Well, hey everybody, welcome to STRONGER Weekly, brought to you
by Purist Nutrition. I'm your host, Jesse Kerrajat.
Thank you so much for being here.
You showed up for a great episode today.
The powerful, and I mean that the powerful.
Laura Gordon joined the show. Laura is a graduate research
assistant at Clemson University studying health psychology, a
former substance abuse counselor, strength coach, and
just someone doing groundbreaking work on stress
dysfunction and how we cope both healthily and unhealthily.
And she's an absolute beast when it comes to physical fitness.
She is a amazing woman, and she is probably literally stronger
than me, a guy who's been lifting my whole life in every
single lift that we might compete in.
She has a VO2 Max somewhere in the 60s.
She's just a beast and she has a lot to teach anyone that's
looking to maximize their fitness and just live a happier,
more stress free life. On that note, we talked about
stress dysfunction, chronic stress, maladaptive coping
strategies like substance abuse and exercise addiction, women's
fitness myths, HRT, peptides, steroids, all the things.
It was an amazing conversation. I'm so grateful she joined, and
I'm grateful you're here for it. But before we jump into that
conversation, as we always do, here are the health and fitness
headlines that you need to know this week.
Let's dive in. All right, folks, let's do this.
We've been reporting a lot on social media lately.
Let's keep it going. So what if you could turn back
the clock on your brain just by putting down your phone?
A new study says you may be able to do just that.
So researchers from the University of Alberta,
Georgetown and UT Austin recruited nearly 500 smartphone
users for a randomized controlled trial.
For two weeks, participants had all mobile Internet blocked from
their phones. No apps, no social media, no
endless scrolling, could still text and make calls, but the
rest completely gone. And what happened?
The results published in PNAS Nexus were striking.
Participants saw a 57% improvement in all mental health
symptoms. That's larger than the effect of
antidepressants. Their abilities to sustain
attention. Yes, please.
Improved by the equivalent of being 10 years younger.
And 91% of participants saw improvement in at least one
major outcome. So what did the people actually
do with that extra time? They got back, they exercised
more, they spent more time outdoors and in nature, and
crucially, they socialized in person more.
Who to thought screen time dropped from over 5 hours a day
on average to under 3. Lead author Noah Costello put it
simply quote. Despite the many benefits mobile
Internet offers, reducing the constant connection to the
digital world can have large positive effects.
So what do we all do with this information?
Of course, you don't need to throw your phone in an ocean,
but put a two week digital reset in your calendar.
That might help. And this study also found that
even short breaks from social media and having the Internet on
your phone could have amazing impacts on your life, so I
highly, highly encourage it. Next up, statistics show that
Americans are hitting the gym more than ever, which is
interesting because obesity rates continue to climb.
So the Health and Fitness Association just released its
2026 consumer Report and the numbers are record-breaking
across the board. 81,000,000 Americans now belong to a gym,
studio or a fitness facility. That's 26% of the entire
population. When I read this headline, of
course I thought right away, how many people don't have a
membership and are still exercising whether it's in their
home gym or just going for a run outdoors.
So this is awesome stuff. Factor in day passes and guest
visits, 100 million people use the fitness facility last year.
So again 81,000,000 have an ongoing membership and it jumps
up to 100 million if you just factor those people that kind of
drop into classes and what not. So Total Gym visits hit 7
billion in 2025, finally surpassing the pre pandemic peak
from 2019. And here's the kicker, the
percentage of people who pay for a gym membership but never
actually use it dropped to just 4.6%, which is an all time low.
So people aren't just paying for that membership, they're using
it more. Gen.
Z leads the pack with 35% of 18 to 24 year olds holding
memberships. But the fastest growing segment,
you might ask? Adults 65 and older up nearly 9%
year over year. That's awesome.
So HFA vice President Anton Severin says it best.
Quote fitness facilities can no longer be considered a niche
amenity. They're part of the basic
infrastructure Americans rely on to manage their health, stress
and sense of community. Exercise is medicine, folks.
Here. Here's the headline for all
those proud to be single people out there.
It turns out being married may be associated with a lower risk
of cancer. Maybe a higher risk of stress
and some other things, but a lower risk of cancer?
Just kidding. Researchers at the University of
Miami's Sylvester Cancer Center analyzed over 4 million cancer
cases across 12 states. Their findings published in
Cancer Research Communications. Adults who have never been
married face a significantly higher risk of developing cancer
compared to those who are or have been married.
How much higher, you should ask? Men who have never been married
had a 70% higher cancer rate than married men.
For women, the gap was even wider, 83% higher.
Now before you panic, if you are single, this doesn't mean
marriage magically prevents cancer.
The researchers believe it's about the social and lifestyle
factors that often accompany partnership.
Better healthcare access, shared health insurance, someone
encouraging you to go get screenings to take care of
yourself, someone that you're accountable to, and even risky
behaviors drop when you're in a committed partnership.
So lead author Doctor Paulo Pinero says, quote, these
findings suggest that social factors such as marital status
serve as important markers of cancer risk at the population
level. So the take away don't just go
get married to just about anybody, but it it does seem to
show that you'll have better social connection,
accountability, whatnot, which would improve your long term
health outcomes. Next up, a new study finds that
exercise and sleep protect your brain from future dementia.
So super important here, a massive new meta analysis from
York University in Canada just published in PLOS 1 reviewed 69
studies covering millions of adults aged 35 and older.
They tracked 3 everyday behaviors, physical activity,
sitting time and sleep duration. The results?
Regular physical activity was associated with a 25% lower risk
of dementia later in life. Sleeping too little, defined as
under 7 hours, was linked to an 18% higher risk.
Sleeping too much, even over 8 hours, was even worse.
Who'd have thought that 28% higher risk and prolonged
sitting more than 8 hours per day was associated with a 27%
increase in dementia risk? So about equal in that risk.
Your sleep is just important as your movement.
The authors know quote dementia develops over decades, and our
findings suggest that everyday behavior such as physical
activity, time spent sitting and sleep duration are linked to
dementia risks. So the take away folks, these
are daily, simple habits that compound overtime.
And it's simple. Move more.
Stand at your desk, sleep more and you'll be good to go.
Creatine, protein, hydration and pre workout.
Those are the Mount Rushmore supplements that I use.
Let's talk about pre workout. For years, I never understood
the importance of quality. I would grab whatever's around
me, whatever's cheap, whatever's convenient.
Yes, I would get energized, but I'd also get anxious and
jittery. I would feel like crap and I
didn't understand all the myriad of ingredients on the label.
That's why Purist Nutrition has launched their first pre workout
supplement and I'm taking it and I absolutely love it.
It changes the game. It's got nootropics in it,
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ingredients. It's got all these different
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workout. So if you want to try Purest
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Again, that's Purest nutrition.com.
You can grab their pre workout or any of their supplements that
I use and you will not regret that one more time.
That's purest nutrition.com. Grab their pre workout.
It'll change the game and last up this week folks. the US
fertility rate just hit another record low in 2025 S According
to new CDC data, about 3.6 million babies were born in the
United States in 2025. That's roughly 53 births for
every 1000 women of reproductive age.
The rate is down 1% from 2024, which was the previous low, and
nearly 20% lower than it was just two decades ago.
Let that sink in. Women are waiting longer to have
children. Birth rates are actually ticking
up amongst women over 30, but not enough to offset sharp
declines among those under 30. So what's driving this?
