More Plates More Dates

Intro

What happens if you're a man with regular levels of testosterone and you give yourself a little boost? From like an actual testicular health aspect, you're essentially shutting down the signal to them in order to minorly elevate your levels just for some hopeful improvement. I know like there's some women who get pregnant and then they're just kind of like calm and happy and like just like pregnant. Yeah. And I just went like batshit crazy. If you're not literally dying, good luck getting anything in Canada. Like you better show up to the ER like physically having a heart attack or else you're not getting anything.

So. I can get behind that. Derek, nice to meet you. Thanks for coming on my podcast. You as well. Thanks for having me. Uh how did you like what's your background?

For people who aren't aware or familiar with you, um can you give a brief background about who you are and what it is you do? Um yeah, so my name is Derek. I started a YouTube channel in 2016 as well as a accompanying website which I'm probably most well known for. Um the channel name is More Plates More Dates. It's kind of centered around men's self-improvement for the most part, but um it's kind of just like a catchy name I came up with at the time that I thought was memorable, kind of funny. And um since then it's kind of branched out into multiple different areas and my interests have evolved since then to be more focused around biology, endocrinology, pharmacology, performance optimization, longevity, just a bunch of different areas like that. And I guess secondarily, I'm most known for my preventive medicine platform as well as supplement company, but mainly it's the channel which you know, I produce a bunch of content around um I don't know, just how the human body works, nutrition, optimization, stuff like that.

And um yeah, it's kind of a high level overview hopefully that is a sufficient summation of what I do I guess. Yeah no that works.

Three Main Focuses for Men's Health

Okay so what do you think the main focus for men should be for overall health health or say the top three focuses for men? High quality sleep for sure I think a lot of people are burning the candle at both ends and are not really dialing in their either their circadian rhythm is out of whack they are you know not getting to bed in an adequate time and then also not following a regular schedule and then even when they're doing that their sleep even if it's eight hours it's often times segmented or not like high quality enough to actually reap the rewards out of it that they could otherwise be getting and that's massively impactful on many different hormone systems most notable I think that most are aware of is how detrimental it is to testosterone levels in men. So I would say that's probably like the biggest low hanging fruit cuz that's the only like restorative time of the day where your body can actually deal with you know cancer cell proliferation recovery from your workouts also mental health massively impacted by quality of sleep for sure. So I would say that's like the biggest thing and then secondarily to that as you're you are well aware and diet quality hugely impactful for sure. I would say a lot of people are very focused on macronutrients like protein carbs fats they count their calories that's kind of like the extent a lot of people go to even those who are trying to be mindful of their health but a lot of times people overlook micronutrient density of foods as well as mineral intake and things that go I don't know like there's a lot of people that will use like low calorie alternatives or sugar free alternatives but then they're totally void of any sort of nutritional value whatsoever other than like oh it's high protein and no sugar, so therefore good. Not always the case cuz a lot of these vitamins and minerals are like cofactors for different things in your body that are necessary for optimizing performance, uh vitality, etc. Um so, there's that, and then I guess exercise third.

Like, what was the original question was three like main thing? Yeah, so. Yeah. That's probably the best I could pull out of my ass off the top of my head. Huh, sleep. Okay. My sleep has been garbage for about 2 weeks, and I feel like I don't feel good because of it.

I just I don't know. I I got into this like just into the going to sleep at 2:00 in the morning. Mhm. Just just it like normally my sleep schedule's on point. It's like 10:00 early in the morning. And then for a couple weeks I had So, you know I'm on this carnivore diet. Yeah.

And I had these amazing sausages made. So, I had like meat meat shipped somewhere, and I had these sausages made, and I guess they went through a meat grinder that had other things in it. Oh, jeez. And it just screwed up my sleep. And I've been It's amazing how much you need to optimize sleep. What what could people do or what if they have interrupted sleep? Um like I guess as far one of the main things is people waking up to go to the washroom in the middle of the night.

How to Cure Interrupted Sleep

So, that's one of the biggest interruptors for sure that could be mitigated through electrolyte balance. So, having a sufficient balance of sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium. A lot of people are not really focusing on mineral intake and their electrolytes, um as well as just being very mindful of how much water you're drinking before you go to bed. Like, I'd say that's probably the number one like actual physical impediment to staying asleep is people waking up and having to go take a piss, for sure. Um but other than that, like actual sleep quality, caffeine timing, definitely huge. A lot of people don't consider the half-life of caffeine is five plus hours and depending on how old you are you are your metabolism of the caffeine gets worse and worse over time. So eventually it takes longer to work its way out of your system and that, you know, afternoon coffee that you had on top of your morning coffee could be screwing you up, you know, later into the night when you think, you know, you just assume the caffeine's out of your system cuz you don't feel, you know, up being energetic anymore, but in reality the residual effects are still preventing you from getting that really deep sleep.

Um and there's a bunch of other things, too, but I mean those are probably the two main ones off the top of my head, to be honest. So, are you a fan of uh high salt? What about high salt? Well, I mean just a lot of salt, consuming a lot of salt. You talked about electrolytes. So, are you a fan of like extra electrolytes for optimization? Um it depends on the individual.

Like I wouldn't just broad spectrum sweepingly say everyone should be adding salt to their diet necessarily cuz a lot of people can have, you know, go into elevation of blood pressure when they have added salt salt to their diet when they don't necessarily utilize it, but yeah, that could be impactful for sure for actually avoiding excessive urination, you know, and I think caffeine also does have a mild diuretic effect. So, if you are loading up on caffeine, you can imagine that that's going to make you urinate more as well. So, things to be mindful of for sure.

Derek's Educational Background

So, what's your background in? Like do you have educational wise or education wise do you have education in nutrition or or anything like that or that's the interesting thing is for me a lot of people think, like I remember Joe Rogan for a while thought I was a chemist cuz I had, I don't know, this like rumor started that I was like this meathead chemist. Um and a lot of people wonder exactly what I do, but I had a undergrad in marketing and totally useless, by the way. Like, I would not necessarily recommend it for anybody. Huh. Yeah. But, um yeah, my education formally is just on the uh business administration side of things, but um nothing really relevant to what I'm passionate about or pursue nowadays.

And mainly my education is self-taught, as well as through collaboration with other individuals that I respect, and um you know, find mutual benefit in, you know, educating each other, keeping up to date on the newest literature of endocrinology, whatever it is, and through my preventive medicine platform, as well. We have a lot of doctors who I kind of indirectly get to absorb, like a sponge, a lot of their findings through their work with patients directly, um cuz they talk about stuff in clinical chats all the time. There's meetings all the time, and I can kind of indirectly absorb information through them as they work with patients in real time. And then I'm also just like a huge nerd, and I just read studies all the time. Yeah.

The Marek Health Platform

Okay, so tell me more about this platform. Okay, it's called uh Merak Health, and essentially it is targeted for broad-spectrum optimization. So, it's not like a typical, I'm sure you've heard of TRT clinics. TRT is becoming like a very, very popular, almost trendy fad nowadays, where a lot of people are haphazardly jumping on testosterone replacement that may otherwise not even need it, but our platform tries to I kind of differentiate it in a way that it's focused on optimizing all things from a natural angle, too. And then also assessing other kind of um diagnostic metrics that could evaluate, you know, things from your lipid health, you know, for cardiovascular disease risk, you know, things like cancer markers. And essentially, when you come into our clinic, you find you'll get teamed up with somebody, a provider who will kind of evaluate your diagnostics, and then make targeted recommendations for optimization from a health perspective, vitality optimization, perhaps hormones, and it's kind of just like a Okay. Yeah, it's like basically ties in exactly with what I'm most passionate about and I can actually like impart that information to people who follow me.

