#175 Dr. Gabrielle Lyon - The Nicotine Debate, Aging Conspiracies and Living to 100

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I mean, there was a tornado or hurricane or something and kids. It's a whole thing.
Yeah. But, well, I got a whole slew of stuff I want to chat with you about.
And, you know, we just added another topic right before the camera started rolling. Cancer scares the hell out of me.
It's like every day, every day I get a text from somebody else that knows somebody that died of cancer, that just got diagnosed with cancer. It's like my biggest fear.
I never want to get that fucking diagnosis. You know that you can screen for it very robustly.
I'm scared to do that, by the way. Nope, we're doing it.
We are doing it. I'm going to tell you why.
I actually sent you a paper right before we came on the show. I published a paper with my husband, actually, who is a urology resident on bladder cancer and military exposures.
So I would say that military operators have higher rates of cancer. We're talking about cancer as if it's one thing.
There are various types of cancer. The good news is there are very robust screening tools.
For example, full-body MRI scans. I'm sure you've heard of the Pronovo scan.
What is it? Pronovo scan. Have you heard of that? No.
Full-body MRI scan should definitely be doing that. Really? Yes.
And also something called the gallery test. We became very interested in this because of operators.
Early detection cancer, if you can detect cancers early enough, you can initiate treatment. And so the GRAIL, originally in cancer research, it was called the GRAIL, now the gallery test, that is available to people through their provider.
Early detection is critical. You know, me and my wife had a conversation about this because we were going to do it was like getting screened yes and i was gonna go with this foundation i can't remember the name of it but uh there's a foundation that does a bunch of military guys and i was gonna go with them and then uh we're gonna yeah you know have katie do it too and and she was like we were both hesitant but she mentioned something and she's like, okay, so what if one of us gets a diagnosis and it can't be treated? Then that changes our entire life right now.
I think it's a good thought. Shit, I didn't think of that.
It's a good thought, but the reality is if you can get cancer early, these technologies allow for early detection when it's in its infancy. I strongly encourage you to do it.
In fact, I'm going to hold you to it. I'm going to talk to Katie too.
All right. I do it every year.
I just finished one. How often do you do it? Every year.
Every year? I do. Every year.
Because I had a lot of anxiety about it. I think everybody does.
It's that one unknown thing that seems to take people out. Whether it's— What's— Well, I did do a blood— Can I do a blood test? Yeah.
So I did have a blood test. This is probably two years ago now.
Was it the grail, the gallery test? Man, I don't know. I went to a longevity doctor.
He told me how long I was going to live. It was like 76 or something.
Is that real? No. Okay.
No. All right.
Besides, wasn't our game plan to live to at least 100? Yeah. No, but I do think that we are seeing a rise in cancers.
We're seeing a rise in cancers that are treatable. For example, colon cancer, getting a colonoscopy at 45 before it was 50.
Now it's 45. I think that they're going to lower that number even lower because we're seeing an increase in cancers.
These things, once they are identified, you can remove it. But if you don't go through regular screening, then the outcome is devastating.
How many different screenings are there? Those are the two big, I mean, that's a great question. So there's a colonoscopy.
Everyone should be doing those. There is, obviously, for women, there's mammograms.
For young men, testicular cancer is one of the highest cancers in young men, 30-some years old. They can examine themselves or have a partner do it.
And then these other various tests, ultrasounds, thyroid ultrasound, liver ultrasounds, we're more advanced with those tools. Can the blood test test all of that? Depends on the kind and depends on the kind of cancer.

Okay.

But it's a great, I think right now the GRAIL test, I think it's 68 different cancers, 50 or mid-60 different cancers.

How many are there?

I couldn't even tell you.

Wow.

Is it true it's hereditary?

No, not necessarily, not at all.

Again, for a military operative community, they have exposures like Agent Orange. There are all kinds of various exposures that help facilitate DNA damage.
Are there cancer preventatives other than the screenings? Yes. Like what? Diet and lifestyle.
Did you know that obesity is one of the largest known risk factor for cancer? I didn't know that. What about sugar? I would say that it's not.
It's not? No. Okay.
So we have to think about it. What is cancer? Cancer is a mutation in the genome.
There are various types, and I'm not a cancer expert by any means. But it's some derangement that the body cannot overcome.
Could there be one insult? For example, smoking. We know that the relative risk of smoking and cancer is tremendous.
But would a single dietary food cause cancer, like sugar or red meat? No. We have to look at the complexity of what we do on a daily basis.
So what if you quit smoking or you quit vaping? Does that in you? I mean, you can reduce your risk for sure. Reduce your risk back to the, to the normal level as if you over time.
I mean, I believe that to be true over time. Yes.
Okay. Okay.
I mean, I think that we've all made bad choices. I know I've made a lot of them.
But yeah. What about, well, let me give you an introduction first before we get too far in the weeds.
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon.
Today we have got an incredible guest who's going to shake up everything you thought you knew about health and wellness. Dr.
Gabrielle Lyon, you are not the average physician. You're a game changer in the medical field.
You're a board certified family physician who's also fellowship trained at Washington University in nutritional science and geriatrics. You founded the Institute of Muscle Centric Medicine and made it your life's mission to keep people not just living longer, but living stronger.
You educate people about how skeletal muscle is the largest organ in the body, the key to longevity, and the secret weapon against diseases like obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. You've worked with some of the toughest people out there, including special operations, military personnel, Olympic athletes, helping them to optimize their performance when it counts.
You tackle big questions, offering framework for navigating the health space that are grounded in both science and practicality in your podcast, The Dr. Gabrielle Lyon Show.
Your latest book, Forever Strong, a new science-based strategy for aging well became a new york times and wall street journal and usa today bestseller congratulations thank you sir and we're going to dive deep into how we can all take charge of our own health the impact of our dietary choices and why muscle health might be the first place we look in our wellness journey and then i have a whole whole bunch of subcategories, too, that I came up with. Right before it showed up, it crossed my mind like nicotine.
But we'll get into that in a minute. So one thing I do have is a subscription account.
It's on Patreon. And many of these people have been with us since the beginning.
They're the ones that kept the lights on in the beginning and still do today.

Because of them, I wouldn't be here, and neither would you.

So one of the things I do is I offer them a – I tell them who the guest is and offer them the opportunity to ask each guest a question.

So since we're talking about longevity, this is a good one. This is from John Hoppin.
Being 65 injury risk. Oftentimes we think that training like we did in our 20s, 30s, 40s, or 50s might be able to take us through to 60 and beyond.
For example, I don't do a ton of explosive crazy movements. I don't want to get injured.
Picking things that you can do and do well. If someone's going to squat, if they're going to deadlift, picking a weight and doing it well.
Also, prehab movements. There's the big three or big five things like- Prehab movements? Yeah, prehab movements.
I actually learned this from an incredible physician. His name is Dr.
Gerard D'Onofrio, and he has taught me a lot about the tissue integrity. We think about muscle, but I think what a lot of the injuries happen, they are bone, they are connective tissue like tendons and ligaments.
So how do you warm the body up so you don't go balls to the wall and hurt yourself? And these are movements like a bird dog or glute activators, things before you enter into the actual movement. Also making sure you're doing corrective exercises, figuring out what your imbalances are.
How do you do that? You've got to get screened.

You've got to go to someone who knows what they're looking at.

Well, I mean, so for somebody like me,

you say you've got to get screened.

Who do I look for?

Well, I have the people for you.

I have the people for you.

Are you one of them?

I would work with my colleague, for example, Dr. Jordan Shallow,

or Don Saladino, people I know and trust,

and we would screen you.

Thank you. How are you moving? How do you screen them? For me, because I tore my hamstring, I knew that I had to get very particular actions.
So for me personally, and it's interesting, I would say the guys that have been in the teams, you have to be built very robustly. If you are not built very robustly, you wash out.
You don't even make it. But for me, for a normal athletic person, I have movements like my squat isn't right.
Someone would watch my squat. Someone would watch my lunge.
Just movements that maybe I'm not activating my glute or maybe my hip is dropping. But someone who knows what to look for.
Just like a doctor who can look at blood work and say, you know what? Your eosinophils are elevated. You might have a gut bug.
There are professionals that really look at the body comprehensively to see those movement patterns. Okay, so they're actually screening the way you're moving.
Screening, yeah, and in dynamic positions. With the back, typically if someone has a sedentary lifestyle, just outside of exercise, figuring out what kind of mechanical thing that they're doing that is creating issues throughout their whole 24-hour cycle.
And then the other thing, what about things like stem cell treatments? I think that that can be very valuable. What does stem cell treatment do? Take your blood, spins it down.
It helps create an inflammatory process to help rebuild and repair. Do you have to leave the country to do that? I've had it done multiple times.
We send a lot of team guys to get them done, and oftentimes we don't have them leave the country. Really? So you can get it here in the U.S.? You can.

You can make that recommendation on where to go?

I can.

I can.

I think that when you go outside the U.S.,

there are various countries that have been doing it for a very long time.

You know, they do it in Dubai.

They do it in Japan.

I can't speak to those areas.

I mean, some of my friends have clinics over there. There are various places in Japan.
I can't speak to those areas. I mean, some of my friends have clinics over there.
There are various places in Mexico. Again, it's hit or miss.
It's not regulated. You have to go to someone who you trust.
I mean, it's really important. Because I've heard really bad stories of people that have gotten infected.
Yeah. To be very careful.
Man, I've thought about that, the stem cell stuff for my back, but I haven't done it because I didn't. It has to be validated.
It has to be vetted. I mean, there are reasons why we have certain regulations.
And one might argue that we might be slow to change, but I think there are certain procedures that, again, I don't do these procedures. There are certain procedures that can be done stateside that I think are very effective.
I think there may be the opportunity to go outside the country to get them done, but you have to be very careful about the provider that you choose in that way. You all know what speed dating is, right? Well, if you're the owner of a growing business what if there was a feature like speed dating but only for hiring in other words you could meet several interested qualified candidates all at once well good news there is it's zip intro from zip recruiter you can post your job today and start talking to qualified candidates tomorrow.

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So, I mean, I'm just, is there a resource that people should use to find?

I mean, for somebody like me that has no idea what the hell we're looking at,

and everybody's selling something, you know, like, where do you find a reliable resource?

And there's massive distrust in the healthcare system nowadays.

And I don't even have a primary care anymore,

which is probably horrible, but I go to them and I'm like,

and then I go to somebody like you who reads all the lines of my blood work

and tells me all the good things and the bad things and everything.

And then I go to the doctor and he's like, oh, yeah, everything looks good.

See you in six months.

You know, and so, but people don't know where to look.

You know, people don't know where to look for vaccines.

Like, what do we do about vaccines?

Do we vaccinate our kids?

Do we not vaccinate our kids?

Do we take the COVID shot?

Do we not take the COVID shot?

Stem cells, is that healthy? Where can I go? Where is it reliable? And so there's like this mass confusion of who can we trust in healthcare now? So for a stem cell, where do you find reliable? How do you know if they're reliable? First, this is a very important question, and I think it goes across all medical providers. The first thing that you look for, is this person board certified in what they're talking about? Did they do rigorous training? The thing with medicine is it does have a lot of problems.
But I would say the one thing that we're very good at is vetting and having credentials, a governing board, that these people are capable. They are board certified in what they are talking about.
They have passed their exams. They hold an active medical license.

