Mark Bell's Power Project - Ozempic for Obesity: Pros, Cons, & the Truth About Long-Term Use - Dr. Tyna Moore || MBPP Ep. 1109
Episode Date: October 28, 2024In Episode 1109, Dr. Tyna Moore, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about pain management and the pros and cons of a GLP-1 Agonist like Ozempic Follow Dr. Tyna on IG: https://www.instag...ram.com/drtyna/ Official Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw Special perks for our listeners below! 🥜 Protect Your Nuts With Organic Underwear 🥜 ➢https://nadsunder.com/ Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 15% off your order! 🍆 Natural Sexual Performance Booster 🍆 ➢https://usejoymode.com/discount/POWERPROJECT Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order! 🚨 The Best Red Light Therapy Devices and Blue Blocking Glasses On The Market! 😎 ➢https://emr-tek.com/ Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order! 👟 BEST LOOKING AND FUNCTIONING BAREFOOT SHOES 🦶 ➢https://vivobarefoot.com/powerproject 🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWER to save 20% off site wide, or code POWERPROJECT to save an additional 5% off your Build a Box Subscription! 🩸 Get your BLOODWORK Done! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel, and use code POWERPROJECT for 10% off any lab! Sleep Better and TAPE YOUR MOUTH (Comfortable Mouth Tape) 🤐 ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject to receive a year supply of Hostage Tape and Nose Strips for less than $1 a night! 🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!! Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: ➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements! ➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel! Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Become a Stronger Human - https://thestrongerhuman.store ➢ UNTAPPED Program - https://shor.by/JoinUNTAPPED ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Podcast Courses and Free Guides: https://pursuepodcasting.com/iamandrewz ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz/ ➢ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject
Transcript
Discussion (0)
It's easy to look at other people and just be like,
I wish that this person would like kind of wake up,
but there's some people that are just simply too compromised.
My entire family's obese.
And I'm over here trying to wave the flag,
like I got stuff that'll help.
Why do you think GLP-1s get such a bad rap?
So it's been in use for 20 some years.
They release it in FDA approved for weight loss
and everybody loses their minds.
My dad's case, I was like, you know what we're gonna do?
We're gonna put you on Ozempic for the first time
in a decade.
He's going for a walk every day with his puppy.
He's cognizant.
He's there.
My daughter yesterday, she was like, pop us back.
You typically have these patients do lower dose.
What does lower dose look like?
Here's the caveat.
Those small doses don't work
if they're not doing everything else.
If somebody is on a GLP-1 agonist,
do they have to approach protein intake differently?
You have to start with protein first, but isn't that what we tell people anyway?
Thanks for coming to the show today.
I really appreciate you being here.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
I'm very excited.
Your story is amazing.
I heard some of your commentary on a bunch of different podcasts and stuff like that.
And then our good friend, Gabrielle Lyon, was talking you up a bunch.
But I find that whole conversation
of pain to be a really fascinating one.
And unfortunately I've had many family members
who've been in a lot of pain.
My brother's one of them.
My mother had tremendous amounts of pain.
My oldest brother was kind of like plagued by,
you know, some mental illness, but he had like a lot of,
almost like, yes, you say almost like an internal pain,
like mental pain. And it's just a lot of almost, I guess you'd say almost like an internal pain, like mental pain.
And it's just a hard thing to battle with,
but you've been battling against it
pretty much your whole life?
Yeah, yeah.
I guess when you put it that way, it has been a long haul.
It really ramped up when I got pregnant with my daughter.
So I was 24 when I got pregnant.
And that, whatever that hormonal flux was
really sent my immune system into overdrive.
And so it's been just this journey ever since
trying to figure out what the heck is going on.
And then interestingly, I chose pain management
as my profession.
So that is what I chose to take care of.
Chiropractic, right?
Well, I'm a chiropractor and I'm a naturopathic physician,
but I ended up mentoring with an incredible man.
Many years ago, I started as his receptionist
way back in the 90s. He's the one who got me into strength training, as I was telling
you earlier, and he specialized in regenerative injection therapies and pain management from
a naturopathic and holistic standpoint. So injecting non-drug substances into people,
neuro therapy, pro therapy, PRP, stem cells, like long before it was cool. Acupuncture as well, it was his specialty.
I'm not an acupuncturist, but that world
I've been immersed in since the nineties.
And then, so dealing with chronic pain,
taking care of people with pain, mostly acute pain,
mostly guys like yourself or women who were healthy and fit
and just trying to keep their joints in the game.
But I had some, you know, my fair share
of very complicated pain cases to contend with.
And so, yeah, it's been a really interesting,
pain is very interesting.
And the way that you maybe solved for it
years ago is probably different
than maybe the way you're solving for it now.
Yeah, I used to live off of ibuprofen.
Like it was ibuprofen, excedrin,
you know, all the over-the-counter NSAIDs and aspirins.
And you know better than to mess with like painkillers and stuff like that sort of deal or?
I actually had a pretty decent opioid, I think, problem when I was 18.
I had my wisdom teeth taken out my senior year of high school and they gave me this massive bottle of Vicodin.
And then they got impacted
and they gave me another massive bottle.
And then I ended up with a third massive bottle.
And I was a teenager.
I'm in high school having no idea that what I'm getting into
and I end up on them three times a day for months on end.
And then I end up in Germany on a trip
and I wake up in the middle of the night and I'm sweating and there's no more pills in my bag. And unbeknownst to me, I
was, I went into a few day withdrawal situation, ended up with pneumonia actually on that trip.
I have a history of pneumonia and really interesting. And I was like, Ooh, those are not, you know,
I got, I cleared out of that, but I was like,
that was a looking back.
That was a little bit of a close call.
They hand that stuff out like candy or at least they used to.
That was the nineties.
You said ibuprofen and it kind of had like a negative connotation to it.
Most people think that ibuprofen is like, it's obviously doctor recommended and it's in everybody's
cupboard and it seems like it's not really too,
I guess I'll say dangerous.
What is wrong with ibuprofen?
So ibuprofen is an NSAID,
it's a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory.
It is definitely handed out like candy.
It's over the counter.
There's different iterations of it.
There are prescription versions like Celebrex
that a lot of people are on.
There's Vioxx, which may have killed
at least 45,000 people during its time.
They knew that it was doing what it was doing.
And what NSAIDs do is they cut off the inflammatory cascade.
And when you get injured, it takes about 300 days,
give or take, for full collagen production
and stability to set in.
It's a whole cascade.
And the first two weeks of that, 10 days to 14 days
of that healing cascade need to go to fruition
for the rest of that cascade to happen
for you to end up ultimately laying down
really healthy, strong, stable collagen.
And if you cut it off in the first few days
with ice and NSAIDs, which that's what
is usually doctor recommended, right? Ele ice and NSAIDs, which that's what is usually doctor recommended, right?
Elevate ice NSAIDs.
You basically shoot yourself in the foot.
And so they've known since the 90s
that when you give somebody,
like they were doing studies in rabbits
where they would pit the cartilage in their knees
and then they would give them high doses of ibuprofen
and the cartilage just would not regenerate.
Orthopedic surgeons know not to give ibuprofen
because it actually inhibits bone healing after a fracture.
And then there's a whole litany of problems
that it causes within the body, the cardiovascular system,
and the gut and so on.
So they're really, people die from NSAID addiction really.
It's not addiction, it becomes a dependence.
But, and then when you're on high doses of NSAIDs
for a long period of time,
if you discontinue them abruptly,
you can have a rebound effect where you end up
in more inflammation.
And so it's a really slippery slope that I think,
especially like college or even high school students,
athletes.
Yeah, we did that a lot in college.
Yeah, there's a lot of NSAIDs in ICE
and it's just a really bad way to train your immune system
to react to an injury.
Seems like it's a skill set to be able to overcome,
you know, some of these injuries and some of this pain.
And you've had like, I guess, more complicated pain,
like a systemic pain.
Yeah, so it's autoimmune driven,
and that's what I finally figured out.
I mean, I knew there was always an immunocomponent to it,
but to really kind of put my finger
on it and go, oh, this is what's been happening. I think that's the problem with a lot of folks.
So one to five up to one in seven patients will present to any doctor's office for pain.
That's really, really common. And I trained doctors in a lot of the treatments I used
to anyway, up until, you know, 2020 when everything hit the fan. I had a whole,
I mean, hundreds of doctors I've trained in these regenerative injection therapies and
I teach them all like you have to have some tools in your tool belt to deal with pain and it can't
just be NSAIDs and painkillers. Like you have to have something that you do. I think this is where
injections can be really cool and really beneficial, but it becomes, there's a whole lifestyle component that people don't understand. And so right
now I think stem cells are all the rage and doctors charge exorbitant amounts of money
for them. I know because I did them in my practice too, but you can only accomplish
with a patient with these therapeutics, what their own health and immune system will bring for them.
Meaning if they're a hot mess of inflammation
and you take their fluids or their fat
or their bone marrow out and you concentrate it down
and shoot it back into them,
you're just creating a bigger hot mess, right?
And so it's really contingent on their overall health
and that comes down to lifestyle.
And a lot of it comes down to oddly emotional traumas
that we're carrying around.
I mean, the studies on looking at adverse childhood events,
folks who've had multiple adverse childhood events,
and I can't remember the exact numbers now,
it's like five or more,
they're almost guaranteed to have chronic pain
in later years.
And so pain's really interesting. It's really prevalent.
It's underappreciated and it's life destroying
because it totally pits your nervous system.
So you're spending all of your time,
whether you realize it or not,
just trying to stay on top of your pain,
trying to get through the day and manage what's happening
versus being able to focus on other things like joy
or relaxation, you or relaxation or mindfulness because something's
always nagging at you. For the trauma, do you yourself help them with any of this or do you
have them see a therapist? I think referring out is the key. But interestingly, I did mostly
injection therapies. And when you get in there with a needle, it's sometimes like hitting the
eye of the storm. I just have this incredible knack. I don't know, it's a there with a needle, it's sometimes like hitting the eye of the storm.
