303. Stronger By Testosterone & Peptides, Functional Medicine & Biohacking
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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's up, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back to the Boost Your Biology podcast. Today, I'm joined in the studio with a very good friend of mine and also fellow naturopath, Dr. Michael Moyler. Michael, welcome to the podcast, man. What's up, Lucas? It's a long time. No talks, probably been longer than, you know, we're overdue.

Absolutely, man. So for my audience, Michael, I mean, there's a whole new brand new followers and audience here that haven't heard about you. And we've already recorded one episode together. But for those who don't know you, I mean, how did you get into the health optimization space? All right. Yeah. Elevator speech will boil it down.

Uh, past life, personal trainer, bodybuilder, uh, was really into working out your typical 20, 22 year old gym bro. Got a job at GNC. This was back in the bodybuilding.com days, the forms where you had to go and look, you know, Argenine, Citrulline, what's, and so working at GNC, you know, you get a little chip on your shoulder and you got to know your stuff. Um, yeah.

At that time, I got what's called interstitial cystitis. They didn't diagnose it. That wasn't the diagnosis at the time. I found out that was later. It was like a chronic UTI infection. Sucks. Terrible. Peeing all the time. Burning, stinging. Multiple urologists. Doctor, doctor, doctor. Cytoscopy, where they take a camera up your urethra. I was like, okay.

Our medical care system is broken. I have to figure out what's going on because unfortunately these guys, I don't, and I love them to death. I have good MD, MP friends. They're good at some things. The nuance is tough. So I went down the rabbit hole. What are bladder irritants, right? Dyes, colors, gluten, dairy, all these things. Did that cut, you know, stop boozing all the time, eating Papa John's pizza, staying up late, doing college stuff. Took some herbs, hit the sauna, did the natural stuff and it went away.

I was like, oh, maybe this naturopathic stuff isn't so much quackery. So that was 2012. I was an undergrad still figuring out what I wanted to do. So I switched to pre-med. And then 2013 to 2017, I moved to San Diego. I went to Bastia University, got the doctorate in naturopathic medicine and my license to practice medicine in California. And I now have one in Idaho.

And like we were explaining, you know, my first love was pre-workout and those gym supplements. And I got into the tropics. And then during school, I really got into hormone replacement therapy. So that's really my jam now. Most of what I do now is you have a 28 year old, 33 year old, these younger guys who struggle with usually low testosterone symptoms. They go to their primary care doc. Their test is 300. Their doc goes, you're normal. See you later.

That's when they come to me and I'm like, hey, dude, a lot of what you do. Here's your natural stuff. Here's your stuff in between. Here's your TRT. Let's get you going in the right direction. Because as your audience already knows, we have an epidemic of low testosterone. Dude, the underwear, the receipt, like it's just, it's everywhere. You know what I mean? So, you know, I'm a fellow TRT, testosterone optimization warrior as yourself. And yeah, it's good to be back like we should have before. It's been a few years since we got to connect. I know, I know, man.

Yeah, well, obviously, your level of knowledge has probably grown exponentially since we last spoke. And specifically, I would love to discuss like, what's going on with men these days? Like, what are you seeing in the common complaints amongst men, particularly the ones that visit your practice? Yeah, I mean, we have a wide variety of stuff. To boil it down, it's usually like, I don't feel like myself is usually the main one, right? Like,

And usually it's the boiling of the frog, you know, when you're 18 versus 23, 28, 35. I mean, I need that afternoon nap. Another very common one is like, doc, I have to choose. I can wake up and go to the gym. I can go to work and crush it. I can come home and play with my kids. I can please my wife. Okay. Those are like four things I need to do. I can probably do two or three of them a day, maybe. Right. So I have to pick and choose.

my life right now. It's like, and for most of them, it's usually the gym that gets cut. You got to make money. Hopefully you're playing with your kids and then, you know, happy wife, happy life. So, but you know, they, they blow out at different places ultimately, depending on their discipline and what's going on. So those were, I'd say are the main ones. Then the tough part becomes, I usually, like I told you, send and get some labs. We sit down, we run through the labs and

And most guys, they don't know. Like you go into a Macy's, like I get a headache, right? The perfume place, underwear, receipts, deodorant, shampoo. They're just getting smacked around. And I mean, like not being breastfed, getting hit with all these immunomodulating shots. It's a lot. And most guys are not that aware of

And then when they try and fight it on their own, dude, it's tough. I mean, you and I have both gone through that. Like, you know, how many hours have you come to researching like sun in your balls or ice in your balls? You know what I mean? Like that's the tenacity that it takes. Too many hours there, man. Too many. Yeah. But we're both on a similar mission, man. We're both, yeah. I mean, when I first came across your work, you were already doing this, creating a lot of content.

on like teaching guys what to be aware of and, and like how to optimize your overall vitality. And you were saying before that, like, oftentimes it might just be like your heaviest hitter usually clinically will be prescribing like testosterone and talk, talk to us like your methodology in terms of prescribing, like what does that typically look like?

Yeah. You know, what, what, what naturopathic doctors do best is individualized. Um, and I get it because the system is set up. It's a system to see as many people as possible. Um, so for me, usually I do most of the time, if I have the availability, a free 15, 20 minute conversation, make sure you're in the right spot, right? If you're coming to me because, and I've treated guys on anabolics, I have lots of guys on anabolics and

You know, don't do them. Now that you're going to do them, how do we keep you safe? Right. And I think that's starting to happen now with most modern doctors is there's nuance. People are going to do things, you know, like if I don't help this guy, he's going to go over here at 28 and then run a thousand makes a test. If you're going to do that, dude, like you need to do, do, do, do, do, do, do like, don't do it. I'm going to tell you to stop, but come back and get blood work, you know? So usually I meet the guy. Have you had blood work done?

When was the first time you had blood work done? Me? When I was probably, as in what age? I think I would have been like 14. Oh, wow. Do you remember? That's impressive. I may have had maybe like a CBC or a blood prick. I think it was like 14 or 16 years of age. That's good. And do you remember, did you continue with that? Do you remember like 20s and-

Well, like, man, I was working when I was that age, I was working in a health food store, like literally just voluntarily. And I was like, I have to get blood work done. And back then my parents were like, you don't need to get it done. Like, what do you want to get a check for? And I'm like, man, I want to understand my biology. Like, I want to see what happens if I take this supplement cordyceps for a whole year straight. What impact is that going to have on my biology? But yeah, back then, 14, 15, I think, yeah.

it was very limited data. Obviously it was just a basic panel. Cause imagine a 15 year old trying to convince a doctor. Can you, can you measure my test doc? Nah, you're fine. I mean, even at 20, if you ask for your testosterone, um, my first blood work was 23. When I went, I had some like basic stuff done when I had my cystitis and, um, knee surgery, um,

But like testosterone, thyroid, you know, you don't measure those things until they're broke or you think they are, you know. So I had my test measured at 23 and I'm a natural bodybuilder, biohacker, going to naturopathic med school, sleeping eight, nine hours, eating the protein. And my test was like low 400s. And my free was like.

70, which are seven milligrams per deciliter, 70, you know, people, I don't know what markers you guys use. You know, I try to always talk about milligrams per deciliter. And what's crazy is some of the blood tests in the United States, they'll move it to picograms per milliliter. I don't know why it's just easier to side tangent.

So, I was aware of that at 23. I'm like, well, this is weird. I'm at 400. And to be honest, I saw a naturopathic doctor at the time, and he was like, ah, you're fine. You're young. And I was actually like struggling, like to be honest, like energy, brain fog, my libido wasn't, in my opinion, where it should be at 23.

So I was conscious of that. Right. And that's why I tell most guys now, like, dude, go get blood work is if you're 18, go get a go get a baseline. Like, where's your test now? You should be biohacking that you have the best years of your life right now if you're 18. Like, and in my opinion, if you're 18, you go measure your test and it's 500. You should be I should be higher than that.

Then you're motivated to not be boozing, staying up late and like, hey, maybe I should listen to Lucas, take some supplements. And then you can biohack and like you're going to be you're going to be doing this the rest of your life. Like you might as well be running blood work twice, three times. I run like four or five times a year because I'm weird. I play with all these things. But that's what I'm trying to engrave when these guys first come. I'm like, dude, you should be doing blood work two or three times a year.

let's get some and then you and I are going to sit down and let's walk through everything. Right. CBC, CMP, thyroid panel. Usually I just run like a TSH free T4 depending on their budget. I like running other things just kind of, I don't think we need to run a free T3 for not having thyroid. That's all their discussion about thyroid stuff, but I don't think it's a bad idea to run antibodies while you're at it. Run them once, be done with it. Maybe run them every five or 10 years.

So run the labs, come back, let's go through them. And then I educate them on, I try and literally go through every single one of them where a lot of doctors go, Hey, you're fine. See you later. Versus like, Oh, what's a lymphocyte? You know, why do I have a total number and a percentage? Well, that's usually that's, you know, and I talk about white blood cell count, neutrophils, lymphocytes, monocytes, basophils, police officers, SWAT team, national guard.

