lactate testing for zone 2
would love to see you do a podcast (or article) dedicated to a deep dive on lactate. there's a lot of great information across a lot of your material regarding lactate testing, but there are so many nuances it would be great to see you go through systematically the usage of lactate for confirming zone 2, including all the adjustments needed for various factors such as fitness level, fasted/nonfasted state, time of day, mode of exercise, etc. thanks for all your outstanding content!
The importance of play in physical, social, emotional, and mental health
I feel this is a largely untapped topic. I'm curious about the contribution physical play can "play" in physical, social, emotional, and mental health. For instance, I remember when the Cooper Institute in Dallas was studying people for aerobic fitness in the 1990's. They tested one guy who was very aerobically fit. They asked him what he did and he said "I play racquetball." And they said, OK, but what do you do to get in such good shape aerobic shape for racquetball? Run? Cycle? "Nothing. I just play racquetball." As I recall, they came to realized that say 90 minutes of racquetball was equivalent to a not insignificant amount of aerobic exercise. Then there's the element of social...say playing pickleball with friends vs. sitting on an exercise bike inside by yourself dialed into zone 2. Then there's the mental element of strategy and reacting to unpredictable events. I think this topic deserves a full on podcast!
Do you really believe that the 10th percentile of testosterone for young adult males in the general population is above the Olympic male median?
I hope this message finds you well. I was just looking for information about normal testosterone ranges in your AMA 180, and was struck by how high the numbers in your table were. They imply that the “10th percentile” for men ages 20-39 years is above the male Olympian mean or median in 2019 (Source: https://www.biointeractive.org/sites/default/files/TestosteroneAthletes-Educator-DP.pdf). They also imply that the 90th percentile for men is above 90% of male Olympians, which is hard to believe given the wide prevalence of PED TRT usage among Olympians. I followed up by email with the authors of the book you cited (Laboratory Tests and Diagnostic Procedures, 2012, by Berger and Chernecky) and in it absolutely no context is given for where the numbers come--where did they draw these T norms from? What’s the population n and selection criteria? What year were they chosen? Are they supposed to be representative of the general population? There aren't even references or citations in the tables. Your reference seems high and other sources seem to agree... Do you have more current/accurate information that I could look at to find out what the true demographically segregated T norms are? I mean, from the title it’s got to be some aggregation of lab results, right? But who is getting the labs, how did they end up in the data, was the data processed or outlier trimmed, etc Ten or twenty choices were made when aggregating the data and creating that table, and every one can skew it, a well as the original selection methods... If these numbers are wrong, it's significant, because famous public medical communicators like yourself are reposting your table in order to encourage men to get TRT treatment, apparently on the basis of badly gathered and/or presented data. Not to be too melodramatic, but I am one of your victims: I went on TRT because of that table and am now wondering if I made a mistake! Can you please help me to understand how your numbers could be so high?
Gerontologists
Hi - I was wondering if Peter could talk about the value of working with a gerontologist in the last decade of one's life. What exactly do they do and how do they differ from your GP or other specialists you may see? Can they make a difference in anyone's health span, or are there special cases where they're effective. Thank you!