(Breather) Last week we talked about optimizing testosterone through the right kind of exercise and specifying your diet to include superfoods (organ meats, pastured eggs, SMASH fish, and monounsaturated fats like avocado and coconut). But how do you factor in carbohydrates in a healthy way? How much should you eat a day, and when?

My suggestion is: honor your natural appetite. If you are craving carbs, then just eat some carbs! Just be careful about what becomes a habit (see the lessons I learned from my Fatty Popcorn Boy saga).

Also, Ben Greenfield recommends that you restock glycogen and optimize your hormones with nightly carb refeeds. Think of it as a “Best of both worlds” scenario – you bank lots of fasting hours and eat mostly keto meals, but then you can enjoy family time and liberal carb intake (100-150 grams, even up to 200 grams!), which ensures restocked glycogen and gets insulin to move adaptive hormones into receptor sites. In fact, these feast and famine cycles are gaining popularity, which is funny since Art DeVany said back in 2006, right out of the inception of the ancestral health movement, that, “We are most human when we don’t eat.” Interestingly, prolonged fasting drops testosterone and HGH (human growth hormone), but refeeds actually spike it higher.

Now that we’ve covered testosterone boosting tips like exercise, sleep, and diet, it’s time to discuss supplements. If you’ve already done a little research on this subject, then you already know that there are tons of supplements out there that all pretty much claim to be magical testosterone boosters. But are any of them actually effective? That’s why I’m proud to stand behind my MOFO supplement. Made of desiccated and dried organ meats, this supplement is basically like a meal (or a snack) in pill form, because it’s made up of the most-nutrient dense organ meats. MOFO is so effective because we use the specific organs that have cofactors and molecular bio directors (a fancy way of saying the chemical agents contained naturally in animal organs are believed to heal the same target organs in your body). A traditional physician may balk at the idea, but in reality, people, like the Native Americans and Chinese, have used organ meats as a healing modality for centuries.

Natural/Herbal Supplements to try:

• Magnesium and Zinc (but only if you are exercising and sweating heavily).
• Vitamin D: Most of us are deficient in magnesium and Vitamin D. Make sure you’re getting enough sun exposure!
• Boron 
• Creatine: One of the most proven supplements ever for muscle building and recovery, it’s also good for older athletes. Since you can’t absorb too much at one time, just mix a little in water – take 5g per day, but in two doses of 2.5g.
• Cacao powder: You can also eat cacao nibs, or add some cacao powder into your morning coffee. Or, try making a cup of creamy hot chocolate using my favorite cacao powder from Organifi.
• Maca root/maca powder
• Longjack
• Fenugreek
• Pycnogenol (pine bark)
• Tribulus

Estrogenic Influences to avoid:

1. Plastic bottles and food containers.
2. Soy, corn, and flaxseed contain 100 times more estrogen than any other foods.
3. All-natural skincare (sunscreen) and eco home cleaners.
4. Parabens, phthalates, and PCBs: Found in shampoos and conditioners, these are easily absorbed into the body and unfavorably affect testosterone/estrogen ratios.

I personally like to use Mrs. Meyer’s cleaning products for home and Dr. Bronner’s soap for personal care – classic, affordable, easy to find, and most importantly, a high quality, clean product that actually works and doesn’t disrupt your hormones. Yes, there are a lot of toxic products out there, but fortunately there are many companies that do care about your health, so you just have to do a little research to find which option works best for you.

TIMESTAMPS:

Remember that sleep, strength training and diet are important for supporting testosterone. [03:10]

Where do carbohydrates fit into the picture? [04:11]

If you’re trying to drop excess body fat, the most simple and direct way there is to minimize insulin production in the diet and upregulate fat burning accordingly. [08:11]

Honor your natural appetite. [10:19]

Are supplements good for you? MOFO supplements have natural organ meats in them that target specific organs.  [13:22]

Magnesium and zinc are important and most of us are deficient in this. [16:44]

Vitamin D is a huge cancer risk factor. You must have exposure to the sun. [18:35]

Creatine is a bodybuilding supplement but not just for bodybuilders. [22:55]