Those ratios are off. Your immune system is telling us something. And then hopefully there we can run through everything. And it's usually their testosterone that is probably the least optimal. Right. And I have a biased audience. Right. I have the guy who's listening on Instagram or the friend of the friend and whatever.

So I can't speak too much about the statistics, but you know, I hardly ever get guys who are five or 600 and they can be in their twenties. They can be 40, 50. To be honest, I probably have more older guys in the fifties and sixties who come in that six, seven, 800 range. But usually they're freeze quite a bit lower. You know, there's some type of, you know, we can, it's funny. I had someone reach out to me on Instagram who didn't get back to me. It was a PhD guy.

kind of challenged me a little bit on the idea of saxophone binding globulin um which i'm open to i think that makes sense you know we think about just were you um like were you framing shbj as like you don't want to suppress it super low it's there for a reason like you like what was your stance there like how are you framing it

Yeah. I mean, I, I, it was one of my videos where I talked about it being an aircraft carrier and you have your jets and I think your jets are, you want them doing things. Um, so it's, you know, if you have a, if you have a total testosterone of 1200, but you're free is like a hundred milligrams per deciliter. Like that's not a good ratio, right? You want 1% minimum two or 3%, in my opinion, where I see guys feeling good. Right. But, um,

The one thing I have seen that we can get into is it seems like when guys are boosting it naturally or using like in clomiphene, especially in the beginning, the SHP goes up with it, but not enough that the percentage, right? So if a guy is, let's say he's 500 and his free test is 50.

You get them on an enclamophene or you use something that gets up to a thousand. You would say, oh, does the sex hormone binding globulin go to a hundred? It usually goes like 75 is my experience, right? It doesn't completely nullify its effect, but it usually does go up with it. And as an astrophysicist, I'd say, yeah, that's probably right. This sex hormone binding globulin is probably modulating how much you don't want to just throw it all out and be free.

Right. My two cents on, on that. He had just like, didn't like my ratio and said he'd been working on some research. And it's funny you say like, I'll reach out to him. Cause I just wanted to hear, I dude, I don't know shit. Pardon my French. Like I'm here to learn and I learn things all the time. And a lot of my stuff that I've learned is wrong. So I'm happy, you know, if you have a theory to hear it and research it and try and figure it out. The SHBG, SHBG pathway, I think, yeah,

I think it's important to spell out like reasons why would be high, reasons why would be suppressed, different factors that would influence that. So maybe you want to sort of illustrate to the audience, I mean, from a dietary nutrition perspective. Yeah, there are some pretty dramatic things you can do to suppress SHBG or there could be some reasons why a guy's SHBG is elevated.

if they're on a ketogenic or a carnivore diet, things like that. Because we know that insulin actually suppresses SHBG. And the only way that you can truly, you know, properly raise insulin is by eating carbohydrates. I know you can with certain proteins, but, you know, carbs are going to raise the insulin because it's trying to shuttle, you know, your blood sugar into skeletal muscle cells and things like that. But yeah, and then also from a...

Like any exogenous androgen, and you've seen this on blood work, you know this, even if a guy like tanks the SHBG. But it can be done. I've sort of looked at some other strategic ways to like, how do we lower SHBG without boron, without tonkadali, without magnesium? Let's say they've tried all that. I know Dr. Peter Atiyah was talking about how Anavar, oxangelone, can do it.

But so can Osterain in low doses. So I just want to talk about that SHBG stuff. Yeah, I think it's cool to open the floor and throw some ideas around here because this is a tough one. Like you're saying, I think when most people get into the field, they go, okay, more free is better. Let's get this thing down.

So two things I'll say one, and you probably have more experience, especially on the natural end, because to be honest, on my end, when I was first out of school, I did way more natural stuff. It's a lot harder. Yeah. I mean, just like the guys have to follow up. You have to be committed. And if I have a 48 year old guy who's running a plumbing company, I, and I tell him, I go, Hey, here are your natural stuff.

Can you, can you wake up early? Can you do these things? Or are we honestly just better off putting a needle on you? Like you got to decide that I want your life to be better. It's the same thing with weight loss. We know diet and exercise are best. People don't do it. If I give you a little semaglutide, which maybe we'll chat about those a little bit too. So I would say pretty early on, I started to move in again to be transparent, like I

If people are paying to see me, right? I want to move those numbers up. I have a incentive to perform. They're paying. And that's another thing. They're seeing you for an outcome. Sometimes they don't care about the method or the way. And most of the time people want it fast. People want shortcuts. They just do. Yeah.

And that's the hard part of me trying to like talk to them and have a relationship like this. And honestly may not be the best thing for you. Yeah. I mean, it depends like the TRT and depends on fertility. And that's a lot of what my first visit is, is like, okay, what's your lifestyle like? And that's why too, I know a lot more and more people are moving to the cream and testosterone, which I like and use personally. However, if you miss three doses and you do blood work,

With the Ciponate, you can miss a couple doses, right? And if you come to me and you're at 300 and you miss two doses before your blood work, you're still coming back 700, 800, depending on where you're at. The cream, you can miss three or four applications and your test is lower. And you're like, Doc, I just paid you a couple hundred bucks. I've been putting cream on my nuts for three months. Like, what the hell? Just on that, sorry, with the cream, are you relying upon –

like the FDA's prescribed testosterone cream? Like what does it look like there? Because in Australia, testosterone cream, I think it's androgel, is really cumbersome, terrible to use, like very difficult to apply. Is it the same where you are? I think androgel is a gel and I think it might even be alcohol-based. Like definitely don't want to be putting that on your scrotum, right? We get them compounded from a pharmacy that's in like a lipoderm cream

Much, much, much better. I've never used the gel. And what percentage usually is that? 20%. So you get four, there's four clicks in a gram and it's 200 grams then at 20%. Does that make sense? So the way I think about it is when you move to the cream, it's like milligrams in injection, you'll move to milligrams per day in clicks, right? So if you do 200 milligrams a week,

On injection, you'll do 200 milligrams per cream. Does that make sense? Per day. Yes. Yeah. And so can we explore that? Because I want to actually hear about what you've seen with patient results, like the cream versus obviously the half-life is a lot shorter. So therefore, technically speaking, suppression should be less, right? So what have you seen clinically from the cream? Yeah. Yeah.

So usually I'll start guys on injections because it injects, it gets under your skin. You're paying me money. I'm very confident in three months from now, your, your levels will be higher. Um, I like the cream. Don't get me wrong. And there are other doctors who have way more experience. Like Keith Nichols is one of the main guys that I heard first and Jay Campbell. And like he threw that, you know, Oh dude, you gotta be doing the cream, you know, 2019, 20, when I was still doing sip and eight.

And I was skeptical just for a couple of reasons. One, you, you really should be shaving your scrotum every day, every couple of days, because it gets hairy and there's the idea that you're exfoliating. So it absorbs better. Um, and I've trialed it on myself and it can be kind of overcompensated. I'm like, Oh, I need really need to do that today. I don't have time. Like it's like, I just don't lather it on. Um,

And then the other thing is like with the half-life, I think the benefit to it is it's probably closer to, to matching this Arcadian rhythm, right? Like if, if, if it's four to six hours, people debate on this. And this is the other thing that I have a little bit of, um,

I don't want to say contention with you, me and Bob all put the cream on. I'm not convinced due to skin, skin, ethnicity, all these different things. The absorption I think will probably be a little bit different versus I inject it's under your skin. It's getting absorbed. I don't have to worry about it. Right. That was one last variable that I just don't like playing with. So usually what I'll do with guys, I put them on the injections for the first year, year and a half. They're dialed in and I say, Hey, you're probably going to be on this for a long time.

Like it's kind of like with exercise, like maybe you like doing CrossFit. Why don't you try, you know, regular weights or pickleball or so maybe you enjoy doing the cream more for whatever reason. Right. I do think the injections, my personal opinion, the dopamine, serotonin, adrenaline, sensitivity, testosterone raises that. Right. So when I think about sleep and deep sleep,

it'd probably be good for the testosterone to peter off at the end of the day and going to sleep right because i do see when guys levels are too high i do think that that can probably affect i and this is just my speculation is anecdotal but just thinking about testosterone increasing sensitivity to dopamine that would make sense the way yeah i do agree i think also as part of that would be um

I don't know, man. I think testosterone can be sympathetic nervous system activating to a degree. Yeah. Like, have you seen that typically play out with like,

HRV scores or things like that. Because I mean, the way I look at it is like in order for men to produce testosterone though, you don't want them to be in a sympathetic state, right? If the guy's trying to optimize naturally, he actually wants to be more in a parasympathetic state in order to rebuild and generate testosterone. But then if you're taking supra physiological doses of testosterone and you're pushing what you'll ever be able to achieve naturally,

and you're sitting at around, I don't know, 1400, 1500, surely that's going to have an effect on, like we know it affects the kidneys, not super severely, like not going to cause major kidney dysfunction, but sympathetic nervous system maybe is activating that side of the nervous system.

