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Andy Stumpf (0:30)

Okay, got the red smoke. Sun runs north and south. West of the smoke. West of the smoke. Okay, copy. West of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. Come on with it, baby. Give it to me. I mean it cleared hot, can't be cleared out. Heyo. We are back with our normal Friday scheduled programming. Now, before I get into this Q and A, my goodness, everybody take it easy a little bit. I realized the last two Fridays I put up conversations instead of Q and A's. And I did not realize because I've talked about this before. This medium is very transmit only for me. I record, I hit upload. I can see a little bit geographically where it goes, some very basic information, age ranges, male, female. But I know that's all based off of what people are putting into their device. I didn't realize how many people enjoyed the Q and A. Let me be clear. I enjoy doing the Q and A. It is very humbling that people would reach out and give any thought or care into what I may think. And I take it very seriously. I try to think through my answers. I really enjoy when the questions force me to question my own beliefs and get me to a place where I will ask myself, why do I feel the way that I do about what I feel? And I'm not gonna stop doing them. I just had a few extra guests. I'm in front of my laptop right now. Let me count this real fast. I have three more. Five, six. I have eight podcasts prerecorded. I'm gonna be gone for a week doing some jiu jitsu up in Northern California. And I have four more podcasts the week that I get back that would be on a normal release schedule. Almost three months of content in the cam, to use the business vernacular. Well, I don't want to sit on a conversation for three months because it can get dated. You might talk about something that would have no relevance into the future. And it's not fair to the guest either to sit on it for that long. So I was just trying to not have some of those episodes sit for too long. Plus, if you notice, they were shorter than the normal conversations because both of those guests had limited time. That's all it was. It was an attempt to churn what I have now. What did I realize? Some people don't like that and they're vocal. But I listen to feedback. I solicit for feedback and I do listen. So I hear you. You like the Q and A. I'm gonna keep doing the Q and A. I might for a little bit just release some Wednesday episodes as well. So if I have an extra one that's a conversation, I'll release it on Wednesday. So potentially in the month of August, we might do Monday, Wednesday, Friday for the entire month. And if the volume continues of people reaching out and wanting to come on the show, maybe we'll just do that for as long as I can sustain it and then go back. No promises, no guarantees, but I'll leave the Friday episodes alone for you crazy people. All right, today's episode is brought to you by David. 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I just don't think that you're a good person if you like cake batter flavored things. But that's just a personal opinion. Let's move on. Perhaps you don't know which of the flavors I listed you might like. Well, cool. Head over to davidprotein.com and you can order a sample pack. These go in my backpacks. They go on me with travel. It has become my go to for convenience when it comes to healthy protein in my diet. And as we get older or if you're trying to focus on your health and nutrition, pretty quickly you're going to be confronted with the amount of protein that you need to eat. It's a perfect solution. And like I said, late night snacks, horrible. Way healthier than going fist deep into that bowl of M&Ms. Back to the show. Let's get into it. Question 1 Andy, after listening to your show for a few years, I decided to take the plunge into skydiving. Literally. I learned a few things pretty quickly. Number one, I do not like small planes. And number two, I am not a big fan of free fall. I did, however, quite enjoy the feeling of being under canopy. So I'm on the fence about if I wish to pursue this further or not. Any suggestions helping me on overcoming or on helping me overcome my fear of free fall or any other skydiving suggestions? I do have a few. So for those of you who are unfamiliar with skydiving, this is the occupation for some the hobby for others of testing the theory of gravity, which I've been able to do now on all seven continents with thousands of jumps over two decades. So actually two and a half at this point. Here's what I have found on every continent to include Antarctica, which some people think is surrounded by an ice wall and that we're not allowed to go to. That's a different conversation for a different day and should probably involve an IQ test. But who am I to judge? Gravity works. If you jump out of an airplane and you don't deploy your parachute, you will impact the ground at terminal velocity and you're going to die. So skydiving is figuring out how to exit that aircraft in flight, have a really good time, hopefully deploy your parachute and safely land. And at your intended point of landing, which can be harder than you think it would be sometimes, especially once you get a good amount of experience and maybe stop paying attention to some of the things that you should be paying attention to, it can sneak up on you real fast and it can bite you. And oftentimes it's lethal consequences if not life altering medical issues. You might say to yourself that sounds like it should be taken very seriously. And so the training protocol to even get into the sport should be robust. I'm here to tell you you can do it in a weekend and I know that because I did it in a Weekend, way, way