EPI 146: Dr. John Jaquish - What You've Been Taught About Nutrition & Weightlifting Is Wrong!

Full Transcript #

Dr. John Jaquish: The injections are lousy because they keep your testosterone high for a number of days at a time. Well, the problem with that is you’re supposed to have high testosterone in the morning. That’s how your body works. But as you get later in the day, it goes down to very low levels.

Taylor Zamir: Welcome back to another episode of the Peak Performance Life Podcast. Today, I am very excited to have someone on the line who I have been following for a long time, and I use one of his strength training devices, which I’m sure we’ll talk about. We have Dr. John Jaquish PhD. He has spent years researching and developing improved approaches to health. He is the innovator of the most effective bone density building medical technology, which is now partnered with the Tony Robbins and Osteostrong for Rapid Clinic deployment, the inventor of X3, and that’s what I’ve had for many years. The X3 Bar, it’s a really great system. It’s a technology that has proven to develop muscle much faster than conventional weightlifting, all with the lowest risk risk of joint injury, which is super, super important, especially as you get older, to be able to load up those muscles and get all those benefits without having the risk of joint injury. So Dr. Jake’s methods are used in training the world’s most elite athletes and associations such as the entire Miami Heat Organization, various NFL and NBA players. I’ve seen Anthony Davis from the Los Angeles Lakers using his equipment. I’ve seen Tom Brady using his equipment, and he’s also the CEO of Primal Medical Group, a physician group with over 100 general practitioners who understand and require patient application of his physical medicine interventions like X3 and Osteostrong. And he’s also the author of a new book, which has a very interesting name that I’m sure we’ll get into. His new book is called Weightlifting is a Waste of Time. So Dr. Jaquish, thank you so much for joining us here today.

Dr. John Jaquish: Thanks. That was an awesome intro.

Taylor Zamir: Yeah,

Dr. John Jaquish: Man. Just bring you with me.

Taylor Zamir: Yeah, exactly right.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah,

Taylor Zamir: Totally. Well, awesome, man. Yeah, as I mentioned, I’ve been using the X3 Bar for years. I love it. I’m sure we’ll touch on that. But let’s start off by talking about, well, actually, let’s start with a little bit of background about yourself. How did you get into developing these different types of protocols that are so different yet so much more effective than what’s out there today?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, different. It is funny. I’ve recently been on a whole bunch of entrepreneurship type podcasts, and I think everyone’s so fascinated with the fact that I did something that was so counter the market, and in my mind, I didn’t think about it that way. I just looked at for X3, I just looked at the fact that most people get just about nothing out of strength training. They might have some beginner gains, like the first week they start lifting, first two weeks they put on a couple pounds, and then they’re like, their arms are a little tighter, and they’re like, oh, great. This is going to keep going forever. And then they realize that it doesn’t go on forever. In fact, it pretty much never happens again. And so I don’t know the exact number. I do have quite a bit of data. I put in the book about the lack of conditioning of people, but 23% of men in the United States work out on a regular basis, two times per week. Strength training, I would say it’s how many people walk down the street and you’re like, wow, that guy’s in shape. Maybe one 10th of 1%, maybe 100th of 1%. Most people, when I show ’em a picture of a bodybuilder, I’m like, how many people have you ever seen that look like this? Most people will say, I’ve never ever in person seen a person that looks like that. Now, I now realize there’s drugs when it comes to bodybuilders, but still 6.6% of people in the United States, men over the age of 18 have used or are currently using anabolic steroids, 6.6%, but 6.6% of people don’t look fit. Not even, like I said, less than maybe 100th of 1% look like they’re in shape. So what are these people doing? Well, clearly whatever they’re doing isn’t working. And so when I saw my lack of progress in fitness, I thought, okay, something’s wrong. Because there are some genetic outliers who seem to walk into a gym and toss some weights around and not really even be all that conscious of what they’re doing, and they grow a lot of muscle and then the rest of us don’t grow shit. So why? And I think I really figured that out. And that’s really the subject of the book. Weightlifting is a waste of time.

Taylor Zamir: Nice. And for people that do see you walking down the street, you definitely do look like a bodybuilder. I think the key with the X3 Bar really for me is just I think many of us, we go to the gym, we do the same exercises for years, nothing different, not really triggering anything new. And then the X3 Bar comes along and it just hits a different part of the muscle. It hits you in a different way. So what is it that’s different about what training with the X3 Bar and with your systems?

