The Truth About Supplements - Mark Ottobre

Everything in physiology— Jacka just before spoke about muscle building, and he outlined constraints with muscle building and muscle turnover time, how much nutrition and the rate at which you can actually build muscle. So there are constraints on our physiology that block us from getting a result. So everything operates under the theory of constraints, and the point of this is that if we can remove the constraint, we can make things happen faster. So when we're looking at the world of supplements, for example, we want understand that nutritionally there are things, or from a biochemical point of view, when we're looking at performance, we want to understand that there can be constraints in our performance, there can be constraints in our biology, there can be constraints in our physiology that prevent us from losing fat, building muscle as fast as possible. If we can support these things nutritionally, we can get a faster result. So the reason why I say all this is because we want to identify the constraints. So muscle testing, labs, blood, stools, urine, other devices can, can help us identify these constraints. So I use muscle testing as an example because it gives you a clear, but that's the whole purpose of getting blood work done. That's the whole purpose of getting stool, urine, all these lab tests. People get attached to the test. It's not the test. The test is not valuable. It's like when we talk about training and the difference between me giving you one-word cues versus someone explaining it technically, you get the one word cue, you get when I put the hand in front of your face, you get when I put the band around your knee. The labs aren't what's valuable, what's valuable is who interprets the labs. It's what that data means, it's turning that data into actionable things where you can put into place of a bigger plan that's gonna get you the result. So in looking at the labs, I think it's also helpful to identify the breaks to health and performance. So the way, you know, before we spoke about the 7— in the last presentation we spoke about the 7 areas where we can enhance performance, uh, if you remember them, like lifestyle, calories, stress, etc., right? Here I've done the reverse. I look at the brakes. What are the things that are going to hinder? What are the constraints going to hinder someone's performance? So some of them do overlap, but sleep— sleep is a big one. If we're not resting, if we're not recovering, and Jack has said it very well before, there is a difference between adaptation and recovery. Adaptation doesn't mean you're going to build muscle and improve, it just means you've adapted. Recovery means you've improved. So we want to always shoot for recovery, not just— sorry, we want to shoot for adaptation, not just recovery, rather. We want to adapt, we want to recover from that stimulus to improve with the full flow to improve, not just adapting. So sleep is huge, and we do have tools to monitor sleep. I gave you one the other day, which was the Oura Ring. That is my favorite tool to, 'cause it's not intrusive at all to ring. There's no light associated to it. And the data is, what I've found, extremely accurate. So I would recommend you take a look at that. Pricing varies. You can get secondhand Oura Rings if you don't wanna spend too much on it. But sleep for sure. Gut health, 100. If you're not digesting your food, you're not assimilating your protein, if you're not breaking down your carbohydrates, it's going to have a huge impact. Being in a calorie surplus, eating too much food, obviously is going to cause you a sluggish metabolism. It's going to cause you to be overweight. Obesity, being overweight, is correlated, or actually more than correlated, it is co-in with a lot of morbidities, mortalities. It ramps down a lot of biochemical functions. So we don't just, we don't want to put on excess body fat because we're not going to be functioning from a neural point or non-neural cellular point of view. So we want to make sure that we stay relatively lean, we're not just overfeeding all the time. Toxicity for sure, which we can look at labs to identify. A sedentary lifestyle is going to be a constraint. Malnutrition is going to be a constraint. And stress, which I spoke about before. If we don't manage— or stress just is, it's not stress, it's how we manage stress. Because if you're an ambitious person, which most of you are, and if you're going to train, stress is going to always going to be a factor. It's not stress, Stress is too ambiguous. When people say, I'm stressed, stressed about what? How are you stressed? Yeah, catch yourself. You say, I'm stressed, or catch a client, I'm stressed. What are you stressed about specifically? Because saying that word is a catch-all that causes overwhelm that actually can create more stress. So we want to break these things down into actionable things, and when we can action them, we can implement plans to overcome them. So we want to identify the constraints. Addressing the constraints can come in a number of ways. Nutrition, supplementation, lifestyle. I'd also put like, you know, if it is a stress thing, you need mental, I suppose, clarity. You know, the psychological mindset understanding can definitely give you less stress because it's your perspective of stress, not the actual stress, right? So the two prime considerations in putting together a supplementation plan or a lifestyle plan is first, what are you trying to achieve? Right, what are you trying to achieve? Because the way we put a plan together for, say, a lady who comes in and says, I want to get pregnant, versus a guy who comes in and says, I want to get jacked, they're two different plans. Yeah, and my favorite is the lady who comes in and says, I want to have a baby and compete. Well, not on my watch. Yeah, those two things don't exist in my world, right? We're going to train you and support you nutritionally to have a baby, or we're going to compete because one needs a calorie surplus with plentiful nutrition and the other one we're going to purposely deplete you and be in deficiency. They're not, and I don't have good conscience trying to do both of those things at the same time. And you think I'm kind of fucking with you guys giving you that example, but no, I've had multiple people ask me that over the years. I'd like to get pregnant, oh, and also I want to compete in 12 weeks. Well, no, we can We can, if it's pregnant, if you're pregnant, we're gonna focus on that. You're gonna have the baby, you're gonna nurse the baby 12 months, and then we can talk about competing after that. Let your body heal. There's no need to rush these things. These are, competing will always be there. So we need to understand what we're trying to achieve, and then the deficiencies on top of what we're trying to achieve. All right, now we also wanna understand that when we go to the doctor, and we look at blood work, the doctor— and this is what I said before, it's about who interprets the test— because a lot of people will get blood work and the doctor will say what? Your blood work is normal. Yeah, fine, it's fine, you know, it's fine. But the doctor's looking at what's called absence of disease. They're looking at what? Right, so as long as you don't have cancer As long as you don't have a diagnosed disease, they don't see a problem. And frankly, why should they? Why should taxpayers pay for your blood work because you wanna get abs? It's like, fuck you, man. There's 2 people in the clinic that have cancer or have a thyroid disease. You wanna get abs, you wanna optimize, you should pay for that. I'm all for it. You should pay for that. That's not on the taxpayer. That's optimal nutrition. That's optimal performance. That's not on the doctor to have to see you. But it's for you to understand that when you go to your doctor, your doctor doesn't care about your performance. The doctor doesn't care that you want to be in the 1% of the population and be optimal and jacked when you're 70 years old, right? They just don't want you to be sick. That's their goal. So when you understand that, you start to have a bit more empathy for the doctor's position where they're seeing actual sick people every day. People go to the doctor— people like me, I go to the doctor, but I go to the doctor not because I'm sick. I go to the doctor because I wanna, I wanna check, I wanna pulse read on how my health is doing. That's not normal, right? And when you understand that, you start to understand how the bloods work. So for example, in 2011 when I used to send clients off and get blood work, right, vitamin D was never an issue to get. Number one, it was never an issue to get. Medicare didn't have their back up against the wall. So you go to the doctor, I want my vitamin D test. No problem, get your vitamin D test. The reference range on the labs was anywhere from, this is international units, for anyone American, uh, international units was anywhere from 80 to 120. You know, you want to be at the high end of normal, so you want to be at about 120. If you go to the doctor today, you will be pushing shit up a hill for most doctors. Some doctors will do it, no problem, but they won't want to do your vitamin D because Medicare doesn't bulk bill it. But if you do manage to get it, the reference range will say so long as you're above 50, 50 IUs, which is basically bare-ass minimum nutrition. It is extraordinarily low. And the reason why I use vitamin D as an example is because vitamin D is— there's a lot of studies on vitamin D being referenced to multiple diseases, many of them immune orientated. So any autoimmune disease, you do definitely— even cancers, you want to have— I'm not saying, you know, vitamin D by any stretch is going to cure cancer. Obviously, if it was that simple, then there'd be a cure to