Summery / Comments:

Travin Gray – REVV Health
 https://revv.health/

Seth Horst and Dave Faller sit down with Travin Gray, owner of REVV Health, a local hormone optimization clinic for men and women. They discuss optimal testosterone levels for men and women, the benefits of testosterone replacement therapy, and the potential side effects of TRT. Testosterone in men has been declining for decades, driving many men to local clinics. Surprisingly, many women are jumping on the T train as well, and they discuss why women are starting to consider testosterone as well. This is an informative discussion involving expert opinion and anecdotal evidence from personal use to unpack a fairly nuanced topic. 

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0:01

In today’s episode, Dave and I sit down with travin from rev health, we’re going to talk about how to optimize men and women’s hormones. Let’s go north. Idaho is a throwback to a better time in American history, a time when values and characters still mattered, from homeschool moms, hunters and homesteaders to business owners, veterans and first responders. We are a unique community held together by a common thread, a love of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These are the stories of those who choose to call North Idaho home. Welcome to the north Idaho experience. You saw what I just posted. I saw your poll. Yeah, right. Everybody voted for a beard, but I had about a third of the people vote for me to do a hair transplant. I don’t think hair transplants actually work that well. I don’t know, though, no, they wouldn’t, but if my hair looked like it did in that photo, yeah, bro. I mean, I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off you, that’s for sure. But I don’t know about somebody else. Hey, today’s podcast, let’s just jump right in. We are going to talk about testosterone. This is a huge topic. It feels like a lifetime that Dave has been researching this and annoying the shit out of me every day about it. Maybe I should do it, maybe I shouldn’t. So I think through all of his research, he’s come to a conclusion. We’re gonna dive in. We’ve got travin. He’s the owner of Rev health, that’s our EVV, and they do hormone optimization for men and women. So we brought an expert in, and we are gonna dive in. It’s a very nuanced subject. There’s a lot to it. So we’re gonna dive in. Stick around. We got lots of great information. Where to start? Well, I’m on two year introduction. Let’s go special guests. So I mean, just for my personal experience, and I will chip in as much as possible here on my experiences with it, I’ve been on testosterone for over a year now. I wish I had found it when I was working graveyards as a cop, because I’m sure my my numbers were in the dumps. I imagine a lot of your clients come from the first responder world, absolutely, because it like messing with your sleep cycle is probably one of the number one things that can jack up your T levels. I would guess. I’m no expert for sure. Well, let’s start with this. Travin, tell us about rev health. How you got into this, what exactly you guys do? Yeah, so like Seth said, we do hormone optimization for both men and women. Um, kind of just like anything else, it’s kind of my own personal story that that got me here. So I’m 41 now. I was see back when I was around 30 years old, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune condition called Hashimotos. So what that does is it, basically your body releases these antibodies that attack your thyroid. And over time, your thyroid function just reduces lower and lower and lower until you start producing sufficient enough thyroid hormones. And so, you know what a lot of people don’t realize? So low thyroid symptoms almost identically mirror low testosterone symptoms. So things like, you know, fatigue, brain fog, low energy, inability to lose weight, you know, camping on muscle, those things like that. So, you know, it’s something that gets overlooked a lot in men in general, you know, thyroid conditions, but I was diagnosed with this disease in my early 30s. It’s crazy, because I’d always worked out I was active. I looked healthy on the outside, but it happened so quick. It was like, within the course of a year, I just didn’t want to do anything, like, I didn’t want to go do things with friends. I didn’t want to work. I didn’t have, like, motivation for anything. So I finally, like, worked my way up to going to the doctor, because, like, you know, we’re men, we ain’t going to doctor or anything. So finally, you go in there, she it’s just my primary care doctor, so she diagnoses me with this condition, puts me on what turns out to be the wrong type of medication. I spend, like, probably the next five or six years, like bouncing around to different doctors, putting on different medications, adjusting my dose up down, and I never felt better. Actually felt worse throughout this whole time, because it ended up being like the wrong medication. And so I finally, you know, got connected with a doctor that took care of me, you know, as best as I had so far, got that dealt with, then it kind of dove into the whole testosterone side of things. And I was around 3738 but, you know, it took me about eight years to get to that point, and a lot of time, a lot of money, right? And a lot of just wasted time and feeling like crap. So it was, you know, kind of just out of a need of, like, gosh, like, how can we, you know, my partner, you know, she kind of went through her own health struggles along the way too, and hormone stuff. And so we kind of, but how can we just bring together a platform that makes, you know, hormone optimization accessible, you know, easily accessible to men and women. So we’re telemedicine based, so everything’s done online, and it’s just a super streamlined, easy process. Our providers are, you know, experts in hormone therapy. They’re trained, they’re very, you know, well educated and just have a lot of experience in doing this. So I think you know what you guys have maybe found, since you know you’re on testosterone, you’ve been doing all kinds of research. You look at the two of us who’s on testosterone, that little vein in my arm tells me everything I need to know. Dave, yeah, well, it’s the beard too. It. Is there a, first of all, though, I’m starting to grow out a beard. Is there a direct correlation between people on testosterone, on their forearms? Well, vascularity. Yeah, it absolutely increases vascular I mean, you’ll and guys will see that too. I mean, obviously it kind of, it helps with working out, too, and sometimes it’ll get people back in the gym. It helps with building muscle. But, yeah, absolutely it increases vascularity. So when I was in the fire department, I mean, this is we had a we had a lot of guys that went on testosterone, and it’s been, this is what’s good about talking about this. You know, I did those Facebook posts where I connected with you because you saw my my post about that is that I don’t really care if you’re on it or not, but a lot of people are either ashamed of saying they’re on it, or they’re nervous about telling people, or it’s just, you know, it’s private. They don’t want people to know. But I look at it as, hey, if it’s something that’s helping change your life, and it’s something that you want to do that’s going to make you feel healthy and give you more vigor, and you’re going to be in a better place then, then why not? So that’s really the purpose of this is, you know, but we see guys in Fire Department, and I’m looking at their farms, I’m like, bro, I know you’re I know you’re on something all I got to do. Is, look at your forearms, and I’m like, that looks different than it did six weeks ago. Well, dude, six weird. That’s exactly why I reached out to you. I don’t even think I’d ever talk to you in person before we were friends on Facebook, you know, for whatever reason, and I saw your post about testosterone and tons of engagement and comments, and that’s why I reached out, because it’s like when you weren’t promoting it, because I’m on it, you’re just sharing your thoughts, your experience, what you found, and that it’s cool, because there isn’t a lot of people talking about it, and just, you know, openness and education, and some guys are even almost like embarrassed to say that it’s like, very, very much like the mental health conversations these days. It’s kind of, there’s almost a stigma around it, which obviously, I’m super open about it. I always, I don’t care. I’ve been open about mental health too, so, but, you know, it’s funny, you say that guys in the fire department, I didn’t know anybody in my department that openly talked about it, you know, I didn’t think it wasn’t on the radar. So there were ways that I knew also there. There’s, yeah, there were other things going on that that led to conversations where we knew what people were doing, but then you saw more and more people starting to take and you’re like, Hold on