SPEAKER_01: 0:01

Welcome to Proximity with Ken Jocelyn. I am Ken Jocelyn, your host, founder of GrowStack Drive, and everything we do here is driven by one mission. To help one million faith-based entrepreneurs become the best version of themselves in what we call our Core Five framework: faith, health, relationships, business, and finances. Here's the truth that most people miss. Your life does not move in the direction of your intentions, it moves in the direction of your proximity. Who you're near matters. Who you listen to matters. And the rooms that you choose to enter matter probably more than you know. This podcast is built on the principles from my book, The 14 Frequencies of Proximity, where I break down the internal frequencies you must develop to attract the right relationships, gain clarity, and step into the next level that God has for your life. You'll hear real conversations with faith-driven entrepreneurs, leaders, and high performers. Many of them voices from Create, the number one faith-based entrepreneur conference in America, that I host right here in Atlanta every single year in January. This isn't about hustle culture. This isn't motivation for the moment. This is about alignment, discipline, and becoming the person your future requires. If you're ready to grow in your Core Five framework and get closer to the people and environments that accelerate your growth, you're in the right place. Do me a favor, guys. Again, this guy right here, when it comes to energy levels, homeowner play game changer for me right here. Game changer for this guy right here. Put your hands together, guys. Let my guy Josh Porter know how much you appreciate him. You got it, big boy. What's up, guys?