According to Doctor Segal Klipstein, a fertility
specialist in Chicago, the biggest factor isn't career
ambition, it's relationships. Saying quote, the largest group
is women who said they haven't found the appropriate partner
and don't want to have children alone.
So UCLA epidemiologist Dr. Allison Gammel puts it this way.
Quote, our world and our lives are complex.
There are so many factors that people consider when making
decisions about how and when to start a family, and they all
matter. So the trend shows no sign of
reversing, which means the conversation around family
economics and social support isn't going away anytime soon.
So that's it for our health and fitness headlines of the week.
Stay tuned for my deep dive with Laura Gordon.
Waiting for any other side. All right, Laura, welcome to the
show. Thanks for being here.
Thank you for having me. It's my pleasure.
Happy Friday. Thanks for carving out some time
for me. I mentioned offline I I found
you first and this was dating about a year ago on the
consequence of habit podcast. JT had you on his show and he
mentioned you at the time and he said that I should have you on
my show. So here we are full circle shout
out to JT. So let's let's start here big
and broad, and then we're going to kind of drill down to what
I'll call kind of like your your passion, but just give your
background. How would you describe yourself
right now in this point in time? Because you've, you've kind of
had, you've lived a couple lives, it feels like.
How would you describe yourself? Currently, I live in South
Carolina. I am a PhD researcher and
graduate students teacher at Clemson University.
I'm very, very lucky to be here. It's an R1 institution.
We have a lot of different opportunities for funding on
projects. And so thankfully this last year
our projects have not hit any stalls.
We've been moving forward with a lot of work on human performance
in one of my labs and understanding stress.
Some of the more, I would say psychologically oriented
components of stress, less about the Physiology, but the the
psychological components. And then I also work for the
Center for Addiction and Mental Health Research here at Clemson.
And one of the things I know about your background, I wanted
to ask you about. You started with AJD, right?
That Watch out my marine brain, Juris.
What does JD stand for? Doctorate So this is my my
second run at a doctorate degree.
OK. Got it.
So you were interested in becoming a lawyer and now you're
doing what you just described? Why the pivot?
I made the choice to go to law school when I was really young.
I had just lost soccer and was sort of trying to figure out
what the next steps were, Didn't know who I was outside of being
a soccer player and had listened to a lot of individuals kind of
project the idea onto me that, well, if you're a soccer player
and you're competitive, it's because you are inherently
competitive. And so you would thrive in an
industry that replicates that. And it turns out I was really
good at soccer and loved it because it was a more community
oriented team sport and we got to work towards a goal that was
greater than ourselves. And so when I got to law school,
I was really disappointed that that the things that I did like
weren't in law school. And so I had to wait it out,
kind of finish the degree, try a year or two to make it work.
And then I realized that my real passion was like connecting with
people through not only mental health and working as a
substance abuse counselor, but also coaching.
So I got involved in the mental health industry in San Diego,
worked in and out of different areas while accomplishing a
master's degree there, and was also coaching strength and
conditioning that entire time. So you actually wrapped up law
school and practice for a year? I worked as the general manager
for a small startup in San Diego.
So I used it a little bit more as like an applied MBA, I
suppose. Gotcha.
And then I was like, I think this is not going to work for
me. And so after a year and a half,
almost 2 years, I pulled the E brake and then pivoted into a
completely different career direction.
Got it, got it. And where'd you play soccer, by
the way? UCSD in San Diego.
Nice you, you have lived in beautiful places.
That's very. I have.
I have, yes. So let's talk.
You said the E brake and the pivot.
You pivoted now in the lane that you're in.
I know from offline conversations even what you just
shared that mental health is a passion of yours.
Why is that? I think that it became a passion
later in life. It was something that I didn't
actually know really existed as a field or a career opportunity
until my mid 20s. And so in pulling the E brake
after law school also, I'd started to work on my own mental
health. And I said, you know, I think
that working not only at like finding a life that's more
fulfilling, but working on the patterns and behaviors that I
think will help, like help me to achieve that is going to lead
towards the best outcome. Because I was just not a happy
camper and I wanted to put all, all my cards on the line and
pursuing the next endeavor. So that sparked just a full
blown dive into understanding and learning about all things
mental health and then seeing different industries and
populations that paralleled some of the things that I was working
through, especially around identity change and stress
regulation. And I was like, I think that I,
if I work with these populations and I contribute something
meaningful, that would be a very a wonderful way to live and a
purposeful life. Yeah, well put.
And you said it was in your mid 20s.
You just described yourself as not a happy camper.
May I double click on that and and just kind of ask you to
unpack a little bit about maybe like what made you not a happy
camper? What did you realize about
yourself in your mid 20s that had you?
I'm going to keep saying this. Pull the E brake, make the
pivot. I felt like I was living in a
very nostalgic state when I would think about who I was,
when I was in the dynamic of a team environment and in school
and actually pursuing things that were aligned with me and
the parts of my personality that came out more naturally and
facilitated the goals that we were all working towards.
Whereas everything at that point in my life felt so forced.
Every time I would get up and go to work, everything that I was
doing, I had to like really conjure this energy That felt
super disingenuous and that made me tired and just a shell of who
I thought that I could be and who I was.
I felt very stuck in this perpetual nostalgia and and
wanted to get back to this idea of like, if I wake up and I get
to be exactly who I am and it gets to help facilitate a
greater goal, I think it's going to not require as much emotional
energy to get through a day. Perpetual nostalgic.
I don't. I don't.
People don't use that word nostalgia a lot when I talk to
them just to make sure I'm tracking.
Or are you saying at the time like you were just yearning for
the past and you weren't like appreciating the present?
Is that what you mean when you say that?
I think I was living like the in a constant state of like
comparing past and present and realizing definitely how much I
took for granted and how easy it was to be a collegiate athlete
and to be in this like a area of academia that I loved.
I was in a really cool program at UCSD, which was a sociology
major with a psychology minor and it was the long society
honors college. And so we got to look at a lot
of historical events through a macro and micro lens.
And so I specialized in working with World War 2 at the time.
And I like, loved showing up to every class and I loved my
classmates and I loved, you know, living in La Jolla and I
loved being on my soccer team. And so at certain points in my
mid 20s, I would think about the fact that I was like, when I go
to work, I was like, I feel so anxious.
And every time like an e-mail comes in, I can feel like a
heightened response. And I really don't even like the
content that I have to write in the replies to these emails.
So it became like very comparative.
And I was like, I remember there once was a time where I would
show up to my day and I could put in 110% and it felt so easy.
I can see how that would make you an unhappy camper.
Decent segue, I think, to this whole concept of stress
dysfunction, stress in general, because I'm assuming you're,
you're probably in a, in a state of stress when you're kind of
had a misalignment with your career and your passions and
you're comparing it to the past. But let's venture into stress.
What? I'll just, I'll just throw that
word out there. But what, what have you learned
about it? How are people big broad
questioning about how are people maybe unaware of the role that
stress can play in their lives? And then the next piece is how
are people mismanaging stress in an unhealthy way?
It's a lot, no? No, that's really good.
This is sort of exactly what I think is missing from the
dialogue that exists in a lot of like online areas.
So I think this is really wonderful.
I think the first really important distinction is the
difference between chronic stress and acute stress.
And we as a society right now, and a lot of the Wellness
industry has a hyper fixation on trying to use acute stress
modalities to like exercise and a workout to try and overcome
the issues that actually are a result of chronic stress.
So chronic stress is a prolonged activation of the sympathetic
state with our autonomic nervous system.
