Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 122 - Gabrielle Lyon

Episode Date: October 5, 2018

Dr. Lyon is a functional medicine physician specializing in Muscle-Centric Medicine. She combines evidence-based medicine and cutting-edge science to restore metabolism, balance hormones and optimize body composition. Rewatch this episode's live stream here: https://youtu.be/fRIcmx2P0Ww ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Stitcher Here: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play here: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud Here: https://soundcloud.com/markbellspowerproject FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

Good to go. We're rolling. Hey now. All right. Well, I guess we're live. Great. Anyway, you know, whenever I have a guest on the show like this, like a material expert, it can be really difficult to try to unwrap and unfold everything. actually really impossible basically to unwrap everything all in one podcast, but we'll try to make the most sense of it as we go through here. One of the things that really interested me, well, I guess let me back up a little bit. First of all, I got to say that we were introduced by our good friend, Charles Poliquin, RIP, really tragic that he passed, and I know that you were really close to him, so very sorry for your loss. I've known him for a long time as well, but like we weren't colleagues, I didn't hang out with him a lot, but, uh, we were friends and, uh, you know, the fitness community has, has lost a really great person that had a lot of great information. Anyway, uh, you were one of the

first names that popped up when I talked to him, uh, probably almost a year and a half ago and said, Hey, who should I have my podcast? And he said, this girl would be great. She's awesome. And then I started watching some of your stuff. And, um, one of the things that popped out to me is you talked about muscle being like this active tissue and the muscle being, um, uh, like an organism that helps your body really, uh, burn sugar and burn calories. And I just don't think it's talked about enough. People mention it, but then they go, ba-ba-ba-ba, and they skip past.

And it's just not, I think that's a big deal. Yeah. I think it's a huge deal. Why don't you tell us a little bit about kind of what you found in your practice with, you know, helping people gain muscle. What has been some of the advantages? So it's really interesting when you think about muscle. And I practice something called muscle-centric medicine. And it's the concept that muscle is the largest organ in the body.

So you talk about the heart, talk about the thyroid, but really muscle just by mass is the largest organ. And it's an endocrine organ. And not only is an endocrine organ, it is the largest. So when you train your muscle, right, it secretes certain anti-inflammatory compounds. Right. In addition, it is the largest site for glucose disposal. And we all know high levels of glucose can cause diabetes, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's disease, right? So it's type 3 diabetes of the brain. disease, Alzheimer's disease, right? So it's type 3 diabetes of the brain. But the muscle is really responsible for fatty acid oxidation, glucose metabolism, and your resting metabolic rate. So the focus needs to really be on the quality of the tissue versus everyone focuses on adiposity.

So they focus on being over fat. Really being over fat is not the issue. It's really- I like that term being over fat. Really being over fat is not the issue. I like that term, over fat. It's really about being under muscled. So, you know, your listeners in your community are really fit. The rest of the population and really significantly as individuals age, the quality of that tissue goes down. If you don't train it appropriately and feed it the appropriate nutrients, in particular protein, then you get kind of what looks like a marbled steak. So you get fat within the muscle tissue, and that decreases its ability to generate power, to help with the metabolism. So it's really essential.

So what I've found that if I can keep the muscle tissue healthy, the longevity of my patients, you know, I did my fellowship in geriatrics, in obesity medicine and geriatrics at WashU. And I ran a geriatric clinic for two years. Nobody in this room is geriatric. What is that age? Over the age of 65. So what we did is, you know, you follow people that have been going to that clinic for years. If they had cognitive issues, maybe they started going in their 50s. But really, if you look at them from 65 and on, a lot of what they had was preventable. It really started to solidify this concept of muscle-centric medicine. How do we allow people to age well?

How do we, while they are young, really augment that? Do you get frustrated with what is going on traditionally? Oh yeah. Right now our healthcare system is one of putting out fires. Unless it is a major trauma event, then that's necessary. But really the whole paradigm of medicine is backwards is backwards. We've, we look at it in pieces and not necessarily as a whole holistic system. You know, somebody has, uh, the one that we hear the most of, and it's, you know, there's more and more evidence coming out now that it may be, maybe the problem is being looked at the wrong way, but the one you hear about the most is like the statin drugs, or that's the one I hear about the most. Anyway, somebody goes

to the doctor, their cholesterol is high and the doctor's like, you know, here's this. And you know, I don't, I don't, I'm not in the medical community, so I don't know who to, you know, who to point the finger at. I don't have solutions either. So I'm not one to like, you know, bitch and complain about stuff that I don't have a solution to. However, it can be really frustrating because it seems like a lot of evidence is coming out. Statin drugs in some situations can actually be worse for some people. They can kind of potentially harm people. And there could be a lot better strategies going on. What do you think is like the whole, like why are some of these things happening in your view? So I think that when you're talking about statins in particular, there's a time and a place for them, right?

So if the LDL is over 190. So they can be effective. Absolutely, right? And the evidence is clear that, you know, I'm not a cardiologist, but the evidence is clear from the Lipid Association and these governing bodies in particular that it would be of a medical disservice to not, you know, it would be almost medical malpractice to not. These people are at very high risk. But when you're looking at other levels of elevated lipids and cholesterol, to just put people on a statin, we know that there's dietary interventions, exercise interventions, and lifestyle interventions that would have a much better effect, right? Because statins affect brain, they affect memory, it affects muscle tissue. I think the disconnect is in our societies, we're very immediate solution oriented.

So lifestyle changes don't happen overnight. How long did you die for this bodybuilding show? Yeah, many weeks. Right. And it took years to even get in good enough shape to even consider getting on stage, right? Right. And so that was something that you done. You had a journey. In medicine, it's not really thought of as a journey. We never think about the end point. So you place someone on a statin. Then what is the trajectory of their aging?

So you do it now. Then where do you just add more drugs? Where does it stop? So if you kind of take a step back and take a much broader view and you fix it from the root cause in, say, integrative medicine, you take the best of Western science with the best of more alternative lifestyle approaches and you combined it, then you have the potential for some solutions that are not necessarily immediate, but important and critical. I'm sure you've had clients over the years that are not adhering to some of the advice, but what if you have somebody that adheres to at least a little bit of exercising and maybe they're not doing so great on the diet? What are some results you've

seen with that? Because I think a lot of people are in that category where they just can't quite get the food down. Their cravings are too much. There's too many good, rich foods around. Right. People love to indulge on, right? Right. So in my practice, I will be frank, the majority of the people, 98% of the people that show up in my practice are ready to show up and do the work.

They don't even get through the door. I don't even, you know, as a patient-physician relationship, I don't take them as patients. If you're not willing to execute, at least meet me 90%, which is asking a lot, but I'm asking them to level up. So it is their personal responsibility. Then it's not really a good match

because if they can't get that fundamental down, they cannot. You can't figure out how to fix it. I cannot help you if you cannot stop eating Twinkies. I mean, I can't. I can help augment. You hear that, Andrew? Twinkies. I mean, I can't. I can help augment... You hear that, Andrew?

Twinkies is okay. It's those damn fries. Oh, French fries. Yeah. I mean, you can treat other things like, you know, environmental toxins or heavy metals or mold, you know, if there's these tests that are positive or GI issues. But when it comes to really executing on body composition and decreasing risks that will affect longevity, then nutrition is key. So the diet and exercise component have to go hand in hand. With that being said, I will work on their mind, right? So there are ways in which to decrease feeding, right? So it's a top-down approach. It's how do you get their internal wherewithal high enough to then begin to execute

and of course changing their environment. Yeah. The strategy is going to be a huge part of it. My brother and I were working on a film so far. It's very broad category of being on nutrition, but we're trying to, you know, help solve some of this mystery or not even mystery, I guess, but it sort of seems like a mystery because when you ask one expert to the next,, help solve some of this mystery or not even mystery, I guess, but it sort of seems like a mystery because when you ask one expert to the next, there's a lot of dispute. You know, one person will say, hey, you need more vegetables. The next guy will say, hey, vegetables aren't even healthy. They're not even digestible. The next person will say, hey, what are you doing eating all that meat? It's a carcinogenic. What's going on? You're, you know,

some people will say the carbs will cause all these problems, you know, and it gets to be, it confuses a lot of people. Right. And so some people just, uh, even though they know the answer lies in the middle, which is almost always the case, they just kind of put their hands up and say, I don't know what's going on. So America continues to get, um, to get heavier, to get fatter, to get more and more unhealthy, I guess you'd say. What do you think is kind of the number one thing that we're facing trying to get over some of that? Do you think it's really, is it really just the food? I know that you want people to, you know, have the food down and exercise and everything in combination. But if you had to kind of pick one over the other, do you think the food is probably the main culprit?

