My Health Scare: Why This Blood Test Forced Me To Reset My Vision w/ Dr. Anthony Balduzzi

The foundational optimizations for most entrepreneurs out there are going to be around diet and the sleep restoration rituals. 100% diet can be one of your best friends in helping buffer your body's capacity to deal with stress. And then, you know, really addressing having a mindfulness practice, getting enough sleep, you know, all the centers around healthy outlets to deal with stress. And we know if we're on the spectrum, like deep down, it can sometimes be really helpful to work with somebody who really knows their stuff to be able to kind of wiggle in, deep dive and give you a custom solution. Because often, as you probably know personally, like, information is not the answer, it's the implementation of that info. So.

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Foreigners, this is Ryan, and today we're going to do something a little bit different here on the podcast. Recently I had a humbling moment where I got some results back from my doctor, from a blood test that I had. And I was not pleased with the results. In fact, I was actually pretty scared by the results. Now, I have recently just exited a company. I just had the, you know, the biggest payday of my life, which is awesome. But I'm still building capitalism.com and I am still a dad of a 2 year old and I'm still working out a lot and I still feel like, you know, I wish I had more free time. And I probably have been hustling a bit too hard for too long. And my blood test reflected that. My blood test essentially said that I was overworked, overstressed, and it was affecting all kinds of my hormones. It was affecting, well, it was affecting really everything. It was affecting my metabolism, it was affecting the way that I process food. It was affecting my sex hormones. It was affecting everything in my life. So as a result, I saw these numbers and I decided that I needed to do something about this. And the first thing that I did was I talked to everyone that I thought could help on this. So I spoke with some biohackers and people who might have some opinion, but I also just wanted to get a really educated medical opinion. So while I was at Camp Maverick this, this past month, I met Dr. Anthony Balduzzi. And Anthony is, I would call him like the entrepreneur's doctor. And Anthony talks all about the ideal diet for entrepreneurs. He talks about how entrepreneurs are different beasts and how we need to think about our health. And he kind of kicked my butt in terms of where I'm neglecting my health in things like sleep and stress management and going and going all of the time. And I actually gave Anthony a copy of my blood test results and. And he went through them and he analyzed them alongside me. So you're gonna hear him dive a little bit into the numbers. And we go pretty deep into the woods in this episode. So if you're not a biohacker or you're not a nerd like me, some of this might go over your head. But what you will hear are the different things that even me, somebody who gets their greens every day, who works out every day, who cares about their health is. Is missing the mark because you miss something so major like stress and sleep. This was kind of a wake up call for me, and it was one that I thought was necessary for me to open up about, because although I'm a little bit embarrassed by some of the results, like my testosterone levels, I thought it was important for us to have an honest discussion about this, because in a world that talks about hustling and going and going all of the time, we miss the thing that is most important to us, which is our health and our happiness. Because if we lose that one, we have really lost everything. Anthony talks a little bit about that, how that's how he lost his dad. He lost his dad because his dad was productive, but he died very young because he neglected his health. And obviously that changes a lot of people's lives. And I don't want to have that same experience, especially now that I am a father. So. So Anthony believes in a lower carb, but mostly paleo diet and a little bit of a modified paleo diet. So that's kind of the foundation of what he believes in. And he is very well versed in biohacking and other areas to maximize performance. So he has a very well rounded view on. On health and longevity. And I really appreciated his insight while we sat down. One note. We were at camp during this interview, so there's some background noise. You'll hear some basketball being played, you'll hear a tractor. We were outside when we recorded this. So it's a little bit rustic, but if you are an entrepreneur who cares about living a long time and not just grinding throughout the rest of your life, I hope that my wake up call gives you a bit of a wake up call and you'll benefit a little bit by going into the weeds. And the numbers on my lab reports with Dr. Anthony Balduzzi.

Hey, everybody.

Welcome to Freedom Fast Lane.

This is Ryan, I'm joined. We're actually at Camp Maverick here in.

Where are we?

Kent, Connecticut, with Dr. Anthony Balduzzi. Anthony, what's up, man?

Hey, happy to be here.

So I pulled Anthony aside after hear.

Give a talk because you obviously specialize in health and longevity for entrepreneurs specifically, and we're a weird bunch, so we'll dive into that. But why don't you take a couple minutes and talk about your background and why the heck you specialize in health for entrepreneurs.

Yeah, I guess my foray into getting incredibly passionate about health came from, you know, some early experiences of watching my own dad get sick. And I just watched him work himself literally to the bone, you know, long hours and, you know, really trying to put food on the table for me, my mom, my little brother. In the process, his health slipped. And so it was a very formative thing for me growing up to watch dad, you know, essentially lose his health while trying to build a life for our family. And he passed away at 42. I was just 10 at the time. And it was.

And was he health? Like, was he healthy?

He was before business really started cranking up. So as he started to, you know, work longer hours, the health was the one thing in this juggling all these different balls that slipped. So, you know, it's almost like I watched a man who was my role model growing up drop one major ball, you know, being health, you know, taking care of finance, love for my mom. And so I really want to figure out, how can we balance all these different balls and have it all?

And if you drop that one, that one breaks, that one breaks, that breaks.

Everything, and you drop the other two balls. And I think that was the biggest thing is when dad got sick, he lost everything else. You know, he lost his ability to work, he lost his ability to spend time with me, my little brother, and my mom. So I really see health as not something that we should do, but as a necessity, a foundation of our performance, and something that every human. To really maximize this experience and the impact we want to have, needs to have nailed, because if we don't, we put everything else at risk.

So I thought I had this nailed. So I'm. I think I'm. I think we all think we're smarter than most people, right? But I think I know. I know more about health, fitness, longevity than most people, including most entrepreneurs. And I get it all. And I would say that I was willing, like, I can put in the work, but now I have a 2 year old, and it's all of a sudden I realize my own mortality. Like, I turned 30 this year. My daughter is 2, and I realized that I'm not going to be young forever. So I had this blood test done just as a baseline, and that spooked me, not because anything was wrong, but because I could see telltale signs of what could happen if I didn't make a change. So before we started recording, I pulled up my blood panel for you, and I asked you not to comment on this until we were recording. So give me. Give me the doctor's analysis of this. And I have my analysis, and I want to hear yours.

Yeah.

Like, what stands out to you?

I'm gonna run down the blood work, please, quickly, starting from the lipid panel. Looks fantastic. I mean, an 83 HDL, very cardio protective, you know, and any triglycerides under 70, under 100, really? 75 is a great range. LDL is great. Now, I must say that most blood work that people do have run these days are these traditional lipid panels. And this is good for some predictive heart disease stuff. But we're learning more about different subtypes of LDL cholesterol, which we've labeled as bad cholesterol, like oxidized LDL cholesterol and particle size, which you do not get on a standard blood test. So, point being, we know that, you know, cholesterol levels in themselves are not completely predictive of heart disease. And there are oxidized cholesterol fractions that we can look into deeper level blood work that can tell us a little bit more. So at first glance, with the blood work that you have, you know, lipid panel looks good. As we move down here, one thing that actually stood out to me is your liver enzymes. You know, we look in any blood work, you have both your values and you have, you know, a normal range and yours, even though, you know, usually the doctors will highlight or circle the thing that comes up in bold from the lab that's frankly out of range.