And it means that we're engaging with all, with all of these
different physiological variables at a more heightened
state and not allowing them adequate time to rest and
replenish. It's manifesting now as one of
the integral key components to a lot of the diagnosis for chronic
disease and chronic illness in the United States.
So chronic stress being in someone's lifespan timeline and
a heightened risk of any cardiac disease, cancer, autoimmune
issues starts to come up. And we see this role of chronic
stress as a very key determinant of your health outcomes across
your lifespan. And because it's very difficult
for us to then differentiate between chronic and acute
stress, a lot of our conversations in the Wellness
and fitness industry have been, well, we can exercise our way
out of it essentially. And so individuals who have had
issues with chronic stress will a lot of times lean into acute
stress forms of like self therapy in trying to work
through some of the issues that have come up.
So the reason why sometimes this like feels good in the moment
but isn't like a long term solution is that with chronic
stress. We're moving our baseline for
the base level of stress that we feel on a daily basis upwards.
So again, we're using a lot more of those resources.
We're not replenishing acute stressors and engaging in
moments of high spike and then recovery are more aligned with
what our stress activation systems were evolutionarily
intended for and they also help us reset really well.
It's just really important that when we utilize them, it's not
exacerbating a pre-existing chronic stress issue.
So if I am already someone who has a high level of chronic
stress because the occupation that I am at makes me really,
really anxious for 8 hours a day and I'm starting to exhibit
signs of somebody who has endured issues with chronic
stress. A lot of times right now we're
saying, well, if you engage in acute stress, it's going to help
overcome these issues. And so we're kind of conflating
the two in in our our Wellness world right now without adequate
research background and understanding how the two
interplay and how acute stress can maybe either exacerbate or
mitigate the experiences that come from chronic stress.
The truth is right now we don't know the full extent.
We are starting to just now piece together the most ideal
exercise modalities to improve longevity.
We have hardly any any research on really starting to understand
the interplay with acute stressors and chronic stress
symptomology. With that being said and working
in mental health and populations that have been diagnosed with
post traumatic stress disorder, we sort of see two like a
dichotomous approach that really doesn't see eye to eye.
There's the, if you process and you go and you talk about all
the emotions around the experience and the trauma, then
the symptoms will dissipate and everything will be OK.
And then there is more of a camp of this is going to be a
physiological thing and bad things happen and you have to
expand your window of tolerance and push through it.
And for me personally, and seeing these two kind of
different camps arise, I'd like to see research and evidence
that supports like a dual sort of like a duality where we say,
hey, these mental health like resources and, and interventions
that we have are useful when in conjunction with repairing our
window of tolerance for acute stress.
And so I think that that lack of interconnectedness in managing
the differences in those experiences is where there's a
lot of disjunction and sort of a lot of maybe like discrepancy
and sort of how do people work through difficult things, which
is why I really want to do research in this area.
And predominantly it's something called translational research.
So when we start to understand the Physiology more and we start
to understand the mental health components more, how do we take
those research findings and translate them in translational
research towards actionable interventions or community based
programs that we can implement as humans?
Wow. OK, I told you this is going to
be a 45 minute interview. Based on based on that, I think
I might throw up. I might throw this outline.
Now buckle up. No, I've got questions.
I've got questions for you. So we'll put, OK, let's go to
chronic stress. You said a few things there.
One of the things I heard you say and and I'm fervently, if
that's a word, highlighting and writing here was some of the
signs and symptoms of chronic stress.
I would love to be able to understand because correct me if
I'm wrong, there could there could be many people living in
this state of underlying chronic stress and maybe they don't even
realize it. Is that fair so far?
OK, so on that note of like some signs of symptoms, how could I
know or anyone listening know that they are living in that
state of chronic stress just as a starting point?
I think that the most relatable conceptualization of this
chronic stress and ways that it's really impacting people
across demographics would be the conversation around burnout.
Right now, the concept of burnout is that if I am in these
high occupational stress situations and I'm not feeling
any type of regulation throughout the day, the onset of
the, the burnout symptoms start to happen.
I think that the low grade stress that happens and then the
creep towards burnout, it requires for you to actually
notice it. Such a strong mind body
connection that oftentimes we don't see the chronic stress
implications until much later. And when these signs are kind of
like starting to blink in our face and we're like, oh wow,
this is actually not good. And I think that there's a,
there's a, a mixed sort of thing that's happening there.
One of it being like this kind of like dominant American
ideology of like if things are difficult, you push through and
you push yourself up by your bootstraps, which is helpful in
some acute situations for long term endeavors like a life of
work, it could lead to the development of chronic stress
and then some of those more negative symptoms.
So when we first start hearing in our head, Oh my goodness, I
know I'm so tired, but I have to push through.
I have to, have to, have to have to.
And we start racking up the half twos and we start realizing that
we've become emotionally disengaged.
We're pushing through. It's not a, oh, I get to, it's
a, Oh my gosh, like I've, I've got to push through this.
So those little mental moments, the more you develop that mind
body connection to, you'll notice the difference between
fatigue and tiredness. Like, oh, I didn't get a good
night's sleep, so I'm tired or this level of fatigue where
you're like to do this basic task feels like I'm pushing a
rock up a mountain right now. So a very increased level of
fatigue after these moments of I have to, I have to, I have to.
And then the, I think the most widespread and one of the most
common experiences 2 is starting to become numb.
So numb to things happening at work, numb to things happening
in your personal life. What does numb mean?
Numb is a state of disengagement where in previous encounters you
would have engaged. So it leaves that sort of space
for someone maybe who's more introverted and we're like, oh,
well, I didn't do those things before.
And so you're comparing to your own baseline of I used to
readily engage with this person, this person and this activity.
And now I'm finding it that I have to again, go to those.
I have two moments to engage or I just disengage and I don't
reply to text and I say, oops, I fell off.
Like that's it just is what it is.
So numbness is compared to this more subjective baseline and it
is that disengagement from things that we previously used
to like to do or humans that we used to like to engage with.
There's a clinical word for it called anhedonia.
And so that for me is if I was in a more clinical setting, I
would likely use that word. But in trying to make it
relatable, that's how I would define numbness.
I'm glad I asked because maybe numb can also be this as well,
but I know someone who at one point in one point in their life
was a healthcare executive traveling the country all the
time. There was a cognitive dissonance
between the work that I was doing in the fulfillment that I
that I felt doing it. I, we just had our third baby
boy and between the mounting pressures of my occupation, as
you put it, and just expectations, reasonable ones of
a father and a husband, etcetera, found myself like I
was going through the motions everyday and I wasn't
experiencing the full range of emotions that I used to feel.
We're going to go into alcohol use disorder in a moment.
I found myself coping with those feelings, the dysregulation, all
that with substance because I just didn't feel like I could
escape from it. But most of that to say, one of
the one of the experiences that made me realize I was probably
living in chronic stress now that you're teaching me that
term was I was, I would go for walks around this beautiful lake
right in front of my house in Colorado.
And I remember a time when I would feel all of my senses on
that walk. I would have nostalgia.
I'm a spiritual person, so I would pray.
I would notice things, I would hear sounds, I would smell
things. And it got to a point where I
would just out of habit, do the same walk.
And it was like I wasn't experiencing anything.
And I had a hard time finding the joy that I used to feel.
I did do some self research and I, I, I, I discovered this term
called the hedonic set point. I don't know if that's connected
to the term that you just said, anadonia, but it sounds as
though I was living in a state of chronic stress.
Yeah. Yeah.