Yeah. I mean, of course, there's changes in hormonal status because of the high stress lifestyle. You know, nutrient deficiencies, of course, thyroid problems, environmental toxins definitely affect the body in those ways in terms of optimizing weight, but when it comes to obesity and when it comes to the obesity epidemic, we have to start with the obvious. And the obvious is overconsumption of food, overconsumption of processed foods. And that is really essential. And when you look at different experts, we all have our different thing, right? Protein is my thing. I'm a low carbohydrate person. I think animal-based proteins are exceptional. You ask another guy and like you said, you know, you should just be eating vegetables or you should be on a vegetarian vegan diet.

There's something to be said for bio-individuality. And I think that once you find what works for that person, it is truly exceptional, right? So some people I've seen do incredibly well on a ketogenic diet. So even if you do control for calories, some people do better on a higher carbohydrate and some people do better on a lower carbohydrate and really kind of defining what that is.

And when a person finds that, then it tends to result in much more advanced health and wellness for that person. Right. And then have you seen this in your practice? Like if you're going to have the carbohydrates, then that may be something else has to give somewhere else. Like, so if you have carbohydrates, maybe you got to eat less fat. And if you don't have the carbohydrates, maybe you have to eat more fat. At the end of the day, calories count no matter what people say. So the calories are metabolized differently. Yes. If it comes from protein, which has a high thermal effect versus if it comes from fat or if it comes from carbohydrates. With that being said,

if you control for calories, people will do better on different macronutrient breakdown. My patients, I tend to start them on what people would consider a higher protein diet. I would consider an optimal protein diet. And, you know, I mean, that's kind of where I start them because in my practice, I always measure skeletal muscle mass. I always measure body fat. I'm always tracking blood glucose levels and a whole bunch of other tests. Right. Does the individuality seem to come in the carbohydrates more so than anywhere else? Put most people on the standard American diet where they're eating half of their body weight in grams of protein a day.

You bump up their protein. Yeah. You probably kind of almost see instant results. And then the carb is probably where you see the individuality, right? I would say you adjust their carb. You get their protein stable. You adjust their carbohydrates. And definitely their body composition improves.

Right. So. Yeah. And so another thing that the protein, or I'll have you explain it rather. What are some things that the protein is really doing for somebody? Like what are, you know, the a certain bolus amount, which is where that two and a half grams of leucine, which is one of the branched chain amino acids come from, have that distributed throughout the day in a certain amount is really essential. And protein is the foundation for everything. So really, it is the black sheep of the macronutrient family because it has a face that's incredibly emotional for people.

Right. So I think it's really skewed the science because when you mix emotion with facts, it becomes very challenging. It's an interesting thing because it's the one that gets talked about the least. Right. You know, everyone's shouting about carb. Right. You know, high fat and everyone's kind of shouting about these different things and they're not really talking that much about the protein. But correct me if I'm wrong, the protein, you know, it's four calories per gram,

but it doesn't even get assimilated that way, correct? Well, it gets assimilated that way. When you think about protein, you think about it, it is more challenging for the body to digest and absorb, right? Because you have to get rid of the nitrogen group. And with higher protein, it increases fatty acid oxidation. There's many things that protein does. Helps feed immune cells, has glutamine, right? You generate arginine for blood pressure. So when you kind of get your foundation, as with anything foundation in life,

I think about things kind of in a dualistic way. So you think about life foundation and then you think about the lifestyle foundation. So when the foundation is in place and that foundation for almost everybody should be protein. I mean, I can't even imagine someone that it's not, unless they have an illness. Can we have too much protein though?

Because like we've been told for so long that you can only digest so much per serving and whatnot. So you digest all the protein that you intake. Whether there's benefit from going from 30 to 70, no, but you digest all of it. And they've done studies up to three grams per kilogram per body weight, profound body weight, and they haven't seen any negative effects. Yeah. I have meals sometimes where I probably have a hundred, a hundred grams of protein in a meal. And you're still here. I'm still here. I'm totally fine. The body can handle it unless you have kidney disease or you have some kind of issue where you can't handle that amount of protein. There should be no reason. What happens

is I'm like, I just think I got to keep adding protein to everything. And then by the time I sit down and actually look at what I'm eating, because I'm eating with my eyes rather than like really paying attention to what's going on. I'm like, oh my God, it's probably like 80, 90, 100 grams of protein sitting here in front of me right now. Sounds awesome though. It is. Sounds delicious. How much protein are you eating now? You know, I'm very guilty of not counting anything. I don't count anything. How about you?

Do you count stuff? Uh, I have an idea. I'm probably, I'm probably at 200 grams. Yeah. For the bodybuilding stuff, he wanted me at like 350 a day. And I think I just ended up there cause I ate six times a day and, you know, got, you know, I don't know, 60 grams of protein per meal or whatever, whatever that math ends up being, but it was somewhere in that neighborhood. Um, I messed around with all different kinds of stuff though, over the years, you know, some of the recommendations from Charles and some recommendations I've gotten from different bodybuilders and stuff I've done, you know, to, uh, you know, double my body weight in grams of protein. I've done 500 grams of protein a day.

I've done all kinds of different things. I like to eat, but I don't have a crazy appetite. And that'll come and go depending on what I'm doing. The more accurate I am with my food, usually my appetite will go up a little bit. Probably just because everything I'm eating is healthier, so my body's probably regulating everything a little bit better. But, yeah, normally I just probably eat about 300 grams of protein a day. I weigh about 250 or so, 240. Okay. Somewhere in that neighborhood.

Am I doing okay? Yeah. I mean, so, again, I come from the perspective that if you're going to have calories, the majority of those calories should come from protein. Whether there's a difference between 1.8 grams per kilogram versus 2.4 grams per kilogram to gain, you know, per pound body weight or per kilogram body weight to generate muscle. I don't know if there's a difference. I mean, you could probably get away with 1.8 just as well as 2.4, but. Probably good to try different things at different times a year and depending on your training and everything else, right? It's true.

What about somebody, so somebody comes to your practice and for lack of a better term, they're just a mess. Bloodwork is bad. They're heavy. They can't get up a flight of stairs very well. Everything's just all screwed up.

Where do you start them? How do we get these people heading in the right direction? Yeah. So you have to prioritize. Prioritize what is the most urgent thing. So obviously if they've got cardiac issues, they see a cardiologist. So you get this baseline foundation of a team approach of what they need. And then the first thing that you start with, I bet you can guess, diet.

Diet. Yeah. So you got to, you got to, you know, bring that in. And typically if they're that heavy, I'll start them on more of a protein, protein sparing fast. So it's, it's about mostly just protein and they can, your listeners can pull it up. I think the Cleveland Clinic, it's either the Cleveland Clinic or John Hopkins has a really nice kind of protocol for how that goes.

It needs to be monitored by a physician. And it's actually a relatively lower fat diet and a low carbohydrate diet. It's fucking low everything. It is. It's low calorie and it's almost all protein. Chew on that, you fatty. You know, it's almost all protein. And, you know, you monitor them.

And then this is probably pretty short term. Yeah. How long? So I usually put them, you know, when, if they're in that. Two or three years. A quick two or three years. If they're in that rough a shape, you know. I usually, after the first month, we can start changing things around.

And then you put them on time-restricted feeding. Because that's been shown to help. Somebody will probably lose a tremendous amount of weight just eating protein, right? Yep. What kind of results have you seen off of that? I mean, it depends on if they're trained or untrained. But like I'd mentioned before, I had a woman that had come in, had tried everything. And within six months, she'd lost 50 pounds.

She'd been trying for 10 years. Right. So it just depends. I mean, patients can lose easily, you know, a couple pounds a week depending on if they're heavier. And of course they have to maintain their muscle mass. Right. So it's not about total weight loss. It's about the quality of the weight loss. And everyone just looks at the scale, but really, you know, whether you have a DEXA. Right. But you need to track that. Broke our DEXA skin. Um, when, uh, when it comes to, uh, the protein sources, I know you mentioned kind of like leaner, you know, leaner things because you're not eating that much fat either.