Okay.

Number one.

Number two, you look for a fellowship-trained physician.

Was this person specialty trained in the thing that they are doing?

Then number three, there are governing bodies like associations.

And again, I'm saying this blanketly, but there's a ton of problems.

You're right.

Because do we trust traditional medicine?

How do we begin to think about these things?

Even with hormone replacement therapy, the guidelines are set very low.

So for testosterone replacement, does someone have 300, you know, is their testosterone 300? Can you treat them? Is it that they feel terrible at 300? But the guidelines say that 300 or less or 290 or less is the low number. So looking also at these governing bodies, these associations, we will have a list of providers that they feel are qualified.

Oh, good.

So, that's one way.

I'll give you an example. A cosmetic surgeon is different than a plastic surgeon.
somebody could do a

I don't know

make up a

residency

gastrointestinal residency. Then take a fellowship in cosmetic surgery and then become a cosmetic surgeon.
Interesting. That would be terrifying.
If something goes wrong, that's terrifying. Really understanding where this person was trained, what their qualifications are, and who else do you know that has used this person? And how are they thought of within the community? It's tough.
It is tough. You know, me and my wife are always looking around and poking around at different things.
What do you think about, I wasn't even really expecting to go here, but what do you think about these, what do they call, these more natural doctors? What do they call them? I can't remember. Naturopaths or holistic? Are you talking about? Yeah, it's more like holistic medicine.
Functional medicine've been looking for a functional medicine doctor because we're really concerned about the vaccines and stuff. But a lot of these functional medicine doctors I've gone to, I leave and I'm like like this doesn't sound like a doctor

this sounds like a sales pitch on

we don't do vaccines and that

shit weirds me out because it's like look man

yeah we're not

really into the vaccine thing

but we also want somebody that can

do all the rest of the stuff that a fucking

doctor should be able to do and treat our kid

and if my son

breaks his arm you better be able to fix it

like your sales pitch to me

can't be well we don't

I don't do vaccines and tell me how fucked up they are. I get it, man.
Yeah, everybody's talking about this, but what else do you do other than just not give vaccines? Another really astute question. So this idea of functional medicine, which I've been practicing and trained in functional medicine, I don't know if you know that, over 10 years.
And the idea of functional medicine, which it seems to have morphed over the years, is root cause medicine. It's this idea of what is at the core causing these issues.
And functional medicine is a way of thinking about it through that lens. I don't know if you know that, but I still have a full medical practice.
Wow. You got a lot going on.
I have a full medical practice. And what we do is we practice integrative medicine.
We practice the best of functional medicine, which the idea of functional medicine is, again, that root cause approach. So, for example, let's say you have GI issues.
I know that your listeners, that many of them are going to have GI issues. Whatever they eat, they're going to feel bloated.
There's going to be all kinds of things that happen. If you go to a traditional doctor, potentially, right, a traditional doctor might say, well, have some Metamucil.
You'll be fine. But a functional medicine doctor will go, okay, why? Where is this coming from? Is there a parasitic infection that you've had? Is there a series of foods that you are eating that are maybe causing gas and bloating? Whatever it is, we find what the root cause is, and then we address it at the root.
What you're talking about is, and I think a really good doctor thinks about it comprehensively, that a really good doctor is able to not just look at your numbers are good, this is fine, this is the standard, but what are some of these issues, where do you want to go? and functional medicine. And over the years, it's really gotten a bad rap.
It's gotten a bad rap because when you are saying you are practicing medicine, you better be a doctor.

And that is you better be an MD or a DO and have an active medical license. Then there are naturopathic doctors.
I

there are a few that I trust

but

I And I, there are a few that I trust, but I think that there's a large stigma that goes with them because can you prescribe medications in all 50 states? Have you had the same kind of training? Again, I think that they're good for their own niche, but a truly comprehensive provider will look at the root cause. And that's actually where medicine is moving.
Who should be able to practice medicine? If someone says functional medicine, do they have a medical degree? And I have nothing against chiropractors. Are they practicing outside their scope? Are they trained to read blood work? Are you going to someone who is saying they're practicing functional medicine and they don't have an active medical license? Do we need primary care physicians? Absolutely.
Do we need people that can provide an antibiotic if necessary? Yes, absolutely.

Are supplements and natural treatments valuable?

They can be.

The severity of the illness must equally be treated with an impactful solution. And I'm going to explain to you what I mean by that.
If someone comes to me with GI issues, typically that's not challenging to treat. We can use a combination, myself, my other providers in my medical practice, can use a combination of natural and antibiotics if necessary.
We'll try to do it natural, but there are limitations. There are limitations to what a supplement can do.
You have to match the illness or the challenge with a treatment that is going to have a meaningful impact.

And you have to be very careful.

You know, what has become so fascinating is with this distrust in medicine, there's all kinds of things that people believe that are not true.

That doctors get paid to prescribe medications. We don't.
This idea of big pharma, big pharma has challenges, but there are other things like compounding pharmacies that make medication affordable. Have you ever heard of Empower Pharmacy, the largest compounding pharmacy in the world.
No, I haven't.

But this idea of, for example, GLP-1s, that they are so unaffordable for everybody. GLPs, GIP, people have heard of Ozempic and Mondiorno, and people are saying, well, these are just for the elite.
They're unaffordable. That's not true.
There are compounding pharmacies that represent 2% of this pharmaceutical massiveness.

Is there anything you need to look out for with a compounding pharmacy?

Yes.

Compounding pharmacies, they have to be regulated.

They have to have a reputation.

They have all kinds of paperwork that they're required. I mean, again, we use Empower Pharmacy.
They're the largest compounding pharmacy in the world. They make medications accessible and affordable to my patients.
So we don't have to go under this idea of big pharma. But your original question was, how do we know who to trust? It's difficult.
They must be trained. They cannot be misleading.
If someone has a doctor in front of their name, it can't be a, and again, this is a very large audience, so I'm not trying to offend podiatrists or I'm not trying to offend dentists or things of that nature. But if someone is saying they are a metabolic expert and it says Dr.
So-and-so and that person has not done metabolic training but hold a doctorate in, I don't know, history, you can on Instagram, they will say Dr. So-andso, metabolic expert.
But if you don't look under the hood, that expert has a doctorate in, I don't know, history. Interesting.
Nothing is more important than your health. Nothing is more important than having a provider that you can trust, hands down.
You need a great teammate at home. You need a great lawyer.
You need a great accountant. And you need a great doctor.
And a real doctor relationship is someone you have a relationship with. So what is your practice? Yeah.
Do you, I mean, is it remote? Are you a primary care doc? I'm a primary care doctor by training, and then I am fellowship trained in nutritional sciences and geriatrics.

My practice, we have a practice that is all telehealth.

My patients come to see me in Texas in person.

I started my practice, believe it, in New York City.

Terrible idea.

Rent was like $40,000 a month.

Terrible idea.

And it was really interesting.

I went right into private practice.

And New York City, I was right across from Central Park.

There's the Plaza, Columbus Circle, Central Park.

It was very hoity-toity.

And I started seeing patients, whether they're celebrities or athletes. It wasn't really my cup of tea so much.
And then I started seeing operators. For the listener, it's SEALs, Green Berets, Rangers, but mostly SEALs.
Started becoming very interested in them even before I graduated fellowship. How did that come across your radar? It was mindset.
You know, medical training is difficult. Medical training is sacrifice.
You sacrifice your youth. You sacrifice your time, your energy.
You become very good at sacrifices. And people think medicine is noble, which it is, but it's very rigorous.
and you are working 24 hours.

You know, you are, my husband's working.

I shouldn't even say the amount of hours that he's working because it would, you know, you can't violate hours.

But you miss a lot.

And it was hard for me.

So I did two years of psychiatry training, which I didn't like at all.

I spent two years at the University of Louisville working.

My first residency was psychiatry.

And I left that residency.

I thought it was something different than it was.

I thought psychiatry training was people were really thinking about how to get the best out of themselves. And that's what psychiatry was.
I remember this patient, this was my first couple months on the job as an intern, and this guy jumped off a parking garage. And he died.
you know, they call it psychiatry. He broke every bone in his body.
He was a medical student. His father was a surgeon who worked at the University of Louisville.
And I was like, I had to tell his dad. I brought his dad back to his body.
And that was just one example of the experience in psychiatry. And it wasn't what I thought.
It was a lot of medication. It was, you know, the brain is an organ.
You and I were talking about addiction before. The brain is an organ, and the brain can get sick.
So I switched, and I went into family practice because I felt with family practice, I could reach a lot of people. I could help a lot of people.
I would be the first line of defense. Someone comes in, you know, your stomach hurts.
You have low testosterone. You have a cold, you broke your arm, I'm going to be able to be useful and send you to where you need to go.
But during that training, it wasn't easy for me, you know? And I would say that it's not easy for any physician. We get a lot of slack, or a lot of flack, but that training is tough.

And how I got to operate is, again, this is long-winded. You told me we had six hours for this podcast, so I could actually talk a little bit more than I normally ever do on a podcast.
but I turned to the people that I thought that were the best at being mentally tough and capable. Wow.
How'd you meet your husband? So your husband was a SEAL. My husband was a SEAL.
We got married while he was still active duty. He was on Team 10.
His name is Shane Kronstadt. He's bummed.
He's actually working today, so he can't make it. But do you know who Mark Devine is? Yes.
I've not met him, but I know who he is. So Mark is unusual.
Mark, I think what you see online is different very much from who he is. He's very sage-like.
He'd probably be embarrassed if I'm saying this, but I've known Mark for over 10 years. And again, this was over a decade ago.
And Mark was talking a lot about mental toughness in a way that I could understand and think about. It was a way that really resonated with me.
And so I found him. And I went and I learned from him.
And that was my first exposure to the mentality of what I believed that an elite operator had. Because there are not that many of you guys.
At any given time, there's 2,500. And remember, 10 years ago, so right now, the SEAL community, I think, has a lot more exposure than it did a decade ago.
Would you agree with that? Mm-hmm. Absolutely.
And if you think a decade ago or over a decade ago, where were people turning to to think about how to cultivate mental robustness? I mean, I don't even know. Maybe they weren't.
They probably, I mean, I don't know. So for me, I was looking for mentors, from mentors that weren't just heads.

It's one thing to say you're mentally tough and then not actually go through challenges that allow you to express that.

And so I was just very interested in the culture.

And it helped me a lot.

It helped me get through residency and training and the sacrifices that I was making

because it's, again, I missed almost every holiday. I missed time out with friends.
I missed relationships. I miss a lot.
and when I started to learn tools and ways of processing things, it made me a much better doctor. Now, how I met my husband, Mark called me and said, hey, I have this guy who wants to go to medical school.
Can you talk to him about what it takes?

What are the things?

And when my husband, so when my husband was deployed in Afghanistan,

he taught himself physics and calculus.

So he was a medic in the teams,

and he knew that he wanted to go to medical school at that time.

I think he saw a lot of lower body injuries.

He just saw a lot of injuries.

