What if Liver King was natural? (Liver King Part 1) (Patreon)

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Brian Johnson, AKA Liver King - the dude who, year round, is absolutely jacked with six pack abs that you could use as bouldering holds. Is he natural? Well, he claims he’s natural.

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Though people who are much better versed on this topic than I all say certainly not.
Greg Doucette says he’s not natural.
Nick’s Power and Strength says he’s not.
Derek from More Plates More Dates says he’s not.
Joe Rogan & Andrew Huberman say he’s not. Anyone who seems to be pretty knowledgeable about this kind of stuff that I’ve asked in person - they all say he’s not natural.

<figure>This is apparently liver king when he was around 15.</figure>

As you can see in the picture of him at 15 above, he’s probably got decent genes for putting on muscle. Though, his abs nowadays are quite suspect even to someone not familiar with hallmarks of steroid use. They’re very prominent regardless of what he’s doing, even if he’s sitting down.

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Considering his abs seem to stretch and contract, it’s really unlikely that they’re implants. Several people have pointed out that the ab implant technology just isn’t at that point anyhow.

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Greg Doucette accuses him of getting a procedure called “abdominal etching,” which is basically a targeted liposuction technique to remove the fat around the abs. (Per Texas regulations, the human fat is then donated to Tyler Durden’s soap making operation) Looking at some of the better before and afters of the process, that’s actually a pretty convincing theory.

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But what if he was natural? Let’s suspend disbelief for just a moment and look at whether there’s anything about his lifestyle that might make him alarmingly jacked.

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In that episode of JRE with Andrew Huberman, Rogan pulled up this image (below) of Liver King and Huberman said:

“If I were to put that through my knowledge of hormones and biology and… I would say [he’s on] TRT.” (TRT = Testosterone Replacement Therapy)

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So let’s just run with that for now. Is there anything about Liver King’s lifestyle that might give him abnormally high testosterone for a 45 year old? Well, Liver King does eat a lot of bull testicle. He claims that there have been radio isotope labeling studies showing “conclusively” that when you eat the organ of an animal, the nutrients from that organ will be delivered to the corresponding organ in your body. While Liver King doesn’t say ‘and that’s why I have huge testicles,’ Layne Norton comically points out that this idea of eating an animals organs to improve your organs is stupid because then all of us eating liberal amounts of muscle meat should be super jacked.

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Liver King promotes what he calls “the nine ancestral tenets,” which allow you to express your “highest, most dominant form.” These tenets are all, actually, pretty legit. Many of these areas indeed relate to testosterone. Poor sleep, bad diet of course, being sedentary, exposing yourself to phthalates, exposing your testicles to heat - all of these will reduce testosterone. Whether optimizing each of these areas will give you suspiciously high levels of testosterone is a different question. Let’s go through all of these before we tackle Liver King’s diet in Part 2.

SLEEP

He gives a couple tips for good sleep - get early morning sun, finish eating 3-4 hours before bed time, look at the setting sun, put on blue blocker glasses. All decent advice.
It’s widely understood that poor sleep will lower your testosterone and raise your cortisol.

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In this study you can see T is a bit lower (dotted line) when study participants were allowed only 5 hours in bed rather than 10 hours.

MOVE

Liver King isn’t talking about only hard workouts, but moving frequently. Indeed, a study found better testosterone outcome in those who had higher step counts: Association of daily step count and serum testosterone among men in the United States

Patients with the lowest daily step counts had higher odds of being hypogonadal. The current work supports a possible association between daily steps, total testosterone, and hypogonadism for men in the US.

SHIELD

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Liver King says to stay away from plastics and EMF as much as you can.

Dr. Shanna Swan has done a lot of work uncovering the nefarious effects of plastics on our hormonal health. Phthalates, a group of chemicals used to make plastics more durable, have shocking effects on genital and hormonal development.

Shanna Swan explains that the anogenital distance is a mark of masculinization in mammals. Essentially the distance from the anus to the genitals (also referred to as the “gooch” or “taint”) is much longer in males. The anogenital distance (AGD) is 50%–100% longer at birth in males than females of most mammalian species. In rodents and humans, shorter male AGD is associated with reduced sperm count and infertility.(S) Here’s Dr. Shanna Swan explaining the effects of phthalates on AGD and genital development per an animal study:

“So, here’s this little pup that’s born and if he’s unexposed, he’ll have a good standard penile size, AGD and he won’t have any malformation with his penis - it’ll be normal, but if his mother was exposed to phthalates, everything can go south. What happens is the penis is smaller and the AGD is smaller and the scrotum is smaller and the testes are maybe not descended - in other words, it didn’t finish the process. It was arrested, if you will. So we say that that pup is incompletely masculinized.”

Joe Rogan asks here if it’s possible to achieve the same level of phthalates that these pups in this experiment in human beings in normal conditions. Dr. Swan said “Absolutely.”