Dr. John Jaquish: So the X3 is a very, well patting myself on the here. It’s a very well put together approach to variable resistance exercise. So some people have an advantageous set of tendon insertions in their body, whereas they can engage more musculature than the rest of us, especially in the weaker range of motion. So when you’re bench pressing, some people have more access to muscle here than the rest of us. So being able to engage musculature, they might be able to engage three or four times as much because of where the tendon inserts on the humerus bone. Therefore, as they’re going through that range of motion, they’re able to recruit more, thereby, simulate more, thereby they get stronger. The next workout goes well for them and they continue to compound their strength gains. But for a significant percentage of us, in fact, the first reference in my book is the study Petrella 2008 talked about how 23% of people, no matter what they do with weights, they will not stimulate any muscular growth at all. No muscle protein synthesis, no matter what. And it’s a problem in sports performance studies because sports performance studies are self-selecting. They’re all based on volunteers. Well, who volunteers for a strength study, probably somebody who’s interested in strength. Why are they interested in strength? Well, probably because working out for ’em, there’s not a lot of people that sign up for a strength study and they’re like, yeah, I’ve been going to the gym for years and I haven’t been able to do anything. It just doesn’t end up working out that way. So it’s sort of like everything is for genetic outliers by genetic outliers. And the idea that we’re all going to do the same thing that the genetic outliers are like, you could take the average person and put ’em in a training room with a couple NFL players and the NFL players will be like, all right, skinny guy, we’re going to make you strong and put ’em through all the stuff that they do. That NFL players will still continue to grow. The regular person, probably not much. And so by embracing what’s been discovered with variable resistance, it takes the whole tendon issue out of the equation. So when you’re at the bottom, you just deal with a slightly lowered amount of force, and then as you enter into the stronger range of motion, it very aggressively climbs up so that you’re dealing with a much more significant amount of force where you’re recruiting more tissue. And then as you do repetitions, so I’m strong is tear, but let’s say, so when I pick up a chess press bar, I’m holding 200 pounds here, 300 pounds here, and five 50 here, and as I’m going to fatigue, all of a sudden I can’t get to that five 50. So I’m just doing what’s called lengthened partials in that 300 pound range, and that’s where the muscle is stretched. That’s actually the most anabolic position for growth. So we do extra repetitions there, and those extra repetitions really guarantee that we grow more muscle than really anything else.

Taylor Zamir: Yeah, I highly recommend everyone check out the X3 Bar, watch some videos about it, learn more. And if you’re listening and couldn’t see the demonstration that he was just doing, imagine doing a bench press. Normally with weights, the hardest part is when the bench is close to your chest, whereas with the X3 Bar, the hardest part is when you’re extending all the way out. So you’re literally getting the muscles working in a different position, harder than they would with the weights. So I

Dr. John Jaquish: Think it is really great. It’s just loading is changed so that it’s optimized for your capability in each separate position.

Taylor Zamir: Right, right.

Dr. John Jaquish: And you just go to fatigue in each position gradually marching backwards.

Taylor Zamir: Yep, exactly. And I want everyone to hear this because this is one of the first things when I first heard about the X3 Bar and it was like, wait, you can do this in whatever, it was like 10 minutes a day, 15 minutes a day. And I know you look like for people who aren’t watching, he’s absolutely jacked. He looks like a bodybuilder. And I know I heard this recently that you only worked out for, what was the number of hours or days per year that you typically work on? So

Dr. John Jaquish: I’m doing something different, but last year was the year we launched the force bar. I had my force bar before anybody else did. Obviously I invented it. So now the force bar records all the data. So there’s two versions of X3. There’s one that doesn’t record any data, and then there’s one that records absolutely everything and gives you all kinds of great information. It’s great, especially if your goal is to be as strong as possible. Being as big as possible really has more to do with exercise volume and then the sort of short term one set, I’ve got to get more total output out of this set. So it’s like for people who want to be as strong as possible, the force bar is amazing. So what I was doing is really narrowing down what it takes to stimulate strength. I was only doing basically one workout per muscle group per week, so one set per muscle group per week. I think I increased my strength by something like 500%. Wow. Yeah. I think I worked out 14 hours in the entire year.