And I know that he wanted to be able to do more. An introduction was made.
And I don't know about you, but any normal woman would never want a day to steal. No offense, friend.
And I had already graduated residency and fellowship. And again, I was already taking care of the special operations community at that time.
Because I really feel like they provided an incredible value as humans. What were you doing? GI stuff.
So basically, when a guy gets out, so I would see guys that were out, or a handful of guys that were trying to get into buds, and then most of my patient population were guys that either were on medical leave, transitioning out, or out. Because, and I know that I can speak freely on this podcast.
Yes? Oh, yeah. That's what we do here.
Okay. There was a period of time, I think, that the forward-facing, and then again, please, you'll tell me where you disagree and where it's too much, or I shouldn't say, but I think that the forward-facing special operations community can be very glamorous.
And the sacrifice behind the scenes is tremendous. The sacrifice behind the scenes for the wives, the sacrifice behind the scenes from TBI, from just chronic injuries, people don't see that.
And when the guys would get out, they'd already been to the VA, they'd already been to all these other places, and they were not getting better. They felt terrible.
They would come to me, and we would do a comprehensive analysis. You know, I'm part of the Seal Future Foundation.
I work on their medical board. We would get guys from Seal Future Foundation, from Task Force Dagger.
We'd look at gastrointestinal problems. That is a huge complaint.
Guys would go get deployed. Whole platoons would get sick.
They would go to Mayo Clinic. They would go to John Hopkins, and they wouldn't get answers.
So I became very good at treating complex things that were not tested for a while. And a lot of it was infectious disease, Lyme disease, parasites, figuring out, facilitating who they needed to go to.
The old school parasitologists, right now everyone does these gut tests that have to be sent out and it's something called PCR. PCR misses, I don't know, the number, I'd say at least 80% of these diagnoses.
Wow. 80%? I mean, I'm saying that from my clinical experience.
I don't know what the data says, because what we do is we would send out these PCR testing, because now it's the gold standard. Nobody wants to go and do a rectal exam on a patient or do a rectal exam, take a stool sample, look under a microscope.
That is a dying field. It's a dying field.
The old-school parasitologists, that's what they used to do. Now you get a stool sample and you send it and it goes to a lab.
That missed almost everything. We would send them to old school parasitology in New York.
They would come back with whipworm, roundworm, liver fluke. We would treat them.
We would treat their wives. Because if one person in the family has it, typically everybody has it.
Holy shit. So these guys, so these things were going undiagnosed.
I mean, there was one guy who had schistomaniasis. He came to me because he was having phantom limb pain, and he ended up having schistomaniasis.
Schistamaniasis? Yeah. What is that?

So it's a parasite.

They can get in the bladder, irritate the bladder.

But again, so you asked me, what do I do?

Because I still treat special operations community.

We still treat them.

We figure out what's going on in all domains.

Low testosterone, send them out for, it's a lot of head trauma that happens. Got to send them out.
They have to get testing. There's a lot of exposures.
The barracks are full of mold. The places in which people live in water-damaged areas, full of mold.
The body cannot get rid of that. So it's complicated,

and there are groups that are putting together ways of looking at the operator.

And it's not just the operator, it's everybody.

But we are in an environment that is very challenging,

and the treatments are not so simple.

So where did these parasites come from? The number one place? Yeah. I would say food, and now we live in a global society.
I will say I never eat anything raw. Really? Sushi is out the window.
Are you kidding? I would not touch. Listen, I never eat and people will say well if you freeze it then it'll kill whatever bug I don't see that I don't eat anything raw I don't eat any undercooked meat when we go to dinner tonight and your wife looks at me because I'm ordering my steak well done at some great steakhouse that we're going to and ruining the entire food,

I will tell you, I do not want a worm.

I'm good.

So that's where it comes from, huh?

Yeah, a lot of people, I mean,

you can get it from water,

you can get it from animals.

Parasites can come from animals.

Giardia, yes, you can get it if a dog is sick and then they're're kissing your mouth. You can get it all over.
It's ubiquitous. How do you get rid of them? Here will be the difference.
Most people, many people will try to treat it naturally. I haven't found that to work.
You use antibiotics or you use whatever protocol is necessary for that. And it's fixable.
You treat everybody, it's fixable. But I will tell you, for example, a Helmuth infection, which is a worm, is one of the leading causes of iron deficiency anemia because of what it does to the intestine.
It creates, well, number one, they create their own issue, but it affects absorption. See, John, we can fix all these things, by the way, my friend.
If you had to put a percentage on it just off the top of your head, I'm not asking for exact numbers, but I mean, what percent of people do you see have some type of parasite? 90%. 90%? So I probably have a parasite.
Oh, you definitely. Yes, my friend, you definitely have one.
You definitely have one. I've never had a team that has not had a parasite.
No kidding. Never.
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I've been checked for those things. You've been checked the traditional way, which is PCR testing.
That's right.

And that's part of the issue.

And we got really good at treating and testing for those kinds of things because you need solutions.

Although you're very robust and healthy,

some guys end up really struggling.

They end up really struggling.

So what, I mean, let's say I have a parasite.

Yeah.

We're going to test it and we're going to treat it.

What would I be feeling?

What does it do to me?

You don't have normal stools.

You might go to the bathroom more frequently.

You will, you know, it's not always related to food.

You can't figure out why your stomach is bothering you.

We might see it on your blood work, malabsorption.

Almost everybody has it.

You might have, are you ready for this?

Itchy feet, itchy ears, itchy anus.

You might find that these things happen cyclically.

This is going to sound crazy, but during the full moon,

this is when they seem to be very active

because they go through life cycles

no kidding

yeah

and it's very common

and it should be treated

what about acid reflux

would cause any of that?

probably H. pylori

yes

what is it?

bacteria that should be treated

easy to treat

easy to test for

it is a risk factor

for gastric cancer

gotta treat these things

but what's amazing

Thank you. easy to treat, easy to test for.
It is a risk factor for gastric cancer. Got to treat these things.
But what's amazing is that we're very skilled. This is where medicine is wonderful.
We're skilled at these things. H.
pylori, reflux, 50% of the population might have H. pylori.
But you got to treat it. You got to test it.
You got to treat it.

Nicotine probably doesn't help for the reflux, must say.

Yeah, probably.

Well, I mean.

Sleep apnea, all team guys.

If your neck is greater than 17 and a half inches, you have to be tested for sleep apnea.

Well, if you don't breathe through your mouth, do you have to worry about sleep apnea? Yes, you got to be tested for sleep apnea. Well, if you don't breathe through your mouth, do you have to worry about sleep apnea?

Yes, you've got to be tested.

Jeez.

But listen, I don't want to be Debbie Downer, so now we have to switch this to some positive stuff, is that it has never been easier to be healthier.

So we're kind of at this precipice where it's never been easier to take action. We have access to more capacity than ever before.
Let's talk about nicotine real quick. Okay.
I see you going to do it. Yes.
Because I went to Tucker's event. Tucker had a bit of, you know, he's coming out with his own nicotine pouch.
He is? He is. He's coming out with his own nicotine pouch.
It's called Alp. And he had a party here.
So I went. So do you feel bad that you're not using his nicotine right now? Shh, don't tell him.
Don't tell him. It's not out yet.
I already chewed them all. But no, I went to, anyways, I went to this event, and I was like, all right, whatever.
It's a nicotine party. I don't do any of this stuff.
But I was like, all right, I'll have one. And then I was like, I kind of like this shit.
So nicotine is amazing. Nicotine is amazing.
So then, because I was talking about it around my phone, now I'm getting all these fucking nicotine heads. Wow, they are on you.
They are on top of it. But I saw somewhere, I can't even remember what it was, but apparently there's some benefits to nicotine.
There are some benefits to nicotine. Nicotine is a naturally occurring substance.
It is stimulant. It vasoconstricts blood vessels, the skin, probably in the mouth, just all over.
There are nicotine receptors in the brain, in the body. It's thought to release adrenaline.
Nicotine comes in various forms. It's actually part of the nightshade family.
Comes from a nightshade plant. From what I understand, I mean, they probably can manufacture nicotine now.
But when nicotine is smoked, that's not good. Nicotine in the form of a cigarette.
So I think that we have to be fair, right? Do I recommend people all go on nicotine? It's highly addictive, which... Figured that out.
You figured that out, my friend. You have figured that out.
I personally love nicotine, and it has to be used discretionary. What are some of its benefits? When I was doing my fellowship at WashU in geriatrics, so part of the job as a fellow is to obviously do research, and I did research, but we ran a memory and aging clinic.
And so the things that were coming up on, how do you make people more cognitively robust? What are the studies? What are we looking at for new data coming out? And one of the papers that came across my desk was, in fact, nicotine. It was nicotine improving cognitive function in Alzheimer's and potentially Parkinson's.
How does it improve Alzheimer's? I don't know. I don't know.
I don't know if it does in a meaningful way,

but one of the things that it seems to do is it improves attention, concentration.

There are just various domains of thinking and memory it seems to affect.

It gives you that boost that you love.

Again, I love it.

I have to be very careful because it does cause gum recession.

It may have negative,

it increases blood pressure.

So the cardiologist that I use,

I send him all my patients.

He's amazing.

His name is Dr. Mike Twyman.

He sits there with blue-blacking glasses. He's hysterical.
He's very calm. He's amazing.
His name is Dr. Mike Twyman.
He sits there with blue-blacking glasses.

He's hysterical. He's very calm.
He's very zen. And I remember I go to St.
Louis every year for all the testing. And, you know, he was like, that nicotine habit, that's a terrible habit for your blood vessels.
So there may be, I joke and I say that, there can be negative there's a negative

impact on blood pressure blood vessels. So there may be, I joke and I say that, there can be negative

there's a

negative impact on blood pressure,

some vasculature,

gum recession.

Am I selling you on it or are you still keeping it?

I'm going to

quit.

It's difficult. I like it, but

I'm going to quit. Because it's.
I like it, but I'm going to quit.

Because it's something that you need, that you love?

I mean, I just, like I said, I've only been doing it for a couple weeks,

but I was like, it came in like a wave.

I interviewed somebody who's an investor in this new one called Sesh, too,

and he brought a whole basket. It's highly addictive.
And now the whole damn team's chewing nicotine. So I will say that me personally, I prefer gum.
But you see, it can increase energy expenditure. I think there are positives with it.
And then I think that there are negatives. Let's talk about some hormone stuff.
Great. So it's no secret.
I mean, team guys come out. Sounds like TBI and PTSD and a lot of these other things lower.
It just lowers testosterone for whatever reason, right? And so you get all these guys coming out and they have a T level of, what, 200, 300?

For starters, before we go any further, what is a normal level?

So it's complicated because normal testosterone is going to be individual.

And let's say the number, depending on the lab that you look at, goes up to 1,000.

a great robust number it's not the total T

it's the

Thank you. and let's say the number, depending on the lab, that you look at goes up to 1,000.
A great, robust number. It's not the total T, it's the free T.
Okay. And again, it depends on the lab, but team guys care about two things, good hair and testosterone.
I'm fucked with the hair. Listen, I can make these jokes.
I'm married to a team guy. I take care of lots of them.
Or maybe I can't make them, but they're coming anyway. Everybody knows.
They're coming. It is about the free testosterone.
The total testosterone below 300 is low, but that's weird. So if it goes from 300 to 1,000 and someone is 350, they might feel terrible, right? But there are these, again, we talked about medicine.
How do you know? Who do you go to? How do you know what to trust? You know, there is, you know, there's the AUA, which is the American Urology Association.

