Episode 595: Dr. Jonathan Schoeff: Biohacking for Longevity: What Works, What's Overhyped, and What Matters

You can spend a lot of money trying to optimize your health and still miss the things that make the biggest difference. The wellness industry keeps giving us new treatments, tests, and biohacks to chase, but expensive does not automatically mean effective. We dive deeper into this in Habits & Hustle with Dr. Jonathan Schoeff. We talk about which longevity trends are actually worth your attention, where people may be wasting their money, and why strength, sleep, and metabolic health still do more heavy lifting than many of the latest wellness trends. Jonathan is a practicing surgeon and longevity physician who works with high performers on health optimization. He looks at wellness through both a clinical and performance lens, which makes him especially good at cutting through claims that sound impressive but do not have much evidence behind them. His approach is simple: look at the data, understand the outcome you are trying to improve, and stop confusing good marketing with good medicine. What's Discussed: (13:11) Why the most expensive biohacks may be the least effective. (17:07) The basic health habits that still outperform most expensive longevity treatments. (25:00) Why muscle may be one of the most important markers of healthy aging. (28:03) How deadlifts can become risky when form, load, and spine health are ignored. (33:20) Why lifting lighter weights for more reps may not build the strength women need. (39:24) Why training three days a week may produce better results than constantly working out. (48:54) Which popular longevity tools are actually worth the money and which are overhyped. (53:32) Why GLP-1s may have benefits that go far beyond weight loss. (1:02:11) Why high performers often invest in everything except a real health strategy. Thank You to Our Sponsors! Magic Mind: Head over to magicmind.com/jen http://www.magicmind.com/jen and use code JEN at checkout. Momentous: Ready to try supplements that actually do what they claim? Head to livemomentous.com http://livemomentous.com and use code JEN for 35% off your first subscription. Tru Niagen®: For supplements that are rigorously tested, third-party verified, and actually deliver what's on the label, head to truniagen.com http://truniagen.com Kion: Visit getkion.com/habits http://getkion.com/habits for 20% off AirDoctor: Head to AirDoctorPro.com http://airdoctorpro.com and use promo code HUSTLE to get $250 off select AirDoctor air purifiers, including the 3500, 4000, and 5500 models. Plus, you'll receive a free 3 year warranty, an $84 value, and AirDoctor's 30-day money back guarantee. Find more from Jen Cohen: Website: jennifercohen.com https://jennifercohen.com Instagram: @therealjencohen http://instagram.com/therealjencohen Books: jennifercohen.com/books https://jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagements https://jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagements Find more from Dr. Jonathan Schoeff Website: longevitylabwellness.com http://longevitylabwellness.com Instagram: @jonschoeff https://www.instagram.com/jonschoeff/ Facebook: Dr. Jon Schoeff https://www.facebook.com/p/Dr-Jonathan-Schoeff-Longevity-Expert-General-Surgeon-61576146488809/ YouTube: @drjonschoeff https://www.youtube.com/@drjonschoeff

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Welcome to Habits and Hustle, where I sit down with the world's biggest thinkers, entrepreneurs, and athletes and experts to uncover the habits, strategies, and mindset shifts that actually move the needle in your health, happiness, and success. Right now, one of the hardest areas to navigate is wellness, because between expensive treatments, new longevity hacks, and constant promises of optimization, it is getting harder to separate real science from really good marketing. Today, I'm sitting down with Dr. Jonathan Chef to break down what actually moves the needle for your longevity and performance. We talk about where people are wasting their time and money, and why the basics still matter more than most people

• 0:50Speaker 01

  want to admit. And we also cover how to make smarter decisions about your health. Jonathan is a practicing surgeon and longevity physician, and who actually works. He's not just an Instagram influencer. He is a big person with high performance on health optimization. He brings a very different perspective to the wellness conversation, because he is looking at the research through both a clinical and performance lens. In this episode, he gives his take on the health trends gain the most attention right now, and where the science actually stands. So let's dive in.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  Okay, you guys, we're back. We're doing an episode with a guest that was actually already, he's a repeat guest. He's been on before. He's a friend of mine. His name is Dr. Jonathan Chef. He is a surgeon, a practicing surgeon, and somebody who's also has, is a longevity doctor. And then what I always say, he doesn't just play a doctor on TV. He's actually, day to day, in the trenches, operating on patients. So he's the, he's the real deal. And that's why he's back so soon. Because whenever now I have some questions on, like biohacking, longevity, medical, I call on him. So thank you for being back.

• 2:18Speaker 00

  Happy to be the longevity expert.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're, well, thank you for being here. We're very happy to have you back.

• 2:23Speaker 00

  Excited. And next time I'll tell time better.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, Jonathan was like, an hour late today. And yesterday, he missed his plane. It's been a real treat.

• 2:32Speaker 00

  Do you want to unpack that story, though? Because it is a story. I can keep it less than a minute.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  Could you? Do you know how?

• 2:40Speaker 00

  Let me think.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  Jonathan, Jonathan has tendency to have a lot, like sometimes long-winded answers, because he's so precise.

• 2:47Speaker 00

  So let's flip it. Today, I'm, everything's, give me a timeframe, 30, 30 seconds. What do, give me a time window.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  We'll see how it goes. I'll let you know. I'll, I'll do like a-

• 2:59Speaker 00

  20 years of training and practice in 71 seconds.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  That's great. That's perfect. But what he was, what Jonathan was going to tell you was yesterday, he missed his plane for a very good reason, because-

• 3:11Speaker 00

  Well, good, well, let's not say good, because very problematic reason.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:16Speaker 00

  My surgery started on time, and all my days are mapped down pretty much to the minute, except I didn't plan for the actual operating room table, what, where we're doing the surgery on a person in surgery to break. And by break, I mean, it wouldn't move. So it's supposed to go up and down.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  Right, the table.

• 3:37Speaker 00

  We use a lot of x-ray. So you have to be aligned to actually do the surgery. And it broke.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  God.

• 3:43Speaker 00

  Real time. Forty-five minutes on the phone with, like, tech support.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I think that's why, that's why I like, it's a good, it's a great, it's a great excuse. You can't be mad at someone for that. If you were just shooting content.

• 3:55Speaker 00

  It's not even an excuse.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  I know. It's what happened. But what I'm saying is, if you were, if you just weren't here because you were shooting content, it'd be a whole different story.

• 4:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't, I don't do that enough. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  You know, so that's why, that's why, you know, we're here again today. So what we do here, you know, last time, now Jonathan is obsessed with these magic minds. The first thing he said when we walked in.

• 4:17Speaker 00

  This is legit, my go-to.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 4:19Speaker 00

  Unlocking the mind, so that I can actually be present, instead of coming out of two hours of LA traffic, because I was going across town, too.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  Isn't that horrible?

• 4:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, but-

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Well, this will kind of, this will kind of-

• 4:31Speaker 00

  If you'll excuse me.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  Yes, we excuse you. They're delicious. That's, that, that one's the original. So it has like, only, I think it has 50 grams of caffeine. Is that enough? Do you want me to give you another one, or a max?

• 4:43Speaker 00

  No, let's, let's, let's work with that. No, because I, I like it, because it's not the heavy jolt of caffeine.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it's true. It's like a steady.

• 4:52Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  And this is not a commercial, really. This is actually legit, like how you actually feel about these things, as I do, too. Okay, so today, we're going to do something a little bit different. Well, not that different, but I have like, a lot of questions. I'm just going to fire a lot of questions at you, and then you can kind of just give us your hot take, or something like, or whatever.

• 5:10Speaker 00

  Seventy-one seconds.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  Seventy-one seconds, or less.

• 5:13Speaker 00

  Or less, okay.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  Okay, let's just start with one thing, okay? What is one longevity treatment or biohacking hack that yields zero results that everybody thinks is so popular, so great, and so important to do?

• 5:31Speaker 00

  Do you want to go by cost? Because that's a great place to start.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 5:36Speaker 00

  Typically, the more expensive, the less effective. The biggest gap-

• 5:40Speaker 01

  Is that true?

• 5:40Speaker 00

  I mean, yeah, it's a little bit crass, but the biggest gap that exists right now, okay, with biohacking, I'm going to reframe the question to your, the question you really wanted to ask me, which is, what's the deal with biohacking? Biohacking, like you want to hack your metabolism, you fast, you go to the gym, you alter your nutrition to support performance versus support a habit that's running off of dopamine. Those are biohacks. What's being presented is, it's just sales and marketing, with major, major gaps. One thing that's on my radar right now, everybody's seen TPE, therapeutic plasma exchange, literally pulling all your plasma. And by the way, I've used TPE for years in clinical practice.