That's very cool. Yeah. So, my husband watches quite a bit of Mind Pump. Okay. For about for about 6 months he was like, "My testosterone's low.

Testosterone Injections

It's definitely low testosterone. And I need to get on testosterone." And I was like, "I don't know. I'm so skeptical. I don't know very much about hormones. I know quite a bit about nutrition and from having the autoimmune disorder, I know quite a bit about I know some anyway. You can define quite a bit, but I know some things.

But I don't really know anything about hormones. And I was like, "I don't know. Injecting testosterone seems like if you don't need it, first of all, seems like a bad idea." And I know that there are a lot of people on it and there are a lot of people who say there are benefits to adding in testosterone. What happens if you're a person with like a man with regular levels of testosterone and you give yourself a little boost? Um well, it depends. If you give yourself a little boost as in you push yourself a bit higher than what you are naturally essentially, Yeah. you know, you're essentially shutting down your entire um rep- not your entire reproductive system, but from like an actual testicular health aspect, you're essentially shutting down the signal to them in order to minorly elevate your levels just for some hopeful improvement in cognitive sharpness, you know, muscle building potential, et cetera.

Like often times I think people are misdiagnosed through poor lifestyle and diet habits and they will haphazardly jump on T cuz they have a they go into a you know, a a lab corp or whatever it is. they get a testosterone test done, they transiently through one snapshot in time at one moment they had a, you know, 250 total testosterone level, and then they interpret that as, "Oh, I must be low T perpetually and it's negatively impacting my life. I need to get on TRT." But, there's all the low-hanging fruit, even that we addressed at the beginning, those were just a couple of things, those things are so impactful on testosterone production that if you overlook those and jump right to the drug route, you could be overlooking things that could get you back to a healthy state otherwise without the necessity to rely on these hormones. So, I think a lot of people, some people do need it for sure, and there's like absolute utility in it, and it's very, very effective when it's needed and warranted, but a lot of people, I think, haphazardly get on it and may not otherwise need it. And then they end up reliant on it for their entire lives. Okay. Okay.

So, what what ended up happening with my husband is he was having tree allergies, so he was tired. And that was the end of the story, and now he's not having them, so it It was like just that one thing. brutal a brutal reason to get on, for sure. Yeah. Uh okay, so you said reliant. So, is there actually no way to get off of it once you're on it? So, if you were a healthy functioning male with good testosterone levels prior, if you got off within like a reasonable time frame, like, you know, there's not really a reasonable time frame for replacement cuz you're supposed to be replacing what you otherwise don't have. So, it's like you're essentially, you know, using something, you're you're artificially shutting down your system that otherwise didn't need to be, and you could get back to your natural function dependent on the duration of exposure.

So, if you've been doing TRT for like 15 years or something, and you technically didn't need it when you started it, are you going to be able to recover to natural function if you you decide, "Oh, I want to try and come off." It kind of depends cuz again, it's almost like there is a use it or lose it kind of thought process that goes into different organs in your body.

Getting Off of Testosterone

So, if you shut down the signal to your testicles for a decade and a half and you have like shriveled atrophy testicles and then you try to recover to baseline, it's not as simple as just pulling out the testosterone and then everything just works correctly perfectly. Like you're going to deal with a very very arduous recovery phase whereby you might end up hating your quality of life so much on that recovery phase that you just end up staying on the on the testosterone. Now, for some people though, if they were totally healthy, like for example, your husband, if he was to get on test, didn't need it, and then was like, "You know what? It's not for me." came off after like 3 months or something, he might have like a transient phase where he kind of feel shitty while it's kind of like leaving a system and then his normal pituitary is kicking back in. But, in that he'd probably recover to baseline within relatively short order once the drug had worked its way out of his system. Yeah. Okay, so that's not like massive risk if you're testing it out.

Yeah, no, but I would definitely caution against the test testing. Yeah. Um how did you how did you go from a YouTube channel, like a popular YouTube channel, to running that kind of massive business?

From More Plates More Dates to Marek Health

Did you Did you have a change like Did you have a plan or is this something that just kind of happened and you went with it? Um you know, I much like a lot of businesses that people find themselves in, I I very rarely believe that people, especially in the social media space, really predicted where they'd be 5 years ahead of schedule when they first start. So, for me, it was a I didn't I didn't even know if I should be making videos when I started online. Like I literally just started writing articles. Somebody told me suggested I should also do videos with it, started making them. Um and as my content evolved and whatnot, you start to look into different ways to monetize, especially things that you're passionate about, cuz after a while, when you start making money, you realize you're, you know, the money part can only take you so far. The passion is what's going to actually like drive you for years.

So, for me, this was like the perfect overlap of monetization and what I actually am highly interested in, and it sort of just evolved naturally. Like, I found myself seeing some of these platforms popping up across the USA, and I was just seeing the haphazard cookie-cutter protocols that, you know, providers were putting people on just to basically make a markup on medication, essentially. A lot of these companies exist simply to be like not like almost similar to like the pill mill stuff you heard about back in the day, but like on the testosterone front, a lot of these companies would basically just, you know, evaluate your blood work, but not even really care what it says, and be like, "Here's legal steroids. Go, you know, here you go. Have fun." And that is not, I thought there was a major hole in the industry for like an actual preventive medicine approach that is looking for optimization from a optimization from a dietary perspective, sleep hygiene optimization, um you know, hormone optimization if warranted, and just like a broad-spectrum overview approach. So, that's kind of where I came into it.

Yeah, it's cool. Um coming from Canada, there aren't as many Terrible here. Oh, it's no. I Are you in Canada? Yeah, I'm on the West Coast. Oh. Yeah.

Ha, I left Canada. I'm in Miami now. Oh, lucky. Yeah. Sorry, I don't mean to like laugh at you. I didn't know you were from Canada. So, is your company No. based in Canada?

Okay, no, you're not talking about that. Yeah. Yeah, Canada is a rough one to try and break into, cuz there's a lot of uh like I I don't know who watching has had experiences trying to even get a basic blood test when you're not like 70 years old, but if you're not literally dying, good luck getting fucking anything in Canada. Like you better show up to the ER like physically having a heart attack Yeah, yeah. or else you're not getting anything. So Okay, I can get behind that. No, it's it's shocking. It's shocking.

Yeah. It's free, but then you get what you pay for. Yeah, that's one of the things I'm very very optimistic about expansion into Canada cuz that's something I've and partly what motivated this whole thing to begin with is I've been so frustrated with the medical system in Canada for a number of years that I was like, why is it that I literally have to drive over the border just to get a blood test? Fucking absurd. So for me, you know, being able to give that access to my parents, to my friends, to myself, you know, that's the kind of stuff that I want people to be able to get a proactive approach to longevity optimization, etc. rather than have to physically like show up having a heart attack to get some help. So Okay, I like that. Yeah, it's it's crazy.

Moving to the US uh I've had it's just there's so many options. It's amazing. Like I found this company online that I'm giving a shot cuz I've got I'm allergic to everything, which is why I'm on this diet cuz I like I've got food allergies, I've I've everything.

