Don't let your health come last: Proactive Steps to Prioritize Your Health Today

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You've learned how to hack the New Zealand medical system.

Our medical system here has left me bewildered.

If I were you, I would have a lot less faith in your doctor. I've just seen medicine get worse. If under stress, you're juicing up the system even more.

All I want to do is prevent future ill health. I actually discovered a lamp in my left peck. I'm dripping with sweat. Like my shirt is soaked. My body is like, hey, you're under attack. If I don't have my health, I have none of it. That pretty much says you're dying. This is not cancerous. This is what they call.

Welcome to Lead on Purpose. I'm James Laughlin, former seven time world champion musician and and now executive coach to global leaders and high performers. In every episode I bring you an inspiring leader or expert to help you lead your life and business on purpose. Thanks for taking the time to connect today and investing in yourself. Enjoy the show. It's very rare that I have the same guest on the show more than once. I like variety and I like to bring you new voices. However, there have been a few exceptions. One of those being the Prime Minister of New Zealand who's been on a few times. And now today we're re inviting Andrew Hare back to the show. Andrew runs an incredible company called Fount and Fount is all about optimizing health. Look, I have had some health challenges that have surprised me over the last six months and with Andrew's help he's uncovered some incredible things. No thanks to some of the challenges from the New Zealand medical system, we but Andrew and I chat about that and I know you're going to enjoy today. He shares so much that will be valuable to your health and I promise you we can do small things to make big differences to our health. Today's conversation is going to highlight that for you. Please sit back and enjoy the show. Andrew, a huge welcome back to Lead on Purpose.

Well, hey James, so great to be here. I'm really Looking forward to this conversation.

Hey, you know what? I want to just highlight for you and for the listener that you're only the second person to ever be invited back on the show. And there's a real important reason for that, and that is that this past 12 months, I decided I want to level up in my health. My health truly is the most important factor of my life. And so I engaged with you as a client. I'm going to let everyone know there's no royalties, paybacks, commissions. This is truly. I want to shine the light for a very important reason, because shortly into working with you, I actually discovered a lump in my left pec. And it sent me into a bit of a spiral sense of dread, that's for sure. But I just started working with you prior to that. I'm so thankful that I did because our medical system here has left me bewildered, to be honest, in a lot of ways. So let's start with that and just what fount is all about. I guess it'd be really helpful for the listener to go, why would James have reached out to fount? So I wanted to optimize my health. What is it that you and Fountain do that actually help people do that?

Yeah, I really appreciate it. And you did mention that the only other person to come on twice was Prime Minister, so I'm feeling a bit underdressed.

I love it.

So the current medical system is totally reactive to symptoms at best, if they actually even take your symptoms seriously. But what we do at found is we want to help you reach whatever your goals are. And to do that, we want to understand comprehensive picture of where you are. So, you know, you might, if you go to your doctor and if they order blood tests, they might order like three or four things. Basically, just check if you have the right level of electrolytes in your blood and some cholesterol, maybe a couple other things. But in reality, there are a wide number of tests that can tell us both things that we can know are going on in your body and find out and tell us if things unexpected are happening. And so what we do at found is we gather the data, and that can be labs, wearable data, and then we spend 90 minutes going into a deep dive on schedule goals, family history, environment, all these factors. And we use that to come up with a comprehensive plan. And what are the kinds of goals people come to us for? Energy, focus, mood, sleep, gut, health, longevity, fat, muscle, these kinds of different things. And what's amazing is the combination of your goals, your physiology, your psychology, make it possible to reach those goals for nearly everyone.

Of course, some people will come to us with some totally outlandish things, but we have design programs for people with outlandish goals as well. And so you came to us with, I think, a great set of goals, both, you know, focusing on having more energy. You know, it's really apparent, and obviously we've had a chance to work one on one for a while, that you love the work you do, you love your family, and it was clear to me that you wanted to be able to do more for your clients, for your family and as well as just, you know, make sure you're on the right track for longevity. And so, you know, I think that set of those are the kinds of goals I love because there's both sort of a short term, very tangible, and then there's the long term and we can optimize for both.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. And we're going to step into my journey in terms of, hey, well, these are my goals. But here's what actually ended up unfolding and what really attracted me to what you do is that you led human performance and biotech strategy with the US military. And to me that was like, wow, he's learned some things and went deep. And I really want to benefit from that as an individual. So for me, I like working with people who are deep in what they do. They're industry experts, but they've got the data, the science, they've got all experimentation that goes with that. And so for me, it was, I wanted to level up my energy, I wanted to get a baseline on my full body health. Like, is there anything underlying? Should I be concerned about anything? And so as we embarked upon this, you said, james, first things first, I'm going to send you a lot of things and the different supplements. This Christmas gift arrived essentially, which was phenomenal. So just let's start there with what's in something like that and why do you send those out initially?