Yeah. Um, but have you noticed a big difference to people being able to stay on the diet a little bit better and also not having cravings from maybe perhaps them being able to eat red meat? So they do eat red meat or they don't. All my patients eat red meat for the most part if they're open to it. And actually, I typically like grass-fed and grass-finished, but that tends to not be as lean. So sometimes I don't have to make them have organic as long as it's relatively lean. And yeah, we know that high-protein diets help with satiation. And you can be on it for a lifetime.

Yeah, people say it's not sustainable. Of course it is. I've been on a high-protein diet, an optimal protein diet for years. Right. And it allows for behavior to kick in and you keep it. Something that I noticed when I was on like the carnivore diet and even just on a keto diet, it almost felt like the more red meat that I ate, the easier it was to stay on the diet because there was never a time where I didn't look forward to eating red meat.

Right. I was like, I get to have a steak. It wasn't like I have to eat a steak. Like, oh no, I got another steak. Now I noticed that, you know, some of the stuff I'm doing now and some of the bodybuilding stuff where started pairing carbohydrates with protein. Now I'm like, oh man, it's kind of hard to get through the steak. Right.

When it was just a steak, when it was just me and the steak, everything was perfect. How long did you do the carnivore diet for? I would say I nailed it down pretty good for probably about a two-week span, but I did it for about two months. How did you feel? I was also messing with some eggs and some different things. Then I got to a period where I was like, let me see what happens when I just eat just the meat. And I cut out some of the vegetables that felt great. I felt great. I liked it a lot. What are some of your opinions on it?

That's what I do right now. I am very low carbohydrate. Maybe I'll have some greens. What's the deal with vegetables? Everyone has a heart attack about vegetables. I know. And I've been thinking a lot about this. And if you think about evolution and where we live, depending on the location, there were periods of time where vegetables were not available. Right. In winter, if you were in winter in Montana, you probably only had buffalo to eat. I think that there is something, and again, this is not evidence-based, but in my mind, it would make sense that the way in which we feed should be cyclical. Right. it would make sense that the way in which we feed should be cyclical. Animals eat cyclically and I think humans likely should too. There are a lot of people who have talked about that before where you go on a

ketogenic diet for a while and then you spin out of that and you eat some fruits, you have some berries and some different things like that and some maybe like nuts and whatever foods that you like really that have some carbohydrates in them. And then you kind of get back into it. You kind of switch it up a little bit. And I found the more carbohydrates you eat,

for the most part, if you're not very tuned in, the more you'll crave. Yeah. Yeah, it does kind of build upon itself, right? It does. And carbohydrates aren't inherently bad. It's not that they're an inherent bad. So that's what I like about the keto diet that I feel that people aren't talking about enough, is I feel that the ketogenic diet promotes itself.

Like when you're doing it and the longer that you're doing it, it seems to fuel itself in a way. Like it keeps you fired up to kind of be on it. You're not like just... And I suppose other diets can work that way, but it hasn't been my experience that I've really felt that before. But in a ketogenic diet, maybe because the ketones working with your brain or whatever the hell is going on, it feels like it works synergistically to keep you on the diet itself. What have you found out of all the nutrition plans that you've tried? What is, what has really been the best for you? Uh, I think in terms of like, you know, keeping mean,

lean muscle mass and, uh, and having strength and being able to support, you know, the type of workouts that I do, I think that having some carbohydrates in the diet is, um, for me anyway, it seems like it's essential. I don't know how many carbohydrates though. I haven't really, um, years ago I did a ketogenic style diet and I started putting in some carbohydrates on training days and I'd go like a hundred, maybe, uh, maybe almost like 150 grams of carbs, uh, on some days, depending on the training day and, uh, had really great results with that. Um, more recently, you know, being on the bodybuilding diet, the carbohydrates were still not that high.

So I think that, um, maybe that's where some of the confusion is. I think that people maybe might think that they need to really hammer down this enormous amount of carbohydrates and they probably just don't need right you know 75 to 100 grams of carbs is really for bigger guys the drop in the bucket really you know yep it's not a lot how about for yourself when you were you know competing and stuff you did some figure competition yeah i was low carbohydrate i was probably between 90 to 130 grams of carbs and did you like post workout shake type thing or did you just ate like a potato or something? I just ate.

Yeah. I don't actually really like a ton of shakes. I like to eat my food. Right. Right. So when I was competing, I had 130 grams of protein, 130 grams of carbs and 40 grams of fat. Well, what type of recommendations do you utilize with your clients in terms of what they do kind of around their workout and like during the workout if health and like weight loss is the primary goal? Depends on how hard they're training.

Typically, carbohydrate consumption pre and post workout is great. Right. But there is something to be said for training low. So training relatively depleted, but not necessarily for performance. And I don't have evidence to say that this is true, but this is what I found from my clinical experience of seeing hundreds of patients, is that you train them in a low-fed state, and their performance may not be great, but if they're mentally turned on, they're able to train hard and they tend to lose more body fat. Yeah. Something I've noticed with adding in carbohydrates and being able to

eat more is that I can work out harder, which that feels like a really good result. But I also, you know, I have to admit, like, I haven't really, I haven't kind of tinkered with everything. I haven't messed around with like ketones. I haven't really, um, you know, I haven't really, I haven't kind of tinkered with everything. I haven't messed around with like ketones. I haven't really, you know, I haven't like pricked my finger every day. Like I haven't, I haven't like, you know, really like dove into it hardcore, but I, I mean, about as hard as you can, you can go, I guess, because I have done those things. I just haven't done it religiously to kind of figure out the exact recipe that might feel the best. But I have noticed,

you know, with more carbs, being able to go harder in the training sessions. Um, and then kind of because of that, um, I'm able to grow, I'm able to get a little bit stronger, but that's, you start to kind of ride that fine line of, you know, you start to eat more carbs, you get more cravings. I'm a fat kid and always will be. And the other side of that too is once you have an influx of carbohydrates, then you run the risk of gaining more body fat or even in some cases, like kind of interrupting your sleep, which for me, I found personally that when I didn't have as much carbohydrates, it was easier to sleep. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. So a lot of people eat a little bit of carbs before bed and it seems to really, from a clinical perspective, it seems

to actually really help them sleep. Yeah, no, I've heard that before. And that is the case with me that my problem is I'll wake up though, you know, so like I can, I can, you know, as soon as I hit the pillow, I could be out cold. Like somebody just knocked my ass out, but, uh, yeah, I'll wake up and I'll wake up. I'll wake up kind of like boom. It's like 2 o'clock in the morning. I'm like wide awake. I'm like why the hell is this happening? So I'm wondering if you're eating the carbohydrate, you're having a blood sugar drop.

And then you're having a cortisol spike and you're waking up. Yeah. So I'm wondering if you're having reactive hypoglycemia. Probably. Just getting hungry all over again. Well, so that was a trend that happened for a long time where I'd just wake up in the middle of the night and like a bear, I would just attack my pantry and eat everything that was in there.

Twinkies. Make some weird combinations of food in the middle of the night. Twinkie and pancakes. Yeah. It was almost like I was high. Get super creative in the middle of the night. Yeah. You're like, oh, this ice cream looks good.

And like this cereal looks good. And just throw it all together. Yeah. Do you monitor it or not necessarily monitor, but like prescribe sleep for your clients? Like necessarily? Yeah. So we know that for hormone production and even for the brain and prevention of Alzheimer's, that there is systems in the brain that require sleep, right?

And of course, for testosterone production. With your practice being functional medicine, somebody comes to you and they have low testosterone levels. You know, so obviously there's, you just give somebody testosterone, but I'm sure you have a lot of methods and techniques that could help raise their testosterone naturally. What are some things that you might do? Definitely get them sleeping better, improve nutrient status, zinc and micronutrients, and believe it or not, GI health. I found that if people have a really dysfunctional GI system, that they don't absorb their nutrients. Of course, there's no direct correlation between GI health and testosterone production, but when I see my

patients and our goal is overall health and within that umbrella is optimizing testosterone, the more that I can get them absorbing their nutrients, their fats, all of those quality vitamins, then I see that there's a possibility that their testosterone can go up. And of course, resistance training, which is really good. What's the difference between working with a male and a female? What are some things that you might have to try to address harder with a guy versus a girl or vice versa? Is there any real differences? I would say with the women, I have to be, they have to really be aware of their nutrition. And of course, they have menstrual cycles and hormonal cycles. They have a, I mean, men have man periods, but it's not quite the same. I'm going through a rough one right now.

