Q&A: Folic Acid, MTHFR, Vitamin D3 & Testosterone | TUH #299

Every week, thousands of you leave questions in the comments, and after reading through all of them, I noticed something. The same questions keep coming up over and over again. So today I'm not bringing on a guest. Today it's just me and you, and this is the episode where I finally sit down and answer the questions you've been asking me most. Is Gary on TRT? What does he take every day? Yes, I am on hormone replacement therapy, and the reason why we call it hormone replacement therapy is because— How do I lose weight? Does 30-30-30 actually work? Yes. What is 30-30-30? It is. I'm outside the US. How do I get tests and find a doctor just like you? Well, remember, I'm not a doctor. I'm a human biologist. But the most important website for you if you are outside the US is. Which diet should I follow? What does Gary eat? There is no evidence that dogmatic dieting extends life. So the answer to a long life is not carnivore, keto, paleo, pescatarian, vegan, vegetarian, raw food. The answer to extending life is the Ultimate Human. Every week, thousands of you leave questions in the comments, and after reading through all of them, I noticed something. The same questions keep coming up over and over again. So today I'm not bringing on a guest. Today it's just me and you. Welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I'm your host, human biologist and founder of the Ultimate Human, Gary Brecka. And this is the episode where I finally sit down and answer the Questions you've been asking me most. No filler, no fluff, just straight answers to the 12 questions I get more than any others. From, is this guy even a real doctor? To what I actually eat in a day, to how to fix your own health when your doctor won't. So we're gonna go through all of it. So let's get into it, and let's start with the one a lot of you are clearly wanting to ask first. So question number 1, is Gary even a real doctor, or is he legit? Number 1, and I love that this is number 1 because it's the elephant in the room. A lot of you wanna know Who is this guy? What are his credentials? And is he actually legit, or is he just another voice on the internet? So let me answer that one head-on. My undergraduate degrees are in biology. My postgraduate degrees are in human biology. So I do have a lot of experience with humans and human beings and biology. Also, I was a mortality expert for 22 years for large life insurance, which meant if we got 10 years of medical records on you and 10 years of demographic data, We had a model where we could tell insurance companies how long you had to live to the month. And this was based on big data. I read medical records for a living. So while I'm not a physician, and I have all of the respect in the world for people who are, I'm not licensed to practice medicine or give medical advice. I do have a voluminous amount of experience in reading medical records and seeing what worked and didn't work over a long period of time, to be exact, about 20 years. And what I've done is I've imported that knowledge into very practical things like, what are the best supplements for you? What are the things that are keeping people from living longer, healthier, happier lives? I'll tell you right now, the vast majority of that is dietary and lifestyle changes. And so I try to bring a new perspective, taking the ultra-complicated and making it simple. Because I've had so many years of experience in human biology, anatomy, physiology, very often concepts go over people's head because a lot of influencers out there are trying to impress you with how smart they are. And I'm trying to impress you with things that you can do that are practical, that could change the trajectory of your life. The second question is, is Gary on TRT? What does he take every day? Yes, I am on hormone replacement therapy. And the reason why we call it hormone replacement therapy is because there's 2 types of issues that happen in men. One is called primary hypogonadism. This is where your testicles have an issue making testosterone. And that is the version that I have. Some people have secondary hypogonadism. This is where you actually turn down the signal to the testicles so they lower their production of hormones. I am a huge fan of hormone replacement therapy if done right and if done when needed. Very often, younger males and younger females are put on hormone therapy too early. I'm 55 years old. I'll be 56 in a month. I am a perfect candidate for hormone replacement therapy. I followed the guidelines in the 2018 Journal of American Urology, where they updated all of their clinical guidelines on hormone therapy. Remember, there are 10,000 receptors in the heart alone for