Don't Fall for MAHA Health Myths, Here's What the Data Actually Says | Dr. Mike Israetel

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Rubin Report

Episode: Don't Fall for MAHA Health Myths, Here's What the Data Actually Says | Dr. Mike Israetel

Host: Dave Rubin
Guest: Dr. Mike Israetel
Date: February 28, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on widespread health and fitness myths—especially those perpetuated by social media, influencers, and popular culture—and what actual scientific evidence shows about them. Dr. Mike Israetel, a PhD, exercise scientist, and co-founder of Renaissance Periodization, breaks down misconceptions about organic foods, sugar, artificial sweeteners, supplements, hormone therapy, fitness routines, and more. He brings an evidence-driven but irreverent tone, aiming to help people skip the fads, ignore the fearmongering, and make informed choices for better health.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Proliferation of Health Misinformation

• Problem: Social media and influencer culture have flooded the public with conflicting, often anecdotal, and sometimes outright wrong health advice.
• Types of Misleaders:
  • Well-meaning, misinformed people (based on their own experience)
  • People who never challenge their own approach
  • “Grifters” who monetize fads or exploit the public’s lack of education
    (11:58, Dr. Mike Israetel: "There are lots of folks just doing their best and... they’re making educated guesses about how things work... There are still other people... it's not what you would call a completeness of thought... And there's this third category, which is really unfortunate, of folks... grifters or something like that.")

2. Nutrition Myths Debunked

a. Organic Food

• No superior health or nutritional value compared to conventionally grown produce.
• The biggest, proven difference is simply a higher price.
• The myth that “healthy” = “expensive organic” is harmful, especially for regular people trying to eat better.
  • (14:32, Dr. Mike Israetel: "There is evidence that organic food is not nutritively different... There is evidence, compelling evidence, irrefutable evidence of one thing. It costs substantially more.")
  • (15:36, Dr. Mike Israetel: "The idea that healthy food costs more than not healthy food is actually entirely mythical.")

b. Pesticides and Agribusiness Conspiracies

• Pesticide residues are minuscule, heavily regulated, and far below any level of toxicity.
• No evidence of broad health threats from pesticides in US produce.
  • (17:28, Dr. Mike Israetel: "Pesticides directly have been studied like ad nauseam... There are like levels of approval for pesticide exposure... long term reviews say that the amount of pesticide the average American consumes is... lower that would result mechanistically in any kind of damage.")

c. “Good” vs. “Bad” Foods / Perfectionism

• Having occasional treats, fast food, or sweets—if done in moderation within a balanced diet—has no measurable negative effect.
• Cultural morality around eating “perfect” is counterproductive and breaks adherence for most people.
  • (19:50, Dr. Mike Israetel: "... if most of your food is really like high quality food... and like on Friday nights... you have some just nonsense shit at a steakhouse... Totally golden.")

d. Artificial Sweeteners & Diet Soda

• Aspartame, sucralose, and most other non-nutritive sweeteners are among the most tested food additives ever and show no health risk even with regular consumption.
• The fear of diet soda is completely unsupported by science.
  • (23:33, Dr. Mike Israetel: "...what are called non-nutritive sweeteners... are the safest food additives ever tested. Straight up.")

e. Sugar & High Fructose Corn Syrup

• They have the same health effects as “regular sugar.”
• Neither is uniquely “poison”; the problem is excess calories, especially in liquid form (soda), which sabotages satiety and leads to overeating.
  • (25:50, Dr. Mike Israetel: "High fructose corn syrup... seems to have roughly the same health effects as regular sugar... the myth that high fructose corn syrup is itself somehow obesogenic or health deleterious is just straight up non starter.")

3. Practical Fitness Guidance: What Really Works

a. Simplicity Wins for Results

• You don't need elaborate routines, cutting-edge equipment, or lengthy workouts.
• Full-range, basic resistance training, done consistently, is the most efficient and results-driven approach.
  • (32:53, Dr. Mike Israetel: "...one of the best things you can do for your physique and your health ...is to lift weights through a full range of motion multiple times a week... It's a thankless process, Dave. It's just like, it hurts... but it's the most productive.")

b. Minimal Effective Dose

• Just 2 sessions per week, 20 minutes each, with alternating upper/lower body “supersets” can transform health and body composition—no need for “all or nothing.”
  • (36:29, Dr. Mike Israetel: "...you can show up to the gym twice a week for 20 minutes each time... Two days a week, 20 minutes. That can improve your everything about your health, your shape, your mobility, and alter your physique substantially.")

c. Progression & Challenge are Essential

• Getting stronger and pushing yourself (not just going through motions) is key.
• Most people never push themselves close to their threshold in the gym and thus don’t see results.
  • (33:24, Dr. Mike Israetel: "A lot of people want better physiques... but never once experience anything like pain or discomfort... That's the stuff that gets you the most results.")

d. The Time Excuse is a Myth

• Most people who “don’t have time” could easily find 20-30 minutes by replacing scrolling or TV time.
  • (42:38, Dr. Mike Israetel: "...instead of watching two hours of [TV] at night, watch an hour and a half, and for half an hour, go in your basement, grind some weights. That half hour, three times a week, is going to be revolutionary for you.")

4. Cardio & Steps

• 8,000 – 10,000 steps a day is a great baseline for health.
• More structured cardio (20-40m, 3-4x/week, heart-rate-raising) is beneficial for fitness but not essential for baseline longevity if you meet daily step counts.
  • (45:22, Dr. Mike Israetel: "If you don't want to do formal cardio... 8 to 12ish thousand steps a day as a minimum bar... the mortality and morbidity statistics on that are really solid.")

5. Sleep

• 7–9 hours/night is optimal for most; self-claimed “short sleepers” are usually just underperforming and adapted to feeling worse.
  • (46:47, Dr. Mike Israetel: "...seven to nine hours... It's correct, absolutely... Humans can psychologically get used to not having enough sleep, but performance wise and health wise, all the markers are still there of not getting enough sleep.")

6. Supplements & Hormone Therapy

a. Supplements

• For most, supplements are unnecessary beyond a daily multivitamin/multimineral and possibly creatine (not dangerous, beneficial for energy/cognition).
• Vitamin D can be useful in sun-deprived areas.
  • (49:26, Dr. Mike Israetel: "Most supplements either don't do anything or you just don't need them. Multivitamin... Creatine is pretty good... Vitamin D supplementation [in northern climates].")

b. Hormone Replacement

• Testosterone replacement (TRT) for men with low numbers and HRT (testosterone, estrogen, progesterone) for perimenopausal/postmenopausal women can be life-changing, if medically supervised.
• Fears of horrific side effects are overblown with correct dosage and monitoring; blood work supervision is crucial. Most side effects can be managed or prevented.
  • (51:19, Dr. Mike Israetel: "I think in the modern world folks... should be pretty interested in hormonal replacements.")
  • (54:58, Dr. Mike Israetel: "Optimizing your testosterone will cause more benefits than not attempting to optimize your testosterone, full stop.")

c. Tirzepatide & GLP-1 Drugs

• GLP-1 agonists (Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, Tirzepatide) are “miracle drugs” for weight loss, diabetes control, inflammation, and even psychological benefits.
• Not just for weight loss; positive effects on cardiovascular, neural, and general metabolic health, even in otherwise healthy people.
• Risks are present, but lower in magnitude than risks of unchecked metabolic disease. Must be dosed carefully, under medical supervision, and combined with healthy habits.
  • (57:42, Dr. Mike Israetel: "As far as we can tell, at some dose... Tirzepatide for most adult Americans would be a health elixir, full stop... it's a miracle drug.")

7. Steroids, Vanity, and Calculated Risks

• Doctor Israetel is openly on steroids but strongly discourages their use for the average person—calling them “poison” except for niche scenarios (extreme physique, professional sports).
• If used, requires careful medical oversight and risk trade-offs, just like other risky activities (skiing, driving, etc.).
  • (65:27, Dr. Mike Israetel: “No, [the average person should not be taking steroids] ...they're poison.”)
  • (65:54, Dr. Mike Israetel: “It is for me, but I have very calculated risk trade-offs... I get blood work all the time. I use a very small amount... but I’m absolutely making a known trade-off.”)

8. Alcohol

• Alcohol is a true poison: every drink is mildly harmful, but moderate consumption (a few drinks, a few times a week) is manageable and likely negligible within an otherwise healthy lifestyle.
• Zero proven health benefit from moderate alcohol (the old “red wine is good for you” is unsupported); the dose makes the poison.
  • (69:26, Dr. Mike Israetel: "Alcohol is like way closer actually on the other end of the spectrum and is like steroids in the sense that it is an unmitigated... poison... but if you do it on occasion a few times a week... the level of study we would have to do to even demonstrate that that's having a negative effect on your body is incredibly precise.")

