The0Self

Good thinking! For instance, you wouldn't want to stop taking DMSA while ALA is still being dosed and elevated at a constant rate, as ALA will be transporting mercury into and out of the brain via the blood brain barrier at any given time, with a slight bias toward getting it out of the brain... but when the DMSA level falls, this would cause a spike in free mercury in the body, whereas the brain would see no change... thus, the bias would shift toward mercury going INTO the brain. Do some research on onibasu to see some anecdotal reports and see what they have to say about it, but just make sure you either stop the ALA first, or stop them at the same time -- never stop DMSA first. Copper toxicity for ALA; oxidative stress for DMSA, specifically. Generally, the problem is with the mercury/lead mobilization itself -- some will be moved around your system, and your system won't like it. I wasn't very toxic so I did fine with at least 2 months at a time, but I've heard of people taking 1mg ALA and they felt like they might have to call 911 they felt so sick. Lol, perhaps. Medicinal chelation is not a very holism-friendly procedure. They don't give a crap about redistribution. They just give you DMSA or EDTA until you're no longer testing above the reference range. Sometimes every 8 hours -- completely inappropriate frequency. "Medicine." Looks good. The molybdenum is perfect. But the zinc is too high. That's 64mg/day. ALA already causes zinc retention, it just causes even worse copper retention, so taking zinc is necessary (causes increased copper excretion via the metallothionein mechanism), but you definitely don't want to exceed 50mg of supplemental zinc per day. 30-50mg/day seems to be a good balance. Research the Cutler protocol on a site called "onibasu" though. There's more info on there. You may need antioxidants and magnesium from what I remember, though I'm not entirely keen on the rationale behind them specifically (if I'm even remembering correctly that they're indeed included in the protocol). No problem!

College student, lol

ALA will only chelate mercury, but it chelates both intracellular (e.g. in the brain, across the blood brain barrier) and extracellular mercury. DMSA chelates both mercury and lead, but only extracellularly as it is neither lipid soluble nor affiliated with any transport proteins. Also, ALA doesn't work as well on organic mercury (methylmercury), but works great for inorganic -- which, given enough time, all organic mercury converts to, but if one doesn't want to wait, they can add in DMSA or DMPS. DMPS looks like it would chelate lead, on paper, but in practice it does not -- it only chelates mercury, but it can be dosed more conveniently than DMSA and has fewer side-effects, though it is quite expensive. It takes much longer to chelate mercury from the brain than from the body, and the only compound capable of this is ALA, so it is the principal mercury chelator, but ALA will not chelate lead. Proper ALA usage can seem to be rather inconvenient; a bit of a hassle, since it must be taken every 3 hours, around the clock, for a bare minimum of 72 hours straight, and preferably 96+ hours. For completeness, I'll add: There is a fourth chelator -- EDTA, but it only chelates lead, does so less effectively than DMSA, and it depletes zinc. Generally, it should not be used. No. No. Only two things cause redistribution: 1. Ingestion of an ineffective/partial (single-thiol) chelator (penicillamine/cysteine) or cilantro/chlorella. 2. Falling blood (and tissue) concentrations of an effective/full (double-thiol) chelator (ALA/DMPS/DMSA). The chelators sport a double thiol group, which acts like a hook and binds to the metal (which situates itself between the 2 thiol groups) far more effectively than compounds with a single thiol group (which pretty much just haphazardly stir the metal around your system). But even this hook-like binding mechanism isn't perfect... When blood levels of the chelator fall after having been elevated (consistently elevated, and for quite a while, if you're chelating properly), the chelator will continue to be excreted... and many of the chelator molecules will have a mercury or lead molecule attached. Well, some of the metal always gets knocked loose from the hook at any point along the way, throughout the whole round, but while chelator blood levels are steady, there's usually a nearby empty chelator molecule ready to scoop-up the free-metal, preventing it from being incorporated into tissues... Well...when there's a dwindling supply or even modest reduction in chelator molecules to scoop-up these knocked-loose metal molecules, these metals will increasingly have nowhere to go but redistributing themselves into your body. It's extremely important to understand this robustly, and visually, because chelating improperly has the potential to concentrate mercury in the brain. #1 is irrelevant if you're using proper chelators, so let's focus on #2: How does one "prevent" (minimize) redistribution? By minimizing the extent of falling blood concentrations of ALA/DMSA/DMPS. How does one do this? By doing two things: A. Taking the chelator(s) very frequently -- at least once per each respective compound's half-life. ALA e3h, DMSA e4h, and DMPS e8h... or more frequently, for each. B. Continuing at this rate for a sufficiently long time (doing sufficiently long rounds/cycles) such that you only let blood levels fall (when you end a round) a small number of times relative to the total amount of time you spend "on-round" with elevated and steady systemic levels of the chelator(s). The bare minimum duration for each round, in order to ensure net-positive healing/damage ratio, is 72 hours, but 96+ hours is superior. For this reason, doing the rounds as long as possible (weeks) is even better, if you can avoid significant side-effects or (in the case of ALA) copper toxicity. ALA causes copper retention, so to somewhat prevent massive buildup, you are advised to take zinc and molybdenum 4 times a day, for a total daily dose of about 30mg zinc and 1000mcg molybdenum. Any time you miss one single dose of a chelator (by more than 30-60 min), chelator concentration has begun to fall significantly, and that round is now OVER -- you need to take a break of at least 3 days, but preferably the amount of time the round lasted for... And if you missed that dose before you had made it to the 72 hour mark...then unfortunately, that round was unsuccessful. Hope that clears some things up for people.

