Welcome to part two of the “Is Brad Natty Or Not?” presentation.

In part one, I covered my background in athletics and my decision to operate from a squeaky clean baseline dating back to my professional triathlete career. In part two, I present an assortment of practical tips to optimize testosterone naturally, in the categories of:

• Sleep, rest, recovery, and down time
• Increasing all forms of general everyday movement
• Performing regular strength training sessions with brief, explosive movements
• Sprinting the right way to gain incredible hormonal benefits
• Diet: prioritize protein, eat nutrient-dense foods, eliminate processed foods
• Supplements: whey, creatine, MOFO, animal organs, and a few potential others

You’ll learn why creatine is so essential for everyone (not just athletes) when it comes to muscle strength, performance, recovery, and even protecting brain neurons from age related damage, how to get more creatine into your diet, the important role supplements like boron and Vitamin D play in testosterone optimization (plus alternative and effective ways of increasing Vitamin D), and the benefits of prioritizing protein, specifically whey protein.

TIMESTAMPS:

In learning to optimize our lifestyle behaviors, we cover sleep habits, rest, recovery, diet, supplementation and movement. [01:02}

Getting the best sleep is the most important of all healthy lifestyle objectives. [02:58]

Regular everyday movement is essential.  As little as 20 minutes of sitting still will deliver decrease in glucose tolerance and an increase in insulin resistance. Micro-workouts are a tremendous benefit. [08:05]

High intensity strength training is an overall benefit to add to the movement. [11:44]

CrossFit and boot camp are healthy and build fitness but you do need to use caution. [15:50]

Sprinting has the greatest return on investment. Full impact running sprints on flat ground are the best kind of sprints. [19:19]

You should avoid chronic exercise. Stress hormones antagonize testosterone. [23:49]

Diet is always a concern.  You want a protein-centric nutrient-dense diet that has eliminated processed foods. [25:27]

Supplements have the potential to keep you in an optimal state. [29:13]

Beside the animal organ supplements, we need to look at the need for Vitamin D, magnesium, and boron. [36:41]

Brad is 100 percent natural. [40:25]

LINKS:

• Brad Kearns.com
• Brad’s Shopping page
• Podcast with John Gray
• Don’t Just Sit There
• Carnivore Score Food Ranking Chart
• B.rad Whey Protein Superfuel

LISTEN:

We appreciate all feedback, and questions for Q&A shows, emailed to podcast@bradventures.com. If you have a moment, please share an episode you like with a quick text message, or leave a review on your podcast app. Thank you!

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• Mito Red Light: Photobiomodulation light panels to enhance cellular energy production, improve recovery, and optimize circadian rhythm. Email me for special B.rad 10% discount and 60-day free trial!
• NutriSense: Continuous glucose monitor and 1:1 expert support to help optimize diet choices and lifestyle behaviors. $30 B.rad discount!
• Marek Health: Comprehensive lab testing and expert tele-health support for peak performance. Use code “BRAD” for 10% discount!
• LMNT Electrolyte Drink Mix: Tasty, sugar-free, scientifically formulated electrolyte drink mix with everything you need and nothing you don’t. Free sample pack, just click the link!
• B.rad Whey + Creatine Superfuel: Premium quality, all-natural supplement for peak performance, recovery, and longevity
• Male Optimization Formula with Organs (MOFO): Optimize testosterone naturally with 100% grassfed animal organ supplement
• Brad’s Macadamia Masterpiece: Mind-blowing, life-changing nut butter blend
• Online educational courses: Numerous great offerings for an immersive home-study educational experience

Check out the my Favorites page for discounts on other great products!

B.Rad Podcast

Brad (00:00):
Welcome to part two of the scintillating two-part series Is Brad Natty or Not? The Truth Revealed, and in part one, I gave you a lot of background information, going way back to my career as a professional triathlete and how I formulated the beliefs and the value system and the behavior patterns of operating from a completely squeaky clean baseline. I’ve carried that forward, that philosophy forward to today, and I believe it serves me better in the long run. And I’m also open-minded to, uh, all the advantages and benefits that modern technology can provide. But right now, I think it’s really important to do the best we can optimizing all manner of lifestyle behaviors. And so that’s what we will cover in part two of this two-part presentation. We’re gonna get into sleep habits, rest, recovery, and downtime, increasing all forms of general everyday movement, high intensity strength training workouts, properly conducted sprint workouts, and of course, all about dietary habits that can optimize hormones and especially prevent you from, uh, tanking and feeling lousy, tired, and more and more dependent on nutrient deficient, heavily processed, quick energy foods, rather than being a clean burning machine.