cancer. So I'm not, you know, not suggesting that, you know, it's that simple. It's not. But as precautionary measures, Vitamin D is an optimal measure that you want to check and you want to have optimal. And if it's not optimal, it's a very simple fix. Supplement with vitamin D or go out and get more sunlight. So we don't want to be 50, we want to be at the optimal range. Likewise, total thyroid stimulating hormone. If you have an, you know, if you have a thyroid disease or you are suspecting thyroid disease, the reference range is anywhere from 0.5 5 to 5, but that's like me saying the average body fat for a female is anywhere from 5% to 30%. Well, wait a minute, if you're 5%, you're like Janet Kane about to win a Miss Australian competition. If you're 30%, you're morbidly obese. That's too big of a reference range. We need a narrow reference range. So in optimal— sorry, in diagnostic world, it's 1 to 2. Oh, sorry, yeah, 1 to 2 is generally what you'd look, and then you want to look at T3, what's happening behind the scenes, because thyroid stimulating hormone is just a marker, but it doesn't say what's actually happening with the rest of thyroid hormones. Diabetes is another one. Diabetes type 2 is diagnosed at 7, but years of dysregulated blood glucose precede. So you can definitely see these trends in blood work leading up to diabetes. It's just when it becomes 7, the doctor can diagnose it. But that doesn't mean, like, when you're trending at 6, that's when you really want to start implementing lifestyle interventions. Like, this is starting to get high. It's just not diagnosed. There has to be a diagnosed marker. So what does it mean for us? It means that the average client has Homer Simpson health in terms of the Medicare system, right? When you're looking at bloods, the average client is Homer Simpson. So when you look at that and you look at blood work, you want to work with people who understand. So the two best people I know who do this type of work is the mother of my children, Christine. She does, she has a company called Welluxia, and I've already sent some people to, I've sent many people to her actually, and she basically looks at all the blood work, and that's her wheelhouse. She's absolute queen expert at doing this work, and she'll tell you straight up, she's like, you can get her to read blood work and she'll be like, yeah, they're a vegan. How do you know? Well, And yeah, they're a vegan because this is vegan blood work. It's pattern recognition, essentially. Yeah, they have gut issues. And she's picked up multiple times people who've had thyroid issues where the doctor has refused further thyroid tests and goes, no, I really think you should pay for this out of pocket. They pay for it out of pocket, and what happens is they have a thyroid issue or they have an autoimmune issue. She was able to diagnose it early because she's not looking at base tests. She's looking at the complete picture. The precautionary picture, if that makes sense. And then they go back to the doctor, and the doctor kind of has egg on their face. And, you know, here's this naturopath who's called them out, like, has found what the doctor didn't find. The other person who's also— who did the foreword for my book is Dan Gardner. So Dan Gardner is awesome. He works with a lot of pro athletes in analyzing blood work. So if you're in Melbourne, if you're in Australia, I'd say like definitely check out Christine walexia.com.au, I think her website is, or just go Christine, or send us a message. And it's on, it's on actually on the Enterprise Fitness website too. There's links there, so if you want to get in contact. So next on that is understanding environmental pollutants and testosterone. So, you know, there is a males, you know, you want to optimize testosterone obviously because it's going to help you build muscle. So what you should know, I wrote this article in 2000 2011. It was called Fighting the T-Killing Toxins. I wrote it for, at the time, it was the biggest men's health magazine in the world, T Nation. You can still find it still online. In it, I referenced this study, but basically the average sperm count fell from 113 million per milliliter in 1940 to 66 in 1990. So basically, what does that mean? It means The definition of a normal sperm count fell from 60 million to 20 million in the same period. Today, the average sperm count is 40 million to 300 million. So basically, the reference ranges are constantly being changed so that people don't have to be diagnosed with low sperm count or low testosterone. I remember my mentor Charles would say that you could go to England and get a testosterone test And if you took those results to Canada, so if you did in England, they'll say that you're fine. If you took those same results to Canada, they would say you have the testosterone of a 4-year-old girl, right? Same, same, same numbers, but the reference ranges were different. And Canada, I believe, is one of the few countries that have refused to lower the standard of blood work. But the thing is, because in Australia, you know, as I said, sick people go to the doctor, there's people's health starts decline, there's a reference range, a mean of lab scores that they have to manage essentially. So like another example of this is in America it used to be defined as if you don't go to the toilet every day, you're constipated. But because America was spending like $2 billion, I think it was a lot of money, on laxatives every day, they changed the definition that if you don't go to the toilet every 2 days, so they could cut and save money on essentially how many laxatives they give as a diagnostic. So, but you know, you want to go to the toilet every day. The test versus who interprets, I've already spoken about this, and optimal versus diagnosis of disease. I think you understand that now. So labs, here's my stance on labs. There are no shortage of personal trainers who get bored with personal training that then want to become doctors. It frustrates the fuck out of me, right? Because Lab work is extraordinary, and I know a lot about lab work, but I don't know enough. I don't know anyway. I know a fucking lot about supplements, right? We've got a whole chapter talking about supplements and lab work and all this kind of stuff. It's complicated. It's very complicated. So I do recommend that you refer out, particularly because I look at us as kind of the generalists. It's Christine's website here, so I recommend Christine for interpretation. And she's also as a naturopath. The other thing about trainers going into kind of naturopathy versus an actual naturopath is, fortunately for me, because I've been in the industry for so many years and have so many contacts and people know, like, they like the cut of my jib and all that kind of stuff, I'm able to get access to practitioner products because they see the work that we do and we know what we're talking about. We've got proof in the product and that kind of stuff. So I can get supplements that normally most trainers couldn't get, but there's also a bunch of supplements that I can't get. So If I wanted to quote unquote treat dysbiosis or a gut issue, I might technically be able to get the stool test and get everything lined up, but it's actually very hard to get the right formulas to kill. Like, I'm very limited in terms of what we can get. Like, I can get oil of oregano, but like Biocidin and these other formulas you can't get unless you're a naturopath, so you need— or a doctor. So things like that is what I say, like lab work interpretation consultation and in terms of like treatment plans, support protocols, you want to work with someone who knows what they're doing. And unfortunately, the same thing with personal trainers, naturopaths. There is a big scale. Like, you know, Christine tells me stories about clients that come to see her, and, you know, there was this one example that always sticks out in my head. This lady came to see her, she had gut issues. She said, yeah, my other naturopath said to repopulate the bacteria in my gut, I need to get my husband when he comes home from work because he was a Trady, get him in the bath, have a bath with all the dirt on him, and then jump in the bath so then the bacteria from him goes onto you. And it's like, fuck, man. Like, yeah, can't make this shit up, right? Can't make this shit up. But that, you know, obviously that— because that's going to work. Um, yeah, so unfortunately with naturopaths, for, you know, I think a lot of reasons It does attract a lot of woo-woo. It does attract a lot of woo-woo, but actual proper naturopathy, it's not woo-woo. You're looking at blood work, except you're supporting— well, you can support, you can work with medical doctors, support with pharmaceuticals, and Christine certainly isn't, you know, against pharmaceuticals. They have a place, they definitely have a place, uh, pharmaceuticals certainly do. But where you can, using natural medicines, using vitamins, minerals, herbs, supplements to support that can help can create a good change as well. So it's understanding the whole, whole picture. Environmental pollutants is a thing that— so on the topic of toxicity, the topic of toxicity, this is something that's super, super easy for everyone to implement pretty much right away. So unfortunately, Australia's laws on chemicals and what we can put in and spray on our crops is kind of We've gone 15 years backwards essentially in terms of what's allowed in Australia. So we are actually one of the worst countries when it comes to what we allow on our food, unfortunately. So exposure, the point is exposure to environmental pollutants is unavoidable, right? It doesn't matter where you live, US, Finland. I mean, there's a few countries in the world that are very, very pristine. I think Sweden's one of them, but for the most part, we're gonna