Episode 31: Metabolic Health & Masculinity | Building a Nutritional Foundation, Balancing Hormones, Identifying Motivation with Adam Marafioti of LifeBlud
Women we work with frequently ask us how they can help the men in their life pursue metabolic healing. Do the same principles apply? Should men approach nutrition differently than women? We have been wanting to bring you a discussion all about pro-metabolic health for men, and we knew that Adam of LifeBlud would be the perfect guest to share his story. In this episode, we discuss establishing a strong nutritional foundation to support both male and female bodies according to their individual design. Adam shares practical and attainable strategies for men who are getting started on a metabolic health journey. And make sure to stay through the end of this episode to hear Adam’s profound insight into why it is so important for men to access their intrinsic motivation when making these lifestyle changes.
Join us as we discuss:
Adam’s evolution from the party life to raw veganism to a pro-metabolic approach to wellness
What we can gain from our progression through extreme dieting phases
Does the approach to balancing male hormones differ from the approach to balancing female hormones?
The physical changes in appearance that manifest in male and female bodies as a result of increasing metabolic health
Examining the current cultural attitude towards gender roles, family, procreation and its impact on upcoming generations
Practical tips for men on incorporating attainable metabolic principles into your daily rhythm
The importance of identifying your intrinsic motivation as a man to take control of your health
The beautiful interplay of male and female strengths in relationships
A discussion of learned helplessness and how women can support their men in the pursuit of health
Practical strategies for men who desire to prioritize quality nutrition but are away from home a majority of the day
Supporting your nutritional foundation with supplements
The power of methylene blue in targeting a variety of health concerns in men, women, and children
Tips for boosting testosterone naturally
Resources mentioned
Connect
Adam Marafioti of LifeBlud | Website | Instagram
Kori Meloy | Instagram | Freely Rooted Course
Fallon Lee | Instagram | Fallon’s Table
“A man and a woman can both pursue this approach of eating nutrient dense foods and lowering toxins and focusing on foods that are low in plant toxins and getting those animal products in, and our bodies can respond appropriately. A man’s health is going to lean toward male hormones functioning correctly and a woman’s health is going to lean toward female hormones functioning correctly.”
Transcript
Kori Meloy Welcome to The Freely Rooted Podcast, where we are passionate about helping women reclaim their metabolisms, restore their youthful vitality, and rediscover God's original design for motherhood and wellness.
Fallon Lee We are your hosts, Fallon and Kori, and we're so glad you're joining us for season four. If you're new here, be sure to listen to our previous episodes where we talk through many of our favorite foundational topics. Now grab your favorite nourishing drink and join us as we continue discussing simple, attainable, and life-changing approaches to wellness.
Kori Meloy Adam, welcome to the show. This is the season finale of season four, and we were so excited to wrap up the whole season with this episode. We've been really looking forward to it and we've loved following along with you and just your whole endeavors with LifeBlud and just all of the great info that you share. And I would love for you to just tell us a little bit about yourself, tell our audience a little bit about yourself and how LifeBlud got started.
Adam Marafioti Yeah. Awesome. Thanks for having me. Let's close it out good, and yeah, I'll just go into, I guess, the general intro about myself. I've been in alternative and natural health for six or seven years now, and I mainly started because I felt— in my earlier twenties, around 24 or so, I kind of just hit a wall in terms of my health. And I remember in previous years to that feeling like basically invincible and having just that really youthful vitality, kind of like the way that Ray Peat talks about the youth associated hormones. I felt like I definitely was in a state like that for a while and dropped off pretty significantly, I think, because I was a pretty big partier and basically nocturnal for a long time. Binge drinking every weekend for ten plus years and really just hitting it really hard in life. And definitely caught up to me and it caught up to me pretty early. And I quickly figured out that if you were to go to a doctor, there's only a few options, basically, that you're going to get when you present like X or Y issue. And I wasn't satisfied with any of those potential outcomes that I knew I was going to receive back. And so I just kind of decided to take my health into my own hands. And yeah, just kind of got on the internet, did what I know how to do best, which is kind of just poke around the Internet for information and look and discern. And I eventually found Dan "The Life Regenerator" McDonald who is a Hawaii guy, like you Kori—you're not a guy. But Hawaii native, and he's a raw vegan, fruitarian juicer guy, and he just made really motivational videos online juicing and about taking your health back. And six or seven years ago, I just bought a juicer and the rest was history, I guess, from there.
Fallon Lee Out of the gate, I really appreciate the dichotomy of your story because I think that like a lot of either women listening who've got husbands that are just nowhere near pursuing health or even men that are listening that feel like they're not quite on this path to wellness yet, like you coming from a background of ten plus years binge drinking— I mean, you've recovered from a lot. And so I think this is going to be a really encouraging conversation for a lot of guys who have maybe had similar stories. I'm curious if you had a health approach prior to finding this bioenergetic realm. It sounds like maybe pre-juicing era, there wasn't really a health approach at all, maybe a lack of health approach. And then once you found the juicing, raw vegan realm, how did that transition into kind of the more Ray Peat style metabolic approach? How did you get from point A to point B?
Adam Marafioti I think it was just joining certain communities online. And you have a natural progression, right? I think when you first get into natural and alternative health, there's a more surface-level set of information. And naturally that's what you would land on first. As someone who just wants to take action, then you would start doing those surface-level changes first, like you would do the eat more greens or eat more berries and make some smoothies and stuff like that. But what's very important is that you don't get stuck and you're not afraid of constant progression or realizing that there's a better way and that the previous thing you were doing could have been wrong. So I think I just continued researching with an open mind. And I was vegan for quite a few years, and I did get pretty deep into the raw vegan type lifestyle, and then just regular sort of cooked vegan foods. I did experience, obviously, a great benefit from going that route over what I was doing previously, which was basically just eating whatever and living a very destructive lifestyle, I guess you could call it. And another thing I learned very importantly during that time period was the quality of things, how much that matters. So whether that's the quality of food that you're eating and sourcing, the quality of what you're putting on your body, your skin, the soaps, all the different environmental pollutants and chemicals, how those affect not only hormones but metabolism and how they can basically pollute every aspect of your function. So those were invaluable lessons. And I think without any sort of massive dietary change, just focusing on quality and removing the most toxic pollutants, the average person could make a massive change in their health without having to maybe become so extreme, like myself or probably one of you guys.
