Our Supplement Stacks | ETP#148

What's up guys, happy Tuesday. Welcome to another episode of Eat, Train, Prosper. This is episode 148 where Brian and I are diving into and covering our respective supplement stacks. So today's episode actually came from a question from our February Instagram Q&A that we thought would be best covered as an entire episode as it would just be very difficult to cover very, very quickly in that context. So welcome to the episode as always, Brian. Can you kick us off with some updates, please? Yeah, so we didn't have any updates last week since we had Dr. Mike T. Nelson on the podcast. One of the topics, we actually, the podcast was great. So if you guys missed last week, make sure you go check that out. It was everything cardio, HRV, breathing mechanics, a lot of stuff I was personally interested in. So thanks to Aaron first for kind of letting me run with that and ask all the questions that I had. But I thought it was really productive and really interesting. One of the things we discussed was about HRV and how the different devices use different calculations to determine your HRV, or at least the Apple Watch seems to be the outlier that uses a different formula algorithm than pretty much every other device out there. So most of the other devices use RMSSD, which is a certain type of calculation. And Apple Watch uses... SDNN, which is a standard deviation calculation off of RMSSD. All you guys really need to know from that is that SDNN tends to produce a much higher number than RMSSD because it's taking out with the standard deviations, it's taking out something that involves like the low beats that don't get included or the I don't even know what I'm trying to say. But basically, the SDNN number is always going to be higher due to what it eliminates from the RMSSD. So I've always been using Apple Watch for the last couple years. Prior to that, I actually did use a chest strap Polar H7. Recently, I went and bought a Polar H10, which is the new upgraded version because my Polar H7 that I tried to pull out of the closet, the battery was dead, it just kept being finicky. The most annoying thing about it was that it kept telling me my heart rate was 233. And that was really annoying because that's actually impossible since 220 is supposed to be the max. It kept telling me it was 233. And then my phone was receiving this information and basically updating my max heart rate to 233. And it was changing all of my zones in all of my cardio programming. And so I had to go in and manually delete all of these 233 entries. I'm like swiping left, deleting them. And there's like a hundred of them. And I was so angry one day doing that, that I just threw away my H7 monitor after I finished deleting them and ordered an H10. So anyway, I have an H10 monitor now. It works really smoothly. It doesn't tell me my heart rate is 233, so all is good there. The point though of this story is that I, now I'm switching my HRV calculation to using the heart rate monitor connected to an app on my phone called Elite HRV. I'm no longer using my Apple watch to get my scores. For anyone that has followed my stories for the last two years, I constantly would have these readings of 234 for my HRV, 260, 282, whatever it was, it was always these really big outblown numbers and people were like, how is your HRV so high? And I didn't understand that it was using these different calculations. So now that I'm back to a normal heart rate variability calculation, my numbers are much more in the range of what people would expect. The cool thing about the Elite HRV app is it gives you your RMSSD score, so it would be the same as what you would get on like Aura Ring or Garmin or Fitbit or any of those other ones, I think. I know Aura Ring uses RMSSD. And then Elite HRV converts your RMSD reading to a 1 to 100 scale. So you can kind of see day to day, it's not like, you know, RMSSD readings are like 146.7 and it's just kind of this weird number that doesn't actually mean much. but when it converts it to one to a hundred, you can see day to day kind of what your fluctuations are and it gives you a readiness score and all that cool stuff. So a long way of basically saying new way of calculating HRV. I think it's much better. I think the chest strap is the way to go. And then the other interesting part about that is that my resting heart rate is pretty much the lowest it's been at this body weight. So I'm in the mid one nineties right now, after I recovered from my month of not using weed and losing seven pounds. I'm kind of back up to where I would expect to be in the mid-190s. And my resting heart rate seems to be 41, 42 most mornings. And that, like I said, is the lowest that I would expect at this body weight. It usually will get into the high 30s when I'm in the 180s, like 185 when I'm dieting, stuff like that. But yeah, I feel really good. I think that my heart rate variability, my resting heart rate and all that stuff is perfect for where it should be right now. kind of curious to just follow it as I get into more cardio in the spring and stuff like that and see what happens to it as body weight drops and be able to track it that way. Okay, so second update is I finished my first messo cycle of the bro split. It was seven weeks long for me, and it culminated in a hack squat PR, a lifetime PR that I am just really amped about. It's been a long time. This movement has been in my program for basically a year straight in this exact. manner where I'm going down, I'm pausing for two to three seconds at the bottom, I'm coming back up, et cetera, et cetera. So I set a 10 pound PR for six reps. Nothing crazy. I mean, for someone 25 years into training, it's just nice to see that there is a PR, that it's not a result of novelty. Like, oh, I switched out that movement for this movement and that movement for that movement. And suddenly I'm making progress again. It's like, Hey, this movement has been in my program for a year straight. And I was able to manufacture this. 10 pound PR with all conditions, the exact same. So I feel really good about that. But I am a little bit burning out on the bro split. And I wasn't sure that was gonna happen. I thought it was a possibility because it's training six days a week. But I was really enjoying that the sessions are only 45 minutes each. It kinda didn't matter though in the long run because when you have to get up for it mentally, six days a week, that's just a lot of days to have to psychologically go there, especially toward the end of mesocycles when things are getting really tough. And so I actually made a change for the second mesocycle of the bro split across the board for everyone following the program. I combined delts and arms day together. So now it's a five day a week program instead of a six day a week program. And I shortened that day a little bit. So I didn't just take delt day and arm day and make it like a 90 minute day. I kind of created some different circuits and alternating movement sequences and stuff like that. So that day is still should be about an hour, but it does give me an extra rest day throughout the week. And then I'm just kind of getting excited to start my new cardio journey here in the next few weeks. as the bro split is gonna wrap up and I take vacation and I'm changing over to the 10 exercises for life program from the episode that we did