1172: TRT & Steroids | Skeptical Sunday

1172: TRT & Steroids | Skeptical Sunday

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Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Today I'm here with Skeptical Sunday co-host, writer, and researcher Nick Pell. on The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you.

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I'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit Jordan [00:01:00] harbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Welcome once again to Skeptical Sunday, where we take a closer look at things people take for granted, misunderstand, or get totally wrong.

Now, if you're listening to this podcast, there's about a hundred percent chance that you do in fact have internet access, and you've probably gotten an ad for those hormone clinics at some point. That is testosterone replacement therapy, or TRT. I've even talked about it a little bit here on the show.

Not Schilling, TRT or hormones directly, but clinics that do things like that, they're kind of a dime a dozen these days, and some of them are really great in life changing, and we'll get to that in a little bit. This treatment, though, is almost exclusively for men. So fair warning, there's gonna be a lot of dude talk in this episode.

Yes, there's menopause stuff and hormone replacement for women. I feel like it warrants a separate episode entirely. So here, when we talk about steroids, that's gonna be shorthand for anabolic steroids, not cortisol shots or stuff you get in your knee from your doctor when your shoulder hurts. I don't know, whatever.

Well, probably you wouldn't get anything in your knee where your shoulder hurts. Depends how shitty your [00:02:00] doctor is. Nick, your doctor works at a storage locker, so they might offer something like that. Anyway, 10 years ago, TRT. Testosterone replacement therapy was this exotic thing that you might've heard about, I don't know.

And like Joe Rogan, and he thought, oh gosh, doesn't that drugs? But now it's everywhere and you probably already know somebody who's on TRT or test as the cool kids call it. And it's not limited to testosterone replacement therapy either. What used to be a taboo warned about an afterschool specials RO rage or whatever, if you remember those, is now so much more widespread.

I'm talking about the use of performance enhancing drugs. We'll call 'em peds in Hollywood. They use 'em in pro sports. They use 'em down at your local gym where people are chasing after superhero bodies and throwing caution to the wind. But why is this, and maybe more importantly, is it safe here today? To help me thread the needle on the use of peds, is writer and researcher Nick Pell.

Nick, are you juiced up for this episode or what? I pinned this morning. So for those of [00:03:00] you who aren't write out gym freaks, like Nick Pinning is what they call injecting steroids. One of the reasons that I asked him to handle this episode, is it fair to say you're a pretty loud and proud steroid user?

Is that fair?

Nick Pell: Yeah. I've been on TRT for six years now, and I would very comfortably say that it saved my life.

Jordan Harbinger: Meaning what? You're gonna die from a critical lack of excess body hair and testosterone, or what?

Nick Pell: No, but here's the thing, and we'll get a lot deeper down this rabbit hole as we go along. Low testosterone doesn't always cause a lot of side effects, but it did in me.

In fact, my issue wasn't even that my testosterone was low, it was on the high end of normal when I got my blood checked.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, you just had to throw that in, didn't you? I think a lot of people are on the low end of normal or in the middle of normal and they still go for it, but that's not really what matters.

Right?

Nick Pell: Naturally. But I also had very poor levels of what they call free test.

Jordan Harbinger: So free test for our listeners is the amount of testosterone that your body, I'm gonna oversimplify this, the [00:04:00] amount of testosterone your body can actually utilize. So if your testosterone is through the roof, but you don't have enough free testosterone floating around, you're gonna have a bad time.

So the short version is that total testosterone is what you have, and free testosterone is what you're actually using. Think about, you could have a million dollars in the bank, but maybe they give you a $500 withdrawal limit. That's your free test. That's the bottleneck. Okay. So what were the symptoms for you then of low testosterone?

Nick Pell: A lot. Little bit of background to give here. I've suffered from chronic insomnia since I was a kid, which I learned much later in life was the result of PTSD. Now, does testosterone cure PTSD? No, but it does make it easier for me to sleep, which is a common thing. Men report after going on testosterone.

Other things related to low testosterone or depression, and I mean severe and extreme depression, which is also probably related to PTSD, but the testosterone made it both easier to deal with that and less of an issue. Generally. I had very low energy. That was the big one that I was [00:05:00] like, I think that I am a TRT candidate, but honestly, if testosterone did nothing but clear up those problems for me and did not make me into a jack hulking freak, I probably still take it.

I love being a jack hulking freak, but it's more of the other stuff that keeps me doing it.

Jordan Harbinger: Any negative side effects for you? I mean, we haven't hung out in a while. You got boobs now. Are you bald now wearing a wig? I don't know. Is there anything like that? I know you can't wear jeans anymore. I'm not sure if that's a side effect.

Nick Pell: Yeah, I legitimately can't fit into jeans anymore because of my monster thighs. What a flex. Yeah, but I can't wear jeans, so I have to take something called an aromatase inhibitor every couple of months and canary in the coal mine for that is I get really gnarly back knee, like nasty zits on my back. But the aromatase inhibitor is an additional medication that I take to prevent nasty side effects, which are typically caused by the body turning excess testosterone into estrogen.

That process is called [00:06:00] aromatization, hence the name aromatase inhibitor, which thankfully has nothing to do with smells. Yeah, thank

Jordan Harbinger: goodness for that.

Nick Pell: Yikes. Yeah, so that said, major symptoms are. Pretty rare at the dose I'm taking, which is at the limit of what can reasonably be called testosterone replacement therapy.

I take more than what most doctors would prescribe you unless you're John Cena and you've totally wrecked your endocrine system from years of massive PED abuse. Mm-hmm. Me and my current wife have been trying for a kid for two years now and nothing. So fellas, especially you young bucks out there know that if you take testosterone, you could potentially permanently nuke your reproductive ability.

Jordan Harbinger: Yikes. Those raisins. Okay. Why is that? What's going on there?

Nick Pell: Because when you start introducing external sources of testosterone, your body stops producing it from the regular sources. That means that it stops making the stuff your body needs to produce sperm [00:07:00] and unfortunately, testosterone alone won't make sperm.

You need other hormones for that.

Jordan Harbinger: Young guys are unfortunately thinking whatever, I don't even want kids, which, yeah, you're 24, of course you don't. But as you get older, you might change your mind like 90 whatever percent of the population. And then if you're taking tons of testosterone and other stuff, it might be too late.

And I, I do think, Nick, it's a little ironic that a lot of guys, maybe not every guy, but a lot of guys take this stuff so they can land a girlfriend or a wife, and then when they finally succeed, they find out that they're shooting blanks as a result of shooting all this stuff.

Nick Pell: So there's things you can do to reverse that, but they might not work and they're expensive.

My startup cost for the regimen that I'm on now was I think $4,000. And I am shelling out less now because I found another source. But I was shelling out about four. For the fertility stuff. For the fertility stuff, yeah. Gotcha.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, and there's operations and stuff, but let's just say the things that they [00:08:00] can do, if your raisins are switched off, that hurts a lot more than the kins stuff that you are able to pull off with your new friends due to all your big muscles over there.

All. I don't wanna get too deep into the weeds on the side effects. Let's come back to this later. I guess the big question on my mind is, are these drugs meeting a legitimate medical need or is it kind of like, Hey, medical need, but it's a vanity play and a cash grab when you take the dressing off.

Nick Pell: I think it's honestly both.

I don't think it's an either or thing. If you look at testosterone levels and the average American male, they've dropped considerably over the last few decades. I think that there are some pretty clear reasons for this. We actually have an episode coming up all about it, about xenoestrogens and endocrine disruptors.

