Latest / The Joe Rogan Recap / Derek, More Plates More Dates (2025) - Optimal Dosing, Peak Performance, and Woke Culture

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Derek, More Plates More Dates (2025) - Optimal Dosing, Peak Performance, and Woke Culture · The Joe Rogan Recap

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  Welcome to the Joe Rogan recap and before we get going, please
• 0:03
  follow us right here on Spotify to make sure you get sight of
• 0:05
  our latest episodes in your feet.
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  O Today we are doing a a really deep dive into the fascinating
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  and sometimes, well, frankly alarming world of performance
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  biohacking. It's a huge topic.
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  We've got a mountain of info here from, you know, these super
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  meticulous nootropic formulas all the way to the absolute
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  extremes of what people are doing to their bodies.
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  Exactly. So our mission today is to kind
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  of unpack all that. We'll get it to the actual
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  science, the ingredients, the dosages and contrast this this
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  new era of transparency. With the old days and with the,
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  I mean the genuinely reckless lives of some of these athletes
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  who are just pushing biology to its absolute breaking point
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  every single day, OK. Let's start with the toolkit,
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  then the biohacking toolkit. The first thing that really
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  jumps out is how deliberate these new formulas are, but I
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  have to start with this one. Detail the flavor the.
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  Flavor, yeah. The new liquid nootropic was
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  called red gummy fish. Apparently it's delicious, which
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  is a great hook, but what's actually happening inside the
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  drink? Well, what's so interesting is
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  how they built the stack. It's all about consistent
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  cognition, you know, without a huge crash.
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  They're building a foundation. And that foundation starts with
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  what? It starts with tyrosine, which
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  is a crucial precursor for your feel good and focus chemicals.
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  Dopamine. Dopamine exactly, but also
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  adrenaline and noradrenaline, the catecholamines.
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  So you're basically just boosting the raw materials your
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  brain needs to stay switched on. OK, So what about support for
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  like brain structure membranes? That's where alpha GQC comes in.
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  It's the most bioavailable form of choline and the key thing is
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  it crosses the blood brain barrier.
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  And the guest's belief was that most people walking around
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  deficient in choline. Very deficient.
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  I mean, think about it, the best sources are things like liver
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  and eggs. Things a lot of people just
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  don't eat anymore for whatever reason, so you almost have to
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  supplement just to get back to a normal baseline.
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  Absolutely. So once you have that base, you
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  layer on the classic partner for caffeine, L theanine.
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  The counterbalance. The perfect counterbalance.
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  You stack it with caffeine and it boosts your alpha waves.
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  It helps with verbal fluency, attention, concentration, but it
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  gives you that smooth mellow feeling instead of the jitters.
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  OK, this is where it got really interesting for me and kind of
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  stepped outside the usual energy drink formula, uridine
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  monophosphate. You just don't see that very
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  often. You really don't.
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  So what's its purpose? Why put it in there?
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  It's all about tolerance. Think about someone who's been
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  drinking coffee for, say, a decade.
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  They barely feel it anymore. Uridine is thought to enhance
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  your sensitivity to stimulants like caffeine or nicotine.
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  Wait, hold on. So if my tolerance is through
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  the roof, this could actually help me feel it again without
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  having to, you know, double my caffeine intake.
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  That's the idea. The literature suggests it can
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  help restore function in those dopamine producing neurons that
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  have been overworked. That's a huge deal that
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  completely changes the economics of being a daily stimulant user,
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  doesn't it? It does.
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  It's genius really. You get the effect back without
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  escalating the dose. And Speaking of dose, they
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  settled on 200 milligrams of caffeine, which they said was a
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  huge point of debate for them. A huge point because they were
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  trying to find that that fine line balance for sustainability
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  they. Didn't want the hammer solution.
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  Exactly. They specifically rejected that,
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  you know, these drinks with three hundred 350 milligrams of
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  caffeine, they're really only for people who already have a
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  massive tolerance. 200 is the sweet spot for daily consistent
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  use. And that focus on safety is so
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  critical, especially when you hear their own stories, that
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  anecdote about them messing with velvet bean extract.
