Don't Fall for MAHA Health Myths, Here's What the Data Actually Says | Dr. Mike Israetel

25:39And Dave, you have absolutely no idea if some of those do not interact with Ashkenazi Jewish anatomy and physiology very well. There could be some kind of weird epigenetic thing where it's slowly killing you and you have no idea. But we know almost certainly that does not happen with sucralose because sucralose has been tested into the ground. But I await comprehensive testing of every single ingredient in avocados, for example. but nobody gives a shit you go to whole foods you're like avocados they're natural look how fucking green they are of course they're good for me but they're like oh oh so here's the funny thing whole foods is great i love whole foods right they don't carry any regular brand diet sodas or sodas at all because their customer base if they saw like coke zero which is inert for your health it doesn't do anything good for your health or bad for you because as much coke zero as you want as long as the caffeine doesn't drive you insane it's totally fine but their customer base knows knows coke bad so they can just have the off brand artificial sweetener bad but so they'll have the other artificial monk fruit stevia stevia because they're natural that is the naturalistic fallacy back again and so if you want to drink diet soda and especially if you drink the caffeine free stuff because you know not to screw up your circadian rhythms or whatever you can have as much of it as you want and you're going to be 100 % fine that statement I just made as a controversial statement when we make reels out of this, people will bitch on the comments, the whole thing.

26:57Now, I assume you would not make the same argument for non-diet soda with the amount of sugar. Non-diet soda with that amount of sugar. High fructose corn syrup. High fructose corn syrup. So high fructose corn syrup in every comprehensive review seems to have roughly the same health effects on you as regular sugar. Okay, as natural sugar. So the idea that high fructose corn syrup is itself somehow obesogenic or health deleterious is just straight up non-starter. It's just wrong. And so the high fructose corn syrup thing is a myth. Now, How does soda get you in trouble? If you eat normal healthy foods, and like I said, a can of Coke has like 40 grams of carbohydrate, 40 grams of pure sugar.

27:35If you have to have 220 grams of carbs for the day to get your macros going and use the RP Diet app, you're welcome. There's the plug. I've done my corporate duty. Good job, Mike. You have 220 grams of carbs you need to eat per day. you're at 180 and you've allotted so that during dinner you can have a coca-cola classic you know like they did in those 50s ads there's absolutely not a damn thing wrong with that you will pay zero health downsides you can have even on the sugars oh yeah inside the carbs oh yeah oh yeah you can have tons of sugar as long as the rest of your diet is healthy you're getting plenty of protein you're getting enough fiber getting enough micronutrients if your diet is all coca-colas for carbs you're not getting any vitamins and minerals really because those come from veggies fruits, whole grains.

28:19So if you're having enough of those and you want a Coke every now and again, there's nothing poisonous about sugar at all. The way you get in trouble with Coca-Cola is this, not Coca-Cola specifically, every single soda that's not diet. Its ratio of how many calories it brings to how tasty it is, to how not filling it is, is a giant travesty. So no one's ever like, can you imagine like, so you're on a plane, like a stewardess is coming around giving you snacks and sodas, and you drink a Coca-Cola, and then they come up with the snacks later, because this drinks first snacks after. Can you imagine how nonsensical of a statement it would be if she was like, do you want cookies or nuts?

28:54You were like, oh, I just had that Coke and I got full. She'd be like, what? It doesn't make any sense. Everyone pretty much intuitively understands that sugar in a sweetened beverage is like calories that basically don't fill you up at all, and they're delicious. If you have one Coke, you're just going to keep sipping them all night long. That's how you get in trouble with soda. because it's a ton of extra calories that adds to your day. The reason soda does such havoc to the American health on aggregate is because a lot of people will consume not-so-great diet to begin with. They're sure shit not kind of their calories.

29:29And every drink will be soda. And then their caloric excess, instead of being like 500 extra calories per day, is like 1 ,000 or 1 ,500. They gain pounds every week. They get obese. They're also inactive. And then it's all just super down the drain. So there's nothing specifically wrong about soda or sugar, period, unless it is used to generate a caloric surplus, an excess of calories that lasts long enough for you to gain substantial weight. And then it's really bad news. So one of the things I say, probably nobody, almost no one, should be drinking regular soda. Just drink diet. Diet soda is amazing.

30:09It's a miracle. It's a miracle of engineering. It's so interesting because the only time I ever drink it is occasionally on a plane. I'll get a Diet Coke. When they come around the second time, I get a little caffeine before I get off the plane. But I always think I'm doing something bad one way or another. I know that there's aspartame in it, and I'm just like, I'm doing something bad. But I'm willing to make that concession, and you're totally blowing that out of the water here. You've mentioned the commenters a couple times. I mean, what kind of hate do you get from the other people in your world?

30:43I'm not talking about the commenters. I'm talking about the influencer class and everything else for saying these things, because this is completely the reverse of what you would hear from a lot of these guys. Yeah. I mean, like, now that I'm relevant on social media, it's just great react video farming. So God bless them. That's how they all make the money. Yeah, yeah. So there's that. You know, a lot of times there you get accusations of being bought off by agribusiness. Check this out. Like, agribusiness companies, I am ready to shill for you. Please, God, pay me money. No one, no, they don't do that sort of thing.

31:15And so, like, I've actually been to Monsanto's headquarters. And, Dave, I just, like, you know the jokes are funny at first, then they're mediocre, and then they just want you to shut the fuck up and get out? I got to way beyond that last part because I was like, where's all the top secret poison the people shit? And they're like, okay, sir. There's just nothing there. It's just, like, folks just trying to do a good job. There's no conspiracy. I would think, conspiracies are so amazing. Like, every movie I watch, like, super deep conspiracy. The agribusinesses aren't trying to poison you. They're not trying to, like, so a lot of the comments will be, like, how much is Monsanto paying him to, like, nothing.