Kori Meloy Yeah. I was thinking about this idea of if you are coming from maybe more of the standard American diet or an extreme, on the spectrum, kind of like that destructive lifestyle that you're talking about, it's almost like some people need— we've talked about this on the podcast before, but it's almost like it actually is extremely helpful for people to have some rules and almost go the extreme route because, similarly how the Bible talks about when you're a child, you need like that milk and the simple rules and then you can kind of go into these more complex, I guess, topics. I find that is so true with people. They are drawn to, okay, let's figure this out. Let's go all in. And then later on, figuring out what is the nuance in everything and what actually works a little bit better for my body. And so for you, was it more of like you felt really good, obviously, and then was it continuing your research journey? Or did you find that you hit kind of a bump in the road with how you felt later on? Which one was kind of the motivating factor in what got into Ray Peat's world?
Adam Marafioti Yeah, that's a good question. And I realize I didn't fully answer the last one, Fallon, sorry. So actually this is good to push me through. Yeah, so what happened, I guess, a few things. I eventually got really, really skinny. I was also doing extreme amounts of fasting, water fasting, 72-hour water fasts, juice fasting frequently. I did intermittent fasting for at least three of those years. Twelve/eight, probably never missed a single day. And I did go the extreme, and to your point, I actually do find that I did feel a benefit from going through all these extremes, even though each one of those protocols may not be the most beneficial for you at that time. I think that going through them is very important in your learning and evolution. So I wouldn't take any of those experiences or periods back if I could. But eventually, yeah, I did get very, very skinny. I think I was about 115 pounds at one point. And I'm not very tall, but still. I remember seeing a photo of myself without a shirt on. I was in Indonesia. And I just kind of looked at myself like, wow, I can't believe how gaunt I looked. And eventually I started to have the symptoms of basically the hypothyroid type symptoms, like always being freezing cold, lower libido, and basically felt that my hormones were not in alignment with what my physiology should be. And felt definitely on the feminine side towards the mid end of my vegan days. I had really long hair and just felt very feminine in general. And I didn't see a problem with that at the time. And that's, I guess, part of it, too, right? The discernment, the level of discernment sort of starts to fade away and you become a little more malleable. And I actually used to work—I've never told this story—I used to work in a vegan restaurant, even up to February of '21. While I was starting my company, I was still working there. But I worked there for a few years, like started when I was vegan and left— you know, by the end of it, I was sneaking out to eat ribeyes and stuff. And I used to basically deep fry fake meat all day long and cornstarch and work a fryer. And so I was really in the thick of it. I actually never ate any of that stuff, but I was really in the thick of it. So eventually, I just— finding those symptoms, the cold all the time, being super skinny, I kind of stumbled across the Ray Peat community, Danny Roddy, and Matt Blackburn. Or at least, he was getting into Ray Peat as well at that time. And it all just kind of clicked because Ray has a very coherent perspective on health and physiology. And it's very empowering because he teaches you how things work. He doesn't just give you the whats, which is what— like I was talking about the surface-level information. When you first get into natural health, a lot of it is just whats. They tell you what to do, what to think, what is what. Ray likes to tell you how. He tells you how things work, the fundamentals of physiology and metabolism as we know it best right now. And so when you learn more mechanistically, you're able to basically take that information and use it yourself and apply it in a way that's much more individual.
Kori Meloy That's so good. I love the picture of the switching from the what to the how, and I think that's another reason when people first read Ray's work, they're like, "What?" Like, "I don't know if I can fully comprehend this right now." And it takes a second. It takes a second to fully absorb his information, but I found that year after year, it clicks like this. And it's like something that was honestly a little bit too complex for me to absorb at the time years ago. I have a better understanding of now just because of the mechanistic philosophies that you're talking about. And that's basically— like that, in and of itself, is pretty profound. That if you can understand the mechanisms behind your approach to health, it really answers any questions that come up along the way in a more simplified way. But going into hormones, I think one of our—I mean, Fallon, probably for you as well—our most frequently asked question when it comes to men, in my DMs or my emails or in my course community is, okay so we talk a lot to women obviously, and people are curious. Okay, as far as the hormonal approach, we talk about estrogen dominance, we talk about optimizing your synthesization of youth associated hormones. Does that apply to men in the same way? That would be probably the most frequently asked questions that we get. And I find it interesting in your story, prior to getting into this approach of health, how you actually found yourself feeling a little bit more feminine. And yeah, I would love for you to dive into why this approach to hormones actually does really matter for men.
Adam Marafioti Yeah. So I guess I'll start that by laying a bit of a foundation because obviously when we're talking about any of these things, especially something like a hormone which none of us can see, obviously, we can't physically observe these things. They're just sort of names of molecules that we understand from a scientific process of research that is giving us information. So we need to understand what we know about health from a very coherent paradigm, just like the Ray Peat metabolism paradigm is coherent and it's one big picture. It's not just fragmented parts. And we need to make sure that we're talking about hormones in the same way. So the way I like to think about it is I'd like to first ask myself what are hormones? And what do they do? Why do they exist? And yeah, so, what are they, right? And the way that I see them is that they're basically a signal. A signal from the innate intelligence in us of our environments, of our input. It's a response signal. Right? And they guide our physiology to operate in our best interests at the given time at the given environment, protecting us from dangers. And they can shift our energy levels and influence certain actions. So that's the way that I see hormones is they're these guiding sort of signals that are a response to what's going on. Now, when we ask about are men and women the same? I'm not someone who goes after labs a lot. So if we're talking about numbers, personally, I don't work with numbers. I don't work with labs often. I work sort of more in theory and just implementing things in practice that, theoretically, you should balance our physiology. So the overarching fundamentals of what would balance hormones in men and women generally would be the same. Not obviously the exact same, but things that are going to optimize my testosterone may help a woman preserve progesterone and keep her hormones in balance with testosterone and with estrogen. Because all these things are, one, important. Like I said, they're signals that guide our body. And, two, they will align with what good physiology is, given that we provide the right input.
Kori Meloy This is so good because it kind of reflects on—and we can talk about this later in the episode as well—this question of how do I boost my testosterone? It really reflects on the compartmentalization of how our healthcare system is set up, where it's like everything is fragmented, like you said, compartmentalized. And what you're saying is when you set the overarching big picture and foundation, we're all kind of in balance. And it's so simple in that way and also just cohesive and beautiful. And it just speaks to our innate intelligence. That was so good. Thank you for that.
Adam Marafioti Mm hmm. Yeah, I used to give more, I guess, like scientific or research-based answers and stuff, but I'm totally switching up— you know, I've been refining the way that I see the body and the way that I see physiology and the way that I see the world, and I see it all connect. I've been refining that more so than just doing specific research lately because I also haven't had that much time to do that, but that's what I've been refining lately. And so my message is definitely changing to be more in that alignment. And I would say that it's very important to note that if you're— you know, now we're sort of running in the alternative and holistic natural health sphere. I imagine we agree that's where we're at. That we really need to actually make sure that we're properly ditching the models of allopathy and that we use a holistic mindset when we think about any problem or any physical optimization or issue, illness, wellness, etc. It has to come from a holistic approach or else we're just regurgitating allopathy.