be impacted by environmental pollutants. There are things you can do to avoid them. So metals, xenoestrogens, and other metabolic pollutants can affect the metabolic process. Tests that you can use are environmental pollutants and heavy metal tests. So heavy metal tests come in a few different forms. You can do urine tests, you can do other chemical analysis. People sometimes are skeptical, but environmental pollutant tests on a urine test can show what you're excreting. So the common environmental toxins are parabens, phthalates, dioxins, and fragrance, which are in a lot of compounds. I just want to skip ahead to, and I've got it on this slide. I'll show you this in a sec, but cooking in pans is also another thing you should consider. So plastics do leach into food. Cooking, Teflon, I would avoid Teflon. Cast iron, anyone low in iron? Right, cast iron pans actually can leach the iron into the food. So if you're low in iron, consider getting a cast iron pan because it may help you basically absorb a bit more iron from your food from the pan. I'd look at mineral stoneware rather than Teflon. So consider your cookware and don't store your food in plastic. And you know, there's that like all the, all my drink, I've got a stainless steel water bottle. Yeah, stainless steel, glass are your best friends. BPA-free, by the way. Who's sort of, you know, seen BPA-free? All BPA— so BPA, what BPA is, BPA is bisphenol A. It was a compound that they essentially manufactured in, was it 1950, 1960? And it was essentially originally developed as an estrogen replacement, and they're going to use it in a medical context. And then they started doing more tests on it, they added it to plastic, and it found that when added to plastics, it made the plastics shatterproof. And from then, they've created patents on it, and now it's widely used in all plastics. So it is an estrogen-mimicking compound. It's in a lot of plastics that makes it shatterproof. So a way to, you know, in the market, what they've done is they've created a lot of BPA-free plastics, but a lot of BPA-free plastics are still estrogenic. It's just that they're BPA-free. It doesn't get rid of the issue. So it just means that it's a— they've used the plastic that doesn't have as much testing on it. So it's like the Olympics and drugs, right? So every year— you're laughing because you know what I'm going to say. So every year they're like, oh, you know, we banned Clenbuterol. Oh, but we just made growth hormone. Everyone starts taking growth hormone. Oh, we banned growth hormone. Oh, we made this designer drug. Do you want— so the athletes are, you know, the drug manufacturers I don't know if you know this, but a lot of sports have drugs, yeah, professional levels. It's just that at professional levels, they're a lot better at hiding it, right? Tennis is a widely used— this might be unpopular, but tennis is a widely— they use, they just don't use as much, right? And they're better at masking recovery agents, let's say. So it's kind of like that. BPA and chemicals that they put in water bottles and stuff like this, they just use things that haven't been tested that the market don't know about, but it doesn't mean they're any better for you. Much better off using glassware or stainless steel. So who uses like skincare products, deodorants? Everyone use deodorant? Who uses deodorant? That's what I thought, right? Who, who, you know, makeups, toothpaste, hygiene products, soaps? Anyone? Okay, so if you want to avoid nasty chemicals, uh, and get and shop and have some kind of like peace of mind what you're putting on your skin, because your skin, by the way, is the biggest organ of your body and it, it, you can absorb things transdermally, right? You definitely can absorb things through the skin. You want to go to this website, it's the Environmental Working Group, so ewg.org/skindeep. And if I got on the next slide, no I don't. On this website they've got thousands, tens of thousands of products that they've analyzed, and they put it green. 1 means awesome, Red, 10, means terrible, right? Avoid. And they rank their products from 1 to 10, from not toxic at all to you're probably lathering your body in toxicity every day, right? Environmental estrogens. So definitely worth checking out. My friend Mark Schaus, who made those supplements, the electrolytes, he wrote a book many years ago called Achieving Victory Over a Toxic World. Is one of the— this is second podcast I ever did, awesome podcast that I do with him. And he talks about the toxic revolver theory in his book, which is toxicity is one of those things that isn't necessarily, you know, you're not gonna spray this stuff on your body and all of a sudden you got cancer, or, you know, you spray this and all of a sudden, you know, it's harder for you to lose fat, you've got insulin resistance. But for some people, your detoxification system can be overloaded if you're using, you know, if you're using, let's say, 40 chemicals every day that you're unaware of because 'cause they're ubiquitous in our environment, because you're using soap, toothpaste, deodorant, foundation, gel in your hair, fragrance, more soap, all these things that you don't even think about, they're ubiquitous. In your car, you've got a car freshener, you're breathing in more estrogens. The way they actually make the smell aroma stay is there's a plastic that they use in that car fragrance. So yeah, I don't recommend you use them. But those things you're breathing every day, and it's the accumulation of those things every day that can slow down the detoxification process and the metabolic process. So it's something to be aware of because toxicity is stored in our fat cells. On the BioSignature test, Charles would always talk about how— so the BioSignature test is a 12-site body fat test that Charles formulated, and he said he went all around the world and people will say, oh, you know, it's correlation, it's not causation, all that kind of stuff. But Australians always had the fattest hamstrings, right? At every country, like Australians have the fattest hamstrings. I didn't believe him for a while, and then I went around the world and did tests. I'm like, man, all Australians got fat ass hamstrings. And he's like, you know, because of our environment, right? But it is something you can manage if you, if you, well, know how to supplement, one, know detoxification pathways, two, but just avoid, avoid some of these chemicals, which is actually fairly easy. And it's not a case you have to have a mini freak out, throw everything you've bought and put in the bin, but over time you can start replacing your products. With better choices. And it's not necessarily going to cost you any more, right? In actual fact, a lot of time it costs you less because you're buying brands that are full of shit rather than you could buy the other brand that has nothing in it. So like, fun fact, the best shampoo, commercial shampoo on the market is Herbal Essence. Yeah, yeah, so you can look it up on their website. Herbal Essence is, is, you know, and you'd be like, well, that's not really a sexy brand. It's like whatever, you know. But Herbal Essence, there's no crap in it, right? It's— they analyze that one. That's one of the best brands on the market for shampoo. Uh, Oura Ring. This is the Oura Ring. Measures heart rate, heart rate variability, and more. It's an insight into your autonomic nervous system. And again, your autonomic nervous system is what? Your rest and digest, sympathetic, parasympathetic. The more ability you have to tap into being yang and yin, the better you're able to recover. The more you can go into your yang, the more you, you want to be able to go into your yin. You don't just want to be up all the time, you also want to be able to rest. And the more polarity— oh, anyone here on this side of the road? It's a clearway, it's 4:30, you're going to get towed. No one here, just making sure. Awesome, cool. The more you can create the polarity, the more you're going to be able to go into those, the more you're able to go into yang. So if you want to be an overachiever make sure you're resting. And this is the way to manage that and get insights into it. So here's an example how I use it. This is from one of mine, 44, like measures your heart rate when you sleep and you've got a whole track and it can tell you your data. Again, another way to get an insight into your autonomic nervous system is with grip strength, measuring your grip strength or a vertical jump. I just use Oura Ring because it's easier. All right, any questions on any of that? Anyone inspired to get more cookware throughout their fragrance, their perfumes and shampoo? And who would you recommend getting from? Aura. That's a brand name. Yeah, yeah, just go to aura.com. We've got a measuring kit here, uh, because yeah, just you literally buy it from them. Yeah, or you go on eBay and find your size and Find a secondhand one and get a secondhand one. So yeah, supplements. Why to use supplements? Do you need supplements? No, you don't need supplements. But do you need your iPhone? You do need your iPhone. So I guess you need supplements as well, right? iPhones, they make life easier. Yeah. See you, Jack. Let's give Jack a round of applause, folks. So do you use supplements? Do you need supplements? No, you don't need them, but they do make life easier. They do help fill nutritional gaps. They help fill what? Nutritional gaps. Right. So again, it would be amazing if we ate nothing but organic food off a farm where we knew the farmer by name and they didn't use NPK as their main fertilizer and have to spray the crops because the soil is so weak and we have these pests. I mean, that'd be amazing, right? I'd love to be in that kind of like pseudo world, but we don't live in that world. We just don't. We, our soil is depleted, it continues