Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick - Making Sense of Optimal Health? With Dr. Steven Geanopulos - Episode 12

Episode Date: April 22, 2024

Welcome to another episode of the Makes Sense Podcast with Dr. JC Doornick and a very special guest. Making Sense of Optimal Health with Dr. Steven Geanopulos. What a great conversation about a topic that proves to be mostly confusing and for the most part made up to suit the needs of the individual when asked "What does it mean to be healthy?" Dr. Steven Geanopolus is a licensed Doctor of Chiropractic as well as a diplomat in Chiropractic Neurology. As the CEO of Cyrene Labs, a full scale optimal health diagnotic company, brings a facinating and eye opening vantage point to the mystery surrounding the topic of health in America and the world.   Connect with Dr. Steven Geanopulos: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drsteveng Websites: Dr. Steven G: https://drsteveng.com  Cyrene Labs: https://www.cyrenelabs.com  Sponsor: Makes Sense Academy: https://www.skool.com/makes-sense-academy/about  Connect With Dr. JC Doornick: https://zez.am/makessense  Highlights: 01:00 - Intro Dr. Steve G 04:00 - What is Dr. Steve Working On and Excited about? 06:40 - Why are people showing interest in learning but lacking in taking action? 12:34 - Is the range of what MD's call normal health changing as the world gets sicker? 23:32 - Sponsor Break - The Makes Sense Academy 27:40 - Are health professionals not equipped to measure health? 30:53 - How do you define what it means to be "Healthy"? Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hmm. Makes sense. Great morning, my friends. This is Dr. J.C. Dornick, the host of the Make Sense podcast. I'm so excited about this particular episode. As you know, I've been going primarily in the beginning of the launch of the new podcast, Makes Sense. We've been doing a lot of solo stuff because I've been just sharing a lot of the foundation and language, you know, that will help you understand the science of sense making. And now we're moving into a new territory where we're going to just have some spectacular. I mean, this is a fantastic guest that we have today.

And I love this topic. We're basically going to take some experts from the field and make sense of what it is that they're passionate about and what they do. So it's my honor and privilege to, and I'll lay a little bit of the groundwork of how I know this, dude, to welcome to the Make Sense podcast, Dr. Stephen Giannopoulos. How are you, my friend? Excellent. Excellent.

It's great to be here, J.C. Yeah, it's great to be here again. So just a little background on Steve. Steve is actually a great friend of mine from the past. And we were joking about this, you know, before we recorded this, that we used to be in a mastermind. And we used to just talk about conquering the world and just doing all these spectacular things.

And we were just as smart and talented as we are now. But we just, for whatever reason, didn't really follow through back in those days. So when I, you know, I've just been observing. You know, Steve's one of those guys that I've always honored and respected as a friend. And I know that if I called him or if he called me, we'd be there for one another. But I've been watching him just climb to fame. I'm not shocked by it. He's got just an amazing Instagram account that's just gone viral.

And he's got hundreds of thousands and millions of views and all that stuff. I just said, it makes sense. You know, it makes sense. Finally, these schmucks found out who he was, you know. So it's just such an honor and a privilege that we've become reacquainted. and we're having this fun podcast. So just a little background on Steve. He's a CEO of a company called Cyrene Labs,

which is a really, really cool company that we'll get into in this. He's the doctor of chiropractic like me. Went to a different school. He went to a school called Parker University in Dallas, Texas. What's unique about Steve in the realm of chiropractic is chiropractic is a really cool field and a lot of, you know, very, very big, prominent people come from that field to a certain degree, even though it has a wide range, it can be one-dimensional. Steve was always the guy that we would call when we had complicated cases, because Steve took his education a step further, and that's

important to know about him, where he got his diplomat in an American chiropractic neurology school. He actually became a chiropractic neurologist. So just so you know, there's a big difference between somebody that is just really good at what they do when somebody steps out. So that says a lot about Steve because he's always been on the cutting edge of, let me see if I can say this the right way, looking under the rocks that other people don't. And that's going to play very, very well into this topic today. What we're going to do with Steve is we're going to make sense of just health. You're going to see that this conversation is going to go in so many different directions. But the reason why Steve is a perfect person for this conversation is just that. He spent his life

acknowledging what most people acknowledge, but daring to look under other rocks. for what else is there. And he's built a wonderful, wonderful career. And he's just a wonderful person to put somebody's health care in his hand. So Steve, once again, so excited that you've taken time again to be here. Yeah. And again, another great introduction. Thank you. I mean, I don't- Was it better the second time? It was. It was better. And I don't disagree with anything you said. So it was great. So you've got so many things going on. And if somebody is following you on, on Instagram,