Ahh. This could be a starting point for your holistic search for a cure. Perhaps I can help a tad bit: What ester? (Testosterone enanthate, cypionate, or propionate?) What dosage? What frequency? And I'm assuming you get blood work every 3-6 months? How's your SHBG? Cortisol? DHEA? Estrogen? Contrary to popular belief, it's actually often worse to have low estrogen than high, especially for mood, libido, and sexual function. On TRT, your endogenous production is suppressed through negative feedback, which would not be an issue if it were only testosterone that got suppressed. Other hormones can be suppressed. I would highly recommend taking pregnenolone 100mg on most days -- Life Extension brand has a good product.

Again, as long as you're progressing on at least a push, a pull, and a leg-dominant movement, you're doing alright for general health and fitness. It's only when you want maximal strength, fitness, and muscle mass that each of the following 5 basic movements become minimum requirements for maximizing progress/potential while preventing injury: squat, hip-hinge, vertical press, horizontal press, scapular retraction. They aren't necessary for all purposes. Periodization is required when fitness is so high that the amount of stimulus required to cause adaptation necessarily requires a workload that also causes one to incur a level of fatigue that makes adaptation impossible. A catch 22. The solution was always thought to be periodization (which does work quite well)... That is... until a recent invention called conjugate ("Max Effort + Repetition Effort / Dynamic Effort + Repetition Effort"). At a certain level of strength (i.e. before 500 lb deadlift), the squat, deadlift, and bench will need to be limited for optimal results; only trained for speed sets and maxes, as (while their stimulus-values are through the roof) their stimulus-to-fatigue ratios are very poor. At this level, periodization can actually be avoided with a particular system called "conjugate" -- it's an adaptable training style that is arguably the most effective training invention as of right now. It involves 1. Maxes, 2. Speed sets (in a specific way that is scientifically proven to involve the highest workload density a particular human is capable of in its training modality), and 3. Hammering the crap out of easy-to-recover-from (high stimulus-to-fatigue ratio) exercises such that by the time you get to the sufficient level of stimulus required to adapt, you've only incurred a tiny, tiny fraction of the fatigue you'd necessarily incur just training the barbell lifts. The speed sets also involve very high stim/fatigue even while using the main barbell lifts, since they use such light loads; usually 3 ultra-fast-as-possible reps followed by 1 min rest for 10 sets, with 50% of that week's 1RM weight + up to 30% in band tension. The joys of running ingenious systems like that are harder to come by without barbells. Examples of exercises with high fitness-to-fatigue ratio: hip thrust, good morning, reverse hyper, glute ham raise, close grip floor press, band facepulls, JM press, Pendlay row. If you get really nerdy and holistic with programming, you can work out some really effective strategies that get you a lot stronger and fitter than most would think is reasonably possible. To get ultra-strong and really push your body to its limit level of fitness, barbells aren't really replaceable. And there's really no way around training with barbells and squatting well over 400 lb if you want bone density 6 standard deviations above the mean -- which would almost certainly mean you won't bite the dust due to the accelerated failing of health caused by being bedridden from a broken hip, like so many elderly people do. Frankly, it's rather difficult to apply the same level of holism and goals of stratospherically high fitness without the inclusion of barbell exercises, but if that's not what you're after, that's perfectly fine.

Precisely.

Identification with awareness is always happening in the background even when identified with other things. When those things are dis-identified with, the ultra-subtle identification-with-awareness program is still running unrecognized, and further practice is necessary.

If you've never been into pickup, you didn't "dodge a bullet," you missed out. IME/IMO, you need to get that phase behind you -- it's an important stage of development for men to both master and transcend.