to get depleted. We have to use fossil fuels, NPK, nitrous, phosphorus, potassium, to fortify our soil so so food actually grows. And we spray shit on our food so animals don't kill the food, which is good because then you can feed more people. So there's like benefits to, you know, indoor plumbing and stuff. Like, I'm not— I don't want to go back to the Paleolithic days because fuck that. I like my iPhone too, right? Apple's cool. I like my Apple stuff. But at the same time, we want to probably use a balance of— we live in a modern world, so who are we kidding that we aren't going to use modern technologies? And modern technology is supplementing. So on that, understanding soil and farming, since we really started farming the soil, soil, uh, so it's about, there's about 57 minerals, but in, so in, in like organic soil, I suppose, in a what you'd call a poly-parental culture, you have a cow that defecates on the land which is rich in nitrogen, but then the cows eating all this other rich plantation, and that their manure essentially is what gives life to the soil because it's rich in nitrogen. But we don't have a farm like farms today, or modern farms where we have monocrops instead of a polyculture where we're having multiple animals and species and different plants that are all grown at the same farm like a local farm would. We have a culture like, you know, Coles, Woolworths, where most of the farms are growing one thing. That's a monocrop where they're just growing broccoli or they're just doing chicken or they're just doing, you know, beef or whatever it may be. So to make that system work, we need to use NPK. NPK is nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium. It's 3 minerals when healthy soil is going to have a plethora of minerals but also bacteria. So it's a different system. So in terms of making up the gap that we may have with nutrition, and also the other thing is Who eats in-season foods? Anyone? Okay, and, and, but do you eat foods that are not in season? No, you don't. Like, most people eat the same foods. I know I do, um, and just rotate, right? Because they're the foods they like. It's one of the benefits of modern culture is that we have access to foods that are summer foods all year round, uh, and it's— I'm not necessarily negating it or bagging it. Like, I like blueberries. But I'm pretty sure my blueberries come from Chile, right? They're not coming from Australia. And that's good, right? We're going to have a mixture of these things. Again, I don't negate it, but understanding that there's probably foods that you have that are limited in terms of creating deficiencies, if you will, especially for your clients. So most clients are going to stick to 7 foods and just rotate, and there's going to be deficiencies in that. And one of the big ones is magnesium. By the way, so looking at this, we start to understand where supplements can come in to fill in some of these constraints. So I like to put supplements in 3 brackets. We have sports supplements. I think of sports supplements as protein, fat burners, and pre-workouts. Then we have health supplements, and I think of those as like the ones that you buy at like Chemist Warehouse, a health food store, or supermarket. Then you have practitioner supplements. And practitioner supplements are from a naturopath, specialized trainer, or behind the counter. Now the difference, and you're always going to be opting for practitioner supplements, reason being is to register. Like, we have Designs for Health. For them, I think it's every ingredient or every supplement, it's like $2,000 a year they have to pay per, per supplement to register to the TGA. So they have to undergo many, many checks of efficacy to make sure that what's on the label is in the product. There's no bastardization. It has to be— and that's one good thing about Australia is our TGA is very, very strict on what we put in our supplements. So if it says there's 200 milligrams of whatever is in this product, you can bet your bottom dollar there's 200 milligrams in that product. So practitioner supplements are always best in class. Now when it comes to sports supplements, the only one I really like of that list is protein. So I always use, uh, WPI protein. I find that the best in terms of most people's digestion. So look, protein powders I think do have a place. Fat burners, fat burners don't support a metabolic process essentially. It's a lot of compounds. Usually the main compound that they use is caffeine, guarana, which is another code name for caffeine, and a lot of niacin or B vitamins, which gives you kind of that flush. But what I often find with fat burners is it makes very people very antsy, can induce things like anxiety, depression, cause people's energy to gap. So I don't recommend fat burners to anyone because also with fat burning, we want to look at the constraint behind fat burning. The constraint is health. So when we optimize someone's health, people will burn fat faster. You don't need to give someone a fat burner product. It's kind of a bastardization. Pre-workouts I'd stay away from altogether, primarily because they're overpriced junk, uh, secondly because a short black is cheaper. And a Jocko's more delicious. And look, if you wanna get better alanine and creatine, which I absolutely believe in, better alanine and creatine, get the raw ingredients. It's gonna be way cheaper and you're gonna get what you're actually paying for, which is the main things like caffeine, better alanine, creatine is really what you want kind of in your pre-workout. You don't need to buy it in a, I mean, there are some good formulators who do that, but most of them just put a whole bunch of junk in there and way too much caffeine. So the average short black has 65 milligrams, which means the long black has about 130 milligrams. What's the one that Al had? Where's Al? Like 200 milligrams? It's like, for sake, it was like a lot. I'm like, Jesus, if I had that, I'd be like up all night. Um, and you want it— you don't want to desensitize your caffeine. Like, you want to remain sensitive to these things. Again, health supplements, the cheap supplements that you buy from your Chemist Warehouse and these type of places they're using cheap forms of the product. So I gave the example before about oxide and carbonate, and like if it's fish oil, you can almost guarantee they're getting it from polluted waters, whereas the more expensive fish oil like the practitioner range, they're getting it from waters that are sought out. So like in Norway and places like this. So practitioner brands include but not limited to Designs for Health, Thorne, MediHerb, Orthoplex, Polyquin into clinical labs. Now when we look at supplements, obviously, because most trainers are like this, they think more is better, but more is not better. Everything in physiology operates under a bell curve. So a bell curve, you've got 15% on both sides and then optimal. So pretty much all, like, all trials, all tests will fall somewhere on a bell curve, right? Where there'll be— there's 100 people in the group, 15% of those people will get absolutely no effect, right? They'll take whatever it is, but they're not even just no effect, some of them might get a bad effect. So let's say they take, let's say something like vitamin D, right? Or even better yet, let's take an example like a B supplement, right? A B Supreme supplement which has a, you know, B1 to B12, and 15% they get a negative effect. And then 15% on the other side say, this thing changed my life. And then you get everyone kind of in between, right? That's pretty normal of what you'll see in taking anything. It's something to understand. And it's also meaning that it's also dose dependent. And sometimes it's what people's status— some people, if you're deficient in B12, for example, and you take B12, will you feel better? Yeah, you might think I just changed your life by giving you B12. But if you're high in B12 and I give you B12, will that change your life? Yeah, it will, for the worse, negatively. You might start getting anxiety and being like, what the fuck, what's going on? I'm racing now, right? So either way, you need to understand the context, and this is where doing lab work is very, very important, right? If you're enjoying this presentation, make sure you hit subscribe on our YouTube or follow us on our podcast, available anywhere where you listen to podcasts. So, and then you have everyone in between. So you need to understand that when we're dosing supplements and taking supplements as well. So supplements can support, and this is how we want to think of it, right? General health, inflammation, blood sugar, joint pain, digestion, gut health, immune health, recovery, sports performance, hormones, sleep, stress, mood, concentration and focus, detoxification, longevity, anti-aging, and energy production. So that's an awful lot of things that supplements can support, right? Um, but again, we want to know where we're going, what we're trying to use the supplement for. We're not going to go— we're not going to try and achieve all these things in our supplement protocol. We're usually going to try and achieve one or maybe two. So the idea of general versus specific supplementation, we're putting these plans, is the difference between a shotgun and a sniper. So when you understand and you have lab work or you have data you know exactly what— you understand the constraints. It's like picking up a sniper rifle and getting one bullet, one target, they're dead, game over. So I'd attribute this to like something like the way Christine practices. She's picking up a sniper rifle because she can see behind the curtain what's happening with your blood work. A shotgun will hit the target, but sometimes the problem with the shotgun, if I'm aiming there for the books, I'm going to hit my friend over