and I'll make sure that we put those things up there. You talk about health care, you talk about weight loss, you talk about fasting, you talk about all of these hot topics that everybody's talking about. Maybe just catch us up. What are you excited about right now? What are you working on right now? So everybody knows. You know, it really is about communication. And that's what excites me the most. I was always the guy who, you know, if I go on vacation, I'm not picking up a novel to read on the beach. I'm picking up a physiology textbook. That's just where I kept my excitement from. And, And I was always that guy who kind of introverted in that sense. But I always, whenever I got excited about something related to what we do,

restoring health and helping people along the way, I would dive into the geeky stuff. And then I would try to explain it. And I would try to explain it to my patients, to my family, to my mother, who has a fifth grade education from Cyprus. She's 86 years old. Never went to school after she came to the United States when she was 14. And I need to be able to explain this to her.

And if she can get it, well, then I know I own it, right? So it's kind of like this idea that you have to find simplicity on the far side of complexity. And I always felt that that was kind of my superpower, just communicating with people. But social media has reinforced that because I believe that my Instagram stardom, as you might call it, is based on that. because the most common thing that people will comment on in my, on my post is, wow, I never heard it explain that way. Why didn't somebody else explain it to me that way? This is understandable. So ultimately, I think that's what excites me. But at the same time, science and healthcare is getting very exciting, especially over the last four years for a lot of obvious reasons. And we, you know, we can certainly talk about that. But people are far more.

more engaged. When I say people, I guess interested people are far more engaged in what they can do to not only be healthier, but to perform better, to stay younger. You know, you and I are the same generation. You know, we're in our 50s and we would like to enjoy the fruits of our labor for decades to come. And we're not going to just wait until we're 85 kind of stumbling along and then saying, oh, wow, I hope I can fix something that, you know, is not working very. well. We want to prepare for that now. So when we hit that stage, we're doing all the things we love to do. Yeah. I'd love to put some color to that because we were talking about this and you'll get some of this in this episode and this phenomenon. Steve talks about, he does do it in a unique way and he's

very good at making sense of it. I think that's what you said you were trying to do with your grandmother, is make sense. So it's perfect, perfect for my show. But what do you think it is? You know, because you made a statement that I agree with. I mean, it's kind of an ironic thing that you're seeing so many people take an unusual interest in what you're talking about, yet at the same time, we're not seeing anybody do anything about health. In fact, the health status of the world is just rapidly declining. So just from your observation, how would you explain that? Is are people almost feeling like they're proactively working on their health by talking about it? What do you perceive is going on there where people are fascinated with it, but we're not seeing anything

changed. So there's a lot. All right. So there's a lot to unpack there. What I, believe is that there's always been a small number of people, small percentage of the population who are willing to do what it takes, right? Do what it takes to make a better life. What percentage would you say that population represents? Certainly less than 10%. Certainly less than 10%. I always tell people, I go, if you go out there and you get optimally healthy, there's a lot of competition. This is true, but those, that 10% 20 years ago, 30 years ago, we're not doing as deep of a dive as that 10% is doing now.

Interesting. And I believe culturally, I mean, even if you were to say, you know, who are the big movers and shakers culturally 20 years ago when we were growing at 25, 30 years ago was Oprah, right? Well, mainstream television is not really providing that that kind of cultural push the way that new media is doing it. So, for example, podcasts, podcasts like this one. And there are big names out there, guys like Joe Rogan. And, you know, Joe Rogan's talking about cold plunges, intermittent fasting, saunas, different forms of diet to perform better, to be healthier. And this conversation is actually impacting. So I went down, you and I both have children in a similar age.

I went down to Florida State University to visit my son, George. And he's a sophomore there, and he's in a fraternity. And I expected complete pandemonium when it. And I found it. Trust me. But I opened their refrigerator. I see what these kids are doing. They're working out like crazy. They love to understand more about diet and lifestyle choices far more than our generation did. Now, we worked out. We worked out because we were playing football. We wanted to look good on the beach. None of that's changed. But when I took these kids out for dinner, the Frat brothers, I was shocked at how much they knew about nutrition. How much they knew about nutrition. This is really interesting because I just made an assumption that my son was the only person like that.

Because my son lives in a house with a nice gaggle of knuckleheads, we'll just call them. And, you know, they cook. You know, they understand that when they're eating chicken, it's protein and things like that. We used to just consume. That's right. And, you know, I got to tell you, I, when I was in college, I was going, I was a bartender. And, you know, I finished my shift, let's say two, three o'clock in the morning. I would go to the diner and have about 5,000 calories in what we would call a double

cheeseburger deluxe with fries and gravy. And then, you know, because of our youth, we could go to the beach the next day, take your shirt off and not look half bad. But if I did that now, I'd be a train wreck real fast. So your body over time can only be treated that poorly while you're young. If you continue to do that. So what we're seeing in our kids' generation is a generation of kids in their early 20s, late teens, who are engaged in this conversation. And there's a lot of them.