Yeah.

We also want to be looking at the things that are fringe, you know, that might be trending low, but not out of normal range. Trending high, not out of normal range. Your liver enzymes, you know, they're slightly elevated.

What does that mean?

Actually, I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to liver enzymes. Yes. Like, I know what to eat. I've gone keto. I've gone more traditional, healthy American diet, if you will. And we can go into, like, the ideal diets and stuff, but I don't know anything about liver enzymes.

Totally. So the liver is what people don't realize is one of your main metabolic organs. Like, it helps keep your blood sugar stable, it helps process fats. In fact, everything that we absorb through our GI tract. And I imagine we're going to talk a lot about gut health here today. First goes through the liver into circulate before it hits the whole bloodstream, it goes through liver's blood flow. Liver is a filter, but it's also a metabolic organ. AST and ALT are two key liver enzymes that are very predictive of inflammation in the liver. And so when we have people who have inflamed livers, whether they're taking tons of medications, whether they drink a lot of or something, you know, the liver is being taxed, we will see higher levels of AST in alt. And there's another enzyme, ggt, that we also look at, but we can essentially look at the ratios of AST and alt. And it's very predictive of certain kinds of conditions that are happening in the liver. Now, the liver is a beast of an organ. Like, you could cut.

It's the biggest internal organ, isn't it?

Yes. And you could cut like a third of your liver off and it'll regrow back. Like, this thing can take damage. That doesn't mean we should damage it because it's so precious. And it's really important when you see blood work, when you see things that are, like, trending up and that are pointing to some inflammation that. Hey, I would ask deeper questions, like, are we taking any medications that might be trending these enzymes up? Because oftentimes to enable medications to be active in our bodies, we need to methylate them and put certain compounds on these meds, and that can damage the liver. So yours are in range, but it's something to look at. I mean, they're on the upper level. We take this, like a day later, you're at 40. It's automatically bold. And now we have a liver problem.

Okay, so let me give you some context here. Well, first let me ask you, is there anything in my blood work that would point to why those would be elevated, about why I would have some issues? I eat a healthy diet. I drink wine once in a while, and that's it. Is there anything that leads you to. I have my theory, and it's something I haven't told you yet, but go ahead. If you have a. If anything else points to that.

Well, you know, I think typically when the liver is being overworked is when we're going to see elevations, those enzymes. So I would really look at your diet, because I think there's a lot of people that have healthy diets. And I'm not saying you don't, but, you know, environmental toxins, you know, toxins in foods, these kind of things can put more stress in the liver. But I mean, I'll continue. We're only on like the first page of like three page blood work.

Yeah.

So there is like a bigger picture here. I would also look at your glucose. I mean, fasting morning glucose, yours was 99. Now, normally in the morning, our blood sugar is naturally higher, cortisol is high. And what cortisol does is it raises blood sugar in the morning, gets us more awake, more alert. You know, again, this is an instance of something that didn't get flagged on blood work as a bold number, but it could have been, you know, one milligram per deciliter higher. And then your doctor been like, oh, man, you got to watch your glycemic regulation.

So for those of you who. Who are not looking at my blood work right now, which is everyone but Anthony and myself, I eat a fairly low carb diet. So in theory, except when I'm training, if I'm training, I work in a good amount of carbohydrates and I train, I'm definitely over trained, which we'll talk about. I sometimes work out twice a day and I'm lifting very heavy weights four to five days a week, which we'll get into. In my frustrations. There's but everything in my habits and in my brain would lead me to believe that my body is very efficient at running at carbohydrates. But my blood panel said that my fasting blood glucose was 99 and the normal range is 65 to 99. So I'm on the absolute fringe of normal, which in theory, I should be very efficient at carbohydrate metabolism on a.

Low carb diet, you know, exercising and doing weight training, which is one of the most insulin sensitizing forms exercise we can do. You know, we might expect you more in like the 80s.

Yeah.

So what we can.

I have diabetes in my family history, but so that could be a factor. But I still am surprised by that number.

Totally. Yeah. I mean, it's definitely. You asked me to look for things that are jumping out as, like, red flags. That would be one of them. One of the main things I would point to, you know, knowing a little bit about your schedule as well, is stress and running high, chronically high cortisol levels. That's something if we Take like a healthy, generally high performing male like you, we see a high morning fasting glucose. Cortisol is probably in play in raising that number. So, you know, there are other deeper tests that we could do to like dive deeper into that. One of them is what I asked you is an adrenal stress index, which is able to take cortisol and insulin samples and DHEA samples like throughout the day. So we can kind of chart how cortisol is going. But, you know, based on this glucose panel, like, if you wanted to go deeper into figuring out some things, a fasting insulin would be interesting to see. Like how high is your insulin really? I mean, if you're eating a low carb diet, it should be, you know, at the low range.

Right.

But regardless, from here, what we can tell just from looking at the 99, again, the upper, upper range is 99, is that your body is, you know, eating a low carb diet. In that context, your body is running high cortisol. We can probably make that assumption. And that's raising your blood glucose to a certain extent.

So what you're saying is that since I'm a hard charging entrepreneur who is probably overworked and overstressed, that stress could be affecting actually my body's ability to run on carbs and sugar.

Absolutely. So especially low sleep, if you're skipping sleep, that is the fastest way to really make your body resistant. Have just glycemic dysregulation, we'll use that fancy term.

Does that mean that stress and lack of sleep could actually be making me store more body fat?

Well, here's the thing, and I asked.

Because that is a bit of a sticking point for me. And also, if I'm storing more glucose, I just assume that means I'm probably storing more fat.

So the answer is absolutely yes. Can stress and lack of sleep have your body store more body fat? 100%, yes. And when glucose is chronically, you know, elevated and your body wants to be at a kind of a lower optimal fasting level of glucose, your pancreas is going to be working on overdrive to secrete more insulin. And what more insulin floating around will do it will, it will kind of temporarily shut off fat burning and it's kind of this cascade. So insulin is a storage hormone. So when insulin's released, when we eat carbohydrate, essentially, you know, your body's like, okay, we have an inflammatory blocks of nutrition. Let's get those carbs into fat cells, into muscle cells, like wherever they need to be. Anything with A glucose receptor that wants to take carbs, it's going to go there. When you have chronically elevated blood glucose, your pancreas is constantly sensing that, and you're going to be releasing, you know, higher levels of fasting insulin, which is going to lead to lower levels of fat burning. Does that kind of make sense?

Yeah, it does, it makes sense. So, like, once again, stress and cortisol is like, it's a huge topic, especially in my panels here.

Correct, Specifically in your panels. You know, knowing that you're stressed, knowing that you have a high blood glucose, we can just start there looking at that. Now we have some other things that can help us paint this general picture. Good thing is, you know, blood glucose alone doesn't tell us, you know, the whole picture. We have the HBA1C, which is one of those most essential numbers that essentially looks at the long term glycemic control. Essentially. That's.

I have no idea what you just said there.

Cool.

Honest with you.