Brad (02:26):
That’s the best you can be at all ages. And we’ll also cover the role of supplementation. I’ll bet you can guess my top three favorites, which would be whey protein, creatine, and male optimization formula with organs, freeze-dried animal organ supplements, and several others that warrant consideration and perhaps experimentation. So let us get into it now on with some important tips to optimize testosterone naturally for the ladies’ and for the mans’

Brad (02:58):
Okay, it starts with sleep number one. I’ve done whole shows related to testosterone optimization, so I’m gonna take you through these kind of quickly as a refresher and making sure that you’re nailing all these objectives as best you can, uh, rather than trying to override them, because it brings up an interesting philosophical question. If you are engaging in hormone replacement therapy, you are possibly masking or overriding the adverse lifestyle consequences of things that you are not optimizing. So if you’re a heavy duty business traveler and you’re on the jets all the time, which is so stressful and is known to spike cortisol and kick you into chronic stress mode, especially crossing time zones and dealing with jet lag, and you are pegging your testosterone at a certain number through intervention, maybe that is mitigating the adverse lifestyle consequences of frequent jet travel, and maybe that’s a fair trade off, right?

Brad (03:59):
Hormone replacement therapy is not very ancestral. Our caveman ancestors did not have needles and syringes, nor though did they jump on airplanes and go into hectic, stressful meetings, uh, with client or wherever you’re headed on your next business travel. Same with, you know, brushing up the loose ends around your sleep habits or your eating habits. And so, I, you know, I, I I understand the rationale, the justification if you can’t absolutely dial in your lifestyle, but I would rather try my best to appreciate the process of leading the most healthy lifestyle possible and getting all the sleep I need every single day, finding and sourcing the best foods, doing the most sensible workout program, which I’m not scoring very strong there right now, as evidenced by my heel surgery indicating that I overdid it and push myself too far and now have a long recovery ahead of me.

Brad (04:58):
But I’d rather try my best to do my best rather than take a blanket and cover up my shortcomings. Do you understand what I mean? And speaking of that, um, how about taking lifestyle advice from someone who’s in that category? We might have to take it with a grain of salt because someone on hormone replacement can get away with stuff that a natural person might not be able to. Remember I talked about my time as a triathlete and going in and seeing my blood values tanked because I was training so hard and traveling and racing. That’s a natural consequence of the behaviors that I was engaging in that were out of balance with true health and hormone status. And speaking of that your hormone status is a really wonderful proxy for your overall state of health and stress, rest balance. It could even be expressed in terms of your libido.

Brad (05:55):
So when your libido is strong, that means whatever you’re doing is not interfering with that healthy, natural part of your human experience. And if it’s tanked, that could mean like John Gray describes in his awesome book, Beyond Mars and Venus, and on our podcast together, it could mean dysfunctional relationship dynamics can indeed tank your testosterone and tank your libido, as well as eating all that junk food, traveling too much on jet airplanes and training too hard in the gym or out on the road. So it’s a great proxy to see without having to pay for, uh, continued blood tests. Right? Okay. So I talk about sleep as number one and the important environment that you must create a dark, cool, calm, quiet sanctuary to sleep, and then implement those wonderful evening rituals where you wind things down, you get away from the screen in the final hours before bedtime, and you transition into a wonderful night’s sleep.

Brad (06:56):
And then ideally, you awaken naturally in the morning without an alarm near sunrise. Again, ideally, I know we have work schedules and other things that are getting in the way, but if you can leverage, uh, that getting into direct sunlight, the direct light exposure doesn’t have to be sunny, but getting your eyeballs direct, light exposure as soon as you wake up outdoors without filtration from a window or anything. So if it’s cold, get out on the balcony for a couple minutes and expose your eyes to actual light, natural light that will help, uh, optimize your circadian rhythm. It will actually help optimize the next night’s sleep. So a good night’s sleep starts first thing in the morning, waking up near sunrise, getting light and getting movement going, as I described in such detail on my morning routine course. So I think this has been a huge, uh, benefit for me. My male hormone status, my overall health is to get up, get outside, and commence a, ambitious, uh, movement routine that I do every single morning without fail. Uh, so that brings us to number two on the list. So we have sleep, rest, recovery, and downtime.