That's one entity.

And then there's the Endocrine Society. That group, they'll all have different recommendations.
But it's the free testosterone that matters. Again, I think people feel better the higher the number.
Again, that's just my opinion. But it's not just about the testosterone number.
There are receptors. And it is all about the sensitivity of your receptors.
Okay. Do we know what your receptors are? We don't.
We can test it at Baylor. It's called a CAG repeat.
For example, you might feel great at a testosterone of 400. My husband might need a testosterone of 700 to feel good.
So is it the higher the T-level, the more free testosterone you have? Depends. I mean, that's your best bet because in order to get testosterone free, so testosterone and sex hormone binding globulin, sex hormones are like children.
They can't go anywhere alone. What you care about is that free number.
Testosterone in the bloodstream is typically bound to sex hormone binding globulin. Then there's a free number.
And that free number you want as high as, you know, I say as high as possible, but that free number should be high. It'll vary depending on whatever the lab is, whether it's 45 or higher depending.
Again, it just depends on that lab range. But what I think is really important is that hormone replacement therapy has this taboo film around it.
Would you agree with that? I mean, there's struggles even right now with, can you treat team guys? Can you treat active military? There's a lot of challenges with providing hormone replacement.

It's old.

It's old school.

When you look at where that came from,

testosterone and hormone replacement therapy got a bad rap when the drugs with sporting happened.

I'm not old enough to know what it was like

to practice medicine before then,

but I will tell you that since I have been in medicine,

it has had a huge stigma for men and women.

Testosterone is not FDA-approved for women.

In my clinic, we put women on testosterone all the time. Really? Why? Off-label.
Sex drive, low levels of testosterone. Sarcopenia, decreased muscle mass.
But what's so interesting is that I can give you a medication to make you less fat and nobody thinks twice about it. I can give you a Zempic.
I can give you a medication to make you less fat, and nobody thinks twice about it. I can give you a Zempic.
I can give you a GLP-1, GIP, Moderna, Wigobi. No one thinks twice about it.
But when I write a script for hormones or talk to you about anabolics, it's like people think that's crazy. So is it true that just the population as a whole here in the U.S.
has lower testosterone than our grandparents? Yes. Our grandparents? Yes.
Is that from the food? What is that from? It is from? Is it environmental? Obesity. It is from our sleep habits, which I have terrible ones.
It is from the potentially endocrine disruptors. It is, we are under blue lights all the time.
We are outside of the natural environment. We do not train.
We are not robust as humans. Fertility levels have also decreased.
The funny thing with medicine is once we get an idea, we believe that idea. I'll give you an example.
For the longest time, people thought testosterone replacement therapy would cause prostate cancer. Did you ever hear that? Oh, yeah.
I almost didn't do it because of that. It's not true.
Nobody questioned that until the likes of, you know, the legends in the fields of andrology like Abe Morgenteller or Dr. Mohay Cara began to study this.

It doesn't cause prostate cancer.

And in fact, depending on the type of cancer,

those that have low testosterone do worse.

There seems to be some protective effects.

Really?

Yes.

So I think what we have to recognize is this common theme of having an idea that remains unchallenged. For decades, people believed and probably still do that testosterone causes cancer.
Yeah, I've always heard that it can increase the speed that cancer grows in the body? Again, probably depends

on the kind of cancer, probably depends on a multitude of factors, but overall, testosterone replacement does not cause cancer. Testosterone replacement can be protective.
Also, this idea of testosterone replacement therapy affecting adversely your risk of a heart attack. They did something called the TRAVERSE trial.
It does not increase negative outcomes for cardiovascular impacts. I mean, these are serious things to understand because as a society, we make overarching statements about our care based on unchallenged information or rhetoric or repetition.

Another question.

So, with my primary care doc, who I now will be, yes, I'll take over, it was always, well, it's good for your age. Well, my question to you is, if I felt my best at age, let's just say 25, and my testosterone was way up here, and now I'm 42, and it's down here, why wouldn't I want to bring that up to the level that it was at age 25 throughout the duration of my existence? You would.
You would. should be at that level.
Does that mean going back in time

to... existence.
He would. So it should be at that level.
Does that mean going back in time to before we had all these environmental issues and obesity and all the other shit that's contributing to low T, would a human being maintain the same level of testosterone throughout the duration of their... I believe yes.
For men, yes. Okay.
Now, sex hormone-binding globulin, which is exactly what that is, that protein, will increase. But, for example, my dad, who's 74, his testosterone is 750.
Okay. He lives in Ecuador.
He walks everywhere. He lives in Ecuador? He does.
He lives in Ecuador.

He walks everywhere. He is very diligent on everything.
I mean, he lives very close to nature. We do not have to face the state of the health that we are in.
We do not have to be where we are at all. Do you think that

do you think that

because all the, there's a lot of discussion on all of the, it seems like healthcare is just being revolutionized right now. We are, we are entering a renaissance.
We are entering a golden era. I believe so.
So are our children, you know, I mean, are our children going to have, deal with the same, the same issues, do you think? Are they going to, you know, people are eating cleaner, people are— People are not. They're not.
By the speculations, by 20%, 30%, 50% are going to be obese. Well, I mean, okay.
Our children, mine and your children, yes. They are going to be stronger and more capable and more robust.
People are getting away. Maybe not everybody, but there's a lot of discussion.
I mean, RFK is coming in. Yep.
And he has an opportunity to do incredible work. So as people start moving away from plastics and people start eating cleaner and people start doing the farm-to-table type food and going to local farmers versus, you know, and getting chicken and beef there rather than…

Chick-fil-A?

Chick-fil-A rather than, you know, the stuff that was raised in a pump full of hormones, you know.

Hormones don't.

So let's talk about this.

Yes.

Okay.

Let's talk about this.

Let's do it.

Okay.

We have the capacity to be healthier than ever before from a nutrition standpoint.

Nutrition science is relatively new.

It's not something that we've all known about.

I've trained in nutritional sciences. That's my area of expertise.
I trained professionally in nutritional sciences for seven years. That's what I've done.
And I will tell you over the last 20 years of watching this, number one, the guidelines, which are called the RDA or that that's the recommended dietary allowance, and the dietary guidelines, when it relates to meaningful numbers, let's just say protein, they haven't changed in the last 50 years. Saturated fat, this percentage number is, I believe to be wrong, also hasn't changed.
If we go back, because history repeats itself, where did this come from? In the 40s, they started to really think about food for people because of World War II. World War II, the backs were up against a wall.
40% of those that enlisted were unfit for war. Coming out of the Great Depression, they were just a mess.
So there was this three-day conference. The idea was you win the war with food.
How do we take broken Americans and make them robust?

They began to put in rationing.

Rationing was they recognized the importance of dietary protein.

Soldiers were rationed one to one and a half pounds of meat a week.

Sounds like a lot, right? One and a half pounds of meat a week? Sounds like a lot, right?

One and a half pounds of meat a week?

A week.

It's not that much, right?

I don't think that's a lot.

It's not.

The current dietary guidelines are recommending less than what we were rationed in the beginning of World War II.

Wow.

What should we be eating?

Close to one gram.

So the science says 1.6 grams per kg, which is 0.7 grams per pound. I believe if you want to age well, you're going to be closer to one gram per pound, ideal body weight.
But the statement that I'm making here is that we've had decades of misinformation and confusion. These guidelines have not changed.
They came up with this hypothesis, this guy named Ancel Keys came up with this hypothesis that saturated fat caused heart disease. Saturated fat caused LDL to go up, and it caused heart disease.
The guidelines still exist with this foundation. So then they determine, well, 10% of the diet or less should be saturated fat, which by definition, anything above saturated fat would be considered unhealthy.

Which means any animal food, if you look at the landscape and the guidelines, would be considered unhealthy. So an egg with 18% saturated fat will never be considered healthy.
so we've created this construct which is is why I think we're hearing this eat less animal products, because that's what we're hearing, which I'm hoping is going to change. Now with the new administration, we have a real chance to change that.
For the first time, I believe ever. That narrative that was built has defined American eating.

And one could argue that, hey, Americans don't follow the guidelines anyway, right?

But guess who it affects?

Anyone that receives federal funding.

Our military, nursing homes, and schools.

Let's talk about HGH, since we're on hormones. What are your thoughts about that? I think that HGH, if prescribed appropriately, can be beneficial.
I think you have to measure IGF-1 levels. Do you feel like a lot of doctors push this stuff on you for the sale? I think no good doctor would do that.
I didn't say no good doctor. Is it common? A, we need you to take this.
A, we need you to take that. I think it would be very unethical.
I mean, I can't speak for other physicians, but I know that my colleagues, physicians in my practice, the colleagues that I respect, they would never do that. It's unethical.
You can't, you know, a doctor's first oath is to do no harm. Period.
End of story. You know, I explained how rigorous training is.

You don't do that because you're hoping to make a lot of money. I mean, that is not, you're not going into medicine because this is a financial thing.
There are way other avenues, there are many other avenues to probably do much better financially without a ton of debt, without all this stuff. People go into medicine, I believe, because they truly care about their fellow human.
I do believe that. And so if there is a doctor that is pushing things on a patient because of a sale, then it is not the right doctor.
And I will also tell you this, a doctor will go to find solutions for that patient. For example, compounding pharmacies.
That's why I brought up Empower. Or pick your favorite compounding pharmacy that you know and trust.
The job is to make medications affordable. How do we make testosterone affordable? How do we make, I don't know, HGH affordable? How do you make Ozempic affordable? What percentage of your, I mean, you deal with a lot of team guys.
I deal with a lot of executives, a lot of moms. Do you see a lot of commonalities with team guys? I do.
Yes, I do. I see a lot of commonalities within patients across the board.
What are some of the most common? What are some of the commonalities? Okay. Well, now I have to clarify, there's not that many team guys in general.
Yeah. So the practice, while we service special operators and their families, we take care of a certain type of person.
And that type of person is willing to do whatever it takes to get better. They are expecting more for themselves.
They don't, you're not coming into my practice because you want to feel average. You just don't.
You are coming to me because you want to remove physical limitations to be the best version of yourself. Maybe you are someone with Lyme.
Maybe you are someone with gastrointestinal problems. Maybe you are someone who wants hormone optimization because you want to feel better.
I would say across the board for guys. Let's say a middle-aged guy.
Who is your audience, by the way, aside from everybody in the world? Who's my audience? Yeah. My audience is, we have a huge audience, obviously.
Okay.

But I would say my audience is comprised of just a lot of people that are looking for,

they just want to know the truth about things.