SPEAKER_02: 1:47

I see you over there, Matt Morris, and that balls hat. Yeah, I mean, Gary's always uh big shoes to fill, but here's what I would say from the connection. One of the things that Gary talks about is finding that root level cause, right? The understanding that what the body is happening to you, oftentimes inside of our bodies, we have the capacity to fight off disease. And as Gary mentioned just recently, I mean, two huge things that have happened around hormone replacement therapy in 2025. The first, which was in February of 2025, pertained to testosterone, which for you guys who don't know all the things that go into black box warnings and things of that nature, one of the things that happens is when a data set or a study may reveal a possible bad outcome, certain outcomes become what we call black box warnings, which means that is the highest standard of side effects that could happen. And so for years, testosterone therapy for men in particular has been around for 80, 90 years. And for the majority of part of that, no one was ever talking, because I saw this question, no one was ever talking about testosterone therapy and cardiovascular side effects. But there were a couple studies in 2012, 2013 that were what we call retrospective observational studies. And these are really correlating studies. You can't draw a cause-effective study from this, but you can you can draw assumptions, you can draw hypothesis from it. But the FDA unfortunately took those studies and placed the black box warning on testosterone that said it could cause heart attacks, strokes, and DVTs. And as a result of that, you saw a decline in men getting testosterone. You saw providers being really afraid of prescribing testosterone when it was needed for men. The one benefit of that data set was that the FDA actually did require what we call a randomized controlled trial, and that was called the Traverse Trial, which actually disproved what we already knew that testosterone is safe, that it's effective when used appropriately. And not only is it safe and effective, but when you look at chronic disease management, so when we're talking with Gary, we're talking about cholesterol, we're talking about diabetes, we're talking about all these things that start to occur, Alzheimer's and dementia, all these things that start to occur as we age. Well, what's really fascinating around men is that those conditions are not associated with high levels of testosterone, they're actually actually associated with low levels of testosterone. And so why does that happen in men in particular? Because again, going back to Gary, so much of what we are fighting against has to do with inflammation. There are a lot of things that you heard tonight, and in some of it, I I've been watching the chat, feels incredibly overwhelming. Where do you even start? I saw somebody say, where can I even get a mattress that doesn't have the fire retardant on it? Right. So so it all of this feels so overwhelming. But the what I always encourage patients to consider is start with the basics, like Gary said, sleep, nutrition, exercise. And then you've got to start to understand and track and and find assessments, things that you know he spoke to as far as certain testing, depending on what your symptoms are. But in my opinion, for an aging male, and unfortunately I say an aging male, but we're actually seeing testosterone levels decline at a rapid rate in younger men. When I say decline, almost a 20% decline generationally. So if you take a 40-year-old male and compare him to his father when he was 40, currently our testosterone levels are close to 20% lower because sedentary lifestyles, microtoxins, all these things, the environmental exposures, all that what we call endocrine disrupting chemicals that Gary kind of spoke about, because those chemicals were synthetic and they're not meant to be in the system. And so they bind to these receptors. So then this testosterone has no ability to actually make an impact. And so understanding that data, that we live in this society where drift is the norm, right? We we're we're actually pushed into, I'm just getting older. This is just part of the process. And instead of getting to the root level, what we tend to do is say, well, here's a band-aid, here's you've got blood pressure issues, here's your blood pressure medication, you've got cholesterol issues, here's your statin. We don't really get to the point where we're looking at things that says, Well, could it be if a guy's testosterone level is 350 and he is a type 2 diabetic and he doesn't exercise, obviously those things need to occur. But could it be that elevating his testosterone level would actually improve his insulin sensitivity, improve his inflammatory mediators? The answer is yes, very often. And so understanding to get to those root levels is incredibly important. When it comes to women, women, in my opinion, we we refer to women's hormones. There's a specific trial called the WHI trial that came out in 2002. And outside of the majority of things that have happened in modern medicine, if you guys ever follow Peter Atia, Peter Tia says that the WHI trial debacle is the greatest tragedy that ever happened to modern medicine. What happened in that was, again, there was a question in the chat does HRT cause blood clots? That was the narrative that we received that that from that trial that HRT caused blood clots, that HRT caused breast cancer. And so overnight, when this study came out in 2002, not only did we see fear and the media really take that and and spread that dogma across the country, we saw an 80% decline in prescriptions written for hormone replacement therapy. Well, as that happened, what do you think happened to those women in that generation? One of the main reasons that I do what I do is because my mother was in that generation and I saw her suffer from osteoporosis, I saw her suffer from insulin resistance, I saw her suffer so much from brain fog. And so as you start to look into the data, that's not what that study ever showed. The study never showed those situations and issues. The data was manipulated. Now, we could go really deep into talk about big pharma. Gary was very generous and gracious towards that industry, but big pharma, big insurance, big food is not here to make you well. They're here to keep you sick, right? You can go and look at certain foods and the and the process through which they go through the addictive behavior that foods have. And so that the system is set up to work against you, not for you, until we have situations like we're experiencing now with the Maha movement where we're actually getting to these root-level treatments. But so the second big thing that happened in 2025 was around female hormones because a month ago, those black box warnings about cardiovascular issues with hormone therapy as well as breast cancer were actually removed. So not only do we know that hormone therapy does not cause breast cancer in women, we actually have data that shows that hormone therapy, in the same study that we want to use to say that it caused it, we actually have the same data that shows that it actually lowered over time breast cancer in women by 22%. So hormone therapy is protective in women. It enhances your cardiovascular system. Data has shown that 30 to 50% reduction in cardiovascular mortality. So we're talking about big impact in these patients who are in the in the most important part of your life. I just I was just talking to someone the other day, and they talked about the from age 45 to age 55, is the most stressful season that most of us will ever go through. You've got aging kids. Literally, there's an engagement party downstairs at my house right now. My son just got engaged today. So you have aging kids who are in transitions as parents. You have aging parents, and now you're responsible for taking care of them. My mother, as many of you guys know, is battling lung cancer. And so you've got this pull. And then in addition to that, you have this situation where oftentimes at in this age, we're the busiest we've ever been with business, right? And so you're you're you're in this season, and then in that season, especially for females, your hormones are working against you, they're not working for you. And so I think the understanding of where do I even start, right? Where do I even start to gain an understanding of what is going on in my body? Many of the questions that I saw in the chat tonight were talking about how expensive are some of these treatments. Many of them are not cheap. Eboo therapy, which is one of the plasma exchange therapies, can be, you know, a couple grand of$4,000, right? So you can go down a lot of pathways in a very broad manner and spend thousands and thousands of dollars, or you can start to focus on the pillars, the sleep, the exercise, the nutrition, the hormones, just to get an understanding of what is my body foundationally doing that's working against me versus working for me. Any Ken, you got any questions? I I know it's it's kind of.

