Health Experts Reveal What’s REALLY Making You Sick | Roundtable

Mainstream medicine is largely looking at organs, systems. Really what it is is actual cellular dysfunction that's going on here.

It's insulin and it's cortisol. And if you can fix those 2 hormones, every other hormone would go back to where it should be.

I found that I had a high Lp. I found plaque and I was supposed to be the epitome of walking health. My dad had a heart attack when he was 59. I didn't see that coming.

The amount that your insulin spikes from less than 6 hours of sleep is just wild.

Sleep is not a luxury. It's a mandate on our health.

It's a non-negotiable if you want I used to kind of live by this all gas, no brakes, never rest. You think that you're training and doing all of these things that are so great and macho and everything else, and you're just the epitome of poor health.

Just because you hear about it on a podcast or read it in a book doesn't mean that you have to do all the things.

It's always confusion. People going, well, what can I even do?

What can I even eat?

We're creating a bigger problem. We're literally creating stress when we do that.

We have such a hubris and arrogance today because we need a randomized control trial. But now the great thing is that the randomized control trials are substantiating what God always said. Surprise, right? God knew what he was talking about.

If I have a patient and they start seeing some results, but then they just hit this plateau, there's a childhood trauma that's just never been dealt with, and that's just continually on replay. I'm not smart, I'm not pretty, I'm not pursued, I'm not loved.

People that are still against people in functional medicine, they're on the wrong side of history because the data speaks for itself. So people are still like, it's us versus them. This is not radical. Getting people healthy should not be offensive. If it is, look at your heart.

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All right, everybody. Welcome to The Roundtable. This is a discussion that we are going to have on everything about today's health and wellness scenario. I am pleasured here to be with Dr. Josh Axe and Dr. Will Cole. We are going to bring you the very best insights that we have. There's going to be some different opinions and thoughts. We're going to compare, we're going to contrast, and we are going to do our very, very best to bring you the best guide that we can to health and wellness. So, without further ado, my friends, Dr. Josh Axe and Dr. Will Cole.

Thanks for having us.

Thanks for having us.

Yeah. So, hey, so excited to be here today and excited to jump into cellular medicine. I really believe that's the future of medicine. I know we've got Dr. Will Cole here, good friend of mine as well. And, him and I co-authored a book recently diving into how do you fix your energy, how do you reverse autoimmune disease, how do you reverse the irreversible when today a lot of doctors would say it can't be done. Well, today we're going to walk you through How to Heal Your Cells. We're going to really dive into, again, what is cellular medicine? What is the mitochondria? How do we fix that? And one of the things I know that I've seen in practice is conditions like hypothyroidism, perimenopause and menopause, infertility, low testosterone in men. A lot of times these are cellular issues, and there are all-natural solutions to these that we can fix a lot of these issues with diet, herbs, advanced therapies, and so much more. Yeah.

So, we're going to dive into certain questions today when it comes to cellular health and recovery, but we're going to cover the bases on different aspects that I find Will and Josh to excel at that I want to get, get the intuition on. So, first things first, you guys just co-authored one of the most amazing books that I've ever read. I had the blessing of getting an early read on it. And so, the book is called Heal Your Cells, correct?

Yeah.

And so, I would like to dive into Cellular health today first, because what I have found— and admittedly, science was my least favorite subject my entire life till about 2 years ago, and I have enthralled myself in cellular health. Now, I want to know from both of you, when you're looking at total health and you're analyzing people and you're looking for things that may be going wrong, correct me if I'm wrong, but is the cellular side the very most important? part of health that we need to tackle first and look at when it comes to someone's health?

Yeah, I think— look, this topic is without a doubt the root cause of why we're facing such an epidemic rise of chronic health problems. And when you look at it, I see a lot of people, telehealth patients that have autoimmunity specifically, okay? And it's easy to see with autoimmunity when the immune system is attacking certain parts of the body. Mainstream medicine, conventional medicine is looking at organs oftentimes, right? The immune system's attacking the thyroid, it's Hashimoto's disease, or it's attacking the gut. It's all sort of colitis and Crohn's or the myelin sheath in the nervous system, the brain. It's MS, right? And even if it's not autoimmune, inflammation is really the commonality between just about every health problem. But mainstream medicine is largely looking at organs, systems, really what it is. is actual cellular dysfunction that's going on here. So they're dealing with a downstream macro, uh, dysfunction. They're not actually dealing with the root causes.

Mm-hmm.

But you look at all the latest science in, as far as longevity is concerned, people living long, healthy lives, meaning not having those diseases that they're diagnosed with, it's dealing with cellular dysfunction. And the ripple effect of cellular dysfunction is where you get organ dysfunction. So one of the hallmark studies that we talk about in the book is a Stanford study which published in 2023. And those researchers found, as published in Nature, I believe, 1 in 5 people in the study, it equals to about 22 million Americans have one organ aging more rapidly than other organs. What that means on a practical level is if that the, the researchers found if the heart cells, meaning that organ, but the cells of that organ were aging more rapidly, you were at over a 200% increased risk of a heart attack, stroke, heart failure. Your brain, if your brain cells were aging more rapidly, you were about a 80% increased risk of neurodegenerative. So yeah, it absolutely is the most cutting-edge aspect of it. So instead of us being archaic dinosaurs of still looking at just the organs and realizing there's so much more at play here, there's actually a cellular dysfunction. And when you address the root cellular dysfunction, you can have healing. And the subtitle of the book is Reversing the Irreversible, which is a bold statement that we can tell you the tea behind that. But it's going to ruffle some feathers, but it's true. It's absolutely true. These things are, it's a paradigm shift for people to realize that you can actually heal at the cellular level.

So, you guys brought up points that you just said about the aging of organs, and I kind of got a little freaked out last night when I was reading about that because that's not something that I am accustomed to reading or seeing. And then, I started to look into what had happened with both of your fathers. My father passed away when he was 59, so I can relate. I wasn't in tune to the cellular side of things. And, understanding what you guys brought up, I want to convey to people the importance of looking at cellular health early. What age would you start to say, okay, we need to start looking at certain aspects of our blood panels and habits? And, Josh, I would love you to get into this. What are we looking for at certain stages of life? So, let's say 20 years old when they're telling you, oh, you don't need to worry about this.

Yeah.

You don't need to look at this. That frustrates me to the highest level. And so, what are some things, stage of life that we need to be aware of and what can we address early that's going to prevent some of these things?

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it really starts at infancy. I mean, I know that's going right back to the beginning, but let me say this. I mean, here's an example. I know when I started my practice, this was nearly 20 years ago now, I would have mothers bringing in their daughters that were starting to have a number of health issues But one thing that a lot of people, quite a few people are, I think, aware of now is women are hitting, a lot of young girls are hitting their menstrual cycle at 10, 11, 12 years old, commonly 13, when really it shouldn't be until at least 16 and 17. I mean, so a lot of girls, rather, if you're hitting it at 12 rather than 17, your hormonal system is aging 5 years early.

Wow.

I mean, think about that. And then what does that lead to in the future? Well, increased risk of breast cancer, Most likely. And then later on, of course, hitting perimenopause and menopause much earlier. But overall, I mean, a lot of this dysfunction starts off when we're children with insulin resistance is major. We know type 2 diabetes in children, insulin resistance is much, much higher. So, all that being said, I think that really looking at— and by the way, I do want to say something else too. That study said, and it was looking at some very basic markers and saying, okay, They looked at a number of organ systems and found about 20% of people had one organ aging faster than others.

Wow.

I will say this though, from clinical experience, I think that number is radically higher. I think it's probably closer to 50%. I mean, I think it's at least double what they have down there. Because right now, I look at blood markers every single day. Okay? We run very extensive tests about— and looking at numerous blood panels, and the number of people that come in with high ApoB, Wow. The number of people that come in with, again, other heart markers related to that that are off, high blood pressure, that's pretty high. The number of people that come in with prediabetes, that's extremely high. So think about that. I think overall, you've got— I'm trying to think about how many people are diabetic and prediabetic. I mean, it's close to 50% of people, right? Yeah.

And then there's the larger continuum, I think, depending on the study that you cite, right? But I've seen upwards of 93% Of the United States is somewhat metabolically unhealthy. Yeah. So what percentage of people actually diagnosed? I don't know exactly, but the reality is that's such a reactive model anyways, right? It's like, just wait till you're bad enough to be labeled. By the time somebody's diagnosed, it's 4 to 10 years prior to that diagnosis that the actual mechanism is at play.

Exactly. So again, what I found is most people, when they come in and actually get their blood work done the right way, they tend to be Most people, not everybody, because I definitely have some outliers, people that are very healthy and don't, but I think around 50% or more of people have one organ aging faster than the others. And that puts you at great risk of disease. Now, according to that study that Will's talking about, and this is one we dive into in the book, certain systems aging faster than others is much more deadly. The most deadly was neurological. I think the second most deadly was immune system.

Yeah.

If your immune system is aging too quickly. I mean, your chance of cancer, for instance, is just radically higher. And then, the next one is cardiovascular disease. So, those are the 3 in terms of mortality rates that really increases your risk of mortality. But overall, I mean, think about the value today of knowing if you have that one organ system aging faster than the other. And then, one thing we do in the book Heal Yourselves is we lay out specifically, here is exactly how to reverse the age of that organ system because it's different, right? If somebody's neurologically Advancing in age too quickly, of course, there's a greater risk of dementia. What do we do there? We want to really send blood to the brain and support detoxification of that channel as well. So, there's ginkgo biloba, there's lion's mane mushroom, there's exercise, extremely important for brain health. And then, the immune system, doing things— there's herbs like astragalus, there's doing medicinal mushrooms, there's drinking more bone broth. There's things that you can do there to reverse the age of that organ system. So, there's great value in knowing which organ system is aging too quickly and then having an exact protocol on how to start reversing the age of that organ.

Okay.

So, question then, because this has got me super curious. We're looking at the aging of organs, we're looking at systems. What are some of the most telltale signs on a blood panel that are going to indicate my heart's aging rapidly here? And, if we see that, What do we have to do to address it given the problem? Give me an example of a problem, maybe a cardiovascular sign, like you said, ApoB, for example. We see that, what do we need to do to address it? And then how do we know if the regression is reversing? What is going to show us that we have a reversal there?

Well, you have to compare, compare the data, right? So I think some of the top things, if we want to know about cardiometabolic issues, I mean, the leading driver of heart attack and stroke is insulin resistance. So I would actually want to look at Someone's metabolic profile and look at the optimal ranges, not just the lab's reference range. So people that know this, like the lab's reference range is largely based on a statistical bell curve of people who go to labs. The people that are predominantly going to labs aren't the healthiest population. So in functional medicine, we're looking at optimal, not average. Where does people that, that live long, healthy, thriving, vibrant lives, that's a tighter interval of the, where the body's functioning the best, the functional range.

So. Yeah.

For example, I would look at glucose and A1C. I mean, these are some basic— and this is what's so good about this is most of this stuff is completely within the state. You can go to your standard local doctor and get these labs done and kind of see. It's not the same as the protein markers that the Stanford researchers were looking at, but it's a good aggregation of more or less how fast or how slowly these cells are ticking. So glucose, we want under 90. But fasting blood sugar, A1C, we want under 5.5, around 5.5 would be great.

Mm-hmm.

Triglycerides or circulating fats, we want to be under 100. If the body is— has nowhere to put the excess blood sugar, which is fueling the heart attack and stroke, the insulin resistance, the body stores that triglycerides as either fat around the midsection, fat around the liver, fatty liver disease, or circulating fat triglycerides. So you're gonna see broader views for all of these on that lab reference range.

Mm-hmm.

Whether it's LabCorp or Quest or another lab. So we're looking at these optimal ranges. And then, uh, of course we have to look at serum insulin. We want that to be low and healthy. And then inflammation markers, high sensitivity C-reactive protein under 1.

Yeah.

Homocysteine, another inflammation marker. We want it to be under 7. And then there's liver enzymes, AST, ALT, GGT, because if the liver enzymes are spiked, sometimes that's years prior and that you ever become a type 2 diabetic, but you're somewhere on this insulin resistance spectrum. That's insulin resistance is the leading cause of heart attack and stroke. That's what's killing 1 in 2 people of America is because of insulin resistance. So that's where I would start. And then from there, you can look at ApoB, Lp, and then what I would also run from a cholesterol standpoint, it was called a nuclear magnetic resonance or NMR test, which looks at the particle sizes. So total cholesterol by itself, I mean, you know this, but for people that don't know, Total cholesterol by itself, it's like flipping a coin.

Yeah.

