6 Ways to Get Metabolically Healthy

Hey, it's J.J. here. You know, I've been talking about environmental toxins forever, and laundry detergent is a sneaky one. A lot of them contain harsh chemicals like dyes, preservatives, and even UV brighteners. Those brighteners don't actually clean anything. They just coat fabric so your eyes think things look whiter or brighter. That's more chemicals I don't want on my family sheets or skin. And. And if you've got sensitive skin or allergies around the house, this can be a big problem. That's what got my attention about Earth Breeze. It looks like a dryer sheet, but it's actually laundry detergent. You toss one in the washer and that's it. No pouring, no mess, and no heavy plastic jug. Their packaging is lightweight cardboard, which helps reduce plastic waste. And if you choose the fragrance free option, it's gentle, hypoallergenic, non irritating, and non sensitizing. I really like how simple it is and how fresh and clean everything comes out without those unnecessary chemicals. Right now you can try Earth Breeze for up to 40% off with free gifts@earthbreeze.com virgin that's earthbreeze.com virgin for up to 40% off plus free gifts on your first order. Hey, JJ here. Can you believe how fast the holidays are knocking at the door this year? One minute it's pumpkin spice season, the next you're getting your guest room ready and wondering where their wrapping paper went. And that's when I turned to Wayfair. From bedding and towels to holiday decor and last minute stocking stuffers, Wayfair has everything you need to get your home and holidays together fast. And for way less. With Wayfair, I know I can refresh my guest room in no time. Maybe I'll add a soft new comforter or a few holiday throw pillows. With Wayfair, it's so easy and everything arrives super fast. Plus, there's free shipping for any order over $35 easy and total peace of mind. So whether you're hosting, gifting, or just adding those final festive touches, Wayfair has your back. And when the holidays wind down, Wayfair has everything you need to tuck it all neatly away. Smart storage solutions for every room from the kitchen to the closet. Get organized, refreshed, and ready for the holidays. For way less, head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. Wayfair. Every style, every home that's W a Y f a I r.com Ray Ban meta Glasses Come with open Ear audio so you can listen to your favorite music without blocking out the world around you.

Hey Meta, Play Gorgeous.

Here's Gorgeous by Doja Cat.

You can also ask Meta AI questions.

Hey Meta, when's Doja Cat's next concert?

Doja Cat is playing at the Los.

Angeles Theater next Tuesday.

Sweet Ray Ban Meta Glasses available at Ray Ban stores and other authorized retailers. Hey, this is JJ Virgin. Thanks so much for joining me. This is Ask the Health Expert. In each episode, I put the power of health in your hands and share ways to get healthy, lose weight, heal your gut, detox, and lots more so you can look and feel better fast.

If you'd rather watch the video, hey.

I did put on my makeup and do my hair, so check it out on my YouTube channel.

Hey, it's J.J. here. Now let's be honest. The holidays are basically a financial ambush. Travel, hosting gifts, surprise holiday school things. Suddenly you're wondering how December turned into a spending spree. If you want to keep your finances under control this holiday season, you need to be using Monarch. It's rated the Wall Street Journal's best budgeting app of 2025. Monarch is the all in one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean interface on your laptop or your phone. What really grabbed my attention is how fast those little holiday expenses pile up with Monarch. Seeing everything in one place makes it a lot harder to accidentally overspend. And honestly, I appreciate anything that keeps me from starting January with a money hangover. You'll love exploring the holiday spending category. Imagine how good it will feel to actually see what's happening before your credit card statement does that whole dramatic reveal thing. Monarch basically shows you exactly where the money is going in real time. And that level of clarity could change everything, right? Don't let financial opportunity slip through the cracks. Use the code virgin@monarch.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year@monarch.com with code Virgin.

This episode is brought to you by McAfee. I got a message that our flight was canceled, but they can put us on another flight and we just need to confirm our credit credit card info.

Wait, I got a security alert from McAfee. It flagged that message as a scam.

McAfee's scam detector automatically spots and alerts you to suspicious texts, emails, and deep fake videos. Learn more@mcafee.com online protection.