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On organic produce:

  • “The idea that healthy food costs more than not healthy food is actually entirely mythical.” (15:36, Dr. Mike Israetel)

• On diet soda:

  • “Non-nutritive sweeteners, aspartame, sucralose, etc. Are the safest food additives ever tested. Straight up.” (23:33, Dr. Mike Israetel)

• On “clean eating” perfectionism:

  • “People have a perfectionist mindset and they think in terms of morality versus causality... You can have McDonald’s a few times a week and in the context of a calorie-controlled diet... absolutely fine.” (19:50, Dr. Mike Israetel)

• On fitness basics:

  • “The basics pay massive dividends and they're not complicated.” (32:53, Dr. Mike Israetel)

• On time and consistency:

  • “With two sessions, 20 minutes a week, you can do crazy, crazy things. And if you don't have any more time...just do that for years and years and years.” (41:02, Dr. Mike Israetel)

• On hormone therapy:

  • “Optimizing your testosterone will cause more benefits than not attempting to optimize your testosterone, full stop.” (54:58, Dr. Mike Israetel)

• On steroids and risk:

  • “No, [the average person should not be taking stuff]. They’re poison.” (65:27, Dr. Mike Israetel)

• On alcohol:

  • “Alcohol is... an unmitigated fucking poison... If you do it on occasion a few times a week, it’s... a little bit of bad. But it’s a trade-off.” (69:26, Dr. Mike Israetel)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Dr. Mike’s Origin Story & Approach: 03:17 – 11:06
• Debunking Organic/Natural Food Claims: 14:15 – 19:18
• "Good Foods" vs. "Bad Foods", Perfectionism in Diets: 19:34 – 22:33
• Artificial Sweeteners & Soda Myths: 23:33 – 26:47
• Fitness Routine Simplicity, Progression, & Time Management: 32:53 – 43:30
• Cardio and Step Recommendations: 43:30 – 46:43
• Sleep Needs & Self-Deception: 46:43 – 48:17
• Supplements & Hormone Replacement Therapy (TRT, HRT): 49:26 – 57:42
• GLP-1 Drugs (Tirzepatide, Ozempic) as “Miracle Drugs” Debate: 57:42 – 63:35
• Steroid Use Decision-Making: 65:12 – 67:15
• Alcohol’s Place in Health & the “Dose Makes the Poison”: 68:56 – 73:14

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Tone and Language

Dr. Israetel is candid, irreverent, and refreshingly unsentimental, mixing deep scientific rigor with humor and practical advice. Dave Rubin guides with curiosity and skepticism typical of the fitness-minded layperson.

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For Listeners Who Haven’t Heard the Episode:

• Practical, myth-busting, and unvarnished: You’ll come away with clear-eyed, evidence-driven guidelines for diet, exercise, and health, free from fad or fear-mongering.
• The bottom line: Focus on basics; don’t obsess about “natural,” organic, or purity. Real, lasting results come from simplicity, consistency, and science—not influencer noise or expensive trends.

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End of Summary

Transcript

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[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Support is available 24.

[Dave Rubin]

7 with VRBoCare.

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We're here day or night, ready whenever you need help because a great trip

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

starts with the right support. So there are people that in good faith are trying to help but getting it wrong. Never manage to first, second or third guess their approach and they're kind of just saying stuff that works for them.

[Dave Rubin]

Maybe how much of what you do on a day to day basis is cleaning up the mess of what so many of these other people are putting out there?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yeah, that's a fun way to put it. We do have the data on organic food. There is evidence that organic food is not nutritively different. Then there is no evidence that it's somehow better. High fructose corn syrup in every comprehensive review seems to have roughly the same health effects on you as regular sugar. The idea that high fructose corn syrup is itself somehow obesogenic or health deleterious is just straight up non starter. It's just wrong. And so the high fructose corn syrup thing is a myth. The classic scenario is people are like, I would love to get in shape, but I don't have time. It turns out that with two sessions, 20 minutes a week, you can do crazy, crazy things. And if you don't have any more time to add in, don't add in. Just do that for years and years and years. You know, a lot of times there you get accusations of being bought off by agribusiness. There's just nothing there. Just like folks just trying to do a good job. There's no conspiracy. I would think of conspiracy. So amazing. Like every movie I watch, super deep conspiracy. The agribusinesses aren't trying to poison you. So a lot of the comments will be like, how much is Monsanto paying him to like nothing? Damn it, I don't have any money. You're on steroids. Yeah.

[Dave Rubin]

Should the average person be taking steroids? So why are you doing it? All right, Mike, I got a whole bunch of notes right here, but basically we're just going to arm wrestle, right?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yes. Wait, how Is that gonna go stream for that?

[Dave Rubin]

There's a different stream for that. Yeah.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

So, yes.

[Dave Rubin]

Different show altogether different set. How quickly would you rip my arm off if we did that? And I've been working out a lot lately.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

I can tell.

[Dave Rubin]

I was gonna say thank you. Thank you.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Well, you know, the stream, they pay for an hour. Yeah. So it would take an hour, but it would be fun. Yes. I had no follow up to that joke. Sometimes they just die on the vine.

[Dave Rubin]

All right, that's okay. Let's talk fitness, because I'm very. I know we're gonna. Somehow. We just chatted briefly before the camera started rolling. Some ends up political one way or another, and we'll dive in to some of that and the Maha stuff and all that. But it's nice for me to take a break and talk more about fitness and health and some of the other things that I'm interested in, rather than bludgeoning people with politics all the time. So let's do a little just backstory on you. When. When did you get interested in fitness? Making sure that the muscles were right and caring about body science and all the rest of it.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yeah. Thanks for asking. So I came. So I was born in Russia at age 7, moved to the United States all by myself. Just kidding. My family. That'd be nice. Cool story. And then.

[Dave Rubin]

That's a better hero's journey. Yes.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

I swam under.

[Dave Rubin]

Yeah, under a boat.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Even during the land crossing, I also swam. Figure that one out. It was that hard.

[Dave Rubin]

Whoa.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yeah, exactly. And so I went to high school. I went to elementary, middle, and high school in the metropolitan Detroit area. And when I was in high school, one of my friends who I wanted to hang out with freshman year, I was like, hey, do you want to hang out after school? And he was like, I'm actually going to go to wrestling tryouts. And I was like, oh, can I come with you? And he was like, sure. And so I started wrestling. And in wrestling, it becomes, like, really obvious that bodies matter. Like, if you have more muscles and less fat, you're just better at everything about wrestling right away. And at the time, I was 14. And, you know, like, some kids mature early and some kids mature much later. I was like, you couldn't. Like, there's not a lot of puberty going on. Like, technically there was, but it was like, just like a pudgy little short kid. And so I really liked wrestling. The experience was awesome. But then as soon as wrestling ended, I was like, man, it is. I'm putting stuff together in my Head. And I'm like. I had to get, like, upgrade the physique. And so I went to the gym. I went to the Jewish Community center in Metropolitan Detroit. There were two. There was the nice one and the not nice one. I went to the not nice one.

[Dave Rubin]

Okay.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

And I began to, like, lift weights. And for the first probably year, I. I just didn't like it at all. I just knew I had to do it. And then every season, I would wrestle, and then I would stop lifting weights during wrestling, and I'd miss lifting a lot. I would start lifting again after wrestling season and start liking it more and more and more. And eventually I'm just kind of lifting all the time. And I like lifting so much that when I went to my undergraduate program at University of Michigan, I eventually I started as an engineer. That was like, super, super cool. But long story short, my passion ended up being like, I'm competing in power at this point, and I want to know how to become stronger. And powerlifting is like a super objective sport. Like, you either lift the weight or you don't. Right?

[Dave Rubin]

Right. You can't fudge it.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

You can't fudge it. There's no nuance. And so I was like, well, in objective outcomes, how do we find out how things are made to progress? And the answer is science. If there's like, someone's really sick, you're not like, well, let's do vibes. You're like, let's run blood work and stuff. Right? And so I actually switched my major to kinesiology to try to figure out how to become stronger. And at that point, I was coaching other people really important that I learned stuff. So I started learning stuff, learning stuff, learning stuff. And at the end of every kind of degree program, I realized shortly thereafter I still didn't know enough. And so I just got more degrees. So I got master's and did a year of personal training for people in New York. That was really cool because it was Manhattan, and it was like, people who were at a level of wealth, which is, like, inconceivable to me, around, what year is this? 2009. So it was funny because I was super interested in economics, and I had been for a long time, and I was always asking the cause. We trained a ton of hedge fund managers. I would always ask them technical econ questions. And I didn't even, like, really know. The financial crisis was like, this huge thing, right?

[Dave Rubin]

If you had started again, oh, my

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

God, it was trippy because our gym owner told us it was like a Private personal training studio. My now co founder of rp. Nick and I were training people there and him and the trainers were like, yeah, man. Last year, two years ago, it was like booming. There was twice as many members here. And I was like, why? And they were like, the financial crisis. And I was like, oh, it was that big of a deal. Like, dude, people lost their careers on that thing. And so one year into that I was like, I still don't know enough. Went to get my PhD and then I became a professor. I was a professor for a while, so I guess it's one thing, I suppose. Long story short, I get into it for my own reasons. Just try to get more jacked for wrestling. And then eventually I got super passionate about getting stronger. Eventually I started reading bodybuilding magazines and I wanted to get aesthetically super like jacked and lean. And that just kept going. And as I accumulated knowledge for my own selfish purposes of building the ultimate 41 year old balding Jewish man. Yes. That you see before you. It doesn't look so good on paper, but it also looks terrible in reality. But the. All right, sometimes I drop the laugh track. Amazing.

[Dave Rubin]

Tremendous amount of editing.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Your crew's not laughing as much as I would like them to. I paid them significant amount of money to do that. Now we got some laughs.

[Dave Rubin]

Actually, it depends how much Celsius they have.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

That's right. So I started basically just try to get myself into better shape. But then the passion for helping others is definitely a thing that hit me. One of the reasons I have that passion, I suppose, is like, it just really sucks to see super well meaning good people have a goal and go about it orthogonally. Imagine you play basketball, right? Imagine you watch someone have talent and passion and they were just two hand shooting like this. You'd be like, come here, kid.

[Dave Rubin]

This guy over here.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

So some people are terrible, just terrible. I still think that's how you shoot a basketball. I'm like a sports side just.

[Dave Rubin]

Anyways, you don't, you don't really have the physique of a basketball player. You would hurt someone on the basketball. You can rebound. I could see some.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

I also hurt feelings out there. But your boy got dribbles, you feel me? I'm all over the place. I might be five, six, but attitude wise, I'm at least five, seven.

[Dave Rubin]

I get it.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

But it's like, yeah, you want to be like, hey kid, like let me teach you how to do this. And you kind of send them on their way because it's somebody's in earnest Trying something that they think is going to help themselves, but they're making all kinds of mistakes. You know how to help them. It's just like I was going to say, a stupid joke. You feel like they. Tom Cruise passing someone on the freeway and you're a Scientologist. That's an accident. Do you remember that? No. There's like a classic Tom Cruise interview where he's like, oh, this is amazing. Does anyone. Any crew. Do you guys know any of that?

[Dave Rubin]

Maybe we can lay in a B roll or maybe we can throw the.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yeah, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. This is.

