Why Zane Griggs Believes Extreme Biohacking Fails You

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Thank you, JJ. Yeah, I am well beyond 40, and, uh, I am too.

And biggest thing I've noticed is that as I get older, older gets older.

It does get older.

Yes.

We keep pushing it out.

You know, the whole like middle age, I'm like, wait a minute, I think I'm on the edge of, I was like, uh-uh, that like, if we're thinking we're gonna live until 120, right? Middle age then is 40 to 80.

That's true.

There you go.

I like that.

Right?

Okay.

Let's go with that. You, my friend, have been ruffling a lot of feathers in the social media world.

Yes.

And we are gonna be getting into that today. I thought it'd be really fun to talk about, you know, couples and talk about, you know, how a woman can get her husband on board, what to do with these high-performance guys who overdo everything. Lots of stuff to talk about, but let's talk first about the person who seems to be doing everything right. And of course, I'm gonna say everything right, because quite often as we look at it, we're like, you're doing what? But their body just seems to be breaking down. What does that look like? Like when someone's doing everything right and they're just— it's just not working?

Well, with, with a lot of my clients, people do everything right. They're, they're often very high performers. They're driven with their career, and then so they kind of hit their health and fitness the same way, with a hammer, right? And so they're going, going, you know, with— they want to pull all the stress levers, and they already have a lot of stress in their life between career, if they have a family, and then they wanna pull all the hardest stress levels with exercise, restrictive diets, whether it's drastically cutting calories.

Go hard or go home, right?

Right. Fasting, super low carb, and rev up all of their exercise routine. And you could just see it heading towards, I mean, eventual crash, but they want fast results, right? And it's a little bit like maybe our body's responded to that at 20, 25, possibly 30, when you get past 40, that stress response has to be managed. And it can— that's what comes back and gets them, is actually the body responding to stress and hormonal stress.

I was definitely that person in my 20s, my 30s, my 40s. I definitely now, like, lean way into recovery. Do you see it differently? Like, does it— is this an equal male and female issue, or do men tend to go at it more, or what?

That's a great question. I think men have a tendency to do that, but I'm seeing more and more women do it. I think just as part of like a cultural shift, and I think women tend to be more sensitive to these stress hormones and these changes and things. So what I'm happy to see is that there are some people saying, hey, maybe, maybe as women we don't need to try to do the exact same things the way men do. I would say we all need to take a step back and look at it, but I, I do see, uh, more and more women gravitating to these kind of high-stress lovers.

It strikes me that this is kind of like a new, a new burnout, but it's just disguised as discipline or biohacking. Yeah, but, and, and here's the thing, okay, we're gonna step right into this, and I know we're gonna upset some people with this, but I'm watching what's going on with the biohacking health optimization movement And I think that we are missing the point. Recently, we were in Arizona and we were out to dinner and they kept messing up our orders. And finally they were like, listen, we— it was one of the top restaurants in Arizona. And they go, we have a pastry chef and the pastry chef makes a special cake every night. We call it Cake-spiration. And so we'd love to give you Cake-spiration. And Tim and I are like, Great. You know, Cake Spiration was like this massive— if you've ever seen the Claim Jumper cake, you know, the 7-layer thing, and it happened to have an espresso bean layer and a tiramisu layer. It was insane. And I'm still dreaming of Cake Spiration, but the old me would not have touched Cake Spiration. And what I see right now is so much rigidity in the morning routines, and I'm like going, oh my gosh, where's the joy in all this?

I would agree with you. And I was also in that place with low carb for 20 years, intermittent fasting on top of low carb, fasted workouts for like 8 or 10.

Wow.

So I was burning out with it and it's like my numbers were off. I was looking at my labs like, what's going on here? Why is this? And I thought I was doing everything right. I thought I was leveraging these stressors for improvement. What I didn't realize is I was burning myself out. I wasn't allowing for recovery until it was really impacting my body, my sleep. How I felt. And I had to kind of hit a wall to realize it and take a step back and go, what have I been doing? Now I kick myself.

Yeah, I know.

But it took a little bit of age catching up with me and, um, and asking some questions, trying to be curious, you know, and some humility, and really having to backpedal on some of the things I'd recommended to people. So I mean, it was really a place of humility and like, okay, what— where do I look now? Um, but I 100%— so I'm empathetic to these people looking for answers, and I appreciate the energy in that direction. But yes, it's kind of like, you know, we're familiar with the term orthorexia from way back in the '80s and '90s. And, you know, you can— if you teach a person to work out, they'll work out for a day. If you give them orthorexia, they'll work out for a lifetime, right? So it's that overcompensation for— I think, and many times a lot of these things that they're overcompensating for, just like, let's— simple diet, exercise, and recovery. And balance those and knowing that these extra little things are like, should only make up about 5 or 10% of the icing on the cake, so to speak. But there's also a place for living. Yeah. It's like, how do we live and engage with our families and not make ourselves so— ostracize ourselves away from life where our family's like, what's up with you?

Yeah, wow. It's like, I still remember like what I wouldn't touch at the table as if it was a badge of honor. And is skipping things because I had to get that other workout in. And what's wild about all of it is I'm in better shape now having cakespiration periodically, not every night, but, you know, and missing the workout. I'm in better shape than I was back then when I was like driven and disciplined and doing everything perfectly.

My wife will tell you I'm a lot less grumpy.

Yeah, you're probably a lot more fun too. But how do we help someone before they get to that point? Were there things that, like, if someone comes to you now, can you see it in their labs or their, you know, how could you tell so they don't have to end up where you and I both ended up?