testosterone. So being deficient in testosterone is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, not the other way around. I also made sure I went deep down the rabbit hole of the research. Does being on hormone therapy increase your risk of prostate cancer? No. Does it exacerbate prostate cancer? No. Does it increase your risk of cardiovascular disease? Absolutely not. It reduces your risk of cardiovascular disease. So yes, I am on hormone replacement therapy. I take 200 milligrams of testosterone. It's a blend of cypionate and propionate, which is called an ultra testosterone. And I split it into 2 injections twice a week, one on Monday and one on Thursday. Which diet should I follow? What does Gary eat? So let's clear the deck on diet. There is no evidence that dogmatic dieting extends life. So the answer to a long life is not carnivore, keto, paleo, pescatarian, vegan, vegetarian, raw food. The answer to extending life is the absence of processed foods. You don't go to any areas of the world where you have extended lifespan and find the presence of processed foods. They are also not dogmatic dieting. They are not eating hardcore carnivore, hardcore paleo, hardcore keto, hardcore pescatarian, hardcore vegan, hardcore vegetarian. I'm not saying that any of those diets can't work. I'm saying overall, the evidence supports eating a whole food diet, a well-rounded whole food diet. If you start picking apart regions of the world, you'll find areas where there's extraordinarily high carbohydrate consumption, very long life expectancies, high meat consumption, very long life expectancies. The Mediterranean is very high in fatty fish and fatty oils. In some cases, a full liter of olive oil per person per week And if you told that to your cardiologist, they would absolutely freak out. So I, I eat a whole food diet. I eat a lot of whole eggs. I eat grass-fed meats, pasture-raised eggs, free-range chicken. I eat a lot of vegetables. I sauté them in grass-fed butter and will sometimes add olive oil to my meals. I eat a lot of slow-burn carbs. So things like sweet potatoes, brown rice, sourdough bread. So whole foods, that's the secret. What is Gary's morning routine? What's in his morning drink? I put the same thing in my morning drink every single day, and I never ever miss. And I'll give you the rationale behind this. So very often we are not just protein deficient, we are amino acid deficient. So I make a drink in the morning in about 10 ounces of water. I put a scoop of something called Perfect Aminos, which is all 9 of the essential amino acids. Remember, amino acids are not proteins. They are the building blocks of proteins. So you can build all kinds of structures in the human body from essential amino acids. You can build muscle. You can build ligaments, tendons, connective tissue. We make natural killer cells, our immune defense cells, with amino acids. But it's very important that they are complete amino acids, meaning all 9 of the essential amino acids. Essential means that our body can't make them on our own. We have to get them from diet or supplementation. So I take a scoop of something called Perfect Amino. I take 2 hydrogen water tablets, which are called H2Tab. I drop those into water. Those will effervesce into 13 parts per million hydrogen gas. You've heard me talk about this before. You can look at the research yourself. I think the discovery of the role of hydrogen gas in the human body may be the greatest discovery of our millennia. Delayed onset muscle soreness, inflammation, acting as a selective antioxidant, not just over-suppressing oxidation, but restoring something called redox homeostasis in wound and tissue repair, In skin. If you look at the research on eczema, psoriasis, you can actually apply hydrogen topically to the skin as well. So I take Perfect Aminos, I take 2 hydrogen tablets, and I always take all 91 of the essential minerals, and I take something called Baja Gold Sea Salt. So I take a mineral salt, hydrogen tablet, and all 9 of the essential amino acids every single morning without failure, whether I'm traveling or not, or whether I'm home or on the road. That is my morning stack. Okay, so question number 5, how do I water fast? So speaking of protocols, a lot of you want to go deeper and ask about fasting, specifically the water fast. How long? Can you train? How do you break it? Now, I could spend the next 20 minutes on this subject alone, but I've actually already done that for you. If you're watching this on YouTube, click the video right here. That's my full 3-day water fast playlist, and you can follow along with me start to finish. Everything you need is in there. So let's keep moving. Question number six: I have the MTHFR gene mutation. Now what? Okay, the