[Dave Rubin]

I thought this was Minority Report stories, bro.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yeah, that was also a great movie.

[Dave Rubin]

Yeah.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

No, this is real Tom Cruise interview where he was talking about, like, what Scientology means to him. Scientologists all love and respect. Please do not sue me. I don't have any money. And he's like, you when you're on the freeway or whatever. I'm paraphrasing. He's like. And you see an accident on the side of the road and you're a Scientologist, you realize you can help. And everyone in the crowd's like, what? How so Classic. Oh, yeah, he did this. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. But it's all about, you know, the facial expressions too, because you gotta do that. The laugh and everything. Tom, that idea that you can help people, not the Scientology related one. It's just dope. And then all of a sudden, you start giving people adv. You write a few books, you do a few interviews, make a few apps or whatever, and you end up like, I don't know, on the margin at least, helping some people. And the big thing with that is, like, a lot of people really care, really care about their health. They care about their quality of life. My contention, this is something we found over and over with clients, is that they'll care to some very great extent about those two things, but they care the most about how they look. And that's a thing in economics, stated versus revealed preferences. Like, you say you want one thing, but all of your behavior say you want the other. The revealed preference of wanting a great physique is, like, massive. And so many people invest so much into that that myself and the companies that I'm associated with and stuff like rp. We just want to, like, be like, hey, do you want to know how to do this, like, faster with fewer errors? We don't claim to have all the answers, know a little bit better, and then voila. Like, that's my entire reason for in fitness is helping well meaning folks just like get into better shape and not fall for stupid fads and go off on their way, just wasting time basically.

[Dave Rubin]

So you gave me so many avenues to go there. Because if you take your journey and now it's around 2009 and social media is starting to blow up and if I, I can show you after the show, I mean, if I show you my Instagram search page, because I've really been on a fitness thing over the last year or so. It's every other person's an influencer. Every other person has conflicting information about how to do this or that. But interestingly, it almost always is about the physique for these guys. And I don't need to be like, I'm 49, I don't need to be like jacked, ripped, like an influencer. But I am more interested in the science and getting my body fully right all the time. And so that I'm not doing this even when I'm sitting here, I usually sit back a little bit more than I should or whatever it might be. So how much of what you do on a day to day basis is cleaning up the mess of what so many of these other people are putting out there?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

That's a fun way to put it. On the one hand, there are lots of folks just doing their best and they're making educated guesses about how things work from their own experience, from inference. And so people will get it wrong. I get it wrong, like geez, a ton, right? And so there are people that in good faith are trying to help but getting it wrong. There are still other people that are trying to help but never manage to first, second or third guess their approach. And they're kind of just saying stuff that works for them maybe. And it's not what you would call like a completeness of thought, isn't there? And that sucks because you have to sort of say, hey, that's kind of not true. And people are confused. Oh, this person says it's true. There's a third category, which is really unfortunate of folks that you could technically describe as like grifters or something like that. And they'll do a combination of two things. One is push their kind of ideological or whatever money making scheme. The other is they'll just supply a demand. But the people who have the demand are not educated enough to understand what they're demanding. So for example, a lot of people like organic food and they think organic food is like good. And it's not like it's an inborn fallacy of Humans, the naturalistic fallacy, the argument from nature to think natural good and organic good is just like just one house down the street from that. And people will be like, I want organic. And there are many people who will just sell them the stuff and be like, here's what you want. And they're not bad. But it just so happens that in every single comprehensive review of the literature, organic is in no way different, health wise or environmental impact wise, than conventionally farmed produce. And so at rp, we have the tough job sometimes of calling out the BS in a way that's like, look, we don't. We need this. Feel free to edit this out. We don't want to kick dicks out of anyone's mouth.

[Dave Rubin]

We don't want to edit for contents.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Right, Excellent. So, yeah, we don't kick dicks out of people's mouths, but we're really trying to say, like, hey, like, respectfully, this is probably more likely to be the truth and sometimes even what people want, like the consumer of health stuff, they don't look at us and go, oh, my God, thank God. They're like, really? You're saying it doesn't matter if I eat organic? And we have a sort of tough job sometimes being like, well, here's all the boring studies and science and so

[Dave Rubin]

you're saying there's actually no scientific evidence to say that if you were eating, you know, over the course of two years, if you ate just all organic on one side and all inorganic on the other side or sprayed with pesticides and the rest of it, there would be no. There's no evidence that there's any health benefit or health detriment.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

It's more. It's a stronger claim than that be made. There is direct evidence that almost certainly no difference will occur because no evidence. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Like, I didn't see a ghost in my hotel room last night. Doesn't mean the ghosts weren't there while I was sleeping. Or some like that is missing too. I don't like a ghost. Probably still.

[Dave Rubin]

What hotel are you in?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

What the hell?

[Dave Rubin]

There's a lot of weird things that

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

happen in Miami about what that's after the show. Okay, but almost certainly the ghosts are stealing stuff. But like, you can say, well, we just don't know because we don't have the data on organic. We do have the data on organic food every single time it comes in. I mean, the earliest review off memory is one that was published in the mid-2010s. It was like A Harvard meta review. And it was like, there's tons and tons of studies all combined together. And like, organic has claims about what it does better. And like, it's true to say that some organic produce has some higher levels of nutrients in one category, but then conventionally farmed other foods have slightly higher levels of nutrients in other categories. And so on the aggregate, there is neither. There is evidence that organic food is not nutritively different. Then there is no evidence that it's somehow better. There is evidence, compelling evidence, irrefutable evidence of one thing. It costs substantially more. And there's another bit of a second order problem that in my mind is like, really, really unfortunate, is people can't know all the knowledge, right? So we use heuristics, simplified rules to be like, this is that, like, whatever. Like, don't speed because speeding is bad. Like, if you're a formula driver, doesn't apply to you because 90 miles feels like standing still, but to the rest of us, like, over 90 is really dangerous. One of these kinds of heuristics that sunk into the popular culture is that if I'm going to eat healthy, it has to be organic. And that is actually like, really limiting for people who don't have infinity rich people money, because they go to the store, they see conventionally farmed produce looks totally fine. They see organic, it's super expensive, and they're like, trying to be on a health journey maybe, and they're like, well, I don't. I can't afford that. And then people are like, hey, why aren't you eating healthy? They're like, I can't afford it. The idea that healthy food costs more than not healthy food is actually entirely mythical. It's totally myth. But because people think organic is great and it's not, again, it's totally fine. Organic has one big advantage. Organic. The organic agriculture process tends to not tolerate transport as well. So organic definition means more local, which means the food tastes, like, fresher, which is like a legit thing. Like a strawberry off your neighbor's farm is gonna taste like, whoa. So people eat the stuff and they, whoa, it tastes different. I could taste the difference. Even though in blind taste tests, usually they can't. There's some fun TV shows that have done that where they give you two bananas and like, this one's organic. Like, nope, they're actually neither one of these is. They're like, oh, God damn it.

[Dave Rubin]

And bananas. Usually the example of people that will tell you you don't need to eat organic because at least you're taking the covering off versus maybe a peach that you'd think the pesticides are ever growing.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Totally. So pesticides directly have been studied like ad nauseam. I say this in as many podcasts as I do or as I can. One of the number one professions that gets zero love and should get all love in the world is toxicology. Professional toxicologists do their entire training and their entire practice because their job is to make sure that all the stuff that could poison you is not entering your body in sufficient quantities that it is going to poison you. They have studied pesticides, pesticide exposure in the United States for generations and believe it or not, it's not one of these things where some huge evil agribusiness is just fucking spraying random pesticides and some little, little 10 year old 50s kids like Gee Whiz Mister, doesn't that go in our tummies? It's like ah, kid whatever. Like that's not how that works. There are like levels of approval for pesticide exposure and the total aggregate amount of pesticides that can your body is incredibly closely monitored study after study after study. Long term reviews say that the amount of pesticide the average American consumes is like orders of magnitude lower, like factors of 10 lower that would result mechanistically in any kind of damage. Also, unless you really cherry pick studies, which some people are bound to do, you'll see some of those in the comments this video on the aggregate. People who have different pesticide exposures really are just not at any risk of anything. Statistically that would be like, oh shit, like pesticides are bad. So it is true to say that if you go and get pesticides like you get glyphosate and you just start drinking it bad. Right? Right. In the actual industrial farming practices in the United States, on average, pesticides are not a pertinent concern at all. There's just not.

[Dave Rubin]

All right, so let's continue with the food portion before we get back to the fitness portion because that's super interesting.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Huge part of fitness.

[Dave Rubin]

You're welcome to look in my fridge right now. And it's basically all organic. So I guess I'm throwing Whole Foods an awful lot of money over there.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

One sense that's cheap. Yeah.

[Dave Rubin]

Whole paycheck. Oh yeah. But all right, sticking with the food side of it. Can you give me one more example of something that maybe we're all missing on the food side, nutritionally or otherwise? That is a sort of common thought that we all think we're doing right, that we're Doing wrong. Wrong.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Common thought in terms of how we

[Dave Rubin]

eat or what we're eating or.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yeah, perfectionism. So people will see you eat like one candy bar and they're like, isn't that like python? And you're like, do you really talk like that? Are you just from the Valley?

[Dave Rubin]

Only. Only on Instagram.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Exactly. Yes. And so it turns out that if most of your food is really like high quality food, lean proteins, veggies, fruits, whole grains, healthy fats, some of the you probably have in your fridge. If you eat mostly like that and like on Friday nights or whatever, you go out with your friends, you have some just nonsense shit at a steakhouse teacher. Totally golden. People have a perfectionist mindset and they think in terms of morality versus causality. They think good, bad, like, there are good foods. That means I'm on the side of the angels. I voted for all the right candidates even. And then there's bad foods like the degenerates eat, and they're made of literal poison. And like, you can have McDonald's a few times a week. And in the context of a calorie controlled Diet, who's eating McDonald's here in

[Dave Rubin]

the crew, we're on a real fitness thing over here. But this guy, this guy, we won't say his name on air. Suddenly I'm getting a lot of pictures of McDonald's lately.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

He just sends a tea to troll you. Yeah, look what I'm eating.

