Do you remember what kind of tissue blood is? This is a phenomenal final exam question. What kind of tissue is blood? Blood is a connective tissue. And hopefully you're like, boom, I know what connective tissues are. Connective tissues are cells within a matrix of ground substance and fibers. And that's what all connective tissues are. And you might be thinking, but we have been looking at a real connective tissue and dense irregular connective tissue and how can fluid be a connective tissue? But remember that connective tissue is highly diverse and fluid connective tissue is a really interesting variation on the theme. So let's look at, we have two main components of blood. And that is we have plasma, which is a fluid component. And then we also have cellular elements. And the term is cellular elements, because as you'll see, someone who's included in the cellular element club isn't actually a full cell. So they're kind of, well, we'll talk about that in a second. You have about total five liters, five liters of blood, which is about 10.5 pints. I have a visual of a pint of Ben and Jerry's. So I can imagine my 10.5 pints of Ben and Jerry's flowing through my bloodstream. Holy cow, that would be a lot of ice cream to eat. Some days it feels like I could do that. Your plasma, you've got about three liters. So what is that? Like 10, I mean six plus pints is plasma, which is this fluid substance.  So that's what's left over. So if you were to separate out your blood into the cells and the plasma, which is the fluid part, then you would see that you have more plasma than cells. And we're actually going to show you a visual of doing just that. Let's talk about our plasma first. 92% of your plasma is water, 92% water. And that's how we ended up with it being fluid. The plasma is actually your ground substance. Your plasma has stuff in it, which are considered our fibers. About 7% of your plasma is proteins. And so you can imagine, okay, so here's my plasma, I'm showing you that there's waves in there because it's fluid, you go surfing in there on your blood. And now I'm going to show you the proteins because we have all different flavors of proteins. There are proteins called antibodies. They are an important part of blood and they may actually make up a bunch of the blood. Antibodies are involved in your immune system and I'm just going to draw a few of them in here. Now, the plasma proteins are important players when it comes to how blood functions, to some of its functions, clotting is an interesting function. And we have some proteins that are involved in clotting. One of them is called fibrinogen. And so fibrinogen plays a role in clotting.   It's kind of, it's also a protein and it's one of the primary proteins that's found in your plasma. The amount of protein in your plasma plays a role in maintaining, keeping the blood, the fluid, the plasma in the vessels and not seeping out into the rest of your tissues, like into your connective tissues surrounding your vessels, where if that happened, you would swell. That'd be a bummer. And then you have, you know, if you add up my numbers here, you will see that no, we didn't quite reach 100%. 1% of the stuff in your blood is just in the other category. And other stuff includes ions, you can have nutrients, glucose can be in there, like there's other stuff sprinkled in, like I imagine it like sand sprinkling in amongst all these other kind of bigger things. Plasma is where our cellular elements float. And the cellular elements, we've got our main dudes, are our main dudes, erythrocytes, also known as red blood cells.  And here's the scoop. About 44% of your cellular elements, no, that's not true actually.  So we'll talk about that one in a second. But red blood cells are wholly abundant. In fact, when we do the histology of blood today lecture, I mean in lab, you will see that when you look in at your scope, like red blood cells everywhere. And so red blood cells are extremely abundant. These guys are responsible for gas exchange. So we know red blood cells as carrying oxygen. They also carry carbon dioxide, but they're carrying them back and forth to the lungs so that we can have gas exchange in the lungs. We've got red blood cells. We also have white blood cells. And these guys are called leukocytes.  And leukocytes, we're going to talk about all five flavors of leukocytes, but they're all involved in some way in immunity. And the immune system is your protection. Attack the bad guys. They're the army soldiers in the immune system. And the last people on our list are the thrombocytes, really? Yes. Thrombosis. Thrombosis, is that a word? A bruise is a thrombosis or a clot. I think it's a clot. Yeah, it is. But a bruise has something, whatever. Guess what thrombocytes are involved in? Clotting. Who are they? They're platelets. And this is where the platelets are why we labeled this as cellular elements and not cells. Because platelets, they're pretty fantastic. They're actually broken off cell pieces from these massive cells in your bone marrow called mega, mega karyocytes. So you've got these mega karyocytes hanging out in your bone marrow. All of your cellular elements from in the blood, well, okay, most of them are born in the bone marrow. And then they go from being in the bone marrow, they squeeze into the bloodstream, and they go traveling around and doing their thing, whatever they're supposed to do in the blood. But thrombocytes come from mega karyocytes and they're so huge that they can't squeeze into the blood.   So the mega karyocyte is actually breaking into tiny pieces that float around in the blood and those are your platelets. And it's awesome, thank you platelets, because they play an important role. I'm trying to show you that they're like broken up little pieces of mega karyocytes. So that's what they're going to do. Okay, you now have everything. Now what we're going to do is let's centrifuge this down. Let's take a tube of blood, shall we? But of course we shall. And let's centrifuge the blood. So if we started out with, you know, this much blood in our test tube, you know, when you centrifuge you spin it down and so the heavy, more dense things are going to come to the bottom of the tube and the less dense things are going to float to the top. And what do you think is the most dense thing in the blood? Well, I'm going to play Pictionary with you if I can find the right. We'll have to go with this. Oh, what color did I use? The erythrocytes are the most abundant item in the blood that is going to centrifuge down the cellular elements and actually this is where my 44% came in. Now, they're the most dense. Next in line, I have to pick my color carefully and this will give you a hint. Look at this color. Hmm, who is that? That is purple plus blue. That, my white blood cells and my leukocytes, I mean my thrombocytes, centrifuge down to the middle strip and they only make up about 1% of the total volume of this blood. And then what's left on top? This is just my plasma. And so the plasma makes up all the rest of it. If you were to spin down the blood, you can actually measure the amount, the number of red blood cells and that's your hematocrit and it will tell you your oxygen carrying capacity which is important. If you don't have enough red blood cells, then you're not going to be able to get enough oxygen to your system and the symptoms that you will see are symptoms of anemia.  It's because you don't have enough oxygen getting to your cells to generate the energy that you need to do what you got to do. For the rest of this lecture, we're going to break down our leukocytes. For having just a measly 1% of all of our blood leukocytes, we're going to spend a good chunk of time talking about each one individually and how they function.


If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump, mind pump, with your hosts. Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this episode, whoa, of Mind Pump. The beginning intro is about 30 minutes, and we get into some fun conversation. We talk about Adam's uncle, Casey, who Adam is a lot. He's like the same guy. A lot-like, except his uncle Casey's cooler than he is. We talk about family resemblances, and who the people we take after are like, and how we identify with that, and how that influences our behavior. And are we stuck to that, or can we change that through our own? Am I going to turn into my grandpa? Exactly. So basically, destiny versus choice. We talk about the silver lining behind my gut issues. And then I kind of get into how I use certain products to help with my gut issues. I talk about one product in particular by FourSigmatic, their Raishi mushroom. We actually have a code, I believe, that offers people a discount at FourSigmatic, F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C dot com forward slash mind pump. And you'll get 15% off if you use the code Mind Pump for your first purchase. And by the way, I refer a Smart Drugs Smarts episode in the intro where they talk about the benefits and health effects of mushrooms. It's kind of interesting. If you've not listened to Jesse's podcast, you have to listen to Jesse's podcast. It's Fire, and he always has Fire guest on that show. Smart Drugs Smarts is one of my favorite podcasts. Jesse is the host by the way. The episode I refer to is episode number 82. And then we get into the questions. The first question was what do we think about pulsing supplements or cycling supplements to encourage the body's natural functions versus just taking them all the time? Then we answer the question about how you should introduce yourself to other professionals. Justin has a very interesting method. Hi, how are you doing? That's it. Then we talk about occlusion training. Is it actually good for long-term muscle growth or is it just this kind of fleeting extra pump you get in the bicep? Or as we like to call it, a muscle erection. It's like a boner for muscles. Then we talk about Maps Prime Pro and would you be able to use that if you have some kind of neurological issue? Could it benefit you? And besides Prime Pro, types of training you can do to help yourself become more connected. Finally, this month, one of my favorite promotions we've ever done we're actually giving away access to our private forum for free if you enroll in any of our programs, any of our Maps programs or any of our bundles. The private forum is something that we really cherish, we really value. There's about 2,000 professionals on there, fitness enthusiasts, doctors. Well, we wanted to do this because our programs themselves are valuable, but now it's like you can have that accountability to walk you through the programs and be able to ping pong with other people in there that are going through the same thing or the professionals to give you an eye that you may not be seeing yourself. Well, the most successful people we've seen with the programs are people who do the programs and then work with the forum so they can kind of move through each phase, ask people questions. They even help modify your workouts because of course we always encourage modifications according to your body.  