back in 99 or 2000. Now I don't know if you can still do it like this, but the AFF or accelerated Free fall program has classroom and then practical. I did not have to do a tandem jump before I did a free fall jump. My first time exiting an aircraft in free fall, I had two instructors holding onto me. It was a traditional level one jump. And I think they've actually changed the way that they talk about. But maybe now you have to do a tandem. Maybe now it would take longer than a weekend. But even if it took two weekends, that probably shocks people as to how low the barrier to entry could potentially be. You're not doing 50 jumps, you're doing eight, which might shock people as well. Let me tell you this. After your graduation from aff, you know enough to be dangerous to yourself and others. And it's essentially a license to go out and kill yourself by doing something stupid. But after eight jumps, and I'm going to have to make an assumption here, because you got into jumping, it doesn't say how many jumps you did. I will assume you're either in the middle of the AFF program or you're right at the end of it. And we'll just go point by point here. You don't like small airplanes? I am. I don't mind small airplanes, but I've also flown a lot of small airplanes. But in the skydiving realm, there are very, very few aircraft that are going to be considered large, especially in comparison to commercial airliners. Like you're not jumping 757, 737, 747 size aircraft. A lot of DZs in the US are Cessna based operations. Four or five people in the aircraft. Maybe you'll get a Caravan, which is a turboprop. Maybe you'll get a Twin Otter, maybe you'll get a Sky Van, maybe you'll get a Casa, maybe. All of those aircraft though are microscopic in comparison to a commercial airliner. Paris Valley does in fact have a jet. And I don't know the exact specifics of that jet. I think it starts with a seven, but they do some jumps out of that very infrequently. I think it actually stayed on the ground without being used for years, if not over a decade. So I guess it is possible, but you're not going to touch aircraft at that size. In the civilian skydiving world you get in the military, it's a little bit different story. C130s, C5s. I actually did one of the last Jumps out of the C141s. Those are way bigger. But yeah, you gotta enlist in the military to do that too. And then find a job where freefall is required or at least training for free fall is required. So I don't know how to tell you how to get around the small aircraft issue, other than to say the statistics are, in fact, in your favor. Skydiving operations, they have to have pilot qualifications, they have to have mechanical and maintenance qualifications and standards that they adhere to, those are overseen by the faa. Requirements for the people working on the aircraft, hourly inspections, you know, not like every hour, but at a certain hour mark or takeoff and landing or cycles on an engine. So the maintenance is all getting done. And also you can do a visual inspection of the aircraft as well. And you don't need to be a pilot to take a look at an airplane and go, oh, that airplane looks like it's rusting and falling apart. If you don't feel comfortable with what you're looking at, don't get into the aircraft. And also, if you're at a dz, don't be afraid to approach the instructors or the owner of the DZ and just talk to them about your fear of the aircraft and ask them to explain to you everything that goes into certifying an aircraft for skydiving use and the maintenance involved with that to include the pilot qualifications. And honestly, if you meet one of the pilots, I guarantee you they would love to talk with you about flying, as most pilots do. And if you catch them on a slow day, they can probably take you up in either the right or left seat, depending on what they're flying it from, and show you exactly how the operation works from their perspective. It's eye opening. And if you're going to stay in skydiving, I don't know what to tell you as far as small aircraft, other than it ties into my answer for question number two here. You're not a big fan of freefall. You probably don't have that much time in freefall. If you are exiting at 13:5 and pulling at student altitude, let's say you're getting 40 seconds of freefall per jump times eight. That's 320 seconds. I'm not Mike Glover and I don't have him on speed dial right in this moment for him to do this quantitative. But I think that's. What is that, 6 minutes and 20 seconds? Something like that? Yeah. No, 5 minutes and 20 seconds. So the point is this. You don't have a whole lot of Time in that pool to really get an understanding of all the really cool things you can do. Skydiving, you need time. And by that what I mean is time in the sport, you need more reps. When you're getting more reps. This is going to tie back to question number one. You're probably going to develop a little bit more of a comfort with small aircraft because you're being exposed to them more and you will develop comfort with things that you are exposed to. So, yeah, office student status, you should have an understanding of safe practices, stable body flight, recovery from an unstable body, flight position, altitudes to safely deploy your parachute, altitudes, your decision, altitudes which you need to execute your emergency procedures, landing procedures on the ground, and hopefully an idea and understanding of how to fly a safe, consistent and predictable pattern and land on the ground without hurting yourself or anybody else. If you watch skydiving YouTube videos, it's like the exact opposite of all those things. It's people in wingsuits, it's people doing angular flight where somebody's flying on their