31:47Damn it. I don't have any money. Please help. Yeah, well, we'll see. I'll say whatever for money. Maybe you just sold it here. Yes. Oh, I can't wait to check my email. All right, so that, all right, so you've debunked some of the stuff on the food side. What about just on the pure fitness side, how people are lifting, what you are supposed to be doing, reps, all of those things, relative to gender and relative to age and goals, I suppose. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of difference that will emerge between advanced people that have really been lifting a long time versus intermediates versus beginners.

32:24There's fertile ground for like, don't do exactly what your super jacked steroid using influencer. I'll just say that I've used many steroids even this morning. Not that many. The usual amount. How many this morning? A few. Throw the table at me?

32:44So there may be some, because people, one thing they'll do on social media is they'll see how someone who's really jacked and super fit works out. And they'll be like, that's what I need. but that's similar to a person who's like a kid who's like you know let's say nine years old and really good at math and they really like math and they look up like the problem sets that like Terrence Tao is working on but kid you're not gonna make any sense of that that's totally for that's when you have eight PhDs in math you need to start doing simpler stuff and so one of the big take-home messages for people involved in fitness is the basics pay massive dividends and they're not complicated.

33:20One of the things that is kind of a universal, which I'll sprinkle the knowledge here for the folks listening, is one of the best things you can do for your physique and your health and everything is to lift weights through a full range of motion, multiple times a week, get a little bit sore and tired, really push yourself, rest, and then repeat the process and slowly increase how much weight you can do over time. It's a thankless process, Dave. It's just like it hurts, and then you're like, uh, and it's not that fun. There's no gimmicks. There's no, like, the balance board and the BOSU ball. That's all nonsense bullshit.

34:01It just doesn't do anything that was relevant to getting people in shape. You can incorporate it into your fitness routine, but if you're like, hey, I want to win a bodybuilding show or do really well, a good coach would be like, well, that's all. You don't need any of that. I thought this was how you get fitness. Like, no, that's for like bored housewives and shit like that. The real way to get fit is to like do squats and deadlifts and bench presses and pull downs and pull ups and lateral raises. And to here's a big one. Challenge yourself. A lot of people, especially wealthier people I've noticed, tend to think that fitness is something they can accrue just by being around it.

34:36You know, like I'm like there's people. Right. Exactly. They're working hard. They're sweating. I do some dumbbell things. I talk to my trainer. I stop my sets, you know, 50 reps shy of anything remotely challenging. I'm getting a lot of critiques all the time, which are valid, that for like how jacked I am, I don't train that hard. And that's all totally true respect. But we're talking about people in the gym. At least I look, make some faces when I'm training. A lot of people want better physiques. They want better health. And they go in the gym and they never once experience anything like pain or discomfort.

35:11You know when you're lifting and you're like, I would rather not be here? That's the stuff that gets you the most results. And if you consistently get to that place where you're challenged and you're like, oh, I did 10 reps. That was 95 pounds. Next week you come in, you throw 100 pounds on the bar. You get another 10 reps, but that was real tough. Then you do 102.5 or 105. And then after a couple of years, you're doing 150. That's how you change your body. people not progressively overloading in meticulous fashion and using basic movements is like everything else that they do is generally looks like fitness but it doesn't get you the results that you want and because that part is some combination of boring and painful it's so easy to be sold on some other shit i'm staying in midtown right now for february or miami bro no no names but there's so many business concepts fitness concepts gym concepts that are just like okay i got you and i just would come up and give them the cynical take like yes hello i'm white and i have too much money is there a way you guys can make me feel like i'm getting fit but nothing happens like well right this way it's exactly what we do it's tons of that stuff the reality is all you need is a regular gym membership even you could just have barbells and dumbbells at home and just fucking grind and slowly get stronger over time like imagine someone asked you like hey, how do I get better at basketball?

36:30You're like drilling and team play. And you just got to get on that court and just get sweaty all the time, days, hours. I was like, well, I got this manual about how to do this jump shot. You're like, shut up. That's not how it works. In sports, a lot of times people kind of know, but in lifting and in fitness, none of us are, I'm educated in it, but even I'm still learning shit all the time. It's so easy to become confused. And there's also this aura of knowing things that you can just buy with physical architecture like if you have a really fancy gym with cool lighting really good looking trainers and they're like i don't know the cryotherapy or something you're like well what's gotta work like not just the front lighting yeah that's right it's so easy to get the impression that like well this shit has to be how you get in shape the reality is getting in shape is much simpler but in some sense more like thankless where does where does the rest part that you mentioned come in do you do like six days on one day off or how do you how do you do i look like i take days no days off no days no days off no days off i do a my shit is again so i'm like more advanced than doing this a while so let's go more for just like average person that's just trying to get their body right super if you start lifting weights what you can do is show up to the gym twice a week for 20 minutes each time What you do is you do one lift that does some muscle groups.

37:57And instead of resting between sets, you do another lift that does other muscle groups. So, for example, you do the close grip bench press for a set of like 10 to 20 reps until it's moving really slow and it's really hard. Rack. Write down your reps, RP hypertrophy app or whatever app you use. Yep. Got it. Got it. The link's down below. The link's somewhere. We're a professional. Excellent. Thank you so much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure, there'll be no link as well as a shouldn't. No, they'll put the link. They'll put the link. You tell the guy you can eat McDonald's. Put that McDonald's wrapper down and put the link in.

38:27As soon as you're done with that, you just scoot right over to the underhand pull down. And you do 15 reps of that until it's really tough. Put that down and you go right back to the bench. Four sets of that, you have trained almost every muscle in your upper. This is Rick Burgess from The Rick Burgess Show. I want to talk to you for a second about something most of us put on autopilot, car insurance. If you're just letting your policy auto renew year after year without shopping around, I'm telling you, you are probably throwing money away. Rates change all the time and staying loyal to one company can end up costing you big time.