Yeah, so that's a great question because it's not always the same for everybody. But what tends to happen with a high stress environment, pulling all those levers, it— some, for some people you can see elevated blood sugar where their blood sugar is just a little bit out of range, even to the point that A1C starts creeping up. Some thyroid dysfunction, which may— maybe their ranges aren't completely clinically off. They might be a little bit not functionally dialed in, but it's more about the symptoms with thyroid, I think, more so than the numbers. If the numbers are off, it's, it's obvious, but sometimes it's how are they feeling— low energy, sleep disruptions. Um, the primary hormone I found as I was digging through all that that's elevating the blood sugar and causing a lot of these problems is a stress hormone that we don't talk about. We hear a lot about cortisol, but there's also one— the initial stress hormone is glucagon. And at a low level, it gets us between meals by telling our liver to release some blood sugar. But when we keep over-cranking that stress, underfeeding, over, over-exercising, or, um, it can impact not just sleep, but it can suppress insulin's action and actually raise blood sugar, tell the liver to keep spitting out blood sugar.. And we could have low insulin, low fasting insulin, but have high blood sugar because it's trying to compensate from a stress standpoint for a lack of fuel, for underfueling or overtraining. And so I've started adding glucagon to the— when I make lab requests.

Oh, that's very interesting. I never thought of doing that.

Yeah. And so I really had to dig because there's not a lot— I don't know too many people doing it, but it's there's not a lot of, um, data on it unless you start looking at like research papers and where you start comparing, even going back 30, 40, 50 years, comparing glucagon levels with diabetics. Because diabetics have high glucagon levels. People with fatty liver, metabolic disease, are going to have high glucagon levels. But so do people on a very strict long-term ketogenic or carnivore diet. And so it's a similar— but they— but the difference is, where's insulin? You know, on diabetes, insulin's high. Carnivore keto, insulin's gonna be low, but the same stress response. And so that stress response impacts, again, blood sugar, baseline blood sugar, glucose tolerance. So if they eat something, maybe they're on low carb and they eat something just small, maybe it's 10 or 12 grams of glucose, but their blood sugar shoots through the roof. That a normal person—

But they've also destroyed, I mean, I think the thing people don't realize if you're, and I love to dig into carnivore keto, but chronically low-carb keto, you actually wreck your metabolic flexibility and your body doesn't know how to handle carbs.

That's exactly what it is. This is the, this is the root cause. This is like at the root of it. Your hormone, your stress response starts with hormones. You're not making enough or efficient, efficiently making ATP. In digging through all this, figuring out my issues with the low carb and the fasting and the people coming from keto who I know who have elevated blood sugar, they're not sure why. And the remedy has been, let's add carbs in. Well, why does that work? Because it lowers glucagon, alleviates that stress of having to create glucose. You're bringing glucose back in.

Yeah.

And so that's where it's kind of made— sent me through a few rabbit holes. That's where I started adding that to the lab work, because cortisol sometimes is hard to track. You get, you get some, some daily fluctuations throughout the day, but the glucagon tends to remain pretty high if it's someone in a stressed state.

This is fascinating. I've never thought of looking at this. I would— the first time I realized the whole stress issue was when I started to see higher fasting blood sugars with low fasting insulin and good triglycerides. So a triglyceride of like 50 to 75, and I'm like, what's going on? How could this be? And that was how I would look at it.

It's the glucagon. Yeah, wow. So our stress hormones are released sort of in an order. It's not exactly like this, but I think of it like a stair step. It begins with glucagon, then adrenaline, and cortisol. So before you get to cortisol, the glucagon and the adrenaline start to elevate. And this can happen— this could be a good thing, like short-term. You have a family member in the hospital, you're stressed out, you don't feel like eating, it kicks in to give you some energy. Or you're about to speak in front of an audience and you're nervous, and it kicks in, gives you energy. So short-term, acute, it's a great backup mechanism. Chronically though, once it becomes chronically elevated because you're living in this underfueled or highly stressed— not emotional stress, but hormonally stressed state, energy stressed— low ATP production, your body has predictable stress response to release more fuel to make more ATP. Funny, we see the same thing in diabetics where they have the— they have an impaired ATP production. They tend to have low thyroid as well, low energy, and high stress hormones elevated. So it's very similar profile, it's just with a change in the insulin. But it's telling because it tells me that the root cause of all of these diseases we're seeing, metabolic disease, starts with ATP. And then what we're seeing is all these different diseases like diabetes, depression, dementia, heart disease, cancer— they come back to that root of low ATP production or inefficient ATP production, a release of the stress response, and then how all of these organs or tissues are responding and expressing the damage from that stress response. So we see a variety of diseases. But in a healthy person, it looks like a little elevated blood sugar and maybe there's sleep disturbances.

So this would be the beginning.

This is the root.

Yeah, it's beginning. Yeah, because I know you've gotten in a little kerfuffle with some of the low-carby keto carnivore people.

Well, I was seeing these symptoms, and what caused— what kind of made me kind of respond was that there were people coming there, these coaches coming from, um, the keto carnivore coaches coming in basically invalidating their experience. They're saying, you must be doing it wrong, you just need to keto harder, keto more, keto harder, harder, harder, add more fat, add more fat, was their response. You must be doing something, or you must be either drinking alcohol, letting in artificial sweeteners, or eating dairy. You must be doing something wrong. And I had to jump and say, no, this is exactly the textbook response to long-term low-calorie and low-carb diets that we see with things like REDS, Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport, or just— I mean, this is, this is not unusual. This is fairly textbook. It's documented. They're having a real experience and you're invalidating them. That's kind of what got under my skin because I see it all the time.

Yeah.

Our friend Brad Kearns, who wrote Keto Diet Revolution with Mark Sisson back in 2017, on the keto diet was waking up to blood sugar of 120 mil— his fasting blood sugar was 120 mg/dL, which is diabetic.

Wow.

And Brad's an incredible athlete.

Yeah.

As you know. So why? It, it like, what's going on here? You know, and that, that was the stress of the keto diet that built with a very lean, active person who is not getting sufficient blood sugar. So his body's overproducing and then suppressing insulin. So insulin's not moving that into tissues because it's saving it for his brain. And so it's, it's a, it's, it's a metabolic adaptation, but elevated blood sugar is still gonna cause damage no matter what the driver is. Elevated, sustained elevated baseline blood sugar is still gonna create glycation problems.

Oh yeah. And it doesn't take much. 90.

I think so.

I mean, 90, 90. That's what the research shows. 90. If your blood sugar, fasting blood sugar is 90, 5x the risk of dementia.