So it's just a great resource. It's free if you enroll in any program and at the end of the month, it's gonna be going up in price as well because normally we sell that. You can find all of that at mindpumpmedia.com. T-shirt time. Give away some shirts, Doug. We're doing them reviews lately. We had 11 reviews, so we're giving away three shirts. Okay, all right. Save money on shirts. Okay, all right. So the winners are Captain Patch. Hey, yarr. Shave it off. More JoJo. Or less. Yeah, we like more JoJo. Kate S123456. All of you are winners. Winners. How do they get their shirts, Doug? Yeah, send the name I just read to itunes at mindpumpmedia.com, your shirt size, your shipping address and we'll get that right out to ya. And then rock them right away and show us on Instagram. Right, yeah, don't forget to tag us, share them on Instagram. Maybe you'll get another one. We might do that.  He's like Adam on steroids. Not body wise, but like everything else. I think literally I'm him on steroids, is what it is. I don't know. Literally. Yeah, literally. I don't know, dude. Literally and figuratively. I feel like he's like, he's you solidified. He's older, you know what I mean? Yeah, he's already had the wife and kids.  Bro, he's got a picture of himself. He's a grown man. Like he's like 40, 50 something in the picture.    Isn't that funny though?  Don't you find that fascinating how like somebody like that who really had no influence in my life, we didn't really hang out with each other. I didn't get a chance to see him as a kid really very much at all. Isn't it crazy how like there's certain things that just in your blood, right? It's just in your DNA. It would seem that way, wouldn't it? Well, don't you think so? Like, how do you explain something like that? There's definitely a similarity there, although we're unique and different. Oh, for sure, dude. The second we met your uncle and sat down with him and him, I don't remember what it was, but he checked you really hard on something and it cracked me up because not cause he checked you, but the way he did it made me laugh so hard cause it's exactly what you would say or do.   But you were never were, right? Right, so that's what I find really fascinating is that, you know, he didn't have that opportunity really to influence me that way. I just turned out that way. And Katrina actually was talking weird, so we went to- Personality in your DNA. We went to the concert this weekend, right? We saw Faith Hill and Tim McGraw and we took my uncle and my aunt. Oh, so you did take, oh, it took him? Yeah. And so, and him and I ended up talking business the whole time where the girls enjoyed it. And Katrina afterwards was talking about, you know, how much she enjoys watching my relationship with him and then with my uncle, John. So my uncle John is my real father's brother. So my real father who died when I was seven, it's his brother who they're a lot of like personality-wise. And then my mom's brother is my uncle Casey who we're talking about right now. And both of them weren't, I mean, a little bit when I was young, but I didn't get a lot of influence growing up around them. My mom kind of separated our family from a lot of the rest of the family because of how hard that was.  So you can imagine. So that segregated me from a lot of my cousins, uncles, aunts and I didn't rekindle those relationships until I was in my 30s, until not that long ago. Maybe early 30s, late 20s. Did I really forge that? No, I reached out a few times, but like it's only been in the last maybe five plus years have I really, really spent a lot of time with my uncle Casey and my uncle John who are both blood, my closest blood, right? As far as uncles are concerned.  So you can see the dichotomy between the two, right? It's so fascinating for her, she said to watch because they're polar opposite personalities. And she's like, you can really see them both inside of you. And to me, I find that fascinating because they didn't have an opportunity to really raise. Yeah, I didn't know. I've never met your other uncle, but if I didn't know. You had met John. I think you met John. You came down here with my Aunt Julie. They came down and they watched. We didn't really talk much. Yeah, yeah. If I didn't know any better, I would, like seriously, if I met you and your uncle Casey, I would be like, oh, that's your dad. Yeah. Everything, everything. Just the way his mannerisms, the way he talks, like everything, it's so funny. I love doing that, by the way.  That's totally you.  So when I was a kid, and maybe this is because I'm, it's probably because I'm a boy, right? I identified so strongly with being my father, you know, the son of my dad, that I really wanted to be a lot like him and a lot like the people in his family. You know what I'm saying? And it took me a long time to realize, even though people told me all the time, that I was very much a Visconti, that's my mom's side, her maiden name, in the sense that my personality, the things I was interested in, like my mom's side is a bunch of charismatic, outgoing, you know, sales people. Like a lot of them are in sales, a lot of them are in business, a lot of them are very charismatic.  My grandfather's kind of like that. My aunt is like that. My uncle is an herbalist who is very much into alternative medicine and wellness and health. And every time I talk about health stuff, everybody in my family would be like, geez, you're so much like your uncle. But I identified so strongly with my dad's side that I refused to kind of see that because maybe because I'm a guy, right? Because I'm thinking like I'm like my dad. In reality, I'm way more like my mom's side.   Imagine me, right? So my father who dies at seven years old, you know, I missed that. So there's so much that, you know, as a kid, you start to, what would it be like if your dad was around? And so I wanted to be my father just because I didn't have that, right? So there was this, but in reality, everyone used to tell me that I was just like my mom and my mother's side, which is Casey, her brother. That's her side. Because it's my mom, I want to be like my dad, like every other kid wants to be like their dad. Same thing. Isn't that weird? Yeah, it's similar. Like my dad, I just wanted to be as big as him. Like I was so pissed that I wasn't getting that growth spurt. You know, he was like six foot in sixth grade. And that was like my target goal was to be as big as my dad. His goal, like a height. Yeah, height is a goal. I was like trying to do everything I could to be like taller. Yeah, my brother ended up being six, three. I don't know, dude, like hanging on. Drinking milk. I remember listening to, this is why I liked Michael Jordan because I remember reading stories or whatever where he had that same problem where he was a late bloomer, you know, and he was like hanging on like pull up bars and like doing all this kind of stuff, trying to like get taller or whatever. But yeah, like my dad, I definitely idolized just his size and strength and all that kind of stuff. But like I was like a complete split. Everybody said I was like exactly like my grandpa Lamar. And he looked completely identical to me. And he played for LSU. I think you showed us a picture of him. Yeah. It does look like he was creepy. It was really like, he could be my twin. It was so creepy.  Do you think that's a part of why you are drawn to that era is because you identify with him? Yeah. Because everybody told me that like all the family What is that style? What am I, what am I missing the word? What's the style called like that? I know what you're talking about. The 50s, you know, the flat top. Yeah, yeah, yeah, rockabilly. Yeah, rockabilly. Yeah, exactly. Like you're into the all, that look. Yeah. And so I wonder if that has something to do with that. It may. Yeah, it may.  Like he was really into old classic cars and I'm, you know, I am too. My dad is, but yeah. And then on the other side, like my dad's dad, I actually, my dad's dad's personality was completely like mine. Like, and like, so he was like super, like he was always joking and like really silly, but like he was super into like design and he was actually like an interior designer. But at the same time he was in a biker gang.  Super conflicting. Yeah, just conflicting. Like I never knew that. Like he carried a gun with them around and he was like in this biker gang.  So yeah, it's just really weird, you know?   Yeah, it's weird. Interesting thing on that level because genetics for physical appearance are so cut and dry, black and white, right? It's hard to deny.  