It's a heavy day. Oh no. It's not quite the same, but it's really... Do you need a Snickers? I need something. So it's really having, you know, making sure that their hormones are in check and they're also being able to detoxify their estrogens and, you know, their metabolites and things. So being really strict on their nutrition is key and getting them to train hard, really what their perception of training hard is and what really training hard. And it's not for all women. I'm not saying that there aren't some great, I take care of some great female athletes, but when we're talking about the kind of population that is looking to lose weight

and have struggled with weight for a very long time, then you really have to get them to switch their mindset and really execute. There are numbers. You can't just do SoulCycle or Barry's Boot Camp

and really see a composition, a body change composition. Everybody needs to lift, huh? I think so. We were a body change composition. Everybody needs to lift, huh? I think so. We were designed to do that. Everybody needs to hit the gym and get jacked and get more muscle. Jacked and tan. Everybody.

It's true. Yeah. For a long time, you know, I used to kind of think like, it'd be great if everyone like had some form of exercise, you know. But as I, you know, gotten older and as I've seen more and more people and seen more and more people gain the weight back, I've kind of been like, you know what? I guess everyone needs to lift. They do.

Because the muscle is the largest organ in the body. Only two ways to stimulate it. Through resistance training and nutrition. Do you help people with their actual lifting protocol as well? I'm glad you asked that. Actually, I refer that out because there are people that do that. So for like my program, I have Kara Lazowski. She does, Lazowski, she does mine and you'll see her on a show coming up soon. Cool. Don't want to give away the surprise, but it'll drop in January.

And then, you know, if they want to go online, there's Forge Training. Jim Brown does a great online program that, you know, people can put in their information and get an excellent program. And then, of course, I have trainers in the area in New York City, and I've worked with Lane Norton before, and he's done, you know, he's fantastic. So it's really about kind of outsourcing that part. And I always vet the people that I use because that part, if that part's done wrong, it's the equivalent of having a nutrition plan that's done wrong. Right. So the new, the training is just as important as the,

um, nutrition. How long have you been lifting for? Since I was 17. Damn. Yeah. Um, have you kind of had to battle the, uh, the kind of, you know, girl gaining muscle type thing most of your life when you, especially when you first started? I mean. No, I mean, I'm lucky. So my dad, I was always pretty athletic. My dad was wrestling, kept him as wrestling team at Penn. I came from just a very athletic family. The biggest part of, the biggest struggle I've had is injuries.

Multiple. God. Getting hurt? Jeez. So that's the biggest thing that has really set my training back is just multiple injuries. Just what? Training too hard or like making bad decisions? What happened?

Embarrassing. I was, with this most recent injury, it's been a two-year rehab process. I was training for Kokora, which is a 50-hour event with Mark Devine, who's amazing. That's how to seal fit. And I thought it was going to be a good idea from transitioning after my fellowship to decide to pick the hardest thing that I could do. And my training volume was extensive. I was going through Jim Jones. They were programming my training at that time. And I was being a little crazy. programming my training at that time. And I was being a little crazy.

80% of all is my hamstring, tore my right shoulder, broke my left shoulder. But I'm on the mend. It's been two years. My God. How'd you tear both hamstrings? Like in the same workout? It was heavy lifting and then sprint intervals and rucking with load and just high volume that my body wasn't, you know, truth is I came from a figure background.

Even though I had done dance, gymnastics, and other sports, when you go into more of the physique kind of exercises, it doesn't mean that you're a functional athlete. There are some great functional athletes that I'm sure bodybuild and do, you know, figure, but I wasn't one of them. I had show muscles, which didn't necessarily translate to being able to withstand a heavy load and 10 sets of 10 pull-ups a day. How'd you get through that time period of being injured for so long and staying in shape? I did whatever I could. I try not to ever make excuses. Yeah. I've had six stem cell procedures, five PRPs. Did you get depressed

at all because you couldn't exercise the way you wanted to? So I thought a lot about this. And what I did was I really channeled, I always put a lot of effort and time into the physical prowliness and physical excellence. What I did was I then shifted that intensity and put that towards my career and working on other projects. But it's been challenging. But I'm just at the tail end of coming out of that now. Now it's about being smart. Yeah. Well, and it helps you, you know, have empathy for some of your clients that might

have, you know, maybe, maybe in the past you might be like, I don't, I don't care what happened to you. Right. And now you get to be a little bit more reasonable with them, I guess. It sounds like in your practice, you're able to utilize, you know, a lot of different people. You're able to utilize blood work. Obviously have a long history of working with a lot of people as well. What are, what are some things that, um, you feel that are just very common

in the people that you're working with, uh, that maybe the listeners could, you know, could, could try something that would really work well for them. That's, um, something that maybe they're not, they're not thinking about. I know we kind of mentioned some sleep. You and I talked a little bit about toxins. Are there some things that maybe people microwave their food for too long? I don't know. There could be some things that we're doing on a daily basis that are harming us a little bit more. Maybe we eat organic foods.

I'm not really sure, but do you have any recommendations like that? What was so surprising to me was the amount of digestion problems and the amount of fatigue people had and what they would do unknowingly to combat that fatigue, whether it's multiple cups of coffee or stimulants or anything. And then they would continue to be tired, but make ways, do things to try to get rid of that tiredness, that fatigue. do things to try to get rid of that tiredness, that fatigue. So I think really being aware of the amount of coffee consumption. I had one patient. He's a SEAL now.

He was training for BUDS. He was taking in 10 cups of coffee a day. Jeez. You know, so you go through this whole intake. How are you feeling? Oh, you know, hey, Doc, I'm really tired. And, you know, do you drink? No, I don't really drink.

I'm really pretty healthy. And then you get down to the caffeine. Well, how much caffeine? 10 cups a day do you drink? No, I don't really drink. I'm really pretty healthy. And then you get down to the caffeine. Well, how much caffeine? 10 cups a day as you drink coffee. So I think it's really monitoring, definitely sleep, number one. Also seeing how much stimulants that people are on. And I think that people don't think about that.

And that includes chocolate, coffee that afternoon. Can't take away our chocolate. Digestive health is huge. Did you say eat more chocolate? I did not. I did not say eat more chocolate definitely don't eat chocolate raw cacao nibs just taking those and you'll just

throw up in your mouth and you'll never want to eat those again oh yeah those are crazy gross disgusting exactly Jessica did you show me that video of that kid eating that chocolate I can't remember

somebody showed me a video of this kid was eating like like pure he wanted to eat pure cocoa disgusting and he took a have you seen the video he took a um he took a spoonful of it his mom kept telling him she's like you don't want to have that he's probably like five or six years old but he just sees it

says chocolate on it and he's excited perfect and he's just you know want wanting to take a spoonful of it and it's funny because she's like, okay, go ahead. And I'm watching it as a parent and I'm like, the kid could die from this because he could choke on it. Look at him. He's so mad. And she keeps telling him, no, you don't want to have it. You don't want to have it. She's going over and over. Because she knows that. He knows that. Oh, yeah. He just coughed it out of his mouth like a dragon. He did have it. Yeah. It's funny. He just shot it out of his nose, I think, pretty much. Look at his face. That's terrible. Oh, poor little guy. Brutal.

That's a good way to dissuade people from ever eating that. Oh. He's like, I made a bad decision. That'd be like taking a spoonful of cinnamon. I think I might do that with my patients. Yeah. You'd be like, here, try this. Yeah.

Not a bad idea. What about cheats? Is there any room to cheat? You earn it. You earn it. I definitely don't think it's a good idea unless you have a lot of flexibility within your body fat range or you're happy with. Otherwise, it's just a bad behavior. Right. It's not about when your mindset is, bad, it's a, it's a bad behavior. Right.

It's not about when your mindset is I'm depriving myself, I deserve a cheat meal. That's a failure mindset. But if you are executing the way you should be, you're lean. What about maybe not a cheat, but maybe just like, what about something that's maybe just like off your normal, off, off of like your diet plan, but it's not really a bad food necessarily. So there are no bad foods. Yeah. But you go into like a gray area,

like, okay, you know, you recommended a certain diet to me and maybe there wasn't fruit on there, but I was like, you know what? Fuck it. I had a good training session.