here. But yeah, it was never openly talked about. Nobody ever walked in and was like, hey, I want testosterone. But I think, you know, when people hear it, they think of steroids, they think of things like that, yeah, and it’s got a negative connotation. And to be honest, I don’t care if you’re on steroids, either, if you’re making that choice for your body, then you go right ahead. You do you? Yeah. I wonder why that stigma even is, is it? Is it? Is it a personal ego thing? Like, a guy doesn’t want it almost feels like a weakness, right? Yeah? Like, the same way that I’m left handed weakness, yeah? So, so, yeah, I think that’s probably it, right? Like, oh, something’s wrong with me. I don’t want to talk about it. Well, I think too guys, like, pride themselves on being capable, right? Yeah? Like, what? Dude asks for directions, right? We’ll drive around and we’ll be lost forever. So to say that you’re getting a supplement that’s helping you be this jacked person or this healthy person, let’s just say that people don’t, I don’t think guys want to say it. They want to take full credit for what they have and what they’ve done, and they don’t want to admit that they’re taking it. It’s a total ego thing, and I so, like, we, so we have a lot of women patients, and a lot of times they’ll, woman will start with us, and then she’ll bring in her husband, right? She’ll, she’ll, she’ll come and tell us, like, he’s, there’s, you know, whether it’s a libido thing or can’t lose weight, or whatever’s going on, like, I think he needs help. And, and the guy almost always in that situation is, like, I know I don’t need it. Like, I know my testosterone is great. Yeah, no, we get levels checked, and it’s like, you’re like, you’re like, 350 dude, yeah? Like you’re not. My husband’s fat. He’s not into me. Yeah? That’s funny. That’s how it went for me. My wife went in first and got on testosterone. She actually had an interesting route, because they they’ve got her levels way too high. And, yeah, pellets, yep. So they, for those that don’t know, they take a pellet and they cut an incision right at the, like, lower back, upper ass area, and then insert these pellets in there, and their time release over months. I actually did that first too. It was not conducive to my lifestyle, because I coached Jiu Jitsu, so, like, I cannot not be active for a long enough time. Yeah, and it was really painful, and it’s like, screw that. Yeah, yeah, I got off that. Yeah. It’s not an optimal way to do things, at least in my opinion, you know, when you think about, like, what we’re trying to do with bioidentical hormones is trying to replicate your body’s natural production, you know, and that’s basically over a 24 hour cycle. And when you think about these pellets, they’re metabolized over the course of, like, four to five months, versus, you know, for doing like, you know, twice or three times a week injections or daily cream, or even the daily oral capsule, which you mentioned. I mean, there’s, you want to try to mimic that natural cycle as much as possible. And so what happens with pelts a lot of time, especially with men, because we metabolize them so much faster. It’s like some guys will burn Vroom in two, two and a half months, and then they have, you know, six to eight weeks of feeling like garbage that happened to be too Yeah. It was like, I knew when they wore off. And I was like, I felt like dog shit for weeks. And I was like, this is not sustainable, and that’s not something I want. And that’s why I hear like a lot of times injections people will now do them twice a week or three times a week, because just stabilizes a little better. Yeah, yeah. Huge. That’s what I went. I ended up going to the injections. I started out once a week, and now I do them twice a week. Yeah? And it’s just, like, everything’s level. Yeah, that’s perfect. We would never recommend. We’ll never start anyone on fewer than twice a week. Yeah. So travin, you guys be in small business. That’s a big part of, like, our heart and everything else is just supporting small business and local business here in Coeur d’Alene. So talk to me about I’ve gone, I told you, I’ve gone to four different clinics. Okay? And as Seth continues to complain, I’ve tried this for too long. I’ve spent so after leaving law enforcement, I realized that I had adrenal fatigue and low T and the symptoms that go along with it, more importantly, that I wanted to find a natural way to do it, everything from she legit to ashwagandha to, you know, sleep cycles, drinking water, eating healthy, all these different things. And granted, I will say my numbers have gone significantly up. But I think I get caught on numbers a lot, right? Because it’s still how you feel. I still have a lot of that sluggishness, sluggishness and everything else. So travin, when I went to some of these places, and I told you before I’m not going to name any, but some of these places I went to, I just felt sold. I didn’t like the decision to give me testosterone was made before I ever walked in the door, before I was ever evaluated. And I felt that through the evaluation and how quick the process was, I didn’t like that. So what’s your process? Well, so, I mean, just to hit on that real quick, any of these places, because there’s a ton of them popping up now, and there’s, I almost hate to even be associated with, you know, we’re so much more than just a TRT clinic. That’s what a lot of these places are. And, you know, any place that goes in and they require you to have these other ancillary medications to go along with your testosterone therapy, I mean, that should be a huge red flag. What kind of stuff like, like dim. So like, you know, most of these places will do like an estrogen blocker, like, like an Astros all or remadex, which is, you know, that that should probably be your biggest red flag. If a place is telling you that you need to block your estrogen on testosterone therapy, that’s the number one sign that they probably don’t understand the medical literature. Why is that? So testosterone works through its active metabolites, right, estradiol and DHT, so if you’re blocking estradiol, you’re literally blocking half the benefits of your testosterone. And so not only are you doing that, but you’re also so when you have low extra levels of estradiol, you’re putting yourself at risk for cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, prostate cancer, colon cancer. So all the medical literature shows, I mean, we have decades of research now that show us, anytime you block estrogen, it shows harm, and every time that you give testosterone and it shows benefit, you do not block estrogen. So if you follow the evidence, right, you should never block your estrogen. So how do you deal with somebody that has because I know that we talk a lot about the ratio of Estrada and testosterone. So when you have somebody that maybe that that ratio is a little too close, how do you deal with it? So if you’re doing like we talked about the injection frequency, if you’re doing like two or more injections, your levels are going to be pretty stable most time. So you’re not really going to deal with that like those. If you’re doing one big injection a week, like you might have some issues with a spike and a crash, but if you think about it this way, like when we were young, when we were teenagers, early 20s, and we had these robust testosterone levels, did we worry about blocking estrogen in No, you know, it wasn’t a thing. So it’s like, this whole notion of like, it really comes from the bodybuilding community. I think, you know, people that are using a lot of synthetic, you know, derivative compounds that, you know, then they use, they block estradiol for those reasons. But, um, in the world of, like, testosterone therapy, bioidentical hormones, there’s, there’s never a need. Yeah, I don’t think I produced a lot of testosterone as a kid. I was, like, 150 pounds and eating Doritos. I so when I started, I was taking, it’s called damn dim, same thing, right? Okay. And then I talked to my buddy Eric fodi. Do you know Eric? I know Eric. Okay, yeah. He’s fine with me talking about this, because we’ve talked about it on this podcast before, and he’s been on T for a long time, and he’s like, I don’t take any, any estrogen blockers. I was like, really? And I was like, I don’t want to do that either. It’s just one more thing that I have to pay for and I take. And I didn’t even know about the health issues, so I finally got my dose, like, dialed in. It took me a long time to get it just dialed in where I don’t need to take them anymore. It’s been, like, freaking, really happy about that. Yeah, just one less thing to take. Yeah. So I know, I know you’re not the end all on a lot of this stuff, but obviously you have quite a bit of knowledge and experience with all this stuff. So why? I’m very much Joe Rogan at here, yeah, and just keep asking questions. Why is it then that clinics are out there adding estrogen blockers, if it’s really