back and the rest of the people are either on their back with them or above them and they're rotating and they're carving through the sky or people chasing objects, or if you follow the Red Bull guys, they're jumping out and they're circling around an airplane that's in a dive or the wingsuits are linking up with the wings of an aircraft. There's entire disciplines inside of skydiving that involve linking up under canopy and doing formations under canopy or swooping, where you take incredibly high speed and high performance canopies and you dive them at the ground and you're going for speed and distance and accuracy. None of that is even on your radar when you're finishing AFF because you're still trying to process. What does this feel like when I exit an aircraft in flight? It doesn't surprise me that you may not be a big fan at this point, but what I will say is this. Give it a little bit more time. If you are the person who is one or two jumps through aff, my suggestion would be this. Finish AFF and then make your mind up. I would actually even add to that. I would say finish your AFF program and get yourself to 20 jumps, if not 25 jumps. If you can economically do it, I would say 50. That will give you more time in this aircraft, more time in free fall. You mentioned you quite enjoy the feeling of being under canopy. Well, under canopy, things are moving slower. Your brain is going to be able, especially early on in your journey through this, you're going to be able to process what's going on. You're under a student canopy, so it's not going to do a radical dive if you pull down on a toggle. Not that you can't hurt yourself if you do that, but it's just a more docile canopy because you, you're a student and you will have more time under canopy than you will have in freefall. That's almost always going to be the case as well. So you have a little bit more time in that saddle and your brain can slow down a little bit and pick up with that speed by first jump. I remember very well you really don't have that many requirements. You have an instructor on both sides. I want you to maintain your altitude awareness, which is looking at your altimeter. I remember that I was wearing an altimeter. I vaguely remember that it had numbers on it. And at the bottom end of the dive, you wave off and you pull my optic on freefall. It seemed like that jump was incredibly fast, that I didn't see anything. And it felt that way because I couldn't process anything. Thousands of jumps later, you can have really complicated thoughts in your head that have nothing to do with skydiving. While falling to the earth at 120 miles an hour, trying to maintain your position with other people or film something that's going on, the whole world will open up for you. Time will process a little bit slower. You'll see things that you didn't see before. Your peripheral vision will seem as if it's opening up. It gets really cool. But you can't short circuit your way to that. That takes time and experience. So give it some time and experience and you'll enjoy the canopy stuff as well. Even if you got to a place where you're like, I only want to fly canopies. There are entire disciplines of skydiving, of people who exit low and just deploy canopy, and that's their whole jam. There is so much years worth of knowledge that you could spend time gaining on just a canopy, learning how to precisely control your canopy, landing on dinner plate every single time, regardless of the wind conditions. You can do it downwind into the wind crosswind, turning your canopy without using the toggles, when you should use the front risers versus the rear risers. Optimal performance when the wind is at your back versus the wind is at your face. It goes on and on and on. And all of these disciplines of skydiving too, that was just an example of canopy stuff. You could do that in any different discipline that you want. There's a lifetime of knowledge that can be gained there, but you have to give it more time. And that's the biggest thing I could say, give it a few more reps and if you really don't like it, just move on. There are plenty of things in my life where I thought I had this idea of this is going to be amazing, this, this is what I'm going to want to do. And then you start down that path and you just don't enjoy it as much as you can. I will say this. I've always told myself I'm not going to stop after one or two experiences because I might be personally having a bad day. The conditions may not be favorable, I might not have the right equipment. I'm going to at least invest with time and money wise to give it an honest assessment of try to get a good experience and a bad one. I'm not that I'm aiming for a bad one, but if I start with a bad experience, I'm gonna give it a go again to make sure that I'm not making my decision off of a flawed data point. And that's what I would recommend. So if you get to the place where you enjoy it, my advice to you after that would be go slow a low trajectory on your goals towards a very distant horizon. Don't be this person that's trying to go up at a 45 degree angle of performance and knowledge and all of these things. Take your time. It's an amazingly rewarding sport and activity, but it can also take your life if you get complacent. So keep that in the back of your mind at all times and hopefully you stay with it. It's. It's pretty cool. It's way cooler than aff. It's way cooler than you even could think it would be while you're in aff because you just don't have the time, knowledge or experience to get into that other stuff that comes on the other side of the rainbow. So that's my advice for you. 