I just have this incredible knack.
I don't know, it's a gift and a curse,
but I can just reangle the needle
and know exactly where I need to go.
And it's almost like hitting a spider's nest.
It's almost like you hit the bullseye and then,
and I've had men bigger than you
just start crying on my table.
And it's not from pain,
it's like this emotional trigger
of something terrible that happened to them
that they didn't even remember.
I remember one woman, she's a powerlifter,
and I was treating her ankle and I said, hold on,
and just give me a sec.
And I just re-angled and I just knew,
I like follow my intuition.
I drop into her ankle, she falls apart on the table.
I'm teaching a class and she's the demo model.
She ends up going in the restroom and crying for like an hour.
And I mean, she's this big, she's a chiropractor.
She's like a super big, tough woman.
And I finally went in there, I was like, are you okay?
And she said, I was raped when I was a child
and I didn't remember it until just now.
Like she'd completely blocked it out.
And I hit this spot on her ankle
and he had injured her ankle.
I mean, that's heavy, I know.
But like, this is the kind of stuff
that the body remembers, right?
The body keeps the score and it gets buried in there.
And so sometimes I'm sure you've had experiences
where you're getting deep tissue work
or you've had an injury and it like,
or you've re-injured something
and it brings about this emotional just outpouring that you're maybe
not or maybe you're just getting a massage and you're, you know, you're just not anticipating
it. And I think that people are carrying a lot of that around. It's a lot of emotional
baggage that's presenting itself as musculoskeletal pain.
You think that's like a bigger problem in America than we even recognize is just how
much pain we're in. And maybe that's the reason why, a lot of people just kind of have the same day
they had the day before,
and they go home and they drink and they,
just trying to, I guess, manage the pain in some way.
Absolutely.
We need like better coping mechanisms though.
Yeah, absolutely.
I have myself been prone to,
you move to alcohol for the pain relief.
Cause you're like, if I just drink a glass of wine,
I can turn the dial down a little, you know,
but it's not a great way to cope.
And then alcohol ends up creating an inflammation,
you know, a whole inflammatory cascade in your body
that makes you hurt worse.
It makes you really crunchy.
It makes you kind of gluey and stick together.
So then everything's stiff and you hurt even worse.
The foods we're eating, the toxins we're breathing in,
the mold exposure, all the things, right? All
the things contribute to this picture. But because I do believe at the core, a lot of
it's driven with this immunologic component, even if they're not frank autoimmune, there's
this piece where their immune system's getting involved in this pro-inflammatory way. Fat
will do that too. Fat cells can start to shift themselves into a more inflammatory state.
And so now you're moving less, you're adding weight on,
that weight is pro-inflammatory,
that weight, it doesn't just hurt mechanically,
it's actually a little depot of inflammation.
You're wearing around an inflammatory suit, if you will,
and it really feeds forward and gets people into a pickle.
And how do you get out of that, right?
We wanna just make it simple and mechanistic
and say, well, just eat this way,
go keto, go low carb, go carnivore.
I wish it were that simple
because high doses of arachidonic acid in a high,
I love beef, I'm the first person to promote steaks
and red meat, but in some folks
that can be really pro-inflammatory
and it can really drive that mess forward.
So it's like, it's a pickle.
And I don't think our doctors are remotely equipped
to manage it.
I know, I mean, even with all the knowledge I have,
I don't think that it's not a one woman show.
It takes a team.
So to answer your question, long roundabout is yes,
absolutely.
Like whatever players we have to get involved
because you never know what started it
or what's, it could just be a shitty marriage, right?
They could go home.
I saw one of my colleagues, Dr. Alex Vasquez once speaking at a conference and he said,
if you're arguing with your spouse multiple times a day, every time you get into a scuffle
with them, you become immunocompromised for three to four hours and you become inflamed
for three to four hours.
So imagine if you're arguing with your partner or your business associate or you hate your
job or whatever it is, multiple times a day, you're chronically immunocompromised and you're
chronically inflamed.
So it's who knows what's driving it all in an individual.
That's an interesting thing because I wonder when you mentioned that and when that when
that you said his name is Alex Vasquez.
Yeah.
When you mentioned that because you know arguments suck and they can be stressful and a lot of
these things can be stressful but doesn't it also depend on how people their perception
of these situations like how how big of a deal it is to them because again don't get
me wrong no one likes arguing but some people seem to just let it roll right off them after it's done.
And some people seem to hold on to this for days, right?
So what are your thoughts there?
I think you're spot on.
It's interesting.
I think that's how their nervous system is equipped.
And I think, you know, just going back to pain as an example,
I think pain wears out your nervous system.
So you're very easily triggered, right?
You're just quick to, cause you're just so tired.
It's exhausting.
Pain is exhausting.
Stress is exhausting.
Fear is exhausting.
I mean, we just saw the last couple of years
what like chronic fear states can do to people, right?
It's a really exhausting kind of downward spiral.
And so, yeah, I think people become addicted.
I think there's probably neurotransmitters involved
and people get addicted to cortisol,
they get addicted to dopamine
and that's how they get it, right?
And we see this online, any of us with big followings,
we see the people in the comments
who really just are trying to start shit
because that's their dopamine.
And I think it was Dr. Andrew Huberman who said,
don't close the loop, don't respond.
Cause if you respond, you close the loop
and they get their dopamine hit.
If you don't, they won't.
And so I think people, I always say like,
pick your battles because some things
are not worth getting excited about.
I'm a hyper excitable person by nature,
just because I think probably my health growing up overall
and just kind of the environment I grew up in
and a lot of trauma, but yeah, I mean, there's stuff that as I get older, I'm like, I can't believe
I used to get excited about that. Like, it's just not worth it. I have other things I need
to focus my, like, I got to pick my battles if I'm going to get through this.
What are your thoughts on? So I had back pain for many years, almost two decades worth. Oh, wow.
Yeah.
And a lot of that just came from sitting and not moving period.
Really bad diet growing up as well, which we kind of connected with in the gym.
I started hearing people tell me that like it's potentially like a mental thing.
And I'm like, no, it actually is a lot more than mental because I can physically feel
this pain.
But then I started getting into, I forgot his first name, Sarno.
He wrote a book, Healing Back Pain, and reading reviews about people kind of just like using
their mental prowess to kind of heal themselves.
What are your thoughts on stuff like that where it's like, no, this actually, I can
feel this, but then there's people saying, no, I can actually kind of get through this
because I can work on these mental practices.
Well, ultimately our pain registers
and responds in our brain.
So it all comes from the central nervous system, right?
So it really is all in our brains at the end of the day.
Our tissues could be screaming,
but the feeling that we're getting from that
is coming from, is being generated by our brain.
So I do think that mindfulness, awareness, and we have so many studies showing that people
do better when they are being treated for pain, if they're given some kind of community
program, group coaching, different techniques that they can utilize throughout the day to
manage their pain.
They do much, much better than if they're left on their own and told to here do these
rehab exercises.
Like that ain't it.
That is part of it though.
So I think, and then the movement, your, I was just telling my husband last night, mechanoreceptors
override pain receptors.
So movement will always override pain.
So the one of the best ways to get out of pain is to move.
Unfortunately, when you're in like the pickle, I get myself in sometimes is you get so in such a terrible
pain flare that getting out of it is I always tell patients like it's going to get worse
before it gets better for a hot minute.
But eventually if you stay consistent like with anything, it will your nervous system
will start to calm down.
So I think there's ways to tap into the nervous system through movement, through mindfulness,
through therapy,
whatever it may be. There's different forms of therapy that work better than others. But
yeah, I mean, it's all ultimately again, just coming back to getting the nervous system
to chill out to your point of like, how do they even respond to it or take it in? Same
thing, right? It's a calm nervous system.
So it seems like no matter what a healthier person responds better.
So if you're in pain, do your best to start to develop some sort of healthy habits so
that that way no matter what, because like prolo therapy or PRP or stem cells or most
of these things are going to stick a lot better if you are healthier or if you already have
some habits in place.
And if you have some habits in place,
maybe some of this therapy, maybe even your ibuprofen
can like be something that just occasionally bridges a gap
so you can get out on your walks,
but it's not something that you,
it's not your only coping mechanism,
not your only way to deal with your problem.
Yeah, 100%.
I mean, you can't, there's just no version of anything.
It doesn't matter what condition you lay on the table.
There's no version of that that is gonna do better
if you're unhealthy.
There's just no version of this.
Like we as humans need to get our shit together
and it's not negotiable.
I don't want to do all the things that I do every day,
but every day, as we folks do,
we probably have our daily rituals, right?
Like you were telling me you do your rope flow
in the morning, out in the sun, in the grass,
to get your grounding.
Like, how can we stack these habits
because they're really not negotiable.
And if I start having sleep disruption,
sleep's a big piece of it, right?
People are in pain, they don't sleep well.
They don't sleep well, they get more pain.
The other night, after I texted you
about my back squat fiasco,
my sleep score was atrocious because
my deep sleep was interrupted and my HRV was in the toilet because I had terrible pain
all night. So it's like this terrible vicious loop and we can apply these tools to these
patients to help them. And I know there's a lot of different movement modalities out
there and a lot of experts who really do have good techniques and therapeutics
available.
It's whatever the healer is gifted at, right?
I may not be gifted at a soft tissue therapy, but I'm a demon with a needle.
It's whatever that healer brings to the table.
You're a healer.
You're a healer through movement.
You get people to move in different ways and that's healing to them. So those are all helpful, but if your nervous system, your tissues, your brain, if that's
not nutrient dense, if you're not getting enough sun on your skin, if you're not getting
enough daylight and circadian rhythm set, if your sleep is disrupted, if you're in stressful
situations, like all of those factors, I call them all the things, those all have to be
addressed because when one's off and it's like you were saying, you know,
you go back three days, I do something similar. I eat pretty simply. So I know I'm like, what did
I eat the last three days? What have I done? What have I put in my mouth the past three days?