Brad (08:05):
And then number two, regular everyday movement. So, uh, we know from, uh, evolutionary anthropology, the human species is designed to be in near constant daily movement. That’s how we evolve for two and a half million years to walk around, move around. We’re hunting, we’re gathering, we’re building shelter. And this idea of sitting in a chair and deloading our skeleton and changing our physiology, we know from the research that, uh, as little as 20 minutes of sitting still will deliver, will prompt a measurable decrease in glucose tolerance and an increase in insulin resistance. So we stop burning energy efficiently just from being seated strange as it may seem.

Brad (08:52):
So these little bitty breaks that we can take throughout the day will help optimize hormones, keep our energy high, keep our metabolism working well, and that could be as simple as just sending last email, getting up, going down one flight of stairs, back up, doing some stretches in the online course that you can find on brad kerns.com from Katy Bowman, the Master of Nutritious Movement. It’s called, Don’t Just Sit There, that’s the title of the course. And she has exercises and suggestions that you can do in the office to also counterbalance the ways that your skeleton is placed. Uh, inappropriate skeleton muscles, connective tissue are placed in inappropriate loads when we’re sitting in a chair. So we can do the wall angels where you put your back against the wall and sweep your arms up and down, and that counterbalances the hunched over posture, uh, uh, sitting at your desk, typing or sending text messages, what have you, so that that absolute urgent need for increasing all forms of general everyday movement is right up there.

Brad (09:56):
Uh, many experts contend that’s more important than adhering to a devoted exercise regimen. I mean, both are super important, but if you’re gonna do anything, especially from, uh, we’re talking to someone on a baseline level of poor health status, they’re not in shape, they’re not exercising, they’re not eating well, um, set the priority to just get up and move more throughout the day. And walking, of course, is the centerpiece of that. And then we can sprinkle in things like the morning movement, uh, the fascination that I have with micro workouts, rather than thinking that fitness is this elaborate protocol where you have to get in your car and drive to the gym. Just drop for a set of 20 deep squats in your cubicle or one flight of stairs, or a few poles on the stretch tubing that’s hanging from your door. And these micro workouts will add up over time to a tremendous fitness and health benefit.

Brad (10:48):
So we have sleep, rest, recovery in downtime as point number one, and then increase all forms of general everyday movement. Number two, in pursuit of optimal hormone status. Uh, and remember I said sleep, rest, recovery and downtime. So that evening sleep block, of course, is super important and the nice dark room and your nice eight sleep bed that you can control the temperature on and all that great high-tech stuff. But this also means downtime from this constant sources of stimulation, hyperconnectivity, distraction, and brain function. We have no downtime anymore because of the mobile device and because the way modern life is situated. So we have to strive not only for a nice evening sleep, but taking rest periods from the near constant and hectic pace of general everyday modern life. Now we got our movement down, we got our sleep down.

Brad (11:44):
Then the high intensity strength training is going to be a wonderful benefit to your overall hormone and health status. And we’re talking about brief, intense explosive movements that involve full body functional movements being the best. And that’s things like pushups, pullups, squats and planks, or doing the compound lifts like squats, dead lifts, um, Dr. Doug McGuff’s Big Five Workout, which is the LA pull down, the chest press, the seated row, the overhead press, and the leg press that’s working. Total body compound movements, major muscle groups, major joints, putting them through the range of motion. Those kinds of exercises will be the best for a hormone boost as well with particular attention to lower body compound movements like the squat and the deadlift, because we have greater androgen receptor density in our lower extremity. So when we work those muscles, when we challenge them, pushing them all the way to failure on a single set, let’s say, of the leg press, like on Dr. McGuff’s workout, or if you’re competent doing things like the hexagonal deadlift bar, the number one, many people think it’s the number one overall most beneficial piece of fitness equipment.

Brad (13:01):
I tend to agree because it’s so versatile. And I have that now integrated into my morning routine where I do a set of straight leg deadlifts, uh, followed by a set of more of a squat where I’m lowering the butt down while holding the hexagonal bar, and then finally end with just holding the bar up and getting a total upper body and lower body workout when I’m tired, no rest between these three things, and that caps off my morning routine like nothing else. So it’s a super versatile and safe piece of equipment that will give you a nice hormone boost because androgen receptor density, meaning that these muscles, these muscle cells, will uptake a lot of the sex hormone that will give you those benefits when you’re talking about performing, doing the hard work, recovering and coming back, uh, optimally optimal hormone status throughout the day and throughout the life, especially as you age.