• 6:26Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, is that, is that plasma ferresis? Is that what you're talking about? It's super popular. But listen, it's not popular for the everyday person. It's popular for people who have access.

• 6:36Speaker 00

  A lot of money, but don't really realize what they are or are not getting. But there's different versions of it. So plasma ferresis is the, really, the cleansing of the plasma, TPE. What they're, what people are doing is taking your entire blood volume out over the course of time, running it through a machine, pulling the plasma out. So what lives in plasma is everything from proteins to things, things like immune, like immunoglobulins, okay, things that fight infections, so on and so forth. So you're pulling that and replacing it with something called albumin, human albumin. Okay, so it is, it is a, one of the many proteins that live in your plasma. So on the one hand, you say, oh, we're doing a clean out, we're

• 7:20Speaker 00

  doing a reset. Problem is, we don't really know what that reset actually looks like. The argument is for things like, everything from EDCs, microplastics, right? We have nothing to support that, no solid human evidence. Let me just say it clearly, in humans, very different, we can unpack it. It's different when you talk about, oh, this works in an animal, or, oh, this works in a lab.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:44Speaker 00

  Humans actually are different. So you're talking about, and I don't know, I haven't been involved in it, but I suspect it costs money, a good bit.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  With the plasma for-

• 7:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, TPE.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Ten thousand dollars.

• 7:55Speaker 00

  Is it really?

• 7:56Speaker 01

  Or like, some, like, eight thousand is really expensive.

• 7:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  You know, it's funny that you, okay, that was the first thing that you said, because someone offered it to me, like some clinic offered to do it, so I would talk about it. And my doctor was really adamantly against me doing it. They're like, A, your iron's too low, it's dangerous. And it's stupid if you don't need it. It's actually like, completely useless.

• 8:21Speaker 00

  Do you know the, the role of TPE, like, from a medical perspective?

• 8:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:27Speaker 00

  It is to clear antibody, this is what we call antibody-mediated disease. Your, your immune cells, white blood cells, produce antibodies to fight things like infection.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Right, right, right.

• 8:37Speaker 00

  But that can be, you can have autoimmune, something called ITP, related to your spleen. Long story short, TPE clears those immunoglobulins. It can be life-saving. The problem is, now we're selling it at a steep premium without any translational research. So the moral of the story is this, this is my take on biohacking. The biohacks that exist are sleep. If your sleep is wrecked, if you're not getting duration and quality, forget about it. Don't, don't, I mean, now the gym is worthless. In fact, what you see in the metabolic space, the impacts simply on your blood glucose from poor sleep is dramatic. So get your sleep right, lift

• 9:21Speaker 00

  heavy weights, and eat appropriately, understanding how nutrients support performance. And you can do that, by the way, and you can be a foodie, okay? I know, we go back and forth about fasting. I'm trying to convince you. But you can be a foodie, be my guest. Do something simple like food sequencing, fiber, fat, protein, paws, carbohydrates. Think how we eat. When you're, when you go out to a restaurant, how do you eat? They bring the bread.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, which I don't eat.

• 9:48Speaker 00

  It, okay. They bring the bread, then the cocktails, then the main course, plus all the side. I'm thinking steakhouse.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course. It's like, well, no, if I go, I like going to steakhouses. It's the appetizers, it's the entrees, it's the dessert, but most, by now, it's not about lack of information. It's just a lack of doing the thing, right? Like, everybody knows that that's not how you should be, but most people know that's not how you should be eating. How you should be eating.

• 10:15Speaker 00

  I'll tell you this, full disclosure, I didn't really, I've never eat that way.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  Ever?

• 10:21Speaker 00

  No, no, no. So if you know it, I mean, clearly, again, I'm trying to play a doctor on TV, but.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 10:28Speaker 00

  No, no, no, I've food sequencing, there's so many, there's so many simple bio hacks. Bio hacks that move the needle are often free. That's the moral of the story, okay? When you're paying tens of thousands of dollars for someone telling you that twenty minutes of exercise a week can equate to a hundred and twenty minutes? You're paying for something you want to believe exists, but doesn't. Just get, get off your ass and go to the gym, and women, please, lift heavy weights, period.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  Okay, we, we all know about heavy weights. We hear it at nauseous.

• 11:02Speaker 00

  Do we?

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, it's like, I feel like I'm so tired of hearing it.

• 11:06Speaker 00

  Are you, what do you do a lot of?

• 11:08Speaker 01

  I do, I do a lot of weights, but I.

• 11:11Speaker 00

  And cardio.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  A lot of cardio.

• 11:13Speaker 00

  A lot of cardio, calories and cardio.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  But I, you know why I do a lot of cardio?

• 11:17Speaker 00

  I'm all ears.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  I do a lot of cardio, my, my cardio is for my brain.

• 11:23Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  And, you know, like, it's not for my body.

• 11:25Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  Because the cardio to me, I, I, you, I can fight with, I can fight you tooth and nail on this. Because it, it, it really recalibrates my brain. It literally recalibrates my mind. Like, if I don't do cardio, my brain isn't as sharp. I'm not as focused, I'm not as alert, quite frankly, not as smart. Like, when I started to really kind of like take my cardio up a notch, I, my brain just got reactivated. It's like, doesn't it like, weights just don't have that same pump in my brain.

• 11:57Speaker 00

  Well, my question, because I don't recall, what, what is your definition of cardio? I think that's part of the question.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Okay, well, listen, that's a good question, right?

• 12:07Speaker 00

  Because you got, you got the, the hit classes that every woman goes to fasted and just wrecks their body.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  I don't do that.

• 12:15Speaker 00

  Right, so.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  Okay, this is what I do. Personally, what I do, I do, and don't yell and scream at me. But I do like, I do like to jog. When I say jog, it's like, I don't need to be like running at like a, like at a clip of like seven or eight or nine miles an hour. But I feel like I need to kind of get my body in a speed enough where I start to sweat and it takes me out of my own head and I get into the, what do you call that mode? It's, um.

• 12:46Speaker 00

  The runner's high?

• 12:47Speaker 01

  No, no, no, it's like, yes, but like, um, something mode. Oh, God, I can't remember the name of it.

• 12:55Speaker 00

  Well, since I don't run, I'm gonna.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  I know. I don't, so I, but when I say I don't, let's say I do thirty minutes.

• 13:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  It changes like my, my entire mood.

• 13:04Speaker 00

  I believe that.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  So for that reason, so to me, that's a gateway drug. So I know, and this is a good thing to tell people if they're interested, like, if, we know that we need to do heavy weight. We knew, or we need to do strength training.

• 13:17Speaker 00

  I don't think that's true, but let's, I'll let you keep.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  For those who don't know that.

• 13:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, news flash.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, news flash, update, like, it's important to do heavy weight, especially as you age, for your boat, for your muscles, for your bones, bone density. But sometimes it's hard to like get into it because it's like, it's like, can be boring to some people, I'm sorry to tell you. So a good gateway, gateway drug into that is doing the cardio first because it warms up your body. It like lubes you up a bit, your brain's now activated, and it's easier to do your, your lifting session. That's how I feel. If I went from weights, if I did weights first, forget about it, I'd be done, I'd be like, oh, my God, after eight minutes. But if I do cardio first, I can go all day, I can do weights, I can, I can work out for five hours, like, you know, like,

• 14:07Speaker 01

  totally, if I do cardio first. If I don't, oh, my God.

• 14:11Speaker 00

  Well, but do you ever track heart rate, any, any?

• 14:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do. I used to do all of that, not anymore.

• 14:16Speaker 00

  But do you know where you live? If I, here's my gut sense, is what, what you're talking about cardio is probably fits into the zone two mold, right?

• 14:25Speaker 01

  More than zone two, like, you, zone two, you kind of like, I can talk to you.

• 14:28Speaker 00

  Right, yeah, zone two, so.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  I'm more like.

• 14:32Speaker 00

  Probably zone three, low zone three, somewhere.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  Or high zone two, low zone two, yeah.

• 14:37Speaker 00

  No, no, so the reason I ask about what your version of cardio is, I, I think of cardio as kind of like old school sweatband.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, Jane Fonda.