38:58That's why you need to go check out Insurify. I went to Insurify.com to test it out myself and I was blown away by how easy it is. In about two minutes, totally free, you can compare actual real-time quotes from over 100 top insurance companies all side by side in one place. No endless phone calls, no pushy sales pitches. Here's what I really love. Insurify doesn't just help you once and walk away. They actually keep monitoring your rates in the background and alert you whenever prices drop so you never miss out on a better deal down the road. Millions of drivers have already used Insurify to stop overpaying, and there's no reason you shouldn't too.

39:35Do yourself and your wallet a favor. Go see what you could save right now at Insurify.com. That's Insurify.com. This Monday.com ad was created by a team of people and AI agents. The agents wrote the copy and managed the timeline. while our human creative director made sure it all made sense. Easy. Create your own AI agent today on Monday.com. Body, and it took you three minutes. Then you move in to do something with legs, supersetted with something with arms. Something with your glutes, supersetted to some lateral races. That's six exercises. It's whole body. It is cardio and lifting because you're going to be gassed the entire time because you don't really rest.

40:14You go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. That whole workout takes 20 minutes. You choose slightly different lifts for Monday than you do Thursday, and there's your template, two times a week, 20 minutes. That can improve everything about your health, your shape, your mobility, and alter your physique substantially, especially if you diet properly. For years, that can just be continued compounded improvement. After two years, you might be like, you know what? I want to get even more fit. Drop in a third day. Expand the workout to do more sets. and then you're up to 30 or 40 minutes at a time, three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

40:52For years, again, you will continue to make gains. Eventually, you can go up to four days a week for an hour. Four days a week for an hour of proper training is like, man, I'd call that damn near full-sent effort. You're gonna radically transform your body. But the big thing is, when you're just getting started, you don't need to go four days for an hour. Two days a week, spread evenly apart through the week, roughly, 20 minutes at a time in that alternating superset fashion, is like the gold standard of what's called adult fitness. That's how you get the job done in the teeniest amount of time and the most return on your investment.

41:25I did not say it was going to be fun, but it sure shit works. So for the last three months or so, I've been doing six days a week, about 45 minutes a day. And I can tell. And it's working. I mean, it really is working. I'm not patting myself on the back. I see it working. I feel stronger. Because you're so jacked, you can't reach your own back anymore. I can barely move my arm. But I feel better. I can see the difference. but so you would say well you didn't say six there you said four would be pretty great so so if it works so if it works for you it works right oh yeah that's that's oh no you're not doing too much or whatever are you do you feel like you're recovering adequately yeah when you're going to the gym to train whatever muscles like you feel they're like ready to go i mean i lift it i can show i actually do i have it so i'm using this thing called amp fitness have you seen this thing it's one of the things you connect to the wall oh yeah yeah resistance very cool it has completely changed my life and maybe after the show maybe we'll go into the gym there and i'll show you what I've been doing.

42:15And it has completely, because I was always the type of person that I would go into the gym and I would just kind of do some things. Like I would just be like, I got that thing here and this thing and I'll pull that and whatever. And I think I just sort of maxed out what that would do. And this thing has just locked me in and it's AI. So it's training along with you and it's doing the progressive overload and all those things. Very cool. And it's working. So you don't think six days is necessarily too much as long as, as long as you're seeing results and you feel okay, basically. As long as you feel recovered regularly, every four or five weeks, you should take a week off the gym anyway or take some light days.

42:48And as long as you're getting great results, you might, my God, you can train six days a week, twice a day if you like. If it's working, it's working. But for radical alterations, at the minimum input, the minimum inputs are really small. Two days a week, 20 minutes at a time, alternating compound supersets. Man, like that's how you get huge ROI. And if you want more, hell yeah. I just think a lot of people, again, with the absolutism, they'll be like, well, like, typical Uber ride for me is like, oh, so you lift. And I usually try to lie and say I don't. No, no. Just to take a lot of steroids, actually.

43:27Just one needle. We'll talk about the steroids. Sure, excellent. Beautiful. And so a lot of times they'll be like, they'll even cut themselves off of their own advice. They'll be like, oh, I got to get back into the gym. And so, yeah, you're great without the gym, but sure, the gym's great. And they're like, I just don't have time. You know, I work. And my joke, one of my friends actually, he went back home to see his family. And he had an uncle, you know, the uncle, the classic uncle that will say audacious shit to your face and you don't do anything about it. He's like, my friend had lost a bunch of weight, got in great shape.

43:58And at the time, he was like the COO of a software company. This is a beyond full-time job. And the uncle's like, oh, I would do that too, but I have a job. Friends like, very well, take a shot, leave the uncle alone. The classic scenario is people are like, I would love to get in shape, but I don't have time. And that's a problem because they're kind of imposing this standard on themselves, which like maybe they meet you at a cocktail party or something like that. They're like, Dave Rubin, he trains six days a week. I don't have that kind of time. I'm not an influencer or whatever. It turns out that with two sessions, 20 minutes a week, you can do crazy, crazy things.

44:33And if you don't have any more time to add in, don't add in. just do that for years and years and years it ad infinitum if you find yourself loving it or have more time jack up the commitment by like an extra 20 minutes a week don't be like all right now it's fucking war and then go to seven days a week five hours burn the fuck out and then be like oh fitness is a thing that only people a shitload of time do that's the big illusion you also can always make more time it's just true i know people don't want to hear not all i'm gonna say that you can just Just wake up earlier. You can. Get up a half hour earlier.

