Love or Hate Joe Rogan, 8 of His Health Habits Are Worth Stealing
At 55 years old, Joe Rogan hasn’t lost his step. When he’s not busy commentating the latest UFC smackdown, taking the stage for stand-up comedy, or hosting one of the most successful podcasts in the world: The Joe Rogan Experience, you might catch him doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu, hunting for game meat, or floating in a sensory deprivation tank.
From kettlebells and kale shakes to a deep medicine cabinet packing Athletic Greens, Thorne vitamin D, and a medley of pills and powders from his own supplement company Onnit, Rogan’s quick to share what’s worked for him (and the many things he’s experimenting with). Here are the habits he swears by for living a longer, healthier life.
He’s on TRT
After feeling a dip in energy in his late thirties, Rogan went on testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) at age 40. Starting with cream and then progressing to injections, TRT turned out to be the exact pick-me-up he needed.
Regardless of a well-balanced diet and solid exercise regimen, your body changes as you age, and your hormone and testosterone levels naturally decline approximately one percent per year (1). “[TRT] makes a big difference,” he said on The Joe Rogan Experience. “It’s real simple. If you’re fine with not feeling good—good! If you’re not fine with it, hormone replacement therapy exists for a reason, and that reason is it makes you feel way better.”
As passionate as he is about sharing his experience with TRT, Rogan’s vehement about doing it right. Which, according to him (and licensed doctors) means getting tested and making any necessary lifestyle changes (like improving diet and sleep, and ditching cigarettes and alcohol) before going on TRT.
Hone’s testosterone assessment is the simplest way to uncover whether your levels are low. It’s fast, simple, and you can do it from home. And if low T is the problem, Hone can help you get you back on top of your game.
He Works Out Maniacally
Rogan knows no amount of testosterone is going to magically make you stronger. Not without putting in work at the gym, too. “I schedule my workouts every Sunday,” he shared on Flagrant. Each week he does two yoga sessions, three weight lifting sessions, and two runs; plus kickboxing or Brazilian jiu-jitsu when he has time.
When it comes to weights, Rogan’s all about function over form. “Don’t do it for vanity. Do it because you want to keep your tissue. Age is like a little demon that is slowly robbing you of your tissue,” he said. “Your ability to walk upstairs, open up jars, open the car door when it’s frozen—the only way to stave that off is weight lifting.”
As for the specifics of his longevity-focused routine, Rogan told Balance the Grind he follows the Pavel Tsatsouline protocol. The regimen basically involves completing one- to two-thirds of your maximum reps at a given weight (i.e. if your max is 10 reps at 90 pounds, do four to six reps at 90 pounds). “I don’t [workout] to failure. I don’t believe in going to failure. What I think you’re best off doing is less repetitions more often,” he said.
He Digs Game Meat
If you’re wondering how Rogan fuels his substantial workouts, he hunts his own elk meat, of course. “[My] diet is pretty strict in terms of no bread, very few carbs, no sugar, no bullshit. Healthy food—a lot of vegetables and a lot of game meat, mostly wild game,” he said on The Joe Rogan Experience.
What he loves most about elk? “It’s like eating a super animal,” he said. When you hunt game like elk yourself you get lean, wild, organic, hormone-free, antibiotic-free protein. Elk is rich in iron, potassium, phosphorus, and selenium which has immune-boosting properties.
Plus, the taste isn’t so bad either. Rogan likes to cook his elk on a Traeger pellet grill using his “low and slow” and reverse sear method: low temperature for a few hours to get the meat tender, then sears it in a hot frying pan to add a nice crust.
He Loves Green Juice
“I do everything that I can to put my body and my brain in a good place so I’m keeping my engine smooth. I’m changing my oil, I’m changing my spark plugs, and I’m making sure that it’s operating,” he told Balance the Grind. Exactly why Rogan washes all of his elk meat down with a nutrient-dense green juice.