Like that's not, that's easy, right? That's easy to identify. Right, right. Personality stuff is fascinating to me though. It's extremely fascinating to me because it makes you wonder if you're kind of destined to kind of be like you, you know, as much as we're in control of who we are and what are our actions and what we do. But there is a part of you that is kind of destined to be like something, right? It makes me, so I had this thought a long time ago about that. So it's a really ponder exact question of how destined we are to do things and how much control we have. And it makes me wonder, like, let's say you have the exact same genetic predispositions as, I don't know, your dad, right? Let's say you and your dad are just very, and you're never identical. The only identical people are identical twins, but let's say you're super, super similar in that respect. There's still the influence of the fact that your dad grew up in a different time, different circumstances, different experiences than you. So the reality may be that you're different but you're reacting in a way he would react in your life. Does that make sense? Oh, Tony, man, that's exactly how I think about it. It's like, wow, what if I really am him? But I'm just, I'm me because I had different scenarios. At two years old, this happened to me, then at four years old, this happened to me, these things happened to me. And if that would have happened to me, I probably would have went the same way he did too. So you wonder that, right? And there's a lot of, which is interesting to me, a long time ago, I had a sales guy that worked for me who came from very, very, very difficult situation growing up. Single parent, mom was not even a great mom. Dad was not present. Drugs and alcohol in the family grew up. I mean, he would tell me stories that were just, I mean, mind blowing, but he was a very driven successful individual, ended up leaving fitness and pursuing medicine and became a doctor. Just very driven, very hardworking, very successful, had three siblings, every single one of them turned out horribly, you know, either addicted to drugs, dead, or in jail. And I was always like, God, you know, what's strange about that is what was different about the ham versus the others? And the way I used to think about it, and this is just my own belief about it. I don't know if there's even any science to support this, but for whatever reason, his genetic makeup flourished and thrived off of that horrible environment, whereas the others didn't. And what if, and I always ask myself this, what if they all grew up in a great environment? What if they had an awesome environment where everything was great, loving parents? Right, they would be totally different. Those three kids who became losers, would they have become normal, successful people?  You know what I'm saying? Pressure crushes some things and it turns other things. Exactly, you ever wonder that kind of stuff? That's a trip. Whatever your program is, if you put it in different circumstances, what would it become? What if I were placed in a different life, in a different type of life, what I have crumbled or what I have succeeded as a result of it? It's all really interesting.  You know what I mean? Like the experiences and behaviors of your, they're connecting, not in humans, but they're doing this, and I believe in animal studies, they're connecting like grandparents and great-grandparents experiences to like how genetics turn out for... So trippy.  I find it as maybe the single most powerful tool for personal growth is the ability to connect to one's family like this because when I look at both my uncles, like there's traits that I admire about them and there's traits that I see myself and that I wish I was better at or changed. So it's like one of the best ways to self-reflect is to have somebody who's blood related like that and you pay attention to something that they do that maybe you don't like and you go like, oh, wow, I have that trait. Like, do I have the ability to see that coming before? Because he obviously doesn't. He just kind of says whatever and doesn't think about it where I don't wanna be like that. I wanna be able to be more socially aware or self-aware in a situation like that. So it's one of the best tools for that if you use it that way, right? If you look at your parents or your grandparents and uncles and those that have a lot of similar traits as you and the things that maybe you don't like best about it is recognizing that, hey, there is a part of that that's in you somewhere. How you handle those situations or what you do with it is up to you though. So I find that really cool. It's, I was thinking, the subject is, I was doing a lot of thinking this weekend and it reminds me of this particular subject, but you know, thinking about your genetics and what you're predisposed to and issues you have with your own self. I think you can go one or two directions with it.  Or you can accept the reality and then just understand that it can also be a gift. You know what I'm saying? The reason why I had that particular thought is I've obviously made no, you know, it's not a secret that I've dealt with gut issues and they've gotten a lot worse as I've got older, but I've always been kind of predisposed to them. If you talk to my mom, she'll tell you when I was a kid, I always had kind of sensitive, you know, she'd say I had a sensitive stomach or as Adam would say, a sensitive tummy, where I'd eat certain things and I was predisposed to having diarrhea, for example, when I was a kid. And I get real frustrated with it sometimes because like this weekend, you know, I'm having gut issues again and I can kind of identify some of the reasons why, but for the most part, I'm a very health-conscious individual and it can be very frustrating because I'm a health-conscious person.  And I know people in the same boat with different things, you know what I mean? Like, well, you know, it's so hard for me to lose weight versus other people or it's so hard for me, I can't be as strong as this other person or I can't, you know, I tend to have bad skin versus other and you can feel sorry and angry, for sorry for yourself and feel angry at the situation. I started getting like that, well, I caught myself like, you know, and the thought process I got into started getting really negative, you know, again, because I, what was going on in my mind is I'm way more health-conscious than most people.  And I'm sure I'm making it bigger than it really is but it really irritates me because I feel like I'm so healthy. But then on the flip side, you know, because when I get real negative, what I try to do is I try to flip things because being negative about something, just adding a layer on top of it. On top of a situation that's... That's already happened. It's not benefiting. It's already there, right? It's already happened, can't you? It's already there. And what I started to realize is I'm actually grateful. I'm grateful that I have good issues because... It's an opportunity for growth. Besides that, the way I'm looking at it is I have this very obvious outward sign that I need to change things with my health and wellness. A lot of people don't have that luxury. A lot of people don't have an outward, clear sign. A lot of people have these kind of subtle, chronic signs that don't, you know, like mine's obvious. Mine's very obvious. You know, this is how I... They don't feel urgent. You know, this is how I used to talk to clients that would come in and they would be really down and depressed on themselves about how much weight they were carrying on themselves. And I actually used to spin that on them and tell them that, you know, think of it this, this is kind of a blessing in disguise because a lot of people go 20, 30, 40 years of their lives poisoning the inside of their body, not realizing it because their body is not showing it. Your body is showing you that you're doing something to it that it needs to change and you can obviously see it. So take this as a blessing in disguise because I get clients that are 20 years older than you that have all these major issues that we can't reverse because they've done damage because they thought they were healthy because they looked at themself in the mirror and they were skinny. And the reality is I know what to do. Like I have the tools necessary available to me that I know work with my body. I know the reasons why things are off for me. It's just an obvious signal. I tend to push it and ignore it till it becomes really obvious. And then I'm like, okay, and it reminds me, okay, those things that, you know, I ate out a lot. I was eating out a lot last week. I had guests over. My girlfriend's mother and niece and nephew were staying with us. It was harder for me to get, you know, quality sleep because I wasn't sleeping in my bed.  And so I know what to do. Like I know exactly what to do to start reversing those things.  And I have the steps. There are steps that I take now that I didn't do before. There are things I've identified that I can add to my diet that I can do with my nutrition to, you know, balance me out. And I'm just gonna continue focusing on those things. Well, when we went up and saw Dr. Ruscio, I overheard you guys kind of discussing some of this and he was talking some of the shrooms and stuff with that. Have you been using those at all? Oh yeah, so mushrooms are, so a while ago I listened to an episode of one of my favorite podcasts, Smart Drugs Smart. So I don't remember what episode number was a while ago, but there was a whole episode on mushrooms and fungi in general. And I did not realize that mushrooms are not plants. They're in their own category of, like if you look at like the categories of animals, plants, bacteria. They clean up the forest floor. They're in their own category. They're not plants. And the reason why this was a big breakthrough for me a while ago when I learned about that, this was probably about, I wanna say about eight or nine months ago, maybe a year ago. The reason why this was a breakthrough for me was the expert that was talking on the podcast was talking about how we understand that it's a good thing for our health to regularly eat vegetables, fruits, some nuts seeds, and when you're talking about an omnivore diet, well sourced in quality, meat, animal type products, right? But we forget that fungi are also very important part of a regular diet. We actually don't even, we include that in vegetables to the point where someone can tell you, no, I eat vegetables all the time and may never eat- Doesn't touch you. Never touch them. And some of the benefits of fungi on health, because what that episode did is it spurred me to do a lot of research on fungi. And what I realized was in ancient medicines, like Chinese medicine and Ayurvedic medicine, both of which I respect quite a bit because they have such a long pedigree of treatments and they're very whole body type treatment. Like if you go to a Chinese medicine or an Ayurvedic medicine expert and you go in with some type of a chronic symptom, it's never take this supplement, take this herb, take this mushroom.  