291. Taking Testosterone WITHOUT Suppression?!
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Thank you for listening to the Boost Your Biology podcast. My name is Lucas Owen. I uncover the most cutting edge health information on the planet, ranging from hormones, nutrition, supplementation, fat loss, biohacking, longevity, wellness, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the Boost Your Biology podcast.

What is up, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back to the Boost Your Biology podcast. Today I'm thrilled because we'll be exploring testosterone optimization and also beyond testosterone, exploring some of the other critical hormones. And I'm joined in with an expert on this subject matter, Dr. Cameron Seppard. Cameron, welcome to the podcast.

I'm so glad to join you. I've been a big fan of your work for a long time. And so I think this will be a fun and interesting conversation with your viewers. Definitely, definitely. So maybe Cam, we'll start out by, I mean, we've been sort of keeping an eye on each other's work for a number of years, and I've seen you expand and grow Maximus Tribe, which has done exceptionally well in the last 12 to 24 months. But for my audience, did you want to sort of let them know a little bit about your backstory? How did you get into health optimization? Yeah.

Sure. So I've been a healthcare practitioner for a long time. I'm a licensed clinical psychologist and psychiatry professor. So I train doctors at UCSF medical school. So I've been practicing teaching for over a decade. And I've been doing a lot of

I became a serial entrepreneur. So I helped start a company called Amada Health, which created online weight loss programs to help people prevent diabetes and heart disease. And through that company, we helped a million people lose 10 million pounds and cut their risk of diabetes and heart disease in half. And it really opened my eyes to the power of telemedicine.

When I was working in a hospital setting and I still have a private practice working with top CEOs and VCs, I literally see one patient at a time. It's great, it's effective, but you're never going to help society at that level. And so you really need a scalable platform in doing what we're doing, just like now on Zoom and these technological platforms allow you to scale healthcare in a way that's really accessible.

um, that really became the opportunity to do that directly with consumers with Maximus and kind of the backstory behind that is, you know, I read the statistic that testosterone and sperm count have dropped 50% in the last 50 years or so. Um, which, you know, you're on the forefront of, and it was very alarming statistic. Um, and it's not only due to the obesity and diabetes epidemic, which I was addressing through Omada,

but also due to endocrine disrupting chemicals in our food, water and plastics that even in thin, young, otherwise healthy males was negatively affecting their hormone function. And so unfortunately, there weren't any great solutions for it. Injectable testosterone replacement therapy is not a good solution for young men who want to maintain their testicular function and fertility.

But they're essentially, I ran across talking to the best doctors in the United States. There are sort of fertility safe solutions that were out there in kind of the creme de la creme private practices. And I really wanted to democratize that for, you know, essentially young American men in that they didn't have to choose between essentially being chemically castrated

as they are now, or having to castrate themselves with essentially injectable TRT. And I've developed a good solution and then that was kind of the genesis for Maximus.

Yeah, it's a common discussion that I also have with a number of clients. Obviously, they want to optimize testosterone. They go to their doctors. Most doctors will say their blood test result is like 200, 300. And oftentimes, the only recommendation that they get suggested is you have to go on TRT. And that's like usually testosterone sort of injections or a cream. But

Before we get into that sort of discussion, maybe did you want to talk about sort of how did you come about analyzing and exploring different methods to actually increase testosterone levels? Like how did that evolve? Yeah. So when I was doing my research on, you know, how do you address this? Because I think the future of, of honestly, society is, is dependent on it. There was an interesting article that came out about,

talking about how we're gonna essentially achieve sperm count zero by the year 2050, if the trend continues, 'cause it's been decreasing linearly. Now, I don't think necessarily the entire society will end in terms of reproductive capability, but there may very well be a possibility that the average guy, if he's overweight and otherwise ill,

may significantly lose reproductive ability. In fact, 50% of idiopathic infertility, meaning infertility without a known ideological cause is now male caused. We assume it's always women that are having trouble in terms of getting pregnant, but half the time it's men and it's increasingly due to hormonal dysfunction. So it's a really dire thing and unfortunately not enough people are talking about it. And so

For me, it almost became a requirement in thinking about testosterone,

treatments, you have to maintain testicular function and fertility because I think that's the only way to do that while ensuring essentially the future viability of society. And so one of those was essentially looking into fertility drugs, the most common of which in the United States that is prescribed is Clomid. That's the brand name or the generic name is Clomiphene. It's actually been FDA approved since 1967.

It's commonly used for female infertility, but it's also used off-label to treat men's infertility. It's a category of drugs called SIRMs or selective estrogen receptor modulators. And essentially what they do is they selectively in certain areas of the body, including the brain, block the estrogen receptor. Now, what that does is very interesting and almost clever. It's a clever biohack.

At the level of the hypothalamus and the pituitary, so it's called the HPG axis, the G being the gonadal axis, the body is paying attention to how much essentially estrogen is floating around. And if it signals that there's not enough estrogen, it will actually produce more testosterone because estrogen is essentially derived from testosterone via an enzyme called aromatase. So essentially you're tricking the body into thinking there's estrogen deficiency, even though there isn't.

Um, and so what happens is your body, uh, will produce more of the hypothalamus produces more GNRH, gonadotropin releasing hormone, which stimulates the pituitary to produce more LH.

which stimulates the testes to produce more testosterone and also to produce more FSH, follicle stimulating hormone, which stimulates the testes to produce more sperm. So it's a hugely advantageous drug because it not only increases sperm production and thus fertility, but it also increases testosterone as well. It's a relatively commonly used and safe approach. In fact, there's three year plus studies showing that

Clomid is an effective treatment for secondary hypogonadism or essentially low testosterone. Now, the downside of it is Clomid is essentially

uh, two drugs. They're stereo isomers or kind of mirror molecules, just like my left and right hand. There's, uh, N-clomiphene and then there's Zuclomiphene. One is an estrogen receptor antagonist or blocker. And the other is an estrogen receptor agonist or stimulates the receptor and basically acts like an estrogen. The problem is in guys, obviously, if you take too much estrogen, you get estrogenic side effects, moodiness, bloating, uh,

emotionality, et cetera. And so while it boosts testosterone, it kind of throws off people's mood if you're taking it long term. And so it's not a super elegant solution. So what a pharmaceutical company did to solve this was they basically purified it, getting rid of the zuclomaphene stereoisomer and only leaving enclomaphene, which is the pure stereoisomer that's responsible for most of the testosterone boosting effects and essentially getting rid of the side effects that are associated with

And so N-clomiphene has been out on the market and essentially we took that and essentially popularized it. We're actually the number one prescriber of it now in the United States, because like I said, it stimulates your body to produce more of its own natural testosterone and it maintains or even increases testicular function size, interestingly, and fertility.