Yeah, I think there's something there. And I think that's one of the major balancing acts because it's funny when we give blank statements about free testosterone or total testosterone. I'm starting to view it more and more like something like caffeine. There are some people, and whether this is the SNPs, detoxification, like I have guys that can get their total testosterone to 700 and they can't sleep. Now, there are so many other things to consider.

Do you know what I'm saying? I don't want to just blame the testosterone because every other guy that's at 700, like 95% of them have no issue being over sympathetically dominant. Right. But I have had a couple of guys that I put them on and they're like, doc, I mean, and sometimes it's just the first week or two, which I think is just, um, all of your, all of your pathways have to figure each other out. You know, like a lot. Yeah. And then, yeah. And then there's regulation upregulating certain enzymes that are, you

But I do see that there's a handful of guys and even myself, once I get over 1200, 1300 and I've even with an anabolics for sure, like my resting heart rate goes up on anabolics, small amounts. I've taken some smaller ones, low doses, like not talking like provarine, anavar, things like that. Yeah. Oxangelone and nangelone, right. I've gotten, actually I can get prescriptions for them. Right. And I've used low doses and,

Talking about that, I think in the future, my personal opinion is there is probably a risk versus reward because, right, the reason we use these anabolics is we want more anabolic effects without less androgenergic effects and the other side effects that come with them. My personal opinion is you're a 50-year-old guy. You're running 150 mg of test a week. Why not?

three months out of two years, add like five or 10 milligrams of oxyangeline, put on a little muscle mass, you know, and then again, you want to watch your lipids, do some echocardiograms. Like I think the risk versus reward will probably be there. And especially in surgery, you're a 55 year old guy and you're going in for back surgery. Why are you not putting them on? And again, I,

I'm not an anabolic professional. There are other guys out there who'd be like, dude, nangeloid is garbage. It's like, yeah, but that's what we can get compounded. Like as a doctor, I'm not going to go and get trend. Like I can't, can't, you know, you can't legally get that.

You know, Winstraw is probably an option there too. But that's the issue. Like all these things have been pulled because I think it was Oxadrine is the original Anivar that was pulled. And I don't remember off the top of my head. Right, Oxangeline generic and you have Anivar drug name. And I think it was Oxadrine, which someone will correct me below. But, you know, I talk about Oxangeline was my, from what I've read, the research, it was a

drug that was developed for teenage girls who are burn victims. Right. So how do we get them to regenerate without the side effects? Um, so like wound healing, right. To speed up wound healing was the main. Yeah. But collagen synthesis, nitrogen retention, glycogen, like all of those things that if you're 55 and you're going into a back surgery, um,

I don't know why every orthopedic surgeon is not, you know, they're worried about clotting. In my opinion, that's all been debunked. There's no, your clotting factors don't go up. You can be scared of secondary ethocytosis. I think that's pretty much a wash. Most people throwing that out, but that's going, that's the buyer hat. You know, this is the difference between sick care and healthcare. If I'm 55 and I have a patient, like I have to like kind of walk that line, like, Hey, it'd probably be better if your test was optimized.

Growth hormones, a whole other conversation about low doses of that seem pretty well tolerable. I mean, I'm sticking with peptides. That's all other legal stuff. You know, I haven't have to be careful talking about oxyangeline and whatever I've taken ayahuasca. So it is what it is, you know? Yeah. So it's just tricky. It's just tricky trying to figure out that, that line. And I do think going back to the cream,

that trying to mimic that natural production, there's probably something with the sleep. Like if you do, I'll do three clicks in the morning, a click or two before I work out. I do feel like I sleep better than on the siponate, but I also believe that may just be me. I don't, I'm just doing that with all of my patients. Are you seeing like pretty dramatic symptom resolution, even with a guy that's just on cream and never decides to go down the injection pathway?

Oh yeah. It's just, I think it, it's just as, just as good as not better. And symptoms wise, we're talking like energy, mood, libido, recovery, strength, like tick, tick, tick, tick basically. Yeah. Yeah. And if anything, a lot of times I'll, I'll move guys on to cream and,

Um, one of the theories is that the cream being applied to the scrotum, right? That's where your testes are obviously latex cells or curly cells. And then the, you're probably having more five alpha reductase, more aromatase in your testes versus like, you know, if you're putting cream, there's some in your cells and your muscles and stuff, but you're, you're late at your latex cells and all that. They're going to have way more of that.

Um, so it does seem like putting the cream on the scrotum when guys having, let's just say I got a guy on TRT and his libido somewhat better putting on the scrotum seems to help more. Um, the drawback then is the prostate. Are you getting more DHT? You know, I've heard Keith, Dr. Keith Nichols talk more about this and he knows more than I do. Um,

that that it may raise some of your blood levels of dht but this is and again whole other argument glutathione is the same way it's like but what's it doing in the cell right like glut you know like all these ivs of glutathione i'm about them but are they are they being dissolved like do they does it act does it get into the cell and do anything like a lot of people argue de novo synthesis like don't take glutathione take nac and all right what's a glycine glutamate and

Glucosamine, glutamine, and cysteine. Take those, take NAC, take the zinc, like the things that are going to help you make it.

versus doing straight IV of it. But if I had to say, if a guy's struggling with like libido, seems like the cream often works better than the injector. Because, you know, if I'm injecting test sip here, you know, it goes into your muscle and or fat, and then it's got to seep in your blood and then go all out and get cleaved by the ester where it's getting right into your testes. Some of it's going to be estrogen, DHD. Yeah.

Which again brings us into the controversies of, well, what about, do I need to measure DHT? Do I need to measure estrogen? Do I need to modulate them? And this actually ties back into the sex hormone body globulin. I don't like having to modulate stuff. I honestly try and keep it in. And that's how I got with the SHGB doing mag, doing boron, a ton cat first in my personal experience. I didn't ever really see it do a whole lot. You know, if a guy's SHBG is severely elevated 70, 80, 90, uh,

maybe they come back 10 or 20 points lower. And maybe I, you know, may, like I said, you might have more experience with that than I did. Um,

you know, being at 50, maybe they get down to 40 on high doses of Magmoron and magnesium. I mean, I don't know if you can speak to that. Yeah, man. I've actually, what I've found over the years was the SHBG was heavily determined by also liver functioning as well. So oftentimes when I treated like optimize, like treated the liver with like, you know, your glutathione, your Tudka, artichoke extracts, things like that. And then focused on

replenishing actually telling guys to increase their carbohydrate intake now obviously these these guys are not medically metabolically unfit and unhealthy so they can jack up their carbs and they're not going to gain a lot of fat it's not a big deal um and then obviously combining that with like boron tonka dali magnesium

And then also optimizing thyroid. That's the most neglected. I mean, you probably figured this out quite early on when you're getting into like the hormone optimization space. You probably realized, shit, like maybe I don't need to be focusing on this hormone that starts with T. Let's focus on the other hormone that starts with T called thyroid. Because if T3 is not inadequate amounts, there's no way a guy can feel warm, energetic, like just...

High T3, in my opinion, just make everything else work a lot better. It just does. Yeah, and I got scarred, I think, because I came out of school 2017, 18. And it seemed at least in SoCal at that time, everyone was on thyroid. So I had guys coming to me, and you're right, because I'm like, hey, thyroid. And I always, that's for sure in my initial panel. I'm putting you, you know, I'm checking your TSH, free T4, T4.

I'm a little more skeptical on the free T3 measuring it due to its shorter half-life and reverse T3, you know, a bad night of sleep. And that's older conversation we can have about blood work, you know, measuring testosterone. Dude, your test can move two or 300 points daily. You know what I mean? And that's where I'll just go by symptoms. Are you cold? Are you constipated? I've got something that happened with a patient of mine. He did really well financially.

like he made a lot of money through cryptocurrency or something. It was a ridiculous amount. And the next day he did his blood work.

Man, his testosterone was through the roof. Yeah, yeah. I believe it, dude. It's funny. I mean, I think we all feel that. Like I had a good – one of my first days out of school, like I think I made like $1,000 in a day. And I was like, you're talking minimum wage. And I was like, dude, I made $1,000 today. And I remember driving to the gym just being like – there was definitely –

Like I could feel it in the gym. I was stronger. I was like, we'll go talk to that girl, you know, like for sure. And we see that there's studies, right? There's the, there's a soccer study. Yeah. So when your soccer team wins or loses, is that the one? Yeah. Yeah. Right. They showed the one guys they won and their testosterone went up. Dude, I reckon that's, I actually reckon that's one of the reasons why I stopped playing soccer myself was because we kept losing.

And I must have subconsciously known. I must have known. I'm like, at the age of, what was it? Like, I don't know, 19, where I stopped playing. I'm like, because I just kept feeling really shit after. You know, I just felt shit. But I'd not only feel really bad after the match, but I'd feel really bad

Like going to university the few days after. And I just feel like just average. Maybe it was lowering my teeth. You guys, sorry, guys. I got to get traded. Like you guys are wrecking my test, man. Like I got to go somewhere else. It's true, man. And I mean, I think that's just life. And it's funny how we like to, you know, scientifically objectify this. And it's like, that's the hard part. And, you know, one of the things I got challenged on in school, I remember with one of my professors was kind of vitamin D.

