Doping on the Joe Rogan Experience

“you know like a normal person in your testosterone level would be like a low 300 a high 800 vitor was like 1475 and he looked like a fucking silverback and jus…”

Rogan claims normal adult male testosterone levels range roughly 300-800 ng/dL, and that Vitor Belfort tested at approximately 1,475 during his UFC testosterone-replacement-therapy run.

“when you're an agent for the Food and Drug Administration, I don't know how, I mean, all of these things have missions. He was, you know, he was an agent for t…”

Armstrong states that Jeff Novitzky was an IRS agent during the BALCO/Barry Bonds investigation and questions why doping in cycling was an FDA issue, implying the agency roles were reversed from what actually happened.

“we've sort of finished that first phase of litigation and that it'll go to trial maybe a year from now in washington dc”

Armstrong predicts the federal U.S. Postal Service fraud lawsuit against him will go to trial roughly a year from this December 2015 podcast, in Washington D.C.

“Those seven years were, the green jersey was won by Zabel, who admitted to having doped all seven of those years. The polka dot jersey was won by Varenque from…”

Armstrong states that Erik Zabel (green jersey) and Richard Virenque (polka dot jersey) each admitted to doping in all seven years that Armstrong's Tour titles were later stripped, yet their jersey wins were never revoked.

“I mean, if you look at the amount of positives it must be you know less than one percent well if i told you well joe we're all good man it's less than one perc…”

Armstrong claims that USADA's drug-testing positive rate is under one percent, implying this proves the agency is ineffective at catching dopers despite spending tens of millions of dollars a year.

“which is really, I think, bothered a lot of people that, that this person being me forced young impressionable young men to put dangerous substances into their…”

Armstrong denies that he forced younger teammates to dope, calling that characterization from the doping scandal coverage untrue.

“But I can't take, when I hear that this program or this particular athlete being me was the greatest fraud in the history of sport, you know, I can't. That's j…”

Armstrong disputes the characterization, attributed to USADA's findings, that his doping program was 'the greatest fraud in the history of sport.'

“But I mean, if you go back to the 84 games right here in Los Angeles, that was really the first major exposure you had for transfusions, which the American tea…”

Armstrong claims the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics was the first major public exposure of blood transfusion doping, done by the American cycling team and exposed by Rolling Stone.

“It's not, there was, out of all the people that won the Tour de France and all the years that you did it. If you go back to people that either weren't implicat…”

Rogan claims that going back through Tour de France results to find a winner who was never implicated in doping or never tested positive, you'd have to drop down to roughly 18th place.

“So then they started testing the viscosity or the thickness of people's bloods, otherwise known as hematocrit, right? And so they would use that as a screen. A…”

Armstrong describes cycling's hematocrit test as a 50% health-based cutoff that riders could legally push right up to, framing it as a benign screening measure rather than a doping deterrent.

“Did anybody that was on the tour ever drop dead from EPO? Well there's, there, there was, you know, look, there, there, I don't know, I mean there are a lot of…”

Armstrong claims there was a documented wave of Dutch cyclists who died in their sleep in the 1980s from EPO use, then immediately hedges that it was never actually proven.

“your spleen compresses and you produce more erythropoietin, more red blood cells. Same thing that you produce, actually, if you sauna, like if you do a workout…”

Greenfield claims that post-exercise sauna use for 30 minutes triggers erythropoietin (EPO) production equivalent to using the banned performance-enhancing drug EPO.