Optimizing Your Hormones with a Carnivore Diet!

hello and welcome to another episode of the how-to carnival podcast we're back with anthony chafee the plant-free md anthony welcome hey thanks man how are you very good thank you matt you're all heated up ready to go well just just went i just just finished up surgery so yeah have a bit of a break very good um so the topic for today is all about hormones and we're going to talk about a world that i know very little about and that's female hormones and estrogen so maybe we can start off by explaining exactly what estrogen is and how it's created yeah well you know estrogen is one of the the main sex hormones um in people both men and women produce it and use it and you you men need a little bit of it so men have estrogen too yeah and you actually need some of it you know so um you don't you know people think about like you know bodybuilders um and uh and other people obviously you can you can take exogenous uh estrogen and try to you know change your body features or you know if someone is um you know taking uh other hormones that can that can mess with your testosterone your estrogen and so you have to take different different drugs to modulate these but you actually do need some estrogen estrogen is actually very important like a body builder who's taking exogenous testosterone might also need estrogen to sit up no no no no the opposite so some of that that testosterone can get converted into estrogen so they have to take estrogen blockers so so like things that will block the conversion of testosterone into estrogen because we all start out with with testosterone and then it gets converted into estrogen so even women don't just make estrogen they make testosterone which is then converted into estrogen okay and so yeah and so if you're taking you know just you know just butt loads of of uh testosterone you know a portion of that can be converted into estrogen and then you get those uh you know sort of you know different sorts of um issues related to high estrogen in men erotica yeah so and that's um you know so that's one of the one of the sex hormones obviously there's testosterone and then there's progesterone progesterone for women um and these all have to be in a very very specific and ordered balance or else you you you aren't going to be in in perfect health there's tons of other hormones as well but just specifically for reproductive health these are these are very very important um for women obviously estrogen and progesterone are your main ones but you actually do still need a bit of testosterone uh the problem comes when that goes out of balance because uh as we mentioned in the you know the female uh you know fertility episode um and i'm talking about pcos the conversion of testosterone to estrogen happens in the ovaries but when you have high insulin levels you'll actually block that conversion so insulin will block that conversion from testosterone into estrogen and so not good yeah no not good so women will have much higher levels of testosterone than they actually want and then they'll have much lower levels of estrogen than they actually want and you can and this can have quite a lot of problems and people can develop pcos and which is one of the leading causes of infertility in women uh but it also causes a lot of other problems so you can you can gain weight you can uh you know have what's called hirsutism which is the inappropriately uh grow hair on their face and their back uh or you know other places as well that you would typically see in men and not women so that's obviously not not desirable uh in in many cases in most cases uh just from an appearance point of view but you also feel like crap and when you're not getting your period and you're not able to conceive that's a that's a very baseline level of health that's sort of a you know canary in the coal mine that you know things things are wrong you know and your body's just basically saying nope you know we're not we're not going to subject ourselves to creating another life because there's something things are too far out of whack it's not going to work so things just sort of shut off and um and so that that's what you see and so you you see in uh there's dr um you know kilts who's been a a um reproductive endocrine have been in reproductive endocrinology for you know decades and he's been a carnivore for over a decade and he actually incorporates this into his practice getting women healthy and able to uh conceive um as well you know dr ken berry actually in one of his videos talks about how when you get women just on a ketogenic diet they would have you know much better health in general but also reproductive health and he actually would have a few women actually came in who they were in menopause and all of a sudden they come back and they're pregnant and they're missed so they're like what did you do to me you know so healthy that they came out of menopause and and had a kid and so it's very surprising when you're 50 and you've been in menopause for five years and all of a sudden you you're pregnant but you know it's also you know the definition of a blessing you when you have a child when you when you didn't even realize that you were capable of that anymore but that's how powerful this is that's how powerful diet is you know someone's in menopause and full-blown menopause has not had their uh cycle in years and all of a sudden they're they're reproductively healthy again and that's just that's just you know just the tip of the iceberg because that that denotes that the rest of their body is so much more healthy and that they will be able that their their body their biology thinks that they would be healthy enough to sustain a pregnancy yeah incredible definitely the definition of health i mean five years of menopause into into having a baby how good's that yeah yeah yeah so yeah no it's it's uh yeah it's very good so yeah diet diet makes a huge difference and that's just keto you know that's just keto cutting out carbohydrates and reducing your insulin so you're not converting testosterone and estrogen that's just just one process but it's a major one um well what about the rest of these things when we know from you know plants are going to kill you episode you know they're they're one of the ways that plants uh try to kill you or try to not have you kill them is by uh modulating your hormones so having hormone modulators that screw with your hormones send them out of whack make you feel wretched so then you don't want to eat that plant anymore and you know we know about phytoestrogens like in soy there's there's you know 20 times the amount of phytoestrogens in soy then uh then you know like the birth control pill now that's not that's not a one-to-one comparison because it's not it's you know not exactly um as powerful as estrogen in your body but it absolutely works as estrogen in your body and when you have you know 2 million nanograms of phytoestrogen and 35 000 nanograms of normal estrogen