The latest statistics show that only 12% of the population is metabolically healthy. 12%. So odds are pretty good that you may be in the other 88%. And if you want to feel great and lose weight, well, you got to be metabolically healthy. So let's talk about six ways you can heal your metabolism. Hey, it's jj. This channel is all about helping you get healthy, feel better fast, and lose weight as a bonus. And if you're interested in that, and if you are, hit like and subscribe to get more videos like this. Now, here's the headline. Looking and feeling your best are almost impossible if you're not metabolically healthy. But what does that really mean? What are the markers and measurements that you need to look at to really determine whether you're metabolically healthy or not? Well, I'm going to give you six things to check so you'll get a sense of where you are now to get your baseline. And if you're not metabolically healthy, you'll be able to keep an eye on these markers to see how they improve as you make the changes. Because as you know what you measure, you can improve. So I'm going to start with some labs you'll want to get, and then I'm also going to share some things you can do at home that are going to make a big difference. In fact, most of the things I'm going to share can be done at home. So there's really no, no excuse not to be all over this. All right, number one. Number one is lab tests. You have to know your numbers. And that means getting your functional medicine doctor, getting with them and having them order a few labs. Now, you can do this on your own too with those direct to consumer lab companies. But to start, if you can work with your doctor, now, the first one you're going to do is you're going to want to look at your triglycerides to HDL ratio. And the closer to one this ratio is, the better. TG to HDL is used in diagnosing metabolic syndrome and is a predictor of heart disease. Now, when you're looking at this ratio, you'll also want to test your level of lipoprotein little A or lp, which is a type of LDL cholesterol. It's like the most atherogenic type. Now, most people have levels of 5 to 29 milligrams per deciliter. You don't want it any higher than that because there's clear evidence that the risk of heart disease may start to rise at that, 30 milligrams per deciliter, and then it just goes up steeply at 50 and over. So if it's high, it may also mean you're at risk for heart disease. Now, don't worry. You can bring these down with lifestyle shifts to your diet and by adding in some exercise. So if you are at risk, check out my book, the Sugar Impact Diet, and then make a habit of doing some resistance training and high intensity interval training exercises at least three times a week. Okay. You'll also want to know where you stand as far as prediabetes and diabetes are. And early detection is really important. So there's three tests you're going to want to do. First, you're going to want to look at fasting glucose, which measures blood glucose after you haven't eaten for at least 8 hours. 12 is better and shows how well your body utilizes sugar. Now, the normal range is 70-92mg per deciliter. Ideal is around 80mg per deciliter. If yours is high, it can indicate insulin resistance and other conditions of metabolic syndrome. You're also going to want to look at your fasting insulin. Fasting insulin indicates how much insulin you have in your blood even when you haven't eaten. And high levels can be a warning that your pancreas is over secreting insulin to clear out excess sugar. And it's another test that can help your doctor determine insulin resistance and other indicators of metabolic syndrome. The normal range of fasting insulin varies somewhere between 2 to 5 mil to ML is really where you want to be. That's considered ideal. And by the way, you might see up to 20 is fine. No, 2 to 5. We want ideal, optimum, not normal, right? All right, next one is the hemoglobin A1C test. Now, sugar is sticky, it clings to your blood cells, and they have a three month lifespan. So what you're going to learn From a hemoglobin A1C test is how much sugar has been sticking to your red blood cells in the past three months. So it gives you a big picture of how well your body metabolizes and utilizes sugar. Now, a normal A1C range here is going to be 5. 4.8 to 5.4. But you really would love to be in the 4.5 to 5 and 5.5 and up is considered high. All right, so all three of those tests are important. Fasting glucose, fasting insulin, and your hemoglobin A1C. Now, of course, you also want to get your blood pressure checked. I mean, that's kind of an obvious one. And an Easy One, normal blood pressure for most adults is defined as a system systolic pressure of less than 120 and a diastolic pressure of less than 80 and elevated is 120 to 129 over a number, you know, over that 80. So 130 over 80 is considered to be hypertensive. But by the way, really where you want to be is more in the 110 to 70 range. That's where you really want to think about getting to 110 or 70. Now, you probably know that if you have high blood, you're at more risk for other health problems like heart disease and heart attack and stroke. All right, next one, inflammation. The major symptom of being metabolically unhealthy is inflammation. So to measure that, you're going to want to get a highly sensitive C reactive protein test. This is a great measure for your overall inflammation. It's called an hscrp, and it can be used to evaluate your risk for heart disease and stroke. Okay, so those are some of the tests that you can talk with your doctor about monitoring, getting in monitoring so that you can really see what's going on with your metabolic health. Now, let's talk about what you can do at home, because one of the main things we're talking about here in terms of metabolic health is your glucose tolerance, how well your body handles glucose or how well you balance your blood sugar. Anytime you eat, your blood sugar should rise slowly, not like this. And then insulin should increase to bring it back down to normal fasting levels. After that, insulin should also return to its normal fasting level. But when insulin isn't working well, all sorts of things go sideways. But the good news is that there are a lot of tools available you can use to monitor your blood sugar and your metabolic health at home. So you know pretty much in real time. If