In 2004 a surgeon removed about ten kilograms of fat from fifteen women and measured everything that mattered. Nothing improved. Four years later, it still hadn't. That result should have ended an argument about body fat. Instead the argument got more specific, and the version you've heard most recently is that visceral fat, the fat around your organs, is the dangerous kind. I've said a version of…
A popular paper claimed the longevity benefit of lifting disappears once you train more than an hour a week. It's a real paper, but the claim is a misread. This is the free cut of this month's Direct Line, where Drs. Feigenbaum and Baraki also take on whether GLP-1s affect your mood, the "same calories, more weight loss" protein argument, and what you can actually do in the gym when you have…
An FDA advisory committee just voted to open a legal compounding supply line for six of seven peptides, including BPC-157 and TB-500, over the objection of the FDA's own scientists, who recommended against all seven. Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum walks through what the Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee actually voted on, why a vote about ulcerative colitis ends up governing tendon and joint use,…
A previously healthy 21-year-old shows up with seven months of headaches and 30-plus pounds of weight gain he can’t explain. He’s eating the same and training more, and the scale climbs anyway. We hand the case to Dr. Austin Baraki cold and work it in real time: the exam, the labs, the MRI, and two diagnoses that turn a headache workup into the clearest proof we’ve got that body weight is set by…
Every couple of years a new headline warns that the protein you eat is quietly hurting you. This year the target is your kidneys. Before that it was cancer, then your bones, then the claim that your body can only use twenty or thirty grams of protein at a meal. In this episode, Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum goes through the actual studies behind each scare: the kidney trials, the 2014 IGF-1 and cancer…
Is weight loss really just Calories in, Calories out? The equation is true, but "just count your Calories" is bad advice for most people, and almost every objection to it is pointing at something real. In part two of our energy balance series, Jordan Feigenbaum takes the biggest "it's not Calories, it's ___" claims (metabolism, thyroid, cortisol, PCOS, insulin, the type of food) and tests each…
Obesity roughly tripled in about 60 years, and the genes didn't change in that time. So if body weight isn't a willpower problem, what is it? Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum and Dr. Austin Baraki walk through what actually sets your weight: the adoption and twin studies behind the genetics, the "defended range" your biology fights to hold, the food environment that does most of the eating for you, and where…
Once a month we answer Barbell Medicine Plus subscribers’ questions on the Direct Line. This is a free look at June’s episode. We start with GLP-1 drugs and muscle: why DEXA overstates the loss, what resistance training actually does, and whether creatine is worth taking. Then whether bulking and cutting does anything the scale can’t already tell you, how to get real benefit from one training hour…
Is there really a “menopause-specific” way to train, eat, and supplement — or is most of it marketing? In the finale of our 4-part menopause series, Drs. Jordan Feigenbaum and Austin Baraki go straight to the evidence on building muscle and bone before, during, and after the transition. We cover whether menopause blunts your response to lifting (the Isenmann 2023 head-to-head trial and the 2026…
Most women in 2026 are told menopause affects everything, the weight, the belly fat, the bones, the heart, the brain, and that the fix is hormones, supplements, and a proprietary protocol. The data tell a different story. Menopause does some of it, but not all of it. In this episode, Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum and Dr. Austin Baraki, with OB-GYN Dr. Loraine Baraki at the clinical handoffs, put real…
The story goes that hard exercise is risky for women, and that the idea is ancient. Both halves fall apart on contact. In this solo episode, Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum follows the claim that physical effort harms the female body across twenty centuries, and shows that almost every version of it arrived as a verdict first, with the science bolted on afterward. It runs from antiquity to the present: what…