So I see on the news Hulk Hogan dead at age 71 of cardiac arrest.
It makes me wonder how many incredibly affluent people get the type of care that is now medicine 3.0? I’m presuming he had significant CAD – who knows also what his IGF-1 has been running at for all these years … but was the death avoidable with simple care like CTCA and appropriate lipid, BP, insulin/glucose monitoring? We’ll never know, but it puzzles me when affluent people die of simple avoidable things - as to how this occurs.
So sad. I looked up to guys like him, Arnold (age 77), and Stallone (age 79) growing up.
Dwayne Johnson (The Rock) came out and said on Mark Hyman’s podcast he has some CAD from a calcium scan (didn’t specific the exact number) and also disclosed he always tried to stay off any medication (not smart given his years of steroid use). I hope he wisens up because the world would be devastated if something happens to him too.
Triple H (also years of steroid use) had heart surgery a few years back and his ejection fraction got pretty low. He seems to be much better now but who knows how much that shortened his lifespan.
I don’t think celebrities are always better than the regular population when it comes to checking their health. They’re probably scared to find out too.
Affluent and famous people die of preventable causes all the time, because it starts with the patient. If the patient is non-compliant, or believes in woo conspiracy theories and trusts scam quacks, well, ignorance, including willful ignorance kills. Wealth does not protect against ignorance. And if you want to buy expertise, you have to have enough knowledge that you are buying a genuine expert and not a scammer - many people don’t have enough knowledge base to distinguish between the two. That’s how snakeoil finds customers, people don’t know whom to believe and have no tools to figure it out. People, including wealthy people want to have their bad habits or pet theories confirmed, and there are plenty of influencers and scammy MDs who will be glad to do so while picking their pockets. None are so blind as those who refuse to see. And wealthy people are often scared, like ordinary folks, and don’t want to know too much about their health in case there’s bad news. But wealthy people can often buy comforting illusions, and people to affirm their delusions, including doctors. William Randolph Hearst forbade ever raising the topic of death, or uttering the word in his presence, and had the wealth to enforce that - he still died, but did make it to 88.
@LukeMV mentioned The Rock. I wish him the best, but that dude is a classic example of the issues I mentioned above. All his wealth and fame are not protecting him, because the problem starts in his head. Btw., here’s Greg Doucette’s takedown of The Rock’s interview:
The Rock Has Coronary Artery Disease (Greg Doucette)
Well this is an impressive video … in all the wrong ways. I cannot believe Hyman was foolish enough to allow this to be published. It’s the same neglect to provide simple sensible advice and limits and also clearly overstepping one’s knowledge base that led to a Cardiologist providing sedation to Michael Jackson – something he was never trained to do.
I’m genuinely disappointed in my own profession seeing such incredibly bad advice and having a functional medicine approach, while ignoring the elephant in the room.
This is precisely why I always state, take care of and optimize all the obvious things (traditional risk factors and disease, backed by high level evidence) and only after those (or concurrent) talk about the clever/non-high level evidence items.
I do disagree with Greg Doucette on one item - and that is doing reasonable basic levels of testing (which I consider CTCA - which costs $311-520, or MRI/MRA which costs $1250) is sensible. It is an incredible motivator for change in my patients when they have disease. There are many patients who go from not really optimizing things to getting the wakeup call that they have a window of opportunity to make changes and potentially eliminate or massively mitigate the risk of certain causes of death and disability with simple steps. Otherwise, I thought he did incredibly well at dissecting this shameful sucking up to the detriment of the patient.
Similarly, Biden didn’t even get a $20 PSA test — and he supposedly ran the country.
Prostate cancer is the most common non-skin cancer in men, and the second leading cause of cancer death especially in older men like him.
So who was “caring” for him? His personal physician? The White House medical team? Walter Reed? His own family?
This was the most powerful man in the world — and no one helped.
And he didn’t help himself, either. What chance do you or I have?
To make it out here in the wild, it takes a certain kind of person — someone willing to act without permission, think without consensus, and live with the consequences.
That’s not just knowledge. That’s character: independent, skeptical, persistent, quietly defiant.
Most people don’t have it.
Most doctors don’t either.
And institutions? They’re built specifically to weed those traits out. That’s not even failure — that’s design. Bureaucracies run on compliance, not courage.