45:06Oh, yeah. Basically, you can do it. Here's the thing. Waking up half an hour earlier is excellent advice. A common retort to that is, well, isn't sleep important for recovery? And that's unassailable. That's absolutely true. What you can do, though, is do like a time analysis of someone's day, and you just get real persnickety. They're like, why do I have time? Like, that's cool. So you don't watch any. You don't scroll. They're like, I mean, I scroll. How long do you scroll for? like hours basically four of the eight hours a hundred percent like netflix documentaries yeah who doesn't like to watch amazon prime of course it's amazing but like instead of watching two hours of it a night watch an hour and a half and for half an hour go in your basement grind some fucking weights that half an hour three times a week is going to be revolutionary for you so to your point a lot of people that say they don't have time to just like have leisure time they don't want to move out of the way.

46:01Right. Where does cardio fit in all this? Because there's all sorts of conflicting stuff as it relates to cardio. I try, I'm trying to do about 15 ,000 steps a day. Whoa. Mostly walking my dog because I get up early. What kind of dog do you have? Boxer, you know, something. The boxer walks that distance? He's like, I seriously hate this. Boxers are active dogs. Well, there's also iguanas out here. We got a lot of animals. And right now it's cold. So frozen iguanas. Oh my God. So he's very happy. But I usually do that and two shots. So maybe it's like 8 ,000 in the morning with him and that's when I'm setting up for the show and I'm going through the stories and all that stuff.

46:32And I play basketball three times a week, two or three times a week for about three hours. So it's a lot of cardio that I'm doing, but it feels right to me. Like it feels like I don't get that tired when I'm playing. Like knock on whatever this is. Yes. But so what's your general philosophy on cardio and how much you should be? It's almost exactly with lifting. The minimum bar for cardio is real low, but the maximum recoverable cardio you can do if you train up to it is psychotically high there are no wrong answers in between the wrong answers are the incredibly rare people that will do too much that are almost mythical and the you always see one of those people at the gym the body is just disappearing yes you're like there every day and there's towels everywhere and it's like you're gonna brought you a cookie yeah they hiss at you you're like okay sorry the people that don't do enough cardio and lifting and eating right i mean almost you know huge fraction of the world, Americans for sure.

47:27So for cardio, if you don't want to do formal cardio, like get in a machine or run around just eight to 12 ish thousand steps a day as a minimum bar, eight to 10 ,000 is like a real good start. I mean, it's an excellent, excellent thing. The mortality and morbidity statistics on that are like really solid. So if you're above 8 ,000 steps, like then you're really in the clear. If you're below. And that could be walking, right? You don't have to be running and sweating all the time. Absolutely. Absolutely. Does running and sweating pay dividends extra? Yes. They're not massive from a health longevity perspective.

48:06From a quality of life perspective, they're substantial. Can you get a decent fraction of that just through not taking rest breaks when you're doing your high rep sets of 10 to 20 lifting? Absolutely. Is it best to do some cardio on top of that? Yeah. Three, four sessions a week of 20 to 40 minutes in duration for this kind of hardcore cardio. And there's just one rule, two rules. One, do anything you like that's fun. And two, if you can have a conversation while you're doing it, you're not getting the best health benefits. It's gotta be like huffing and puffing. Not like emphysema, but tough.

48:43It's gotta be some shit you gotta psych up to do. If you do that several times a week in addition to that core lifting, and in the context of eight to eight, there's no top end of steps. As long as you feel fine, you're good to go. 8 ,000 plus steps a day with good nutrition and sufficient sleep. If you just look at the epidemiological literature altogether, there's really nothing else you have to be doing for us to be like, yes, at modern sciences of early 2026, you're doing, you're checking every single box that you need to be checking. And on the sleep side, seven to nine hours, that's what basically everyone says.

49:16Is that what you think is right? It's correct, absolutely. The thing about sleep is you're going to know when you're getting enough sleep or not. And you're going to know it by do you need caffeine to stay awake in the middle of the day? If the answer is like, oh, I don't need any more sleep. Or like, what if I took your espresso away? Like, I would literally like a robot running out of batteries. I would just die. Like, okay, no, then you need more sleep. The other thing about sleep, and this is a really recent, been making the trend on social media. It's good to call out. It's a really good thing.

49:44Humans can psychologically get used to not having enough sleep. but performance wise and health wise all the markers are still there of not getting enough sleep you know those people like you you've been involved in politics you know the the beltway lifestyle of like oh sleep that's like a thing i used to do in my 20s and they're like literally how they say oh yeah and like you know five hours six hours but i'm fine you look at their blood work you look at their health trajectories you look at their cognitive performance they're not fine at all they just got used to it it's kind of like you know if you live in a war zone uh like the ukraine war for example you just get used to like things blowing up that doesn't mean it's a good thing that just means you got used to it so for sleep it's really good to check to make sure you're functional without caffeine and also to get that seven to nine hours and it's very genetic some people actually need less than seven they're not as common as you might think because everyone's like i just need five hours like bullshit some people need nine and a half hours every night and that's what they need like for me i need somewhere between seven and a half and eight and a half and I'm good to go.

50:42If I chronically for a week straight, I get like six and a half hours towards the end of the week. I'm mostly fucking useless. Is that more mental for you than the fatigue or is that more physical? Both. It's both. Both. Yeah. I find I will get more, maybe it's just because I talk for a living. So it's a lot of this, that my fatigue is usually mental fatigue more than it's physical fatigue. Interesting. When I'm, when I'm sleep deprived, I enjoy it a ton. My, one of my favorite drugs is sleep deprivation. I'm in like a, Like, literally, it's crazy. I tell people, it's like, what? I love being sleep deprived.

