to human growth hormone or testosterone or estrogen. The reason a lot of these athletes are taking it or doping with it is their recovery is much faster. It's not so much, there probably is some performance boost as well, but it's the recovery that these guys are really looking for. You know, as far as like the effects on testosterone, I haven't really looked into what supplement or what taking that can do, but yeah, it's definitely not something that most people need.

• 1:25:49Speaker 05

  If you're going down that route, it's usually you got something really majorly wrong medically and so your doctor's prescribing it for those reasons. If you're supplementing it outside, you're, I think you're running the same type of issues where your body's going to start shutting that down. As we get older, we shouldn't make much HGH anyway. Most of our HGH is made during puberty and when we're really growing. So doing that synthetically, yeah, the brain's just going to start shutting things down that I don't think we want.

• 1:26:17Anthony Pompliano?

  TRT, I don't think is necessarily directly connected, but there's a lot of guys who maybe they never talk about it, but like they're bodybuilders or whatever and they take a lot of steroids and you just kind of look at something like, all right, that's probably not physically possible without some supplementation. And what we've seen is a number of these guys have died in their late 40s, early 50s, you know, just earlier than you would normally expect and definitely than the average life expectancy. What is the understood kind of impact of any of these synthetic things on like longevity?

• 1:26:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm not sure how much we really know. A lot of these things are newer, right? But TRT, actually, if it's done right, can improve longevity.

• 1:26:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Interesting.

• 1:26:59Speaker 05

  Because they're getting themselves, as long as it's done right and under the guidance of a doctor, they're getting their levels to a better physiologic space, so their body's working better, their metabolism's working better, all those things. Bone mass increase, muscle mass, actually, and like muscle strength is, can be a predictor of longevity. Now, these bodybuilders, and they are so metabolically unhealthy, most of them, that I wonder, I don't know how much is the steroids versus how much is the fact that you're at a 2% body weight? Human body is not made to be at a 2% body weight, right? And so, the things they are doing to look like they do, I think, play a massive role as well. They're just wrecking their hormones by doing all that. A lot of those guys, they get to the point where they can't produce like any of their hormones anymore

• 1:27:44Speaker 05

  because they've been so low fat and low calorie and all that, that they do for so long, that it just completely wrecks them.

• 1:27:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. It is this kind of crazy thing of like, the extremes may not be the best thing. What is your, like, daily diet, right? You mentioned steak and eggs and some of this stuff. Are you like, just, you know, Sean Baker literally eats one steak, and like, that's it. I love talking to him because he was just like, no, literally, like, salt on the steak, and I drank water, and that's it.

• 1:28:13Speaker 05

  What can be more simple, right?

• 1:28:15Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, like, literally, I was like, I'm envious of that. But what is kind of your daily look like? And especially because you're what I would consider like, more like a normal citizen, where you have four young kids, you have your practice, right? Like, you've got all this stuff going on, so it's not like you can just say, "Hey, I'm gonna eat one meal a day and it's this one thing," right? You also have to almost like, deal with feeding your kids and all that. Like, what does that look like?

• 1:28:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, and part of it for me too is I love to cook. Cooking is one of my main hobbies. Most days I'm skipping breakfast. I tend to, I tend to fast, you know, people call like an 18 6 fast. I don't really focus on it, but I, I will wake up and I feel good. I don't feel any need to eat. For lunch, I'm eating something high protein. I try to get 50 grams of protein at lunch, 70 if I can. And, and that's coming from chicken, beef, pork, whatever. I'm not too picky on that. And I don't tend to eat any carbs with lunch. If I am going to have some, some carbs, that's going to be with dinner. And even lately, a lot of times I just feel better when I don't eat a lot of carbohydrates. The way I'm built, I, I am very prone to insulin resistance. My whole family, we, we struggle with it.

• 1:29:26Speaker 05

  And so I try to keep my carbs really low. I, I'm not always in ketosis, you know, the ketogenic side, but maybe I'll have a little bit of rice with dinner, but most of the time I'm just eating the protein. I, I don't go as far as Dr. Baker does with only eating steak and eggs, like that's, that's what, and right now it's carnivore month. I've seen Dr. Baker's posts, like he's like, oh, I ate this whole prime rib for day 15, you know? But, uh, yeah, I, any, on a weekend, I'll, I'll have a piece of pizza. I'll, I'll have some, but I, I try to keep that stuff to a minimum. Most days I'm eating high protein, moderate fat and pretty low carb.

