The My Sugar Free Journey Podcast—Episode 154: Dr. John Jaquish

In this week’s episode of The My Sugar Free Journey Podcast, we are talking to Dr. John Jaquish about OsteoStrong and the X3 resistance bands system.

Full Transcript #

Aarn Farmer: All right, all right. Welcome to the My Sugar Free Journey Podcast. I am here today with Doctor Jaquish. So, Doctor Jaquish is someone that I had tried to get on this podcast for a while. And Doctor Jaquish, your team of people that get things to you, they’re … Man, it’s hard to find your contact email and all that stuff online. But I am so glad that you’re here because I am so interested in what you’ve done and just all the different things that you’ve got going on. So, before we get into the two things that I’m interested in, which is OsteoStrong and this X3 Bar resistance band bar system that I’ve heard so much about, let’s get into your background. Tell us a little bit about how you got to this point and what your background is and why we should definitely listen to what you have to say.

Dr. John Jaquish: Okay. 13 years ago, my other was diagnosed with osteoporosis. And she was devastated. I was a student at the time, and I just … Like, I saw her suffering and she was worried she would have a fragility fracture, which can be life ending. 50% chance of death within one year of a hip fracture after the age of 50, very important statistic. So, she realized that and was upset by it. And then she also looked into some of the pharmaceutical options and didn’t like the side effects associated with those. So, I said, “Let me focus on this.” And so, what I did was I did a literature review just trying to find who has the highest level of bone density and then why, right? So, we want to find out who lives the longest. Like, they’ve done a couple of studies, the people in areas that live the longest. Turns out, it’s because they’re the happiest. But they isolated that because they kind of tried to figure out why people are living long. So, for me, it was I needed to find a population of people that had superhuman bone density, figure out how they did it. I’ll build medical advice or I’ll come up with something. I didn’t know it would be medical advice. So, when I started doing literature reviews, it was very obvious, gymnasts because of the way they hit the ground, they absorb tremendous forces through their body. And so, therefore, I thought, okay, high impact is building bone density. And it turns out, there’s more than 100 years of research. The laws of mechanical trainers induction were written by Doctor Julius Wolff in 1896. So, what he would do is he’d look at people who went through an impact and then he’d do cadaver interactions after people would die and saw into their bone, look at their bone. And then, sedentary people, he’d saw into their bone after they died at the same age and he’s compare the two. It’s obviously, the more mechanical loading you put through the body, the more you’re going to be able to influence bone density. So, I saw this and I said, “Okay. What I’m going to do is I’m going to create a series of medical devices that will create impact emulation.” So, what we’re going to do is get people in the impact position, so like hard 20 degree angle of the upper to lower arm. And then the back of the hand in line with the clavicle. So, everyone who trips and falls, that’s how they protect them. So, isolate that position. And then allow for self created force. Now, the positioning is all robotic, so very precise. And there’s a computer system that monitors the self imposed force as somebody’s pushing away from you. So, through that process, we were able to influence bone density to an incredible degree. Like, the trial we did in London through the University of East London, we were able to demonstrate 13% bone density change in six months. Now, when you take … This is a postmenopausal population, you take a postmenopausal population. If you stop your loss … because typically they lose 2% per year. If you just have them lose nothing in a year, that’s considered a smashing success. So, we’re heavily influencing the development of their bone density. So, just to put things into perspective, that type of bone density growth is like taking somebody from osteopenia back to healthy bone, which is … osteopenia is like pre-osteoporosis. Or taking somebody with osteoporosis and putting them in the osteopenia range. And if they keep doing this for let’s say 18 months, you can get right back to a T score of zero, so the bones of a 30 year old.

c: Why do women tend to lose bone density faster than men?

Dr. John Jaquish: They don’t.

Aarn Farmer: They don’t?

Dr. John Jaquish: Menopause, yes. Childbirth is very … It takes a lot of calcium out of bone. Like, bone is like a battery for calcium. Calcium is the only mineral that the body self-regulates. So, we’ll use it every time an axon and a dendrite fire. Like, every time there’s a nervous system reaction, every time you blink, every time you breathe, your body is using that calcium. So, it’s very important. But the body self regulates it. So, actually if you take in less calcium, your body hangs onto more. If you intake more calcium, your body gets rid of a lot of it. So, the idea … So, the only way to really change that homeostasis is to give the body a reason to keep more and more and more. So, through this mechanical loading, this impact emulation, we have four different positions we load the body with. And through those loading events, the individuals are able to absorb incredible forces. And that observation got me to X3 Bar portable home gym.

