Jason Actualization

1. The low carb concerns me. I advise 150g as a daily minimum for men, not least because stress/cortisol related problems can arise when the liver becomes glycogen depleted. Any idea what your macronutrient split is, and, more importantly, what are your food sources? 2. My best advice is to set an alarm 30-60 minutes before you want to go to bed, and not to wake up, to allow your body to get as much sleep as is deemed necessary. You might "like" the variation, but I assure you that your body doesn't. The most valuable thing I believe you can do right now is elucidate your chronotype (in short, if you were on a deserted island in isolation, a permanent vacation of sorts, when would you naturally tend to tire and fall asleep, assuming you had no access to artificial light sources?) and to honor that as entirely as possible. 3. Excellent start, light control is paramount for deep, restorative sleep, but it's just one layer. Once we get your timing (circadian rhythm) dialed in, there are additional layers to delve into, the next one being temperature regulation.

@ZenAlex Regardless of the MMA test results, your B12 level is one of the lowest I have ever seen (even people with a 500-600 level can manifest clinical symptoms). Nevertheless, you are on the right track to recovery, and I have no doubt you are taking this seriously and will one day recollect these times as something approximating a bad dream. Keep us posted man!

Bingo. Action over intellect my friends. Sean Connery has an epic line in a 1996 film (The Rock) in response to Nicholas Cage who says "I'll do my best." His response was, "Your best? Losers whine about their best; winners go home and f*ck the prom queen." Stop strategizing like an air traffic controller and just land the f*cking plane. Indeed. Much of these assertions are demonstrably false, i.e., people close enough to Owen's circle are well aware of his social prowess. In general, yes, pickup coaches are biased and often times untruthful, but we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Also, yes, genetics are incredibly important, going along with the examples, in explaining outliers who operate at the peak of their place in society, be it bodybuilders, actors, spiritual gurus or intellectuals. That said, pickup, in contrast to these other areas of expertise which all have sizeable populations of people who have devoted their lives to, is far less competitive. Becoming a top 0.1% (1 in 1000) male at cold approach is in reach for >99% of guys within a couple of years (at worst) if they went as hard as other people do in pursuing, for example, their career in acting or philosophizing. Appearance absolutely matters, but self image and by extension, confidence, reigns supreme and is overwhelmingly the showstopper for most gents. For myriad reasons, declining testosterone and false societal programming (not least from increasingly "woke" media) among them, women RARELY get stone cold sober approached nowadays, and more often than not when they do, it is a mentally compromised, homeless man, for example, whistling at them. The bottom line is, because the primary barrier to entry to mastering cold approach is surrendering one's ego and embracing feedback and rejection, it is a game that's easier (relative to "games" that have more "players" such as physique development) to win because nobody else wants to play, and thereby the influence of genetics gets stymied. The question is, are you the protagonist playing the game, putting your own skin into it, or are you still merely spectating?

Likewise. The presupposition that a 50/50 masculine/feminine composition epitomizes perfection is erroneous when applied to individuals. Perhaps said composition is more reflective of what constitutes a healthy relationship, but then we must ask ourselves, is either party actually winning in an androgenous encounter wherein neither the yin, nor the yang is embodied in a fully actualized fashion? Said differently, a relationship could achieve this balance if both parties were 50/50 yin/yang, or, for example, one party was 95/5 yin/yang, and the other was 5/95 yin/yang. The prudence of the latter lies in the fact that it checks the same box as the former, i.e., the balance of energies, while checking an additional box, namely the sustenance of sexual polarity.

Could you provide some more details regarding this situation? It's not at all ridiculous, but we firstly need to determine what's causing you to wake up at this time. I have a few ideas I'm leaning towards, but could you please elaborate on the following: 1. Your overall nutrition and meal timing relative to bedtime 2. The ostensibly unique circumstances around Sunday/Monday that is preceding this scenario (something work related perhaps?) 3. Your sleep hygiene practices (i.e., blackout curtains, sleep mask, mouth tape, etc., essentially how have you already optimized for sleep?)

As a former pharmacist of 5 years, I will echo this message entirely. I will also add that I'm a bit more optimistic that Alex will internalize and actualize both your and my advice/feedback, while acknowledging that indeed, these messages do tend to fall on deaf ears. Alex has a reason to change, and I'm confident that he will embrace what's been said here and never look back after experiencing the results firsthand.