Brad talks about other supplements that can support your testosterone level. [24:37]

Estrogenic influences are in our environment. The worst are the plastics that touch your drink. [27:46]

LINKS:

• Dr. Cate Shanahan
• Ben Greenfield
• Dr. Phil Maffetone
• Dr. Peter Attia
• Dr. Tommy Wood
• Dr. Paul Saladino
• MOFO
• Weston A. Price Foundation
• Vitamin D Solution
• ORAC
• Organifi
• Maca Root
• Pine Bark
• Triobulus
• Estrogeneration: How Estrogenics are Making You Fat, Sick, and Infertile

LISTEN:

Get Over Yourself Podcast

Brad (00:00):
Welcome to the get over yourself podcast. This is author, an athlete, Brad Kearns, discovering ways to be healthy, fit and happy in hectic, high-stress, modern life. So let’s slow down and take a deep breath. Take a cold plunge and expertly balance that competitive intensity with an appreciation of the journey. That’s the theme of the show. Here we go.

Brad (03:10):
Time for lifestyle tips to boost T part 3. Thank you for bearing with me. Remember in part 1, we covered the all important topic of sleep and we got into the incredible benefits of sprinting, uh, on the workout side. And then in part 2 we kept the workout discussion going with the importance of strength training, how to do it properly. Same with cardiovascular exercise, especially the importance of maintaining aerobic heart rates to avoid that chronic exercise pattern that is so destructive to testosterone and general health. The importance of recovery, uh, doing things that elicit testosterone spike, which are competitive environments, are challenges in life and your environment. That’s our basic hormonal biological drive is to conquer our environment. And then we jumped into the diet and we talked about super foods, minimizing insulin production so you don’t wash away all your testosterone with excess insulin.

Brad (04:11):
And now we arrive at a continued discussion about diet, a couple more follow up points and then talking about some supplements. And one thing is the role of carbohydrates with testosterone optimization, especially for athletes. If you’re non-athletic and non-active, you best be getting off your butt and moving your body before you even talk about macro nutrients in the diet, right? So we’re going to assume you’re an active person that’s doing your best to get out there and deliver some high intensity efforts, some explosive work now and then as well as move around enough in during daily life and getting some of those cardiovascular workouts in at the proper heart rate. So with that assumed, where are carbohydrates fitting into this picture? And this is where we get deep into the weeds, where some people are advocating for an extremely low carbohydrate diet. That’s the whole keto genic scene, right?

Brad (05:04):
Strictly limiting those carbs every day. Uh, the carnivore community of course is not consuming many carbohydrates, especially if they’re strict nose to tail animal foods. You’re getting a little or no carbohydrates and people are performing wonderfully on this kind of dietary pattern. And then there’s the counter voices saying that if you lower carb intake too much, you lower insulin too much, you’re going to tank your not only anabolic hormones like testosterone and growth hormone, but also thyroid, adrenal, things like that. So it’s important to recognize that things like, uh, aggressive fasting, uh, high intensity exercise, cold exposure, jumping into the cold tub. And so on are all, uh, stressors, right? We call them hormetic stressors. If they produce an overall net benefit, these optimal positive natural stressors, a sprint workout would go in there too. Um, you can, you can do just fine and be the best you can be and be a superhuman superstar, delay aging, performed magnificent athletic feats, thumbs up all around because you are stressing your body appropriately.

Brad (06:15):
But if we recognize these are all different forms of stress to the body, it’s very easy to get out of balance and overdo it with your ambitious lifestyle practices to the extent that they are counterproductive because don’t forget, for most of us in the background lies all kinds of mostly chronic stressors, right? We have commuting, we have work deadlines, we have too much screen time, we have arguing and drama and difficulty in our personal lives. So those all go on the stress side of the equation. On the stress side of the balance scales. I like to, uh, convey that image. You know, the scales of justice, the, uh, the, the blind lady in the statue and there’s two sides of the scale. So you have all these stress factors on one side. So if you also throw in there what are otherwise appropriate stressors, like sprinting, like fasting, like cutting carbon, take like jumping in the cold tub, you can over weight that side of the scale.