And on top of it, take this herb or whatever. Well, mushrooms make up a huge part of the types of things that they recommend. In fact, if you go to a Chinese medicine doctor or a Ayurvedic medicine doctor and they are gonna recommend that you take something, the odds are it's some type of a mushroom. And there's that much of a benefit. So I did some more research and in that period of time, this has been now over the course of a year, I've implemented mushrooms into my protocol for certain things. And I haven't talked a whole lot about it because I don't like to talk too much. I have brought it up a few times, but I don't like to talk too much about taking things until I feel real confident in them because I know we tend to have a pretty good influence and there's been a couple of times where we've mentioned something and I'll get all these messages and people are doing it and I'm like, I have to correct them. I'm like, no, no, no, I've been experimenting. I'm not recommending it yet. Well, mushrooms is something that I highly recommend people looking to because of their benefit on the body. And one of the things that I've done that's helped me a lot with my gut health, both directly and indirectly is I've been using reishi mushrooms. And reishi mushrooms have this great balancing effect on my body. Really calming effect, I'll take them at night and I've noticed, and it's not something I do, like it's not like a...  So they're hard to find raw, they're pretty gross actually, to be honest with you. If you're gonna use them medicinally, the way I use them is I use them medicinally. So I'll use them when I feel like I'm in a lot of stress or I need better quality sleep or I'm having more gut issues is I was using them medicinally. So I start supplementing with them. And I learned that there's certain compounds in mushrooms that you get from grinding up the mushroom and having like a dry extract from it. And there's stuff that you can get from them by through heat, through like water. And they're both different. So a while ago, I found a company that actually does that, they do both in their actual... It was at PaleoFX, right? That's when you first introduced them to me. Yeah, Forcigmatic does that. They're very, very focused on quality. So they do a dual extract process, you get all of it. So that's the one that I use, it's very convenient. So I don't have to buy the actual mushrooms and then kind of grind it and do all that stuff myself. And I use it at night, especially when I feel like I'm in higher levels of stress. I notice a direct benefit on like just making me feel more balanced. And then indirectly, I started noticing more gut benefit. And so I did bring this up to Dr. Ruscio and he did say, yes, that's actually something that... Yeah, I remember just that last trip we just did. I heard you guys talking about that. And since we're bringing this up while I was talking, I did Google their name. And here's the studies. So people who are really science-based, these are the things that have been shown actual benefit. And a lot of these studies are done in Japan, China, some in the UK and some in the US. They have been used to help people with chronic fatigue syndrome, which that's when I start to use it because I think it has to do with stress. Liver disease, food allergies and asthma, digestive problems, tumor growth and cancer. Here's what's interesting about mushrooms in general. When my close family member was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago, part of the things that I would have her work with were mushrooms because there's some pretty interesting effects that mushrooms have on tumor growth. But anyway, just it's part of a protocol. It's not something about... It's not like I'm like, uh-oh, I'm having these issues. I'm just gonna take this. I also do fasting. It's really, really good for my gut. Well, explain why. I see it's part of your protocol and people need to understand this that it's when you get the signs, when your body tells you it's already too late. Like it's already happened to you, right? Like you're already dealing with it. I think that's the same thing like with pain. Like we talked about this the other day when your body gives you these signs of pain because you have some sort of dysfunction or imbalance. Like that's the last signal.  And so learning that to be proactive like this. I mean, I notice it right now with me with ever since you and I talked about the vitamin D deficiency being connected to people with psoriasis. And when I'm good about making sure I'm taking that, I noticed my psoriasis stay suppressed big time. It's a major difference maker for me. And if I'm lazy about it, I can get away for a week or so and then all of a sudden it'll flare up really bad. So I gotta recognize what's going on with your body. Like the awareness part of it for sure. Like yeah, maybe you're too late as far as like, okay the gut, it's talking to you and it's past the point where now I gotta treat it. But like going forward, what are the steps that I'm gonna take to be more preventative, be more proactive in managing that. So it doesn't flare up the same way it does every time. This is what really fascinates me with the business that we just recently talked to with the guys at not iron radio, but the other one that we interviewed that same. Thrive? Thrive, yeah. Thrive market, yeah. No, no, not thrive. Thrive the podcast. Thrive, nourish, balance and thrive. Yeah, they are working on that survey and I think the more that we start diving into that, I think it's going to be really cool because the only real problem I ever had with ever recommended supplements for people is it's so hard if I don't know what you're lacking. Like when people ask me about even a generic question, like, oh, should I take fish oil? Like, I don't know, should you? Like it really depends.  Yeah, exactly. If you're somebody who eats fish on a regular basis, there's no real need for it. Or if you eat a very highly processed, high six and nine diet, then it's still a waste of money too. Even if you do have fish every once in a while. So understanding what your body needs and then supplementing can be a huge, can be a huge game changer for somebody if you understand where you're lacking. Oh my God, if you have a deficiency in a nutrient and you supplement with that nutrient, life changing moment.  Oh my God, look. Just learning what you're deficient in and giving the body what it needs. If you have, if there's certain gut issues that people will have, for example, and they have issues absorbing B vitamins, okay? Someone like that could get a shot, like literally an inject, because they can't absorb B vitamins or they have issues absorbing them. You give them an injection of B12 and it's like you turn the lights on. Like, oh my God.  I know some people get huge energy boosts from that. You give a B12 shot to someone who absorbs B vitamins fine, they're gonna notice zero. Zero from it. That's me. I got plenty. Here's the problem with how we treat supplements in Western societies. We look at supplements the same way Western medicine views medicine in that you're taking an acute compound that's gonna give you an acute effect to handle a symptom very strongly. So when you look at supplements, they're actually marketed and processed and developed to mimic what drugs do, which I believe is a huge disservice. For example, we were just talking about mushrooms, right? Chinese medicine or Ayurvedic medicine will take the whole mushroom and we'll put it in an extract in a way to where you can consume it easily and regularly. So like Chinese medicine will say, here's your mushrooms, boil them in water, drink the water, and then eat the mushrooms afterwards, right? Western medicine or Western scientists will look at the mushroom and say, what is the compound within the mushroom that we think is giving the benefit?  So then now two pills of this particular extract is worth 500 servings of this natural mushroom and they'll be like, here you go, this is what you're gonna, this is what you want and that's not good because the reason why herbs and plants and mushrooms and those types of quote unquote supplements are so effective for chronic issues is the fact that they're whole. There's an entourage effect of how it works. It's gentle on the body. Anything that has a very strong, acute effect on the body will cause a reaction from the body to try and balance itself out. So anything that I take that I feel right away, unless I'm replacing a deficiency. So forget that, right? I have all the nutrients I need. There's no problem with that, whatever.  Like, whoa, what did you give me? I have so much energy. My body is going to aim to balance itself out in the sense that it doesn't want extremes in either direction. So the next time I take that pill, whatever effect it had on me is gonna start becoming smaller. And if I keep taking that pill, I'm gonna start developing a tolerance to it and I'm gonna start to the point where my body is thinking it's balancing itself out because it's assuming you're gonna continue taking that pill and now I've become dependent on that pill. And then when I stop taking that pill, I have withdrawal. What you wanna do, what you should do is identify why you need that pill in the first place. And what herbs do with that holistic approach is they say, let's identify the root cause and while your body's healing, here are some things you can take that are gonna help your body move in that direction, not give you this huge slam and try and force you in that direction because you can't do that. Your body tries to balance it up. And this is with anything, you take any hormone, take a hormone, your body will stop producing that hormone to try to balance it out. Cannabinoids, we've talked about marijuana so many times in how it's got lots of benefit.  And all the evidence you need is smoke a bunch of weed every day for a long time and at some point you'll stop feeling it and you'll need to take more. So that's the approach that I think people need to have.   