And yet many of them are beginning to justify these numbers like, oh, it's okay. It's just an adaptation. I'm on a superior diet. That— those numbers, those ranges are just for the normal population who eat carbs. But I have a high-performance machine here who's— that's eating keto and carnivore. So my elevated blood sugar is just a normal adaptation to a superior— with my superior diet. It's that level of ego.

Yeah, gosh, it's— in our industry, it's been— I mean, I was telling you before we started, you know, starting in the world of exercise science, there was the feuds between— and all of my graduate work, everyone else was doing cardio research because that was what was funded and I was doing strength research and I was the black sheep. But there was the big wars between the yoga, cardio, long-distance running, and resistance training. It was just ridiculous. I was like, I think we need them all. Like, you know, pretty sure.

Why is this a battle?

You know, and I think diets are tools and there's a short-term application for keto. Gosh, my son had a brain injury. You better believe I had him on keto for that.

Yes.

But, you know, unless you're epileptic, I don't know why you'd want to be on it for long term. And then carnivore seems to me to be a really good elimination diet for the short term, but I do not understand the staying on this long-term thing for your gut microbiome. I've got a buddy who's been on forever, and he's like, you know, my— I'm like, could we do a gut test? Let's just do a gut test. Like, maybe everything will be fine. I doubt it.

You're starving out the very bacteria that are so intrinsic to our immune system, to the gut lining being healthy, which is all— healthy gut lining is directly connected to all forms of metabolic disease and brain health, heart health, metabolic. I mean, those polyphenols and these starches and fibers that are in these plant foods feed the gut bugs that make the butyrate that line our gut and give us a healthy gut. And if we don't have a healthy gut, we're leaking endotoxin into our system, which is basically a toxin that will impact our mitochondria.

I know, and there was some, like someone just pinged me on social 'cause I was saying, have slightly green bananas. Those are a great thing to use in a smoothie. And you're like, oh God, Georgi Dinkov.

Oh yeah.

Apparently said, if you eat green bananas, they will create LPS endotoxins in your gut. I'm like, oh my goodness.

Wow.

Yes, I was like, that's a leap. That's a big leap. It is a huge leap. But the reality is, We are omnivores. And what's so funny is when you look at all the diet research, you can eat high carb, low fat. You can eat high fat, low carb. You can eat, you know, don't eat high carb, high fat. That's a big mess. That tends to be the big problem.

But that's where you start gaining weight.

I don't know how you eat high, high anyway. One's got to go high. One was, you know, but our bodies are very adaptable to all of these things.

Right. I like to toggle them. I mean, I would, and I wouldn't say bring a client in and because not all clients have the schedule and the wherewithals. Many times you got to put on training wheels and create structure, but I'm at the point where I like to play with these a little bit and toggle higher carb days and lower carb days. And carb cycling has been a part of fitness and even the bodybuilding world for, for a long time. And I think it has a lot of benefits to talk to shifting gears on our metabolism. But quality, I think, is probably the first place I start with. Like, right, get rid of the ultra-processed food and stick to some whole food and go from there. Let's build a foundation on whole food and then see what's working there. Like fruit, you know, starches, vegetables, good cuts of meat, you know, not hot dogs, obviously. Let's go back to what would ancestral food, what did food look like 150 years ago? Let's start on that foundation.

Gosh, even 50 years ago, things have changed so dramatically. It's wild. So these extremes that people tend to go on, whether it's, you know, extremes with training or extremes with diet, is it, universal problem? Do men tend to do it more? What do you think?

Men do it more because it's that— especially if they were an athlete before, they kind of go back to like, what used to work for me.

Yeah. And do you think they're more tolerant too? Like, I, I've always felt like women are more sensitive to stress than men are.

Agreed. By design.

Yeah.

Especially in—

yeah, because we have reproductive years, have babies.

So human— yeah, you can eat those— all those hormones in balance. But I still think, especially for people over 40, I don't think it's a good idea. I think anything like that should be acute and controlled, and we need to be paying attention to our body's responding. And if it starts disrupting your sleep, you're waking up in the middle of the night because— tie that back to, well, are you fasting a lot? Are you underfueling? Because that's when our body starts making up for these things.

Well, where do you see— I've never been a good faster. You want to be in an unpleasant situation with me, get me hungry and cold, and then if I have to pee, we're done. A big problem.

Might be my wife.

You know? But I've never, and for a while there, I was like, you know, I'm gonna give this, I always like to try everything. And I was like, I'll try just pushing my breakfast till after I come back from the gym. I normally go to the gym around 9:00. So I was having breakfast 10:00, 11:00. And my workouts suffered dramatically. Yeah. Like dramatically. And it also just, I did not enjoy my mornings. I like to get up, have coffee, you know? Eat breakfast like 90 minutes later. And I was like, this I don't like, this makes me unhappy.

When we're eating our larger meals, I think that should really bookmark our workout. I mean, when you're most active or have the most intense activity, especially strength training, those type 2 muscles that we're trying to target, they're very glycolytic. They don't have a lot of mitochondria. They're not, they're not there to burn fat. You are there to use glucose to stimulate those fibers to be stronger, bigger, possibly faster, have more power. That's all glucose-driven activity, like sprinting is, right? You can't burn fat fast enough. You can't convert fat into ATP fast enough for those activities. And some of those muscle cells will actually shut down, not fire, if there's not enough glucose on board. And so we should be fueling our workouts and fueling our recovery. And then when you're just kind of cruising around doing errands, if you wanna like ease up on your carbs or your food quantity, well, that makes sense. But why would you starve yourself out of your most? And I used to do it. I say that question, I'm asking myself.

Why would you, Zane?

Why did I starve myself from my most active part of my day or most intense part of my day? It makes no sense. Competitive athlete would do it 'cause they know how it'll impede their performance.

And it will impede your performance really the next day because you are, after you eat after a workout, that's when you're really stockpiling for the next workout. In my opinion, for your, for your glycogen.

Yeah, your recovery begins right then.

