BenGreenfield-TestosteroneChris.mp3

Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And a man named Christopher Walker is on the call with me today. He was actually the first individual to finish Duke University's neuroscience program in just three years. And he's also the co founder of Neurogenesis, the journal of undergraduate neuroscience. And while I may be scaring you away here, making you think that this is going to be an extremely geeky podcast, the fact is that this guy also has quite a few athletic accomplishments to his name. He's a former elite triathlete with a personal record of 1450 for the 5K, and that record actually occurred in a triathlon. And he has done a ton in the realm of training and dieting. He was a three sport athlete in high school, including being offered several NCAA baseball scholarships. So he really knows athletic training. He's got a website called nogym.net and he has an extremely interesting story. Today we're going to be talking to Chris about testosterone and about how our training and our diet and our lifestyle can either maximize our hormones, maximize our health, or it can wreak havoc on our bodies, depending on what we decide to do. So, Chris, thanks for coming on the call today.

I'm really glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Well, Chris, you've got an interesting story. I know that it sounds like you kind of started out as an athletic person, but can you kind of walk us through, you know, going into university and triathlon, what your actual story is? Because you actually have a pretty interesting story, especially with regards to a medical issue that you ended up having.

Yeah, definitely. So like you mentioned earlier, I was actually, you know, in high school, involved in more team sport oriented things and I kind of just got burned out and was looking for something different when I went to college. Didn't want to do that sort of thing during college because it's like, you know, another job basically. So I started running a bit and quickly, you know, improved at it. And you know, everyone, everyone probably listening to this podcast right now, you know, can relate. And once you start getting better and better at running, you know, it's kind of addicting. So you get really into it. So I got really into running and kind of at this point I was also noticing a shift. This was my freshman year in college and I started noticing a shift in the way I was feeling in general. And I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Started going through my sex drive was starting to decrease. You know, I was only. I was like an 18 year old kid. So that wasn't normal. But also I was starting to feel a little bit depressed and whatnot. And, you know, a lot of people can chalk that kind of stuff up to, you know, over training and that sort of thing, but for me, you know, there was something else a little off. So I had like a. I had a GI bleed in my freshman year, and it was kind of. You had a what, A GI Bellida? Three duodenal ulcers in my duodenum. So that was kind of an increase. And I think that nothing in medicine or in your body or health is ever linear. Everything is incredibly complex and systematic. So that may have contributed to a lot of the stuff that started happening later. It may not have, you know, whatever. But so, you know, my training increased. I started getting slower, actually, the more I trained, interestingly enough, you know, because that's what over training will do to you. And.

And this was while you were in your. In your undergraduate neuroscience studies at Duke?

Yes, this was my freshman year.

Gotcha. What year was that, by the way?

That was 2017.

Okay. I was actually at Duke in 2004 doing a sports medicine internship down there.

Oh, cool. Very cool.

Yeah. Okay. So you had these duodenal issues in the GI bleed and what happened from there after that?

I figured I was like, really? Okay, I have to take my health seriously now. You're in high school, you don't. It doesn't matter. So I started trying to focus on eating healthier. At that point I was pretty skinny. I kind of just wanted. I was 6:2 at that point and like around £150. So I was really skinny and, you know, so I focused more on trying to put on some muscle and be healthier in general. And that's when I turned to triathlon. I figured it was a good, you know, well rounded sport. Right. You know, you get basically full body workout all the time. And so packed on 25 pounds of muscle fairly easily looked great.

Just doing triathlon?