Immunotherapy

And I found this company that does sublingual immunotherapy. So they'll give you like tiny little doses of like oak and ragweed, cockroach, dust, like everything. And so I'm going to try that out for the next couple years to see if I can reduce the food allergies and the food sensitivities. So how would might be a cross-reactivity issue with the severe environmental allergens causing the food sensitivities. I'm hoping. So if you have these sublingual like microdoses of of random stuff, like what is that doing? Evaluating if you have a allergic response and then like Well, what what you do is you do an allergy test.

So they do a prick test Right. and then and then decide, you know, show what you're allergic to and then they mix that up in this drop and then you take the drop and it's supposed to desensitize your system. Oh, wow. Um Yeah, it's really interesting. They're doing it for for people with peanut allergies, they've been doing this for a little bit um because you have kid with peanut allergies, they can just die, right? If they're if they don't have the EpiPen. So, you can give them tiny tiny bits of tiny bits of peanuts sublingually and so they have this tiny little immune response, but you can train their immune system over like a 2 or 3 year period. It takes a while.

I think they see results after 6 months and slowly reduce sensitivity. That's crazy. That's like Have you ever heard of those guys who in intentionally expose themselves to like snake venom or like some random that. Okay. Huh. Wild. I didn't know that was like an actual therapy.

Crazy. Yeah, yeah, it is. Uh it's called it immunotherapy. You can get it in shots, too, but there are these companies popping up. I think there are three of them now in the US where you can go online and order immunotherapy drops. So, if you have tree allergies, you can get this mixture that slowly desensitizes your immune system and the results are like it it's theoretically it works. It looks like it works.

So, um fingers crossed I can one day eat other things than meat. We'll see. Seems unlikely, but maybe. be nice. Yeah. This episode of the podcast was sponsored by Paleo Valley beef sticks. It's a health episode kind of, so I thought, why not throw these guys in there. Paleo Valley's beef sticks are made from 100% grass-fed and grass-finished beef.

They're fantastic for snacking if you're trying to lose weight. I give them to Scarlett for a snack in kindergarten, but they're good for you, too. If you want better food and something to eat that doesn't make you feel like you can't stop eating it and therefore makes you gain weight. Meat doesn't do that. Paleo Valley puts their beef sticks through a natural fermentation process, which is cool, which helps nourish and keep your gut biome healthy. Paleo Valley's beef sticks come in five different flavor flavors. Paleovalley's beef sticks come in five different flavors and all the spices they use in their beef sticks are 100% organic.

Other beef sticks often use fillers uh like mechanically separated chicken parts. Which is just a hilarious thing to add, but you probably shouldn't eat it. They're crushed down chicken parts that are crushed down into a paste, brominated vegetable oil, BVO, and MSG, which can cause a myriad of issues. Paleovalley's beef sticks, on the other hand, are clean both for you and for the environment. Great for kids, too. All of their cattle are raised on small American-owned farms in the US that use rotational grazing practices to help restore the nutrient content and foliage to grazed pastures. Head over to paleovalley.com to check out their beef sticks today.

That's p a l e o v a l l e y. If you're not entirely sure how to spell Paleovalley, you should just know how to spell it, though. paleovalley.com for 100% grass-fed beef sticks. Okay, so this this this uh company you have that that uh employs doctors, which is very cool.

Plans for Expanding Marek Health

Um what's your plan with that? Do you have a growth plan or are you kind of staying where you are? Um yeah, so right now it's more so just brand exposure and bringing more people to spread the message, showing up to different um there's a lot of different kind of like conferences when it comes to like there's kind of the optimization niche of the scientific community, like a lot of the the Ben Greenfields and like uh of the world. And then there's also like the clinical side with like the Peter Attias and the Hubermans and whatnot. And Yeah. I don't know. I'm just like branching as far out as I can and trying to spread the knowledge and also, you know, at the same time, you know, bring people into what I consider to be high-quality uh medical oversight.

So, you know, for me it's more so just continuing to make content surrounding the I don't know issues that we face from like a hormone balance perspective, anything health optimization related, and then bringing like-minded individuals who want to also impart the same message, further educate themselves as well as others in the process, and um yeah, you know, I would like to get it international, but it's obviously a very very large undertaking to when it comes to licensing all the different, you know, ram I don't know, like legal loopholes when it comes to medical stuff.

Difficulties with Canada's Medical System

So, in the near future, hopefully Canada is on the to-do list, and then It's crazy that you can like as a Canadian that it was easier. It's so much easier in America to do business. It's crazy. Like I can't get over it, but that's nuts that you'd I mean, I suppose most of your audience is probably American versus Canadian, is it? Yeah, yeah, the corporate structure stuff as a Canadian sucks when you're in the states, like trying to establish like the companies that hold the companies that do this, but overall like everything in the states is just superior overall, and um like even before I had even before I had all this stuff, like I used to literally pay for blood work, drive over the border to Blaine, Washington, and go to a LabCorp myself, get my blood drawn, get it emailed to me, and then like interpret the results. Like that was how I had to get blood work back in the day cuz you would go to a doctor here and just say, "Can I get my cholesterol checked?" And they'd say, "No."

And they'd get mad at you. Cuz it's like you're trying to tell me what you need. Go fuck yourself. Get out of my office. Brutal. That's Yeah, that seems pretty accurate. No, you don't need that.

Yeah. I can imagine what you dealt with growing up with trying to figure out all your stuff, and probably the amount of doctors that shunned you or told you you were crazy or or you think you need this test, like you're, you know, I I know what's correct. I'm the doctor, you know, get out of here. have, oh my gosh, I still have anger issues from that. I was like lividly, especially when I ended up putting the autoimmune disorder into remission with diet, then that just like it blew me away, right? Especially after the medical system experience in Canada. I was livid, like livid with anger for probably 2 and 1/2 years cuz at that point um I'd had my ankle replaced in Canada. They installed the replacement slightly crooked.

So, I'd solved the autoimmunity and I didn't have that anymore and I was in chronic pain from a ankle replacement I probably could have avoided. Yeah. And I I was Anyway, I'm not really angry anymore, but I'm not very trusting of doctors. I'm sure the Canadian medical system didn't help with that. At least the silver lining to it though is the information you have now that you can then impart on tens of thousands of people. Like even my one of my business partner's his wife was on antibiotics during her pregnancy and then she ended up like wiping out her gut microbiome essentially and it kind of like presumably impacted their kid in a very significant way. So, they have a toddler right now or an infant, I guess.

I don't know when you become a toddler or what the difference is age-wise, but he's like one and his his gut is just a disaster. Like anything he eats and his entire like face goes red, everywhere becomes red and he tries to like scratch his face off cuz he's so uncomfortable and they have to put like mittens on him to make sure he doesn't scratch his face off and walk. Yeah, so like some of the information that you, you know, Paul Saladino, some of these you know, the autoimmune experienced individuals who have kind of got their stuff into remission via this kind of like wild out there, you know, elimination diet, you know, that information was not available, you know, 10 plus years ago. So, you had a lot of like babies being put on corticosteroids long-term, which is going to have like significantly hindered their growth, you know, and impact them in so many bad ways. So, um like even now that uh they're trying to see if they can do some sort of elimination style diet while they rebuild his gut microbiome and then kind of reintroduce more diversity as he gets older kind of thing. Yeah, they should do it. Um I was really paranoid.

