TRT: Avoid it or Race to it?

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What Is TRT, and Why Is It So Popular?

Testosterone Replacement Therapy is a medical treatment aimed at addressing low testosterone levels. Over the years, it has become increasingly mainstream, with influencers like Joe Rogan and Alex Hormozi openly endorsing it. Many men turn to TRT for reasons ranging from low energy levels to improving physique and performance.

However, the growing normalization of TRT, especially for younger men, raises important questions. Are we addressing the root cause of low testosterone levels, or are we merely applying a quick fix?

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Lifestyle Factors Contributing to Low T

For many men, lifestyle choices may be at the heart of low testosterone levels. Common culprits include:

• Chronic Stress: Unregulated stress over months or years.
• Poor Diet: Lacking essential nutrients like zinc, vitamin D, and magnesium.
• Inadequate Sleep: Consistently getting less than 7 to 9 hours of quality rest.
• Excessive Alcohol Consumption: A known factor in reducing testosterone.

Instead of jumping straight into TRT, consider addressing these areas first to see if they naturally improve your testosterone levels.

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TRT: No Biological Free Lunch

Tim Ferriss' blog post "No Biological Free Lunches" highlights a critical point: Every advantage comes with a disadvantage. While TRT may boost testosterone levels, it's important to understand the potential risks and downsides, which can include:

• Dependency on medication for life.
• Side effects like acne, mood swings, or more severe health complications.
• A potential masking of deeper, unresolved health issues.

Before diving into TRT, reflect on whether you've exhausted other lifestyle interventions first.

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Lifestyle Changes to Consider Before TRT

If you're experiencing low testosterone levels, these lifestyle adjustments could make a significant difference:

1. Nutrition: Eat a balanced diet rich in fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, and healthy fats. Avoid processed foods and sugar.
2. Exercise: Incorporate strength training, high-intensity interval training (HIIT), and daily movement.
3. Stress Management: Practice mindfulness, meditation, or pursue hobbies to reduce stress.
4. Sleep: Aim for 7 to 9 hours of quality sleep each night.
5. Reduce Alcohol: Limit or eliminate alcohol consumption.
6. Quit Smoking: If you smoke, stopping is essential for overall health and testosterone levels.

These changes are challenging but essential. They target the root cause of low testosterone, rather than masking symptoms with a quick fix.

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When TRT Might Be Worth Considering

If you've optimized your lifestyle but still experience symptoms of low testosterone, TRT may be a valid option. Here are some steps to take before committing:

• Double-Check with Blood Tests: Don't rely on just one blood test. Confirm your results with multiple tests under similar conditions.
• Seek a Holistic Practitioner: Avoid clinics that push TRT as a first solution. Instead, consult a functional medicine doctor who can explore root causes.
• Understand Exit Strategies: Before starting TRT, know what it would take to stop treatment if needed.

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Final Thoughts: Avoid Easy Buttons

TRT can be life-changing for some, but it's not a decision to take lightly. Focus on optimizing your lifestyle first by addressing stress, nutrition, sleep, and exercise. These changes may not be easy, but they are the foundation for long-term health and performance.

Remember: There are no biological free lunches. Every advantage comes with a reciprocal disadvantage. So before jumping into TRT, take the time to build a solid foundation and make an informed decision.

If you're an entrepreneur, hard charger, or simply someone striving for better health, prioritize your lifestyle interventions first. And as always, if you don't kill comfort, comfort will kill you.

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Garage Gym Athlete Workout of the Week

Podcast Transcript

Jerred:

All right today, let's go over TRT, testosterone replacement therapy. Is it something that you should be doing? Or shouldn't be doing. This is the Garage Gym Athlete podcast. I'm Jerred Moon, and this is just me talking about TRT. I'm not a doctor. I can't tell you what to do, what you shouldn't do. I'm not doing mounds of research on the topic.

I'm just going to kind of give you my ideas. From what I've seen and just point you in some other directions and things that you might want to consider. When it comes to TRT. This is a hot topic. I know. Talking about it in any capacity, thing you should do it or shouldn't do it. It's going to piss some people off. But I'm going to talk about TRT anyway, because I actually get a lot of questions about this. So let's dive in. So the number of people on TRT right now is crazy.

We have a ton of influencers. Joe Rogan's on it, Alex Hormozi, like 90% of fitness influencers these days are on TRT. And it's becoming increasingly normalized and incredibly easy to get. I mean, you can get TRT from an online doctor and they will ship it to you in the mail. And I think a lot of the why behind this is the fact that sex sells on the influencer side. Like, if you're trying to grow an Instagram following and you're not just absolutely jacked and making a ton of money.

I mean, it's going to be hard, right? So like you got to keep up with other people. So I think on that side of it, that's why a lot of people are doing TRT. On the non-influencer side, just guys taking TRT. There are a lot of problems out there, like just current lifestyles don't support having normal or higher levels of testosterone.

And I'll talk about that. And so legitimately a lot of dudes have low T. And so TRT can fix that problem, but should they have low T.