I'm going to eat an apple. That's fine. Right. Post post-training apple. No big deal. deal. But I do think that it's really about setting a plan for yourself, creating discipline and executing that. And especially with my patients, my job is to get them better. I want them, you know, I don't take people that are high performers and feeling fantastic and make them better performers.

There's a million people that do that. I'm a physician. I take people who are not feeling well. They could be elite performers. They could be elite military operators, professional athletes, housewives, it doesn't matter, who perform well and need help to get to the next level and take that elite mindset and then make them even better. So with that in mind, it's really about how do we create something that is sustainable for a lifetime and also being accountable. If they're going to go off their nutrition plan, it should be very conscious and you should know how many times you're doing it. It's like a birthday or something. I mean, I know you don't want to get in the habit of like celebrating, but at the same time, you know, people need a little bit of a leash, right?

They need a little bit of freedom. And I think it depends on the person. So if they are a person that needs that, then you leverage that personality trait. Me, I don't need that. Right. I'm not interested in that. You stay on the plan all the time. I do.

No matter what. I do. I mean, there's sometimes I may have a meltdown and have a protein bar or something, but. What about things like eating out? Like, do you. I don't. I think it's a bad idea. Yeah.

Because of the oils and weird shit they throw in your food. Yeah. And then people think I'm crazy and that's okay. You don't have to be, you know, you set the bar really high. You are at your top level of craziness and then people can decide how the problems are crazy. What about in terms of social, like just trying to be social? Like, I don't know, you go over, it's a family gathering. Like, do you eat the food or bring your own stuff?

Maybe I'll bring it or I'll hang out. Right. But I don't need to feel that I have to eat. Right. What if you go on like a date or something or you go out with some girlfriends or something? Do you eat some of that food? No, not necessarily. And they all just think you're weird.

Yeah. It's perfect. They just think you're strange. Yeah. Or, you know, you order some kind of something that you know weird. Yeah. It's perfect. They just think you're strange. Yeah. Or, you know, you order some kind of something that you know is, you go to a place where you know and, and have it done there. It can be difficult. I mean, a lot of times you go out to eat and you're like, I thought I ate something pretty healthy, but my stomach is killing me. Right. And we know that as you go out to eat the average, it's three times the amount of calories. We know this. Right.

Because it tastes good. Right. So my grandmother used to say, if it tastes good, spit it out. It's probably bad for you. But if you go out to eat, it doesn't take like, it doesn't taste as if you cooked it at home or in my case, cooked it in my hotel room with a hot plate. Right. Yeah. It's, um, it's amazing when you go out to eat some of these restaurants, like, uh, something like a Black Bear Diner or Denny's or something like that. You eat there at like 8 o'clock in the morning and then you're not hungry until like 3

and you're wondering why, but it's probably all the oil and all the crap they throw in the, who knows what's in there. Right. I thought I was doing good by ordering broccoli at Spaghetti Factory and they gave it to me and I was like, dude, this is amazing. I'm going to do this every time.

Right. And then I looked down and there's like oil all over the place. And so I was like, hey, what do you guys do to prepare the broccoli? Like, oh, we put brown butter all over it. Okay. I'll be coming back tomorrow. Yeah, exactly. Like, that's how I can make that shit at home.

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's the, you know, one of the toughest things that face people is like, how do we have some strategies? You know, there's all these companies are spending so much money on making these foods like hyper palatable. Yeah. And then there's just fast food everywhere. There's fried food everywhere. A lot of times you order something, you might order like tuna or something and it comes and it's fried and you're like, shit, I didn't want that.

The chips are stacked against us in a lot of ways. Absolutely. And the only way to really protect yourself is to cook at home. And I think that that brings up a good point. It's the idea of shifting the paradigm. So we are so indoctrinated in thinking it's okay. There's food. I went to, I think it was Staples.

And at Staples checkout line, I swear to God, it could have been lunch buffet. I have Cheetos if I wanted or something else in a brightly colored package. I'm writing this down, Staples. It was amazing. And if you are not, we know that if you visually see food, it begins this neurochemical process, right?

So if you're watching the food channel, you will begin to get hungry. We need to make glasses that make you not see the food. Have you seen the glasses that block out screens? No. You put them on and every screen just turns black. That's awesome. It's sick, yeah. It's just a lens filter that a, like a, uh, a lens

filter that like I put on my lenses or something, but like they just like altered it to that way. Anything with like a backlit display just totally disappears. Yeah. There's so many people walking around, uh, you know, having unhealthy practices and walking around a lot heavier, um, than maybe they should be. Uh, I guess there's the argument of, like, I don't know, maybe some people don't care that much. I don't think it's that. I don't really. I never think that that's true, though, either, because I can't, you know,

I can't really think of anybody that doesn't want to be better. You know, like, I believe in people a lot more than that. And I think that people do want to make more money. People do want to look better. I know that people do want to make more money. People do want to look better. They want to, I know that people want to feel better and maybe if somebody doesn't want to feel better, maybe they, um, you know, maybe they, maybe they don't necessarily know what it's like to feel better, but they definitely don't want to be in pain. Once somebody is in pain, then they, that's when they start to really start to make some changes. Have you been able to help people

a lot with that? Because I know inflammation plays into it a lot of just eating these crap foods. Absolutely. Patients that come in with pain, you clean up their diet, you get rid of some of these oils that are inflammatory, and their pain definitely decreases. There's other things that you can do. There's a medication called low-dose naltrexone, which helps upregulate the body's own ability to heal itself. You look for nutrient deficiencies. There's all ways in which people can feel better. What are some strategies to help people with hunger? Stimulants. It's true, but also water and making sure that your macronutrient balance is- People don't really drink water.

Correct. Right. I mean, they really don't. They're drinking coffee or like Crystal Light or something, this and that, but they're not really drinking water, right? Yep. And also getting your macronutrient ratio correct. High protein for your first meal of the day, whenever that is, is wonderful for hunger, for satiation. People talk a lot about fat being satiating, but actually protein has been shown to be really satiating. Heather Leidy has done studies, shows breakfast skipping, looks at fMRI, shows what parts of the brain light up in terms of cravings.

It happens to me quite a bit. I'm eating eggs and I just can't eat them anymore. I'm like, shit, man. I can't take one more bite of this. So that's a, and also having, hunger is not a bad thing, right? People think you shouldn't be hungry and that it's an emergency. Oh my gosh, I'm hungry. I have to eat.

So I think that changing the mind frame, hunger is not an emergency. In fact, good, be hungry. You deserve it for a little bit. It's okay. And that's where like something like intermittent fasting comes into play. And I think everyone should at least try it, you know, whether you agree with the research or you're on the fence or whatever.

I think everyone should at least play around with it. I'm not really a person, me personally, I'm not a big fan of somebody trying to fast every day for extended periods of time, especially if you're new to it. Like you might want to just try it out here and there. But I like doing it when I was doing it. I did about every other day. How long did you fast for? I felt really good. Uh, had some really good results. Some days it wasn't very long. Some days it was only like 10 or 12 hours, which is like, you know, really easy because you sleep for seven, eight hours. Right. Um, and then other days I'd extend it a little bit longer and I'd try like 16 and 18, some of the recommendations from like Dominic D'Agostino and stuff.

And I liked it. The problem that I found was it didn't seem like I was able to like hammer enough food to fuel what I was doing. So it's like I needed a little bit bigger window. bigger window. Um, and then also when you fast that long and you go dive right back into eating, um, when you're not really used to it, um, when you, you want to just like eat everything and then you kind of eat too fast and that's not great for you either. So I was trying to find a happy medium between everything. And it seemed like if I just did 12 to 14 hours, it made the eating window longer and it made reintroducing that food a little easier. And I did a 24-hour fast and a 48-hour fast and all that stuff felt fine. I was, you know, nothing happened.

You're okay. Still there. Still alive. Still here. But, yeah, I didn't love the effects of it. But I think everyone should try it so that they can really learn about what true hunger is. Because you'll get hit by a wave of hunger. And then two hours later, it's gone.

