Ep. #297: The Best & Worst Supplements to Boost Your Immune System (According to Science)

Kurtis: If there’s something wrong with your upper respiratory tract, particularly acute bronchitis, and is characterized by a dry cough, take pelargonium as soon as symptoms arise, take it for seven days. The duration of sickness goes down, the length of sickness goes down, and the intensity of sickness goes down to the point where multiple side effects of acute bronchitis are reduced over 80%.

Mike: This is where I would normally plug a sponsor to pay the bills, 

Kurtis: but I’m not 

Mike: big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in. So instead I’m just going to quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my one on one coaching service. So the long story short here is this is The personal coaching service that I wish I had when I started in the gym many years ago.

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So no matter how tricky you might think your situation is, I promise you, we can figure out how to get you results. If I have piqued your interest and you want to learn more than head on over to www. muscleforlife. com forward slash coaching and schedule your free consultation call. I’ll tell you, there’s usually a wait list and new slots fill up very quickly.

So if you’re interested at all, don’t wait, go schedule your call now. Alrighty. That is enough shameless plugging for now. At least let’s get to the show. Mr. Curtis, you are back going to talk immunity, which should be good because that’s something I think about. At least that’s why I take Genesis every day.

And I’m excited that we’re, you’ve already put together the formulation for A pro immunity supplements because I hate getting sick. Unfortunately, I don’t get sick very often. And if I do, it’s usually not very severe, but getting sick sucks. So here we are to talk about the immune system, how it works and some practical strategies for keeping it running optimally.

If we do get sick, which unfortunately is inevitable, I think they’re one of the guys. I think Kareem, it’s been years since he’s gotten sick. I wonder if he’s drinking virgin blood every day or something. 

Kurtis: I have to inject that stuff. It doesn’t survive digestion. 

Mike: Spirit cooking though.

If you combine it with satanic ritual, it works differently. 

Kurtis: I didn’t consider it the satanism. I’m not an expert in satanism. So whatever biological shenanigans they do I have to respect it. They disobey a lot of logic to great effect. 

Mike: You can’t argue with a Podesta’s emails. Come on, 

Kurtis: no comment.

Mike: All right. So here we are immunity. I think we should start with some basic information on the immune system. How does it work? What are the major moving parts? How does it keep us from instantly dying every day? 

Kurtis: Okay just to preface this, I’m not a complete expert on the immune system, like, when it comes to all the systems in the body, the immune system is probably the one that I’ll proudly say I’m not an expert, because it’s just so bloody complex.

Imagine an organ that was not in any one area of the body. An organ that was like 10 percent of the organ was in your legs and then you sneeze and then 5 percent of it just leaves and goes to your lungs like it’s a mobile set of cells of which communicate with each other better than some organs do when the organs just, physically existing one area for the entire your entire existence.

So let’s you just rip it out. So it’s just A mobile set of cells that are created, modified, as sentient as cells can get, move all around your body, assessing, neutralizing, and sometimes creating threats, and then they die. And before they die, they send out signals saying, this is what my life was like, and I want to adapt and improvise in accordance with what I detected.

Just basically a bunch of cells that are highly advanced. 

Mike: Pretty neat. What kind of cells specifically? 

Kurtis: Okay, so I tend to use a police analogy for this because no analogy for the immune system is going to be perfect or absolutely comprehensive, but we do need some sort of base to fall back on. So macrophages are probably the most Well known cell of the immune system.

They’re the Pac Man cell. The ones that just like literally go up to an infection and go, I don’t like you and eat it and then digest it. Which is cool because normally cells can’t digest things but macrophages can. So if macrophages are the like basic police officer, the foot soldier that is just on the beat all the time.

Natural killer cells are another type that have the ability to sequester and destroy. But they’re significantly more potent and like they actually have a process known as oxidative burst where like you know how oxidation can damage your cell there you have a like highly evolved process to shoot things with oxygen radicals like a submachine gun.

And they just destroy it. Natural killer cells are actually the link between how the immune system hunts down and destroys cancer cells. They’re basically the SWAT team of the immune system. Then there’s T cells and B cells. T cells are the ones I want to talk about more because they’re regulatory cells.

They have a sensing role. They go around the body, they sense things, and then they direct the other cells to action. And they’re the ones that are highly involved in how When we eat stuff and it’s in our gut, how does the stuff in our gut, even if it’s not absorbed, somehow affect the periphery or blood?

And it’s because the stuff in our gut talks to dendritic cells, which are stationary immune cells. The dendritic cells then train the T cells, like a police academy would train just a desk worker. Then the T cells will go and start mobilizing and talking to them. The other cells and directing them to action and then there’s like multiple other cells.

Mass cells in particular are important in allergic reactions. Like basically, whenever we get an allergic breakout, that’s because of mass cells exploding, literally exploding. Freaky. 

Mike: Interesting. That’s a good primer on how the immune system works. So now let’s talk about improving or boosting immunity.

Cause that’s that’s a marketing hot button that’s used for, to sell all kinds of things ranging from diets to supplements, even like modes of exercise and so forth. What does that really mean? And what can you actually do? Maybe we should start with some of the things that definitely do not work and that are people commonly believe could increase immunity.

Kurtis: So I’m going to define like what people should care about when it comes to the topic of immunity. But before that, I just want to give the opposite of a shout out to vitamin C and lysine. You guys suck. Like it isn’t there some research that shows if you are sick and you take a vitamin C every hour, it can reduce the severity only for upper respiratory tract infections and high intensity athletes.

So it’s a very niche setting, but then people added lysine to it for some reason and there’s just absolutely no evidence and not even good logic to it. Like people literally take, by people marketers, will take studies on like African children dying of Merasmus and it’s oh, if we get them protein, they’re healthy.

Yeah, no shit. Like they’re starving to death and everybody needs protein. 

Mike: That’s what I, 

Kurtis: their lysine levels went up. Yeah. It’s the first time they ate it in a month. 

Mike: I don’t know. What I get from that is everyone should have protein. They’ll be healthier. I don’t know what you’re saying.

Yeah, 

Kurtis: pretty much. Cause if you have protein malnutrition, you have like great, like hugely increased susceptibility to infections and that’s because your lysine levels go down. So if you replenish lysine levels in this state, You get normal resilience to infections. Pretty much every single person in the Western world has enough lysine in their bodies that they don’t need to care about extra lysine.

And yet we’re sold it anyways, because yeah, no reason science. I can’t even blame the consumers on this one. It’s just. The people selling it intentionally obfuscate the topic. So it’s hard to research. It’s just stupid. 

Mike: That reminds me of a glutamine. I don’t think it’s as popular now as it was years ago.