There's a lot of them. Are you saying that you're optimistic about the future because of that? I am. I am very optimistic about the future. My 21-year-old. We found somebody optimistic about the future on the show here. Yes. Yes.

You know, my oldest is 21. She's a senior. And she's all about beauty and all the things. So she was pretending to be a vegetarian for a little while. I say pretending because she wasn't really a vegetarian. But she wanted, like she saw value in being a vegetarian. But she did see a TikTok video where the person explained how eating liver on a regular basis can make your skin glow. So she sends me pictures of her cooking liver and actually enjoying it.

So what are the motivations of each generation? That I can't tell you. beauty, fitness, girls, whatever, but they're finding information about health to accomplish those goals. And I'm, again, super optimistic about it. But again, this is also a small percentage of the population. The majority is a train wreck. And we just look at the statistics and see that. And we also have to recognize, you know, that Steve and I come from a different cut. And this is not like a worldwide beta test that we did. We went into the homes of our children. So I would assume that they might have had something to do with it. But, you know, there's another, God, we got to be careful. We don't go

too far in a different direction. So I want to go into something that I really want to talk about. This generation, another way of looking at it is, God, I hope that they take their nutrition serious. Because as we get more and more sedentary to the point where projected that kids are going to spend more time in the virtual world than the real world, there's very, very little wigger. room for making mistakes in that world. Yeah, it's interesting. So that actually leads perfectly into something else. So when I was, you know, I was doing a little bit of recon of my friend here just to catch up so I could pretend that I knew a lot about him in this conversation. And I went to check out Cyrene Labs, which is just a fantastic new project of his that he's the CEO of and he'll have

an opportunity to talk about it. And you'll see in the notes, but also flashed on the screen right now, got his contact information. But I watched this video. In the spirit of this show, I just love new ways of looking at things and interesting perspectives. And in this video, I heard Steve, because Steve's not this kind of guy that just kind of wings things. Like when he goes and says something or starts a company to provide a solution for a problem,

he does his research. And one of the observations that he made, which I think a lot of people are going to be really, really curious about. Just kind of like almost like a historian took note. And there's research on this. And there's science behind this of this concept of what is deemed a normal range to operate within to be okay or or healthy. Because the topic here that we're discussing is, is like what is health. So that means like how do you define it? But also how do you measure it? And how do you manifest it? There's so many different ways. Think about this for a second. And I'd love you to expand on this.

I'd love you to get into the difference of socioeconomics and cultures and stuff. But what it's saying is is that if you are overweight and smoke and maybe even drink a little too much and go into see your general practitioner for your once a year, which is funny in itself. Isn't that funny how we just like, we assume that once a year will just say, well, you don't look so good, Frank. Be like, yeah, but I was six months ago. He said I was fine. But anyway, what it's saying is, is that if you go into your doctor and you're doing all these things that are predictors for a bad time in the future, you can get a clean bill of health. Because what Steve is noticing, and I want you to expand on this, is that the realm indicating that somebody has a problem has widened.

So like if I'm thinking pre-diabetic, for instance, there's more flexibility before you actually get that diagnosis now. So talk a little bit about that observation and why it's so relevant in the work that you. you're doing. Okay. So the way you opened up this conversation was Steve is a chiropractor. He got his degree in functional neurology and pursued his education from there. So my education from that point, when I studied neurology and like you said, I would develop the reputation within our community. So I would get referrals from other doctors for specialty cases. Anytime somebody has a brain-based disorder. When the brain is not functioning the way it should, let's just say stroke, concussion, developmental challenges, whatever the story is, if the brain isn't working well, the body's not

working well because the brain controls the body. And we would see a lot of what we would call organic dysfunction, which led me down a path of becoming an expert in blood chemistry. But just like neurology, I'm not necessarily interested in disease as much as I'm interested in health and performance. And in that realm also, so a lot of people call the blood chemistry world functional medicine. I don't really like to use that term, but I understand it. And the words- Just for the listeners, just describing your own words what functional medicine means. So functional medicine is just what you're saying. It's a way of looking at your blood chemistry in particular or your body chemistry. You could look at saliva test, urine tests, stool tests,

blood tests, et cetera, and you basically look at it from a functional perspective. So if I'm going to look at your cholesterol, I'm not just going to make assumptions about your cardiovascular health, right? We all think when you think cholesterol, you think heart disease. Okay, but it also tells me about blood sugar. It also tells me about your behavior. It also tells me a little bit about other fact, you know, your ability to detoxify. So it's looking at things in a system-wide way. as it relates to your health. Now, this became very much an important topic during the pandemic because the medical profession found themselves dealing with crisis even more.