SPEAKER_01: 11:14

I would love to, because one of the things, guys, we're doing at Create this year, it's it, and I know you've been in the past, it's been amazing. This year, literally, guys, we're taking it to the next level. Specifically in inside the health component, Josh is actually bringing phlebotomists on site. So not only because what here's what our conversation with Josh was this, because with the second, the second appointment I had down in RMI, my functional medicine guys down at the stem cells, guys, getting stem cells in Costa Rica. I had Josh on my cell phone on the on FaceTime, and I had Gary on Zoom on the big TV and my functional medicine team. And they helped me navigate through where I was at, testosterone-wise, which was still, I think I was at 600 then. I was like right around 600 as on that clomafine. And then I started taking it twice a day, and now I get the regular TRT. But Josh is the one that said, hey, what if we up this a little bit here? And so I just said, Josh, why don't we this year, instead of, because here's what I know, guys, and you guys know this as well. If you're on site and you know you're having an issue with energy, you know you're having some of the issues maybe even Gary talked about or some of the stuff that Josh is talking about when it comes to homeown replacements, whether you be a man or a woman, I said, Josh, let's set this year, bring some of your, some of your team in, some of your phlebotomists, let's give them an opportunity to go, hey, you know what? I don't have the energy. I'm not sleeping. I'm not doing all the different things that would indicate that my energy is low, which is probably why my my hormones are are out of whack. And I said, dude, let's bring in your guys and let's let them get their blood drawn on the spot. So I don't know how many, I don't know how many faith-based entrepreneur conferences literally draw your blood on the spot, but we're gonna give you an opportunity while you're there. Josh, you want to talk a little bit about that? It's not we're not selling anything for you guys, and I it I I guys listen, every person I bring in here, Gary and I have been friends for five years now. I knew Gary Brecka before anybody knew who Gary was. Literally, he just started with Grant. And I sat in his condo at the Porsche Design Tower in North Miami or Aventura. I sat there with him and say he's listening to some of the same things he just talked about just a minute ago before anybody knew who Gary was. So, what I really, my heart and desire is with Create and what we're doing is to bring the people to you that have had an impact and helped change my life. Gary's one of those guys. Obviously, you've seen my before and after picture. Josh is another one of those guys, with specifically when it comes to my testosterone levels, my energy, and those kind of things. So, Josh, go ahead. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 13:55

Yeah, I think to answer that question as far as you know, what our our hope and purpose and serving, you know, create and GSD is really to give people layers and understanding, right? We have hormone panels, we we look at kidney function, we look at cholesterol panels. I'm a huge advocate of what Gary said. LDL is not something that majority of people need to be treating with a statin when elevated. But we also are going to offer, because I think we're not naive to understand that some people have specific needs. And so we have access to what we refer to as a cardiac panel where we can look at apolypoprotein B, apolittle A. We can look at homocysteine, which Gary talked about. We can look at CRP markers. We're going to do vitamin panels where we can actually test, because somebody asked in the chat, what vitamins do you need to test or uh to take? Well, it kind of depends. There are some core vitamins. Vitamin D with K2 is a very important vitamin. Magnesium is a very important vitamin. Omegas can be very helpful from a supplement standpoint. And so there are certain core vitamins and minerals that you can take, but sometimes you need to know what I am actually deficient in. And then, you know, and again, you can take those things. We won't be doing this at Create, but you can take those things to a whole different level: vibrant wellness, genetic testing, methylation testing. You can go, but if in from my standpoint, I think you start with a what's an attainable, realistic way for me to get some information and allow that to be an algorithm through which now you can really tailor that to the particular patient.

SPEAKER_01: 15:30

There's a couple questions. Go ahead. I was gonna run through these with you real quick. Yeah. Best stack for men with testosterone for strength and viability.