And I was giving a guy a vitamin D. He's like, oh, why are you giving him vitamin D? I'm like, well, he's at 35. Like, I want to get it to 60 or 70. And he's like, why would you do that? Well, I'm like, because we know people with higher vitamin D, you know, cardiovascular disease. I was like, really? He's like, do you have a study? And I was like, I just assumed I heard other people. And I went to be honest, I went and Google and I don't know if there's been one since.

Um, and testosterone is similar. There was a really awesome, um, I know that we're not trying to objectify everything, but there was a pretty cool vitamin, vitamin D study that came out, um, in May, 2024, um,

And it was titled high dose vitamin. I was sharing this with the guys in my group coaching call this morning. High dose dietary vitamin D allocates surplus calories to muscle and growth instead of fat via modulation of myostatin and leptin signaling. Wow. So it's kind of like a myostatin inhibitor from vitamin D. Yeah. That makes sense. I mean, I, and again, is it, you know, so two things. One,

His challenge was you're right in the same way with testosterone. We know guys with higher testosterone live longer. There's becoming more and more research showing that hiring their testosterone does it, right? But is it correlative versus causative? Meaning like he's like, show me a study where everyone had a vitamin D of 30. They put someone on 10,000 IUs. They got them to 70 for 10 years. And then the diseases were better. Because right now what you're showing me is that

you know, I'll pick on someone in the North Midwest. It's like, yeah, that guy's 250 pounds. He's never out in the sun. You got a guy in San Diego. Is it, is it mechanistic, right? Is it correlative or cause? And I, and that's a cool, whatever. Like he was challenging me. That's his job in school. Obviously I still give the person vitamin E and I still recommend everyone do it. I think there's enough research now. Same thing with testosterone. I'm like, look, guys with testosterone live longer.

what's what's the risk first reward on that ultimately i think you're worth pushing it up if you know you're worried about your blood your hematocrit rising which my opinion is not a big deal let's talk about some of those potential like myths around the side effects of like because i mean i'm sure i'm sure you've consulted patients that are pushing the limits they want to really push their testosterone to what 2000 nanograms or whatever

realistically, actual risks, blood thickness, things like that, prostate health. What are your thoughts on that? I think the prostate one's an easier one to chat about. And again, I think there's a couple of papers where higher testosterone actually decreases your chance to getting aggressive prostate cancer. And the stat I drop is I think 50% of guys by 60, half of guys by 60

90% of guys by 80 will have some form of prostate issue, whether that's BPH, maybe some form of prostate cancer. And again, this is an area outside like talking Gleason scores and biopsies. Even when you're biopsying the tissue, there can be some questions about, is it just growing or is there cancer in it that's growing? Like, and then when you're biopsying, it's not like you're hitting it all. You know what I mean? So like you can have BPH and you can have a little bit of cancer in there that isn't metastasizing.

which is another kind of issue with that. But my opinion, I tell guys, I'm like, testosterone does not cause prostate cancer. The more debatable part is if you get prostate cancer, you have, you have androgen receptors on your prostate. And in my understanding at this point, though, your androgen receptors are pretty much they're, they're overloaded. They're, they're maxed out once your test is about 290 milligrams per deciliter. So,

going above or you know doesn't do a whole lot but there is anti-androgen therapy lupron is what they give guys who have prostate cancer my opinion you're better off dead like yeah i've talked to so many guys who've done that i dude i had a guy jump out his window out his hospital not even playing like it just dude you don't have testosterone like i had this guy in his mid-70s you know

Went on it and he's like, it's funny because he's my neighbor and we were chatting about it. He's like, yeah, she left me. Like I went on and my girlfriend left me because I laid on the couch. I didn't want to do anything. Is this literally like anti-androgen therapy? Is that what it is? Yeah. Yeah. Lupron's mechanism, I think it, does it block the receptor or does it shut it off? Lupron mechanism. I should know that. I just remember it in New York. Is that the first line of...

causing surge yeah gnrh oh so it shuts down so it'd be shutting down all of the androgens not just yeah not just testosterone oh my god sounds like what they would use if they're trying to transition genders am i right i want to talk about that yeah yeah yeah you're good um

So that's the prostate. I'm like, look, it's not going to cause it. There's been controversy. Those, the one bad study where they like castrated one guy. And again, then he had no androgens. So it almost, I think you could probably make the argument. It'd be really hard for your prostate to grow, but I'm like, yeah, you can take your engine out of your car too. Your car will last longer, but like, it's just, you can't do anything with it. So I think there's more arguments to be made with the DHT and especially anabolics.

I don't feel comfortable saying anything at like to really dissect and be like, do we understand the mechanism action, higher DHT? Then is it blood versus, you know, what is interest, what is getting in the cell and acting on the nucleus? And then you have five alpha ductase. What is it doing when it gets in there? I think that's more controversial. Um,

But we still, we run PSAs. Like I'm just like, dude, you're on tests. You run a PSA twice a year and keep a, keep a pulse on it. Have you actually seen any patients where their PSA has like gone up dramatically to the point where you're like, dude, we have to pull back on testosterone. So usually what you'll see is let's say a guy's PSA is like 0.5. It's not uncommon to see it go 0.6, 0.7, right. And you want to keep it under four.

And what you're really worried about with the PSA is they call it like velocity or doubling. Like you don't want it to be at 0.5 and then it's at one and then it's at two and then it's at four. It's like a typical standard of care. Most medical doctors are going to say, look, your PSA is over four. We're taking you off. Whether they want to do a biopsy, an MRI, you know, that's honestly, I get to that point where I'm like,

Look, I would love to, and again, if you're signing the consent, I'll help you in what shape I can. As an astrophysicist, like that's going to be up to you. You're all just kind of decide if it's cancer, what they want to do. I'm not, I don't try and get into pissing contests with other providers. You know, it's the same thing with the heart stuff. Like I have a guy who's tachycardia. He has aortic regurgitation in his heart, right? Where his valve doesn't shut.

It's tough. Like that guy, I'm like, you know, is testosterone going to make that worse or better? Probably going to help you put on muscle. I mean, then you go, well, there's any receptors in the heart.

It's very nuanced. And when you get to the medical dark, they're like, get off of it. They don't want you on anything. Like I have a cancer patient and they're like, we don't want you taking any supplements, none, no NAC, no ECG because they just don't want to deal with it. Right. They're like, I don't know what that does. We have you on this. She was specifically on a immunomodulator and her liver enzymes went up, which I'm glad because if I had to put her, I had another guy in his late thirties who had a heart attack.

Crazy story. He was in there, but that actually doesn't have to do with his heart attack. But previously, two years before, he had some type of liver issue and his liver enzymes were high. And they're going through everything. And they're like, oh, it's because your vitamin D, you're taking 10,000 IUs a day. And his vitamin D was like 80. But do you get what I'm saying? If anything, that should actually lower liver enzymes. I don't think it would have a... Lucas, you call him up and tell him that. Do you get what I'm saying? It's just not worth my time to be like,

Cool. That's the hardest part. Honestly, when guys come to me, I have to walk them through my, Hey, depending on how cool your primary care doctor is, how up they are on the research. And that's why I explain all these things when they come to me, I'm like, Hey, fertility, estrogen, prostate, heart health. These are the things that your primary care doctor will probably bring up to you. Um, yeah.

Look, I can be wrong about some things. The research can be wrong about certain things. We don't have double-blind placebo-controlled trials over a statin, a blood pressure med, and a diabetic. They're not there. We don't know how those things work. We all have to...

deal with what we have here and figure it out. And then as a doctor, my job is to figure out the nuance, right? I know biochemistry, pharmacology, and physiology. You have this issue. My job is to try and put the pieces together. I like educating you and then you make your own decision. It's like you're remodeling your house. Like, Hey, this is what I usually do. I think you'd be good over here. But like, I'm a weights guy. I'm more animal based. If you're vegan, for whatever reason, we can do it. It's difficult. Like we got to figure it out.

That's fine. It's your life. Let me try and help you through that. That's my job, right, is to kind of be your tour guide. So most of TRT is that. You're your side effects. Here's what your primary care is going to tell you. Here's what Google is going to tell you.

