The Dr. Josh Axe Show - Health Experts Reveal What’s REALLY Making You Sick | Roundtable

Episode Date: September 8, 2026

Your hormones, your sleep, your stress, your diet — they may all be affecting your health at a much deeper level than you realize. Dr. Josh Axe sits down with functional medicine expert Dr. Will Col...e and fitness and biohacking educator Dylan Gemelli for a no-holds-barred roundtable on what may actually be driving chronic disease, accelerated aging, hormonal dysfunction, and poor metabolic health — and why healing may need to start at the cellular level. In this episode, we learn why Dr. Axe and Dr. Cole believe cellular health could change how we approach chronic disease — and how to identify which systems in your body may be aging faster than others Uncover what’s really going on in your body with advanced biomarker testing for hormones, thyroid, and metabolism — plus a 1-hour consultation with a Senior Health Advisor! → http://mybloodwork.com Disclaimer: The bloodwork our team runs at mybloodwork.com covers a handful of the biomarkers listed in the guide above — including critical thyroid and metabolic markers — plus a 1-hour consultation with a Senior Health Advisor, but does NOT cover all 25. You will want to consult your primary or functional doctor for the entire list. Thank you to our sponsors! Sunlighten Sauna → https://get.sunlighten.com/axepodcast Manukora Manuka Honey → https://manukora.com/axe Watch The Dr. Josh Axe Show every Monday & Thursday on YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/@drjoshaxe?sub_confirmation=1 🎧 **Early Access!** Our listeners enjoy every episode before anyone else! Tune in below and join our exclusive group of listeners → Spotify → https://bit.ly/DrJoshAxeSpotify Apple Podcasts → https://apple.co/3JDvWcS Order our NEW BOOK, *Heal Your Cells* → healyourcellsbook.com Watch my free training on how to naturally balance your blood sugar and reverse your symptoms → http://DrAxeDiabetesClass.com Discover practical steps you can take today to start healing your thyroid naturally → http://DrAxeThyroidClass.com If you’re ready to start feeling like yourself again and balance your hormones, take my free class → http://DrAxeHormoneClass.com CONNECT WITH DR. JOSH AXE Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/drjoshaxe/ Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/DrJoshAxe/ TikTok → https://www.tiktok.com/@thedrjoshaxeshow/ X → https://x.com/drjoshaxe/ LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshaxe Website → http://thehealthinstitute.com Sign up for my newsletter → https://bit.ly/4oE9Jf3 Ask Dr. Axe → http://speakpipe.com/drjoshaxe CONNECT WITH DR. WILL COLE Website → https://drwillcole.com Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/drwillcole/ Podcast → The Art of Being Well CONNECT WITH DYLAN GEMELLI Website → https://dylangemelli.com Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/dylangemelli/ YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/@DylanGemelliBiohacking Podcast → The Dylan Gemelli Podcast TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 — The Biggest Drivers of Chronic Disease 02:29 — Welcome to the Health & Longevity Roundtable 03:07 — Why Cellular Health May Be the Future of Medicine 06:10 — Is One of Your Organs Aging Faster Than the Rest? 08:22 — How Early Do Health Problems Really Begin? 12:30 — The Blood Markers That Could Reveal Heart Disease Risk 18:12 — What Insulin Resistance Actually Means 19:59 — The 2 Hormones That Can Throw Everything Off 22:58 — The Surprising Connection Between Sleep & Insulin Resistance 25:10 — “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” Is Destroying Your Health 31:32 — Waking Up at 3 A.M.? Cortisol May Be the Reason 32:43 — How to Lower Stress & Support Your Vagus Nerve 37:18 — How Your Mind & Nervous System Affect Your Health 41:32 — Can Childhood Trauma Keep You From Healing? 43:55 — Forgiveness, Faith & the Nervous System 48:11 — Why Dylan Believes Health Starts With “Mind, Body & God” 51:11 — Can Faith Actually Help You Live Longer? 58:35 — The Truth About Peptides & Where Medicine Is Headed 1:03:29 — Are Peptides Overhyped or the Future of Health? 1:05:31 — Conventional vs. Functional Medicine 1:10:14 — How to Increase Your Healthspan, Not Just Your Lifespan 1:11:01 — Why Gut Health Matters for Longevity 1:12:46 — The Best Exercise for Mitochondria & Healthy Aging 1:16:23 — Why Women Shouldn't Be Afraid of Strength Training 1:19:32 — Keto, Carnivore & Vegan: Why Extreme Diets Can Backfire 1:21:29 — Bio-Individuality: There Is No Perfect Diet for Everyone 1:27:30 — Is Health Advice Actually Making People More Stressed? 1:29:03 — Seed Oils vs. Saturated Fat: What's Actually Healthier? 1:39:12 — The 5 Foods Josh Axe & Will Cole Would Choose for Life 1:43:11 — Josh & Will Reveal Their Favorite Cheat Foods 1:45:29 — Are We Eating Too Much Protein? 1:50:01 — Do You Really Need Fiber? 1:55:12 — The #1 Health Lesson From Josh, Will & Dylan 1:57:16 — Dylan's Final Message: God First, Health Second Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:01:29 Really what it is is actual cellular dysfunction that's going on here. It's insulin and it's cortisol. And if you can fix those two hormones, every other hormone would go back to where it should be. I found that I had a high LP little A. I found plaque and I was supposed to be the epitome of walking health. My dad had a heart attack when he was 59. I didn't see that coming. The amount that your insulin spikes from less than six hours of sleep is just wild.
Starting point is 00:01:54 Sleep is not a luxury. It's a mandate on our health. It's a non-negotiable if you want to live long and thrive. I used to kind of live by this all gas, no breaks, never rest. You think that you're training and doing all of these things that are so great and macho and everything else. And you're just the epitome of poor health. Just because you hear about it on a podcast or read it in a book doesn't mean that you have to do all the things.
Starting point is 00:02:14 It's always confusion. People going, well, what can I even do? What can I even do? We're creating a bigger problem. We're literally creating stress when we do that. We have such a hubris and arrogance today because we need a randomized control trial. But now the great thing is that the randomized control trials are substantiating what God always said. Surprise, right?
Starting point is 00:02:31 God knew what he was talking about. If I have a patient and they start seeing some results, but then they just hit this plateau, there's a childhood trauma that's just never been dealt with. And that's just continually on replay. I'm not smart. I'm not pretty. I'm not pursued. I'm not loved.
Starting point is 00:02:43 People that are still against people in functional medicine, they're on the wrong side of history because the data speaks for itself. So people are still like it's us versus them. This is not radical. Getting people healthy should not be offensive. If it is, look at your heart. Now, I don't say this lightly, but I believe that the information in heal yourselves
Starting point is 00:03:13 is the most important health content that you'll read all year. And my new book that I wrote with Dr. Will Cole is now officially available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever you get your books. And here's the part I don't want you to miss. When you go to healyourselves.com and add your email and your order number, we'll send you hundreds of dollars in bonus resources, including the cellular peptide guide, the cellular supplement guide, and a masterclass and 40 longevity recipes.
Starting point is 00:03:44 Order your copy, then head on over to healyourselves.com. That's healyourselves.com to get hundreds of dollars of content for free today. All right, everybody, welcome to the roundtable. This is a discussion that we are going to have on everything about today's health and wellness scenario. I am pleasured here to be with Dr. Josh Axe and Dr. Will Cole. We are going to bring you the very best insights that we have. There's going to be some different opinions and thoughts. We're going to compare. We're going to contrast. And we are going to do our very, very best to bring you the best guide that we can. to health and wellness. So without further ado, my friends, Dr. Josh Axe and Dr. Will Cole. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us.
Starting point is 00:04:34 Yeah, so hey, so excited to be here today and excited to jump into cellular medicine. I really believe that's the future of medicine. I know we've got Dr. Will Cole here, a good friend of mine as well. And him and I co-authored a book recently diving into how do you fix your energy? How do you reverse autoimmune disease? How do you reverse the irreversible? When today a lot of doctors would say it can't be done. Well, today we're going to walk you through how to heal your cells we're going to really dive into. Again, what is cellular medicine? What is the mitochondria? How do we fix that? And one of the things I've known that I've seen in practice is conditions like hypothyroidism, perimenopause and menopause, infertility, low testosterone
Starting point is 00:05:10 and men, a lot of times these are cellular issues. And there are all natural solutions to these that we can fix a lot of these issues with diet, herbs, advanced therapies, and so much more. Yeah. So we're going to dive into certain questions. today when it comes to cellular health and recovery, but we're going to cover the basis on different aspects that I find Will and Josh to excel at that I want to get the intuition on. So first things first, you guys just co-authored one of the most amazing books that I've ever read. I had the blessing of getting an early read on it. And so the book is called heal yourselves, correct? Yeah. And so I would like to dive into cellular health today first, because what I
Starting point is 00:05:54 have found, and admittedly, science was my least favorite subject, my entire life till about two years ago, and I have enthralled myself in cellular health. Now, I want to know from both of you, when you're looking at total health and you're analyzing people and you're looking for things that may be going wrong, correct me if I'm wrong, but is the cellular side of the very most important part of health that we need to tackle first and look at when it comes to someone's health. Yeah, I think, look, this topic is without a doubt the root cause of why we're facing such an epidemic rise of chronic health problems. And when you look at it, I see a lot of people telehealth patients that have autoimmunity specifically, okay? And it's easy to see with autoimmunity
Starting point is 00:06:41 when the immune system is attacking certain parts of the body. Mainstream medicine, conventional medicine is looking at organs oftentimes, right? The immune system's attacking the thyroid. It's Tashimoto's disease or it's attacking the gut. It's all sort of colitis and Crohn's or the myelin sheath in the nervous system, the brain is MS, right? And even if it's not autoimmune, inflammation is really the commonality between just about every health problem. But mainstream medicine is largely looking at organs, systems.
Starting point is 00:07:08 Really what it is is actual cellular dysfunction that's going on here. So they're dealing with a downstream macro dysfunction. They're not actually dealing with the root causes. But you look at all the latest science in as far as longevity is concerned. People living long, healthy lives, meaning not having those diseases that they're diagnosed with, it's dealing with cellular dysfunction. And the ripple effect of cellular dysfunction is where you get organ dysfunction. So one of the hallmark studies that we talk about in the book is a Stanford study,
Starting point is 00:07:39 which was published in 2023. And those researchers found as published in nature, I believe, one in five people in the study. It equals to about 22 million Americans. have one organ aging more rapidly than other organs. What that means on a practical level is if the researchers found, if the heart cells, meaning that organ, but the cells of that organ were aging more rapidly, you were at over a 200% increased risk of a heart attack, stroke, heart failure.
Starting point is 00:08:07 Your brain, if your brain cells are aging more rapidly, you were about 80% increased risk of neurodegenerative. So yeah, it absolutely is the most cutting edge aspect of it. So instead of us being archaic dinosaurs of still looking at just the organs and realizing there's so much more at play here, there's actually a cellular dysfunction. And when you address the root cellular dysfunction, you can have healing. And the subtitle of the book is reversing the irreversible, which is a bold statement that we can tell you the T behind that. But it's going to ruffle some feathers, but it's true. It's absolutely true.
Starting point is 00:08:39 These things are, it's a paradigm shift for people to realize that you can actually heal at the cellular level. So you guys brought up points that you just said about the aging of organs. And I kind of got a little freaked out last night when I was reading about that because that's not something that I am accustomed to reading or seeing. And then I started to look into what had happened with both of your fathers. My father passed away when he was 59. So I can relate. I wasn't in tune to the cellular side of things. And understanding what you guys brought up, I want to convey. to people the importance of looking at cellular health early, what age would you start to say, okay, we need to start looking at certain aspects of our blood panels and habits. And Josh, I love you to get into this. What are we looking for at certain stages of life? So let's say like 20 years old when you know they're telling you, oh, you don't need to worry about this.
Starting point is 00:09:37 You don't need to look at this. That frustrates me to the highest level, you know. And so what are some things stage of life that we need to be aware of? And what can we address early that's going to prevent some of these things? Yeah, well, I mean, I think it really starts at infancy. I mean, I know that's going right back to the beginning, but let me say this. I mean, here's an example. I know when I started my practice, this was nearly 20 years ago now.
Starting point is 00:09:59 I would have mothers bring in their daughters that were starting to have a number of health issues. But, you know, one thing that a lot of people, quite a few people are, I think, are aware of now is women are hitting, a lot of young girls are hitting their menstrual cycle at 10, 11, 12 years. old, commonly 13, when really it shouldn't be until at least 16 and 17. I mean, so a lot of girls, rather, if you're hitting at 12 rather than 17, your hormonal system is aging five years early. I mean, think about that. Yeah. And then what does that lead to in the future? Well, increase risk of breast cancer, most likely. And then later on, of course, hitting parimenopause and menopause much earlier. But overall, I mean, a lot of this dysfunction starts off when we're children with insulin resistance is major. We know, you know, type two diabetes in children, insulin resistance
Starting point is 00:10:48 is much, much higher. So all that being said, I think they're really looking at, and by the way, I do want to say something else, too, that study said, and it was looking at some very basic markers in saying, okay, you know, they looked at a number of organ systems. I found about 20% of people had one at organ aging faster than others. I will say this, though, from clinical experience, I think that number is radically higher. I think it's probably closer to. 50%. I mean, I think it's at least double what they have down there. Because right now, I look at blood markers every single day. Okay, we run very extensive tests about in looking at numerous blood panels. And the number of people that come in with high APOB, the number of people
Starting point is 00:11:29 that come in with, again, other heart markers related to that that are off high blood pressure, that's pretty high. The number of people that come in with pre-diabetes, that's extremely high. So think about that, I think overall, you know, you've got, um, I'm trying to think about how many people are diabetic and pre-diabetic. It's close to 50% of people, right? And then there's the larger continuum, depending on the study that you cite, right?
Starting point is 00:11:56 But I've seen upwards of 93% of the United States is some on the spectrum. It's not a healthy. Yeah. So what percentage of people actually are diagnosed? I don't know exact, but the reality is, that's such a reactive model anyways, right? It's like just wait to you're bad enough to be labeled.