And the, the hedonic set point is kind of like this theoretical
idea around like if we pursue pleasure in life, what, what,
what benefits will it yield? And what is the kind of kind of
baseline that we need in order to feel those like expressions
of joy, engagement. So it definitely applies to like
when you are experiencing chronic stress, does your
hedonic set point just completely dissipate?
Are you able to access that at all?
There's a a researcher at Yale, her name is Doctor Laurie
Santos. And in her experience in
teaching Yale students, she started, I mean, from my
perspective, she visually clocked that students at this
Ivy League institution were having such a difficult time
with chronic stress that she created a class on happiness and
being like, hey, guys, happiness is intentional.
Let's figure out how we get there.
And it was essentially a lot of the tools in it and which talks
about her ways to navigate chronic stress to recreate a
relationship with experiences of joy and and being present.
So that's very cool. And I think correct me when I'm
wrong because it's likely, but if you are living in chronic
stress and then coping with alcohol, which essentially
floods your brain and the dopamine system and kind of
hardwires it, you're more at risk kind of to like shifting
that hedonic set point. Or maybe I'll put it this way,
you're you could succumb to what my experience, which is like the
only way that I was basically self medicating and feeling
something was by consuming or ingesting alcohol.
Am I on the on the ball? OK.
Yes, absolutely. And it's one of those moments
where our body is in those states of chronic stress.
And This is why I truly believe that PTSD, it will eventually be
reframed as stress dysregulation because in these moments where
we're again missing the cues from our body that it's time to
reset and you are overwhelmed with stress again, right?
We're like, I have to got to maintain the schedule.
I have to keep showing up. So what can I do?
And we lean into sort of these social modalities that are like,
this is what people do when they feel stressed, which is
sometimes to lean towards alcohol consumption.
And I'm, I'm so curious. There was, there's no feasible
way to do a research study on this.
But if people got to that point where they're like, shoot, I'm
having trouble coping. And they were allowed to choose
between like yoga, breath work, some type of like somatic
therapy versus a quicker sort of like there's candy, fast food
and alcohol behind this door. You can go this way or there's
there's this kind of like somatic therapy.
I would love to see which door people chose because there's
something about being in that stress state and that almost
internal state of desperation that we don't even quite
recognize where we go. Oh, a quick route to like
getting rid of this feeling done, doors open.
Yeah, Yep, Yep, Yep. I, I have to say I'm probably
your ideal person to research, but I felt, I felt stuck.
So I got there. I don't know whether or not I
knew I was there, meaning I was in this, you know, chronic state
of stress, but I felt stuck, right?
Because I still had to show up to work and I still had to, you
know, perform in that role. I still had to, you know, put
that, take that hat off and then show up into a loud, noisy House
of dysregulated kids that made me dysregulated.
I still had to not had to. I still should, you know, my
wife had her own challenges with being with the kids.
So I felt like stuck and there was no way out.
And those two doors that you describe, 1 is like the
shortcut, short term benefit, long term problem.
The other takes time, like to say, OK, no, I'm going to lean
into mindfulness and I'm that one would take a lot of time.
Whereas I felt at the time that like, Hey, you know what, I'm
just going to sneak into the garage and slam this 8% IPA,
which turned into two turned into three.
And then I was like, how did I get here?
But it's, it's the P code. It was the shortcut route that I
took. Yes.
And the another added layer on top of that which there was a
study done with children who had experienced adverse childhood
experiences. So they were pretty dysregulated
kiddos and they tried to use a yoga intervention with those
kiddos to help them learn regulation.
And at first, none of the kiddos were scoring any better on their
symptoms of dysregulation and PTSD, which it was hypothesized
by those researchers that if you don't have a relationship with
calm, it doesn't work right away.
So you have to stick with that type of intervention to create a
relationship with calm in order for it to help you.
And I think that especially now and trying to really advocate
for these somatic therapies, especially with occupations or
individuals who work in those high occupational stress
environments, we say just do yoga, it'll be fine.
And they go to one class and they're like, that was, that was
harder for me than like a 3 or 4 hour task at work.
Trying to force myself to feel calm.
It felt so foreign and unfamiliar that I didn't have
that relationship with it. So that's, that's sort of
another caveat where we see all of these interplays with these
niche little areas and that's our physical ideology and
wanting to seek what's also familiar.
So if the short and easy provided a very quick access to
any type of reprieve from the stress that we're feeling, our
CNS and our ANS are essential nervous system and autonomic
nervous system. Remember that.
And they're like, we're going that way.
We don't have to do much. Like that's where we're going,
which to me, like as a, as a researcher, we have to
strengthen and sort of build better when it comes to wanting
to people, help people learn, calm that, that temptation's
always going to be there. So how do we embolden and and
make this stronger over here, which is another, hopefully
another project one day? Yeah, wow, so much of this
resonates. I I remember there were days
back in the day that, you know, I would wake up clear headed,
present, tell myself, you know what, it's going to be a good
day. I felt no urge to escape with
alcohol, nothing. And then throughout the day,
reactions, urgent fires, my day would just blow up.
And then on like my ride home, I be like a moth to a flame to
that to alcohol is it was just like, Oh my God.
And what changed? The circumstances changed and my
inability to cope and keep myself regulated.
And then I would seek that familiar foe to try to, you
know, get that relief. I'll be it for a couple hours,
wake up next day, rinse, repeat. You got a problem on your hands,
right? Yeah, that's sort of the game
too that we start playing is starting to recognize the
patterns and starting to become familiar with the patterns.
I like the term for a lot of these patterns of behaviors to
be termed as like coping mechanisms.
And I think that coping mechanisms exist on a spectrum
and we have to be a little bit more cognizant and honest when
our with ourselves when a coping mechanism has become maladaptive
versus adaptive. I think that one of the examples
of this is in the sorry, my talk is, is right now the using
exercise. And this is something that I had
to purse through because when I was an unhappy camper, I started
to use exercise as my like escape.
And I could go into this like full rage mode for two hours and
overtrain. And then I had this period of
time in my mid to late 20s where I was injured like all of the
time and I was overtraining and under eating.
And it makes sense now, but it's an objective tool and a coping
mechanism. And then it will exist on this
spectrum of is it adaptive and helping you move through these
like these times of chronic stress, or is it maladaptive and
setting you back in the long run?
Comparatively, maladaptive exercise versus maladaptive
alcohol use probably worse for health outcome relationship
outcomes from alcohol. But we still have stuff here
that, like, for me, resulted in some surgeries and, you know,
like some issues with like, health that were like, well, if
we learn how to actually listen to our body and use adaptive
coping tools for stress, outcomes are much better.
Well put. Where would you put, given
everything that happened this week with the massive lawsuit in
California around social media? I don't know if you're tracking
on that. Would you include digital
consumption as like a maladaptive coping mechanism as
well? Yes.
So in the world of addiction, there are two kind of main
groups. So there's substances and then
there's process addiction. And so with substances and a lot
of substance abuse treatment facilities, they are not really
actually built on a ton of mental health, but on theories
of abstaining and complete, you know, like non use of whatever
substance you were leaning into, which you can still do as a
human being and you can thrive. Process addictions are
interesting because they're usually tools that have become
maladaptive that we still have to have a relationship with in
order to function in our life. So if food is an addiction or if
exercise becomes an addiction or if digital devices becomes an
addiction and it's maladaptive because we're escaping, it's
hard for us to to cut those things out and to still operate
in society, right. If I went into a job interview
and I said, hey, I have a process addiction with the
Internet, I can't do anything online, you can't give me an.