a few episodes ago and I'll have more details on that as kind of the time begins to get closer. So I have two more updates. I've been talking forever. I wanna take a break. So let me see if Aaron has any thoughts and pass them over to him. Yeah, sure. So my updates are a little bit shorter. I turned 36, I guess, technically yesterday, and we went to a Starbucks here. And that's what I wanted to do. I mean, we did more than that. We went to this place called Black Lava Camp where it was kind of like, I guess you could call it glamping there. Like this like yurt thing we stayed in. It was like a potato. It was it was called for the night, you know, right down the road from the Starbucks because it's about like it was like an hour and a half ride on the on the motorbikes. And that would just be a lot in a day. So we went up, I was gone for about like 24 hours, which is like the perfect amount of like trip for me. I don't like doing like two nights away, three nights away. I just like the routine, right? I've just learned that about myself. So we did that. The Starbucks is really, really cool. It's up on this kind of like ridge for anyone, who may be potentially interested in visiting Bali. It's in this area of Bali called Kintamani, which is a very popular like a coffee region because it's at a higher elevation. And then there's this volcano in the middle and everything along it is all like black lava from, you know, whoever knows the last time it erupted. Hopefully it was like a very, very long time ago. But it was really, really cool. So I was pumped about that, reflected on some things, talked about some things with Jenny, which is cool and we, you know, meet up and make sure our plans for life and everything still align and that was all good. And then ultimately decided on something that Brian and I, you know, we had talked about a little bit off air, but I decided that I will compete this year in men's physique in what would, you know, be colloquially termed an NPC in certain places. And then on other parts of the world, they just call it IFBB. So I will be moving forward with that. I have a meeting with my coach, Jackson tomorrow, where we'll kind of bring in timelines, pick shows and those sorts of things, and then talk. about everything else that unfolds with that coming. I have more on that or do you have some questions before I go into more? have one question which maybe you would get to anyways, but the thing that is most pertinent in my mind, well, first off, that's awesome. I'm really glad that you decided to do that because we had this conversation off air where you were trying to kind of figure out your why. And so I'll let you maybe get into the why portion of that. My question was more about, I'm sure you'll get more information on this as you talk to your coach, but given that you're doing men's physique, the level of leanness required is significantly lower than it would be if you were going to bodybuilding or maybe not significantly, but it is lower at some level. And so my thought is that at the end of that diet you did where you got down to 190, it seems to me like you're damn close to almost being stage ready for men's physique at that point. And your thoughts on that. Yeah, I would tell you, I do think I was close. I think I would be close, yes, there, yeah. And then if you want to discuss the why at all, I think people might be interested in that too. Yeah, I've realized in Brian and I were kind of joking again off air as you get older, you kind of just you become like really firm in who you are and the things that you like and don't like and that sort of thing. Are you realize more about yourself is a really good way to put it. I love the pursuit of things. I always find myself underwhelmed in when upon goal completion. And then I always will paint this picture in my mind that when I achieve this, you know, when I achieve X, I'm going to feel like, you know, why. And I've had enough track record now. It's like the goal achievement never fulfills the way that I feel like I tell myself that it is in this most recent one was very much of that. Like I, I had the physique. Everything had been building up to this culmination. And then since achieving it, I have felt a little bit lost and like, You know, what do I do now? Where, and I would be questioning things. Why am I training so hard? And why am I spending 20 minutes in the sauna miserable playing mind games with myself? Like, why the fuck am I doing this anymore? And outside of it's like, you know, some days we build this the whole, for many of us, I guess you get into being an entrepreneur and all these things to like get time back, right? Because like, I don't want to be in the office, like nine to five. And what you trade it for is working seven fucking days per week. You know what I mean? But then I have also realized like, I have some time, like some days I don't, I legitimately don't have anything to do. There's not, like all clients are taken care of. Programs are written. Like I don't have anything to do. I'm fucking miserable on those days because I feel like I'm wasting it with nothing to do. And I just realized that The gym will be opening at the end of this year. A lot of my work has been preloaded with and already done with equipment selection, a lot of, and a lot of that stuff. I need something to fill these next 10 months. And this was the most, it made the most sense. And I'm sure we can talk about why's and stuff in potentially another episode, but. I would like to formulate some of my own opinions on things, which I've shared many times before on the podcast. And the last example that I have here is about my realizations of, I love the pursuit of things. Something that I literally told myself for years, right, is like, man, if I can be like 205 pounds at 10% body fat, like, that's my ultimate physique thing. Like, I reached that, that's it, I'll be stoked. I'm there. I feel no more fulfilled than I felt at like the 190, like literally no different. And that was like the realization that like, okay, I have, I remember literally since I was like 21 and putting things in my head. And once I learned about obviously being like where more realistic, like genetic ceilings were and that sort of thing, I knew I could never be like 240 pounds natural and like lean sort of thing. Like that's the goal, like 205, like that's the goal. I'm here now and I feel no more satisfied with anything. And I realized it's like, I love the pursuit of things and I need a new pursuit for me to get, fill the rest of my time of this year. Cool. Yeah, we'll go. We'll dig into that more as kind of things approach and, you know, get more firm and you talk to Jackson and all that good stuff. Cool. All right, cool. Well, moving on to my last two quick updates here, actually, three, but I'll be fast. I had my best bike ride of the year. Uh, this last weekend it was beautiful out. We had like 60 degree weather in the end of February and I went out and did 31 and a half miles on gravel and actually kept the fastest pace that I have on any of my rides in zone two this year. despite being on gravel, usually you lose about a mile per hour on gravel compared to pavement, but I was able to keep the same pace for a longer distance and a lower heart rate. So basically all three of those metrics kind of convalesced into one amazing ride. And I was