Starting point is 00:12:12 By the time somebody's diagnosed, It's four to 10 years prior to that diagnosis that the actual mechanism is at play. Exactly. So, again, what I found is most people when they come in and actually get their blood work done the right way, they tend to be most people, not everybody, okay, because I definitely have some outliers, people that are very healthy and don't. But I think around 50% or more people have one organ aging faster than the others. And that puts you a great risk of disease.
Starting point is 00:12:37 Now, according to that study that Will is talking about, and this is one we dive into in the book, certain systems aging faster in others is much more deadly. The most deadly was neurological. I think the second most deadly was immune system. If your immune system is aging too quickly, I mean, your chance of cancer, for instance, is just radically higher. And then the next one is cardiovascular disease. So those are the three in terms of mortality rates that really increases your risk of mortality. But overall, I mean, think about the value today of knowing if you have that one organ system aging faster than the other. And then one thing we do in the book, heal yourselves is we lay out specifically, here is exactly how to reverse the age of that organ system because it's different,
Starting point is 00:13:16 right? If somebody's neurologically advancing an age too quickly, of course, there's a greater risk of dementia, what do we do there? We want to really send blood to the brain and support detoxification of that channel as well. So there's ginkgo biloba, there's lions made mushroom, there's exercise, extremely important for brain health and then the immune system, you know, doing things that there's herbs like astragalus, there's doing medulla, mushrooms, there's drinking more bone broth, there's things that you can do there to reverse the age of that organ system. So there's great value in knowing which organ system is aging too quickly and then having an exact protocol on how to start reversing the age of that organ.
Starting point is 00:13:56 Okay. So question then, because this has got me super curious. We're looking at the aging of organs. We're looking at systems. What are some of the most telltale signs on a blood panel that are going to indicate my heart's aging rapidly here and if we see that what do we have to do to address it given the problem give me an example of a problem maybe a cardiovascular sign like you said apob for example we see that what do we need to do to address it and then how do we know if the regression is reversing what is going to show us that we have a reversal there well you have to compare the data right so i think some of the top things if we want to know about cardiometabolic issues I mean, the leading driver of heart attack and choke is insulin resistance.
Starting point is 00:14:42 So I would actually want to look at someone's metabolic profile and look at the optimal range is not just the labs reference range. So people that know this, like the labs reference range is largely based on a statistical bell curve of people who go to labs. The people that are predominantly going to labs aren't the healthiest population. So in functional medicine, we're looking at optimal, not average. Where does people that live long, healthy, thriving, vibrant lives, that's a tighter interval of where the body's functioning the best,
Starting point is 00:15:10 the functional range. So, for example, I would look at glucose in A1C. I mean, these are some basic, and this is what's so good about this, is most of this stuff is completely within the, you can go to your standard local doctor and get these labs done and kind of see something the same
Starting point is 00:15:27 as the protein markers that the Stanford researchers were looking at, but it's a good aggregation of more or less how faster, how slowly these cells are ticking. So glucose, we want under 90, but fasting blood sugar. A1C, we want under 5.5, around 5.5 would be great. Triglycerides or circulating fats, we want to be under 100. If the body has nowhere to put the excess blood sugar, which is fueling the heart attack
Starting point is 00:15:53 and stroke, the insulin resistance, the body stores that triglycerides as either fat around the midsection, fat around the liver, fatty liver disease, or circulating fat, to glycerides. So you're going to see broader views for all of these on that lab reference range, whether it's lab core request or another lab. So we're looking at these optimal ranges. And then, of course, we have to look at serum insulin. We want that to be low and healthy. And then inflammation markers, high sensitivity, see reactor protein under one, homocysteine, another inflammation marker. We want it to be under seven. And then there's liver enzymes, AST, ALT, G-G-G-T. because if the lever enzymes are spiked,
Starting point is 00:16:30 sometimes that's years prior and that you ever become a type 2 diabetic, but you're somewhere on this insulin-resistant spectrum, that insulin resistance is the leading cause of heart attack and stroke. That's what's killing one in two people of America is because of insulin resistance. So that's where I would start,
Starting point is 00:16:49 and then from there you can look at the APOB, LP-L-P-L-A, and then what I would also run from a cholesterol standpoint, it was called a nuclear magnetic resonance or NMR test, which looks at the particle sizes. So total cholesterol by itself, I mean, you know this, but for people that don't know, total cholesterol by itself, it's like flipping a coin.
Starting point is 00:17:07 It's about 50% of people who have heart attacks and strokes have normal to low cholesterol. So it's like, is that 200 total cholesterol good quality or bad quality? It could be great quality. So it's not demonizing cholesterol by itself, but realizing that's an incomplete perspective. So we measure what are called small-dense LDL particles, which are actually protein carriers,
Starting point is 00:17:28 cholesterol and we want these oxidized rusted inflamed BB bullets these small dense LDL particles to be as low as possible but we doesn't mean we have low cholesterol it means the quality is better so these fluffy buoyant large buoyant LDL particles are actually healthy so you could have 250 cholesterol but really great quality and I'd much rather have that than someone has 150 total cholesterol but high small dense LDL particles and high inflammation markers so the context around cholesterol, it's so important because there's so much, because that's where people go to, right? It's like, oh, if my cholesterol's above 200, that's the devil and I have to get it down. Well, yeah, for most people, other than, I mean, look, other than middle-aged men who have had heart
Starting point is 00:18:12 attacks, and there's a very slight protection that statin drugs bring, the vast majority of people, it's not, the only benefit they're getting from statin drugs is maybe researchers argue it acts is a mild anti-inflammatory. Maybe for some people. That's being benevolent. The reality is it's not cholesterol. It's killing people. It's the inflammation, the damages the particles that carry cholesterol. That's the issue. And statin drugs mildly maybe affect inflammation. Thank you for pointing some of those things out because that's kind of on a personal note. And I've talked to you about this, Josh, the struggles that I've had conveying this. I've been studying cardiology five years now with some of the top cardiologists in the world and making this kind of like my life thing because I found
Starting point is 00:18:56 that I had a high LP little A. I found plaque and I was supposed to be the epitome of walking health. And some of these things are uncontrollable. My dad had a heart attack when he was 59. I didn't see that coming. And so I want to make people aware of the things that we need to look at so that they can be ahead of the curve. Had I had some blood work done maybe in my 30s or even later 30s, let's say I would have been on the on the up and up of knowing hey you've got this gene man you got to do some some different things make some changes Josh do me a favor can you just break down what insulin resistance means because we we say that but I know some people that have written me when I've talked about and been like what is that you know yeah sure yeah so I mean insulin resistance is where we have
Starting point is 00:19:41 these beta cell we have cells on the pancreas and imagine that you know you have a my grandmother used to have one of these she had a loud speaker and she would go up and like yell like in your ear because she couldn't hear anything but she would and literally and you know grandma I'm like I'm gonna go deaf you know but she's just doing that to talk to you or just to or just well so I mean I give you the whole background
Starting point is 00:20:04 they owned a campground in Lake it was like 50 acres so she did it but then like sometimes she would do it when you're standing right in front of her yeah just to get you yeah so yeah exactly but you can basically these cells can go they can go death, right? So they don't hear anymore. They don't work right anymore. So insulin resistance is where, that's the thing about insulin resistance, right? Your cells are kind of become resistant to
Starting point is 00:20:31 insulin. They become death. And so it's not the insulin itself. It's the receptor for insulin, because what happens is you have insulin, which is a peptide hormone. Yeah. And it goes in and basically, it's like a key, unlocks it to where now it can help bring sugar into the cell, right? So sugar is fine if it's in the cell, because then your cell, your mitochondria is going to take it, and it's going to turn it into energy ATP, cellular energy. We want that. But if we have insulin resistance, sugar stays in the blood. Okay.
Starting point is 00:21:02 And when it stays in the blood, it's inflammatory. It's going to cause the plaque buildup. So to Will's point, it's going to increase the risk of cardiovascular information, plaque buildup, but really inflammation throughout the entire body. And so to Will's point, if there really is a single, I kind of, I typically say this. There are really two hormones for the most part that I think are the ones we want to pay attention to the most. It's insulin and it's cortisol. And if you can fix those two hormones, typically almost every other hormone in the body will just do exactly what it should do.
Starting point is 00:21:35 It's a dominole. Like, if cortisol goes high, now insulin goes high. Well, if insulin's high, every other hormone is going to be thrown out. And when you think about the cascade too, insulin goes high. Well, typically, sometimes estrogen will follow it. Progesterone will drop down. Well, now estrogen's high for men. Well, it's going to romatize their testosterone.
Starting point is 00:21:54 That'll become more estrogen. And there's all these things that happen. But typically, what people will start doing is they'll start chasing the downstream. This happens most with thyroid hormones. It's like, okay, we're going to go and chase TSA all over the place. If you would just fix insulin and cortisol, every other hormone would go back to where it should be. Yeah. And on that note, I'm just, as he was talking about this, is that, again, we were talking about insulin resistance.
Starting point is 00:22:18 But what is it? It's a cellular dysfunction. Yes. So it's talked about in the research as the information theory of aging or the information model, and I like the way that Dr. Ag said it. He said it become deaf.
Starting point is 00:22:29 That's what's actually happening. Is that it can't, they cells lose recognition of self. They get confused. So if it happens in the pancreas or the liver is where insulin resistance is happening, the liver cells become confused on who they are. How God created that liver is to recognize,
Starting point is 00:22:48 I'm a liver cell, but it's forgetting. It's called X differentiation, is the term, is that cells all get confused. There's cellular confusion. They don't know how to function and haywire. And then just like humans, when one becomes kind of toxic and dysregulated, the people around them can be kind of dysregulated too.
Starting point is 00:23:06 And that's what happens on a cellular level. The whole liver becomes insulin resistant. Listen, if you've started over more times than you can count, maybe it was another diet, another protocol that works for three weeks, and then it stops working, you're not missing discipline, you're missing the foundation.
Starting point is 00:23:24 That's what our cellular healing protocols build at the Health Institute. We've got hundreds of five-star reviews on Trust Pilot from folks who finally stopped guessing and actually discovered lasting healing. The first step is a cellular blood work analysis, which is our at-home blood work kit,
Starting point is 00:23:42 followed by a full-hour review with the Senior Health Advisor who will map out your patterns and show you exactly how we can. work together. If you're ready to finally stop the cycle, go to mybloodwork.com. That's my bloodwork.com so we can help you regain your health. Okay. So here's what I want to do. And I want to do this fair because I know how this goes. If I ask you one thing and I want both your opinions, it's like, well, he just took all my answers. Yeah. It's okay. He can have them. Yeah, we both. We both.
Starting point is 00:24:12 We both have plenty to say. I want one for me to view on both insulin resistance and cortisol. what are the main drivers and causes of these problems? So give me one for each. Okay, I'm going to go first. Sure. Okay, so for insulin resistance, well, I can tell you, I think, in terms of studies, what probably impacts it the most, and it's probably, and I would actually say this for both, my answer is poor sleep.
Starting point is 00:24:41 If somebody's sleeping less than six hours a night, I mean, I want to say, because I covered this recently on a podcast, I mean, the amount of, that your insulin spikes from less than six hours of sleep is just wild. Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah, just one night of poor sleep can spike the high sensitivity, C reactive protein that I mentioned. It's true.
Starting point is 00:25:00 And that's why shift workers, we just can't control that, right? I mean, it's like if you're working a night turn in a factory or a nurse or a truck driver, you know, people that work the graveyard shift, they call it graveyard for a reason. I mean, they're at increased risk of insulin resistance because their whole sleep wake cycle is off. So part of it's sleep, and then part of it's like our connection with light and the way that light impacts the circadian rhythm. In fact, when we were writing this book together, I spent a lot of time. One thing I really like to do is I like to say, okay, what does all the current medical research say? But what is all of the ancient practitioners and Chinese medicine and Ierveda?
Starting point is 00:25:35 What does the Bible say? I really tried to look at those things. And so I worked with AI on this and I kept asking it, what is typically the first thing in terms of hallmarks of aging or health problems? what is typically the first thing that tips off that cascade? And the thing it came back with constantly was disruption of circadian rhythms. Yeah. Was the tipping point for most people. Yeah, it's the light is that it resets the cell clock.
Starting point is 00:25:57 So if you're not in sleep, if you're not sleeping well, if you don't have good sleep hygiene, it's really going to throw it off. And think about even Genesis and the Genesis of disease. Again, it's, you know, the first thing the Bible is talking about is night and day. I mean, it's very, you know. Yeah, it is a massive one. And so that's an interesting pick, but it's true. It is true.
Starting point is 00:26:19 People don't think about that. They think, oh, it sleeps this thing that's like, yeah, we know we should sleep. But are they really prioritizing this deep medicine? Then they're slowly depleting and not to sleep, but what's their relationship with light and darkness? As far as the sleep wake cycle, it's profoundly important for insulin resistance. I'm going to say something here, and I don't want to sound morbid. But you know, that statement, I'll sleep when I die. And I used to kind of live by this all gas, no brakes.
Starting point is 00:26:45 rest and kind of that comment you will die a lot sooner without sleep because you're going to run yourself into the ground and and i have come from that fitness bodybuilding world first before i started to really tackle total health alignment and you run into this overtraining and that overtraining cascades into this just like dark hole of brain fog and inconsistent eating patterns inconsistent sleep patterns and before you know it you think that you're training and doing all of these things that are so great and macho and everything else. And you're just, you're the epitome of poor health. Can I tell you, though? So I remember, uh, I worked as my first job out of high school when I got to college was I worked as a personal trainer for four years and worked in a gym. And I remember,
Starting point is 00:27:30 you know, looking at some of the people that were more semi-proes or people doing it kind of for, you know, maybe for vanity. And, in, and a lot of that culture was, to your point, don't sleep, you know, drink just straight alcohol so we don't like mess up our carb, you know, our macros. I mean, that's what thing. But here's something else I will tell you. The professionals, the Arnold Schwarzenegger's, the Jay Cutler's, the Ronnie Colt, those guys, they slept a crazy amount.