Kori Meloy Yeah, I was just reflecting on this idea of when the amygdala is fired— we just talked about this actually on the femininity podcast because Parris Hodges was talking about when, even with HTMAs, let's say you get this chart and then you have all these numbers and you have all this data, it's easy to kind of go into this rabbit hole, fix these. And Parris was just like, it's so interesting to navigate through bringing in a holistic approach where you're not kind of having this amygdala firing and thinking, okay, something's wrong, let me fix it. This problem and then fixed solution. And instead, bring in this whole big picture of emotions and how the mineral balance reflects your emotional state and psychology and your entire environment. And I love this whole conversation of just switching because I think we've all been there as far as kind of dabbling into holistic health and then still approaching it with an allopathic mindset. I think all three of us maybe came a little bit from allopathic in the past. And so it's been a beautiful thing to watch kind of this cultural shift on social media as people have grasped, oh, I've totally been doing that. And what does it look like to kind of take a step back and look at that big picture?
Adam Marafioti Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And it's part of that— like when I was talking about the layers, right? You get through the surface level, and it's just about us progressing, as well, with our knowledge. And we can't be mad at ourselves or anyone for not getting everything right away. But we do also have to progress into a more holistic understanding of the body and the world and what's going on. And it's my opinion, too, that—you kind of touched on it—that everything matters, like our thoughts, our words. Sometimes I wonder, do words— you know, when we speak them, do they come out— and they're obviously in waveform, so these are physical things. Do they have an effect on the world around us? Do they become steeler waves that now affect the environment? And so on and so forth. So yeah, I'm just in the mentality that everything matters, and I think that's pretty optimistic in general.
Fallon Lee And I love, Adam, how you spoke about your own journey, just feeling that gratefulness for kind of the stair-step approach and filtering through different ideologies. And it's actually crazy to me how similar our stories are. I feel like we kind of had a similar progression of, you know, I was kind of in the like Paleo, Whole30 world for five years, then kind of slowly started learning more about this bioenergetic approach. And so I feel like our journeys are mirrored a little bit. And what's interesting is that—if you're a longtime listener of the podcast, this is not news to you—but Kori and I have talked frequently about how we feel like, you know, we look back at pictures of ourselves and I have almost that exact moment as you have, Adam, where I saw a picture of myself. I was like 105 pounds and I was like, *gasp* is that— like, that's me. Like, that's what I look like right now. And I also remember just feeling and looking so masculine and just like— okay, if you're watching right now, I also look like a Beastie Boy. So, like, this is not the best time to be like, oh, I'm so feminine now. But I've seen myself change. I really did have these masculine features. And as I nourished myself, as I focused on just more nutrient density, I just watched my features change. And so—I know you touched on this and I don't know if you're comfortable getting into this a little bit more—I'd love to hear more about this journey that you had of kind of losing touch with your masculine self. And it is mindblowing to me how divinely and intentionally the human body was created. Because, kind of like you've said in answer to our question of like, hey, do we have to take a different approach for men? And it's wild to me that a man and a woman can both pursue this approach of getting nutrient density and lowering toxins and focusing on foods that are low in plant toxins and getting those animal products in, and our bodies can respond appropriately. That a man's health is going to lean toward male hormones functioning correctly and a woman's health is going to lean toward female hormones functioning correctly. And I know this is so touchy, not really in our realm, but like in the world at large right now, just this gender ambiguity has just taken us by storm or taken our culture by storm. And I look at this way of healing and this way of nourishing, and I'm like, how can we not honor the differences that are in existence in a man's body and a woman's body? When we can take the same nutritional approach and we respond in the appropriate manner? That hormones balance in the appropriate manner when you pursue this approach is just wild to me and so just affirming and fascinating. Anyway, I clearly could go on about this. But Adam, I would love to hear you talk a little bit more about kind of that— I don't know if you'd say emasculation or what verbiage you would apply to it, but kind of that journey where you felt like you were kind of a little bit more feminine and kind of how you saw yourself maybe come out of that. Anything that you're comfortable talking about or not talking about in light of that journey. But I know you mentioned there was kind of this moment where you felt like you were aware of yourself feeling or looking—or whatever it was—a bit more feminine. And what was the transition like back to feeling like you really connected with your masculinity again, you know, nutritionally— I'd love to just kind of peek into your mind for that whole journey of feeling like you were back in your masculine self.
Adam Marafioti Yeah, it was definitely pretty distinct. And I would say that, like I was talking about with being a little more malleable when you're vegan, I think the culture tends to push men into being more feminine now and women into being a little more masculine. And so I think there was definitely a malleability aspect to it where I allowed the culture to sway me in the way that it is. And in general, I think I just had more of an approach to vanity, although I don't want to say that women are vain, but it was more of just being not masculine than being more feminine, I guess. Like chasing vanity a little more and just wanting to be thinner and more dainty and that type of thing, like more than on a surface level, a looks type thing. I wanted to be more dainty, appear more dainty, more clean, and just opposite to that sort of rugged male type of— and I'm not really that anyways, even now. But I just kind of wanted the opposite of that, to be this sort of, I don't know, like boy band type boy. And I guess I was still in my mid-twenties. Yeah, it is what it is. But I did feel a distinct difference after I started eating significant amounts of red meat and whether that is the amino acids in high quality proteins like meat and eggs and things like that that were able to actually do what they do in physiology, which would be to be the precursors of neurotransmitters and things like that. I was getting tons of carnitine, tons of carnosine, taurine, creatine and all those types of things from red meat again. So I think that that changed my behavior. It changed my emotional state in a way where it just kind of clicked and I sort of connected to it like a wave. And all of a sudden, I started behaving differently and I started wanting different things. And it was totally— I didn't have to force it. But I certainly started to change my behavior in a way that I was also definitely more— I became more upfront and not worried about hurting people's feelings and sparing the truth and things like that, just becoming a lot more demanding. Never in a mean or offensive way, but just a lot more of a commanding and leading person is what I became eventually over time of reintroducing meat and things like that. So that's kind of the shift that I felt. It's hard to kind of remember it all now. It's years back.