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They have options. People have asked me, do these taste good? Yes, they do. Are they incredibly convenient? Yes, they are. They come in little sachets. You need some warm water and a vessel to drink them out of and you're good to go. Tea on the go, if you will. It doesn't require a teabag. Way less mess. It's not your grandma and grandpa's version of tea. If you're ready to give it a try yourself. If you're ready to elevate your day and transform your health. For a limited time, you can get 20% off, specifically their puair bundle, plus a free starter kit which is going to be a rechargeable frother and a glass beaker. Again, everything other than the water you need to make tea. You can use my link to get that. That's peaklife.com Cleared Hot Peak P I Q U E Quebec uniform echo life.com Cleared Hot to claim this exclusive offer. Or you can just go right to the show notes. Back to the show. Question number two. Longtime listener, first time caller. I am not someone who seeks out conflict for context. I am almost a 44 year old woman, kind, considerate and empathetic. Also tired, but that's a different story. Recently I was in a public place where a total stranger, clearly auditioning for a reality show, made a wild assumption and decided the best course of action was to get all up in my face. Encouraged by their little entourage, Unprovoked conflict. Oh great. My favorite. Did I mention that I hate drama? Like I loathe it. I have no time and zero fucks to waste on it. I de escalated the situation as gracefully as possible. Middle school teacher here. So de escalation is practically one of my superpowers. And then I walked away. And yet I'm mad and I'm frustrated the way I tanked the vibe of what had been an amazing day. Or I should. Sorry, I read that wrong. The way it tanked the vibe of what had been an amazing day. Now, over 24 hours later, it's still parked in my brain, lounging on the couch, eating chips and criticizing my choices. I know I did the right thing. I stayed calm. I took the high road. I kept it classy. I wish I had told them to go fuck themselves for assuming the worst of someone they didn't even know. But instead I smiled, took the high road and floated off with grace like a mature adult I never asked to be. So here's my question. How do you deal with the emotional hangover of conflict? Especially when you're conflict avoidant, deeply sensitive, and let's be honest, probably running 30% hotter than usual thanks to hormones. Love the podcast. I only wish I had the presence of mind to channel your sarcasm and wit when it all went down. Cheers. She who just wants to be left the fuck alone to enjoy a beautiful day. Has there ever been a better sign off to an email than that? I'm not sure, but that's. That's top 10 right there. Ah, conflict. Public conflict with people that are acting kind of crazy. What I will say is this. I'm glad that you didn't channel my sarcasm when it all went down because just given this is the only information I have about what happened in this situation, but just given how you described it, the individual and then the fact they had an entourage, which oftentimes I have found levers people towards doing things even more irresponsible because they may be and just they might be having a bad day but then they had this would be the best word, performance pressure. It's that group setting. Maybe they wouldn't even consider doing something like that if they were by themselves. And I'm not saying it's the group's fault that they were with them, even though they of course could be have contributed to that. But it's this performative nature. People just sometimes go outside of themselves with the in intent to impress those that they're with. And if you had channeled that sarcasm, which by the way, sometimes I'm able to and sometimes I'm not, I have a whole list of things that I have written down that I wish I would have said to people in that moment. And I'm hoping that I would finally meet that random stranger again, remember who they are and then what? I'd have to be like, hey, hold on a second and just go through my phone and be like, oh yeah, six years ago I wish I had said this to you. It doesn't work out like that. But if you had, you can't really estimate the reaction to somebody in that state. And what I have found is it becomes very nonlinear, meaning most conflict. And maybe this is more true of relationships, whether healthy or unhealthy. I wonder if unhealthy ones escalated at a higher velocity. But there may be a main issue and then there can be a response and then there is a slight elevation and then that goes on both sides. So a slight elevation on both sides. What I mean by nonlinear is let's say you had snap back with something sassy and they go straight to violence. When you thought you were still in the I'm just gonna be a smart ass phase. I don't want that for anybody. And it's really not predictable. And again, in those moments where there are other people there, that performative nature of it, I have seen it lend itself towards that non linear escalation. So even if you had had double usage there, the sarcasm available for you, I'm glad you didn't use it for exactly those reasons. How do I deal with emotional hangover over conflict? Which by the way, I'm not a huge fan of conflict either. I don't know. Are there people out there who really like conflict like that gets their rocks off? Probably. I don't know. There's people, there's people out there that a lot of really weird things to me fill their cup. But I'm not going to tell people how to live their life. So maybe there, there are people out there who just love conflict. I'm not one of those people. There are two answers I'm going to give you. Conflict for somebody or with somebody that I know. And conflict in a situation