SPEAKER_02: 15:40

So with testosterone, you know, there I'm gonna give you some numbers around this. Some people may disagree. That's okay. But when you look at the reference ranges for testosterone, 264 to 916 is the reference range. I just told you that in 2007 there were some changes in these reference ranges. And then in 2017, we call it the harmonization of the reference range. And so as we saw that testosterone levels were getting lower and lower and lower in men, what what the CDC did in response is instead of saying, this seems off, why is this happening? They moved the goalposts on us. And so now we have this 264 to 916 range. But when you actually look at the data, there was a study done about 12 years ago which actually looked at outcomes in treating testosterone levels. So if you started a guy who was at 250, 300 and you took him to 400, 500, 600, 800, so they had four different groups, the primary outcomes that they were checking was lean muscle development, hypertrophy, okay, so subcutaneous fat reduction, and overall muscle strength and cognitive improvement. The only group who saw significant improvement in all four categories was the group above 800. So if somebody says, where does the guy need to be? And there's a lot of variability here, so I'm going to give you some general broad guidelines, 800 to 1200, depending on the time of that lab relative to your dose. When one of the things that we don't have the opportunity to check in the United States at this point is what's called CAG repeat, which is a DNA transcription of the length of the androgen receptor. So how does that androgen receptor receive the testosterone? And what we do know, because in Europe they check this oftentimes, is that some men have longer CAG repeats and they're more dull to testosterone. Some men have shorter test CAG repeats, so they respond greatly to lower doses. So someone may get greater benefits at the 800 level, but someone else else may need a level at 1200. So when you stack things, you prioritize how does my testosterone levels where are they in that range? How am I doing my testosterone? Because you need to do it in a way that creates steady state as much as possible. So gone are the days of doing testosterone once every two weeks, once every week. You actually want to do what we refer to as microdosing, where you're taking small amounts of testosterone. The best is daily, but nobody really wants to do that, at least twice a week. And what that does is it levels you out after about three weeks and it keeps the gap of your testosterone range in a very tight window. And then from there, it really depends on the gains. I'm a huge fan of creatine. I think creatine is a is a huge benefit. I'm a huge fan of DHEA. DHEA is another androgen similar to testosterone, but not as anabolic in nature. But it's a supplement, so that's a supplement that people can take. And then I saw it in somewhere in the chat, they were talking about taking testomerelin. Tesamorelin is a growth hormone releasing peptide.

SPEAKER_01: 18:30

Uhtid, because that's the next I want to roll right into peptides.

SPEAKER_02: 18:34

Yeah. Because those are things you can stack on top of it.

SPEAKER_01: 18:37

Yeah, Jim Youngblood asks, favorite peptides and why.

SPEAKER_02: 18:41

So, you know, my so I will say this, I I would not disagree at all with what Gary said about getting, you know, if you get rid of the Oreos and supplement it for avocado, you're going to see weight loss.

unknown: 18:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 18:53

The practicality of that is not everybody is going to adhere that. And so I am a fan of GLPs because I think if you couple GLPs with the approach of getting people to eat clean, exercise, when they see those responses, and especially when you do what we refer to as microdosing, so you're not using GLPs at these high levels because if you look at the data, high levels of GLPs, so the stronger the dose, the greater the results. Okay. But if you actually dig into that data, what it also shows is the higher the dose, the greater the rebound. So where success with GLPs, like tursepatide, semaglutide, retitrutide, where success applies greater in those, is when you do all the other things right, you balance your hormones and you've got those optimized. And now you add a microdose of GLP if needed for somebody who needs 40, 50, 60, 70 pounds of weight. That is a very great option. I'm another hipper marelin, testamarelin, semorlin, those are what we call growth hormone releasing peptides. And so they work on the pituitary, uh they Ibutamorin is another one that works on ghrelin. And all of these peptides basically stimulate your body's ability to elevate your own growth hormone. Growth hormone is incredible for recovery. It's incredible for inflammation. It's incredible for sleep. It's incredible for leanness. And so growth hormone-releasing peptides are something that you can stack in addition to testosterone, oftentimes, when you're trying to make those goals. Now, if you take peptides, checking what we refer to as an IGF-1, which is a lab marker that you can take, that is a way that you can correlate is my growth hormone level on the lower end, because the person who has a lower IGF-1 is going to get a greater response from a growth hormone releasing peptide because it is helping your body produce more of it. So the endocrine system works off of a feedback loop. So if your IGF one is elevated already in a pretty optimal range, you're likely not going to see as much benefit from that peptide because of the feedback loop.

SPEAKER_01: 20:59

I love that. Walker, unmute yourself. He's got a pretty long question. Walker's actually working with us on our team on the cell side with some AI stuff.

SPEAKER_00: 21:09

Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_01: 21:10

Come on, ask this question, Mr. A. I love your AI robot picture.