So, my daughter's five and I was really paranoid about her like microbiome, just everything, allergies, like everything to do with her because I was sick from such a young age and then I was on antibiotics so often. I was like, "My microbiome's probably messed up, which means she's going to be messed up and like what can I do about that?" And so I didn't start like I did um meat only when we were first introducing foods. Um and then introduced like one food at a time and waited.

Inheriting Autoimmune Sensitivities

And that worked really well and she does have like she has environmental allergies and she's got a host of sensitivities, but we were able to like avoid them because we just did one food at a time. Now, do you know if it's like obviously, I'm sure you researched this heavily, but how much of it is genetic versus epigenetic? Like I know and maybe I don't know if this is even a question you can answer, but I know for example if somebody is obese, like self-inflictedly obese when they are pregnant and have a kid, you know, they could pass on some of that to their child and put them in a worse kind of baseline position and then they have to deal with those issues, too. Does that have any sort of crossover from like I think you mentioned both of your parents had autoimmune issues to some extent? Yeah, my mom my mom actually recently got diagnosed with lupus, which she's not on medication for it. She she's on the same diet as me. But that explains like arthritis and some organ issues and like some eye issues.

So, lupus and my dad had um psoriasis and alopecia at one point, um gum disease, like just not like not great from both. I have a brother, he's totally fine. I have no idea how that happened. But Estrogen is very impactful on autoimmune issues. So, typically you'll find that, for example, Hashimoto's thyroiditis is an autoimmune issue that attacks the thyroid and in general, it's very very majorly affecting women relative to men and it's because of estrogen's impact on the on the immune system seemingly. So, women are wonder That's that's really interesting. Okay, I have a question.

I don't know if you know the answer to this though. Um a lot of the people I've spoken with who've had autoimmunity and are on like the lion diet or or the carnivore diet, um have gotten significantly worse or got worse, whatever their problem was, after having children. And for me, I actually put myself into remission on a very restrictive paleo diet. So, it was super clean. I was eating like 25 foods when I which I thought was restrictive, um but I didn't have any symptoms. And then I had Scarlett and that's when I went over to the meat-only diet cuz my autoimmune flared up. Do you know anything about pregnancy exacerbating autoimmunity?

Um I would imagine the massive fluctuation in hormones from a progesterone estrogen aspect throughout that process would have very significant implications on that. How they would go to like as far as the metrics of hormones before pregnancy, during, and then after and reaching baseline, I couldn't tell you off the top of my head exactly what in general they do, but I would imagine, and this is kind of where the utility of having baseline blood work comes in and why I recommend anybody get like an extensive panel regardless if they're going to go on TRT or not, like anything. Cuz if something goes awry, being able to look back and see what was my baseline when I was healthy and what is weird and aberrant now can be very very helpful for actually like owning in and figuring out what might be screwing you up.

Pregnancy's Effect on Autoimmunity

So from like a hormone metabolism aspect and just balance of everything like I would imagine there could be something there for sure. Like I know postpartum depression is I believe lack of progestogenic activity from the the changes in progesterone activity in the body. So having that crash or be non-existent or you know, decrease whatever it may be could be something that leads to like anxiety, depression, mood swings, just like a lot of major issues and they've actually developed drugs around trying to like replicate the same things that you get from like adequate amounts of natural hormone production from progesterone for example. So yeah, there's definitely I would imagine something very impacted by the hormone balance side of things after for sure and that's where you know, a good elaborate blood test I think would be highly warranted compared to a baseline beforehand. Yeah, that's a very good idea. Regarding progesterone from what you know about the topic, is that not enough progesterone to begin with or are those like downstream problems like it's not getting converted properly or something? I believe it's not enough in general.

Typically people who have conversion issues are people who are using drugs that impact enzymatic enzymatic pathways. Like for example, guys who use finasteride for preventing hair loss there's an enzyme called 5-alpha reductase and if you inhibit that enzyme despite the fact that you're preventing the hormone DHT from wreaking havoc on your head, you're also preventing the conversion of different progestogenic metabolites like allopregnanolone is a very very owned in on one that has like anxiolytic activity and is very very significantly implicated in like depression outcomes and whatnot. And if you don't have either a sufficient amount of the substrate to produce those metabolites, so progesterone being the main thing off the top of my head that I can think of that's impactful on that, or if you're using a drug as a male to inhibit that enzyme, then downstream, yeah, it could be problematic. But from the female side of thing side of things, I would imagine progesterone, lack thereof, is probably the main needle mover on that side. Hmm, interesting. I had a pretty miserable pregnancy experience, and I I know like there's some women who get pregnant and then they're just they're like they still have pregnancy hormones, but they're kind of like calm and happy and like just like pregnant. And I just went like batshit crazy.

Changes in Hormone Levels

And I could feel like I could feel hormones, and I was like, that doesn't feel like me. And it was just it was bad, and it felt like something was wrong. And I had this And I know some people have miserable pregnancies, but it felt like I went crazy in a way that wasn't something was like off. Yeah. Um and I I was wondering if I spent I spent the years like age 12 to 23 on antidepressants, um which can really increase your progesterone levels. Um and I was wondering if being on that for like a decade during my developmental years screwed up my brain enough that just some of the pregnancy hormones just don't make me feel good. I can hardly take any medication now without it making me feel like terrible in a side effect way that normal people shouldn't really have.

Like antihistamines, anything, kind of make me crazy. Um Hmm. Yeah, yeah, the SSRI side of things, um like as far as female endocrinology is definitely not my like wheelhouse. And again, I'm not like a you know, a clinical specialist or anything. I'm just a guy on YouTube ultimately at the end of the day, so don't take this as medical advice anybody watching. This is why you would get a high-quality medical provider, but from what I have seen, I think uh I think SSRIs like even from a quick Google search, they seem to impact allopregnanolone solely and do not substantially affect the brain concentrations of progesterone or dihydroprogesterone. So, you know, it's uh it it's tough to say, too, cuz some people the way they partition certain hormones like down certain pathways to different metabolites, it's a different proportionally, and different tissues have different like you know, receptor expression from that amount of hormone like even from the testosterone side of things, some people are going to get more of an effect even though they have less testosterone on a blood test than another guy because of the way the receptors interact with the hormone.

So, it's tough to say, you can't really predict broad-spectrum just because you have a heightened level on a blood test or a heightened level based on what it's supposed to do, that that's going to yield the exact effect you're looking for, especially when it might have like backhanded consequences on upstream things that are going on. So, you know, like extra, you know, selective serotonin reuptake inhibition, I can't say for certain what it did that, you know, might have impacted you. either. Yeah. Like nobody nobody knows. Um we went I talked to some Eastern European doctors, and they said they have brain scans that say that they change that you could see it on brain scans, like decades of SSRI use, and I was like, "Wow, that's definitely not something that we have here. At least they don't say that." Yeah, I think there was some like uh study that came out recently that said SSRIs are like, I don't know, they they used to be thought to be lack of serotonin was thought to be the cause of depression, and then recently they were like, "No, that's actually not the case."