@ZenAlex My friend: the fact that you started experiencing these symptoms months after starting this supplement is merely coincidental. What you are currently facing has been many years in the making as your liver, over nearly a decade now, has become increasingly depleted of vitamin B12, until hitting the threshold with which symptomology finally surfaced. Vitamin B12 is stored long-term in the liver which acts as a multi-year reservoir of such, which will slowly release over months and years to meet your demands. The problem is that, if you have a net deficit/depletion of vitamin B12, then over an impossible to predict time horizon, you will eventually hit the aforementioned threshold wherein your symptoms surface, but never attribute that to your diet which as far as you can tell is non-contributory because you have been following it for nearly a decade. Until you get your vitamin B12 above 1,000 - you are going to continue feeling terrible. Some people, by the way, are non responders to vitamin B12 supplementation and fail to augment their levels, necessitating they source it from whole foods, and I would place you in this category. Before you do anything else, quite frankly including responding to this message, although feel free to ask any clarifying questions, this is exactly what I would do in your position: 1. Speak to a physician about receiving an intramuscular vitamin B12 shot ASAP. 2. Eat red meat, ideally beef, daily (I consume 400g but try to get at least 200g or better yet, half a pound). 3. Completely ignore the currently, laughably low, established reference range and aim for a four-digit result. 4. Do not dive down any adjacent rabbit holes, depleting time and energy affiliated with such, until you fully go down this one and come out on the other side, where you will, I promise, see the light at the end of the tunnel. 5. Trash that supplement today, not least because it is advertised to contain 10x the RDA of vitamin B12, and, as evidenced by your labs, has left you at the bottom end of the reference range. I don't want you to have to suffer any more from this my friend, so please take this advice seriously and let me know if there is any further clarification I can offer. You've got this man!

I've always wanted to get a DEXA scan, so I decided to get one done as a 30th birthday gift to self. I attribute having had zero detectable visceral fat to the fact that my sole source of fructose is 250 mL of pomegranate juice (~17 g) that I drink daily to augment my antioxidant status. Anyone else here ever had one of these scans performed, or wanted to?

Beef is incredibly nutritious for humans, and yes that's right, one must consider the totality of the expenses they incur in light of a particular lifestyle. Vegans have the best of intentions, and if somehow selfish, are so inadvertently, but nevertheless I find admirable the intentionality with which they consume food. Over time, they will tend to reincorporate animal products and find for themself that omnivore is ultimately optimal.

@Spiritedness Just shot a YouTube short for you:

Aromatase inhibitor: drugs like anastozole (Arimidex) which block enzymatic activity that otherwise aromatizes free testosterone into estradiol. When men go on TRT, particularly if they are overweight, (the aromatase enzyme concentrates in adipose tissue and men with higher body percentages will aromatize more of their free T into estradiol) will benefit from an AI drug, but the dosing must be dialed in to ensure that estrogen levels don't dip too low. The downside of underdosing or omitting the AI altogether is that estrogen may be too elevated and lead to fatigue, brain fog, libido issues. even gyno. The downside of overdosing AI is that estrogen levels may dip too low, leading to fatigue, anxiety, ED, increased osteoporosis risk, etc.

Unfortunately men on HRT can all too easily overdose their AI, leading to deleteriously low estradiol levels which, by extension leads to lowered bone density. That's great to here your HRT appears to be dialed in. Lol I didn't even notice that!

That's fantastic, the reference range for B12 is notoriously low and within it, has a 5-fold range, and to think that someone at the bottom of that range is going to be equal to someone closer to the top, is entirely misleading. I do not supplement any of the B vitamins as I prefer to derive them from whole food sources, namely beef, milk, eggs and basmati rice.

Exactly, this is exercise-induced, again pointing back to a B12 deficiency. Here are just a few of my labs. Yes, ascending beyond the upper end of the B12 reference range is a good thing.