• 14:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, well, I'm, I'm old, so.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  We are, but not that old.

• 14:52Speaker 00

  I mean, I know who Jane Fonda is. Do you know what's been showing up on my Instagram feed?

• 14:56Speaker 01

  What?

• 14:57Speaker 00

  Who was the lady, remember, um, it was like an ESPN show, and it was all, it was like.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  Kathy Smith?

• 15:03Speaker 00

  No, no, it's like two or three women, they'd always be in bikinis, like lifting weights, and the weight machines would just be out in like, maybe it was in Hawaii or something, I.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  Oh, with that guy, the Israeli guy?

• 15:15Speaker 00

  No, it was always these women, and it's just been popping up, it's like in the nineties, and when, before, you know, the world changed. And, uh, it's like how we used to do it.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 15:26Speaker 00

  They're, they're, that's just, I'll, I'll think of the name, it's one person.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  It's late here, guys, I'm, I'm, I'm missing words, you're missing words, okay, okay.

• 15:35Speaker 00

  But, yeah, so I think, but, but, let's say this, the only point I would make, I think zone two cardio, by the way, if you want to do something fasted, do zone two. Put your body in a position where it is preferentially going to use fat for fuel. I do not know a single person out there that doesn't want to lose fat.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:54Speaker 00

  Anybody out there that says they want to lose weight needs a recal, I mean, they.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  It's fat.

• 15:59Speaker 00

  The issue is fat. If I could lose fat, just turn a switch on, I would.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  What are you doing? I want to know, like, whatever you're doing, are you naturally super fit?

• 16:09Speaker 00

  Absolutely not, and I don't think I'm, after this morning.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:14Speaker 00

  You know, I was thinking, I was with Tom, and, um, could I say that, or?

• 16:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, why not?

• 16:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, so, so I was with Tom, and.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  Cruz, just kidding.

• 16:21Speaker 00

  I, I don't know.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  He wasn't with Tom Cruise, it was Tom Delauer, his friend, you guys might know him, he's a health.

• 16:27Speaker 00

  Tom Cruise could, might be able to kick my ass too, I don't know.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, he's a machine.

• 16:31Speaker 00

  Is it, yeah, but, but look at that, okay, so example, why is he a machine?

• 16:36Speaker 01

  Oh, because he trains like a motherfucker, like crazy.

• 16:39Speaker 00

  Right, the idea that aging is really defined by muscle, that's where I'm, I'm totally convinced. Everybody wants to take all these side routes and everything, but from, purely from a logistical standpoint, safety standpoint, the basics, you have to move, right? If you're stuck in a wheelchair, that's not a good life, but it goes way beyond that because even cognition is tied to muscle health.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Exactly, but let me just, I want to make sure I was very clear, I, I'm not doing cardio because I think it's gonna yield these great results on me.

• 17:12Speaker 00

  No, no, right.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  I literally do it as a gateway drug, so I can then do the things that are completely necessary, and it turns on my brain for other things that I need to do during the day, and it's like a meditation for me. Like, when I get into, you know, into the zone, okay? That to me, like, that's when all my best ideas flow, that's when like, if I'm doing an interview with someone like you, or whoever, if I'm doing a podcast of any kind, if I don't do cardio at some point before that, I just won't be as sharp, and I'm, look at me now, I'm forgetting words.

• 17:41Speaker 00

  Start doing some more cardio. No, I, I mean, cardio, the, the, the, the issues I have, now, women's health, okay, that, this does count. There is mixed evidence around women using running as their primary modality of exercise.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:59Speaker 00

  As far as bone health, but it stands to reason, cardio, running, is not an effective strategy to build muscle, it's not, there is no special, right?

• 18:08Speaker 01

  Doesn't it break, doesn't running break down muscle?

• 18:11Speaker 00

  See, I'm not going to go that far, but, uh.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  Why, you're a surgeon.

• 18:16Speaker 00

  It can.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  What kind of surgeon are you? Tell the world.

• 18:18Speaker 00

  So my, my training background is in general, and I've spent the last decade of my career only doing spine surgery, but it's, I don't know if I've explained this, it's, can be a little hard to follow. The front of the spine is actually a very powerful tool to fix the spine. You can feel your back in the back, and everybody thinks of back surgery on the backside, but coming from the front is a way more powerful approach. In general, I don't want to get into it with spine surgeons, but I basically create pathways to the spine. So I move everything between skin and spine, most notably the blood vessels, that's really why I'm there. So it's primarily a vascular.

• 19:00Speaker 01

  Do you think, do, do you see a lot of surgeries or injuries because of running? Like, how high up there is there?

• 19:07Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no, definitely.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  Hip, hip problems.

• 19:10Speaker 00

  Talking, again, I see spine problems, and when you're talking about spine-related issues, no, I think those favor resistance training, no question. I did a post about, about deadlifts and just got lit up.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  What did you say?

• 19:26Speaker 00

  Oh, that deadlifts can lead to disc herniations, can. That's a true statement.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've heard that actually.

• 19:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, the mechanism of loaded hinge movements has to be taken seriously.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:38Speaker 00

  Doesn't mean don't deadlift. It may mean find a creative alternative that gets you the same benefit. That's my point.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  That's a good point, actually, because I did hear that before. So you're on that bandwagon that doing deadlifts can actually cause injury.

• 19:53Speaker 00

  So.

• 19:53Speaker 01

  If you're doing them too heavy for your body and not doing the form right.

• 19:56Speaker 00

  See, that's the, that's the issue, right? So flexion under load does introduce a risk. That's a simple statement. We don't need to get into the hardcore, the hardcore realities, but yes.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  Why? It's important because I think what happens is there's a few exercises for your lower body that are considered to be the most important and the best ones. One is a squat, one is a deadlift, one is like a lunge of some kind. Right? So you're like doing a hinge.

• 20:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, hinge. I mean, that's what it's about. Posture chain is locomotion.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 20:31Speaker 00

  Fancy way of saying, posture chain gets you up out of a chair.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  However, if you don't know how to do it properly, of course you're going to hurt yourself. How is that even controversial?

• 20:42Speaker 00

  It's the, it's the idea that some would say the deadlift is like gold standard. My point to a personal trainer is there's a thousand different ways to do a deadlift that do not load the spine the same way as a conventional, especially a conventional straight leg deadlift. So doing it and doing it right, call it form, call it function, I don't really care. I'm a big advocate for personal trainers. I can't go anywhere now today without mine because he understands my personal spine injury history, my mechanics. And guess what? I don't, I'll do a sumo deadlift. I may do trap bars. I mean, subtle variations that still drive posterior chain development,

• 21:26Speaker 00

  but don't require that same forced flexion under load. The biomechanics of the spine favor that the amount of pressure on your discs is highest forced flexion under load. That's, that's not me, that's biomechanics of the human body. And then my point on that post was just, I'm getting lit up. This is not how it happens. Even some of the people that say this is not how it happens, then they come back and they're like, but when I herniated my disc, and I'm like, well, what did you do to herniate the disc? Deadlift. Okay.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  I know so many people who got injured by doing a deadlift.

• 22:04Speaker 00

  And then, and then the other position is, oh, fear mongering. You're convincing people who are sedentary, don't move, to never step foot in gym. I'm like, wow. So me telling you to get creative and educate your clients better is me telling people, don't go to the gym. Like, come on. The extremes that Instagram and social media drive people to is nuts.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  They listen to two seconds. And they're like, tap, tap, tap.

• 22:30Speaker 00

  Keyboard warriors.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 22:31Speaker 00

  But so my point is, it's not women or men, but, but yes, hinge, a hinge movement in posterior chain development is longevity, period. Deadlifts are a great, great power tool for a hinge movement under load that builds the posterior chain. However, if you have underlying spine disease like I do, if you're not strong and comfortable at the weight you're training, it does impart risk. It's not deadlifts are bad. It's what you said, deadlift's done wrong. Eagle lifting with a deadlift is more times than not going to be problematic.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  Can I say one thing also? I think overall, I mean, strength training is obviously very important. Lifting heavy, very important. But there's also, there is something to be said for lifting too heavy if you're not strong enough. And so one of my big pet peeves is when trainers keep on being like, more weight, more weight. But if you're, if you're.

• 23:28Speaker 00

  That's a crummy trainer.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  It's a crummy trainer.