So everything we do we run as an experiment. Of course, using the data, both the objective and the interview data, I can predict with some level of accuracy what's likely to work, but I can't know for sure because the amount of inner individual variability, what works for you might not work for me, might be bad for a third person. And I say that, not hypothetically. I say that working with people every day and knowing that to be true. And so we think of everything as an n of one experiment. For people who are not used to that terminology, you know, in a study, we Look, N is sort of the number of people in the study. So n of 50 meant 50 people were in a clinical trial or something like that. And so we want to run an N of one experiment, meaning it's just on you. And the beauty there is I don't really care how the average of 50 people who aren't you reacted to a supplement or a diet, intervention or exercise protocol. I want to know how you react to it. And so we can design these experiments. And what I did is after the initial data collection, I designed a series of experiments and I sent you all the stuff you needed to run them.

And I think it was probably like a couple dozen different types of supplements and some post workout and pre workout different types of items. And that allowed us to then step into, hey, you don't have to buy every one of those things. We can send you a 14 count zip, top baggie of it and then only you know you'll need to buy it. Or for people in the US we provide all the supplements, but because you're a bit further away and FedEx charges us a few extra bucks to ship, we just sent you a ton of stuff up front. We can know the experiments and then we can help you source it when you're there in New Zealand.

I loved it. That was great. And what I liked about the next step was you said, look, James, here's a list. And it was a full list of bloods that you wanted me to go and get done. So my next step was to go and see my doctor because I don't often go and get bloods done. So I went to my local, we call it GP here, general practitioner in New Zealand, and said, hey, these are a list of bloods that I want to go and get done. First question is why? Well, I just want to get a baseline on my health. I'm trying to look at every aspect of it because I want to know that I'm doing the right things. And if I need supplementation, I'm actually supplementing with the right things. I'm working with a specialist and they want me to get this done. Yeah, well, we're not that keen to send you for those, but I'll refer you for two or three of those, which was things like cholesterol, total blood count, the basics. And I said, well, what about the rest? And he says, oh, you'll just have to figure it out at the blood bank and see how you go. So I turn up to the blood laboratory to get the test done. I say, hey, I actually need to get all this done. And they went, yep, here's a self referral form. Now what's interesting about that Andrew, is I had a nurse come around and do some sampling for an insurance application I was putting in and the nurse was doing very simple basic blood tests. And I said, hey, I've done all of these. She went, huh, how did you do that? I said, I just self referred. She went, james, I've been a nurse in this country for 40 years and I never knew that you could self refer for blood tests. Mind blowing, right? So I self refer, I get all these bloods in and they get emailed to me, which is great. I don't have to wait for my doctor to see them and hopefully ring me and they just get emailed to me. So in between the results coming in and me sharing them with you, I discover a red inflamed lump just below my left nipple. I'm like, this is weird. And two days later I'm flying to Fiji for a family holiday. And so I'm thinking it's the weekend, I should go and see the after hours doctor before I go to Fiji just to be sure. So I go and see them and they look at it and they're like, yep, there's definite lump. It's kind of pea shaped, pea sized. Here's antibiotic. It looks infected. Take that, go to Fiji, have fun. When you get back, go and see your gp. Okay, cool. Took the antibiotic right enough, it started to settle down, the inflammation lump's still very firmly there. Then five, six days into Fiji, I broke a rule of mine. A rule of mine when I'm on holiday is don't check your emails. Just don't check them. Never do it. What did I do? I seen an email come up that was from the blood laboratory and I was so excited because I knew that you and I were working together. I was like, I got to check it. So I go in and it was, yep, looking great, looking great. All the bloods were looking amazing. And then one was DHEA sulfate. It was elevated above the normal range. So sitting, looking at that, I've got this lump still. I go, well, what is that? So of course, what do I do? Visit Dr. Google and it pretty much says, you're dying. So I reach out to you thankfully and said, what do we do? Here's the results. What's my next steps? So what's your experience of what unfolded and what did we do then after that?

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Hey, James here. I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about something. Look, I get asked to deliver keynotes and workshops for teams and companies all over the world, from London to Antarctica, from America to Australasia, from armies to small businesses to large corporates to sports teams. But I go in and deliver keynotes around the mindset of high performers, around the habits of high performers, about how we navigate change. If you would like me to come and speak to your team or speak at your conference or deliver a bespoke workshop, please get in touch with my team. Carolinejlochlund.com will be able to help. I'll also make sure that we put that in the show notes.