like this where you don't know this person and you don't know the motivation or backstory behind it. The easier one for me, conflict with somebody that I know. And a version of this I think would be true of friends, family and social circle. First off, try to deal with it at its lowest level instead of a mushroom cloud waiting, assuming that somebody else may know that you are pissed off about something. And of the many skills human beings have, let's be clear, reading somebody else's mind is not one of them. So if you are upset about something, my best advice to people about that is verbalize it. As opposed to trying to light somebody on fire with your eyes, hoping that they figure out what you are talking to yourself about in your head. Verbalize it, deal with it at what would be like the lowest level of a mushroom cloud, a starter Pistol. A cap with no projectile bang might startle you a little bit, but easy to resolve conflict as it gets more complicated and as things build. Resentment, I have found to be more difficult. Not that you can't walk your way back from a nuclear mushroom cloud, but a nuclear mushroom cloud does a lot more damage than a cap gun. So deal with it early post conflict and I've had every version of mushroom cloud to starter pistol cap. It sits with me for a long time and I'm very hypercritical. I am a sarcastic person for sure. I am a smart ass for sure. The reason I have come to the realization that I am likely that way is that I am actually a very sensitive person and it's easier for me to be on offense than it is defense. And that has caused me some problems in my life. I have said some things to people that didn't deserve it and I have felt terrible about that. It has led me towards conflict that was closer to a mushroom cloud than a starter cap and I don't feel good about that. So what I try to do is after conflict of any kind, I am hypercritical to assess my own actions and things that I may have said. And then I go back and I will address it with the person. I have found that one of the fastest ways to recover from conflict is after the battle's over. Regardless of the size, scope and scale. Give it some time. This is a key aspect too. Let it breathe a little bit. Which, and by that I don't mean walk out of the room and come back in and just think you're going to go back into it, into round two. Let it finish, let it stabilize. If I in my reflection did or said anything that is below the standard of what I want to be as a human being, I will go back and I will address it and I will apologize for. Doesn't feel good to treat people poorly. Conflict doesn't feel good to me. I avoid it at all costs. Physically, emotionally, mentally. It happens sometimes. I will engage in that when I have to, but I try to also stick with proportional responses. So if somebody has a cap gun, I don't go nuclear weapon because I have before and it's horrible and you feel like a just absolute piece of shit as a person. And I don't want that for anybody, let alone myself. So that's how I work my way back. In those situations where it may be somebody that I know. I own my shortcomings. I apologize if I got outside of the boundaries to what I would consider to be Acceptable or the way that I would want somebody to talk to me, and then I do my best to put it down and move forward. That's easier because you can have a second interaction or a third interaction or a fourth interaction. This one's tough because you met random people and you did great. You got out of the situation without it escalating. But now here you are, and it's wearing on you because you have the rest of your life to second guess anything that you may have said or done or what you would have wanted to do differently. And that sucks. So here's how I handled this one. And, you know, here's an example of a conflict that I bet occurs to most people pretty often. Somebody, while you are driving, does something that you think is idiotic or irresponsible, and perhaps you would want to honk your horn at them. Perhaps you would like to share a few choice words with them through the glass. Or perhaps you needed to get their attention to signal to them that you think they are number one. Perhaps double number one. Right. So we're all familiar with this. I am not immune to this happening. And this is what I tell myself, though I am not immune from accidentally doing that to somebody else as well. Do I try to drive irresponsibly? No. Am I the world's best driver? Of course I am. Obviously, it's a joke. We all make mistakes. I have made mistakes. I have pulled out in front of people that I shouldn't have. I emerged when I wasn't really paying attention. I have made poor decisions based off not paying attention enough and making a snap second decision on limited information. Haven't heard anybody, haven't killed anybody. But I bet you I've pissed some people off. And I don't feel great when I do that. And I don't think other people feel great when they do either. Nobody likes to get honked at and flipped off. So what do I tell myself when those things happen? They made a mistake. They probably didn't want to do that. What's the point of me potentially escalating this? And what would I want somebody to do if the roles were reversed? I would want them to probably acknowledge the fact that they're as human as I am, that they're gonna make as many mistakes as I am and just go on with their day. I don't think anybody is out there trying to run me off the road, even though some people have appeared to have tried. But right at that point where I get super pissed, I take a deep breath and I tell myself, you know what? I don't know what kind of day that person's having. I don't know what they're dealing with. I don't know why