E-mail because. They're probably going to be
like, so sorry, they don't think this is going to work.
Do you know, you go through half of a day and you're like, I,
I've got a, you know something. Yeah.
So with these process addictions and the the impact that they
have on our lives, we have to learn how to work with them.
And we have to have to work, work how to be around them a
little bit more closely than some of the more substance abuse
oriented things that we use to cope where we can live lives of
complete abstinence and and not really suffer or probably thrive
actually. So it's interesting the the
duality that even exists in that little field too.
Yeah, it sure sounds like it. On on the on the topic of
exercise as a coping mechanism and how it can be maladaptive.
Maladaptive's bad, right? Maladapt is a bad word.
That's a bad word. OK, it sounds like you, you had
a journey in that regard, where maybe you recognize that
exercise is becoming a maladaptive cope and everything,
but where? Where's that tipping point?
How might someone know if they're using exercise in an
unhealthy way? I can say it now, I didn't know
as it was happening at the time, but I was in so much emotional
pain that I was willing to go extremely hard in workouts for a
slight reprieve from that emotional pain and feel physical
pain. And a lot of times with that
physical output, there were some paired really wonderful hormones
that I loved and, you know, like adrenaline, cortisol, like
things that brought up this heightened experience again,
that was sometimes familiar. Right.
I was seeking something familiar to soccer in any way that I
could. And it took me probably like 3
or 4 pretty bad injuries to be like, I don't think that I read
my body's internal cues well when it needs rest versus when
it needs movement. And so again, I was like, I'm
going all in. I worked for the registered
dietitian. I learned so much about fueling
my body. I learned everything there is to
know about strength and conditioning and then metabolic
conditioning as well in different heart, heart rate
zones. And then, and in that kind of
autodidact process and self education, I now realize I'm
like, Oh my gosh, like once you dial in these small little
things, every facet and area of fitness is open to you.
So my, my early 30s and now into my mid 30s has just turned into
doing anything and everything that I can get my hands on.
And it's, it's just been such a different and wonderful
experience and an adaptive coping tool that I I really love
and, and thrive with. Yeah, we'll put.
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I want to because we're kind of naturally moving towards fitness
a little bit here. But before because I'm so
excited to talk to you about your own fitness protocols and I
have a whole nother line of questions for you because you're
an absolute beast. You're probably stronger than me
in every single lift, I've humbled to say, but I have.
I, I would love to leave if I could with maybe a little
practical summary around this idea of chronic stress.
So if somebody is listening and maybe they're thinking to
themselves, oh damn, that's me. Let's talk about some healthy
steps or maybe some healthy coping mechanisms that they
could approach to start to move in a healthier direction.
With chronic stress and wanting to move towards a healthier
direction, my biggest starting point would be to find someone
that you trust, whether it's a mental health professional, a
friend, a family member, what have you, that you can start
having a very open and honest conversation about your internal
experience with. Because the moment that that
becomes externally real and you can say it and have it validated
and supported is when you can start putting together the
adaptive tools to work past baseline.
The biggest thing, especially as we continue our conversation
from earlier on burnout and when people are like, well, how do I
prevent burnout? My first big tool in that area
of chronic stress would be to find the person that you can
trust and start talking about what's going on internally.
Because then the tools sometimes will also become apparent and
the tools that are being used in a maladaptive way start to
become more apparent as well. So those those safe relational
spaces would be my number one biggest starting space.
And then if you are someone who loves to learn and sort of like
lean into that, the opportunity presents itself to really start
to build the relationship with mind, body connection.
If my mind is doing this up here and I'm spinning a wheel and I
feel heightened states of anxiety, how is that showing up
in my body and my choices? Am I somebody who has a
stressful day and then I stress eat a pizza afterwards and I
call this, you know, thriving? That's a relationship we have to
start to become aware of. I love that you started with
kind of, you know, just being open and vulnerable.
I might even put it that way with someone, share it with
somebody because I, I will say personally, I too, but you tend
to kind of bottle all those things in and there is something
very therapeutic about letting it out, right?
Let the darkness into the lightness as they, as they would
say. So great stuff.
Let's talk about fitness. I love it.
You're not expecting this question.
Ready. Let's lead with this right now.
One Rep Max barbell back squat. What do you got?
I think right now post, right now today post ultra, I could
probably comfortably hit 350. My Max all time is 365 and then
I love to do the unilateral work with the safety, the safety
Marbell. Bulgarians with.
Yes, Bulgarian foot squats, the reverse lunges and the Hatfield
squats with it. Those ones are I can push the
single leg work close to the four hundreds and then the
Hatfield squats like up into the five hundreds.
Unbelievable. I mean that's just incredible to
me. I we're we're friends on
Instagram, if that's what they call it.
I'm pretty sure I saw a video of you doing 315 for like 8
recently. Maybe it was 6.
I don't know, clean. Like I literally, literally this
is just to be really humble and normal.
I'd I hit 315 for six like a week ago and I sent it to like 3
friends and I was like, yeah, and I see your feed and I'm
like, what the hell? And I knew you were coming on
the show. So with that, so anyone
listening that knows anything or has been around a barbell knows
that Laura is an absolute beast. But let's let's start with this,
OK, Because that's incredible. Alright, let's start, let's
start here. So fitness, we're going to get
super meat and potatoes and practical because I know you
were you were a high level soccer player.
You, you seem to have, have a lot of experience in different
types of exercise regiments. So if I made you, Laura, like if
I forced you to recommend a protocol for anybody.
Let's make some assumptions here.
They're healthy. They don't have any injuries
that would prevent them from doing compound movements.
But unpack for me like a general well-rounded fitness protocol
that encompasses both strength and cardiovascular fitness that
most people could apply. Start there.
If I had to start with the cardiovascular, I would love to
see zone 2 running out during one day of the week and then
Sprint intervals or wind sprints at another day. 2 running days
for me is about what I accumulate right now and it
helps with my lifestyle while also maintaining my
cardiovascular fitness. So that would be the non
negotiable cardio component. As we like grow and evolve or we
experience injuries and what have you, we always want to see
if we can just dial back that kind of baseline gold standard
of cardiovascular fitness just a little bit each time.
So let's say I'm just being one of those people who decided to
not adequately warm up my hamstrings and I go and do a
Sprint workout and I pulled my hamstring.
So Sprint things out for a little while.
Even with a hamstring injury, depending on the grade of the
issue, we still might be able to do zone 2 running.
I'd like to keep that during rehab and, and, and growth for
as long as possible with that zone too.
I think a lot of times what happens is something happens
injury related with, with one modality and we throw it out the
window for like a year and we don't touch it.
And so these really long gaps and periods of touching these
gold standard modalities is something that I like, I see in
the fitness industry as problematic consistency and just
dialing it back as bare minimum as possible from the gold
standard is what's really important for me.
So those consistent 2 days and should anything happen, just
dialing back a little bit, the ones that really fall in for me
after running. So some people cannot run.
Incline walking is really wonderful.
Using the bike erg is really wonderful.
Swimming is really wonderful. These are all cardio respiratory
things that we can do to help maintain heart health, which is
the it's the gold standard of health because it like for all
'cause mortality, it's the greatest indicator of like
positive health outcomes. I've heard VO2 Max is sorry to
interrupt you. Is the most closely correlated
metric for for longevity, right? What's what's yours?
I know you know yours. I actually don't.
I don't know. Yeah, You know, I think the last
time I was high 60s. Oh my goodness, Oh my goodness.
I was sitting here hoping you said a number less than mine, so
I got I beat you on that. I'm 5353, might be a 2 maximum.