Look, I have had many clients get a result and say like, should I be concerned? And the answer first of all is, and as I said to you, like, hey, great, let's look at this in context of all the other labs. And before we, you know, everyone goes, used to be WebMD or Google, like it will inevitably tell you you have an autoimmune disease, cancer or neurodegenerative disease. Like, because these diseases can essentially have every possible symptom. And so first things first, like let's not, let's not get too worried, let's investigate. And the beautiful thing here is now suddenly we have data that you wouldn't have had otherwise. And so this has led us now on a multi month odyssey of learning that your body. And we're not even, I think, spoiler alert, we're not at the end of the puzzle, but we found some really fascinating or not at the end of the maze. We Found some fascinating pieces here. And so I said, hey, great, thanks for sharing that. What else do you have? And here's our plan going forward. So basically the plan was, here's the follow up tests we can get, here's the questions you can ask your doctor. Because look, I'm not your doctor, I'm not a medical doctor, I'm trained as a scientist, I've worked as a professor and now I run founce. But I'm going to be your scientific advisor on this journey. And I think that's what we've done is at every step, when we've gotten more data, we've helped it, used it to help build our model of what's going on in your body and use that to design experiments to run. And then we run those experiments and when we need more data, we get more data. And apparently you've learned how to hack the New Zealand medical system better than the players involved. And so, yeah, so I think the key part was, hey, great to know, let's develop a plan.

Yeah. And that's really what unfolded. And for me, you know, I'll be honest, I operate in the world of personal leadership and mental skills, but in that moment of sitting in Fiji with so many unknowns, a lump in my chest, this elevated blood marker, there was a sense of dread, truly a sense of dread. Like I've got too many other great things in the world I want to try and do and achieve and to make a difference and be there for Finn. Everything started kind of going through my mind in a flash.

So reaching out to you. Sorry, I just want to give your audience a little context about what that marker is and why it might be concerning. And so DHA sulfate is the precursor your body uses to make testosterone and estrogen. It's a hormone that also has its own result effects. And one of the things that I know you found, because you sent it to me, was that this can be caused by, by what's called a neuroendocrine tumor, which is basically a type of a tumor which can be very rarely cancerous, but usually is not cancerous, but basically can grow in your pituitary gland and cause your brain to make, to signal your body to make too much dhea. And you weren't like a few points above normal, to be fair. You were 80% almost double normal. And so it was a pretty high result. And so there's clearly something to go after.

But it wasn't time to, well, it's almost never time to panic, but it wasn't the worst case scenario was not obvious here. And I think continues, I think we can say, like, we've been able to make progress to figure out what this actually is.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And having you there as an advocate, as an advisor, as someone with specialist knowledge around looking at things and going, well, it could be this. Let's go to this. Let's go to your medical practitioner and ask for this. That was priceless. So when I got back to New Zealand, first thing I did was, well, look, I get a mole map done every year in New Zealand. We have one of the highest skin cancer rates, melanoma rates on the planet. So I was like, you know what? There's a mole close to where that lump is. I'm going to go to there Monday morning. Within three minutes, the specialist was like, nat, you're fine. It's not that. Then a couple of hours later, I go to the doctor. So I see my doctor say, hey, the lump is still there and obviously my bloods are elevated. You've seen the results. She said, look, let's get an ultrasound mammogram done to rule out anything with the lump. I said, okay, that sounds great. And she said, look, I'm not too worried about the dhea. I don't think you should worry about it. Just get on with it. I think we'll just deal with the lump and it's not to worry. And I says, but wouldn't it be better for us to look into what's happening? She's like, go get the test done for the mammogram and come back, went and got the mammogram done. Very uncomfortable. I'll be honest, I have a newfound appreciation of what people go through when they get a mammogram and they discovered there was extra tissue there. And great news on the day that they gave me was, this is not cancerous. This is what they called gynecomastia. So extra tissue down there. Literally, it was like a high five. Great news, get on with your day. The same came back from my doctor. Move on with your life. It's all good. And I'm still question marks in my head going, but how does gynecomastia actually exist? Why is it there? What's driving it? Let's go back to our levels. So that's when I came straight back to you. I said, andrew, where to next? And what was your thoughts when I came back with that?

I think the other thing you mentioned to me is your doctor said, and even if you have gynecomastia, there's nothing we can do about it. It. I think my first response was, that's not true. That's literally not true.

So what is gynecomastia? That's when tissue in the breast area, men have tissue there, too. It's obviously less developed than most women. And that can grow a little bit in men, too. And so the question is, why is that happening? And typically that will happen because you have a high level of estrogen that can come from any number of sources. Typically, people who are quite overweight make the fat tissue makes estrogen, and then that can cause some gynecomastia. But obviously you're slim, you're healthy, you're not overweight. And so that's interesting. And so the next question is, well, we should absolutely get your hormone levels. We know you have high DHEA that could be converting to high estrogen. We certainly want to know that. But we also want to go upstream and see is anything like what could be causing this high dhea? It's possible. It's just genetic. And your glands produce more of it in response to the right amount coming from your brain, how your adrenals do. But it's also possible that something further up the chain is off. And of course your doctor was like, doesn't matter, irrelevant. But of course, the story gets more interesting because there were things going on. And so my initial thoughts were, I have a lot. If I were you, I would have a lot less faith in your doctor if they told you that there's nothing they can do to something that there obviously are things that can be done about. And two, lack of curiosity I find to be a particularly unimpressive trait when somebody cares about anything important in my life.