Starting point is 00:27:58 I'm talking about 12 hours a day. Yeah, it would sleep. Yeah, recovery. Well, that's where all the muscle growth happens. Yeah. You know, and the testosterone levels, that's when they get the highest boost to growth hormone is sleep, it's recovery. If God had to sleep on the seventh day, it wasn't that he needed to. He was showing us the example of this is what you need to do. Yeah, I want to say it was a craziest sleep
Starting point is 00:28:19 schedule. I want to say, and I might be wrong on this, but I thought it might have been J-Col or something like this. He, what it was, he slept like four hours and then woke up and then four hours and then another four hours. He slept three, four-hour shifts in. Yeah. So they can get enough meals in too for for caloric intake. Yeah, recovery is so important. And I lived this. And I lived this world and I trained a lot of professional bodybuilders and athletes so I saw the ones that made it that lasted they prioritized rest and recovery over train train train train train and not to bring everything back to the cells but I will do that with for heal your cells is that that's where the cells recover yeah that's where these autophagy pathways happen
Starting point is 00:28:56 that to the body needs to have the cellular debris to be cleaned up and that happens when you sleep so yeah sleeping when you're says to say I'll sleep but I'm dead it's sleep is not a luxury it's a it's a mandate on our health it's not non-negotiable if you want to live long and thrive. And I will say this too, and I know will you'll agree with us or I think you will, is that, you know, I do think sleep is probably the one that, I mean, you can just absolutely destroy your health so fast if you're sleeping four to six hours a night. But also, I mean, you know, there were, what was supersized me? You know, that, I mean, you can absolutely destroy your health with poor nutrition, high stress. You can see people
Starting point is 00:29:36 physically aging radically, you know, fast. I mean, lack. of moving. I mean, there's, there's a loneliness. That's a whole other category, but that was shown to take something like 14 years off someone's life. Yeah. They're starting with light and sleep, but it's, I mean, if you want more of our hot takes on what causes it, there's a whole list. Oh yeah. There's a whole list. You just brought up what I was actually going to next was when you don't sleep enough, think about how that affects your hunger. You, you start to have strange cravings in the morning and. Yeah, insatiable food cravings. It's throwing off good, it's, it's, the whole sleep wake cycles off. So yeah, you're a hangary monster and you're eating foods that don't
Starting point is 00:30:14 love you back because you are at the whim of these dysregulated hormones. Would you call that like metabolic dysfunction from lack of sleep? Is that kind of what it would fall under? And then it compounds. It's like if you're not sleeping well, you're also irritable, which raises impacting your relationships. You're going to be more lonely because people are going to be want to be around you. I mean, there's a cascade of that where it's so important. You know what I used to tell myself and then my wife because she's just like, why don't you sleep longer? What are you doing this for yourself? And I said, I just don't feel good when I sleep over six hours.
Starting point is 00:30:45 I feel like I'm hung over and everything. And then I started doing it a few times. And then I said, okay, I'm setting this alarm clock and I'm getting Mando seven. I hope to get eight. Isn't that funny, the things we tell ourselves? It's like, it's so funny. It's just we can identify with these things that may or not be true and make it our personality. It's like, I'm a night person.
Starting point is 00:31:05 I'm a night owl is another one, right? It's like, are you really? night hours, it's just, just because something's common, you normalized it. So my daughter just started preschool. She went, you know, started this week. And, uh, I mean, I go to bed right now. I mean, I'm in bed at like 755. I'm not kidding. Well, because anyways, I put them down and honestly, it takes like, it takes so long before she falls asleep. And then I'm like, you know what? I'm going to sleep now as well. I love that for you, man. I do too. Jeez, I'm getting my second gym session for the day and at nine or 10.
Starting point is 00:31:38 I'm not even kidding you. I'm trying so hard to flip that switch. Yeah. It's hard. You should be. I mean, honestly, you guys, is the best sleep time like between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m.
Starting point is 00:31:50 does that sound about right where you're getting the best deep sleep? It's when you're getting deep the most for sure. That's also when, at least in Chinese medicine, that's also when liver, which, you know, the liver does everything.
Starting point is 00:32:02 I mean, it's, Well, that's what that's what the insulin resistance is predominantly having. And that's a good point, too. It's like these hours matter. It's not just about the hours. The time of the day because of the darkness and our connection with light and the lack of it are so important. And something that we talk about in the book, because this is something that Josh brings into such a passion for traditional Chinese medicine.
Starting point is 00:32:22 Yeah. That it's just, that's what these experts in TCM over thousands of years knew that these specific hours were associated with these organs. And now research is just catching up with this. right? And we don't even know half of it in our hubris of modernity how these, it's not just the hours. And that's why the shift workers that work the graveyard turn, yes, they have to make the best of a not ideal situation. But ultimately, nighttime is the best time to be sleeping for so many ways. It's never going to, it's a counterfeit to be sleeping during the day. Yes, you have to do what you have to do, but it is not just the hours, but the time itself. You know, one of the patterns that I see in a lot
Starting point is 00:33:00 of patients, I'm sure you do as well as the 3 a.m. wake up, like the 3 a.m. and then have a hard time kind of falling back to sleep after 3 a.m. And that's where that's the cortisol. We go like the reverse curve. It's like, okay, well, you know, your body is so cortisol driven that your body's like, okay, well, I know we got a lot going on. It just starts, it starts peaking way too early. So if people are waking, and that actually in Chinese medicine, they call that liver cheese stagnation, but it typically is caused from, yeah, just people that pack their schedule from the moment they wake up till the time they go to bed and they just are always like trying to achieve and win and eventually just living in a sympathetic state with not enough parasympathetic,
Starting point is 00:33:43 they'll start to have the 3 a.m. wake up call. And so that's a, that's a sign of high cortisol and that's something that then, you know, it's at the root of a lot of problems. It is. What would you recommend for somebody that's doing that like three a.m. wake up can't go back to sleep and going to bed at a good time, you know, 10, 11 o'clock. If that is a cortisol problem, what are some practices or things they can do to make a change that's non-medicinal? I would say that neuroendocrine axis, the intersection between the nervous system and its communication with the endocrine system of the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis, but Dr. X was talking about that what's my nervous system saying to my adrenal glands which releases cortisol. Someone being constantly stuck in that
Starting point is 00:34:28 fight or flight, freeze, fond, sympathetic tone like Dr. X has talked about, we have to be supporting vagal tone. This person almost always has poor vagal tone. We talked about the gym a moment ago. Well, if someone's biceps or core is weak, they have to strengthen it. This aspect of the nervous system is weak. The vagus nerve, the largest cranial nerve in the body, It gets the root word, wanderer. It is responsible for that resting, digesting, optimal REM, deep, heart rate variability, all the things we want to feel grounded and get good night's sleep. That nervous, part of the nervous system is weak.
Starting point is 00:35:03 So we need to strengthen it and do some vagal toning. So there's lots of ways to do vagal toning. But I typically have telehealth patients pick something active and something passive. So something active is something that you actively are doing. that it's a practice that you show up. It could be breathwork. It could be gargling. It could be meditation, journaling,
Starting point is 00:35:25 because this has to do with stress and trauma. Yes, it's currently stressed, but journaling's a great way to sort of somatically clear out any stress. Some basic, you mentioned not medicinally. Like magnesium can be a great tool here, things that are supportive of the parasympathetic. And then something passive,
Starting point is 00:35:43 I like transcutaneous vagal nerve stimulation, like the devices that you wear on the ear or neck that kind of are kind of like e-stem on these auricular branches of the vagus nerve to tone it. So actually our CEO over here, Adam was telling me, I told him, I'm like, get this device and he's sleeping better. His HRVs improved. Neuropod or what do you have them doing? Palsetto. Pulsetto. So Neuropod and pulsator are two favorites. I've used to Poloneuro, which I use frequently and Pulsato, were the ones that I've used to. Polo Nero is great too. It works differently because it's oscillation on the bone, but it's similar mechanism. Yeah. It's working on
Starting point is 00:36:15 these different pathways of toning the vagus nerve, the parasipathetic. So start there, but you have to be consistent. It would be like doing it once and saying it didn't work, would be like me going to the gym once and saying, well, that gym didn't work for me. You have to tone a week, something that's weak. I'll tell you, I had a, by the way, in Chinese medicine, they have a formula for increasing vegal tone. It's called the wonder formula, or the free and easy wonder formula for, because it's all anyways. So you took your point, what we call the Vegas nerve. But we had, You know, Josh Radd, I had him on the show. Yeah, yeah, he's great.
Starting point is 00:36:47 And he had told me, he said, you know, I have patients gargle if they have constipation, which again is vegltonne issue, has them gargle for two minutes every hour on the hour. I love that. And I was like, I'm going to try that. I won't home and did this. And I was blown away. And I can tell you, do this. So, and at first, anyways, I tried to do the full two minutes.
Starting point is 00:37:11 I realized, okay, no, I need to stop and breathe out of my nose. because I could not. He was drowning himself in the kitchen. So what I tell me what to do, gargle 30 seconds, breathe for 10 seconds, gargle 30 seconds, but do it for two, two and a half minutes. Difficult, probably. It's a little difficult. Is it a long two minutes, Dr. Ax?
Starting point is 00:37:30 I would say it's a long two minutes. Let me say this, I mean, I was blown away at how much I could just tell I just went right into parasympathetic. That's cool. It was unbelievable. I mean, I've done breathwork. And breathwork is great, but I truly think gargling. is the fastest single way
Starting point is 00:37:46 to get yourself into the state. You can't just do it for 10 seconds. I think you've got to do that full two minutes, but it's incredible. And it's like this is just free other than your time, right? So that person that wakes up at 3 a.m., that's what they need to do.
Starting point is 00:37:59 It's a sign. That's a check engine light. That 3 a.m. wake is a check engine light that their nervous system's ready to go because what's happening there mechanistically is that cortisol is supposed to be increased in the morning. So that's normal. It's happening a bit early.
Starting point is 00:38:13 and then what's happening? The glucose is coming up. Glucose is being released from the liver, and you're waking up. Your whole sleep wake cycle is a bit too hypervigilant. You're like, okay, yeah, you need that to happen, but not at 3 a.m. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:38:26 Like, calm down a little bit. So just regulate to kind of an adaptogenic type balancing approach, maybe that happening not as extreme at 6 a.m. And waking up refreshed, reading a book is another good way to do it. Yes. Just like reading it to grounds you, It censors you not looking at a screen, but reading a book.
Starting point is 00:38:45 I was going to say not an e-reader, like a real physical book. Yeah. So I want to stick to the neuro side of things right now. And admittedly, I did 15 some odd years of nothing but fitness, nutrition, not understanding the total control that the mind has over every single thing that we do. And I tell people this, look at some of the best athletes that we've ever encountered. Kobe. What was it?
Starting point is 00:39:11 it was not Kobe athlete, it was Mamba mentality. Why was everybody so scared of Tiger Woods? Could he put the fear into everybody? Because he was so mentally strong that he knew he was going to to whoop you when it came down to it. Same with Jordan. So it's the mentality aspect of it. And likewise, the people that fold under pressure, they're the ones that never got elite that had all the talent. Same thing with body, right?
Starting point is 00:39:32 So like you guys are saying, cortisol spikes, well, there's a lot of stress and a lot of things going on internally that are caused by that. I did a very, very severe nervous system reset. What did you do? It was with Dr. Sean Drake and he called it soul surgery. And this is, God plays a big part in this treatment and this therapy. And I challenged myself and I said, you know what? For some reason, you want to be compassionate. You have it in your heart and it's not coming out.
Starting point is 00:40:04 You're stoic all of a sudden and you don't want to be. You're super irritable, but you're eating. well, you're training, you're doing all these things. What the hell is wrong with you? You're spiritually good. You're praying all the time. Why are you doing this? Why are you so inable to stay focused? And why are you not resentful, but just kind of angry? Things that aren't who you are. So what I did was I went and sat with him and he was able to pull all of these different traumas out of me or things that bothered me that I don't think about. I didn't even know they were there. And they were hidden inside.
Starting point is 00:40:41 And I was able to do this through, like, the breath, when I tell you the breathwork, I mean, I'd have to sit and show you this was so intense. Is it like holotropic or sort of deep? Deep and then like heavy. And then it was with sounds and vibrations. And then there was a lot of connection with God and me opening up my mind to be able to hear him talk. Because what happens is noise, all of this noise and distraction. And I don't know where the hell it's coming from.
Starting point is 00:41:08 I can't focus. Even when I'm reading scripture, my mind is like, it's soaking it in, but not fully. So I was able to release this. And once I was able to do this, I just developed this deeper appreciation of everything. Everything my wife said, it was like, ah, you know, I appreciate that you're taking the time to do this. Not, man, you're saying this and it's being irritable. Being irritable for no reason. My mom would say something and I'd just be like, man, stop.
Starting point is 00:41:36 You know, and instead now I'm listening. I appreciate the conversation. Or for instance, I would do this, oh, I have to go do this interview today or I have to go do this. And now it's, man, I get to. Yeah, wow. I get to do this.
Starting point is 00:41:49 Wow. And that just shows you this, like someone's heart state and their mental state, how that impacts so many different things, right? Yes. Because if you're in that dysregulated state, how you show up to the world,
Starting point is 00:42:00 that shows up in how you, the foods you eat and how you treat people, how you sleep, all of those things. That's really profound. It is. Was there just one session that you did? No, I mean, I have had to, I've had to refresh. And I started to do this in the morning where if I don't get up, do all my prayers.
Starting point is 00:42:18 So when I get up in the morning, my morning routine is I read my scriptures, like the morning scriptures. I'm Catholic, but if you're not whatever, it doesn't matter. Just read, right? Yeah. Then I say a prayer over my wife. Then I, you know, say I go shower, shade, but I'm saying prayer while I'm doing it. Then I do my walk and then I go do breathwork. Then it's time for meetings.
Starting point is 00:42:38 And you know what? If I got a meeting and I'm sorry, like, I have to push it back because I have to do this. Or I'm not going to be right. And I'm not going to be good to you myself or anybody else. And I think the important thing that I'm trying to stress here is get your mind right first before you start your day. So it's so true. Yeah. I mean, the Bible says that.