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  L Dopa. That was terrifying.
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  A major, major misstep. L dopa is a direct precursor to
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  dopamine. It bypasses all the body's
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  normal safety checks. And the result was what they
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  called a dopamine overdose. Extreme nausea.
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  They had to just lie down for hours.
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  Horrific. It's just a perfect example of
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  why sustainable, thoughtful dosing is so important.
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  They basically floored the gas pedal with no brakes and the
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  system just shut down. It's the difference between
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  biohacking and just being reckless.
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  Which is a perfect transition really.
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  The difference between that meticulous dosing for the mind
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  and the the blunt force you sometimes need for elite
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  physical performance. Right.
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  If you're talking about acute strength or trying to offset,
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  you know, serious sleep deprivation, the caffeine dose
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  changes completely. It goes way.
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  Up dramatically. The literature points to an
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  effective dose of three to six milligrams per kilogram of body
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  weight. So for a big athlete, we're not
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  talking 200 milligrams anymore, we're talking. 4-5, maybe even
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  600 milligrams. At that level, caffeine is a
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  legitimate performance enhancer. It's moving the needle on power
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  output. And we're seeing that same kind
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  of dose escalation with other supplements like creatine.
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  The old recommendation was what, 5 milligrams?
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  Tiny. Now athletes are pushing 1020
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  grams and you can't forget the stigma.
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  Back in the 90s, creatine was treated like it was steroids.
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  Light Oh I. Remember that total panic?
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  But the science is just undeniable now.
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  It helps offset ATP deficiency. It's a bridge to maintain power
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  when you're exhausted. The stigma is gone because it
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  just flat out works. It's just wild to think about
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  how unregulated things used to be, that Wild West era of
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  supplements they talked about. It was so dangerous.
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  I mean you could buy stuff over the counter like mag 10 which
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  was basically a functional steroid 10.
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  Pounds of muscle in a month? That's that's insane.
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  Insane. And then you'd stop taking it
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  and your hormones would just absolutely crash.
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  But the stimulants were maybe even worse.
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  RIP Fuel Jack 3D. Yeah, RIP Fuel had epidrine,
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  massive cardiovascular risk and Jack 3D.
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  They called it straight meth. It was DMAA, an amphetamine
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  analog hidden in a proprietary blend.
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  So you had no idea how much you were taking?
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  Zero idea and that deception was everywhere.
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  Bodybuilders lying about what they took for endorsement deals.
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  It led to this tragic culture of guys escalating their doses in
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  secret, trying to catch up. Which led to people dying young.
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  It's so different now with the transparency.
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  Like the actor Frank Grillo. Totally different.
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  He's completely open about using things like Anavar and TRT to
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  stay in shape. That honesty prevents the
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  dangerous guesswork that killed people before.
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  And Speaking of long overdue honesty, let's talk about
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  Women's Health. The FDA finally removing the
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  black box warnings from hormone replacement therapy.
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  A massive reversal, and it's correcting decades of just awful
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  public health advice that was based on a single, deeply flawed
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  study from the 90s. What was the main flaw?
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  It was the materials they used. They weren't using bioidentical
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  hormones. The source called it horse piss
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  derived estrogens and a synthetic progestin.
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  That combination created this scary sounding media narrative
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  about a 26% increase in risk. Which sounds terrifying.
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  Of course it does, but the absolute risk was tiny.
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  It was the difference between 3 cases out of 1004 cases out of
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  1000. But that headline scared an
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  entire generation of women away from treatment they needed.
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  It's amazing how sticky that kind of fear is.
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  It's like the old debunk testosterone or prostate cancer
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  link. It just takes decades for
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  science and common sense to win out.
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  And that brings us from sensible science to, well, the extremes
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  when people start pursuing radical changes to their body,
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  pushing biology way past its limits.
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  Yeah, the limb lengthening surgery, that was horrifying.
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  The case they discussed was just so extreme, a guy who was
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  already 6 feet tall, £300 wanting to add 6 more inches to
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  his height. I mean, I get that it's used to
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  correct a functional asymmetry, but for vanity at that size the
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  risk must be astronomical. It is.
