The role of testosterone in males and females, performance-enhancing drugs, sustainable fat loss, supplements, and more | Derek, More Plates More Dates Pt.2

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
Hey, everyone, welcome to the Drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia. This podcast, my website and my weekly newsletter all focus on the goal of translating the science of longevity into something accessible for everyone. Our goal is to provide the best content in health and wellness, and we've established a great team of analysts to make this happen. It is extremely important to me to provide all of this content without relying on paid ads. To do this, our work is made entirely possible by our members, and in return, we offer exclusive member-only content and benefits above and beyond what is available for free. If you want to take your knowledge of this space to the next level, it's our goal to ensure members get back much more than the price of the subscription. If you want to learn more about the benefits of our premium membership, head over to peterattiamd.com forward slash subscribe.
My returning guest this week is Derek from More Plates More Dates. Derek was a guest back on episode number 274, which aired in October of 2023 In that episode, we didn't cover nearly as much as I would have liked, so I wanted to have Derek back for round two.
In this conversation, we continue where we left off in our first discussion. We talk about a number of exogenous molecules that impact both male and female health, including testosterone, DHT, DHEA, progesterone, Clomid, HCG, and various peptides. And we also talk about some updates from the FDA since our last conversation that impact the use of peptides. We also touch on myostatin, follistatin, and more. We cover various ways that bodybuilders will lose fat and weight while maintaining muscle, including the various weight loss drugs that are available. As a reminder, Derek is a fitness educator and entrepreneur behind the More Plates, More Dates YouTube channel, podcast, and companion website. So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Derek for More Plates, More Dates.
Derek, good to see you again.

**Derek** (2:19)
Thanks for having me again, Peter. Appreciate it.

**Peter Attia** (2:21)
Yeah, so last time we spoke, we covered a lot of ground, and yet somehow at the end of it, we felt like there was still a lot to talk about, so hence we're back.
And I'm gonna do something unusual, which is I'm just gonna tell you, hey, what do you wanna talk about, as opposed to driving down my agenda? I have a bunch of things that I wanna talk about, but curious as to where you think we should pick things up.

**Derek** (2:40)
Yeah, I think that a lot of stuff we covered at a surface level, and maybe there might be some unanswered questions or ambiguity on some specifics when it comes to, am I a good candidate for hormone replacement? How would I assess that?
Should I be worried before I get on it? What kind of things should I look for? I feel like getting clear on that might be worthwhile, because a lot of people are kind of in that boat where they don't know who to trust, they don't know who to listen to, and I know even yourself, you're kind of like teetering on the thought of maybe exploring it. So I feel like even seeing what your thought process is going into evaluating, is it viable for you, would be super valuable.

**Peter Attia** (3:17)
Yeah, so let's maybe back up a little bit and give folks a quick primer on the topic. So let's just start by just talking about testosterone. I don't know if it's just that I'm more attentive to it, or there's truly been an increase in marketing efforts, but it really seems like the last decade, and presumably it's also just the explosion of social media and more channels through which this information comes at you.
But clearly there's been a lot more attention brought forth to this idea. And it's very interesting because there's historically been kind of a negative connotation associated with testosterone. Natural hormone, we can talk all about that, but of course its role as a drug of abuse in sports has sort of tarnished it in a way that we don't see on the female side. So when we talk about hormone replacement for women with estrogen and progesterone, that doesn't come with the same performance enhancing benefits.

**Derek** (4:13)
Which is odd, eh? It's viewed as such a taboo thing, even though at the end of the day, it is just a natural hormone that you produce.

**Peter Attia** (4:20)
Right, and so it's interesting of course that estrogen and progesterone are not scheduled drugs.
They're hormones, you prescribe them without any limitation. They're unscheduled by the DEA. Conversely, testosterone is scheduled and much more highly regulated. And again, the suggestion here is that there's potential for abuse that we presumably don't see with estrogen and progesterone. That's neither here nor there. It just is what it is.