• 1:30:01Anthony Pompliano?

  What do you do with your kids? Cause you know, I've got a, a young daughter and uh, she's just now transitioning from all, you know, breast milk and milk and all that to now like starting to eat solid foods. And uh, there's this like weird thing where uh, you want her to eat, right? You want her to learn, like, you know, she's in a fork now. And like, like, okay, here we go. But also you're like, hey, I don't want to just give her a bunch of like high sugar foods, right? That seem to be kind of the standards. Like, how do you, do you think about that? And especially because you have some kids that are a little bit older, you know, as kids, and then you've got some that are still very young.

• 1:30:34Speaker 05

  Yeah. So, so my kids are probably a little different than they grew up with me, you know, as their dad. So we started from a young age. I mean, the first food that my kids are given is egg yolk, you know, when we're starting to transition to more real food. I give them egg yolk and maybe mash it up with some sweet potatoes, something like that. So I, I start them right away, but my boy, my oldest, he's, he's seven, he's, he's getting to be more like dad where we'll be eating, you know, I'll make some curry or something. And so that'd be some rice and he'll just say, can I just have the chicken? And I just say, sure. Yeah, go for it. Like, I don't, I don't care. But yeah, I, we try to just, for my kids, we don't have a lot of junk in the house. There's usually a bag of cereal or a box of cereal. But my kids don't eat every day.

• 1:31:13Speaker 05

  My kids will do, they do pancakes quite often, and we're trying to make those higher protein pancakes where ideally, there's maybe a whole egg per pancake type of thing. And so, so we're trying to mitigate that. And kids can get away with, you know, eating more, more carbs and stuff. But yeah, the big thing is just avoiding the junk with my kids. They, we don't have candy in the house. We have ice cream only for a special thing. You know, if it's my, you know, my wife's birthday was a couple of days ago, we had some, some ice cream, but it's just finding that balance, right? I don't want to be the, the one who's like, you know, my kids never touch sugar ever, because I, I think there's a place to have a treat every once in a while. But yeah, for the most part, my kids know, the rule at my house is not you have to eat your vegetables.

• 1:31:54Speaker 05

  The rule in my house, you gotta eat your meat. Once you eat your meat, you can be done. If you want to be done, and you have enough meat, great. And I, I portion there. I give them about what I think they need. And a lot of times I'll ask for more. If they don't, great. They, they still got enough. Like, yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm not like, I'm not as far as some guys on the anti-vegetable route, but I, I don't eat vegetables very often. I don't make them very often, personally, mostly because I don't like them. But I don't think it's bad to eat them, but in our house, we, we don't eat a lot.

• 1:32:20Anthony Pompliano?

  What is the like anti-vegetable argument?

• 1:32:23Speaker 05

  A lot of it on, on those guys would be some of the chemicals in the vegetables, the oxalates, the, the phytic acid. The, you know, just, just the chemicals that the, the plants have for protection, lectins, gluten, some of that stuff, right? And there, there is some, there are, can be some people who are real sensitive to oxalates, for instance, oxalates you're gonna find in like spinach and kale and more your leafy greens. But, but if someone wants to eat those, that's easily mitigated. Steam your spinach, the oxalates are gonna break down. So that's the biggest argument that people have. I do tend to think that fruit is, is less harmful in general.

• 1:33:03Speaker 05

  Again, I'm not saying vegetables are harmful, but fruit isn't gonna have as much of those chemicals, but you add in the fact that our fruit has Been so manipulated to be so high sugar. Now you have a little bit of issue there, but if someone's eating fruit, vegetables and meat. I think they're they're gonna be pretty damn healthy.

• 1:33:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, one of my biggest conclusions in talking to a bunch of people with all kind of the different perspectives is like. The zero to one improvement is like get off processed foods, right? And get more like natural food. And then there's tons of variations between meat and vegetarian and fruitarian, whatever. But but really getting out of the processed food being the main, you know, components of a diet is probably the single most important thing.