And then it comes back. And you're like, okay, now I'm starting to actually get really hungry. I utilize intermittent fasting as a strategy for my patients all the time, especially if they've yo-yo dieted and tried everything to lose weight. There is something called leptin resistance. And one of the strategies for dealing with leptin resistance is fasting. Right. I think that fasting is, is great. And I think it works really well with a keto diet. I'm sure you can use, utilize fasting on any diet. Um, but me personally, I used it on a ketogenic style diet and the keto diet in combination with intermittent fasting helped

me a lot with hunger and helped me a lot with cravings. And so I think that that's where those diets, um, and you know, I, I'm, uh, I'm definitely guilty of misrepresenting the word keto, you know, as I think everybody else is too, most of the time, because I don't normally follow a true ketogenic diet. Although I have before, but I'm not a fan of low protein. No, I think that's, some people do really well on it, shockingly. I never felt for me that it was a great idea. I don't mind doing stuff for periods of time felt for me that it was a great idea. Um, I don't mind doing stuff for periods of time. I think that it kind of makes sense. I think that, um, your body was probably faced with a lot of these scenarios, uh, just throughout the, uh, you know, years that

we've been on this planet, your body's probably dealt with every, uh, every form of hunger you can think of. Um, and so I think that sometimes not having the protein in there, you could maybe make the argument that when you reintroduce it, maybe it would have, you know, more of an impact. I don't know. But the interesting thing that I think is that you get all these experts together a lot of times and they really don't, they, they know, uh, but they really don't know. A lot of times all that you hear people recite is research. And in hearing a bunch of different people be on Joe Rogan recently, you heard the debates go back and forth and this guy would whip out this research paper and this

guy would whip out this one. Um, and then this one was more credible than this one because it was done this way. You're just like, Oh my God, this is really, it gets to be kind of overwhelming. All the information coming out all the time. And that's where practical experience is priceless. I think being able to experiment on yourself, being a physician that sees many patients. I've been experimenting with myself since 13, maybe 12. That you can help, you get with a good physician or you get with a good coach, and they've heard the story so many times that there are patterns that happen.

Right. I typically can know how someone's going to do on a certain kind of nutrition plan. You get a sense of where they're at. Right. You can kind of tell because you've just worked with so many people. Yeah. You definitely get a sense of what their preferences are, where they came from, when they felt the best.

But it is interesting. You get a bunch of experts in the room and everyone has a different opinion, even though all the science, they're all facts. Right. So that's interesting. The stuff about fiber, I kind of find that that's the most interesting part because you'll have some people say that, you know, we're supposed to have some foods that are going to ferment in our stomach. Um, you can make the argument of that human beings are made to eat

meat, uh, but we're not a hundred percent carnivore. I mean, it's kind of, it seems obvious to me that an apple and an orange and some of these things that, uh, are, are super bright and come off these trees that it, you know, it seems like, uh, thousands of years ago when you would discover a thing of berries, it makes sense that you would eat them just because they look so, they look so damn good. Right. Um, and people kind of argue back and forth. But what really interests me is the fiber side of things with the carnivore diet taking off and people getting so excited about that. I kind of hear these doctors say, oh yeah, you got to have fiber. But then when you really dig and you really ask them why you need fiber, it seems like they don't really know for sure on

whether you need it or not. I would say that that is probably true because the body is very flexible. I haven't looked at any of the fiber studies recently, but from thinking about it, there's large populations, say the Eskimos, or there's multiple populations that have lived on just either meat and fat and done well. Right. Again, I think that the body is incredibly adaptable. What about some people kind of making the comment of like, if you're going to eat meat, that you should have vegetables with it in order to maybe fight off.

Some people will say that meat is a carcinogenic, maybe the way that you prepared it or whatever. So don't burn it. What's that? So don't burn it. Don't burn it. What if like, can vegetables help detoxify your body in a certain way because they pull fiber from your body? What do you kind of think about some of that? I think when I think about the word detoxify, I'd have to really think about what we mean because we know that protein is necessary for glutathione production in the liver. Right. And that is what we use for detoxifying. So a higher protein diet naturally would be if we use that definition detoxifying. In terms of greens, fiber is great for elimination right and also has nutrients in it

that they're not going to get in the meat so right do i think that we need it i think you know i don't know that answer yeah it just seems very debatable right i think i don't know yeah and i think that uh we we just need more researchers and more scientists kind of saying that. And I think that it ends up being personalized. So I have a really good friend. She's an orthopedic surgeon and she's a type 1 diabetic. She is a vegan keto. I think I saw you make a YouTube video with her.

Yes. Yeah. Carrie Dwellis. She was at Cleveland Clinic. She's now in Cleveland. She has her own practice. Yes. Yeah. Carrie Dwellis. She was at Cleveland Clinic. She's now in Cleveland. She has her own practice. She's amazing. We have totally separate views on nutrition, but what's amazing is she's been able to maintain her muscle mass as a vegan keto. What we believe has happened is that there's some emerging science that says that the gut

bacteria actually break down to provide those amino acids. Actually, Dr. Donna Lehman is one of the people that are, who trained me, is one of the people that is part of this study. And that's amazing. So how is it that she's eating almost no protein? I would wither away to nothing. I'd be starving and I'd probably gain a million pounds. But she is able to function as a vegan keto. Right. There's some people that compete in bodybuilding that are vegan. Is that true?

Yeah. There's a guy, there's a guy that has one, um, uh, like classic physique. Okay. Um, I mean, he's really high level. He's super shredded. I cannot remember his name off the top of my head. But, you know, you don't want to ever just take like one person. Right.

But the guy has a huge following and there's other people that kind of follow along with some of his stuff. And some of those people are pretty jacked, too. It's amazing. It is amazing. I think we had George Lockhart on the podcast a long time ago. And George Lockhart is interesting because. Sorry, George. George is like almost a little time ago. And George Lockhart is interesting because sorry, George,

George is like almost a little punch drunk. He used to be a fighter. You know, he, he sounds, he's just like, uh, he just has this kind of real world, uh,

gritty information. And, uh, when you ask him about certain things, he's like, you know what? I think when the body wants to, it just does what it needs to do.

It's like, Oh my God, it's so simple. But, you know, some people that have a practice or some people that are maybe trying to monetize what they do, maybe they would say, hey, well, it's way more complicated than that, but maybe it's not more complicated than that. I agree. I think we make things way more complicated. I think everyone wants to go into the weeds and into the deep science when it's important to have a foundation of knowledge on some of that stuff. But when it comes to practical application, it's not so super complicated. Like within 15 minutes of your

workout being over, you have to have carbohydrates right away. It has to be a cyclic dextrin and you need 30 grams of branch chain amino acids. Like the body's probably not that, the body's probably not like, your body's probably not sitting there going, Hey bro, like where's the carbs? Where's the BCAAs? We're waiting. Right. I mean, I would agree with that. And there's research that shows that it could possibly help, but I'm sure that you could.

But a lot of times people are forming these studies to show that it helps. What if you formed a study that shows that it doesn't do anything? You'd probably get the same result. I still want to believe, though. Oh, yeah. You want to throw down as many supplements as you can. So at the end of the day, it ends up being what works for you. And also identifying in order of priority what you need.

So for me, I'd love to start with digestive health, health with patients, especially even if they're, especially if they're high level athletes, then typically they have a pretty messed up GI system because of elevated cortisol. You know, again, this is just from my experience. They really had impaired gut. Cortisol and stubborn belly fat. That's always the commercial we see. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's just, you know, you think in terms of stress, stress really affects the GI system.

So it doesn't even have to be high level athletics or deployments or things like that. But really, um, high levels of stress seem to really affect the GI system. Your stomach, uh, it can really affect everything, right? Your immune system. Oh yeah. Uh, and, uh, some people are saying now even like your central nervous system. Yeah. So, I mean, if all this is like screwed up because you're not digesting your foods very well.

Yeah. You're in a lot of trouble, right? Yeah. You know, of course, elimination. I see a ton of people with parasites. I send them to an old school parasitologist. That's gross. Oh, when you go see him, you have to get a rectal swab.

Damn. I know. I think I got something going on with my stomach. Rectal swab. You know, those send away stool tests, you need a little bit more. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm joking, but I, if, if Mark and I eat the same piece of steak, his body's going to be able to digest and utilize way more of the protein than my body will. I'm assuming because I've been skinny my whole life. And the second I eat something, it's like, okay, where's the next bathroom? Because it's going to be an emergency. That's not normal. Right.

Obviously, yeah. So what can someone like me do to kind of get the ball rolling on keeping their digestive system on point? You got to figure out what the problem is. First step in my practice is I usually send them to the parasitologist. I think he has overproduction of estrogen. If I would just by looking at him, that would be my guess. I mean, of course, you know, you can take things to slow that motility down, but like probiotics or something. Yeah. Saccharomyces boulardii. But would you want to do that if you don't know what it is? No, it's actually in my like Amazon cart right now. That exact probiotic. There you go.