able to keep my heart rate at 129 average the entire time, spent an hour and 52 minutes in zone two of the two hours and five minutes. So really, really awesome ride, felt great about that, kind of gives me some hope and excitement for this endurance journey as we get into April and beyond. I have N1 hypertrophy camp coming up March 16th and 17th. I've talked about this a few times. By the time this episode drops, I'll be just a few days away from hypertrophy camp. And I'll be going with Jordan Lips, assuming that his baby doesn't arrive prematurely. I think his baby's scheduled for like end of March, early April. So as long as baby is staying inside for a little while, then I'll get to hang out with Jordan and do hypertrophy camp with him. at N1. And then the last piece is so just a stupid, annoying story, but we're supposed to go to Costa Rica March 20th through April 1st. And we realized like a week ago that Bryson's passport was expired because I guess kids passports expire after five years instead of 10 years. So I go on this website, RushMyPassport.com and pay an absurd amount of money to do eight to nine business days to get it to us in time. So we go in to do this like validation process where this person at the USPS signs your form and you send it off. She goes, oh, new policy, we're not allowed to do these forms until 14 calendar days prior to your trip. So, okay, eight to nine business days, 14 calendar days, fuck, we're not gonna make it. Gotta go back, stressed out as hell, gotta upgrade from priority service to emergency service, which is three to five business days. pay another exorbitant amount of money to upgrade. And now we're like $1,000 deep just to potentially, hopefully get this passport in time to still go to Costa Rica. So if for any reason this passport doesn't come in time, our whole entire trip, like we've paid for flights and Airbnbs and rented a car and like, I mean the whole thing, it's literally like causing me anxiety and I don't get anxiety much, but this experience has been one of the most anxiety ridden. weeks of my life from this one thing. So I'm just praying here that three to five day expedited service actually comes through and that we can go to Costa Rica. That sounds... I wouldn't handle it well. I know I wouldn't handle it well. Those would be one of those things where like, I wouldn't look and we'd like get to the airport and I'm like, here's our passports and it's like expired and I would just lose it, absolutely lose it. And it... Yeah, I just, I can't believe we didn't think of this further in advance. I mean, thank God we did it like two or three weeks in advance, but, um, imagine the, yeah, like if that would have happened, I would have been in the same situation. I just wouldn't have known what to think at that point. So, um, yeah, hopefully it all works out. I'll keep you all updated. Yeah, hopefully. Cool. Yeah, so I guess since we have yours up here first, Brian, do you just wanna kind of give a high level overview of how you kind of have them organized and then we'll kind of go in there. And then one thing I do wanna give, just a big wave that kind of flags here, when doing episodes like this, one thing I wanna do, Brian, as you go through is like, this is what I'm doing, here's the reason why. in that sort of thing because it's I see a lot of posts. It's a great my stacks. And it's like all this random shit. And people don't have real reasons why. And people end up throwing money away on stuff. So I just want to not. What's the word I want to use, like add to that, like fuckery that goes on with it. And then like this is. Contextually what we are doing right now, if you were to visit this episode in a year, things would likely look different to varying degrees. And the context is important here, which we will provide. Yeah, for sure. I mean, the last thing you need is to be taking a bunch of superfluous supplements that are just unnecessary and just kind of make your wallet thinner. So yeah, good, good introduction there. One thing I do need to state and I can't believe I've never actually said this on the podcast before. Maybe we can actually put it into the notes in the in the in the show notes or whatever. But I am sponsored by Legion and Legion is awesome. Legion is all evidence-based, third-party tested, like the best supplements that you can have, like Eric Helms funds the research that Legion does. So just a huge fan of Legion's products. I use a lot of them because I'm sponsored by them and I have a code. So my code is Brian, just B-R-Y-A-N. And if you haven't used it before, you would get 20% off your first order. And then every time you use it after that. you would get additional bonus points, discounts on future orders. When you get bonus points, they're applied to discounts in your orders and stuff like that. So anybody that buys a Legion product, I employ you, please use my code. It really helps me out. And I don't ask for a lot on this podcast, but that would be rad if you guys can use my code for me. So, kind of moving on from that, the way I've kind of organized these is initially I My top section are things that I do every day. Most of them are in the morning. Some of them are spread evenly throughout the day. So I'll get into that. And then I have a few that, actually I don't really have any supplements that aren't pretty much daily. I see that you organize yours daily and then first thing, AM, breakfast, PM, intra and sauna. So it does seem like most of what we're doing is daily. It's just kind of where it fits into the day. But kind of to, To begin this discussion, when we first fledglingly opened the doors to this conversation, my first thought was, I don't really take a lot of supplements. I'm like, I'm gonna really struggle with this episode because I only take, you know, three or four things. And then I started kind of going through my list and monitored what I put in my body throughout the day. And I was like, oh, I take a lot more stuff than I actually thought I did. And so I don't know if that's like a common sentiment. Did you feel similarly or did you kind of know you're like, hey, I have a decent amount of stuff I take? I thought it was honestly going to be higher and mine will kind of come as I elaborate on things, but there's a lot more that I have kind of like in preparation of things, but they're not actually currently being taken. Yeah. cool. So anyway, the when I wake up in the morning, the first thing that I do is I take, I think five different things here. So I take a half dose of multivitamin from Legion, and the Legion multi is like premier like everything else, and has all the evidence based stuff, it has the best forms of the ingredients that you're going to take. So for example, a lot of multivitamins have folic acid. which is not very good for you. This one has folate, which is the original form of folic acid, definitely gonna be easier absorbed, methylated, et cetera, et cetera, all of these key terms that you hear. Now, the reason I take a half dose, so the multivitamin from Legion is four caps in the morning, four caps in the evening. The reason I take half is because last year I had some blood work done, and specifically my vitamin B12 came back super high. Like the top of the range was a thousand or 1100 micrograms, I think is what it was in categorized as. And mine was up at like 1600 or