They're everywhere. They're in the water. You drink.

Jordan Harbinger: So the water I drink is making me into less of a man. I guess that shouldn't surprise me. The label on the bottle is French for crying out loud, so. Should have seen that one coming.

Nick Pell: There's estrogen in the tap water, and this is not Alex Jones. The [00:09:00] frogs are gay paranoia.

You're drinking estrogen every time you drink tap water. Not making this up. You can check the show notes. I don't like 'em putting chemicals in the water. They turned the freaking frogs gay

Jordan Harbinger: just in case anybody was missing that reference. I love that soundbite. That's probably one of my most used soundbites, even though it never fits in the context that I use it in.

So I'm glad that it actually slid right in there. Okay, I will defer to the show notes on this one. Plus I'm reading the notes for the next episode. I have heard that we drink birth control hormones because they come out of people's urine and they aren't filtered out, which is crazy to think about. What are some other reasons for this?

I mean, it can't just be all esoteric hormone pee in the tap water stuff, right?

Nick Pell: No, it's not. There's obesity, there's sedentary lifestyles. Chronic stress, which leads to much higher cortisol levels, which nukes your testosterone levels. And there's kind of a feedback loop that develops where one starts causing the others and then they reinforce each other.

Okay. Meaning what? Exactly? Show me the loop here. So you have [00:10:00] chronic stress because you sit on your butt all day, which makes you more stressed out, which makes you wanna sit on your butt more.

Jordan Harbinger: Ah, okay. So it's kind of like hashtag modern life.

Nick Pell: Yeah, that's the crux of it. The modern western lifestyle is very conducive to reducing low testosterone levels.

Jordan Harbinger: So assume that there is an actual crisis of testosterone levels among American males, which is so funny. 'cause whenever you look at old photos of people, men and women both look way older. You find out they're like 29 and you're like, why does this person look 45 in this photo? And then also, maybe this is just a weird cognitive bias of mine, but when I look at pictures of men from like the sixties and seventies, they look way more.

And again, this could just be like style and aesthetic. They look way more manly than guys do. In 2025. Again, I'm open to just, this is like anecdotal, my observation over the last few days before this episode, so could be nonsense, but that's kind of how I feel about it. Telling me that testosterone levels have gone down in the past few decades.

It just completely [00:11:00] tracks somehow.

Nick Pell: Yeah. Sean Connery is like 30 years old when he's playing James Bond and he looks like a 50-year-old today.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. In the photos you mean. Okay. And what about the cash grab part? If there's a serious problem, is it a cash grab at all or does it just go over the line at one point?

Nick Pell: So in one sense, yeah. I think they're addressing an actual issue in another sense, guys come to me all the time like, oh, should I go on testosterone? Because I'm the guy they know who talks about being beyond testosterone, and I have very few opinions about how another grown man should live his life. I figure people more or less know what works best for them, but the first thing I ask them is, how do you feel?

Because a blood test reading of your testosterone. Can tell you a lot, but you can more definitively answer this question by answering questions like, how are your energy levels? Do you have a sex drive? Are you depressed? And I get different answers. Some guys say, oh, I feel fine, but my blood work says I have low tests.

[00:12:00] And I'm just like, bro, who cares? You feel fine. Who cares what the number on a piece of paper says? And I get the opposite. My numbers are fine, but I feel terrible. Okay, so a number on a piece of paper is fine. So you have to suffer. Just go talk to your doctor, man.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Okay. So do you think that many of these clinics are pushing treatments on men that they maybe don't need?

Like the guy who feels fine, but he supposedly has low test and now he's just shooting stuff up every three days?

Nick Pell: Yeah, I think the clinics probably do this. They're also stupid expensive. My totally reputable and legal clinic that only accepts Bitcoin as payment and only communicates via proton mail.

Charges something like 35 bucks for a bottle of test C. That lasts me like two months, and some of these clinics are getting like 200 bucks a month or more for the same bottle. Now granted they're providing additional services on that, but they'll be like, oh, we'll send you the needles. It's like a box of needles.

It's like 12 bucks.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it [00:13:00] is interesting. One, they figure you can't get it anywhere else. Two, yeah, they send you the needles and three, they're like, we're monitoring your blood work. And it's like, well, okay. Depending on the clinic, it really does depend. Like my clinic, by the way, I'm happy to refer anybody to mine.

I don't take testosterone, but I take other stuff and. They're super responsible with it. But yeah, you hear about these clinics where like the doctor looks at your stuff annually and is like, yeah, you're not dead yet. Give me 12,000 more dollars and I'll send you a pallet of testosterone or whatever. And another pallet full of needles.

Nick Pell: And I've totally had that experience by the way. Whereas like I had elevated PSA levels, which is prostate stuff, and it was like, yo, I have elevated PSAs. We need to talk about this. It took me like two weeks to get somebody on the phone and then they were like, did you have a bladder infection recently?

Yes I did. Okay, well then you're probably fine. We'll monitor it. Nothing to be worried about now, but it's like, okay, well I just spent two weeks thinking I had cancer.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's super scary. That's like phone call that day or [00:14:00] the next day. Or text me back, did you have a bladder infection? Okay. It's probably that, but we'll still like have you talk to the doctor in a week.

But it's probably that, so relax. That would've gone a long way. That would've scared me. That would've probably been a deal breaker for me.

Nick Pell: It was a deal. That's why I stopped working with that clinic.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it it sounds like you have a very serious board certified clinic you use that does not violate any laws or federal regulations whatsoever these days.

Yeah, indeed. Yeah.

Nick Pell: For the record, I do have an endocrinologist and we do discuss my blood work levels, dosage.

Jordan Harbinger: He's

Nick Pell: fine. Interesting. With

Jordan Harbinger: everything I do's. Interesting. I like that because I'm sure as a doctor, he's like, I have to obligatory tell you not to buy your stuff from the internet, but your blood work looks this way in that way.

Like he still, he didn't refuse to do his job because you're not buying the stuff from him.

Nick Pell: The thing I said about after I get my wife pregnant, I may wanna blast again, which we'll explain what that means later. And they were like, oh no, it's cool. We got pro athletes. We get it.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, they

Nick Pell: get it.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It's harm reduction.

That's it. That's a good way to put it. To circle back a bit, [00:15:00] you said that testosterone saved your life, which is a pretty bold claim and I know you don't really say stuff like that unless you mean it, so everyone should be on testosterone. You're not saying that, right?

Nick Pell: No. Like I said, I don't know what you listening to this podcast or some stranger should do.

That's a medical decision for you in consultation with a doctor and whatever personal research you do, it's not a decision for me to make. Maybe it's great for you, maybe it's not. I don't know.

Jordan Harbinger: Fair enough. Let's say that I've decided I want to go on TRT and I wanna not pay for it with Bitcoin and get the kind of medication somebody produces in a storage locker off a highway exit on the outskirts of Tempe.

How easy is it then to get it legitimately?

Nick Pell: It's pretty easy, especially if you're willing to shop around. You walk into your local mail enhancement clinic and tell them you want to go on testosterone, they're gonna oblige. Yeah, that's the cash grab part then. Yeah. Being a libertarian, like I think they're just meeting a market need.

If a guy wants testosterone, like, sure, I [00:16:00] don't even care if he actually needs it. It's his body. He can put whatever he wants. He can sell his kidneys for fent for all I care. But you're right, it is the cash grab part. If you look long and hard enough, you're gonna find a place that totally doesn't care if you actually need testosterone or not, and chances are good that you're not going to have to search very hard or very long to find a place willing to accommodate you.