But remember when glutamine was being touted as like an anabolic because there was research in like AIDS patients that showed that it reduced muscle 

Kurtis: wasting. Yeah. It’s 

Mike: just like this person, a 

Kurtis: third degree burns all over their body. That totally is representative of a glutamine. Weightlifter. 

Mike: Yeah.

Yeah. I e glutamine is a steroid, 

Kurtis: but basically back to the topic of what to measure the complexity of the immune system should not be used as like a way to confuse people. Like it’s complex. Sure. But there’s ways to simplify it. One of the ways to simplify it is just in practice, what it means to boost your immune system.

Basically it means A, you get sick less often. B, when you are sick, you aren’t sick for as long. And C, when you are sick, it doesn’t feel as bad. And that’s pretty much it, like a good immune booster will affect one or more of those parameters. I’ve yet to see one that affects all three of them potently.

But, generally speaking, if you just have one of them if you get sick less Often when you’re sick, it doesn’t really harm you that much, then no big deal. But if you get sick infrequently and you’re absolutely bedridden during this time, then maybe you won’t want to get something that reduces the frequency because you never get sick that often, but you want to get something that reduces the intensity.

As long as you focus on those three parameters that you can look at the research on those three parameters and. Select accordingly. 

Mike: Makes sense. And the place to start there would be lifestyle, right? Would be the basics of diet, exercise, sleep, hygiene, stress management. Cause I’m assuming if you don’t have the fundamentals in, I doubt taking a bunch of pills and powders is going to help you all that much.

Kurtis: They could help if you don’t have the fundamentals down, but the fundamentals are free and I’m not sure if it’s more effective. Then pills and powders, like at least the ones that work, but, get the fundamentals down and maybe you’ll avoid spending unnecessary money on supplements. 

Mike: So supplements can make that much of a difference.

The right ones. 

Kurtis: I would say yes, but understand that The science on immunity boosters aside from one particular one that’s very well researched and proven the other ones are they’re in that middle ground where they have five human studies that all say the same thing so you want to put all your eggs in one basket but they’re five small studies so you just have to like just for prudency twiddle your thumbs and wait for more.

There’s a few of them in 

Mike: that category. Okay. Let’s just, let’s jump right into it then. What are, let’s go through your favorites for boosting immunity. And then let’s also go through some duds as well. You mentioned, Vitamin C, lysine, but there are also some others, of course the ones that people probably most frequently take are really not the best choices simply because what drives them is high profit margins and high advertising budgets and so forth.

Kurtis: Oh, yeah it’s bad when most people who sell immunity boosters pretty much go for what’s already on the counter. And then they sell it at lower doses for higher costs and without giving too much information when I was sourcing the immunity boost that we are to sell in the, I’m not sure if it’s near future, but future at some point, it’s 

Mike: probably going to be later.

I’m thinking Q4 this year. 

Kurtis: But yeah, Kareem and I were like selecting specific African retailers. To source a particular thing, and I’m going through all the data. She’s just what the heck? There are some of them, like where it’s obvious, they just literally grabbed a plant out of the ground.

So is this good? Don’t care. Put it in. It’s no. Yeah, we actually put in some effort for that particular ingredient. Like the other ones were easy to source this one. No, difficult. 

Mike: And that’s something that’s worth just highlighting to everybody listening. And that’s been the case with several supplements where you’ve been in several formulations, you’ve been very specific with certain ingredients, some ingredients we don’t necessarily need a standardized extract because the general quality of whatever it is we’re going for is fine.

But in other cases, you’re very specific as to, I want this form of this, I want this patented ingredient because of, reasons and so forth. 

Kurtis: Yeah. Cause if you have a. Let’s say a mushroom, because a mushroom has the stem, it has the fruiting body, it has the mycelium, and then it has the, I’m not sure if you’d call them roots, but the things under the ground.

They all have different bioactives in them, but they also share some bioactives. So if you want a particular bioactive and it’s found in any part of the mushroom, you can go, I don’t care, whatever’s the cheapest, just give me X amount of the bioactive. Other times it’s found only in the fruiting body, so you’re like, give me the fruiting body.

Will the mycelium work? No, fruiting body. We have some roots. No I’m actually surprised at how often the people that I can’t really blame Capstone for a lot of this stuff. It’s almost like they’re the people that we work with are trying to like, they have like I don’t know, a doctrine where they have say, go for the lowest price, go for whatever has the highest profit margin or whatever, but 90 percent of the time it works.

The other 10 percent of the time it’s frustrating. Yeah. 

Mike: We are their pickiest customer. I guarantee you, no one else is as picky as we are with ingredients. And we ironically they’re they sometimes make mistakes and we receive emails with things that we aren’t supposed to receive.

So recently we received their entire AR. So we solve their accounts and all their balances with everybody and everything. Which is hilarious. But I can tell you no one else in that, that they work with gives a shit like we do and spends the money that we. Spend across the board on our cost of goods relative to our prices.

So that’s all they’re just, they’ve learned along the way. Cause in the beginning reiterate several times. 

Kurtis: Oh, apple extract one more apple extract. Can I talk about that? So I wanted in some of our products, you have grapeseed extract and the reason I have grapeseed extract is because it’s a cheap and basic antioxidant.

That’s it. You eat it, it gets absorbed, it floats around to your blood where we want it. We don’t necessarily want it inside a cell, we want it in the bloodstream so it can help support nitroxide synthesis. And it just stays there in the blood for a while and once it’s done it just leaves the body.

Very simple, very basic, effective and highly cheap. And the main component in grapeseed extract that does this is prociandin B2. I think it’s been three times so far. I’ve said I want grapeseed extract, I don’t care the overall amount of the grapes. Just give me 90mg of Procianum B2.

And the expected price for this is less than a dollar a bottle. I’m talking like Probably about 10 cents a bottle on our side, then they come back. Oh, we found some apple extract, 17 bucks a bottle. Is that acceptable? No, not at all. It went from 10 cents to 17 bucks. What the hell is going on? It’s three times that happened.

Yeah, they’re 

Mike: on the whole. They’ve they have done well for us, but again, they’re just not used to working with someone like you. They’re used to working with, in some cases, it’s companies who come and they’re just like yeah, I don’t know, give me a pre workout. I don’t care. In other cases, they do have formulations, but these are companies that are relying on retail or MLM.

The margins are. Are super high. So their production budgets are very low, very basic. And they, in some cases I get these companies don’t care. Like they wouldn’t even follow up. They’d be like, yeah, sure, whatever. Just as long as they can say this on the label, that’s all I care about. 

Kurtis: Yeah. They almost never screw with us, but that just makes their accidental screw ups memorable.