Kori Meloy Well, you know what's interesting is something I've been reflecting on in the last—probably the last year—is that whether it's a nutritional shift that kind of puts us in that state of that hormone imbalance or something emotional or some sort of conflict occurs, I believe we will actually kind of start to seek that nutritional approach that will keep us in balance, if that makes sense. And so I found that for my own personal story, my conflict with women which had a root cause, I was seeking out the environment that would keep me in a masculine state. And I sought out that way of eating that would keep me in a masculine state, in a job, in a profession, and just like all the things, as opposed to those things getting me there in the first place. So it can happen so many different ways. And that's why it's all connected is because there's this energetic pool and why we can go— for the same reason that people develop trauma bonds. You go and seek that same behavior that keeps you stuck, basically. And I find that conversation really interesting. I know that that was it for me. Whereas, Fallon, it might have been the nutrition and depletion that got you into that more masculine state or the inability to produce enough of those hormones like progesterone. For me it was the conflict first and then seeking out those things. And then it was just like a tornado, basically, of keeping me in that masculine state. And I just had to slowly pull myself out. And what's interesting about the metabolic health approach or bioenergetic nutrition approach is I didn't even realize what was happening as far as kind of regaining my femininity until it had been a few months. And I was like, wait, my face is changing. And then other people were pointing it out too. That's always what's interesting is when people actually point out you look softer—in a good way for women. You look softer. Your features are not as harsh. I had a very harsh look about myself and then Fallon has explained the same thing of just having those really harsh, like almost pointy, edgy features. And for a man, that's almost this endearing kind of thing that they would be able to develop because of having that sharp jaw feature. But for a woman, when she's very depleted, she will kind of develop those very sharp and edgy, I guess, parts of her instead of being more soft and supple. So all that being said, I'm curious if you feel like there's just like this bigger picture at hand with what's happening with masculinity right now. Do you feel like there is basically a direct attack on both sides with women kind of disconnecting to their femininity, men disconnecting to their masculinity? Do you feel like that there is a kind of a bigger agenda at hand there?
Adam Marafioti Well, it kind of seems like there is an attack on everything that's true and good these days, whether it's deliberate or not. So, yeah, it does really feel like we're kind of an upside down world. And in my worldview, there is good and there is evil. And these forces are kind of in a constant back and forth. And it's up to us to sort of choose good. And the existence of evil is what makes choosing good so good in general. We can be a part of evil, we can do evil, but we can choose good, and that is the essence of goodness. And this attack on masculinity, whether it's a satanic inversion or whatever it is—we could speculate all day—what it does, though, and with changing both the gender roles into basically swapping them or making them more ambiguous, it definitely seems to have an atomizing effect on the family. Less family, less procreation, obviously saying that kids are bad for the environment, all this kind of thing. They allow consumerism and government control to really flourish. In a family-oriented scenario where there's a strong unit in place and everyone is sort of in a very tight collective, there's less need for the person to fulfill themselves and their life with consumer goods. And it works in every way in benefit for the controlling forces at the expense of our quality of lives and especially family life. Yeah, I guess I don't want to speculate too much further on that for now.
Kori Meloy Well, I love that you brought up the procreation thing because I had learned— this is new to me; I don't know if it's new to you guys, but @innate_fertility, Loren de la Cruz, had done this reel where she was kind of highlighting this comment that was left on her page calling her a breeder as like a derogatory term. And she was discussing this antinatalist movement that has kind of been on the rise, which I have been aware of. But I didn't realize— even in the last few years, kind of like really skyrocketing in that, yeah, children and having children and producing children is kind of turning into this idea of being almost like a sinister option in that it's harming the Earth, it's harming the planet, humans are bad, people are bad. And so therefore, producing more is only kind of perpetuating this state of this idea of humans harming the earth. And yeah, I'm curious if you have seen that or observed that, and if you feel like that is all related to kind of that discussion of the attack on maybe the family unit, masculinity, femininity.
Adam Marafioti Mm hmm. Yeah. I've never heard the term breeder before. That's kind of funny. Yeah. So I think this comes down to, as well, having a coherent worldview that's rooted in something strong and that makes sense and that corresponds with our reality. The overarching worldview now or the dominant worldview now, is that basically the globe is their god. And we must act accordingly to not harm it and to not— you know, with whatever definition that they create based on what day of the week it is, basically. We have to adhere to those sort of— you know, how to respect the globe and not to create climate change and not to exhale more carbon out of our lungs, etc. But it's very founded in atheism and it's founded in what I would think is unnatural and doesn't actually make any sense in reality because they're missing a lot of key fundamentals about the earth and about what is and isn't pollution. They see carbon dioxide as a poison, which if anyone has studied the work of Ray Peat, they know that it's probably the opposite of that. I mean, as far as the innate breeding thing, I don't really—
Fallon Lee No, I mean, this is a new thing for me to hear, too. This is a new term. And the more I sit here and kind of think through the trajectory of our current culture, I mean, in truth, we've been existing in an attack on procreation for some time now. And I know it's going to probably— again, I never know in our sphere who's going to—I don't know—be offended by this or not. But I mean, in truth, this has existed for a long time in the form of birth control and a number of things. We have been kind of moving toward this sort of dishonoring view of procreation. And it makes a lot of sense. Genuinely, I mean, Adam, with your point of viewing the world in terms of sort of good and evil and light and dark, which is very much kind of how I view things, too. And I think about one of the first biblical commandments that the Lord gave was "be fruitful and multiply." And so why would our culture not be attacking procreation? Because it's just the nature of our culture to attack what is good and beautiful. And so this is just— I get it's a multifaceted and heavy conversation, so we just kind of wanted to have a back and forth on like, have you heard this, too? Because this was a new phrase for me to hear the whole breeder thing. So kind of moving on from that in terms of our younger generation's health. I know that you, being someone who was kind of caught up in the trend of veganism and even raw veganism for a long time, would love to hear your thoughts on what you think will be the long-term impact of our school age children who are attending schools in person and public schools in particular, government run schooling systems and the sort of politically correct nutrition that they're receiving at lunch time, etc. Even like meatless Mondays have become such a trend over the past several years. And I'm curious to hear your thoughts on what you perceive the effects of this to be for the younger generation right now should they continue to exist in this realm of nutrition that's kind of being pushed by the culture at large.
Adam Marafioti Actually I'm not too familiar with that type of school nutrition thing. I don't have kids and I used to bring my lunch every day to school when I was a kid. I'm Italian, so I'd bring a sandwich with cold cuts inside of it, basically every single day.
Fallon Lee That's really impressive, actually.