[Dave Rubin]

But you're telling him it's okay if

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

he's not eating an excessive calorie load of McDonald's multiple times a week enough that his body fat starts to get higher. I don't know if this is true. He's looking a little thick.

[Dave Rubin]

Yeah.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Where's that? Pull that sweater down a little bit. Let's see. As long as he's not gaining weight from it and it's not so much processed food that his blood work is McDonald's a few times a week, chips, soda, et cetera, A few times a week is absolutely fine. The problem with extremism is it becomes radically unsustainable. So if you tell yourself, I'm a good person, I don't eat bad foods, you tend to do this thing where you get on the wagon, fall off the wagon. Because as soon as like, you eat the bad food at a party because you've had a few drinks, which you also know you're not supposed to be having, and a few drinks every now and again is also totally fine. People are like, they do that fuck it all kind of mentality where they're like, well, in for a penny, in for a pound, and then just go like weeks of like, eating total crap, and then like, I gotta clean up my life, they'll do a cleanse or some other stupid bullshit that doesn't work, and then the cycle repeats itself. I'm sure you've been around some folks that have done that their entire lives.

[Dave Rubin]

Well, how much of that do you think is just how people are wired mentally, that some people are able to just kind of stay on a certain level? Like, I've been eating very, very clean for the last two years, but I have no problem going to dinner on a Friday night and then. And I'm not eating like a ton of fries and all this fried stuff, but I will drink and I'll eat some whatever. Like, I'm just not wired that I'm suddenly gonna, like, go crazy. You know what I mean? So then I feel fine, but I feel like other people, somebody is just wired to, oh, I had one crazy night. Next thing you know, it's three weeks later and the bender.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

I don't even remember anything.

[Dave Rubin]

Alcohol or food or whatever. Yeah, that's just sort of psychological.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

It's psychological. There is like a spectrum of how people deal with it. On one end of the spectrum, or people call the moderators. They can have a candy bar within their day and be totally on the other end are the abstainers. Like, it's either on or off for them. And they do really well with that. You can and should be an abstainer if that's just your psychology, but only your internal psychology and preference should guide that. Not a misunderstanding of physiology. Like, well, these are bad foods. Like, nah, that's not how that works. It's all accumulation over time. And your body is incredibly robust. So if you give it like literal poison every now and again, not enough to kill you, it's totally good, man, you're totally fine. And so people have this kind of inbuilt extremism where they think everyone should be an abstainer. And that's not true. Another quick one, because it's on the subject is diet soda and artificial sweeteners. So the vast majority of people, if you poll them, know, they don't think, they know diet soda's bad for you and literally will say, just drink regular soda. Why not just drink regular soda? In science as a whole field, for sure, nutritional science, if you were to rest your hat on anything, hang your hat on anything that was like, rock solid, it would be the Idea that what are called non nutritive sweeteners, aspartame, sucralose, etc. Are the safest food additives ever tested. Straight up. And more testing has gone into sucralose than has gone into the vast majority of chemicals that you eat in natural foods. Let me ask you a question. Do you have any Latin American ancestry? I don't think so, but I here

[Dave Rubin]

in Miami, there's a lot of Cubans. Does that help?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

That does. It's by proximity.

[Dave Rubin]

Okay.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Do you eat avocado?

[Dave Rubin]

Eat a lot of avocado.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Avocado's like a new world food. They didn't have it in Eastern Europe when you and I evolved. Jewish evolution, whatever. That looks like that page of the book. There are like hundreds of chemicals in avocados. And Dave, you have absolutely no idea if some of those do not interact with Ashkenazi Jewish anatomy and physiology very well. There could be some kind of weird epigenetic thing where it's slowly killing you and you have no idea. But we know almost certainly that does not happen with sucralose because sucralose has been tested into the ground. But I await comprehensive testing of every single ingredient in avocados. First example, nobody gives a shit. You go to Whole Foods, you're like, avocados, they're natural. Look how fucking green they are. Of course they're good for me, but they're like, oh, oh. So here's the funny thing. Whole Foods is great. I love Whole Foods, right? They don't carry any regular brand diet sodas or sodas at all. Because their customer base, if they saw like Coke Zero, which is inert for your health, it doesn't do anything good for your health or bad for you. Get as much Coke Zero as you want. As long as the caffeine doesn't drive you insane, it's totally fine. But their customer base knows Nose Nose Coke. So they can just have the off brand artificial sweetener. Bad. But so they'll have the other artificial. They'll have monk fruit stevia. Stevia. I don't know how you say yeah, because they're natural. That is the naturalistic fallacy. Back again. And so if you want to drink diet soda, and especially if you drink the caffeine free stuff because you know not to screw up your circadian rhythms or whatever, you can have as much of it as you want and you're going to be 100% fine. That statement I just made, that was a controversial statement. When we make reels out of this people will in the comments, the whole thing.

[Dave Rubin]

Now, I assume you would not make the same argument for non diet soda with the amount of sugar.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Non diet soda with that amount of sugar.

[Dave Rubin]

High fructose corn syrup.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

High fructose. So high fructose corn syrup in every comprehensive review seems to have roughly the same health effects on you as regular sugar.

[Dave Rubin]

Okay?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

As natural sugar. So the idea that high fructose corn syrup is itself somehow obesogenic or health deleterious is just straight up non starter. It's just wrong. And so the high fructose corn syrup thing is a myth. Now, how does soda get you in trouble? If you eat normal, healthy foods and like, a can of Coke has, like 40 grams of carbohydrate, 40 grams of pure sugar. If you have to have 220 grams of carbs for the day to get your macros going and use the RP Diet app, you're welcome. There's the plug. I've done my corporate duty. Good job, Mike. You have 220 grams of carbs you need to eat per day. You're at 180, and you've allotted so that during dinner you can have a Coca Cola Classic like they did in those 50s acts. There's absolutely not a damn thing wrong with that. You will pay zero health downsides you

[Dave Rubin]

can have even on the sugars inside the carbs.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You can have tons of sugar as long as the rest of your diet is healthy. You're getting plenty of protein, you're getting enough fiber, getting enough micronutrients. If your diet is all Coca Colas for carbs, you're not getting any vitamins and minerals, really, because those come from veggies, fruits, whole grains. So if you're having enough of those and you want a Coke every now and again, there's nothing poisonous about sugar at all. The way you get in trouble with Coca Cola is this. Not Coca Cola specifically. Every single soda that's not diet. Its ratio of how many calories it brings to how tasty it is to how not filling it is is a giant travesty. So no one's ever like, can you imagine? Like, so you're on a plane, like a stewardess just coming around giving you snacks and sodas, and you drink a Coca Cola and then they come up with the snacks later. Because this drinks first, snacks after. Can you imagine how nonsensical of a statement it would be if she was like, do you want cookies or nuts? You were like, oh, I just had that Coke. And I got full. She'd be like, what? Doesn't make any sen. Pretty much intuitively understands that sugar in a sweetened beverage is like calories that basically don't fill you up at all. And they're delicious. If they have one Coke, you're just going to keep sipping them all night long. That's how you get in trouble with soda because it's a ton of extra calories that adds to your day. The reason soda does such havoc to the American health on aggregate is because a lot of people will consume not so great diet to begin with with they're sure shit not kind of their calories and every drink will be soda. And then their caloric excess instead of being like 500 extra calories per day is like a thousand or 1500. They gain pounds every week. They get obese. They're also inactive and then it's all just super down the drain. So there's nothing specifically wrong about soda or sugar period. Unless it is used to generate a caloric surplus, an excess of calories that lasts long enough for you to gain substantial weight and then it's really bad news. So one of the things I say, probably nobody, almost no one should be drinking regular soda. Just drink diet. Diet soda is amazing. It's a miracle of engineering.

[Dave Rubin]

It's so interesting because the only time I ever drink it is occasionally on a plane. I'll get a Diet Coke when they come around the second time. Get a little caffeine before I get off the plane. But I always think I'm doing something bad one way or another. I know that there's aspartame in it and I'm just like I'm doing something bad, but I'm willing to make that concession. And you're totally blowing that out of the, out of the water here. You've mentioned the commenters a couple times. I mean what kind of hate do you get from the other people in your world? I'm not talking about the commenters. I'm talking about the influencer class and everything else for saying these things. Because this is completely the reverse of what you would hear from a lot of these guys.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yeah, I mean like now that I'm relevant on social media, it's just great reacts video farming. So God bless them. That's how they all make the money. Yeah, yeah. So there's that. You know, a lot of times there you get accusations of being bought off by agribusiness. Check this out. Agribusiness companies, I am ready to shill for you. Please God Pay me money. No one, no, they don't do that sort of thing. And so like I've actually been to Monsanto's headquarters and dude, Dave, I just like, you know, the jokes are funny at first, then they're mediocre and then they just want you to shut the fuck up and get out. I got to way beyond that last part because I was like, where's all the top secret poison the people shit? And they're like, okay sir, there's just nothing there. Just like folks just trying to do a good job. There's no conspiracy. I would like. Conspiracies are so amazing. Like every movie I watch, super deep conspiracy. The agribusinesses aren't trying to poison you. They're not trying to like. So a lot of the comments will be like, how much is Monsanto paying him to like nothing. Damn it, I don't have any money. Please help. Yeah, well I'll say whatever for money.

[Dave Rubin]

Maybe you just sold it here.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yes, I can't wait to check my email.

[Dave Rubin]

All right, so that. All right, so you've debunked some of the stuff on the, on the food side. What about just on the pure fitness side, how people are lifting what you are supposed to be doing reps, all of those things relative to gender and relative to age and goals.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

I suppose. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of difference that will emerge between advanced people that have really been lifting a long time versus intermediates versus beginners. There's fertile ground for like don't do exactly what your super jacked steroid using influencer. I'm just saying that I used many steroids even this morning. Not that many. The usual amount.

[Dave Rubin]

How many this morning?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

A few.