How's my sleep, Ben? I can look at my sleep score. How's my movement, Ben? I can look at
my movement journal and I keep track of all this because it's easy to forget. And I even journal my pain.
I keep an eye on it and it fluctuates with my hormones
and it fluctuates with my cycle.
And it fluctuates if I'm with my husband's cycle.
You guys have cycles.
There's a week where you're a bit off every month,
whether you realize it or not.
There's a week where your wife's like,
what is wrong with you?
I don't know.
I'm just, I can't express it.
You guys usually just get grumpy, but I've noticed with men, men get grumpy and just
kind of, but anyway, whatever it is, I try to look at that and I'm like, okay, I can
usually put my finger.
I'm not going crazy.
I can put my finger on something, but that's because I built these healthy habits that
are not negotiable.
Jared Ranere Would it be possible to dive a little deeper
on what that conversation looks like when you're explaining to somebody that's in pain
and you're like, it's going to get a little bit worse, but then you're going to get out
to the other side. And I'm hoping that somebody's listening is in pain, so maybe we can talk to that
person. But I have somebody in my life that I care about deeply, and I can kind of mention some things that they can do. But the second that something hurts a
little bit more to the area that they're working on, or that's been in pain, they can't sprint,
but they're running away from it as fast as they can move, right? Because they're like,
no, that hurts. I want to do the thing that makes me feel better. And the thing that feels better is like a steroid injection from the doctor.
It's like a heating pad and it's not moving or then shifting around because then that
hurts and then the next position doesn't hurt. But then I'm like, if we get a little bit
of movement in there, if we get some fascia release in there, it's going to hurt. It's
going to feel like you're taking three steps back and maybe a half step
forward. It's really hard because my terminology is probably way off and the
way I present it is really bad.
So again, what does that conversation look like when somebody's in pain and you
have to explain, you're going to probably go through a little bit more pain, but
on the other side of that, you're going to get some relief and you're going to feel better than what you feel right
now.
I think you have to compartmentalize it.
So for myself, for instance, there is a afternoon period where I allow myself, and I've done
this for forever.
I would do this when I was in a busy clinical practice.
I would lay down for 20 minutes.
I give myself a 20 minute, it's like a nap.
Remember in kindergarten when they said, okay, it's nap time. I always loved that. I was like 20 minute, it's like a nap. Remember in kindergarten when they said,
okay, it's nap time.
I always loved that.
I was like, yes, I can have a nap.
I love naps.
So I might be just laying down in my clinic
on a treatment table.
It might be laying down on the floor with my staff,
putting our legs up against the wall
and having a meeting briefly, but I rest.
And so now I lay down on my couch with my dog,
with my PEMF mat and my puppy lays on me.
And we, you know, I have my whole thing.
I give myself time to lay flat.
I might have a heating pad out,
but it gives my spine some time to decompress.
I do some strategic breathing.
I focus on, I might sleep,
I might set my timer to take a brief nap,
but either it doesn't matter.
I lay down and I allow myself to rest.
I also allow myself to tell my husband what's going on,
but we're not allowed to complain in my house.
We don't complain, we don't have victim mentality.
We don't perpetuate the cycle by-
Can you go to the backyard and complain?
If I'm really-
Like, hold on, I need to complain really bad.
I got a real doozy, I gotta go out back.
I need to tell him when it's bad.
Like I need him to know, like I am in a lot of pain today, just so you know, because I get a little testy
probably.
And he knows then to make sure I've taken my thyroid and my hormones and he's feeding
me well because that's important and that I'm getting hydrated.
But all that to say is there's no more excuses outside of that because I have to get movement
in too.
And I have to get my sleep in and I have to prioritize my sleep and I have to make sure that I'm eating enough. A huge driver of pain is people not getting
enough proteins, specifically women. I had a awesome doc, I don't even know if he's alive anymore,
really elderly gentleman years ago when I started in my training and he said,
a hundred percent of the time do not inject your female patients for the first month, just
up their protein. And this was a long time ago.
This was like 20 years ago.
He's like, just get their protein and take up
and you will see phenomenal changes in their overall pain.
And I would say as well, hormones,
even young women often need hormones.
So all that to say is we're allowed to have the pain,
we're allowed to acknowledge the pain.
I journal it, that gives me a chance to sort of,
that's where I complain.
I complain to my notes section on my phone of like, I journal it, that gives me a chance to sort of, that's where I complain. I complain to my notes section on my phone
of like, this is it, right?
I put it down so that it's down, it's out of my head.
And then you still have to do the things every day.
And those are just non-negotiable.
So if somebody wants to work with me,
that's what we're gonna do.
There's no way out of it.
And you can't eat like shit and expect good results.
You can't sleep like shit and expect good results.
You can't have, there's been times when it's like,
you have to leave your crappy job,
or you might wanna consider a divorce
from this terrible marriage you're in,
because that's probably a huge player in this.
For other people, those lifestyle habits, if you will,
it's choices, at the end of the day,
it's choices we're all making, right?
We're choosing to stay in these situations that are not serving us.
That might present as autoimmune disease.
That might present as neuropsychosis.
That might present as, who knows?
It doesn't always present as pain.
So whatever that person sort of Achilles heel is,
the non-negotiables are still non-negotiables
to be a healthy human.
I mean, you got to do all the things to be a healthy human.
What are some things that you've done
that actually have worked and helped you get out of pain?
So hormones, hormone replacement therapy,
I think is huge.
That's a tricky one though.
So you got blood work done and then-
Yep, you get lab testing done.
Although really the best way
to apply hormone replacement therapy
is through doing a symptom evaluation.
And since my whole practice was predominantly pain,
that was my gauge.
So if what we applied, the therapies that we applied,
the titration up of the hormones that we did,
if we got their pain down or their symptomology in check,
then boom, we're onto something.
And so you take, I call it activities of daily living,
that's what we call it in medicine,
but you just take an assessment when a patient walks in the door and they
might say, you know, I've got terrible hip pain. And this, let's just take a theoretical,
you know, 60 year old woman. Maybe she's a grandma. So I'm going to start drilling her.
If I notice her hair is nice and she's got coming in with shoulder pain, I'm like, are
you still able to style your own hair? Or do you go have it done? She's like, Oh yeah,
I can't get my shoulder up to do that. So I write that down.
If it's a someone with knee pain, are you able to get up and down off the floor
easily and play with your kids or your grandkids or your dog or whatever?
Oh no, I can't do that.
My case is like, can I go on my walks with my dogs?
Can I go play with my dogs?
Can I like cut and run with them and play with them and weave and dodge?
So whatever those things are that matter to them, I take note.
And then as I apply whatever we're doing, therapeutics, it might be injections, it might
be hormones, it might be all of the above, then I'm going to gauge and come back to that.
So they might come in and say, it didn't work.
And I'm like, really?
Well, this was a, you know, we put it on a scale of one out of 10.
And with 10 being the worst and one being, you know, negligible.
And we can all do this.
We can all do our own activities of daily living,
whatever it is.
One of mine actually is not to be too much TMI,
but like having a healthy intimacy relationship
with my husband.
And so he's always telling me,
he's like, stop bunging yourself up in the gym
because then we can't do what we wanna do
because then you're complaining, right?
So whatever those activities are that are important to you.
And then we gauge based on response to that.
And that's everything that will tell you everything.
And then of course we run labs to make sure
we're keeping people in safe ranges
and we're not hurting them and causing any harm.
But really it's symptom mitigation
and to see if we get ahead.
Some of the other things are,
I always refer patients out to a strength
and conditioning coach who knows what they're doing.
I usually try to find someone who knows how to train older people because anyone can train
a 25 year old, but it takes a lot of skill to train somebody who's 45 or older.
So if somebody has some skill in that, I make sure that they get hooked up there because
I would rather they truly, I would rather they spend their money in that gym or facility
with that person than spend it on injections because getting strong is gonna deal with a lot
of the mess in the first place.
Making sure they have resources for figuring out how to eat.
If it's not me, we thank God for health coaches
and nutritional therapists
and people who can support them in that way.
Whatever gets them motivated.
Maybe they need community and accountability.
Maybe they just need a meal service, whatever that is.
And then of course, like you were mentioning therapy
or a mental emotional component,
whatever it is to off gas that nervous system
so that they can start to heal.
And it's amazing, it might be sauna.
I've had people have remarkable turn.
I mean, that for me, like being able to get into a box
and cook myself is such a powerful tool for my pain.
So it might be getting a new mattress.
I mean, it's kind of all over the place, but finding a doctor that people are willing to
work with, you know, and it's a group effort.
I'm just the cheerleader.
I'm just trying to sort it out for them.
You mentioned earlier that young women, many of them might need hormones and then also
older women too.
Because some people are very against the use of most people using hormones because many
people believe that you should be able to fix some of these issues through lifestyle
and changing your nutrition, etc.
So when it comes to hormone therapy for women specifically, what are your thoughts there
in terms of who's an actual candidate and who just needs to change some of their lifestyle and nutrition, et cetera?
So here's the thing with hormones. If I've got, let's say we've got a 25 year old woman
who's got PCOS and she's having severe mental, emotional issues and terrible acne, for instance,
that's very common, right? She'll go to her MD and her MD is going to give her a litany of options.
There's usually some IBS there too.
She's going to get put on meds for her gut.
She's going to get probably put on an antidepressant.
She's going to be offered the birth control pill.
It's all a mess.
I'm going to test her hormones and I'm going to give her hormones if she needs it.
The thing about hormones and the way that I believe, and I feel this way about GLP ones
and other peptides as well, is that you use them as a tool to get the person
to feel good enough to do the thing.
So my dad, for instance, my dad is, it's a long story,
but he is morbidly obese and he's been so for a long time
after several head injuries.
Traumatic head injuries will lead you
into hormonal disruption.
So any of you guys that played contact sports
are probably looking at low testosterone levels
at a young age. It's not uncommon, right? It'll present itself in all different kinds of ways that
we can skate around with nutrition, lifestyle, and pharmaceuticals. But really at the end
of the day, you throw a little testosterone on there and things get really, really nice.