Yeah, not at all. Yeah. Yeah, they were like there's no evidence that serotonin plays yeah, that type of role or lack of serotonin plays a role in depression. I was like, "Oh." So all these people on serotonin increasing drugs. But sometimes it's hard to tell too when it's like cuz again when you circle back to the low-hanging fruit discussion, it's like how many people on this earth are getting 6 hours of sleep perpetually, have to get up underslept, drive to a job they hate, and there's so many like different factors from a lifestyle perspective that are so deleterious to all of the hormone systems and then they'll blame you know, they'll rely on a drug or this or that and then they're wondering why they're they're feeling a certain way.

SSRIs Not Treating Depression

It's got to be because of the drug or not because of the drug when in reality it's like the baseline infrastructure that holds up like the tower so to speak is just not even set properly to begin with. So it's kind of hard to say for certain like owning in on one specific thing, "Oh, it was definitely this." when we have no idea about all the other like weren't you on Adderall at the time too when you were trying Yeah, I was on tons of things. So like I imagine that fuck your sleep up brutally at the same time. So we have no idea for sure but I would imagine that has like it's all it's like a vicious circle effect like sometimes you'll take a drug to correct an issue that was caused by some lack of foundational principles from a lifestyle perspective and then that using that might fix something acutely but on the back end fucks up the baseline stuff and then it's like yeah. I I had things perfected like I did. I mean the Adderall really helped but I I was on man, I was on like seven medications like immunosuppressants that I injected and like antibiotics and just because They only prescribe extended-release Adderall as far as I know too. Yeah.

So it's like if you look at the half-life of extended-release Adderall and trying to get a high-quality sleep when you're on like a very very long extended window literal amphetamine just to function and then you know you might be having caffeine on top of that cuz people you know how many coffees they have a day or whatever like trying to get high quality sleep with that in your system it's like essentially impossible I would say. Yeah. So it was it was crazy. I used to take do you know gravel? Yep. Do you know gravel? Yeah, so I took gravel to sleep at night.

Which is like for people listening is like Benadryl.

Slow Release Adderall

Yeah, so I take Adderall in the morning and then I take a couple of like gravel at night. And then just repeat. But I did figure out like the perfect combination of medications to keep me functioning enough that I figured out how to get off of everything and fix it with diet. So like I can't say it was all detrimental cuz it did put me in a position where I could at least like function enough that I thought okay, how do I get out of this like as soon as possible. No, but yeah again I think it circles back to the it's almost it was shitty that you had to go through it but it makes you more I don't know in a better position to impart that wisdom on people who might be on the laundry list of the entire catalog of drugs right now and maybe don't need it or whatever. I I wouldn't trade it. Like during the experiences I think I probably I'd be like I remember like you know even praying like how do I make this stop?

But now that it's over it's like if I hadn't gone through that yeah I wouldn't be able to tell people about it and lots of people have reached out and it's helped them and I'm fine now. Plus I don't think I would be as like I'm a fairly disagreeable disagreeable person and I don't know what I would be like if I hadn't had chronic health issues but I think it probably made me a more compassionate person especially towards sick people. Like I'm not very patient I don't think and I have a lot of compassion for people who are sick and I don't know if I don't know if I would have that otherwise so I'm definitely grateful for that. Yeah, I think there's a lot of people who are quick to judge somebody who's overweight or somebody who has an issue but they have no idea what might be underlying and leading to that problem to begin with. Like maybe they're dealing with some like very significant obscure as hell issue that then leads to all of these like byproduct, you know, manifestations of like a not as great cosmetic appearance or whatever it is. And to be judgemental on that is like very common and unfortunate. So, good that you went through that for sure, overall I think.

How do you feel then about um the fat acceptance movement? Um I think it's not good cuz being obese is unhealthy. So, I think that shaming somebody who's fat is not good, but I think it is not something that should be celebrated, which is the main issue that I see in social media as a lot of these companies. It's kind of like hard to even you can't really blame them cuz at the same time so many people are obese that obviously if you're going to make clothing for example, you're going to make them for obese people too. So, they can fit it because that's a giant demographic of your, you know, customer base. So, are you going to put, you know, not feature them in advertisements? Like at some point you're going to have to market to those people cuz they exist and they have to buy clothes just like every other person.

Yeah. But then if you put out an ad with an obese person who's like in fitness apparel, you get shit on as a company for trying to like promote fat acceptance. And it's like it's a weird like double-edged sword cuz I think on one hand the companies are very aware of this too. And then it gets like media hype and attention and clicks. But on the other hand it's like these people need to wear clothes. So, it's like um I think in general the the kind of the celebration of obesity, which is something that happens in social media, Tik Tok culture and stuff is uh toxic cuz it definitely does reinforce bad behavior that ultimately I think it's not even the debate that it's not healthy to be holding excessive amounts of body fat. Um but at the same time it's kind of like, you know, that double-edged sword like I said cuz some people do have issues that lead to these, you know, problems that may be less controllable than the next guy who just has like lack of willpower or cuz some people just aren't lazy and fucking suck at following a diet.

Like that's just how they are.

Thoughts on the Fat Acceptance Movement

And then there are some people who legitimately have epigenetics passed on from their fat as hell parents that led to like poor satiety, um, appetite signaling feedback systems or whatnot and they're perpetually dealing with heightened levels of hunger compared to the next guy who just feels satisfied off of 1,000 calories less per day. And then is that person just like, you know, a worse off a person who just has low willpower or is it that their literal brain chemistry is wired differently than this person? You know, it's definitely a very interesting discussion, but I think, uh, more compassion needs to be taken to it from both sides of the spectrum. I like that. I like that. I I agree, too. I think that encouraging it and saying that it doesn't cause health problems is an issue.

Um, but there just needs to be more education about how to get out of that. Like I would have But it's also tricky dealing with people who are in a kind of a health crisis. I can remember I I never had someone come up to me and go, "Oh, you know, maybe you should try an elimination diet because maybe your body's inflamed, maybe you're having allergic reactions." Like I never had that conversation. Yeah. Um, but whenever anybody did mention any type of kind of alternative approach to health, I can remember being angry at them. Like in an inappropriate way.

It was like, "How dare you tell me that my problems are solved that easily." And I had like severe problems. Um, but it's hard to speak to sick people who've been trying things for a very long time and then saying, "Oh, well, maybe you just didn't try this properly." Yeah. Yeah, like telling a person who's fat, it's just like, you idiot, just eat less. Like sometimes it's not Yeah. Like even though that is ultimately will make you lose the weight, like there are other complications that can lead to Like you know, maybe if you dealt with the same hormone signaling as that person, maybe you'd be fat, too.

Like you don't you don't know for sure. You know? So. Yeah. Cuz some people literally will have like a for example, if they had an autoimmune issue that was attacking their thyroid, and then they have a lack of thyroid hormone output that regulates their metabolism, and then no matter what they eat, you know, their actual metabolism is at a lowered set point than the next person, they can't necessarily control that inherently just through lifestyle changes or like how much exercise they're doing necessarily. They might just have less T3 than the next guy or crashed T3 cuz their thyroid's been destroyed by this autoimmune issue for years. You know, telling that person just like eat less and exercise, it's not as simple as that.

Or a guy with crashed testosterone being like, just get in the gym, lift some weights, bro. Like it's been different when you literally have no motivation, no drive, crashed testosterone, your libido's non-existent, sleep quality is terrible, you know, it's definitely a nuanced uh discussion. Interesting. Okay. I definitely had that. Maybe I should go through some of your blood tests. I kind of like uh all my symptoms went away with a diet and then I was kind of like uh goodbye medical system.