Taylor Zamir: Incredible. Now,

Dr. John Jaquish: Just so everybody knows, I am now switching gears and I’m developing a volume program that’s really focusing on muscular size. I know you’re going to think it’s funny. I’ve never focused on muscular size before, and like you mentioned, I’m kind of bigger than most people just wait. Oh, wow. The new program now I’m working out maybe an hour a day, so last year or 14 hours in the whole year. Now I’m working out an hour a day and it’s pretty grueling, but the results are just, they’re there.

Taylor Zamir: Yeah. That’s amazing. I can’t wait for that. And yeah, I think I’m someone who I always did a little more even on the original X3, even though it was only like, yeah, you only have to do the minimal. I would always do more. I just like working out a little more. I think there’s some people like me who just enjoy working out sometimes more than 10 minutes a day. I’d rather be in the 30 to 60 minute range most days, taking a day off here and there. So I’m really looking forward to that. That sounds amazing. I

Dr. John Jaquish: Think you’ll enjoy it. Getting the amount of protein that you need is really important. I think a lot of people are going to have trouble getting one gram per pound of body weight in protein. And also vegetable sources don’t count. You just count those as zero because they’re basically zero. You’re not able to, most vegetable sources of protein are only 9% usable by the body. So if you have a hundred grams of protein, let’s say you eat something like seven pounds of broccoli, which would give you a hundred grams of protein, I know nobody would do that, but anybody who thinks broccoli’s healthy needs their head examined. So it’s like you could eat this, it would almost kill you by eating that much, and that a hundred grams, there’s really only nine grams in there that your body can use, and the rest of it you’ll just secrete out in the form of nitrogen waste. So you really need to get it from animal sources or fermented sources.

Taylor Zamir: What’s a fermented source? What’s an example of a fermented source?

Dr. John Jaquish: Fortagen

Taylor Zamir: Okay. Oh, like amino acids? Yeah. Got it. Got it. Cool.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, they need to be fermented. There’s a lot of amino acid products that are just about as good as eating sand, so you got to be careful. Branch chain amino acids, they’re actually outperformed by placebo.

Taylor Zamir: Oh, wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. So I see people still, which brand of branch chain amino acids should I be taking? None. That will do absolutely nothing for you.

Taylor Zamir: Yeah. So let’s talk a little bit about, let’s touch on your diet real quick before we move on. I definitely want to talk about your new telemedicine clinic and all that kind of stuff in a little bit. But while we’re on the topic here, so I believe you follow, is it more of a ish diet?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah. I call it low carbohydrate. I think carnivore kind of triggers the people who are looking to be upset about everything. I don’t really want to have a discussion with those people under any circumstances. And so when somebody’s at a grocery store, just because the way I look, people come up to me and be like, how do you get in shape like that? How do you stay in shape like that? And it’s usually high school males that ask me this question, but I’m still in earshot of the people who wear masks while they drive. And so I don’t want to say carnivore just because I don’t want these land monsters to wander over to me and get their purple hair on me. I just like, no, I’m not talking to you.

Taylor Zamir: Yeah, what do you eat in a day? But that’s something that I’m sure people would love

Dr. John Jaquish: To do. What do I eat in a day?

Taylor Zamir: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: So yesterday I had about three pounds of ground beef,

Taylor Zamir: Three pounds

Dr. John Jaquish: In one meal.

Taylor Zamir: In one meal. And was that your only meal of the day or, yep. It’s really interesting. I’m seeing this a lot recently, people just having one or two really big high protein meals. So

Dr. John Jaquish: This was like, I thought that this was always the way to go, and I had always done this, and there’s some very weak research out there that had suggested that you can only ingest 30 grams of protein at once, which is why bodybuilders will be like, oh, I need to have six different small meals a day throughout the day

Taylor Zamir: Through.

Dr. John Jaquish: So 30 grams happens to be the exact amount of protein that’s in a typical protein shake. So it turns out that it was the people who were making whey protein shakes that funded that. It wasn’t even really science, it was just sort of hyperbole that became something that was mentioned in multiple studies but never proven. And so it was like I got thousands of people saying to me, well, you’re not getting most of that protein. You can only ingest 30 grams. And I’m like, well, that’s weird. I put on 45 pounds of muscle doing this. So you’re saying, I did that by only ingesting 30 grams of protein and everything else went to waste. You sure about that? Anyway, this past year, there’s a study that came out that shows, and this is a direct quote, the amount of protein that can be assimilated in one meal is apparently unlimited. Nice. So yeah, eat a huge meal. Your body and the period of protein synthesis can go on. They measured it for 12 hours. So the more protein you have, just the longer your growing muscle. So if I have a meal in the evening, like three pounds of ground beef, well, I know what my body’s going to be doing overnight, and I will wake up and there are times where I’ll look at my arm or my forearm and be like, I think it’s bigger than it was yesterday. That happens frequently.