their attention span is what it is. But I'm gonna give them the same grace that I hope that they would give me. And it makes it way easier to not escalate into that situation. Then what do I do? I let it go. I don't chase people down. I don't try to run people off the road. I don't get right on their ass. And when I have seen that done, and maybe I've done it earlier or younger in my life, what ends up happening? The driving actually gets worse. Shocker. Because somebody who made a mistake is now really scared because this situation is escalating because beyond what they thought was going to be happening in their day. And I don't blame them for that. I put it down and I let it go for you. Here's the best piece of advice that I can give you. I have no idea why that person was acting that way, and I have no idea why they selected you, approached you, or why you are the person that had this interaction. But no amount of time, time for you thinking about that and what you would have maybe liked to have said that would have presented your position better or made you feel better. At the end of the day, none of that is going to help you moving forward. I would just say think of this in the terms that I do. In traffic, you encountered somebody who was clearly not being the best version of themselves. And I think most people realize, maybe not in the moment, but afterwards, that that's the case. And I don't think they're incredibly proud of their behavior. Now there are sociopaths and there are just straight up assholes that we have to navigate with. But you know what? You know what I found about just like true assholes? They're miserable. Nothing you do is going to make their life worse because their life is already so bad as it is. All you need to do is get out of the way and let them go by. And don't worry. All the bad things that you would hope are going to happen to them, it's going to happen because of their own actions and behavior or even potentially the way they view the world. Sociopaths, I have no answer for because I don't know if I've ever truly come across the sociopath. I probably have. I wouldn't recognize it. So I have nothing really of value to add there. But this person. It sucks that you got wound up into this. You need to let it go. Realize that that person wasn't being their best self. But you know what? You kind of were. You got ambushed by something you weren't prepared for and you got out of it without any escalation or cascading consequences, which is amazing. That's awesome. And move on from there. There's also a really high likelihood that this person that you encountered is not even considering that interaction anymore. And that's what I found about people who are just legit assholes. They will spend zero time thinking about their actions in this particular interaction. But you'll spend hours, days, weeks thinking about it. Why put that weight on yourself? You responded in what I would consider to be a great manner. It sucks that that happened. But just put it down. Go through a whole mental checklist of like, work your way through the whole thing, Take a deep breath and just emotionally and mentally put it down. You encountered somebody that's not living their best life in that moment. Can you change that? No. Is there anything to be gained by ruminating over that? Absolutely not. Just find a way to put it down. It's so hard because you don't get closure. Like I said, social circle, friend or family. When you can go back and have other interactions. Excuse me. A lot of times you get closure. You're not going to get closure on this. And if you do encounter this person again, don't confront them. Just live your life and let them live their life. Also get your hormones checked. Reach out to me again over email. I'll connect you with my sister. She has literally spent years of her life working in the medical field. She was focusing on hospice and she is just completely doing. I guess it would be a 180. I mean, if you work in hospice, which is care for people in the end of life and now you're working on specifically with women, menopause, perimenopause, all of those things. And for like longevity and health. That's like the opposite of dying, sort of. Or trying to delay the hospice as long as possible. Reach out to me, I'll connect you with her. And there's just stuff that you can do. I mean, I don't. Male and female, obviously endocrine system is very different. Men obviously, straight lines, no deviation, perfection in most, if not always women. Completely insane. Not me saying this. This is what the scientific literature actually has shown us over many years and many volumes of medical journals. But Casey can help you out with that. So if you're interested not everybody is, but, you know, why suffer when you don't have to? And that's all I have for your question. Question number three, Andy. Greetings from Connecticut. That's how I say it, because that's how I can remember how to spell it. I know it's Connecticut, but I say it connect to cut Connecticut, because, yeah, that's what it looks like. Longtime listener and fellow Asian, Korean. Sort of like Glover. Thank you for that data point. Anyway, a while back, you mentioned undergoing testosterone therapy. I'm 50 now and would appreciate any insight from your end. Pros, cons, how's it going? Et cetera. Yeah, I haven't talked about this much, and this is the promise that I made early on when I originally talked about starting hormone replacement therapy, or trt, testosterone replacement therapy. Be totally open and honest about my experience. So shortly after my stomach surgery, which was in December, so we're at like, one year, and it's just now into August. So one year and eight months, I had my blood drawn