Jordan Harbinger: Is there actual evidence for this? Are you kind of just guessing?

Nick Pell: I don't know if there's any statistical evidence for it, but anecdotally, I've never, ever met a guy who says, oh yeah, they turned me down because my testosterone was too high. I don't see why there's any stigma around taking it anyway. If you feel like shit because you're getting old, take testosterone if it makes sense to you.

No one's given out prizes for being depressed and having low energy, and I honestly just hate the kind of doctor who responds to these complaints with heck. Well, you know, we're all getting older. It sucks.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it's, look, I'm not saying everybody should go on testosterone, but I am saying everybody should [00:17:00] get their hormones checked because one of the most common complaints I get.

Just from my friends, but also in the feedback Friday inbox is like, man, I turned 42 and I just not the same person. And it's not, is this just midlife stuff? And it's like, have you heard your hormones checked? And most of the time they haven't. Or it's been like five years or they can't remember the last time, or it was two years ago.

And then I go get a full blood panel, get your hormones checked, and when your doctor says you're in the normal range, don't just say, okay bro, I'm curious what the number is. Because guys will come back and go, I'm in the normal range. And it's like, okay, you're 35 and you have, I don't know, two 50 or whatever.

Nick Pell: Yeah, I was gonna say like two 50 or something. Right?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. And, and look, maybe that's normal. Maybe that's what your body wants. But I'm 45 and mine is 1100 and something. So you're in the normal range and I'm in the normal range, but I am gonna say that there's probably a fundamental difference in how much free testosterone I have, what testosterone is doing to me, and my brain, my [00:18:00] body.

And it's just very different. Like, oh yeah, you're in the normal range. So is my 83-year-old dad? So if you have the same test levels as my 83-year-old dad and your 35, is that really normal? And like you said earlier about having symptoms, even though you're in the normal range, I just think that there's this massive normal band and blah, blah, blah.

Well, anyway, I'm going off on a tangent, but this is one of my pet peeves about a lot of doctors, especially general practitioners, not all doctors, I'm, I very much am a guy that follows my doctor's advice. I consult many doctors, but many sort of old school guys and gals, they just seem to refuse to realize the fact that a lot of symptoms of aging can be mitigated with medication or exercise or lifestyle.

Usually it's all three exercise, lifestyle, and medication. But doctors either go straight to medication or they just kind of go, eh, nothing you can do about that. And it's like, no, you can definitely build bone density. You just have to start jumping rope and lifting heavy weights or medium heavy weights.[00:19:00]

Yes, you can turn back the cardiovascular age that you have and make your heart healthier. Even if you're 60, you don't have to run a marathon, but you have to stop watching murder she wrote all day or whatever the hell you're doing now. So anyway, cut me off, Nick, before I continue down this rant hole.

Nick Pell: No, and I think it is partly a generational thing.

I think younger doctors tend to be much more progressive and forward thinking on these types of issues than older doctors. But back to the cash grab, it's so super aggressively marketed like guys who maybe don't even have any of these issues, see an ad and they're not imagining it, but your mind is pretty amazing in that it can create realities that don't otherwise exist if you pay attention to certain things and not other things.

So you start reading about TRT and low testosterone and all of a sudden you have symptoms, quote unquote, that you didn't have before because you focus on and lean into the negative and you didn't even notice it before.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. So this kind of like hypochondria is applied to your endocrine system. Like, oh, I slept a little bit [00:20:00] later this week.

I'm tired. Now you're maybe I do have depression. I'm kind of sad about the lions losing, you know, whatever. And you're not doing it. So you can get drugs specifically in some conscious way, but your brain's just doing this to you.

Nick Pell: Exactly. You're not faking it. But it wasn't a problem before and if you stopped thinking about it, it would go away.

A lot of these places use very fear-based marketing. Do you have low T tired of being fat or. Really vague language about regaining your vitality.

Jordan Harbinger: That's when they show the gray herd couple and the guy's like smiling at the wife and she's smiling back and it's, you're supposed to read between the lines like they're about to go have sex somewhere 'cause he can still do that.

Nick Pell: Yeah. Or it's like a 75-year-old dude who's super jacked and has an eight pack and it's, that guy is not on TRT my friend. He's got some additional supplements that we're gonna talk about a little further now and, and his penis is

Jordan Harbinger: inflatable now. The last time that man had a natural erection was the Clinton administration.

All right, so that raises an important [00:21:00] question. Are men actually optimizing or is this kind of like Botox for dudes

Nick Pell: for, I think it depends on the guy. I think it's mostly optimizing, but there's probably a fair amount of Botox For dudes, myself as an example. There's absolutely no way that I need to be taking and people who know are about to be like, you're taking what?

I take two 50 a week. I believe it's milligrams. I just fill the needle up to the five. Two 50 a week is not TRT. It is drug use. And guys are taking this much and lying to themselves about what they're doing because it came from a doctor, so did the stuff that killed Elvis. Get

Jordan Harbinger: juiced up for the deals and discounts on the fine products and services that support this show.

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Many of the guests on the show already subscribe and contribute to the course. Come on and join us. You'll be in Smart Company where you belong once again for free over@sixminutenetworking.com. Now back to Skeptical Sunday. So quickly, earlier in the episode, you said, I'm at the top range of what could be considered TRT.

And now you're saying this is not TRT, it's drug use. So which is it? Are you in like a gray band of you're admitting it, but other people would maybe not admit it at the same dose?

Nick Pell: So the euphemism for this is sport TRT. I'm not on TRT. I mean I am, but I'm not. I see. It's definitely like anything above 200 is a [00:25:00] little questionable, but most guys who have a legitimate TRT need, it's like 1 25.

Yeah, it's like half, about half what I'm taking. Gotcha. But I feel good. So it's like, who cares? I feel good. Which is the point. Taking

Jordan Harbinger: it as long as your doctor's monitoring it, it's kind of like, all right, you're making those choices yourself. We'll watch your blood and watch your diet. There's longevity stuff that goes along with this.

I, I think we're gonna get into in a little bit, but I do agree that I think a lot of the danger here, not with your particular use, but I just mean using it in general, is a lot of this stuff. They will take two 50 a week or 500 a week or whatever they're doing, and it's all kinda like whitewashed because hey, it's from a doctor.

And thing too about optimization is you're not even talking about treating a deficiency anymore. Like with 1 25, you're talking about a way to have an edge in life. So even if a guy doesn't go to the gym, he's optimizing and trying to be more driven than the other guys at the office. Do you see that as a problem at all?

Nick Pell: No, not really. Whatever. He's probably lying to [00:26:00] himself about it. But beyond that, I don't think there's really an issue with it. Like you said, is your doctor okay with it? And are you going to a real doctor? But other than that, no. I mean, if guy wants an edge and testosterone gives it to him, sure, why not.

Jordan Harbinger: We talked a little bit about the side effects earlier, but I think this is a good opportunity to jump into the downsides of all this because you're not just gonna get a magic serum that makes you the ultimate superman or gives you that edge without any risks. So what are the risks?

Nick Pell: That's an important point to bring up.

One biggest one is what it does to your blood. My lipid profile is not great. Okay. What does that mean? It's your fat, your cholesterol levels. I think I'm naturally predisposed to bad cholesterol. I'm pretty sure that my old man has bad cholesterol. No matter what I do, no matter how clean I eat, I always have elevated LDL and triglycerides and.