[Dave Rubin]

Throw the table at me.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

So there may be some because people, one thing they'll do on social media is they'll see how someone who's really jacked and super fit works out and they'll be like, that's what I need. But that's similar to a person who's like, like a kid who's like, you know, let's say nine years old and is really good at math and they really like math and they look up like problem sets that like Terence Tao is working on. Like kid, you're not going to make any sense of that. This totally for that's when you have eight PhDs in math, you need to start doing simpler stuff. And so one of the big take home messages for people involved in fitness is the basics pay massive dividends and they're not complicated One of the things that is kind of a universal, which I'll sprinkle the knowledge here for the folks. Listening is one of the best things you can do for your physique and your health and everything is to lift weights through a full range of motion multiple times a week. Get a little bit sore and tired, really push yourself. Rest and then repeat the process and slowly increase how much weight you can do over time. It's a thankless process, Dave. It's just like, it hurts and then you're like. And it's not that fun. There's no gimmicks. Like, there's no, like, the balance board and the Bosu ball. That's all nonsense. It just doesn't do anything that was relevant to getting people in shape. You can incorporate it into your fitness routine, but if you're like, hey, I want to win a bodybuilding show or do really well, a good coach would be like, well, that's all. You don't need any of that. Be like, I thought this was how you get fitness. Like, no, that's for, like, bored housewives and shit like that. The real way to get fit is to, like, do squats and deadlifts and bench presses and pull downs and pull ups and lateral raises and to. Here's a big one, challenge yourself. A lot of people, especially wealthier people, I've noticed, tend to think that fitness, fitness is something they can accrue just by being around it. You know, like, I'm like, there's people lifting, right?

[Dave Rubin]

Exactly.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

They're working hard, they're sweating. I do some dumbbell things. I talk to my trainer, I stop my sets, you know, 50 reps shy of anything remotely challenging. I'm getting a lot of critiques all the time, which are valid that for, like, how jacked I am. I don't train that hard. And that's all totally true. Respect. But we're talking about people in the gym. At least I look make some faces when I'm training. A lot of people want better physiques. They want better health. And they go in the gym and they never once experience anything like pain or discomfort. You know, when you're lifting and you're like, I would rather not be here. That's the stuff that gets you the most results. And if you consistently get to that place where you're challenged and you're like, oh, I did 10 reps. That was 95 pounds. Next week, you come in, you throw 100 pounds on the bar, you get another 10 reps. But that was real tough. Then you do 102.5 or 105 and then after a couple of years you're doing 150. That's how you change your body. People not progressing. Passively overloading in meticulous fashion and using basic movements is like everything else that they do is generally looks like fitness, but it doesn't get you the results that you want. And because that part is some combination of boring and painful, it's so easy to be sold on some other shit. I'm staying in midtown right now for February or in Miami, bro, no names, but there are so many business concepts, fitness concepts, gym concepts that are just like, okay, I gotcha. And I would come up and give them the cynical take. Like, yes, hello, I'm white and I have too much money. Is there a way you guys can make me feel like I'm getting fit but nothing happens? Like, well, right this way, it's exactly what we do. It's tons of that stuff. The reality is, all you need is a regular gym membership. Even you could just have barbells and dumbbells at home and just fucking grind and slowly get stronger over time. Like imagine someone asked you like, hey, how do I get better at basketball? You're like drilling and team play and you just got, got to get on that court and just get sweaty all the time. Days, hours. It was like, well, I got this manual about how to do this jump shot. You're like, shut up. That's not how it works in sports. A lot of times people kind of know, but in lifting and in fitness, none of us are. I'm educated in it, but even I'm still learning shit all the time. It's so easy to become confused. And there's also this aura of knowing things that you can just buy with physical architecture. Like if you have a really fancy gym with cool lighting, really good looking trainers and they're like, I don't know, they're cryother therapy or something. You're like, well, it's got to work.

[Dave Rubin]

Like it's not just the front lighting. Yeah, that's right.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

It's so easy to get the impression that like, well, this has to be how you get in shape. The reality is getting in shape is much simpler, but in some sense more like thankless, you know?

[Dave Rubin]

Where, where does the rest part that you mentioned come in? Do you do like six days on, one day off? Or how do you. How do you.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Do I look like I take days off?

[Dave Rubin]

No days off, no days off.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

No days off, no days off. I Do a my shit is again. So I'm like more advanced ye doing this a while or so.

[Dave Rubin]

Let's go more for just like average person that's just trying to get their body right.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Super. If you start lifting weights, what you can do is show up to the gym twice a week for 20 minutes each time. What you do is you do one lift that does some muscle groups, and instead of resting between sets, you do another lift that does other muscle groups. So for example, you do the close grip bench press for a set of like 10 to 20 reps until it's moving really slow and it's really hard. Hard rack. Write down your reps. Rpi Perfect app or whatever app you use.

[Dave Rubin]

Yep, got it. Got it.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

The link's down below the link somewhere.

[Dave Rubin]

We're a professional.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Excellent. Thank you so much. For sure, there will be no link as well as a show.

[Dave Rubin]

You tell the guy you can eat McDonald's.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Hey, hey. Put that McDonald's wrapper down and put the link. As soon as you're done with that, you just scoot right over to the underhand pull down and you do 15 reps of that until it's really tough. Put that down and you go right back to the bench. Four sets of that. You have trained almost every muscle in your upper body, and it took you three minutes. Then you move in to do something with legs supersetted with something with arms, something with your glutes supersetted to some lateral races. That's six exercises. It's whole body. It is cardio and lifting. Because you're gonna be gassed the entire time. Cause you don't really rest. You go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. That whole workout takes 20 minutes. You choose slightly different, different lifts for Monday than you do Thursday. And there's your template. Two times a week, 20 minutes. That can improve your everything about your health, your shape, your mobility, and alter your physique substantially. Especially if you diet properly for years, that can just be continued compounded improvement. After two years, you might be like, you know what? I want to get even more fit. Drop in a third day, expand the workout to do more sets, and then, then you're up to 30 or 40 minutes at a time, three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, for years again, you will continue to make gains. Eventually you can go up to four days a week for an hour. Four days a week for an hour of proper training is like, man, I'd call that damn near full send effort. You're gonna radically transform your body. But the big thing is, when you're just getting started, you don't need to go four days for an hour, two days a week. Spread evenly apart through the week, roughly 20 minutes at a time in that alternating superset fashion is like the gold standard. What's called adult fitness. That's how you get the job done in the teeniest amount of time and the most return on your investment. I did not say it was going to be fun, but it sure shit works.

[Dave Rubin]

So for the last three months or so, I've been doing six days a week, about 45 minutes a day, and I can tell. And it's working. I mean, it really is working.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Oh, yeah.

[Dave Rubin]

I'm not patting myself on the back. I see it working. I feel.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Because you're so jacked, you can't reach your own back anymore.

[Dave Rubin]

Can barely move my arm, like, but I feel better. I can see the difference. Difference. But. So you would say. Well, you knew. You didn't say six there. You said four would be pretty great. So.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

So if it works.

[Dave Rubin]

So if it works for you, it works, right?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Oh, yeah, that's.

[Dave Rubin]

That's.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Oh, no. You're not doing too much or whatever, are you? Do you feel like you're recovering adequately? Yeah. When you're going to the gym to train, whatever muscles like you feel, they're like, ready to go.

[Dave Rubin]

I mean, I lift it.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

I can show.

[Dave Rubin]

I actually do. I have it. So I'm using this thing called Amp Fitness. Have you seen this thing? It's one of the things you connect to the wall.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Dave Rubin]

Resistance.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Very cool.

[Dave Rubin]

It has completely changed my life. And maybe after the show, maybe we'll go into the gym there and I'll show you what I've been doing. And it has. Because I was always the type of person that I would go into the gym and I would just kind of do some things. I would just be like, I got that thing here and this thing, and I'll pull that and whatever. And I think I just sort of maxed out what that would do. And this thing has just locked me in. And it's AI. So it's training along with you and it's doing the progressive overload and all these things and it's working. So you don't think six days is necessarily too much. As long as. As long as you're seeing results and you feel okay.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Basically, as long as you're feeling. Feel recovered regularly, every four or five weeks, you should take a week off the gym anyway or take some light days and as long as you're getting great results. My God, you can train six days a week, twice a day if you like. If it's working, it's working. But for radical alterations at the minimum input, the minimum inputs are really small. Two days a week, 20 minutes at a time, alternating compound supersets, man. That's how you get huge roi. And if you want more, hell yeah. I just think a people of lot, lot of people. Again with the absolutism. They'd be like, well, like, typical uber ride for me is like, oh, so you lift. And I usually try to lie and say, I don't. No, no, just to take a lot of steroids, actually, just one needle.

[Dave Rubin]

We'll talk about the steroids.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Sure. Excellent. Beautiful. And so a lot of times they'll be like. They'll even cut themselves off of their own advice. They'll be like, oh, I got to get back into the gym. So, yeah, you're great without the gym, but sure, the gym's great. And they're like, I just don't have time. You know, I work and my joke, one of my friends, actually, he went back home to see his family and he had an uncle. You know the uncle, the classic uncle that will say audacious shit to your face and you don't do anything about it. He's like, my friend had lost a bunch of weight, gotten in great shape, and at the time, he was like the COO of a software company, right? This is a beyond full time job. And the uncle's like, oh, I would do that too, but I have a job. Friend's like, very well, take a shot. Leave the uncle alone. But the classic scenario is people are like, I would love to get in shape, but I don't have time. And that's a problem because they're kind of imposing this standard on themselves, which, like, maybe they meet you at a cocktail party or something like that. They're like, Dave Rubin, he trains six days a week. I don't have that kind of time. I'm not an influencer or whatever. It turns out that with two sessions, 20 minutes a week, you can do crazy, crazy things. And if you don't have any more time to add in, don't add in. Just do that for years and years and years ad infinitum. If you find yourself loving it or have more time time, jack up the commitment by like an extra 20 minutes a week. Don't be like, all right, now it's war. And then go to seven days a week, five hours, burn the out and then be like, oh, fitness is a thing that only people with a shitload of time do. That's the big illusion.