Brad (13:56):
And we suffer from this widespread condition called sarcopenia. That’s the age-related loss of muscle mass, which will dramatically harm your metabolic and hormonal and even cognitive health. So getting those lower leg, those major muscle group movements is a great way to quickly boost your testosterone and promote long-term health with muscle mass. Another good thing to do, uh, along these lines is to, uh, hold a position where you can have what’s called the maximum force production position where, so where you’re strongest. So this would be at the near the top of the squat or near the top of the deadlift. So you’re getting close to finishing a rep, and then you just hold that position, and that has especially a beneficial hormone boost and activating those receptor sites in the muscle cells to, uh, bring in the adaptive sex hormones.

Brad (14:54):
So, what kind of protocol, really simple. Of course, you can get all kinds of content recommending the perfect workout, but if you do somewhere around six reps with a challenging weight, right, where you’re six reps near failure and you rest extensively in between the sets, so it’s not sort of a metabolic conditioning session where you’re getting really tired and you’re working hard through a bunch of stations or doing a CrossFit type session or a group training boot camp where you’re doing this thing, this, this, this is more about pure strength, where you’re giving out maximum explosive effort for only a few reps, let’s say six reps, and then resting a couple minutes between sets. This is similar to the proper sprint workout protocol that I’m going to detail next, but these are particularly beneficial for hormone optimization. Now, is a boot camp, a CrossFit session, a really challenging workout that you like to do, whether it’s basketball or, or a tennis match?

Brad (15:50):
Are those things healthy and building fitness? Of course they are, but they bring an increased risk of fatigue, depletion and, uh, a adverse impact on your hormone status. And that was me training for triathlon and doing the crazy swim workouts and track workouts and long bike rides and all those things that are known to tank your hormones. And so when you go on a prolonged grueling workout lasting 45 minutes or an hour could be a peloton session where your heart rate is up high, you are going to produce a lot of stress hormones, particularly cortisol and cortisol, and the other stress hormones antagonize testosterone. So if the workout is a little bit too difficult, lasts for too long, doesn’t have enough rest in between explosive efforts, this will contribute to a fatigue and depletion effect on your hormones rather than the desired effect of a truly explosive, powerful workout where you walk out of the gym and you still feel light and energetic.

Brad (16:56):
Yes, your muscles can definitely feel the effort when you push yourself hard, but you’re not depleted, exhausted, staggering over to the Jamba Juice next door and needing to replenish. Those workouts should be performed few and far between if you indeed harbor those competitive goals. Otherwise, we wanna stick to that explosiveness. And how do you know if you’re doing too much? Here’s one guideline. You want to execute precise, perfect technique on every single rep. Mark Bell, even at his extreme power lifting goals, contends that your last rep on your last set of the workout should be as good as your first rep on your first set of whatever exercise it was. So you don’t want to go in there and blow yourself up. That is going to tank hormones, especially when you do it in a patterned manner, like that’s your go-to workout is an extreme CrossFit session and you’re in group two rather than group four where you belong.

Brad (17:53):
You get what I’m saying? So air on the side of caution and be explosive, feel powerful, be able to execute precise technique. If you experience something like a tightening up in your lower back when you’re on your sixth rep and you’re thinking that you’re gonna do eight. No, you’re done drop the weight immediately. Same with beginning your third set and you feel not quite as strong or you feel like you’re not able to maintain those good positions. I do my 45 degree dumbbell raises every morning where my shoulder blades are pinched together aggressively, and then I’m holding the weights out at a 45 degree angle from the body and lifting up high and dropping ’em back down and lifting up high. And I am pinching my shoulder blades aggressively the entire time. And on certain days, if I’m recovering from a stressful workout the day before, I will notice my shoulder blades start to cave from the stress of the effort of doing the dumbbell races before my rep count is up.

Brad (18:54):
So typically I’ll do 25, raises at 45 degree and then immediately shift over into 25 raises with horizontal where my arms are just out to my sides. And I can do that with my shoulder blades pinched all the time, except on those days when I can’t, and that’s when I have to stop the rep count early. Okay, so high intensity strength training done correctly is number three.

Brad (19:19):
That gets us to number four, sprinting. This has the greatest return on investment, the most profound impact on testosterone and the other adaptive hormones of any kind of workout. It’s the quintessential human movement of brief, intense all out sprints, paired nicely with moving frequently at a slow pace throughout the day, putting your body under regular resistance load with strength training, and then finally capping it off with a properly conducted sprint workout.