It's about 50% of people who have heart attacks and strokes have normal to low cholesterol. So it's like, is that 200 total cholesterol good quality or bad quality? It could be great quality. So it's not demonizing cholesterol by itself, but realizing that's an incomplete perspective. So we measure what are called small dense LDL particles, which are actually protein carriers of cholesterol, and we want these oxidized, rusted, inflamed BB bullets, these small dense LDL particles to be as low as possible, but it doesn't mean we have low cholesterol. It means the quality is better. So these fluffy buoyant large buoyant LDL particles are actually healthy.

Yeah.

So you could have 250 cholesterol but really great quality, and I'd much rather have that than someone has 150 total cholesterol but high small dense LDL particles and high inflammation markers. So the context around cholesterol It's so important because there's so much— because that's where people go to, right? It's like, oh, if my cholesterol is above 200, that's the devil, and I have to get it down.

That's right.

Well, yeah, for most people, other than— I mean, look, other than middle-aged men who have had heart attacks, and there's a very slight protection that statin drugs bring, the vast majority of people, it's not— the only benefit they're getting from statin drugs is maybe, researchers argue, It acts as a mild anti-inflammatory.

Yeah.

Maybe for some people. Yeah, that's being benevolent. The reality is it's not cholesterol that's killing people. It's the inflammation that damages the particles that carry cholesterol that's the issue. And statin drugs mildly maybe affect inflammation.

Thank you for pointing some of those things out, because that's kind of— on a personal note, and I've talked to you about this, Josh, the, the struggles that I've had conveying this. I've been studying cardiology 5 years now with some of the top cardiologists in the world and making this kind of like my life thing because I I found that I had a high Lp, I found plaque, and I was supposed to be the epitome of walking health. And this is— some of these things are uncontrollable.

Mm-hmm.

My dad had a heart attack when he was 59. I didn't see that coming. And so I want to make people aware of the things that we need to look at so that they can be ahead of the curve. Had I had some blood work done maybe in my 30s or even later 30s, let's say, I would've been on the, on the up and up of knowing, hey, you've got this gene, man. You gotta do some, some different things, make some changes. Josh, do me a favor. Can you just break down what insulin resistance means? Because we say that, but I know some people that have written me when I've talked about it and been like, what is that? You know?

Yeah, sure. Yeah. So, I mean, insulin resistance is where we have these beta cells, we have cells on the pancreas. And imagine that, you know, you have a— my grandmother used to have one of these. She had a loudspeaker and she would go up and like yell like in your ear because she couldn't hear anything. She would. And literally, and Grandma, I'm going to go deaf.

Was she just doing that to talk to you or just to tease you?

Well, so I mean, I'll give you the whole background. They owned a campground in Lagos, like 50 acres.

Oh, I remember you telling me this.

So she did it, but then sometimes she would do it when you're standing right in front of her. Yeah, just to get you.

Yeah. Tell her, won't Grandma?

Yeah, exactly. But you can basically— these cells can go deaf, right? So they don't hear anymore. They don't work right anymore. So, insulin resistance is where— that's the thing about insulin resistance, right? Your cells are kind of become resistant to insulin. They become deaf. Uh, and so, it's not the insulin itself, it's the receptor for insulin. Because what happens is you have insulin, which is a peptide hormone.

Yeah.

And it goes in and basically, it's like a key, unlocks it to where now it can help bring sugar into the cell, right? So, sugar is fine if it's in the cell because then your cell, your mitochondria is going to take it, And it's going to turn it into energy, ATP, cellular energy. We want that. But if we have insulin resistance, sugar stays in the blood. Okay? And when it stays in the blood, it's inflammatory. It's going to cause the plaque buildup. So to Will's point, it's going to increase the risk of cardiovascular inflammation, plaque buildup, but really inflammation throughout the entire body. And so to Will's point, if there really is a single— I typically say this, There are really 2 hormones for the most part that I think are the ones we want to pay attention to the most. It's insulin and it's cortisol. And if you can fix those 2 hormones, typically almost every other hormone in the body will just do exactly what it should do. It's a domino. If cortisol goes high, now insulin goes high. Well, if insulin's high, every other hormone is going to be thrown off. And when you think about the cascade too, insulin goes high, Well, typically, sometimes estrogen will follow it, progesterone will drop down. Well, now estrogen's high for men. Well, it's going to aromatize their testosterone, that'll become more estrogen. And there's all these things that happen. But typically, what people will start doing is they'll start chasing the downstream. This happens most with thyroid hormones. It's like, okay, we're going to go and chase TSH all over the place. When they would— if you would just fix insulin and cortisol, every other hormone would go back to where it should be.

Yeah. And on that note, I'm just— as he was talking about this, is that again, we, we would talk about insulin resistance, but what is it? It's a cellular dysfunction.

Yes.

So it's talked about in the research as the information theory of aging or the information model. And I like the way that Dr. Axe said it. He said they become deaf. That's what's actually happening is that it can't— the cells lose recognition of self. They get confused. So if it happens in the pancreas or the liver is where insulin resistance is happening, the liver cells become confused on who they are. God created that liver is to recognize, I'm a liver cell, but it's forgetting. It's called ex-differentiation is the term, is that cells all get confused. There's cellular confusion. They don't know how to function and haywire. And then just like humans, when one becomes kind of toxic and dysregulated, the people around them can be kind of dysregulated too. And that's what happens on a cellular level. The whole liver becomes insulin resistant.

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Okay, so here's what I want to do, and I want to do this fair because I know how this goes. If I ask you one thing and I, and I want both your opinions, it's like, well, he just took all my answers.

Oh, yeah.

That's okay.

You can have it.

Yeah. We both have plenty to say.

I want one from each of you on both insulin resistance and cortisol. What are the main drivers and causes of these problems? So, give me one for each.

Okay.

I'm going to go first though.

Sure. Okay. So, for insulin resistance, well, I can tell you, I think, in terms of studies, what probably impacts it the most, and I would actually say this for both, My answer is poor sleep. If somebody's sleeping less than 6 hours a night, I mean, I want to say, because I covered this recently on a podcast, I mean, the amount that your insulin spikes from less than 6 hours of sleep is just wild. It's crazy. Yeah.

Just one night of poor sleep can spike the high-sensitivity C-reactive protein that I mentioned. It's true. And that's why shift workers, which can't control that, right? I mean, it's like if you're working a night turn in a factory or a nurse or a truck driver, You know, people that work the graveyard shift, they call it graveyard for a reason. I mean, they're at increased risk of insulin resistance because their whole sleep-wake cycle is off. So part of it's sleep, and then part of it's like our connection with light and the way that light impacts the circadian rhythm.

In fact, when we, when we were writing this book together, I, I spent a lot of time. One thing I, I really like to do is I like to say, okay, what does all the current medical research say? But what does all of the, the ancient practitioners in Chinese medicine and Ayurveda, what does the Bible say? I, I really tried to look at those things. And so I worked with AI on this and I kept asking it, what is typically the first thing in terms of hallmarks of aging or health problems? What is typically the first thing that tips off that cascade? And the thing it came back with constantly was disruption of circadian rhythms was the tipping point for most people.

Yeah. It's the light is that it resets the cell clock. So if you're not getting sleep, if you're not sleeping well, if you don't have good sleep hygiene, it's really going to throw it off.

And think about even Genesis and the genesis of disease. Again, the first thing the Bible's talking about is, Night and day. I mean, it's very, you know.

Yeah. It is a massive one. So that's an interesting pick, but it's true. It is true. People don't think about that. They think, oh, sleep's this thing that's like, yeah, we know we should sleep, but it's, are they really prioritizing this deep medicine? Then they're slowly depleting and not just sleep, but like what's their relationship with light and darkness as far as the sleep-wake cycle? It's profoundly important for insulin resistance.

I'm going to say something here, and I don't want to sound morbid, but you know that statement, I'll sleep when I die. And, I used to kind of live by this all gas, no brakes, never rest.

Yeah, yeah.

And, kind of that comment. You will die a lot sooner without sleep because you're going to run yourself into the ground. And, I have come from that fitness bodybuilding world first before I started to really tackle total health alignment. And, you run into this overtraining, and that overtraining cascades into this just dark hole of brain fog and Inconsistent eating patterns, inconsistent sleep patterns. And before you know it, you think that you're training and doing all of these things that are so great and macho and everything else, and you're just— you're the epitome of poor health.

Can I tell you though? So I remember I worked as— my first job out of high school when I got to college was I worked as a personal trainer for 4 years and worked in a gym. And I remember looking at some of the people that were more semi-pros or people doing it kind of for Maybe for vanity. And a lot of that culture was, to your point, don't sleep, drink just straight alcohol so we don't mess up our carb, our macros.

Yeah, right.

I mean, that sort of thing. But here's something else I will tell you. The professionals, the Arnold Schwarzeneggers, the Jay Cutlers, the Ronnie Coles, those guys, they slept a crazy amount. I'm talking about 12 hours a day they would sleep.

Yeah, recovery.

Well, that's where all the muscle growth happens.

Yeah.

You know, and the testosterone levels, that's when they get the highest boost. The growth hormone is sleep. It's recovery. If God had to sleep on the 7th day, it wasn't that he needed to. He was showing us the example of this is what you need to do.

Yeah. I want to say it was the craziest sleep schedule. I want to say, and I might be wrong on this, but I thought it might have been J. Keller or something like this. He slept like 4 hours and then woke up and then 4 hours and then another 4 hours. He slept 3, 4-hour shifts a day. Wow. Yeah. So, they can get enough meals in too for caloric intake.

Yeah, recovery is so important.

And, I lived this world and I trained a lot of professional bodybuilders and athletes, so I saw the ones that made it, that lasted. They prioritized rest and recovery over train, train, train, train, train.

And, not to bring everything back to the cells, but I will do that for Heal Yourself, is that that's where the cells recover. That's where these autophagy pathways happen that the body needs to have the cellular debris to be cleaned up. And that happens when you sleep. So yeah, sleeping when you're— to say, I'll sleep when I'm dead, sleep is not a luxury. It's a mandate on our health. It's non-negotiable if you want to live long and thrive.

And I will say this too, and I know, Will, you'll agree with us, or I think you will, is that I do think sleep is probably the one that— I mean, you can just absolutely destroy your health so fast if you're sleeping 4 to 6 hours a night. But also, I mean, there were— it was Super Size Me. I mean, you can absolutely destroy your health with poor nutrition, high stress. You can see people physically aging radically fast. I mean, lack of movement. I mean, there's a lot. Loneliness, that's a whole nother category, but that was shown to take something like 14 years off someone's life. I mean, it's— Yeah.

We're starting with light and sleep, but it's— I mean, if you want more of our hot takes on what causes it, there's a whole list.

Oh, yeah. There's a whole list.

Well, you just brought up what I was actually going to next. Was when you don't sleep enough, think about how that affects your hunger. You start to have strange cravings in the morning and—

Yeah, insatiable food cravings. It's throwing off— it's the whole sleep-wake cycle's off. So yeah, you're a hangry monster and you're eating foods that don't love you back because you are at the whim of these dysregulated hormones.

Yeah.

Would you call that like metabolic dysfunction from lack of sleep? Is that kind of what it would fall under? Yeah. And then it compounds.

Like, it's like if you're not sleeping well, you're also irritable, which raises impacting your relationships. You're going to be more lonely because people are going to want to be around you. I mean, there's a cascade of that where it's so important.

You know what I used to tell myself and then my wife? Because she's just like, why don't you sleep longer? What are you doing this to yourself? And I said, I just don't feel good when I sleep over 6 hours. I feel like I'm hungover and everything. And then I started doing it a few times and then I said, okay, I'm setting this alarm clock and I'm getting Mando 7. I'd hope to get 8.

Isn't that funny how the things we tell ourselves? It's so funny because we identify with these things that may or not be true and make it our personality, right? It's like, I'm a night person. I'm a night owl, is another one, right? It's like, are you really a night owl or is this just because something's common, you normalized it?

So my daughter just started preschool. She went, started this week. And I mean, I go to bed right now. I mean, I'm in bed at like 7:55.

Geez.

I'm not kidding. Well, because anyways, I put them down and honestly, it takes so long before she falls asleep. And then, I'm like, you know what? I'm going to go to sleep now as well.

I love that for you, man.

I do too.

Geez, I'm getting my second gym session for the day in at 9:00 or 10:00. I'm not even kidding you. I'm trying so hard to flip that switch. It's hard. You should be. I mean, honestly, you guys, is the best sleep time between 10:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m.? Does that sound about right where you're getting the best deep sleep?

It's when you're getting deep the most for sure. That's also when, at least in Chinese medicine, that's also when liver Which, which, you know, the liver does everything. I mean, it's—

Well, that's what the insulin resistance is predominantly having. And that's a good point too, is like these hours matter. It's not just about the hours, the, the time of the day because of the darkness and our connection with light and the lack of it are so important. And something that we talk about in the book, because this is something that Josh brings into such a passion for traditional Chinese medicine, that it's just, that's what these experts in TCM over thousands of years knew that these specific hours were associated with these organs. And now research is just catching up with this, right?