Anyways, back to immunity. 

Mike: Yeah, back to immunity. . . Okay. So yeah, getting back on track. All right, so we’re talking about sourcing particular ingredients. So let’s start at the top. This is one that you like for boosting immunity, pelagonium. 

Kurtis: Okay. Yes. 

Mike: So what’s that and why is it cool? 

Kurtis: It’s cool because for every other immune booster, I have good evidence, but at the same time, the evidence is not complete.

And I have to twiddle my thumbs for more evidence. And it’s in a state where I could be confident in the evidence, but if a medical doctor were to walk up to me and critique the evidence, I’d have to be cautious with my words. And I say, this is where the evidence is good. This way, the evidence is bad, blah, blah, blah, and all that.

Pelargonium is one where I can just literally print out the studies, staple them together, slap the doctor in the face, and he’s going to like it. The evidence is just solid. We’re talking over a dozen studies. All these studies have well over a hundred, at times over three hundred participants. And it’s quite simple.

If there’s something wrong with your upper respiratory tract, particularly acute bronchitis, and is characterized by a dry cough, take pelargonium as soon as symptoms arise, take it for seven days. The duration of sickness goes down, the length of sickness goes down, and the intensity of sickness goes down to the point where multiple side effects of acute bronchitis are reduced over 80%.

Some studies say that they’re just like effectively ablated. I’ve yet to see a pharmaceutical option for acute bronchitis that has these numbers. It is just, it is the stand alone immunity boosting supplement. It’s just incredible quality of evidence, incredible reliability. And I believe in Germany it’s called the Phytopharmaceutical, which is basically a plant that’s so good.

It’s okay, we’re going to pharmaceuticals. It works. Why not? 

Mike: And what are some other upper respiratory tract infections that like, what are some common, because if people are like what does that mean? Practically speaking, are we talking about colds here? Are we what if I have a flu?

Should I buy this? 

Kurtis: So the studies have the best evidence for acute bronchitis. But basically, if something with your lungs and throat is off, and is characterized by dryness, dry coughing, the whole type of sound, then there’s a chance the Pelargonium will work. 

Mike: Yeah, what is it? How does it 

Kurtis: work? It’s very similar to how cranberries work for urinary tract infections.

They pretty much just prevent the bacteria from adhering to the mucous membranes of the lungs and the throat. Thank you very much. Because the bacteria goes in and has to stick to something before it can affect it. And if it just can’t grab onto it and just like slips away, then it just leaves the body.

It literally just prevents the bacteria from having a chance of doing anything. 

Mike: Neat. And where is it found in nature? 

Kurtis: It’s African geranium. So it’s just like an African plant. I think it’s more south like mid and southern Africa than it is northern. I think it’s exclusively in that area. It’s not like a North American or an Eastern plant or anything.

Mike: Okay. And I know you can buy it on Amazon. Like I’ve bought it before. I was taking it when I had gotten a cold for a few days. So not exactly applicable, but I was like, eh, Curtis likes this stuff. I’m buying it. 

Kurtis: Yeah. It’s niche, but it’s damn good in that niche.

Mike: Hey, quickly before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it.

It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say Thank you. You can find me on Instagram at muscle for life fitness, Twitter at muscle for life and Facebook at muscle for life fitness. So now let’s talk about one that you don’t like that is commonly Used or promoted as either helping prevent sickness or reduce the duration or severity.

Kurtis: I’m super on the fence about echinacea. 

Mike: I was going to ask about that because, okay, so the common thing is vitamin C with echinacea. That’s supposed to be the stack. 

Kurtis: Yeah, like echinacea is weird because if you were to cherry pick evidence for it not working, easy to find. If you were to cherry pick evidence for it working, easy to find and you can get some really good studies.

It just seems that echinacea is unreliable. That’s like the entire thing. And the unreliability doesn’t seem to be in the human that ingests it. It seems to be more in the sourcing of the plant and the molecules within it. Because, like, when it comes to pelargonium, the bioactive is umcolin. And umkhalin is just one molecule.

You put umkhalin in your mouth and umkhalin is coming out of your body. When it comes to echinacea, it’s the acylamides, an entire group of molecules. And they can freely interchange from one into the other. Like they just, Metabolize into each other, like in the plant and in the body in a seemingly at this point in time, pretty unpredictable way, and we don’t really know which one of them or if multiple of them are the bioactive in question, and there’s even evidence just That’s all just been a red herring and there’s actually other things that are like the bioactives.

There’s one study in particular that was just interesting because it basically said how bacterial contamination of echinacea, which led to a high lipopolysaccharide content, which normally causes a lot of inflammation in rat models, that the lipopolysaccharide contamination actually led to an immune boosting property for echinacea supplements because of contamination.

And then another one just said that it was because they had brawn protein. So they’re similar to spirulina and it’s just all over the map. No one knows what’s happening with echinacea. It’s just unreliable. And if it slips into your mouth, good job, keep on taking it. But I cannot recommend people go out and buy it because there’s just a good chance it will not work.

And no one knows why. And if it does work, what are we talking about? A slight reduction in duration of sickness. I think frequency stays the same and side effects become a little bit more tolerable according to self reports. So even then, like it’s nothing major, like nothing revolutionary. 

Mike: Okay. If it were me, just cause I hate being sick and I wanted to get over, could be over as quickly as possible.

If there was even a chance that it was going to work, honestly, I’d be like, eh, it’s cheap, I’ll try it. 

Kurtis: Yeah. I’d recommend other stuff instead of Echinacea. 

Mike: What’s next then? What do you recommend? Let’s go back to a good one. 

Kurtis: Garlic is definitely a good one. 

Mike: I eat more garlic than I, than I probably should be eating for the sake of people around me.

Oh yeah, they can suck it up. They can suck it up. I eat a lot of garlic every day. I love it. 

Kurtis: But basically, garlic is cool because it Was the first time that heard of a particular, remember I said that macrophages and NK cells were the ones that hunt down and kill infections? 

Mike: They were the the foot soldiers in the SWAT the SWAT team.

Kurtis: Yeah. T cells, the ones that regulate are normally the desk workers, but there’s the first time that I heard that T cells can actually be modified to become pretty much assassins. It’s the equivalent of going postal. For an immune cell and garlic can encourage this. 

Mike: That sounds amazing. 

Kurtis: Yeah. Garlic from what I’ve seen does.

Mike: Garlic can make your T cells like lose their shit. 

Kurtis: Pretty much. The evidence isn’t the best, but it’s enough. It does not reduce the rate of what you get sick. Nor does it reduce the length you get sick, but it reduces how much the sickness, how bad the sickness makes you feel. And like the studies that I’ve seen measuring this actually just measured work days.