here as well. But I didn't want to hit my friend. Does that make sense? So if we have a shotgun, it's a spray effect. So this is where taking too many things at once and trying to shotgun approach can actually cause harm as well. So we want to understand that when we're taking supplements as well. More is not better. More can also create damage. We want to be exact in the way we do things. So general protocol for supplements kind of as a general thing, and look, I take more than 5 supplements, you know, for full disclosure, I take quite a few things every day. I put into my shakes, I put, you know, night things and during the day. But that's me, not recommended. But also, like, I just go into my office and there's a whole case of supplements and I'm like, yes, I will try that today. So not that I take everything every day, but I just have them at home because, yeah, it's kind of my thing. So 3 to 5 supplements generally for clients. So here are some simplified guidelines and starting points that you can you can use. I've used the Designs for Health range for most of these because I really like— well, one, I really like their range and I use their products, and it's not like I'm saying to use anything, but I've also put what they are on the site. So fish oil, electrolytes, magnesium, a WPI. So as a very simplified starting point, if you've got a general client, I think every client would benefit with this. Everyone would benefit with this. Fish oil— reason for fish oil Fish oil, so, studies have shown, I've got this in my book, all the studies if you want the exact reference papers and all that kind of stuff. So on average, people have a 1 to 17 omega-3 to omega-6 ratio. So understanding what omega-3 and omega-6 is, omega-3 is your anti-inflammatory, what is it? Anti-inflammatory. Your omega-6 is your pro-inflammatory, what is it? Pro-inflammatory. Is one better than the other? No, it depends, right? One is anti-inflammatory, one is pro-inflammatory. So the problem is, is that most of us have a diet much higher in pro-inflammatory. We do need inflammatory because if you cut yourself and you don't have any anti-inflammatory, you just bleed yourself to death. This is why when you go do surgery, you need to get off omega-3 fish oil because it's anti-inflammatory, right? You want pro-inflammatory. Omega-6 is is helpful. It's not we want to get rid of it. It's just if you look at the research, the average diet is a 1:17 ratio— way too high. What has been found optimal, or more in line with optimal, is 1:4. What is suggested from a Paleolithic or traditional point of view is a 1:2, even a 1:1 ratio, right? So I mean, I would say 1:4 is probably more acceptable, or 1:2, let's say somewhere around that. But 1:17 certainly is too high. So most people are, especially general population client, are going to be eating a very pro-inflammatory food. So the best way to kind of skew and start to skew that ratio is to increase the anti-inflammatories. Now if you go on PubMed and just type in fish oil and, you'll see a whole list of benefits from cognition, joint pain, arthritis, mood, skin, cardiovascular disease. There are many, many things that can help because it reduces inflammation in the body, which is a systemic process on a cellular function. So it does have a place. Again, the thing with fish oil is you don't want to get fish oil from cheap, polluted Chinese water because you're also getting a serving of mercury with your fish oil. There will always be a little bit of mercury in fish oil, except if you get it from more pristine waters like Norway, for example, it's going to be trace amounts. It's going to be a heck of a lot less. So you do want to pay attention to the quality. Electrolytes, there is only one product on the market that I recommend. It's the KTS Solution Electrolytes, and the reason is, is because it's formulated in the 1:1.6 ratio of sodium potassium, which is found in the human body, without all the sugar, salt, and all the other shit that most electrolytes have. I'd recommend that. It's also pretty cheap for what it is as well. As I said yesterday, I have 4 to 8 scoops a day depending on the day. Your adrenal system runs on sodium as well. So a lot of people wake up and they want to have coffee in the morning. In actual fact, a lot of time what they need is sodium. This is also why you want to salt your food. I'm not saying— I said this to Shane— salt your food and then— okay, salt your food versus putting salt all over your food. You don't need to put salt all over your food, just salt your food, like pinch of salt, you know, kind of like put it, make it taste nice, um, you know, kind of A little bit of salt is good, but you don't need to like pour the whole bag on it. Shane, no MSG. Yes, uh, but yeah, salt is good as well. Celtic sea salt is the ideal, uh, magnesium as well. So magnesium is involved in over 300 chemical functions. It's not just mutually exclusive to sleep, but bone health, muscle contraction, muscle relaxant, cardiovascular health, even liver function, the Krebs cycle. There is magnesium, like magnesium threonate, across the blood-brain barrier to help calm down the nervous system, calm down your brain. It's an important mineral. The reason why I highlight it is because most people are deficient in it because they sweat and they use it. It's— there's a demand for your body to have magnesium, especially if you train and if you're training hard because you're sweating it out. There's a constant demand for more magnesium. So this is where, like, if you're taking a herb, you don't have a herb deficiency. Like, no one here, I don't care who you are. Yes, I'm talking to you, Jason. No one here has a caffeine deficiency, right? No one here has a caffeine deficiency, I promise you. But every day you do need magnesium. Every day you do need amino acids. Every day you do need protein. These things you do need. You— if you don't have them, you will get a deficiency. Caffeine? No, you don't have a deficiency, promise you. And the other one is WPI, which you could trade for collagen as well, which is just whey protein isolate. And the reason why I include it for most clients is because most clients don't eat enough protein. And when you're starting to change their plan and getting their protein up, instead of them eating so much, it's an easy hack. I teach clients how to make a shake, you know, scoop. I always get clients to blend it because it tastes so much nicer if you blend it rather than shake it. So put it in a blender, put a banana or berries depending on your calorie plan. Make it a little bit thicker, and clients generally enjoy it a lot more. The brand we use for WPI is True. Not that you need to use True, but that's what we use. I find that's a great brand because it's not overly sweet, which a lot of protein powders are, and there's not a lot of crap in there either. Question? All right, so this is a protocol for inflammation and kind of blood glucose control, or in other words to say insulin sensitivity. So I kind of give this protocol if someone's very, very inflamed or potentially like skinny fat kind of body type. So fish oil, which is gonna reduce inflammation, berberine, which acts very similar. You may or may not know what metformin is, but berberine is kind of like the natural version. Metformin is a pharmaceutical, berberine, kind of has all the benefits of metformin but not any of it. Not— people would argue there are no drawbacks to metformin. I'm still like, well, it's, um, it's still pharmaceutical, which you need to cycle. They give it to diabetics a lot, but berberine is kind of the natural alternative. So it helps with basically insulin regulation, so keeping insulin low. Magnesium, curcumin, which is anti-inflammatory, and annatto E, which is a, is a a specific form of vitamin E. So what berberine does will bring down insulin and natto E kind of cleans up the insulin receptor site. Is there a question here? Question? Oh, which one? The Tri-Magnesium Supreme? Oh, yes, it is different. Yes, so please ask these questions. So the one I use for most general clients is the Tri-Mag Supreme Night Powder. And the Trimag Supreme Night Powder has the— I believe it has Californian poppy in it, which is a precursor to melatonin. I think they updated the formula, but basically they've put a few different herbs in there that are precursors to melatonin, which you take at night, which help you sleep. So if I'm going to give a client a magnesium, usually I'm going to start with a sleep one because— and it's not just the magnesium that helps them sleep, it's what else they put in the product. I've given that to Thomas over there and he's found, like, you've used a whole bunch of stuff It's an awesome product, right? So I use that as the first point of call because if I can improve someone's sleep and they've had sleep issues for many, many years, they basically think that I'm the king, right? And I want them to think that I'm the king because I want to get them, I want to get their, how do you say, buy-in, because I want to give him more advice to help him further his journey, right? Compliance is real. I give him this much advice, I just say, hey man, Take this before you go to bed, and I solve a big problem for him. He's like, man, this guy gives good advice. What else you got? Right? And now he's compliancy. He's going to be a way more compliant client. Also, if he sleeps better, his willpower to do what I need him to do is going to be restored. If he's constantly tired every single day and I say, hey man, you need to resist the cookies that your mom made for Christmas because you need to stay on track, he's going to be like my trainer, these are cookies, man, my mum made them, you know, like, but if he's well slept, he's like, well, my trainer gives good advice, I think I'm going to get these results. Because one