I have seen you enough. Um um although now I'm trying this sublingual immunotherapy for environmental allergies, so we'll see what that does, but I definitely have the like can't stop eating. I don't have that on the carnivore diet. But I had that and I have like excellent self-control. Like I'm on this diet now. I'm like hyper conscientious. Um I I think I have good self-control, but I really had difficult time stopping eating whenever I was eating anything.

And even now if I introduce something that has a different ingredient, then I'm just like switch into I'll just eat the entire thing. Yeah. So I don't like I was never one of those people that could like have a little bit of a like a cake or a cookie or something. It was always like now that's all I want and I'm starving. Yeah, yeah. Some of those foods I think are just like they're not even food at the end of the day. So trying to judge your I don't know ability to regulate portion control when you're eating something that is like hyperpalatable and isn't even an isn't even an actual food item is not I don't think it's representative necessarily of you know willpower or self-control but So you don't think anyone like is there is there one person that can eat one cookie and be like I'm okay?

Oh, yeah. I definitely know people who do do that and I look at them I'm like that's fucking wild. wrong with them? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Some people are fine with that. my brother is like that. Just have a little bit of a cupcake.

It's like what? It's like cocaine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I can't even keep it in the house. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Okay, okay. Well, that makes me feel better. Uh so these blood tests you're talking about what what type of markers should everyone just go get tested so that at least they have a baseline? Um yeah, so we have uh pre-designed panels on the site for both men and women from and depending on budget it gets more comprehensive the deeper you go and some of them are like more elaborate to then be insightful for if you were going to pursue something like hormone replacement if you're postmenopausal or if you're a man with low T whatever it is.

Baseline Markers for Blood Testing

There's more comprehensive metrics that are you know more expensive and elucidate more stuff but in general from like a baseline perspective I think cardiovascular disease is still one of the number one killers. So getting a high quality lipid panel that assesses your you know kind of potential for atherosclerosis I think is definitely warranted at least to see what your current diet model and lifestyle is yielding as far as, you know, atherogenic particles and whatnot. Um I think getting like a basic complete blood count is definitely reasonable. Um thyroid markers probably good thing to check as well. Um basic kidney health, liver function, it's called like a metabolic panel is kind of like the standard summation, I don't know. It's like a subcategory of pretty much every panel we have, I think. So, I've definitely check that.

Um I guess in general from a hormone perspective, above and beyond the thyroid, getting your It's called gonadotropins. It's like your LH and FSH, your luteinizing hormone follicle-stimulating hormone. If you are a man, especially, definitely worthwhile to see how much signaling you have to your testes to actually produce testosterone cuz That's cool. Yeah, so getting not just your total T and figuring out how much testosterone I have, but also upstream to that, why do I have low T? Or why is my T where it is? Seeing how much of a signal you have from your brain down to your testicles is worthwhile cuz then you can kind of evaluate, is it my testicles are non-responsive to the signal or is it that I have a lack of signal? And then why is that the way it is?

And kind of getting a more comprehensive outlook as to why you are functioning the way you are and if it's, you know, a lack of sleep or micronutrient intake or whatever it is cuz some people who are low T, your diagnosis and what you get treated with will differ or lack thereof will differ very, very significantly based on do you have enough signal going to your testes, but they're just not responding to it? Cuz at that point, you know, that's where something like a intervention with therapy becomes more warranted cuz it's like you literally have testicular failure. Whereas for another guy who's low T because of lifestyle and his sleep sucks, his diet sucks, whatever, he might have low T, but it's like his LH and FSH are super low, too, because he just is is everything from the baseline foundations is terrible. So, that sort of thing is insightful to see. Are you haphazardly getting on testosterone therapy you don't need it? And if so, what could you do to then optimize like the whole reproductive axis kind of thing? So, getting your LH and FSH checked, I think it's definitely worthwhile.

Total testosterone, but above and beyond that, your free testosterone. This is like the hormone that is not like it's it's called free cuz it's not bound to these like binding proteins in your blood that kind of like bring it around to target tissues, and free is kind of the number that dictates how much is actually freely available to do stuff in actual tissues in the body. So, getting a total and a free is definitely worthwhile. Um and all of these it sounds really complicated. It's like, how would you know, people are probably thinking, do I need to write notes or whatever? Like, any good panel will have all of these things in it as is. As well, getting a fasting insulin, hugely, hugely, hugely overlooked.

A lot of people are just checking fasting glucose, but fasting insulin is going to be very worthwhile to see how insulin sensitive you are. And this is one of the biggest tie-ins to like checking pre-diabetes risk, as well as, you know, cancer cell development potentially. I think getting a fasting insulin is definitely very worthwhile. Um vitamin D, a lot of people are very deficient in vitamin D. I definitely think that's worth checking. Um C-reactive protein, that's an inflammation marker that I think is worth checking as well. There's a bunch of stuff like I I could go on all day, but those are kind of like the low-hanging fruit, I would say, um off the top of my head.

Yeah, I think that's I I lipoprotein little A part could be part of a good lipid panel as well. Um but other than that, that sounds like a lot of stuff, and it's very, very complicated to wrap your head around. It's like, holy shit, I don't even want to get this done because it sounds so complicated, but that's where we're you know, just a panel that's made for you. Everything's done and then somebody interprets it for you who's qualified is definitely worth the money in my opinion. That's cool. Yeah. Maybe I'll do another one of those.

I'm going to be coming up on 5 years on this diet. 5 years in December. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. So, I'll probably do Maybe I'll do a bunch of blood work to prove I'm not dying, see what's going on. What inspired you to do it? Was it Shawn Baker or before that or how did you arrive at it? Uh well, I So, initially I went down the like I was in biomedical science and I was doing all these tests like blood tests, just everything to try and figure out what was wrong with me.

I did my family tree. I got everyone to do genetics tests to see if there was some weird gene thing that was going on. Um and I got to the paleo diet just to rule diet out. Like cuz I I didn't think it was playing a role and I wasn't eating that unhealthy. I was eating a lot of like chicken and broccoli and rice. Like I I'd gotten to that point and then I was like, well, maybe I'll get rid of everything I could possibly be allergic to just to see. So, like eggs and shellfish and soy and like nuts and grains and I really cut down as much as I thought was like healthy and that basically put me into remission in like a month.

That was a paleo diet. It was crazy. I was eating mostly like sweet potatoes and carrots and meat. Um but I was still eating like some fruit. Like it wasn't like crazy restrictive. Um and then everything was like pretty good. I got off all of my medication and I got a lot more sensitive to foods when I stopped taking the SSRIs.

Like stopping the SSRIs just like destroyed me and I I didn't know what was happening at the time cuz I didn't know that they could cause physical dependence. So, I stopped take like I stopped taking Adderall and I was like, maybe I'll be tired. And I stopped taking some of these medications, but I stopped taking SSRIs and I was just like, I should feel better. And I didn't. I felt much worse. My food sensitivities went up. But I had them kind of under control with paleo and I got pregnant.

And then my autoimmune symptoms came back.

My Inspiration for Starting the Carnivore Diet

And I was on this like restrictive diet that had worked before. And it didn't work anymore. And I was like desperate cuz my depression came back. My arthritis came back. Um I was itchy everywhere and I was like is it Did I get better in the first place? Has it always been like this? And then I figured if I'm itchy everywhere, I'm it's probably not in my head.