Yeah, I'm with you on that. And what's interesting is I got an email from my doctor saying, look, James, I know you're requesting further tests and I would always be reluctant to do this, but I can tell that you're overly anxious, which didn't really validate me much, to be fair. And she said, actually, I wrote it down with exact words. She said, the hospital doesn't like us doing this type of test or these types of tests, and that's why they're reluctant to send us to do it. At that point, I took a breath and I had to try and control. It wasn't anger, but it was a deep frustration at the thought that all I want to do is prevent future ill health or potential disease. And I'm being told, hey, the hospital gets a bit like they just don't really like us sending you for blood tests, so we're not going to do it. I felt so frustrated and almost hamstrung that I couldn't move forward. But that's a game where you came in and said, james, this is what we need to do and this is what you need to ask for a referral for.

Right. And look, this is the same thing I see in America, which is. And by the way, I have some sympathy for the doctors. They're in a system that used to give them a lot of power and leeway and prestige and has basically now made them automatons with very little power, decreasing prestige, and.

Has just taken away, I think, a lot of the joy of that job. You know, I grew up around. My dad's a doctor, so I grew up around medicine. I have a tremendous amount of respect for my dad and, you know, I grew up. And the doctors I grew up around, but I've just seen medicine get worse. And this is something doctors will tell you often, at least in the States themselves, which is like. It's not like it used to be. And so.

You'Re not the kind of person to take no for an answer if there's a better plan. And my goal was to give you a better plan.

Yeah, and I'm so glad you did. And in the end, I went and seen another GP and with what you had armed me with in terms of what we needed to investigate, and instantly he was like, yes, yes. And 100 more yeses. This advisor is absolutely onto something. Let's go. And yeah, that's where it again got more interesting.

So now it's time to start testing up the chain and down the chain of. I said DHEA can convert into testosterone, which can be converted to estrogen. And then why is this DHEA double the upper limit of normal? And so when you look at the biochemistry and the physiology of this, the pituitary gland is producing growth hormone and prolactin. And these are different hormones that affect a variety of things in our body, but including they signal for DHEA production. And, oh, by the way, prolactin in particular, you can tell from the name prolactin is something that helps with women who are breastfeeding and so can affect. Can influence the breast tissue. So that's suddenly quite interesting. And then obviously, I want to see your testosterone estrogen levels. And so we get this next set of labs and lo and behold, your IGF one, which is another marker of growth hormone. It's harder to test for growth Hormone because it's released in pulses. So if you look at your insulin like growth factor and that is way above normal, more than two standard deviations above normal. So you're well into the, you know, well above the sort of 90th percentile of levels of people being tested. So something interesting is going on there. And if I'm looking down, it's because I'm looking at the actual numbers that we saw on those tests as well. Your prolactin level quite a bit above normal. So suddenly, okay, you read about these neuroendocrine tumors, like something does seem like it's going on in your pituitary because these are two pituitary related hormones. And then we looked downstream and found something totally surprising. Both your testosterone and estrogen levels were totally normal.

And quite good, frankly. So in fact, your estrogen levels were on the lower side of normal, which is totally what you wouldn't predict for somebody with some gynecomastia and also tells us that something else is causing that. So fascinating moment. And so now you have the data to say, like, hey, look, the good news is, by the way, for people listening at home, these neuroendocrine tumors are almost never cancers. So they can really affect your quality of life, but they don't necessarily.

They'Re not going to kill you, as it were. So that's an important point. And I think something I was, I don't think I used all caps in bold in our messages, but something I really wanted to make sure we put out there was like, hey, look, even if this is the case.

I want you to know that the odds here are that you're not in sort of a life threatening situation.

And that was just like, again, for me, it was reassurance. And I shared that I had a sense of dread and panic almost in Fiji on the family holiday. But since then, with the way that you have taken me on this journey of being investigatory, trying experiments, I'm more interested and curious. And when I share with my close people that actually I've got some things going on and that there's a possibility it might be this, a prolactinoma potentially, they're like, oh, and they're full of dread. I was like, no, no, it's all good. We're just going to do one step at a time. And you even mentioned there's different ways that if it was that we could actually deal with it through medication rather than potential surgery.

Yeah, I pulled a bunch of studies, clinical trials, looking at this and there's a bunch of medications that can often solve this. And in fact, some of them cause. They'll cause it to go away so you don't even have to take them forever. And I think what was beautiful for me to watch was you taking control. Feeling control, I should say. Taking control and feeling control seemed to cause the level of concern from these objective numbers because in a sense, you ought to be almost more concerned when we get like sort of confirmatory evidence that this is going on. But you were less concerned because we knew we had a plan, you knew it was, and we knew where to go next.

Yeah. And that was what I wanted. I just wanted to feel like I was in the driving seat with my health. But it was like the way the system is set up. And again, this is no slight on doctors. I take my hats off. I've got friends who are doctors. They have to work in 15 minute increments. It's hard work. It's full on. They are generalists, not specialists. I get it. But what I felt was like, hey, you're not entitled to all the information that you want about your body. And it all has to come through us. And we'll think about sharing it with you if there's anything that we think is massively abnormal, but other than that, you won't hear from us. To me, close enough's not good enough. I want to know the detail. I want to know what I can prevent. And that's why I am really glad that I've got you as my advocate.