• 23:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  And like your form is off. Like I look around the gym and I see how these trainers are with their clients and these people have these rounded backs and they're pulling up this heavy weight. It's literally going to be like an accident waiting to happen.

• 23:43Speaker 00

  You're like.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  And they're on their iPhone scroll, doom scrolling Instagram.

• 23:48Speaker 00

  As I'm watching it, I'm just visualizing the load.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:51Speaker 00

  On their spine, skyrocketing. So that's, yeah, I agree with you and there's so many conversations to be had. But the other thing I would mention, just on the topic of women, is what is strength training? Versus, there's a conversation going on right now that is high weight, low reps is no different than low weight, high reps for hypertrophy. This is really important. Hypertrophy means is a pump, okay?

• 24:20Speaker 01

  I know what you're talking about.

• 24:21Speaker 00

  And then, and then you want to get, you want to get to this concept of reps in reserve or relative perceived exertion are the things we use. Okay. So say you're training max intensely near failure, we'll talk about, okay? It is true, it's scientifically based to say that low rep, high weight and high rep, low weight don't have a statistically significant difference in hypertrophy. But this is the problem. People are hearing that hypertrophy is not the end game. Strength is. And that's where it's critically important. And so I feel like it's kind of appealing, and I'm not being critical of women at all, but there's all these narratives out there, right? And, and the skinny girl, this and that, and high reps, right?

• 25:06Speaker 00

  Pump them out with the five pound dumbbells. Ladies, you gotta lift heavy, lift heavy. Like for, for a woman, I would say the seven to nine max rep range is where you will see strength impacted most.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  But heavy is relative.

• 25:21Speaker 00

  Oh, correct. Right.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  But I know.

• 25:23Speaker 00

  That's why I say, look at, like, again, you want to be within one rep of failure, meaning you can't complete the rep or you can't complete it with good form. Okay. That's the ideal.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 25:32Speaker 00

  That's what we call pre-failure. My point is, for a woman, the weight needs to drive pre-failure in that seven to nine rep range. Men might be even lower, but for a woman, that, that's reasonable. But so when I, when you're talking about 15, 20 reps, you can't possibly be moving the weight sufficient to give that signal for strength. And, and think about it, women don't want to be bulky anyway. Hypertrophy is size, but strength is the metric.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  I love that you said that. I think that's a really important distinction, right?

• 26:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  Because people hear the word, I can never say it, but hypertrophy. And they think that's the goal, but it's not. The goal is, it's all about the strength. So when you're older, you don't, you know, when you fall, you're not going to break into seven pieces.

• 26:20Speaker 00

  That's it.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  And that you're functional also, right? Like that you have like, you do functional movements. So you can like catch yourself and like you can not break your hip. And it, the goal is very clear, but yet that's, and that is the problem with Pilates, right? Because Pilates is about going to failure. It's not about strength. There's a difference. Strength and hypertrophy are totally different.

• 26:42Speaker 00

  Right. It is. It's fundamentally different. And, you know, there's a lot of agendas on social media. I don't necessarily think it's.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  This is what it is. I think Pilates is extremely popular, right? Because it looks very, like people get their matcha and they go to their Pilates and it feels very, it feels very feminine, like I'm working out.

• 27:03Speaker 00

  An NFL player in there.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  Right, exactly.

• 27:04Speaker 00

  And those guys, if you see me in Pilates, it's not.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  By the way, Pilates is hard because you are training to failure.

• 27:13Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  And it's not.

• 27:14Speaker 00

  It's a different failure.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  It's a different failure, but that in itself is not enough.

• 27:18Speaker 00

  It's not the signal.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  It's not, it's not basically going to get you to what you need, which is strength, right?

• 27:24Speaker 00

  A hundred percent. And that's, I mean, that's where I'd leave it clean and simple. Like it or not, the, the evidence is abundantly clear that strength comes and it stands to reason. You need enough of a stress signal for muscle to repair and reformat, if you will, to a stronger version. And that's from heavyweights, lower reps.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  So what happens if you're someone who works out five days a week or six days a week, right? Let's talk about the person who's like an over-exerciser versus the under-exerciser.

• 27:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  Right?

• 27:58Speaker 00

  There's such a thing, right?

• 27:59Speaker 01

  It is. I'm an over-exerciser, right? Because I, I've become like dependent on it for my mental health.

• 28:06Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  By the way, I'd rather be doing that than taking an antidepressant or, you know, taking a drug. I mean, exercise the best antidepressant anxiety medication.

• 28:16Speaker 00

  In Europe, that's first line therapy.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Really?

• 28:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. First line therapy for depression and anxiety in Europe is literally exercise.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. I've gone through like some, some hard stuff lately in the last year or two. And if I did not, if I did not adopt fitness and exercise into my life, like when I was a kid and where I kind of like was able to like really build it into what it is in my life today. I don't, I mean, it's kept me sane, it's kept me fit, it's kept me healthy. It's allowed me to compartmentalize, honestly. Like it's really been like a wonder drug.

• 28:52Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 28:52Speaker 01

  You know, like you can actually like, if you have that like outlet to like stress outlet, it makes all the difference in the world.

• 29:00Speaker 00

  Totally. And that's what's tricky, that, that's, you're the challenging situation.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  The over-exerciser. That's the thing.

• 29:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't, it's hard, and it's hard to even say that, right? Is there such a thing as exercising too much? There's such a thing as optimal training modalities for performance. So I would say if you're doing strength training six days a week, I think everybody's going to agree, way too much going on. And you're not giving yourself the physical time to repair. There, there is a physical amount of time if you're trying to increase muscle. That's a very different conversation.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  I love that. That's actually a good point too, right? So when you, when I say what happens for the people who are over-exercisers like me. It depends on what the goal is, right?

• 29:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  Like, I'm not-

• 29:46Speaker 00

  Goal, modality, it's everything.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  Right. And it's like you can change the exercise, right?

• 29:52Speaker 00

  Right.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  So, like, but this is what I was gonna get to is let's say someone does weight six days a week, right? They do, what's the best type of break, like, kind of split?

• 30:02Speaker 00

  Split.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  So you're not overtraining too much.

• 30:04Speaker 00

  If, okay, so this goes back to your original question, true story. Um, I went to, had a client of mine say, man, there's no way I'm gonna be training like six days a week like you do. And I said, I don't train six days a week. There's a part of me, for the same reasons you're talking about, that I wish I, I could. I don't have the, the physical time. That's my restriction. And so I went to my trainer, who I've been with for three years, and he, uh, and I said, look at the schedule. Tell me how, what, what's my average training? And I only train with him. Two point three sessions per week. That's how often I train.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  Really?

• 30:39Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And I've seen more, now, I think the sweet spot's three to four. I think the sweet spot's three to four.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  You don't look at-

• 30:46Speaker 00

  And if I could, well, but this goes to shameless self-promotion. I swear in that conversation is optimization. Optimization should drive a significantly higher output than input. This is the thing that we have to think of, very different. If, if I told you you were gonna invest in a company and you're going to get your investment back, would you do it?

• 31:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 31:11Speaker 00

  No, no, no ROI, just eventually you get your money back. You don't lose.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  If you said to me-

• 31:18Speaker 00

  I wouldn't consider that a good investment. I wanna know how much is, where's the return?

• 31:21Speaker 01

  Wait, wait, wait, if someone said to you, you're gonna get your money back, oh, without any, oh, without any detail.

• 31:26Speaker 00

  And you get ten dollars back.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  No, I'm not gonna do it.

• 31:29Speaker 00

  That's a terrible investment.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, sorry, I was looking at the next question.

• 31:32Speaker 00

  But people are, are thinking about that, the biologic ROI for, for training, and have the mindset that the more I put in, the more I get out. That's a flawed, very flawed. You have to be thinking about, actually, no, how can I, what is the minimum? Have you heard of a minimum effective dose?

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 31:52Speaker 00

  What is the sweet spot? Because what, the, the big thing you say, overtraining, well, you risk injury. I mean, I think that's plain simple. I mean, I've had neck surgery, spine surgery on myself, probably, I mean, old injuries, but there, there could be an argument towards overtraining. So, when I talk about movements, when I talk about training intervals and training frequency, some of it's coming from the professional, but some of it's coming from personal. Hey, these are the lessons I learned the hard way. I do think it's interesting to see, I mean, if I can get three training sessions, I trained for 50 minutes by the clock. If I can get three in, in a week, that's a home run week for me. So, I'm kinda confined by that, and it's forced me to-

• 32:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:35Speaker 00

  Think a lot differently about training and performance. How, I need to get more, way more, out of less.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  Right, so how do you do it? How do you optimize working out twice a week?

