Michael569

@The0Self @Lila9 you guys are correct, algae do indeed contain EPA, dunno why I had that wrong. Thanks for the correction

this guys is a joke, I can't believe he has so much publicity - he was never the strongest man, I don't know where that even came from. His records never even came close to Eddie Hall or Bryan Shaw. He is a glorified celebrity on roids and powders - yeah, I would not take this dude as an example of a healthy vegan diet for sure do you think every vegan in the gym wears a t-shirt "plant-powered" like a clown? Not all need to attract attention to themselves. Plenty of athlestes out there who are meat-free. What even is a definition of an athlete? If you are thinking about world class lifter then there are very few but plenty of plant based folks are fit and agile but not famous. agreed No, Vegetable Police is a poser who likes to create drama. I have been following his journey for around 4 years before I realised that for him it is always about "what's the new crazy thing I can be doing" I was even in his Patreon Group at one point. In fact he will tell you that neither carnivore nor vegan nor paleo nor keto nor anything else worked for him. He'll always bring up how everything flares up his IBD and then do some lunacy rather than actually stick to one protocol long enough. His content is all about jibberish and monkey business. I've stopped taking him seriously a long time ago. He is a funny guy tho and gave me many laughs over the year but his health content is all over the place. The camera channel is pretty hilarious I have to admit and he is also a really talented music producer - I bought his album couple years ago and it was really cool. As per John Venus, I don't believe he ever gave fuck about animals. He is a poser and always has been. I wouldn't be surprised if he was, all that time, snacking on meat behind the scenes. He and his wife are just your typical Youtube fitness pseudo-fitness gurus selling cookie cutter overpriced plans. When I spoke to him on vegfest in London, I didn't buy the things he was saying - his body language did not confirm the words he was speaking. But he is a good marketers and a good business man, that's for sure. And he looks like a Greek god with a face that melts your heart which does help Nimai Delgado might be a better example although I'm not sure to what degree he is roid free, he probably is. If you want to see a healthy example, the best one I can think of is Derek Simnet and Krystal Kennings from Simnet Nutrition. I spoke to both of them on VegFest and they are the most charming couple out there. I am sure Richard Burgees from Vegan Gains behind all that drama and depression is a decent guy who just needs to learn to let go and take a step back. But yah overall the vegan influencer scene is riddled with posers, fake natties and a lot of pseudoscience but there are good examples of really caring people who do good things.

^ this response ^ Fix this before doing anything else. I can report similar findings. If I spend most of my day sitting on my ass, working and not going outside, my sleep is awful. The more physical activity I include the better. The best sleep are the ones when I spend a whole day outdoors hiking for example and feel exhausted at the end of the day.

Couple of ideas I can think of depending on the scale you want to have an impact. Obviously, all of these are macro categories and they can be broken down into an endless amount of jobs. None of the below are jobs per se, they are sectors which you may consider. Careers in health & welness in general - medicine, alternative medicine, welness services, therapeutic services of any kind Ecology, Sustainability and Planetary Welfare - such as WWF, B-Corp, Fair Trade, Organic Soil Association . Social Services - retirement homes, social care, homeless care, child foster care services etc Law and legal counselling services Careers in consumer right protection of any kind - such as corporate audits, legal support for people who cannot afford private counceling Careers in consumer health protection - FDA, Water treatment, Public health guidelines etc. Careers in public safety services - fire brigade, police department, military, paramedic services, crime & investigation, forensics Other public services - public transport & infrastructure management Education & Tutoring in any shape and form is a humble public service with lasting impact Farming & Food sourcing is much needed public service Missionary work Public entertainment is a gigantic sector with millions of different jobs There is much more. Ofcourse different careers come with different salaries, career progression and satisfaction but if your sole goal is to help people and feel good at the end of a day, you can have that as a mental health coach, as a paramedic, as as an elementary school teacher or an educator or even as a volunteer in a charity shop. All depends on your values, financial needs, freedom requirements and current staus quo