something like that. And I think that was the result of all of the B12 that is in the Legion multi. And so my doctor advised that I cut that into half. And we've been monitoring my blood work since then. And it's been perfect. My B12 has come down into the normal range, but all of my other micronutrients and stuff like that have remained. exactly where I want them to be. So for me, at least taking half of a dose of the multi seems to be spot on. Whereas other people, depending on your situation, you may need the whole thing, maybe not. But that's kind of why we do blood work and experiment and kind of figure this stuff out for ourselves. The next one that I take is NATO kinase. And you might be asking like, what is that? And why are you taking that? Because it's a weird name and no one really knows what it does. For those that that don't know I had a blood clot or called a DVT in my calf in 2011 or 2012 when we had the CrossFit gym. I don't know if you remember that or not. But I remember. I specifically remember it. I think it was 2012. Yeah. So, uh, it was kind of this odd thing where you're like, why is a healthy mid twenties dude getting a blood clot in his leg? Like, isn't that something that happens to like old people that have no circulation and don't exercise? And, um, so as it turns out, I got some genetic testing done at that point and I have factor five Lydon, which is a genetic disorder of, of blood clotting. Um, so I've been kind of hyper aware of this for about a six months after the blood clot, I had to be on blood thinners, like really proper pharmaceutical blood thinners like warfarin. And then luckily, I was able to get off warfarin after about six or seven months. And they advised me to take a baby aspirin every day, which at the time was kind of the recommended way of keeping your blood thin. It seems like baby aspirin is on the outs. Now there's some studies coming out that are showing maybe it's not quite as effective as people thought. There's also potentially the long term impact of, Hey, you're taking a an NZ every single day for your entire life is probably not the best thing for you. So through following Dante Trudell, who's really, really big on enhanced bodybuilders keeping their blood viscous enough, or that would be the opposite, the opposite word, opposite of viscous. Yeah. So he had, he's been advising NATO kinase. And I looked into research on that and stuff and NATO kinase seems to be effective for that purpose and being protective. So I've just been taking one NATO kinase every morning for a really long time now. I mean, really long time, like years at this point and substituted that out for baby aspirin. For anyone that's listening that may be curious about the factor five lied in and what I'm doing to take care of that and ensure on my end, you know, I I think that the 2012 one was a perfect culmination of a really stressed out Brian and not stressed out necessarily psychologically, but physically because we had just started the CrossFit gym. I was training six plus days a week for three hours a day. I was addicted to Adderall because I was getting up at 5 a.m. to teach morning classes and then I was at the gym until 10 p.m. sweeping and mopping. So literally I was sleeping five or six hours a night for eight straight months and training, you know, 18 hours a week. It was insane. So I think my body was just under a ton of stress and inflammation. I would have liked to have actually seen what my CRP would have been at that time to see if that would have been, you know, potentially a causative factor of that because they are linking high CRP during COVID cases to blood clots. So anyway, it would have been cool to have that information. back in the day, but I don't have that blood work. But anyway, I think, you know, with my lifestyle being an anti-inflammatory lifestyle now, I'm not as concerned about the blood clot issue. With that morning stack, I take Phoenix from Legion, which is a, I call it a fat burning pill. I just use it mostly as my source of caffeine. Instead of drinking coffee in the morning, I just take one 200 milligram caffeine Phoenix pill from Legion. I take two capsules of sporebiotics. Sporebiotics is a type of pre and probiotic that can get through the gut lining. So it's not most, most probiotics get killed in your stomach acids before they actually get to be able to do what they do. The sporebiotic is supposed to be able to get through and survive that journey through the stomach acids and actually. what it needs to do to help me, you know, with my gut bacteria and all that good stuff. And then the last thing I take in the morning is a vitamin D plus K2. I do this in the morning on in winter and you know, times where I'm not getting a lot of sun on my body. So I take 4000 to 5000 I use each morning. I did up that recently to almost double just to see what would close to the top of the range. It was up to about 80. And generally, you want that to be at the 40 to 60 range. And so I dropped it back down to 4000 to 5000, I use and that seems to have settled right around the mid 40s for vitamin D. So, you know, again, monitoring blood work and being able to kind of determine what your optimal doses are based on, on what you see when you change or fluctuate your doses, I think is really important and of one research to do so. That's my morning stack. I have some other stuff I take throughout the day, but I'll let Aaron kind of jump in and talk about his as well. Yeah. So really quickly, I think what would add up or be really good to add in here with your Omega threes that you take, is that, does that go in the morning as well? No. So Omega threes need to be taken with food and I don't really eat in the morning. I wake up at 5 a.m. usually with no alarm. And so I'm in the house doing work in my office and I don't usually eat until after I drop the kids off at school, which is 8 30 or 9 or something like that. So I will put off my Omega's until I begin eating through the day. And then I want to actually get into more detail on my Omega. So I'll get come back to that when it when you're done. Okay, yeah, cool. The reason I was just gonna add is omega-3s will also kind of thin blood a little bit with higher doses. So I think as we kind of talked on that a little bit. And then the last thing that I think is important that I wanted to add is the vital, so fat soluble vitamins you definitely wanna do more testing on because you can take too many of them. As someone who... In college, like a dumbass was really hungry when I was moving one time and just ate a shit ton of Flintstone vitamins, like probably 80% of a bottle because we were literally moving out of college. I was like moving, graduated, moving out, just trying to get shit done. I was fucking starving and I was eating them. And then the next day, my fucking kidneys were killing me. Killing me. So like bad things can happen if you do that. Yeah. With the B vitamins, they're water soluble, the excess you'll piss out, but you can just be throwing money away, if your levels are way too high and you can stretch a two month supplement into four months and you're still getting a very, very efficacious dose there. Cool, so I will jump into kind of my... First thing in the morning as well, I do one gram of a vitamin C, and that is just, vitamin C is a great antioxidant. It's one of the primary