in a birth control pill you know even if it's just a 10 percent conversion rate like you're screwed it's going to mess you up and you know and that's just you know in a few ounces of soy you're over a million nanograms of these phytoestrogens and so some some people eat a lot of soy you know and and soybean oil is in everything like basically every mayonnaise is going to be soybean oil we use so much soybean oil i think i saw a statistic the other day basically we're we're consuming an equivalent amount of of animal fat to soybean oil you know so there's a lot of soybean oil yeah in our in our diet as you know on average if if soy has a lot of estrogen um how is that gonna for females when they eat it how's that gonna affect their sort of natural estrogen production yeah it's gonna screw it up you know right okay you're gonna you're gonna have yeah have more of an estrogenic effect uh than your body necessarily wants you know well maybe you're you're offsetting something maybe you're you're eating so many carbohydrates that you're screwing your uh estrogen production and so maybe this offsets it a bit but who knows you know it's it's very hard to tell you know your body knows how to regulate its hormones if you let it you don't you know i mean you can look at you know i certainly don't like on a day-to-day basis anyway you know you can do lab tests and check you and you know try to try to modulate your your hormones that way and you can you can do that with some success but it's not going to be part of the whole big picture and also you might not just point out on a daily basis like we're just eating old this is how much soy i need like you're never gonna know that you know unless you unless you're doing like daily blood tests and you're and you're tech checking and testing and you know so you're just never gonna know uh but it's gonna throw it out it's gonna throw it out of balance and it's not going to be helpful and obviously there are other things in there as well which screw with your health which you're not going to want but um yeah so that that's a major thing is you know just doing keto are taking people out of menopause well you go next step and now you're taking out all the plant toxins and uh hormone modulators that exist in plants and this is going to further improve your health yeah i think you make a good point about like people's estrogen productions getting stuffed around by too much carbohydrate consumption and then they're like okay that's cool i'll just eat these sort of exogenous you know estrogen from eating things like a soy well it could be you know that that women like you know some women would like tofu maybe that makes them feel better if they're in that position could be it's even if even if you got it right though you're still making you're still not converting your testosterone into estrogen and so now you have too much testosterone no matter what you're doing even if you're even if you're sort of offsetting your uh your estrogen detriment by eating soy or whatever you're still going to have too much testosterone and that's and that's going to screw you up as well yeah exactly and another thing that we've spoken about before i think it was in the pcos episode was we were saying that um like sort of a lot of carbohydrate consumption or like you know eating lollies and sweets and things like that i think they're often portrayed as being quite feminine but being addicted to sugar and having your blood sugar spike all the time throughout the day is making you way less feminine because it's stopping you from converting that testosterone into estrogen you know yeah well yeah well it's certainly screwing with your your female hormones anyway you know and um and so yeah appearance maybe what i'm saying it's like you know oh could be you know it could be and i mean uh you know people that suffer from pcos uh you know do have different sort of characteristics like hirsudism uh which are unappealing to many women you know everyone's different maybe some people don't mind that or or or prefer it i don't know but you know there are quite a lot that that don't and wouldn't wouldn't want that so it's um you know and then you know putting on weight and not being able to control your weight and and other aspects of your health can be just very very difficult um physically and mentally certainly yeah so perhaps the best thing you can do is go and eat a steak and bacon yeah all that sort of stuff that you know our blokes on the barbecue you know women need steak and meat and proper nutrition as much as men do well yeah well exactly right and obviously because this we are one species and you know i mean what what what example can you find where the females and males of the same species have different diets yeah you know because people ask me you know what is this diet good for women too i don't want to get all big and bulky like a man it's like this isn't man juice no absolutely this is just turn you into a dude this is this is just food for humans and so you know female lions eat the same things male lions you know female badgers eat the same thing as male badgers and so on you know it's just like it's a species thing it's not a male female thing and so they absolutely need exactly the same food that we do maybe uh not as much if they're smaller but uh and not not being as physically active but you know they still need it's the same food you know yeah absolutely and also you know just just very importantly for hormonal health is cholesterol you know cholesterol is so vilified but it is absolutely vital you know to the point that we make cholesterol ourselves but we only make 70 percent of the cholesterol we need erotica right and that's 70 percent of cholesterol we need and that's sort of as you know as figured out when or as decided by people who thought that cholesterol was bad for you so maybe we actually need a lot more a lot more yeah oh yeah exactly so it could be actually that we would would benefit from from more than that but either way it is indisputable it's just it's just a hard fact that cholesterol is a precursor for testosterone estrogen progesterone progestogens mineralocorticoids steroids and glucocorticoid steroids these are the the steroid hormones that are made in your adrenal glands like cortisol very important you die without these things and you're miserable before you die they all come from cholesterol and so you have to have cholesterol you have to have enough cholesterol to make uh the s the hormones that you need and then you need other things being in balance so that you're able to utilize and convert and uh [Music] you yeah use those those hormones uh to the best that that your body can in the way that your body wants to um but yeah but cholesterol is is in everything else and that's what's bile is is a component of uh cholesterol has a component a bile every single cell in your body the membrane is cholesterol it's somewhere between 20 or sorry 40 and 60 of the surface of your