That's crazy. It's a good job. So if you are having stomach issues, yeah, where do you start? What's the first test that you might go and try to get? I mean, the first test that I do, like I said, the first thing that I do is I send them to a parasitologist. I mean, listen, this is where the art of medicine comes in. You do an exam. You look at their tongue. If you look at your tongue and it is a complete wreck, right, you know there's something going on. Either I send them to a parasitologist. I do a SIBO testing. You do a couple digestive tests.

Parasite is crazy. A lot of them come back negative. But typically, if someone has been having issues for a long period of time, they almost always have a parasite. That's at least what I found. My stomach's going to be like a New York rat, just all kinds of shit floating around. Yeah, like how long are these parasites like with us for? I mean, they're just. Can be there for a long period of time.

People get it from eating a lot of sushi. Yeah. You get it from going out of the country, whether it's Africa. Does everybody have parasites? No. And then some people are able to eliminate them and some people aren't? Possibly. Possibly.

But if you are symptomatic and you are having GI issues, then chances are, you know, it doesn't mean it's a parasite, but just from my clinical experience, the body can really regulate a lot of things. But it tends to have a really hard time getting rid of pathogens like that. It's just so terrifying. Yeah. No, it's treatable. I think there's like a living thing in there just chomping on your food. Well, it doesn't want to kill you. It wants to just feed off you.

Yeah. No, mine's just grabbing all the food and throwing it out the back. We don't need this. I mean, of course, you can see, you know. Shouldn't it help make you leaner because it's eating some of your food? You know, you might have food, you know, you might have issues with gluten or certain kinds of sugars, those kinds of things, like the FODMAP diet thing of that nature. Yeah. Do you think some of those things work?

Sure. Because those things are kind of controversial a little bit too. No, I think it works. It helps. Yeah, I think that, of course. And there's no harm in trying. So when you think about, well, is it BS or not? We'll give it a try. Right. That, that'd be your end of one, be your own study. That makes a lot of sense, uh, in terms of like gluten, like gluten, whether you think it's, uh, you know, going to hurt you or not hurt you, it probably is not going to help you. Yeah. So maybe just try to

avoid it and see what happens. See what happens. Exactly. It doesn't really cost you anything to give it a shot, right? Exactly. And most of my patients don't eat gluten and it's not because I'm inherently against it. I find that it's packaged and people can't control calories. Right. And again, I'm a, I personally come from a camp of a lower carbohydrate. Yeah. Well, I think that's where the low carb stuff is effective is that it does help you manage your calories easier because carbohydrates just aren't on the menu. They're not on your menu. They're not on your radar.

Right. Let's take a more regular person, not a mutant like yourself who doesn't go out to eat ever. I go out to eat doesn't mean I eat. It doesn't mean you actually eat anything. You just sit there and sip on something. Just like today,

your wife asked me if I wanted a poke bowl. Oh yeah, just sip it on iced tea while you're out with your friends. I said no, I have my pound of beef

in my bag, I'm good. There you go. Poke is so good though. It is good. Well, she doesn't eat raw fish, right?

That's right. I don't eat raw fish, no. What about regular fish? No. No, you don't like fish? It tastes gross.

Not a fish person? No. Salmon, once in a while, canned sardines if I'm really struggling. Canned sardines? If I'm struggling and everyone is in the plane and they're eating their pretzels. That's a real jump for someone who doesn't normally eat fish. I couldn't do it. You know, you do what you have to, right?

I stick to the plan. I stick to my plan. What's your favorite food? Probably beef. What's your favorite food before you started this entire mess? Trail mix, maybe. Trail mix? I don't know.

I'm not really a big foodie person. Oh, man. I'm not. It's just I never was raised that way. It was not really on my radar. You said your stepmom, was that right? It was a... My godmother, yeah.

Godmother. So she was, her name is Liz Lipsky. She was, she is one litsky she was she is one of the trailblazers of functional medicine she's a phd in nutrition she wrote the book digestive wellness teaches all over so i moved in with her when i was 17 that's when you started learning all this yeah and then now this is what you do for a profession and you travel all over the place i do yeah you like seminars and stuff as well i do i do and profession and you travel all over the place. I do. Yeah. You like seminars and stuff as well. I do.

I do. I teach and we talk. It's really an open conversation. Again, it's utilizing the base as a physician. So nutritional sciences and medicine and you combine it. And really, again, my focus is on muscle and protein because everyone focuses on diabetes, obesity, and they always focus on the problem, but the solution is so evident. And the solution is really just keeping your muscle healthy and really understanding as you age what that means and not eating like you did when you

were 20, even if you were a fit 20-year-old bodybuilder or a fit 20-year-old athlete eating 150 grams of protein as you age, that needs to change. Actually, it's higher. You said you worked with people that were 65 and up? I did. Can those people gain muscle? It's very hard, but yes, you can always improve. I don't recommend fasting for those people. So once you destroy tissue at a certain age, then it becomes much harder for things to recover. A lot of times, a lot of times older people just aren't as interested in eating too, right? I mean,

have you found some of that? Yeah. They just, whatever the hell reason, and they wake up a lot earlier and stuff, right? I don't know what is up with that. Yeah.

They sleep all day long. Well, not all day long, but they'll fall asleep in the middle of the day only because my dad does that all the time. So it's, it's really interesting. It becomes important to age mindfully

because we're all going to, apparently nobody gets out alive from what I hear. Yeah. There could be a couple people. I mean, you never know.

Yes. I would, you know, be interested. I mean, I could be like 400 years old. You know? You could be. That is amazing Botox

you have. Whatever your secrets are. You could be a vampire. I need to know. It's just all that protein. Yeah. It is really about. Just a facel have. Whatever your secrets are. Could be a vampire. I need to know. It's just all that protein. Yeah. It is really about. Just a facelift.

It wasn't bad. So for example, my dad. My dad lives in Ecuador. He is a mountain man. He decided he didn't want to be a mathematician or stockbroker anymore. He wanted to be an expat and move to Ecuador and be a mountain man. He's like a medicine man. He does ayahuasca and all this crazy stuff.

So what does he do? He says he is 65 and a 27-year-old. He is a 65-year-old, but he's really 27. So what does he do? He walks. If it's three hours or less, he'll walk there. Wow. He's 180 grams of protein a day.

Two days a week, he does resistance exercise. He does some extracurricular things I don't even want to know about. And his concept of aging is not i'm old and frail it is i'm super vibrant and full life and the reason i bring that up is because aging consciously really can change the trajectory of your life i mean he has more energy when i go to visit him i say dad i need to take a nap see you later get the freak out of here you know yeah i feel i mean i feel a lot better than I did when I was like 20, especially with training. Yeah. With training, I feel like I can handle way more. It's just, you know, I think that people kind of have a mindset of like as they get older, they're going to get weaker.

Or all their joints are going to hurt all the time. And then they buy into it. And then they're surrounded by, it's contagious. Yeah. Because you are a product of your environment. Look at the obesity epidemic. Right. And you also rise to the challenge of those around you.

Right. So. And a lot of athletes, strength athletes, bodybuilders, a lot of times they get better into their late 40s and even early 50s. So, I mean, you got guys like Dexter Jackson who are stepping on a bodybuilding stage at, uh, you know, 50, 50 plus, obviously these guys are chemically enhanced. So it's, uh, they have a little bit different story than some other people, but it's definitely possible to get stronger as you, as you age. Um, have you noticed there's a, you know, as you've been doing this for so long, have

you noticed there's been more, more women, uh, involved in, in what you're doing? In terms of practicing? In terms of like, uh, just professionals that are kind of in this, uh, you know, cause I see a lot of men, you know, like a lot of guys, we have tons of guys in this podcast, but, um, I've noticed that there's been like a little bit of a surgence of women getting into the field. Yeah. I think that I don't, I don't know what it was like before in terms of female physicians

or females that do this kind of work. Right. I'm trying to think of, you know, I definitely have a great crew of girlfriends that they're all professionals, whether they're physical therapists or, you know, my business partner. But you have women colleagues that are in like fitness and that kind of thing or not really? I do. So my business partner, Teresa DiPasquale, she's a bikini.

She has a bikini competitive company. She's a pro bikini competitor. We're actually building something, an online platform. Oh, awesome. That talks a lot about the stuff that we are. And in relation to Mauro Di Pasquale? No. I know.