Brad (19:49):
What are the best kind of sprints? Full impact running sprints on flat ground. Those have the best genetic signaling for bone density, hormone optimization, fat reduction, because the penalty for carrying excess body fat when you’re trying to become competent at sprinting is so severe that you are going to see that fat melt away from your body when you become a competent sprinter on flat ground. For many of us, we need to work up to that because the injury risk is high due to the high impact and perhaps lack of competence. And, uh, many years removed from the last time you’ve run a sprint race. So you can do wonderful sprint workouts in a low or no impact manner, such as sprinting on the concept two rower, sprinting on the stationary bike or the elliptical machine or any other way, sprinting in the swimming pool.

Brad (20:40):
Um, these are all great ways to bump up that heart rate to near maximum, ask the muscles for a maximum output, and then recover extensively in between each rep so that it’s true, uh, maximum output or near maximum sprint performance. We misuse that term a lot. And so when we say, Hey, I did a great, uh, Peloton workout, we sprinted 10 times, for a minute each time, that’s not a sprint. The body cannot truly deliver maximum output, uh, technically speaking for longer than seven or eight seconds. That’s the ATP creatine phosphate pathway that gets exhausted after seven or eight seconds. And then we go into, uh, recruiting, uh, different energy sources. Uh, the next, uh, pathway is called the lactate pathway, and then we go up to the glucose pathway, and then finally the fat burning pathway as we go for hours and hours.

Brad (21:30):
But a true, true, true literal sprint where your ability to generate absolute maximum force can only last for around seven to eight seconds. Now, the commonly cited optimal parameters for a sprint workout. Hopefully you’re gonna memorize these by now cuz I talk about ’em so much. But the recommendation for everyone at every fitness level is to perform between four and 10 sprints lasting between 10 and 20 seconds with a six to one recovery to work ratio. So if you’re sprinting 10 seconds, you’re gonna rest for a minute. If you’re sprinting for 20 seconds, you’re going to rest for two minutes. How do you choose between 10 and 20? It’s your fitness level, it’s your competitive goals. It’s also the event you choose. So if you’re running high impact sprints on flat ground, you might err on the, or you might trend toward the lower side of that.

Brad (22:24):
So you might be doing ten second sprints. Whereby if you’re doing something in the swimming pool with no impact or on a stationary bike, you might want to go up to 20 seconds, especially it takes a while to accelerate on a stationary bike, for example, and shift the resistance. And so whatever duration you choose, go for a six to one recovery. That’s gonna be plenty of time to come back for your next sprint, feeling refreshed, energized, and your nervous system, what’s called optimally excited and uninhibited. You’re ready to pounce and do another sprint. But if you start to experience a breakdown in technique, fatigue of the central nervous system, like you don’t feel like doing anymore, your focus is wandering, or you feel, uh, a new, uh, and unique, uh, muscle tension, for example, the lower back or the hamstrings tightening up after your fourth sprint or your seventh sprint, that’s when you know to cut the workout short and you’ve done just fine.

Brad (23:21):
So we have sleep, we have movement, we have high intensity strength training, we have sprinting. And interestingly, this is research cited on one of Ben Greenfield’s shows talking about testosterone optimization. The research shows that sprints as short as six seconds can deliver a wonderful boost in testosterone levels. So you don’t even have to go for 10 seconds. You can, can do these brief bursts and get a huge, uh, hormone benefit.

Brad (23:49):
Now what to avoid, as we talked about all these great workouts to do that chronic exercise that can absolutely tank your hormones, don’t be like that young professional triathlete Brad that was out there all day trying to get faster and tanking his hormones in the process. It was a evil trade-off and pursuit of athletic excellence and competitive excellence at the highest level, basically sacrificing my health, putting my health on the sideline as I pursued incremental fitness goals that really aren’t, uh, in, in the interest of, uh, nearly anyone except for an elite performer, right?

Brad (24:24):
So you wanna avoid chronic exercise patterns of any kind. The the popular template of high intensity interval training is almost by definition or as high potential to be overly stressful. So when you’re asked to perform interval after interval after interval, uh, during these bootcamp classes or during the group cycling class, it can easily drift over into the category of overly stressful workout pattern. It’s much better, especially for hormone optimization to perform brief high intensity sprints with long rest. Same with the strength training. Um, I know we want to get metabolic conditioning, it’s called we want to get fit enough to complete a CrossFit workout, but this comes at more risk to hormone optimization than the true power and the rest and the recovery. So be absolutely sure to steer clear of anything that resembles even a whiff of chronic exercise, uh, stress hormones, antagonize testosterone, it’s as simple as that.