And then they feel better so they can go back to the gym and they quit hurting themselves,
et cetera. But in the case of my dad, I actually ended up,
he really needs some testosterone.
It would be just phenomenal for him.
But with that kind of adipose on your body,
testosterone goes rogue.
We don't wanna be putting testosterone or estrogen,
I believe, in bodies that are really inflamed.
And say it goes rogue, what do you think?
It can start to go down the wrong pathway.
So testosterone, for instance, will aromatase into estrogen in the presence of a lot of
belly fat.
Okay.
In women who are really metabolically unsound, a lot of women in middle age, unfortunately,
that, I mean, predominantly most women in middle age, the majority of them are overweight
or obese at this point.
Estrogen can start to go down pathways that are not favorable in the long run for cardiovascular
and cancer risks.
So we want to clean up the metabolic milieu.
In my dad's case, I was like, you know what we're going to do?
We're going to put you on Ozempic straight up.
And it's been about a year and we went very slow and low, but he's, I'm kid you not, for
the first time in a decade, he's going for a walk every day with his puppy.
He's cognizant, he's there.
My daughter yesterday, she was like,
Papa's back, like he actually has conversations with us.
Now he participates.
He doesn't eat himself until he's sick.
That was his only goal at a family meal.
Now he actually eats and conversates and he's moving again.
And then, so he starts asking me,
he's like, what should I do next?
Right, his brain's working,
his ability to make choices is back. And so he's asking me, he's like, what should I do next? Right? His brain's working, his ability to make choices is back.
And so he's starting to ask about, you know, he's starting to be cognizant about the foods
he's choosing to eat instead of the food running his life, things like that.
And so I, it's not my job to judge somebody and say, no, you can't have this until you
do this.
I can, I do make male patients sign a contract for testosterone saying they will do X, Y, and Z
because we don't want it to go down those pathways
where it starts to aromatase.
If a guy's drinking heavily, he's rocking the belly fat
and he's not going to the gym,
testosterone is not a good option, right?
But they need it to get started.
So it's a dance with the patient.
And I think that takes a strong doctor with good boundaries
and it takes a patient who's motivated.
But sometimes we can't get that motivation
where we need it to do all the things.
Cause that's a big list that we've been talking about.
Those are changes that happen in time.
You can't eat the elephant in one bite.
And so I really love hormones when needed.
And that could be any age,
depends on what their labs or their symptoms are.
And then we apply it in a way where we're working
with the patient because we ultimately want compliance,
but we can't always get compliance.
If you've got somebody with really low thyroid
or really low adrenal function,
they can't chop up vegetables and work out.
They feel like complete shit, you know?
And so we give them a leg up.
And this is where I think a lot of these therapies come in.
Unfortunately, a lot of doctors are just giving the leg up
and not doing any of the heavy lifting with the patient,
but we got to do all.
It's got to be all of it.
It's a team effort.
Yeah.
If you're someone that's taking supplements or vitamins
or anything to help move the needle in terms of your health,
how do you know you really need them?
And the reason why I'm asking you how do you know
is because many people don't know their levels of their testosterone, their vitamin D, all
these other labs like their thyroid, and they're taking these supplements to help
them function at peak performance. But that's why we've partnered with Merrick
Health for such a long time now. Because you can get yourself different lab
panels like the Power Project Panel, which is a comprehensive set of labs to
help you figure out what your different levels are.
And when you do figure out what your levels are, you'll be able to work with a patient care coordinator
that will give you suggestions as far as nutrition optimization, supplementation,
or if you're someone who's a candidate and it's necessary, hormonal optimization to help move you in the right direction
so you're not playing guesswork with your body.
Also, if you've already gotten your lab work done but you just want to get a checkup,
we also have a checkup panel that's made so that you can check up and make sure that everything
is moving in the right direction if you've already gotten comprehensive lab work done.
This is something super important that I've done for myself. I've had my mom work with Merrick.
We've all worked with Merrick just to make sure that we're all moving in the right direction and we're not playing
guesswork with our body. Andrew, how can they get it?
Yes, that's over at MerrickHealth.com slash power project and at checkout enter promo code
power project to save 10% off any one of these panels or any lab on the entire website. Links
in the description as well as the podcast show notes.
Yeah. And some of these people are like in compromised positions. Maybe they have or any lab on the entire website. Links in the description as well as the podcast show notes.
Yeah, and some of these people
are like in compromised positions.
Maybe they have compromised hormones.
We're not saying that they literally
cannot do certain things,
but they are less likely to do it consistently.
And that's what we need.
We need consistency.
So someone with low testosterone,
of course they're gonna be potentially motivated
a little less
than the person that has optimal testosterone levels,
but the person that doesn't have any testosterone
can go into a boxing gym and sign up.
They can do these things,
but are they gonna be able to really stick with it?
How good are they gonna feel
when they start to participate in these things?
You know, it might drive their levels down even lower,
and it might just,
I just think it's interesting because it's easy to look at other people and just be like,
oh man, I wish that this person, I wish that this person would like kind of wake up and
start to do these things. But we're all in different places and that's just not reality.
I don't think we're going to see everybody, you know, out on their bike and everybody
out on a jog and everybody out on a walk. It would be great.
And you wanna continue to encourage everybody,
but there's some people that are just simply too compromised.
It's true.
And I think it's, I've just, my entire family's obese
and I'm the one who didn't get there
because I preemptively cut it off at the pass early on.
And I've seen the struggle and I've seen what happens
when they get in the state and what it potentiates.
So there's just more illness
and then there's more pharmaceuticals
and then there's further illness and more pharmaceuticals.
And then they just go down the pathology pathway.
And I'm over here trying to wave the flag,
like I got stuff that'll help.
But even when I apply some of these therapeutics,
I mean, that doesn't mean patients
are gonna be compliant, right?
And so that's where the boundaries come in as a physician.
It's like, if you're not gonna cooperate,
then I'm not gonna keep writing the script.
That's the unfortunate part where we're at,
with I think a lot of medicine today,
is people, they keep writing the Ozempics scripts,
they keep writing the HRT scripts,
and they're not really giving the patient the tools
or monitoring the patient.
But it's not my job to judge how badly somebody wants it, meaning how badly do they want to
get better?
I have to give them the tools to give them a chance to try.
And this whole like, we should make people white knuckle it thing.
I'm just not about, like, I'm just not about white knuckling.
When there's tools that can make it easier, I'm all for pulling out the tools
that are available to them.
I saw a woman in the airport today in the restroom
and she was a tall woman, quite obese
and really shaky on her legs, on a cane.
And she wasn't old enough to really be that shaky.
And who knows?
Who knows if she's had a terrible traumatic accident?
Who knows how she got there?
I always say like, it's not my job to judge
how you came and how you got to my office.
What was that?
Were they beat as a child?
Were they, I mean, who knows what people have endured
to get here?
Maybe they've had chronic illness their whole life
or maybe they have had congenital issues, who knows?
Maybe they had just a whole bad set of genes
from like epigenetic hits from parents and
grandparents who were not healthy or maybe, you know, a lot of grandparents were malnourished
several decades ago and everything's a burden being rich, being poor.
It's impacting.
I mean, I just, I looked at this woman and I thought this woman actually would be a really
phenomenal candidate for like say a GLP one.
I bet it would make a tremendous difference for her
to get the neurologic benefit and to get the weight off.
And I wonder what the, I mean, you know, I see people,
I'm not judging, I'm just looking and thinking,
gosh, this woman looks like somebody
that could really use some help.
It would be very helpful for them
if they had this kind of information, you know,
because she just looked miserable.
And you see people walking around looking so miserable
and you know they don't wanna be miserable.
I don't know how to get them motivated all the time.
I'm not, you know, I'm not Tony Robbins,
but I do know that I can at least make the tools available
and say, here, let's give this a try.
And that's where I'm at with it.
I mean, a long, long answer there is,
I'm just not into white knuckling it.
And I'm certainly not into watching people struggle through low hormones. Low hormones, as you
age, you might as well have one foot in the grave, in my opinion. If you're a male and
your testosterone is low and you're 45 and you're starting to pack on belly weight and
you hit 50 and now you're on a blood pressure med, now you're on a statin, you're looking
at type two diabetes and stroke or dialysis down the line. So like, let's get some testosterone
in there and let's get them on the right path. But they need to be strength training. That's
the thing people don't realize the X the strength training part does more than just put muscle
on the body. It actually triggers all of these metabolic pathways that help glucose uptake.
So we get the glute four receptor to the membrane to uptake the glucose to make
the cell more efficient and to get the mitochondria working well. And it's not just about insulin.
Everybody wants to make it just about insulin resistance. There are multiple ways to get
the Glut4 receptor to the membrane to bring in that glucose to make that cell more efficient
and to give that body energy and strength training kind of knocks off the big ones.
So exercise, actually squeezing the muscle, the act of contraction of the muscle.
It's not just eat the protein, pack the muscle on.
It's phenomenal if people really understood the biochemistry.
So I'm like, this is non-negotiable, you guys.
You have to squeeze your muscles.
Even if I think about Diamond Dallas Page, you probably know him.
Have you ever met him?
Yeah, I know who he is.
I've never met him, no.
He's such a character, but he has that program.
And it's like where you create a tremendous amount of tension in your body.
I think his program is phenomenal.
You create tension and it's the squeezing of the muscle.
DDP yoga.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's the squeezing of the muscle that really gets a lot of these metabolic pathways revved
and gets your mitochondria going, let's go.
So this is where the strength training is like, it's non-negotiable.
Gotta find a way to get them in the gym.
It's usually the coach.
It's usually the strength and conditioning coach that gets them motivated.
They start to feel strong.
It does something for their mental psyche.
They realize they can do this.
I think the help, finding ways to get them to help, whether that's a group program that
they can afford, maybe it's something online, maybe it's a community online, I don't know.
There's so many different options now.