Yeah, yeah. So really important. It's like, in fact, I feel like I just want to eat some carbs when I'm done working out. It's like, just feel like it. Let's flip into some relationship stuff. We were talking offline about some of our clients. What happens when you have a client who's like all in for their workouts and their partner is completely not.

That's a difficult situation. As a trainer, be careful, or coach, be careful not to step between a husband and wife.

I've been inserted into that position. I was like, I didn't know— nope, not a therapist.

Yeah, no, no. Or even just if it's one side, well, so-and-so said—

oh, I know, you're like, oh great, I'm gonna get fired any minute.

Um, but that's a difficult situation where you want to be an encourager but not but not divisive, and focus on why are you doing this? You know, a little, I think a little bit of that, what is your end goal in this? Like, what are you after? And if it's like, it's bigger than you in most cases, especially with people we're working with at our age, it's not about fitting into the certain jeans or the bikini. It's like, I want to be around for my grandchild. When we retire, I want to be able to travel. I want to be able to, let's take that why to your spouse and say, can't we get on the same board on the same, you know, uh, on board with this together? Can't we get on the same page with this? Because these goals I have for my health, They include you and I want you to be with me. And that's probably the, like, where it's direct but not attacking.

Well, but also it came from the right place. Like, it's— I feel so fortunate that Tim's on the same page as me. Like, we both, you know, when I first met him, he slept 6 hours a night. I'm like, this won't work. Now he's a big sleeper too. But it's like, we both, we prioritize sleep. We go to bed early. We eat healthy. When we're traveling, we order, like, have Instacart delivered so we have good breakfast. The whole thing, it just makes life easier.

Right.

Like if you had someone sabotaging that, it would be so difficult. But I think especially when you're 40 plus, it can start being okay. Like we're looking out into the future and what we wanna be able to do together. And it's like we both gotta be on board here.

Right, right. And I think that's the big picture. And most spouses have a hard time arguing with that kind of approach because it's very open-handed. Yeah. It's not you need to, it's like, let's, let's do this so that we're together long term and I'm not,, you know, basically caring for you.

Yeah, yeah, you know, listen, I don't want to care for you when you're older. That's not going to work.

Yeah, but feeding you with a spoon when you're 65 because you didn't take care— that doesn't, that doesn't— that's not a dream anybody should have, you know, right? And so I think that's where— that's probably the best way I've, I've thought about approaching that. But it does happen. I've seen it a lot where someone's bringing food into a situation, the other person's trying to correct habits. And it can be very disruptive to the big, the big plan. And that's where there's a— there is some room for some confrontation at that point.

I mean, where even when you're doing all the right things, your strength training, staying active, prioritizing protein, keeping the muscle you built over a lifetime gets harder with age. Now, our parents were told to accept that it's just getting older. I don't buy that. And that's why I use Timeline powered by MagnaPure. Here's the real story. Muscle isn't just about strength or looking good. Muscle runs your metabolism, protects your balance, preserves your independence, and determines how powerfully you age. And what most people don't realize is that muscle loss isn't only about hormones or workouts. It's about cellular energy. As we age, our mitochondria, those energy engines inside our muscle cells, become less efficient. Now, when your muscles can't produce energy well, it's harder to maintain strength, function, and resilience. That's where Mitopure comes in. It's the only clinically studied form of urolithin A, a postbiotic shown in human clinical trials to support muscle strength and function by helping renew mitochondrial health at the cellular level. I love this because it works with your training, not instead of it. Now, strength training is the signal, protein is the building block, and Mitopure supports the cellular energy that allows your muscles to actually respond and adapt. Mitopure gummies make it simple. 2 a day, sugar-free, vegan, non-GMO, and independently certified for quality. And let's not forget, absolutely delicious. So if staying strong is part of your longevity strategy, and I sure hope it is, visit timeline.com/JJVirgin and get 20% off your order. It can be a major issue. I was telling you, I, I found working with men and women, it was always a lot easier to work with a man than a woman. You would tell him what to do and he did it, and the women would have all these emotional things going on. But you have to take all of that into account. Going back over to looking at, you know, you talked about glucagon. Are there other markers that you see that are missing from standard lab testing?

Well, fasting insulin is missing from standard lab tests, which is—

that's so ridiculous and it's not even expensive. No, I don't understand.

I think a lot of the doctors don't know how to read it. When you ask them what the normal range is, they'll say, oh, normal range is anywhere from 2 to 25 or 230. And it's just like, they'll say that's not— because that's what they're— that's what the textbook, or that's what they, they're told. They don't understand the difference between optimal and what warning sign, and then what diabetic would be. They don't know how to read it. And that's so discouraging to me that we— that's— our MDs aren't being taught how to read that. But But JJ, there's no medicine to lower your fasting insulin, so they have no protocol for it.

Doesn't metformin lower it?

It can lower— it starts— I mean, it starts lowering, but they'll see that in the blood sugar. They'll start seeing the blood sugar go down. But so over time it could. What's funny, so we've got the GLPs, so the GLP-1, not to argue pro or against, but the way they work is by lowering glucagon and stimulating insulin action to bring blood sugar down. And we've got 50 years of research that led to that, of, you know, not in mainstream medicine but in the real, the real diabetic research where they're like, how do we bring glucagon down to, to bring blood sugar back down and improve insulin sensitivity? So this is not a new thing, it's just not been spoken about in the mainstream, but there's 50 years of research around. And so that tells me, okay, this is a viable tool, or, or understand, to, to start using, just that nobody's looking at, but we have to know how to understand it. Unfortunately, the doctors don't. So to answer your question, I think I went around it. That's one of my main ones is look at glucagon.

And I know you're going to give us, uh, your lab marker like cheat sheet, but what's the number that you would have someone want to get on a fasting insulin? What's the range that they're—

for insulin ideal is going to be anywhere between 2 and I'd say 5, maybe 6. You get to 6 to 9, I'm like, you've got a little— say that's the yellow zone, the warning zone, where you're like, you're starting to creep and move in the direction towards some insulin resistance. You probably have a little bit there, but you don't need treatment yet. But you start getting past 10 into the teens, you're probably going to start seeing blood sugar creep up, A1C come up, and that's where you really need to make some changes immediately. In my opinion, because if that continues too long, you are, you are in the process of developing metabolic disease when you're staying above 10 for too long.