Low HDL?

Jordan Harbinger: Yes. And I remember you used to be a vegan. If I can out you on that. So if you had bad cholesterol, then genetics are often [00:27:00] the culprit at player. For those who aren't blood work nerds, like Nick and I, he's saying that he is high bad cholesterol and low good cholesterol. And take a statin already, man.

Nick Pell: Oh, look at me. I'm Jordan. I'm a millionaire who can afford doctors. Don't you have insurance? No, thanks Obama. All right,

Jordan Harbinger: moving on. What are some other side effects that are a serious issue as opposed to like zits on your back? That's gnarly, but eh, okay. You go out in the sun for the afternoon every Saturday and it's like manageable,

Nick Pell: uh, blood thickening, which is an issue for me or has been an issue for me.

That sounds

Jordan Harbinger: one gross and two super

Nick Pell: dangerous. What is blood thickening? It's pretty much exactly what it sounds like, but the process is that your blood gets more iron than it's supposed to, so it gets thicker and puts you at a

Jordan Harbinger: risk of stroke. Please tell me there's something you can do about that and that you are also doing that.

Nick Pell: Yeah, so some guys maybe me, maybe not go to the blood drive every other month and definitely don't lie on the forums about whether or not they're [00:28:00] there to dump blood and leave them with a pin of blood. Yeah, it's called blood dumping. I didn't know about it for two years after I went on a test and I was talking to this dude at the gym who was like, you've been on tests for two years and you haven't dumped blood.

You need to go to the clinic like now. Intense. So what do they do with the blood then? Apparently it gets flagged for elevated hemoglobin levels and then they either throw it out or they send it away for research. So I see maybe these guys are helping with blood research. Is it like the whole vat of blood or like just your pint of blood?

No, it's just the individual donation. They test all that stuff before they do anything. But if the hemoglobin levels are fine, they just use it for transfusion. The only reason that you're not supposed to do it, I think is twofold. One, they don't want every guy on gear showing up and using them as a free phlebotomist.

And the other one is that you fail all of the, like do you [00:29:00] use needles questions? I'm not like sharing a dirty needle at a trap house.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh yeah. They're like, do you use needles? And it's, yeah, but not like what you mean in this question

Nick Pell: in the same way that a diabetic does.

Jordan Harbinger: Like, yes, I, I use needles for insulin, not because I'm mixing up fentanyl or whatever that, what's the one where you melted in a spoon?

It used to be heroin, but that all got chased off the market by Fent, so probably nothing

Nick Pell: now.

Jordan Harbinger: I see. So anyway, it's not like you're gonna accidentally kill someone with your thick blood or they're gonna have toss out a huge vat of otherwise healthy blood or something. 'cause I was about to let you have it for that blood dumping.

No,

Nick Pell: there's literally nothing wrong with elevated tests in your blood other than possibly elevated hemoglobin levels. In which case, yeah, they're gonna throw it out or send it to a lab.

Jordan Harbinger: I see. So what else do guys on high doses of testosterone have to worry about?

Nick Pell: So I mentioned infertility, which is a byproduct of your body stopping producing testosterone.

Once you start introducing it from an outside source, it's called exogenous [00:30:00] testosterone. For people who, like the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle, the blood thickening and the bad lipids put a strain on your cardiovascular system. And I think the, probably the biggest one is the emotional dependence.

If I miss a day or two, like people around me are gonna notice mood swings, body dysmorphia is. Correlated to it, but I very much doubt it's caused by it. I think it's more the type of dude who's, I have horrible body M and I think that's just a function of how many meatheads are on test. Does a bro culture influencer Don Betti, who you apparently do know from my new haircut.

Jordan Harbinger: Girls love my new haircut. Everybody who's 40 plus remembers being emailed this video on a fax machine or whatever.

Nick Pell: And everybody who grew up from South Jersey to revere mass remembers the guy the day you started lifting is the day you became forever small. Because you're never gonna be big enough is the thing he says.

It's true.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. You're doing good with the downsides though. 'cause I, I, I love the [00:31:00] real talk. I don't like to glorify something that has real downsides. Tell me more about the body dysmorphia. I wanna do like a whole show about body dysmorphia in men and then another one about women. 'cause I feel like this is like the other silent epidemic.

Women will get eating disorders and stuff. I want to talk about that. But guys do this. I mean, I guess it is an eating disorder if you're eating 400 grams of protein per day. 'cause you wanna gain 25 pounds every year until you're 30. Like that's also disordered eating.

Nick Pell: It's a whole other episode and I have opinions on the exact specific thing you just said, and you should have me on for that one because Sure.

Jordan Harbinger: Orthorexia, that's what it's called. Yeah. Guys are wearing their poop on a scale in the morning. Weird stuff like that. Yeah. So I definitely have bias. Mia, Dr. Mike talked about it on his episode, Dr. Mike Rael,

Nick Pell: I'm sure that much like me, Dr. Mike Rael looks in the mirror every morning and thinks, man, I'm such a small, skinny, fat sack of shit.

That's it. I'm like 2 25. I've got like 15% body fat. Teenagers [00:32:00] come up to me at the park and at the gym and stuff, and they're like, how do I get big? How do I get big muscles?

Jordan Harbinger: Right? And you're like, why are you asking me of all people here at the dog park? Yeah. That's interesting.

Nick Pell: Yeah. And I got a wife who's constantly telling me how hot I am and how big I am and how great I look, and none of it connects.

I just am like. Well, I could be leaner and when I get leaner I look smaller. And you know, your wife is the last person

Jordan Harbinger: you can trust about how good you look. She's either the top choice or the last choice of who you can trust about your body.

Nick Pell: She's the only choice, honestly. That's the right answer.

Interesting

Jordan Harbinger: man. This is super fascinating. It's also insane to me, but I don't mean that in a derogatory way. I obviously believe you. I've seen it everywhere. Alright, so with all the downsides, why inject testosterone in the first place unless you have some super serious deficiency, body dysmorphia aside, if you didn't have that, would you be doing it?

I don't know. I guess that's probably a separate question than the one I just asked. But why inject it if you don't have some super serious deficiency in the first place?

Nick Pell: Everything in life is a calculated risk. [00:33:00] You can mitigate most of these symptoms and you're not necessarily gonna have any or all of them.

I'm not doing the better to live a day as a lion than a lifetime as a lamb thing because go find someone in their deathbed and ask them if they think that's true. They probably don't. But do I take more than I should? Maybe to be the most stacked and jack dude at the gym. Yeah. Can I imagine my life without test?

Not really. I was miserable. Yeah,

Jordan Harbinger: to be fair, I've seen you pretty miserable while on testosterone as well, so it's just it is something you do occasionally.

Nick Pell: Yeah. Well, life circumstances matter a lot and I think that the point, at least in my specific case, and this will probably resonate with other people, it definitely makes being miserable easier to deal with.

Jordan Harbinger: So when does therapeutic TRT turn into doing drugs? As I believe you said earlier, what's the line? I meant to ask you this, I forgot.

Nick Pell: I think probably 200, 200 [00:34:00] milligrams is probably like the line above that. You're taking a dose if you've ever blasted, that's meathead lingo for 500 or more in a week.

That's not that much. Okay. The guys at West Side Barbell do their, do the what They want a total at the power lifting. Meat in a week. Like that's nuts. But yeah, if you've ever done a blast 500 or more in a week, you're doing drugs. Crazy.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. That's wild. So you talked to me about the whole blasting cruise thing.