But I was taking this postmenopausal population, women who had never exercised ever. And we got them to the point where day one, they’re loading 100 pounds through the lower extremities. And they get to the point where they’re up to 700, 800, and 900 pounds of force. These people never exercised and they’re postmenopausal women. So, I’m looking at like, okay what we’re really seeing is, yes these women were getting stronger. But in the effort of loading bone in emulating this high impact, we’re getting to some hard numbers that show what we can actually do, what human capability is in these specific positions. So, now OsteoStrong is in seven different countries and has 127 locations. And helping people improve their bone density everywhere. Hundreds and thousands of people are being helped. And it’s just … You only do it once a week, primary mineralization happens between five and 10 days. So, secondary mineralization takes 140 days. So, the metabolic rate of bone is very different than the metabolic rate of your cardiovascular system or your musculature. So, every tissue has a different metabolic rate in the human body. So, it’s just really important that people get this loading and then they wait, they wait a week. They come in and they get to view their functional bone performance, very important term because that’s a dynamic test of how powerful bone is. So, the gold standard of measuring what bone density looks like is called a DEXA scan, dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry. And when a DEXA scan looks … It’s just two x-rays going into your stomach, but it’s looking at your spine or your hip. And it’s a picture they create. And based on what that picture looks like, they determine the density or porosity of the bone. Now, what’s more important, a picture of something or a functional test?

Aarn Farmer: Well, I think a functional test, for sure.

Dr. John Jaquish: Sure. Like, if you have a cardiac problem, they don’t just take your blood pressure. That’s just a number. They put you on a treadmill. Cardiologists puts you on a treadmill and watches your heart rate go up and down and determine it that way. So, I started looking at these numbers and how people would come in every week. They can actually watch their functional bone performance number change week by week. So, they’re capable of putting force through bone at a higher degree. Now, the regulatory system is … We have a computer system that tells them what they’re doing in real time. So, they’re competing with what they did the previous week. But what’s interesting is the human body’s wired for safety. So, we have a process called neural inhibition. So, if I squeeze a fist, can I squeeze it hard enough to break my own finger?

Aarn Farmer: I don’t think so. I’ve never done it.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. Right, you can’t. In fact, this is kind of a graphic representation, but it takes more force to bite through a carrot than bite through your own finger. But you can’t bite through your own finger because of the neural inhibitory process. So, when we load the body like this, it’s very self regulatory. People need to be relatively ambulatory, not fully, you know? They can have some joint issues, some biomechanics that they may need to address also. But they can still load the body. And they need to be relatively pain free. If they’re hypertensive, that needs to be medicated. And then muscular dystrophy is the only other contrary indication because this is a very, very aggressive protein synthesis process that the body goes through. And that actually accelerates that disease condition, very sad disease. So, other than that, pretty much everybody can go in and do it.

Aarn Farmer: Do these machines focus on just the arms, the legs, the hips? Or which bones are they focusing on?

Dr. John Jaquish: Every long bone in the body.

Aarn Farmer: Every long bone, okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Every bone that’s really affected by osteoporosis. So, your skull doesn’t change when you have osteoporosis. The density of the skull, probably a good thing. Yeah, I mean, your head’s just as hard when you’re young as when you’re older. But the humerus bone right here or the clavicle, that can lose density.

Aarn Farmer: Yeah, clavicle especially. So, my listeners know I’ve got a mother-in-law that lives with us. She’s 91 years old and she had a fall about two years ago now that I thought for sure that this was going to cause long-term damage. But when she fell, she hit her head. And she hit her head on the corner of a door and it just split the skin open. But they went in, they stitched it up. I mean, she was fine. And she was moving at a pretty … She was running, if you can imagine a 90 year old woman running. But she was running down a hall, hit an 80 pound dog and just went flying, caught herself, hit the door, all that stuff. And she was … She did break her hand, that’s right. But she was fine. And it just took her maybe eight weeks to recover. And she’s fine, no ill effects. And so, I mean, obviously she … I mean, when I think of a 91 year old woman, I think of someone who’s brittle. This woman is just not brittle. And until very, very recently, she was always very active. She could walk around, she could … You know, she never stopped moving. And I’ve wondered what it is. And she eats like us now, you know? She eats a ketogenic diet, a lot of meat. And I’ve wondered if she’s … What she’s doing to keep her health where it is. But we got her to stop taking her Statin, because she was just determined. The doctor told her to take Statin, she’s eating all this red meat, she’s going to take the Statin. We finally got her to stop taking this. But she still exercises every morning, she still does her stretches, she still is active, you know? And then after that, she sits and she reads for like six hours a day. But she’s still moving and she’s still active and was able to recover from a very, very bad fall in I would call it record time. I had never seen … I don’t know that I could have recovered any faster if I would have had the same fall. And she’s fine. It’s interesting. So, your OsteoStrong machine, is this … Help my listeners kind of understand. Is this somewhere that you go? Like, you go to a gym or something that has it? Or to a medical center? Or is it something that’s crosstalk-

Dr. John Jaquish: Clinic.