• 1:33:41Speaker 05

  That's the single best thing that people can do. Just get the junk out. I would say get the junk out, increase your protein is where you're gonna find the best bang for your buck. You'll probably get eighty, ninety percent of the improvement you could get just by making those two changes.

• 1:33:55Anthony Pompliano?

  The last thing I want to talk about is where do you get your information from? One of the things that somebody like me who's more of kind of a layman trying to learn about this stuff, interested in this stuff. Not just for myself, my wife, my kid, right? My other family members is. You go on Twitter and it's hard to tell who's real, who's not, right? You go even online and, you know, I was talking to somebody yesterday. Who swears by a specific diet. And the American Cancer Society literally labels that kind of perspective of the world as quackery. I was like, okay.

• 1:34:29Speaker 05

  I'm a chiropractor. I'm used to that term. Heard that one before.

• 1:34:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? So like as you're kind of like looking through all this stuff. How do you maybe like, what are the sources of information that you turn to? And then like, when you come across a news source or they're like a framework or some way that you use to evaluate, just to like. Again, increase the probability that like what you're reading is actually valuable versus not.

• 1:34:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, most. One rule of thumb is if it's in, you know, New York Times or Washington Post or any of those, I think it's probably BS, you know? Like, because a lot of times they're cherry picking these studies that they're quoting. Now, I might see a headline and then I'll go read the study, you know? And I have studied enough that I know how to interpret a study, right? So the things I'm looking for when I'm reading those studies is who funded this? Number one, a lot of times these pro.

• 1:35:16Speaker 05

  You know, anti meat, pro vegetable study, for instance, like they're going to be funded a lot of times by organizations that are

• 1:35:23Anthony Pompliano?

  By the broccoli association.

• 1:35:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. These organizations that are anti meat in general, right? And that doesn't mean that your study is bad, but it introduces some bias, you know, things like that. So that's one thing. It's hard. Like I said, you go on Twitter and how many nutrition bros are on Twitter, you know, that read a nutrition book once and now they're an expert. And not to say they're giving bad advice, but you just gotta give it the, what I call the sniff test, right? If it smells, if it smells funny, it probably is, it's probably bad, throw it out. I, I study guy, Benjamin Bickman is one, anything that guy puts out. Now, he's more on the insulin resistance. He's a great source. If you want to learn how to be healthy, study Dr. Bickman's work. He's a professor at BYU.

• 1:36:06Speaker 05

  And guys like Sean Baker, I just, you know, I love Dr. Baker, I read his book too. I just read a lot and I try to find the trend. The trend right now, the more we're learning is higher protein is probably the key. It used to, for the last handful of years, it's been ketones, you know, keto, keto, keto, keto, everything. And I think keto is great too, but you just gotta pull what resonates with you out of what you're reading, because there's going to be something good and almost anything puts out. But like I say, it's really hard to know. The biggest thing is who's saying it. You know, when I have a, you know, you get the extreme with Dr. Baker, who's straight up carnivore. Dude has only eaten

• 1:36:48Speaker 05

  meat for like seven years. And then you get some of these people on the complete opposite side, they're straight vegan. One thing I appreciate about Dr. Baker is he's not telling everyone, you gotta eat like I do.

• 1:36:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I did. He made that very clear. He was like, look, this works for me. Some people, they don't like it, they don't want to do it, whatever. He's like, that's fine, but like this works for me.

• 1:37:07Speaker 05

  That's what I appreciate about Dr. Baker is he found what works for him and he recommends it generally and he's seen it helped a lot of his patients. But he allows that nuance of if you feel better eating some vegetables and fruit, great, do it. Whereas you get the, the extreme opposite side, the vegan side, a lot of, and there are vegans that are the same way, right? There are vegans that'll say, yeah, I feel better eating this way. And if that's the case, great, good for you. I, I tend to disagree. I think it's an unhealthy way to eat, but. You get the others that and there's that moral ethical conversation when we talk, talk with a lot of in the vegan community, but a lot of them, you know, the meat is murder. Never eat meat. It's killing you, killing you like now. See, you're coming from a bias as well because they, you know, they don't want to harm animals and I can appreciate that.