Now most people aren't going to admit that there's any vanity involved in the decision to take TRT. Everyone has a good reason, right? Like, my energy levels are low.

I have a low blood test. I had some sort of eating disorder when I was 14. Everyone's got some sort of reason and they will never admit, hey, if I take TRT, I'm gonna be jacked. You know, and that's the truth, to be honest. Come on. Let's be real. Why are you considering it? And here's the deal.

I don't care if you take TRT and I'll also openly admit I'm not on TRT of any kind. And I don't plan on taking it for a very long time if ever. But the decision to take it or not take it is yours. And it's yours alone. But I know a lot of hard chargers out there. So I work with a lot of entrepreneurs and I work with a lot of people who are just type A personalities. And here's the deal.

These are the people I talk to about TRT more often than not. And they have commonalities in their lifestyle. So high unregulated stress for too long. And I'm not talking about a couple hours. I'm talking about months, years of high unregulated stress, meaning they're not doing anything to mitigate that stress. Maybe they have really stressful careers. They have poor diets, a lot of the time, maybe due to their lack of time, their hard charging career, whatever it is they're after. Low quality and amount of sleep. Typically.

So what I see a lot of, and a tendency to over consume alcohol, I see that a good amount as well. So if you didn't know, those four things right there, that is a recipe for low testosterone. But the problem is people are, then they're like, hey. I have high unregulated stress. My diet sucks.

I'm not getting very much sleep and I drink a lot of alcohol. My T's low, so maybe I should get on TRT.

But here's my recurring belief about humanity. And I wrote about this in chapter five of my book, Killing Comfort. If you want to check it out, if you already have the book, pull up chapter five, you'll see what I'm talking about. But I believe that every generation falls prey to their own level of stupidity due to ignorance or following the crowd.

And aside from social media and cell phone usage, could TRT be that for our current generation, our current young men. And let me harp on that just for a second. If you're an older dude getting on TRT, you're probably not really who I'm talking to about some of this stuff, but I mean, there are 20 year olds. Young 30 year olds, like people getting on TRT at ages where in the past it would've not really been possible.

Like doctors wouldn't have prescribed it. Wasn't easy to get. But it's just becoming crazy. And I think, you know, we're kind of seeing, you know, social media, the emergence of social media kind of came up. People were excited about it. We used it. And now we see in a lot of teens who are now like going into their twenties, the mental disorders and struggles that that brought on, right?

Like there, all these things that come on, we don't really know if it's a problem. We think it's fine. We can handle it then. Boom, 10 years later, that was a massive problem. Thanks for the experimenting on us, Facebook, you know what I mean? Like that's what happens. And I'm wondering if that's happening with TRT right now, because right now we're at the front end of this wave.

It's just like, boom, everyone on TRT. If you wanted to, if this is a big, big goal for you, you could be on TRT by the end of the week. I guarantee it, but I don't know. I don't really know if it's bad. I've looked at some of the research on testosterone replacement therapy and it really seems like it's just like the field of nutrition. It seems like you can cherry pick the data you want and prove it in either direction, like taking TRT is perfectly safe or it's unsafe.

It's just like I can prove to you through science that a vegan diet is the best diet or a keto diet is the best diet or paleo diet's the best. All you have to do is cherry pick your research and you'll find what you want to find.

But, you know, Tim Ferriss wrote a great blog post on this called No Biological Free Lunches. You can Google that title if you want to see what he said and I'll hit on some of his points. But ultimately we can't expect to only gain an advantage without a reciprocal disadvantage. One more time. You can't expect to gain an advantage without a reciprocal disadvantage.

And I think this is so true, even in, you know, especially in human biology. And it's true of anything. Like if I want a really heavy back squat, like I want to be able to back squat 400, 500, 600 pounds. I want to be able to like jump really high, be incredibly strong. That's an advantage as a human being.

I'm an awesome, strong human being. I'm powerful. I'm strong. I'm fast. What's the reciprocal disadvantage. The fact that I'm tearing my body down at a faster rate than someone who wouldn't be doing those things. The fact that I could be compressing my spine, hurting myself. You see what I'm saying?

Like every advantage comes with a disadvantage and you might be okay, well, a slight injury here, there, whatever, is worth that big back squat. And it's true, but it doesn't change the fact that every advantage comes with some sort of disadvantage and they don't always have to be a hundred percent equal.

It's not like if I have this massive advantage I have a massive disadvantage, it might be like, well, this is 80% good with a 15% negative. There's always going to be something like that. Like side effects in general. But the first reports of smoking being linked to cancer go back to 1795. And the world didn't get serious about stopping smoking until 200 years later. So sometimes it's better to go with your gut instead of doing what everyone else does.

And my gut is telling me to avoid TRT right now for as long as possible. I just don't think playing with your hormones is a path you want to go down unless you absolutely need to.

So here's what I'm going to say again, I don't want to take TRT and I'm not saying everyone should jump on it, but let me talk about a few considerations. And when you might want to take TRT.