Aarn Farmer: You go to a clinic?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, these things are $100,000. You don’t buy them.

Aarn Farmer: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: And they’re bigger than a car.

Aarn Farmer: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Aarn Farmer: But then you came up with something that people can have at home. And this was something else that I was interested in.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, Tony Robbin has them at his houses, but he’s Tony Robbin.

Aarn Farmer: Well, he’s Tony Robbin.

Dr. John Jaquish: Let me think if anybody else does. I feel like there’s another celebrity type that has a setup at their home. But yeah.

Aarn Farmer: That’s interesting. It’s just-

Dr. John Jaquish: No, I did another sort of home training in the palace, well one of the palaces in the United Arab Emirates in Abu Dhabi.

Aarn Farmer: Now, is this something that anyone of any age should do? Or is this something that you get a little bit older and you want to start taking care of your bone health?

Dr. John Jaquish: So, peak bone mass happens at 30 years of age, which basically what that means is based on normative data, which I don’t like because normative data is based on pretty much everybody who’s doing everything wrong because that’s the general population, right? When somebody says, “Well, the normative data says your blood work should look like this.” It’s like, “People are eating trash and not moving around.” Like, who cares what their blood work looks like? But ultimately, what was the question? I got totally distracted.

Aarn Farmer: The age. Is this something that-

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, so you want to do it either to make peak bone mass higher to just be fracture resistant. Like, let’s say you’re getting ready to play college football. You’re a high school student, you know you’re going to continue with contact sports. You want to put that load through your bone. You want to become fracture resistant. So, putting that force on the body will heavily influence how powerful bone is. Also, there is some speed changes that happen. The more powerful the bone is, the less neural inhibition when you co-strike and push off with your calf and move forward. The stronger the bone, the bigger the engine. It’s sort of like the chassis in the engine. You can’t put a peak formula one engine and put it in an economy car. It’d blow the wheels right off it. But you look at a formula one chassis, that’s a powerful chassis. So, it can handle that formula one engine. Same thing, you make the chassis of the body more powerful, it can host a much more powerful engine.

Aarn Farmer: Now, if you’re loading your bones another way, like if you’re doing a lot of weight lifting, is there still some benefit to your machines? Or are you getting the same thing if you’re dead lifting or doing a bench press or something?

Dr. John Jaquish: So, in 2012 in Bristol, United Kingdom, researchers Deer and some of the other professors at the university published a brilliant study to determine what the minimum dose response is to grow bone in the hip. Does that make sense? So, how much force is required to … Like, when you’re over 30, it’s like here’s your catabolic activity and here’s your anabolic activity. So, you’re breaking down more than you’re building. So, what does it take to make this ration change and have more anabolic activity, growth, and less catabolic activity, breakdown, because everything’s growing and breaking down. Like, you’re kind of recycling cells in your body all the time. So, what Deer and researchers determined is that … They used accelerometers and then regular blood markers to determine what is happening inside of the body, how much breakdown, how much building there is. And so, there is the CTX blood test, the P1NP blood test, and the BAP blood test. The P1NP and BAP are both anabolic tests. And then the CTX is the catabolic test. What they determined is through high impact activity, which is what we’re emulating at OsteoStrong, that you needed a minimum of 4.2 multiples of your own body weight to do anything. So, like weight lifting is good, but you could pick up like a one pound dumbbell, I could do this all day long. Am I going to make my bicep any bigger? Nope.

Aarn Farmer: No, yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. So, we have to have a relevant force. It has to be exhausting, you know this with muscular growth. But before this, the really … There had been another study done by Ritviger in Ylivieska, Finland about six years earlier. And they got right around four multiples of body weight. So, we see some congruency of data. Now, right in there, it wasn’t as crystal clear of a study as the one out of Bristol. So, now that we have these data points that determine the minimum dose response. And then there’s yet another study right after that with one of the other researchers, Tobias, replicated this and tried to do it with a more elderly population. And they weren’t able to achieve the 4.2 multiples of body weight, which is kind of obvious. But he just wanted to make sure, can they tolerate those impacts. They can’t tolerate the impacts because of the neural inhibitory process. But if it’s slow and controlled loading because impact is an out of control event, at OsteoStrong, we control it. That’s the difference. That’s how people can get these high levels of bone density. Now, when it comes to going to the gym, clearly I like exercise, right? And we’re watching this on video, I don’t know if you have a lot of audio listeners. But I like exercise, it’s important to me. I like being strong. But the strength training that I do, it’s just a completely different type of exercise. It doesn’t matter how heavy you lift, you’re probably not influencing bone density very much unless you’re one of the top strength athletes in the world.