How long have you been off them? If it hasn't even been 3 months, I'd say you likely have nothing to worry about; just wait. If it's been over 9 months, you may need to do some holistic research and troubleshooting to solve it -- certainly if it's been over 18 months. Somewhere out there, there's very likely a way -- you just haven't found it yet. Probably should get testosterone level checked, to start with.

Well, if you're referring to exercises like weighted chins and dips, then yeah... They're as effective as barbell exercises. I'm not sure I'd classify them as calisthenics though -- they're in the same category as barbell exercises. The problem we run into is that a callisthenic-only program is necessarily minimalist, relative to a complete barbell program, and if one were to get very strong on them, they'd likely encounter shoulder impingement and other problems. Doing too much chin relative to row, too much bench press or dip relative to standing overhead press, or not doing enough facepulls -- these 3 things lead to shoulder impingement once a lot of muscle mass has been accrued. The bare minimum is a push, a pull, and a leg-dominant movement. But this is minimalist and therefore unsafe in the long-term. The most minimalist program that is somewhat safe only consists of 2 movements: standing overhead press (functions as the push) + deadlift (functions both as the pull and the leg-dominant movement) -- adding weighted chin/dip would help though, and if the reason a minimalist approach is chosen has to do with time constraints, the chins and dips can be supersetted -- just use the same weight that you just did on the chins and immediately do a set of dips, and repeat for the planned number of sets, unless doing only 1 set (which, while not optimal, is actually sufficient for novices to gain consistent strength and muscle mass). That's still greatly inferior to a complete program, which pretty much needs to include: squat, deadlift, press, bench (and/or dip), at least one scapular retraction movement (chin and/or row), and (not a main exercise but crucial for shoulder girdle health and deltoid size) facepulls.

Too much focus on too few women seems to be the issue.

I know you didn't ask me, but I'm qualified to answer. Technically, as long as you're progressing on at least one of each of the following, you're at least doing the bare minimum: a pushing movement (such as weighted dips), a pulling movement (such as weighted chins), and a leg dominant movement (such as squats... or even sprints, or... stair-climbing with a heavy pack/vest, lol). But the program format I listed the other day is complete, at least for a novice -- on average, you're likely a novice if press/bench/squat/deadlift hasn't yet hit 135/225/315/405 for 5 reps each, but really a novice is someone who can steadily progress every session or at least every week. And by the way, if your numbers aren't yet at 95/135/225/315 for 5 reps each, progress may be very slow unless you maximally recruit your (necessarily sparse at these weights) fast-twitch fibers -- you need to treat every rep like a 1 rep max; explode with maximum bar speed even from rep 1 -- this is why some novice programs are 5x5 instead of 3x5. 5x5 is WAY too much to do 3x/week if you're reasonably strong, but if you're a "hardgainer" (small proportion of fast-twitch fibers), you'll benefit from the additional volume, but it isn't necessary to go above 3x5 if you focus on exploding under the bar with maximum acceleration on ever single work-set. IME, you will be "jacked" by the time your 5 rep chin/press/bench/squat/deadlift get to 85/170/255/340/425 lb, but you'll need more advanced/intermediate programming to reach those numbers. In case anyone cares, lol. Just show up to every session no matter what. If you need to rest, reduce the weights by up to 50% and only do 1 set per exercise, or just screw around, but show up to the damn gym lol. If you don't, that's dangerous for your consistency. You'll fall off the wagon unless you're obsessed, and most people are not obsessed -- at least not every week for years on end. Get resistance bands to prepare for potential times when the gyms close, so you can train at home and continue to maintain or even build your hard-earned strength and muscle mass consistently. Or build a home gym if you're super dedicated.