Yeah, just doing triathlon, eating healthier and more and more meat and that sort of thing. But, you know, on the outside I looked very healthy and I was very fit. And like you said, like, I had some great PRs, I could run very fast, I could train, handle a lot of like a large load of training, and it was really fun. Right. So. But still I had this lingering sense of I just didn't feel great about a whole lot of stuff. And then it kind of led into what would have been my sophomore year. I actually ended up taking it off of college. That's how I finished in three years Because I took off my sophomore year and then returned for my junior and senior year. I had to leave college because I just didn't feel good at all. It was really. It was hard to put my finger on something at the time, which was why I was so relieved that when I was home, I went in for a blood test, just a standard routine blood test at my general practitioner. And he noted something in my white blood cell count that kind of alerted him. And so he said, I'm going to send you to a specialist, and we're going to get some really comprehensive tests done and check this out. It's like, all right. So I went to a hematologist oncologist in northern Virginia, near D.C. and he did a complete hormone analysis and a much more detailed blood analysis, and he looked at it all, and he was like, this is really interesting. It looks like you. I would be willing to bet you have a brain tumor. I was like, you know, first I was like, wow, okay. But secondly, I was actually kind of relieved to hear that because at this point, I just wasn't feeling good, and I didn't know why. Right. So at least there was some sort of a substantial. Like, a reason. So. And that. That's actually a bit of a relief. And luckily, it wasn't cancerous, so that was good. But it seemed to be. He was gonna. He was guessing it was in the pituitary gland at this point. This was before I had the mri and they confirmed that it was in the pituitary gland, but it was blocking the secretion of a lot of very important hormones into my body, because the HPA axis is the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis, and that's kind of the main route for your endocrine system to communicate with your brain. And that was being basically stopped, you know, for. For lack of a better term, kind of like a rock sitting in a funnel. The tumor was. Was sitting there in the pituitary gland. Wow. And blocking this stuff.

That's just a. That pituitary gland just kind of sends out the signal for lots of different hormones, right?

Exactly. Exactly. So. And one of the biggest ones was testosterone. And my testosterone at that point was just ridiculously low. I mean, I think it was like 11 or 12 units. It was, like, crazy. Basically zero. And, you know, for reference, the average male testosterone levels are probably around. It's, like, between 300 and, like, 1100 units. So. And that number varies, I guess, depending on where you get your source, but it's roughly in that range so it was incredibly low, basically.

Now, I gotta ask you, because you were a student in neuroscience and you obviously know a lot about neurobiology. I noticed that you wrote a blog post about this, and you said that you didn't know whether this was a. Or, you know, if this was a chicken and egg problem, whether or not epigenetic expression could have played a role in the appearance of this tumor, or whether the tumor was actually causing a lot of the problems which came first, the tumor or a lot of the issues that precipitated it. Why do you think that?

Yeah, I guess I think that because I had those issues for the year and a half, and one of them was that severe medical issue leading up to the discovery of the tumor. So there wasn't really any way for us to measure. And I wish I could have been like a lab rat just laying on the table for that couple years, and we could have looked at it. And that's kind of my geeky nature. But the fact of the matter is, there was really no way to measure what actually caused what. Brain tumors can come about through epigenetic expression in that they can be influenced by your environment. Like, the cells can proliferate because of environmental influences.

Have you found in your research, like, certain environmental influences can cause those kind of issues?

I'd have to say I haven't done personal research on testing stuff, but just through reading, I would have to say anything traumatic as well as. Basically because it offers up so much stress to your system, can just greatly influence everything. And, you know, in my case, it was a lot of, I think, over training, plus the GI bleed. You know, I was actually in the ICU for like a week during that period of time. So it was like a traumatic stress on my. On my entire system, including my brain. But, you know, there's really no way to measure it. And I really wish I could say that I knew for sure whether, you know, all those problems were caused by the brain tumor initially or just the brain tumor was caused by some other problems that. And then it didn't, like, perpetuated things and kind of propagated down the line, but I really have no idea. I can only just guess, you know.

Gotcha. So, you know, you talk about the testosterone levels being very, very low. And I know that, you know, we've had, for example, we had Kevin Moats recently on the podcast and an age grouper triathlete, and we talked about how age can cause low testosterone, you know, in young and healthy individuals. It's interesting that something like this like a brain tumor, you know, that, that was completely flying under the radar for you, was affecting your pituitary gland and causing low testosterone. But at that point, you know, once you found this out from the doctor, you kind of had a unique approach. What did you do?