Taylor Zamir: Yeah. It’s very, very interesting. Yeah. For many years we’ve heard the same thing. 30, maybe 40 grams you can digest in one time, and so you got to break it up into five meals a day. So only one meal a day though. Do you

Dr. John Jaquish: Listen to this? You should have eight glasses of water a day. Right? Who came up with that?

Taylor Zamir: Who?

Dr. John Jaquish: Gatorade.

Taylor Zamir: Who’s that?

Dr. John Jaquish: Gatorade.

Taylor Zamir: A Gatorade. Interesting.

Dr. John Jaquish: So it’s like if you want to be that hydrated who wants to be drinking water all day, you should probably drink Gatorade. Right. So it was a marketing message. It’s sort of like breakfast is the most important meal of the day brought to you by Kellogg’s,

Taylor Zamir: Right?

Dr. John Jaquish: They did that to sell cereal. In fact, people didn’t eat breakfast in the 1940s and fifties. They woke up, had a cup of coffee, went to work, and there was no, maybe they would have lunch and they would all definitely have dinner. So one meal a day used to be like what people did. In fact, when you look at pictures of the streets of New York from the 1940s, not a single fat person in sight. You see hundreds of people. Nobody’s fat. You go there today, almost everyone’s fat. And what changed? Well, we used to eat 80% mean butter. Now we eat 70% carbohydrates.

Taylor Zamir: What

Dr. John Jaquish: About some people would be like, oh, well we have more vegetables. Yeah, I can create a case against vegetables.

Taylor Zamir: I was going to ask you. Yeah, is there any vegetables or fruits or honey or anything like that in your diet?

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, no, but let’s see. So I recommend lowering carbohydrates. There is plenty of data that supports what I’m doing. So when somebody says there are no studies on carnivore, yeah, there are. Now they’re not huge also. So the most important piece of research that I think anybody should be aware of is there was a study that came out last year in nature, which is amazing publication. I’m sure you’ve seen articles from nature. It’s a top peer reviewed journal. They don’t put out many issues. I think it comes out quarterly and there’s not a lot of articles in it. So to be in nature is a big deal. And there’s a study that was put in there last year called The Burden of Proof and a Burden of Proof Study. It’s like it means, okay, here’s something X, we accept this as a fact, but where’s the evidence? Let’s really do a deep dive on the history of the literature and find the evidence that either backs this up or maybe it’s not there. Turns out that the claims about saturated fat and cholesterol, there’s correlation data, but there’s no causation data, None. That’s absolutely outrageous. And the fact that that’s the situation we’ve been telling people they should stay away from meat for years, and people are gravitating towards, whether it’s veganism or just higher carbohydrate or eating vegetables, eating fruits. The case against meat is unfounded, and that’s my opinion here is not clients. I would say it’s the most nutritious thing. And so a lack of any mechanistic connection between cholesterol and cardiac events. Here’s where people went wrong, is the artery gets inflammation in it, and then the low density lipoprotein comes through the artery. The LDL, which is formerly called bad cholesterol. It’s really just better cholesterol. It sticks. And then another one sticks and another one sticks. Another one sticks causes a blockage. Well, the problem isn’t the LDL. The LDL is the mechanism of transport for fatty acids around the body. It’s your train system or Dave Feldman who’s really the one that’s offered this sort of alternate model of cholesterol and fat metabolism is fatty acid metabolism. He calls him the LDL is like the canoe that all the fatty acids jump in to go to wherever they need to go. And if you limit that with a statin, for example, you’re limiting your life. You can’t get the fatty acids delivered. They need to need be. Also, this is just a point of obviousness that medicine is conveniently left out the conversation when your LDL is highest.

Taylor Zamir: When’s that

Dr. John Jaquish: When you’re fasted because your body is metabolizing its own body fat, so your LDL goes super high. Well, the LDL is bad for you. That’s like saying weight loss is bad for you, and we all know that’s not true. So the entire model falls apart. It doesn’t work based on the way it’s been described for the purposes of prescribing statins. Now, I’m not too much of a conspiracy theorist. I think people were very well intentioned when they came up with this, but it just turns out that’s not the way it works.