membrane it's just cholesterol that's like that's like the the skin around the cell if you will and then everything else they have proteins and everything stuck into that uh cholesterol is vital you absolutely need cholesterol and for your brain as well so yeah so that that's very very important and you know we've been told that you know fats bad fats bad fat makes you feel fat and uh you know particularly um you know young girls or women will you know not want to be fat and you know and so they'll avoid that and they're going to screw their hormonal health and they're going to screw their hormonal health going through puberty which is not the time you want to screw with your hormones no i definitely don't know i was developing like that and so you know once you once you go through that and you finish your developing you you're set you know you can optimize where you ended up but you ended up in a different place you know just simple as that like you didn't develop the way that your body was set up genetically to to to develop and you you can be perfectly happy and healthy i think we both are like i didn't i didn't you know uh you know uh developed my genetic potential or to what my my genes had set out for me because i didn't need a perfect diet when i was you know breastfeeding and young and um and in late adolescence you know it was until early adulthood that i started eating exclusively meat and i wasn't eating enough fat either because fats bad for you so you know that's what i i thought as well and so i i still ate fat but i didn't eat uh as much i would go for leaner cuts often you used to cut it off your steak um sometimes yeah she wasn't sure is this good for me or not i know it tastes good but you know i don't know if i should be eating this yeah i would um i i would sometimes yeah yeah and and i even had to when i started doing this again and um you know was you know knew more about what i was doing and why i was doing it i still like automatically was cutting off the fat and so i just i had to say myself like what am i doing like no like i trust research i trust the data that's good for me eat the damn fat i had to tell myself that eat the damn fat and so i started doing that and i had to recondition myself because it was just like oh god oh that's bad for me and so you sort of that taste even though it's enjoyable sort of repulses you at the same time exactly yeah yeah yeah but it's a it's a conditioned response you know it's conditioned because it's oh this is bad this is bad that flavor is associated with ill health this is bad for me you know and but it's not and so i was able to recondition myself like nope this isn't bad for me this is good for me eat it and so i did and it was great um but and i i certainly feel better because of that and my you know i've had my hormones checked i've had everything checked my you know uh vitamins minerals all my normal blood work as well as my hormone panel everything's been fine you know thyroid testosterone right um everything everything has been been exactly where it's supposed to be and you know and there's also you know studies and and data that show that regardless of what your testosterone is your body can either utilize it more effectively or less effectively depending on again what you're eating so carnitine has been shown to do a lot of things in your body first of all it's very important for your brain's development your neuronal development and there's actually kind of autism that has shown to be caused by a deficiency in carnitine and so you know when kids aren't getting enough carnitine they can their brain won't develop uh the way it's supposed to most of us make carnitine and generally make enough to just to stop this from happening but not everyone does and so if you cut out meat and animal products and you just get no carnitine like if you're on a vegan diet or a vegetarian diet where you're very limited in the amount of meat that you eat you may not be getting enough carnitine or your child may not be getting enough carnitine and they their brain won't develop to their potential and potent and they could get a specific kind of autism which is caused by this it's caused not correlated caused and that was shown by texas a m uh in recent years so so i think with carnitine obviously this is very important in a lot of other things but specifically to do with your hormonal health and and particularly for men in general is that carnitine has been shown to increase the number of testosterone receptors that your cell has so the same amount of testosterone is going to go farther okay so that's how it works you have you have uh receptors and you have you know the hormones or whatever chemical and so if you have you know 50 of these things they're going to just bounce around and randomly knock into these you have 50 50 that'll be fine they're just randomly going to be hitting into each other and they're going to be stimulating that receptor once they they latch on uh properly the more substrate you have obviously the more molecules you have in there banging around so you're going to have more interactions with those receptors but of course if you have more receptors you're also going to have more interactions because the likelihood of hitting one of those receptors is going to go up and so what you know you can optimize your testosterone by having more testosterone but you can also have more receptors and then the testosterone that you have works better it just just does more of its thing so you need both and and carnitine can actually help on the receptor side of things so it can increase the number of receptors so you know you have testosterone x and someone else has testosterone x they're not really getting you know the same you know uh feeling as you are and but you have a ton more receptors so you're more muscular more slender you know have have more you know mental clarity and then everything else that comes with it obviously you can go for the other side of things and get all you know get a bunch of road roid rage but like but but when it's physiological and it's normal for you then it's good it's positive and so when you're not getting enough of that you know you you don't feel as good and you and you aren't as healthy so carnitine uh is is very important in that as well and so that's again just something that comes from eating animals and red meat in particular there's a ton of carnitine in red meat and there is some carnitine in other things uh but there's a lot in in red means so people that eat red meat they're gonna again optimize their hormones even even more fantastic um going along that sort of chain um maybe we should shift into talking about testosterone and talk about you know how men can optimize their testosterone we've just sort of talked about carnosine but what else should we be doing yeah so i mean i and and exactly right you know i mean this is about optimization you know we're not saying we need absolutely more of this we're trying to get our