So true. Bring on that bird, Doug. This Quas brought to you by Organifi. For those days you fall short on getting your organic veggies or whole food nutrition, Organifi fills the gap with laboratory-tested certified organic superfoods to help give your health and performance the added edge. Try Organifi, totally risk-free for 60 days by going to organifi.com. That's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I dot com and use a coupon code MINEPOMP for 20% off at checkout. The first question is from the Green Deviant. What are your thoughts on pulsing supplements to encourage the body's natural function? Oh, man, what a perfect segue. Pulsing supplements? What are pulsing supplements? So he means like taking, instead of taking supplements all the time, like taking this supplement all the time, taking them for short periods of time and then not taking them. So pulsing them.  Pulsing is an interesting. Yeah, I know. I've never heard anybody use that like that. This is how you should take supplements, 100%. Yeah, we used to say cycling them on and off all the time. I mean, I believe this with almost everything. Like you just, we're talking about marijuana just a second ago. I feel like marijuana, any sort of pain medication you may take, any sort of anything that you take, I feel like it's just important to- Even food. Right, exactly. We talk about food rotation. Like I think rotating things on the body. And I think there's, you don't need to do it every day. It doesn't need to be crazy. You know, workouts, same thing too, right? Everything needs to have this natural rotation. I feel like that makes the body run really efficiently. And when you keep giving anything the same thing all the time, all the time, all the time, it adapts, it gets efficient. And the great benefits that you were seeing from whatever it was, whether it be a modality of training, a nutrient you're taking in, a drug you're taking, those benefits diminish on all of those things. So the whole cyclical approach is a much better approach than growth is like a bell curve, right?  Just like anything else, like it's just gonna slowly start to decline back because you get so efficient, like and you've done this and it's your body's regulated and adapted to this. Dude, it's, I mean, like Adam said, it's true for everything. Like an example, there's lots of evidence now to show, to suggest that consuming high levels of protein all the time reduces your body's sensitivity to protein. So you stop becoming, you stop utilizing it for its best benefit and you just start using it to turn into energy. Some of the best gains that I get from a high protein diet come from when I'm needing low protein then I throw in a high protein diet. I definitely can attest to that too. Especially in the last year or so I've played around a lot with this because we have this big debate on whether somebody needs protein supplement or whatever. And I definitely know that I need to utilize a powder intermittently throughout my week because I just on a day-to-day basis struggle but I have seen huge benefits to me having these super low days and then also then having a nice big underlating just like we talk about underlating your calories even underlating the protein intake where our bodies don't work on this exact this made up thing we call time. It's like the body doesn't work that way. It doesn't know the difference between 24 hours and seven hours. It's really fascinating how when you think of it like that it's the difference of you having 75 grams of protein in one day and then 350 the next day. I would even love to see this. So we talk about underlating calories and how much better that is in our experience when it comes to fat loss or muscle gain.  At the end of the week it averages out to what we're looking for. I would love to see a study where people eat consistently the same amount of protein at what we've established to be the optimal range for protein, 0.6 to 0.8 grams per pound of body weight for most people. I would love to see a study where you do that every single day versus some days you're way over, some days you're lower, some days you're at it and then it adds up to the same amount at the end of the week. I would love to see what the difference would be in terms of performance, muscle gains, and then all the other metrics, because there's a lot of metrics we wanna look at as well in terms of energy, digestion, mood, all those things. I'd love to see what the difference would be in that particular sense. I mean, I know in my personal experiences, I feel better than I ever have on the way I'm eating right now, which is this, like you just said, the end of the week, I'm averaging right around 200 to 210 grams of protein. So, 210 is about what I average, yeah, per day, but it doesn't look like that. Some days are 160 and then some days I go way over 200 or something, and some days I'll fall right on it. So I go everywhere, all the way from as, well, sometimes I'll schedule an even lower day, the 160, but typically 160 up to about 250 range and everything in between there. And I find that my body does way better that way. And I feel like it's weird. It reminds me of what I used to feel like when I would carb-deplete for a show and then refeed or that feeling afterwards, that post, almost anabolic feeling from it. It's pretty cool to see the difference. And I know right now, the amount of testosterone that I'm on right now, how I'm training volume-wise, I'm doing the least with the least amount of work, with the least amount of stress food-wise and probably the best shape I've ever been. Nowhere near my stage competitive getting on there and competing at the elite level, but I mean, I haven't carried meals around. I haven't really had to stress about making sure every day I get that 220 grams of protein mark. It's just like, oh, I only had 160 today. I'll make sure that I have 240 tomorrow. And you're finding that it's much more sustainable. Yeah, it's more sustainable. It's way easier to do. And I actually am feeling good response from it. Obviously anecdotal. So first off, the human metabolism, or just metabolism in general, animal metabolism, is probably the second most complex thing that we've observed in the universe, right underneath the way the human brain works and processes and develops consciousness. It's literally that complex. And we're learning more and more about it all the time. And every time we learn something new, we're blown away and we realize that we didn't know nearly as much as we thought. And one thing you have to understand is with human metabolism in particular, there are innumerable ways that the body tries to balance itself out, okay? So if I take a supplement that has an effect on my body, my body can change its microbiome to balance out that effect. It can down-regulate receptors to affect that change. It can affect its own chemical, neurotransmitter hormone production to affect that change. It can affect my appetite to change my food intake to influence how that everything feels. There's so many different factors. I'm naming the ones that I know of with many, many more that can change and modulate how that thing is reacting with your body. So whatever reaction you're getting initially from a supplement is not the same reaction you're going to continue to get as you continue to take that particular supplement. So if you're getting favorable benefit from supplementing with, you know, creatine, at some point your body will reduce its production of creatine and maybe down-regulate the way it utilizes creatine, for example. And that's creatine. That's like the most backed-by-science, most amazing, you know, awesome supplement that's pretty much out there. This is true for anything else. There's almost nothing that should be taken all the time unless you have, you know, a really strong desire or need. Unless you're really treating something within yourself. Like I said, if you have an issue producing a particular nutrient or... Like the vitamin D thing for me is something that I should be pretty damn consistent with taking it. Especially if I'm not getting a lot of sunlight. I'm inside of a building that has no windows all day long. That's something that if I'm already deficient there I've put together that I am deficient there. Right. And we can even take that a step further, right? We could, which would take, which is you've been doing and would just continue to take more and more work is slowly start to dive in and really uncover the root cause of whether it be the deficiency in vitamin D or the root cause of the psoriasis. Right. You know, but that would take more, you know, you just kind of keep going deeper and deeper and deeper which takes a lot more work, which you're doing, which it's not like you're not doing it. But my point is with supplements, as with almost anything else you're going to get your best benefit by, even if you're a performance-based athlete or aesthetic-based athlete, by cycling them and allowing the body to reap the benefits and mitigate the side effects, allowing the body to adapt and slowly come off and then try something else. So that's the recommendation. That's the recommendation with nutrition. That's the recommendation with supplementation and with your workout. Quick commercial break, you guys. We keep getting asked all the time, how can I support the Mind Pump family? Here's one of the best ways you guys can. You guys love that Chimera coffee that we have. Chimera coffee with a K. Discount Code Mind Pump for 10% at the checkout. Also, if you guys want to know how I have this luxurious beard and you want one too, go to bigtopbeardcompany.com put in the discount Mind Pump again, but this time for 33% off. Also, you guys, if you guys have not tried Ben Greenfield's new bars out, they're fantastic. If you want some, go to bengreedfieldfitness.com forward slash nature bite, put in the code Mind Pump and get 10% off. Go check it out. Kodi K90. Do you guys offer any advice on ways to introduce yourself to other professionals? Oh, I like this question. This is a little networking.  