Brad (07:17):
Dr Maffetone was one who told me in interview that he doesn’t like people to go for a long period of time without calories if they’re athletic because it’s too stressful. So he wants you to wake up and enjoy, for example, a high fat coffee beverage or even a nice healthy breakfast every single day. And then another meal and another, uh, whatever works for you because you’re fueling these high performance workouts. Uh, I’ve put a lot of thought into this and consulted with the great leading experts in the world. Dr Cate Shanahan comes to mind. I had Peter Attia on my interview talking about this stuff. Mark Sisson and I talk about this all the time and write about it all the time. And it’s a very nuanced topic of the role of carbohydrates for an active high-performance person to optimize testosterone and so forth. So what to do here? Ah, the first one I would say, uh, is sort of a fork in the road.

Brad (08:11):
I conveyed this idea when I’m talking to live audience and it’s like, raise your hand if you are carrying excess body fat that you would like to reduce. So if so, you’re kind of in a different decision making category. Different decision making parameters than someone who is a carrying ideal body composition levels is not worried about, uh, someday or immediately achieving that caloric deficit to stimulate accelerated fat burning. Big difference, right? So if you’re trying to drop excess body fat, the most simple and direct way there is to minimize insulin production in the diet and upregulate fat burning accordingly. Provided you’re healthy. As my main man, Dr Tommy Wood has, uh, delivered with such great emphasis during the three podcasts that we did. So first you get healthy, then you worry about dropping excess body fat and metabolically healthy, uh, conveys a bunch of things such as, uh, that your gut function is nice rather than you have, uh, symptoms of gut dysfunction, leaky gut syndrome, things like that.

Brad (09:17):
Okay. Let’s say you’re a fairly healthy, fairly active, your body fat is okay? Yeah. Maybe you want to lose an extra five or something, but you’re not in that category of metabolic dysfunction, obesity type two diabetes risk factors, things like that. You know what I like Ben Greenfield’s take care where he talks about these evening, uh, re-feeds of high carbohydrate intake that are combined with a celebratory family. Did I say celebratory? I don’t know about that, Ben, what do you think? Celebratory family environment. So he paints this picture of him and his wife and his kids in the kitchen cooking up fabulous fun concoctions and sharing a healthy dessert or healthy treat that happens to have a lot of carbohydrate intake in there. Uh, because Ben is an aggressive a workout machine, he is ensuring that his glycogen is restocked every single day when he has these evening periods of relaxed carbohydrate intake.

Brad (10:19):
He’s also ensuring that his hormones are optimized and he’s not drifting into that category of restricting carb intake, trying to train too hard, trying to stick too hard into Quito and then having a workout performance compromised. And all the elite athletes I’ve met, uh, are pretty much in this mode where they’re not terribly worried about counting their carbs or restricting their carbohydrate intake. They’re training too hard to worry about that. A one insight that occurs to me. So this is fresh and new. You’re not going to believe it. It’s going to be life changing. Brad Kearns says, honor your natural appetite. This has worked really well for me after incredible research and consultation with the world’s leading experts. If I’m hungry for carbs, I’m going to go eat some carbs. You’ve heard my fatty popcorn boy saga where it easily gets out of hand. And my wonderful evening popcorn binges that were originally inspired by, let’s say, challenging mountain bike rides with my, my son and my nephew, uh, turned into daily habits.

Brad (11:24):
So we want to be mindful about this. But if you can tap into the incredible, incredible intelligence of your natural appetite, I think you’re gonna do just fine with optimizing carbohydrate intake over the longterm and Hey, when you’re not that active. Uh, I described a brief period of illness after incredible exercise binge in recent weeks, and I’d go through the day without doing much activity at all. Maybe taking my dog out for a slow jog or walk was all I did. Guess what? Wasn’t that hungry, especially for carbohydrates. So when we can get away from the regimentation and the overly analytical, overly obsessive approach to making dietary choices and just go with the flow, I think you’re going to do fantastically well and not have to worry or stress this, uh, issue of are you getting enough carbohydrate intake, right? Simple as that.