Like when people are sick, they call into work and say, I can’t come in. I’m too sick. Does that go down with garlic? And yes, it goes down severely. A lot of people who are still sick say I’m good enough for work when they’re taking garlic supplementation. It’s I think you’re 50 percent approved for it.

Half the people who normally call in sick don’t 

Mike: interesting. 

Kurtis: So what about and you don’t need to take it every single day. Like as soon as you start feeling sick, then you can start popping the garlic and severity should go down. 

Mike: And just because we’re on the, we’re on the topic. What are the benefits of having garlic every day, eating it or supplementing with it?

Kurtis: Just anything related to hydrogen sulfide signaling, which is nitric oxides underappreciated a little brother. So better blood flow, better anti oxidation protection, better cognition, better organ health. Probably better longevity, but that’s you know a hard thing to prove outright. It’s just Put garlic in your face now, 

Mike: right?

Right now literally right 

Kurtis: now. Yeah. A clove a day keeps the everything away. 

Mike: What 

Kurtis: about spirulina? Spirulina is a weird one because I haven’t seen major, like I love spirulina, I’ll recommend people put five grams in their face now and forever more, but there isn’t much studies on sickness rates at this moment in time.

Mike: What are your thoughts just based on your understanding, the research you’ve done, even though there aren’t studies on it per se. 

Kurtis: I believe that because its main mechanism is the, remember the oxidative burst I talked about earlier, the SWAT team’s shotgun? 

Mike: The submachine gun, I think it was.

Kurtis: Submachine gun, yes. Spirulina prevents this, but it has other compounds in there that boost immunity. So I do believe that it has a position where it could make you get sick less frequently, but if you are sick and you start super loading it, it may not be the best idea. 

Mike: Interesting, because it might prolong the sickness or increase the severity because your body isn’t able to fight it.

Kurtis: A general rule of thumb is that anti inflammatories are also anti immunity just because to reduce inflammation you have to impair the immune system’s function in a way. Spirulina is on the verge of being both pro immunity and anti inflammation, but it’s not. Nothing is panacea when it comes to these two topics, because they are like the yin and yang.

They oppose each other. So in that particular situation, if you want your natural killer cells to kill, you probably don’t want to have high dose spirulina preventing them from doing their job. 

Mike: So practically speaking, then it’s take your spirulina every day, but if you’re sick, maybe not take it while you’re sick.

Kurtis: Yeah, it’s prevention, not therapy. 

Mike: Makes sense. What’s next on the list? What’s either good or bad? What else is worth talking about? 

Kurtis: Probably the mushrooms in general. 

Mike: Okay, let’s talk mushrooms. Which mushrooms? 

Kurtis: I usually refer to Reishi or Ganoderma lucidum initially because it’s like my favorite mushroom, but mushrooms in general have bioactive polysaccharides that just promote overall proliferation of white blood cells in the intestines.

And this isn’t good or bad at default. 

Mike: And this would apply to any and all mushrooms, right? Even just white mushrooms or portobello like mushrooms you would just eat. 

Kurtis: I wouldn’t say every mushroom, but I would confidently say more than 50%. And yes, white button top mushrooms do apply. I have seen some research on that.

What about crimini? Is that how you pronounce it? Crimini? Crimini? Yeah, I think it’d apply to that one as well. Like this general motif, like the medicinal mushrooms have it stronger, but generally speaking, it’s a mushroomy effect. It’s just for like most fungi that are in the human diet and don’t kill us at the same time.

Even the deadly ones will help us in this way, but then they just, by another way, kill us. 

Mike: So you’re more immune for a little bit and then you die. 

Kurtis: Yeah, but basically like the mushrooms proliferate white blood cells in the intestines overall, and this may or may not lead to improved immunity, but it forms a good base.

So if there is going to be like a good mixture of immune boosters, having a mushroom in there, It’s probably really effective, like it’s the same way how fiber heavy diets improve immunity because they just support the gut and allow white blood cells be created in higher levels. 

Mike: And what else about reishi?

Because I know that’s something that you that’s in Genesis, obviously, and it’s an expensive ingredient. You wanted it in there. You’re willing to spend a good amount of money on it because to get the right dosage, you That means that you had to forego other things, 

Kurtis: oh yeah, that’s just because it’s one of the only supplements that has evidence that it has like straight up anti cancer properties.

Like you have people with butt tumors, literal tumors in their colon. They take ratio for two months, the tumors are either smaller or gone. Yeah, like that exists. And another reason for like why it exists is because When cancer gets to an advanced stage, the cancer cell starts to learn, it’s like, Oh, we shouldn’t be here, time to protect ourselves.

And the natural killer cells they go to the cancer cell, try to kill it. They do this a few times. So the cancer cell learns to get like a coating around it to have the NK cells bounce off. Reishi actually eliminates that coating. So the NK cells can straight up kill the cancer cell once more, and Reishi increases overall NK cell count.

So it is just somewhat demonstrably proven anti cancer mushroom. That also has immune boosting properties and potentially cognitive health benefits. 

Mike: And what are those potential benefits for cognitive health? 

Kurtis: Oh, nothing major, just the general protective effects. I wouldn’t say like it’s anything super potent or to put your faith into, but it might make you feel a wee bit better.

That’s literally it. It’s the definition of something you accidentally want to fall into your mouth, but you don’t want to buy a supplement on its own for this purpose. Which is why we slipped into a mix of multiple things. 

Mike: Yeah. And it’s not something that we even promote in terms of in the sales copy for Genesis.

There’s nothing in the way of cognitive health just because the effects aren’t strong enough. 

Kurtis: Yeah. I think about it this way. I would probably never buy Reishi by itself, but because Reishi is in Genesis, that serves as a major reason for me to buy Genesis. Because, if I’m going to be putting a powder into my face, I want some goodies in the powder and reishi qualifies as a goodie.

Mike: Yeah, that’s one of my favorite supplements. We have that. I skew more toward the, just the health and longevity stuff because you can only do so much in the way of supplementation to help you get jacked and shredded. So I like Genesis a lot. Triumph is awesome. Has so many good things in it.

Fortify as well. I really like it just because I guess as my personality, I’m a bit more mindful of preventative actions. Like in life, I try to be proactive more than reactive. And so I’m just naturally drawn towards supplements that are more proactive in nature that prevent problems from occurring. So I don’t have to deal with problems that are not fun to deal with.

I just want problems that are like, The good problems that I want is I want as few stupid and shitty problems as possible. 

Kurtis: Yeah, I call it the maturely lazy way to do things. 

Mike: That’s a good way of putting it. I just 

Kurtis: don’t want to deal with these problems. So I’m just going to make them not happen in the first place.