51:15It feels phenomenal. And I'm like, my ideas flow pretty free and I'm very verbally fluent. I can't attack, like, systematic logical problems as well. But on expansive trajectories of conversation, I'm like, all day. All day. So, so far, drink Diet Coke and get sleep deprived. Those are the main. Hell yeah, man. That's the life. Talk to me about supplements and things like that. Everybody's on a gajillion supplements. I'm not on that much. I was on a little bit more of cut almost everything at this point. Just for the new year, I was like, let me just take a break on things. What's your general take on supplements?

51:50And again, not for someone that's trying to be as jacked as you, but just kind of like average person trying to maintain. Yeah, yeah. I would say like most supplements either don't do anything or you just don't need them. Multivitamin, multimineral is nice. It's like a little insurance policy. You take like one every morning. Creatine is pretty good. more and more health benefits all the time of creatine as well. Are you doing the 10 milligrams on that? Grams. Oh, 10 grams. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not milligrams. 10 milligrams. Yeah, no, no, no. 10 grams on that, which I just... It's not working. I just upped the five on that because there's supposedly a lot of cognitive benefits.

52:23Yeah. So most of that research is in people who are intentionally like underslept or something like that. We don't have a good body of data to say that there are like real big cognitive benefits to people that aren't very fatigued, but wouldn't rule that out. and creatine's like the opposite of poisonous, like 10 and 15 grams. Oh my God, absolutely not. Back in the 90s, like the school nurse would be like, you're not on creatine, are you? It's going to kill your kidneys somehow by no mechanism known to man. So creatine is really dope. If you want to take protein powders and stuff, that's cool.

52:53You can just eat all that protein anyway. People in northern climates don't get a lot of sun, like everyone in Michigan where I'm from, may benefit from vitamin D supplementation. And there are a couple odds and ends there that are very situational. but honestly if you eat a mostly healthy diet and a multivitamin multimineral supplements become this thing that's like man like in some contexts it works but it's not like a universal world like everyone has to be an expert like fish oil is really nice um but its effects are like super small in the grand scheme what i will say is here's here's i'm on my bullshit here dave i'm giving you good viral clips it'll go completely insane because i'm saying insane shit i think in modern world, folks, women of perimenopausal age and postmenopausal age, and men generally of any age, but especially over 35 and over 40, should be pretty interested in hormonal replacements there.

53:49So that's where I wanted to go next. This is Rick Burgess from The Rick Burgess Show. I want to talk to you for a second about something most of us put on autopilot, car insurance. If you're just letting your policy auto renew year after year without shopping around, I'm telling you, you you are probably throwing money away. Rates change all the time and staying loyal to one company can end up costing you big time. That's why you need to go check out Insurify. I went to Insurify.com to test it out myself and I was blown away by how easy it is. In about two minutes, totally free, you can compare actual real-time quotes from over 100 top insurance companies all side by side in one place.

54:24No endless phone calls, no pushy sales pitches. Here's what I really love. Insurify doesn't just help you once and walk away. They actually keep monitoring your rates in the background and alert you whenever prices drop so you never miss out on a better deal down the road. Millions of drivers have already used Insurify to stop overpaying, and there's no reason you shouldn't too. Do yourself and your wallet a favor. Go see what you could save right now at Insurify.com. That's Insurify.com. This Monday.com ad was created by a team of people and AI agents. The agents wrote the copy and managed the timelines, while our human creative director made sure it all made sense.

55:01Easy. Create your own AI agent today on Monday.com. Yeah. So let's do it. Yeah. Yeah. So for females, a combination therapy of testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone is going to have usually phenomenal outcomes on everything. thing there again the naturalistic fallacy comes in and as a woman let's say you're postmenopausal and someone's like oh have you tied you know talked about hormone replacement therapy like no like the changes going on in my body are natural and i'm just gonna let nature take its course right sweet go visit an old people's home that's what nature looks like it's fucking brutal there's no justice to it at all your genes care about their own replication into the into the generations you are but a vessel for your genes that's how your genes see you and as soon as you you've had some kids or as far as your genes are concerned, exited the reproductive age, they're like, sweet, that coil we're throwing off.

55:57You are the mortal coil. They are the immortal coils. And then your body just starts to degrade from mostly planned obsolescence from the genetic perspective. And also just like there's no evolutionary pressure for the genes to keep you upright. And so if you want to feel amazing, if you're an older woman listening to this. You ever watch like a 22, 23-year-old woman just vibe? She's just around, just energy, all that shit. And you're like, ah, that shit, that youth shit. Well, there's nothing more than like physiology. And a lot of that is like, that girl has progesterone, estrogen, testosterone in the right concentrations.

56:33Your uterus has stopped functioning. It no longer makes any of those hormones to nearly the extent that it should. Replacing will make you feel unbelievable. And And for men, at least replacing testosterone to get it to a level where your blood work, your physique, your performance, your psychology all align for their best is like a really big deal. I had a friend who same friend is from the other story with the uncle, actually. He went to his doctor and he was like, you know, I've got injuries and all this stuff. I lift. And his doctor is old school. He's like, well, that's just called getting over 40.

57:10And my friend's like, and second opinion. And the other person was like, yeah, there's a lot of stuff we can do. He got on testosterone replacement therapy. And like his numbers were not hypogonadal. They were just at the low end of the range, low moderate. He got to high moderate, revolutionized. I've had like five friends who have gotten on TRT. I've only like only one of these people was one I was like, hey, you should really consider it. Mostly they just went about it themselves. Every single friend was like, this is a revolution. And they're like, I feel like I'm 25. And Dave, that's not an accident.