No, that's great. This is why you gotta. We'll make sure you clear this up. So hemoglobin A1C, this is a number that doctors look at to see, are you diabetic? Are you pre diabetic? This number shows you your long term glucose control. Not just the 99 snapshot that we got this morning when you took this test, but how many red blood cells floating around how much hemoglobin has sugar attached to it. That's what this number says.

Okay.

So when you have high sugar chronically more of that hemoglobin is gonna have this sticky sugar on it. We can measure that. So this is a better predictor of like a 3 month, 4 month, 6 month, 8 month longer term glucose regulation. Hemoglobin is hemoglobin A1C.

Okay.

It's like that special, like glycated hemoglobin has sugar stuck to it. So that's, this is, this number for you is good.

So My number is 5.1. Ideal range is under 5.7. And you're saying that is, that's, that's a solid.

This is telling us that that 99 snapshot probably means that, hey, you know, you probably are running high cortisol, but over the long haul, this, this greater period of time, last quarter, last year, you're still doing okay.

Okay.

I would treat that 99 as like a warning flag to say, hey, Ryan, like, let's make some tweaks to like start bringing things back into balance. But the HBA1C is telling me we're still in okay shape. You know, we're still in good shape.

Cool. So in the. In the short term, there could be some hormonal issues that can be corrected. In the long term, it hasn't affected us yet, but could. If I didn't correct some underlying issues.

I would treat that high fasting glucose single reading as a warning flag.

Got it.

Not necessarily something we need to go all up in arms with.

So what we're looking at now is my thyroid levels. These freaked me out. These freaked you out because they're on, like, the very low end of normal.

Okay.

And what that means to me is that.

My metabolism, from what I know about thyroid hormones, that could point to my metabolism not operating where it should. Is that accurate?

Yes, totally. So just a little background on thyroid hormone to give people context. So your thyroid gland releases these metabolic hormones. Thyroid hormone T4 and T3 are what you're going to see on the blood work. And these essentially, you know, help maintain your metabolic rate. They get into tissues and increase metabolism and activity inside the tissue level. A lot of people who have trouble losing weight or feel like they're at a sticking point do sometimes have thyroid issues. Not all the time. Sometimes it is like, literally a diet. I'm eating too much stuff. But for you, a guy who's doing a lot of things right, and you feel like you're at a sticking point, you know, this is something to look at. So we have two numbers to work with here. We have a TSH, which is a thyroid stimulating hormone, and a T4, a free T4 level. And that's like unbound thyroid hormone, like this. T4 is a type of thyroid hormone. T4 is not the active thyroid hormone. T3 is. This was not measured on your blood work. So for everyone out there who wants to investigate thyroid health, what you'll really want is a TSH, a total T4, a free T4, and a free T3.

And I only have two of those on my blood work.

So now we're kind of playing a guessing game, because what if we had this blood work and we saw that you had a tsh, and we can talk about what that means in a second. But let's say you have this free T4. That is 1.1. And for those listening, the reference range is 0.8 to 1.8 nanograms per deciliter. So Ryan's, you know, on that low end of normal, you know, getting almost out of range. That is his free T4. What if we had his total T4 number and you were totally fine. What if he wasn't high? That would tell me, hey, we're producing enough thyroid hormone, but a lot of it's bound up, so the strategy would be totally different than if the thyroid is under producing. Does that make sense?

It does.

It makes me wonder why that's just not normally included in a blood panel. Like, why do I have to ask? Because I don't know what to ask or when I'm having a blood test.

That's a huge frustration with medicine. Right?

You know, I don't know. To say, make sure you give me total T4 hormone and not just the free T4 hormone. I don't know.

This is because this basic panel that they gave you a T4 and a TSH is basically the minimum amount of blood work necessary from a doctor's insurance level perspective to treat you for thyroid disorder. And the one they really care about is that tsh. That stands for thyroid stimulating hormone. What this is, is a measure. If this hormone is super high, that means that your brain is sending a ton of this hormone to your thyroid to say, wake the F up, get going, like, start kick starting things. So a lower TSH actually means that your thyroid is functioning fine, you know, at least based on this one snapshot. So when that hormone's super high, that means your brain is really trying to send a signal to your thyroid to say, kick it up a notch. When that number is low, it's typically being a feedback back from total T4. When T4 feeds back to TSH and tells it to, like, you're okay. So it's kind of like a loop. So TSH tells the thyroid to get going, and then if the T4, if there's enough T4 in the blood, that tells the brain to kind of stop producing tsa.

Sorry, my, my brain can only handle so many big words.

Understood.

So what, what I really want to know is, is, doctor, do these numbers mean anything? Do you have, did they point to anything indicative of what I should or should not focus on?

My, my full answer on this would be this is a totally incomplete thyroid panel. For us to make, like predictive stuff based on these numbers, we would need to see a total T4.

Okay.

And, and we know if it's a production issue or a binding issue based on seeing a low tsh, we can say that it's probably more of a binding issue. It's probably like a lot you're producing thyroid hormone, but it's bound up. And as we go down your blood work, when you're gonna see some other important things that you're producing, quote, unquote, enough of that are also bound up.

Got it.

Cool. So thyroid, we also see here that in a regular, you know, blood count that you have low platelets. Now platelets are a special kind of cell that floats around along with red blood cells and they're used for wound repair. And they also, you know, when this is low, this kind of indicates some. It could indicate some liver pathology. It could indicate a bleed. This is what doctors think when we see low platelets. Okay, is this person bleeding somewhere? Is that why, you know, we have lower platelets?

It sounds terrifying.

It sounds terrifying. But we look up here and we see that your red blood cells are totally fine, within range.

Yep.

So that's good. You know, we have to look at these numbers in concert with other numbers. But low platelet function can be totally indicative of, you know, stress can, can lower platelets. There is definitely genetic predisposition to running at different levels of this platelet range. Some people just tend to run a lot lower. Especially people who eat, you know, high fiber plant based diets typically have a lot lower platelets than other people.

So when I spoke to Ben Greenfield about this, he said this could be indicative of mild anemia. And he said, go get some really good grass fed red meats. And that's what he suggested. How does that strike you?

Well.

You need to look at anemia for those out there. Essentially means like underproduction of red blood cells. So there are a couple things you need to look at in context. So based on your red blood cell number and the platelet count, I would say you are trending towards a myelo anemia because we need to look at both the platelets and the red blood cells. Your red blood cell count is 4.76 and the reference range here is 4.2 to 5.8.

Would you agree with Ben's analysis then?

Ben's analysis is a good guess. He said you could be trending towards a mild anemia. Yeah. And based on, you know, trending low red blood cells that are not out of range and low platelets.

Sure.

Yeah. And foods that support red blood cell production. You know, grass fed beef in his example, you know, has good iron, has good substrates to help the body produce more red blood cells, is a totally fine recommendation.

Okay, got it.

Yeah, I would. I mean, you were definitely not, frankly anemic from this blood work. Your red blood cells are in range. May you be trending towards anemia?

Sure.

Would grass fed beef, you know, help Help these blood numbers probably, but nothing's 100% medicine.