[Dave Rubin]

You also can always make more time. It's just true. I know people don't want to hear.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

They're not allowed to say that, but

[Dave Rubin]

you can just wake up earlier. You can get up a half hour earlier. Like, oh, yeah, basically you can do it.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Here's the thing, waking up half an hour earlier is excellent advice. A common retort to that as well. Isn't sleep important for recovery? And that's unassailable. That's absolutely true. What you can do, though, is do like. Like a. Like. Like a time analysis of someone's day. And you just get real persnickety. They're like, why don't have time? Like, that's cool. So you don't watch any. You don't scroll? You're like, I mean, I scroll. How long do you scroll for? Like, hours, basically.

[Dave Rubin]

Four of the eight hours.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

100%. Like Netflix documentaries.

[Dave Rubin]

Yeah.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Who doesn't like to watch Amazing. Amazon Prime? Of course it's amazing. But, like, instead of watching two hours of it a night, watch an hour and a half, and for half an hour, go in your basement, grind some weights. That half an hour, three times a week is going to be revolutionary for you. So to your point, a lot of people that say they don't have time to just, like, have leisure time, they don't want to move out of the way.

[Dave Rubin]

Right. Where does cardio fit in all this? Because there's all sorts of conflicting stuff as it relates to cardio. I try. I'm trying to do about 15,000 steps a day, mostly walking my dog because I get up early.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

What kind of dog do you have?

[Dave Rubin]

Boxer. You know something, the boxer walks that distance.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

So he's like, I seriously hate this. No boxers are active.

[Dave Rubin]

Well, there's also iguanas out here. We got a lot of animals. And right now it's cold, so frozen iguanas.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Oh, my God.

[Dave Rubin]

So he's very happy. But I usually do that in two shots. So maybe it's like 8,000 in the morning with him. And that's when I'm setting up for the show and I'm going through the stories and all that stuff. And I play basketball three times a week, two or three times a week for about three hours. So it's a lot of cardio that I'm doing.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

But if.

[Dave Rubin]

But it feels right to me. Like, it feels like I don't get that tired when I'm playing like knock on whatever this is.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yes, but.

[Dave Rubin]

So what's your general philosophy on cardio

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

and how much you should be almost exactly with lift, like with lifting, the minimum bar for cardio is real low, but the maximum recoverable cardio you can do if you train up to it is psychotically high. There are no wrong answers. In between the wrong answers are the incredibly rare people that will do too much that are almost mythical.

[Dave Rubin]

You always see one of those people at the gym. The body is just disappearing. It's there every day and there's towels everywhere and it's like you're gonna disappear.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Brought you a cookie. They hiss at you. You're like, okay, sorry. The people that don't do enough cardio and lifting and eating. Right. I mean, you know, huge fraction of the world, Americans for sure. So for cardio, if you don't wanna do formal cardio, like get in a machine or run around just 8 to 12 ish thousand steps a day as a minimum bar, 8 to 10,000 is like a real good start. I mean, it's an excellent, excellent thing. The mortality and morbidity statistics on that are like really solid. So if you're above 8,000 steps, like, then you're really in the clear.

[Dave Rubin]

If you're bowling and that could be walking, right?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Literally it is.

[Dave Rubin]

You don't have to be running and sweating the whole time.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Absolutely, absolutely. Does running and sweating pay dividends extra? Yes. They're not massive from a health longevity perspective. From a quality of life perspective, they're substantial. Can you get a decent fraction of that just through not taking rest breaks when you're doing your high rep sets of 10 to 20 lifting? Absolutely. Is it best to do some cardio on top of that? Yeah. Three, four sessions a week of 20 to 40 minutes in duration for this kind of hardcore cardio. And there's just one rule, two rules. One, do anything you like that's fun. And two, if you can have a conversation while you're doing it, you're not getting the best health benefits. It's got to be like huffing and puffing, not like emphysema, but tough. It's got to be some shit. You got a psych up to do. If you do that several times a week. In addition to that core lifting, and in the context of eight to eight, there's no top end of steps. As long as you feel fine, you're good to go. 8,000 plus steps a day with good nutrition and sufficient sleep. If you just look at the epidemiological Literature all together. There's really nothing else you have to be doing for us to be like, yes. Modern sciences of early 2026, you're checking every single box that you need to be checking.

[Dave Rubin]

And on the sleep side, seven to nine hours. That's what basically everyone says. Is that what you think is right?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

It's correct, absolutely. The thing about sleep is you're gonna know when you're getting enough sleep or not. And you're gonna know it by, do you need caffeine to stay awake in the middle of the day? If the answer is like, oh, I don't need any more sleep. Or what if I took your. Like, I would literally like a robot running out of batteries, I would just die. Like, okay, no, then you need more sleep. The other thing about sleep, and this is a really recent. Been making the trend on social media, it's good to call out. It's a really good thing. Humans can psychologically get used to not having enough sleep, but performance wise and health wise, all the markers are still there of not getting enough sleep. You know those people, like, you've been involved in politics, you know, the beltway lifestyle of like, oh, sleep. That's like a thing I used to do in my 20s.

[Dave Rubin]

That's literally how they say it.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Oh, yeah, in five hours, six hours, but I'm fine. You look at their blood work, you look at their health trajectories, you look at their cognitive performance, they're not fine at all. They just got used to it. It's kind of like if you live in a war zone, like the Ukraine war, for example, you just get used to things blowing up. That doesn't mean it's a good thing. That just means you got used to it. So for sleep, it's really good to check to make sure you're functional without caffeine and also to get that seven to nine hours. And it's very genetic. Some people actually need less than 7. They're not as common as you might think because everyone's like, oh, I just need five hours, like, bullshit. Some people need nine and a half hours every night. And that's what they need. Like for me, I need somewhere between seven and a half and eight and a half and I'm good to go. If I chronically for a week straight, I get like six and a half hours. Towards the end of the week, I'm mostly useless.

[Dave Rubin]

Is that more mental for you than the fatigue or is that more physical?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Both.

[Dave Rubin]

It's both.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Both, yeah.

[Dave Rubin]

I find I will get more. Maybe it's just because I talk for a living. So it's a lot of this. That my fatigue is usually mental fatigue more than it's physical fatigue.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Interesting. But when I'm sleep deprived, I enjoy it a ton. One of my favorite drugs is sleep deprivation. I'm in like a. Like, literally. It's crazy. I tell people this, like, what? I love being sleep deprived. It feels phenomenal. And I'm like. My ideas flow pretty free and I'm very verbally fluent. I can't attack, like, systematic, logical problems as well, but on expansive trajectories of conversation, I'm like, all. All day, all day.

[Dave Rubin]

So so far, drink Diet Coke and get sleep deprived. Those are the. Those are the main.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Hell yeah, man. Those are the main life.

[Dave Rubin]

Talk to me about supplements and things like that. Everybody's on a gajillion supplements. I'm not on that much. I was on a little bit more of cut almost everything at this point, just for the new year. I was like, let me just take a break on things. What's your general take on supplements? And again, not for someone that's trying to be as jacked as you, but just kind of like average, Average person trying to maintain.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yeah, yeah. I would say, like, most supplements either don't do anything or you just don't need them. Multivitamin. Multi minerals. Nice. It's like a little insurance policy. You take like one every morning. Creatine is pretty good. More and more health benefits all the time. Of creatine.

[Dave Rubin]

Doing the 10 milligrams on that.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Grams.

[Dave Rubin]

Oh, 10 grams.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dave Rubin]

Not milligrams.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

10 milligrams.

[Dave Rubin]

Yeah. No, no, no. 10 grams on that, which I just. I just upped the five on that. Because there's supposedly a lot of cognitive benefits.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yeah. So most of that research is in people who are intentionally, like, undersle or something like that. We don't have a good body of data to say that there are real big cognitive benefits for people that aren't very fatigued, but wouldn't rule that out. And creatine's the opposite of poisonous. Like 10, 15 grams. Oh, my God. Absolutely not. Back in the 90s, the school nurse would be like, you're not on creatine, are you? It's going to kill your kidneys somehow. By no mechanism known to man. So creatine is really dope. If you want to take protein powders and stuff, that's cool. You can just eat all that protein anyway. People in northern climates don't get a lot of sun. Like, everyone In Michigan, where I'm from, may benefit from vitamin D supplementation. And there are a couple odds and ends there that are very situational. But honestly, if you eat a mostly healthy diet and a multivitamin, multi mineral supplements become this thing that's like man. In some contexts it works, but it's not a universal or everyone has to be an expert. Like, fish oil is really nice, but its effects are super small in the grand scheme. What I will say is here, I'm on my bullshit here, Dave. I'm giving you good viral clips. It'll go completely insane because I'm saying insane shit. I think in the month Modern World folks, women of perimenopausal age and postmenopausal age and men generally of any age, but especially over 35 and over 40, should be pretty interested in hormonal replacements there.

[Dave Rubin]

So that's where I wanted to go next.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yeah.

