Training volume, ADHD, Keto & testosterone, 4G, and much, much more

Good afternoon Nikkola Newsletterers!

It's almost 2024!! As I look forward to next year, you can still expect plenty of fresh content to help you improve your physical health. But in addition to that, I plan to include lots of content to help you feel better, too.

Sometimes you don’t know how not–good you feel until you start to feel better. That’s what happened to me this past year. I would’ve never said that I didn’t feel good or certainly would have never said I felt bad, but when I started feeling really good recently, it made me realize how lousy I felt for much of the year.

Or, lousy, probably isn’t the right word. Ungood is better. Or maybe I’d describe it as “blah.”

I didn’t feel enthusiastic about anything, but I also didn’t feel stressed out or discouraged. Just blah.

And then we started this new adventure with these products, and I haven’t felt this good in as long as I can remember.

I realize that if I was unknowingly in such a funk, there are probably a lot of other people who are as well.

So, in 2024, my focus will still be to help people get healthier and fitter, but I want to do that by helping them feel better fast first.

Much more to come. I’m grateful that you are here to get healthier and happier with us.

Enjoy today’s carefully crafted newsletter! And have a very HAPPY New Year!

Higher-volume training is superior for muscle maintenance in older adults. You often hear that "moderate" exercise is best for older adults, which often means "doing what's comfortable." Research shows that you actually need to train with higher volumes (like more sets per exercise or more total exercises) to maintain muscle mass with age. This makes sense because you develop anabolic resistance with age. You need more protein and more resistance training to get the same effects you got with less when you were young.

Long-term ADHD stimulant meds may lead to low testosterone. In a study of more than 17,000 men, it was found that using ADHD stimulant medication for more than three years led to an almost doubling of the risk of testicular hypofunction, a condition in which the testes cannot produce sufficient testosterone for normal male health.

A ketogenic diet may also lead to low testosterone in men. Evidence suggests that long-term adherence to a ketogenic diet may lead to lower testosterone levels. However, that doesn't negate its benefits for shorter-term use in those with diabetes and obesity, obesity also lowers testosterone levels. Ideally, you want to use the diet in the short-term to get blood sugar and body weight under control, and then transition to a more moderate carb, higher-protein diet over time.

4G radiation could be more problematic than most realize. A new animal study shows that exposure to 4G radiation for two hours per day led to a decrease in sperm viability and changes to the liver, kidneys, testes, and other reproductive organs. It also lowered testosterone and antioxidant capacity while altering other blood chemistry markers like hemoglobin and red blood cells.

Certain gut bacteria seem to make kids smarter, and other bacteria make them less smart. Just published in the journal Science Advances, a study found that certain bacteria were more prominent in children with higher cognitive functioning and others were more prominent in children with lower cognitive functioning. Alistipes obesi and Blautia wexlerae were associated with the higher cognitive functioning kids and Ruminococcus gnavus was associated with lower functioning. This does not suggest that supplementing with these bacteria would enhance brain function, but it's a step towards finding out if that's possible.

Nine out of ten pregnant women have micronutrient deficiencies. That's the finding of a new study of 1700 pregnant women. The most common deficiencies included folic acid, riboflavin, vitamin B12 and vitamin D. A good prenatal multivitamin would easily fix this issue, so that's a sign of how few women are actually taking one.

How Dopamine Affects Your Behavior and Choices. Have you ever wondered what drives your decisions, what fuels your motivation to stick to a workout plan, or why certain foods seem irresistible? The answer might surprise you – it’s all about a powerful brain chemical called dopamine. This neurotransmitter plays a crucial role in our everyday behavior and choices, often without us even realizing it. In this article, we’ll delve into how dopamine influences your adherence to exercise and nutrition programs, what causes its levels to fluctuate, and, most importantly, what you can do to optimize dopamine levels for better health and well-being. Keep reading...​

Testosterone Levels Predict COVID-19 Severity and Mortality. Early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, or plandemic, or circus as I like to call it, we saw a distinct difference between how men and women responded to the infection. Though both men and women (the only scientifically and Biblically supported sexes) saw similar infection rates, men were much more likely to develop severe infections or die from the disease. This led some people to believe that estrogen, which is much higher in women, protects you from severe illness, or that testosterone, which is supposed to be much higher in men, makes infections worse. Many health “experts” vilified testosterone. Listening to them speak, you’d think the best preventative would have been to get on anti-androgen medication. Keep reading...

Parents who still mask their kids. (Vinay Prasad) Everywhere I go, life has returned to normal. Most people acknowledge that school closure was an error, and that restrictions placed on the lives of children served no purpose. They all got covid anyway, and it is not clear the vaccine works in children in any meaningful way. Moreover, restricting kids did not significantly slow the spread for anyone else, and the best evidence suggests no change in spread, or a marginal change in spread. It was a mistake to not recognize the age of gradient of the virus, and approximately every restriction placed on healthy young people was an error. Keep reading...​

Debt and Dopamine: The Ghosts of Christmas Present. (The Epoch Times) Most every Christmas growing up in the 1950s, Brad Harris got socks, a new pair of jeans, and—if he was fortunate—a new sweater. He lived with his mom, who was a single parent, as well as his grandmother, great aunt, and younger brother. Finances were tight, but there was always food on the table, including a big dinner for Christmas. “We never felt deprived, but we didn’t compare what we had with other folks,” Mr. Harris, 87, told The Epoch Times. “It was a wonderful time really. It was a lot less frivolous. I think it made a better generation of us.” Keep reading...​