And the best part is there's so much you can do diet and lifestyle-wise that makes such an impact.

Absolutely, you know, that should be your primary tools as far as I'm concerned. Obviously, I understand the GLP-1s and their benefit and that why they're making so much money, but I do think they're overleveraged both by practitioners and by those who are using them in a way of being their only tool. And so coming off of them becomes very difficult. Many of them are told you're going to be on these for the rest of your life, possibly. And they don't address diet and exercise. They just— that's their only tool.

I don't think you should be allowed to use them unless you address diet and exercise. I think it should be something you're required to do, and then you can use this.

Yeah. But you have to get that on board first, and you need a lot less, right? You do. But it's— I agree 100%. I just don't know how we monitor that.

I was the benevolent health dictator of the world. That would be, that would be one of those things for sure. Um, okay, so glucagon, fasting insulin, pre-testo.

Okay, so thyroid, I think we need to start looking at reverse T3, not just pre-T3. Reverse T3 is the inactive form of thyroid that under stress, when you have high glucagon levels or high cortisol levels, uh, instead of converting T4 to T3, which is the normal— how we create more energy or higher, better functioning thyroid— it gets converted to reverse T3, which actually takes some of the resources for making the active form of T3. So I think reverse T3 should be added. And for those of us over 40, I mean, let's start looking at testosterone and free testosterone. For a lot of, uh, men and women. It's again not looked at by a lot of practitioners. A lot of them don't know how to look at it, or they just look at the total number, which can vary. But the free testosterone is almost— is really like the real active form, or a better, a better number to measure how much.

Where do you think that men— and then we're getting into women— should be?

It depends on age, obviously. But as someone, you know, if you're, if you're in the teens, so ideal range, like if you're just cranking it even at 35, 40 years old, you might see your free testosterone between 15 and 25 if you're really doing well. And I think that's a beautiful range to be in. But what we tend to see, especially with more stress, is 40 plus, especially towards 45, 46, 47, you see free T dipping down closer to 9, 10, you know, right in there. And 10, 11 is manageable. I think you start getting in single digits, you're on your way to, in my opinion, being a candidate for hormone replacement.

And how would a guy feel when his testosterone's there?

He'd be a little rundown, almost like he's in a rut. It's a slow decline for men. It's not like it drops off a cliff.

Yeah, that's— I think almost it's almost worse for men because it happens slowly and you don't— I mean, we're in such a roller coaster, you know what's going on.

Exactly.

You know, but for men it's this slow thing. And so all of a sudden you're going, why am I a little depressed? Why am I getting some fat around my waist?

Drive, losing muscle, personal drive, sex drive, recovery. If you're exercising, your recovery is not there. You can even disrupt sleep just because your body's working so hard to recover. It could be in some, you know, they say inflammation, but just achy joints. It could be also a— but most of it's personal drive, sex drive, and that metabolic change where you start seeing a little less muscle and a little more stubborn fat.

And are there some lifestyle things you can do to help bring it back up?

Well, it depends on where your lifestyle is now. I mean, I think recover— honoring recovery, like we talked about earlier, where— because I see it dip on both ends of the spectrum. I can see low testosterone on someone who is eating a lot of ultra-processed food and obese because— and they have maybe, maybe a lot of visceral fat because that can create estrogens that just basically convert that, that testosterone into estrogens. And then you have a lot of metabolic issues along with that. And the other end of its spectrum, I've seen it where it's high performers who are, like we've talked about, who are really maybe under-fueling, over-exercising, very demanding job, and their testosterone starts to dip too because on the stress end. So it's kind of like there's a little there's a little sweet spot.

Are you seeing it too, like, with people that are doing more keto and low carb?

Oh, absolutely.

Because I know that having a little carbs at night not only is going to help sleep, which will also help testosterone, but it can also help with testosterone.

So because of the direct impact of cortisol— cortisol has a direct impact on not just the hypothalamus and releasing like LH and FSH, which stimulate hormone production, including testosterone production, but they also have a direct impact on the testes and and ovaries. So cortisol can lower production, but then you also have the low thyroid. So if you have a low thyroid function— thyroid is also directly involved with testosterone production, with the, um, not to get too nerdy about it, but basically there's a star protein with the testes and making testosterone that needs thyroid, uh, healthy thyroid levels to start stimulating testosterone, which makes sense if we're in a low energy state. Or whether food is scarce.

Don't make babies.

Why would you make babies? Exactly.

Right.

Insulin signaling has a big deal, has a big impact on thyroid as well. And that because if you're not eating carbs, your insulin is not being stimulated, not going up and down. And so that's going to also tell your body low energy, famine, drought, winter, whatever. There's food is scarce. So what signals are we giving our body and how does that impact it hormonally?

Now, before we go to women and testosterone, let's talk carbs because we kind of skirted over it before. I know you've been getting your butt kicked a bit on social because, oh my gosh, you are, you're telling people to eat carbs. I think what's happened is that ultra-processed foods have created the carbohydrate problem and people are not distinguishing between carbs and, you know, ultra-processed food. There's a huge difference between a potato and a potato chip. Absolutely. Right? Like, it's like—

Well, potato is a carbohydrate. Potato chip is maybe 40, 50% carb and 35% fat.

Yeah. But even there's, there's even a difference between apple and a baked apple. You know, it does start to change anything you do, like, you know, depending on how your oatmeal is prepared and how it's been milled. Like, so everything changes, right?

However, the driving disease, I think, is the ultra-processed food.

Yeah, it's really the ultra-processed food. And somehow we've become very carb-phobic. And I feel like we do this in the diet world anyway. It's always something's the villain and something's the hero.

Correct.

You know, carbs are the hero. Like, for a long time it was carbs were the hero and fat was the villain, and then it flipped over to fat's the hero and carbs are the villain. Now protein's the hero and carbs are the villain. So it's— it'll flip again. But, you know, you've been out preaching the need for carbohydrates and eating a lot of carbohydrates, like preaching a lot of them.