Yeah.

And we, we don't even know the half of it in our hubris of modernity, uh, how these— it's not just the hours. And that's why this— the shift workers that work the graveyard turn, yes, they have to make the best of a not ideal situation, but ultimately nighttime is the best time to be sleeping for so many ways. It's never gonna— it's a counterfeit to be sleeping during the day. Yes, you have to do what you have to do, But, it is not just the hours but the time itself.

One of the patterns that I see in a lot of patients, I'm sure you do as well, is the 3:00 a.m. wake-up, like the 3:00 a.m. and then have a hard time kind of falling back asleep after 3:00 a.m. And, that's the cortisol, the reverse curve. It's like, okay, well, your body is so cortisol-driven that your body's like, okay, well, I know we got a lot going on. It starts peaking way too early. So, if people are waking up, and that actually in Chinese medicine, they call that Liver Qi stagnation, but it typically is caused from, yeah, just people that pack their schedule from the moment they wake up till the time they go to bed, and they just are always trying to achieve and win. And eventually, just living in a sympathetic state with not enough parasympathetic, they'll start to have the 3:00 AM wake-up call. And so, that's a sign of high cortisol, and that's something that then, it's at the root of a lot of problems.

It is.

What would you recommend for somebody that's doing that, like, 3:00 AM wake-up, can't go back to sleep, and going to bed at a good time, you know, 10:00, 11:00? If that is a cortisol problem, what are some practices or things they can do to make a change that's non-medicinal?

I would say that neuroendocrine axis, the intersection between the nervous system and its communication with the endocrine system, or the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, what Dr. Axe was talking about, what's my nervous system saying to my adrenal glands to release cortisol? Someone being constantly stuck in that fight or flight, freeze, fawn sympathetic tone, like Dr. X has talked about, we have to be supporting vagal tone. This person almost always has poor vagal tone. We talked about the gym a moment ago. Well, if someone's biceps or core is weak, they have to strengthen it. This aspect of their nervous system is weak.

Yeah.

The vagus nerve, the largest cranial nerve in the body, It's the root word, wanderer. It is responsible for that resting, digesting, optimal REM deep heart rate variability, all the things we want to feel grounded and get good night's sleep. That nervous part of the nervous system is weak, so we need to strengthen it and do some vagal toning. So there's lots of ways to do vagal toning, but I typically have telehealth patients pick something active and something passive. So something active, is something that you actively are doing, that it's a practice that you show up. It could be breathwork, it could be gargling, it could be meditation, journaling, because this has to do with stress and trauma. Yes, it's currently stress, but journaling is a great way to sort of somatically clear out any stress. Some basic, you mentioned not medicinally, magnesium can be a great tool here. Things that are supportive of the parasympathetic. And then something passive, I like transcutaneous vagal nerve stimulation, like the devices that you wear on the ear or neck that are kind of an e-stim on these auricular branches of the vagus nerve to tone it. So actually, our CEO over here, Adam, was telling me, I told him, I'm like, get this device, and he's sleeping better. His HRV's improved.

Neuropod or what do you have him doing?

Pulsetto.

Pulsetto.

So Neuropod and Pulsetto are my 2 favorite things.

I've used Apollo Neuro, which I use frequently, and Pulsetto were the ones that I've used too.

Apollo Neuro is great too. It works differently because it's oscillation in the bone, but it's similar mechanism. It's working on these different pathways of toning the vagus nerve, the parasympathetic. So start there, but you have to be consistent. It would be like doing it once and saying it didn't work would be like me going to the gym once and saying, well, that gym didn't work for me. You have to tone something that's weak.

I'll tell you, I had a— by the way, in Chinese medicine, they have a formula for increasing vagal tone and it's called the Wonder Formula or the Free and Easy Wonder Formula for— because it's all anyways. So to your point, what we call the vagus nerve. Josh Rad, I had him on the show.

Yeah, he's great.

And he had told me, he said, I have patients gargle if they have constipation, which again is a vagal tone issue, has them gargle for 2 minutes every hour on the hour.

I love that.

And I was like, I'm going to try that. I went home and did this and I was blown away. And I can tell you, do this. And at first, anyways, I tried to do the full 2 minutes. I realized, okay, no, I need to stop and breathe out of my nose some because I could not.

He was drowning himself. In the kitchen.

So what I tell people to do, gargle 30 seconds, breathe for 10 seconds, gargle 30 seconds, but do it for 2, 2 and a half minutes.

Difficult, probably.

It's a little difficult.

Is it a long 2 minutes, Dr. Axe?

I would say it's a long 2 minutes. But let me say this. I mean, I was blown away at how much I could just tell I just went right into the parasympathetic.

That's cool.

It was unbelievable. I mean, I've done breathwork, and breathwork is great, But I truly think gargling is the fastest single way to get yourself into the state. You can't just do it for 10 seconds. I know you got to do that full 2 minutes, but it's incredible.

And it's like this is just free other than your time, right? So that person that wakes up at 3:00 AM, that's what they need to do. It's a sign. That's a check engine light. That 3:00 AM wake is a check engine light that their nervous system's ready to go. Because what's happening there mechanistically is that cortisol Cortisol is supposed to be increased in the morning. So that's normal. It's happening a bit early. And then what's happening is cortisol's coming up, glucose is being released from the liver, and you're waking up. Your whole sleep-wake cycle is a bit too hypervigilant. You're like, okay, yeah, you need that to happen, but not at 3:00 AM.

Yeah.

Like, calm down a little bit. So just regulate to kind of an adaptogenic type balancing approach. Maybe that happening not as extreme at 6:00 AM and waking up refreshed. Reading a book is another good way to do it.

Yes.

Just like reading, it grounds you, it centers you. Not looking at a screen, but reading a book.

I was going to say, not an e-reader, like a real physical book.

Yeah.

So, I want to stick to the neuro side of things right now. And admittedly, I did 15-some-odd years of nothing but fitness, nutrition, not understanding the total control that the mind has over every single thing that we do. And, I tell people this, look at some of the best athletes, that we've ever encountered? Kobe. What was it? It was not Kobe athlete, it was Mamba mentality. Why was everybody so scared of Tiger Woods? Because he put the fear into everybody, because he was so mentally strong that he knew he was gonna whoop you when it came down to it. Same with Jordan. So, it's the mentality aspect of it. And likewise, the people that fold under pressure, they're the ones that never got elite that had all the talent. Same thing with body, right? So, like you guys are saying, cortisol spikes. Well, there's a lot of stress and a lot of things going on internally that are by that. I did a very, very severe nervous system reset and—

What'd you do?

It was with Dr. Shawn Drake and he called it soul surgery. And this is— God plays a big part in this treatment and this therapy. And I challenged myself and I said, you know what? For some reason, you want to be compassionate. You have it in your heart and it's not coming out. You're stoic all of a sudden and you don't want to be. You're super irritable, but you're eating well. You're training. You're doing all these things. What the hell is wrong with you? You're spiritually good. You're praying all the time. Why are you doing this? Why are you so unable to stay focused? And why are you not resentful, but just kind of angry? Things that aren't who you are.

Yeah.

So what I did was I went and sat with him and he was able to pull all of these different traumas out of me or things that bothered me that I don't think about. I didn't even know they were there and they were hidden inside and I was able to do this through like the breath. When I tell you the breathwork, I mean, I'd have to sit and show you. This was so intense.

Is it like holotropic or it was sort of deep?

Deep and then like heavy and then it was with sounds and vibrations and then there was a lot of connection with God and me opening up my mind to be able to hear Him Because what happens is noise, all of this noise and distraction, and I don't know where the hell it's coming from. I can't focus even when I'm reading scripture. My mind is like, it's soaking it in but not fully. So I was able to release this, and once I was able to do this, I just developed this deeper appreciation of everything. Everything my wife said, it was like, ah, you know, I appreciate that you're taking the time to do this. Not, man, you're saying this and it's—

Being irritable.

Being irritable for no reason. My mom would say He would say something and I'd just be like, man, stop. And instead, now I'm listening. Oh, I appreciate the conversation. Or for instance, I would do this, oh, I have to go do this interview today, or I have to go do this. And now it's, man, I get to. I get to. I get to do this.

Wow. And that just shows you that someone's heart state and their mental state, how that impacts so many different things, right?

Yes.

Because if you're in that dysregulated state, how will you show up to the world? It shows up in how you— the foods you eat and how you treat people, how you sleep, all of those things. That's really profound.

It is.

Was it just one session that you did?

No, I mean, I have had to refresh and I started to do this in the morning where if I don't get up, do all my prayers. So when I get up in the morning, my morning routine is I read my scriptures, like the morning scriptures. I'm Catholic, but if you're not, whatever, it doesn't matter. Just read. Right?

Yeah.

Then I say a prayer over my wife. Then I, you know, say I go shower, shave, but I'm saying prayer while I'm doing it. Then I do my walk and then I go do breathwork. Then it's time for meetings. And you know what? If I got a meeting and I'm sorry, like I have to push it back because I have to do this or I'm not going to be right and I'm not going to be good to you, myself, or anybody else. And I think the important thing that I'm trying to stress here is get your mind right first before you start your day.

So it's so true.

Yeah.

It's, I mean, the Bible says that. I mean, from your heart, things flow from there, right? It's like everything flows from there.

Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. I mean, one of the things I think Will and I both feel really strongly about is dealing with past childhood trauma and using faith-based medicine. I mean, I see it constantly where I think anytime I have a patient who, let me just say, at least 90% of the time, if I have a patient and they start seeing some results, but then they just hit this plateau. I think the most common thing, especially if it's been for a long time they've dealt with an issue, there's a childhood trauma that's just never been dealt with, and that's just continually on replay. I'm not smart. I'm not pretty. I'm not pursued. I'm not loved. I'm worthless. I mean, there's something there that's feeding the fear, the anxiousness, the overanalyzing every last thing, the obsession, whatever out-of-balance emotion there is, there's some sort of trauma or just not knowing. I say this quote constantly, so my audience will have heard me say this before, but my favorite quote in the world is an A.W. Tozer quote, and it's something like this. He says, what you believe about God or what you think about when you think about God is the most important thing about you. And so, because you think about if God is an scary figure that's just judging you, or he's distant and really doesn't care, or he's benevolent, he's just thinking about you every moment. And it's like, if anyone that has kids, like my daughter, I think about her all day. And she's doing swim team now. I can't wait to go and watch her and help her. But if you believe that God is like that, interacting in your life and constantly working things out for your good, what that does to your state is just crazy. And so all that being said, I think that there are so many things that are spiritual that are in the past that have never been dealt with. And then to your other point, and I think if you can, and the number one way to deal with those things is going to the Bible and following the things the Bible says. It's praying and first connecting with God. It's confessing any of your sins, anything, getting that out there, having other people pray for you. And it's just living rightly. Um, but then also writing.

Yeah.

I mean, the studies on writing for overcoming anxiousness and fear, I mean, it's, it's probably the most powerful therapy in terms of like an exercise you can do.

And then part of that forgiveness, the other part is the part of the confession. Like after that is like forgiving others because the bitterness and rage and like what that does to our sympathetic tone and then forgiving ourselves for things that maybe we we did it intentionally or unintentionally.

Yeah.

The so important part of that whole— yeah, it's all there. It's all there. I mean, surprise, right? God knew what he was talking about. Who would have thought? We have such a hubris, again, arrogance today that it's sometimes it's this stuff that we just overlook because we need a randomized control trial. But now the great thing is that the randomized control trials are substantiating what God always said, not just in this circumstance, but many others too.

You know, there's the parable of the sower in the Bible and that somebody's sowing seeds and that, you know, it either falls on hard ground and it can't get into the soil, or there's a different— but the one that stands out to me the most, the reason I'm bringing this up is you mentioned busyness. I think in the modern day, that is the one that hits people the hardest, is that these weeds go up and choke off the plant to where it cannot grow and flourish. And so I just think about my home. This morning, I was going to have a little bit of quiet time, And my office right now is not set up like I can still hear everything. And I've got dogs barking. I've got my 2-year-old like just screaming. She's got a wiggle bike. She's flying through the room. And I'm like, you know, I don't know if it's possible for me to get like just a quiet moment. But this is why Jesus woke up before the sun came up. Now, you know, he had an early bedtime, I'm sure.

He's going to bed at your time. Yeah.

But again, that quiet time and that stillness to hear and to actually let your spirit rest and to connect with God. And that's important. Well, so what I typically do now is I go for a walk.

Yeah.

Because that's where I can typically get that.

And that's an interesting point because that 3:00 AM that we talked about earlier, the context around that's so important. Are they waking up in panic, heart racing, and they can't fall back asleep? I've had some telehealth patients over the years when we improve vagal tone, And nourish the body with food, deal with all the facets of that would regulate that neuroendocrine axis. Sometimes not maybe at 3:00 AM, but maybe 5:00 AM they'll wake up.