• 32:47Speaker 00

  So I would say hormone optimization, understanding some of the tools that, that optimize metabolic performance. I do use peptides, and those have incredible value in the right circumstances.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  What peptides do you take?

• 33:01Speaker 00

  So I'm, my go-to for growth hormone optimization is tesamorelin, which is, yeah, which has been around forever. People hear about smorlin, or, you know, so you got smorlin, ipamorlin, tesamorelin. Without getting into the weeds of what they do, just say, they all, to some degree, improve your own body's production of growth hormone.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  But why tesan not, well, no, while you're saying it-

• 33:23Speaker 00

  It's just considerably more potent.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  Than, than-

• 33:26Speaker 00

  Exponentially more potent. Smorlin, in my professional experience, may bump IGF-1 levels 20, 30%. That's my, my experience. Ipa's better, you know, Ipa-CJC's better, and then tesamorelin is, is the gold standard. It's, it costs more, so there's, there's that differential. And we're waiting to see what the, you know, this whole FDA peptide conversation. But I hope to hell that tesamorelin is brought back, and, and we can get it consistently from compounding pharmacies, because it's, it's a powerhouse.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  I thought, okay, so that's what you're on though, right? You said?

• 34:03Speaker 00

  Yes, and right now, it is exceedingly difficult-

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Oh, so what are you doing?

• 34:07Speaker 00

  To access tesamorelin.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  Do you have it?

• 34:09Speaker 00

  No, it's just, it's exceedingly difficult. I'll leave it at that.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  Okay, so then, okay, so that's, that means you are on it, but it's exceedingly difficult to, yeah.

• 34:17Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, you've got this whole, this whole freaking world right now, the research use only.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  Yes, okay, tell me, oh, the research use only.

• 34:25Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  Right, so where are you getting it? Do you have like a compounding pharmacy?

• 34:29Speaker 00

  I just, uh, from, from my standpoint, in my practice, I, I know these peptides and how they work and how effective they are, but we've, we are facing everyday challenges-

• 34:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:41Speaker 00

  In getting quality and consistency. Like the FDA, hate the FDA, it is a regulatory agency, period. There's no hidden, sorry, no conspiracy.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:53Speaker 00

  No conspiracy, okay? The FDA is a regulatory agency. So, when a regulatory agency's involved and there's oversight, what, what are you, at least as a physician, what I'm most comfortable saying, there's a 99% chance that what they say's in the bottle is in the bottle, that what they say the concentration is, it's real, that there are no endotoxins, there's no contaminants, right? Because the FDA requires a very high level of supervision in production. When you're getting stuff on the, on the black market, like, the, this, the gray market peptide hustle, i- i- if that doesn't disturb people, I don't know what does. And guess who will pipe up the most when you talk about the gray markets, the research use only? The people with a link to buy.

• 35:39Speaker 00

  It's so amazing how passionate people are around things that they're making a lot of money by driving margins off the charts.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  And also, you don't know where they're getting them from.

• 35:48Speaker 00

  That's my point. Oh, gosh, I mean, you have no idea. Are Chinese peptides safe? What's API? Once those peptides, yes, most peptides are indeed manufactured in China. That's not the question here. The question you gotta be asking is, what happens from there to here? That's the problem, right? When there's no regulatory oversight in that chain of custody, if you will?

• 36:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:12Speaker 00

  Who knows?

• 36:12Speaker 01

  So what could happen?

• 36:13Speaker 00

  And I'm not trying to fear monger.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  I'm just curious, like, so if every, if 80 or 90% of peptides are coming from China?

• 36:20Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  What makes you, like, just your peptide any better than that peptide if they're coming from the same boat, so to speak?

• 36:26Speaker 00

  Again, it's that chain of custody, right?

• 36:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, so are some going on a different boat?

• 36:31Speaker 00

  No, some are not being overseen at all. Some are-

• 36:35Speaker 01

  So how do you know which ones are being overseen and which ones not? That's the argument.

• 36:38Speaker 00

  The challenge.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  The argument is like, most people say they're all the same.

• 36:41Speaker 00

  Right.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  And nobody really knows.

• 36:43Speaker 00

  Well, and then you see, I mean, there, there is plenty of evidence out there that when you actually test the sample, there's a lot of creative ways people are getting around the conversation. These are bioactive substances. They should very much exist in a medical therapeutic fashion. So I should be, i- in my strong belief, as a physician who is well-read and well-understanding of the actual mechanisms, the level to which the data arises or doesn't, right? An animal does not behave the way, the same way as a human. So, that in, in the capacity of treating patients, I think is very valuable. I think peptides absolutely have, play a powerful role. My issue's not that.

• 37:25Speaker 00

  My issue is this crap that's coming out of the back of somebody's van in reality.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:30Speaker 00

  And they're hustling on their site.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 37:32Speaker 00

  And guess what? When you check the little box on the website for research purposes only, when it's coming from an unknown source, you're literally indemnifying them. Does that make sense?

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 37:44Speaker 00

  You're literally signing a waiver. Cause if it's for research purposes only, well, I sold it to you, but I, I didn't know you were gonna use it on yourself, right? I will wrap with this regarding peptides. I'm not anti-peptide, very, very pro-peptide.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  Okay, okay.

• 38:00Speaker 00

  I'm not anti-peptide, I'm pro-patient, pro-research.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 38:03Speaker 00

  What's going on right now is, is a train wreck.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  I got you, okay.

• 38:07Speaker 00

  That's it.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  Let's take a quick break, because I wanna talk about something I ignored in my own house for way too long, my air, and how Air Doctor fixed it. I track pretty much everything, sleep, recovery, performance, and for a while, my recovery numbers were all over the place, even though nothing about my training had changed. Turns out, the variable wasn't my workouts, it was the air in my house. Once I started using Air Doctor, I noticed better sleep, more consistent recovery, and fewer allergy flare-ups. And with kids at home breathing the same air, clean air is just not an option, and I'm not willing to leave anything to chance. Air Doctor uses three-stage filtration to capture particles up to 100 times smaller than standard purifiers.

• 38:59Speaker 01

  Things like dust, pollen, mold spores, pet dander, bacteria, viruses, odors, and even wildfire smoke. It automatically adjusts based on air quality, tells you when the filter needs changing, and it's incredibly quiet. Basically, I turn it on and forget about it, which is exactly how I like my products. 98% of Air Doctor customers say that their home air feels cleaner, safer, and healthier, and it recently won Newsweek's Reader's Choice Award for Best Air Purifier.

• 39:33Speaker 01

  So go to airdoctorpro.com and use promo code HUSSEL to get up to $300 off select Air Doctor models, plus a free three-year warranty. Every Air Doctor also comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. That's Air Doctor Pro, promo code HUSSEL.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  We're gonna go worth it, waste of money, or depends really fast. Ready? Full body MRI.

• 40:05Speaker 00

  Worth it. I think the, the, it's early, it's in its infancy, and it's costly. And there's some arguments about what happens when you find something. Also, what happens when you miss something? Both, both can exist. However, I'm still an advocate for more data is better. And I'd rather know if I could detect some type of a cancer early or an aneurysm, for example, which I think those are probably the best two use cases. Would I want to know and have the potential to eliminate risk down the road? Yeah.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  Okay. Good. CGM for a healthy person.

• 40:42Speaker 00

  Worth it times 50. The most worth it I've got on this list because data drives decisions. What I see with CGM, the argument of anxiety, like data anxiety is real. I totally agree. Connect with a clinician or somebody that understands the data and how to interpret it. Are glucose spikes bad? No. Do glucose spikes by themselves cause metabolic dysfunction? No. Do glucose spikes constantly throughout the day, continuously? Because you just keep shoveling? Yes. Yes, that does drive metabolic dysfunction. So above all else, CGM brings awareness. All of a sudden, you see it and that changes habits.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  Biological age testing.

• 41:23Speaker 00

  What were my options? Worth it?

• 41:25Speaker 01

  Worth it?

• 41:26Speaker 00

  What's my?

• 41:26Speaker 01

  Worth it? Waste of money or depends?