Boom. 

Mike: Exactly. So on the mushrooms, are there other mushrooms other than rishi that are worth mentioning in the context of immunity? 

Kurtis: I think I personally believe reishi is the best for immunity. Turkey’s tail is a dietary supplement, and it’s more catered towards cancer research.

Cordyceps is a very popular mushroom for dietary 

Mike: supplementation. Yeah, I think people are, a lot of people are hearing about that these days. Probably because there’s that mushroom coffee that is has been blowing up. And I know it’s, I think it’s reishi cords and a couple others. Oh yeah.

That I remember 

Kurtis: seeing 

Mike: it. But it’s probably trash. It’s probably trash because 

Kurtis: I wouldn’t say like it’s trash, but at the same time I don’t like the idea of putting fungus into coffee. It’s no. Did I tell you about kombucha at all? 

Mike: No. 

Kurtis: Kombucha is fungal tea. It’s quite literally, I’ve 

Mike: drank it and it’s not very tasty.

Kurtis: I’m like, I find it. Okay. It’s not, I want to go back for seconds. Let’s just put it that way. 

Mike: Is it good though? Because that’s also something that, that’s even more popular than the cordyceps that’s like mainstream, Insta, Instagirl status stuff. Now everybody’s drinking kombucha.

Kurtis: Kombucha is not insanely healthy, like it has antioxidant properties it may or may not be an immune booster, research is just not there. It’s stunningly average, but it has a kill count. That’s cool. Cause if kombucha is made properly, it’s completely safe as marketed towards a demographic that does not respect biological processes, particularly related to fermentation, they think, Oh, bacterial infection, that’s more probiotics.

Am I right? Then they drink it and die. No, kombucha is the last thing you want to make at home. You want an actual factory with sanitation to make it for you, or at the very least take responsibility for the fact that it might kill you if you brew it horrendously wrong, which apparently some people have, 

Mike: I didn’t know that.

I hadn’t heard that. That’s one of those headlines that would have stood out to me. 

Kurtis: Yeah. Anyways beyond that, there’s also a. Lion’s Mane mushroom and Lion’s Mane is a marketed more as a brain booster, but it also has the immune boosting properties. 

Mike: And how does it work? 

Kurtis: The proposed mechanism for brain boosting is essentially the same mechanism as Bacopa.

It increases BDNF. So If an area of brain wants to grow, there’s now a growth factor in that area to allow and support growth. But the cool thing about this one lines main is that it might also increase BDNF in the spinal cord. So there’s no research on it, but some people have been interested in pairing this with agmatine for spinal injuries.

I have no clue if that’s been successful or not, but it’s something to think about. The lion’s main also has 

Mike: pretty cool too. So what’s next on the list? 

Kurtis: I’m just on the examine list for bioactive mushrooms, and the only last one is King Oyster. But I have no clue what King Oyster’s niche is.

I’ve never even heard of it. Oh it’s just a really big mushroom that if you cook it correctly, it tastes like meat. And it’s probably one of the only ones that, legit might taste like meat just because it’s really like thick and absorbs 

Mike: moisture well. So what’s the next, what’s the next supplement then?

Kurtis: Oh, weird. There’s actually a study showing that it increases testosterone 

Mike: in elk. Oh, great. So it’s time to make a testosterone booster then. 

Kurtis: Never ship this up to Canada. Moose is strong enough 

Mike: as it is. They might just take over. 

Kurtis: They already have, they can’t defeat the goose. Nothing. Defeat the goose.

Mike: That’ll be the final war. It’d be like 

Kurtis: frosts is the world or ice. It’s going to, is it going to end with the elk or the goose on top? The Australian is just going to be alive. It’s just yeah, we got our own problems. The castle warriors are beating up the alligators. And everything else all right.

So what’s what’s next on the list that you wanted to discuss just supplement wise, good or bad. Can’t really think of anything else aside from maybe probiotics, but yeah, let’s, 

Mike: That’s probably, that would really warrant its own. That’s something I’ve asked you about over and you keep on telling me to fuck off.

Kurtis: It’s just cause there’s so many different probiotics out there that I just don’t feel sufficiently researched on them. 

Mike: Yeah, no, I know. 

Kurtis: I could say. Say a bunch of random things about them. I thought I just want random things, man. I have a random thing. That’s not at all related to immunity.

Mike: Please share. 

Kurtis: T O. So there’s actually one probiotic that I really like it’s called lactobacillus root Terry and like lactobacillus acetophilus is one of the more popular ones. Lactobacillus routeri is a different type of Lactobacillus, obviously. And it was initially tested for just reducing stomach ulcers.

You know how stomach ulcers are related to, I think it’s the bacteria, Heliobacter pylori? I did not 

Mike: know that, but now I do. 

Kurtis: Okay, so there’s something called H. pylori. And if it gets in your stomach, it goes, ha, you have an ulcer now, bitch. And it is very common, surprisingly. 

Mike: So a lot of people have ulcers and they don’t realize it per se.

Like they don’t realize that. I wouldn’t say 

Kurtis: that a lot of people have ulcers, but when you have a stomach ulcer, I’d say there’s like an 80 percent chance that H pylori is in there screwing things 

Mike: up. H pylori. I’ve definitely heard of, I don’t remember the context, but I feel like if I were to hear, I’ll be like, Oh, maybe that’s why. And I just didn’t put it together. 

Kurtis: But anyway, because when I say Lactobacillus ruteri, that’s saying just any other plant named Bacopo monnieri. And those plants can still have variants and bacteria can still have more subsets. And this particular subset PTA6475, I’ve actually remembered that because it’s so cool.

There’s a study that I can link it to you after this is done so you can share it with everyone, it’s a free to access study. It basically gave this probiotic to rats and showed a glow of health. And by glow of health, skin quality increased, hair quality increased. Vitality increased fertility increase.

It basically did an all around more youthful effect on rats. And it was all tied into increasing a particular interleukin, which is basically remember I said immune cells signal to each other. A lot of their signals called interleukins. 

Mike: So the signals themselves are called interleukins. 

Kurtis: Not there’s a lot of signals, but 

Mike: so yeah but that’s, I just want to make sure that I’m understanding that’s what that is.

It’s a signal. 

Kurtis: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, have you ever read a study on like exercise inflammation? You saw the acronym IL 6, interleukin 6. That’s it’s basically just a way to assess the activity of the immune system. But yeah, I believe it was interleukin 17, interleukin 10 and 17a. It gets really complex.