And so you open the market quite dramatically because instead of the injectable testosterone that you mentioned, where if you take that, it shuts down your natural production. You literally get testicular shutdown, shrinkage and infertility. It's a drastic solution. It's also basically a permanent solution in the sense that you have lifelong dependence. If you go on injections, if you stop taking it, your body's no longer producing testosterone. It's almost like a

car that has a dead battery, it's now no longer functioning. And so for younger men, basically our advisors think basically anyone under the age of 50 or anyone who wants to maintain their fertility or have any possibility of having children in the future really shouldn't be on injectable testosterone. But with Inclamaphene, because it's actually

like I said, derived from a fertility drug, it's safe for fertility. It maintains your own natural production. And so it's a much more accessible solution that has no dependence. If you stop taking clomiphene, your levels will just go back to wherever they were. And so to me, I was like, wow, this is a much smarter solution. It's more consumer friendly because it's just a pill that you take every day. No injections needed, not a pain in the ass, just like there is with testosterone. And it maintains testicular function fertility. So to me,

It's not just a better product. It's significantly advantageous for people who are interested in testosterone optimization, but they don't want to go the full route of starting to inject themselves every week for the rest of their life.

Yeah, I think you've done a really good job at sort of explaining mechanism of action there. My listeners will really appreciate that. And I do want to point out to my listeners as well, I have talked about inclimafine favorably for many, many years and mentioned its many different benefits, how in some cases may actually be superior to injectable testosterone, given the fact that it maintains fertility, it's oral,

And like you said, it's limited side effects. So did you want to sort of talk about, I mean, dosage regimens that you've seen work well for guys? I personally have, I mean, from my experience, I've seen guys that use even as little as 6.25 milligrams see a favorable effect. So do you want to sort of elaborate on dosages?

Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing I'll say, you know, if you look at the original clinical trials that were published on in Clamiphene, they were strictly done in men who have secondary hypogonadism. So meaning this is everyone who has low testosterone, generally under 300 nanograms per deciliter in terms of total testosterone. They basically tested various dosages and found that for most people who are hypogonadal, about 12 and a half milligrams a day.

was the most effective dose. Now, the interesting thing that we kind of pioneered is we're not just treating people who have low testosterone, because as you know, the definition of low testosterone is completely arbitrary. In the United States, it's generally 300 nanograms per deciliter, which is like the second and a half percentile.

which means because of our healthcare system here, which is heavily reliant on insurance companies, if you're in the third percentile, meaning 97% of men are higher than you, insurance says your testosterone is not low enough to qualify or be reimbursed for treatment.

That's silly because you're obviously not doing well. If you're behind 97% of people, you probably aren't even feeling particularly well. But insurance here is like basically unless you're really, really sick, you don't qualify for treatment. Now, that's obviously silly because health is not just about the avoidance of dire illness. That's why I always unfortunately say in the United States, we have a sick care system. We don't have a health care system.

But, you know, with Maximus and other clinics who are cash pay, we don't touch insurance for that reason, because insurance would never pay for anyone who's not below that second and a half percentile. We treat people who are what are called eugonatal or technically within the normal range. Now, the normal range is quite wide. It can be between 300 to 500.

thousand up to twelve hundred depending on what you consider to be normal there's a vast difference between someone who's 300 though and like a thousand uh in terms of their total testosterone so what we found is it obviously depends on your starting point uh of where you're from so we we have tested dosages uh anywhere between 3.125 milligrams all the way up to 25 milligrams

And obviously different people need different amounts depending on, you know, how much of a testosterone boost that they need and where they're starting from.

But we actually were the ones who pioneered the dosage of 6.25 milligrams that literally did not even exist on the market. You couldn't even find it. Literally, when I started the company, 25 milligrams was the only dose that was available from a pharmacy. I did funny personal experiments. You know, I was like taking the powder out of the capsule, putting it in liquid droppers so that I could have lower dosages and test it. And basically what I found is for people who have normal testosterone like myself,

Like I'm not low, but I want, let's say a boost for optimization or performance enhancement. 6.25 is more than enough. In fact, in most people, it'll increase levels by somewhere between 1.5 to 2.5 X. So on average, let's say it'll double your testosterone levels. That's what I even found personally.

So you're going from, let's say a 500 total tea to a thousand total tea or a hundred free tea to 200 free tea in terms of picograms per milliliter. And so it's quite effective even with a pretty low dose. Now everyone's results vary. That's why we do personalized medicine. So in our clinic, you know, they might start you on a low dose, let's say 6.25 milligrams, depending on your starting point, maybe a little bit higher if you're lower, maybe if you're a bigger guy,

Test your levels after 30 days to see how you respond. And if that's good, then you're great. If you need more, we can always titrate up, right? And so I think the philosophy in responsible clinical practice is really to find what I call the MED, the minimal effective dose. More is not better, contrary to kind of American norms. You know, with all medications, the higher the doses that you take, the higher the risk of potential side effects. Now, the good thing with Inclamiphene is the side effects are

rare, they're mild and they're reversible. So they're on the order of one to 3%. Most common side effects are headaches, dizziness, and nausea. So common things that you see with all medication

And if you have the side effects, they stop when you stop taking them if you want, or obviously you can lower the dosage to try to minimize the risk of side effects. And in fact, I think in clinical trials, the side effects were no different than placebo even. So who knows if they're even from the medications themselves. So they're relatively mild and manageable is the way that I describe them. But you always kind of want to take the minimal dosage in order to get the biggest bang for your buck or the highest cost benefit ratio that you can.

Now, as part of the protocol, I mean, obviously, we've seen tremendous results with N-clomiphene, even as a standalone therapy. Like, let's say we're looking at a guy who's just integrating N-clomiphene by itself. You're saying that even as low as three to six milligrams, for example, is going to move the needle quite significantly. And I'd imagine that's like after a three to six month period. That's typically what you're sort of looking at. But

Any ancillary recommendations, complementary supplements, ingredients like DHEA, pregnenolone, how do they sort of fit into the picture?

Yeah, great question. So the two neurosteroids or neurohormones that you mentioned, DHEA and pregnenolone are essentially like the grandfather, grandmother, mother hormones that are high on the steroidal cascade, right? When you consume fat in the form of cholesterol, it breaks down into pregnenolone, progesterone, DHEA, and the other hormones that your body produces.

Utilizes to produce testosterone and estrogen. So oftentimes we'll pair sometimes a low dose of pregnant alone along with the. Now, I wouldn't say it's absolutely necessary. 1 of the advantages in fact, versus injectable that most people don't realize.

is injectable TRT will shut down your LH and FSH that I mentioned, right? So you're no longer getting that signal from your brain to your testes. That's why your testes shrink and you become infertile. But it's not just the LH or FSH signaling. It's actually shutting down your neurosteroidal cascade. So your pregnenolone levels drop

which is really important actually to cognitive functioning because pregnenolone turns into allopregnenolone, a very important neurosteroid and GABA agonist, which is responsible for your sense of calm or equanimity.