Taylor Zamir: Yeah. We’ve had a bunch of people on this podcast who have said the same thing, that it’s really inflammation. If you look at people who have high cholesterol, most of the time, if it’s not people like you or me who are eating a really healthy diet that’s just very low carb, most of the time they’re eating lots of inflammatory foods. And so they didn’t do a separate study that showed people who are eating super healthy low inflammatory diets versus people who are eating, oh no,

Dr. John Jaquish: Actually that study has been done and it is the outcome you’d expect. They don’t have cardiac events.

Taylor Zamir: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: People who cut carbohydrates out of their diet. I don’t know what, do you know whether they have high cholesterol or not? So the problem is high cholesterol and high triglycerides, you get triglycerides from eating carbohydrates. So if you have a hundred grams of carbohydrates a day, you’re going to have high triglycerides. And if you’re eating a bunch of meat and fat, you’re also going to have high LDL. So that’s a stupid combination, which is why fruit honey. Honey is pure fructose.

Taylor Zamir: Interesting. Yeah. Honey’s because a lot of cardboard people are now eating Honey. Honey,

Dr. John Jaquish: That make it,

Taylor Zamir: Yeah. Okay. Gotcha. Yeah. Interesting. So I guess the other last question on the topic of your diet would be just about carbs. So a lot of people are like, you need carbs for the fuel to lift heavier. If you’re strength training or you’re an athlete, you need the carbs. What would you say to that? Even if it’s a healthy, I

Dr. John Jaquish: Would say they asked a bunch of carb addicted people.

Taylor Zamir: Yeah,

Dr. John Jaquish: All the time. Somebody is like, oh, I do better on carbs. That’s like saying, look, I do better with three glasses of scotch. I feel great when I drink scotch. But does that mean scotch is healthy? No, it’s terrible. So also if you ever go low carb and then try and reintroduce carbs, and based on all the things that you’ve heard from these guys who I guess they think they know something about nutrition because they have a gym membership, they’re saying, oh yeah, carbs. You can just feel the energy and you’re like, okay, I am going to have some carbs today. It’s leg day. I’m going to smoke it. I’m going to have super human power because I’ve been away from carbs and now I’m going to introduce some and I’m going to feel great. You feel like shit. When you condition your body to burn ketones instead of carbohydrates, you have a bunch of carbohydrates and you go and you’re like, where’s all this energy? I feel awful.

Taylor Zamir: I really like this. I hope people are really listening and keeping an open mind. Because a lot of people who may not have heard this kind of such a different way of presenting information, but I always look at things and I always say, results don’t lie. When I look at you, I see the results. When you look at your clients and people who have followed your protocols, we see the results. And so have an open mind that just because you were taught your whole life that maybe meat is bad and you should be vegan or eat vegetables or all this kind of stuff. Really look behind it and look and see the results. So I’m really glad. I love when people present opinions and things that they’re doing that are so different from the norm and when you see the results, so really

Dr. John Jaquish: Remember everything I just said is backed up by research. No opinions here.

Taylor Zamir: Right? I

Dr. John Jaquish: Have a position that that position is backed up by literature. I’m actually pretty nice to vegans when they do come up to me and start talking to me. I’m like, oh, okay. I mean, you want to save animals? Great. Did you know 7 billion animals a year or ground up or poisoned or shot for the sake of vegetable farming? Any species that’s growing is taking away resources from another species. That’s just a biological geological fact. And sorry, just because you’re vegan doesn’t mean you’re not killing stuff. You’re killing lots of stuff. In fact, there’s been a couple papers that indicate that if you want to cause the least amount of death, eating large ruminant animals, cows is the best way a cow can feed a person for an entire year. If you just go pay to have two sides of beef and keep it in your freezer, they’ll feed you for, I mean most people over a year. For me, probably a year, I could eat 500 pounds.

Taylor Zamir: Great information. This is really great information. Let’s switch gears a little bit. I know you have a new kind of a, I don’t know if it’s new or not, but I’ve been hearing a lot about it recently, your new telemedicine clinic and how you’re working with people who are maybe deficient in certain hormones and kind of optimizing their hormones there. Tell us a little bit about that and what should, a lot of our listeners are over the age of 40, over the age of 50, they may be a little afraid of using hormone optimization or things like that. Tell us a little bit about your thoughts around that and your telemedicine clinic.