In July of 2009, at 15 years of age, I was diagnosed with a rare, chronic inflammatory condition of my esophagus called eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE). At the time, frankly, I was relieved, thinking the mystery of the myriad choking episodes that had left me unable to speak and barely able to breathe for up to an hour at a time, had been solved. Little did I know at the time that this diagnosis was merely a sequence of sounds pointing to a set of symptoms that stemmed from a deeper, underlying problem that was never explained to me. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I would experience hundreds more of these food impaction episodes throughout my late teens and early 20s, prior to crossing paths with an Australian savant who presented me with door number 3, and the map to lead me to and through. This map, unlike that disseminated by my well-intended allergist and gastroenterologist, was not comprised of pharmaceuticals for which I was not deficient (yet would later on dispense countless thousands of throughout a half of a decade long career as a pharmacist). Rather, it was an elegant dissemination of self-derived dietary and supplementation advice, the likes of which I have unprecedented reverence for to this day. As a 21 year old pharmacy student intercepting this information and contending with the downstream cognitive dissonance, I could not then fathom the ramifications that this would have down the road, namely the eventual divorce from a career that I had devoted over 10 years of my life to. The nutrition, supplementation, and training information that I was given invoked a parallel appreciation akin to that which I had rapidly developed for Leo and his work, when this Australian mentor of mine inadvertently steered me his way. My mentor Luke advised me to meditate daily, prompting me to search on YouTube, in 2015, for whatever the hell meditation was, leading me to actualized.org. Not dissimilar to actualized.org, now nearly 10 years later, my appreciation for this information continues to grow as I am reminded of the true gold mine that it is. Having food completely impact my esophagus, and worse yet, the mere prospect of this occurring in mixed company, and the affiliated anxiety, is no longer something I have to contend with the consequences of. EoE, along with my many environmental allergies and asthma, are no longer factors for me, and the hero's journey that I went on to acquire this holy grail, started the day that I took full ownership and accountability for everything that touched by tongue, teeth and lips. On January 13th, 2014, I had my allergist, Scott, write a medical note excusing me from my college university's dining meal plan, which I would have been otherwise obligated to adhere to. This marked the beginning of an arduous adventure of trials and tribulations, the likes of which molded me into the man I am today. My message is simple my friend: the way to fix your physiology and find freedom is by putting food first, and as Hippocrates ostensibly said, let food be thy medicine. The culmination of my time as an autoimmune disease patient, a pharmacy student, as a pharmacist, and also as a reasonably intelligent human being who has sought to observe and understand the world, what I've realized is that you have two basic choices: you can pay the farmer for good health on the front end, or pay the pharmacy on the backend in an attempt to buy back your health. I am not anti establishment, anti pharma, anti anything frankly. As a 15 year old, I just wanted to fix my physiology so I could have the best possible experience of life possible, and I wish the same for you. Pharmaceuticals have an important place in society, most notably in the context of acute, life-threatening conditions such as severe infections and anaphylaxis. The problem is that, prior to birth control, the notion of a drug for which you never come off, was completely foreign. Most modern pharmaceuticals are doing something approximating the placing of duct tape over the indicator light on the dashboard of a vehicle, i.e., they are masking symptoms which are precisely incentivizing us to not explore the underlying cause. The cure hides where the cause resides, never forget that. During an ice hockey game as a junior in high school, I was speared in the throat and in attempting to brace my fall, I broke my left fibula. The crutches that I was given to help me ambulate the following months, while an important stepping stone, were merely an intermediate, transient step to take. Seemingly paradoxically, if I were using those same crutches today, they would actually cripple me, because I would not have rehabbed my leg properly to restrengthen it. Similarly, most prescriptions invariably become the problem themselves, because the actual etiology of one's problems is neither discussed, nor addressed. There is a remarkably powerful scene from the third Harry Potter movie that moves me every time. It's the point in the movie that Harry Potter realizes that his deceased father, James, is not coming to save him. Harry's dad, in spite of him insisting Hermione to the contrary, was never going to cast the Patronus to save Harry and his godfather Sirius. It was once Harry realized that nobody was coming to save them, that he approached the edge of the pond, and casted an unparalleled Patronus charm that devastated the dementors, leading to their diffusion. At age 21, I had to stop outsourcing my own health to others. While vital to garner insights from others, doctors included, at the end of the day, nobody else had to navigate with and interface life via this body but me. At the end of the day, there was only one vote left, and it was my own, and therein I realized I was the ultimate arbiter for the quality of my life, nobody else. Effectively, I was airborne, flying a Boeing 747, trying to navigate the conditions up ahead. In so doing, I had contact with local air traffic controllers (my allergist, gastroenterologist, mom and dad, sister, friends, my newfound mentor, etc.) but when it was all said and done, I was the pilot responsible for landing the plane, and the only one who would suffer had I not done so effectively and crashed. In the end, I landed the plane, and you can too.

I love calisthenics, especially pull ups and dips which are excellent mass builders. The key is to overload over time, because sure you can continue adding reps to these movements, but once you have strength enough, there are a couple noteworthy benefits to adding resistance via a weight lifting belt, for example. The first benefit is that it's simply more efficient to induce hypertrophy in a moderate rep range such as 8-12 reps, but the second major benefit is that, if you are ever in a calorie deficit wanting to gain leanness/definition, you will burn less muscle glycogen training higher intensity, lower volume. Conventional wisdom would suggest that one should perform higher rep, lower resistance sets while leaning out, but in fact this is counterproductive (the bottom line being that the additional calorie burn you get from training this way gets overshadowed by the muscle glycogen depletion). Use training to elicit the the hypertrophy stimulus, and use nutrition to ensure you are hypocaloric (again, assuming you want to lean out). Nevertheless, calisthenics are a phenomenal tool to implement.

Bingo. Nutrient deficiencies can takes years to develop, blurring the line between the dots that one would otherwise easily connect to trace back to their diet.

Brilliant, but please ensure to include weight-bearing exercises in your program, i.e., resistance training (squatting for example).