And so on TRT, it's particularly important to supplement, injectable TRT, I should say, to supplement pregnenolone and or DHEA. So you see common like TRT gurus back in the day, like Dr. John Chrysler, always recommend to his patients an injectable testosterone to supplement pregnenolone and DHEA.

With enclamophene, because it's stimulating your own natural production, your endogenous pregnenolone is not shut down. Your neuro steroids are not shut down. And so there isn't a deficiency that's caused. Now, if you want to supplementally just make sure you're getting a little extra boost, you can take a little bit of supplemental pregnenolone. Now, pregnenolone won't boost your testosterone levels any more than you are with the enclamophene. Really, the purpose of it that we found clinically is it seems to improve mood and it seems to improve energy.

as a kind of a neurosteroid or neurohormone. Some people kind of describe the colors in life kind of being a little bit brighter, a little more pep in their step. So it gets some of the mood and energy effects that people often want from testosterone, gives a little extra boost, I would say.

DHEA tends to in men preferentially convert to estradiol. So I actually don't necessarily recommend it because it can boost estrogen too high. Now, if your estradiol levels on a blood test are low, then it makes sense to take some supplemental DHEA to increase levels into an optimal range or to a range that you're feeling better.

But I generally recommend to not supplement DHGA unless you're doing blood testing because it's easy to overdo and you don't want too much estradiol as a man. Yeah, that makes sense. Just going back to, I want to sort of talk about like the suppression side of things with injectable testosterone. And this might be sort of linked to like the pharmacokinetics, how it's sort of absorbed, utilized and regulated by the body.

My understanding is that anytime any man decides to use any exogenous testosterone, this is my understanding. And we were sort of chatting about it before. Initially, what I thought was that no matter what form it's in, whether or not it's injectable, cream, nasal, oral, undecanoate,

Any sort of form you use, it's going to lead to severe suppression. But did you want to sort of elaborate on how that pathway, it's more so related to the half-life, how much we're impacting LH? Did you want to sort of discuss that?

Yeah, this is a great point. And I actually think it's almost like a common myth. Basically, everyone thinks if you're taking exogenous testosterone, meaning external testosterone from outside the body, it's going to cause testicular shutdown, shrinkage, and infertility. And I think that's no longer the case with the recent understanding and the more cutting edge approaches that we're doing now. So if you actually look at the research literature,

The amount of the suppression is directly proportional to the half-life of the testosterone, which is just basically a fancy way of saying the longer the testosterone lasts, the more suppressive it is. And if you actually think about what injectable testosterone is, it's almost like a devil's bargain that we've made is that it's not, even though they call it bioidentical, it's not bioidentical.

The injectable testosterone is actually an ester. We modify the natural testosterone molecule. You add an ester to it. So you typically have heard of like cipionate, propionate, or ananthanate, or unbacanaate, as you mentioned. And what that does is it increases the half-life because nobody likes to inject anything every day. It's too much of a pain in the ass. And so with these esters, you can inject, you know,

usually once a week. And so it's literally less of a pain in the ass. The problem with that is it's almost like to use a car analogy, you're redlining your car and driving it for 24 hours a day for the next seven days and your engine kind of gets burnt out.

And so the body, because it's being redlined and it's elevated all day, every day, which is not natural, the testosterone has a natural diurnal rhythm. It actually peaks kind of the early morning and then drops off. And so it has this natural 24-hour rhythm. I think the body is very sensitive essentially to that. And so the level of LH and FSH suppression that you get on injectable testosterone is something around 90%, 95%.

Right. So like normal levels of LH or FSH, somewhere in the single digits, essentially, it'll go to near zero. And it's very obvious on a blood test when you're shut down or suppressed. As I said, not only does that happen with LH and FSH, it also happens with your neurosteroids as well. So here's the interesting thing.

There's topical testosterone as well. Now there's oral testosterone as well, and they have shorter half-lives. For a topical testosterone, instead of lasting a whole week, it lasts about 12 to 16 hours. So it'll last basically the course of a day, but you need to reapply every single day. So usually once, maybe twice a day for some people who want it, but usually once a day is sufficient.

With oral testosterone, usually the half-life is about four to six hours. So you'll dose that usually twice a day, maybe sometimes up to three times a day. With the intranasal, the half-life is very short. It's 10 to 100 minutes. It's the shortest half-life of any form of testosterone. So you need to swab your nose literally three times a day.

The oral and the topical testosterone only suppress LH and FSH by about 50, 55%. And then the intranasal testosterone suppresses by only 33% because it has a shorter half-life.

So you're correct. All of them are suppressive, but not to the same degree. You're talking about 90, 95, 50, 55, and about 30, 35%. So they will all suppress you to varying degrees, but not as much as injectable. Now, here's the interesting thing that we've discovered, innovated upon, and actually even filed for intellectual property on.

is with injectable testosterone, there's really no reversing that suppression. If you take it with inclamophene, which is a common question that we ask, they're like, well, you know, inclamophene increases LH and FSH, testosterone decreases it. Can you counteract it? And the answer is no. Just injectable testosterone is too powerful for inclamophene to do anything. People have tried that with Clomid for years. It doesn't really work.

So really the solution with TRT, if you want to maintain some semblance of fertility is to co-inject it with HCG. HCG is basically synthetic LH. So you're, it's almost, I call it LH replacement therapy, just like it's testosterone is testosterone replacement therapy.

So you're replacing your LH. It will signal to your balls that you're getting LH. It will stimulate some of the LH production and, or the functions of LH, and it'll keep your testicle volume. So you're not going to get the shrinkage and it'll maintain some fertility. It won't be as good as if you were off TRT, but if you just want to keep the boys running, so to speak.

It is a good solution. Unfortunately, in the US, HCG is no longer able to be compounded. You have to either buy the brand name or it's just very expensive. We do offer it, but it's a few hundred bucks. So it's not a cheap solution. But here's the interesting thing with the topical

the oral and the intranasal, because as I mentioned, they're not a suppressive by only about 30 to 50%. And clomiphene can actually counteract the suppression. That's something that we discovered and we actually published. You can read the paper on our website. We tested as in fact, oral testosterone and oral testosterone, by the way, works way better than most people realize you can get total testosterone levels to 1500 plus, you can get free testosterone levels to 500 plus. The only trick to it is you have to consume it with some fat.

So generally, if you consume it with about 30 grams of fat, which is like a normal fatty breakfast, you're eating some eggs, some avocados, et cetera. What it does is it piggybacks off of the lymphatic system. The lymphatic system is your body's system that absorbs fat. And so as it's absorbing the fat from your food, it's also absorbing the testosterone, which is a lipid soluble drug, fat soluble drug. And it actually gets absorbed and it bypasses in fact, first pass liver metabolism.