You know, I'm a very curious person. That's why I think this is going to be a great interview.
And I'm always digging for the truth. And I think that my audience is also very, it's a very curious audience.
They want to know, they want to know about things like what we're talking about right now. They want to know, you know, how to find, because it's really, it's tough for people like me who don't have, I don't have knowledge in medicine, you know, other than what, other than basic trauma care that, you know, that I was taught in the teams.
But, you know, and it's, There's some good fucking salesmen out there. And so I want to be able to sniff through the bullshit.
And I know my audience wants to be able to sniff through the bullshit too. And so that's why I'm asking these questions.
Yeah, they're great questions.

So I'm hoping that we're clearing things up for people. We are.
But it's tricky. You know, I mean, somebody can sound like they know exactly what they're talking about, especially in the medical field, because there's a lot of knowledge there.
There's a lot of terminology that people aren't familiar with. And so people, with everything that happened in COVID, it created a lot of distrust in healthcare.
And it caused people to go down rabbit holes. And now we see the stuff with seed oils.
We see the stuff with what's in our food, how was it raised, what farm to table, the vaccination thing. There's a huge controversy there.
Yes. And so I think everybody just wants to know, who do we trust? So let me tell you, that is actually exactly why I started my podcast.
My podcast doesn't have people that you know. My podcast has experts that have been in the trenches for 20 years that can talk about seed oils.
So, seed oils, for example, is a really hot topic. And there's influencers everywhere.
But what is it when you actually examine the evidence? And who is the expert? Who is actually doing those studies? And how do we make sense of it? Those are the people that I bring on my podcast. Before we started, I actually, you'll see them in your email.
I had, for example, the former president of the Lipid Association. His name is Kevin Mackey.
You're not going to know him on social media, Dr. Kevin Mackey.
But you will know that his science, he doesn't care what the answer is. He just wants to know.
So we had this long conversation about seed oils. I said, Dr.
Mackey, what is it? What's the truth? And he said, well, if you go back and you look at the overwhelming body of evidence, the overwhelming body of evidence will support that they are neutral. And I know that I'm, this is, again, this is not my opinion.
He said they are overwhelmingly neutral, if not positive, when you replace for saturated fat. I was like, well, how can that be? That seems crazy.
And he said, well, the data isn't perfect, but this collection of data supports that. Again, why are we worried about seed oils? Because people are worried about inflammation.
Inflammation is driven by overall dietary choices that are bad. Do you know the number one food consumed in the U.S.? No.
Pizza. Do you know the number one— I do love pizza.
Do you know the number one vegetable consumed in the U.S.? Carrots. Potato, in the form of potato chips.
Do you know, this is my last, do you know, do you know the number one fruit consumed in the U.S.? Think of the most carb-heavy fruit you would pick. Bananas.
That's what I was going to say. All right.
Is it bad? No. It is not.
Should our seed oils unnatural? Totally. Have we tripled their intake over that last handful of decades? Yes.
Do we know that they are harmful? Well, they're usually omega sixes. So seed oils would be canola oil, anything that comes from a vegetable.
Is the problem that we are eating them with pastries, baked goods, and fried foods? Is that the problem? Are we overheating and heating this substance multiple times? And or are we not balancing it with not enough omega-3 fatty acids? The data, again, data is not perfect. There's probably a lot of problems with it,

but I emotionally want to believe that all seed oils are bad.

Is that emotion backed by what the evidence says?

It's not.

Do I believe that highly processed foods are killing us?

Yeah.

Are we on a suicide diet?

Totally.

You don't eat pizza.

I don't really like pizza. What? I don't really like pizza.
What? It's kind of gross. We're going to have to change the dinner reservation.
No, you guys are definitely, we are definitely not taking me to pizza. I know for sure.
I know for a fact. But listen, I think that we have to understand that we are eating in terms of what is the dietary pattern.

And when things, there's a lot of noise out there in the health and wellness space that makes it very confusing for people.

And that noise creates distraction.

That distraction allows for distrust. And it allows for people to be taken away from proper action.

We can all agree that whole foods are probably best. We have an entire nation to feed.
It, you know, our conventionally raised beef, is that just as healthy as grass-fed beef? I mean, if my choice was I'm going to eat convention or organic or I'm going to eat, I don't know, a pastry because it's not organically raised meat, I'm going to eat conventional meat.

Is conventional meat tested before it goes on market?

Yes.

Is it, you know, are there a ton of antibiotics?

There can't be detectable limits of this stuff in beef. But beef also can't defend itself.
Beef is a commodity. Red meat is a commodity.
And what do I mean by commodity? Well, you have, if I say the other white meat, what do you say? The other white meat? Yeah. Chicken? Well, you'd probably say pork.
Pork? Yeah. If I say, does a body good, what am I talking about? Milk.
Exactly. If I say, blank, what's for dinner? What do you say? Say beef.
Beef. Thank you.
So this is an example of a commodity. Commodity is under the monitors, under the umbrella of the USDA.
USDA has very strict regulations. These commodities, they have a collective marketing budget of $750 million.
That was the last number that I looked at. They are very restricted about what they can say.
And where am I going with this? I'm going to get there.

$750 million for all these commodities,

dairy, pork, almonds,

probably throw almonds as a commodity in there,

versus, now, they can only say they're part of a healthy diet.

This is a good source of B vitamins.

Versus anything that is a processed food

is under the FTC.

PepsiCo, that marketing budget is $2 billion. That's one company.
$2 billion. Their marketing budget? Correct.
It's $2 billion. All of the commodities, all of these whole foods alone, these foods that are coming from ranchers, whether it's organic, whether it's conventional, however they're doing it, they pool their money together in this checkoff.
Their collective marketing budget is $750 million. All together.
Wow. Fage meat can say and create rhetoric and narrative to say red meat is killing the planet.
Omen juice. Omen juice can say this has a better carbon footprint than milk.

The commodities, which is why you see such a vast difference in what you're hearing, commodities cannot defend themselves.

They cannot say, because of the restrictions, they cannot say, actually, no, fake meat's not good for you.

We are a much better source of protein. They cannot be disparaging against any other product.
What does that mean for the consumer? When an anti-animal narrative, which is fed by, as you can guess, the guys with a ton of money and a machine, they can say whatever they want. And so then the American public doesn't know what to think,

what to believe, or how to eat.

And again, that's a huge problem.

So we have to go back to the fundamentals.

The fundamentals are good, solid nutrition,

which again, these guidelines haven't been updated in, I don't know, 50 years.

You know, we were chatting, why did you write a book? I wrote my book for that reason. And there was a moment that I knew I had to do it.
Do you want to know what that is? What is it? I was in fellowship, just coming out of fellowship, and I had not been on social media at all. During my time at WashU, I was in a geriatric fellowship, so I did combined nutritional research in geriatrics.
Have you ever been in a nursing home? Yes. Pretty depressing, right? Yes.
You never want to end up there, right? No. Part of my job was to take care of these patients.
On the weekends, I'd round at the nursing home. Broken hip, percentage of those people, first of all, they're never going to survive.
Their quality of life is over. And we know that their mortality rate is extremely high within the next six months to a year.

What did they lack?

Muscle.

They weren't training, they lacked muscle.

They go to the doctor, the doctor says,

you need to cut back on your cholesterol.

Stop eating red meat.

Which, by the way, they took cholesterol

out of the guidelines in 2015. That was taken out of the dietary guidelines in 2015.
So I wrote this book because when I was on social media and seeing these things, people were talking about how we should go more plant-based. The American diet is 70% already plant-based.
Whether it comes from processed seed oils, processed whatever, we are not aging well. And I'm like, well, all this information, they're talking about red meat and cancer.
That's not true. Talking about all this stuff, how protein is bad for the kidneys, how animal protein is going to raise cholesterol, all of this stuff when all of this stuff was not true.
So you asked me, did I write my book? I wrote my book, and that's exactly why. Because how am I going to protect people? So I wrote this book for Ever Strong.
I didn't call it marginally weak. It's a joke.
It's my mom joke. But it's the people in the middle that I'm worried about.
It's the people that have a chance to be able to actually change the trajectory of their life.

By the time you're in the nursing home, I don't want to say it's too late,

but, I mean, that's a tough place to start.

Screwed in the line, huh?

And then I worry about our kids.

Me too.

This idea that, have you heard that exercise isn't good for our kids?

They shouldn't be lifting weights. Have you heard that?

I mean, they took PE out of classrooms, right?

Yeah.

Out of school.

So let's talk, you know, big on longevity.

I watched, there was a docuseries I saw,

I think it was How to Live to 100, and this guy went around.

Do you know what I'm talking about? Oh, was this, this wasn't the Blue Zones, right? It was. Blue zones, there's a lot of problems with the blue zones.
Why is that? Because the blue zones are hand-selected places, which, by the way, the blue zones, which they, depending on where it is, have some of the highest poverty rates, highest level of smoking, lowest level of education, and income.

Interesting.

It's not, you can't pick areas and say, this is what's going to make you live to 100. Right? It is a culmination of how you do your life.
And that doesn't necessarily translate to us in the U.S. unless you're like my dad in Ecuador

who's walking for hours to go from somewhere to the grocery store, these blue zones, there are a lot of issues with that. Okay.
Well, how do we live to 100? Well, be strong as hell. Stronger you are, the more robust you are, the more muscle mass you have, the longer you're going to live.
And God forbid you get any of those things that we're talking about, cancer, fall, the greater your survivability. We don't have an obesity problem.
We got the problem wrong. Just like we got the problem with testosterone and prostate.

Just like, you know, we've gotten the problem wrong with, I don't know, you name it.

We have the problem wrong with obesity.

It's just a symptom of unhealthy skeletal muscle.

You want to live to 100?

Be as strong as you can for as long as you can.

Have as much muscle mass as you can.

How many hours a day do you contribute to your fitness? Less than one hour. Less than one hour? What do you do? Three days a week.
Three to four days a week. I train.
I work with my trainer, Carlos Mata. He's amazing.
I should just call him the punisher. Three days a week.
What do we do? We do heavy sled pushes. We do compound movements.
We do kettlebell swings. We do bag tosses.
We do rope pulls. We do isolations.
We do resistance training. We do it in a form of progressive overload, meaning my goal is to get stronger and better.
I do that three to four days a week. But the other days, I am active.
You see how much I'm moving now? I should sit on my hands. Probably a terrible interview.
I'm sorry, guys. But I move.
I'll put a weight vest on and I'll walk around. Take calls while I'm on a treadmill, wear a weight vest, walking, rucksack.
With my kids, we don't do any electronics. None.
Terrible idea. It's a terrible idea.
I would have a lot more time if I use electronics with them, but we don't. And what I've done is I build into my life activity.
It's not, do I train three to four days a week for an hour?

Yeah, I do. That's four hours a week.
It's activity during the day. I hate this term,

exercise, snacks. It's terrible, but it's this physical movement that you put in throughout

your day. I will tell you something else.
Zone two, you heard of zone two? No. It's having its moment, that slow, steady state cardio.
It's having its moment. I don't have time for that.
Do you have time for that? No. So I think as a society, we have to recognize there's multiple ways to get to an end point.
The less time you have to train, the more intense it has to be. You do not have to spend hours doing zone two cardio.
We tend to not like to get really uncomfortable and breathe heavy when shit sucks. It's exactly what we should do.
You get away with 20 minutes a week of that, and you'll still have longevity benefits. Interesting.
So to live to 100, it's just exercise. Body composition.