And so I got desperate and I started cutting out foods again and I went down to like meat and greens. So I was literally eating like lettuce and meat. And uh I was like may- maybe I can drop the lettuce, but I hadn't heard of the carnivore diet. I was like, I just need to like have a baseline to not react and I can reintroduce foods. And I didn't but I was breastfeeding at that time and I didn't want to screw myself up cuz of Scarlett. Um and then one of my I like I sent somebody a picture of my lunch. I was just eating chicken wings.

I was like, I'm doing this like again. And somebody sent me the video of Shawn Baker on Joe Rogan. And they're like, yeah, this guy only eats steak. And I was like Okay, I will literally do that right. Like I didn't even know that was an option. And I was getting some pressure from in-laws about my diet. So I and the baby.

And so I was like worried about being selfish, I guess. Um and going on this crazy diet. But then when I saw Shawn Baker and that he'd been on it for years and he was just so chill. It's like, yeah, it's fine. Just eat steak. I was like, okay. So that that's what brought me to it.

And then I just haven't been able to reintroduce anything without having like what appears to be allergic reactions, which got me to come to the conclusion that maybe I'm having cross-reactivity issues. Like sometimes if you're super allergic to trees, you can have oral allergy syndrome to like apples and stone fruit. Okay. Pitted fruit. Yeah. Fruit with stones. Anyway, um and I have that and I was like, maybe it's a cross-reactivity problem and that's why I'm hypersensitive to food proteins.

So. What do you think of all these like sub niches that are stemming out of the carnivore diet where you have like the organ meat plus red meat and fruit camp and then like red meat only versus I saw a pretty critical comment of yours on a uh Saladino podcast recently and Okay. Okay. So, I I have an issue I think I have a more like personal issue with some of the things Saladino says because I get the the people who come to me to to the lion diet, which is literally just like ruminant animal meat, they're people who've tried everything else and when they start trying the diet, they get confused. Uh-huh. So, they instead of just like just eat ruminant meat, try to make sure your electrolytes don't go crazy. Like And that's And then wait until see how you're feeling.

Like give it 3 months and then start to reintroduce food. It's pretty simple for someone who's really sick and confused and desperate to just just do this and then wait. Like calm down, just make it through this and wait. And then you get people who are like, oh no, you got to do the you got to do the supplements. You got to do the liver supplements. Liver supplements or you're going to be like liver deficient. You got to do the liver supplements.

And then it's like, well, no, you should have juice in the mornings cuz you need some extra glucose. Make sure you have like 3 Tbsp of honey before you go to bed. Uh-huh. And it's just like I know for me, I'm still, whatever's wrong with me, I'm still too sensitive to introduce any fruit. So, people being like, oh, well, no, people always ate fruit. You can eat oranges. Oranges give me terrible arthritis.

Carnivore Diet Niches

So, then you have people who are trying the diet for autoimmunity who are like, why isn't it working?" And it's cuz they're still eating a ton of fruit or something. And the point I was hoping the point of the diet is like eliminate everything and then reintroduce. Otherwise, you're never going to be able to figure out what's wrong with you, especially if you have an autoimmune disorder. And then the the supplements like I'm a fan of electrolytes. I wish I had increased my salt and potassium in particular intake in the first 8 months of carnivore cuz I had like muscle cramps and I just dealt with them Mhm. unpleasant. Um but I don't eat organs.

I've been doing this for 5 years. Mhm. I don't like liver. The liver is disgusting. And if you like gag when you eat it, but Yeah. and then they tell you like take it in a pill. It's like maybe you don't need to eat it if it makes you gag. So, no.

I'm not a fan. Okay. Now, it's uh interesting cuz one of the first like podcasts I saw about this stuff was like I So, I saw your podcast with Rogan, your dad's with Rogan, Saladino with Rogan, and then there was expected crossover with you and Saladino, and then kind of this all of these different like sub niches started to like expand into different verticals of like this is the way to do it. No, this is the way to do it. And it definitely adds layers of complexity to it that can be overwhelming I think for some people where it's like, "Oh, I can't I can't even start if I don't have a testicle." Or like You know, or if I Oh my gosh, that Or I don't if I don't have like heart with me or whatever. like that either. It's like got to carry around a spleen in my backpack when I travel.

It's like as if being on the diet doesn't make you freaky enough. You need to carry around organs. Um Yeah. Uh I think like my goal with the lion diet anyway is to give people a place to go if they need to figure out their issues. And then hopefully they can just reintroduce foods and and hopefully they don't have to be stuck on the diet. Like I don't think I have a feeling that I'm not going to be stuck on it forever. I think I can figure out how to reduce sensitivities, but at least it's a starting point and then you can reintroduce.

So, if you end up eating meat, fruit, maybe greens, like whatever else and that's what makes you feel good, that's fantastic. That's like where I was at before I had a baby. So, like I don't have anything and I think that diet's way healthier than like standard American diet. So, I still like what Saladino's doing because he's saying, "Here's a healthy diet." And like, yeah, that's a healthy diet. Um but for people with autoimmunity or like severe like multiple sclerosis, like something crazily bad, um then it's frustrating to be like, "This is what's going to help you." Cuz then they can sometimes give up.

Well, it didn't work, so the carnivore diet's out. Yeah, when you see like Liver King stories for example, it's like overwhelming to even think about how would I even prepare or source any of this shit? Cuz it's like testicle? You'll have like bone marrow like in a in like a bowl beside them and then there's this other weird concoction and then you know, a bowl of testicles and this and that and it's just like the process of even finding even like high-quality red meat like ground bison or whatever in Canada is terrible. It's actually pretty hard to find. Um but then finding organs on top of that and whatnot can be definitely a could definitely tip somebody over the edge where it's like, oh, like fuck it. It's too complicated for me to even figure out how to find the stuff, let alone start.

Yeah, especially somebody who's like barely making it out of bed or like with an autoimmune disorder, they're like, "Okay, now I have to drop all the foods I like and go into like food withdrawal and probably feel worse initially and also figure out how to eat organs." Yeah. Ew. One thing I would say just cuz it popped in my head, too, is a lot of people who are dealing with this kind of stuff, definitely look at what you're taking as well, not just from a food intake aspect, but also like birth control Oh my gosh, yes. like how impactful these things are on all bodily functions, including autoimmunity for sure when you're using like a synthetic ethanol estradiol with the synthetic progestin to like manually castrate yourself. It's going to be impactful on your food sensitivity probably. So, a lot of women who are using an array of different things probably you're going to be looking at like it's very hyper specific focused a lot of these discussions on what are you eating that's causing an immune flare and then they'll forget the baseline foundation of all these medications they're on that are screwing with them, too. So, it's not just the lifestyle from your sleep, your diet, whatever, your exercise, it's also what's all the other stuff you're taking that could be impacting it, too.

So, definitely worth looking at that cuz I think a lot of people they'll literally go years not even thinking about the medications they're taking and how those might be impacting everything else and they look at, you know, the stuff that they think it must be. Like if you even come to the conclusion that it's your food you're eating, like you're already pretty deep down the rabbit hole, but then I think often times it gets like hyper focused on and then they forget about some of this other stuff, too. So, I think it's definitely worth mentioning. That That's actually so true. Um I probably haven't spoken about that enough. When I like for my blog and everything I say, "Okay, you like eventually you have to get off of everything." Because And like I told you earlier, I can't take I can't take anything.