Right. When you Google it, you know, it causes heart disease. So I do. There was one bad veteran study that they hardly moved their testosterone up using androgel. And even when you look at the statistical analysis, it's like not clear. If I remember right, like maybe the heart attacks were higher, but the stroke was lower. Like, you know, the data and the heart stuff is very vague. And then you're not taking into consider diet and lifestyle and a wide variety of other things.

because I tell guys that like if you're 60 and you're overweight and I put you on testosterone, you're going to have more energy to go to the bar and booze more. Instead of sitting on the couch and not eating, you're going to be able to get up and go eat McDonald's or you're going to be able to get up and go work out. Like you're saying, testosterone motivates. It makes work feel good. Honestly, I reckon that is like one of the most powerful aspects of like androgens and testosterone itself is like

the sheer willpower to want to go to work out, to have that reserve level of energy, it can be life-changing for men. To be able to have that back, like a lot of guys, they say, when I was 18, 19, 20, I could have a late night and I could eat shit, but I could still have heaps of energy to train and I could work and I could do all that. It's like a lot of that could be re-unlocked through testosterone

Um, which is, I think it's pretty amazing. Like the aspect that, um, Dr. Andrew Hoopman points out, which is like, and you've quoted it as well, which is like testosterone makes effort feel good. It's awesome, man. It's so cool. If you think about it, you want to compete, you want to fight, you want to like, it's a spiritual thing, man. Like I'm, that's what other thing, like I got my cross in the back, but it does like, like I've, I've talked to guys who are spiritually, you know, are Orthodox Christian and we've got their hormones higher and they talk about feeling more spiritual.

you know, whether or not that's the estrogen. And, and again, I like estrogen, you know, we haven't really chatted about that. Like, you know, obviously I did podcasts with Jay for, for a long time and he, you know, he hate man, he hates the AIs, you know, they're rat poison, dah, dah, dah. Um,

I think maybe one or two guys. Out of school, I used them a little bit just because that was a protocol I was given. I come out of school and they're like, hey, you do the one. You take an inch and a half needle and you inject one cc of Ciponate a week. You do your HCG 250 to 500 I use twice a week. And then you do your one milligram of Benastrazole.

And it was funny though, just because as I started practicing, I'm like, well, shit, man, like an astrozole's half-life's in the 20 of hours, ACG's 36 to 40 hours, whatever.

sip and eights 10, seven to 10 days. I do. I get roasted on that one all the time. I did some videos with America. Like, no, it's this month. It's like, it's somewhere around there. Ethanate. Oh, and then it's longer. Okay. Is there actual data on that? Cause I've actually personally, I've never looked into it, but I'm actually curious, like that test, sip, you know, where does that seven to 10 day. So on the Pfizer handout or Merck, like the company that makes it, I'm almost positive. It says I'd have to go back nine or 10.

Um, past that you have to go into research papers that are not, it's like, they're not focusing on it. They're like, they're doing a trial and they're like the half-life of an anthate is four or five days. And they vary. There's a couple of papers that say as low with an anthate, like four or five days. Um, there are other ones that say eight or nine days. So, right. You have like low end four or five days. It's, it's at least that long. I think there is a paper or two where they're talking about, it's like eight or nine days.

Siponate has ones that are like nine or 10 days and there's some shorter ones that say seven. Right. And then in the bro world, for whatever reason, it's always been switched. They always like using the anthate. It's a longer ester. It's funny. Cause like I did that video with Merrick and it was just like all these people. And I'm like, and I, you know, I put the papers. I'm like, dude, here's the handout and maybe Pfizer's corrupt, whatever. This is what their handout says. I'm not going to argue with them. It's pretty well established though, that the proponate is, is the shortest one.

So it's tough. And again, I don't, we need more data in my opinion. There's only a couple of papers talking about it. And I'm not a biochemist. Like I go into the, I go into the paper, read the paper. I'm not smarter than that. What about, um, recently I've come across and you probably heard about it way earlier than, than what I did is, um, Natesto, the nasal testosterone. What are your thoughts on that? Um, I, I,

I opened up that rabbit hole. I went down. It makes sense, right? Like a cream, you're right there. There are some things that I like, like probably being closer to the brain. To be honest, it'd probably be like if you had a product that you had to get in a country, like I'm like, I'd have to switch my whole practice. I'd have to implement it. It'd have to be researched for me. You know, so I'd have to go to 30 or 40 guys and say, hey, you've been on 7-8 for a while. Do you want to try the nasal thing? I looked at the data. I didn't hear people like raving about it.

Cause like with the cream, to be honest, I was resistant to the cream pretty early on for reasons that I said, one, you can transfer onto people, shorter half-life absorption is going to be different. Then they want you to do on your scrotum. Dude, just, just pin twice a week. Use, you know, reason smaller needles. Like most of my guys that I've like, it's different. Some guys like the cream. It just becomes a personal preference.

So I resisted it just because I have my systems in place. And then I had to figure out the lab testing. Like usually they'll say three or four hours. And if a guy's wanting to get his lab tested, he's like, I got to get my lab tested before work at 7am. What are you going to do? Wake up at 3am and put cream on and go back to sleep. So it's more of a logistic thing. This is a lot of these things, the nasal cream, the nasal gel may be better. You know, now the, the, they have a,

It's like a trochee pill, cry, it's a undeconate. Oh, testosterone undeconate capsules? That is oral. Yeah, the orals. Yeah, which I think their half-life is two or three hours. That's pretty cool. Yeah, right? The issue has always been like,

You know, like oxangeline is a variable orally. All the almost other ones you're like, you just inject it because you have liver issues, detox, first pass metabolism. And then is it harder on your liver? X, Y, and Z. I've chatted with some of the reps a couple of times. There is some argument, and this is with the cream and with their shorter half-lifes.

It's funny because a good friend of mine, Dr. Alice Nguyen, she works at a clinic called Stark. And the owner there, Todd, his test – I think his sandal is Testoteron. I don't know if you've seen him. I think he's out there. I think I'm out of – yeah. Is he on Twitter or Instagram? Yeah.

Instagram is probably his bigger following. I did a podcast with him and we were talking about fertility, right? Because siponate will shut down your fertility. It's going to inhibit FSH and LH, right? Take your GNRH. I know you guys know this, but I'll just to remind you, right? Your siponate, once you give your body too much testosterone, you're going to shut down your gonadotropin-releasing hormone in your hypothalamus, shut down your pituitary FSH and LH, which also affects your sperm.

Now, one of the claims that the, and I don't know, I thought it's a trochee. Maybe it's a pill, the inductinate, either way. One of their claims is that because it has a shorter half-life, it's not inhibiting the FSH and LH as much. Like if it's, I don't know, I see that as like an Indiana Jones, like you're trying to just do it just right. Right. That like, if you, if your normal test is like 400, you take two caps in the morning, you get the seven or 800, it's out of your system in two to three hours. Right.

maybe that's short enough that it doesn't shut your FSH and LH off. Maybe I don't, I haven't, I haven't done it and I don't want to do it to be honest, because I already know how the syphonate works and I already know the cream is another debatable one with fertility. Um, which is funny. Cause you know, Dave Lee, I'm hopefully chatting with him soon. Cause he's, it's funny. He had a video talking about ACG and its mechanism, which again, another topic you and I, I'd like to chat about FSH and LH. Um,

But like siponate, my opinion, most guys are going to be infertile. And then I have to explain the problem. Like spermatogenesis is a, I think Google or Wiki is 74 days, but I would say 90 to 120 days. Like you have to water that seed every day or your sperm dies. It has to be constantly stimulated FSH and LH. And so if you just come in for a couple of days and you don't get that stimulation, in my experience, guys will die.

I had a guy on TRT and ACG. He was fertile, right? ACG mimics LH. He's fine. He's on the way to the airport. It's like, doc, I'm going to Bali. I left my ACG. I was like, how long are you going to be gone? He's like two weeks. I was like, ACG probably out of your system. Came back home after two weeks, did a sperm analysis. Sperm was gone. Dead. Right. He had to start all over. Was he on Cipunate or?

Yeah, he was on siponate and then he was trying to get – I've had plenty of guys conceive while on siponate and HCG. And what about – There is that joke. The other forms like in antite? Much more – well, I wouldn't – proponate – any of the injectables I'm still going to be – I'm not convinced. But this is why I said I talked with Todd over at Stark and he was saying that he had lowered his dose to a point where he said he was still fertile taking siponate without anything else.

Which I was surprised, to be honest. I've not been able to do that with any of my guys. It doesn't mean it's not doable. But that's one of the arguments that the Indecanate oral people have. They're like, no, it doesn't mess with fertility. Now, I have huge issues with the fertility stuff because I have guys. I can't risk that, you know, depending on, you know, if you've got a 42-year-old guy, his wife's 38. It's tough for us to make that decision. Do you want to come off?

Or you're going to get an ACG for 90 days and their partners are wanting it. Like we don't have time to play around and like, do you want to experiment? Right. I know the ACG works. So your options are either come off the sip or you stay on the sip and you add ACG, but you may get nervous in four months if it takes longer than normal to get your sperm back online. And then if you leave your ACG out, you don't inject for a couple of weeks, you guys start the whole process over. And right. Is in clomiphene not considered in that picture at all? Yeah. Let's get into that. It's funny because, uh,

What's his name? The pharmacist Dean St. Dean Mark. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Him and I went into his DMS cause they were kind of chatting about in clomiphene and just, I'd like to have a conversation with him too. A couple of years ago, ACG, right? So,

Going back, TRT shuts everything down. You had ECG. My experience, low doses of that brings guys fertility back online and it's dose dependent. There's a study at Baylor. I think it's 250 IUs a week is 60% baseline, 500 IUs a week is 80% baseline, and 1,000 IUs a week will send a guy above baseline. So if you're a natty and you want to take ECG to boost up your test, you need to be doing at least 1,000 IUs a day or a week.