[Dave Rubin]

So let's do it. Yeah. Yeah.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

So for females, a combination therapy of testosterone, estrogen and progesterone is going to have usually phenomenal outcomes on everything. There again the naturalistic fallacy comes in. And as a woman, let's say you're postmenopausal and someone's like, oh, have you tied, you know, talked about hormone replacement therapy? Like, no, the changes going on in my body are natural and I'm just gonna let nature take its course. Right, Sweet. Go visit an old people's home. That's what nature looks like. It's fucking brutal. There's no justice to it at all. Your genes care about their own replication into the generations. You are but a vessel for your genes. That's how your genes see you. And as soon as you've had some kids or as far as your genes are concerned, exited the reproductive age, they're like, sweet. That coil we're throwing off, you are the mortal coil. They're the immortal coils. And then your body just starts to degrade from mostly planned obsolescence from the genetic perspective and also just there's no evolutionary pressure for the genes to keep you upright. And so if you want to feel amazing, you have like, if you're an older woman listening to this, you ever watch like a 22, 23 year old woman just vibe she's just around just energy, all that shit. And you're like, ah, that shit, that youth shit. Well, there's nothing more than like physiology. And a lot of that is like, that girl has progesterone, estrogen, testosterone in the right concentrations, your uterus has stopped functioning. It no Longer makes any of those hormones to nearly the extent that it should. Replacing will make you feel unbelievable. And for men at least, replacing test testosterone to get it to a level where your blood work, your physique, your performance, your psychology all align for their best is like a really big deal. I had a friend who, same friend is from the other story with the uncle, actually. He went to his doctor and he was like, you know, I've got injuries and all this stuff. I lift. And his doctor is old school. He was like, well, that's just called getting over 40. And my friend's like, and second opinion. And the other person was like, yeah, there's a lot of stuff we can do. He got on testosterone replacement therapy and his numbers were not hypogonadal. They were just at the low end of the range. Low, moderate. He got to high, moderate, revolutionized. I've had like five friends who have gotten on trt. I've only one of these people was one. I was like, hey, you should really consider it. Mostly they just went about it themselves. Every single friend was like, this is a revolution. And they're like, I feel like I'm 25. And Dave, that's not an accident. Why do you think 25 year olds feel like they're 25? Is that fucking enough testosterone? And if your shit falls over time, you can raise it and just do better.

[Dave Rubin]

So you see no issue. I mean, everyone talks about all the side effects and your balls are going to disappear.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

What do you need your balls for? You're like, oh, I loved having huge balls.

[Dave Rubin]

No more people like having balls. I mean, pretty standard stuff. So you can see the balls? Basically, yeah. You'd concede the balls for the feeling good and looking good.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

A sizable fraction of people have no meaningful testicular error. Atrophy. I sit here before you with full size balls, sir. They're giggling. They have seen my balls before. But when I walked in, you weren't very. And I was like, I just want to show you guys my balls. They were like, well, those are.

[Dave Rubin]

Put them on the table.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

They're totally fine. I didn't say they were great. No.

[Dave Rubin]

So you're not on.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Oh, I'm on more than trt?

[Dave Rubin]

No, no. So I want to get to.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

I want to get to where you're

[Dave Rubin]

on and I want to get to the steroid part of it.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dave Rubin]

But so you are on trip trt.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Oh, yeah.

[Dave Rubin]

And so. And okay. And do you see any downside to trt? Is there a much related.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Numerous downsides to TRT and that you

[Dave Rubin]

have to basically be on it forever. Although now that sounds like maybe that's not exactly.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

No, you can take some drugs that keep your balls going, and then when you come off of trt, your balls are, like, totally fine. If you insist on having balls, then you can never lose your balls with TRT for sure. That's a solved problem. TRT is. Here's how I would look at trt. It introduces a certain level of testosterone into your body. If your testosterone is too low, you'll have problems. If you have certain kinds of genetics and your testosterone is an average range, then that's too high or too low for your genetics, and you're gonna have problems. If you're at the very top end, way above the normal range, you're probably gonna have problems. But for pretty much every single human male on earth, there is a level of testosterone that will optimize your health. As far as testosterone can comes from your balls or that comes from the needle is almost completely irrelevant on the effects for your body. Proper TRT isn't just being like, oh, the doctor gave me TRT and it drove me nuts, or it caused xyz. It is titrating the dose, communicating to your doctor over time to get to the level where your blood work is the best it's been, you feel the best, and you're dealing with all the ancillary effects. Because, like, testosterone by itself for some males will cause balding. Right? I wouldn't know anything about this. I have a full head of hair. But. But, I mean, speaking of which, God

[Dave Rubin]

damn, they've got working hard over here.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

I take neutrophil.

[Dave Rubin]

That is one of the supplements I still take. And I do PRP for my hair.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

My man. So there's like. If you really want a full head of hair and you're prone to baldness, even the small amount of testosterone you have naturally will continue that process. If you raise your testosterone to where everything else in your life is amazing, but you're losing your head of hair, there's stuff to do about that. Or just say fucking YOLO and look like Jeff Bezos. No big deal. So testosterone supplementation is no different than naturally produced testosterone. It's just finding the right level for you. That's a big deal. Tons of side effects on all the other ends, but there's a level.

[Dave Rubin]

So basically, when people tell you about all the side effects, putting aside the balls, but they'll tell you things about your blood levels. I don't know, is it like thick Blood cells.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yes, Correct. You get more blood cells and they clog you up. Right.

[Dave Rubin]

So when you hear about all those things, your, your argument basically would be as long as you are checking the numbers consistently with your diet doctor, you could do this for 20, 30 years and if anything you would have more benefits.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

More benefits? Not if anything for sure, more benefits. Optimizing your testosterone will cause more benefits than not attempting to optimize your testosterone, full stop. It takes more proactive medical care and getting blood work. You should be getting blood work anyway regularly and doing something about it. If your blood work happens to be off 100%. The other thing I'll say is there's one more drug I would say most people need to consider taking and it's supplements and drugs. This is a drug. Tirzepatide. Have you heard of Tirzepatide?

[Dave Rubin]

I don't think so.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Mounjaro Zep, boundaries. That's the drug GLP1, right? Correct. Yeah. And so it's a. Technically it's a fourth generation GLP1 drug. And because Ozempic was semaglutide was generation three, this is fourth gen. So it's GLP and GIP agonist tirzepatide. As far as we can tell, at some dose. Again, the dose is incredibly important. If you take a ton of it, you're just going to go to the hospital, vomit, vomiting blood. If you take not enough of it, you'll be like, I don't think anything's happening. A very small introductory dose of Tirzepatide for most adult Americans would be a health elixir, full stop. And yes, I'm confident enough saying that on camera. It's a miracle drug. It has downsides, it has side effects that need to be managed exactly like trt. But if you manage it successfully, Tirzepatide is better for most people to be on than not on.

[Dave Rubin]

What is it doing for you? Oh my God.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Besides weight loss? So like if you're a normal healthy

[Dave Rubin]

person, why would you be?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yeah, it makes your balls bigger, Dave. No, I'm kidding.

[Dave Rubin]

I wish.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Is there a drug that does that? That's a real pharmacy. Trillion dollar stack in the pharma industry. Can you imagine, like pharma executive like presents the big project. It's a ball growing drug and people are like, what else does it do? What do you mean what else, Jim? Nothing. The problem solved.

[Dave Rubin]

Like the beginning of idiocracy where they show you why humans fell off and it's because they spent all their time for hair loss drugs and donor pills. Yes, yes.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

So there are weight mediated benefits of these drugs and non weight mediated benefits. We used to think a few years ago that the reason these drugs made you healthier is because they help you lose weight. And that's a huge part of the equation. Another part of the equation is that these drugs have the non weight mediated benefits and they're numerous. One of them is that they are anti diabetic in their action. They normalize your blood glucose in a way that no other drugs before could do. These drugs were invented for diabetes outcomes and at a higher doses they just like noticed people were losing weight and they were like, I'm not hungry. And they're like, oh, let's jack up the dose even more and see if it works. That's how semaglutide started. There is an anti inflammatory effect that is total body. So tirzepatide is a total body anti inflammatory agent of the kind that we just don't see in other drugs. And whole body low level chronic inflammation and excess is a gigantic fucking killer. It messes up like every system in your body and tirzepatide calms that down. Another thing is, has specific effects to reduce neural inflammation. We have good reason to believe that it reduces the decay rate of your brain, essentially, which is a huge, huge thing. It has massive effects on psychology. It actually seems to quiet down every kind of addictive noise you have, including, including food noise. People have reduced smoking on it, they've reduced drinking, they've reduced gambling, ironically. And so it has psychological benefits, it has cardiovascular benefits, kidney benefits. These are all weight independent by the way. It's whether you lose weight or not. There's like five other benefits. Tirzepatide, semaglutide for sure. But even more, tirzepatide is just straight up, it's a health elixir. It's not a panacea. It doesn't cure everything. But, but I would say it's similar to like pretty decent exercise program because you could be like, what's good about exercise? Be like, I don't have a long enough time on this podcast to list all the benefits. It just fucking fixes everything. Tirzepatide's on that list of things that is like, it's that good.

[Dave Rubin]

Just before we get into the last couple things here, how worried are you that when you promote these things or just the general talk about these drugs? Like, you know, it seems like every drug, 10 years we think it's good and then in 15 years, we're like, oh well, it did have all these other side effects effects and everything else. Obviously that has to ring in your brain at some level when you're talking about these things.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yeah, oh yeah. So the question is not if I don't take Tirzepatide, I'm totally fine, versus if I take it. There's these big risks. The certainty that your body will degrade, you will age and you will die is 100%. What can we do about it then? Is the difference like, you know, you pay attention a little bit probably to like the AI risk situation? Right. Like if we make super intelligence that could kill us all? Absolutely it could. If we're not as smart as we can possibly be as a species, a wandering black hole will fucking kill us. We're not safe at all. As a human in your own mortal body, the assumption that your health is totally good as you age is wrong. It's dead on arrival. So the question isn't, oh, do I stay completely safe and not take tirzepatide, do I take these big risks? You're at risk without it with tirzepatide, you're absolutely at risk for many things. Mismanaging the dose, having a bad time. Some people, it just doesn't jive with their physiology for sure. This is why you don't just go and buy it and just do this or like I did the Tirzepatide. You would talk to your doctor, ostensibly. But the alternative is for sure you're gonna have a bad time with Tirzepatide. The probability you'll have a better time, health longevity wise, is already evidenced in the scientific literature. There's actually a big study that just came out that shows all cause mortality for older folks on semaglutide and not semaglutide. And it's a big difference, man. These drugs just keep you healthier and alarm alive longer. Is there a probability that we'll find out later that they do crazy and just you just like in your 40s, you're good and you hit 15, you just die. And the old 50s detectives like, yeah, it was tirzepatite again. See the great killer like, yes, there is a probability of that. The probability of that is lower by a 10 or 100 times than the probability that not taking tirzepatide will for sure kill you.