Adam Marafioti Sick of salami for life. But I think what seems to be the worst part of that, in my view, is that it reinforces this type of guilt based mentality around food instead of a more— like you said, meatless Mondays, that's a very guilty phrase. It's like we're these horrible eaters every other day, but on Monday, we're going to atone for our meat sins. Right? And I think from a physical perspective, kids are quite resilient and they can probably bounce back from a lot of things just like we did. I'm sure we probably grew up maybe on subpar nutrition than kids nowadays might just because of the overall education that's gone on around whole foods and stuff. A lot of people are a little more with it now. Even the ones that do still consume junk are probably not as bad, or at least there's more nutrition facts and calories and things like that. There's just a little more mainstream education about that. But the mentality around food, I think, is really important because we need to understand that in this world and this system we live in, everything derives energy and nutrition from everything else. And that is part of the cycle of nature. That's the way this place is designed. And again, that sort of atheistic mentality tries to create a utopia here based on the very gray definitions of sort of eliminating suffering. And it kind of shields you from reality in a way, because we should know that with life there's death and so on and so forth. And like I said about good and evil, the beauty of good is that evil exists. And the beauty of life is that death exists. And we need to sort of really respect that natural cycle or else we're fundamentally flawed.
Kori Meloy Back when I was, I think, first getting into more of alternative health, I think that Zach Bush was actually one of the first people that I found and was kind of like— back then he was— I think he may have been plant-based back then. I don't think he's plant-based anymore, but he was the first person I ever heard talk about regeneration of soil and the earth. And something that I thought was so cool that he talked about was this idea of death being such a beautiful part of life. And he would tell these stories about being with people in their last moments and just talking about how these are some of the most beautiful moments he's ever had in his life was interacting with people who are just like taking their last breath and that being something that inspired even more his approach to life and how beautiful it is. And so I think that it's interesting that Zach Bush was one of the first people that kind of introduced me to that idea. And he is kind of a little more countercultural now as far as what is actually politically correct. Okay, so jumping into kind of like practical questions from our audience, I know that a big one that we get is— we interact with a lot of married women, and I'm sure a lot of husbands are listening to this podcast episode right now. And a lot of questions that we get is how—in practical terms—can men kind of like start taking ownership of their health in a way that is hormonally supportive and supportive of the cellular level of their bodies? What are some practical tips you would give men if they're literally just now starting out kind of with their approach to bioenergetic nutrition?
Adam Marafioti Yeah, for sure. I tend to optimize a sort of set of principles, like metabolic principles. And that's how I go throughout my day. I'm not super duper extreme or particular anymore. I mean, I guess maybe someone on the outside might think that I am, probably would. But for me, it's a little more balanced and free-flowing. But I try to consume calcium-containing foods every day. So I consume raw dairy, cheese, things like that. I try to consume red meat most days, like a grass-fed red meat. I try to consume organ meats at least once a month, if not more. Just be practical with yourself on what you can do there. But just grab some liver. It's not that hard. And I try to balance out my carbohydrate intake with my protein intake. I try to eat breakfast every day. Well, I do eat breakfast every day. I try to eat protein and carbs every meal, 3 to 5 times a day. And yeah, those are kind of the main metabolic— you know, I call them the balancing act. And the other thing is I look at my electrolytes and my minerals and try to just have a rough idea around balancing those. So understanding that a lot of foods are high in phosphorus, and like I said, you need to have the calcium foods which are to balance out the phosphorus. And high iron foods should be balanced with foods with the other trace minerals in them. So you just want to make sure you're getting foods that have things like copper, selenium, iodine, zinc. All of those trace minerals are very important. And they're in things like eggs, like organ meats, seafood, oysters, shellfish, things like that. So those would be very foundational principles that you can structure your days of eating around and not be too crazy about it.
Fallon Lee Yeah, I love that those are all very attainable. It's funny to me, any time I have a wife reach out who's like, "Oh, I want to buy a meal plan or I want to start kind of eating this way, but I don't know about my husband." And I'm like, "Listen, your husband is going to be just fine. He's going to really enjoy, 'Hey, you should eat breakfast every morning and probably have some eggs,' and like, 'Hey, you should probably have steak and potatoes for dinner tonight.'" Like, what man is going to be like, "No, that actually sounds really restrictive and terrible." Like, these are all very attainable tips. I love this idea of having daily goals and daily rhythms that you do instead of like, oh, here's this list of things you should and shouldn't do. So I thought that was fantastic starting advice. And then we'd also love to hear your thoughts on this whole principle because, like Kori said, one of the things we get asked about the most frequently is like, "Hey, my husband, brother, whatever has zero interest in pursuing health. How do I help motivate him?" And I'm curious how you would respond to people asking you like, how do I motivate someone who doesn't have any motivation? And in particular, a male? Because we wrestle with this idea of trying to force someone into health will probably have quite the opposite effect. And so how do we kind of gently encourage maybe the men in particular in our lives to kind of walk this road without losing our gracious and helpful approach?
Adam Marafioti Yeah. I mean, I do have a lot to say on that because things like motivation and self-improvement are just as important to me as physical, biological health. To me, it's like my next love, or maybe just equal, in terms of what I study and stuff. And so I'll go through how I began. I would say, at this point, I've become pretty good at motivating myself and being very determined and strict when I need to be and not in other times, etc. So I think the way that I began in the health journey was I started to tailor first who I wanted to be. And that's from a more surface level, which would be like looks, clothes physique. You start to basically create an image of what you actually want to be, like what person you want to be. What do you want to look like if you were, let's say, like a caricature of yourself. And this is more of like a type of a lower or initial paradigm with more shallow, result oriented. That's how a lot of people end up getting into health is like they want to have better skin, they want to have better physique, things like that. They want to do anti-aging, but that's good and bad because it is bad if you stay there and you stay in a very shallow mentality, but it's good as a stepping stone. And when you start to feel better, then you can progress. And then what I went from there is like you can think of what you want to do, right? The next thing I did was what did I want to do? And the upward spiral of wanting to be more healthy because you're feeling good, that's what led me into my health career. And I think that purpose, on a day-to-day basis, it's extremely like a fundamental part of our energy. I think that maybe part of the divine intelligence, our bodies know that if we're not in a task or a job that we like, it actually kind of tries to shut us down to maybe protect us away from these mundane tasks or jobs or activities. So that would be sort of the mid-level paradigm is like who I want to be, what do I want to do? And then the third one is what kind of life you want to live. So what are the activities you want to be doing on a day-to-day? What do you want to get good at? Do you want to start surfing? Or do you want to become good at mountain biking? Or pursue hobbies? You want to get good at building something? That becomes more of a state-oriented paradigm where you start to find things that are more flow state and they give you a higher sense of purpose. Right? And probably building a family and having kids, etc., can be a huge part of that as well. So as far as getting motivated— and I'd like to relate that into a view of masculinity that I have, is like you need to start being at the cause instead of the effect of what happens to you as a man and as someone who wants to become motivated. Ultimately you can't force anyone to be motivated. But men, we have to be at the cause instead of the effect, right? So that's not being a victim. That's understanding that we control our output. We control our input. We control our state and everything. Right? We're not— things aren't happening to us. It's the outward flow of energy that comes from the man. Right? The alchemical view of masculinity and femininity has really gotten me interested lately because they see it as and they relate it to sun and moon. The masculine has this outward giving energy, and then the woman has a receiving energy where the masculine is there to provide and to protect. And the woman receives and creates. And from there, there's this beautiful harmony between man and woman. That's another thing I've been very interested in lately. But another thing to help with motivation, too—staying on topic there—is men have to start or continue engaging in activities and behaviors that give you energy versus taking energy from you. So on a day to day basis, are you doing things that actually fill you up? Or are you constantly engaging in these parasitic activities like scrolling through reels and TikToks and things all the time or Netflix, etc. These things just take from you. They don't give back. They are parasites, right? Energy parasites. Instead of— going outside. Are you doing physical activity? Are you doing real things that you love that you can be happy about after the fact? Do you audit your time? How do I live my life in every aspect? Do I waste 30 minutes here or there when I could be working on other things? Do I use my time effectively? Am I looking at an ROI for my time? Or am I just kind of wasting it, right? Spending time, as they say. Killing time, even worse. What type of people do I surround myself with? Another very important thing. Am I surrounding myself with motivating people? Or am I surrounding myself with people that just basically want to waste away all day and all they want to do is just feel good and do that sort of thing?