Hey guys, this is Ryan. We're going to take a quick break and we'll return to the show in a second. I get a lot of questions about what I think of some of Tony Robbins investment strategies, especially the ones where he talks about assets that can go up in value over time but don't participate in any downside. I don't agree with all of Tony's investment recomm, but I do participate in investing in insurance, which is one of the things that he's describing in that strategy. Now, I want to give you a warning. When I went into that investment strategy, I got schmoozed over by a slick.

Salesman, and I wish that I had.

Used a sophisticated firm that was actually dedicated to that. That's why I had Wealth Point on the podcast recently. And I'd encourage you to go listen to that episode about infinite banking. Now, infinite banking isn't the proper term to describe what they do. They actually use a modified version which is called capital warehousing.

But what it basically allows you to.

Do is park cash like you would put it into a bank, participate in the growth of the market without participating.

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Can put it into other investments. So if you've got money sitting on.

The sidelines, you might want to use capital warehousing as part of your strategy. So you can go over to gowealthpoint.com freedom to learn how the strategy works, or you can just listen to the episode that we had with Sam Prentice from Wealthpoint here on the podcast. It's called how the Rich Use Infinite Banking for Tax Free Wealth.

What we've covered so far is maybe I'm just hearing what I want to hear, but I keep hearing the word stress come up. And I know that stress and cortisol can bind up hormones across the spectrum. And what I keep hearing is that I'm overstressed.

Yeah.

I mean, and that this blood panel basically points to that it looks depleted.

There are certain things of this blood panel like the your blood glucose looks high, indicative of that stress. And some of these red blood cell numbers look like your body's being overworked. And underproduction of red blood cells often comes in concert with stress.

So before we get to the part of my blood panel that really spooked me, let me give you some context of kind of symptoms I've had up until this point to give some context before you give me your Prescription, if you will. I'm obviously a hard charging entrepreneur. I run and manage a couple different companies. I just recently sold a business but I feel like I traded a lot of sleep, happiness and fun over the last five years to get that paycheck right. I worked really hard to get that business to where it was, where I could, you know, it was profitable enough that it could be sold for an eight figure payday. And at the same time I'm running things@capitalism.com learning how to build a team. I have a two year old daughter. That was a surprise. So. Well, it wasn't a surprise that she turned 2. It was a surprise that she came along.

And.

About a year ago I went on what I called my anti dad bod plan, which often meant working out twice a day some extreme caloric restriction for a few months in order to lose amount of body, a certain amount of body fat. I had wonderful results. But ever since then I have had.

Well, one. I feel like I completely wrecked my hormones because my appetite is out of control. I can out eat anyone you've ever met in your entire life and then ask for seconds. I have a really hard time maintaining the physique I want and I seem to be very sensitive to inflammation and just holding on to a few extra layers of body fat. Even though I'm in great shape for like my strength compared to my weight is off the charts. Great. I deadlift almost 400 pounds. I weigh 155. Like that's, that's off the charts. It's like Olympic level good as far as I know. But I don't feel like I look that way. I am definitely. I've been working very hard for many years. I've sacrificed some, a whole lot of hangout time and fun time to get to the level I'm at. And now I'm kind of paying for it is how I feel physically. So I know what to eat. I eat a very healthy diet. I get my greens every day. I work out regularly, probably too much. So that's kind of the context through which we're operating in.

Yeah.

So from a surface level perspective that would mean if there was a health problem, stress could be indicative of that. But I'm so used to being stressed that I don't know what it feels like that's my default. I don't know anything else besides hard charging, working out five days a week, managing multiple companies. I don't know anything else. So if I, if someone else told me that, I'd be like, all right, so you definitely have high cortisol levels and they're probably chronically overloaded. So that's the context with which we're working.

Does that factor into kind of how you're reading any of this?

Absolutely. I mean, yes, it's the short, it's a short period answer. Absolutely.

Would you agree that we're at least zooming in on that being the root cause of.

Well, do you understand, first and foremost, and maybe we should have said this off the bat is, you know, as doctors and physicians, we treat people, not blood work. It is really easy to see numbers and get freaked out by them and like try to optimize the number on the chart as opposed to like how you're feeling. But symptomatically what you're describing is that you also feel stressed, overworked, you're not, you know, you're not sleeping enough, you know, you're overstretched on the workout, exercise, all fronts.

Yeah.

So yeah. In the context of your symptoms plus blood work that I believe in, in finding manageable outlets for you to give your body more R and R time to heal because you are providing a good substrate, these numbers would improve.

I don't get the results that I want from working out and eating like spot on. To maximize muscle growth and minimize fat gain. Right. I've always said, yes, I'm successful in business, but all I ever wanted in life was six pack abs and to lift a thousand pounds over all the major lifts. That's all I ever wanted in life. And I've been frustrated with the results that I've gotten. Even though I get compliments on my physique all the time, I feel like I may be just above average and could. How important do hormones play in the role of the results that you get in the gym?

Phenomenally important.

Okay, so could I be doing everything right and be stressed and it compromise my results 100%.

Yes. I mean, a case in point example is to look at athletes like a drug free athlete versus someone who takes, let's say anabolic steroids or it's exogenous testosterone. You know, a guy taking testosterone exogenously can put on more muscle mass, you know, hardly working out than a natural guy in a year, almost like maybe even tenfold the progress. So hormones, my point of being is hormones, whether they're super high or super low, can have a tremendous impact as it comes to your physique, your body composition.

Even in like.

So if we're talking about losing fat.

The fact that I've been in a caloric Deficit for a long time and have been exercising regularly and still maintain a layer of fat. Does do hormones play a factor there as well?

The thing I would look at when it comes to those kind of fat loss plateaus would definitely be a full thyroid hormone panel, which we unfortunately don't have one to look at today. We have that incomplete one. And you know, I, I would actually work with you on strategically increasing carbohydrate intake at the right times to help improve your metabolic rate because you can.

Probably around workout time.

Around. Yeah, pre, pre, like Perry workout, particularly post workout.

Okay.

And introducing some, some carbohydrate refeed days, like very high carb days. Because, you know, there are other hormones at play that we're not even measuring on these blood panels, like leptin being a humongous hormone that controls hunger. You say you have a ravenous appetite. So leptin is a hormone that's produced by fat cells. It goes to the brain, tells your brain to essentially like be full and to increase energy expenditure. It's the hormone of plenty. It's your body's way of saying, yeah, we got tons of fat. You know, you don't have to eat as much. You know, you can, you can burn off some calories. You're in good shape.

Now.

As we diet and stay in a caloric deficit for a long time, leptin levels decrease systematically making it both our metabolic rate go down and our hunger go up. It's almost like our body's defense mechanism against getting any more lean. One trick we have in the, in the toolbox and you know, I'm not. Your symptoms, plus some of this blood work suggests that leptin would be low. In particular, the fact that you're hungry all the time, you're having a hard time losing weight. The thing we would do in that instance is use strategic high carbohydrate refeeds, you know, probably for you at least once a week. And I'm talking about like a very, very, very high carb day. So how many carbs do you typically eat in a day?

If I did not train, 100 or less.

Okay.

If I did train, it could be 200.

I would say a high carb refeed day for you would be somewhere around 400 carbs.

My goodness.

Yes. In one day.

How many sweet potatoes is that right?