Yeah.

But they wake up refreshed. They don't— they're not anxious. When we track the REM deep sleep and HRV, it looks great. And research shows that even if you don't have all like 12 hours of sleep, but it's great quality, let's just say 6, 8 hours of sleep, sleep, that may be the body just being balanced the way that God made it. And you do have that time in the morning to like go and like walk, get out in nature, put your feet on some grass. So that's not always a bad thing. You know, I don't want to pathologize early mornings because it's, to Josh's point, it's one of the best times to connect with God in the quiet, in the stillness, when before anybody else is awake, uh, for you to do amazing things. Sometimes people are freaked out by that. I can't go back to bed. It's 5 o'clock, 6 AM. Maybe it's just time.

Yeah.

Because you've improved.

Your, your new normal is you are regulated and you get up early naturally without an Yeah, I got a new patient for you because my mom does not listen to a word I say.

What's your mom's name?

Nancy.

Nancy will listen to us.

Yeah, that's, that's what I'm saying. I'm gonna send her to you guys. You guys have a smoother tone than I do with her, probably.

Sometimes it's the messenger, not the message.

That's exactly my point.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, so touching on a couple things that you guys said. One, in the Bible, God made his points in the whispers, in the breath and the whispers he sent. And when they There was a thing I just read with Elijah when he went to the mountain and there was a storm and there was the thunder, but then that was the whisper from God that was the present message. And that resonated with me because it was like a direct punch in the gut of you never block out the noise. I pray well, but I don't listen good. You know what I mean?

Well, welcome to the club.

I think we're all kind of hardheaded.

But then it came to the point of, If you were having a conversation with your wife, would you talk the whole time and never let her speak? So if you're talking to God and you're sitting there talking the whole time, shouldn't you let him speak? And I've been trying to implement that into prayer time too.

So good.

So I sent you guys last week a speech that I gave. I sent you a clip of it.

Yes, really. Such a good talk.

And this has nothing to do with me, but it has to do with the thought behind the speech. I now am on a mission. Everybody wants to talk to me about peptides and hormones and everything else, the juicy topics of the day, which I Yeah. And, I am more than happy to discuss and they play a certain role in health. But, foundationally, and this is what I want to talk to you both about, I have a foundation and my belief set. And, when I go speak, this is what I'm talking about. And, I guess the conventions are too good for me if they don't want to allow me to speak on this, which is fine. I'm not going to stop. And, it is mind-body, but it's not mind and body-spirit, it's mind-body and God. And, that connection that I have found to align full health because we can nourish ourselves with knowledge, we can nourish ourselves with foods. If we don't nourish our soul, we will never be cellular health. We will never find the right nutrition plan. We'll never find anything. We're going to be chasing something forever. And I have found once I am able to get people to connect with God in one way or another, and even if it's just hear me out, let me get into your heart. Just let me let you think about it. Even if you're the biggest atheist on the planet, nonbeliever, hateful, whatever, let me just get in there.

Yeah.

there. And you start to think, it starts to change the way that we move internally, which then allows inflammation to go down. My big point was, and I asked the crowd this, and I said, this is a rhetorical question and I'll wait. How many angry, negative people do you look at and go, wow, they're the epitome of health?

Yeah.

Let me check their blood panels. And I bet you anything, we're going to see a lot of disruption on blood markers. So I say, There's a lot of knowledge, a lot of people that have a lot of brain power with science and all of the things that we're talking about. But we carry, I believe, and I don't want to toot my horn, this is what I pray for, is the wisdom aspect is what carries us. That's what makes us really know. I know a lot of people that know so many facts and studies and everything that don't know the first way to use it. In fact, use it to hurt people.

Right.

And hurt themselves. So that's why I say when you get connected with God, you understand wisdom, you understand Holy that's where you speak. That's why I always, when I go do something, I don't speak off of scripts. I can't because it's whatever's coming out of me that I'm being fed. I always go into something with a plan that somebody sends me and I can't stay on it because I believe that when I go in and start asking and teaching, it's what was supposed to be asked.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? And so my question to you guys is, do you believe in what I'm saying? Because for me it's like, well, when you connect with God, gratitude comes first. When you have that gratitude, you're able to appreciate everything deliver. You can be healthy. When you give to others, you get back tenfold. But when it's all about Dill and Josh, Will and all of this, we don't get anything, man. It's unfulfilling, and then it trickles down into your health.

Yeah, I agree. Go ahead, Josh.

Sorry, sorry, I get going.

And yeah, well, I think there's a few things there. I think, you know, uh, so there's 2 main things I'm thinking of. One is kind of even a little bit of a theological idea here, and that is It's interesting. I don't know if you guys know this, but in some churches they read God's word first and then they pray and invite the Holy Spirit. And some they pray first and then they read God's word. Because some, if you're in more, let's say charismatic circles, they put a greater emphasis on the Holy Spirit. If you have more of, let's say a Presbyterian, like a Reformed church, it's a little bit on God's word. But all that being said, I mean, I think it's very important that you're kind of doing both. To your point with, should you prepare for a speech or let the Spirit flow through?

Yeah.

like let that lead you? And the answer is really you should be both. I mean, nobody's going to give their best speech typically if they're not prepared and have some level of study and understanding. But also having a level of just not holding on too tightly, a level of looseness to let God work, I think will lead to the best outcome. And so, so I, I do, I do agree with that. And then, and then also to your point, you know, I mean, statistically clergy, people that are professional in professional ministry, they do live longer. And then also there's plenty of studies about religious attendance, people living longer, having more peace, more happiness. I think this goes back to something I mentioned earlier, and that is your view of God, your relationship with God. If you know that God is working for you, if you know that you're going to live for eternity, there's just a greater level of peace with that, right? Knowing that I don't have to do it all. I mean, one of the things Jesus said is, listen, my yoke is easy, my burden's light.

Man.

And that's like, whoa. I mean, and honestly, for someone like me and you guys who are achievers, we want to change the world, we want to run to win the race. There's also an element of, yeah, but part of the race was already won in what Jesus did on the cross in the ultimate race. And so all that being said, there's a level of like, this is true in sports, it's true in academics, it's true across the board. You want a level of understanding something's really important. But also, So if you believe that everything's relying on you, there's an element of anxiety that actually starts to— there's this bell curve of performance. There's actually a bell curve on this is you want to be very focused and know that, but also if you feel like it's all on you, your performance declines.

Yeah. There was a Harvard— I think it was out of Harvard. They substantiated what Dr. Axe just said, that people that had a regular faith practice and community's part of that, but also community with other people, but community that you have with God, 33% decreased risk of all-cause mortality over a 16-year period, I think it was. Decreased high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, again, the inflammation marker. Uh, people don't realize that. That, yeah, I love that way you said it, mind, body, God. And it, but it has to be beyond like this rote list of things that you do. Like going to church by itself doesn't do the thing, right?

No.

It has to be a relationship. It has to be meaningful. I'm not just checking the boxes. So, and Dr. Lisa Miller from Columbia, she substantiates this as well, like changes in the brain for people that have a faith practice. We have greater resilience on average, right? We, we know, yes, the small, like the things in our world matter, but we have perspective on the ultimate things that matter.

If you start going down lists of virtues, like the important ones that are spoken throughout the Bible and then you start to look at it. So I started to look at it from different points of view. So I sat and read the entire New Testament and I thought to myself, okay, I gained a lot here but it's just, it kind of just revolves around love and so it was embedded in my head. Then I started to look deeper and this is what I want to tell people. You know when you watch your favorite movie 20-some-odd times, you always find something new in there that you didn't see.

Yeah.

Well, you just brought up the yoke and the burden and I read that 50 times and never knew what it meant till like a month ago and then I got the real interpretation of what that actually means. It's saying, you know, here's my laws, but they're gonna be very easy for you to follow if you love me and you follow me.

Mm-hmm.

And I grasped and understood. So then I've been able to grasp and interpret these virtues. Well, look at 'em. First is faith, hope, and love, right? So these are key integrative practices in our life that are gonna bring the most joy and happiness and peace. But then I got into the knowledge and wisdom, but then it's endurance, perseverance, temperance. So how do we relate these to everyday life? Well, you need to have fortitude and the ability to overcome. Temperance, you need to have some self-control over indulgence in eating and then whatever else bad practices you have, drugs, alcohol, whatever, I don't know, whatever it is, but you need temperance to overcome that. You need to have perseverance. I mean, I've had to have some severe perseverance for mistakes I've made, but that goes in general for everything. That can be the smallest thing of the day you got to overcome.

Mm-hmm.

Just something small. I mean, just on the way here, I was ironing my clothes in a hotel room. I spilled water all over them and I started to get angry and then thought, Man, just get the blow dryer out and blow them. You'll be fine. They'll wait.

Yeah.

You know, but these concepts in the Bible that are misinterpreted, misconstrued, misread are the handbook to life. If you just read them and understand them, there's an answer to everything in there.

Yeah.

And that's showing up on a cellular level. And science is substantiating that now that we have 30+ trillion cells and they're all eavesdropping on how we talk about ourselves and other people. And there's a resonance there, right? I mean, their cells feel unsafe, and both physiological physical things like foods that don't love us back, environmental toxins—that makes ourselves feel unsafe. But our disconnection from God also makes ourselves feel unsafe, which is why studies are now showing why people that have a deep, rich faith life tend to live longer. Well, look, we can't control everything, so we're not saying that if you have faith, you're gonna like everything's gonna be good, but it's just a component to how. How on a cellular level we're meant to live.

Yes, and that's the thing. I'm also not saying, oh, I'm perfect and I wake up every day full of joy and happiness and everything. But I will say this, when I take the time to pray and I sit back and think about how many blessings I have as opposed to the things that I'm whining and complaining about, then I come to this quick recollection of, hey man, like you need to just chill. And one of the things in the Bible, it'll say pray constantly. And I used to think in my head, man, I'm not sitting here and praying 24 hours a day. But What it did bring out in me is little moments where I feel alone or something's bothering me and I just say in my head or say a prayer and I talk. I never feel alone anymore in any aspect of my life. And I found myself talking to God more than I even talked to my wife throughout the day.

Yeah.

And it's actually quite beautiful because you don't even realize it. When you talk to somebody like we're talking here, I mean, I don't know, we've been going an hour. It feels like 5 minutes. But when you're in that, you don't even realize it. When I talk to God and I look and sometimes I'll look and I'll be like, man, there's minutes, but I better get rolling here. And, it's like you don't even realize it because it's so valuable, but that time is spent so well and it impacts everything you do, then it helps you cellularly, then it helps you focus. So, I guess my point is saying, no, there's no such things as rainbows and unicorn 24 hours a day, but it's going to enhance your quality of life not only for you but the people that are around you.

Yeah, absolutely. It's without a doubt. And, And it's— people forget it sometimes. They were looking for the next biohacker. You said like the next peptide. Sometimes it's like maybe just get your relationship with God right.

Yes.

Your relationship with the present moment right. Uh, that's really important.

That's why I say foundationally we set that, and once we have the foundation, then we can move forward. So, okay, I want to go over a few different things that are going on right now with you guys. I would like to get into some, some peptide-related discussion. But, I want to go a little bit deeper. All everybody wants to talk about is GLP-1s and people, when they say peptides, that's all they think, literally. And, it bothers me because I've spent 15 years when I first found them studying them. Do you guys have any feeling on our future here with where we're going to go? Because I look at peptides and I'm showing people, look, there's something for ejection fraction here with SS31 for your heart. We got mitochondrial MOTS-c. Solanke and Semax are helping with the stress and anxiety. Do you see a future here or do you see— because I am in the trenches, I see people that are trying to take advantage of this, sell them everywhere, compounding pharmacies that don't know how to compound anything that are just popping up. Do you see this broad spectrum of people shilling and taking advantage of the system or do you see alternative medicines and therapies?

Will's had him on before. I had Brien Buhler on my show and he's really a peptide expert. I mean, went a few weeks ago, 3 weeks ago, actually. We had to change the podcast date because he was scheduled to come on my show, and then he had to go to Washington, D.C., uh, to meet with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and testify in front of the Senate. And so he was just on, and, you know, he thinks that it's going to keep getting passed through. He said that one of the problems is a lot of these senators, they, they didn't— they just didn't know the science. And so, I mean, it's so, it's so interesting. You, you wouldn't think this would happen with professionals, But some of the things he was getting around is rather than actually reading some of the documents, one of them just had AI interpret it for them. And then they shared something and they said, but what you're talking about, that's like an Olympic drug that was banned in the Olympics. It's not even a peptide. I mean, it is just so awful.

For the whole world to see.