So that's another myth. People always say, oh, oral testosterone must be like an oral steroid. It's going to mess up your liver. No, that's a myth. In the 1970s, there was an alkylated form called methyl testosterone that was toxic to the liver, but that's not this. We use literally native testosterone. It's actually bioidentical. It's literally the same testosterone that your testicles produce, chemically identical. And we put it in a special tablet

that is formulated to piggyback off of the lymphatic system. And so as long as you're consuming it with fat actually gets absorbed pretty well. Um, and like I said, it can make your levels go as high. In fact, as injectable, the only thing is it's only lasting for about four to six hours. So typically what you do, you'll pop one with a breakfast. You might take another one with lunch or dinner, and you can almost time it the way that you want. So actually, if you want to use it as a pre-workout that, uh,

It's a really great solution. Just take it four hours basically before a workout and you'll have super like physiological testosterone levels that are peaking right as you're doing your workout. You'll be stronger than ever. And what we found is with even a low dose of inclamophene, like let's say 6.25 milligrams, 100% of the patients in the clinical trial maintain their LH and FSH levels within the normal range, if not even higher. So actually we did a person's blood test, sorry, sperm analysis results.

They had done a sperm analysis 2 years ago. They went on oral testosterone plus and did another sperm analysis because they were donating sperm to fertilize some embryos. They actually had twice the amount of total motile sperm count as they did before. Which is not only remarkable, because you're saying it's not only not suppressive, it's actually improving their fertility.

So for the first time really in history, you can have your cake and eat it too. You can take exogenous testosterone and maintain or even increase your testicular function and fertility. It's so like, I fully agree, man. Like we're at a point in history now where we can actually leverage some of these really powerful hormones without

like we're sort of we're really biohacking their use like we're just figuring out ways to utilize them without many of the side effects that most guys typically think of now my question to you is for the guys that use oral testosterone are they actually experiencing the typical like the testosterone sensation like feeling stronger in the gym like better mood are they still getting those benefits

Yeah. I would say in the order of strength, in terms of how much you feel it, it's also directly proportional to the half-life. I would say the intranasal is the weakest, then stronger than that is oral, then stronger than that is topical, then stronger than that is injectable. So the problem with the injectable though, is when you inject it, like usually within the first day, your levels are super physiological to the point that it's like almost in human levels, like no natural human being has that level. So it almost feels like a high literally when you inject it. And

Then it starts to drop over the course of the week so that by the time you're at day seven and you're injecting again, your levels are almost a little bit back to normal or let's say high normal. I wouldn't say that's really natural. And so, yeah, if you're chasing a high, nothing is going to feel as strong as injectable. But I would say especially the topical and the oral are

are very strong. Like I said, at the peak levels, they'll be as high as, you know, like maybe a midweek or end of week dose of injectable testosterone. And so you're still getting the symptomatic improvement, the improvements in mood, energy, motivation, drive, kind of the typical testosterone effects.

But actually in a way that I would argue actually feels better. And this is a really other interesting example of a difference, key difference between injectable and the oral and topical.

Injectable tends to aromatize into estradiol or estrogen. So one of the huge problems with TRT is a lot of guys feel great because they have this super physiological testosterone, but after a few weeks, they're getting so much estrogen that they're getting estrogenic side effects. In fact, you can get gynecomastia or development of male breast tissue or what they call man boobs, right? If you're not careful, you have to monitor your estradiol levels and make sure they're not too high.

In order to counteract that, doctors will often prescribe an aromatase inhibitor, an AI, to lower the conversion of testosterone to estradiol and control estrogen. A lot of people aren't a fan of that because you can overdo it. You can shut down your estrogen. And so you're playing this kind of Goldilocks game of I don't want it too high. I don't want it too low. And you have to constantly dial it in. It's very finicky, right? So the more progressive solution nowadays is if your estrogen is going too high on injectable, they just lower your testosterone.

dose rather than adding another drug and aromatase inhibitor. Now you're engaging in polypharmacy, et cetera. So it's kind of a known problem with injectable is essentially you're getting high testosterone, but it converts to estrogen as well.

The interesting thing about oral and testosterone, oral and topical testosterone is that they, instead of converting to estrogen, they actually preferentially convert to DHT, right? Which is a male virility hormone as, as you know, it's kind of associated with aggression and drive and libido.

And especially the topical, if you're using a topical compounded version, that's a gel or a cream, you can actually apply it directly to the scrotum or your ball sack. And that's obviously very close to the localized area in which testosterone is naturally produced. And there's a lot of

of the 5-AR enzyme, 5-alpha reductase, which converts testosterone to DHT. And so you can actually get super physiological DHT levels. And so people oftentimes actually report better libido

on topical testosterone than even the injectable because they're having higher DHT levels. Now, some people might say, well, is it good to have high DHT levels? There's a whole debate we can have about that. I would say you can choose your own adventure. If you like the effects of DHT and you're not sensitive to DHT, meaning you don't get hair loss, enlarged prostate and acne, which are common DHT side effects,

then run your DHT high and have fun. You're going to feel like fucking Superman. For other folks who are prone to male pattern baldness, you're already having hair loss.

You got to be a little bit careful about pushing your DHT to super physiological levels. What you can do is you can add a 5-alpha reductase inhibitor, a 5-AR inhibitor, which are people commonly known as finasteride or dutasteride. So our doctors will prescribe dutasteride. If you are already prone, you don't want to lose your hair, you're already losing it. You can take oral or topical testosterone.

You get the testosterone boost, but the dutastride will block it from converging to DHT. So you're not going to get kind of the typical DHT level side effects. That's your choice. You can kind of run it either way if you want high or low DHT, but essentially you have the option to do so. And it works either way. With DHT, I don't know if you've, but you probably have come across a research where they actually apply DHT cream and it shrinks the prostate. Like, did you want to sort of elaborate on that?

Yeah, it's kind of an interesting controversy about whether DHT is problematic. But on the other hand, we know that 5-alpha reductase inhibitors, which block DHT, also shrink the prostate. So it's kind of a conundrum in terms of what it's doing exactly to the prostate.