Yeah, I mean, let's say like average sweet potatoes. Like 50, you know, for like 50, 60 for like a medium sized sweet potato.

Okay, so let's go here for a.

Second because I sat in on, on your session. Yeah, I loved it. You've, you've read. I've read all the same books. Not as many, but a lot of the same books as what you talked about. We talked about the bulletproof diet, we talked about the vegan diet, we talked about the plant paradox, we talked about the Paleo diet, we talked about all these different diets. And your basic thesis was that kind of a lower carb whole foods diet is.

The link between all major diets, all healthful diets, and that there are benefits and negatives to all the popular diets, but that a whole foods high in healthy fats diet is kind of the way to go with lots of.

Fiber and, and make sure those carbohydrate sources are low in lectins and other gut offending.

Yeah.

Compounds.

So that, that's been my conclusion as well. One day I'll tell you the story about the fight I got into with Dr. Michael Greger and, and the guy from Forks Over Knives. Colin Campbell, Is that his name? Yeah, I got, I got into some fun exchanges with them at one point. I think just their total thesis is wrong. Those are the guys from what the Health. For those of you who are listening, I think that's probably the most misleading documentary in history. But.

If your thesis is to be fairly low carb and mostly plant based, what in the world would I eat to get 400 carbs on a refeed?

So this is where we make exceptions and I try to make a good point in the talk of like, you know, releasing the dogma that carbs are bad. Although we want to run lower carb most of the time, you know, there are certain times where carbs can be the best tool and carbs are the things that raise leptin. So in an example of like a 400 carb day, which is a strategic high carb refeed, and your body, during a 400 carb refeed will essentially just increase your metabolic rate to match the new calorie influx that you're getting. And at the same time, you're going to be eating, you know, moderate to lower protein and very low fat on that day. It's like almost like the exact opposite day of one of those other days. And in that case, this would be a perfect time to have some higher glycemic, fast digesting carbohydrates that are also clean. Things like white rice, which is also lower in lectins, has the lectin sheath, the whole of the rice removed. Sweet potatoes. If there are some kind of a Rice based pasta that you, you enjoy. You could do something like that.

Fruits, smoothies, smoothies, throw some honey on some things.

Yes, these are the kind of foods and we want glucose, we want to load up your glycogen stores, we want to fill you completely up and this is going to help you lose more weight. Now my background, I mean I'm talking doctor stuff, but I've had also the benefit of being a competitive national level bodybuilder. And a lot of the stuff, this physique enhancement engineering stuff we learn from bodybuilders. This is a unique group of population that's willing to do basically anything to increase their physique status. And these high carb refeeds have been a staple in the way bodybuilders approach getting incredibly lean and breaking through weight loss plateaus. In fact, the leaner you get sometimes you have to do these more often. In the end days of diet, when you're going from let's say like an 8, 9% body fat, trying to get to a goal of 5 or 6, you might have to do a refeed every four days.

And is that because we need to keep the body from going into that starvation mode? Yes.

Your body does not want to be shredded at 6% body fat like looking how we want it to look. You know, it wants to survive first and foremost. And there are detriments to getting that lean and our body will be resistant to that. This kind of carbohydrate boost, leptin hack, if you will, is one way that we can help coax the body to increase the amount of alcoholic rate. Another great example is. So we just talked about one strategy to give you shorter term solution to get the leptin levels up. But over time what we want to do is slowly increase your carbohydrate intake to get your metabolism to a point where we can increase your metabolic rate essentially by slowly incrementally increasing the amount of carbohydrates you have. Now the goal is not to eat a higher carbohydrate diet necessarily, but it can increase your metabolic health by having a higher burning engine, throwing a little bigger log every time.

But if your thesis is to mostly have a moderate to high fat diet, why do we want to work up carbohydrate intake?

I guess I'm really referring not to the average person's diet, but to your particular circumstance where you are very concerned about with having that herculean six pack abs and like 500 pound deadlift kind of situation. You know, in that context Carbohydrates play better into that thing. Well, you will eat a higher carbohydrate diet chasing that goal than you necessarily would, you know, if you're just, you know, the everyday guy who wants to be healthy and perform.

I see. So in that case, the average sedentary person who's not working out crazy like me would probably really benefit from a ketogenic or a really low carb diet. But. And someone like me who's very active, I'll probably need to follow more of a standard bodybuilding protocol. Probably working in those carbs around workout time.

Exactly.

And then once a week or so having those big refeeds just to prevent my body from going, what is this? What is this idiot doing?

Completely, you nailed it on the head. And timing those workouts or those carbohydrates, particularly post workout, will be essential. And still getting those good, healthy fats. And now for the average person, I'm not necessarily saying they even need to do keto to reap the benefits of having high ketone production. That's just something like. I'm a big proponent of intermittent fasting, as you know, because it's a way to kind of like get ketone production daily without necessarily needing to be on an incredibly restrictive diet. And you told me to do a ketogenic diet for a year, like, hats off to.

Yeah, I did. I did keto pretty hardcore. And I did it for. The only reason I did it was because I've had stomach problems since I was a kid and that seemed to squash them. And I think that. I think it was an inflammation thing. Right? Yeah, Like I've. I just seem to be sensitive to inflammation. I can eat one wrong thing and it throw me off. And ever since I was a little kid, my mom says since I was three years old, I had pooping problems. So that was the one thing where I felt best. I actually, I feel like I have had them under control for the last couple of months because I started a new supplement regimen of actually a lot of creatine, MSM and magnesium chloride. That combination has really helped my gut for whatever reason. I don't know if you have a.

Theory on that, but I'm open to, you know, commenting on that, plus a couple other things. Okay, so first off, I think a ton of people can benefit from starting. I'll take these points one by one, but starting from a ketogenic diet, because, you know, pretty much every American who knows they could be eating better with their nutrition and diet in general, we can safely Assume they have some level of gut inflammation. You know, we're eating foods that are inflammatory, period. So keto is really fantastic. Is the main gut offenders come from the, the carbohydrate sources. So we peel those out. We're basically having healthy fats which are anti inflammatory plus some fiber. You know, that's a recipe for having a healthier digestive tract. Now that's not to say that's how you need to roll like for the rest of your life to be optimal. You can reintroduce certain kinds of carbohydrate containing foods as long as they're gut friendly. And that's like the whole lectin issue. Now with your gut healing protocol, you know, MSM can absolutely be very helpful. You know, creatine is a fantastic supplement. Not just for, you know, performance things, but brain health. Actually, I would, I would personally have recommended other supplements to heal your gut. I would have recommended high dose glutamine. Glutamine kind of failed the test. Is like a really good ergogenic sports supplement, even though it was marketed as such. But it is a fantastic gut healer. Up to like 20 grams a day, 30 grams a day.

Wow.

Yeah, we've been taught, you know, take like three to five grams of gluten. Glutamine, your post workout shake really doesn't do much from an ergogenic perspective. But as a gut healer, it's fantastically soothing to the, the entire digestive tract. I would also use, have you something like a dgl, which is a licorice extract and that would have been incredibly nourishing. And you can use like marshmallow or aloe, some other like, you know, we have good gut healing herbs that are very useful as well, like demulcents.