• 41:29Speaker 00

  Waste of money. Waste of money. We're not there. Epigenetics is, is not there. What, the way biological age testing is being used today is just a hustle. Right? They're, they're selling, oh, we can reverse your biological age. Well, there's so much nuance to the tests and their accuracy predictability. That's a waste of money. Just get healthy and don't, don't spin there.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  Red light therapy.

• 41:54Speaker 00

  Oh, amazing. With a caveat, okay? Worth it, worth every penny. But red light therapy is really expensive. That's pretty much how you know if it's real. Yeah, yeah. So here's the deal. 30 second blurb. Photobiomodulation, PBM, red light therapy is not a red light bulb. It is very specific wavelength, 660, 850. That's where you get the most mitochondrial excitation. So you need to have dual wavelength. That's piece number one. And then irradiance. Iriance is the intensity of the light. That's what, like, people put this stuff in their gym. So it requires proximity to the light source. Typically within, within one to two inches.

• 42:36Speaker 00

  Because the ideal, we're talking 70 to 100 milliwatts per centimeter squared. That's the number to know. And 99% of the crap out there is complete BS. I actually have a meter and I've looked at product after product there. So I said 70 to 100, that's the magic number. Most are two to three.

• 42:55Speaker 01

  Two to three?

• 42:56Speaker 00

  Correct. So sorry.

• 42:58Speaker 01

  So these red light masks?

• 43:00Speaker 00

  You know, I actually haven't tested. We, we use, so there's variability in that conversation. But when you talk about the science behind red light therapy, those study, those studies originate from that, those data points. 660, 850, 70 to 100 milliwatts per centimeter squared. A ton of energy.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  I love that. Okay.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  Cold plunge.

• 43:21Speaker 00

  Ooh.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  Worth it?

• 43:23Speaker 00

  It depends. It depends. So it depends.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  Waste of money?

• 43:26Speaker 00

  Yeah. What, what's your end game? Well, it's cheap because you just put, put cold water in a bath. I'll tell you this thing. The sweet spot, colder is not better. That's very clear. The sweet spot is 50 to 59 degrees Fahrenheit. Okay? Most studies are 55, split the difference. But you got to understand, yes, there are mental health benefits, super powerful. But that study that's being referenced was sitting in 55 degree water for an hour. If you have an hour and you sit in an ice bath, good for you. I'm, I'm proud of you. But there are other ways. So I think it can have.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  They say six, after six minutes is too high.

• 43:58Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no. No, that's a temperature related phenomenon. But again, that 50 to 59 degrees is very safe to do. But I don't have an hour to sit in the tub. That's where you see the biggest dopamine and norepinephrine replenishment. So it does have value. Does shorter duration possibly give you some benefit? Yeah, probably. Bare minimum, this is the deal. Don't waste your money on a cold plunge. Just take a cold shower, move on.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's a good point. That's what I think too. Okay. Microdosing GLP-1s.

• 44:29Speaker 00

  What was it? Spend it. Spend all you got on microdosing GLP-1s. There are very few circumstances that I.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  It's worth it?

• 44:37Speaker 00

  Worth it. Worth it. Yeah. And by the way, the, the best thing that has happened over the past several years is the cost of GLP-1s has come down dramatically. Access to GLP-1s has improved significantly. Look at Lilly's, I'm not, not, no, I'm not getting paid by Big Pharma, folks. But Lilly's direct to consumer program is awesome. It's cheap.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  What is it?

• 44:58Speaker 00

  So you get a prescription from your physician. They send it directly to Lilly and they send you vials to your house so that you can draw up the peptide and administer it. It, it's, but the price point, I want to say it's a couple, don't quote me on it. But I mean, it's, it's less than $500 a month, which may still be a lot of money. But for the benefits, just let me say this. GLPs are not weight loss drugs. That's just the most disturbing misrepresentation. They're not weight loss drugs. They're metabolic tools. Period.

• 45:30Speaker 01

  What's the difference?

• 45:31Speaker 00

  Well, one has substantial health benefits.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  So you believe that GLP-1s is really good for?

• 45:37Speaker 00

  Transformative.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  For your inflammation, for your metabolic health?

• 45:41Speaker 00

  Well, I don't believe that. That's what the scientific evidence shows. Actual reduction in inflammatory markers.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  Do you take any?

• 45:47Speaker 00

  I do, but I use them very strategically. How I use it most is around fasting.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  Okay, because you were, what?

• 45:54Speaker 00

  I use GLPs around my fasting periods.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  What do you mean?

• 45:59Speaker 00

  Just that. So a GLP.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  Oh, so you're not hungry?

• 46:02Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, so the endpoint of fasting, this is what, you know, I was going to talk to you about. The endpoint of fasting is health optimization. No one's going to disagree with that. Right?

• 46:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:12Speaker 00

  Built out through fat burn, ketosis, autophagy. Okay? That's the endpoint. In my mind, as a physician, I got to get you from here to that endpoint. If hunger or food noise is going to deter you, I'm going to use a tool.

• 46:27Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a good point.

• 46:29Speaker 00

  So that's actually how I use GLPs more in my practice.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  This is interesting. So you really are like a, a true optimizer. Like how, the, like, all the things you need to do to actually maximize your benefits. So you're going to use a GLP-1. So you'd cycle it that way, right?

• 46:45Speaker 00

  Right.

• 46:45Speaker 01

  So if you're fasting, you use that GLP-1 to suppress your appetite.

• 46:49Speaker 00

  Well, so, so, well, more than that.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  How often do you fast?

• 46:52Speaker 00

  So I go through bouts. I mean, I'll randomly fast, but then when I'm really locked in, usually a day a week for four to six weeks. That's, that's really like the powerhouse. That's what moves the needle in every category. Body composition, metabolic optimization, and longevity. Autophagy, autophagy, clearing out bad cells. This idea, these, all these BS posts that are like, in 16 hours, I'm in autophagy. No, you're not. Okay? Autophagic flux exists at all times. But autophagy, which is the real clean out, okay? That, the closest correlate we have that's accessible is ketones.

• 47:27Speaker 01

  So basically, because I'm worth it, waste of money, or depends?

• 47:30Speaker 00

  Worth it, worth it.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  For fasting, you think?

• 47:33Speaker 00

  No, I think it's, I'm going to say though, Jen, it's worth it across the board.

• 47:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was just saying because.

• 47:37Speaker 00

  There are different roles for the tool.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  So, so far, what I've heard, you say that are really kind of, uh, things that I've really kind of glommed onto for optimizing true longevity. You really want to be like a real biohacker. It's using a GLP-1 during fa, just during fasting to suppress, as a tool? To suppress your appetite?

• 48:00Speaker 00

  But again, it enhances insulin sensitivity. That's the deeper.

• 48:02Speaker 01

  Fasting, okay, because, because why?

• 48:05Speaker 00

  It enhances or improves insulin sensitivity. So it's all part of that.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  Fasting once a week for about six weeks, that really kind of cleans out your senescent cells.

• 48:13Speaker 00

  It's a powerful.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  It's a powerhouse, powerful tool.

• 48:16Speaker 00

  And then I will do longer fasts, no more than three days quarterly. Like, yeah.

• 48:21Speaker 01

  Yes. You said another thing also. That was, you said one other thing that was really important.

• 48:26Speaker 00

  Oh, for, for longevity?

• 48:27Speaker 01

  Like for optimization. Yeah, you said, like, the test of moral and you said you like, that wasn't what, I can't remember the other one you said.

• 48:33Speaker 00

  I mean, hormone optimization. I mean, hormone, hormone health and optimization is, you, I don't see, and this is what gets with like online coaches and stuff. I don't see how you could legitimately tell someone you're optimizing them without knowing their baseline hormone status and having that tool to apply. Does everybody need to be on testosterone? Does it? No, of course not. But data drives decisions. And why on earth would you ever summit Everest butt naked? How are you going to go build muscle in the gym when you literally have zero testosterone in your body? It's silly. It's silly. And people are like, I'm doing it natural. Natural would be having some level of functioning hormone in your body that's appropriate.

• 49:16Speaker 00

  We, I'm not going to get into the normal because it's, it's ridiculous. But low testosterone in men is an actual disease. It's an illness that actually increases the risk of all cause mortality, death. Low testosterone. Now specifically, that's less than 150. So really freaking low. But look at women and what they go through, through menopause.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I need to, well, no, I'm not, I'm not in menopause, but I guess I'm in. No, no. What I was going to say is I guess I would be perimenopause, or that's what they say, I guess. But why, why am I, why am I bringing that up? Is even when I was like 36, I feel like I've never had high testosterone. And then people are always like, why are you so muscular? I don't know. I don't, I don't know.