MTHFR gene mutation is the most common gene mutation in the world. About 46% of the population has this, so don't panic if you do. You just want to supplement with something called methylfolate. MTHFR stands for methylene tetrahydrofolate reductase. It's a fancy way of saying your body has impaired folic acid or folate metabolism. And why is that important? Because in the human body, we rarely use compounds based on how they enter the human body. We refine them into the usable form. This gene, which is one of the most common in the world, refines folate and folic acid into the form that your body can use. Now, if you cannot refine the most prevalent nutrient in the human diet, what does that cause? It causes a deficiency. What do you see in people that have MTHFR? Increased incidence of anxiety, increased incidence of ADD and ADHD, increased incidence of miscarriage. And why is this? Because the deficiency in methylfolate affects so many systems in the body. One of my favorite things to do is to show people that they're not broken, they're just deficient. So it's an easy gene mutation to fix, one of the worst to have, one of the easiest to fix. I've done tons of content on this, but if you have the MTHFR gene mutation, I'm going to link to it. Especially if you're a female, you do not want to be taking folic acid. You want to be supplementing with something called methylfolate. If you're in the pregnancy phase, you want to be taking a methylated prenatal vitamin. So you hear me talk about supplements and nutrition all the time. If you have that gene mutation or you suspect that you do, methylated vitamins are the best source of nutrition for you. Question number 7, how much vitamin D3 and what level do I target? So vitamin D3, if you look at it on a lab, it goes from 30 nanograms per deciliter to 100 nanograms per deciliter. You're considered okay if you're over 30. Well, 30 is clinically deficient. 100 is where you're at the clinical maximum. All of the research suggests that between 60 and 80 nanograms per deciliter is the sweet spot. In fact, there's hordes of evidence that this level reduces breast cancer risk in females. So how do you know if you're getting 60 to 80 nanograms of vitamin D3? You want to be taking a minimum of 5,000 IUs per day. And you always want to pair it with something called vitamin K2. Why? Because vitamin D3 is a calcium transport molecule, and it can deposit calcium into the arterial wall, or it can deposit it into the bones. Vitamin K2 determines where that calcium goes, and it will make sure it makes it to your bone and stays out of your arterial wall. So as a general guideline, 5,000 IUs of vitamin D3 per day minimum, even if you're getting adequate sunlight. Question number eight: Folate versus folic acid. My doctor prescribed folic acid. This is super common. So let me just tell you what folic acid is and what it's not. Folic acid is an entirely man-made compound. It's an entirely synthetic compound. It didn't even exist until we synthesized it in a laboratory in 1943. In 1993, the U.S. federal government decided that we needed to spray this on our entire grain supply. So all breads. Cereals, flour, pasta, grains of any kind are sprayed with the chemical folic acid. You will never convince me that a nutrient that we did not even compound in a lab until the 1940s is somehow essential for a healthy pregnancy or necessary for a healthy lifestyle. It's not. Folate occurs naturally in nature. Folic acid does not. So if you're going to supplement For folate, the best way to supplement is with something called methylfolate or 5-MTHF. Breathwork. How many breaths? How long? The holds? When? And one of the most powerful tools for exactly what we just talked about is completely free. It's your own breath, and it's the only way to access your autonomic nervous system. Remember, right now while you're watching this episode, your heart's still beating, you're still respiring, you're still breathing, and you're not thinking about anything. You're not thinking about any of it. The reason for that is you have an autonomic nervous system that keeps all of these systems running in the background. So one way that we can access this autonomic nervous system is through breath. This nervous system exists in 2 states. One we call the sympathetic state. That is a state of fight or flight. When you are highly alert and aware, your heart rate is rapid, anxiety is tied to the state of the nervous system. And then we have the parasympathetic state. The parasympathetic state is a state of rest and digest. Very often when you look at statistics like autoimmune disease and you see that 85% of all autoimmune disease is found in females, you go, is autoimmune disease selected by sex? No, it's