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  You're talking about a multi year recovery, crutches,
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  constant pain, a huge risk of infection and putting all that
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  stress from a £300 frame onto bones that are essentially
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  healing from a voluntary massive fracture.
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  It's shocking. And then you have the chemical
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  side of it, things that are sort of halfway between performance
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  and vanity, like Melanitan 2. Melanitan 2 is fascinating.
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  The most obvious effect is cosmetic, right?
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  It makes you super tan the chocolate body as they said, and
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  it darkens your hair pigment. But it does more than that,
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  doesn't it? Oh yeah, it's also a powerful
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  appetite suppressant, and it's famous for enhancing libido.
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  So it's a peptide that's hitting these core biological drives
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  while also changing how you look.
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  Let's shift to the absolute peak of performance, then, the new
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  generation of MMA athletes. These guys are embodying that
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  radical edge. They really are.
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  You take someone like Gable Stevenson, the Olympic gold
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  medalist wrestler. A heavyweight freak athlete.
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  Exactly. But it's not just his size, it's
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  his speed. He can throw a knockout strike
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  and then immediately transition to a takedown.
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  It's like watching a video game combo.
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  And then there's the just ungodly power of Alex Pereira.
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  Unbelievable. He hit a 190 on that punching
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  machine. From comparison, a huge
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  heavyweight like Francis and GNU hit a 129.
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  But the really critical point they made was about his
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  durability and weight cutting. His chin got so much better when
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  he moved up to 205 lbs. Yes, and this is the key take
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  away. It's about brain dehydration.
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  Your muscles might rehydrate quickly after a big weight cut,
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  but your brain takes way, way longer.
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  So even if you feel fine, your brain is still vulnerable.
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  Exactly. It's swimming in less fluid
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  which makes you incredibly vulnerable to getting knocked
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  out. Shots you'd normally eat at a
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  healthy weight can put you out cold.
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  That cut to 185 was literally risking his career and those.
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  Risks. They're not just physical, are
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  they? The mental game dealing with
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  fame and attention. Right.
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  The conversation took a real turn there.
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  They diagnosed social media as being basically toxic, the
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  opposite of mindfulness. A high stakes this drag a.
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  Huge 1 So they talked about these these almost monk like
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  strategies to manage it. Ghost and ghost.
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  Yep. Drop your content and get out.
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  Use a burner phone to create a wall between your real life and
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  your public life. And the very practical advice?
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  Don't scroll on the toilet. It's about protecting your
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  mental space. Because if you don't, well, we
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  saw the example of Ilya Topuria. Yeah, two division champ, but
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  his personal life, divorce, the Miami women culture was seen as
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  a serious derailment. It just shows that at that elite
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  level, discipline has to be a 247 thing.
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  Any big distraction outside the gym can completely knock you off
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  course. The mental tax is just too high
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  when you're already at your absolute biological limit.
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  So we've covered this huge spectrum.
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  On one end you have this meticulous, careful science of
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  dosing for sustainability, and on the other you have the high
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  stakes, sometimes reckless lives of athletes pushing those
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  limits. And that tension is really the
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  core of it all. This pursuit of human
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  improvement is moving beyond just willpower.
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  It reminds me of the discussion about Alexander Carolyn, the old
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  Russian wrestler. They called him the Experiment.
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  He was this behemoth way bigger than his small parents because
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  he was put into an extreme systemic training program from a
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  young age. Which leaves a pretty big
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  question for you, the listener, to think about.
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  Given everything we know now, from peptides and hormones that
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  can correct growth issues to the ever improving science of
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  genetics, is the future of elite sports even about dedication
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  anymore? Or is it becoming more about who
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  is willing to proactively engage in the genetic and chemical
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  optimization of their athletes? Are we starting to create a new,
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  ethically complicated class of experiments who are just
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  designed for dominance from the ground up?
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  It seems like the only thing separating the great from the
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  greatest might soon be the blueprint, not the effort.