antioxidants, given that I have now introduced exogenous androgens into my system, and typically that correlates with higher oxidative stress, higher C-reactive protein, and those sorts of things. I'm just being a little bit more vigilant, I guess is a good term to use, on purposefully putting higher amounts of antioxidants in because of that, you know, different... difference in my recent environment. So that is one. Another one I do first thing in the morning before food is a Saccharomyces boulardii. That is a type of probiotic. The reason for that one is here in Bali, their stomach bacterial infections are quite common. It's called Bali belly. It happens to pretty much everyone. So over the I don't know, about two years I've lived in Bali, I've had it probably five, six times. It's not fun, and this is just a little bit of like a prophylactic that I just keep in pretty much daily when I'm in Bali now. The specific reasoning of the Saccharomyces boulardii is it's one of the few strains that has a lot of clinical support for like your common traveler's diarrhea, which is just... What am I looking for? Intestinal bacterial infections, right? Which caused that. And then I'm also doing 20 milligrams of a polycosanol, which is my first phase one kind of test in supplementation for reducing my LDL levels. One of my kind of promises with myself is if we are going on TRT, typically what is often seen with TRT is decreased HDL, increased LDL. I have genetically high LDL. I've had it for my entire adult life, was that we now, we colloquially, or we as in myself and I need to do something more concretely to bring the LDL down. So this is the first thing I'm doing. I have my, actually, I didn't bring this up. I have my first set of labs from TRT at the six week mark back. So, and then I started this to know, so. After I saw okay, this is what six weeks This is what my lipids and stuff look like now I'm putting this in to see if that comes down and then you know I'll go from there whether adding in like niacin would be a next one sort of thing, but I haven't done that yet What, anything that stands out from the first six weeks that's different than prior to the first six weeks? My no change in hematocrit or hemoglobin, which is pretty cool. I could just still be a little bit early for that. My LDL is actually lower by 17 points. But I mean, my LDL will very commonly fluctuate from like a 112 to like a 150. I see that a lot. So this most recent time, I think it was like 113, the end of diet labs. it was a, or pre TRT labs, I guess I should say it was 130. So lower, but still within that kind of range, it fluctuates. And I think I was a little bit sick as my Eosinophils were off the reference range, which wouldn't really be impacted by TRT. I think I was just sick and battling something and didn't really realize it. But other than that, everything else was pretty in line with my typical baseline. That's good to hear. Sweet. Okay, so I wanna talk about omega-3s here for a minute. One of the metrics that I've been really paying attention to in the last year has been on the blood work is omega-3 index. And so omega-3 index is essentially kind of like the HBA-1C of omega-3s, where it gives you a three month snapshot of what. your omega-3 content is in your body over the course of three months. This is very different than when you just get your omega-3 number percent, which is more equivalent to, hey, this is your glucose. Here's a one-time shot of what your glucose looks like in this moment. That's usually what you'll see on a lab if you get an omega-3 reading is just in this moment, what does your omega-3 look like? So maybe you ate a bunch of fatty fish the night before and suddenly your omega-3 looks great. but maybe you don't eat fatty fish all the time. And thus you're not always in a great Omega-3 state. The Omega-3 index gives you that three month snapshot. It's also, as I've learned in the last year or so, highly correlated with longevity. They actually did a long, a big study. I want to say it had like 400,000 people or something crazy like that in it. And they found that if you had an Omega-3 index above 10, that was uh, protective against smoking. Like it was, it was better for you to have an omega three index above 10 and smoke cigarettes than to have an omega three index of five, but not smoke cigarettes. And that's not to say like, Hey, if you have a 10, you can just go smoke cigarettes and you're good to go. It's more just saying that like, you know, this is really important and it's better for you to do this than the what, how bad a cigarette is if you're smoking them consistently. Um, which makes it extremely extremely relevant for longevity. So I've been very focused on my omega-3 index and specifically the amount of EPA to DHA ratio. And so I was taking a regular omega-3 that was, most omega-3 regulars are gonna be higher DHA than EPA if you just have a regular omega-3 pill. Um, and so I've been in the last six months or so after getting my readings back that my DHA was high and my EPA was low. I've taken this super EPA. It's actually called EPA extra from Nordic naturals and it has a ratio of 425 milligrams EPA to 100 milligrams DHA. So it flips that, um, that ratio completely. And so for the last six or seven months I've been doing this and I finally have my omega three index up to 9.2. So it's still not up at that 10, which is kind of that number, but it's certainly like climbing and it's approaching it. But for me to get there, I've found that I need to take seven capsules a day. That seems to be the number that is effective for me. And that's expensive, number one, but it's important to me. And so I do that. I also don't eat fish. And so that's kind of probably another factor in the situation. If I were to eat more fatty fish that was high in omega-3, I would probably need less of these capsules. But I do take seven of them a day. I've been doing this for a really long time now and monitoring my blood work along the way And I tend to do two capsules with my first feeding of the day Three with my midday feeding because it tends to be bigger and then two with my evening feeding and so that gives me my seven Omega three capsules for the day that are high in EPA I have a question for you, Brian. You may not know this, but maybe do. So I know we basically have like of the omega-3s, there's three, there's your EPA, your DHA, and your ALA. For us as humans, like the ALA form isn't very usable. We need to convert it through, you know, whatever enzymatic process. I believe ALA converts to DHA. Um, it's a very, it's very, um, in a very inefficient process as well. So it's like chia seeds, ground flax seed, like walnuts and some other foods, nuts and seeds are most typically abundant. Have like a pretty good amount of ALA, but once it gets converted, it ends up being actually kind of quite small in the grand scheme of things. I believe our body also converts. I can't remember if it's DHA into EPA or the opposite. Do you know anything about that? I don't, but given the first blood work I had that basically showed my DHA was super high, my guess is that it would be converting EPA into DHA. Just because I was taking an omega that was your standard ratio, I think it was like a two to one DHA to EPA, but my DHA was way, way higher than my EPA, more than you would think in that two to one ratio of the