I would say most of the time, the concern that people have is less around the prostate and PSA levels. It's really most of the time around hair, right? As guys generally don't like to lose their hair and to be bald. Um, the guys who are already bald, they don't care. They like to run their DHT levels high. Um,

But we have a lot of customers who don't want to lose their hair. And so for that reason, they're often taking Dutasteride along with it. The other thing that's nice too, if you think about it, what Dutasteride is doing, it's blocking the conversion of testosterone to DHT. So if you're blocking it, you get even more testosterone. So oral testosterone in particular, and combined with Dutasteride, will get your levels super, super high. And so it's a really effective

combination. The other thing too, a lot of guys are scared of obviously taking finasteride or dutasteride because they hear about post finasteride syndrome, sexual side effects, etc.,

you have to remember too a lot of guys are taking these as monotherapy meaning they're just taking finasteride to test right for hair loss they're kind of low t in the first place so you're low t and then you're low dht now so yeah you're going to have loss of sexual function if you're on testosterone with oral or topical your testosterone levels are over a thousand you know total uh 200 300 free you're going to be feeling probably pretty good and so not having super high dht

for the most part, usually doesn't mess with libido when testosterone is properly optimized. That's the thing that people don't generally appreciate. What about, I mean, I'd imagine over the years, you've collected and collated huge amounts of data points with so many guys running different stacks and protocols. Like, what have you learned personally? Like, has there been a certain area that you're like, oh, this was quite a surprise. Like, I wasn't expecting the combination of this and this to happen.

result in something like you know an interesting outcome like given that you've i mean how many men has maximus tribe helped over the years like being served yeah i mean we're definitely in the five figures now of patients that we're currently even serving um and we're constantly collecting data and publishing it that's actually something that's unique about our company um i'm not

Or of any other telemedicine company that actually publishes and open sources their data. Um, so we have, like, we published a paper on and alone as a monotherapy showing that it safely effectively doubles testosterone levels. We published the paper that I mentioned that combines oral.

testosterone and in clomiphene. And the reason, by the way, part of the reason we published that paper was because that was a surprising result and almost nobody believed it because to your point, the norm, the myth in the space was if you take testosterone, you're gonna be suppressed.

And we said, not necessarily if you take it with enclamophene. But we had to publish the data to prove it because people otherwise wouldn't really believe it. And that was surprising. Like, you know, before we started the study, like I almost skinny pig myself before, you know, we actually did the study because I was like, well, if I start taking oral testosterone, it's going to mess with my fertility. I literally banked my sperm because I was like, you know, in case this like messes with me, I want to make sure I'm good for the future when I want to have kids. And obviously monitored my levels very carefully.

But that was a surprising thing that I found was it's not as suppressive as people think. By the way, another key little difference. There's a brand name on the market called Kaisertrex that has testosterone on the canna eight. That's in the oral form. We have a compounded version that uses native

Uh, testosterone, so it's a different form of testosterone. Like I said, we use the natural native bio identical form. On the can I use an Esther we find that the native is actually less suppressive because it has a shorter half life. And so some guys don't even need interestingly in cloniphene, they can take oral testosterone at like a moderate. Not get too much suppression.

And for other guys, they can take really low dosage. They can take 3.125 milligrams or they can take maybe 6.25 every other day and still maintain their natural testicular function, their LH and FSH. So that was really the surprising result is it's less suppressive. Oral is less suppressive than we thought because essentially oral hasn't been tested that much. There's three FDA approved forms in the United States.

But the first two were really expensive. And even though doctors like them and patients like them, they never became popular, honestly, because of cost. And now that essentially there are cheaper oral versions available, there's a lot more people taking oral testosterone. And so now the data is coming in and people are like, oh, OK, this does work. And now we're realizing it's actually less suppressive than we initially thought.

Now topical somewhere in the middle, topical is actually suppressive. You take topical testosterone on its own, you're gonna get suppressed, not as bad as injectable. So it typically needs a higher dose of inclamophene, maybe not three or six. It might be six or 12 and a half. Um,

But that's the beauty of the testing and the personalized medicine that we do. You know, you test your levels, you see where your LH and FSH is, you can increase or decrease your enclaffing to get the just right minimal effective dose to just keep your testicular function going. But in that model, it doesn't become a monotherapy. Really, the testosterone is doing the work, if you will.

Right? The oral, the topical testosterone is getting most of the symptomatic benefit. And then you're just really taking in clomiphene as an anti-suppressive agent just to make sure. So it's almost, I almost call it testosterone reinforcement there. It's not testosterone replacement, actually. It's not replacing your testosterone.

You're keeping your natural testosterone as almost the baseline or the foundation. And then the exogenous testosterone is stacking or reinforcing on top of that. So you kind of get the best of both worlds. Your balls are working, you get your own testosterone is still online. The factory is still going. And then now you're getting level that are, you wouldn't see unless you're an Olympic athlete or otherwise genetically blessed.

This is, yeah, I find this super, super interesting. With the, because I'm just trying to think about it theoretically, like let's say even a guy that doesn't want to use N-climafine, obviously there's going to be some guys out there that would try not to use N-climafine for whatever reason. Might be they're just like anti-

I don't know, they don't want to block the estrogen in the brain or something. Theoretically though, like if they were to stack it, like the oral testosterone microdosing with like other supplements and herbs and compounds that actually stimulate LH, such as like tonkat ali, fadozia, boron, cistanche, pine pollen, like that sort of stack. Theoretically, I'd imagine those guys could probably...

Like it wouldn't surprise me if they also see an improvement in fertility because of those other compounds, you know? Well, let's address two things. I think I'm really glad you brought this up. One, people read too much Reddit. I always think the best way to develop mental illness is to read too much Reddit posts. There's a bunch of scaremongering around inclamophene. First of all, there's like, if you read it, you think you're going to go blind. The people complain about ocular side effects.

The research actually shows that Clomid, as I mentioned, it's probably from the Zuclomiphene isomer, has rare ocular side effects that are actually reversible when you stop taking the drug.

What's actually happening is people, 76% of people who aren't taking any drugs have floaters, right? If you start paying attention to just like the viscous fluid of your eye, you have these little things that float on there. You don't even notice them most of the time, right? Unless you think about it. What happens is people go on Reddit, they're like, oh shit, it causes floaters. And they start paying attention to them and like, oh shit, now in my eyes, I'm going blind. It's literally like a psychogenically induced anxiety, right?

There's literally in all the clinical trials that there are no documented ocular side effects in clomiphene ever. And in our clinical trial, we had 1,250 people. Out of that, one person reported ocular side effects. And even then, that person had previously used Clomid. So it wasn't even clear if it was due to the Clomid or the inclamiphene, which is incredibly rare.

And I talked to Mohit Khera, who's one of the top testosterone experts. He does clinical trials in the clomiphene. I said, have any of your patients noticed any ocular side effects? He's like, nope, not one. So I'm not saying it's not possible, but I'm saying it's incredibly rare. And if it does happen, it's probably because people overdose it and it's reversible. Like I said, any medication, if you overdo the dosage, is going to cause issues.

There's some people out there who make this argument about estrogen blockage long-term not being good for you. I think it's speculative. If you have to remember, these are also used as anti-cancer drugs.

Inclamiphene, teramiphene, raloxifene have been used for decades in women. We have literally half a century of data on the safety and efficacies. They're very well characterized drugs. I'm not saying that they're side effect free. I'm saying we know the side effects very, very well. And so the safety profiles are very well known. And so it is a cost benefit.

in terms of if you take in clomiphene, is there some side effect risk? Yes. But there's clear downsides of not having your testicular function. So to me, I'm like small theoretical side effect risk versus the clear benefit of keeping your balls working are generally positive for most people. And you can always try it. And if it doesn't work for you, you can stop. The problem with the herbs, you know, is the research is very pure. Sorry, it's very poor.