More specifically, his Instagram-famous “Hulk Loads” kale shakes. To make one, throw the following in your blender:
- 1 cucumber
- 1 apple
- 4 cloves of garlic
- 1 chunk of ginger
- 3 stalks celery
- Large clump of kale
If you’re wondering if it tastes intensely like garlic, a scroll through the comments can confirm: “Omg! This tastes like a leprechaun’s asshole.” To tone down the garlic, try the more palatable green juice he downed on Rolling Stone. It packs oat milk, honey, parsley, cucumber, and pineapples.
He Adapted the Carnivore Diet To His Needs
In 2020, Rogan revealed to fans that he suffered from the auto-immune disorder vitiligo, which causes the loss of skin color in blotches. The loss of color is unpredictable and results from the body’s immune system attacking and destroying melanocytes—the cells that produce melanin, often found in the skin.
To see if he could improve his symptoms, Rogan tried the carnivore diet for a month. The diet essentially cuts out carbs and limits your diet to meat, fish, eggs, and some animal products (including lactose-free dairy). “Lots of aches and pains went away, and I have improvements in my vitiligo. I’m impressed,” he said in an Instagram caption. Plus, he lost 12 pounds.
But it wasn’t all good: “I haven’t shit my pants yet, but I’ve come to accept that if I keep going with this diet it’s just a matter of time before we lose a battle, and I fill my undies like a rainforest mudslide overtaking a mountain road,” he confesses shamelessly in the same post.
On The Joe Rogan Experience, he admits he doesn’t believe the carnivore diet is the specific reason for his success. “I think the problem is not plants, as much as it is refined sugar, carbs, and bull shit.” That didn’t stop him from trying it again in January 2022 for world carnivore month, with one stipulation: adding fruit to the mix.
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He’s Into Cryotherapy
As someone doing all the things, Rogan is no stranger to recovery. It seems he takes it in any form he can get—cryotherapy sitting at the top of his list. “There are real benefits. Your brain produces really strong chemicals when you’re in there, ‘cold shock proteins’ is what they call them,” he tells Dr. Rhonda Patrick on The Joe Rogan Experience.
By exposing your body to extreme temperatures (close to -230 degrees Fahrenheit), cryotherapy is designed to promote faster and more efficient recovery (2). The International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance notes in one study that whole-body cryotherapy can boost and speed up muscle recovery for faster bounce back and optimal performance (3).
While you might think cryo is only for professional athletes, that couldn’t be further from the truth. At such low temperatures, your body produces cold shock proteins which can improve your resilience to stress and reduce your risk of cancer and inflammatory diseases (4).
He Uses a Sensory Deprivation Tank to Relax
“One of the important components—of the many components—in healthy aging is lowering stress and stuff,” he said on The Joe Rogan Experience. One way Rogan does it? Sensory deprivation tanks.
In fact, he enjoys them so much he keeps one at The Joe Rogan Experience studio and often invites guests to take a dip after the show. “It’s a very extreme form of meditation in a lot of ways because you’re not experiencing your body at all. It’s like your brain is detached from all the impact of the body.”
One study backs up Rogan’s claims. It found floating in an Epsom salt deprivation tank reduced anxiety, stress, muscle tension, pain, and depression while improving serenity, relaxation, and happiness (5). Larger controlled trials are needed to determine if the effects are simply placebo, but either way, a tank has been confirmed as a promising technique to reduce stress.
He’s a Fan of Coffee
Dude runs on coffee. And lucky for him, researchers in China found that people who drink coffee appear to live longer (6). The study found that moderate coffee drinkers—those who knock back between 2.5 and 4.5 cups per day—had a lower risk of death than those who did not.
Rogan doesn’t drink just any coffee. He relies on a healthy blend of Caveman Coffee Nitro Cold Brew, Four Sigmatic Mushroom Coffee, and Black Rifle Coffee which is veteran-owned. He tops it all off with Laird Superfood Coffee Creamer with Turmeric which contains MCTs from coconut oil and is dairy and sugar-free.