• 49:55Speaker 00

  Well, worse for you, but remember, one quick point, because we think of testosterone muscle. But in women, the dominant signal for muscle health is estrogen. It's just estrogen goes to zero, literally. You're cruising along, cruising along, menopause, zero. Imagine men, if we went along, along, along, zero testosterone.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:14Speaker 00

  Right? That's a, that's not even dramatic. That's life changing, life altering. But estrogen's the stronger signal in women. But testosterone can add to that from a strength standpoint. So whatever's working for you.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  It's not really.

• 50:28Speaker 00

  Is.

• 50:28Speaker 01

  I'm holding on by a, by a thread, Jonathan.

• 50:31Speaker 00

  Just a thread.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  I'm holding on by a thread. It's like just, it's, it's just the end of the year.

• 50:37Speaker 00

  But okay, I know you're joking.

• 50:39Speaker 01

  I'm actually not joking.

• 50:40Speaker 00

  Well, maybe you're being serious. But the reality, the difference between someone who is optimized hormonally and non-optimized is, is radical. I'm not in the business of selling hormones or anything of the sort, but like the educational piece. And for women, this is really important. Testosterone, sure, it improves libido, but that's the least of my concerns. So we'll call it icing on the cake. What it does is it improves cognition, memory, decisiveness, muscle health. That's where it lives. And it actually contributes to bone health. So.

• 51:09Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 51:10Speaker 00

  That's testosterone. And if it's done right, there's, there really shouldn't be downside. I'll tell the state of California to approve my, approve my medical license. I'm good to go.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  Okay. Until then.

• 51:21Speaker 00

  That's my snag. Well, the state of California doesn't like me right now. So.

• 51:26Speaker 01

  Okay. So what do I do?

• 51:27Speaker 00

  We can try to find someone locally and we'll figure it out.

• 51:31Speaker 01

  Figure it out. Okay. What is the earliest sign that someone is becoming metabolically unhealthy?

• 51:37Speaker 00

  There isn't one. I mean, I think I operate on the assumption that there's metabolic dysfunction in most Americans. As, as evidenced by a variety of biomarkers. But you could say sluggish after meals. You could say brain fog. But these are all so non-specific. The important piece of the puzzle to me is I operate on the assumption that you're somewhere along the metabolically deranged pathway. No matter where you are, focus on those core tools that optimize metabolic health. Muscle, sleep, nutrition, not sexy, not expensive.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  But I'll tell you something, like sleep is a good, like, let's just unpack that for a minute and then I want to move on. Try to like answer this as, yeah, worth it, as concise as possible. Like, I mean, I want to sleep. God knows. I'm, God, I would, I would love to sleep eight hours. I think I'm walking around like a zombie half the time because I just, I cannot sleep.

• 52:37Speaker 00

  I know the question before you ask it. Here's the most common thread, Tom and I were talking about this morning. The most common thread I see across high performers is two things. One, their sleep sucks. It's so nice for me to say, oh, Jen, you need seven to eight hours of sleep and, and you know, ensure that rim is quality. And that's nice, but habits and hustle to me says it all. When you're a high performer, like our wheels don't stop spinning. Okay. And all the, I'm sorry folks, but is meditation good, positive? Yes. Do I have the time or the patience for it? No. Would it help me? I don't know. But the bottom line is high performers have a constant. I haven't met too many that are like, oh, doc, I sleep like a rock. Right?

• 53:18Speaker 00

  Because you're always on, you're going. So what I, here's my answer about sleep. What do you do? My position as a physician, I have the luxury of having pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, supplements. Okay? I'm going to tell you, there are pharmaceutical grade sleep agents that indeed, unlike the old school Ambien and stuff, that actually optimize sleep, improve duration, improve quality. No, I don't work for Big Pharma, but.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  Like what? What is it?

• 53:45Speaker 00

  The, the one I use routinely is Devigo.

• 53:48Speaker 01

  So interestingly.

• 53:49Speaker 00

  Which is expensive as hell. And if Big Pharma is listening, it should not be expensive.

• 53:54Speaker 01

  How much is it?

• 53:55Speaker 00

  Oh gosh, I mean, like probably several hundred bucks for a month. But it's, but think about what you're investing in.

• 54:01Speaker 01

  How's it different than Ambien?

• 54:02Speaker 00

  Radically different. Uh, I don't know all the, the, the science behind it, the chemistry. But what it's proven to do is extend duration and quality of sleep. And I see that in clients, in myself by sleep tracking. Oh, by the way, is it worth it to have a bunch of wearables? No. Is it worth it to have one that follows sleep and movement? Yes. I give you, that was free.

• 54:22Speaker 01

  That was a good thing. Thank you.

• 54:23Speaker 00

  That was free.

• 54:23Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 54:24Speaker 00

  But that's the issue is optimize sleep.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  Let's start, let's start with the sleep because all you hear now, sleep, sleep, sleep. And if I hear one more person say, you guys get sleep.

• 54:32Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's like my therapist saying, I should find balance.

• 54:36Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 54:37Speaker 00

  Perfect.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 54:38Speaker 00

  I just, that's all I need.

• 54:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. I know. Oh, just balance?

• 54:41Speaker 00

  Jen, my advice, professional advice, you need balance.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:44Speaker 00

  Tell that to a high performer. There's no such thing.

• 54:47Speaker 01

  By the way, balance is like a joke and a half. Ball, when? I've never had balance ever in my life and balance is, I don't even understand that word.

• 54:55Speaker 00

  I don't think it lies in conflict with performance, to be, to be honest. That's how it is.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  I think moderation also is up there, but that's besides the point. But that's a whole other podcast.

• 55:05Speaker 00

  But so perform, high performers, they lack sleep and they lack strategy.

• 55:09Speaker 01

  It's, it's a hundred percent. Why strategy?

• 55:12Speaker 00

  Because you spend, just answer me this. You, how much time have you invested in your team? I don't know what your team is, but you probably have everything from publicists to financial people. You gotta have financial people.

• 55:27Speaker 01

  I have financial people.

• 55:28Speaker 00

  Okay. Right. So they're, they're sort of the basics, the fundamentals. The higher the echelon of the high performer, the more people sit at the table. But there's one chair that's always uniformly empty and that's their healthcare or health span strategist.

• 55:41Speaker 01

  By the way, you know what the irony of this whole thing is? I have access. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have known. I don't have a doctor.

• 55:48Speaker 00

  Right.

• 55:49Speaker 01

  It's, it's, I have a dermatologist.

• 55:51Speaker 00

  Right.

• 55:51Speaker 01

  Who I like.

• 55:52Speaker 00

  Right. And you go select out the people that you can help.

• 55:54Speaker 01

  And I have a gynecologist. I don't have an internist.

• 55:56Speaker 00

  Right.

• 55:57Speaker 01

  And by the way, none of my friends do either.

• 55:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:59Speaker 01

  I mean, I have my friend, Dr. Abe, who helps, like he has a clinic, whatever. But I don't think I really have anybody who's like on my stuff.

• 56:07Speaker 00

  Well, what you don't have, but think of it higher level. Again, we're talking about optimization. You don't have a strategist.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  No, I do not have a strategist.

• 56:15Speaker 00

  Watching your money. No one's investing. Of course they are.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  But, but you're right. But the health strategy, it's, it's virtually like, it's unbelievable. There's a big gap with that. Because I thought it's also very LA, like in LA, everyone's a concierge doctor, charging a fortune.

• 56:30Speaker 00

  Right. There's that. And, and but tragically, at least where I practice in Denver, I'm shocked on a daily basis. Clients that come in with a concierge doctor on a slow dose of a cholesterol medicine. Their blood pressure's off the, off the charts. They've had two heart attacks. And I'm like, what, so what do you think you're paying for?

• 56:49Speaker 01

  Well, that's, okay. So I'll tell you.

• 56:50Speaker 00

  Band-aids at best.