Brad (12:18):
Uh, and I think in a bigger picture perspective, uh, this feast and famine pattern is gaining increasing popularity where if you are going to, uh, increase your carbohydrate intake, you’re going to do it in a distinct manner where it’s not a snacking on three energy bars every day for the next three weeks, right? So if it’s been Greenfield’s evening party time, or let’s say you’re going away on vacation, and this is where a Sisson’s insight comes in because that guy is pretty tightly regulated. He operates on a closed loop system where he doesn’t eat that much food period. And definitely not that many carbs, but then he’s relating, going to Italy and indulging in the local gelato because he’s all about enjoying his life and living awesome. So maybe vacations or your time where you have relaxed carbohydrate intake, family gatherings, whatever it is, just loosen up. Don’t worry about it so much. You can burn the energy off tomorrow if you happen to do something that makes you feel guilty or discouraged that you went off track. Sound good?

Brad (13:22):
All right, let’s get into, uh, supplements. Uh, don’t heave a sigh of relief like I just did. I know there’s a shit ton of talk about here. Look on the internet for testosterone supplement and you’ll get your mind blown by all this crazy stuff out there with these dramatic graphics of dudes with six packs and giant muscles and a conveying that idea that they’re also a incredibly high libido and virility, which is most likely not the case if they’re extreme bodybuilders or extreme athletes of any kind anyway, behind the label of the bottle. Uh, all kinds of these agents have been touted for years and years to be testosterone boosters, magical testosterone boosters. So let’s just hit some of the high points, cut through some of the hype and talk about some things that that might be helpful to consider, not overwhelm you here. Um, I’m really proud and excited to stand behind our Male Optimization Formula with organs with ancestral supplements. Cause think what you may about supplementing in general and about a chemically derived agents that came in a pharmaceutical laboratory to prepare a, some wonder supplement.

Brad (14:33):
This kind of goes in a different category because it’s real food in a capsule, right? These are desiccated dried organ meats put into a capsule. So it’s basically like a meal or a snack of organ meats rather than a traditional supplement, uh, in the same category as a vitamin supplement that we’re so familiar with in the bottle and the white powder. Uh, so if nothing else, what you’re getting is a nice dose of some of the most nutrient dense foods on the planet. In the case of MOFO, we are targeting the topic of testosterone optimization by putting in the specific organs that have the cofactors and molecular bio directors they’re called. That’s a fancy way of saying that the chemical agents contain naturally in these animal organs are believed to act upon the same target organs in your body. And if you go running off to your physician and asking them about this concept, they might not be a as highly on board as an ancestral living enthusiast.

Brad (15:37):
But please let it be known that this has been part of traditional healing and traditional ancestral living for centuries. It’s essential fundamental component of Chinese medicine, of native American medicine where an ailing comrade who had a weak heart or weak kidneys, uh, was given the same organ from the animal and brought back to health and nurtured back to health. There’s some amazing work by these alternative physician. Weston A Price Foundation talks about some of this where, uh, over centuries of records, people who have been, uh, nourished on these specific organ meats have been nurtured back to health. It’s incredible. So when you look at the, uh, messaging and it says proteins, peptides, cofactors, and molecular bio directors contained in the bottle acting upon your target organs. That’s what we’re talking about is you’re swallowing testicle, you’re swallowing prostate, and it’s going to trigger a optimize function in your own testicle, prostate, uh, reproductive organs.

Brad (16:44):
Okay. So that is the deal, man. And guess what? You can try it out and see for yourself. I’m getting tons of reports from people that I know and trust, including myself, where I’m trying to be completely objective and determine whether I have a boost in certain areas and track everything and be honest about it and got to tell ya, man. I feel great. So, uh, happy to spread that message. And then when we’re talking, uh, outside of the Organ, Organ supplementation world and bigger picture, uh, let’s hit some of the big ones that are of most need and most potential benefit, uh, for your testosterone. And first comes to mind is magnesium as well as zinc. And these are areas where a large percentage of the population is deficient and can greatly benefit from, uh, magnesium and zinc supplementation. So I’ve been hitting the magnesium hard for a couple of years now after learning just how widespread and how easy it is to become deficient in magnesium.