• 1:37:50Speaker 05

  But the source is going to be your biggest key of.

• 1:37:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's interesting that when you actually look at the studies, you go and you see who funded is one of the biggest things you look at.

• 1:37:58Speaker 05

  Mm hmm. Yeah.

• 1:37:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Have you ever seen a study funded by someone and it went against what they believe?

• 1:38:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, it happens. I mean, a lot of times, if it's a true science organization, then yeah, they just, they just, but this gets into the realm of what gets published and what doesn't. A lot of times, this happens all the time where they will do a study. They won't like the result. They don't publish the study. So you never even see that study. You never even see some of these negative studies like of the, of the things that get published. It's like over 90% of them are positive. You can't tell me over 90% of studies are positive. There's not. And, and so there is that bias there as well. So you have to take some of that with a grain of salt when you read a study. But yeah, most of the time

• 1:38:46Speaker 05

  just looking, looking where some biases might be. And even like, you know, if you're reading an article in a newspaper or something, pay attention to what, you know, is this author someone who's written a lot about, you know, anti meat or pro this, pro that, like you'll, you'll find the biases and then there are going to be cherry picking. So the biggest advice I could give someone is just read a lot, just study a lot, read a lot of books, read a lot of articles and you'll start to find a trend that works for you.

• 1:39:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you have one or two books that you suggest that people are interested in health, testosterone, metabolism? Like are there one or two that stick out to you?

• 1:39:20Speaker 05

  The biggest one that I recommend to everyone is actually Dr. Bickman's book. It's called Why We Get Sick. Dr. Bickman has been studying insulin resistance for 20, 20 plus years, I think. Like I say, he's, he's a professor down at Brigham Young University in Utah. And that one is the key to. Insulin resistance is tied to every, pretty much every chronic disease and is the cause of a lot of them. So if someone reads that book, they can better understand what insulin resistance is and how they can help it. Dr. Bickman goes into that as well. I do tell people to read The Carnivore Diet, which is Dr. Baker's book. I think it's a great one. The other one, as far as like health goes, I tell people to read is Why

• 1:40:00Speaker 05

  We Sleep, which is by Matthew Walker, who's a neuroscientist. I think Cal Berkeley or Stanford, he's out there in California, but that's just a great one of learning how important sleep is for your health.

• 1:40:14Anthony Pompliano?

  All three of those are great books. I haven't read Why We Get Sick. I'm gonna pick that one up. And now you gave me, reading a assignment, which I always appreciate. Where can we send people to find you on the internet if they want to learn more, either about the chiropractic practice or some of this other stuff?

• 1:40:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, so my chiropractic practice is in Wyoming. If anyone's ever driving through Star Valley, Wyoming, on their way to Jackson, stopping Star Valley, it's great. But online is, you know, on Twitter is the easiest way to get me. It's just Dr. Rich Huntsman on Twitter. And then I do have a website. It's DrHuntsman.com. And I've got a couple of things on there, some guides of things to avoid. If people want to learn more about the plastics and that stuff, things to avoid to help their testosterone. There's a free guide on there that they can download. And I also, you know, I help people, I help people with this. I do virtual coaching and that kind of stuff. So if people want to reach out to me on Twitter, that's, that's the best way to get me.

• 1:41:04Anthony Pompliano?

  I feel like I got a master class today. So I really appreciate you coming and talking to me and answering all my dumb questions. But you're doing some amazing work. And I think that just more people who get educated, right? I always look at this as like the first step is kind of educating themselves on what are the potential downfalls of things that they're doing in their daily life. Some people will change, some people won't, right? And that's okay. But if you've got the information, at least you got, you know, the opportunity to change. And it really just comes down to kind of like, do you want to or not?

• 1:41:29Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:41:30Anthony Pompliano?

  No one's gonna hold a gun to your head and say, filter your water.

• 1:41:31Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 1:41:32Anthony Pompliano?

  At least not yet in America. And so we'll see how it goes. But I really appreciate the time. And I hope that everyone goes and checks out you both on Twitter and at the website. We'll do it again in the future.

• 1:41:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, I appreciate you having me.