of the tricks is as well in understanding this, I'll draw this out because it's important to note, we all have potential to do something, we have potential to achieve a massive result. And some of us get massive results and some of us get, you know, little bitty kind of to no results. And then there's our action. The actions or actions we take from our potential determines whether we get a little bit of result or a massive result. If we take massive action on something we'll get a massive result. Yeah, if we take a little bit of action, we get a little bit of result. But there's the next part here that determines whether we take massive action. Do you know what it is? Sorry, it's part of it. It's whether we believe it's going to work or not. If we believe it's going to work, we'll take massive action. If we don't think it's going to work, we won't take any action. So if I said to you, join my 12-week program, I'm gonna bust your chops, and I guarantee you, you're not gonna get any results. It's really expensive, and I guarantee you won't get any results. How many of you motivated to join my— you're like, no. You're like, what would I do that for? Why am I gonna train with you? I'm not gonna get any results. But if I said, hey, join my 12-week program, I'm going to push you harder than you've ever been pushed before. I'm going to push you to the limit. You're going to find a new level of operating that you've never had before. And I guarantee you that by doing this program, you'll achieve everything you've ever wanted and so much more. You'll make every cent of it back, if not more. You'll achieve your physique goals. You'll achieve your strength goals. I guarantee this to you as the law of God. It's $10,000. Do you want to join? Who's thinking about it? All right, what's the difference? One's guaranteed to work, right? So it's not the effort, it's whether you believe it's going to work or not. So coming back to this example, the reason why I start with quick wins is because I want you to understand this shit works. I've been doing it for 20 years. This shit works. Do what I say, all right? Yes, you did sleep like a baby. That's exactly right. Sorry. Good. Um, so very different energy, right? Yes. Uh, signs of inflammation. Good question. So what you usually find is that their skin skin and their body fat is kind of puffy, and this could be redness associated with, with areas of their body. Usually, like, you'll see in terms of, like, severely inflamed, like, their face kind of like a moon face as well, and a little bit of, like, redness, which also, like, indicates, like, cardiovascular. Kind of a lower version of that is general puffiness of the skin. When you do, like, skin folds for people, you can really tell. Yeah, if you've ever eaten a meal and you felt kind of like waterlogged. Well, that's the body. The body will bring like inflammation, the body will bring water and fluid to that area to protect it. So that's what we mean when we talk about inflamed. Does that answer your question? From a cellular point of view, the cell has become hydrated. Well, not hydrated, it's holding fluid is another way to explain it. I give a better explanation in my book, much better explanation, because I had that question as well. How do I explain this better? And now it's kind of escaped my thought a little bit. I'm like, I'm kind of tempted to open my book and go, like, what's my exact explanation? But it's definitely, it's definitely in there in one of the sections, so you can check that out. All right, so anti-aging/longevity protocol. Collagen, which helps with skin function, multiple helps with skin. Coenzyme Q10, which is part of your— basically will help with energy. Fish oil, zinc. Zinc is one of those minerals that is involved in multiple pathways. Testosterone, hair, skin, nails. Magnesium always makes the cut, and electrolytes. I won't spend too much time on that one. Energy. So if someone has a problem with energy output, B vitamins is usually always my point of call. CoQ enzyme 10, ashwagandha. So ashwagandha is a good one. It's a herb, it's a very robust herb. So it's an adaptogen. So if you're— basically you can take it in the morning and night, but what it basically helps is with kind of like helps with allostatic load, which is a fancy way of saying it helps you cope with stress. So if you're kind of burning the candle at both ends, it will help. It also helps you get into a deeper sleep. Sleep. So I do recommend ashwagandha for kind of like my stressed and wired clients. It's a good one to have. Joint support. So if you've got clients with joint issues, fish oil, PEA, that actually helps with pain receptor regulation, curcumin, which helps with inflammation, and collagen again. So there are many different collagen powders you can take. The Complete Joint Collagen from Designs for Health also has the has the, how do you say, the turmeric in it, which will help with inflammation as well. So that's a good one. General gut health. Now, it's not all at once. It really depends because gut issues are very complex. And, you know, do you need to heal the gut? Do you need to kill something in the gut? Do you need to eliminate something in the gut? There are different phases depending what you do. Do you need to, how do I say, re-flora the gut? Put more, so it's widely dependent. But here are some things that may look at. Probiotics, if it's inflammation in the gut, definitely aloe vera. Zinc carnosine can be a good one. Glutamine, digestive enzymes can definitely help with a big meal, help you break down food. GI Revive and Gastromend are probably my two favorite if somebody's having a kind of acute gastric upset. IgG Shield, which is actually a new one, that is colostrum. But it's a colostrum that they derive from blood, not from the milk. So colostrum is actually really, really super healing for the gut. And so aloe vera— if you want something general for the gut, aloe vera juice and colostrum, or the IgG Shield in this case, very, very good in terms of re-healing the gut lining. Oil of oregano, that actually kills things inside the gut. So if you suspect like bad bacteria, oil of oregano. Promed, which is basically your— word escapes me— probiotics. It's a very, very high powerful— and the ZymeGest is the brand name for the digestive enzymes that we use. But the thing about digestive enzymes, it depends on what you're trying to digest. So are you trying to digest protein, fat, carbohydrates? If you're trying to digest protein, you need something to help digest protein, you're going to have betaine more so than like if you're trying to have like a carbohydrate, you're going to have the proteolytic enzymes. So there is a difference. Would it be okay to take any of them like daily for the gut health, or would you just take it for a specific set of time and then once everything's fine? Aloe vera you could take every day. Zinc carnosine will help close the gut lining if there's a problem there. Would you need to take it every day is the other question. So for probiotics, probably not, because you're going to get to a threshold. Because the thing is Gut bacteria is a little bit like West Side Story. There's an East versus North. You don't necessarily want one of them to win. You want there to be a balance between the two. So you're not necessarily trying to take more, you're trying to create balance. So oil of oregano, I definitely wouldn't take every day. You're gonna be taking that for a specific set time to kill something in the gut with an outcome. So if you've got like a fungal or yeast infection, you might wanna take oil of oregano 'cause it's gonna kill it. But again, if you're taking oil of oregano, you're probably not gonna take probiotics. Because it's also going to kill it, right? That's the whole point of it. But if you're trying to seal the gut, then that's where your GI Revive, uh, aloe vera is going to help with the inflammation. So aloe vera, as a general point of call, you could probably take that all the time. Uh, oh, let's give Lewis a round of applause, a real round of applause, ladies and gentlemen. See you tomorrow, sir. Um, for the summit. So tomorrow we've got a venture challenge. Does that make sense? Yeah, a follow-up question? Yeah, so tomorrow we are— we're going to what's called the summit, which is out in Teralgon, and we have basically laser tag and a whole bunch of challenges, which I have no idea what we're doing, but it's really, really fun. We did it last year, it was awesome. So we're going to be like crawling through barbed wire and water and climbing nets and heaps of other stuff. So yeah, be awesome. And Jana is going to have to do it with a sore body. It'll be fun to watch. We're not mean at all, not at all. Um, yeah, so gut health based on specifics and based on a stool test. Yeah, just it really depends, um, if you kill, rebuild, or, uh, healing the gut. Yeah. But yeah, again, generally starting with gut protocols. If there is a kind of history of gut issues, I would start with a stool test. The only real way to analyze what's happening with the gut is with a stool test. So it's looking at, well, what bacteria is in your gut that's causing issues. So for example, I did stool tests a couple months back, and I had a weird bacteria in it that basically was found from eating eggs. Like it's linked to eating— I was eating shitload of eggs. So then I just cut my eggs down and obviously the bacteria started to go down. But that's what I mean by it's not, uh, it's complex. Yeah, it's actually— what's actually really good for the gut? BPC-157. Yeah, yeah, oral BPC. You know BPC? Yeah, the peptide. Peptides, uh, if you take it orally, it's very good for the gut. Yeah, if you inject it, it's good for the local area of the joint. But if you take it orally, it's one of those supplements that— it's certainly not a steroid. It's