I'm 41 years old so I'll take it.
I want to say the last time I had it tested, it was around a
year ago. Yeah, because I did my 50 mile a
year ago. I want to say 67 that's.
That's unhuman. Good for you.
That's amazing. Amazing.
OK, I jumped in on you there. So sounds like one day of maybe
longer bout of zone 2 cardio, one day of more like, you know,
zone 5 work, I'll call it. But interval sprints, something
Max right, pick up where? Pick up right there.
After we have that in our program.
I love pure strength training and this is where I probably
differ from a lot of people on social media, though.
I love lifts and movements where we can overload the primary
movers as much as possible to really create high strain in the
workouts. And so that's where I really
fell in love with the Hatfield and the reverse lunges because
you do use that stabilization in the lift, which helps to convert
the lift in that isometric position where it's a lot of
times that's where we lose energy.
So when you're using that stabilization on either the
squat or the reverse lunge, usually as you're coming out of
the bottom, you're giving yourself a little press to
continue and finish the lift. That doesn't take away from the
work that your body is doing under that amount of load.
And so if I want the most bang for my buck, I want to put my
body into situations where it can move safely the highest
degree of load possible on my strength days.
And that's also I typically will use the trap bar deadlift as
opposed to conventional. I also have weaker hips, so it
makes me feel really strong when I use the trap bar.
So I'll trade out some movements to make sure that I can overload
adequately. I do love barbell movements.
I love free weights with dumbbells, any type of
unilateral work as well. I think that it's just a fun
opportunity to really challenge yourself.
I think that's the biggest articulation that people have is
like, this was difficult. I think that's fun to have that
type of movement in workouts. I probably haven't done
explosive Olympic lifting in over a year.
I could potentially work that back in.
I don't think that it's necessary for gold standard
longevity, lifelong programming. I think that it's a great
workout and it's fun to learn and it's like difficult for some
people, but these moments of high strain movement, like with
your muscles working as hard as they can for your lift, should
be the other two to three days that you're working out.
OK, to get your gears grinded on this, I'm going to, I'm going to
ask you in a moment to kind of recommend a split in the bro
culture, right? Like a good split that people
can do right? But before I do, because you're
talking about loads, it sounds like, correct me if I'm wrong,
you would prefer to have higher loads and lower reps as opposed
to getting that same total load across higher reps, right?
So you know, 333 reps at 400 lbs versus 200 lbs at whatever that
math is 6 reps, right? You see what I'm asking?
Like talk a little bit about that I think.
That chalks up to a little bit of a training reference, one for
me and two, a very small minuscule benefit from higher
load training, which is that if you create that those more
strenuous moments for the muscles, you create potentially
more micro tears. So if you are able to move the 8
reps at 200 a little bit easier, even though it's like pretty
good strain, the workout loading that is going to yield the most
amount of micro tears Also then in your recovery demands that
the body adjusts and produces and recovers with the greatest
degree of sex hormones as possible.
So if you're someone I think has like lower free testosterone or
a guy who's like, you know what, I think I want to try to abstain
from HRT for a little bit. I would drop the running volume
a little bit, but really focus on these workouts where you're
creating as much strain as possible for these muscles, as
many micro tears as possible, recovering adequately because
that's your body producing what it needs for muscle protein
synthesis, which includes testosterone.
Got it. I'm going to take one more
follow up question. I'm going to nerd out.
Right before I met you about an hour ago, I hit a workout.
I used the trap bar. I did a deadlift.
So you'll love that. So based on what you just said,
what I did was four sets of 10 with increasing load each time.
I kept it really easy on the first set, 135, right?
Then I went to 225, then I went to 275, and then I did 315 for
10. Are you saying that you would
put more load on the bar and cut the reps down and maybe do the
same overall volume but just put just put more weight on the
weight on the bar and crush it because it has more hormonal
benefits? Did I catch you?
I would do that. Yep, I would do that.
However, if you know your body well and you say that I have
developed this Rep scheme and this build up because I have an
A pre-existing back injury. And yeah, that's usually that
type of loading scheme and that type is is AI had a pre-existing
back injury. So when I performed this way, my
back doesn't flare up. I would not say that the loading
that I prefer exceeds the benefit that you get from using
a loading scheme that doesn't risk injury.
And the small like benefit that I might get from the the heavier
loading scheme, it might be, it's not negligible.
It's just not something that I would write a paper on and say
it's so statistically significant, we should do it
this way because it's just not. It's just like a little bit more
of a preference and then when I want to do and like I still do
Max opportunities. If I want to Max out, I look at
those opportunities as like little moments where I can build
towards a greater Max. So also different goal outcome
as well. I still think that that loading
scheme, that weight and that movement is phenomenal for
engaging in the type of muscle contraction that we want to see
for you to maintain muscle health throughout the lifespan.
Got it. Yeah, because I've just found
that I feel that when I when I go in the fours on my deadlift,
it throws off some of my other like running goals.
Like I'm going to do a fartlick run tomorrow and if I'm over 4
or £500 on the deadlift it I just feel clunky and painful
when I do the run. So that's why I do but good
there take away is like the the benefits are kind of like
minute, minute, right? Is that a word?
What's with my vocabulary today are small.
Customize it. Customize it based on your
goals. OK, so if I could make you now,
how about just a a general well-rounded split compound
movements, everything we talked about that most people could
alley and work towards? I do full body high, low
training. So when I go to the gym on a day
where I am doing strength training, I will do a full body
workout and I will go extremely hard and I will start with a lot
of times upper body. So if I'm doing pull ups, push
ups, rows, what have you. And then I work into my lower
body. I'm doing lunges, deadlifts, any
of that. And then my next day I is a low
day. So I can either do a full body
low. So maybe a, you know, like a
little hit that I don't go above 70%.
It could be a low day in terms of that's my zone 2 run day, but
it allows me to adequately recover enough from that high
day. And then I'm only putting in
three days of high output work a week and I have enough recovery
in between those days. I think the biggest mistake and
the worst training outcomes that I've ever had was I was at a
pretty big CrossFit gym in San Diego and the first 3 days of
the week we would go so hard back-to-back to back.
We would take Thursday off. Friday would be another really
hard workout. And then 12 hours later, because
it was Saturday, we would have our morning workout at like 7:00
or 8:00 AM, those small recovery windows.
I struggled so much and then I got internal about it and I, I
was like, I'm a horrible athlete.
I'm, I'm bad at this. And it was truly load management
and being able to take adequate recovery.
So I love high, low, and I love full body high, low, full body
high, low, full body high, low. When you say low, you're not
touching strength training, am I?
Am I right? Not in a way that creates
strain. I could do a workout at a like a
with maybe like a freeway where they're like dumbbell snatches
where it turns into more of a, a cardio workout than it does for,
you know, like any type of, of true strain.
It's usually because of the things that I like to do, some
form of cycling, running, flow, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, like a
little flow grappling session or swimming.
We've been swimming a lot lately.
You're doing BJJ. I am, yeah.
How long you been doing it for? I think I'm at my 4 month mark.
I think in July or I'm going to do my first competition.
Third straight guest. That is like starting out in
BJJ. So you're doing nogi or Gee?
It's a nogi. I'm it's a 10th Planet Gym in
Clemson. It's nogi, which I think is OK
for me. I don't know if I would benefit
more from being in ghee and some of the submissions that are
there. I know that it's a little bit
more of like the traditional environment, but my my strengths
right now are getting into some type of like scarfold or side
control and just body weight and then like dead lifting into
people and then eventually doing that.