Okay, got it. Okay. So I think that leads me to the thing on my panel that really startled me and that was.

It's humbling to talk about out loud, but my testosterone levels, my luteinizing hormone. And this surprised me because I didn't think I had any symptoms that would point to this. And the last time I had my testosterone checked, it was literally 50% higher. So I'm on the, like my numbers are mid range, but mid. This is, that's BS. I mean like I'm 29 years old, active and freaking handsome. I should, I should not have testosterone, you know, under 500. And like the last time I had it, it was closer to 800. So that was like a ding, ding, ding, pay attention, something ain't right.

Yeah.

Kind of thing.

Yeah.

But if. If cortisol is a. Is a factor here, then that would explain a lot.

Cortisol and testosterone are inversely related. They kind of run on like a. They kind of run on like a seesaw kind of pattern. When cortisol is high, testosterone is almost typically always low. So, you know, that definitely would play into here. But I want to look at a couple things on your blood panel. All right? First thing for those that don't know is if you ever get some of these, you know, male hormone panels, you'll see an fsh, an lh, a prolactin, and a testosterone total. So LH and testosterone are the ones we're going to talk about. Mostly. LH is a hormone that's released from your pituitary gland in your brain that basically tells your testes, hey, let's make some testosterone. So when LH is low, that's a feedback signal that is saying, hey, you know, your brain is not telling your testes to make a lot of testosterone. So, you know, we want to look at your number, and your LH is definitely trending low. What we typically see, you know, when testosterone levels are low, you know, there's a lot of different kind of patterns, but, you know, LH is often very high. And that would suggest that, you know, LH is trying to tell, you know, if LH levels are high but testosterone is low. That tells us that the brain is sending a signal to the testes to say, hey, make a lot of testosterone, and the testes are not responding.

I don't.

I don't have that.

My balls are fine is what you're saying.

Yes.

Yeah.

For everyone out there, Ryan's balls are totally fine. You were concerned.

What we see here is a low LH in a lower testosterone level. So what that means is that we're not getting a ton of signal to produce testosterone from the brain. And often we see low LH in high stress situations. Like, the body's just kind of like. It's like a quiescence generally of this mere hormone panel. But that's. But wait, there's more. So we have total testosterone of Ryan's that is totally in the mid range. And, you know, this. This is a guy who wants to be 100% optimal and totally can be. We also want to look at his estrogen levels. Estradiol is what they measure in men, a form of estrogen, which actually is totally fine. But his sex hormone binding globulin, which is something that all guys should have checked, shbg, essentially, what this Means a lot like the thyroid hormones that we talked about is these hormones are often bound up and the only hormone that really matters is the one that's free and that's actively working on receptors and creating the effects that we like of testosterone. You have a very, very high shbg. So that means that the testosterone that you do have, that mid range level, you then a vast majority of it is bound up. Shbg, sex hormone binding globulin, always rises under stress conditions, under low sleep conditions. So we have two ways to work on this. One, we want to naturally support testosterone production through nutrition, but more importantly, we also want to address the fact that we want to get more free testosterone. Because here's the thing, you know, if you had a super low sex hormone binding globulin number in that same testosterone level, you might be feeling like the Incredible Hulk, you know, so my point, you could have someone with a Testosterone level of 1000 that has SHBG off the charts and not much of that's active. So we need to always look at things in concert here. And you do have a pattern displaying here that a lot of testosterone is bound up and we know that you have lower production than you did even a few months ago.

Right.

Or whenever you had your last blood work. So definitely, you know, this is something that we totally need to improve in. The fastest ways to tank your testosterone levels are to not sleep, to over train, to lower your calories and to drink alcohol. Like if I want, if I want.

Three for four on this, if I.

Wanted to tank it and go in and have the lowest testosterone level possible, I would. Let me tell you this, a little competitive bodybuilding story. I, I often show pictures of me at my prime in some of these talks and I looked like a beast.

Yeah.

When I got my testosterone levels checked, they were like 220. Oh, tanked.

Why?

Why? Because I'd been on a 16 week diet, I'd lost 50 pounds, I was taking stimulants and I wasn't sleeping really well because of the whole concert totally tanked. So I mean this is a, again, I kind of see this as a warning signal that we need to re kick start this kind of stuff and you know, do address the stress, which is, you know, the golden thread that runs through this entire blood work panel.

Wow. Okay. I have a thousand questions about that. Yeah, I want to throw one wild card at you and that's that I have experimented with some biohacks, one of them being selective androgen receptor modulators.

Which ones?

In Particular ostarine.

Okay.

I've also experienced experiment with some other ones which like GW 50156 and I've experiment with some with S4 in the past, all of which can be mildly suppressive in terms of testosterone. But I'm, I'm not on them now and I've been off them for a couple of months. So my concern here is.

Can I interject. And your testosterone levels were fine before you tried the serms?

Yes, they were fine before I, before I tried them. So my concern is either I didn't properly recover from that or that there's other factors in play like stress. And I could be completely recovered from some mild suppression which as I understand it, the suppression from something like that type of an anabolic would be nothing.

Comparable to taking steroids.

Yeah. And nothing compared to a 400.3 or 400 point drop that I'm seeing. Right. Right now.

Right. And just, you know, you could tank your levels by another 3, 400 by pulling an all nighter and you and I just playing beer pong all night. So these levels can fluctuate, you know, pretty dramatically.

Oh, okay.

You know, so we can do a lot of things, but do know that, you know, the recovery times that are listed for, you know, anything like an exogenous androgen or something that's binding to engine receptors, estrogen receptors, is in context of, you know, a healthy high functioning body that's not dealing with, you know, a lot of the other pressures that you have. So, you know, I don't think just taking a general time frame that generally people should be recovered from a, you know, a mildly suppressive, you know, supplement necessarily apply to a situation like yours where we have a lot of other factors at play. I would say it's probably a like a both and not like an either or situation. Knowing that you had good blood work before you start taking stuff that is, you know, definitely impacts testosterone levels and we're dramatically lower than we are here and your SHBG is high tells me that there definitely could have been a factor. I wouldn't beat yourself up over what.

Could have been a factor.

That both use of, use of any kind of SARM or cirm plus all the stress.

Okay, yeah, got it.

Plus lower calories.

Okay. Yeah, Right. Okay. So. Well, that it's just, it's frustrating to me because like in order to get to a certain leanness, you have to be in a caloric deficit. But at the same time, if you're in a caloric deficit for a long time that can be a wreck on your hormones. And so it just, it just seems like. What's the solution exactly?

Okay, I, I think the solution for you. I know a lot of you know what Ryan looks like. A lot of you would be very envious to look like him. But dig into this next.

Everyone would be so envious to look like him.

I know this. I'm envious to look like him.

By the way, you're not looking at Anthony, but he, he's like, he's got 2% body fat and looks like he should be in a boy band and he probably hasn't. He probably just got out of bed and didn't shower and just still looks like he's a fricking model.

Thanks, Ryan.

So what are you doing later, doctor?

We'll take that off air.

God, I totally lost my train of thought. I had something good there. Oh, God, I got it.

We were talking about calories.