Trying to get somebody to white knuckle it with YouTube videos at home probably isn't
it.
But the internet experts will tell me that it's all about calories in, calories out.
Oh my goodness. I know I'm like 1980 called, they want their busted theory back. But the internet experts will tell me that it's all about calories in calories out.
I know I'm like 1980 called they want their busted theory back.
Yeah.
Why do you think the like Ozempix and that type of prescriptions have been getting such
like a bad rap?
Because it seems like they came out and it was a little like, we're not sure what's going
on.
Even though, like Mark pointed this out recently, like they've been around for a very long time.
It's just now we started utilizing them for in this, what we're talking about right now,
weight loss.
They came out, they got popular, and then all of a sudden we're starting to hear stuff
about like muscle loss and stomach's freezing and this and that.
So like, is that the really the only thing that's like the reason why they've been getting
such like a bad rep lately? Well, you know, they've been in use safely.
The generations of this peptide category started back in the, you know, 2002, I believe was
when Xenotide came out, used safely in diabetics.
Now when they originally discovered it in the nineties, they sort of put it to bed.
It was actually like an orphan drug.
They decided to just forget about it. The GLP-1 agonist, yes, they did discover it in the
Gila lizard venom, but that's not what it's made out of. They found it there.
They also realized at that time though, very early on, that it had neuro regenerative properties.
It just happened that they ran with the type two diabetes.
It just happened that way.
It doesn't mean that it,
it just didn't get studied enough at the time.
So it's been in use for 20 some years,
different generations of this peptide.
And then all of a sudden they start,
they release it in FDA approval for weight loss
and everybody loses their minds.
So you can decide why.
I have many theories, but I just was like,
why are people freaking out?
And so I started researching it and realizing like,
yes, this can be done very wrong.
And cranking somebody out on crazy high doses
and expecting it to be a monotherapy
and expecting anything good to come from that
while they're not prioritizing their, you know,
protecting their muscle.
Monotherapy, what's that mean?
Just a single focus on just one thing?
Yeah, good luck.
There's never one thing.
Yeah, so they just give them the high dose of Azempic
and say, good luck.
And even lifting, you know,
lifting weights is not just one thing to be healthy.
There's not, you know, just walk, you don't just lift,
you do both, right?
Like you- You do all the things. You do both, right? Like you-
You do all the things.
Gotta do a bunch of shit.
All the things.
All the things.
I need a T-shirt.
Yeah.
So yes, you crank them out.
And here's what happens in that scenario.
They get put on incredibly high doses.
They get teared up very quickly.
Their metabolism, it actually does heal the metabolism.
And I've done podcasts about this before on my own show,
but without getting into all of that.
So it's healing, regenerative and anti-inflammatory,
but in these super high doses, just like any other peptide,
but imagine, so insulin's a signaling peptide hormone.
Imagine if you got cranked out on high doses of insulin,
you'd die.
We wouldn't blame the insulin,
we would blame the management and the dosing.
And so this is happening for people
and they get put on these very, very high doses.
They're not taught any of the other things.
They're not doing all the things.
They're not prioritizing protein protection or muscle protection through protein macros
and strength training.
And then now they're in a terrible mess.
So they just went from overweight and inflamed and metabolically busted to really, really thin, like they look
like melting candles, right?
They end up in this terrible position.
Now they've lost all their muscle and the peptide is abruptly withdrawn.
That's just a disaster.
And that's what's happening every single day with people.
They're getting put through the paces that way.
Also people who get gastroparesis,
let's just say the group most at risk for pancreatitis, gastroparesis, and some of these
other big concerns happen to be folks who are diabetic and overweight. So folks sitting
in the obesity category and in the type two diabetes, especially the longer it's gone
on that hyperglycemia state is so devastating to the vagus nerve.
It literally starts to destroy the vagus nerve.
They start to get gastroparesis.
It's usually not diagnosed.
They're told they have GERD or reflux.
They get put on Pepsid.
And really what's happening is their function
of their stomach neurologically
is starting to become very compromised.
Now they're cranked up on a high dose of a peptide
and they're thrown over the edge, right? Things will throw you over the edge. If you hit patients too hard, too fast with
anything, you'll throw them over the edge. You can do this with estrogen. You put a woman on estrogen
who's really low progesterone and you don't compensate for that. She can have a terrible
experience. You can do this with progesterone. You can put somebody on a high dose of progesterone and
not give them the estrogen they need.
And things can get, it's the ratios.
Things get really out of balance.
I've seen this with thyroid hormone.
You put a patient on thyroid hormone,
but you do it too quickly
and you don't support their adrenal system.
They end up bonking and hitting a wall.
So there's a way to do this elegantly.
And I think it's, you know,
all of those things need to be taken into consideration.
It's not just a one-shot wonder.
So you actually mentioned a few times
how you typically have these patients do lower dose.
So what does lower dose look like?
Cause you know, many people are interested
in hopping on some of this
and using some of this for their weight loss.
If they go to a typical doctor
and a doctor prescribes them X,
how do they know if it's too much?
It depends on the patient because sometimes,
like in the case of my father,
I think folks who are more metabolically compromised
and who are more overweight
tend to need a higher dose generally.
I'm shocked at how we have slowly titrated my dad up,
but even at these, he's not at the max dose by any means,
but even at these higher doses,
he still hasn't complained once of a side effect.
So my strategy is it's individualized, personalized dosing.
And I cannot give you a straight answer on like,
here's the algorithm because there isn't one.
It's applying the dosage that is tolerable to the patient,
titrating them up until we reach the goals
and their short-term and long-term goals
for almost everybody.
Let's give an example for myself.
My short-term goal was I wanted improved cognition.
I wanted my immune system to calm down.
I wanted my pain to go down.
And I did have about 15 pounds to lose that had packed on while I was in terrible pain.
My long-term goals are to keep that weight down, but also more importantly, just to keep
the benefits of the peptide up.
So I did get all of those benefits
and I wanna maintain them for the long run.
We titrate them up and we keep them just shy of symptoms.
We don't want any side effects.
We don't want any side effects at all.
We don't need any side effects.
A little bit, sometimes we'll see with a little bit of a,
just they might get a little burpy.
When I start to see that,
if they start complaining of it too much, we go back down.
So here's the caveat.
Those small doses don't work if they're not doing everything else.
They just don't, they don't work.
And I've seen in the last year,
I've watched a few patients just chew right through it.
So they keep drinking, they keep eating the junk.
And now they're like, I need a higher dose.
I need a higher dose. I need a higher dose.
I'm like, no, you don't.
You need to get your shit together
because you are getting yourself to a higher place.
And do you guys know who Dr. Ben Bickman is?
He's great.
You've had him on the show.
Oh, I love him.
He's been talking recently
and he's making a very important point,
which I've read about,
is that GLP-1s can actually induce adipose hyperplasia. So when you're
young, you are building fat cells. When you hit a certain age, you stop making fat cells
and you start filling your fat cells. And it's the hyper filled fat cells that become
really inflamed and they become insulin resistant. And you really get into a pickle then that
can be, that's kind of the difficulty that people have a hard time coming out of a lot of mitochondrial
compromise and then those fat cells aren't working so well anymore and they're really
messing up your immune system and so on.
That's where a lot of Americans are.
The devastating part about childhood obesity is they're making fat cells and they're filling
them simultaneously and those kids are really looking at a lifetime of struggle.
Like that's a very challenging position versus a child that was raised and ended up lean or I'm sorry, was lean
as a child. And even if they got heavier as an adult, they have a much better chance of losing
that and keeping it off. The obese child is sitting there with, you know, lots of fat cells
and they're getting filled up. Anyway, back to the GLP-1, he's
talking about on some podcasts how GLP-1s can create adipocyte hyperplasia. What that
means is your stem cells are making more fat cells. Those fat cells are insulin sensitive.
It takes the load off of the busted fat cells that are no longer working.
Does that make sense?
So you end up with new fat cells, little baby fat cells.
They're highly insulin sensitive.
And it's speculated that this is part of the way
that it's working to help regulate
insulin resistance in people.
I think that that's not a terrible thing.
It's kind of like bringing on a new, you know,
a new troop to relieve the exhausted troop
during a war, if you will.
But if that person eats through the GLP-1, now they're just going to fill those fat cells
up and they've lost all their muscle.
So that's a really, really bad place to be.
And I think part of that is the dosing and management.
But I think a part of that is also the patient compliance and patients thinking, oh, I can
just take Ozempic forever because you can't at a certain point,
you will chew through it.
And I'm talking to compounding pharmacists
who are letting me know that like patients
are wanting to go above the maximum dose.
It's not working anymore.
After a couple of years on it, they're like,
can I take more?
Can I take more?
I'm starting to get hungry again.
They're starting to go back to their old ways
and now they're on this super high dose.
Is there anything by the way that you're noticing of those people who have, let's say
they're not following the protocol, right?
They're on a super high dose.
They're still finding that they need more.
Is there anything you're noticing with those patients?
Cause like at that point you would assume that maybe it's a good idea to back off for
a little bit and try to, but what do you notice?
I don't have any patients in that category.
So I treat people like yourselves. So maybe,
you know, somebody has some cardiovascular family history and they want to do a low dose
GLP-1 to mitigate their cardiovascular health or to, you know, we have good studies on that.
Or maybe they want to use it for immune function. I just had a colleague, a doctor friend who
she was told she was being given a micro dose. It was just the standard starting dose and it was way too high for her.
She's very well-muscled and very fit.
So we consulted and I got her on a much lower dose and that was contingent on what she could
tolerate.
Anyway, she did it for a round and then she went off of it and then she texted me and
the whole time she was on it, she said it wasn't doing anything because it's not a weight
loss strategy, what I'm talking about here. This is not necessarily a weight loss on it, she said it wasn't doing anything. Cause it's not a weight loss strategy,
what I'm talking about here.
This is not necessarily a weight loss strategy.
And she said, it didn't work.
I noticed nothing.
And then she sends me a text about a month
after being off of it.