Starting point is 00:42:54 I mean, from your heart, things flow from there, right? It's like everything flows from there. Yeah. Yeah, I totally go. I mean, one of the things, you know, I think Will and I both feel really strongly about is dealing with, past childhood trauma and using faith-based medicine. I mean, I see it constantly where I think anytime I have a patient who, let me just say at least 90% of the time,
Starting point is 00:43:19 if I have a patient and they start seeing some results, but then they just hit this plateau, I think the most common thing, especially if it's been for a long time they've dealt with an issue, there's a childhood trauma that's just never been dealt with and that's just continually on replay. I'm not smart, I'm not pretty, I'm not pursued, I'm not loved.
Starting point is 00:43:38 I'm worth a lot. I mean, there's something there that's feeding the fear, the anxiousness, that over-analyzing every last thing, the upset, you know, whatever, whatever out of balance emotion there is, there's some sort of trauma. Or just not knowing, you know, there's, I say this quote constantly. So my audience won't have heard me say this before. But my favorite quote in the world is an AW quote, Tozer quote, and it's something like this.
Starting point is 00:44:06 He says, what you believe about God or what you think about when you think about God is the most important thing about you. And so because you think about, like, if God is like an old, you know, scary figure that's just judging you, or he's distant and really doesn't care, or he's benevolent, he's just thinking about you every moment.
Starting point is 00:44:24 And it's like, you know, if anyone has kids, like my daughter, I think about her all day. And, you know, like she's doing a swim team now. Like, I can't wait to go. and watch her and help her. But if you believe that God is like that, interacting in your life and constantly working things out for your good, what that does to your state is just crazy.
Starting point is 00:44:44 And so all that being said, I think that there are so many things that are spiritual that are in the past that have never been dealt with. And then to your other point, and I think if you can't, and the number one way to deal with those things is going to the Bible and following the things the Bible says. It's praying and first connecting with God.
Starting point is 00:45:02 It's confessing. any of your sins, anything, you know, getting that out there, having other people pray for you. And this is just living rightly. But then also writing. Yeah. I mean, the studies on writing for overcoming anxiousness and fear. I mean, it's probably the most powerful therapy in terms of like an exercise you can do. And then part of that, forgiveness, the other part is the part of the confession.
Starting point is 00:45:26 Like after that is like forgiving others because the bitterness and rage and like what that does to our sympathetic tone and then forgiving ourselves for things that maybe we did intentionally or unintentionally. Yeah. The so important part of that whole, yeah, it's all there. It's all there. I mean, surprise, right? God knew what he was talking about.
Starting point is 00:45:47 We have such a hubris, again, arrogance today that sometimes it's the stuff that we just overlook because we need a randomized control trial. But now the great thing is that the randomized control trials are substantiating what God always said, not just in this circumstance, but in any others, too. You know, there's the parable of a sewer in the Bible and that somebody's sowing seeds and that, you know, it either falls on, you know, hard ground and it can't get into the soil or it's, you know, there's a different, but the one that stands up to me the most reason I'm bringing this up is you mentioned busyness. I think in the modern day, that is the one that hits people the hardest. Is it these weeds go up and choke off the plant to where it cannot grow and flourish? And so, like, I just think about my home, like this morning, like, I was going to have a little bit of. bit of quiet time. And my office right now is not set up. Like I can still hear everything. And I've got
Starting point is 00:46:38 dogs barking. I've got my two-year-old like just screaming. She's just going to wiggle bike. She's flying through the room. And I'm like, you know, I don't know if it's possible for me to get like just a quiet moment. But this is why Jesus woke up before the sun came up. Now, you know, he had an early bedtime, I'm sure. He's going to bed at your time. Yeah. But again, that quiet time and that stillness to hear and to actually let your spirit rest and to connect with God. And that's important. So what I typically do now is I go for a walk. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:47:12 Because that's where I can typically get that. And that's an interesting point because that 3 a.m. that we talked about earlier, the context around that's so important. Are they waking up panic, heart racing and they can't fall back asleep? I've had some telehealth patients over the years when we improve vagal tone and nourish the body with food, deal with all the facets. of that would regulate that neuroendocrine axis, sometimes not maybe at 3 a.m., but maybe 5 a.m. they'll wake up. But they wake up refreshed.
Starting point is 00:47:39 They don't, they're not anxious. When we track the REM deep sleep in HRV, it looks great. Research shows that even if you don't have all like 12 hours of sleep, but it's a great quality, let's just say six, eight hours of sleep, that may be the body just being balanced way that God made it. And you do have that time in the morning to like go and like, walk, get out in nature, put your feet on some grass.
Starting point is 00:48:03 So that's not always a bad thing. I don't want to pathologize early mornings because to Josh's point is one of the best times to connect with God in the quiet, in the stillness before anybody else is awake for you to do amazing things. Sometimes people are freaked out by that. I can't go back to bed.
Starting point is 00:48:18 It's 5 o'clock, 6 a.m. Maybe it's just time because you've improved. Your new normal is you are regulated and you get up early, naturally, without an alarm. Yeah. I got a new patient for you because my mom does not listen to a word I say. What's your mom's name?
Starting point is 00:48:31 Nancy. Nancy will listen to us. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I'm going to send her to you guys. You guys have a smoother tone than I do with her probably. Sometimes it's the messenger, not the message. That's exactly my point. Okay, so touching on a couple things that you guys said.
Starting point is 00:48:46 One, in the Bible, God made his points in the whispers, in the breath and the whispers. He sent the, and when they, there was a thing I just read with Elijah when he went to the mountain and there was a storm and there was the thunder. but then that was the whisper from God that was the present message. And that's, that resonated with me because it was like a direct punch in the gut of you never block out the noise.
Starting point is 00:49:13 I pray well, but I don't listen good. You know what I mean? Well, walk up to the club. I think we're all kind of hard headed to know. But then it came to the point of if you were having a conversation with your wife, would you talk the whole time and never let her speak?
Starting point is 00:49:25 Yeah. So if you're talking to God and you're sitting there talking the whole time, shouldn't you let him speak? And I've been trying to implement. that into prayer time too so good so i sent you guys um last week a speech that i gave i sent you a clip of it really so good such a good yeah talk and i and i this has nothing to do with me but it has to do with the thought behind the speech i now am on a mission everybody wants to talk to me about peptides and hormones and everything else that the juicy topics of the day which i am more than happy to
Starting point is 00:49:53 discuss and they play a certain role in health but foundationally and this is what i want to talk to you both about. I have a foundation and my belief set. And when I go speak, this is what I'm talking about. And I guess the conventions are too good for me if they don't want to allow me to speak on this, which is fine. I'm not going to stop. And it is mind, body, but it's not mind and body spirit. It's mind, body, and God. And that connection that I have found to align full health, because we can nourish ourselves with knowledge. We can nourish ourselves with foods. But if we don't nourish our soul, we will never be cellular health, we will never find the right nutrition plan,
Starting point is 00:50:31 we'll never find anything, we're going to be chasing something forever. And I have found, once I am able to get people to connect with God in one way or another, and any of us just hear me out, let me get into your heart. Just let me let you think about it.
Starting point is 00:50:46 Even if you're the biggest atheist on the planet, non-believer, hateful, whatever, let me just get in there. And you start to think, it starts to change the, way that we move internally, which then allows inflammation to go down. My big point was, and I asked the crowd this and I said, this is a rhetorical question and I'll wait. How many angry, negative people do you look at and go, wow, they're the epitome of health? Let me check their
Starting point is 00:51:10 blood panels and I bet you anything. We're going to see a lot of disruption on blood markers. So I say there's a lot of knowledge, a lot of people that have a lot of brain power with science and all of the things that we're talking about. But we carry, I believe, and I don't want to toot my horn, this is what I pray for is the wisdom aspect is what carries us. That's what makes us really know. I know a lot of people that know so many facts and studies and everything that don't know the first way to use it. In fact, use it to hurt people and hurt themselves. So that's why I say when you get connected with God, you understand wisdom. You understand Holy Spirit messaging. That's where you speak. that's why I always when I go do something, I don't speak off of scripts, I can't, because it's
Starting point is 00:51:55 whatever's coming out of me that I'm being fed. I always go into something with a plan that somebody sends me and I can't stay on it because I believe that when I go in and start asking and teaching, it's what was supposed to be asked. Yeah. You know what I mean? And so my question to you guys is, do you believe in what I'm saying? Because for me, it's like, well, when you connect with God, gratitude comes first. When you have that gratitude, you're able to appreciate everything and then liver. You can be healthy. When you give to others, you get back tenfold. But when it's all about Dill and Josh, Will, and all of this, we don't get anything, man. It's unfulfilling and then it trickles down into your health. Yeah, I agree. Go with Josh. Sorry. Sorry, I get going.
Starting point is 00:52:37 Yeah, well, I think there's a few things there. I think, you know, so there's two main things I'm thinking of. One is kind of even a little bit of a theological idea here, and that is, it's interesting. I don't know if you guys know this, but in some churches, they read God's word first, and then they pray and invite the Holy Spirit. And some, they pray first, and then they read God's Word. Because some, you know, if you're, if you're in more, let's say, charismatic circles, they put a greater emphasis on the Holy Spirit. If you have more of, let's say, a Presbyterian, like a reform church, it's a little bit on God's word. But all that being said, I mean, I think it's very important that you're kind of doing both, to your point with, should you
Starting point is 00:53:12 prepare for a speech or let the spirit, like, flow through, like, let that lead you. And the answer is, really you should be both. I mean, nobody's going to give their best speech typically if they're not prepared and have some level of study and understanding, but also having a level of, just not holding on too tightly, a level of looseness to let God work, I think will lead to the best outcome. And so I do, I do agree with that. And then also to your point, you know, I mean, statistically, clergy, people that are professional in professional ministry, they do live longer. And then also there's plenty of studies about religious attendance, people living longer, having more peace, more happy. I think this goes back to something I mentioned earlier, and that is, you know, your view of God, your relationship with God.
Starting point is 00:53:53 If you know that God is working for you, if you know that you're going to live for eternity, there's just a greater level of peace with that, right? Knowing that I don't have to do at all. I mean, one of the things Jesus said is, listen, my yoke is easing my burdens life. Yeah, man. And that's like, whoa. I mean, and honestly, for someone like me and you guys who are achievers, we want to change the world, we want to run to win the race, there's also an element of, yeah, but, you know, part of the race was already won in what Jesus did on the cross in the ultimate race. And so all that being said, there's a level of like, you know, this is true in sports.
Starting point is 00:54:28 It's true in academics. It's true across the board. You want a level of understanding something's really important. But also, if you believe that everything's relying on you, there's an element of anxiety that actually starts to, there's this bell curve of performance. There's actually a bell curve on this is you want to be very focused and know this. But also, if you feel like it's all on you, you're performing. performance declines. Yeah. There was a Harvard, I think it was out of Harvard. They
Starting point is 00:54:52 substantiated what Dr. Axis just said, that people that had a regular faith practice and communities part of that, but also like community with other people, but community that you have with God, 33% decreased risk of all cause mortality over a 16 year period, I think it was, decreased high-sensensi-seater-reactor protein again, the inflammation marker. People don't realize that. But yeah, I love that way you said, it my embodied God. But it has to be beyond, like this rote list of things that you do. Like going to church by itself doesn't do the thing, right? It has to be a relationship.
Starting point is 00:55:26 It has to be meaningful, not just checking the boxes. And Dr. Lisa Miller from Columbia, she substantiates this as well. Like changes in the brain for people to have a faith practice. We have greater resilience on average, right? We know, yes, the small, like the things in our world matter, but we have perspective on the ultimate things that matter. you start going down lists of virtues, like the important ones that are spoken throughout the Bible.
Starting point is 00:55:53 And then you start to look at it. So I started to look at it from different points of view. So I sat and read the entire New Testament. And I thought to myself, okay, I gained a lot here. But it's just, it kind of just revolves around love. And so it was embedded in my head. Then I started to look deeper. And this is what I want to tell people, you know, when you watch your favorite movie 20 some odd times, you always find something new in there that you didn't see. Yeah. Well, you just brought up the yoke and the burden. And I read that 50 times and never knew what it meant until like a month ago. And then I got the real interpretation of what that actually means. It's saying, you know, here's my laws, but they're going to be very easy for you to follow if you love me and you follow me. And I grasped and understood. So then I've been able to grasp and interpret these virtues. Well, look at them. First is faith, hope, and love, right? So these are key integrative practices in our life that are going to bring the most joy and happiness and peace. But then I got into the knowledge and wisdom. But then it's endurance, perseverance, temperance.
Starting point is 00:56:51 So how do we relate these to everyday life? Well, you need to have fortitude and the ability to overcome. Temperance, you need to have some self-control, overindulgence and eating. And then whatever else, bad practices, you have drugs, alcohol, whatever, I don't know, whatever it is. But you need temperance to overcome that. You need to have perseverance. I mean, I've had to have some severe perseverance for mistakes I've made. But that goes in general for everything.
Starting point is 00:57:15 that can be the smallest thing of the day you got to overcome. Just something small. I mean, just on the way here, I was ironed in my clothes in a hotel room. I get spilled water all over them and started to get angry and then thought, man, just get the blow dirt out and blow them. You'll be fine. They'll wait. But these concepts in the Bible that are misinterpreted, misconstrued, misread are the handbook
Starting point is 00:57:38 to life if you just read them and understand them. There's an answer to everything in there. Yeah. And that's showing up on a cellular level. and science is substantiating that now. We have 30 plus trillion cells, and they're all eavesdropping on how we talk about ourselves and other people,
Starting point is 00:57:53 and there's a resonance there, right? I mean, their cells feel unsafe, and both physiological, physical things, like foods that don't love us back, environmental toxins, that makes ourselves feel unsafe, but our disconnection from God also makes ourselves feel unsafe,
Starting point is 00:58:06 which is why studies are now showing why people that have a deep, rich faith, life tend to live longer. Look, we can't control everything. So we're not saying that if you have faith, you're going to like everything's going to be good. But it's just a component to how on a cellular level we're meant to live. Yes. And that's the thing. I'm also not saying, oh, I'm perfect and I wake up every day full of joy and happiness and everything. But I will say this, when I take the time to
Starting point is 00:58:31 pray and I sit back and think about how many blessings I have as opposed to the things that I'm whining and complaining about, then I come to this quick recollection of, hey, man, like, you need to just chill. things in the Bible, it'll say pray constantly. And I used to think in my head, man, I'm not sitting here and praying 24 hours a day. But what it did bring out in me is little moments where I feel alone or something's bothering me. And I just say in my head or say a prayer. And I talk, I never feel alone anymore in any aspect of my life. And I found myself talking to God more than I even talk to my wife throughout the day. And it's actually quite beautiful because you don't even realize it. When you know when you talk to somebody like, we're talking here, I mean, I don't know. We've been going.