So for those who don't know, this is when you spend several weeks taking a huge dose, which is a blast, then you taper it down to the semi-normal dose, which is a cruise.

Nick Pell: Yeah, I'm 100% on a cruise dose. Okay. And I'm fine with admitting that. That's kind of one of my things about it is I'm not gonna lie to myself about it.

I'm on a cruise dose. I've blasted in the past. I'm not sure if I would again, but ask me after I make another kid. The other thing is, if you're taking anything other than testosterone and an aromatase inhibitor [00:35:00] to keep your estrogen in check, you're doing drugs. We typically refer to the other stuff as orals because they're almost all taken in pill form.

Somebody's gonna shoot a email over about the one secondary anabolic that you inject, but. They're almost always pills. HGH is injected. There's probably other ones, but I honestly like I don't take them so I don't really know.

Jordan Harbinger: I see. So testosterone, human growth hormone, aromatase inhibitors. What else have you ever taken anything else?

Nick Pell: Peptides.

Jordan Harbinger: What are those again?

Nick Pell: They're short chains of amino acids that kind of hack your body to get it to produce more of a hormone that you wanna have. I'm actually on an IGF cycle right now.

Jordan Harbinger: Insulin-like growth factor? Is that what that is?

Nick Pell: Yeah, I think that's what it is. That's like the peptide

Jordan Harbinger: version of HGH.

So wait, how is it different from HGH then?

Nick Pell: So rather than just injecting HGHI use IGF to tell my body to make more of it.

Jordan Harbinger: I see [00:36:00] HGH again, human growth hormone and IGF insulin-like growth factor tells your body, Hey man, we need to pump out more HGH from your liver or whatever. So why do that instead of just injecting the HGH?

I don't get it.

Nick Pell: It's supposedly safer, and I choose to believe that so that I can have traps to my ears. But supposedly it's safer. That's what they say. The experts, the doctors, and I don't honestly know if this is true or not, of HGH, but you can also only take IGF for like nine, 12 weeks and then your body's used to it.

But what's cool about it is you keep the mass, you know.

Jordan Harbinger: I did check a lot of this with an endocrinologist, just so people aren't like, oh my God, this guy's just shooting from the hip. We talk casually, but we've checked this stuff and so obviously you should talk to your own doctor, but we aren't just talking out of our butts here.

I think that's important to note.

Nick Pell: Yeah, and the thing too is like my wife, she is supportive, but like my wife is always whenever I'm like, I'm gonna do this, she's just, well, I trust you. You do your research. You're not stupid [00:37:00] about it. You always know what you're doing when you do it. I've got a kid who I'd like to live to see, grow old and maybe meet my grandchildren one day, so I'm not just like, Yolo bro, whatever.

Like I said, it's all calculated risk.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Have you ever taken any other steroids?

Nick Pell: I have a bottle of Anavar that's an oral that's most commonly used by women looking for that like CrossFit bunny look, but sometimes pro bodybuilders take it to retain muscle mass while they cut fat. It's been sitting in my medicine cabinet for like five years at this point, and the only time I ever took one was when I reached for it and thought that it was my bottle of Cialis.

Okay, so that's a boner pill, not a steroid. Getting old sucks kids, but I don't take orals for a few reasons. One of them is that a lot of them do have what you might call ro rage as a side effect, like testosterone, even dose. I'm taking ro rage is, I think RO is [00:38:00] overplayed, like generally anyway, because.

Not to get on too much of a tangent, but as a good example, there was a wrestler in the eighties named Dynamite Kid. He was actually Chris Ben's hero, and Chris Bewa is probably another good example of this Dynamite Kid's Wife is, I don't wanna hear about Roy Rage because he was always on Roy's. It was the CTE that made him crazy.

The concussions and the brain damage. Yeah. That's also what I think about Chris Beis is like football players and all of it. When you start talking about re rage, it's a real thing, but it's also way overplayed when you're not factoring in the spot on the Venn diagram that's guys taking high doses of OIDs and guys who basically ram their head into a brick wall 12 times a week.

You have to be looking at both of those things. We've talked about this either on the show or in person, but I really suspect that there's a non-trivial amount of guys who were in prison because they had a [00:39:00] really short and they started taking. One of these oral steroids like Diana Ball and they punched a cop or their sister, God knows what,

Jordan Harbinger: right?

Yeah. As a lawyer, I usually advise my clients in the past anyway, not to assault police officers. Not because I currently advise them to do so, but because I'm not practicing, I should clarify that. But you're right. I know tons of guys that do steroids, some of them do mega doses and it really does vary.

They might have the thought, but they have impulse control. You're right. A lot of people with poor impulse control do end up in prison and if they have poor impulse control and then they add steroids on top of it, now they're aggressive and they have poor impulse controls. That's a pretty bad combination.

Nick Pell: Yeah, and there are orals that are specifically designed to make you more aggressive check drops trend, right? Is that one? No. Trend is just to like put tons of lean meat on your frame. I think check drops is specifically like boxers and MMA guys to like make them like super aggress. Yeah. There was something Tyson was taking.

Yeah, [00:40:00] Tyson, I didn't wanna say it 'cause I didn't wanna put him on blast, but yeah, Tyson was on check drops.

Jordan Harbinger: I think he talked about it. So I think it's okay. And if not then I'm wrong and I apologize. I'm not trying to slander somebody, but I could almost swear I heard him talking about this particular thing on a podcast.

Nick Pell: So the most common beginner cycle for guys who were like getting serious about it, his testosterone and D ball, which is the cool kid name for Diana Ball, that in combination with each other is gonna give you that kind of like puffy, bloated, but also super massive eighties pro wrestler. Look, I thought about taking it and a guy I know who competes in strongman and takes a ton of it basically said, if you're a little temperamental, it's a really bad idea.

And I took him as word 'cause I definitely can have a short fuse and was like, I'm not cutting this fuse any shorter than it already is. Orals. Almost always result in liver damage. And perhaps more importantly, for a man with a lustrous and [00:41:00] Leon head of hair such as myself, hair loss, take oral, you're almost certainly gonna go bald.

Ah, and that was a deal breaker for me too.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, there's longevity issues. We should link to anybody who's thinking about doing this. Gotta get down on that. Dr. Mike YouTube channel. This is a man who's taking steroids and is, don't do it unless you know what you're doing and you probably don't. He sort of readily admits like your longevity is gonna be cut short because of it, but he does it for other reasons.

If you wanna live so you're 95 and stuff like that, then this might hinder that. It's hard to say. The problem is it's hard to run a study for someone's entire life when they do this, but a lot of guys who really do a ton of this stuff have heart problems and whatnot. But what's the upside then, other than you get to look like Hulk Hogan joined a biker gang like you.

Nick Pell: To be honest, looking like the road warriors would be pretty cool, but competition. You need to assume that all competitive strength and physique sports like strongman, weightlifting, powerlifting are filled with drug addicts. I mean, this is why Mark Henry left Olympic [00:42:00] weightlifting 'cause he was tired of competing against guys on drugs.

Jordan Harbinger: I see. So what about drug free competitions?

Nick Pell: First of all, there's no such thing as a drug free competition. There are drug tested competitions. Mild man had to take random drug tests for his job as an iron worker for years, and he never failed one. He smoked pot every day of his life. He'd tell me how he would pass them if a random iron worker in Boston can pass them, then you know, a guy on the US Olympic weightlifting team can do it.