And she said, oh my gosh, I had no idea how much pain
I was in and how well it was mitigating my pain.
And I said, yeah, isn't that wild?
And she's like, holy smokes, I hurt so bad.
I just ordered some more.
And she didn't lose weight.
It was just, when she was on it, she was in less pain.
I think when you are at a set weight,
I call it your fighting weight.
You know, like this is my fighting weight.
Like this is it.
I could crank the GLP-1 and probably get into side effects
and lose more weight, but I don't really want to.
I'd rather do what I need to do to reconstitute things.
I want to change my body.
It's not a body composition tool.
That's what other things are for.
There's other peptides,
but also that's what strength training's for, right?
When we want to change our physique.
It just makes you a smaller version of what you are.
And so for her, she really didn't,
pushing past her fighting weight was gonna require,
I was like, that's not where I consult.
Like you need a different girl for that.
Call someone else, cause I'm not that girl.
Like I'm not here to tell you to crank the dose
until you get into nausea and you don't wanna eat.
And then you're gonna force weight loss
through crushing your appetite.
That's not what I'm talking about.
So I don't really get into that zone at all.
And I think that what I have noticed is
just like any hormone, we take a holiday,
we go off of it so the receptors can reset
and become sensitized again.
And then it's really important
that the person using the peptide,
any peptide or any hormone for that matter,
get their lifestyle factors in order,
because then they can come back
and they can usually tolerate and have good impacts
with a much lower dose.
Does it make sense?
Like it's just responsible.
Like be responsible.
This isn't just a forever get out of jail free tool.
Any tool that we, same thing with hormones.
My patients who were really metabolically compromised
just needed higher and higher doses of hormones.
I've seen that with folks with blood pressure medications, with antidepressants, they need higher and higher doses of hormones. I've seen that with folks with blood pressure medications,
with antidepressants, they need higher and higher doses
because their lifestyle is atrocious
and it's not working anymore.
I'm like, well, it's not working
because you're not doing the work.
So again, it's a dance with the patient.
I think a lot of people deal with
what's called food noise, you know,
just like they're super hungry,
maybe they're super hungry, they're, they're, maybe
they're stressed from the day and they're kind of end up with this, you know, stress,
stress eating and eating their feelings and so on. And those things tend to be habits
that tend to be like in a loop, right? Where they kind of continue to do. And it seems
like these medications can help lower some of that noise and make things maybe just seem
a little more clear. I've heard some people say,
oh my God, I didn't even realize
how much I thought about food.
That's like, I think that's pretty cool
because there's a lot of people that are suffering
that are really stuck.
I think it's all noise actually.
What we're seeing is it's kind of all noise.
So I've had people report back
that they were no longer online shopping the way
that they were. I noticed that I get myself into like a cortisol loop. I'll get upset
over something and then I will feed forward to get myself more upset. And it becomes sort
of a chasing the cortisol dragon, if you will.
Yeah. What does someone do when they feel sad? They play a sad song.
Right.
That's like, well, why wouldn't you play a happy song?
It breaks the loop though.
I don't find myself getting caught up in,
like again, going back to the pick your battles,
I don't find myself getting myself caught into the battle.
I'm just like, meh.
Somebody will say something horrible
that's triggering online.
And normally I let that stuff slide,
but once in a while they'll say the thing that gets ya.
And I'm like, eh, not today Satan, I'm not participating.
I noticed for myself, I quit over packing.
I used to pack in preparation for everything and I would have a tremendous set of nerves
if I didn't have everything I needed.
Even though I'm traveling within the US and I could buy anything I needed, I'm still having
a panic attack.
It's a day trip.
I need, yeah.
Now I'm like, I literally just,
one of my goals was to get myself into a carry-on only,
no matter how long the trip was.
And I have nailed it every single time.
It's been phenomenal.
I've had people tell me they're no longer doom scrolling
on social media, completely broke their social media
addiction, not to mention, and they're studying this,
alcohol cessation, smoking cessation, opioid cessation,
just that noise and whatever that person's noise is, right?
For me, it's not food,
but I definitely have my own noises
and things that I get myself looped into
and people just,
it just is doing something to the dopamine pathways
and it's not making them flat,
although I do think you can dose people into flatness
because I'm seeing a movement right now online of women complaining about further sexual
dysfunction.
So they are losing their libidoes.
Unfortunately, a lot of women as they age lose their libidoes anyway.
And I do think this is where utilizing these peptides in conjunction with other peptides
and hormone replacement therapy is really important.
It's a whole orchestra.
Again, it's not monotherapy.
We wanna make sure their thyroid's supported,
their adrenals are supported, their ovarian system is,
those hormones are being made up for,
but we don't wanna dose anyone into flatness.
And if food is a really important part of your life
and your culture and your way of communicating
and food is how you visit with people
and it's how you
love people or show your love. I can imagine that taking too high a dose of these and just
cutting out your desire to eat might ruin that for you and that would take joy away.
So we don't want to dose anyone into flatness and we don't want to dose anyone into low
libido or any of those things. But again, and not everyone, this is not for everyone.
Not everyone tolerates this peptide, but for those who do, again,
keeping the other lifestyle factors in check
really does allow us to keep the dosage as low as possible
and still have success.
And I mean, I don't want to speak for everyone,
but I am curious.
Is the intent to use this to help you get towards your goal?
And then when you're there and you're there for a while to
titrate off of it or do some people just perpetually stay on a low dose?
I tend to cycle it. So just like I do everything. I'm not going off my hormones. I'm never going off any of my hormones
Not until I die. I have no plans
I'm not going off my thyroid
I'm not going off my estrogen or testosterone and I'm not going off this peptide because
when I do, my pain comes roaring back.
I've seen this time and time again and how long we can cycle off of it is totally individualized.
So some people can go a couple of weeks.
Some people can go a couple of months.
I've been lucky enough to have, you know, I have a decent size following.
It's not as big as your guys, but there's a lot of people who message me
and they have been sharing so much information with me
about how they're utilizing it.
And there's people messaging me telling me,
they quit like a smoking habit of 40 years,
they quit and maybe they space out the dosage.
So maybe they don't dose as frequently
or maybe some people will go on and off.
They might do just like testosterone.
And a younger man, if a younger man comes to me
and he's had, you know, maybe he's a hockey player
or ex football player, and he's had a lot of head injuries,
he's got very low T, we have to replace that testosterone.
But we're gonna do it in cycles.
We're gonna do it a couple times a year.
We're not just gonna do it perpetually.
So it depends on the patient.
But I think that the best, again,
just to keep those receptors sensitized,
I don't think it's an all the time thing.
I do think that some folks who've really compromised
their metabolism over the years or had it,
maybe they, you know, we have studies showing
that epigenetic changes happen over generations.
And so if your parents were obese and diabetic,
your chances of dealing with obesity and diabetes
significantly increased because these metabolically compromised mothers, if they have severe insulin resistance
during pregnancy, these babies are literally swimming in a massive amount of insulin inside
the placenta.
And so these kids are coming out just sort of flagged for difficulty throughout life.
And so I do think that there might be a place where people are on these all the time forever.
And it's not my job to judge that
as long as they're trying to do their best along the way.
And there's other folks out there like yourself.
I mean, I know I've followed you and your brothers
for a long time and like you've overcome, you know,
and familial obesity really, you know,
and you've kind of figured out what that ticket is.
My family's fat. You've figured out what that ticket is. My family's fat.
You've figured out what that ticket is for you.
And so whatever that is for you.
And so it kind of depends on the person and it depends on, again, what are our short-term
and long-term goals?
Because if we're using it to mitigate the immune system, probably going to cycle it
for life.
Also, they need to do all the other things to mitigate their immune system, which is
their work.
That's the work they have to do.
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On this podcast, it's just a rule of thumb,
definitely not written in stone, but when it comes to protein intake, we have the rule of thumb,
one gram per pound of body weight. If somebody is on a GLP-1 agonist, do they have to approach
protein intake differently? Because there's a lot of stuff going on, but then also to maintain the
muscle like you mentioned, do they have to do something different
with their protein intake?
I think that would be the same rule.
If they're dosed high enough that they're getting appetite,
I like to say appetite control versus suppression.
I never wanna take anyone into suppression.
I just wanna give them the onus of control back.
I think that's what fasting does.
Yeah.
It gives you really good control,
where you can learn like, oh, it's okay for me to be hungry
for five, six, seven hours.
It's not that big a deal.
Hunger's normal.
And it can get you kind of back in tune with that.
Yeah, I totally agree.
And I think that one of the ways that this helps
is it induces neuroplasticity.
And so if they're doing the lifestyle changes,
maybe the thought of fasting
is just like, what?
I mean, I could never do that, right?
You probably got patients or clients that say that
this gives them the opportunity to experience that.
And then the neuroplasticity is actually wiring
new pathways while they're on it.
They're having new pathways wired.
How amazing is it if they're doing all the things,
they're learning all the new lifestyle habits,
they're hard wiring that in. So it's a really cool window of opportunity if people take
advantage of it to drill in and wire in new lifestyle habits for the rest of their life,
which I think is super cool. I interestingly, which totally off topic, I dealt with anorexia
my whole life until I found strength training when I was 40. And I will tell you though, that taught me how to fast.
It gave me a tremendous amount of appetite control.
I trained myself to have appetite control.
That was part of that.
So I know what that feels like,
and that's why I don't get too hung up on food.
But yeah, I think that, I'm sorry, where was I?
So we were just talking about the protein intake.
Oh, the protein intake.
So you only have, if you give yourself some appetite suppression or you get yourself there,
the doctor prescribes you to a place where your appetite is suppressed, you only have
so much room in that bag that's your stomach.
So you have to start with protein first.
But isn't that what we tell people anyway?
Don't we tell them to start with protein first?
Like eat the protein on your plate first before you eat all the carbs and fill your belly
up with carbohydrates. So it's the same on your plate first before you eat all the carbs and fill your belly up with carbohydrates.