Yeah, well, initially they wanted to put me on some medication and hormone replacement therapy, which was something I listened to that Kevin Moats podcast and that's really common nowadays. Especially nowadays with the pharmaceutical industry pushing it so hard. It's just like a testosterone gel kind of thing. So I was on that for a couple months the whole. But with the medicine and that causes its own issues. So my approach, I wanted to take it back to the basics. And since it wasn't a malignant tumor, it wasn't life threatening, and I'd been living with the problems for a while, I figured the risk was okay, right. So I decided to go off all the meds I was on. I was sick of popping pills, sick of putting on gel and all that stuff. I decided to just really dig in and try and figure out the optimal way that my body was supposed to exist in that hormonal balance. I wanted to really focus on reaching a hormonal balance. I was getting really into naturopathic stuff like osteopathy type approaches. Not to the point of drinking green juice and stuff all the time, but I wanted to just be very fundamental about it and take that approach and be patient with it. Because that was something a lot of people, including myself, really struggle with, is being patient and waiting. Because things that are really worthwhile aren't going to come right away. I wanted to take a long term approach to natural, sustainable health. One of the things that really helped for me was just trying to, and not go cold turkey, but just to try to steadily increase the percentage of the amount of whole natural foods that I was eating in my diet. And I also took a big approach of eating a lot of meat because there's just a lot of good stuff in it. Just from what I was reading, it seemed like it would be a great idea and if I'm trying to increase my hormone levels naturally. So I started eating a lot of meat. I started fasting actually, really before it was getting. This was about the time it was starting to get really popular, like intermittent fasting on the Internet. I was looking at it for other reasons and then I just started fumbling across the intermittent fasting stuff and I've been doing it now for quite a while and I really, again, I can't really measure, but I really would point to intermittent fasting as helping a lot in this whole process, because just through fasting, getting plenty of sleep, drinking a lot of water, eating almost all natural food diet, but also at the same time, taking a more balanced approach to diet instead of being neurotic and obsessive about it. If I wanted to have something that wasn't a natural food, I would just eat it and I wouldn't really care about it, and I would just move on and then focus on picking the best choice for me at that time. I think that approach also, because stress really plays a huge. It has a huge impact on your body as well and your hormone balance.

Yeah, absolutely.

The high levels of circulating cortisol, which is something that. I'll talk about this in a second, is that I really changed my training drastically too, because training for me was increasing the cortisol levels, but just mental stress can also increase those levels. But in terms of training, honestly, I just stopped training and I wanted to give my body a chance to really reset. That was another big step in being patient, because we know training can be very addicting and you just turn into a compulsion sometime. You just have to do it. But it felt really freeing and really good to try and find that balance by stopping training and then focusing on things that were healthier for me, like going on longer walks and really just getting out there and enjoying a long walk and then starting to do resistance exercises, which I steadily have gravitated now toward completely body weight. That's something I talk about a lot on my blog, is the fundamentals in that respect. And you can build a great physique with only your body weight. It's pretty good. But through all just those really simple steps, just over the course of a year and a half or two years after that, I just got my testosterone tested a couple months ago, and it was at 1200.

So now what about the tumor?

And the tumor is still there. Got an mri. It's still sitting there. It looks completely the same as it did.

Does that concern you at all? I mean, that it could continue to grow or. I mean, what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah. So we elected, two years back, I guess we elected to not do a surgical removal and. And just kind of monitor it every six to 12 months. The endocrinologist thought that was fine. That was a good idea because, you know, the risks with going in, you know, having an invasive surgery is they're pretty high. So, you know, we've just been monitoring it, and if it starts growing, then we're going to have to make that decision. But as long as it is staying the same size and it has been the same size, and as long as I'm feeling good, you know, I've never felt better in my life than I do right now. So as long as that stuff's, you know, all going okay, then I really see no reason to have any alarm over it or anything interesting.

Gotcha. So you, you found this out about your testosterone and, and how high you've been able to get it by kind of changing your entire training routine. What about people who are, you know, let's see. Me, for example, I'm signed up for, for Ironman Canada next year, and obviously I've got a whole kind of quality over quantity approach and try to avoid too much chronic training. But for people who are maybe not wanting to completely stop chronic endurance exercise, or people who maybe want to continue to do what they're doing while limiting the damage, while limiting cortisol, that type of thing, do you have tips? Do you have things that you found, have really worked in terms of, of what you've read about or experienced yourself or discovered in your neuroscience studies that may actually help in this kind of situation to control cortisol or increase testosterone?