Aarn Farmer: That’s interesting. Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, os the average person … And I run into women all the time who may be even pre-menopausal. And they say, “I had a bone density test. I have low bone density. I don’t understand, I exercise every day. I do weight training every day.” And I’m like, “Yeah, 4.2 multiples of body weight. I know you’re not training with that.” So, yeah, you’re not really influencing bone. So, when I realized that, that’s when I started filing for patents and realized that this was something that needed to get all over the world and I could improve the lives, maybe even save the lives of millions of older women. So yeah, I think I have the coolest job in the world. I wouldn’t trade.

Aarn Farmer: Yeah, it’s just like you said at the beginning, if you’re an older woman and you break a hip, you’re really rolling the dice. I mean, who knows what’s going to happen next? So, that’s pretty cool. I’m glad that exists. And I’m … Because I found out about Osteo … I don’t even know how I found out about it. But it’s not something that’s common knowledge. It’s something that I really think … It’s one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on here is because there really needs to be more … More people need to know that’s an option, especially more elderly people.

Dr. John Jaquish: When we have 1,000 or 2,000 locations, it’ll be news. People will be like, “Yeah, I’ve heard of that.”

Aarn Farmer: Okay, that’s good.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, it’s one of those things where when something’s new, especially when it’s never been done before, a lot of press doesn’t want to cover it because they don’t want to … Let’s say it’s incorrect, you know? Like alkaline water, that was talked about years ago and people were saying, “Yeah, it’s going to end all kinds of diseases.” Alkaline water doesn’t do anything. It makes the water alkaline. It wasn’t a scam. I think a lot of people went into alkaline water with the best of intentions. But the problem is the more alkaline your nutrition is, the more acid your body makes. So, what you eat is not always what ends up in your biochemistry, right? Sometimes it’s the opposite because they body’s trying to find a way around this completely inappropriate material you just put in your body.

Aarn Farmer: That’s what I always remind people, when you eat something, the first thing that happens to it is you drop it into a vat of hydrochloric acid. And then there’s not a whole lot that you’re going to do to influence that. In fact, there’s not a whole lot that you want to do to influence that.

Dr. John Jaquish: What if the hydrochloric acid’s not there?

Aarn Farmer: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Or if you’ve neutralized that acid, the body just starts pumping acid.

Aarn Farmer: Pumping, yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. This is like the logic of proton pump inhibitors. Yes, they seem to work and they give you devastating side effects. Like, I tell anybody who’s used a proton pump inhibitor, change your nutrition. Don’t take that.

Aarn Farmer: Yeah, in fact, this is really off the subject, but I am glad now that Zantac has pretty much been taken off … not totally taken off the market, but it’s a little harder to get because now we’re finding out that it gives you cancer. Well, you know, people have been saying that you don’t want to reduce your stomach acid forever. And now we’ve got proof that the actual molecule of Zantac, whatever the name of that medicine is, directly causes cancer. And there’s still people that are going to take it, that swear by it, that are going to eat crap food and McDonald’s and everything else and then take their Zantac and just be done with it. It’s frustrating. I mean, it is frustrating for me especially, just to see people make bad choices, because I know … I mean, I saw what my bad choices did to me. I don’t want anybody else to go through any of that. That’s not good. All right, so moving on just a little bit. Now you have a home system to increase strength. And I’ve seen ads for this all over the internet. The X3 Bar variable resistance training system. Have you got it right there? So, there it is. The X3 Bar resistance band training system. If you’re watching this on video, he’s showing really the core piece of the X3 Bar exercise band bar system, the bar.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s a pretty simple, elegant device.

Aarn Farmer: Pretty simple. What is it? Tell my listeners what it is and how you can use it?