I mean, if your accountant said you don't need to look at your financial statements, it's okay. You'd probably be a bit concerned. Your tax advisor.

I'd be running.

Yeah. But I think the other thing to say is in the meantime, we're not letting the time go to waste. We're running other experiments. In the meantime, we obviously, this is, I think, quite front of what we're working on. But you had some other goals. You wanted to amp up your energy even further and some other things. And so we've been making changes otherwise and making progress there. And so I think that's the other cool thing is like, sure, there's the uncertainty about what's going on here, thankfully mitigated by the fact that we've got a plan, we're going forward, but meanwhile we're amping up your workouts. We were testing some diet experiments that I think were having what seemed like very good effects. And so we're getting wins and we're building regardless of what's going to happen over here.

And again, that's liberating because it took me off this focus of negative, worst case scenario catastrophe to, hey, we're doing the work to figure out what's going on. But in the meantime, I can actually improve my cardiovascular health. I can start to develop more muscle and develop better protein, I can eat better, I can sample whether caffeine works for my system or not. We've done lots of experiments and I've made big changes. Even this ring on my finger here, for those that are watching, not listening, is the Oura ring. That was something that I hadn't got before started working with you and you were like, James, a big factor in what you're trying to achieve is actually your quality and depth of sleep. And this Oura ring obviously gives a lot of data. So could we chat about that for a second before we go back to just chatting about where we're headed? But the Oura ring, what's it for? Why might people enjoy getting one of these?

Yeah, so I also don't get a kickback from them. So it's literally a ring for people who can't see what James was just holding up. And what it does is it has a series of sensors in it that can measure your heart rate, your heart rate variability, which is when your heart's beating, it's not a perfect metronome, it's not a perfect pattern. So even if it's not slowing up or speeding down, your heart rate has different. If there's three beats, the time between beat one and two and two and three is different. And how different that variability is in the inner beat intervals actually tells us a lot because it's proportional to or inverse, it's, I should say, inversely proportional, meaning if you have more adrenaline or stress in the system, your heart's more regular, it's more like a metronome or a drum. And so we can start to say, hey, how recovered is your body? How much stress is there in the system? As well as it's going to start to use movement data and all the other sensors in there to try to tell us, how long did you sleep? How much of that was deep sleep? How much of that was deep? NREM sleep vs REM sleep, rapid eye movement vs non rapid eye movement, different stages of sleep. And we can use that to then measure or get a sense of, of your sleep quality and potentially if sleep is playing a role or isn't playing a role in hitting or not hitting your goals. And so I think you know, and the thing we know, people like, people often ask me, how accurate are these sensors? And the answer is it depends how you use them. If you want it to be perfectly accurate for how many minutes of REM sleep you got, it's not perfect by far. But if you want to use it to say, hey, I made these changes, is it getting better or worse? It's quite accurate. And that's the beauty of using it to run experiments is I only need the relative accuracy to be great. I don't need the absolute accuracy to be perfect. And I think that's actually using these for experiments is sort of the key part of the wearable story. It's well known that most people put a wearable in the drawer after a few weeks and never use it again unless they then sign up with us. They're like, oh, I actually have one of those. But because the data, if it tells you you slept poorly last night or well, but you didn't change anything, it's sort of like, so what? Most people will figure out, oh, I sleep worse when I drink alcohol, great, that's true for most people, or over a certain amount of alcohol, or hey, if I, you know, stay up really late and don't get any sleep, my heart rate variability is lower. But they really aren't getting actionable data. But the cool thing is when you use it as a sensor to evaluate experiments, then it can be really valuable. And I'm quite interested in the heart rate variability data because where the story is going has a lot to do.

With stress, a hundred percent. And for me, what's interesting is I love sleep and I'm pretty structured. So at 9 o' clock that's like, okay to the bedroom. And there's journaling, meditation, reading. So 9, 39, 45, lights out. So I would always get eight or nine hours sleep, always. But when I put this on, I was like, whoa, I'm only sleeping sometimes five to seven hours. Of those eight or nine hours that I'm in bed, I'm tossing, turning, restless. So it actually has forced me to go, okay, what's driving that? And what can I do before I go to sleep during the day? It's, it's been really amazing. And you're right, there's been some signs there that there's elevated stress throughout the day.

And those are all things we can run experiments on. So yeah, so I, you know, there's a couple other wearables on the market. There's a whoop strap which is also quite good. The Apple Watch has good sensors, but uses algorithms for, like, heart rate variability that aren't as accurate. So. But they're kind of the two big wearables on the market that people wear for sleep are whoop and aura. And they're both. They're both quite good.