And I tell you what, probably one of the most important things I ever put together. And I think I can't remember what book I read. This was in my early 20s. And I remember first reading about Henry Ford's story. And just he attributes a lot of his success by surrounding himself around other brilliant men. And he's got a ton of great quotes and great stories around that. And I remember, you know, thinking to myself, like how important that is, like as you start to elevate yourself as a professional that you just, you can't simply do it all by yourself. And I have great examples of people in my current life and people, we've had people on this show before that are kind of one man team, you know, and they, and they've been very successful for a one man team. They are jack of all trades, super talented, hardworking, but you tend to hit a ceiling when you rely on what you're capable of doing. And it really takes your ability to network with others to elevate to a whole another level. And so the importance of this is huge. I think where a lot of people struggle is the social awareness piece, is understanding who you're communicating to. I think the three of us in this room were very blessed that we fell into a profession that kind of forces you to do that if you're going to excel and be good at it at least, because you're, you know, you got each of us in here have easily trained 10 plus people in a day before and try having 10 conversations, one hour straight conversations with 10 different people and 10 personalities. It really forces you to be a chameleon and read the other person, like what their interests are, their demeanor, their tone, everything, and then learning how to mirror that, I think is an important piece to being able to conversate with professionals. I think that's the place to start and important. Yeah, well, definitely that. I mean, this has always been something for me that's been a growth, a development, and I had to like force myself to get better at and immerse myself in an environment that, you know, placed pressure on that. And so, you know, for me, it started off with just waiting tables and then it started off and then I started bartending and just the small talk element of it, like for me, like, I kept that close to myself. I kept that between like me and a couple of my friends. And so, getting outside of that and really starting to express myself more, took a lot of work, man. It took some training and it took, you know, like just me, like, really putting emphasis on that and going up to people and figuring out, you know, the best approach for that, the opening line or, you know, just like hello and then like where do we go from here? Like, you just get better as the more reps you kind of place into that. And it's kind of funny because, you know, going through sort of like a timeline of all the different characters I've met that have tried to help coach me with this and everybody has their own style and their own approach and, you know, they're charismatic in different ways. I ran into a couple of people that were like the fake until you make it kind of characters, right? And so there's always that, like I highly caution against taking that approach. I just don't feel like, you know, in today's day and age, like if you're not authentic right from the get go and then you're planning on later on kind of evolving into this character that you're creating, like you're going to have a tough, tough time and people are not going to take you seriously after that. Well, someone calls you out on it, man. You're done. You're fucked, yeah. I think the only way I would apply fake it to your make it would be more in my, like if I'm like, fuck, I'm so nervous right now. Well, I'm going to pretend like I'm real confident. You know what I mean? Like that type of thing. That's different.   And the funny thing is people really love, at least good people really love honesty. You know, one of the easiest ways to introduce yourself or talk to other professionals is ask them about what they do. Yeah, let them talk. Nobody, everybody likes to talk about themselves. It's not, they appreciate it almost. It opens up the conversation. Then it becomes easy to kind of introduce what you do.   Like, what do you do? Hey, hi, I'm Sal. I'm a personal trainer.   And next thing you know, they're going to talk about what they're doing for a living. And then you're asking them questions about what they're doing for a living. Like, what's that like? Who do you work with? Wow, that sounds really cool.  And at some point, the high odds are they're going to ask you what you do. And then you can get into, you know, talking a little bit about what you do. I'll give you some actual takeaway things that you can do as far as putting systems in place to enhance this whole thing. So I wanted to hear what the boys had to say. This is really my favorite part of what we do. I love networking with people. I love building relationships. I pride myself on being pretty good at that. And over years, there's certain things that I've put in place to learn to manage that. And you kind of have to, as your network grows and the amount of people that you're talking to grows to keep those relationships takes a lot more work. And in my case, it's taking the help of like an assistant. So I actually have somebody who helps me do a lot of this relationship building with professionals.  You have to give a lot. So, and for me, I know what I'm good at. I couldn't fix a dryer if it broke, a light bulb went out in my house. These are not my skills. I know what my skills are and what I can provide for another professional. So if I meet like a Dr. Ruscio who we like or a Dr. Brink or a, you know, Paul Check or, you know, you meet the Tom Bill you, these great minds that we've had on the show. What I'm looking for is what I'm really, really good at and maybe something that are not as good at that I can provide that service to them. And sometimes that is something to do with social stuff or sometimes it's business related. Sometimes it's fitness and health and nutrition stuff. Or just other contacts in your list to connect them to. Right. Sharing, yeah. Sharing other related, exactly. That would be on the business side, right? If I see that they need help in the business side. So I first look for where can I help this person? What can I do for them? And I do it without expecting anything in return. I want to genuinely get, if I like this person and I want to build a relationship with this professional, I want to give him or her something that I'm really good at or that I could provide for them that is of value. And most people will appreciate that. But that's where the part that I said people can't stomach or keep doing is that it doesn't stop there. So from that point, now I've established the beginning of this relationship and then I'm going to continue to water it. Now where I'm at now in my career compared to where I was, I had to do a lot of this on my own. But now I rely on an assistant that I can say, listen, I want an email to go to this person, a letter to go to this person. Make sure that you send a happy birthday to this person's kids. Like if I have a professional I know that's a total family man or woman and they're telling me a lot about their family. I'm going to take note of that and I'm going to make sure that I make a comment, something related to that, to show that person that I genuinely cared about their conversation and cared about something that they care about. Like being able to connect with people like that and then to continue to foster that over time. Because everybody, or at least most people in business know that that's important. But then a lot of times it's fake. It's not real. It's just they put up a front and then when they go their separate ways they never hear from each other.  They were just maybe using each other for a mutual benefit.  But it's first you got to give. You got to give like crazy. And a lot of times this happens to me all the time and I've expressed this to the boys before where I'm just like, you know, I'll give you an example. Like sometimes I'll open my doors to people where I'll let them come in, stay with me and I'll mentor and talk business with them and spend two or three days because I know that this could be a potential solid relationship for the business and us down the road and I want to help foster and build that. So sometimes I'll spend time with a person like this and then after three or four days I realize like this is not going to be a beneficial relationship or this person is not going to return anything or do anything for us. And I've literally just wasted three days of energy. That's when you're dealing with an energy suck. Yeah, but that's part of this. That is part of you're going to have those situations where you pour yourself into another professional hoping that they receive it and you form a relationship and sometimes you won't and you can't be discouraged by that because if you continue being that person eventually you'll get somebody who respects you for that or appreciates that and you'll forge these great relations. I think one thing that's funny about this question is it makes me remember introducing myself to people now like new friends or like my girlfriend's family when I first met them and they're like so what do you do for a living? What do you guys say? Oh, I have a fitness podcast. Huh? Yeah, what's that? Her dad even asked me we were talking. He's like, so what do you do?  I'm like, oh, it's kind of like a radio show.  That's kind of it. Yeah, that's kind of cute. And he's like, how do you make money? You have to explain what to do. It was a lot easier when I just said personal trainer. People kind of got it. I actually like it now that we have like complex titles instead of just trainer. I used to get so irritated. I think I just say radio show because a podcast What station are you on? Yeah, right. Then you get that follow up. But I definitely think that that's an awesome question. And I think that it's, you know, don't be afraid to put yourself out there. Don't be afraid to give, find what your strengths are. Well, it's an essential piece to growth in your business. I mean, like the network, I feel like this is definitely a piece a lot of people neglect. And that's why, you know, you do have to go into that like great of detail. You're always thinking about what you can give that person. You're never thinking about what you can immediately benefit from them. You're just putting yourself out there.  