Dr. John Jaquish: What happens-

Aarn Farmer: Or how you just … Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: What happened doing the research is it became apparent to me that human beings are so much stronger in this impact range of motion. And when I compared what people normally lift to what I was seeing with these postmenopausal women, the difference between how we are in our weaker range, so like when you do a pushup, your nose is close to the ground, versus when your arm is almost fully extended, there’s a sevenfold difference in capacity. So, if there’s a sevenfold difference in capacity, why would we pick the same weight in the joint damaging weaker range than we do in the stronger range? Because the muscles are really not having a lot of activity in that stronger range. The stronger you become and the heavier you go, you’re risking joint damage. And a lot of joint damage is cumulative. So, what we needed was a weight that in the compromised range of motion is light, lighter than normally we’d handle. In the middle, something that we might normally handle, maybe even a little higher. But then where the musculature is becoming more efficient and where the bones are loaded on their axis, the weight really jumps up. So, I wanted to create a loading situation where we loaded every part of the body in accordance to biomechanical capacities. So, when I bench press for example, and I’ve built up of course. This wasn’t day one. But I hold 100 pounds at the bottom of this chest press movement. 300 pounds in the middle, and 540 pounds at the top. Now, I’d never get under a bar with 540 pounds because if I dropped it, I would be killed. However, it’s very safe because that 540 pounds is only 540 pounds in that impact ready position. So, I get the benefit of hitting that 540 pounds and firing all the musculature to get it there, and I can even do that for 20, 30 repetitions. And then I can’t get there anymore. It depends on the speed of the repetitions. That heavily weighs on how quickly you exhaust. You want to go slow though because you want the stabilizers to fire. Then you start to fatigue the middle of the range. So, you go from bottom to kind of halfway and do half reps if you can’t do those anymore. Then the last few repetitions, we call this diminishing range. The last few repetitions are maybe just a couple centimeters. And so, that way it’s complete exhaustion of moves. The evacuation of ATP glycogenic creatine phosphate is far beyond anything you could ever do with a weight. The myofibril stimulus is far beyond anything you could ever get with a weight. You can’t barely do that at all with general weight training because you’re not firing enough musculature to really give a massive protein synthesis signal so that more myofibers are formed inside the muscle cells. And then, because we keep constant tension, the design of the product forces you to keep constant tension, otherwise the band moves around on your back or chest press or you kind of lose your grip. So, if you keep constant tension, that creates an effect called hypoxia, which means that the blood that’s in the muscle stays in the muscle. It’s not really taking hardly any blood in, it’s not really letting hardly any blood out, which allows for a greater level of exhaustion of the ATP glycogenic creatine phosphate. That means it’s a greater signal to store more of those fuels after the exercise. So, you’re enlarging the cell because you’re packing more fuel in there, because your body’s like, “We got really low on our three fuel systems. We’ve got to store a little bit more here, because this might happen again.” So, I’m resetting homeostasis. And then, of course testosterone upregulation, this is true of men and women, testosterone is very important in women too. The determining factor of muscle growth is not actually testosterone, it’s testosterone receptor site activity. Receptor site activity calls for your body to create more testosterone. So, what’s the greatest influence on receptor site activity? It’s mechanical force. So, we’re going heavier than we ever would at the gym, but only in strategic positions where we can totally handle it. And we’re going with high repetitions, so we’re living in this zone of incredible loading of the body and it’s safe. So, we’re getting more growth because of those four reasons. And it’s phenomenal. You do one set per exercise, it takes about 10 minutes. So, one day it’s chest press, triceps, and overhead press, and then squats. And then the next day is deadlift, calf raises, bent over row, and bicep press. So, there’s eight main exercises. There’s a couple of supplementary ones, you know? Like the body builder type who really wants the thick pectorals, you can do like a crossover kind of thing. But it’s so simple. It takes 10 minutes, and you’re going to grow more than you would in the whole gym. So, I tell people … Like, people say, “You still lift, right?” And I said, “Weight lifting is a waste of time. I have something far better.” It wouldn’t be a waste of time if this didn’t exist. So, the heavy latex handing hooks to this, and then there’s a second ground that the bands move and flex underneath because ultimately there is people who’ve been training with rubber bands like physical therapy. The problem with that type of banding is it’s very weak, very low levels of force. So, you’re in a contracted position, like I mentioned, you’re seven times stronger and stronger range. But if you’ve got a 20 pound band, it’s not going to do anything. There’s no getting away from heavy. Similar to the bone, you really have to put tremendous forces through the body to create a change. So, what I did in both regards, bone and muscle, I made that safe. And then we’re able to get to those places because if we just had bands, like let’s say somebody were doing … threw a band around their back and they did a pushup with it. If it were heavy enough … San Francisco.

Aarn Farmer: Not in a fire, are you?