Brad (25:27):
And now we’ll quickly move over to diet, which we’ve talked about so much, but in a nutshell, for hormone optimization, we want to have a protein centric, nutrient dense diet that has eliminated processed foods, which tank your health tank, your hormone status, making sure we get enough protein, making sure we get that one gram per pound of ideal body weight. That’s the new formula communicated by the great experts. Um, I I love the show, uh, Dr. Don Lehman did on Peter Attia Drive. I love Dr. Gabrielle Lyon hitting this point over and over about the protein centric diet. Dr. Ted Naiman, uh, previous guest on my show talking about this protein to energy ratio diet whereby we prioritize protein, we get the high satiety provided by protein. We get that maximum nutrient density that you can find by downloading the Carnivore Score Food Ranking Chart on my website, and we steer clear of the processed foods that will destroy our health, destroy our homeo status, uh, mess up our appetite and stay tidy hormones and lead us down this path of being, uh, less than, uh, fully energetic, poor recovery, poor performance and poor metabolic function such that we experience an increased reliance upon this crappy processed food to get through the day because we don’t have, uh, good hormones running through our blood.

Brad (26:51):
Okay? So that’s the, the nutshell of the diet. Robb Wolf, major props for him with his epic one-liner that he delivered on our podcast together where he says, if you wanna live longer, lift more weights and eat more protein. Maintain that muscle mass throughout life, that muscle strength, and as Dr. Lyon talks about with this, uh, uh, protein centric medicine or muscle centric medicine, is her term. If you can maintain optimal body composition, if you can keep that muscle mass, that muscle strength going, uh, by definition you’re gonna have excellent metabolic health. We’re we’re programmed in culture to obsess about our body fat levels and keep our weight down and try to, you know, avoid adding on more fat, adding on more fat. That is certainly a, a, a valid, um, a a approach, a belief system, but it’s going to be better to prioritize protein, prioritize muscle mass, and let the body fat take care of itself accordingly.

Brad (27:50):
So if you can get stronger and more muscle mass, you are going to burn more calories and you’re going to drop that fat that you might have had a difficult time removing when you’re engaging in calorie restriction, fasting portion control, ketogenic eating, all the tools and tricks that we use to try to eat fewer calories so that we’ll drop that excess body fat. How about turning up the dial on the other side of the equation and burning more calories, working harder, building more muscle, and letting your metabolic function, uh, take care of itself 24/7? Um, I just saw a good clip from Dr. Paul Saladino talking about that too. The weight and lose weight is to lose weight around the clock by having a lot of muscle mass and, uh, a good, uh, metabolic rate as, uh, as created from your exercise regimen.

Brad (28:41):
So the protein centric nutrient-dense diet, go for those animal foods that are the most nutritious on the earth. Make the best choices in every category and choose the plant foods, uh, selectively, uh, in short meat and fruit is gonna be big winner fruit being the premium source of carbohydrates along with, uh, other optionals that work for you. Um, but I’m really loving this new kick of optimizing intake of all macronutrients, including carbohydrates in the form of the most nutritious carbohydrates, starting with fruit.

Brad (29:13):
So that brings us to supplements and the potential they have to, uh, keep you in that optimal category. And, protein would be at the top of the list because we want this protein centric diet. However, it can be difficult to sit down and prepare a delicious, nutritious meal, the omelet, the steak when you’re running around on a busy, hectic day or have just finished a workout and your appetite is not quite you know, ready to sit down to a feast because your body temperature’s elevated, the stress hormones are still regulating.

Brad (29:45):
And that is a great time to take the most easiest and highest quality protein, easiest to digest, highest quality, B.rad Grassfed Whey Protein Super Fuel. And we’re so happy how the taste comes out with this light, authentic, natural taste. That’s why I insisted on not putting any artificial sweeteners in there. You can take a scoop or even two scoops of the super fuel and stir it in water and drink it, and it just tastes like a light vanilla drink. It’s not that thick, disgusting fake taste that you’re gonna get from, uh, the vanilla cream smoothies that might be for sale on the shelf at your local fitness facility, and you’re gonna get sick of over time. So if you start your day with 20 or or or 40 grams of protein, going down the hatch, that’s going to help you optimize your protein intake and guarantee it even among the ebbs and flows of your dietary habits and whether you were able to sit down for that delicious steak and egg.