you're having an issue, I'm going to get into those in a bit. Number two, waist and hip measurements. Now, this is a simple thing that you can do, and that's to check your waist and hip measurements. Try to do this once a week. You just measure the smallest part of your waist and the largest part of your hips, and then divide your waist measurement by your hip measurement. Now, according to the World Health Organization, a moderate waist to hip ratio is 0.9 or less in men and 0.85 or less for women. And a waist to hip ratio of one or higher increases your risk of heart disease and other conditions linked to being overweight. Now, you don't have to obsess and do this every day because it's not going to change that fast. But if you find you're gaining weight around your waist, that's a very dangerous indicator of being metabolically unhealthy, because waist fat, belly fat, tends to be the most inflammatory. Belly fat is the most dangerous kind of fat because it develops in your abdomen and can surround internal organs. It puts you at greater risk for developing high cholesterol, inflammation, heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. And it boosts your risk of premature death, even if you're considered normal weight. And then there's number three weight. Now, if you can step on a scale and get your weight, I say if you can, because I know for some people the scale can be this big trigger. But I would love for you to start to look at that scale as unemotionally as possible. It is not your mean friend. Use it at this as this biometric device that's giving you great information that you can use to heal and to make the right decisions. Now, here's one way to look at it, okay? Without a scale, you may gain three to five pounds overnight and not even know it. Now, ignorance is not bliss here because if you see on the scale that you gained three to five pounds overnight, you know immediately you're inflamed. Because you don't gain 3 to 5 pounds overnight from food. You gain 3 to 5 pounds overnight from inflammation. And when you know you're inflamed, you can use that information to make better choices. Next time, you can look back and go, like, what food did I eat that's hurting me? That didn't work for me. Or maybe it was an activity you did, or maybe it was a stressful event, or maybe you overdid the exercise. The bottom line is you'll be able to identify the things you did that are working against you and not helping you heal. So ideally, you're going to disconnect emotion from the scale and stop allowing it to be your mean friend and begin to look at it as nothing more than a biometric device. You know, just like you would with the blood pressure cuff, it's just a device that's helping you really connect the dots between what you're eating, how you're living, and how it's showing up on your body. Now, if you have a body fat scale that looks at your total body water as well, even better, that's a critical measurement because it helps determine your body composition. How much of your body is fat and how much is lean body mass. You want to make sure that you are holding on to or building muscle as you're losing that body fat. Now if you find that you're losing weight but you're not losing your waist, you could be losing muscle rather than fat. And by the way, that is making you worse, not better. And that's why you really want to know both your weight and your waist measurement. All right, number four. Number four is monitor your blood sugar. And this is great because you can now measure your blood sugar at home with something called a continuous glucose monitor or a cgm or you can use a little prick monitor. But I really love that continuous glucose monitor because it lets you see in real time how what you're eating is impacting your blood sugar. So then you can make informed, smart decisions that are good for your metabolic health. And you'll see why I always emphasize eating by the plate, which you can check out in the links below. The plate is made up of clean protein which is so thermic and satiating anti inflammatory fat choices which don't trigger an insulin response. Plus they're also super satiating, right? And delicious. And fiber from non starchy veggies. And slow low sugar impact carbs, which lowers the sugar impact of your meal and slows down the release of blood sugar. A blood sugar level less than 140 milligrams per deciliter during the two hours after eat is normal. And you really want it to be 120 or less. Now after two hours, a reading of 140 to 199 indicates prediabetes and 200 plus indicates diabetes. So a blood sugar monitor can tell you as soon as you've had that coffee with sweetener, bam. Your blood sugar went up. Or instead, when you eat a meal that was balanced, you can see immediately that it kept your blood sugar under control. Then when you eat, you know you're going to eat something or drink something that might impact your blood sugar. You can do a little hack like little apple cider vinegar or some lemon juice for water before and you'll be able to see if it's going to help slow the rise in your blood sugar for that meal. It's really cool. The continuous glucose monitor sticks on your upper arm like right here and it stays there for a few weeks until you need to replace it. So I mean you take showers, you go to the gym, everything, it just sticks on there. Now another option is just do a little prick test after you eat to see what's going on with your blood sugar and and in the morning to see what your fasting blood sugar stands as well. Okay, number five, blood pressure testing. Now, of course, this is another easy test you can do at home. You'll get it done at your doctor's office, as we talked about earlier, and they'll have that record. But when you get a blood pressure cuff at home and you can do it more often, you'll know if it's consistently high, because sometimes when you go to the doctor's office, it's high because you're at the doctor's office. Right. When you have poor glucose control and you're more insulin resistance, the chances are that you're going to have issues with your blood pressure as well. And testing it at home is going to help you connect all of those dots. So you really want to monitor your blood pressure, because even being slightly hypertensive, remember I said I want you 120 over, over 70. So even as you start to go like, or 110 over 70, as you.