• 56:51Speaker 01

  True story. I had this concierge doctor, I'm not going to name his name. He came highly recommended. It was a disaster. Still is. Did nothing for me. I spent a lot of money. I went there once to get a physical. He put all of my notes in some like folder on like Cedar Sinai. I never, I don't even know how to get into the link. He doesn't follow up. He forgot, he's in my chart. He forgot to follow up on a test. It was the biggest joke. I mean, like it is a bad joke out there, what's going on. And so I obviously don't work with him anymore, but 100% it's a real problem.

• 57:24Speaker 00

  But you need, but you need, I just gotta keep hammering this. You need a strategist and that's, that is everybody that knocks longevity medicine is just another hustle, da, da, da. Yeah, it is for a lot of people, but what I do in my practice is there's, there's no hustle to it. It's very straightforward. It's a strategy and it's a playbook.

• 57:44Speaker 01

  Okay. So why can't you be my doctor? I don't have any license in California. Okay. Well, let's get back to the sleep.

• 57:52Speaker 00

  Let's everybody appeal for my license.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  Exactly. Okay. Let's talk about magnesium then, because everyone thinks that's the panacea to sleeping well.

• 57:59Speaker 00

  Right.

• 57:59Speaker 01

  Take magnesium, take this, take that. No, Charlie's not, would happen. No, not good.

• 58:04Speaker 00

  No, Charlie. The data is really tied to deficiency, not to, to quality. So this is the same issue across the board. Yeah. Oh, I mean, I see these posts, right? 10 different forms of magnesium. If you, if you got constipation, take Magox. If you've got sleep issues, Maglyc, oh, you want more blood brain, okay, folks, go get your serum magnesium levels tested. Start there. If they're normal, it's a relatively hard argument to say just dumping more in the mix is going to actually change something. Now, I'm a hundred percent on board for placebo. Okay? And, and absolutely, I'm not against Maglycinate. I'm not against supplements, melatonin, fine.

• 58:46Speaker 01

  You are. I thought melatonin is not good for you.

• 58:48Speaker 00

  Well, it depends on the dosing. It's, no, it just depends on the dosing and it does suppress natural production. But at the end of the day, I just keep coming back to the same thing. The output is sleep. The input is whatever it takes to get sleep. So this is one category and clients ask me this all the time. I'll say my position very plain and simple. If there is a pharmaceutical, which there is, that optimizes sleep. Yeah, most of my high performers are going to take it. It's your choice, but when you look at how sleep is foundational. You're chasing, you know, more, more performance in every aspect of your life and your sleep is disrupted. There is really hard to get ahead.

• 59:28Speaker 01

  Jonathan, you know how much, how much I slept last night?

• 59:31Speaker 00

  I bet two hours, three hours.

• 59:32Speaker 01

  Maybe two.

• 59:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:33Speaker 01

  I woke, I, I could not fall asleep and I woke up at three thirty.

• 59:37Speaker 00

  Wheels are turning.

• 59:37Speaker 01

  And I'm like, fuck, I'm at three thirty in the morning and now this, and now I'm getting, I'm getting anxiety.

• 59:41Speaker 00

  And you probably went and did cardio.

• 59:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wish I, I should have.

• 59:45Speaker 00

  No, but that's exactly it.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  All I do, and then I'm stressing out, oh my God, I'm going to be awake. I can't fall asleep. I'm going to be awake till six o'clock and then I gotta wake up at six thirty.

• 59:53Speaker 00

  Right.

• 59:53Speaker 01

  And then it's like.

• 59:54Speaker 00

  By the way, I'll throw in one more pharmaceutical, old, old, old school. I actually use something called propranolol. It's a beta blocker. That combo for high performers is a workhorse. What beta blockers do is they literally disconnect those two systems. I can be emotionally anxious and my heart rate doesn't pick up and I don't start to get activated. That's a, that's a chemical response to anxiety, right? Cortisol dump, nor epi dump, those stress hormones, right? Propranolol just cuts the system apart. So you have physiologic response.

• 1:00:27Speaker 01

  What is this called?

• 1:00:28Speaker 00

  Propranolol. It is old, older than my grandma. From a prescription. It's, you know, people will use it for like a performance anxiety, a bunch of, but it's incredible. I used it during my surgical training.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  Is it like Xanax?

• 1:00:43Speaker 00

  No, no, that's the thing. It's, no, it's literally just interrupting the system, which go your, your sympathetic system. Okay. The fight or flight mode, right? Getting ready to go on stage, getting ready to do surgery, that getting amped up, if you will. It just separates the system. You can mentally be amped up and you're not getting that feeling because that feeling compounds, right? Your heart starts racing. Now I'm paying attention. Now I can't slow my heart down. Now it goes faster. That whole feeling of anxiety is driven by the sympathetic nervous system. All propranolol does is it just disconnects the two. And that's, I'm telling you, high performers, it's, your story is everybody's story.

• 1:01:22Speaker 00

  Because if I got a guy working an M and A deal for nine figures, you think that guy sleeps eight hours a night? That's not even optional. So to me, regulating sleep, literally my tagline is by any means necessary. If melatonin works to regulate sleep and you get good quality duration, great. Melatonin it is. Does it work commonly? No, not, not that I see in my practice. So it's not even something that I would lead with.

• 1:01:48Speaker 01

  Or magnesium.

• 1:01:49Speaker 00

  Magnesium, yeah. I, I, anecdotally, I'm not against, against it, but I don't think from a rational perspective, it makes sense.

• 1:01:58Speaker 01

  Okay. One more question, then I gotta wrap this and we can do this again.

• 1:02:01Speaker 00

  Worth it.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  What's a wellness claim that makes you immediately skeptical?

• 1:02:08Speaker 00

  Any wellness claim that does not have an objective outcome. Period. You're going to feel better, you're going to look better, you're going to perform better. Those aren't objective outcomes. I'm going to reduce your fasting insulin by 50%. That's an outcome.

• 1:02:25Speaker 01

  Okay, I like that.

• 1:02:26Speaker 00

  The fundamental issue, why are people getting hustled in solon and all this stuff? It's because they're, it's sales tactics and trying to, trying to target an emotional buy.

• 1:02:35Speaker 01

  Okay, wait.

• 1:02:35Speaker 00

  So get rid of it.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  Get rid of it. What's something influencers routinely say about health that is just medically wrong?

• 1:02:44Speaker 00

  A lot.

• 1:02:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:02:46Speaker 00

  It'd be hard to like pare it down. I think.

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  One, the top one that you see.

• 1:02:51Speaker 00

  I mean, again, the, the theme I see is people using the qualifier, the evidence. Let me tell you about the study. Let me write, it sounds really sophisticated. Nine times out of 10, they're leaving half the story out. The evidence was never to sell something, to drive an agenda, to win an argument. The evidence was just that. It's evidence. It's information that requires interpretation and application. Okay. So when someone tells you this study says blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like we're in an age, I'm going to say this to the general consumer, freaking go to chat GPT, put it in and ask for, just type this in. Do deep research, critical analysis of this publication for pros and cons.

• 1:03:32Speaker 00

  And basically, basically consolidate it down, you know, what are the cliff notes? Okay. Chat GPT is pretty good. Claude's pretty good at that.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  And whatever that wellness claim is.

• 1:03:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  And say, and say, deep analysis.

• 1:03:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  That's a great point. That's what I do.

• 1:03:48Speaker 00

  Well, right, but, but it's so hyper sensationalized. You got good edits, you got viral posts, all this stuff. And then it started, it gains traction because of the algorithm. The thing is it gains traction because of the algorithm, not the information. The information is being presented. I don't have the medically, legally, ethically, morally, I don't have the option to mislead people. That's not part of the deal.

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  Jonathan, thank you for being on the podcast. I know we had to like wrap this quickly because you were two hours late, but you'll come on again and we can finish this. This is a good hour. We, we got another hour, a good hour in. This could go on. I have another four pages of notes, but.

• 1:04:28Speaker 00

  We'll get back to it.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  We can, you'll come back again and screw up the schedule yet again. I'm sure.

• 1:04:33Speaker 00

  Doing that again. Okay.

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  Are you sure? Okay, we'll figure that out.

• 1:04:36Speaker 00

  I appreciate the grace.

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:04:38Speaker 00

  And you could rip my head off.

• 1:04:39Speaker 01

  I, I was going to, but I thought that'd make a really bad podcast if we were like, you know.

• 1:04:45Speaker 00

  Tensions are high. Fair enough.

• 1:04:47Speaker 01

  Okay. Um, okay. Bye.