Like, well, and I think the studies back it up. I think there's a lot of studies showing, even going back again 50 years, where we've seen people seen in the research or in the interventions reversing diabetes with very high-carb diets where they lowered the fat and they saw improved glucose tolerance, improved insulin levels. But they weren't, you know, they're not overeating though.

They're not overfeeding them. No, that's the other big piece. Overfeeding anything changes everything too.

Sure.

I think when we can look at indigenous populations where they have some great heart health, no metabolic problems, they kind of hunt, gather, and grow some of their food, and they have these diets of 60 to 80% carbs.

I was in the Amazon over the holidays. Like, you know that. And what did they do? They drank— it's disgusting. They have this drink they drink all day long. It's boiled plantain. It's sugar water where they chew plants and spit into it. So it's saliva from people to get all the—

Wow. Processed.

Oh boy. I was like, they're like, you want some? And I'm like, nope. No, I don't.

So that's one of— getting nerdy again, but there's a Tsimane tribe in the Bolivian Amazon. They have the greatest heart health recorded. 85% of the population has zero CAC score. And the other 13%, so there are only 15% left, 13%, the CAC score is 100 or less. And that was looking at 700 people, 85 different villages between 40 and 95. And so even two-thirds of the people over 75 years old have zero CAC. And their diet is, it's a lot of plantains, it's cassava, it's this, you know, roots. Yep. And fruits and some fish and whatever they can find.

But it's like not much protein, I will tell you, because they pretty much hunted it out.

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And I'm not saying it's the perfect diet, but they have— they're 65 to 70% carb, 15% fat, maybe 15 to 20% protein. That includes some plant protein. So is that— does that mean this is the perfect diet? No, but it would tell me that whole food carbohydrates don't cause metabolic disease or heart disease or any of these other problems we have, or they would have it. And they have the most pristine heart health that's been found so far. What they don't have is ultra-processed food. And when we look at other populations like the Kitavans in Papua New Guinea, or, um, it's a— it's an island in the South Pacific, and these other populations where they have varied diets because varied food is available, but there's no disease, but they also don't have ultra-processed food, right? So the only missing ingredient— it's not, it's not, is this the perfect carb to fat to protein ratio? It's they don't have ultra-processed food. That's the common denominator.

Don't you think that's the whole— like, when you look at the Blue Zones and they try to say it was a, it was a plant-based diet, I go, is it? Because Greece— yeah, I'm like going, I'm going, is it really? Because yeah, Italy and Greece, I don't know, I've been to both those places, it's not plant-based.

No.

It's—

and I doubt Japan is either. Okay, they'd be doing fish. Yeah, so, yeah, but they're—

it's—

they are not eating processed foods, right? And they all live on hills.

They walk a lot. And that's the other thing, when they do walk a lot, but we can— I would argue, well, can we out-exercise a bad diet? Because if it's just— they're not running marathons, they're not going to the gym, they're walking and carrying stuff, they're doing daily living things. They're just walking though. If their diet were that bad, would they have the best heart health with their— no, just from walking. So it comes back to the ultra-processed food for me, which is— and I know this is also considered controversial, there's a lot of people in nutrition space who will laugh at me for saying this— but I do think the abundance of polyunsaturated oils that come into our diet—

big seed oil debate, big seed oil debate in ultra-processed food—

because of the impact on our mitochondria. And there is research on this, there's totally research on it.

And here's the thing, it's like, we know we're supposed to have this 6:3 balance And we're out of balance.

It's a volume issue.

And it's— so it's that piece of it. It's the 6:3 balance. It's the— it's the way that they process them. They basically made junk oils. They did, right? So we've got that too. And then we're overeating because this stuff pushes us to overeat.

So these polyunsaturated fats in general were maybe made up 3 to 5% of our diet prior to 1900. Now it looks like they're going from 15 to 25%. Wow. We've increased the amount of polyunsaturated fat in our diet by anywhere from 5 to 10 times depending on how processed your diet is. But minimal— I mean, soybean oil makes up 57% of our fat consumption, essentially.

Are you kidding?

Of, of oil fat consumption. There is plenty of research looking at multiple species showing that these polyunsaturated fats get into— they become incorporated in the inner mitochondrial membrane, which is— this is nerdy— but in the mitochondria, and they cause oxidative stress there. And that's where they impair the ATP production I was talking about before. And that's where we get the stress response. So we can still have blood tests showing, oh, it lowered LDL over here, or this is— oh, this—

and that's always the argument.

And it's like, yeah, well, I could argue why.

When we can finally really look at mitochondria, things will change dramatically.

Yes.

But it's— there is research going back even 20 years looking at this across multiple species of mammals, birds, reptiles, showing the more polyunsaturated fat in the diet, the more it interferes with the mitochondrial ability, oxidative stress there. It really affects the mitochondrial DNA, the likelihood of it having to go through apoptosis, and the metabolic clock, which is basically lifespan and/or healthspan of that organism. Unfortunately, this is research that's being done in this— in the silos of neurodegenerative disease, or maybe some, some species or some types of heart disease, but it's not the main nutrition space. And so like medicine has silos, so does our nutrition research.

I know, and there's so much— they're acting like we're crazy. Yes, on the seed oil front, it's like there's multiple reasons it can be problematic.

There are, there are, you know, to me the oxidative stress issue is not in the mitochondria, has been settled. The question is, should be, at what volume or what dose of this becomes detrimental? That really should be the only question.

Yeah. Okay, let's go over to testosterone for women, 'cause I'd love to hear where you think. I'm so happy, and I've just got a shout out. I'm about to interview Dr. Kelly Casperson again, and bless her for getting this out into the world.

Yes.

You know, oh my gosh, the attention to it. I was fortunate early on, Dr. Alan Christianson, the first thing he put me on as I started to head into my little perimenopause thing, which I didn't really suffer because I had all my friends around me going, put this on. And testosterone was the first thing we did.