That's what they're really good at. We want them to be great at that. But the crisis was occurring to people who spent their lives prior to their crisis, being metabolically unhealthy. Let's just say being overweight or having type 2 diabetes or being pre-diabetic or being pre-diabetic, as I think you alluded to. And now all of a sudden that person makes, you know, prior to the pandemic, they would make a calculation and say, well, I'm not going to exercise.

I'm going to work hard. And on the weekends, I'll have my beer and my buffalo wings. And if I'm 30 pounds overweight, well, so be it. I'll live to 79 instead of it. Only live once. Yeah, you only live once. But whenever somebody says that to me, they go, hey, you only live once. And I go, exactly.

Hello. You only live once, exactly. So now that 35-year-old who was making some calculation about decades ahead, and they don't really have to worry about that now. During the pandemic, they're like, well, I could be dead next week. And actually, that was happening to people who are very metabolically challenged. Those who were not metabolically challenged did really well. So now the medical profession really can't help you because the truth is that's not where their education is, their crisis management. And then in our world, we say, well, this idea of a functional range. So to get to your question, if we're going to look at a marker for diabetes or, well, forget that, let's just look at a marker for health related to detoxification, right? We call that liver function. So we look at liver enzymes. And there's a range. That range in 30 years ago was, let's just say the number 25. If you had these liver enzymes and they were above 25, the doctor said, hey, you have fatty liver. Fatty liver is caused by excess medications, alcohol, and or food that you're not burning off. Well, over the last 30 years,

the reference range for that number went up to 30, 35, and then even 40, and in some places, 50. So why did that happen? Well, that idea of a reference range, so when you go and get your laboratory, when you go to a laboratory to get your blood drawn, there's what was measured on the left side of your paper, there's your value to the right of that, and there's the reference range. So the reference range is what you might consider to be normal or abnormal. So just to give everybody some visual, you get your results and you, you know, you want to make sure you're not going to die first, right? So you look at your number and then you see where it stacks up in this reference rate. If it's low or high above or below the reference range,

the lab will flag it for you. And when it's flagged, it alerts the doctor to say, hey, you got a problem here. However, the goalposts keep moving on that. And you might say, well, how could the goalpost move? I mean, we're humans. We haven't really changed. Well, that reference range is not normal or abnormal, healthy or unhealthy. The reference range is common and uncommon.

And common and uncommon based on the laboratory you went to. So that reference range for many of the markers, almost all of the markers, some of them are not, but almost all of them are based on the laboratory you went to, the city you live in, and the state that you live in. So it's different from city to city, state to state, laboratory to laboratory. And we saw this in really stark terms in Manhattan where I practiced for over 24 years. in Manhattan, if I'm on the Upper East Side where people are wealthy and healthy, the reference range for those liver enzymes might be in the low 30s. Let's just say 32. One mile on the other side of the river is the South Bronx, where the socioeconomic environment's far different. And the labs that were coming from there would say 42 instead of 32.

And then even in the Midwest where people are kind of grain fed, you know, because of the corn, those numbers could be actually in the high 40s or low 50s. And then, of course, the numbers are even worse if you're getting them from a hospital. So obviously what I'm saying is who's more likely to get their blood check in your community? Sick people or healthy people? Well, the answer is, of course, sick people. So when you look at the reference range and you feel proud of yourself that you're within the reference range, you're doing better than the sickest people in your community.

And that's not something to be proud of. Let me ask you a question. Is this the same, this is, this is frightening because it's almost like gentrification. You know, it's like if everybody's home here starts going down in price, you know, mine does too. Is this almost like our kids that like come out of a test and say, oh, God, I failed it, but they got an A because of the bell curve. So are you saying that as this is nuts. So what you're saying is as our country gets sicker, the lab reference ranges are changing to a accommodate them? Wouldn't it make sense, though, if that was the case that the lab reference ranges

would be adjusted to pick up those things earlier? Well, the reason we do a community rating, which is what we're talking about. How do you rate against your community is because we all live in different environments. We shouldn't be comparing people in Maine to people in Sedona. Yes, we are all human, but we live in different environments, different climates, different. And even in the laboratories themselves, there's different machines and, you know, so on and so forth. However, there's good reason for having this community rating, which is why we do it. But the unintended consequences are related to the fact that people are getting sicker.

So for example, millions of women are taking thyroid medication. So there's a marker for thyroid called thyroid stimulating hormone, which the, The reference range is useless. It's 0.45 to 4.5, and that's like a 20 times difference. It makes no sense. The person cannot be in the same state, the same physiological state at 0.45 is somebody who is at 4.5. Right. But because so many people are taking medication, those numbers are skewed.