57:42Like, why do you think 25-year-olds feel like they're 25? Is there fucking enough testosterone? And if your shit falls over time, you can raise it and just do better. So you see no issue. I mean, everyone talks about all the side effects and your balls are going to disappear. What do you need your balls for? You're like, oh, I loved having huge balls. No more. People like having balls. I mean, pretty standard stuff. So you concede the balls, basically. Yeah. You concede the balls for the feeling good and looking good. A sizable fraction of people have no meaningful testicular atrophy. I sit here before you with full-size balls, sir.

58:16They're giggling. The crew is giggling. It's the fifth show where a guest said that. They have seen my balls before. But when I walked in, you weren't very good. I was like, I just want to show you guys my balls. They were like, well, those are totally fine. They didn't say they were great. So you're not on? Oh, I'm on more than TRT. No, no. So I want to get to where you're on, and I want to get to the steroid part of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you are on TRT. Oh, yeah. And do you see any downside to TRT? There are numerous downsides to TRT. And that you have to basically be on it forever, although now that sounds like maybe that's not exactly true.

58:48No, you can take some drugs that keep your balls going, and then when you come off of TRT, your balls are totally fine. If you insist on having balls, then you can never lose your balls with TRT, for sure. That's a solved problem.

59:02Here's how I would look at TRT. it introduces a certain level of testosterone into your body if your testosterone is too low you'll have problems if you have certain kinds of genetics and your testosterone is on air is an average range then that's too high or too low for your genetics and you're going to have problems if you're at the very top end way above the normal range you're probably going to have problems but for pretty much every single human male on earth there is a level of testosterone that will optimize your health as far as testosterone can, whether that comes from your balls or that comes from the needle, is almost completely irrelevant on the effects for your body.

59:42Proper TRT isn't just being like, oh, the doctor gave me TRT and it drove me nuts or it caused XYZ. It is titrating the dose, communicating to your doctor over time to get to the level where your blood work is the best it's been, you feel the best, and you're dealing with all the ancillary effects. Testosterone by itself for some males will cause bald ink, right? I wouldn't know anything about this. I have a full head of hair. Speaking of which, God damn, Dave. Working hard over here. I take Nutrafol. That is one of the supplements that I still take. And I do PRP for my hair. My man. So there's like, if you really want a full head of hair and you're prone to baldness, even the small amount of testosterone you have naturally will continue that process.

1:00:21If you raise your testosterone to where everything else in your life is amazing, but you're losing your head of hair, there's stuff to do about that. Or just say fucking YOLO and look like Jeff Bezos. No big deal. So testosterone supplementation is no different than naturally produced testosterone. It's just finding the right level for you. That's a big deal. Tons of side effects on all the other ends, but there's a level. So basically when people tell you about all the side effects, putting aside the balls, but they'll tell you things about your blood levels. I don't know, is it like thick blood?

1:00:48Yes, correct. You get more of the blood cells and they clog you up. So when you hear about all those things, your argument basically would be as long as you are checking the numbers consistently with your doctor, you could do this for 20, 30 years. And if anything, you would have more benefits. More benefits. Not if anything. For sure more benefits. Optimizing your testosterone will cause more benefits than not attempting to optimize your testosterone. Full stop. It takes more proactive medical care and getting blood work. You should be getting blood work anyway regularly and doing something about it if your blood work happens to be off 100%.

1:01:19The other thing I'll say is there's one more drug I would say most people need to consider taking. And as supplements and drugs, this is a drug, terzepatide. Have you heard of terzepatide? I don't think so. Manjaro, Zetbound. Well, Manjaro, that's the drug that - GLP-1, right? Correct, yeah. And so technically, it's a fourth-generation GLP-1 drug. And because Ozempic was, semaglutide was generation three, this is fourth gen. So it's GLP and GIP agonist. Terzepatide, as far as we can tell, at some dose, again, the dose is incredibly important. If you take a ton of it, you're just going to go to the hospital vomiting blood.

1:01:55If you take not enough of it, you'll be like, I don't think anything's happening. A very small introductory dose of trisepatide for most adult Americans would be a health elixir, full stop. And yes, I'm confident enough saying that on camera. It's a miracle drug. It has downsides. It has side effects that need to be managed exactly like TRT. But if you manage it successfully, trisepatide is better for most people to be on than not on. What is it doing for you besides weight loss? So like if you're just a normal, healthy person, why would you be on it? It makes your balls bigger, Dave. No, I'm kidding.

1:02:28Is there a drug that does that? That's a real pharmaceutical trillion dollar stack in the pharma industry. Can you imagine like pharma executive like presents the big project? It's a ball growing drug. And people are like, what else does it do? It's like, what do you mean? What else, Jim? Nothing. Problem solved. It's like the beginning of idiocracy where they show you why humans fell off. And it's because they spent all their time for hair loss, drugs, and boner pills. Yes. Yes. So there are weight-mediated benefits of these drugs and non-weight-mediated benefits. We used to think a few years ago that the reason these drugs made you healthier is because they help you lose weight.

1:03:04And that's a huge part of the equation. Another part of the equation is that these drugs have the non-weight-mediated benefits, and they're numerous. One of them is that they are anti-diabetic in their action. and they normalize your blood glucose in a way that no other drug before could do. These drugs were invented for diabetes outcomes, and at higher doses, they just noticed people were losing weight, and they were like, I'm not hungry. And they're like, let's jack up the dose even more and see if it works. That's how semaglutide started. There is an anti-inflammatory effect that is total body.

1:03:38So trisepatide is a total body anti-inflammatory agent of the kind that we just don't see in other drugs. and whole body low level chronic inflammation and excess is a gigantic fucking killer it messes up like every system in your body and trisepatide calms that down another thing is has like um specific effects to reduce neural inflammation we have good reason to believe that it reduces the decay rate of your brain essentially which is in a huge huge thing it has massive effects on psychology, it actually seems to quiet down every kind of addictive noise you have, including food noise. People have reduced smoking on it.