Starting point is 00:59:14 an hour it feels like five minutes but when you're in that you don't even realize it when i talk to god it's and i look and sometimes i'll look and i'll be like man there's 20 30 minutes that i better get rolling here you know and it's like you don't even realize it because it's so valuable but that time is spent so well and it impacts everything you do then it helps you cellularly then it helps you focus so i guess my point is saying no you're not there's no such things as rainbows and unicorn 24 hours a day but it's going to enhance your quality of life not only for you but the people that are around you. Yeah, absolutely.
Starting point is 00:59:48 It's without a doubt. And it's people forget it sometimes. They were looking for the next biohacker. You said like the next peptide. Sometimes it's like maybe just get your relationship with God, right? Yes. Your relationship with the present moment, right? That's really important.
Starting point is 01:00:01 That's why I say foundationally, we set that. And once we have the foundation, then we can move forward. So, okay, I want to go over a few different things that are going on right now with you guys. I would like to get into some peptide. related discussion, but I want to go a little bit deeper. All everybody wants to talk about is GLP ones and people, when they say peptides, that's all they think, literally. And it bothers me because I've spent 15 years when I first found them studying them.
Starting point is 01:00:29 Do you guys have any feeling on our future here with where we're going to go? Because I look at peptides and I'm showing people, look, there's something for ejection fraction here with SS31 for your heart. We got mitochondrial, MOTC, Salank and CMAX are helping with the stress and anxiety. Do you see a future here? Or do you see, because I am in the trenches, I see people that are trying to take advantage of this, sell them everywhere, compounding pharmacies that don't know how to compound anything that are just popping up.
Starting point is 01:01:00 Do you see this broad spectrum of people shilling and taking advantage of the system? Or do you see alternative medicines and therapies? Will's had him on before. I had Brigham Bueller in my show. and he's really a peptide expert. I mean, he went a few weeks ago, three weeks ago. Actually, we had to change the podcast day because he was scheduled to come on my show.
Starting point is 01:01:19 And then he had to go to Washington, D.C., to meet with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and testify in front of the Senate. And so he was just on. And, you know, he thinks that it's going to keep getting passed through. He said one of the problems is a lot of these senators, they didn't, they just didn't know the science. And so, I mean, it's so interesting.
Starting point is 01:01:39 You wouldn't think this would happen with professionals, but some of the things he was getting around is rather than actually reading some of the documents, one of them just had AI interpret it for them and then they shared something and they said, but what you're talking about, that's like an Olympic drug that was banned in the Olympics. It's not even a peptide.
Starting point is 01:01:55 I mean, it is just so, so awful. For the whole world to see. Yes. And so all that being said, I think we're going to continue to see them pass through, become legalized. Because listen, there's a choice. So I recently saw on Instagram,
Starting point is 01:02:10 somebody post. This is a doctor who, you know, his name was discredited. He was found in the Epstein files. People used to listen to him now, many less are because there's just so many character flaws in issues there. But he came out and it did this whole thing on GLP ones are safe.
Starting point is 01:02:26 No, it's before he didn't say that. But I found it he has a tie to, he owns a company that's about to sell that's creating GLP ones. So, but again, by all that being said, and then he was saying, well, you know, a lot of these peptides aren't, you know, there's proven, there's no proven benefits.
Starting point is 01:02:43 There's no double-blind, you know, placebo trial studies. Now, here's the thing I will say, and here's the thing I talked to bring them about, is that when I worked as that personal trainer for four years, one thing I noticed is bodybuilders are the most obsessive people I've ever met at tracking every, I mean, you know, they changed a half a pound of body fat. I'm going to wash. I remember there's a woman who who was doing this, who I was friends with, and she would wash her chicken breasts to make sure there's no salt on them. So to my point is, they are absolutely meticulous.
Starting point is 01:03:16 And BPC-157 in an example, you think for the past 20 years, bodybuilders haven't been using that and actually knowing, oh, I injured my shoulder, doing shoulder press, using it, and knowing what works and doesn't work. So the reality is maybe there's no double-blind placebo trials or not many, but there are so much anecdotal evidence for numerous peptides. And the reality is, they do work. I've noticed it physically. Will's, will's notice it physically. We've got so many people that have used it. And so, by the way, on his thread when this doctor posted this, basically there were hundreds of comments of people saying, actually it fixed my shoulder and fix it. I mean, that was pretty much all of the
Starting point is 01:03:55 comments. So all that being said, I think that it's just a matter of time. Now, the government needs to make a decision because if you don't make it white market, if you don't make it to where, hey, you can go to your doctor and they can prescribe it or as long as people can get it, they're going to be happy. They'll go through some of the channels to get it. But if you make it to where even functional medicine practitioners can't prescribe them and recommend them, people are just going to go to the gray and black market. And then who knows what they're going to get because there's a lot of stuff that's tainted out there. In fact, read one story where BPC-157 was tainted with testosterone. This guy lost his license. And this happens all the time. So the reality is you want to make
Starting point is 01:04:31 sure you're buying from a United States compounding pharmacy when you're getting pedicates. They have transparency and purity. Yeah, what they did is just shoved it under the ground. I mean, it's just, yeah, the Biden administration went in 2023 when they just based, they grew the market even more under this sort of shady gray area research only model. So yeah, hopefully there is, it's we can bring it to the light and oxygen can be infused into the market. And, you know, I think the truth is oftentimes somewhere in the middle. I think the one side that on that. It's also with the natural health world. It's just kind of controversial for us to even have this position. Because some people are like, you, this is like scary. We shouldn't be
Starting point is 01:05:08 doing peptides at all, like the super crunchy wellness, purest zealant that we love. I mean, they're our friends too. But they're very anti-peptides. And then you're the other side that's like peptides or the, you know, it reminds me the conversation around like, you can eat butter and tallow all day every day and there's no issues. And it's like, no, that's not true. Yeah. That's not true. Yes, exactly. So, yeah, of course there's caveats.
Starting point is 01:05:32 Of course, not everybody should be doing all the peptides, but the truth somewhere in the middle, like the dose, the person, the purity, all of these things matter. These people kill me and I'll tell you why. This extremism that goes so far. Yeah. And I always tell people, I'm not going to say the exact verbiage because there's some cursing in there, but I always tell people, look, I'm not your dad.
Starting point is 01:05:54 Do whatever you want. If you want to take all the vaccines in the world, have at it. Don't tell people that they have to do something. Same with peptides. Man, if you don't like them, stick to your conventional medicine or whatever it is that you do. Do whatever you want. Why are you so angry and so worried about what everybody else is doing looking for alternatives? Nobody's telling you you have to do anything. But I will say this, and I want you guys' thoughts on this. So I always call conventional medicine the real non-conventional because I look at something that is taken naturally and generally altered, methylated, whatever you want to say. And so that's why I call it non-conventional.
Starting point is 01:06:31 I would say conventional medicine is more along the lines of natural herbs, traditional Chinese medicine. It should be primary care for, it should be the primary for sure. Yeah. That's what I was curious, what you guys' thoughts were on the negativity, the views that people carry. And why do you feel? Because for me, when I see all that negativity, you know what I see? Poor health. That's the first thing I see. Yeah, I think the thing that I have a hard time with is that I'll give you this with the cancer industry as an example. There is no doubt in certain clinics in Europe. There's a few in the United States, but, you know, that cancer treatments are being being done much better than what the conventional system is doing. But what the people on the conventional side will say, I'll give an example of this, like I work with a, I work with a cancer patient probably every week, okay?
Starting point is 01:07:24 and it's cancer support, and what we'll do is, is I'll try and lay out what is the ideal integrative treatment. Whether they decide to go and do chemo radiation or not, I'll go through, and we do something called an RGCC blood test, it's a Greek test, and it'll tell you, does sulfurane work, does high-dose vitamin C, does liposomal turmeric, does hyperthermia, you know, what are the things that move the needle the most
Starting point is 01:07:48 for this type of cancer? And it's a great test, and I think really effective. And so I'll take that, and I'll lay out a protocol of, you know, here's your ideal diet of what you should eat for every meal. Here's the exact supplements. Hey, let's do hyperthermia because, you know, here, here and here. And then maybe you are going to do radiation. Maybe you can skip the chemo because in like colon cancer, it's typically used as what
Starting point is 01:08:10 they call a radiosensitizer to just make the radiation more sensitive. But chemo is even more damaging on the body. And it's throughout the body where radiation is more localized. So let's not do the, you know, ideally they'd be better off not doing that, doing the lotus dose of radiation. if they want to do something, okay, you can do that conventional, but let's do all of the natural therapies we can. And what a lot of the oncologists will say,
Starting point is 01:08:31 now, by the way, some of them, they're becoming more and more progressive of saying, hey, I think that would be a good idea to do this. But most of them will not move off what the current treatments are because those have been established for the last 60 years. That's what they get paid for. But it's not the best for the patient. So I get frustrated.
Starting point is 01:08:48 Listen, there is a better model out there. Let's work together to find out what it is. Yeah. Yeah, I think for most of not just cancer, but all chronic disease, it should be both and not either or. Like, what's the most effective option that causes the least amount of side effects? And you're right, both sides, because then you'll have the health, like, the health purest side with cancer specifically, it's like, I'll never do chemo, never do radiation.
Starting point is 01:09:10 What's like, well, what's the context of it? What does the data show? Maybe it is both and. So there's so many examples of that. I think people that are against, the question was like people that are still against people in functional medicine. Yeah. They're on the wrong side of history.
Starting point is 01:09:24 I mean, mainstream institutions, like the Cleveland Clinic, don't open up multi-million dollar functional medicine centers because it's woo-woo and quackery. Because the data speaks for itself. So people are still like it's us versus them. Where have you been? I mean, I've been doing this for 16 years. This is not radical. Getting people healthy should not be offensive.
Starting point is 01:09:44 If it is, look at your heart. And I can tell you, 20 years ago, 99% of doctors, I'm serious about this, would say you cannot reverse type two diabetes. Oh, yeah. I would get phone call saying I was going to kill people. How dare you? Yeah, and they literally felt like it did not matter if you ate a Snickers. Yeah. Or an apple. Type 2 diabetes, not type 1. You know, we're talking about type 2 here. And then now it's probably more like 50% of doctors do believe you can reverse it. And 50 still don't, which is boggles my mind. But we have come so far in 20 years. So far. That's funny that you saw the same thing because it was type 2 diabetes. I think, wait, what? Out of all the things that's offended you but now you're right it's just like here's what's offensive to me i was in the
Starting point is 01:10:28 i had a small incident and i was in the hospital for three and a half days in the the cardiovascular area all right and i had to stay the night they're all weekend and they bring me a menu and this was the heart healthy menu and i looked at my wife and i said does that say chicken eff and parmesan and margarine and dinner roll and i took a picture of it i have it on my phone i could show you this is what they have in their heart healthy menu. Marjoran and dinner rolls. Chicken. Maybe sugar-free jello or pudding. I'm not even kidding you. Chicken, parm and tortellini. We're on here. I mean, if you took a fork or knife and just scrapped everything off with a chicken meal, I mean, you still get the hormones, but outside of that, you know, that's fine. This is why
Starting point is 01:11:11 the United States spends more on any, more than any country. Yeah, we have the shortest lifespan in the most chronic disease. I mean, all you have to do is look at how we're feeding people in the place that should be a place of healing. I know. Yeah. So my goal when I talk to people, because everybody wants to live longer, I mean, you see that everywhere, but they, they don't look at the quality. And I always tell people, we should be trying to add years to our life, or I mean, life to our years, you know, our years, you know, not years to our life. And people don't understand. Well, we have this life stand. But yeah, but how are you living it?
Starting point is 01:11:46 How do you feel? So I guess my question to you guys is, if we're looking to enhance quality of life. life as we age. Now, cellular health, I think, would be one of the obvious, right? So I think that that would be the number one thing to address. But let's look past cellular health. I look at markers like, you know, more obscure things too. I'd like to look at that too. Like at NAD levels, I started to really study the past year and a half on the importance of that. And that's a whole other topic on flooding people with IVs that we could get into. But I'm just looking at markers right now. What are some other things that as we age that we should kind of look at, man, maybe we should address this.
Starting point is 01:12:24 Maybe we should focus on this. As far as longevity is concerned. Well, I think one of the hallmarks of aging that science recognizes that we talk about at length in the book is gut health. I mean, microbiome balance and the ripple effect of that, I mean, when you look at the ripple effect of inflammation and oxidative stress and stress of the bagel tone and the impact that it has, so it's a gateway. Gut health is such a gateway to so many other pathways, a cascade or ripple effect.
Starting point is 01:12:55 So I do think that it should be a bigger conversation in the longevity space, right? People can have, you know, they'll be eating great foods. I see this all the time. We see this all the time. It's people that eat better than the average American, but they have really poor gut health. And that shows you, yes, food is a big part of it, but it's not just about food. I mean, it's about our environment. It's about stress and trauma.