Right. So like 300 every other day to get you super like it's not super physiologic, but if your test is 700, you know what I'm saying? So in the States, ACG used to be a drug and so it could be compounded. So I could call up my guy down the street and I could order a small amount, 50 bucks, 100 bucks, you know, get it affordable over to Lucas here.

Our friends over at Pfizer and Merck lobbied and said, no, this is technically a biologic, which it does come from, you know, depending if it's bacterially fermented or whatever. However, they they does come from pregnant women's urine. Right. That's where ACG is highest. They do. A lot of it is actually from their urine that they dry it out and they put it in a bottle. Kind of weird. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's a weird one, right? Siponate usually, I think they, they do something to cholesterol with yams or something and they make the siponate. Um, so what ended up happening is a lot of practitioners like myself, you had to stop getting it compounded and then lo and behold, there's a back order and then the price quadruples, right?

conspiracy theory time anyways um so a lot of clinics that are like well what do we do this profit margin doesn't make sense these bottles of hcg are two three hundred dollars i have to sell them for 600 where i used to get them for 1500 and so then people started okay well clomid right let's try the clomid out uh and there were people doing that before the hcg happened and i had used clomid

uh, before, like I did Clomid to boost my own testosterone. I didn't like it. Made me feel terrible. Most guys, you want to take a bubble bath and sit home and like question what you're doing with your life. Like it's not fun.

Inclamiphene, right, which is half of that drug, you have two isomers, inclamiphene, zuclamiphene. Zuclamiphene's like 30-day half-life. It's something ridiculous long. It's over 20. And that's going to be acting more on the FSH and estrogen. Inclamiphene's like a 6-10-hour half-life, I think closer to 10, working more on LH. So most guys feel better on inclamiphene monotherapy. Now, in my experience...

I, before this thing happened, I put some guys on Clomid and Clomiphene when they were on TRT to see if they could be fertile and they weren't. We did like the YoSperm test and they were guys who had it, like they were younger guys like me. I tried it. My sperm was dead. I did TRT and Clomiphene and on Clomid. Actually, I don't take Clomid. It's garbage. I can't stand it. But I tried it in some guys. But the weird thing is, and I still have this happen.

is I have had some guys who don't care about fertility. Let's say I got a 55-year-old guy, but he's like, dude, my gonads are dust in the wind, man. They're non-existent, right? And I've given them inclamaphene, and they've told me it's worked. And personally, I've done it, and it's worked. I've been on TRT monotherapy, added inclamaphene,

My sperm is not swimming, but my gonads come back to normal size and jackatory volume returns. So this was something I want to chat about with you. And I'm hoping to chat with Dave. Like, I don't think we understand LH and FSH and ACG and inclamophene, my personal opinion. I think there's something going on there. I'm wondering if that drug is actually working in the testes somehow or

Or I just got bad data. Like I'm okay to admit whatever. To be honest, I just want to know the truth and I want to help guys because inclamafine is cheaper than ACG and it's a pill. So if I could have a guy on TRT and inclamafine, then that'd be fine. But I was listening to like Vigorous Steve and them and everyone has their own opinion about it. And I, yeah, it's St. Dean Mart. What's his name? Dr. Dean St. Mart.

Does he have an opinion on this? Well, I just slid into his DMs. I'd like to have a longer conversation with him. He's like, doesn't make sense. It won't work. And I just wanted to be like, I told him, I go, hey, dude, what do you think? He's like, no, because it's not right. The theory is the testosterone is too high. There's too much testosterone. It's inhibiting the FSH and LA. Like, it's just.

Right. And clomiphene is a selective estrogen receptor modulator. So it's going to the brain, telling the brain, I don't have any estrogen, uprelated unidotropin. But if you just still have too much testosterone, it's like they're fighting. I guess the receptor isn't antagonized enough.

And it could be something else going intercellularly. Is it, okay, you're antagonizing the receptor, but is testosterone going in the cell and then aromatizing? It's like an anti-negative feedback loop that it's sort of like balancing it out where it's like, you think that N-climafine is going to have that serum-like effect, but if you're overriding it, what you're saying is you're overriding it with by boosting serum levels of testosterone? Yeah. So the proposed mechanism of action is,

with in clomiphene right estrogen receptor modulator and what's very interesting in the research that i've done is that in some places when it's modulating the receptor it is either in some places up regulating its sensitivity and other places down regulating sensitivity meaning like in the breast tissue you don't want the receptor to be i guess more sensitive right for an adipose

Your bone, you don't want it antagonized, right? You want that receptor to be hitting the bone, but you don't want to hit in the breasts. And then if you want it to increase gonadotropin, you're going to want it to trick your brain into down-regulating it, right? And this is where I'm saying I don't, I'm questioning the mechanism of action. Like, what is it doing to the receptor? Is it, it's decreasing the sense that, my understanding, it's like if you have 20 estrogen, right? And the, for every time the estrogen hit, it does like,

It grows one milligram per deciliter of bone. I don't know. I'm just trying to figure out an objective matter, right? Like, and clomiphene hits, and it does one in the brain, right? And what it's trying to do is it modulates the receptor. So when one hits, it only gives you half points, whatever, right? It's only half as potent is my understanding of what it's, and I could be wrong. That's why I'd like to talk more to you.

a pharmacologist like that's with you know the pharma like he should know more than that than me i'm just i learned mechanism of actions i'm not as sharp intercellularly like what's going on in the nucleus i've got a you know i reckon between um dr dean say mart also i've got a a pharmacist friend who's also really well versed in hormone therapy and stuff

I'll put it to him and we'll get him on there. Cause we got group coaching calls. Like I said, going, we'll get you as well in that, in that group, having a chat with Nick. Cause he's like, he's a wizard with that sort of stuff. And we'll just jam it out, man. Cause guys need to know this stuff. This is not easy to race. They can't find this on Google, you know? And so, well, and then what happens when you add the, the sloop or the SLP with the SS 33 SLU, right? Yeah.

It's a estrogen antagonist. It's a weird, it's a, what is it? A different estrogen genomic. What is it? I haven't looked into it as much. Jay was saying it and then there's the bodybuilding guy who's been chatting a lot about it. I've only gotten to listen to him and Google some stuff. Extrogen related orphan receptor agonist. Okay. Yeah. It activates ERR alpha, sorry, ERR beta and ERR gamma.

So I don't know how that would – The estrogen receptor. Yeah. I think their argument when I looked at it, I think it upregulates AMPK, which is supposed to be mimicking estrogen. Like somehow when it's hitting that estrogen receptor, right, AMPK gets upregulated in exercise. Do you remember? Yeah. Right.

When I was looking at the biochemistry, I was like, okay, it hits here. Da-da-da. AMPK. Okay, I know that thing. You know what I mean? I'm not a bio... I know enough. I'm like, AMPK going up. Good thing. Depending on the situation. Depending on the situation. The thing is, I've had quite a number of clients order SLU people. And they've had pretty positive effects in terms of endurance. I've got a few cycling...

cyclists, athletes, runners, things like that. And they've noticed improvements in endurance. One guy noticed an increase in resting heart rate. But yeah, I mean, it's...

I find these sort of, these are like the real, this is like as novel as it gets in terms of research chemicals. So like we're, we're, we're in a bubble, man. Like we are just, it's a very small cohort of people that are actually interested in these compounds. And these are like way before they hit mainstream way before. And it's difficult because to me, I sit back and I look, I go, okay, so you're on testosterone. And this is why I don't like pulling more levers. We talked about SHBG. I'm like,

My opinion, I don't really understand it that well. I'm thinking that it's some way modulating and has some type of feedback. And this is my – and this may be in the research. I don't know. But my opinion on the androgens downregulating SHGB, sex hormone binding organ, is that

I'm imagining there's something else going off with FSH or LH in this cascade that because that is shut down, the SHGB gets shut down, right? So testosterone is high. It goes in and shuts down that whole FSH, GNRH. Like maybe GNRH is what's working in the liver to create more sex hormone binding globulin or FSH and LH. Those are off.

So you're downloading like, cause the brain, the body thinks I'm not producing any testosterone. So it probably thinks I don't need to produce any sex hormone binding globulin. Does that make sense? Like that's,

Sort of.