Yes. And so all that being said, I think we're going to continue to see them pass through, become legalized, because listen, there's So I recently saw on Instagram somebody post, this is a doctor who, his name was discredited. He was found in the Epstein files. People used to listen to him and now many less are because there's just so many character flaws and issues there. But he came out and did this whole thing on GLP-1s are safe now, which before he didn't say that. But I found out he has a tie to, he owns a company that's about to sell that's creating GLP-1s.

Oh, really?

But again, by all that being said, and then he was saying, well, a lot of these peptides aren't— there's no proven benefits. There's no double-blind placebo trial studies. Now, here's the thing I will say, and here's the thing I talked to Brigham about, is that when I worked as that personal trainer for 4 years, one thing I noticed is bodybuilders are the most obsessive people I've ever met at tracking every—

Mm-hmm.

They changed half a pound of body fat. I'm going to wash— I remember there was a woman who was doing this who I was friends with, and she would wash her chicken breasts to make sure there was no salt on them.

Wow.

So to my point is they're absolutely meticulous. And BPC-157 is an example. You think for the past 20 years bodybuilders haven't been using that and actually knowing, oh, I injured my shoulder doing shoulder press, using it and knowing what works and doesn't work? So the reality is maybe there's no double-blind placebo trials, or not many. many, but there is so much anecdotal evidence for numerous peptides. And the reality is they do work. I've noticed it physically. Will's noticed it physically. We've got so many people that have used it. And so, by the way, on his thread, when this doctor posted this, basically there were hundreds of comments of people saying, actually, it fixed my shoulder. It fixed this. I mean, that was pretty much all of the comments.

Yeah.

So all that being said, I think think that it's just a matter of time because now the government needs to make a decision because if you don't make it white market, if you don't make it to where, hey, you can go to your doctor and they can prescribe it, or as long as people can get it, they're going to be happy, they'll go through some of the channels to get it. But if you make it to where even functional medicine practitioners can't prescribe them and recommend them, people are just going to go to the gray and black market. And then who knows what they're going to get because there's a lot of stuff that's tainted out there. In fact, read one story where BPC-157 was tainted with testosterone. Yeah, this guy lost his license. I mean, this happens all the time. So the reality is you want to make sure you're buying from a United States compounding pharmacy when you're getting peptides.

It has transparency and purity. Yeah, what they did is just shoved it underground. I mean, it's just— yeah, the Biden administration went in 2023 when they just basically grew the market even more under this sort of shady gray area research-only model. So yeah, hopefully there is we can bring it to the light and oxygen can be infused into the market. And I think the truth is oftentimes somewhere in the middle. I think the one side that—

Yeah.

It's also with the natural health world. It's just kind of controversial for us to even have this position because some people are like, ew, this is scary. We shouldn't be doing peptides at all. The super crunchy wellness purist zealot that we love. I mean, they're our friends too, but they're very anti-peptides. And then you have the other side that's like peptides are the, you know—

It reminds me of the conversation around like, you can eat butter and tallow all day every day and there's no issues. And it's like, no, that's not true. Yeah, that's not true.

Yes, exactly. So yeah, of course there's caveats. Of course not everybody should be doing all the peptides. But the truth's somewhere in the middle, like the dose, the person, the purity, all of these things matter.

These people kill me, and I'll tell you why. This extremism that goes so far.

Yeah.

And I always tell people, I'm not going to say the exact verbiage because there's some cursing in there, but I always tell people, look, I'm not your dad. Do whatever you want. If you want to take all the vaccines in the world, have at it. Don't tell people that they have to do something. Same with peptides, man. If you don't like them, stick to your conventional medicine or whatever it is that you do. Do whatever you want. Why are you so angry and so worried about what everybody else is doing, looking for alternatives? Nobody's telling you you have to do anything. But, I will say this, and I want you guys' thoughts on this. So, I always call conventional medicine the real non-conventional because I look at something that is taken naturally and generally altered, methylated, whatever you want to say. And so, that's why I call it non-conventional. I would say conventional medicine is more along the lines of natural herbs, traditional Chinese medicine.

It should be primary care for— it should be the primary for sure.

Yeah. That's what I was curious what you guys' thoughts were on the negativity, the views views that people carry? And why do you feel— because for me, when I see all that negativity, you know what I see? Poor health. That's the first thing I see.

Yeah. I think the thing that I have a hard time with is that— I'll give you this with the cancer industry as an example. There is no doubt in certain clinics in Europe, there's a few in the United States, but that cancer treatments is being done much better than what the conventional system is doing. But what the people on the conventional side will say, I'll give you an example of this. I work with a cancer patient probably every week, and it's cancer support. And what we'll do is I'll try and lay out what is the ideal integrative treatment, whether they decide to go and do chemo radiation or not. I'll go through and we do something called an RGCC blood test. It's a Greek test, and it'll tell you, does sulforaphane work? Does high-dose vitamin C? Does liposomal turmeric? Does hyperthermia? What are the things that move the needle the most for this type of cancer? And it's a great test, and I think really effective. And so I'll take that and I'll lay out a protocol of, here's your ideal diet of what you should eat for every meal. Here's the exact supplements. Hey, let's do hyperthermia because here, here, and here. And then maybe you are going to do radiation. Maybe you can skip the chemo, Because in colon cancer, it's typically used as what they call a radiosensitizer to just make the radiation more sensitive. But chemo's even more damaging on the body, and it's throughout the body where radiation is more localized. So let's not do the— ideally, they'd be better off not doing that, doing the lotus dose of radiation. If they want to do something, okay, you can do that conventional, but let's do all of the natural therapies we can. And what a lot of the oncologists will say, now, by the way, some of them, they're becoming more and more progressive of saying, hey, I think that'd be a good idea to do this. But most of them will not move off what the current treatments are because those have been established for the last 60 years. That's what they get paid for. But it's not the best for the patient. So I get frustrated that, listen, there is a better model out there. Let's work together to find out what it is.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think for most of, not just cancer, but all chronic disease, it should be both and, not either or. What's the most effective option that causes the least amount of side effects? You're right, there's both sides because then you'll have the health purist side with cancer specifically. It's like, I'll never do chemo, never do radiation. Well, it's like, well, what's the context of it? What does the data show? Maybe it's both and. So there's so many examples of that. I think people that are against— the question was like people that are still against people in functional medicine.

Yeah.

They're on the wrong side of history. I mean, mainstream institutions like the Cleveland Clinic don't open up multimillion-dollar functional medicine centers because it's woo-woo and quackery, because the data speaks for itself. So people are still like, it's us versus them. Where have you been? I mean, I've been doing this for 16 years. This is not radical. Getting people healthy should not be offensive. If it is, look at your heart.

And I can tell you, 20 years ago, 99% of doctors, I'm serious about this, would say you cannot reverse type 2 diabetes.

Oh, yeah. I would get phone calls saying I was going to kill people. How dare you?

Yeah. They literally felt like it did not matter if you ate a snack.

Yeah.

Or an apple.

Type 2 diabetes, not type 1.

Yeah, no, we're talking— yeah, we're both talking about type 2 here. And then now it's probably more like 50% of doctors do believe you can reverse it and 50% still don't, which just boggles my mind. But, but we, we have come so far in 20 years.

Yeah.

Geez. So far.

It's funny that you saw the same thing because it was type 2 diabetes. I'm like, wait, what? Out of all the things that's offended you? But now you're right, it's just like commonplace.

Here's what's offensive to me. I was in I had a small incident and I was in the hospital for 3 and a half days in the cardiovascular area. All right. And I had to stay the night there all weekend and they bring me a menu and this was the heart-healthy menu. And I looked at my wife and I said, does that say chicken effing Parmesan and margarine and dinner roll? And I took a picture of it. I have it on my phone. I could show you. This is what they have in their heart— Really?

Yeah.

Menu.

Margarine and dinner rolls.

Chicken. Maybe sugar-free Jell-O or pudding.

No, I'm not even kidding you. Chicken, parm, and tortellini were on here.

I mean, if you took a fork or knife and just scraped everything off with a chicken meal, well, I mean, you'd still get the hormones, but outside of that, you know, that's really not—

Well, and this is why the United States spends more on any, more than any country, yet we have the shortest lifespan and the most chronic disease. I mean, all you have to do is look at how we're feeding people in the place that should be a place of healing.

I know.

Yeah.

So my goal when I talk to people, because everybody wants to live longer, I mean, that's— you see that everywhere, but they, they don't look at the quality. And I always tell people we should be trying to add years to our life, or I mean life to our year, you know, our years, you know, not years to our life. And people don't understand, well, we have this lifespan, but yeah, but how are you living it? How do you feel?

Mm-hmm.

So, I guess my question to you guys is, if we're looking to enhance quality of life as we age, now cellular health, I think would be one of the obvious, right? So I, I think that that would be the number one thing to address. But let's look past cellular health. I look at markers like, you know, more obscure things too. I, I'd like to look at that too, like NAD levels. I started to really study the past year and a half on the importance of, of that, and that's a whole nother topic on flooding people with IVs that we could get into. But I'm just looking at markers right now. What are some other things that as we age that we should kind of look At, man, maybe we should address this. Maybe we should focus on this.

As far as longevity is concerned?

Yeah.

Well, I think one of the hallmarks of aging that science recognizes that we talk about at length in the book is gut health. I mean, microbiome balance and the ripple effect of that. I mean, when you look at the ripple effect of inflammation and oxidative stress and stress of the vagal tone and the impact that that has. So it's a gateway. way. Gut health is such a gateway to so many other pathways, a cascade or ripple effect. So I do think that it should be a bigger conversation in the longevity space, right? People can have, they'll be eating great foods. I see this all the time. We see this all the time is people that eat better than the average American, but they have really poor gut health. And that shows you, yes, food is a big part of it, but it's not just about food. I mean, it's about It's about our environment. It's about stress and trauma. It's a lot of different things that can impact microbiome health. So I think a deeper, more meaningful attention when needed to get the gut to a better place is profoundly important.

I've noticed when I really started to address this, the sleep has been a lot better. The feelings, I feel a lot more satiated, you know, and after I eat, I'm less hungry, honestly, too, which is, I'm kind of thrown aback with the training where I was like, I can't, but I, I can tell the health is better, right? And I started taking a spore-based probiotic, and that's another topic we could get into later. But there's a lot of different probiotics, and no one knows what they're taking, and they're throwing all these things at there. And, well, I'm taking a probiotic, or I'm taking an enzyme. And I, and I say, well, do you know what's in it? Do you know what it's doing? Because I used to be one of those people too. So, yeah. What about you? What, what do you think, Josh, on some other things about longevity that you would recommend?

I think exercise is incredibly important. I met with a patient yesterday, and this is the group of people I think have the hardest time with it. It's probably women in their 50s and 60s and 70s. But I mean, the fastest way you can increase mitochondria is through weight training. I mean, it's not even close. I mean, because you have so much mitochondria in your muscle.

Yeah.

Outside of your brain and Your heart, your muscle, I mean, that's where you're the most mitochondrial dense. And so, yeah, I mean, anytime you can add on muscle mass, and then of course what that does to your metabolic health is incredible. So I think for longevity, being able— now here's the thing I want to say. It's just when I was taught to work out when I was younger, it was all about just moving to put on muscle. But also now I add in the second part of don't hurt yourself. I mean, I had a back injury that was terrible, and part of the reason that led me to this infection was, well, okay, I injured my back doing CrossFit, which was really unwise. It's like, hey, let's do Olympic lifts for time. The more I think about it, the more, what was I thinking?

What a terrible idea.

That's a whole episode on its own.

Anyways.

Pick up heavy things with good form.

Yeah. That's the thing. So now when I exercise, I mean, I was a personal trainer and I know a lot about health and fitness, but I still have a personal trainer. I see at least once a week just to watch me do things to make sure I'm doing them properly. And I found that to be incredibly helpful. So yeah, I think for most people, weight training and then just walking, weight training and walking.

Yeah. Zone 2. There's a lot of great exercise or research around zone 2.

Yeah. So I think doing those 2 things together are massive for longevity and just being like, to your point, not just living a long time, but being active. I want to be active with my grandkids in my 80s and beyond that. So I think that's— I'm blessed. I've got my mom, I think is 74 now. My dad's 76. And I just went with them 2 weeks ago. We were at a lake house in Tennessee and my mom water skied, slalom back and forth, crushed it. My dad went trick. Now people don't do this anymore. Everybody switched to wakeboarding, but there used to be something called trick skiing. So he literally had the rope around his foot and was doing like 360s at 76. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So my, they're both incredibly healthy and a big part of it is they've decided every morning when they wake up, they go for about a 45-minute walk. My dad still lifts weights. My mom sometimes, like she's off or on, I'm trying to, you know, she's more like she'll do 1 or 2 days a week. Yeah. Um, but, but that's part of the reason why they're still so active and healthy in their, in their 70s.