Brad (17:44):
Some of these can be traced to, let’s say, the inferior soil quality of today, or the fact that we don’t eat a ton of organ meats and we’re focused on, uh, the less nutrient dense muscle meats like steak and hamburger, uh, the eggs and the feed lot animals, which worked our way into most people’s diets are just vastly deficient on these things that used to be incredibly nutrient dense. Uh, the, the choices of the animal foods, right? So when we choose the best animals eat a lot of organ meats, we have less and less need to stress about all the supplements we’re taking. But it certainly can’t hurt and it’s probably worth doing, especially if you’re active or leading a high energy, high stress lifestyle. Uh, so it’s believed that the best delivery system for magnesium is in the transdermal form. So spraying it onto your skin and allowing it to absorb through the skin.

Brad (18:36):
Uh, we also have on the, uh, list of big, big ticket supplements, uh, vitamin D, and that’s because most of us are vitamin D deficient. Again, so we talk about widespread magnesium deficiency, widespread vitamin D deficiency, because the main, by far, the main source of vitamin D is not diet, but it is sun exposure where we’re widely deficient on that, especially with these indoor dominant lifestyles with the knowledge that you only have a certain number of months of the year depending on the latitude that you live in, where you can even make vitamin D. so if you can’t tan, that means you can’t make vitamin D. so right now I can go outside, uh, here in Northern California, Northern Nevada area, Lake Tahoe, and I can, uh, stay outside for five hours. I’m not going to get sunburned because it’s February and it’s simply the sun’s rays are not intense enough to facilitate vitamin D production.

Brad (19:34):
The oblique angle of the sun hitting the earth at its current rotation throughout the year is just not strong enough to make vitamin D as evidenced by lack of tanning. So when you’re able to tan, when that month comes around, wherever you live, if you live up North and Pacific Northwest or in Europe, Scandinavia, you only have four or five months, a year, four or five or six months a year where you can make vitamin D if you down and down in Texas or the Caribbean or Hawaii. Of course, you can make vitamin D a for many more months and have much less risk if you are living at a latitude that’s in-congruent with your ancestral past. So if you’re African American, African descent and you’re living in Scandinavia or Portland, you are at extreme risk for vitamin D deficiency because your ancestors were out in the sun all day. Okay? So that’s where the supplement comes in huge. And vitamin D advocates, uh, like Dr. Michael Holick, author of the vitamin D Solution, dedicating his life to the education and awareness of increased need for vitamin D and higher vitamin D levels than conventional resources recommend, boy, that’ll be a life experience to read and learn about. Uh, the tremendous benefit of vitamin D. it helps as a cancer protection. When you have healthy vitamin D levels, it works on the genes that protect against, uh, uh, dysfunctional cells from proliferating, they call it the spell checker gene known as P 53. And when your vitamin D is low, you are simply not as good at regulating healthy cell division. It’s a huge cancer risk factor. Uh, the, those of African descent have a massively increased risk for reproductive cancers, which are particularly sensitive to vitamin D levels. And this is a known fact, right? There’s 84% increase in cancer risk, uh, increased incidents of cancer risk in African American males versus, uh, Caucasian males.

Brad (21:35):
And, uh, some experts believe this is attributed to, uh, their vitamin D deficiency, which is so much more extreme because their skin is not letting in enough sun, whereby someone from, uh, the higher someone whose heritage is of the higher latitudes can make vitamin D sufficiently in the summertime. So if you’re an at risk person who spends a lot of time indoors or the other risk factors mentioned, pound that vitamin D and get that puppy up to 50, 55 60. Dr. Maffetone wanted me at 75 I was proudly showing him my vitamin D level of 55. He’s like, Nope, need it higher. But most people, when you go to the doctor and you put in anything over 30 nanograms per milliliter, they’re going to say, well, your vitamin D is fine. It’s in the normal range. Uh, but I want you to think outside the box here and realize that the, the normal range is perhaps vastly too low as stated by people who have spent their life’s work, uh, looking into this. So try to bump up that vitamin D level, especially by getting a sun exposure over the large skin surface areas of your body during the times of day and times of year of peak solar intensity in your area. But otherwise shoring up deficiency by taking a nice quality vitamin D3 product. That’s the preferred form of supplementation.