Dr. John Jaquish: Funny thing though, usually when they role, something terrible happened. You know, they’re not getting a cat out of a tree. They’re doing … Somebody probably OD’d or something. So, it’s San Francisco, you know? We have the greatest homeless population. Should I say greatest? Nothing great about it.

Aarn Farmer: Biggest.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, where the hell was I?

Aarn Farmer: I’m sorry, you were talking about these bands, they’re flexing and they’re moving.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. If you use a heavier band just by itself, this happens, you twist your joints. If you step on a band and you try and do like a deadlift, like a back exercise, your ankles will be twisting inward. So, that causes neural inhibition. So, either your muscles will just shut down and you won’t be able to do it, or you’ll actually create an injury. You could even break an ankle or a wrist. So, the answer was to come up with a bar that could manage hundreds of pounds of force with rotating hooks to keep level, so there’s no torque on the wrist. And then what we have is the ground plate. So, the bands move and flex underneath the plate so that your ankles are fine. It’s just a flat piece of ground. It’s a second ground you stand on, the band moves underneath.

Aarn Farmer: Yeah, because I always have problems with two things, number one my right knee. But I think that’s just because I’m old. But my ankles. When I do anything heavy for a long period of time, my ankles really, really, really start to ache. And I if I do any … Like, if I try to do dead lifts twice a week for six months or something, my ankles will start to ache. And when you look at my shoes, if my shoes ever get … I don’t have them in here. But if my shoes ever get about four months old, they’re at an incline. I look like I’m bowlegged or something. And that’s just from me walking around. They wear out unevenly, I guess I should say. So, my shoes are never flat. My shoes always roll to the inside and it’s just something that’s weird. So, I have a lot of problems with doing weight, because I’ve got a deadlift rack in my backyard, or squat rack, rather. When I exercise, I’ll do that for like three or four months. And then I’ll be so sore, I don’t want to do it. And then I take some time off to rehabilitate and to get healthy. And then I forget about it, I’m onto something else. And I lose any gains that I had. And then I have to go, “Okay, I should get back to this for a little while.” I found some success with kettle bells. I love kettle bells and I’ve got a 30 pound kettle bell that I can do a lot of different things with. But there’s something about my lower body that just doesn’t work right. So, that’s one of the things I was interesting in your bar because everything is adjusting as you go. I’m wondering if that wouldn’t solve some of my problems?

Dr. John Jaquish: The problem is when you’re in those weaker ranges of motion.

Aarn Farmer: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Even people with biomechanics issues, they can still restore impact, maybe not as well. But they can still do it. The highest performance of the joint is when it’s loaded on its axis. That’s just full stop, you know? It is. You know?

Aarn Farmer: So, you said … I’m sorry, go ahead.

Dr. John Jaquish: You’re going to enjoy it.

Aarn Farmer:: Okay. You said you’ve got one set of exercises for day one, another set of exercises for day two. And then, do you recommend rest days? Do you just do that once a week? What’s happening there?

Dr. John Jaquish: You start off doing it four days a week. If you’re doing it four days a week and you don’t want to increase the intensity, so if you’re somebody who maybe a little nutritionally challenged, maybe not getting the right nutrients. Now, for me, I am very aggressive with it. Like, I want to get absolutely as much out of it as possible.

Aarn Farmer: Sure.

Dr. John Jaquish: You know?

Aarn Farmer: Sure.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. So, I am just … I’m six days a week.

Aarn Farmer: Six.

Dr. John Jaquish: I take one day off. 10 minutes a day, also.

Aarn Farmer: Right, so you’re not doing it a bunch of times.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, people see me and they just imagine I spend two hours in the gym every day. And I’m like, “No, I workout at home for 10 minutes.”

Aarn Farmer: The first bodybuilder I ever had on this podcast, it was one of the questions I asked him. I was like, “It must be five hours a day.” He was like, “No. About 20 minutes a day.” And I think it was like four days a week, maybe five. And I had to sit down and go, “Wait.” It did not track with what my idea of a bodybuilder would do.

Dr. John Jaquish: Most bodybuilders trains longer because stimulus with each set when you’re lifting a regular weight is just not as efficient as a set here with the X3 Bar resistance band bar system. So yeah. I mean, I’ve seen guys strategically be a little more efficient about their lifting. There are smarter ways you can go about weight lifting. But yeah, I mean, ultimately, you don’t need to commit a ton of time, you need absolute fatigue of the muscle. I just came up with a strategy to do that better than anything else that’s does it.