1:04:20They've reduced drinking. They've reduced gambling, ironically. And so it has psychological benefits. It has cardiovascular benefits, kidney benefits. These are all weight independent, by the way. It's whether you lose weight or not. There's like five other benefits. Trisepatide, semeglutide for sure, but even more trisepatide is like just straight up and it's a health elixir. It's not a panacea. It doesn't cure everything. But I would say it's similar to like pretty decent exercise program because you could be like, what's good about exercise? You'd be like, I don't have a long enough time in this podcast to list all the benefits.

1:04:53It just fucking fixes everything. Trisepatide's on that list of things that is like, it's that good. Just before we get into the last couple of things here, how worried are you that when you promote these things or just the general talk about these drugs, like, you know, it seems like every drug, 10 years we think it's good and then in 15 years we're like oh well it did have all these other side effects and everything else like obviously that has to ring in your brain at some level when you're talking about these things yeah oh yeah so the question is not if i don't take trisepatide i'm totally fine versus if i take it there's these big risks the certainty that your body will degrade, you will age and you will die is 100%.

1:05:33What can we do about it then is the difference. You pay attention a little bit probably to the AI risk situation, right? If we make super intelligence, it could kill us all. Absolutely it could. If we're not as smart as we can possibly be as a species, a wandering black hole will fucking kill us. We're not safe at all. As a human in your own mortal body, the assumption that your health is totally good as you age is wrong. It's dead on arrival. So the question isn't, oh, do I stay completely safe and not take trisepatide? Right? These big risks. You're at risk without it. With trisepatide, you're absolutely at risk for many things.

1:06:11Mismanaging the dose, having a bad time. Some people, it just doesn't jive with their physiology for sure. This is why you don't just go and buy it and just do this. You're like, I did the trisepatide. You would talk to your doctor ostensibly. But the alternative is for sure you're going to have a bad time. with trizepatide the probability you'll have a better time health longevity wise is already like evidenced in the scientific literature there's actually a big study that just came out that shows um all cause mortality for older folks on uh semaglutide and not semaglutide and it's a big difference man like these drugs will just keep you healthier and alive longer is there a probability that we'll find out later that they do crazy shit and just you fucking just like in your 40s you're good and you hit 50 and you just die.

1:06:54And the old 50s detective was like, yeah, it was trisepatide again. See, the great killer. Like, yes, there is a probability of that. The probability of that is lower by 10 or 100 times than the probability that not taking trisepatide will for sure fucking kill you. So is it fair to say that your sort of blanket statement on all this would be as long as you are having your blood work checked, you're pretty much okay to try these things? Absolutely. in the context of working with a medical professional, monitoring your blood work, monitoring how you feel. And here's a big one, especially for trisopatide, doing all the other health stuff is huge.

1:07:33Here's how to have a bad time on these drugs, somaglutide, trisopatide, and soon-to-be ritatratide. Just eat like total shit. These drugs slow how fast food processes, and if you eat like two double cheeseburgers, the shit's just going to stop, and your stomach's like, I can't throw this up. I can't poop it out yet. I'm just going to sit here and do nothing about it. And then you're going to go get admitted to the hospital and they're going to have to put the tube and the machine. If you eat healthy, not only do the drugs work better because now you're in a great calorie place, you're getting all your nutrients.

1:08:06Because some people take trisopatide and they don't eat anything for days on end and then they pass out. It's like, no shit, motherfucker, you need food. But if you take the drugs and you eat healthy, you radically lower the probability of bad side effects and you enhance the main effect. That's one of the beautiful things about drugs like trisepatide is there are some drugs that like at least visually, if you take them, you can have shit habits and still look better like a crap load of steroids. But with trisepatide, it works synergistically with health habits. And some people, their food noise is so high.

1:08:38They're so fucking hungry all the time. They're like dieting is just not for them. They take trisopatide. All of a sudden, they're like, I can just not eat. Well, if I don't have to eat anymore, like it's not pulling me in, and I have to eat because I know I need fuel for my body, might as well make good choices. Who gives a shit? And then they make better choices, and the whole thing gets better. All right. So last two things real quick. The steroid thing, how can we do that in a somewhat timely fashion? You're on steroids. Yeah. You obviously are trying, you know, you're in competition, and basically this is your living.

1:09:09Yeah. Should the average person be taking steroids? No, fuck no. No, they're poison. Yeah. So why are you doing it? Vanity. So it's purely vanity. Yeah. You want to put on the shirt and... I don't even want to put on a shirt. I had to have one for the filming. I prefer the shirt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I just want to look cool. So it's purely vanity. You just want to be bigger and... Yeah. Yeah. Unapologetic. I'm not saying it's a good thing. And in your personal view, the vanity is worth whatever the downside is. It is for me, but I have very calculated risk tradeoffs. I'm not YOLOing it. I get blood work all the time.

1:09:45I use a very small amount relative to the context that I'm in. And I'm using the kinds of steroids that are the least likely to cause health problems, etc., etc., etc. But I'm absolutely making a known tradeoff. I would analogize my steroid use to like talking to rich people about their skiing habits. Like you do realize that the velocity of the tree remains the same, but you hit the tree and then you die. And they're like, yeah, you know, you got to take some risks. Anytime you go on a flight, like that plane could crash. Anytime you get into a car and you go on the freeway, especially in Miami, holy shit.

1:10:20Then, you know, you could die, but you're like, you're still going to go to the grocery store. You're still going to go even, okay, you have to go to the store and get food. You're going to want to go to a nice club. You want to want to go to a nice restaurant. You're going to get into an Uber. That guy, Uber driver, does he know what he's doing? Is he on drugs? You don't know. It's a risk. It's calculated risk. You're just like, I know this could kill me, but I'm not just going to stay in my house. For me, my impulse, my drive to look like sort of like my own weird version of an action figure is high enough that I have made a calculated tradeoff by using some substances like steroid and growth hormones, et cetera, that are like not great to use at the doses.