Yeah. And that's, I think a good point here is that people maybe that are listening this or watching to the, watching this in their 20s, 30s, Maybe even 40s, they're not thinking about longevity. But what you are going through in your 70s, like how you are in the 70s begins in your 20s. Like you are investing in your rest of your life now.

Anyone over 40 will absolutely agree with me on this. That time you sprained your ankle in high school playing soccer or basketball, you'll feel it in your 40s.

Yeah.

You know what I'm saying? I mean, those— because that's the area where where the cartilage, the tendons, the ligaments were inflamed or partially torn that were never fully repaired. And you'll feel that. So doing everything, and this is why also honestly, if I have any minor injury now, I take peptides, I'll do stem cell, I'll do PRP, I'll do shockwave. I mean, I'll do whatever therapy I can because I know I'm going to do something right now to prevent me feeling this in 10 years.

Yes. I want to make a couple points on some things you guys said. So the First one, my wife, and I've had this conversation with her, I don't know how many times, she comes to me like 3 days ago. And I tried to be patient because I've already explained this to her. She's like 98 pounds. And she's— we talked about strength training. I want to be toned, but I don't want to gain too much size. And I said, babe, listen to me. If you knew what it takes to hold 2 pounds of lean muscle in a year, I said, you need to double your caloric intake. Your weights would have to go bigger than mine right now for you to gain any weight. And I say this for women that are scared that they're If you understand what it would take for you to get big, for the— just the food consumption alone, and I'm not just talking protein, I'm talking calories that you're gonna have to take in to allow you to grow, especially as you age, just— and the supplements or performance enhancers you're gonna have to take too, because it— especially as you get older, it's harder to put muscle mass on.

Well, let me say this too. Any women— first off, women shouldn't be concerned about that at all.

No.

But even if they are, they're probably doing the right— wrong exercises. I mean, if you're doing a lot of biceps and triceps, which you really don't need to do. Maybe that's your arms you're most concerned about, but most women should be doing their butt, their hamstrings, so posterior chain or general legs, and then shoulders, back, and core with compound movements. Yeah. And if you do those right exercises, you're only going to have more of a V-look. You're not going to end up looking big no matter what.

No, it's just not going to happen. And like you said, training the butt. And then, You know, women carry back here, you know, they carry a little bit of extra back here, even when they're thin. You can do like high, high reps and low weights to get toned. You know, I, I got torn up. I went on this podcast because I really, I started to do a lot more focus on women that are in menopause and trying to help and understand and comprehend as my wife started to go through things. And then I realized, I am not compassionate in understanding what women are going through at this age. So I really dug in here.

Yeah.

And I got on a big podcast that was addressing women in menopause, and I was telling them, you have to lift smarter, not harder, as you age. Just like you said, the injuries. And I had this woman telling me, oh, you don't— lifting baby weights and you're not going to gain anything. And I said, well, first of all, I didn't say lifting baby weights. And second of all, if you're injured every other week, you're not making any progress. So you got to prioritize the rest, like we said, but lifting smart. We're not getting younger. Injuries accumulate, and it's easier to get hurt as you get older. You guys know that.

Yeah.

Especially after we've had injuries, like you said. So I, I implore people, don't Don't go into the gym, A, worried about anybody saying anything about how much you lift. That makes no difference whatsoever. You're not getting paid, and even if you were, sacrifice it because you don't want to get injured. And 2, train for your health. That's it. You know what I mean? Train for your health.

Yeah.

When I feel like I looked my best, 8 abs and just, just ripped to the gills, 4% body fat, I felt my worst. I was the most miserable I've ever been. You can look phenomenal, and I mean phenomenal, with no drugs, no steroids, no, no any performance enhancements by just eating right, training good, sleeping good. That's it. That's it. So I just wanted to make that point. Now, I want to do a little bit of diet questions with you guys, especially because this has been— it's getting so polarizing now, the angry diet advice that I see where people just get so pissed off if you don't follow keto 7 days a week, or you don't follow carnivore, if you hate vegans, or what— I mean, it's just, it's like everything that people people say. Here's where I'm at. I've been studying nutrition since I was 11 years old, and I've been through— we talked about this— the fear of fats and all these misguided information. My care is metabolic flexibility, which depends thoroughly on your age, your activity level, conditions that you might have. I am one of those that find keto to be a tool, carnivore to be a tool, vegan to be a tool, but not a lifestyle. A lifestyle is being flexible metabolically.

Mm-hmm.

And being metabolically flexible means you might have a high carb day, one day. It's good carbs, it's healthy carbs. You might have a really high protein day. I try to prioritize fats, but I don't go crazy. I wanna know you guys' views on these hardcore 7-day-a-week keto, 7-day-a-week vegan, like these hardcore extreme diets, 'cause I find the restriction actually causes you more problems down the road. But I wanna know from you guys.

Hey, have you seen the SNL skit where it was like a Maha SNL skit and where, oh my God, you guys gotta watch this. It is hilarious. And so they have this— Jordan Rubin texted it to me right when it came out and I watched it. But there's somebody laying in a hospital bed and they're laying down just asleep and they say something to the like of, oh, he's a vegan. He goes, oh, pull the plug. So here's my opinion on this. And Will likes to use this term and it's a great term. It's bio-individuality. I mean, it's a term that really correlates with personalized medicine. And I think some people need to be on a keto diet. Maybe it's 3% of people. I don't know. I don't know the exact number. I had a cousin who was diagnosed with glioblastoma, and the literature is incredibly strong in the favor of following a ketogenic diet for life. So there's an example of that.

Yeah.

But I don't think most people should be following a ketogenic diet. I don't think most people should be following a carnivore diet. I don't think most people should be following a vegan diet. I think we're omnivores. I think there's— in the Bible, you see we ate plants. And then in Genesis 9:3 or 6:3, God says, hey, you can eat the things that creep and crawl on the ground. And then we have the food laws with Moses. And then later on, we see Paul to the Corinthians church saying, whether you eat, drink, or whatever you do, do all for the glory of God.

Yeah.

So there's a sort of progression in the Bible too, of in of what we see dietarily. But overall, I think everybody is an individual. I'll share this. I don't do well with high fat. I don't even do well with probably high moderate. I do okay with moderate to low moderate. I do well with a tablespoon of olive oil, tablespoon of coconut oil, filet mignon or whatever it is that's good fats in small to moderate amounts, I do good with.

Yeah.

Part of the reason is, is that this is from Chinese medicine. When I deal with stress, I deal with it my liver. And so my liver is the most stressed organ I have because the emotions I tend to deal with are frustration. That's all liver.

Yeah.

So different organs have to deal with different macronutrients. I mean, the liver deals with almost everything, but I mean, it's definitely dealing with a lot of fat and the gallbladder, whereas your stomach is probably having to do a little bit more with hydrochloric acid and breaking down certain things like protein. So a lot of it has to do with, again, but my whole point here is it all comes down to the individual, what your macronutrients should be.

Yeah. And even within these camps, there's so many different ways to do it, right? I mean, there's so much ways to do the ketogenic diet. Is it, are you eating just, you know, anything because it's a hashtag keto and just it's low carb? Like you were talking about the bodybuilders downing alcohol, like cocaine is keto. It doesn't make it healthy. So it's like, are you doing it in a nutrient-dense way, or are you doing it in an inflammatory way?

Yeah.

Just because it's high fat, low carb. So I just think the context around these conversations matter, the context of how you're doing it. And then who are we, who are we talking about? And then like you said, is it a tool or is it a lifestyle? Is it used for a period of time? And what served you in this season of your life, you may not always need to do. Yeah. Especially if you're building, improving metabolic flexibility, lowering inflammation, improving gut health. Yeah, maybe like diversity, variety, flexibility is the goal for most people.

Yes. I get these people, they get so And they get so mad if you don't follow their diet. I'm like, brother, do whatever you want. This is one size fits none. I tried to do low carb and I train. So I do 90-some minutes of cardio a day and then I lift another hour or 2. I try to do low carb and I'm a mess. And, and part of the problem is I'll start to have heart palpitations because I can't hold electrolytes because even when I take them in, my body without the carbs is like draining them out. And I kept saying, why can't I absorb? Because I'm eating like next to no carbs. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't work for everybody. I'm, I'm certainly not anti-carb. Now, I don't like high carbs, and I come to find out that I eat high fat and I just thrive on it. I starve myself on carbs.

And I'd be interested to see, like, if you were— maybe you've done this because you're in the space, like measuring your ketones. You, because of your metabolic flexibility, you may have been in a sort of low to moderate carb and still be producing small amounts of ketones.

Yes, I am. Absolutely. And that's, and that's what, like what you said, knowing your body. I mean, I didn't eat fats for 15 years, man, and I was a mess. And then when I started doing it, it's like, you know.

Well, I can tell you this clinically. I mean, every, everybody that, for the most part that I, that I personally work with, I mean, I'm very much di— I, I don't think when I personally work with somebody, almost every time their diet's different. I mean, it's very different. Or at the very least, somebody is put in a very specific category that's typically proven to help that, that sort of diet. So Hashimoto's thyroiditis, that diet is completely different or might be very different than somebody with cancer, irritable bowel disease, cardiovascular disease. I mean, a lot of times it's very different foods. Because the way that I like to put together eating plans is not just, hey, this is healthy for you. It's, no, what is the single best food for you? So if somebody has heart disease, what is the single best fruit for somebody with heart disease? It's probably going to be— I mean, I could argue pomegranates because of mitochondrial health for that.

Yes.

It could be apples, it could be blueberries, but I'm going to put in there, these are the fruits that are best for this very specific condition. These are the proteins. These are the, you know, the other forms of carbohydrates or the vegetables. So that's the way that I like to build out eating plans. I know Dr. Will does it very similarly as well.

And what we're able to do with our work with the Health Institute is create that bio-individuality of knowing the nuance and context of, and books are great. Like we, we wrote this book, we're really proud of it. And even there, there's multiple based on their, what organs aging faster, they have a different prescription. There's so much bio-individuality. But that's— there's limitations with a book, right? We could put— yes, we put multiple tracks in there based on their score. There's an assessment to see what organ's aging faster that we adapted from questions we ask patients. But the whole point, what I'm trying to say is, on a clinical level, we can get a lot more granular. And like, their clinical case is their book, their own personal book.

Yes.

Instead of this dogma where you're saying these tribes, it's like, okay, what loves my body back in this season of my life and not compare yourself to other people, which, you know, people in our space, I mean, we probably stress people out sometimes too. And so it's important for us to be careful with our words and being mindful of like, yes, all this is good education, but just because you hear about it on a podcast or read it in a book doesn't mean that you have to do all the things.

I'm trying to work on that myself. And I've been stressing to people like, look, there's some people that I love. I call them like really close friends, but I don't agree with some of this stuff, like scaring people. If you guys ever look in the comments See, I, I look in the comments not to see what somebody says about me. It's like, what's going on? Like, what's, what's going on? It's always confusion. People going, well, what can I even do? What can I even do? We're creating a bigger problem. Yeah, we're literally creating stress when we do that. Yeah.

You know, and part of it is messaging. You're absolutely right. That's a big part of it is. And but the other part of it is we need— I, my hope is, is that these longer-form conversations can provide nuance and context and people should have discernment. And I think that's part of the problem too, is as a consumer. We just are so bred and trained to like be spoon-fed and be told what to do. That's not like— a podcast is not the same as a doctor's visit. Like, just you have to understand that. Yeah. And be like, okay, to have discernment on what to do and what not to do.

Yes, you have to. Like, everything in life's a little bit of trial and error, right? Because we just don't know what— you know, I can sit here and you guys can do the same, and what we've seen work, there's always going to be an outlier. There's always going to be somebody that's going to leave a comment or something. Well, this didn't for me, then we got to be aware of that. And that's why we have to like highlight that everybody's different. It's one size fits none technically.

Yeah.

But, but saying that, what I want to talk about is there are certain foods or certain things that are just going to cause problems, right? So I want to talk about seed oils now because all 3 of us have a passion about it. I just, I literally like last week finalized and signed a contract with the, the Seed Oil Free Alliance, which they do seed oil certifications now. to endorse this is seed oil-free, like the hardcore testing. So, I mean, it's a— that to me, I always say, if somebody says they don't care about money, run, because that's all they care about. This is more of a passion project for me because of how I feel. And I feel that this is something that is really getting abused. On both sides, really, because people are lying. They're just flat-ass lying. And whether it's, that's what they're being fed, or they know what they're doing about how dangerous they are. And then there's people that go way overboard board that just act like they will murder you at the same token. Now, I obviously find a lot of wrong there. I wouldn't have joined this alliance. But I do want to— I want you guys to shed light factually down the middle on what you've seen, what you've encountered, and what's true and what's false.