Dr. John Jaquish: So over the years, I had received so many complaints from people who basically they were just disappointed by what their doctor said. Like, oh, my doctor said I shouldn’t be eating meat, but you’re telling me to eat lots of it. Okay, well, I can’t legally tell people just don’t listen to your doctor. But I can say, wow, if it were me, I would want a doctor that’s maybe a little bit more aware of current nutrition information. Because contrary to what vegans will tell you, there’s plenty of literature that says meat is extraordinarily healthy and it’s exactly what we need, and if we don’t have it, we’re deficient in all kinds of things. That’s just not the ultra biased data that they share with each other. So they imagine because they haven’t seen it, it doesn’t exist, but they all want to go to some political and religious echo chamber, like food lies, is it food lies? No Nutrition facts.com. There’s no facts on nutrition facts.com. It’s just bullshit. But that’s where they go and they think like, oh yeah, I’m so much more educated on nutrition. No, you’ve been uneducated. You’re worse. You’re poorly informed now. Before you just didn’t know anything. You were way better when you didn’t know anything. So yeah, that’s just the situation

Taylor Zamir: Then. So what prompted you to do the telemedicine clinic and start focusing on hormone?

Dr. John Jaquish: So many people kept saying, I don’t really like my doctor. He sucks. He keeps telling me to eat this garbage diet, which will guarantee I’ll never grow muscle. I asked him questions about exercise, doesn’t know the first thing, just sort of shrugs his shoulders like, oh, I don’t know anything about that.

Taylor Zamir: And even with the statin issue, right? It’s like how many millions of people are prescribed statin and the doctor doesn’t even ask them what they’re putting in their body, right? It’s incredible.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, your health is a direct reflection of what you’re eating. And physicians, they don’t make any connection typically, and that’s what they’re taught. Now you got people from the A MA saying, obesity is just genetic. There’s nothing you can do about it. Oh, that’s weird. I was just talking about pictures that were taken in the 1940s and nobody was fat. It’s the same genetics guys. Those are our grandparents. Why are we all of a sudden fat when our parents and grandparents? That doesn’t make sense. So yeah, it’s clearly not genetic is completely lifestyle based, and that’s the way it is.

Taylor Zamir: Yep. I know I saw recently I got an email from you about a new form of oral testosterone that you’re really excited about.

Dr. John Jaquish: So two things happened at once. So I started primal medical with a couple guys who are planning on doing something in this space, and the objective was we’re going to have smarter doctors that are actually aware of what’s going on in nutrition, and they’re going to have some heavy education in nutrition. That’s a requirement for being a primal physician. Then we also work on hormone optimization because of poor diets, because of soy, tofu, all kinds of garbage. We’ve been eating chronic cellular inflammatories that sends testosterone down, and almost everybody who’s over maybe 35 is low in testosterone. So we have an approach to treating that. We have a different approach than most places, but we can prescribe all the same stuff. These are regular doctors that can prescribe you anything you need. So primal supposed to replace your regular doctor, that way you don’t have a doctor who’s telling you to do all kinds of stuff that you know is not great. You don’t want a doctor like that. You want a doctor that actually understands sports performance. So these physicians, when it comes to hormones, we have a completely different position on testosterone. So what we have is an oral solution as opposed to injections. So a lot of different TRT clinics over the years have, some of ’em did creams for a while, but those weren’t very effective. You kind of need to cover your entire body and the stuff to get any decent absorption. And then of course, you can’t wash it off because it absorbs throughout the day. And then if you kind of cuddle with your wife, she starts growing a beard Because she’s getting the stuff too. So that was not a very good solution. The injections are lousy because they keep your testosterone high for a number of days at a time. Well, the problem with that is you’re supposed to have high testosterone in the morning. That’s how your body works. But as you get later in the day, it goes down to very low levels. If you have high testosterone at night, then your body starts creating a countermeasure called SHBG, sex hormone binding globulin, sex hormone, meaning testosterone binding, meaning it grabs a hold of testosterone and makes it inert. So it’s your body sensing that there’s too much. So the body’s canceling it out, which is why it takes about 60 days for SHBG to catch up to somebody who’s using testosterone. This is why steroid users do cycles. They do it for a certain amount of weeks, and what they’ll do typically, like an advanced cycle is they’ll be on a certain amount of drug for 60 days, and then instead of going off, they bump up the dosage by 50% and leave it there another 60 days, and then SHBG catches up again. Then they add to the dosage again, and then they take some time off, let all the drug cycle out of the system, have all kinds of emotional catastrophes, and they’re miserable. And then sometimes they have an estrogen rebound and they grow breast tissue and it sounds great, and then they have to start the whole process over again. Yeah, sounds like a real pain in the ass, and why would anybody do that? So doing this oral testosterone therapy, number one, it’s not suppressive, meaning it doesn’t shut down your natural testicular function like the injections do. Oh, wow. So because it only cycles up and down each day, it’s additive to your natural production as opposed to replacing.