Interesting. And that's the unintended consequence. And people, of course, are getting sicker. And this fatty liver issue is a big one because fatty liver is, number one cause for people to get on a waiting list to have a liver transplant. And it used to be hepatitis C. That's no longer the case. Now it's non-alcoholic fatty liver disease caused by your diet and your lifestyle. Let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsor. The Make Sense podcast is sponsored by the Make Sense Academy, co-created by both myself, Mika,

aka The Chicken and The Dragon. The Make Sense Academy is a live interactive. community where like-minded, solution-focused, curious seekers of expansion, gather daily in a mastermind setting with both chicken and dragon, where they have access to premium content, online courses, and powerful collaboration and networking, all for $24 a month. The Make Sense Academy and its members are solely responsible for funding the Make Sense podcast. So feel free to reach out to us at www.org.org.org.com.com and check out the Make Sense Academy, risk-free, with a money-back guarantee. Now, back to the Make Sense podcast.

So those numbers are climbing, and you're right, you could catch it earlier. My profession, our profession, went to the biochemist who came up with these numbers and said, hey, can you just give us the ranges for the healthiest among us? So as you could imagine, they gave us a much tighter range that actually was a little bit more normal 30, 40 years ago. So that tighter range is what we use to say, all right, you're within the reference range, but you're outside of the optimal range. Right.

Right. Totally different perspective. Totally different. But it allows the doctor myself to say, hey, you're trending in the wrong direction. I'm not going to have you see a doctor to get a prescription from medication. Make these lifestyle changes. Let's reverse this before. your next annual physical, you know, you could have your annual physicals for 10 years until you're,

and every year you're fine until you're not. And then they're like, oh, look at this. You need to take these pills. And now you're like, Doc, I mean, there was no warning. Well, there were warnings. There's a lot of pre, pre, pre, pre diabetes warnings. So there's pre, there's diabetes, pre diabetes, pre pre diabetes, pre pre diabetes. I could predict it 10 or 15 years out very, very, easily by looking at other markers like liver enzymes and triglycerides and even some aspects of your cholesterol can give us a clue about what's going on with your blood sugar before the main marker tells you you have a disease called pre-diabetes. You see a lot of people are walking around saying, oh, I have pre-diabetes. I better watch it because one day I might get diabetes.

They think they have a pre-disease. They don't realize pre-diabetes is a disease in an itself. Right. It's so fascinating. I mean, first thing that pops into my head, just from the work that I've done in health transformation, I remember when I was a kid, you either had type 1 or type two diabetes. And I remember type 2 diabetes was known as adult onset until six-year-old started getting it, you know? So it's interesting to just awaken to the trends. And another thing, just a question, and we're not here in any way, shape, or form to bash medical doctor. or anything like that. It's like, don't hate the player, hate the game. Everybody's doing the best that they can within the realm of what they do. But this is why I think everybody needs a health care

team. I mean, functional medicine is probably like an elective that you have to voluntarily, like, seek out if you're going through medical school. So they're not looking for those markers and nor are the diagnostics that are typically being used looking at these markers. So you have to go somewhere else for that, right? Can I tell just a quick story about that? Of course. A lot of medical doctors will retire and because they love to see patients and they find themselves stuck in a system that is not of their choosing. When they do retire, they kind of move towards where we are in the functional space.

Interesting. And, you know, I've been teaching doctors and whenever there's an audience, there's chiropractors in the audience, acupuncturists, medical doctors, all kinds of people in the audience. And my business partner, too, has been teaching for over 20 years. And there's, you know, a few hematologists. Now, a hematologist is an expert in blood chemistry sitting in a classroom learning about blood chemistry from us. And when a hematologist, when I, that's what they are. They are blood chemistry experts. There's no way that we could say that I have any of the education that they have. They are far superior in their understanding.

of blood chemistry in the context of cancer and disease, not necessarily what we're talking about. So when the hematologist is sitting in our classroom, it's partly for them to have a mental shift, as you could imagine, how difficult it must be for you to be steeped in a certain way of looking at things and then being asked to look at it completely differently. And this one hematologist in Arizona, I'll never forget him. I mean, he was so engaged and he would text questions, you know, related to blood chemistry to these chiropractors, right? It's just fascinating. So when you go to medical school, you become great at managing crisis and disease and identifying crisis and disease.

But that doesn't make you an expert in becoming healthy. And that's where we like to believe our niche reside. It's so fascinating. And it doesn't say anything bad about anything. It just says that we all need to work together. I started a mastermind. I didn't even get a chance to tell you about this. But I started a mastermind and opened it up to all health practitioners.