I mean, I guess I can start here. So, you know, my, my opinion is this. I think that— gosh, this is going to sound terrible. I, I, you know, some of the— no, say it. Let me say this. I think there are going to be people on both sides that agree with me. I think it really does come down to, and I'm looking at this from a Chinese medicine perspective, I think for some people that sometimes certain types of saturated fats are going to be worse for them than seed oils and vice versa. In Chinese medicine, when you have something that's solid at room temperature in that fat, it tends to move slower through the body. That's the belief and thought. So I think certain people that are prone to cardiovascular disease, I mean, that's the main thing I'm talking about when I'm saying this.

Yeah.

I think that over-consuming butter, over-consuming animal fats is not ideal. Okay? And I think that might be just as bad for them or worse than certain types of seed oils. Now, I also want to say this. I do think that when you have the people that are living and dying by the double-blind placebo studies, they're just missing a lot. Because even when you're looking at a meta-analysis that's brought together numerous studies and you're comparing over time, because what they're doing, by the way, if you just looked at it that way, seed oils are going to outperform. I mean, just being honest, when you just look at the studies, they're probably outperforming saturated fats. But one of the things that's happening is a lot of the studies are counting olive oil with seed oils. The other thing is those people that tend to do olive oil or do seed oils, they tend to be historically, they've been a lot more physically active. I think that's throwing off studies. And I also think when they're talking about the saturated fats? Are they talking about the saturated fat from conventional meat? Yeah, that you're— that they're making at, I don't know, Burger King and McDonald's and all these fast food restaurants.

And most of these studies too are epidemiological as well. So it's like causation and correlation are different too. It's like the people that tend to— anyway, sorry for interrupting.

No, no, no, no, you're— no, but that is a massive point and you're 100% right there. So the reality is it's like nobody knows. Yeah, like nobody knows for certain. Here's the thing, here's where I just try and cut a bunch of things. Just do olive oil all the time. I absolutely guarantee you.

It's like the United Nations of fats. I feel like most people will get behind it. Like, you know what I mean? There's tribes for everything, but olive oil is like this utopian kumbaya moment where whether you're vegan or maybe— do carnivore people hate olive oil?

I don't know.

What do they think?

You know, I will— I can't keep up there, man.

I will say this, they don't probably do much of it, but I don't think they hate it. I'll actually say this, generally I recommend fruit oils. And that's what they are. I mean, if you think about it, avocado is a fruit, olives are a fruit. Now, people would push back on this one, but I like coconut oil too. I mean, in terms of you're comparing it to every other saturated fat, it's the one that impacts cardiovascular—

Because of the medium-chain triglycerides.

The least. But yeah, extra virgin olive oil absolutely is by far the healthiest oil most people can consume.

And the bitter, the better when it comes to the polyphenol, like the xenohormetic The stress that that sweet plant went through, living in this arid desert under the heat with insects, the cells of that plant gets transferred to us. I agree with you.

And to your point, I think if somebody has a liver and gallbladder that are just working really well, I think they can tolerate and do a good amount of butter and tallow and just do fine with it.

Yeah.

Absolutely. One thing that was interesting is this is something actually Gabriel Lyons brought up, and I don't know So I understand her philosophy on it, and I think she's probably correct, but she said she thinks that you can do a higher-fat diet as long as you're— and not have risk of cardiovascular disease, or I'm summarizing part of what she was saying, and do things like butter and tallow as long as the caloric intake stays low or below a certain level.

Mm-hmm.

But if you're doing a lot of saturated fat from animals and a lot of carbs and a lot of other— and a high-caloric intake, that's where the risk really tips off and goes up dramatically at increasing your risk of a cardiovascular event. I agree with that.

And the science, the literature talks about this mixed meal phenomenon too, where it's like, is it, was it the, back to the epidemiological side of it, is it the saturated fat or is it the American meat, like the bun and the burger and the fries? And then we blame the saturated fat.

Yes.

Whereas like this compounded effect of high carb plus high fat, yeah, that can be an inflammation bomb.

Yeah, for sure.

Well, I can— here, I can tell you this through blood markers on myself, and I can, I can show you this on how they've changed since I started eating like higher fat, but calories are still on the lower end. So here's how I base my diet. It's kind of like a 40-40-20. So it's like 40% fats, sometimes like 42, 43, and then protein and then carbs. And I have monitored— I do blood panels every 3 to 4 months generally now at this point, because knowing what I found out about some plaque in my arteries and Lp. And my Lp started at 330. It's gone down into the 90s, which I told was impossible.

Wow.

Um, and I do—

It was in the what?

It was 330 when I first found it, and now it's—

That's very—

Normally between 100 and 95.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, and pomegranate juice is one of the things that I do have daily.

Yeah.

Every day. That was brought to my attention that that could reverse plaque. I'm getting a Cleerly scan in the next 2 weeks too, so we're going to get a real strong indication. So generally speaking, and I just started to implement chicken again finally I don't know how many years of being like against it. So I do 2 days of salmon, um, avocado every single day, 4 whole eggs 3 days a week, and then some animal fat. So 85 or 93 beef, occasionally 80s, but I do elk, bison, venison, mix them in. I'm doing about 100 grams of fat a day, 220, 230 protein, and hopefully 100 carbs. markers, aside from my LDL and my ApoB went up slightly. Everything else, particle sizes down, liver down, everything that was high down, they all came down. Granted, your LDL is going to go up when you have that kind of diet. Grass-fed butter I have every day, but not mounds of it. And, you know, I'm just cooking it now.

The quality improved.

Everything. But everything that I have is pasture-raised, grass-fed, 100%, not grass-finished. I mean, I mean, I am, dude, I travel with a scale. Like, I'm Mr. Weigh Everything, like you were saying, and everything is pinpoint. My life is lived around regiment and precision.

Mm-hmm.

So, I monitor everything and I know every single number in my head. I have a photographic memory. So, I know what I see on myself, but I don't want to say that for others because other people aren't on some of the medications I'm on or don't train like I do or don't have the same kind of background that I have from whatever I've inherited, and some of that I believe And some don't. But the point is, is everybody's different and you only know your own numbers. You can't monitor what everybody's doing. I was just talking to my wife about this. I said, how the hell do I know if somebody's at home doing exactly what they're telling me and eating exactly what they say?

Mm-hmm.

And like you guys said, how do I know what kind of beef that is? How do I know what else has been included in there? What kind of condiments they're using or whatever? I don't know. So some of these studies I take with a grain of salt. We need them, but I also, I care about being in the trenches and getting real-world experience. Like, we talked about this earlier about peptides, man. I want to know what all my clients are doing, what all the people in the forums I'm at are doing, and what their body response is.

Real-world data.

Yeah, I want real-world data to compare and contrast with the studies. And I can tell you, man, these people were 60 years old with this condition and had this so that I could get the outcome I wanted.

Oh, yeah. You know?

And that's like the devil's in the details. Same thing when you Google Be very careful when you get this AI response and you don't look at the source of where it's coming.

It's a really good point because anytime— and I use AI very often for creation.

Yeah.

And, I have to wrestle it. Like, for instance, I've been writing articles and having it pull certain things, but its view of peptides is very negative. Its view of— I mean, it's very conventional and some are worse than others. I mean, Grok is probably one of the most friendly towards natural medicine. I mean, Google to me, and probably Google is the most hostile, probably Gemini is one of the most hostile. Claude is not great. I can get it to where I want. ChatGPT's a little bit more friendly too. But yeah, generally a lot of these AI tools are very— what they're going to do is it's just like they're just going to go to WebMD and CDC and that World Health Organization.

Yeah.

I mean, that's where they're going to go to It's not well-versed to pull a lot of their— so I have to go and tell it, I want you to go and pull more functional medicine-minded, these journals. And I actually have to tell it what to do. And I get like a research assistant.

Yeah, it's crazy. I just urge people when you do a search, look at the sources. Yeah, it's easy to just read it.

Yeah. Backcheck it, consider the source.

100%.

Yeah.

All right. So what I want to do now with you guys is talk about like if you were stranded on an island or whatever, one of those questions, but you could only have 5 foods that you had to live on. Because, you know, you ask somebody this and it's like, oh, I'd want pizza and ice cream. Like, brother man, you wouldn't want to eat that every day. You know, only if you were stoned 7 days a week. So, what kind of foods would be your 5? This is what I'm living on. This is what I'm never going to get sick of.

So, this is off of nutrient density and survival or in Either one. Okay. So this has to be well-rounded.

Yeah.

You can go first if you want.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, let's say if I only had to pick one, it's salmon. I mean, that to me is probably going to be number one on my list. After that, probably coconut. I would have that. And this is for myself. I could eat those things a lot. I would probably pick some type of fruit or carbohydrate. I would think it would be Probably blueberries.

Yeah.

And then I might do— I would either do olives or avocado, and then I might do a sweet potato, something like that. Now, the only other thing I am thinking of is that maybe I would want another source of protein. And so maybe I'm trying to think of iron levels right now. I might have a little bit of a challenge with what I just shared. So I'd probably swap one of those things out and add in a grass-fed burger, but that's what I would go with.

Okay.

Nice.

Yeah. I would do a grass-fed burger for sure. I would do— it's like, okay, so we're saying 5, grass-fed burger. I would say Salmon. That's funny. I, I'm not trying to cheat off of you.

That's all right. Great minds think alike.

I would say salmon. I maybe avocado. Did he say avocado?

Yeah.

Did you say avocado?

Yeah, I said avocado or olives.

Okay. I would say avocado. Yeah. Um, I would say berries for, and then I would say pizza, like a good sourdough pizza. Because look, if I'm like, you know what?

That's not like the Better what I did. I did sweet potato. That's so much better.

If I could have mint chip ice cream every day forever, man, I would do it.

Is that your ice cream of choice?

Oh, it is. It is. It is, man. I swear to you. I've always been since I was little. But it's got to be— I am like a connoisseur of mint chip ice cream. And it's Baskin-Robbins still to this day is my favorite.

Yeah. But interesting. Yeah. I need to check it out.

I don't know why.

That's my mother-in-law's favorite. It's the best.

I have to be in the mood. Really? I'm a peanut butter guy. So I would do like vanilla with peanut butter.

Oh, that's hard to beat.

We're gonna go into our, like, after I do round off my 5, I want to get into our, like, if we could just cheat with 5, what they would be our favorites. So, you know what's funny is most of my list is stuff that I hated until like 2 years ago. I wouldn't touch aside from my number 1, because if I had to eat something and survive on it every day, it would be eggs. Like, I—

Oh, that's a great one.

I would never, never get sick of it. And nutrient-wise, like, I knew I'd be healthy. Yeah, you know? Yeah. So that's my number 1. But then we start getting into these other And I'm like, I wouldn't touch an avocado. I can't live without it. I travel with them because, you know, if you go to the store and try to buy them in town, they're not really ripe. And it's hard. So my wife has them ready for me prepared. I will not leave the house without them. I will not go a day without those. So those would be 2 for me. I eat a lot of vegetables, like a lot. So I would probably like, I'm a zucchini, mushroom, and peppers guy. So if I don't know if I could combine all 3 or not, if that would be okay. Um, but it's your rules. It's my rules. I'm just gonna say my veggies, right? My veggie plate would be 3 I agree. I love salmon, which is another thing I wouldn't touch. I just get scared about eating it every day unless I know it's like how perfectly caught it is and everything. And like with the mercury side of things. But if I could eat it every day, which I used to till I had a high mercury result, I would, 'cause it's the best. Now I like king salmon or sockeye myself, but that would be it. And then it was certainly the— if I can't do salmon, it would have to be berries.

Hmm.

Blueberries are my favorites and blackberries.

Yeah.

And I do that in Greek yogurt. every day. And then the beef, you have to do grass-fed beef. I think you could easily have that every single day. So, let's get into the guilty pleasures, the cheat foods. If you pick 3.

Okay.

Well, yeah, because 5 is kind of a lot. So, give me your 3, what they would be.

I mean, I'd probably just a classic like cast iron chocolate chip cookie. I mean, I make my own that are probably healthy, a healthier version, but I would do something like that. I'd probably top that off with vanilla ice cream and then just some, just dark, just straight dark chocolate. Yeah. Okay. With some salt on it.

Yeah. Mine probably would be pizza, which I put on my top, which shows you how good I am. I put it in my survival list, but I would look, this is the truth is that there are better for you versions for all of these things. Like, I'm not going to go to Domino's, no offense Domino's. I'm just not going to do that. But you don't need to, like you can get an amazing, good quality, organic sourdough pizza, gluten-free if you're gluten-free. Anyways, I would do sourdough pizza. I would do peanut butter, which I would put on that list because it's not really nutrient-dense, but it tastes so good.

I agree.

And then third, man, do you remember this? I'm going to put this on the list because I haven't— I forget the name. It was like called Nutter Butter or Nutty Buddy. It was like a peanut-shaped wafer cookie thing.

Yeah, of course.