Or maybe this is because people now live longer than those tribals you referred to? Yes, maybe 10,000 yrs ago people didn't have allergies but a pandemic of tuberculosis would have wiped out 80% of the tribe. Not to mention 9/10 children would not live to be 5 years old, mothers would be dying during labour and average lifespan being 30-40. Allergies might be the cost we pay for having eradicated 99% of deadly viruses and bacteria that were killing people left and righjt. Maybe that's a small price to pay for being sure you children don't die of smallpox? As per the mental distress and "mess" consider how our lifes have changed as the society has evolved. We live in different housing, people have more stressors, more burdens and more responsibilities which is causing mental distress - an average women no longer just cares about babies. Now she has a career, dependencies, bills to pay, body to take care of, a husband to satisfy, food to provide, deadlines to deliver, car to drive, grociers to take care of, household to manage, hobbies and interests to satisfy, parents to take care of (who now live longer and are more likely to get sick and need help) etc etc etc. I don't know about your life but I certianly cannot afford to sit and meditate for hours a day or live on fruits while running a business & having a 9-5 job, deadlines, projects, bills to pay in double-digit inflation etc. I could not do that on fruit juices, trust me I tried. (read below) I just want to make sure you are not having a distorted perspective of the world as it would seem from some of your comments. Maybe you are lucky to be able to afford a certain type of lifestyle that many cannot. If you live with parents or live in a place like California, south US, Australia or have a wealthy family, you may completely misrepresent what life is like for most people. I think that's important to appreciate. I can tell you that folks in cold UK, northern Europe, Germany, France or Baltic region cannot live on fruits in January. Or imagine being a single mother living in Manchester UK or the suburban Washington DC with low level of education and an annual income of 18K having 3 jobs. You're glad if you can keep your kids alive with the cheapest diet possible without them going hungry, going dirty or turning to drugs. I know where you're coming from in general. I was a follower of Robert Morse, John Rose, Mangotarian (before he turned to dark side), I was a member of 30 Bananas a Day following Freelee and her craziness and even using ROber Morse's herbs for like 6 months to eradicate my allergies (didn't help as much) and all those sides and I was sold into the ideology of infinite body intelligence, fruit fasting and all of that. If if you look back enough, my comments on this forum 4-5 years ago reflected that. What happened is I started losing strength, libido, my gums eroded a few millimetres on bottom canines (that has never recovered since) and I generally felt like shit on a fruitarian diet. It was the most expensive and most challenging diet I've ever been on. But at some point, you come to a point where you see that this lifestyle is unattainable for most people. And that's where a balance needs to come in. You introduce cooked food, some legumes, spices, some meat (unless ethically conflicted) and suddenly you feel much better. And I know protein is being thrown around a lot but despite that many people still walk around protein deficient as they try to navigate all the internet nonsense and are going from one fad to another. Even highly educated and well-off people struggle with this. I know the opinion of Robert Morse and his community on protein (acid causing, mucous causing and all that stuff) but without it people just feel like crap. What's the point of living like that? Don't take that as a criticism and ignore if doesn't resonate, it's just an observation and an attempt to draw the other side of the chasm.

I would be careful with this. If you depend on those without supplements you will run into critical deficiencies and demyelination of your central nervous system. As a vegan, you MUST supplement B12 if you want to prevent irreversible neurological damage. Once a year you should also run either methylmalonic acid test or holo transcomabalamin test as serum B12 is inreliable. If you are 100% vegan, these may save you from lots of issues. The reason you have no problems is that you probably have good hepatic stores but if you don't supplement, you're gonna run out. Algae are only a source of DHA, fish are a source of both EPA and DHA. They are not better or worse, they are the same gram for gram of DHA but they are less complete you could say where full Omega 3 profile is concerned. Combined with something like flax oil you should probably get all you need. that's an unfair argument against veganism. You would have to assume that omivores don't use those where in fact probably like 60% of gym goers take some form of protein isolate. Be objective In fact I would go as far as to say if you put 100 vegan and 100 omnivore athletes next to eachother, omnivores would be loading up on significantly more additional protein than vegans (but I have no data to back this up, just a speculation on my end)