[Dave Rubin]

So is it fair to say that your blood, your, your sort of blanket statement on all this would be as long as you are having your blood work checked, you're pretty much okay. To try these things.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Absolutely. In the context of working with a medical professional, monitoring your blood work, monitoring how you feel. And here's a big one, especially for tirzepatide, doing all the other health stuff is huge. Here's how to have a bad time on these drugs. Semaglutide, tirzepatide, and soon to be retatrutide. Just eat, like, total shit. These drugs slow how fast food processes. And if you eat like two double cheeseburgers, you're just gonna. The shit's just gonna stop. And your stomach's like, I can't throw this up. I can't poop it out yet. I'm just gonna sit here and do nothing about it. And then you're gonna go get admitted to the hospital, and they're gonna have to the tube and the machine. If you eat healthy, not only do the drugs work better, because now you're in a great calorie place, you're getting all your nutrients. Because some people take tirzepatide, they don't eat anything for days on end, and they pass out. No shit, motherfucker. You need food. But if you take the drugs and you eat healthy, you radically lower the probability of bad side effects and you enhance the main effect. That's one of the beautiful things about drugs like tirzepatide is there are some drugs that, like, at least visually, if you take them, you can have shit habits and still look better, like a crapload of steroids. But with tirzepatide, it works synergistically with health habits. And some people, their food noise is so high, they're so hungry all the time, they're like, dieting is just not for them. They take trisepatide. All of a sudden they're like, I could just not eat well if I don't have to eat anymore. Like, it's not pulling me in. And I have to eat because I know I need fuel for my body. Might as well make good choices. Who gives a shit? And then they make better choices, and the whole thing gets better.

[Dave Rubin]

All right, so last two things real quick. The steroid thing, how can we do that in a somewhat timely fashion? You're on steroids. You operate, obviously are trying. You know, you're in competition, and basically this is your living.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yeah.

[Dave Rubin]

Should the average person be taking stuff?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

No, no, they're poison.

[Dave Rubin]

Yeah.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

So.

[Dave Rubin]

So why are you doing it?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Vanity.

[Dave Rubin]

So it's purely vanity.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yeah.

[Dave Rubin]

You want to put on the shirt and I don't.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Damn. I don't even Want to put on a shirt? I had to have one for the filming.

[Dave Rubin]

For the shirt.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yeah, I just want to look.

[Dave Rubin]

So it's purely that you just want to be bigger and. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Unapologetic. I'm not saying.

[Dave Rubin]

And you think. And in your personal view, the vanity is worth whatever the downside is.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

It is for me, but I have very calculated risk trade offs. I'm not yellowing it. I get blood work all the time. I use a very small amount relative to the context that I'm in. And I'm using the kinds of steroids that are the least likely to cause health problems, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But I'm absolutely making a known trade off. I would analogize my steroids used to like talking to rich people about their skiing habits. Like, you do realize that the velocity of the tree remains the same, but you hit the tree and then you die. And they're like, yeah, you know, you gotta take some risks. Anytime you go on a flight like that, plane could crash. Anytime you get into a car, you go on the freeway, especially in Miami, holy shit. Then you know, you could die. But you're like, you're still gonna go to the grocery store, you're still gonna go even. Okay, you have to go to the store to get food. You're gonna want to go to a nice club, you want to, want to go to a nice restaurant. You're going to get into an Uber. That' that guy, Uber driver, does he know what he's doing? Is he on drugs? You don't know. It's a risk. It's calculated risk. You're just like, I know this could kill me, but I'm not just going to stay in my house. For me, my impulse, my drive to look sort of like my own weird version of an action figure is high enough that I have made a calculated trade off by using some substances like steroid and growth hormones, et cetera, that are not great to use at the doses and absolutely is reducing the probability that I'll make it to old age. And it's a known trade off and I don't recommend it to other people.

[Dave Rubin]

So was it a GI Joe character or a WWF guy that got you into all this in 1987?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Fuck, man, that's so goddamn close. There was a movie called American Ninja 2. It may be one of the worst movies of all time on my technical grounds, you know. Yeah. And there was was a gentleman in it, and he was.

[Dave Rubin]

We'll throw up some images.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yes, I believe his name is, the actor's name is Steve James. He's an African American man and he knew martial arts in the movie. So his, his, he was the sidekick. The main guy, Michael Dudikoff, he was like super good looking. I couldn't relate to that clearly. And he was like, he was like a ninja. He knew like ninja magic. And I was like, that's really cool. But Steve James was a sidekick and he was just like, he knew karate or whatever, but he was just really jacked. And like, I was like, wow, that's so cool. I was 7 and like it never left. And then I got to like watching Dragon Ball Z later and that whole training thing. And at first I did like, I wanted kind of a Bruce Lee look when I first started training. But then as I got bigger and my muscles got rounder and like started popping out, I was just like, yeah, yeah, that's what the fuck I want more of. And I just wanted more and more and more. And so like here I am, all juiced to the gills and in my 40s and hopeless.

[Dave Rubin]

Last one over your right shoulder over there is my Copal tequila, which I launched in, in June. I love tequila. I don't drink a ton, but I like to have a good time and I go out with my guys here all the time and I enjoy it on the weekends and occasionally a weekday. Very rarely am I like absolutely shit faced or anything else.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

But not never.

[Dave Rubin]

But not ever. Not ever. If you can admit the small balls. I can admit. Oh, you didn't admit this.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

I have massive, massive balls. No, regular balls.

[Dave Rubin]

Regular balls. Where does alcohol fit into all of this? I suspect I know your answer.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Just relative. Do you want to take a guess?

[Dave Rubin]

Well, I think you're basically going to say as long as the calories aren't going to blow you out and there isn't too much sugar in it. Which tequila has the lowest sugar?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yeah, I will say this.

[Dave Rubin]

And it's not creating, you know, a series of other bad behaviors, I guess.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yes, I would say alcohol. Alcohol is like way closer actually on the other end of the spectrum and is like steroids in the sense that it is an unmitigated fucking poison. Alcohol is poisonous. Straight up. Smells like poison, tastes like poison. It's bat.

[Dave Rubin]

You gotta taste that.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

I changed my mind. I had one shot of tequila once in my life. I was in college. I was so drunk that I could barely see or speak and it still tasted like shit.

[Dave Rubin]

Yeah, it's called Jose Cuervo. We're getting you on the Worm the whole thing.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

That being said, if you do it on occasion a few times a week, it's not every day. It's not three, four, five, six drinks a day. If it's a very moderate amount. The total negative effect is that same conversation is like, do you still get into vehicles that go on the freeway? It's not an all or nothing. The dose makes the poison. If you have some really awesome tequila, congratulations. But by the way, and it tastes amazing. And you have a couple drinks here and there, a few drinks a few times a week, the level of study we would have to do to even demonstrate that that's having a negative effect on your body is incredibly precise. It's a trade off for sure. But it's a trade off that if you're having alcohol all the fucking time and you're drunk right now, they've started interviewing people pretty well considering. Dude, you're the mess.

[Dave Rubin]

Bad.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Holy. I thought you were going to piss yourself. I've already pissed myself. And you're, you're totally fine. Typical for me on broadcasts, by the way. I mark my territory. It's an alpha thing. Yeah. So if you're, you know, just a few drinks a few times a week, it's totally cool, man. Am I going to say it's good for you? No, it's bad for you. But it is a little bit of bad. And if you're interested in entertaining like total like absolutism of like, I'm not drinking anymore. I love that. It's dope. If you want to on the margins, drink a little bit here and there, Cool people who say like, no one should be drinking ever, like I love that vibe. But then you gotta say shit to be concordant with it. Like never go out into the sun. Right. The sun is a giant thermonuclear bomb. It just radiates like harmful shit all the time. But it's tough to say like never go out in the sun. And if people really like drinking and like the vibe, it's really good. Let's say another big part of drinking is if drinking really relaxes you and you know, you have your tequila and you're like ah, long work week. That ah, that relaxation that pays massive health dividends psychologically, physiologically. So if drinking is something you can unwind with and it doesn't take eight beers to unwind, then it might be on the net balance, pretty much neutral. If drinking is something like you don't like to do, your friends do it, you do it with friends and you're like, should I be doing this? Isn't it, like, healthy? No. We used to think, and I used to repeat this claim, that, like, a little bit of alcohol. Alcohol is good for you. Turns out that's probably not true. It's just too not bad for you to detect. So that's kind of the verdict on alcohol in the grand scheme of an otherwise incredibly healthy lifestyle that you're living. I might not know about some other crazy shit you Hollywood people get into. That's right. You're that famous.

[Dave Rubin]

I'm in Miami.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Oh. Because that's a bastion of health.

[Dave Rubin]

We're the fittest city in the United States, dude.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yo, facts.

[Dave Rubin]

This isn't the 80s Miami. That's true.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

And I miss that. Every day that I'm in Miami, I typically like to crash a Lamborghini into a pile of cocaine.

[Dave Rubin]

I mean, that could be arranged.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

That could be arranged. Yes. In the context of an otherwise healthy lifestyle, you have some drinks every now and again. My God. Like, amazing. But if you think that, oh, I can just have a ton of alcohol and as long as I get my calories in, you're officially well into alcoholism and you have a fucking problem. This is an intervention, man. All the crew and I, we just want to tell you, you know when

[Dave Rubin]

Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers. When they shake hands in Predator and everyone.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Absolutely.

[Dave Rubin]

Wait, how is it?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Dylan, you son of a bitch. Oh, that's funny. That's exactly what he says. You nailed it.

[Dave Rubin]

You nailed it.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

It's so weird. This app shows that my credit score's pretty good, but I couldn't get the car loan.

[Dermalogica Advertiser]

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[Dr. Mike Israetel]

no, it's some other company.

[Dermalogica Advertiser]

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[Dr. Mike Israetel]

That would have been helpful yesterday. Get the scores lenders use. Get the right FICO credit score for your credit goal, including your FICO scores used for mortgages, auto loans, and credit cards. Visit myfico.com or download the MyFico app to get started today.