Starting point is 01:13:17 is a lot of different things that can impact microbiome health. I think a deeper, more meaningful attention when needed to get the gut to a better place is profoundly important. I've noticed when I really started to address this, the sleep has been a lot better. The feelings, I feel a lot more satiated, you know, and after I eat, I'm less hungry, honestly, too, which is I'm kind of thrown it back with the training where I was like, man, but I can tell the health is better. right and I started taking a spore-based probiotic and that's another topic we could get into later but there's a lot of different probiotics and no one knows what they're taking and they're throwing all these things that they're and well I'm taking a probiotic or I'm taking an enzyme and I and I say well do you
Starting point is 01:14:03 know what's in it you know what it's doing because I used to be one of those people too so yeah what about you what do you think Josh on some other things about longevity that you would recommend I think exercises is incredibly important. I met with a patient yesterday, and this is the group of people, I think, have the hardest time with it. It's probably women in their 50s and 60s and 70s. But, I mean, the fastest way you can increase mitochondria
Starting point is 01:14:33 is through weight training. I mean, it's not even close. I mean, because you have so much mitochondria in your muscle, you know, outside of your brain and heart, your muscle, I mean, that's where you're the most mitochondrial, dense. And so, yeah, I mean, anytime you can add on muscle mass. And then, of course, what that does your metabolic health is incredible. So I think for longevity being able, now, now here's the thing I want to say, it's just when I was taught to work out when I was younger,
Starting point is 01:14:58 it was all about just moving to put on muscle, but also now I add in the second part of don't hurt yourself. I mean, you know, I mean, I had a back injury that was terrible. And part of the reason that led me to this infection was, well, okay, I injured my back doing CrossFit, which was really unwise. It's like, hey, let's do Olympic lifts for time. The more I think about the more, what was I thinking? Yeah. What a terrible idea. That's a whole episode on us own. Anyways. Pick up heavy things with good form. Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing. So now when I exercise, I mean, I was a personal trainer and I know a lot about health and fitness, but I still have a personal trainer. I see at least once a week just to watch me do things to make sure I'm doing them
Starting point is 01:15:42 properly. And I found that to be incredibly helpful. So yeah, I think for most people, weight training and then just walking. Yep. Weight training and walking. Yeah, Zone 2. There's a lot of great exercise or resource run in Zone 2. Yeah. So I think doing those two things together are massive for longevity. And just being like to your point, not just living a long time, but being active, like I want to be active with my grandkids in my 80s and beyond that. So I think that's, you know, I've, I'm blessed. I've got my mom, I think, is 74 now. My dad's 76.
Starting point is 01:16:13 And I just went with them two weeks ago. We were at a lake house in Tennessee. And my mom water skied, slalom back and forth, crushed it. My dad went trick. Now, people don't do this anymore. Everybody switched to wakeboarding, but it used to be something called trick skiing.
Starting point is 01:16:26 Yeah. So he literally had the rope around his foot and was doing like 360s. Wow. Wow. Yeah. So they're both incredibly healthy. And a big part of it is they've decided every morning, when they wake up, they go for about a 45-minute walk. My dad still lifts weights, my mom.
Starting point is 01:16:42 Sometimes, like, she's off or on. I'm trying to, you know, she's more like, she'll do one or two days a week. But that's part of the reason why they're still so active and healthy in their 70s. Yeah. And that's, I think, a good point here is that people maybe that are listening this or watching this in their 20s, 30s, maybe even 40s, they're not thinking about longevity. But what you are going through in your 70s, like how you are in, 70s begins in your 20s. Like you are investing in your rest of your life now. Anyone over 40 will absolutely agree with me on this.
Starting point is 01:17:18 That time you sprained your ankle in high school playing soccer or basketball, you'll feel it in your 40s. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? I mean, because that's the area where the cartilage, the tendons, the ligaments were inflamed or partially torn that were never fully repaired. And you'll feel that. So doing everything, and this is why also honestly,
Starting point is 01:17:36 If I have any minor injury now, I take peptides. I'll do stem cell. I'll do PRP. I'll do shock. I mean, I'll do whatever therapy I can because I know. I'm going to do something right now to prevent me feeling this in 10 years. Yes. I want to make a couple points on some things you guys said.
Starting point is 01:17:52 So the first one, my wife, and I've had this conversation with her, I don't know how many times. She comes to me like three days ago. And I tried to be patient because I've already explained this to her. She's like 98 pounds. And we talk about strength training. I want to be tone, but I don't want to gain too much size. And I said, babe, listen to me. If you knew what it takes to hold two pounds of lean muscle in a year, I said, you'd need to double your caloric intake.
Starting point is 01:18:15 Your weights would have to go bigger than mine right now for you to gain any weight. And I say this for women that are scared that they're going to get big. Bucky, yeah. If you understand what it would take for you to get big, for just the food consumption alone, and I'm not just talking protein, I'm talking calories that you're going to have to take in to allow you to grow. especially as you age, just, and the supplements or performance enhancers you're going to have to take, too, because especially as you get older, it's harder to put muscle mass on. Let me say this. So any women, first off, women shouldn't be concerned about that at all. No. But even if they are, they're probably doing the right, wrong exercises. I mean, if you're doing a lot of biceps and triceps, which you really don't need to do, you know, maybe that's your arms you're most concerned about. But most women should be doing their butt, their hamstring, so posterior chain or general legs.
Starting point is 01:19:05 and then shoulders back in court with compound movements. And if you do those right exercises, you're only going to have more of a V look. Like you're not going to end up looking big no matter what. It's just not going to happen. And like you said, train in the butt. And then, you know, women carry back here. You know, they carry a little bit of extra back here,
Starting point is 01:19:25 even when they're thin. You can do like high, high reps and low weights to get tone. You know, I got torn up. I went on this podcast because I really, I started to do a lot more focus on women that are in menopause and trying to help and understand and comprehend. As my wife started to go through things and then I realized, I am not compassionate and understanding what women are going through at this age.
Starting point is 01:19:48 So I really dug in here and I got on a big podcast that was addressing women in menopause. And I was telling them, you have to lift smarter, not harder as you age, just like you said, the injuries. And I had this woman telling me, oh,
Starting point is 01:20:01 you don't lifting baby weights and you're not going to gain anything. And I said, well, first of all, I didn't say lifting baby weights. And second of all, if you're injured every other week, you're not making any progress. So you got to prioritize the rest, like we said, but lifting smart. We're not getting younger. Injuries accumulate and it's easier to get hurt as you get older. You guys know that, especially after we've had injuries, like you said. So I implore people, don't go into the gym, A, worried about anybody saying anything about how much you lift.
Starting point is 01:20:30 That makes no difference whatsoever. You're not getting paid. and even if you were, sacrifice it because you don't want to get injured. And two, train for your health. That's it. You know what I mean? Train for your health. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:20:41 When I feel like I looked my best, eight abs and just ripped to the guilds, 4% body fat, I felt my worst. I was the most miserable I've ever been. You can look phenomenal. And I mean phenomenal with no drugs, no steroids, no, any performance enhancements by just eating right, training good, sleeping good. That's it. That's it.
Starting point is 01:21:02 So I just wanted to make that point. I want to do a little bit of diet questions with you guys especially because this has been, it's getting so polarizing now, the angry diet advice that I see where people just get so pissed off if you don't follow keto seven days a week or you don't follow carnivore. If you hate vegans or what, I mean, it's just, it's like everything that people say. Here's where I'm at. I've been studying nutrition since I was 11 years old and I've been through, we talked about this, the fear of fats and all these misguided information. my care is metabolic flexibility, which depends thoroughly on your age, your activity level conditions that you might have. I am one of those that find keto to be a tool, carnivore to be a tool, vegan to be a tool, but not a lifestyle. A lifestyle is being flexible metabolically.
Starting point is 01:21:52 And being metabolically flexible means you might have a high carb day one day. It's good carbs. It's healthy carbs. You might have a really high protein day. I try to prioritize fats, but I don't go crazy. Yeah. I want to know you guys' views on these hardcore seven day a week keto, seven day a week vegan, like these hardcore extreme diets because I find the restriction actually causes you more problems down the road.
Starting point is 01:22:15 But I want to know from you guys. Hey, have you seen the S&L skit where it was like a Maha SNL skit and where you guys go watch this. It is hilarious. And so they have this Jordan Rubin texted to me like right when it came out and I watched it. but there's somebody laying in a hospital bed, and they're like laying down just like asleep, and they say something to the like of,
Starting point is 01:22:38 oh, he's a vegan. He goes, pull the plug. You know. So here's my opinion on this. I think, you know, and Will likes to use this term, and it's a great term. It's bio-individuality. I mean, it's a term that really correlates
Starting point is 01:22:54 with personalized medicine. Yeah. And, you know, I think some people need to be on a keto diet. Maybe it's 5, maybe it's 3% of people. I don't know. I don't know the exact number. Like I had a cousin who was diagnosed with glioblastoma. And the literature is incredibly strong in the favor of following a ketogenic diet for life.
Starting point is 01:23:13 You know, so there's an example of that. Yeah. But I don't think most people should be following a ketogenic diet. I don't think most people should be following a carnivore diet. I don't think most people should be following a vegan diet. I think we're omnivores. I think there's, you know, in the Bible, you see we ate plants. And then in Genesis 9-3, or 6-3, God says, hey, you can eat the things that creep and crawl in the ground.
Starting point is 01:23:35 And then we have the food laws with Moses. And then later on, we see Paul to the Corinthians Church saying, whether you eat, drink, or whatever you do, do all for the glory of God. So there's a sort of progression in the Bible, too, of in terms of like what we see dietarily. But overall, I think everybody is an individual. I'll share this. I don't do well with high fat. I don't even do well with probably high moderate. I do okay with moderate to low moderate.
Starting point is 01:24:00 I do well with something like a tablespoon of olive oil, tablespoon of coconut oil, you know, filet mignon or whatever it is, you know, that's good fats in small to moderate amounts I do good with. Part of the reason is that like this is from Chinese medicine. When I deal with stress,
Starting point is 01:24:17 I deal with it my liver. And so my liver is the most stressed organ I have because the emotions I feel I tend to deal with like frustration. and that's all liver. Yeah. So different organs have to do with different macronutrients. I mean, the liver deals with almost everything, but I mean, it's definitely dealing with a lot of fat in the gallbladder,
Starting point is 01:24:35 whereas, you know, your stomach is probably having to do a little bit more with hydrochloric acid and breaking down certain things like protein. So a lot of ass to do with, again, but my whole point here is it all comes down to the individual and what your macronutrient should be. Yeah, and even within these camps, there's so many different ways to do it, right? I mean, there's so much ways to do the ketogenic diet. Are you eating just anything because it's hashtag keto and just it's low carb? Like you're talking about the bodybuilders, like downing alcohol.
Starting point is 01:25:04 Like cocaine is keto. It doesn't make it healthy. So it's like, are you doing it in a nutrient dense way or are you doing it in a inflammatory way? Yeah. Just because it's high, fat, low carb. So I just think the context around these conversations matter. The context of how you're doing it. And then who are we talking about?
Starting point is 01:25:23 And then like you said, is it a tool or is it a lifestyle? Is it used for a period of time? And what served you in this season of your life, you may not always need to do. Yeah. Especially if you're building improving metabolic flexibility, lowering inflammation, improving gut health. Yeah, maybe like diversity, variety of flexibility is the goal for most people. Yes. I get these people that get so angry and they get so mad if you don't follow their diet.
Starting point is 01:25:45 I'm like, brother, do whatever you want. This is one size fits none. I try to do low carbon. I train. So I do 90-some minutes of cardio a day. And then I lift another hour or two. I try to do low carbon. I'm a mess.
Starting point is 01:25:59 And part of the problem is I'll start to have heart palpitations because I can't hold electrolytes because even when I take them in, my body without the carbs is like draining them out. And I kept, why can't I absorb? Because I'm eating like next to no carbs. Yeah, yeah. You know, it doesn't work for everybody. I'm certainly not anti-carb.
Starting point is 01:26:18 I don't like high carbs. And I come to find out that I eat high fat and I just thrive on it. I starve myself from fat. And I'd be interested to see like if you were, maybe you've done this because you're in the space like measuring your ketones. Because of your metabolic flexibility, you may have be in a sort of low to moderate carb and still be producing small amounts of ketones. Yes, I am.
Starting point is 01:26:38 Absolutely. And that's what like what you said, knowing your body. I mean, I didn't eat fats for 15 years, man. And I was a mess. And then when I started doing it, it's like, you know well i can tell you this clinically i mean everybody that for the most part that i that i personally work with i mean i'm very much i don't think when i personally work with somebody almost every time their diet's different i mean it's very different or at the very least somebody is put in a very specific
Starting point is 01:27:03 category that's typically proven to help that that sort of that sort of hashamotis thyroiditis that diet is completely different or might be very different than somebody with cancer irritable bowel disease cardiovascular you know disease i mean a lot of of times it's very different foods because the way that I like to put together eating plans is not just hey this is healthy for you it's no what is the single best food for you so if somebody has heart disease what is the single best fruit for somebody with heart disease it's probably going to be i mean i could argue pomegranates because of mitochondrial health for that it could it could be apples it could be blueberries but but i'm going to put in there these are the fruits that are best for
Starting point is 01:27:44 this very specific condition these are the proteins these are the you know, the other forms of carbureters are the vegetables. So that's the way that I like to build out eating plans. I know Dr. Will does it very similarly as well. And what we're able to do with our work at the Health Institute is create that bio-individuality of knowing the nuance and context of. And books are great. Like we wrote this book.
Starting point is 01:28:06 We're really proud of it. And even there, based on their, what organs aging faster, they have a different prescription. There's so much bio-individuality. But there's limitations with a book, right? Yes, we put multiple. tracks and they're based on their score, there's an assessment to see what organs aging faster that we adapted from questions we ask patients. But the whole point, my short, I'm trying to say is on a clinical level, we can get a lot more granular. And like their clinical case is their book,
Starting point is 01:28:32 their own personal book. Instead of this dogma where you're saying, these tribes, it's like, what loves my body back in this season of my life? And not compare yourself to other people, which, you know, people in our space, we probably stress people out sometimes too. So it's important for us to be careful with our words and being mindful of like, yes, all this is good education, but just because you hear about it on a podcast or read it and a book doesn't mean that you have to do all the things. I'm trying to work on that myself and I've been stressing to people like, look, there's some people that I love. I call them like really close friends, but I don't agree with some of this stuff like scaring people. If you guys ever look in the comments, see, I look in the comments,
Starting point is 01:29:09 not to see what somebody says about me? It's like, what's going on? Like, what's going on? It's always confusion. People going, well, what can I even do? What can I even eat? We're creating a bigger problem. We're literally creating stress when we do that. Yeah. And part of it is messaging. You're absolutely. That's a big part of it is. But the other part of it is we need, my hope is that these longer form conversations can provide nuance and context and people should have discernment. And I think that's part of the problem too is as a consumer, we just are so bred and trained to be spoon fed and be told what to do. That's not, a podcast is not the same as a doctor's visit. Like just you have to understand that.