So it's the same rules, same, same,
just eat the protein first and make sure you can't,
I had a health coach say this,
she's had a really phenomenal personal experience
with GLP-1s and she now coaches people on this.
She health coaches them to make sure they maintain
the good healthy habits and she's like,
these people get in a habit of eating all their calories at night. That's how they've always been,
right? They kind of, oddly, I've seen this with people who deal with obesity. They starve themselves
all day and then they just gorge at night and that's their nightly ritual. And she said,
they try to do that with the protein. So they wait all day instead of getting it in incrementally
and then they try to hit their macros
at nine o'clock at night.
Like that's not gonna work.
You cannot eat a bunch and go lay down.
You're gonna get gird.
So I think just making sure that you prioritize it,
you make sure your eating window is kind of, you know,
set in stone and you stick to it.
Doc, I'm kind of curious about this.
You know, when I'm thinking about, again,
everyone's different, everyone's gonna use this
for a certain period of time.
But what did the financials on some of this
look like for people?
Just because like, and I know it depends on insurance,
so that's just such a general question.
But I think about, you know,
what someone's gonna need financially
to be able to manage obviously the lifestyle changes
Then some of these different drugs that are probably something that they really need
What are the options for people that aren't that well off?
That's a great question and I get that asked all the time. Here's where we're at
For one if we're doing really small doses now, this is think, what got me in trouble and got me deplatformed.
So, this does not go on social media, but I use compounded.
I've always used compounded medications in my practice.
And I didn't realize that doctors weren't using compounded medications.
That's just kind of how I was raised up in medicine was that we have compounded medications
available for people who need different dosages than are available from the brand name.
And so, it allows us personalized dosing
of all medications that we can have.
Not all medications can be compounded,
but what we can, we can do more personalized dosing.
The dosing strategies I'm using are really reserved
for those who are metabolically sound
and the dosages are very low and it equates to,
if we're talking some acclutide, we're talking $30 a month.
And potentially being able to get off
of a lot of other medications that they're paying for.
The HRT, I know that that can get spendy
and I know that I've been called elitist
and all kinds of names for talking about it,
but there are so many telemedicine companies out there now
available for men and women where you can get peptides
and hormones for really reasonable pricing,
or you pay a reasonable monthly fee.
I realize that's not available to everyone,
but I can't solve all the world's problems.
But I just think there's innovative ways
and I'm seeing all kinds of,
I get contacted by all these companies
and so many cool startups are coming around from,
I just saw a group of tech guys
who had their own health issues
and they kind of figured it out for themselves
and then now they wanna make it mass available
at a reasonable price point.
So you're looking at a couple hundred bucks a month,
give or take, depending on what all you need,
but it's not cheap for sure.
Yeah.
But, and it's not available to everyone, but I do think now I will say there's some folks
like I mentioned who may need higher, more standardized dosing and that's their micro
dose.
That's their low personalized dose and their insurance may be covering the pen.
And now we're starting to see studies come out showing efficacy and safety with
cardiovascular disease. Like the select study that came out last year was really phenomenal.
20% reduction in major cardiovascular events in overweight and obese middle-aged people.
These people did not have type two, although I would argue they were probably headed there,
but they, for the case of the study, were obese. They, then the argument came out,
well, wouldn't losing weight lead
to better cardiovascular outcomes?
And so that's what everyone argued
after the study was done and published.
They reanalyzed the data and looked at it
and realized that the benefits to the cardiovascular system
were independent of weight loss.
And that has allowed, now, Medicare,
it was approved for Medicare for cardiovascular
disease, although most doctors don't know that and it's like pulling teeth to get doctors
to prescribe it. So there's ways, there's avenues. And I think the more that we get
these good studies published and we're starting to see after we're having studies being done
on Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. And I think the more that those drop, the more insurance
coverage we're going to see and the more access we'll see for different conditions. So it's a bit of
a weave and dodge. I think for me, it's always about empowering the patient. If I can empower
people through education, I have a course where I do that because I want them to have
all the knowledge so they can come armed to their doctor's visits and have an educated
conversation. This is the way I've always taught my patients was like, here's the information, here's the studies, now go talk
to your PCP. Like you have to go be your best own best patient advocate. And the only way we
can do that is through education. So I'm grateful for you guys having me on to talk about it,
because I think there's just opportunities here or potential benefits that are being
opportunities here or potential benefits that are being overshadowed with the click baity headlines and the obesity bias and just that whole nonsense argument.
Even in the functional medicine community of just like hating on Ozempic, I'm over here
saying, whoa, there's piles.
I've got a 35 page document of all the studies I pulled up in the last year showing really
incredible potential and a whole variety of categories throughout the body
that there's some potential here.
This peptide might be,
I think it's one of the most exciting things
I've seen in medicine, honestly, since I've been in medicine.
What would you say are like,
because you've probably heard it all at this point,
but what are some like the top two reasons
why the functional medicine side of things,
things people should stay away from Zempic? probably heard at all at this point, but what are some like the top two reasons why the functional medicine side of things
thinks people should stay away from Ozempic?
Well, I think a lot of the online influencer
functional medicine docs have something to tell you.
Okay, so their thing instead of the,
okay, that makes sense.
I see that a lot.
Before Ozempic, it was hating on hormones
because you don't need hormones.
Let me sell you my herbal proprietary blend that'll
balance your hormones naturally. You know, I see a lot of this coming out of the functional medicine
community and it's something I've had a beef with for decades. And I'm a chiropractor too,
as well as a naturopathic physician in the state of Oregon. We're primary care physicians, you know,
board certified, licensed, and we can prescribe. And this has been like the age old thing with
my chiropractor buddies.
They're like, I'm gonna support someone's adrenal glands
and thyroid naturally.
And I'm like, I'm gonna prescribe thyroid hormone
because it gets the job done faster and it's a lot cheaper.
So, you know, it's always that argument.
I think the other reason is,
I think there's a lot of obesity bias.
I don't know what it is.
It's been really interesting to be on the receiving end
of this and to have come out and continually try
to talk about this because the more people give me shit,
the more I feel like not backing down
and the more I feel like bringing it.
And it's been wild watching it.
It really reminds me of like 2020 days,
like what was going on in 2020, you know,
people just really having a strong firm,
they all sound like, I don't know if
they're bots or what, but there's like a lot of parroting happening of just the same sentences
coming out of people's mouths.
And it doesn't matter if you present them data or not, they'll argue it.
And you're talking about like just eat less, just work out.
Eat less and move more.
It's like white knuckle it, eat less and move more, white knuckle it.
And I'm over here saying, okay, but I'm not even trying to have a conversation
around obesity, I'm trying to talk about
all these other potential benefits.
And yet this is where everybody lands
and really wants to dig in and dig their heels in.
So I don't know.
The docs I know who can prescribe it and who are,
think it's phenomenal.
And none of them are having problems with side effects
and none of them are having problems with gastroparesis
or pancreatitis.
And yet that's all you hear about in the media and on the clickbaity titles
and on the videos that the health influencers are making. So I think it's personal bias
for some reason. They, I don't know if it's obesity bias or it's like they think people
are lazy or the way to get over obesity is just this really like dogmatic, you know, just this really narrow,
it's such a complicated conversation and they're over here like, just eat less and move more.
So I don't know, I can't speak for them. I'm just here thinking, I got a patient in front of me,
I got all these tools available to me, I'm going to use them.
Yeah, these new drugs are, they're wild and if they can be helpful, it seems like we're
in a pretty compromised spot.
So maybe, maybe we need them.
Yeah, right?
I know.
Look at the world around us.
Like it's not going in the right direction.
It's crazy.
I saw the other day there's a drug that is supposed to mimic you running a 10 K.
Oh my goodness.
I was like, I don't know exactly like in what way. It was like, I think it was in New York Times.
I think our New York Post is where it was.
I don't know exactly what it's supposed to mimic, but there are a lot of...
Probably mTOR, probably like...
There's a lot of peptides that are mimicking like, or they're helping with like mitochondrial
function.
They are assisting you with... Like L-A-K-E.
There you go, I guess that's what it is.
Wouldn't it be cool though if folks like us
used those to optimize?
So that's what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about longevity and optimization.
Because in medicine right now-
Some of it sounds crazy, but if you, you know,
Dr. Peter Itea, who's one of the most sought after people
in the world, was using a rapamycin for years,
which is a drug that someone would take to allow
for like a liver or kidney transfer or heart transfer,
which just sounds crazy.
Like, why would you take this drug?
But it did have, at least at the time,
he felt it had some impact and effects on,
or he thought it was gonna have good health outcomes.
Who knows if it did or not, but it's interesting.
It has incredible longevity benefits.
But we've got, I think, to kind of two conversations,
we've got this, the medical model of the most,
unfortunately, most Americans are falling
into the path, heavy pathology model.
I'm over here talking about those of us
who've gotten to our age and we're like,
we just need a little tinkering.
We're doing really well, but we still have medical needs.
We still have autoimmune disease.
We still have pain.
We still have issues happening.
We still have blood sugar imbalances.
I know people with six pack abs and the most beautiful physiques who have pretty crazy blood
sugar imbalances as they age.
Because I heard you say it years ago.
You said you might as well just expect that you're going to become insulin resistant as
you age. So you might as well do something about it now, right?
Like figure out how to fast.
Train and everything.
Yeah, so that's the conversation.
And like there's needs here too,
but this is a different application of all of those things.
All the peptides and hormones and the rapamycin
and the longevity meds,
like that's an entirely different way of applying things
than the medical pathology model.
And unfortunately, most people fall into this model
and everybody wants to talk about that, which I understand,
but it's a different conversation.
I think that's what's so confusing about just health
and nutrition in general, because what you advise
for one person, it has to be different for another.
And I think we're starting to see that more and more
in the compounding pharmacies and things like that.
I think they're super important.
The TRT clinics and all this stuff,
I think to help people optimize and try to figure out
exactly what's gonna be right for them.
I think it's really important.