not to benefit, I have a guess. Can I guess? Sure? Is it they make more money selling that shit too? So yeah, I mean, it’s a combination of that, that and, and, or they just don’t understand the medical literature, because the place I was going to, they would push their own supplement line, like, oh, you can get it here. It’s four times as much as I can find it somewhere else. But I was like, oh, yeah, I don’t like that, you know? So the other component of that, what a lot of these clinics will do is they’ll use hCG. You guys familiar with H human Corona gonadotropin? Yeah. So what you heard it? I like big words, the human coronavirus gonadotropin. There you go. So, so a lot of these places will try to, you know, upsell or add this in and, or they’ll even say it’s mandatory, you have to do this alongside testosterone. So the reason is, so HCG will. The thought is, it will, it will keep your natural production stimulated while you’re on testosterone therapy. Yep, there’s really not a need, in my opinion, to use it outside of, like, fertility reasons, like, if you’re on testosterone, just be on testosterone. You know, there’s no, to me, there’s no point in keeping your natural production simultaneously while you’re taking exogenous testosterone. But these places will try to upsell you. And it’s, it’s, I mean, it’s not cheap. It’s like 202 50 bucks a month sometimes for this hCG. But they’ll, you know, any place that’s trying to say that, okay, you have to take this long with your testosterone. That’s just, to me, a huge red flag. Can we talk about numbers a little bit? Because that’s, like, really, the the indicator if you even need to be on it. So I went, I got my T tested back in, like, I don’t know, 2013 I was working shift work. I think I was on swing shift at the time, and I went to my normal doctor, and he tested my level. I don’t remember what they are at. I think they were probably in the four hundreds. And he’s like, you’re fine. Like, I’m like, sure. He’s like, you know, basically his question was, Sorry, ladies. He’s like, do you get morning wood? And I was like, Well, yeah, he’s like, you’re good. Then I was like, Okay, that was it. No more conversation. Like, I couldn’t push the issue with him, nothing. And I was like, All right, I guess we’re done here. But I’ve come to find out those are actually pretty low, yeah. And you know, when I got tested last year, it was low five hundreds, and they put me on testosterone, and now my levels are quite a bit higher. But what’s like, what’s the standard? Yeah? So, I mean, you guys have both said it, right? It’s, I hate getting caught up on numbers too, right? So many people like to focus on this, and it’s like when you look at the range. So most people use, like, lab core quest, or the two big labs. And so when you’re talking about range of testosterone, let’s use lab core. It’s 264, to 916, is their normal range. Big range, right? Yeah, big range. I mean, a guy, a guy at 265 does not feel the same as a man at 900 at all. But they will look at that. A lot of at least primary care doctors will look at that and go, Oh, you’re still in this normal range, like you’re okay. And then the other part of it too is then you have a lot of guys that come in that might be like, let’s say four or five, even 600 and say, Well, I’m right in the middle of that range, like I must I’m okay. Or, let’s see if you’re in 600 you’re like, Well, okay, I’m I’m better than midway, you know, I’m better than average. Well, okay, 25 years ago, that scale went all the way up to almost 1600 and then in 2017 it was changed. It was a 1200 to 2017 and it’s changed then to now 916, so what’s happening is we’re becoming women. We’re becoming women both our it’s clear our testosterone levels are becoming lower and lower. And so instead of just saying, Okay, let’s acknowledge this problem, let’s correct it, we’re just adjusting the scale down to basically normalize the deficiency. So where you’re looking at now, you’re like five, 600 I’m in the middle. Okay, well, that scale went up to 1600 Would you still feel that way? Or would you say, like, I’m quite a bit lower, yeah, than where I should Well, that’s how we do everything now. We just lower the standard. Yeah, we don’t exactly, that’s exactly right, normalization of deviance. So do we know why test so basically, what you’re saying is testosterone levels in men have been, been declining for decades. Do we know why? So there’s, yeah. Well, I think, you know, the endocrine disrupting chemicals, right? A lot of the microplastics, toxins, pesticides, herbicides, that kind of stuff, obesity has gone way up, you know. So that’s another big thing that contributes to low testosterone levels. I would say those two things, like the endocrine disruptors, everything in our environment, all the contamination, and then obesity rates are probably two main causes. Got it and obviously, you know, if you’re thinking about getting on testosterone, you should do all the other stuff. First, you should eat right, lose weight, like, if you’re overweight, you know, it’s not a cheat. It’s like, if you do all these other things, like, Dave does all of these things right, like he works out, he eats right most of the time this past week, if you’re doing all of that and it’s still not getting you where you want to be, feeling wise, right? Like we said, numbers aren’t necessarily the indicator here how you feel, then it might be a time to explore this as an option. Yeah, I’m glad you said that too, because I don’t want people sometimes people do mistake that and say, Okay, well, you know, let’s just, let’s just hit the easy button and go to testosterone. Go to testosterone. Like, I feel like those things you said kind of go without saying. Like, those should be a given. Everyone should be doing that stuff already. You know, we should all be focusing on our diet, exercise, you know, work on our sleep and those things. But, um, you know, you get like, I was listening to one of your guys podcast, the one that you had a lady on talking about her cancer story and your wife, oh yeah, Nancy, yep. You were talking about how having, like, digestion issues, and you were, you know, you eat really good. And you’re even talking about your buddies would give you crap, like, oh, you eat good, but you’re still having some of these issues. Sometimes that stuff. Sometimes it’s not enough, you know. Sometimes we can do, yeah, everything, right, and it’s still not enough to overcome whatever’s going on. And I think that’s something that why a lot of people have tuned in with. What I’ve been talking about about this testosterone for past couple months is because I really feel like I have tried, you know, like I said, I’ve had positive results. Don’t get me wrong, and I’m very much a person that would rather supplement over medicate. I don’t like being dependent on things, right? I tease him all the time, and I’m like, oh, man, just wait when the testosterone runs out and we have, yeah, everything goes to crap. And I’m over here with my, you know, 240 testosterone, and you drop down, yeah, you’ll be my little lady. Well, that’s a misconception. So that’s what I want to get into that real quick, though, before we get there. Like you, you did all the right stuff, but you also work shift. I mean, Dave was, how long were your firefighter? 15 years in that two years, right? You slept like shit. Even though I get firefighters crap, they didn’t sleep so much. And then he was a cop for two years. Like you’ve done that for so long, even if you’re doing all the right stuff, your sleep schedule has been whacked. Dude, like his being impacted sleep and stress, absolutely. I mean, those two things can hammer it down for sure. Yeah, 100% okay, well, let me ask you what you said. And so you made a comment about supplement over medicate and that kind of thing. Yeah. So here’s, here’s what I always say to people that say that. So when we’re talking about testosterone and everything we do is bioidentical hormones, right? So what we’re talking about is a plant derived, natural bioidentical molecular compound to what your body naturally produces, versus a supplement, right? That you’re taking things that might have artificial ingredients in them. You don’t know exactly what’s in them. It’s not regulated. So sometimes I would make the argument that the testosterone, the hormones, is more natural and than than even a supplement, just product, you know? And so sometimes I think people kind of think about because it’s a prescription, they’ll call it a medication or a drug, and I don’t call it either those things. It’s a natural bioidentical hormone. And so I think that’s where the difference is, is sometimes it’s hard to get your head around, okay, it’s prescription, it’s coming from a pharmacy, right? You know, it’s a medication or it’s a drug, yeah? And that’s so and I agree with you, and I think that’s good, and a lot of my supplementation has been trying to supplement things that are