Obviously there's somebody out there, but Russia got banned. Russia's not making a lot of friends in the world in general, but a bunch of these competitions aren't tested. Most of 'em aren't. You can go do a novice class. Strong man for funsies. I registered to compete and won before COVID hit and then it got canceled.

But if you plan to compete in any serious level in an untested sport like strongman or power lifting, if you're not doing drugs, you're gonna [00:43:00] lose Chris Bell's documentary, bigger, stronger, faster. Does a good job of exploring this topic and was produced by a guy I went to high school with. Shout out to Leland Anderson if you're out there.

Jordan Harbinger: Nice. I also remember Dr. Mike Isel again episode 1109. He told us that even. If you take drugs and then stop because you have a competition, your body is still getting an advantage from those drugs years later in the form of muscle memory. Because I was like, well, what happens if you take steroids in your thirties and then you don't lift weights for 10 years and then you're like, ah, midlife crisis.

And you get back in the gym. Do you get the muscle memory? Do you get the, all the advantages of having built a ridiculous physique from those steroids? And he is like, yeah, there's definitely, I dunno what you would call it, like a afterglow that just stays with you because your body's like, yeah, I remember when I used to have giant ripped pecs and abs and shoulders.

Maybe you won't get all the way there because your hormones are now at a normal level. I don't know how muscle memory works or whatever, but that stuff is still there somewhere. So guys are [00:44:00] using hardcore steroids to win the local strongman competition at the county fair. That just seems kind of dumb.

Nick Pell: It's, it absolutely is. Arnold Schwarzenegger talks about how steroids are a fact of life if you plan on competing, but he also says. Don't do them unless you're absolutely certain you're gonna make a career outta your sport, which I think is good advice for younger guys. I cannot stress enough that there is literally zero upside to taking drugs to be the gnarliest looking dude to the gym and being able to swing your dick on social media about how strong you are when you're 25 years old.

Alright, now

Jordan Harbinger: word from our sponsors, including Nicholas Pell's, catchy storage locker hormone emporium biz. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by the defender. You ever meet somebody and instantly know they've been places that calm and chaos? I've driven through a storm and found the sunrise kind of energy.

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If you can't find a code, email us. I'll happily give it to you because it is that important that you support those who support the show. Now, for the rest of skeptical [00:47:00] Sunday, what about, what is it called? SARMs, for those who don't know, those are quasi level baby steroids. I guess they become more popular with the TikTok generation.

They're touted as a safer alternative to anabolic steroids. What are these? Is there any truth to that?

Nick Pell: Well, you know, it's all the danger with none of the actual results. Okay. SARMs stands for selective androgen receptor modulators. So here's the thing with the SARMs versus steroids debate, and this is literally like what I tell every 16-year-old kid who wants to know, oh, I can go get SARMs at the supplement store.

Should I do that? No, and you know why? Because if I wanna run a cycle of testosterone and D ball, I know exactly what the risks are. Remember we talk about calculated risk. I know exactly what the risks are. I can calculate the risk. Guys have been doing this since at least the late sixties, probably earlier.

Guys used to like drink tiger piss to get more testosterone. Get outta here. No, for sure. Really it was a thing in like the thirties [00:48:00] before they had synthetic anabolics. Guys have always been looking for some kind of an edge, but test and D ball guys have been doing since at least the sixties, probably the fifties, maybe the forties.

There's a massive body of existing scientific literature that studies at least 60 years of the long-term effects of testosterone and D ball. Those two specific ones, because those are the two granddaddies and the most commonly used. I know what it's gonna do. I can calculate the risk. People been doing SARS for 20 years.

We don't know what the long-term effects are. And from what I've seen personally, I don't see the results. There's a term SARMs goblin, because you look like a scrawny little goblin on this stuff. Who cares? What's the point? You are gonna risk, you don't even know what you're risking. You don't even know what you're risking to look like.

What

Jordan Harbinger: to get less results. It's like risks, black box results [00:49:00] definitely less. Why make that trade? That's kind of what you're saying. I see. Okay, so this isn't asar, but I remember back in my college days there was something called Andro, and I can't remember what it was, but it was like this over the counter crap you could get at GNC.

Which I remember asking guys that knew about this kind of stuff and I was like, oh yeah, is this good? And they were like, no, we sell it like crazy and it's flying off the shelves. But no, it raises your testosterone for about 20 minutes, which is long enough for them to do a lab test and then claim it raises your testosterone.

And then it has, by the way, all the side effects of using real steroids, but it really doesn't do anything for muscle building. But again, it's $80 a bottle and people can't buy enough of it 'cause it's the quote unquote legal and it's supplement. So it's just the dumbest trade ever. And that kind of reminds me of this SARMs thing.

I doubt anyone takes Andro anymore 'cause it's useless.

Nick Pell: I don't think you can even get it anymore. I know a guy who he has boobs from taking Andro.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, gross.

Nick Pell: They don't go [00:50:00] away unless you get surgery. So

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. And that's called gynecomastia. Or something. Yep. Yeah, you have to have the fat removed from under your nipples.

Ouch. That sounds brutal. What role does the fitness industry play in all this? Guys are, again, they're on Instagram for six hours a day looking at these disgustingly jacked and ripped dudes and they're developing feelings of inadequacy, no surprise. 'cause they don't look like those guys from just like guys who watch too much porn.

They're like, my dick is small. I mean, you never hear the end of that. Do you think that the Instagram stuff, social media stuff contributes to this in any way? This dysmorphia that causes steroid use?

Nick Pell: Probably. You've probably seen more ripped dudes today than most people who've ever lived saw in their entire life.

I don't think it's the only factor, but I think it's definitely there. Here's the thing, there's this guy whose whole thing on YouTube is exposing fake nat. These are guys who say that they're natural, but they're definitely on gear, juice, steroids, whatever. And he asked somebody at some event if he was [00:51:00] natty or not, and the guy said, is anyone in our industry?

That's kind of it. None of these guys are natural. Yes. Even your favorite, who swears up and down that he is. You are not ridiculously jacked and ridiculously lean all year long and not on drugs. Just doesn't happen. You can be one or the other at any given time, but you're not gonna be both at the same time all year round.

Go right now and Google pictures of Arnold during his peak when he's off season, he has the body of a furniture mover. He's a big hulking hunk of man, but he's not ripped or shredded at all. He didn't have to be, he needed to look that way for an hour on stage. And now with Instagram, these guys gotta look like this all year round.

How much do you think social media is really driving all this stuff then? I think it's a little overblown. I think the sheer amount of dudes that you have to look at any given day, the scale matters, but. I grew up in the eighties and I was super into, I was [00:52:00] like obsessed with professional wrestling. I loved Hulk Hogan.

I loved the Road Warriors. I loved Bruce Beefcake. I loved all these big dudes and like every other kid in the eighties, I loved Arnold Schwarzenegger. He was the biggest movie star in the era.

Jordan Harbinger: So Flies Stallone looked ridiculous in the rocky movies too. It was like there was just veins on top of the veins on his abs and stuff with the crazy, I just wild greased up tan too.

Nick Pell: Yeah, he looks nuts in the, especially the third and fourth rocky movies. But the whole phenomenon of guys, I. Looking at wooded out freaks and wishing they had their bodies like that's not new. You might see more of 'em in a given day, but that's not a new thing.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, we had action figures we were supposed to look like, and they all had crazy apps.