Yeah. Cool. Brilliant. So let's just look back into where we're at. So, essentially, I did get more bloods done. They did show those markers that you shared. And at that point, my doctor said, hey, I'm going to give you a referral to a specialist, which is an endocrinologist, and they will likely send you for an MRI on your brain. So that's kind of where we're at. That appointment's coming up in the very near future, and so is the mri, and we'll have more information on that front. So what. We also had to do another blood test, a rested prolactin blood test for that. And this was interesting. So I've given lots of blood over the last three or four months, getting somewhat comfortable with it, but every time the needle goes in, it's like, oh, it's never nice. So this rested prolactin test that the endocrinologist required was I would go to the hospital, they'd put an IV in, and they asked me to rest deeply, uninterrupted for 40 minutes. I was like, what's the point in that? Like, let's get this thing done, let's go. And they said, no, we want to see what your rested prolactin and other markers are. So for those 40 minutes, I essentially did breath work and meditation, and I was looking at my watch, looking at my heart rate, and I had it down pretty low consistently. They then drew the blood from me as I was in a rested state. Now, what came up after that was quite interesting, right?

Yeah. So two things came up. One, your DHEA was still elevated, so that initial finding was still there, but your prolactin was back to normal.

Why do they want you to rest and really relax? Well, we have something called the HPA axis, the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal axis. This is the set of brain structures and glands that are tied and are especially prominent in our stress system. This is a system that produces adrenaline and cortisol. And one of the things that happens here is as you get more stressed, there can be feed forward and it can cause you to get to produce more prolactin. So what they're trying to figure out is, is this coming from stress or is this being produced all the time. And so I think what's fascinating about where we are today is with that level coming back normal, clearly there's an element of it that is being produced by stress, at least at some times.

And so. But the sort of downstream effects like the DHEA are still staying elevated.

The DHEA came back quite a bit though, right? It came back from where it was originally came back.

It's still high, but lower than it was. And so again, that makes sense from this idea of if under stress you're juicing up the system even more then. And so I think what's fascinating will be how the doctors interpret this now.

Why?

Well, let's assume that this hypothesis is right and everything we do is based on experiments and hypotheses and that we can test. And so if the hypothesis is right, that you have, your body is very sensitive to producing prolactin under stress and therefore DHEA and the other factors, then the question is like, is that still something abnormal? Because I think there might be a case where the endocrinologist says, well, it's normal, then it's just stress. But my question is, yeah, but I'll bet you my prolactin isn't high under stress. Or the first time you went in, you were probably a little bit stressed about the blood test, but you wasn't like you had a massive house fire. It wasn't that the world was going crazy. So my question is, why does James Body produce a lot of this under stress? And is it just a stress sensitive neuroendocrine tumor? Is there no neuroendocrine tumor? And your pituitary gland is just very sensitive to effects of stress hormones. And we do have a little bit of data which is to say you're a calm guy, extremely successful business keynote speaker, but we do know that you seem to have a little bit of an exaggerated stress response physiologically, even if not psychologically. And I hope you don't mind me sharing with your audience that. Not at all. You notice that you'll sweat more than most people when you're not feeling that stressed, but your body has this response. And so I think what's fascinating from my standpoint is you have a physiological response to stress even when it's not totally psychogenic. And so that's a really interesting thing. And so then of course, in the meantime, because unfortunately there's quite a delay to see these specialists, we've run some experiments.

Yeah. And what's interesting, before we jump into those experiments, you're so Right. Like, if I think of keynote speaking, I actually love it. Like, it's. It's. I just feel so connected with people when I'm. When I'm delivering a keynote, when I'm on stage, I'm fully in the moment, fully present, having fun. I get off stage and literally I'd be like, I'm dripping with sweat. Like, my shirt is soaked. I go through shirts like you wouldn't believe. And I just thought that must be what it must be to be a keynote speaker.

You just get sweaty.

But actually, I noticed it more and more in different situations where I may be speaking to an audience or there's a little bit more expectation. I don't mentally feel any pressure at all. I'm in performance mode, but my body is like, hey, you're under attack. Let's stress and sweat.

Right? Yeah. It's fascinating. And I think.

It, to me, is a signal that there is an exaggerated physiological response. So I believe. My guess here is you have either, for some reason. Let's put it this way, for some reason, your pituitary is very responsive to stress. And maybe it's because you do have something like a prolactinoma, or maybe something else is going on and we'll go even deeper. And the part of this that I love the most, working with somebody like you is like, I want to get to the bottom of this. And I know you do, too. And so I know we'll get to the bottom of this. And it'll either happen through testing and evaluation, or it'll happen through experimentation and the data we collect there. Or probably both.

Yeah. And what's interesting, since we started doing that, things have set over the last, say, four or five weeks. I haven't had any lumps in around my chest, underneath my arms, where I was getting. Also tenderness in the armpit from the same kind of gynecomastia. It's all disappeared in terms of those symptoms, aren't there? Which is great. However, we ran an experiment recently. And what was that experiment?