Yeah, like you're not going to move from here and I'm just
going to gradually weasel my way in here and we're done.
Strength. Strength definitely overpowers
technique in the white in the white belt realm, but.
I understand that. Yeah, I've done it for a while.
I've done some competitions but I found that that strength
benefit quickly away when I got on there with some purple.
Yeah. And they're even saying, like,
as soon as you turn into a blue belt and you're going to walk in
thinking your your, your hot stuff because you did well
against white belts that didn't know how to handle your
strength, they're going to just mow you down.
And I was like, OK, I'll, I'll learn technique.
OK. Yeah, yeah, my my first
instructor taught me a live lessons.
He basically like choked me out with my own thumb somehow
because I was like trying to freaking around.
But that's cool. You and I have some we have some
things in common. I don't have a 62 VO 2.
Bad. We have some things in.
Let's be honest, most of us don't have a private gym, a full
time trainer, or hours every day to lift.
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That's repfitness.com. Yeah, I could talk to you all
day. Let's let's go here if we could,
because we we messaged about this topic.
It's an important question that I wanted to ask, and it has to
do with the difference, or should there be a difference
with the way that women approach physical fitness and men?
What would you say to that question?
One of the creators that I have a parasocial relationship with,
his name is Clark Hibbs. He had a really great segment
where he used the phrase predatory pseudoscience around
women training. And so there's sort of this
phenomena right now, right where we see predatory things about
women entering the workout space.
So your creatine should be pink with a Peach on it and be 40
more dollars because it's not going to make you bloaty or
something like that. Hogwash.
Like it's, it's throw it out the door.
So there is this theme and sort of prevalence of predatory
pseudoscience around women in the industry and and engaging in
fitness right now. However, this is not the same as
invalidating the experiences that women have based on their
unique Physiology. So if I'm training like, and I
did do this during COVID, I trained a lot of high school
girls who couldn't play their sports because of the shutdowns.
And so we would do field trainings and they would come to
me and they would be like, hey, I'm at this stage of my cycle.
I feel horrible today. Is there evidence to support
that their output would actually be different that day?
There's another creator on here, her name.
She's like doctor lists on Instagram.
A lot of her research has said there's actually no
physiological difference. But psychologically someone
might be like, because of these changes and these hormone
differences that I'm experiencing, my internal
experience is different right now.
And what we want to work on is the validation of that and
saying like, OK, you've got 70% today as opposed to a full tank,
let's have you operate at 70%. What scaling adjustments can we
make so that way you don't don't lose out, but that you don't
feel like you're overexerting? So is there, there's this nuance
and sort of balancing that has to be done between predatory
stuff where people are like cycle sync, you're training and
someone genuinely coming to you saying like, hey, because of
what's happening right now, I think I need to adjust.
And then being able to work with that and appreciate that those
physiological differences will likely come up.
So that's something that I like to distinguish between.
And then I think the, the last little bit is the, the fun
research that I've seen come out about the benefits that women
have if they strength train throughout their pregnancy.
Because I know that there are like tons of hesitations around
like excessive movement or because I know that cortisol is
bad for the baby. Is it bad if I exercise and do
these things? And because strength training is
a little bit more of a sex hormone based activity where
we're not like spiking our adrenaline, our cortisol as much
as we would during HIT workouts. It's looked at as one of the the
key ways to maintain maternal health during pregnancy and
resistance training is really beneficial.
So that's my my shameless plug for that one.
I would love to see more women training through through
pregnancy if they feel that they have the capacity to.
I love it. I love it.
You should do more podcasts and get that word out because I
don't, I don't, I don't think that pregnant women, I don't
think that they instinctively think that.
I think they think it's unsafe and there's more detrimental,
you know, effects of it than the benefits.
So that's a great point. I'm going to ask you one more
question because I just want to, and then I'm going to go into a
rapid fire, which is my favorite segment every time I have a
guest on. But I know that you have some
thoughts and maybe some ideas and research around HRT.
You said that acronym earlier, hormone replacement therapy.
For anyone that doesn't know what that means, peptides,
steroids, what would you? What would you say?
What would you caution? I know that like peptides in
particular seem to be the thing that's blowing up as things do,
but what's your thoughts on all of those different?
They're not modalities, but treatments, supplements,
whatever you want to call. Them, yeah, we're, we're at a
point right now we're using exogenous substances is at like
a big high point and they're readily accessible and
unregulated. So I don't want to advocate for
fear, but I want to advocate for cautious hesitation.
That could be really beneficial if you just stick with it.
So the first topic with HRT is hormone replacement therapy has
had some really strong evidence come out in support of it when
there is a clear physiological instance for the decline in a
given sex hormone. So especially around estrogen
and testosterone for women who are doing or not doing going
through perimenopause, menopause and men who have gonadal issues,
we see this physiological rationale for a decline and
hormone replacement therapy has worked really well in mitigating
certain symptoms there. My area of caution that is
purely observational at this point comes from men in
particular who have not experienced A physiological
rationale for a testosterone decline immediately running into
very similar to door #2 from from earlier to the quick fix of
if I take this testosterone, I will feel better as opposed to
leaning into. Is this symptom that I have
around lower energy the like this as experience of
testosterone decline, a greater indicator of potentially chronic
stress? Because when we are chronically
stressed, our bodies natural production of testosterone
declines. And so if you are using HRT, but
not addressing the chronic stress you're experiencing,
there's still a myriad of Physiology and like physical
changes that happen because of the stress that we're not
addressing. We're just putting a little
Band-Aid over it, potentially a bad Band-Aid if there's
excessive amounts of testosterone use.
But so that's my 1 area that I would really love to see more
conversations about and research on is when we're using it as a
way to work through chronic stress.
What are the health risks? What, what does that look like?
And and hey B, how can we navigate that better?
And maybe some more regulation around it too, but go on, yeah.
I would, I would love to. I'm a big, I used to be like
really libertarian and in the past two years have been like, I
think we need to regulate some things.
Yeah, agreed. Agreed.
And then so with peptides right now too, they're broken pieces
of amino acid chains. And so they come in so many
different forms. The ones that are really have
strong anecdotal evidence right now, but there's maybe one or
two human trials and not a lot of like looking at like what
this does for human beings comes from the peptides that are very
similar to HGH, but instead of targeting muscle growth, they
target ligament and tendon repair.
And so if you do quit Google and you say, well, why was BPC 157
like why did they drop these clinical trials?
It turns out there's a really high risk that if a person has
undiagnosed cancer that they these peptides that are going in
to maybe help repair whatever issues that we have like an
elbow injury or what have you, they don't discriminate.
They won't just go to the side of the injury.
They'll go anywhere where there's prolific cell group.
So. They're going to.
They're going to and multiply basically cancerous cells.
If you potentially have it. So right now we're seeing
peptides being pushed without the preliminary and necessary
level of let's at least do a cancer screening first, right?
Like let's at least get this underway.
Let's get some human trials, like make sure we know how to
use this. So that's my, my hesitation
there and my caution. And, and just take it, you know,
with a grain of salt and a little bit of nuance.
Some people are like, I'm so desperate because I have to
perform for my job. I'll try anything, OK?
The risk makes sense to you. You're a 20 year old and you
know, you have a history of breast cancer in your family and
you're a girl and you're like, I'm just going to try it.
I would say this, this is a place where we have to pause.
So that's sort of my posturing of peptides that I would like
people to start taking into consideration.