Bust out any GI Joe, they were all like shirtless dudes with eight packs or whatever. It's totally ridiculous.

Nick Pell: I was a He-Man kid. So

Jordan Harbinger: yeah, there you go.

Nick Pell: I think people can really overstate this crisis of male image stuff. There's a YouTube fitness influencer, [00:53:00] Alexander Bromley, and he has a really good video about it on YouTube that I'd recommend people go watch because he has a really balanced take on it.

I think most of these takes are just click baiting nonsense. Are there people who are experiencing serious mental health crisis because of what they see on social media? Probably, I think most statements that broad are true of somebody. But is there like a serious public health crisis that needs addressing because guys are bummed out that they don't look like somebody on Instagram?

Like, no, I don't think so.

Jordan Harbinger: Do you feel like people should be more honest about their steroid use? This is a complicated one, right? Because on the one hand you should be responsible, but on the other hand, then you might encourage it. I don't know.

Nick Pell: You're right, it is complicated. So let's take a guy like The Rock.

He does not look natural to me. Yeah, but not remotely. He's huge. He's giant. He's got Peach Genetics. I'm not denying that. Like he's, he's an incredible specimen of man, [00:54:00] but you know, he comes out and says that he's on steroids. Every 16-year-old gym rat on Planet Earth is gonna be buying steroids off.

Sketchy guys my age in the gym locker room, and I think on a certain level. The responsible and ethical thing for him or somebody else in his position to do is to lie about it, which is probably what he's doing now.

Jordan Harbinger: The Jordan Harbinger show does not take any position on Dwayne Johnson's alleged steroid use.

Nick Pell: Well, he supposedly had to take months off WWE to get his gedo boobs cut off, so there's that.

Jordan Harbinger: The Jordan Harbinger show also does not take any position on Dwayne Johnson's alleged steroid use, nor his alleged breast reduction surgery.

Nick Pell: Yeah, okay. If he's on drugs, he absolutely should lie about it. I would hope he would do that.

Jordan Harbinger: That's an interesting point. So I'm a little torn, I think. I agree, but I don't know if I agree. I genuinely don't know. I haven't given it enough thought. But I see your point about how guys [00:55:00] in the position of the Rock or whoever do have some kind of responsibility and a lot of people go like, they didn't N for that.

Yeah, you kind of did when you became a wrestler for kids, which is what it is. And then you became a movie star. Like you don't get to choose if you want responsibility when you're an A-list celebrity. You just have fame and thereby responsibility. But do you feel the same way about Johnny Meathead on Instagram, who's just look at me.

I can do a handstand on this cliff.

Nick Pell: I think that people who aren't the rock should let their conscience be their guide in this respect, but also should take into account what we said about the rock. The main thing is that I think people who are following these guys on Instagram or TikTok or whatever, need to be a little more savvy and not be so surprised when they find out that the liver king is on the sauce.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, y'all have seen the liver king. He's the most ridiculous person on Instagram. He is got muscles on muscles, he's all bright red and he's got the beard and he is always like biting into, I don't know, [00:56:00] a cow's raw liver. The dude's like 50% parasites basically by now. But yeah, he didn't get jacked merely by using the line of supplements that he himself sells for a living.

So again, this is the guy who claimed that he was gigantic and lean enough for eight pack abs with veins on them because, oh, I'm just eating all this organ meat. And somehow people believed him and then he got rich AF off of a supplement line, which is supposed to be like organ meat, powder, whatever. Of course, his emails were later leaked and he's on enough steroids to kill an elephant, and he kind of did this like fake apology and then was like, you know what?

Nevermind. I'm just a con man. Here we go. It's kind of where he is now, allegedly.

Nick Pell: I think that there's this kind of combination of ignorance and wishful thinking. Ignorance, because I think that. People just don't really know what's possible and what's not possible without the juice. If you wanna see the limit of what the human body is capable of without juice, this is peak human genetics.

IE, not [00:57:00] you. You need to look up a guy named Eric Boen Hogan.

Jordan Harbinger: I don't know who that is, but I'm Googling and he is an absolutely massive, you're right pro wrestler looking dude. Just absolutely gigantic.

Nick Pell: Yeah, and he's definitely not, oh, I could look like this guy with enough hard work. No, you can't. He's a genetic freak.

You would not look like him no matter how much you lift, no matter what you eat, and probably not. Even if you do all, you have the world's perfect drug regimen. It's genetic. I've been trying to look like him for years. I am never gonna be as big as Eric Bogan Hagan, no matter what I do.

Jordan Harbinger: People saw Liver King and wanted to think that if they just put in enough hard work and dialed in their diet that they were gonna look like that.

And it's kinda like, well no, dude, you're not even gonna look like that even if you did take steroids, because genetics still play a role.

Nick Pell: Exactly. And there are some influencers that are a little more candid about their PED use. I think that's honestly a step in the [00:58:00] right direction, provided that it's coupled with the negative side of things.

And I wanted to give Dr. Mike a shout out because he's honest about it in a way that includes like, these are the trade-offs. There's other guys who are just like, yeah, I'm on steroids. But he's good about, this is the balanced reality of it.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Again, he was on episode 1109, he's coming back on the show.

I do think he does a good job walking the line. He's like, I will die younger because of this. I made the choice to do that. I'm a professional and you shouldn't do it. And then he shows things like, here's me getting surgery to remove. Skin and, and the changes that have happened to his body, good and bad.

It's really, he's a really good person. Actually.

Nick Pell: You know him. I just watch his content. He has really good energy, and to be honest, Soviet Jews are some of the most awesome people I've ever met, and he's one of them. Yeah. It's funny that you should say that. Good dude backed hard. Yeah, they're wonderful contribution to our country just as a group, but especially Dr.

Mike. So to circle back to the fake [00:59:00] Natty thing, which is guys pretending that they're natural when they're not. There's this other phenomenon of movie stars getting just ridiculously, insanely jacked and spreaded out of nowhere. If a guy gets insanely shredded, just lean and muscular, that could just be diet and exercise.

If a guy is super jacked after the age of 30 and also has like rated shoulders and an eight pack all year round, there's a chance he's on juice. That approaches total certainty. This is not a thing people do without chemical enhancement.

Jordan Harbinger: I feel like to a certain degree it's become a lot more normalized.

Thanks. In part to, I hesitate to say this, but like the Joe Rogan and Company who's just another one of these guys who are super loud and proud about the fact that they use testosterone and I think also human growth hormone for better or for worse, right? He didn't wanna lie to people, but it's okay.

Does this encourage other people to do it? And it's like he's stuck between a rock and a hard place with that.

Nick Pell: I mean, even if he hadn't admitted to using human growth hormone, that dude's head on news radio [01:00:00] versus today his head. Yeah, man, his non, and John Travolta's, another one. Man, you just don't grow two full hat sizes when you're 45 years old.

HGH. Yeah, John Travolta does have a huge head Good call. Yeah. And he didn't use to have a

Jordan Harbinger: huge head, did he? That's an interesting point. You're right. The dude is half forehead.

Nick Pell: Go watch Staying Alive. It's a wonderful film that everybody hates for some reason. But anyway, HGH grows everything in your body, including your organs, which is one of the reasons why it's so dangerous.

But you know, Joe Rogan is Oprah for dudes under 50. So I would say he endorses it, but like you said, he is very open about his TRT and HGH use, which I think the transparency part of that is very cool. I also think that there's definitely an aspect of human psychology that sees someone else doing something and then feels like they've been given permission to do it.