And in that safe environment where you're not just speaking to your audience that requires you speak a certain way, it becomes an open and curious solution-focused realm that entertains anything. So, yeah, that's something that needs to happen. for sure. So this kind of leads to what I think. So I mean, here we are again, you know, as as our friend Pat Jen Tempo would call it the jacuzzi experience, you know. Okay, great. There's a big problem and Steve has all the answers. Fantastic. You know, all I have to do is, is have my blood tests look at functionally. And, you know, and then I'll hop on over to Cyrene labs and be all set, right? But the problem there is that, you know, like you said, when that blood chemistry guy is steeped in what he does to entertain a

different perspective, it's very, very much like somebody that is indoctrinated and tethered into the habits, the unconscious habits, not only of what they eat and drink, but also the way that their autonomic nervous system functions and perception. And that's what my whole podcast is about. So I want to go into that realm because that's an interesting observation that kind of kind of leads into why I think it's so important that you're building this social media presence. My first question to you is, and this is always the toughest question for a guy like Steve to answer because it's like it's got so many components. But how would you define the word healthy? Yeah. So without going into the weeds, which you know I can do, I like to look at it in terms of longevity,

but not longevity in the sense of how old will I be when I die. Longevity in the sense of how long can I be young, right? How long can I function like a young person? And that's important because- That metric is changing too. Oh, yeah. Yeah, like first of all, define what it is, right? What does, if your last year on earth is your hundredth year,

what would you like to be able to do that last year? You know, would you like, do you need somebody changing your diapers? Do you need, can you manage a flight of stairs? Like, these are the questions. Like, do you have control of your faculties? So if we all just assume, yes, of course, I want to have control of my faculties. I don't want cognitive decline. After that, physically, what do you want?

Well, I want to be able to climb three flights of stairs. I'd like to be able to carry 10 pounds of groceries in each hand. I'd like to be able to, you know, get out of a swimming pool on my own. I'd like to get off the floor. I'd like to pick up a great grandchild, like in a goblet squat kind of a way, like a 30-pound kid. That's asking a lot for somebody who's 100 years old. And if that's the case, if that's what you want and you didn't hit the genetic lottery to get there, because we all have the story.

My uncle smoked his whole life. He never exercised to 110. Yeah, just assume you're not that guy. Just assume you didn't hit the genetic lottery and move forward, you know, move forward accordingly. That's what I want. I want to hit the genetic lottery. Right. And if I didn't, my mother's going to get an earful. But anyway, the, the, if that's where you want to be at a hundred, well, then ask yourself, what do I have to be able to do at 80? And then what do I have to be able to do at 60? And that's like tomorrow, right? For me, I'm in my mid 50s, 60s tomorrow. So understanding that and

then saying, all right, well, those are the things that are important to me. I want to enjoy the fruits of my labor. I worked a long time. I would like in those years to be able to travel and do all of those things. If I can't travel, then, you know, what's the point? If I can't take care of myself, if I can't go anywhere without, you know, my medications being in arm's reach, I don't want any medications. So you really have to define what it means for you to have to have.

longevity and then decide all right so what is health and then find a doctor who has metrics like i have metrics i have blood chemistry metrics i have strength metrics i have flexibility metrics i have oxygen carrying capacity metrics um i kind of you know have this five assessment system that i have where the first assessment is blood chemistry the second one is called v o2 max and resting metabolic rate then there's strength testing than they're, you know, with strength testing, your grip strength. Yeah. Talk about grip strength. This is fascinating. I mean, it's absolutely fascinating. The research goes back 40 years on this. It's not even like worth continuing to research because all of the research points in the same direction. Your grip strength is a better

predictor of your cardiovascular risk than your blood pressure is. And cardio and blood pressure is a major. Right after this interview, I'm going to go do a chin up. Yeah. So your grip strength, and the reason why it's so valuable is because your grip strength, you can't fake your grip strength. It's not something you say, he's going to check it. I better work on it for a few days before I go into the office. Your grip strength tells me who you've been for the last two to five years, right? And think about that 100 year old. His grip strength or her grip strength is what's going to keep her from falling if she trips, right? She grabs the railing and holds on. She's got grip strength. So there's a lot of reasons why grip strength is a valuable

marker, but statistically for all-cause mortality, it is like one of the top three. So we have a lot of technology. We can do all kinds of scans and stuff and we can measure things in your blood. But I like doing things that are tried and true and things that can't be fooled. Your hemoglobin A1C can't be fooled. You don't just like clean up your diet for three days and your blood sugar marker for your long-term blood sugar marker called hemoglobin A1C. That doesn't drop in the short term, right? It takes time for that to drop. Your grip strength is not something you can change quickly. Your joint flexibility and muscle flexibility, joint range of motion, you're not fixing that if you haven't been active.