That’s why it matters so much to have doctors like you in the mix — one of the few who sees clearly, speaks freely, and gives a damn. You don’t just think differently — you’re one of the few who still earn the title Homo sapiens : a man who is wise.
I just came across this video from three weeks ago on Instagram. They’re saying his heart wasn’t strong enough to handle a heart valve replacement.
Translation: his (presumably aortic) valve leaked too much and caused heart failure before he could get it replaced. It’s also possible he had heart failure before the valve deteriorated but we can’t be sure.
If it’s the former, then yes it could have been prevented with an earlier valve replacement.
Well looks like Bubba’s information is contrary to what happened. Sounds like sudden cardiac arrest at home - so either massive pulmonary embolism (unlikely) or a myocardial infarction (most likely). It was just before 10am at his home - not unwell before as far as the family reports.
Yes steroids shorten life - but untreated/unidentified coronary artery disease does too.
I know that we won’t know, but I wonder whom was managing his health and if they had done some objective coronary artery imaging (not just a stress test). I continue to advise this on all of my patients over 50 years, and with surprising findings. Many individuals whom I’d be sure we are going to find something - no disease (although they usually have white matter small vessel disease on MRA brain), and others where I think they’ll have nothing, sometimes have extensive disease.
Blood work is slightly indicative - imaging is definitive.
Agreed. But they also go hand-in-hand. When I used steroids, my HDL-C once fell to single digits, triglycerides got worse (like 200+), and many are liver toxic. Not sure of effects on LDL-C, but I’m sure it wasn’t good!
Definitely. It also depends which steroid and what dosage. I’m a strong believer that smart compound selection and dosage with the proper preventative measures (meds, supplements, nutrition, cardio, sleep) and duration of time on makes a tremendous difference. Sometimes I still get the itch to bump the testosterone up or add something else but you better believe I’m checking my blood pressure and my lab work all the time if I do.
Androgenic steroids seem to accelerate aging (when used in supraphysiologic dosing) but the cause of death or disability is a result of these substances causing traditional health issues which can be monitored and mitigated. The issue in this case is whether with proper surveillance this death would have been predicted and mitigated. If due to a myocardial infarction … or other vascular emergency (e.g. thoracic dissection) - avoidable. If due to another cause - depends on the cause.
But yes, use of these substances makes one’s pre-test probability much higher that disease will be found. But the cause of death won’t be androgenic steroid abuse (if certainly indirectly could be the underlying cause of forming the disease that kills someone).
RIP Hulk!
I was surprised Hulk outlived many other wrestlers of his era. It would be interesting to know what he was doing for his health in the past few decades.
Here is a bit of steroid and wrestling history. Hulk’s said to have got his steroid info from Superstar Billy Graham back in the 70’s.
There are videos on YouTube about Graham talking about steroids, Hulk Hogan, and wrestling history.
Here is a video from 1978 where Graham talks about what steroid cycle he is using.
This clip was probably on television.
This could be the 1st time an advanced steroid cycle was discussed on tv, or movies, but I don’t know for sure. If anyone has any findings, post them!
@2:25 is when the interview starts for Graham.
The cycle is 7 dianabol pills a day (probably around 10mg each but various doses available), and 5 delatestryl shots a week (200mg/ml per shot of testosterone enanthate).
1000mg testosterone/week, 70mg dianabol a day. Around 1500mg/week.
So this gives us a clear picture of what dosages were being used back in the 70’s.
Some bodybuilders would probably go even higher for contests, and other sport athletes would go lower(replacement levels or slightly above it).
Depending on things like weight/size, speed, etc.
For people reading this post, if you are considering using steroids (or just want to be healthy), I’d look at the health & imaging tests @DrFraser has posted about.
Look at stacks various people here use such as @LukeMV.
Dr Fraser and LukeMV are some of the top guys to follow for information about staying healthy regardless of steroid use or not.
Now to revise Superstar Billy Graham’s cycle in today’s technology:
7 dianabol pills a day, 5 delatestryl shots a week, 1 to 3 lipid lower agents per day,
1 or 2 medications for blood pressure per day, dht or estrogen lower medication if needed, 1 hgh shot a day, multi vitamin & mineral 1x a day, omega 3 fish oil 2x/day, 1 to 2 possible non-insulin type medications…could even be missing various stuff depending on the person’s health.