Brad (22:55):
Okay. So we went to magnesium, zinc, vitamin D, and now we go to Creatine, which is perhaps the single most popular, uh, bodybuilding supplement, athletic performance supplement. There is hundreds, perhaps thousands of studies showing, uh, the tremendous benefit it has for a muscular growth, muscular maintenance, muscular recovery. So creatine is the real deal. Don’t get scared away thinking it’s just for bodybuilding freaks. The bodybuilders are known to kind of abuse this supplement or overdo it and load up on massive doses and then cycle off it and all this stuff you’ve heard. So I want you to consider just taking a bit of creatine supplementation, uh, perhaps every day for the rest of your life just to, uh, boost your muscle performance and recovery, especially if you’re, uh, aging in the higher age groups and especially if you’re active or trying to remain active and do the crazy stuff that you used to do years ago. Super beneficial, right, and can also help with hormone function, hormone optimization. And the little scooper that comes in most Creatine containers is five grams. Uh, but Ben Greenfield, uh, pointed out that we can’t absorb that much. At one time. So we want to regulate that dose over the course of a day and only take one and a half grams at a time. Mix it in water. You can barely taste it, especially when you’re taking that little creatine, but just sprinkle that creatine, uh, into your drinks or I guess, uh, anything that’s a liquid type meal, uh, throughout the day and there’s no loading or unloading necessary during loading.

Brad (24:37):
That’s only when you’re dealing with the extreme, uh, bodybuilder stuff. Then the rest of the stuff you could probably consider optional or high enthusiast interest to kind of explore some of these, uh, herbal agents that have, uh, had some science behind them to show that they’re, uh, possibly beneficial for testosterone production. One of them is Cacao. How about that for some permission to go find some dark chocolate or Cacao nibs as contained in my Brad’s Macadamia Masterpiece, or even the nice Cacao powder that you can put into a warm beverage. Organifi makes that cool, uh, chocolate gold and getting some of that in has some, uh, connection to testosterone optimization. So go for it. Fun stuff. Also Cacao has the highest ORAC score of any food. Uh, that’s the Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity, O R AC. and you can Google this and find charts where they give you the score of the various foods and the SuperDuper foods like blueberries or acai berries or the green leafy green plants all have nice ORAC scores, but, uh, vastly superior to all of them are the Cacao nibs or Cacao powder.

Brad (25:52):
Amazing. Superfood there. Okay. So some of the other herbal supplements, you’ve probably heard some of this stuff. If you go over and listen to some of Ben Greenfield’s content, he will get deep into the weeds about his experimentation with all these, uh, wonder agents. So I’m just going to list them really quickly here. And if you’re interested in going deep and filling up your shelf with more stuff, go and look into it further. Uh, so we have Maca Root and Maca Powder. We have an herb called Long Jack, another one called Fenugreek, another one called Pine Bark or a PI pycnogenol. And another one called Tribulus. And, Oh my gosh, people, uh, I’ve experimented with an assortment of supplements over the years. Uh, all kinds of them for all kinds of purposes and it’s a little bit of a chore. It’s a little bit strenuous to keep on top of it.

Brad (26:43):
I’m looking at bottles right now in my recording studio of stuff that I bought with good intentions. Probably took half the bottle and then it’s just been sitting there, I just kind of lost interest or something. So I’m trying to simplify and streamline my approach here. And right now I’m totally dedicated obviously to taking the male optimization formula. And I also take some peripheral products from ancestral supplements. If you’re looking to add one, I’d probably add beef liver or beef organs because there’s such a great combination and liver being probably the number one choice among all the organ meats. And also, uh, I take additional prostate because, uh, we have such high risk factor as aging males for prostate dysfunction and I want to guard against that by just loading up on more prostate. We know that, um, a MOFO contains a nice healthy dose, uh, 300 milligrams of prostate itself.

Brad (27:36):
So just getting a little extra there, filling up my shelf with more cool stuff. How’s that for a little discussion on supplements? Okay.