and my hormones checked before the surgery, and then had the surgery and then started testosterone replacement therapy, among a variety of other things after the surgery. They were not supposed to be tied that way. That's just the way that life just gave me the Marvel superhero uppercut right in the balls. So I went from flat on my back, completely and utterly useless in every respect. My daughter's calling. She always calls when I'm doing podcasts. We're going to silence that one. I'll get a hold of her in a little bit. And I have the thing on do not disturb, so you know what that means. She calls and calls and calls and calls until it blasts through and she knows she's doing it. I swear to God, these kids, they're amazing, and I couldn't love them more, but they just know. They know. So flat on my back in the hospital and get out of the hospital. Like I said, I was not intentionally going to start right afterwards, but I did have the thought of maybe this could potentially help. Why did I start? I was 45 when I did. I resisted it very deeply because I didn't. I didn't want to utilize exogenous hormones until I had exhausted every avenue that I could. And I could have always been better and still could always be better on rest, diet, training, all of those things. But my numbers, I remember sitting down with Leah and saying, I think. I think I'm dying. They were not great in a lot of metrics. My testosterone was very low and saying that. Right. Like, all of These measurements are on a scale like I don't know what average is for the average person. And I didn't even have a baseline for myself. And I guess that's one thing I wish I had done earlier, and that would be a suggestion for people, is get a baseline earlier in your life so you know where you're at in comparison. After doing a lot of research, some people are just naturally lower on a scale that's supposed to span all humans. Some are higher. So I was on the low end of the low scale. I made the decision I was working or I am working with Merrick Health. And, and, and I say in addition to TRT, the testosterone was one of like 14 or 15 things that I was taking. My vitamin D3 was almost non existent. Gut biome health wasn't great. Some of my blood metrics weren't spectacular. The testosterone was low. I was having problems sleeping. I was having problems not really with mood, but with energy retention and recovery, all of those things, and it sucked. I would wake up feeling more tired than when I went to bed. Not every night. But for people who have that happen to them every once in a while or relatively frequently, it just, it sucks so much because you still have to do what you got to do. Like, oh, hey, I'm tired. Cool story. This is what needs to be accomplished. Go accomplish it. I'm like, yeah, Roger that. Because that's what you do when you're responsible. You go and you do whatever needs to be done regardless of how you feel like an adult. So I made the decision to start and I, I don't. This is where I get I, the numbers. It was a, it's a small dosage of testosterone. I have an insulin needle that I use three, three times a week. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, it's to the two on the insulin needle. And I know that many of these needles are different, so I'm sorry, I can't give you the exact volume that I'm on, but that's what it is. I, I only know the particular needle that I have and I pull it to the tube and yeah, I do now realize that other needles or syringes and the container that they're, the plunger that they're attached to can be very different. And you should know your dosage when you're going back and forth on those things, know what you're drawing. I stick with the same needle all the time. So is it earth shattering? No, absolutely not. Do I feel better? A little bit. And that's the most honest answer that I can give. Is it all rainbows and you know, and daisies and gumdrops? No, not at all. I had a time right when I first started like crazy water retention. Like we would travel and my anchors look ankles anchors not like carry around anchors. My ankles look like I had just eaten a barrel full of lobsters. Just I was dealing with that. You're gonna gain a little bit of weight. Not necessarily bad weight. It could be muscular weight which has some great data for men carrying more muscle into their later years. When it comes to all cause longevity, all of that stuff. In addition to starting trt, I started focusing more and again I fell short on this often. It's. This is a continual journey for me. I fall short on the diet hydration for me. Man, that was something I was not paying attention to. Creatine is another one of the things. They had me on fish oil trying to. As this stuff comes to me, I'll just kind of spit it out. But it's more than just the testosterone itself or tossed around as my father would say, the male hormone testosterone. I don't, I do not know where he gets it from. I digress. I don't care how much testosterone you're on. If you're not getting any sleep, you're. It's not going to have the impact you want it to. If you are eating like a garbage can, it is not going to have the impact that you want it to. You can just blast right through all of that stuff by having horrible self care practices in health metrics because of your self care practices. Have I noticed a difference in recovery? Yes. Have I noticed a difference in my sleep? Yes. Am I noticing a difference in performance in jiu jitsu? Not on the mats. Like I just, you know, I wish it was like and boom, let's go have an awesome open mat. That's not it. You know, your technique is your technique. You may put on a little bit of muscle. So I guess you could be stronger. Do I recover faster? Yes. That's the biggest