bodies physiological for our systems you know we're not not trying to get super at least i'm not trying to get super physiological um or i don't i don't encourage that in in people either because you can get you know just as many problems from doing that as you can from not not having enough so it's about optimizing and there's so many different things that come into that and just speaking generally being on the diet of that's biologically appropriate that your body was designed to eat obviously is going to optimize that and being optimal is the key word they're not massive massive numbers because more isn't always better you know and so um it's all about optimization and there are a lot of a lot of reasons for this that we probably won't be able to cover in just in just one talk and then certainly you know i don't know all of them i don't think no one knows all of them yet either but when you eat a biologically appropriate diet your hormones are going to be optimized that's just that's just all there is to it and so regardless of what's happening regardless of the the the you know mechanisms it will be optimal you know you can take that to the bank um some specifics with testosterone um you know again having enough cholesterol having this dietary source of uh the precursor for your home hormones getting enough sunlight vitamin d this this is very important you know you can think of vitamin d as a hormone as well it's very important it has a hormonal property in your body um but then there's a simple thing so even people that you know aren't doing keto or aren't doing carnivore you can actually increase your testosterone and your and your human growth hormone which is very very important for multiple different uh processes in your body and you know it's it's one of those things that you have like in these anti-aging clinics where they you know optimize hormones and optimize health so that people you know sort of look younger feel younger feel better growth hormone is a major component of that um a very simple way of increasing your your growth hormone and your testosterone in men even if you're and probably especially if you're you're eating a standard american diet or standard australian diet is just by by fasting doing fasts and doing even just intermittent fasting if you just go into like an intermittent fast with like an eight hour window or you you know can eat throughout the day and you just skip you basically eat on alternate days so you just some some form of some pattern of fasting this has actually been shown in studies to double oh sorry um is it double you know i think it's 50 increase your testosterone by 50 wow hormone by 50 so that's that's that's quite amazing and that's you know that you may have diminishing returns with because those studies are done with people that are just eating you know a standard western diet right and so you know part of that's going to be that you're just sort of getting away from you're eliminating all that process [ __ ] you know and um so i don't know how much more you get out of that by being on carnivore but it's certainly something that's interesting um i've also seen in my patients uh that their testosterone will within a matter of months you know for like middle-aged men will actually jump up 25-30 percent you know sometimes a little more and you know they probably have you know low t this would be someone that would qualify for uh you know testosterone replacement therapy um which is you know it's fine i don't have a problem with it with people doing that getting back up to a physiological level um but the point is is that going on a carnivore diet you may not even need to do that and so you know you have people that you know would be in that you know qualify for uh you know trt but now all of a sudden they're on carnival for four months and now now they don't even need it and their bodies is just making you know banging away with testosterone you have more carnitine so your body's utilizing it more efficiently and people feel great you know doing it um like doing it naturally and making your own is always going to be a better solution right yeah i would say so you know i mean there yeah yeah yeah and um you know because the thing is is that um you know having having your body work the way it wants to work there's a lot to be said for that now you know when we age you know we're just not going to be producing hormones in the same way as we are in you know in our late teens and mid-20s um you're just not so the thought is on these replacement therapies is that you're getting back to sort of how you were in your 20s and you know is that bad it's like well if it was bad for you wouldn't that have been bad in your 20s you know and so that's the argument um so it just goes about you know how how people feel and you know as you age you're just not going to make you know hormones the way you used to but you know you can you know just like people going into on a ketogenic diet can come out of menopause you know given that it's not entirely too late you can actually just give hrt and and simulate a woman's cycle and actually continue their uh fertility years there when i think in the 90s there was a lady who did this with hormone replacement and very specifically so that she could get pregnant she was 63. wow yeah but it was completely done with exogenous hormones yeah so it was just like they they gave her a pattern of hormones uh exogenously that mimicked her normal cycle and her body actually ovulated you know which is great and um and so she's right right or is it i don't know playing with nature what do you think well i think yeah who knows if it's great that's how i guess if she wants to have a baby yeah well yeah i mean it's great in that sense but you know i i don't know if it turned out great because you know she's 63 and that's that's you know pregnancy is tough childbirth is tough and so i actually never heard the end of that story i don't actually know how if the pregnancy went well you know or or if uh you know you know something something driving data yeah hopefully um but yeah you know so that's just that's just the power of these these hormones so you know you're not going to be making hormones in the same way and so some people you know want to get get back up to physiological um i get asked all the time if i take that stuff i don't definitively [ __ ] don't and um so you i mean you don't take trt or anything like that no man i mean i i don't even take action natural eyes yeah so um yeah no i mean i don't i mean the only thing that i would take every now and then is if i'm not getting outside i'm you know i'm i'm you know in the hospital before dawn and i'm leaving after dusk you know and sometimes that's that's every single day for weeks and so if i'm not getting out into the sun where am i getting my vitamin d from i'll get it from butter i'll get it from animal fat but i won't necessarily get as much as my body would like and so you know in when i feel that i'm