My wife as well. And that was like game changer. Yep, game changer. So your typical ranges for, for free testosterone for women is they say like, oh, 2 to 4, I think it is, or 2 to 5 picograms. And that could be fine for some women if it's really low. I mean, you probably want to think you'd feel a lot better if you could push that up. I can tell you from my experience with talking to clients with my wife, with talking to doctors who, who work in this area, they go more by the individual and how they feel. And some women feel better taking that range a lot higher. My wife's one of them, like 10 or 15, and, you know, way out of what would be considered the normal range into an optimal range for them. And so I think treating the individual rather than a kind of a murky range that most people really don't understand. Yeah. I think there's been a lot of pushback on this, so much so that our knowledge of it has probably been stunted because— and there's a lack of research on it because of all the negative press and the ignorance and the many doctors who don't understand. I had a client, her OB-GYN, who was also female, told her, I just, I just give the antidepressants.

What?

Instead of, instead of testosterone or hormone replacement, I would just give you antidepressant. And she said, well, that's not going to happen. And then when she got on testosterone, she's like, oh my gosh, I have my life. I remember this me. I remember this, this, this old me. And they just, they feel so much better. Same improvements. Personal drive, libido, muscle mass. The stubborn fat goes away. You just feel more like yourself. But I think where men— I think there's, there's a pretty good range to stay in where you can stay, okay, this is safe without, um, too many side effects. With women, I think the range is limited and underestimated for the individual, and I think there's room to go outside that range. But you, you really want to find a good functional doc or NP that, that understands this and that is empathetic to how you feel once you get on it.

Well, considering at this point you can't even get insurance to pay for this.

That's true.

It is. I mean, I just use my husband's, right? That's, that's, yeah, that's what we do.

Yeah, just use, use a little of his and then a little goes a long way.

Yeah, I was like, I would just use a little.

Yeah, it works, but it's a game changer.

It is. Yeah. So, all right. That's all women need to understand that because we have more testosterone than estrogen and progesterone. So, and they don't get that and they're like, that's, it's still called the male hormone. I'm like, how's that a male hormone? Men have estrogen, by the way. So estrogen's not a female hormone.

I got approached at a biohacking conference by one, and one more story, but she's like 40-ish, great shape. She was going to this clinic that was right there in Hollywood that was supposed to be to help with women with hormones and health optimization. And she, She's nowhere near menopause. She was 40. And so she went in there expecting, oh, she'd be able to get some testosterone. And they told her, oh no, we only have female hormone. We only work with female hormones. We don't work with male hormones. And you're in the middle of Hollywood at a health organization.

Wow.

And they're still saying that testosterone is a male hormone. It's a human hormone. So I'm still shocked at that. I say that to tell women If your practitioner doesn't get it, move on.

Yeah.

It's not you, it's them.

Yes. And both of us have podcasts. We've interviewed tons of great doctors who get it. They're out there. And so just look for our lists. Let's go back to like sustainable high performance.

Okay.

What do you think to avoid the, this has now taken over my life and I'm no, I'm not having any fun and I'm no fun to be around. How does, like, how do you like, How do you create a sustainable approach that will work, but that gets you the results, but doesn't, you know, cost you?

Right. That is difficult. I mean, it's definitely a nuance. And I think on an individual basis, what's going on there, but helping them understand that when recovery is just as important as the workout, the stress from their career, the stress of not sleeping counts with the stress of their workout and the stress of, under eating. And so when I try to help them understand, like, these carbohydrates create the energy that fuel your brain and your muscles, you know, and your performance and your hormone production, you're going to feel better at this higher level of intake, right, of whole food intake. And that's why I have to get into the whole food. The whole food was not the problem. It's the processed food and the alcohol that is impairing your energy, your mitochondrial, your basically your metabolic health, and that might be causing that sticky fat around your middle. Let's not blame apples for bananas or potatoes for what's sticking to your waistline. Let's think about the Scotch and the pizza and the fact that you're eating fried food 3 or 4 times a week. And if they don't know that those are the levers or the factors for it, then that can They're overlooking it. They're not going to try to limit those. They're just going to limit volume, right? So they try pulling big levers.

So that's what GLP-1s do, is it just takes what you're doing and makes it smaller. But let's say that we have someone who now is eating healthy. Okay. What would be— it's kind of that minimum viable, like if we were going to create the perfect program that they could still be having fun, live their life, they're working, they've got everything going on. What would that look like in terms of diet and exercise?

So in general terms, we'll think in general terms, because there's a lot of nuance there, but I would like to see a whole food— I hate to say balanced because it seems it's been so destroyed or misused, but a diet where there's carbohydrates, there's healthy fats, and there's protein is represented.

Yeah.

In all 3 meals, if we're talking simple. And exercise, for instance, strength training, 3, maybe 4 days a week. I like to personally like to see a little more recovery in there with a lot more mobility work and just movement, whether it's walking, it's a pickleball, it's a yoga class, it's something where you're moving.

Do you do yoga?

I stretch and do my own mobility. I don't do yoga. So I need to, I would like to.

I gotta tell you, like, I hate yoga. I hate it. However, I do it. Tim and I go once a week when we're in town.

And it's here that gets you, right?

It's so awful. In fact, so we have this teacher, Megan, at Camp Tampa, and shout out Megan. We go in the other day and Megan's not there. I look at Tim, I go, we can leave.

We're off the hook.

We're off the hook. He's like, no, we're not leaving. You know, it's like, that's always, I'm always the one like, let's go. No, we're staying. But it's great for the mobility, the balance, all the stuff. I think like—

And it's movement without creating a big stress response to recover from. And I think we have to honor that.

It actually aids, like that really helps me with some recovery is doing some yoga. Exactly.

Exactly. It doesn't need to be hitting with a hammer, go hard or go home every single time you're exercising.

Definitely the resistance training, some cardio, some mobility.

Yes.

The variety of all of it.

The variety.

Yeah.

It's like basically your real theme of all of this was variety. Variety in your diet, variety in your exercise. I don't know if you've seen the research showing that a variety of exercise actually improves your gut microbiome balance.

I think I saw that. I was like, eat it. I think I saw that.