natural. Yeah, between food and stuff like that, one more. What are the B vitamins that I need? What type of food do I need for this? These types of things, what are the natural producers? So that’s been a lot of my supplementation. But so, you know, my big fear, right? This is, this is the big thing, and, and I’ll be honest with you, um, I have, like I said, I’ve been evaluated by four different clinics. I’ve talked to hundreds of people probably about this, and I’ve researched online extensively, and I’ll, yeah, I’ll be honest with you, I still don’t have an across the board conclusive response from the community on what actually happens here when you go on testosterone and you are on external testosterone, you’re taken as a supplement. Does your body have the ability to reproduce testosterone? If you come off of it three years, five years, 10 days down, 10 years down the road? Yeah, it will return to its baseline. So what? So what happened? And it’ll take two to three months, typically, is from from what all the literature says, but you will return to a baseline. So, yes, when you’re taking exogenous testosterone, your your body creates a negative feedback loop, and it stops producing its own testosterone. But when you come off of that, you will return a baseline. Now, will that baseline be what it was when you started? You know, that’s going to be dependent on how long you were on the testosterone. And it’s not necessarily a factor of, okay, the testosterone damage my natural production. It’s the factor of, you know, how much have I aged? What would my normal baseline have been? So at 40 years old, right? Now, if I’m at 500 I can expect, at 50 years old, I might be at 400 Right? Exactly. Okay, yeah, exactly. But so you so your research says that you will go back to your natural testosterone, you will return to a baseline testosterone still higher than your I have a, yes, I have a theory here. And what I’m doing is I’m stockpiling a three month supply, so the supply chain gets cut off due to whatever. I’ve got three months to establish dominance, and then after that, you know, like, I don’t know what will happen, but I’ll, you know, I’ll have a stall there for you. Yeah, you can. You can get my back, bro, because I’ll shrivel up. But yeah, can we talk about some of the negative side effects I can personally share, like, your nuts shrink. Sorry, ladies, we’re 96% men that listen to this podcast. So yeah, I’ll tell you, though, a lot of women that’s not necessarily a negative thing? Well, they don’t have nuts. They don’t necessarily view that as a bad thing, like we do, I asked my wife, like, I don’t really care. Yeah, okay, fair enough. Yeah. Some guys actually worry about that. Like, how often do you let other check your nuts eyes? I don’t. So not really big concern of mine. But, and is that because the net natural, that’s what creates the testosterone your body. So they’re not, they’re not working, yeah, they’re an organ. And, you know, it stops working, shuts down. It just activates, like, don’t you just know this, you’re luteinizing high hormone goes down and stop sending signals. They stop working. They get smaller. I mean, Lay it on me. Just go. Loving knowledge. Honestly, my wife’s had them for years now. So I don’t, you don’t, you know that’s real quick to luteinizing hormone. When I sat down with you, a lot of my levels were normal, right within that range, but he also noticed that my luteinizing hormone was high. Yeah, more of an explanation. I mean, yeah. So it’s kind of like, you know, your body so you’re lunging hormone is the signal from your pituitary, basically to your testes, saying, produce hormone, produce testosterone, right? So when we see a situation where it’s elevated like that, it can typically mean, okay, your your body’s ramping up production of that luteinizing hormone because it’s not getting enough of the testosterone it needs. So it’s it’s screaming like, hey, we need more testosterone, and it’s pushing it out. So usually what that can be indicative of is, if you know, so there’s primary hypogonadism and secondary hyponatism. So primary is when your your balls basically stop producing as much as they can. But secondary, it’s more of a pituitary issue. You’re not sending sufficient enough gonadotropins to your testicles to produce it. So you know, in a case where the LH, you don’t have to worry about HIPAA too, you have authorization to talk about my medical, yeah, you brought it up. So that’s typically what that means, is like. And so what I told you that day is sometimes when you get to that point where you know your balls are not producing as much as they should, there’s really not a lot you need testosterone at that point. There’s not a lot you can do naturally to get it to produce sufficient enough amounts. So that was what I had. I had. I mean, everything kind of came across normal, but my luteinizing hormone was extremely high, saying that I’m sending a bunch of signals trying to ask for more testosterone, but it’s not happening. Yeah, interesting. And we can get it, you know, there’s, you know, we, I think we all know, like, what the benefits are of having, you know, optimal testosterone levels in terms how you feel in quality of life. But a lot of people don’t pay attention to the actual medical literature that shows all of the like protective benefits. So when you think about like aging and age related disease, you know, what do most people die from cardiovascular disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s. So all these things are caused in in large part by declining levels of hormones. And so you know, when you look at all of the you know, 810, 11, year like long term studies of testosterone. You know, the guys in the testosterone group, you know, are so much more healthier in terms of these age related diseases than the non treated test. I can prove that right now. When you look at my childhood heroes, uh, Stallone and Schwarzenegger, those dudes are like, 90 now and they’re freaking back. You’re like, All right, yeah, it’s no said Yeah, and so, like, Where was going with that is, I mean, I think, you know, anyone 40 and up, pretty much, I think, is a pretty good candidate for, you know, you should really look at focusing on, like, optimal, make sure all of your hormones are optimized, right? And that’s not to say younger guys. We have plenty of guys in their 30s that we work with and that we help. But, I mean, just pretty much 40 and up, I think, is that point where I, you know, I you know, I would be worried about focusing on optimizing my hormones. How, just for people do you have come to you that, that you look at them and you talk to them, they’re like, I want to go on T and, you know, it’s for an alternate purpose, right? They just want to get jacked. So honestly, honestly, in our population and people, I do not see it that much. I mean, I really don’t. Most of the guys, there’s been a couple guys that I can tell and I just, we just refused, I mean, in a polite way, we just don’t work with them. I can tell, like, Guys will reach out on social media, and I can tell that they’re, you know, they’re trying to, like, double dip. There’s something, yeah, and it’s like, you can tell, and all these guys don’t know, like, you can’t double dip. Like, if you have a prescription for testosterone, like, there’s a database controlled substance, you can’t get another prescription for it. So, guys don’t know that, and you can kind of tell if that’s the case, but it really doesn’t happen that much, and we just don’t work with them. No, that’s that makes sense, and I know, so I want to ask you a couple questions, and I think I talked to you about this. So I took some pro hormones. I believe they were labeled as Pro then. Now I can’t find them, so I don’t know what they were, but they’re not available anymore. I took him back in 2018 now I weighed 155 pounds. I cannot believe that. Yeah, I was 155 pounds. I look much bigger on here than you, because you’re stuck back the big guys. But no, I was 155 pounds. And then, you know, now I’m 197 I came up here, but I did three cycles of this stuff, and it came with estrogen blocker, liver and kidney support. It was, uh, Centurion labs, m1 alpha is what it was. And I remember taking it. It was three pills a day, my estrogen blockers, morning and evening, some you just ordered online. No, it was over the counter. Yeah, 29 palms, man. I mean, they were selling like crazy to Marines. I bet some jacked Marines out there. And I went and got this, my liver and kidney support. Kidney. Sport, I take nine pills a day, and I was man. I was on it like I was I was not the one pills Good. Two pills are better. Guy. I did it exactly the way that it said. I drank a ton of water, I didn’t drink alcohol, I didn’t put other toxins in my body, because it was explained to me, it’s, it’s a toxin, like you’re, you’re putting something toxic in your body. You need to cleanse it out. But God dang, did I get strong? I mean, over