Aarn Farmer: What if you have other goals besides just muscle growth? Do you do any stretching or yoga or anything like that as part of your routine?

Dr. John Jaquish: I recommend yoga. Like, if you have a range of motion problem, yoga’s awesome. Yeah.

Aarn Farmer: Okay. All right.

Dr. John Jaquish: And there’s other stretching programs. Like, a lot of guys are like, “I’m not going to yoga class.” You know, it’s okay. You can find stuff for range of motion problems.

Aarn Farmer: Yeah, I do DDP Yoga. I enjoy it. I mean, I’ll do it. And he’s just got like a 10 minute warmup video and it lives in my phone and I go watch that before I do anything. And it really helps, because you know, when you … I spent the first 40 years of my life doing nothing, you know? But getting fatter. And a lot of times, I feel like a lot of stretching, a lot of doing new things with my body because it’s just … I was so sedentary for so many decades that I really need a little bit more. I always feel brittle. Like, I always feel like I’m right on the edge of an injury, you know, if I push myself or do anything. So, I’ve learned to slow down, stretch, warm up, all the things that they tell you to do that I think a lot of people just ignore.

Dr. John Jaquish: Don’t stretch before you lift.

Aarn Farmer: Don’t stretch before you lift?

Dr. John Jaquish: No.

Aarn Farmer: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: It shuts muscles off.

Aarn Farmer: Really? That’s interesting. Let’s talk about that. Why does that happen?

Dr. John Jaquish: Because you have to warm up. Like, if you do it with regular weights. With X3 Bar resistance band training system, you don’t really need to do a warmup because the first couple of repetitions, the way the load comes on your body, it is your warmup.

Aarn Farmer: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, but generally warming up, just perform the movement a little bit lighter than you’re going to move it. When you start to stretch, it actually shuts muscles off. So, right now, you’ll see a warmup. You won’t see stretching. And then, you stretch afterwards.

Aarn Farmer: Okay, see, that’s definitely something I didn’t know. And that’s what I was telling you, I think before the microphones went on, the nutrition part of this I love. And I’ve spent so many years digging into this because I’m just fascinated by it. The exercise part of it, it’s never been a priority for me. I do a little bit of exercise. But even when I exercise, I’m just trying to grow a little bit of muscle so that I burn energy a little bit more efficiently and it’s still … It’s not so much strength as it is trying to continue to lose weight because I’ve still got about another 40-50 pounds that I want to lose. And that’s what I’m trying to do.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, your listeners have been following your journey?

Aarn Farmer: Yeah. When I started this podcast, I was 350 pounds. So, I had already lost 50 pounds. And so, over the course of this podcast, this is episode 150 plus. So, I think I released 150 the other day. So, this’ll be like 154 or 155 when it comes out. Guys, if you’re listening, don’t hold me to that. I have absolutely no idea what episode number this is. But yeah, they’ve watched me lose 150 pounds over the course of this podcast, the ones that have been with me from the beginning.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s awesome.

Aarn Farmer: In fact, I remember … His name just absolutely left me. But he’s a guy that does street work in New York. Like, all this … Almost like the parkour stuff. And I cannot think of his name. But he was the first guy-

Dr. John Jaquish: Hannibal?

Aarn Farmer: Say it again?

Dr. John Jaquish: Hannibal.

Aarn Farmer: No, it wasn’t Hannibal. But he was the first guy I interviewed at less than 200 pounds. And I was so happy. It was like, I got up that morning, weighed myself. I was less than 200 pounds. And then 20 minutes later, I was talking to him. So, I just was talking about that. That was probably 75 episodes ago. Actually less than that. It was probably about 50 episodes ago. But anyway, I digress pretty easily, so I try to stay on target. Sometimes I do it, sometimes I don’t. But the X3 Bar fitness band bar system interested me for that reason because of how it adjusts. I wondered if it was something that I could do that would do less … What would you call it? That would put less stress on my joints at odd angles, which I think was what was happening. I know when I was doing squats, I think when I was going down, that my ankles were turning a little bit. And I think that was what was causing the issue. So, that was one of the things that seemed interesting about your thing. So, real quick, or you can just take as much time as you want with this. I’m also interested in what you eat because I know that you’ve done keto. I’ve been keto for a long time. And I know recently you’ve got carnivore. This is something that I do for time to time. Like, I’ll go a month or two of carnivore and then I’ll come back and do some vegetables, whole vegetables, and then go back to carnivore. I don’t really know why I go back and forth, it’s just something that some days I wake up and I feel like I want a salad. But you’ve been carnivore for a long time now. Can you tell us about that? What made you decide to do that?