Brad (30:44):
So people sometimes blanket object to needing, uh, supplements when we can get everything we need from healthy, nutritious diet. I absolutely agree. And if I’m sitting down to a delicious omelet every day that my private chef wakes me up and has me eat, I’m gonna be less needing something quick and easy on the go. But for most of us, we want to choose carefully with the supplements that have the most benefit and are the most convenient and help us stay focused there. Creatine is next on the list. This is the most proven performance supplement ever. Basically, the most studied, the most longest used with great success. It helps with muscle performance, muscle strength, muscle recovery. And now emerging research is showing its tremendous promise for protecting the brain neurons from age-related damage, especially for healthy, active people. So, creatine, I’ve talked about the creatine phosphate pathway that helps you produce maximum energy for those eight second sprints.

Brad (31:44):
It’s an energy source for the muscle cell. It’s so important to muscle hydration, uh, muscle performance recovery status. And it’s absolutely undisputed that this is, uh, one of the, one of the most important things you can do as a healthy active person is to make sure you get enough creatine every day. Where is it found mainly in the diet? In meat, especially red meat. And so if you eat a couple pounds of red meat per day, like Dr. Shawn Baker, um, he’s probably, his creatine levels are optimized. That’s why he is setting records in the 50 plus division in rowing and peak performance guy all around. And I think not big on supplements from some of the content he puts out. That’s great if you’re eating two pounds of red meat today, and if you’re a little short of that and you want to get a great performance boost, Hey, why did I put it in the Super Fuel for that reason?

Brad (32:34):
So you’re getting weight, protein, and creatine, at least in my product, or you can buy them separately and mix and match, but I don’t think you can beat this product. I’m so happy to put it out there because I’ve tried everything and bought from different sources and mixed and matched, and now I make it easy and convenient for you to take the very best. So that goes on the list. And of course, what else goes on the supplement list? MOFO! That’s rad male optimization formula with organs. This show’s turning into commercial, Brad. Well, that’s because I strongly believe that this stuff has been highly effective for me. And as I report before, going back around 2019, something kicked into gear for me and I experienced a huge boost in overall energy and peak performance and athletic performance. And I think certain things happened around that time.

Brad (33:27):
Um, probably optimal lifestyle circumstances and everything in healthy balance, my career, my love life, my personal life, my diet, spinning out of the, uh, period of time where I was in, uh, the ketogenic research and development, writing those books and trying to adhere to strict keto guidelines and perform and recover, it was too much for me. It didn’t work. And so bringing back more carbs and, and then also drifting away from, the plant-centered diet where I was consuming large amounts of these potentially problematic plants. So the advent of the carnivore movement and also starting to consume, uh, pretty good quantities of the ancestral supplements, organ meats, and trying to up my organ game in general. So bringing these super nutritious foods into my diet, especially grass-fed liver, which goes into my smoothie every morning, uh, that has been a big boost as well as taking MOFO and the other ancestral supplements.

Brad (34:23):
So, with MOFO it’s comprised of this is from grass-fed cattle. Uh, we have, uh, uh, uh, testicle prostate, heart, liver, and bone marrow compilation freeze-dried into the capsules. And I take quite a few of these every day. I throw them into my smoothie or I swallow them, whatever’s the most convenient. And the compilation of these animal organs contains the proteins, peptides, enzymes, co-factors, and molecular bio directors that signal your body to optimize or increase natural production of testosterone. This is called like supports, like it’s a fundamental piece of ancestral medicine of ancient Chinese medicine for thousands of years, where if you are fed an extract or the actual organ from the animal, whether it’s a kidney or a thyroid, it’s gonna support the function of a corresponding organ in your body. It’s a little bit, uh, I would say, um, uh, maybe the staunch, Western medicine person is going to look a scans at something like the concept of like supports.

Brad (35:29):
Like, even though it’s thousands of years old, um, the Native American healers, the Chinese medicine have had this as a centerpiece and even more mainstream, like a functional medicine person will give you maybe some desiccated thyroid to kickstart your thyroid or adrenal or desiccated liver has long been a popular supplement because it’s incredibly nutrient dense. So say what you wanna say about, uh, your belief systems and the rigid science that you want to, uh, follow. Guess what? Dr. Cate Shanahan about as, um, measured and thoughtful as you can get, admits, uh, acknowledges that when you’re taking these organs in supplemental form, they have the exact nutrient profile as required by the actual organs in your body. So when you take freeze-dried testicle, you are getting high levels of boron, vitamin A, uh, riboflavin, all the things that are necessary for healthy testicular function and testosterone production. So I think the science is tremendously supportive that these products can benefit you greatly, and they’ve been a big help for me along with all the other things.