the course of about a year, I gained about 40 pounds in muscle. I went from dead lifting like 200 pounds like 450 and every day I went in the gym. I’m like, Oh, let me try my max again. I’m like, that wasn’t I have a new Max? Yeah. And, you know, I did three cycles of this month on two months off. And, I mean, and, but the crazy thing is, it’s like, I can attest, I don’t feel like maybe that’s what jacket might test us. I don’t know, but I don’t feel like I ever had a negative side effect, and I’ve regained, I’ve retained about 95% of that strength. What are those things? Well, a lot of those have synthetic anabolic syndrome. You don’t know it, but a lot of them do. There’s been a lot a lot of people have done, bought those products, had them tested, evaluated, and they find synthetics. And that’s, I mean, they mix them in there. You don’t know that they’re in there, but that’s how come they work. Yeah, yeah, dude, that it was incredible. What? Um, so the the positive benefits, maybe we should touch on a little bit, because there might be some people out there that actually don’t know. Actually don’t know. It’s not all about getting jacked right there. For me, person, my personal experience, is recovery. So I trained jiu jitsu three days a week. I was getting, like, overly sore working out. You know, I’d have injuries that would lag forever, and mostly that has gone away. That’s what that’s the biggest one right now for me is, like, my recovery time is a lot faster. Yeah, yeah, that’s the big one I hear a lot, you know, for me personally, it’s the mental aspects, you know, like I was, I dealt with a lot of, like, brain fog and just mental fatigue and not depression, but just not, not excited, right? Like, I used to be not motivated, and didn’t have that drive. And so for me, that’s a lot of what changed, you know. And you’re right. A lot of people associate it with, like working out in the gym, but that, that to me, is the I’d rather have all the other benefits over that personally, you know. But when you ask so typical, like, signs and symptoms of, when we talk about low testosterone, you know, libido, erectile dysfunction, fatigue, lack of energy, brain fog, low motivation, low drive. You know, those are kind of the main ones that we see. I think that’s another one that holds a lot of guys off from talking about it, like guys that maybe have, you know, erectile dysfunction or low libido. You know, it’s, I think that’s something that that people are embarrassed to say, right? They don’t want to come to somebody and be like, I got this column right? Like, I can’t perform it. I can’t do these things. And I think that that’s something that holds a lot of people back. Because when I ask people, it’s so often that I look at something, I’m like, Dude, I know that you’re on testosterone. I’ve seen how you probably just, I can tell, right? Yeah, and they don’t want to, they don’t admit which is fine, but I think that’s one of the things that holds a lot of guys back, yeah, yeah, that. Well, that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to do what I do. It’s like, I know how much of an impact it made on my life. It’s like, I want to help people. I want to talk to guys. I want to, like, help the guys, because people, like you don’t need to walk around and suffer with these things. I mean, they’re easily treated. I mean, it’s a hormone deficiency, yeah, and we can just correct it. Yeah, you don’t have to live that. I’ll tell you what. Every when I posted those videos, I had so many wives reach out to me, Hey, do this to change my husband’s life. Like, you really need to get on it. I’m like, Whoa. What is going on here? I mean, and I’m like, that’s kind of, that’s kind of, I guess you love or hate it, whatever. Yeah. But I had a lot of wives reach out, and that was, like, their big thing. They’re like, libido so much better. I mean, women were citing that of their husbands that are on it. They weren’t telling me they were on it. It because their wives reaching out, and they’re like, hey, so I think that’s a shame. That’s something that guys are nervous to talk about. That’s one of the big things women know, because, well, most of our women are on testosterone as well, and that’s the big thing they notice. Is like libido, part of it right away, is huge for them, but it’s a big reason why we encourage couples to do it together, right? Because it like, you can imagine, it’s funny to talk about, but it can kind of cause a problem, like, problem. Let’s say, if you’re used to this baseline, you know, sexual level of sexual activity with you and your partner, and then all of a sudden, one person gets on testosterone, robito shoots way up, and once a week to twice, and they’re chasing everyone, right? Yeah, and they want all the time. I mean, in the other person’s not at that level. It’s uncomfortable. I mean, it’s not ideal, and it can cause problems in a relationship, but, man, we’ve had so many, like, husbands and wives that do it together, and they’re like, oh my god, we’re like, teenagers again, yeah, yeah, it’s a pretty cool thing. It has caused a little bit of friction in my household. I’ll be honest. I’ll go on camping trips together. Negatives, so testicular shrink is not really big thing, I don’t think. But what are some of the other negatives? So the typical when we say side effects, like the I mean, yeah, that’s a given, like testicle shrinkage, that’s going to happen, acne and water retention, right? Are the two things that that guys will experience, and women can too. You know, those are the two things that can happen. And a lot of it, honestly, is due to diet. So the guys that we see affected by that stuff are guys that are eating a lot of processed foods, eating a lot of sugars. They’re more insulin resistant. They got some inflammation, things going on in these in the hormone you know, you’re used to these low levels, and you ramp up your hormone levels and testosterone. And these changes can kind of flare up some of these issues. And so usually they’re very transient, like they’re temporary. They’ll resolve after a few months of being on it, if not. We have some guys that we, you know, have some things that they can do to kind of help their acne situation, but yeah, usually it’s, usually it’s acne and water retention are the two main things, you know, in terms of, like, long term side effects, it’s all positive. I mean, all of the studies, all the long term, you know, health studies, or shows benefit. I’ve had a lot of people ask me about prostate. I think there’s a misconception out there that it’s dangerous for the prostate to speak on that. Yeah, absolutely. So that used to be the thinking. For a long time, there was a DR Abraham Morgentaler that started doing a lot of research on this. He’s kind of like the guy that brought all this to light, but they came up with a saturation model of testosterone, and it has to do with the prostate and so they found is actually low levels of testosterone, um, puts you at more of a risk of prostate cancer than high levels of testosterone. So the only, the only caveat is, if you have active prostate cancer, then that would be a situation where you would not want to take testosterone, but it used to be, even if, like, let’s see you got a family history or you were higher risk for prostate cancer, it would be the contraindication for testosterone. But it’s we, we know now it’s no longer the case. I know, like, for me personally, I do blood work quarterly, and they check, is it an enzyme in the prostate or something like your PSA, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s it. They check that just like routinely make sure nothing’s changing there. Thankfully, we don’t have to do it the old way like I did when I got joined the Highway Patrol. Yeah, dr, finger, dr, Knuckles, yeah. Anyway. And then what about hemoglobin as well? I know a lot of people have to donate blood. Good question while they’re on testosterone. Oh, that question came up, why donated blood recently and that, but they asked me, and I was like, Yeah, another, another, huge misconception. This is a hard one to talk to people about, because there is such a especially if you get online, and if you ever spend any time on like the forums or websites or anything like that, everyone will talk about donating blood, and testosterone will give you thick blood well. So the reason they think that is because, yeah, usually, especially with injectable testosterone, there will be an increase in your hemoglobin hematocrit, that’s your red blood cell count, which is actually a good thing. I mean, you’re, you’re delivering more oxygen into your blood. But what happens is, it’s gotten misunderstood with something called polycythemia Vera, which is an increase, an increase in all of your platelet counts, right? And it can lead to blood clots. Well, what this is, it’s, it’s termed secondary erythrocytosis, where it’s just an increase in red blood cells. It’s the exact same