SPEAKER_00: 21:14

Yeah, no worries. Oh, yeah. I was just saying, so I'm actually I'm 31. I'm in pretty decent physical shape. Not the best shape I've ever been. I'm probably like 10 pounds more than I need to be right now, but I mean I still work out pretty actively. We have two kids under five, so my gym regimen's not as consistent as it used to be. But just maybe like four to six months ago, I was considering doing TRT. I had my labs done just because like my energy's been off most days, and my LH came back at like 1.2. My test was like 350. The rest of my like blood work came back, like all in optimal levels. But my biggest concern with it is just me and my wife are like both still in our like you know younger 30s, and we already have two kids, we're considering having more at some point. So that's like one reason why I haven't really pulled a trigger on it. Like I guess, like, what's your opinion on like will that have significant side effects for like that specifically down the line? Like some people pretty much say, or what I've heard at least is like if you start taking TRT for a significant amount of time, then your like chances of having kids in the future is like pretty low.

SPEAKER_02: 22:26

Yeah, that's a great question, Walker. So I'll I'll I'm gonna start with what I see on your labs, and I'll kind of explain this. Fertility is a huge problem with patients who use TRT. TRT, because the endocrine works, the endocrine system works off of a feedback loop. So when TR when testosterone levels are elevated, that signal goes back to your hypothalamus and that suppresses your body's production of it. It's not specific, therefore, not only does it suppress your body's production of testosterone, but it also produces or suppresses your body's production of sperm. So we refer to that as what we call azospermia, which is sperm counts drop to almost undetectable oftentimes. Now, there are some ways around that. Some people will use testosterone therapy with a peptide called HCG. HCG is a direct LH agonist, but when I look at your labs, LH stands for luteinizing hormone. Lutinizing hormone is the direct stimulus from the pituitary that actually causes your testicle to produce testosterone. So when you're using this marker, LH is usually around 1.7 to 8.6 on the reference range. So in your situation where your testosterone level is 350, now I don't know what your free testosterone level is, but when your total testosterone is 350 and you have an LH that's suppressed, I would use what I refer to as restorative therapy. The other thing I would want to know is a prolactin level, just to make sure you don't have a little pituitary tumor that would be causing your suppression of your LH, which can happen. But when you look at that LH and you see that it's so low, you can use medications like clomethine or enclomathine, which are what we refer to as selective estrogen receptor modulators or CERMS. What they do is they bind to the estrogen receptor in men, and men produce estrogen through testosterone. So we convert testosterone to estrogen. So when we sub when we bind to that estrogen receptor, again, that feedback loop goes up to the brain and says your estrodiol levels are low. So how does the man produce test estrogen? It's through testosterone. So you can use medications like clomaphine, enclomiphene, HCG to number one, protect fertility. But number two, in a guy like you, you would, I would suspect that those medications would actually elevate your testosterone level fairly substantially. Versus, let's say you're you've got that testosterone level of 350, but your LH is 9.2. So I just told you 1.6 to 1.7 to 8.6 is the reference range. If the LH is already elevated, then that tells you that you probably have an issue with your testicle because you're you're getting adequate response to the testicle, actually, supra physiological response or stimulation, but there's no response. That patient's less likely to see benefit from clomathine. But in your situation, I would avoid testosterone and I would use something more like clomafene, enclomatene, HCG.

SPEAKER_01: 25:21

Yeah, when I did that, Walker, I was at a 260. And then my next, my next test was I don't know, three or four months later, Josh. And then six months later, I was in the 600s. The next fall, I was in the 900s just off of clomathine. Yeah. So it so yeah, it worked for me. It worked for me big time. Go ahead, Josh.

SPEAKER_02: 25:40

There are some, and I will say this real quick, if somebody's made that decision and let's say they're 31 and they didn't know that and they went on testosterone, there actually is some really good studies that shows you can restore up to 50, 60 percent of testos of sperm count by going off of testosterone onto that restorative HCG clomethine combination. So it's not all all is not lost, which I should say.