Body composition.

What do you mean by that?

I don't want you doing a bunch of marathons like my husband.

You have to be strong.

You have to lift weights.

Does diet play a role?

Yeah, we've got micronutrients that we need, not just the macronutrients.

We have nutrients of concern like iron, zinc, selenium, B12 for brain function. You need all those things too.
But if you do not move and move in a meaningful way, then your capacity to move reduces. So you have to become very intelligent about the ways in which you're pushing forward.
I think the worst thing that can happen to someone is they get injured. Shoulder injury, back injury.
How do you facilitate a life that allows for maximum movement in a meaningful way for outcomes, right? You want to be able to lift your kids over your head when you're 75. So these are the things that we have to do.

You have to train in a meaningful way with resistance training.

There's no, there's, I'm sorry, walking is not going to do that for you, my friend.

It's not.

You have to lift things.

Do you have to do some kind of high-intensity training once a week?

I think that you should, unless you're just going to do zone two, which will take hours. Well, I mean, I know what you're saying works because I have a good friend, also my attorney.
I don't want to say his name because I don't want to, you know. But he took you on, or you took him on as a client, and I just saw him a couple weeks ago.
He looks amazing. Oh, that's right.
So Katie, someone messaged me. Katie, your wife messaged me.
She didn't say who, but she was like, oh, I just heard. He told me he was starting with you.
When we scheduled the podcast and I saw him, and I was like, holy shit, man, you look fucking amazing. And he said, yeah, I feel great.

Now my wife, I don't know if she's seeing you yet or not,

but if she's not, she probably will be soon because he told me that that was going to happen.

But I've seen your work in person, and it looks amazing.

So let's keep going. How do we live to 100? I mean, what about supplements? So, I mean, a lot of people are saying that, you know, fruit, vegetables, we already kind of touched on the meat, but the pesticides, and they don't have near the nutrients that they

used to have 50-plus years ago or 20-plus years ago. It seems like it just keeps diminishing more and more.
And so a lot of people are turning to supplements, greens, different multivitamins, whatever, fill in the blank. And from what I've heard about you, it sounds like you don't think that replacing food with supplements is necessarily the best idea.
Here's what I think. I believe everything that you're saying in terms of there are changes in soil, the way in which our fruits and vegetables are.
They're not what they used to be. If you've ever had a natural blueberry or a strawberry, they don't taste the way that ours do.
So they are cultivated to be significantly sweeter. We also pick food and then it sits and then it's sent and it respires, it loses its nutrients.
All of that is true. Whole foods are ideal.
Are whole foods enough? No, I don't believe whole foods enough. Do I believe in supplementation? I absolutely do believe in supplementation.
But how do I think about it? I think the best diet is a diet where it's both plant and animals. Whole foods diet, plant and animals, fruits and vegetables.
Lean red meats.

If you want to throw some salmon, organ meats.

Kind of gross.

I hide them in my kids' food.

It's amazing.

I even hide them in my husband's food.

What do you mean organ meats?

Liver.

Liver.

That was my daughter's first food.

Liver.

What's the benefits of liver?

It is unbelievably rich in iron, fat-soluble vitamins.

There's no replacement for it.

There's retinol. There's no replacement.

Vitamin A, vitamin E, vitamin D, there's no replacement for our liver.

What kind of liver?

Cow liver, chicken liver.

Doesn't matter.

I mean, it's an acquired taste, but you don't eat a ton of it. You can cook it in a burger, just a little bit.
Maybe that was my daughter's first food. When you think about supplementation, it's what is it that you're potentially missing? I don't eat a ton of vegetables, so I use greens.
I use green powder. I use red powder.
I use things that are rich in phytonutrients and colors. Do you use a red powder, green powder? you should we will i'll fix'll fix that.
I have. I mean, I go, I shouldn't say no.
I go, here's the thing. I'm just going to be 100% honest, and I'm, I mean, I still fucking gummy bears.
But. Oh, wait.
Was I supposed to get a present? I felt bad. Do you want some? No.
What is it? Is it, it's not CBD gummy bears, is it? No, they're just gummy bears. Yeah, where are my gummy bears? Dude, I was embarrassed to give you some.
I felt bad. Do you want some? No, what is it? It's not CBD gummy bears, is it? No, they're just

gummy bears. Yeah, where are my gummy bears?

Dude, I was embarrassed to give you some.

I watched your show so many times. I thought you would

yell at me. So listen, I watched your show so

many times, and you know what you always start out

the show with? The hand-taking, you go,

everybody gets a gift. The doctors

don't get the gummy bears.

I watched your, wait, I watched Duckworth,

was that her name? Duckworth, what was her name, who was doing the remote viewing?

It was amazing.

She got gummy bears.

Doctors don't get gummy bears.

I'm embarrassed.

We'll take a break.

When we come back, I'm going to give you some gummy bears.

Where's my present?

You can put them up there as a gift.

But, man, now I just lost my train of thought.

Wait, we were talking about gummy bears. Now I feel bad.
No, no. Wait, we were talking about gummy bears.
We were talking about supplements. We were talking about supplements.
Supplements. It's important.
And so my thing is I'm coming out with a supplement too. Amazing.
What are you making? It's going to be 2,000 milligrams of cordyceps, 2,000 milligrams of lion's mane mushroom extract. I love mushrooms.
It's a nootropic. Yep, we're still perfecting it, but it was a huge discussion with my business partner.
He wanted another thing to mix. We're going to do the mix, but I was like, look, man, I have to do something that's fucking easy because Because just, I mean, you're running three businesses.
You understand being busy. I'm already overwhelmed as it is.
I can't even believe I'm saying it. I have a bill box that has all my stuff in there, my fish oil, my multivitamin, my K3.
Vitamin D. Yeah, that stuff.
It's got a bunch of stuff in it. But I just don't have time to...
It has to be easy. And I don't, you know, I don't...
All right, let's do the red powder. All right, let's do the green powder.
Mix it up. Let's do the mushroom supplement.
Mix it up. Like, that's like 30 minutes...
Totally. minutes of just mixing all these damn supplements and putting them in.
So what we did was I was like, it has to be something easy, whether it's a shot or I don't know. So it's an eyedropper thing.
It's the dropper thing. You just do two of them.
I think those are amazing. But that's my thing.'s, that's, and then there's the protein powder.
And then there's the, you know, so what I'm saying. So put a dropper of mushroom extract in the protein powder.
Well, so you see what I'm saying though? Like it's become, it's just not the most convenient thing. And I'm always looking for convenience.
And then that creates 50 dishes that you have to clean and yeah wash and run through the dishwasher and i'm like man like i just i don't want to do all that stuff i just want can we just do one thing here that's just bam done do it on the fly and it doesn't take any time and so that's why we came out the we're coming out with the coming out with the eyedropper supplement because it's so convenient. That's exciting.
But, yeah, if I had one, I'd give one to you right now. I'll send you some when we get them.
I'm going to hold you to it and gummy bears. And gummy bears.
But that's the thing with the supplements. And so is that what you do?

Do you mix the reds and then you mix the greens and then you mix the protein?

I'll tell you exactly what I'm doing these days.

I start my morning with, have you ever heard of strong coffee?

Yes.

Amazing.

So I have strong coffee, which has collagen, L-thean in it.

I put an extra scoop of collagen. If you want to know exactly what I'm taking, I will tell you.
Yeah, let's hear it. Do you know Bubz, Glenn Doherty's Foundation? Oh, yeah, I love Bubz.
Okay. I take Bubz.
Okay, so a scoop of Bubz, and then I have a very small scooper of Amra, which is colostrum. That is my first thing that I take.

I'm winning. I'm already winning.

I have extra collagen,

extra

vitamins, all of this stuff in the shake.

I go train, and

looking at me crazy, not

complicated, three to four days

a week, I might slam a protein shake.

I do use a protein shake.

I use,

I'm on my AG1 cake. Have you tried

AG1? It's amazing.

I think that's. I'm on my AG1 kick.
Have you tried AG1? It's amazing. I actually mix it together with vanilla protein powder.
I don't care. It tastes amazing.
It's fine. I take something called urolithin A.
What is it? Urolithin A. What's that? It's a company called MitoPure.
It says urolithin A. It is a postbiotic.
It is very good for mitochondrial function. It has a lot of good data, has over a decade of data.
Take 1,000 milligrams of that. I should probably break it up.
I take fish oil. I have like a little pack.
It has fish oil, magnesium, zinc. Take that with my shake.
I'm like, good to go. That is so easy.
Let's go back to Arma, the colostrum stuff. It's great for gut health.
Just interviewed Brecca, and he wants me to take that. He did the whole gene test thing on me.
Okay. He threw it on the show.
What's the deal with colostrum? So colostrum is mother's milk. So it's the stuff for mother's milk.
There is a ton of nutrients and bioactive ingredients in it. If you get a company where the colostrum is not overheated and killed, then you have something that has a ton of immunoglobulins and these, you know, we think about immunoglobulins.
What is that? Proteins. So things that are really good for the immune system in the body.
The things that we were built on. This is amazing.
What does it do for you? Well, there's some great data for gut health for me, and that's why I use it. I was having some weird, probably from my nicotine gum.
I can't believe I'm saying this on the show. But probably from chewing nicotine gum, it affected my ear laughing.
I've never talked this much on a podcast. I'm sure all your guests.
Welcome to the Sean Rye Show. Do all your guests do that? Oh, yeah.
I don't think I've ever talked this much. My husband might disagree, but the...
So, my... I was getting, like, weird tingling on my tongue.
It was just getting very sensitive, and I think that the nicotine was affecting the mucosal integrity. So, I was like,, I've got to fix this.
This is unacceptable. So that's why I started using Omra, and it has absolutely helped.
But I use it for gut health. Gut health.
What's the importance of gut health? It's everything. It's your interface with the outside world.
We talked about nutrition, but you're only as good as what you absorb. You can eat perfectly, but if you do not have good gut integrity, which is basically the way in which the lining is intact, the way in which the mucosal is intact, it doesn't matter what you eat, it matters what you absorb.
So do you test for that? Of course I test for it. How do you do that? Is it the same thing, the stool samples and stuff? So we do stool samples.
We look at proteins like zonulin, calprotectin, yeah, various markers.

And then you can see a pattern in the blood work if someone is not absorbing their nutrients.

There's a multitude of ways to get an answer, and it has to check out, you know?

Okay. So is it...

Gary probably also wanted you to take some B vitamins.

He probably

wanted you to take some methylated

B vitamin complex.

I'm guessing. Do you remember?

Man, I can't remember

all of them. So the other

supplement, so colostrum is great.

I think that there's great benefit to collagen.