Brad (27:46):
And let’s get down into the next category, which are these, uh, extremely disturbing estrogenic influences in our environment. I listened to a wonderful podcast with Dr. Anthony Jay, author of an outstanding book on how to protect yourself from the estrogenic influences in the environment. It’s called Estrogeneration and I believe I heard him on Paul Saladino’s Fundamental Health Podcast and those guys got deep into it and got me highly motivated and inspired to minimize my exposure to estrogenic, uh, influences. Probably the worst one are the plastics that touch your food or drink. So those plastic water bottles, those plastic containers, that food served in, nothing worse than microwaving your food in a plastic container because the microwave allows the plastic molecules to escape and permeate into the food that you’re ingesting.

Brad (28:48):
Of course, the plastic water bottles are everywhere. They’re unavoidable when you’re traveling and you need to grab some water, but please go get yourself a clean canteen, right? Or any one of those hydroflasks, those popular stainless steel containers that you can refill and drink your fluids out of a stainless steel or glass container. So getting all plastics away from things that you ingest would be number one goal here. Uh, I talked about this before on the show where I did my Nourish, Balance, Thrive comprehensive, uh, blood and fluid testing to look at all the possible health risks and things going on in my body. And I returned a shocking result that I had a toxic plastic residue in my bloodstream as well as petroleum byproducts in my bloodstream. Whew. And it was theorized that this perhaps was coming from drinking out of a plastic bottle, especially out of a heated plastic water bottle.

Brad (29:49):
And I thought back and thought, Oh my gosh, you know what? I have a plastic water bottles in my car. I’m not drinking out of a hot water bottle. That’s nasty. But I realized that maybe that bottle was sitting there all day long and the next morning when it was back at a normal temperature, I ingested the beverage. So trying to get that plastic out of my game has been a nice thing to focus on. And I want to encourage you to do the same and get all glass for your Tupperware. Throw away any plastic Tupperware or plates that you have now, especially if there’s any sign of degrading, right? So if there’s little scrapes or imperfections or nicks in the plastic containers, that’s the worst because then the plastic is freely entering into, uh, what you’re consuming. Uh, and also on the dietary front, what you’re consuming, a realize that soy, corn, and flax and foods derived from these things have 100 times more estrogen than any other food.

Brad (30:48):
So we want to stay away from the high estrogenic foods, especially soy, corn and flax. And then finally, again, focusing on what we’re putting into our body. Uh, try to get rid of all the, uh, chemical laden, uh, skincare and personal care products. So stuff you’re putting on your body. Sunscreen soap, uh, shaving cream, uh, fragrances, uh, things that contain parabens, phyilates and PCBs. And these are also found in high levels in shampoos and conditioners. These are easily absorbed into the body and they unfavorably alter your testosterone to estrogen ratio. They are estrogenic stimulating. And for females, we want to avoid excess estrogen as well, uh, because that can be, uh, increasing cancer risk. So we want to get this stuff off our bodies, people, Oh my gosh, the commercial skincare and personal care products industry could give a crap about any of this.

Brad (31:50):
That’s what we want to find alternative brands. I’ve been, uh, taking to switching out all my cleaning products to, uh, the, the products offered by Mrs Meyer’s clean day so you can find their stuff on the internet or in a good store. And of course on the body, nothing but Dr Bronner’s, my lifelong, not really, but at least for 20 years have been in love their Castiel soaps and all their different flavors that they have now. Absolutely pure and a huge commitment to providing healthy products. So find those companies that care about your health rather than care about their commercial jingles and the manipulative marketing that keeps them at the top of their game, selling this crap that’s unhealthy to put on your body. All right, thanks for listening to that. And that brings us to that conclusion of part 3 of the testosterone tips. Thanks for listening. I got one more show in me, so we’ll catch ya down the road and keep the dream alive.

Brad (32:56):
Thank you for listening to the show. We would love your feedback at getoveryourselfpodcastatgmail.com and we would also love if you could leave a rating and a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. I know it’s a hassle. You have to go to desktop, iTunes, click on the tab that says ratings and reviews, and then click to rate the show anywhere from five to five stars. And it really helps spread the word so more people can find the show and get over themselves cause they need to. Thanks for doing it.