They're not pure. So you mentioned Fidogea aggressive. Andrew Huberman goes on Joe Rogan's podcast and is bizarre as a scientist and professor. He talks about a case study of one person, right, who went from theoretically a testosterone of 200 to 600. And he claims that Fidogea triples testosterone.

which is a joke. Like that's not a no, no serious scientist would cite an end of one anecdote as scientific evidence when there's zero human studies on Phytogea agrestis, they're only rat studies. And in fact, the rat studies suggest that it causes testicular toxicity.

So why would he go on Rogan promoting this? Because it turns out later he has a financial tie to a supplement company, Momentus, that of course sells Fidogea agrestis. He's been making money off of it, even though it's literally clinically irresponsible. I called him out for it for years for promoting the snake oil bullshit because most of the test Fidogea is on the market. It's not even real. The owner of Nootropics Depot is a friend of mine. He owns an analytical lab. He tested a lot of Fidogea on the market.

By the way, there's no, there's not even a reference sample to know what is real pedogia to compare it to. That's the funny thing. So basically what happened the moment he went on Rogan, all these Chinese companies all of a sudden say, Hey, we have pedogia for sale. Even though think about how long it takes to grow a plant. Like all of a sudden these, it's just complete, it's complete fake bunk, um, was going on the market. People were selling it. No one, no one was even doing the, the, uh, analytical, uh,

testing to prove that it was real. So most of it's all fake, by the way. If you're buying Fidoji, it's like 90% of it's fake. And yeah, Momentus eventually got so much pressure that they literally pulled it from their product line. So I do not recommend Fidoji aggressive. I don't think A, it's real. B, there's no human studies suggesting that it increases.

And then third, it probably causes testicular toxicity. And the bizarre thing is when he was confronted about it, Huberman and Kyle Gillette, they're like, well, just cycle it. And I was like that. First of all, you're speculating that that even reverses toxicity. And second, something with known toxicity, you're just like, well, take a couple of days off and it may not mitigate the toxicity is the most irresponsible thing I've ever heard. But, you know, so that's the end of my rant there.

Um, problem with the herbs in general though, is this is the, something that people don't appreciate because they don't understand science. There's a big difference between statistically significant and clinically meaningful statistical significance. All that means is that there's a 95% probability that the finding was not due to chance.

But that finding could be that it increases your testosterone by 1%, which is meaningless, right? So someone can say, oh, there's a paper that shows that ashwagandha or tongkatali increases testosterone. And there are. Ashwagandha increases it by 14.7% in one paper. Tongkatali increases it by 16% in another paper. That is statistically significant, meaning there's a 95% chance that's correct. However, I tell people,

14.7 and 16% increase is meaningless. Getting an extra hour of sleep from seven to eight hours will increase your testosterone by 10 to 15%. So it's not better than anything you do on the lifestyle front. And it's not clinically meaningful.

For me, as a clinician, you'd have to have at least a 50% increase in testosterone for it to even begin to be clinically meaningful, meaning it's going to make a noticeable difference in your life, your performance, et cetera. So just to compare how much of a difference we're talking about when you're talking about versus pharmaceuticals, you're talking about 15% on the herbs.

And clonophene increases it by 100%, right? Or two X. With the oral testosterone, it's increasing it by 200 to 600% or three to seven X.

Like it is 10, 20 times greater magnitude of increase. So you're honestly wasting your time and money. If you're taking any sort of herbs, in my opinion, at least for testosterone boosting purposes, because the magnitude of the change is so meaningless at 15%, you can get that from doing all the great stuff that you teach in your course in terms of diet, exercise, sleep, stress management, all of those will boost your testosterone far more than the herbs will.

If you're serious about increasing your testosterone to a degree that is going to increase your performance in the gym, you're actually going to put on significant amounts of muscle. Like for instance, CIRMs like Inclamaphene will increase your muscle mass by about, I believe it was like 4%.

five pounds of lean mass in 16 weeks, something around there. So that's a noticeable amount of muscle. You're not gonna get that from the supplements, I promise you. So people are just wasting their time, honestly, with the herbs. And is it possible for them to increase their LH or FSH on them?

Yes, but at the risk of side effects. So one of the interesting things that actually happened, I'll tell you an interesting anecdote. Nootropics Depot, because they do sell good supplements, they sold legit Tongkat Ali. And it was too legit because most people didn't realize how Tongkat Ali increases testosterone is that it's a herbal aroma taste inhibitor.

It blocks the conversion of testosterone to estradiol. So people were flooding Reddit being like, hey, I'm taking this supplement. I'm literally having joint pain. I'm getting moody and I can't sleep. And these are classic symptoms of low estradiol. And then people did some blood tests and they're like, shit, my estradiol levels are tanked essentially from taking Tongkat Ali. And like, oh shit, it's easy to overdo this. So you gotta be really careful that sometimes, I mean, most of the time herbal supplements don't work and they're bunk because they're not even real and the supplement companies are great.

Then you have good supplement companies that do sell good high potency stuff and they may actually be too potent. And if you're not doing the proper blood testing, you may be tanking your estrogen and messing yourself up. So you got to be I'm not anti herb, but I say you got to be really careful about the supplements because it's generally unregulated industry. It's a wild west in that wash. I shouldn't say it's unregulated. It's regulated, but it's not enforced. No one's testing any of these.

So unless you're taking it from the best, and I would only take it from the best brands, not random Amazon brands, and you're doing the blood testing, it can be very, very hit or miss. And so that's why I generally don't recommend if you're doing it for testosterone or hormonal optimization purposes, messing with it because for most people, they're not doing the testing, to be honest. It's going to be very hit or miss.