Starting point is 01:29:47 and be like, okay, to have this tournament on what to do and what not to do. Yes, you have to like everything in life's a little bit of trial and error, right? Because we just don't know. I can sit here and you guys can do the same. And what we've seen work, there's always going to be an outlier. There's always going to be somebody that's going to leave a comment or something, well, this didn't work for me. Then we've got to be aware of that. And that's why we have to like highlight that everybody's different.
Starting point is 01:30:13 It's one size fits none technically. But saying that, what I want to. to talk about is there are certain foods or certain things that are just going to cause problems, right? So I want to talk about seed oils now because all three of us have a passion about it. I just, I literally like last week finalized and signed a contract with the seed oil free alliance, which they do seed oil certifications now to endorse. This is seed oil free, like the hardcore testing. So, I mean, it's a that to me, I always say if somebody says they don't care about money, run because that's all they care about. This is more of a passion project for me because of how I feel
Starting point is 01:30:53 and I feel that this is something that is really getting abused on both sides, really, because people are lying. They're just flat-ass lying and whether it's, that's what they're being fed or they know what they're doing about how dangerous they are. And then there's people to go way overboard that just act like they will murder you at the same token. Now, I obviously find a lot of wrong there. I wouldn't have joined this alliance. But I do want to, I want you guys to shed light factually down the middle on what you've seen, what you've encountered and what's true and what's false. I mean, I guess I can start here.
Starting point is 01:31:27 So, you know, my opinion is this. I think that, gosh, this is going to sound terrible. You know, some of the, no, say it. I think they're going to be people on both sides that disagree with me. I think it really does come down to, and I'm looking at this from a Chinese medicine perspective, I think for some people that sometimes certain types of saturated fats are going to be worse for them than seed oils and vice versa. Like in Chinese medicine, when you have something that's solid at room temperature and that fat, it tends to move slower through the body. That's the belief and thought.
Starting point is 01:31:59 So I think certain people that are prone to cardiovascular disease, I mean, that's the main thing I'm talking about when I'm saying this. I think that overconsuming butter, overconsuming animal fats is not ideal. Okay, and I think that might be just as bad for them or worse than certain time seed oils. Now, I also want to say this. I do think that, you know, when you have the people that are living and dying by the double-blind placebo studies, they're just missing a lot. Because even when you're looking at a meta-analysis, it's brought together numerous studies and you're comparing over time because what they're doing, by the way, if you just looked at it that way,
Starting point is 01:32:34 seed oils are going to outperform. I mean, when you just look at the studies, they're probably outperforming saturated fats. But one of the things that's happening is a lot of the studies are counting olive oil with the other, with seed oils. The other thing is those people that tend to do olive oil or do seed oils, they tend to be historically, they've been a lot more physically active. I think that's throwing off studies. And I also think when they're talking about the saturated fats, are they talking about the saturated fat from conventional meat that they're making up, I don't know, Burger King and McDonald's and all these fast food? restaurants. And most of these studies too are epitomological as well. So it's like causation and correlation are different too. It's like the people that tend to, anyway, start for interrupted.
Starting point is 01:33:19 No, no, no, but that is a massive point and you're 100% right there. So the reality is it's like nobody knows. Yeah. Like nobody knows for certain. Here's the thing, here's where I just try and cut the things. Just do olive oil all the time. I absolutely guarantee you. It's like the United Nations of fats. I feel like most people will get behind it. Like, you know what I mean? It's for everything, but olive oil is like this utopian kumbaya moment where whether you're vegan or maybe, do carnivore people hate olive oil? I don't know, man. What do they think? I will say this. They don't probably do much of it, but I don't think they hate it. I'll actually say this. Generally, I recommend fruit oils, and that's what they are. I mean, if you think about it, avocados of fruit,
Starting point is 01:34:02 olives are a fruit. Now, people would push back on this one, but I like coconut oil too. I mean, in terms of you're comparing it to every other saturated fat, it's the one that impacts cardiovascular because of the medium chain triggers the least. But yeah, extra virgin olive oil absolutely is by far
Starting point is 01:34:18 the healthiest oil most people can consume. And the bitter the better, the better when it comes to the polypenol, like the xenohrmetic, like the stress that that sweet plant went through
Starting point is 01:34:27 like living in this arid desert under the heat with insects, like that, the cells of that plant gets transferred to us. I agree with you. And to your point, I think if somebody has a liver
Starting point is 01:34:37 and gallbladder that are just working really well, I think they can tolerate and do a good amount of butter and tallow and just do fine with it. Yeah, absolutely. You know, one thing that was interesting is this is something actually Gabriel Lyons brought up. And I don't know, I understand her philosophy on it, and I think she's probably correct. But she said, she thinks that you can do a higher fat diet as long as you're and not have risk of cardiovascular disease.
Starting point is 01:35:02 I'm summarizing part of what she was saying and do things like butter and tallow as long as the caloric intake stays low or below a surgery. level. But if you're doing a lot of saturated fat from animals and a lot of carbs and a lot of, you know, and you're in high caloric intake, that's where the risk, you know, really tips off and goes up dramatically at increasing your risk of a cardiovascular event. I agree with that. And the science, the literature talks about this mixed meal phenomenon too where it's like, is it, was it back to the epidemiological side of it? Is it the saturated fat or is it the American meat, like the bun and the burger and the fries and then we blame the saturated fat? Yes. Whereas like this compounded effect of high carb plus high fat, yeah, that can be an inflammation
Starting point is 01:35:45 bomb for sure. Yeah. Well, I can hear, I can tell you this through blood markers on myself. And I can, and I can show you this on how they've changed since I started eating like higher fat, but calories are still on the lower end. So here's how I base my diet. It's kind of like a 40, 40, 20. So it's like 40 percent fats, sometimes like 42, 43, and then protein and then carbs. And I have monitored. I do blood, panels every three to four months generally now at this point because knowing what I found out about some plaque in my arteries in LP little A. And my LP. Little A started at 330. It's gone down into the 90s, which I told was impossible. Wow. And I do probably, it was 330 when I first found
Starting point is 01:36:27 it. And now it's, that's very high. Normally between 100 to 95. Yeah, yeah. And pomegranth use is one of the things that I do have daily every day. That was brought to my attention that that could reverse plaque. I'm getting a clearly scan in the next two weeks too, so we're going to get a real strong indication. So generally speaking, and I just started to implement chicken again finally after I don't know how many years of being against it. So I do two days of salmon, avocado every single day, four whole eggs, three days a week, and then some animal fats.
Starting point is 01:36:59 So 85 or 93 beef, occasionally 80s, but I do elk, bison, venison, mix them in. I'm doing about 100 grams of fat a day, 220, 230 protein and hopefully 100 carbs. And all of my markers, aside from my LDL and my APOB went up slightly, everything else, particle sizes down, liver down, everything that was high, down, they all came down. Granted, your LDL is going to go up when you have that kind of diet. Grass-fed butter I have every day, but not mouths of it. And, you know, I'm just cooking it now. The quality improved. Everything, but everything that I have is pasture raised, grass-fed, 100% not grass finished i mean i am dude i travel with a scale like i'm mr way everything like you were saying and
Starting point is 01:37:44 everything is does pinpoint my life is lived around regiment and precision so i monitor everything and i know every single number in my head i have a photographic memory so i know what i see on myself but i don't want to say that for others because other people aren't some of the medications i'm on or don't train like i do or don't have the same kind of like background that i have you know from from whatever i I've inherited and some of that I believe and some don't. But the point is, is everybody's different and you only know your own numbers. You can't monitor what everybody's doing. I was just talking to my wife about this.
Starting point is 01:38:19 I said, how the hell do I know if somebody's at home doing exactly what they're telling me and eating exactly what they say? And like you guys said, how do I know what kind of beef that is? How do I know what else has been included in there? What kind of condiments they're using or whatever? I don't know. So some of these studies I take with the grain of salt, we need them. but I also, I care about being in the trenches and getting real world experience.
Starting point is 01:38:40 Yeah. We talked about this earlier about peptides. Man, I want to know what all my clients are doing, what all the people in the forums I'm at are doing and what their body responses. Real world data. Yeah, I want real world data to compare and contrast with the studies. And I can tell you, man, these people were 60 years old with this condition and had this so that I could get the outcome I want it. Oh, yeah. You know, and that's like the devil's in the details.
Starting point is 01:39:03 Same thing when you Google something. be very careful when you get this AI response and you don't look at the source of where it's coming. It's a really good point because anytime, and I use AI very often for creation. Yeah. And I have to wrestle it. Like friends, I've been writing articles and having it pull certain things. But its view of peptides is very negative. It's view of, I mean, it's very conventional.
Starting point is 01:39:27 And some are worse than others. I mean, Grock is probably one of the most friendly towards natural medicine. I mean, Google to me, And probably Google is the most hostile. Probably Gemini is one of the most hostile. Claude is not great. I can get it to where I want. Chad GPT is a little bit more friendly too.
Starting point is 01:39:47 But yeah, generally, a lot of these AI tools are very, what they're going to do is, it's just like they're just going to go to WebMD and CDC and that World Health Organization. I mean, that's where they're going to go to first to pull a lot of their. So I have to go and tell it. I want you to go and pull more functional functional medicine mind. did these journals and I actually have to tell it what to do and act like a research assistant.
Starting point is 01:40:09 Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. I just urge people when you do a search, look at this because it's easy to just read it. Yeah. Back check it, consider the source. 100%. Yeah. All right.
Starting point is 01:40:20 So what I want to do now with you guys is talk about like if you were stranded on an island or whatever, one of those questions, but you could only have five foods that you had to live on. Because you know, you asked somebody this and it's like, oh, I'd want pizza and ice cream. Like, brother, man, you wouldn't want to eat that every day. You know, only if you were stoned seven days a week. So what kind of foods would be your five.
Starting point is 01:40:45 This is what I'm living on. This is what I'm never going to get sick of. So this is off of nutrient density and survival or enjoyment? Either one. Okay. So this has to be well-rounded. Yeah. You can go first if you want.
Starting point is 01:40:56 Okay. Yeah, I mean, listen, if I only had to pick one, it's salmon. I mean, that, to me, is probably going to be number one on my list. after that probably coconut I would have that and this for myself I could eat those things a lot I would probably pick some type
Starting point is 01:41:11 of fruit or carbohydrate I would think it would be probably blueberries and then I might do I would either do olives or avocado and then I might do like a sweet potato something like that now the only other thing I am thinking of is that maybe I would want another source of protein
Starting point is 01:41:29 and so maybe you know I'm trying to think of iron levels right now I might have a little bit of a challenge with what I just shared. So I'd probably swap one of those things out and out in like a grass-fed burger. But that's what I would go with. Nice. Yeah, I would do a grass-fed burger for sure. It's like, okay, so we're saying five. Grass-fed burger.
Starting point is 01:41:48 I would say salmon. That's funny. I'm not trying to cheat off of you. That's right. That's right. Great minds think a lot. I would say salmon. Maybe avocado.
Starting point is 01:41:59 Did he say avocado? Yeah, I said avocado or olives. Okay, I would say avocado. Yeah. I would say berries for, and then I would say pizza, like a good sourdough. Because look, if I'm like, you know what? I don't like that better what I did sweet potato. That's so much better.
Starting point is 01:42:18 If I could have mint chip ice cream every day forever, man, I would do. Is that your ice cream of choice? Oh, it is. It is. It is, man. I swear to you, I've always been since I was little. But it's got to be, I am like a connoisseur of mint chip ice cream. And is Baskin Rob and still to this day is my favorite.
Starting point is 01:42:34 Yeah, but interesting. Yeah. I need to check it out. I don't know why. That's my mother-in-law's favorite. It's the best. I'm a- I have to be in the mood. Really?
Starting point is 01:42:42 I'm a peanut butter guy, so I would do like vanilla with peanut butter. That's hard to be. We're going to go into our like, after I do round off my five, I want to get into our like if we could just cheat with five, what they would be our favorites. So you know what's funny is most of my list is stuff that I hated until like two years ago I wouldn't touch aside from my number one. because if I had to eat something and survive on it every day, it would be eggs. Like, oh, that's a great one.
Starting point is 01:43:06 Yeah, I would never, never get sick of it. And nutrient-wise, like, I know I'd be healthy. Yeah. You know? Yeah. So that's my number one. But then we start getting into these other ones that I'm like, I wouldn't touch an avocado. I can't live without it.
Starting point is 01:43:19 I travel with them because, you know, if you go to the store and try to buy them in town, they're not really ripe and it's hard. So my wife has them ready for me prepared. I will not leave the house without them. I will not go a day without those. So those would be two. for me i eat a lot of vegetables like a lot so i would probably like i'm a zucchini mushroom and peppers guys so if i don't know if i could combine all three or not if that would be okay um but
Starting point is 01:43:41 it's your rules it's my rules yeah i'm just gonna say my veggies right my veggie plate would be three i love salmon which is another thing i wouldn't touch i just get scared about eating it every day unless i know it's like how perfectly caught it is and everything and like with the mercury side of things but if I could eat it every day which I used to till I had a high mercury result I would because it's the best now I like king king salmon or sock eye myself but that would be it and then it was certainly the if I can't do salmon it would have to be berries blueberries are my favorites and blackberries and I do that in Greek yogurt every day and then the beef you have to do grass fed beef I think you could easily have that
Starting point is 01:44:24 every single day yeah so let's get into the guilty pleasure the cheap foods. If you pick three, well, yeah, because five's kind of a lot. So give me your three, what they would be. I'm probably just a classic,
Starting point is 01:44:38 like cast iron chocolate chip cookie. I mean, I make my own that are probably healthier version, but I would do something like that. I'd probably top that off with vanilla ice cream and then,
Starting point is 01:44:48 and then just some just straight dark chocolate. Yeah. With some salt on it. Yeah, mine probably would be pizza, which I put on my top, which shows you how good I am. I put it in my survival list. But I would, look, this is the truth is that they're better for you versions for all of these
Starting point is 01:45:04 things. Like, I'm not going to go to dominoes, no fence, dominoes. I'm just not going to do that. But you don't need to. Like, you can get an amazing good quality, organic sourdough pizza, gluten-free if you're gluten-free. Anyways, I would do sour-up pizza. I would do peanut butter, which I would put on that list because it's not really nutrient
Starting point is 01:45:21 dense, but it tastes so good. I agree. And then third, man. Do you remember this? I'm going to put this on the list because I forget the name. It was called Nutter Butter or Nutted Buddy. It was like a peanut-shaped way for cookie thing. Yeah, of course, yeah.