I think that you should tackle everything else first, before you start jacking with your hormones. Okay. And I know this is hard. And if you're coming at me, telling me it's hard, I don't care, easy buttons will shorten your life. So here's what you need to do before you hop on TRT. One, eat a balanced diet, rich in vegetables, fruits, lean proteins, and healthy fats.

Cut out all the fast food, all that crap. Include essential nutrients like zinc, vitamin D, and magnesium. Limit sugar and processed food. Engage in strength training and resistance exercises and incorporate high intensity interval training and sprinting weekly. Stay active daily. Avoid prolonged inactivity. Manage weight through diet and exercise to combat obesity. Aim for seven to nine hours of quality sleep per night. Use techniques like mindfulness, meditation, and hobbies to reduce stress. And reduce alcohol intake or give it up altogether and quit smoking.

If for somehow you missed the memo on smoking. So I know that's a long list, right? That's a lot of things. But if you're looking to go on TRT, can you try all of those things first and see if it influences your blood biomarkers in the direction you want to go before we jump to TRT, because that's what is alarming to me.

It's not the fact that people are playing with their hormones and getting on TRT. It's that it's a band-aid for something else, right? It's like, say you're the opposite of everything I just said. Your diet's crappy. You don't have these nutrients, you're eating a bunch of sugar. You don't strength train, you don't sprint.

You're super inactive. You know, you're overweight, you're not sleeping. You don't do anything to reduce your stress levels. You drink a lot of alcohol and you get a blood test that tells you that your T is low. And so you're like, you know what? I'm going to get on TRT. I just can't see that compounding in a good direction. But having said that, say you are trying all of those things. And your energy levels suck.

You just can't manage, like, it's just, you're trying as much as you can. You're doing as much of that as, I said, you're doing all of those things and you're like, you know what? And I still have low T and my energy levels suck. My libido sucks, all that kind of stuff. Then consider it. Then it might be like exactly what you need. So again, I'm not saying don't ever take it ever because it will never make sense.

I'm saying let's not put a band-aid on something. Let's see if we can fix the root problem. And then if the problem still exists. Like, if you have all these lifestyle factors dialed in. Then go on TRT, because that makes me think that there's some other issue and you might actually need some sort of medical intervention. And that would be up for you and your doctor to discover, but ultimately it's not going to be hitting any of these basic lifestyle guidelines, right? And that article that Tim Ferriss wrote, No Biological Free Lunches.

Here were some of his considerations. One, he said, assume there is no biological free lunch, meaning if you're going to get on TRT, something's coming with it. Some sort of reciprocal disadvantage, right? He said, assume the larger the amplitude of the positive effect of anything, the larger the amplitude of side effects. Kind of the same thing, in my opinion.

Number three, don't ask a barber if you need a haircut, I think is a phenomenal way to put it. Don't go to like one of these med clinics that gives everyone TRT and ask them if you need TRT. You know, maybe like a functional med doc, somebody who does a little bit of everything, to see if there's something holistic that needs to be tackled first.

Number four is replicate before you escalate. And what Tim was mentioning there is if you got a blood test tomorrow and it said that you had low testosterone, get one more blood test done before you decide to make this big decision to go on TRT. Like, because what if something was off, you had high stress? You know, maybe a workout screwed it up.

You didn't sleep that well the night before, because a blood test is just a snapshot in time. It's not like a permanent thing. Like these things fluctuate throughout the day. So if you hear like, oh wow, that's low T. And it's like, okay, I did that test on a Wednesday. I'm going to do it again on a Wednesday. I'm going to try to make sure I have good sleep.

I'm going to make sure all these things are in line and then I'll get the test done again. And it could just be that specific test for testosterone or whatever. And then if you're like, no, it's low. Oh, wow. It's even lower or whatever. Then it's like, okay, now we'll escalate. We'll go that different direction.

But rarely would I trust just one blood test. Number five, know how you could get off of any substance before you get on it. Just something to consider, something I would research. And then number six, he said, biceps are temporary, baseball helmet sizes are forever. And I'll let you dive into that one a little bit more if you need to. Look, again, I don't care if you take TRT. And I'm not your dad, right?

Like, I don't care. So there's no need to like, come message me or email me telling me your justification for why you're on TRT. Like those decisions are yours and yours alone. But I have gotten a lot of questions about this. So I figured I'd finally do this podcast just basically on my thoughts. My thoughts are all like gut feelings, hunches.

I'm not talking about science here. I'm just talking about, hey, let's try to dial in all of our basic lifestyle guidelines. And after we've done that, maybe you can escalate to TRT, but if you haven't done that, maybe try that first, right. Try harder. So if you are an entrepreneur or if you're just a hard charger type A personality, let's get those basic lifestyle guidelines dialed in. And then, you know, doing all those things, that's gonna take a lot of trying harder. Dialing in everything on the list that I mentioned is very hard.

I'm not going to pretend like it's easy. But I ultimately think that you should prioritize those things. And you should focus on lifestyle interventions first and always before you start hitting easy buttons. But, like I said, you might be someone who needs it. You could go down that path. But there are no biological free lunches.

I wholeheartedly believe that. So those are my thoughts on TRT. Remember, if you don't kill comfort, comfort will kill you.