The simplest-while-still-optimal training split for maximum strength and muscle growth, ime, fwiw: Mon/Wed/Fri (3 nonconsecutive days) Squat 3x5 Bench 3x5 (Or Weighted Dip, if you anticipate being unable to always have a spotter, since you will NEED to go to failure at least twice every month or so -- the ONLY possible way around this is having a coach tell you whether you can get another rep and when and how much to reset based on bar speed alone) Deadlift 1x5 / Row 3x5 (Alternate each training session, so you do each 3 times every 2 weeks) Press 3x5 Chin 2x8 (band-assisted or weighted, depending on current fitness) / Curl 2x8 (Again... Alternate each session, such that you perform Chin on Deadlift day; Curl on Row day) Facepull 1x20 Abs 1x20 (standing cable crunches are preferred, hanging leg raises are also great, other exercises work though) Lateral 3x10-20 (optional, but this 3x/week is extremely effective for aesthetics) (Warm-up sets not listed) 3 minutes rest between sets usually leads to the most growth. Never go outside the 1-5min range. 10% reset method is required -- search info on proper progression. With bare minimum 120g protein per day, and enough calories, this can put up to 0.5 lb muscle on you per week (max possible for humans not chemically-assisted) but you'd have to research programming and protein synthesis uptime. Bridge the gap to optimize further by doing GPP/MetCon on Saturday and Tuesday... and you're golden. Essentially, this is the fastest possible route to getting very strong... and having a powerful looking physique as well. THE KEY is to simply never miss a session. Same goes for meditation. Just show up. Even if you go easy, within a week or two you might just be ready to get back in there and ramp up the effort, but you won't regress if you just show up. The days where you show up despite lack of motivation will function as deloads. Foolproof Anticipate the fact that you will want to quit. Squats are HARD and there's NO way around it.

@bracknelson123 Not bad. Yeah, sodium in particular is super important for fasting. And keto as well.

Epsom salt (USP) / magnesium sulfate isn't a regular magnesium supplement. It has a lot of uses. It always tastes the same. It's Epsom salt USP. Just make sure you do NOT get "Epsom salt" -- only "Epsom salt USP." Epsom salt probably does taste like poison -- it's meant for baths, and is usually scented. Even Epsom salt USP (what Leo and I were talking about) tastes quite bitter though, it's just not the worst thing in the world imo. Or just get magnesium citrate. It is perfectly fine and as Leo stated, tastes better.

Yes, it is an endogenous intracellular antioxidant. Taking it exogenously, such that its distribution is systemic, with fluctuations in concentration, is the potential issue. It's not that it's dangerous for everyone. It's that, in those for whom it is dangerous for, it is extremely harmful. It's a very high risk compound -- which isn't obvious at all without a particular/specific holistic view.

Stop seeking, then stop doing that. You have to (whether you realize it or not) maintain some thread of effort, even if it's subconscious effort, so you might as well shed light on it, and apply it towards letting go of that very same effort.

@Leo Gura It's a bit bitter, but I always take less than a tsp a day. Maybe it's a genetic thing bc it goes down super easily for me. But yeah, citrate is just as good, just have to be aware it only has a 30% bioavailability. Epsom salt USP is great if you have phenol/salicylate intolerance though, as sulfates are needed to process them and some people have low sulfates.

At 210mg/d it's unbeatable. And it's synergistic and effects are maximized when split into 4 doses per day, each taken with: -- Taurine (though apart from vitamin E, this is the only substance that ever produces acne for me, and it does it every time) -- Glycine -- Phosphatidylcholine or lecithin or whole eggs This intervention greatly increases bile flow. To the point where copper deficiency can actually become a problem, so be careful. Eat some nuts every now and then.

Despite its well-known benefits, there is very good reason to avoid this for anything except chelation (wherein it is taken e3h around the clock for a bare minimum of 72 hours running) -- to prevent mercury redistribution. ALA is the most effective mercury chelator there is, and when blood levels fall, some mercury, perhaps trace amounts, will be mobilized into tissues. And if there are any significant mercury sources in the body, such as dental amalgam, the ALA will mobilize this and spread it to tissues, most concerningly the brain, as ALA crosses the BBB. Avoid ALA unless chelating by taking it e3h for 72+ hours straight, with copper control (7.5-10mg zinc and 250-500mcg molybdenum 4x/d). Preferably far longer than 72 hours (weeks, even), to reduce the amount of times the blood concentration falls, which leads to redistribution into tissues including the brain. Please do not take ALA.

Competition in anything.

Certainly, but at least in my view, Meister Eckhart was one of the most conscious people in history, and certainly for his time.

Or Mother Theresa above Meister Eckhart...

I've been feeling absolutely wonderful on: Oats, eggs, milk, meat, white rice, fruit (lots of apples, cantaloupe, and grapes), vegetables, lots of potatoes, occasional peanut butter, and occasional cheese. For occasional social dinners I often go out to southern/barbeque restaurants and eat lots of BBQ, mac n cheese, fries, etc lol but not too often. And lots of fat-free plain Greek yogurt with stevia, unsweetened cocoa powder, and unflavored hydrolyzed whey protein mixed in -- extremely delicious with 42g P / 7g C / ~0g F, if that's what I'm going for on a particular meal. No gut issues or otherwise whatsoever. I'm pretty resilient though, so the only time I truly feel just a bit off is on rare occasion when I eat fast food, mainly Chick-Fil-A.

@Opo You're welcome!