getting more popularized and more accepted now, but there is a lot of research on it that shows it's actually very beneficial for ligament and joint repair if you inject it, and also very, very beneficial if you take it orally to heal the gut. So that's something I would say. BPC-157 is definitely on the up and up and worth looking at for for healing the gut. So recovery, and this is probably gonna relate to a lot of you, magnesium, collagen, protein powder, electrolytes. Sports performance, creatine, beta alanine, and electrolytes. Those three, you're never gonna go wrong. Which magnesium is that? For sports performance? All of them. All of them. I like the Nite Powder. I like magnesium threonate. If I'm really feeling like I need even more magnesium, I'll take the magnesium day powder as well, which is, I believe off the top of my head, the orotate, fumarate, and tri or glycerinate or bisglycerinate or whatever it is. I have to check the thing, but yeah, there's, well, obviously tri meaning 3, there's 3 different forms. Taking it, say, in the morning, just to lift, whatever time, or pre-workout, is there a significant difference? There is so many studies on creatine that I'm like, like almost everything's been studied. This is one of the most studied, I think it is the most studied supplement. So what has actually been found, it's really beneficial for brain health as well as all the other things that it does in terms of energy cycle, ATP. So even if you're not training, it's beneficial for like cognitive performance. Timing, what I've What I've seen is not really, just as long as you're taking it. Um, yeah, I would suggest everyone take creatine, but I, I haven't seen anything that really— like, it was that whole thing in the '90s where you had to load, and that's kind of turned out to be a little bit of like not really bullshit kind of thing. You don't really need— you're better off taking it throughout. And there was a whole thing about like it caused water like fluid fluid retention. It's like, well, not really either. So it's like, what form of creatine are you taking? All the research is done on monohydrate. So I just take usually like a scoop, 5 grams every day. Sometimes I forget when I'm working out. It's always in my workout shake. I just have it when I remember it and always have it in my workout shake. So I'd say routine is the most important factor there. Yeah. So my recovery stack, as I said, I take more than 3 supplements, more than 5 for sure. So magnesium night powder, Active Body Collagen, protein, electrolytes, vitamin C powder. I usually take the, I like the liposomal, which is a liquid, and the magnesium threonate. I really like magnesium threonate, not to help you sleep, but to help your nervous system calm down and relax. So hormones, optimizing hormones. Like supplements for hormones, I'm not even going to get into because it would take another whole day to talk about properly. It's so many supplements you can take to optimize hormones, and it's like, what are you trying to take it for? Are you male? Are you female? Do you have menopause? Is it to increase sex drive? Is it to help with irregular periods? Is it because of low testosterone? Is it estrogen detoxification? It's a whole other— like, there are many, many supplements that you can take to take. And certainly, like, if you have any of these things, supplements can help, right? And but usually, again, you want to have blood work. So I'm going to talk about that, but just know that kind of like asterisk that one. There's a lot more we could, we could talk about there. Sleep and mood supplements. So this one, very, very important because people who do have sleep issues, and a lot of clients will have sleep issues, this one I do want to cover in a bit more detail. So the first point of call for all sleep issues and someone who has issues with sleeping is I like, from a supplementation intervention point of view, is I like to use the magnesium night powder. I've had great success. Almost everyone I give it to tells me. Now, if that doesn't kind of like hit it on the head, the next one I go to is inositol. I've got my inositol because that's just the brand name from Designs for Health, but inositol. So inositol, I believe, is vitamin B8, but it's neural adaptive. Which basically means that it kind of calms down neurotransmitters in the brain. What I find for inositol, the really like telltale sign of someone who needs inositol is someone who's very anxious. So if someone has like anxiety before going to bed, that's usually what I'd recommend inositol. Now inositol's been studied in like schizophrenia, uh, as much as like 16 grams. I don't want to work with schizophrenic clients personally. It's like out of my pay grade and I don't— not qualified to work with them. But in just saying that, the point that I bring that up is because it does have an effect neurally. So how do we use it? You know, obviously, hopefully none of us have schizophrenia, um, but how do we use it in, in this setting is you could use it to help calm down after a big day. So for example, I like the general recommendation dose of 3 grams twice split. So you could take 3 grams post-work for example, like after a big day, so like at 6 PM, say when you knock off, and then another 3 grams before you go to bed. That's usually how I start my inositol dosing. If you take too much inositol, you'll get whack dreams, right? Whack. So the first time I took too much inositol, I'm a really big fan of Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Super. Who feels me during Dragon Ball Z? Yeah, come on, put your hand up. You like Dragon Ball Z, right? Yeah. Hey, shut up, you. They're both awesome. So yeah, I like anime. I do actually have something nerdy on. I almost always have something nerdy on, yeah. But you don't know the nerdy stuff that I have on. So who likes Star Wars? Yeah, so this is Han Solo. This is a Boba Fett watch. Yeah, you guys thought I was cool. No, I am not. I've also got Superman socks on, but no one can see that. So, because they're short socks. But, so the first time I took too much inositol, I was on a Magic School Bus on Shenron, who's the big dragon, driving over Shenron in a Magic School Bus. It was awesome. Like, I'm in Dragon Ball Z driving a bus. Shenron, grant my wishes. Yes, so don't take too much inositol because you have whack dreams. Sorry, or do, or do, and tell me about them, please. I want to know, uh, yeah, especially if it's about Dragon Ball Z. The next one is magnesium threonate. Now, this one was thought of as a sleep supplement when it was released into the marketplace, but really it's not so much a sleep supplement as it does help— it does cross the blood-brain barrier, so it does help calm you down, but it's more neural. It will help you calm down neurally. So for some people, it it will help them relax, which byproduct will help them sleep. The next one is L-theanine. Now, I always forget with theanine the pathway which it works on, but I believe it induces GABA, and GABA is also important, one of the neurotransmitters that involved in getting deep restful sleep. You could add theanine. The thing about theanine is it does have kind of a stabilizing relationship to dopamine. So if you were gonna have I think you need some theanine. Um, so you could put and add theanine into coffee. In actual fact, there is theanine, I believe, in the Jocos, because theanine helps take off the dip on caffeine, so it helps stabilize the dopamine receptors. Next one is Triganda, which is ashwagandha. Uh, it's 3 ashwagandhas in one, help you get a deeper rested sleep. Pathways I forget what pathway is it on, so I'll skip that one. 5-HTP. So you have basically tryptophan, which is the next one. You have tryptophan, which is amino acid. Tryptophan becomes 5-HTP. 5-HTP becomes serotonin. Obviously we don't want too much serotonin because that creates a serotonin storm. But again, for people who are depressed or people who are anxious or have any like kind of need calming down, you could use something like 5-HTP or, or tryptophan Some, like, it's what I've learned, like, from Bob is it's not necessarily tryptophan is going to work better than 5-HTP or 5-HTP is going to work better. It's usually a case of somewhat, sometimes people have a problem with the uptake of tryptophan to convert to 5-HTP, or others will have, won't have a problem from with tryptophan and the uptake. They'll have a problem with the conversion of 5-HTP to serotonin. So it depends on, like, they basically work on the same pathway But the differences that you'll find from taking tryptophan to taking 5-HTP can actually be quite substantial from person to person. So it's not a case of one is better than the other, it's a case of individualized. How do you know is you try them, right? You try and see. And always with this, like 5-HTP and tryptophan, I usually recommend the absolute lowest dose. And sometimes the lowest dose is half a cap of what it is, right? Tryptophan, usually like you say start with 1 tablet, 5-HTP could be half a tablet. Again, are they that powerful? Do you need to be that careful? Depending. If you, look, if you are on antidepressants, yes, you do need to be that careful because they can help, or you have a client who's on antidepressants, you do need to be that careful because it can create a serotonin storm, which isn't good for the client. But then also when taking these supplements, you'll probably, they, you know, I always say to them, speak to your doctor because you may not need as much of your pharmaceuticals from taking these supplements because they work on the same pathways basically. Does that make sense? But basically they have an influx of serotonin and, um, I need to look up the technical definition, but they get very like— it's kind of like a seesaw of neurotransmitters where