You know, I can't take zinc without it stopping me from sleeping. Like I really can't take um anything. Uh so, but I was so I was on so many medications and then diet helped me so much that it didn't like it didn't occur to me as much. My dad, though, he got rid of a whole bunch of health problems from going on the diet and then getting off of antidepressants almost like literally almost killed him. And then he was put on a number of medications, and it was just like, that's not working. What's going on? Like, he has symptoms, that's not working.

And it took us quite a long time, I think because he took SSRIs for a long time, and I was on them. It took both of us a really long time to be like, oh, these this is the medication that's causing these problems? That's crazy. And then, a lot of doctors, too, they're like, oh, you can experience some side effects, but it's not like this side effect could ruin your life. Cuz it's just this tiny little pill, right?

Medication and Autoimmunity

Yeah. Like, especially in young girls, I think it's the worst because they're typically the first ones to get on essentially life-long HRT through a birth control pill or something similar to that. And they end up at like 15, 16 years old prescribed what is literally going to be their androgen and estrogen they rely on for libido, this and that, which is going to be sub-optimal. But in a addition to that, like, that becomes such a consistent part of your life, you even forget it's an like a part of the equation. A massively impactful one, too. Like, the impact on testosterone, free testosterone levels, and suppression of it from birth control is like astounding when you actually look at how much you are fucking up your hormones as a girl who's on birth control. It's like, your free testosterone levels could drop by like 80, 90% while you're using it.

Wow. Yeah. So, like, a lot of a lot of girls, like, I'm I'm sure you've seen the literature on like impact on sexual uh like preference for like type of, you know, masculine versus less masculine men or whatever, that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. So, that is definitely impacted heavily, I think, from how much like a lot of girls think they're just asexual and have no sex drive, but in reality, they're like manually shutting down their testosterone levels. Didn't even consider that link to Okay, I thought about the link to even politically the link to that and birth control.

Like and the insanity that's kind of going on right now.

Effects of Birth Control on Hormones

Like you wouldn't want Do you know what percentage of the population is on birth control? I looked this up the other day. I think it was 60% of women who can get pregnant are actively taking birth control and 80% have taken it. That could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's what it is. Um It's high, whatever it is. Yeah, which would impact mate selection. Like everybody's mate selection is impacted in a more feminine man, right?

That's the choice. That's crazy. There's some data that suggests it may not be as significant as you think in terms of mate selection, but I definitely think I mean it doesn't look that way. It definitely There's something to be said though, like regardless if your hormones are plummeted, it has an effect physiologically. Like at best-case scenario, you're just like not impacted, but worst-case scenario and oftentimes, like I'm pretty sure everyone knows a girl who either had a side effect of some sort from the birth control or they're just operating with a state of lowered sexual desire or lack thereof entirely. And they don't attribute it to the birth control. They just think that's their baseline state cuz since they've been sexually active, they've been on the drug.

So, they just assume their entirety of their lives essentially, you know, I just don't want sex that much or I just am not that interested in, you know, I could go you know, it it they just overlook it entirely and it's a very, very uh problematic thing how again, like how haphazardly men are put on testosterone pales in comparison to how haphazardly women are put on a synthetic drug that's not even bioidentical. It's a synthetic progestin. Your body doesn't produce this progestin. Like this is technically actually an anabolic or it's not an anabolic, but it's a steroid. It's derived from There's an anabolic steroid called nandrolone that men in bodybuilding use. They chemically tweak that drug because it's so suppressive and cast like castrating at low dosages and created orally bioavailable analogs of it that are used in women for castration, birth control, like levonorgestrel um and a bunch of other synthetic 19-nor derivatives. And then they use a synthetic estrogen on top of that, too, ethinylestradiol.

And you're just operating off of like this You're just like a pseudo-castrated human essentially for years. gosh. Yeah. Wow, I haven't heard it that put put that way. That's horrible. It was That's horrible. Um I was put on birth control because I had like bad skin as a teenager and it was like, "This will fix your skin. And then you're also on birth control, yay."

And that was like 14. And my mom told me, I remember, she goes, she didn't like hammer it in like she should have. She She goes, "Oh yeah, when I was on birth control, it made me depressed." And I was just like, "Well, I was on SSRIs already." I was like, "I'm already depressed." Who cares? Um which is a teenager response.

Uh and I think what it did the It's hard to say cuz I was on so many like mind-altering drugs, Adderall, SSRIs, birth control, like so many things that it's hard to say what that did specifically, but I I know one thing it did is it blocked me out from any emotional difference during my cycle, right? So, when I stopped taking it, I was like, "Oh, I can actually tell when I'm ovulating." Like I I can actually feel that. I feel different. I act in a slightly different way and I can feel it. And I was like, "That's actually very cool." Like that's a very cool thing to experience after it just being like, "Okay, you get your period once a month and that's kind of it."

Or you don't get your period, right? Cuz there's birth control for that, too, every 3 months. Um but that was really interesting and no one had ever I hadn't had a conversation, anyway, with anyone that was like, "You know, you should be able to experience these like waves and hormones and yeah, it's messed up." Yeah. system's messed up. Similar to the discussion of if you're a guy who takes TRT and you don't need it, how problematic is the recovery process going to be to get back to like a natural function? On the flip side, no one talks about women who are on cuz a lot of women skip the placebo pills, too, or they're not placebo, the sugar pills in their packs and they just they just stay on like the straight hormones the entire time to skip, you know, bleeding cuz they don't want to deal with it. Yeah.

So so that, if you're on it for years on end, shutting yourself down, trying to get back to natural function is not totally different than a guy who's been on steroids for years and then is trying to recover function, too, cuz you're both in a state of like pseudo castration and then you're trying to get back to baseline after years of exposure, you know, your you know, kind of reproductive system has not been functional for a decade plus in some cases, expecting you to recover in short order and that it's going to be a smooth transition is often not going to be the case. Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty crazy. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah.

Well, okay. I may be hitting you up for blood tests Okay. for my 5 years on carnivore. We'll see. Sure. We'll see. Um if people want to find you online and they don't follow you already, where should they go? Uh I think the best place is probably YouTube, uh More Plates More Dates, or Instagram.

Any kind of any of the main social platforms I'm on and then if they want to check out Marek Health for some of the hormone stuff we discussed, marekhealth.com and you can just go to the just to get started if you want a blood test. You don't have to have a doctor look at it, too. You can just look at it yourself and make your own informed decision if you want to move forward with medical oversight or not. You can just go to the lab test section. There's pre-designed panels for men as well as for women and they've been audited by me as well as numerous other medical providers on our team and it's kind of just like turnkey done for you and hopefully it's going to be impactful on people's quality of life is what I'm hopeful for. So. Yeah, that's good.

People can just like purchase the test and then bring it to LabCorp or wherever they want to go. Yeah, yeah. So you would purchase it online and then you would get a requisition form. You could walk into a LabCorp wherever you live in the states and then get it done and then from there you could either have a provider or patient care coordinator go over the test results with you and then if warranted, you know, proceed with some sort of targeted recommendations thereafter, but there's no um stipulation where you have to do all of it.

Outro

You could just get a blood test and see where you're at and kind of just have that baseline panel for reference in the future if something goes awry. Definitely something I would recommend for majority of people. Cool. Okay. Thank you very much for coming on. Yeah, no worries. Thanks for having me.