So these are measure and your VO2 max, my goodness, the ability for you to bring in oxygen and deliver it through your heart, you're not going to fake that. You're not going to fix that quickly. So these are tried and true. The research is clear and it's cheap and simple to have checked. I like to do the five assessments,

even if I have three assessments, or two, or even just the blood, chemistry, I feel like I can come up with a plan to not only tell you where you're at, what your baseline is, but what's your plan to improve it? And you can improve it, no matter whether you're, you have terminal cancer, you can improve, or if you're an elite athlete, you can improve. You can always improve. Well, I'm going to request like five months to get ready before I have that test. You know what's interesting about it.

I mean, first of all, a couple of things to just make sure people pick up on this. You can either go have these functional like tests done to see where you're stacking up and what you should focus on or what you could focus on. Or you could not and just wait until you go to the big house and see how fucked up you are. You know, I mean, so. But what's interesting, you brought something up before. you're almost saying it says, well, it depends. You know, like, what are you looking for?

Do you want to live longer? You want to be able to gobble squat and all that stuff? Or do you just not care? If I smoke and I don't exercise and I eat junk food, but I don't care and I don't have a goal, well, that's healthy for me because my attitude is, screw it. I'm just going to have fun. Say, congratulations. You don't need the five tests because you won't like the results, right?

But if somebody has a desire to, it's like health is in the eye of the beholder, if somebody has a desire to live longer and all those things, then health would show up as something that would fall under those markers is, you know, something you want to focus on. I mentioned before somebody that Steve and I both know is just a pioneer and a genius, Pat Jen Tempo. In my 52 years of life gave me the best answer to the question of how do you define health? Better than anybody else. You probably heard him say it. And he looks, without even thinking, he goes, he says, health is a destination that you've never been. That was his first way of saying that you're never going to arrive.

You're always going to thrive and strive towards it. And then he says, the way that you measure health, and this kind of works into your testing, is you measure health by looking at how the body handles adversity. That's when you really can measure health, because adversity's coming, no matter. matter what. So I love the idea of identifying the functional component. So if you wanted to boil it down to one word. Yes. Health is the ability to adapt. It's adaptation. That's it. That's exactly what we're talking about. And we saw unhealthy people and what happened to them in COVID. And I know that ruffles a lot of feathers because everybody's got a different interpretation. But at the end of the road, if you do work on

your health to the point where you go get an assessment by, you know, Dr. Steve in those five, five markers and they're good, you're at a much better, you know, advantage to handle adversity. So the last concept that I want to talk about before we end is the real problem. Like I was saying, we have this jacuzzi experience now where everybody says, oh, this makes total sense. I never thought of it that way. I love the concept of the functional markers, you know, like I said, I'm going to, I'm going to go shopping at Cyrene Labs and be. fine. But there's this one problem, and that is what I call the biggest disease in our country, and that is people's inability to follow through. You gave that analogy before about that guy that

was steeped in his profession and having to open himself up to learning about a different thing to look at in the blood markers. When we look at habit, unhealthy habits, which we see everywhere, I like to look at them as if you have a habit, which means it's running on autopilot, I look at it as like a 120,000 ton oil tanker, which is how much they weigh when they're full. That's going this way, and it always goes this way. And the captain knows nothing else but to go this way. And here you are trying to turn it around. So what I'd love to hear from you, and then, you know, you could kind of couple that in with this strategy of, you know, Steve has fallen upon this because he kind of, you know, it's an interesting story. But he is communicating with the masses. And in the beginning, I was

asking you like, why are we seeing so much interest and curiosity in this, but no action? What is your interpretation? Because this is, I think, the biggest challenge is people know things and they walk around saying, I know about functional medicine now, but they're not doing anything about it. How do we solve that problem? So I think identifying the problem. So I found out that there's a lot of information junkies out there. And it seems like they almost want to be able to show up at Thanksgiving dinner and be say something that is smart and say something that is interesting. So they're pursuing a lot of that. I mean, we see this, especially in the functional medicine world, there's a, again,

people have to have an interest, right? So this smaller population of people, they're actually, they're lay people. They're people who are, you know, plumbers and housewives and school teachers and all those things. and they're actually paying to take courses in really advanced aspects of functional medicine, and they have no background in healthcare. It's fascinating. Yeah, and they're paying for it, and they're enjoying it.

And you say it's almost like it's creating an illusion. You know, on the patient's side, if I'm getting, if I'm learning and I'm consuming information about health, it's almost creating the illusion and the perception that I'm working on my health. But then you've got the, on the educational standpoint, you've got people that are getting credentialed up the wazoo. And I mean, like, I meet these people. They're always working on a new credential, not helping anybody. It's almost like fake work.