That's when, you know, they're going to show up. I think it was like maybe two days ago I called Brianna and said, I I need your help. I need you to have Cassie put together a list. And I want like literally everybody we've had on because it's getting tough for me. Like I'm having a hard time managing this part of the business right now that I have to get even more systematic about it where I'm like, okay, I need everybody in any way that's been on the show. I want all their social media presence. I want their e-mailing their home address. I want all these things that I can reach them that way.  Like I got I now have to be more organized about it for the amount of professionals now that we've connected with. So that is obviously an evolution, though, the first, like I said, the giving, giving yourself and and providing for others. I think that a lot of people are afraid to do that, you know. Diego MDE to MIA occlusion training. Is it good for long term muscle growth or just for a temporary pump? So we this was something we addressed a long time ago when we started Mind Pump. It was a relatively new form of training. Now the research that goes behind occlusion training goes back underground. It goes back to the late mid to late 90s in Japan. Japanese researchers noticed that when they would occlude a muscle and train it and I'll get into what that means, by the way when they'd occlude a muscle and train it that people would build muscle like as if they were lifting heavy weight might even go back further. Doug's mentioning motioning to me like it went back even further but the actual technique behind it that I was aware of was actually in the late 90s in Japan, like I said. So first off, let's talk about the pump. The pump is a temporary feeling. It's the technical term for it is transient sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. And sarcoplasm is everything besides muscle fibers and it's transient in the sense that you get this pump because there's more blood in the muscle than the normally is and then it goes away because the blood rushes out. You get that way exaggerated with occlusion training. However the pump by itself also contributes to muscle growth. So although the pump itself is temporary getting a pump seems to signal muscle growth for one or two reasons. One, the ability to get a pump means you're probably in an environment where it's optimal for muscle growth. And two, the pump itself we're now showing to have muscle fiber stimulating growth. The growth that you get from occlusion training is muscle fiber growth. It's real. So it's not just this temporary effect.  Oh, it was discovered in 1966. Excellent. Very cool. Thanks, Doug.  But it does stimulate muscle growth differently than traditional muscle, excuse me, traditional exercise. With traditional exercise you get what's called mechanical stress on the muscle fibers and you get metabolic stress on the muscles. Mechanical stress comes from the load. It's heavy weight you're grinding it out the muscle fibers have to contract really hard that causes some kind of damage. Then there's this metabolic stress from everything from lactic acid that goes in the muscle, the type of energy that you use, you know, the pump, the burn that's all metabolic stress. Occlusion training doesn't do very good of a job of mechanical stress because you'll notice when you do occlusion training you can't lift nearly but this is also what makes it so awesome for like rehab and people that have injuries that can't do a lot of weight. You are getting a lot of metabolic stress on the muscle so to go into what occlusion training looks like if I were to do this on my arms and we're going to film a YouTube video today on occlusion training so I think it'll be up when this episode comes up and you can refer to it but with occlusion training I'm wrapping if I'm doing my arms for example I'm wrapping a knee wrap at the top of my arm and I'm doing it tight enough to restrict venous outflow. Now I'm not cutting off blood to my arm. If you do that you're going to hurt yourself and it's going to be dangerous, you're not going to build more muscle but if I do it so it's loose enough to allow some blood flow but tight enough to restrict some blood flow coming out of my muscle then I'm going to get this pooling effect in my muscle so if I'm working out my biceps I'll get this really intense pump it'll reduce my biceps ability to pump out waste so I get this waist build up within my biceps you get this insane burn this insane pump and you notice this reduced ability to contract the muscle so as I do sets of curls with 10 pounds whereas normally I could do 35 pounds by the second and third set 10 pounds feels like 60 pounds I can barely move the weight it's incredibly painful and they've created all this metabolic stress on my muscle when you combine occlusion training to a traditional resistance training routine in the right way that's a big asterisk there has to be done properly you will stimulate muscle growth more than if you didn't use it and what Adam's saying as far as injury that's the biggest benefit like if I have an injured knee it's a game changer for that oh man if I have an injured knee I can't squat with heavy weight but I can squat with maybe body weight or do a leg extension leg extension and blood occluded is huge oh yeah and I'm going to create all this metabolic stress so it's going to prevent muscle atrophy much better than if I didn't do it at all and I don't need to do heavy weight with it so for physical therapy man occlusion training through we actually wrote a guide on this we have a guide we don't talk about it much but it's available at mind pump media dot com well we don't talk about it much because we wanted to write a guide one because at the time that this was like two years ago of early guides it was hot and trending and we wanted to show people the right protocol if you're going to do it but it's not one of those things that we recommend that people do this only or this is going to be so here's the thing too here's the one thing to keep in mind if you're somebody who trains similar to my buddy Craig Capurso where you are very high volume super setting like crazy you know doing a lot of sets and repetitions in a workout constantly pumped and burning all the time these people tend to see the least amount of benefit from it because you're getting a lot of the you know sarcoplasmic hypertrophy benefits that Sal talked about earlier from kind of training that way so the adaptation for is not you don't see this huge change or difference now someone like me who phases in and out of his workouts and I'm always cycling that it was a major I saw a major difference from it right away but then I got so excited about it I was doing it all the time and then it started to impede on my normal phasing and my normal training for my calves and it started to kind of plateau pretty hard on them and I even regressed a little bit and so I realized that this is not something that should replace how I train my calves or my arms whatever I'm occluding it should be something that I do supplemental in addition to it so it would be great for like how we recommend trigger days and focus days it's a great I think to include into those type of workouts if you're advanced I would say to occlude to do like three or four occlusion sets in your training I don't know twice a month I go I do it more than that if you see me work out at golds those that work out at the same gym as I do what do you do once a week well I do my calves probably once a week and every once in a while I sporadically will throw my arms in there so how often do you work calves throughout the week because you're doing it once a week but you're working out your calves more than once oh three to four my calves get hit three to four times a week so like one out of every three or four workouts yeah yeah yes and actually the way what I normally do is if I if I'm trying to basically hit my calves every other day and if I feel like I went really heavy maybe the day before I was doing five by five type of protocol and I felt sore from that from two days ago I might do a protocol like that where I'm not going to lift a ton of weight on it and like you said do a lot of mechanical damage to it right I'm going to go more towards the sarcoplasmic pump that would be a day that I would kind of intermittently throw it in there well I'll tell you I measured my arms and my calves and everything when I did this I gained a legit quarter inch on my arms from doing occlusion training you know kind of inserting it at semi regular intervals and my calves I love it I gained about a quarter so I made a quarter inch on quads or a motherfucker I'll be a doubt I've I've done that a couple times and every time I'm like I don't do it on my class they get too big but like I said to add a quarter inch for me is hard I've been training for so long that's doubling the size of them I mean half inch guns now it's a it was when we first started using it was really mind-blowing it was a game changer because it was so different if you're advanced I highly recommend giving it a shot but do it right because I could see how someone will put these on too tight it's definitely an advanced tool it's a to me occlusion training is what fasting is to somebody who's just learning about nutrition it's something that I don't think the average person should mess with but if you're an advanced lifter and you've been training I think it's an excellent tool to add to your arsenal and I'm actually surprised I don't see more of it in the gym I get looks all the time when I'm doing it so I know people are like watching me do it but they're probably going what the fuck is he doing and I don't ever get anybody that asks and if you do ever see me doing this I don't mind you talking to me or asking me I feel like sometimes I look so focused people are afraid to come over and say something to me and I know I see the shirts I see our shirts all the time float around the gym and you know come up say hi I don't mind people talking to me right in the middle of a set of squats look me in the eyes hey Adam hey Adam but I have I've done I do you know what this there's like a couple of things that I do in the gym that I catch people I know they're going what the fuck and they're staring at this the when I do blood inclusion and when I do sissy squats those two I always can tell that like people are going what the fuck is this guy doing you see me doing that come over talk to me I'll talk to you about why or how I implemented into my