pill. So my guess is that it's converting to DHA, but I don't know the answer. Okay, yeah, got it. So I guess it could be a really good point right now to break down fish oils for people a little bit too, because this is one where I'm routinely doing this for clients. So when you're buying a fish oil, and Nordic Naturals is a really, really good company, very, very reputable there. I've looked at the Legion Omega is also very, very good there. Exactly, yep. Now, oftentimes if you're just going to like Amazon or one of these other kind of supplement shops on the front, it's going to say like 2000 milligrams of omega threes, but the EPA and the DHA values in milligrams is actually, or actually kind of grams is what you want to want to at least get up to. I would say like a minimum of a two grams EPA and combined DHA would be like a good starting point. The bottle might say like, hey, two capsules is 2000 milligrams of fish oils, but you might only be getting like 200 EPA and like 100 DHA per capsule. So that would be like of the two grams you want, you're at 600 milligrams. So you're like 40% of the way there or 50% not know 20. it would be 400 DHA and 200 EPA or something like that would be to get you to the 600. Yeah. So 600 milligrams of the 2000 milligrams, basically one third of the fish oil you're getting is EPA or DHA. Yeah, so if you wanted to use that product, like you'd be taking more capsules per day than Brian is. You'd be doing like 10 a day to get to that. And just like always flip it around, read the back and see how much EPA and DHA you'll actually be getting because that's like a very snake oily kind of thing that some lower quality supplements will do with the fish oils there. Yeah, you generally will want to see at least 60% of the total be combined EPA DHA. So if you see 1000 milligrams or one gram, you would want 600 of those milligrams to be EPA DHA combined. Cool, what else you got? Um, so other than my omega threes that I take throughout the day, um, I do whey protein and I primarily do whey protein as intra workout. Um, I've talked about this a bunch on the podcast, but I do this like sludge mix of, uh, two scoops of whey protein with six tablespoons of Gatorade powder and a pack of element electrolytes. And then I will usually add Legion. caffeine free pre workout. And so you have this kind of four mixture like different powders all kind of being pushed together and then shaken up in this big bottle. And it turns into kind of this like fruit punchy looking thing. The way that I use is dimetize ISO 100. And I don't think this is necessarily the best health healthy way protein out there. I use it because the fruity pebbles flavor is amazing and it makes consuming whey protein actually enjoyable. I even enjoy this when I'm just drinking it straight with no added Gatorade powder or element or anything like that. But I do use this Dymatize ISO 100 for my intra workout in this sludge that I make. When I'm using whey protein outside of intra workout, like if I just need... I mean, a few examples would be I'm going out to breakfast with the family and I know I'm going to have, you know, hash browns and French toast or something, which has no protein. Then I'm going to add, I'm going to bring a side of whey protein with me and that's going to be Legion. So if I'm just drinking whey protein straight and it's not part of my sludge, I'm going to use Legion and I'm likely going to be using either the cookies and cream flavor, the vanilla flavor or the cinnamon cereal flavor. So I like all three of those. Those are pretty solid to drink on their own by themselves. But pretty much my Legion is relegated for those situations where I'm just having whey protein by itself or for baking. So I do a lot of protein baking. I make protein pancakes probably twice a week for the kids. I use the any of the three Legion flavors that I just mentioned. We'll throw into the banana to the banana pancakes. works out really well tastes fantastic, especially with the bananas, which adds a little bit of wetness since protein powder can tend to dry things out. And then I do some other baking as well. Like I make crepes, similar idea to pancakes, but I'll use the Legion protein in there with the crepes as well. And we'll sometimes bake, you know, protein muffins and stuff like that. So kind of the same idea, but I always use the Legion for that and tends to work out really well. So whey protein is certainly a staple in my How about you? Oh yeah. So moving into kind of my staples, the one that I had here away, isolate right now I have two 30 grams servings. So I have one with my pre-workout meal, one with my post-workout meal. Those are both basically just protein carbohydrate meals. Uh, and then a creatine monohydrate. I've been dosing mine at 0.1 milligrams per kilogram. So based off my weight right now, I'd be doing, I'm doing nine grams per day. If you look at the research, there's pretty much two divergent paths of it. Some people, some research is just five grams per day, whether you're a, you know, 50, 50 kilo woman or you're a hundred kilo man, like you get five grams per day. There's other research that does it at 0.1 gram milligrams per kilogram. I think there, you know, this is purely theoretical. I could be 100% wrong here. So take this with a grain of salt. To me, it makes sense that it would be, make more sense to dose relative to how much muscle mass you have. So that's what I do. Could be wrong, right? Right now, I'm limited in my way options here. I have an isolate. I think it's actually out of the Middle East, a company there, it's Stevia. a sweetened, which I prefer as opposed to like a sucralose and an aspartame that some of them will use When I am in the states my favorite Protein which again zero affiliations here is muscle feast They're a smaller company out of ohio Every time I check when a client sends me something like what about this one? It is still the best protein to weight and cost ratio for an isolate on the market The Legion one is very, very good, right? That would be very good. But the Muscle Feast one does actually beat it out there. But again, you can't lose with any of those. Those are both going to be like the Legion or the Muscle Feast, either of those will be better than literally 99% of everything else on the market, hands down. So those are my dailies. We went through my first thing in the morning. My first meal, I have my Omega threes. I'm doing three grams per day right now, DHA and EPA. I don't have an Omega three index testing. I don't even think I can get that one here. That might be something I'll do back in the States at some point just to kind of test. And then I do a now brand Daily Vites, I believe is the one that I'm doing, which is a. It has like your B's, it has like methylated forms, it has your methyl tetrahydrofolate, which is that one that you spoke about earlier, the methylcobalamin, which is the methylated B12 form. So that's another thing to look for is with a... A multivitamin, unless you are sensitive to methylated forms of B vitamins, which some people are, and you would obviously want to avoid that, it's typically going to be a better investment of your dollar to go with methylated forms as those are already kind of activated forms for how your body will use them. It has some other things in it. I'm... A lot of people will tell you that