sort of just not getting enough uh sunlight i'll you know i'll take some vitamin d you know just it's good to have and you know we're not living natural lives really you know and so like normally i'd be outside doing things you know all day but you know i don't i don't have that luxury at the moment um so that's really all i'll take you know and then you know if you're feeling like you're getting sick or you want to boost your immune system you can take some zinc or some magnesium or some vitamin c and and vitamin d certainly and so you know i haven't really been sick in years but you know if i'm sort of around a lot of sick people and people shortly don't i might i might just take some of those things just to bump it up but all my levels have always gotten the checks i've always been normal magnesium zinc and vitamin d and as you say this is sometimes when when things aren't quite right lifestyle-wise and some vitamin c as well but i'm not all that much you don't need to take that much um yeah so so that's sort of a cocktail that's sort of become popular in some medical circles uh to do with cove that uh when that that started being a thing and there was um there were studies actually even published by the cdc that if you get your vitamin d level above a pretty normal level uh the mortality rate effectively goes to zero that's published by the cdc you know you can look that up and then if you basically get double that you know up to a you know a high normal sort of level of vitamin d the morbidity rate of of the coronavirus effectively goes to zero so you don't even get any like long coveted or any sort of serious long-term side effects dude i'm so glad we had the whole world shut down for two years because of this thing yeah just because people didn't didn't want to get on the sun and um and um so that's what people were actually commenting on it and saying that you know instead of a flu season they're thinking of it more as a low vitamin d season oh my god the vitamin d is so important for your overall health and immune health that that when you don't have enough of it it won't work properly and you won't be able to fight off illnesses as well well on the on the covered stuff i've got some firsthand experience uh because i we uh may have contracted covert and certainly a couple of my friends have and taking a little cocktail of quite natural uh vitamins and things you can get over the counter like just you don't need a prescription including a mega dose of vitamin d uh better in 24 hours from this thing that shut down the world for two years um yeah so if anyone if anyone wants the cocktail that i got from my friend message me and i'll send you a screenshot with with what's in there um it freaking works yeah yeah well and that's that's one of the things that you know they'll give in hospitals as well um in the places that they do well with this because some some of the times that they're giving medicines that don't work it's it's all just ad hoc people are just just treating this in very different ways they're they're um and they're having very different results as you as you would expect but a very common cocktail for active covert or just to try to stave it off if you're around sick people a lot is you know the vitamin d zinc magnesium vitamin c and and that that seems seemed to work really well you know in specific doses but it's very hard to take too much vitamin d there are cases you know case reports of uh people taking hundreds of thousands of uh units of vitamin d a day for once just because they were dumb i don't know like just i mean you'd have to take so much uh to just like you know like a half a handful of pills you know um so i don't know why it got covered well you know it wasn't during cove but it was yeah before but yeah but yeah but they had actually no discernible uh side effects from it so you know i'm sure there are i mean eventually you know water will kill you but from drinking water obviously drowning is will kill you right away but um yeah which is from from from consuming and in in by being water you'll you know you'll die eventually with about 50 gallons worth but vitamin d at some point would almost you know beg your belief if it wasn't toxic at some point but whatever that toxic toxic point is it's way out there you know there are people taking way too much vitamin d for way too long and then and they're not having problems they're still okay so yeah and so you know other things you can you can have more of a problem with but yeah absolutely so you know vitamin d is is a massive one and and you should think of that as a hormone you know it is a hormone you know and it's a precursor to hormones and so you know this is something that's very very important for your overall health and your immune health so not getting outside and covering yourself with sunscreen probably not a good idea yeah well you know if you know as you said in the plants are trying to kill you episode there are certain things like uh photosynthesis sensitizers in plants that that well in certain plants that will make you more sensitive to uv light will make you burn more easily and make that that burn be more damaging to your dna and potentially precipitate you know cancer or other sorts of skin damage and down the track cause more problems so you know we know that and when you're not eating that sort of stuff your your body's gonna be much more healthy your skin's gonna be much more healthy it's just gonna look more healthy as well it's gonna be softer it's gonna be you know you know thicker firmer collagen and um and it's just going to be nicer more youthful skin and it's going to hold up better in in the sunlight i mean we animals live outside we're animals you know we didn't evolve in a box and we certainly didn't evolve in the building the sun's good for you but if you are eating things that make you sensitive to sunlight and cause damage it's still good for you it's just that the plants are bad for you and the plants are screwing with a natural healthy process yeah the sun didn't all of a sudden become unhealthy it's the plants that are that are unhealthy and using something healthy to screw with you but you know sunlight is actually still good for you yeah so you only need the sunscreen because you know yeah you're eating the plants and it's that's a bit like what we're saying with the estrogen before it's like you only need the tofu and the soy beans because you're rescuing it all over the place yeah yeah it's not root cause stuff um quick question for you so now that i'm now that i'm 30 and i'm starting to think about my testosterone uh what when i when i optimize my testosterone which i'm i think i'm pretty close to doing so i go out in the sun i ate a lot of steak i'm basically carnivore um what what can i expect like what what are the benefits of having optimized testosterone oh well you know you'll have you know [Music] more your muscle bone density you'll have uh you know more mental clarity you have more energy