they're like very, uh, getting to a hole essentially. Like overwhelmed, overwhelmed with emotion essentially. Where it can cause them to be very like erratic, erratic behavior is probably the best way to describe it. So warning, not all at the same time. I'll try one or two at a time. All right. So stress support, because again with that you're working on neurotransmitters. So support, try Ganda, vitamin C, vitamin B, protein, magnesium. Sleep, night powder, inositol, magnesium threonate. Mood, theanine, 5-HTP, tryptophan, and inositol. So I've just grouped them into different things, and again, you could use one or two of these at a time. So concentration and focus. Who wants concentration and focus? Yes, we all do. So my concentration focus go-to supplements are acetyl-L-carnitine, which helps increase both dopamine and acetylcholine, which is important for cognition. Alpha-GPC, which is a choline donator, which helps with the uptake of dopamine. Caffeine works adrenally, but it also works— basically caffeine sits on top of the— I said this yesterday, didn't I? The other day, about caffeine sits on top of the adenosine receptor site. So no, I didn't talk about this. Okay, so when you sleep, sleep is essentially made up of two components. You have what's called sleep tension, which is the buildup of adenosine, but also you have the influx of melatonin. So adenosine, kind of think of it like this, at the start of your day, adenosine starts at zero. As you go over the course of the day, adenosine builds up and up and up. What caffeine does is it blocks the adenosine receptor site. So adenosine, but the thing is it blocks it, adenosine is still building up. So as the caffeine wears off, that adenosine is still there, it just hits you later. So then what do you want to do? You want to have another cup of coffee, right? So you keep having these coffee, but then you get to the end of the day and you just crash. So you have the adenosine buildup equally at the start of the day, you have no melatonin. So you have the adenosine buildup at the start of the day, you have no melatonin, and at the end of the day you start to have that melatonin starts to creep up. Now melatonin, we get cues from our external environment. One of the external cues to to build up melatonin and to help you sleep is darkness. So if I put you, say, in the sunlight, you probably don't feel like, like, you know, they say reset your circadian rhythm by standing outside, getting sunlight each day. And that's true because the more sunlight you get, the less melatonin you're gonna make, right? But if we go into dark, and this is where like, what is it, Greenland, where they don't have, they have like 6 months of darkness, 6 months of day. Iceland, thank you. It like really fucks up people's sleep because we're not used to living like that, right? But essentially, when we have darkness, what that darkness is going to do is going to cue our brain to start making melatonin. So in saying that, as another sleep preventative without supplements, is start teaching your clients to, when they get home, to turn off all the lights. If they are going to use a light, use a lamp, because a side light is registered differently to our brain than overhead light. Like, our brains, prehistoric as they are, they can't tell the difference between side sunlight and our house being lit up with lights. It's still all overhead light to us, which is registered as sunlight. So if we want to start to induce melatonin, we need to start understanding that darkness is our friend. So not only do we need to cut caffeine— caffeine has a half-life of 6 to 12 hours, which also means caffeine has a quarter-life of 8 to 10 hours. So this is where, like, my recommendation to cut off caffeine is 1:37 PM. 1:37 PM. Why 1:37 PM? Because you can remember it, right? Actually, I actually got a complaint once that it's ridiculous that you want people to stop drinking caffeine at 1:37. Why not 2 o'clock? Like, you remembered it, didn't you? Like, fucking smart. Well, I'm like, no, it is. You people remember odd numbers. But 2 o'clock is about 11 o'clock when people go to bed, 10, 11 o'clock. So caffeine should be out of your system. That's why I say 1:37 PM, because cause it's easy to remember. So in saying that, get people to sleep in darkness. If you do a survey of your bedroom, you should be able to put your hand in front of your face and not see it. So someone should be able to punch you in the dark, right? You should trip over your shit. So define light. Like if you have a TV, yeah, TV, and there's like a little light there. So, you know, I was in America last week, you know, I turned all the alarm clocks around I put like tape over the TV because in my bedroom it's completely dark. Like I'm used to sleeping in pitch black darkness and that shit. I remember there was like this little thing every night. I'm like, where's this light coming from? It was like pissing me off, this thing flashing. Like I swear something was flashing. I swear. And then I'm like, where the fuck? And I turn on, I saw this little thing like that. So I put a sock over it. It was driving me nuts because it wasn't pitch black dark. I'm not weird at all, right? I'm not. I just know a lot of stuff about a lot of things. So yeah, you want to sleep in pitch black darkness because it's going to help melatonin. It's also going to help you stay asleep because you can wake up, like you could, someone could wake you up with a flashlight. Why? Because it's light. So reset your circadian rhythm by being in sunlight, but when it's time to go to bed, you want to be in pitch black darkness. So for concentration, that's how caffeine works. Tyrosine helps increase dopamine in the brain. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter of focus and drive. So we want dopamine. Dopamine is good, y'all. P5P, a vitamin, well, it's active form of vitamin B6, which is used in the brain, primarily uptake in the brain for cognition. It's an important one. This one actually, in terms of focus, if you're deficient in B6 and P5P, it can actually, just taking P5P can greatly improve someone's mood and cognition. So it's definitely one worth looking at. Inositol microdose can help with concentration. And theanine as well if you add it to something like caffeine. So these are my go-tos for concentration. And there's a supplement that I use called Fast Brain. It's basically just this. It's basically like carnitine. I think there's a bit of alpha-GPC. There's definitely tyrosine in it, a bit of P5P. I think that's it, right? It's from the PolyQuin Institute. They sell that one, which is good. It's a good one. Detoxification support. So you have water-soluble and fat-soluble vitamins. Water— fat-soluble vitamins essentially insulate toxins. Your water-soluble vitamins excrete toxins. So for detoxification process, you need both water-soluble and fat-soluble because the fat-soluble basically inhabits the toxin to then, because it's hydrophobic, to then pass it to a hydrophilic supplement, which then gets rid of it and eliminates it. So you need both in detoxification process. So people say they want to do a detox. My first point of call is making sure your water-soluble vitamins and your fat-soluble vitamins are adequate. Glycine is amino acid that binds with numerous different toxins, including estrogens. It's a good one. It's very, very cheap and something you could add. I use quite a bit of glycine. It also helps taper off cortisol. You could use it at the end of a workout or before bed. It's a very, very good one. And also helps with connective tissue of, it's numerous functions, connective tissue of ligaments as well. So glycine's also an amino acid and it's also cheap. N-acetylcysteine, another amino acid that helps in liver clearance. Calcium D-glucarate is specifically helping deglucuronization, which is a process of getting rid of estrogens inside the body. Glutathione is referred to as the master antioxidant, which helps essentially dispose of toxins. And sulforaphane, which is a compound that's found in broccoli that helps eliminate xenoestrogens, which specifically, like, people talk about glyphosate. Glyphosate's a pesticide, water-soluble pesticide, but sulforaphane's been one of those compounds that definitely helps in terms of excreting xenoestrogens and helping essentially what you'd call the ugly estrogen clearance of the body. Algatine, you would use for mercury and heavy metals that you get from InterClinical Labs. And that's a marine algae that binds with metals to help excretion. All right, so it's kind of a, a little but big crash course in supplementation. So we have a few— water and fat, um, no, you can take them at the same time. So yeah, you can take them at the same time. So your fat-soluble vitamins are A, D, K, and E. Your water-soluble vitamins are B, C, mainly B and C. And again, one's going to be passed through urine, the other one's not. So like vitamin C, you're going to be taking throughout. Like, that's why liposomal vitamin C is quite good because you can uptake a lot more than what you would otherwise. Whereas like vitamin D, you can take, you can take vitamin D like twice a week at big doses because the body's going to store it. And actually, there's been studies that have shown that it's better, better to take big doses of vitamin D, just a fat-soluble vitamin for storage, rather than sequentially. So it's, it's one approach you could do. I don't personally subscribe to it. I like to take it every day, but, um, you can definitely do it that way. Thanks for listening to the Enterprise Fitness Podcast and watching the full presentation. If you've enjoyed this, remember to hit subscribe and leave us a comment wherever you're listening to this through, or a review, would be forever grateful. Till next week, train hard, eat well, and supplement smart.