So I think the solution is we, we do know that prolonged calorie deficits are counterproductive to our long term maintenance goals or good for like a crash effort. Calorie cycling is the answer. So having strategic days where we're doing these surges of calories are absolutely necessary for you to get to the level that you're going to want to get to. And realistically do understand, like the body belt builders, fitness models, like the way they look, they look like that for a period of like two, three, four weeks. But you can safely maintain, I'd say like a 7, 8%, which is a very visible rip six pack, you know, all year round.

As low as I've ever been.

Right. You can easily get to 8 on. Easily. You can get to 8 on a maintenance thing. I would start for you. One tweak would be calorie cycling. Have these calorie surges, you know, on, you know, total high carb days. Ideally after. Start them once every five to seven days. That's like a super high carb day. Lower fat, moderate protein. And do them after one of your big compound lift days.

I see on a squat or deadlift day.

On a squat or deadlift day, ideally do that in the morning. On those kind of days, I know you might want to work out later in the evening. I just want to get you like super. There are some really cool benefits that happen to glucose regulation post lifting. You know those, those glut receptors, those glucose receptors, they come to the surface of the muscle cells and the ones on the fat cells and endocytosis. So it's like the Perfect storm for like feeding glucose to where we want to get it. I would probably do a hack for you like maybe on the weekend if you do have a workout where you do it earlier in the day and then you have a high carb day for the rest of the day.

I see. Okay.

That would be one immediate tweak.

So I've always worked out later in the day because I want to eat a lower carb morning and lunch, as you should. And then I'll have my carbs later. I just want to keep my carbs and kind of that anabolic window that.

Is the optimal schedule. 100% Monday through Friday and Sunday.

Okay. So on my refeed, this is a tactical special day. I see. So would you recommend that I look more at caloric load week by week rather than day by day and say like if I'm going to have a refeed this day, like that's fine as long as the long term.

If I'm trying to get leaner, then the long term calorie load is lower.

If you're trying to get leaner, I would, I would approach it. Thinking about it this way, you're lifting four times. Let's say we're lifting four times a week. On days that you're lifting, I would. And you're taking slow. We're saying two, three rest days. On, on days you're lifting, I would eat at maintenance or a little bit lower. Not a huge deficit. I would personally probably do do a 24 hour fast once per week. On a non workout day, on a total rest day. There's tons of benefits. Your metabolism actually increases throughout a 24 hour fast. And I would do one high carb day that is maybe at a 4 or 500 calorie surplus. So you know, net, you're still going to be under for the week. You're still going to be in a calorie deficit, but hormonally we're going to have a much different kind of flux. You've had a big leptin surge after the high carb day. You know, and actually some, a good option is sometimes to do a 24 hour fast one to two days after that high carb day. And then I would eat at maintenance or a little bit lower on those other just regular lifting days. I wouldn't run big. I would only run a really big deficit on a day I wasn't working out.

Interesting.

Yeah, yeah. On a day you weren't working out is when I'd really run a deficit. So for example, I love pointing People to. Are you familiar with Martin, Brad and lean gains?

I'm familiar with the concept of lean gains.

Okay. 16, 8 intermittent fasting. Every day you're eating for eight hours, fasting for 16. On that framework, he only allows people to lift like three, four times a week. Three, ideally, almost full body compound training every single time.

Why?

Because on those days when if he's running a recomp, on those days where he's exercising a lot, he's actually eating hypercaloric and eats like 20% hypocaloric, like in a deficit on those off days. So on days you're training, you're feeding anabolism with higher calories. On days you're off, you're taking advantage of that. You're not exerting anything, not worrying about burning muscle tissue. But you can run a bigger deficit fasting. I think if you don't want to do it daily and you just want to do it, 24 hour can also really help, like once per week on an off day.

Okay.

Helpful.

Yeah, for sure. Some of it feels a little bit over overwhelming.

Yeah.

But once again, it seems like everything you're saying based on this blood work comes back to me showing classic entrepreneurial burnout and. Or at least under sleep. At the very least, I would start there.

Like, if we're gonna break it down and like, what habits? If I were you, I would implement immediately. It would be taking a big inventory of how my sleep is and how I could improve that personally. I would also implement that, you know, the refeed day immediately. I would start there as like the two highest leverage action steps.

Okay.

They think are going to prove a lot of this picture here. And the other thing from a medical perspective, when we see a testosterone like this, like, you know, a lot of doctors are putting young guys even in their 30s on, you know, hormone replacement therapy. TRT.

Right. It's terrifying.

Terrifying, right, that you're taking a needle in the butt, you know, at this age. The first thing they would do though, is run a medication called Clomid. Clomiphene, which is what, you know, bodybuilders use to recover from steroid cycles. But from your blood work, you know, taking Clomid, around 50mgs per day for a month could get a testosterone level up. It stimulates luteinizing hormone naturally. Something like Clomiphene that a doctor could prescribe could actually help really stir up this level. It essentially works directly the brain to simulate LH and get things going. And so that was the first thing they'll do before they prescribe TRT will be a Clomid challenge. So, you know, it's. It's a medication. You know, it's. It's definitely a pharmaceutical. It has applications.

And you're recommending that? Not necessarily recommending, but you're bringing that up why? To kickstart?

I'm bringing that up.

Hormone?

Yeah, I'm bringing that up because in concert with improving the sleep, working on your leptin levels with those refeeds, we can also. The long play is those things will help improve your testosterone level by getting your system just generally functioning better, getting stress under control. The short term play is if we want to definitely increase testosterone dramatically in the next 30 days by working on this angle and kind of kickstarting the brain in the right pattern. Clomiphene or a medication like that would be directly beneficial for that.

It would be my preference to avoid that.

Totally fine.

Okay. It would just be like a 60 or 90 day rest recovery. You think then?

Yeah.

Okay. Yeah.

I'm not saying it's necessary. I'm just saying it's a tool in the toolbox that's also possible and just something worth researching. Like there are medications have their place. I'm the kind of doctor that doesn't prescribe a lot of medication because we can do so much with the diet, the exercise, the optimization. But something like that is a tool just to know that it's there.

So so far what you're telling me is I need to sleep more, I probably need to relax. My cortisol levels are probably.

Much higher than they should be. Okay, got it. I probably need a long vacation. I probably need to just hang out with Esther, my daughter, and just.

Probably back off the number of workouts. Maybe not work out twice a day and work out once a day or three to four days a week.

Add in some carbohydrate refeeds if I'm active.

If. If you're not active, you would keep it pretty low. Carb. Is there anything else that you would add into your. Your prescription?

A couple ideas. I think it's important to. We all know that lifting heavy weights is like phenomenal for your physique and your goals. But we also need to just not take a blanket prescription. Heavy weights are good and I would ideally match your workout based on the demands that are currently on your nervous system. I mean, you're stressed out, which is like a nervous system kind of situation. So I would design a training program that would honor the state of your nervous system. So I would not be doing High demanding CNS activities as we're trying to heal you.

What CNS activities?

Central nervous system. So let's say like trying to max out on a deadlift and something under 5 reps, I would be doing more metabolic bodybuilding style pump, lighter rep or I'm sorry, lighter weight, higher rep range. Like lifting more in the, let's say 70% of your one rep max.