multis are, you're wasting your money. And I would say if you follow a diet like Brian and I typically talk about on the podcast, they may be somewhat superfluous. However, if you're someone like Brian and myself, like my health is arguably my greatest hobby. I would like, I'm okay spending whatever it ends up being $30 every two months for a little bit of redundancy there. Like I'm good. with that sort of thing. So that one you can kind of make up, make your decision on how you feel about that there. Any question about my AMs? No, that all sounds great. I think regarding the multi, the research I've seen has shown that for older adults, and I think the number is somewhere around like late 30s, early 40s, it tends to be much more beneficial than for younger adults and kids because they are able to manufacture a lot of these things on their own in their body. And our ability to do that kind of diminishes as we get older. So I think that from what I've seen, that just seems to be relevant. And I know that we have an audience that's similar in age to ourselves for the most part. And so if you are in that age range of 35 plus, then I think the multivitamin serves more of a protective benefit than it would if you were young. Yeah, and as we age, unfortunately, our efficiency rates of synthesizing things, converting things, start to work against us. And very similar why higher protein intakes are typically more warranted in older individuals because your muscle protein synthesis conversion rates or efficiency rates decline as we age. So very, very similar to that. In the evenings, I do a C3 curcumin complex. Again, that is pretty much anti-inflammatory, again, leading back to with excess androgens coming in and just typically correlated with higher oxidative stress. I generally want to bring in more anti-inflammatory related things. The reason I take that in the evening, I take it about as far away from my training window as I can is you don't want to needlessly, or I guess I could say from an inhibitory standpoint, try and squash the post-training inflammation process that is a proxy and very, very correlative with the hypertrophy signaling cascade. So don't want to do that. And then I also take 500 milligrams of a berberine hydrochloric again in the evening. I cannot remember the specific reason I'm doing this, if I'm being honest. I remember it was some research that I read, that was like, oh wow, that's good, I'm going to do that. I never wrote it down, but I know there's a reason, it's only once in the evening. I think it may have to do with LDL levels, but I really don't remember. I know... it's a glucose modulator. I could be wrong on that, but. No, it is. Berberine is one of the supplements. There was even a study that, and I'm not necessarily buying into this or suggesting this, that showed berberine was just as effective as metformin for regulating blood glucose levels. Personally, for me, berberine has never done anything for my blood glucose levels. I have spent... way too many days and months trying to manipulate my blood glucose levels to no avail. Berberine did nothing. I believe the reason it's in the evening, again, I'm stretching, I'm reaching here because I cannot remember the specifics. I do believe when you have like the higher dose berberine, it can impact your mTOR pathway signaling. So if you're taking it closer to training windows and stuff, you could be to some varying degree. inhibiting the mTORP pathway signaling. So that, I believe, was the reason it was in the evening. I think, again, it was LDL cholesterol-related, but personally for me, I know berberine does absolutely fuck all for my blood glucose levels. So that one goes in the evening. So those are my evening ones there. Cool. Do you want to finish off or jump on over to me? I'll finish off. And then intro workout, I have two packets of a drink called, or a powder called Pocari Sweat, which is basically just like an Asian, a Gatorade that's popular here in Asia. Each one is 13 grams of carbs. So I do pretty much 26 grams of carbs there. And then I do 25 grams of the dextrose monohydrate, which is just a low osmolality, I believe is how you say that word. Basically, almost identical. practically identical from a chemical structure to glucose, rapidly digesting intra-workout carbohydrates for longer training durations, and about 10 grams of EAAs. So that I do training, intra-workout, and then if I'm doing the sauna, I will do one packet of Element or Replenish, which is an Australian company making electrolytes that has a very, very similar profile to Element, which is wonderful. Sweet. Well, yeah, I guess as we kind of get into to mine, finishing up here, I also do element. I primarily use it like I noted in intro workout. I put one in. So that's one a day if I'm just, you know, doing a lifting session. When I take long bike rides, I'll usually add one for that as well, especially in the summer when I'm sweating. And then I have a steam shower in my house and I will tend to use that two or three times a week in the winter. I can't get myself to get in there in the summer. But when I do it in the winter, I sweat so much. I've actually tested this and I've lost up to three pounds in one steam shower session. So I always make sure that I have some element after that because if I forget, I end up really feeling awful about an hour later. So that's important there. I do tend to have one quest bar or protein bar most days. And I'll usually do this as part of a snack. that includes nuts, whole grain bread and fruit. So I'm kind of combining a bunch of things together that are generally healthy. And then the Quest Bar, you know, not healthy per se, high in fiber, it's still debatable whether that fiber should be considered fiber or whether it's just, you know, a substitute for sugar. I've looked into research on this and apparently in about 2017, they changed out the type of fiber they were using for- starch, which tends to be a much more usable form of fiber in our body. So I tell myself that Quest bar is good fiber. I still am not fully convinced on that. And then just literally yesterday, I started taking a stack that Huberman has been talking about endlessly for his T levels. And I don't know if it's going to work. I have very little faith in anything that's not TRT to increase T levels. But Huberman's talked about it for so long on so many episodes that I just said, screw it. I'm gonna give it a shot and see what happens. So it's a Tonkat Ali for two caps in the morning and then Fadagio Agrestis, one cap in the morning on an empty stomach. So we'll see how that goes. I will take it for three months and then retest my blood work and just see if anything changed at all there. And then the last one for me is to talk about creatine. because I actually have not been taking creatine for about three months now, and maybe even four. And the reason was because every blood work I did, I kept coming back with these really high creatinine and low EGFR, which we know, like we know this from all the research that's done, that if you take creatine and you're highly muscled, you are going to have high creatinine and low EGFR. I just wanted to know that because mine was really high, it wasn't just sort of high, like high end of the range, it was like way out of the range. And the EGFR was at the very bottom of the range, like even below