But basically just this probiotic by itself increased like all these parameters including fertility, testicular function, and male rats testosterone as well. Like it just overall gave an incredibly youthful appearance and effect on these rodents. From a goddamn gut bacteria, 

Mike: I guess that’s not entirely surprising based on all the research that is, at least it’s getting the research that’s out there is getting more attention now and on just how many different ways our gut health impacts us, right?

Ranging from not just physical things, but also you could say it’s physical, but mood and psychological states and so forth. 

Kurtis: There’s more than magnitude. Yeah. And when is listening who wants to read up on the study, the fur on the rats basically went from basic and stringy to deliciously lustrous.

Mike: Oh wow. 

Kurtis: Like it was a big effect. 

Mike: Good thing we are just big rats, right? So we should all just take it. 

Kurtis: Oh yeah, pretty much. 

Mike: No, what are your thoughts? What are your thoughts? 

Kurtis: Where does it go from here? Has it been studied in humans yet? I haven’t followed up on the particular strain because like it’s actually one of the lesser popular strains.

Like one of the other strains for infant. Colic, I think it’s called. Yeah, infantile colic. Yeah, seems to work for some reason. Also apparently infantile colic is all related to the intestines. At least from what I’ve seen of these studies. Apparently babies cry if their stomachs are pissed off. 

Mike: Who knew?

I can attest to that. My son had colic when he was younger. It was not fun for a little bit. 

Kurtis: Yeah. I do not envy 

Mike: you for that. But now he’s cool though. So it’s okay. Let’s do a recap then just so if people listen, let’s put it together in terms of, okay, so here’s something, if you want to here’s a daily, if you really want it to do with supplementation, do everything you can to boost your immune system.

And then if you do find yourself sick, you could add these in as well. 

Kurtis: That would be a somewhat healthy diet with. Plenty of fiber in there, a mushroom of sorts, dietary mushrooms are fine. And then adding garlic against supplementation or dietary inclusion are fine. 

Mike: And for people listening, what I do personally is I tend to eat the same thing.

Meals, same foods every day, just cause I eat stuff I like until I get sick of it. And then I change it. But I eat a fair amount of garlic of it’s probably, it’s probably three or four cloves. A clove being an individual nodule, right? Yeah. What’s the entire thing called?

What are you a bulb, right? Yeah, you’re bulb. And then you have so I’m eating a few cloves of garlic every day. I’d say three or four. And then I’m probably eating let’s say 

Kurtis: popcorn into your mouth before workout. 

Mike: No, I know you said that you’re into that because you’re weird, but 

Kurtis: I’m not into it, but I’ve done it before.

If you ever buy a pre workout and you’re like, Oh, wow, does it really reduce blood pressure? Hon, like you’re skeptical. Pop two cloves of garlic into your mouth. Go to the gym and try to do an overhead press or don’t because you will fall unconscious. Holy crap. Like a clove of garlic in your mouth.

We’ll reduce blood pressure and you will feel it because you’ll get woozy. It’s that potent. 

Mike: So don’t do that. 

Kurtis: Like our podcast on hydrogen sulfide. Cause it’s, I’d like it more than nitric oxide, to be honest. 

Mike: Something I know nothing about. So I would just sit and learn. 

Kurtis: Cause have you heard the term gaso transmitter before?

Mike: Maybe it sounds familiar. 

Kurtis: It’s a signaling molecule in the body that just happens to be a gas rather than a liquid or a solid and all that. And there’s three of them known, nitric oxide, hydrogen sulfide, and carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide is an antioxidant. Also might kill you in high amounts.

Mike: Will. Will. Yes, Will. 

Kurtis: They’re all toxins. That are produced in her body that had beneficial effects and that’s just interesting, but hydrogen sulfide itself is blood pressure reducing brain protecting antioxidant. It’s awesome. 

Mike: Interesting. But you can get more of it through garlic.

Obviously, 

Kurtis: anything that provides sulfur to the diet. Garlic, methionine, cysteine. A lot of the benefits of protein that are beyond the amino acids themselves are tied into providing sulfur to the diet through methionine 

Mike: and 

Kurtis: cysteine. Taurine can actually provide sulfur to the diet, as can the supplement MSM methyl sulfanol methionine, I believe it’s called.

It’s just, methionine with an extra sulfur on it. 

Mike: Yeah, common, so you find it in joint supplements a lot, right? 

Kurtis: Yeah, and like sulfur actually inherently can help joints. I shouldn’t say helps if you don’t have sulfur in your diet, your joints suffer. 

Mike: Okay. So those are the diet things. And then supplementation wise, if somebody were wanting to do everything they could to keep their immune system working as well as it can, what would you, what would the daily regimen look like?

Kurtis: For somebody who gets sick frequently, but not to an overly potent degree, I would recommend Spirulina Daily. I’d recommend Spirulina Daily to everybody, but for these particular people, I’d double recommend. And that’s what, 5 

Mike: grams a 

Kurtis: day, right? You can go as low as 2 grams a day, but I’d recommend 5 as a basic.

Also, if your nose hates you. If snot builds up a lot, spirulina is your best friend. Trust me on this one. My nose hates me. 

Mike: I know, I noticed that I was getting some allergic reactions this year to the pollen, which I haven’t experienced in a long time. I guess the pollen was pretty intense and spirulina helped with that.

I take Genesis every day. But there were a couple of days on the weekend when I didn’t take it. And I noticed that I was, it is a milder, it’s not my allergies were a bit more intense when I was younger, but I noticed I was sneezing a little bit more on the weekends. That’s my experience with that.

Kurtis: Yeah, the only downside of a sire lead is that you have to take it daily. Just the effects don’t last in the body. 

Mike: Experienced that firsthand. 

Kurtis: Anyways, but continuing, if you get a sickness, anything related to the throat that is dry, consider pelargonium sidioides or African geranium. And finally, if you get sick, Either frequently or infrequently doesn’t matter, but as long as your sickness has a high intensity to it, up the garlic, we’re talking three to four cloves a day level, or if you want to supplement about 1200 milligrams of aged garlic extract.

Mike: Okay. And what about vitamin C? It’s not completely worthless, right? In all scenarios, it’s cheap. 

Kurtis: Yeah, if you exercise and because you exercise, you feel sick and that’s it, like it’s directly related to the exercise. Then consider some vitamin C. 

Mike: Really? It’s that I know you’d mentioned that, but I thought you were just referring to because there’s just not much evidence.

That’s the only scenario where it’s seen to be beneficial. But I assumed that the 

Kurtis: evidence and other scenarios has just shown to be pretty much useless. 

Mike: Okay. That’s good to know. 

Kurtis: That’s the scenario where it shines. It’s just if someone works out hard enough to make themselves sick, then whatever vitamin C does in the body prevents sickness there.

