OS 15: Stacks, Vitamins, GLP-1... a cure for text neck? Shkerli is anti-peptide?
Happy OPENING DAY (actual)—Toronto Blue Jays baseball—51 degrees out in Carroll Gardens—Canada weather—God is good all the time. Caught Wiseman’s Central Park at the Roxy the other night, this guy wears a propeller beanie 2h49 into it, Coppola is in there as well. People wore shorts out all over the place… wore my weighted vest to the bodega. Looks like a bomb but is not.
What is this newsletter?
Snake Super Health is the final word on dark nutrition. Open Secrets is the only DARK WELLNESS/actual health aggregation email out there, touching all points between full health psychosis and being completely normal.
What we cover here, for those new to the program: peptides, CASEIN protein, other (animal) protein, gelatin, linoleic-acid removal mechanisms, citrus-peel to the face and maybe blended up with some water, nicotine patches and the people that love them, nerve flossing AKA reverse Tai Chi aka high-level band work, thoracic spine mobility, post-DHT theories of hair growth, post-calories in/out models of fat loss, severe macros mastery, GHk-Cu and Wolverine, Dr. Raymond Peat, sunlight titration, EMOM workouts, pleasant-looking zero-drop shoes, vibratory therapy (movement), cotton head to toe, cave-person skincare, strength, curly hair, eye color lightening and more. Nobody who understands this writes about this. Snake Super Health Open Secrets.
This week: A new Snake Super Health group workout, the Times is bearish on collagen (and why they’re wrong), the world’s most dark health demon show hits Netflix, the surprising/modified return of a Carroll Gardens Sicilian restaurant staple, a bunch of artists and photogs love doing calisthenics, a breakdown of my hair health routine, a series of simple stretches to cure text neck, TPBN (the tech podcast) weighs in on PEPTIDES with a classic pharma villain, a look at people’s $1,000/month stack habits, and unpacking those weird IG posts that take over the feed but don’t push a study. Plus, a new company making legit sick women’s tech/workout wear… mimicking performance fabrics, but from seaweed. Need this for the lads.
Onto it:
Snake Super Health group workouts—calisthenics—resumed last weekend, on Sunday, in Columbus Park in Manhattan’s Chinatown. The workout was a success: folks who couldn’t rep out pull-ups were doing slow negatives, repping out form, mastering weak points. Powerlifters were doing Tyson push-ups. One guy even did a hand-stand. Breakdown was strong people, cut people, some sub-one pull up people, some regular people, some stragglers.
The next one will be at noon on Sunday 3/29 in NORTH BROOKLYN. Prob McCarren, as I’m doing a closet sale nearby that weekend at Fantasy Explosion.
So: Workout Sunday at noon, McCarren Park, calisthenics, for all levels—bands, rings, lots of room to maneuver. More updates here:
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Related: The Iggy group workout (Jacked by Jack got written up by T Magazine early this week, as part of a mag feature on creatives meeting up in different places.
Features friend of the newsletter Alexis Page. Coincidentally she interviewed me about my hair (keeping it, health, thickness) for Self Involved—S-tier skincare letter. Read that here.
Most twisted media consumption of the week was this TPBN live debate on peptides. With Martin Shkreli (anti-peptides) and Max Marchione (founded Superpower, which is like a well-designed Marek Health but more ambitious; he’s pro peptides). Feed Me liked it but I found it hard to watch. Shkreli makes some lucid arguments—peptides are untested, black-market, are complicated for the majority of individuals to truly administer—though much of his argument feels like it’s setting the table for some sort of traditional Benjamin Graham style pro-pharma investment on his part. I don’t buy it. Marchione’s argument is more laissez faire though not as buttoned up on the details; I prefer to get my peptide information from like lifters who are on the fringes of society, or who at least don’t live in Miami. Ultimately the video is a strange, strange piece of data: Shkreli the institutionalist. While I agree with him that peptides are complicated (and shouldn’t be done by someone who doesn’t know what homeostatic compensation is)… this is AMERICA. People should do what they want, as an idea; it’s not working, as a rule.
More peptides: No shaming, GLP-1s are here to stay, but this NYMag story about citizens improvising their peptide usage on the fly is… insane. Touches slightly on how seriously hard it is for anyone to administer a specific peptide course effectively and without weird, unintended side effects down the line. (It should be noted: it gets harder the healthier you get. It is hard to get from 50% to 80%, but way harder to get from 90 to 95.) Still, have at it. My request to those doing this is to get a copy of Lyle McDonald’s book the GLP-1 Solution so that you will understand these class of drugs better. (He’s the smartest person in the game on this stuff: more on him here.)
Related: People with $1,000/month supplement stacks in the Wall St. Journal! Regular, normal stacks like magnesium, creatine; injections like NAD+, glutathione, even black seed oil? (Not a stack; a naturally occuring miraculous oil. Probably just do that.) There’s requisite attention paid to anonymous nobody TikTokers, Bryan Johnson (not sure what he’s on lately), Dave Asprey (couches his stack in mystery), and even a shot at Huberman. I don’t know about this. The type of story that a year ago would be a lightning rod, kinda came and went.
My technical notes here is that half of these items—creatine, whey, black seed, maybe mg—aren’t really uncontroversial. Nothing about why people are ‘stacking’ aside from appeals to popularity. Is it Huberman? Or is it soil erosion. Again, related to the point I made above: this is extremely difficult to do well. Most of these interventions will only have MAX POSITIVE benefits for a month. I’m not even smart enough to do this. This isn’t the path. This shit is more expensive and less bioavailable. I guess it’s fun since it’s an appeal to authority, and illicit. But I don’t get it.
Last week’s roundup ICYMI:
A WaPo-approved grocery rating ad; Nike takes application for farm team/research runners, Huberman misses the old Banksy, the best Tai Chi guy and a checklist and workout plan for strong/bouncy ankles:
More News
New Netflix show Plastic Detox—throw another W up for the demon health crowd. We’re in the conversation. Show itself is just OK; the tips, aggregated by other news platforms, are pretty uncontroversial and simple—avoid paper receipts, no plastic bottles in the sun, etc—though it does feel novel the characters in the show are cutting down on plastics for fertility reasons.
Another fascinating data point is this line from the Times review:
“Based on the research, plasticizers are the bigger concern for reproductive health. Bisphenols (including BPA) and phthalates are part of a class of chemicals called endocrine disruptors because they interfere with hormones, said Andrea Gore, a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Texas at Austin.”
Rare to see endocrine disruptors referred to so plainly. Used to be you were a fucking nut if you said this out loud. Wonder whether this POV retrenches in the next couple years, or if the health discussion will be even further downstream and more twisted on topics like this.
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Full list of news updates
Podcast archive. The latest episode is about looksmaxxing.
Gear
Nike partners with ONE LDN, a fancy athletic gym in London. They also are partnering with Everlast gyms in England and Ireland, per this sports business post. This comes on the heel of Nike’s collab with the PNP calisthenics crew over there. Here there’s some of that, more running. Curious how it’ll shake out in the indie strength world over the next little bit. I want to see someone doing a human flag in Nike Air Zoom Seismics.
The Sal Tang group’s reopening of Ferdinando’s Focacceria is like a few weeks away. This is promising, for me, since it’s down the block from my apartment. It’s covered here by NY Mag, though no word here in the story (or anywhere else) if they’re keeping the tripe sandwich. Thoug they are, per stroy, getting rid of the Manhattan Special on tap for their own coffee. Oh well. What can you do? We’re probably 25 years away from restaurants being healthy to eat at. Ferdinando’s was incredible but used the worst oil in America, known to man. The better move is to