1:10:54design absolutely is reducing the probability that I'll make it to old age and it's a known trade-off and I don't recommend it to other people. So was it a G.I. Joe character or a WWF guy that got you into all this in 1987? Fuck man that's so goddamn close. There was a movie called American Ninja 2. It may be one of the worst movies of all time on my technical grounds you know? And there was a gentleman in it and he was, yes, I believe his name is, the actor's name is Steve James. He's an African-American man and he knew martial arts in the movie. So his, his, he was the sidekick, the main guy, Michael Dudikoff.

1:11:37He was like super good looking. I couldn't relate to that clearly. And he was like, he was like a ninja. He knew like ninja magic. And I was like, that's really cool. But Steve James was a sidekick and he was just like, Like he knew karate or whatever, but he was just really jacked. And like, I was like, wow, that's so cool. I was seven and like it never left. And then I got to like watching Dragon Ball Z later and that whole training thing. And at first I did like, I wanted kind of a Bruce Lee look when I first started training. But then as I got bigger and my muscles got rounder and like started popping out, I was just like, yeah, yeah, that's what the fuck I want more of.

1:12:12And I just wanted more and more and more. And so like, here I am, all juiced to the gills in my 40s and hopeless. Last one over your right shoulder over there is my Copal Tequila, which I launched in June. I love tequila. I don't drink a ton, but I like to have a good time. And I go out with my guys here all the time. And I enjoy it on the weekends and occasionally a weekday. Very rarely am I like absolutely shit-faced or anything else. But not never. But not never. Not never. If you can admit the small balls, I can admit. Oh, wait, you didn't admit the small balls. I have massive balls. No, massive balls.

1:12:49No, regular balls. Yes, regular balls. Where does alcohol fit into all of this? I suspect I know your answer just relative to everything. Do you want to take a guess? Well, I think you're basically going to say as long as the calories aren't going to blow you out and there isn't too much sugar in it, which tequila has the lowest sugar of alcohol. There you go. Yeah. I will say this. And it's not creating a series of other bad behaviors, I guess. Yes. I would say alcohol is like way closer, actually on the other end of the spectrum, and is like steroids in the sense that it is an unmitigated fucking poison.

1:13:24Alcohol is poisonous, straight up. Smells like poison, tastes like poison. It's bad. You gotta taste that. I gotta, I changed my mind. I had one shot of tequila once in my life. I was in college. I was so drunk that I could barely see or speak, and it still tasted like shit. It's called Jose Cuervo. We're going to get you on a new one. The worm, the whole thing. That being said, if you do it on occasion, a few times a week, it's not every day. It's not three, four, five, six drinks a day. If it's a very moderate amount, the total negative effect is that same conversation as like, do you still get into vehicles that go on the freeway?

1:14:07It's not an all or nothing. The dose makes the poison. if you have some really awesome tequila congratulations by the way um and it tastes amazing and you have a couple drinks here and there a few drinks a few times a week the the level of study we would have to do to even demonstrate that that's having a negative effect on your body is incredibly precise it's a trade-off for sure but it's a trade-off that if you're having alcohol all the fucking time and you're drunk right now like Dave started interviewing people drunk. It's real bad. I held it together pretty well. Dude, you're the man. Holy shit.

1:14:42Very impressive. I thought you were going to piss yourself. I've already pissed myself and you're totally fine. Typical for me on broadcasts, by the way. I mark my territory. It's an alpha thing. So if you're, you know, just a few drinks a few times a week, it's totally cool, man. Am I going to say it's good for you? No, it's bad for you, but it's a little bit of bad. And if you're interested in entertaining, like total absolutism of like, I'm not drinking anymore. I love that it's dope. If you want to on the margins drink a little bit here and there, cool. People who say like no one should be drinking ever, like I love that vibe.

1:15:16But then you've got to say shit to be concordant with it. Like never go out into the sun. The sun is a giant thermonuclear bomb. It just radiates like harmful shit all the time. But it's tough to say like never go out in the sun. And if people really like drinking and like the vibe, it's really good. I'd say another big part of drinking is if drinking really relaxes you, You know, you have your tequila and you're like, ah, a long work week. That, ah, that relaxation, that pays massive health dividends psychologically, physiologically. So if drinking is something you can unwind with and it doesn't take eight beers to unwind, then it might be on the net balance pretty much neutral.

1:15:55If drinking is something like you don't like to do, your friends do it, you do it with friends and you're like, should I be doing this? Isn't it like healthy? No, we used to think, and I used to repeat this claim, that like a little bit of alcohol is good for you. Turns out that's probably not true. It's just too not bad for you to detect. So that's kind of the verdict on alcohol. In the grand scheme of an otherwise incredibly healthy lifestyle that you're living, I might not know about some other crazy shit you Hollywood people get into. That's right. You're that famous. I'm in Miami now. I'm in Miami.

1:16:24Oh, because that's a bastion of health. We're the fittest city in the United States. Dude, yo, facts. This isn't the 80s, Miami. That's true. and I miss that every day that I'm in Miami I typically like to crash a Lamborghini into a pile of cocaine I mean that that could be arranged that could be arranged yes if in the context of an otherwise healthy lifestyle you have some drinks every now and again my god like amazing but if you think that oh like I can just have a ton of alcohol and as long as I get my calories in like you're officially well into alcoholism and you have a fucking problem Dave this is an intervention man all the crew and I we just want to tell you like you know when Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers when they shake hands and Predator and everyone absolutely wait wait how is it Dylan you son of a bitch oh that's exactly what he says you nailed it