Yeah, definitely. I've noticed actually with your approach, it's actually pretty good because you kind of take the fat adapted approach. And it reminds me a lot of Phil Maffetone, his kind of stuff.

Oh, yeah, he's been on the podcast before.

Oh, really? Yeah. That's, that's really cool.

He's got a book called the Big. What is the Big Book of Endurance Training? Endurance training, yeah. Yeah. And he obviously, I mean, you know, people hear that and they may shake their heads because they hear about this Mathetone approach that's like the aerobic approach where you're doing all, you know, all kind of aerobic training primarily. But the guy's approach goes way above and beyond that. And that's, that's actually a good book. I agree. The Big Book of Endurance Training in terms of some health concepts and his website, philmathetone.com, i think it is.

Yeah, I believe so.

Yes. Also a good read. So sorry to interrupt, but what were some of the strategies?

Yeah, I definitely, I think if you take what I did and then kind of apply it in an Ironman context or something. So I would focus on creating a clearer dichotomy between when you're going hard and when you're recovering. At the extreme ends of the spectrum, you're going Hard, you're sprinting completely all out. And then on the other end of the spectrum you're walking. If you can find a balance somewhere in between so that you're not constantly in the middle. Because I think that's really what will tend to wreak the greatest stress havocs on your system is just constantly training right in that middle ground, the middle heart rate levels, that sort of stuff. I think you'll see drastic improvements too if people are kind of stuck when they do make that dichotomy a little clearer. And when they go out for a jog, they're going out for a jog. But when they're going out for a hard workout, you know, they really go for it. So, you know, and I've seen that a lot too. When I was in Durham, there were a lot of Kenyan runners actually interestingly enough, because the Duke Forest is, you know, great training grounds. So we'd be running in the forest and you know, you come up on some Kenyan guys and they're literally just jogging like, you know, going 8:39 minute pace, you know, which to them that's like really jogging, like really slow. But then when you see them out on the Washington Duke trail, just hitting some intervals or something, those guys are flying. They go very hard, very hard. And so I think that approach is actually a little healthier.

Kind of not being like a one speed athlete.

Yeah, definitely. You know, change it up and it's just like, it'll help you like one, it'll help you activate those fast twitch fibers too when you're really giving it all on your sprints. But at the same time you're building your strength and your capacity to do more work as you take it easier on the longer runs and that sort of thing, you're still getting all the work in. It's just you're not wreaking as much havoc on your system due to stress. It's more of a rejuvenative exercise. Right? Yeah.

And so what type of other things do you have you found to help out when it comes to workout or nutrition strategies and decreasing cortisol or increasing testosterone.

In terms of nutrition? I definitely think, I personally love fatty meats and that sort of stuff and basing more becoming fat adapted. That whole idea is very, I think beneficial at least to explore for certain people because I've noticed such an increase in the quality of life basically. It might sound ridiculous, but you just feel better when you're fat adapted. It's hard to explain, but your well being is good. I definitely Think that will also help people reduce hunger? Because one thing I noticed is that that before when I was just like pounding carbs and just like training real hard and going like four to six hour a day kind of thing, I was just, you know, I was hungry all the time still. So how can you eat like 6,000 calories in a day and be starving? But I've noticed since I stopped doing that and started focusing on, like, eating more fat and really training my body to burn fat for fuel, you know, I can come back from a hard workout and I still work out hard sometimes, just not as often. And I'm really. I'm not like, starving, you know, I'm not ravenously hungry, like shoveling food down and, you know, completely negating that calorie deficit I just created that I think would be, like, very beneficial for some people to explore in their training.

Day of eating. Look like for you?

For me right now, it's. I eat twice a day, you know, lunch and dinner, each of which are probably about 1000-1200 calories. And I try and focus. Right now I'm focusing more on balance because I'm definitely not like one of those carbs are evil kind of guy. But I think you should just try to, you know, get quality carbs when you're eating them. So I kind of have a balanced approach. I'll go for good. I eat a lot of chipotle, for example, like burrito bowls kind of stuff with the guacamole and cheese and all that sort of stuff. It's probably my favorite meal. And I eat a lot of just chicken. And right now I'm a model, so I'm trying to keep that under wraps too, and get lean for the photo shoots when they come up. And that involves basically one thing I've found is keeping it really simple. Helps a lot if you choose four or five foods and you just eat those four or five foods for the week or two. For example, meat, peanut butter, oatmeal, simple stuff like that, potatoes. It really helps.