Yeah. And by the way, I should add, we've been doing work on decreasing physiological stress levels that could certainly be helping make these symptoms going away, because we could probably be putting, you know, taking the foot off the gas pedal a little bit in the pituitary gland, as it were. So we've been working on doing everything we can to support from that angle, and I think it seems to be working somewhat. But one of the things is, the treatment for. One of the treatments for prolactinoma is.

Dopamine agonist drugs, these drugs that activate dopamine pathways. And so one of the supplements that we will use for clients, especially for focus, is.

The amino acid L tyrosine, which is a precursor that your body uses to make dopamine. And so, you know, one focus is one of the goals that almost all of our clients want. And so it felt like a very interesting experiment to run. Hey, let's see what happens with your focus on this. And let's also just see if anything else happens. And what were the results?

Yeah, so two key things. I started taking L tyrosine and very quickly, within 24 hours of the first tablet, I was deeply tired. Like, very deeply tired. And secondly, I started to experience the tenderness in, around my pec again under my arm almost instantly. Well, not instantly, but within 12 to 18 hours, I was feeling that. I was like, oh, I haven't had that in a long time. Why is that? Oh, yeah, I had that tablet. I wonder, is it connected? And that's when I came back to you. I did it for the second day as well. Same thing. Deeply tired and the sensitivity that had returned. So that's when I came back in.

So that was the end of that experiment. And the beauty is. So normally you'd think if you're increasing dopamine, it should, if there is even an issue in your brain, it should help.

But if we understand the physiology of dopamine and tyrosine, we know also that your body produces adrenaline and noradrenaline out of dopamine. And so what, in my sense, the most likely explanation here was, oh, this jacked up your endogenous stress hormone system. Your body was gobbling it up, the dopamine to make adrenaline. That can make some people, some people, it'll amp them up. Or if they're already kind of amped up, it can make them more tired. So that can absolutely be the case. And then lo and behold, if you're sensitive, if you're kind of HPA axis, if your hypothalamus, pituitary, adrenal axis is sensitive to stress, to producing prolactin and more dhea, lo and behold, like that at least is a pretty clear explanation. Now, we don't know for sure that it's true, but I always say, if I were a betting man and I run a company, so I am.

That'S what I bet on is happening. So now we have just more and more data suggesting that you have this really sensitive stress system and it has these unexpected effects. And so now we have even more data to help us think about the future.

And that's, again, I'm excited about that. And I know there's still unknowns for me in my health journey and for the person that's watching and listening right now, just knowing about your body, knowing what's going on inside, it's incredibly liberating and empowering to go, oh, I can actually manipulate things within my body through, you know, exercise, diet, meditation, supplementation, you know, but there could actually be something underlying there that if I get in there early enough, I can stop it before it gets worse. And I mean, I've been tested for everything under the sun and it's been great because now I've got a clean bill of health, regardless of this tiny little thing that we're dealing with, which I'm confident in the next couple of months we're going to. I'll have to get you back on the show when we figure out what it all is. But we're getting there, right?

Yeah. And I think that's the beautiful thing. Sometimes doctors are like, why do you order all those things? They're all going to come back normal. And my answer is, you're right, almost all of these are going to come back normal. But when they don't, it's incredibly valuable and often can just blow a case wide open for a client who has a goal that is like, for whatever reason, they can't hit. And that's an amazing way to use data because then we can also use experiments to make sure, hey, maybe it turns out they were low in this thing and it seems to be causing. But then you give more of it and it doesn't work. Okay. It just gives us the hypotheses and that, like I think you said earlier, it gives us the control to make decisions and figure out what our right next move is. That's the whole point here, is running these experiments. Figure out what's right for you and use that to reach your own goals. And some people in this biohacking world, you have to do this and you have to do that and you have the other thing. No, you have to do whatever fits your own goals. And maybe your goals are for. Some people are growing their company a thousand X, and some people, their goals are relaxing more and spending more time with their family. And it's not my job to tell you what your goals should be, but it is my job to help you get there.

Yeah, and you're definitely doing that. And, you know, I've made a decision that I want to continue When I reach my health goals with you, I want to set new ones and I don't want to just get complacent because I see that in business and I see that with clients often is they set a big goal, they reach it, and then they just go back to doing what they did before. And it's like, well, actually, no, we got to keep growing. So I want to keep being open minded around what's going on with my body, but also growing because if I'm not growing, I'm decaying. So it's like I want to be growing in all areas.

Yeah, I mean, I'll share. I turned 40 this past year and so I'm 40 and I've decided that this year I will set personal records in nearly every category.

I love it. Tell me, what kind of categories are we talking?

So I have goals across weightlifting, running, and some business goals as well.

I love it. That's amazing. And happy 40th. You're looking great for 40, I'll tell you that.