phenomenon that occurs to anyone that lives at high altitude. So we have 500 million people in the world that live at 7000 or above altitude. They all have the same phenomena. They don’t have to donate blood. Anyone with sleep apnea has elevated RBCs, they don’t have to donate blood, right? But somehow we think that from testosterone and increase our red blood cells, we have to donate blood. But every single again, we always go by the literature. Every single study shows, when you get testosterone, when you raise hemoglobin, hematocrit, there’s no risk. There’s actually benefit. I’ve always donated blood every few months anyway, and I usually do it twice or three times a year. I think the max is, like every three months. Yeah, you don’t want to do it more than that. You can really crush your iron levels and deplete your energy. But, yeah, I mean, there’s nothing wrong with donating blood, you know? And it’s, yeah, it’s a good thing. It helps people. It’s great to do. It’s just that’s another one of those things. Just like we talked about the estrogen, the place is telling you that you have to donate blood on testosterone, that’s another thing. So it’s not a necessary thing. You ever done a double red blood cell donation? No, oh, dude, that was that the one where they, like, take the blood Yeah, I didn’t like it because it went back in me. And I’m like, I did, and I didn’t like it’s the one that takes a while, yeah, I’ll tell you what. Oh, like, I’m always that guy that’s like, Alright, sit here 15 minutes. I’m like, Hey, what’s that? And then I’m I’m out the door, yeah, whatever. And I feel fine. That will jack you up. You lose so many red blood cells. I mean, you go to run a mile and you were like, You are out of brown. Oh yeah, it was pretty gnarly. Yeah. I mean, we think about, like, you watch that documentary with Lance Armstrong, yeah. And they, you know, they do the blood doping and the cycle, oh yeah, that’s what they’re that’s what they’re doing. They’re trying to increase their red blood cells to increase their endurance. Yeah, it’s not a bad thing. But yeah, this misconception that, you know, there’s so many guys that will say it’s thick blood and it’s it’s just not true, right? Interesting. Okay, I want to talk about women in testosterone a little bit too, because, you know, like I said, my wife is on I know quite a few women out there that are on it. Why are women taking it same reason as men? I mean, all of the, all of the same side effects, or the side effects, but all the signs and symptoms of low testosterone, the men experience same thing for women. And so you know that the issues with women, it’s, there’s no, there’s no clinical diagnosis of low there’s no low testosterone women. So most doctors are going to think you’re crazy, if you’re a woman, and you’re like, Okay, check my testosterone level. I mean, so you really have to, you know, go to a place that understands this. You’re working with a provider that understands this. But, yeah, understands this, but yeah. I mean, women feel great on testosterone, just like men do, yeah. So my wife got she might kill me. She won’t listen to this. When she got tested, she was like, almost zero, and then the pellets got her, like, way too high. She was in the two hundreds at one point. And the downsides there acne and hair loss for women, like, there were some upsides for me, we’ll talk about off there. But the the hair loss was, like a real deal. I saw it, so she kind of got freaked out. Her levels got kind of out of whack for a bit, but now she’s back. Yeah, and it’s the fluctuation. Is the big issue, like we talked about earlier, it’s, it’s the pellet. It’s going to be a big spike, you know, initially, and for women, it’s usually too high, and then there’s a drop, and then you go back down to almost zero, and then you go through this whole cycle again. Why do people, why? Why are, why are people on that money? I that was my conclusion, is that the Canadians, because, no, the clinic, the clinic makes more money. So, yeah, am I right there? Yeah, yeah. I mean, so it’s, it’s actually a, you know, a procedure that they do and they charge for it, right? And it’s, so, it’s, think about, if you’re a provider and you’re not making money giving someone a testosterone prescription, right, right? Here’s the prescription for testosterone crate, and go fill it at the pharmacy, but if I can implant this pellet into you, you know, and charge you 800 bucks, okay? But it’s just when you think, and I’m not saying there’s, like, look, I think it’s better than nothing. I mean, if I was, if, if that was all I had available to me, yeah, I would do it. I would do it. But it’s, it’s just, it’s not an optimal way, in my opinion, to do it, because just you’re having the fluctuations in the in the other thing, especially with women, they experience this, is once they put that pellet in, it’s in, they can’t take it out. So if you spike your level and you’re dealing with all these side effects, I mean, you literally have to run literally have to ride it out for months. Yep, that’s exactly what we went through my house. It was bad. It’s terrible. Yeah. So there’s just, there’s just so many reasons, and then the scarring, like, think about you’re doing this decision three to four times a year over the next how many years? And so you get all these nasty scars, and it’s just not a good way, in my opinion, to do it. I mean, there’s so many, so many more, better options. I think everybody would probably say that it’s, it’s inconvenient at best, like any way that you do it. I mean, even doing pills, injection, it’s just something that you have to, you go on a flight, you go somewhere for the weekend, you got to pack the stuff up. I mean, even taking supplements, you know what? I mean, my B vitamins that I take, I hate having to put those in my you know, just take them with me. Or, Oh, I decided to stay the night somewhere, and then I don’t have them, not that. Yeah, I’m gonna go down. But it’s just, it’s just travel is an issue. Yeah, even with me on the shots, like I have to time it, or I could, I can take them with me. I can do that. Yeah, that is one benefit of the pellets, is that they’re in and you don’t have to worry about it. But for me, in our situation, they were like, not cool. So I had, we had we had mentioned earlier when we spoke like I’ve been doing a compound and testosterone cream for about six months, and I was doing injections for two and a half years or so prior to this. And I like the I had great experience with the injections and great results. And then we have some patients. We switched over creams for various reasons. So I tried it, and it actually got my levels much higher than the injections ever did. I really have feel a lot better on the cream. And so when you talk about the traveling thing, I mean, it’s almost like, it looks like a stick of deodorant, almost. And it’s so super easy to travel with. Yeah, it takes 15 seconds, you know, every morning, to apply it. So it’s not a big deal. It’s just like brushing your teeth or doing anything else. But, um Yeah, dude, it’s, it’s, we need to check that out. That’s interesting. It’s, um Yeah. I mean, really great levels. And so we have a lot of guys that do it. It’s a it’s a bit more expensive than injections, but it’s well worth it, in my opinion. I love it. So, so we got injections, we got oral, we got the pellets, we got the creams. What else is out there? Yeah. I mean, I’d say that’s for, you know, just testosterone. Um, you know, for women, they have some other options. They have there’s, there’s suppositories, there’s, like, trochees that they dissolve on their tongue, which I know there’s a Tories. I told you, that’s a thing, yeah, in my opinion. I mean, really, it’s, it’s injections or cream, or compounded cream, to me, are the two best ways to do it. I mean, we know that’s going to get sufficient levels. You can make changes super easy, yep. And it’s just, it’s a proven way to do it. Any issue going back and forth between cream and injection? I mean, I not necessarily. I mean, I wouldn’t recommend just constantly going back and forth. I mean, if you’re, you know, trying one for a while, and then you decide, okay, I want to go back together. I mean, there’s no issue, but it’s just ideally, you’d want to just keep it, you know, the half life of the cream is like 12 hours. So super fast acting. That’s why you apply it daily. You know, the injections, depending on how fast you metabolize it with, like, sipping eight, it’s like anywhere from like four to seven, eight days half life. So there’s a little bit different, you know, mechanism there. But the is there risk with the cream of, like, rubbing on somebody else? Yeah. So, like, in general, you kind of want to, you want to plan about four hours and so that that’s where it can kind of get to be a pain, so four hours before contact, or even, like, showering, getting wet, because you could wash it off. So it’s supposed, it typically takes