Start to go 120 over 80, 125.

You'Re going to start having risk for heart issues. And slightly elevated blood sugar puts you at risk, just like slightly elevated hypertension. So we want to catch all of these things early. Okay. You probably figured I was going to say this because you know how much I love to talk about sleep. Six is sleep. Now, I love to track sleep. I actually have two trackers on right now. I have an ordering and an Apple watch. I've been known to do that with a Garmin as well. I love to track sleep because sleep fixes so many things. That's what it's for. Repair and restore. And you know how good you feel when you got a quality night's sleep. Now, getting more quality sleep has a massive effect on your insulin sensitivity and your blood sugar control. And those things can happen really fast if you do some simple things to prioritize your sleep. So check out my other video on sleep for ways to do that, because poor sleep can also be a reason you're not losing weight. Now, as far as tracking it goes, again, I've got my OURA ring right here. I've got an Apple watch, There's Garmin. There's all sorts of cool tools out there. Just get one and use it. And of course, it's ideal if you can get seven to nine hours of sleep every night. But what's great about the tracker is it's not just about those hours. It's really about how much deep sleep you're getting, because the deep sleep is what's really helping you get rested and healing. All right, there you go. Six things you can do that you can measure and test to help you become more metabolically healthy. And remember, the more metabolically healthy you are, the better you're going to feel, especially in terms of your energy and your focus. You'll be less inflamed and it'll be easier for you to drop some weight too. Don't forget to hit like and subscribe and join me next time when I talk about what it means to brown your body fat. Intriguing, right? See you soon. For more info on this and other health topics I cover or to rate and review, find me on Instagram, Facebook and my website, jjvirgin.com and don't forget to subscribe to my show so you won't miss a single episode. Go to subscribetoj.com thanks again for being with me this week.

Toyota Thun is on, so stop by your local Toyota dealer and test drive a stylish new Camry or sleek and capable Corolla with great financing and lease options available to qualified customers. Visit buyatoyota.com for more Toyota let's go places.

Hello listeners, this is Ann Boeckle, author, blogger and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week, I take all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment, whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change, or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything. You'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and visit our website what Should I Read Next? Podcast. Com to find out more.