Taylor Zamir: Wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Then it doesn’t convert to estrogen because it’s then low at night. So you just get the benefits without the side effects. Also, there’s no needles. So traveling with this stuff, as a guy who’s traveled, I used to fly 200,000 miles a year. You land in Dubai or Abu Dhabi or something like that, and you got a bunch of needles with you, you’re going to spend another two hours answering questions about those needles. That’s just the way it is. They don’t like anything coming into their country that they don’t understand, and they’ll let you have it if you have your little prescription tag or some prescription on a bottle, but they’re going to make you suffer. And so that whole exercise is just like spare

Taylor Zamir: Me. Yeah. Most people like myself, don’t want to use needles. I’ve been considering it as well, because actually my total testosterone, which I think from what I understand is kind of the wrong number that almost everyone focuses on, is the total testosterone. And mine has been mostly in the seven hundreds, couple times even 800. But because I think my SHBG was a little high, my free testosterone was much lower than I would like it to be, and I think that’s the more important number. And so now myself and many other people, we don’t like using needles. So this is much more convenient form. There’s also a lot of fear of, well, if we start using this, then our body’s going to shut down our natural production. I’ve heard people say, after two years of being on TRT, your balls are going to shrink and you’re going to stop producing testosterone on your own and all this kind of stuff. So those I think are the common concerns.

Dr. John Jaquish: Short and true.

Taylor Zamir: Yeah, sort of true.

Dr. John Jaquish: I mean, once you cycle off it, they come back.

Taylor Zamir: I gotcha. But

Dr. John Jaquish: TRT is not really a thing you cycle off of. You go in that direction and you’re that direction forever. So yeah, with this new oral, you can go on and off it whenever the hell you feel like it. There’s no downsides.

Taylor Zamir: And in the past, I know people, the concerns with oral testosterone was that it would have to go through the liver and have some sort of spike there. But this new form, this Rex, which I know you guys are one of the only ones offering, I saw the clinical studies on that recently.

Dr. John Jaquish: There’s a couple of ’em. That’s not the only

Taylor Zamir: One. Gotcha. Yeah, it looks really solid based on the clinical studies and the fact that it doesn’t spike your liver enzymes or things like that. Right,

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. Yeah. Well, so how it works is the liver tends to damage a lot of delicate chemicals that are coming in the body. So one way to get it through the liver is to methylate, which is really just adding a level of complexity so that when it gets to the liver, the liver deals with the methylation, not the chemical, and a large percentage of that chemical gets through. So Tylenol acetaminophen is methylated, and that’s why it gives you liver damage. So if somebody’s in pain and they take 16 Tylenol capsules a day, they could have some liver damage over time. The reason there had never been an oral testosterone is because to get testosterone a delicate hormone into the bloodstream through oral administration, you had to get through the liver, you had to methylate it. Well, you don’t want a methylated chemical to be a daily medication. That’s just a bad idea because you’re eventually just going to damage your livers. What these oral testosterone, uc can weight drugs do is they just give you way more of the drug of the hormone than your body could ever assimilate. But only 4% makes it through the liver. So if you look at how the dose is typically 800 milligrams of testosterone per day, which from if you were to take that via injection, that would be insane. That would be what a bodybuilder does. And you’d call that abuse of testosterone. You wouldn’t call that usage, but when you look at what 4% of that is, it is like 32 milligrams. Oh, okay. Well, you multiply 32 by seven, now you’re looking at two, a little over 200 milligrams per week, which is like a TRT dose. So it’s really just a high level of the chemical of the hormone, and only a small percentage of it actually makes it into the bloodstream. The rest of it is destroyed by the liver.