about four hours to get full absorption all the hormones. So it’s not the in the world if you, let’s say I shower, two and a half or three hours. I mean, okay, whatever, I might not absorb as much that day as I normally would, but it’s still, I mean, it pushes my levels up high enough. I mean, anyways, so does that sound for people that maybe have small kids are holding all the time, you would want to do injections? Yeah, you would probably want to do injections. And that’s just, that’s recommended if you have, like, small kids, you know, you have, you’re holding a lot. You just probably want to do addiction. Yeah, on that. Yeah, that’s, I know that’s always been. I heard of Androgel. I remember I had a guy offer me that years ago. He’s like, Oh, this will give you the edge. I’m like, What is this stuff, dude? And then I read about it, and it’s like, Oh, watch out, you can give your kids early puberty. And I’m like, uh, well, dude, what I see with Androgel usually is. It actually gives guys a lower testosterone before they even started, because it’s just enough to shut down your natural production, but not enough to really overcome it in a meaningful way. So like to give an example, andergel is either it’s sold as either a 1% or a 1.67% concentration, the compounded cream is 20% we’re talking like 10 to 20 times the strength of what commercial Androgel is. So it’s a big difference. So that’s what people Yeah, when we talk about cream compound and cream, it’s not the commercial Android gel that we’re talking about. Are there different varieties that people inject? So usually, like in the United States, sibinate and enantate are the two most common ones, but simpates by far most the most common one. And there’s really no difference between the two. I mean, the supposedly the half life of an antates little bit shorter, but once you’re at steady state, it’s really irrelevant. Yeah, sibinate is a bit cheaper, so that’s why it’s most commonly prescribed. I guess one of the challenges. So it took me, like, a year to get my dosage dialed in because I was way too high at first, which felt great, but I was like, I don’t I don’t need to be this high. Dave was just getting jealous all the time, so I guess that would be a challenge. Switching between the cream and the and the injections is to get your dosage right. Because I’m almost, I’m like almost half, little more than half of where I started at to get down to where I’m comfortable at. And I don’t need to take an estrogen blocker. And I just feel good, but not like, overly good, you know, people aren’t like, oh yeah, you’re obviously on T like, I don’t get that as much anymore, except from him. Were you getting that? I was getting that from the guys at Jiu Jitsu, like, immediately, and they knew I was on it. So there, there was that caveat. But they were like, you’re on roids. Like, you know, it was, I was looking pretty big, I’ll be honest. Oh, so just you were, you were getting, I was getting size, and I didn’t change anything about my workouts. I work out lifting weights. I try to hit just twice a week. I don’t even lift heavy, but my put on size. We’re just saying to you, can pretty much eat whatever you wanted. That is, that is one, one challenge that I have, right is that I can eat like a teenager, yeah, so I have to actually be more careful, because I don’t put on body fat as much. That’s how I am too. I mean, yeah, in the same way, yeah, you know, that’s I want to talk a little bit about the size, you know, getting size and muscular and testosterone, because that is, you know, some people do you talked about earlier, about socio like, performance, dancing, drugs and things like that, but it’s not like, when you’re doing therapeutic testosterone, right, biennial testosterone, you’re getting yourself into an optimal level. It’s not You’re not doing, like bodybuilding, like tech stuff. You’re not just gonna blow up typically, you know? And I think a lot of people think that, but I just, we always like to say that it gives you the results that you deserve. Yeah, right? You know, like, kind of I like to associate with, like, when you first start working out, when you’re younger, it’s kind of remind of reminds me of that, right? No, it’s but it’s nothing crazy that’s been, like, mentally, been a huge thing for me working out, because I don’t think I’m any slug in the gym. And granted, there’s a lot of people that I work me out there, but for the most part, when I go to the gym, I feel like I’m putting in a lot more effort than a lot of the people that I see around me. Yeah, I mean, I’ll come out of there just drenched and just tore up and sore for five days. I mean, chess days on Monday, I’m sore till freaking Saturday, right? Like, leg days are just even worse. And I see myself just out there working so hard, and I see other people shredding down. I see other people getting bigger. And I’m like, granted, there’s probably some other supplementation that’s involved with some of those, but, man, it is. It is frustrating and it’s hard. Like, that’s one of the reasons why I like the winter out here, yeah, because I feel like I excel, because a lot of people don’t want to put in the work to go run in the snow or go outside and cold dip or do the things that are hard when it’s cold and dark and everything else. So I feel like in the winter, I’m like, it’s like, my time, right? Yeah, because other people aren’t out there, but, man, it’s just it’s crazy to watch some people come in and they just, God, they kill it, yeah, yeah. Well, it’ll be exciting to see kind of how your results progress, you know, going forward. I mean, it just to me, when we when we know all the benefits that come from having healthy high levels of testosterone, it’s like, that’s where I want my levels to be, yeah, you know. So I it’s, it’s hard for me, you know, I talk with guys all the time, and they’re like, so many guys get on the fence right in that middle range, and it’s like, you know, it’s up to you, but where do you want to be at? Oh, that’s been 100% me, right? And I honestly feel like we should do like, a quick 15 minute follow up on this, because so so people know you’re on sippin eight, yep, right? You’re on, you’re now on the cream. I’m doing the cream. Okay, so I, uh, I’ve obviously been saying I’m not on it. I haven’t been on anything. I actually start the oral pills today. They should be there pretty soon. So, so excited. There we go. You’re so excited. So I’m gonna start those and see how that changes. Now, obviously, like we’ve talked about, I’m really not as concerned. My testosterone could be 100 it could be 900 it doesn’t matter. As long as I see the results, I feel the results, right? Especially the mental clarity, libido, the energy, all that, the sleep, all that stuff. So I’m going on. It would be neat to meet back up in a month or two and talk about the changes that I experienced too, just to see how that’s going. Because I may switch. I told you, I may switch to sipinate at some point. Yeah, I want to try the oral version first for various. Reasons, but I want to see how that works and see what changes. It would be interesting. And I want to do that too, because, like I mentioned, we were off air that in so far in the studies, it doesn’t raise levels typically, enough to give guys the resolution that they need to feel good. It’s been more effective in women, because they don’t need to raise their levels as high. But so yeah, I’d be interested to see, you know, how you feel, how long? Because it took me, I feel like it was a solid six months before I started to visually see difference. Absolutely, we may even want to push that out longer. Yeah, I imagine, like, is there a normal amount when people start feeling, I say, I mean, so I tell people, six months, you’re right on with that now it that doesn’t mean, I mean, people say to me all the time that they feel a lot sooner. I mean, I have guys that just start it, and, like, in like, the week after they start, oh my God, I feel so much better. I can feel it. Maybe it’s placebo. Maybe they are feeling it. But again, it’s really still, but they’re feeling better. So they’re, you know, that’s all subjective, but definitely in terms of, like, body composition six months, I tell guys, yeah. I mean, give it a real six months. And that’s why, you know, we require a six month commitment for our patients, just for that reason, because, like, you need to give it that, that time when we going on our cruise, six months. Yeah, boy, yeah, perfect. No, I’m interested too, because I am very much an extremist, especially when it comes to working out and those types of things. I mean, even I said when I did those, you know, steroids or pro hormones, whatever they were, you know, I was very dedicated. When things get into it, if I start seeing change, it’s like, all of a sudden I’m like, pushing away bad foods, and I’m going to bed a little earlier, yeah, drinking more water. And it’s like, almost like, it does have that