SPEAKER_00: 26:04

Yeah, that makes sense. I appreciate that. Yeah, and I don't know if I because I was looking at my labs when you pulled that up, and like my free testosterone was like 59, and I just know like the rest of my blood work in like the optimal ranges were like near like mid to high. So, like, and I genuinely feel good most days, but I mean I can tell like significantly just like that drive is not there like it used to be.

SPEAKER_02: 26:27

So well, that that free testosterone, depending on the reference or the the lab, can be 59 or 5.9. It's just moved a decimal point, but in that scenario, your your level should be of a free should be 180 to 240. So you're fairly low in that free testosterone range. Saliva testing, I see I see that real quick for Britney. Saliva testing is great. I do use it, I don't use it exclusively. Again, when you go back to data, you look at what has been the available, you know, evidence that we've used for years. What's the what we would call in medicine the gold standard? What's the cheaper option? Saliva testing is great for somebody who can financially afford it, and it can give you some really important metabolic pathways to understand how the hormones are breaking down. But oftentimes, especially depending on the situation, if you've got a 52-year-old female, she's postmenopausal, is it worth a three to four hundred and fifty dollar saliva test versus a hundred dollar serum panel to get you the information you need to know that you can help her? So do I use them? Yes. Is it the is it my number one foundational uh no? And it's generally because of cost. But I'm a I'm a fan of saliva testing.

SPEAKER_01: 27:46

GLPs create the zombie look where muscle is being eaten as well as fat.

SPEAKER_02: 27:51

So, yes, when done inappropriately at high doses and poor nutrition. If you do GLPs, I mean I could show you patients after patients where I check what we call Sika scans, or many of you have probably done a what's called an in-body scan. And what I always tell my patients is the goal should be one to two pounds of fat loss per week. If if someone is losing more weight than that, or if they're not eating properly, they will lose lean muscle. But it's not because the GOP is eating away the muscle. It's often because if you've ever taken a GOP and you take too much of it, you have zero appetite. And so if I if I have zero appetite, I'm not consuming the proper nutrition protein, I don't have the energy to exercise. So you're not doing anything to promote that. And then, secondly, again, from a hormonal standpoint, if I've got a testosterone level of 300 as a guy or three as a female, and so now anabolically my body is working against me, and now I'm depriving my body of important nutrients, protein, and things of that nature, then of course you're gonna lose muscle. But it's not that I would argue it's not so much the GLP doing it as much as it is the mismanagement and misdosing of GLPs that does that. We got one question here. It's gonna be all right.

SPEAKER_01: 29:07

Dara says her husband's 57, had a grandma seizure in September. Three weeks later, his brother-in-law broke his jaw, same age, both had prior brain injuries in the 20s that showed in MRIs. I've read that hormone changers can trigger that. Do you have any recommendations on what tests they should be looking at? Let me see the question again. It's in here, Kim.

SPEAKER_02: 29:29

It's the second one. Okay. So I I I don't I don't see it exactly, but are are hormone can so can hormones affect affect threshold of epilepsy and seizures? Yes. I mean, I I don't know exactly what you know the scenario from has he been diagnosed with epilepsy? Do we know if there's a trigger to it? But can hormones actually testosterone therapy can sometimes lower your your seizure threshold. So you have to be kind of careful about putting a person on testosterone, male or female, as well as estradiol, oftentimes because it can lower your seizure threshold, which means if you've got a patient who has epilepsy or seizures, that can be triggered or lower the threshold, which means they can have, they can elicit more seizures more frequently.

SPEAKER_01: 30:20

Thanks for listening. And if today's episode challenged you or gave you clarity, remember this. You didn't become the best version of yourself by accident. You became it through alignment and proximity. When your faith, health, relationships, business, and finances are aligned, everything changes. That's the heartbeat of GrowStack Drive and the experience we build every year at Create, the number one faith-based entrepreneur conference in America. So if you're serious about becoming the best version of yourself and growing alongside other faith-driven entrepreneurs, I want to invite you to take your next step. You go to GrowStackDrive.com forward slash free and join our free GSD community. You'll get access to leadership content, conversations, and proximity designed to help you align with your Core Fi framework and grow within it. And if this episode brought you value, I'd love to have you subscribe, leave a review, or share it with someone you lead. Remember, great leaders want something for people, not from people. This is Ken, this is Proximity with Ken Doctor.