Seems there is something to the EMF thing. A 2012 study found “histopathological and histomorphometrical analyses of the testes showed testicular degeneration in a subset of animals exposed to EMF.” They say “Exposure to 60 Hz and 1 mT EMF can disturb spermatogenesis and may produce subfertility or infertility,” but whether this is on part with what we’re typically exposed to through routers and cell phones and such, I’m not sure.

CONNECT

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Connect is more like “connect with nature;” basically he recommends to do grounding. Grounding or “Earthing” is when you put your bare feet on the earth or connect yourself to the earth by touching a tree or potentially a large dog standing on the grass. To quote this 2012 study:

“Earthing (or grounding) refers to the discovery of benefits—including better sleep and reduced pain—from walking barefoot outside or sitting, working, or sleeping indoors connected to conductive systems that transfer the Earth's electrons from the ground into the body.”

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I wouldn’t say grounding is a big testosterone “hack” but one obscure study did find:

Grounding was associated… with an increased circadian amplitude of salivary testosterone (15.1 vs. 9.3 pg/ml, t=2.466, p=0.020)

COLD

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Heat seems to have a negative effect on testicular function, at least in terms of sperm production. Even a 2 degree increase in testicular temperature can hamper sperm production.(S) Perhaps the cold invigorates the testicles, allowing them to express their highest most dominant self. After all, I had heard somewhere that there was a study finding that taking a cold shower for 10 minutes raises your testosterone. Though… not having any luck finding it now.

To get in the spirit of this article, I went to the grocery store and bought 34 kilograms of ice to take an ice bath. I stayed in for a bit over 15 minutes, which left my whole body very red. My heart rate dropped dramatically when I got in, rose a bit while I was in there, then dropped dramatically again when I dunked my head under.

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I did feel quite invigorated afterwards, but shortly after I felt very tired and I think I overdid it because now (several hours later) I feel kind of ill to be frank. I’ve felt a lot more invigorated with an increase in libido and without these negative effects after a much less intense cold shower.

In a VICE article, Urologist Lye Diwa of the Philippines said:

“Although there are small studies that would attest to cold temperature and improvement in sperm quality, there are no large clinical trials that would advise icing as a means to improve sperm count”

Actually, one study found 19 year old men’s testosterone to decrease by 10% from cold stimulation.(S) This 2002 review reports:

“In male subjects, testosterone showed no change in responses to acute or mild repeated cold air. Only meat factory workers exposed daily to extreme cold (-40°C), showed a decrease in their serum testosterone levels.”

On the other hand, several studies have found that keeping the testicles cool (also known as “scrotal cooling”) improves sperm count, quality, and motility.(S,S2) This 2012 study achieved higher sperm counts with use of a “scrotal cooling patch.”

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Lucas Aoun got his testosterone above the reference range using ball icing …and several supplements.

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Vigorous Steve shares here his results from icing his testicles for 20 minutes 3 times per day for 7 weeks. He took his testosterone from 375 ng/dL to 627 ng/dL. However, this was combined with going off a fasting mimicking diet (drastic calorie reduction will reduce your testosterone). So based on other testosterone results he had, he surmised his baseline testosterone is around 514 ng/dL. Meaning we can guesstimate an increase of about 113 ng/dL from the icing.

Fun, irrelevant tidbit: mice can better withstand heat stress if castrated.(S)

SUN

A 1939 study in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology found that men who exposed their chest and back to UV light experienced a 120% increase in testosterone. Further, UV exposure to their testicles boosted testosterone by 200%. It’s hard to find other human studies that replicate the testosterone boosting effects of that 80 year old study, but this study found significantly higher testosterone levels in men with higher vitamin D levels.

I brought up in a video about the health benefits of red light how Ben Greenfield claims to have increased his testosterone 300% by exposing his balls to red light. It is the setting and rising sun that has more of this red light (630-940nm range) and Liver King recommends to expose yourself not just to the sun but also to the setting sun as well. He didn’t comment on whether he had his balls out during this time.

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hubermanlab

A post shared by Andrew Huberman, Ph.D. (@hubermanlab)

Huberman talks more about this in his podcast episode titled Using Light (Sunlight, Blue Light and Red Light) To Optimize Health

He cites a 2021 study finding that men who got 20 to 30 minutes of sun exposure 2 to 3 times a week over a month period had notably higher levels of testosterone.

hubermanlab

A post shared by Andrew Huberman, Ph.D. (@hubermanlab)

“[The] p53 [gene] in keratinocyte skin cells can activate the pituitary gland and hypothalamus if the skin is exposed to ample sunlight (UV-B light in particular…). That in turn, causes increases in LH/FSH that trigger testosterone, estradiol and progesterone.”

FIGHT & BOND

Fighting and winning does raise testosterone. Just make sure you don’t lose.

Liver King is talking more about bonding with family and friends, but talking to or “bonding” with a new woman (a stranger) will raise a man’s testosterone.

EAT

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Liver King told Mark Bell on an episode of Mark Bell’s Power Project that “Liver is the biggest lever to creating change in your life.”

If there’s anything Liver King is doing that is giving him his highest most dominant level of testosterone (other than y’know, actual testosterone injections), it’s his diet. We’ll tackle this next time.