selected by weakness. Women very often do not feel safe in their own bodies. Their nervous system is trapped in a sympathetic state. So how can we shift this state? One of the greatest ways to shift this state is through breathwork. You can use breathwork to wake up. Mm-hmm. And you can use breathwork to go to bed. So let me give you an actual breathwork protocol. Let me give you the one that I use first thing in the morning. Within 30 minutes of waking, I am outside doing a Wim Hof style of breathwork. Start with 3 rounds of 5 obnoxiously deep breaths with a prolonged breath hold in between. So 3 obnoxiously deep breaths in through your nose or your mouth. Don't worry about how you get the air in, just get the air in obnoxiously deep. 3. Pause and out through a straw. 3 rounds of 5 breaths with an extended breath hold in between. If you do that for 7 days, it will become your new drug of choice and you will never miss another morning breathwork session after that. At night, when you're trying to access the autonomic nervous system and calm it down, the secret is long, slow exhales. Long sighs, often called a physiological sigh, have been proven To tap into the autonomic nervous system and shift it into a state of parasympathetic, which is rest and digest. Those breaths might look something like this. I put an eye mask on, I'm in a dark room, I'm in a cold room, I'm under my covers, I'm not looking at the phone, 6 feet from my head, I'm relaxed. I'll take a long, slow inhale through my nose, pause, and go out through a very, very small imaginary straw, an extended long exhale. Exhale. The longer the exhale, the more impact on relaxation that breath has. Use one to wake up, use another one to go to bed. This is called bookending your sleep. It's portable, it's free, you can take it anywhere, and it really works. Question 10, how do I lose weight? Um, eat less, move more. How do I lose weight? Does 30-30-30 actually work? Yes. What is 30-30-30? It is 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking, followed by 30 minutes of steady-state cardiovascular exercise. Very often we do too high of an intensity of cardiovascular exercise without eating, and so we begin to tap our own lean muscle reserves and we leave fat alone. Here's a hard thing for people to understand. Fat is burned at rest, and it is burned in low cardiovascular states. Fat is a very inefficient energy source, so we don't just get to tap it by choice, we get to tap it through our physiology. So if you do 30 grams of protein, or the equivalent of 30 grams of protein in amino acids, within 30 minutes of waking, and you follow that with 30 minutes of steady-state cardio, what is that? That's cardiovascular exercise where you're walking on a treadmill. For me, That's a 5-degree incline at a 3.5-mile-an-hour pace. You should be able to hold a conversation, watch an iPad, listen to a podcast, watch a video or a show. It is not panting and high-intensity exercise. It's steady-state cardiovascular exercise. Try that for 20 days in a row and you will see the pounds come off. So question number 11, I'm outside the US. How do I get tests and find a doctor just like you? Well, remember, I'm not a doctor, I'm a human biologist, but the most important website for you if you are outside the US is theultimatehumanwellness.com. That's theultimatehumanwellness.com. You can order my genetic tests and all of my supplements if you're outside the US right at that website. We will send the gene test right to your front door. Those results will come back to your email, and then the supplements can be sent right back to your front door. It's how we get these protocols, this testing, and this way of thinking Right into your hands, no matter where you are in the world. So if you've been asking, how do I actually start? That's your answer. Go to theultimatehumanwellness.com. And that's the list. Those are the 11 questions I get asked more than any other question. And now you've got the answers straight from me. Here's what I want you to do. Pick one, just one. Don't try to overhaul your entire life overnight. Take one single thing from this episode and put it into action this week. This is how every transformation actually starts. One decision, and keep the questions coming. I do read your comments. That's literally how this episode got made. So if there's something I didn't cover, drop it below. It might be just the reason we need to do this again. If you want to go deeper for the full protocols, the live calls, the science behind every one of these answers, and the discounts on the tools I actually use, come join us at the VIP community. This is where the real work happens. Until next time, small change, big results. And that's just science.