Jordan Harbinger: A hundred percent agree with that. How does this tie into the overall anti-aging thing that we see all over the place now? I mean, that sounds like another episode of Skeptical Sunday from Blood Boys to [01:01:00] Drugs to Supplements. Man, what the hell?

Nick Pell: So I don't know that it's gonna make you either appear younger or be what they call biologically younger.

I suspect it's gonna do the opposite in both cases, but I don't know. But my friend Jack Mann wrote a book called The Way of Men, you may have heard of him. He once called TRT, vampire Life. Meaning that you're going to feel 19 until you're 60 years old, which is great. At a certain point you do have to stop taking it, or at least highly advisable because your body might be able to handle having blood, the consistency of used motor oil at 55.

But you know, you approach retirement age, it's gonna get a little older.

Jordan Harbinger: Ugh, that sounds gross. The thick blood

Nick Pell: thing freaks me out too,

Jordan Harbinger: man.

Nick Pell: You should see my blood bag when I go to the, anyway. You might have some increased vitality and feel young again, but I don't know any evidence that exists that it actually makes you younger in any meaningful way.

Jordan Harbinger: How [01:02:00] is this all different from women taking hormones during menopause, for example? Again, we gotta do a whole show about that, but about menopause. But how is the TRT thing different from HRT menopause stuff?

Nick Pell: I don't think it really is in any significant way though. Like you said, that's an episode for another time.

But also, like you said earlier, there's a whole school of thought among certain doctors that, oh, getting old socks just need to deal with it. And in my opinion, TRT is no different from women taking hormones to deal with menopause or even diabetics taking insulin. I see. What about

Jordan Harbinger: all the side effects we talked about?

Doesn't that make it different? Insulin doesn't have physical and mental side effects that can negatively affect your life and your longevity and stuff.

Nick Pell: Well, here's the thing. If a drug doesn't have side effects, it's not a drug, it's a snake oil. All drugs have side effects, and consumers and medical professionals make decisions about whether or not the benefits of the drug outweigh the side effects.

Some people don't have any. [01:03:00] Some people have sides that are pretty minor that they barely notice. Some people have side effects that are so bad they start looking for alternatives to solve their problems. But all drugs have side effects.

Jordan Harbinger: I think that's a pretty fair assessment. Honestly. You're not just gonna get something for nothing in nature especially.

So you've pushed TRT on me in the past. I say that tongue in cheek. I have absolutely not. That's true. You. You haven't pushed it on me. That's fair.

Nick Pell: I've simply told you things I probably shouldn't repeat on our family friendly podcast about what it's done for my life. But

Jordan Harbinger: you are pretty balanced about TRT even in private conversation, I should say.

But ultimately I've just decided the downsides are not worth it for me. Especially the part where you're basically a steroid addict. I was about to pull the trigger on this. I was like, oh, I should probably get TRT blah blah, blah. I can't even remember why. I was one of the many dumb reasons that everyone has.

Oh, my levels are a little bit lower, even though I totally feel fine. And then my brother-in-law showed me a Dr. Mike video. This is years ago, about why you should not do TRT, [01:04:00] and this is the first I'd ever seen of this is a couple years ago. And not only did that make me a Dr. Mike fan, but it also scared me well away from TRT, at least for the time being.

Nick Pell: Yeah, that's a big one. We haven't talked about the steroid addict aspect. Coming off of testosterone is like coming off of heroin or SSRIs, you know, like Prozac and its cousins. You can't just randomly decide, you don't wanna take it anymore and then throw your gear in the trash. You need medical supervision to start coming off, and if you don't, bad things are gonna happen.

And that's definitely something to consider if you've just decided on the basis of this episode that TRT is the answer to all your problems.

Jordan Harbinger: When you come off testosterone, you need to do what's called post cycle therapy or you're gonna suffer from severe depression, fatigue, libido, collapse, which is as horrible as it sounds.

It could be months actually before your normal testosterone levels resume, if they ever do it all. It depends on your age and your genetics.

Nick Pell: Yeah, it's super scary. And the thing is, post psychotherapy might not even work. [01:05:00] I see. Especially if you've been on juice for years and years,

Jordan Harbinger: right? Yeah, that's right.

I think the biggest takeaway here is that TRT could potentially improve your quality of life, but also you don't get something for nothing in the natural world, especially anything else. There's gonna be drawbacks. And one of the drawbacks is that once you pop, you kind of can't stop. 'cause your body's not just gonna pick up the slack.

Nick Pell: Yeah. You don't get something for nothing. It's just like a general guiding principle of reality.

Jordan Harbinger: So where can our listeners find out more about testosterone, whether they need more of it? I'm happy to refer people to the clinic that I use where they don't just like hardcore push stuff on you. Again, I don't take testosterone, but I take other stuff and they've got real doctors there.

So if anybody's interested in this, just email meJordan@jordanharbinger.com. But what do you recommend if people just wanna research more about this?

Nick Pell: There's information everywhere it's worth talking to your doctor about. But like I said, a lot of them just don't care that you're slowing down as you get older.

But an increasing number of, especially younger doctors are more open to the idea of people using TRT, even if it's [01:06:00] just for what we've called optimization. Talk to your doctor if you don't get the answer you want for a clinic. A lot of these clinics are fine, by the way. I use one for my endocrinologist and I have zero complaints about it.

I wouldn't be able to advise anyone on where to find a good clinic or how to tell a bad one, but

Jordan Harbinger: So where did you find your good clinic?

Nick Pell: I used your affiliate code, dude.

Jordan Harbinger: Nice. I don't even know if I have a code. I think I just have to introduce people to them. And again, I'm happy to do that for people because finding a bad one is, yeah, can be really bad.

And people could simply, again, email me. I'll point 'em in the right direction. FYI, again, I am not taking testosterone. The clinic does offer that. If that's what you're after or that's what you need, I use other things. To help keep my testosterone and hormone levels up that are not testosterone. I don't really wanna get into the details on that 'cause most people don't care.

And by the way, if you're under 35, you almost certainly do not need to be messing with this stuff at all. 'cause when you're like 15 to 35, your body is a testosterone mega factory anyways. Would you agree with that?

Nick Pell: Yeah. If there's any teenagers listening to this, like [01:07:00] the love of God, stay off the juice.

Just don't I get asked kids asking me about this all the time at the gym. Don't, yeah, you're 16 years old,

Jordan Harbinger: it basically won't do anything and you get all the negative side effects and it's expensive and it can hurt you. So whether you're considering TRT, you know somebody who is, or you're just wondering why, it seems like every guy on Instagram looks like he's been airbrushed onto a protein tub.

We hope this episode gives you a clearer, more honest look at what's really going on. And thanks to Nick for helping me inject some clarity into a super complex topic with a lot of cultural baggage. Thanks Nick. Pleasure to be here. Thanks everyone for listening. Topic suggestions for future episodes straight to me, jordan@jordanharbinger.com.

Show notes on the website, advertisers deals, discount codes, ways to support the show all at Jordan harbinger.com/deals. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. This show is created in association with PodcastOne. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jase Sanderson, Tadas Sidlauskas, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi.[01:08:00]

Our advice and opinions are our own, and I am a lawyer, but I am not your lawyer and sure as heck not a doctor. So do your own research before implementing anything you hear on the show. Consult your doctors before you start taking stuff you bought from a storage unit off the side of the road in Tempe.

And remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. If you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge we doled out today. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn and we'll see you next time.