convention routine I put inclusion training up there with using bands and chains and you know other types of techniques that you can add to your team to add to it definitely doesn't replace anything that's for sure so I made the same mistake as Adam where I got all carried away with it and kind of started doing less add-ons exactly exactly I wouldn't place it I wouldn't make it as effective as trigger sessions or focus session no type stuff well because those are more staples recovery yeah those are more staples quick commercial break hey people ask us all the time how they can support mind pump here's what you can do you can go to www.brain.fm mind pump and get 20% off brain FM for meditation or focus you can also go to audible trial dot com forward slash mind pump and get a 30 day trial plus one free audio book lastly you can go to get nature blend dot com forward slash mind pump and you will get a discount on Ben Greenfield CBD product next up is Bridget Donahue would you recommend maps prime pro to someone who has a permanent neurological injury as a way to regain function absolutely that's who would need it most absolutely so permanent neurological injury or issues MS type of anybody anybody with any anything neurologically like that to me those people are I just had this conversation who was it in my family that I just got told this and I was like why have we not been having her do this type of stuff way early you know it's crazy and this is another thing that pisses me off about western medicine is that's very common I see this where people have some sort of you know neurological permanent dysfunction and they're taking all the medications and it's all this stuff and it's just you know over time she's losing the ability to move this leg and it's just we don't do anything about it it's like well what are we exercising you're trying to are your movement yeah what are we trying to do like yeah I mean fight that as long as you possibly can like if you got something it's yeah you're probably not you're not going to cure something that's uncurable but you most certainly will slow down the progression of a disease that is actually like a degenerate disease like that I mean God that's 100% that person you have you have cases where people are there where someone has actually reversed you've had there's tons of cases there are tons and tons and tons of cases what was Dr. Terry walls you remember she had a horrible she went and declined horrible and was bed was bed ridden and reverse it through nutrition nutrition movement there are lots of cases where people have incurable ailments and either fixed it through changing their lifestyle or it's spontaneously reverse that happens a lot too happens with cancer people will go into the doctor and they're like oh you've got stage 4 whatever cancer you've got a month to live and then the body just decides to for whatever reason get rid of it and then they're cured so it's definitely possible the way I look at it is this if you have a condition your potential is lowered so you may not have the same potential someone who doesn't have this particular condition but there's still a range of potentials and what I mean by that is there's a worst you can hit to and there's a best you can get to and the way you can get to your best is through doing this you know movement through nutrition through mindfulness through everything that you can do to get your best you know I'm saying so you may not get as good as someone else but there's a lot that you can do to get better or at least slow down to generation and there's serious urgency there to maintain the function in your abilities that you have currently so I remember training this lady that had MS and just having her do step ups and having her do really controlled movements where she was connecting to balance or just really slow like methodical mindful movements like it made enormous impact and you know when she was consistent and she would come in and during the week it was almost like you'd see right before your eyes you'd see like the movement her walking changed all these things changed and then something would happen where it was a bad day the next week I wouldn't see her for like a week and it was like we started all over again and you also don't know what you don't know so I'll give you an example I had a client years ago she was in advanced age she was in her 80s and she had some degenerative issues going on dementia was one of them and she was also losing mobility and function with her body but we trained consistently and the degeneration was quite slow it was very very slow to where I trained her for about five years and I could tell that there was some degenerate you know things were going down but it was because it was I have been with her so long and it was over the course of five years and I could kind of see it happening and it was very slow then she broke her leg getting out of the bathtub and she was sick and the acceleration of the degeneration of her body and her mind was so alarmingly rapid that it blew everyone away and her family and it blew me away but it did remind me that because during that period of time while I was training her I remember thinking like fuck we're not improving and in some areas I can see that we may be regressing a little bit but what I wasn't realizing was we were doing a lot there was a lot of stuff we were doing to prevent the quick acceleration of her degeneration of her body and her mind so that's the other thing you want to keep in mind another example is a FDR Franklin D. Roosevelt who got polio and lost the function of his legs he was a big proponent of exercise and activity way back when lots of people this was like a new thing he actually he come from a very wealthy family and invested one of the few things I like about him he invested in these spas where they would do lots of water therapy exercise, massage and you would have all sunlight way ahead of their time and people would come down from all over the country who were sick they had issues and they believed in these therapies and he was like religious about it now he never gained back full function of his legs and I've actually heard people say like oh he wasted his time but how can you possibly say that we don't know the unseen we don't know how much more he would have how much worse he would have been in both his mental state, psychological state and maybe even his physical function so definitely when you have issues with your body you know very proactive and positive with him and although you may not see this crazy progression you may be preventing a quick degeneration or you may be slowing down a degeneration and one thing you want to understand too is you can take someone that's got normal health and I can put them in a chair and tell them don't get up for the next two weeks and we will see a loss of function and I can also take that same person and take them through exercise and see dramatic improvements in their function well that applies to everybody maybe like again maybe the potential isn't the same but your brain is still there's still some neuroplasticity going on there's still your ability to make connections with other muscles maybe you never gain function in particular muscles but all you end up doing is improving your body's ability to compensate with other muscles so you may not be able to walk great because your quadriceps aren't firing but maybe through practice and training you operate your hips and calves and everything else better so that you can function better with this dysfunction so I highly recommend utilizing some of the techniques and Prime Pro is great because it's all about connection it's all about connections all about connecting don't underestimate your brain's ability to adapt there was a man in China I believe who went to the doctor recently this was a news article I'd love to find it it's fucking fascinating went to the doctor for something headache or something and they did an MRI and they found that he had half a brain literally half a brain inside his skull nobody ever knew about this because although he was the brightest person or whatever there was no huge signs that there was something wrong with him what had happened is his brain your brain is so adaptable that half of the brain learned how to do all this other stuff to where nobody really could tell until they showed him the MRI and they're like oh shit you have half a brain yeah your brain and your body have this amazing ability to compensate too so sometimes western medicine doctors will be like you've got this neurological issue guaranteed 100% you'll never regain function in these nerves well that doesn't mean you should stop because there's other functions of the body there's other nerves of the body there's other muscles other parts of your brain that can learn to compensate to help you function better and that only is going to come from practice it's only going to come from practice, exercise and trying it ain't going to happen if you just sit there so my advice 100% you got something that someone says is permanent do what you can to either A, reverse it, slow down the progression or teach your body how to compensate with its other functions with that go to mindpumpmedia.com because we still have 30 days of coaching and it's free it's available to anybody who is interested in information that can impact their fat loss muscle building and their health if you'd like to ask us a question that we answer on an episode like this one the place to ask it on is instagram and the page to ask it on is mindpumpmedia we also have personal pages my page is mindpumpsal Adam's page is mindpumpadam and Justin is mindpumpjustin go to mindpumpmedia.com the RGB Superbundle includes Maths Anabolic, Maths Performance and Maths Aesthetic nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs with detailed workout new prints and over 200 videos the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers the price the RGB Superbundle has a 430 day money-back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com if you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a 5 star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing mindpump to your friends and family we thank you for your support and until next time this is mindpump