Mike: How does that, what does that really mean though? How do you work out so hard that you get sick? Yeah, you just train seven days a week and try to squat one RMS every day or something. 

Kurtis: Just refers to the frequency of, I believe in upper respiratory tract infections. Again, But basically, if you have two groups of people, if you have 200 people on the left, 200 people on the right, and you follow them both for a year, you can measure how frequently they get sick.

And the harder you work if you work out moderately, rates of sickness go down. But if you work out intensely, then there’s a chance that after your workout, you will be susceptible to infections. And so you just catch something. It’s like you work out hard enough that your immune system is so busy that you can’t 

Mike: keep an eye on everything else.

So then practically speaking, then you’re talking about what do you think would be reasonable in terms of intensity? I think of some of the crazy shit crossfitters do or. 

Kurtis: The studies in particular were done on teenage and young adult skiers. So I would say you don’t need to like bust a lung in particular, but honestly, I’d say crossfitting intensity is probably.

Comparable. 

Mike: Yeah. 

Kurtis: As long as you do it every day of the week or six days at least. 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. So some of the more intense CrossFit folk out there. 

Kurtis: Yeah. I think that’s totally reasonable to suggest vitamin C for. 

Mike: And that would be in the case of sickness though, right? Or would it be for, in the case, it would it be to prevent sickness?

Kurtis: It would be to prevent. 

Mike: Okay. Okay. Now what would be how much? 

Kurtis: 500 milligrams at the minimum. 

Mike: Perfect. Perfect. Great. And on the mushroom side of things any general recommendations there? 

Kurtis: I would just recommend a reishi as the default, unless you have a lot of white button in your diet every day. And if you do have a lot of white button mushrooms in your diet, you probably are already getting the benefits.

So you don’t need another. And if you aren’t taking any brain booster, but you want to like for one supplement, double down on immunity and brain boosting, then you can try out lion’s mane. Great. But beyond that, consider most of them interchangeable. 

Mike: And in terms of amount, what’s reasonable? 

Kurtis: About one gram of the water extract daily for supplementation.

If you’re doing it food wise, I’d say it’s about 10 grams after water is taken out. A loose handful. You can probably tighten up a little bit. Small apple size. How many? I’m just like making a pop right here. I was like, wait, how do I show? How many 

Mike: grams does this apple weigh, man? Come on. 

Kurtis: I don’t know.

50 grams fresh. 

Mike: Okay. All right. Perfect. 

Kurtis: Yeah. Fresh just means with water in it. 

Mike: No, it’s a handful or two of mushrooms a day. That’s reasonable. I think that’s everything. 

Kurtis: Yeah, 

Mike: perfect. Thanks for taking the time as always. And what should we talk about next time? 

Kurtis: If hydrogen sulfide isn’t the topic du jour of that inevitable day, which it should be, to be honest, because I’m have no other major ideas here, perhaps just like a general overview of like how Eastern medicine Is just because it has shit evidence doesn’t mean the actual medicine itself is shit.

Mike: Yeah, we were talking about that before. It sounds very interesting. And you need a bit of time to digest the massive book that you’re in the middle of. But I think that could be a very interesting episode. 

Kurtis: I 

Mike: think also probiotics could be a good episode because They are trendy and you have a lot of supplements because they are a lot of people hear about them.

A lot of people are searching about them and you have a lot of fake news supplements. That ironically, I just got emailed from, I won’t say who, but somebody who I actually Warned him that it’s probably a bad idea to go too much into the affiliate land in the fitness space where you just start whoring your list out to anybody who has like a decent EPC or whatever the, I don’t even know.

I’ve never even promoted an affiliate offer. That’s not true. I promoted I promoted Greg knuckles is Greg’s Mike’s monthly research review because it’s actually really good, but I’ve otherwise never done an affiliate offer. But. Where you see Hey, they’re promising. We’ll look at people are earning on average 1 50 per email subscriber they’re sending to.

And it’s some bullshit probiotic product that the headline basically promises that you are going that, what is it ferocious, friendly probiotics that guarantee more muscle building and fat burning without making any changes to your diet. And I’ve seen this offer actually going around Again, simply because probiotics are very mainstream right now.

There’s a lot of talk about them. There’s even like stupid shit out in New York. And I think LA where they have probiotic bars, so to speak, where you go and get special probiotic shots, 20 

Kurtis: Little cups of yogurt. That’s better than me thinking of shot. Because when you said shots, my first thought was needles.

I’m like, Oh, that would be really good. But no, it’s just, they’re just little yogurt, little squirt, little 20 squirts of yogurt. Here you go. Idiot. Thanks. Yeah. It’s Why, like, why do you sell probiotic under the name probiotic? What are you talking about? Why are like to say, here’s a probiotic, eat this probiotic and not specify the species.

Say, hey, I have plant. Do you like plant? Eat this plant? Do you know the benefit of plant? This plant is known as green. Do not watch Dr. Osman. You don’t know about plant. Green plant ketones. There’s a supplement right there. Actually, I actually want 

Mike: that domain. Just because I grew up on the internet and there’s something irreparably wrong with my soul.

I really would like to, at some point, spend a lot of time just making fake supplement websites with fake brands that make fun of existing stuff just for fun. But green, greenplantketones. com. I’m actually going to Google the main road. Greenplantketones. com is mine. Nobody can have it. 

Kurtis: Make a bone supplement, right?

And there’s vitamin D, iodine, calcium, and vitamin K in that order. And just pretend that calcium with this initial CA, just forget about the day, DA. So you have Vitamin D. I. C. K. Sell it in horse 

Mike: pills. It’s pretty good. It’s pretty good. It’s pretty good. I do want some vitamin dick in my life. 

Kurtis: Are you 50 years of age?

You need some dick. Vitamin dick. That is. And the worst part is you could argue it’s a good bone health supplement. 

Mike: See, a part of me wants to do that and actually just sell at least one bottle, just to say that I sold a bottle of vitamin dick. Like when people ask what do I do? Oh, what do you do?

Oh, I sell dick. 

Kurtis: I sell 

Mike: dick. 

Kurtis: How, what kind of, how can you beat that 

Mike: answer to go into a block party in my neighborhood with all these, I put on all 

Kurtis: my CV. I have one sold dick without breaking laws. This is the kind of shit I think about 

Mike: when, I live in Northern Virginia and it’s mostly just whatever professional older people that I’m just strange to.

So I just think of when I go to a block party or something. Oh, what do you do? I sell Dick. What, what do you do? Oh I’m a lawyer, I’m the head lead counsel at this huge whatever, fortune 500 company. What do you do? Oh, I sell Dick. 

Kurtis: Yeah, that definitely that’ll be worth 

Mike: too cool.