I love fruits. Love the taste, low how healthy they are, and I feel good when my diet is rich in fibre. Fruits are to me what butter is to you. My gut can handle 100 grams of fibre per day without consequences. And yes to your point, barley porridge on its own is a bit dull, but does that mean the food itself is automatically unhealthy?.....I don't really like this argument of "people need fruit with food otherwise, it tastes blend" Why not combine foods to make them more palatable if you can? What's wrong with that? Most people already suffer enough, have tremendous amounts of burdens, raising kids, paying bills in a double-digit inflation, doing shit jobs they hate, stressors and anxieties in their life, and can't make their food palatable without being guilted by freaks on the internet? Life comes in balance. Nothing good ever comes of extremes Because they are highly educated, highly privileged, white males living in the richest regions of the world, wealthy and EXTREMELY biased sample. They are not the regular Joe or regular Jane with zero health knowledge who cannot just navigate all the pitfalls. I have seen the way people with low nutritional knowledge do keto or carnivore. They eat fucking salamis with mayonnaise and fried eggs and reject fruits and vegetables. They think they are doing what Paul is doing when he loads his steak with a pound of vegetables. They are not. Most people who attempt these diets end up with high LDL and high blood pressure. This is my main grievance that these clowns have complete disregard for how people misunderstand their advice, and all they hear is "red meat is good". Go on nutrition Twitter and actually look up the examples of young carnivores having their bypasses, colonic polyps found on colonoscopy in their early 40s. It is not worth it, the diet is too risky, there are too many unknown variables. People do not differentiate between processed and unprocessed. They cannot tell what fats are saturated and which are not. They don't understand fibre, they don't understand the importance of microbiota. They remember the things that are most exciting - "vegans are wrong, and meat is good" and they go on a crusade (kinda like what you did above) with 2% of the big picture understanding, completely ignorant of the fact that their picture is missing 98% of the clarity. And when someone tries to educate them, someone with PhD let's say, they are dismissed as "epidemiology fanatics" - it is a freaking clownshow. All carnivores have problems which is why they become carnivores in the first place. Do you think it is normal that people cannot digest fibre even thou humans have been eating high-fibre diets pretty much since the times of ancient Egypt and the Roman Empire, way before that even. It's just that it is human nature to become a crusader and ideologist which is how this nonsense spreads. To be honest, I would rather get SIBO than colorectal cancer if those were my two choices.

Edit: my first response was triggered and inflammatory. I'll just tell you what I told you before Please don't settle with your health so quickly to people who are excellent marketers because you may pay for it one day. That's all. Just keep your guard up.

Asking young people for CAC score and expecting anything other than negative is like giving a prostate exam to a 10 year old boy and cheering up when it shows BPH negative. It's preposterous and they all know it. Young guys do not get heart disease regardless of what they eat The first difference in blood lipids (mainly in ApoB) won't become apparent until late 30s mid 40s.

Not without heavy weights and synthetic hormones you can't. Bodyweight will only get you so far. Are we talking Dorian Yates type of big or more like Frank Medrano type of big? The later is achievable with bodyweight work. The earlier or a moderate variation of, not really. Not to mention it takes a decade or two to achieve that size and development.

Unlikely to be permanent change even if it does short term

You are right, to a large degree.There is a lot of crap science out there, bad methodology, personal bias, financial incentives and data distortion. But there is a lot of good science out there too and a lot of researchers who care about more than just getting published. You don't go into medical research to become rich - at least I hope most don't. Maybe I am being naive but most folks I met in this industry are honest, are not making big buck and are fairly passionate. In general the outcome of any research is NEVER definitive. It only shows possibilities and associations and from those, we can learn. No study can ever tell you "definitely do this and this will happen" - but a well-designed trial can help us estimate roughly how things will evolve if we do XYZ. I mean how else are we going to know about potential health hazards? Self-experimentation? Sometimes that is tricky and can be dangerous. I would rather take on board whatever I can learn from those who came before me - even if their data isn't perfect, as long as it is all pointing similar direction, chances are pursuing that path is likely to be least risky (e.g. using fluoride containing toothpaste as an example) than pursuing an alternative where the direction of the effect is all over the place. With an example of fluoride in dentistry, these experiments are actually relatively easy to design because most likely, you are already taking people who are a bit lazy and don't care too much about their health (e.g. people with progressive periodontal disease where you are already assuming a large degree of neglect over a long time) so even if you give them Toothpaste A to try for 3 weeks and give toothpaste B to another group, it is unlikely they will go and turn their entire life around - people like magic pill solutions, they don't want to work hard for their health (I've seen a lot of that in my practice as well) . And people like being given an important task (e.g. being part of a study) so they will do what they are told if it could mean getting solution easily. I mean ofcourse! Nothing works for everyone. There are thousand things that could be causing Leo to feel the way he does and maybe for him hormonal replacement don't do shit - doesn't mean they are useless for everybody. Again, we are only doing our best with the information we have. Most doctors don't have the liberty to experiment if they don't want to lose their licenses. Alternative practitioners do which is both blessing (if it works) and a curse (if it goes wrong).