But you think something even like a, and I use them like Ampam, Rella, and CJC. All right, so you got one. Then you're, so you're, you know, I think estrogen and metabolism, you're modulating that. And then you're given an MK-677 and you upregulate the ghrelin over there. It's like, and then you're mimicking exercise over here. It can be done, don't get me wrong. I just get more nervous adding on

more and more things. It can become difficult. Yeah. Like you're sort of like pulling different levers and it's like, when you pull this lever, it's sort of, you know, imbalances this pathway. And then it's like, you have to use something for that pathway. Like speaking of, um, speaking of MK six, seven, seven, um, I finally got my hands on some about six months ago, man. So getting a taste for what that's like, literally like eating the entire pantry. Um,

It makes you hungry, man. How much did you do? So I pushed it to 25 milligrams. But man, the sleep quality is pretty awesome. But I reckon the next phase of my growth hormone pathway activation will be, like you said, the ipamorelin, tesamorelin, CJC. Because you've tried all sort of growth hormone pathways.

analogs and things like that. Until this day, you're still a fan of like ipamirelin, right? So risk versus reward and then money, like there's several things to take into consideration. I like MK. My opinion, it is for your normie, it's a pill. It works. 12 milligrams, 25 milligrams. Sometimes you can get them as low as 10. Most people are going to take that. They get hungry. They sleep better.

Some people can get kind of groggy. I don't know if you had that. Like you kind of woke up and you're like, whoa. I don't have enough blood work to say that I know for sure that it raises glucose too much. There are other people out there. I looked into that pretty extensively. I also asked that pharmacist friend of mine. He said after six months on average, blood glucose does go up, but it's about by only 0.3%.

and it's like that's basically like taking you from hba1c from like 5.2 to 5.5 so if you're low it's not a big there i had a guy today he's at 5.7 you know so for him i wouldn't but i dude i walk around under five most of the time so yeah yeah my that's yeah that's the other conversation my cholesterol is always low uh dude how i was just about to say like how are you under five because like

I wish, let's just say this. I was on a group coaching call two days ago and I said to the guys, I rarely see guys underneath 5.0 or any, very rare will I see a guy around 4.7 HbA1c, extremely rare. - Under 4.8, yeah, under 4.8, I'm like, dude, you need to eat more. Yeah, I don't know. I've always had low, dude, my cholesterol, it's hard for it to get over 150.

And this is where I was pretty convinced early on. It's not diet. Dude, I was to the point where I ate four eggs for breakfast, two slices of four slices of bacon, slices of cheese, chicken for lunch, steak for dinner. My cholesterol won't get over 160. Just won't. It just won't go. And that just could be I'm almost always in a caloric deficit.

But are you? Are you actually the caloric deficit a lot of the time? Probably not right now. Not a recent. In school, I probably was. And again, everyone like when I'm stressed, I have a tendency to not eat. You know what I mean? And I will always, I'm still going to work out. So I was a big fan. Dude, I did keto. I can work out fasted. Dude, I can wake up. I can have 500 calories by the time I work out at three o'clock and be fine.

Right. I'm a usually I smash usually fifteen hundred to two grand in the evening. But I'm just saying that's where, like, again, you get told all these things. And I think we'll agree cholesterol is mostly made. It's not as much as what you're eating.

But, and again, I think we're probably similar. I'm still more on the, like the kind of calories definitely matter. The calories are definitely going to affect thyroid function, hormone function. But from a physics perspective, it's still, you can't give it like you have this many calories, you know, calories in versus calories out. And that, that doesn't mean you affect that in the type of calories you eat. Like if I'm eating so much sugar, my blood sugar is going up and down. I'm going to have to eat more calories to maintain my blood sugar better.

Right. That's the thing I don't like when people argue calories. It's like we're not arguing about what we need to be arguing about. You know what I'm saying? When people have that argument, it's like the one person's like clean and the other person's like, yeah, but it's just about calories. It's like, yeah, but if you eat terrible calories, you're going to have terrible blood glucose regulation and you're going to eat more calories.

You get what I'm saying? Like, I'm not, that's not what we're arguing about. So don't tell that person it's calories in versus calories out and they eat seven ice cream sandwiches a day. Well, I only had 2000 calories. It's like, yeah, but your blood glucose regulation is all over. You're also not getting all of your essential amino acids. You know what I mean? So you just can't say that without like elaborating on it a little bit more. So that's what's tough in medicine. There's nuances.

Would you say the, would you say the, like, the recovery side of things, MK-677 versus ipramirelin is like comparable? Like, how would you differentiate the effects of both of those? Yeah. So usually when I talk about them, right, I divide them. I go, okay, growth hormone releasing peptide, growth hormone releasing hormone. They're actually working on different receptors on the brain, ipramirelin,

ampamorelin mk uh ghrp samorelin is the one most a lot of people have heard of tesamorelin cjc 1295 are the hormones peptides right they're technically samorelin and tesamorelin aren't peptide well depends on amino acid sequencing that's a whole other conversation about i get that right mk is not a peptide it's like all right whatever um

But it hits the peptide receptor. So what do you, you know what I mean? Like nuance is everyone wants to dunk on people. Um, my experience using the growth hormone releasing peptides that hit the peptide and or ghrelin receptor, that's usually like, Hey, that's your hunger hormone, right? So you get hungry and it's mimicking and inducing growth hormone effects from that, right? Where the other side, you're hitting the growth hormone releasing receptor, actually telling it to release it. Um,

Again, I like using less is more, but for whatever reason, when people take MK, they're way more likely to gain weight. I hear, um, uh, like if you came to me, like, Hey, I want to put on 10 pounds of muscle. Yeah. I'd say take MK. If you're like, Hey, I'm trying to lean out. Like I like the CJC amp and Morellon combination. I do think Tessa Morellon and what I've seen is probably better than CJC, but it's like five times as expensive.

And most places don't make the combination. And so you test morale into minor sitting. And this is like a Ryan Smith question that it's to minor. It seems it's way more unstable. Like you really should be mixing it and using it within 24 to 48 hours. It's just not as sustainable versus the CJC lasts a whole lot longer, right? You can mix it and use it. Usually you're going to use it for like 10 weeks. So in my clinical experience using MK gain weight, energy in the gym, sleep better,

Um, the CJC amp and Morrell and seems more like blood glucose regulation, better energy throughout the day, weight loss. So if you, if I say, Hey, I'm gonna put a guy on MK, I'm gonna put a guy on the CJC amp and Morrell accommodation 10 weeks from now, for whatever reason, the CJC amp and Morrell and people seem like they usually are more like gaining muscle, losing fat. Like they don't, their scale doesn't change as much, you know, in the MK, it's not uncommon for five or 10 pounds. Um,

I don't know, was that your experience taking, did you put on a little bit of weight or? Well, the thing is I was, I wasn't doing it consistently. So I was doing it like maybe three to four days a week. Um, and also bear in mind, I wasn't actually like, I'm still doing a lot of, um, quite a lot of hit and aerobic training. So I wasn't truly trying to like go full on hypertrophy. Um, and also in terms of my calorie expenditure, cause I'm still doing like 15,000 steps a day, doing a lot of consulting, like,

very active, things like that. But in saying that, I definitely noticed improvements in sleep quality. The way I can figure that out is instead of doing the objective measurements like Oura Ring or Whoop or things like that, it's more about how I feel upon awakening. Usually it's like if I wake up and I get out of bed, I'm not just walking out of bed, I'm literally running out of bed. Just getting out of bed. I'm still doing the test. Yeah.

They're hard. I hardly get those. I don't know about you. Pretty much caffeine. To the point where I'm like, I have to go train immediately upon awakening. That's how I know I've had a really good sleep where I can almost go straight into the gym, go straight to the leg press. Obviously not putting on the full as heavy as I can, but I feel adaptive enough to the point where my energy output can almost be

like 100% of my max effort pretty soon within the workout, maybe within like 15 minutes. So yeah, in terms of sleep quality, definitely that. The appetite side of things, I found it, I haven't done a HBA1C assessment, but one of my best friends did and he was using it regularly and it had no negative impact on his HBA1C at all. So, you know, like, and he was eating pretty well and he wasn't overeating.

So like he was pushing through the hunger pains quite a lot. And he was at like a normal calorie. He wasn't like overeating, that sort of stuff. But yeah, man, I think this will be the year of like getting more into the experiment. I feel like every year is a year of experimentation. Every year, man. It's so hard because, you know, we haven't even really gotten into nootropics that I...

I'll do something like this morning. I took half a paracetam. I have alpha-GPC, choline CDP, uridine monophosphate. I have another supplement that's called cognitive aminos that just basically has 200 to 300 milligrams of tryptophan, tyrosine, and

Maybe some L-theanine. I don't think that's L-theanine. But what I'm getting at is like some days I'll take two caps of coin CDP. Some days I'll take one cap of that, one cap of alpha GPC, and they're $250 and $300. So I'm getting...

Sometimes I take the uridine monophosphate. Sometimes I don't. I'm just, you know what I mean? I'm not. And then a couple days a week, I'll take a methylene blue or a paracetam, phenyl, phenylparacetam. Like I'm just constantly always taking something a little bit different. Maybe I do 3,000 milligrams of L-quarantine instead of 1,000 in the morning. And my pre-workouts always are changing. I have some with caffeine, some with not. So I'm getting sometimes 2,000 milligrams of B-18. Sometimes I'm getting three or four.