Taylor Zamir: Got it. Got it. That

Dr. John Jaquish: Way, nothing’s methylated, no liver damage

Taylor Zamir: And that 800 milligram dosage, I had a friend who was taken in, I’m kind of interested to hear your approach. He actually, they told him take 400 milligrams in the morning and then 400 milligrams again in the afternoon or something like that. Would you do that whole dosage all in the morning, or would you kind of split it up like that too, do you think?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, you do two first thing in the morning and another two at 11.

Taylor Zamir: Gotcha. A little bit, not

Dr. John Jaquish: Later in the day. Definitely. If it’s afternoon, just forget about it.

Taylor Zamir: Gotcha. So the half-life is kind of like six to eight hours or something on these things?

Dr. John Jaquish: More like four.

Taylor Zamir: More like four. Okay. Gotcha. And you want it to finish. You

Dr. John Jaquish: Really only want it high at that beginning point in the day. And then the testosterone finds its receptor sites and then it goes down. So you want it to find its receptor sites, so it’ll create growth. Don’t worry. You do most of your growing at night, but your testosterone goes up in the morning and then down in the middle of the day naturally. So it’s not like you need it high all the time.

Taylor Zamir: Interesting. You just

Dr. John Jaquish: Need that peak in the morning.

Taylor Zamir: That’s a good advice for anyone listening who may be on TRT, whether it be injectables or some other kind. Some people might be shooting it late in the afternoon. They should be doing it first thing in the morning.

Dr. John Jaquish: Actually, if you’re taking an injection, it doesn’t matter. You’re fucked either way.

Taylor Zamir: And that’s because rather than with the pills where you’re getting the right amount of dose every day versus the injections, you’re getting a huge spike and then it’s last

Dr. John Jaquish: For days.

Taylor Zamir: Right. And you’re trying to avoid these spikes. Right?

Dr. John Jaquish: There is a way to do it with injections. If you inject something called testosterone suspension, which you can get if you know somebody at a compounding pharmacy like CVS does not carry suspension, but if you know somebody who can make it for you. So I started my experimentation when I learned that oral testosterone was coming. I was like, oh my God, that makes so much more sense. I had actually been thinking, boy, it would be great if we had a way to influence testosterone for just a couple hours. And then I thought, well, I mean there is an approach. So I started using suspension for my TRT just with daily injections. Oh, yeah. I mean it worked. I cut my dosage. Let’s see, I think I was doing something like 10 milligrams a day instead of, so way less than I was taking. So that totals to like 70 milligrams a week. Right. I was growing faster than with my prescription where I would take a longer acting testosterone at 250 milligrams a week.

Taylor Zamir: Wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. So I went from two 50 to 70 and got better results. So the timing matters a lot more than the amount.

Taylor Zamir: That’s great information.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Taylor Zamir: Well, Dr. Jaquish this has been absolutely incredible. I love when we just kind of flip everything on its head and it’s coming from someone who’s gotten results himself, gotten results for clients, professional athletes, things of that nature. So this has been very, I’m sure people listening. For many people, this may be the first time they’ve really heard the information presented in this way. So I’m really grateful that you’re sharing this information based on real science, real studies. So that’s really incredible. Where can people learn more, follow you, find you work with you?

Dr. John Jaquish: So probably the best spot is my website, dr j.com. Do CTOR, the letter j.com. There’s links to all my social outlets there. I do the most on Instagram, so if you’re going to follow me on one of them, Instagram’s it.

Taylor Zamir: And what’s the handle on Instagram?

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s D-R-J-A-Q-U-I-S-H.

Taylor Zamir: Perfect.

Dr. John Jaquish: Perfect. That’s why my websites dr j com. Yeah, Dr. J. That’s a little better. You need to remember

Taylor Zamir: To last. Amazing. Well, Dr. Jay, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and hope to do it again sometime.

Dr. John Jaquish: Thank you.

Taylor Zamir: Thank you. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, can you please leave us a rating or review and subscribe? I’ve realized that while we have actually increased our downloads a lot, we are actually getting a lot of downloads, which I’m really happy about. We actually have very few ratings and I realized that I’ve never asked people really to rate much. So I’m asking you now, if you could please rate and review and subscribe, and if you enjoyed the episode, please forward it along to anyone that you think will get value out of this. … Thank you.