@Schizophonia no you're good. I liked your response but I never got around to reply properly and didn't want to half -arse it. I appreciate reasonable feedback but what I really hate are the types of responses i was commenting on (e.g. " all science is corrupted" "nothing can be trusted" )

these types of absolute statements always make me laugh. Not everyone out there is trying to get you and scam you of your money. Have some faith in the good of the humanity for fuck's sake. There are lot of scumbags and thieves out there but most folks are fairly honest and kind....

That might be the same elsewhere but think of the long term possibilities. A cashier is unlikley to be promoted and change her income over lifetime. Junior dev can be promoted to more senior roles and exponentially have their salary increased over time. I don't know the first thing about IT development but I'm sure with more seniority the amount of stuff Chat GPT can do as well as human diminishes. It is good at the basic tasks but it has no mastery in anything, it is just an information platform. Turn yourself into an expert in the field and you will attract better opportunities. There is, of course, always the possibility that this is not the right thing for you and that you should be pursuing a different area of expertise altogether. If you hate Spain, why not try living elsewhere? Germany, UK, Austria, US - all offer plenty of opportunities to young people with ambitions. Moving countries is the easiest it's ever been and with EU Passport the Europe at least is your playground. UK (post Brexit) & USA will be a bit more difficult but you could get invited and transferred over by a company (if you ar good enough). If you are young, flexible and (I assume) unmarried without kids, then this is the perfect time to do it. You can always come back to Spain in 5-10 years with a pack of new experience - worked well for me and many others who did the same.

It makes for a nice green poo, that's fur sure. If that's not worth the 80 bucks for a box of Sun Chlorella then I don't know what is

Ya I get that It comes down (at least for me) to having an internal piece of mind. The feeling of not constantly needing to be on the lookout for the next thing trying to kill you, is worth more than avoiding the remaining 2% of toxins. Not all synthetic products are bad tho: Toothpaste containing fluorides are most likely pretty darn important, just don't swallow that stuff on purpose. The evidence on benefits against cavities is pretty darn robust - sure there are other ways but water brushing might not be enough with the diet that humans have in 21st century. The risk of dental problems at the expense of few nanograms of fluoride per day that absorb through oral mucosa (which I am not even sure actually does) is not worth it. You will do more by avoiding alcohol-containing mouthwashes - that stuff has actually bene linked (albeit marginally) to oral cancer risk If you intend to date, find girls and get married then you can forget about that if you are not going to be using some form of washing liquid for your clothes and your body, or at least a decent natural soap. Women like guys who smell nice & are clean. To be frank not using any of that to me sounds a bit creepy and weird (I am generalising here, not speaking directly to anyone). No wonder a lot of these stage green people are always single - some can be really difficult to live with, don't become one of them, it seems to be a pretty miserable form of living. If the stuff for washing your dishes bothers you, wear rubber gloves during it. Just don't have disgusting and greasy cutlery - I've seen that in some people and it made me wanna vomit. The water just doesn't do it as well if you have oil on the plate. What you're left out are poorly washed dishes and cutlery I am yet to see an example where "100% natural living " (e.g removing all synthetic products) has actually led to something better. I've seen it lead to a lot of neglect, dirt, dust and kinda gross households. Adding a bit of stuff back can make a lot of difference. There is ofcourse the other side of the coin where people overuse this stuff and use 50 different products but we are talking about the other side of the spectrum here. You can use all this stuff and still be avoiding more than 90% of exposure which btw comes from water , food and air you breathe, the rest compared to those 3 is small. But again, ignore all of this if it doesn't click with your value system. This is a journey you need to walk alone. My health journey took around 6-7 years and during that time I went down the weirdest fucked up rabbit holes before finding the balance again. So do carry on but be mindful of the suffering some of this stuff causes and be honest with yourself when reflecting on these different practices,

