Seeing too many deaths within bodybuilding, Dante Trudel gives you four tips to gain control over your health. As this is ONE thread of many, Dante provides a starting point to begin the process of being mindful in your journey of gains and/or stage time.
You have to put as much priority and thought process into your health and longevity as you spend time-wise thinking about putting on your next five pounds of muscle mass.
I'm done with it.
I've seen the body counts pile up over the last few years of bodybuilders in their 30's and 40's dying. Off the top of my head:
Nasser El Sonbary
Frank Hildebrand
Ed Van Amsterdam
Matt Duvall
Luke Wood
Greg Kovacs
Greg Deferro
Stoili Stoilev
Art Atwood
Derek Anthony
Ed Kawak
Daneile Seccarricci
Anthony D'arezzo
Shawn Robinson
Mike Mattarrazzo
...and now Joe Deangelis
The ages? Thirty-three I believe with most of them being 37-48 and the oldest I believe was 53. And that's off the top of my head. Most of them died from heart problems or kidney problems (<---which in alot of the cases ended up being a catalyst to the end result heart failure).
I'm naming the guys up above without naming the multitude of bodybuilders who are currently in kidney failure of have had stroke/heart problems and are still living (David Dearth, Brad Hollibaugh, PD Devers and a bunch of others come to mind). On top of that, two large bodybuilders had heart attacks in my gym the last year but are still living (late 40's-early 50's). On top of that, a bodybuilder in my gym who was 42 died of kidney failure last month (I'll leave his last name out right now for his family's sake but a lot of my local friends do not know this person died because he had recently switched gyms in Vista to Oceanside, but trust me (local friends), you do know him or know of him....I know that....he was a well liked individual and its truly sad).
So I'm done with it.
I'm going to outline step-by-step of how you take your health into your own hands.....because its painfully obvious to me that the majority of this sport have no freaking idea of how to monitor your own health, your blood pressure, your blood work, and what steps and supplements you need to use to regulate yourself so you're not dropping dead in your driveway playing with your 3-year old son or daughter. It's going to take me a couple weeks to put this all together. I got a lot to cover.
These are going to be long posts. If you don't like long posts or don't give a crap about your health, skip my posts. But im tired of seeing people die and I'm going to do something about it. I'm going to go through A to Z here over the next few weeks, so bear with me....it's a lot to type up and my time is fleeting but i'm going to get it done.
Four tips...First up....3 must-buys:
There is no discussion. If you want to monitor your health you must buy both of the following:
1) Buy LifeSource Blood Pressure Monitor with the Extra Large Cuff
Buy this. (courtesy of Mike Weitzman )
Go to Amazon and buy the LifeSource Blood Pressure monitor with the extra large cuff.
Most of you guys are bodybuilders and the regular cuff isn't going to fit you. It will give you skewed results if you use the regular cuff with over 17.5-18 inch arms. If you are a smaller bodybuilder get the one with the regular cuff, but if you got 17.5 and onward plus pipes (which I know a great deal of you do) you have to get the extra large cuff to get the most accurate reading. I'm going to go through this in detail and tell you what you need to do when the readings are off but right now i need you to buy that.
First up, get a baseline....upon arising from bed take your blood pressure every day for 2 weeks in a row and get the gist of what is happening and what the numbers are at.
2) Buy Anti-Aging Test and 3) Comprehensive Wellness Profile Test
Go to www.directlabs.com and order two tests that you can use anytime over the next year.
The first one is under Male Health Labs and its the anti-aging test. And yes its expensive at $299 dollars, but i'm going to give you a 20% off coupon that will make it $239 dollars. Is your health worth $239 dollars to you? It should be. I see a lot of you guys spend money on certain "things" with no regard for expense, so $239 dollars for the knowledge and peace of mind that you aren't screwing yourself up long-term should be nothing.
I would like people to buy the anti-aging test and also the comprehensive wellness profile which is $97 dollars. With the coupon it will be about $78 bucks.
You do the anti-aging test once a year and then you do the comprehensive wellness profile once a year (6 months later or so) to make sure you are still on the correct path. The anti-aging test is highly detailed and will have everything you want to know as a bodybuilder. The CWP test is basically a "healthy blood work" test but you can add a few tests to it to see if you are off still from anything awry from the anti-aging test. (Don't worry, I'm just getting through the basics here...I'm going to go through everything in detail over the next few weeks)
Side Note: You could also use discountedlabs, but when all is said and done (using the coupon codes) I think you'll be around the same price.
Here's what you do: You will go (fasted) to a local drawing lab near your zip code (for most people probably within 5-10 miles of you) and they take couple minutes, draw your blood, you go home and your blood work results end up in your email in 2-3 days.
Yes, it is that easy and that quick.
The blueprint that it's going to give you to your own body's chemistry is going to be invaluable.
This weekend there is a coupon code: USA which you can use for 20% off.
4) Take Your Body Temperature
I'd also like for everyone to take your body temperature three days in a row upon arising and get the median temperature. If you are below 97.6 there is a good chance you are running a little hypothyroid and your endeavors to lose bodyfat are going to be for naught. Especially for women....I could not even tell you how many women over the years run tremendously low body temperatures and their "inability to lose body fat" had 100% to do with that (and the resulting subpar thyroid blood workup) than cutting more carbs and doing more cardio. Half a grain of Armour thyroid later....walla....but i digress and i'll get into that later.
We could go into cardiac calcium scores and echocardiograms but lets get down to brass tacks and maybe get into that later (especially with echocardiograms where someone like Justin Harris commenting would be invaluable information).
That's the start of it and I'm going to hit on this every single chance I have over the next few weeks until I get the urgency of this pounded into as many people's heads as possible.
You have to put as much priority and thought process into your health and longevity as you spend time-wise thinking about putting on your next five pounds of muscle mass. And if you don't believe that and have been walking around with 170/110 blood pressure for a few years with that all too common "I look good so I must be healthy" - out of sight out of mind" mentality....(most of those guys in that list above were freaking specimens on the outside and 95 year old men on the inside) .....
Take a few minutes and research dialysis and see what it all entails. Take a look and see if you would enjoy being hooked up to a dialysis machine Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for 6 plus hours at a time.
I will continue on with this as much time as I can give over the next 14 days or so....because I've just gotten sick of seeing the RIP threads that seems to be happening way too much way too often.
A system of "YOU MUST DO THIS IF THIS IS HAPPENING WITH YOUR BLOOD WORK/BLOOD PRESSURE/SIDE EFFECTS!" needs to be put into place in the bodybuilding community, and hell for that matter, anyone reading this. I don't have all the answers, but I do have a lot of them and I have fixed too many bodybuilder's blood work that I couldn't even begin to count.
If you take one thing from what I'm about to write over the next few weeks I hope it's, "Okay, enough, I'm getting on top of this stuff!"
Source: Dante Trudel's Facebook Page
Truenutrition.com