Check the nutrition label of this supplement and please tell me how many mg of DHA and of EPA you have been taking per day, and for how long. The zinc/copper ratio is paramount, and the oats, nuts and seed you've been leaning on for your zinc intake will absolutely fall short my friend. I strongly encourage you to consume at least 250g of ~90% beef mince per day, not only to augment your B12 levels, but to help enhance your bioavailable zinc intake. It's only seemingly weird because one (quite logically so) thinks to themself, "hmmm, I haven't made any dietary changes recently, so surely this is not a consequence of my nutrition." However, there is a massive degree of inter-individual variability in terms of how long it takes for a micronutrient deficiency to manifest. In your case, because it took so long, it wasn't immediately obviously connected to your nutrition because the symptoms of said micronutrient deficiencies are a lagging measure of an inadequate intake, and so it's difficult to connect the dots. Appearance is overrated, it's really just the cherry on top. The most valuable byproduct of being healthy and fit is to be truly at ease with yourself. My advice would be to disregard the zinc content of your current food consumption, and to supplement such that you are getting 20mg of additional zinc to your diet, ideally from the aforementioned beef, or, alternatively, an amino acid chelated supplement. Honestly man, this is paramount. My friend Luke has coached countless people over the years, and between his experience in that arena, and my experience consulting as a pharmacist for nursing homes, we have both encountered cases in which people are non-responders to B12 supplementation. Checking the B12 box via animal products is highly recommended, but please just keep in mind that recovering from as significant of a deficiency as yours could take up to 12 months. It may be worthwhile to discuss with a doctor the possibility of getting a B12 shot intramuscularly. Think of that as a bolus dose to help get your levels back to a healthy steady state, and think of the animal products in your diet as a way to maintain that level. This shot is not mandatory but would expedite your recovery. I am quite confident this is reversible and you will be feeling like a million bucks in no time brother. I saw the other thread you posted, and your exercise intolerance is absolutely due to a B12 deficiency. Having a triple digit B12 is unacceptable in my book, you should aim for north of 1200 if you seek optimality.

Sorry for the delay brother, I just finished uploading an entire video dedicated to you.

Definitely man, running is probably fine for most people assuming they are already at a healthy body weight, it's just not something I would issue universally given the excess adiposity most people hold. I know you wouldn't blindly "prescribe" running either without considering context, so I suspect we are more or less on the same page here. 100%.

From the article, "When muscles contract they pull on the bones to which they are connected. These forces provide the stimulus for bones to grow both thicker and denser. Maximal strength training and impact forces are the best way to provide this stimulus to your bones." My advice for anyone serious about their health is to make at least 80% of their exercise resistance training, the other 20%, or less, low-impact cardio, giving you the best of both worlds (optimal bone and cartilage formation courtesy of a controlled set of weight-bearing exercises, while getting the cardio benefits in an equally controlled, low impact fashion). Professional cyclists are optimizing for one incredibly specific domain, and their propensity to suffer osteoporotic outcome is unsurprising given the unidimensional nature of their training, which I would never suggest one emulate. Context is everything my friend. Here's the problem: the runners being studied have very low body mass indices. This demolishes the external validity of these studies, because most folks are overweight, and if you were to blindly advise them to run regularly, that would be ill-advised. My BMI is around 28 and yet my body fat percentage is lower than these so-called "healthy" runners who are in fact skinny fat individuals who, invariably, will be more susceptible to sarcopenia later in life. That said, even though my "high" BMI is due to muscle mass, running would still put unwanted wear and tear on my joints and tendons, just as it would someone who is overweight due to excess adiposity. The bottom line is that, jogging/running is simply one tool in the toolbox, but is in no way a linchpin given the several aforementioned, superior options.

Woah, let's hit the pause button and regroup bro. What you are experiencing, I can assure you is temporary, so hang in there my friend. Physiology is fixable with the proper inputs. Can you tell me more about your diet, being as granular as possible, so I can better deduce the potential for specific micronutrients that you have yet to be tested for? The more detail the better, i.e., exact quantities, for how long you have been eating this way, and in the context of what supplementation, again, being as specific as possible. Give me as many puzzle pieces as possible and I will do my best to assemble that which remains, and, by extension, offer you precise, practical advice to become whole again.

Similar to how some folks can get away with smoking for decades, while others cannot. To be fair, I think a better question would be whether or not you know of folks who have been strictly cycling for years/decades without running, who encountered knee problems down the road. If one has enough pieces of a puzzle assembled, they can logically deduce the rest of it prior to research coming to fruition. Low impact forms of cardio such as walking, or if looking to improve VO2 max by training in higher heart rate zones, things like swimming or cycling are absolutely advantageous.

Do you take any supplements? Based on that food list I suspect you have suboptimal zinc levels sans supplementation. Is it brown or white rice that you opt for?