The deeper you go down this rabbit hole, the more miserable you become. Seen it on myself, seen it in others, seen it around here. Just a word of advice from someone who's nearly gone mad with all the toxin avoidance, I tried to do couple years back...it was also the most unhappy I've ever been. Just accept that some exposure is inevitable and from that place take a rational standpoints and adopt few practices that help you find a healthy balance without becoming mad each time you have to come in contact with a synthetic product Example: buy a dish soap from a relatively conscious company then move along Example 2: if you washing machine is making you anxious, don't use it and wash dishes with hands using just a bamboo scrape and some essential oil soap - then move along. Example 3: get an eco egg for your washing machine, mix it with something that seems natural enough and then move along. Ignore if the advice doesn't resonate, maybe you need to experience the misery this stuff causes first hand No criticism there, just a friendly advice

The issue with real life experience around this topic in particular is that most of us around here are too young, so none of us would have actually felt the consequence of eating a high saturated fat diet such as getting a heart disease or stroke. This is, for me personally, the biggest issue I have when guys in their mid 20s tell me "I eat tons of red meat and I feel fine" - it is an irrelevant anecdote because the real downside effects might become apparent in their mid-50s by which time most carnivore eaters will be on a cocktail of medication preventing rupture of arterial plaque with a severe arterial calcification but you won't know anymore because all these conversation will be long forgotten. Consider asking this on a forum where you have a higher population of older men and the answers might differ. This forum where the most population is 22-28 is the wrong place to ask.

Yes!! Got it on the shelf already ready to go. I wish he wouldn't be so dismissive to epidemiology and nutrition tho but his CVD & exercise content is top notch. I'm a member of his private group, worth getting for any health nerds out there. He's a bit too heavy on the pharmacology side which I'm on the fence with

that's not how you're supposed to validate your claims with research that's pure cherrypicking. The best quality research actually requires specific filters to find, what you're likely to find through Google is stuff most commonly used by influencers and marketers or the ones that have the most fancy title. Once you stop googling studies and actually dedicating time to reading the high-quality ones, most mechanistic evidence (e.g. Ray Pete type of content) dies in the process and gets superseded by human outcome data./ That sounds to me like a regirgutation of mechanistic pathway you read somewhere. All these mechanisms interact with thousands of other pathways which is impossible to capture in in-vitro study (once again I'll mentio the name of Ray Pete because I've seen you copy his content and I think that's where you are finding these - Ray Pete is not a good exmaple of objective researchers - he is extremely biased into mechanisms that sound cool but may not be the most accurate representation of the impact on the human health. In-vitro studies and lab animal studies are prone to the most biases and errors in conclusions which is why they sit so low at the hierarchy of evidence. Give me a practical implication of this for human health staying away of mechanisms (e.g.l that receptors and that neurotransmitter etc). How is more DHT better than less DHT all things being equal? My argument is that high DHT is a risk factor for prostate cancer that 1/8 men get and if they had lower DHT they would survive longer. What would you say is the strongest argument against that where high DHT is beneficial and the benefit is worth the risk of PC? those are two contradictory statements. Can you unwrap this for me pls? That's cool, I'm glad that is working for you. Maybe the effect on your depression could be achieved through other means too? Maybe one of those supplements is also targeting multiple other pathways. I would still be cautious with widely recommending to people online such protocol due to the above cancer risk. It's the carnivore argument all over again - eating more beef makes people's digestion better but it also increases their APoB. What is bigger risk - IBS or heart disease? How do you know that? Most people eating those foods do not end up with hypothyroidism. In fact the only evidence of this phenomenon has been observed in rats - This was very well discussed in Alex Leaf & Paul Saladino debate - both being subjct to their own biases ofcourse. But let's assume eating brassicas (most likely goitrogens) does increase the risk of hypothyroidism by say 10%. Considering that massively reduce the risk of cancer of the reproductive system & lungs, would that be a tradeoff worth making? I'd argue that it is. Also goitrogenic substances get deactivated by cooking so as long as you're not juicing ounces of kale you should theoretically be fine if you get those from cooked food. And finally, statistically speaking, people with goitrogen will test deficient on iodine tests so maybe goitre development has nothing to do with goitrogenic substance and is a pure sign of major deficiency. that is intereting, I've never thought about that. Migth be true. But then it increases the odds of atherosclerosis which isn't ideal. In the end all these things can be managed with medication so you are able to get treatment for anything that occurs, the question is what is worth the ultimate risk? If being stronger is worth the risk of early coronary obstruction then people should go for it. I guess getting benefits from DHT modulation for depression might be worth for you if you're happy to accept the other risk factors. It's always a balancing act. People need to be given all the information when making these choices rather than being exposed to marketing and cherrypicking which I have a personal grievance with. I'm just trying to present the dark side to you that you might not have considered That's all