difference that I noticed. Which in turn would allow me to train more and potentially or hypothetically allow me to get better faster because my volume could be increased due to my better recovery. But it's not magic. And oh by the way, God, I should have opened with this. Spoiler alert for the audience. I'm not a doctor at all. I'm not qualified to give any medical advice at all. I am talking about only my personal experience and I am not making recommendations for anybody else. So net positive for sure. But it's not the only thing I'm doing. Recovery. I went and spent thousands of dollars on one of those eight sleep pods that has the blanket for the top and the sheet that you're laying on to try to regulate temperature. Because sleep, I am struggling with sleep diet. I am messing around with removing things from my diet. I had to get a food allergy test. I'm still waiting to get the results. I'm pretty sure I'm sensitive. With my luck, I will literally likely be allergic to the foods that I like and I'll end up eating shrimp. And whatever you eat with shrimp, you know, that's what it'll tell me. Like, hey, don't eat any of these because you like them. And you can have carrots and shrimp and mango, which I have. No, maybe that would be good. I don't know. That sounds pretty disgusting, but I'd give it a try. I am attacking this from as many ways as I possibly can. Hydration again was a big one. You know, Element, being a sponsor, I've been drinking Element from long before I was sponsored by them for the podcast. And I don't just take one of the packets, but in the morning I wake up, the first thing I do, biggest glass of water I can find in the house, a little bit of element in there and I do that for flavor in addition to the electrolytes and that I don't count that towards the packet that I take after Jiu Jitsu. Collagen peptides from Bubs naturals which took about a month to kick in, but it has been awesome. Marked decrease in specifically joint soreness post Jiu jitsu. It's very grip heavy sport if you play that type of game. Substantial improvement there. So the first thing I'm doing in the morning is drinking water and I'm trying to drink water throughout the day and I'm still not doing a good enough job at it. But again that trying to be consistent with my training, trying to be consistent with my food, messing around with timing, quality processed food removal versus just having only natural foods, everything in between. So yeah, is the TRT helping? Yes. But is it doing it by itself? No. So for anybody out there considering starting trt, my advice to you as a non medical professional would be this. Make sure that you have a plan for all the other aspects of your life as well. Because if you feel like shit and you're not happy with where you're at and you think injecting a little bit of testosterone in your body is going to magically change all those things. It's not going to. But don't worry, they'll take your credit card. You could spend as much money as you want to getting as much of that stuff as you want. They will take your money, but you're not going to get the impact that you want from it. So be holistic in your approach. Again, non medical advice to people. Would I recommend it to somebody in their 50s? Well, here's what I'll tell you. I'm not going to recommend it to anybody. I'll just tell you my dad's experience. My sister prescribed my dad some testosterone and his words, not mine. He is feeling a little bit more pep in his step. 78 years old. If I could find a way to recover one more year of useful life for him, obviously taking risk to a factor of this. I also get my blood drawn once a quarter. I'm working with doctors, making sure I'm tracking all my metrics because nothing comes for free. Injecting yourself with TRT can move some of your other metrics. HemoCrit is a good example. Some people actually end up getting a place where they need to get a blood draw to reduce their hemocrit. I'm not even going to sit here and pretend to know the exact mechanism of hemocrit. I know it has to do with red blood cells. I know how to spell it, I know where to look for it on the chart and I know that they say if it gets too high or over a certain level you need to reduce it via usually a blood draw at the Red Cross. But I've seen the impact in my dad. He's 28 years past this. Make sure all the other conditions in your life that you have control over, you're focusing on them as well. Go to your doctor, talk to a doctor about this, have a holistic approach, tie it all in together and at least take a look at it. There are a lot of people who are devoutly against this and I'm totally fine with that. And my suggestion to them would be the same for those who are interested in this, go get your blood drawn and see how you're doing. There's so many different variables. You might be doing awesome, but at least you know you are. But if you wake up and you're tired and your body by the way is not going to feel like it did when it's 18 or 28 or 38 when you're in your 50s and 60s, but you're, you don't like the way that you feel and you are controlling those other metrics. Go take a look at it. You don't have to wait for the check engine light to come on to look underneath the hood. A lot of these things can come from simple blood draws. At least you can get some idea of where you're at. So for me there have been more pros than cons. But I am doing way more than injecting myself with a very small amount of testosterone on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. So make the decision on your own. For me, it's been net positive for my dad so far, net positive as well. And that's the best advice that I can give. Hopefully that helps and I'll see you all next Friday.