Kori Meloy Totally.
Adam Marafioti Setting attainable goals. Do I know what I want? Am I pursuing it? Am I pursuing anything? Am I building something? This is very important as men, right? The notion of building is like a fundamental, I think, concept that is very important in a man's life. And we need to be building everything, building our lives, building family, building— that's just a fundamental masculine thing. And if you're not doing that, you need to start just basically auditing and saying, what can I do that is going to begin the first step there? Do I see obstacles and pain points as opportunities to grow, learn, and get stronger? Or am I just becoming a victim every time something bad happens to me and basically crying and complaining about it? Those are all things that will help a man get more and more motivated. And unfortunately, what needs to happen often is there needs to be a level of suffering or something that the man actually wants to remediate. I'm not sure that a nagging wife is enough. Personally, for me, I needed to really feel like I was sucking in life in order to make massive, massive change and get so motivated that I wanted it so bad. Right? And it's not just about the result, but it's about are you able to exercise your will? Just being able to do that alone is fulfilling. But there should be incentive, right? There should be something there that the man has to achieve. If his life is so comfortable at the moment, then it's going to be very hard to just find some intrinsic motivation.
Kori Meloy That was unreal. Like, so good. You hit on so many points that I was like, yes, yes, yes. And specifically— and I can share a little bit about my husband's journey with us as well, if that's helpful to our audience. We did this live together, but the audio was so poor that we couldn't get a lot of our concepts across. But I wanted to talk about this idea of the sun and the moon thing, because we did this relationship dynamic, masculinity, femininity mentorship with a woman named Michale Chatham—we had her on our podcast; love her—and she taught us this concept that speaks directly to what you were saying. And I love also the building analogy because essentially she's like, "The man is a frame holder, so they hold a frame, and then the women create within that frame." And motherhood, specifically, can feel like a very masculine role for women, because they can be the visionaries or the fixers or the do-it-all or the wear-the-many-hats and kind of be in this state that feels very masculine in that a lot of times they kind of carry— they are the foundation of their homes and they kind of carry the homes on their back. That happens all the time, I would say, maybe with the majority of our audience. And for a man to be able to step into a role where a woman can feel like she can fall back on him and lean on him is the difference. And so, yeah, just even like the imagery of the man holding a frame for a woman to be able to feel safe within, that in and of itself is what can allow those dynamics to flourish even more. And when you talked about the idea of victimhood, my husband found— and he doesn't mind me sharing this because he's already shared this publicly, but he was definitely in a state of learned helplessness for a while. And that was a result of many different layers and dynamics in his life. But he found that just being in an environment where I was consistently like— okay, so if I'm cooking most of the time— now, he helps me a lot with cooking with our two kids, but before we had kids, I was doing a lot of the cooking, and as long as I was feeding him the consistent meals, packing his lunch, feeding him breakfast, making sure— like me just literally, I'm setting the food environment for my home. So he's just kind of like eating along with that and getting the food consistency in, balancing his carbs and protein, even just eliminating copious amounts of alcohol. For him to eat consistently like that for about a year and a half, it kind of brought him out of learned helplessness alone because he felt the difference on how he felt when he was consistently nourished. And then he got really into Jocko Williams and he was like, oh, literally everything is an outpouring. Like what you were just saying out of like everything is an outpouring of the man within the home. I take total ownership of every choice and action, even my children having a meltdown. How can I take ownership in this situation? And so I find that that is a really big encouragement to women who might be married to a man who is in that state of learned helplessness, which is often a result of hormones and that hormonal state of feeling like you have all the resources in front of you, but you can't actually put a foot forward. And I'm curious, Adam, if you actually went through that at a point in your life. But if you're a woman listening to this episode, I find that the most supportive thing you can do is just feed your man the same way that you would feed yourself and just see if that, in and of itself, gives him a little bit more of tools and resources to kind of bring himself out of that state of learned helplessness. Because there was this study—I think I talked about it either on the podcast or on the live, but there was a study that Ray Peat discussed where these rats were in this little pool, right? And they took the ladder away, and all that they had to do was teach the rats just once that they could save themselves. And they got themselves immediately out of a state of depression, which speaks so much to the emotional state of what that is. But just like that one little taste of "I can help myself" and "I'm not a victim to life" is just huge. And I found your take on all of that just super inspirational. But I'm curious if you went through a whole learned helplessness state prior to kind of coming out of it.