@Nilsi right, gotcha. First of all, I appreciate the criticism, it is certainly pointing some blind spots that I need to work on. Yes, sure, full disclosure, everything I say here has a spin of my own bias - of course it does !!! You do the same and so does everyone around here. We all wear the filters of our own perspective and biases and those shape our perception of the world. You should critically examine everything you read around here automatically. I try to actually be unbiased where I can which is why you see my advice changing over time but sure, there is lot of it there still. With health advice this is tricky. With philosophy (or political theories such as Marxism) for example you might be able to follow all sorts of rabbit holes, try them and then come back and try something new. No harm done. With nutrition, going down wrong rabbit holes for couple years could mean irreversible damage to health and since we only got one of those i am perfectly happy to follow a consensus of the evidence because, well, it's the best we got. It's not perfect, there is lot of garbage there but you can train yourself to spot it. If you wanna put your health in hands of charlatans, by all means but if I have information based on 100s of thousands of people who went before me, and who got the things i would like to avoid, and I can see a certain mathematical probability of X happening if they do YZ, then why not? It would be silly not to. I'm totally willing to put my ego aside in this, there is zero agenda in the type of health advice I share with folks which is probably why people consistently disagree with me, and that's totally cool. I'm always open to debate about this stuff. This is not just about sharing A study. I spend hundreds of hours dissecting this information, studying the methodology, potential biases in those studies. I don't pull stuff out of my ass. To give you an example, I used to be a huuuge seed oil and dairy denier. If you look up my past comments here, they were all against those things in a bit of a dogmatic fashion. But you know what? With more due diligence and more digging I came to realisation that they are not all that bad and a lot of what I share with folks has changed...this happens all the time. This is not about finding clients, in fact i haven't actually acquired a client from around here for over 7 months so it's not like I'm making a buck saying these things. Sure, if someone likes this and need some help, I'm happy to do that but you will not see me agressively promoting business around here other than my signature - which you are free to do as well and so is everyone else. I just really dislike people being told off what we clearly know are health promoting foods because of some made up chemical reaction and then pushed to following what is (probably) a health jeopardising diet. If you wanna call that "having a head in the sand" that's up to you.

@Nilsi can you translate all this jibberish to something practical for me to respond to please? Which part of what I said you disagree with and why?

Do you have any evidence for any of this? I mean actual longitudinal evidence that shows vegans are more likely to be androgen deprived. We can make mechanistic speculations all day long but has any of that actually been demonstrated in humans? Are cultures with highest green tea consumption more likely to have low testo levels? Any RCTs you can share where people are given green tea and their levels drop? Permanently or transiently? If green tea is so bad why is it consistently associated with lower incidents of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, prostate cancer, breast cancer and mental health disease? Even periodontal health is positively impacted by it. If anything, if something was shown to reduce DHT in adults that's a MAJOR benefit. You don't want high DHT post teenage years especially if you have history of prostate cancer in family So If drinking more green tea will ensure i can skip a prostate cancer that men part 65 in my family are getting and the mechanism is DHT reduction (even at the cost of my strength at the gym going 10% down) then I'll say fuck yeah gimme more of that stuff.

Godspeed Matt, hope you'll find the peace you're looking for ?‍♂️