Okay.

Because it's going to be easier on your nervous system as we're healing things. So just like diet, when one of the best things we can do is remove offenders that are inflaming our bodies with exercise too, you know, as good as it is for us, needs to be in the context of what we're trying to achieve. Not just with physique, but with our healing, especially with stress. So there are certain workouts that are going to support you in your de stressing phase of training. And I would even start to think about it, conceptualize it if I were you. Like this is the phase goal of my training block right now, neurological recovery. So I'm going to train in a way that still produces fantastic results because we can get those results without doing tons of demand on your nervous system. This would be a training block where I would back off on the head heaviness of the deadlifts. Try some other kinds of techniques. And that's something I'm totally open to exploring with you. But yeah, the key point here is what else matching your exercise goal, the nature of those workouts with your goals on the nervous system. If you're stressed, you're burned out, you know you're on that spectrum. Lifting heavy weights probably not the best thing for you right now. You can still make great gains.

So things like CrossFit and Really High, like long cardio workouts probably should be avoided. And more bodybuilding, 8 to 12 rep type of heavy lifts is what you.

Do those kind of heavy lifts, but not like Olympic or powerlifting, not like one rep max kind of strength thing. Not like massive speed explosiveness things. These are the most demanding kinds of exercise on the nervous system. More of like the, the Arnold kind of like pumping, pumping up.

Yeah.

Kind of workouts would be ideal for you. You at this point still lifting heavy. You're not lifting like the 15s but it's a different kind of workout that's less neurologically demanding.

What about any supplement regimens that you'd throw in?

Totally. I think one of the best things that we can do, assuming that you're on like the golden 56 supplements, which I would say would be a super high quality Omega 3 supplement, a really high quality probiotic, some magnesium, a good, good greens powder, multivitamin superfood. And then I would also add in your situation, adaptogenic herbs. And adaptogens are a class of plant compounds that essentially help our bodies deal better with stress. Mentally, physically, spiritually. Like, they're just fantastic. And we've probably all heard of the ginseng herbs as being good. We don't know exactly what they do, but ginsengs fall in this category. A lot of these mushrooms like reishi and stuff fall in this category. Rhodiola, which is a supplement a lot of people are taking as a nootropic, falls into this category. So there are adaptogens we can use to actually heal your adrenal glands because that's where cortisol is produced. These little like almond sized glands that sit in.

I didn't know that actually. Okay, yeah. So when people say that they've got adrenal fatigue, it just means they're stressed and have high cortisol.

So adrenal. Yeah, this is a really great point. Adrenaline. Adrenal fatigue is like a spectrum. First with adrenal fatigue, as we're getting really stressed, cortisol is really high. And as we're continuing to crank out cortisol, eventually the body's capacity to produce cortisol tanks. So when you'll see someone in true end stage adrenal fatigue, their cortisol levels will be low, they'll be exhausted. So on the path to get there, you're in overdrive. I see you're driving the car a million miles per hour cortisol super high, the engine's really revved and then when you run out of gas, you flatline.

Got it.

So someone in adrenal fatigue, you actually give them exogenous cortisol to like get them out of that hole. Because you literally can't get up in the morning if you have no cortisol. So you're thankfully on a point of the spectrum where we can do like restorative healing kind of medicine to bring you back out of this as opposed to needing more cortisol in the system. So withania would be an herb I would absolutely have. You have. You do. Say lathania withania.

Withania ashwagandha.

Have you heard of that?

Oh, yeah.

Okay. So that would be an herb I would have you take before bed. It's a great male tonic. It's very tonifying to nervous system. It helps, you know, you know and there's great research on it as well. I would also maybe have you take one or two of the different kinds of ginsengs as well. So point being, there are adaptogens and classes of herbs and they're well formulated in products online. But you can also have someone who really knows their shit to help give you more tailored prescription on those kind of things. But for adrenal health, they're absolutely essential. And in fact I think they're kind of, they're like the long term play that I think a lot of hard charging entrepreneurs should be taking on a continual basis to kind of like not use to just heal, but also give your body a little more of a buffer capacity.

So that's how, that's how I want to finish is this has obviously been very custom to me and my blood panel. I know that there are tens of thousands of entrepreneurs who listen to this that are in a similar boat as me. Maybe their, maybe their platelets aren't low and maybe their thyroid hormones don't need to be optimized, but they're hard charging are in denial about the fact that they're burnt out. I have been in denial about my burnout until I saw these numbers and then I was like, I have to do something about this. So for if there is an average entrepreneur, what would you recommend that they pay attention to or the habits that they need to practice in order to get this under control before they have a scare on their blood panels?

Yeah, blood panels can be something that can be the final kick in the butt to get us going. The foundational optimizations for most entrepreneurs out there are going to be around diet and the sleep restoration rituals. 100% diet can be one of your best friends in helping buffer your body's capacity to deal with stress. And then you know, really addressing, you know, having a, whether it's having a mindfulness practice, getting enough sleep, you know, all the centers around healthy outlets to deal with stress. And we know if we're on the spectrum, like deep down it can sometimes be really helpful to work with somebody who really knows their stuff to be able to kind of wiggle in, deep dive and give you a custom solution. Because often, you know, as you probably know personally like information is not, you know, not the answer, it's the implementation of that info. So yeah, I sleep in restoration rituals would serve people as well as a proper supplement regimen that includes some of those supplements that I mentioned, those like golden five plus the adaptogens.

Cool. Well, Dr. Anthony, I feel like this is A topic that we as entrepreneurs don't talk about enough. And I certainly didn't address. I thought I was addressing it. And now I see these numbers and realize I need to do something about it. So thanks for your help, man.

My pleasure.

Thanks for. Thanks for affecting so many entrepreneurs. I love what you're doing.

You're welcome. Thanks for having me, Ryan.

So this has not been easy for me. Even when I make the honest attempt to de stress or detach or relax, I find myself very quickly going back into workaholism. And those tendencies I have found and had to be really honest with the fact that I get a lot of my emotional needs met through work. And that is not healthy. I'm turning 30 this year. I've been an entrepreneur since I was 18 years old, maybe earlier than that. And I really haven't developed good habits to do things like maintain a really healthy social circle. I've gotten most of my needs met through work, and that is called workaholism. So this is something that I just felt like it was okay to share with you guys because I am on the other side of a sale of a business. And so I know the perception is probably Ryan could retire off into the sunset and I could. I don't really know how. So I hope it's okay that I'm a little bit open with this about you. This is a little bit of a struggle for me, so I'm going to be exploring this over the next few years of what it looks like to experiment with taking more time off. I talk about taking time off. My mentor is Dan Sullivan, who takes a ton of time off. And when I do take time off, I say I'm gonna do this more often. And when my health is a priority, everything else does fall into place. But when things get out of whack, it's sometimes hard to get back on track. So I'll be updating you throughout the experience as I make steps to correct this. So I hope you enjoyed this exploration into my blood tests and my numbers and the fact that even when you think you could be doing things really well, sometimes you miss the really big things that matter. Hope you enjoyed today's episode. Share it with an entrepreneur who's overworked and needs a wake up call like I did.

Talk to you guys on the next episode.