And then in the third category of anabolic steroids and this
really like heightened world of aesthetic pursuit in in fitness.
My one thing that I would like to plant the seed of for people
to think about is maybe only consider anabolic steroid use,
right? This is purely for aesthetics at
this point. After you have put in the work
to reach your genetic potential, after you have dialed in the
nutrition, after you have trained well trained hard, done
a myriad of different programs, found out what movements you
actually benefit from. When you have exhausted that and
you still feel the need to try anabolic steroids, it's a free
country. I can't, I can't advise you any
differently. There are health issues and
health risks there, but some people the pursuit of that
aesthetic is what they want. I would just say at the outset,
have the goal be exhaust genetic potential first and then
consider it. Because if you jump right in
right off the rib at 21 years old and you start, you know,
using anabolic steroids, you will never know what it was
would have been like to pursue your like natural genetic
potential. You just eliminate that
opportunity, opportunity completely.
And I think that that is something so fun and fulfilling
and meaningful in the fitness industry.
And I've had a blast with it. And so I would I would be remiss
if I missed the opportunity to not advocate for others to
pursue it. I love it and nobody talks about
that and no one uses that as the justification to avoid it, You
know, but unfortunately, I think there's so many borrowing from
your Fraser, there's so many predators and social media that
just want to take the shortcut, look great, sell their fitness
programs and packages. And it's, it's sad, but you
know, there's so many health risks, especially to the
anabolic piece. One last question on that.
Do you do you see parallels with the GLP?
One explosion, people just jumping right into door #1 and
just going for it? Yes, I, I usually don't have
kind of like emotional feelings about tools.
And then in the research realm, we see it being used in its
appropriate context. And so we have all of this
phenomenal data and we're like, wow, GLP ones are great.
Like they're really help improving people's health
outcomes. Like, this is phenomenal.
And then you step out of the research world and you go on to
either social media or even just, you know, brunch with the
girls and everybody who is so healthy, so beautiful.
Like they are pursuing wonderful lives.
Like, I think I need to go on Olympic.
Like, I think I need to do this to lose 10 lbs.
And so that sort of experience in watching the abuse or the
maladaptive use of this tool to achieve aesthetic standards,
that will likely be different in seven years.
If we're being honest, it's going to it's going to swing
back and forth. That's the way trends always do.
And especially with women, we're seeing an increased risk of poor
health outcomes, right? So if I don't have a lot of body
weight to lose, but I go on to AGLP one, we'll start losing
muscle mass that I'm going to need when I'm older.
That's going to help me move. That's going to help me spend
time with my grandchildren. That's going to help me get up
out of bed and out of chairs so I don't need assistance and I
can live for as long as possible.
And those sort of long term consequences I think get really
lost in this instantaneous need to to fit the social standard.
So we'll put and couldn't agree more.
All right, this has been great rapid fire time.
Laura, I've got 12 questions here and I'm going to pick one
that I think you already answered some of these in the
middle of our interview. But let's start here.
In your opinion, the worst fitness trend of the the last 10
years? Worst fitness trend, Oh my gosh,
in recently, the things that's popping in is people who do not
have the bone strength to put on a weighted vest and to start
doing fitness with a weighted vest.
That one popped off in the last six months that I truly didn't
appreciate. How about this one?
Ready gym pet peeves? Something that irritates you in
a public gym. I am a huge advocate of cleaning
up after yourself and cleaning up your space.
And if you're at a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu gym, you're helping to
clean the mats. If you're in a weightlifting
space, you're putting the weights away and always thanking
your coaches and just being a good community member and saying
hi to people. When the when those things are
being done, you'll see me in the corner like.
Yes. Come on, people, it's not that
hard. Put your weights away and wipe
down your stuff. All right.
Next one. If you could only do three
strength training exercises for the rest of your life.
Only three? What are they?
A calisthenic upper body pull up.
I'll go pull up over push up a compound upper body.
So I would do a Hatfield safety bar, barbell squat, and then a
posterior activation, probably actually something very
posterior for extended. Yeah, I would do RDL as well.
Those would be in my face. Range, Yeah.
Trap bar deadlift. RDL over the trap bar deadlift.
I think that I would get enough quad activation from the
Hatfield squat where trap bar might be a little bit redundant,
but an RDL would really capitalize on very like
important points of the posterior chain.
You are so thoughtful. Next one what is the most
overrated overused supplement Fitness supplement?
I might. Say vitamin D right now.
I think that I see that supplement come up a lot and it
should truly only be utilized if you're deficient.
But I see a lot of it, I think that overused in the sense of
like it's postured as the solution to a lot of problems
that it would not improve at all for people.
So I would say probably vitamin D, OK.
I'm not sure if everyone is as deficient as they think they are
in it. Maybe during the winter.
Months. Yeah, that that seemed to be
catching a lot of momentum. Is the vitamin D supplement
stuff next one? If you could give 20 year old
Laura one piece of advice, one piece of advice, what would you
tell her? I would say take your time
moving forward. I didn't know who I was and I
moved really fast. I think that if I had given
myself more grace and more time, I could have moved a little bit
more slowly but also figured out who I was and what my passions
were earlier on, which likely would have landed me into the
same space but just a little bit earlier.
I think I ultimately got there, but I took a very long way
because I went too fast, which that happens.
Sometimes, but enjoy the ride. I love that going a little.
Bit more fully. Yeah, be a happy camper along
the way. All right?
Last question. Last question for you. 10 years
from now, we meet up, we have another conversation.
What are you up to? What are you doing?
What's the future for Laura Gordon?
I'm teaching at an Ivy League school, possibly you pen,
because they have a really wonderful positive psychology
Research Institute there where Angela Duckworth is one of the
researchers and she is like the pioneer of grit and resilience
and creating a lot of measures that we use to understand that.
So I'm teaching there. I am a scholar advocate, and I
periodically will help politicians understand the true
social determinants of health and help them understand if
certain bills will help get us in that direction or if they
will be detrimental and with the capacity to advocate in that
more public health domain. And I probably have 10 acres, a
boat, three more dogs. Maybe.
It's 10 years, I guess. My first kid, I think land and
more dogs are definitely going to be on the menu, but yeah.
I love it and 10 years from now on the BJJ front, if those
politicians don't listen to your advice, you tell them I'm a
black pad, I'll choke you out and I can barbell back squat
£600 by that point probably. Triangle choke immediately on
the floor. Awesome.
Hey, look, honestly, I mean, when I say one of my favorite
conversations I've ever had of almost three years of doing this
show, I'm I'm very, very grateful that you said yes to
come on. I really appreciated my time
with you. Laura, thanks very much for
coming. Thank you so much for having me.
This is my pleasure, Laura Gordon, everybody.
We'll see you next week. Well, that's it folks, for my
discussion with Laura Gordon. What an amazing human she is so
cool. I that one of my favorite parts
about this gig I have here as a host of a podcast.
I get to meet just awesome people like her and learn from
them and just create a platform where other people can learn
from them too. So here's my top three takeaways
from my conversation with Laura #1.
Chronic stress is a thing and many of us don't realize that
we're experiencing. So know the symptoms and move in
a direction where you can get more healthy #2 when it comes to
fitness, my interpretation is you can keep it simple, work
hard, don't over complicate it, and just be consistent.
And then #3 when it comes to steroids and peptides and all
these things, make sure that you are addressing all of the other
factors for health before you move in a direction which could
potentially lead to some risk if you go down the peptoid, steroid
and other routes. So thank you so much for
joining. We hope you learned something.
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