you'll have more you know obviously uh you know sexual vigor and drive um and and that again is it's just a marker of of of health and virility is just a marker of health in general so it's uh it can have a lot of benefits and just just basically you will feel better physically and mentally and you'll be able to perform better you'll be able to uh perform better you know mentally as well as physically and then you know those physical actions that you do you'll you'll get more out of it you know because your body's being signaled uh you know to grow and respond in certain ways with that testosterone you know which is which is why people take testosterone yeah exactly very simply um but uh but at you know at the same time you know you still need to stimulate your body i was um uh you know i went to college with with people then and some of them used that sort of stuff but it was always funny because it was it was generally the ones that actually weren't working all that hard that had to use it um because they just wanted to shortcut and you know they had like you know myself and my friends who we put in a lot of work uh in the weight room and on the rugby field to really really push ourselves and really get the most out of our bodies and these guys really didn't you know and so they they sort of used that and you know there was uh one guy who was a roommate of a good friend of mine i mean and this guy would go to the gym basically every day and lift and and his roommate we always invited him like hey you want to go sometimes you go you know maybe like once a week you know we would go at least four to five times a week and he would show up once this kid was doing steroids he wanted to be big and and strong like us and then he did and he just did like you know multiple different uh steroids and the guy wasn't working out so he's doing all this damage to his body he's taking all this risk legally and all this expense financially and from his health perspective and and he's not even doing anything with it so the guy did did this for months he he looked exactly the same as he did before that and it was just like and you know he didn't really look like he was someone who worked out a lot you know and so you need the stimulus yeah well and you know like he felt good you know he's probably just coursing with hormones he's like going through viewers like yes but like you know he wasn't he wasn't you know actually utilizing it and so he didn't get the you know the physical adaptations that that he he could have had but you know he could have gotten a lot of results just by putting in the work and that's and that's the thing it's it's hard work that does it it's not it's not the chemicals it's not you know just adding to it your body will do that for you you know if you treat your body well and you push yourself and you work hard your body's going to do just fine like you don't need those things you know at a certain point you know we're not really going to make these things and so if you feel better and you have more energy and and you're happier like that you know you go for it like i don't i don't have a problem with people doing that to physiological levels i think you hurt yourself when you go past that but you know two physiological levels that go for it but you know you you know you need to actually put in the work and when you put and that's another thing too just exercise will increase your your growth hormone and testosterone you're just stimulating your body to work you know you get busy living and get busy dying you know when these when these processes aren't needed anymore your body will shut them down because it's efficient it's trying to conserve energy why would you expend so much energy in so many resources in your body for something that you just don't need your body's not just going to say like just build the hell out of your pecs unless you are stimulating it too your body heals and grows in lines of stress and so this goes for for bone mineral density as well you know you're if you're putting stress on the bone it's going to form new pieces of bone to support in in those directions you know and so uh actually you know dr john jay quest you did the uh listen to that that was a really good chat oh yeah i should go and check out this interview yeah yeah so so yeah so he actually one of one of his early inventions was something to help with osteoporosis because his mom had osteoporosis and he's like okay how do i fix this and it's it's basically just putting pressure on your bones it's just it's compressed and pressure you just hold yourself there and you're just pushing and and your your your bones are getting stressed in a certain direction and so they're stimulated to to grow and reinforce themselves that's how your body works you know and when you don't do that your body's just gonna be like right we don't need these here we're gonna you know take them down for scraps so and that will happen at any time so you just need to put in the work put in the work and that will stimulate growth hormone that will stimulate testosterone and so one of the easiest ways to bump up your your growth hormone is to do a heavy workout like a heavy leg day will actually give you a hit of growth hormone that's similar to that you know which we would be giving people exogenously once they you know run out you know and and need supplementation just do a heavy leg day and you'll get the same hit of uh of of growth hormone you know so it's it's very powerful um and that's yeah and so yeah that's that's definitely one to remember is is resistance resistant exercises you will you will uh fundamentally uh better your your hormonal system yeah absolutely so it's you know it's not just nutrition you still need to move your body you need to put in the stress you need to do the resistance work um i suppose wine on the sun yeah everything in the sun yeah i mean one big benefit of carnivore that i've found is that it is easier to train so you've you've got more energy and if you've worked all day and then you still want to get a workout in you can because you're not crashing um and and you can train for longer like you've got lots of great you know experiences where you've just trained and trained and trained when you've been you know street carnival like you are now um so yeah you still need to train but training is more pleasurable you know there's less inflammation in your body so it doesn't hurt as much you know there's less like arthritis or knees all that sort of thing it's um it's it's more enjoyable yeah no it definitely is and you know when i talk about the you know our metabolism being optimal when you're on a carnivore diet or even ketogenic diet you're going to be in the optimal metabolic state you're going to be in our primary metabolic state that's what i argue um you know we call it a fed state in a fasting state i think that's completely wrong you know people have listened uh to this stuff before you i mentioned it before but the the