While if you're doing pharmaceuticals, you know it works. There's half a century of research. The research has been published. And by the way, one last thing to leave you with, this whole naturalistic fallacy is nonsense. People are like, oh, if it's a natural, it's an herb. It's good. If it's chemical and it's a pharmaceutical, it's bad. Well, where do you think testosterone comes from? Testosterone, their original source is actually Mexican yams. It's

It's a natural plant. You can look this up. Essentially, essentially like a sweet potato that essentially is the source of, I believe it's like pregnenolone or progesterone. That is the precursor to testosterone. And so you can argue essentially that even if you're in, you know, applying testosterone orally topically or injecting it, it's a natural plant-based thing that they've obviously made into pharmaceutically pure compound. So, so what is natural and what is plant-based and what is herbal?

it's all an arbitrary distinction. The thing that you should actually care about is, is it pure? And the only way you can really assure that it's pure is it comes from a pharmacy that's inspected by the FDA. And that's why we generally prefer pharmaceuticals for that reason. You at least, you know what you're getting. - There's a lot of things there that you've obviously highlighted that,

Yeah, obviously a lot of guys that I've spoken to, they sort of like discuss some of those attributes like the safety profile. I'm definitely with you on that with the quality control, particularly around supplements and herbal medicines. They can be very dangerous if they're, number one, if they're not used correctly, the wrong dosages, they can be toxic, which is what I educate about, definitely. A lot of them can also be very dangerous.

like hit and miss in terms of their subjective effects. So a lot of guys might experience, you know, positive effects initially with Tonka Raleigh. And then after like a week or two, they start to notice the drop off in, in estrogen, like you said. So I think there's definitely like a look as a, someone who's very open-minded about testosterone optimization, some of these herbs, whilst they won't move the needle quite a lot in terms of blood work, like let's say, um,

pine pollen or cistanche or tonka dali, things like that, they might actually only move the needle maybe 15 to 20%. But what I always go back to is, why is the patient even coming to me in the first place, right? It's because they have symptoms, right? The goal is to then like, how do we address the symptoms in the most efficient and effective way. And for some guys, they're happy to like start that journey by like,

I might dabble with supplements. They might try... And some guys get good resolution. They might see resolution from just tinkering or playing around with a few herbs and then all of a sudden their lack of energy is improved, their overall quality of life is improved, their confidence is improved. And if you look at blood work, it's like we haven't really seen much of an increase in your testosterone, but we've seen a resolution of a lot of your symptoms. So it sort of comes back to like...

yeah do we look at it objectively or do we analyze like subjective symptomology so like has the patient ideally seen an improvement in their symptoms sort of thing yeah and that you you bring up a great point literally all of our medical advisors say we treat symptoms we treat um patients not numbers

Because you can have sky-high testosterone levels and not feel good. You know what I mean? And some people, they have like normal, normal high testosterone levels. They actually feel better at a lower level than they do on a higher level because maybe they're aromatizing too much estrogen or other things. So I always tell people like people, for instance, on the internet have this notion that I need to get my testosterone over 1,000 because it's a nice round number. First of all, I tell people free testosterone is more important than total testosterone.

testosterone because the free testosterone is the testosterone that's free to bind to the androgen receptor. So actually clinically we care about free testosterone and getting the equivalent of a thousand is about like 200 picograms per milliliter. I mean, care about that more than the magical thousand, because here's a funny thing, by the way, that people don't realize.

There's guys who naturally walk around with testosterone levels that are closer above to a thousand. But the reason that they do is they have very high SHBG and SHBG is the transporter protein that carries it around. And the body essentially compensates for high SHBG by producing more total testosterone because it means you have less free testosterone. Other guys like me, I'm naturally low SHBG. And so my total is not very high, but my free is high.

And so if you get two biological twins in theory, one is high SHBG, the other is low SHBG, one will have much higher total testosterone levels, one will have lower total testosterone levels. They'll have the same free testosterone levels.

So free is what you actually really care about. So that's, that's just like key kind of a psychoeducation number one. Um, so I think sometimes people are tracking even the wrong marker, um, in my opinion, in that they're correlated. Generally, if your test total testosterone high, your freeze, your freeze is going to be high too, but there, there are guys who have higher free testosterone levels than, uh, than, than, uh, guys who have higher total testosterone levels.

That's why SHBG is really so important. The interesting thing too about taking testosterone, enclamophene tends to increase SHBG a little bit, testosterone tends to decrease it. So if you take both together, they kind of equalize themselves out. So that's a great point.

But I actually empathize with what you're saying. I've tried, by the way, Cisdanch, by the way. I've done blood work on Cisdanch to see does it increase testosterone and DHT? Because I was in the same camp. I avoided pharmaceuticals for years because I was like, the only thing that exists is injectable testosterone, which I just don't want to do. I don't like the idea of injecting myself. I'm not afraid of it. It's just annoying.

And second, I was like, I don't want to mess with my fertility. So I definitely went down the supplement route as well. And unfortunately, years of wasted time, money, et cetera. Yeah, it had mild effects. And maybe to your point, a certain symptom resolution, but it wasn't moving the needle. But now I think that middle ground is solved in that there's essentially safe and effective pharmaceuticals that don't require injections or infertility that I think are essentially going to

replace this whole middle market of people who are looking for testosterone optimization. Now, I do think there's still a place for herbs, but I think they're going to be not for testosterone as much. It's going to be for more of the symptomatic resolution to your like the ketubah that you supplement that you're bringing to the market. It's a standardized extract. So you know that there is standardization in the quality and the potency of the active ingredients. Right. So, you know, it's you're at least getting what you're buying.

Like the third party testing as well, like because obviously sending it to Alchemist, like to get it approved by them. I mean, there's no one better in the US right now that does third party assessment. Yeah, definitely that as well.

Yeah. And so if you're looking for, hey, like we understand the mechanism of action, it's a dopaminergic, it might improve mood and libido, which are common reasons that people want to go on testosterone in the first place. You can get mood and libido improvement through a totally independent and novel mechanism of action, which is through the dopamine system that has nothing much to do. Not I just say nothing. They're associated with testosterone.

It's not gonna necessarily, ketubun won't necessarily boost your testosterone very much, but it might improve your symptoms completely, if not maybe even more. I actually tell people like testosterone for the most part, except for the topical, which I mentioned is good for the libido, is not gonna necessarily change your libido overnight. Like if you have shit stress, sleep, your whole lifestyle is out of whack, I can get your testosterone levels sky high and you'll still have a poor libido. So you gotta take care of the lifestyle stuff first.

And or if your neurotransmitters are off, then yeah, maybe a different approach is going to be helpful for the symptomatic thing. So that's why I just differentiate. I'm like, look, if you care about testosterone, getting your numbers up, go to the pharmaceutical route. If you need some supplementary symptomatic improvement, absolutely. There's a place for supplements and herbal medicine as well.

Yeah, no, no, definitely fair, fair. In terms of testing wise and like assessment, I mean, you guys have brought out an at-home testing kit. Did you want to sort of elaborate upon that? Yeah, so this is pretty revolutionary and this is almost the genesis of the company. The vision for Maximus was how do you have an online clinic where someone can get the best...

the best in class concierge care in the comfort and convenience of their own home without ever needing to step outside. In the COVID era, that was like a legit thing. You couldn't go to a doctor's office or a Quest or a LabCorp. Or if you did, you'd have to be wearing a mask and you're paranoid about standing in line getting COVID with a bunch of other people.

Um, you know, we have great advisors, like some of whom are in private practice. They charge a thousand bucks for an initial consultation here in like LA. Right. So unless you're wealthy, you don't have access to the best doctors, but we could take their brains, uh, you know, uh, have them create our protocols and then figure out a way of delivering that at home. So that was kind of part of the original vision. The fortunately, the technology has enabled us to do that.