I mean, I better, right? Like it's. What's the old joke? You don't want to eat from a thin chef? Well, you probably want to work with me if I were terribly out of shape, but also like, you know, look, I run a startup. It's been five pretty grueling years. Even though I love it, it's still, you know, incredibly high stressed. And so I have to make my environment and decisions easy. And so look, I'm fairly knowledgeable about a lot of this performance stuff, but I work with a physical therapist and trainer twice a week because honestly, the physical stuff, I know enough to be dangerous. I know enough to manage a fair number of points in my life and for clients. But on the very technical balance, stability, injury recovery, even I'll outsource that. And so I think almost all of us in our lives have, whether it's an accountant, a lawyer, we all hire experts. And I think we're moving towards a world where, look, and I understand that this is not stuff everyone can afford. And I don't mean to look down on people who can't afford it in the least, but for people who can, it seems kind of crazy that they're not. And I think more people are, which is the point. But why wouldn't you want an expert to help you with your health? If you hire a lawyer, you probably want one for your body as well. And even for people who don't feel comfortable spending money and taking care of themselves. And by the way, Jeff, that's a Big deal for a lot of people is they don't feel emotionally maybe like they're worth it or like they should.

Just think about the benefits for your business or whatever you're working on. And that's why I love this work. I get to work with people. I mean, I spend most of my day developing products and selling products that we've discovered based on all these end of one experiments. But I just love being able to work with people and especially people like you that are so motivated and so sort of engaged and up for it.

Yeah, and I understand what you're talking about around like I look at high performance in a life and in a business sense now. High performance to me is being able to perform above the standard norms consistently over the long term. But whilst you're doing that, maintaining positive wellbeing and relationships. And so when it came to, you know, it was a year and a half or maybe longer ago that you and I chatted on the show for the first time and in between that time I'd seen that you had the fly kit and I fly often to do keynotes. So I was actually flying. It was a. There's a family trip to South Africa was the first trip. I tried this. I tried your fly kit because it pretty much guarantees no jet lag. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. I'd like to try that. I always get jet lag. I'm not sure if it's going to work, but I followed it to the tee and quite enjoyed it. The program, the protocol to get to South Africa, Got to South Africa, bang. I was away laughing, no jet lag. And me and my partner were chatting like, oh, let's just see what it's like on the way home. It's always more difficult when you're going home. You're maybe not as excited. And came back in New Zealand, you know, it's several thousand miles and again hit the ground running. And I know what jet lag is all about. I've had it many times, so that was phenomenal. So it got me thinking, I should go back here and just see what Andrew's doing, what other things he's doing. That was an interesting experiment. I've shared it with some of my elite professional athletes who travel a lot. They've used it successfully. So I thought, what else is he doing? I seen Frank pro and I just thought, you know what? I invest in so many other things in my life. You know, whether it's buying a car, whether it's clothing, whether it's Learning something about the business and getting a coach or an advisor for that. It's like, if I don't have my health, I have none of it. I literally have none of it. If I'm unwell or I die, it's all gone. So I thought, no, this is it. And I did have what you said a moment ago. I did have that moment. I'm like, oh, I'm going to be investing in myself. I could be, you know, taking that money and giving it to my son or taking that money and giving it to charity or I could put that into marketing. I'm like, just hold up a second. Like you need to show some love to yourself and be healthy and be actually willing to invest. So there was an emotional bit of like, should I, shouldn't I? But then I was all in. I was like, no, if I want to be the best dad I can be best partner, I can be the best business owner, best coach, best speaker, whatever it might be, I actually have got to be the best version of myself physically and at a chemical and biological level. So it was a no brainer. Andrew.

Well, I'm glad you did. It's been an incredible journey so far. We're certainly not done either on all the experiments we're doing to optimize energy focus, muscle mass endurance, which is coming along nicely as well as just this kind of journey to figure out what, why your body's unique in the way it is. And I fundamentally believe that when we get to the end of that journey, it's going to explain a bunch of things that you've always just thought were kind of odd about your body. And I'm quite high confidence that you in having this operator's manual for your body at much higher fidelity that you'll quite enjoy that going forward.

No, I really will. And when we do get to that point where we get the information, we figure out what this is. I would love to invite you back on and also to share some of those different protocols and different breathwork exercises and things that you've been getting me to try. I'd love to share some of the practical tools in our next session so that people can maybe try and experiment for themselves.

I would love to do that. I love nothing more than helping people experiment for themselves. So let's do that. We'll come back on, we're going to figure this out. I don't know exactly where the journey here ends and what we'll learn. I've still got my hypotheses, but to be continued.

Let's do it. And Andrea, I'm going to put a link to Fight below if people want to learn a bit more about what you're doing or some of your products so people can go and check it out. But I just want to say a heartfelt thank you for creating the space to connect today and a massive thank you for helping me on my health journey.

It's been such a pleasure and it still is. And we've got more to do.

Thanks man.

Thanks for tuning in today and invest investing in your own personal leadership. Please hit that subscribe button and I'd love if you'd leave me a rating and review. I've got some amazing guests lined up for you in the coming weeks. And leaders, it's that time to get out there and lead your life on purpose.