fed state i think is is uh just actually a pathological defense state of defense mechanism to protect yourself against high blood sugar and then you you correspondingly increase your insulin to just get this stuff the hell out of there so you're not killing yourself with blood sugar and then that that high insulin and the responding sort of issues from that are all going to screw you up in a number of different ways and we see this in many many disease processes so when you don't have that in your system your body actually works you know very very well and very normally so when you when you stimulate your your uh you know body to go in a carnivore metabolism you actually do just feel better because that's that's how we feel better is when we burn more energy this is why people drink coffee or they take stimulants because that that forces your body to burn more energy and so you're just you're burning hotter and you feel good because you're burning more energy well most people have to take an energy drink or a supplement to force their body to start burning more energy so that they feel good enough to go work out whereas you know your uri will start working out and our body will produce the exact amount of energy that we need for what we're doing so better instantly yeah you do and so you feel better because when you start working hard because when you start working harder your body starts producing and burning more energy and you feel better because of you're burning more energy and so that makes you want to work out harder and want to work out harder because you feel better and better and better and better and so it's this positive feedback loop and you and you just feel great so you actually feel good during the workout not just like you're killing yourself in the gym and you're like oh i hate this i hate this but then you leave me going yeah i know i'm glad i went i feel great as i'm doing it i was in um i went to the gym probably for the first time and you know in a number of weeks since i was on vacation but i just wanted to get like a good leg day in so um like the old school bodybuilders like serge nubray and um and others they would do this thing they were just they were killing it we're like if they're doing upper body they would do like so i'm gonna do like eight sets of eight and so you do like eight words it's hard to do but then like to where you go you keep doing it and then where eight becomes really really difficult but you look for upper body stuff you only give yourself 30 seconds rest because the point is you really really want to just drive blood in there and get those things stimulated and um that's why i was sort of doing that and you and you do you know wear yourself out quicker like i can just sort of keep going if i give myself enough rest like a couple minutes and my body replenishes its glycogen um i can just keep going but it's sort of interesting to really wear yourself out like that by not giving yourself enough rest um and then on legs they would only give themselves a minute so just 60 seconds rest between you know a heavy set of legs um sometimes you don't catch your breath you know by then um so i was doing this and i was doing heavy legs and i was sort of doing um sets of 12. and so i did end up doing eight sets of 12 with just a minute rest in between and like i was it was you know going like i was i was definitely feeling burn uh on my legs and my glutes and um you know i finished that up and it was it was a it was a tough workout and i felt great doing it i really liked it normally when i hadn't done legs in months probably you know i'd just be crippled right now i wouldn't be able i would not be able to sit down i just feel like in agony and wouldn't be able to walk properly i feel fine yeah it's actually no problem like i definitely feel like my legs have been like my legs are saying like like yeah you know we worked a lot we need to heal here but they don't hurt they're not sore they're not stiff and so you know that that uh it is fantastic and just that little thing you feel better during your workout but also you just you don't have the same recovery and pain and agony that you get uh after your workout you know yeah i think it's amazing yeah the fast recovery it means you can train you can train every day it's not like you know some people go to the gym once a week to do legs you can literally do some form of legs every day which is which is awesome so think about how much better your results are going to be and how much more you're going to enjoy working out if if you know you can push it get a heap of blood flow and the next day good to go yeah and yeah and that's it you know because a lot of people get uh you know quite uh nervous about um you know exercising because they're like well i haven't worked on a while i don't want to be sore well you don't have that problem anymore my uh my dad was telling me he had a friend of his who was he was older uh older than he was sort of like you know late middle age and he wanted to get back in the gym and he went to a personal trainer and said hey look i haven't worked out in a long time just go easy on me i want to ease into this i want to get going but you know just he's into me and the guy like really just pushed him he was like you know a drill sergeant sort of guy and he was his whole body just like couldn't get out of bed the next day he's like yeah screw that guy you know and um you know he never went back because you know he was so sore that doesn't exist if you uh if you don't eat this crap and um you know it's very hard for people to believe but all you have to do is do it just try it you know stop eating that crap for two weeks you will not be able to get sore i guarantee you yeah and you'll doesn't happen and you'll notice things like the aches and pains in the morning in certain areas have gone like you know if you've got sore ankles in the morning or knees um or what have you you just completely forget about it or back like even sort of lower back so many people have back pain and you know i'm convinced it's an inflammation from eating processed foods well it is and you know you can have you can have injuries and you can have you know wear and tear and arthritis but the the pain that you experience is going to be very very different depending on what you eat so i i've i've had back pain since i was 15 years old i always played you know very you know aggressive sports that are very you know taxing on your body you know i had two desiccated discs on an mri when i was 20. you know and so you know um you know i have lower back pain and you even now you know it's it's a bit sort of like you know get certain positions or you know sort of like you know bending over like you're getting socks on or whatever i'm just like getting like a bit of a kind of a discomfort but it's nothing that limits me it's just something that i notice every now and then contrast that with eating any amount of carbs or rice or beans or anything like that even