But it's kind of like our kids. You know, I can tell you right now, my wife and I have been vomiting all over our kids, this idea of health and wellness and all the things. And we practice what we preach and we live the life we live. But they're kids and they're going to birthday parties and they're going to do what you. kids do and they're they're going to rebel and they're going to consume things that we wouldn't want to see them consume but then they become young adults and they do they do truly you know you if you force feed them they start so my 19 year old and my 21 year old they are coming around on their own so i think people you you you can't not have a beneficial effect you can't say this

information is getting out there, right? Social media is a powerful tool. The information is getting out there. Look, my daughter is making a lot of health decisions based on TikTok videos. And they're, and they're for the most part, directionally good decisions. Yeah, a lot of people are going on, like almost getting coached by TikTokers. Yeah. Yeah. And I can't help but think that that's a positive thing because it's going to bleed into society. I really believe that. And people have a distrust. in the institutions that you and I grew up to respect, whether it be the federal government, you know, the American, the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, like we're starting to

see corruption in all the institutions, whether it be the media, the medical profession, pharmaceutical industry, the federal regulatory agencies. There's distrust in the public. And the trust used to give you that security blanket that was kind of fake. anyway. So now people realize, you know what, nobody's really looking out for me. Maybe I'll decide to look out from myself sooner than I would have later. Look, all the people who say, I don't have time to work out, you will have time to go to chemotherapy three times a week. I promise you that. I promise you that. Here's an interesting, an interesting take on it is, I mean, there's two things that, you know, where you and I are aging, we now can, like,

look at kids and have an opinion about like how much time they're gaming and all that stuff. But there's another thing at play here that's been at play a lot longer than we've been around, even my great-grandfather longer than him. And that's called natural selection. Natural selection's not going away. And sooner or later, you're going to figure out that only the strong survive. And that's going to play a role in change. As practitioners and as educators, we kind of have to not try to force feed people and allow people to make sense on their own because it's there in the decision. The only way to turn the oil tanker around is if the captain decides to turn it around. You can't like have the Somalian pirates come and turn it around. You know what I mean?

Just such a fascinating topic that could just go in so many different directions. And there's other bits and pieces of this conversation that, you know, will be inserted in the, in this show as well. So Steve, just in closing, how would people, I mean, obviously everybody should immediately just start following him. I'll put it up again on his Instagram. That's just a fun way to interact with Steve. It's just great stuff. I'm a fan. I mean, he's my buddy, but he's just got a great way of doing what he always does, but he's on Instagram now. So that's at Dr. Steven G. what would you recommend people do if they want to reach out? Yeah, so all of my social media is at Dr. Stephen G.

It's all the same, whether it be X or whatever. But, you know, if you don't ever want to pay somebody like me, my fees, and I'm not cheap, if you can get through all of my videos, and believe me, there are people who've done it, I get messages from them all the time. They just, they're not my recommendations. I'm not telling you what to do on Instagram. What I'm doing on Instagram is saying, you know, this is what either the science or my clinical experience or all of it or the culture is saying about health. Here's either my interpretation or what I think about it.

And then you'll listen to that and say, all right, that makes sense. That's easy for me to try. It can't hurt. And you can have dramatic things change. And if you just went through those videos, you would have learned so much. because I'm truly giving you everything I got on those videos. And you can find me on YouTube as well where I have longer videos. But if you wanted to engage with me one-on-one, I do have a website.

It's Dr. Steven G.com. So again, the same thing, D-R-S-T-E-V-E-N-G.com. And there's a survey or a questionnaire that can kind of lead you in a direction. Can we put that on the notes of the episode? Yeah, for sure. You have it up right there. It says Dr. Steven G.com. Okay.

And there's a little questionnaire there right on the front page, a survey that you could fill out that informs you and us at the same time. If you want to dive a little deeper with me or my team personal. So here's how I would guide all of you. If you want to learn and consume, it would be a great idea. You'll get a lot of value from that. Just follow him and maybe he'll give you a T-shirt saying I looked at everyone. one of his videos. This is a lot. But if you want to do something, that's a big difference. That's one of my favorite quotes is that learning is just another distraction in the absence of

action. We got a lot of learners out there. But if you want to do something about it, do something about it. Take an action step. My brother, thank you so much for your time. What a fun career that has evolved out of all of this stuff. I'm not surprised, like I said before, and just keep doing the good work you're doing, man. We'll definitely have to have a, we're going to pick another topic sometime and have another discussion. I'd love to come back, JC. Thank you for having me.

All right, my friend. Thanks so much. And everybody, have a wonderful day. Makes sense.