the bottom of the range. And so I just wanted to know, I wanted to get off creatine, I wanted to get some realistic assessments of what is happening with my kidneys beyond the fact that I'm on creatine masking, whatever may or may not be happening. So I actually was off it for about 45 to 60 days. So almost two months and there was very little change. So I'm wondering how long it took for my body to actually get rid of the creatine in my body. I'd been taking it, you know, for a decade straight. But about 45 days after stopping, my numbers were still off the charts. No good. Then I had blood work again a couple months later and everything had evened out and was perfect. So creatinine was right in the middle of the range. EGFR was right in the middle of the range. And I also had began taking the C-statin C measurement, which is supposed to give you kidney function outside of, you know, creatine, muscle mass, things like that. My C-statin C is, it's in range, but it's high. So that would tell me that, yes, there is maybe something slightly off with my kidneys, tough to say, but the creatinine and the EGFR have leveled out and are back in range. So I've decided that I'm going to begin getting back on creatine again. And what I tend to use for that is just the Legion post workout. So the Legion post has five grams of creatine. I tend to just kind of take that nominally and say, Hey, five grams a day. To Aaron's point, I have also in the past used the 0.1 gram per kilogram, which puts me close to that, you know, eight or nine grams a day number that Aaron was talking about. And so when I was doing that, I had a separate creatine powder that I would add three or four grams into my Legion Post. Since Legion Post has five grams, that would get me to eight to nine. I think when I reintroduce creatine back in, I'm probably just going to do it slower and just use the Legion Post. Do five grams a day for a little while, see how that works out before I consider upping it again. But I'm sure you guys all know at this point, I mean, the research on creatine is insanely positive ubiquitously across the board. It is not just for muscle mass and muscle retention and metabolism. It's also for cognitive function. I mean, there are literally so many benefits to creatine. They're showing now that it helps stave off Alzheimer's and dementia in older adults. And I mean, it's just insanely beneficial. So I do think it's something that regardless of whether you care about putting muscle mass on or not, like you probably should be taking creatine. Yeah, that's a really good ad. It's very, very safe. I mean, I guess I actually just, I had a client who was like super concerned about this. In certain people who are sensitive to DHT, which is like a downstream metabolite of testosterone, dihydrotestosterone, I believe it actually is, if you're like super sensitive to that and you are pretty much gonna go bald or have really hardcore receding hairlines, creatine may. right may exacerbate the rate at which that happens. Now, if you're curious and you're like scared about it, this is exactly what I said with my client, go get your DHT tested. It's like 40 bucks, you know, third party to go get your DHT levels tested. And you can do that, have a baseline with no creatine, go on creatine for like 10, 12 weeks, get it tested again. Is there a significant divergence there? There you have it. Right. So with many of these things and stuff that gets delineated down from podcasts like this, right. Go get things tested. Right. Like Brian said, with the, with the B12, with the Omega index here, with the, with the DHT, like just go get things tested, you know. And I guess I'll wrap up with some places you can get that done. One is called, uh, I'll have to, I believe it's Ulta lab tests, you LTA. They, this is all in the United States, by the way, use Quest Diagnostics for their lab testing. Another one to use is Life Extension, right? Life Extension uses LabCorp for their blood testing. You don't have to have a doctor or anything like that. You can pay for whatever you want. Third party, they email the PDF results directly to you. If you want to look at things, just go get them tested. Many of them are insanely inexpensive. Yep, I'm a huge promoter of that as well. I tend to do my blood work every three to six months, which I think six is probably fine for most people, but when I make slight changes in the amount of vitamins that I'm dosing myself, especially those fat soluble ones, I wanna make sure that they're not jumping out of range too quickly and stuff like that. And I do a lot of experimentation. So for me, every three months feels, I enjoy the process and like he said, they're not super expensive. So insight is always good. Yep, yeah, I would say most people I would say, if this is like an ever so slight, like, hey, I just wanna be healthy, I'm not overly into it, I would say yearly. Six months, you know, if you're kind of into it, and then if it's like, if you're a coach or something like this and you're looking to learn, like, by all means, go get your labs tested. Especially if you're getting into hormones, things get a little bit more expensive, but if you just want like lipids and like an ApoB and that sort of thing, like. It's like 50 bucks. It can be really, really inexpensive. And then like me, I will be moving into like the every eight weeks sort of thing, especially as I'm learning how I respond to things. And it's hugely individual and health is pretty much my top priority. Like if I spend...$2,000 on lab work this year, like so be it. I'm happy to spend that money there sort of thing. So the deeper you go or the more things you're experimenting with, I would say the more you need to spend money on lab work if you want to be safe. Cool. So as always, guys, hopefully this was informative. Brian and I divulging a little bit more into what our current supplement stacks are. These are subject to change, of course. I think very little in here would be like a across the board recommendation for anyone. If I were to make a blanketed statement, which I really don't like, maybe a vitamin D, especially if you live in like the Northeast or Northwest and it's winter time, that is a pretty, pretty safe one there. A multi, a methylated multi, if you handle methylated things well, how do you know if you handle methylated things well, go with a methylated version. If things do not go well, maybe you don't handle methylated things well. Vitamin C, potentially, maybe, but if you're eating a lot of fruit, that one, probably not. Whey protein, creatine, pretty straightforward if you're lifting and training, those make sense. And the omega-3, if you're someone who loves tuna or salmon and you're gonna eat that two times per week, it might be superfluous and a little bit redundant at that point, but I feel like that's probably not the case for a lot of people and that one I feel like can be a. a pretty potentially high across the board for everyone as well. Yeah, I mean, there's just get your Omega 3 index tested because I think getting that number up to 10, I mean, the research is so confident at this point that it makes a huge difference. And I'm really striving to get from 9.2 to 10, just even that small little bit. So yeah, all good stuff. Cool. As always guys, thank you for listening. Brian and I will talk to you next week. Sweet.