just like the last time i had any of that garbage it um it was sort of on a plate that i went to a restaurant and it sort of was just on it and i was trying to scrape it off but just didn't get everything off and so i was like all right well you know is it that big a deal let me know let's see you know dose mix and poison and uh my back felt like someone was stabbing me in the spine for four days after that i was just in absolute agony um and you know i have you know i have you know just you know some arthritis issues on my patellar tendon or starting on the patellar my patella my patellar tendon and um you know that's just from years of you know doing kickboxing and knee strikes and then rugby and just just stuff wears down the rest of these perfect but those are that parts um you know uncomfortable and so i had an mri and it um and it showed you know uh this issue and the radiologist i was talking to he's just like that right there that knee that knee would keep me in bed i would not be able to get out of bed with that knee and i was like i don't even notice it you know like doing certain things it you know you know it'll be um you know noticeable but it's it's noticeable it's it's not a hindrance it does not cause me any any real problems you know i mean like naturally like you imagine our sort of ancestors or hunter-gatherers they would have had so many busted ligaments and patellas and you know all sorts of injuries impact injuries along the way and they weren't constantly in pain or bedridden you know maybe they were when they hit the wrong thing but yeah well you know and the thing is is that there aren't really as many examples of arthritis in those those natural cultures as well and um you know there's there was it was a story that i read you know what first of all like the maasai in africa like when living traditionally they just don't get the the disease that we get and they don't get arthritis and um there was an interview with one of these guys uh where he was talking about like his dad actually was a traitor and he interacted with people in the cities and so he would bring whatever you know the messiah had to sell and trade into the cities and so he would have these these lunches and these dinners uh with different sorts of people and they'd have sweets and candies and and desserts or whatever and he would he would sort of eat that stuff when he was out you know interacting with with uh the western you know cultures and so he was mostly eating what the messiah always eat but just just that um just eating that much this guy was saying that this guy he started getting arthritis when no one gets arthritis and he's had knee problems and back problems and you know he the guy like died in his 90s which is super weird because normally like that's that's that's young you know for these guys when you explain when you're you're you normally live to 120 you know and um you know so it's interesting um yeah your body just shouldn't just fall apart like that you know structurally and it just shouldn't just break down and you know when you're out in the wild and you need to you need to hunt to live and you need to you know fight off you know panthers and and saber-toothed cats yeah you don't have a bit of arthritis in your nace yes that's my back you know and hold on hold tight yeah yeah i mean that's it you know that's your lunch at that point you know yeah exactly so yeah and you know and people people don't realize this you know they think that people just broke down and just you know died so early and so young it's not true you know you look at alexander the great uh he died young what about his generals you know he had some of his uh one of his generals uh cavalry cavalry generals was there fighting on the front line dude was like 76 and he was in the battles fighting on a horse you know 76 right you know what how many 76 year olds do you know that are able to you know you know ride around on a war horse you know sword fighting with people and winning you know and you know the his uh you know it's pikeman they had the special macedonian sort of spearman that has five ranks of the spearmen with these very long sharp shredded ass spears and um and so you had to get through five waves of things trying to stab you just to get to the first guy you know so it's very difficult i mean they absolutely just destroy all these different uh militaries because they just you know you couldn't get through that porcupine sort of formation um their their guys ages ranged anywhere from 20 to 60. you know so you had 60 year olds there with a like a i think it's like a 14 or 16 foot long spear with a heavy weight at the back and a big like five foot long blade at the front you know it's that's not light you know and you're there in formation you know stabbing the hell out of people and doing this you know time after time after time for years and in their 60s you know what i mean and you know generals in their 70s going around fighting on the front lines so you know our bodies are actually designed to hold up a lot better than we can give him credit for and it's not like alexander the great you know and his warriors were all carnivores you know they probably ate a lot of meat you know the greeks knew that meat was very important but you know they they would eat other things as well and so you know we just are really on the other side of that we're eating so much this toxic junk that you know we just think it's normal for the body just to just to break down and crumble to dust totally um all right i think that's a good that's a good place to wrap up uh great combo on hormones we went all over the place um bottom line get your hormone health right because there's a there's a wonderful life out there to be lived if you if you do get it in check yeah well also is this just you know this is just another piece in the puzzle of optimizing your health you know your your health is going to be optimized if you're eating optimally and you're giving your body exactly what it needs to run optimally and you're not introducing a lot of harmful substances that are going to detract from that and so this is just another piece of that puzzle showing that this is this is how these certain things can help optimize your your hormonal health but it's doing so many other things as well to optimize your health in other ways and so it's really what it's about and if people want to do something outside of that i mean i'm i'm happy for you if you want to do whatever you want to do i'm just trying to tell people what i think the evidence shows to be optimal and so if you want optimal this is what i think it is and you can try for yourself and see what you think that's how i feel the best and so that's what i do and if someone wants to do that that's great and if they don't want to do that that's fine you know just trying to just trying to give people information and help them make a good decision for themselves awesome all right thanks anthony cool no problem thank you