Collagen does have a protein score of zero, though. People will say, I get protein from collagen.
That is not. It's an incomplete protein.
Collagen does nothing for muscle health, but for skin integrity. I think that there's good evidence.
I think that we don't know exactly all of what collagen's benefits are yet because it's difficult to test. But I do think that there's definitely benefits for gut, for hair, for skin and nails.
And then a red-green powder, whatever you choose. I've been on an ag one kick my mom actually got me on it because she was obsessed with it it's like a multivitamin so it's not really a green powder it's this multivitamin has a whole bunch of stuff in it then it's a we have to think of it as a food matrix so the foods that we eat think old school days or bodybuilding type stuff, it's your carbohydrates, fats, and proteins.
The new school of thinking is really the food matrix. What is within a food that makes it comprehensive? And that's why I think AG1 is a good product.
It's comprehensive. It's a food matrix.
Same with the colostrum. It's not an isolated vitamin C.
And that's where I think the next iteration of supplements are actually going is this idea of how do we recreate as much as possible a natural whole food matrix? Interesting. Interesting.
Creatine. Every team guy should be on creatine.
12 grams for the brain. For the brain? Not for muscle.
I've not heard this before. Yeah.
10 to 12, there's some great evidence that creatine can help, especially as individuals are aging with cognition. I don't know the mechanism of action, but the data that I'm seeing in terms of cognition and memory, I think that's exciting.
Interesting. Let's take a quick break.
When we come back, I want to talk about... Gummy bears? And we'll give you some gummy bears.
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All right, Gabrielle, we're back from the break. We're on the road to 100, but we had a conversation earlier and I actually wanted to about podcasting and and then you brought up your podcast on the show in the interview and you had mentioned that you were interviewing people that nobody had ever heard of and for whatever it's worth that's what I do is I find people that nobody's ever heard of and I bring their story or what they're saying to light.

And I think that's really what sets it apart.

And I don't know.

I think if you continue down that road and just stick with what you're interested in,

they don't have to have the big name behind them, I think you're going to see a lot of success.

I know you're already having a lot of success.

I mean, did you say you're number three in health? In medicine. In medicine? That's amazing.
So congratulations on that. Thank you.
Thanks, my friend. And we're going to live to 100.
Everybody gets a present on the show. Oh, and so let's tell them.
So obviously, you didn't edit it out. You're the only doctor.
But I was the only doctor, I believe, that I'm giving gummy bears to. So Andrew and Gary, no one ever got these? Dude, I'm embarrassed to give them to the doctor.
It's junk food. They will definitely be eaten.
And I don't know where they're going, but they're definitely going to be eaten. Well, there's no collagen protein or ARMA or anything like that in there.
It's basically just a sugar pill. Okay.
Or what we call them, you know, on the team's fat pills. I'm grateful.
I have watched enough of your podcast. I was a little, I was surprised I didn't get my bag.
Now I feel bad. I feel bad now.
But that's all it is. Well, I got two bags.
I'm still conscious about giving sugar to doctors. So, but there you go.
Thank you. Then you got the gummy bears.
I'm so excited. They're sold out online right now.
I'm auctioning them. If you guys want them, I'm auctioning them.
Where are you going to auction them? eBay. Nice.
Nice. My Instagram.
I'm going to auction them. I bet you they get sold.
I'll bet they do, too. Supplements.
Supplements. Supplements.
Well, hold on. The road to 100.
Yeah. And so where we left off, I wanted to talk to you about.
We talked about supplements. We talked about hormones.
We talked about a whole bunch of stuff. Let's talk about sleep.
I'm not great at it. You? Me? I'm horrible at sleep.
It's horrible. We are both going to have dementia.

I don't want to hear that. I'm sorry.
Me neither. But sleep is, we should also backtrack.
This idea of living to 100, we don't want to live old and decrepit. It's all about the quality of how we want to go out, right? The longevity space, I feel, oftentimes tries to not acknowledge the inevitable.
It is the thing that no one gets away from. It's coming for all of us.
You know, my great-grandma lived to 102 years old, and she was sharp as a tack until the last week and a half. And we all thought she was going crazy.
Not really crazy, but, I mean, she's 102 and she's dying. And she started seeing angels and people that she knew, and she was talking to things that none of us could see.
And now, after we kind of talked a little bit about that subject before we interviewed here, but now I think we're the dumbasses that didn't know what was going on.

I think maybe she wasn't crazy in all of those entities and spirits or angels or whatever they were, relatives of hers. They probably were their welcoming.
It was her welcoming party into the next cycle of life. It's wild.
I do think it's, I mean, I don't know if you're afraid of death or the end, but it is, I don't know. I think that when we have young kids, we don't look forward to that.
Before, I would argue that you feel like you have less to lose. Once you have children, it layers on a whole other level of vulnerability.
I have more of a fear of leaving my kids behind in this atrocious of the world than I do of dying. But what I do worry about with dying is I want to be able to go out like my great-grandma.
or like, you know, we were talking about some of the stuff that's in the studio here,

like that sore, Don Graves, 99 years old. He was 98 when I interviewed him.
Guy was like, just like we're talking right now. Totally with it, remembers every little detail.
I mean, super sharp human being. Still that way.
I still talk to him every once in a while. But that's how I want to go, whether that's at whatever age.
You know, and so. But anyways, let's move to sleep.
Okay. How much sleep do we need? You probably, there are a few genetic outliers that can get away with four hours of sleep.
And I think that that is genetic. And they don't feel tired.
They roll like that. The rest of us.
And by the way, do you know the operative community self-selects for those people? No, I didn't. How do they do that? Fascinating.
Well, those are the ones that can complete training and remain robust. I had a sleep neuroscientist on my podcast.
She is still active duty. And that was one of the topics that we covered.
That, you know, in terms of how much sleep we need, the average person probably needs seven to eight hours. There's a range, whether it's six to eight.
And then there's a handful of people that function amazing because of a genetic mutation on four or so hours. And it doesn't seem to have the negative implications.
No kidding. Yeah.
You're probably one of those people. Well, that makes me happy to hear, you know, because I can't sleep.
And it's getting better. I started these peptide things with our mutual friend, Conover.
And— Delt to sleep peptide? Don't know. But it's a peptide.
And it works, and you sleep. But, yeah, but I still wake up, though.
I wake up at, like, 2 a.m., damn near on the dot, every night. And, you know, I've always had this, and I always just trained my mind to think, actually, Sean, this is a blessing that you're not sleeping because you can get that much more work done and you just don't need sleep like everybody else.

But then I see these damn things on social media.

I saw one the other day that showed this person that looked horrible,

horrible health, and it was like,

this is what six hours of sleep will do for you.

And I'm like, holy shit, I got that.

What do we know about the science?

We know that sleep is critical.

It's the time that our brain processes.

It is also the time where it cleans itself. One of the risk factors of dementia is not sleeping.
Unfortunately, you know, I say this doesn't mean that I'm good at it. Deep sleep, sleep is critical for memory.
If you are not sleeping well, the body doesn't seem to recover in all aspects. And I'm not talking about from training,

but we know that when you lose sleep, don't sleep, it can affect metabolism. I remember when I was doing the 24-hour night shifts, I put a, I sound like a total nerd, but I put a glucose monitor on to measure my blood sugar.
And the nights where I wasn't sleeping, my blood sugar was through the those things over time

one night, two nights

here and there of impaired sleeps, probably not a problem. But those lifetime habits, and we live in a society where I'll sleep when I'm dead, is a thing.
It is important, but you have to understand you may be a person who doesn't require as much sleep as the next person. That is true.
But it's critical. I mean, when I was screening patients for dementia, one of the things that we always asked was how much sleep? You want to know what else affects sleep? Good thing we're on nicotine.
Thank God we're on nicotine and caffeine. I mean, but also, what is the reality of it? Do your kids sleep in your bed? No.
I can't get my kids out of my bed. We moved them out at eight weeks.
My wife was adamant about that. So I've been trying.
Three and five. Those kids will not sleep

in their own bed.

What?

I don't know.

The last night

I had a good night's sleep

was when I was here.

But all kidding aside,

I think a lot...

Your kids sleep in bed

with you guys?

Oh my God, I cannot get them.

Yes.

And I move them.

Doesn't that destroy

your sex life?

Well, my husband's creative. Okay.
All right. He'll find a way.
It doesn't matter. All right.
Don't worry. Oh, my God.
Right here? Yeah, exactly. The laundry room? Okay.
How about sex? What about that on the road to 100? Very important. Very important.
Sex organs, while smooth muscle, they're still a muscle. Sex, life, is a barometer to overall health.
And again, I'd mentioned Dr. Mohit Kera, he created this term called sex span.
so basically this idea of your lifespan health span

I believe in muscle span

so muscle is the length of time you live with healthy skeletal muscle

which by the way I think trumps all of it. He created this idea of sex span and that for men, it is the ultimate barometer for cardiovascular health, for vascular health, for metabolic health.
And for women, it's this funny thing because women's sex drive seems to change as they age, and the tissue can atrophy.

So we talked about hormone replacement.

We didn't talk about women.

I believe very strongly in hormone replacement for women to maintain sex drive and also protect the tissue, the vaginal tissue.

It'll atrophy.

Interesting.

So basically, if you want to live to 100, have a lot of sex. It can be in the laundry room.
Sleep. Eat your dietary protein.
Get Sean's gummies. Did I miss anything? How much sex should we be having? There is no number.
But I'll give you my personal opinion.

Personally, it's probably close to every day,

which seems like a lot of sex,

because we're animals.

Doesn't it seem like a lot?

Sounds good to me.

It seems like a lot,

but I think that a healthy relationship

would be at least a couple times a week.

I mean, we are animals.

We're very domesticated, but we are animals.

And I think that it has overall effect on mood, oxytocin production, which is that connection hormone.

Oxytocin?

Yeah.

Connection hormone.

Yeah.

So when you breastfeed and there's that milk letdown, we talked about colostrum, that mother's milk, it is released. One way it's released is through oxytocin.
And oxytocin is a neurochemical that is released when you feel close and when you hug. It's what they call the love hormone, the happy hormone.
Interesting. You can also intranasally take it, by the way.
We prescribe that in our practice for mothers that are lactating. I think I'd rather just have sex than the nasal thing.
Yeah, probably. But, you know, having sex while you're pregnant or breastfeeding is not as fun, potentially, but fair.
I got another question. Kind of uncomfortable, but whatever, I'm going to ask it.
What about, is there a difference between masturbation and sex when it comes to longevity? I don't know. Okay.
I don't know that answer, but I do think that there is something in relationship with the other person. But also, and I'm just taking a stab at this, probably the flora, the mucosa of two partners.
Okay. Again, I'm not an expert in this sexual flora area, but if I was a bedding woman, I would say that as natural as we can get, we'll help optimize our life.
The other thing with living to 100 is community, is meaningful relationships. There's a lot of data coming out that the quality of your relationships can help with the longevity of your life, which is surprising.
What kind of studies? How long have you been tracking that? I mean, I'm always interested in what's going to make people better. There's all kinds of data that comes out.
We just see it increasing over time. And, you know, it's difficult to study.
One of the challenges with not just nutrition, but also influences from communities, things like the blue zones, is it's all epidemiology. It's not a randomized controlled trial.
Randomized controlled trial would be high-quality evidence. So the idea where it's epidemiology is where we look at groups of people.
The data on that is considered low-quality evidence, weak or low-quality evidence. Very difficult to do randomized controlled trials over decades.
It would be near impossible. There's got to be something to it, though, right?

If there's zones, it's not just...

It doesn't sound like it's just sporadic

that all these people are living to 100

and all these different...

It seems to be concentrated in these zones, correct?