Brad (36:41):
And then we have in the next category, all the other possible supplements that you can take, especially for the very popular category of testosterone optimization. Your head will blow if you go on to Amazon and search for supplements. Um, some of the ones that have been validated, uh, pretty strongly by science are, uh, making sure you get enough magnesium, which is, uh, frequently deficient in the modern human, uh, vitamin D status should be optimal. And of course, the main way to get that is through sun exposure, secondarily through supplementation and third varily through diet. So even a high Vitamin D diet is going to give you only a fraction of what you’ll get with healthy sun exposure during the times of day and year of peak solar intensity in your area.

Brad (37:28):
And if you live a sun deficient lifestyle, such as those of equatorial ancestry living in Sweden right now, or in Canada, you know, if you have challenges or you’re indoors a lot, you can do vitamin D supplementation and or, um, getting some, uh, vitamin D, uv B lamps on your skin. Uh, that would be, uh, a proper tanning bed. I’d have a small, uh, vitamin D lamp called the, um, uh, the ray reminder where in the wintertime I’ll stand in front of this very powerful lamp for a couple minutes at a time and it will prompt vitamin D production in those months of the year where I can’t get vitamin D from outside. So we have magnesium, we have vitamin D, we have boron, which is another mineral that, and today’s diet is deficient because the soil is depleted of things like boron.

Brad (38:22):
And so you can go get dried figs and dates grown in the Mediterranean area, Greece, Italy, because that soil is still pretty good. And those, uh, foods will give you high levels of boron, or you can supplement with boron. So that’s now on my list, uh, as being especially effective for, uh, testosterone optimization. And so, um, that would be, uh, that would be a quick hit at some of the popular supplements. But of course then we also have all these, exotic plant compounds that have become or have been very popular for quite some time centuries. In the case of things like Gin Sing has been known as used as an aphrodisiac for a long time. Uh, but the research on some of these compounds that you might have heard, uh, bantered about. Dr. Huberman did some programming where he went through the various exotic plant agents that have some correlation with boosting libido, not necessarily testosterone as much as libido.

Brad (39:23):
And those are seemingly, uh, interchangeable, but they’re not exactly interchangeable. So, if you’re looking down that route and want to experiment with some of this stuff, you may have heard about things like, Tong Cat, Ali Tribulous, terrestrials, horny goat Weed, Panax, jinsin Ashwaganda, mama Root, LJ Fen, Greek pine bark, and Black Pepper. So these are believed, these herbals are believed to, uh, boost strength, increase your energy, help with muscle building, help with libido. If you wanna play around with that stuff, I don’t think it can hurt too much, but I would stick to the major ones, which would be whey protein, creatine, uh, healthy eating of course, and considering a supplement like MOFO for targeted testosterone optimization. Oh my gosh, the reviews from customers are really impressive. You can read those on Amazon, and I’m proud to stand behind that product and then especially proud as we close down here to say, Hey, I’m a hundred percent natural.

Brad (40:25):
And by the way, when it comes to the content dispensed on this show, it is 100% authentic and 0% embellished. I had to scroll through my Instagram posts and my show content to make sure, uh, there’s absolutely nothing that’s not really happening in my life every day. So I’m not, I’m not posing in any way and I don’t plan to ever, so I will be telling the truth if I go over to the hormone replacement therapy five years from now, 10 years from now, you’re gonna hear all about it here, but for now, putting the rumors to rest, Brad is a natty and proud of it and trying my best, and hopefully you’ll join me on this journey. Thank you so much for listening, and let’s hear what you have to say. I love getting the, the feedback at podcast@bradventures.com is the email addressed, and I’m sure we’ll have follow up programming with q and a shows to get deeper into this as each of us navigates our personal battle. Thanks.

Speaker 4 (41:25):
Thank you for listening to the show. I love sharing the experience with you and greatly appreciate your support. Please email podcast brad ventures.com with feedback, suggestions, and questions for the Q and A shows. Subscribe to our email list at bradkearns.com for a weekly blast about the published episodes and a wonderful bimonthly newsletter edition with informative articles and practical tips for all aspects of healthy living. You can also download several awesome free eBooks when you subscribe to the email list. And if you could go to the trouble to leave a five or five star review with Apple Podcasts or wherever else you listen to the shows, that would be super incredibly awesome. It helps raise the profile of the B.rad podcast and attract new listeners. And did you know that you can share a show with a friend or loved one by just hitting a few buttons in your player and firing off a text message? My awesome podcast player called Overcast allows you to actually record a sound bite excerpt from the episode you’re listening to, and fire it off with a quick text message. Thank you so much for spreading the word and remember, B.rad.

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