Have you found that that tends to be common within, like, the modeling community, People trying to get lean, doing things like skipping breakfast and eating just two meals a day. Or is your high fat approach a little bit different? You know, your high fat. No chronic cardio type of thing?

Yeah, I think it's a little different. I think, like, you know, I like to think of it as I'm approaching it in a pretty healthy manner. And my mindset is completely different from a lot of these other people, especially in the Modeling industry. It's very like starve yourself oriented or it can be in a lot of ways. Luckily for guys though, it's a little better because we're not completely expected to be ridiculously skinny. But I just tend to take the approach at this point. I've been intermittent fasting so long that I don't really even think of it like skipping breakfast. I just think of it as just what I do and I just have a cup of coffee. I really am not hungry until noon or one every day. So I just eat when I'm hungry. Basically it's pretty a balanced approach and it keeps the stress low. I don't have to think about food very much. It's good.

What about supplements? Do you use supplements at all?

Yeah, I try to keep. Since I kind of kicked the medicine thing. I also kicked a lot of supplements. But recently I've been using two just to just for the photo shoot stuff. So I use cla. I take a cla tablet or two at every meal. Supposed to help I guess mobilize fatty acids. And then sometimes I use this, the yohimbi in hcl. It's supposed to be really good for lower stomach stubborn fat.

Especially when yohim is also a popular supplement for pre sexual activity for sex drive.

Oh really? Okay. Yeah, I've noticed that it's kind of. It's definitely like a stimulant. It's acting. If you take it and then drink a couple cups of coffee, it's really not the best feeling in the world. So I kind of try and limit that one. But as for supplements, that's about it, honestly.

Nice. Interesting. Now as far as you know, if somebody were listening in and they kind of fall into your demographic, young man who wants to maximize testosterone. If you were going to give your top few tips to folks who are listening right now, what would be the tips that you would give?

I would say focus on, number one, focus on some sort of resistance training. Whether it's the approach that I take where you are doing bodyweight stuff or whether you're doing going to the gym and lifting weights or lifting weights at home or something like that. But I definitely would say to focus on compound movements and less on the isolation stuff with the resistance training because the compound stuff will get your, your entire body working with it. And in terms of body weight, body weight doesn't have to be boring. There's stuff like muscle ups are just incredible workout and they're very challenging. The benefit of stuff like that is it works your muscles deep. You make some really great neuromuscular adaptations. I definitely want to write a post on that stuff coming up here soon. But it just really gets your muscles very thick and strong and not necessarily bulky, but just very tight. The other way, definitely. The other recommendation, I would say make sure you get plenty of sleep, drink water and just keep things basic. Honestly, if you're not a vegetarian or vegan, eat meat and eat plenty of it. Eat eggs. Eggs are not going to kill you. They're not going to make your cholesterol go through the ceiling if you're not eating a ton of sugar with them, that sort of stuff. Just focus on the basics, don't overdo it too much and overthink it. It's pretty easy to know what's actually good for us. The hard part is actually just consistently implementing it and keeping it simple will help you make your lifestyle changes sustainable because they're not really mixing. Not so difficult.

Right, Gotcha. All right, well, your website URL is nogim.net and I assume that you named it nogym.net to indicate that you can really optimize your hormones by perhaps not getting into the grind of the daily visit to the gym.

Right, exactly.

Yeah, gotcha. And we'll put a link to that in the show notes too for folks. And his name is Christopher Walker. Very interesting story, especially on the pituitary gland, the testosterone and how you kind of dealt with this by altering your lifestyle and your activity levels and your diet rather than going the traditional medicine route. So, Chris, thanks for sharing your story today.

Oh yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me. I'm really glad I could.

Alright, folks, this is Chris and Ben signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.