Well, they're also notoriously very bad

at record-keeping.

We don't know the validity of the birth certificates.

Well, isn't, like, Okinawa, Japan one of them? Now, if my memory serves me correct, there's various areas within Okinawa, or I can say China. So there was various areas of China that are considered blue zones, but they compare it to the area in China where everyone is outdoors and doing a lot of physical labor versus areas in China where they are, be like living in New York City.
The things aren't comparable. But what I think that we can learn from the blue zones are lifestyle modification factors.
Physical activity is

critical.

Now, one would say,

I'm out, I'm doing all these things

and I'm walking and I'm exercising.

The reality of how

we live doesn't

necessarily make it conducive

to live like the blue zone.

I don't think it's enough.

In the blue zone, you don't hear about people lifting

weights. You don't hear about

people purposely going through stressful experiences. We, as Americans, we live here.
We live in a sedentary type of culture. We are up against various other environmental factors.
For us, we do need to train hard. We do need to do various things that if you lived in an island somewhere where it was fresh water and flowers, you might be fine.
But I think that it can guide us, but it's not translatable. Why do you think nature plays such a big part? It sounds like that's what you're saying.
Yeah, we're just designed. That's how we're designed.
We're not designed to be under fluorescent lights. We evolved with a 24-hour circadian rhythm, and we are very removed from that.
I do believe that we are going to move from this idea of sleep biology to circadian biology. We think about it as sleep.
I think that sleep is going to fall under the umbrella of circadian biology, meaning how we eat in terms of the timeframes, how we eat breakfast. Are we eating at the same time? Are we eating when the light is out? Do we stop eating at 5 o'clock in Texas when the sun goes down? Our body is designed to not be out of alignment with its natural rhythms.
And I think the further that we move away from those natural rhythms, the more dysregulated, the more inflammation that we create, regardless of doing all of the things. Okay.
Okay. That makes sense.
I wanted to ask you, this is totally a side rabbit hole here, but psychedelics, we've brought up dementia, Alzheimer's a couple different times. That's a fear of mine as well.
I think a lot of people worry about that. I've heard, read, I don't remember where I saw it, but it's popped up several different times.
Psychedelics, does that help with Alzheimer's dementia? I can't say for sure, but what I can tell you is there seems to be a lot of promising information. When we say psychedelics, are we talking about Ibogaine? NMDA, are we talking about ayahuasca? There are various modalities, I think, that affect the brain.
What we do see is that it seems to improve mood relationships, difficult depression to treat. There are definite benefits to psychedelic therapy.

Again, we definitely see it in the military population.

I just see it all the time from patients that go and do some kind of psychedelic therapy,

come back, and they definitely seem transformed,

and their relationships seem transformed, and their depression and anxiety.

Have you done them? I have done ayahuasca in Ecuador. Did you get any benefits from it? Threw up a lot.
Threw up a lot. I don't know if I did.
Why did you do it? My father, who is an expat, is very interested in plant medicine. He's been down there for over a decade.
And he went through some really significant struggles. And he found that plant medicine really helped him and really transformed his life.
And I'm very open-minded. I'm very interested in how can we become the best version of ourselves.
And if there's something that I am doing or have subconsciously that's holding me back, I want to address it. So I was very open to trying it.
I mean, your husband's a team guy. Not interested at all.
Not interested at all? At all. Interesting.
He's afraid. What do you think he's afraid of? Of the things that it might bring up.
Fair enough. The things, I would say military members, particularly special operations community, I mean, again, I can only speak from my experience, seem to be very good at compartmentalizing.
But the one thing that I know for sure is that you can't escape these things. It comes out.
It has to be addressed.

You know, we were talking before.

I've been seeing patients for almost two decades and not quite two decades, but maybe close to 15 years or a little over.

There are through lines that you see of individuals that are able to become very successful, not just from a business perspective, but as humans. And a physician's job is to recognize patterns, typically patterns of diseases.
But there are very particular attributes or patterns of individuals that I think allow for them to become the best version of themselves. And I have just seen similarity after similarity.
And one, which may be surprising, is a level of neutrality. They're neutral.
Things are going great. Things are going terrible.
They're even. They never get too high.
They never get too low. They're very neutral.
And the individuals that are able to maintain a neutral mind seem to be the ones that have the most success.

Are you like that? I definitely have a level of neutrality. Absolutely.
Because I know what happens if you get too excited or too pumped up. Basically, what I see over time, I've obviously seen within myself, and you've probably experienced, that let's say you had a big event.
As high as you go for that big event, as amped up as you're going to be, you're going to go give a talk, you're going to get out there, will be as low as you fall. So it's this kind of dopamine swing.
You see individuals that will release a book, or that will make millions of dollars because of a deal that they closed, or they'll have a major event in Las Vegas, whatever it is. These people get ready for the high, and they're chasing the high, and they're getting so excited.
And again, I see this in my patients. They get so amped up that at the pinnacle of being amped up right before the event, right before the book release, right before the major show that comes off or comes out, whatever that is, is a point of vulnerability.
And they will continue to chase the high, make bad decisions, increase risk-taking behavior. Let's say you're someone who likes to buy a car.
Right at that pinnacle, you're going to go out to purchase. You'll do something to continue to drive that high.
But what's so fascinating is at that point of vulnerability, when people are at their peak, you never think about doing this amazing thing.

And right at that peak is where you're vulnerable.

But as high as you go in emotion and success, as high as you allow yourself to go, is as low as you fall.

Makes sense.

People after, I mean, I had this one patient, this one guy, he would put on this big event in Vegas. Every year he would call me.
I knew it. I'm feeling depressed.
I don't want to work out. I don't know.
Maybe I should buy a new car. He just made millions of dollars.
Like clockwork. The human mind is predictable.
As high as he would go would be as low as he would go. And that second point of vulnerability is where it takes people months to recover if they're unaware.
If they don't allow for this dopamine, which is a neurotransmitter thought to be responsible for drive and motivation, if that doesn't recover, and the best way to help with recovery, I mean, you can train it. But if you do not allow yourself to get amped up, celebrate all those wins, you really modify what the meaning is, then you never get too high.

Then you never fall so low.

And the people listening can probably appreciate that because I'm sure your team here has had major events or major things that you've had to do. Following that accomplishment is where people surprisingly feel depressed.
And at that moment is a level of vulnerability. Like maybe when they go on vacation, just something simple.
When you get back from vacation, people feel depressed. They've been high all week, and then as high as they go is as low.
So back to the statement that I was making is that there are predictable behaviors and ways in which we can modulate our human experience. And when you recognize that human beings are totally predictable, tactical things to improve neutrality.
I don't know, don't celebrate every win. You want some nicotine? Look at it, don't have it, put it back.
Heads or tails, you get to eat that gummy bear. Tails you get to eat it, heads you don't.
So you practice this kind of purposeful restriction. Interesting.
Yeah. What are some other attributes of successful people? They set standards.
There's this idea of goals. That we should have the goal and work towards the goal.
The goal allows for failure. You set standards by how you execute, what you believe in, and you do those things over time.
Then you always rely on your standards. You're not setting the 10-pound goal of weight loss.
You are the type of person that wakes up and trains. You are the type of person that executes these key components because that's your standard.
I mean, that's critical. And then the third one is managing distraction.
Distraction, I think, kills more people than, I don't know, heart disease. Literally.
Yeah. I mean, I don't know, but it seems like people say that— It kills success or it kills people? It kills dreams.
It kills people. I mean, distraction allows you to do things that are unimportant in place of things that are very meaningful.
You know, I really started thinking deeply about this. I don't even want to tell a story.
We live in Texas, and I have two very little children. My husband was going to San Diego to present this urology paper that he wrote, some study.
And we go to the pool every summer. Well, every summer we've been there, two summers, every day during the summer.
I have a three-year-old boy. He cannot swim.
My daughter is able to swim. Amazing.
She's good at everything. Life is going to be hard for her.

But there were eight lifeguards there.

They all know my son.

We go every day.

There were two children in the pool.

I'm a helicopter parent, especially around a pool.

I look up.

There are eight fucking lifeguards,

and there are two kids in the pool, and no one is there. I'm like, you know what? Aries,

my daughter's name is Aries after the God of War. We were going to FaceTime Shane, who was leaving, to say goodbye.

And we FaceTime him.

I look up and... to say goodbye.
And we FaceTime him.

I look up, and I didn't see my son.

He was drowning at the deep end of the pool.

What do you think those eight lifeguards were doing?

On their phone. They were on their phone.
Thank God I looked up, ran in, jumped in, got him out. He was okay.
Had I not looked up, that little boy would not be here. Damn.
So we are in a culture of complete distraction. That would have changed our lives forever.
Wow. Man.

So when you think about what allows people to fulfill their life, their life's purpose, those are the ones that are undistracted and unencumbered by distraction. How's your son? My son is good.
Good deal. Yeah, you know, it can be tough to keep the distractions away.
You know, we were kind of chatting about that too before the interview about my road to podcasting and all the distractions. And it wasn't until I really zeroed in and I was like, look, we do one thing here and we do it really good.
That's when we really, really saw the curve start steepening. And so all of that makes a lot of sense.

It's discernment.

You're able to discern the right thing to do at the right time.

What was so important?

I'm like, there's no way something's going to happen to my son.

There were eight fucking lifeguards.

Yeah.

No one was in the pool.

Damn.

So when we think about this global idea of health and wellness, there are things that distract and minimize our ability to discern the things that are most important from the things that aren't. We talk about sleep and supplements, and supplements, but ultimately, you know, this level of neutrality,

I think even at the top of that is the ability to discern.

Is this thought a relevant thought?

Is this action a relevant action?

You know, is this nutrition plan, you know, whatever it is,

this is what I've committed to, this is my standard?

So you wrap it all up in discernment.

And the better you are at discerning, the more capable you are going to be

in all aspects of health, wellness, business.

That's a damn good point. Well, doctor, I think that's a good place to end it.
But I just want to say thank you. Thank you for making the trip here to Franklin.
And I'm just so thankful we met. And wish you the best of luck with your—you got more books coming out? I have two more books coming out.
One comes out in a year and then in the following year. What are those going to be about? The next book is going to be a manual.
So it'll go with Forever Strong. You want to look up how to sleep,

how to lose fat,

whatever it is,

it'll be there.

Oh, wow.

You don't have to think about the science.

It's a protocol-based book.

Very cool.

And the book after that

is one for women.

Good.

Forever Strong for women.

Good deal.

Well,

I wish you the best of luck

with your books,

your practice,

your podcast, and whatever else you can, being a mother. And thank you again.
Thank you so much for having me. I joke that I've never probably talked this much on a podcast.
You are a spectacular host. Truly, this has been one of my most favorite podcasts.
I'm so grateful. Thank you for having me.
Yeah, thank you. NBA veteran Jim Jackson takes you on the court.
You get a chance to dig into my 14-year career in the NBA and also get the input from the people that will be joining. Charles Barkley.
I'm excited to be on your podcast, man. It's an honor.
Spike Lee, entrepreneur, filmmaker, Academy Award winner. Nixon! Now you see it.
I got you. But also how sports brings life, passion, music, all of this together.

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