effect. Now I’m trying to put all these other things. I want that top Yeah. I want the top results absolutely right. Yeah. Interested? Can we talk about costs a little bit, or at least rough costs? Because that’s a question guys ask me a lot. There’s a lot of guys that I know that, you know, their budget’s kind of tight, and they’re like, I might want to do it, but I don’t think I can afford it, right? Yeah, shopping. So, yeah. I mean, it’s, you know, it’s we talked about earlier with, let’s so the cheapest route, like, if you were just going to get lucky, you know, maybe your primary care doctor might be lucky enough to actually prescribe you testosterone. Typically not going to, you know, do much on the optimization front. You know, a lot of those guys, it’s like, okay, we’ll get you into like, the high normal range, which might not provide symptom resolution. You know, what we do is, you know, we we do a six month commitment. It’s a membership based program. So we do one monthly cost, and it includes doctor’s fees, hormones, testosterone, if you’re on thyroid or whatever else, in one monthly fee. So most guys pay around $200 all in for everything. Yep, and we do, we don’t make you do blood work every three months or so. Like a lot of you know, it’s you can if you want to, but we’ll do your initial blood work. We’ll do a follow up labs a couple months later, and then, you know, depending on what we see, you know, we’ll just do that labs annually at that point, unless you need to, unless you request them, for some reason, you can do it. But kind of like you said, I mean, it’s not, we’re not focused so much on the number. It’s more about how you feel. So after we kind of get some baseline labs, we can make a lot of adjustments just based on your signs and symptoms and how you’re feeling. So it’s like, I started to do labs a bunch of times throughout the year. I just popped. The question is popping my mind? Is it dangerous to be too high? Is there risks to that? We don’t know. So there’s nothing. So I will tell you it is. Testosterone is a dose response, right? So what the studies show us is, the higher the level, the higher the benefit. Now, what is that upper level? We don’t know. It does we we? There’s no literature that shows us this level is too high. Now, probably the most kind of, I guess, famous study in terms of, like, higher doses, there was a guy named basin so the basin dose studies, and they took patients, they started like 100 milligrams, and went up in intervals all the way up to 600 milligrams a week of injectable testosterone. Now, for those of you guys that don’t know, like, a typical TRT dose would probably be like between one to 200 milligrams a week. So they would take guys up to 600 in that group. The guys in the 600 milligram group had the best benefits in terms of, like, symptom resolution, how they felt. They had the best outcomes in terms of health outcomes, like, you know, everything the monitor, Lipper, lipids, blood pressure, cholesterol, things like that, like, they have the best health outcomes at that level. So not saying everyone needs to go do 600 milligrams a week. You know, that’s probably overkill. But there is, like, we don’t have an established range. Like, okay, this is okay. Once you get to this high, it’s too high for you, yeah, you know. So it’s kind of, it’s kind of a loaded question, but we just, we don’t know that. All we know is, in every study, the levels that they show, the higher the level, the higher the benefit. So got it. I want my levels high. Another question. And I hear this a lot, and I know there’s a better term for it, but guys are always like, Oh, I don’t want to get roid rage. Is that something to worry about? So that actually, that study, those bays and dose studies I was just talking about, that’s one of the things that they looked at, was aggressiveness all the way up to the 600 milligram a week group, yeah, showed no signs of added aggression. So you know, a lot of that roid rage comes from the synthetics, right? And so that’s what causes that. But the bioidentical testosterone has never been shown to anything like my personal experience, even when I was very high, I never, I didn’t. Have, yeah? I mean, I’m and maybe it’s a reflection on your personality, right? I’m a very chill person in general, so it didn’t have that effect. I mean, you got it, yeah, absolutely, yeah. I think if you’re an asshole, yeah, it’s gonna probably make you a bigger asshole. Yeah, right, but yeah, so don’t be an asshole. Yeah, exactly. How about cortisol? Does it have any effect on your cortisol levels, or cortisol? So, um, that’s more of an adrenal hormone. So, like we’ll do, we use a lot of DHEA in our men, and so DHEA will oppose the cortisol a lot. But just, you know, kind of in a roundabout way, um, if you’re improving, you know, the testosterone is helping you improve, your sleep habits, your exercise, things like that, like in a roundabout like it will help improve that doesn’t have a direct impact on it. Why would someone want to go to someone like you face to face, rather than online, because I get, I get now, I get constant, like, messages and emails of like, testosterone. Oh yeah, we’re gonna get so much more after this. Yeah, listening, I guarantee, yeah. So I think if you’re just someone that maybe wants just like prescription and to be left alone and no guidance, no, you know, not communication, not support, you know, that’s, I think that’s kind of what a lot of those places do you just want to show up to your doorstep? Yeah, exactly. It seems risky to me because, like, obviously, you’re very knowledgeable about it, and I think it’s important to understand what you’re getting into, because they’re, you know, there’s pluses and minuses to it. So I find that to be a little risky. So yeah, I was just wondering if it Yeah, and stay on it more too. And it’s like, what I always say, like, we do full body hormone optimization, right? So we’re gonna look at your testosterone, your thyroid, your adrenals, a lot of other lab markers to kind of see what’s going on. And so when I talked earlier about how symptoms of low thyroid can affect or mirror symptoms of low testosterone, like, that’s a big one that we’ll see guys that come in from some of these clinics and they have great testosterone levels, and they still feel, you know, they’re still experiencing all these symptoms, and it’s like, well, look at their thyroid, and it’s like, you need to get your thyroid up, and so we’ll do that and takes care of it. So it’s like you’re working with a place that just does testosterone. There’s a big chance that you might be missing a lot more to the puzzle than to what you actually need. Yep, get it all anymore. Good. Um, no. So where can people find you? Yeah, that’s my next question. Yeah, yeah. So our, our website is Rev dot health. So r, e, v dot health. Um, same on all of our social media, rev dot health as well. So that probably be the best way. Um, my direct email is travin at Rev dot health. So I will link routes. I will link that in the description so people can find you directly. I suspect Dave and I will get a lot of questions out of this podcast. So if you’re thinking about it, or you have questions, feel free to hit us up, drop a comment in there, and we will certainly refer people your way as well. Yeah, and that’s, I think that’s a big thing, and that’s why I got linked up with travin. It’s just there’s a lot of questions. I mean, you’re putting anything in your body, you want to make sure that you’re getting good information. So, you know, I’ve asked information. So, you know, I’ve asked a lot of questions to you, to a lot of other people, just because I want to be educated and informed. I’m not one of those people that you put something in front of me and say, take this. I’m like, All right, so I think that’s a big thing. There’s so much information, and it really, testosterone is really developing, right? Like, I mean, it’s a newer industry. It’s, I’m sure it’s been around for a long time, but commercially, it’s becoming more and more and, you know, going into some of these other clinics has been something that’s been a huge turnoff to me, because, like I said, when I walk in and you’ve already pulled my prescription without looking at anything, you’re ready to go, I have a question about that, because I also want somebody, I would love to come to you and say, here’s how I feel, here’s The things that I have, and for you to say, hey, testosterone might not be right for you. That’s that’s what I want, in terms of people that treat me as people to be willing to say, this might actually not be the right thing. Absolutely, perfect. Well, travin, thank you. That was good. Great. Um, yeah, we’ll drop all the info in the notes so you guys can find it. And once again, thanks for listening. We appreciate you. See you next time our own this podcast is brought to you by your North Idaho agent. 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