Dr. John Jaquish: November 1st, 2017.

Aarn Farmer: Wow, that’s a long time to eat just meat.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. Right. I’m also not … It’s about getting your nutrition from the most nutritious place, which is meats. I did a lot of research. Ultimately, I invented the ultimate fitness product. And so, I thought, okay. I was already ketogenic, I knew that was the smart way to go. Dave Asper was a friend of mine, he was a good friend of mine. And so, I bounced ideas off of him and pretty much recommended a bulletproof diet, which is ketogenic.

Aarn Farmer: It’s ketogenic, yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Some great advice coming along with it. But I thought, “Okay, I need to find what is absolutely the best nutrition plan for growing the greatest amount of muscle and being as lean as possible,” because I want people to get the best out of X3 Bar variable resistance training system. So, also came across many references to the two greatest drivers of long life, which there’s a lot of things that are drivers of long life, but then there’s conflicting research about it. No conflicting research about these two things. The two things that drive the longest life are being strong, being lean. So, stronger, leaner people live longer.

Aarn Farmer: Right. I know caloric restriction is almost always talked about with some kind of level of intermittent fasting, probably because it leads to stronger leaner people.

Dr. John Jaquish: Is it caloric restriction? Or are those people just lean?

Aarn Farmer: Right. Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Like-

Aarn Farmer: Cause and effect crosstalk.

Dr. John Jaquish: Make sure we’re not looking at a variable that causes something else.

Aarn Farmer: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Like, somebody who eats whatever, 600 calories a day and barely has the energy to get off the couch, versus me where I’m going with X3 Bar resistance band bar system going at hundreds of pounds, my deadlift is over 615 at peak force. There’s an app for X3 Bar resistance band training system that tracks how much force you’re lifting.

Aarn Farmer: Okay, I didn’t know that.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, so I’m putting just huge forces through the body. And I’m a lean 220 pounds. I might be just as lean as the guy who’s too weak to get off the couch, but statistically he’s supposed to live a long time because he’s emaciated? I don’t think that’s the driver of long life. I think it’s the lean part. So, ultimately, when I looked at all the data and I talked to some of the strongest people in the world. And when I started talking to these strength athletes and where they really get their results, it was meat. So, I thought, “Okay.” I found Doctor Sean Baker.

Aarn Farmer: That’s the guy, isn’t he?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. He’s the guy. And his Joe Rogan podcast was just awesome. He’s even done some better stuff since then. Now he’s built up an audience, it’s his job. But he’s done so many … He lays out the research very similar to the way I do it. And he and I are friends. I’ve been on his podcast too. But I discovered what he was saying and thought, “I’m going to do this. I’m going to try it and let’s see.” And my results were better. I got leaner. My skin cleared up. Things got better that I didn’t know I had a problem. Allergies, barely a problem anymore. I used to have debilitating allergies every fall and every spring. Like, I’m allergic to mold and all kinds of stuff. California’s got pollen all over the place. I barely … And it was like a light switch. It wasn’t like two years after I went carnivore, it’s like, “My allergies are better.” It was immediate.

Aarn Farmer: Yeah, and I’ve heard so many stories of that same … I know when I go carnivore, I lose 10 pounds in a month. I mean, it’s pretty impressive how fast it goes away, and I think it’s just like-

Dr. John Jaquish: Totally efficient.

Aarn Farmer: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: I don’t think I’m ever going to eat a different way.

Aarn Farmer: Okay. Well, that’s good. That’s good. I mean, I think it’s … I’m very interested in people who can maximize their health efficiently. I don’t have a ton of time, so I’m always looking for efficiencies. I’m always looking for ways to get more out of less time. So, again, that’s why I wanted to talk about X3 workout bar system, but that’s why I wanted to meet you as well because I think that you’re kind of interested in the same things I am.

Dr. John Jaquish: Awesome.

Aarn Farmer: Okay. Well, Doctor Jaquish, why don’t you tell my listeners what you … where they can follow you, where they can find out more about the X3 portable gym or OsteoStrong or all that good stuff?

Dr. John Jaquish: There is this osteostrong.me.

Aarn Farmer: Dot me, okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. That’s the website for OsteoStrong. You can find me on … My more scientific place to find me is Johnjaquish.com. And then, J-A-Q-U-I-S-H is the way you spell my last name. And then @drjaquish on Instagram or then Doctor John Jaquish on Facebook.

Dr. John Jaquish: Awesome.

Aarn Farmer: Thanks man, I appreciate it.

Dr. John Jaquish: All right.