That's so cool. I was like, are you kidding?

But in honoring recovery, like, we don't We shouldn't— so many of them discount recovery, like taking a break. Or if you— hey, you feel run down, that's not the day to go hit the gym hard. That's the day to go on a walk or do the yoga class or, you know, go, go, you know, light swim, whatever. Listen to your body and, and honor that, that fatigue as being— it's not weakness, it's a signal.

You know, it's interesting. I'm thinking of our buddy Mark Sisson because Mark, who's my oldest friend in health, I've known him now 35 years.

Oh, wow.

And he was like the crazy triathlete.

Of course.

I was a resistance trainer. I was like lifting weights. He was doing all that stuff. But he now is like recovery king.

Yes.

Like that's his big thing. And it's like, he looks great. He's in great shape. I think it's recovery is the missing piece for so many of us.

Absolutely. Yeah, we have to honor that.

Recovery and carbs, people.

Yeah, recovery and carbs.

Sleep.

I mean, you know, it's really— that's a good indicator if you track sleep. That should be one of your first indicators that something's going wrong is when that's getting disturbed in the middle of the night. You're waking up with the heart racing or staring. It's like, is there something else emotional going on? Fine. But many times it's physical. It's a physical response to being underfed, overtrained, And so I think those kind of signals are there, but too many of us have been taught to ignore them or to consider them—

Power through them.

Power through them. It's weakness or it's a lack of discipline. It's like, no, this is, again, it's a signal. And the deeper you push against that signal, the worse it's going to get until you hit burnout.

Well, let's not do that. And let's use— Right. I know we're gonna give everyone your lab values and the different lab tests that you're talking about. Again, I'd never— like, the glucagon things, like, that's brilliant. So we're going to give that to everybody before I give— and we'll put that all at jjvirgin.com/zane. Z-A-N-E. But we are not done. I want to do a little speed round.

Okay.

Okay, ready?

My best.

Uh, low-carb tool or trap?

I honestly think it's a trap.

Fasting, powerful Underused or overused?

Overused.

Who struggles more with overdoing it, men or women?

Men.

One thing couples should do together for their health?

Go on a walk and have a conversation.

See, this is what's great about having dogs is guess what you have to do after dinner?

You know? Take the dog for a walk.

Yeah. Now they're— ours are tiny and they stop to pee every 5 seconds. But still. One thing to stop doing immediately?

Fasted workouts. Fasted strength workouts. Yeah.

One habit that creates the biggest shift?

I think the biggest shift is whatever you can do, move towards whole food, single ingredient food, and away from ultra-processed food. That would change the entire health of our country.

So you have a podcast.

I do. It's Healthy AF, which is AF is after 50.

But your mind's out the gutter.

Well, but it's, you know, it started because I hit 50 and it was like, there's, it's a different world. I mean, it's a different perspective and your body's in a different place.

Yeah, it is. You know, we've got a lot of women who listen to this show and they might have some husbands who are not quite paying attention to their health, which we could send them over to your podcast. But any words of advice there? You are taking on clients too, right?

Definitely taking on clients. Young clients, you know, statistically, the first indicator of a heart problem is death. Not everything comes with a big glaring red light before something happens. And so if you value your family, if you value your career, you want to keep charging forward, and you want to have a life after your career with your family, you know, you have to start now. This is important.

And I'm going to give a suggestion for you women out there. If you're having challenges with this with your husband, here's what you can do. Okay. Get your lab values. So they're at JJVirgin.com.

Www.zane.com/zane.

Get yourself a Function Health membership for you and your husband. And then like Tim and I go and get that done. So, and then I make sure I have a copy of all of these things. But you know, sometimes women have to be the healthcare CEO and push. You know, he's good once he's pushed a little bit, but I've had to push him to—

Yeah, you want numbers. Yeah, get numbers, get your labs done.

Like the DEXA scan, I pushed him to do that. That's when we discovered he was get data.

And men respond to data.

Yeah, they do.

I think that's a great, that's a great cue. It's like, get some data. Hey, look, these are out of line. This can be better. Here's what we can help you with.

And then send them over to Zane and he'll deal with them.

There you go. But I think data is a good way for men to like respond. That way it's not personal. It's not like, oh, you know, you're not, you're not doing so. It's like, no, no, the numbers say, and I think, I think you're absolutely right. Cool.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate you hanging out here.

Oh, have fun.

One thing people forget about on their fat loss journey is digestion. When you're changing what you're eating, how much you're eating, when you're eating, your digestion changes too. You may be feeling any of these things. You feel backed up, a little bloated after your meals, maybe some cramping or just overall ugh. One of the foundational things that I recommend during this time to support to support your gut is sodium butyrate. So what is sodium butyrate? So butyrate is a short-chain fatty acid that's produced by your beneficial gut bacteria. And it's actually one of the primary nutrients for all the cells that line your gut. And when those gut cells are supported, digestion, comfort, regularity, it all works better. And that is why I added BodyBio Butyrate to my daily routine. If you're in the process of upgrading what you're eating, how you're eating, when you're eating, head over to bodybio.com/jjvirgin to start supporting your gut today. Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips, and techniques you can use to look and feel your best and be built to last. Also, I'd love to connect with you and hear your thoughts on the podcast.

Here's how.

First, subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest review. Second, take a screenshot of your review. And third, text it to 813-565-2627. That's 813-565-2627. When you do, I'll reply using my brand new Virtual JJ. It's my on-demand virtual self built from my books, talks, and years of experience so I can interact with you directly. You'll make my day and I can't wait to hear from you. Thanks for tuning in and I'll catch you on the next episode. Hey, JJ Virgin here. And just a reminder that the Well Beyond 40 Podcast offers health, wellness, fitness, and nutritional information that's designed for educational and entertainment purposes only. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for, nor does it replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you have any concerns or questions about your health, you should always consult with a physician or other healthcare professional. Make sure that you do not disregard, avoid, or delay obtaining medical or health-related advice from your healthcare professional because of something you may have heard on the show or read in our show notes. The use of any information provided on the show is solely at your own risk.

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