Starting point is 01:45:38 I haven't had it since the 90s, so I need to like find it. But that would be on my list. Or you know what? I was in the gas station. I was driving my son down here. He goes to college down here. And it was the white powdered donuts. Oh, man.
Starting point is 01:45:52 I'm like, man, I haven't had that since 1997. Wow. And I thought, what have I bought this? Yes, I didn't buy it, but I thought. Well, if I knew that it wouldn't hurt my health, then like I would be okay to have this, I would get a cheese pizza with extra grease, my friend, because I just how good it is, if I knew like, okay, I'm going into this where it's not going to hurt me. So it would be the mint chip ice cream, the pizza for sure.
Starting point is 01:46:17 I like just, I either get plain cheese pizza or I've always been a green pepper and mushroom guy, you know, like, like, or roasted peppers, whatever. So those two things for sure. And then it's like, okay, because you need the peanut butter is. And I like walnut butter. I don't know if you guys ever had that. No, I've never had it. But I consider that more of a health side than a cheat side.
Starting point is 01:46:38 So I would say, I'm Italian. I grew up like around it all the time. So like just continuous pasta every day would be my other one. I don't even touch it anymore. My mom always says, do you want me to make it? I'm like, no, I don't. Inside, yes, I do. But no, I don't.
Starting point is 01:46:56 So those would be mine. Okay, so I want to bring this up. We go on extremes, like we said. Now, right now it's the protein extreme. Every single thing has to be protein. And I've always been a guy coming from the bodybuilding world where if I got a guy, I'm training hard that needs to gain size. We'll do the 1.5 grams of protein to pound of body weight.
Starting point is 01:47:19 I don't love to get on this. Oh, you got to have per pound of body weight. But what are you guys' feelings on how extreme it's getting? What's too much? What's too little? Because I've seen some crazy people. Okay. Crazy thoughts about eating too little.
Starting point is 01:47:33 I don't want to say crazy people. Sorry. But like really low, which I find to be detrimental long term. But I think too high is also detrimental. So what are your thoughts? And then also what are your thoughts on the ability to actually process like 70 grams of protein in a meal?
Starting point is 01:47:48 Is that getting turned into sugar like some people say? Or what? Give me some facts on this. Yeah. I think, look, I think from a public health standpoint, I actually think it's great, but the HHS did recently with highlighting it and increasing it slightly. Yeah. The requirements, because yes, we're not talking about malnourishment, but are we thriving?
Starting point is 01:48:07 And I think most Americans aren't getting enough high quality. But it's the American way. Maybe it's the human way. We like to overcorrect. So it's like I'm annoyed at myself right now to have talk about protein right now because this is people are inundated on social media all the time. And it's just, look, trends will come and go. It's having it sort of zeitgeist. moment, protein is, but the truth remains the same, whether the world's paying attention or not, we need to focus on high-quality protein, but not over-correct and become obsessive with it. The truth, as I said earlier, the truth is oftentimes somewhere in the middle. And with protein being around that 100 grams a day, depending on your weight, obviously
Starting point is 01:48:44 is going to fluctuate depending on your activity-level age and health goals, and the quality of the protein matters. But we don't always want M-Toror to be high all the time from a longevity standpoint. If you look at all the longevity research, there's going to be periods of time where you don't want that mechanistic target of rapid myacin, which is stimulated by protein, to be high all the time.
Starting point is 01:49:05 I agree. From a cellular health standpoint. So, yeah, I think that probably times of less, like I think you said earlier in the conversation where it's like, yeah, maybe this meal is going to be less or this day is going to be less. There's flexibility there. Or a time of protein sparing or times of fasting.
Starting point is 01:49:23 You don't always want to be fasting. it's called starvation. So it's like, I think that to become maniacally obsessed with then getting the protein pop-tarts and the protein cold foam and the protein cereal, it's probably not needed. Actually, it's not needed because that's not the goal of this. It's a marketing tool right now. And actually, we were at, I was, you weren't there, but I was at Expo West. Were you there? No, I wasn't. In March, and I heard from a lot of the food companies that there's a protein shortage because all of these companies. Way protein is shortage now.
Starting point is 01:49:56 The price has gone up like the oil price right now. I mean, it's like the same thing. Yeah. Because of this. Yeah. Like, it's really largely like a marketing tool at this point. They do this all the time. I remember 20 years ago, they started putting omega-3s and everything.
Starting point is 01:50:10 There was omega-3 eggs. Then there was a probiotic craze about 10 years ago. They started putting probiotics and everything. Then collagen, now protein. I mean, fiber, of course, has been on and off for years. And so it's, yeah. I mean, it's, it's big time. You know, I actually design my own protein.
Starting point is 01:50:27 There's a website, I don't work with them or nothing. It's called true nutrition. And I go in because I'm not a big fan of like all-way protein. So mine, I make the percentages. So it's beef protein isolate's about 55%. I do egg white protein. I do a little bit of bovine collagen, a little bit of MCT powder. And I make it that way.
Starting point is 01:50:45 And I've found the way that like my body responds to it. Because I put it in coffee every day. And I don't drink protein shakes, but I utilize it in yogurt and everything. And I've noticed a different body response and digestion and everything through different formulations of it because I find that to be a good source of added protein throughout the day. But don't become reliant upon it either was my point to saying that I see a lot of people do that and you can't compensate for real food sources of protein.
Starting point is 01:51:14 So let me ask you guys this then. Fibre's another one. So I've run into some people that think you don't need fiber. I disagree with that thoroughly, but a lot of carnivore people, especially say you don't need it at all. What are you guys' thoughts on that? Because I'm firmly against it.
Starting point is 01:51:30 I believe that we do need it, but I'm curious. Go ahead. I'm going to go. Well, yeah, my thought is this, is I think saying you don't need it, I think part of it comes down to what challenges, what pathogens,
Starting point is 01:51:44 what things are you going to come up against in the future? Because I definitely think that there's, listen, there are quite a few studies that show your diversity is important. You know, I think for the, most of this conversation is probably around people that are on carnivore diet. Most of the people I know they get on carnivore, they do it because they're sick and they have an immune issue where their immune system's overreacting. And not even overreacting. It's just reacting because it's in this sort of typically it's autoimmune or mold or some sort of thing where your immune system is on high alert constantly. And I do think if you're
Starting point is 01:52:19 decreasing your total microbials, you're going to have less histamine. Your body's going to have less reaction, less systemic inflammation. And so that's why they do it. But I do think that not having bowel movements, and I do think, or having very few, because if you're, I mean, if you're in carnivore, you're not going to have very many bowel movements. I do think it's a problem. I mean, I had a PhD on the show, James D. Nick Lentoneo. Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 01:52:47 And he brought this up, and I thought this, he said, you know, know, I have some research that says that if you stand carnivore, your body is going to move into being too acidic. Now, I'm not talking about this. I remember this drove me crazy 25 years ago, the whole pH thing. Just alkalinity. But they can, I mean, we're talking about the one person. So you can move over into being too acidic and your body will start pulling minerals out of the bone that are more alkaline like magnesium and calcium and other things to start to try and keep your pH imbalance. That was his perspective. He said he had some evidence and research on that. I think that could be true.
Starting point is 01:53:20 So listen, I don't think that for most people, being carnivore is a great diet long term. Or, and maybe your question was also there about fiber, if you're not getting fiber, again, the studies show that that's not ideal for most people. I mean, people that do more fiber tend to have better insulin levels, tend to have better microbial diversity. Those are, I guess those are. Yeah, I think that, yeah, I agree. You have to meet your gut, like a big patient base
Starting point is 01:53:51 that I've seen over the past 16 years of people with autoimmune and gut health issues. So I think sometimes that context is lost, you have to meet your gut where it's at. So yeah, you're telling someone that has a wrecked gut, an inflammatory autoimmune issue, maybe you can't have all the 30 grams of fiber that you're hearing that you need.
Starting point is 01:54:09 So you may be low fiber for a while, while you heal your gut and build low, slow titrate over time as you build resilience. And look, fiber's not the only way, to build microbiome diversity though. I mean, you may polyphenols, like really focus on the olive oil that we talked about earlier
Starting point is 01:54:24 or the berries, which has some fiber. But I think that you want to actually be, bring more polyphenol rich food in, which may or may not have some fiber, but the polyphenols themselves build and promote bacterial diversity. So, but I agree.
Starting point is 01:54:43 But you know what? It's so interesting. Who are the people that are saying this now? Because they're staunch, Stanch's carnival people I knew six, seven years ago, they eat more fruit than vegans do now. So I think people again that make it their personality to say like this, everybody, and this applies to everybody.
Starting point is 01:55:03 They don't, like we see people as far as patients for all day long. So if I hung my hat on one way for everybody, I'd be proven wrong all day long. So you have to have an intellectual flexibility to bio-individuality because it's like, bro, you are just talking about yourself. Yeah. At the season of your life, don't apply that to everybody. That's exactly what happens.
Starting point is 01:55:23 What happens is, and some of it's good intentions. It's, it helped them. Yeah. So they feel like, that's where they come up. They feel like, oh, I did paleo or I did vegan or I did it. And it helped me. That means everybody should do this thing to help me. But to your point with like Paul Saladino and he's a really smart guy.
Starting point is 01:55:39 And it helped him with some of his issues. I know a lot of people with mold. It helped them. But now to your point, a lot of them now are they add in fruit. and then honey and then eggs and then they add in fruit you know vegetables i mean so so they kind of keep going because really you're typically if you're healthy you're going to be trying to get a lot of those foods in your diet that's just it things go in phases and stages right yeah and so i'm always trying to be careful when i say well you should do this because i am i like to break down this is
Starting point is 01:56:06 where i had problems this is what i did to fix it now here's where i'm at today and this is what's working right now but the therein goes that term flexibility because we change as we age, body response change. Your microbiome changes. Exactly. Conditions change. And some of the foods are exposures we have to things change. That's right.
Starting point is 01:56:25 You know, and you have to be able to pivot and accommodate and be ready to do that. And stress levels change too. Like, is it the food or is it your mental state, spiritual state when you eat the food? That's it.
Starting point is 01:56:36 That vaguely tone that we talked about earlier. Yeah. So if you guys could leave everybody with one thing today of importance that you really want to stress, right now, and I know there's a lot that we would all like to wrap around here, but what's one thing each of you would like to leave with people from what we discussed today and what you really feel of value? Yeah, well, I'll just say that I think it's important to know that God design you uniquely.
Starting point is 01:57:02 There's no one else in the world like you. And so you need to be eating foods that are right for you, supplements that are right for you. I mean, have something that's tailored that's ideal for you to follow for you to reach your optimal level of health. And that's one thing we try to to do and heal yourselves is we really lay out how to reverse the irreversible, how to heal anything. We go through protocol. People can take a quiz in there and find out which organ might be aging faster, what protocol they need to follow. We have a protocol in there that people can follow. But I think that, you know, that personalized medicine is the future and that's where people see the biggest results. Yeah. I would say your body is amazingly resilient, but you have to do
Starting point is 01:57:41 something different to see something different. A big percentage, my intention for this book as it comes out into the world is that the people that are medically gaslit, people that are told they're crazy, there's nothing wrong with you, that they know intuitively something's off, not to become a hypochondriac and look for problems with their own problems, but you know your body. And we really wrote this book for those people, those people that have what the world may call mystery illnesses or the people that just know they're not feeling their best. They know this isn't just, just age or just stress or whatever it is, they know something's off here.
Starting point is 01:58:18 And the science is pointing to this, but there's such a gap between what's in the scientific literature and then it trickling down to conversations that people are having with their doctor. It may never happen because it's a training within the paradigm and they're trained to diagnose a disease and match it with the pharmaceutical drug. So we are having conversations that probably they've never had
Starting point is 01:58:38 before ever with their doctor. We got to have in the book, so I'm excited. for people to read it. I love it. I would just like to say, set yourself a foundation. I'm a God-first foundational person and I believe that that will set the stage for your healing and your growth as a person and who you can become for yourself and then for everybody else around you. And I just want to say this too. When you become more selfless and not selfish and you take care of yourself, then you're taking care of your loved ones around you. You can be your best you. and you prioritize people and your resilience as a person and who you were meant to be,
Starting point is 01:59:18 that's living. That's what it's all about. It's not about you. It's about what you do for the people around you. And that makes you the healthiest and the happiest and the best you can be for everybody around you. So I just want to say this. What an honor and joy and pleasure it is to sit here with you guys. I mean, it really is to me. I was sitting last night and I was going, wow, I can't believe that I'm going to get to sit with two people like so esteemed and so amazing and brilliant and I get to just be a part of that and be here with you guys. It means a lot to me. I know God brought us together here for messaging, but what you guys do, not just this book, which is amazing, all of these years of sacrifice that you've given and the way that you've
Starting point is 02:00:00 conveyed message, you've been abused, you've taken shots from people and you just, it makes you go harder. I love that about you guys. And to be able to sit here and do this and share it with you, like, this is why I live. And so I just, beyond the thank you for that, it's just gratitude to be here with you and to share this. And I really hope everybody listening just really takes into what you guys do and teach because it's amazing. Thanks, man. Thanks so much. Appreciate it.
Starting point is 02:00:28 So you're saying not everybody likes us. I think that the three of us are not for everybody, but I think we are for a lot. So that's going to wrap it up today, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. I hope this hits home. And just remember, prioritize your health first, live that long and healthy life. Cellular health, God first, and we love you.

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