I haven't had it since the '90s, so I need to like find But I would— that would be on my list. Or you know what? I was in the gas station. I was driving my son down here. He goes to college down here. And it was the white powdered donuts.

Oh, man.

I'm like, man, I haven't had that since 1997. And I thought, what if I bought this? I didn't buy it, but I did.

Well, if I knew that it wouldn't hurt my health, then like, I would be okay to have this. I would get a cheese pizza with extra grease, my friend, because I just— how good it is. If I knew like, Okay, I'm going into this where it's not going to hurt me. So, it would be the mint chip ice cream, the pizza for sure. I either get plain cheese pizza or I've always been a green pepper and mushroom guy or roasted peppers, whatever. So, those 2 things for sure. And then, it's like, okay, because the peanut butter is— and I like walnut butter. I don't know if you guys ever had that.

No, I've never had it.

But, I consider that more of a health side than a cheat side. So, I would I would say I'm Italian. I grew up like around it all the time. So, like, just continuous pasta every day would be my other one. I don't even touch it anymore. My mom always says, do you want me to make it? I'm like, no, I don't. Inside, yes, I do, but no, I don't. So, those would be mine. Okay. So, I want to bring this up. We go in extremes, like we said.

Yeah.

Now, right now, it's the protein Extreme. Every single thing has to be protein. And I've always been a guy coming from the bodybuilding world where if I got a guy I'm training hard that needs to gain size, we'll do the 1.5 grams of protein to pound of body weight. I don't love to get on this, oh, you got to have per pound of body weight, but what are you guys' feelings on how extreme it's getting? What's too much? What's too little? Because I've seen some crazy people. I Okay, crazy thoughts about eating too little. I don't want to say crazy people, sorry, but like really low, which I find to be detrimental long-term. But I think too high is also detrimental. So what are your thoughts? And then also, what are your thoughts on the ability to actually process like 70 grams of protein in a meal? Is that getting turned into sugar like some people say, or what? Give me some facts on this.

Yeah, I think— look, I think from a public health standpoint, I actually think it's great what the HHS did recently with highlighting it and increasing it slightly.

Yeah.

Uh, the requirements, because yes, it's— we're not talking about malnourishment, but are we thriving? And I think most Americans aren't getting enough high quality, but it's the American way. Maybe it's the human way. If we like to overcorrect, so it's like I'm annoyed at myself right now to have to talk about protein right now because this is— people are inundated on social media all the time, and it's just like trends will And go. It's having its sort of zeitgeist moment, protein is. But the truth remains the same, whether the world's paying attention or not. We need to focus on high-quality protein, but not overcorrect and become obsessive with it. The truth, as I said earlier, the truth is oftentimes somewhere in the middle.

Mm-hmm.

And with protein being around that 100 grams a day, depending on your weight, obviously it's going to fluctuate depending on your activity level, age, and goal— health goals, and the quality of the protein. matters. But we don't always want mTOR to be high all the time from a longevity standpoint. If you look at all the longevity research, there's going to be periods of time where you don't want that mechanistic target of rapamycin, that which is stimulated by protein, to be high all the time.

I agree.

From a cellular health standpoint. So yeah, I think that probably times of less, like you even, I think you said earlier in the conversation where it's like Yeah, maybe this meal's going to be less or this day's going to be less. There's flexibility there, or a time of protein sparing or times of fasting. You don't always want to be fasting. That's called starvation. So it's like, I think that to become maniacally obsessed with then getting the protein Pop-Tarts and the protein cold foam and the protein cereal, it's probably not needed.

Yeah.

Actually, it's not needed. Because that's not the goal of this. It's a marketing tool right now. And actually we were at—

I was— you weren't there, but I was at Expo West.

Were you there?

No, I wasn't.

In March. And I heard from a lot of the food companies that there's a protein shortage because all of these companies—

There is. Whey protein is shortage now. It's the price has gone up like the oil price right now. I mean, it's like the same thing.

Yeah. Because of this. Yeah. Like it's really largely like a marketing tool at this point.

They do this all the time. I remember 20 years ago they started putting omega-3s in everything. There's omega-3s 3 eggs. Then, there was a probiotic craze about 10 years ago. They started putting probiotics in everything. Then, collagen. Now, protein. I mean, fiber, of course, has been on and off for years. And so, it's— yeah. I mean—

It's big time.

Yeah.

You know what? I actually designed my own protein. There's a website. I don't work with them or nothing. It's called True Nutrition. And, I go in and— because I'm not a big fan of all whey protein. So, mine, I make the percentages. So, it's beef protein isolates about 55%. I do egg white protein. I do a little bit of bovine collagen. collagen, a little bit of MCT powder, and I make it that way. And I found the way that, like, my body responds to it— because I put it in coffee every day, and I don't drink protein shakes, but I utilize it in yogurt and everything— and I've noticed a different body response and digestion and everything through different formulations of it.

Yeah.

Because I, I find that to be a good source of, of added protein throughout the day. But don't become reliant upon it either, was my, was my point in saying that. I see a lot of people do that, and you can't Yeah. For, for real food sources of protein. So let me ask you guys this then. Fiber's another one. So I've run into some people that think you don't need fiber. I disagree with that thoroughly, but I— a lot of carnivore people especially say you don't need it at all. What are you— what are you guys' thoughts on that? Because I'm firmly against that. I believe we do— that we do need it. But, uh, you know, I'm curious.

Go ahead.

Well, yeah, I mean, my thought is this, is I think saying you don't need it, I think part of it comes down to what challenges, what pathogens, what things are you going to come up against in the future? Because I definitely think that there's— listen, there are quite a few studies that show your diversity is important. I think most of this conversation's probably around people that are on carnivore diet. Most of the people I know, they get on carnivore, they do it because they're sick and they have an immune issue.

Yeah.

Where their immune system's overreacting. reacting. And not even overreacting, it's just reacting because it's in this sort of— typically it's autoimmune or mold or some sort of thing where your immune system is on high alert constantly. And I do think if you're decreasing your total microbials, you're going to have less histamine, your body's going to have less reaction, less systemic inflammation. And so that's why they do it. But I do think that not having bowel movements, and I do think, or having very few, because if you're on carnivore, you're not going to have very many bowel movements. I do think it's a problem. I mean, I had a PhD on the show, James D. Nicolantonio.

Yeah, yeah.

And he brought this up and I thought this— he said, I have some research that says that if you stay on carnivore, your body's going to move into being too acidic. Now, I'm not talking about this. I remember this drove me crazy 25 years ago, the whole pH Alkalinity. But they can't, I mean, we're talking about the 1%. So you can move over into being too acidic and your body will start pulling minerals out of the bone that are more alkaline, like magnesium and calcium and other things to start to try and keep your pH in balance. That was his perspective. He said he had some evidence and research on that. I think that could be true. So listen, I don't think that for most people, being carnivore is a great diet long-term, or, and maybe your question was also there about And then fiber, if you're not getting fiber, again, the studies show that that's not ideal for most people. I mean, people that do more fiber tend to have better insulin levels, tend to have better microbial diversity. Those are, I guess those are the—

Yeah, I think that, yeah, I agree with you. You have to meet your gut. Like a big patient base that I've seen over the past 16 years are people with autoimmune and gut health issues. So I think sometimes that context is lost. You have to meet your gut where it's at. So yeah, you're telling someone someone that has a wrecked gut, an inflammatory autoimmune issue, maybe you can't have all the 30 grams of fiber that, that you're hearing that you need. So you have— maybe you may be low fiber for a while while you heal your gut and build low, slow titrate over time as you build resilience. And look, fiber is not the only way to build microbiome diversity though.

That's true.

I mean, you may— polyphenols, like really focus on the olive oil that we talked about earlier, or the berries, which has some fiber. But, um, I think that you want to should be bring more polyphenol-rich foods in, which may or may not have some fiber, but the polyphenols themselves build and promote bacterial diversity. So, but I agree, like, but you know what? It's so interesting. Who are the people that are saying this now? Because there's staunch, staunchest carnivore people I knew 6, 7 years ago, they eat more fruit than vegans do now. So there's a, I think people again, that just, I become, make it their personality to say, Like this, everybody, and this applies to everybody. Like, they don't— like, we see people as far as patients for all day long. So if I hung my hat on one way for everybody, I'd be proven wrong all day long. So you have to have an intellectual flexibility to bio-individuality because it's like, bro, you are just talking about yourself. Yeah. At this season of your life. Don't apply that to everybody.

That's exactly what happens. What happens is, and some of it's It's good intentions. It helped them.

Yeah.

So they feel like—

That's where they come from.

They feel like, oh, I did paleo, or I did vegan, or I did, and it helped me. That means everybody should do this thing to help me. But to your point with Paul Saladino, he's a really smart guy, and it helped him with some of his issues. I know a lot of people with mold, it helped them. But now, to your point, a lot of them now are, they add in fruit, and then honey, and then eggs, and then they add in vegetables. I mean, so they kind of keep going. Yeah, it's a tough one because really, you're typically— if you're healthy, you're going to be trying to get a lot of those foods in your diet.

That's just it. Things go in phases and stages, right?

Yeah.

And so, I'm always trying to be careful when I say, well, you should do this because I am. I like to break down, this is where I had problems, this is what I did to fix it, now here's where I'm at today, and this is what's working right now. But therein goes that term flexibility because we change as we age, body response changes.

The microbiome changes.

Exactly. Conditions change. The exposures we have to things change.

That's right.

You know, and you have to, you have to be able to pivot and accommodate and be ready to do that.

And stress levels change too. Like, is it the food or is it your mental state and spiritual state when you eat the food?

That's it.

Back to that vagal tone that we talked about earlier.

Yeah. So if you guys could leave everybody with one thing today of importance that you really want to stress right now, and I know there's a lot that we would all like to wrap around here, but what's one thing each of you would like to leave with people from what we discussed today and Yeah.

Well, I'll just say that I think it's important to know that God designed you uniquely. There's no one else in the world like you. And so you need to be eating foods that are right for you, supplements that are right for you. I mean, have something that's tailored, that's ideal for you to follow, for you to reach your optimal level of health.

Mm-hmm.

And that's one thing we try to do in Heal Yourselves is we really lay out how to reverse the irreversible, how to heal anything. We go through protocol. People can take a quiz in there. and find out which organ might be aging faster, what protocol they need to follow. And we have a protocol in there that people can follow. But I think that personalized medicine is the future, and that's where people see the biggest results.

Yeah. I would say your body's amazingly resilient, but you have to do something different to see something different. A big percentage, my intention for this book as it comes out into the world is that the people that are medically gaslit, people that are told they're crazy. There's nothing wrong with you, that they know intuitively something's off. Not to become a hypochondriac and look for problems where there aren't problems, but you know your body. And we really wrote this book for those people, those people that have what the world may call mystery illnesses, or the people that just know they're not feeling their best.

Yeah.

They know this isn't just age or just stress or whatever it is. They know something off here. And the science is pointing to this, but there's such a gap between what's in the scientific literature and then it trickling down to conversations that people are having with their doctor. It may never happen because it's a training within the paradigm. Then they're trained to diagnose a disease and match it with the pharmaceutical drug. So we are having conversations that probably they've never had before ever with their doctor. We got to have in the book. So I'm excited for people to read it.

I love it. I would just like to say, set yourself a foundation. I'm a God-first foundational person, and I believe that that will set the stage for your healing and your growth as a person and who you can become for yourself and then for everybody else around you. And I, I just want to say this too, when you become more selfless and not selfish and you take care of yourself, then you're taking care of your loved ones around you. You can be your best You and you prioritize people and your resilience as a person and who you were meant to be, that's living. That's what it's all about. It's not about you. It's about what you do for the people around you. And that makes you the healthiest and the happiest and the best you can be for everybody around you. So I just want to say this, what an honor and joy and pleasure it is to sit here with you guys. I mean, it really is to I was sitting last night and I was going, wow, I can't believe that I'm gonna get to sit with 2 people like so esteemed and so amazing and brilliant, and I get to just be a part of that and be here with you guys. It means a lot to me. I know God brought us together here for messaging, but what you guys do, not just this book, which is amazing, all of these years of sacrifice that you've given and the way that you've conveyed message that you've been abused, You've taken shots from people and you just, it makes you go harder. I love that about you guys. And to be able to sit here and do this and share it with you, like, this is why I live. And so, I just, beyond the thank you for that, it's just gratitude to be here with you and to share this. And I really hope everybody listening just really takes into what you guys do and teach because it's amazing.

Thanks, man.

Thanks so much. Appreciate it.

So, you're saying not everybody likes us?

Is that what you're saying? I think that the 3 of us are not for everybody. Yeah. We're not for everybody, but I think we are for a lot. So, that's going to wrap it up today, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. I hope this hits home. And just remember, prioritize your health first, live that long and healthy life. Cellular Health, God first, and we love you.