You know what I mean? So it's always like, it's not consistent, but I also don't want to take it consistently because I,

I feel like kind of like with exercise, it's probably best to not blast that pathway all the time. I agree. Yeah. Oh man, a hundred percent. I've got like, I've got like compounds that I'll just tap into. I've got like a cycling protocol for certain, like true performance enhancing compounds that I'll use like maybe once or twice a week and I'll just sort of like rotate between them. So I've got like maybe like three or four compounds that I know can really give me a kick, like in terms of energy and,

And I'll just sort of rotate between that so that there's like minimal tolerance development. I can consistently get the desired effect that I'm looking for. So it's like a pretty much like a win-win. I'm not ever developing tolerance, nor am I ever likely to develop any side effects as well. Yeah, and that's maybe a way that I think...

something like MK can be really utilized, right? Like instead of taking, and this is the other thing we didn't chat, you know, with that, with the growth hormone peptides, like when I first came out of school, everyone was like, Hey, with the Samorelin, you probably heard that five days on two days off, right? They think kind of like, which like caffeine makes sense to me, like let the receptor sit, like don't blast it all the time. Um, that's been more debatable, especially with the newer ones like test some rounds protocol, uh,

It's right. Egrifta. Is that right? Does that sound right? It's an F. I think it's, I always get that. And thymus and alpha ones drug, I think is Zaxanda. So I think it's a grifta. I think a grifta is the test of Morell and actually FDA approved one, right? It's protocol is just, it's like one or two mil. That's the other thing. When you're getting tests of Morell and most people are doing a couple hundred micrograms. It's like, man, you look at the actual pay. There's like millions.

milligrams and when you're 50 to 100 a bottle research purposes only you're not talking getting it from the pharmacy i think they're like several hundreds of dollars each at that point you might as well just do actual growth hormone honestly if you can get it which is that's right in the states you can't you can't write it off label it's supposed to be for specifically for people with dwarfism i don't know if you're not right in this so like as a doctor

If your nose itches, I could write you for an antibiotic. You can write for things off-label. It wasn't designed for nose itching, but I can do that. The same thing with testosterone. You legally cannot prescribe testosterone in the States for anti-aging. It has to have a clinical indication, right? It could be primary or secondary or other. Technically, the drug was made for hypogonadism. When it went through clinical trials. Same thing like a blood pressure med.

You know, Viagra, that was a heart med originally. You know, they were working on, you know, cardiovascular stuff. Growth hormone is one of the more debatable ones. I know people that do it, but to my understanding with the DEA, they're like, no, that's not, you should not be prescribing that off label. Meaning like, unless they have diagnosed dwarfism with a low growth hormone score, maybe even bone density, um,

And again, someone can explain that to me. I got kind of scared away from that early on my dude. I'm not risking my license on something that's, you know, TRT is already, especially when I came out, it's so dude in five years,

It's way more. There's so many more companies. You know what I mean? 2017, you couldn't. 15, even. You couldn't even go into a clinic. Now, doctors are way more accepting of it. I'm happy about it. I'm stoked. The abundance of clinics, that's great. As long as they're prescribing...

like appropriately you know they're not being reckless or stupid and doing the generic what was that one you said before was like yeah testosterone cpna with hcg and anastrozole that was like the og stack yeah like even what i learned in school because in naturopathic medical schools we actually learn ib therapy like you know your primary care doctor they don't teach maybe they taught them that i don't even think so i think you you learned the

They use a testosterone undeconate and they do, I think it's one CC for two weeks. I forget what their, their protocols like one ML for four weeks. And then I think they move you to one ML every two weeks. And then you have to go into the office to do it, you know, as the other thing, like, okay, so I have to drive to the office once a week to inject my testosterone. I think that was like, if you went to the endocrinology associate, the, what is it? American, uh,

I don't remember the exact, you know, whatever the endocrinologists are, are taught in school and learn in residency. And someone maybe knows below and they can comment. And then, yeah, I mean, I'd learned in school like, Hey, well that's, you know, you should take some ACG to off put the gonadal shrinkage. It really wasn't about fertility maybe. And then there was still lots of scary concerns about estrogen, which two things I have to say about that. One,

Um, I've never, I don't have any guys in my clinic on AI and I've never had a gyno case, which is crazy. Um, and I mean, there are more and more docs that will even like, they don't even, I almost don't even want to measure estrogen because it's, it, you know, guys like, like a guy comes to me, his test is 500 and his estrogen is 25. His test goes to a thousand hours. Estrogen is 50. That makes sense, man. You have aromatization. You have twice as much testosterone. You have twice as much estrogen.

Do you have nipple sensitivity? Are you crying easy? You know, I use a couple of like, I did have a guy from Texas once. He's like, man, doc, that old George Strait song came on every day and I'd start crying, doc. And I was like, okay. But again, I go to pathways. Okay. Glucuronidation. Like, let's just upgrade it. Like, get you some NAC, get you some DIM and that. And that usually does it. However, dealing with anabolics is another story. Like there's some that push pathways and

Again, I have plenty of comments on that. I'd like to talk to some more, let's say, bodybuilding coaches about how I think they look at a certain anabolic and it can't be aromatized. So they go, okay, no estrogen symptoms. But I'm like, okay, if you're doing a test base, does more of the test be aromatized? Right?

My pain. And again, I've seen some guy I've not as familiar with that. I have some guys who come to me and I have to use biochemistry to be like, well, I know you're using this, you know, oxangalone can't be, it's a DHT derivative. It's not going to be aromatized. Right. But it's weird. You're having it like, and then like, if you remember Huberman had came out and is like, well, guy knows really more from prolactin, which I've measured prolactin and guys who have gyno.

It's not elevated, but did, was it elevated for a long time? And that's what gave him the gyno. I don't think so. When you look at the mechanism of action, it's just to increase the gland. It's not actually causing the fat tissue, which to my understanding, that's where you get more of the, the gyno. But I'm again, I'm not a gyno expert. Um, and I've not had to deal with it, which is nice. You know what I mean? The protocols I used, you know, like I said, I learned the one, one ML. And then I'm like, why am I not spreading this out?

You know what I mean? When I was like, why it has a 10 day half-life. Would it not be way better if I'd inject twice a week, three times a week. Then I went all the way to daily. I don't think it's worth it. Most of my guys, we do three days a week and they can remember that Monday, Wednesday, Friday, you go on every other day. Super. Did I do it yesterday or do it the day before? You know, it's easy. It's like, it seems easy until you're doing it. And Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, way easier to go about that.

And then the other thing with the ACG, like we talked about with the testosterone cream, again, kind of my opinion. When guys come to me, I don't like putting them on ACG and TRT at the same time. ACG is going to keep your endogenous production going, which we think is great. But if we talked about earlier, you have more 5-alpha reductase, more aromatase in the testes. So now you're having the exogenous, right, being created.

My personal opinion is then if you're taking that ACG, I am more concerned about higher estrogen, higher DHT. Now, again, whether or not that's good or bad, that's just been my experience that if I put a guy just on test and then we add ACG, more likely to have breakouts, more likely to have nipple sensitivity. Sexually, it increases their libido, but I've had guys adding ACG that...

they can get PE like that bad. Like it's super increases your, and I think that's, it's gotta be through DHT. Right. So I'm like, okay, why is that happening? But if a guy is at like on a dose of tests and his test is at 900 and we add ACG and he bumps up to 1200, that guy versus a guy whose test just gets to 1200, the guy on ACG almost always has more side effects.

Almost always, if any, not always. But if you had to tell me, doc, I have a guy at 1200 on TRT. I have a guy at 1200 who has ACG and TRT who's having side effects. I'm like ACG guy. And that's just anecdotal. And then me thinking, well, you're still producing. So probably more of what you're producing is being aromatized or turned into DHT. And again, people argue about, is that a good or a bad thing? Maybe it's,

I like having a little bit of ACG. I feel better taking TRT with ACG and almost all my guys say the same thing. But a lot of times I'll start a guy on ACG, even lowering their TRT dose and they'll have more acne. So it's a tough balance. And that's why I like pulling one lever at a time. We'll have to...

We'll have to line up another episode just dedicated to a specific topic because we've just smashed through so much and it's always...

It's always a pleasure chatting, man. So, um, we'll definitely have you in on the group coaching calls for those listening in. Um, that is part of the limitless program. I'll get Dr. Michael Moeller as part of that to sort of co-host some of those. Um, but otherwise, Michael, where can my audience connect with you if they want to check you out or, you know, work with you personally? Yep. Yep. Um, you can see my name down there. Just Dr. Michael Moeller, ND. Um,

YouTube. You can find me pretty easy. Instagram are probably my two bigger ones. TikTok. Yeah. I got a website. You can reach out to there. You can DM me and questions about stuff. So.

I'm around, man. We'll do this again and we'll have you. I don't know if we can repost this on my channel or you have it on your channel or whatever, but we'll do some more stuff, man. It was great to be chatting with you again, man. It's fun. I enjoyed it. So did I, man. Thanks for sharing all that knowledge and wisdom. And for those listening in, if you did enjoy the podcast episode, please do leave a five-star review and share the episode around. That's it for me today, guys. I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.

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