Before, the only way you could do basically at-home testing of hormones, well, maybe there's three means. There's a urinary test. It's not particularly reliable. It's not a lot of publications or evidence that it works. I think it's better for more functional medicine kind of stuff.

There's a saliva test. We actually tested it extensively, but it's also kind of unreliable. And if you like flossing, there's like blood that actually accidentally gets in there. It messes up the result. So it's not super reliable.

And then there's finger prick test. So finger prick tests do work because it's real blood. You got to prick your finger. The problem is 20% of the time guys have such calloused fingers that it's impossible to prick correctly, get the blood out. It's literally painful because your nerve endings are in the end of your fingertips. It's just, it sucks. It's painful. It's a mess. And it's just very prone to error.

And then a lot of companies that are out there like Hone Health, they do this finger prick test. It's a dried blood spot. It literally dries onto a card. The problem with the dried blood spot testing is when you mail it, if there's temperature fluctuation in the mail, it can mess up the result. So there's validity issues actually with dried blood spot testing.

And so you'll see complaints online with companies that do dried blood spots testing. They'll compare the dried blood spot to a venipuncture draw through a Quest or a LabCorp, and it will have a totally different result. And that's criminal in my opinion, because it's like, how are you prescribing medication or claiming it's working if your whole testosterone test is wrong? Right? Because you don't know what you're doing and you don't know what's the before, what's the after. It's completely unreliable. So what we do is totally different.

It's whole blood. It's actually a little medical device that sits on your shoulder. You press a button. It's virtually painless because it uses microneedles and it can extract about half a pinky worth of blood. And it's whole blood. It literally sits in a little test tube that has a preservative and it gets mailed off to a lab literally next day air. So it's in the lab within 24 hours because it's whole blood. The sample has to be preserved and then they can test it usually within a day or two.

And so it's really revolutionary. Literally at no point in history was this possible due to the thankfully this, you know, these new FDA approved medical devices and this really rapid lab testing. And it's within generally 99% accuracy as a Quest or a LabCorp. It's done at, in fact, labs that are basically just like Quest or LabCorp. And so it's very reliable. It's very valid. And you can do it in the comfort and the convenience of your own home.

I can see that being in very high demand, particularly a lot of guys just hate sort of leaving the house to get the blood work done with a nurse. They just hate that process. So I think that's going to be a big game changer for a number of guys. Is that also, obviously testosterone is one of the biomarkers assessed there. Is it sort of expanding out to like potentially in the future, like looking at DHT, estrogen, prolactin, that sort of stuff?

So, um, you can go buy it, um, all a cart off our website. If you just want to do the test, I think we sell it for like 99 99, um, on Maximus tribe.com. Um, it measures, um, total testosterone and measures SHBG. We can use that to calculate free testosterone as we talked about measures, estradiol or estrogen, uh, LH and FSH, you know, your, your testosterone and sperm, um, fertility markers, uh,

I think it does like, I think it does PSA as well. So yeah, we measure basically like a half a dozen to a dozen markers through that test. So it's not full blood panel. If you want to measure 100 markers, yeah, go to Quest and LabCorp. If you want to do super specialized tests,

um test or you want like a lipid panel that's part of your comprehensive blood work your annual physical exam you should do that but if you only need to measure essentially the key things that we're tracking for hormones you can measure about a dozen markers and we can do that much more conveniently through the at-home um blood test that's awesome no it's been um it's been it's been a great great discussion cam i mean there's definitely um we could we'll have to line up another episode because there's there's still so many other questions that i've got around um

like PCT sort of ways that guys go wrong there, particularly like, you know, using these aromatase inhibitors as part of their PCT, which to me, I don't think really makes much sense to be, to leverage some of those compounds. So we explore that.

in another podcast. Well, I'll just mention something really quick because you mentioned PCT, which is referring to post-cycle therapy. Back in the day when people would take suppressive androgenic anabolic steroids, and testosterone technically is an androgenic anabolic steroid. It's just the one that your body naturally produces. It would cause shutdown. And so what bodybuilders would do is they'd take it for eight to 12-week cycles, and then

because they're shut down, literally the balls are smaller. They would go on this post-cycle therapy where they typically would take it. In fact, serums like, in clomiphene, clomid, novel decks, neuroma taste inhibitors. And so they're constantly swinging back and forth.

In this world in which you're taking the CIRM concurrently with testosterone and there's no suppression, there's no need for PCT anymore, right? Because there's no suppression in the first place. And so you can essentially cruise or run it year round and there's no need for the cycling

I actually make the argument that cycling is an outdated practice. And if there's any compound that you really need to cycle, because either it's toxic or it's suppressive, you probably shouldn't be taking it in the first place. Versus if you're taking something that's safe and it's non-suppressive, you can theoretically run it year round. The other thing I should mention too, we actually on the testosterone, we do measure liver markers.

So we're measuring, I think, AST and GGT. And so we're monitoring your liver, making sure obviously everything's safe. Like I said, it's inherently non-toxic to liver anyway, but just for peace of mind, we measure liver and PSA, your prostate as well. So yeah, I think we almost never prescribe aromatase inhibitors. If there's some cases that's for whatever reason, individual pharmacokinetics, someone's super high, we can, but most of the time there's no need because

Um, the DHT that's converted and topical and, um, oral testosterone essentially is a natural aromatase inhibitor. People don't realize that DHT is your body's own aromatase inhibitor. It controls estradiol levels. So we actually find an oral and topical testosterone estradiol levels do not, um, go super physiological because they're naturally controlled. That's awesome.

Now, you've been a wealth of knowledge, Cam. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast. And for those listening in, I'll make sure to leave his particular website, Maximus Tribe, linked in the podcast show notes if you guys wanted to check that out. And some of the research studies that you've mentioned, Cam, that'll be found on the website. So make sure if you guys want to actually double check and have a look at some interesting research, definitely check that out. But otherwise, it was an absolute pleasure having you on the podcast.

Thank you. Like I said, I've been a huge fan of your work. I think you're doing a great service to society in teaching men how to naturally increase their testosterone. And for those who want to take the next step optionally, they can obviously go the pharmaceutical route. And I'm glad people are at least becoming educated that there's more options now than there ever were before that literally due to advances in science and technology, you don't need to choose between, you know, your testosterone and your balls.

And you can learn more at MaximusTribe.com. That's our website. And you can hit me up on social media. My handle's on Instagram or DrCamMaximus. Happy to answer any and all questions. And really loved being on your show and would be happy to join any time again.

Awesome. Thanks so much. And guys, if you enjoyed this podcast episode, please do leave a five-star review. That really does help with the algorithm. And if you enjoyed it so much, please do share it around. Otherwise, that's it for me today, guys. I look forward to seeing you in the next podcast.