Adam Marafioti Yeah. Well, from a Ray Peat perspective, that would probably be associated with high serotonin if we're going down that route, which is definitely more physical, more scientific route would be the high serotonin state definitely has been shown, at least in some studies, to induce learned helplessness. And I think SSRIs are a big culprit there as well if anyone has history with those. Yeah, it basically turns you into a robot. And the culture itself today wants to basically turn you into a robot as well, right? To just keep you as this consumer on the black screen and you just sort of follow orders and listen to the science and all that nonsense, right? Is just to fall in line with the robotic mentality that each person they want to have. And I wonder if there's a bit of a seesaw or like a give-and-take effect where you can— acting that way either creates more of the learned helplessness and more serotonin and vice versa. But yeah, I would definitely focus on— like you probably fed him a lot of carrot salads, I assume. That probably helped, actually. And the other thing that I would suggest, too, for men is—and for anyone really—is to do some macro calculations on like a chronometer or any sort of calorie tracker app because chronically under eating as well— people just don't know generally what's in their food or don't have any sort of generic idea of this is that many calories and this has that much fat in it. It doesn't have to be exact, but to have an idea is very, very important so that you know you're eating enough each day so that you're not in a constant depleted state. And then being depleted in nutrients is going to obviously run you short of neurotransmitters, running short of building blocks for hormones, all these types of things, lower energy because you don't have enough of the metabolic backbones. So I would definitely recommend doing the calorie tracking until you have a good enough idea where you can look at your day and say, "Oh, yeah, I'm pretty on it." Did I go through a state of learned helplessness? I would say probably. It's probably even more of a default state now than not. So I would say probably before I got into health, I was at least in some form of learned helplessness. Although I don't know what exactly allowed me to get out of that and pursue health, but I'm very glad that I had it. And yeah, I think that health is kind of a stepping stone to help you become more passionate about life, to help you start resonating with things that expand you, start resonating with things that add value to yourself, start resonating with things that add value to the world. Part of that can be a family and kids. Making a contribution that what might be seen as your legacy or what you leave behind or your mark that you leave on this world. To me, health is a great stepping stone to that. And health is not the be all, end all. But that's where I would start. That's where I started. Definitely your story resonates with me because I've felt great behavioral, emotional, and physiological changes just on changing my diet and doing certain supplements and stuff. And so I really do like your advice is like just get the nutrition on point because even that will have a great effect.
Kori Meloy And just that idea of men and their primal needs, they have this idea—different than women—in that they're very goal-oriented, and it's so helpful and in touch with that primal, innate need to actually set that goal and then move towards it. And so even this idea of legacy, that's setting a goal and then moving towards it. And even tracking macros for like a day, that is like setting a goal. Auditing your time, auditing how you spend your time, all those things that you touched on really are these masculine, primal needs that a lot of men are kind of out of touch with because of that system of like, okay, zone out on the big black box or follow somebody else's orders, rules, systems, strategies. And you're just kind of riding the wave, and breaking yourself out of that and actually setting goals for yourself, I think in and of itself, is a really, really powerful psychological tool to be able to get you out of that. Because what happened to my husband, Kyle, was once he broke out of that, he was very motivated to start paying attention to like, "Have I had an adrenal cocktail today?" He was very motivated to actually set those goals for himself. And then from there, he became a goal-setting king. So it was just interesting to watch him go from that to that. And sometimes an environmental shift is needed along with that. So big FAQ from women in our community is when a man actually works maybe like a 9 to 5 job or long hours away from the home or maybe travels a lot, what are some ways that they can support their bodies when they're not necessarily cooking at home? Maybe things to bring with them to work? What do you do on a travel day when you're not actually cooking out of your own kitchen?
Adam Marafioti Well, I would 100% invest in a cooler. That would be the number one thing I do, because it's not often where I leave my house for a very long time if I'm traveling or driving or something that I don't bring something along with me. And if you don't have a cooler right away, you can do things like dried fruit and jerky, although paying attention to the balancing fundamentals that I talked about earlier. But yeah, I would definitely get a cooler. And if you're working all week, you can do things like meal prep. And just make sure you are consuming enough calories and nutrition to counterbalance the stresses which are physical demands on our system that consume nutrients is what, you know, is stress. Cortisol and adrenaline and things, like I was talking about, hormones being signals of the input in the environment. They exist simply to give you more energy. And so we don't want to be relying on those hormones all the time. That's maladaptive. What you can do instead is feed your body to counteract the stress that occurs with just simple, everyday demand.
Fallon Lee We would also love to hear— in terms of supplementation for men— and obviously, this is a great chance for you to talk about your own company and the products that you create. But we'd love to hear what your favorite supplements are for men. And then kind of as an additional question, I would love to hear—for a specific supplement that you share—do you feel like that is an entry point or do you feel like the nutritional foundation has to be set before you add in that specific supplement? Does that make sense? Like what are your favorites? And then can we incorporate them right away? Or do we need the nutritional foundation before we even start dabbling in that particular supplement?
Adam Marafioti I think for someone who hasn't— you know, who's basically nowhere in terms of their health, supplements can be a pretty good bang for your buck because they are more potent than real foods or extractions, often. It's not just a ground whole food. And they're typically higher doses of things that you would get in food, and they have marked physiological effects. So supplements in general can be quite a bang for your buck. But I always would suggest having a food foundation in place because you don't want to get into the mentality of just relying on supplements all the time, even though they can help you. You want to use them as tools. And the word in itself, it's a supplement to your existing life, to your diet, to your lifestyle. It's not a replacement. And personally, my supplements are kind of foundational, just the way that I do everything. I try to see things, at least, from the framework from the ground up. So my supplements are, you know, B vitamins and magnesium, for instance, are at the very foundations of the energetic process physiologically. If our bodies are water that conducts electricity through minerals and electrolyte filled water and light and food input, B vitamins and minerals are basically at the very basis of keeping that cycle going. So that's why I love my B Complex Energi+. It's kind of like— I take it every day. They're water soluble, so the water soluble vitamins like B vitamins and vitamin C are ones that excrete through your urine. They don't get stored in you for long periods of time, so you can take them daily. Then the fat soluble vitamins like A and K would be ones that can be stored in fat. So if you're to, say, take a large dose, then you could potentially have that stored in your body for longer. But as far as metabolic foundations, I would say getting adequate electrolytes is very important, number one. B vitamins would be number two, and consuming enough macronutrient, in terms of calories and protein, carbohydrate and fat.
Fallon Lee Also, I just have to tell you a quick, fun story. We're a big Star Wars household. I don't know if you care about Star Wars at all or will get this reference, but they drink blue milk in the Star Wars universe. And your methylene blue is always what we put in our milk to make it blue. And it's a big staple in our household, that we drink blue milk. And that's how it turns blue is from your stuff.
Adam Marafioti That's awesome. Yeah, I've never heard of that.
Kori Meloy Can we do a quick kind of explanation on methylene blue? Because I think that—at least in my course community—I think that your products and maybe Noelle's methylene blue were their first introduction to even what that is. So a lot of people are still pretty new to the conversation and I would love to hear just like a little segment on just what that even is and how it serves the body.