I think Gary Brekka has shed some light
on some of these situations where he's saying,
and who knows who's correct and whatever,
but he has a decent, I mean, it just sounds like
it makes sense that we're all a little different.
So these people over here,
maybe they methylate B vitamins better,
and maybe these other people have trouble,
and maybe that's why these people have trouble sleeping,
and X, Y, and Z.
Yeah, there's a lot of factors.
There's a lot to it.
It's social media wants to make it polarized,
dogmatic, simple black and white.
And it's just not most of the best medicine
is in the gray zone.
Why was your IG banned?
And then you tried to make another one
and that one got banned for a second there too,
I think, right?
I don't know.
I don't know.
You're a rebel.
Well, I got deplatformed in 2021.
And right after I was on RFK's podcast,
discussing how my belief that obesity
and metabolic dysfunction was really driving the pandemic.
And then my Instagram went down.
So that was interesting.
I got it back.
It lived in perpetual shadow ban.
I thought I was, I mean, for years,
I thought I was clear,
started talking about this conversation
and then it went down again.
Couple interesting things around that,
timing wise is one of the big pharma companies
who makes one of these GLP ones released a,
well, had been going after the compounding
pharmacy cease and desist letters and was really kind of on a rampage because they released
a vial version of one of their GLP-1s and that, you know, the, obviously the compounding
pharmacies conflict with that. And so I don't know what all was going on because I don't
get into any of that, but somehow I think I got caught in the crosshairs of it all.
So I don't know. And then I
got it back and I still don't know. I don't know what I did wrong. So I don't know what I can and
can't say. I don't know. I really have no idea. But yeah, I started a second one a few days later
and it grew to 30, or I'm sorry, in 36 hours, it grew to about 20,000 followers and I woke up and it was gone. What?
Yeah, so I, and then I've had a hit on my YouTube
since then, I've had my Facebook ads account taken away,
but I dealt with a lot of this in 2021.
I had some, I had my merchant services taken down.
How dare you help people lose weight.
I've had all kinds of crazy things happen
over the past few years.
So I think I might be on a list.
I don't know.
I think I'm on someone's shit list. Meta, you're on the meta shit list. I think it might be beyond
that though. Your name's at the top. I think it might be bigger than that. I don't know. I
really am trying to, I feel strongly, I think about Gen X, right? I'm a Gen Xer. We're the
last generation that lived and thrived without technology.
The new generation coming up desperately needs our advising and we are just a
dumpster fire of health in general. Like Gen X is just a mess. We were the first generation to get hit with fake fats. We were the first generation to get hit with a lot of, you know, childhood
vaccines. We, not as much as my daughter's generation, but we just really got, you know,
a lot of toxicity came out in the world during that period
and we were hit with flame retardants everywhere.
I mean, it's just a lot going on with our generation
and I'm just trying to help us all survive
the zombie apocalypse so that we can be healthy,
strong advisors to the next generation
that's gonna be running our country.
Like we are needed and we are needed to be healthy.
And the middle-aged cohort is on the struggle bus.
And I'm just trying to, I'm trying to save Gen X.
And I think GLP-1s and hormones and strength training.
I'll drive it.
What are all the things?
Can you give us the rundown of all the things?
You mentioned a lot of stuff, but.
Yeah, so the basics that I think every human has to master
is go to bed on time like a grownup.
When my dog goes to bed, it's time to go to bed.
So I like your dark glasses for getting hit
with all these lights.
But dogs are sleeping all the time.
Like if I went to bed when my dog went to bed,
I'd be sleeping all day.
My dog knows, my puppy knows.
He goes to bed.
He looks at me and he leaves the room and I'm like,
where is he?
He's curled up on the bed.
It's time to go to bed.
Go to bed like a grownup.
Don't stay up all night, doom scrolling
and staring at your blue light television.
Move, right?
Every single day, sweat every single day.
Build your muscle and prioritize it.
Intimacy is so important.
Like just touch and that might just be your pet and your dog
or maybe you go work out in the gym.
And it, you know, like, I think for men,
especially like having some kind of physicality
with other men is really important.
Like, I don't know, boxing.
Rolling around with other men?
No, but you know what I mean?
Like it stokes the, I've been telling my patients this
for decades. You guys were so mature
for two seconds there.
Dudes, well, anybody, but like,
it helps stoke the testosterone, right?
And for women, it's talking and being in community
and like actually crafting and doing things with your hands
and that elevates your oxytocin,
which makes your hormones better.
Some kind of mindfulness and meditation
or purposeful practice of,
I don't know if that's religion or what,
but people who have religion in their lives and purpose live
a lot longer and are a lot healthier. So whatever that means, spirituality, I guess. And then
making sure that we eat nutrient dense foods and we get enough of it. I hate to, women
get really stressed out. Like we're already stressed out in middle age and then to be
like, you need to eat a pound of protein or a gram of protein per pound of body weight.
Like that's super stressful, especially for people who have got compromised,
really difficult for older women and men
who have compromised digestion or dentition.
Like it's just not reasonable.
So just eat like a human being and eat foods
that look the way God or the farm brought them to you.
Just eat real food and enough of it
and don't eat garbage that comes out of a package and
get outside.
You have to get sunlight on your body and you have to get light in your eyes and that
is what it is.
So I really say morning, noon and afternoon, evening, that's three different types of light.
And it's really important that your eyeballs see all three of them.
That will help you sleep like an adult, right? So, and then be cognizant of your stress because it will destroy
you. Stress will destroy your metabolism. It will destroy your gains in the gym. It will
destroy your relationship. It will chew up your brain. And I think we all are very, very stressed
out as a society. And it's, I feel like it's a little bit intentional at this point for people.
So again, we have to pick our battles and turn off the fricking TV and get off the internet.
Go chop down a tree like your husband.
My husband.
Do some real man shit.
My husband, I will just say.
He's a badass.
He's telling me about driving all this heavy equipment and welding and shit.
I'm like, I don't know how to do any of this.
I'm out of here.
He's just such a, but you know what?
He's such a boy.
Like when he comes in at the end of the day
and he's all dirty and he's in his coveralls
and he smells like, there's like a faint aroma
of diesel smell on him all the time.
And he comes in and he's filthy and he eats a whole bunch.
He doesn't talk at all.
He just shovels it in and then he goes in,
he's such a farmer.
He goes and takes a shower and he comes out
and he's like the sweetest boy.
He's like the sweetest man.
And if he doesn't get that,
then he's just a little Tasmanian devil.
So I really, like he has taught me and then he sleeps.
He's like 9.30, we're going to bed, boom.
And then he wakes up and then he's up
and he's out in the light on the farm.
And it's made me realize that like,
this is how all humans should be.
Like we have to wear ourselves out during the day
if we want to sleep at night.
So it's not just about going to the gym.
It's like, you've got to off gas,
like your puppies or your kids,
like we all have to off gas and so do us adults.
And so it, you know,
really figuring out how to stoke your fire.
And so that you come home at the end of the day,
you take that shower and you feel like, ah, you know,
I worked hard today and now I can sleep well.
I have a quick question.
I usually encourage some of the people I work with
to get Dexascan so they can also get a check
on their visceral fat.
Yes.
Do the GLP ones, do they have an extra effect
on the fat around the organs or is there anything they do?
Yes.
So specifically, trisepatite has been shown
to be more effective for fatty liver and for visceral fat.
But yes, they do.
They start to really soften the bellies down.
And I am so with you.
I've had so many patients where I'm trying to tell them
that their labs are trending towards insulin resistance.
Like maybe there's no Frank markers there
that are screaming high, but I'm like,
this whole package adds up.
It's like a choose your own detective novel.
You got to put it all together.
I'm like, all of these markers together are very suggestive.
And then we look at your body, I can just look at them,
right, like we've got the protuberant belly.
I can tell there's a softness to the tissues.
There's not a lot of lean mass.
And they're like, no, no, no, I'm fine.
I'm like, go get a DEXA scan
and we can talk about if you're fine.
I'm not gonna say anything.
And then they get the DEXA scan
and they see it for themselves.
And I just tell them, oh, it's for your visceral fat,
but it's for so much more, right?
So I'm like, just go get the DEXA scan.
And they come back and they're like,
oh my God, what do I need to do?
And suddenly compliance is right there.
So yes, I think GLP ones are awesome.
And actually I just had a good friend share his DEXA scan
with me and he was in utter shock of what it's,
cause he goes to the gym every day
and he does those fast ppaced, lightweight classes and he wears
himself out.
And I was like, so he does his Daxa.
And I was like, yeah, do the Daxa.
It was at the gym.
He said, should I do it?
I said, yeah, fuck yeah.
So he does it.
And I looked at it and I said, okay, this is what you need to do.
This would be a million times easier if you went on a low dose of GLP-1.
Like it just makes everything that much easier.
What did he see with himself that was so shocking?
Just high visceral fat, low lean mass,
high percentage of body fat overall,
just not what he was expecting.
And you know, it's a really good gauge objectively
for people to see where they're at.
And also for me, you know, I am pretty hard on myself.
Just, I grew up in Southern California,
like you're just, I don't know.
It's like I have body dysmorphia.
And I get a Dexa and I'm like, oh, I'm doing pretty good.
You know, I'm doing a lot better than I thought I was.
So I think there's utility on both sides.
It just really gives you a nice objective measurement.
I think they're great.
They are x-rays, I will say though.
So people should probably not be irradiating themselves
as much as they are.
I see people getting Dexa every month or every three months.
And I'm like, you're getting hit with radiation.
It may not be a lot, but it's cumulative.
So just be aware of that.
Like in the gym culture,
there's this movement towards like lots of Dexa scans
to really motivate their clients.
And I'm like, maybe-
I say twice a year.
Yeah, maybe twice a year, maybe once a year.
Like just, well, I guess in maintenance,
I would say once a year, but I think they're awesome.
I think, and they're pretty readily available
at this point, right?
There are stacks of fits everywhere almost.
Brilliant, yeah.
Strength is never weakness, weakness never strength.
Catch you guys later.
Bye.
Well, that was a good close.