But, so we're actually building something called Strong for a Century. And, yeah. But in terms of women physicians, I'm not, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. But I'm sure there are some great ones out there. Um, with, uh, you know, trying to get these people to, you know, adhere to the diet and these different things, when you go to like, uh, like a family function or you get around some friends and they start asking you some questions, uh, how hard is it to get, you know, some of your,

you know, friends or, or, or relatives, you kind of. They're all my patients. Oh, they are. Oh yeah. Oh, there you go. Yeah. That's great. So you got to whip them into shape.

Yeah. They're really on board. You know, that people inherently, like you said, want to feel good. Right. So it's not, that's not a challenge. Does your dad kind of follow some of the diet recommendations and stuff like that? He does. That's cool.

Yeah. Both of my parents are, they've followed a lot of my diet information more recently and it's helped improve their health a lot. My dad goes on walks with us every night. My mom's lost like 60 pounds. Amazing. Yeah. I mean, you know, took them 30 years.

It's fine. They're on board. Yeah. They're on board. They're on board now. So screw it. Yeah. So I think that, you know, having people around you that believe in what you're doing and those kinds of things are essential.

How long ago did you compete? You were competing in some figure contests and stuff like that? I think the last time was maybe 2000 and, gosh, it was either 12 or 14. You missed some of it or was it too regimented? No. I was ready. I don't mind the regiment. I love training for something, but I'm ready for some more of an athletic event, which is how I got interested in Kokoro.

Right. What's that? So that's a 50-hour event that Mark Devine puts on and it's like a Navy SEAL fantasy camp for 50 hours. What the hell got you interested in that? Sounds terrible. Yeah, it sounds like fun. Something along the lines of that challenge. Sounds brutal. That sounds fun, right? But we like challenges. There you go. So when you were doing some of this training, did you implement a little bit more carbohydrates?

I did. I did. Probably also just because like you might be away from, you know, you might just be away from food. It might be more convenient to pack, you know, some carbohydrates with you or something like that to grab onto something quick to snack on. I mean, if you're trying to train for something like this, I'm sure you're, you know, gone, you know, away from easy accessible foods, right? Well, this, they feed you there. But the training up to that, you know, I packed all my food. Right. I was able to train. Yeah, it looks terrible.

It was amazing. So, actually, I. Did you enjoy it? I mean, you like training like that? I do. Yeah. I do. The harder, the better.

That's why I did school for about 17 years. Yeah, I know. I saw that on your sheet over here. I was like, why is she in school for so long? So bad. We're going to train some bench press today. I'm going to teach you how to bench. Amazing.

How much you bench? I haven't been benching. Oh, my God. I've been working on healing some of those injuries, so it'll be good. I thought we were doing Pilates. I packed my leotard. Yeah, well, yeah. We can get into doing some of that, too. It would be beneficial for my back, for sure. I thought we were doing Pilates. I packed my leotard. Yeah, well, yeah. We can get into doing

some of that too. It would be beneficial for my back for sure. I think I would get hurt. I think I would definitely get hurt doing that. What do you have coming up? You're going down

to San Diego, right? Yep, going down to San Diego and then next weekend, oh, next weekend I'm going down to First Form. We're going to be launching a foundation series for GI Health.

Oh, that's awesome. I'm really excited about that. And then traveling every other weekend. Yeah. Going all over the damn place. Very cool. Anything else, Andrew? We just barely touched on water earlier,

just saying that we all need to be drinking water. As much as you can drink. Thank you. Okay. Now, what was I going to ask next? Oh, so for chicks, losing body fat but still maintaining muscle, what are the first steps that they can take? Lift heavy. Gotcha.

They got to lift heavier. And then more protein. Yeah. And lifting heavy. Cool. Do you think trying to just simply just challenge yourself in each workout and try to just get a little bit more weight on there you know as safely as possible is kind of the objective i think that having a really well-designed program is really important right and i think that if you do things haphazardly

you get haphazard results yeah yeah you got to kind of uh track everything and kind of understand like what's you know what's coming next and what you did in the past and all that kind of stuff. The most successful people that I've seen in training and life and health, that's what they've done. So that's why I always tend to refer them out to people that that's what they do. Right. Right. And then you have something implemented, you know exactly what's happening. It would be the equivalent to not looking at blood work.

Say, oh, well, I just think that this is, well, just, I think we should just do this. Yeah, just take a bunch of zinc. You'll be fine. It's fine. But I would say, well, hey, I'd like to actually see. Right. So. That makes sense.

And then you mentioned Charles Poliquin being a mentor for a long time. What are some things that you learned from him over the years? To read. I'm sure it's a lot. One of the biggest things is that he always said you need to keep reading hours. I mean, a minimum of eight hours a week. Uh, knew like what four or five different languages or something like that. Yeah. Very smart. He, I was really lucky to have been mentored by him for the time that I have and he, that I have been. So yeah, he was, he was awesome. Um, yeah. One thing that I, you know,

that I really, uh, liked about him was, you know, how he was, um, he would really stick to his guns on stuff. And I think more people need to do that. More people need to believe in, in what they're sharing. And, and he also too was like very trusting. He'd be like, this guy over here, you know, has been doing this for years. And if he knew somebody and he knew they were good, then he was just like, we're going all in on this. Whether it was an amino acid recommendation or whatever it was. And then he would share the information with people. But not only would he share the information with people, but then he would say where he got it from, which is not common enough. People are like, they want to take credit for it.

He's very generous. He's very generous. He's very generous of spirit, generous of his time, generous of his resources and his energy. Right. He had us over, a couple of us over

two weeks ago and he made mixed yak, beef, ostrich, venison stew. We just mixed all this meat together. How about his basement

with all those, with all that equipment? I've never seen a gym like that before. It was insane. He just had stacks and stacks of equipment everywhere. Hopefully the family's able to get everything together. I know he just started the gym so hopefully they're able to carry on the legacy. As I said earlier, we lost a great one. Awesome having you on the show today. Thanks for having me. Can't wait to get some training in.

And where can people find you? They can find me on Instagram. I'm very active on Instagram, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, my website. You're big on the selfies. No, I'm actually terrible at Instagram, but I'm working on it. It's the place that I'm actually active in. But people can find when I'm going to be speaking or at whatever event I'm going to be at. And then, of course, my website, which is not super active, but they can download my protocol.

It's really great for women, the baseline protocol, which I'm sure your listeners are already doing. And men, too. You guys can take a look at it. And I'm happy to answer any questions. And then Facebook. Lift heavy and eat more protein. And they can come see me in my clinic at the Ash Center in New York City. Awesome.

They want to. Are you near Manhattan? I'm in Manhattan. 61st and 5th Avenue. Oh, you're in Manhattan. That's awesome. Yeah, it's crazy there. Where did you say you grew up?

I grew up in Chicago. Chicago. Yeah. I love New York City. You do? I do. It's a lot of opportunity. Well, it's great to visit. Yeah. You live there. Yeah, it is. It's a crazy town. Yeah. I love New York City. You do? I do. It's a lot of opportunity. Well, it's great to visit.

Yeah. You live there, so that's different. Yeah, it is. It's a crazy town. Yeah. I've only ever really visited because I did grow up in New York, but- You did? Yeah, from upstate New York, Poughkeepsie. I know where Poughkeepsie is. My sister got married in Poughkeepsie. Oh, my God. Poughkeepsie.

Who do you- Yeah, small world. There's a reason why I left. Kipsy. Yeah. There's a reason why I left. But no, I love, I love New York. And then New York city is just, it's always been fun because I only go there for like short period of time.

I go in, I enjoy it. I don't, I don't get hit by all the negativity of it. And I get out of there. Smart man. But man, the weather, the weather gets to be shitty. People get to be angry. They're very angry. I can't, you know, I got here and people are smiling on the way to the coffee place saying hello.

You know, and you kind of look around. People got no worries. They got no worries, bro. Am I being punked? Yeah. Weirdest thing. I remember like going back to New York one time and I went into a deli to like order something. And the guy like was about to like point to me, but he could see that I was in the middle of trying to figure out what to order, and he skipped right past me.

He was like, next. And I was like, shit. I've become one of those people just passing through. I wasn't quick enough. So in New York City, things move quick. They do. And if you're not, if you're in the way, you get passed up or run over. It's true.

Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength. Catch you guys later.