All right, man. I vote for probiotics. I think that would be a worthwhile and, actually now that you bring up bone supplements, bone broth is another thing that is I’d have to check on Google trends. I feel like it’s heating up, though. I’m hearing more and more. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And popular. I’m going to check right now. right now. Oh, 

Kurtis: it should die. Oh, don’t betray me humanity. I put it in right now. Google trends. Look at this trend. 

Mike: Oh yeah. It’s way more popular than berberine, but not nearly as popular as the ketogenic diet, my friend. 

Kurtis: Oh, what do you know? China and India have this shit, right?

There’s one searching berberine more than bone broth. 

Mike: So that could also be a, that could also be a podcast worth doing. I think 

Kurtis: how France has their shit together. Sure. Not 

Mike: France. There’s none of the shit together. Come on now. Don’t say such blasphemous things, 

Kurtis: but they’re better than the bone broth.

Mike: Yeah, they have that going for him, all right, man. This was a good discussion. What do you have coming up on the blog, which I mentioned this every time, and I should mention it again. Curtis writes over at legionathletics. com slash blog writes all kinds of amusing educational things.

Oh, it’s, we have a, we have an ongoing game now of Writing ridiculous intros and his intros. He’s I think you’ve been beating me actually because I’ve been buried in like other stuff and I haven’t been able to get put much brainpower into creating more and more alluring introductions. But what do we got coming up?

Kurtis: So recently we had the gut health supplements as well as potassium deficiency article, which I recommend because everyone needs more potassium. 

Mike: Yeah, quickly. What’s the easiest way to do that? Cause supplementing is pain in the ass. 99 milligrams per tablet. Like how do you do it with diet? 

Kurtis: So for diet, just have to eat more veggies.

Mike: And what kind of veggies, what do you do? 

Kurtis: For me personally, I tend to go towards beans and pretty much any veggie I can shove my mouth like guilt free. Like I don’t need to track the calories for it, that kind of stuff for me. But also In grocery stores, there’s something called the salt substitute.

It’s supposed to taste like salt. Doesn’t do a good job. 

Mike: Yeah, it doesn’t. It doesn’t really taste shitty, but. 

Kurtis: Yeah, but things like you buy in grocery stores called a salt substitute, and it’s straight up potassium hydrochloride. And you can sprinkle that on your foods for extra potassium. So that’s like really the only way to get high levels of potassium in your diet without just buying like 20 bottles of pills.

Mike: Yeah. You can also, I like to eat a banana as well. That’s on average about 500 milligrams of potassium, right? I don’t remember the exact numbers. I think that’s what it was. I remember cause I was looking at this okay, I want to make sure I get enough potassium. I don’t want to have to supplement or use salt.

So I’d say I would prefer to just get it through food and anyways. 

Kurtis: I make chili a lot. So I just throw the potassium hydrochloride in there. Yeah. 

Mike: Yeah, that works. Yeah. Plus, obviously, chili lends itself to beans, 

Kurtis: yeah. It’s weird that’s my potassium source, chili. You’d think it’d be green at least.

Mike: Whatever works, man. 

Kurtis: I know, 

Mike: right? And what do you have? What do you have coming up? 

Kurtis: There’s going to be a nutrient deficiency article in the next week, and there’s one other article that It was an op ed, which I’m actually proud of, where I was talking about three supplements that are highly potent and that’s why you should not take them.

Just dangerous ones. To anyone who has used the term soy boy unironically you should feel ashamed because I’m actually going to talk about a true estrogen in that article. 

Mike: What are the three? You don’t have to go into the specifics, but I just I just want to know. 

Kurtis: Wolfia vomitoria, a plant that is aptly named after his ability to make people profusely vomit and is a wonderful combination of yohimbine, reserpine, and antipsychotic, uppers, downers, and other psychoactive agents.

A wonderful thing to sell to old little ladies who just want to have their bones stop hurting. Pueraria Morifica, or White Crow. And it is basically more potent of an estrogen than estrogen itself. Wow. Potent enough that if you took one gram of it and put it in your bro’s protein shake as a prank, it may constitute a legitimate crime.

And the last one you’re giving people, you just gave a lot of people ideas right there. But Amazon sales are about to spike. No, because I know people that go, this herb has been used to give men in the transgender community titties. That’s how powerful an estrogen it is. They use it to grow tits like when they can’t get estrogen otherwise.

Mike: And 

Kurtis: so I’m actually wondering when 

Mike: being a soy boy isn’t enough. 

Kurtis: Yeah, like you just there. That’s the headline. Soyboars are like level one mobs you grind on in a video game compared to this thing being the end boss. 

Mike: Ah, so you show up kind of emotional, but not lactating yet. And then yeah, pretty much.

Yeah, 

Kurtis: but in the last one is Thunder God Vine, which has the best name ever. Thunder God Vine. 

Mike: Thunder God Vine. 

Kurtis: Yeah. 

Mike: It’s not named 

Kurtis: after Thor, surprisingly. I want to take it. Don’t, it has a kill count. 

Mike: Oh. 

Kurtis: Basically, it’s a traditional Chinese medicine for rheumatism. 

Mike: Ah. 

Kurtis: And It is a very potent anti inflammatory, but if you accidentally take a wee bit more than expected and it’s a plant, so the bioactive levels change depending on how it was grown, it may or may not kill half your immune system.

Huh. Regardless of what happens, rheumatism goes down. So rheumatism is basically your immune system. Yeah. Like rheumatism is basically your immune system attacks your own body. So you just kill half your immune system. Calm down. Yeah, or if you just go full Thanos on them, both of them work to reduce rheumatism.

It’s just if you kill half your immune system, like Thunder God Vine has given people cancer like cancer, scabies, ovarian failure, numerous cases of just outright death. It’s Oh wow, I feel good. Dead. So yeah, thankfully it’s not really sold in the west anymore, but if you find like a little mom and pop store, like that has like old Chinese owners, they’re just like, Oh, what do you want?

And it’s Thunder God vine. I can kill a man with that. So yeah, don’t take Thunder God vine or Morifka. You can take vomitoria if you want, but your stomach won’t like you. 

Mike: Fun, fun. Perfect. I think that’s it for now. Huh? 

Kurtis: Yeah. 

Mike: All right. Thanks for taking the time, man. 

Kurtis: Okay. Talk to you later. 

Mike: Hey there.

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Lastly, if you didn’t like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at musclefullife. com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I’m always looking for constructive feedback, so please do reach out. All right, that’s it. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.

And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though. I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in. So instead I’m going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my one on one coaching service. So the long story short here is this is the personal coaching service that I wish I had when I started in the gym many years ago.

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