Fallon Lee Mm hmm. Can you include kiddos in this conversation too? I know a lot of moms will be like, "Okay, but also talk about this in light of my family." So can we throw that into the answer, too? I would love that.
Adam Marafioti Sure. So methylene blue is a synthetic compound. It's not a whole food extract. It's not a vitamin or mineral. It's one of the first synthetic medicines that was ever created. It is the first— actually in 1876, Paul Ehrlich— and it came actually from the textile industry as a dye and they began using it for superficial purposes during research to stain things and over time realized that it had amazing physiological effects. When they were using it, they were basically reversing overgrowths of all types— fungal, bacterial, etc. And it began as a malaria drug as its first use all through the First World War era. And then over many more years of studying it, it was found that it had great effects on mental health issues like depression, schizophrenia, anxiety, and so on and so forth. And they studied it for many other types of ailments. It's now an approved treatment for UTIs, for septic shock, cyanide poisoning, carbon monoxide poisoning. I think that's what it's approved for in hospitals. So if you get poisoned in the U.S. By one of those things, you actually may receive a huge dose of methylene blue in the hospital via injection. I like to segue the poisoning bit into how I explain its effect because its effect can only be explained scientifically. And I know for most people that's— you know, talking about mitochondria is over the top. So the mitochondria are inside of your cell. They are responsible for the bulk of producing energy, which is electrical in nature. It happens through the conversion of oxygen into water. And the structuring of water with a molecule called ATP seems to be what energy is. When a poison of like, let's say, for example, cyanide or carbon monoxide— but it actually applies to a lot of different poisons. So any metabolic poison, whether that's an environmental pollutant, you inhaled paint fumes or exhaust on the street, heavy metals, etc., metabolic poison basically inhibits oxygen from flowing in your mitochondria and becoming water essentially through that electrical process. And it's through what's called the carrying of electrons. That's at least as we know it. And what methylene blue does is when there's poison present that is inhibiting the oxygen flow with electrons, it actually is able to basically step in for oxygen and facilitate that electrical flow, even when oxygen is basically not able to be used because of the poisoning. So that's why it has such an amazing effect and that's why it has such a wide range of effects, meaning your shoulder pain or your UTI or your brain fog can all be benefited. Or at least I've received stories from customers from syndrome A to Z being benefited, is because it has such a foundational effect on the body's ability to produce energy. And if the metabolic and bioenergetic perspective is in any way correct, then producing energy is basically at the foundation of what makes us either healthy or lack of— unhealthy.
Kori Meloy Yeah. With methylene blue, I take probably— I get a lot of questions about like "do you take it while breastfeeding?" I personally take about one or two drops daily in a little bit of water. But Adam on his Instagram has a whole dosing post saved to his feed. So if you guys end up getting his product, there's a whole instructional post there with resources linked if you guys want to look into more. I would love to wrap up today with just this idea of the hot topic of testosterone booster. My husband and I had this inside joke for so long because, back when I was first getting into health, I would be like, "Yeah, yeah, it's good for this." And he's like, "Yeah, no." And I'm like, "It boosts your testosterone." There's like this buzziness this with men where it's like, "Woop, okay. I'll listen to that for a second." It's like a buzzword almost. And I feel like that is almost like a hot hormone for men to be like, "Oh, anything that boosts the testosterone, like, sign me up." But I would love to hear you just discuss, like, is that the most important hormone for men? And just this idea of a lot of what you do is, again, just naturally supporting the hormonal balance. But yeah, would you like to just touch on that as far as testosterone boosting tips? And if you get that question and then what you typically say when you receive that question.
Adam Marafioti Yeah. And sorry, Fallon, I'll just talk about the kids thing because I remember I forgot.
Fallon Lee Oh sure.
Adam Marafioti So I do have a lot of customers that do give drops of methylene blue to their kids. They do so typically when the kids are like falling ill. And I've heard time and time again, "I gave three or four drops or two drops to my kid, and he was getting sick, and the next day he's back in the playground and going nuts again." So yeah, it can be given to kids. It's typically not recommended during pregnancy, and none of this is medical advice, etc. I'm not advising anyone take it. And yeah, breastfeeding, some of my customers have taken it during then and others not. And small amounts is very, very safe. Testosterone boosters, my favorite are pine pollen is actually my number one favorite, pine pollen tincture. And I use— it's called Canadian Pine Pollen. They harvest pine pollen in the wild in B.C. and they actually don't break the cell wall. Every other pine pollen company advertises this broken cell wall thing. I know a lot of it is from China, probably most of it otherwise. So you should look for that. But I really like their tincture. And it's funny what you said, too, because there is this sort of really buzz about testosterone, even though none of us have actually seen something called testosterone before. And so we have no way of knowing that that's what it is or if increasing that is what is making us feel good. However, if the consensus is correct on that one, then having high levels of testosterone for men might be beneficial, or at least to have it in balance with what your good physiology would look like. Personally, I've never measured mine. I only go by feel. I don't like chasing labs. I don't like chasing molecules. I'm looking to tweak things as if I am playing God with myself. I like to do things from a more theoretical and holistic perspective. But if we're talking about consuming something that might boost testosterone, then it would either be consuming like an endogenous type of testosterone, which would be— let's say pine pollen has like plant androgen in it, like a phytoandrogen, similar to like soy would be like a phytoestrogen, or containing it. And otherwise, I guess you could take something that would encourage the enzymes that help you synthesize hormones from their building block, which is typically cholesterol and... So, one, you would definitely want to make sure you're consuming cholesterol from animal foods. And then two, you want to make sure that you're consuming the electrolytes because enzymes are part of the electrical process that happens within us by energy that convert one thing to another in our body. So you need to make sure that the electrical component of your body is running very well. And that's with minerals, with touching real earth, which is conductive with sun, infrared light, which charges the water inside of you, which is part of that entire electrical system. So you need to make sure that you are not looking just at compounds and look at everything. Right? Look at supplements, look at herbs, look at light, look at everything, and make sure you're not skipping a beat.
Fallon Lee Adam, thank you so much for coming on today. We have been wanting to do a men's health focused episode for, I mean, probably since our conception. I mean, I feel like we've talked about this through the history of the podcast, and I can genuinely say this exceeded my expectations of what this conversation could have been. I think you were just such a great guest to have on to cover all of this. So thank you so much for your time. And of course, we will link LifeBlud and ways to connect with you in our show notes. And we would love to just send support your way. We just appreciate your work and the products that you put out so, so much. So thank you again for your time. Thank you guys for listening. We cannot wait to just hear your thoughts around this episode and we will see you guys in the next season. This is our last episode for this season, so thank you so much for following along in season four and we will see you guys in 2023.